"You're a cartoon character," says Batman. But it's apparent by now that when Clark explains stuff like that, Bruce is just impressed; and of course he would be, here, when beluga whales are inspiring him to smile openly, and he's captured video footage of Clark being ridiculous with otters just because he doesn't think his heart can take thinking something like that might be lost in only his own suspect memory.
He's standing almost closer than necessary, to hold hands. Not to cover it up. Like some part of him thinks it's too fragile to withstand a bold two-foot distance, arms jostling with the cadence of their footsteps. Something to be protected instead.
It is something to be protected. Not the literal tangle of fingers right now, maybe, but what it gestures to, what it connotes for them both. He remembers Lois realising what it meant, loving him and him being in love with her, how her instinct has been to pull back, and maybe not now but today he certainly thinks about that. It had been to protect him.
Maybe he is a cartoon character, for his own instinct being to love even more fiercely. Bruce has tried to pull away too. It seems like a normal human instinct. But they probably both know by now that Clark isn't going to let them, no matter what prophetic dreams have to say.
They go to pet the stringrays, after determining that it's closer on the map anyway.
The touch tank is low, accessible for children, but it's a school day and so it's relatively empty, where all the people going on daytime dates are more interested in mooning over sharks and otters and belugas like losers. There's a sign with instructions, asking aquarium goers to stay quiet, not to splash the water, keep your hand still and palm flat, only touch these circled parts of the stingrays and gliding reef sharks present, and Clark follows all these to the letter. He has to take off his jacket and roll his sleeve, which he does.
"Do you snorkel?" Clark says, his attention such that he looks like he's asking the smooth grey stingray that passes beneath his hand, but it is intended for Bruce.
If a human instinct exists to withdraw from gods, then Bruce doesn't actually have it; first he wanted to fight Clark, and now this. His attempts to disengage have been a tangle of personal nonsense and personal clarity, and perhaps it hasn't been fair of him to make Clark feel like so much of an alien, when Bruce has had similar self-sabotage moments over mere mortals, too.
Perhaps also, mere mortals aren't equipped to tolerate his shit, and he was always meant for this in some way. Kryptonians and Amazons and the only humans who don't flinch from them.
"Do I snorkel."
Behind him, Bruce has conceded to removing his coat, temporarily depositing it on the railing leading down to the pool's edge. Using the thumb of his half-busted hand to tug up the opposite knitted sleeve. He hovers next to Clark for a while, enjoying watching him more than the idea of reaching into water turned into germ soup by a thousand hands and stingray pee. He will. Just give him a second.
Also, lurking behind him means that he can wait until Clark is behind forward again, and do that thing and poke him lightly in the back, like he's threatening to push him in.
There is a glance back at the nudge. Fuck around and find out, Wayne. (Neither of those things will happen. They are responsible.)
"Me neither," Clark says. "But it seems relaxing."
There is an epaulette shark circling nearer, but not near enough. Still, Clark isn't afraid of falling in, centre of gravity wherever he needs it to be, so he leans enough to brush fingers against spotted hide. Maybe they'll deserve another vacation in a future that doesn't feel like it's about to be eaten up by cosmic horrors. Maybe they'll kill an afternoon by drifting bellydown in crystal clear waters and stare at octopuses and eels and pointy-finned tropical fish, who will only see their shadows.
There's probably a lot they have to talk about. Clark evens out his hand when no fish is imminent, unconcerned about germs and stingray pee as he only just touches the surface. Earth is pretty good. The Els did alright.
"I can hold my breath for ten minutes or so," is his answer to relaxing floating jaunts. It seems unlikely that he can, particularly while doing anything, but you never know. Normal Batman shit. It would be less chill than a snorkel, but he'd get style points.
A kite-shaped ray comes around again, swooping on a lazy racetrack, and Bruce leans in and dips his hand into the water, letting his fingers run along its wet sandpaper skin. For a moment he lets himself be transported; standing just here (a meter over, actually), this same sensation under his hand, a ten-year-old boy babbling excitedly about it, utterly unaware of his shirtsleeves and half his front being soaked. It was crowded that day, noise echoing off every surface, animals drawn to the din.
Silence aside from lapping water, when he returns. (Only a few seconds missing. It's fine.)
"Once in a while I have to convince myself there's probably not anything unusual living under the house."
For a given value of unusual. Clark has his hand positioned with perfect form, having patted the ray after it skated by under Bruce's fingers. The few seconds of silence feels part and parcel to this moment that he doesn't wonder too sharply after what Bruce is thinking about, save that he is always wondering a little what Bruce is thinking about. It's all meditative, like the concentric ripples from their contact with the water, colliding, cancelling one another out.
Clark lifts his hand, lets water drip off his fingers, disinclined to startle anything by shaking it dry. "Frogs and minnows. Things that wanna be left alone, probably."
But stingrays are friendly. He will probably google 'do stringrays like being petted' in the Mercedes-Benz, later. He catches eye contact with a college-age aquarium employee lingering nearby at an adjacent touch tank bank to make sure no one is fucking with the fish, including the two huge gentlemen over here, and so Clark projects a disarming smile in their direction. They smile back.
Bruce may want to do something lest he find himself standing by while Clark strikes up friendly conversation with a marine biology major.
Clark is left dangerously unchecked, free to converse, while Bruce cautiously negotiates with a paper towel dispenser to dry his hand, unwilling to use his trousers unless he absolutely has to. So: that, followed by unfolding his sleeve, the artful pickpocketing of Clark's phone with which to take photos, and the redonning of his coat.
Surely the marine biology major will recognize neither local old rich guy nor Metropolisian journalist who once had an obit published with a clear photo of his face.
It doesn't seem to come up, fortunately. Names exchanged, Clark for Fiona, the latter of whom assures Clark that plenty of stingrays like to be patted, and the ones that don't will retreat into the mangroves potted in amongst the rocks further back. She's been working here for four months. She studies reefs and coral. She's originally from Nashville and she's here on a scolarship.
And maybe there is a moment where she glances past Clark towards Bruce with fleeting speculative recognition, but it drags away again when the sound of an excited child shriek echoes through the enclosure.
"It was nice to meet you," Clark says, freeing her back to her job, and then he does a pat down with his dry hand and a classic 'where'd I put my phone' swivel, immediately scoping the tank just in case. Nope. Back to Bruce, a reflexive peeling back of visual layers, clothing and skin and bone and then a ghostly outline carrying the rectangle he's looking for, all in the bredth of a second.
He smiles, and moves past him to go wrangle a paper towel for himself.
He's got a hat on, Fiona, let him live. (Later, in an employee area— 'Did you see Bruce Wayne?' 'Who?' 'The WayneTech guy, he was here with some investor, I guess' 'I don't think that was him, there's like no way he's that tall, for one', and the Earth continues to turn—)
Clark deserves nice pictures; atmospheric ones of his own beflanneled self, the small shark who accidentally high-fived him, even Bruce's reflection and a ray. He's not a gifted photographer, but he's got a steady hand and a general awareness of composition that comes from a life of passive art consumption. Stuffed to the gills (hah) the Manor was, before. His own tastes run a little less classical. A mysterious captured view of Clark's hand, shimmering with saltwater, is nothing if not sexual. When the heck did he take that.
Ninjas, man.
"I think you may be on to something," Bruce says, his voice grudging, elbow against Clark's in the outdoor food court slash boutique shopping experience. They really are selling fish tacos in here, aren't they. "Bleak."
"You should follow that instinct," Clark says, and they bypass the sushi stand too. "See where that gets you."
There's also pizza, which is ultimately the direction that Clark drifts to after some prowling. It includes an option of pizza decorated in shrimp, which is politely ignored in favour of a couple of slices with veggies and crumbled quorn and something that isn't legally allowed to be called cheese. He knows better than to insist Bruce or really anyone around him to actually inhabit this habit (that Lois is struggling along with him is purely her burden to bear), but he can still make him try a bite, probably, of something he thinks isn't that bad, actually!
While waiting: "How're you feeling?"
And his plan is to bundle all the pictures and short video clips into a folder and leave them somewhere on Bruce's servers to be discovered later. Who knows, though, maybe Alfred and Diana will get to them first. He assumes he would not have to for Vic to be just ambiantly aware of the stupid contents of his phone.
Because he still feels bad for accidentally taking a swipe at Clark (despite it hardly being the worst they've done to each other, on purpose) (and being the one who ended up with the injury) (and the fact that Clark couldn't even feel it), he does not say that he doesn't believe Clark can sense animal auras or whatever and that he's just being ridiculous, or that his necessary 'consumption' of leather and other animal products that aren't food will always dwarf his diet anyway.
The sad vegan pizza is fine. At least there are no fish.
Also, perhaps going along with the crumbly corn pizza will make Clark less inclined to :/ so intensely when Bruce uses him as cover for buying two awful slushie margaritas. One of which he chugs so fast the painful brain freeze is tangible in the air before he even sets the plastic cup down with a (hilarious) wince on his face.
"You're not supposed to ask that," he points out as he digs a few NSAID tablets out of a pocket. "You're supposed to tolerate my conspicuous avoidance until I crack and say something dramatic."
Pills go in mouth. Second (awful) margarita is swallowed slower this time. He thinks maybe this was next to a bottle of tequila once, weeks ago; it's mostly ice and sugar, and he will have the worst headache later.
Their table is situated next to a koi pond, off from the main cluster of seating. Some parents overlook a couple of kindergarten aged kids, some retirees sip their coffee, some college-age couples sit in comfortable silence on their phones with empty sushi trays in front of them. There is music playing from a very distant speaker and a looping female voice funneled through that sits just beyond the scope of human hearing, like she's announcing sealion feeding hours and reminders not to run from the depths of a cave.
Clark is already making a :/ face as he folds a pizza slice to eat, tolerant of slushie margaritas and criticism and certainly not waiting for his time to reply before he takes a bite. Omf. The quorn (with a q, Bruce) is fine, the 'cheese' is not great. But also, not worse than what Clark remembers as if in a distant dream like maybe five months ago coming out on normal food court pizzas, anyway. If questioned on the moral hypocrisy of his efforts, he honestly has little in the way of argument.
It just feels better. Speaking of feelings—
"Well, we still have time," he says, after the bite is swallowed. "How's your—what is that?"
There are so many carbohydrates in this qizza, and no animal proteins. Look how much he loves you.
"Cocaine," Bruce answers immediately, about the pills (?) that Clark only might or might not be asking about it. "What is what?"
Does he have something on his face. Did Timmy fall down a well. He takes a bite of the pizza and chews it without comment, because despite all his wary skepticism about veganism, he's like, mostly fine with it, and probably eats more raw vegetables than Clark by a longshot. (Ask him about kale and celery juice.) Mostly because he actually has to eat.
Clark shakes his head through his second qizza bite, no, not the pills, and then goes and answers his own question by reaching out and taking Bruce's remaining margarita. He helps himself to a sip of faintly tequila-flavoured ice, tips his head like not bad, and sets it back down within Bruce's reach.
Bad manners. Maybe someone has a corrupting influence. (It's Lois, or both of them, trying each others cocktails of choice.)
What do you mean, non-verbal not bad, it's awful, and Bruce's flat look says so. But it's something to brush up against the concept of taking the edge off, which is about where Bruce is on the path of wrestling with an addiction. He has the physical ability to go cold turkey, he knows, the dangers of it not as immediate for someone who does the kinds of things he can do, but he's grudgingly accepted the wisdom in a kinder, slower path. Not just for him. He and Alfred enable each other, and badly; a measured pace allows him the breathing room to see what can be done in that direction, too. His 73-year-old father figure can't hold his breath for ten minutes or regulate his own heartbeat.
So, he is drinking the rest of this freezie machine margarita, and maybe he won't have a headache. He can function with headaches, his behavior and performance levels indistinguishable, but he doesn't like them.
Would the dramatic thing tell Clark how he is. Or would he use it to build a cathedral around an answer, the empty space within beautifully lit and protected and enshrined, but still empty. This qizza is pretty bad. Part of the crust on his is burned, and it helps the texture, miraculously. Maybe he and Lois can cook for Clark sometime. Jam on toast and a kale smoothie, and scotch.
Bruce watches him, but doesn't answer. Undecided on how to. In the pond, a large koi breaks the surface with a zig-zag splash, brilliantly colored body zipping back from capturing a gnat.
For all that Clark will strike up conversation with anyone and anywhere, seemingly immune to the tempo of a big city, or will talk about topics plucked from thin air, he isn't particularly anxious about filling the silence. There's been plenty of times where they've lain together in a quiet and peaceful tangle, or Clark has read a book he's found somewhere in the lake house while Bruce does something complex and mechanical nearby in eyeshot. Walking the rest of the shark tunnel in companionable quiet.
The social adept in him does, however, twinge a little as he waits for an answer, when his question hooks on the air between them and hangs in place, and they're sitting across from one another lke this. There's a speculative eyebrow raise, but no further pressure than that, finishing off his pizza slice in gnawing bites.
Mainly: he wants Bruce to be okay, and to say that he is. Tall order, probably. But he's supposed to, according to the script, tolerate conspicuous avoidance until Bruce cracks, and so.
Time goes by, and things about Bruce that can be forgotten in the heat of his passion, or strategically applied humor, risk bubbling to the surface like the ripples in the pond beside him; pathological rudeness, shutting down, shutting out.
He taps his fingers against the table, alongside the mostly-empty margarita cup. A little anxious, a little decisive. A very human mix.
"I don't know how I'm feeling."
And I hate that.
All his control, all his planning. Bruce has let go of a lot over the past two years, between his blind dive into faith and hope and striking out in the dark to make this team and fight an unknown power. Even their collective relationship is sailing into uncharted territory. Exposing himself like this - the dreams, his poor reaction to them - makes him vulnerable. Unsteady. He should find solace in support, but he's so unfamiliar that it's just strange.
"I've loved you for a long time," he continues abruptly. "It was something I accepted and then set aside as private, because I didn't think it would ever come up. Or that it was—"
Ah. Hm.
"Your business. I guess. I thought it would be intrusive for both of us. I don't think about it too closely anymore. You startled me. I'm sorry about this morning, it was just." He twists the plastic cup where it sits on the table. "Unfortunate timing on my part."
Maybe there's an alternate timeline where Bruce falls back on instinct, closes up, retracts, deflects. In this timeline, later, hours or days, Clark flexes his fingers through Bruce's and says I feel like there was something you wanted to say to me, and maybe Bruce does, then. Or doesn't, but it won't matter, because there may have been some unsteady and unstable time when Clark, unsure of himself, could have been shut out for good, allowed that to happen. But not in that future.
Not in this present. He is cleaning his hands when Bruce speaks, setting food court debris aside, and then stillness. No fidgeting.
His eyes do a thing, that fractional widening slightly amplified by needless lenses. His heart does a thing, no one around to hear it. It doesn't feel like new information—you know, right?—but it still feels revelationary. That's how poems work too.
Clark, gentle, reaches across the table to map his hands against the outside of Bruce's, like he could absorb that fidgeting and the feelings that create it. His thumbs resting on the heels of Bruce's palms. "I don't like the idea of you waking up alone with this," he says, quietly. "And I know you might prefer it, that way, but I want to be there. And next time, I won't let this thing hurt me, or you." For whatever 'hurt' means, flailing in the dark, invulnerability.
"You don't have anything to be sorry about," he adds. Deeply earnest, very sure.
To have faith in Clark is to, in some way, have lost faith in himself. In the way he does things, in the way he forms his beliefs and executes his plans. In his place in the world entirely. It's too much to put on one person— or would be, if that person weren't Clark, always looking at him like too much is finally enough.
Bruce closes his eyes. Not to hide from the moment or block it out, but to let himself feel Clark's hands over his, to sink into what he says. An instinct is there to withdraw, because he's been hurt so many fucking times - hurt others so many fucking times - but he pushes into it instead. Makes himself feel it and accept that he wants it.
(he's wondered sometimes if the reason he can't stop and can't kill himself in his dreams is because he still loves Clark so much)
"I don't have a plan for any of this," feels like a shameful admission. Lying to Clark by withholding his dreams, endangering Lois by falling asleep next to her. Not having any idea what the fuck to do. Is this what having people is supposed to be for?
Clark is studying their hands while Bruce closes his eyes. Similarly sized hands. Bruce's rough in places, bandaged recently, and his own look nothing like you'd expect a farmer's son from Kansas to look, smooth and unworked. If Clark had to guess, he'd say that this thing is doing to Bruce not unlike what Luthor had managed to do. Get right into the heart of things, remove Bruce's powers of calculated objectivity. Make it too close, too intimate.
He looks back up when Bruce speaks, a fond kind of smoothing of his expression. Bruce is a planner. Clark, less of one.
"I don't know. You kind of had a plan," Clark suggests, letting his tone lighten up a little. Not teasing, still serious, just not sombre. "You were information collecting even before you knew if it meant anything. You still don't know if it does. So you kept it contained. You didn't want it to hurt anyone."
Like Clark, which is very sweet, but. His grip on Bruce's hands tighten, although he avoids the sprain as he does so. "A while back, I asked you to let me help you. I seem to recall you agreed."
Bleak humor: if Luthor had been less heavy-handed, if Bruce had not been pushed to such an unhinged state, he may have actually managed to kill Superman himself. He's wildly dangerous when he's spinning out of control, but he's far more effective when he isn't. If he has a plan and he's clear-headed, no moment of weakness is going to interrupt him. He'll always want to get back to center, no matter how angry he is.
So thanks, Lex.
Bruce presses his thumb up against Clark's grip. Returning it while caged in. Looking at him finally, brown eyes tired, but unguarded. Sitting across from him at a small table in a food court at an aquarium. A small bird has landed on the lip of the koi pond, hoping for soggy pellets not yet vacuumed up by the koi.
"And here I thought," well, this is happening, apparently, "that would be boring."
Boring and about a lamp. You midwestern asshole, Clark.
Clark gives him a smile, the smile of a man secure in the spoken fact that they are in love and so he can maybe get away with even more than he previously let himself know about.
"Boring's fine too," he says. "So any time you wanna try that out instead, I'll be there."
Said smile fades a little, faster than usual. This is all stressful. It's nice for them that their first kiss happened on Christmas Eve, on his home porch, snow blanketing his favourite place on earth, because so much other nice things seem to be borne of extremely tense situations. The world ending, nightmares, attempted mutual murder despite their mutual pulled punches, near misses with neurotoxin (:/).
Still. Holding hands next to the koi and the bird and fresh memories of otters is pretty good, no matter the looming shadow of the subject at hand. "How often?" he asks.
Bruce considers for a moment just how miserable this would be with nothing else - if they weren't touching hands right now, if they were having this discussion months in the future, in the cave or Clark's office after-hours. Their entanglement had unnerved him at first for how dangerous he saw it being, but these days he's beginning to see it as the opposite. He never imagined himself capable of working anything else; he doesn't know if it's just that Clark is that exceptionally patient (sort of) or if he himself has changed enough to allow for it (also, sort of).
He didn't want it to hurt anyone. He dismantled the chamber where he could have kept Clark contained. He's designing the red sun light to be easily destroyed.
It isn't you.
"Every few weeks. But when it happens, it might be once, or it might be a few nights in a row. This was the first one in a while."
Each time there's a lull, he wonders if they're over. Hard not to hope.
The hands around Bruce's are now looser in their hold, but engaged. Soft and intermittent fingerstrokes, gentle presses of his thumbs against sensitive points. Almost negligent while Clark nods, thinks, making the slow and slightly reluctant shift from reassuring to something more analytical. Trying to balance between both, at least.
And beneath this conversation, he's still reeling a little, circling that word, love, turning it over and over like spun sugar. And he thinks he gets it, about what is and isn't his business. Maybe. There are times when Clark has said something or done something cognizant to the fact that a normal person would probably think it's too much, too far, too quick, too soon, where mild manners aren't enough to quite throw a blanket over it. There are still, somehow, things he hasn't told Bruce for fear that there is some kind of upper limit.
Here's something crazy: sometimes he thinks he, Clark Kent, is made for someone like Bruce Wayne, and the other way around. No, not someone like. Just him, singular. From the atoms up.
Which isn't to take away from what he has with Lois, what Bruce has with Lois, with Diana, with anyone else he might open himself up to. It's just something else, a force, a magnetism, where love feels like it has its own measurable energy. Transmutable too, taking on various qualities, of violence, of awe, of hunger and desire. And all of that, a lot of the time, feels more like Clark's problem rather than something he needs to unpack, out loud, with Bruce.
(He has tried a little, with Lois, just to make sure she understood and would be accepting that something he had ran deeper than just sex. She hadn't laughed at him, just—well, smirked. That was very kind. But she was right: he has it pretty bad.)
Anyway. It's good they're not just talking about their feelings.
"I'll stay tonight," he says, and it is suggestion, in spite of the absence of a question mark lifting his tone.
Before the farmhouse on Christmas, before snow and socks in haphazard wrapping paper, they were up to their elbows in each other's atoms; there is something that happens, Bruce would say, when a life is reshaped. And even though Clark is the one that died, he's not the only one who's been brought back to life. It isn't the same, but Bruce holds it close, some small candle in a gale protected by his rough, mortal hands.
A second chance that he can't waste.
How does he explain to his kids that it wasn't them, who made him do this? To Selina? Why couldn't he have remade himself for her, or for Talia? People who loved him enough to hate the absence of him. People whose own absences have driven him mad. And then there's Clark Kent.
Bruce knows he can turn that suggestion away. Clark would never force it. Even if he kept an ear out the whole time, he'd give Bruce the illusion of privacy and maybe even hold back if he panicked in his sleep again. But he knows it's an illusion, and there's something perversely freeing in it. The decision is his, but it also doesn't matter. Clark's inescapable attention is comforting.
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He's standing almost closer than necessary, to hold hands. Not to cover it up. Like some part of him thinks it's too fragile to withstand a bold two-foot distance, arms jostling with the cadence of their footsteps. Something to be protected instead.
What's next? Petting stingrays? Seals?
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Maybe he is a cartoon character, for his own instinct being to love even more fiercely. Bruce has tried to pull away too. It seems like a normal human instinct. But they probably both know by now that Clark isn't going to let them, no matter what prophetic dreams have to say.
They go to pet the stringrays, after determining that it's closer on the map anyway.
The touch tank is low, accessible for children, but it's a school day and so it's relatively empty, where all the people going on daytime dates are more interested in mooning over sharks and otters and belugas like losers. There's a sign with instructions, asking aquarium goers to stay quiet, not to splash the water, keep your hand still and palm flat, only touch these circled parts of the stingrays and gliding reef sharks present, and Clark follows all these to the letter. He has to take off his jacket and roll his sleeve, which he does.
"Do you snorkel?" Clark says, his attention such that he looks like he's asking the smooth grey stingray that passes beneath his hand, but it is intended for Bruce.
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Perhaps also, mere mortals aren't equipped to tolerate his shit, and he was always meant for this in some way. Kryptonians and Amazons and the only humans who don't flinch from them.
"Do I snorkel."
Behind him, Bruce has conceded to removing his coat, temporarily depositing it on the railing leading down to the pool's edge. Using the thumb of his half-busted hand to tug up the opposite knitted sleeve. He hovers next to Clark for a while, enjoying watching him more than the idea of reaching into water turned into germ soup by a thousand hands and stingray pee. He will. Just give him a second.
Also, lurking behind him means that he can wait until Clark is behind forward again, and do that thing and poke him lightly in the back, like he's threatening to push him in.
"Can't say that I do, no."
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"Me neither," Clark says. "But it seems relaxing."
There is an epaulette shark circling nearer, but not near enough. Still, Clark isn't afraid of falling in, centre of gravity wherever he needs it to be, so he leans enough to brush fingers against spotted hide. Maybe they'll deserve another vacation in a future that doesn't feel like it's about to be eaten up by cosmic horrors. Maybe they'll kill an afternoon by drifting bellydown in crystal clear waters and stare at octopuses and eels and pointy-finned tropical fish, who will only see their shadows.
There's probably a lot they have to talk about. Clark evens out his hand when no fish is imminent, unconcerned about germs and stingray pee as he only just touches the surface. Earth is pretty good. The Els did alright.
Hopefully.
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"I can hold my breath for ten minutes or so," is his answer to relaxing floating jaunts. It seems unlikely that he can, particularly while doing anything, but you never know. Normal Batman shit. It would be less chill than a snorkel, but he'd get style points.
A kite-shaped ray comes around again, swooping on a lazy racetrack, and Bruce leans in and dips his hand into the water, letting his fingers run along its wet sandpaper skin. For a moment he lets himself be transported; standing just here (a meter over, actually), this same sensation under his hand, a ten-year-old boy babbling excitedly about it, utterly unaware of his shirtsleeves and half his front being soaked. It was crowded that day, noise echoing off every surface, animals drawn to the din.
Silence aside from lapping water, when he returns. (Only a few seconds missing. It's fine.)
"Once in a while I have to convince myself there's probably not anything unusual living under the house."
In the dark water.
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For a given value of unusual. Clark has his hand positioned with perfect form, having patted the ray after it skated by under Bruce's fingers. The few seconds of silence feels part and parcel to this moment that he doesn't wonder too sharply after what Bruce is thinking about, save that he is always wondering a little what Bruce is thinking about. It's all meditative, like the concentric ripples from their contact with the water, colliding, cancelling one another out.
Clark lifts his hand, lets water drip off his fingers, disinclined to startle anything by shaking it dry. "Frogs and minnows. Things that wanna be left alone, probably."
But stingrays are friendly. He will probably google 'do stringrays like being petted' in the Mercedes-Benz, later. He catches eye contact with a college-age aquarium employee lingering nearby at an adjacent touch tank bank to make sure no one is fucking with the fish, including the two huge gentlemen over here, and so Clark projects a disarming smile in their direction. They smile back.
Bruce may want to do something lest he find himself standing by while Clark strikes up friendly conversation with a marine biology major.
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Just imagine the quacking.
Clark is left dangerously unchecked, free to converse, while Bruce cautiously negotiates with a paper towel dispenser to dry his hand, unwilling to use his trousers unless he absolutely has to. So: that, followed by unfolding his sleeve, the artful pickpocketing of Clark's phone with which to take photos, and the redonning of his coat.
Surely the marine biology major will recognize neither local old rich guy nor Metropolisian journalist who once had an obit published with a clear photo of his face.
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And maybe there is a moment where she glances past Clark towards Bruce with fleeting speculative recognition, but it drags away again when the sound of an excited child shriek echoes through the enclosure.
"It was nice to meet you," Clark says, freeing her back to her job, and then he does a pat down with his dry hand and a classic 'where'd I put my phone' swivel, immediately scoping the tank just in case. Nope. Back to Bruce, a reflexive peeling back of visual layers, clothing and skin and bone and then a ghostly outline carrying the rectangle he's looking for, all in the bredth of a second.
He smiles, and moves past him to go wrangle a paper towel for himself.
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Clark deserves nice pictures; atmospheric ones of his own beflanneled self, the small shark who accidentally high-fived him, even Bruce's reflection and a ray. He's not a gifted photographer, but he's got a steady hand and a general awareness of composition that comes from a life of passive art consumption. Stuffed to the gills (hah) the Manor was, before. His own tastes run a little less classical. A mysterious captured view of Clark's hand, shimmering with saltwater, is nothing if not sexual. When the heck did he take that.
Ninjas, man.
"I think you may be on to something," Bruce says, his voice grudging, elbow against Clark's in the outdoor food court slash boutique shopping experience. They really are selling fish tacos in here, aren't they. "Bleak."
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"You should follow that instinct," Clark says, and they bypass the sushi stand too. "See where that gets you."
There's also pizza, which is ultimately the direction that Clark drifts to after some prowling. It includes an option of pizza decorated in shrimp, which is politely ignored in favour of a couple of slices with veggies and crumbled quorn and something that isn't legally allowed to be called cheese. He knows better than to insist Bruce or really anyone around him to actually inhabit this habit (that Lois is struggling along with him is purely her burden to bear), but he can still make him try a bite, probably, of something he thinks isn't that bad, actually!
While waiting: "How're you feeling?"
And his plan is to bundle all the pictures and short video clips into a folder and leave them somewhere on Bruce's servers to be discovered later. Who knows, though, maybe Alfred and Diana will get to them first. He assumes he would not have to for Vic to be just ambiantly aware of the stupid contents of his phone.
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The sad vegan pizza is fine. At least there are no fish.
Also, perhaps going along with the crumbly corn pizza will make Clark less inclined to :/ so intensely when Bruce uses him as cover for buying two awful slushie margaritas. One of which he chugs so fast the painful brain freeze is tangible in the air before he even sets the plastic cup down with a (hilarious) wince on his face.
"You're not supposed to ask that," he points out as he digs a few NSAID tablets out of a pocket. "You're supposed to tolerate my conspicuous avoidance until I crack and say something dramatic."
Pills go in mouth. Second (awful) margarita is swallowed slower this time. He thinks maybe this was next to a bottle of tequila once, weeks ago; it's mostly ice and sugar, and he will have the worst headache later.
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Clark is already making a :/ face as he folds a pizza slice to eat, tolerant of slushie margaritas and criticism and certainly not waiting for his time to reply before he takes a bite. Omf. The quorn (with a q, Bruce) is fine, the 'cheese' is not great. But also, not worse than what Clark remembers as if in a distant dream like maybe five months ago coming out on normal food court pizzas, anyway. If questioned on the moral hypocrisy of his efforts, he honestly has little in the way of argument.
It just feels better. Speaking of feelings—
"Well, we still have time," he says, after the bite is swallowed. "How's your—what is that?"
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"Cocaine," Bruce answers immediately, about the pills (?) that Clark only might or might not be asking about it. "What is what?"
Does he have something on his face. Did Timmy fall down a well. He takes a bite of the pizza and chews it without comment, because despite all his wary skepticism about veganism, he's like, mostly fine with it, and probably eats more raw vegetables than Clark by a longshot. (Ask him about kale and celery juice.) Mostly because he actually has to eat.
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Bad manners. Maybe someone has a corrupting influence. (It's Lois, or both of them, trying each others cocktails of choice.)
"Would the dramatic thing tell me how you are?"
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So, he is drinking the rest of this freezie machine margarita, and maybe he won't have a headache. He can function with headaches, his behavior and performance levels indistinguishable, but he doesn't like them.
Would the dramatic thing tell Clark how he is. Or would he use it to build a cathedral around an answer, the empty space within beautifully lit and protected and enshrined, but still empty. This qizza is pretty bad. Part of the crust on his is burned, and it helps the texture, miraculously. Maybe he and Lois can cook for Clark sometime. Jam on toast and a kale smoothie, and scotch.
Bruce watches him, but doesn't answer. Undecided on how to. In the pond, a large koi breaks the surface with a zig-zag splash, brilliantly colored body zipping back from capturing a gnat.
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The social adept in him does, however, twinge a little as he waits for an answer, when his question hooks on the air between them and hangs in place, and they're sitting across from one another lke this. There's a speculative eyebrow raise, but no further pressure than that, finishing off his pizza slice in gnawing bites.
Mainly: he wants Bruce to be okay, and to say that he is. Tall order, probably. But he's supposed to, according to the script, tolerate conspicuous avoidance until Bruce cracks, and so.
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He taps his fingers against the table, alongside the mostly-empty margarita cup. A little anxious, a little decisive. A very human mix.
"I don't know how I'm feeling."
And I hate that.
All his control, all his planning. Bruce has let go of a lot over the past two years, between his blind dive into faith and hope and striking out in the dark to make this team and fight an unknown power. Even their collective relationship is sailing into uncharted territory. Exposing himself like this - the dreams, his poor reaction to them - makes him vulnerable. Unsteady. He should find solace in support, but he's so unfamiliar that it's just strange.
"I've loved you for a long time," he continues abruptly. "It was something I accepted and then set aside as private, because I didn't think it would ever come up. Or that it was—"
Ah. Hm.
"Your business. I guess. I thought it would be intrusive for both of us. I don't think about it too closely anymore. You startled me. I'm sorry about this morning, it was just." He twists the plastic cup where it sits on the table. "Unfortunate timing on my part."
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Not in this present. He is cleaning his hands when Bruce speaks, setting food court debris aside, and then stillness. No fidgeting.
His eyes do a thing, that fractional widening slightly amplified by needless lenses. His heart does a thing, no one around to hear it. It doesn't feel like new information—you know, right?—but it still feels revelationary. That's how poems work too.
Clark, gentle, reaches across the table to map his hands against the outside of Bruce's, like he could absorb that fidgeting and the feelings that create it. His thumbs resting on the heels of Bruce's palms. "I don't like the idea of you waking up alone with this," he says, quietly. "And I know you might prefer it, that way, but I want to be there. And next time, I won't let this thing hurt me, or you." For whatever 'hurt' means, flailing in the dark, invulnerability.
"You don't have anything to be sorry about," he adds. Deeply earnest, very sure.
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Bruce closes his eyes. Not to hide from the moment or block it out, but to let himself feel Clark's hands over his, to sink into what he says. An instinct is there to withdraw, because he's been hurt so many fucking times - hurt others so many fucking times - but he pushes into it instead. Makes himself feel it and accept that he wants it.
(he's wondered sometimes if the reason he can't stop and can't kill himself in his dreams is because he still loves Clark so much)
"I don't have a plan for any of this," feels like a shameful admission. Lying to Clark by withholding his dreams, endangering Lois by falling asleep next to her. Not having any idea what the fuck to do. Is this what having people is supposed to be for?
"I know how to be alone with it. That's why."
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He looks back up when Bruce speaks, a fond kind of smoothing of his expression. Bruce is a planner. Clark, less of one.
"I don't know. You kind of had a plan," Clark suggests, letting his tone lighten up a little. Not teasing, still serious, just not sombre. "You were information collecting even before you knew if it meant anything. You still don't know if it does. So you kept it contained. You didn't want it to hurt anyone."
Like Clark, which is very sweet, but. His grip on Bruce's hands tighten, although he avoids the sprain as he does so. "A while back, I asked you to let me help you. I seem to recall you agreed."
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So thanks, Lex.
Bruce presses his thumb up against Clark's grip. Returning it while caged in. Looking at him finally, brown eyes tired, but unguarded. Sitting across from him at a small table in a food court at an aquarium. A small bird has landed on the lip of the koi pond, hoping for soggy pellets not yet vacuumed up by the koi.
"And here I thought," well, this is happening, apparently, "that would be boring."
Boring and about a lamp. You midwestern asshole, Clark.
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"Boring's fine too," he says. "So any time you wanna try that out instead, I'll be there."
Said smile fades a little, faster than usual. This is all stressful. It's nice for them that their first kiss happened on Christmas Eve, on his home porch, snow blanketing his favourite place on earth, because so much other nice things seem to be borne of extremely tense situations. The world ending, nightmares, attempted mutual murder despite their mutual pulled punches, near misses with neurotoxin (:/).
Still. Holding hands next to the koi and the bird and fresh memories of otters is pretty good, no matter the looming shadow of the subject at hand. "How often?" he asks.
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He didn't want it to hurt anyone. He dismantled the chamber where he could have kept Clark contained. He's designing the red sun light to be easily destroyed.
It isn't you.
"Every few weeks. But when it happens, it might be once, or it might be a few nights in a row. This was the first one in a while."
Each time there's a lull, he wonders if they're over. Hard not to hope.
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And beneath this conversation, he's still reeling a little, circling that word, love, turning it over and over like spun sugar. And he thinks he gets it, about what is and isn't his business. Maybe. There are times when Clark has said something or done something cognizant to the fact that a normal person would probably think it's too much, too far, too quick, too soon, where mild manners aren't enough to quite throw a blanket over it. There are still, somehow, things he hasn't told Bruce for fear that there is some kind of upper limit.
Here's something crazy: sometimes he thinks he, Clark Kent, is made for someone like Bruce Wayne, and the other way around. No, not someone like. Just him, singular. From the atoms up.
Which isn't to take away from what he has with Lois, what Bruce has with Lois, with Diana, with anyone else he might open himself up to. It's just something else, a force, a magnetism, where love feels like it has its own measurable energy. Transmutable too, taking on various qualities, of violence, of awe, of hunger and desire. And all of that, a lot of the time, feels more like Clark's problem rather than something he needs to unpack, out loud, with Bruce.
(He has tried a little, with Lois, just to make sure she understood and would be accepting that something he had ran deeper than just sex. She hadn't laughed at him, just—well, smirked. That was very kind. But she was right: he has it pretty bad.)
Anyway. It's good they're not just talking about their feelings.
"I'll stay tonight," he says, and it is suggestion, in spite of the absence of a question mark lifting his tone.
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A second chance that he can't waste.
How does he explain to his kids that it wasn't them, who made him do this? To Selina? Why couldn't he have remade himself for her, or for Talia? People who loved him enough to hate the absence of him. People whose own absences have driven him mad. And then there's Clark Kent.
Bruce knows he can turn that suggestion away. Clark would never force it. Even if he kept an ear out the whole time, he'd give Bruce the illusion of privacy and maybe even hold back if he panicked in his sleep again. But he knows it's an illusion, and there's something perversely freeing in it. The decision is his, but it also doesn't matter. Clark's inescapable attention is comforting.
"You'll stay tonight."
and then the thread ended. hereafter are dvd extras.
beep boop
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