Bruce isn't tempted towards sudden worry by I can't see, too aware of Clark's attentive line of sight tracking, and the way he's expressed changes in his abilities during these tests so far. But he does reach out to his shoulder, just steadying him. Or them both, really, he's still having to pay undue attention to breathing correctly.
"You don't have to see my spleen to know I'm alright," he reminds the younger man. Like for one, Bruce is standing, so he's cool. (Ignore that Bruce's 'upright' is probably the average person's 'in the hospital'.) Also, there are computers keeping track of both of their vitals, and he's in the
... okay for Bruce zone. Clark's looking better, but he always is.
"Wait for a while. See if anything changes."
If he drops into the range Bruce is in without Bruce also falling further, then they'll really have some data. His hand has moved to the back of Clark's neck, holding there, watching his eyes.
Clark issues a glance at the computers, minor worry there, but interest as well. He's followed along enough with this process to understand where they're at, and what progress looks like, and also the risks they are playing with.
As Bruce's hand settles in place, his focus zeroes back in on him. It isn't as though his powers are such that it's a struggle not to see through things, see things too closely, not since he was little—but that he can't even if he wanted to is its own kind of strange. Bruce here and close to him and looking at him like that is probably just enough to have his heart rate spike again, but differently
and so Clark leans in the rest of the way to kiss him, like maybe that'll help, or at least, you know. Hide it.
Because Bruce has said that he's not getting enough oxygen, and that he needs to pay attention, he should probably push Clark away, and not let him both a) cut off a major airway and b) distract him.
But he's not gonna do any of that.
He's going to tilt his head to meet that kiss. He's going to curl his hand more firmly around the back of Clark's head, cradling it. Bruce wonders how it feels, to just have something ordinary— he also wonders how, practically, they've managed to go so many rounds of trial and error in here and not let their collective patience run down to this before right now. Clark feels and tastes just the same to him, if a little tinnier because of the lack of air in his own blood, and he makes a low, rough sound before he bites gently at the Kryptonian's lower lip.
For a little while he even remembers he should be breathing slowly and carefully through his nose. But as tends to happen when they start making out, his mind wanders, and then narrows. Just to here.
Even gentle, the pressure of Bruce's teeth into soft flesh feels different right now. A different sort of sensitivity, just a little more give than there would be otherwise. He kisses Bruce a little harder in response, powerfully instinctual, but they should really stop. They're not ready. It's just Clark has this problem where any excuse to entwine them together is extremely hard to refuse himself, to refuse Bruce.
A wobble.
The kiss breaks immediately. Clark's hands go up to grasp the older man's elbows. "Hey," he says, gently. "You okay?" Ask a stupid question—
He wants Clark to kiss him as hard as he wants, to sink teeth in, to push back and actually feel his muscles burn in protest when Bruce holds him down. The purpose of these experiments is to make sure Clark is safe even if something unthinkable happens, but Bruce is constantly hyper-aware of all of this, too. It should be an undercurrent, or they should be pretending that it's further down the priority list than it is—
But that would be beyond the pale of dishonesty, considering the way they started their entanglement in the first place.
Bruce opens his eyes, even though he knows he'll see spots. He does.
"Emergency three button," he says through a reedy-sounding inhale, and if anyone could manage to roll their eyes in exasperation while falling unconscious, it's Bruce Wayne.
Smash cut transition: two of the smartest people on planet Earth sitting in the lake house's living room, enduring the muttering chastisement of a man who's punished his son with a bag of frozen peas for the bump on his head. Alfred is busy in the kitchen, and Bruce, for his part, doesn't dare slink away even though a childhood instinct demands it. Instead he just looks over at Clark from where he's laying on the sofa, undignified.
Giving Clark a scolding, even muttered and British in nature, is either exceptionally easy or exceptionally difficult. Easy because he's not going to duck responsibility, never has, and any argument he might have is currently on notice. Difficult, because his eyes get big and he looks extremely sorry the whole time. It's really up to the scolder which part's worse. The Kents sure struggled.
And nothing's really changed in adulthood. Guilt and apology hasn't lessened since Alfred departed, and so I'm sorry eyes get swiveled to Bruce.
Lessens, a little. The peas bag is funny.
"Headache gone," he confirms. "Back to normal."
His normal. Clark gets up from his seat, moves in closer. Both of them are big and the sofa is only mortal, but he manages to scooch a seat on the very edge of it next to Bruce's prone body, and superbalance compensates for the rest. "Sorry about the bump. I need to get, uh. Get better, at that." Apparently.
The look Bruce sends in return to that hang-dog mug is folded brow of Good god man, have some self-respect. Bruce's own guilt in the face of a dressing-down from nanny is far more resentful, posture not unlike a disgruntled child being forced to look nice for a family picture. Which adjusts, when he's joined - he sits up against the arm of the sofa more, knees bending to allow Clark's butt more than a sliver of sofa.
Peas stay held in place.
"It's fine." Not the worst bonk he's ever had, and far from the worst thing that could have happened, given how wildly reckless they're being, dicking around with all of this in the first place. "Just glad you evened out."
Things that would be bad: if they permanently nerfed Clark somehow.
"That might have done it, though," he says quietly. "Gotten the data to progress significantly."
He's been thinking about it feverishly since he came to, almost angry at having been back here and not in the chamber, itching to get his hands on the recordings. But he's making himself sit still, if only to keep from alarming present company. Speaking of, Alfred chimes in, voice raised from the narrow galley kitchen, backed up to a seamless glass wall:
"Don't think I don't know you two aren't whispering about something foolish," (Bruce pulls a face that says I wasn't WHISPERING), "I'd appreciate at least some credit for politely feigning ignorance of your secret clubhouse meetings thus far, preferably in the form of neither of you showing up with head injuries. Which is not—" here Alfred appears around the cabinet corner, wielding a pricey silicone heat-resistant spatula at them, "permission to avoid necessary medical attention when injured. I expect this sort of thing out of Master Bruce, but you I'm surprised in, young man."
"Al."
"Dinner's nearly done, just sit there and continue to look contrite, please."
Zero self-respect returns, Clark half swiveled towards where Alfred is talking, doing the most with looking contrite enough on possibly also Bruce's behalf. "I'm really sorry, Mr Pennyworth," follows Afred back to the kitchen.
But possibly also not the right sort of contrite. Like he's sorry for the trouble. Somewhere in the same neighbourhood of breaking the kitchen window during a rowdy game of soccer and not weird science experiments that compromises of their safety. Real regret would be angrier, probably, and though in no way, shape, or form does he want Bruce hurt, or to really risk himself in the same way—
They're getting close, is the thing. (And none of this means that this isn't agonising for Clark specifically.)
His hand sneaks over to tangle with Bruce's.
"Evened out pretty quick," he says. "Small acclimation period, maybe half a minute. I think that'll reduce," and there's a clang from the kitchen that has him going guiltily silent and then, quieter, "under the right conditions."
"He's just barking," Bruce grumbles, though there's clear and distinct fondness in the way his performative sulking is so open, unguarded. He trusts Alfred more than anyone alive, and his comfort with him is absolute. There is something distinctly more real person about Bruce when they interact, peeling back all the agony and shadow and revealing some guy raised by a single parent.
Work-rough hand squeezes perfect one. Fingers thread. Bruce circles the pad of his thumb over Clark's knuckles, affectionate, but a little like it's a substitute for pacing, too. He gives him a look, and it's plain: Nearly there.
Possibly, if the numbers crunch correctly, already there.
Peas are returned to the freezer, food is set out, dinner is had at the table. (Always the table; Clark has probably noticed, when visiting him and Lois, Bruce has no natural inclination to sit on the sofa for a meal.) Alfred does things the way Bruce does things - nearly obsessive precision made to look effortless. Dinner is immaculate, despite being stitched together with leftovers. He seems to have some kind of magic in selecting water glasses that never succumb to messy condensation. No alcohol. Bruce has a head injury. Alfred has been working on re-creating a pie recipe floated to him from Clark's mother, but the humidity is doing something funny to the dough, he thinks.
Lois is on CNN dissecting a piece she's been deep into, a mangled wreck of politics and corporate shadows. Her video keeps getting delayed with jittery repeats, a satellite issue from Dubai, and Bruce keeps trying to guess what the next word will be, knowing Clark can already hear. Once Alfred has retired (back to the main house, he wants to be up early for the woman taking measurements for carpets), Bruce pushes Clark back on his bed, curtains open to the dark star-flecked sky.
The amount of times Clark decides not to be pushed is not never, but not tonight. He goes and his hands are on Bruce to take him along for that short ride.
There are so many places he belongs, now, after what felt like a lifetime of feeling out of place. Some of it by choice, never making his way back to Kansas for long stretches of time, most of it not. But he does, now, standing in his mother's kitchen and drying the dishes, or sitting cross-legged opposite Lois and handling cardboard boxes of vegan chow mein, or finding himself invited to Alfred's simple and classy midweek dinner table, or meeting Diana anywhere from the wild sky to a Parisian bistro.
Or here.
He lifts his head and kisses Bruce as if they were getting right back to where they'd left off a couple hours back, even though it's not quite that. His hands gripping Bruce's waist and half slipped up beneath his shirt, drawing it up in absent minded function when most of his focus is on kissing. None of the above contemplations are coherent thoughts, but manifest anyway as an inarticulate contentment, warm in him and the way he touches Bruce back.
Bruce can't help the way he wants to make everywhere feel like home, even when he's the strangest thing in any given place. Pulling Clark into it has been so easy - too easy, considering all the back-and-forth resistance he's subjected them to. Too, because he didn't (couldn't) see it, because there is still a kind of terror lurking behind a rib somewhere that Clark fits like a space was always carved for him, and Bruce tried so hard to annihilate him. Suicide mission in a number of ways.
And now. He can kiss Clark for hours. Slow and gentle, dedicated and quietly playful. The tender bruise on the back of his head is enough to chastise anyone out of anything extreme tonight, but it feels too good to get lost to do anything as stupid as just go to bed.
Besides, the next week will be long and exhausting, and leave little time for it. Because over the next week, Bruce figures it out, and on an ordinary Wednesday morning, every equation clicks into place, every generator hums at the right frequency, and every last monitor ticks over to green.
Bruce has tape on his hands in eight places - the last week has not only been filled with tinkering, sometimes Batman also has a dance card - and they hover over a keyboard while he watches Clark with a critical eye. But he already knows the answer, because the younger man hasn't pulled the odd face he normally pulls, and he himself hasn't started to feel light-headed.
Clark's great addition to the work has been: the permanent relocation of one of the gym mats now rolled out near the work station.
And other stuff, not to be humble. It's more than a little strange, to realise your own capacity to do science upon recently hitting 30(-ish, what is age anymore), to follow along with the complex engineering being done, and understand it, and contribute. Clark suspects, maybe, he lacks some of the necessary curiousity to propel him much further in that direction, having ever met someone like Victor for whom it seems a compulsion, for example. Curious about people, less so the secrets of the universe.
But the mat's a good idea, he thinks, if a week and change too late. He is pretty sure Alfred would consider it both sensible and also missing the point, on account how little sense all of this is, if he knew.
Bruce looks over and Clark is looking at his own hands. Then back up at the monitors, then at Bruce.
Like nothing's changed, though he can feel a slight pressure difference - minimal as his ears popping routinely on an airplane. But that, he knows, is a side effect of the chamber they're in, not the fabric of the atmosphere itself (so to speak). If his long-term plans out the way he wants it to - and it looks like it will - he won't notice anything at all, even while Clark changes.
A smile, but distracted as he thinks. Weird is not the word he would use, this time.
Maybe strange.
But he wants to live, so he says, "Stable," as in, his heart isn't doing anything weird this time, there's no dull migraine pulsing away, no fluctuations of his senses. His hands form up into fists. He is not constantly aware of his own powers, like staying grounded to the earth is not a choice he makes every time he takes a step, operating on an ingrained subconscious level he'd had to unlearn to fly, but here, deliberately, he feels around for those senses.
They're not gone, exactly, but weak. Weakening. If he spent enough time in here, he suspects he'd hit baseline. (They'd established early that he won't meet any continued deterioration effects, so long as they don't fuck up. An alarming threshold to avoid, but a comparatively easy one compared to Bruce's delicate blood vessels.)
He stands, focusing on other taken for granted aspects, like the odd shallowness of his own breathing, which—feels weird, but also reminds him of the way that had felt on the Black Zero, after some violent bleeding from his lungs from the suddenness of it.
Violent lung bleeding is definitely on the list of things Bruce is trying to avoid. To that end, he's gotten the worse end of things, aside from Clark bouncing against the ceiling a few times. And a few sensations of head-squeezing, probably. He watches Clark closely now, and observes the readings he's putting out.
Rushing to conclusions would be bad. The last time they let themselves get distracted, Bruce ended up with frozen peas on his face.
"Tell me about my breathing," he prompts. Baiting the professional writer in him. Describe it. Compare it to your own. Explain how it sounds.
Meanwhile, Bruce fusses with more readings, takes some notes, gets him to walk to one side of the chamber to the other, then back. Takes his own blood pressure, checks his own oxygen saturation. Does not try for either of these things with Clark, who normally would not be able to be manipulated by such medical intrusions. Baby steps. His vitals settle, but don't dip lower. They aren't the same as Bruce's, but like, no one's are. So.
Quieter than usual: "Would you like to try something?"
Like your heart beat; slower than mine. Calm, low tide. He hadn't added that he likes listening to it, but it's there in his tone.
They're working. Clark walks this way across the room and back again, and while there is no discernible difference between him doing so now and him having paced around half an hour ago, it does feel different. He's not sure if that's a physical thing or a brain thing, knowing that if he did try to jump, he'd clear several inches into the air and no more. That if he swung a punch at the concrete wall, he'd break his hand. It makes him feel
clumsy, kind of, and like he's still overthinking his own physical self, just in a different way. When he turns, he brushes a hand against the wall as if to steady himself. Assures he's fine, really. Like riding bike.
The quietness of Bruce's voice catches Clark's attention from where he'd been eyeing the monitors. Not nervous, or anxious, not exactly. Anticipatory. It's still there when he looks over, a hard look that betrays how little he can read the other man, how used to it he is, but there's a crack of a smile as he says, "Yeah."
Bruce can see the different way he moves, little micro-expressions across his whole body, which no longer pushes the world around itself like the center. It revolves around him in another way now, purely in Bruce's imagination, and he interacts like he's
not ordinary. Never that.
"Tell me if you start to feel anxious about it," Bruce says. "And keep in mind I'll be pissed off if you don't."
Don't suck it up. Actually say something. Ok? Ok. He nods at the mat. "Lay down on your back."
Clark's chin drops to look across at Bruce as if to say: great anxiety deterrent, Wayne.
But the almost smiling is mirrored, and he moves across the room and towards the mat. Practice will make perfect, maybe, with the not overthinking thing, but for now there's quite a bit of thought that goes into going from standing to lying down. Not so bad. He spent most of his adult life unaware of his ability to control his own gravitational force. Something about the knowing, though.
Anyway, he's down, stretching out onto his back. A little anxiety never harmed anybody, right, and maybe that's what he ought to be feeling, but what he is feeling is curious. If he didn't completely trust Bruce, he's not sure they'd have gotten to this point.
Their loved ones would think they are so stupid, if they knew the half of it.
"What about if I feel weird about it."
So flat as to be indistinguishable as a joke, if Bruce didn't already know better.
Veering a bit into the 'games we shouldn't be playing' lane, but there's a method to Bruce's reckless madness, here, as there so often is. He waits, leaving Clark there for a while as he gets used to the way gravity pulls him down to the floor and keeps him horizontal, knowing that he'll be feeling new heaviness, intangible elastic bands pulling his spine, his knees, his elbows, the back of his head. Letting him straighten out every vertebrae against the lightly padded floor. Find the least uncomfortable angle for the back of his skull to rest. He's got enough muscle, superpowers or no superpowers, that he shouldn't feel much in the way of a bite from a hipbone.
Bruce is careful when he walks over, cognizant of the way sound will be different. He kneels down next to Clark, and then, perhaps unsurprisingly, straddles his hips.
Hi.
No weight on him. Hovering there over him. Bruce raises his hands, posture obvious, though he says, "Give me yours."
Once their hands are linked, Clark's shoulders still on the ground, Bruce pushes lightly.
Fingers lace with Bruce's like they've done countless times before. That had always been something to think about. It's embarrassing the amount of times he's flipped a sink tap around to run the water hot only to snap the whole thing off, even if most of that was left behind in clumsy adolescence. Only left behind because he became cognizant to the potential, though.
Now, Clark tests it, squeezing their hands rather than doing what Bruce says, immediately. It's very tentative, that much Bruce can tell, as if still doubting that strength has left him even if he has the distinct impression of being invisibly pressed to the surface of the earth as inexorably as a butterfly pinned to a board.
That grasp relaxes, and he applies pressure to Bruce's hands. Like that squeeze, it's almost comically gentle, and then more force is slowly applied, until Bruce can feel proper effort applied through muscle and joint, Clark's expression the picture of focus.
Tentative is appreciated. Clark should probably not lose that instinct, even if they nail this. Bruce likes having fingers.
Once Clark is putting in effort, Bruce stops holding himself, and starts pushing down. Clark will have to start straining to keep himself from being flattened - there might even be a swoop of sudden unease, a previously absent lizard-brain response to a potential incoming collision. Though of course Bruce is fully capable of pausing no matter how forward tilted he becomes.
Pressure from his hands, through his wrists, stressing elbows and rotator cuffs, making shoulders and biceps tired. He'll feel it through his upper back, and shoulder blades. Even if they were evenly matched pound-for-pound and in applicable experience, Bruce has enough leverage in this position to pin him, if he really presses down.
Even while super, Clark has pushed himself beyond even his considerable limits, normal stuff like dragging stranded ships across ice or separating sentient cosmic computers from one another before they could destroy the world. In these scenarios, he has applied a little effort. And doing so felt different to this. It just—worked differently, in a way difficult to describe. Accessing new stores of himself.
This is bone and tendon and muscle and blood. It doesn't make sense that he should feel Bruce's weight and strength pressing down on his hands in, say, his lower back, but he does. Heels dig into mat. That he is reminded to breathe is timely, because he had forgotten for a hot second.
"Uh huh," he says, a smile cutting sharp across his face, a laugh at the edge of newly returned breathing.
And because he had tested his newfound superpowers that one time by almost flinging himself off the whole earth, Clark tests newfound weakness by suddenly doubling his effort, a meaningful attempt to shove Bruce up, powering against that odd burn lashed through muscle.
Recognition in Bruce's face. There you are. There's a smile hidden in one corner of his mouth.
For a second he's pushed up, feeling the force of Clark's effort, practically balanced against his hands, a funny insect pose between the two of them. Elbows doing things. And then he pushes back, steady but hard, unfettered by heavy armor or the need to keep his own momentum going to leap off the next ledge. His considerable strength focused down to just Clark, the way his considerable attention is so often focused down to just Clark.
He feels the same burn, the same strain in this joint and that. A prickly twinge in his spine where the worst of the damage was repaired, years ago. But he always feels those things, and so he doesn't really notice them, and they don't have any impact in how he directs his weight.
"Oh yeah," Clark says, mock-certain, teeth together. "Totally."
This after a completely genuine hrrgh when Bruce bore back down. The odd wobble of his hands beneath it could almost spark the anxiety that Bruce warned him about if not for the fact he—does not feel it, feeling too many other things, like an odd splash of giddiness, of adrenaline.
After he says 'oh yeah, totally', literally nothing happens but what feels like to Bruce the same amount of pressure bearing back up at him. Clark's head falls back down against the mat with another breathless laugh—yes, an attempt had been made—before he collects himself again.
He just needs an angle. (Story of his life.)
And so there's a twist, strength thrown into his right side in an attempt to off-balance Bruce and fling him in the other direction. There is none of the training they've attempted, there doesn't feel like there's room for that at all, just brute strength or an attempt at it.
Clark tries to throw himself upward, and Bruce just. Stays right where he is, shifting his weight slightly in a counter-balance on autopilot, possessing nothing like a Kryptonian's unmovable object strength, of course, but so well-versed in physical brawling that getting him into a throw is like trying to grab running water.
Oh, that was the attempt. Bruce helpfully shifts back the other way, like a well-meaning and well-trained pet dog doing the trick on a delay.
"Get your foot under my shin," he instructs, trying very hard not to laugh. "There. Shift your shoulders the other way. Push."
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"You don't have to see my spleen to know I'm alright," he reminds the younger man. Like for one, Bruce is standing, so he's cool. (Ignore that Bruce's 'upright' is probably the average person's 'in the hospital'.) Also, there are computers keeping track of both of their vitals, and he's in the
... okay for Bruce zone. Clark's looking better, but he always is.
"Wait for a while. See if anything changes."
If he drops into the range Bruce is in without Bruce also falling further, then they'll really have some data. His hand has moved to the back of Clark's neck, holding there, watching his eyes.
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Clark issues a glance at the computers, minor worry there, but interest as well. He's followed along enough with this process to understand where they're at, and what progress looks like, and also the risks they are playing with.
As Bruce's hand settles in place, his focus zeroes back in on him. It isn't as though his powers are such that it's a struggle not to see through things, see things too closely, not since he was little—but that he can't even if he wanted to is its own kind of strange. Bruce here and close to him and looking at him like that is probably just enough to have his heart rate spike again, but differently
and so Clark leans in the rest of the way to kiss him, like maybe that'll help, or at least, you know. Hide it.
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But he's not gonna do any of that.
He's going to tilt his head to meet that kiss. He's going to curl his hand more firmly around the back of Clark's head, cradling it. Bruce wonders how it feels, to just have something ordinary— he also wonders how, practically, they've managed to go so many rounds of trial and error in here and not let their collective patience run down to this before right now. Clark feels and tastes just the same to him, if a little tinnier because of the lack of air in his own blood, and he makes a low, rough sound before he bites gently at the Kryptonian's lower lip.
For a little while he even remembers he should be breathing slowly and carefully through his nose. But as tends to happen when they start making out, his mind wanders, and then narrows. Just to here.
Wobble.
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A wobble.
The kiss breaks immediately. Clark's hands go up to grasp the older man's elbows. "Hey," he says, gently. "You okay?" Ask a stupid question—
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But that would be beyond the pale of dishonesty, considering the way they started their entanglement in the first place.
Bruce opens his eyes, even though he knows he'll see spots. He does.
"Emergency three button," he says through a reedy-sounding inhale, and if anyone could manage to roll their eyes in exasperation while falling unconscious, it's Bruce Wayne.
Smash cut transition: two of the smartest people on planet Earth sitting in the lake house's living room, enduring the muttering chastisement of a man who's punished his son with a bag of frozen peas for the bump on his head. Alfred is busy in the kitchen, and Bruce, for his part, doesn't dare slink away even though a childhood instinct demands it. Instead he just looks over at Clark from where he's laying on the sofa, undignified.
"Headache gone?"
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And nothing's really changed in adulthood. Guilt and apology hasn't lessened since Alfred departed, and so I'm sorry eyes get swiveled to Bruce.
Lessens, a little. The peas bag is funny.
"Headache gone," he confirms. "Back to normal."
His normal. Clark gets up from his seat, moves in closer. Both of them are big and the sofa is only mortal, but he manages to scooch a seat on the very edge of it next to Bruce's prone body, and superbalance compensates for the rest. "Sorry about the bump. I need to get, uh. Get better, at that." Apparently.
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Peas stay held in place.
"It's fine." Not the worst bonk he's ever had, and far from the worst thing that could have happened, given how wildly reckless they're being, dicking around with all of this in the first place. "Just glad you evened out."
Things that would be bad: if they permanently nerfed Clark somehow.
"That might have done it, though," he says quietly. "Gotten the data to progress significantly."
He's been thinking about it feverishly since he came to, almost angry at having been back here and not in the chamber, itching to get his hands on the recordings. But he's making himself sit still, if only to keep from alarming present company. Speaking of, Alfred chimes in, voice raised from the narrow galley kitchen, backed up to a seamless glass wall:
"Don't think I don't know you two aren't whispering about something foolish," (Bruce pulls a face that says I wasn't WHISPERING), "I'd appreciate at least some credit for politely feigning ignorance of your secret clubhouse meetings thus far, preferably in the form of neither of you showing up with head injuries. Which is not—" here Alfred appears around the cabinet corner, wielding a pricey silicone heat-resistant spatula at them, "permission to avoid necessary medical attention when injured. I expect this sort of thing out of Master Bruce, but you I'm surprised in, young man."
"Al."
"Dinner's nearly done, just sit there and continue to look contrite, please."
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But possibly also not the right sort of contrite. Like he's sorry for the trouble. Somewhere in the same neighbourhood of breaking the kitchen window during a rowdy game of soccer and not weird science experiments that compromises of their safety. Real regret would be angrier, probably, and though in no way, shape, or form does he want Bruce hurt, or to really risk himself in the same way—
They're getting close, is the thing. (And none of this means that this isn't agonising for Clark specifically.)
His hand sneaks over to tangle with Bruce's.
"Evened out pretty quick," he says. "Small acclimation period, maybe half a minute. I think that'll reduce," and there's a clang from the kitchen that has him going guiltily silent and then, quieter, "under the right conditions."
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Work-rough hand squeezes perfect one. Fingers thread. Bruce circles the pad of his thumb over Clark's knuckles, affectionate, but a little like it's a substitute for pacing, too. He gives him a look, and it's plain: Nearly there.
Possibly, if the numbers crunch correctly, already there.
Peas are returned to the freezer, food is set out, dinner is had at the table. (Always the table; Clark has probably noticed, when visiting him and Lois, Bruce has no natural inclination to sit on the sofa for a meal.) Alfred does things the way Bruce does things - nearly obsessive precision made to look effortless. Dinner is immaculate, despite being stitched together with leftovers. He seems to have some kind of magic in selecting water glasses that never succumb to messy condensation. No alcohol. Bruce has a head injury. Alfred has been working on re-creating a pie recipe floated to him from Clark's mother, but the humidity is doing something funny to the dough, he thinks.
Lois is on CNN dissecting a piece she's been deep into, a mangled wreck of politics and corporate shadows. Her video keeps getting delayed with jittery repeats, a satellite issue from Dubai, and Bruce keeps trying to guess what the next word will be, knowing Clark can already hear. Once Alfred has retired (back to the main house, he wants to be up early for the woman taking measurements for carpets), Bruce pushes Clark back on his bed, curtains open to the dark star-flecked sky.
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There are so many places he belongs, now, after what felt like a lifetime of feeling out of place. Some of it by choice, never making his way back to Kansas for long stretches of time, most of it not. But he does, now, standing in his mother's kitchen and drying the dishes, or sitting cross-legged opposite Lois and handling cardboard boxes of vegan chow mein, or finding himself invited to Alfred's simple and classy midweek dinner table, or meeting Diana anywhere from the wild sky to a Parisian bistro.
Or here.
He lifts his head and kisses Bruce as if they were getting right back to where they'd left off a couple hours back, even though it's not quite that. His hands gripping Bruce's waist and half slipped up beneath his shirt, drawing it up in absent minded function when most of his focus is on kissing. None of the above contemplations are coherent thoughts, but manifest anyway as an inarticulate contentment, warm in him and the way he touches Bruce back.
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And now. He can kiss Clark for hours. Slow and gentle, dedicated and quietly playful. The tender bruise on the back of his head is enough to chastise anyone out of anything extreme tonight, but it feels too good to get lost to do anything as stupid as just go to bed.
Besides, the next week will be long and exhausting, and leave little time for it. Because over the next week, Bruce figures it out, and on an ordinary Wednesday morning, every equation clicks into place, every generator hums at the right frequency, and every last monitor ticks over to green.
Bruce has tape on his hands in eight places - the last week has not only been filled with tinkering, sometimes Batman also has a dance card - and they hover over a keyboard while he watches Clark with a critical eye. But he already knows the answer, because the younger man hasn't pulled the odd face he normally pulls, and he himself hasn't started to feel light-headed.
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And other stuff, not to be humble. It's more than a little strange, to realise your own capacity to do science upon recently hitting 30(-ish, what is age anymore), to follow along with the complex engineering being done, and understand it, and contribute. Clark suspects, maybe, he lacks some of the necessary curiousity to propel him much further in that direction, having ever met someone like Victor for whom it seems a compulsion, for example. Curious about people, less so the secrets of the universe.
But the mat's a good idea, he thinks, if a week and change too late. He is pretty sure Alfred would consider it both sensible and also missing the point, on account how little sense all of this is, if he knew.
Bruce looks over and Clark is looking at his own hands. Then back up at the monitors, then at Bruce.
"How do you feel?"
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Like nothing's changed, though he can feel a slight pressure difference - minimal as his ears popping routinely on an airplane. But that, he knows, is a side effect of the chamber they're in, not the fabric of the atmosphere itself (so to speak). If his long-term plans out the way he wants it to - and it looks like it will - he won't notice anything at all, even while Clark changes.
Which is the real point of interest.
"If you say you feel weird again, Kent."
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Maybe strange.
But he wants to live, so he says, "Stable," as in, his heart isn't doing anything weird this time, there's no dull migraine pulsing away, no fluctuations of his senses. His hands form up into fists. He is not constantly aware of his own powers, like staying grounded to the earth is not a choice he makes every time he takes a step, operating on an ingrained subconscious level he'd had to unlearn to fly, but here, deliberately, he feels around for those senses.
They're not gone, exactly, but weak. Weakening. If he spent enough time in here, he suspects he'd hit baseline. (They'd established early that he won't meet any continued deterioration effects, so long as they don't fuck up. An alarming threshold to avoid, but a comparatively easy one compared to Bruce's delicate blood vessels.)
He stands, focusing on other taken for granted aspects, like the odd shallowness of his own breathing, which—feels weird, but also reminds him of the way that had felt on the Black Zero, after some violent bleeding from his lungs from the suddenness of it.
Nice of them to skip that part.
"Good," he adds. Wordsmith.
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Rushing to conclusions would be bad. The last time they let themselves get distracted, Bruce ended up with frozen peas on his face.
"Tell me about my breathing," he prompts. Baiting the professional writer in him. Describe it. Compare it to your own. Explain how it sounds.
Meanwhile, Bruce fusses with more readings, takes some notes, gets him to walk to one side of the chamber to the other, then back. Takes his own blood pressure, checks his own oxygen saturation. Does not try for either of these things with Clark, who normally would not be able to be manipulated by such medical intrusions. Baby steps. His vitals settle, but don't dip lower. They aren't the same as Bruce's, but like, no one's are. So.
Quieter than usual: "Would you like to try something?"
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They're working. Clark walks this way across the room and back again, and while there is no discernible difference between him doing so now and him having paced around half an hour ago, it does feel different. He's not sure if that's a physical thing or a brain thing, knowing that if he did try to jump, he'd clear several inches into the air and no more. That if he swung a punch at the concrete wall, he'd break his hand. It makes him feel
clumsy, kind of, and like he's still overthinking his own physical self, just in a different way. When he turns, he brushes a hand against the wall as if to steady himself. Assures he's fine, really. Like riding bike.
The quietness of Bruce's voice catches Clark's attention from where he'd been eyeing the monitors. Not nervous, or anxious, not exactly. Anticipatory. It's still there when he looks over, a hard look that betrays how little he can read the other man, how used to it he is, but there's a crack of a smile as he says, "Yeah."
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not ordinary. Never that.
"Tell me if you start to feel anxious about it," Bruce says. "And keep in mind I'll be pissed off if you don't."
Don't suck it up. Actually say something. Ok? Ok. He nods at the mat. "Lay down on your back."
Bruce is almost smiling.
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But the almost smiling is mirrored, and he moves across the room and towards the mat. Practice will make perfect, maybe, with the not overthinking thing, but for now there's quite a bit of thought that goes into going from standing to lying down. Not so bad. He spent most of his adult life unaware of his ability to control his own gravitational force. Something about the knowing, though.
Anyway, he's down, stretching out onto his back. A little anxiety never harmed anybody, right, and maybe that's what he ought to be feeling, but what he is feeling is curious. If he didn't completely trust Bruce, he's not sure they'd have gotten to this point.
Their loved ones would think they are so stupid, if they knew the half of it.
"What about if I feel weird about it."
So flat as to be indistinguishable as a joke, if Bruce didn't already know better.
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Do you want me to stop?
Veering a bit into the 'games we shouldn't be playing' lane, but there's a method to Bruce's reckless madness, here, as there so often is. He waits, leaving Clark there for a while as he gets used to the way gravity pulls him down to the floor and keeps him horizontal, knowing that he'll be feeling new heaviness, intangible elastic bands pulling his spine, his knees, his elbows, the back of his head. Letting him straighten out every vertebrae against the lightly padded floor. Find the least uncomfortable angle for the back of his skull to rest. He's got enough muscle, superpowers or no superpowers, that he shouldn't feel much in the way of a bite from a hipbone.
Bruce is careful when he walks over, cognizant of the way sound will be different. He kneels down next to Clark, and then, perhaps unsurprisingly, straddles his hips.
Hi.
No weight on him. Hovering there over him. Bruce raises his hands, posture obvious, though he says, "Give me yours."
Once their hands are linked, Clark's shoulders still on the ground, Bruce pushes lightly.
At first.
"Resist me."
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There are worse times to flirt. Clark thinks so.
Fingers lace with Bruce's like they've done countless times before. That had always been something to think about. It's embarrassing the amount of times he's flipped a sink tap around to run the water hot only to snap the whole thing off, even if most of that was left behind in clumsy adolescence. Only left behind because he became cognizant to the potential, though.
Now, Clark tests it, squeezing their hands rather than doing what Bruce says, immediately. It's very tentative, that much Bruce can tell, as if still doubting that strength has left him even if he has the distinct impression of being invisibly pressed to the surface of the earth as inexorably as a butterfly pinned to a board.
That grasp relaxes, and he applies pressure to Bruce's hands. Like that squeeze, it's almost comically gentle, and then more force is slowly applied, until Bruce can feel proper effort applied through muscle and joint, Clark's expression the picture of focus.
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Once Clark is putting in effort, Bruce stops holding himself, and starts pushing down. Clark will have to start straining to keep himself from being flattened - there might even be a swoop of sudden unease, a previously absent lizard-brain response to a potential incoming collision. Though of course Bruce is fully capable of pausing no matter how forward tilted he becomes.
Pressure from his hands, through his wrists, stressing elbows and rotator cuffs, making shoulders and biceps tired. He'll feel it through his upper back, and shoulder blades. Even if they were evenly matched pound-for-pound and in applicable experience, Bruce has enough leverage in this position to pin him, if he really presses down.
"Breathe," is a reminder, only faintly amused.
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This is bone and tendon and muscle and blood. It doesn't make sense that he should feel Bruce's weight and strength pressing down on his hands in, say, his lower back, but he does. Heels dig into mat. That he is reminded to breathe is timely, because he had forgotten for a hot second.
"Uh huh," he says, a smile cutting sharp across his face, a laugh at the edge of newly returned breathing.
And because he had tested his newfound superpowers that one time by almost flinging himself off the whole earth, Clark tests newfound weakness by suddenly doubling his effort, a meaningful attempt to shove Bruce up, powering against that odd burn lashed through muscle.
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For a second he's pushed up, feeling the force of Clark's effort, practically balanced against his hands, a funny insect pose between the two of them. Elbows doing things. And then he pushes back, steady but hard, unfettered by heavy armor or the need to keep his own momentum going to leap off the next ledge. His considerable strength focused down to just Clark, the way his considerable attention is so often focused down to just Clark.
He feels the same burn, the same strain in this joint and that. A prickly twinge in his spine where the worst of the damage was repaired, years ago. But he always feels those things, and so he doesn't really notice them, and they don't have any impact in how he directs his weight.
"Think you can throw me off?"
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This after a completely genuine hrrgh when Bruce bore back down. The odd wobble of his hands beneath it could almost spark the anxiety that Bruce warned him about if not for the fact he—does not feel it, feeling too many other things, like an odd splash of giddiness, of adrenaline.
After he says 'oh yeah, totally', literally nothing happens but what feels like to Bruce the same amount of pressure bearing back up at him. Clark's head falls back down against the mat with another breathless laugh—yes, an attempt had been made—before he collects himself again.
He just needs an angle. (Story of his life.)
And so there's a twist, strength thrown into his right side in an attempt to off-balance Bruce and fling him in the other direction. There is none of the training they've attempted, there doesn't feel like there's room for that at all, just brute strength or an attempt at it.
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Oh, that was the attempt. Bruce helpfully shifts back the other way, like a well-meaning and well-trained pet dog doing the trick on a delay.
"Get your foot under my shin," he instructs, trying very hard not to laugh. "There. Shift your shoulders the other way. Push."
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