OH LOOK, I'M A HUGE CLICHÉ, AND THIS IS RIDICULOUS SELF-INDULGENT FLAILING, FULL OF HANDWAVY LIES ABOUT MEDICAL TREATMENT
WHAT A SHOCK
He freezes, stupidly, and the explosion hits him like—well, like a slap, at most, because he's Superman. But it's enough to get him moving again. Even he struggles to see through the wall of fire that comes after, but he only has to wait a moment for the worst of it to pass, flames ballooning out from what's left of the truck tank and then dying back.
The force of the blast made the end of the bus skid sideways with a screech, a scraping smash of glass; but behind the crackling fire, the noises of surprise and dismay from everyone further away in the street, Diana's quiet curse in Clark's ear—there's a cough.
Not Bruce, Clark thinks, it sounds wrong, but he scans the bus anyway and there's—there's two people in there, huddled close.
And—"Batman," one of them is saying breathlessly, "Batman, are you—? Oh—oh, god—"
Clark moves, that must be what happens; but it seems to him like the world just blurs around him and then he's there. The front of the bus is furthest away from the tanker, Bruce would have prioritized the rear end—but he'd still have come back for everyone if he could, and he hadn't been able to predict that the explosion would flip a car over the side of the bus—
Clark lifts it off, tears the bus's roof and side apart and peels the roof back, and the teenage girl Bruce has pinned against the lower side of the bus turns her face toward him and gasps, "Superman," before coughing again. "There was—there was a kid, I told him to get the kid first, and then he came back but I, I couldn't—"
"Shh, hey, it's okay," Clark says quickly, because he can see her better now; her face is smeared with grime, tears, and there's spatters of blood around her, a creeping pool of it beneath her arm. This side of the bus got dented in by something before the bus toppled over—the window had broken, caved in, and a bar from the frame has gone through the girl's shoulder. Bruce would have wanted to be careful, moving her—would have wanted to get everybody he could move more easily to safety first, and—
And then he'd come back, and the tank had exploded, and he'd covered her. He'd covered her, of course he had; and that's why there's two jagged pieces of metal sticking out of Bruce's lower back.
Clark can't figure out how to move either Bruce or the girl safely, so he moves the bus instead—he lifts it carefully over the cars around it, flies it past the wider circle of debris that's still burning, and then sets it back down where emergency services can actually get to it.
As it turns out, Bruce didn't actually get properly impaled. The shrapnel didn't go through him, didn't even manage to puncture a kidney. Bruce Wayne is going to get away with a particularly bad bout of flu that may or may not turn into walking pneumonia, depending on how Batman's recovery shakes out.
And Clark learns all this from Alfred, about eighteen hours later. Superman can't just—spend hours in a hospital, or looking over the shoulders of whatever private doctors get rushed in, or whatever setup Bruce has prepared for dealing with something like this. And Clark Kent can't start following Batman around—especially not now that he's publicly dating Bruce Wayne, ironically enough.
He can't—he can't do anything. He leaves, changes back into his civilian clothes, carefully retraces his steps to the flower shop; and he stands there and looks at the calla lilies until the place is about to close.
At least he's got a good excuse to buy them now.
There's no date; no car shows up. But in the end Clark goes to the lake house anyway. He can't stand the idea of spending one more second staring at the ceiling in his apartment, can't even fathom going to work. He needs to know what's happening, or he's going to lose his mind.
He calls in sick—and of course he's never done it before, but thankfully that only makes Perry more willing to assume he really does need the time. He calls Mom, too, before he leaves, and he doesn't even have to tell her anything—the second he says, "It's me," she draws in a sharp breath.
"Oh, Clark," she says, "I saw what happened—is he all right? Is it—"
"I don't know," Clark tells her, and his voice sounds strange even to him. "I don't—"
"All right," she says quickly, "all right. Go on. Just—just let me know if you need anything. Everything will be fine, honey."
And in the end, as always, Mom is right. Bruce has already been moved back to the lake house by the time Clark gets there—"It was difficult," Alfred acknowledges quietly, "but I believe we succeeded in completing the transfer without any breaches of security."
"Good," Clark manages, "that's—that's good," and then he finds himself sitting down abruptly, even though Superman's knees really shouldn't be capable of going weak.
"Indeed," Alfred agrees. He sits down himself and rubs one temple gently; it's the first time Clark can remember seeing him look tired. "And Master Wayne employs excellent private doctors. The staples—"
Clark winces.
"—appear to be holding, there's no sign of infection, and Master Wayne is currently sleeping." Alfred pauses for a moment and then adds, "I suspect it will not be obvious; but I am nevertheless certain he will be glad to see you when he wakes, Master Kent."
"Clark," Clark says, because it never works but it'll make Alfred smile.
And it does. "As always, I obey," Alfred murmurs, and then, pointedly, "Master Kent," because sometimes he's just as much of a wiseass as Bruce.
So: Clark stays. He doesn't go in the room the doctors have set up for Bruce, not while Bruce is sleeping—he's not sure Bruce would be okay with that once he'd woken up. But he discovers that Alfred's made up the bed in his usual room with fresh sheets. (And Alfred worries about Bruce at least as much as Clark does; he was probably just trying to find small ways to keep himself busy, while the doctors were working. But he still had to have done it before Clark even arrived, like he expected it. And that's—that makes Clark feel uncomfortably obvious, embarrassed and grateful at the same time.)
He and Alfred eat a quiet lunch together, in the sympathetic silence of people who are thinking about the same thing and know it, and know neither one of them has anything new to say about it. Alfred made the food; so Clark uses a hint of superspeed to get to the sink first, and wins himself the right to wash up. Alfred doesn't even protest too hard.
And then, a little while before dinner, Bruce wakes up. And Alfred, like Mom, is always right: if Bruce is glad to see Clark there, it's awfully hard to tell.
"It's not necessary," is the first thing he says to Clark, flat, already pushing himself up a lot faster than Clark thinks he's supposed to.
"Master Wayne," Alfred says, "I believe the doctors intended for you to—"
"This shouldn't have happened at all," Bruce interrupts, switching targets. "The suit I keep at the office needs to be lighter than the patrol suit, I was prepared for that, but I can't be worrying about shrapnel if I'm going to keep—"
"Master Wayne, sir," Alfred says, in a tone of deep patience, "if you think I am going to permit you to so much look at the workshop today, then you are still so thoroughly drugged that you cannot legally be allowed to operate heavy machinery."
Bruce locks gazes with him. Alfred raises an eyebrow; and after a long moment, Bruce eases back down onto his side with a sharp sigh through his nose.
"And as regards Master Kent's presence," Alfred continues, more quietly, "if he cannot remain here by your invitation, then he will remain by mine. I imagine it will be quite a struggle to prevent you from risking your recovery in a wide and inventive variety of idiotic ways, and I expect I shall greatly appreciate his assistance in winning it."
He bows to Bruce without a visible hint of irony, and then catches Clark's eyes on the way out—Clark gives him a small nod. If Alfred needs an ally in the fight to keep Bruce from popping his staples out, then he's got one.
And Bruce may have given up on arguing with Alfred, but apparently that won't stop him from trying to talk Clark around: "It's not necessary," he says again, once the sound of Alfred's steps has faded.
"Maybe not," Clark says agreeably, and doesn't move, which makes Bruce frown briefly. He doesn't understand, Clark thinks—unlike Bruce, Clark's never needed to convince himself things are necessary before he does them anyway.
(Kissing Bruce on Mom's back porch is proof enough of that.)
"There's no good reason for it," Bruce insists, a little hoarse. "As far as anyone else is concerned, it's a flu, Clark," and the idiot's already started trying to get up again—
"A really, really bad flu," Clark says. "Besides, I'm in love with you."
Bruce's gaze snaps to him; nothing about his face changes, but he stops pushing himself up.
"That's the narrative, remember?" Clark adds, with more confidence than he feels. "I'm in love with you. And I'd—I'd stay, if you were that sick. I'd stick around to look after you, at least until you were feeling better."
Bruce just looks at him silently. And then, eventually, his eyes flick away. "I suppose I'm not exactly in a position to throw you out," he says, dry.
"No, not exactly," and Clark strives to keep his tone conversational instead of smug. "Now lie down, you look awful."
It's not a lie: Bruce does look awful, tired and hollow-eyed, face tense and drawn with pain. He probably is still a little bit drugged, too, which means he'll feel even worse when the painkillers actually finish wearing off. And Clark wouldn't put it past him to refuse to take more, even on medical advice. Just to make this as difficult as possible for everyone.
And maybe it's the drugs or maybe even that much was enough to tire him when he's like this, but either way Bruce does it, and his eyes are already closing. "That's a terrible thing to say," he murmurs, voice swapped over to Wayne-charming, amused, even though it's started to waver a little. "For the record, Clark: you probably shouldn't say that to anybody you're in love with."
(Bruce is exhausted, injured, drugged; his eyes stay shut, his breathing levels out, and Clark's almost sure he's not faking. It's as safe as it ever will be to tell him softly, "Too late.")
FILL: tell all the truth (but tell it slant); Bruce/Clark, fake dating (14/17ish?)
WHAT A SHOCK
He freezes, stupidly, and the explosion hits him like—well, like a slap, at most, because he's Superman. But it's enough to get him moving again. Even he struggles to see through the wall of fire that comes after, but he only has to wait a moment for the worst of it to pass, flames ballooning out from what's left of the truck tank and then dying back.
The force of the blast made the end of the bus skid sideways with a screech, a scraping smash of glass; but behind the crackling fire, the noises of surprise and dismay from everyone further away in the street, Diana's quiet curse in Clark's ear—there's a cough.
Not Bruce, Clark thinks, it sounds wrong, but he scans the bus anyway and there's—there's two people in there, huddled close.
And—"Batman," one of them is saying breathlessly, "Batman, are you—? Oh—oh, god—"
Clark moves, that must be what happens; but it seems to him like the world just blurs around him and then he's there. The front of the bus is furthest away from the tanker, Bruce would have prioritized the rear end—but he'd still have come back for everyone if he could, and he hadn't been able to predict that the explosion would flip a car over the side of the bus—
Clark lifts it off, tears the bus's roof and side apart and peels the roof back, and the teenage girl Bruce has pinned against the lower side of the bus turns her face toward him and gasps, "Superman," before coughing again. "There was—there was a kid, I told him to get the kid first, and then he came back but I, I couldn't—"
"Shh, hey, it's okay," Clark says quickly, because he can see her better now; her face is smeared with grime, tears, and there's spatters of blood around her, a creeping pool of it beneath her arm. This side of the bus got dented in by something before the bus toppled over—the window had broken, caved in, and a bar from the frame has gone through the girl's shoulder. Bruce would have wanted to be careful, moving her—would have wanted to get everybody he could move more easily to safety first, and—
And then he'd come back, and the tank had exploded, and he'd covered her. He'd covered her, of course he had; and that's why there's two jagged pieces of metal sticking out of Bruce's lower back.
Clark can't figure out how to move either Bruce or the girl safely, so he moves the bus instead—he lifts it carefully over the cars around it, flies it past the wider circle of debris that's still burning, and then sets it back down where emergency services can actually get to it.
As it turns out, Bruce didn't actually get properly impaled. The shrapnel didn't go through him, didn't even manage to puncture a kidney. Bruce Wayne is going to get away with a particularly bad bout of flu that may or may not turn into walking pneumonia, depending on how Batman's recovery shakes out.
And Clark learns all this from Alfred, about eighteen hours later. Superman can't just—spend hours in a hospital, or looking over the shoulders of whatever private doctors get rushed in, or whatever setup Bruce has prepared for dealing with something like this. And Clark Kent can't start following Batman around—especially not now that he's publicly dating Bruce Wayne, ironically enough.
He can't—he can't do anything. He leaves, changes back into his civilian clothes, carefully retraces his steps to the flower shop; and he stands there and looks at the calla lilies until the place is about to close.
At least he's got a good excuse to buy them now.
There's no date; no car shows up. But in the end Clark goes to the lake house anyway. He can't stand the idea of spending one more second staring at the ceiling in his apartment, can't even fathom going to work. He needs to know what's happening, or he's going to lose his mind.
He calls in sick—and of course he's never done it before, but thankfully that only makes Perry more willing to assume he really does need the time. He calls Mom, too, before he leaves, and he doesn't even have to tell her anything—the second he says, "It's me," she draws in a sharp breath.
"Oh, Clark," she says, "I saw what happened—is he all right? Is it—"
"I don't know," Clark tells her, and his voice sounds strange even to him. "I don't—"
"All right," she says quickly, "all right. Go on. Just—just let me know if you need anything. Everything will be fine, honey."
And in the end, as always, Mom is right. Bruce has already been moved back to the lake house by the time Clark gets there—"It was difficult," Alfred acknowledges quietly, "but I believe we succeeded in completing the transfer without any breaches of security."
"Good," Clark manages, "that's—that's good," and then he finds himself sitting down abruptly, even though Superman's knees really shouldn't be capable of going weak.
"Indeed," Alfred agrees. He sits down himself and rubs one temple gently; it's the first time Clark can remember seeing him look tired. "And Master Wayne employs excellent private doctors. The staples—"
Clark winces.
"—appear to be holding, there's no sign of infection, and Master Wayne is currently sleeping." Alfred pauses for a moment and then adds, "I suspect it will not be obvious; but I am nevertheless certain he will be glad to see you when he wakes, Master Kent."
"Clark," Clark says, because it never works but it'll make Alfred smile.
And it does. "As always, I obey," Alfred murmurs, and then, pointedly, "Master Kent," because sometimes he's just as much of a wiseass as Bruce.
So: Clark stays. He doesn't go in the room the doctors have set up for Bruce, not while Bruce is sleeping—he's not sure Bruce would be okay with that once he'd woken up. But he discovers that Alfred's made up the bed in his usual room with fresh sheets. (And Alfred worries about Bruce at least as much as Clark does; he was probably just trying to find small ways to keep himself busy, while the doctors were working. But he still had to have done it before Clark even arrived, like he expected it. And that's—that makes Clark feel uncomfortably obvious, embarrassed and grateful at the same time.)
He and Alfred eat a quiet lunch together, in the sympathetic silence of people who are thinking about the same thing and know it, and know neither one of them has anything new to say about it. Alfred made the food; so Clark uses a hint of superspeed to get to the sink first, and wins himself the right to wash up. Alfred doesn't even protest too hard.
And then, a little while before dinner, Bruce wakes up. And Alfred, like Mom, is always right: if Bruce is glad to see Clark there, it's awfully hard to tell.
"It's not necessary," is the first thing he says to Clark, flat, already pushing himself up a lot faster than Clark thinks he's supposed to.
"Master Wayne," Alfred says, "I believe the doctors intended for you to—"
"This shouldn't have happened at all," Bruce interrupts, switching targets. "The suit I keep at the office needs to be lighter than the patrol suit, I was prepared for that, but I can't be worrying about shrapnel if I'm going to keep—"
"Master Wayne, sir," Alfred says, in a tone of deep patience, "if you think I am going to permit you to so much look at the workshop today, then you are still so thoroughly drugged that you cannot legally be allowed to operate heavy machinery."
Bruce locks gazes with him. Alfred raises an eyebrow; and after a long moment, Bruce eases back down onto his side with a sharp sigh through his nose.
"And as regards Master Kent's presence," Alfred continues, more quietly, "if he cannot remain here by your invitation, then he will remain by mine. I imagine it will be quite a struggle to prevent you from risking your recovery in a wide and inventive variety of idiotic ways, and I expect I shall greatly appreciate his assistance in winning it."
He bows to Bruce without a visible hint of irony, and then catches Clark's eyes on the way out—Clark gives him a small nod. If Alfred needs an ally in the fight to keep Bruce from popping his staples out, then he's got one.
And Bruce may have given up on arguing with Alfred, but apparently that won't stop him from trying to talk Clark around: "It's not necessary," he says again, once the sound of Alfred's steps has faded.
"Maybe not," Clark says agreeably, and doesn't move, which makes Bruce frown briefly. He doesn't understand, Clark thinks—unlike Bruce, Clark's never needed to convince himself things are necessary before he does them anyway.
(Kissing Bruce on Mom's back porch is proof enough of that.)
"There's no good reason for it," Bruce insists, a little hoarse. "As far as anyone else is concerned, it's a flu, Clark," and the idiot's already started trying to get up again—
"A really, really bad flu," Clark says. "Besides, I'm in love with you."
Bruce's gaze snaps to him; nothing about his face changes, but he stops pushing himself up.
"That's the narrative, remember?" Clark adds, with more confidence than he feels. "I'm in love with you. And I'd—I'd stay, if you were that sick. I'd stick around to look after you, at least until you were feeling better."
Bruce just looks at him silently. And then, eventually, his eyes flick away. "I suppose I'm not exactly in a position to throw you out," he says, dry.
"No, not exactly," and Clark strives to keep his tone conversational instead of smug. "Now lie down, you look awful."
It's not a lie: Bruce does look awful, tired and hollow-eyed, face tense and drawn with pain. He probably is still a little bit drugged, too, which means he'll feel even worse when the painkillers actually finish wearing off. And Clark wouldn't put it past him to refuse to take more, even on medical advice. Just to make this as difficult as possible for everyone.
And maybe it's the drugs or maybe even that much was enough to tire him when he's like this, but either way Bruce does it, and his eyes are already closing. "That's a terrible thing to say," he murmurs, voice swapped over to Wayne-charming, amused, even though it's started to waver a little. "For the record, Clark: you probably shouldn't say that to anybody you're in love with."
(Bruce is exhausted, injured, drugged; his eyes stay shut, his breathing levels out, and Clark's almost sure he's not faking. It's as safe as it ever will be to tell him softly, "Too late.")