And: solve all problems standing right here, through logic and empathy, or at least enough of them that they can take the long way back to the lakehouse, scare Bruce and Alfred out from their hiding places, share a family dinner, listen to fond and not sad anecdotes, leave estranged father and son to talk of deeper things, resolve their outstanding arguments, catch up on what they've missed—
Alright, well. One step at a time.
"I'll let him know you dropped by," feels like as good a fair warning as any, rather than permission being sought, Clark pressing a smile that is thin but not insincere. "It was nice meeting you."
Those things can happen. Surely, Bruce and Alfred also want them, and maybe Rick too. Maybe Rick only wants to want them, but that's better than nothing. Clark's right. One step at a time.
A nod, for the warning. Fair enough. In all likelihood, Rick is smart enough to accept that no visit on home turf would go unnoticed either way.
"You too," he says, equally subdued, equally sincere. "And thanks. For, uh." He shrugs, smile widening a bit. That's the thing, about Superman. He's Superman. Thanks for all your supering, man.
Rick takes his leave, but not back to his car. He's aimless for a bit, until he picks his direction. Either wishing to kill time until he's less likely to be observed, or dithering. Who knows. The grounds are expansive, and the graveyard is a bit of a walk, but it's one of the only footpaths still clearly carved. When he stops, it's not to grovel before a Wayne ancestor. No past generations are his people.
Quietly, to no one, "Hey, shithead."
(Jason always wanted knives or C4. So he also got stuffed animals.)
Clark says, "Bye," with a wave of his hand, watching Rick go.
And then he moves deeper into the manor, avoiding the echoing sounds of contractors from the other wing as he moves up some unsafe stairs, the soles of his neat if cheap shoes not even evoking a creak from old wood as he goes. He roams towards some wide windows, the glass panes in them still intact, just dirty, and from there he can watch Rick make the last little way down a path before disappearing from view a few steps later.
But Clark listens to the crunch of his shoes over earth, twigs, grass, watches the glimmer of his form through the mess of the layers of the world. Listens to the odd collection of sounds of a relative stranger on the move, the ambiance of heart beat and steps and the rustle of his coat. Until it stops, and he speaks, voice an echo in the field of Clark's focus.
He blinks, and landscape resolves from skeletal transparency into solid shades of green and grey. Allows himself to lose track of Rick, to hear instead nearby engines, voices, fluttering creatures housed in the rooftop.
Takes a breath, and moves, walking the long way back to the lake house.
Real World Days are always more draining to Bruce than even getting the shit kicked out of him. Even the tedium of shuffling chess pieces at Wayne Enterprises is preferable. But they're necessary, and when it's finally done - contractors cleared out, papers signed, paint samples decided on, permits paid for - the lake house is quiet, even though it does feel a little scuffed thanks to the unusual intrusion. He'd been very tempted to hold all these hand-off meetings in the city, but in the end, doing so would have been wildly impractical.
So. Leaning against the kitchen counter and staring out at the expanse of land between the lake and the manor - just a smudge over a tree line when it's clear - Bruce has a mug of coffee, a glass of scotch, and his cell phone.
He holds out the scotch bottle, eyebrows quirked. Or coffee, he could pick that, too.
"Enjoy exploring?"
It's been a long day. He's sorry he couldn't spend more of it with Clark, but if either of them held grudges about time being infringed upon by a thousand different kinds of outside demands, this'd never work.
Clark makes for the coffee maker, and likely none of his shitty minimum wage jobs adjacent to coffee are compatible experiences with the expensive, fancy space-age bullshit that dispenses black European coffee at a dribble. He's seen both Bruce and Alfred operate it enough to get it going, anyway, as he says, "Not as quiet as usual."
It's gonna be a little while until it is, again, and probably even longer than that for the kind of quiet that put the whole place into repose.
Machine set to growl and do whatever mysterious and arcane coffee practices it must, Clark moves for the fridge in search of cream, fishing that out and turning back to Bruce. The transparent look of someone with something he wants to say, and instead says, "How was your day?"
Bruce will push the right button when necessary for more coffee. His own is teetering on the edge of lukewarm, but it hardly bothers him. Tea is what really grinds gears, in this house.
"'Quiet' is part of why mom had this place," he muses. So, you know. It's alright. In the midst of regrets - the manor should have never fallen to such a state, the horrors should never have happened - there's also acceptance. It can be loud. And he can have a haven from it, when it's too loud.
Not that this place is as silent as it used to be, either. Have you noticed how many people he is dating these days.
Scotch consumed, in a neat single swallow. Glass clinks down on the counter as he says, "Productive. Annoying." He shrugs. "You had company."
Clark is locating a stirring spoon out of the drawer when Bruce says this last part, and presses a thin smile at it without yet looking up. Of course.
"I intercepted company," he corrects, next retrieving the sugar, going for the crumbly brown kind that is more normally used for cooking, with its high molasses content. Leans against the island, then, with his gathered supplies, looking across at Bruce, all fondness. "Rick Grayson?"
Name change, ostensibly. The lift at the end isn't a question.
"Saw his car come in," sounds like a and that's all; could have been on security, could have caught sight of it. Either way. His surveillance equipment is not yet wired into the manor, though it will be soon. Clever bird. Mm. He sips his cooling coffee, does not push the button on the machine yet, as it's not ready.
Rick. Guess we all grow up sometime. It feels brittle to not have been in his life for the adjustment, but surely this is progress. Him being here at all, remembering the gate code, making the drive. Apparently not telling Clark to fuck off. His fiddle with his coffee mug is not buried anxiety, you can't prove anything.
Bruce looks like he's going to say something. Doesn't.
Clark looks like he's ready to listen to whatever Bruce is going to say, and when that doesn't happen, his mouth skews into a rueful line. The sound of Bruce's tiny fidgets against the coffee up all echo loud to someone who is super and keyed into what he's doing.
"He got the postcard," he says, by the by. "I'm not sure that was the inciting motivation, but."
A beat, and he adds, more directly, if a still gently applied pressure, "When was the last time you two were in the same room?"
He's glad the coffee is growing tepid. The very faint annoyance of it alleviates the tiniest amount of anxiety about the rest of this; focusing on something else. But it's fleeting, and Bruce is more regretful than anxious, anyway.
"Years."
So.
He's staring, unfocused, at the bottom of his coffee mug, not a Clark.
There's a moment where Clark thinks about saying something else, thinks about not saying it, and then it comes out of his mouth anyway as he says, fondly, "He looks like you."
Not physically, obviously. But he is speaking as someone who does not literally resemble his parents either, but you might still see Jonathan in the way he touches the top of the doorway leading into the kitchen back home, or Martha in the way he looks at people before embracing them. Likewise, Rick moves like Bruce Wayne too. Studies people like him. Wears his coats like him.
Bruce nods, slowly. Unclear if that's agreement, or just acceptance; imagining it, and the metrics that might prompt Clark to make such a comparison. Uncertain if it's good or bad that his influence is so obvious on someone who wishes to be free of it. He thought he was doing the right thing, with how he raised Rick. At the very least, he thought he was doing the honest thing.
Love's not enough, etc.
Anyway. He moves over to do the thing with the coffee maker, so Clark doesn't blow it up. Ta-da. He lingers there, still holding his own empty mug.
"Thank you," he says. "For talking to him. I don't need to know what you talked about, just. I know you."
Bruce shakes his head a little and exhales through his nose, some wordless completion of that scattered thought. I know enough about you to know you'd be kind to him, and that's all I want for my kid anymore, is shit that's not awful, and that isn't me. Some terrible creeping emotion threatens to close his throat and he runs his thumb over the edge of the mug, thinking.
There is a puzzled line drawn at his brows when Bruce thanks him, and it kind of stays there through the rest. They're closer, now, so Clark wanders a hand out to touch his waist, just a light point of connection through clothing layers, while the coffee machine does its thing.
Gee, but Bruce looks sad. He isn't really a person from whom that can be hugged away, either. Not everyone is.
"I didn't really know what I was doing," Clark says. "But he humoured me a little."
Which was nice of him, Clark thinks. He could definitely have told him to fuck off at any point, and still been polite about it.
"But he definitely didn't come here expecting me."
"But he clocked you anyway, huh." A guess, but a very educated one. Of course Richard Grayson did, he is who he is. There is something so impossibly fond in his voice, but he's still sad. Bruce knows that it's entirely possible - probable, even, sucker bet - that R(d?)ick has done his homework on Superman already, and that just
does something to him.
The next breath he takes is steadier, and his posture reorients to normal. That look leaves his face. Behold, compartmentalization so efficient as to be art. He's still silent for another moment, but eventually: "Sorry. Don't know why that got me. I'm used to it, I really am."
Ha, ha. Anyway we're cool, let's have some coffee.
Clark doesn't move, but he does manage not to stare at Bruce with open—something. Not pity, but it'd be easy to mistake it that way. He stands in place instead and studies some middle distance through Bruce's clavicle as he considers what magical right thing there is to say that makes everything better again, comes to the conclusion it doesn't exist.
So he just says what's on his mind, which is, "Sometimes I think being someone's kid is a responsibility too, when you grow up. You realise you're just two people, and you owe it to one another to act on that. You realise that one day, you have to come home, or not."
His hand wanders from Bruce's waist to his hand.
"He didn't come here to look at a building." He did come here to look at a gravestone, but Clark is ready to believe that if Rick wanted to look at a gravestone, he could have just looked at a gravestone. Or not at all. Personally, he was always in the habit of looking at the sky.
Bruce closes his eyes again, sighs. It's a kind of I know but it isn't defensive— barely. He could be, but he chooses not to.
"He did not have normal growing pains and he did not have normal examples," Bruce says, and he shrugs, opening his eyes again. "I've never been in a position to make a choice about coming home, because it's always been only mine. God only knows what that made him feel like."
Dead parents, a guardian who spent a lot of years actively downplaying and denying his role as a father. From eight years onward, this has all been Bruce's; he has no experience about the mindset concerning 'should I move out to go to college or not' or 'I'm in a fight with my dad'. He figures he must have assumed Rick felt the same way, because he never actively thought of it at all. And now what. Neither of them know how to come back over a familial rift, having only experienced the kinds that were caused by death, and thus are by default unrecoverable.
"Pushing him has always made him ice me out more. I can't— I can't just corner him, even if he shows up here. You think I wouldn't—"
Bruce scrubs a hand over his face, tips his his head back. "You think I wouldn't reach out, if I thought I could. If I thought it wouldn't be the last straw."
Defensive is certainly not what Clark was aiming for, but he ought to have known—no one keeps themselves quite on the hook like Bruce. Trying to ease him off it is about as easy as orchestrating a touching family reunion, which is to say, potentially dangerous. Painfully aware he can only really talk as someone's kid, and not someone's parent.
But Clark has his hand, so. He keeps it.
And listens, head tilted, while the coffee maker over there finishes filling his cup. Just a minute, coffee maker.
"Of course I don't think that," he says, gently. "And maybe the right thing to do was to let him be, today. Probably it was. I'm just wondering if this isn't him looking for a way back." His thumb brushes over Bruce's knuckles. "And that you shouldn't have to be used to this."
Bruce squeezes his hand. He is indeed not the kind of person for who a hug would solve anything, but maybe once in a while he'd like one. Alas, he'll die before indicating so.
"Well, it's my fault."
Stiffly. It all sucks.
It's my fault, so. He deserves to suffer, or something like that. Is there actually a worse crime than making your child hate you, Bruce isn't sure. He doesn't have a way to describe how much of a failure he feels like. Perhaps there are parents out there, biological or adopted or intentional or accidental, who can make clean breaks, who can feel content with distance and shrug it off. Bruce can't. But he also can't actually do anything about it.
"I want to be in his life, but I don't want him to hate that I'm there."
A hug might be coming. Who can say. They are proportionately more likely from Clark, as a rule, but plenty a superhug potential has gone squandered.
And Bruce can probably tell that Clark wants to refute that statement, that first one, because of course he does. Self-aware enough to know that he doesn't know enough to lift it up out of platitude, even of an extremely well-meaning kind.
But still. "He said you were a great dad," he offers, anyway. "I can't imagine that hate would enter into it, and stick around. He doesn't seem the type."
It's a very unusual thing, because he has so few modes - the normal one, blank with only little tells around the eyes and mouth, and the occasional stupefied one, which is usually more funny than anything. This is someone who's been gutted and doesn't know what to do about it. Bruce looks out through the glass wall and doesn't find anything, because there's just—
What?
"I can't actually talk about this," Bruce says, but it kind of goes up at the end. I can't actually talk about this? He's not telling Clark he doesn't want to talk about it with him, or that he'd prefer him to mind his own business, but he just. Doesn't know what the fuck to do, so that's cool.
There's a breath in, like Clark is going to say something, and when he says, "Okay," there's the sense it wasn't his first choice.
But it's the one he settles on. He curls a hand around Bruce's arm and closes in the distance between them, a kiss brushing across Bruce's cheek on the way into pulling him into an embrace, pushing past whatever invisible layers of east coast-y social distance exist with a different kind of unstoppable effortlessness that has nothing to do with cellular structures and yellow suns. A squeeze up around Bruce's ribs, regardless of buy in, chin tucked on shoulder.
"But if you want to," he says, then amends, "when you can, and want to, then," he withdraws a little, but still within that space, still holding him, "whenever you want."
He doesn't like seeing Bruce this way, and at the same time, it's better, seeing it, than knowing it lurks somewhere hidden beneath several feet of ice.
Bruce doesn't quite resist, but there's a long moment of non-reaction before he begins to unwind, almost mechanically. Standard operating procedure says he should tell Clark to mind his own fucking business, maybe leave Richard another tragic voicemail move on— he's at a loss, and yet he has endless motivation to do something, despite being unable.
Why the fuck would he say he's a great dad.
He ends up curling his arms around Clark, clinging there, head against his shoulder. Clutching too tightly, but only until he manages a deep breath out. Leans into Clark, then, hoping that he can somehow intuit an apology for being such a weirdo.
It's a while before he says,
"I miss my kids."
Is the thing. A real shitty thing to try and navigate around, the justified estrangement of one, and the brutal death of the other, which reinforces that rift between the survivors. Sandwiched in the middle of two sets of murdered parents. It's a trauma echo chamber in Wayne Manor, and they're rebuilding it. God help them.
Clark settles a hand at the nape of Bruce's neck as he leans in, staying steady and stable, thumb rubbing tiny arcs at his hairline. A wish that he could do more, expressed right there, and then stilling when Bruce speaks, says that.
Mm. His chin pokes Bruce's shoulder, head ducking, holding him tighter, like he too felt some small heartbreak at the sentiment alone.
"It's not too late with him," he says, finally, very certain for someone who has only met the guy for a few minutes. But it feels like a crucial few minutes. It feels like a few minutes that wouldn't have happened if this thing weren't true. That tight grip only lessens once he senses some even unconscious pull-back from Bruce, but otherwise remains, a steel circle of an embrace that Bruce could collapse into, if he wanted.
Clark adds, "Maybe he's just making his own way back."
He considers pulling back. Maybe it's almost there, unconsciously. It's not too late, Clark says, and Bruce watches some other world (maybe the same world where Bruce does not say anything, that day at the aquarium, does not tell Clark about being in love with him, even if it isn't any of his business) where he stands up straight and ends the conversation. It would be fine if he did, he thinks. Understandable. Both because it's so painful to Bruce, and because this is a lot to ask of Clark, honestly. He did not perhaps sign up for this particular brand of baggage, when he invited Bruce to Christmas some years ago, but here it is. Airport carousels full of it as far as the eye can see.
Not quite a collapse. Some form of unspooling. Melting into him, trusting Clark with his weight, physical and emotional. Arms around him, hands tucked up over the backs of his shoulders.
Surely there's a point where he gets better at this. (Surely there's a point where he realizes he already has.)
After a while - when did he close his eyes? Bruce isn't sure - he ventures, muffled, "We should visit your mom sometime."
See. This is funny. Parent angst. What if Martha also misses her kid. Let's go look at the fucking corn, Kent.
The not-collapse is felt more like Bruce relaxing than a real shift of weight, although Clark becomes aware of that too. Easily done, he holds Bruce to him, and stays quiet. He can, after all, do that much.
And then smiles against Bruce's shoulder, where he'd tucked his face down against it, at that suggestion.
"We'd love that," he says, cheer low-key but present. It's probably not just a tactic to change topic, maybe, but hopefully Bruce was also prepared for this to eventuate, laser-burned into his calendar, at least as far as Clark is concerned.
Gently, Clark moves his hands to Bruce's shoulders, sets him upright. Doesn't back off, though, still bracketing him in and using that proximity to touch his face, snare in eye contact. A silent kind of you okay? in big eyes and expressive eyebrows.
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no subject
And: solve all problems standing right here, through logic and empathy, or at least enough of them that they can take the long way back to the lakehouse, scare Bruce and Alfred out from their hiding places, share a family dinner, listen to fond and not sad anecdotes, leave estranged father and son to talk of deeper things, resolve their outstanding arguments, catch up on what they've missed—
Alright, well. One step at a time.
"I'll let him know you dropped by," feels like as good a fair warning as any, rather than permission being sought, Clark pressing a smile that is thin but not insincere. "It was nice meeting you."
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A nod, for the warning. Fair enough. In all likelihood, Rick is smart enough to accept that no visit on home turf would go unnoticed either way.
"You too," he says, equally subdued, equally sincere. "And thanks. For, uh." He shrugs, smile widening a bit. That's the thing, about Superman. He's Superman. Thanks for all your supering, man.
Rick takes his leave, but not back to his car. He's aimless for a bit, until he picks his direction. Either wishing to kill time until he's less likely to be observed, or dithering. Who knows. The grounds are expansive, and the graveyard is a bit of a walk, but it's one of the only footpaths still clearly carved. When he stops, it's not to grovel before a Wayne ancestor. No past generations are his people.
Quietly, to no one, "Hey, shithead."
(Jason always wanted knives or C4. So he also got stuffed animals.)
no subject
And then he moves deeper into the manor, avoiding the echoing sounds of contractors from the other wing as he moves up some unsafe stairs, the soles of his neat if cheap shoes not even evoking a creak from old wood as he goes. He roams towards some wide windows, the glass panes in them still intact, just dirty, and from there he can watch Rick make the last little way down a path before disappearing from view a few steps later.
But Clark listens to the crunch of his shoes over earth, twigs, grass, watches the glimmer of his form through the mess of the layers of the world. Listens to the odd collection of sounds of a relative stranger on the move, the ambiance of heart beat and steps and the rustle of his coat. Until it stops, and he speaks, voice an echo in the field of Clark's focus.
He blinks, and landscape resolves from skeletal transparency into solid shades of green and grey. Allows himself to lose track of Rick, to hear instead nearby engines, voices, fluttering creatures housed in the rooftop.
Takes a breath, and moves, walking the long way back to the lake house.
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Real World Days are always more draining to Bruce than even getting the shit kicked out of him. Even the tedium of shuffling chess pieces at Wayne Enterprises is preferable. But they're necessary, and when it's finally done - contractors cleared out, papers signed, paint samples decided on, permits paid for - the lake house is quiet, even though it does feel a little scuffed thanks to the unusual intrusion. He'd been very tempted to hold all these hand-off meetings in the city, but in the end, doing so would have been wildly impractical.
So. Leaning against the kitchen counter and staring out at the expanse of land between the lake and the manor - just a smudge over a tree line when it's clear - Bruce has a mug of coffee, a glass of scotch, and his cell phone.
He holds out the scotch bottle, eyebrows quirked. Or coffee, he could pick that, too.
"Enjoy exploring?"
It's been a long day. He's sorry he couldn't spend more of it with Clark, but if either of them held grudges about time being infringed upon by a thousand different kinds of outside demands, this'd never work.
no subject
It's gonna be a little while until it is, again, and probably even longer than that for the kind of quiet that put the whole place into repose.
Machine set to growl and do whatever mysterious and arcane coffee practices it must, Clark moves for the fridge in search of cream, fishing that out and turning back to Bruce. The transparent look of someone with something he wants to say, and instead says, "How was your day?"
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"'Quiet' is part of why mom had this place," he muses. So, you know. It's alright. In the midst of regrets - the manor should have never fallen to such a state, the horrors should never have happened - there's also acceptance. It can be loud. And he can have a haven from it, when it's too loud.
Not that this place is as silent as it used to be, either. Have you noticed how many people he is dating these days.
Scotch consumed, in a neat single swallow. Glass clinks down on the counter as he says, "Productive. Annoying." He shrugs. "You had company."
Both of them can't play coy.
no subject
"I intercepted company," he corrects, next retrieving the sugar, going for the crumbly brown kind that is more normally used for cooking, with its high molasses content. Leans against the island, then, with his gathered supplies, looking across at Bruce, all fondness. "Rick Grayson?"
Name change, ostensibly. The lift at the end isn't a question.
"He didn't stick around for long."
no subject
Rick. Guess we all grow up sometime. It feels brittle to not have been in his life for the adjustment, but surely this is progress. Him being here at all, remembering the gate code, making the drive. Apparently not telling Clark to fuck off. His fiddle with his coffee mug is not buried anxiety, you can't prove anything.
Bruce looks like he's going to say something. Doesn't.
It's fine.
no subject
"He got the postcard," he says, by the by. "I'm not sure that was the inciting motivation, but."
A beat, and he adds, more directly, if a still gently applied pressure, "When was the last time you two were in the same room?"
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"Years."
So.
He's staring, unfocused, at the bottom of his coffee mug, not a Clark.
"Did he look okay?"
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There's a moment where Clark thinks about saying something else, thinks about not saying it, and then it comes out of his mouth anyway as he says, fondly, "He looks like you."
Not physically, obviously. But he is speaking as someone who does not literally resemble his parents either, but you might still see Jonathan in the way he touches the top of the doorway leading into the kitchen back home, or Martha in the way he looks at people before embracing them. Likewise, Rick moves like Bruce Wayne too. Studies people like him. Wears his coats like him.
'Years' is a rough answer.
no subject
Love's not enough, etc.
Anyway. He moves over to do the thing with the coffee maker, so Clark doesn't blow it up. Ta-da. He lingers there, still holding his own empty mug.
"Thank you," he says. "For talking to him. I don't need to know what you talked about, just. I know you."
Bruce shakes his head a little and exhales through his nose, some wordless completion of that scattered thought. I know enough about you to know you'd be kind to him, and that's all I want for my kid anymore, is shit that's not awful, and that isn't me. Some terrible creeping emotion threatens to close his throat and he runs his thumb over the edge of the mug, thinking.
no subject
Gee, but Bruce looks sad. He isn't really a person from whom that can be hugged away, either. Not everyone is.
"I didn't really know what I was doing," Clark says. "But he humoured me a little."
Which was nice of him, Clark thinks. He could definitely have told him to fuck off at any point, and still been polite about it.
"But he definitely didn't come here expecting me."
no subject
"But he clocked you anyway, huh." A guess, but a very educated one. Of course Richard Grayson did, he is who he is. There is something so impossibly fond in his voice, but he's still sad. Bruce knows that it's entirely possible - probable, even, sucker bet - that R(d?)ick has done his homework on Superman already, and that just
does something to him.
The next breath he takes is steadier, and his posture reorients to normal. That look leaves his face. Behold, compartmentalization so efficient as to be art. He's still silent for another moment, but eventually: "Sorry. Don't know why that got me. I'm used to it, I really am."
Ha, ha. Anyway we're cool, let's have some coffee.
no subject
So he just says what's on his mind, which is, "Sometimes I think being someone's kid is a responsibility too, when you grow up. You realise you're just two people, and you owe it to one another to act on that. You realise that one day, you have to come home, or not."
His hand wanders from Bruce's waist to his hand.
"He didn't come here to look at a building." He did come here to look at a gravestone, but Clark is ready to believe that if Rick wanted to look at a gravestone, he could have just looked at a gravestone. Or not at all. Personally, he was always in the habit of looking at the sky.
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"He did not have normal growing pains and he did not have normal examples," Bruce says, and he shrugs, opening his eyes again. "I've never been in a position to make a choice about coming home, because it's always been only mine. God only knows what that made him feel like."
Dead parents, a guardian who spent a lot of years actively downplaying and denying his role as a father. From eight years onward, this has all been Bruce's; he has no experience about the mindset concerning 'should I move out to go to college or not' or 'I'm in a fight with my dad'. He figures he must have assumed Rick felt the same way, because he never actively thought of it at all. And now what. Neither of them know how to come back over a familial rift, having only experienced the kinds that were caused by death, and thus are by default unrecoverable.
"Pushing him has always made him ice me out more. I can't— I can't just corner him, even if he shows up here. You think I wouldn't—"
Bruce scrubs a hand over his face, tips his his head back. "You think I wouldn't reach out, if I thought I could. If I thought it wouldn't be the last straw."
no subject
But Clark has his hand, so. He keeps it.
And listens, head tilted, while the coffee maker over there finishes filling his cup. Just a minute, coffee maker.
"Of course I don't think that," he says, gently. "And maybe the right thing to do was to let him be, today. Probably it was. I'm just wondering if this isn't him looking for a way back." His thumb brushes over Bruce's knuckles. "And that you shouldn't have to be used to this."
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"Well, it's my fault."
Stiffly. It all sucks.
It's my fault, so. He deserves to suffer, or something like that. Is there actually a worse crime than making your child hate you, Bruce isn't sure. He doesn't have a way to describe how much of a failure he feels like. Perhaps there are parents out there, biological or adopted or intentional or accidental, who can make clean breaks, who can feel content with distance and shrug it off. Bruce can't. But he also can't actually do anything about it.
"I want to be in his life, but I don't want him to hate that I'm there."
no subject
And Bruce can probably tell that Clark wants to refute that statement, that first one, because of course he does. Self-aware enough to know that he doesn't know enough to lift it up out of platitude, even of an extremely well-meaning kind.
But still. "He said you were a great dad," he offers, anyway. "I can't imagine that hate would enter into it, and stick around. He doesn't seem the type."
no subject
It's a very unusual thing, because he has so few modes - the normal one, blank with only little tells around the eyes and mouth, and the occasional stupefied one, which is usually more funny than anything. This is someone who's been gutted and doesn't know what to do about it. Bruce looks out through the glass wall and doesn't find anything, because there's just—
What?
"I can't actually talk about this," Bruce says, but it kind of goes up at the end. I can't actually talk about this? He's not telling Clark he doesn't want to talk about it with him, or that he'd prefer him to mind his own business, but he just. Doesn't know what the fuck to do, so that's cool.
no subject
But it's the one he settles on. He curls a hand around Bruce's arm and closes in the distance between them, a kiss brushing across Bruce's cheek on the way into pulling him into an embrace, pushing past whatever invisible layers of east coast-y social distance exist with a different kind of unstoppable effortlessness that has nothing to do with cellular structures and yellow suns. A squeeze up around Bruce's ribs, regardless of buy in, chin tucked on shoulder.
"But if you want to," he says, then amends, "when you can, and want to, then," he withdraws a little, but still within that space, still holding him, "whenever you want."
He doesn't like seeing Bruce this way, and at the same time, it's better, seeing it, than knowing it lurks somewhere hidden beneath several feet of ice.
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Why the fuck would he say he's a great dad.
He ends up curling his arms around Clark, clinging there, head against his shoulder. Clutching too tightly, but only until he manages a deep breath out. Leans into Clark, then, hoping that he can somehow intuit an apology for being such a weirdo.
It's a while before he says,
"I miss my kids."
Is the thing. A real shitty thing to try and navigate around, the justified estrangement of one, and the brutal death of the other, which reinforces that rift between the survivors. Sandwiched in the middle of two sets of murdered parents. It's a trauma echo chamber in Wayne Manor, and they're rebuilding it. God help them.
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Mm. His chin pokes Bruce's shoulder, head ducking, holding him tighter, like he too felt some small heartbreak at the sentiment alone.
"It's not too late with him," he says, finally, very certain for someone who has only met the guy for a few minutes. But it feels like a crucial few minutes. It feels like a few minutes that wouldn't have happened if this thing weren't true. That tight grip only lessens once he senses some even unconscious pull-back from Bruce, but otherwise remains, a steel circle of an embrace that Bruce could collapse into, if he wanted.
Clark adds, "Maybe he's just making his own way back."
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Not quite a collapse. Some form of unspooling. Melting into him, trusting Clark with his weight, physical and emotional. Arms around him, hands tucked up over the backs of his shoulders.
Surely there's a point where he gets better at this. (Surely there's a point where he realizes he already has.)
After a while - when did he close his eyes? Bruce isn't sure - he ventures, muffled, "We should visit your mom sometime."
See. This is funny. Parent angst. What if Martha also misses her kid. Let's go look at the fucking corn, Kent.
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And then smiles against Bruce's shoulder, where he'd tucked his face down against it, at that suggestion.
"We'd love that," he says, cheer low-key but present. It's probably not just a tactic to change topic, maybe, but hopefully Bruce was also prepared for this to eventuate, laser-burned into his calendar, at least as far as Clark is concerned.
Gently, Clark moves his hands to Bruce's shoulders, sets him upright. Doesn't back off, though, still bracketing him in and using that proximity to touch his face, snare in eye contact. A silent kind of you okay? in big eyes and expressive eyebrows.
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