Aaaaaand here we continue our descent into iddy angsty nonsense, omg I am so sorry. /o\
Clark is on his way.
Bruce can feel as much, despite his best efforts. Clark's determination is burnished, hammered, shining; feeling it is like looking at Diana's shield, at her knuckles around its grip and her steady stare over its edge.
At least this time he knows precisely where and how he erred. He has some hope of predicting Clark's response, and can therefore strategize in his turn.
Or he could, if there were any defense to be mustered.
In the moment, Clark had been grateful. Clark had been—glad of his presence.
(Dizzyingly so. Impossibly so. Brilliant with it, scintillating—he always is the brightest light Bruce ever sees, the blazing heart of a star, but this had been—
There aren't words for it. The nearest thing he can find to compare it to is the moment Clark had shared with him, how sunlight feels when Clark turns his face into it: every human thing, warmth and comfort and sheer sensory enjoyment, but beyond that a deeper contentment; being filled, renewed, having every dim tired corner of yourself come alive.
Bruce has been described by a lot of people as a lot of things, but typically not—comforting. And yet he had gone to Clark, and Clark had been comforted. Comforted, touched, even—dare he think it?—pleased; the way they had flashed back together to Steppenwolf's ship, to the last time Bruce had let himself reach for something he shouldn't have. He hadn't thought Clark had noticed that small trespass, but he'd been wrong: Clark had noticed and had—
Hadn't minded. That's the most it's fair to say, and even that may be more wishful thinking than not. Parademons had been swarming him. He'd been injured, mentally if not physically, and disoriented. Bruce shouldn't take the contents of his mind at a moment like that as evidence of anything.)
But now that it's over, the crisis safely resolved, surely he's angry. Surely he's upset. After Bruce has spent the better part of a week screaming Wagner at him to keep him out of Bruce's head, while at the same time sloshing his own idiotic lack of restraint all over Clark right and left, to then go walking right into Clark's mind like that—without hesitation, as if he were entitled. Yes, Clark's undoubtedly going to have plenty to say about this.
And Bruce is prepared for that. He's not afraid of Clark's condemnation.
What he is afraid of, with a terrible dawning sense of self-awareness, is his own reaction to it.
Even when he'd barely been compromised at all, he hadn't been able to keep Clark from feeling his anger. He'd comprehensively failed to do so, in fact. And that was—two days ago? No, three. It must be three by now.
Bruce sighs through his nose and digs a thumb in just at the dip of one temple, where his head is throbbing the most pointedly. He has the precise number of hours somewhere, he does; just—not to hand. But that he can't be sure he's remembering it correctly on his own is—it would worry him, if half a dozen other much more serious symptoms of sleep deprivation hadn't already made themselves known. The moment he began to suspect he'd started involuntarily sliding into microsleeps, he knew he couldn't suit up until this had resolved itself one way or another. If Batman lost the conscious control not only of his body but of all the equipment in the suit—no. It simply could not be risked.
Control is slipping away from him, if he ever had it in the first place. Control is slipping away from him, and Clark is on the way here to share his opinion of Bruce's most recent misjudgment in what will no doubt be exacting and excruciating detail, and it won't matter whether Bruce looks calm. It won't matter whether Bruce can sit patiently through it and keep his expression pleasant and quietly agree that he needs to do better.
It won't matter at all. Clark will be able to tell exactly how he feels about it anyway.
Bruce squeezes his eyes shut and tries to draw as far into himself as he can, fill his head with Hugo—as if he can drown Clark out with it instead of himself, as if it were possible to make himself forget what's coming.
—cette âme est pleine d'ombre, le péché s'y commet. Le coupable n'est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre—as if you couldn't be both, couldn't sin and be the shadow cast across your own soul, and maybe this wasn't the best book he could have chosen for this—
A rush of air, a distant noise, and he's out of time. That must be Clark, coming in for a landing one level down. And he isn't merciful, doesn't use the speed: his footsteps sound at a torturously ordinary pace, counting down one scuff at a time as he crosses the concrete and climbs the stairs.
"Bruce," he says.
At least he isn't shouting yet, Bruce thinks, and then turns in his chair.
Except Clark doesn't look angry, either. And he's a lot worse at that than Bruce. He doesn't look angry, he doesn't sound angry; he's standing by the stairs with something Bruce might almost call diffidence if that weren't ridiculous—as if he's not sure he's allowed to be there. But inside—
Inside, he's still all brazen and alight, the flash of setting sun off a raised shield.
He'd tucked his chin down a little, uncertain, but all at once it comes up, and his eyes go narrow—and Bruce has utterly lost the thread of Les Misérables, doesn't even remember dropping it, so it's entirely possible Clark just heard him think that.
Fuck.
The corner of Clark's mouth twitches, and he takes a step closer to Bruce. "Bruce," he says again, a little more comfortably. "Sorry, I should've thought—are you okay?"
Bruce stares at him. What the hell kind of question is that?
"I mean," Clark adds, "doing that—whatever you did for me earlier."
For him. For him, instead of to him.
"You're all right? You didn't hurt yourself?"
"I'm fine," Bruce says, automatic, and feels the slow cool rise of Clark's doubt spill over in the back of his head. "I am, Clark. That's what this connection is for."
He manages to stop himself before he can follow that thought to its conclusion—out loud, at least, and fuck, fuck, this is exactly why he shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be interacting with Clark at all. Once he realized he wouldn't be able to hold out, he should have secured a sedative. At least then he would be unconscious for this.
But Clark isn't stupid. He's the one who'd said before that Steppenwolf had hardly been planning to dream at him tyrannically; he can guess what would have happened as well as Bruce can. Steppenwolf wouldn't have been throwing up smokescreens or listening to the radio, thinking filler thoughts. He'd have torn right into Clark's mind the moment he was able. At the absolute least, Bruce was able to hold out for a few days before he did the same—
"Bruce," Clark says, and Bruce blinks and looks up; Clark's watching him, the barest suggestion of a frown forming in the dip of his brow.
Bruce swallows, blinks again, and looks away. He'd planned to offer this as penance, not reassurance—but penance doesn't seem to be what Clark is asking for.
"Clark. I'm all right," and at least it comes out creditably even. "It didn't—hurt, or whatever it is you're thinking. The link is working the way it's supposed to. Try it."
"What?"
"Try it for yourself," Bruce repeats. What's the risk? Where's the harm? All his deepest secrets have already been offered up on a plate, and Clark hasn't made a grab for them. And all Clark has to do is reach in for a moment to understand that Bruce is telling the truth; even the briefest look around will surely be more than he wants to see. There's no reason to think he'll linger. And Bruce can't stay awake much longer in any case. At least this way Clark might be prepared for the worst of it, while Bruce still has a modicum of control over what's being pushed to the front.
He waits. Clark doesn't move—outside or inside.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," Bruce tells him, and it isn't even a lie. It's only fair. It's reasonable, it's logical, it
(—god, god, it had been beautiful. Clark, in him and around him and through him, Clark Clark Clark: at all his deepest levels, his thoughts and his feelings and his mind, the brilliant sunlit flavor of his strength and generosity and unhesitating kindness—dimmed, of course, by the shadow of fear the parademons had cast across the inside of him, but—
—but Bruce had gone to him, and everywhere Bruce had passed, everywhere he touched, the light had come back. Of all the impossible things: Bruce, Bruce, had walked into a darkened place and left it brighter—)
doesn't matter if he wants it or can't bear it or has ten thousand other stupid reasons for allowing it. Clark will step close enough to learn that Bruce was right, to be reassured, and whatever else he sees or doesn't see, he'll step away again.
Bruce hears Clark's breath catch first, and then feels it, that sense of presence; and it's going to go away again. Surely it's going to go away. Clark won't want to stay long enough to—
Clark blinks, looking perturbed, and Bruce can feel his curiosity, mild apprehension, uncertainty; and then all at once he lets out a jawcracking yawn.
(Oh, of course: has he ever yawned before? Interesting, that Kryptonians should share the reflex—and maybe Clark has caught himself yawning when other people yawn, contagious, but hasn't ever been moved to do it on his own.)
"Jesus, Bruce," Clark says through the tail end of it, squinting. "You really need to sleep."
And he hasn't moved away, hasn't stepped clear of Bruce again and turned that interior gaze aside. Bruce is filled with his wide-eyed warm attention, cautious and uncertain, fingertips feeling gently through the dark.
And of course the first thing they bump into is the icy prickling edge of Bruce's apprehension.
Clark's reaction is wordless, immediate: hushed dismay like an indrawn breath, a flickering trail of thoughts as visible to Bruce as Bruce's must be to him. Bruce still doesn't want to sleep? Is it—did something happen while Clark was asleep? And Bruce doesn't even get the chance to flash them both into the middle of his half-formed sense memory of touching Clark's chest (Clark touching his own chest, but Bruce had felt it anyway; it had been Bruce's touch, too, just for an instant) because instead his hand is—their hands are—
A neck breaking; Bruce knows the sound but hasn't ever felt it, the jerk and the crack, the stillness after. Something under his feet, the unfamiliar texture of—bones, dozens of them, skulls, a barren field covered over with them—
—is that what he got? Did Clark make him see that? Is he angry? He should be; Clark should have thought of it sooner, it was—he should have known. After Black Zero, after he came back, he'd had nightmares for months, and being taken by Steppenwolf like that must have started them up again. Out of the two of them, Clark's the one who doesn't need to sleep; he should've realized it would be like that, should've been more careful.
He wants to apologize, except that's pointless. Isn't it? Bruce is in here with him, can already feel the whole muddle of uncertainty-regret-shame, and Clark can't express it better by trying to talk about it.
And Bruce—oh, he shouldn't, he shouldn't, and yet there's no way to stop it. There's no gap to step into, none of the space he's used to having between his emotions and what shows on his face, nowhere to pause and intervene. His confusion-understanding-rejection is instantaneous: that's not it.
He's just lucky that Clark interrupts before he can draw them both down fully into his sickeningly rosy-warm perception of what it had been like to feel Clark sleeping, curiosity firing bright all anew. What could it be? The array of options Clark has been considering is flared out in front of Bruce like a hand of cards, and is that—Clark thought Bruce didn't want Clark in Bruce's head? Clark shouldn't want Clark in Bruce's head, Clark should be running in the opposite direction—
And then, for a single strange moment, they're caught. Trapped, suspended, in the conflict between two utterly incompatible thought-impression constructs. Bruce doesn't even know how to describe it, like doubled vision in his mind's eye: because he knows which thought he's having, a half-sketched mental image of Wayne Manor
(—and it's improving now, brighter, cleaner; it'll be ready for the League soon. But somewhere in his heart, it will always stand just as it was: that crumbling, shadowy, ruined shell, and what better metaphor could there be? What is Bruce, what has he ever been, except the blackened remains left after everything else has burned down—)
and the wordless assessment that Clark can't possibly look at that and want to go inside. But Clark is—it takes a moment for Bruce to even parse the image, blue-shadowed ice and furious red light; but it isn't just a picture, it's a memory, and all at once the context is inescapable.
It's the ship. The Kryptonian ship, at the moment Clark had found it. Three hundred feet of ice, but Clark had melted through it at last, and everything he'd ever wanted to know and understand had been right there behind it waiting for him.
Bruce huffs a laugh through his nose. As if that makes any kind of sense. Bruce is three hundred feet of ice, sure; three hundred feet of ice with three hundred more feet of ice behind it, and nothing to be done with it but freeze to death.
It's been seconds, if that, since Clark spoke. Bruce glances up at him wryly, expecting Clark to perceive and understand his grim amusement, to share it.
But Clark is already watching him, unsmiling, and his gaze is strange and searching. "Bruce," he says again, quietly—and aloud, even though they've just proven conclusively that he doesn't need to. "Bruce, come on. It's all right. Go to sleep."
FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (7/?)
Clark is on his way.
Bruce can feel as much, despite his best efforts. Clark's determination is burnished, hammered, shining; feeling it is like looking at Diana's shield, at her knuckles around its grip and her steady stare over its edge.
At least this time he knows precisely where and how he erred. He has some hope of predicting Clark's response, and can therefore strategize in his turn.
Or he could, if there were any defense to be mustered.
In the moment, Clark had been grateful. Clark had been—glad of his presence.
(Dizzyingly so. Impossibly so. Brilliant with it, scintillating—he always is the brightest light Bruce ever sees, the blazing heart of a star, but this had been—
There aren't words for it. The nearest thing he can find to compare it to is the moment Clark had shared with him, how sunlight feels when Clark turns his face into it: every human thing, warmth and comfort and sheer sensory enjoyment, but beyond that a deeper contentment; being filled, renewed, having every dim tired corner of yourself come alive.
Bruce has been described by a lot of people as a lot of things, but typically not—comforting. And yet he had gone to Clark, and Clark had been comforted. Comforted, touched, even—dare he think it?—pleased; the way they had flashed back together to Steppenwolf's ship, to the last time Bruce had let himself reach for something he shouldn't have. He hadn't thought Clark had noticed that small trespass, but he'd been wrong: Clark had noticed and had—
Hadn't minded. That's the most it's fair to say, and even that may be more wishful thinking than not. Parademons had been swarming him. He'd been injured, mentally if not physically, and disoriented. Bruce shouldn't take the contents of his mind at a moment like that as evidence of anything.)
But now that it's over, the crisis safely resolved, surely he's angry. Surely he's upset. After Bruce has spent the better part of a week screaming Wagner at him to keep him out of Bruce's head, while at the same time sloshing his own idiotic lack of restraint all over Clark right and left, to then go walking right into Clark's mind like that—without hesitation, as if he were entitled. Yes, Clark's undoubtedly going to have plenty to say about this.
And Bruce is prepared for that. He's not afraid of Clark's condemnation.
What he is afraid of, with a terrible dawning sense of self-awareness, is his own reaction to it.
Even when he'd barely been compromised at all, he hadn't been able to keep Clark from feeling his anger. He'd comprehensively failed to do so, in fact. And that was—two days ago? No, three. It must be three by now.
Bruce sighs through his nose and digs a thumb in just at the dip of one temple, where his head is throbbing the most pointedly. He has the precise number of hours somewhere, he does; just—not to hand. But that he can't be sure he's remembering it correctly on his own is—it would worry him, if half a dozen other much more serious symptoms of sleep deprivation hadn't already made themselves known. The moment he began to suspect he'd started involuntarily sliding into microsleeps, he knew he couldn't suit up until this had resolved itself one way or another. If Batman lost the conscious control not only of his body but of all the equipment in the suit—no. It simply could not be risked.
Control is slipping away from him, if he ever had it in the first place. Control is slipping away from him, and Clark is on the way here to share his opinion of Bruce's most recent misjudgment in what will no doubt be exacting and excruciating detail, and it won't matter whether Bruce looks calm. It won't matter whether Bruce can sit patiently through it and keep his expression pleasant and quietly agree that he needs to do better.
It won't matter at all. Clark will be able to tell exactly how he feels about it anyway.
Bruce squeezes his eyes shut and tries to draw as far into himself as he can, fill his head with Hugo—as if he can drown Clark out with it instead of himself, as if it were possible to make himself forget what's coming.
—cette âme est pleine d'ombre, le péché s'y commet. Le coupable n'est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre—as if you couldn't be both, couldn't sin and be the shadow cast across your own soul, and maybe this wasn't the best book he could have chosen for this—
A rush of air, a distant noise, and he's out of time. That must be Clark, coming in for a landing one level down. And he isn't merciful, doesn't use the speed: his footsteps sound at a torturously ordinary pace, counting down one scuff at a time as he crosses the concrete and climbs the stairs.
"Bruce," he says.
At least he isn't shouting yet, Bruce thinks, and then turns in his chair.
Except Clark doesn't look angry, either. And he's a lot worse at that than Bruce. He doesn't look angry, he doesn't sound angry; he's standing by the stairs with something Bruce might almost call diffidence if that weren't ridiculous—as if he's not sure he's allowed to be there. But inside—
Inside, he's still all brazen and alight, the flash of setting sun off a raised shield.
He'd tucked his chin down a little, uncertain, but all at once it comes up, and his eyes go narrow—and Bruce has utterly lost the thread of Les Misérables, doesn't even remember dropping it, so it's entirely possible Clark just heard him think that.
Fuck.
The corner of Clark's mouth twitches, and he takes a step closer to Bruce. "Bruce," he says again, a little more comfortably. "Sorry, I should've thought—are you okay?"
Bruce stares at him. What the hell kind of question is that?
"I mean," Clark adds, "doing that—whatever you did for me earlier."
For him. For him, instead of to him.
"You're all right? You didn't hurt yourself?"
"I'm fine," Bruce says, automatic, and feels the slow cool rise of Clark's doubt spill over in the back of his head. "I am, Clark. That's what this connection is for."
He manages to stop himself before he can follow that thought to its conclusion—out loud, at least, and fuck, fuck, this is exactly why he shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be interacting with Clark at all. Once he realized he wouldn't be able to hold out, he should have secured a sedative. At least then he would be unconscious for this.
But Clark isn't stupid. He's the one who'd said before that Steppenwolf had hardly been planning to dream at him tyrannically; he can guess what would have happened as well as Bruce can. Steppenwolf wouldn't have been throwing up smokescreens or listening to the radio, thinking filler thoughts. He'd have torn right into Clark's mind the moment he was able. At the absolute least, Bruce was able to hold out for a few days before he did the same—
"Bruce," Clark says, and Bruce blinks and looks up; Clark's watching him, the barest suggestion of a frown forming in the dip of his brow.
Bruce swallows, blinks again, and looks away. He'd planned to offer this as penance, not reassurance—but penance doesn't seem to be what Clark is asking for.
"Clark. I'm all right," and at least it comes out creditably even. "It didn't—hurt, or whatever it is you're thinking. The link is working the way it's supposed to. Try it."
"What?"
"Try it for yourself," Bruce repeats. What's the risk? Where's the harm? All his deepest secrets have already been offered up on a plate, and Clark hasn't made a grab for them. And all Clark has to do is reach in for a moment to understand that Bruce is telling the truth; even the briefest look around will surely be more than he wants to see. There's no reason to think he'll linger. And Bruce can't stay awake much longer in any case. At least this way Clark might be prepared for the worst of it, while Bruce still has a modicum of control over what's being pushed to the front.
He waits. Clark doesn't move—outside or inside.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes," Bruce tells him, and it isn't even a lie. It's only fair. It's reasonable, it's logical, it
(—god, god, it had been beautiful. Clark, in him and around him and through him, Clark Clark Clark: at all his deepest levels, his thoughts and his feelings and his mind, the brilliant sunlit flavor of his strength and generosity and unhesitating kindness—dimmed, of course, by the shadow of fear the parademons had cast across the inside of him, but—
—but Bruce had gone to him, and everywhere Bruce had passed, everywhere he touched, the light had come back. Of all the impossible things: Bruce, Bruce, had walked into a darkened place and left it brighter—)
doesn't matter if he wants it or can't bear it or has ten thousand other stupid reasons for allowing it. Clark will step close enough to learn that Bruce was right, to be reassured, and whatever else he sees or doesn't see, he'll step away again.
Bruce hears Clark's breath catch first, and then feels it, that sense of presence; and it's going to go away again. Surely it's going to go away. Clark won't want to stay long enough to—
Clark blinks, looking perturbed, and Bruce can feel his curiosity, mild apprehension, uncertainty; and then all at once he lets out a jawcracking yawn.
(Oh, of course: has he ever yawned before? Interesting, that Kryptonians should share the reflex—and maybe Clark has caught himself yawning when other people yawn, contagious, but hasn't ever been moved to do it on his own.)
"Jesus, Bruce," Clark says through the tail end of it, squinting. "You really need to sleep."
And he hasn't moved away, hasn't stepped clear of Bruce again and turned that interior gaze aside. Bruce is filled with his wide-eyed warm attention, cautious and uncertain, fingertips feeling gently through the dark.
And of course the first thing they bump into is the icy prickling edge of Bruce's apprehension.
Clark's reaction is wordless, immediate: hushed dismay like an indrawn breath, a flickering trail of thoughts as visible to Bruce as Bruce's must be to him. Bruce still doesn't want to sleep? Is it—did something happen while Clark was asleep? And Bruce doesn't even get the chance to flash them both into the middle of his half-formed sense memory of touching Clark's chest (Clark touching his own chest, but Bruce had felt it anyway; it had been Bruce's touch, too, just for an instant) because instead his hand is—their hands are—
A neck breaking; Bruce knows the sound but hasn't ever felt it, the jerk and the crack, the stillness after. Something under his feet, the unfamiliar texture of—bones, dozens of them, skulls, a barren field covered over with them—
—is that what he got? Did Clark make him see that? Is he angry? He should be; Clark should have thought of it sooner, it was—he should have known. After Black Zero, after he came back, he'd had nightmares for months, and being taken by Steppenwolf like that must have started them up again. Out of the two of them, Clark's the one who doesn't need to sleep; he should've realized it would be like that, should've been more careful.
He wants to apologize, except that's pointless. Isn't it? Bruce is in here with him, can already feel the whole muddle of uncertainty-regret-shame, and Clark can't express it better by trying to talk about it.
And Bruce—oh, he shouldn't, he shouldn't, and yet there's no way to stop it. There's no gap to step into, none of the space he's used to having between his emotions and what shows on his face, nowhere to pause and intervene. His confusion-understanding-rejection is instantaneous: that's not it.
He's just lucky that Clark interrupts before he can draw them both down fully into his sickeningly rosy-warm perception of what it had been like to feel Clark sleeping, curiosity firing bright all anew. What could it be? The array of options Clark has been considering is flared out in front of Bruce like a hand of cards, and is that—Clark thought Bruce didn't want Clark in Bruce's head? Clark shouldn't want Clark in Bruce's head, Clark should be running in the opposite direction—
And then, for a single strange moment, they're caught. Trapped, suspended, in the conflict between two utterly incompatible thought-impression constructs. Bruce doesn't even know how to describe it, like doubled vision in his mind's eye: because he knows which thought he's having, a half-sketched mental image of Wayne Manor
(—and it's improving now, brighter, cleaner; it'll be ready for the League soon. But somewhere in his heart, it will always stand just as it was: that crumbling, shadowy, ruined shell, and what better metaphor could there be? What is Bruce, what has he ever been, except the blackened remains left after everything else has burned down—)
and the wordless assessment that Clark can't possibly look at that and want to go inside. But Clark is—it takes a moment for Bruce to even parse the image, blue-shadowed ice and furious red light; but it isn't just a picture, it's a memory, and all at once the context is inescapable.
It's the ship. The Kryptonian ship, at the moment Clark had found it. Three hundred feet of ice, but Clark had melted through it at last, and everything he'd ever wanted to know and understand had been right there behind it waiting for him.
Bruce huffs a laugh through his nose. As if that makes any kind of sense. Bruce is three hundred feet of ice, sure; three hundred feet of ice with three hundred more feet of ice behind it, and nothing to be done with it but freeze to death.
It's been seconds, if that, since Clark spoke. Bruce glances up at him wryly, expecting Clark to perceive and understand his grim amusement, to share it.
But Clark is already watching him, unsmiling, and his gaze is strange and searching. "Bruce," he says again, quietly—and aloud, even though they've just proven conclusively that he doesn't need to. "Bruce, come on. It's all right. Go to sleep."