dceu_kinkmeme | DCEU Prompt Post #1

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DCEU Prompt Post #1

Welcome to Round One of the DCEU Kink Meme!

Please have a look at the extended rules here.

The important rules in short:

Post anonymously.
Negative comments on other people's prompts (kink-shaming, pairing-bashing etc.) and personal attacks of any kind will not be tolerated.
One prompt per comment. Warnings for common triggers and squicks are encouraged, but not required.
Prompts should follow the format: Character/character, prompt.
Keep prompts to a reasonable length; prompts should not be detailed story outlines.
No prompt spamming.

Please direct any questions to the Ask a mod post. For inspiration: list of kinks .

Prompt, write, draw, comment, and most importantly have fun! Please link to your fills on the fill post.

Here's the discussion post for all your non-prompt/fill needs.

We now have a non-DCEU prompt post for any prompts in other 'verses (comics, animated series, other movies or TV shows etc.).

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They crowd him in. He bites into the nearest thigh he can reach and rips his head away, head-butts the same man when he crouches over his injury, then collar-chokes target thirteen into swift unconsciousness. Chokes out fourteen with a blood-hold while he dislocates fifteen’s knee. Cracks sixteen’s pelvis with his calves and spits the blood from his mouth. Five seconds to freedom. Losing ground.

Frantic. Heart pounding affretando in his chest. A storm of blows and kicks.

A solid hit to the side of his head and somehow they get hands on him. Bruce could disable them all—he could take four times as many, with the right equipment and enough space—at least three-hundred and twenty-two different ways from where he’s standing (crouching, falling), but what he can’t disable is the close quarters and the sheer bulk bearing him down. He’s out of time. He thrashes and flails wildly through the haze, bares his bloodied teeth and growls at them as they drag him back out of his pitiful shelter.

“Get your fucking hands off of me! You sick freaks! Get off! My name is Bruce Wayne! I’m a private citizen, I’m a civil—” Somebody knocks the wind out of him; he writhes desperately all the same. His words are pointless to them, but he makes them fight for every damn inch. He makes them take what they want; he makes sure that’s what the world will see.

They throw him down. He snaps his legs out at them, abandons the illusion of incompetence and aims for knuckles and kneecaps. Nerve bundles and arteries. A chorus of low curses and hard fingers dig into his limbs. Another Narrows-hard slap, a careful slap—they’ve done this before. Bruce has seen plenty of workers on the East End of a night get slapped exactly this way. He struggles harder. The thought that they’re being careful not to mess up his face, his teeth, makes him yell and strain against the hands restraining him. ”Damn you. Damn you-“

Thirty seconds. There’s the sound of another struggle then the meaty impact of fists and Bruce contemplates through his icy remove who in all his acquaintances would be upstanding enough to try to help him. He’ll owe them, whoever it is, when this is all over.

“Enough bullshit!” Chatty McFuckface seems a little pissed off. “Don’t cry yet, richboy—you want that energy. We haven’t even gotten started.” His arms are pinned. Bruce could fight, but he stays tensed as if he’s frozen; if he starts to struggle, he’ll never be able to stop himself. They’ll cut his throat and use someone prettier than him.

“We?” he gets out as laconically as he can while he tries to shake the bastards off. He doesn’t have to fabricate the fear; he can taste it. “I’m worth more undamaged - you sure you want to share me with your buddies?” He goes limp in a plot for space, then surges up, straining. Sixty seconds.

A sharp yank to his hair and a ripping tug to his pants answer him. A cold edge pressing into his tensed stomach above his buckle. Knife, his brain whispers. Ice prickles up the back of Bruce’s neck. “You think you’re special? You’re just another pretty Gotham whore.” A sharp knife. The air on his bare buttocks and legs makes Bruce flinch involuntarily. Dammit. Still, the man pauses, sniffs at Bruce while Bruce swallows down his gorge and retreats further into his own mind.

“I’m sure we can come to some mutually agreeable—” Bruce Wayne would bargain, negotiate. He refuses to squirm as a thick finger probes him. “S-some mutually…h-hey, hey—STOP.” His hips jerk away from the intrusion without his permission. “Stop—stop it you motherfucking animal, stop!”

One hundred and twenty seconds. This isn’t right. This isn’t right. Bruce doesn’t intend the switch from defense to lethality—it just happens. He sees one, two, three faces crack under his blows and yells when they bounce his head off the floor. The room fractures and he—

He can see the shock on the faces behind his attackers, just on the edge of his vision. Shock, the stares, the hands over faces and ears. The multiple fellow kidnappees making eyes at him to give in before it gets worse, to do the beau monde thing and live another day. To do the Gotham thing, and give in gracefully to what he can’t prevent.

No. He won’t! He won’t.

This isn’t how reasonable gangsters treat hostages they intend to return safe and sound. These assholes aren’t affiliated with any of the unionized Gotham gangs; if they were they’d know better than to mess up the merchandise. It’s not the money they’re after—it’s the infamy. They’re the wrong kind of professionals—the worst kind. Bruce gives up all pretense of detachment; he wrestles madly, kicks out until they pin his legs down too, then he pinches and twists and claws whatever he can reach, skin shredding beneath his nails in the scuffle. It’s not—no, it’s not enough, the flat tang of his own stress, the curtain of scarlet over one eye from the laceration over his eye. Too much adrenaline. Too much energy expenditure. Too much.

“I am a private citizen. I am a civilian. This is a goddamned act of piracy and a violation of safe conduct! I do not concede to this. No! No!” His body is struggling, squirming, fighting. They only bother to open him up so he won’t bleed out; frankly the lube is more than he’d expected but he can’t bring himself to be thankful—he’ll never thank them for it. They’re going to get away with this; there’s no justice in the world that can make it right.

There is no justice in the world but what they make. Bruce grits his teeth. “When this is over, I swear I will break you.” His promise is low and sure enough that the man putting his weight on him pauses in surprise. Bruce’s focus is on the pulse of blood in the jugular over him, and how much slack he needs to get his teeth in that neck. He lunges.

He’s slapped again, lazily across the mouth. His teeth clack together and he arches, jerking and thrashing. Not enough to harm, but damn sure enough to hurt him. He spits his pain right back into their fucking faces. When Clark gets here, he’s going to wipe the floor with these punks, with whatever Bruce leaves him to wipe up. Bruce shoves away the voice inside that tells him how little that matters.

Talkative Guy is, unsurprisingly, still talking. “Not as stupid as they say you are, but boy, buddy-o, do you have things backwards. I know who you think you are, richboy, but you’re just meat to me. You are too pretty to share, which is too bad, cause it’s gonna happen anyway. Still gonna fuck you good, right in front of all your rich friends, and the city’s gonna pay double what you just offered if they don't wanna see the rest’a your friends get it too. I like your fire - you keep them pretty eyes open. I wanna see em when I open you up. Then we’ll see who breaks first, deal?”

“No.” It means nothing to them, but he says it anyway. He goes on fucking record. “No. NO!”

There’s a flash; a camera. Bruce can’t push the thought aside: there’s a camera. They’re filming this. Everyone will know.

They’re professionals, but they’re arrogant and brash. His wrists burn; the electrical cord they used to tie his hands is slippery with sweat from his struggles. Bruce jerks hard, feels his skin split and uses the extra lubrication to scrape a hand free.

“Get off, get off me dammit, no!” He swings, vision half-blinded by fury and sweat, hits as hard as he can, barely registers one falling off of him before another comes in low, rifle-butt cracking across Bruce’s collarbone. There’s too many; god no, there’s too many. He has to calm down, he has to control the situation.

He’s not in control, the situation is fucked, Bruce is about to be—

They’re—

Ugly, wretched sounds for an ugly, wretched act.

He has to put each and every one of them into traction.

“Nobody’s comin’ for you, bitch. You’re nobody.” A bone snaps. He doesn’t care, he’s fighting—fuck witnesses, fuck their camera, he’ll rip them apart, he’ll maim every last one of them. “Settle down and we might make it easier on you.”

To hell with that. He flails an arm free again. Dislocates a jaw and hooks his fingers into a vulnerable kneecap, adrenaline pounding through him and sapping his composure. Fuck that. He rakes a face, grabs an errant hand and twists viciously, feels bone and tendon crush before he’s swarmed. No.

“NO!” He’s bucking and twisting, he knows it’s only driving them on but he can’t help it, he can’t stop fighting, he doesn’t know how. “Fuck you,” he rages thickly. “Fuck you, fuck you - no, let me go!”

Bruce lets his eyes unfocus, lets his mind drift far away from the shoving and swearing. He lets things get crazy. “NO! NO! No!” He won’t stop, he won’t shut up; he won’t let there be a second of doubt in anyone’s mind about what this is. He scratches and kicks, bites whatever he can reach— he curses the fact that they seem too smart to try to put anything in between his lips.

Until someone sticks rude fingers in his mouth and he chokes and bites down hard, teeth scraping bone, mouth overflowing with panic. White-out, his skull ringing, jaw throbbing, then he tastes the copper and hears the flat crack of the blow. Someone is screaming about their eyes. Good. The door opens.

He spits into a face, gets his own ground down into the no longer spotless surface of the viewing room floor. “You fucking sons of bitches—I’ll destroy you. I’ll destroy you for this!” He will; he’ll do it and he’ll enjoy it. He wonders what will be waiting for supper when he gets home. It will be wonderful; he’s been gone for two weeks—the meal is going to be spectacular. The company will be more so. Three-hundred seconds. “Stop, stop dammit!” He fights. He fights. The door opens.

The sunlight will just be brushing the tips of Gotham’s spires on its way down, when the cruise is scheduled to disembark. Rancid stickiness rolling down the inside of his thigh; it could be blood, but he knows it isn’t. He knows, he gags, he—

Has to remember to breathe, has to or he’ll suffocate.

Jesus. He can’t die like this.

“You motherfuckers, you goddamn motherfuckers-” He bucks and kicks out hard with both feet, even though it makes muscles in his torso shriek, kicks out and hears an answering gurgle that’s music to his ears. Gasps air into lungs on fire. It’s been… he’s lost count. He’s lost count.

“Rapist. You’re... All - you worthless fucking…you pieces of shit, you goddamn dogs—” Alfred will be waiting to greet Bruce and welcome him home. Everyone he wants in his life will be there. Bruce snarls and uses his bound hands as a club on someone stupid enough to ease up. Pain explodes across his kidneys; he’s choked until his head swims and he can barely see straight. The door opens.

Clark will… Clark will be there, with his earnest smile and gentle eyes. Clark will grin, and bring him out of himself, and lighten his heart. The door opens and Bruce won’t give them the satisfaction of begging; he won’t. He’ll scream, he has to—the pain has to go somewhere, but he refuses to beg. He won’t, he won’t, he won’t. Now is a moment, only a moment, nothing more.

Clark will be there. He focuses on that: Clark will be there.

They don’t stop. They don’t do him the courtesy of knocking him out. They don’t care if he fights—they get off on it.

This is why they’re here—not for ransom, not for jewels, gold and cold cash, no. They’re here to feed on fear. They’re here to make a name and have half the city shaking in their fashionable boots, afraid of the night and ready to pay anything to make sure that what’s happening to Bruce doesn’t happen to them and theirs. Fuck these amateurs.

They can’t win; Bruce won’t let them win. The alternative would be undoing himself.

He’s afraid, he’s so fucking afraid and all it does is fuel his outrage. They can’t have his fear; Bruce can’t fear the night. He is the Night. He is the Night. He is…

He is wishing that he’d listened to his best… his only friend, just this once. But if he had, he wouldn’t be here, which means that someone else would be here in his place—someone innocent—and that he could never forgive himself for wishing. He won’t wish it.

He wishes he was innocent. He wishes he could reach a goddamned knife.

He just has to reach the knife. His fingers itch and clench on empty air.

He saves his breath, measures them out, forces his lungs to cooperate. Sixty-four breaths. One hundred and eight endless moments. His moment doesn’t come.

Bruce drifts away from the hurting, wordless animal that his body has become, and waits for it to all be over.

Rough jerks, a ripping sound and Bruce’s bonds are cut. A boot shoves him over onto his side roughly. He sprawls on the floor, ears on alert before jerking up, arms raised in self-defense. Everything in his gut bubbles over and out of his mouth right then and there.

The edges of the room blur and melt in and out.

The door to the viewing room closes.

They don’t grab anyone else, though, and that’s… That’s something.

Objective achieved.

That’s something.

Bruce knows he’s shaking. Dispassionately notes the flow of liquid from his body and makes a reminder to visit his family physician. Just as stoically waits for his body to stop retching so he can move to the next indignity. His watch never lies; it’s been a total of ten minutes and… It’s been six hundred and fifteen seconds since they threw him down.

There are things he needs to do, things he cannot forget. He counts them.

One: he needs medical attention, he needs to get the hostages to safety. Two: stitches. Safety. Three: a full-spectrum antibiotic. Four: an STI screening. Five: there were five, and he’ll never stop choking up vomit, five—he needs an emesis basin. No, he needs that goddamned camera and whatever the server address is at the other end. Six: a GPS transponder, to get to a secure location. Seven: there were five and he needs ice packs, backup, and access to the emergency radio. Five, no eight, a shock blanket, a garrote and a communicator. A corner at his back and a sharp knife. Warm water. Five, a minor repair kit. A fucking washcloth. Five and the hostages, he has to—

Soap.

Jesus, he needs soap.

There’s only copper and bile left now. He scrubs the back of one hand across his mouth and forces himself to breathe. His body will survive. He will survive. He’s fine. He’s fine.

His eyes are burning.

The silence on deck is broken only by the whimpers of his fellow hostages and the laughing outside the door from the kidnappers. He hates them all. He uses scraps from his ripped pants to wipe himself clean, flinching even though it's his own hands. He locks his jaw on everything that wants to escape and swallows it down. Throws the wads of filth-smeared cloth aside and watches the rest of them avoid his eyes and shrink away as if he has leprosy.

Parasites.

“Brucie…” someone comes near him, pitying eyes and soft, soft hands.

“Don’t touch me!” He doesn’t mean to snarl at her, doesn’t mean to speak at all. He registers a shocked face, then she pulls back. A dizzying swell of voices: murmuring and people crying. Not Bruce. Bruce is fine.

He’s fine.

There’s a quiet conversation, and a movement in his peripheral vision has Bruce scrambling backwards blindly until he hits the wall. His fists are raised, to threaten or to protect himself, he isn’t… He isn’t quite sure. “Don’t.” His voice is wrecked.

“Mr. Wayne…” A softness gently comes to rest on his hand. A sheet—no, a tablecloth. Linen. Bruce hates himself for the flinch he can’t suppress. He grips the fabric and pulls it to his chest, staring Elliot Dumas down until the young man backs away. The girl Bruce stepped in for won’t even look at him, she’s too busy weeping into some older woman’s shoulder. That woman, at least, does Bruce the courtesy of meeting his eyes with a shaken nod, mouthing her thanks. Her gratitude might actually last longer than it takes to cash a GC Central Bank check.

The Dumas kid’s jaw is bruised. Hematoma around right eye socket. Moves constrained; probably bruising to torso. He’s been beaten.

Bruce nods stiffly at him and pulls the ruined cloth over the livid marks on his skin. “Thank you.” Not for the covering. For the effort, wasted as it was.

He has no intention of moving just yet. He needs a moment, to regroup, to get his mind straight. There are things that need doing; he has to—

There are things he has to—

Now would be a good time for backup.

The sound of the yacht’s motor hitting a flying object at an inadvisable rate of speed rings through the frame. The deck pitches and a blur of sapphire and crimson streaks through the air. There’s a roaring on the wind.

“You think you can touch him? You think you can threaten him?” Pure fury.

Jesus, Clark, no.

“Clark.” Bruce’s voice is low, too low and too far away. He has to stop him. “Stop. Stop.” A limp body flies through the locked door and smacks into the wall opposite Bruce’s crouched position with a sickening crunch. Blood, so much blood. Not clotting though, bleeding; Bruce gives the slumped form a critical eye. The asshole will live with reasonably soon medical care, though he’ll probably never walk again.

Good enough.

Bruce sets eyes on his target, grits his teeth and starts his limping progress towards it.

A blur of color, then Clark hovering before him like a dream, skin clean and gleaming with sea-spray, eyes wounded. He scans Bruce’s tablecloth-clad form, his eyes travelling down then jerking back up, pinpoints of crimson in his pupils. His mouth shapes Bruce’s name but no sound escapes him. He reaches out and Bruce already knows what he’ll do, knows how he reacts when the worst happens.

“No,” he pushes Clark’s hands away. “Save them. I… can wait.” Bruce immediately wishes he;d used the hand signals instead. The integrity of his voice is (shredded) suboptimal.

Clark’s eyes dim slightly before the red glow fills them again.

Don’t kill anyone. It’s what Bruce is supposed to say. It’s what he has to say, and he’s never hated himself more for it. “Non-lethal. Don’t… Don’t.” Don’t let it be him, don’t let Bruce be the reason Clark loses faith. Bruce isn’t worth it; Clark would argue, but Bruce knows the difference between hope and reality. Life keeps giving him reasons to remember.

Remember who’s watching. Remember, Clark.

Clark’s frown is thunderous, but he nods once, slow, as if it’s something he has to deeply consider first. A whoosh of air, and Bruce is laying on his side, tucked carefully into the cabin bed. He shudders and gags once, helplessly, at the contact. Clark’s face is a mirror of horror; he carefully pulls his hands away from Bruce.

(Note: Oh god, someone save me from my terrible threading. Halp!)

“I’m here,” murmured in his ear almost too fast to hear. “You called me and I’m here.” He looks down and his expression freezes and shifts into something infinitely sadder. Bruce has to look too, to understand why. His hands are clenched; he forces his fists open and scarlet fabric slips through his fingers. He doesn’t meet Clark’s eyes. Then Clark is gone.

There’s work to be done. He pulls himself up. “Move.” Clears a throat that feels like glass shards and yells it. “Grab onto something. Everybody move!” Frightened eyes stare at him. Nobody moves.

The entire vessel lifts, begins to move through the air. Screams and cries of confusion and pain. Bruce’s target falls over, the camera perched atop the tripod falls and rolls under the counter. He’s seen enough though; the red light, the blink of the auto-focus—not just a cam, a livecam. An IPcam, presumably tied to a website somewhere, streaming its broadcast. Bruce constructs a multi-tiered plan of attack to sweep the gantry and break every neck he can find, then forces himself to stand there and do nothing. Bruce waits until the maelstrom fades, until he can see clearly.

Christ, and he’d called out for Clark. He’s off balance and weak-legged; he stumbles back to his knees. Pain crackles up his back. He’s bleeding. He cannot pass out. He will not pass out. “Superman,” he gets out. “Level out the damn boat.”

There’s an odd moment of tilt, then the floor grade lessens and evens out. A sensation of buoyancy novel enough that Bruce makes a note of it to look into later. Then a tiny bubble of vertigo and the familiar see-saw swell of water resistance on the hull. They’d landed.

Relief almost sends him crashing down into the black. He can’t. He holds it firm in his mind: he has to be and remain conscious. He can’t allow strangers to examine his body, to touch his body without his permission. Not again. There’s no telling how he’ll react if he wakes to that.

They won’t touch him at all. Bruce has his own doctors and his own lawyers; this is one of many reasons why.

Bruce takes a breath, and reaches deep. Deeper. The road is familiar, though he rarely has to travel so far down it these days. Existence narrows down to the next breath. Pain is… it is. Pain is, so he dismisses it in favor of action. He stands. He removes the shreds of binding clinging to him. He sets his nose (and his jaw against the anger and pain); it’s going to look ghastly, but there’s no help for it. He wipes the blood from his mouth and lower jaw-some of it’s his; most of it isn’t. He collects the damned camera; he needs it. He pulls the sheet around himself, ignores the seeping stains already on the cloth and forces his body to stand tall; he’s Bruce fucking Wayne.

He’s The Wayne. He won’t be cowed, not by this; not by anything. Not ever.

Above, the sound of booted feet racing on deck—shouts and cries for help—the Coast Guard, most likely, headed down. Medical and security personnel. Hot chocolate and platitudes. Scrutiny and pity.

The first and third are useful; the rest he can do without. He pulls authority around him like a cape and steps into the hallway. A rippling shadow from high above the deck flits over the wider view windows. “Don’t,” Bruce warns.

Stay out of it, Clark. The last thing they need is Superman getting spattered by what’s about to hit. Bruce slips the small camera between two cunningly twisted folds of his makeshift covering.

Time for damage control.

There is no controlling the damage. They rip Bruce apart in print and on national television, as they love to do. No one comes forward to speak for him, not even the Dumas kid. It’s a smart move- Bruce is a social liability now. He’d never expected anything different, truthfully. More importantly, it’s what Bruce has planned for; it’s what he needs. He knows better than to expect the best of people who have nothing at stake. They’ll find something new to talk about; the buzz will die down soon enough.

The morning paper is a half-page spread with a full-color photo of Bruce, Alfred’s thick winter Burberry coat shielding his shoulders, face blank and head high as he’s escorted in painfully slow ceremony, through the line of microphones and emergency lights at the end of the North Pier Dock. (He’d walked it; of course he had, though against the field medics recommendation.) Unflattering pre-dawn light on Bruce’s bruised face and grimy cloth-wrapped torso. His blue-stained hand and arm. His bare feet are the highlight of an entire evening of fashion news. Blood in the water.

They say he’s had a psychotic break: the newscasters, the Board, City Councilmembers, random people on the internet. They treat it as if his business is their business, and it’s not new—Gotham has always enjoyed watching him. Now though, it isn’t Bruce they see when they watch.

Everyone who is anyone wants to speak with Bruce Wayne.

Note: I messed up (again). This is 9; the one just before is 8.

The images of Bruce losing his fucking mind and being summarily assaulted play on too many channels to count. Bruce makes it to three hundred before he has to bury his face in his hands and regroup. It takes him hours longer than it should. He needs to watch the attack, to be assured that he’d utilized every advantage afforded him, to examine the battlefield from every available angle, but the only angle that’s available is the one being used to victimize him. Consequently, Bruce finds it much more difficult than he’d expected to…

He can’t make it through the footage, not a tenth of it—not a minute of it. Not thirty seconds, not five.

It doesn’t surprise him to find that Clark has taken a leave of absence from the Daily Planet, citing personal reasons. He imagines what it must be like, to have to hear it over and over, and Bruce can only hope that Clark has taken a trip to that monstrous structure he hides in the Arctic, rather than sitting in his dingy west Metropolis apartment listening to Bruce’s pain.

The police are easy enough to brush off; they always have been, for Bruce. They ask their questions at the hospital, and Bruce’s attorneys answer while Bruce, behind a partition, prepares swabs for the Kit in grim silence. He doesn’t look at them, Gotham City’s finest—not one of them, when he walks stiffly past. He doesn’t speak to them. When he discovers who was on patrol duty the night before the cruise set sail, Bruce will let the Bat have his say.

Eventually of course, after, after Bruce’s name and proclivities have been dragged through more mud than half the Liberty, everyone steps up to denounce the “brazen act of terrorism”. There are speeches and parades and protests. There are city-wide petitions for increased budgetary allowances for the GCPD. There’s the Protect Our Own campaign. There’s the flood of inappropriate and vicious-spirited memes and all the uninspired glee the tank media takes in calling him the Wincing Prince until his people sue them for defamation of character and harassment. (He doesn’t ask them to do so, but his people are loyal; there’s some comfort to be had in that.)

There are marches and unauthorized television re-enactments. There are Walk for Wayne races. There are point-of-view eyewitness exclusives. There’s however many digital copies of the footage that Alfred was unable to catch in his frantic world-wide server-scrape of information (and let them come after Bruce and Wayne Industries for that—let them try to prove it). There is the upswell in stock prices and the outpouring of support and inspiration that Gotham City dedicates to the victims and by extension, Bruce.

However, Bruce doesn’t serve the duty that he does for thanks and he doesn’t need support; he makes do with what he has—he doesn’t require inspiration to perform his obligations.

He doesn’t allow himself to make the mistake of believing that what happened to him was the worst thing that happened aboard ship for the hour he and his fellow hostages were detained. He’s fine, he thinks.

Alfred is a wonder that Bruce doesn’t deserve. He takes over Bruce’s care once his physician is assured of his fitness to return home. He helps as he can; Bruce represses his flinch whenever his Guardian hovers too close. (Two steps.) Alfred has the furniture rearranged for Bruce’s comfort, he has all the chair backs turned to the walls and the doorways cleared.

Returning to his daily routine is imperative. It’s three hundred and nineteen strokes from one end of his swimming pool to the other; Bruce trims his time down to seventy-nine point seven-five seconds. He aims for seventy-five.

Bruce pretends not to notice the changes taking place in the manor; it’s best to allow Alfred his preferences. The west hallway is one hundred and two feet long, forty point eight steps; it takes approximately six point fifty-two seconds to get to the door of Bruce’s Study from end. Alfred announces himself before entering rooms in small ways which he never would have used before-a deliberate scuff of his shoe, the tap of meticulous fingernails on plaster, the slight catch of clearing his throat.

The study is ten steps across. If he’s quick, if he’s fast enough, Bruce can make it from one side to the other in under one point twenty eight seconds. There is no clear line of sight to the upper stairwell; he needs a mirror moved so he can properly see the bannister-head. He coats the mirror in a translucent nano-polymer to keep it from being shattered.

Alfred looks him in the eye, accedes to his many requests and carries on doing what is in Bruce’s best interests as he always has, without consulting Bruce about the details. Bruce finds stacks of invitations and puff-piece articles bound up with the newspapers in the bin. He reads every one, in the dimness of the large kitchen at night—the well-wishes and the slander both—then puts them all back in the trash where they belong.

Returning to his daily routine is imperative, and yet it lingers just out of his reach.

Alfred never lets him see a glimmer of pity; Bruce is pathetically grateful for this.

The scene becomes an iconic one: Superman, caught by camera in the midst of his battle against the elements, saving civilian survivors of a mudslide. The camera is shaky, the footage just clear enough to see the Man of Steel pause, head turning before continuing the rescue efforts for several minutes. His eyes glow. The crack of the sonic boom echoes and the footage goes to static.

Nine minutes, no—five hundred and fifty seconds. The news reports that Superman doesn’t return to the scene of disaster until half an hour later. Bruce counts it out again and again.

“No comment yet,” the glossy News Anchor relays, “on why Superman left an evacuation zone to assist with a relatively minor hostage situation on the Atlantic basin—”

Bruce turns the sound off.

Four hundred and eighty-six seconds. Two thousand, one hundred and eighteen point two seconds. Six hundred and ten seconds. He knows it’s there, but he can’t find the seam in his memory where the time was lost.

Clark is courteous enough to call instead of invading his space; Bruce finds reasons not to answer his calls. It isn’t vanity. It isn’t. What he and Clark had been headed towards had no place in this; Bruce can’t allow the two situations to hold the same territory in his mind. He can endure a lot, but the thought of Clark’s pity is the blade that cuts deepest.

Bruce listens to his messages—short and quiet requests to see Bruce, to know what he can bring, what he can do. If he can come stand at Bruce’s side in this.

Courtesy will only hold Clark back for so long, though, he thinks. He holds Clark to a different standard, because Clark is the best man he knows, but Clark is still a man and Bruce is tired of being disappointed by his own body’s reactions.

Bruce attends the funeral parade for the crew of the ship and makes a generous and more importantly, anonymous private donation to the families of those lost at sea and those injured.

The pain from his injuries is a constant reminder in the weeks afterward of what Bruce has survived. It isn’t until the aches and abrasions fade, and the stitches dissolve that Bruce realizes that his actual injuries are far beyond what he’d assumed.

He’s never liked having people at his back; he has tolerated it over the years out of necessity and social value, but early experience has taught Bruce that people who approach him from a blind spot generally don’t have his best interests at heart. It’s an impulse that he’s disciplined himself for years not to respond to unless in a combat situation. It’s an impulse that crashes back in with a vengeance.

He comes to himself, back pressed into the corner of his own dining room, prickling with sweat and the sour bite of adrenal response. He’s threatening someone; no words, just a low grating verbal warning. He sounds like an animal.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred’s voice is carefully neutral. “Bruce. It’s just me.”

The sound of the sea, endless and merciless. The sway of the boat-deck underfoot.

Bruce is… He’s…

“Bruce; listen to me, my boy. I intend to stay right here. You’re home.”

Bruce is… Standing on level ground. Breathing too fast.

Brandishing a steak knife at his surrogate father while using a cloche from the table as some kind of ersatz shield… Ready to attack. Bruce blinks, vision wavering.

There is no sea. There is no damned boat.

Christ. What is he doing? It’s been almost two decades since Bruce has lost control this way.

“I…” Bruce lowers the knife and distantly notes the tremor running through his hand. “Alfred...” He clears his throat and sets the knife down then stares at the cloche in his hand until Alfred steps forward and gently removes it.

“Come now, Master B, there we are. Good lad.” Somehow Alfred gets him moving.

Bruce isn’t surprised in the least to see Clark floating, hand touching the glass, outside his double-paned second story window. He pinches the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger wearily before crossing the room to lift the latch and throw the window open.

“For fucks sake, come in, Clark. Someone will see you.” He hears Clark’s hesitation, how he breathes in a bit at Bruce’s profanity. Not that Clark is the paragon of all that is pure, despite Superman’s own P.R. rap, but Bruce doesn’t usually allow himself to curse this way. He doesn’t allow himself to be heard cursing this way.

Bypassing the usual seems to be on trend for the month. Bruce backs into his seat when Clark steps inside the room. He hovers, his face uncertain.

Jesus. Bruce counts the steps to the door from the chair. Two point eight. Zero point four seconds. Has to close his eyes briefly when he hears the familiar tread of Clark’s slow pacing; that solid, reliable rhythm that he knows so well. Bruce relaxes muscles he hadn’t intended to tense. The magnitude of Clark’s kindness always surprises him, even now.

(Not the OP/prompter.) I just read this all in one go.

O.O Poor Bruce.

Can't wait to read how he recovers from this (with the alien bae's help, of course) and will the mad fighting skills expose his identity as Batman? How will he bounce back from that as well? As if he didn't have more than enough issues already. He's dealing with shit from all sides, it's truly amazing he hasn't curled up into a ball in his room and swore to never come out again. But you've captured his trauma so well and just what exactly's going on in his head. I love how you show such an iron-willed character reach his breaking point. Please don't leave us hanging! Will rush to reread the whole thing on AO3 once it's up there too.

AA here-

Wow, thank you so much! It was difficult to write.

I've gotten side-tackled by NaNoWriMo, but I am still working on this story.
Sorry for the WIP-iness of it all. :)

I just found this wonderful, heartbreaking fic and now I really, really hope you plan to continue at some point, especially now that Clark showed up. I need to see Bruce receive the support he needs and deserves, and get better, even if just a little.

I suck at giving feedback, as you can see, but just know that I'm suffering along with Bruce here, and I'm loving it. Thank you for writing this!

Thank you so much for this! I have a lot of irons in the fire, but I am still working on the update to this fic.

Im sorry for the late reply. It's so good that you're feeling it! <3

Your comment has made my day

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