Clark knows Bruce said 'when you have a moment'. The thing about that is that Bruce is aware Clark currently does not have a job and is not running around handling a variety of science-powered supervillains in between Watchtower duty and his exceptionally understanding wife. So 'a free moment' feels like he might want to get there within a timely manner.
...besides he'd been wanting to check on him anyway. He's practically been waiting to get a text message giving him the clear to come by.
So Clark's there within, oh, twenty minutes of the text. He'd had to answer a few more questions about his possible literary intentions or he would have been there sooner; people certainly enjoyed their social networking around here.
Despite the fact that he has a key, this is still Bruce's apartment and not the cave. That's why he knocks, regardless of the fact that there's a 50% chance or so that Bruce will give him a dirty look for knocking when he was invited and has a key.
Muffled from inside the apartment and, yes, annoyed. The look he gives Clark as he steps inside is exactly as predicted. Why did he even give him a key? Bruce is in the small kitchenette; his apartment is still Spartan, though he's obtained two utilitarian bar-stools. The low coffee table is annoying to eat at. For a long moment Bruce just looks at him, his expression as unreadable as perhaps it's ever been.
Then: "I was accosted the other day in the grocery store, I don't know what to put together with it now."
Clark makes his way into the apartment with only a slight roll of his eyes.
"Just wanted to make sure I wasn't interrupting anything mid... cuddle," because it wasn't as if Bruce lacked the skills and the charm to go out and get himself someone to cuddle with. 'Cuddle'. Yeah, he'd keep thinking of it that way. It helped.
As soon as Bruce explains his reason for calling him over, though, Clark has to fight the urge to chuckle. He fought really really hard.
It was a battle Superman lost.
"I don't suppose it'll help if I point out that cooking is a lot like chemistry?" he ventures as he makes his way over to the kitchen. Best to get a look at what he has to work with. But--
With dignity, Bruce makes a small hand gesture that says Yes, accosted, it was beneath me but I tolerated it because I wasn't raised by wolves. Inside his fridge there are vegetables, the makings of some kind of salad, juice, eggs (Bruce can make scrambled eggs at least, usually), some other things; not a huge amount of anything, just a hand basket's worth of groceries. It is not actually all that complicated, but it's tragically plausible that Bruce looks at this and has an instinct to put it all in a blender, and that it's a small step towards progress that he's called for an intervention instead of resorting to a bread-veggie-egg smoothie.
Clark considers what he sees in the 'fridge, frowns, and decides he needs to make sure that this kitchen is as well equipped as his own. A moment later, though, and he's pleased to have found himself a small pie pan.
Then he's pulling out some of the vegetables, the nuts that would have been used for the salad (nuts in the 'fridge, Bruce? Why?), the eggs, butter, milk, and he grabs for the salt and pepper from the counter.
Then he looks over at Bruce, gesturing to what he'd grabbed.
"I can show you how to make a simple quiche. Vegetables and protein, and with a nut crust, low carb. Next time you go, I'll show you some staples that you'll want to keep around that're useful for most dishes."
He reaches up into the thankfully identical kitchen to pull out a couple of bowls, takes off his jacket, and rolls up his sleeves.
"Would it help if I write out some simpler recipes for you to start with? The kind of thing that'll show you the basics?"
Eyebrows go up. This looks very complicated already. It's not that Bruce is so stupid he can't figure out cooking. He could. Can with even a little attention, but learning to cook is replacing Alfred. The emotionally crippled eight year old that makes too many of his decisions doesn't like that.
"Yes," he says, about the offer to write it out, and curiously it sounds like he's saying No in another language. Bruce is doing a good job of pretending like this isn't embarrassing; he's probably too egotistical to realize it should be. He crosses his arms and leans against the counter in the single position that lets him observe what Clark's doing without putting his back to the window.
(Hopefully Clark will forgive him for being manipulative. Or, at least, forgive the thing in his brain that says he has to be manipulative whenever he wants to make a point.)
He notices those eyebrows. They're like a Bruce barometer and he has to hold back another laugh. This one just shines out of his eyes plainly enough, but he spares Bruce the indignity of having to hear it.
"This isn't complicated, I promise. Mostly, this consists of throwing things into a bowl, mixing it all up, and putting it in the oven. We're not even going to measure much."
Wait, this is Bruce.
"Though you can measure. If it makes you more comfortable."
A cutting board, a basic chopping knife, and a few small bowls... Bruce knows how to use a knife, doesn't he?
"The most important thing... well, I'm sure you're familiar with the concept... is what's called mise en place." And Bruce knows French so he's not about to translate it. "Make sure that you have all of your ingredients prepared, ready, and measured before you start cooking anything."
Bruce just grunts in answer, stepping over to offer desultory participation. He pushes the sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows, if reluctantly. Honestly, a kale smoothie sounds more appetizing than quiche, which he mainly thinks of as soggy. He'll do what Clark directs him to-- well, no, he might do a thing Clark instructs him to, he might not. He will do a thing, at least. His expression suggests You could have made sandwiches.
He waits, is the thing. Clark could still superspeed out of here with the barest of air rustles if he wanted to, and Bruce knows it, but he feels more secure doing this. Luring him over, closing the apartment door behind him, let them become involved in doing something that shouldn't be abandoned at the drop of a hat.
"I don't know if it was the same for you," he says after a while of observing the construction. His tone is the same; soft-spoken in that way he has when he's not acting. "Or if you'd even remember. For months - near a year, we had armbands."
"One night it was raining awfully, even for Gotham. Most everyone had given up for fear of drowning in the open air, except for one gang. The armband," and Bruce hadn't paused when Clark did, continuing whatever busywork he was given, though now he reaches up halfway, as if remembering where wore it, "kept slipping. I got back after dawn and that was what I was most angry about. I was breaking Tim in still and he was doing that.. hyper-attentive to everything act, and would stay in the cave until I left, even if he was dead exhausted, or if I told him to leave. I sat there for five hours fixing it, so it wouldn't slip off. At first. I ended up remaking it. The crest was asymmetrical, I don't know who printed the original ones. Tim fell asleep."
His eyes are closed and there are so many things going through his head. So very many things.
He remembers. God, the things he remembers. He can't remember things he wasn't there for, though. But he can imagine. He can imagine Bruce working with that black armband, restitching, adjusting, redesigning. Being frustrated at the crest printing. Being frustrated at the arm band.
Frustrated at the reason for the arm band.
Frustrated at everything.
He pushes himself up from the counter and looks Bruce in the eyes then, putting the knife down, brushing the spinach off his fingers. Then, clearly purposeful, he steps closer to Bruce and leans into his personal space.
Bruce looks back at him and doesn't budge. Don't blink. His expression is still neutral, but there's something in his eyes-- something well concealed but present, and for the first time, it's possible to notice that he's angry. Bruce is furious, in fact. Gone far past the explosion point and back around into something impossibly cold.
It is not entirely - even chiefly - aimed at Clark.
His voice is quieter now.
"And you tell me that I need to remember someone gives a damn. When you have no idea what it's like."
He closes his eyes then, closes them and leans in so slowly. Bruce might think, wildly, impossibly, that he was trying to kiss him except that the mechanics are all wrong. No, he's leaning in to press his forehead to Bruce's, leaving that the only point of contact between them. Eyes closed, forehead to forehead, the rim of his glasses touching his brow on every breath out.
"You really think that, don't you?" and his voice is only just above a whisper.
Bruce doesn't think that Clark's trying to kiss him. He has no idea what Clark's trying to do, so he holds still and watches him, even when their foreheads touch and he's so close that his vision blurs; his brain which already can pass for a very bristly batcomputer goes into a bit of a beep-boop what the fuck setting for a moment, but it's not enough to dent his mood of quiet anger.
"You are behaving as though you don't know," Bruce says, his voice quiet but not whispered, the same as it was when he spoke a moment before. He thinks he should probably step away, but a tiny part of him cautions against it, holding motionless in front of a t-rex like in that movie Tim puts on that he always drifts off in the middle of. "I am losing sleep over your lack of discretion not because I want to be left alone, but because you have no concern for your own safety. It takes one opportunistic bastard who recognizes you and all the little genial innocuous things you're saying to all these nice people, and you won't see it coming, and you don't know what it's like being on the other side of that, Clark."
He doesn't know where to start because there's just so much to say, so much to explain. So much that had become crystallized in that terrible otherworld, things that had been nimbus and ill-defined and known-without-words suddenly the only thing that mattered. The only thing that made any sense.
He wants to start with the red, the yellow, the blue. He wants to start with the part that's easy, the part that's all Superman. He can't, though. He can't because he doesn't feel like Superman right now. The only time he's felt like Superman at all has been when he was talking to Kamala.
He wants to start with Regina, with the world where he's a story, where she'd known exactly who and what he was without much prompting at all. How pointless is it to hide when people know them like they know the Grey Ghost? Like Clark knows To Kill A Mockingbird. Like Bruce knows The Gay Blade.
He could start with a godling who'd come to dinner, plied him with wine and flirtatious glances, and who'd eventually disappeared in a fit of frustration with him because for all that he loves, he cares, he genuinely believes in people... trusting them with his heart is next to impossible.
He doesn't start with any of them, though. He can't start with any of them. Because Bruce thinks he doesn't know. Bruce actually thinks he doesn't know.
"I live every day of my life with the knowledge that you won't last through even a quarter of my life span," and his voice is so quiet, so terribly quiet.
"It runs like a program through the back of my mind, every waking moment, every single day, right along with the beat of your heart in my ears. And it isn't 'maybes' or 'one opportunistic bastard'. It's every bullet, every toxin, every madman. You could die from a faulty engine. Bruce Wayne could be hit by a semi-truck. And that's not even counting the times I did think you were dead, all of them lived through at the speed of a Kryptonian mind. All of them with the absolute certainty that I should have saved you because on a sunny day? There's nothing I can't do.
"It took a machine of absolute destruction to take me out, Bruce. And I came back. I. Came. Back. It doesn't change that year, but don't tell me that doesn't put it in perspective."
He breathed out then, shaking as he tilts a little, eyes fluttering open with enough force to send little puffs of air against the skin of Bruce's face.
"And it's only been worse since I came from that world. Not because that Bruce had lost hope in his Clark. Not because my own Bruce was actually going to let them have me ingest a kryptonite capsule with a radio detonator to kill me at the first sign of madness, but because I saw what happened when I lost Lois.
"And having seen it? I cannot even imagine what is going to happen when I lose you."
Bruce's heart rate doesn't change, which is probably annoying. He'd run potential conversations through his head when he decided this was how he was going to approach the subject. He listens, though, and after Clark stops talking, he raises his head away-- but only so he can reach up and take the other man's glasses off.
(An inserted K-capsule wired to detonate isn't a terrible idea, as safeguard measures go. He'll remember it.)
"I expect to die, Kal." Now, his voice is quieter, looking at his unreal blue eyes plainly. "I'm never going to die peacefully of old age. I see everything coming. Every time." And Clark doesn't see it about himself, and that makes Bruce fucking crazy. Anyone can be Batman. There is only Kal-El to be Superman, and as much as the truth of it embittered him for so many years, the Earth needs Superman.
"You'll pull through, when I go. Because even if you are right on the edge, you will have a moment to stop and think about what I'd say if I knew you were doing it because of me."
It's all he can say. It's the truth, in stark black letters. It's everything he lives with, every day, every moment, every millisecond. Nothing Bruce is saying is news. Nothing he's saying is unexpected. It's the backbeat in his brain, the mantra at the back of his mind. It's the one person he can never, ever save without destroying.
He makes a noise at the back of his throat when the glasses are removed, his whole body reaching for a moment without his hands for his boundaries. For his shield. For the thing that lets him hide. Now there's nothing between them. Absolutely nothing between them and there's nothing better. Nothing worse.
I expect to die, Kal. I know. I'm never going to die peacefully of old age. "I know." I see everything coming. "I know." Every time."I know."
Anyone can be Batman. But only one man can be Bruce Wayne. Only one man can be B, can be his best friend, can make him feel safe in all the darkness he knows is full of terrors.
The Earth might need Superman, but Clark Kent needs Bruce Wayne.
You'll pull through, when I go. "I know." He knows he will. He knows he will because
Because even if you are right on the edge, you will have a moment to stop and think about what I'd say if I knew you were doing it because of me.
Because of me.
Because of me.
"You goddamn bastard."
Which is the last thing he says before his hands are in dark hair, his body is pressing him against the wall with a surprising amount of deference to a certain gunshot wound, and his lips are firmly against Bruce Wayne's.
Your friend with the key won't even hold your hand? that daft girl had asked, and then there had been no response that Bruce could see. He'd understood in a heartbeat, in that absence. Still hasn't inspected it too closely-- not over any squeamishness, but he's so overloaded with everything else it was just too much. Oh, he'd thought, and left it.
Oh he thinks again now. And there's no leaving it.
(His heartrate does speed up this time. Damnit.)
Bruce doesn't protest, doesn't play dead or tense up, but he doesn't return it, either. He's too busy processing what's happening and what it feels like and if he can deal with someone this size pressing him into a wall to react. He's still holding Clark's glasses in one hand, hands that are against the other man's shoulders. It's nice. Better than he might have imagined, if he'd ever let himself imagine it. He thinks he likes the way Clark smells.
"That explains some things," he says softly when they're apart. It's not disdainful or wry. He's gentle.
His heart is still sped up, though, and as he stands there he thinks of the absolute last thing he wants to think of
Just you and me forever
sees in his mind's eye the absolute last thing he wants to see
All deep inside you
and the way his pulse trips is not one of passion but of panic.
"Can we maybe," he begins, still managing to sound calm, "not against the wall."
Clark's shaking like a colt after its first breakneck sprint, every muscle quivering and liquid and at first, the words are just noise because he's shivering too much. Because he just kissed Bruce.
He just kissed Bruce.
Oh God, he just kissed Bruce.
They were fighting and then they were talking about dying and then he was kissing Bruce and there are a few seconds that are just a wall of white in his mind, utter blankness, until he remembers how to anything. Anything at all.
Language. Words. Bruce is talking.
Bruce is...
"O-of course."
He pulls back, hating every millimeter he's putting between them, hating it and knowing he may have just ruined the most important relationship in his life because now that he's thinking, now that that white space is filling in with color and sound and heat, he realizes that Bruce didn't kiss him back.
They were making a quiche.
They were making a fucking quiche and now the world is falling down. Is this how it happens for him? Is this how
"Of course."
I thought I knew.
He needs his glasses. Bruce has his glasses and he needs his glasses. Everything is in his eyes and he needs his glasses, please. Please, God, he needs his glasses.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
He ruined everything again. He didn't need his strength or his speed and he still
"You have--" swallow, hard, even Bruce can probably hear it, can Bruce hear his heart beating? Is his heart beating? Or is that just the pieces falling down
Surprising to exactly no one, Bruce just stares at him.
It takes him a second longer than he'd like to figure out what's happening, because he's stuck in a bad place in his head (which he does not want to be in for a second, or a second longer, or at all, ever). The things Joker said, the slick-jagged fingers in his brain forcing everything to be real, are too close. He broke free-- he won, he has to hold onto that, he won. But it was days ago. Days that feel unreal and dreamy because they've been days spent here, and at home in the real world, it had been no time at all when he had been sick with that for so long. He'd won his mind back and an hour after that was authorizing his suicide protocol.
And now Clark is ... having some kind of anxiety attack. Bruce stares for another second, willing himself to unscramble it.
"Kal." Snapped. Then again: "Kal. Look at me." It's the voice he uses when he's pulling someone up in the field. Not anywhere near one of his nicer voices by a thousand miles, but it's the one he knows will bring his attention back to the here and now.
When he's sure the other man is listening, he dials it back, but is still serious when he addresses him. "When I say 'not against the wall', you take a step back and say 'okay'. That's it."
The battlefield voice hits him like a green bullet even if he already looked sick, his head turning like a slap to focus on Bruce. He listens to the words, he does, understands them even. When is to specify a time. I is a pronoun. Say is a verb. He's got this. He's got this.
He's Superman.
And looks nothing so much like a guide animal taking commands until the words translate into meaning. God, what did he do? What the fuck did he just do?
You just assaulted your best friend. That's what you did, Kent.
You assaulted your injured, grieving, poisoned, traumatized best friend.
He was just making some quiche and he wants his glasses so badly he's crushing the handle of the knife in his hand, leaving it a misshapen lump with the imprint of his fingers deep in the metal.
"Of course," he says again, because of course. Because can we maybe not and against the wall and of course you step back and you show him how to make dinner like you said you would and then you leave and you never come back because he doesn't need you, he's never needed you like you need him, because he survived a year without you and you could hardly last fifteen minutes when that meteor exploded
When your brother died in your arms
You've never touched another person you love without their express permission in your entire life because how you feel doesn't require them to feel the same way, no matter how much they care. No matter how deep the bond between you goes.
"Stop." Snapping again. Bruce puts one hand on his hip, just something to do instead of-- spontaneously combust from irritation and its sudden concussive impact on his mood. He's still holding Clark's glasses.
"Stop it right now. We're not doing this, you're not beating yourself up over kissing me. If you'd actually lost control I'd have noticed." He would, in fact, have been crushed to death against the aforementioned wall. Quite notably, this did not occur. "That reaction was entirely about me and the shit I have been through, not you. I need you to accept it and not dwell on it, because I don't want to dwell on it."
There's a more raw, honest note to him as he finishes that terse delivery of what are almost orders (it's hard for him to communicate important things in another way). I need you to do this, for me.
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...besides he'd been wanting to check on him anyway. He's practically been waiting to get a text message giving him the clear to come by.
So Clark's there within, oh, twenty minutes of the text. He'd had to answer a few more questions about his possible literary intentions or he would have been there sooner; people certainly enjoyed their social networking around here.
Despite the fact that he has a key, this is still Bruce's apartment and not the cave. That's why he knocks, regardless of the fact that there's a 50% chance or so that Bruce will give him a dirty look for knocking when he was invited and has a key.
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Muffled from inside the apartment and, yes, annoyed. The look he gives Clark as he steps inside is exactly as predicted. Why did he even give him a key? Bruce is in the small kitchenette; his apartment is still Spartan, though he's obtained two utilitarian bar-stools. The low coffee table is annoying to eat at. For a long moment Bruce just looks at him, his expression as unreadable as perhaps it's ever been.
Then: "I was accosted the other day in the grocery store, I don't know what to put together with it now."
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"Just wanted to make sure I wasn't interrupting anything mid... cuddle," because it wasn't as if Bruce lacked the skills and the charm to go out and get himself someone to cuddle with. 'Cuddle'. Yeah, he'd keep thinking of it that way. It helped.
As soon as Bruce explains his reason for calling him over, though, Clark has to fight the urge to chuckle. He fought really really hard.
It was a battle Superman lost.
"I don't suppose it'll help if I point out that cooking is a lot like chemistry?" he ventures as he makes his way over to the kitchen. Best to get a look at what he has to work with. But--
"Accosted?"
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"There were also cheese sticks."
He ate those.
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Then he's pulling out some of the vegetables, the nuts that would have been used for the salad (nuts in the 'fridge, Bruce? Why?), the eggs, butter, milk, and he grabs for the salt and pepper from the counter.
Then he looks over at Bruce, gesturing to what he'd grabbed.
"I can show you how to make a simple quiche. Vegetables and protein, and with a nut crust, low carb. Next time you go, I'll show you some staples that you'll want to keep around that're useful for most dishes."
He reaches up into the thankfully identical kitchen to pull out a couple of bowls, takes off his jacket, and rolls up his sleeves.
"Would it help if I write out some simpler recipes for you to start with? The kind of thing that'll show you the basics?"
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"Yes," he says, about the offer to write it out, and curiously it sounds like he's saying No in another language. Bruce is doing a good job of pretending like this isn't embarrassing; he's probably too egotistical to realize it should be. He crosses his arms and leans against the counter in the single position that lets him observe what Clark's doing without putting his back to the window.
(Hopefully Clark will forgive him for being manipulative. Or, at least, forgive the thing in his brain that says he has to be manipulative whenever he wants to make a point.)
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"This isn't complicated, I promise. Mostly, this consists of throwing things into a bowl, mixing it all up, and putting it in the oven. We're not even going to measure much."
Wait, this is Bruce.
"Though you can measure. If it makes you more comfortable."
A cutting board, a basic chopping knife, and a few small bowls... Bruce knows how to use a knife, doesn't he?
"The most important thing... well, I'm sure you're familiar with the concept... is what's called mise en place." And Bruce knows French so he's not about to translate it. "Make sure that you have all of your ingredients prepared, ready, and measured before you start cooking anything."
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He waits, is the thing. Clark could still superspeed out of here with the barest of air rustles if he wanted to, and Bruce knows it, but he feels more secure doing this. Luring him over, closing the apartment door behind him, let them become involved in doing something that shouldn't be abandoned at the drop of a hat.
"I don't know if it was the same for you," he says after a while of observing the construction. His tone is the same; soft-spoken in that way he has when he's not acting. "Or if you'd even remember. For months - near a year, we had armbands."
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"You mean when I died."
It's not really a question.
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"One night it was raining awfully, even for Gotham. Most everyone had given up for fear of drowning in the open air, except for one gang. The armband," and Bruce hadn't paused when Clark did, continuing whatever busywork he was given, though now he reaches up halfway, as if remembering where wore it, "kept slipping. I got back after dawn and that was what I was most angry about. I was breaking Tim in still and he was doing that.. hyper-attentive to everything act, and would stay in the cave until I left, even if he was dead exhausted, or if I told him to leave. I sat there for five hours fixing it, so it wouldn't slip off. At first. I ended up remaking it. The crest was asymmetrical, I don't know who printed the original ones. Tim fell asleep."
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He remembers. God, the things he remembers. He can't remember things he wasn't there for, though. But he can imagine. He can imagine Bruce working with that black armband, restitching, adjusting, redesigning. Being frustrated at the crest printing. Being frustrated at the arm band.
Frustrated at the reason for the arm band.
Frustrated at everything.
He pushes himself up from the counter and looks Bruce in the eyes then, putting the knife down, brushing the spinach off his fingers. Then, clearly purposeful, he steps closer to Bruce and leans into his personal space.
"And?"
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It is not entirely - even chiefly - aimed at Clark.
His voice is quieter now.
"And you tell me that I need to remember someone gives a damn. When you have no idea what it's like."
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"You really think that, don't you?" and his voice is only just above a whisper.
"You really think I don't know."
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"You are behaving as though you don't know," Bruce says, his voice quiet but not whispered, the same as it was when he spoke a moment before. He thinks he should probably step away, but a tiny part of him cautions against it, holding motionless in front of a t-rex like in that movie Tim puts on that he always drifts off in the middle of. "I am losing sleep over your lack of discretion not because I want to be left alone, but because you have no concern for your own safety. It takes one opportunistic bastard who recognizes you and all the little genial innocuous things you're saying to all these nice people, and you won't see it coming, and you don't know what it's like being on the other side of that, Clark."
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He wants to start with the red, the yellow, the blue. He wants to start with the part that's easy, the part that's all Superman. He can't, though. He can't because he doesn't feel like Superman right now. The only time he's felt like Superman at all has been when he was talking to Kamala.
He wants to start with Regina, with the world where he's a story, where she'd known exactly who and what he was without much prompting at all. How pointless is it to hide when people know them like they know the Grey Ghost? Like Clark knows To Kill A Mockingbird. Like Bruce knows The Gay Blade.
He could start with a godling who'd come to dinner, plied him with wine and flirtatious glances, and who'd eventually disappeared in a fit of frustration with him because for all that he loves, he cares, he genuinely believes in people... trusting them with his heart is next to impossible.
He doesn't start with any of them, though. He can't start with any of them. Because Bruce thinks he doesn't know. Bruce actually thinks he doesn't know.
"I live every day of my life with the knowledge that you won't last through even a quarter of my life span," and his voice is so quiet, so terribly quiet.
"It runs like a program through the back of my mind, every waking moment, every single day, right along with the beat of your heart in my ears. And it isn't 'maybes' or 'one opportunistic bastard'. It's every bullet, every toxin, every madman. You could die from a faulty engine. Bruce Wayne could be hit by a semi-truck. And that's not even counting the times I did think you were dead, all of them lived through at the speed of a Kryptonian mind. All of them with the absolute certainty that I should have saved you because on a sunny day? There's nothing I can't do.
"It took a machine of absolute destruction to take me out, Bruce. And I came back. I. Came. Back. It doesn't change that year, but don't tell me that doesn't put it in perspective."
He breathed out then, shaking as he tilts a little, eyes fluttering open with enough force to send little puffs of air against the skin of Bruce's face.
"And it's only been worse since I came from that world. Not because that Bruce had lost hope in his Clark. Not because my own Bruce was actually going to let them have me ingest a kryptonite capsule with a radio detonator to kill me at the first sign of madness, but because I saw what happened when I lost Lois.
"And having seen it? I cannot even imagine what is going to happen when I lose you."
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(An inserted K-capsule wired to detonate isn't a terrible idea, as safeguard measures go. He'll remember it.)
"I expect to die, Kal." Now, his voice is quieter, looking at his unreal blue eyes plainly. "I'm never going to die peacefully of old age. I see everything coming. Every time." And Clark doesn't see it about himself, and that makes Bruce fucking crazy. Anyone can be Batman. There is only Kal-El to be Superman, and as much as the truth of it embittered him for so many years, the Earth needs Superman.
"You'll pull through, when I go. Because even if you are right on the edge, you will have a moment to stop and think about what I'd say if I knew you were doing it because of me."
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It's all he can say. It's the truth, in stark black letters. It's everything he lives with, every day, every moment, every millisecond. Nothing Bruce is saying is news. Nothing he's saying is unexpected. It's the backbeat in his brain, the mantra at the back of his mind. It's the one person he can never, ever save without destroying.
He makes a noise at the back of his throat when the glasses are removed, his whole body reaching for a moment without his hands for his boundaries. For his shield. For the thing that lets him hide. Now there's nothing between them. Absolutely nothing between them and there's nothing better. Nothing worse.
I expect to die, Kal. I know. I'm never going to die peacefully of old age. "I know." I see everything coming. "I know." Every time. "I know."
Anyone can be Batman. But only one man can be Bruce Wayne. Only one man can be B, can be his best friend, can make him feel safe in all the darkness he knows is full of terrors.
The Earth might need Superman, but Clark Kent needs Bruce Wayne.
You'll pull through, when I go. "I know." He knows he will. He knows he will because
Because even if you are right on the edge, you will have a moment to stop and think about what I'd say if I knew you were doing it because of me.
Because of me.
Because of me.
"You goddamn bastard."
Which is the last thing he says before his hands are in dark hair, his body is pressing him against the wall with a surprising amount of deference to a certain gunshot wound, and his lips are firmly against Bruce Wayne's.
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Oh he thinks again now. And there's no leaving it.
(His heartrate does speed up this time. Damnit.)
Bruce doesn't protest, doesn't play dead or tense up, but he doesn't return it, either. He's too busy processing what's happening and what it feels like and if he can deal with someone this size pressing him into a wall to react. He's still holding Clark's glasses in one hand, hands that are against the other man's shoulders. It's nice. Better than he might have imagined, if he'd ever let himself imagine it. He thinks he likes the way Clark smells.
"That explains some things," he says softly when they're apart. It's not disdainful or wry. He's gentle.
His heart is still sped up, though, and as he stands there he thinks of the absolute last thing he wants to think of
Just you and me forever
sees in his mind's eye the absolute last thing he wants to see
All deep inside you
and the way his pulse trips is not one of passion but of panic.
"Can we maybe," he begins, still managing to sound calm, "not against the wall."
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.
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He just kissed Bruce.
Oh God, he just kissed Bruce.
They were fighting and then they were talking about dying and then he was kissing Bruce and there are a few seconds that are just a wall of white in his mind, utter blankness, until he remembers how to anything. Anything at all.
Language. Words. Bruce is talking.
Bruce is...
"O-of course."
He pulls back, hating every millimeter he's putting between them, hating it and knowing he may have just ruined the most important relationship in his life because now that he's thinking, now that that white space is filling in with color and sound and heat, he realizes that Bruce didn't kiss him back.
They were making a quiche.
They were making a fucking quiche and now the world is falling down. Is this how it happens for him? Is this how
"Of course."
I thought I knew.
He needs his glasses. Bruce has his glasses and he needs his glasses. Everything is in his eyes and he needs his glasses, please. Please, God, he needs his glasses.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go.
He ruined everything again. He didn't need his strength or his speed and he still
"You have--" swallow, hard, even Bruce can probably hear it, can Bruce hear his heart beating? Is his heart beating? Or is that just the pieces falling down
down
down
"I was making you dinner."
He was showing him how to make dinner.
"I was-- how to make dinner."
He was showing him how to make dinner.
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It takes him a second longer than he'd like to figure out what's happening, because he's stuck in a bad place in his head (which he does not want to be in for a second, or a second longer, or at all, ever). The things Joker said, the slick-jagged fingers in his brain forcing everything to be real, are too close. He broke free-- he won, he has to hold onto that, he won. But it was days ago. Days that feel unreal and dreamy because they've been days spent here, and at home in the real world, it had been no time at all when he had been sick with that for so long. He'd won his mind back and an hour after that was authorizing his suicide protocol.
And now Clark is ... having some kind of anxiety attack. Bruce stares for another second, willing himself to unscramble it.
"Kal." Snapped. Then again: "Kal. Look at me." It's the voice he uses when he's pulling someone up in the field. Not anywhere near one of his nicer voices by a thousand miles, but it's the one he knows will bring his attention back to the here and now.
When he's sure the other man is listening, he dials it back, but is still serious when he addresses him. "When I say 'not against the wall', you take a step back and say 'okay'. That's it."
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He's Superman.
And looks nothing so much like a guide animal taking commands until the words translate into meaning. God, what did he do? What the fuck did he just do?
You just assaulted your best friend. That's what you did, Kent.
You assaulted your injured, grieving, poisoned, traumatized best friend.
He was just making some quiche and he wants his glasses so badly he's crushing the handle of the knife in his hand, leaving it a misshapen lump with the imprint of his fingers deep in the metal.
"Of course," he says again, because of course. Because can we maybe not and against the wall and of course you step back and you show him how to make dinner like you said you would and then you leave and you never come back because he doesn't need you, he's never needed you like you need him, because he survived a year without you and you could hardly last fifteen minutes when that meteor exploded
When your brother died in your arms
You've never touched another person you love without their express permission in your entire life because how you feel doesn't require them to feel the same way, no matter how much they care. No matter how deep the bond between you goes.
You take a step back and say
"Okay."
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"Stop it right now. We're not doing this, you're not beating yourself up over kissing me. If you'd actually lost control I'd have noticed." He would, in fact, have been crushed to death against the aforementioned wall. Quite notably, this did not occur. "That reaction was entirely about me and the shit I have been through, not you. I need you to accept it and not dwell on it, because I don't want to dwell on it."
There's a more raw, honest note to him as he finishes that terse delivery of what are almost orders (it's hard for him to communicate important things in another way). I need you to do this, for me.
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