Hey, check it out, Bruce is continuing to make terrible extremely logical decisions that coincidentally maximize Clark's angst! HOW REMARKABLE.

and for fuck's sake, someone take the em dashes away from me /o\




Clark wishes he were surprised.

But he wakes up in Bruce's bed, sunlight pouring in, and even before he blinks his eyes open, he knows perfectly well that there's no one there. He can't even fool himself the way humans do, pretending that maybe Bruce is just downstairs or in the shower; his hearing yields nothing but Alfred, moving easily around the kitchen. (And Clark has stretched it far enough to catch the wind in the trees outside, a few drops of dew scattering from the leaves and falling.)

Bruce is gone. And it would have been more surprising if he hadn't been.

Clark lies there and stares at the wall, watches the light creep across it. It's the weekend, he has nowhere to be—nowhere he wants to be, either, except here; but everything's gone wrong and he can't stay. Everything's gone wrong and he has no idea what to do about it, and he has to leave.

He gets up. His clothes are still everywhere—Bruce must have had to step over them to get out. Clark wonders distantly whether he hesitated at all.

It's hard to imagine he did.

Clark's suit jacket is still somewhere on the floor in the car, probably. But then it's one of the ones Bruce got for him—it's technically Bruce's anyway. He can keep it.




Alfred maybe has supersenses of his own: he doesn't interrupt Clark at any point during the process of dressing, but appears just as Clark's finished rolling up his second sleeve. "Good morning, Master Kent."

He says it so gently there's no way he doesn't know, no way he hasn't figured out exactly what's happened. And that should be desperately embarrassing, but Clark mostly just feels sort of tired.

"Good morning, Alfred," he says automatically, managing half a smile; and Alfred's expression is so kind and sorry that it doesn't feel strange to add, "He's gone, isn't he?"

"Yes," Alfred says, very low.

And Clark knew that already, but it still means something to hear it from someone else, to say it out loud. He draws in a long slow breath, lets it out, and finds himself staring down helplessly at his own bare feet. (Socks—he'd had socks, hadn't he? Where had those managed to end up?)

"Come have breakfast, Master Kent."

"No," Clark says, "no," and he flashes Alfred another little smile and hopes Alfred's kindness will extend to pretending to believe it. God, he should have just run for it—Alfred might not even have noticed the breeze he'd leave by passing, if he'd chosen his route carefully enough. "No, thank you, but I—I'd better go—"

Alfred lets him run out of words, lets the silence stretch for a moment; and then he crosses the space between them in two quick steps and touches Clark's elbow. "Come have breakfast, Master Kent," he says again.

Clark swallows and meets his eyes. "Okay."




Alfred also seems to have sensed that Clark has no interest in anything complex or substantial—the pancakes he serves up look like something Mom might make, except for the picture-perfect round edges. As hard as it is to picture him soberly flipping them in the lake house's terrifyingly clean kitchen.

He eats one himself, even though Clark's pretty sure he must've had breakfast already. It feels almost easy for a few minutes: quiet, not uncomfortable, the sun still shining in wide warm stripes across the floor, the table, their plates. Clark's not all that hungry, but the pancakes still taste good, and there's strawberries too, in a little glass bowl Alfred has positioned so that it's very precisely equidistant between his seat and Clark's.

And then Alfred swallows a bite of pancake and looks up at Clark, for the first time since they sat down, and says, "He is making a mistake."

Clark manages not to choke on half a strawberry. "I—uh—"

"He is," Alfred repeats. "I can't say whether he will figure it out. But however Master Wayne chooses to deal with this—or to fail to deal with it, as the case may be—there is something you should know: you will always, always be welcome here. As, indeed," he adds, "you will always be welcome in any building to which I possess the keys."

His voice is warm and a little droll, and the words startle Clark into half of a laugh, a short quick breath out the nose.

And this is going to be bad, with Bruce. Clark has no doubt about that. But—hey, he's been impaled through the chest, and he's all right.

Maybe he really will survive this.

"Thank you, Alfred," he says.

Alfred smiles. "You're welcome, Master Kent."

"Clark," Clark says softly.

And Alfred looks at him for a long moment and then says, gentle, "Clark." He waits a beat; and then he points his fork at Clark and adds, "Just this once, you understand. Don't start thinking you've won."

"Never, Master Pennyworth," Clark assures him.

"Oh, sweet Mother of God, never do that again."




Wherever Bruce has gone, whatever it is he's doing, he wouldn't have left like that if he wanted Clark to be there when he came back. So Clark doesn't linger long enough to force Alfred to make him lunch, too.

The weekend's not a loss, at least. He goes back to his apartment, cleans up a little—does errands, because he hadn't really bothered to restock the fridge properly after those weeks at the lake house. He makes a run to Mom's, speeds through a handful of comfortingly familiar old farm chores and then sits on the step with her and drinks a tall cool glass of lemonade. If she notices that he seems off (and it's Mom: she does), she must guess that it has something to do with Bruce, and she's kind to him; she smiles, ruffles his hair, and doesn't ask.

On Monday, he goes into work about an hour and a half earlier than usual. Not because anything's worse, not because there's anything to worry about—just because he can't sleep, and lying awake listening to the clock tick felt silly. He might as well get something done.

There's a few other people there already, because the Planet building is almost never completely empty. But once he reaches his desk, he's as good as alone: there's nothing but the morning fog outside the windows, the tap of keys as he types, and the low distant hum of Metropolis being Metropolis. He does some research he's been putting off, and pulls together a list of contacts to try at a more reasonable hour, plus a good six hundred words based off the notes he took at that press conference with the city chief of police.

It's actually kind of nice. Peaceful. He lifts his head when Cat Grant comes in and finds himself smiling at her for real.

Which lasts right up until she stares back at him and says, "Oh—Clark. I'm so sorry."




She shows him the photos in her office. And it's not—he's not surprised. He understands what Bruce is doing, he's pretty sure. He can look at them with objective eyes. Bruce is leaning in for all of them; is touching both of the dark-haired women a little too much, hands a little too far above the knees to look innocent; doesn't seem to have actually kissed the blond man, but has his hand cupped around the back of his neck, is feeding him a line or telling him a joke with his lips almost touching the guy's ear. Nothing conclusive, and yet still enough to draw conclusions.

It's strategic, Clark thinks. Bruce has made a decision, is sending a message—that's all.

It doesn't really help.

Cat looks up at him after the last one, unusually grave. "You didn't know," she summarizes.

"I—had an inkling," Clark says, quiet.

Because he had, hadn't he? Bruce had been trying to find a line, but maybe Clark had found one instead—had found one and had shoved Bruce full-tilt over it. And this is Bruce telling him: no further. This is Bruce saying that they need to stop.

It's fair to think Bruce should have talked to him about it first—isn't it? Or is Clark just telling himself that because he wants Bruce to have talked to him?

Not that it matters now. It's done.




It's lucky he came in early—the reporters start arriving not too long after Cat, Clark can see them from the window. More of them than there ever were, even right before the first date: the dinner going well is less interesting than the dinner going badly, Clark remembers, and this is the worst things have ever gone.

Everybody in the office is weird. They're all trying to be careful with him. Even Ron looks at him gently, talks quietly around him, like a loud noise might hurt him.

By lunch he's so sick of it he can't stand it anymore, and he escapes up to the roof. That's where Lois finds him.

He hears her coming and braces himself for even more smothering sympathy, but he should have known better. Lois wouldn't. Instead she comes up to him where he's sitting, back against the low wall that runs around the roof's edge, and sits down next to him. "Are you two—is it over?" she asks after a moment.

"I think he's made his opinion pretty clear," Clark says, without looking up, and then, because he can say it when it's Lois, "Please, I—I don't want to talk about it."

"What do you want to do?" she says.

Clark closes his eyes, rubs a hand across his face. He couldn't sleep earlier, but now he feels so tired. "Just sit for a while."

"Okay," she says—as though that's reasonable, as though he's not acting like a kid getting dumped for the first time. He lets himself glance at her, and she catches him at it and smiles, small but real. "Do you have to do it alone?"

"No," he allows; and she puts a hand over his on his knee and stays.




He's not sure how long they sit there, but it must be at least half an hour. Lois doesn't get impatient, doesn't even seem to need to shift position—then again, Clark thinks, they met for the first time in Antarctica. She's probably sat for much longer times in much less comfortable places than the roof of the Planet building.

"Was there somebody to do this for you?" He doesn't realize he's decided to say it out loud until he hears it come out of his mouth, and rushes to clarify, "After I—after what happened."

Lois smiles and pats his hand. "Sure," she says. "Lucy. And your mom." She hesitates, and then adds slowly, "And, well—Bruce, actually."

Clark blinks.

"He stopped by a few times while I was at the house with your mother." She shrugs a shoulder. "I don't think he ever meant to catch me there, but sometimes we just—had decided to go see her at the same time. I didn't even know he knew you, the first time it happened, but your mom explained everything."

Clark wonders distantly what Mom had come up with.

"And he was really—I don't know. He was really thoughtful. Really kind. Not that he's not being a dick to you today," Lois adds, "because he is. Cat probably showed you that statement he released: 'not answering any questions about my personal life', as if it's ever bothered him before. I totally do have plenty of mean things to say about him right now—"

"No," Clark says, "no, it's—" and he can't tell her everything, he knows that, but surely it's safe enough to say, "It's not what it looks like, with the pictures. He didn't do anything. He's just—he's just telling me what he wants me to do."

"Mmhmm," and Lois's tone is dubious but Clark can't blame her, because it kind of does sound like Clark's just making excuses.

And maybe he is. Bruce wants to stop pretending to date Clark, which is—which is fine, Clark can live with that. But Bruce is thoughtful, sometimes; Bruce can be kind, almost unbearably so. Mom loves him. And Clark—

Clark doesn't want to lose him. Even if Bruce never kisses him, never touches him, ever again—that was never all of it. Clark liked getting to know him, learning how to be around him. And for all he knows, if Bruce gets his way it's only ever going to be Superman and Batman from here on out.

Clark closes his eyes and lets his head drop back into the wall. (A little bit too hard: there's a crunch, and a dusting of concrete bits skitters down his back.)

Lois squeezes his hand. "Well," she says, "I'm repeating myself, but—what do you want to do?"

"I don't know," Clark says, hoarse; and Lois squeezes his hand again and stays silent.