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.
"You'll stay tonight."
and then the thread ended. hereafter are dvd extras.
Not that 'yay' is the appropriate reaction, really. The offer isn't being made for the purpose of a nice time, and what Clark feels is relief, mainly, that something has been settled, shifted, and he hopes for the better.
But still, slightly glad for more selfish purposes, of nearness and acceptance thereof, and while he presses a smile at Bruce, gives his hands a last squeeze, he entertains the brief fantasy of leaning across the table to kiss him in front of god and everyone. Inappropriate, too, but there it is, and it wasn't the first time today he's thought about it, and it won't be the last.
What Clark does instead is gather the remnants of their lunch and the recyclable plates and napkins it came with, leaving Bruce the cup of melting margarita slushie to do with as he likes. Reflexively tidying before the person he's with even thinks to do it themselves is probably the number one mama's boy tell he has, chief among all the other ones. They make pretty good boyfriends, his tribe.
"Seal feeding's in ten minutes," Clark says, on his way back over. "We can make it if we don't get distracted by cephalopods."
The dregs of the awful margarita are downed in one last go, and then Bruce chucks it into the bin. Two points at the buzzer in overtime, Gotham wins. He adjusts sunglasses back onto his face from being clipped into his sweater, though it's still obvious when he gives Clark a look of slightly conflicted frown.
Cephalopods are neat.
It's a near thing, but they can always walk back past more tentacles after. And Bruce finds that he's strangely - shyly? - eager to watch Clark enjoy himself, even if that enjoyment involves daintily holding out dead fish under the guidance of a wetsuited marine biologist with a crackly lav mic on. There's not much of a crowd, but the young man is going for the Oscar anyway, perhaps happy to have less pressure to practice.
Incredibly, the canned speech involves discussing behavioral reactions to the oceanic displacement incident, which catches Bruce off-guard. Not in a bad way, he thinks, after a moment's reflection. It's just doubly strange to be reminded of how much a part of the world they all really are, and not just shadowy machinations making decisions and fighting wars on its behalf.
A very well-trained sea lion blows them all kisses, and does multiple laps back to the littlest girl in the front of the small audience; she has on a giant pink bow and a Gotham U Womens Soccer shirt on, oversized and clearly mom's. Appropriately enamoured despite the overwhelming smell of fish. (Bruce is glad they had the fake pizza.)
Quiet, because Clark doesn't need to strain to hear him, "These are definitely the dogs."
They are the dogs. Unruly, loud, excitable. Bruce's barely audible observation cracks a smile out of Clark as they navigate around children and buckets of dead seafood. Big whiskered snouts open wide to catch little silver fish and slimy squid, which is both very fun, a chance to interact instead of staring through tanks wistfully, and also mildly stressful. Like it's teasing them, tossing food down by hand one at a time, and it'd be more fair to just pitch the bucketful into the pool and let them have at it, which is kind of how Clark fed the chickens way back when. Urgently and generously.
The show is satisfying, getting to watch them swim like torpedos through clear water, and then slapping their bodies up onto the concrete, grasping rubber balls in their mouths, waving their flippers. The girl with the bow and the soccer shirt is enamored, as is oversized Kryptonian further back.
If there's a news headline in a few weeks of someone sighting Superman giving a seal a bellyrub, drawing criticism from wildlife experts everywhere, Bruce only has himself to blame.
"We should go by the shark tunnel again," Clark suggests, through the last scattered applause. "To make sure."
It does seem like it would be very pleasing to reach out and pet one, cold wet fur and slimy noses, teeth formidable but not more than a golden retriever's. Mischievous friends happy to have jobs, more personable than their cousin the leopard seal, who lurks in a different tank and slides along the edges of the viewing window like an unnerving mermaid. Dinosaur fangs and overlarge eyes on a wide, oval face, looking at them too-intelligently.
Hopefully she'll get some extra fish, too. Or several penguins.
Sea lions bray loud enough to be heard still even as they begin the trek back to whence they began.
"You planned this loop," Bruce accuses, faintly amused.
Clark flashes his own set of canines in confirmation. "We can high five the octopuses again on the way," he assures, like maybe Bruce was very invested in that and he's being considerate. And because no one will try to get him in a headlock in public, probably; "High eight?"
That this directly benefits Clark too is not a secret, when he beelines back for where the giant Pacific octopus is housed. Her name is Susan.
There are also: gigantic crabs that Clark will tell no one make him slightly hungry, just conceptually and in spite of his fake aura vision thing, which is not fake, and big column tanks full of jellyfish set aglow with gentle blues and golds. Clark steals his phone back, here, to take some artful space fish pictures where some of them not so subtly capture Bruce through them, one of which he sends to Lois, harking back to some other co-owned jellyfish-related memory. There's a tank full of Nemos, all darting frantically through near-glowing fingers of anemones. They seem bigger in the movie.
It's a good way to feel less alien, if Clark ever does, hanging out with all these weird and wonderful things. But they're halfway through the tanks when it's clear he is just waiting to go back and check out the sharks again, observing plaques and tropical fish out of a sense of good manners and inclusion.
The giant octopus is spending a lot of time fitting itself into an impossibly tiny hole in some rock, then unfurling itself, then back in, as if performing a magic trick for an audience. Bruce tells a story about being chased by one while he was being made to retrieve shoes from an underwater cave. ("It kept throwing rocks at me.") Drawing the story out every time Clark inches away, until it's excruciatingly clear that he's doing it just to watch him begin to squirm for desire of sharks, and relents, trying not to laugh.
There's just something so charming about him. Happy like this. Part of him wishes he was the sort to think to do things without a crisis as a catalyst, but he isn't; at least he's gotten to this point. Thinking to come here at all. Baby steps.
Baby fins. The sharks are still huge, still swimming, the glass tunnel still pleasingly shadowed and electric blue and air-conditioned. Bruce watches more of Clark than the aquatic predators, expression on his face particular. Gentle, but restrained; headlocks not the only thing being politely avoided.
The hammerhead, for a little while, seems to hang out with them, skirting above the tunnel as a shadow and swimming lazily apace. It's not lost on Clark that most of the creatures they've gotten to admire would fare better in open ocean that aren't either dumping grounds for waste, or hunting fields for poachers, or apparently ancient battlefields between ancient beings. That they'd probably prefer to swim for miles rather than the same circuit, every day.
But the world is full of what feel like impossible ethical paradoxes, from the cruelty and slaughter of soft-eyed cattle and the exploitation and poor working conditions of human beings, through choosing to slowly stroll through the plexiglass tunnel of Gotham's aquarium with someone he loves versus spending every waking second in the sky, on the hunt for lives to save. Saving a bus full of kids or protecting a secret that was bigger than all of them. He thinks Jonathan Kent said 'maybe' that one time because he didn't have an answer to Clark's question.
And living with not having the answer while trying to find it, every day, is not just a Superman condition, but a human one. Kyrptonians thought they knew everything.
They could have never brought him back. Clark always framed the decision to do so as doing so for a reason. That there is, and was, a reason they could have chosen not to—
These odd undercurrents, cold but fleeting. He is, at the moment, nodding up at the hammerhead to call Bruce's attention to it, but catches Bruce's focus instead. His own symmetrical smile already in place then skews a little crooked, borderline subliminally picking up on the particulars in being watched as opposed to only looked at.
Richard Grayson, nine years old, sitting in the center of Bruce's bed after careening through the halls of a haunting old house, terrified of the things playing out in his head. (After that, they'd moved rooms, and Bruce was never too far away, Dick only taking the larger quarters in a more private space once he was older.) It had been a rough night, dawn just breaking. He still felt bloody, even scrubbed raw, somehow more cut open by a child clinging to his hands after a nightmare.
If you were Batman, the night my parents died, could you have saved them?
It had been a breakthrough after nearly a year of taking him in, the hell of grief and therapy, new trauma of discovering Bruce's mad secret. And it was devastating, too. Bruce held his son to his chest and knew he had doomed him to thinking of that question only, for the rest of his life. Knows he thinks of it still, as a cop in Blüdhaven. It's the only thing either of them think of, sometimes. Consumed by it.
The sharks cast shadows, distant sunlight streaming in, mingled with the blue bulbs that do their best to slice away harmful rays. Not content with simply fucking up the seas, humans also continue to burn holes through the protective layer around their own planet. Where do fish have left? Where do any of them have left?
Bruce looks at him. Expression completely open, like someone took knife and delicately flayed him like one of the creatures swimming by, slickly separating meat from bone to expose every detail. I just like you, is all. Thank you for today. Thank you for all of it.
Clark's own expression softens, like Bruce has said something other than nothing. Fond. His shoulder bumps into Bruce's without any kind of push behind it. It would be nice if the tunnel they're in would just spiral on forever, preserving just this in the cool watery shadows, the silent shapes drifting around them. Despite that sentiment—
—let's get outta here, the nudge seems to say.
Well. Almost.
Because there is a gift shop planted strategically by the exit that Clark inevitably swerves towards. Plenty of T-shirts and hoodies, metal straws to promote sustainable consumerism, a wall of plush toys. These, Clark appears tempted by, lingering over an otter, a leopard seal, a fuzzy stingray, but Lois has a threshold for adorable bullshit cluttering up her extremely good apartment and he has to be strategic.
(Also tempting: a pair of socks shaped like sharks, so it looks like they're eating your legs when pulled up. Clark does pick these up. Christmas for Arthur, sorted. One day, he'll get presents that aren't kitsch distilled.)
He identifies some respectable looking coffee keep-cups with myriads of sea creatures, picking up one patterned with seahorses speculatively, putting it back, exchanging it for the jellyfish one.
The stuffed animals are a trap; somehow, still, at nearly 50 years old, Bruce also spends some time observing the wall of them. He picks up an orca one, turns it over, some stray memory about the company that used to manufacture them drifting by his consciousness. "I used to get Richard a million of these," he says, normal, like this is something he talks about at all, "because he grew up with all these exotic animals. He was always trying to get me to buy a ten-foot boa constrictor, or a zebra. The horses were barely a compromise."
Orca goes back on the shelf. Soft and lovey-eyed. Alfred would not like it. (As if he gets Alfred anything the man would actually like.)
"Jason always wanted knives or C4. So he also got stuffed animals."
Maybe it is something he talks about. Sure, Clark can count on one hand in the past mumblemumble they've been together that he has, but it's, you know. Adding up.
But there isn't a lot of opportunity to see Bruce that way, a dad and the impossible task of being one, and his eyes crinkle at the corners after little boys wanting to be superheroes, grow up fast, being given a plush raccoon instead.
"Depends on your definition of worst," Clark says, because he was asked a question. He reaches up and picks up a mug where the handle is a garishly orange tentacle, connected to the artwork of a googly eyed octopus. The eyes are in fact googly eyes, and they roll in place as he tips it speculatively. "'Cause to someone, this is the best."
He offers it out for inspection, juggling keep-cup and socks in his other hand.
It's something he talks about inside his own head. Is all. Narrating to himself, trying not to let old film reels of memory burn up. Please return my fucking calls. Getting more than a little sad, after so many years.
But.
Bruce accepts the googly-eyed cup, listening to the faint clink of plastic googlies, giving it serious consideration. After a moment he returns it to the shelf. Rejected.
"Too obvious."
Also, it's absurd enough to deserve a customer who appreciates it for its surreal glory. Bruce peruses some more, fully aware that whatever cup he selects will end up in a storage room at the back of the manor's secondary kitchen, at best. If it's especially tasteless, a box sent to Goodwill. So there's care that must go into selecting the right one, striking a balance between annoying and entertaining Alfred. Bruce knows he still has a Tokyo Disney one in the house proper, even, he's just strategic about not showing anyone.
Clark makes eye contact with the mug, kind of shrugs at it like, sorry about him, before scanning the shelves for one that is the worst but not in an ~obvious~ way. No suggestions are forthcoming, though, more entertained at the prospect of whatever Bruce is liable to select.
The question prompts a glance down at the items in his hands. "Arthur, for Christmas," gestured with the socks, apparently while cognizant to the fact they've only just escaped the winter, "Lois, for now," with the cup. "She has two of these in black."
So. She deserves something cute too, veering from anything too brightly coloured and clutching the one with the jellyfish patterns in dreamy pastels. "I don't buy her stuff she has to wear, 'cause she will not." False. He's gotten away with a nice set of gloves on a birthday, a pretty bracelet at Christmas, an engagement ring and a wedding band. But he means kitsch: no fun hats or dolphin pendants.
So he adds, "Mostly."
You know, like Curry's gonna be thrilled for his socks.
Curry is absolutely going to be thrilled about socks. They're from Superman. Speaking of—
"Are you seducing Arthur for Christmas?" Archly, giving him a sidelong look. From someone else, or in circumstances that do not involve so many other partners (Lois, Diana, whatever the Gothamite woman that Bruce spends a lot of time texting but doesn't talk about is), that might sound insecure. You got me socks for Christmas, before I kissed you the first time.
But because they are what they are, it's just. Funny. Or at least it is to Bruce, standing in the middle of an aquarium gift shop side-eying Clark about apparently working his way through an entire time of superheroes and demigods with his alluring and irresistible novelty socks.
It is to Clark, who laughs. One million teeth. Surprised enough that he did not quite draw a line between these two points, but still—
"If he takes me back to his place," is bantered back in a way that leaves room for a good rimshot sound effect. He has given up on Themyscira, for feminist reasons, and while he could probably just roll up on Atlantis if he felt like it, an invitation feels required in case he aggravate some kind of diplomatic incident.
And, like, he'd expect the Justice League to ask him before crashing in on Smallville, so.
"Hmmm." About Arthur's place. How weirded out is this guy going to be, when he finds out they're all pining to see merdogs. Bruce picks up a laser-cut drinking glass, almost tasteful designs etched onto the sides. Looks back at Clark. Gives him a studious look, as if he isn't one of the most attractive people currently residing on Earth, tall and unfairly built, bright eyes, perfect predatory warm smile.
"Maybe if he doesn't already have socks."
Sure.
Puts the glass back, picks up another one, slightly further from tasteful. This one's designs include a dolphin mascot wearing a Gotham City Knights hat, in the midst of what is otherwise quite pretty fish and filagree. Deemed the winner, he returns it to the display and looks for a corresponding box beneath the shelf.
A good natured :/, and so the socks remain in his hands as he picks out the corresponding box for his gift to Lois. Much like the aquarium itself, it'd be easy to do a few circuits among the brightly-adorned displays, see what else fires off a synapse, but the impulse is resisted, Clark headed for the cashier instead.
The bored young man on the other side prompts Clark to slip a ten dollar bill into the donations box, and unprompted, Clark selects an item off the little stationery display on the countertop, attempting to achieve a balance between not looking like he's shoplifting while also not attracting Bruce's attention.
He helps load his choices into a comically small recycled paper gift bag as part of this ruse but also because of course he does, and pivots to see where he left the other giant man squeezing between overstuffed aisles of tropically coloured merchandise.
The other giant man squeezing between overstuffed aisles of tropically colo(u)red merchandise is picking at a rotating display of postcards, and not seeming to do much squeezing. For all his acting ability, Bruce has a difficult time not looking like he moves easy, despite being the broad side of a barn door. The postcards are 75cents each, or 4 for $2, and so, he picks 4.
"Does your mom want one?" he asks Clark at the counter, tapping them. Smalltalk, he's buying them anyway. Also allowing himself to be sold a book of fish stamps to go with. His haul also includes the cup, and a tiny ceramic baby Weddell seal - the trinket kind that come lightly glued to tiny white paper squares. Not even the adult, just the baby. Slightly smaller than a quarter, a little blobby and characterful for the hand-painting. Bruce could get Diana a thousand things, expensive and elegant - his tastes match hers, if he picked out jewelry he's sure she'd wear it - but her collection is fine, and this is funnier. Besides. He knows what kinds of things she keeps. Old photos and watches. She can chuck this in a drawer, forget about it for a century and a half, find it again someday. Why the hell did Bruce get me this.
(Because there are no bats at aquariums.)
The cashier takes a look at Bruce's bandaged hand, and pointedly passes his paper gift bag to Clark. Bruce does not laugh. Barely.
Clark collects up this second bag dutifully, even magnanimously, and wishes the kid a good day.
On the way out, exiting the ventilated and very specific smelling air of the aquarium they've been marinading in into the damper, rawer climate outside, he's already extracted the postcards to look at, and turns one of them to show Bruce. A picture of a sealion with its whiskered nose pointed up to investigate the camera, big glossy eyes and slick fur.
"This one?" he asks, because yes, his mom will appreciate it. There's always been a Kent dog, a tradition stubbornly maintained by the reigning matriarch,
(eventually, maybe even soon, he's going to have to stop glossing by those niggles, the ones that twinge when he has no similar anecdote for the preciously rare times Bruce shares his own reflexive narrative about his sons, or thinks about how extremely ready Martha would be for her family to grow, his own sense of unease about what that could mean for a person growing up in all of this)
and as established, this is as close as they get to the ocean equivalent. That being said, there will be some lazy night when Clark shows Bruce a YouTube video of a diver holding a placid shark by the nose, delivering calming pats with gloved hand. See?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
Not that 'yay' is the appropriate reaction, really. The offer isn't being made for the purpose of a nice time, and what Clark feels is relief, mainly, that something has been settled, shifted, and he hopes for the better.
But still, slightly glad for more selfish purposes, of nearness and acceptance thereof, and while he presses a smile at Bruce, gives his hands a last squeeze, he entertains the brief fantasy of leaning across the table to kiss him in front of god and everyone. Inappropriate, too, but there it is, and it wasn't the first time today he's thought about it, and it won't be the last.
What Clark does instead is gather the remnants of their lunch and the recyclable plates and napkins it came with, leaving Bruce the cup of melting margarita slushie to do with as he likes. Reflexively tidying before the person he's with even thinks to do it themselves is probably the number one mama's boy tell he has, chief among all the other ones. They make pretty good boyfriends, his tribe.
"Seal feeding's in ten minutes," Clark says, on his way back over. "We can make it if we don't get distracted by cephalopods."
beep boop
Cephalopods are neat.
It's a near thing, but they can always walk back past more tentacles after. And Bruce finds that he's strangely - shyly? - eager to watch Clark enjoy himself, even if that enjoyment involves daintily holding out dead fish under the guidance of a wetsuited marine biologist with a crackly lav mic on. There's not much of a crowd, but the young man is going for the Oscar anyway, perhaps happy to have less pressure to practice.
Incredibly, the canned speech involves discussing behavioral reactions to the oceanic displacement incident, which catches Bruce off-guard. Not in a bad way, he thinks, after a moment's reflection. It's just doubly strange to be reminded of how much a part of the world they all really are, and not just shadowy machinations making decisions and fighting wars on its behalf.
A very well-trained sea lion blows them all kisses, and does multiple laps back to the littlest girl in the front of the small audience; she has on a giant pink bow and a Gotham U Womens Soccer shirt on, oversized and clearly mom's. Appropriately enamoured despite the overwhelming smell of fish. (Bruce is glad they had the fake pizza.)
Quiet, because Clark doesn't need to strain to hear him, "These are definitely the dogs."
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The show is satisfying, getting to watch them swim like torpedos through clear water, and then slapping their bodies up onto the concrete, grasping rubber balls in their mouths, waving their flippers. The girl with the bow and the soccer shirt is enamored, as is oversized Kryptonian further back.
If there's a news headline in a few weeks of someone sighting Superman giving a seal a bellyrub, drawing criticism from wildlife experts everywhere, Bruce only has himself to blame.
"We should go by the shark tunnel again," Clark suggests, through the last scattered applause. "To make sure."
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Hopefully she'll get some extra fish, too. Or several penguins.
Sea lions bray loud enough to be heard still even as they begin the trek back to whence they began.
"You planned this loop," Bruce accuses, faintly amused.
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That this directly benefits Clark too is not a secret, when he beelines back for where the giant Pacific octopus is housed. Her name is Susan.
There are also: gigantic crabs that Clark will tell no one make him slightly hungry, just conceptually and in spite of his fake aura vision thing, which is not fake, and big column tanks full of jellyfish set aglow with gentle blues and golds. Clark steals his phone back, here, to take some artful space fish pictures where some of them not so subtly capture Bruce through them, one of which he sends to Lois, harking back to some other co-owned jellyfish-related memory. There's a tank full of Nemos, all darting frantically through near-glowing fingers of anemones. They seem bigger in the movie.
It's a good way to feel less alien, if Clark ever does, hanging out with all these weird and wonderful things. But they're halfway through the tanks when it's clear he is just waiting to go back and check out the sharks again, observing plaques and tropical fish out of a sense of good manners and inclusion.
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The giant octopus is spending a lot of time fitting itself into an impossibly tiny hole in some rock, then unfurling itself, then back in, as if performing a magic trick for an audience. Bruce tells a story about being chased by one while he was being made to retrieve shoes from an underwater cave. ("It kept throwing rocks at me.") Drawing the story out every time Clark inches away, until it's excruciatingly clear that he's doing it just to watch him begin to squirm for desire of sharks, and relents, trying not to laugh.
There's just something so charming about him. Happy like this. Part of him wishes he was the sort to think to do things without a crisis as a catalyst, but he isn't; at least he's gotten to this point. Thinking to come here at all. Baby steps.
Baby fins. The sharks are still huge, still swimming, the glass tunnel still pleasingly shadowed and electric blue and air-conditioned. Bruce watches more of Clark than the aquatic predators, expression on his face particular. Gentle, but restrained; headlocks not the only thing being politely avoided.
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But the world is full of what feel like impossible ethical paradoxes, from the cruelty and slaughter of soft-eyed cattle and the exploitation and poor working conditions of human beings, through choosing to slowly stroll through the plexiglass tunnel of Gotham's aquarium with someone he loves versus spending every waking second in the sky, on the hunt for lives to save. Saving a bus full of kids or protecting a secret that was bigger than all of them. He thinks Jonathan Kent said 'maybe' that one time because he didn't have an answer to Clark's question.
And living with not having the answer while trying to find it, every day, is not just a Superman condition, but a human one. Kyrptonians thought they knew everything.
They could have never brought him back. Clark always framed the decision to do so as doing so for a reason. That there is, and was, a reason they could have chosen not to—
These odd undercurrents, cold but fleeting. He is, at the moment, nodding up at the hammerhead to call Bruce's attention to it, but catches Bruce's focus instead. His own symmetrical smile already in place then skews a little crooked, borderline subliminally picking up on the particulars in being watched as opposed to only looked at.
"What?" he asks, on a delay. Not guilelessly.
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Richard Grayson, nine years old, sitting in the center of Bruce's bed after careening through the halls of a haunting old house, terrified of the things playing out in his head. (After that, they'd moved rooms, and Bruce was never too far away, Dick only taking the larger quarters in a more private space once he was older.) It had been a rough night, dawn just breaking. He still felt bloody, even scrubbed raw, somehow more cut open by a child clinging to his hands after a nightmare.
If you were Batman, the night my parents died, could you have saved them?
It had been a breakthrough after nearly a year of taking him in, the hell of grief and therapy, new trauma of discovering Bruce's mad secret. And it was devastating, too. Bruce held his son to his chest and knew he had doomed him to thinking of that question only, for the rest of his life. Knows he thinks of it still, as a cop in Blüdhaven. It's the only thing either of them think of, sometimes. Consumed by it.
The sharks cast shadows, distant sunlight streaming in, mingled with the blue bulbs that do their best to slice away harmful rays. Not content with simply fucking up the seas, humans also continue to burn holes through the protective layer around their own planet. Where do fish have left? Where do any of them have left?
Bruce looks at him. Expression completely open, like someone took knife and delicately flayed him like one of the creatures swimming by, slickly separating meat from bone to expose every detail. I just like you, is all. Thank you for today. Thank you for all of it.
"Nothing."
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—let's get outta here, the nudge seems to say.
Well. Almost.
Because there is a gift shop planted strategically by the exit that Clark inevitably swerves towards. Plenty of T-shirts and hoodies, metal straws to promote sustainable consumerism, a wall of plush toys. These, Clark appears tempted by, lingering over an otter, a leopard seal, a fuzzy stingray, but Lois has a threshold for adorable bullshit cluttering up her extremely good apartment and he has to be strategic.
(Also tempting: a pair of socks shaped like sharks, so it looks like they're eating your legs when pulled up. Clark does pick these up. Christmas for Arthur, sorted. One day, he'll get presents that aren't kitsch distilled.)
He identifies some respectable looking coffee keep-cups with myriads of sea creatures, picking up one patterned with seahorses speculatively, putting it back, exchanging it for the jellyfish one.
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Orca goes back on the shelf. Soft and lovey-eyed. Alfred would not like it. (As if he gets Alfred anything the man would actually like.)
"Jason always wanted knives or C4. So he also got stuffed animals."
Parenting. He looks over at the mugs.
"Mm, which is the worst?"
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But there isn't a lot of opportunity to see Bruce that way, a dad and the impossible task of being one, and his eyes crinkle at the corners after little boys wanting to be superheroes, grow up fast, being given a plush raccoon instead.
"Depends on your definition of worst," Clark says, because he was asked a question. He reaches up and picks up a mug where the handle is a garishly orange tentacle, connected to the artwork of a googly eyed octopus. The eyes are in fact googly eyes, and they roll in place as he tips it speculatively. "'Cause to someone, this is the best."
He offers it out for inspection, juggling keep-cup and socks in his other hand.
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But.
Bruce accepts the googly-eyed cup, listening to the faint clink of plastic googlies, giving it serious consideration. After a moment he returns it to the shelf. Rejected.
"Too obvious."
Also, it's absurd enough to deserve a customer who appreciates it for its surreal glory. Bruce peruses some more, fully aware that whatever cup he selects will end up in a storage room at the back of the manor's secondary kitchen, at best. If it's especially tasteless, a box sent to Goodwill. So there's care that must go into selecting the right one, striking a balance between annoying and entertaining Alfred. Bruce knows he still has a Tokyo Disney one in the house proper, even, he's just strategic about not showing anyone.
"Lois?"
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The question prompts a glance down at the items in his hands. "Arthur, for Christmas," gestured with the socks, apparently while cognizant to the fact they've only just escaped the winter, "Lois, for now," with the cup. "She has two of these in black."
So. She deserves something cute too, veering from anything too brightly coloured and clutching the one with the jellyfish patterns in dreamy pastels. "I don't buy her stuff she has to wear, 'cause she will not." False. He's gotten away with a nice set of gloves on a birthday, a pretty bracelet at Christmas, an engagement ring and a wedding band. But he means kitsch: no fun hats or dolphin pendants.
So he adds, "Mostly."
You know, like Curry's gonna be thrilled for his socks.
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"Are you seducing Arthur for Christmas?" Archly, giving him a sidelong look. From someone else, or in circumstances that do not involve so many other partners (Lois, Diana, whatever the Gothamite woman that Bruce spends a lot of time texting but doesn't talk about is), that might sound insecure. You got me socks for Christmas, before I kissed you the first time.
But because they are what they are, it's just. Funny. Or at least it is to Bruce, standing in the middle of an aquarium gift shop side-eying Clark about apparently working his way through an entire time of superheroes and demigods with his alluring and irresistible novelty socks.
You minx.
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"If he takes me back to his place," is bantered back in a way that leaves room for a good rimshot sound effect. He has given up on Themyscira, for feminist reasons, and while he could probably just roll up on Atlantis if he felt like it, an invitation feels required in case he aggravate some kind of diplomatic incident.
And, like, he'd expect the Justice League to ask him before crashing in on Smallville, so.
"Think it'll work?"
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"Maybe if he doesn't already have socks."
Sure.
Puts the glass back, picks up another one, slightly further from tasteful. This one's designs include a dolphin mascot wearing a Gotham City Knights hat, in the midst of what is otherwise quite pretty fish and filagree. Deemed the winner, he returns it to the display and looks for a corresponding box beneath the shelf.
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A good natured :/, and so the socks remain in his hands as he picks out the corresponding box for his gift to Lois. Much like the aquarium itself, it'd be easy to do a few circuits among the brightly-adorned displays, see what else fires off a synapse, but the impulse is resisted, Clark headed for the cashier instead.
The bored young man on the other side prompts Clark to slip a ten dollar bill into the donations box, and unprompted, Clark selects an item off the little stationery display on the countertop, attempting to achieve a balance between not looking like he's shoplifting while also not attracting Bruce's attention.
He helps load his choices into a comically small recycled paper gift bag as part of this ruse but also because of course he does, and pivots to see where he left the other giant man squeezing between overstuffed aisles of tropically coloured merchandise.
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"Does your mom want one?" he asks Clark at the counter, tapping them. Smalltalk, he's buying them anyway. Also allowing himself to be sold a book of fish stamps to go with. His haul also includes the cup, and a tiny ceramic baby Weddell seal - the trinket kind that come lightly glued to tiny white paper squares. Not even the adult, just the baby. Slightly smaller than a quarter, a little blobby and characterful for the hand-painting. Bruce could get Diana a thousand things, expensive and elegant - his tastes match hers, if he picked out jewelry he's sure she'd wear it - but her collection is fine, and this is funnier. Besides. He knows what kinds of things she keeps. Old photos and watches. She can chuck this in a drawer, forget about it for a century and a half, find it again someday. Why the hell did Bruce get me this.
(Because there are no bats at aquariums.)
The cashier takes a look at Bruce's bandaged hand, and pointedly passes his paper gift bag to Clark. Bruce does not laugh. Barely.
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On the way out, exiting the ventilated and very specific smelling air of the aquarium they've been marinading in into the damper, rawer climate outside, he's already extracted the postcards to look at, and turns one of them to show Bruce. A picture of a sealion with its whiskered nose pointed up to investigate the camera, big glossy eyes and slick fur.
"This one?" he asks, because yes, his mom will appreciate it. There's always been a Kent dog, a tradition stubbornly maintained by the reigning matriarch,
(eventually, maybe even soon, he's going to have to stop glossing by those niggles, the ones that twinge when he has no similar anecdote for the preciously rare times Bruce shares his own reflexive narrative about his sons, or thinks about how extremely ready Martha would be for her family to grow, his own sense of unease about what that could mean for a person growing up in all of this)
and as established, this is as close as they get to the ocean equivalent. That being said, there will be some lazy night when Clark shows Bruce a YouTube video of a diver holding a placid shark by the nose, delivering calming pats with gloved hand. See?
He offers back the bag, keeping the card.
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