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“Hey, let’s go on a road trip,” Bruce blurted out.
“Uh, sure?” Clark responded, not sure where that idea had come from. Usually, his boyfriend hated leaving Gotham for reasons outside of business, and he never took vacations unless prompted by Clark, Alfred, or one of the boys.
“Why the sudden interest now?”
Bruce shrugged, not giving an answer. “I just feel like it.”
“Are you okay? This isn’t typical Bruce behavior. Are you sure you haven’t been contaminated by Fear Toxin? Or Laughing Gas?”
“Don’t even joke about that.”
“Okay, okay. But you aren’t going to entertain me with a reason on why you decided that today of all days you want to go on a road trip to who even knows where just for kicks?”
Clark was more than confused, but he didn’t want to push it too far. God knows, Bruce needed to get out of the mansion for something other than work, and this was the perfect opportunity.
“No. Let’s go.”
And with that, Bruce went to go grab his bag of already packed clothes. Clark followed after him, not knowing how to feel about Bruce already assuming that Clark would agree on the trip. Then again, it was Bruce. He packed his own bag and the two headed out onto the driveway where an already rented pickup truck was standing.
“You couldn’t just buy one?” Clark huffed, not even surprised that one had been there all this time. It’s like whenever Clark thinks he’s in control of his own actions, Bruce has twenty steps to show that he played his own hand.
“It makes for a better road trip.”
Clark rolled his eyes at his boyfriend’s dramatics, but hopped into the truck as well. The two rumbled out of the city limits and into the country sides. At first, the silence was peaceful; a little quiet from the racket of the Wayne mansion was always nice. But once the landscape started to become just rolling visions of dry, tan dirt, Clark got bored. He reached his hand to turn on the radio, but before he could touch the power button, Bruce swatted it away.
“Really? I won’t even turn on the country station, Bruce. Just a little something to liven up the mood. It gets depressing just watching you stare at the road.” Bruce driving was like Bruce doing any other activity; the man put all of his focus and attention into the act and rarely let anything distract him from it.
“Not yet,” he grumbled back, not taking his eyes off the road.
Clark sighed, hoping this trip wasn’t going to be like this for much longer. “Where are we going anyways?”
Bruce remained mute on the destination of the road trip, so Clark turned to passively watch cars go by, entertaining himself with licence plates, similar to family trips as a young boy. By the time he had seen his fifth New York plate, he was ready to fall asleep at the spot. Clark knew that trying to get a conversation out of Bruce was only going to piss him off, but he was in the blind about everything on this surprise trip, and he was tired of it.
Whining, Clark asked, “Come on, at least a hint? Not even the city, just a street name? Give me a little something, B.” He sounded like one of Bruce’s many children, so of course Bruce knew how to handle him.
“We are now about to enter Cresskill, New Jersey. 563 flu victims died there during World War I in October of 1918.” He then started to ramble on about the 1918 influenza pandemic and how it affected the world. Bruce didn’t stop there; the topic of discussion jumped all over the place, from the aforementioned H1N1 virus that caused the Spanish flu to how the ways the industries of agriculture raise livestock cause breeds of new viruses. Fortunately, Clark could follow that line of discussion, having been through it multiple times with his dad growing up. Unfortunately, talking about cows and chickens was the last thing Clark wanted to talk about with his boyfriend.
But Bruce wouldn’t stop talking, utilizing his brain to max capacity to recite everything he knew about everything. Eventually, it became a relaxing background noise for Clark, who could fall asleep to the dulcet voice of Bruce. He knew that Bruce wanted him to fall asleep so that he would stop asking questions about where they were going, but for once, he let his boyfriend’s scheming plan go into effect.
Waking up from the nap, the sun was starting to set, and Clark was getting hungry. Though they had both eaten a full course meal at lunch, courtesy of Alfred, it had been hours since then, and the two had neglected to bring any roadside snacks along with them. He didn’t know how much longer Bruce had planned on driving, but it seemed as though he wanted to continue forever, and Clark couldn’t handle that.
“Bru-”
“Not yet, Clark,” Bruce interrupted before he could get his thoughts out. Clark didn’t know why he wasn’t used to this sort of behavior yet.
Looking through the windows and out into the pastures, the road trip had given Clark some time to reflect on his life. How he thought he was just a normal kid until his powers started to develop. How he couldn’t fit in with everybody else because not only was he adopted from the woods, he could crush everybody without breaking a sweat. How it took until his twenties to realize why he was sent to Earth. How even as Superman, he couldn’t save everybody and had to learn how to deal with the guilt of ‘if only he could’ve been a little but faster.’ Life had been difficult for Clark, but it was one he would go through again and again just to protect the world.
But life was even harder for the man sitting next to him. A boy who had to grow up too soon when a stranger decided to play God and shot down his parents in front of him. A teen who wandered aimlessly until he decided that no child should ever feel the way he did that night. A young man who didn’t know what he was doing, but saw a child too similar to himself and took him in as his own.
A man who had to see countless people die because he thought he wasn’t strong enough, wasn’t fast enough, was too preoccupied with things like family and love to stop the people set out to destroy the world. A man who had to watch his own children die right in front of him. But despite all of that, Bruce stood tall and fought. He fought as if he was the only thing holding up the Heavens from falling onto the Earth. He wasn’t a god, but he was his own Atlas.
“Hey, Bruce, I love you.”
He could tell that the other man was shocked at the seemingly random comment. The two didn’t often trade confessions of love, despite knowing down to their deepest cores that they loved each other. Clark smiled as his boyfriend tried to hide his blush, not wanting to know how affected he was at the message.
“I love you too, Clark.”
He wanted to take advantage of Bruce’s brief moment of weakness to ask about their destination, when they were stopping for dinner, anything really. But he knew he couldn’t do so because he too had been weak in the moment, full of love and admiration. Clark reached over to place his hand onto Bruce’s thigh, starved for touch and comfort. The heat of Bruce’s body felt amazing to even his everlasting warm body.
Bruce broke the calm, asking, “Clark, do you see a gas station up ahead? Or a rest station at least?”
Concerned, Clark looked to spot any of the mentioned locations. “Yeah, there’s a Circle K about twenty miles out. Why? Are we out of gas or something?”
Instead of answering of the questions, Bruce replied with, “Okay, you can play something on the radio now, if you want. It can even be country.”
It was an odd lack of answer combined with an even stranger request. Clark didn’t know how a man ever so prepared such as Bruce would ever encounter a problem like running out of gas, but he also knew how focused the man could be when he had one thing set on his mind. He tried to swipe a look at the gauge, but the other man covered it up before he could see. Clark could easily look through, but he respected Bruce’s wishes to not disclose the information at the moment. Unfortunately, Clark also knew that Bruce often kept problems to himself before they become too much to handle.
“You will tell me if there’s a problem right?”
“Yes, of course. Now play something on the radio already.”
Clark aptly did so, cranking the volume high on a country song he belted the lyrics out to, knowing that this was the one opportunity Bruce would let him play such blasphemy in the truck. He had been singing so loudly that he almost didn’t notice the beeping of the truck, telling them that they were about to run out of gas. Luckily, the Circle K was just ahead, and Bruce pulled into the gas station.
The two got out, needing to stretch their legs, take a bathroom break, and just grab some food. As Clark walked out of the store with a bag filled with junk food, he noticed that Bruce was fiddling with something that wasn’t the gas nozzle. In fact, there seemed to be a look of pain on his face. Clark got worried, assuming that the worst had happened and got ready to fly them back to Gotham.
“Oh no, the boys are fine. Dick called and said patrol had been slow so far. Uh, actually, I was wondering, uh, if you wanna. I mean, Clark, I- I don’t know how to say this, but um-”
It was absolutely out of character for Bruce to be stuttering this much and overthinking about what he was going to say. Clark was scared out of his mind that something bad had already happened, and the fact that his boyfriend couldn’t explain himself only increased his nerves. Everything was already Hell for him, but then suddenly, all of the lights except for the one at their pump flickered off. The only thing left lit was Bruce. And Bruce was on one knee.
“So, I know you know where this is going, but let me just. Think of my speech real fast. Ever since I’ve met you, I’ve been enamored with you. When you rejected me, I fell even harder. Clark, you are the light that is blinding me. You- Ther- I, uh, there is so much I could say about you. I can fill millions of books, just writing about how much I love you. And maybe one day, I will. But today, tonight, let me just say. Clark Joseph Kent, I never thought I would ever say this, but. Will. You. Marry. Me?”
Bruce almost seemed as if he was shaking, and he spitted out that last sentence like he was being choked from behind. But the instance he asked, Clark exclaimed, “Yes! Absolutely yes! I would love to marry you, Bruce.”
Neglecting the ring, the two embraced in each other’s arms, not caring that the world was still going one behind them. After all, they were each other’s worlds. They were so wrapped up in each other’s arms that Clark did not notice that the lights had turned themselves on again and that there were now fireworks shooting into the sky. Clark could not care less about anything else because the only thing that mattered right then and there was Bruce. They just stood there together; Bruce’s head took into Clark’s, keeping each other warm and safe.
Finally, as what seemed to be years later, they broke apart, grinning from ear to ear. Somehow, Bruce had already managed to slip the ring onto Clark’s finger, but there were more pressing issues that he had come to realize.
“Bruce, I love you, I really do. But why on Earth did you choose a Circle K to propose to me? I know you aren’t the most romantic guy, but a Circle K?” Clark teased, half joking, half wanting a real answer to his question. “In fact, did you plan for all of this to happen? Purposely filled the truck’s gas tank to the point where when it ran out, it had to run out at this exact location? Is that why I had to wait to play the radio? In case your estimations were a bit off?”
Clark already knew what Bruce was going to say, and he was astounded. Despite knowing the man for over a decade, despite loving him for just as long, this was really the last thing he had expected.
“Do you remember our thirty fourth date? How we went to the county fair and afterwards ate at QuikTrip for dinner because I was scared of the fair food but not of the gas station food? Do you remember that story you told me?” Bruce started to explain himself, and it started clicking for Clark.
“I was on my first date ever at 14, and at the top of the Ferris wheel, we could see the whole town. I pointed out to the Circle K and jokingly said that that was where I wanted to get proposed at. Bruce, that was ages ago, how on Earth do you still remember that?”
“I remember everything you tell me, Clark.” He couldn’t believe his luck. How did he manage to get the best boyfr- fiancé in the world? Clark Kent was the luckiest guy ever. “God, Bruce, I love you. I really love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Later, when the two were properly situated in a motel bed, Bruce revealed how he had paid the gas station in advance to make sure only the light at the pump they were at would still stand and how they were to shoot off fireworks in the event that Clark had said yes. He had spent hours trying to figure out the math, making sure to get the gas correct down to the last milliliter.
“You do realize that you could’ve just proposed at one of the Circle Ks in Gotham, right Bruce? You didn’t have to make a grand trip out of it.” But Clark knew that it wasn’t in his nature to do that. And the anonymity of a road trip allowed the two to make a great load of noise at night without getting yelled at by the people they knew. Bruce really knew how to think ahead.