5638/Till the Morning Comes

Till the Morning Comes
Date of Scene:	24 October 2018
Location:	Unknown
Synopsis:	Bruce Wayne and Jubilation Lee talk about race cars and marshmallows. Bruce does a terrible Batman impersonation.
Cast of Characters:	Jubilee, Batman

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Jubilee has posed:
There is a silence that is tangible in the wilds of morning, when all the world slumbers and waits in breathless and expectant wonder for the aurora of morning to break the darkness as the sun breaks free of its earthly grave. Now is that moment, when autumn has pushed off the dawn for hours yet, and the world slumbers around a pair who, hours hence, have found solace in one another, and clung like wild vines in the dying warmth of an affectionately stoked bonfire. The world slumbers, except for one.

"Booooood'n..." The soft sound is barely audible above the tiny creaks of dying fire, but audible all the same. Jubilee is running a toy matchbox car up a scar on Bruce's limp arm, and following the ridge all the way to his shoulder. So many scars. He'd have made the best hot wheels track ever, when she was a child. "Booooood'nnnnn..." over his shoulder and down his back, following another faint furrow that lurks beneath his tee shirt. The matchbox car is a Batmobile.

Batman has posed:
    When he sleeps, there is something different about Bruce Wayne. In the waking hours he is smiling, charming, and easy. He has no cares in the world. Even in the face of attempted murder he was able to laugh, joke and genuinely enjoy Jubilee's company. But to see him sleep is to peer beyond a veil most people are not even aware is there. His muscles tense and relax intermittently, his face goes from an impassive mask of sleep to a grimace of pain to one of grim determination and back all in a matter of moments. When left relaxed, his hands tremble just slightly as though he were cold.
    As the toy Batmobile runs over one of the veritable roadmap of scars that crisscross his exposed flesh, his eyes shoot open and he breathes one sharp inhalation. A Batman reflex that is quickly forced back down as the Bruce Wayne mask is forced into place in the blink of an eye. He smiles, tilting his head and peering out the corner of his eyes at the miniature car: "I bought one of those for Damian but he's a little too old for them."

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee freezes, as she's caught Batmobile-handed, and looks up at Bruce's eyes as they track the tiny car. "You were supposed to be asleep," she reminds him, as if that were the agreement. She lifts the car off him and pockets it so deftly it might as well be sleight of hand.

"I couldn't help it," she replies in her own defense. "Too tempting." She follows the same scar with a fingertip to where it disappears beneath his shirtsleeve, and on up to his shoulder. "Did you show him this? He might not have been able to resist, either. Must be all in a day's work for an international spy," she guesses. "So now I know your secret." She smiles, self-satisfied with her deductions. "You're James Bond."

Batman has posed:
    "You've got me now, Blofeld. I suppose you expect me to talk?"
    Bruce holds up both his hands as though surrendering, although not moving so much as to let her hand fall away from his shoulder. After a moment he glances back down at the scar Jubilee is tracing with her fingers, still smiling.
    "I wish I was James Bond. I don't think I could back away Ian Fleming-levels of martinis and not just be half-unconscious at any given moment. No, these are mostly from mountain climbing. That's when I hooked a ledge coming down Cerro Torre the, uh, fast way. That is to say, the falling way. Broke my arm, too. I'm afraid I'm not James Bond - I'm just the world's worst mountain climber."

Jubilee has posed:
"You're the world's worst /liar/ toooo..." she replies playfully, the car somehow back in her hand, as she follows another scar back down to where she remembers seeing an obvious gunshot scar that's now hidden beneath the shirt. "Unless you do that extreme, full-contact climbing where the mountain tries to shoot you while you climb." She grins and looks up at Bruce with a shrug as she leans back against his shoulder. "We all got secrets. You keep yours, it's fine. Not like you're makin' me any promises I gotta buy." She reaches out with one foot to a small pile of logs and tips one up on its end, toppling it onto the fire without getting up. "Work smarter, not harder, y'know."

Batman has posed:
    For a moment, Bruce opens his mouth to explain the gunshot wound. He's had an alibi sorted out for it since that chop-shop owner put it there a week ago. It's no doubt healing quicker thanks to some medical treatment from an unlikely source, but it wasn't going away anytime soon. But when Jubilee tells him he doesn't have to explain it, he doesn't. A part of him would prefer to just omit the truth instead of crafting a lie. For someone that lying comes to as easily as breathing, it is a largely unfamiliar sensation that gives him pause and causes him to frown slightly as Jubilee turns to add more fuel to the fire. He slips his arm back around her shoulder, leaning his head against hers: "We've been out here all night, huh?"

Jubilee has posed:
"Mhmm. You needed some sleep, it was a long day. I kept the fire warm though, cause I didn't want you to wake up cold." She inhales deeply, nose crinkling as she stifles a yawn. "It's about 3am. Still hours from morning. In the summer, the mockingbird would have been crying for dawn, for hours already." She smiles, looking up at him until she meets his frown. "What? You're....you're pissed about the Hot Wheels, aren't you? I can explain..."

Batman has posed:
    "No, I'm just ... I don't know ... lost in thought," Bruce says, shaking his head, "Like you said, it was a hell of a long day."
    He sighs, eyebrows still raised slightly at the yawn: "Now /you/ look like you're about to pass out and you haven't even had /one/ martini. I'd offer to mix you one, but if you've got a wet bar back in the cabin I think I might've missed it - and beer doesn't really have the same effect."
    He is quick in his effort to move on from the frown, making sure it doesn't surface again and cause further alarm.
    "Besides, I wouldn't want you to think I'm trying to liquor you up."

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee grins, successfully distracted. "Good, cause my explanation was just gonna get me in more trouble." She had quite simply seen his scars and smuggled a Hot Wheels out in her pocket in case he fell asleep. "I usually just have a little glass of wine when I put together a jigsaw puzzle, or if I'm painting," she adds. "I'm a lightweight. If you liquored me up, I'd probably just pass out. And I don't have as many good roads, even if you had a car."

Batman has posed:
    "I could just borrow yours!"
    Bruce reaches out, slipping a hand into pocket of her jeans and grasping the Hot Wheels Batmobile with his thumb and forefinger. His moves are preternaturally graceful, and it is as though he simply has it in hand before it is even clear what he was going for. Even among pickpockets, he might be seen as something of an expert - or at least a talented amateur. The car in his hand, he reaches out to run it up her arm as he puts on an hilariously over-the-top pulp superhero voice.
    "Uh oh, Boy Wonder. It looks like we may have taken a wrong turn at Kane Avenue."

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee loses it, in a fit of giggles at his superhero voice. "Worst. Batman. Ever." And she shivers. "Ooh, that's COLD. No wonder I woke you up!"

With a sigh as she settles back in, content with being a makeshift Kane Avenue. "How old is Damian? I suck at keeping up with celebrities. You guys put on your $2,000 pants one leg at a time, same as the rest of us."

Batman has posed:
    "Fifteen," Bruce says quickly, answering a little quicker than he might have liked. The math there is ... complicated. It's no big secret that Bruce Wayne fathered his son at a young age, but eighteen seems fairly young even for a roaming billionaire playboy.
    He brings the toy batmobile to a pause, lifting it from her arm and warming it between his hands, "He's a good kid but, yeah, a little old for Hot Wheels. Or so he /tells/ me. Maybe it's just one of those being embarassed by your dad sorts of things."
    The last words give him pause again, and his face becomes a little more sorrowful. The hurt there that he usually masks becomes that bit more real. He lets out a swift sigh, attempting to push on as he returns the toy car to rolling up her arm: "I don't think I've had a nap that good in a long time. Did I say that already?"

Jubilee has posed:
"Nope, you didn't. But I'm glad you had a good nap. Night's not over yet, there's still time for you to sleep." She looks down at the car rolling up her arm. "Bet it's just a phase," Jubilee quips. "He'll grow out of it. I did." Clearly.

"You don't get much downtime, do you?" she asks, leaning her head to rest against his shoulder. "You sleep restlessly. Even if it's the best you've had in a long time. You should come over more." She reaches down and picks up a bag of marshmallows at her feet, and two forked wires with handles. Opening the bag, she skewers a fat marshmallow on each wire and hands him one, letting her own rest on her knee so that the marshmallow hovers just above an orange, glowing bed of embers with no flame.

Batman has posed:
    "I do?" Bruce asks, eyebrows raising. He'd never given much thought to how he sleeps. In the early days his dreams were full of the most horrific nightmares - all populated by the likes of the Joker, Two-Face, and the Riddler. All jeering at him. Killing gleefully. But he can't remember the last truly bad dream he had. Or any dream, for that matter. Sleep is just a darkness that swallows him up for those scant few hours between dawn and his rather luxurious starting time of eleven in the morning at Wayne Tower.
    He doesn't move or even glance at her hand as it rests on his knee. He's comfortable, and he shows it by taking the marshmallow-on-a-wire offered to him and dangling it in the fire as he leans comfortably against her: "Are you inviting me to visit more? Because I'll take you up on that. Or at the very least you can visit me ... ever toasted marshmallows in an eighteenth century fireplace?"

Jubilee has posed:
"Only once, and only till I got caught," she replies, breathing a laugh. "Some rich people can be SO persnickety. 'Who are you and how did you get in here??' Like they ever even USED that 18th century fireplace anyway, what does it matter to them?" Jubilee winks and turns her marshmallow slowly so the bubbled and browned side is on the top. "Visiting you would be like visiting royalty, far as I'm concerned. Will I need to bow, or curtsy? I'm really /bad/ at ettiquette..."

Batman has posed:
    "You've seen me in my underwear." A reference to his run around the lake earlier in the day before Jubilee was able to procure proper Xavier School athletic wear for him, "As far as I'm concerned, we might be a bit beyond Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous protocol at this point. You can just knock on the door and, if I'm not already there anxiously awaiting your arrival, Alfred'll let you in and you can just ... I don't know ... look at oil paintings and sculptures until I get home?"
    A pause.
    "Alfred is my ... well, his professional title is butler and he'd say he's head of my household staff except he's the only one who still works there. He practically raised me."

Jubilee has posed:
"Oooh, well I guess you make a good point. I wouldn't just drop by unexpected, anyway, of course." Jubilee grins. "Alfred must be a heck of a guy, then, if he's the one who survived. AND if he's the one who raised you." She lifts her marshmallow and slooowwly pulls the entire browned skin off the sticky, melty marshmallow core beneath. She pinches it closed and nibbles at it, licking the melted marshmallow from her lips. "I raised me, so I guess I'm my own butler."

Batman has posed:
    "He is. He is."
    Bruce pauses for a moment, his own marshmallow sitting in the fire as he watches Jubilee with hers. Blue eyes lock on her, his head tilting as he takes in the actions of something so straightforward as talking and eating a toasted marshmallow. There's a degree of captivation there that he doesn't try to hide. His breathing quickens for a moment, not noticably, and he is in danger of missing what she says next entirely as he does little more than sit and take her in.
    Fwoosh. Then his marshmallow catches alight and he turns his attention to it, shaking the burning cinder frantically and looking - despite himself - sheepish.

Jubilee has posed:
Laughing, Jubilee takes hold of his wire and gently blows out the marshmallow. The tender center of her own is toasted carefully, so she lifts it from the fire and carefully pulls the creamy, toasted center of her marshmallow off and lifts it to his lips. An offering to replace the smouldering briquette at the end of his own wire. "This is the best part," she says with a grin.

Batman has posed:
    When the toasted marshmallow is offered, Bruce opens his mouth and takes a bite. He tilts his head a little at the last minute to catch any of it that may drip, licking it off his lips and smiling. If the rest of the Family saw him now - eating pizza earlier, laughing, smiling, eating toasted marshmalllows - they may well lose their minds or think he'd lost his. As he leans forward to replaced his marshmallow, his hand rests heavily upon her leg for a moment to steady himself. He glances up to meet her eyes again.
    "It is."

Jubilee has posed:
Jubilee sighs contentedly as the scant cricket song of the night wanes with the chill. "Yeah, you should come out here more often. I mean, if you don't mind that my 18th century fireplace is a fire pit in the back yard. I won't even make you run around in your underwear." With a grin, she looks out across the lake. The moon's setting in the west, fat and yellow. "It'd be a peaceful change for you sometimes, maybe. Seems like you have a lot more stress than you let on. Probably all those mountains seeking revenge for your efforts to conquer them, hmm?"

Batman has posed:
    "They can't stop me," Bruce says resolutely, leaving his hand where it is as he otherwise leans back on the loveseat to watch the moon set in the distance, "I won't rest until I've climbed every mountain in the world, even if they throw me off and I spend two weeks in traction."
    He simply lets the silence go on for a long moment after that, turning his marshmallow evenly in the fire now to prevent it from being burnt. For someone who let their last one burn to a crisp, he seems a quick study in cooking this second attempt to perfection. He draws it out of the fire, lifting it up between them and blowing out any lingering flames. When he speaks again, it is matter-of-fact and out of the blue: "I want to see you again. I mean that. I don't think this should just be one of those crazy things that just happen because of a perfect storm and then the stars never align that way again. What do you think?"

Jubilee has posed:
"Well," Jubilee begins, as she watches Bruce and his marshmallow, impressed by the improvement and lack of charcoal. "I know you wouldn't have come here if all that hadn't happened. And I know you have a million things in your life begging attention. I won't ever be one of them. You have enough of that. But if you want me around....well, I'm here. And I'd like that. As long as I'm a positive thing, I'll always be here." Her grin has grown a little embarrassed, and even in the firelight, her blush is visible. "Because the people who you add to your life /should/ add to your life."

Batman has posed:
    When Bruce replies, his words are little more than a whisper. As though he's wary that the woods around them might hear what he's saying and confer some great secret from it: "You're adding something to my life. I ... don't relax a lot. I don't laugh. Or, if I do, not as much as I should. If you can make me sit here and forget about the fact that, not that long ago, someone was trying to kill me. If you can help me think about what /is/ happening rather than what has happened or what might happen? I think that's adding something - and not just something. I think that's adding something I needed." When he finishes speaking, he's closer to her now. His head tilted forward slightly and his eyes locked on hers.

Jubilee has posed:
Tilting her head as she listens, Jubilee's smile grows into a beaming thing, and she lowers her head a little as he finishes. Nearly embarrassed. Nearly. And somehow, with all the willpower in her being, she manages not to mention that he brings the best Hot Wheels track in the world to the table.

"Then I think maybe we should explore this and see what it is, and where it goes. Because it's a rare thing when someone gets to know who I am, outside of the school and everything that goes with it. It's a rare thing when I /let/ them." She looks up into Bruce's eyes as she says so, and finds herself waist-deep in that intensity. But somehow, not over her head.

Batman has posed:
    "I want that, too."
    Bruce keeps his eyes on hers, not moving closer nor moving away. Just locking her with a stare that, until now, was muted behind a mask. All the hurt of his life is there now. The scars on his body seem more than just laughed off stories, instead becoming milestones on a road full of real injury and pain. This is a real side of him. Perhaps the only unmitigated part of the true Bruce Wayne beneath all the masks and disguises that he is willing to show right now. When she can look there and not flinch but instead want to know him more, he recognizes the gleam of something he had hoped was there but had not truly unearthed until now.
    And then, for the first time since they've met, he's at a loss for what to say next. Mister Eligible Bachelor Bruce Wayne finds himself without a single charming line or witty rejoinder.

Jubilee has posed:
A smile plays at Jubilee's lips. Not one of amusement. Not even one of bliss. But one at having been let in. In that moment, Bruce is not a playboy billionaire. He's not a mystery wrapped in an enigma. He is genuine. He is something beyond the portrait that the tabloids have painted of him. "I knew there was something real beneath all your facades. I wasn't sure what I'd find. Or whether I'd ever even find it. But I'm glad to have unearthed at least some measure of the man behind that mask." She takes a slow breath, still watching his eyes, and her eyes betray a level of happiness that her smile doesn't. "Thank you. I'm grateful for that. And I like what I've found so far..."

One does not simply kiss Bruce Wayne. And so, with a gentleness without pretense or intimidation...she does.

Batman has posed:
    There are many layers to Bruce Wayne. Some going so far down that even he sometimes cannot see where the true core of his being lies. To move even one aside for someone is a monumental show of trust. One that is so rarely given that all those tabloid stories fail to even touch on him as anything more than a charming, affable man with a generous spirit and an aversion to going in to too many details about what might be going on beneath the surface. For a moment he feels apprehension, as though he's exposed himself to an attack by lowering his guard. But in the end, the defensive urge is suppressed, and he allows himself to go on. Her kind words are heard, and perhaps by virtue of his not plastering on a charming smile he is able to show that he truly hears and appreciates them for what they are.
    His hand still resting lightly on her knee, he leans in to meet her. Such a strange turn of events and one even he may have trouble unraveling. But years of training himself to live solely within his own head - to burn away every shadow under the unfaltering light of logic and rationality - are, at last, ignored. For the first time in an eternity and with a voice raspy from disuse, his heart speaks.
    He listens. He returns the kiss.