Fall From Grace | Harper & Bilal
Every muscle in his body ached. His stomach held steady, breath in his lungs stopping the circulation of blood. The rush to his head was euphoric, dizzying and impractical, but not something he ever wanted to be rid of. His toes tingled, and his hands gripped more tightly to the railing, chalk dusting as he repositioned his digits. His shirt had fallen, baring his chest and causing the fine hairs on his stomach to stand on end, prickling his flesh with goosebumps. It was cold. Too cold to keep the fire burning for much longer. Years of training had given him considerable core strength -- this should have been a cakewalk. Bilal's training had been better acclimatized to Paris, though: not as damp, not as foggy, not quite so brisk. As the old saying went, March liked to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb -- he'd never seen a lamb, not up close, but he always imagined them to be much warmer than this.
With a huff, he bent his knees ever so slightly, completely shifting his body's center of balance. He slowly fell down to earth, back arching as he bridged his body, feet finding the coarse gravel of the rooftop. As he straightened, he clapped his hands together, covered in a thin membrane of white dust, creating a small cloud, then wiped it onto his jeans. Bilal turned, looking back down at the scenic view -- hand-standing on the railing gave him a very different perception of Gotham City. Somehow, it seemed much darker right-side up than it did upside down. The persistent fog clung to the bottoms of buildings, making the ground itself nearly obscured from his vantage point.
He straightened his shirt out, exhaling into a silvery mist, while going for his jacket, which he'd left in a crumpled pile on the opposite end of the roof. Bilal didn't stop, body bending just sharply enough to grab his things, but his legs kept going. His right foot found the very edge of the building, and he leaped clear across the gap between one and the next. The momentum propelled him forward, feeling like he was running on air. When he landed, he tucked into a roll to avoid too much strain on his ankles, which meant getting dirt and rocks in his hair. That was nothing new, certainly, but he was acutely aware of the time. More precisely, how much of it he had before his next prayer. It changed his entire schedule, how much spare time he had before needing to get back to his dorm and shower himself clean. He was already slick with sweat from the high-rise workout, and GSU was still quite a ways away.
With a small smirk, he figured he might as well get as dirty as possible.
From there on out, he didn't bother to stop himself. In fact, he took the chance to stretch his legs more than he had since landing on this side of the ocean. If there was an obstacle, he jumped it. If it was too tall to jump, he climbed. Clearing rooftops was nothing for him anymore -- the most fun he had was from the little challenges he made for himself. How far can I clear that fan? How many kicks with it take to make it up the vent? He moved gracefully, sharply, almost as if he was weightless.
In Paris, everybody could see him when he did this. The buildings were tall, but not as tall as Gotham's seemed to be. He was working on low-rises, still, but they dwarfed the banlieue by comparison. The fog likely made it difficult for passers-by to notice the man lunged along the street. They wouldn't see his triumphs, nor his failures -- if he happened to fall, he acknowledge with a chuckle, they would be just as surprised as himself when he hit the ground.
Most days, he would have stopped for nothing. He knew his routes back home, and didn't need to consult his mental map or check his GPS location. Gotham was still new to him. He didn't know which buildings would have open stairwells that he could take back down to ground level, or where there was a useful cascade of rooftops to do the job for him. When he saw the girl, he forced himself to skid to a stop. She was still one jump away from him, and he felt safer with that distance. Bilal wasn't sure what she was doing -- working, he could assume, but beyond that -- and spent a few moments watching her in silence. He couldn't be sure, either, if she saw his approach. Through narrowed eyes, he took the final few steps towards the building's edge, toes hanging slightly over the concrete.
"Excuse me?" he called over, waving his hand as non-threateningly as possible. "How are you getting down from here?"
