One more time, during the extended pause of Bruce's finishing his drink. Committing the motion to memory. Wouldn't be hard to apply the principles of it. Clark has a fair fathoming of anatomy, able to peel back its layers before his eyes, evaluate internal injury and pressures at a glance. Probably, with a little effort, he could make improvements.
Of course, that's not who he is. It's who Batman is. Had he grown up human, into a general you, he might still never have made it out of a schoolyard dust-up. Maybe he'd be something weaker, gentler, strong only in the ways a blue collar farmboy is, one who never leaves Kansas, let alone the atmosphere. Just like dad. (He would like to imagine that he gets a natural inclination towards writing. Goes to school. Moves to Metropolis all on his own. Improbably dates the Pulitzer prize winner of The Daily Planet. You know.)
In no scenario is Clark Kent a martial artist.
But still--
"I could," he agrees. "If you wanted to show me a thing or two more, sometime."
Clark collects back his own beer, checking what he's got left in it, innocuous. They are, after all, on a team now.
They are, after all, on a team now. (And Bruce had been the one to bring this up, can't shrug it off now and make it obvious that spending time doing something so physical with the Kryptonian is probably going to do his head in.)
Silence settles. That feeling of 'what the fuck are we doing' creeps up Bruce's spine, and--
Wait a minute, he can totally shrug it off now.
"Diana," he says, seemingly out of nowhere. Bruce glances away for a moment, grasping for what he actually wants to say. This is terrible. He hasn't had a problem with blurting out words since - ever. Maybe when he was four.
"Diana would be a more practical option," jeez, there, words are working, good. "All things considered."
From the little uptick in pulse through to Diana's name thrown out between them (and Clark makes as though to turn around and see if she in fact materialised behind him, because we have fun here), it might also take supercognition to process what signals get collected through his supersenses. He's not exactly looking for them, though he can't play dumb to himself and say that his pushing back at Bruce to teach him something was wholly innocent of motive.
Not a specific motive. He, too, would like to know what the fuck they're doing.
His eyebrows raise at that suggestion, doubtful immediately of Diana of Themyscira being a practical option to teach anybody, let alone him -- metahuman status or not. "You think?" he asks, flatly doubtful, but accepting of the possibility that Bruce does know her better. She's just very.
His gaze cuts back to Clark at that flat tone. (You can be in France in ten seconds, Kal-El.)
"I do," Bruce says. "Because it'll be easier to learn if you focus on what you're doing, instead of on trying not kill your instructor by accident."
Awful convincing, coming from the only person to get into a proper knock-down drag-out with Superman and live. It's unthinkable, actually, that Bruce would be so reckless as to put Clark in a position to slip up and hurt him; he's too smart for that, a hundred times over, and if he doesn't care about his own safety he definitely cares about the other man's psychological well-being. But he's banking on Clark's opinion of him being too low to guess that.
His heartbeat has nearly slowed back into its usual, sedate evenness, the fluster of a moment ago evaporated (or rigidly controlled). It's embarrassing enough as it is - he doesn't need Clark to know.
"And you should get to know her a bit, anyway."
From the edge of the building, Bruce tosses his empty beer bottle towards an abused-looking dumpster wedged against brick. Thunk, clink. Three points.
But Clark doesn't say that, because Bruce isn't wrong. His face makes a :/ expression, contemplating. He can't help but feel stubborn about it, because there's appeal in learning how to fight within human parameter, one foot in the cornfields. There's appeal in learning how Bruce does it, in specific, and there's appeal in repairing something that might need it in a way that a slapfight of misunderstanding between demigods does not.
But they are have not had enough beer for Clark to find a way to articulate any of that. He finishes his beer, and -- carefully -- tosses the empty vessel as Bruce did. Thunk, clink, light enough that nothing obliterates into dust. Maybe he's making a point.
But he says, "Okay. But, you know, if I come back with a sword and shield, you only have yourself to blame."
"We can talk about blame if you come back in her uniform," says Bruce, a little of that spiteful shit-eating playboy who Clark first met sneaking in. (That persona is fake, yes, but he doesn't actually mind snarling at people about Gotham. It's a hellhole, but it's home.)
And that's ... that, more or less. They can't stay up here forever; Clark has feats of divine intervention to attend to, Bruce has fledgling heroes to manage from afar and bleak murders to investigate. They had a beer. It doesn't mean anything. Alfred is pointed about his whereabouts, as being whisked away by Superman was not something that slid under the news media radar, but Bruce resolutely ignores him. It's stupid, and he'll get over it.
Winter gets its claws in early, out here in the east. No proper snow yet in Gotham City but it's bitterly cold enough that everything has a layer of perpetual frost. Bruce should be working, or sleeping, or out with a model, anything but courting pneumonia out in the pitch black expanse of his family's land. He's just walking. Thinking. Drifting.
It seems like the kind of activity that invites solitude. Requires it. Having touched down, gently, on the rooftop of the manor, Clark listens to the steady heartbeat that, among a few, have become familiar to his ear, peering out into the darkness where he can detect Bruce walking. Drifting. Not where he thought he'd be.
Considers leaving him alone, but it's not his natural instinct, personally. Leaving things alone.
A flutter of cold wind. In the bleak Gotham evening, colours of blue and red are rendered into shades of deep grey. He lands at a respectable distance, shock absorbed into bent knees, several feet behind. Probably, if there were an emergency, he would say so, instead of, upon standing up,
Alien feet meet terra firma and Bruce does not turn around, his shoulders do not tense; that he can see well enough in the dark to have noticed Superman lurking along the parapets of his crumbling childhood home should not be surprising. He's in too contemplative a mood to have been flustered by the appearance - pulse ticking up only now, and only a little. His fingers are curling in the ends of high yellow stalks of weeds.
"First day of construction's tomorrow," he says at length, low voice eerie in the cold stillness.
He and Diana and Alfred had spent a long time, planning and designing and sifting through contractors. He had spent even more, mapping everything out. Some imaginary architect's name is on the blueprints. Bruce Wayne can't be good at much of anything, on the record.
"It'll never look like this again."
No longer a skeleton, no longer a mausoleum for a past he won't speak of that must be composed of more than just his absent parents. Something else has been keeping Wayne Manor dead. It should be a good thing, to breathe life into it. But he seems sad.
He doesn't have a natural instinct towards platitude. It's probably frustrated more than one journalist or superfan on the rare occasions that Superman has touched down long enough to be spoken to, but there it is. Now, none come to mind either, looking past Bruce in an effort to see this place through his eyes.
Black trees, white fog, grey buildings. Different to the palettes of yellow and blue that define his own childhood memories.
Bruce looks back at him, and Clark returns attention on a slight delay, and then gives a slightly surprised smile, as if not expecting the callback. He wanders a step or two closer. "No," he agrees. "I don't have what it takes to be an Amazon, apparently. She, uh." Mm. Some kinda memory plays out behind his eyes and crinkled brow. "Well, we sparred."
It's fine. Bruce has few terminal allergies, fit as he is, but platitudes are on the list. He doesn't often expect a response when he says things like that.
"Mm." One eyebrow up. Mm sounds an awful lot like That isn't strictly what you were supposed to be doing, but maybe also like, It must have been fine since I didn't catch any news stories about the Louvre being accidentally kicked in.
"She's sweet."
Is she.
Amendment, as Bruce turns back to look at the derelict mansion again: "Or she was, once."
He wonders if it disturbs Diana to be so easily understood by a mortal man, and one so spiritually acidic at that. He doesn't wonder if she regrets having felt safe enough with him to share the tale of her lost love - he knows that. He should have told her about Selina, probably, or even Talia. But he didn't. He told her he understood her and then saved that knowledge in reserve as something to hurt her with later.
Clark should leave. Get out of this quicksand before he's too deep.
"But now it's bugging you that you might not be throwing a real punch, huh."
Though they've yet to pick a pace, Clark has idled into a position that can be considered sidelong. This, after a tip of his head in return to silent communication about what they were meant to have been doing: you're telling me.
Donning the cape is sort of instant gravitas, his suit a strange armour that nevertheless demands a certain physical decorum. Here, however, he is more Clark Kent than the statue-like alien from the stars, an absent fidget where he works his knuckles a little with his other hand, as if remembering-- something. They are, after all, talking about punching, and not other things.
As for Diana being sweet, his smile twists. Rue. "She told me to come back," he allows, but wait for it, "after you quit being stubborn about my training."
Her words, not mine, is communicated with eyebrows.
A line appears between his brows. Just so. (There is a whole language in the movement of a person's eyebrows, especially his, and strangely, Clark's too. Of course it has to be an alien who he ends up overlapping with.)
He'll get you for that, Diana, and your little dog too.
"That's interesting," is dignified.
No objections to being called stubborn. He'd probably turn to a pillar of salt, struck down by a god who doesn't exist, the lie would be so outlandish. Even from someone as good at lying as Bruce Wayne. Another little while of staring out at the manor.
"Do you want to schedule a date, or are you free right now?" is deadpan.
At least Clark did not leave France having learned nothing. Raw strength is not news to him, and neither is cosmic ability. That Diana had trained herself into her own relative powers since girlhood had become all too painfully evident, a display of the value of practice combined with metahuman ability. At least he has something to bond with Barry about, besides the occasional race for a coastline.
Clark finds himself looking at what Bruce is looking at, curiousity strong enough, abrupt enough, that he nearly just says: now's fine.
Instead, "I didn't mean to interrupt," which is true, even if he made the active decision to once he'd gotten halfway there. The matter isn't tabled, but he wants to know, "Did you come here a lot, before?"
It's an ambiguous timeframe to ask about. Before tonight. After he left it behind for good. What he knows about Bruce is only a matter of public record, except for the things deliberately kept off record.
Sometimes it's easy to forget that Gotham City is in New Jersey, with how infrequently the dialect impresses itself on Bruce's speech. And then sometimes there's that, easy-sounding words with kicky pops of consonants on the end. Anyway. No. Before is many-layered, and 'a lot' fits none of them.
(Lurking in the darkness is an opinion about pizza. Fear it.)
Bruce turns around, away from the dead thing in the distance.
"Well I'm not instructing you on anything while you're wearing that," sounds a little more human. One step, two, heading back towards where the lake house is, frost-crisp plant matter crunching under booted feet. "You want to zip back to your secret crystal palace and change or borrow something of mine?"
It's only on a slight delay before Clark steps alongside, matching pace, accepting momentum. His next breath is semi-laughter, judging from the way it strikes as steam in the cold air. He's considered getting annoyed about smart assery with regard to his status as messianic alien in tights, if not for the fact he has the luxury, now, of working farmland in Kansas secured beneath his mother's name.
The counter words, ivory tower spring to mind, but the dark grey silhouette of the manor looming behind them has Clark laying down that specific kind of sass with an inwards sigh.
"Crystal palace's exclusively for capes," he says, instead, retreating into easy self-deprecation. "I can borrow something, if you don't mind. Unless it's got ears."
Maybe, if Superman had a nice animal mascot headband as part of his outfit, Bruce would not have wanted to murder him so badly. Did you ever think of that, Clark. Did you.
The hike back to the lake house is right at the midway point of 'long' and 'not too long'; Clark caught him before he could make it all the way to the crumbling mansion or wander past it. Bruce doesn't ask anything further about his jaunt with Diana, nor does he explain why he's bothering to do this Right Now. (He's not getting any younger. No time like the present. Batman doesn't believe in rest. Pick.)
Alfred is in the kitchen when they arrive, wearing pajamas and a house robe and looking appropriately shocked. His alarmed expression eases when whatever he reads on his ward's face tells him there's nothing to be concerned about, but shifts to something else-- something that makes Bruce roll his eyes when he believes Clark isn't looking at him.
"Might I get you something to drink, Mr Kent?" while Bruce slinks off like a shadow to his bedroom.
That Clark has superanticipated another warm moving body ahead of him spares him momentary awkwardness. Well. Mostly. He still manages a second of it when he stops short upon realising that following Bruce directly into his bedroom would classify as weird, and an extra half-second recovering from the alien decorum of a man his senior being the deferential one in the social transaction.
Even if he suspects Alfred more playing at butler than being one. Manners kick in.
"No sir," he says, nonetheless. "But thanks, anyway. Sorry about the hour."
But, you know. Bats are nocturnal, says his crooked, pressed smile.
Alfred's eyebrows go up in an initial bit of confusion about the hour, but catches on a moment later and nods, conspiratorial. Yes, yes, the hour, the hour during which sane people are asleep. (Does it look like anyone sane lives here, Mr Kent.)
Anyway, he's getting a cup of tea handed to him, despite the 'no'.
(Meanwhile: Bruce is shrugging out of his expensive coat, changing his clothes, and digging out something for Clark to wear. In the moonlit chamber of his unnervingly exposed bedroom, he downs a dose of lorazepam with the remaining, tepid white wine still on his nightstand. It's just to take the edge off, make sure he can think; he'd have to have much more alcohol or trazodone to end up loopy.)
Upon his return, Bruce looks almost shockingly normal. Long sleeved shirt with a soft collar, gym pants, bare feet. (All black.) He's carrying what must be for Clark.
"Have you considered just playing cards or watching a sporting event?" Alfred asks, immediate and waspish, frown only deepening at Bruce's monosyllabic, unconcerned response. Even more peeved, "Ordering in Chinese and discussing your feelings?"
"Goodnight, Al."
The older man makes a disgusted noise but leaves them be, muttering. Bruce is walking to the back of the kitchen to a door that leads to an antechamber, one of the only enclosed rooms in the house. One's a door to a hallway that leads to the rest of the house proper - other bedrooms, and so on. And one door is an elevator.
Clark's brows knit together midway through the exchange, his 10% depleted teacup set aside as he slides a look between men. By the time Alfred is finished, bewilderment has converted into bewildered amusement, the corner of his mouth crooking up.
"Mr Pennyworth," is goodbye, good natured.
(For the record, he Did Not let supersight glimmer through the walls for long, curiousity only overtaking him when he thinks it's been long enough for a man to have gotten dressed. Concern has dogged his heels since they turned away from the manor and headed back for the house by the lake, and concern dogs his heels now as he follows Bruce down the corridor.
Nothing for it, really.)
"Considering the state of things from the last Wildcats v Meteors game," Clark says, presently, "my vote's for cards, next go."
Obviously, they're not going to talk about their feelings.
"He just thinks I'll hit you too hard," is mild, and Not Actually Funny. Whether it's a joke about Bruce having tried to hard to murder him is unclear - but unlikely, given the depth of his regret. Which means it's probably a self-depreciating joke, implying Alfred thinks Bruce might intentionally hurt himself.
It would be easy.
Anyway, into the elevator. The panel has no numbers, though some buttons are more worn than others; surely there can't be that many subterranean floors. Bruce pokes one and they're lowered to something in between the cave (The Cave) and the surface level. There's a modestly sized gym space, clean and stocked but still in a way that says it hasn't been used in a while. Bruce must get his own practice in elsewhere.
"Locker room's that way," Bruce says, tossing him the space clothes. It's more like a mini luxury hotel spa back there, but whatever.
While Clark is gone, Bruce turns off the CCTV for this room. When he returns, he's sliding a paper and bamboo screen over the mirrored wall, apparently not in the mood for the reflections.
Battlesuit folded and left behind, Clark Kent emerges, dressed like a normal human and bare foot and-- well, nervous might be a leap. Anticipation and uncertainty, mingled together. The deductive leap on what Alfred might think is not a difficult one to make, and the simple question -- why are you doing this -- glimmers beneath the surface.
Maybe they'll figure it out on their own.
"That I'm not so used to defending against counter attack," he says, pacing at a circle, a little, acclimatising. "That she thinks several steps ahead of any given move she takes. You and her have that in common."
Blurry footage of a red-and-blue clad figure slamming bad guys into buildings does not look like someone who has plans.
"That she'd probably appreciate it if we got another lady on the team." A few comments, here and there, about how men fight, as if it were an anomaly. He doesn't know Diana any better than he knows Bruce, really, but he likes her.
Bruce watches him, considering. Probably playing back all the times he's observed Clark fight. Deciding where to start and what to start with.
"She might be equally disappointed by any women who've learned to fight in the outside world," he says wryly. "I've known a lot of women who could lay my ass out flat, but none like her."
Clark pauses only long enough to think about it, and to consider the man in front of him: Bruce, out of the batsuit, let alone the heavy armouring of the version he wore to battle with him, all scratched up silver like he'd welded himself into it. Not long enough, though, for Bruce to have to prompt him again, Clark approaching like he's stepping up onto a stage, cameras all on him. He has, after all, never done this before. Even Diana had been different (with a hair toss, an arched eyebrow, let's go, and they went).
But, settling into the form he's been shown, he centres his balance, and swings a punch.
He doesn't condescend to slow down by a lot, trusting in Bruce's ability to counter. Being the kind of man whose heart is worn on his sleeve (or in a big S, on his chest), a lack of murderous intent and malice takes the viciousness out of it, anyway.
(Or desperation, as with Zod, in the end, and as with Doomsday, desperate to end something and unable to make it happen as fast as he would like.)
Sidestepped. Bruce observes, and while his standards are high enough that he doesn't show any appreciation for the fact that Clark takes a swing as he'd been shown how to do that night in Milwaukee, he at least doesn't look disappointed. One hand snags Clark's wrist, fingers looping around. His other, in a fist, tags Clark's ribs light enough to barely be a tap. Marking. If they were matched for strength, farmboy would be in a world of hurt.
He stops.
"Once more."
This time, Bruce stops him with a hand on his wrist, and guides Clark to shove his elbow towards Bruce, aiming at his solar plexus. There's an art to it, but it isn't an elegant one. Holds and hold-breaking, using brute force only where the weak points are, to destabilize and cripple.
Another thing he took away from Diana: alongside his failure to defend against attack, there is also his habit to choose not to, and that choice having become at least one feature of the fighting style he's built for himself. Absorbing impact and absorbing energy along with it, wasting ammunition as guns turn to him, acting as shield and decoy in ways living beings are generally not expected to.
Which is no excuse, really, and certainly won't impress Bruce. Or Diana. Not that he's interested in impressing Bruce. Or Diana!
He swings, gets caught, and a little faster, folds his arm as shown, stopping just shy of delivering more than a bump of elbow to torso. "Owch," he suggests, wry.
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Of course, that's not who he is. It's who Batman is. Had he grown up human, into a general you, he might still never have made it out of a schoolyard dust-up. Maybe he'd be something weaker, gentler, strong only in the ways a blue collar farmboy is, one who never leaves Kansas, let alone the atmosphere. Just like dad. (He would like to imagine that he gets a natural inclination towards writing. Goes to school. Moves to Metropolis all on his own. Improbably dates the Pulitzer prize winner of The Daily Planet. You know.)
In no scenario is Clark Kent a martial artist.
But still--
"I could," he agrees. "If you wanted to show me a thing or two more, sometime."
Clark collects back his own beer, checking what he's got left in it, innocuous. They are, after all, on a team now.
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They are, after all, on a team now. (And Bruce had been the one to bring this up, can't shrug it off now and make it obvious that spending time doing something so physical with the Kryptonian is probably going to do his head in.)
Silence settles. That feeling of 'what the fuck are we doing' creeps up Bruce's spine, and--
Wait a minute, he can totally shrug it off now.
"Diana," he says, seemingly out of nowhere. Bruce glances away for a moment, grasping for what he actually wants to say. This is terrible. He hasn't had a problem with blurting out words since - ever. Maybe when he was four.
"Diana would be a more practical option," jeez, there, words are working, good. "All things considered."
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From the little uptick in pulse through to Diana's name thrown out between them (and Clark makes as though to turn around and see if she in fact materialised behind him, because we have fun here), it might also take supercognition to process what signals get collected through his supersenses. He's not exactly looking for them, though he can't play dumb to himself and say that his pushing back at Bruce to teach him something was wholly innocent of motive.
Not a specific motive. He, too, would like to know what the fuck they're doing.
His eyebrows raise at that suggestion, doubtful immediately of Diana of Themyscira being a practical option to teach anybody, let alone him -- metahuman status or not. "You think?" he asks, flatly doubtful, but accepting of the possibility that Bruce does know her better. She's just very.
In France.
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"I do," Bruce says. "Because it'll be easier to learn if you focus on what you're doing, instead of on trying not kill your instructor by accident."
Awful convincing, coming from the only person to get into a proper knock-down drag-out with Superman and live. It's unthinkable, actually, that Bruce would be so reckless as to put Clark in a position to slip up and hurt him; he's too smart for that, a hundred times over, and if he doesn't care about his own safety he definitely cares about the other man's psychological well-being. But he's banking on Clark's opinion of him being too low to guess that.
His heartbeat has nearly slowed back into its usual, sedate evenness, the fluster of a moment ago evaporated (or rigidly controlled). It's embarrassing enough as it is - he doesn't need Clark to know.
"And you should get to know her a bit, anyway."
From the edge of the building, Bruce tosses his empty beer bottle towards an abused-looking dumpster wedged against brick. Thunk, clink. Three points.
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But Clark doesn't say that, because Bruce isn't wrong. His face makes a :/ expression, contemplating. He can't help but feel stubborn about it, because there's appeal in learning how to fight within human parameter, one foot in the cornfields. There's appeal in learning how Bruce does it, in specific, and there's appeal in repairing something that might need it in a way that a slapfight of misunderstanding between demigods does not.
But they are have not had enough beer for Clark to find a way to articulate any of that. He finishes his beer, and -- carefully -- tosses the empty vessel as Bruce did. Thunk, clink, light enough that nothing obliterates into dust. Maybe he's making a point.
But he says, "Okay. But, you know, if I come back with a sword and shield, you only have yourself to blame."
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And that's ... that, more or less. They can't stay up here forever; Clark has feats of divine intervention to attend to, Bruce has fledgling heroes to manage from afar and bleak murders to investigate. They had a beer. It doesn't mean anything. Alfred is pointed about his whereabouts, as being whisked away by Superman was not something that slid under the news media radar, but Bruce resolutely ignores him. It's stupid, and he'll get over it.
Winter gets its claws in early, out here in the east. No proper snow yet in Gotham City but it's bitterly cold enough that everything has a layer of perpetual frost. Bruce should be working, or sleeping, or out with a model, anything but courting pneumonia out in the pitch black expanse of his family's land. He's just walking. Thinking. Drifting.
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Considers leaving him alone, but it's not his natural instinct, personally. Leaving things alone.
A flutter of cold wind. In the bleak Gotham evening, colours of blue and red are rendered into shades of deep grey. He lands at a respectable distance, shock absorbed into bent knees, several feet behind. Probably, if there were an emergency, he would say so, instead of, upon standing up,
"Hey."
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"First day of construction's tomorrow," he says at length, low voice eerie in the cold stillness.
He and Diana and Alfred had spent a long time, planning and designing and sifting through contractors. He had spent even more, mapping everything out. Some imaginary architect's name is on the blueprints. Bruce Wayne can't be good at much of anything, on the record.
"It'll never look like this again."
No longer a skeleton, no longer a mausoleum for a past he won't speak of that must be composed of more than just his absent parents. Something else has been keeping Wayne Manor dead. It should be a good thing, to breathe life into it. But he seems sad.
Bruce turns his head.
"No sword or miniskirt, I see."
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Black trees, white fog, grey buildings. Different to the palettes of yellow and blue that define his own childhood memories.
Bruce looks back at him, and Clark returns attention on a slight delay, and then gives a slightly surprised smile, as if not expecting the callback. He wanders a step or two closer. "No," he agrees. "I don't have what it takes to be an Amazon, apparently. She, uh." Mm. Some kinda memory plays out behind his eyes and crinkled brow. "Well, we sparred."
That's probably not the whole story.
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"Mm." One eyebrow up. Mm sounds an awful lot like That isn't strictly what you were supposed to be doing, but maybe also like, It must have been fine since I didn't catch any news stories about the Louvre being accidentally kicked in.
"She's sweet."
Is she.
Amendment, as Bruce turns back to look at the derelict mansion again: "Or she was, once."
He wonders if it disturbs Diana to be so easily understood by a mortal man, and one so spiritually acidic at that. He doesn't wonder if she regrets having felt safe enough with him to share the tale of her lost love - he knows that. He should have told her about Selina, probably, or even Talia. But he didn't. He told her he understood her and then saved that knowledge in reserve as something to hurt her with later.
Clark should leave. Get out of this quicksand before he's too deep.
"But now it's bugging you that you might not be throwing a real punch, huh."
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It is.
Though they've yet to pick a pace, Clark has idled into a position that can be considered sidelong. This, after a tip of his head in return to silent communication about what they were meant to have been doing: you're telling me.
Donning the cape is sort of instant gravitas, his suit a strange armour that nevertheless demands a certain physical decorum. Here, however, he is more Clark Kent than the statue-like alien from the stars, an absent fidget where he works his knuckles a little with his other hand, as if remembering-- something. They are, after all, talking about punching, and not other things.
As for Diana being sweet, his smile twists. Rue. "She told me to come back," he allows, but wait for it, "after you quit being stubborn about my training."
Her words, not mine, is communicated with eyebrows.
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He'll get you for that, Diana, and your little dog too.
"That's interesting," is dignified.
No objections to being called stubborn. He'd probably turn to a pillar of salt, struck down by a god who doesn't exist, the lie would be so outlandish. Even from someone as good at lying as Bruce Wayne. Another little while of staring out at the manor.
"Do you want to schedule a date, or are you free right now?" is deadpan.
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Clark finds himself looking at what Bruce is looking at, curiousity strong enough, abrupt enough, that he nearly just says: now's fine.
Instead, "I didn't mean to interrupt," which is true, even if he made the active decision to once he'd gotten halfway there. The matter isn't tabled, but he wants to know, "Did you come here a lot, before?"
It's an ambiguous timeframe to ask about. Before tonight. After he left it behind for good. What he knows about Bruce is only a matter of public record, except for the things deliberately kept off record.
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Sometimes it's easy to forget that Gotham City is in New Jersey, with how infrequently the dialect impresses itself on Bruce's speech. And then sometimes there's that, easy-sounding words with kicky pops of consonants on the end. Anyway. No. Before is many-layered, and 'a lot' fits none of them.
(Lurking in the darkness is an opinion about pizza. Fear it.)
Bruce turns around, away from the dead thing in the distance.
"Well I'm not instructing you on anything while you're wearing that," sounds a little more human. One step, two, heading back towards where the lake house is, frost-crisp plant matter crunching under booted feet. "You want to zip back to your secret crystal palace and change or borrow something of mine?"
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It's only on a slight delay before Clark steps alongside, matching pace, accepting momentum. His next breath is semi-laughter, judging from the way it strikes as steam in the cold air. He's considered getting annoyed about smart assery with regard to his status as messianic alien in tights, if not for the fact he has the luxury, now, of working farmland in Kansas secured beneath his mother's name.
The counter words, ivory tower spring to mind, but the dark grey silhouette of the manor looming behind them has Clark laying down that specific kind of sass with an inwards sigh.
"Crystal palace's exclusively for capes," he says, instead, retreating into easy self-deprecation. "I can borrow something, if you don't mind. Unless it's got ears."
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Maybe, if Superman had a nice animal mascot headband as part of his outfit, Bruce would not have wanted to murder him so badly. Did you ever think of that, Clark. Did you.
The hike back to the lake house is right at the midway point of 'long' and 'not too long'; Clark caught him before he could make it all the way to the crumbling mansion or wander past it. Bruce doesn't ask anything further about his jaunt with Diana, nor does he explain why he's bothering to do this Right Now. (He's not getting any younger. No time like the present. Batman doesn't believe in rest. Pick.)
Alfred is in the kitchen when they arrive, wearing pajamas and a house robe and looking appropriately shocked. His alarmed expression eases when whatever he reads on his ward's face tells him there's nothing to be concerned about, but shifts to something else-- something that makes Bruce roll his eyes when he believes Clark isn't looking at him.
"Might I get you something to drink, Mr Kent?" while Bruce slinks off like a shadow to his bedroom.
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Even if he suspects Alfred more playing at butler than being one. Manners kick in.
"No sir," he says, nonetheless. "But thanks, anyway. Sorry about the hour."
But, you know. Bats are nocturnal, says his crooked, pressed smile.
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Anyway, he's getting a cup of tea handed to him, despite the 'no'.
(Meanwhile: Bruce is shrugging out of his expensive coat, changing his clothes, and digging out something for Clark to wear. In the moonlit chamber of his unnervingly exposed bedroom, he downs a dose of lorazepam with the remaining, tepid white wine still on his nightstand. It's just to take the edge off, make sure he can think; he'd have to have much more alcohol or trazodone to end up loopy.)
Upon his return, Bruce looks almost shockingly normal. Long sleeved shirt with a soft collar, gym pants, bare feet. (All black.) He's carrying what must be for Clark.
"Have you considered just playing cards or watching a sporting event?" Alfred asks, immediate and waspish, frown only deepening at Bruce's monosyllabic, unconcerned response. Even more peeved, "Ordering in Chinese and discussing your feelings?"
"Goodnight, Al."
The older man makes a disgusted noise but leaves them be, muttering. Bruce is walking to the back of the kitchen to a door that leads to an antechamber, one of the only enclosed rooms in the house. One's a door to a hallway that leads to the rest of the house proper - other bedrooms, and so on. And one door is an elevator.
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"Mr Pennyworth," is goodbye, good natured.
(For the record, he Did Not let supersight glimmer through the walls for long, curiousity only overtaking him when he thinks it's been long enough for a man to have gotten dressed. Concern has dogged his heels since they turned away from the manor and headed back for the house by the lake, and concern dogs his heels now as he follows Bruce down the corridor.
Nothing for it, really.)
"Considering the state of things from the last Wildcats v Meteors game," Clark says, presently, "my vote's for cards, next go."
Obviously, they're not going to talk about their feelings.
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It would be easy.
Anyway, into the elevator. The panel has no numbers, though some buttons are more worn than others; surely there can't be that many subterranean floors. Bruce pokes one and they're lowered to something in between the cave (The Cave) and the surface level. There's a modestly sized gym space, clean and stocked but still in a way that says it hasn't been used in a while. Bruce must get his own practice in elsewhere.
"Locker room's that way," Bruce says, tossing him the space clothes. It's more like a mini luxury hotel spa back there, but whatever.
While Clark is gone, Bruce turns off the CCTV for this room. When he returns, he's sliding a paper and bamboo screen over the mirrored wall, apparently not in the mood for the reflections.
"Pick up anything worthwhile from Diana?"
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Maybe they'll figure it out on their own.
"That I'm not so used to defending against counter attack," he says, pacing at a circle, a little, acclimatising. "That she thinks several steps ahead of any given move she takes. You and her have that in common."
Blurry footage of a red-and-blue clad figure slamming bad guys into buildings does not look like someone who has plans.
"That she'd probably appreciate it if we got another lady on the team." A few comments, here and there, about how men fight, as if it were an anomaly. He doesn't know Diana any better than he knows Bruce, really, but he likes her.
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Bruce watches him, considering. Probably playing back all the times he's observed Clark fight. Deciding where to start and what to start with.
"She might be equally disappointed by any women who've learned to fight in the outside world," he says wryly. "I've known a lot of women who could lay my ass out flat, but none like her."
In many ways.
"Alright. Try and hit me."
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But, settling into the form he's been shown, he centres his balance, and swings a punch.
He doesn't condescend to slow down by a lot, trusting in Bruce's ability to counter. Being the kind of man whose heart is worn on his sleeve (or in a big S, on his chest), a lack of murderous intent and malice takes the viciousness out of it, anyway.
(Or desperation, as with Zod, in the end, and as with Doomsday, desperate to end something and unable to make it happen as fast as he would like.)
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He stops.
"Once more."
This time, Bruce stops him with a hand on his wrist, and guides Clark to shove his elbow towards Bruce, aiming at his solar plexus. There's an art to it, but it isn't an elegant one. Holds and hold-breaking, using brute force only where the weak points are, to destabilize and cripple.
"You follow?"
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Another thing he took away from Diana: alongside his failure to defend against attack, there is also his habit to choose not to, and that choice having become at least one feature of the fighting style he's built for himself. Absorbing impact and absorbing energy along with it, wasting ammunition as guns turn to him, acting as shield and decoy in ways living beings are generally not expected to.
Which is no excuse, really, and certainly won't impress Bruce. Or Diana. Not that he's interested in impressing Bruce. Or Diana!
He swings, gets caught, and a little faster, folds his arm as shown, stopping just shy of delivering more than a bump of elbow to torso. "Owch," he suggests, wry.
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