BET YOU NEVER THOUGHT WE'D GET HERE. ♥ x many thousands to everyone who's commented on or read any part of this—you guys are all great and I'm so grateful to share a fandom and a kinkmeme with you! Thank you for your patience and generosity, and for sticking with me through this ridiculous 30k+ (!!!) of tropey feelings. YOU'RE THE BEST EVER.
The afternoon passes in long weird dollops, excruciatingly slow until suddenly an hour's gone by, and then another, another. Lois stops by Clark's desk at the end of the day, touches his wrist as he's shrugging his jacket on. "I'd offer to walk out with you," she says, wry, "except I'm guessing that wouldn't really help."
"No," Clark agrees grimly. It's briefly satisfying to imagine, in a really petty way—but he's pretty sure he knows what he'd be saying to Bruce by doing that, and it's not something he actually wants to say.
"Good luck," Lois adds. "Good luck with all of it."
"Thanks," Clark says, and then she goes, and he braces himself to run the gauntlet alone.
Strictly in terms of numbers, he's dealt with more reporters as Superman, but that doesn't make it any easier. (He supposes he could have used the speed, or flown from the roof. But that would have felt a little more like running away than he was comfortable with.)
They move toward the door when they see him coming, and he has to push a bit to make his way through the crowd of them—carefully, of course. He's upset and they're here to get pictures of it, it's frustrating; but they're just doing their jobs, and he can't go tossing people around for that.
"No comment," he says, rote, into the buzz of questions. Cat'll be proud. "No comment—excuse me, thank you; no comment."
"Mr. Kent—! Mr. Kent, have you and Bruce Wayne separated?"
He should just keep saying no comment—or, better yet, he should say yes. That's what Bruce wants, after all; that's why he's done what he's done, and of course he'd follow up with his awful coy Bruce Wayne thing and leave it to Clark to—
To construct the narrative.
Clark draws a slow breath, wondering whether he's really got it in him to pull this off. What Bruce wants him to do is clear as anything—but that doesn't mean Clark has to do it. And it's not that he's trying to trap Bruce, or force him into a corner; but Lois had asked Clark what he wanted, and—
And he wants a lot of things, more than he can list. But at the heart of it all, Clark just wants to talk to Bruce. He just wants to make sure they're all right, or at least might be able to get there, even after everything. And Bruce has accidentally handed him the means to make it happen.
(Make it part of one of his Batman plans—there are worse playbooks to steal from than Mom's, Clark thinks.)
For someone with so many secrets, he's never actually been any good at lying. But he doesn't have to, does he? He can just—tell the truth.
He turns around to face the woman who asked, and shoots her a self-conscious little smile; all he has to do is hold it through a few flashes to make sure it'll get seen. "No," he says, "we haven't," because they haven't—they were never together properly in the first place, were they? So they can't have separated now. "Bruce is only human," also true. "He's made mistakes, but so have I—who hasn't?" and no one could call that a lie. "I'm not going to try to tell you those photos don't bother me. They do," because that's a lie only in the sense that it's a staggering understatement. "But I care about him, and I'm confident that we can work this out like adults." He smiles again, hoping it looks like the smile of someone self-aware, capable, resilient, and gives the reporter a little nod. "Any other questions?"
"—and I'm confident we can work this out like adults," the tiny upside-down Clark on Bruce's tablet screen says; and then Bruce taps with one finger and the video pauses, and Bruce's office is abruptly silent.
Clark does his best not to let it rattle him. He looks Bruce in the eye, unwavering, and raises his eyebrows. "I know what I said, Bruce. I was there."
"You have to see you're only dragging this out," Bruce says, raising an eyebrow right back. "This doesn't have to become a problem, Clark. I realize I should have let you know before I moved forward with the exit strategy, and I apologize for that. But this," and he flicks a finger toward the tablet screen, "is only going to complicate things."
The words are measured; the tone is conversational, matter-of-fact. There's even a hint of humor in it—as though Bruce is being friendly, gently pointing out that Clark's made a misstep, expecting Clark to acknowledge it with a laugh and then ask him for advice.
Not exactly what Clark was hoping for. But they're in the same room, at least. That's something.
"Maybe I don't mind complicated things," Clark tells him.
Bruce has the nerve to look at him incredulously. "There's no advantage to it. The media deals best with simplicity, with dynamics that are easy to follow. Those pictures make me the bad guy, and no one's asking you to forgive me.
"This is the out, Clark," Bruce adds calmly. "Take it."
An out—an excuse. Another one. They've been piling them up, him and Bruce, finding reasons to say things they don't mean, or mean things they don't say; or say things they do mean and then treat them like lies. At the idea of doing it again, Clark feels something almost like anger. But not quite: it's clearer, steadier, and makes it suddenly easy to say, "Who said I wanted one?"
And Bruce—Bruce's eyes narrow. The tiniest of frowns flickers across his face before he shakes his head a little and sighs. Dismissive, mildly frustrated, as if to say he's not sure why Clark's being so difficult about this. "Look," he says carefully. "This can't—this can't possibly be making you happy."
"Wh—of course it's not making me happy," Clark says, bewildered. "I'm pretty sure you're not happy either, and I—that's the last thing I want. If that video really is going to cause you problems, then I'm sorry about that. It's—I—I only ever wanted you to be happy."
The second it leaves his mouth, he realizes what a weirdly revealing thing it is to say and grimaces, his face going hot. But Bruce doesn't mock him for it. Bruce looks at him and says nothing, and his expression isn't saying anything either, every inch of him cool, sharp, and somehow very, very far away.
"And if ending this will do that," Clark adds a little more quietly, "then I will. I just—" He bites his lip. Maybe it's the wrong thing to say, but what can it hurt at this point? "I just wanted to talk to you about it first, I guess." He draws in a breath and then lets it out, feeling suddenly tired again. He did want to talk to Bruce, and—and he has. Bruce didn't have him thrown out of the building; and he isn't pretending not to know why Clark is here; and he's being polite, courteous, which isn't what Clark wants from him but is a place to start. That needs to be good enough. "Sorry. Sorry, I'll go—"
"I was cruel to you," Bruce interrupts, before Clark can even turn. His tone is still casual—but his gaze is hard, uncompromising, his eyes clear. "I know that. I slept with you and then I left, I didn't come back, and I didn't tell you what I was going to do before I did it. I hurt you and I did it on purpose. I don't see what there could be to discuss."
And that, of all things, is what makes Clark pause. Because—because yes, Bruce had done it on purpose. Bruce had done it with purpose, for a purpose. And what could that purpose have been?
"You were making it easier for me," Clark says slowly.
Bruce has already turned his attention back to his desk, his tablet; and he doesn't move, doesn't look at Clark, but he's listening anyway. Clark is certain of it.
"You were—you were making it easier for me. You wanted me to walk away, you—you wanted me to want to walk away." Except that doesn't really make more sense, does it? "You have to know you didn't need to do it that way. If you wanted to end this, you could've just—"
"No," Bruce says.
Clark blinks.
Bruce still hasn't moved, except to raise his head, and he still isn't looking at Clark, either: he's gazing off somewhere into the middle distance, expression perfect and placid.
But Bruce, Clark reminds himself, is a really good actor.
And then his jaw works, and he swallows, and he does look at Clark; and "placid" isn't the word for his face anymore.
"No," Bruce says again. "I couldn't have."
"Bruce," Clark begins, because that's—that's ridiculous, that's nonsensical. Bruce could have sent Clark away whenever he wanted to. He's talking like Clark's the only one who could have ended things; but he could have broken up with Clark just as easily as Clark could have broken up with him—
And then Clark stops, mouth partway open, as something in his chest flips over almost painfully. As easily as Clark could have broken up with him; except Clark hadn't. Not through any of it—not after the kissing, not after the sex, not any of the dozen times he'd told himself that he really, really should, if only for the sake of his own sanity. Not even after Bruce had been his most unkind, when it should have been the easiest: because—
Because even then, the truth is that leaving Bruce still hadn't been easy at all.
Bruce had given him a dozen reasons to, a hundred, but Clark had had a better reason not to. Clark had had the best reason there is. And he'd—he hadn't ever imagined that Bruce might be in love with him, too, hadn't thought it was possible. But, miraculously, Bruce has as good as said it. I couldn't—coming from him, of all people, who'd gone down to the Batcave workshop with staples in his back, who was a billionaire all day and a superhero all night, who worked and worried and blamed himself and never ever stopped, never let himself fail at anything if he could help it; who was a stubborn, frustrating, uncommunicative dick—and a good man.
Clark startles himself by laughing—himself and Bruce, who looks like he's not sure whether he needs to buzz for security or for an ambulance. "Clark—"
"Bruce," he says, and it comes out disgustingly tender, but he can't bring himself to be embarrassed about it. Bruce is standing with his hands pressed flat against his desk; but they come away easily enough when Clark takes them. They're a little cold, Clark thinks. But he can fix that, if Bruce will let him.
And now Bruce looks like he's thinking about erring on the side of the ambulance.
Clark can't help it: he laughs again, and ducks down to press his forehead briefly against Bruce's knuckles before he looks up at Bruce again and smiles. "Bruce, you realize why we're having this argument, right? I mean, why I'm here at all?"
Bruce stares at him silently, eyes narrowing.
"You did make it easy," Clark tells him, feeling merciful, "as easy as you could. You gave me the out, because you couldn't make yourself take it. But look at me, Bruce. Look where I am." And surely, surely if he puts it in Bruce's own terms, Bruce can't fail to understand him. So he looks down at their joined hands and then, careful, explains: "I couldn't make myself take it either."
It doesn't sound like it should be enough. But Clark knows what he's saying—and so does Bruce. He must, because he sucks in a sharp breath; which might have been too quiet for anyone but Clark to catch, but Clark's there and he catches it. And then—then he can hear Bruce's heart start pounding, too.
"Clark," Bruce says. His voice has gone flat and he's looking away, withdrawing in the half-dozen small ways he's able to control.
Except he doesn't try to pull his hands back.
"Bruce," Clark says, and doesn't let go either. "I want to stay with you. For real."
And that makes Bruce look at him again. Bruce's expression has gone back to empty, wiped clean; but his gaze is flicking back and forth across Clark's face. Looking for something, something he wants to find there, even if it's despite himself. That's all Clark needs to see.
"This is a bad idea," Bruce says, very low.
"Maybe," Clark agrees, but he can't stop himself from smiling. "I want to stay with you anyway."
And Bruce swallows, and tightens his hands in Clark's, and then something new ripples across his face: something a little like anger and a little like longing, and maybe a little like hope. After a moment he does shake one hand loose, but only so he can lean over and wrap it around the nape of Clark's neck. And then he tugs Clark forward across the desk and into a kiss—a kiss, Clark thinks dazedly, that absolutely nobody is watching.
FILL: tell all the truth (but tell it slant); Bruce/Clark, fake dating (19/19)
The afternoon passes in long weird dollops, excruciatingly slow until suddenly an hour's gone by, and then another, another. Lois stops by Clark's desk at the end of the day, touches his wrist as he's shrugging his jacket on. "I'd offer to walk out with you," she says, wry, "except I'm guessing that wouldn't really help."
"No," Clark agrees grimly. It's briefly satisfying to imagine, in a really petty way—but he's pretty sure he knows what he'd be saying to Bruce by doing that, and it's not something he actually wants to say.
"Good luck," Lois adds. "Good luck with all of it."
"Thanks," Clark says, and then she goes, and he braces himself to run the gauntlet alone.
Strictly in terms of numbers, he's dealt with more reporters as Superman, but that doesn't make it any easier. (He supposes he could have used the speed, or flown from the roof. But that would have felt a little more like running away than he was comfortable with.)
They move toward the door when they see him coming, and he has to push a bit to make his way through the crowd of them—carefully, of course. He's upset and they're here to get pictures of it, it's frustrating; but they're just doing their jobs, and he can't go tossing people around for that.
"No comment," he says, rote, into the buzz of questions. Cat'll be proud. "No comment—excuse me, thank you; no comment."
"Mr. Kent—! Mr. Kent, have you and Bruce Wayne separated?"
He should just keep saying no comment—or, better yet, he should say yes. That's what Bruce wants, after all; that's why he's done what he's done, and of course he'd follow up with his awful coy Bruce Wayne thing and leave it to Clark to—
To construct the narrative.
Clark draws a slow breath, wondering whether he's really got it in him to pull this off. What Bruce wants him to do is clear as anything—but that doesn't mean Clark has to do it. And it's not that he's trying to trap Bruce, or force him into a corner; but Lois had asked Clark what he wanted, and—
And he wants a lot of things, more than he can list. But at the heart of it all, Clark just wants to talk to Bruce. He just wants to make sure they're all right, or at least might be able to get there, even after everything. And Bruce has accidentally handed him the means to make it happen.
(Make it part of one of his Batman plans—there are worse playbooks to steal from than Mom's, Clark thinks.)
For someone with so many secrets, he's never actually been any good at lying. But he doesn't have to, does he? He can just—tell the truth.
He turns around to face the woman who asked, and shoots her a self-conscious little smile; all he has to do is hold it through a few flashes to make sure it'll get seen. "No," he says, "we haven't," because they haven't—they were never together properly in the first place, were they? So they can't have separated now. "Bruce is only human," also true. "He's made mistakes, but so have I—who hasn't?" and no one could call that a lie. "I'm not going to try to tell you those photos don't bother me. They do," because that's a lie only in the sense that it's a staggering understatement. "But I care about him, and I'm confident that we can work this out like adults." He smiles again, hoping it looks like the smile of someone self-aware, capable, resilient, and gives the reporter a little nod. "Any other questions?"
"—and I'm confident we can work this out like adults," the tiny upside-down Clark on Bruce's tablet screen says; and then Bruce taps with one finger and the video pauses, and Bruce's office is abruptly silent.
Clark does his best not to let it rattle him. He looks Bruce in the eye, unwavering, and raises his eyebrows. "I know what I said, Bruce. I was there."
"You have to see you're only dragging this out," Bruce says, raising an eyebrow right back. "This doesn't have to become a problem, Clark. I realize I should have let you know before I moved forward with the exit strategy, and I apologize for that. But this," and he flicks a finger toward the tablet screen, "is only going to complicate things."
The words are measured; the tone is conversational, matter-of-fact. There's even a hint of humor in it—as though Bruce is being friendly, gently pointing out that Clark's made a misstep, expecting Clark to acknowledge it with a laugh and then ask him for advice.
Not exactly what Clark was hoping for. But they're in the same room, at least. That's something.
"Maybe I don't mind complicated things," Clark tells him.
Bruce has the nerve to look at him incredulously. "There's no advantage to it. The media deals best with simplicity, with dynamics that are easy to follow. Those pictures make me the bad guy, and no one's asking you to forgive me.
"This is the out, Clark," Bruce adds calmly. "Take it."
An out—an excuse. Another one. They've been piling them up, him and Bruce, finding reasons to say things they don't mean, or mean things they don't say; or say things they do mean and then treat them like lies. At the idea of doing it again, Clark feels something almost like anger. But not quite: it's clearer, steadier, and makes it suddenly easy to say, "Who said I wanted one?"
And Bruce—Bruce's eyes narrow. The tiniest of frowns flickers across his face before he shakes his head a little and sighs. Dismissive, mildly frustrated, as if to say he's not sure why Clark's being so difficult about this. "Look," he says carefully. "This can't—this can't possibly be making you happy."
"Wh—of course it's not making me happy," Clark says, bewildered. "I'm pretty sure you're not happy either, and I—that's the last thing I want. If that video really is going to cause you problems, then I'm sorry about that. It's—I—I only ever wanted you to be happy."
The second it leaves his mouth, he realizes what a weirdly revealing thing it is to say and grimaces, his face going hot. But Bruce doesn't mock him for it. Bruce looks at him and says nothing, and his expression isn't saying anything either, every inch of him cool, sharp, and somehow very, very far away.
"And if ending this will do that," Clark adds a little more quietly, "then I will. I just—" He bites his lip. Maybe it's the wrong thing to say, but what can it hurt at this point? "I just wanted to talk to you about it first, I guess." He draws in a breath and then lets it out, feeling suddenly tired again. He did want to talk to Bruce, and—and he has. Bruce didn't have him thrown out of the building; and he isn't pretending not to know why Clark is here; and he's being polite, courteous, which isn't what Clark wants from him but is a place to start. That needs to be good enough. "Sorry. Sorry, I'll go—"
"I was cruel to you," Bruce interrupts, before Clark can even turn. His tone is still casual—but his gaze is hard, uncompromising, his eyes clear. "I know that. I slept with you and then I left, I didn't come back, and I didn't tell you what I was going to do before I did it. I hurt you and I did it on purpose. I don't see what there could be to discuss."
And that, of all things, is what makes Clark pause. Because—because yes, Bruce had done it on purpose. Bruce had done it with purpose, for a purpose. And what could that purpose have been?
"You were making it easier for me," Clark says slowly.
Bruce has already turned his attention back to his desk, his tablet; and he doesn't move, doesn't look at Clark, but he's listening anyway. Clark is certain of it.
"You were—you were making it easier for me. You wanted me to walk away, you—you wanted me to want to walk away." Except that doesn't really make more sense, does it? "You have to know you didn't need to do it that way. If you wanted to end this, you could've just—"
"No," Bruce says.
Clark blinks.
Bruce still hasn't moved, except to raise his head, and he still isn't looking at Clark, either: he's gazing off somewhere into the middle distance, expression perfect and placid.
But Bruce, Clark reminds himself, is a really good actor.
And then his jaw works, and he swallows, and he does look at Clark; and "placid" isn't the word for his face anymore.
"No," Bruce says again. "I couldn't have."
"Bruce," Clark begins, because that's—that's ridiculous, that's nonsensical. Bruce could have sent Clark away whenever he wanted to. He's talking like Clark's the only one who could have ended things; but he could have broken up with Clark just as easily as Clark could have broken up with him—
And then Clark stops, mouth partway open, as something in his chest flips over almost painfully. As easily as Clark could have broken up with him; except Clark hadn't. Not through any of it—not after the kissing, not after the sex, not any of the dozen times he'd told himself that he really, really should, if only for the sake of his own sanity. Not even after Bruce had been his most unkind, when it should have been the easiest: because—
Because even then, the truth is that leaving Bruce still hadn't been easy at all.
Bruce had given him a dozen reasons to, a hundred, but Clark had had a better reason not to. Clark had had the best reason there is. And he'd—he hadn't ever imagined that Bruce might be in love with him, too, hadn't thought it was possible. But, miraculously, Bruce has as good as said it. I couldn't—coming from him, of all people, who'd gone down to the Batcave workshop with staples in his back, who was a billionaire all day and a superhero all night, who worked and worried and blamed himself and never ever stopped, never let himself fail at anything if he could help it; who was a stubborn, frustrating, uncommunicative dick—and a good man.
Clark startles himself by laughing—himself and Bruce, who looks like he's not sure whether he needs to buzz for security or for an ambulance. "Clark—"
"Bruce," he says, and it comes out disgustingly tender, but he can't bring himself to be embarrassed about it. Bruce is standing with his hands pressed flat against his desk; but they come away easily enough when Clark takes them. They're a little cold, Clark thinks. But he can fix that, if Bruce will let him.
And now Bruce looks like he's thinking about erring on the side of the ambulance.
Clark can't help it: he laughs again, and ducks down to press his forehead briefly against Bruce's knuckles before he looks up at Bruce again and smiles. "Bruce, you realize why we're having this argument, right? I mean, why I'm here at all?"
Bruce stares at him silently, eyes narrowing.
"You did make it easy," Clark tells him, feeling merciful, "as easy as you could. You gave me the out, because you couldn't make yourself take it. But look at me, Bruce. Look where I am." And surely, surely if he puts it in Bruce's own terms, Bruce can't fail to understand him. So he looks down at their joined hands and then, careful, explains: "I couldn't make myself take it either."
It doesn't sound like it should be enough. But Clark knows what he's saying—and so does Bruce. He must, because he sucks in a sharp breath; which might have been too quiet for anyone but Clark to catch, but Clark's there and he catches it. And then—then he can hear Bruce's heart start pounding, too.
"Clark," Bruce says. His voice has gone flat and he's looking away, withdrawing in the half-dozen small ways he's able to control.
Except he doesn't try to pull his hands back.
"Bruce," Clark says, and doesn't let go either. "I want to stay with you. For real."
And that makes Bruce look at him again. Bruce's expression has gone back to empty, wiped clean; but his gaze is flicking back and forth across Clark's face. Looking for something, something he wants to find there, even if it's despite himself. That's all Clark needs to see.
"This is a bad idea," Bruce says, very low.
"Maybe," Clark agrees, but he can't stop himself from smiling. "I want to stay with you anyway."
And Bruce swallows, and tightens his hands in Clark's, and then something new ripples across his face: something a little like anger and a little like longing, and maybe a little like hope. After a moment he does shake one hand loose, but only so he can lean over and wrap it around the nape of Clark's neck. And then he tugs Clark forward across the desk and into a kiss—a kiss, Clark thinks dazedly, that absolutely nobody is watching.