It's 50/50 if I can finish up in one more part. I think you'll find I still have NO PLAN. "Not in civvies," Bruce growls, and wraps his hands in Clark's jacket, pulling him down. "Feet on the ground, flyboy."
Clark looks up at the sky, takes a deep draught of the sticky Gotham air and decides that he disagrees wholeheartedly with that sentiment. Whether Bruce notices his gleeful grin and recognizes it as a warning he doesn't know, because he's already hooked an arm around his waist and propelled them skyward, wind resistance tearing at his clothes and making Bruce's cape snap and flutter.
Bruce flattens himself to Clark's chest, hands still fisted in his jacket. He makes a noise that starts off like Clark's name and ends as though all the breath's been pushed out of his lungs.
It is intoxicating, the lights and sounds and smells that have woven themselves back into the tapestry of Clark's subconscious, ready to be tugged to the fore when he needs them. He wants to revel in it, grasp at each bright filament in turn and somehow share the brilliance of it all with Bruce. He grips him tight, turns in a lazy arch and watches the skyline slant; the drone of the night-time traffic stretches in a Doppler shift.
Bruce isn't enamored, apparently--he braces his forearm against Clark's collarbone and pushes away, arcs into a twisting dive, a graceful freefall that's interrupted by the whine of grapnel wire slicing the air. He swings in a deep parabola that lands him atop one of the tall buttresses of a nearby building and crouches there, as formidable as any of Gotham's gargoyles.
Snarling as much as one, too. Clark drifts in front of him, hands tucked into his jacket pockets, and smiles amiably. The Bat is terrifying, but Clark's seen what lives beneath its leathery skin. He's exactly as intimidating as he'd have everyone believe, but Clark is far from afraid.
"Don't," Bruce says, "ever do that again." The whites of his eyes are bright in the gloom and his pulse is slightly elevated, but he doesn't think Bruce is afraid, either. But nor is it an attraction thing--he's wound too tight, voice clipped. Maybe a flagrant display of power was not Clark's wisest choice, even if it was rooted in joy.
"Not even if you're plummeting to the ground from five hundred feet up?" he asks, keeps things playful.
"Not a likely occurrence."
"Okay. How about if you're in a building that's about to explode?"
"Also doesn't happen as much as you'd think."
"Really? Huh. How about if… hmm. You've been flung into orbit by an overpowered supervillain."
"Where are you digging up these scenarios? Jesus, Clark." Bruce's sufferance filtered through the Batman's digital growl is probably funnier than it should be.
"I dunno." Clark shrugs, grinning. "Personal experience? I just want more specificity on 'don't ever'. I don't need you reading me the riot act because I failed to intuit the exception to your rule."
"I thought I was very specific."
Clark leans himself against the building next to Bruce, arms folded and shoulder brushing the warm stonework. "You've been doing this alone for a long time, I get it," he says. And maybe he doesn't know the half of it, not really, but he knows enough--the planning, the contingencies, the white-knuckled control; it's going to be hard for Bruce to delegate, to break years of ingrained habit and learn to trust in someone other than himself. "But that won't be the case going forward. You know that I--the rest of us, we'll want to help. And the others aren't, um. Invested in you. The same way I am. It won't do much for morale if you rebuff them every time."
Bruce stares at him. The cowl is always glowering, of course, but his vexation is plain in the downturn of his mouth. Clark is sure he's going to argue the point like the eminently stubborn man he is, but he just echoes, "invested," and shifts his balance. The he sighs, tension dropping out of his shoulders, his fingers uncurling from their anchor on the stone buttress. "Clark," he says, slowly. "I expect discretion. Don't be an idiot about this."
"I'll take care not to undermine your reputation." Clark flashes him a smile and bobs on an eddy of air, slowly spirals upward. There's the plaintive wail of an untended infant two blocks over. He can smell street food somewhere. "So," he calls down. "Meet you at the Batmobile in--?"
"I'm patrolling once I've taken care of business at the National. I presume you can get yourself home." Bruce freezes. "--back," he amends. He readies the grapnel gun, aims.
"Right," Clark says, laughing. "Very discreet."
Bruce swoops away without a word. His silhouette scythes through the light pollution, neon haloing the edge of his cape, and then he's gone, subsumed by the city's shadows. Home, Clark thinks, and closes his eyes, tracks the measured beat of his heart for a moment--catches him muttering under his breath: trouble.
Clark presses a finger to the device at his ear. "I heard that."
The comm buzzes to life, distorted by velocity. "You were meant to."
*
Thunder rolls through the muggy air and the clouds upend their lot. Gotham smells like rotting newspaper under the warm rain, dank and earthy. Clark casts himself out over the city, throwing his senses open to the nightlife, listens everywhere the rain falls. It doesn't take long to find trouble; this city eats her own as a matter of course.
In a blind alley several blocks away there are raised voices, the scrape of turned wood on blacktop. Clark focuses his vision, sees a group of figures--a half-dozen young teens, squabbling amongst themselves. One of them has a baseball bat and another is on the ground, curled over his leg.
(He keeps Bruce in his periphery, a now-familiar constant: steady pulse and calculated breaths, the hum of his suit's biometric feedback. Near him, there's the electronic whir of tech being deployed, and the soft pip of the bank's security system abruptly ceases.)
He sets down a little way from the mouth of the alleyway, schools his body language into something disarming. He can't be Superman here, not yet--but he doesn't need to be. These are kids, not criminals.
"Hey," Clark says. He barely raises his voice but it still resonates off the brick walls in a way that makes him wince. "Everything okay over there?"
There's a beat of stillness, a delayed panic response and then they shout and scatter, pelting out of the alley and dodging around Clark. He half spins in mild bemusement and watches them go, sneakers splashing through oilslick puddles.
Looks like they forgot someone, though. The boy looks up at him, eyes wide and shining. He's clutching at his calf.
"Your friends were in a hurry," Clark says, crouches down next to him. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," the kid says, regarding Clark warily, which is fair enough considering the circumstances. He wipes at his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his hoodie, pulls himself to his feet, fingers clawed in the chain link fence that terminates the alley. "Just an accident."
"You wanna tell me what happened?" Clark takes a quick look at his leg--nothing fractured, but he's going to have an impressive bruise to show off. One of other kids obviously took a whack at him.
"Nah, I'm good, mister. You're from out of town, right."
"You could say that." Clark grins at him, lopsided. "Anyone I can call?"
"No!" the kid says, and Clark thinks he would have heard his heart jolt even without his enhanced senses. "No, I don't live far. I'm just gonna get h--home. Ow." He keeps his weight on his good leg, rests his foot gingerly on the pavement.
"Listen," Clark says. "I know I'm some strange guy talking to a kid in an alley in Gotham in the middle of the night--" and he pauses, wonders when he got so stupid. It's one thing to do this with hope emblazoned across his chest, another thing entirely as a civilian. "--but if you want to hitch a ride, I'll take you home."
"Like hell am I getting in a car," the kid says.
"No car," Clark says, turns around and hikes his thumb over his shoulder. "Hup."
*
The kid--Nate--lives a couple blocks over and apparently all it takes is a little kindness to open the floodgates. He likes science and wants to be a paleontologist, his brother shares his comic books and his friend has a temper problem, but it's not his fault. Clark hitches him up in a piggyback as he yatters on, keeps his arms loose so he can slip free anytime he wants and tells him to scream blue murder if he feels like he has to.
"Shut up, man," Nate says, after about the fifth time Clark asks if he's okay. "What are you, some kinda boy scout?"
"Something like that," Clark says, laughing. "So, what's the deal with your buddies?"
"Nothing." Clark feels Nate tense up. "I was batting but hit too hard and the ball went over the fence and Rick got pissed cos it was his ball. Hey, I live over there."
"Uh-huh," Clark says, veers over to the building Nate points out. "Play a lot of baseball in the middle of the night?"
"Yeah, we do." Nate cackles, and Clark realizes he might be younger than he thought--he's tall, rangy, but probably no more than thirteen. "Mom doesn't let me hang out with them."
Clark takes them up the stoop. "Probably a reason for that--hey, lay off." Nate's grabbed a handful of his hair, reining him in like he's a pony.
"Not in the front door," he says urgently, and tilts Clark's head back.
Clark follows his direction; on the third floor a window is propped open with a book. There's no fire escape, just a cast-iron downspout running parallel. "You climb down that?" Clark asks.
"Uh-huh."
"Okay, well," Clark takes a deep breath. He could pretend to shimmy up, but that would be a hard sell even without a kid on his back. Best to be up front about this, return the trust the boy has shown him. It's not like he remembered his glasses, anyway. "Listen. Can you keep a secret?"
"Sure," Nate says. "If you're gonna keep mine." There's a grin in his voice.
"Scout's honor," Clark says. His feet leave the ground. "Okay, hold on tight!"
Nate keens in shock, his arms tightening around Clark's shoulders. "Holy shit," he whispers, and the pure astonishment in his voice makes Clark's heart clench. He draws abreast of the window, turns to let Nate park his butt on the sill.
"Are we good?" he asks.
"It's you." Nate lunges to catch Clark around his neck, almost tipping himself off the ledge. Clark catches him, lets him squeeze in a tight hug. "I knew you couldn't be dead," he whispers fiercely. "I knew it."
"Well, technically," Clark says, then thinks better of it. He puts a finger to his lips. "I have to stay incognito for a little while. Think you can keep this quiet for me?"
"Yeah!" Nate's eyes are wide and bright. He mirror's Clark's gesture, finger on lips. "Your secret's safe with me, Superman," he says, with youthful solemnity. Then, with equally solemn resignation, "nobody would believe me anyway."
*
Clark flies up, up, past Gotham's perpetual cloudbank, shedding the mist of rain and the cloying humidity, and breathing in the sharp, clear air. He closes his eyes, hears the even beat of Bruce's pulse and the zip of grapnel wire. Must have wrapped everything up at the bank. He touches his finger to his ear.
"Bruce," he says.
"I saw," Bruce replies. The low growl in his ear makes him shiver. "That was rash, Clark."
"I know." And Clark smiles to himself, because Bruce might be chiding him, but there's an underlying warmth to it. "I'm going to need my suit," he says. He takes a breath. "Did they--do you know--is it, um, buried?"
There is a long pause. Clark turns a lazy somersault while he waits, cool currents ruffling his hair.
Fill: Whoever Falls First -- Bruce/Clark, sparring (17/18ish)
"Not in civvies," Bruce growls, and wraps his hands in Clark's jacket, pulling him down. "Feet on the ground, flyboy."
Clark looks up at the sky, takes a deep draught of the sticky Gotham air and decides that he disagrees wholeheartedly with that sentiment. Whether Bruce notices his gleeful grin and recognizes it as a warning he doesn't know, because he's already hooked an arm around his waist and propelled them skyward, wind resistance tearing at his clothes and making Bruce's cape snap and flutter.
Bruce flattens himself to Clark's chest, hands still fisted in his jacket. He makes a noise that starts off like Clark's name and ends as though all the breath's been pushed out of his lungs.
It is intoxicating, the lights and sounds and smells that have woven themselves back into the tapestry of Clark's subconscious, ready to be tugged to the fore when he needs them. He wants to revel in it, grasp at each bright filament in turn and somehow share the brilliance of it all with Bruce. He grips him tight, turns in a lazy arch and watches the skyline slant; the drone of the night-time traffic stretches in a Doppler shift.
Bruce isn't enamored, apparently--he braces his forearm against Clark's collarbone and pushes away, arcs into a twisting dive, a graceful freefall that's interrupted by the whine of grapnel wire slicing the air. He swings in a deep parabola that lands him atop one of the tall buttresses of a nearby building and crouches there, as formidable as any of Gotham's gargoyles.
Snarling as much as one, too. Clark drifts in front of him, hands tucked into his jacket pockets, and smiles amiably. The Bat is terrifying, but Clark's seen what lives beneath its leathery skin. He's exactly as intimidating as he'd have everyone believe, but Clark is far from afraid.
"Don't," Bruce says, "ever do that again." The whites of his eyes are bright in the gloom and his pulse is slightly elevated, but he doesn't think Bruce is afraid, either. But nor is it an attraction thing--he's wound too tight, voice clipped. Maybe a flagrant display of power was not Clark's wisest choice, even if it was rooted in joy.
"Not even if you're plummeting to the ground from five hundred feet up?" he asks, keeps things playful.
"Not a likely occurrence."
"Okay. How about if you're in a building that's about to explode?"
"Also doesn't happen as much as you'd think."
"Really? Huh. How about if… hmm. You've been flung into orbit by an overpowered supervillain."
"Where are you digging up these scenarios? Jesus, Clark." Bruce's sufferance filtered through the Batman's digital growl is probably funnier than it should be.
"I dunno." Clark shrugs, grinning. "Personal experience? I just want more specificity on 'don't ever'. I don't need you reading me the riot act because I failed to intuit the exception to your rule."
"I thought I was very specific."
Clark leans himself against the building next to Bruce, arms folded and shoulder brushing the warm stonework. "You've been doing this alone for a long time, I get it," he says. And maybe he doesn't know the half of it, not really, but he knows enough--the planning, the contingencies, the white-knuckled control; it's going to be hard for Bruce to delegate, to break years of ingrained habit and learn to trust in someone other than himself. "But that won't be the case going forward. You know that I--the rest of us, we'll want to help. And the others aren't, um. Invested in you. The same way I am. It won't do much for morale if you rebuff them every time."
Bruce stares at him. The cowl is always glowering, of course, but his vexation is plain in the downturn of his mouth. Clark is sure he's going to argue the point like the eminently stubborn man he is, but he just echoes, "invested," and shifts his balance. The he sighs, tension dropping out of his shoulders, his fingers uncurling from their anchor on the stone buttress. "Clark," he says, slowly. "I expect discretion. Don't be an idiot about this."
"I'll take care not to undermine your reputation." Clark flashes him a smile and bobs on an eddy of air, slowly spirals upward. There's the plaintive wail of an untended infant two blocks over. He can smell street food somewhere. "So," he calls down. "Meet you at the Batmobile in--?"
"I'm patrolling once I've taken care of business at the National. I presume you can get yourself home." Bruce freezes. "--back," he amends. He readies the grapnel gun, aims.
"Right," Clark says, laughing. "Very discreet."
Bruce swoops away without a word. His silhouette scythes through the light pollution, neon haloing the edge of his cape, and then he's gone, subsumed by the city's shadows. Home, Clark thinks, and closes his eyes, tracks the measured beat of his heart for a moment--catches him muttering under his breath: trouble.
Clark presses a finger to the device at his ear. "I heard that."
The comm buzzes to life, distorted by velocity. "You were meant to."
*
Thunder rolls through the muggy air and the clouds upend their lot. Gotham smells like rotting newspaper under the warm rain, dank and earthy. Clark casts himself out over the city, throwing his senses open to the nightlife, listens everywhere the rain falls. It doesn't take long to find trouble; this city eats her own as a matter of course.
In a blind alley several blocks away there are raised voices, the scrape of turned wood on blacktop. Clark focuses his vision, sees a group of figures--a half-dozen young teens, squabbling amongst themselves. One of them has a baseball bat and another is on the ground, curled over his leg.
(He keeps Bruce in his periphery, a now-familiar constant: steady pulse and calculated breaths, the hum of his suit's biometric feedback. Near him, there's the electronic whir of tech being deployed, and the soft pip of the bank's security system abruptly ceases.)
He sets down a little way from the mouth of the alleyway, schools his body language into something disarming. He can't be Superman here, not yet--but he doesn't need to be. These are kids, not criminals.
"Hey," Clark says. He barely raises his voice but it still resonates off the brick walls in a way that makes him wince. "Everything okay over there?"
There's a beat of stillness, a delayed panic response and then they shout and scatter, pelting out of the alley and dodging around Clark. He half spins in mild bemusement and watches them go, sneakers splashing through oilslick puddles.
Looks like they forgot someone, though. The boy looks up at him, eyes wide and shining. He's clutching at his calf.
"Your friends were in a hurry," Clark says, crouches down next to him. "Are you okay?"
"Fine," the kid says, regarding Clark warily, which is fair enough considering the circumstances. He wipes at his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his hoodie, pulls himself to his feet, fingers clawed in the chain link fence that terminates the alley. "Just an accident."
"You wanna tell me what happened?" Clark takes a quick look at his leg--nothing fractured, but he's going to have an impressive bruise to show off. One of other kids obviously took a whack at him.
"Nah, I'm good, mister. You're from out of town, right."
"You could say that." Clark grins at him, lopsided. "Anyone I can call?"
"No!" the kid says, and Clark thinks he would have heard his heart jolt even without his enhanced senses. "No, I don't live far. I'm just gonna get h--home. Ow." He keeps his weight on his good leg, rests his foot gingerly on the pavement.
"Listen," Clark says. "I know I'm some strange guy talking to a kid in an alley in Gotham in the middle of the night--" and he pauses, wonders when he got so stupid. It's one thing to do this with hope emblazoned across his chest, another thing entirely as a civilian. "--but if you want to hitch a ride, I'll take you home."
"Like hell am I getting in a car," the kid says.
"No car," Clark says, turns around and hikes his thumb over his shoulder. "Hup."
*
The kid--Nate--lives a couple blocks over and apparently all it takes is a little kindness to open the floodgates. He likes science and wants to be a paleontologist, his brother shares his comic books and his friend has a temper problem, but it's not his fault. Clark hitches him up in a piggyback as he yatters on, keeps his arms loose so he can slip free anytime he wants and tells him to scream blue murder if he feels like he has to.
"Shut up, man," Nate says, after about the fifth time Clark asks if he's okay. "What are you, some kinda boy scout?"
"Something like that," Clark says, laughing. "So, what's the deal with your buddies?"
"Nothing." Clark feels Nate tense up. "I was batting but hit too hard and the ball went over the fence and Rick got pissed cos it was his ball. Hey, I live over there."
"Uh-huh," Clark says, veers over to the building Nate points out. "Play a lot of baseball in the middle of the night?"
"Yeah, we do." Nate cackles, and Clark realizes he might be younger than he thought--he's tall, rangy, but probably no more than thirteen. "Mom doesn't let me hang out with them."
Clark takes them up the stoop. "Probably a reason for that--hey, lay off." Nate's grabbed a handful of his hair, reining him in like he's a pony.
"Not in the front door," he says urgently, and tilts Clark's head back.
Clark follows his direction; on the third floor a window is propped open with a book. There's no fire escape, just a cast-iron downspout running parallel. "You climb down that?" Clark asks.
"Uh-huh."
"Okay, well," Clark takes a deep breath. He could pretend to shimmy up, but that would be a hard sell even without a kid on his back. Best to be up front about this, return the trust the boy has shown him. It's not like he remembered his glasses, anyway. "Listen. Can you keep a secret?"
"Sure," Nate says. "If you're gonna keep mine." There's a grin in his voice.
"Scout's honor," Clark says. His feet leave the ground. "Okay, hold on tight!"
Nate keens in shock, his arms tightening around Clark's shoulders. "Holy shit," he whispers, and the pure astonishment in his voice makes Clark's heart clench. He draws abreast of the window, turns to let Nate park his butt on the sill.
"Are we good?" he asks.
"It's you." Nate lunges to catch Clark around his neck, almost tipping himself off the ledge. Clark catches him, lets him squeeze in a tight hug. "I knew you couldn't be dead," he whispers fiercely. "I knew it."
"Well, technically," Clark says, then thinks better of it. He puts a finger to his lips. "I have to stay incognito for a little while. Think you can keep this quiet for me?"
"Yeah!" Nate's eyes are wide and bright. He mirror's Clark's gesture, finger on lips. "Your secret's safe with me, Superman," he says, with youthful solemnity. Then, with equally solemn resignation, "nobody would believe me anyway."
*
Clark flies up, up, past Gotham's perpetual cloudbank, shedding the mist of rain and the cloying humidity, and breathing in the sharp, clear air. He closes his eyes, hears the even beat of Bruce's pulse and the zip of grapnel wire. Must have wrapped everything up at the bank. He touches his finger to his ear.
"Bruce," he says.
"I saw," Bruce replies. The low growl in his ear makes him shiver. "That was rash, Clark."
"I know." And Clark smiles to himself, because Bruce might be chiding him, but there's an underlying warmth to it. "I'm going to need my suit," he says. He takes a breath. "Did they--do you know--is it, um, buried?"
There is a long pause. Clark turns a lazy somersault while he waits, cool currents ruffling his hair.
"No," Bruce eventually says. "I have it."
*