Chapter Text
"So, Freddy, you excited?"
Billy's friend was vibrating in his seat like a crazed chihuahua, an equally manic look of anticipatory joy twisting his face into a disturbing spectacle of adolescent emotion. If Billy didn't care so much about the kid, he would've told him to knock it off.
However, he did put his hand on the brunet's shoulder to try to calm him down.
Freddy jolted, then shot him a sheepish grin and settled back into the faux leather clad bench. "Yeah, man, I'm really, really, really excited." The boy put his shaking hands on his face to hide his reddening ears. "I mean, man, I know you see the dude a lot, but I'm excited. This means a lot to me, seeing as the dude doesn't have superpowers."
Billy furrowed his brow, and his friend rambled on. "I mean, I know you can do cool stuff with your powers but," Freddy put his hand on his crutches and shrugged, "the reminder is nice, you know..."
He shrugged and replied, "I can see where you're coming from, I guess." He then smirked. "But Superman is still cooler."
The conversation briefly descended into chaos before the two twelve-year-olds finally conked out, much to the teachers' carefully hidden relief.
"Wow, would you look at that!" Freddy took another picture of a gargoyle with his phone as he nattered about casting technique.
Billy nervously looked around as he held his friend back by his jacket. "Are you sure we're allowed up here?"
"Why not?" Freddy tried to lean forward to capture a snarling expression, and Billy tightened his grip on the window sill.
"Maybe because we're five million feet up without guard rails or supervision?"
"When have we ever needed supervision? And besides, it's only four hundred." The boy attempted a fancy hand movement and dropped the device. It was only the strap on the case that saved a pedestrian from getting his head cracked open, but the instinctive lunge Freddy pulled nearly sent them over the edge.
Billy decided enough was enough. "Alright, we're done, no street pancakes to see here." He pulled them both back in, shutting the window.
Someone called their names, and they ran off, not noticing the toxic yellow smoke billowing in the distance.
"You still think Batman is cool?" Billy yelled over his shoulder as he ran through the chaos-ridden street with Freddy on his back, the boy's crutches slamming against the backs of his legs as he tried to not drop his friend. "Because this place is a bit, I don't know, crazy-prone, to be considered cool!"
Freddy coughed and used one crutch to nudge a screaming child out of the way, wincing at the blank looks of terror shared by all the people around them. "I don't know, man, isn't Metropolis a bit nuts, too? It even gets alien invasions from time to time."
Billy sneezed and used his shoulder to wipe the tears from his gas-irritated eyes. "But this place is all homegrown nuts, is that its charm?" He fought the shudder of artificial fear and bit back a scream of genuine fear as a creepy man with a sack for a head came sauntering their way.
His head turned towards the crowd, Freddy didn't see the nutjob as he shrugged and said, "Well, at least we know where it comes from. There is a lot of history in...these..." His eyes finally made their way to the front, and Billy felt his friend stiffness behind him. "Billy."
"Yeah?" He did not like the blank voice, no he did not, why was he talking like that??
"Is that who I think it is?"
Billy had begun backing away from the creep, not taking his eyes of him as he carefully enunciated his words. "Are you seeing a dude so ugly his own mother told him to wear a sack over his face to spare her delicate sensibilities?" The man stopped. Even though he couldn't see the man's face, he could tell that the man didn't expect him to talk, much less talk trash about him.
There was a pause as his friend parsed through the description. "Oh."
Billy sneezed again. The image of the dude was still there, as crazy as it looked, and it had resumed its approach. The posture indicated it was angry, very, very angry. "Oh what?"
"Oh Scarecrow, that's what." Freddy leaned forward and whispered not-quietly-enough into his ear, "Run."
"Sheets, why didn't you just say so?!" Billy nearly toppled over as he spun them around, sprinting back where they came.
As he ran, Freddy said, "Did you just say Sheets? Why didn't you just say sh-"
"Because," Billy wheezed, the gas hurting his lungs as he panted, "Because I said it in front of Batman and he told me to set an example."
"On a scale of one to ten, how would you like to rate your visit?" Billy continued holding the bag of frozen peas to his face as he turned to his friend. "Oh, I don't know, what do you think we should rate it? The super villain was a nice touch, added some ambiance to the scene, don't you think?"
Predictably, his friend nodded seriously. "And the fight scene was awesome. Batman just went pow and wham and..." The boy proceeded to punch and kick at the air as he described the takedown until the nurse told him to sit still so that she could clean the scratch on his face. "And look, I got pictures!"
Billy caught the now slightly more battered camera and clicked through it.
Traffic, an idiot tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and spilling his double frappe whatever coffee on the sidewalk, gargoyles, pigeons, Billy tripping over a discarded disposable coffee cup, them making faces in front of a picture of goofy looking clowns, Freddy talking a selfie with a statue of Robin, Batburger, a Batman figurine he got with his meal alongside the melted one Billy got, a bunch of goofy poses of the two Batman figures, more gargoyles, a passerby running in plain terror, a burning building, Scarecrow, Batman beating up Scarecrow, and a picture of the two of them with the responder who sat with them on the way to the hospital.
"You know you can only take about a million more photos, right?" Billy joked as he handed the phone back. Freddy laughed and pocketed it.
"But seriously, what should we rate the trip?"
Freddy shrugged. "10."
Billy squinted at his friend, and the boy shrugged. "What? It was cool."
"Uh huh. I'm putting down a seven."
"But the ambiance!"
"Fine, a nine." Billy scratched out the first answer and put an eight, then waved the fretting PR intern over. "I'm done with our paperwork."