Chapter Text
Bruce woke slowly and confused. Which, really, should have been the first sign something was wrong.
God, his head hurt.
He kept his eyes closed, pressing his head further into his pillow that, he distantly realised, was far more solid than normal. Whatever, he was far too hungover to think about that right now.
Oh, right, hungover— he had drunk last night, and by the feeling of his head exploding, far too much for his first time drinking in years.
“Mgh…” he groaned as he regained his bearings and opened his eyes to see…
A bare chest?
Suddenly, he was aware his torso was wrapped in a loose embrace, legs entwined with the figure’s.
He chanced a slow glance upwards, praying please god let it be anyone else, please don’t be—
Clark smiled drowsily down at him, “good mornin’, B. How’d you sleep?”
Fuck.
“Fuck,” he hoarsely grumbled out, but before he could open his mouth further to say anything else, and what would he even say, a hand was in front of his face holding a glass of water, which he accepted after adjusting to sit up slightly and took greedy gulps of, not registering how sore his throat was previously.
When he had a firm grip on the glass, Clark’s hand moved to stroke through Bruce’s hair gently, “I have plenty of things to say to you right now, but first I need you to tell me if you remember anything you said to me last night that led up to…” he used his arm still loosely wrapped around Bruce to gesture between them, “this,” his voice was calm and void of any judgement, the only thing keeping Bruce from panicking. Noticeably, at least.
Bruce held up a finger to signal a need for a moment, as he tried to recall the night prior.
He had been at a gala, and for some godforsaken reason decided to forego the mocktails for the night in all his self-flagellation over the breakup. He had certainly failed to account for his age and (lack of) tolerance after denying himself alcohol for years and had gotten sufficiently hammered.
Oh, right. That was when he decided to call Clark.
Suddenly everything came back to him in a rush. The call, the pleas for Clark to change his mind about breaking up with him, the flight back to the manor, when they landed and—
“Christ, did I throw up on you?”
A slight chuckle escaped Clark from surprise, “on my t-shirt, mostly.”
Bruce cringed, setting the now empty glass on the bedside table, “I think I recall everything, then. Clark, I’m—”
“You don’t have to apologise, B. you did enough of that last night. I just… needed to make sure we were on the same page here,” Clark said sweetly, his fingers never ceasing their comforting combing through Bruce’s hair.
He was not on the same page. In fact, Bruce was deeply confused.
“…And what page would that be, specifically?”
“How did we break up, Bruce?”
The non-sequitur only served to deepen Bruce’s confusion, but he entertained the change of topic.
It’s not like he could ever forget the harsh words spat at him, anyway.
”You can deal with this shit on your own then, Bruce,” Clark had snapped at him, and the use of a curse word paired with his name (rather than one of Clark’s god-awful pet names) had stunned him so much he flinched, actually flinched, at the words. But before he could conjure a reply, Clark was gone with a gust of wind and a muted, “don’t call me.”
Bruce struggled to correlate the sentence spoken to him then with the tenderness Clark was showing him now. He almost felt like this was some kind of cruel prank.
“You… we were arguing. I don’t even remember what we were arguing about, I hadn’t slept in… a while during a case. You broke up with me. Told me I could deal with my shit on my own. What’s this for, Clark? Are you just trying to humiliate me more?” his walls were rising at record speed now that he was fully awake and only moderately hungover. Clark shook his head before he had even finished his sentence.
“No, I wouldn’t do that. I just… that’s not how I remember it. In my memory—or, I guess, my misunderstanding—you were the one that broke up with me. I only realised we had different perceptions of it last night. I spent a lot of time while you were sleeping replaying the argument in my head, looking at both sides,” Clark rambled, doing nothing to ease Bruce’s headache or his confusion.
“How did I break up with you?”
“Well, before I said what I said—and I’ll apologise for that in a moment, please just hold on—you had just… kind of out of nowhere shouted at me that you ’don’t have time for this’ and—and when I asked what you meant by that, you just went—” he gestured between them in recreation, “’I don’t have time for this… you.’ and… and I thought that meant you were breaking up with me—I still don’t really know what it means if not that—and I snapped and I am so sorry, B. I got scared and upset and I should’ve just let you talk rather than assuming and—” he broke off into a sob, both hands coming up to cover his face, “I’m sorry, I didn’t want to cry, but I feel so bad for hurting you over a wrong assumption. Just… give me a second, please,” his voice sounded so broken as his sentence ended that Bruce couldn’t help but turn his body back to face him, placing a gentle hand on his bicep.
“Clark. I’m the one that should be apologising here. In all honesty I… don’t remember saying that,” he gritted out, every nerve in him screaming to just shut up. But if he was understanding Clark right, there might be salvaging this. So, he pushed through the discomfort and forced out the vulnerability Clark was owed, “I think my… exhaustion had been catching up to me, and I was just trying to say anything to get you out so I could continue working. I didn’t want you to leave for good. I… I would never want that,” he could almost laugh at the situation, “ironically, with you gone, I’ve barely gotten any work done at all.”
Bruce had tried to throw himself into his work—any work—after the breakup, but found himself unable to focus on reading or writing anything— paragraphs in reports and contracts read over 5 times without absorbing any of it, and any attempts at writing ending up riddled with spelling and grammatical errors. His work as the Bat faltered less, but only marginally so. He hadn’t realised how much he had— not relied on Superman, necessarily, but grown accustomed to him joining him unprompted on patrol.
Bruce had spent a lot of patrols simultaneously hoping for and dreading the idea of Superman dropping by.
Clark wiped his face, offering Bruce a small, sad smile that broke his heart more than cruel words ever could, “I should have understood that you didn’t mean it. You’ve done things similar to that before just to get people to leave you be,” he shook his head lightly, “and both of our work has struggled because of this. I’ve really been falling behind on my duties— as both Superman and Clark Kent…” he trailed off, clearly having something else he wanted to say but was hesitant to for some reason.
“Clark, say what’s on your mind before—”
“Do you want to go out with me again?”
What?!
“What?!” of all the things Bruce had expected, in his admittedly poor state, that had not been one of them. And oh he should not have shouted, his head not-so-kindly reminded him, starting to throb with newfound intensity.
Clark startled slightly at the response, but didn’t back down from his point, “well, I just think— if our relationship ended over a misunderstanding, and neither of us wanted it to happen, and we’ve both been miserable and heartbroken for weeks… maybe getting back together would fix those? And—and obviously nothing would be perfect, because we’ll probably still argue and misunderstand each other but… honestly, I miss it, I miss everything about you. There isn’t a part of you I wouldn’t love forever… if you’d let me love you again, that is,” he cleared his throat awkwardly, “it’s okay if you don’t actually want to get back together with me again— I mean drunk words aren’t always sober thoughts, but I—”
Bruce cut him off by covering Clark’s lips with his own in a short, chaste kiss, which Clark seemed more than happy to oblige, chasing the taste of Bruce as he started to pull away.
“You bumbling idiot, as if I’ve wanted anything for the past few weeks other than you,” he chuckled against Clark’s mouth, thumb coming up to caress his cheek gently, tilting his head to lean their foreheads against each other.
Bruce felt Clark’s blinding grin before he saw it, and a hole in his chest slowly started to mend at having his—Clark back.
“Okay—okay perfect, this is… gosh, baby, I don’t know what I would’ve done if you’d said no. With that out of the way— well, no. We’ll definitely be talking about things like communication going forward, but that’s a later problem. Let’s get some food and more water in you and then… go back to sleep maybe? Do you have anything to do today before patrol?” his hands roamed freely over Bruce’s body as he spoke, as if he couldn’t help himself now that he knew he could again.
Bruce nodded sluggishly, the adrenaline wearing off, replaced with his very much still-hungover state, “mm, I’m not leaving this bed for anything short of a mass Arkham breakout, big guy. Alfred will come up with food at some point soon— he’ll know about my… situation. He’ll probably bring breakfast for you too. Let’s just sleep until he comes,” he said, exhaustion coming back to him with a vengeance.
“I still don’t know how he knows everything like that, it honestly scares me,” Clark joked, “but before we get too comfortable, let me just—”
He disappeared into the bathroom for a few moments, returning with another full glass of water which he put on the bedside table, “—here.”
Bruce offered a small smile, “thank you, Clark. Now, get back into bed so I can sleep for the foreseeable future.”
Clark grinned and sped back into the bed with Bruce, moving them so they were back in the position guaranteed to make Bruce Wayne sleep for more than an hour uninterrupted. Clark laid on his back with Bruce halfway on top of him, tucked under Clark’s chin and legs entwined.
Clark wrapped one arm around Bruce’s back and another up to play with his hair, before pressing a light kiss on his head and murmuring a small, “I love you, B.”
Bruce hid his sleepy smile in Clark’s chest, offering a soft hum and a whispered, “me too.”
Clark’s chest shook with a light laugh, “sleep well, darlin’” he said, his hand in Bruce’s hair never ceasing its mission to break down Bruce’s walls, one scalp massage at a time.
I could get used to this again, Bruce thought as he closed his eyes and drifted to sleep in his partner’s arms again, more relaxed than he had let himself be in a long time.