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Published:
2019-11-06
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2020-08-30
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Small Increments

Summary:

Change begins with a vague sense of discomfort, when something that has always stayed the same shifts from its place.

When Clark almost dies from radiation exposure, a shift happens by small increments.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

It was a closer call than usual.

Apparently Kryptonite isn't the only way to bring Superman down, and it's pissing Batman off that this is new information.

Nosy, paranoid bat, Clark thinks fondly, sagging slightly as another wave of exhaustion hits him.

As Batman drags him to the decontamination chamber, he can hear back molars grinding together in anger. 

Well, there is reason for worry. He does feel weaker, feels weirdly overheated, and the amalgam of heat and weakness is slowing everything down. How did Luthor figure out another one of his weaknesses?

"Strip, please. Let's get you under cold water as much as possible; it's the only thing I know offhand that might work against this type of radiation exposure."

The 'please' tugs at Clark. This is Bruce right now, not Batman. He's really worried for him.

"I can't believe it's possible to overdose you with solar radiation. It's pure, dumb luck that I arrived at the moment I did."

Clark slumps against the shower stall, struggling to remove his skintight suit. Bruce helps, still wearing gauntlets.

"If it's an overdose... of solar radiation... why do I feel... weaker... rather than stronger?" Clark almost slurs. He's so sleepy.

He's now down to his boxers, standing under a deluge of cold water in the hope that this will counteract whatever Luthor did to him.

Bruce drops his suit in the laundry basket, scrutinising him from head to toe as he walks back to Clark's side.

"My theory is that you extended your bioelectric aura just enough to let in enormous amounts of solar radiation, but not enough to overload your cells completely. Now all of your body's cells are focused on healing you while discarding the excess solar energy, leaving you weak."

He turns the temperature down a bit. "Let's help your body by making you colder little by little. After you feel better I need to do a full lab work to check for long term effects."

He’s quiet for a moment, then exhales.

"I don't know what would've happened if I didn't arrive as soon as possible. What a few seconds more of radiation would have done to you. Don't do that again, ever, alright?"

Clark feels unbearably fond of his friend right now, feels a squeeze in his chest as he looks at him.

The price was high, but it's a treat when Bruce let's his guard down like this. Allows himself to show how much he cares about the people around him.

He smiles from the wall he's slumped against. "Thanks for... zeta-ing us away... just in time then." I'm so lucky to have you at my back, he doesn't say.

His friend looks at him with a frown. "You still sound weak, is it helping at all?"

Bruce suddenly moves closer. He removes a gauntlet and touches his neck, as if to feel for fever. As he presses his warm palm against hot skin, Clark feels something jerk low in his gut.

A spark of something electric. The man has never touched him so intimately before.

His senses unwillingly hyper focus on the sensation of Bruce dragging his calloused palm across the thinner parts of his neck; focus on the warm friction, the press of flesh on his pulse. The concentration on those blue eyes, no, grey-blue, that's suddenly so close to his face. A quick movement of a hand flipped, then pressed deeply into his neck, and the electric feeling crawls across his skin, starts pooling into a low heat down in his - down in his.

With a casualness that's at odds with the fast beat of his heart, he reaches for Bruce's wrist and pulls it away from his neck, willing the heat from growing. "Really Bruce, I'm fine. Just a close call, I’m feeling stronger already."

Bruce grunts."I need to think about how to protect you from this. It's a new vulnerability."

Clark pushes off the wall, centers himself under the shower. Waves a hand at Bruce, softens any perceived dismissal with a smile. "I know you won't let this go, and I'm grateful for it. I'll meet you at the med bay, promise I'll stay here until I feel better."

Bruce nods, then walks away.

After the chamber door closes, Clark stares unseeing at the wall.

Bruce is his best friend. He's known him since the beginning of all this; from those first few months of barely acquaintances, when it was just the two them, through years of hard work at building trust, and now, a hard-won relationship that's close to brotherhood.

So why that... reaction? Why now?

Maybe, maybe because it's the first time he's been close enough to see that there's grey flecks in those blue eyes? Such a beautiful color.

No, no, no. He shakes his head, stops himself from thinking more about the man. That was just an... unguarded moment. He was exhausted and feeling endeared by how much Bruce cares about him, that's all.

Bruce is his best friend. The best one a man could have.

A cold shower is perfect right now.

 

 

 

 

Bruce pauses outside the chamber. He flexes his hand, chasing the feeling of smooth, hot skin, of flushed cheeks. A hitch of breath. Committing it all to memory.

He heads to the med bay to prepare.

Chapter 2

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Feeling marginally better after a very long shower, he slowly makes his way to the med bay to get checked. Right now he looks and feels every inch like exhausted human Clark Kent rather than practically invulnerable Superman, and he’s never felt more anchored to humanity than right now.

The swoosh of the automatic door reveals Bruce dressed in casual clothes, prepping the Kryptonite needle to most likely take his blood. But with how weak Clark feels he doubts Kryptonite is even necessary at this point.

He pauses for a bit on the doorway to take Bruce in because the visual is striking - a handsome, well-dressed man in black, his sleeves rolled up his arms, standing amidst the white of the medbay and the shiny chrome of the machinery and equipment. He looks at the signature black turtleneck all the way down to his jeans, at the way only designer denim can fit a man, and the way only some men can pull off designer jeans.

He can see suddenly why all the new recruits seem to always latch on Batman when they meet him, as if they can’t help but look, can’t resist gravitating closer, even if he terrifies some of them. His silhouette is always so striking wherever he may be.

As he draws closer Clark sees the frown between Bruce’s eyes and the number of equipment he’s preparing. He sees the worry, and that makes the heat he felt back there in the showers, supposedly cooled away, slowly leech back into his stomach, settling all the way back up his chest.

Bruce finally catches him basically gaping, and levels him with a glare that screams impatience.

He obediently walks closer, trying to clear his mind of these frankly uncomfortable and inconvenient thoughts. This is his friend, he’s being incredibly creepy right now, and he needs to calm down.

 

 


“How are you feeling?” Bruce asks, rubbing alcohol on the soft skin of Clark’s arm. He normally just jabs the needle willynilly into Clark’s skin during similar circumstances, and this extraordinary care is making the chest compression he’s feeling even worse.

“I feel weaker than I did in the shower, but I don’t feel overheated anymore. Ouch.” he says at the pinprick, surprised. This procedure has never hurt before, and he knows how unusual the reaction is when the crease between Bruce’s eyes deepens even more. He wordlessly goes to the microscope, squeezes out drops of blood from the vial, squishes it between multiple paper thin glass, and slips the rest of the vial into a sleek box connected to screens and moving graphs.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“I’m going to compare this blood sample against control samples to see what’s the difference. Won’t take half an hour, at most.” He then proceeds to ignore Clark, absorbed in the magnified pictures of moving blood cells in the screen.

Clark lies back to rest, slightly exhausted by the effort of getting here from the showers and wonders at the feeling. It’s so unusual to feel relieved to lie down; he likes to rest, likes the chance to clear his mind, but he doesn’t need it. Now though, slumping his weight onto the flat surface of a hospital bed is a genuine relief.

“It’s unusual that you haven’t recovered yet; Kryptonite poisoning disappears after an hour under the sun lamps, and I thought this would be a similar process.” Clark understands the logic, even if it’s faulty. He’s had an hour or so to cool off, so it’s concerning that he still feels weak. 

He looks at the screens, a stream of wiggling dots and other shapes. “I’m surprised you know enough about uh, hematology to even do this.”

Bruce snorts. “As if I have the time to study something that specialized. I just want to see if your cells are acting differently, then I’m going to send these to Leslie. It’s the scanner that’s doing the work.”

“I knew you were still human.” Clark replies with a weak grin.

Silence fills the room, disturbed only by the typing on a keyboard and the faint hum of the machine. Clark is startled to realize that although his senses are still sharp  - he can still hear sounds from three rooms away - they’re dulled somewhat, and the world is quieter and smaller than it usually is. 

He should feel apprehensive right now - he’s been made vulnerable by something completely new and they don’t understand it fully. And yet, the unusual quiet lulls him to sleep, knowing that Bruce will be there to watch over him while he closes his eyes for just a little bit.

 


He wakes up to the light of a dimmed lamp in a dark med bay, feeling incredibly rested. In the quiet he decides to test his hearing- he still can’t hear as far as usual, but he does hear the International Space Station hurtling across the Earth’s orbit. He’s getting better, it looks like.

He tries to stand, but stops at sight of the comforter thrown over him during his sleep.

He lays his palm flat against his chest, feeling that warm constriction that didn’t seem to go away ever since he was with Bruce in the shower. Because the thing with being invulnerable is that people very rarely take care of you, and it feels... nice. It feels nice to be worried about.

He looks around for the wall clock when he sees Bruce in a chair beside his bed, arms crossed and resting the side of his head on his shoulder. 

He’ll wake up with a massive crick in his neck for sure, he thinks fondly. He looks and looks, focusing his hyper senses onto that face, and here and now, where there’s no one to judge him for it, he let’s himself feel the warmth spread all over his chest without overthinking it. There are many reasons to explain why he’s feeling the way he does right now - radiation exposure, vulnerability, friendship, relief - but, just for now, he lets himself feel happy that Bruce is here, taking care of him, too worried to leave him behind with an unknown condition while he rests. 

So he looks and feels for a few more minutes,  keeping himself still and unmoving while he lets Bruce sleep, and once he’s got a hold of himself he squeezes his shoulder.

“Good morning Bruce.”

And Bruce jolts awake with little disoriented pause between wakefulness and sleep. He only takes a second to rub his eyes before focusing on Clark.

“How are you feeling now?”

Clark gets up and stretches his body, one extremity at a time, scanning it internally. He can’t feel the sluggishness that made it hard to walk earlier, but he’s still not back to normal - there’s still a bit of heaviness to his muscles that’s normally never there. He flexes them, just to check if they feel weak or sore, and bends his back to smoothen out any kinks.

“So much better, but not yet 100%. I’d say you should’ve woken me up when the tests were done, but it looks like I really needed the sleep.”

He looks back at Bruce, who’s looking off to the side.

“Is everything alright?”

“Yes.” Then he stands up and heads to the scanner, opening up graphs and stats on the screen. “Based on the results, you were actually at baseline human rather than your usual enhanced level. I’m still waiting for Leslie’s analysis, but we should check you again this afternoon.”

“Alright.” Clark stretches again, memorizing the feeling of apparently being ‘baseline human’.

Bruce locks the scanner, scrutinises Clark from head to toe. “You should go have some food, and I’ll see you again at 3. I need to check in back home for a bit.” He then heads for the door, but then Clark says,

“Wait, Bruce.” And he feels flustered, simply because this is supposed to be nothing, just one teammate taking care of another injured teammate, but he can’t help it. It’s Bruce, who’s always so sparse with his affection, taking care of Clark like this, like someone incredibly special to him. He rubs his neck in embarrassment with himself, feels like he’s blowing things out of proportion.

“Thanks for staying here with me all night, I really appreciate you worrying about me.” He smiles at Bruce, hoping he can see how much it meant to him that he always has Bruce at his back.

Bruce just stares at him for a moment, then touches his forehead again, pressing a bit to feel the temperature.

“It’s no problem at all, I’m glad your overheating is gone.” After a pause, he slowly brushes his hair away from his forehead. “You should get changed before you eat.” Then walks away without another word towards his quarters.

Clark watches him, a bit dazed, then he shakes it off and heads to the mess hall.

 

Notes:

Can’t promise this is going somewhere; this is the fic that I write when something pops into my mind.

Concrit is violently solicited!

Chapter 3

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Surprisingly enough, he recovers without consequences. He’s been dreading the long term effects of what happened - you can’t be friends with Bruce for nearly a decade now and not learn to expect the worst - but it looks like what happened was a fluke. For once.

The thing he hates most about Lex is that he’s brilliant, so his plans work most of the time.

A week after the incident, he receives a curt invitation from Bruce. He drops by the cave only to find the man standing rigidly in front of the massive computer, fingers gripping the edge of the table so tightly that the bones in his knuckles creak with the force of his anger.

“That bastard... It’s not a fluke.” He grits through his teeth. Clark silently stands beside him as Bruce presses replay on a video.

His friend closes his eyes for a moment, as if to calm himself down. “This is a simulation that Leslie just sent me - what would’ve happened if I didn’t get you out of that solar explosion in time.”

He watched as cells seemingly vibrate faster and faster, the energy at their core seemingly growing larger by the second, then all of a sudden... explosions.

Like tiny supernovas.

Clark shudders at the thought, of his whole body, every single cell of it, suddenly failing him all at the same time in such a gruesome, unstoppable way. “I don’t understand where Luthor gets these fits of inspiration from.”

“Maybe we need to be proactive, dedicate time to studying you so that we can have protocols in place.”

“Bruce, if we lived our lives trying to control everything that might kill us, we’ll never leave the house ever. Just last week a marauding army of aliens slipped through a wormhole outside Earth’s orbit.”

Bruce lifts his eyebrow at the hyperbole, but Clark is dead serious about this.

“I doubt anything we can come up with can predict that.” He adds. But he knows it’s futile convincing Bruce to leave anything to fate, so he instead focuses on something they can do. “Let’s just... continue having each other’s back, you know? But thanks for worrying about me.”

Bruce doesn’t disagree, but he is suspiciously quiet afterwards.

 

Ten days after the incident, the phone rings.

“Hello, this is Kent.” Clark answers distractedly, busy rewriting an article for tomorrow’s print.

“... Clark.”

“Oh, hey Robert.” He replies, switching to the codename, and relieved to remember the protocol - it’s a rare thing, that Bruce calls him via his office phone. “How can I help you?”

“I’m just checking if there were side effects from last week.”

Clark smiles at the question, pausing to save his article first before answering. He scans his body, feels the leashed energy in his muscles, the lack of weakness anywhere he focuses on. “I’m still alright. Looks like we got lucky yet again.”

“That’s good.” A pause. “You know I’m not a big believer of luck.”

“Oh I think everyone you’ve worked with knows that very well, Rob . The last thing anyone thinks about you is that you don’t plan enough.”

“Get back to work, Mr. Kent. What have I been paying for if you’re not working?”

“Hey you’re the one who-“ and the line is dropped. Clark continues to smile a long while after the call that everyone in the bullpen starts whistling and shouting What’s with the goofy face Kent? and Ooooh Rob asked you out to the movies, Clark? He’s gonna pick you up at your house? Which didn’t even make sense, and he regrets everything.

 

12 days from the incident he’s staring off at the distance, letting his mind wander with the hope that when it comes back it’s brought the words he needs to write his overdue editorial, when he notices the CCTV camera that’s always been trained on the door suddenly zoomed into his desk.

He rubs his face in exasperation and sends off a text to warn someone to back off, that he told him that he was fine, and that he’ll let him know if anything changes.

To absolutely no one’s surprise he doesn’t get a reply, but after lunch break the camera’s no longer trained on his desk, so that’s something at least.

 

Exactly two weeks from the incident, he feels a tingle behind his neck. This isn’t one of Superman’s smorgasbord of powers; just a finely honed fifth sense for when there’s anything different from the usual, developed from years of fighting criminals and dodging near death.

He idly scans the area behind him and focuses on a man drinking coffee alone in a corner of the cafe - a beanie covering his head, windbreaker, scarf, and large rimmed glasses swallowing most of his face.

A typical urban hipster in a coffeeshop, practically background noise in a metropolis. A masterful disguise, but too bad for him, Clark knows that silhouette all too well.

He knows better than to blow one of Bruce’s covers, so he sends him a raised eyebrow instead, and if he had less manners he might have given him the finger out of annoyance.

 

The CCTV camera turns his way once every three days now. Clark makes sure to frown very, very disapprovingly every now and then, just to show how he feels about this... hovering. It’s starting to feel less comforting and more worrying, at this point.

Sam from security approaches him warily one afternoon, awkwardly asking why he keeps glaring at the security camera, and was it something he did? Clark fumbles through an equally awkward excuse of how it’s just part of the writing process, staring off the distance and glaring, hahaha, it’s nothing personal, wish they put more plants here, you know? They say green relaxes the eyes.

He needs to have words with Bruce soon. Soon, he tells himself. No true harm done so far, anyway.

 

In an unprecedented move Mr. Wayne drops by the Daily Planet offices to “inspect his media subsidiaries”. Meanwhile, inside the Editor-in-Chief’s office, Perry White is alarmed and fuming that corporate is showing interest in his editorial room, the room that Mr. Wayne has left entirely to his supervision so far.

When a pen goes flying past his head just as Perry bellows “No extensions for you, Kent!”, was when Clark finally feels that something needs to be done. But to get Bruce to stop doing something that he thinks is right, he needs some serious ammunition.

 

“Dick, you need to intervene.” Clark pleads over the phone.

He hears the sound of cooking over the phone, and if he concentrates, he thinks he hears fried rice being tossed in the pan. Typical bachelor fare.

“What happened exactly? Did something happen to you? From what you told me he’s acting exactly like that time Alfred had a heart scare.”

“Alfred did? Is he okay now?”

“Yeah sure, of course he’s finally okay, but do you know Bruce practically forces Alfred to take a walk around the gardens once a day now, no matter how busy it gets? It’s scary, seeing them square off. Like an underground cage match.”

Clark is surprised. “He didn’t tell you what happened with me?”

“Nah, I just know something happened at the Tower that one time he stayed overnight, but he told me it’s about your safety, so I shut up pretty quickly.”

Again, Clark feels that squeeze in his chest, and a catch in his throat. Bruce cares, so much.

“It’s, something happened with Luthor. He got pretty close than usual to killing me.”

A silence, then softly. “Oh, I get it now.” Then he hears the sounds of a plate and cutlery being laid down the table. “I don’t think he’ll stop until he makes absolutely sure that nothing’s going to happen to you.”

“How do I do that and get him to believe me? I’ve been telling him, Dick. I cannot be more clear when I tell him that I’m fine. How is “I’m fine, stop following me!” even vague in any way?”

“Then why don’t you just get angry and tell him to leave you alone?”

“Well... it’s not like I don’t know where he’s coming from. I mean, it’s not a bad thing per se? I’m just worried about how much he’s worrying, that’s all. He has enough on his plate as it is.”

“Oh my god I can’t believe this.” Dick mutters into the phone.

“What? What’s wrong with that?” Clark asks, slightly hurt at Dick’s frustrated tone. Did he have other plans tonight? But Dick’s never been selfish with his time.

“Oh no, it’s not you, Clark. Just, it’s kinda frustrating when two people don’t seem to get each other, you know? Even when things are unsaid, and it’s obvious to everyone what’s going on?“ Dick replies with a weird emphasis on ‘obvious’.

“Exactly!” Clark agrees. “Bruce can literally see that I’m fine, I don’t need any more of his monitoring.”

Dick outright heaves a resigned sigh, and Clark is hoping it’s frustration with Bruce rather than with this frankly absurd situation.

“If being frank isn’t working, then you just have to find a way to make him acknowledge that you’re fine.”

 

For all that he’s raised midwestern and polite, Clark was still an investigative journalist. He’s also Superman, and in both jobs he confronts the issue, the danger, head-on. And if Dick thinks it’s time for him to resolve this his own way, that’s exactly what’s he gonna do.

At the end of the work day, he flies to the manor.

 

He finds Bruce in the cave about to get ready for patrol.

“Bruce, we need to talk.”

The obstinate man crosses his arms, and instead of denying everything, which would be beneath him, he replies with the most infuriating thing he can possible come up with. “I want to be sure you’re okay.”

“I already told you, I’m fine!” He takes a deep breath. “Really, I appreciate how much you worry about me, but it’s starting to interfere with my work, and I don’t like feeling like I’m being surveilled. And we both know you’re too busy to keep doing something this unnecessary.”

Bruce looks off to the side, which is unusual for him. His number one weapon is intimidation, after all. “What happened was the closest call we’ve had in a while, and it’s something we didn’t even understand. It’s too good to be true, that it just went away.”

He turns to look at Clark with his usual intensity. “We both know you have the tendency to rely on brute force; is it so unusual for me to think you’re being to carefree about this?”

Feeling so very frustrated , he zooms close, grabs Bruce, and squeezes him hard. Bruce is rigid in his arms, but doesn’t make a move to leave.

After a few seconds of squeezing him, just to make sure he’s not going to push him away, he places his palm against Bruce’s  nape and gently he presses him against his chest. “Here! Just, just listen to my heartbeat; it’s as strong as it ever was.”

He then lifts very slightly above the ground, making sure that Bruce’s feet are stepping against his own. The elevation forces Bruce to hold onto his waist. “See? I’m as sturdy as ever, can still lift all 210 pounds of your paranoid ass, as usual.” He says, softly.

He can’t see Bruce’s face from this angle, but he’s holding himself stiffly in Clark’s arms, and the heart pressed against his chest is going a mile a minute. He takes a moment to wonder at the unexpected intimacy of feeling a person, of feeling Bruce of all people, so close this way, but the wonder is overpowered by the possibility that he’s causing his friend discomfort. Even though he deserved it.

He slowly lowers them down and squeezes him one more time. “I never said anything, because I know it’s just you looking out for me, but I don’t want you worrying either. I’m fine, and I’ll tell you immediately once I’m not.” He separates them and looks at Bruce anxiously. “Are we good? Sorry about that.”

Bruce is tense, and for a few seconds Clark wonders if the hug was that unwelcome, but then he relaxes and pinches his brows together in his fingers. “No, you’re right. I went too far. I was just... worried.”

Clark relaxes too. “It’s alright.”

“We’re good.” He hesitates, then continues. “Your heartbeat’s faster than I expected.”

“Oh, yeah. I think it’s the fast metabolism.”

Bruce nods, and Clark has the inexpressible feeling that while things have settled back into their normal positions in the world, they’re all slightly... shifted, is the word. There’s an understanding between them now, of how much they mean to each other, but at the same time, nothing has changed.

It’s odd, and it makes him restless. Luckily Bruce breaks the silence.

“I’m going to start patrol.” He dismisses Clark by heading to the Cave’s armoury without another word.

“No more acting like a creeper!” Clark shouts after him, and the ‘yeah, yeah’ he hears back is good enough for him.

He flies back to Metropolis.

Notes:

What even is this chapter??? But I had so much fun writing it and hope you liked it though! Also hard squeeze hugs are the best hugs.

PS: If I ever write another chapter I promise there’s going to be resolution of some sort.

Chapter 4

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

Months later finds them in a different med bay; a state-of-the-art facility made more impressive by the fact that it’s built into the stone walls of a somewhat dank cave that is full of bats. They find themselves here because this time, it’s Bruce that’s hurt. 

The thing about Bruce is that, in his worldview, it’s justified when he goes crazy with smothering paranoia, practically stalking people for the pursuit of his own peace of mind. But on everyone else it’s an overreaction and ‘hysterics’. Clark wants to go out and punch something until it disintegrates into fine dust.

“I’m not being unreasonable. Non-metas getting injured is straightforward; I break bones, a weapon makes me bleed, or a hit jostles an organ. The end result is I’ll heal or I won’t. They all have straightforward outcomes.” 

He moves toward his tablet on the bedside table and Dick snatches it out of reach, unafraid of the scowl leveled against him. “You know Alfred’s rules. At least a day of rest for broken ribs."

“Hm.”

“Bruce."

“This situation is unlike you and your ridiculous body; look, if you remember, it took what was essentially a small supernova and a genius nutjob with no better use of their time to affect you. We can never predict what happens when it comes to you.”

He rubs his face in frustration. “Bruce.”

“Hm?”

“Shut up.”

Bruces raises an eyebrow at the outburst and Dick hides a snicker behind his hand. No one really does tell Bruce to shut up, except Clark. Possibly Alfred, on his bad days.

“I’m going to make coffee, any requests while I’m at the kitchen?” Dick says.

“Coffee.”

“Bruce, no. Nothing for me Dick, thanks.”

He waits until Dick is out of earshot before turning the full force of his irritation unto the man currently laid out on a hospital bed, his face free of any emotion other than a mild annoyance. Possibly annoyed at being confined to rest. Clark hoped for at least a little remorse.

“You were shot in the chest. What the fuck were you thinking?"

Bruce shrugs, and through a deep breath Clark stifles the flash of rage at the nonchalance. He takes another, and another.

“Let’s start from the beginning.” He says, shaping the words fully as he speaks them, the way you talk to grade school children when explaining something complex or to keep an even and calm breath. “Why did you take the bullet for me?”

The man had the gall to roll his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious.”

Clark can’t help but pinch the space between his eyebrows. He doesn’t get headaches the way other people do, but the frustration bubbling in his chest needs a physical outlet somehow.

“Tell me, why is it obvious that the human with the normal flesh and the normal bones is the one that should be shot. Rather than me, the practically invincible Kryptonian with the mostly invincible suit?”

“Yes, it’s obvious."

“You just told me I have ridiculous body! If anybody should be shot at it should be me!” Clark replies, all pretense of calm gone.

“My armor is bulletproof. Your spandex suit, while extraordinary, is still of Kryptonian make. Who knows how it's going to react to a Kryptonite bullet? The outcome of a bullet hitting me is more predictable.” Bruce replies with the same tone Clark started with, like he’s the child in this conversation and isn’t that infuriating? 

He closes his eyes and sees the bullet leave Luthor’s gun, remembers feeling a bit disbelieving at the attempt and thinking he may have overestimated him. But the distance between the bullet and his body was already small when he noticed the green glint, and even he, as impossible as he is, can't dodge all the way at that point. He braced for impact, and from one millisecond to the next there was only a thud, a grunt of pain, and a body on the floor.

He felt his heart crawl up his throat as as he stared at Bruce, and in the seconds he wasn’t moving time seemed to stop altogether. The scene didn’t make sense and he didn’t know how to react. Clark was frozen where he was standing.

He opens his eyes, and the quiet in the med bay permeates.

"This is just… severe bruising and broken ribs, Clark. I’ll heal. Who knows what it could have done to you?”

“Please, please just stop.” He replies with a hand raised as a plea. He can’t take hearing anymore of this. "I thought I lost you there for a moment.”

“But you didn’t.”

“Please, just, listen to me.” He moves to take Bruce’s hand and holds it tightly. He needs to impress on the man the weight of what happened so that he shuts up and stops this awful dismissive attitude as if it’s just another day on patrol. “Listen to me. From the moment you fell on the floor, time seemed to stop.”

“I don’t regret possibly saving you, Clark. But I am sorry that you’re distressed."

“Distressed? That’s one word for it. I was useless and impotent.” Clark replies, his eyes never leaving the face in front of him. “Bruce, why do I have the feeling that if anything happened to you, I’ll just stop moving altogether? It felt that way.”

That got Bruce’s attention. Finally got his attention. 

“Clark."

"You stopped moving, and it's as if a lot of things in my life have come to an end and I missed out on everything, and I’ve stopped.”

There was no immediate reply to the declaration. They’re staring at each other now, and he’s not going to look away. He’s going to let the words linger and sink in. Clark sees Bruce’s throat moving through a swallow, and the pulse in the hand he’s holding is jumping.

“So are you finally going to say sorry now?"

“I know the feeling.”

It’s not the reply he was expecting, but then again, this is what’s it’s always going to be like with Bruce, wasn’t it? He thinks back to the incident with the solar flare months ago. He thinks of all the moments that came before, and he sees the man before him with clear eyes.

“You do, don’t you?”

“I always need to be beside you, because you’re liable to get yourself killed, and I.” Bruce looks off to his side. “I think I’ll stop moving for a long while if you do."

He smiles at that. “Then we just have to stay together all the time now, don't we? I need to be there to stop you from doing stupid things, like jumping in front of bullets for me."

“Back at you.” Bruce replies as if it’s nothing, as if the hand that’s gripping his own isn’t holding on as tightly.

Nothing is resolved. Clark is still angry at him for his arrogance, at the way he seems to weigh his life against everyone else’s and sees an imbalance, and it will take more than an afternoon’s conversation to change the mind of the most stubborn man in North America.

But they need to start somewhere. As he cups a stubbled cheek and brushes his lips against Bruce, as a hand grips his nape in reply, he thinks a kiss is a great place to start.

Alfred finds Dick in the kitchen, drinking coffee and scrolling through his phone.

“How is our patient?”

“Physically? The ribs will be the usual four weeks. Emotionally, there’s an even chance that he’s happier than he’s ever been."

“Oh?”

“Bruce is in a mood, but Clark is still down there and has been down there for a while. So I’m betting they finally got their shi-, uh, act together. I’ll stay up here to let them stew in the atmosphere a bit longer.”

Alfred puts the kettle to boil and pulls out ingredients from the cabinets. “I’ll bake us some scones for afternoon tea."

Notes:

And that's it, I hoped you enjoyed reading this! We started out kinda broody and ended up somewhere fluffy. Thank you very much for your patience with this story and all your feedback :) I loved writing it.

Notes:

How Clark was overdosed with solar radiation was taken from the first few pages of All Star Superman.

Also I was thinking what song best fits the mood of this fic, and it's Señorita. Hope I pulled it off!