Chapter Text
If -- and this was only a hypothetical -- if Bruce had the ability to travel through time, he would return to the television interview three weeks ago, and he would choke to death that idiotic self who was spouting nonsense in front of the camera. However, first of all, he didn't; secondly, if he were to carefully reflect on and examine it, his answer at the time couldn't really be considered 'nonsense'. In fact, at first look, it had seemed quite logical, after passing through the 3-5 minutes of detailed deliberation given by the Batman before accepting the formal interview. One must understand: The vast majority of things that Brucie had to worry about could only be spared a maximum of two minutes of time from the Bruce that was simultaneously living two different lives. So, this whole situation didn't actually deserve any vexatious regrets. He'd done his best with the scenarios that he could predict at the time.
Perhaps this was exactly why he felt a wave of outrage. Not only was his ego bruised, but he had the furious feeling that fate was setting up against him.
Still, neither fury nor regret could save the present him or pull him out of the crowd that was currently pushing him toward Superman. Everyone was excitedly riveted on this tableau. Shouts of, "Brucie! Brucie! Kiss him, give him a kiss! Give him a taste of Gothamite passion!" surrounded him.
Gotham didn't do passion. Bruce snorted. That was more the style of the goddamned Metropolis. Even if he was in Metropolis right now and facing the top-line mascot of Metropolis, he couldn't help his desire to mock the entire situation.
That man, on the other hand -- that man floating in mid-air, despite weighing over two hundred pounds, light and graceful as a butterfly lighting on the point of a pin, innocent, honest, pure as unadulterated wool off a lamb -- his gaze.
This was giving Bruce a sudden, acute headache.
Honestly.
How on Earth did all this start.
***
The most direct accelerant was probably three weeks ago, when Bruce Wayne, as President of Wayne Enterprises, appeared on a live interview. For Bruce, this was the kind of thing that didn't require much extra attention to prepare for. He didn't need to be too smart, due to the established character of Precious Brucie, and he didn't need to be too dumb, since being dumb would draw equal suspicion. He just needed to be empty-headed window dressing, curious about anything and everything, equally unruffled by anything and everything, so that people's teeth itched with irritation at him. Even so, after he had taken Two-Face back to Arkham, had four hours of sleep, had breakfast and a copy of the current quarter's company financial report, he had spent some time (that is, the time it took for Alfred to take him to the television studio) considering answers to some questions.
For instance, regarding his official stance on the fact that Wayne Enterprises had invested heavily in the Justice League.
He would certainly be asked on why he was financially supporting the Justice League. There were a lot of official reasons, from "It's the Justice League!" to "It's about time to add something interesting to my collections." In any case, unfortunately, prior to this, Brucie had been decidedly antipathetic toward superheroes, even dodging as if to avoid conflict.
"Mr. Bruce Wayne, how do you feel about the hero patrolling Gotham by night, inhabiting that gray area between justice and criminality?" a reporter, five years ago, nearly shoving the microphone into his mouth, had asked.
"You've certainly stumped me." The Bruce then had evinced an innocent, charismatic smile, befitting that oblivious young dilletante, focused only on playing golf. "But come on, what does that have to do with me? I can't get up any kind of interest for a boring man like that."
"Boring." That reporter, drawing on many years of rolling in the entertainment columns and tabloid scandals, had seized on the phrase with alacrity. "Which is to say, if he were able to catch your interest, you wouldn't mind deepening your relationship. If he were to kiss you, would you consent, Mr. Wayne? If he..."
"Oh, please don't say that, honey." He'd winked, his expression as unruffled as ever, with an attitude of dissolute arrogance. "We don't even know what he's hiding under that mask: Zorro or the Phantom. I don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and go mad from fright because of the person in bed with me. Now, please make way." He'd squeezed his way the best he could between the reporter and the doorway. "My beauties are waiting for me, you know."
Just that one sentence, that one simple throwaway utterance... Who would have known that the next day, "Gotham's Precious Boy Publicly Declares Love, Asks Only For One Kiss From the Batman Beneath The Mask" would become the newspaper headline. Put aside the straight male fans and the girlfriend fans, the thirsty "It could be me" oldster fans, and the "Anything Bruce does is right" mom fans. A wave of energy erupted up a mysterious organization digging through just how well Bruce and Batman went together. They investigated Batman's images and Bruce's figure ("So he's not actually that short. God, I thought he wasn't all that tall, but he only has to stand on his toes a little bit and he can kiss Batman!!"), investigated Batman's appearances and Bruce's travel itineraries (I heard that Batman appeared in the East Docks today, and at the same time, Bruce was having dinner at the top restaurant in the Eastern quarters-- this has to be a lovers' tryst). When Poison Ivy appeared in front of Bruce to interrogate him as to whether he might wear the Robin uniform to mess around with Batman, Bruce knew this situation had to end.
No Batman, No Superheroes. What even are superheroes. No interest. Bye. See ya.
And now, he had to find a reason to explain why he was investing in the Justice League. It couldn't be too serious a reason, because that would clash with his usual style. It couldn't be too frivolous either, because he couldn't allow certain people who had since given up to revive their fires.
"Why are you financially supporting the Justice League, Mr. Wayne? Everyone knows, superheroes aren't the sort of thing that will give you a super return on investment. In fact, given past reports, you might have to be responsible for a large amount of damages they cause..."
"Wayne Enterprises has always been focused on charity work, from the Martha Foundation from my parents' generation, to the Thomas Scholarship Fund, recently founded to support Gotham public schools. We're focused on, uh, kids studying, poor folks' livings. I remember that somewhere in Africa, we-- You can ask my secretary later. We're supporting a lot of... Anyway, we've always donated to charities. And I believe that the Justice League, as the frontline protecting our world, is a group worthy of the same level of attention."
"You seem very interested in them, but there have been voices recently saying that because superheroes have powers that surpass humankind, they've become a danger themselves. If they ever point their spearhead at us, what are we to do? Will the support of Wayne Enterprises increase their speed at hunting down humankind?"
Discussing philosophy and analysis of current events weren't Brucie's fortes, so Bruce Wayne spread his hands with a grin. "Oh, don't be like that, honey. I'm sure the bigwigs will have ways to take care of all that. But look, their leader, that guy called Superman? Have you ever seen the way his eyes glow when he's giving press conferences? I've never seen a man with such limpid eyes. He's so built, so strapping, yet he just wants to use that strength to do little bits of good like saving kittycats. If that kind of man is dangerous, then I can't think of any person who can be called safe. Have a little faith in him."
"You seem like you really like Superman."
This was the question that had caused him to fall into the abyss of hell.
But, the Bruce at the time only gave a slight pout and raised the corner of his mouth 30%, the perfect picture of a flirty Brucie asking for a li'l sugar.
"Nobody doesn't love Superman." He said, "Who on Earth could possibly not love him?"
***
Who could possibly not love him?
In other words, he loved Superman.
That night, the BruBat fandom, having starved from years of a lack of sugar and subsequent lack of worshippers, officially declared dissolution. The SuperBruce and BruSupes fandoms sprang gloriously onto the stage. Fans of the former believed that Superman had to be the top, shit, can you see the Man of Steel lying back and allowing himself to be fucked? Supporters of the latter believed that the guy who can fart money will always be the Daddy, shit, you can tell that none of you have ever been crushed by capitalism. But to tell the truth, what does any of this have to do with Bruce?
He was still the President of Wayne Enterprises, that cad, Brucie, who talked without thinking and tried to pick up anything pretty.
Up until three weeks later, when he was invited to Metropolis for some ribbon-cutting work at a Wayne Enterprises branch office, and, as usual, some unexpected events occurred. Honestly, this was just the hallmark of a superhero story -- he's invited to whatever place, and then the whatever place coincidentally has some kind of robbery-hostage-prison escape etc. event to add some color. Did the crime cause superheroes or did superheroes stimulate crime? This kind of chicken-and-egg problem can be set aside for now. Anyway--
When Metallo, in the middle of dodging Superman's pursuit, crashed into the banquet hall, Wayne had to squeeze under a banquet table with everyone else and pretend he was only a little Schrodinger's President. When Superman, true to his name, descended from on high like a god while dangling Metallo, like a guided missile directed to destroy Wayne Enterprises property, he was choked tightly by the woman next to him amid shouts of, "Superman!!! It's Superman!!!! Superman has come to save us!!!!!!" in a sharp soprano. And when he'd finally struggled free of the pressure and suffocation of oppressive breasts and clambered out, face flushed red, from under the table with everyone else......
Everyone turned with expectation to stare at him.
"Look, Brucie, it's Superman!" Don't call me by that nickname. We're not that close.
"It's Superman! Superman! Your favorite, Superman! Why don't you say something, Brucie? He came expressly to save you. Oh, this is too romantic." Thank you, but I would think this was more romantic if he could damage less of the venue.
"Don't just gape and stare." Someone actually surreptitiously shoved his shoulder. "Go on, Brucie, let him have a taste of Gothamite passion."
If one could automatically translate that classic, "This is my Gotham!" into "Hello there, have you had dinner yet?" then I do indeed squat on a gargoyle every evening, letting him experience Gothamite passion, Bruce thought to himself dryly.
Honestly.
Let Superman have a taste of Gotham passion, from Batman?
"I think Superman must be pretty busy right now." Although Superman probably didn't know Batman was Bruce Wayne yet, and as long as everything was under his control, he was certainly not about to let the Boyscout in front of him discover he was the famed philanderer, Bruce Wayne -- but hypothetically, on the off chance, if (Batman always had to calculate the probability of every unlikely scenario), if there came a day when Superman were to discover his real identity.
Superman would make fun of him over this for the rest of his life.
Oh, but actually, Superman might not make fun of him.
But he would hate Superman over this for the rest of his life.
So, for the sake of the working relationship between the Future World's Finest, Bruce determinedly knocked away those hands on his shoulders and the ones angling to push him to Superman's side. "Anyway, I'm quite sure Mr. Superman's not interested in this type of thing. Why go causing extra grief for this cutie of a superhero?"
He hoped the Kryptonian would take this opportunity to fly away. For instance, the police might finally drag the malfunctioning Metallo into a police car, or Superman might hear some damned cat, sitting in a tree, calling from somewhere. Any reason would be fine. All he had to do was to seize this window of time, smile like always, wave, and shoot up up and away into the stars like an arrow. Nobody would blame him.
But however he pushed and protested and tried to prevent him and Superman entering into this devastating pile of trouble, Superman, floating lightly in the garden beside the fountain, waiting for the police to take care of the cleanup, making sure Metallo didn't revive-- that Superman wasn't a bit of help.
Not only did he not help, his goddamned super-hearing must have been out of order, because he couldn’t hear the League's top financial contributor spouting all kinds of nonsense in order to avoid meeting him. In fact, he looked like he was waiting for a bus, bored and relaxed, distracted in a way that most people wouldn't notice but that Batman recognized at a glance. At the mandatory weekly Justice League meeting, when they started to discuss things like financial expenditures, like budgets, etc., things Superman wasn't interested in, he would look like this. Of course, it wasn't as if Bruce was complaining about how Superman was useless except for damaging buildings, increasing losses... Occasionally, he would abruptly stop and ask Superman his opinion on a topic.
He couldn't deny that the first time he had done this, he'd been hoping to teach this mind-wandering Kryptonian a lesson. However, without moving a muscle except for frowning slightly, in less than a second, this "square and honest" Kryptonian had given his customary perfect smile along with an answer.
Super-speed and a super-brain. Of course. He had cheated.
Batman always wanted to catch Kal-El being distracted at a meeting, and Kal-El would never let Batman catch any shred of him being distracted. This had become a sort of secret game between just the two of them that neither of them ever mentioned. Up to now, Batman had yet to win once, but despite that, his competitive nature assured him that he was going to succeed in catching Superman in the next three months-- but this is getting off track.
Let's return to the topic at hand.
Namely, Superman, who should be taking off and rocketing into the sky and ending this whole godforsaken ordeal.
The one next to the fountain right now.
The one ostentatiously letting his mind wander.
It was exactly this Superman, defenseless, innocently harmless, like a dog yawning next to a fire, at once lovable and engendering enmity. In the face of this, even the Batman, despite being always logical and online, couldn't help but recall in detail all the times the Kryptonian had been distracted in public, making the League consultant feel it absolutely necessary to criticize him... causing him to become distracted for a second.
Only a second.
And then Bruce discovered that he was being shoved forward by the crowd.
......It didn't take any thought to put this mistake squarely on Superman's head, thank you very much. Although he would never let Superman know where his head had been at just then, in any case, he was shoved forward, and he had to act the part of a drunkenly flustered klutz, stumbling forward a few steps. And when he at last clumsily tried to straighten up and figure out his surroundings, that hand appeared in front of him.
That hand.
That well-articulated -- instantly recognizable by the League consultant from how he had seen it countless times, those long elegant fingers, that palm that was callus-less and flawless like jade, and that way it was held out (please don't misunderstand anything from this, even though it's probably unavoidable) -- that goddamned hand.
"Do you need help?" A voice came to him from over his head.
Bruce thought for two seconds.
Whatever. Damn it.
He gave up.
Snagging Superman around the waist, he used that steel-plate-like, sturdy, pliable lumbar area to straighten himself, and at the same time, a kiss landed on Superman's cheek.
"For sure." Grinning, he said, "Thank you for saving me, my sweet Mr. Superman."