Star City Technology Conference and Expo, the banners and sailflags bedecking the hotel concourse announce, reflected manifold in the building's modern glass-and-steel facade. It figures that it would be held here in the space-age curvature of contemporary architecture and not in one of the stately buildings downtown. Cramming that much technology per square foot into something so old would probably make it an art installation instead.
Clark Kent shoulders his bag and, as he checks in, wonders what kind of slick modernity will have befallen his room.
Massive, massive glass windows that facilitate a tropical microclimate, naturally. His compliments to the architect. He'll only have to sweat through two nights, at least--tonight, when Bruce Wayne will make himself known as a surprise attendee, having taken a last-minute hands-on interest in his own products for whatever fickle reason--and tomorrow, by which time they should have located their target, extracted the necessary information, and Clark can get on with writing his article on the How to Identify Risks, Threats and Vulnerabilities in Your IT Infrastructure panel for the Planet's technology spread.
He mashes the AC controls and then sits to kick off his shoes; the sound of them hitting the floor echoes loudly around the room. He sighs.
*
Bruce Wayne arrives fashionably late, as is his wont. The hotel is booked solid and has been for months and any number of bills slipped to the concierge can't change that. The basic suite he has wrangled is next to Clark's by design, but it would be like him to attempt to lubricate his way into the penthouse as a matter of course.
They rendezvous in Bruce's room so that he can be intractable with authority. The case has had something of a learning curve so far, not least for dealing with Bruce's inconsistent interpersonal skills. Clark knows he's a personal affront to him in a myriad of ways, many of which he doesn't fully understand and probably never will. Existing was one reason, until it wasn't. Not existing seemed to upset him equally, or so he's heard. Being alive again: opinion pending, erring on the side of exasperated.
"Piper Moritz is on the event roster. I still think she's our key."
"She's a junior management gofer." Bruce lounges in the lone taupe wing chair, leaving Clark on his feet.
"She has the contacts."
"But not the clearance levels."
"Not officially."
"What's your evidence, Clark?"
"Intuition. With the pattern we've been seeing, I think--"
Bruce holds up a hand. "Look, I'm not in the habit of committing corporate espionage based on nothing but a hunch."
"Really? I thought that was very much in your wheelhouse."
Bruce narrows his eyes. "What we have here is circumstantial at best," he says.
"But you think there's something we can learn," Clark points out, "or you wouldn't have bothered coming."
It took him a few incidents to figure it out, but Bruce doesn't like it when Clark is right. That part is obvious. The part that took a bit more consideration was that it's not being wrong that bothers him. It bothers him because Clark has figured something out--either before he's managed to, or more likely because it was something he was withholding.
Clark can only assume that Bruce thinks he cheats, the same way as he cheats at gravity, at being faster and stronger, at death. Maybe he harbors some paranoia that Clark is privy to more than he actually is. It would explain why Bruce still feels foreign even after months of working together; his reflex is to make himself unknowable.
Regardless, it's always a gamble to cut through his deliberate speciousness, and it rarely pays off. Today has not been exceptional in that regard.
"If you don't mind I'm going to shower," Bruce says, "and then I'm going to recon the bar."
*
"I'm slumming it," Clark hears Bruce say to the woman at his side, napkin and a tumbler of gin in his hand, tie already loose and he's barely been here an hour. "There's not even a minibar."
She laughs and tugs a strand of hair out of her chignon, resting her clutch on the bartop so she can lean on one elbow and touch her neck. "Lucky me," she says, "now you have to hang out at the actual bar instead of having a private party."
Bruce smiles and lays his phone face-down next to it. Great, Clark thinks. Finally. If Bruce can intercept Moritz's contact history then this will be more straightforward than either of them had hoped. Bruce taps the back of the phone, an idly flirtatious gesture that activates the cloner with a haptic command.
The phone stays face-down. Bruce orders another drink. And another, and a round for the bar. He's had plenty of time and then some for his software to work its magic, and he hasn't glanced in Clark's direction even once where he's sat alone at one of the tables with his notebook and a glass of coke.
One of Bruce's hands migrates up Moritz's arm until it's cupping her shoulder.
Clark frowns and pulls up his contact list. Bruce's ringtone trills loudly--the WayneTech startup jingle; familiar to anyone running a device with the OS. Three other people in the bar go for their phones. Clark's heard it once or twice on the rare occasion that the Bat's computer has needed rebooting, a strange, lively echo in the sheetmetal shadows of the cave.
He watches Bruce pick up his phone, look at it and then hang up. His hand slides down Moritz's arm again and flattens in the small of her back. A moment later Clark is pinged with an auto-reject message: In a meeting.
Not soon after, Clark senses someone approach his table. "Don't bother," the someone says. "That's Bruce Wayne."
Clark looks up from his phone. It's a man in the first flush of middle age, unremarkably handsome but wearing his suit like it's a costume. He's clutching his drink tightly enough that his fingertips have gone white. He's sweating, ever so slightly.
Oh, no, Clark thinks. Whoops.
"He'll chew you up and spit you out," the man says.
"I don't think there's any danger of that," Clark replies, cheerfully misunderstanding even as he wonders if the man speaks from experience or is just parroting some gossip. "At best I'll get a lousy quote. At worst, nothing on the record."
"Oh," the man says, following Clark's lanyard down his chest, eventually arriving at his badge. "You're press? The--" He makes a gesture that encompasses Clark's glasses and shirt, "--make you look like a tech guy. Are you covering the expo?"
"Yup," Clark says. And that's all he says. A slightly awkward silence ensues.
"Well," the man says, cautiously. "I don't suppose I could buy you a drink?"
It's an easy enough question to answer, but for some reason the grey flecks in his hair give Clark pause. "Ah, no, thank you," he says, not unkindly, and offers an apologetic smile as he feels the heat crawl across his face. "Not tonight."
The man hesitates for a moment and then leaves after dropping a pleasantry and a handshake, but not his name. Clark's view of the bar is restored. Bruce has turned his head and is looking at him for the first time since he got here, his expression carefully schooled.
Well then. Clark checks his watch--it's late enough. He takes himself back to his room.
*
Some hours later, amid the usual ambient noise of the hotel--the foot traffic and slightly-too-loud voices, the struggling AC and inexplicable moving furniture--he's awakened from a light doze by Bruce stumbling up to his room.
He's not alone.
"Your eyes are so incredible," Bruce says. Clark can hear him unlocking the door, the magnetic displacement of the keycard in the lock. "So blue."
"They're green," Piper says, half-laughing, confusion softened by her evening at the bar.
"Oh," Bruce says, no sharper. Clark can't tell if it's an act, this time. "Must be the lighting." The door shuts behind them.
FILL: It’s more than silhouettes tonight, Bruce/Clark, voyeurism [1/3]
Clark Kent shoulders his bag and, as he checks in, wonders what kind of slick modernity will have befallen his room.
Massive, massive glass windows that facilitate a tropical microclimate, naturally. His compliments to the architect. He'll only have to sweat through two nights, at least--tonight, when Bruce Wayne will make himself known as a surprise attendee, having taken a last-minute hands-on interest in his own products for whatever fickle reason--and tomorrow, by which time they should have located their target, extracted the necessary information, and Clark can get on with writing his article on the How to Identify Risks, Threats and Vulnerabilities in Your IT Infrastructure panel for the Planet's technology spread.
He mashes the AC controls and then sits to kick off his shoes; the sound of them hitting the floor echoes loudly around the room. He sighs.
*
Bruce Wayne arrives fashionably late, as is his wont. The hotel is booked solid and has been for months and any number of bills slipped to the concierge can't change that. The basic suite he has wrangled is next to Clark's by design, but it would be like him to attempt to lubricate his way into the penthouse as a matter of course.
They rendezvous in Bruce's room so that he can be intractable with authority. The case has had something of a learning curve so far, not least for dealing with Bruce's inconsistent interpersonal skills. Clark knows he's a personal affront to him in a myriad of ways, many of which he doesn't fully understand and probably never will. Existing was one reason, until it wasn't. Not existing seemed to upset him equally, or so he's heard. Being alive again: opinion pending, erring on the side of exasperated.
"Piper Moritz is on the event roster. I still think she's our key."
"She's a junior management gofer." Bruce lounges in the lone taupe wing chair, leaving Clark on his feet.
"She has the contacts."
"But not the clearance levels."
"Not officially."
"What's your evidence, Clark?"
"Intuition. With the pattern we've been seeing, I think--"
Bruce holds up a hand. "Look, I'm not in the habit of committing corporate espionage based on nothing but a hunch."
"Really? I thought that was very much in your wheelhouse."
Bruce narrows his eyes. "What we have here is circumstantial at best," he says.
"But you think there's something we can learn," Clark points out, "or you wouldn't have bothered coming."
It took him a few incidents to figure it out, but Bruce doesn't like it when Clark is right. That part is obvious. The part that took a bit more consideration was that it's not being wrong that bothers him. It bothers him because Clark has figured something out--either before he's managed to, or more likely because it was something he was withholding.
Clark can only assume that Bruce thinks he cheats, the same way as he cheats at gravity, at being faster and stronger, at death. Maybe he harbors some paranoia that Clark is privy to more than he actually is. It would explain why Bruce still feels foreign even after months of working together; his reflex is to make himself unknowable.
Regardless, it's always a gamble to cut through his deliberate speciousness, and it rarely pays off. Today has not been exceptional in that regard.
"If you don't mind I'm going to shower," Bruce says, "and then I'm going to recon the bar."
*
"I'm slumming it," Clark hears Bruce say to the woman at his side, napkin and a tumbler of gin in his hand, tie already loose and he's barely been here an hour. "There's not even a minibar."
She laughs and tugs a strand of hair out of her chignon, resting her clutch on the bartop so she can lean on one elbow and touch her neck. "Lucky me," she says, "now you have to hang out at the actual bar instead of having a private party."
Bruce smiles and lays his phone face-down next to it. Great, Clark thinks. Finally. If Bruce can intercept Moritz's contact history then this will be more straightforward than either of them had hoped. Bruce taps the back of the phone, an idly flirtatious gesture that activates the cloner with a haptic command.
The phone stays face-down. Bruce orders another drink. And another, and a round for the bar. He's had plenty of time and then some for his software to work its magic, and he hasn't glanced in Clark's direction even once where he's sat alone at one of the tables with his notebook and a glass of coke.
One of Bruce's hands migrates up Moritz's arm until it's cupping her shoulder.
Clark frowns and pulls up his contact list. Bruce's ringtone trills loudly--the WayneTech startup jingle; familiar to anyone running a device with the OS. Three other people in the bar go for their phones. Clark's heard it once or twice on the rare occasion that the Bat's computer has needed rebooting, a strange, lively echo in the sheetmetal shadows of the cave.
He watches Bruce pick up his phone, look at it and then hang up. His hand slides down Moritz's arm again and flattens in the small of her back. A moment later Clark is pinged with an auto-reject message: In a meeting.
Not soon after, Clark senses someone approach his table. "Don't bother," the someone says. "That's Bruce Wayne."
Clark looks up from his phone. It's a man in the first flush of middle age, unremarkably handsome but wearing his suit like it's a costume. He's clutching his drink tightly enough that his fingertips have gone white. He's sweating, ever so slightly.
Oh, no, Clark thinks. Whoops.
"He'll chew you up and spit you out," the man says.
"I don't think there's any danger of that," Clark replies, cheerfully misunderstanding even as he wonders if the man speaks from experience or is just parroting some gossip. "At best I'll get a lousy quote. At worst, nothing on the record."
"Oh," the man says, following Clark's lanyard down his chest, eventually arriving at his badge. "You're press? The--" He makes a gesture that encompasses Clark's glasses and shirt, "--make you look like a tech guy. Are you covering the expo?"
"Yup," Clark says. And that's all he says. A slightly awkward silence ensues.
"Well," the man says, cautiously. "I don't suppose I could buy you a drink?"
It's an easy enough question to answer, but for some reason the grey flecks in his hair give Clark pause. "Ah, no, thank you," he says, not unkindly, and offers an apologetic smile as he feels the heat crawl across his face. "Not tonight."
The man hesitates for a moment and then leaves after dropping a pleasantry and a handshake, but not his name. Clark's view of the bar is restored. Bruce has turned his head and is looking at him for the first time since he got here, his expression carefully schooled.
Well then. Clark checks his watch--it's late enough. He takes himself back to his room.
*
Some hours later, amid the usual ambient noise of the hotel--the foot traffic and slightly-too-loud voices, the struggling AC and inexplicable moving furniture--he's awakened from a light doze by Bruce stumbling up to his room.
He's not alone.
"Your eyes are so incredible," Bruce says. Clark can hear him unlocking the door, the magnetic displacement of the keycard in the lock. "So blue."
"They're green," Piper says, half-laughing, confusion softened by her evening at the bar.
"Oh," Bruce says, no sharper. Clark can't tell if it's an act, this time. "Must be the lighting." The door shuts behind them.
*