batmanschmatman | 013 [video]

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013 [video]

[Dick is wandering around the house, which is a nice, normal looking place. He's particularly focusing on the family photos and any other traces of the people who apparently really live here who happen to look... just like him and some other Barge people. Including apparently Wally. And Tim. Who are both the wrong ages.]

I'm still in the "this could be worse" stage, but not gonna lie, this is pretty freaky. I think I'm a cop. And maybe ten years older.

So, guess we should have a sound off? Who else is totally wigging out a little over this?

... And anyone seen Wally? I think he's [Dear god this is so weird.] my kid.

[Private to Costigan]

You make it off the Barge? You seem to be a popular guest star in some of these pictures. [Meaning it looks like they're both cops. Which is. Fun.]

[ooc: Housemates, neighbors and whoever else are more then welcome to spam. <3]

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[In the inmate's mind, it was nearly the opposite. While he figured that his warden would be keeping tabs on him regardless of what he chose, he was confident that being on the job and having something to strive for would distract him from exactly what he was missing if he stayed home instead. Even without the pills, it sure as hell wouldn't take him too long to round up some drugs on the street. The guy knew who to talk to and what to say. Even if he was a cop here, he had enough experience at acting like a criminal to convince people he was dirty.

The injuries weighed on his mind like a tough decision, but they were the kind he could ignore with a little practice. If Dick took lead on anything they might have to investigate, he could certainly cover and it was less likely any of his wounds would be provoked that way.

There came an uncomfortable thought to his mind as he considered the idea of working as an officer again. It was something he wasn't certain that his warden had even considered already, something he hadn't thought about. Every other cop he knew so far was a warden and he was, to his knowledge, the only inmate to be considered law enforcement at present.] "You going to trust me with a gun?"

[The question sort of caught the warden off guard. He'd almost forgotten about that whole part of the job. He didn't like using guns - he was, after all raised by a guy who was pretty firmly against them - and even while he'd been a cop, he'd tried to avoid drawing his weapon unless he absolutely had to. So, he hadn't immediately thought this was going to be a bad idea, putting the inmate within reach of a weapon that was a little more dangerous then a knife.

But he didn't really see the issue with it. Costigan was an inmate, yeah, but he wasn't a homicidal maniac. It wasn't like he was going to go shoot up a school bus. He wasn't the Joker, or even someone like Deathstroke or Sylar where you couldn't really tell when they were just going to do something crazy like attack you in the dining hall or drop a living nuclear warhead on a city. And, let's be serious for a moment, if he tried anything, especially in his current state, Dick would be able to take him out in all of five seconds.

He shrugged.] Yeah. I mean, it'd be kinda weird if you didn't have one one you, and I'm not letting you head out into any - god forbid - crisis situations unarmed. [He shrugged again, summarizing with a simple and honest statement.] I trust you.

[Costigan nodded distractedly in response to the first idea, figuring it would be a legitimate explanation like that. To the latter, he actually stopped and looked up at his warden to stare him in the eye for a moment. The inmate was used to being trusted, sure, before he had come, but not so much by a warden. Max hadn't trusted him. Aziraphale kinda had, but Eddie sure as hell didn't. It was a little jarring that Dick trusted him already. Even with the understanding that they had been through a lot together, he couldn't help but be suspicious, wondering if it was part of some grand scheme.

After a beat, he nodded again, glancing down to the pictures again. Dick was right about them being partners from the looks of it and, if he called in sick, the man would probably get assigned to someone at random. Even if it was a man from the Barge, it seemed unlikely that they would do as much for or as well with his warden as the inmate knew he would.] "Yeah, alright. Yes. I'll be there."

[Dick grinned, scooping up the cat to put it back on the ground so he could stand up, carefully dusting the fur off his jeans.] Awesome.

[This might even be fun. Dick had really liked being a cop, and the chance to do it again was too much to pass up, even if it was just a boring little suburban town.] We should probably have a look around, see if other you's got anything else hiding around here. Unless you'd rather just stay at my place until we get back on the Barge, but something tells me you might have had enough sleeping on my couch for a while.

Not that we wouldn't be happy to have you, of course, but I'm not sure either of us knows how to cook. [He was acting like this was totally normal, to be hanging out in a house he'd never been in before that apparently belonged to his inmate, who was actually his partner on the force in this universe. He didn't really spare much thought to the trust thing; he'd said it, he'd meant it, and Costigan seemed to have accepted it, so he wasn't going to try and pick it apart.]

[It was words like 'awesome' that made Costigan remember how young Dick was, or maybe it was just the lighthearted attitude of his warden that he never quite felt he aligned with. Regardless, he found he minded it less now than he had in their first few meetings. The suggestion of searching the house was a good one, despite Costigan's desire for more.] "You might need to search by yourself, guy. If I find any, I'll probably just fucking pop 'em before you even realize I did."

[It was the kind of honesty that the inmate was often loath to admit, but there wasn't any good reason to lie and Costigan liked to think he wouldn't have anyway. Dick seemed like the kind of guy that would be willing to talk things out if it came down to it. That was really what the former undercover needed, given his penchant for finding potentially troubling situations.]

[Staying in a house that wasn't his own, doing a job that wasn't his own, acting like someone else entirely? Tragically, this situation was all too familiar and the Bostonian was only accepting of it because it was a few days. Any longer and he might have refused. He let out a small laugh at the invitation to stay at Dick's house, though.] "No offense, but I'd rather stay here.

I don't blame you, Wally was quite a handful at twelve. I'm not sure I want to be living with him. [He was mostly kidding, and admittedly, he didn't actually know that first hand. They didn't call themselves the Teen Titans for nothing. Plus depowered Wally would be easier to handle then a junior speedster, so really, he didn't have a lot he should be complaining about.

Effectively tearing apart a house while looking for something wasn't exactly far out of his range of abilities in the slightest, and while part of him was kind of looking forward to finding out more about the place they'd been dumped into, the other part of him was wondering if this was kind of... invasive. Sure, he was doing it because he didn't want Costigan popping pills while he wasn't around, and the inmate had made a good point as to why he probably shouldn't be involved in the search, but Dick didn't really want to be rifling through his other life. He started heading out of the room.] I'll let you know if I find anything interesting. You think you still go by Bill here?

[Costigan got that Dick was trying to joke around, but he wasn't in much of an amused mood at the moment and so he didn't reply to the remark in one way or another. It didn't occur to him that there might be things he didn't know about the man he was inhabiting or why it should bother him for Dick to find out before him, so he gave a simple nod when his warden mentioned letting him know. There couldn't be anything too terrible; after all, the man had already read the file on his real life and was still here.]

"Sure, thanks." [He replied to the first, then shifted, glancing away and back again.] "I don't know. Everything I found was my full name or just 'Costigan.'"

Probably another thing the videos'll be good for. [He was saying it more to himself then Costigan and left the room to get started his search of the house.

Which actually wasn't as weird as he'd thought it would be, at least, initially. Again, thanks to someone's 'always be prepared' philosophy, he knew where to look and where it was likely the inmate's counterpart would hide more of his stash, and a good dose of healthy suspicion made him expand that search's radius to the point of where he was thoroughly investigating just about every inch of the house.

And everything was pretty much as he expected. He found another bottle of pills and promptly flushed that too, but nothing was too out of the ordinary until he was on the second floor. He opened the door to the next room - having already tackled the bathroom - and immediately stopped, staring. It took a moment for his mind to unstick before he found his voice.] Uh, Bill? You might want to come up here.

[Costigan remained silently on the couch for Dick to continue his investigation until the man had cleared the first floor, knowing that if he ran into any more pills, he would pop them without question. Once his warden moved to the upstairs, the inmate walked into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water. He was just swallowing a large sip when Dick called down to him. He was silent for a moment, frozen there as if the voice had been a hallucination, considering what it was that he could possibly be called for.]

"Yeah, alright." [He called finally, setting the glass on the counter and trudging slowly up the stairs with a sense of dread. Glancing around, he looked for movement of light or shadows.] "Where are you?"

[At the warden's reply, he moved forward down the hall to step into the room beside him and froze just as promptly. His throat was immediately dry and he swallowed the lump there but still could not speak again.]

[Dick was just staring, totally not sure of what he should do or say. Whatever he had expecting, it hadn't been this, even though he'd definitely had experience with this sort of thing before. When he was a kid, one of the first days he was in the Manor, he'd wandered into Bruce's parent's old room without realizing what it was. Everything looked like it hadn't been touched in years, like Bruce had let it exactly the same way it was the night they'd been killed.

And that was, more or less, what he was looking at now, only this time, it was worse.

It was a kid's room.

He looked over at the inmate quickly before looking back at the room, suddenly feeling like he'd done the same thing - stumbled into something intensely personal without realizing it.]

[Costigan moved past Dick silently to the photo he saw on the kid's bedside table. He picked it up before even giving himself the chance to consider that it was a bad idea, wanting to see exactly who was in the photo. The inmate dropped the photo on the bed and turned around before spontaneously bending over and vomiting straight onto the ground. The withdrawals still continued even now and the shock of the situation was just too much.

The photo was of he and Madolyn and a kid who looked too much like him. He had wondered sometimes if Madolyn was pregnant, the time he had felt her stomach that night she told him they couldn't be together. Had wondered if it was his kid, even though she surely slept with Sullivan as much. But this..

The inmate heaved again, then wiped his mouth on the shoulder of his sleeve, glancing over to his warden and knowing the man would be worried. Without skipping a beat, he started walking toward the door again. He just had to get out of that room.]

[Dick just watched, still feeling like he was intruding on something, which only got worse when Costigan threw up. His hand was still clenched around the door knob - he hadn't let it go since he'd opened the door - and he wasn't sure he could let it go if he wanted to.

As soon as Costigan was back in the hallway, he shut the door firmly. If he was Bruce - or maybe even Tim - he might have gone in to investigate further, try to figure out everything he could about this other life, but he couldn't do it. He was a detective, but he understood people, and this was not the time or the place to be rooting around in this apparent mausoleum.

His throat finally unstuck, even though his voice was a little strained, growing stronger as he finished the question.] I know... that this is a stupid question, but are you okay?

"I'm going to get a drink of water. Then I'll clean the shit up so it doesn't stink." [His response was a very clear avoidance of a straight answer. Costigan was not okay in any sense and, though he was pretending to be just fine--and succeeding in his expression, his posture, and even his tone--, he saw no reason to lie to his warden. Not about this. The fact that Dick had closed the door instead of following him in meant something and he wasn't going to discard that.

The former undercover said nothing else as he walked down the hall and headed toward the stairs to go get some water and wash his mouth out. He should probably change shirts too, but maybe after he cleaned up. After all, the both of them had smelled enough vomit to last a lifetime and Costigan would rather go without the scent some more if he could help it.]

[Dick hesitated for a long moment, looking back at the doorknob he still held tightly in one hand, before releasing it and following the inmate back downstairs. He wasn't really sure what he should be doing, torn between just being quiet and maybe going back to looking around the rest of the house for more hidden drugs, or trying to get him to say something about what they'd just seen. Which was... hypocritical. Dick didn't like talking about stuff that bothered him that much either.

He settled for avoiding the direct topic of potential conversation.] You don't have to go back in there, I can do it.

[Costigan moved into the kitchen, stripping the shirt off of him and tossing it on the counter. He still had all four bandages in place, the stitches needing to stay in for another day or two. Of course, they could always leave them until the return to the Barge, which seemed a safer bet; he wondered how he would explain away the scars that made it seem like suicide. But that was a thought for another day.

The inmate grabbed the water he'd had before, taking in a mouthful, swirling it around a little, and spitting it back out into the sink. He did it once more before finally swallowing a mouthful, listening to Dick but taking his time in responding.]

"It's okay, kid. You've been cleaning up after me for a week. I got this." [He didn't think about the change in nicknames because it often wasn't a conscious choice. 'Guy' was respectful; 'kid' was still affectionate, but with an insinuation of something a little less empathetic.

[Dick chewed at the inside of his lip for a moment. He knew he couldn't keep him out of the room forever - Costigan did, after all, live here, at least until the admiral decided they'd had their fun - so even if he thought it was maybe a bad idea to get too involved in what was there, he wouldn't stop him from doing it.] Okay, if you're sure. Cleaning supplies are under the sink.

[He wasn't really sure what else to do, so instead of leaving or going back to ripping apart the house, he just... loitered. He knew it was incredibly unlikely that the inmate would want to talk about what had happened, especially if the photo had provoked such a violent reaction, but if he did, he wanted to be there.]

[Costigan nodded, taking another sip of the water. Then he crouched down and completely suppressed any physical reaction to the pain that flared as he aggravated his wounds, opening the cabinet and grabbing out the roll of paper towels. He rifled around for a spot before finding and taking out the carpet cleaner as well. The inmate stood with only a very, very subtle gesture of extra effort in that he over corrected his posture when he stood and had to remedy it. Then he glanced at Dick before moving past the warden to return to the bedroom.

He wasn't sure why the guy was staying with him so much. It wasn't like they were living together and, at some point, Dick would have to go whether he liked it or not. Partially to get his warden off his back and partially because he sincerely wanted it, Costigan asked, "Think you can finish up your house search in the other rooms while I do this?"

Yeah, sure. [Dick could take a hint - every once and a while anyway - and he knew he was sort of hovering to the point of being a pain in the ass. Of course, he still had to follow him upstairs, but as soon as they arrived at the door to the bedroom, Dick moved off farther down the hall to finish the search, leaving the inmate to do whatever he needed to.

He still had questions, and the detective inside him was starting to nag at him to ask said questions, but he wasn't going to. Again, he wasn't Bruce, and this wasn't even real life. Counterparts, just a projection, whatever it was, if Costigan wanted to talk about it, fine. If he didn't, Dick wasn't going to push him unless it became a problem.]

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013 [video]

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Spam - lolno. He'll go by Will. And we'll say he and his wife lost their kid and got divorced.

Spam - The multiverse likes raining on your parade, huh Costigan?

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