Hi, this got weird. Have too many em-dashes, some mixed metaphors, religious imagery and general confusion and pretentiousness. JUST LOOK AT PORN LIKE A NORMAL PERSON, JESUS BRUCE /o\
March 27th, Bridgeport, Connecticut. Extinguishing house fire. Three-quarter profile view, low quality capture from cellphone, blurry.
May 9th, Buenos Aires, Argentine Republic. Averting multi-vehicle collision. Low, distorted angle as subject is floating several feet above the ground. High res, blurry.
June 11th, Metropolis. Brief appearance at press conference after preventing assassination attempt on visiting diplomat. 1080p footage, face-on.
Blurry.
Bruce doesn't know how he's doing it--he'd try to find out if he thought it was important, but he's confident that it's too subtle for Spyral's IPI, at least. The salient point is that he's protecting himself, and that means he has something to protect. An alter ego, a daytime persona. Or, night-time, as the case may be; this is not a creature that flourishes in shadow. Bruce wants to know exactly who he is, who he knows, who he cares about, who cares about him. What will break him when enough pressure is applied.
Bruce pushes his keyboard across his desk and rubs at his eyes. He has gathered approximately three terabytes of data on this man--this alien, this walking WMD--since the Black Zero event: folder upon folder full of amateur YouTube footage and news broadcasts from all around the world, an unfathomable number of stills cribbed from every social media site that exists. Every time the Superman so much as breathes in public, the internet erupts with a flurry of candid shots and the tantalizing promise of new data points, but his crawler only ever brings him more Instagram pics of someone who looks like he watched a slightly cursed videotape.
Bruce sets up every new batch to run through facial recognition anyway, cross-references the results with what he's extrapolated about his height and weight and body mass, his chest and arm and inner goddamn thigh measurements, and collates a list of people from whatever his algorithms spit out.
It's mostly actors and athletes and a startling number of underwear models. The outliers, the everyday folk--those are the ones Bruce has more interest in. The quiet ones, keeping their heads down. When the frequency of any given name hits a certain threshold, that's when he starts digging further.
(Two months from now, Bruce will meet Clark Kent. He will be set on a different goal that night, but the name will be familiar enough that Bruce will pay him more attention than he would otherwise warrant. Enough that their tense interaction will devolve into an aggressive rut against the rear of the building.)
Bruce takes a gulp of his coffee. It's cold, but he tips his head back and finishes the rest anyway.
His eyes hurt. The clock on his taskbar reads 4:32 am, and he decides that a little sleep before tomorrow's eight a.m. board meeting would be prudent if not useful. He sets off another web crawler before he turns in, and resigns himself to the trashpile of animated gifs and dubious photomanipulations that the morning will bring.
*
He's straining on his toes atop an ornate gargoyle, high above the inky streets of Gotham. It's teeming with rain, slanting over the skyline and beading on his gauntlets, trickling down into the grooved detailing. It collects there and then drops onto his face, slides along the seam between the cowl and his skin. His hands twist against the slippery brickwork, but that only serves to tangle him further in his own grapnel wire.
"Well," the Superman says, voice like a thunderhead. He steps towards him across the smoggy air. "Look at the state of you."
His face is vivid, flawless: high-boned cheeks and cleft chin; mouth as hard as marble. He looms over him, the personification of judgment, reaching out to press his palm over the symbol on Bruce's chest. Bruce jerks beneath his touch, pulls the wire tighter around his wrists. The Superman's eyes transfix him, colder and bluer than Arctic water as his fingers walk up Bruce's neck, his chin, slip between Bruce's lips and curl behind his teeth. He tastes like ozone.
"My fish on a hook."
Bruce jolts awake a handful of seconds before it happens--enough time to register the weight between his legs, the hot slam of his blood--and then it belts him like a suckerpunch, drives the breath out of him as he comes in a long, brutal wave.
It's been a while, he tells himself as he cleans up, hands shaking. It's been a while since he's taken someone to his bed. Too fixated on his mission, he has neglected to indulge in even his own utilitarian touch.
He tries to remember the face in his dream, and can't.
*
Mid-afternoon, and he's sifting through the detritus collected in his database. His friend has been busy; there's new footage from Europe and Australia, as well as dotted around the States. One picture in particular keeps cropping up repeatedly--his system does a decent job of sieving out the duplicates when one goes viral and blankets social media like kudzu, but it's not infallible.
Bruce can't be annoyed about it, not this time.
The Superman is twisted in midair, his back a graceful arch against the sky. He's framed by Metropolis' skyscrapers, and whoever snapped the shot has inadvertently hit upon the golden ratio. His cape billows, backlit and radiant, and every sleek line of his body is limned in sunlight.
He looks like a renaissance painting, an angel ascending. It's breathtaking. That his face is smeared and grainy doesn't matter. The fact that Bruce hates him to the core of his being--it doesn't matter.
The hair pricks up along Bruce's arms and the back of his neck, and he knows what he is going to do.
*
Bruce closes his eyes and tightens his fist and tries to remember the face in his dream. Whenever he feels like he's close, almost has his features solidified, the man's eyes spark like electricity, cruel and blue, and the image he's painstakingly building flares up and disperses like smoke.
He grunts in frustration, tries a different approach.
Nobody can agree on how strong the Superman is, only that he is phenomenally so. He could hold Bruce's wrists down, for example, above his head, one-handed, with ease. Bruce hasn't had a partner who could do that, or who seemed inclined to even try, for a very long time.
(Two months from now, Bruce will meet Clark Kent, and find himself pressed against warm brickwork.)
A man like him--this weapon, this threat--he could pick Bruce up as though he is made of nothing, render him helpless with the bare minimum of effort. He could draw his fingers down Bruce's suit--down Batman's uniform, split the seams like he's opening an envelope. He will only find a poison pen letter inside. Perhaps that will anger him.
And perhaps that what Bruce wants, to see the wrath of a god, to smile in his face they dismantle each other--
Bruce pushes his head back against his pillows, drags his hand; his feet slide against the sheets.
--and it might be a mutually-assured destruction, because Bruce may be weak in the shadow of such a being, but he is clever and he is resourceful and most of all he is tenacious. He will find a way to put his hand to the Superman's throat, and he will--
(Two months from now, Clark Kent will float to the top of Bruce's list, caught by his surveillance devices around the Gotham docks. Bruce will call him, Clark Kent will come to him, and afterwards, satisfied, Bruce will harden his heart.)
--he will pull his head back, bare his neck for ritual sacrifice, carry him over his shoulder like a lamb, hook a finger into his mouth, reel him in and land him in the gutter with the rest of the human race.
But he is not human and he doesn't recognize his place, and he will fight--
Bruce arches up from the mattress, breath caught between his teeth.
--he will fight, with all that he has, all that power focused into a singularity, bearing down onto Bruce like a thunderbolt and enduring it will be the most crucial thing he'll ever do, his life's work in the balance. He will resist, and won't be struck down or transfixed by his fists, his mouth, his eyes, crushed by his magnitude; he will strain against him with all of his might, with every inch of his ferocity, hands clawing--
(Two months from now, Bruce will try to kill Clark Kent.)
--he will find something, find a weakness, because he knows there must be a way to get under his skin, to crawl into his veins, to penetrate--
--and Bruce comes with a shudder, hoarse cry reverberating off the glass walls, echoing back at him like an unheard prayer.
Fill: An Open Eye, Bruce/Clark, masturbation, fantasizing about Clark
March 27th, Bridgeport, Connecticut. Extinguishing house fire. Three-quarter profile view, low quality capture from cellphone, blurry.
May 9th, Buenos Aires, Argentine Republic. Averting multi-vehicle collision. Low, distorted angle as subject is floating several feet above the ground. High res, blurry.
June 11th, Metropolis. Brief appearance at press conference after preventing assassination attempt on visiting diplomat. 1080p footage, face-on.
Blurry.
Bruce doesn't know how he's doing it--he'd try to find out if he thought it was important, but he's confident that it's too subtle for Spyral's IPI, at least. The salient point is that he's protecting himself, and that means he has something to protect. An alter ego, a daytime persona. Or, night-time, as the case may be; this is not a creature that flourishes in shadow. Bruce wants to know exactly who he is, who he knows, who he cares about, who cares about him. What will break him when enough pressure is applied.
Bruce pushes his keyboard across his desk and rubs at his eyes. He has gathered approximately three terabytes of data on this man--this alien, this walking WMD--since the Black Zero event: folder upon folder full of amateur YouTube footage and news broadcasts from all around the world, an unfathomable number of stills cribbed from every social media site that exists. Every time the Superman so much as breathes in public, the internet erupts with a flurry of candid shots and the tantalizing promise of new data points, but his crawler only ever brings him more Instagram pics of someone who looks like he watched a slightly cursed videotape.
Bruce sets up every new batch to run through facial recognition anyway, cross-references the results with what he's extrapolated about his height and weight and body mass, his chest and arm and inner goddamn thigh measurements, and collates a list of people from whatever his algorithms spit out.
It's mostly actors and athletes and a startling number of underwear models. The outliers, the everyday folk--those are the ones Bruce has more interest in. The quiet ones, keeping their heads down. When the frequency of any given name hits a certain threshold, that's when he starts digging further.
(Two months from now, Bruce will meet Clark Kent. He will be set on a different goal that night, but the name will be familiar enough that Bruce will pay him more attention than he would otherwise warrant. Enough that their tense interaction will devolve into an aggressive rut against the rear of the building.)
Bruce takes a gulp of his coffee. It's cold, but he tips his head back and finishes the rest anyway.
His eyes hurt. The clock on his taskbar reads 4:32 am, and he decides that a little sleep before tomorrow's eight a.m. board meeting would be prudent if not useful. He sets off another web crawler before he turns in, and resigns himself to the trashpile of animated gifs and dubious photomanipulations that the morning will bring.
*
He's straining on his toes atop an ornate gargoyle, high above the inky streets of Gotham. It's teeming with rain, slanting over the skyline and beading on his gauntlets, trickling down into the grooved detailing. It collects there and then drops onto his face, slides along the seam between the cowl and his skin. His hands twist against the slippery brickwork, but that only serves to tangle him further in his own grapnel wire.
"Well," the Superman says, voice like a thunderhead. He steps towards him across the smoggy air. "Look at the state of you."
His face is vivid, flawless: high-boned cheeks and cleft chin; mouth as hard as marble. He looms over him, the personification of judgment, reaching out to press his palm over the symbol on Bruce's chest. Bruce jerks beneath his touch, pulls the wire tighter around his wrists. The Superman's eyes transfix him, colder and bluer than Arctic water as his fingers walk up Bruce's neck, his chin, slip between Bruce's lips and curl behind his teeth. He tastes like ozone.
"My fish on a hook."
Bruce jolts awake a handful of seconds before it happens--enough time to register the weight between his legs, the hot slam of his blood--and then it belts him like a suckerpunch, drives the breath out of him as he comes in a long, brutal wave.
It's been a while, he tells himself as he cleans up, hands shaking. It's been a while since he's taken someone to his bed. Too fixated on his mission, he has neglected to indulge in even his own utilitarian touch.
He tries to remember the face in his dream, and can't.
*
Mid-afternoon, and he's sifting through the detritus collected in his database. His friend has been busy; there's new footage from Europe and Australia, as well as dotted around the States. One picture in particular keeps cropping up repeatedly--his system does a decent job of sieving out the duplicates when one goes viral and blankets social media like kudzu, but it's not infallible.
Bruce can't be annoyed about it, not this time.
The Superman is twisted in midair, his back a graceful arch against the sky. He's framed by Metropolis' skyscrapers, and whoever snapped the shot has inadvertently hit upon the golden ratio. His cape billows, backlit and radiant, and every sleek line of his body is limned in sunlight.
He looks like a renaissance painting, an angel ascending. It's breathtaking. That his face is smeared and grainy doesn't matter. The fact that Bruce hates him to the core of his being--it doesn't matter.
The hair pricks up along Bruce's arms and the back of his neck, and he knows what he is going to do.
*
Bruce closes his eyes and tightens his fist and tries to remember the face in his dream. Whenever he feels like he's close, almost has his features solidified, the man's eyes spark like electricity, cruel and blue, and the image he's painstakingly building flares up and disperses like smoke.
He grunts in frustration, tries a different approach.
Nobody can agree on how strong the Superman is, only that he is phenomenally so. He could hold Bruce's wrists down, for example, above his head, one-handed, with ease. Bruce hasn't had a partner who could do that, or who seemed inclined to even try, for a very long time.
(Two months from now, Bruce will meet Clark Kent, and find himself pressed against warm brickwork.)
A man like him--this weapon, this threat--he could pick Bruce up as though he is made of nothing, render him helpless with the bare minimum of effort. He could draw his fingers down Bruce's suit--down Batman's uniform, split the seams like he's opening an envelope. He will only find a poison pen letter inside. Perhaps that will anger him.
And perhaps that what Bruce wants, to see the wrath of a god, to smile in his face they dismantle each other--
Bruce pushes his head back against his pillows, drags his hand; his feet slide against the sheets.
--and it might be a mutually-assured destruction, because Bruce may be weak in the shadow of such a being, but he is clever and he is resourceful and most of all he is tenacious. He will find a way to put his hand to the Superman's throat, and he will--
(Two months from now, Clark Kent will float to the top of Bruce's list, caught by his surveillance devices around the Gotham docks. Bruce will call him, Clark Kent will come to him, and afterwards, satisfied, Bruce will harden his heart.)
--he will pull his head back, bare his neck for ritual sacrifice, carry him over his shoulder like a lamb, hook a finger into his mouth, reel him in and land him in the gutter with the rest of the human race.
But he is not human and he doesn't recognize his place, and he will fight--
Bruce arches up from the mattress, breath caught between his teeth.
--he will fight, with all that he has, all that power focused into a singularity, bearing down onto Bruce like a thunderbolt and enduring it will be the most crucial thing he'll ever do, his life's work in the balance. He will resist, and won't be struck down or transfixed by his fists, his mouth, his eyes, crushed by his magnitude; he will strain against him with all of his might, with every inch of his ferocity, hands clawing--
(Two months from now, Bruce will try to kill Clark Kent.)
--he will find something, find a weakness, because he knows there must be a way to get under his skin, to crawl into his veins, to penetrate--
--and Bruce comes with a shudder, hoarse cry reverberating off the glass walls, echoing back at him like an unheard prayer.
*