"Can't you use glo-- hell, Kansas." Did you want a batgrowl this early? Well you get one.
Bruce stands and stretches, runs his hands through his hair again. He caught that blush. Ugh. This is terrible. He should have left. He should have left hours ago, he shouldn't have even shown up. He should just dump Clark's key into the harbor, but it's not like he would have needed one, is it?
Whatever. If Clark's fighting Poison Ivy on the rooftop in just his shorts right now, it's what he gets. Bruce is going to use his shower. And his towels. Knowing Clark is lacking x-ray vision makes this feel like punishment. Good.
He'll always take a batgrowl. They're either deeply amusing or incredibly hot.
By the time that Bruce comes out of the bathroom, it should be noted that 1. Clark is back and he is dressed in an older pair of well-worn jeans and a t-shirt, 2. he is staring at the ceiling just above the entrance to his kitchen which has 3. a sprig of the strange plant that he'd just put up on the roof and which 4. also seems to be just above Bruce's head as he exits the bathroom.
He glances over as Bruce comes out, blushes a little because Bruce is under the mistletoe and points.
He doesn't take long-- doesn't even use all of Clark's hot water, which is uncharacteristically nice of him. (He has reasons not to linger. He's not sixteen. Fuck's sake.) Bruce reemerges dressed in the same clothes, sleeves rolled to his elbows, hair still damp. He immediately looks up, and frowns.
"What is it?" How does he still sound this tired, also. "Do you have coffee?" Oh.
Clark can't help the little grin at the idea of kissing Bruce under some mistletoe. The best he can do is press his lips together again but the curl is still at the corners of his mouth and the softness is in his eyes. After a moment, though, he gets the question.
"I can make some coffee. I bought some the other day. Needed it for the steak."
Which had been one of the tupperware meals. Clark wasn't hiding the fact that he was putting them there. He just hadn't signed the notes. It wasn't necessary.
He grunts an approval at that. He can probably function without coffee, but he doesn't feel like trying. Bruce wanders closer to the kitchenette, bleary still, if physically refreshed. (He used Clark's toothbrush, too. These are the sacrifices we make with friends like Bruce Wayne.)
Absently, he picks up the invitation on the counter. He'd received one, too, but had tossed in the the garbage without going through it. Like hell is he going to some cocktail party after he's finally rid himself of that life. Having nothing else to do at present but glare at a plant, he opens it, and starts reading.
Slow breath in and out. Serenely, Bruce sets the pamphlet down on the counter, then pushes it over and slides it off the edge and into the trash. Maybe Clark just won't notice.
He notices, because with a clean, wet-haired Bruce Wayne in his apartment full of mistletoe, he is hyper aware of what Bruce is doing. But he generally trusts Bruce's calls, so he just lets it go. If it was important, Bruce would tell him. Instead, he goes to the 'fridge and starts pulling things out.
"How do omelettes and a citrus fruit salad sound?" he offers as he looks through.
"Hn." ... Probably fine. He's not going to function until he's processed coffee, which he takes over obtaining since Clark is moving towards real food. Bruce sips and shoots a look over to the lurking plant. If Clark is paying attention he might notice it curiously resembles a look he's given the likes of Guy Gardner, ie, I'm thinking about eviscerating you and feeding you your own entrails because the thought relaxes me. Well, maybe not exactly that. Plants don't have entrails.
Edited (oh my god how many times can i edit) 2015-12-03 20:18 (UTC)
Clark can't help raising an eyebrow at the murderous glare that Bruce is sending at the plant. Really. What is his problem? It's a plant. It's slightly annoying but it's not causing any harm that he can see. He'd feel ill if the thing was actually exerting any magical influence him, almost certainly, but so far it just seemed to want to hang out in his apartment.
"I'm not going to kiss you unless you want me to, Bruce. Mistletoe's a tradition, not a requirement of honor."
Spinach and mushroom omelette with a bit of feta. That sounds good. He starts chopping.
His gaze cuts back to Clark, undiluted in its lack of filter this early.
"It's not mistletoe. It's a spontaneously-appearing thing. And besides, it's not your self control I'd be worried about if it was." That last part is grumbled, but he doesn't even consider trying to muffle it. It is what it is.
Bruce slipped into his apartment in the dead of night and crawled into bed with him. Subtle, it was not.
"And if you did kiss me," Clark said matter-of-factly, "the biggest effect it'd have on anything is to give me a smile."
He doesn't know what it would make Bruce feel, which is why he's not about to kiss him (again). At least if Bruce kisses him, he knows that, however complicated the mess of emotions around it, Bruce wants to be kissing him.
Pan out, a quick dollop of butter in the pan, swirled around as it melted.
"Though you've got one in reserves, considering. I kissed you the last time."
Grumbles more. Coffee. Bruce doesn't know what he wants to do-- no, that's not accurate. He knows what he wants to do, and he knows what he should do, and they're on opposite paths. This is him dithering, which is unlike him to the extreme, but he hasn't ever been in a situation like this before. Nothing in his extensive history can lend any experience to draw from, and the person he'd usually go to as a sounding board is off limits, as that person is Clark.
He sets the cup down and rubs between his eyes, the bridge of his nose. Headache already this early, fantastic.
There was a split second temptation to put on a frown, possibly even a sad face. He decided against it, especially since he had scrambled eggs to add to the pan.
"Someone has to provide a counterbalance to all the grump," he pointed out with a soft snort. But he saw the rubbing.
"Won't help," he says, and then a long exhale, the kind that's for expulsion in meditation. Bruce finishes his coffee and roots around to make more.
"I had to get something looked at." It's risky, saying this; Clark could find his anonymous network post, which has the potential be alarming coming from him. "I went through-- an incident. At home."
What is he even saying. Bruce falls quiet, focusing on coffee and trying to sort it out.
Clark simply nods, listening. He's found, and not just with Bruce, that occasionally leaving people to talk will have them talking to themselves and the information one can glean from such a discussion, while more wild and erratically spread, could be more useful than directed questioning. But he turns to look at Bruce, because he does want him to talk.
Bruce doesn't want to talk. At all. He would like to not be in this position-- he feels like a coward wishing the incident with the Joker hadn't happened, so does that mean he has to wish Clark hadn't opened this pandora's box? Yeah, sort of. That doesn't make him feel great either, though, and there's only feelings now. Problems he can carefully unlock or punch to death are a distant fantasy.
"I don't know what to do," he admits after a while. It's hard for him to say it.
Ugh, questions that force him to cut through his own bullshit. This is why he talks to Clark about these kinds of things. It's terribly inconvenient of Clark to have made himself this kind of thing, really. Bruce is suspicious of this plan to explain even in broad terms, though, and for a while he doesn't answer.
"I can decide not to tell you, and leave," he says slowly. "Or I can tell you, and ultimately leave anyway."
He doesn't bother splitting it up into four options, because he doesn't think the other possibilities attached to those two are viable. Not telling Clark and staying isn't going to work as Bruce will drive himself insane and bail, and he's not ... he just. He can barely stand himself, he doesn't deserve to live after what he's done. Clark's here to fix an entire timeline thanks to a loss of control. There's no way.
Edited (things things things) 2015-12-04 00:25 (UTC)
The change in phrasing is what he picks up on, because 'ultimately' feels like Bruce feels that he knows what will happen. And Clark is well aware that Bruce is a damn pessimist. And when it involves the two of them, he... can't really understand why. He wonders if Bruce knows how much hope, how much... how much drive comes from what they share? From his relationship with the other man? He's reasonably certain that if he has an inkling, he probably gives him, Clark, too much credit.
"What does 'ultimately' mean here? Why do you think you'll 'ultimately leave anyway'?"
Do you think I'd ever kick you out? Do you think there's anything you could ever do to make me turn my back on you?
"I did something. I did..." he trails off, because he doesn't want to talk about it. He wants to walk three paces closer and say Can we try the other day again and kiss him, and this time they can be aware of themselves and present, and Bruce can actually react. He wants the relief he felt when he slept next to him.
"There's no exit I can see. I'm not who I was before."
Bruce doesn't know if he'll feel the same about Clark if the other man can forgive him, he tries to argue with himself. He doesn't know if that's true, but it's something, and his insides are too tangled for him to make sense of. If Clark accepts him, what's he supposed to do? He has to go back and go through with everything. It's too late.
The omelette is plated, the stove is turned off, and Clark turns his attention entirely on Bruce where it'd been only a paltry 99% his before.
"Bruce?" and his voice is gentle as he walks a little closer, keeping his movements slow and his steps obvious, "if you can't see one, trust me to look for you?"
A faint smile, wry and oddly self-depreciating as he continues--
"I figured out a way out of death. I'm craftier than you think."
That aside, though, he reaches forward slowly, carefully, to take Bruce's hand in both of his. It's a mirror, he realizes, and perhaps it's because he's functional and Bruce is... Bruce is having trouble (Bruce Wayne is always functional, even when he's not) but he needs to hold some part of him. Connect with touch, even if it's small.
Please, Bruce, he says with the gentle stroke of his fingers over Bruce's hand, over the knobs of his knuckles, the lines of tendon under the skin, let me help you. Let me love you.
His insides twist. He stares down at their hands, his in Clark's. Superman could not have helped in in Gotham, not the night he came here, not in the months leading up to it. Those wounds inside and out were all New Jersey machinist noir, all darkness and rain and blood. His Kryptonian strength couldn't have cured Bruce, or fixed Jason, or purified the air. He knows that when he goes back, he won't speak to Clark ever again.
"...I need to sit down."
Bruce will. Will he? Tell him. Maybe. He'll see. But he's not going to do it standing here while Clark's eggs are going cold. It feels like reality playback on pause, and makes him want to ninja out the damn window. He squeezes Clark's hand.
He nods and puts a bowl over Bruce's eggs (because they were for Bruce, who had a headache and probably needed to eat something; Clark had been in the sunlight so he was pretty much just fine). Then he walks back over to the couch where Bruce had been sitting last night.
He keeps to one side. Because if Bruce wants to sit against him, take the comfort he's desperate to give him, he can do that. But if he's decided, as he does so often, that he's not allowed such things, the other side is open.
It's just as well; he doesn't know if he'll be able to keep anything down if they go through this. Truly a mirror of the other day-- what the hell is wrong with them, honestly. Bruce sits on the sofa next to him, but not close enough to touch. He wants to but at the same time, he doesn't. He doesn't know how, physically, to be casual about it - he knows how to sit next to a woman and hold her, but this is new territory. And he doesn't know if he can handle Clark's touch while he's thinking about this. Any touch, but he doesn't want to associate it.
(At least Joker was shorter and much thinner, a pragmatic voice in his head says. A very good point, though he would have preferred to simply think nothing.)
"You're familiar with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Prion infections. Correct?" It's a blunt, cold opener, and not a great sign for anything that's to come.
It's easy enough to nod, and he's not lying. He's familiar enough. He doesn't have the in-depth medical knowledge that Bruce does, but he's done his share of research on more unique diseases. It always ends up being pertinent at the worst times.
And he nods, because he doesn't want to break Bruce's stride.
"Joker had become obsessed with obtaining immortality," because of me, he leaves out, trying to keep this contained on one horrible trajectory at a time, "and in a last-ditch grab for it after experimenting on himself to the point of a significantly quicker death anyway, started shooting up a super-steroid called Titan, a failed attempt to re-created Bane's Venom. It reacted with whatever was already in his blood, and created something unthinkable. Not unlike a prion infection. Transformative and fatal."
Bruce keeps his voice clinical. He doesn't look at Clark. The transformative nature of Creutzfeldt-Jakob and other prion diseases is not so much that; it only looks that way, as the brain begins to melt away cell by cell. The behaviors that develop as the disease progresses are nightmarish, and coupled with the most common form of transmission - consumption of human spinal fluid - gave rise to the mythos of zombies.
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Bruce stands and stretches, runs his hands through his hair again. He caught that blush. Ugh. This is terrible. He should have left. He should have left hours ago, he shouldn't have even shown up. He should just dump Clark's key into the harbor, but it's not like he would have needed one, is it?
Whatever. If Clark's fighting Poison Ivy on the rooftop in just his shorts right now, it's what he gets. Bruce is going to use his shower. And his towels. Knowing Clark is lacking x-ray vision makes this feel like punishment. Good.
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He'll always take a batgrowl. They're either deeply amusing or incredibly hot.By the time that Bruce comes out of the bathroom, it should be noted that 1. Clark is back and he is dressed in an older pair of well-worn jeans and a t-shirt, 2. he is staring at the ceiling just above the entrance to his kitchen which has 3. a sprig of the strange plant that he'd just put up on the roof and which 4. also seems to be just above Bruce's head as he exits the bathroom.
He glances over as Bruce comes out, blushes a little because Bruce is under the mistletoe and points.
"I don't think it wants to leave."
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"What is it?" How does he still sound this tired, also. "Do you have coffee?" Oh.
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"I can make some coffee. I bought some the other day. Needed it for the steak."
Which had been one of the tupperware meals. Clark wasn't hiding the fact that he was putting them there. He just hadn't signed the notes. It wasn't necessary.
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Absently, he picks up the invitation on the counter. He'd received one, too, but had tossed in the the garbage without going through it. Like hell is he going to some cocktail party after he's finally rid himself of that life. Having nothing else to do at present but glare at a plant, he opens it, and starts reading.
Slow breath in and out. Serenely, Bruce sets the pamphlet down on the counter, then pushes it over and slides it off the edge and into the trash. Maybe Clark just won't notice.
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"How do omelettes and a citrus fruit salad sound?" he offers as he looks through.
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"I'm not going to kiss you unless you want me to, Bruce. Mistletoe's a tradition, not a requirement of honor."
Spinach and mushroom omelette with a bit of feta. That sounds good. He starts chopping.
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"It's not mistletoe. It's a spontaneously-appearing thing. And besides, it's not your self control I'd be worried about if it was." That last part is grumbled, but he doesn't even consider trying to muffle it. It is what it is.
Bruce slipped into his apartment in the dead of night and crawled into bed with him. Subtle, it was not.
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He doesn't know what it would make Bruce feel, which is why he's not about to kiss him (again). At least if Bruce kisses him, he knows that, however complicated the mess of emotions around it, Bruce wants to be kissing him.
Pan out, a quick dollop of butter in the pan, swirled around as it melted.
"Though you've got one in reserves, considering. I kissed you the last time."
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"You smile too much as it is."
Grumbles more. Coffee. Bruce doesn't know what he wants to do-- no, that's not accurate. He knows what he wants to do, and he knows what he should do, and they're on opposite paths. This is him dithering, which is unlike him to the extreme, but he hasn't ever been in a situation like this before. Nothing in his extensive history can lend any experience to draw from, and the person he'd usually go to as a sounding board is off limits, as that person is Clark.
He sets the cup down and rubs between his eyes, the bridge of his nose. Headache already this early, fantastic.
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"Someone has to provide a counterbalance to all the grump," he pointed out with a soft snort. But he saw the rubbing.
"There's aspirin in the medicine cabinet."
Which was purely there for Bruce.
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"I had to get something looked at." It's risky, saying this; Clark could find his anonymous network post, which has the potential be alarming coming from him. "I went through-- an incident. At home."
What is he even saying. Bruce falls quiet, focusing on coffee and trying to sort it out.
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Spinach now. The cheese crumbles.
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"I don't know what to do," he admits after a while. It's hard for him to say it.
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"Well," he ventures gently, "what do you feel are the options?"
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"I can decide not to tell you, and leave," he says slowly. "Or I can tell you, and ultimately leave anyway."
He doesn't bother splitting it up into four options, because he doesn't think the other possibilities attached to those two are viable. Not telling Clark and staying isn't going to work as Bruce will drive himself insane and bail, and he's not ... he just. He can barely stand himself, he doesn't deserve to live after what he's done. Clark's here to fix an entire timeline thanks to a loss of control. There's no way.
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"What does 'ultimately' mean here? Why do you think you'll 'ultimately leave anyway'?"
Do you think I'd ever kick you out? Do you think there's anything you could ever do to make me turn my back on you?
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"There's no exit I can see. I'm not who I was before."
Bruce doesn't know if he'll feel the same about Clark if the other man can forgive him, he tries to argue with himself. He doesn't know if that's true, but it's something, and his insides are too tangled for him to make sense of. If Clark accepts him, what's he supposed to do? He has to go back and go through with everything. It's too late.
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"Bruce?" and his voice is gentle as he walks a little closer, keeping his movements slow and his steps obvious, "if you can't see one, trust me to look for you?"
A faint smile, wry and oddly self-depreciating as he continues--
"I figured out a way out of death. I'm craftier than you think."
That aside, though, he reaches forward slowly, carefully, to take Bruce's hand in both of his. It's a mirror, he realizes, and perhaps it's because he's functional and Bruce is... Bruce is having trouble (Bruce Wayne is always functional, even when he's not) but he needs to hold some part of him. Connect with touch, even if it's small.
Please, Bruce, he says with the gentle stroke of his fingers over Bruce's hand, over the knobs of his knuckles, the lines of tendon under the skin, let me help you.
Let me love you."And who are you?"
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"...I need to sit down."
Bruce will. Will he? Tell him. Maybe. He'll see. But he's not going to do it standing here while Clark's eggs are going cold. It feels like reality playback on pause, and makes him want to ninja out the damn window. He squeezes Clark's hand.
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He nods and puts a bowl over Bruce's eggs (because they were for Bruce, who had a headache and probably needed to eat something; Clark had been in the sunlight so he was pretty much just fine). Then he walks back over to the couch where Bruce had been sitting last night.
He keeps to one side. Because if Bruce wants to sit against him, take the comfort he's desperate to give him, he can do that. But if he's decided, as he does so often, that he's not allowed such things, the other side is open.
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(At least Joker was shorter and much thinner, a pragmatic voice in his head says. A very good point, though he would have preferred to simply think nothing.)
"You're familiar with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Prion infections. Correct?" It's a blunt, cold opener, and not a great sign for anything that's to come.
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And he nods, because he doesn't want to break Bruce's stride.
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Bruce keeps his voice clinical. He doesn't look at Clark. The transformative nature of Creutzfeldt-Jakob and other prion diseases is not so much that; it only looks that way, as the brain begins to melt away cell by cell. The behaviors that develop as the disease progresses are nightmarish, and coupled with the most common form of transmission - consumption of human spinal fluid - gave rise to the mythos of zombies.
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