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?
"Oh, I'm carrying this after all?" Wow, Kent, and you didn't remember their sock anniversary, either. The romance is dead.
It always feels like a longer walk back to the car, than from. Some measure of anticipation sweeping time along gone; now they contend with reality, and all the reminders of why they showed up in the first place. A whole assorted mess, far-reaching implications, a long unpaved road to set out on to discover where it leads. Rough terrain. Orange-tinted, like on a world that never stops burning.
Surely, it would have been enough to just tell Clark what he was seeing. He didn't have to show him the sketches, or let him see that Vic has experienced similar visions. Detailing a Superman made not of nightmares, but of waking fear. Why can't honesty be kinder? Is it just not? Is that why Bruce is bad at both?
Cl-click. Car unlocked, and they can put their small shopping bags on the floor of the back seat for safety. It's a very ordinary move. Perhaps the trunk is full of old soccer equipment, or a solid block of bat-surveillance gear. Perhaps Bruce just also does mundane things like this after all; habits about grocery shopping and where to put breakable items in his fancy cars. Perhaps yet—
It's so he doesn't have to move to the driver's side yet. Pause.
A second earlier on that comment, Clark might have swerved the bag back out of reach, but it's lifted from his fingers too late. Dang it. You take/be taken by a guy on one date—
Well, they've probably had more than one hang out that constitutes as date instead of the usual existing in proximity followed by tumbling into bed or the shower or the shower and then the bed, but this one's a stand-out. Clark feels it too, that transition from one world with a set of expectations to another, the kind of thing that means they'll have to give serious consideration to the idea of: what do we do now?
And now they're just standing here, and maybe the question can be put off a little longer.
The look that snags on Bruce when Clark notices the pause is still, first, and then the familiar kind of sleepy-eyed consideration of a person who wants to kiss the other person very much. Normally, that's exactly what would happen, but instead Clark's hand wraps around Bruce's non-injured one, and there's a hint of a smile before he just goes ahead and ducks back down into the backseat of the car.
Sometimes, it's just really nice to be driving a German-made luxury car that was designed with people over five feet tall in mind, back seat included. The top of Bruce's head still makes contact with the roof of the car, but he manages to get the door shut behind them (does this look any less suspicious on security cameras than just making out leaning on the car would be? no, but). Thud. It echoes through the parking garage, sealing them into a clipped off bubble of reality.
He pulls his hat off. Hair a little funny. Leans over and kisses Clark.
Probably that kiss is more amorous than the setting warrants. But it doesn't feel like it; it feels like this is the right level, preemptively a degree higher than it should be, for several reasons. Like: how painful this morning was. The way Clark looks when he's smiling about sharks. How rare it is to be kissing in the back of a car like idiot teenagers.
Knees on seatbacks. Bruce has to be mindful not to jam a heel into the breakable mugs in their paper bags. His injured hand is gentle against Clark's chest, resting there. Safely.
Amorous level is met in kind, hands landing on Bruce as soon as he's in range. It's silly. This is silly. What are they going to do, even? Clark doesn't care, content to indulge his id in the present second, and then the next one, and the one after that.
There's a beat where Clark pulls his head back, remembering late to claw off his glasses, now half-fogged, and reach to drop them into the front seat. Back to this, pressing his mouth to Bruce's, gentle initially, then head tipped, angling to deepen contact. One hand rests on the back of Bruce's injured one, keeping it there, innocent and gentle. The other smooths up Bruce's chest, finds a place to settle on the side of his neck, thumb brushing somewhere sensitive at the base.
Feeling that butterfly flutter of heartbeat in the same way he can hear it as a deeper throb, always, whenever he thinks to.
In the slim clip of time when Clark is pseudo-distracted removing his glasses, Bruce kisses the sharp angle of his jaw, and higher near his ear, then easily swayed back to his mouth. His good hand tucks in at Clark's side below his ribs, inching further now and again as they shift - by necessity, this is a nice car but still a car - doing nothing more complicated than finding new, better angles, for the scrape of stubble and warm slide of lips and tongues, noses not bumping (and also bumping, pleasantly).
When they began, his pulse had jumped out of control every time they brushed close; uncertain, paranoid, a vicious internal clash of fascinated desire and extreme guilt. Most of all, unused to it. As they progressed, he got the hang of mastering this, too, and his heart obeyed. Remained in his control, in all but the most intense of encounters.
Now. His heart beats, unfettered, pulse ticking up. Lets himself feel it, feel everything, feel Clark. Bruce puts his trust in the other man that he can breathe harder, in between kisses, and forget to crush himself under his own iron will. It's alright, he wants it and he's wanted, in a cramped car backseat and tasting like quorn pizza still. He curls his fingers against the other man's side, does something slow and tender with his mouth. Expensive leather doesn't squeak. Just creaks a little, very faintly, like sighing.
It's not unnoticed, that uptick in heart rate, the roughness of Bruce's breathing. It's not information that Clark does anything with intellectually, but simply revels in contact, in his extrasensory perception of what it's doing to the other man, how it feels tangled up in what it's doing to him. He is receptive, responsive. Provoking.
They get better at this, the awkwardness of the geography, the placement of their bodies. Clark has an arm almost around Bruce, and the next time they part to breathe, he ducks his head, nuzzling into his throat. Breathing him in, relishing the scrape of not extremely well shaven jaw against his cheek, the warmth that comes from this curve of muscle and bone, even from someone whose temperature runs cool, usually.
This is where he'd normally push Bruce beneath him, or roll Bruce on top of him. But this is fine too, lifting his head, mouth tracing along jawline before finding mouth again, like finishng what Bruce started in slow and deep kisses, some of that initial scrabble and urgency tempered into something—not gentle, exactly, but patient.
Like an itch has been scratched already, in just this, a private moment, enough to do whatever they want.
Crazy to think he does it - his stupid vital signs dance - even with people who can't hear it. But there is an extra layer of trust, knowing that Clark can. A special note of intimacy in the awareness of it, and the thought that the Kryptonian can hear it, and know what it's saying.
Bruce makes a soft noise as Clark echoes his earlier swerve, appreciative, indulgent. They are two people who could probably do with something like this every now and again; being made to slow down. And not because someone might pass out from artificial atmospheric pressure, or keel over from broken ribs. Once in a while, Bruce wonders if the way they have a difficult time keeping their hands off each other isn't simply because of all the reasons that make sense on the surface, but also because there are a lot of years behind them with nothing at all.
What if they'd run into each other, on their winding journeys? Clark in Tibet, being peered at by a man training to be a 'monk' that the locals don't speak of; Bruce catching sight of a mysterious stranger on an oil rig. He, at least, has never been the type to let a curiosity go without investigation, even if the other would have wanted to vanish.
A loud squeal heralds a car going too fast up the ramps, and the reminder of the public venue. Bruce doesn't pull back right away, or even a beat after, but he does. And then presses a kiss to the side of Clark's mouth anyway, in no hurry, even as he slouches a bit. The windows are illegally tinted too dark, but still. None of your bees wax, world.
Bruce pulls back, and Clark almost closes back up that distance, listing forward a barely perceptible millimetre, barely perceptible if they weren't already so close. His head tips as a kiss comes back to him, contented, at least to some extent. No one's leaving anyone in the cold today.
He knows it was the appearance of Zod, that day, that forced him from hiding. Sometimes, he wonders if it was Lois, too, who tracked him down, who unearthed secrets that no one even cared to know about until her. In the canon divergent alternate universe where another investigative spirit connected dots, Clark assumes he would have just run away some more, back into all that nothing.
But maybe not. Who can say.
He lists into the seatback once some more inches of distance settle between them, his arm eased back from around Bruce, hand now clinging a hold at shirt collar. He lets them sit there in the comfortable quiet (heartbeats, winding down) before he asks, "Can I drive?" with all the confidence of someone with a terminally visible halo. (He is used to trucks, shitty rentals, and more recently, his bike. It's a nice car, okay.)
Eyebrows. Can you what? Bruce's look is not No, but it's very Bold of you to ask, dry without saying anything. He doesn't answer right away, instead bumping in close once more to run his mouth from the pulse point beneath Clark's jaw to his ear, capturing the lobe for an almost-long moment. There's a spark of something low in his stomach, like an ache; both pleasure at being required to draw it out and have this moment contained as itself, and desire to be nearly anywhere else. It's an enjoyable mix.
He sits back.
"Sure. All you farmboys can drive stick, right?"
Because of course he doesn't have a fucking automatic.
So: to the front seats they go, and he picks up his other post cards and stamps on the way, buckling in and sifting a pen from the glove box.
There are worse cars he could ask to drive. (And he never got around to apologising for wrecking the last one with his whole body.)
But Bruce leans in and does that, Clark holding almost comically still after an initial adjustment to make room. Leather creaking faintly under his hand. It makes him wish, with a sudden rising heat, that they were nearly anywhere else, but preferably somewhere with clean sheets and all the time in the world. It's open in his expression when Bruce leans back.
The toothy smile Clark deploys next definitely indicates that comment landed as a dick joke.
Into the driver's seat, then. He is careful and respectful with property that isn't his but clearly happy to be there and while it has been a minute since he drove stick, actually, you wouldn't know it. More alarming than any lapse in skill is probably the smug energy with which he drives them out of the parking lot,
and then the immediate impatience for late afternoon traffic, draining out of the city like life blood. Metropolis gets pretty bad sometimes too with all the construction, hence his own preference for ecofriendly options, but Clark would characterise gridlock there as kind of a politely crystallised frustration, everyone in it together. On this side of the river, well—
—one instance occurs where he is is slower than a Gothamite would prefer him to be to change a lane and a horn immediately screeches by, muffled profanity. "Sorry," doesn't sound sorry at all. "Jesus."
Yeah, yeah, drive his stick all the way back to the other side of the Palisades in gridlock traffic. Sexy.
It is quickly apparent that 1) Bruce is going to fill out and write notes to people on these post cards while in transit and 2) he has no inherent instinct to be a nervous passenger. On the one hand, it's a little strange for a man with such a deep-rooted control complex, and such an expensive fucking car, but on the other, Bruce drives like such a maniac that it's entirely possible he just feels like they're plodding along in an Amish horse-drawn tractor. Scenic and safe.
"Take your time, kid," Bruce says in his best TV Dad voice, eyes on a post card. Neon seahorses. He flips it over, clicks the pen into action. Addresses it to Mr Barry Allen and Company.
"You're gonna have to get off at Seventh, not the exit for the house."
This is very sweet of Clark, offering to drive. What a nice break.
One who glances skeptically over in the wake of TV Dad voice, mouth pressed in a line, and only a little bit considers whether a more pointed jerk of the steering wheel would mess up Bruce's writing or if Batman is trained to write postcards in any condition, ever adaptable, but it is the kind of mischief that never makes it past the temptation. Besides, Clark did want to drive, and it's only like.
95% because it's a cool car, and 1% because he wanted to see Bruce's expression when he asked it, but 4% it seemed like a nice thing to do, maybe, in the same pointless neighbourhood of carrying his things halfway across the parking lot.
"Scenic route?" he asks, of Seventh. Another bray of a horn. Probably not at him, but Clark glances in the rear view like what, already, just to make sure.
Well, it will be better once they're on the highway. Gotham drives fast, he'll get to have some fun, and probably not get pulled over.
"There's a post office." He writes Hope you're finding time outside the lab, too, and signs it with initials B and C. He knows Barry and Vic are buried far past their eyeballs in science experiments between the Speed Force and Cyborg's capabilities (promised to send him some 'craaaaaazy' data about dimensional travel soon), and that's just very warming, for some reason. They'll get a kick out of the card. He carefully peels a fish stamp from the book, and sticks it onto the corner where the little blank rectangle placeholder is. One down.
"They don't actually come out to the house, unless I arrange for a courier. They used to, when a couple of the other old houses back there were inhabited, but the Elliot place hasn't been anyone's primary residence in years, and apparently Roman Sionis was recently blown up with an errant hand grenade out at the pier,"
just normal Gotham shit
"so I can't imagine he'll be back to do anything about the acreage he owns. No reason to make a postal carrier drive out there, I just go into the penthouse once a week."
Clark's eyebrows do a few things over the course of that story, raising up at the phrase 'errant hand grenade'. He should probably, at some stage, get used to the buckwild nonsense that Bruce will casually refer to about his own neighbourhood, but where would the fun be in that.
The highway will be fun, the lonely tracts of land outside the city will be nice, speaking of them. Playing chaffeur is also fine, and takes his mind off the mood they left behind in the backseat.
"Well, maybe someone nice will move in," says Clark.
"I'm going to buy out all his holdings as soon as they declare him dead, in theory that'll include the land," Bruce says, an uninteresting fact. "I could have ten years ago, but he wouldn't sign over complete control, and." He shrugs. "Mobsters." A sudden shift, then, his tone moving over to someone griping about spots scores: "I can't believe how long it's taking to confirm he died. It's obvious what went on, what are they going to do, sift out an eyeball from the Atlantic."
Grumble. Picking between a postcard with a stylized collage cut-out of Gotham Aquarium!, and some sharks. He ends up choosing the former, since it looks more kitschy and vintage. The sharks he will save for the fridge.
Breath in, half-sigh out; barely audible for a human over the hum of asphalt beneath wheels.
"My kid." He writes Richard Grayson into the addressee line, fills out a label for a condo in Blüdhaven, New Jersey.
It'll end up in the trash, but, you know.
Doesn't voice that. Taps the end of the pen on the slip of cardstock, finally decides on 'Couldn't help remembering. - B' He doesn't need to leave a name, or even the initial; Dick will recognzie his handwriting and understand the reference, but it feels slightly creepy to not add it. Clicks the end of the pen. Done writing.
Bruce grumbling is inherently extremely funny, and every time, Clark does his best not to show this in case it encourages him not to. Here, supressed smile is redirected out the window to his left.
Clark listens to the sound of pen scratches, glancing to catch a look at the message itself, both it and the other card. Not a glance that would net literally any information for a normalman, but fine tuning his vision to peel back layers of paper, read impressions of ink, translate letters skewed at weird angles,
well, look, everyone has a hobby. Or everyone is extremely invasive a lot, only encouraged by their two full time jobs. One of those things.
They park, and Clark snags the sealion postcard he'd lifted on their way over, along with the book of stamps. He writes his message against the deposit box, after a little hemming and hawing:
Bork Bork Bork! Hope you are doing well. Give Shelby a hug from me. Love you & see you soon. - Clark
"Did you want to write something?" he asks, as he hovers over where he could add Bruce in parentheses.
Bestamped, Bruce sticks his two postcards into the box, one off up to the state's northern border with New York, and one off to Ohio.
He looks at what Clark has written for his mother. Borks and all. A flat look. That is very whimsical, Superman.
"Say something nice from me," he offers, and if he's a little surprised by the invite to be included, it doesn't sound like it. (He is, somehow. Even though he signed Clark's initial for Barry and Victor without asking. Invasiveness goes both ways.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
It always feels like a longer walk back to the car, than from. Some measure of anticipation sweeping time along gone; now they contend with reality, and all the reminders of why they showed up in the first place. A whole assorted mess, far-reaching implications, a long unpaved road to set out on to discover where it leads. Rough terrain. Orange-tinted, like on a world that never stops burning.
Surely, it would have been enough to just tell Clark what he was seeing. He didn't have to show him the sketches, or let him see that Vic has experienced similar visions. Detailing a Superman made not of nightmares, but of waking fear. Why can't honesty be kinder? Is it just not? Is that why Bruce is bad at both?
Cl-click. Car unlocked, and they can put their small shopping bags on the floor of the back seat for safety. It's a very ordinary move. Perhaps the trunk is full of old soccer equipment, or a solid block of bat-surveillance gear. Perhaps Bruce just also does mundane things like this after all; habits about grocery shopping and where to put breakable items in his fancy cars. Perhaps yet—
It's so he doesn't have to move to the driver's side yet. Pause.
no subject
Well, they've probably had more than one hang out that constitutes as date instead of the usual existing in proximity followed by tumbling into bed or the shower or the shower and then the bed, but this one's a stand-out. Clark feels it too, that transition from one world with a set of expectations to another, the kind of thing that means they'll have to give serious consideration to the idea of: what do we do now?
And now they're just standing here, and maybe the question can be put off a little longer.
The look that snags on Bruce when Clark notices the pause is still, first, and then the familiar kind of sleepy-eyed consideration of a person who wants to kiss the other person very much. Normally, that's exactly what would happen, but instead Clark's hand wraps around Bruce's non-injured one, and there's a hint of a smile before he just goes ahead and ducks back down into the backseat of the car.
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He pulls his hat off. Hair a little funny. Leans over and kisses Clark.
Probably that kiss is more amorous than the setting warrants. But it doesn't feel like it; it feels like this is the right level, preemptively a degree higher than it should be, for several reasons. Like: how painful this morning was. The way Clark looks when he's smiling about sharks. How rare it is to be kissing in the back of a car like idiot teenagers.
Knees on seatbacks. Bruce has to be mindful not to jam a heel into the breakable mugs in their paper bags. His injured hand is gentle against Clark's chest, resting there. Safely.
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There's a beat where Clark pulls his head back, remembering late to claw off his glasses, now half-fogged, and reach to drop them into the front seat. Back to this, pressing his mouth to Bruce's, gentle initially, then head tipped, angling to deepen contact. One hand rests on the back of Bruce's injured one, keeping it there, innocent and gentle. The other smooths up Bruce's chest, finds a place to settle on the side of his neck, thumb brushing somewhere sensitive at the base.
Feeling that butterfly flutter of heartbeat in the same way he can hear it as a deeper throb, always, whenever he thinks to.
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When they began, his pulse had jumped out of control every time they brushed close; uncertain, paranoid, a vicious internal clash of fascinated desire and extreme guilt. Most of all, unused to it. As they progressed, he got the hang of mastering this, too, and his heart obeyed. Remained in his control, in all but the most intense of encounters.
Now. His heart beats, unfettered, pulse ticking up. Lets himself feel it, feel everything, feel Clark. Bruce puts his trust in the other man that he can breathe harder, in between kisses, and forget to crush himself under his own iron will. It's alright, he wants it and he's wanted, in a cramped car backseat and tasting like quorn pizza still. He curls his fingers against the other man's side, does something slow and tender with his mouth. Expensive leather doesn't squeak. Just creaks a little, very faintly, like sighing.
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They get better at this, the awkwardness of the geography, the placement of their bodies. Clark has an arm almost around Bruce, and the next time they part to breathe, he ducks his head, nuzzling into his throat. Breathing him in, relishing the scrape of not extremely well shaven jaw against his cheek, the warmth that comes from this curve of muscle and bone, even from someone whose temperature runs cool, usually.
This is where he'd normally push Bruce beneath him, or roll Bruce on top of him. But this is fine too, lifting his head, mouth tracing along jawline before finding mouth again, like finishng what Bruce started in slow and deep kisses, some of that initial scrabble and urgency tempered into something—not gentle, exactly, but patient.
Like an itch has been scratched already, in just this, a private moment, enough to do whatever they want.
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Bruce makes a soft noise as Clark echoes his earlier swerve, appreciative, indulgent. They are two people who could probably do with something like this every now and again; being made to slow down. And not because someone might pass out from artificial atmospheric pressure, or keel over from broken ribs. Once in a while, Bruce wonders if the way they have a difficult time keeping their hands off each other isn't simply because of all the reasons that make sense on the surface, but also because there are a lot of years behind them with nothing at all.
What if they'd run into each other, on their winding journeys? Clark in Tibet, being peered at by a man training to be a 'monk' that the locals don't speak of; Bruce catching sight of a mysterious stranger on an oil rig. He, at least, has never been the type to let a curiosity go without investigation, even if the other would have wanted to vanish.
A loud squeal heralds a car going too fast up the ramps, and the reminder of the public venue. Bruce doesn't pull back right away, or even a beat after, but he does. And then presses a kiss to the side of Clark's mouth anyway, in no hurry, even as he slouches a bit. The windows are illegally tinted too dark, but still. None of your bees wax, world.
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He knows it was the appearance of Zod, that day, that forced him from hiding. Sometimes, he wonders if it was Lois, too, who tracked him down, who unearthed secrets that no one even cared to know about until her. In the canon divergent alternate universe where another investigative spirit connected dots, Clark assumes he would have just run away some more, back into all that nothing.
But maybe not. Who can say.
He lists into the seatback once some more inches of distance settle between them, his arm eased back from around Bruce, hand now clinging a hold at shirt collar. He lets them sit there in the comfortable quiet (heartbeats, winding down) before he asks, "Can I drive?" with all the confidence of someone with a terminally visible halo. (He is used to trucks, shitty rentals, and more recently, his bike. It's a nice car, okay.)
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He sits back.
"Sure. All you farmboys can drive stick, right?"
Because of course he doesn't have a fucking automatic.
So: to the front seats they go, and he picks up his other post cards and stamps on the way, buckling in and sifting a pen from the glove box.
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But Bruce leans in and does that, Clark holding almost comically still after an initial adjustment to make room. Leather creaking faintly under his hand. It makes him wish, with a sudden rising heat, that they were nearly anywhere else, but preferably somewhere with clean sheets and all the time in the world. It's open in his expression when Bruce leans back.
The toothy smile Clark deploys next definitely indicates that comment landed as a dick joke.
Into the driver's seat, then. He is careful and respectful with property that isn't his but clearly happy to be there and while it has been a minute since he drove stick, actually, you wouldn't know it. More alarming than any lapse in skill is probably the smug energy with which he drives them out of the parking lot,
and then the immediate impatience for late afternoon traffic, draining out of the city like life blood. Metropolis gets pretty bad sometimes too with all the construction, hence his own preference for ecofriendly options, but Clark would characterise gridlock there as kind of a politely crystallised frustration, everyone in it together. On this side of the river, well—
—one instance occurs where he is is slower than a Gothamite would prefer him to be to change a lane and a horn immediately screeches by, muffled profanity. "Sorry," doesn't sound sorry at all. "Jesus."
It'll be better on the highway.
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It is quickly apparent that 1) Bruce is going to fill out and write notes to people on these post cards while in transit and 2) he has no inherent instinct to be a nervous passenger. On the one hand, it's a little strange for a man with such a deep-rooted control complex, and such an expensive fucking car, but on the other, Bruce drives like such a maniac that it's entirely possible he just feels like they're plodding along in an Amish horse-drawn tractor. Scenic and safe.
"Take your time, kid," Bruce says in his best TV Dad voice, eyes on a post card. Neon seahorses. He flips it over, clicks the pen into action. Addresses it to Mr Barry Allen and Company.
"You're gonna have to get off at Seventh, not the exit for the house."
This is very sweet of Clark, offering to drive. What a nice break.
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One who glances skeptically over in the wake of TV Dad voice, mouth pressed in a line, and only a little bit considers whether a more pointed jerk of the steering wheel would mess up Bruce's writing or if Batman is trained to write postcards in any condition, ever adaptable, but it is the kind of mischief that never makes it past the temptation. Besides, Clark did want to drive, and it's only like.
95% because it's a cool car, and 1% because he wanted to see Bruce's expression when he asked it, but 4% it seemed like a nice thing to do, maybe, in the same pointless neighbourhood of carrying his things halfway across the parking lot.
"Scenic route?" he asks, of Seventh. Another bray of a horn. Probably not at him, but Clark glances in the rear view like what, already, just to make sure.
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"There's a post office." He writes Hope you're finding time outside the lab, too, and signs it with initials B and C. He knows Barry and Vic are buried far past their eyeballs in science experiments between the Speed Force and Cyborg's capabilities (promised to send him some 'craaaaaazy' data about dimensional travel soon), and that's just very warming, for some reason. They'll get a kick out of the card. He carefully peels a fish stamp from the book, and sticks it onto the corner where the little blank rectangle placeholder is. One down.
"They don't actually come out to the house, unless I arrange for a courier. They used to, when a couple of the other old houses back there were inhabited, but the Elliot place hasn't been anyone's primary residence in years, and apparently Roman Sionis was recently blown up with an errant hand grenade out at the pier,"
just normal Gotham shit
"so I can't imagine he'll be back to do anything about the acreage he owns. No reason to make a postal carrier drive out there, I just go into the penthouse once a week."
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The highway will be fun, the lonely tracts of land outside the city will be nice, speaking of them. Playing chaffeur is also fine, and takes his mind off the mood they left behind in the backseat.
"Well, maybe someone nice will move in," says Clark.
Dare to dream.
"Who else is getting a postcard?"
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Grumble. Picking between a postcard with a stylized collage cut-out of Gotham Aquarium!, and some sharks. He ends up choosing the former, since it looks more kitschy and vintage. The sharks he will save for the fridge.
Breath in, half-sigh out; barely audible for a human over the hum of asphalt beneath wheels.
"My kid." He writes Richard Grayson into the addressee line, fills out a label for a condo in Blüdhaven, New Jersey.
It'll end up in the trash, but, you know.
Doesn't voice that. Taps the end of the pen on the slip of cardstock, finally decides on 'Couldn't help remembering. - B' He doesn't need to leave a name, or even the initial; Dick will recognzie his handwriting and understand the reference, but it feels slightly creepy to not add it. Clicks the end of the pen. Done writing.
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Clark listens to the sound of pen scratches, glancing to catch a look at the message itself, both it and the other card. Not a glance that would net literally any information for a normalman, but fine tuning his vision to peel back layers of paper, read impressions of ink, translate letters skewed at weird angles,
well, look, everyone has a hobby. Or everyone is extremely invasive a lot, only encouraged by their two full time jobs. One of those things.
They park, and Clark snags the sealion postcard he'd lifted on their way over, along with the book of stamps. He writes his message against the deposit box, after a little hemming and hawing:
Bork Bork Bork!
Hope you are doing well. Give Shelby a hug from me. Love you & see you soon.
- Clark
"Did you want to write something?" he asks, as he hovers over where he could add Bruce in parentheses.
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He looks at what Clark has written for his mother. Borks and all. A flat look. That is very whimsical, Superman.
"Say something nice from me," he offers, and if he's a little surprised by the invite to be included, it doesn't sound like it. (He is, somehow. Even though he signed Clark's initial for Barry and Victor without asking. Invasiveness goes both ways.)
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