It's not pain free, all of it. Bruce believed some big things about him, back when, but it's nothing Clark is capable of holding over either of them ever since, and given the anvil of a warning he had dropped on Batman in prior evenings, maybe some of it had even been fair.

Still. He feels some late pulse of hurt on Bruce's behalf, and waits patiently.

The answer that comes, in contrast, almost makes Clark laugh—it does make him smile slightly, a twinge of it nested in the corner of his mouth.

Now he moves. He sits in the chair he remembers Bruce's inhabiting when he'd come to from his neurotoxin episode, listed more forwards, elbows to knees. "You had a place to do it in," he says. It's a little more nuanced than guessing at Bruce's own feelings. It is a tentative comparison of notes. More questioning; "An outlet."