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.
"Mm." Yes, ouch. Back to one, Kansas, say the eyebrows and flat look. Bruce puts him through his paces, corrects his form, makes verbal notes.
It's been a lot of years since Bruce has had to meditate. He gave it up, along with a number of other things. That's the old man in between, the perfect ninja, the monolith. He resisted things. He purged murderous rage and vice. He used his baser emotions like a finely sharped blade, and only permitted blood to wet it when he could control it.
Not so much, these days.
His pulse jumps when Clark gets too close. He grits his teeth when Clark rolls his shoulders and manages to pull taught the borrowed undershirt, which while strictly too loose on him, does not actually do anything to hide his physique or occasional glimpses of chest hair. (The Superman suit does that too. Bruce hates it. Can't you laser vision that off or something, you asshole, it's 2017 and that's not supposed to be attractive. How do you know Bruce's weakness is performative erotic gender standards. Fuck ooooofff.)
They run through a series of moves, and Clark is picking it up, and this time when he stops short to spare Bruce's chalk-fragile human skeleton, he hooks his foot behind the younger man's heel and pulls, while pushing in the opposite direction on his arm. Bonk.
Clark isn't the worst student. His questions are often silent, asked in movement, glance, eyebrows, sometimes verbalised. He takes instruction, and there's no ego for Bruce to have to get his nails beneath and peel back. At least, not right now. But he also isn't the best student.
He's never been the best student, too easily distracted, sometimes too literal. He stops short of chalk-fragile human skeletons as well as improvisation, doing only exactly as he is told. Maybe some of this will shake out on the battle field, but after only an evening, it's probable that after the first failed attempt, it'll be back to putting bad guys through concrete until they stop.
In short, he isn't paying attention when suddenly his own foot isn't where he expected it to be.
It's not just that, either. Bruce's manner can seem strangely aloof, negligent, while his heartbeat and the barely detectable even to Kryptonian ears sound of molars squeezing together gives off a different story, and he is superaware of both, when he should definitely be ignoring the latter. So they have each others attention, and Clark isn't certain if either of them know what they're doing with it. (But he thinks he likes--)
Bonk.
Surprise, and there's a slight flutter in the air as if he was just about to cheat through levitation. He permits the fall instead with a slightly inelegant smack of hand to mat, and an affronted look on his face. Mouth pinching, he brings his leg around in an effort to knock Bruce down in retaliation. Improvising!!
Truthfully, Bruce was not expecting any kind of retaliation - though, also truthfully, he did not expect Clark to just topple over like that. But despite it, there are some things too well-ingrained, too long made a part of him past habit and into default regulatory function.
He hops over it.
A glimmer of hope, though, in that improvisation. Instinct makes Bruce step out of Clark's immediate strike range (if he were human), liquid-quick and easy, always so graceful despite the tank-like size of him. There's no reason to have any reaction there, no matter the affronted look on Clark's face or the satisfying sound he made hitting the floor.
It's quick. Barely-there, a flicker of an expression that's not quite anything all the way. Nearly taken over by an unexpected emotion: Bruce trying not to smile.
"Starting to get it," he muses, using a shift around to get back to one as an opportunity to school his expression while facing away.
Maybe if Clark weren't looking for it -- or something, if not that -- he'd miss it.
But he is, so he doesn't. Rolling to sit, first, watching Bruce turn aside, before climbing to his feet when he recognises a return to position. By the time Bruce turns back, there's a smile ready for him, crooked, a glint of canine. "I think General Zod took it personal," he says, pacing into position, "that a Kryptonian without any kind of genetically encrypted destiny he could recognise, without a lick of training, might go toe to toe with him. It's what he was made for, being a warrior."
Which is what Kal-El was intended for too, but not in the same way, not through the same methods. "How long did it take you? To make you what you are."
Twenty years in Gotham City, but he had to start somewhere.
It's a testament to how far Bruce has come that he doesn't have something to say about that first bit. (Someday. That he was there, that he ran into the dust and debris while others ran out, that the building Zod and Superman heat-visioned into oblivion was his, filled with employees and their children, people he'd moved out of Gotham to be safe. That a shadow he'd spent so long running from caught him.)
Maybe there's something in his gaze before it's blinked away.
Yeah, well. Zod was a dick.
"What, this?" Eyebrows up. Dry. "This is a shitshow, Kent, I'm falling apart."
But that's not what he's asking, and Bruce knows it. Once more - he directs him. Again, from the top. Pushes him a little, forces him to make a call about how Bruce is coming at him.
"Ten years or so," is what he says eventually, "between when I started to wander and when I came back to Gotham. Another five to think I had it figured out."
Since Clark is interested in sweeps, he shows him one.
The flat look that Clark deals to Bruce at the words shitshow is not quite on par with the one he gets more often than not, and mitigated when steered back into training. It takes a certain amount of double-think, honing skills without exercising them to their fullest, but then, he's had a lot of practice with restraint.
He'd learned how to cauterise wounds with lasers that can cut buildings in half; he can go through these motions with Bruce without liquefying his insides.
A real answer gets rewarded with German Shepherd headtip in the midst of it, natural inclination to latch to facts of interest. When the sweep comes, he avoids it as Bruce did before, and then snorts. "Careful, Wayne," he says, because we're doing last names, now, "might start feeling sorry for you."
And he pushes back. It's inevitable that his version of human speed and strength will be that much clumsier and predictable, especially given he is going through motions he's shown, but if surprise is what earns praise
not that he is doing this for praise, it's just nice to know you're not wasting someone's time
Something to alight on the field of landmines that is his entire person; implying Bruce, who nearly succeeded in killing Superman, needs this corn-fed moron to feel sorry for him, lists towards insulting. (Even though he was the one to bring it up, even though any implication there might be that Clark is lacking, because he nearly fell to this broken old man, or that he finds him worthy of inquiry. Even though Bruce is pitifully, embarrassingly enamored with him. Yes.)
To counter the inherent clumsiness in control, Bruce slows him down further. Focusing purely on how it feels. The movement, not Bruce's hands on his skin; he wonders distantly if his senses make small things more intense, or if he needs to get hit by a bus to feel anything. There's a method to tai chi's madness and this isn't quite it, but the principle is the same. Pay attention.
Oh well in that case Clark Kent of the Daily Planet will not share what he's
just kidding.
But after a moment, first adapting to the slow down, an uncertain look flashing across his face before he focuses. Paying attention, possibly to Bruce's expectations, possibly not. For the layman, this probably feels silly, and he is something like that himself, and so feels it, but wanting to take this seriously overrides it.
Speaking of overrides, it's probably clear that whatever he was going to say has been taken over by something else, maybe something stupider, given his entire self.
"That you're impressive," is what comes out of his face around when he slow motion fails to deflect the next slow motion strike he didn't slow motion anticipate, maybe with a self-conscious uptick at the corner of his mouth, but eyes dreadfully earnest, down to the bitty patch of brown marked in all the blue.
Bruce isn't sure if he's satisfied or disappointed that his surly response got Clark to (apparently) abort the mission. It doesn't occur to him that maybe he just decided to wait a moment, change tactics. Usually, once Batman gets somebody to stop something, they stay stopped.
Not so with Superman.
The failure to deflect leaves Bruce with his hand almost at Clark's throat, neither grasping nor impacting with, just there, an open-palmed tag that, were it a real hit on a human, would leave someone staggered, possibly even in need of immediate medical care with a dislocated or collapsed esophagus. Sharp brown eyes snap to mostly-blue ones-- ones Bruce has studied in pictures, in videos, up close while reeling from kryptonite-- and it's clear even through his usual stoic expression that he's surprised. A little disbelieving, too, and deeper, something that's - flustered? God forbid.
Walls shift into place. Bruce tags his throat, barely-there. Got you.
And then he's stepping back, removing his hands.
He doesn't know what to say to that so he's just. Not going to say anything. Apparently.
Surprised, and disbelieving in a way that doesn't seem skeptical, which is important, and he can't help but like being capable of surprising Bruce Wayne in ways he chooses. Clark swallows in the wake of the barely-felt tag to his throat, backing up a step himself. His hand chases the touch without really thinking about, banishing the lingering tickle of it with the flat of his palm.
Smiles, a little, says, "And winning."
It's very possible that he has flustered himself in the wake of open silence, because playing it off isn't supereffective. But okay about it, really, no walls within him to shift into place.
"Is that so." More wry than shuttered, this time. Implying he isn't trying to get one up on Clark, perhaps-- no matter that he always seems to be. Though that seems-to-be is with everyone; a compulsion, defense mechanism, way of life he doesn't know how to turn off.
He could change the subject, here. He should. This is dangerous - more dangerous than trying to punch each other's lights out. Bruce knows by now that the only plans to stop Superman must hinge on Clark flinching, and this is - something. They're both unsteady, and he isn't sure why. (Well, he knows why he's unsteady, but can't imagine it's the same for Clark.)
"When you were traveling, where was the weirdest place you came across?" A beat. "Besides Gotham, which I noticed you avoided."
Of course Bruce knows about that. Either from his standard batcreeping or because of Martha.
Seems like a rich description to ask of Superman to assign anything, especially as directed by Batman -- and at the same time, maybe too vast a category for someone whose first seventeen years of their life was spent in a place called Smallville, Kansas. Mountains qualify as weird.
"I skipped most big city centres," Clark says, of Gotham, hands dropping to fidget again with one another. "Weirdest place was probably as far west as I got before going north. Desert town, if-- marble and pink limestone open mall palace and parking lot can qualify as a town. I had a dish washing job, there. Couldn't tell you where the other employees went every night, and every customer was just passing through. Transitional. Should have been perfect for me."
He didn't last a week, say his eyebrows. Rootless wandering, he can handle, but places that seem to exist like oil on water are unsettling. Five generations of Kents, turning over soil, make an impression.
"But normal's my home state's main export." Next to corn.
Those transitional places - Bruce wouldn't do well there, either. For as twisted as he is, as much as the Kent farm makes him want to skitter away, there's nothing absent about Gotham. Too much context, the both of them. And he quirks his eyebrows for: "Turns out it's easier to hide in big cities, huh?"
Metropolis, like Gotham, is large and busy enough to afford cover. Sure, his co-workers at the Daily Planet know, but who else? Places like this, the subways of New York, downtown Los Angeles - 'weird' doesn't even rank a participation prize. They don't stick out so glaringly.
"I did the Appalachian Trail when I..." Clark trails off there, unsure exactly how to put words around that unique compounding of frustration and loneliness and desperate need to figure things out in a way that doesn't sound, you know, melodramatic. He gives up on that quickly enough. "Well, I'd been wanting to do it, made it something to work towards. Took about six months to fund it, and we're talking-- pocket change, by the time I was ready."
Most would have run out, midway through, maybe less. It takes months. He knew then he didn't need things like people needed them. "It's not all solitary. Cabins, camp sites, other hikers, even the noise? Of woodlands like that? But there's the portion around the Tennessee-North Carolina border, where you can see all around, mountains and forests, indifferent and ancient."
He then stops, thinks, says, "It was beautiful, but. Maybe that's not a favourite place. Just a favourite time.
"What about you? Or is Gotham just weirdest and best?"
That's when his father died, not because anyone's told him, even though he's sure someone's mentioned the year or he's read it. But because he knows the exact look of that pause, knows the shape of the unanchored feeling intimately. Bruce remembers, stupidly, that he'd felt like an alien on earth - had thought those words exactly - because of how misshapen everything had left him inside. Clark, meanwhile, has always been exactly how he should be, and has just been mistreated over it.
For a moment he's quiet. It should be an uncomfortable understanding, but it isn't.
"Lower Manhattan for the weirdest," he says. "Before the--" he makes a vague gesture. "I hate the word 'gentrification', it sounds so benign, but before that. It's even weirder now with that, but as somebody from Jersey, it was too unnatural."
What a stereotypical thing to say. And yet it's true; topical, even, though he doesn't say so, Ted Grant having taught him these very punches. Got his face flattened a dozen times a day.
Having talked himself away from the thinking about dead parents, Clark's smile communicates something like how isn't it neat that Bruce likes remote mountainous locations too. They're practically twins.
Maybe more than that. It's not lost on him, the slight oddness and suddenness of the conversation, questions like a stick digging around in the sand, even if he's not entirely sure what Bruce is looking for. Something to understand, maybe, and he's happy to oblige, to fall into the odd rhythm of it just as he is trusting in the over-slow movements of punches and blocks.
"I'd never been overseas until I figured out how to fly," he says, presently. It's a good thing that the ancient Kryptonians touched down in Canada. "When was Tibet?"
Outwardly, he looks vaguely harassed by that smile, like Clark's sunshine personality is tiring. (It is.) Internally, his pulse does That Thing again, briefly.
C'mon, Smallville, let's put you through your paces again.
"Ten years ago," he says, after watching Clark throw a few punches in slow motion. "And twenty-three years ago." There is a gap in the Bat's activity, a decade prior to today, but not a large one. And it might not look like a gap at all but an uneven shift, like whoever was running around in armor for those months didn't quite have the same skillset.
Maybe he was on vacation.
"How did you like France?"
Bruce is bad at this: talking, getting to know someone. He doesn't really know how to do it without it being like an interrogation.
Clark has done his homework too, although isn't currently doing the math. There's an inquiring look at the numbers -- yeah? -- before concentrating on what he's doing. Fighting very slow phantoms. Starting to get it, though, less just miming and more concentrating on the intricacies of the movements, how he's balanced, what he's doing with the rest of himself when he pulls his right arm back to deploy a strike.
And if chest hair shows up during as neckline tugs with movement, these are the sacrifices we have to make.
Another smile, this time more crooked than the last. "France was fine," sounds genuine, despite the fairly tepid descriptor assigned to a whole nation. "First time I actually touched down there that I can recall, but didn't get up to much sight seeing. Diana was pretty set on not destroying any property while we practiced. Startled some cows instead. They got nice country."
"That's nice of her," he says blandly. It's interesting to him, the care these demigods and messiahs have to take. How it can be reduced to something like remembering to stretch before jogging. Hopefully Clark will connect that sentiment with what they're doing here, since Bruce doesn't want to have to rub his nose in it and make it feel like a lesson to be shirked when he's inevitably annoyed at him.
"Some."
Trying to talk to Bruce is mostly like trying to interview a bored brick wall about mid-term election prospects during a no-contest year.
Well, this time, Bruce's foot catches on an immovable object, Clark instinctively setting heel to floor without thinking about it beyond a muscle memory desire to escape the indignity of last time. Topside, he doesn't cheat as much, other arm coming around in a deflection designed to buckle Bruce's strike, leaning backwards.
Belatedly, that foot lifts to step out of the grapple, this side shy of sheepish.
The problem with the bored brick wall effect is that it does not change the ways Bruce is, personally, in action and history and existence, endlessly fascinating, and still impressive. Clark should find it off-putting, the deflection, the blanking. He mostly finds it frustrates his curiousity without doing anything to quell it.
Without prompt, Clark goes to do as Bruce did: foot to ankle, hand to arm, mostly to see what he does as opposed to ardent desire to put him on his ass.
Ah he thinks, with a kind of incredulous longsuffering quality he mostly ascribes to Alfred, and does not dart away - instead he flips through options for what he'd do if anyone got a decent throw hold on him (and Clark's, while far from form-perfect, counts purely because he might break his own arms trying to get out of it). If Clark were human Bruce could twist to one side and get him in a headlock, or simply not move. He opts to let gravity do the work, allowing himself to fall back, but keeping hold of Clark's borrowed shirt at one shoulder and a grip on his other arm.
In theory, this will allow him to roll back and throw an opponent over his head, and away. He's curious as they go down what exactly will transpire. He suspects Superman might not have the ordinary vs-gravity buoyancy to be flipped.
Satisfaction of apparently having Done The Thing effectively enough to catch Bruce out -- because even if he had activated his X-ray vision, it does not give Clark insight into the branching scenarios almost lazily contemplated inside of his opponent's skull -- quickly turns into a flutter of panic about what he's supposed to do next by the time Bruce's hands tighten on shirt and arm. In normal scenarios, remaining perfectly in place is a likely given. Flying backwards another one.
Presence of mind to have kept those tabled, Clark responds to full-bodied tug by startling, pitching forwards.
Bonk.
Any roll-back momentum is too immediately countered by Clark Kent landing heavy on top of him, a half-aborted attempt at breaking grip laying forearm against a shoulder, knee jabbing thigh and the other braced against mat, other hand flung out wildly to absorb some of his own weight onto the floor next to Bruce's shoulder. Face to startled face as Clark jerks his head back by an inch, zero idea of what to do next has him going still in place.
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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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It's been a lot of years since Bruce has had to meditate. He gave it up, along with a number of other things. That's the old man in between, the perfect ninja, the monolith. He resisted things. He purged murderous rage and vice. He used his baser emotions like a finely sharped blade, and only permitted blood to wet it when he could control it.
Not so much, these days.
His pulse jumps when Clark gets too close. He grits his teeth when Clark rolls his shoulders and manages to pull taught the borrowed undershirt, which while strictly too loose on him, does not actually do anything to hide his physique or occasional glimpses of chest hair. (The Superman suit does that too. Bruce hates it. Can't you laser vision that off or something, you asshole, it's 2017 and that's not supposed to be attractive. How do you know Bruce's weakness is performative erotic gender standards. Fuck ooooofff.)
They run through a series of moves, and Clark is picking it up, and this time when he stops short to spare Bruce's chalk-fragile human skeleton, he hooks his foot behind the younger man's heel and pulls, while pushing in the opposite direction on his arm. Bonk.
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He's never been the best student, too easily distracted, sometimes too literal. He stops short of chalk-fragile human skeletons as well as improvisation, doing only exactly as he is told. Maybe some of this will shake out on the battle field, but after only an evening, it's probable that after the first failed attempt, it'll be back to putting bad guys through concrete until they stop.
In short, he isn't paying attention when suddenly his own foot isn't where he expected it to be.
It's not just that, either. Bruce's manner can seem strangely aloof, negligent, while his heartbeat and the barely detectable even to Kryptonian ears sound of molars squeezing together gives off a different story, and he is superaware of both, when he should definitely be ignoring the latter. So they have each others attention, and Clark isn't certain if either of them know what they're doing with it. (But he thinks he likes--)
Bonk.
Surprise, and there's a slight flutter in the air as if he was just about to cheat through levitation. He permits the fall instead with a slightly inelegant smack of hand to mat, and an affronted look on his face. Mouth pinching, he brings his leg around in an effort to knock Bruce down in retaliation. Improvising!!
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He hops over it.
A glimmer of hope, though, in that improvisation. Instinct makes Bruce step out of Clark's immediate strike range (if he were human), liquid-quick and easy, always so graceful despite the tank-like size of him. There's no reason to have any reaction there, no matter the affronted look on Clark's face or the satisfying sound he made hitting the floor.
It's quick. Barely-there, a flicker of an expression that's not quite anything all the way. Nearly taken over by an unexpected emotion: Bruce trying not to smile.
"Starting to get it," he muses, using a shift around to get back to one as an opportunity to school his expression while facing away.
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But he is, so he doesn't. Rolling to sit, first, watching Bruce turn aside, before climbing to his feet when he recognises a return to position. By the time Bruce turns back, there's a smile ready for him, crooked, a glint of canine. "I think General Zod took it personal," he says, pacing into position, "that a Kryptonian without any kind of genetically encrypted destiny he could recognise, without a lick of training, might go toe to toe with him. It's what he was made for, being a warrior."
Which is what Kal-El was intended for too, but not in the same way, not through the same methods. "How long did it take you? To make you what you are."
Twenty years in Gotham City, but he had to start somewhere.
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Maybe there's something in his gaze before it's blinked away.
Yeah, well. Zod was a dick.
"What, this?" Eyebrows up. Dry. "This is a shitshow, Kent, I'm falling apart."
But that's not what he's asking, and Bruce knows it. Once more - he directs him. Again, from the top. Pushes him a little, forces him to make a call about how Bruce is coming at him.
"Ten years or so," is what he says eventually, "between when I started to wander and when I came back to Gotham. Another five to think I had it figured out."
Since Clark is interested in sweeps, he shows him one.
"All downhill from there."
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He'd learned how to cauterise wounds with lasers that can cut buildings in half; he can go through these motions with Bruce without liquefying his insides.
A real answer gets rewarded with German Shepherd headtip in the midst of it, natural inclination to latch to facts of interest. When the sweep comes, he avoids it as Bruce did before, and then snorts. "Careful, Wayne," he says, because we're doing last names, now, "might start feeling sorry for you."
And he pushes back. It's inevitable that his version of human speed and strength will be that much clumsier and predictable, especially given he is going through motions he's shown, but if surprise is what earns praise
not that he is doing this for praise, it's just nice to know you're not wasting someone's time
then an attempt is made.
"You want to know what I think?"
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Something to alight on the field of landmines that is his entire person; implying Bruce, who nearly succeeded in killing Superman, needs this corn-fed moron to feel sorry for him, lists towards insulting. (Even though he was the one to bring it up, even though any implication there might be that Clark is lacking, because he nearly fell to this broken old man, or that he finds him worthy of inquiry. Even though Bruce is pitifully, embarrassingly enamored with him. Yes.)
To counter the inherent clumsiness in control, Bruce slows him down further. Focusing purely on how it feels. The movement, not Bruce's hands on his skin; he wonders distantly if his senses make small things more intense, or if he needs to get hit by a bus to feel anything. There's a method to tai chi's madness and this isn't quite it, but the principle is the same. Pay attention.
"Not particularly," is deadpan.
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just kidding.
But after a moment, first adapting to the slow down, an uncertain look flashing across his face before he focuses. Paying attention, possibly to Bruce's expectations, possibly not. For the layman, this probably feels silly, and he is something like that himself, and so feels it, but wanting to take this seriously overrides it.
Speaking of overrides, it's probably clear that whatever he was going to say has been taken over by something else, maybe something stupider, given his entire self.
"That you're impressive," is what comes out of his face around when he slow motion fails to deflect the next slow motion strike he didn't slow motion anticipate, maybe with a self-conscious uptick at the corner of his mouth, but eyes dreadfully earnest, down to the bitty patch of brown marked in all the blue.
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Not so with Superman.
The failure to deflect leaves Bruce with his hand almost at Clark's throat, neither grasping nor impacting with, just there, an open-palmed tag that, were it a real hit on a human, would leave someone staggered, possibly even in need of immediate medical care with a dislocated or collapsed esophagus. Sharp brown eyes snap to mostly-blue ones-- ones Bruce has studied in pictures, in videos, up close while reeling from kryptonite-- and it's clear even through his usual stoic expression that he's surprised. A little disbelieving, too, and deeper, something that's - flustered? God forbid.
Walls shift into place. Bruce tags his throat, barely-there. Got you.
And then he's stepping back, removing his hands.
He doesn't know what to say to that so he's just. Not going to say anything. Apparently.
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Smiles, a little, says, "And winning."
It's very possible that he has flustered himself in the wake of open silence, because playing it off isn't supereffective. But okay about it, really, no walls within him to shift into place.
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He could change the subject, here. He should. This is dangerous - more dangerous than trying to punch each other's lights out. Bruce knows by now that the only plans to stop Superman must hinge on Clark flinching, and this is - something. They're both unsteady, and he isn't sure why. (Well, he knows why he's unsteady, but can't imagine it's the same for Clark.)
"When you were traveling, where was the weirdest place you came across?" A beat. "Besides Gotham, which I noticed you avoided."
Of course Bruce knows about that. Either from his standard batcreeping or because of Martha.
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Seems like a rich description to ask of Superman to assign anything, especially as directed by Batman -- and at the same time, maybe too vast a category for someone whose first seventeen years of their life was spent in a place called Smallville, Kansas. Mountains qualify as weird.
"I skipped most big city centres," Clark says, of Gotham, hands dropping to fidget again with one another. "Weirdest place was probably as far west as I got before going north. Desert town, if-- marble and pink limestone open mall palace and parking lot can qualify as a town. I had a dish washing job, there. Couldn't tell you where the other employees went every night, and every customer was just passing through. Transitional. Should have been perfect for me."
He didn't last a week, say his eyebrows. Rootless wandering, he can handle, but places that seem to exist like oil on water are unsettling. Five generations of Kents, turning over soil, make an impression.
"But normal's my home state's main export." Next to corn.
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Those transitional places - Bruce wouldn't do well there, either. For as twisted as he is, as much as the Kent farm makes him want to skitter away, there's nothing absent about Gotham. Too much context, the both of them. And he quirks his eyebrows for: "Turns out it's easier to hide in big cities, huh?"
Metropolis, like Gotham, is large and busy enough to afford cover. Sure, his co-workers at the Daily Planet know, but who else? Places like this, the subways of New York, downtown Los Angeles - 'weird' doesn't even rank a participation prize. They don't stick out so glaringly.
"Where was your favorite place?"
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"I did the Appalachian Trail when I..." Clark trails off there, unsure exactly how to put words around that unique compounding of frustration and loneliness and desperate need to figure things out in a way that doesn't sound, you know, melodramatic. He gives up on that quickly enough. "Well, I'd been wanting to do it, made it something to work towards. Took about six months to fund it, and we're talking-- pocket change, by the time I was ready."
Most would have run out, midway through, maybe less. It takes months. He knew then he didn't need things like people needed them. "It's not all solitary. Cabins, camp sites, other hikers, even the noise? Of woodlands like that? But there's the portion around the Tennessee-North Carolina border, where you can see all around, mountains and forests, indifferent and ancient."
He then stops, thinks, says, "It was beautiful, but. Maybe that's not a favourite place. Just a favourite time.
"What about you? Or is Gotham just weirdest and best?"
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That's when his father died, not because anyone's told him, even though he's sure someone's mentioned the year or he's read it. But because he knows the exact look of that pause, knows the shape of the unanchored feeling intimately. Bruce remembers, stupidly, that he'd felt like an alien on earth - had thought those words exactly - because of how misshapen everything had left him inside. Clark, meanwhile, has always been exactly how he should be, and has just been mistreated over it.
For a moment he's quiet. It should be an uncomfortable understanding, but it isn't.
"Lower Manhattan for the weirdest," he says. "Before the--" he makes a vague gesture. "I hate the word 'gentrification', it sounds so benign, but before that. It's even weirder now with that, but as somebody from Jersey, it was too unnatural."
What a stereotypical thing to say. And yet it's true; topical, even, though he doesn't say so, Ted Grant having taught him these very punches. Got his face flattened a dozen times a day.
"I liked Tibet."
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Maybe more than that. It's not lost on him, the slight oddness and suddenness of the conversation, questions like a stick digging around in the sand, even if he's not entirely sure what Bruce is looking for. Something to understand, maybe, and he's happy to oblige, to fall into the odd rhythm of it just as he is trusting in the over-slow movements of punches and blocks.
"I'd never been overseas until I figured out how to fly," he says, presently. It's a good thing that the ancient Kryptonians touched down in Canada. "When was Tibet?"
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C'mon, Smallville, let's put you through your paces again.
"Ten years ago," he says, after watching Clark throw a few punches in slow motion. "And twenty-three years ago." There is a gap in the Bat's activity, a decade prior to today, but not a large one. And it might not look like a gap at all but an uneven shift, like whoever was running around in armor for those months didn't quite have the same skillset.
Maybe he was on vacation.
"How did you like France?"
Bruce is bad at this: talking, getting to know someone. He doesn't really know how to do it without it being like an interrogation.
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And if chest hair shows up during as neckline tugs with movement, these are the sacrifices we have to make.
Another smile, this time more crooked than the last. "France was fine," sounds genuine, despite the fairly tepid descriptor assigned to a whole nation. "First time I actually touched down there that I can recall, but didn't get up to much sight seeing. Diana was pretty set on not destroying any property while we practiced. Startled some cows instead. They got nice country."
Of course they do.
"You trained in Tibet, or?"
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"Some."
Trying to talk to Bruce is mostly like trying to interview a bored brick wall about mid-term election prospects during a no-contest year.
How about they try that throw again. Bonk.
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Well, this time, Bruce's foot catches on an immovable object, Clark instinctively setting heel to floor without thinking about it beyond a muscle memory desire to escape the indignity of last time. Topside, he doesn't cheat as much, other arm coming around in a deflection designed to buckle Bruce's strike, leaning backwards.
Belatedly, that foot lifts to step out of the grapple, this side shy of sheepish.
The problem with the bored brick wall effect is that it does not change the ways Bruce is, personally, in action and history and existence, endlessly fascinating, and still impressive. Clark should find it off-putting, the deflection, the blanking. He mostly finds it frustrates his curiousity without doing anything to quell it.
Without prompt, Clark goes to do as Bruce did: foot to ankle, hand to arm, mostly to see what he does as opposed to ardent desire to put him on his ass.
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In theory, this will allow him to roll back and throw an opponent over his head, and away. He's curious as they go down what exactly will transpire. He suspects Superman might not have the ordinary vs-gravity buoyancy to be flipped.
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Presence of mind to have kept those tabled, Clark responds to full-bodied tug by startling, pitching forwards.
Bonk.
Any roll-back momentum is too immediately countered by Clark Kent landing heavy on top of him, a half-aborted attempt at breaking grip laying forearm against a shoulder, knee jabbing thigh and the other braced against mat, other hand flung out wildly to absorb some of his own weight onto the floor next to Bruce's shoulder. Face to startled face as Clark jerks his head back by an inch, zero idea of what to do next has him going still in place.
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