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It’s not like he doesn’t notice.
The muttering. The grumbling. The sighs. They all increase over the years, especially when Bruce gets tired— which is a lot more frequently these days— as do the creaking joints, subtle winces, bruises, bandages, casts, scars, all creating a concerning portrait of a battered, but never beaten, man. So, no. Clark definitely notices.
But he doesn’t comment, not unless the circumstances are dire or his concern dear.
Superman has far too much experience witnessing things he shouldn’t, things that are private, by accident and so he knows better now. Several unintentional glances at (or deliberate scans of) Bruce Wayne’s skeletal system have proven an unnerving reminder as well. But otherwise he’s ignored it, is the thing. Clark only realizes this when, one evening, he arrives for a pre-scheduled meetup in the Cave on time and Bruce isn’t there... so he goes looking. And seemingly catches him unawares.
“Bruce?”
The other man jolts, hissing as the abrupt movement jostles his ribs. And Jesus, what a sight. Whoever it was, they got him good. He can see that Bruce’s back, even half-concealed by bandages, is mottled black and blue. As if that weren’t enough, the expanse of skin is also scattered with vivid scars and cuts. And when he spins around uncoordinatedly—
That’s when Clark sees it.
Bruce looks tired. He also seems surprised that Superman’s here. As they inspect him, those familiar, clever blue eyes are clouded and wary. Bruce must think that Clark has arrived early for their meeting, not that he’s late. Ordinarily, Batman would’ve hidden away his vulnerability and concealed his injuries by now.
Superman takes in the furrows on his friend’s brow, some permanent, the slight but jarring creases at the corners of his eyes, as well as the fine but deep lines around his mouth. The flecks of silver, alarmingly bright in his otherwise dark hair. Unbidden comes the thought: when did Bruce start looking so old? This is followed closely by: how have I not noticed?
“Clark?”
He blinks. Swallows. Suppresses both his inner turmoil and the distracting thoughts that follow it. Smiles briefly. Offers Bruce an arm up. Reassuringly, the offer is rejected with a fierce look and a scoff. Bruce rises— steadily if slowly— to his feet. Grabs a shirt and pulls it on sluggishly. This gives Clark ample time for another agonizing inspection. One that he doesn’t want to do but does anyway. He thinks about the way apples always fall from their trees. How the oceans’ tides rise every twelve hours. The inevitability of human mortality.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Clark,” Bruce comments absently as he turns around. “I must’ve lost track of time. You’re here for the League update, I presume?”
He blinks again, abruptly pulled from his morbid, spiraling thoughts. “Yeah,” Clark replies after a beat, grinning wryly. Maybe if he pretends hard enough, he’ll stop feeling this way: a little frantic, a little sad, a lot desperate for his friend not to know that he is, or why. He doesn’t let himself consider the reason behind that last part. “What was your other guess, global emergency?”
Bruce regards him evenly, unimpressed. But then he smirks— that goddamned, knowing Batsmirk of his. “Well, you have to admit that that isn’t unlikely... Come on.” He rests a hand briefly on Clark’s shoulder as he passes, heading back into the main Cave. Clark follows, and they make their way to the monitor bay. They always have their meetings here; the better to take notes and utilize the Batcomputer, if necessary. In this at least, Clark sees no need to argue.
He swallows, with unexpected difficulty.
Bruce is quiet for a few more moments and the Cave is filled with the tck tck tck of typing and chittering of the resident bats. He swallows again, tries to come up with something inane to fill the silence with, opens his mouth, and… can’t. The typing stops. Bruce’s shoulders are stiff, though not hunched yet— he’s alert, but not threatened. Clark clears his throat and steps forward.
“So, about that abnormal scan that came up during J’onn’s last monitor duty—”
“What’s wrong?”
He blinks, feeling as if he’s been shocked by 100,000 volts, or an alien stingray (which happened once when Hal decided to do a little ‘experiment’… but he’s digressing). “Nothing, Bruce. I’m just tired.” Clark rests a hand on the back of his best friend’s chair and does his utmost to ignore Bruce’s dissatisfied sigh. As the chair starts to spin, Clark lets go and steps back. Bruce spins around and his ensuing look is entirely too piercing and concerned for Clark’s liking.
“You don’t get tired.”
He narrows his eyes. “You know that’s not true!”
Bruce huffs and rolls his eyes. “Fine. You are capable of getting tired, Clark. But you normally don’t. So what’s wrong?”
Clark averts his eyes from that steady gaze and looks at the Cave floor instead, no matter how revealing that action in and of itself is. The Cave floor, like its owner, is familiar to him. It’s mostly smooth, except for several natural dips, and one area where a past impact caused it to chip. The silence stretches. In that instant, he recalls, absurdly, that Bruce is a father. He’s probably used to using silence as a weapon. Clark glances up. “You look tired.”
Bruce blinks and his expression smooths over, becoming perfectly blank. “And?”
Clark opens his mouth again. ‘You always look tired,’ he considers saying. ‘Tonight, for the first time, I noticed that you’re getting older.’ Both of these statements, while true, would also be incredibly rude things to say. Bruce, although not overly proud (at least of his appearance), still has some ego and like anyone else would be offended. Even if he wouldn’t show it. His eyes dart helplessly to Bruce’s wrapped ribs. “I—”
Understanding flashes behind Bruce’s eyes and his expression softens. “I’ll recover, Clark. It’s nothing I haven’t experienced before.”
“Yes, but—”
“But what?” That understanding is gone now. The blue has hardened.
All he can do is finish his statement: “But it takes you longer now than it used to.”
Bruce’s eyebrows knit themselves together and he purses his lips. Clark fidgets, moving his weight from foot to foot. You’ve really done it now, he thinks.
“Sit down, Clark.”
He blinks, looking up for confirmation. Bruce’s expression is closed off again, but he appears serious. Not quite grim, or angry, but also like this wasn’t entirely unexpected. Oh. It’s enough to get him moving again. Clark retrieves the spare chair from the Cave’s utility closet, then returns. He sets it up across from Bruce and waits. The silence stretches again, but it’s not tense any longer— they both know that Bruce has what he’s going to say next planned out.
Eventually, Bruce sighs, then leans back awkwardly in his chair, not bothering to hide the wince that follows the movement. He rubs a hand over his face, through his hair, then rests both hands loosely in his lap. “I’m going to tell you something that may be hard to hear, and I want you to keep quiet until I’m done. Can you do that, Clark?”
A part of him bristles at the near parent-like tone accompanying the request order, but he ignores it. Bruce isn’t trying to baby him, he’s genuinely asking. Because this, apparently, is turning into a heart-to-heart, and when emotional subject matter comes up, Bruce usually works best when he can get it all off his chest unimpeded. “Yeah, I’ll shut up and listen.”
“Thank you.” Bruce clears his throat. “First, I’m going to guess what the problem is, and you’re going to tell me if I’m right: seeing me like this upset you.” A pause and arched eyebrow invite him to speak. Clark tries to, but finds himself incapable of it. So he nods instead. Bruce offers an encouraging little smile. “Based on that, I’m going to make an assumption. You noticed tonight, perhaps for the first time, that I’m getting slower. Remembered that I’m human—”
At this, Clark has to interrupt: “Bruce, you’re not—”
Bruce scowls fiercely and something sharp sparks in his eyes. “I’m going to stop you there, because whatever you planned on saying is not the compliment you think it is, Clark. As much as I don’t like to admit it, as often as I pretend otherwise— for myself, the league, the public, villains— I am only human, nothing more, and I live with the limitations from that. Obviously, you knew this. You’ve witnessed my fallibility. But…” Bruce pauses, clasps his hands together tightly, and sucks in a breath, “but until now, those limitations weren’t as much of a problem. Because I was young, because I got very good at hiding them. So you and the others forgot—”
“We didn’t forget.”
“No, you didn’t. That was unfair of me. Rather, you, as in the league, did me the… courtesy, I suppose, of ignoring my vulnerabilities. And, if I’m right, you allowed it to, at least subconsciously, slip from your mind. Because thinking about it was unpleasant. Too uncomfortable to consider.”
Silence falls again as Bruce stops speaking. He’s clearly expecting a response.
Clark, feeling the beginnings of a burning sensation in his eyes— far more unpleasant than when he uses his heat vision for an extended period— as well as a growing lump in his throat, can only nod again. “Ye-yeah,” he finally manages, after clearing his throat. Maintaining eye contact then is extraordinarily painful.
Bruce stares at him, face composed and unreadable, for a long moment. Then he sighs, closes his eyes, and grimaces. He looks uncomfortable. Probably about upsetting him. People who don’t know Bruce don’t see this, they don’t understand that while some of his emotional recalcitrance is real, much of it is deliberate. An act. So in other words, Bruce has thought about this a lot, enough to be able to predict that it’d hurt Clark and deemed that an unfortunate, but unavoidable, outcome of a necessary conversation.
As if in answer to his thoughts, Bruce says, “I’ve talked about this with other league-members.” Clark can’t contain his surprise at that, and it must show on his face. Bruce huffs. “Not this conversation, exactly, but… something similar. Or rather, how to have a conversation like this one.” And that is surprising. Because Bruce hardly opens up to anyone, even those he knows well, and it often takes some effort before he cracks. It’d taken Clark years to gain his trust enough to occasionally be relied on to lend a sympathetic ear. Also, there’s the fact that half of the league— at least those who haven’t worked closely with Batman— are intimidated by the man, or wary of him.
“I didn’t know that,” Clark finds himself saying. He immediately feels embarrassed for implying that Bruce is either unwilling or incapable of mentorship— or perhaps support, in this case.
Bruce regards him silently for several seconds afterward. Then his expression turns distant, and he glances away. “Of our most prominent members, excluding the Lanterns, I’m the only human. You also know how much the media likes to use you, Diana, and I to represent the whole league… two-thirds of ‘the Trinity’ are metas, or otherwise super-powered.”
They come to me because I am the epitome of a non-meta hero, Clark fills in.
“Oh,” he says weakly.
Bruce looks at him sharply this time. Clearly, this is something he’s thought about extensively, and evidently reluctantly too, given his expression. Clark feels a hot flash of guilt. This is perhaps the only thing, the only issue, as it were, that has proven to be a consistent barrier between them, between— if he’s being uncomfortably honest— Batman and the rest of the League’s core members. As much as they try to understand, none of them will ever be human. They have the luxury of relying on their powers. They have the privilege, in most cases, of time. These are things Bruce does not possess.
“You’ve thought a lot about this,” Clark comments neutrally.
Bruce’s responding smile is both sardonic and reserved. “I have.”
He leans back in his chair and regards his friend for a moment, thinking. Bruce waits. “So what’s the point? You’re obviously leading up to something, here, Bruce.”
A sigh. Bruce seems… not defeated per se, but resigned. He remains quiet for a while longer, with that familiar thoughtful frown on his face. Clark waits. Eventually, Bruce turns his chair slightly to face him fully. He purses his lips momentarily, inhales deeply, and breathes out. “I’m human, Clark, and I’m not getting any younger at that. There will come a time— maybe not soon, but five years, a decade, it doesn’t really matter— when I can’t do this anymore. Either my mind will wear out or my body will. When that time comes, I most likely won’t, or rather will refuse to, recognize it. I need you to make sure I don’t drag the team down. I want you to promise you’ll tell me when it’s time, if I haven’t already admitted it… and I’ll need your support then, too.”
Bruce is looking down at his clasped hands, expression vulnerable. Clark opens his mouth, then shuts it. The Cave’s atmosphere is reminiscent of when the Watchtower’s airlocks have just shut: breathless, tense, and eerily quiet. Expectant. He almost feels deflated. But he won’t make Bruce see that, won’t make him live with it. This is Clark’s burden to bear— one he’s known he will bear from the moment he discovered he was a super-powered alien and understood the implications of that. “Alright. I- I can do that, Bruce.”
Bruce looks up. His expression still bears a trace of tension, but it’s largely gone. He mostly looks relieved. “Thank you.”
Clark smiles briefly. “I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same for me. If it’s ever time…”
“I will.” Bruce’s smile is heavy. They both know that his promise is, in all likelihood, meaningless. Unless something unexpected happens, by the time Clark is ready to retire, Bruce will already be long gone. He swallows thickly, feeling that previous burning sensation return to his eyes again.
“Hey.” Clark blinks, looking up quickly at the sound of a chair moving. Bruce has stood up and is now in front of him, looking down awkwardly. His expression is twisted, and he looks vaguely constipated. This startles a watery laugh out of Clark. Bruce smiles, somewhat self-mockingly, at him. “Do you need a hug?” The question is asked stiffly, but, he knows, also sincerely.
“Yeah, I could use one.” You probably could too, he thinks but doesn’t add.
Clark gets to his feet, approaches Bruce, and, mindful of his friend’s ribs, wraps his arms around him. Bruce returns the gesture, a bit awkwardly, and pats him on the back a few times seemingly for good measure. They stay that way for a while. He sniffs a few times and is relieved both that no one else is there and that Bruce will most likely erase this security footage (or at least move it to the private file Clark knows he has for such ‘unprofessional’ moments as this).
Eventually, Bruce clears his throat and starts to pull away. Clark lets him go.
“Better?” Bruce asks, regarding him seriously. One arm is still stretched out, hand resting on Clark’s shoulder.
“Yeah,” he replies, smiling. Clark is pleasantly surprised to find that it’s mostly not a lie.