(605) "Dude, A DAMN CHEESEBURGER HIT ME IN THE FACE! WTF was I supposed to do!?."
One would think it had to take an event of apocalyptic significance to surprise the likes of Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock of the GCPD. Maybe the sky falling or Satan himself clawing his way up from the fiery underworld – that should do it, right? Even people coming back from the dead, at this point, barely warranted a shrug and a "yeah, what else you got?" Before what had just happened, they both thought so too, but here they stood. Jim Gordon and Harvey Bullock stood on the sidewalk in a decent bit of Gotham, staring after the blue VW Bug with nearly identical expressions of marked incredulity. Wild, joyous whooping warbled from the car's open windows.
"Did… that just happen?" Jim dared to be the first to speak.
Ketchup and mustard dripped from Harvey's beard and he pulled off his hat to study the mayonnaise splattered across the brim.
"Looks that way," he deadpanned, blinking at the condiments.
Both men looked up and down the street again, as if in expectation of an equally-bizarre follow-up action, potentially accompanied by nerve gas or some shit like that. No, they observed, traffic flowed like usual, and irritated pedestrians jostled past them on the sidewalk. A passing child pointed at Harvey, observing his condition aloud to her mother. The woman eyed Harvey as if he might have been diseased and picked up her pace, nearly taking the kid off her feet. Jim snickered, Harvey growled, and neither man could shake the distinct feeling of surrealism.
"Could be working with Tetch?" suggested Detective Gordon, not at all serious. In fact, it took all he had to keep his shoulders from visibly shaking. "What? He's wacky enough to order something like this! Tell me, is the ketchup like a hallucinogen or something? No, let me guess… The mustard is a paralytic!"
Harvey let out a long, ragged sight.
"I'll 'paralytic' you!" he shot back, brandishing his hat at Jim and sending flecks of mayonnaise flying in all directions. "Who even does that?"
Jim had to crack another half-smile as he watched the offending Bug disappear into traffic, mostly just glad what had happened moments ago hadn't happened to him. Short story even shorter, four young men in said VW Bug had simply ridden by and thrown a cheeseburger out of the window. Harvey, unluckily enough, had been standing by happenstance in the exact path of the flying fast food. Jim, having not just been hit in the face with a cheeseburger and lacking much else to laugh about in his life, had found the entire thing bloody hilarious! His partner, dripping condiments onto the sidewalk and wondering where his life had gone so wrong, felt far less mirthful about the whole damn thing.
"So, Mr. Bullock, are you interested in pressing charges?" Jim continued to push Harvey's buttons, rummaging in his coat as if he intended to start filing a report, ignoring his partner's glower. "How do you want me to write this down? Officer failed to duck when cheeseburger ejected from vehicle? Or how about this: officer of the law assaulted with fast food, not donuts?"
He gave Harvey a shit-eating grin and fiddled with his pen, absolutely intent on writing this down if for no other reason than to give them a good laugh later. The Irishman, more disheveled than usual, had a vein over his left eyebrow starting to twitch both dangerously and hilariously. He watched Gordon filling in the piece of yellow paper, laughing to himself. Trying entirely too hard to keep his face mock-straight, Jim finished a line and then looked back up at his partner.
"And, Captain Bullock, is there a reason you chose not to perform any defensive maneuvers upon realizing the gravity of the… situation?" Gordon continued prodding him. He had to forcibly hold in another chuckle as he watched a blob of mayonnaise drip from Harvey's hat to the pavement. "Like, I don't know, raising your hand to shield your face?"
Along with the twitching face vein, Harvey had started to audibly grind his teeth at his partner. Since Jim Gordon had come to the GCPD, he had been nothing but trouble. He, Harvey, had been punched, whacked, hung from a meat hook, covered in glitter, and otherwise encountered more bodily harm and peril than one man reasonably ought to. Now, here he stood, watching the younger man pretend to file a police report that would just end up plastered all over the department for a laugh. Something inside his head made a series of apoplectic popping noises that only he could hear and he went off like a Roman candle.
"Dude! A damn cheeseburger hit me in the face!" he shouted finally, waving his hat around and spattering mayonnaise on Jim. Several pedestrians dodged and pulled faces, trying to get out of the splash zone. "What the fuck what was I supposed to do?"
Jim practically jumped back, but the grin stayed plastered across his smug face – apt, for a man who had not just had a cheeseburger launched at him from a moving vehicle. The flow of foot traffic continued along the sidewalk. People sidestepped and threw side-eyes at the now-deranged police captain who had begun to create quite the scene. Profanity, blasphemy, and several utterances of the word "putz" flew from his bearded mouth and he had yet to cease flapping his arms about. Mustard and ketchup now flew from his facial hair and the hat might take flight in a bit! A couple teenagers had quietly pulled out cell phones and started streaming the hilarity to the internet at large. For his part, Jim chose not to mention that.
Across Gotham, in his living room, Bruce Wayne had his laptop out. A video had popped up in his news feed and he called for Selina upon his moment of recognition. The two watched the computer screen with identical looks of shock, then laughter. The video, entitled "Faceburger" already had 50,000 views!