It's not the first time Bruce Wayne has been the target of domestic terrorism, and probably won't be the last, but it sure has been a while. He's graciously considered eccentric, these days, a rare but appreciated tabloid oddity, and it's well known he has no wife or kids at home to tearfully pay out any ransom. And yet the potential is still occasionally too tempting - too much money waiting in the wings, too much chaos in the margins of the way the world is shifting, drawing every freak and lunatic out of the shadows.
He thought, dispassionately looking at the barrel of the fully auto assault rifle in his face, that this sort of shit would never fly in Gotham. Classless and uncreative.
And then the roof of that Chicago hotel dining room had caved in, and the man in front of him had been replaced with a flowing red cape, and Bruce--
--isn't interested in remembering the feeling of something intangible caught between his ribs. Or the feeling of being gently plucked from the entire city after he'd punched someone's face in. Milwaukee. Honestly. Is this midwestern passive aggressive bullshit, he has no idea. Wait here, Superman had said, and then vanished in a sonic boom that had made Bruce rock back slightly on his heels.
He'd better not be on top of the jellybean factory.
Maybe. Clark doesn't often ruminate on the variations on how one thing can be achieved unless it goes wrong, and by all accounts, this went fine. But there is a chance he could have handled that better, and while he's not all that worried about it, it does inspire a quick stop between cleaning up one mess and attending to the other, which is a rude thing to think about Bruce Wayne.
(The clerk, on the borders of Michigan, had been very emphatic, both on beer selection and that Superman can have it for free. Later, Clark will slip a folded piece of paper with some dollars inside, with a little note: keep the change.)
Up in the air, neither bird nor plane, he's set a slightly less breakneck pace, lowering himself as grandly as an invisible elevator direct from heaven. In his hands is a six pack of craft beer, and on his face is a contrite expression. (Sort of.)
At least they're not on a jellybean factory.
"Wasn't sure what's on tap in Gotham." So he went with something expensive.
Anyone approaching from the sky can see the Kent house for miles once it gets darker, but less so on the ground, thanks to snow flurries. Lights glow in alternative gold, green, and red along steep roof angles, posts, windowsills. A wreath affixed to the door is laden with mistletoe, golden cherubs, and red ribbons. In every direction, white blankets the flat farmland, cold and dormant and silent.
It's worse inside. Not the cold. The Christmas.
Competing smells of pine needles, roasted meat, dog, and something deep and rich like rum all permeate the air. Though not comparable to Scandinavian minimalism, the dimensions of the country house are generous enough to have hosted a wake, and hold well for the holidays too, even with a giant tree taking up space in the corner. It all hits you at once, literally in the case of Shelby jumping up for acknowledgement and ear ruffles (tinsel wound through her collar).
By the time it's Bruce Wayne stepping inside, Martha is quick to shove the squirming Collie aside, stern expression immediately reverting to sunshine when she looks back up at Bruce, quick to dust him off of snow and take his coat.
"Am I that replaceable?" is from Clark, who doesn't have a chance to shed his coat before Martha hushes him by bustling between them to pull him into a stranglehold of a hug, and he laughs; "I was talking to the dog, ma."
He'd been, perhaps, 70% convinced that at any point, Bruce might say something like psych and about-face back to Jersey, quietly amused on an increase towards low-key delighted that invitation by way of Martha Kent took effect. Now, there is only a slightly incredulous eyebrow raise passed Martha's head before he reaches out of the range of her embrace to hand off the cardboard bag of presents he'd brought along. You know where these go, surely.
He remembers Martha Kent not as a battered hostage, or a grieving mother at a funeral, not even as someone happy to have her farm back - but as a figure on the ground beneath him, hair fluttering in the blowback from the jet, waving up excitedly at Batman. It's a strange moment to remember and hold so dear, but-- Bruce is a strange man. She went through all that, she knew why Luthor's men had taken her, she knew that the Bat had killed or crippled two dozen people, and she was still smiling at him even as the police ran to her.
So of course he's here. And of course he's seriously contemplated backing out a hundred times, but he's here. For once, he can be honest with himself by thinking that this thing involving Clark isn't for Clark. It's for Martha. And maybe, because of that, a little for himself too, even if he's nervous enough to have to practically scream at himself in his own head not to tense up when she fusses at him for his coat. At least he doesn't seem nervous. Just stoic - or mild, if someone were to feel very forgiving about his 'personality'.
Should he act like himself? (What the fuck is himself?)
Bruce holds the bag he's been handed, staring at it.
This was a terrible idea.
He goes in search of the tree, checking his phone with one hand while he awkwardly tries to arrange items wrapped in brightly-colored paper beneath it alongside objects already placed there. Alfred has sent him another four hundred messages (approximately), suffering through his own anxiety-inducing holiday in England. They are not the kind of unit that does anything besides endure this season in mutual silence these days, but after the world's near-end, Alfred's estranged blood relatives finally managed to cajole him into a visit. Bruce is happy for him. Really.
Clark will find him standing in the living room with a collie sitting on his feet, her furry body pressed tight against his legs and head smushed into his hip, staring up with adoring dog-eyes as Bruce gently rubs the soft fur behind her ears.
Bruce wasn't lying to Diana when he told her I'm barely doing it now. But the real truth is, Batman in his decline can still run dizzying circles around any competition that isn't superhuman - and sometimes, even then. He knows he's slowing down; he feels sometimes like he's watching himself try and move through high gravity, or underwater, his outward reaction time behind what he knows it should be. His awareness of it is the worst part-- in his head he's hitting every mark, ever beat, but his body is a split-second behind.
They still crumble. Men wail, choke, stagger to the ground. Bullets deflect off his armor, even point-blank, and so long as he gets out of the way up close against blades, that's all right, too. For a certain value of all right. It's not like it feels fantastic, and getting shot in the head leaves him disoriented even if he can keep moving through it. BANG. Temporarily deaf, reeling, forcing himself to push through the way his vision turns into waving lines scattered with points of white.
He could have ducked, but there are hostages in the next room, and these walls are thin.
They're up close, going for him with a frantic pace now, having paused under the assumption that a bullet in the skull would keep the demon down. No such luck. An armored hand grips a the shooter's arm and pulls, twisting, tearing humerus from radius inside protesting muscle and sinew. There's a shriek of pain-- he jerks harder, shoves back, knows from the sick sound that he's pushed the bone clean out of the man's arm, and he's a dead weight on top of his accomplice.
More. Pouring in. Where'd they hire this man? This wasn't in his intel.
This isn't like the last time, airlifting Bruce Wayne out of a targetted attack. In a different state, it's the tempo of his heart beat that finds Superman pivoting midflight, breaking the sound barrier, and hovering over the action below. Gotham's night time angles and glitter sprawl out below, and its the panicky rhythm of multiple heart beats that has him stopping to look, vision piercing slanted roofing, red cape billowed in the wind like a single scarlet angel wing.
Does not hesitate. He dives down, feet first, with kind of heavy speed of a cartoon anvil. Through the ceiling, debris obliterated, flooring shattered underfoot as he sticks the landing.
Someone turns their rifle on him, which he grips, and flings them off their feet with a flick of his wrist, expression grim and unforgiving. The weapon is thrown, shattering where it strikes the nearest man angling his way towards the black blur of cape attached to the set of sensory signatures that Clark is all too powerfully aware of.
He has no idea what's happening, but that's normally the case when emergencies involve armed assailants. Tidal waves are simpler.
Edited (alternatively i could just die and never make errors again) 2017-12-24 02:33 (UTC)
But the thing about texting is that even across state borders, Clark can tell what Bruce's heart is up to.
At one point, he lies back and rests the too-fragile cellular device on his sternum and doesn't think about how he got here, just expands his consciousness around the globe, eyes shuttered closed. Listens to tidal movements, to the way certain areas of the earth sound different when quietened under the shadow of the sun's absence, the familiar pulses of people he knows, for better or for worse, whether that's Lois Lane chasing down her taxi or Lex Luthor sitting meditatively behind bars, beneath concrete.
Bruce Wayne is not his constant point of focus, but sometimes, he's the kind of distraction Clark needs.
Of course, right now, he's happy to let the world's fullness fill his mind, a flooding from all sides, so as not to Have Anxiety about a text message. He wants to joke, like, should i arrange for a bat signal? but he doesn't really want to joke either, so he doesn't.
Metropolis is closing its curtains on the day, and the coming of night reminds him of things like logistics, and Batman's favoured hours of activity. Clark picks back up his cellphone, and dials in:
Humans don't have the senses that Kryptonians do. Bruce can't use supersenses to determine where Clark is, what his heart rate is doing, and make a guess about his state of patience based on his breathing. But humans don't have the resources Batman does. So, from afar, he checks in on Gotham's crime forecast, monitors his contacts (in Bludhaven, where his son doesn't know for sure but assumes the old man watches him, in Old Town, where Selina won't speak to him, on the east side, where Kate is as effective as he can be). He checks the observation devices he left in Clark and Lois's apartment. His mother's farmhouse.
There's no response to the text. Clark will be able to tell when Bruce is nearby, getting out of a cab and making the short trek down half a block (traffic; it was quicker to just get out and walk around the corner), and wait by the main door of the building to help a young woman struggling to get into her home with her groceries. He's quiet an unassuming about it, which is the way to go when you're a strange, six-foot-four man approaching a lady out of nowhere. He politely stands away from her unit door holding haphazardly packed bags.
Which would be an uncharitable way to think about it, and Clark's company, seeing as they are on a break, and there are times when Clark Kent (or Wesley Polk, as his latest passport says, because you get very little say in your fake name if you passively refuse to participate) can take a hint and go do some sightseeing on his own. He will return not long after leaving with phone pictures, and something interesting to eat in a couple of recyclable containers, always spicy, sometimes tentacles. There are also times when he doesn't take a hint.
This time isn't about hints. This time is something about a hurricane closing in on the Virgin Islands and a stranded vessel pinwheeling through a temperamental ocean. They are on a break, which doesn't preclude Clark from packing his supersuit.
It's night time, and Bruce's break continues deep into it. It's of a different texture to a restless Gotham, the weighty silence of the mid-west. The scent of the ocean coming in through an open window is ever present in a way that they're starting not to notice it as much, except when the wind shifts and takes it away, and shifts again and brings it back. There are the sounds of clicking insects, the bassline of distant music at some kind of thing happening on the beach down a ways. Maybe other things.
One of them being the sound of the sliding doors of the villa opening.
It's easier to drink too much when he isn't being observably observed (he is aware of the vast depth of potential and probability for being observed regardless of his own observation). Not that he can't drink in front of Clark, and not that he's pretending to be off it entirely, but ostensibly, he is cutting back, and it's easier to soothe his lizard brain and chug too many fingers of vodka and some over the counter diphenhydramine when no one is staring directly at him. It's not several entire bottles of wine and a handful of prescription horse tranquillizers, though. Progress.
He drinks and he goes through files and he reads; when the scrape of a glass door along its track finds him, he's half-watching a newsreel, the volume set very low.
Arthur is having a day. Bruce had wondered if Clark's maritime rescue would overlap; apparently not. Half-watching the television, half-using a laptop. He doesn't close the lid immediately, but after a moment, he does.
It's incredible how quickly a house can fall into disrepair. Even one made generations ago, its foundations and walls stone instead of drywall. He remembers, sometime in the mid-90s, the east wing having to be gutted and refinished, needing an update from the Victorian ages. Walls and windows needed modern insulation to keep up with the rapidly shifting climate, the increasingly bleak storms and increased humidity infringing on even the eastern seaboard's ancient stoicism.
With the right application of funds, a house can be restored even quicker. This will not be a fast remodel, but it won't take ten years. The west wing had the worst of it - the oldest in the first place, the least refurbished since his grandparents' day, with its old bones and questionable roof and the most very flammable antiques stored within.
"There was a mold problem," Bruce says, standing in the taped-up open doorway of a large room, observing all the plastic drop sheets and leftover tools from the day crew. "I noticed about a week before it burned. Someone was booked to come in and look at it the next week. By accident, really. Nobody lived in this part of the house. But a bird got in."
And there is Clark, in normal human clothes, with normal human foot creaks on floorboards that are due to be stripped and replaced. Plaid, denim, accidentally in keeping with his supercolours, and scuffed boots. He has been walking alongside Bruce for the most part, staying in visual range and earshot, and not pretending like he hasn't come here before. And anyway, he'd pick up on the sounds of cameras.
When Bruce pauses at the doorway, Clark moves past him.
His imagination isn't such that he can't picture what it used to look like, what it will look like. Where he draws short is imagining it as any kind of family home and not, like, a heritage building, with velvet ropes and little plaques. Probably some these big rooms were like that more than others.
"What happened?" he asks, tipping a look upwards, then around back at Bruce. Curious, light, not without knowledge that almost any question could find a cold patch in their conversation. "How'd the fire start." Not, like, to the bird, whom he will imagine was set free.
For the third time in a week, in a perfectly sealed chamber beneath the ruins of Wayne Manor, Bruce blearily returns to consciousness and drags in a rough, deep breath. Not quite enough oxygen gets into his system, but he doesn't panic; it's not unlike a very high altitude, and he'll adjust in a minute. A cough as he sits up, tasting of blood. Would be more cause for alarm, but he quickly established that it's just a nosebleed.
He thinks of astronauts training during parabolic flights. Vomit comets. He'll take nosebleeds.
"Also the wrong setting," he grates.
Woof. How'd he end up on the floor? Good thing they put in gym flooring instead of leaving it bare metal. Bruce grabs the edge of the computer table. Readings flicker across multiple screens, and all the various tanks, generators, and control valves along the far wall sit and blink their operation status lights like nothing at all is going on.
He's there, suddenly, although it was probably the collapse that summoned Clark faster than his name. Arms around Bruce to help him up all the way onto his feet. For a second, though, it probably registers as some guy helping him up, even if that some guy is particularly strong—just not a demigod.
"Sorry," he huffs, keeping his hands on Bruce, a not very dignified clenching onto his shirt as if that would stand a chance of directing another fall than anything else. "I tried catching you and—"
Bruce is bleeding from his nose and they are fucking with dangerous forces with themselves as guineapigs, but Clark's helpless smile breaks unstoppably across his face. At least he doesn't laugh.
The steady metronome of Bruce Wayne's heartbeat is the kind to set clocks by. Even, measured, solid. When it speeds up to send blood pumping quicker through his body, it does so with the grace of a luxury car changing gears; when it slows at rest, or slows even further during sleep, it shifts down and down but keeps that constant, perfectly measured beat.
Panic is unthinkable. He has looked down horror beyond imagination and found himself capable of severing the emotional from the physical time and time again. Even if his mind is scrambled, his heart will remain as it should. Thunk, thunk. A horse galloping in slow-motion.
Until it isn't. A grey dawn, sun barely making a dent in low cloud cover. Bruce only got to bed an hour or so ago - an early evening, but worth it, both to rest after a long stretch of painstaking tinkering, and to indulge in lying curled together with Clark's warmly radiating body. The Kryptonian is too heavy and too hot and Bruce likes all of it, likes being caged in so securely, and having every ache and shiver chased away.
He feels like he's sprinting. He feels like he's suffocating. A wild and out of control tailspin bursting into life from nowhere. Still asleep, he struggles to draw in a deep breath.
Clark is hardly sleeping. 'Meditating' is probably a good enough kind of description of this state of half-asleep, aware of almost everything save for time, which slips by like sand in glass. Bruce is a very meditative person to sleep by, to rest by, with his constant heart beat, and his stillness. Clark sinks in and out of consciousness, like floating on water.
So when irregular breathing and a pounding heart start up, Clark lifts his head, looks down at Bruce in their comfortable tangle, quizzical concern at first. He has an arm pinned ("pinned") beneath Bruce's head and he keeps that still while his other hovers over the other man's chest.
Still asleep. Dreaming.
Going gently, then, his hand comes up to card through grey-streaked dark hair, Clark lowering his head to nose at Bruce's hairline. "Bruce," he says, all quiet baritone. Quiet, but he can do a thing with his voice that makes him hard to ignore. A subtle rattle at the glass panes of consciousness. "You're having a nightmare." Another gentle sweeping of his hand through his hair. "Wake up."
The rehabilitation of Wayne Manor is not a quiet affair. The overgrown road to the main gate has to be cleared off and repaved before a few of the crucial vehicles can even approach - new material hauled in, destroyed material hauled out - traffic in the area shoots up from basically nothing to a brisk clip of construction workers and artisans. There will be a brief mention of it in the local county paper, but not yet, as it doesn't take something so obvious to lure in the driver of the Payne's grey 2001 Porsche 911 parked beside a truck full of drywall slabs.
He loiters for a while near the formal entrance, but deviates. There's a more homey entry near the primary kitchens, and the way he pushes the door open, steps over plastic sheeting to protect surviving heavy tile, elbow shifting as though anticipating a long-gone entryway table speaks more to identity than if he'd been wearing a nametag.
Richard Grayson doesn't look anything like Bruce Wayne. His build is different, bones arranged in dissimilar angles and lengths, half a foot missing from both wingspan and height, his skin is a rich olive that defies the inherent pasty paleness of New Jersey, his hair's a different brown, his eyes are bright blue, the cheekbones are all wrong. Richard Grayson doesn't look anything like Bruce Wayne, except in all the ways he could be cloned from him. He moves like Bruce. He stands still like Bruce. The coat he's wearing, mature and timeless, is the kind of garment only bought because someone grew up watching their role models wear them. The look he gives the bespectacled stranger standing in the back of the parlor, quick and lancing and gone before it's even manifested, is identical to how Bruce looks at strangers.
"Don't tell me Alfred hired his own Alfred, finally."
Unlike Bruce, his wary suspicion manages to sound genuine in its tentative friendliness. (Because it is.)
Tentative friendliness matched for the same. A few subtle things occur, and several of them automatic: a subtle but quizzical headtip, like Clark doesn't know exactly who he's talking to, and a quick once over, as if he didn't already watch Dick Grayson's approach through the walls, and move to anticipate the redirection through the side door. The next thing that occurs is a thought: why bother with that?
Probably not to come across as a lunatic immediately, or something. He smiles, though, having already started through this exchange, and moves into the room properly, indistinct in shades of blue, denim on grey. "I'm, uh. I'm a friend of Bruce's," seems like the most relevant identifier, followed by, "Clark," and he moves to offer a hand out.
A memorable evening is much slower to fade than bruises and bitemarks on Kryptonian skin. Some of them would have taken longer to show up properly than they gave it. Others, blotchy and dark on his throat and his chest, show like dark wine stains and then lift away like a slow time lapse once they permit yellow sun to spill into the room, in slow and gradual increments.
Not before a long and hot shower, with some very light fooling around, and some irresponsible phone pictures, the sharp corner of Clark's smile just in frame. What are they going to do with those, look at them fondly? Well, maybe. Clark doesn't know. It's something he's always liked doing, a little, for the right people, the process in itself more interesting than the artefact. But then the sun, and the oddly peaceful transition of mortal atomic structures taking on a different nature.
He also had not bitten Bruce back for that one comment, just levelled him with a look that promised to remember it for next time.
And now here they are. It's next time.
Not the lamp, anyway, just ordinary cool light fixtures in Bruce's room. The bed is smooth and undisrupted from the last time it was made, until Bruce is deposited backwards onto it, a smiley Kryptonian already on him, chasing a kiss. There's no surprises tonight—at least not immediately, with the twin sets of handcuffs held by their connecting chain in one of Clark's hands. They're not really fuzzy, but formed of soft adjustable but unyielding leather.
The fuzzy ones, you can break out of, and that's probably the only reason Clark didn't get them as a joke. Also: he's not sure Bruce would humour him that much. Only this much. His other hand dips beneath Bruce's shirt, and his thumb finds that dip near his waist that Bruce's hand kept finding that one time. Long memories all round, today.
Bruce watches marks fade, feels the way Clark's muscle density shifts back to that strange, unquantifiable quality that seems both weightless and more solid than iron. He watches Clark watching him, wondering what it feels like to have his extreme senses return, to hear Bruce's heartbeat again, and expand to find the rest of the world.
(Can you blame a guy, for that one comment. Both because it's funny - will Clark find it more erotic now, when he fucks Bruce three time over the course of an evening, knowing just how exhausting it is, and how badly Bruce must want him to disregard that? - and for the extraction of that selfsame silent promise. He can be so careful with Clark, in everything but the depth of his wanting.)
"Do you have a problem with my hands on you?" is manufactured attitude, settling back on the pillows and giving him an arch look. It doesn't disguise the heat that's spreading through him, or the way he shifts subtly up into Clark's touch. He trails his own fingers along Clark's arm from his wrist up to his shoulder, drawing circles on the joint.
It is raining hard outside, casting Metropolis into bleak shades. This might have been gloomy, if not for where they are. The shared apartment of Lois Lane and Clark Kent is raw bricked, tastefully decorated, lit up in lamps that give off cosy golden glows, and all the rain can do about it is rail against the windows which only serves to provide a nice ambient susurrus. There's been food, with empty dishes discarded on the low coffee table: crispily seared cubed tofu, a medley of carefully sliced vegetables, brown rice rescued by vegetable stock, some kind of syrupy soy sauce based mixture cooked down and stirred through, the lingering kick of chili flakes.
It hadn't taken long to cook, with the rice being the biggest drag. Time enough to chat while savoury smells filled the apartment. (At one stage, Clark reflexively requesting Bruce get him a beer out of the fridge, mentally pausing over it, filing it away for another time.) Chilling on the couch is briefly interrupted by truly blood curdling parrot screams from across the living room, and so Clark is returning to sit back down, now holding a tropical coloured bird in his hands. (Comfortable clothes stopping short of being literally pyjamas, well-worn jeans, socks, no glasses.)
He sits with a leg folded under him, cupping his hand over Woodstock's head and smiling as the bird ducks beneath it, climbs around to pulling himself on top of knuckles that do not redden under little dinosaur claws.
When he speaks, Bruce could expect him to say any number of things that would suit their homebody date night, something about the bird or asking him how dinner was or picking up some past thread of conversation, but what it is instead is, "Have you thought about it more?" which is so open-ended as to be strategic, like he'd been wanting to ask it for a little while now. Clark clarifies, "The last dream you had."
Once in a while, it still strikes Bruce as strange that Clark wants to do these normal things with him. He doesn't regard himself as someone who makes normalcy appealing, or worth the investment of time; boring nothingness in between all his extremes, whose lapses over coffee or being fussed at by Alfred over dinner are things to be grudgingly tolerated. But this is... easy, enjoyment, acceptance.
Clark makes him feel like a real person.
Woodstock is a menace. Bruce is unreasonably fond of the little bird, but plenty happy to not have to live with pterodactyl shrieks. This is the real benefit of their triad offshoot situation. He does not envy Lois her burden of bearing the full brunt of cohabitated domesticity and all its bird dander trappings, even though there's a corpse of a vicious Scrabble game on the desk by the window, their passion overfloweth.
Hm. Bruce flicks the longest feather in Bird Kent's tail, offers a very shallow smile at the shimmy he gets in response. Thinks, couldn't you have just asked about the beer.
"Yes and no," he says after a little while. "It's... I have to think about it, to record the details. And then after that, difficult to put out of my mind. But I have to."
The penthouse has become the place for this, despite Bruce having once pitched the mobile versatility of the device. But the variables here are smaller. There is no absent other resident to work around, no sprawling laboratory to distract. Windows that can be shuttered. An en suite whose doors can be left open to absorb the same radiation that emanates from the lamp set up on the bedside table. Washing everything in simulated firelight; dark curtains turned bloody, white sheets tinted a pleasant grapefruit. Skin warmed.
Human eyes won't really adjust, but human brains will. Automatically white balancing, and growing used to the difference.
"What's your favorite color?"
On the bed, Bruce sits up beside him. Making out for the duration of the light taking hold is a different dynamic than pushing him until it seems to stabilize. Sweeter. Bruce his been distracting him for a while, running his hands over Clark's chest, letting the bite of his nails increase steadily. Unlike the bulk of their encounters, they've actually talked about the set-up of this one. A bit. Still miles away from what would pass muster for a safe sane and consensual checklist, but everyone's got their kinks.
As Clark answers - whatever it may be - he clips a clothespin onto one nipple (where the fuck did he get that), and observes the reaction.
There are a lot of benefits to the relocation. Of them all, what Clark likes is, perversely, having a place for this at all. Neutral territory. (One day, they'll do some training.)
He also likes: making out, particularly in the lead up to now. Sitting around and waiting is its own kind of tension build, and he's not sure he needs anymore of that right now. Would prefer to be distracted by warm kisses and the odd rake of blunt nails over his skin, than to be distracted by his brain paranoidly circling around each little change as his strength diminished, as his senses dulled. The potential for nervous energy build is expended in languid kisses, his hands feeling along all the familiar territory of Bruce's chest, shoulders, receiving attention in turn.
Slowly, that's how he knows, how they both know, when these touches leave subtle little marks on his skin, quick to fade, hard to discern in the red wash of light, but there if you're looking for it. Feeling for it, in Clark's case.
Anyway. Favourite colour. Clark has a ready answer, where the only pause is just clocking that he was asked it at all before he says, "Blue," because obviously, and then there's that pinch of sensation, and the reaction is a hitch in breathing, a tension that ripples up along his spine as he glances down. Where the fuck did he get that, both just now and in general. Billionaires don't hang up clothes.
"Ow," he reports, like they're still taking notes, trace humour. "Yours is black."
At first, anyway. For a few confusing, smoke-filled minutes, at least until the dust has a chance to settle. Literally. Figuratively, it's still taking its sweet time, confusing clouds of it. They separate. Clark tells Lois everything in the halting but truthful way way he goes about telling people he loves everything. He marvels at her propensity to stare directly into the storm of confusing nonsense and incorporate it into her sense of how anything is meant to be. He's so lucky. Every other night, Clark slips into sleep-like meditation in Lois' arms, and listens out for that one solid heartbeat.
He's fairly certain that the whorling fine particles of their re-entry into this dimension are more or less calm when he sends Bruce a little video of Woodstock fighting his indestructible knuckles and chirping happily. There are words, too, along with these hieroglyphics, but engagement feels low compared to their odd propensity to hit a vein on banter. Lois had been the one to say it: give him a minute.
But bat minutes move slower than super ones.
It's the report that Bruce is not feeling well that draws Clark in. First, hidden above Gotham cloud cover to listen in and watch like the world's most handsome satellite, before he drops down. The speed of it almost entirely dries him of hazy sky-rain, but his landing is gentle, near-silent. He knows the way, how to get in from the outside, following Bruce's biometrics like they're a homing beacon.
Comical: a swap from the dreaded Bat of Gotham to some guy in a spaceship crew jumpsuit, ducking away to avoid being recognized. Fortunately, Superman is always Superman. Whiplash lessened, at first, by the necessity of scrambling back to work. Back in time. And they did it, because they work well together. (Even when they didn't, it had been as if choreographed. A destructive, crippling ballet.)
Earthbound again. Investigations, bird videos, moving Alfred's teacups, Diana. Guarded again. More than once, more than a dozen times, he's almost said something.
But what he saw of her was a violation. She is not ready to show him her past, or let him see her smile so freely. Diana won't shove him into a pond and kiss him, she won't let him pull her hair back and see if something's burned her; the guilt burns edges of purposeful resilience in him and touches other things, too, like Clark's horrible sadness at being parted from Lois. Bruce feels contagious, like the hollow feeling and taste of ash in his mouth will spread. He knows better, mostly— he believes Clark (and Lois, for that matter), and he is beyond insisting that they shouldn't.
He's not beyond pain. Apparently. It's very annoying.
Human ears don't catch the Kryptonian sonic boom from all the way out there, but the cave's airspace monitors do, and isn't it sweet how the blip sounds just as familiar.
There's a weird object out here that Clark wants to take a closer look at, so he does. Disembarking from the craft out here is kind of a pain in the ass, he knows, and he doesn't do it for no good reason—but when he finds a good reason, it's an opportunity he politely requests to take.
And so he suits up, leaves, the painful sting of deeply cold vacuum doing nothing but prickling his senses, some, freezing traces of moisture at the corners of his mouth, his eyes, blinked away. It is odd to fly out here, not as fun as atmospheric flight, but odd doesn't mean bad. He is more conscious of the way he kind of spatially clips himself around with his own self-possessed centre of gravity, different to Diana's leaps, glides, wind-riding, but still assumes a sort of reflexively aerodynamic stance as he drifts closer to the thing they found.
The thing is a shell, a piece of a shell, drifting, slowly turning. Clark lets it spin like so, cautious, but they hadn't picked up on anything radioactive, so he eventually stops its movement by gripping onto a jagged metal edge.
"Space craft," he confirms, over comms. "A piece of it. Definitely Kryptonian."
The thing Bruce finds the weirdest, in this situation that might drive someone else to the brink of sanity with its improbability, is that Clark can talk in a vacuum. He's accepted that the Kryptonian doesn't need to breathe - biological differences, radiation reactions, subatomic pressure stabilization, fine - but sound making it into their communicators is fucking wild. If only he'd thought to take notes about sound, when they were working on the lamp.
Well. Anyway.
"What identifies it?"
A better question than How can you tell?, because he believes that if Clark says it's Kryptonian, then it is. But he's curious. Sitting back in the small control bridge of the ship, watching his slightly distorted figure parts through the multiple layers of thick silica glass, and on a digital map of movement. Out of the action, and occasionally stir-crazy.
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It's not the first time Bruce Wayne has been the target of domestic terrorism, and probably won't be the last, but it sure has been a while. He's graciously considered eccentric, these days, a rare but appreciated tabloid oddity, and it's well known he has no wife or kids at home to tearfully pay out any ransom. And yet the potential is still occasionally too tempting - too much money waiting in the wings, too much chaos in the margins of the way the world is shifting, drawing every freak and lunatic out of the shadows.
He thought, dispassionately looking at the barrel of the fully auto assault rifle in his face, that this sort of shit would never fly in Gotham. Classless and uncreative.
And then the roof of that Chicago hotel dining room had caved in, and the man in front of him had been replaced with a flowing red cape, and Bruce--
--isn't interested in remembering the feeling of something intangible caught between his ribs. Or the feeling of being gently plucked from the entire city after he'd punched someone's face in. Milwaukee. Honestly. Is this midwestern passive aggressive bullshit, he has no idea. Wait here, Superman had said, and then vanished in a sonic boom that had made Bruce rock back slightly on his heels.
He'd better not be on top of the jellybean factory.
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Maybe. Clark doesn't often ruminate on the variations on how one thing can be achieved unless it goes wrong, and by all accounts, this went fine. But there is a chance he could have handled that better, and while he's not all that worried about it, it does inspire a quick stop between cleaning up one mess and attending to the other, which is a rude thing to think about Bruce Wayne.
(The clerk, on the borders of Michigan, had been very emphatic, both on beer selection and that Superman can have it for free. Later, Clark will slip a folded piece of paper with some dollars inside, with a little note: keep the change.)
Up in the air, neither bird nor plane, he's set a slightly less breakneck pace, lowering himself as grandly as an invisible elevator direct from heaven. In his hands is a six pack of craft beer, and on his face is a contrite expression. (Sort of.)
At least they're not on a jellybean factory.
"Wasn't sure what's on tap in Gotham." So he went with something expensive.
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christmas in kansas.
It's worse inside. Not the cold. The Christmas.
Competing smells of pine needles, roasted meat, dog, and something deep and rich like rum all permeate the air. Though not comparable to Scandinavian minimalism, the dimensions of the country house are generous enough to have hosted a wake, and hold well for the holidays too, even with a giant tree taking up space in the corner. It all hits you at once, literally in the case of Shelby jumping up for acknowledgement and ear ruffles (tinsel wound through her collar).
By the time it's Bruce Wayne stepping inside, Martha is quick to shove the squirming Collie aside, stern expression immediately reverting to sunshine when she looks back up at Bruce, quick to dust him off of snow and take his coat.
"Am I that replaceable?" is from Clark, who doesn't have a chance to shed his coat before Martha hushes him by bustling between them to pull him into a stranglehold of a hug, and he laughs; "I was talking to the dog, ma."
He'd been, perhaps, 70% convinced that at any point, Bruce might say something like psych and about-face back to Jersey, quietly amused on an increase towards low-key delighted that invitation by way of Martha Kent took effect. Now, there is only a slightly incredulous eyebrow raise passed Martha's head before he reaches out of the range of her embrace to hand off the cardboard bag of presents he'd brought along. You know where these go, surely.
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So of course he's here. And of course he's seriously contemplated backing out a hundred times, but he's here. For once, he can be honest with himself by thinking that this thing involving Clark isn't for Clark. It's for Martha. And maybe, because of that, a little for himself too, even if he's nervous enough to have to practically scream at himself in his own head not to tense up when she fusses at him for his coat. At least he doesn't seem nervous. Just stoic - or mild, if someone were to feel very forgiving about his 'personality'.
Should he act like himself? (What the fuck is himself?)
Bruce holds the bag he's been handed, staring at it.
This was a terrible idea.
He goes in search of the tree, checking his phone with one hand while he awkwardly tries to arrange items wrapped in brightly-colored paper beneath it alongside objects already placed there. Alfred has sent him another four hundred messages (approximately), suffering through his own anxiety-inducing holiday in England. They are not the kind of unit that does anything besides endure this season in mutual silence these days, but after the world's near-end, Alfred's estranged blood relatives finally managed to cajole him into a visit. Bruce is happy for him. Really.
Clark will find him standing in the living room with a collie sitting on his feet, her furry body pressed tight against his legs and head smushed into his hip, staring up with adoring dog-eyes as Bruce gently rubs the soft fur behind her ears.
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the coldest city
They still crumble. Men wail, choke, stagger to the ground. Bullets deflect off his armor, even point-blank, and so long as he gets out of the way up close against blades, that's all right, too. For a certain value of all right. It's not like it feels fantastic, and getting shot in the head leaves him disoriented even if he can keep moving through it. BANG. Temporarily deaf, reeling, forcing himself to push through the way his vision turns into waving lines scattered with points of white.
He could have ducked, but there are hostages in the next room, and these walls are thin.
They're up close, going for him with a frantic pace now, having paused under the assumption that a bullet in the skull would keep the demon down. No such luck. An armored hand grips a the shooter's arm and pulls, twisting, tearing humerus from radius inside protesting muscle and sinew. There's a shriek of pain-- he jerks harder, shoves back, knows from the sick sound that he's pushed the bone clean out of the man's arm, and he's a dead weight on top of his accomplice.
More. Pouring in. Where'd they hire this man? This wasn't in his intel.
Hm. The Bat smiles to himself.
That's fine.
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Does not hesitate. He dives down, feet first, with kind of heavy speed of a cartoon anvil. Through the ceiling, debris obliterated, flooring shattered underfoot as he sticks the landing.
Someone turns their rifle on him, which he grips, and flings them off their feet with a flick of his wrist, expression grim and unforgiving. The weapon is thrown, shattering where it strikes the nearest man angling his way towards the black blur of cape attached to the set of sensory signatures that Clark is all too powerfully aware of.
He has no idea what's happening, but that's normally the case when emergencies involve armed assailants. Tidal waves are simpler.
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At one point, he lies back and rests the too-fragile cellular device on his sternum and doesn't think about how he got here, just expands his consciousness around the globe, eyes shuttered closed. Listens to tidal movements, to the way certain areas of the earth sound different when quietened under the shadow of the sun's absence, the familiar pulses of people he knows, for better or for worse, whether that's Lois Lane chasing down her taxi or Lex Luthor sitting meditatively behind bars, beneath concrete.
Bruce Wayne is not his constant point of focus, but sometimes, he's the kind of distraction Clark needs.
Of course, right now, he's happy to let the world's fullness fill his mind, a flooding from all sides, so as not to Have Anxiety about a text message. He wants to joke, like, should i arrange for a bat signal? but he doesn't really want to joke either, so he doesn't.
Metropolis is closing its curtains on the day, and the coming of night reminds him of things like logistics, and Batman's favoured hours of activity. Clark picks back up his cellphone, and dials in:
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There's no response to the text. Clark will be able to tell when Bruce is nearby, getting out of a cab and making the short trek down half a block (traffic; it was quicker to just get out and walk around the corner), and wait by the main door of the building to help a young woman struggling to get into her home with her groceries. He's quiet an unassuming about it, which is the way to go when you're a strange, six-foot-four man approaching a lady out of nowhere. He politely stands away from her unit door holding haphazardly packed bags.
Anyway.
Knock knock.
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all icons are icon terrorism
what a stupid face
vacation special.
Which would be an uncharitable way to think about it, and Clark's company, seeing as they are on a break, and there are times when Clark Kent (or Wesley Polk, as his latest passport says, because you get very little say in your fake name if you passively refuse to participate) can take a hint and go do some sightseeing on his own. He will return not long after leaving with phone pictures, and something interesting to eat in a couple of recyclable containers, always spicy, sometimes tentacles. There are also times when he doesn't take a hint.
This time isn't about hints. This time is something about a hurricane closing in on the Virgin Islands and a stranded vessel pinwheeling through a temperamental ocean. They are on a break, which doesn't preclude Clark from packing his supersuit.
It's night time, and Bruce's break continues deep into it. It's of a different texture to a restless Gotham, the weighty silence of the mid-west. The scent of the ocean coming in through an open window is ever present in a way that they're starting not to notice it as much, except when the wind shifts and takes it away, and shifts again and brings it back. There are the sounds of clicking insects, the bassline of distant music at some kind of thing happening on the beach down a ways. Maybe other things.
One of them being the sound of the sliding doors of the villa opening.
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It's easier to drink too much when he isn't being observably observed (he is aware of the vast depth of potential and probability for being observed regardless of his own observation). Not that he can't drink in front of Clark, and not that he's pretending to be off it entirely, but ostensibly, he is cutting back, and it's easier to soothe his lizard brain and chug too many fingers of vodka and some over the counter diphenhydramine when no one is staring directly at him. It's not several entire bottles of wine and a handful of prescription horse tranquillizers, though. Progress.
He drinks and he goes through files and he reads; when the scrape of a glass door along its track finds him, he's half-watching a newsreel, the volume set very low.
Arthur is having a day. Bruce had wondered if Clark's maritime rescue would overlap; apparently not. Half-watching the television, half-using a laptop. He doesn't close the lid immediately, but after a moment, he does.
"Good night?" Or bad night?
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With the right application of funds, a house can be restored even quicker. This will not be a fast remodel, but it won't take ten years. The west wing had the worst of it - the oldest in the first place, the least refurbished since his grandparents' day, with its old bones and questionable roof and the most very flammable antiques stored within.
"There was a mold problem," Bruce says, standing in the taped-up open doorway of a large room, observing all the plastic drop sheets and leftover tools from the day crew. "I noticed about a week before it burned. Someone was booked to come in and look at it the next week. By accident, really. Nobody lived in this part of the house. But a bird got in."
So I looked.
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When Bruce pauses at the doorway, Clark moves past him.
His imagination isn't such that he can't picture what it used to look like, what it will look like. Where he draws short is imagining it as any kind of family home and not, like, a heritage building, with velvet ropes and little plaques. Probably some these big rooms were like that more than others.
"What happened?" he asks, tipping a look upwards, then around back at Bruce. Curious, light, not without knowledge that almost any question could find a cold patch in their conversation. "How'd the fire start." Not, like, to the bird, whom he will imagine was set free.
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science ✨
He thinks of astronauts training during parabolic flights. Vomit comets. He'll take nosebleeds.
"Also the wrong setting," he grates.
Woof. How'd he end up on the floor? Good thing they put in gym flooring instead of leaving it bare metal. Bruce grabs the edge of the computer table. Readings flicker across multiple screens, and all the various tanks, generators, and control valves along the far wall sit and blink their operation status lights like nothing at all is going on.
"Clark?"
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"Sorry," he huffs, keeping his hands on Bruce, a not very dignified clenching onto his shirt as if that would stand a chance of directing another fall than anything else. "I tried catching you and—"
Bruce is bleeding from his nose and they are fucking with dangerous forces with themselves as guineapigs, but Clark's helpless smile breaks unstoppably across his face. At least he doesn't laugh.
Yet.
"You're heavy. Are you okay?"
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Panic is unthinkable. He has looked down horror beyond imagination and found himself capable of severing the emotional from the physical time and time again. Even if his mind is scrambled, his heart will remain as it should. Thunk, thunk. A horse galloping in slow-motion.
Until it isn't. A grey dawn, sun barely making a dent in low cloud cover. Bruce only got to bed an hour or so ago - an early evening, but worth it, both to rest after a long stretch of painstaking tinkering, and to indulge in lying curled together with Clark's warmly radiating body. The Kryptonian is too heavy and too hot and Bruce likes all of it, likes being caged in so securely, and having every ache and shiver chased away.
He feels like he's sprinting. He feels like he's suffocating. A wild and out of control tailspin bursting into life from nowhere. Still asleep, he struggles to draw in a deep breath.
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So when irregular breathing and a pounding heart start up, Clark lifts his head, looks down at Bruce in their comfortable tangle, quizzical concern at first. He has an arm pinned ("pinned") beneath Bruce's head and he keeps that still while his other hovers over the other man's chest.
Still asleep. Dreaming.
Going gently, then, his hand comes up to card through grey-streaked dark hair, Clark lowering his head to nose at Bruce's hairline. "Bruce," he says, all quiet baritone. Quiet, but he can do a thing with his voice that makes him hard to ignore. A subtle rattle at the glass panes of consciousness. "You're having a nightmare." Another gentle sweeping of his hand through his hair. "Wake up."
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familial interlude.
He loiters for a while near the formal entrance, but deviates. There's a more homey entry near the primary kitchens, and the way he pushes the door open, steps over plastic sheeting to protect surviving heavy tile, elbow shifting as though anticipating a long-gone entryway table speaks more to identity than if he'd been wearing a nametag.
Richard Grayson doesn't look anything like Bruce Wayne. His build is different, bones arranged in dissimilar angles and lengths, half a foot missing from both wingspan and height, his skin is a rich olive that defies the inherent pasty paleness of New Jersey, his hair's a different brown, his eyes are bright blue, the cheekbones are all wrong. Richard Grayson doesn't look anything like Bruce Wayne, except in all the ways he could be cloned from him. He moves like Bruce. He stands still like Bruce. The coat he's wearing, mature and timeless, is the kind of garment only bought because someone grew up watching their role models wear them. The look he gives the bespectacled stranger standing in the back of the parlor, quick and lancing and gone before it's even manifested, is identical to how Bruce looks at strangers.
"Don't tell me Alfred hired his own Alfred, finally."
Unlike Bruce, his wary suspicion manages to sound genuine in its tentative friendliness. (Because it is.)
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Tentative friendliness matched for the same. A few subtle things occur, and several of them automatic: a subtle but quizzical headtip, like Clark doesn't know exactly who he's talking to, and a quick once over, as if he didn't already watch Dick Grayson's approach through the walls, and move to anticipate the redirection through the side door. The next thing that occurs is a thought: why bother with that?
Probably not to come across as a lunatic immediately, or something. He smiles, though, having already started through this exchange, and moves into the room properly, indistinct in shades of blue, denim on grey. "I'm, uh. I'm a friend of Bruce's," seems like the most relevant identifier, followed by, "Clark," and he moves to offer a hand out.
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fuzzy handcuffs.
Not before a long and hot shower, with some very light fooling around, and some irresponsible phone pictures, the sharp corner of Clark's smile just in frame. What are they going to do with those, look at them fondly? Well, maybe. Clark doesn't know. It's something he's always liked doing, a little, for the right people, the process in itself more interesting than the artefact. But then the sun, and the oddly peaceful transition of mortal atomic structures taking on a different nature.
He also had not bitten Bruce back for that one comment, just levelled him with a look that promised to remember it for next time.
And now here they are. It's next time.
Not the lamp, anyway, just ordinary cool light fixtures in Bruce's room. The bed is smooth and undisrupted from the last time it was made, until Bruce is deposited backwards onto it, a smiley Kryptonian already on him, chasing a kiss. There's no surprises tonight—at least not immediately, with the twin sets of handcuffs held by their connecting chain in one of Clark's hands. They're not really fuzzy, but formed of soft adjustable but unyielding leather.
The fuzzy ones, you can break out of, and that's probably the only reason Clark didn't get them as a joke. Also: he's not sure Bruce would humour him that much. Only this much. His other hand dips beneath Bruce's shirt, and his thumb finds that dip near his waist that Bruce's hand kept finding that one time. Long memories all round, today.
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(Can you blame a guy, for that one comment. Both because it's funny - will Clark find it more erotic now, when he fucks Bruce three time over the course of an evening, knowing just how exhausting it is, and how badly Bruce must want him to disregard that? - and for the extraction of that selfsame silent promise. He can be so careful with Clark, in everything but the depth of his wanting.)
"Do you have a problem with my hands on you?" is manufactured attitude, settling back on the pillows and giving him an arch look. It doesn't disguise the heat that's spreading through him, or the way he shifts subtly up into Clark's touch. He trails his own fingers along Clark's arm from his wrist up to his shoulder, drawing circles on the joint.
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sweet dreams are made of bees.
It hadn't taken long to cook, with the rice being the biggest drag. Time enough to chat while savoury smells filled the apartment. (At one stage, Clark reflexively requesting Bruce get him a beer out of the fridge, mentally pausing over it, filing it away for another time.) Chilling on the couch is briefly interrupted by truly blood curdling parrot screams from across the living room, and so Clark is returning to sit back down, now holding a tropical coloured bird in his hands. (Comfortable clothes stopping short of being literally pyjamas, well-worn jeans, socks, no glasses.)
He sits with a leg folded under him, cupping his hand over Woodstock's head and smiling as the bird ducks beneath it, climbs around to pulling himself on top of knuckles that do not redden under little dinosaur claws.
When he speaks, Bruce could expect him to say any number of things that would suit their homebody date night, something about the bird or asking him how dinner was or picking up some past thread of conversation, but what it is instead is, "Have you thought about it more?" which is so open-ended as to be strategic, like he'd been wanting to ask it for a little while now. Clark clarifies, "The last dream you had."
seven bees
Clark makes him feel like a real person.
Woodstock is a menace. Bruce is unreasonably fond of the little bird, but plenty happy to not have to live with pterodactyl shrieks. This is the real benefit of their triad offshoot situation. He does not envy Lois her burden of bearing the full brunt of cohabitated domesticity and all its bird dander trappings, even though there's a corpse of a vicious Scrabble game on the desk by the window, their passion overfloweth.
Hm. Bruce flicks the longest feather in Bird Kent's tail, offers a very shallow smile at the shimmy he gets in response. Thinks, couldn't you have just asked about the beer.
"Yes and no," he says after a little while. "It's... I have to think about it, to record the details. And then after that, difficult to put out of my mind. But I have to."
Or I'll go crazy.
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love poems
Human eyes won't really adjust, but human brains will. Automatically white balancing, and growing used to the difference.
"What's your favorite color?"
On the bed, Bruce sits up beside him. Making out for the duration of the light taking hold is a different dynamic than pushing him until it seems to stabilize. Sweeter. Bruce his been distracting him for a while, running his hands over Clark's chest, letting the bite of his nails increase steadily. Unlike the bulk of their encounters, they've actually talked about the set-up of this one. A bit. Still miles away from what would pass muster for a safe sane and consensual checklist, but everyone's got their kinks.
As Clark answers - whatever it may be - he clips a clothespin onto one nipple (where the fuck did he get that), and observes the reaction.
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He also likes: making out, particularly in the lead up to now. Sitting around and waiting is its own kind of tension build, and he's not sure he needs anymore of that right now. Would prefer to be distracted by warm kisses and the odd rake of blunt nails over his skin, than to be distracted by his brain paranoidly circling around each little change as his strength diminished, as his senses dulled. The potential for nervous energy build is expended in languid kisses, his hands feeling along all the familiar territory of Bruce's chest, shoulders, receiving attention in turn.
Slowly, that's how he knows, how they both know, when these touches leave subtle little marks on his skin, quick to fade, hard to discern in the red wash of light, but there if you're looking for it. Feeling for it, in Clark's case.
Anyway. Favourite colour. Clark has a ready answer, where the only pause is just clocking that he was asked it at all before he says, "Blue," because obviously, and then there's that pinch of sensation, and the reaction is a hitch in breathing, a tension that ripples up along his spine as he glances down. Where the fuck did he get that, both just now and in general. Billionaires don't hang up clothes.
"Ow," he reports, like they're still taking notes, trace humour. "Yours is black."
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[static]
At first, anyway. For a few confusing, smoke-filled minutes, at least until the dust has a chance to settle. Literally. Figuratively, it's still taking its sweet time, confusing clouds of it. They separate. Clark tells Lois everything in the halting but truthful way way he goes about telling people he loves everything. He marvels at her propensity to stare directly into the storm of confusing nonsense and incorporate it into her sense of how anything is meant to be. He's so lucky. Every other night, Clark slips into sleep-like meditation in Lois' arms, and listens out for that one solid heartbeat.
He's fairly certain that the whorling fine particles of their re-entry into this dimension are more or less calm when he sends Bruce a little video of Woodstock fighting his indestructible knuckles and chirping happily. There are words, too, along with these hieroglyphics, but engagement feels low compared to their odd propensity to hit a vein on banter. Lois had been the one to say it: give him a minute.
But bat minutes move slower than super ones.
It's the report that Bruce is not feeling well that draws Clark in. First, hidden above Gotham cloud cover to listen in and watch like the world's most handsome satellite, before he drops down. The speed of it almost entirely dries him of hazy sky-rain, but his landing is gentle, near-silent. He knows the way, how to get in from the outside, following Bruce's biometrics like they're a homing beacon.
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Earthbound again. Investigations, bird videos, moving Alfred's teacups, Diana. Guarded again. More than once, more than a dozen times, he's almost said something.
But what he saw of her was a violation. She is not ready to show him her past, or let him see her smile so freely. Diana won't shove him into a pond and kiss him, she won't let him pull her hair back and see if something's burned her; the guilt burns edges of purposeful resilience in him and touches other things, too, like Clark's horrible sadness at being parted from Lois. Bruce feels contagious, like the hollow feeling and taste of ash in his mouth will spread. He knows better, mostly— he believes Clark (and Lois, for that matter), and he is beyond insisting that they shouldn't.
He's not beyond pain. Apparently. It's very annoying.
Human ears don't catch the Kryptonian sonic boom from all the way out there, but the cave's airspace monitors do, and isn't it sweet how the blip sounds just as familiar.
"Slow night in Metropolis?"
Everything is fine.
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gotta go to space!
And so he suits up, leaves, the painful sting of deeply cold vacuum doing nothing but prickling his senses, some, freezing traces of moisture at the corners of his mouth, his eyes, blinked away. It is odd to fly out here, not as fun as atmospheric flight, but odd doesn't mean bad. He is more conscious of the way he kind of spatially clips himself around with his own self-possessed centre of gravity, different to Diana's leaps, glides, wind-riding, but still assumes a sort of reflexively aerodynamic stance as he drifts closer to the thing they found.
The thing is a shell, a piece of a shell, drifting, slowly turning. Clark lets it spin like so, cautious, but they hadn't picked up on anything radioactive, so he eventually stops its movement by gripping onto a jagged metal edge.
"Space craft," he confirms, over comms. "A piece of it. Definitely Kryptonian."
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Well. Anyway.
"What identifies it?"
A better question than How can you tell?, because he believes that if Clark says it's Kryptonian, then it is. But he's curious. Sitting back in the small control bridge of the ship, watching his slightly distorted figure parts through the multiple layers of thick silica glass, and on a digital map of movement. Out of the action, and occasionally stir-crazy.
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kicks down door
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