Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The most efficient way to get most people out of harm’s way is to carry them. That’s a fact that Clark never really questioned. Weight isn’t an issue, so it’s mostly a matter of trying to find an angle to move them as respectfully as possible. If there is more than one person to save, he simply has to be quick. 

Since most people in that kind of situation are terrified, it’s not usually overly risky for him. One time, a woman asked him to bring her home which he declined because he had a deadline for an article waiting for him, only to realize afterwards that she might have tried to seduce him. One businessman threatened to sue him because he was scared of heights, a crying girl had to be pulled off by her mother when she wouldn’t let him go once they were back on the ground, and an elderly man hit him with his walking stick, but all in all, those moments were rarely serious. 

The suit held up and even though so many people were close to him for a few seconds, no one ever questioned his identity in the past few months of him posing as the ‘Superman’.

Or at least no one did until today.

He didn’t think it would matter much. Lois was off to cover a recall at a local bread factory she found suspicious and left a sponsored interview to him because, as she phrased it, even a guy from Smallville should be able to ask a billionaire a few meaningless questions.

“Just let Jimmy take a few pictures and ask him about his fitness routine,” she said as she stuffed her laptop in her messenger bag in the office. “That guy is so vain that he will talk about the most boring things you could imagine. He probably doesn’t even know that Wayne Enterprises owns stocks of the Daily Planet and thinks that we keep interviewing him because he’s such a fascinating person.”

Clark thought the timing was odd because it had only been two days since he had met Bruce Wayne for the first time, albeit not as himself. A fire had broken out in an office building that had driven a group of investors to the roof, so he had carried them down one by one. Mr. Wayne, one of the attendees, had been curiously calm then but Clark had not thought much about it because he had assumed him to be one of the younger staff members. He had only looked him up afterward because he and Lois were asked to cover the incident and had learned about his reputation.

If anything, he thought that the interview could be a good opportunity to figure out whether it was worth giving a billionaire the benefit of the doubt. He didn’t think it would have any impact on his own life.

But now that he sits in a meeting room of the local branch office of Wayne Enterprises, he’s suddenly nervous.

It started normal enough. They announced their arrival at the reception on the first floor, were asked to wait until their visitor passes were issued, and were then led to the top floor by a lady in a nice suit, only to spend another 45 minutes waiting.

Jimmy was playing with his phone, not the least bit worried, so Clark figured that this was all still part of the usual routine. To the rich, the time of a regular citizen wouldn’t mean much. That was probably also why Lois found an excuse to leave it to him. She doesn’t care about the prestige if it comes with what she considers to be a waste of time.

So they waited until Mr. Wayne finally walked into the office with the air of someone who had no concept of time. He looked at them and then immediately turned to a guy in a suit waiting at the door, asking, “No coffee for these two gentlemen?” Before the guy, probably an assistant, could respond, Mr. Wayne already winked at Jimmy and Clark. “Or perhaps some whisky? A friend brought the most divine Scotch from– I’m not even sure where. Somewhere Scotland. I’m not pretending to be an expert on this but I’ve never tasted anything as excellent. I’m sure your bosses at– What magazine are you from again? I’m sure they won’t mind you having a glass.”

He was about to wave his assistant over, so Clark quickly said, “We’re fine, Mr. Wayne. You don’t need to trouble yourself. Water is fine.“ He motioned at the half-empty bottle and the glasses on the table in front of them. “We’re here from the Daily Planet.”

When he introduced them and explained the procedure so that they were all on the same page, he almost expected to be interrupted but Mr. Wayne just looked at him with a curious expression. 

He had been warned that it was hard to keep Bruce Wayne on track because he tended to derail most conversations. That was why Lois was supposed to do this. She has a knack for salvaging any material. But instead, rather than instantly start talking nonsense, Mr. Wayne just motioned at his assistant to leave and then sat down across from Clark with a perfectly bland smile.

Clark thought it was a good sign. He thought that this could just be like any interview with any other powerful man who needed a stage to promote his company.

It has been fifteen minutes of that now. 

Clark asked questions about the latest development of Wayne Enterprises and the newly set up Wayne Foundation and its efforts and Mr. Wayne has so far replied like any rational man. He smiles in a way that seems almost calculated and is occasionally vague, though not as confused as Lois made him sound. Every once in a while he drops names of acquaintances and business trips to exotic places as though he has something to prove but it’s not nearly as difficult to get answers out of him as Clark feared.

Throughout the interview, Mr. Wayne’s heart rate is almost distractingly low. Since Lois mentioned a fitness routine, Clark figures that he just happens to be athletic enough to have a stable resting heart rate. Looking at his figure, it doesn’t seem unlikely. With his resources, he probably had access to the best trainers and equipment. It would also explain why his heartbeat was steady when Clark carried him off the building. 

It’s going well. Like this, they can wrap up the interview and be done with it for the day. Jimmy kept taking pictures, so they should have enough material.

But then, just when Clark means to ask when he plans to return to Gotham City as a way to conclude this, something in Mr. Wayne’s expression shifts a little.  

“By the way, Mr. Kent, do I detect an accent? You don’t sound like one of the local Metropolis Boys, so I assume you’re not from around here?” he asks, casually twirling the pen he pulled out of his pocket at some point during the interview.

Clark looks up from his notepad, readjusting his glasses. “Oh. No, I’m not,” he says, throwing a look at Jimmy who suppresses a grin. He thought that he was slowly getting rid of the accent but it probably takes more time to get the Midwest out of him. “Kansas, actually.”

Mr. Wayne nods as if that confirms something. “Any of the big cities?” If he’s purposely being ironic, Clark can’t detect it. Still, he isn’t sure why he would suddenly become the center of the discussion. Mr. Wayne didn’t strike him as the type to be overly interested in the people around him.

“No, just a small town,” he says. “You know, the usual cliché. We have more cows than people.” 

He laughs the way he always does when he expects city people to make fun of the countryside, but Mr. Wayne doesn’t return the smile. It’s unnerving because he suddenly seems more shrewd.

“I suppose cows don’t commit as many crimes as the people of Metropolis,” he eventually says. His tone is chatty but there is a strange edge to it. “That must have come as a shock to you. After all, Metropolis wouldn’t have its own guardian unless there was a need for him. Did you know, by the way? Just the other day, I had the misfortune, or perhaps the pleasure, of being saved by him. It was quite a nerve-wracking experience. I saw my entire life flash before my eyes.”

There is a pause. Clark isn’t sure why he would mention Superman but there seems to be a purpose behind it. He doubts it’s just a man randomly chatting with a stranger about a near-death experience. 

“He’s a pretty broad fellow,” Mr. Wayne says. “Solid built and all that. I suppose that’s why they call him the Man of Steel.”

Something is off about his words but Clark can’t pinpoint it.

“Have you ever met him, Mr. Kent?” Mr. Wayne asks. The way he asks it makes it clear that he doubts it. 

It’s a lie, too. 

He wasn’t nervous when Superman carried him off the building. He was right at the edge of the roof, so he was one of the first Clark tried to rescue but he kept pushing others in front of him, making sure that everyone gathered in one place. Once they were in the air after he literally jumped into Clark’s arms, he scanned the area below them, seemingly not the least bit worried that Superman could drop him. Whether it was a shock reaction allowing him to be brave or not, it didn’t seem like a big deal to him then. But for all he knows, that would have nothing to do with Clark.

Unless he thinks he knows something.

But how could he? Superman arguably doesn’t look completely different from Clark. Hair color, eye color, and general height are all almost the same because he didn’t get to tweak all the details but unlike him, Superman is supposed to be an ideal. He made sure that the cloaking of the suit would make him look like the kind of man people would assume to be a hero instead of the lanky farm kid he really is. He tested it. The illusion is supposed to be perfect.

Before he can reply, it’s Jimmy who jumps in. “It’s hard to miss Superman in Metropolis. At this point, I think the question is who hasn't met him. He’s surprisingly photogenic, too.”

Mr. Wayne throws him a cursory glance. “I noticed that.”

The interruption is enough for Clark to regain his composure but when he tries to quickly change the topic, his mind doesn’t really allow him to get very far. “I’m sure you have experience with that. I heard Gotham has its own vigilante, so that wouldn’t have been new for you.”

Mr. Wayne’s smile becomes haughty. “Is that what you think Superman is? A vigilante?”

“I’m not really in a position to judge,” Clark says because that is the official position of the Daily Planet. Although the coverage of Superman is largely positive, he has no illusions that public opinion of him could eventually change. That’s not why he does this anyway. “In the end, they seem like the same to me. They’re both saving people.”

“Except that the guy in Gotham isn’t showing his face,” Jimmy notes.

“Very true,” Mr. Wayne says, snapping his fingers. “Which is why I can’t say that I have had the pleasure of having run into our vigilante, to get back to your comment, Mr. Kent. I assume he is more concerned about his privacy. After all, Superman probably can’t leave his house without being recognized. A man like that would stand out no matter where he goes.”

“That’s honestly the biggest mystery,” Jimmy says. “Because that’s what you would think, and yet no one has any idea where he goes after saving the day.”

Mr. Wayne taps his chin in thought before he says, “So maybe your vigilante is wearing a mask, too.”

He throws Clark a look that could be perfectly incidental but makes a shiver run down Clark’s spine. 

In the end, the interview only closes when the assistant returns to remind Mr. Wayne of his next appointment, just as he is getting carried away talking about a new keto diet he is trying while completely ignoring Clark’s repeated attempts of staying on track.

“Well, thank you for taking the time,” Mr. Wayne says as they pack up their belongings. “Do you have my publicist's contact information? I’m sure you do. She probably set this up. But anyway, I trust that the Daily Planet wouldn’t write anything scandalous, being a serious paper and all that, but she always asks to have run articles by her first. We wouldn’t want this to end in a lawsuit, would we?”

He laughs while the assistant rolls his eyes behind him. It’s as if the man talking about Superman is a completely different persona. Clark almost wonders if he imagined that part.

But then, just when they take their leave and Clark wriggles through the door without bumping into Mr. Wayne who is standing at an unfortunate angle, Mr. Wayne suddenly takes hold of his upper arm. It takes Clark all his effort not to instantly shake him off. 

“Is anything wrong?” he asks, clearing his throat just as Mr. Wayne frowns at his hand wrapped around the gray fabric of Clark’s sleeve.

When he looks up, he lets go with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes. “I guess you don’t need a diet.”

It’s only when the elevator door closes behind them that Jimmy lets out a sigh and says, “Well, that was awkward.”

Clark, not sure if he’s glad that he’s not the only one being uncomfortable, asks, “Is he always like that?”

Jimmy shrugs. “More or less. I mean, he always flirts with Lois but I figured that’s because men just tend to do that because they don’t know her. I didn’t think he’d flirt with you.”

Clarks blinks, not sure what to make of that. “You think he was flirting?” Just the word is preposterous. Unlike Lois, he's not a beautiful woman.

“Yeah,” Jimmy says as if there is nothing odd about that idea. “With Lois, he did the same. He asked her all kinds of personal questions and the next time we saw him, he invited her out on a trip with his yacht. She thought he was messing with her. I mean, he probably was. Rich people can do what they want.”

Clark huffs a laugh. He would like that explanation, that he was just being messed with by a bored billionaire. That there was nothing else to it. That there was no veiled threat.

“I’ve never been on a yacht,” he says, causing Jimmy to crack up.

The whole interview still makes him nervous for a few days.

But then, eventually, Bruce Wayne returns to Gotham City, the interview gets printed and when nothing else happens, Clark slowly returns to his everyday life of trying to juggle his two identities.

It was probably all a misunderstanding. Nothing but his own paranoia driving him insane and a billionaire playing a game he doesn’t understand.

Chapter Text

It all starts with the card that reaches the paper on a Tuesday. 

After the envelope is stamped and assigned to a department in the mail room, it ends up in a box on Clark’s desk because he’s assigned mail duty for the week. Normally, it would be Katherine’s job to distribute all the incoming letters and packages but as she’s on sick leave, he was picked as the most junior staff member on his floor.

It’s a thankless job, so he’s just mechanically sorting things in piles but then almost drops the envelope when he notices the logo on the front. He shifts it in his hand until he finally pulls out a card with gold letters embossed on the cover.

“Ugh, is it one of those invitations again?” a voice asks too closely to his ear and he jumps in surprise. When he looks up, Lois, her hands on her hips, rolls her eyes at him. He didn’t even notice her approaching.

“Invitation?” he asks, looking at the unopened card in his hand.

She sighs dramatically. “I have no idea why that man always wastes money on those giant cards. I think he habitually invites every single person he ever talked to because he doesn’t have any actual friends and doesn’t want to be alone on his yacht. About time he takes the hint. I doubt I’m the only one who never RSVPed more than once.” 

She reaches out to snatch the card from him and raises her brow when he holds it out of reach.

“What?” she asks, sounding irritated. It would strike him as funny if he was less confused as to what this situation is.

“It’s not addressed to you,” he says.

She narrows her eyes a little. “Who else would it be addressed to?”

He winces and stares at the card in his raised hand. It’s still closed but even when he doesn’t focus he can see the word ‘yacht’ through the cover. Jimmy joked about that before but he didn't think that it could possibly become reality at any point in time. 

“Me.”

At first, Lois just stares at him as if he said something completely incoherent. Then, just when he is about to have another look at the card to make sure that he didn’t blindly confuse their names, she starts cackling and has to hold onto the back of his chair to not fall over. 

“Oh, thank God, he found a new victim,” she gasps between bursts of laughter.

He can’t decide which part of her reaction is more mortifying.

“I mean, when you think about it, it’s a good opportunity,” she says between bites as they have lunch at the coffee shop around the corner. She’s her usual unbothered self now but they only reached that point after she kept making little remarks all morning. At some point, he almost hoped for some kind of emergency that would distract her and allow him to leave the office.

“He makes exceptions but most people in Wayne’s orbit are influential in some way,” she says, quickly licking her fingertips after taking the last bite of her sandwich. “It could earn you a scoop if you play your cards right.”

It makes sense and he normally takes her advice seriously but she’s leaving out something major.

“So why did you only go once?” he asks.

She shrugs. “I have better things to do than spend a day being ogled in a bikini, scoop or not.”

Of course, she would say that. Lois would do a lot for a story but also knows where to draw the line for herself.

He rubs his eyes under his glasses in frustration. He has no idea why he would even be in this situation. Obviously, this is not about Bruce Wayne wanting to see him in a bikini but he checked both the envelope and the card twice. Both clearly read his name in cursive letters, so there would be some kind of purpose behind the invitation. 

It would be easy enough to decline but what then? He has no idea what Mr. Wayne thinks he knows but Clark doesn’t want to play with fire for no good reason. A man like that could ruin his life just for the fun of it.

Lois meanwhile seems to misunderstand him and continues to be amused at his expense. “That one time I went, I was surrounded by generically attractive people, so I wonder what caught his eye when he met you. Maybe it’s because you’re tall. I suppose you could model for a farm equipment catalog."

He pulls a face. “Hilarious.”

She tries not to break character but barely manages to suppress the grin as she leans her face in her hand. “Then again, you don’t look strong enough to be a farmer, so maybe a line of clothing for people in the city who try to look like fashionable hillbillies. You know, flannel shirts with gold buttons and meticulously faded jeans. Maybe Wayne secretly has a fetish.”

“Right,” he says, not sure if she’s trying to console him in a roundabout way or if she’s making fun of him again. After having known her for only a few months, he still can’t always tell.

She chuckles as she takes a sip of her coffee but then looks him up and down with one of those expressions that make him feel as though she can see right through him. He always figured that, if anyone ever made the connection between him and Superman, it would be her.

“All jokes aside,” she says, instantly sounding more serious. “I don’t think he means much by it. You probably just ended up on a random list of invitees because you gave him your business card and because you have a pretty enough face for one of his parties. The real question is why you mind so much, Smallville.”

He just grimaces because it’s not something he can share with her. He can’t exactly tell her that he worries about being uncovered because the whole point is that she thinks of him as a nobody. But there is also something else. 

He doesn’t understand the motive. 

Even if Bruce Wayne somehow guessed that Clark isn’t who he pretends to be, why toy with him? Why not go public with it or blackmail him more directly? Is he just trying to make sure that he is right? But then why do it in such a roundabout way when, realistically speaking, all it would take is to try and wound Clark in some way? Physical vulnerability isn’t something he can fake, so is that maybe the whole point? Is it all a trap to test his limits?

Or is it all a misunderstanding after all?

“I just think it’s odd,” he says.

“That is quite the awkward situation,” Lana says, letting her feet dangle off the silo.

Clark honestly didn’t mean to consult her but before he knew it, he ended up in Smallville in the middle of the night. It was almost too easy. He knew that she temporarily relocated to her parent's house because of a broken pipe in her apartment building, so it’s as if no time passed since they grew up as neighbors. When they were younger, they constantly sat on her father’s silo like his, overlooking the landscape of seemingly endless fields around them. 

“So the question is,” she says and pauses to brush her hair out of her face when the breeze tousles it. “What are you going to wear?”

It takes him a second. “What–”

She chuckles lightly, clearly not taking this very seriously. “Did it mention a dress code on the invitation? You probably can’t show up wearing an old T-shirt and jeans. Do you even own a pair of trunks that’s not at least fifteen years old?”

“I don’t–” he says with a grimace. “I mean, that’s not the point, is it? I don’t think it matters what I wear if the whole thing turns out to be an ambush.”

She purses her lips and looks at him as though he said something very foolish. “What if it doesn't?”

He sighs but before he can even begin to protest, she adds, “I’ve known you my whole life, Clark, and even I wouldn’t recognize you when you’re the other guy, so what makes you think that a man you met only twice does? You said yourself that he has a playboy reputation, so isn’t that the most plausible explanation? That he just happened to find you attractive? Would that be so bad?”

He looks at her for a moment but then just stares at his feet. He holds onto the edge of the silo with one hand but wonders for the first time in years what would happen if he just let himself float away. He never liked these discussions but they constantly ended up in these situations since that day when he kissed her in the sky above his parents’ barn and when she asked him who he was thinking about. It’s his own fault for mentioning the whole thing in the first place but Lana is the only one who really knows him.

“So what does he look like?” she asks.

Clark instantly pictures the photo they printed along with the interview. It was indistinguishable from any other portrait of any other CEO. Somehow, these people always end up striking the same poses. “Like a billionaire.”

Lana lightly bumps her shoulder into his with a laugh. “What does that even mean? Is he good-looking?”

He doesn’t mean to, he really doesn’t, but has to think of the way Bruce Wayne sometimes looked at him during the interview and at the way his inner rhythm never seemed to change its pace. It was uncomfortable but there was something else, something he could only put into words afterward. It was like staring at a storm brewing in the distance.

“He has a distinctive heartbeat,” he says.

Lana frowns in confusion and he can’t blame her. He isn’t sure himself why he keeps thinking about that. It's like a melody stuck in his head.

He still thinks it’s a trap. He still thinks that there is something seriously wrong with the whole situation. But as he stands in front of his mirror the morning when he is scheduled to step onto a helicopter toward the coast, he isn’t sure where his nervousness is coming from.

He’s entirely dressed in white and blue, so he looks like the cliché of a guy who made having a boat his whole personality. When Lois heard that he had accepted the invitation, she immediately decided to intervene and had him borrow clothes from an acquaintance working for a fashion magazine because, as she put it, looking like Smallville on a yacht would be a crime against humanity.

“Remember, you want those people to tell you things they wouldn’t normally tell you, so you have to look like them,” she said as she held various shirts in front of him with an expression like an army general explaining an operation. “Old ladies maybe tell Smallville the secret recipe of their rhubarb pie because he looks so sweet, but you want Asshole McMillionare to tell you where he funnels his offshore funds.”

So here he stands now, looking like a fraud. The blue shirt that supposedly matches his eye color is too wide and his legs stick out of the white shorts like twigs. It’s not the first time that he wonders whether he would be happier with what he sees if he looked more like the illusion the city admires and if he could fill out his clothes just a little more.

He wonders what Bruce Wayne would see.

He wonders why he cares.

He’s the only one on the helicopter except for the pilot and the same assistant he met during the interview who is dressed in another nice-looking suit. He wonders what he’s supposed to tell Lois if his clothes get ruined as part of an ambush, but then figures that it’s too late to back out. If anything, she would probably just ask him for an exclusive interview.

He’s tense, so his mind is spinning. 

Once they’re in the air, he hates the feeling of being trapped inside a box. Maybe he should have requested to fly by himself and be done with it. That way, he would at least turn up in a form that would make him feel less self-conscious.

The whole thing is a mistake. He shouldn’t have agreed to come. He shouldn’t have agreed to take over the interview. He should have had the firefighters take care of Bruce Wayne.

He’s not the only visitor, probably just the only one without his own ride. That’s his first realization when he’s dropped off on a giant yacht in the middle of the ocean. The place is bustling with people dressed similarly to him. Smaller ships surround the yacht like seagulls. Music blasts from invisible speakers.

He can see why Lois would have hated it. That’s the only thought that amuses him as he’s led to the cabin where he’s supposed to stay for the night.

The odd thing is that, for the first few hours, he doesn’t even see Bruce Wayne. 

He talks to people he remembers from galas and from articles he read. Some recognize him as a reporter, others pretend to know him from somewhere as though they are all part of the same parallel society. 

He tries to play along for a while but it’s clear that he doesn’t belong, so he eventually ends up sitting on a white couch on one of the lower decks, staring at the sea in front of him. He’s a fool. For days, he worried about whatever great conspiracy would await but in the end, it’s possibly just what Lois assumed it to be. He’s a number on a list of invitees.

Just when he wonders whether he should just swim back to shore and be done with it, a voice behind him says, “Ah, Mr. Kent, just who I was looking for.”

He jumps a little as he turns. He should work on that. Even as a civilian, he has no excuse for never noticing anyone approaching him.

“Mr. Wayne,” he says as he scrambles to his feet as if he’s a student being called up in class. 

Bruce Wayne looks more relaxed than he did in the neat suits Clark previously saw him in but he still has the same air. Unlike his guests, he’s dressed in dark linen with long sleeves, just as though he wants to represent the stereotype of a man from Gotham who never sees the sun.

“We can stop that, don’t you think?” Mr. Wayne asks, his expression hard to read. Just when Clark worries that this could be the beginning of the trap, Mr. Wayne adds with a stilted smile, “The fact that you’re here probably means that we can drop the formalities. I’m Bruce.”

Clark isn’t sure what to make of that. It seems like the wrong direction but he figures that he can’t refuse at this point, so he says, “Clark.”

Mr– Bruce Wayne nods. “Right. Anyway, Clark, I would appreciate it if you could lend me a hand. I need to move a few crates of champagne upstairs and most of my staff are busy preparing dinner, so I was hoping to find a strong fellow who can help.”

If it’s a trap, it’s entirely too obvious, so as Clark wobbles up a narrow staircase, he has no idea whether he's being tested in some way. He has enough practice pretending to be weak that he can run on autopilot for this. At some point, Bruce Wayne bumps into him, pushing his crate into his back while swearing under his breath when Clark sways backward.

They might both be acting but there is also another plausible explanation. Clark arguably isn’t particularly muscular but he’s tall and healthy-looking enough that, ever since he was a kid, he often got picked for manual tasks like moving tables in school. The main reason why many people eventually stopped asking was that he often held back too much and dropped things he wasn’t supposed to drop. Bruce Wayne wouldn’t know that, so logically, he would just see a tall, working-class guy who clearly wasn't busy doing anything else and who wouldn’t dare refuse to help. It would make sense for someone in his position to take advantage of someone like Clark.

Still, he isn’t sure if he imagines the way Bruce Wayne seems to scrutinize him when he sets down his crate on the counter of a bar in a room that is being set up for dinner. Just in case, he groans the way his father often does when he insists on carrying things a little too heavy for him.

“Four more to go,” Bruce Wayne says and turns toward the stairs without waiting for Clark’s response.

“Right,” Clark says, wondering whether the goal of the evening is to have at least one person die of alcohol poisoning.

“So what made you agree to come?” Bruce Wayne asks on their last trip up the stairs. His voice is perfectly even for someone moving as much as he does. His heartbeat doesn't betray him either. Whatever training he does in his free time must be intense.

Clark looks behind himself for a second, and then stops in his tracks, causing Bruce Wayne to stumble at the sudden interruption.

“What?” Bruce Wayne asks.

“Oh,” Clark says. “Sorry. It’s just–” He clears his throat. He got distracted because from his angle he can look down Bruce Wayne’s shirt like a creep. “That’s quite the bruise.”

Bruce Wayne frowns and looks down at himself. Two of the buttons of the shirt are undone. It looks casual enough without being overly revealing. At first, Clark thought it was because Bruce Wayne wanted to maintain a certain look, but it would also make sense if he had something to hide. Judging by the bit he sees, a dark bruise seems to reach from his right collarbone to further down on his chest. It’s bright purple, so it seems fresh.

He expects a funny story but instead, Bruce Wayne just looks up at him and searches his gaze with a cool expression. His heart rate accelerates just slightly.

“It’s nothing,” he then just says. The commanding time of his voice makes it clear that he’s not going to allow any further inquiry. 

Normally, Clark would automatically assume that it would be something embarrassing, some kind of story that would make a great headline for a tabloid. Even the Daily Planet occasionally features gossip, so he can see why a powerful man would not want a reporter to pry but somehow–

Somehow he doubts the explanation is that simple.

With dinner, the drinks flow even more excessively than they already did during the day. The music gets louder. The lights are dimmed. Some people start dancing. 

Bruce Wayne sways from one group to the other, acting wilder and wilder while his heart rate remains the same. At first, Clark thinks he just happens to be able to hold his liquor but when he stumbles into him at one point and when Bruce Wayne winks at him before turning to talk to someone else, he doesn’t smell like he drank anything at all.

There was a lot Clark expected to happen but somehow, this whole experience is different from anything he could have pictured.

Way past midnight, when the yacht has quieted down and when the only noises outside come from the few people who are still up drinking, he takes a shower just when a helicopter approaches. It stops for less than three minutes. Even without trying to focus on it, he can tell that it heads eastward.

He can’t sleep. He isn’t sure if it’s the rocking of the ship or his mind playing tricks on him but as he stares at the low ceiling, he feels himself floating up the way he always did when he was a kid unable to deal with his powers.

The truth is that, somewhere deep inside, he feels a dull sense of disappointment. Of course, he’s glad if his life as Clark Kent isn’t endangered. That’s the risk he was always taking, a risk that he knows keeps his parents up at night whenever he’s in the headlines. He owes it to himself and the world around him to do something with the powers he was given but he can’t live his life as an anomaly.

Still, he thought something would happen. Anything. He thought it would mean something to end up here. That, somehow, he would be chosen by–

What, a billionaire? A billionaire who flies strangers out to the middle of the ocean?

He rubs his face and falls flat on the bed.

He’s an idiot. He’s having idiotic thoughts. This always happens when he can’t sleep.

The ship is dead quiet when he sits on one of the deck chairs, or at least as quiet as the night can be. He hears snoring, the low humming of machines inside hull and the soft sounds of the sea. The horizon already shows the first signs of dawn. 

It’s then that the helicopter returns.

It rips through the silence and disturbs the passengers in some of the cabins. Some toss and turn, one swears loudly.

He has given up on sleep, so he walks over to the helipad to see what the commotion is about. In the end, he's still a reporter.

One person stands on the deck, their back to the helicopter as it departs. It’s not hard to make out Bruce Wayne by his shape alone. Whatever is happening definitely has nothing to do with Clark, but he still comes closer because something about Bruce Wayne’s heartbeat bothers him. He also seems to be slumping.

“Are you okay?” he asks when he is sure that Bruce Wayne has spotted him.

Bruce Wayne is not slowing down as he walks past him. “Here for a scoop, Mr. Kent?” he asks. His tone is unusually curt. He is also being formal again.

It doesn’t seem wise to leave him alone, so Clark just wordlessly follows behind as Mr. Wayne continues his way toward the bow where the master cabin is located.

“Mr. Kent,” Mr. Wayne says sharply when Clark gets a little too close, but then doesn’t get to voice further complaints because he drops down to his knee with a grunt despite holding onto the handrail in the corridor.

Clark hurries to his side but isn’t sure how to proceed from there. It would be easy enough to scoop him up but it’s not that kind of situation, so he just wraps one of Mr. Wayne’s arms over his shoulder and lifts him up, trying not to be too firm. Mr. Wayne doesn’t seem happy with that solution but doesn’t protest when Clark moves them forward like that.

It’s only when he sits down on the bed in the cabin that’s surprisingly not much bigger than Clark’s that he talks again. “You can go now.”

“And ignore that you’re clearly injured?” he asks because even a blind man would be able to tell that there’s something seriously wrong with Mr. Wayne. Clark doesn’t mean to pry but even without enhanced vision he can tell that there is at least one broken rib because he could hear it chafing.

Mr. Wayne stares up at him. “I don’t see how that has anything to do with you.” 

“You can’t just–” Clark says but is interrupted by Mr. Wayne who painfully shifts on the bed and waves his hand at him.

“I suppose this is the part where we should call a truce, Mr. Kent,” he says. “I’m sure you can ignore whatever it is you think you’re witnessing here as easily as I can ignore the fact that a reporter from Kansas showed up in Metropolis right before the first appearance of the man they call Superman who happens to have the exact same accent.”

It’s like a slap in the face. 

So Clark was right after all. That’s what this whole thing was about. He didn’t think that something so small would give him away when he looked nothing like the man he pretended to be.

“I’m not–” he says but then feels the words stuck in his throat. He’s supposed to deny it. He has to deny it. His whole life depends on it. He can’t let everything he worked for get ruined because of a man to whom his life wouldn’t be worth much.

But something tells him that Mr. Wayne’s goal isn’t blackmail or any kind of advantage for himself but something more diffuse.

“If you know that,” he says, trying to channel the hero instead of the intimidated reporter. “Then you would also know that I could easily carry you out of here and to a hospital. But that’s clearly not what you want.”

Mr. Wayne straightens his back in an impressive display of will that causes his heart to beat erratically while his face is a mask of stone.

“Just let me take a look,” Clark says. “I don’t want to be part of the kind of headline where I have to explain my take on why Bruce Wayne died of internal wounds on his luxury yacht. When I'm sure that you’re okay, I’ll happily forget whatever you’re trying to hide here.”

Mr. Wayne looks at him with a weary expression but then eventually sighs. When Clark doesn’t move, he motions for him to get on with it.

For a second, Clark hesitates, undecided on whether this is the right moment to give up his powers to a stranger. He could still deny it and pretend that he’s playing along with the delusions of a madman. He could make Mr. Wayne show him his chest and then act as though he could guess what’s underneath based on the bruises. 

But then he says, “Two ribs are fractured, as far as I can tell. I see no internal bleeding.”

Mr. Wayne raises his brows and looks down at himself. He doesn’t seem surprised. 

“I don’t see an immediate risk of the ribs puncturing any organs if you don’t move excessively but I’m not a doctor,” Clark adds.

Mr. Wayne nods. “Are we done then?”

What Clark really wants to ask is how a businessman would even end up like this. It doesn’t seem like the first time either. More bones look as though they healed poorly after being fractured before.

Instead, he asks, “Do you plan to take care of the cut on your lower back yourself? It seems pretty deep.”

Mr. Wayne holds his gaze with a cool expression for a few heartbeats but then cracks a resigned smile. “I assume you want to help with that, too?”

Clark usually avoids casually touching others because he still has a hard time judging his strength, so it’s intimidating to be faced with bare skin he is supposed to stitch up. After describing the wound to Mr. Wayne, it’s clear that this won’t simply be solved by slapping a bandage on the cut. He has seen enough injured people over the past few months that the blood doesn’t make him queasy but he doesn’t fully trust his fine motor skills. He almost hoped that they didn’t have the right equipment and that a hospital visit would be warranted but Mr. Wayne seems to have been prepared for any eventuality.

“Are you sure you don’t need anesthesia?” Clark asks for what might be the third or fourth time.

“Just stop wasting time,” Mr. Wayne says through gritted teeth when Clark puts his free hand on his back. 

It’s strange. Everything about this is strange. Clark came here worrying about looking like an impostor, only to find himself dealing with a situation so absurd, he isn’t even sure what to make of it, touching skin in a way he never would have imagined. He never got hurt as a child but he remembers Lana’s legs being covered in cuts and bruises from all the times she fell because she tried to keep up with him. She sometimes let him blow on a cut while she wiped the tears from her eyes, allegedly because that made it better. He always found it uncomfortable to see how easily her skin ripped compared to his.

Mr. Wayne is very different from Lana, and yet it’s the same. He doesn’t cry and seems stronger, but he still quivers whenever Clark sets another suture. His skin feels just as fragile, even though it’s draped over hard muscles. This isn’t the only cut either. Before it, others ripped open, leaving behind a tapestry of scars.

Clark honestly has no idea who this man is. It’s like finding a buried maze. The more he uncovers, the more confusing it gets.

“I hope I can count on your discretion, Mr. Kent,” Mr. Wayne says as he buttons a clean shirt. Clark tried to help, only to be told off, so he awkwardly stands close to the door, not sure whether he should leave.

It bothers him, that sudden distance. He can still smell the blood on his skin.

“Clark,” he says. When Mr. Wayne throws him a stern look, he adds, “That’s what you said before, right? The fact that I’m here probably means that we can drop the formalities.”

He almost expects to be reprimanded but Mr. Wayne just sighs. 

“Clark,” he says. “I count on your discretion with this.”

By the time he walks back to his cabin, the sun has already risen and the first staff members start moving around the yacht. He nods at them as he walks by and only understands why one lady gasped as she saw him when he stands in front of the mirror in his cabin and realizes that there are several dark stains on his blue shirt.

He stares at it for a moment, scratches at it in vain, and then has to laugh.

Lois is going to kill him.

Chapter Text

“Listen, Smallville, I think we should be very clear about what we’re both doing here,” Lois says as she reties his tie in a way that makes it look a lot more crooked than it originally was. He spent hours practicing, so he knows that the way he ties his ties is more than fine.

They stand in a corner of the corridor she dragged him into right before he could walk into the main venue where the sounds of hundreds of people talking fills the air. One couple threw them a look when they spotted her poking his chest, so she started attacking his tie instead.

“Unlike you, I will not have spent hours on a plane just to go back without even the hint of a story,” she says.

“That wasn’t–” he says but is immediately shushed by her. 

It took months for him to gain even a tiny amount of respect from her but he lost that all when he returned empty-handed from an exclusive event that she wouldn’t even have wanted to attend. He arguably could have come up with a story but what would that story even be? That, apparently, Bruce Wayne was hurt after having spent his night doing– what exactly? Engage in some kind of underground fight ring? Get tortured for fun? Be threatened by the mob? Clark has no idea what kind of acts would lead to the injuries he saw. He could have dug a little deeper and come up with something but that would have come at the price of risking his own identity.

The problem is that he can’t explain that to Lois.

“There is exactly one reason why you’re here,” she says, pulling at the tie in a way that would have choked most people but only makes him worry that she’s going to rip it right off his neck. 

“To support you,” he says, putting a finger below the fabric of the tie on his neck because he should at least look as though he is in any level of discomfort if he wants her to stop. 

“Support me by doing what?” she asks, her eyes narrowed. At least, she’s loosening her grip a little. 

He raises his free hand to count off the list. “Talk to the people believed to be associated with the Neon Dragon Triad. Figure out if they’re connected to Lexcorp. Ask about the construction of the new subway line.”

“And?” she asks.

“Not stand in your way?” 

It shouldn’t be the wrong answer because that is what she keeps telling him whenever they’re deployed together but she pulls at the tie again.

“Don’t get intimidated by people just because you think they’re above you,” she says. “Everyone bleeds when they’re cut.”

It’s always puzzling when she’s trying to encourage him by insulting him first. Sometimes he wonders if he’s completely misunderstanding her and if the encouragement is just an accidental byproduct.

“Also,” she says, just when he thinks that they finally reached the end of her tirade. “You’re here to do your job, so don’t get distracted by Bruce Wayne.”

He frowns, not sure what she means by that. He never mentioned anything about Bruce Wayne. Officially, he wasn’t even invited to the charity ball in Gotham but was assigned after a general notice reached the Daily Planet. 

He means to point out that she clearly misconstrues the situation but then turns his head when he notices the familiar figure stopping at the end of the corridor. 

Lois quickly follows his gaze and jumps a little when she recognizes him. “Speak of the devil,” she mutters under her breath but then puts on one of her best smiles as she finally takes her hands off Clark’s tie. 

“Mr. Wayne,” she says. “I was wondering when I would run into you. I think you forgot about me when you invited my colleague here to one of your cruises. Should I take that personally?”

As usual, Bruce Wayne’s heart rate is suspiciously low as he looks at them with his hands in the pockets of a well-tailored suit, smiling in a way that Clark finds unnerving. Knowing what he knows now, he wonders which part of it is an act.

“You have to forgive me for that, Miss Lane,” Bruce Wayne says in a chatty tone. “If I invite the most beautiful woman in Metropolis, how would that make everyone else feel? It would be like putting a rose in a bouquet of daisies.”

Clark thinks he can see the corner of Lois’ mouth twitching. She is probably trying her hardest to bite back a snarky remark since she’s perfectly immune to that type of flattery.

“I’m sure the other roses around you would find that comparison insulting,” she says.

Bruce Wayne laughs at that. “I suppose they would.” He looks them up and down with a measuring glance and then makes it a point to look at a silver watch on his arm with an exaggerated shake of his arm. “Well, anyway, always a pleasure to see you, Miss Lane, but I shouldn’t impose. I’m sure we all have a busy evening ahead of us and I wouldn’t want to distract anyone.”

Lois shoots Clark a look as though she blames him for being overheard and Bruce Wayne seems about to leave with a grin. As is, the whole exchange would be awkward enough. But then, he decides to make it worse by turning back and saying, “By the way, Clark, I think you should reconsider that helicopter ride over Gotham. Speaking as a local, I don’t think there is much to see for a visitor. This isn’t Metropolis. I think you would find it boring.”

Clark blinks. “What?” He can’t remember having a conversation about helicopters.

Bruce Wayne, rather than explain what he’s talking about, just turns away with a cool smile and Clark is left behind with Lois who hisses, “‘Clark’? What exactly did you do on that yacht to become ‘Clark’?”

It’s another puzzle.

He and Lois split up to approach different people but the phrase keeps looping in his head. Why a helicopter ride? 

He was on a helicopter chartered by Bruce Wayne to get to the yacht. Bruce Wayne left the yacht at night on a helicopter. What does that have to do with anything? Bruce Wayne knows that he can fly, so it’s not like–

Bruce Wayne knows that he can fly. Is that it? Is he telling him not to fly?

Over a month has passed since that night. At first, he was constantly on edge, expecting some kind of aftermath. When nothing happened, his mind still wouldn’t leave things be and had him overanalyze every single exchange. It all made sense when he stood in the dim cabin, rocked by the sea, but in retrospect, he has no idea why he would have risked sharing his identity like that, or why Bruce Wayne would have thought that his being bruised and battered was somehow worse than Clark pretending to be a hero. When it comes down to it, he doesn’t understand anything.

He wants to ask about it but doesn’t see an opening. Bruce Wayne is busy chatting with different people around the venue, and whenever Clark sees Lois, she raises her brows as though to dare him to get distracted. 

So rather than get swept away by the paranoia, he decides to do his job. 

He has trouble overhearing a conversation between a man who he knows runs a subsidiary of Lexcorp in Gotham and the niece of one of the bosses of the Neon Dragon bosses while simultaneously pretending to engage in a conversation with one of the organizers of the ball, so he excuses himself and walks over to the buffet. The two leave through one of the doors leading to the garden behind the building but he can still hear them clearly enough if he tunes out the other noises around him.

He mechanically grabs a plate and picks some kind of pastry off a tray, all the while trying to get a view of the garden through the concrete wall. When he moves to the side, someone next to him suddenly yelps and something shatters.

He flinches, quickly looking down. The last thing he would need right now is an accidental injury.

“Mr–” he says when he realizes just who he bumped into. “Bruce.” He was the one pushing to drop formalities but it still sounds wrong coming out of his mouth.

“You might want to be more mindful of your surroundings,” Bruce Wayne says as he looks at a broken plate with a scattered sandwich on the floor. Something about him is different from the way he acted around Lois. He seems more reserved but that could be due to the ruined food.

“Oh, sorry, let me–” Clark says and means to pick it up, only to find himself lightly pushed out of the way by a staff member carrying a broom. “Sorry,” he adds to the woman who just nods at him with a tense smile.

When it’s clear that he’s just uselessly standing around when another staff member comes to help, he instead follows Bruce Wayne who picks up another sandwich and walks further to the side.

There is a long pause.

“There isn’t much time to eat in places like this, is there?” Clark asks when it’s clear that Bruce Wayne isn’t going to make a move.

Rather than respond, Bruce Wayne just takes a bite and starts chewing. It’s strange. Clark encountered him as someone who talked too much but this seems more like the wounded man who didn’t seem interested in any kind of conversation. Clark blamed that on the fact that he would have been in pain then but he’s beginning to wonder if the chatty version of Bruce Wayne is nothing but a different facade.

“I always end up going home hungry,” he says to bridge the awkwardness. “I have an old friend who always makes fun of me when I tell her about that. She says that I probably have a wormhole in my stomach.”

He laughs but Bruce Wayne, still chewing, looks him up and down as though he is considering that to be a genuine possibility. 

According to most articles on the heir of the Wayne Empire, he’s always either described as a daredevil innovator or a fool who would not have any power if not for the fortune he inherited. He’s portrayed as having no manners, as being stuck in a world of glitz and glamor, as being unable to stay faithful to anyone or anything. No one genuinely seems to take him seriously.

There usually is some grain of truth in any story and although Clark has no idea where the truth ends and where the lie begins in this case, there is one thing he is sure about. The man would be more shrewd than he pretends to be.

“So you do eat,” Bruce Wayne finally notes and looks at the plate with the pastry Clark is still holding.

Clark grimaces. He heard people wonder about that before. Whether Superman has to eat and sleep like any other person. Normally, he can pretend that it has nothing to do with him and join in on the speculations.

“I do. Probably too much, actually,” he says. When Bruce Wayne frowns at that, he picks up the pastry and takes a bite to prove that point. He probably looks foolish but this is at least some kind of opening. “You know those eating competitions?” he asks, heavily swallowing the lump of dough. “I signed up for one in high school. I won because the other kids gave up one by one but I probably could have eaten more.”

Bruce Wayne looks vaguely repulsed and Clark realizes that he’s rambling. Competitive eating probably isn’t how the rich spend their time. They would grow up eating finger food in places like this, not wandering from one stall to the next during the annual harvest festival.

He wonders if he should change the topic when Bruce Wayne surprises him by asking, “What did you eat?”

“At the competition?” Clark asks. Bruce Wayne nods. He doesn’t look overly intrigued but in a way, that still seems like a positive reaction, simply because it’s less fake than that time he insisted on talking about diets. 

“Pancakes,” Clark says, sheepishly scratching his nose. “I mean, I probably could have won no matter what but I definitely have a weak spot for pancakes. That was the only reason why I joined. My mom was against it but, you know, free pancakes.”

Bruce Wayne seems to take that information in and then cracks something like an accidental smile. It entirely catches Clark off guard. He has seen him smile before but for the first time, it seems genuine. It’s not arrogant or threatening or condescending but– Different. It makes him look younger. Nicer.

He means to comment. But then gets distracted by a noise somewhere in the distance. 

When he looks in that direction, Bruce Wayne follows his gaze. There is a pause, but just when Bruce Wayne looks at his vibrating watch, more noises follow and Clark can pinpoint what this is. Gunshots. Probably a mile from here. 

“You know, I think I should look for my–” he says, ready to leave the venue, but is held back by Bruce Wayne suddenly catching his wrist.

Before Clark can protest, he says, “This isn’t your jurisdiction.”

“My– What?” he asks. In the distance, sirens go off. More gunshots follow. There is at least one machine gun. People are shouting. “I don’t think this is the time to discuss–”

“This isn’t Metropolis,” Bruce Wayne says sharply. “Gotham doesn’t need outside help.”

Clark searches his gaze because there is some hidden meaning behind those words but he can’t focus on that when the commotion outside increases in intensity. “I should really go,” he says.

He pushes through the crowd as carefully as possible but since the venue is packed, he can’t move forward quickly. Just when he heads toward the nearest exit, he is stopped by another hand grabbing his arm. He means to shake it off, only to realize that it’s Lois’.

“There’s a shootout somewhere close to here,” she says as she drags him to the side while looking at her phone. Of course, she would already be in the loop. “You didn’t bring a camera, did you?”

He tries to wriggle himself out of her grasp but she has an iron clasp despite dialling a number with her free hand. Before the person she’s calling can pick up, she quickly says to him, “We’ll have to run. Keep the camera on your phone ready. They say it’s impossible to take pictures of the Batman but I don’t believe that.”

Batman.

Long believed to be an urban legend, Clark does not doubt that he would be real simply because there is enough evidence. Unlike the pictures of Superman, Batman is usually just a shadow zipping through the background in shaky videos. Judging by his shape, he is male. Tall. Broad-shouldered, although that could be the suit. Strong. Fast. Occasionally, he leaves things behind that make  it clear that he doesn’t seem to be able to fly. Ropes, hooks, things he would use like darts or throwing stars.

Every once in a while, Clark sees articles about him, wondering what kind of person would end up making a similar decision to him despite having a different skill set. It was never more than idle curiosity, so he didn’t even consider him. But as he runs along the street with Lois who is carrying her stilettos in her hand to be faster, it hits him that this is what Bruce Wayne would have meant. It’s not Superman’s jurisdiction because it’s Batman’s. 

Still, he doesn’t see why that would matter to a regular citizen. What does it matter who does the job as long as it gets done? Clark doubts that this is misguided worry for him.

He doesn’t get it and is ready to intervene as soon as he shakes off Lois. 

The moment they round the corner to where the shootout between the police and a group of men barricaded in a bank takes place, he sees something in the corner of his eye coming from somewhere above them. It’s a man. A man who isn’t flying put descending upon the bank like a shadow from a nightmare.

Smoke fills the air, people are shouting wildly, Lois elbows him to get out his phone. And among all that, there is something he slowly makes sense of.

It’s the same heartbeat.

The whole thing only takes a few minutes. He and Lois get as close as they can to the perimeter set by the police. She gets in a fight with a police officer who won’t tell her what is going on, all the while directing Clark to not stop filming. There are explosions, more gunshots, more shouts. From what he can tell, there are no casualties but he hates to just stand by and watch when he could easily walk in there and handle the situation.

Batman is just a man. A man whose sandwich he dropped. A man who can bleed and whose bones can shatter. A man who, for all sakes and purposes, shouldn’t be in there because he has more to lose than a farmboy from Kansas.

Just when he thinks that he can’t take this anymore, more smoke fills the area. Lois coughs, covering her face with her arm, but doesn’t budge. And then he sees him. A shadow fleeing the scene.

When he turns away, Lois tries to grab his sleeve, so he quickly says, “I think he went that way. I’m going to have a look.”

He’s in civilian clothes, so he runs as fast as he can without attracting too much attention. Now that he knows what to focus on, it’s just a matter of following the right sounds. Batman is fast but Clar doubts that he can keep up the pace.

He eventually catches up to him in an alley. After making sure that there’s no one in sight, he flies up, not wanting to waste more time on climbing stairs.

If not for hearing him so clearly, he would probably miss him when he floats in front of one of the landings of the fire escape. He gets why so many of the reports on Batman mention criminals so terrified that they happily went into custody, if only to make sure that he couldn’t follow them. It is a scary sight. A dark figure staring at him like the personification of darkness. Clark would probably feel more uncomfortable if he wasn’t so used to the sound of his heartbeat. It’s a little more erratic now but he hopes that’s just due to the exhaustion.

“Are you hurt?” he asks.

Batman doesn’t respond.

“You don’t seem hurt, so I’m assuming you’re okay,” Clark says tentatively, landing on the staircase below him to give him some space. 

Batman is hunching, so Clark figures that he isn’t going to move anytime soon and sits down on one of the steps. All the windows toward the alley seem barred, so he doubts that anyone can see them. That is probably the reason why this is the chosen location for a break.

“So did you play games because you knew I would figure out who you are?” he asks because that would explain it. It was never about a rich man toying with him out of boredom but about a vigilante seeing a threat.

In a way, that’s a relief but he still feels a dull sense of disappointment like a rash.

Again, Batman doesn’t respond. He just checks a monitor attached to his wrist as if Clark isn’t even there. Clark decides to take that, too, as a good sign. Lana’s family used to own an old barn cat that always pretended to ignore him but then constantly sat close to him. According to her, that meant that it liked him. Batman's decision not to flee might be the extent of this newfound connection.

He wonders if he should just leave it at that. Now that they’re vaguely acquainted, they’re probably supposed to stay in their respective jurisdictions. Maybe it’s all just a matter of setting the record straight. Come to an agreement, forget all the details that led them there.

Except then, he hears a soft noise, barely detectable over the other sounds around them. He looks up but it takes him a second until he can make sense of it, if only because it seems ridiculous for a shadow to have a rumbling stomach.

“You’re hungry,” he says. 

No response.

He pats his pockets in case he brought any snacks he forgot about. Thinking about it, Bruce Wayne was in the middle of grabbing food when he was interrupted. Extensive exercise probably doesn’t help with that. Clark, too, sometimes feels queasy when he has to be Superman before lunch.

A thought hits him but he hesitates to voice it. He might be overstepping a line.

But then Batman’s stomach rumbles again and he says, “There’s a diner across from the hotel we’re staying at. Not sure about the name. The one across from Hotel Gloria. I think the sign said that it’s open 24 hours. I don’t know when you’re going to be done here but how about pancakes afterward? My treat.”

It’s a stupid idea. He knows that, too. Why would one of the richest men in the country have breakfast with a random reporter? There are a million good reasons against it.

Batman doesn’t respond. 

Which technically means that he isn’t declining either.

By the time he returns, he has ten missed calls and several texts from Lois who demands him to send her his footage. When he knocks at the door of her hotel room, she’s still wearing the same red dress from the event.

“Did you find him?” she asks before he can open his mouth.

He shrugs. “No, I was walking around for a while but I guess he was already long gone.”

She sighs but doesn’t look overly annoyed. She has clearly already reached her manic mode when she’s so focused on her work that she just blindly processes everything thrown at her.

“Let’s not focus on the bat but on the question of why they would rob a bank just when several city officials are gathered two blocks away,” she says, walking back to her makeshift desk and twisting her hair into a bun. 

It’s already early morning by the time she finally closes her laptop and tells him to get some sleep before they return to Metropolis early in the morning. He grabs his things and throws away the empty coffee cups he got from the diner instead of the vending machine in the lobby as an excuse to have a look at the location. He quickly dumps his laptop on his bed, changes into jeans and a T-shirt when he realizes that he’s still wearing his suit, and then walks across the street, hoping for the best.

He occasionally had a look, so he knows that he would be the only patron apart from a tired-looking woman who smells like a nurse and a young, drunk couple, but figures that he might not be the only one monitoring the place.

He sits down in a booth at the window, orders a coffee, brushes imaginary lint off his jeans, cleans his glasses, stares at his reflection, and waits.

And waits.

And waits.

And waits.

After the first refill of his coffee, he figures that he didn’t actually propose a meeting time, so it’s not like he’s definitely going to be stood up.

After the second refill, he wonders if he should have been more clear and nervously drums his fingers on the table until he thinks he sees a dent on the surface.

After the third refill, he considers walking out of the place and flying somewhere where no one knows him to start a new life.

At five in the morning, he decides to give up, if only because they have to leave for the airport at seven. Knowing Lois, she will probably start knocking on his door at six because she thought of something new while brushing her teeth.

He means to wave the waitress over but then spots a figure approaching the diner. He tries to be casual about it but then ends up focusing so much on the heartbeat that it’s like a drum beating right in his head.

It’s yet another version of the same man. After ‘Mr. Wayne’ who couldn’t keep a conversation on track, ‘Bruce Wayne’ who made him paranoid with the things he seemed to know, and the ‘Batman’ who didn’t talk, the fourth version looks like a ‘Bruce’. Like someone’s husband Clark might be introduced to during a class reunion or a distant cousin who came to visit town. He’s dressed in a dark tracksuit, probably to appear like he was just out on a regular run like a regular guy. His hair is damp, so he must have taken a shower. The only thing that really gives him away is the shadows under his eyes.

When Clark doesn’t say anything as he slides into the seat across from him, Bruce frowns. “You didn’t order yet?”

It takes Clark a second to snap out of it. “Ah. No, just coffee. I wasn’t sure if–” he says and pauses. He doesn’t want to sound like he expected to be stood up. “When. I wasn’t sure when you’d finish what you were doing.”

Bruce keeps his eyes on him and then waves at the waitress in a way that makes it clear that this isn’t the kind of establishment he’s used to while saying, “Sunrise, usually.”

There are a million questions Clark wants to ask. 

If Batman is around until sunrise, when does Bruce Wayne sleep? Clark interviewed him in the afternoon and the yacht party started around noon, although he technically didn't see him around then. Does he spend his mornings asleep? If so, his negative reputation probably works in his favor because people would just assume him to be a hungover, irresponsible billionaire. Still, it seems exhausting to live two different lives like that, more exhausting than anything Clark does. At least he doesn’t have to deal with any wounds afterward. And how does that work anyway? Bruce Wayne is known to be a philanderer but anyone who sees him with his shirt off would see the scars and bruises. Anyone would have questions after that. But then again, it’s not like Clark came to the right conclusions when he–

“Clark,” Bruce says.

“What?” he asks and follows Bruce’s gaze to the waitress rolling her eyes at him. He must have completely spaced out.

“Do you want more coffee with your pancakes, honey?” she asks, sounding exasperated. She shakes the half-empty pot to show what she means.

He looks down at his cup and realizes that he’s pulled it up to his chest. “Oh, yes, sure, that would be lovely. Thank you,” he says, pushing it forward so that she can pour him his fourth refill on his road toward a caffeine overdose.

He throws Bruce a glance, ready for the humiliation to fully sink in. 

But rather than look displeased, Bruce just leans back to inspect the diner and most definitely smiles into his cup of coffee as he takes a sip. It’s the same smile as the pancake story smile. 

And Clark has no idea why but it confuses him more than anything else that happened in the last twenty-four hours.

Chapter Text

“Can you stop?” Lois asks.

Not sure who she means, he looks up from his desk and finds her glaring at him. It’s late in the afternoon and she is in the middle of rewriting an article on the new subway line, so he knows she’s irritable and tried not to bother her. Her first draft was rejected because she suggested that construction wasn’t moving forward because certain Lexcorp shareholders were too busy paying themselves bonuses which was, apparently, deemed to be a baseless claim although that is what everyone is thinking. 

He is completely on her side, but he also has no idea what he has done, so he asks, “Stop what?”

She scoffs as though he said something completely outrageous. “The sighing. You keep sighing. Do you have zero self-awareness?”

He did, in fact, not notice that. He has been absent-minded and started doodling a wonky sheep on his paper desk pad at some point but thought that was the extent of it.

“Oh. Sorry. I’ll stop,” he says.

She turns back to her screen with a disgruntled mumble and he looks down at the sheep. He made it look a little too round, itching to be sheared. As a boy, he sometimes helped a neighbor sheer his sheep in spring. It always ended up becoming an exercise in mimicking the others around him. By himself, he could have easily caught and lifted the sheep in a few minutes but the fun of it was to work as a team. Every once in a while, one kicked or headbutted him and he pretended to be in excruciating pain. By the end of the day, he was invited for dinner by the tired family in which everyone smelled like sheep.

Life was simple then. When he was younger and dreamed of leaving Smallville, he never really appreciated the comfort of his neighborhood. He always thought–

“You’re doing it again,” Lois says.

She narrows her eyes at him in a way that makes him consider somersaulting out of the nearest window, but then just rubs her eyes with a long sigh of her own. “Okay, you know what? Fine. Humor me, Smallville. What exactly is your problem?”

It sounds like a trap. “I don’t–” he says but she just waves her hand at him and gets up, grabbing her mug off her table.

“Let’s get coffee,” she says. “Whatever you’re dealing with probably doesn’t compare to what I’m dealing with, so let’s solve that first. God knows I could need a distraction.”

She doesn’t wait for him as she walks toward the office kitchen while running a hand through her hair. He hesitates to follow but figures that she would just yell at him across the office, so he stands up with a sigh. Another sigh. This time he actually noticed it.

“It’s nothing, really,” he says tentatively while she slaps the coffee maker because it doesn’t immediately start brewing.

For a moment he thinks she’s going to ignore him as she watches the coffee filter into her mug. It reads ‘Future Pulitzer Prize Winner Lois Lane’ and according to Jimmy, someone gave it to her as a joke at the Secret Santa last year but she has been using it ever since. He somehow doubts that the irony is completely lost on her.

She takes a sip, swears under her breath because it’s too hot, and then says, “Nothing is nothing. First rule of journalism. One of my best pieces was about a dog show I was sent to because my then-superior was trying to mess with me. Whatever story you’re struggling with, I’m sure it’s salvageable.”

That’s what this is then. She thinks it’s about a story. It probably makes sense. Her work is her life.

He’s working on an article about the mayor’s visit at a kindergarten but that is running smoothly. There’s no edge but also nothing worrisome, so that’s not what’s on his mind.

He shouldn’t talk to her of all people.

But before he can think too much about it, he says, “It’s just, I was thinking about how different life is when you’re a kid in the countryside.”

She raises her brows but doesn’t comment.

“My best friend was the girl next door,” he says. “We spent most days playing with the other kids in the neighborhood. And then in school, I was friends with kids who happened to attend the same classes or the same extracurricular activities.”

“Let me guess, the local chess club?” Lois asks, probably in an attempt to dial down the snark.

“School newspaper,” he says.

She laughs. “Adorable.” He would probably be vaguely offended if he didn’t know that her career started when she became a junior reporter at a local newspaper when she was still in high school. According to rumors, she walked into the office one day and demanded a position. 

“So what does that have to do with anything?” she asks, leaning against the kitchen counter.

He awkwardly rubs his neck. “I just think– It was a lot easier to make friends then.”

She frowns, look him up and down, and then wrinkles her nose in distaste. “I’m sorry but– what? That’s your problem? You want friends? What are you, twelve?”

That is exactly why he didn’t want to talk about her. He knows how it sounds. But when it comes down to it, he’s barely more than a kid wearing a tie. 

Little by little, he figured out how most things in the city work. How to write a resume, how to find an apartment, how to file his tax return, how much to drink at a social gathering. He knows how to do his job and how to pretend to be like everyone else while juggling that other part of his life in which he tries to help people in a way that only he can. He wants to talk about that with someone who understands but the only person who would have an idea isn’t someone he happens to meet a lot. It’s not the same as walking over to Lana’s house, or complaining about homework in class, or standing in the kitchen with Lois for a coffee break.

“Wait a minute,” Lois says. “Is this about Bruce Wayne again?”

He feels the blood draining from his face. “That’s not–”

“What is it with you and that guy?” she asks, clearly having zero doubt that her suspicions are accurate. He has no idea how she does it. She has the intuition of a bloodhound. “I thought you were friends already. Doesn’t he literally have a nickname for you?”

He grimaces but doesn’t point out that ‘Clark’ isn’t exactly a nickname. Sometimes he wonders whether she genuinely forgot that his real name isn’t ‘Smallville Kent’.

“Honestly, I don’t know why you want to be friends with Wayne of all people but my personal opinion aside,” she says, taking a sip of her coffee, suddenly sounding a little less mocking and more down to business. “It doesn’t seem that hard. He doesn’t seem busy doing anything important. Just ask him out on a date.”

It takes a second for his mind to compute. “A– what? No, hold on, that’s not what I mean. I’m not asking anyone for a–” He winces. “Date.”

She rolls her eyes. “Not a romantic date. A play date. I go on dates with my friends all the time.”

He wonders if by ‘dates’ she means ‘informal interviews’ and by ‘friends’ she means ‘potential witnesses she happens to be acquainted with’.

When he doesn’t respond, she gets impatient. “Didn’t you have breakfast with him the other day?”

“That was a coincidence,” he says meekly because he can’t even begin to explain how that happened. 

He wasn’t thinking then. The only reason why she knows about it is that he wasn’t back by the time she woke up and knocked on his hotel door, so she went out to grab a coffee and ended up staring at him and Bruce Wayne in civilian clothes through the window of the dinner.

“Sure, of course, it was,” she says, obviously not believing that story, and starts walking toward the door. This is probably as far as she wants to discuss his personal issues while she has an article waiting for her. He can’t even begrudge her. He thinks of her as a friendly face but not a friend, too. As an adult, it’s harder to attach words like that to strangers.

But then, as she is already at the door, she turns a little, and says, “If a coincidence is all it takes, all you need to do is make sure that another coincidence happens. It’s not like Bruce Wayne is hard to catch.”

A coincidence.

Didn’t it all start as a coincidence? Apart from the time he was invited on the yacht, everything else happened by chance. So judging by that logic, they will probably meet again. He was deployed to Gotham before. Bruce visited Metropolis before.

But how long is that going to take?

When they had breakfast, it wasn’t exactly uncomfortable but they couldn’t really talk with civilians around them, so they only had vague small talk. They probably could have come to some sort of agreement for future endeavors but that became nil when Bruce spotted Lois and decided to leave.

Could he even call it a coincidence anymore if he finds an excuse to meet? 

He does believe they’re on friendly terms now but Bruce also made it clear that there is no space for Superman in Gotham. He can respect boundaries.

It’s not a coincidence.

On a Friday, he enters the grocery store a block away from his house on his way back from work to buy the discounted milk his neighbor told him about. Metropolis isn’t cheap and while he could easily travel to a place with lower grocery prices, he doesn’t want to use his powers for petty reasons. He crosses the isles toward the dairy section but then gets distracted by the radio. 

After a cheerful song, they immediately start with the news, talking about a tanker overturning and bursting on a highway near a town called Maplewood Springs.

He stops in his tracks. 

He thinks he heard about it before but he has to pull out his phone to check on a map. The name sounds almost too quaint, but Maplewood Springs is outside Gotham, albeit not part of its municipality. They mentioned ethanol bursting from the tanker, setting several cars ablaze. If it’s on the news, they would already be in the middle of getting it under control but he could still help. It would only take him a few minutes to get there and it’s not technically in Gotham, so he would not be overstepping any lines, would he? Also, logically, he would be more equipped than Batman, wouldn’t he? It’s people’s lives on the line, so he has no excuse not to help.

It’s not really a coincidence but he figures that this isn’t the kind of situation anyone could blame him for.

So he leaves the grocery store, smiles at the cashier who frowns at him for not buying anything, makes a beeline toward the nearest alley, and then drops off his belongings on the roof of his apartment building before he flies over to Maplewood Springs.

There are miles and miles of cars stuck in traffic, so it’s not hard to find the location of the accident. As the sun is already setting, the fire is like a beacon in the distance. When he arrives, the air is thick with the smoke of several burning cars. The sirens of the approaching fire engines and ambulances drown out all the other noises.

From what he can tell, the people who would have been in the affected cars all evacuated to the side strips, so it’s mainly a matter of containing the fire before it can spread even further. Firefighters have already started working, turning the edges of the area into an alien planet covered in extinguishing foam.

The main source of the fire is the truck. If he could lift the truck, he could carry it up high enough that the fire would die down due to lack of oxygen but then more ethanol would pill out and fuel the smaller fires below it. Unless he can somehow close the burst in the tank that burst. 

He walks toward the truck to get a better idea of what he’s working with but then feels something tugging at his arm. He means to tell whoever is behind him to stand down, only to then be faced with the one person he doesn’t think he can order around. 

Batman is wearing a respiratory mask, so it’s even harder to guess his expression.

“I was going to have a closer look,” Clark says.

Batman lets go of his arm. When he speaks, his voice is dampened by the mask and sounds more gruff than when he is Bruce Wayne. “I saw several fire engines stuck in traffic on the way.” 

Clark looks in the direction of Gotham and the cars he can see blocking the way. Many are trying to change directions, returning to the city.

Firefighters would know best how to handle this. That’s probably the most ideal strategy.

So he says, “I’ll get them.”

“Don’t open the doors and hold on tight,” he yells as he tries to get a grip of the vehicle. It’s one thing to lift it and another to make sure that none of the people and equipment fall out. At least, no one is trying to step out and ask any questions. He isn’t sure whether his positive reputation precedes him or whether this is because he deals with the citizens of the city that spawned Batman.

People around him take pictures, standing too close for his liking. “Stand back!” he shouts.

And then they’re up and one firefighter screams but he manages to keep the vehicle stable.

After he carefully drops it, he flies off to get the next one. He can’t see Batman but figures he’s still in the mayhem of cars in the budding twilight.

Once all the fire engines he can spot are taken care of, he makes sure that the ambulances can get through. At first, he tries to move cars standing in the way to create a corridor but when more and more drivers try to use that to leave the highway, he instead picks up the ambulances as carefully as possible and carries them over to the city.

It’s nighttime when the situation is finally settling down. He smiles at police officers trying to shake his hand while he moves burnt-out vehicle parts out of the way to make sure that traffic on the highway can continue, and eventually leaves when more and more press vans reach the area to take pictures. He did what he could. Everything else can be settled by professionals.

Batman must have long left, or so he thinks until he flies over the area and notices a strange car parked on a dirt road in the nearby forest. Just when he decides to land, Batman breaches through the underwood.

For a split second, they’re at a standstill. 

It’s the necessary coincidence but as he can barely see him in the dim light of the forest, Clark isn’t sure what to say. This doesn’t seem like the right moment to ask about breakfast.

Before he can make a decision, Batman asks, “What kind of material is that suit made of?”

Clark looks down at himself. He heard that question before. People often wonder whether it’s the suit that makes him invincible or, if it’s not the suit but him, how it doesn’t break, rip, or burn. This would be even more interesting for someone who would rely on his suit more than Clark does. Batman has a more massive shape than Bruce because there are several layers of protective material that are hard even for Clark to see through.

He could give a quick explanation and be done with it. 

But this is a potential opening, so he asks, “Do you want to have a closer look?”

Batman doesn’t move but sounds a little more like Bruce Wayne being caught off guard when he asks, “Now?”

“Yeah,” Clark says and then rubs his nose. “I mean, if you want. I have no other plans and we’re on the same side, so, you know, I’m happy to share my knowledge.”

He sounds like an idiot. At least in the suit, he’s supposed to sound more dignified but here he is, being himself.

He smiles, just in case it’s not clear that he has no ulterior motives and is doing this as a testament of their budding friendship but it’s impossible to tell what Bruce would be thinking. His heartbeat is stable as always.

When he turns away, Clark figures that this is the end of that discussion, but then he says, “Not here.”

They end up in a cave after a rapid car ride along seemingly too narrow alleys and tunnels. He suggested flying but Batman decided that he would be too conspicuous and told him to get in instead. 

Clark tries to see it as a good sign but wonders if Batman just wants to avoid him knowing how to reach his lair. Then again, Clark doubts that he is being underestimated. So far, Bruce just accepted anything he did that a normal person isn’t supposed to, so he would know that he can easily pinpoint the location. 

The fact that Clark is in the lair at all probably means something. He doesn’t know what he pictured but he thought it would be on more neutral terrain and this definitely is more personal. He tries not to pry but when he looks up to see how far underground they are, he can tell that there is a lone house on top of a vast cave system. He heard that the Waynes built a manor on the outskirts of the city, so that must be it.

He has a look around in the middle of the cave, trying to take in the gloominess of the place, and flinches when Batman points something at his upper arm. It’s some kind of device that beeps when it makes contact.

There is an awkward pause. 

“So did I pass the test?” he asks when Batman makes no effort to communicate what he’s doing. 

Batman just looks at the monitor on his device, his mouth reduced to a thin line, and then asks, “How does the cloaking mechanism work?”

The question is a little too specific.

“How do you know there’s a cloaking mechanism?” Clark asks because it seems obvious but there could arguably be a different explanation. Batman seems sure that the suit doesn’t change who Clark is but the way he is perceived. It’s a strange thought. When he wears the suit, Clark becomes Superman. For a short time, he can tell himself that this is what he is supposed to look like. He doesn’t like the idea of someone seeing beyond that.

“I noticed it when I touched your arm,” Batman says. “There was a disconnect between the circumference I could see and the one I felt.”

So he noticed it when Clark carried him off the building the first time they met. 

“That’s when you figured it all out?” he asks, trying not to touch his arms in an attempt to rationalize that answer. 

He knows that it’s not an unlikely conclusion simply because he sometimes hates that difference. In the mirror, he sees who he would like to see but when he touches any part of himself, he’s still just skin and bones instead of muscle mass. He didn’t think anyone else would have the time to notice that. 

“That’s when I figured out how Superman disappears,” Batman says. “I had a hunch when I talked to you after that but was only sure when I compared voice recordings.”

“What voice recordings?” Clark asks but Batman just turns away.

Recordings of Superman probably aren’t that hard to obtain because he does occasionally talk to the people around him, but his voice as Clark Kent, employee of the Daily Planet, shouldn’t appear anywhere because he’s usually the one behind the scenes. He did record the interview but could that be the source? Did Batman hack him? He tries to think back to that day. And then remembers the pen. Bruce Wayne kept fiddling with a pen. Was that part of his gear?

The more he learns, the less he understands. How does someone like Bruce Wayne, living a life of luxury, end up like this?

He isn’t even sure where to begin asking.

Batman, meanwhile, is busy analyzing the suit. He walks to a wall of screens, half of which are showing what looks like various security cameras around the city, hooks the device to a massive computer, and then walks back. This time, he pokes Clark’s arm with his hand, seems unhappy with that result, and does it again after taking off his glove. He pinches and manages to lift the fabric a little. “Can you take this off?” he asks.

It’s a simple enough question with a simple enough answer. But Clark finds his voice hitching when he asks, “Off?”

No response.

“I mean,” he says, trying not to look like a bumbling fool. “I can take it off, sure. It’s just a piece of clothing. But I’m not wearing anything underneath and I can only take it all off at once because it’s all connected. I left my other clothes behind in Metropolis before I came here.”

Another pause in which Batman doesn’t move. The confusing thing is that his heart beats a little less evenly. 

He walks away again and for a moment, Clark figures that he’s going to be spared, only to eventually be offered a dark robe.

“Right,” he says, touching the fabric that is probably worth more than his whole wardrobe combined. “I guess that will do.” 

It’s unnerving. It would be unnerving enough to sit in front of a mega computer in a damp cave in a bathrobe next to a rich vigilante who isn’t talking while turning his suit in his hands as if it’s a strange artifact. But what secretly bothers Clark the most is that, after this whole evening he spent as Superman, he is reduced to being himself again. It’s strangely anticlimactic to look at his skinny legs sticking out of the fabric.

He doesn’t know if Bruce could sense his discomfort but at some point, he took off the cowl to become a strange hybrid of Batman’s body and Bruce Wayne’s dishevelled head. Judging by how much his hair sticks to his scalp, he must sweat a lot in the suit. It’s the complete opposite of what Clark wears. Still, he doesn’t smell bad. He smells like the bathrobe.

“That’s the suit my parents found me in,” he says when Bruce doesn’t ask any questions. “It was obviously smaller then. I found it in the attic among other baby clothes when I was nine or ten. When I played around with it, I realized that I could stretch it out without it ripping but I didn’t think too much about it then. I thought it was just a weird piece of fabric until I found the–”

Bruce looks up, his expression hard to read even without the mask.

The truth is that Clark isn’t sure whether he should really trust him. Lana sometimes tells him that he’s too naive and that he tends to give more than he takes. But he is already lying to everyone about something, so shouldn’t he also use every opportunity he can get to be honest? To be human is to trust. That is what he believes. Who else can he trust if not a man who spends his nights trying to keep his city safe?

So he says, “The ship. They found me inside a ship. I’m not sure how exactly it works but the tech in the crest can connect to it. That’s how I set up the cloak.”

Bruce takes that information in for a moment, flattening the crest on the suit in front of him. He doesn’t seem particularly surprised. “Does that mean that anyone wearing the suit would look like Superman?” he asks.

“I’m not sure,” Clark says because he never actually tried it. Superman still has some of his features but he isn’t sure whether that’s because he created the image or because it’s his body.

Bruce frowns as though he is considering testing it and Clark feels a strange pit in his stomach when he tries to picture it. It’s supposed to be funny. Him in a robe with a golden W stitched on the front and Bruce Wayne as Superman. But somehow, it just feels wrong.

“I don’t think it’s going to fit you,” he says. When Bruce throws him a glance, he adds, “Unless I stretch it out first. You’re too–” 

He grimaces. 

What he means to say is that Bruce already looks more like Superman than Clark does. He has the broad shoulders and the toned calves. He can be imposing just by being himself.

Instead, he says, “Big.”

Bruce keeps working, so Clark eventually gets up and walks around to stretch his legs, yawning as he looks at the various devices scattered around the cave. At first, he just walks but when he finds himself staggering, he ends up floating. He shouldn’t have suggested doing this right after the incident on the highway. 

“You can rest upstairs if you want,” Bruce says after a while without turning around.

Clark, in the middle of stifling another yawn, quickly says, “Oh, no, I’m fine. I don’t want to impose. I’ll just leave when you’re done.”

Bruce chooses to throw him a look over his shoulder, and Clark almost thinks that he’s just going to leave as is, but then he moves something on one of the screens and says, “Alfred, can you prepare a guest room for the night? We have a visitor.”

Instinctively, Clark sets both feet on the ground, if only because he doesn’t know what situation this is.

“Certainly, sir,” a voice says through an intercom, a voice that he can hear coming from the manor upstairs.

An elevator brings him up to the dark house where a man with a British accent meets him and brings him to a room at the end of a long corridor. He’s handed silk pajamas that are too wide and then ends up sitting on a canopy bed, staring at the moonlit landscape outside. Everything around him faintly smells of dust.

It would be easy enough to return to Metropolis. Grab his own clothes. Sleep in his own bed.

But this is what he wanted, right? A chance to make a friend? Even if, for now, it’s barely more than a transaction of knowledge?

So he lies down, listening to the sound of the house and the machines humming deep down in the caves and the soft snoring of the man called Alfred a floor below him. Eventually, the familiar heartbeat is taking the elevator up and Clark finds himself drifting off to sleep.

In the morning, his suit is neatly folded on a dressing table, along with a set of clothes that don’t properly fit him and probably cost more than he earns in a month.

He means to leave but then finds himself in a long dining room in front of a pile of pancakes.

It’s nine in the morning. Not particularly early for a Saturday but probably early for someone who works throughout the night. Bruce makes that obvious by resting his face in his hand while staring into a cup of coffee. Clark suspects that he’s only awake because Clark is.

He doesn’t really understand it. 

But in a way, it’s just like the times he helped the neighbors with their sheep. Maybe it isn’t that hard to make new friends as long as they have the same objective.

Chapter Text

It’s already early fall but the day is as bright as though they were in the middle of August. Normally, he loves to be out on a sunny afternoon but with the ocean of trimmed lawn around him, he constantly finds himself squinting. The glasses aren’t really improving that. He should have brought a hat. He laughed at the broad-rimmed one Lois wore when he picked her up but he is beginning to see that, as usual, she knew what she was doing. 

He has no idea how they do it. Lois stands next to the couple who invited her, seemingly unaffected by the sun blinding them all. He may be immune to injuries but he doesn’t think he will ever be as tough as her.

He wonders if he can just find an excuse to take a break somewhere in the shade when a voice next to him asks, “I see you’re not a golfer?”

Bruce pulled up next to him, smiling the same empty smile that has been plastered on his face since they all met at the entrance of the course. He’s the reason why Clark is here in the first place. Lois was invited by Mrs. Broquet, a socialite who, according to Lois, only likes her because she knows enough gossip about her enemies in Metropolis. Mrs. Broquet brought her husband who brought Bruce, and Lois, having heard about that plan and not willing to travel that far by herself, brought Clark. 

On paper, it probably even makes sense. 

The problem is that he has zero experience with golf etiquette, even though he’s dressed the part thanks to Lois’s fashion magazine acquaintance. This time, the colors are white, blue, and beige. He even has a sweater draped over his shoulders like a jerk.

Still, it is nice to have an excuse to see Bruce that does not boil down to Clark offering him further information on himself. After analyzing the suit, they spent a few afternoons with random strength and endurance tests but those quickly started feeling futile because Clark effortlessly acing them all probably wasn’t particularly interesting to witness. He also broke a treadmill in the process. One other time, he brought a metal sample of the ship and pictures he had taken at his parents’ house and after that, he slowly ran out of ideas. By now, it has been almost a month since that day he flew over to check on an escalated street battle, only to be told by Batman that his assistance wasn’t necessary. He figured it was time to stop trying to force things after that. Friendship has to grow organically, or so the article in the magazine he picked up at the grocery store said.

So here he is now, standing next to a version of Bruce that is very different from the one down in his cave. To the three chatting a few feet apart from them, this would be the one true Bruce Wayne but to Clark, it feels like seeing someone through a thick pane of glass.

He lowers his voice a little when he says, “I’m not great at sports you need any equipment for. I’m always afraid of breaking something. It would be easier to just throw the ball.”

To his surprise, something shifts in Bruce’s smile. It still looks fake but he also sounds genuinely interested when he asks, “Do you think you can hit the hole from here if you throw it?” 

He probably sees it at another test. Accuracy was something he had tested before, but it was limited to the accuracy of the heat vision. He gave up on that when Clark accidentally sliced through a stalactite that dropped into the cave and startled a swarm of bats. When he thinks about it, Clark hasn’t shown him many advantages of being friends with him.

“Maybe not on the first try,” he says, trying not to sound braggy. “But if I practice a little, I’m probably as good as you with your club.”

Bruce frowns at that, probably considering it. His expression is less friendly but closer to the person below the facade. 

And then the moment ends when Mr. Broquet yells, “Your turn, Bruce.”

Within an instant, the smile is back. He claps Clark on the shoulder like a man who pretends to be friends with service workers and walks over to the others, readjusting his golf glove. Even his walk is different. Showy, grand, self-assured in an off way. Clark isn’t sure if he detects a limp.

When he throws a look at Lois, she’s rolling her eyes at him.

They’re on the seventh hole when Clark, after being mocked by Lois for hitting the ball like a dung beetle rolling a ball of dung, gives it his all to use just the right amount of strength. In the process, he rips out a piece of the lawn that flies along with the ball. The Broquets and Lois gasp in surprise as they follow it with their eyes, just when Clark realizes that he bent the club and when Bruce falls into a bunker behind them with a yelp.

It’s Mr. Broquet who pulls Bruce out and Clark, standing behind the others like an idiot, only understands that this is supposed to be a diversion when Bruce throws a stern look at the bent club. He tries to straighten it out, causing it to look even worse, and then quickly throws it into the woods at the edge of the course, hoping that he didn’t overlook anyone looking for their ball among the trees. As far as he can tell, the club lodges into a trunk. He probably has to take care of that at some point.

“Oh, Brucie, dear, are you okay?” Mrs. Broquet asks while her husband helps him over to the golf cart to take a seat. Bruce is now visibly limping.

“I took quite the fall, Evelyn,” he says with an impressively quivering voice. “I wouldn't rule out the possibility that I broke a toe. Someone should look into that. Obviously, I don’t want to make a big deal out of it, but it just seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. Who in their right mind would put a bunker in that spot? Thank goodness this happened to me and not to someone who isn't as good of a sport.”

He complains more about missing safety regulations while Mr. Broquet nods in stern agreement and Mrs. Broquet fawns over him, waving air at him with a tissue as though he is suffocating and not dealing with a supposed fracture. It’s like watching a play. Clark somehow doubts that any of them mean it. The Broquets just follow the rules of social etiquette around a man of higher standing while Bruce pretends to be the man they think they know.

“Impressive friend you got there,” Lois mutters under her breath next to him, watching the display with thinly veiled exasperation.

“He might actually be hurt,” Clark says because it hits him that it wouldn’t even be unlikely. Bruce is good at what he’s doing but Clark has seen him hurt before.

Lois looks at him for a moment and then lightly pushes him forward, loudly saying, “Clark, why don’t you bring Mr. Wayne to the clubhouse so that he can have that looked at?”

For a moment, he thinks that any of the others could protest but Mr. Broquet just hands him the keys of the golf cart with a grateful smile and Bruce leans back, dramatically wondering if he will ever be able to walk again.

They’re halfway across the golf course when Clark asks, “Your toe is really broken, isn’t it?” 

Bruce looks down at his leg but doesn’t comment. Which means that Clark is probably right. He only had a glance and isn’t a professional but the bone did look strange to him.

“Is there a doctor in the clubhouse?” Clark asks.

“None who could tell me something I don’t already know,” Bruce says. “I taped it. There’s isn’t much else a doctor could do.”

He sounds entirely too calm. Clark arguably doesn’t know what a broken bone feels like, so he can’t judge it from his own experience but he remembers his mother’s fractured foot when he was little. She moved around a lot, too, but had a proper cast and crutches and didn’t pretend that she wasn’t in pain. He doubts that a toe doesn’t hurt at all.

“You shouldn’t continue playing like this,” he says because golfing is clearly a type of sport that requires a lot of walking and standing, even with a cart. It’s likely not the only thing Bruce would have planned for that day either. At night, he’s probably still going to patrol.

“So what do you suggest? Should I leave my dear friends behind and drive home on my own? That would be incredibly rude, wouldn’t it?” Bruce asks with a stilted laugh, channeling his public persona as a deflection method.

Normally, Clark would be vaguely annoyed because he doesn’t see how this is a laughing matter. But there is something off about the phrasing. He stops the cart, causing Bruce to groan when he is thrown forward.

“You drove?” Clark asks. “As in, you weren’t dropped off by someone but drove yourself?”

Bruce just looks at him indifferently. This is all still part of the act. They talked about cars during the interview, too. His penchant for recklessly driving and wrecking expensive sports cars is one of the many things that define Bruce Wayne in the public eye. Is that another excuse? If he purposely causes an accident, he can blame any existing injuries on that. Is that it?

“I’ll drive you home,” Clark says before he can think about it.

Bruce frowns, looking perfectly unimpressed by that suggestion. Only his heart gives him away when it skips a beat.

“I’m a pretty good driver,” Clark quickly adds when it hits him that he’s pushing things again. “Never got into any accidents. I can drive anything. Tractors, minibusses, you name it. Maybe not big trucks but, you know, in the countryside they let you drive about anything, so I got a lot of practice. I bet you never drove a motorcycle over a plowed field.”

Bruce keeps a cool expression but the corner of his mouth twitches a little. It’s a smile. Which is a definite win for Clark in this round.

It’s a quiet drive in a bright red car. 

Before they left, Clark texted Lois and asked the staff at the clubhouse whether they could return the golf cart to the Broquets. They looked concerned when Bruce continued limping toward the car park, but then just let them go when Clark asked for the key. Rich men tend to have assistants, so that’s what they probably assumed him to be.

Bruce signals him whenever he needs to make a turn but otherwise spends his time either looking out of the window or at his phone where he seems to follow a news feed. When he opens the glove compartment to pull out a hidden tablet that most definitely is part of the Batman gear, Clark feels the tension leave his body a little. He sometimes oversteps boundaries without realizing it, but if Bruce can go about his daily business around him, it's probably a sign that he trusts him. 

In the garage, he’s then at a loss for what to do next as Bruce, now limping less than when he pretended to be mortally wounded but more than when pretended to be a regular guy playing golf, just walks toward the door towards the main part of the house. It smells of dust and oil. Most of the cars in the large garage are covered with tarps.

Clark isn’t sure whether he’s supposed to follow when the door is opened from the other side.

“Alfred, is there some of that cake left?” Bruce asks, not slowing down on his way up a short staircase. He is probably used to being instantly welcomed.

Alfred, as usual, doesn’t look particularly surprised to see Clark standing in the garage in his borrowed golf outfit. “I can make some tea to go with it, sir,” he says evenly. “However, before I do, I should point out that I presently do not know the whereabouts of the young master.”

Bruce stops in his tracks. His heart rate elevates just slightly. “When did you last see him?”

“I served him lunch in his room,” Alfred says. “After that, I’m afraid I didn’t check up on him. I was in the wine cellar looking through the bottles to see which one could be donated.”

Bruce looks at the garage as though he is considering getting back to the car. When his eyes land on Clark, he grimaces. “Clark, can you check if you can see him in the house?”

“Who–” Clark asks but Bruce already vaguely gestures at a height close to his hip.

“A boy this tall. Dark hair. He might be in places that would be hard to reach for most people.”

Clark frowns but figures this isn’t the time to ask questions.

“He’s not in the house,” he says as he quickly scans the rooms. Nothing is moving apart from the mice in the attic.

“And under it?” Bruce asks.

“Under–” Clark asks before it hits him. Is that the problem? That there might be a child in the cave where Batman stores his gear?

“If he’s not there, we will have to check the cameras,” Bruce says to Alfred. “He might have headed toward the highway and hitched–”

"Found him,” Clark says as he spots the little boy perching on the chair Bruce usually sits on, wearing a hoodie and shorts. “Doesn’t look like he’s hiding. He’s checking out the computer.”

Bruce throws a look at the ground as though he can see anything if he tries hard enough and then marches up the stairs. “Alfred, can you bring Mr. Kent to the drawing room and prepare the cake? Three plates. No black tea or anything else that’s caffeinated.”

Alfred just lets him pass and calmly says, “Certainly, sir.”

“Do you need any help?” Clark asks because Bruce is very much still limping.

When there is no response, he just helplessly looks at Alfred who gestures for him to follow.

For a few minutes, he’s alone, pretending not to notice the things going on around him as he looks at a long shelf with cloth-bound books that are probably worth more than his parents’ farm. In the kitchen, Alfred takes the leftovers of a surprisingly colorful frosted cake from the fridge while preparing a pot of leafy tea, and far below them, Bruce is trying to convince the boy to come down from the computer screen he climbed onto.

He never thought he would witness the house be that lively. Normally, he and the bats seem to be the only ones ever causing a commotion.

He only just sat down on a plush chair in front of a low table when Alfred enters the room with a little tea cart. He jumps up to help but then just idly stands around when Alfred puts everything on the table. Like Bruce, Alfred isn’t the type to ask for assistance.

“What type of tea is that?” Clark asks when Alfred motions for him to sit down again. “It smells really nice.”

“Rooibos, sir,” Alfred says as he pours him a cup. “Master Bruce usually prefers black tea, but he is worried that it might excite our new young resident even more. He is quite an active child.”

Clark can see that. But what he doesn’t understand is why there would suddenly be a child in this house in the first place. As far as he knows, Bruce is a bachelor. How old could the boy be judging by the glimpses he got? Seven, eight maybe? Bruce would be around thirty, so technically not too young but Clark didn’t see any signs of there being a child present in his life before. Is he taking care of a relative’s son? 

“So who–” he asks but doesn’t get to finish the question because the door is thrown open.

The boy throws a cursory glance at Alfred but then seems confused when he spots Clark. He is about to turn around and walk back out of the room but since Bruce is right behind him, he instead climbs a bookshelf to his right.

“Master Dick, would you like some cake?” Alfred asks as the boy disappears behind a wooden ornament.

Bruce doesn’t say anything as he walks over to where Clark is sitting and falls into the armchair next to him with a groan. He throws him a look but then just wordlessly takes the cup Alfred poured him. Alfred, meanwhile, monitors the situation for a moment longer but then eventually takes his leave, locking the three into the room with each other.

When Bruce doesn’t make any attempts at explaining anything, Clark eventually takes his plate with cake, trying not to notice the boy staring at him from the top of the shelf.

“So, uh–” he says after taking his first bite. The boy is slowly shifting positions like a tiny predator getting in position to attack its prey. “How do you know the Broquets?”

Bruce throws a look at the shelf from the corner of his eye. He would notice the movement up there, too. “Old family friends.”

“Right,” Clark says, preparing to have something thrown at him. One of the neighbor’s kids used to do that, too. He always hid somewhere and then shot him with his slingshot. Clark has to be ready to react accordingly. The plate he’s holding looks expensive, so he mainly has to make sure not to drop it in the process.

A little, hooded head appears behind a ledge and Clark is ready to gasp in pain, only to then jump up when the boy is literally somersaulting off the shelf.

“You don’t have to–” Bruce says quickly but it’s already too late.

Clark catches the boy before he can hit the ground, and realizes much too late that they’re suspended in midair.

The boy stares at him in confusion. “I was going to jump onto the glittery thing,” he says.

Clark looks up at the chandelier hanging over his head. “Oh,” he says.

The boy wriggles, looks down at the room below them, and then asks, “Can you let me down?” He is suspiciously calm.

“Sure,” Clark says and sets him down as gently as possible.

Once his feet are on the ground, the boy straightens his hoodie, looks up to him with narrowed eyes and, after a moment of consideration, asks, “Are you Superman’s cousin?”

Even if the conclusion is off, he doesn’t sound too surprised. But if he knows about the cave, he might assume that Superman and his cousin turning up in the house is just a regular occurrence. Clark, too, is becoming careless while he is here. In Metropolis, no one knows that he is in any way related to Superman, but this is now the third person in Gotham.

“He doesn’t have any family members who could have taken him in?” Clark asks as he picks up the last crumbs on his plate with his fork. 

Dick, the boy, left him the last slice before he wandered off and started hovering around Alfred in the kitchen instead. At first, it was an even battle. When Clark finished his first slice, Bruce, apparently thinking that he needed to be fed like a cow, told him he could have the rest of the cake, which didn’t sit well with the boy who immediately forked up a second slice. When Clark eventually got a third, Dick did, too, but slowly started looking sick. When there was only one left, he feigned disinterest and gave up. It only hit Clark afterward that he probably shouldn’t have encouraged a kid to ingest that much sugar.

“No,” Bruce says. “It was this or foster care. I was told that at that age, chances of getting adopted are slim. I didn’t think he should have to go through that.”

He doesn’t sound too enthusiastic but Clark can see why this would be a different situation for him. It’s not something either of them ever mentioned to each other but when Clark looked him up before, the death of Bruce’s parents was among the first things he read about. He would have been close in age, so it would be the world’s worst déjà vu.

“So there’s a young Wayne now,” he says, not sure what else to say. It's a surprise but he can only really see it as a good thing. It’s nice to see a less gloomy version of the house.

“Not a Wayne but a Grayson,” Bruce says. “He keeps his name. I’m his legal guardian, not his father.”

His words are cold. When he meets Clark’s eyes, he also seems to realize that because he runs his hands through his hair with a sigh, staring at the floor.

“I’m not sure if he should stay,” he says, sounding resigned. “This isn’t a place for a child.”

He doesn’t explain whether he means the dusty, oversized house or the caves but Clark can see why it could be either. He would question it, too. Whether a philandering billionaire could look out for a traumatized orphan. Whether a child should grow up in the shadow of Batman. But Bruce Wayne isn’t just the sum of his facades. There is a real man below all that, a man who pretends not to care to hide that he cares too much.

“I was adopted, too,” Clark says. Bruce throws him a glance, so he adds, “It’s obviously not the same because I don’t know who my birth parents were but what I’m very sure of is that I wouldn’t be here if my parents hadn’t taken me in. Maybe it’s not perfect but the way I see it, the boy is lucky that you found him. You can offer him more than many others could.”

Bruce raises a brow. “Money, you mean?” he asks, not sounding the least bit convinced.

It’s not supposed to be funny but Clark huffs a laugh. “If you think that money isn’t a serious concern, you should listen to my mom whenever she argues with my dad about a new machine he wants to buy.”

Bruce’s mouth becomes a thin line that Clark chooses to interpret as a suppressed smile.

“But apart from the money,” he says. “I think he’s lucky that a good man found him.”

Bruce again doesn’t respond. It’s generally not unusual for him but there is something about his expression that makes it hard for Clark to keep eye contact.

“And I mean, it’s not like you’re alone in this, right? Alfred doesn’t seem to mind,” he says with a laugh, trying to joke the budding tenseness away. “And I can help, too. If you need a babysitter, I can jump in any time. I’m great with kids. Remember? I’m Superman’s cousin, so I can catch him whenever he leaps from any high objects and–”

He finds the words stuck in his throat. Because something changes in Bruce’s expression again. It’s not just his heart breaking rhythm, he is also visibly surprised. 

It rarely happens that Clark catches him off guard, so he isn’t immediately sure why this would be different. Logistically, it would make sense. He can be here within minutes and doesn’t have any family members or pets to take care of. If something happens in Metropolis, he can return just as easily.

It makes sense.

Right?

It’s only when he returns to the golf course at night and pulls the golf club out of the tree that it hits him that the offer probably was him accidentally overstepping another line.

Chapter Text

“Dick, stop climbing onto him,” Bruce says as he is bent over the newly named Batcomputer with his back to them.

Dick, in the middle of grabbing the back of Clark’s jacket to pull himself up like a climber scaling a vertical wall, lets go and spins around with narrowed eyes, probably trying to figure out which camera picked him up this time. Ever since he made it a habit to sneak down here, Bruce increased security but the kid has a knack for figuring out most systems.

“I can see your reflection,” Bruce says, still facing the screen.

Dick opens his mouth to argue, so Clark quickly says, “I don’t mind. It’s not like it hurts.”

Bruce doesn’t immediately reply. He hasn't put on the cowl yet but the cape is already surrounding him like a curtain, so it’s harder to debate with him. There is something about Batman that even shuts up Clark.

He adjusts a few more settings and changes the view on some of the screens before he finally turns around and says, “That’s not the point. I don’t want him to see strangers as moving obstacles.”

“I’m not exactly a–” Clark says but Bruce isn’t done with his speech yet.

“He has to be on his best behavior,” he says as he puts on his gloves. “For now, I can shield him but he eventually has to be out in public. I can’t have him act like a buffoon around people who will question his every move.”

Clark sighs. It’s another of those moments when he just knows that they won’t come to an agreement. When he was in third grade, he was out playing all day but Bruce’s childhood would be have been wildly different. He would know best what’s waiting out there for Dick. It is relatively easy to hide some things from the public eye but the legal guardian of a boy of school age isn’t one of those things. Still, Clark doesn’t think that it’s fair to rob a kid of his childhood.

He wants to say something but gets distracted by Dick elbowing him. When he looks down at him, the boy grins and whispers, “He called you a buffoon.”

Clark scoffs but then just ruffles his hair, causing Dick to yelp when he tries to save his hairdo. It’s usually wild but he probably slicked it back because it’s still his first week at his new school and he’s trying to look nice. When Clark arrived, he even wore a suit like a tiny version of Bruce.

The real Bruce, meanwhile, does not look amused. He readjusts his belt and picks up his mask as he walks over to the car, recently renamed Batmobile by the house’s youngest resident. “If you need to reach me, use the phone I gave you,” he says. 

“I will,” Clark says, dutifully patting the device he put in the pocket of his shirt.

Bruce eyes him suspiciously for a moment but then nods, putting on the mask. “Don’t let him stay up too late. It’s a school night. There’s cash on the kitchen table. If you need to spend more for whatever reason, I’ll reimburse you but it’s only meant for emergencies.” He puts extra stress on the word.

“Got it,” Clark says. He had a look at the envelope and it was filled with at least a thousand dollars in crisp bills. At first, he thought that Bruce expects the worst to happen but it’s probably more reasonable to assume that he doesn’t know how much anything costs. What is Clark supposed to buy in the middle of the night anyway? Enough gas to fill up the tanks of all the cars in the garage?

He does however not comment when Batman faces him with his expressionless mask. It’s like that one time he was called to the principal’s office after accidentally breaking a window in school. 

“There’s food in the fridge,” Batman says. “Alfred left instructions on how to reheat it. If you–”

“Bruce, we’ll be fine,” Clark says because he figures that this will otherwise continue until sunrise while the streets of Gotham are unguarded. “I know how to heat up a casserole.”

There is a long pause during which he feels assessed. Next to him, Dick is also very still.

Eventually, Batman just turns toward the car, climbs in, and closes the door without another word. It’s a good sign, or so Clark likes to think. Last week the list of things to consider was even longer.

Once the car has disappeared in one of the tunnels leading toward the city, Dick says, “Let’s order pizza.”

“What about the casserole?” Clark asks, trying to channel his inner responsible adult although he likes the idea of pizza.

Dick shrugs. “B doesn’t even know how to find the fridge. He’s not going to check if it’s still there.”

Clark snorts a laugh at that. Bruce may be worried about Dick being rude in public but instead, he should probably worry about raising a little conman.

“Why are you wearing these anyway?” Dick asks as he puts on Clark’s glasses. They’re too big and instantly slide down his nose, so he has to tilt his head back a little.

Clark, in the middle of savoring the second to last slice of pizza, throws him a glance and then continues to follow the rerun of a soap opera his mother used to watch when he was little. The daughter of the show’s villain only just slapped her stepmother. 

“To improve my eyesight,” he says.

They’re in the small living room that he thinks probably wasn’t meant for guests but for servants because it’s cozier than the rest of the manor. Almost everything in the house smells of money and class, but this room, as small and remote as it is, has a worn couch and an old TV like the living room of any average family. When Clark stays over, this is usually where they end up. He suspects that Dick finds the house as alienating as he does.

Dicks huffs. “They’re fake though. This is just glass.”

“Glasses are always just glass,” Clark says. “It’s in the name.” 

On the screen, the stepmother tells the daughter that she will make sure that her secret fiancé will end up behind bars.

“So why can I just look through them and not get a headache?” Dick asks, holding onto the frame to throw Clark a stern glance. 

“Maybe you happen to have the exact same prescription as me. This might be a sign that you need glasses, too,” Clark says while the daughter cries in her bedroom to the sound of a dramatic ballad.

“Superman has perfect eyesight,” Dick says as though there is no doubt about it. When Clark is ready to suggest that, for all he knows, Superman might be wearing contact lenses, Dick explains, “It says so in your file.”

Clark throws him a look. It takes him a moment. “What file?”

Dick shrugs. “There’s one on you on the Batcomputer.” He puts extra stress on the ‘bat’ part. He recently started coining new names for things connected to Batman by adding a prefix to random words after realizing that Batman’s cave is literally a bat cave.

“And it says that I have perfect eyesight,” Clark reiterates. 

“Yeah,” Dick says, finally taking off the glasses and putting them on the table in front of him to grab the last slice of pizza.

“Just that?” Clark asks because that is a random thing to put on file. 

Dick chews for an unnervingly long moment, swallows what seems to be a too big lump, and then says, “I don’t know. It’s pretty long.”

Clark doesn’t know what to do with that information. It makes sense. Bruce is the type to keep tabs on everyone around him. When he tested Clark’s abilities, he made notes and Clark witnessed him pull up information on various personalities in Gotham multiple times before. There is no good reason why he shouldn’t have compiled information on an ally, too. When he first heard about him, he would have seen Superman as a potential threat. 

Still. It’s strange to think that Clark would exist as a file. It doesn’t bother him, that’s not what the feeling is. He can’t put into words why the thought is so puzzling. It’s like existing in a place where he didn’t think he belonged.

For a moment, only the sound of the TV fills the small space. The daughter is sending a secret letter to her fiancé. Dick is moving in his seat until he is upside down with his feet hanging over the backrest.

“Bullies are less likely to hit you when you wear glasses,” Clark eventually says because he realizes that he didn’t actually answer the question.

Dick laughs at that. “You’re scared of bullies?”

“No,” he says. “Not of them but for them.”

It has been years since he thought of that. 

Wearing glasses has become a habit he picked up in high school when he almost did something he couldn’t take back. A boy was hurt that day and he stared at his bloody knuckles that didn’t even have a scratch. 

In the end, he’s the same. 

He likes to think he had a happier childhood than Bruce but wasn’t he also playing a part so that strangers wouldn’t question his every move? The only difference is that his role appeared more normal on the outside. He was The Scrawny Kid who couldn’t fight back, whereas Bruce had to be The Heir who couldn’t play.

Dick looks at him but doesn’t comment.

On TV, the daughter and the fiancé decide that they’re going to elope.

He wakes up when the music abruptly stops. He turns his head to look at the TV that was showing a show on monster trucks when he rested his eyes for a moment and that is completely dark now. He doesn’t know what time it is, so he tries to fumble for his phone but then feels something tugging at his foot. It takes him all his effort not to kick.

“What–” he says, craning his neck. It’s dark in the room but he can still tell who the shape at the other end of the couch is.

“You’ll ruin your spine,” Bruce says with a low voice as he puts Clark’s legs on the couch. Clark was sitting when he nodded off, so he’s still more slouching than lying. 

“You don’t have to–” he quickly says. “I can just go home.” He means to get up but then feels the soft weight on his side. He’s not the only one who was more tired than he realized. Dick is fast asleep with his head against his chest and one arm wrapped around him. 

“Oh,” he whispers. “Sorry. I lost track of time. I can carry him to his room.”

Bruce doesn’t respond but makes it clear what he thinks of that idea when he throws a blanket over Clark’s legs and lightly spreads it to reach up to Dick’s shoulder.

“Sorry,” Clark says again when Bruce turns to leave.

He almost thinks that this will be the last time he gets to be the adult in charge but then Bruce says, “There won’t be any pizza for breakfast.” Clark is pretty sure that he doesn’t just imagine the stifled laugh.

It’s been a few weeks of this now. 

Clark meant it when he suggested to help look out for Dick but it took some negotiating until they found a routine that made sense for everyone. 

The basic premise is that Bruce doesn’t want Dick to be home alone while he is out at night. Officially it’s because Dick is very young but Clark assumes that this is in part because Bruce worries about him leaving the house on his own. Normally, this wouldn’t be an issue because Alfred lives with them but, as it turned out, Alfred recently started ballroom classes on Wednesday that he had to interrupt when Dick moved in with them. This is where Clark eventually came in.

It’s only a matter of a few hours every Wednesday night. Clark doesn’t normally stay overnight. He usually comes over after work, pretends to be a good role model, and then leaves when Alfred returns. That way, he barely misses any time in Metropolis. 

It all makes sense. He likes to help and there are worse things than to spend time with a kid as bright as Dick. Most of the time, they just watch TV. Sometimes they go on excursions in the manor like treasure hunters in a movie. One time they stayed too long in the Batcave and Clark flew Dick up to a cave leading deeper into the ground. Dick decided that they should investigate, only to be interrupted by Batman’s voice coming from a speaker somewhere below them, informing them that Dick had homework to take care of.

It makes sense.

That’s what Clark keeps telling himself.

“You don’t think that’s weird?” Lana asks as they sit in a corner of the only diner in town, milkshakes and fries sitting in front of them as though they’re back to being sixteen. 

When he traveled home for the weekend, he planned to look for to her eventually but then ended up being so busy helping out with the harvest and fixing the leaking roof of the barn that he only met her by chance. He was driving back to the farm after bringing two dozen eggs to the local grocery store when she waved him over on her way home from volunteering at the church.

He didn’t think too much of it. Usually, when he is home, they talk about old school friends or neighbors, so he was wholly unprepared when her first question was, “So what happened to the billionaire with the yacht?”

He didn’t want to lie and pretend that nothing at all happened, so he skirted around the truth as much as possible by talking about his adventures as a babysitter. She just listened but he could tell that she got increasingly concerned. She has that look, the one that reminds him of his mother whenever he talks about being Superman. He thought she would laugh about it the way she did when he genuinely worried that he could be ambushed on a luxury yacht.

“What’s weird about it?” he asks.

“We’re talking about the man who invited you on a trip after meeting you once, right?” she asks. “And now you take care of a kid he adopted? Didn’t you miss a few steps in between? Why is he asking you when he can afford the best nannies in the world instead? You don’t have any qualifications.”

He grimaces because there were steps in between, he just can’t tell her about them. He trusts her but her knowing that he is Superman doesn’t mean that he has a right to expose Bruce. 

“He doesn’t like outsiders in his house,” he says vaguely because even with the security system in place, the Batcave still sits right under it. That’s why Alfred is the only staff member although there are so many dusty rooms that it would take several people to keep them clean.

She frowns and he can tell what she’s thinking. When it comes down to it, he’s an outsider, too. Or at least, he was an outsider. But it’s different. It’s–

“Clark, do you like that man?” she asks.

It’s that question again. He still remembers the last time she asked it. It’s as if he’s thrown back to that afternoon when he stood behind the school, the heat of the summer burning down on them. He started wearing glasses after that.

“I–” he says but then doesn’t know how to explain it. It’s not the same.

She sighs. “I mean, it’s fine if you do but what do you get out of this? Don’t you think you’re being taken advantage of? Because the way I see it, he’s using you as free labor just because he can. This is the exact same thing that happened with–”

“We’re friends,” he says, trying to ignore the void opening up somewhere inside him. He doesn’t want to think about it.

She opens her mouth to protest, so he adds, “That’s what I get out of it. That’s okay, right? I can have friends.”

She searches his gaze for an uncomfortable moment and then puts her hand on his with a sigh. It’s like a weight pulling him down. “I’m worried that you’ll get hurt.”

He puts on a grin. “Did you forget who I am? If there’s one person on earth who can’t get hurt, it’s me.”

She lifts her corners into an unconvincing smile but then doesn’t say anything in return.

She’s wrong because she doesn’t know all the details. 

He never thought that anyone could understand what it’s like to hide a vital part of who he really is. His parents prefer him not to use his powers for anything but heavy lifting and Lana gets nervous when he flies with her. All three of them accept his powers because they love him but he can tell that, deep down, they’re still scared of that side of him. 

With Bruce, it’s different. He’s not scared but either indifferent or vaguely interested, depending on the situation. Most of the time, he makes Clark feel as though being himself is no big deal.

Maybe Bruce is taking advantage of having someone around who can stop a wild child but doesn’t Clark still get more out of it? It’s also not as though Bruce ever asked him for much. Clark is the one who keeps barging into his life.

He doesn’t want more. What he has is enough.

But as he lies awake at night in his childhood bedroom, staring up at his dusty collection of model planes on top of his bookshelf, he wonders if he is maybe misunderstanding something.

They’re friends, right? That's what it boils down to. They’re friends.

But when he thinks about it, he doesn’t know why Bruce even let him get that far. He doesn’t like outsiders in his house but he allowed Clark in. He made contact before Clark knew that they had anything in common.

What did he get out of that? A friend? Intel for a file? A babysitter who feeds his protégé pizza and eats too many pancakes?

Something else?

Something more?

On Wednesday, they go through the same spiel as always. Clark shows up at the manor, Bruce leaves after giving him instructions but something about it feels different. He thinks it’s his mind playing tricks on him again.

“He didn’t say anything about dinner,” he says when he gets on the elevator while Dick decides to scale his back again. He holds out one hand to help him up so that Dick doesn’t rip off another back pocket of his jeans when he misuses it as a step. This happened before and ended with Clark sitting in the kitchen in his underwear when Alfred came home and mended it.

“He told me that pizza is fine,” Dick says as he successfully perches on his shoulder. “But only if it’s one with more veggies. Maybe we can get one with everything. More meat and more veggies. He can’t complain about that.”

Clark laughs but feels a pit in his stomach.

Is that maybe it? Is Clark the fun uncle?

But it’s not like Bruce planned to take in a child Clark could become the fun uncle for, right?

On the following weekend, he’s out reporting on a local protest in front of a bakery organized by a religious group that takes offense to the bakery’s decision to enter a contest with a cake that allegedly looks like Jesus.

“I have no idea why they would send me here,” Lois says when he hands her a cup of coffee he bought at a coffee shop on the other side of the road. She instantly wraps her fingers around it and lets the steam coming from the small opening in the lid warm her face like a spa treatment.

“To keep the citizens of Metropolis up to date with what’s going on in their city?” he asks, pretending to be cold as he takes a sip of his coffee. It’s a sunny day in October but the wind is already bringing the first prospect of the upcoming winter.

She rolls her eyes. “They could have sent literally anyone else. An intern could write a nice little paragraph about why this is the most idiotic thing they have ever witnessed. What do they need me for?”

He laughs and means to explain why she writes the best paragraphs but then gets distracted by his pocket buzzing. It’s that frequency, the one Bruce set up for emergencies. When he pulls his phone out, it’s the number of the manor.

“Sorry, I have to take this,” he says as he already starts pushing out of the crowd around them.

“Oh no! You’re going to miss the best part,” Lois exclaims in such an openly mocking tone that two protesters turn around to her.

He almost knocks over a lady holding a sign when he picks up his phone. “Bruce, what–” he asks but doesn’t get to finish the question when there’s a different voice at the other end.

“Master Kent,” Alfred says. “I am very sorry to trouble you but it seems that Master Bruce could use your assistance with a small matter.”

He instantly knows that something has to be seriously wrong. He helped before but never because Bruce asked him to.

This time the yacht is further south, closer to warmer water and further away from Metropolis, so it takes him a little longer to get there. On his way, he has to fly through a rain shower which almost makes him lose directions. His heart is racing. If Bruce had time to signal Alfred to get backup, he’s probably okay. He would do something himself if he thought there was a serious risk. Right?

But then again, if there is no serious risk, why would he need any help at all? Clark can see why it makes more sense for Superman to randomly appear in the middle of the ocean but the coast guard can probably take care of– 

What did Alfred say? Pirates?

Why are there even pirates in today’s day and age? Don’t they belong to old movies where men with moustaches wear tights and fight with swords?

Technically, he’s wearing tights, too.

Bruce is probably okay, right?

By the time he arrives, one of the decks of the yacht is burning while a smaller ship is docked to it. People dressed in white are screaming. Some have jumped into the sea, trying to reach a lifeboat that is slowly drifting away.

Clark can’t see Bruce, so he focuses on what he can do for the moment. He picks up the swimmers and drops them off on the lifeboat while trying to push it further away from the main ship. When they see him, more people jump into the water to be rescued but he is worried that he’s slowly reaching the capacity of the boat. There’s supposed to be another one.

When he flies around the yacht, there are gunshots. A woman in a white dress falls flat on the deck when he flies over, avoiding the bullets fired at him. He can’t see where the shots are coming from but can only hope that there are no hostages. Bruce wouldn’t let himself be taken, right?

Right?

The second lifeboat is stuck. Two men dressed in black and white uniforms are desperately trying to pull it free and quickly step to the side when he breaks off the bolts to help. Once it drops to the sea, they climb down a ladder to reach it, ducking when more shots fill the air.

“Try to gain some distance,” Clark says. When one man looks as though he wants to protest, he adds, “I’ll bring the others over to you.”

He picks up the woman in the white dress and a waitress who comes running at him with her hands over her head. More people jumped off the other side, trying to reach the first lifeboat while the passengers on it yell at them that there’s no more space, so he gets them to the second boat where the staff members have taken the rudders to reach the rugged coastline in the distance.

Once he is sure that everyone within view is more or less safe, he finally flies inside and knocks out a guy in a black ski mask who tries to shoot him from up close. Smoke has filled the alleyways, so he slows down a little to avoid accidentally hurting regular guests. 

As he moves on, he scans empty cabins, tells one more waitress to get to the deck when he spots her cowering behind a door, and then quickly determines that everyone else on the ship retreated to the same location. They’re all on the bridge. From what he can tell, there’s only one hostage.

He tries not to panic. It’s going to be okay. Bruce wouldn’t let himself be taken hostage unless he would be sure that Clark would get him out, right? He would consider the fact that, unlike Clark, he can very much get wounded, right? There would be a plan.

Right?

He decides to break through the window in the front because the pirates are facing the door. Time is of the essence so he flies right into the hail of bullets, knocking out two shooters in one swoop. When he turns around, desperately hoping that the other wouldn’t have hurt Bruce, he is instead faced with a scene that instantly makes him feel like an idiot.

The third pirate lies next to Bruce’s feet while he contorts his zip-tied hands to look at his watch. He is perfectly calm. His heart beats as regularly as on any other day. As if this is no different from telling Dick to eat his greens.

“What–” Clark asks.

Bruce just walks toward him, holding out his arms. “Can you get this off?” While Clark tries to rip the plastic without hurting him, he looks around himself. “Anyone else left on the ship?”

“Just the people in this room, one passed out further down, and one lady I haven’t evacuated yet,” Clark says.

He is an idiot. What was he even worried about? It’s not the costume that makes the man. Even if he’s dressed in a white suit with boat shoes, this is still Batman. He worried about Batman, a man who can’t be shocked by anything. 

“I will take care of her,” Bruce says, rubbing his wrists. “I’m assuming that the rest of these people are currently trying to escape, so make sure that they can’t get anywhere until law enforcement arrives. Take everyone with you. I already sent a distress signal.”

“On it,” Clark says, trying to swallow the crazed laugh budding in the back of his throat.

The rest is easy. He picks up the unconscious pirates to bring them to their ship where more people shoot at him. He burns through the engine, picks up the whole ship, and strands it on a small rocky island. For good measure, he destroys everything that looks like life rafts or communication devices.

He finds the waitress paddling toward the second lifeboat in a life vest and picks her up. Bruce is again not within sight but he chooses not to see that as a bad sign. 

After bringing both boats to the shore, he returns to the yacht and spots Bruce swimming away from it.

“Sink it!” Bruce yells at him when he approaches him.

Clark thinks he misheard him, so he flies a little lower. “What?”

“I need you to sink the ship. There’s stuff on it I don’t want to be found,” Bruce says, swimming in place. “Just carry it further out and make it look like part of the attack.”

That’s it then. 

He’s insane. He completely lost his mind. Here he is, surviving an attempted abduction while dealing with the type of property damage most people would never recover from in their lifetime, and he still doesn’t seem more than mildly inconvenienced despite looking like a wet dog.

But in the end, Clark is no better. Maybe he’s just becoming numb to the insanity. Rather than argue, he flies off to sink a ship probably worth more than all the farm equipment in his neighborhood in Smallville combined.

He eventually finds him scaling a rock sticking out of the sea a few miles from shore. He doesn’t ask whether he should help because as bad as Bruce looks, he still makes it appear like a routine exercise. When he sits down with a groan and wipes the wet hair out of his face, Clark hovers in front of him.

There’s a pause. Clark can’t even begin to sort his thoughts. It’s all a maelstrom of emotions.

Bruce musters him for a moment and then says, “Thank you for coming.”

He makes it sound as though he invited him over for a casual gathering, so although Clark doesn’t mean to, he has to laugh. This is all just absurd. But that is probably to be expected from being in the vicinity of a man like that.

“Don’t mention it,” he says as he motions at him to scoot over so that he can sit down next to him on the rock.

They sit like that for a moment that feels entirely too peaceful. Help hasn’t arrived yet but from what he can tell, everyone he rescued is more or less healthy and no one has yet tried to escape the island prison. When he moves to look further up the coast, his arms brushes against Bruce’s, and Bruce uses that moment to sneeze.

“Should I bring you over to the others? I think there are emergency vehicles on the way,” Clark says because he didn’t consider that. He never worries about getting sick but while his suit instantly dried off, Bruce is still soaking wet.

Bruce sighs unhappily. The moment he returns to civilization, he instantly has to start acting. That’s probably even more frustrating in a situation he could have easily handled if he had not needed to worry about blowing his cover. He only needed Superman because he couldn’t be Batman.

Clark thinks he can understand that. After all, they’re probably the same. Two boys who weren’t allowed to fight their own fights.

Still, he figures that he has to do something, so he grabs the cape and wraps the end of it over Bruce’s shoulders. When Bruce frowns at him, he says, “I don’t want Alfred to yell at me if you get sick.”

Bruce cracks a smile at that and pulls the cap a little further down. “He never yells. He just gives you a disappointed look.”

Clark grimaces because he can picture that a little too easily. “That’s even worse.”

The smile widens a little as Bruce looks down at the sea below them. Now that Clark focuses on it, he can tell that he’s shivering. He doesn’t know how he missed that. The facade works a little too well. He, too, always ends up thinking that Bruce is as grand as he pretends to be.

“You have seaweed stuck to your neck,” he says when Bruce throws him a glance because he is probably staring. Bruce touches the wrong side of his neck, so Clark reaches out, trying to pull off the leafy piece. His fingers hover over his skin when he freezes.

He knows he isn’t imagining it. Bruce's heart rate changes. It didn’t significantly change once during the whole attack. Even when he swam to safety, it was still even but now it’s erratic. This keeps happening, doesn’t it? Even if he doesn’t look distressed, his rhythm breaks.

“What?” Bruce asks, his voice a little too low.

The rhythm keeps breaking around him. Sometimes, Clark says something or does something stupid, and the rhythm changes to something less even. He never saw a connection.

“You heart,” he says. It’s confusing.

Before he can think about it, he lightly touches his fingertips to Bruce’s chest. It only makes it worse. It’s like triggering a wind chime. 

When he spreads out his hand, Bruce doesn’t stop him. He smells of seaweed and saltwater but also like the house and the clothes Clark borrowed before. He never returned them. He didn’t wash them because he wasn’t sure whether they would survive his washing machine and whether Bruce even wanted them back, so they're folded up in a drawer in his bedroom. Sometimes he opens it, staring at them, wondering if–

Wondering about that feeling. Wondering about himself. Wondering what would happen if he started asking himself Lana’s question.

There’s no point in being honest. He can’t be honest. There is always something he has to hide like dirt being swept under a rug. 

But if Bruce’s heartbeat changes because of him, doesn’t that mean something? Doesn’t that mean that, maybe, it’s not just him? That maybe–

He makes a mistake then.

The moment he leans in, Bruce moves back and Clark quickly pulls away his hand.

“Ah,” he says, jumping up.

What was he trying to do?

What–

“I–” he says. 

Bruce looks up at him, brows furrowed. 

“I better go,” he says and doesn’t wait for a response as he flies up and up and up until the air gets thinner and the clouds disappear to make room for the embrace of imperfect darkness.

He doesn’t try to think about anything. 

He doesn’t want to think about anything.

But even when he tries to calm down his breath and not stare at Earth shining bright below, he’s very sure of one thing.

He was trying to kiss him. He wanted to kiss him. He wasn’t acting like a good friend but like something else. Something worse. Something that ruins it all.