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i.
The sun is low in the sky when they rush outside. There's a silhouette in the field, above the half-grown corn stalks, and – and it's impossible, it should be, but they both know who exactly is standing there.
The figure turns and then Clark is standing in front of them, suit battered and torn, covered in dirt. He looks – Bruce struggles to find the right word. Ethereal. Alien. Godly. He looks more like Kal than Clark as he stares at Bruce, and Bruce thinks he understands, now, the need people have to fall on their knees before the Superman. The setting sun is like a halo behind him, outlining the edges of his hair in a golden fire, throwing shadows across the hard planes of his face. His eyes are like the blue of the deep Atlantic, and Bruce thinks he could drown in the cold he finds there. Kal studies him, expressionless, and Bruce feels as if he's reached his judgment day.
And then the stone shatters and it's Clark who's standing before them, it's Clark who turns to his mother and pulls her into a hug, it's Clark who's smiling brighter than the disappearing sun. It feels like whiplash, like an awakening, and when Clark presses his face to Martha’s neck, Bruce knows he could never be a god.
Martha holds her boy’s face between her hands, and Clark’s smile wobbles and falls. His breaths are ragged and sharp, the tears on his face big and slow. He brings his own hand up over Martha’s, lets his eyes close, whispers, “I’m sorry, mama,” and it sounds like a shout in the dusk silence. Bruce feels like a voyeur, standing there watching their reunion, but he can’t seem to make himself leave.
The brightest stars have become visible by the time Clark seems to remember Bruce is there. He steps away from Martha as if reluctant, eyes again heavy and cool on Bruce. Martha looks between them and leaves them be, walks slowly back to the house.
Clark’s somewhere between Clark and Kal when he tilts his head, turns to face Bruce. “Why are you here?” he says, and now that he’s not whispering, his voice sounds rough, as if he’s just awoken from a long sleep. Because he’s just awoken, Bruce thinks, and can’t help but wonder if that’s what it felt like.
“I’ve been visiting your mother,” Bruce tells him, and for a moment this whole things feels ridiculous. They’re standing at the end of the corn field, crickets noisy in the distance, the sky black and infinite above them, the two of them nearly six feet apart and speaking loudly across the expanse to one another. Bruce covers the laugh he wants to make with a sigh, says, “I’m sorry,” and leaves out a name because he’s not entirely sure which he’s talking with.
“I don’t want your apologies,” comes the retort, sharp, and Bruce – he hadn’t realized how much he wanted that, wanted that from this being he hadn’t believed in, this being he’d tried to kill. He feels like he should confess, like he should beg forgiveness, like he should –
Start over, a part of him thinks, so he says, “How about an introduction, then?” and when Clark says nothing, Bruce steps forward. “Bruce Wayne. Batman. Bruce,” he says, takes a breath. “Doing my best to fix my mistakes.”
The silence sits heavy on them, around them, and Bruce is starting to think that Clark really won’t say anything at all, when he, too, takes a step forward.
“Superman. Kal-El. Clark Kent.” He pauses, too, looks from the sky to the house and back to Bruce, and Bruce knows this is Clark, now. “Happy to be alive.”
“Welcome back,” Bruce says, bites back his nerves and offers a small smile. He fights the urge to squint when Clark smiles back.
“Thanks,” he says, and no, Bruce thinks, mesmerized with the way Clark is so much more comfortable when he’s Clark and nothing else. No, he could never be a god.
ii.
“What happened?”
They're sitting in the yard in front of the house in the bright sunshine. It's the middle of the day, which feels wrong in a way Bruce doesn't know how to describe, because Clark – Clark looks most at home when his golden skin is bathed in the warm yellow light, looks like a middle ground between human and otherworldly, looks like himself, and Bruce just feels exposed.
“Luthor played me, and I fell for it,” Bruce says, squinting up at the sun, because it's easier to look at than Clark is, most of the time. “I let someone else think for me, and I was ready to kill someone – kill a man because of it.”
Clark's gaze is heavy on him, and Bruce wonders what's there. Is it judgment? Anger? Bruce hopes it's not, and he surprises himself with how strongly he hopes.
Bruce had left and come back, and he had half expected to come back to Kansas, to the Kent farm to Martha alone, like he had so many times. He had half expected to realize it was a dream, but there's a part of him that hoped and hoped and hoped. Is still hoping.
“I remember that much,” Clark says, and it lilts like it's a joke but it falls flat on both of them, and Bruce takes a breath. Clark shifts on the porch step next to him, pressing their thighs closer together as he turns his torso to give Bruce his attention. The full force of it feels like a sun in a tiny space, brilliant and trapping.
“I mean,” Clark says, “what happened? On your side.”
Bruce closes his eyes where they're still looking up at the sky.
“I guess I thought you were a risk. I thought you were too powerful, too much for this planet to be trusted with. Too much potential for global destruction. And I convinced myself – I convinced myself that one person, one alien, could never be allowed to hold that power over an entire race.”
Bruce pauses, opens his eyes and turns to look at Clark, who's watching him with that halfway-to-Kal face that still leaves Bruce feeling equal parts unsure and reverent. He shifts, looks Clark in the eye.
“That that one alien couldn't possibly feel any compassion, any obligation to this world that stole and lied and murdered. That he couldn't, because he didn't know anything about humans, because he didn't have a family, didn't have parents or a home or something to look out for.”
There's silence between them after that, as Clark turns his head to look out at the fields. Bruce feels stupidly chilly at the movement.
“For what it's worth,” Clark says, after a small eternity, and he turns back to Bruce. “It makes sense, I think. I can see how you got there.”
Bruce shakes his head and looks down at his hands clasped together in his lap. “But I shouldn't have.”
Clark raises an eyebrow at him, and his eyes are suddenly sharp, searching. Reporter's eyes. “You didn't actually kill me,” Clark reminds him. “That went to Luthor’s demon.”
I might as well have, Bruce wants to say. He'd come so close – so close, and it leaves a bad taste in his mouth that he doubts will ever truly go away. The memory of Clark on the ground underneath his boot is unsettling, haunts him mercilessly, endlessly.
Bruce shakes his head. “I came close enough,” he says. Clark sighs, and Bruce looks at him, really looks. Takes in the way, sitting this close, he could count the lashes on each eye, long and curling; he can see hundreds of tiny freckles just barely darker than his skin scattered across his nose and his cheeks; he could maybe fall into those blue, blue eyes forever, drowning in the detail, in the intensity, lost in the speckles of darker and lighter shades. This close, he looks remarkably human – his skin sun-freckled, his eyes imperfect, his face soft. He is no less beautiful, no less devastating, but he is human, here.
“Come on,” Clark says, sudden, breaking the reverie, but Bruce sees the way Clark's eyes are flickering between his own. He briefly wonders how long they sat there just now, staring at each other.
He stands, walking towards the driveway, and Bruce follows. “Where are we going?”
Clark turns, walking backwards so he can see Bruce, and he grins, just as blindingly, brilliantly beautiful as all the other ones, and Bruce wonders how much more his eyes can take. How much more his heart can take. Clark, walking backwards with the sinking sun behind him, hands in the pockets of his worn jeans, red button down open to a grey t-shirt. Clark, hair a mess of soft, thick curls the wind seems to love, creases at the corners of his eyes from the strength of his smile, beat up pick-up truck half hidden by his wide shoulders. Clark, perfect.
“There's a lake not too far away from here,” Clark tells him, and waves a hand wide at the sky. “If we go now, we'll catch sunset.”
iii.
Martha feeds them and sends them to bed after a day of farm work, Clark in his old bed and Bruce on an air mattress on the floor. Martha and Clark had both asked him to take the bed, but it didn't feel right to Bruce for reasons he'd be hard-pressed to describe.
And so Bruce lies there, still and staring at the ceiling, trying not to think about Clark. Clark, who he's fairly certain is still awake, too. It feels like an awkward group sleepover, where the only two people still awake are the two who know each other the least. Every so often Bruce feels like he should say something, but nothing comes to mind, so they stay in silence.
Until Clark sits up, bare feet landing with a soft sound on the hardwood. Bruce pushes himself up onto his elbow and looks at Clark.
“What's wrong?” he asks, because there must be, somewhere –
But Clark just shakes his head, and the dim moonlight catches on his teeth when he gives Bruce a small smile.
“Don't worry,” he says. “Not going anywhere.” But he gets up, anyway, and pads over to the window.
He slides the pane open and leans out, looking back up at the house. He seems to find what he's looking for, and he comes back into the room with a gentle smile on his face.
“Follow me,” he says, and Bruce blinks at him.
“Okay?”
Clark's already halfway out the window, sitting on the sill with his feet dangling above the floor, and he leans down to meet Bruce's gaze.
“Trust me,” he says, light and grinning, and Bruce – it's a blanket statement, sure, but Bruce can't help but feel like it's more.
Clark has disappeared out the window, but Bruce still softly says, “Of course,” on his way to the window, and he knows Clark hears it.
He looks out the window, finds Clark lifting himself onto the roof. Clark looks down at him. “What are you waiting for?” he asks with a laugh, and Bruce sighs, looking around the window for hand-holds. He hoists himself out of the room and makes it almost all the way up on his own before his grip wobbles just a bit and he sways.
“Woah, careful. Don't fall,” Clark says, leaning over the edge of the roof.
“Thanks for the tip,” Bruce says, although he knows he's more than halfway to smiling. Clark holds his hand down over the ledge.
“Here, grab on.”
There's less than half a second where Bruce debates it, and then shakes his head at his stupidity. Clark's hand is warm in his, bigger than his own, grip strong. Of course it is, he thinks, only half helping as Clark practically deadlifts him up the rest of the way.
Bruce settles on the roof tiles next to Clark. “Thanks,” he says, and Clark shrugs.
“Sure,” he nods once, and then his attention shifts to the reason they're up here. “Look at this,” he says, wonder thick in his voice and eyes on the sky. It's wide and dark above them, and covered in stars like tiny holes in the cloth of the night. Bruce could probably pick out a dozen constellation, if not more. There's the ghost of the Milky Way arching along in the background, and it's beautiful.
Clark shifts next to him, leaning back with a hand under his head. Both Clark and the roof tiles radiate warmth left over from the sun, and Bruce is comfortable here, in the night like this. He wonders if Clark knows, if that's part of the reason they're here, now.
“Can't ever get views like this in a city,” Clark says, and Bruce hums in agreement. “I used to come up here a lot, when I was a kid. Used to stare at every constellation, every star, waiting to find the one that was Krypton.” Clark takes a breath and lets it out slow, shifts a little, and Bruce turns, watches Clark instead of the sky.
“I'm not sure how I'd have known,” Clark says. “Maybe I thought I'd be able to feel it. That I'd look somewhere and know that was it.”
They're silent for a bit after that – just the crickets and the wind and their breathing, deep and slow and soothing, and this is dangerously comfortable, Bruce thinks. He's still looking at Clark, glasses-less and hair a mess, soft in a way he couldn't have believed, before.
“Most kids look at the stars because they're cool,” Bruce says, and it gets the desired reaction. Clark laughs, a loud, quick sound, and he turns a grin on Bruce, who expected it but is still blinded all the same.
“Did you?” Clark asks, and there's laughter in his tone. “Look at the stars because they're cool?”
Bruce shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “My father had a telescope in his study, and he'd show me planets and constellations on clear nights.”
Clark rolls into his side, head propped on a hand, and looks at Bruce. “What were they like?” he asks, and then, “I mean, you don't – I don't mean to…”
Bruce shakes his head. “It's fine,” he says. “I don't…I really don't remember a lot about them. And I think that what I do remember is…highlighted. Only the good things, you know? Like the perfume my mother liked to wear, and my father's favorite cufflinks. I remember looking at planets with my father, and my mother teaching me to dance. I really didn't see them much, though I do remember the few times we went out together. Mostly to the cinema, although there was one time we went to a dance hall.”
“Dancing, huh?” Clark says, and he sounds so ridiculously, surprisingly fond that Bruce can't help looking at him. His face is open and warm and Bruce – it would be so easy to kiss him, Bruce thinks, and the thought should surprise him, but he's been so all over the place after that evening in the corn field that Bruce doubts there's any thought that could truly shock him.
“Dancing,” Bruce nods. “Waltz, fox trot, Charleston. All the classics.”
“Dancing,” Clark says again, although this time he sounds lost in thought. “We should go sometime.”
Bruce blinks. “I didn't know you could,” he says, and Clark raises an eyebrow at him.
“There's a lot I can do you don't know about,” he tells him, and that – he can't possibly mean –
Bruce shifts his position and his hands slip on the roof tiles where he's balancing, sending him skidding down the slope of the roof. He doesn't get far, though, when there's suddenly big, strong arms wrapped around him, warm hands splayed across his chest.
“I thought I told you not to fall,” Clark says, and Bruce can feel the way his voice rumbles in his chest.
“But I didn't,” Bruce says, and maybe he's a little drunk on the way Clark's arms feel around him, on the way he feels safer than he has in years. “You caught me,” he adds, and leans back a little further into Clark's chest.
“Of course,” Clark tells him with a heavy exhale, and Bruce feels the puff of air on the skin between his neck and his shoulder before Clark's head is suddenly there, his nose pressed against Bruce's shoulder and his curls brushing lightly against Bruce's neck.
Bruce stills. “Clark?” he asks, barely more than a whisper. Clark takes a deep breath, tightens his hold on Bruce just a little. “Are you okay?”
“I'm – I'm okay,” Clark says, equally as quiet, muffled by Bruce's skin. “I just… god, I don't know.” He sighs and turns his head, nose brushing Bruce's neck. “I was dead, Bruce, I was really dead, and that's not – that's not something I ever really thought about, and it hurt, dying, and it was cold. I'd never been cold before.”
He sounds wrecked, really, voice tight and strained, ghosts of a great pain lingering, and Bruce relaxes, lets Clark take more of his weight. He brings a hand up to find one of Clark’s on his chest and threads their fingers together, grounding how he can.
“Thank you, for being here,” Clark says, quiet again, and the guilt Bruce has been carrying around wants to say, no, don't thank me, and he struggles to find something else to say.
“I'm glad you're back,” he says eventually, and Clark makes a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
“Thanks,” he says, and then seems to realize all at once the position they're in, and he picks his head up off Bruce's shoulder. “Sorry.”
Bruce stops Clark from taking at least one arm away with the hand that's still threaded through his. It's selfish, he knows, but he can't help wondering maybe Clark could be selfish, too.
“I don't mind,” he says, careful, and Clark squeezes their hands.
iv.
Bruce goes back to Gotham three days later, called back to his city and away from Clark and the lingering looks and hand-holding those three days held, and for the first time in his life there's a part of him that doesn't want to go back.
Alfred is waiting for him with a slew of missed business calls and three meetings that have to be rescheduled, and he waits a whole week before he confronts Bruce. He corners him in the bedroom, raises at eyebrow at the way Bruce putters around the room, trying not to think about Clark and how the sunset looks over the lake out Bruce's bedroom window.
“Is something wrong, Master Bruce?” he asks, and Bruce shakes his head and sighs, frustrated.
“I'm fine,” he says, and he knows Alfred doesn't believe him for a second.
“Whatever you say, Master Bruce,” Alfred agrees. He places the pile of laundry he was holding on the bed and begins to put it away.
“How was Kansas?” Alfred asks, after some time.
“Fine,” Bruce tells him, still mostly lost in the thoughts he's given up trying not to have.
“And how was Mister Kent?” Alfred asks.
“He's good – he seems entirely recovered, if not for a few lingering adjustment issues.”
Alfred looks at Bruce. “How is Clark, Bruce?” he says, and Bruce opens his mouth to answer, but he processes the question and glares at Alfred instead.
“I don't want to talk about it,” Bruce says, and he knows how petulant he sounds.
Alfred's face softens a little. “There's nothing wrong with how you feel,” Alfred tells him, and Bruce runs irritated hands through his hair.
“Yes there is,” he says, halfway to a snap. “I – Jesus, Alfred, I tried to kill him. I wanted to! And then…and now? And now he's alive and he's – he's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I'm falling in love with him, and I don't know what to do.” Bruce exhales, the weight not off his chest but at least out in the open, now, and he sits heavy on the edge of the bed.
Alfred comes to stand in front of him, his hand warm and heavy on Bruce's shoulder.
“It's nice to hear you say it out loud,” he says, wry, and Bruce glares at him.
“I'm having a crisis,” he reminds Alfred, who laughs softly.
“Bruce,” he starts, and he sounds so ridiculously fond that it warms Bruce's heart. “Clark strikes me as the forgiving type. In fact, I'm fairly certain he doesn't blame you for his death, given that it wasn't, actually, you're fault.”
“You can't know that.”
Alfred tilts his head. “I can't, but you can. Talk to him, Bruce. Don't let this one get away.”
Bruce heads down to the Cave that week, too, and Dick meets him there to return the cowl and interrogate him.
“Superman, huh?” Dick says, spinning around in one of the extra chairs as Bruce checks the logs from the days he's been away.
“What about him?” Bruce asks, and with that he's knows he's given himself away. Dick stops spinning, planting his feet on the ground to give Bruce an incredulous look.
“No shit,” he says. Bruce turns to glare at him, but Dick’s grin looks big enough to split his face. “No shit! Oh my god! Superman!”
“Dick,” Bruce growls, but he can feel the blush on his own face.
“So when is he coming over?”
“He's not,” Bruce tells him.
“Oh, come on, B. You should invite him for dinner.”
“Definitely not.”
Dick stands, then, stops behind Bruce's chair. He crosses his arms over the back and hangs his head over the side, like he used to do so often when he was younger.
“Dinnerrrr,” Dick says, and when he gets no reaction out of Bruce except for a deeper blush, he laughs, a loud, happy sound that tugs at Bruce's heart, and for some reason it kind of makes him want to cry, the sound of his eldest’s joy echoing off the cave walls. He blames it on the emotional stress he won't admit to having.
“Catch you later, B,” Dick calls, as he makes to leave. “Love you!” he says with more of that laughter Bruce could listen to for eternity.
“Love you, too,” Bruce says, and he doubts Dick can hear it, but he means it all the same.
v.
Bruce is still stewing in his thoughts by the time he heads upstairs for bed. He changes to thoughts of Clark at his dinner table, brushes his teeth to thoughts of Clark and Bruce's boys playing outside in the rare Gotham sun. It's absurd, he tries to tell himself, it's ridiculous and unattainable and exactly what he wants.
He can't help stopping at the window on his way to bed, peering out at the clear night. He tries to think of what the sky looks like here, and finds he can't remember.
His hand is on the handle for the sliding door before he even really processes it. “ Ridiculous,” he mutters to himself, and slides the door open.
“Is it?”
It's Clark, Clark, standing on Bruce's balcony, in flannel pajama pants and an old white shirt, feet bare and hair a mess. Bruce nearly chokes.
Clark rubs a hand on the back of his head and has the gall to look sheepish. “Sorry,” he says. “I didn't mean to scare you.”
Bruce shakes his head, steps fully outside and closes the door behind him. “You didn't scare me,” he says, mostly reflex. Then, “What are you doing here?” He pauses, looks over Clark more thoroughly. “Are you okay?”
Clark holds his hands up. “I'm okay,” he says. “I just…I wanted to see you, I guess.”
“At three in the morning.”
Clark winces. “Yes?”
“Well,” Bruce starts, and he stops when he catches a glimpse of the sky. It's clearer than he expected, although nowhere near the clarity of the sky above Smallville. He takes in Clark and the way he looks so soft, so human, so nervous – for a wild moment, Bruce feels like a teenager standing in front of a mutual crush, waiting for someone to make the first move. He takes a breath. “Well, I suppose I missed you, too.”
“Are you – wait, really?” Clark looks surprised and more than a little hopeful, and Bruce has no defense. He shrugs.
“Of course I did,” he admits, and the last bit Bruce hadn't even realized he'd been holding onto falls away, and he's here, all of him here in front of Clark, and if that first day in the field had felt like a judgment day, it has nothing on the way this feels. “I didn't think – I didn't think I was allowed to. Because of what happened. And I know…I know you said you that you don't blame me, but I…I don't know how to act around you. I want your forgiveness and I want your judgment and I want to watch you smile for the rest of my life. I… Clark, I just want you.”
Clark stands there and blinks at him and gives Bruce enough time to register everything he just said and be terrified he's said too much. And then Clark's moving, coming closer until their bodies are almost touching, and his hands are so gentle against Bruce's face.
“I forgive you,” Clark says, rough but steady, and he rubs his thumbs over Bruce's cheekbones.
“Clark,” Bruce whispers, says it like a prayer, like a call on a deity, and Clark's kissing him, a soft but firm press of lips. Bruce surrenders instantly.
“I have no judgment for you,” Clark continues, the words against Bruce's lips, and it's too much at the same time that it's not enough. Bruce's hands curl into fists in Clark's shirt and they're kissing again, longer and more insistent this time, Clark's hands wide and warm on Bruce's cheeks. Bruce is instantly addicted – to the way Clark's fingertips feel against his skin, to the way Clark's hair is even softer than it looks, to the way Clark radiates a comforting kind of heat Bruce could fall into, to the way Clark kisses him like he's desperate and clinging and cherishing all at once. His lips move against Bruce's like they've done this a thousand times, a give and take, push and pull kind of kiss that swells in intensity like waves in the ocean.
And when Clark pulls away, he's the most beautiful thing Bruce has ever seen, for what has to be the fifth time, at least. His face is wide open, eyes soft and so arrestingly blue it makes Bruce breathless; his skin is marble smooth, everything about him perfect, and a part of Bruce is stuck on how godlike he looks, like a figure from the ancient Greeks standing in front of Bruce with flannel pajamas and kiss-redded lips. It makes him a little heady, and he lets his hands trail across Clark's chest.
“Come inside?” he asks. “The sunrise over the lake is particularly nice.”
Clark smiles, and in such close quarters Bruce thinks he might go blind. One of Clark's hands has curled around Bruce's hip bone, and his thumb finds the bare skin under Bruce's shirt, rubbing gently, distractingly at it.
“I don't need a reason to stay.”