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Chapter Text

It takes a few steadfast years to crawl out of the comfortable, intrinsically-crafted, carefully hidden myth and into the bright spotlight of Gotham’s very real, very dangerous shadows.  And when the day finally comes, when Batman turns into something tangible, well, it all goes to shit. 

Bruce traces fingertips over the buttons on his TV remote. He worries at the grooves, racketing ideas back and forth in his mind as he watches the news unfold. The GCPD’s long-term plan to bring the Federal Government into ongoing vigilante uprise in Gotham doesn’t bode well for Batman’s work, and his goals. Bruce is going to need to cook up a discreet solution that will nip Gordon’s delusions of grandeur in the bud. He’s attempted negotiation with Gordon, and that’s never ended well. The commissioner can’t trust Batman yet, despite the heathens piling up in his jailhouse. He’s never even asked for his thanks, but Bruce had at least thought he’d earned trust. 

Apparently, not yet. 

Federal interest in Batman can turn sour fast.

Any fast, public action from Bruce Wayne to combat any impending investigation will signal immediate suspicion on the part of the bureau, of Gordon, anyone with eyes, ears, and learning comprehension skills. He’s only barely beginning to build his Brucie Wayne persona to accommodate the necessity of dispelling rumors on Batman’s true identity. 

Ever since Batman started getting reported on regularly, public opinion about the Batman has grown and not for the better. The press isn’t kind, nor have they ever been to Bruce Wayne. 

He’s going to need a few puff pieces about Batman published to at least make the Feds wary. Perhaps even to convince the public and their chosen government that the only ones who should fear Batman are the rogues they themselves demand off the streets of their city. 

Bruce sips at his tea, letting the notes of Earl Gray melt onto his tongue. 

If he pays someone to write these pieces, regardless of discretion, it’ll be too easily traced back to him. Identity, at risk. Back to square one. 

Alfred attends his side to pour more tea, from the pot on the tray beside Bruce, into his master’s cup. “Sir,” he starts, as if he has a one-way ticket for Bruce’s train of thought, “Perhaps if you were to…gain the trust of a valued reporter, you might convince them to write a promising article on the good that Batman has done for this city. I have yet to see such a paper published.” 

“Maybe I’m not doing any good,” Bruce cracks, knowing Alfred won’t take it seriously. The crime rate has dropped significantly since he started this. “That might be the best case scenario.”

Though cozying up to a reporter isn’t an appetizing idea, to Bruce

“It will take some time, if you are to do this by the book.”

As in, if he’s willing to do this honestly. 

Gain someone in high-tier journalism’s trust? As Brucie Wayne, the ditsy, charming, billionaire playboy? Sure, he’ll be honest, but he doesn’t have to be honest about being someone’s friend. 

The only way he’s going to achieve this is if he adds some level of seduction into the plan. It plays with the Brucie persona, and he, Bruce Wayne, knows he should take the rare opportunity to (harmlessly) weaponize his looks and not take them for granted. 

He considers his options. 

“It might be more suspicious if it comes from the Gotham Gazette, and no matter how easily I could get someone from an office like that to trust me, I don’t think I could trust one of them.”

Not with how they’ve treated the Waynes over the years, and how he’s seen his city’s journalistic integrity plummet to the depths of Hell alongside the safety of Gothamites on the streets. 

“Perhaps word from a sister city would suffice?” comes Alfred’s suggestion. He folds a napkin over his arm and watches Bruce with that unscrutable gaze of his that puts Bruce on edge. 

“Bludhaven isn’t reputable enough,” Bruce thinks aloud. “Metropolis could work.”

“Their paper is one of the most prestigious of the few I can think of,” Alfred agrees. It’s a paper that reports on America’s sweetheart, Superman, of course it’s popular. They’re at least the kind of yuppies that wouldn’t write lies about a cat stuck in a tree. “It seems the surefire choice, sir.”

Bruce doesn’t like Metropolis, but that doesn’t matter.

Alfred is right. It’s the best choice. 

“It has to be someone gradually climbing up the ranks. Not saddled with too many awards like that Lane woman from the news. Someone whose work is established, well-received, but will appear from the digital world like a familiar name nobody can place, not a name they harbor preconceptions about.” Someone easy, youthful, guileless. Someone he can seduce with ease.

Bruce thanks Alfred and dismisses him, heading down to the cave for answers.

He slides into place at the Bat Computer, fingers fluttering away at the keyboard as he swiftly narrows a search engine to only a handful of doe-eyed reporters at the renowned Daily Planet. 

There’s one woman and six men that seem to fit Bruce’s parameters. 

For a paper that touts a female writer as their star pupil, they don’t hire a hell of a lot of women, or they sure as hell don’t let them get far in the head office. Bruce considers the men, and sighs. 

Looks like he may have to brush the dust off Brucie Wayne’s fossilized proclivities. 

He’s no stranger to seducing a man, he’s just a little rusty. 

And publicly, Brucie Wayne has stuck to one sort of breed: Dumb, busty women. 

Not because he doesn’t want to sleep with men, he does. For as long as he’s wanted to sleep with anyone, he’s known that. It’s the public persona; if he sticks to typical, one-sort, kind of woman, then nobody’s gaze lingers on the facade a second too long. He’s been trying not to draw attention to himself. That aside, he’s going to have to draw some attention to get what he wants. He needs to make this press scheme work, because he can’t afford the Feds prying into Batman’s business. Failure is simply not an option and whatever he’s got to work with, he’ll make work. 

He, with slight guilt, deletes the profile of the girl whom he does not find attractive (and has a questionable psychiatric record) and two more men who he also cannot imagine seducing. 

It’s down to a few more. 

He scans their backgrounds, dating history.

The last two best options are Cedric Sath and Clark Kent. Sath because he’s an acquaintance of Perry’s and seems to be grandfathered in from a successful father in the industry. He has sway, but he also hasn’t stocked up on a lot of good stories if his history on the paper is anything to go by. That said, a couple of the bigger articles cover Gotham stock exchange, new architecture planning. Someone that has at least breathed putrid Gotham air and didn’t think it unsalvageable. 

Kent, because his background is remarkably vacant yet humble, and because of the innocent line of his shoulders in the photograph the Daily Planet’s website has attached to him. Corny. 

How can a photo look this corny? 

He’s leaning towards Sath because he thinks he’ll do better with someone that seems to have a slight ego, and an edge. There’s also something about Clark Kent that seems too obvious. Bruce hates obvious. There’s also no proof of Kent having any relations with men which would be a waste of time if he takes the path and it leads nowhere. Cedric Sath, Bruce thinks, wise up. 

Bruce checks the time and decides it’s not too late to call Perry.

He dials up the charm, laughs when Perry makes an unfunny joke, and schedules a meeting in his office during Sath’s work hours. It won’t be hard to impose a meager rendezvous on the Planet. 

At four on Wednesday, he’ll be in Metropolis making his move. 

Hanging up the phone, his eyes linger on Clark Kent’s glasses through the computer screen. There’s something he’s missing, comes the distant thought in the back of his mind. Isn’t there? 

Two nights later, the night before Alfred’s to drive him to Metropolis, Batman encounters something unusual, and altogether out of his wheelhouse in a way that pisses him off. 

Massively. 

After taking down two shifty thugs in a back alley, Bruce searches their pockets.

He finds not stolen money or goods but an unmarked package full of Kryptonite. 

“Alfred,” Bruce grumbles over the COMMs. “Get dressed. We’re heading to Superman’s domain a few hours early.” He stares down at the glowing block of green in his hand. “Book a hotel.” 

As always, Alfred books them connecting rooms, with him a single connecting to Bruce’s king sized suite. He has tried to insist Alfred get a double, connecting suites. They certainly have enough money. Alfred turns the offer down every time. He’s an unembellished man, unerringly. 

Bruce gets dressed in the Bat Suit and flings himself off the balcony of the resort, swishing through the too-tall skyscrapers of Metropolis. The clean smell in the air rankles his already-fried nerves. 

He lands in a desolate park, bushes sculptured to all appear nauseatingly man-made. 

“Superman,” Bruce speaks deeply. “It’s me. Batman. We need to talk.” 

For a few seconds, he’s not sure it’ll work, then Clark floats down from the night sky like a glowing specter. The stars reflect off his skin in such a unique way, otherwise he’d appear as human as Bruce. Clark’s smile pinches at Bruce’s remaining nerves and he holds his breath.

So he doesn’t bark out how ridiculous that curl on his forehead looks. 

It’s always curled that way.

It would be redundant.

“Taking a midnight trip to the big city, huh?” Superman greets, settling into a gentle levitation in front of Bruce. They’re standing beside a swingset, lightly blowing in the cool breeze. “You know, not all of us are nocturnal, B. You got something for me?” 

“Don’t ask stupid questions.” 

Why else would he be here? A lūʻau? 

 Bruce holds up a box. He’s placed the Kryptonite in a led-lined box. 

Superman stares at it and chuckles. 

“I don’t copy.” 

“Then you’re not too clever. Inside this box is over a kilo of Kryptonite. Two no-named thugs were carrying it around Gotham by Amusement Mile. You know anything about that?” 

“Jesus. A kilo?” 

“Yes.” 

Superman lands flat on his feet reaching out for the box on instinct. Batman takes a calculated step back. “Right,” Superman huffs, placing his hands on his hips to think. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of Kryptonite imports or exports even passing through Gotham let alone…damn.” 

There’s a deep understanding in Superman's eyes, a flash of anger. It’s only a flash; the Kryptonian doesn’t like to hold grudges. Batman hasn’t known him long but he knows that much. 

“Spit it out, boy scout.”

“I mean, well, theres…well.” 

Batman doesn’t have time for this. He sets the box down and gets right up in Superman’s space. He’s a few inches shorter but that doesn’t mean he’s incapable of intimidating. The only issue is, he’s quite literally never been able to intimidate Superman. There’s this weird, fond puppy look he gets whenever Bruce is using his fear tactics to get an answer out of him. He’s not sure why he tries anymore, if that’s the case, considering Superman is bound to tell him the truth anyway. 

“Start talking,” Batman commands.

Superman tries not to smile, the words spilling out of him like melted butter. 

“Lex Luthor has been taking more business trips into Gotham lately. I—a friend of mine at the Planet asked him about what these trips entailed for Lex Corp and he brushed him off with some asinine answer about Wayne Tech. I mean, Wayne Tech could be involved but with their reputation, and the Waynes’ tooth-rottingly philanthropic reputations in general, I highly doubt they’re behind it with Lex. The Waynes’ core values seem to perfectly juxtapose the Luthors.”

Bruce swallows hard, maintaining his proximity, yet letting his gaze go blank.

“You have a friend at the Planet?” he asks, curious. Enjoying the nuances of what he’s about to say only because Superman has no clue of the context. “You get them to write puff pieces about you?” 

“Funny. I don’t need to growl at people to get them to like me. Or maybe it’s the not-growling that helps with that.” Superman sighs and says, “I don’t know who else could be dealing in this stuff over on your terf. If it’s not some big corporation like Luthor then…it could be anyone.” 

“You know a lot about Gotham for a Metropolis showpony,” he murmurs.

Superman cocks his head with a smirk. 

“I’m a showpony now? Two weeks ago I was a, and I quote, ‘Paparazzi Dickrider’.” 

“I was in a bad mood.”

“When are you not?” Superman jokes softly. He places a warm hand on Batman’s shoulder, not flinching when Batman jerks away with a smooth swish of his cape. “Listen, I can do some digging. I appreciate you coming to me with this. I know it’s been tough, adjusting to, um, me.” 

“Our cities cross paths occasionally. I have to adjust.”

“I just hope our, uh ‘friends’ quote on quote don’t decide to become friendly with each other.” Superman’s expression for the first time tonight appears dire. Batman can’t blame him. He’s still trying not to dwell on the fact that the Kryptonite had been found by Amusement Mile. He can only guess at what that means, and he hopes to God it’s the most outlandish guess he’s ever had. 

Superman turns to leave and Bruce says abruptly,

“You don’t want the box?”

There’s a genuine, full-bellied laugh.

“No, I’d rather not take the box of poison.” Before Batman can respond, Superman elucidates, “Listen, B, I trust you with it. Something tells me you have a place to keep a lot of precious cargo safe.”

“What makes you say that?” 

Superman shrugs. 

“Well, you’ve gotta hang upside down somewhere when dawn comes.”

With a wink and not another word, Superman zips off in a flurry of light and color. It makes a beautiful, almost translucently rainbow trail in the night sky. Bruce stares after it for a while. 

Then, he takes the box home to the Bat Cave. 

It’s stored neatly and safely behind two led-lined vault doors. 

And with tomorrow on the horizon, Bruce prepares for his mission to save Batman’s reputation by any means necessary to his Brucie Wayne reputation. To do this, he lets himself sleep long and hard. Tonight, he doesn’t dream.

Chapter Text

“Smallville, recon, break room, now!” Lois barks waspishly from over the divider between their desks. Her vest rides up as she surges from her rolling chair to march off towards the lounge. 

Startled, Clark pulls his head out of his word document glancing at Jimmy who shrugs.

He might save thousands from tsunamis annually, but no way is he braving the breaking room alone right now, especially while not knowing what Lois Lane wants on a quiet Wednesday afternoon. 

“You know that includes you, right?” 

“Didn’t seem like it,” Jimmy awkwardly brushes off the barely concealed desperation emanating from Clark. “Don’t look at me like that, pal, come on. She’s in her scary-mode right now.”

“Jimmy, she’s in her scary mode every day.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“Come on, I’ve been getting crazy writer’s block anyway,” Clark sighs, clicking his computer off and brushing a hand through unruly hair. “If she found out about the Stapler thing, I’m tattling.” 

“You’re a terrible friend.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

When they enter the break room, they find Lois pacing. 

“Good. Shut the door. Lock it.”

“Perry hates when we do that,” Jimmy points out. “What’s so secretive?”

“Well, Mr. Uninvited,” Lois snips, doing what she’d ordered him to do herself. “This involves sensitive information. How would you go about giving Smallville here a brief on Bruce Wayne?” 

“Aw shit.” Jimmy slaps a hand over his eyes. “Is that today?”

“Yes, idiot! Wait, how long have you known?” She strolls up close to him, eyes squinted as narrow as angel hair pasta noodles. “I got the email from Perry less than ten minutes ago.”

Jimmy clears his throat, looking to Clark for help.

It’s Clark’s turn to shrug. 

He saw the email but it didn’t mean much to him. 

They have important big-wig people visiting The Daily Planet every week. 

While Lois is distracted with her interrogation, he wanders over to the fridge to look for his sandwich from yesterday. He grabs it, and starts peeling open the wrapping to add mustard. 

“All this aside,” Jimmy interrupts one of Lois’ longer tangents about ‘trust’ and ‘teamwork’ with a voice that’s entered a much higher pitch than his average octave, “You’re right. We need to brief him.”

“I’m not that new, guys. I watched Holly interview him at that one Gala.” 

He crosses the room and sits down on the couch. 

Lois follows, sitting parallel to him. 

She rests her elbows on each of her knees, a sign of intent focus. 

“But you haven’t met him, and you certainly haven’t experienced one of Bruce Wayne’s legendary ‘visits’ here. You would’ve remembered. We all would’ve remembered.” 

“The guy’s a slutty party animal, okay, what else do I need to know?”

Jimmy hovers by the door, as if frightened by the idea someone might try and break in. He doesn’t know how proximity to the door helps with the fear, but Clark snorts in his direction when Jimmy lets the cat out of the bag;

“Someone from the office always manages to get themselves fired when he visits. A few years back, it was Tilly Fredricks, a half-year before that, Matthew Derkin. And rumor has it, Perry’s old ground partner.” Lois glances over her shoulder bitterly at him, as if she hadn’t even known that herself until right now. Jimmy has a tendency to keep all of Perry’s secrets to himself.

As well as the Planet’s. 

Keeping his cards close to his chest isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 

Clark has never held this against Jimmy. Maybe because Lois believes in a certain type of openness with her friends. An openness he can never give her, considering his real identity. 

“Perry fired his old partner because of something Bruce Wayne said?” Clark questions, taken aback by the news. Perry is a fairly loyal man. It doesn’t add up with what he knows about him. 

“Nobody knows the details. We just know someone ends up on the chopping board every time,” Lois explains as Clark absently nods along and keeps chewing. She snatches the sandwich out of his hand and smacks the backside of his head. He overexaggerates his reaction and rubs the spot as she berates him loudly. “You need to take this seriously. You’re new and totally expendable!” 

“Hey!”  

“What she means is,” Jimmy jumps in to prevent conflict, “Bruce Wayne might see you as an easy target if he’s looking to blow off a little steam by…sacking someone whose articles he didn’t like.”

“Articles…I barely even write about Gotham.”

Let alone Bruce Wayne. 

Oh, he’s sure his name has made it into his work once or twice.

He can’t remember writing anything negative, however. He’s not into the tabloid drama and who is fucking who at any given charity. It seems to all retract from the importance of altruism itself. 

That’s also ironically  why he’s not too popular a journalist. 

“But you have. Doesn’t matter about what. The people that were fired from the Planet were good writers, and with good reputations as far as I’m concerned. We need to tread carefully today.”

“I mean.” Clark laughs awkwardly, taking the sandwich Lois hands back to him. “I know appearances aren’t everything, but he seemed pretty nice at the Gala. It could’ve been that those people were fired for other reasons. I mean, did anyone even see him tell Perry to fire anyone?” 

“Clark, you fluffy bunny of an idiot,” Lois murmurs. “He’s a billionaire. He’s got no family. He’s bored. It happened almost a day or two after his visits, each time. It’s definitely him, got it?” 

“So, what do we do?”

“We don’t do anything,” Jimmy insists, eyes hard and imploring. “Lois and I have survived these last couple pop-ins because we kept our heads down and stuck to our work. Well, I did….” 

“Yeah, I can’t imagine you keeping your head down if a billionaire strolled into a room,” Clark accuses Lois. He can imagine the barrage of questions now, a pen flinging around loosely in her hair as Bruce Wayne stares on at her like he’s considering an empty room at Arkham Asylum. 

“I…was on assignment. Both times.”

Clark’s eyes bulge. He sets his food down on the coffee table.

“So, you weren’t even here. How can you say—” 

“Okay, listen, I’m not going to pretend to know why you’re running defense for Bruce fucking Wayne—”

“It’s not that I’m—”

“—but this isn’t about that. We just need to protect our jobs.”

Clark thinks this is all highly overwrought for one man. He doesn’t think Bruce Wayne is traveling all the way to Metropolis to get someone here fired. He knows journalism is a tough business with occasionally terrible consequences, but he’s kept his head out of the sand long enough to know it’s something he can survive. He doesn’t think a playboy billionaire will screw up that core belief. Even if Lois Lane is set, righteously, on the justice of their career longevity. 

“Okay,” Clark says agreeably. “So, keep my head down. Work. Anything else?” 

Lois looks to Jimmy.

Jimmy immediately says, “Don’t ignore the charcuterie board.” 

“The—the what.” 

“I heard, from everyone,” Lois elaborates for Jimmy, “that he brings a charcuterie board every time he visits. I don’t know what the deal is. Apparently the last one he got sacked, Tilly, rumor has it that she didn’t take anything from the board he offered everyone. That could’ve been—”

“This is ridiculous,” Clark interrupts with a laugh. “He got Tilly Fredricks fired because she didn’t want a slice of pepperoni or a little cube of Swiss cheese? Lois even for you this is…” 

He waves his hand helplessly. 

He doesn’t want to insult Lois but this is all becoming absurd. 

“Clark, the guy’s rich,” Jimmy points out. “I believe that would be Brie and Prosciutto." 

Clark, being the type of person that he is, who believes in the best of every human being on the planet, cannot picture a man so petty, selfish, and driven by scorn that he’d get someone fired over something so minor. He’s shocked that it’s even being brought up to him in this manner. 

“Just do us all a favor and make sure you take one of those little cubes, okay?” Lois begs. Her close-lipped smile stretches upward and she adds, softer, “We don’t wanna lose you, Smallville.”

“Alright,” he mutters. “But when I take something from Mr. Wayne’s very generous charcuterie offering, it’ll be because I love the taste of any and all cheeses and their salty, meaty cousins.” 

Jimmy snorts and nods. Lois seems satisfied. 

That’s all he can hope for. He tries not to worry about Bruce’s visit.

At his desk, a few hours on the clock left until he arrives, Clark lets himself get mildly worked up about it. He’s seen the man at a distance before and any sort of big impression had been entirely vacant from the night. The man was as attractive as the tabloids expressed. He wasn’t nearly as interesting. Lois added, before they departed sheepishly from a break room the janitor was trying to get into, that Clark cannot under any circumstances give in to the unbearable (he’s fairly sure award-winning Lois Lane was projecting here) urge to ask Wayne questions.

This is something he’s known about Bruce Wayne for a long time.

He’s historically impossible to interview. 

The man apparently practically invented the word subterfuge to evade any question or accountability for any action he takes. Not that he takes a lot of bad action. For a billionaire, the man is remarkably quiet when he’s not making a whore of himself in public. He keeps to himself and donates regularly to charities. Large sum amounts, not just bourgeois pennies others like him might scrounge up to keep up appearances. Every journalist knows about how involved in Wayne Enterprises he actually is; he keeps this on public record so that there’s no reason to ask more.

He’s a cleverly private man, and that alone makes Clark curious to know about the man behind the four-thousand dollar suit. He can’t afford to risk his job right now, though, and Lois is right. He doesn’t want to lose them either. His friends, his career. He’ll play along—just in case. 

But, he has a hunch Bruce Wayne won’t be a threat to any of them.

Almost at four on the dot, Bruce Wayne enters the office. 

Everyone at the Planet is on guard, even when Mr. Wayne sets the legendary charcuterie board down on an empty desk in the newsroom. Perry is striding out of his office with a grin on his face. Bruce opens his arm with an eerily accurate copy of the smile, and gives him a big hug.

“It’s been forever, kid. How are you?”

“Doing well. By the way,” he flashes that grin at the entire bullpen. “This is for everyone here. A little gift from me and my butler who thought it might be nice if I gave back once and a while.”

“Oh, Mr. Wayne we know you give back all the time,” Perry chuckles, plucking what must be some type of salami off the board. “Wow, Alfred still knows how to make a fierce appetizer.”

Lois peers over the divider, murmuring,

“He can schmooze all he wants. Wayne isn’t dropping a dime on Metropolis.” 

Like an owl locking in on a small rodent, Bruce turns to face them. 

“This must be the renowned Lois Lane,” Bruce Wayne greets. Instead of taking the few steps to reach out his hand and shake hers, he raises a pointer finger up and slathers some jam on a cracker, topping it off on a thin slice of melty cheese. Lois looks like a deer caught in the headlights when he approaches her desk to hand her the offering. She takes it with a swallow. “I can tell when someone prefers to go for a nice, strong French Chardonnay, so I think you might like this. Camembert with blackberry jam.” His smile is one of the most practiced, yet effectively charming and sultry expressions Clark might have ever seen on a person before. He brandishes it at Lois when he says, “Maybe I can buy you the drink that pairs nicely with this sometime soon.” 

God, he’s smooth, Clark thinks miserably as he watches Perry’s secretary blush from across the room. Clark ducks his head lower, wanting to escape into a black hole before he hears what Lois says in return. She’s generally not fond of being flirted with openly by eccentric rich men in ties. 

“That—” Lois starts between chews, clearly losing her raging train of thought in the taste of the snack. “Oh damn, that’s good.”

Bruce grins wider, and turns back to Perry. 

“They say that Alfred’s the only reason women haven’t ostracized me from high society yet,” and Perry and a few other of the older guys laugh. Clark doesn’t quite get the humor, nor does he think Bruce Wayne is coming across as genuine as he could be. This strange ‘player’ energy he’s obviously making an effort to boast doesn’t match up with all the philanthropic work he does.

He doubts many women take the time or energy to notice that. 

Lois smirks at him, shaking her head. 

“Good cheese doesn’t mean I’m going out with you, Mr.” 

Bruce Wayne nods, easily let down. 

“That’s fair, Ms. Lane. Lovely to make your acquaintance regardless.”

Clark catches Bruce’s eye for only a moment; it feels like a lifetime. Bruce is…analyzing him, for some reason. It’s his instinct, despite his identity-warping glasses, to duck whenever someone is doing that. So, he does. He tries not to think too hard about the interaction when Perry eventually invites Bruce into his office and the tension slowly drizzles out of the newsroom as he exits. Jimmy is snatching a few offerings off the charcuterie board, and a few others follow. 

He kicks Lois under the desk.

“Did I really need to spell out the part where you follow your own advice?” Clark chastises, ducking when she swats a newspaper at him. “You didn’t have to turn him down like that, Lo.”

She harrumphs. 

“I’m not pimping myself out to protect my job. I’d have a hell of a good case for sexual harassment if he were to pull that shit, and wouldn’t stop till he was dust. He knows that.” 

Bruce isn’t the type for it. He’s respectful of women if not, at worst, leering.

And vigorously prolific about his escapades. 

“My bad.”

“You’re damn right.”

Thirty minutes later, Clark is getting nowhere on his article again, and he finds his eyes keep straying to Perry’s glass office. He can see Bruce lounging comfortably in the guest seat. They don’t seem to be talking about anything important. Bruce is too relaxed and he’s guarded when he talks about anything fundamental. Clark has seen videos of him. He can pull a serious face when he needs to. When it’s important. He can’t help but somewhat, guiltily, admire the man.

Then, Bruce starts to glance back through the window, towards him.

Not quite at him.

That scrutiny feels so oddly familiar.

Like deja vu. 

Clark rubs at his neck uncomfortably and decides now is a good time to go retrieve a second cup of coffee for himself. Just for the smell, and for something to take his mind off of Mr. Wayne. 

On his way back to the lounge, he knocks his cold, almost empty cup of coffee into a hard surface. It’s Bruce himself, out of nowhere, currently standing in front of him like a roadblock. 

The brown liquid splashes all over his expensive, light grey suit.

Gasps sound off behind him, one by one. Then the office is eerily silent into Clark explodes into a barrage of apologies. Clark is so distracted, he doesn’t notice that Bruce isn’t paying attention to him. Not entirely. There’s someone else he was walking towards, or rather, rushing towards.

“Oh my —fudgeballs, I’m so sorry!”

“Fudgeballs,” Bruce repeats, wry. “It’s alright.”

Clark can hear his career crashing down around him right now. And his bank account. Let alone his dignity, and reputation. He can hear across the entire world, yet somehow this is all louder. 

He starts wiping with his bare hand at Bruce’s damp suit jacket, panicking.

In his peripheral, he notices Lois hiding her face behind her hands, and Jimmy turning the other way, biting his lip so hard Clark can smell the particles of blood in the air. He’s still panicking. 

“Shucks, it’s all over you.” 

“Yes,” Bruce responds absently, staring over Clark’s shoulder at what he’s missed the boat on. Someone now missing. He’s not paying attention to Clark when he relays, “It’s all over me.” 

There’s a sound of a door shutting which has Clark turning his head. He sees an empty desk beside the fire exit.”Oh, maybe Cedric’s going to get you one of the spare coats, gosh, gee—”

Something about Bruce shifts on its axis and the man re-enters his own body. 

“You from the Midwest?” Bruce chuckles, and thankfully, it’s a gentle tone. “When a Gothamite tells you it’s alright, really, it’s alright. Still.” There’s something sudden about the way Bruce Wayne’s focus shifts from the fire exit to Clark’s face that is fiercely intense. “I can have Alfred send up something fresh, though hey, wouldn’t say no to a little help trying to salvage this.” 

Clark blinks owlishly at him, aware all eyes are on them right now.

“Uh,” he voices dumbly. “Sure?” 

For once, the stupified, lost Clark’s got is all him. 

Not an exaggerated Clark Kent persona. 

“Where’s the nearest sink?”

This is how they end up back in the break room with Bruce Wayne shirtless, running his stained jacket under the small faucet head like he’s not some kind of billionaire with dozens of maids. 

Turns out they’re back to where Clark was off to anyway, but instead he’s now worrying his bottom lip by the coffee machine. Not getting a delicious new brew that’ll make him forget he wants to be buried alive. Bruce keeps shooting him small, playful smirks when they’re alone, like Clark’s devastation is amusing. Like he didn’t just flush thousands of dollars down the tubes.

“You can get another coffee, y’know. It’s what you were coming in for right?”

Astute, oddly. 

Clark is too ashamed to notice. 

“No, I can never drink coffee ever again. My penance.”

“That’s dramatic,” Bruce jokes. “You can relax, you know. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to pay for it.” Clark goes still. He wouldn’t? “My fault for wearing a suit like this to a playpen.” 

Clark’s brow twitches at that. It’s not like they’re immature children. He thinks of the stapler prank Lois still hasn’t found out about and makes the smart decision to remain silent. 

Until he feels obligated to reply and say, “Thank you, Mr. Wayne.”

“Jesus, don’t thank me. I got a dozen more of these at home.” It sounds boastful but Clark doubts he could’ve worded it any other way. “And, please. It’s Bruce.” He looks expectantly at Clark. 

“Um, Clark. Kent.”

“You didn’t answer me before. Midwest?” 

Clark’s mouth goes dry as he watches Bruce fucking Wayne squeeze actual dollar store dish soap onto the stain and start rubbing the fabric between his thumbs and index fingers. Lois will never believe him. He ponders if it’s uncouth to do something as sinister as report on this moment.

It would make front page news.

No, he can’t.

He won’t.

He’s not the type of journalist that would ever stoop so low, and he doesn’t want to be. Does that mean he’ll never get awards? Probably. Does that mean he’ll go nowhere? Also very likely. 

It’s probably better for Superman that it stays that way. 

“Smallville.” He kicks himself inwardly and clarifies, “Kansas.”

“Wow. I’ve always wondered about living rural. I’ve never been away from Gotham.”

“That’s not quite true,” Clark finds himself blurting out, kicking himself harder. “You took that excursion to Alaska in your youth, came back, and made immediate changes to your Enterprise.” 

Bruce stares at him, shockingly impressed.

“You’ve researched me.”

“You are at the Daily Planet, Bruce,” Clark responds with a quick, awkward smile.

“Usually I get asked why I chose my latest plus ones,” Bruce informs him. “I don’t get into conversations about that mistake of a religious retreat.” That can’t be all that it was, Clark thinks but doesn’t voice. He tries valiantly to stick to Lois Lane’s advice and keep to himself. 

“You need anymore help with that?”

“Dying to get out of here, huh.” 

Clark blinks fast.

Bruce turns off the running water and wrings water out of his shirt.

“No, no!” He wrings his hands, not knowing how he can relay that he really wasn’t just trying to get out of here. This is more than tolerable. “You’re actually…surprisingly down to Earth.”

Bruce seems genuinely pleased by that, and thoughtful. 

“Will you still be saying that when I ask you to dinner?” 

Clark knows if he were holding a coffee mug it would shatter in his hands.

“Sorry?”

Bruce walks up to him, in all his bare-skinned glory. 

There’s a few scars on him, a few too many, but before Clark can really get a good look at them, his chin is being tilted upward by a single finger. Up close, he is forced to acknowledge Bruce Wayne has a dark, mysterious beauty about him. Icy blue eyes that appear to blend with amber in the dim fluorescents. They pierce his own when Bruce gets his attention. The angle is odd, since he’s taller than Bruce and is still being treated like he’s shorter. “Well?” Bruce murmurs, low. 

“You want dinner with …me.”

“Yes.” 

“Lois Lane is right out this door here.” Clark tosses a thumb over his shoulder to signal behind him. “There’s about a dozen other women just as good looking in the IT department too…” 

“Lois isn’t interested. And now I’m interested in you. Are you?”

“Intersted in…what exactly.”

Bruce tilts his head and states, “Now I know you’re not this harebrained.”

“A date?”

“Dinner,” Bruce clarifies, like there’s a difference. He hasn’t stopped smiling, apparently entranced by Clark having a mental breakdown right in front of him. “Would you like that?”

Clark suddenly understands why hoards of women fall for this man weekly. 

He hates himself for suddenly understanding.

“Yeah,” he says, kicking himself for the umpteenth time. “I think—yep, I’d like that.”

What am I doing?

“Good.” Bruce checks something on his watch, typing along it and sending out a message. Perhaps his butler just arrived with a replacement suit. “Because it is a date. To a seasonal ball.” 

Clark’s tongue feels thick in his mouth.

“A seasonal, the —the ball?” 

The Central City ball practically only princes and ambassadors attend? 

The fact he’s even being invited to a ball in general is—Clark should’ve kept to himself more apparently. He has no clue what he’s gotten himself into, but he was bewitched by this man. 

Bruce is surreally beautiful, and he never asks men out. 

He can’t help but, naively, feel special.

“I’m not your coming out event, am I?” Clark asks. “Last time I checked the rag mags—”

“I know what my track record says I am,” Bruce explains. “But I do what I want, without answering to anyone. They’ll write what they write about me. I won’t try to explain you.”

That’s all Clark wanted to hear. 

“The gossip columns lose interest when I don’t give them words to work with. I know you’re a journalist,” Bruce chuckles, wringing his jacket and shirt out again. “But it’ll be better if you forget there’s even press there. Treat it like a normal date. Scandals only happens when you act like you have something to hide. And to them, you’re nothing without a proper scandal.”  

“Do I have to dance?”

“Can you dance?”

“I learned square dancing in a barn in Kansas,” Clark admits, embarrassed.

Bruce smirks at him. 

“I’ll be happy to stick to feeding you dinner.” Bruce gathers his wrung out outfit on his arm and moves around Clark to the exit of the lounge. He smirks and adds, “I’m sure we can find other things to do.” Before he vanishes, he lets him know. “I’ll pick you up at five on Friday.”

Clark opens his mouth, maybe to haphazardly tell him where he lives.

Or give him his number.

He doesn’t get the chance. 

When he plops down in his desk chair a few minutes later, slightly rattled, it takes Lois three attempts to get the truth out of him. He stays silent, floating in the memory of Bruce’s eyes.

“Smallville, you better spill!”

“Hey, that rhymes,” Jimmy notes.

“I’m going to the Central City ball with Bruce Wayne in two days.” Saying it aloud allows the fear to settle into his bones. He is really in over his head. “Jesus Christ, I’m going to a fancy ball. With a billionaire.” 

Lois shouts, “You what?!” 

Later that night, Superman is still distracted by his fumble as Clark Kent today.

He is overthinking what he’s going to wear to such an exorbitant party. 

Caught in his own head, he barely notices Batman calling out for him.

In Metropolis! 

After saving the third cat stuck in a tree tonight, he rushes over at the speed of light to where Bruce is waiting on a gargoyle, Lex Luthor’s tallest skyscraper in the Dark Knight’s sightline. 

Superman lowers himself to float right in front of him.

“You don’t have to be so loud. I could hear you if you whispered.”

Batman glares at him, cape flapping in the wind.

“How the heck did you find a gargoyle in my city? I thought we got rid of all of these.” 

The cold, silent glare continues.

“Wow, tough crowd tonight. What is it, B?” 

“Recognize this?” Batman brandishes a small card from inside his cape. Superman takes it gingerly, huffing at the Joker design on the back. The clown prince of crime’s calling card. 

“Obviously. This guy’s more your domain, y’know.”

“That’s the issue. I found this in one of Lex Corp’s main towers.” 

Superman feels his upper lip twitch, itching to snarl. 

Still, he has to play Devil’s advocate. 

“I hate to say it, but thousands of people carry card decks around. What are the chances—”

“Don’t be a fool,” Batman criticizes. “You know what this means.”

“That doesn’t even make sense. Joker is a mad man. Lex is at least somewhat…rational.”

“He might be a mad man, but he’s smart. And Lex at the very least lacks empathy.”

Superman can’t argue that, but the idea of the Joker working alongside Lex Luthor rubs him wrong in all kinds of ways. He hands Batman the card back and crosses his arms. 

“How did you get into a Lex Corp building without being seen?”

“That’s none of your concern.”

Superman briefly wonders about Batman’s true identity again, as he’s done many times. He can’t possibly work at Lex Corp; he lives in Gotham and Gotham is his heartland. Another journalist?

No, Lex doesn’t care much for press he can’t control. 

“If this means what we think—what we know—it means, you’re going to have to trust me.” 

“I don’t have to trust who I work with. I just have to know what side you’re on,” Batman decides. He’s staring right at him, hardened gaze and tightly set jaw. Goading him to argue. 

“Well,” Superman voices softly, hurt to a degree. “I hope by the end of all this, you learn to trust me regardless.”

“Doubtful.”

“Can you at least be nice? I’m nice to you.” 

Batman lets a beat pass before he says,

“I can try.”

The walls slowly barricading around his heart crumble, and Superman smiles brightly. 

“I can work with that.”

Chapter Text

“Did you bring your car?”

“No.” 

“Right,” Superman answers giddily. “You hate taking it out of Gotham.”

“The street parking in Metropolis is abysmal,” Batman deadpans, grappling off to the next skyscraper. Now that they’ve discussed their gameplan, it’s about time he gets home.

Superman follows at a steady pace, flying beside him with his arms at his sides.

“Was that a joke?” 

“No one will ever believe you.” 

Superman laughs with the brightness of a hundred suns. Bruce’s chest hurts when he hears it. Likely because he can’t imagine a world where he’d ever laugh like that, not because it sounds like music to his ears. There’s a warmth, easiness, and comfortability about Superman’s voice. 

“There’s no one I could tell,” Superman reminds him. Bruce isn’t too sure. He has a hunch Superman is naive about who he tells his secret identity to. “Road Runner still won’t talk to me.”

“You’ll get through to him,” Bruce promises. He’s been keeping tabs on The Flash for the sake of propriety, but he’s certainly not the one to reach out and make the connection. “You got through to me.”

“Oh I hadn’t noticed I succeeded,” Superman teases. 

“I’m working with you, aren’t I?”

“Because one of your clowns escaped the circus.”

Bruce pauses to take a breath on top of an internet tower. Superman sits next to him on one of the connecting rungs. With the magnificent build, he looks ridiculous sitting on such a small beam.

He withholds a smile. 

“More like, Lex Luthor’s been taking trips to the circus.” 

“This is still so unnerving.”

“It’s unnerving because we don’t know what they’re planning. Once we do, we’ll stop them.”

“It doesn’t bother you? You don’t find it…weird?” Superman keeps pushing, nudging his shoulder into Batman’s. “I mean, really, think about it. What could they have in common?”

“Hatred for humanity.” 

It’s dark, deep, and true. 

Joker can work with anyone if it’ll get him closer to his end game. The end game being; chaos. He watches the world burn for the sake of watching it. He imagines Luthor isn’t too dissimilar. All that aside, Superman doesn’t know Joker like Bruce does. Like Batman does. Given the right resources and circumstances, the clown will play Lex Luthor like a cheap training flute. 

They sit in silence for a moment.

Superman could probably be elsewhere, but Batman isn’t the one to tell him he should go be off saving lives. If Superman had to save someone every second of every day, he would drown. 

Bruce decides to focus on Gotham in the distance.

He hates when it looks this small. 

“Maybe one day…” Superman trails off, as if reconsidering what he’s about to say. Batman lets the silence hang there between them, and doesn’t touch it. Selfishly, he wants to hear it. “The physics of it are escaping me, but I'd like to show you the planet one day. Up in the stars.” 

Batman realizes Superman’s been staring up at the sky.

That’s the difference between them. It’s why—they can never be the same. 

Batman regards him silently. Superman speaks again, soft and reverent. 

“It’s different. When you know the shape of what you’re protecting.”

The center of Superman’s focus is an entirely different one from Batman’s. 

Bruce doesn’t bother pointing out he knows what shape the Earth is, what it looks like. How he could probably just hop on a trip to space anytime he wants to. He never has, never had reason to. He doesn’t care about Earth as much as he cares about Gotham which is perhaps the most selfish part of all this. Strangely enough, he doesn’t want to disenchant Superman of the notion. 

“One day, we may need to go up there together for reasons other than whimsy.”

It’s the kind of sappy, hopeful rhetoric his alien acquaintance wants to hear. Just enough of a truth for Batman to be able to say it, though of course, without making any promises.

Superman’s eyes sparkle at him, crinkling in the corners. 

“I’ll protect you, if we do.” 

From what? The vacuum of space? Some entity they don’t know yet? Batman rankles at the presumption, ignoring the pang of warmth in his chest. He just mutters insultingly, “Boy scout.”

He grapples off again and Superman follows until they reach the bridge between their cities. 

“You sure you don’t want a hand getting home? Superman asks, placing a criminally gentle palm on Batman’s shoulder. Batman takes in the glow of his skin, then shrugs his shoulder away. 

“If I’m ever stupid enough to show you where my base of operations is, punch me.”

“Goodnight to you too, Batman.”

Bruce wakes up with a headache and an odd urge to research Clark Kent again.

He did some research before going into the Daily Planet, and knew enough that when his opportunity with Cedric Sath flew out the window, he could improvise and work the Kent angle instead, but he hasn’t been able to shake a new feeling since meeting him that he’s been missing something. What is it about a mild-mannered reporter from Kansas that has him stirring from his nightmares at a questionably unreasonable hour rather than a severely unreasonable one? 

Alfred has coffee brewing, and crumpets, when he arrives in the kitchen.

He mumbles out a thanks and takes his spoils to the cave. 

It’s not long until he types: Clark Kent—into the Bat Computer.

The same information as before pops up, but he digs deeper. Doesn’t find anything of importance, or rather, anything at all. It must be the perks of being from a quaint, rural town. There isn’t exactly a footprint to be left behind, at least none that make it to the big city. 

Digging into his socials, he finds a few ex girlfriends from high school. Oddly enough, from the clippings of information he can gather, he discovers that Clark has never appeared to sustain a relationship for longer than a couple months. For someone as guileless and unassuming as Kent, it seems questionable. He’s attractive, has enough talent to constitute attention. Why is he alone? 

It’s Bruce’s nature to seek out character flaws. They give him an upper hand. 

He doesn’t think he’ll need one with Kent.

He thinks Kent will be putty in his hands by the end of the event tomorrow. 

That doesn’t mean this man’s ghost of a past and seemingly perfect record doesn’t bother him. It does. If a sweater is thirty or so years old, there’s bound to be at least one loose thread. There’s none here. Zero.

He shuts down his search and taps a pattern on his desk.

Glancing at his cell phone, he picks it up and starts typing.

What’s your favorite food? 

Bruce waits a few minutes, and smiles when he gets a response in under a minute. 

Who is this?

Bruce. 

Bruce??? How’d you get my number?

Daily Planet website. Is that creepy?

Bruce is surprised it takes Clark a couple minutes to get back to this one.

No, I was kinda worried when you walked out without asking for it the other day.

I’d have to have dropped back in again if I never found it. Would have been a pity too since I’m wearing a much more expensive suit than the other day... 

Verrrry funny. 

Getting me to take my clothes off twice before our first date would be an achievement few can claim though. Not that I’d be complaining.

He thinks that’ll leave his reporter stumped for enough time to check the daily news and finish his coffee. He’s halfway through an article about Gotham railroad reforms when his cell vibrates.

Wouldn’t have mattered anyway. I’m on the ground today.

That stumps Bruce for a second.

Covering what?

There was a break in at Lex Corp yesterday. They’re not giving us much to work with.

Bruce sighs, knowing he doesn’t need to ask, but still. He’s going to have to tell Lucius his hardware is ticking off suspicion when implemented. Fox might simply tell him not to break into the databases of other billion dollar companies, however, if he doesn’t want to leave a trail. 

The main building on Tilton Avenue?

Yes, why? 

He doesn’t respond. He has a reason to go check out the investigation, see what the authorities have drudged up. For once, he can leave his cowl at home and take his mystery solving inward.

As he gets ready, his phone buzzes a few more times.

He doesn’t check it. 

Bruce has Alfred drive him out to the Northeast side of Tilton avenue, far enough away that he can let Alfred go to get the car polished professionally and walk the extra few minutes to the barrage of police tape and paparazzi. He shifts down his hat and pushes up his big sunglasses. 

It doesn’t take him long to find Clark.

He isn’t in the middle of anything important. He’s got his cell phone clutched in one hand, and he’s worrying at the lapel of his own shirt with the other. He’s separated from the swarm of journalists badgering a few clueless Lex Corp reporters, instead staring off at the building as if he can see through the shaded windows. It’s a foolish if almost mythical hopefulness of waiting for answers to come to him rather than bully the answers out of someone who actually has them. 

There is a charm to it, Bruce has to admit. As a man who lacks hope a good chunk of the day. 

“Slacking on the job, Clark?” 

Clark Kent spins around in a flurry, forcing a genuine laugh out of Bruce.

“Sorry,” he adds. “Really didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Who—wait, Bruce, is that you?” 

Bruce smirks, slipping off the sunglasses and hat.

“Glasses aren't a great disguise, I know.” Clark makes a strange face at that which Bruce can’t decipher. Clark stares a bit absently at his neckline, not moving his eyes away when he responds. 

“Especially if you’re wearing Kiton.”

“Wow. You have an eye for this stuff.”

“I like to doomscroll fashion Instagram.” Clark’s words come out in a rush and he rubs at the back of his head, embarrassed. “Doomscrolling. Go-lly, I sound like my ten year old niece.” 

“You saying I’m too old to know what that means?” Bruce is definitely too old, but that’s not that point. “By the way, usually when I stalk a date the way I’m stalking you…the date freaks out.” 

“More freaked out by the way you’re objectifying the ‘date’ part of that.” Clark smiles warmly at him and shrugs. “I kind of knew when you stopped responding you might be on your way over here.” Bruce cocks a brow at that, taken aback. “I imagine being a billionaire gets pretty boring.” 

“Pardon?”

“This is a good excuse to get out of the house for something other than a board meeting, am I wrong?” When Bruce doesn’t respond Clark says, “Come on. I’m not so interesting that you’d drive across city lines to come say hi. You’ve worked with Luthor in the past though, yes?”

Oh my God, he’s working an angle on me, Bruce abruptly realizes. Trying to sleuth out if I’m involved. 

The realization comes with a thread of pride. 

“Though you sort of missed the mark. There’s nothing interesting going on here.” 

Perhaps Clark isn’t such a mediocre journalist after all. 

Bruce lets go of a breath he’d been holding.

“Really? The whole break-in seems to have garnered quite the crowd.” 

“That was before they realized there was nothing taken.”

“Really,” Bruce repeats, putting on a good, shocked facade. He knows for a fact there was nothing taken, because he’s the one that broke into the facility. He didn’t exactly break in, to be clear. He was invited by Lex and used that entry to connect to plug a malware drive into his database and gather any potential intel on his Kryptonite trading. Uncovering, unfortunately, zip. 

It seems the breach in security registered, albeit a little too late. 

The fortunate upside is the device Bruce used shut off all surveillance during the breach, and an hour prior. There is no way for anyone to prove that Bruce Wayne had anything to do with it. 

“They’re saying it’s hackers, wanting to prove something about insider trading.”

“Well, that’s…sixth page news,” Bruce teases, sighing. 

Hackers. 

It’s good if the press sticks to that. 

“Which is why I’m here and not Lois,” Clark grumbles with a wry smile. Bruce’s focus drifts to where Lex Luthor is exciting the front gate of the tower. “Still think the trip’s worth it?”

“My car needed a wax anyway,” Bruce replies absently, waving to catch Luthor’s eye. He’s in luck; the man’s head swerves and locks onto him. A smarmy, two-face grin spread on his face. 

“Bruce!” Lex calls out, his guards blocking all the other reporters from following. “This is two times in Metropolis in one week. You’re not thinking of moving out here are you, sport?”

Clark hunches in on himself, glancing between them as they close in on each other, barely allowing an inch of separation. Bruce does this head tilt thing with a lot of billionaires. They love to see whose chin can get closer to God, or something. He thinks his does naturally all on its own. He makes sure, then, that Lex this close to his face, sees how real his threatening grin is

“I think I like my ‘ash tray’ of a city just fine for now.”

“Oh is that what I said?” Lex laughs dismissively. It’s precisely what he said during the grand opening of the new downtown subway station. Keeping their streets from becoming an ash tray like Gotham by innovating new modes and terminals of travel. “You know what I meant.”

“Sorry to hear about the breach,” Bruce points out. “My friend here tells me it’s hackers?”

Lex barely acknowledges Clark.

“Hanging out with reporters all of a sudden, Bruce?”

“Clark Kent,” Clark introduces, holding out a hand, realizing it’s clammy, wiping it on his shirt, before extending it again. Lex Luthor pointedly doesn’t shake it. “Erm. The Daily Planet.”

“Well, at least you’re not with TMZ.” 

He turns back to Bruce.

“It’s not hackers. Maybe ‘a’ hacker but the data they breached is a little too specific for my liking. I don’t know why I pay for a security system when it can’t even protect from the basics.” 

“I could give you the number for my guy.”

There’s no way in hell he’d give Luthor Lucius Fox’s number, but luckily Lex will never in his lifetime concede to needing it. As he predicts, Luthor laughs him off and shakes his head. 

“I’ll get to the bottom of this in my own way. I think I have a hunch who is responsible.”

Damn, he does suspect something.

At least it’s not Bruce, but it doesn’t matter what the press thinks if Luthor is onto Batman’s investigation. He’s going to have to tell Superman that Lex knows they’re onto him. And soon.

“Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes,” Bruce says chipperly, making a discreet gesture to glance down at Luthor’s shoes before adding, “Really.” 

Luthor sneers lightly at him, and trots off. His guards follow, and the press. 

Clark steps in front of Bruce, blocking him from the press. It works; Bruce notices in the commotion that Clark is uniquely built, wide and firm looking. He hides it well under baggy suits and a disheveled aura. When the press is all gone, Bruce nudges forward against him a bit. 

Just barely brazing Clark has the reporter jumping out of his skin.

“Sorry,” Bruce murmurs with a smile, not genuinely apologetic in the slightest. He was curious how hard that body really felt, and isn’t disappointed. “I was just going to say thank you.” 

“Maybe I merely wanted you all to myself,” Clark chuckles, going red very gradually when he realizes what that sounds like. “For an interview, I mean. Uh.”

Bruce’s smile turns more sincere, and he asks, 

“Not much for interviews. How about lunch instead?” 

“That looked pretty tense between you and Lex Luthor earlier,” Clark points out, picking at his pastry. Bruce hasn’t touched his own croissant, strategizing in his head on what to do next. 

“Hm? Oh, well, Lex and I go way back.”

“Not in a good way, I’m assuming.”

“Is this off the record?”

“Of course,” Clark insists, like Bruce shouldn’t have even assumed. It’s cute, the way he thinks Bruce wouldn’t assume he’s one of the sharks with cameras strapped around their necks. 

He’s right, though. Bruce knows he’s not.

“Man’s a prick.”

“Sheesh. Well, I mean, he’s certainly not as generous as you are with his own money.”

Bruce tilts his head. In the eye of the general public, Lex is often viewed pretty favorably. He hasn’t heard dissent on the subject for a long time. Outside his circle and from a layman, anyway. 

“He donates annually to respectable charities.”

Clark snorts, as if he doesn’t even need to consider it before replying, “Yeah, loudly, and not nearly as frequently. Maybe twice a year, he’ll dump an obscene amount of money on a good charity. Charities who have shareholders of his heading them. I mean, I’m not saying—”

Bruce’s watch starts beeping. He checks it.

Alfred is done with polishing the car. 

“Sorry, looks like I have to run. Shareholders,” he lies easily with a wink. “Dress sharp tomorrow. I’m picking you up at five, so text me your address before then, alright?”

Clark looks frazzled, watching with round, sad eyes as Bruce gets up to leave. 

“You didn’t eat your food.”

“Not much for food,” he jokes airily. “Pretty faces on the other hand…” He lets his fingers run smoothly along Clark’s shoulder. He is immensely pleased at the blush that comment inspires. 

The scheme is working. 

One night of mind blowing sex will have Clark hand-feeding him grapes from a vine.

Bruce brushes off the hunch that this kindly born and bred midwest reporter has been far too astute and clever for his own good and takes his leave from Metropolis for the rest of the day. 

Later that night,  he calls Superman from the top of the GCPD. 

“I keep telling the Metropolis Police to get a spotlight for me but they keep saying it’s too big of a taxpayer investment since I just have superhearing anyway,” Superman greets in a jolly voice. 

“Superman,” Batman hisses.

“The dire voice. I’m scared. Oh wait, that’s your normal voice.”

“Lex Luthor is onto—”

“Onto us? Yeah, I’m aware.”

Batman stands there, cape flapping in the wind as he processes this.

“How.”

Superman crosses his arms, floating down flat on his feet to stand in front of Bruce.

“You’re not the only one who can crack a mystery, B. I’ve been doing some digging, like I promised you I would. I think we should direct our focus to Joker now, get Luthor off our scent.”

“You’re not directing anything to Joker.”

“Come on. What’s the big deal? He can’t hurt me.”

“Only Hell knows what that clown has up his sleeve for you.”

It’s idiotic to even consider, seeing as Kryptonite is being shipped into Gotham by the ton. 

“Flower that squirts kryptonite juice?” Superman isn’t taking this seriously, and it shows in his mind-bendingly relaxed stance. “I mean, you’ll be there with me. You can protect me.” 

“Don’t rely on others to such an extent,” Batman warns, biting back a sharp comment about how he doesn’t want to babysit a useless alien baby the size of a bulldozer. “It’ll get you hurt.”

“I trust you.”

Batman makes a face and whisks away. Superman zooms in front of him, stern.

“I know you hate it when I say that, but I do, okay?” 

“Why.”

“I know you.”

“You don’t know me. As much as I don’t know you.” 

Superman sighs, eyes flaring for a moment before they dim.

“Do you want to know me?” 

Batman glares at him and asks, “What are you saying?” 

“I’ll tell you my secret identity.” He must see a hint of horror flash across Batman’s features, because he stammers out in defense of himself, “Hey, come on, don’t look at me like that. It isn’t out of the question. We’re both of the same cloth. You don’t have to tell me yours but I trust you, alright? It might do us good if you can use my identity to help in cases like this. Listen—”

“No. You listen.”

Batman has never been sure he’s wanted to use this method, but this blabbering, invulnerable, child is going to get himself killed if he doesn’t stop spouting off highly personal information. 

Unhooking one of his most underutilized pockets in his belt, Batman deftly slips his fingers inside and equips what he needs. Superman’s knees immediately buckle, and his eyes widen in a fairly unpleasant dawning of betrayal. Batman grabs Superman by his neck and shoves him up hard against the brick wall a foot away. He’s now wearing a kryptonite ring that fits snugly around his gauntlet. Superman struggles, weakly lifting his hands to push futilely against him.

His red boots scrape frantically at the gravel of the roof. 

“Put me down!” Superman shouts, voice cracking at the edges. “Batman.”

Green light illuminates the scant space between them, highlighting the fear in Superman’s eyes. Bruce pushes down the self-loathing that boils up when he sees the fear, as it’s undeniably real. 

Batman squeezes his neck harder, more intently. He can’t afford to falter at the way Superman lets out a tiny whimper when he does this. Instead, he growls out each of his words carefully.

“Since the very day the first article dropped about Kryptonite being your Achilles heel, I’ve been carrying this in my utility belt. I never stopped. Tell me,” he growls, making sure the ring is digging into the skin of Superman’s neck, “how it feels. Do you still feel like you can trust me?” 

Superman meets his eyes desperately, and surprisingly, the fear is completely vacant, and they appear soft in the manner they glisten with unshed, pained tears. Batman almost jerks away.

For a second, he’s positive Superman is going to say ‘yes, of course’ but he doesn’t. 

Instead, he whispers, agonized, 

“You’ve made your point.”

Bruce releases his grip and fits the Kryptonite ring back in the tightly sealed pocket in his belt. Superman coughs hard, breathing unevenly. Bruce glances only once at the red mark on the man’s neck. It looks like it stings. He wonders how many times Superman’s skin has ever stung. 

They stand in silence for a few minutes.

Batman allows Superman to regain his strength with dignity.

After a time, Superman places a hand on his still-bruised neck, covering the mark, a tremble of humiliation trembling through his wrist where it restlessly rubs across the skin over and over. 

“I’m not going to be available tomorrow night,” Superman informs him quietly, not meeting Batman’s eyes. He doesn’t elaborate on why. Good. He’s learning. Despite this, Batman wants to know if what just happened is the reason. “I suggest you make use of me now if you need to.”

“I don’t,” Batman replies coldly. “Keeping an ear out wouldn’t hurt.” 

“Alright.” 

There’s something aflame in Superman’s eyes when they meet Batman’s, like a challenge. 

Batman stares back, hard and unwavering.

Without a goodbye, Superman zips off into the night.

Batman swings off to the street where the bat mobile is hidden in the shadows. 

The drive to Joker’s hideout takes less than thirty seconds at the normal speed he drives at, but when Batman is a block or so away, he skids to a halt at the sight of a light zooming towards the old warehouse. Batman hops out of the car in time to see the light burst through a window with a distant crash and come out the other side carrying the Joker. His sickly laugh echoes through the night as—Superman—zooms off with him towards the out of commission watch tower nearby. 

“Idiot.”

He’s going to get himself killed. 

Bruce swears and grapples in the direction Superman went. 

He saw the light stop at the top of the tower. 

It’s not so easy to ignore how heavy his heart is pounding in his chest. 

“Oh darling, you’re just as fun as Batsy tonight, heh-heh!” Joker howls as he’s dangled by one leg above the entire city. Superman hasn’t landed on the watch tower but he’s close enough for Batman to reach if he gets to the top. “Say…I think I can see your house from here, Soupy!” 

“Tell me why you’re dealing in Kryptonite, Joker. Now.”

Superman tightens his grip on Joker’s leg and his eyes start to glow. 

While Batman knows and trusts Superman not to kill the Joker, the sight of his heat vision still causes his heart to stutter. He grapples the last of the way up the tower to the very top ledge. 

Superman doesn’t notice him before Joker rattles off,

“Well since you’re asking so nicely and giving me a hoot of a night, I’ll tell you that Lexie Baby and I are working on the most delightful storm. What tall, dark, and cloudy probably hasn’t told you is that Ivy isn’t the only one who likes planting seeds…” He cackles, apparently done with giving Superman hints for the night. This is especially apparent when he starts punching at him.

Mid-air.

Superman sighs, losing steam. 

“Superman,” Batman bellows angrily, perturbed when Superman doesn’t flinch or let Joker go. “He won’t give you any more than that. That’s not how things work with him. End this.”

Superman turns to face him, unreadable past his frown. 

“Talking about me like I’m not even in the room,” Joker complains with a pout. “Well don’t I make the perfect picture of a nineteenth century housewife with her two brawling suitors.” 

Superman clenches his jaw and tosses Joker gracelessly onto the grating of the ledge Batman is on. Batman swiftly handcuffs him to one of the rails, ignoring the clown’s mad cackling and pointing at them.

“I will say one thing. He didn’t use kryptonite on me like you predicted he would.” Superman fixes him with a hard glare and clarifies, “You’re the only one tonight who chose to do that.” 

He zips off at super speed before Bruce can respond. 

“Oh dear,” Joker croons through a maddeningly punchable grin.”Hope I didn’t make the divorce proceedings worse! Hah-hah-hah—”

Batman kicks him upside the head, knocking him out.

He won’t take Joker in, not when he can still use him to pull Luthor’s plan into plain view. For now, he’ll set him free and watch his movements carefully. He places a tracking device in Joker’s body, so he’ll know where he goes now that Superman exposed this long-term hideout of his. 

What he’d told Superman, the Kryptonian won’t be able to decipher.

He’s probably stewing right now about how pointless an effort this all was.

He’s wrong. He did get a lot out of Joker.

Bruce would say Joker’s even been hanging around Riddler for too long, because there are parts of what he told Superman that he thinks he can piece together if he can get a confirmation out of Lex. Luckily, Superman is taking a day off tomorrow and so is Batman for the most part. Bruce is going to go to the annual ball and hopefully wheedle out info on Luthor’s weather department. 

Tall, dark, and cloudy 

Planting seeds.

Lexie Baby and I are working on the most delightful storm.

If his hunch is correct, Lex is using his resources to cloud seed. Somehow, if it’s at all possible, create an effect in an upcoming storm where the rain will contain properties of Kryptonite. 

It’ll have catastrophic effects if so, not just for Superman.

Kryptonite is confirmed to have correlations to cancer and other diseases after prolonged exposure and if this rain gets into the soil, the air, it won’t matter if Superman can’t save the world. It’ll be a lost cause anyway. He can’t believe Lex Luthor can be so blinded by hatred. 

For a man who has done nothing but good, and shown Bruce nothing but friendship.

He’s never truly dwelled on Luthor’s hatred of Superman, but right now, it’s one of the most unconscionable things in his mind. He cannot understand it on any rational level. 

It stuns him then, how much he values Superman.

How much he’s never realized until Superman crossed a boundary by going after Joker tonight, how he’s never crossed a boundary with Batman before. How he’s never abused his power like that when Batman gives him an order or tells him what to do. And what right does he have to do that? He is concerned about the world’s strongest protector being taken down, but Batman is also treating this man, who has proven his worth time and time again, like he can’t handle himself. 

And Superman has let him.  

Guilt shreds through his gut and he swallows hard to put down the taste of bile that comes with it. He isn’t used to feeling like he’s made a mistake, but hopefully, he’ll be able to fix things with Superman soon. Perhaps, though he’s bad at it, an apology is in order. 

Superman has only tried to help. 

Well, he has. 

Batman should let him know, and cease being harsh. 

That, is for another night.

Tomorrow night, Brucie Wayne attends a party.

Chapter Text

Clarks slaps at his cheeks in the mirror. 

He needs to snap out of his funk if he wants Bruce to invite him anywhere ever again. He’s been in a sour mood since last night, since Batman decided to push all of his buttons and then some. 

He’s mostly in a bad mood because he’s not even mad at Batman. 

The kicker; he gets it. 

Clark gets that his fatal flaw is trusting too much in humanity, in people. His unconditional love for the world’s fatal flaws. He has hope, and he knows that isn’t something Batman thrives on or understands. He’s been pushing his own beliefs on him, optimistic he can change his world view. 

It isn’t his place to change Batman, nor does Batman necessarily need to change. 

Gotham would never need Superman the way they need Batman. 

Last night is purely a result of pushing Batman too far. He isn’t angry at him for pushing back, he’s angry at himself for letting it get to the stage that it did.

That said, Batman using Kryptonite on him has left a bad taste in his mouth. He doesn’t want to think about him right now, nor does he want to see him for a while. At least until he feels calmer.

Present, he needs to get it together.

He hasn’t been on a date in over a year. 

To boot, he’s dressed in a loose fifty dollar suit for the Central City ball which is going to be full of men and women in thousand-dollar attire. He’s absolutely out of his depths here, and he can’t add dwelling over Batman to his list of anxieties right now. His appearance is frazzled enough. 

The bell doorbell rings. 

Clark startles and checks his watch. 

It’s thirty minutes before five. Who could it be? 

He buzzes the person through and less than a minute later, he’s opening his apartment door to Bruce Wayne in a dazzling tuxedo, leaning against the doorway with a warm, sultry expression.

“Oh my God,” rolls off Clark’s tongue, causing him to blush furiously. “I mean —wow.” 

Bruce’s smirk deepens. 

“So I hear. I know I’m early, but I brought my tailor to fit you.”

Clark gawks at him, worrying at a loose thread on his lapel. He hasn’t even put on his tie yet, not that he wants to in front of Bruce. His only tie that matches this suit has a stain on the back of it. 

“F-Fit me?” 

Did Bruce anticipate his suits not to fit him? He’d be right, they’re all too baggy, but still. Or is he saying he’s bought —oh. 

Bruce’s tailor shuffles in from the hallway, with three suits hanging from his wrist. “I hope you’re not offended,” Bruce says mildly. “I personally wouldn’t mind what you wear, but it draws less attention when my plus ones are wearing something similar to my price range.” 

Clark thinks it should probably offend him, but he’s more dazed by the sudden measuring and color matching the tailor is subjecting him to as Bruce watches with piercing scrutiny. The edge of desire in his eyes has Clark shifting his weight from heel to heel, trying to force his body not to respond in front of a complete stranger. The tailor seems oblivious, flitting about him busily. 

“I mean, I can always return it after, right?” he muses awkwardly as his waist is surrounded by a measuring tape. He can’t imagine what suits tailor-made by Bruce’s, well, tailor, must cost. 

Bruce picks at a nail and shrugs. 

“Don’t worry about it.” 

What does that mean?

“Mr. Wayne has already paid for all the prototypes,” the tailor explains in a thick Italian accent. It’s Bruce’s turn to blush. His cheeks turn a pretty rose color but that doesn’t distract from Clark’s guttural reaction, feeling accosted and overwhelmed by this overly generous gesture. 

“You’re just…you’ve known me for less than two weeks!”

“It’s not charity, Clark. It’s optics.” 

Oh, it’s much more than that. There’s about seven suits on the tailor’s person, and that alone must cost what a Metropolis condo is worth. Clark isn’t an idiot; he knows Bruce wouldn’t splurge just for the sake of splurging on a date. This isn’t about optics, either. He would’ve bought two. 

Not a heapful. 

It hits Clark; does Bruce actually like him?

Is he not simply another armpiece? 

This hunch alone keeps him quiet as the tailor dresses him. He ends up in a deep blue suit that compliments his eyes and Bruce’s tie. He tries not to think about how good he’ll look next to him, nor how smooth the fabric against his skin feels. He never thought he could feel expense. 

Until now.

“Stunning,” Bruce murmurs, still standing where he was when he arrived. 

“Of course you’d say that. It’s your taste,” Clark replies abashedly.

Bruce stares right at him and his smile flickers deviously.

“Yes, you are.” 

Clark swallows down the fluttery feeling that erupts in him, patiently waiting for the tailor to clear out with his pins and needles before he responds, “Flattery, Mr. Wayne?”

“Honesty.” Bruce offers up an elbow and Clark takes it. He’s led to his elevator, and then to an overly long limousine. “The champagne’s all yours. That said, there will be a lot of it at the ball.” 

“I’m not much of a drinker,” Clark tells him, ducking into the car.

Bruce follows and sits right beside him rather than parallel to him. Clark tries not to feel too hot under the collar from their proximity, focusing on the way Bruce types away at his work cell. 

He didn’t expect a man as important as Bruce to stop working, even tonight. 

Still, it leaves Clark a little lost. He glances around the inside of the limo.

There isn’t much to see all in all. 

Then, abruptly, Bruce says, “Was just telling my PR guy not to bother me for the rest of the night. And everyone else,” then brags with a chuckle, “Which is a hell of a lot of people, y’know.” 

He slips his phone back into his pocket, seemingly for the rest of the night.

“You didn’t have to do that for me,” Clark stutters. “I know you’re a busy man.”

“Let’s just say, please don’t tell me not to take any opportunity I can to get the vultures off my back,” Bruce implores, mustering a pleading puppy-dog face that has Clark laughing brazenly. 

“Okay, then. I’ll do my best to keep you off your phone tonight.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Bruce plucks a mint from a glass bowl in the back of the limo and says, “And hopefully I can distract you from whatever has you feeling down, to return the favor.” 

Clark’s face falls and he looks down at his shoes. 

The muffled sound of cars driving by on the road is the only noise to fill the space.

Look at me screwing this up before it starts. 

Bruce continues, quieter than before with a shrewd, and unpresumptuous approach of sympathy, “I’m sorry. I’m, um, usually good at noticing these things. You don’t have to talk about it.”

“Hey, it’s not you,” Clark insists, flailing. He doesn’t know how he can explain himself. “I seriously just didn’t think I was showing it. I was doing my best to put on a good face tonight.”

Bruce places a hand on his knee. Every muscle in Clark’s body goes still, anticipatory. 

“Honesty is more important to me than flattery too, you know. I wouldn’t want you putting on a face. I tend not to find those as attractive as the alternative,” Bruce promises him kindly. 

Clark sighs and admits, “It was more for my sake than anything. I wanted to have fun tonight.”

“You might have more fun once you get it off your chest. Not fully. You can give me the broad strokes.” Bruce smirks, giving him a little wink with that. “If you don’t mind the innuendo.” 

“Jesus, you are as shameless as they say.”

“I try.”

Clark frowns, wanting very much to tell Bruce everything. 

He can’t, he knows that. 

Batman would tell him not to be a fool, so for once, he’ll try to listen. 

He’ll give the broad strokes, not the full ones. 

“One of my closest friends…well I’m not sure if he’d consider me that…we got into a fight last night.” Clark twiddles his thumbs, trying to word this properly. “We have drastically different world views, and it all came to a head. He did something…I am having trouble forgetting.”

Bruce’s eyes go distant. 

“Weird.”

Clark frowns deeper.

“What?”

“No, sorry, I just…also had a disagreement with a friend last night. Similar circumstances.” Bruce forces a smile, one of those magazine cover ones Clark knows with a pang of empathy isn’t even an ounce real. “Guess I was doing a better job at hiding how that was eating at me.” 

For some reason, though Clark knows Bruce can’t possibly understand his own situation, the fact they’re in a similar boat makes him feel warm inside. Not so alone. Not alone, like Superman is. 

“Then I think we owe it to ourselves to have fun.”

Bruce regards him, gaze returning to full focus, and he grins.

“Luckily, you’re with the biggest party animal in Gotham.” 

“And you’re with a guy whose last date was in a Waffle House.”

Bruce’s grin stretches and he cheers an invisible glass in Clark’s direction.

“Don’t we make a pair.”

Clark happily cheers another invisible glass against Bruce’s. 

“Yes, Bruce, I believe we do.” 

The ballroom is abuzz for ten minutes tops when Bruce Wayne walks into the Darwin Elias estate with a gorgeous, well-dressed man on his arm. Then, the crowd moves onto the next hot topic, completely forgetting about them and the breaking news on Wayne’s sexuality woes. 

“That was fast,” Clark mutters as he bumps into Sally Meyer, a local aristocrat known for her celebrity blather. She barely gives him a second glance when she rights her champagne glass. 

She moves onward towards a group of men with unique mustache styles.

“Gossip is like a hot potato with these people,” Bruce explains, plucking a snack off a silver tray whisking by. “It’ll itch if they hold it for too long. Told you we had nothing to worry about.”

A big weight is lifted from Clark’s shoulders.

Feeling bold, he tightens his grip on Bruce’s arm and smiles.

“I believe you promised real food?” 

Bruce matches the lightness of his smile and nods.

“Our seats in the dining hall should be ready.”

Bruce leads him through the halls of gorgeously dressed women and their husbands. Rich men with cigars, pure gold cufflinks, overly pampered mistresses with pearls. He holds back a laugh. 

Everyone is putting on such a face, the way he puts one on every day as Superman. Except these faces aren’t the real ones, they’re all facades. They’re ashamed of who they are underneath it all. 

It isn’t often he’s ashamed of being Superman. 

Regret ruptures through Clark and his good mood wavers.

He thinks of Batman, what he might be doing.

Clark hopes he isn’t too lonely. 

“Lex!” Bruce skids to a stop, causing Clark to nearly topple over. He seems to have spotted the fellow billionaire on the ledge above them, beyond the grand staircase. Lex is pretending like he hasn’t heard Bruce; Clark can practically sense before he even does anything that this won’t go over well. “Hold on a second, Clark, I’ll be back in a jiffy.” He slides out of Clark’s grip with slippery skill, leaving him stunned. He can barely utter out the beginnings of a protest before Bruce is bounding up the staircase after a very bemused Lex Luthor. “I thought that was you!”

Most normal humans would not hear the conversation Lex and Bruce are now sharing on the second floor, not without super hearing. Clark, on the other hand, chooses to listen closely. 

He wanders around guilelessly, picking at snack trays (it’s nothing edible by his standards, like caviar on crackers, but it’s a good cover to keep his appearance busy to the party attendees) and makes sure his super-hearing zones in on only the conversation between his date and nemesis. 

Lex was squirming last time Clark saw him in public.

Maybe listening will help Superman and Batman with the case. 

“Don’t think you were going to get that new project past me,” Bruce says to Lex jovially. Clark can hear him slap Lex’s arm, a gesture few men poorer than Bruce could ever get away with and live to tell the tale. “Don’t look at me like that. I heard everything. That new weather matrix?”

Weather Matrix?

“Where the hell did you hear about that, Wayne?” 

“Oh, was that —sorry— I didn’t mean to pry. Didn’t know you were keeping that under wraps.” 

“Has my IT department gone blabbing again?” Lex growls, taking a nasty, aggressive sip from his champagne glass. “I just fired a good chunk of them. I can’t afford to fire any more.” 

“Hey, Lex, in my experience, random firing is usually why foot soldiers go blabbing.”

The terminology seems relatively harsh coming from Bruce who has been nothing but gentle and respectful towards blue-collared workers. Clark gives him the benefit of the doubt and assumes Bruce knows how to speak to Lex to get what he wants. But what could Bruce possibly want in that case?

In on this new ‘project’? 

And does this new project have anything to do with the Kryptonite trading? 

Clark thinks, deliriously, this might finally be his best lead. A way in to finally take down this operation before it can even hit the ground running. Excitedly, he thinks about the look of pride Batman might have on his face once he tells him about this. Then, the excitement dwindles. 

Batman probably is thinking about how much he doesn’t want to see him right now, regardless of any breakthroughs in the case. Superman may have to go it alone, at least to prove himself again. 

“Well, now you know. Feel like stealing my good ideas? Again?” 

Bruce cackles and Clark registers with pleasure that it’s a completely farcical, made-up sound. He is playing him. If Bruce only knew how much he truly has in common with Clark. 

“You know the weather stuff really isn’t my interest. It’ll rain in Gotham no matter what I do,” Bruce replies blithely, “But hey, I feel rotten bringing all this up out of nowhere. How majorly rude. I seriously had no idea it was classified. Say, lemme send you a couple of my men to make up for it.” There’s a beat of silence where Clark assumes Lex is considering it. “Free of charge.”

“No one else of your status is this wealthy, Wayne,” Lex points out. “And that isn’t a compliment.” A pause. “Your men from WayneTech don’t come with any stipulations do they?” 

“Nope, no strings attached.”

“Hm. Alright. I need to cut corners on my end anyhow.”

Lex, greedy as ever. Bruce, obviously cooking something up.

Clark can use this and, shamefully, thinks he can use Bruce. 

It isn’t ‘using’ in a bad sense, though!

If Bruce understood he was doing it in the name of good, he’d understand, he advises himself. When Bruce comes trotting back down the stairs a few minutes later, Clark is surprised when he sidles up to him and plants an affectionate, heart-stopping, close-mouthed kiss right on his lips. 

He gives Clark a second to recover before pecking him once more and whispering,

“Let’s go fill you up.” 

Right, dinner. 

“Oh.” 

Clark forgets everything important, forgets Superman and Batman and Kryptonite. Lex Luthor and that mysterious weather matrix. 

“Okay,” he wheezes, trying not to fall. 

With a gelatinous feeling in his knees, Clark thinks it's far too late for that. 

The date is like a dream.

The food is rich, creamy, perfect.

The table, luxurious with several options and golden silverware. 

Nobody pays them any mind, leaving them alone.

He thinks the governor of Star City might’ve asked him to pass the salt. 

Bruce chats with him about anything that comes to his mind. He has a very selective focus that makes Clark feel slightly high when it’s directed towards him. He’s aware Bruce is a people-pleaser and a seductive man. He knows how to spin wool into gold and make his partners feel special, but despite knowing the process of the infamous ‘playboy’ it doesn’t make Clark immune to the effects. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for with Bruce, and he’d be lying if he said dating one of the most fast and loose celebrities on the bachelor market doesn’t ring alarm bells, but he can’t help heed the other part of him. It’s telling him he needs to let go,  have fun. The part that wants to feel desired and seen, not just brushed over and barely acknowledged, it’s bursting inside Clark, thrashing at the cage of his body to respond to all of Bruce’s attention. 

When Bruce places a hand on his knee under the dining table, unbeknownst to his elite peers, Clark’s whole world comes to a stand still, and he can’t keep his eyes off of Bruce’s warm gaze. 

“At this point in the night, I’d tend to ask you to dance.”

Anxiety ripples through Clark’s chest.

He can’t dance, and told Bruce as much.

Still, he’s internally giving himself a pep talk, to say yes, to be polite.

Instead, Bruce leans close to his ear, nosing along the curve of it, smiling slightly at the way Clark shivers, and Bruce murmurs in that devastating, deep timbre of his, “I’d rather take you home right now.” The hand on Clark’s knee slides up an inch and squeezes his thigh to make his point extremely, bone-achingly clear. Arousal hits Clark so fast that he feels legitimately dizzy. 

The suit is so perfectly tailored to him, that he fears an erection might tear a seam.

He doesn’t have long to figure out if that’s true or not. 

“Your call,” Bruce promises, as if Clark has any power over the way he’s looking at him right now. Like Bruce wants to eat him alive and not stop until he’s begging for him to. Christ. 

Clark doesn’t do this. He doesn’t sleep with people he’s just met.

He doesn’t go on lavish dates, or play along with saucy public displays of affection. 

All that being put into consideration, he finds his mouth working for him before he can weigh the pros and cons. He goes against every lesson he’s ever learned during his humble upbringing. 

“I want that,” he confesses, the truth heavy on his tongue. The intensity of Bruce’s gaze is making it hard to breathe. He attempts to dampen the flames, just enough so he doesn’t explode, because he can barely stand it. “Dessert looked like it was going to be more fish eggs anyway.”

Bruce snorts and warns playfully, “Don’t talk about fish eggs when someone is coming onto you.” 

“I’ll say some different things,” Clark promises lightly, blushing when he catches the sight of a woman in a gold, sleek dress, across the table. “If you take me somewhere private first.”

There’s no hesitation. 

“I have a car waiting outside.”

Clark’s heart pounds feverishly.

“Alright. Let’s go.”

Clark is startled when their drive is only six minutes long.

He isn’t surprised when he lets himself really think about it.

Of course Bruce would have a penthouse in Central City. He probably has one in any city in a fifty mile radius from Gotham. It’s not like he expected to be granted an invitation to the elusive Wayne Manor or anything, but, well, he can’t help the disappointment this drudges up regardless.

The disappointment fades quickly when Bruce gets him up to the apartment on the top floor of a very boujee, silver skyscraper full of equally lavish apartments, and offers him a drink instead of pouncing on him. Maybe it’s the nervous, almost timid, slouch of Bruce’s that relaxes Clark. 

And the fact he isn’t simply jumping his bones. 

There’s a respect here that Clark can almost taste. 

Confirms this isn’t just another night he’s claiming a conquest in one of his sex-pads. 

“It’s ginger ale,” Bruce swears, pushing the glass of sparkling amber liquid in his direction. Clark pays it no mind. “I can make you something else. I have soda.”

Clark’s smile is mild, and he removes his own watch, placing it on the bar counter. He doesn’t bother looking around the penthouse. The riches have never been the interest for him, and he wants Bruce to know that. He wants him to know he would be happy to be with Bruce anywhere. 

Instead of speaking, he leans in and kisses Bruce softly on the mouth.

He’s surprised how pillowy those firm, hard lips feel against his. Bruce is taken aback, but for only a moment. He leads the kiss in no time, with a hand sliding into place across his jaw, and Clark is glad for it. He doesn’t have the experience Bruce has, and it feels good to be handled. 

They kiss for a few minutes, the passion ramping up until Clark is heaving in gasps and Bruce’s stubble is shining with saliva, placed there from Clark’s desperately wet, off-center kisses. 

“Clark,” Bruce’s voice is hoarse, sexy. “I don’t want to rush you.”

“Don’t you?” Clark whispers through a smile. “Maybe I want you to rush.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“You’re not going to walk out on me in the morning without saying a single word to me, are you?” Clark meets his eyes, fixing him with a hard, demanding look. “I’m not going to be one of those tabloid girls whose names you can’t remember.” There’s certainly enough of them. 

“No” Bruce answers swiftly, and jarringly truthful. “They’re different.” He seems to realize Clark wants to hear something further, something else, and adds, “I won’t leave in the morning.” 

A smile gentles Clark’s features.

“Then, I’m sure.”

Bruce watches him carefully, and leans back in for a deeper kiss.

Clark’s spine hits the bar and a stool wobbles. When Bruce’s tongue slips into his mouth, and a hard leg slots into place between his thighs, Clark forgets all together, any of his initial concerns. 

Wind blows through the open window, from the clear night sky of Central City.

They’ve relocated to the bed where Clark is quickly learning how to make a man twist and melt from having a mouth on his cock. He’s not exactly done this before, but he thinks Bruce would sing him praises if he wasn’t busy trying to muffle curses and unintelligible pleas into a pillow. 

More cool air blows in, tickling Clark’s overheated, bare skin. 

He pulls back to ride out a full-bodied shudder.

Bruce’s attention is drawn suddenly to Clark and he lets out a strained, sweet chuckle. “They’re all steamed up, baby, that’s so precious,” that gravelly voice murmurs. It’s such a mesmerizing tone, Clark barely realizes this gorgeous man in front of him is reaching down to —oh fuck.

Clark feels the temples of his glasses being lifted from his ears at the same time he’s scrambling to press the frames flat to his face with an awkward slap over his own face, the other swatting at Bruce intently. “Glasses stay on!” Clark exclaims, hand freezing mid-air when Bruce goes rigid. 

It’s obvious, awkwardly, to both of them that Bruce’s erection flags a bit. 

“Hey, hey, okay. Sorry, you, uh, okay, Clark?” 

When Clark decides the coast is clear, and Bruce won’t try to take his glasses off again, he lowers his hand from his face. 

He has to be more careful! 

He can’t have Bruce figuring out who he is, not when they’ve been having such a good time. Full of embarrassment, he curls in on himself, and struggles to come up with any feasible response. 

“I’m sorry I said anything,” Bruce assures, scooting closer to kiss his neck. “Keep them on, Clark, it’s alright. You don’t need to explain anything, not to me. Let me make you feel good.” 

Clark sighs, relaxing into Bruce’s touch.

He lets himself be pulled back down on the mattress, his wrists encircled by strong fingers, and chest barraged with a searching, sinful mouth that sends him nearly back to the brink of forgetting himself again. He doesn’t get back there. Even with Bruce's thighs sliding sweaty over his hips, tightening and rocking needily. But the adrenaline of his identity nearly being uncovered keeps him from fully being swept away, even if Bruce does give him a run for his money. 

Later that night, Clark wakes up to feel Bruce’s side of the bed empty. The time above the bed reads that it’s four in the morning. His heart starts to hammer with anxiety, shades of betrayal. Sitting up, startled, he settles when Bruce comes back in from the kitchen with a cup in his hand. 

“Just getting some water.” He sits against the headboard and goes still when Clark shifts closer and rests a cheek against his hip. It takes several minutes of silence before Bruce is able to place a hand in Clark’s hair, stroke through the strands in a telling gesture of regard before he confesses, “I don’t remember a time when I had a full night of sleep. You should probably learn that about me sooner rather than later.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” Clark promises, drowsy and satisfied. 

“Okay.” Bruce keeps stroking his hair. “Okay.”

Clark falls back asleep soon after, to the sound of Bruce taking small sips from his glass.

He remembers Bruce’s heartbeat sounding unusually fast, like he’d been running a marathon, before drifting off to an oblivious slumber. 

When he wakes up, Bruce is in the room, adjusting a tie in the mirror. It’s not the same suit he wore to last night’s ball, nor is it anything extravagant. Clark smiles dopily at him, since he’s naked aside from the thin sheet lazily tossed over his lap. Bruce smirks at him in the reflection. 

“You certainly aren’t an insomniac are you.”

“My Ma used to tell me nine hours of sleep is the secret trick to a healthy mind.” 

“Maybe she’s right.”

Clark doesn’t ask Bruce how many hours he managed to squeeze in last night. He’s sure Bruce doesn’t want to hear any type of lecture or suggestion. He’s sure a man like him has tried it all.

He can’t help but want to know what keeps Bruce up at night, nonetheless. 

For now, he stays silent. 

As he tries taming his fluffy, rather askew hair with his hands, Bruce approaches his bedside and kisses his cheek. “I’ve got a meeting in Wayne Tower in about an hour and half. If I don’t leave now, I’ll be twenty minutes late instead of a fashionable ten.” He smirks wider. “Don’t wait up for me.”

Right, it’s not like he’d be coming back here.

And Clark has to get to work anyway.

“Bruce,” Clark stammers, chastising himself as he reaches out a hand to snatch Bruce’s up. Bruce doesn’t tug his hand away though, actually, he soothes Clark’s grip and cradles it. “Was I—was last night— was it, well, good?” When Bruce’s eyebrows cinch together, confused, Clark’s face heats up and he closes his eyes, muttering a curse. “What I mean to say is, was last night, was it…” He opens his eyes, imploring Bruce silently to understand. “What you wanted?”

Bruce squeezes Clark’s hand, his gaze hardening with sincerity.

“Was it what you wanted?” 

Clark nods, right away. “Of course,” he says, honestly. “Yes. More than.”

Bruce nods back, mouth turning up.

“Then yes. It’s exactly what I wanted.” 

Alleviation fills Clark to the brim, and his insecurities fall away. 

“I really have to go now.”

“Right.” Clark lets his hand go. “Good luck at work.”

“I’ll try to focus on the meeting and not think about how much I’d rather be here,” Bruce teases, causing Clark to duck his head and try not to think about the way he called him ‘baby’ last night.

Things are moving so fast. 

“Bye Bruce.”

“Call you later,” Bruce swears. “Bye, Clark.”

The bedroom door shuts and Clark falls back against the sheets, biting his bottom lip through the giddiest grin he’s ever had on his face. He tries not to roll around in Bruce’s scent and make things weird, because things are weird enough as it is. He’s completely head over heels for him. 

This is ridiculous.

Good sex, a good date, well, it doesn’t mean much in the grand scheme of things.

Batman would tell him he’s jumping the gun.

He’s just so happy. 

So full of light, weightless.

He’s not even thinking about his responsibilities as Superman.

That floating thought in his head alone leaves him cold.

Clark frowns, staring up at the fancy, swirly lights installed in the penthouse ceiling.

Not once, since they entered the place last night, has Clark thought about Superman. Aside from the incredibly awkward part where Bruce almost revealed his identity with his dick an inch from his tongue. Clark swipes a hand over his face, groaning at the realization. He’s been sufficiently distracted.

He told himself this would never happen.

He’d never get so wrapped up in someone or something that he’d forget Superman.

Clark thinks about it, long and hard, alone in the toastiness of the bed where they just slept together and made love, and decides that he also can’t throw his life away for Superman either. 

He just needs to be more mindful.

He needs to answer to Earth’s needs as much as Bruce’s, or his own. 

Clark gets dressed, and heads off to be Clark Kent at The Daily Planet. And later that evening, he promises himself, he’ll be Superman for as many disasters across the Earth that he can find.

Chapter Text

On the drive to his meeting, Bruce rolls his shoulder.

He dislocated it in the middle of the night, after dipping out of the penthouse in Central City, hopping the Bat Wing and doing a few hours of patrol in Gotham before coming back to Clark who is a lighter sleeper than most of his conquests. Scratch that, more than all of them combined. 

His extra curricular activities are going to be tougher during his courtship of Kent. 

The courtship overall is going to be like none he’s ever subjected himself to.

He’s not used to returning to a bed, even if a bedmate asks him not to leave. He leaves; that’s what Brucie Wayne does. With Clark, he has an end goal and knows sticking to his routine would put that plan in danger. He’ll never convince him to write a good-faith article about Batman if he treats him like one of his usual air-headed consorts. What is distracting, and draws more attention than his throbbing arm, is the fact that he doesn’t think of Clark that way anyway. 

He can’t put him in the same category as a ‘consort’ and is having trouble separating his reality from Batman’s. Or rather, Bruce’s reality is beginning to come into frame as his priority. 

Batman’s reality is always put first, that’s what Bruce has consistently perpetuated. 

Now, yesterday, being intimate with Clark, he feels something changing. 

There’s a taste of guilt in his mouth lingering after the fact, a tingling of anxiety in his belly, when he thinks about what he’s doing to Clark. The fact he’s using him for an ulterior purpose.

But, can he feel guilt, when he’s been fairly sincere?

He finds Clark attractive, charming. Intelligent. He’s made that much clear, and even if he needs Clark for another purpose, the way of going about getting what he wants isn’t necessarily insincere. Bruce, to his own shock, likes him in a way he hasn’t liked someone in a long time.

He was dwelling on his meeting with Superman the other day, and merely being with Clark at that ball had swept away all his thoughts, worries, concerns about the conflict they’d shared. 

The sex —fuck, the sex— was overwhelmingly hot.

Bruce is used to faking, putting on a show.

None of that was for show. 

At one point, Clark had his hips pinned to the bed with two firm hands and Bruce couldn’t have escaped his grip if he’d wanted to. It was the most turned on he’s felt, perhaps, in his lifetime. 

The sex part at least won’t be hard, going forward.

Even if Clark has a thing about his glasses.

Bruce rolls his shoulder again as he remembers Clark wearing the glasses to bed. The reporter never shifted around much in the night; he slept soundly on his back, so Bruce hadn’t said anything, like warn him that if he so much as turns that strong jaw of his he could shatter them.

Clark simply hadn’t rolled over. At all. 

Strange though it may be, Bruce obviously has his own secrets too.

He isn’t going to confront Clark about his. 

As Bruce is driven to Gotham, he continues thinking about him. Then realizes with a start, he’s thought of nothing else since he left the penthouse. He even has a lead about Lex and he hasn’t thought about that once. He types in coordinates for Lex Corp’s weather modification center. It’s a building by the West Docks in Metropolis. He’ll track that lead down later, he promises himself sternly. For now, he has to be Bruce Wayne for a while for a stuffy number of elites in big positions. A breath. He recalls all the positions he twisted Clark into last night. Oh for fuck sake.

Bruce pinches his hurt arm and nearly groans. He grits his teeth through it. 

The pain is enough to distract from the memories.  

The board meeting at Wayne Enterprises goes off without a hitch, except for the ache that lingers from haphazardly resetting his shoulder bone in the bathroom next to the boardroom. 

When he gets home, Alfred lets him take a few hours sleep without interruption, then insists he eat the quaint meal he’s cooked up before heading off for the weather operations headquarters. 

He needs to see firsthand what this new matrix entails. 

The sun is setting, reflecting glowing white shapes across the twin cities’ harbors, as he flies over the bridge to Metropolis in the BatWing. He maintains distance above the clouds, keeping out of view. 

By the time he reaches the sleek, black skyscraper, located in the Upper West side of the city, he notes with unease that the daunting building blends in almost seamlessly with the night sky.  

Batman drops from the hatch in the base of the BatWing, gliding down to the rooftop.  

Light droplets of rain patter onto his suit and cape. 

He’s used to rain in Gotham, but can’t help but wonder if they’re doing some experimental testing as he stands here, narrowing down an entry point with his cowl’s detective vision. 

A massive heat signature erupts from his peripheral and he spins around, turning his detective vision off momentarily to find: Superman, floating a foot or two off the floor of the roof. 

His normally styled jet black hair is curlier, shimmering with damp rain. 

That distant cold look in his eyes from last time they encountered is gone, thankfully, yet there’s still an uncertainty in the way he’s clenching his jaw and crossing his arms that Batman can see. 

“Superman,” Batman greets quietly, hesitant. “You got the same lead.”

He’s not shocked. 

Superman has proven resourceful more than once. 

“Yep.” Superman regards him, and lowers himself to Batman’s level, feet planted firmly on the ground. He swallows before saying, “Batman, listen, I know…I just…I wanted to apologize.”

What?

“What.” 

Superman smiles warmly and walks close. Maybe Batman’s mind is playing tricks on him but his skin seems to have a yellowish glow, very subtle and hard to spot unless one was really staring. Like when the sun went down, his skin kept residual light and strength from it as a reserve for any nighttime patrolling. It makes him look angelic. Batman doesn’t move an inch to back away. 

The rain picks up. 

“You…piss me off,” Superman tells him ineloquently, raising his hands up in capitulation. It’s startling to hear such brass words coming from the mouth of Earth’s pitch-perfect golden boy. 

“Okay,” Batman deadpans. “And?”

“Shush, alright?” Superman asks softly. “You’re totally different from me, and I knew that from the first moment I met you but I’ve met a lot of people who are different from me. And no one’s ever been able to push my buttons like you do. And I’m not talking about anger, or hatred. Lex Luthor’s been pretty darn sufficient at pissing me off in ways that almost always have worldly consequences but I’ve never met someone who could really strike at my core in the way you have. From day one, we’ve been clashing. It’s like every time I talk to you, I’m jumping into a fencing ring, and I realized why it’s different with you. Because, I need to clash. I need someone to challenge me, and fight with me, and tell me when they think I’m being stupid. Being Superman has come with criticism, but it’s also come with overwhelming blanket support and acceptance. It’s hard to get that amount of support every day and not let it cloud my judgement. The people down there,” he gestures vaguely to the streets below, the flickering lights and muffled traffic, “they don’t know how to tell me when I’m wrong. They don’t know, the way you know, the importance of rationing out trust rather than giving it fully, without a second thought.” 

Batman stares at him, stunned at the words. 

He can’t believe he finds himself responding in the way that he does, and yet it feels like the most natural thing in the world to apologize. In his own way, in a way that counts. 

“Just because I have contingency plans for everyone I encounter doesn’t mean I should use those strategies against someone to make a point, unless it is absolutely, life-threateningly necessary.” 

Superman’s eyes widen and Batman nods.

“It won’t happen again.” 

“You’re my friend, B,” Superman admits, reverent. “I don’t think either of us have many of those.”

Not in these uniforms, no they don’t. 

Batman reaches out a hand to shake, and Superman grins when he takes the hand, dragging Batman into a hug. Bruce tenses up, body on high alert. It’s also an onslaught of heat. 

He’s not sure if it’s from Superman or his own, reddening cheeks, though. 

“When you’re done crushing my lungs, could you X-Ray a vantage point? I don’t see a good one from up here,” Batman grumbles out, wheezing and patting Superman awkwardly on the back.

Superman pulls back, stars in his eyes.

“I’ve got your back.”

Batman clears his throat. 

“Good.”

He  turns around and retrieves a grapple, preparing to slide down a dusty chute or hurtle himself to the third floor ledge if he needs to. Superman is quiet again, so he turns around expectantly. 

There’s a distant look in his friend’s eyes.

“What now.”

“Kal-El,” Superman says. “My name. Before you say anything, it’s not my secret identity. I have one of those, but this…it’s the name I was given on the planet I was born. I want you to know.”

There’s pain in Bruce’s chest, flowering into something sharp. He’s never had an easy time looking directly at vulnerability laid bare.

He doesn’t like to be in charge of precious things like that. 

Instead, all he says is,

“Nice name.”

There is only one vantage point into the building without layers of security making it impossible to bypass. He’s taken out most of the cameras, but the manpower Lex employs is another matter. 

The plan isn’t foolproof but it ends up working. 

It involves Superman distracting two guards with casual conversation outside while Bruce slips in undetected. Through a dusty chute. He’d prayed it wouldn’t come to that, but here he is. 

Once he’s crouching through the vents, he speaks in a very low voice so that no one but Superman can hear him. Small updates about what he’s seeing as he zig zags through empty halls and back through the ventilation system to other sectors of the building. Superman can’t respond, but at least he can hear Batman and keep attuned to the situation. He’s thinking he needs to get a communication system for them, something Superman can wear so he can talk to Batman too. 

For the meantime, Alfred feeds him lines on the building’s blueprints so he can work over to the Labs on the bottom floor without his entry even being recorded by Luthor’s high tech security. 

There isn’t much out of the ordinary so far according to his scanners, which he checks in regular intervals no matter where he is in these vents, but when he reaches the large lab underneath the building, with nothing but a few grates between him and the technology Lex Luthor has been trying so vapidly to hide, the Kryptonite meter on his mineral scanner goes off the charts. 

Silently, of course, he isn’t an idiot. 

He’s not sure how much his own technology is worth because the green glow in the laboratory would’ve proven to him just fine that Lex is actively using Kryptonite in his experimentation. 

Dozens of men and women in lab coats buzz around like flies from station to station. He crawls extremely slowly through the grating beneath the floor, keeping himself still when someone walks over him. Nobody would see unless they were really looking and they’re all too focused. 

“They’re using Kryptonite down here,” Bruce whispers, so Clark can hear. “I have a hunch they’re cloud seeding with the mineral to create a storm that would incapacitate you. I’m not sure to what end…I’m hoping to figure out if they plan to eradicate you during this storm. And how.” 

Bruce is able to crawl into a sterilization room, with a shower. 

There isn’t a trace of any water on the floor, so he knows it hasn’t been used today if ever. He uses the space in the small room to fish out a few of his gadgets. 

He noticed a large computer system at the posterior of the laboratory that he can get to if he gets rid of the technicians on that side. He has a plan. Batman always has a plan, and he tells Superman as much while he’s gearing up to play it out beat by beat. Just in case it goes wrong.

It doesn’t. 

He manages to roll a smoke bomb down the opposite end of the room, distracting almost every technician except one who he successfully knocks out with one swift move around her neck. 

Then, he installs his encrypted program in the database to copy all the information on the computer system into the flashdrive he brought. It will take five minutes, so he’ll have to stall. 

Or better yet, hide. 

He hides. 

It must be his lucky day, because none of the technicians return to the station.

When the data is uploaded, he takes his hard drive and hides the unconscious scientist in his hiding spot under one of the larger, metal desks. Then, he’s back into the grates under the floor. 

Superman is waiting for him at the chute, helping him out, up, and onto the roof. 

“That’s a new record, B. I’m so proud of you.”

Batman bristles, and says nothing to that, mostly because the praise makes his stomach flutter.

“Everything Luthor has been trying to hide is on this harddrive,” Bruce explains, waving it around in the air. Superman’s eyes catch on the tiny device like a dog seeing a bone. 

Then, Bruce realizes.

Oh shit.

There’s a small, Superman sigil keychained to it. 

“Uh.” Batman has never experienced a more awkward moment in his life, and he walked in on Joker and Harley naked together once. “It helps me remember which one is which, erm.”

“No, no, I like it. Glad not everything you own is black,” Superman points out with a nervous chuckle, rubbing the back of his neck. The rain has stopped, and somehow is air-dryed hair is even more appealing than it is slick and soaked. “Listen, um. I know you don’t need a ride.”

“I don’t.”

“You know it makes me feel better to make sure.”

“Thank you.” Bruce sucks in a breath. “I mean it this time.”

Superman’s eyes warble with affection, searingly sincere. Batman ducks his head. 

What the hell is this? 

“Let me know what you find,” Superman tells him. “I’ll see you soon.” 

Batman nods.

His friend flies off, zipping off into a shape in the sky. 

Superman trusts him to craft a plan, a strategy. Ask him when he’s ready to take Luthor and the Joker on. They’ll need to be smart about this if they don’t want Kal-El poisoned, and Batman easily crushed under the awfully formidable weight of Lex Luthor’s technology and money. 

That’s a problem to figure out much later. 

He calls the BatWing. 

Bruce gets into the manor at three in the morning, give or take, takes an hour-long shower, and goes right back down to the cave to input all the information he uncovered during the night. 

The computer takes an hour to upload everything, before he can evem start reviewing it. He’s halfway through a few boring documents, blinking to stay away when Alfred COMMs him.

“What is it, Al?” he yawns.

“A mister ‘Clark Kent’ is here to see you, sir.” 

Bruce does a double take at the time. He rubs his eyes. 

It’s six or so in the morning now, and if he were anyone else he’d be flabbergasted at someone having the gall to show up at his house this early, but he’s almost impressed by how early it is. 

He’s impressed by a lot of Kent. 

Not to mention, he’s a bit sleep-drived and the thought of seeing Clark in person right now is making feel a bit hot and bothered. He’s always slept very soundly after a good fuck. 

He might not be here for that. 

Jesus, what is wrong with me. 

“Send him up to my room. I’ll be there in a minute.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bruce glances at himself in the mirror and tightens the silky black robe around his waist, deciding to brush his teeth again before taking a lift up to the top floor of his mansion. 

The secret passage down to the cave is hidden behind a bookcase. 

Subtle, he knows. 

He opens the door to his bedroom at the end of the hall. 

Bruce finds Clark dressed for work, still clutching a briefcase, shifting weight from one heel to the other as he waits. He sighs in relief when he sees Bruce enter the room. He blushes when he takes the sight of him in, in a short robe and nothing else. Bruce takes note of how disheveled Clark looks as the reporter fully faces him. His hair is askew, his eyes are a little buggy and wide.

“You look like you’ve had a night,” Bruce grumbles pointedly, sauntering towards the bed. Clark sets down his briefcase with an almost aggressive thud, stopping him in his tracks. 

“You look like you’re just going to bed,” Clark shoots back, wringing his hands and immediately muttering, “Sorry.” 

“No, you’re right.”

Clark balks, but to his credit, only for a moment. 

“Well in that case, also, sorry. Times two. For bothering you. I know you must need the rest.” 

“You’re not bothering me,” Bruce assures him, forcing a smile. It must come across tired and slightly manic, because Clark winces. But maybe he’s just embarrassed. “Why are you here?”

Clark stops fiddling with his hands and takes a deep breath.

“I know I must look insane, heck, I feel insane. And I’m sure I’m not the first person on your roster to go out of their way to say this, and it’ll probably mean nothing to you — ”

“Stop making assumptions over what I will and won’t think about this, Clark,” Bruce interrupts waspishly. Alfred often tells him he is far more blunt in the mornings than he has any right to be.  

Still, he wants him to spit it out. 

Clark’s breath stutters. He nods like he understands. 

“I can’t stop thinking about you.” 

Bruce’s heart skips a beat, surprising even himself.

Clark’s blush deepens and he continues, bordering on rambling, “I haven’t had sex like that with anyone in my life. I haven’t felt that connected to someone. I was distracted at work yesterday, and when you left the penthouse, I haven’t thought of much else since. I…am not used to that.” 

When Bruce doesn’t respond, just silently absorbing the words, Clark appears to panic again.

“And again, I know you’ve been with a lot of people. I know you’ve slept with a lot of people much more experienced than me. I didn’t come here hoping you might say you feel the same, or see if you’ve also been thinking about me. I know I’m probably more of an elevated fling — ”

“Clark.” Bruce takes two strides forward until they’re scarcely an inch apart. “I told you to stop making assumptions on what I’m feeling.” Then, he drags Clark in for a heavy, deep kiss. 

“Oh,” Clark utters, the innocent noise muffled dumbly into Bruce’s mouth. Eventually, he melts into the kiss, murmuring softly, “Oh thank goodness.” 

“Goodness has nothing to do with it,” Bruce groans, shoving Clark onto his bedsheets. Their tongues clash as he climbs right onto his lap, preparing to work himself up to a full sweat. 

Clark’s glasses are crooked on his face when he pulls back.

“We can wait, though, if you want. I really just wanted you to know —”

“You’re going to fuck me,” Bruce decides. “I really need the sleep, okay?” Clark looks sufficiently unnerved by that so Bruce swats him and says, “After. You gotta fuck me hard though, alright?” He paws at the bedside table and reaches into the top drawer, throwing his fancy lube at him. It’s what Bruce Wayne uses for most encounters like this, and the girls are usually impressed. Clark’s eyes are still saucer-wide and unbelieving, maybe scared, so he sighs. 

“Do you want to wait?”

“No,” Clark blurts out, then quieter, “No, I don’t. You just seem really exhausted.” 

Boy scout till the nth degree. 

“I am. And I’m also really turned on by the fact you couldn’t stop thinking about me.” Bruce entangles their fingers and rocks his hips a little to get Clark to make that special whimper of his. The one where he kind of squeaks at the tail end of it, and his eyes go glossy. “I want you too.”

He takes his hands away, smoothing them over Clark’s chest as he nibbles at his neck. 

“Do something, farm boy.” 

“Heard,” Clark pipes up, running his hands over Bruce’s cheeks, all the way down to his hips. “Heard loud and clear, Bruce. I’ll, um, here.” He pushes at Bruce’s robe and Bruce tosses it aside, revealing himself in all his naked glory. Instead of being in awe, Clark appears worried. 

“What is it?” 

“Your shoulder.”

Bruce checks, and observes the large bruise, as light in coloration as it may be, covering the shoulder he’d popped back into place yesterday. “Ah. Yeah, I dislocated it, um, at the meeting.”

“Your meeting?” Clark exclaims, dumbfounded, running his fingers gently over the mark.

“Me and the guys like to arm wrestle sometimes.” 

Not his worst excuse, all things considered. 

“You’ve gotta be more careful with yourself.” Clark keeps touching the mark, making him shiver. He leans forward to kiss it and Bruce huffs, squirming out of the intense affection.

“If you haven’t noticed, I’m pretty jacked. I usually win these things.”

Clark smirks. 

“Trust me, I’ve noticed.”

“What are you going to do about it?” 

A laugh is punched out of Bruce as he’s flipped over (not something many of his bedmates can achieve mind you) and kissed within an inch of his life. The cap to the lube is clicked open, then Clark’s dexterous, large fingers are circling his entrance, and he’s soon swept away by sensation. 

Bruce wakes up in the evening, panicking. 

His nerves are soothed instantly. 

Clark is here; typing away on his laptop beside him, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth. 

He is dressed in pants but no shirt. 

Bruce is so out of it he barely remembers where he is until he sees the telltale curtains in his master bedroom, and how the sunset is hitting the veranda in that familiar way that it does. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, rubbing his stubble against his pillow. “How long was I out?” 

Clark startles at his voice but recovers quickly. He closes his laptop neatly and shimmies down until he’s almost nose-to-nose with Bruce. “Enough time for me to get to work and back,” he answers softly, leaning forward to peck Bruce on the cheek. He leaves a wetter kiss on his neck. 

Bruce turns his face more into the pillow and groans.

“I haven’t slept this much in three years.”

It’s unfortunately, mind-numbingly true. Getting more than one REM cycle in his sleep is going to destroy his meticulously fortified brain pathways. He might’ve screwed up years of hard work. 

He can’t even drudge up the ability to get mad.

He feels so well-rested.

“Your dick put me into a coma,” Bruce complains eventually, when that cottony feeling inside his mouth dissipates enough to be coherent. In a lower voice, says, “I want you to do it again.”

Clark adopts that frightened puppy dog look.

“What? You just said — ”

“It works as an alarm too,” Bruce justifies, rolling over on top of Clark. Despite sleeping for hours, he still feels loose and maybe even wet if he isn’t imagining things. “Nngh. Please.”

Clark is hard against his thigh, so any protest is going to land on deaf ears.

“I don’t want to take advantage of you, Bruce.”

“I’m tired, not drunk.”

“I don’t want you to think I came back after work just for more sex!”

“Really? That’s a shame.”

“Bruce.”

“Clark.”

Clark is blushing furiously, hands shaking where they rest on Bruce’s squirming hips. “Gee. Okay, hold on — ”

“No more lube.”

“Bruce!”

Bruce’s fingers scramble down to undo his fly, get Clark’s cock out from between the zipper, and he doesn’t wait to nudge the tip against his used hole. It’s sore from earlier, just how he likes it. 

Clark tenses up. 

“Let me,” Bruce begs, nuzzling his cheek  against Clark’s. “Please, baby.”

Clark goes silent, and quickly nods. 

The erection piercing him open drags a groan out of both of them. 

Bruce doesn’t so much ride his cock to completion as Clark lifts him by his hips and slams him down over and over until his orgasm is screaming out of him and he’s stricken wide awake by it. 

He’s fallen backwards on the silk sheets, trembling as Clark trails hot, sticky kisses up his chest. The fabric of Clark’s pants scraping against the overheated, sensitive skin of Bruce’s lower body. 

“Now that’s a wake-up call,” Bruce purrs, stroking through Clark’s hair. “I could get used to this.” 

That said, Batman needs to emerge from the shadows soon.

This is why relationships with him are never a good idea. 

“What are you doing tonight,” Clark directs the question into the skin of his neck, gnawing gently and needily, like he just can’t get enough of Bruce despite having him all day. 

At least it’s a natural segway. 

“I’ve got to work. Conference calls. Let’s do something tomorrow?” Bruce suggests, reminding himself with guilt that he has to start nudging Clark towards writing the Batman articles soon.

“Shucks,” Clark muses with a smile. “I guess I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“I hate to send you away. I know it’s a long trip out here.”

He doesn’t know what Clark’s mode of transportation is, weirdly enough. Clark appears shifty for a second, tipping off Bruce’s suspicions as he pulls back to create a foot or so of distance. 

“I have a good way of getting around,” he replies elusively. “Don’t worry about me.”

“I’ll try not to.” 

That’s something Bruce will have to look into later.

For now, Batman is the priority. 

They get dressed swiftly, kiss some more in between, with the most memorable kiss being up against his wardrobe. Then Bruce is saying his goodbyes at the front door of the manor, ignoring Alfred’s telling stares after, as he rushes off to shower. He should’ve headed straight for the cave.

During his shower, he doesn’t hear the men breaking in through his bedroom window, stocked up with the perfect drugs to knock him out cold.

Thirty seven minutes after Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent vacates his property, Bruce Wayne, playboy billionaire, is kidnapped. 

Chapter Text

Clark flies home, feeling rejuvenated and prepared to take on anything. 

He zips through the air, in a joyous multitude of patterns. 

It’s not often flying becomes a fresh feeling. The wind on his skin cooling his warm skin, the clouds dissipating around him as he surges through their soft shapelessness. He soars higher. 

It’s like he’s never felt any of this before.

The world seems so small below him.

And yet, his heart feels bigger than the planet with both its sun and moon. 

Who knew being kinda in love felt this freeing? 

He lets himself drop, laughing into the air as gravity pulls him down. He zips off before he’s several feet from hitting the ground, setting a mental course back for Metropolis. He’s ended up somewhere in the Bahamas, basking in the tropical view and the fruity, non-polluted scents. 

It takes no time at all to get home. 

Clark scans the city, keeping an ear out for anything awry. 

He hums a little tune to himself. 

There’s a car jacking on the by the New Troy bank, so he floats down right behind the hijacker in question. “Ahem.” He takes satisfaction in the way the young man freezes, dropping his crow bar. 

Clang. 

Superman quickly does a double take of the thief. 

He’s more than young; he appears to be a teenager, though likely in the eighteen to nineteen range. There’s a frazzled expression on his face, the kind Clark has seen before on tons of first-time offenders. He can tell without doubt he is homeless. He sighs and makes a decision. 

Superman reaches out a hand and the teenager, stunned, hands him the tool.

The crow bar is bent into the shape of a heart in less than a second. 

It’s prettier this way, Clark thinks with a warm smile. 

The setting sun glints off the metal. 

“You have caught me in a very good mood, young man,” Superman tells him. He carefully hands the crow bar heart back to the boy who retrieves it, mouth agape. “I’m going to let you off with a warning. Stealing isn’t the answer. There’s a well-taken care of soup kitchen over on Bakerline. I can offer you a quick flight over there, or to the rehab center a few blocks over. What’ll it be?”

“S-Soup kitchen,” the boy manages. “Superman, look—”

“No need to explain yourself. I understand.” 

The boy looks ashamed. Superman places a hand on his shoulder.

“There’s always a way out, I promise you. Don’t lower yourself to this.” Superman picks him up gently and lands him right in front of the soup kitchen. “I have a friend in the reachout program here, Molly, she’ll help set you up with anything you need to get back on your feet. Okay, son?” 

Scanning the kitchen, he can see Molly right inside. 

“Thank you, Superman,” he replies, staring down at the crowbar. 

“If you’re looking to do a good deed today, throwing that out might be your best choice. Or keep it. Don’t just toss it on the street.”

The boy nods fervently, determined to make Superman proud. He watches the young man enter the building with the heart clutched to his chest, and the Kryptonian lets out a long, heavy breath he’d been holding when the doors are closed and the boy is being welcomed by volunteer staff. 

He’s stopped a car jacking and persuaded a young man not to litter. 

It’s going to be a good day, he tells himself. 

Superman thinks about Bruce’s mouth on his, those soft, yet strong hands holding tight to his shoulders as he—he smirks, shaking the steamy memory from the forefront of his thoughts. 

And not just because it started good. 

Superman is patrolling for the last hour of the evening when he hears a significant chatter about Bruce Wayne coming from Midtown Gym. He speeds down, curious, since Gotham news rarely leaks over unless it’s uniquely important. The gym is all glass so he doesn’t need his X-Ray vision to see the group of people inside swarming around the TV, all focused intently on the news. The news anchor is already deep into the story, though the headline leaves Clark cold.

A group of swooning women try to greet him at the door to the gym, smelling of sweat and the pungent acidity of Gatorade, but his senses are zeroed in on the breaking news in front of him:

Billionaire Enterprise Owner Bruce Wayne Missing Presumed Kidnapped. Ransom Details Unknown. Last Seen In His Own Home. Butler Testifies He Saw Nothing.

Batman always tells Superman he’s the master at speaking too soon.

The day isn’t as good as he might’ve guessed.

It’s going terribly wrong.

For a frantic half-hour or so, Superman searches Metropolis.

“Come on, Bruce,” he whispers to himself anxiously. “Come on. Talk to me.”

Bruce has no reason to call ‘Superman’ thinking it’ll help. 

Come on, he chants inside his head anyway. Please. 

He flies overhead and uses his X-Ray vision on hundreds of buildings. It’s hard this way to track anything down; a thousand heat signatures from other humans cloud his vision. And when he’s panicking, his super-hearing has always been tough to wield. He tries his damndest nonetheless. 

A cat is screaming in a tree.

More newscasters on a hundred TVs are shouting about Bruce Wayne. 

Superman’s head is throbbing. 

He gives up sooner rather than later because he knows this is a fruitless search, at least in the way that he’s going about it. He isn’t going to make any leeway flying around and keeping an ear out. Although he isn’t an expert at it, Superman needs to figure this out logically, schematically.

So, he needs to enlist Batman’s help. 

When Superman dials Batman up on the COMM he was gifted, specifically to communicate with his friend the way that Batman is naturally always able to communicate with him, it doesn’t even ring through. As if Batman isn’t wearing the suit or keeping any line of communication open. 

“What the—” Clark tries again, to the same result. “Come on.” 

This isn’t like Batman at all.

He’ll need to try to find him himself. It won’t be as hard as finding Bruce Wayne. He’ll just go where the hottest new crime scene is in his hometown, and he’ll find him sulking around in the shadows. He’s done it before. Then Batman will help him. This has to work or Superman is lost. 

When he flies into Gotham, he’s shocked at the noise. 

It’s usually a much louder city than Metropolis, but never on this scale. There is a fire in Chinatown, a bank robbery in Bristol Township, and Clark can somehow even make out a rogue meeting happening in Park Row. No Batman in sight; perfect night for his dark knight to take a breather. The city is practically up in flames with just a few hours of the bat being an absentee. 

He knows he shouldn’t be mad at Batman but he’s furious.

The one time he needs him and he’s a flake.

Superman feels his eyes glowing prematurely, and knows Batman would tell him to calm down. Well, Batman chose not to be here, so he’s going to make some quick decisions to save his lover.

Clark’s lover. Bruce still doesn’t know about the whole identity thing.

Maybe once he saves him, and he will, he’ll change that. 

He wants Bruce to know who he is, who Clark really is, so he’ll be able to call him when he needs him to, so this doesn’t happen again. So Superman can properly protect the man he loves. 

For now, Superman charges himself up and rams into the side of the warehouse where the rogue meeting is being held. The villains scatter, knowing they’ll be absolutely demolished if they don’t. He has a reputation for being the generous one, the good cop. And he’s never swayed.

Until now. 

A few don’t make it out of the warehouse. 

He grabs Bane by the throat, to prove to everyone still in the room unconvinced that he will be unbeatable if they try anything foolish on him, they’re toast. He glares at the peanut gallery with red, scorching eyes. He fries up a briefcase of money and The Clock King shrieks, rushing to hide the other stashes. Bane hisses at Superman but stops struggling, simmering instead with vein-popping rage. Superman utilizes his most steel voice when he bellows out the order; 

“Don’t move. Any of you.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Alien?” Harvey Dent growls, fidgeting with his coin. He’s the only one brave enough to walk close to the display Superman is making with Bane. 

“Where’s Batman?” Superman demands. “Answers, now.”

Chuckles erupt from around the room, yet not knowing ones. 

“Dunno, Supes,” Harley Quinn pipes up. Her two ponytails stick up from behind the barrel she’s hiding behind. She is attempting to peer upward without getting laser-eyed to death. “Honest.”

“I’m not buying it. Are you—do you all have him somewhere?” 

Harley Quinn snickers.

Bane rolls his eyes. 

Harvey Dent stares at him like he’s stupid. 

“You really think we’d be able to wrangle the Bat without more reinforcements than this?” Dent questions, popping in a cigar. Superman wants to tell him not to light it but reminds himself this isn’t Metropolis. He doesn’t care what these criminals do in their spare time. Batman has his own way of handling them. “You’re as much in the dark as the rest of us. Good to know he is missing though.” Superman’s eyes widen, glow brighter and Dent cowers. “For…no particular reason.”

Great, Batman is going to kill him.

He’s basically tipped off Batman is missing in action, rather than off on business.

They would’ve figured out regardless, and were hot on that same beaten trail anyway, but he’s sped up the process. A sick part of him can’t help but be satisfied since Batman wasn’t here to be at his aid.

He’ll have to deal with the mayhem by himself when he gets back, just like Superman. 

I’m being selfish. 

He tries not to think about how disappointed Ma and Pa would be in him right now. 

“You really need to learn how to interrogate, child,” Bane grouses, struggling again. Superman slams him into the ground, shocking himself at the violence he’s just displayed in front of everyone. He hasn’t even knocked Bane out, but he can’t remember the last time he knocked someone down that hard. He’s literally just put a dent in the cement floor of the warehouse. 

“I’ll be watching all of you,” Superman warns them shakily, pissed off at himself for even coming here when he should’ve known better. They don’t have Batman. “So you better behave.”

He’s not sure if he’ll be believed, but it’s worth a shot.

The rogues exchange worried-enough glances, so he zooms off.

He can’t waste time searching for Batman on top of Bruce Wayne. 

He needs to give up and work on this alone now. 

As he’s flying overhead of Wayne Manor, he kicks himself for not thinking about retracing Bruce’s steps first and foremost. All this precious time he’s wasted going off half-cocked. 

He lands on Bruce’s balcony, entering an open window into the bedroom.

He blushes when his gaze lands on the pristine sheets of Bruce’s bed. 

They didn’t exactly leave them in the loveliest of conditions when Clark left. 

Alfred must’ve tidied up; the entire master bedroom is just as pristine. Everything is neatly put in its place. Wiped clean. The police must not have been around for long. But this isn’t good, because it means he has no evidence. Nothing to go off of. Bruce Wayne is running out of time!

A British voice pipes up behind him. 

“I was wondering if you might show up.” 

Superman jumps out of his skin, swerving around to see Alfred emerging from the adjoining bathroom. He has a fluffy towel folded over his arm. There are rings under his drooping eyes.

“Al—” Too casual. “Alfred Pennyworth. You must be Bruce Wayne’s butler.” 

Alfred meets him with an odd look, like he knows a secret.

“I am, sir. Are you here to help the young master?”

“Yes. Do you—the police reports didn’t have much to say, not yet. I know you gave your statement to the police, but—”

“Yes, sir. I believe I have what you’re looking for.”

That’s not the answer Superman had been expecting.

“Next time, do use the door.”

Superman flushes and he rubs the back of his neck.

“Yes, of course, I’m sorry, Mr. Pennyworth.”

“All is forgiven.” 

He follows Alfred who swiftly exits the bedroom and leads him down a long hall, the grand staircase, and to a quaint office just left of the foyer. It must be Alfred’s, Clark assumes. 

“I didn’t hand this over in my statement, because I believed the police to be inadequate to handle such information.” Alfred bends over a mahogany desk to retrieve a small, silver bullet. Clark squints at it, not taking long to register the make. “Luthor is, after all, a rather celebrated man.”

The authorities would have ‘lost’ the evidence, easily, Superman agrees.

“This type of caliber is only made by Lex Corp,” Superman confirms after analyzing it in his own palm. He clears his throat, not asking why Alfred would know. “Mr. Pennyworth…were you planning on simply withholding this while the authorities searched aimlessly for Mr. Wayne?”

Alfred tilts his head, unreadable. 

“You seem like a kindly fellow, Superman,” Alfred states, meeting his eyes stonily. “But Master Wayne has friends in high places I had planned to contact. I think you are the proper choice, of course, if you’re still offering your services.” Alfred closes Superman’s palm around the bullet. 

Friends in high places?

Does Bruce know Batman?

Was Alfred waiting on revealing this bullet to those ‘friends’ because Batman is missing?

Regardless, Superman has his answer. 

He can use the scent from the bullet to trace it directly to the pocket it fell from. It wasn’t shot out of a gun, or Superman would be able to tell. It must’ve slipped from one of Luthor’s goons. 

“I’ll get him back safe and sound.”

Alfred nods, not seeming concerned. 

Bruce is basically his son; Superman can’t wrap his head around how he’s not flipping out.

Must be that British stiff-upper-lip mentality. 

“See that you do,” is all Alfred says in response, beginning to tidy up the desk.

Superman zips out of the room fast, up the stairs, and out the balcony window. It takes him seconds to get back to Metropolis, tracking the scent like smoke in the air. It leads him right to his destination. Bruce will be safe. He will be, or Superman will wreak havoc on Lex Luthor.

Chapter Text

Bruce stirs awake, sluggish and disoriented. 

His bones are aching and his back is slouched against the back of a steel chair he’s strapped neatly against in over a dozen knots of kevlar rope. His mouth is duct taped; he’s blindfolded. 

He’s more irritated than he’s been in a long time.

Not only did these people get the jump on him without his knowledge, but he’s in an easily escapable situation and can’t do a damn thing about it without risking Batman’s identity. 

Perfect. 

At the very least, he can wring out information from this encounter.

Hopefully, Alfred is figuring out solutions while he’s here as well. 

Bruce is already awake so the bucket of cold water that’s splashed over his nude—and it keeps getting better and better—body is an unwelcome addition to this captivity’s poor conditions. 

“Wakey, wakey, Rich Boy,” a smarmy voice croons in his ear. “It’s playtime.”

“You know, I was starting to think this year was slowing down a bit,” Bruce admits with callous disregard for his endangerment. “This is only my second kidnapping of the fiscal quarter.” 

He’s kicked in the shin fairly hard, effectively silencing in.

“When we ask you to talk, you’ll talk,” a more feminine male voice spits from above him. They must be tall, he registers, setting that info aside in the back of his mind in case he does need to escape and requires an upper hand. “For now, you will listen, and then you are going to comply.”

“And if I don’t?” Bruce asks, needlessly. 

He’s been in enough of these predicaments to feel familiar with the press of the blade against his cheek. 

“Then, we don’t play nice,” the taller man explains simply. “Take the blindfold off.”

The shorter man knelt behind him tugs off the blindfold.

First mistake; when you’ve taken away one of your captive’s senses, never let him have it back. Now he can scan the room, mark out the exits in his mind, and create a game plan on how to access them. There are two assaillants in a small, stone, square room, with one dangling light. 

Not his worst accommodations whilst trying to figure out a strategy. 

This is all theoretical; Bruce Wayne can’t escape unless absolutely necessary.

He’ll have to give them what they want for now or be tortured. 

The taller man is handsome, with a lean face and long blonde locks. He grabs at Bruce’s hair, sharp and unforgiving and asks, “What do you know about Project Celerity, Mr. Wayne?”

Bruce knows, from skimming the documents found on Luthor’s database from the other day, that it’s the name of the weather matrix project he’s outsourced, meticulously and successfully distancing himself from any public consequence. He knows, now, what this is all about after all. 

“I think Lex mentioned that,” Bruce states innocently. “Some weather channel thing?”

Searing hot pain rushes through his system. 

The man behind him has a cattle prod, and is making use of it. 

“Shit,” Bruce hisses, jerking from the aftershocks long after the prod is off his skin. The man in front of him scoops up a handful of his hair again and pulls, wrenching out an unstable groan. 

“No. Lex Luthor is uninvolved with this project,” the interrogator whispers, lying smoothly and with a clear, unwavering smile on his face. “And wouldn’t know anything about it, Mr. Wayne.” 

Bruce begins to stutter, really laying on the fear in his tone.

“I don’t know! I got wind of some weather-related project he was heading, and I—I assumed that’s what you were talking about. I have no idea what the Project is. You have to believe me!” 

“I don’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be here.”

Bruce braces himself this time, letting the electricity course hot through his veins without forcing anymore embarrassing noises out of him. He grits his teeth, feeling them chatter in the aftermath. 

“We know you’ve been doing some digging.”

Bruce knew Lex suspected him of stealing information, but not of investigating him. 

Has he been too careless with this case, too distracted lately? 

“We know who you’ve been digging with.” 

Bruce tries not to let his anxiety show. Surely, they haven’t somehow tipped Superman off to the fact he’s being held here. If this is a trap and Superman is stupid enough to walk right into it…  

Who knows what kind of Kryptonite trap Luthor has set. 

There’s a blade digging into his cheek, not deep enough to hurt much, but enough to draw blood. The taller man swipes some up and licks his thumb, smirking down at Bruce’s vulnerability. 

“Now you’re going to tell us what Batman uncovered about Project Celerity, and where he’s keeping these discoveries of his.” 

Oh. 

Superman hasn’t been the careless or distracted one, Batman has. 

Talk about bitter pills. 

He laughs, not meaning to, and regretting it only slightly when the knife slashes one long line down his chest. It’s topped off with another prod of electricity, because these goons have no etiquette. “Okay!” Bruce shouts, gasping for air when the cattle prod is lowered. “I’ll talk!” 

The tall man slaps his cheek, the injured side, and smiles at his grimace. 

“Good boy.”

He doesn’t have another moment to think about the lie he needs to come up with in order to get them off his back; Superman is crashing into the stone room in a flurry of exploding debris. 

The captors are knocked flat on their ass, scrambling backwards in intense fear. 

Well, at least Bruce knows there probably isn’t any Kryptonite here. 

They weren’t expecting Superman. 

Still, he thinks Lex should’ve been more mindful about who his real enemies are. He will be now, which is the downside to this. There’s no way Lex won’t suspect Superman of being involved. 

“Superman!” Bruce exclaims, putting on the damsel voice a little thick. He can’t help himself. It’s always his favorite part of the fantasy, likely because it’s the phoniest. “Oh thank God!” 

In seconds, Superman has zipped around and removed the kevlar rope on Bruce to wrap around his two captors. Bruce stretches his arms, and gladly takes the hand of Superman to stand up. 

Quickly, and with a startling blush Bruce could have never expected, Superman removes his cape to drape around Bruce’s naked body, taking note of his condition with rising unease. 

“Mr. Wayne,” Superman’s voice is heavy with concern. One of his hands is lingering on Bruce’s shoulder, now covered with soft red material. “You’re alright now, but you’re—injured.” 

“Typical weekend for me,” Bruce promises with an aloof attitude, frown tugging at him when he sees how harrowed Superman really appears. “I’ll be fine, fly boy.” He pauses. “I promise.”

“Let me get you to…is there somewhere I can take you?”

Bruce scoffs, relaxing a bit when he hears police sirens blaring in the distance.

“Does Superman usually taxi ride the people he saves home?” 

“I don’t want to leave you until I know these will be taken care of,” Superman says firmly, pointing at the injuries Luthor’s goons inflicted. “And I’d like to know what these men wanted.” 

“Ask Batman,” Bruce sneers, hobbling over some larger debris towards the edge of wherever he’s been held. They’re on the second floor of some abandoned warehouse in Metropolis. 

“Batman?” Superman stammers and Bruce holds back a smirk.

“They think I’m working for that winged vigilante. Seriously, I have galas to attend, like I’d ever waste my time leaping around with capes and trunks in the middle of the night.” He meets Superman’s surprised gaze and shrugs down at red trunks, highlighted by a bright belt. “Sorry.” 

“Why would—why would they think that?”

“I heard Luthor was working on some weather matrix. They’re calling it Project Celerity.”

Superman straightens up. “Oh?” 

“I hate being kidnapped,” Bruce drawls, tightening the cape around his torso. “But I hate being kidnapped and not knowing why I’m being kidnapped more. It seriously tends to bum a guy out.” 

“I’d imagine so.” Superman clears his throat. “Let me take you home.”

Bruce smirks at him.

“Do you know where Wayne Manor is?”

“I think you’d be surprised,” Superman admits, scooping him up in a bridal carry. Bruce just barely keeps the protest at the back of his throat, knowing if he’s not Batman, there’s little reason to argue against being carried like this. He lets himself be flown home in the blink of an eye.

“Well, it’s not every day I’m carried over the threshold by a strong, burly man,” Bruce tells him as Wayne Manor comes into view. He traces the pattern of Superman’s crest, because he’ll never get a chance to otherwise, and he’s always been curious about the texture. It’s grainy, fortified. 

Superman is blushing. 

Bruce stops moving his finger, splays his hand out flat on his chest, and meets his eyes. He retracts his hand and Superman lets go of a breath he’d been holding, apparently. Interesting. 

Superman lowers him to the balcony of his master bedroom.

“You just happened to know which room was mine,” Bruce points out, smirking. His signature sly expression wavers when he realizes Superman isn’t leaving. He needs to get rid of him fast. 

He has work to do in the cave. 

And the way Superman is ogling him, with a familiar depth of yearning, is starting to remind him of another dreamy distraction he’s needed to get better at shaking lately. Coincidences are rare. 

“Mr. Wayne—”

Superman is closing in on him again, eyes drooping at the sight of the bleeding scar on Bruce’s cheek. Heart beginning to flutter out of sync from encroaching anxiety, Bruce takes a step back.

“Listen, I’ve got to get dressed, Supes. You can have the cape back after and be on your way. Not that I haven’t enjoyed a little half-naked chat on my balcony here and there in the past, but—” 

“Bruce.”

Bruce’s mouth snaps shut. He has never heard Superman use such a commanding tone. There’s something, a voice buzzing around his temples, telling him he’s not going to like what he hears. 

“I can’t lie to you anymore.” 

Bruce tugs the cape tighter around his body, feeling exposed.

“I don’t even know you,” he reminds him carefully, mustering a grin. “What are you talking about?”

Surely Superman hasn’t figured out his identity?

Bruce doesn’t have time for this. Batman doesn’t have time for this. 

He starts to panic a lot more. 

Superman touches Bruce’s face, like he’s been waiting to, gentle fingers running down the line of his jaw. He ignores how Bruce jumps and tenses up like an injured animal. Bruce’s muscles start to cramp, panic building into hyperventilation. Calm down. Count to ten. Count to ten backwards. Bruce buries his hunches as deep as they can go. What the hell is Superman playing at? 

“It’s me, Bruce. Clark.” 

A pin could drop and be heard, despite the whipping wind. 

Bruce’s stomach flips at the confession, and bile rolls up on the back of his tongue.

“No,” he whispers, half-aware that he’s dropped the Brucie Wayne persona by now. “No, you’re not.” This would mean that he’s had sex with Superman, that he’s been coveting a relationship with the most famous person in the world other than himself. That he’s been in an even bigger lie than he already believed himself to be in.

Superman gnaws at his bottom lip and the image in front of Bruce blips in and out of focus, like Superman just rushed off somewhere to grab something. He did, apparently, because he holds a pair of glasses in his hands. Clark’s glasses, but Bruce doesn’t want to believe what he’s seeing. 

Until; Superman puts the glasses on, and his face becomes Clark’s face.

It’s some kind of alien technology, trickery.

They have the same face, but Bruce’s mind wasn’t able to differentiate. Even now, he can’t, yet now that he knows the context of what the glasses do, and saw Superman put them on—shit. 

“Shit,” he utters succinctly. 

No, no, no. 

This is all wrong. 

“I don’t have time for this,” he finds himself continuing, mind going blank, and words running like oil off a slick from his mouth. “I have work to do.” 

“I know!” Superman —Clark, fuck—babbles, flying in front of him when Bruce turns on his heel to take off towards his room. “I know, it’s a shock at first. It always is. But you have to face it—”

He doesn’t have to face anything. He has work to do.

And now his lover isn’t just a distraction, he’s a distraction for both of his worlds. 

Bruce pushes past him, ignoring Clark’s sigh. 

“I thought you’d be, I don’t know, kind of wowed.”

Naive. Guileless. Pure.

World’s greatest detective and I couldn’t figure this out. 

Bruce ignores him, focuses on what he said before.

It always is. 

“Always?” Bruce rasps, moving on autopilot. He grabs fresh clothes from his wardrobe, starts to carefully shuck them on his body without dropping the cape. It isn’t too difficult but his movements are clunky, awkward. He’s trembling a little. “Just how many people have you told?”

“Not—I really haven’t. Not many.”

Buttoning up a shirt, Bruce nods, jaggedly sucking in a breath.

Then, he swerves to glare at Clark.

“You idiot,” he hisses, the stern outburst startling Clark enough for him to stumble back a few steps. “You’ve known me for not even a month and you risk your life telling me your identity?” 

“I trust you,” Clark argues, naively optimistic. “I love you.” 

Bruce shakes his head, tossing Clark’s cape at him.

“You—do you love me?”

“Clark, I don’t even—I don’t know you!” Bruce exclaims, pacing his room. He grabs a house coat and throws it on, feeling like he’s going to shiver out of his skin with the air drafting in through the windows. Clark can tell, attentive as he always damn well is, and shuts the window paneled doors for him. It’s now eerily quiet in Bruce’s room. Too quiet; stuffy and suffocating. 

“You do know me,” Clark insists, rounding back up on him, cornering him. Bruce can't pace around him, he’s too solid, all-consuming. “Clark Kent isn’t an act. Well, like, some slouching and baggy clothing is at the most, but the rest of it? That’s me! That’s who I am as a person.”

Bruce refuses to meet his eyes. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he sees how sincere Clark is. 

He can barely stand to have this conversation with him while Clark is in his Superman uniform. It reminds him of how stupid he’s been; how he’s looked in his eyes every week as Batman and not seen what was standing right in front of him. He feels inadequate, incapable of defending himself. 

“What you are,” Bruce starts cruelly, marching to his bathroom to splash hot water on his face. He lets the tap run, feeling at the temperature as he waits for it to be scorching, “is someone who decided telling a flighty billionaire with a public and debilitating penchant for whores and self-destruction your metahuman identity was a smart idea.” Bruce glares. “I reiterate. Idiot.” 

Clark’s face twists in confusion, betrayal. 

“Where is this coming from, Bruce?” 

“What, am I being an asshole? Is that out of character for me?” Bruce bites out, gritting his teeth as the water on his skin burns. He lets it get hotter, lets it start to steam. “How would you know?” 

“I get that you…might be angry with me for lying…or, rather, keeping this from you…” 

“I’m angry that you have zero regard for yourself. For what you stand for—for the entire world.” 

Gasping, Clark ducks his head.

If he were Batman right now, he’d deck him. 

Even if it hurt and broke every knuckle in his hand. 

All the while ignoring the fact he wants to kiss him and ask if he can transfuse all the hope and optimism he’s constantly brimming with into him, at least an ounce of it, so Bruce won’t hate himself any longer. Yet this brazen disregard for his responsibilities, as a protector of Earth…

Clark doesn’t know he’s Batman. For all he knows, he’s telling Bruce Wayne a highly sensitive secret that the billionaire, if he wasn’t actually him, would easily use for his own sick advantage. 

“I don’t know what to say,” Clark murmurs, sounding broken.

Bruce’s breath comes out shaky when he lets out the air in his lungs, so he splashes himself with the hot water. He closes his eyes through the pain, then turns the tap off and grips the sink.

“I could have been using you,” Bruce continues, finally meeting Clark’s eyes with steel in his own. It’s only because of his own momentous guilt that he isn’t effected by the devastation in Clark’s face. Guilt because Bruce had been using him. Was going to have Clark write those articles and get Batman out of a government take-down if his reputation kept going on a downward spiral. And here he is now, projecting. “If I was a different person, what you just told me could have signed your death warrant in a heartbeat. Tell me you understand, Clark.” 

Clark stares at him like he doesn’t know him.

It’s understandable.

He doesn’t know this Bruce. 

“I understand.” 

Bruce nods firmly and dries his hands and face. He steels himself for what he’s about to say. For the way he’s about to let both Clark Kent and Superman down. 

“Take your cape and go home, Clark, and don’t—”

“Wait,” Clark interrupts, balling his hands into fists. “You can tell me to go home, and you can tell me we need to stop seeing each other. That’s the last thing I want but it’s your choice. But what you can’t tell me to do is stop saving you.” He glances up at him, fierce conviction in his voice when he warns him, “I won’t stay away if you’re hurt again. I’m not that type of man.”

Bruce laughs. Maybe it looks cruel to Clark, which is unfortunate, but he laughs because of how damn endearing it is to hear that. Clark has no idea that he doesn’t need to do that. It wouldn’t matter. 

Resigned, Bruce manages, “I have Batman.” 

It isn’t a lie, not really.

Superman scoffs, which surprises Bruce.

“Batman wasn’t there to protect you just now. He’s not even in his own city.”

And you didn’t think to put two and two together?

He’s obviously been a terrible distraction for Superman too, if a journalist can’t even make the connection that Bruce Wayne going missing around the same time as Batman is indicative of something. They’re bad for each other in this way; he would’ve never entered a relationship with Superman if he’d known because he would have been able to guess at this outcome immediately. 

Bruce could confess right now. He’s been considering it. There’s no reason at this point not to except for the fact that he needs to create distance between Clark and Bruce, and furthermore, needs to make sure the media never makes a connection between Superman, Bruce, Clark, Batman. And, while harrowing, he needs to acknowledge that this event cements the fact he can’t trust Clark with his own identity. His secret, vital and ever important, would be at grave risk. 

“Don’t make this harder than it is, Clark.”

Clark opens his mouth, about to say something, then closes it. 

As if he thought better.

They watch each other, water dripping quietly from the faucet. 

“If you think I’m an idiot, or careless, Bruce,” Clark says eventually, quiet and resolute, “that’s your prerogative. Mine is to never believe in a hundred years that you’re the type of man who would hurt me. I knew you weren’t from the first day I met you. I know when a man is good.” 

Bruce wants to tell him he can’t possibly know when a man is good.

It’s not the way he survives going about life. 

It’s not the way anyone should.

The disappointment would forever be crippling. 

“And that good man is who I’m always going to be very much in love with.” Superman clips his cape back onto his suit, and averts his eyes. Bruce can tell Clark’s eyes are glistening. “You have my number, Bruce. Don’t be afraid to call me.” He pauses, hesitant, and adds, “For anything.” 

Bruce doesn’t respond. He knows if he does Clark will stay longer.

And he’ll want him to.

Clark gently opens the window to his balcony and flies off, towards the sunrise. 

Bruce swears and slams his head against the tile wall. 

He wants to be the good man Clark sees but he knows he isn’t. He knows Batman needs to be cold, calculated. He needs to prioritize the mission, and he will. Soon, Batman’s reputation will have to suffer for what it, and if consequences come, he will need to be ready for them alone.  

At least he can start to let some of his guilt at using Clark go.

Now that Clark is out of his life.

“Where the heck were you?” Superman —Clark— angrily calls from above. Batman serves around to see him floating down onto the rooftop where he’s just chased Harley Quinn and knocked her out cold. The rogues were on a rampage, apparently catching wind he was out of commission. 

He didn’t need to ask them why they all figured that much out. 

“What are you doing here?” Batman hisses. Bruce tries to keep his heart rate from becoming too erratic as Clark gets right up in his face. He saw him not eight hours before this, and now he’s being confronted again by the very man he needs to avoid so this ache in his chest can go away. 

“Bruce Wayne needed your help and you were nowhere to be seen in Gotham.”

Don’t do this, Kent.

“Have you ever considered that I can’t be in two places at once?” he deadpans, cuffing Harley and hauling her over his shoulder. He climbs down the fire escape towards the streets below where his Bat Mobile is parked. The bad part is, Superman can keep floating alongside him. 

There’s no way to escape this conversation. 

“The biggest name in Gotham gets kidnapped and you’re a no-show?”

“You saved him didn’t you?” 

“That’s not the point!” Clark starts to stutter when he gets worked up. Another sign Bruce should’ve noticed a long while back, and compared with Superman. “What were you doing?”

“I don’t need to answer to you.” 

“So that heart to heart we had the other night. That meant nothing?”

“If Lois Lane fell down the stairs and you weren’t there to help her, do you think I’d come barging into Metropolis asking what your problem was?” Batman questions, voice hardening.

Superman crosses his arms, watching Bruce secure Harley in the backseat.

“Preventing a problem and solving a problem are two entirely different things.”

“Congratulations, you’re not entirely a moron.”

“Batman!”

“I certainly wouldn’t go into Metropolis and tell every single one of your enemies that you were missing,” Batman tells him, accusatory in every fiber of his being as he squares up with Clark. 

Clark shirks almost immediately, shame overcoming him.

“Okay, that was my bad.” 

“Do that again, and this working relationship is finished. Understand?” 

He could get angrier, but his rogues get sloppy when they’re excited.

Tonight, they were all too easy to wrangle. 

Superman looks like he wants to argue, yet seems to tell that he’s beat. Bruce does feel slightly bad, because it’s the second time today he’s personally forced that defeated look onto his face. 

“Understood,” Superman mutters, and if he were a dog his ears would be bent back in embarrassed submission. “Sorry, B. I know you would’ve saved Bruce if you were available.”  

If Batman didn’t know the context, he would’ve demanded to know why Superman was so uptight about this ‘Bruce Wayne’ character. He knows exactly why Superman is angry, and can’t blame him. Which is why he pulls out another flash drive with a Superman sigil keychained to it. 

“Then, I have our answers. To Project Celerity.” 

“You decoded those documents?” Superman asks, letting out a sigh of relief. “What’s in here?”

“The secret weapon Luthor and Joker are planning to use to kill you during the Kryptonite storm.” It took Bruce several hours and a serious lack of sleep to figure it out on the cave’s computer system, but he did, and the plan isn’t pretty. Though he never expected it would be. 

“Well, what is it?”

Bruce feels a pang of longing in his heart and buries it.

Superman is doing that thing Clark does where he tries not to look afraid, or concerned, but is. A facade he’s never quite managed, and comes across sympathetic to someone with a keen eye.

Knowing what he knows, Bruce is certainly sympathetic.

“Luthor figured out a way to create invisible Kryptonite," Batman tells him. “And he’s planning to shoot you with it while the storm has you down. So, we’ll need a plan, and a good one. Fast.”

Chapter Text

“Superman.” Batman’s voice cuts through Clark’s heavy thoughts. “You’re distracted.”

Yes, Superman is distracted.

He’s made a fool out of himself confronting Batman in the way that he did tonight, and he’s quite possibly not going to be able to see the man he loves again, not without crossing Bruce’s boundaries. 

“I’ve had a long day,” Superman explains, mustering a smile. “Show me the schematics again.” 

Batman stares at him, but in a rare display of sympathy, lets the subject drop. Despite how it started, Batman has been nothing but charitable to Superman tonight, which is not ordinary. 

“Don’t take it easy on me, B,” Superman insists, sidling up to Batman’s side where his friend is standing in front of the computer. He’s taken Superman to one of his local underground headquarters. Not his main one, never that. Superman understands, but he’s getting really tired of not being trusted by anyone in his life other than his parents. “If I can’t focus, I will have failed.” 

“If you’ve resigned yourself to failure, you will fail,” Batman suggests, barely turning to look at him when he adds, “Leave your personal life where it is. That is the only way to move forward.” 

“You’ve never carried your second life into this one?”

“What makes you think this isn’t my second life?” 

Superman smiles and shrugs.

“There is no world in which Batman doesn’t come first for you.”

He’s tried to imagine Batman as a man, in many different ways, and it’s exceedingly difficult. 

“And you’re any different?” 

If Superman is actually managing to convince Batman to pause their strategizing to have a conversation, he isn’t going to discourage it. He’s been praying for any type of win tonight. 

Superman floats up next to the keyboard, sitting on the counter.

He makes sure not to put any real weight on it. 

“I don’t prioritize one life over the other. I prioritize helping people, sure, but I don’t think of these two parts of me as separate. I think that would be fairly impossible,” he states plainly. 

“It’s easy for me.”

Batman types something on the computer, fingers moving rapidly to avoid where Superman is going with this. He’s got Batman cornered, as he so rarely does, and he’s not going to stop now. 

“That says to me…that you’re lonely. Self-imposed or not, your life must not mean much to you, if you’re able to separate it so effortlessly.” He watches the way Batman’s jaw twitches, and tries not to feel like he’s achieved something great, breaking through that hard clay surface hiding his emotions. “I’m not saying this to insult you. I believe Batman to be…striking, and incredible.” 

Batman huffs, fingers fidgeting over the keys.

“I’ll get you an autograph.”

“But he wouldn’t be so remarkable without sacrifice.”

Batman’s cape swishes when he swerves to face Superman, a harsh intensity to his glower. “What exactly are you implying? Do you want me to award you for having  a better work-life balance? Alright. Congratulations, Superman, you're the hero of the year. You satisfied now?” 

Superman frowns. This isn’t angry Batman, this is upset Batman.

“This isn’t a competition, B.”

“No?”

“I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

Batman turns back to his work on the computer, clacking away passive aggressively. 

Superman stares, floundering. 

“Frankly,” he continues softly, “I didn’t think I had the power to make you upset.” He didn’t think anybody did, if he were being honest. Enraged? Righteously objecting? Sure, absolutely.

Not upset. Not taking anything personally.

Obviously, Batman doesn’t respond. 

Clark has a mischievous idea, to get his real point across. 

“Can I do something crazy?”

Batman pauses and asks warily, “How crazy?”

“Turn around.” Superman hops up from the counter and stands behind Batman. “Come on.”

“We don’t have time for games.”

“Not a game. It’ll take less than a minute.” 

Sighing dramatically, Batman turns.

The second he does, Superman drags him into a firm hug. Batman stiffens and his hands fling up to flatten against Superman’s chest. He doesn’t push like Superman expects he might. It seems it’s just an automatic reaction from proximity with anything and anyone, a precautionary stance. 

He hugs him for more than a few deep breaths, making sure he feels his admiration, his care. 

Makes sure he knows that Batman is loved.

No matter how deep Batman pushes down the other part of himself, he cannot avoid being loved. 

“Kal-El…” Batman murmurs, his tone sounding like the beginnings of a protest yet not quite meeting the mark. Hearing his birth name makes something warm and bright bloom inside Clark. 

“You’re my best friend, B,” Superman tells him, angling his cheek affectionately against the back of his mask. “Whoever Batman is without the cowl, I’m positive he’d be my friend too.” 

That is what inspires Batman to react, and push him away.

“Was that meant to make me feel better?” Batman rasps, staring at the middle distance between them. Clark doesn’t back off, smiling down at him and feeling grateful tonight for his company.

“Well, does it?” 

Batman turns around to face the computer, hiding his face. 

“Nng.” 

“That’s what I like to hear!” Superman claps him on the back and sidles back up to his shoulder so he can get a good look at the schematics of Luthor’s new weapon. “Now let's get to work.” 

“You have a unique heat signature to most organisms on Earth,” Batman tells him. “Remember that time Parasite kidnapped you? I found you by tracing the most recent signatures that day.” 

It certainly makes Clark feel safer to know Batman has a fool proof way of tracking him down.

“That probably isn’t a good thing in the hands of my enemies though.”

“No,” Batman replies, dry and ruthless. “Luthor is designing his weapon to lock onto your signature, though it won’t be more than a semi-approximate aim if you’re not in a three to five hundred yard radius to it. It would be as useless to them as bobbing for apples with no teeth.” 

“Eugh.” Leave it to Batman to conjure up some seriously creepy imagery. Superman shudders and points out with unease, “So they’re going to set up a decoy to bait me to get close to it.”

“Not necessarily a decoy. Killing people or taking them hostage to lure you in will be easy for them. They won’t mind casualties, so the threats they’ll be imposing are going to be very real.” 

“Right.”

Dread is inching up Clark’s spine like an icy chill. 

“That’s where I come in,” Batman continues, having a solution for everything. “I will take on whatever threat Joker and Luthor have planned for that day while you destroy the weapon.” 

“Okay, um, many questions.” 

“Shoot.”

“Doesn’t destroying the weapon require…my heat signature to get close to the weapon?”

“From what I found, the weapon is being controlled from a remote location. All I would need you to do is shut it down from its control center.” 

Clark nods, continuing his inquiries. 

“What if this ‘threat’ requires, uh, superpowers?” 

“Then I’ll stall until the device is destroyed.”

“With all the Kryptonite rain, I’m going to be out of commission even after the weapon is destroyed, no?” 

“Yes and no. They won’t be able to maintain the Kryptonite infusion for long. The microphysics of cloud seeding are often ineffective, and the way they’re handling it, even with all their research and testing, it’s not going to create any long-term results. The storm won’t last. They’re putting all their eggs in one basket, relying on you to show for whatever threat they’re planning.”

“So…confirming our theory that it’ll be a high-powered metahuman threat.” Superman shakes his head and crosses his arms. “I don’t like that plan, B. I won’t put you in danger like that.” 

“The Flash won’t answer your calls. I’m all you’ve got.” 

“There are others, other metahumans…” His cousin for one, if she were actually in the solar system. He could try contacting a Green Lantern but god knows where they are right about now. Their resources are scattered and are no-shows half the time. They really need to create a system for that, he ponders heavily. Batman ends right up in his face and he jumps, swiftly at attention. 

“We don’t have time,” Batman emphasizes each word louder than the last. “We won’t be going into this blind. We figure out where the weapon is being stashed and then I won’t need to stall for long.” Superman must appear unconvinced. Batman grabs his shoulders. “This is our best plan.” 

“We’re ignoring the fact Joker is a part of all this,” Superman reminds, wincing when Batman curses under his breath and turns on his heel. “C’mon, B, I know Joker doesn’t exactly like me either, but he’s not going to go out of his way to make a kill-plan unless you’re involved.”

“You’re saying that they’re one step ahead of this plan we just created?”

“I mean, they could be!” Superman shrugs. “Shouldn’t we think of every scenario?” 

“I always do.”

“Have you?”

“Joker wouldn’t expect you to throw me to the wolves,” Batman argues evenly. “I’m aware I’m taking a monumental risk, but not expecting this is exactly why I’ll maintain the upperhand.” 

“I’m not happy with this.”

“You were having a bad day already, right?” Batman removes the flash drive from his computer and boots it down. “With the addition of this, you can’t possibly have a worse day tomorrow.” 

Superman glances at him, displeased. 

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

Batman almost smiles but doesn’t.

“Do you? Feel better?” he echoes the sentiment Superman dished out earlier. 

That fact alone makes Superman smile.

“You know what, yeah.” 

“The other part of the plan, you might like even less.” Batman initiates their exit from this small alcove under Gotham’s streets. A ladder emerges from the floor, reaching up towards a grate. 

He stomps away before he can clarify. 

Oh you just love being mysterious, Clark thinks waspishly. 

“Way to soften the blow,” Superman mutters, floating after him. “Lay it on me, B.”

“You will need to be in your civilian wear, in order to gain access to the weapon’s access center. I have a hunch at where they’re operating it from, and when I confirm this, the only way you’ll be able to get close to the controls is by being anyone other than Superman. Do you think you can handle that?” Batman questions. Ruthless in his ascent out of here, he doesn’t wait for an answer. 

He climbs the ladder and Superman follows.

Batman must know something is wrong from the beat of hesitation before he responds.

“Uh, sure.”

“I won’t be there to figure out who you are, Superman,” he reassures. 

“That wasn’t my concern!” 

He would still tell Batman his identity in a heartbeat if he asked. 

“What is your concern?”

“It’s not so much a concern, but I think I have a way of getting close to the weapon system, if my civilian identity requires higher access to Luthor’s buildings.” He blushes. “I have a…friend who can, not me. I’m not working for Luthor or anything.” He laughs, strained. “That’d be crazy.”

He’s rambling because this means he’ll have to go talk to Bruce again, for business.

He can barely stand to picture the look on Bruce’s face when he lays eyes on him again.

Disdainful, untrusting, bitter. 

“If that’s the case, let me know in the next twenty-four hours. Or I’ll find a more illegal way of getting you in there.” Putting Clark at further risk, perfect. “In the meantime, I’ll talk to Joker.” 

“Oh, so now is a good time to talk to him.”

Batman glares, for the uncalled for sarcasm, then grapples off into the night.

Superman watches him go until he’s a dot in the night sky, then zips back off to Metropolis. He needs to get some sleep and go to work tomorrow, then he’ll muster up the courage to face Bruce. It’s not ideal, but there’s a sick thrill in his stomach at the thought of seeing him again.

Maybe he’ll have cooled off by now. 

Bruce has had a lot of time to think about this, after all. 

The icy stare Bruce is giving him from across the conference hall is telling enough. He has thought about it, sure, but he apparently hasn’t cooled off. Clark blushes beet red, embarrassed. 

He still has to talk to him, garner his help. Though now it’s going to be awkward. 

“Your boyfriend’s back,” Lois jabs him in the side with a tape recorder. “Go say hi.” 

“No, uh, not yet,” Clark grumbles at her, brushing off her attentive focus so he can slip away and convince Bruce to meet him in a more secluded area. “Maybe later. Oh, look, fruit punch!”

He scutters away to the drink station, Lois tracking right behind. 

“Why are you avoiding him, Smallville?” 

“I don’t know what you mean, Lois,” he replies, pouring himself a glass with shaking hands. She narrows her eyes to slits as he chugs nearly the full thing. It’s when it’s all down the hatch that he realizes it’s spiked punch and he probably shouldn’t have downed it so quickly, without effort.

“Wow, must’ve been really bad,” she observes, offering a sympathetic smile. “I can go beat him up for you. It’d be to defend your honor, but it would also give you your next great headline.” 

He’s seen those muscles up close and personal on Bruce, and not that Lois isn’t fairly formidable in her own right, but Bruce would demolish her by doing nothing but standing there and merely receiving a punch. Anyways, he knows she’s not being serious, even if the imagery is funny. 

“I appreciate you more than you know, Lo,” Clark says, kissing her cheek.

She rubs her face, laughing.

“Yeah, yeah, I hear it all the time. I’m gonna go meet Jimmy’s new side piece.”

“Bring back the scoop on that for me,” Clark teases.

“You know it.”

Lois leaves his side and he pours himself another punch, wishing in his heart of hearts that he could get drunk like every other red-blooded male on Earth. Instead, he has to deal with an otherwise nice, fruity drink tasting sour for no purpose. He sighs, taking a few more small sips.

“Kryptonians can’t get drunk,” Bruce’s voice appears out of nowhere, right beside his ear. Clark jumps out of his skin, nearly dropping his drink. “Or so I remember from your first press junket.” 

“Bruce,”  he stammers, irritation assailing him. “We shouldn’t talk about that here.”

Bruce cocks a brow at him, as if he’s enjoying fooling around. Clark is hoping he won’t make a scene out of some warped retribution, wonders if he could be that cruel, but Bruce nods slowly.

Apologetically. 

“Sorry. You shouldn’t be here.”

“Actually, Clark Kent is very much supposed to be here.” After he asked Perry if he could join Lois Lane of course, knowing full well Bruce Wayne would be attending the Metropolis Tech Foundation conference. “But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t tag along expecting to talk with you.”

Bruce gives him a funny look, a version of understanding dawning on his face.

“We talked about this,” he whispers quietly, somber.

It isn’t the anger from before at least. 

However, melancholy isn’t a better look on Bruce, even if it seems like Bruce is far more familiar with the feeling. 

“I know,” Clark says regretfully. “But that isn’t what I need to talk with you about.”

Bruce sighs, checking both ways to see if anyone is nearby. He grins at Clark, a completely phony expression that he’s putting on for the benefit of their peers. “I’d love to give you an exclusive, Mr. Kent. Come this way, I’m sure we can find some privacy on the hotel floors.” 

With an almost model-esque strut, he leads Clark to the elevators. 

They push past dozens of people, guffawing and cooing. 

Clark rolls his eyes when he sees Lois and Jimmy shooting him thumbs up from across the hall.

When the doors to the elevator shut, with both of them alone inside, Bruce’s face falls back to a monotone, somewhat cold look. “Okay, Clark,” Bruce tells him in a low voice. “Start talking.” 

“You know I would be giving you your space if this wasn’t important.” 

“I know.”

Does he? 

He remembers Bruce claiming to feel as if he doesn’t know him at all. It’s something he’d confront him on right now if there weren’t other pressing matters.

“I need your help.” Bruce sighs again, which Clark thinks is an odd reaction, almost as if he expected him to say this. Something ticks at the back of his mind again, a theory he hasn’t quite let himself lean into. Maybe Bruce Wayne knows Batman or is supplying him in some way. 

That would explain why Batman didn’t show up to his kidnapping.

Maybe they had a prior deal to get more information out of Luthor’s goons. Letting a public figure, or anyone for that matter, get tortured for information is a little too far even for Batman and Clark doesn’t want to think about the fact that it might be true of his friend.

“Does this have anything to do with Luthor’s upcoming projects?” Bruce asks, helping Clark to the finish line. Clark perks up, his unwanted suspicions becoming clearer by the second.

“I’m afraid it does.”

“Mm.” 

They exit the elevator and Clark blindly follows Bruce down the hall to a private nook with couches just beyond an array of large hotel rooms. He wonders if this entire floor is empty. 

Bruce sits across from him on a sofa chair. Clark leans forward on his elbows.

“So you know about it. Project Celerity.”

“Know of it, yes.” 

“Batman and I have been digging, working together on nailing this project down, because shipments of Kryptonite were discovered in Gotham. We believe Lex Luthor and Joker to be collaborating and outsourcing the construction of a weapon that will kill me there. They’re transporting it to Metropolis this week. I need to get into a building where they’ll be remotely controlling it.” He explains the rest to Bruce, the weather, the encounter with Joker, the whole deal. Then he says, “The only issue is, Clark Kent can barely get access to the Luthor Museum.”

“And I’m…an acquaintance of Lex.” 

“Right.” Clark pauses. “And, I think, if the roles were reversed, I wouldn’t hesitate to help you.” He squeezes his eyes shut and adds in a rush, “And I also used my super-hearing to listen to your conversation with him at the ball and know you offered him some of your men to work for him.” 

Bruce’s blinks speed up and slow, taken back.  

“I’m sorry,” Clark utters. “I know learning that I eavesdropped on you is the last thing you want to hear, especially after everything else that’s been happening with us lately. Because of me.” 

“No, I understand,” Bruce surprises him by saying. “Your life is on the line.”

“You’re going to help me?”

Clark cannot conceal his shock. 

“There’s something you should know about me…” Bruce shifts, eyes flitting to the ground. He’s obviously struggling with whatever he wants to say. He seems to decide against something after warring internally over the matter. Clark tries not to be disappointed. It’s easier not to be when Bruce says,  “I still care about you, Clark. I have my own faults. I shouldn’t have spoken to you in such a cruel way the other day.” Somehow, in his tone, Clark knows this isn’t an olive branch. 

Even if it’s an apology. 

If you still care, why can’t we be together, he wants to demand.

It’s not his place to ask that. 

Bruce gets to make his own decisions, and have his own reasons. Even if Clark doesn’t like them. Clark sucks in a breath and tries to release it evenly. It comes out jagged, and exhausted.

“You don’t need to apologize.”

“I do.” Bruce’s gaze is piercing into him. “I’m not a saint either.” 

Clark swallows a bubble of emotion that would’ve cracked his voice in two before responding. 

“Batman is figuring out the exact location of the control center. When I figure it out, I’ll contact you. Keep alert till then. I have a feeling this is all going to move very quickly when it starts.” 

“In the meantime, I’ll go cozy up to Lex Luthor,” Bruce concedes with disdain, re-buttoning his suit jacket as he stands. “There are few things I loathe doing more in order to save the world.”

Clark grins, and stands to meet him. 

“I’d be surprised there’s anything worse.”

Bruce scans him from head to toe, and reaches out to shake his hand. Clark’s smile wavers, and he takes the hand. Shaking on it feels elementary compared to how intimately he knows Bruce. 

The curve of his lips, and the rosy flush of his cheeks makes Clark want to hold him close, kiss his face, but he shakes the feelings off. He shakes them off as hard as a drowned dog would.

He needs to be Superman for Bruce, stronger than any lowered inhibition. 

“To the world,” Bruce cheers solemnly.

Clark nods, and gulps past a weight in his throat.

“To the world.”

Clark’s heart is pounding when Batman sends the signal.

The signal being a text.

The following message reads: I’ll pick you up when the storm starts.

From his apartment window in Metropolis, Clark looks out to see darkened clouds lining the horizon. He doesn’t expect it will be long. And he thinks Batman knows that’s the case too. 

He doubts the Kryptonite rain will come first. 

Lex and Joker will want to lure him into the mayhem first. Get him right where they want him. Anxiety is still eating him at the thought of what distraction Batman will need to go up against. 

Luthor isn’t in favor with many of his enemies, but who knows who Joker has in his roster lately, or how much Luthor would be able to invest in the idea that this scheme will actually work, and finally kill The Superman. 

Hours later, he gets his answer. 

I’m not picking you up in the Bat Mobile. Meet me in the alley behind Bibbo’s Diner . Black car with shades windows. Bring your civilian clothing to change into once I’m gone. 

Yesterday, Batman figured out the address of the control center. 

Today, Bruce manages to get him his instructions on how to enter the building undetected. 

It seems crazy, all three of them working together.

Like both parts of Clark’s life are intertwining. 

“Explain the plan to me,” Batman says, once Superman is crouching awkwardly into the car with a cup of coffee. A briefcase is pushed at him so aggressively he nearly drops it. “Step by step.”

Clark assumes this is a method in perfecting their strategy, so Batman can be sure Superman won’t miss any fundamental steps. He supposes it’s not too insulting, and does as he’s told.

“My friend, um, bought off one of his suppliers that’s been working there to switch identities with me, so I’m going to use the I.D that he manually adjusted on that guy’s work credentials to make it look like I’m him, and swipe it at the front desk.” He takes a moment to blow on his coffee, ignoring Batman’s glare. “From there, I’m going to find an access point to the top floor, and then I’m going to hopefully not run into any Kryptonite and destroy the stupid thing.” 

“Briefcase,” Batman demands, and Superman sighs. 

He unclips the briefcase he’s been clutching to his chest and shows Batman.

He doesn’t know why Batman wants to see it when he just handed it to Clark himself.

Inside are two lead-lined blankets. If he needs to nullify the effects of any Kryptonite that may be stored in the control room, he’ll be able to throw these giant blankets over the stones and do so.

“I might steal these after the mission,” Superman points out. “Seems like they’d come in handy.” 

“They’re of better use to you than me,” Batman agrees. “The last couple days, I uncovered from Joker that Poison Ivy is the threat they were planning on distracting you with around Midtown.” 

Clark pushes out a gust of air, feeling slightly better since Batman is way more capable of handling Ivy than any metahumans. Still, she’s a formidable opponent to Superman occasionally.

“She hasn’t been brewing up any new potions lately, has she?”

“Not that I could figure. I have an antidote for almost anything, regardless.” 

“Still, if you run into trouble, please call for me.”

“At the worst, I know how to stall Ivy long enough for you to destroy Luthor’s weapon and locate whatever arboretum she’s created in Metropolis. By then, I might need the backup.”

Superman smirks.

“Might?”

“A very loose ‘might’.” 

“We’ll make this work, Batman,” Superman swears. “I promise.” 

Batman nods firmly twice. 

“I’ll park this car in the building’s lot and leave you with it, so you can get dressed and get to work. The rain will be starting soon, likely as soon as I rendezvous with Ivy,” he explains. 

“Did you end up calculating how long you think the storm might last?”

“Like idiots, they started this process during a drought.” 

It’s probably the only way they were able to get the materials for cloud seeding, to mask it as some sort of irrigation process that would aid gardens, farms, and public parks. Maybe, even with the Kryptonite element, it’ll be able to do that. Superman can only hope something good comes of all this hatred.

“So not long.”

“An hour at most.” 

That isn’t as long as Clark expected. He’s starting to feel optimistic about their plan and prays that it's not naive of him. 

“Be careful, Superman.” 

Clark looks up at Batman, and the unexpected sincerity (and…affection) in his deep blue eyes. He can’t help but stare back a beat too long, baffled at why it feels so comforting. Like home. 

Turning hastily to face the road, Batman revs the car. 

Superman shakes himself out of his remaining funk, wondering quietly where Bruce Wayne might be right now. He promised he’d be on stand by as best as he could if there were problems. 

He’s been so helpful, for little reason. 

Clark will have to find a way to thank him.

As they drive along, Clark daydreams about what flowers he could woo a billionaire with. 

Due to Bruce’s help with the I.D. scheme, Clark is able to not only get into the building, but find a service elevator up to the hidden top floor of the skyscraper he was dropped off at, in minutes. 

It took him more time squeezing into his civilian clothing in Batman’s car. 

On a long hallway, X-Raying each closed door to see if there’s a control center stashed away inside, he notices the glowing rain outside. It looks radioactive, and it’s of course, unnerving. 

If he stepped outside right now, he can only imagine the pain. 

The streets of Metropolis are growing louder with concerned citizens. 

There’s an explosion in the distance and he steels himself from responding. Batman will handle Ivy as best as he can manage. He’ll keep her from taking any casualties, even if she damages properties. They will get through this and eliminate the threat against Superman. 

The rain outside would veto any ability he has anyway. 

He’s not used to carrying out a mission as Clark Kent yet he can’t help but admire the perks right now. That is, until he takes another step and feels a weakness in his thighs, his heart. He sucks in a sharp breath and curses. He was expecting Luthor to stash Kryptonite inside. Still, it’s annoying he’ll have to figure out a way  to cover it up with a led blanket. He steps back and squints again.

There’s nothing in his X-ray vision or otherwise to indicate where Kryptonite is being held. 

He grows closer to the room at the end of the hall.

Despite his weakening body. It’s the only room he can’t see through, and that’s how he knows it must be his destination. None of them can afford to stop while the plan is in motion. 

Then he sees it; the green welcome mat in front of the door.

The barest of a luminescent tint to it. 

“Welcome” is all it says. Clark smirks. 

It’s something the Joker would suggest after all, getting worked up in the humor of the matter without thinking of all the defenses Batman would come up with to combat something so stupid. 

“Should’ve made this invisible too,” Clark cracks to himself. 

Clark retrieves a lead-lined blanket from his briefcase and covers it, flattening it with his shoe over the mat. Almost instantly, the nerve-frying, bone-melting feeling from the mat drifts off. 

His powers drain back into him, slowly but surely. 

They should’ve picked a building with less windows. Even with all the rain, the yellow sun is finding its way to cast over him from every direction. As if the universe is on his side. 

For a moment, he allows himself to be Superman, and kicks the door in.

From there, his super speed helps him take out a dozen lackeys and one of Luthor’s right hand men. He’s seen the man face-to-face at many meetings with Luthor, and of course, on the news.

He’s surprised Luthor isn’t here himself, but the man is a coward when he doesn’t have a backup, and he must not have had more insurance other than Ivy and the weapon itself to justify coming here instead of staying in one of those two places. That, or he has another trick up his sleeve. 

It takes Clark half an hour to securely shut down all the machinery. 

He doesn’t want any digital record or tracework of the weapon.

After all that is done, he punches his fist through the power core conducting the control panels, crushing most of it to dust. Outside, more of the sun is starting to peek through the green clouds. 

The storm is clearing. 

Relief floods through Clark. 

To leave, he goes right back down the way he came. He is still wary about the rain so he waits in the lobby for the rest of the storm to clear. Clutching the briefcase to his chest again in a corner nook, bouncing one of his legs. The woman at the front desk is none the wiser as he dials up Batman and tries to patch through to him. “C’mon, B, come in,” he whispers. “Status update?” 

He calls again.

And again. 

When he consistently gets no response, he hones in on the TV in the lobby playing the news.

He should’ve started listening sooner. 

His heart drops into his stomach when he sees Batman flying through the air, strung up by a massive, leafy arm. There’s something wrong with the picture. Batman has numerous ways to combat her branches and extensions. “Silver Banshee has teamed up with infamous Gotham rogue—” Clark’s heart gallops in his chest as he keeps reading, discovering with dread that Ivy has enhanced her normal powers with the magic of one of his deadliest foes. Batman is no match for the two of them if he wasn’t even expecting Banshee there. Superman has to get there now. 

The skies haven’t cleared fully and the rain leftover from the storm certainly hasn’t begun to evaporate, but if he doesn’t start heading over, Batman could die. He cannot let that happen.

No, no, no.

Self-preservation is thrown out the window as he rushes outside. 

The rain droplets hitting his skin burn the second he’s out, and he thinks quickly, grabbing the last lead-lined blanket from his briefcase, tossing that aside, and covering his whole body with the blanket. All he needs to do is get to Batman’s car. He left it here in the lot just for him.

Thank you water-resistent blanket. Batman, you think of everything. 

He runs, legs feeling like they’re made of glass the further he goes. The Kryptonite is in the air, the puddles on the pavement, pummelling off the surface of his blanket and onto skin again. 

This isn’t a good idea. He feels like his lungs are closing up. 

Despite this, Clark can’t stop himself. 

It’s like he’s on autopilot. 

Any ounce of strength he has left is being geared towards saving Batman. 

Inside the car, his powers start to filter back, but he knows they’ll be shot the second he goes back outside. He drives over the speed limit to Midtown where he knows Ivy is wreaking havoc. 

Debris dust starts to cloud his windshield as he gets closer to the destruction, and he curses loudly, honking at another car rearing away from the scene that nearly hits him head on. 

Clark squints, his powers just barely able to help him see through the smoke. 

A burst of purple light in the sky illuminates the foggy vision of the courtyard where Batman has led the fight. Branches are overgrowing the streets, having crushed vehicles and small businesses in their wake. Superman glowers at the purple lights flashing all over, signifying Banshee’s presence. The Kryptonite rain is still drizzling, hitting his windshield in a green glow to match. 

A burst of pure, yellowish-white light swipes through one of Ivy’s taller stalks, cutting it in half. That doesn’t look like Banshee; it’s almost like a shooting star winding through the shadows. 

Must be Batman’s technology. 

Clark swerves the car before driving into a giant pot hole, made worse by Ivy’’s destruction. He can’t drive over it without driving into a deep rift. He thunks his head down on the steering wheel. 

He’s never felt so helpless in his life, parked just out of the way of a fight, unable to jump right in and save anyone because of his one weakness. He’s had moments like this before, crippled and desperate, but he feels as if he’s going insane with his need to be there right now. He’s starting to wonder if he can honk his horn madly, distract Banshee long enough for Batman to take out Ivy. 

God, that’s stupid. 

They should have planned more. 

They should have never done it like this.

They—

The car door is opening. To the backseat.

It takes a minute for Clark to register who the bloody lump of barely breathing human is, but then he registers one of Bruce’s eyes that isn’t swallowed up by a bruise. It’s Bruce Wayne.

A Bruce with a ragged t-shirt that looks like it doesn’t belong to him, and oversized boxer shorts. 

Stunned, Clark gawks.

“Bruce, what the hell are you doing here!” 

Bruce lets out a suffering grunt. 

Clark scrambles to get a better look at him, gasping when he sees the blood is definitely coming from him, from different scars all over his body. He must’ve been caught up in the fight, the fact that he helped take down the weapon must’ve been revealed. Otherwise he wouldn’t be hurt. 

Not like this. 

“No hospitals,” Bruce growls in a strikingly familiar tone, one that usually gets him to shut up and does the job fine now. He coughs up blood, clutching his chest. “Clark…no….hospitals.”

Clark flails, and stammers,

“I can’t leave Metropolis in the hands of Ivy and Banshee!”

“The Flash showed up,” Bruce hacks, groaning through another massive wave of pain. “Superman…he…you got through to him apparently. He showed up for us. Finally.” 

Us?

Bruce isn’t making any sense. That said, knowing what he knows about The Flash, the kid should be taking care of things in no time. That must be what the burst of light was, because Clark is seeing more and more of them, chopping down Ivy’s terrain in almost no time at all. 

“Drive,” Bruce begs. “Please. The kid’s got it covered.”

“Where?!”

“Out of the storm!” 

Clark does. He skids backwards, feeling odd about leaving the city, but also warm at the fact that The Flash pulled through when they needed him. Fear starts to encroach on Clark again when they make headway. He keeps looking back at Bruce who is trying to take in steady breaths. 

“This is all my fault,” he whispers. “I should’ve never gotten you involved.”

But he didn’t get him this involved. So, did Batman?

He can’t imagine Batman ever risking a civilian in this way.

“Nn.” 

“Batman and I rehearsed this over and over. I don’t understand.” 

He tries not to hyperventilate. He really does. 

“We were so stupid. We could’ve planned this all differently, if…hey…Bruce?”

He turns around, as they approach the edge of the lighter clouds, and the border of Metropolis. Bruce has passed out in the back seat, neck draped backwards displaying a purple and yellow collage on his neck. His hair is matted to his forehead with blood, sweat, god knows what else. 

Clark doesn’t have time to make a decision.

He steps on the gas as hard as he can. 

When he’s sure he’s clear of the storm, he scoops Bruce up and flies him with incredible super speed to his fortress in the Antarctic. Holds him gently as he enters his home away from home, and calls out “Robots?” They come to him once he’s inside. “Warm the fortress, then heal him.” 

The robots flutter around, doing everything they’re told. 

Bruce stirs, groaning. 

Clark musters a sad smile.

“No hospitals. Just like you asked.”

Bruce nuzzles into his chest, whining when one of the robots tugs at him.

“It’s okay! They’re here to help, Bruce. I’ll be with you the whole time.” Clark strokes through his matted hair, trying to calm down his own breathing to soothe him. “I promise.”

And he’ll also be keeping an ear out for Metropolis from here.

It sounds like Flash has already gotten a handle on things. 

He helps the robots lift Bruce onto a rolling cot, not leaving his side for an instant. 

“Kal-El…” Bruce’s voice is hoarse, and direly urgent. He takes his wrist before the robots cart him off. There’s blood on his lips; it tastes like iron when he manages to pull Clark in by the cape to kiss him. 

Promptly, Bruce passes out again. 

Clark startles at his birth name, then it hits him like Kryptonite falling from the sky. He remembers Bruce shouldn’t have known that Superman has been trying to contact The Flash lately, not unless Batman said something to him about it. There would be no reason to tell a playboy billionaire. And also—

He’s only ever told one man his name.

That one man isn’t Bruce Wayne. 

Except for the fact that he very much is.

Chapter Text

It is cold and hot at the same time. 

For a split second, Bruce fears he might be blind when he opens his eyes. It takes little time to realize there’s a glaringly bright heat lamp of some sort casting over his whole, brutalized body. 

Blocking the light with a palm, he grunts at the pain raising his arm just a foot or so causes. Despite his body’s warning signs, he forces his head up an inch to take in his surroundings.

Batman has only been here once; Superman’s ice fortress.

Unless he’s been taken to some other homey igloo. 

Letting his head thunk back against the cot he’s on, he chooses to let himself relax.

His body is stitching itself back together, so obviously Clark got him to safety in time. He hadn’t been expecting Silver Banshee, but was blindsided during what he thought had been a thorough investigation of Joker’s involvement. Turns out he was more focused on securing Superman’s side of the strategy than protecting himself on his end. He’s been off his game completely.

If he were without distraction, he would’ve been able to tell Joker was holding something back about Ivy’s plans. There isn’t enough self-castigation that will make this right in Batman’s book. 

His own heart. 

“Do you want water?” a soft, unreadable voice asks from behind him. Bruce tenses up, despite knowing who it is. There’s an edge to Clark’s voice. Wincingly, he turns to face him. All the ice in this fortress couldn’t make him feel colder than the look on Clark’s face does. Before he can even figure out what he’s going to say, memories come flooding back to Bruce. “Batman.” 

Shit. 

Keeping eye contact is agonizing, so Bruce reluctantly lies back flat, closing his eyes against the blinding lamp. Despite the warmth, he’s still cold. Clark remains seated, out of sight behind him. 

Gathering his faculties, Bruce croaks, “Yes. Please.”

There’s a quiet rustle of fabric, footsteps on icy flooring.

Clark returns in less than two minutes with a cup of water. Bruce takes it gratefully, grunting out a hesitant ‘thanks’ before taking small sips. Over the rim of the cup, he studies Clark carefully. 

Gazing back at him, Clark appears vacant. 

“Was it fun for you?” 

Bruce’s heart skips a beat. He can’t help it. It's fear, anxiety. The idea of rejection. 

“Clark—”

“No, Kal-El. That’s what you said, isn’t it?”

Yes, that’s how Bruce destroyed the secret of his identity in one fell swoop. This is exactly what he’d wanted to avoid. The moment Clark looks him in the eyes and tells him he’s a bad man. And that good men can’t stand with the bad. They were always ending up here, at this rotten stage. 

“That’s what I said. And to answer your vague question,” Bruce settles his water in his lap, matching Clark’s piercing glare with his own, “Of course it wasn’t fun for me to lie to you.” 

“And yet you did.”

“You know my opinion on keeping my identity under wraps. It’s not your place to tell me if or when I should’ve told you,” Bruce scolds defensively. “I stand by everything I said to you about how dangerous this is. Look at where it got us.” He gestures wildly to his broken, battered body. 

Clark snarls and smacks the heat lamp out of the way.

It goes flying, crashing to pieces against the wall of the med bay. 

Bruce doesn’t jump, but his lips part in shock. He’s not sure he’s ever seen Clark so angry. A burst of untenable rage cracking through that meticulous restraint of his, like a rare breed of animal. The restraint is back almost in the blink of an eye, but in his voice is a sheer lilt of wrath. 

“It became my place when you decided to have a relationship with me!” 

“I obviously didn’t know you were Superman when I chose you to—” God, he must still be out of it or on some sort of strong painkiller if he’s about to spill his guts like this. He changes directions when the confusion on Clark’s face rings alarm bells. “When I met you at your office.” 

“When, then? How long have you been making a fool of me?”

“When do you think? Why the hell do you think I was so angry when you revealed your identity to me?” Bruce growls, ignoring the understanding dawning on Clark’s face. “Do you think I would’ve started dating you if I knew you were Superman? I was working with you for months!” 

Batman and Superman had solved countless crimes together by then. They were a team. 

“Yeah, because that thought of being with Superman is so despicable to you,” Clark utters with a flare of contempt. As if he thinks that would ever be a dealbreaker for Bruce, like that’s the point.

“Don’t be a child.” 

“No, no!” Clark tugs the cot closer to him, so close that Bruce can feel the spittle on his face. “You’re the child. You want to know how this could’ve been prevented, Bruce?” He puts all of Bruce’s bruises, scars, stitches on display with one waving gesture, “If we’d been honest with each other! This was never about securing safety for either of us, it was about your trust issues!” 

“Trust cannot simply be—”

“Do you trust Alfred?” 

Bruce sputters, feeling caught in an invisible net. 

“What kind of a question is that?”

Alfred raised him. 

“Trust isn’t foreign to you, Bruce. You use it every goddamn day,” Clark accuses. “You trust Alfred with your secret, and he keeps it for you. It probably helps. I’m damn sure it at the very least gives you a reason to go home at the end of the night instead of abusing your body more. And you’re a better fighter for it.” 

That isn’t the same.

“You were never supposed to know,” Bruce says defeatedly, too tired to keep arguing. The heat lamp is gone so he’s starting to shiver, and he’s minutes away from chattering teeth. “It’s cold.”

Clark sIghs, and Bruce has to bite his tongue from making a noise at the relief he feels from seeing the sympathy, and affection, on his face the second he says this. Clark nods and retrieves another heat lamp, setting it up deftly so it covers Bruce’s entire frame. It starts to warm him.

Silence stretches between them.

Bruce decides something; he decides to be honest. He might not be a good man, but Clark is. And good men deserve honesty. 

“I’m ashamed, Clark.” 

Clark sucks in a breath, the barest of gasps.

“Bruce…”

“I used you.”

“Okay, well, I guess I lied too for a while. But you didn’t use me.” 

“I did.” 

Clark’s reaction is sweet and Bruce can’t stand it, because he can suddenly tell that Clark’s forgiven him. He’s been forgiven since the moment he woke up. It builds up abruptly into tears streaming from tired eyes. Clark flutters around when he sees he’s crying, shushing him gently.

“Hey, hey, don’t—wow. Listen, apology accepted, alright? Please don’t cry. I—” Clark’s eyes get a little watery themselves, and he continues desperately, “I’m really, really not good with tears.” 

“What the fuck kind of drugs did you give me?” Bruce groans, tossing his arm back over his eyes to hide this display, the kind he never shares in public. “This is wrong on all sorts of levels.” 

“I don’t know! The robots handle that stuff. I’m kind of a dope when it comes to medicine.” 

“Great. Alien drugs.” 

“Doesn’t sound that bad right? You already have an alien friend.”

“If I get cancer, I’m blaming you.”

“That would be fair,” Clark teases. “Bruce, I mean it. Apology accepted. There’s no rulebook when it comes to people like us. We have to do the best we can, give it our best shot, that’s it.”

“No, don’t,” Bruce digs the heel of his hand into one of his closed eyes. “Jesus, don’t.”

“What, do you want me to keep yelling at you?” Clark laughs, a bright and airy noise which Bruce has missed obsessively. “I’m not sure how into this ‘masochist’ streak of yours I am.”

It’s not masochism, it’s penance. 

“I originally asked you out,” Bruce forces his voice to work, trying to breathe evenly so he doesn’t inspire another rush of tears, “because I was going to manipulate you into writing articles about Batman.” The silence ignites a panic inside him. “The federal government was starting to look into solutions for me and I had a theory that if public perception on me…lightened up, I could get them off my back.” He lowers the arm obstructing his view, eyes downcast. “It’s not an excuse, Cla—”

“That’s smart,” Clark notes conversationally, stunning Bruce into silence. Seemingly oblivious to how dire this subject is, he plops down on the edge of the cot and lets out a haranguing laugh. “Gosh, can you imagine Batman on a little press tour? We could’ve done a what's in my belt exclusive.” He hums, reconsidering. “Scratch that, obviously it’d be a security risk. I’ll work on it.” 

“What?” is all Bruce can manage. 

“That’s so flattering, though, you assuming my articles could sway public opinion.” There’s an honest to god blush on Clark’s cheeks. “You’d probably be better off recruiting Lois Lane.” 

“Clark, I lied to you. I used you.”

Clark cocks his head down at Bruce. 

“You didn’t know I was Superman until I revealed it to you right?” 

“Right,” Bruce concedes slowly. “Are you the one on drugs?”

“Bruce, I lie to everyone in my office every single day. I do it for their safety. You lied to Clark, thinking he was a civilian, to secure the safety of Gotham. I’m not going to fault you for that. Though using seduction as part of your plan is a smidge, um, unorthodox. But that seems to be Bruce Wayne’s specialty?” Clark gives him a sheepish, secretive sort of look that Bruce can’t look at without shifting around in place, vibrating with unspent frustration. Clark’s smile wavers and he adds, “But Batman and Superman are different. We have a responsibility to each other that we can’t share with anyone else.” He snorts. “And maybe the Flash if he proves himself.” 

Judging by how Clark doesn’t seem worried about Metropolis right now, he might’ve already done so. Then, the thought of ever exposing himself to a random teenager from Central City—

“That’s what I’m afraid of, Clark. With the amount of metahumans populating the planet, I can’t have my identity handed out to anyone who can crush minerals into diamonds with their  hands.”

“No one’s asking you to. But you knew me, Bruce. At a certain point, it was hazardous to keep this hidden from me.” Clark takes Bruce’s hand in his own. “We work too darn well together.” 

Bruce meets his eyes, one last glowering look to knock him down a few pegs.

“I think you’re lonely,” he accuses, hating himself for it. “And it’s clouding your judgement.” 

Clark ducks his head to evade the impact of that statement, not quite insulted but staying quiet for a worrying period of time. He doesn’t let go of his hand. Bruce doesn’t tug his away, either. 

There’s the thinnest of cracks in Clark’s voice when he finally speaks, “Maybe I am, and maybe I’m weaker for it.” With sudden conviction, he glares right back at Bruce. “But you already know how that feels, don’t you.”  

Bruce does know. He’s been alone for decades.

It’s a truth that cuts him right to his core. 

It may be stupid and foolish, but he squeezes Clark’s hand back.

“You aren’t alone,” he assures him, the walls he’s spent so long building and fortifying crumbling to dust in seconds because he’s grown too tired of fighting, “and neither am I.”

Clark’s otherworldly blue eyes sparkle.

Bruce doesn’t care what kind of technology those glasses are made of. 

He should have recognized these eyes anywhere. 

“Do you mean that?” Clark asks in that hopelessly hopeful tone of his. Bruce rolls his eyes and nods, grunting loudly when he gets an arm full of friendly Kryptonian tightly embracing him. 

“I stand by the fact you’re too trusting and kind and forgiving for your own good.”

“You love complimenting me,” Clark murmurs into his neck.

Bruce smiles now that he’s not being watched, stroking an aching hand over Clark’s sleek black hair. He hadn’t noticed until right now that Clark is wearing his civilian clothing still with no-glasses. It seems to be the truest version of himself. Both, at the same time. Bruce’s friend.

Batman’s friend. 

“I’ll keep saying it and maybe one day you’ll listen.”

Clark holds him tighter and Bruce sighs, letting his head rest against the side of Clark’s. 

“So you were mad at Batman for lying to Superman, but not Bruce for lying to Clark,” Bruce points out playfully when Clark pulls back to hand him his water cup again. Waiting for an excuse, Bruce takes a sip. Clark doesn’t go far, smirking down at him and brewing up an equally playful response.

“Maybe I think Bruce is much nicer to look at.” 

“No, you rigid boy scout types secretly love the leather and kevlar. I know your kind.”

“Do you.” 

Bruce tries to put weight on his elbows, sit up. Pain shoots through him and he grunts.

“You’re still pretty damaged,” Clark tenderly warns him, placing a warm hand on one of his purple bruises. “You scared the heck out of me, you know. Even when I didn’t know your…” 

“You can swear, you know. Unless Kryptonians will burst into flame?” 

“If there’s a nice way to say something, I say it that way.”

Agony rippling through sore muscles as he shifts around, Bruce nods.

“Uh huh.” 

“The Bruce Wayne you present as is so different,” Clark muses, nostalgia bleeding into his voice as he keeps rubbing over the same, angry bruise. He’s not putting any pressure down on it, just heating it up with his touch. “But I think a part of me could always see something in your eyes.” 

“See what?” Bruce asks, not wanting to know.

He doesn’t want to know how easily exposed he’s made himself. 

How his mask is slipping every single day he doesn’t attend to it with military focus. 

“That you actually cared about me,” Clark admits instead of telling him he could see how tortured he was, how bruised and battered emotionally. “I know what you said about me trusting you, but I’ve never felt that way about anyone else. I’ve had people care about me, but aside from my adoptive parents, there’s no one I’ve ever really trusted before you. That’s why I was confident about it. Telling you who I am. You have to understand—it was as easy as breathing.”

“You didn’t think I would reject you,” murmurs Bruce.

He did to Clark what he fears so deeply towards himself. 

Bruce wants to tell Clark how right he is. How much he truly does care about him, how rejecting him was the last thing he ever wanted. How even Batman might echo the same sentiments. 

Instead, he mentions needlessly, in a subconscious effort change subjects,

“When I narrowed down who I should talk to at the Daily Planet to write the articles, I was actually planning on using Cedric Sath. You were sort of my backup plan.”

Clark makes a gagging sound. 

“Ew, Sath? Bruce, that guy picks up hookers. How was I even in the same category?”

“His history with hookers didn’t exactly come up on the Bat Computer,” Bruce elucidates with amusement, pleased by the way Clark grins with teeth and shakes his head at him. 

“Was he seriously more attractive to you?”

“God no, on the Bat Computer, his picture just made him look more susceptible to bribery.” 

There’s obviously a groan withheld from Clark.

“Do you have to put the word ‘Bat’ in front of every utility you own?”

“You have ‘Superman Robots’.” 

They laugh together at how ridiculous it all is and Clark shakes his head again, over and over, eyes trailing down to Bruce’s lips. As if this is the most natural progression in the world.

Before Bruce can say anything, he’s being kissed. 

Thoroughly, with a strong hand curling tight into his hair and the other keeping his torso flattened to the cot. Bruce kisses back because he never does anything in half measures, and he wants to. Clark tastes like mint, and a storm, heat. He unfortunately must taste like iron and salt. 

Clark moans like he doesn’t, like this is something he’s been waiting years for. Bruce thinks, for himself, it might be. 

When Clark pulls back, Bruce clasps his neck to get his attention.

“You really think starting this back up again is a good idea?”

Clark huffs, undeterred. 

“You think two lonely, sexually frustrated superheroes roaming around their cities by themselves is a better one?”

“Point made,” Bruce emphasises, wanting to kiss Clark again. And again. He wants to come up with a reason he shouldn’t, but he’s run out of all the good ones. Clark’s smile is also distracting. 

“Besides. We’re not starting anything back up. This is something new, for both of us.”

That’s true in some respects.

“I do already know how to get you to make that one noise, though,” Bruce reminds him, trailing two fingers down Clark’s spine to help him recall the memory. He trails them back up when Clark shivers, eyes darkening. Bruce uses those two fingers to trace his panting mouth. “You going to ask one of your Superman Robots when I can be cleared for certain…adult activities?” 

“Uh-hh.” Clark gets caught on that noise, flustered. “I’d rather not.”

“Hmm?” Bruce leans in to kiss at his neck, a seductive liquidity to the movements. “And why not.”

“Bruce, they used to help me with schoolwork, it’d be, like, super weird.”

“Super super weird?” 

“Glad to know some of that cringeworthy Bruce Wayne humor is all you,” Clark deadpans. The monotone expression breaks quickly and he’s dragged into a fiercer kiss, full of devotion and longing. “I’ll ask,” he gives in. Bruce thinks it was fairly easy. “I’ll just word it…uh, cleverly.” 

“Thank you,” Bruce says solemnly.

Clark frowns.

“For asking when we can have sex?”

Bruce rolls his eyes.

“For saving me.” 

Clark regards him reverently. 

“I’m always going to be there for you.”

Bruce wants to beg him not to make promises he can’t keep. Instead, he offers Clark a rare smile and rubs a thumb over his neck. 

“You should check with your machines. See if they need to look at my vitals.”

Clark bobs his head in a dutious nod.

“Good plan.”

He flashes a smile and dips down in super speed to peck Bruce on the lips, the smile twisting into something more secretive, whimsical in the childlike glee it emulates. Then, Clark wisps off. 

Bruce is left with nothing but himself, as usual.

Miraculously, it doesn’t feel as lonely as it always does.

Chapter Text

When Clark lands on his feet behind Bruce, he doesn’t expect for Bruce to swerve and drop his cup of juice. When Clark flew in, he’d seen him preparing breakfast for himself and thought it would be a good time to announce his presence. He hasn’t had time to visit him in a day and half.

The juice clatters noisily, orange spilling over pure white ice. 

“You—” Oh, right, he didn’t check in with Bruce about donning the Bat Suit and taking over the necessary routine duties of the Bat in his absence. All Bruce can manage is;  “You fit in that.” 

“Yeah,” Clark sheepishly replies, kindly asking one of the robots to clean up the mess. He starts the process of pouring Bruce another glass of juice. Bruce continues ogling. “It’s just a little tight around the crotch. I’ve been getting wedgies all evening, I don’t know how you deal with that.” 

“I can see that.” Yep, that’s definitely where Bruce’s eyes have landed. And pointedly remain. Clark smirks, handing Bruce his new glass. Bruce clears his throat. “I don’t wear underwear.”

Clark blinks. Has he heard that right?

“Batman goes commando?”

“Don’t you under your suit?” 

“Should I?” Clark’s underwear never rides up, so he never thought to do this. “I mean, I guess it’s not the same material as yours. By the way, Alfred gave this to me, so I have his approval.”

“That’s a lesser version of my new suit.”

“Ah. The recycled tights.”

“Funny.” 

“I just thought you’d be angry.” Clark bites his lip, trying to appear docile and cute to avoid accountability. “Or something like that.” 

“I don’t mind that you went to fill in,” Bruce says, inspecting any wear and tear of the suit. There is none; Clark was very careful. . “I would have preferred you to tell me beforehand, though.” 

“Bruce, I remember the last time your enemies thought you were on vacation.” 

“And whose fault was that?”

“The guy with the crutch here doesn’t get to judge.”

“Sorry my sole weakness isn’t a green rock.”

Clark snorts, ambushing Bruce with a nuzzle to the chin and a kiss to the cheek. He steps out of the way for the robots filing around them. He knows Bruce is a little nervous about displays of affection in front of them, and Clark can’t blame him. In his situation, he might feel the same.

He can’t help but want Bruce in his arms right now though.

There’s been so much to take care of these past few days, and this thing between them is so new it sparks in his chest every time he so much catches the scarcest whiff of Bruce’s scent in the air. 

Regarding him, Bruce meets his gaze with an equally warm one. 

“I hope no one was too much trouble for you in Gotham.”

“No, of course not. Pretty sure Bane is terrified of you now, though.” Clark laughs, pleased by the satisfaction on Bruce’s face “I kept forgetting to pull my punches with him. He’s a big guy.” 

“Balancing Batman and Superman must be exhausting,” Bruce decides. “You don’t need to go to Gotham every day while I’m healing. I’ll call in some of my contacts, keep the city occupied.” 

Oh, so now you have friends I don’t know about, he wants to tease but doesn’t. Bruce has a very strict opinion on the word ‘friends.’ And he doubts his elusive ‘contacts’ would fall among them. 

“It kind of gave me a power high,” Clark admits, beefing up the smugness of the statement with a puffed chest. “I don’t know if I wanna give up the cowl yet.”   

Bruce huffs, keeping serious. 

“Even you need sleep, Superman.”

Clark hops up on the counter, watching Bruce tug his fluffy robe tighter over his body. He’s wearing full-length body underwear underneath it. With socks and slippers. Sufficiently warm. 

“I actually don’t. That little tidbit never made it to the press though.”

Frowning, Bruce considers this. 

“But you do sleep. I’ve seen you.”

“I try to make it a habit, but I don’t need it for survival. It’s sort of like meditation for most people. For me, it’s peace of mind. It doesn’t affect me physically much, y’know, not doing it.” 

“The kind of thing to make me wish I was Parasite.”

Bruce is ogling again. Clark’s smirk spreads into a grin. .

“I’m kind of ashamed to admit I had to get Alfred’s help to fit into this. You wanna help me get this off?” Clark pokes around at his utility belt, laughing at the feathery tickle of electricity. 

“I could help. You have to do something for me though.”

“Mm?” 

Bruce moves between his legs, raising his hands and carefully balancing an elbow on his crutch. He cradles Clark’s neck and insists vehemently, “Take me home. Let Alfred take over from you.” 

Clark balks slightly. 

The thing is, he doesn’t trust Bruce not to simply don the cowl the second he leaves Alfred to it. The robots told them it would be at least two weeks before he’s healed enough to start back up his gym workouts, not even combat. He feels stuck because he doesn’t want to sound accusatory.

He just cannot let Bruce put himself in danger like that.

“I won’t go out,” Bruce affirms, meeting the visor of one of the robot’s. “Doctor’s orders, right?”

“Bruce…I can take care of everything here…and…”

“I care for you on a deep and intimate level, Clark,” Bruce states plainly, causing Clark to go red and become all toasty inside, “But the robots don’t talk to me when you’re gone and all forms of entertainment are in Kryptonian. I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me but being stuck in a giant igloo with bare minimum heating and one bear rug isn’t going to help me heal faster.”

“It’s faux fur.” Clark swallows. “The rug.”

Bruce chuckles. “I promise, alright? C’mon, Mr. Trust.”

“I trust you, Bruce. With my life, my secrets. Not with taking care of yourself, necessarily.” He knows he can’t keep Bruce here, however; It wouldn’t be fair for all those reasons listed (the reasons he’s been dwelling on for days) and he doesn’t want to see the heavy disappointment in his eyes that he’s darn well about to see if he doesn’t make this right. “Okay, I’ll take you home but I’m going to be the world’s most annoying nurse. I’m not letting Alfred have all the fun.” 

Relief visibly washes over Bruce. 

Clark relaxes and nuzzles their foreheads together.

Bruce allows the gesture of affection for a few seconds before pulling back.

“I had such a nice plan for if you said no, too,” Bruce purrs, a voice Clark hasn’t heard in a long time. Seductive, and very much a performance yet not in a bad way. “Guess you’re outta luck.” 

“Care to explain your Plan B, B?” Clark asks, unable to resist. 

“Plan Batman,” Bruce deadpans. “I’ll keep it in my pocket for next time.”

Clark wants to die. He should’ve been more stubborn. 

He tries to grab at Bruce’s robe, but the dude is like a wet bar of soap when he wants to be, slipping away and out of his grasp. 

“Are you still going to help me get out of this suit?”

Bruce shrugs, moving around him to get another sip of his juice. Nonchalantly, he says, “There’s a button on the back of the utility belt that will help you get to the rest of the entry points.” 

“Gee, thanks.” 

“No problem.”

Bruce pads off to where he’s been sleeping, in Clark’s room, ever since Clark gave him a tour on his third day of recovery and Bruce had made out with him for so long they’d fallen into the bed sheets where they soon had to stop because of his injuries. The robots had warned them, after all. 

Clark had asked them when they could resume sexual activities safely. 

The robots had crudely suggested around the same time Bruce could start back up on his exercise routine. So, not long now, but nowhere near close enough. 

“You’re a jerk,” Clark mutters, pawing around aimlessly at the suit. 

“If you need my help, call me,” Bruce yells out from the hall as Clark awkwardly fiddles with the belt, trying not to break it. Bruce has effectively drained all the romance out of the situation. 

Twelve minutes later, Clark is hopping on one foot trying to squeeze out of a boot. 

Frankly, if Bruce realized his stubbornness was probably currently causing deaths all over the world that Superman could have prevented in these twelve minutes, he might never sleep again. Clark, on the other hand, has long since accepted he can’t be everywhere all the time, nor in two places at once, and is aware he can’t solve every problem. So this isn’t as drastic as it could be. 

Naked and semi-triumphant, Clark gathers the whole suit in a lump in his arms and turns, nearly jumping out of his skin when he sees Bruce leaning against the archway of the hall, smirking.

“How long have you been standing there?” Clark complains.

“Long enough,” Bruce murmurs wryly, taking him all in. “If you think I’m being careless about your time, I calculated that the sex which would have more than definitely taken place after I stripped you of the suit would have taken approximately five times longer than this just did.” 

Slightly humiliated and entirely off-put by the fact Bruce seems to read minds, Clark clutches the clothes tighter against his front and lets out a gust of air to hide the embarrassed red blush coloring him. Yep, this is what Superman looks like defeated. Lex Luthor would have a field day. 

“Go save the world, Kent. I can wait for my taxi ride in the sky.” 

The ‘taxi ride’ comes later that night. Clark arrives in his Superman garb, exhausted from fighting an intergalactic foe all morning. At least it didn’t have any ties to Luthor, or Brainiac. 

“Gathered all my stuff,” Bruce informs him, dressed in some of Clark’s clothing that he stashes here just in case. On Bruce, they look adorably baggy and it makes him even more handsome. 

“You didn’t need to get dressed. You didn’t need to put on anything at all,” Clark tells him, amused by the way Bruce tilts his head, confused by the brazen statement. 

It must feel like less than a second to Bruce; Clark swoops forward to pick him and his belongings up, and has him back in Gotham, in his bedroom, in barely the blink of an eye. Mysteriously stripped of his shirt and lying flat on his back in his bed, right under Clark.

He’ll be glad he hasn’t stripped him of his pants in a minute.

“Oh.” Bruce’s voice is monotone, but Clark can feel a twitch on his thigh where their pelvises are pressed together. “Well, not that I’m not, ehm, grateful, but I think we should wai—”

“I’m off duty for the afternoon if I want to be,” Clark whispers, kissing his strangely resistant lips with soft intent. “You sure you don’t want me here to play nurse for a little while longer?” 

“I can take over that task if you find yourself weary, sir,” Alfred’s dry voice sends adrenaline coursing through Clark’s veins so fast, he tumbles off Bruce and onto the floor with a thunk.

How did I not see him flying in?

“I didn’t see you there, Alfred, I’m so sorry!” he pipes up from the floor, peeking up from behind the mattress. Alfred is holding a silver tray with tea and crumpets, standing by the doorway. It’s almost supernatural how he all but expected them to show up now. Alfred meets his gaze coolly.

“Though obviously, you seem to have been enacting some Kryptonian form of healthcare,” Alfred drawls sarcastically. “Which I am afraid I am ill-equipped to do for Master Bruce.” 

Hiding behind the bed is doing little to hide the pitchiness in his voice. 

“Obviously, I wouldn’t have just—if I knew you were in the—wow, say, you’re um, stealthy.” 

Bruce, now sitting up on his elbows, shrugs.

“He raised me, didn’t he?” 

He receives the tray in his lap gratefully, unbothered, so Clark deems it safe to stand. Alfred isn’t looking at him while he pours Bruce his tea and begins to add in measured spoonfuls of honey.

“You’re free to visit when you please, dear boy,” Alfred informs him, a schooling lilt to his tone, “but you would do best with knocking first, and ideally at our front door, like any other guest.” There’s a twinkle in his eye. “I do believe I’ve recommended such a courtesy to you before.” 

“He’s very old-school,” Bruce drolly explains. 

Clark shudders with a fresh wave of humiliation. 

“Yes, sir, of course.”

“Alfred will do.” He turns to Bruce. “I trust you will call me when you need me.” Turning back to Clark, “Master Kent.” Clark nods at his dissent, watching him face Bruce. “Master Bruce.” 

Alfred leaves the room, arms crossed behind his back.

The door closes with a prim click. 

Bruce offers Clark tea but Clark shakes his head.

“This is the most embarrassing moment of my entire life, and I’m a man with super speed who lost his middle school’s potato sack race in front of the entire student body,” Clark grumbles miserably into the palms of his hands.

“Well, they probably didn’t know you have super speed.”

“I can’t look Alfred in the eyes ever again.” 

“He’s seen worse,” Bruce answers simply. “It was your decision to rush me here without discussing anything first.” Smirking at Clark, he adds, “Not that I’m complaining.”

“I don’t think I can get it up for thirty years after that.”

“A fun theory to put to the test.” 

“Bruce, c’mon.” Clark does laugh, because of the absurdity of all of this. “I can’t believe he knows my identity too. This is all so new, being honest about who I am with people other than my parents.” He knows he misspoke when Bruce’s sullen eyes turn down to face his own lap. 

He knows parents are a sensitive subject, and he hopes he can bring Bruce to Smallville one day so his parents can bestow to Bruce the homey warmth he had the privilege of growing up with. 

“Alfred raised me since I was a child,” Bruce says in a low voice, thoughtful and reverent. “I owe him my life every single day. There’s no better man in this world to keep your secret.”

He hears the subtext. 

Alfred is more of a father than Bruce has ever known. 

“I’m not doubtful about that,” Clark replies mildly, sitting next to Bruce on the bed. Bruce lets him take his hand and rub a thumb over bruised knuckles. “I can go, if you’d like to recoup.” 

“I appreciate that.” Bruce watches him nod and try to hide his disappointment and then rectifies all that with an invitation. “Come over for dinner tomorrow night.”

Clark perks up.

“You sure?” 

Bruce smiles lightly.

“Batman is always sure.” 

That third person bit he does sometimes is always so uncharacteristically silly, he can’t help but grin.

Clark leans in for a chaste kiss, happiness rippling through every atom by the time he’s pulling away. Every time Bruce lets him do something so intimate and special, he feels such gratitude. 

“Don’t get too comfortable without me.” 

Bruce pushes his nose against Clark’s neck, acting more affectionate than he ever has, which has Clark all kinds of flustered. “Impossible,” Bruce whispers, inaudible to anyone without Clark’s super hearing. “Go before I change my mind.”

“Dinner,” Clark agrees, kissing him hard one more time. Heck, he’s never been able to keep his hands off of someone like this. Lana Lang in high school might’ve given Bruce a run for his money a couple of weeks ago but that was a flame which faded fast. Every breath of air he breathes in the vicinity of Bruce feels like it must be some sort of pheromone toxin. “Tomorrow.” 

Zipping out of Bruce’s bedroom, Clark can feel himself being watched as he goes.

Until he’s a blip in the sky

The next night, he knocks at the front door of Wayne Manor at seven sharp.

Alfred answers instantly, expecting him.

“Master Kent.”

“Master Pennyworth! Hi!”

Alfred’s lips tug up in the semblance of a smile and he shakes his head, good-humored in contrast to his following words. 

“No, sir.”

“Sorry.” 

“That’s quite alright. Master Bruce is waiting in the dining room.” 

The first sight of it nearly sends Clark into shock; the dining table is the length of a dance studio, with the room itself stretching wide beyond that. If he hadn’t immediately taken in the two plates closely adjacent to each other at the end of the table, he would’ve feared an awkward movie moment to ensue with both of them a mile apart at opposite ends of the table. Luckily, that isn’t the case here. Bruce is pouring them both wine, oddly, from separate bottles. One without a label. It’s subtle, but to someone who knows Bruce like Clark does, his eyes glinting when he sees him makes his heart soar. Clark swoops in for a kiss on the cheek before sitting down. 

“Talked to The Flash today, got some interesting news on that,” Clark tells him swiftly, vibrating with excitement, taking in the dark purple liquid in his wine glass. “What’s that you got there?” 

“For me, wine. For you, magic wine.”

Clark nearly chokes. 

“Magic wine—how.” 

“I have a friend,” Bruce says succinctly. “She taught me all there is to know about escape artistry.” He pauses. “Smoke bombs are pretty much it.” Clark chuckles, picking up the wine. 

“Magic wine, huh. It’s not a parlor trick?”

“She tells me it works on otherworlders.” 

“Suddenly you know a lot of those.” 

He’ll have to ask to meet all of Bruce’s friends soon. 

Clark swishes around the liquid, staring into its dark cranberry depths, almost nervous, yet mostly honored Bruce would go out of his way to get this for their dinner together. 

“You don’t have to drink it, Clark. I don’t want to pressure you.”

“Trust me, I’ve dreamed about a moment like this. I’ve just—I have never been drunk.” Bruce smiles at that, and Clark takes a sip, surprised at the sweet tones to its otherwise earthy flavor. 

“You might be disappointed. You’re not going to get hammered on magic Cabernet Sauvignon.” Bruce grunts into his own generous glass of wine. “I don’t care how good Zatanna is at her job.” 

Clark finishes his glass and pours himself another.

Bruce cocks a brow. 

“What. We both wanna see if there’s results right?”

“You’d suck in a hazing.” 

Clark laughs, and says, “Since the fight with Ivy, I’ve been corresponding with The Flash a bit, and he and I have been talking about maybe starting up a network of some kind. With any other higher powered beings on the planet, linking up with them, to see if we can all communicate.” 

“You want to create an army?” Bruce mumbles.

“No, obviously not! But say, I’m unavailable, and you’re up against another enemy with powers like Silver Banshee’s . You can have a way to reach out to the Flash, or you know, Zatanna.” 

“Zatanna is a free spirit,” Bruce informs. “And so am I.”

“I understand that. You can communicate that to everyone.”

Bruce’s lip curls up, annoyed by all this.

“Are they all going to be…friendly?” 

He talks like he’d rather have them all be rude.

Maybe he does want that instead. 

“Nobody’s asking to be your friend.” Clark quickly blankets his hand over Bruce’s on the dining table. “Though obviously being your friend is a privilege, and um, you’re a wonderful person.” 

“My teeth are rotting from all this.”

At that remark, Alfred enters the room with dinner. 

He lays out a select array of dishes: the main course being Bistecca Fiorentina, and appetizers including seasoned potatoes, asparagus, some type of savory soup making Clark’s mouth water.

Bruce is already digging, waiting until he swallows to speak. 

“Thank you, Alfred.” 

Clark nods in jubilant agreement. 

“Yeah, Alfred, this looks fantastic, thanks!”

“Let me know when you’re ready for dessert, sirs,” Alfred utters, slowly exiting the room with an exhausted yet satisfied aura. 

“He’s happy to be serving a regular guest,” Bruce tells him.

Is he?

“He’s kind of an unreadable guy,” Clark observes, blowing on a spoonful of soup. It smells like home during the autumn season. Broth his mother would bring when he was sick, but elevated. 

“Where do you think I get it from?” 

Clark snorts, considering something. 

“Anyway, even just having our own cellular network of sorts to talk to these people might be a good idea. The Flash mentioned a base but I said that was unlikely. Seemed like a pretty big step,” Clark lets out a hoarse chuckle, feeling a little awkward, as if he’s pitching to Batman.

And, really, he is.

“I’ll think about it,” Bruce answers, not paying full attention to him. It’s as good as a ‘yes’ so Clark reaches over and thumbs over the skin of his hand before digging into the rest of the meal.

He can’t tell if it’s the soup or wine warming his stomach up. 

Bruce sighs at the foot of the grand staircase, balancing on his crutch. 

“I’ll fly you upstairs,” Clark offers chipperly.

“Don’t touch me.”

“You’re mean.”

“And you're drunk.”

“Hmm, your fault,” Clark croons, leaning a gentle amount of weight against Bruce, giggling when Bruce almost sways over. “I’m not dr—I have —had two glasses at the most, okay?”

“For the most sober man on the planet, that’s inconceivable levels of intoxication,” Bruce smirks at him, slowly lifting himself up the stairs. “I need the exercise. My legs have lost some muscle.” 

“I know how I could help you stretch them out,” Clark whispers under his breath.

“You’re a menace.”

“Shouldn’t have gotten all that magic wine if you wanted me not to be.” 

When Bruce reaches the top of the stairs, he finally allows Clark to slip an arm under his, and plant searching kisses all along his shoulders and neck. He traverses them both to his bedroom.

“I didn’t know you’d be a horny drunk,” Bruce admits, amused, closing the door to his room to give them privacy. Clark can’t restrain himself. He feels alight with need, warm and fuzzy like his head is in the clouds on a summer day yet with so much more feeling. No heavy thoughts. 

He scoops Bruce up in his arms, floats him up off the floor and tenderly lays him down on the bed. He gets overexcited holding him down and peppering kisses all over his body, rucking up his shirt with his teeth and biting at the quivering flesh of his stomach. One nibble to his side draws out a yelp. He can’t stop grinning when Bruce begins to swat at him like an irritated cat. 

“We’re not allowed to do much yet,” Bruce reminds him, already sounding out of breath as he keeps Clark at bay with nothing but a stern look. “Not that you’re making it easy.”

Clark grinds his erection down against Bruce’s, nipping at his bottom lip. Not hard at all, but with Clark’s strength, blood blooms bright red just under the surface. Bruce rubs at his mouth.

“Christ,” Bruce utters, his usually impenetrable will snapping in half. “Maybe we—mmm.” Clark disappears into his neck, tasting every inch he hasn’t already. He can’t get enough.

“I’ll suck you off. Please, please, please.” Clark plies him with more kisses, wet and demanding, with the full weight of his body keeping him pinned to the bed. He doesn’t use this kind of language normally, but he feels loose; uninhibited; “I’ve missed your big cock in my mouth.” 

Bruce’s hips jolt up at that, and arousal flushes across his body visibly. 

“I’m going to have to give Zatanna a generous tip next time I stock up.” 

Clark nibbles down his neck again, too overwhelmed with the love he feels to stop himself from attacking the column like an overactive dog. Bruce chuckles, deep in his throat, luckily endeared. 

Those soft, affectionate noises turn into clipped, desperate moans when Clark gets down past his heaving stomach and to the sizable erection in his pants. Bruce’s hand twists in his hair and it takes Clark no time at all to get him rock hard in his mouth, leaking at the tip, and begging. 

He sucks, licks, holds him inside his throat, gets Bruce worked up right to the sharp edge and then comes to an abrupt stop before ramping it all back up again. Repeats. And repeats. Until he's the only thing that matters in this world, to the man that he loves. The rush is intoxicating. 

He had no plans of edging him tonight but Bruce isn’t telling him to stop, and he can’t help himself when he gets him close. He has to stop, relish the way Bruce’s noises crackle, fall apart. 

And Bruce looks beautiful, torn apart and buzzing with quiet desperation. 

“You’ve always been so pretty like that,” Clark blurts out, letting his hand take over the hard work for a second. He’s not sure how many times he’s nearly sent Bruce over the edge by now. Bruce is somewhere in the space between reality and ecstasy, panting as he tries to focus on what he just said. “I wanna keep you here, just out of your mind like this. So I'm all you’re thinking about.” He knows it’s selfish, and he doesn’t care. This is temporary; Bruce needs the break. 

He needs to not think of all his pain, of anything else.

Just pleasure and heat and Clark and love. 

There’s a cinch in Bruce’s brow, like he’s phasing back towards the edge of reality and Clark can’t have that. He climbs up his body until he’s straddling those thick thighs of his, bending with one hand pressing hard on Bruce’s shoulder so he stays down, the other still wrapped tight around his cock, jerking him furiously. He might be using a little super speed but that’s neither here nor there. With the hand on his shoulder, he inches a thumb across Bruce’s throat, rubbing.

“Eyes on me, Bruce,” he urges. “You don’t have to be anywhere but here.” 

There’s a desperate flare in Bruce’s eyes, like he doesn’t want to let go to this extent. 

And like he can’t help but to.  

Clark nods feverishly, understanding, and getting himself so worked up in turn that he feels his own erection twitch painfully in his trousers at one of the whimpering moans he wrings from Bruce. Clark keeps whispering encouragement, heightened by his own, slick fisting on his cock. 

“That’s it, yeah. Yeah, I’ve gotchu. C’mon.”

Bruce’s heart is jackhammering by the time his head is curling back, bending his knees up, gasping out Clark’s name as he comes all over the knuckles still flinging up and down his spasming dick. Clark stops in his tracks, peeling back when the moans stop sounding relieved.

He’s being swat at again, tiredly. 

Every bone in Bruce’s body is trembling with satiation. 

Clark is revving up to tell him he doesn’t need to reciprocate. He’s still healing after all; it would put too much strain on Bruce’s person especially after giving him an orgasm of that magnitude. 

Sheepishly but quietly proud of himself, he strokes repeatedly through Bruce’s hair, watching him with mounting affection. He opens his mouth to tell him he doesn’t have to worry about—

Bruce doesn’t give him much of a chance, dragging him forward the second he regains a shred of sense, and kisses him over and over again until Clark can’t help but rut against his damp thighs. 

“Pants off,” Bruce demands. “You’re going to sit on my face.”

There is no arguing with that tone. He’s heard it before, when Bruce is in uniform. 

Clark goes beet red.

“I am?”

“Got a problem with that?” Bruce asks, with piercing credence. 

As if anyone in their right mind would want to turn that down.

“Nope. But I’ve never, ehm, done that before,” Clark rambles, licking his lips to the lingering taste of Bruce on his skin. He thinks maybe it is the best position for reciprocation after all, if he’s delicate with Bruce. He nods again and suggests, “You might have to show me the ropes?” 

Bruce watches him disrobe hungrily.

“You’ll get the hang of it,” Bruce promises darkly, pawing at his waist as he carefully walks himself up Bruce’s chest. Bruce flicks his tongue out at his cock while he climbs over him, and Clark nearly topples over, still buzzed from the magic wine and the high of getting Bruce off. 

“Stop that,” he complains, unseriously. 

Bruce gnaws at the flesh of his thigh, hard. He can’t feel it that much due to his powers, but the psychological aspect of the sight is more powerful than the feeling might be. Clark shivers. 

He’s not sure what the etiquette is here, with his hands balanced on Bruce’s headboard, and Bruce’s head comfortably underneath his pelvis on the pillow. He doesn’t need to wrangle with what to do for much longer. Bruce grabs him by his hips and shoves him down so his mouth is buried against the curve of his ass. The sensation is so foreign, wet pressure in a place he’s not used to touching like that, that he almost tips backwards from the feeling. Bruce’s grip is tight, though, and he’s not going anywhere so long as he’s in his hands. Then Bruce’s stubble grazes at the skin of his inner thigh as he licks his way into a swirling, prodding pattern against his rim.

Clark yelps, crashing his forehead into the wall.

Dust snows down on the headboard and he winces with guilt. 

The guilt is quickly wiped away. 

Bruce is too distracted to notice, moaning more than Clark as he eats him out with vigor. However nerve-wracked he was to start, Clark is very much enjoying himself. He’s never gotten as close to the way Kryptonite makes him feel than right now, as if he’s on the verge of blacking out, but so much better. Swaying in and out of heavy, hot sensations that make him go non-verbal. 

He gets lost in it, and he doesn’t know how, but Bruce somehow makes him come with his tongue halfway inside him, and fingernails scraping invisible lines down the back of his thighs. 

It’s unlike any orgasm he’s ever had, and the alcohol has him feeling it for more time than is probably normal or sane. Bruce licks him through every shock, every shudder, scraping his beard over his thigh when he’s spent. Breathing heavily, Clark wilts into place next to Bruce after it all.

“Wow,” he muses airlily. 

Bruce wipes his mouth with the back of his wrist, smiling proudly at the ceiling. 

“I didn’t know how much of a thing that was, like, I knew it was a thing, but—wow.”

“I know a lot of tricks,” Bruce boasts, rolling halfway on top of Clark, grunting from the effort and mild pain. Clark doesn’t insult him by asking him to go back to a more comfortable position.

And selfishly, he wants him to stay exactly where he is. 

“I’d like to see all of them some time.” 

“You will,” Bruce promises. 

“Mm.” 

They drift in and out of a vegetative state, sometimes Bruce twirling his black hair around his finger, sometimes both of them lying as still as statues, their drowsy breathing synching up. 

For once, Clark can barely hear the world over the beat of Bruce’s heart. 

“I’m publishing an article tomorrow,” he murmurs conversationally.

“What about?” Bruce rasps the words against Clark’s forehead. 

“Batman.” Clark glances up at a surprised Bruce, smiling and open when he says, “about how he represents the best of Gotham, how he serves the community’s interests above his own. How the city should support him, because nobody that compassionate, and devoted to peace, deserves to stand alone.” 

Bruce stares at him in awe.

“Sounds like boring journalism,” he teases half a beat later, when he regains his senses. 

“My editor seems to think it has promise.”

“Perry doesn’t know his left foot from his right.”

Clark laughs brightly. 

He knows Bruce wanted this article to begin with, but also knows the man can’t take a compliment about himself in any form. He can’t truly see an outsider’s perspective of Batman. At least, not an outsider that isn’t a rogue mortifyingly afraid for their future and dwindling business. He can’t see that Batman is just as much a symbol of hope than he is for fear. 

“You’ll be surprised how many people agree with Clark Kent,” Clark tells him, kissing his lips long and convincingly.

Bruce strokes over his cheek.

“And if I don’t agree with Clark Kent?”

Clark smirks.

“I heard the guy is pretty persuasive in his writing.” 

Bruce smirks back.

“We’ll see.”