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Chapter Text

Clark

Clark knew he had a soulmate from a young age.

His parents had warned him it might not be the same for him, being Kryptonian. They didn’t know for sure. Did Kryptonians have soulmates? Could Clark have a human soulmate? Had he had one once, but they’d perished with the rest of his planet? No one had the answers. And so Clark had gone into puberty with lower expectations than his peers, fully prepared to never see the imprint of a bruise or cut appear on his skin even once he started experiencing the other hallmarks of adolescence.

He might have missed the first injuries when they’d appeared; they always started out faint, easy to ignore or dismiss. But then, one day, he came home from school with the faded imprint of a black eye. His parents noticed it before he did. They knew, by then, that Clark was made of tougher stuff than humans – he had never had a bruise of his own – but their natural parental instincts kicked in and they launched a rapid-fire series of questions: Had he gotten into a fight that day? Had one of the other kids punched him or pushed him? Had he fallen? Did it hurt? Clark answered no to all of these, and when Martha and Jonathan finally released him, the first thing he did was run into the nearest bathroom and look at himself in the mirror.

The bruise was a semi-translucent bluish-purple, not as dark as a real black eye would be, but dark enough that he understood why his parents had been worried. But no one had hit him or pushed him that day, and even if they had, it wouldn’t have left a mark. This bruise belonged to someone else.

Clark’s soulmate.

Overtaken by curiosity, Clark closed and locked the bathroom door and stripped down to his underwear, intent on examining every inch of his skin for other injuries. He didn’t need to look too closely. When he turned around, he had a series of bruises down his back like he’d fallen onto a rough surface.

Clark dressed and came out of the bathroom triumphant. He’d felt a twinge of compassion for whoever the bruises belonged to; they must have gotten into a fight at school. But Clark didn’t linger on that conclusion for long. He was, after all, a preteen boy, and one who’d just made a life-altering discovery. He couldn’t help but focus on himself.

Clark’s parents, by then, had come to the same realization he had. Seeing how pleased their son was to have a soulmate after all, they had a celebratory dinner at the nicest restaurant in town, the one they only ever went to on Clark’s birthday. It was, in Clark’s twelve-year-old opinion, even better than his birthday, because a birthday came around every year, but he would only find out he had a soulmate once.

Over the next few years, the novelty of having a soulmate wore off. Clark’s youthful impatience got the best of him; he started to resent living in such a small town where he was unlikely to meet the person he was destined to spend the rest of his life with. He wanted to get out into the world and find them, and as he developed control over his superpowers, he also wanted to get out into the world and do good. His parents saw this and, instead of taking it personally, encouraged Clark to do well in school so he could apply for scholarships. They couldn’t afford to send him to the best schools around the country, but they would save as much as they could, and if he tried hard enough and got good enough grades, hopefully he could go wherever he wanted.

Another damper on Clark’s initial excitement upon seeing the bruises all over his body was how frequently new cuts and bruises started appearing. Even though he’d never been injured himself, Clark knew plenty of regular kids his age, and most of them didn’t get hurt that often. Only the ones who were being bullied, or the siblings whose father everyone spoke about in hushed, disapproving tones; one day, when Clark was in high school, they moved away with their mother in the middle of the night. They were at school one day and gone the next.

So Clark, being the kind-hearted person he was, naturally began to worry about his soulmate. Were they being bullied? Or, even worse, was one or both of their parents hurting them? His parents started to worry too; they had reached the same conclusions, and it frustrated them to no end that there was nothing they could do about it. There were millions of children in the world who needed help, who were bullied or abused, and they couldn’t help all of them, and they had no way of finding the one whose injuries were showing up on their son’s body.

Clark became even more determined to find this person. He studied and did well in school, took the SAT three times until he scored in the top ninety-eighth percentile. He dated a girl, Lana, who he knew wasn’t his soulmate, and she knew he wasn’t hers, but they liked each other well enough, they had fun together, and they lost their virginity to each other after graduation, when they knew they were going to different schools and might never see each other again.

He’d gotten accepted to Metropolis University in Delaware, in the second-largest city in the country. It would be a huge culture shock after growing up in small-town Kansas, but Clark was ready to be at the center of the action. He was ready to see more of the world and meet new people. Maybe one of them would be his soulmate.

There was certainly a better chance of it in Metropolis than there was in Smallville.

In college, Clark met as many people as he could. He dated around, always on the lookout for someone whose injuries matched his. But romance wasn’t his only focus. The more Clark learned about the world, the more he realized how much pain and injustice there was in it. He wanted to do something about it. He was still keeping his powers a secret, as his parents had taught him to, but he didn’t know how much longer he could keep it that way; something had to change. His parents had always told him he’d been sent to Earth for a reason. What better reason than saving people from harm?

Eventually, Clark couldn’t keep his powers to himself any longer. He didn’t want to give up his chance at a normal life, the life his parents had worked so hard for him to have, though, so he constructed an alter ego, a version of himself that was larger-than-life. The media started calling him Superman, and it stuck.

In the meantime, Clark took his passion for writing and spun it into a journalism degree. He got an internship at the Daily Planet, and when he graduated, they offered him a job. He befriended some of his coworkers: Cat Grant, who had a big personality and was tons of fun at parties; Jimmy Olsen, who was the type of friendly that made him impossible not to like; and Lois Lane. Lois… was a whole different breed. She was beautiful, sure, of course she was. But she was also insanely driven and talented and passionate about her work. She reminded Clark a little bit of his high school girlfriend, Lana, but she also reminded him a little bit of himself.

Clark and Lois started dating, and just as it had been with Lana, it was clear that Lois wasn’t Clark’s soulmate, although Lois didn’t appear to have any injuries that weren’t her own. Clark briefly held out hope that maybe he might be her soulmate, but he knew it didn’t work that way. Some people didn’t have one at all – not everyone was destined for romance – but for those who did, it always went both ways.

Even if they weren’t soulmates, Clark liked Lois a lot. So he gave it a shot. He even told Lois his secret, that he was Superman. (Well, she mostly found out on her own.) And the relationship lasted for a while, but eventually they both realized Clark couldn’t be happy in the long-term with someone who wasn’t his soulmate. He would always be haunted by the unknown, in search of someone he hadn’t yet found, and it wasn’t fair to either of them to keep their relationship going past a certain point when they both knew it wouldn’t last forever.

They parted on good terms, stayed friends afterward. Things were awkward for a while, and then they were less awkward, and then they weren’t awkward at all.

And all the while, Clark wondered. He wondered who the cuts and bruises on his body belonged to. There had been a few years when the injuries mostly disappeared, and Clark had been hopeful that his soulmate had gotten out of whatever bad situation they’d been in (or, if they hadn’t been in a bad situation, that they’d stopped doing whatever it was they’d been doing to keep getting themselves injured, playing a contact sport or constantly falling down and running into things).

But when he was still in college, Clark’s secondhand injuries had come back with a vengeance, and this time they looked less like the sort of injuries a kid might get in a fight at school and more like the sort of injuries an adult would get in a no-holds-barred grudge match. With weapons.

Was his soulmate a gang member? Were they in an extremely abusive relationship? Were they in a fight club? Clark’s mind spun with the possibilities. Even more than that, it spun with the desire to find out. To find this person and help them. After a few years of being Superman, Clark had helped so many people, but he couldn’t help the person who mattered the most. The soulmate he hadn’t met yet.

They were out there somewhere.

Bruce

As far as Bruce was concerned, he didn’t have a soulmate.

It hadn’t been his number-one concern during his adolescence; he was deeply traumatized by his parents’ death, working through his grief and a number of unhealthy coping mechanisms. He’d been through a series of therapists and antidepressants. He was keeping Alfred up at night with worry.

And he was getting into fights at school. He couldn’t help it. He had so much rage inside him, all the time, battling with his grief for his attention. Sometimes he felt like all he was on the inside was anger and sadness. Darkness and depression. The ability to hurt other people and the ability to be hurt. And when one of his classmates mentioned his parents, mocked him for being an orphan, he saw red and lost all control. Or maybe the opposite happened; maybe that was the only time he felt like he was in perfect control.

Alfred refused to pull him out of school and get him a private tutor. He maintained that Bruce needed to socialize with other children his age. But Bruce wasn’t interested in other children his age. He wasn’t interested in anything, most of the time. When he was on the right antidepressant, when the eternal darkness that hung over him lifted enough for him to care about anything but his own pain, he took an interest in his parents’ company and charity work. He was going to have to take over both one day. He was going to have to carry on their legacy. It was the only thing that gave him purpose.

The only thing, other than the memory of his parents shot dead in an alley. The memory of the man with the gun that had ended their lives, one after the other, just like that. Bruce never saw his face. But that didn’t matter. As he grew older, Bruce realized it was less about the individual shooter and more about the state of the city of Gotham as a whole. It had the highest crime rate in the nation, the highest homicide rate, a foster system overrun with orphans like him and other children whose parents had been lost to drugs or jail or poverty.

Gotham was overrun, it was corrupt. And maybe the sensible thing to do would be to leave and never come back. Certainly Alfred would have dropped everything and moved across the country, around the world if Bruce had expressed a desire to do so, if it would mean Bruce would get better. But Bruce didn’t want to escape the memories of his parents. They were all he had left. That, and their life mission to make Gotham a better place.

They hadn’t seen their mission through to the end. Bruce would.

He finished school early, because he was a genius and because he couldn’t wait to get out of that place. He graduated college at eighteen. He took over Wayne Enterprises. He started the Wayne Foundation. He trained. He constructed an elaborate secret identity, a role he would play in his day-to-day life to distract from what he did by night. He used his vast wealth and intelligence to compensate for his lack of superhuman abilities. And he relied on the darkness he’d once found oppressive, that he’d taken and cultivated. A persona criminals would fear. A symbol the people of Gotham would come to rely on.

And all the while, from his first fights in school to the nights of getting beaten up by criminals, Bruce never saw a cut or bruise on his body that wasn’t his. For a time, in his youth, this had been yet another source of despair, though it paled in comparison to his grief over his parents. But these losses, the loss of his parents and the loss of a soulmate he’d never have, were complementary. He’d lost the two people in his life who he’d loved the most, and who’d loved him. And, unless there was somehow someone out there who had never sustained an injury in their life, he would never love someone the way his parents had loved each other. He was destined to a life of solitude, and if it weren’t for Alfred, perhaps he would have believed this meant he was unlovable.

Perhaps, even with Alfred as proof to the contrary, Bruce believed this nonetheless.

By the time he’d reached adulthood and taken on the mantle of Batman, though, Bruce had come to view his lack of attachments as a strength. He slept around to maintain his image, and because he enjoyed it, but he never searched for anything more. It was better that he didn’t have a soulmate. Love was a weakness his enemies could exploit. It was the one luxury he couldn’t afford.

Meeting Selina Kyle didn’t change his mind. At least, not at first. She was compelling, and beautiful, and challenging in all the best ways, and when their flirtation evolved into something physical, Bruce would admit he was pleased by the development. But they were both adamant that what they had was strictly transactional, a mutually beneficial exchange between two peers. Even as they orbited closer and closer to each other, became increasingly entangled in each other’s lives, they avoided words that would indicate commitment: “boyfriend,” “girlfriend,” “relationship,” and especially “love.” They were two broken people who refused to be vulnerable with each other.

And they weren’t each other’s soulmates. They figured that out early on, and neither of them were surprised, and neither of them were disappointed. They’d both learned, by that point in their lives, to manage their expectations.

Selina asked him, once, if he had a soulmate. It was a breach of their unspoken rules to ask him something so personal, but Selina had never been one to abide by any rules. Bruce told her he didn’t. She called him “lucky.”

Bruce didn’t feel lucky. And he didn’t turn the question around on Selina. If there was someone out there who was perfect for her in every way, Bruce didn’t want to know about it. Let him go on assuming she was like him: alone in the world.

Their arrangement didn’t last long after that. There was only so far it could go when neither of them were willing to admit what they were feeling, or ask for what they wanted from each other. And for the first time in a long time, Bruce found himself regretting the lack of bruises on his body that weren’t his own.

Bruce could easily have spiraled even farther into loneliness after that, but fate intervened in the form of a story splashed across the headlines: The circus had come to town, and now two acrobats were dead. An accident, the news anchors said.

Accidents didn’t happen in Gotham. As he always did when the police and the media failed to bring justice, Batman stepped in, and he soon learned about the child the acrobats had left behind: a talented, precocious, and bereaved twelve-year-old named Richard Grayson.

The question of adoption didn’t even cross Bruce’s mind at first. He went to visit the kid at the group home he was living in, one of the many group homes in Gotham that had been built and furnished with Wayne money, but it was still overcrowded, and there was still little chance of a traumatized preteen boy getting adopted when there were plenty of younger, happier children to choose from.

After meeting Dick, after seeing himself so much in the kid, the idea started to coalesce in Bruce’s mind. It was a crazy idea, he knew. But he had this enormous house, and more money than he could spend in a lifetime, and he wasn’t likely to have any children of his own.

He pitched the idea to Alfred, who reacted like Bruce had gone out of his mind. As far as Alfred was concerned, Bruce could barely take care of himself. But Bruce explained the situation, and he introduced Alfred to Dick, and there was no going back after that. Faced with another intelligent, dark-haired young boy who’d lost both of his parents, Alfred was powerless to refuse.

The lengthy adoption process gave Bruce something else to focus on besides work and fighting crime for the first time in a very long time, and he threw himself into the task. He met with social workers, met with lawyers, met with child psychologists. He hired an interior decorator to transform one of the bedrooms in Wayne Manor. He researched schools and listened to audiobooks on adoption and parenting.

By the time the adoption went through, Bruce and Alfred had met with Dick multiple times, and though his personality was dimmed by grief and he still hadn’t fully warmed up to them yet, it was obvious to anyone with half a brain that the kid was full of potential. Bruce was determined to give him a better life than the Gotham foster care system had in store for him.

And yes, okay, maybe Bruce’s motivation wasn’t entirely selfless. He’d accepted the lack of a soulmate in his life, but a part of him – a part he wouldn’t admit existed, not even to himself – was rapidly realizing that he couldn't live the rest of his life alone.

Maybe his weak sense of self-preservation had finally kicked in. Out of all of Bruce’s coping mechanisms, healthy and unhealthy, the one that had always worked the best in staving off the deepest depression was a sense of responsibility. Responsibility to his parents, to his father’s company, to his mother’s charity work. Responsibility to Gotham. Add to that a responsibility to Dick Grayson, and he had a pretty good list of things to live for.

By the time Dick settled into life at Wayne Manor, by the time he’d learned Bruce’s secret and taken on a secret identity of his own, the concept of a soulmate was so far from Bruce’s mind it may as well have been nonexistent. Against all odds, he was building a decent life for himself. Romance wasn’t a part of the equation. It was never meant to be.

There wasn’t anyone out there for him, and maybe that was for the best.

Chapter Text

Clark

In his day-to-day, Clark didn’t think about the matter of his soulmate all that much. He thought about it when he undressed at the end of the day and saw a fresh new mark on his body, and he thought about it in those rare, quiet moments when he had nothing else to think about. But the truth was, he was a busy guy, and he had a lot of other things on his mind most of the time.

At work, Clark was making a name for himself writing about Superman. It wasn’t the sort of hard-hitting investigative reporting he’d signed up for, but it generated clicks and it sold papers and, because of that, it made his boss happy. And Clark needed to keep his boss happy, because otherwise Perry might look a little too closely at how often Clark left work in the middle of the day with a flimsy excuse (and just so happened to come back with a brand new story to write about Superman).

And outside of work, Clark’s number-one concern was, obviously, being Superman. Saving the world, sometimes; saving the city other times. He’d collected a host of nemeses – most notably Lex Luthor – whose nefarious plans he was constantly foiling and who were constantly trying to destroy him.

It took Clark’s parents a while to get used to their son constantly putting his life in danger, but they trusted him to make his own decisions, and they were proud of him. Lois adjusted to it much quicker after learning Clark was Superman; she was never one to shy away from danger, so that became something they shared.

Those were the only people in Clark’s life who knew the whole truth of who he was. Clark knew that was for the best. He liked to believe most people were good, but that didn’t mean he could trust them with his most valuable secret. Telling the wrong person could easily ruin his life.

He got lonely, though. He visited his parents often, and he knew in that way he was luckier than most to be able to fly halfway across the country at the drop of a hat. But there were some things he felt he couldn’t talk to them about. He didn’t want to tell them about the life-and-death scenarios he got himself into in too much detail, because he knew they’d worry. He could tell Lois, and that helped, but sometimes Clark wished he had someone in his life who understood, who knew what it was like to live a double life, to go into a dangerous situation and not know for certain whether he’d make it out.

There were others out there like him, and as Clark grew more comfortable in the role of Superman and started taking on bigger threats, he ran into some of them. Wonder Woman, the Flash, various Green Lanterns—they were all nice enough.

Well. Most of them were nice enough.

The first fellow superhero Clark had the massive misfortune of meeting happened to be Batman, although “meeting” was a strong word to describe an interaction that barely consisted of more than a gruff “get out of my city” and the swish of a dark cape. It really set the tone for their relationship (again, if it could even be called that) going forward.

To be fair, Clark hadn’t tried very hard to endear himself to Batman. Everything he’d heard about the so-called “hero” had left him highly skeptical, and meeting him in person hadn’t improved things. It was easy to trust someone like Wonder Woman, who practically exuded truth and righteousness, or the Flash, who was friendly and had a good sense of humor. It was a lot harder to trust someone like Batman, the embodiment of darkness, a vigilante who ruled by fear and had no interest in making friends or even allies.

Clark was only too happy to stay out of Gotham, not because Batman had threatened him with bodily harm if he didn’t, but because Gotham was a terrible place to be and Batman was a terrible person to be around.

Unfortunately, the nature of their superhero work meant Superman and Batman did, occasionally, have to work together. Neither of them were happy about it; they endured it with as much professionalism as they could muster and went their separate ways. And after they’d done this a few times, Clark started to notice something surprising and a little disturbing.

Superman and Batman actually made a pretty good team.

To be clear, they didn’t enjoy working together. They spent the majority of time they weren’t actively fighting evil trading snide remarks or silent glares. They complained about each other’s methods and told each other off for being reckless. But they always accomplished their objective, and they accomplished it faster and better than Clark could have done on his own. They triumphed in situations that felt unwinnable.

At first Clark felt like maybe this was just a fluke, but it happened again and again and again, every time he worked with Batman. Which led Clark to figure out why they worked together so effectively. Their skill sets complemented each other: where Clark relied mostly on his brute strength and invulnerability to win a fight, Batman had to be more strategic, more clever. No matter how delicate or precarious the circumstances, Batman always had some sort of trick up his sleeve. And when Batman ran out of tricks, Superman was there to blast a hole in the wall or, at the very least, fly them to safety.

And their abilities weren’t the only thing about Batman and Superman that complemented each other. The same opposing qualities that led to them butting heads – Clark’s optimism versus Batman’s relentless cynicism, for example – meant they each approached difficult or dangerous situations differently. When one of them overlooked something, the other caught it. When one of them thought there was no way out, the other had already found a way.

And so, over time, Clark didn’t come to like Batman any more than when they first met, but he at least accepted the inevitability of having to work with him. And that was a kind of progress.

At the end of the day, although he liked most of his superpowered colleagues and could at least tolerate the ones he didn’t like, Clark hadn’t formed any close relationships with his fellow superheroes. He almost counted Wonder Woman as a friend, or as much of a friend as Clark could be with someone who only knew him as Superman, but being that she lived on a remote island that no man could reach, they couldn’t exactly hang out on the weekends. Batman lived right across the bay in Gotham, but the convenient location was all he had going for him; he was out of the question for Clark in terms of friendship.

The loneliness was mostly what had Clark thinking about his soulmate in those silent moments of his day, alone in his apartment when he didn’t have anything planned after work, lying in bed at night or in the early hours of the morning. He tried not to be unrealistic in his expectations; he knew finding his soulmate wouldn’t solve all of his problems. But he couldn’t help but wonder if it might fill the empty space that seemed to exist in his life. It certainly couldn’t hurt, having someone who was perfect for him in every way. Someone he could confide in and trust with his deepest secrets.

He wondered if they felt the same way, whoever and wherever they were. He wondered, as he often had before, whether they even knew they had a soulmate. Clark had spent the first two decades of his life never being injured. He’d since then had a few run-ins with Kryptonite, but his injuries from those encounters always healed once he’d gotten away from said Kryptonite and out into the sunlight. If Clark’s soulmate wasn’t constantly, actively searching for new injuries on their body, they probably hadn’t noticed those fleeting cuts and bruises that didn’t belong to them.

The thought that his soulmate might not even know he existed had always left Clark feeling an inexplicable sense of anxiety, that same restlessness that had driven him out of Smallville and made him want to see the world and find his place in it, find his person.

There were forums for this kind of thing, websites where people could upload information about themselves and any notable injuries they’d endured. That had never felt like an option for Clark. What was he supposed to say? “My name is Clark Kent, I live in Metropolis, and I’ve never been injured”? And how likely was his soulmate to even be on one of those forums?

There wasn’t anything Clark could do to speed up the process of finding his soulmate. His only option was to wait. He felt backed into a corner, and unlike when he was out there saving the world, he didn’t have someone like Batman around to think of a way out.

Bruce

Adopting Dick wasn’t a miracle cure for Bruce’s loneliness. Bruce hadn’t expected that it would be. Dick was in the thick of his grief over his parents’ unexpected deaths, something Bruce could very much relate to. Dick needed space, and support, and plenty of therapy.

So that was what Bruce gave him. When Dick was withdrawn and taciturn his first few weeks at Wayne Manor, Bruce allowed him plenty of time and space to adjust. When Dick started opening up, Bruce listened and empathized. And he found Dick a therapist and made sure it was someone Dick liked and felt he could trust.

The whole time, Bruce was constantly conscious of his own shortcomings, every potential misstep he could make and every one he did make. He hadn’t been prepared to be a parent, and he knew that, and Alfred knew it, and Dick probably knew it too. But he did his best, and he was surprised by how often that turned out to be enough.

Gradually, Dick grew more comfortable around Bruce and Alfred. Bruce got the feeling that Dick trusted him more after Bruce told him he was Batman. Bruce had been hesitant to let Dick in on the secret – although Dick had been close enough to figuring it out on his own that Bruce might not have had a choice for much longer – but it turned out to be more than worth the risk.

Now Bruce was training Dick to join him in fighting crime, and that was also going better than expected. Dick had extensive acrobatics training from his upbringing in the circus, but he didn’t know the first thing about combat. Of course, Bruce would try to make sure the kid did as little actual fighting as possible – leave that part to Bruce – but Dick needed to be prepared for anything, just in case.

They settled into a daily routine. Dick woke up and ate breakfast with Bruce – Bruce was not happy about waking up this early, but Alfred had been adamant that eating breakfast with Dick was an important daily bonding experience – before Dick went to school and Bruce went to work. When Dick got home, he did his homework, and if he finished by the time Bruce got home from work, then they trained together in the Batcave until it was time for Dick to get ready for bed and Bruce to get ready to go out on patrol.

While Bruce was putting Dick through the paces, they talked, usually about Bruce’s experience being Batman. Dick was understandably curious about it all. Bruce answered most of his questions as truthfully as he could, though he omitted some of the more morbid details of vigilante life, as well as the details of his relationship with Catwoman.

When Bruce didn’t feel like being interrogated, he asked Dick about school. He suspected Dick was also omitting some unpleasant details on that front; Bruce knew firsthand how cruel adolescent boys could be. But Dick hadn’t come home with any black eyes yet, so if he was being teased, at least he had more restraint than Bruce had at his age.

Bruce got home on a school night like any other, as tired as he had been ever since adopting Dick. He knew adopting a preteen child was completely different from bringing home a newborn, but at least for Bruce, he was missing just as much sleep as he would if he had a screaming infant keeping him awake. The difference was that his lack of sleep was mostly his own damn fault for choosing to stay up all night fighting crime.

Still, exhausted as he was, Bruce wouldn’t miss out on his and Dick’s evening training sessions. They were easily the best part of his day. So, instead of going upstairs to catch a few hours of sleep, he exchanged his suit and tie for workout clothes and went down to the Batcave, where he found Dick already stretching, getting ready for whatever Bruce had in store for him. Alfred had left a pair of clean towels and full water bottles for them, and a tumbler of freshly brewed coffee for Bruce. Bruce made a mental note to thank him later.

“How was school today?” Bruce said conversationally, sipping from the tumbler while Dick finished his stretches.

“I got in a fight,” Dick said casually.

Bruce masked ninety percent of his concern, not wanting to overreact. “With who?” he asked, scanning Dick’s face and arms for scrapes or bruises. There weren’t any visible, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been injured.

Dick shrugged. “Just some guys in my class.”

“Did they hurt you?”

Dick gave Bruce an odd look. “No,” he said, like Bruce had asked a crazy question. “They were just arguing about whether Batman or Superman would win in a fight.”

Ah. Dick got in a verbal fight. And not even about anything important. “What did they say?” Bruce wasn’t all that interested in what a bunch of twelve-year-olds thought about him and Superman, but if Dick wanted to talk about it, he’d humor him.

“One guy said Superman would win because he’s more powerful, and the other guy said you would win because you’re smarter than Superman and you’d just use Kryptonite.”

So, the usual arguments. “And what did you say?”

“That it was a stupid thing to fight about,” Dick stood up from his stretches and Bruce motioned for him to move on to the next phase of his warm-up, running laps around the training area. Dick raised his voice so Bruce could hear him clearly across the room. “You and Superman wouldn’t fight each other, so it doesn’t matter who would win.”

Of course Dick would be that optimistic. Maybe he was a little naive, but he was a child, after all. If anything, the fact that Dick didn’t automatically assume the worst in people was a testament to how he was coping with his trauma far better than Bruce had. Still, if he was going to become Batman’s sidekick, he needed to learn to prepare for anything. So Bruce posed the question: “What if something happened and Superman turned evil?”

Dick frowned mid-run, appearing to consider this for the first time. “Is that why you keep Kryptonite in the Batcave?” he asked after a moment’s thought. “Just in case something happens?”

“It’s important to be prepared.”

“I guess so.” Dick finished his first lap. Nine to go. “But aren’t you and Superman friends?”

Batman and Superman? Friends? Bruce was glad Dick had his back turned to him; he couldn’t help the look of distaste that crossed his features. “Not really.”

“I hope I get to meet him one day,” Dick said, undeterred by Bruce’s obvious disinterest in the subject.

“I’m sure you will.”

It wasn’t long after Dick started joining Bruce’s patrols that he got his wish. Dick had completed his preliminary training in a matter of months. He wasn’t ready to face Gotham’s top-tier villains, but Bruce felt comfortable bringing him along to stop some garden-variety criminals.

Superman found them in Gotham late one night. Bruce had spotted him from the street and, already annoyed at seeing the other hero in his city, pulled the Batmobile into an alleyway and ascended to the roof of the nearest building. Dick followed up the building, hopping up the building’s fire escape like he was climbing a jungle gym. He really was impressively acrobatic.

Upon seeing Superman, Dick came to a dead halt, eyes wide and mouth agape. Bruce fought the urge to roll his eyes. He watched Superman carefully as Superman looked Dick up and down and extended a hand. “You must be Robin,” he said with a friendly smile.

Bruce let his haunches down slightly.

“Yeah,” Dick said, audibly awestruck. He stared at Superman’s hand in front of him for an awkward moment before snapping out of his stupor and shaking it. A wide grin broke out across his face, and even Bruce had to admit, it was good to see the kid smile like that.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Superman said.

“What are you doing here?” Dick asked.

Superman turned to Bruce for the first time during the interaction. “I came to talk to Batman about something I might need his help with.”

Anything Superman couldn’t handle on his own was almost certainly something too dangerous to involve Dick in, so Bruce instructed Dick to wait in the Batmobile. Obedient as ever, Dick clambered back down the fire escape. Bruce waited until he heard the door of the Batmobile shut before turning expectantly to Superman.

“He seems like a good kid,” Superman said.

Bruce wasn’t here to talk about Robin. That was none of Superman’s business. “What do you need?” he demanded.

“I’ve been following some criminal activity in Metropolis and I’ve tracked the perpetrators back here,” Superman explained. “I didn’t want to get in trouble for fighting crime in ‘your’ city, so I figured I’d give you all the information I have and let you handle it.”

“What do you have?”

Superman laid out everything he knew while Bruce committed it to memory. It was, Bruce was loath to admit, genuinely helpful information about a human trafficking ring Bruce had long suspected of smuggling victims into the country through Gotham’s port. He hadn’t managed to track down the group’s ringleaders, and Superman’s information could potentially lead him right to them.

“That’s everything I know,” Superman said once he’d finished relaying his information.

“It’s enough,” Bruce said, the closest thing he’d ever come to thanking the other hero. “I’ll take it from here.”

“You’ll tell me how it turns out?” Superman asked.

“I’m sure it’ll be on the news.”

Superman glared. “I’ve spent a lot of time tracking these people down. I’d rather hear about it from you directly.”

“Fine.” Bruce turned without another word and followed Dick off the building.

Dick was waiting in the Batmobile, as instructed, when Bruce rejoined him. “That was so cool,” he said giddily. “He’s nicer than I thought he’d be.”

“Sure he is,” Bruce said. He plugged a destination into the Batmobile’s autopilot. “I have a new lead for us to follow.”

“From Superman?”

“Yeah. From Superman.” Bruce was already not a fan of the admiring way Dick spoke about Superman. The Man of Steel had been nothing but a thorn in Bruce’s side ever since he’d shown up on the scene in Metropolis. Bruce didn’t trust him in the least – any person with that much power would inevitably be corrupted by it, and Bruce had dedicated more than enough time and stress toward preparing for that eventuality – and he resented how often they had to work together to achieve a joint objective.

If it was up to Bruce, he would never see, speak to, or hear from Superman ever again. But he didn’t think he was lucky enough for that to happen.

Chapter Text

Clark

At first, Clark hadn’t known how to react to the news that Batman had apparently taken on a sidekick, the colorful young Robin. His instinct was to dismiss the story entirely. The idea of Batman taking someone under his wing was almost laughable. He had always been adamant about preferring to “work alone.” In fact, Clark had been under the strong impression that Batman didn't like being around people at all, under any circumstance. And Clark highly doubted he had the patience to train a new hero.

That had been Clark’s primary motivation in flying to Gotham. Sure, he had also been meaning to tell Batman about the human traffickers, but he was mostly curious. He wouldn’t believe this Robin thing until he saw it with his own eyes.

And sure enough, when Batman scaled the building Clark had alighted on, the little red, yellow, and green mini-vigilante hopped right up after him. (The kid was surprisingly nimble.) He was all gangly limbs and messy black hair, and couldn’t have been older than fourteen.

Even more shocking was the way Batman acted around Robin. It was obvious he was fiercely protective of the kid, which was a side of Batman that Clark had never seen. The only thing Clark had ever known Batman to be protective of was the city of Gotham.

In the months that followed, Clark didn’t have another opportunity to interact with Robin. He hadn’t expected to. The sort of missions that Batman and Superman embarked on together were not the sort of missions that were safe for someone so young and new to the superhero scene. Clark also suspected that Batman was keeping Robin away from him; that protectiveness was coming out again, and maybe Batman also didn’t appreciate the way Robin had seemed to take an instant liking to Clark.

It was a shame, though. Clark had been telling the truth when he’d said Robin seemed like a good kid. It still stumped him a little that a bubbly, polite kid like Robin could somehow get along with someone as dark and depressing as Batman. It was such a contradiction that, even in Robin’s absence, Clark started reevaluating the way he thought of Batman. If he was, in fact, capable of caring about another person the way he seemed to care about Robin, what else was he capable of?

In their subsequent encounters, Batman was still as rude and standoffish toward Clark as he’d always been, but Clark began to notice things about him that he hadn’t picked up on before.

First was the way Bataman talked about Gotham. His fierce protectiveness of the city had always come across to Clark as hostile, territorial, but when Clark set aside his preconceptions about Batman and really listened to him, he realized it was much more than that. He cared about Gotham, the same way he cared about Robin. He didn’t want Clark messing around in his city not just because he didn’t trust Clark – although that surely played a role – but because no one else knew Gotham the way Batman did. It was a complicated city, where one false move could tilt the delicate balance between good and evil too far in the wrong direction, and Batman didn’t want another hero who wasn’t familiar with Gotham’s intricacies to get involved and throw everything into chaos.

Clark could relate to that. Now that he thought about it, he wouldn’t trust Batman to fight crime in Metropolis the same way Batman didn’t trust Clark in Gotham. Batman’s approach wouldn’t work in Metropolis, a city that wasn’t nearly as corrupt or crime-ridden as Gotham. His brand of dark vigilantism would not go over well, and he’d end up creating more problems than he could solve.

But that had never been a point of contention, because Batman had never tried to get involved in Metropolis’ problems. He stayed in his lane, and he just expected Clark to do the same.

The second realization Clark came to took a bit longer to sink in, if only because he simply couldn’t believe it.

It first occurred to him after he and Batman wrapped up a successful mission. Everything had gone off without a hitch, for perhaps the first time in their entire history of working together. Clark was feeling pretty good about it… until Batman rounded on him with a furious expression.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded, like he’d just witnessed Clark do something beyond stupid. It was the same question Batman aimed at him after their rougher missions, the ones that ended in the villain escaping or one or both of them narrowly avoiding death. If either of those things had happened, Clark would have anticipated Batman’s anger – hell, he probably would have been pretty upset himself – but he hadn’t expected it this time. As far as Clark was concerned, they’d both done everything right.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” he said, already annoyed that Batman couldn’t for once just be pleased that everything had worked out. He always had to find something to complain about.

“I told you going into this mission that there was a possibility we’d run into Kryptonite,” Batman reminded him. Distantly, Clark did remember Batman saying that, but it hadn’t been at the top of his mind. He’d been more focused on completing the mission. “And yet you acted like there wasn’t any danger.”

“There wasn’t,” Clark argued. “They didn’t have any Kryptonite.”

“But there could have been. I didn’t sign up to babysit the most powerful man on earth. You should be looking out for yourself.”

Okay, that ticked Clark off. He thought of Batman as an equal partner. A bad-tempered, cynical, pain-in-the-ass partner, but an equal one nonetheless. The idea that Batman felt the need to “babysit” him on a mission when Clark was easily ten times more powerful hit Clark right in his pride.

And why did Batman care so much what Clark did anyway? “I don’t understand why it matters to you whether or not I endanger myself,” Clark snapped. After all, it wasn’t like Batman actually liked him or wanted him around.

Batman glared. “It matters to me that our mission is successful. That includes no one dying.”

They went their separate ways after that, both of them fuming. But once Clark had had enough time and space to clear his head, he replayed their interaction in his mind and realized it was part of a larger pattern. Batman constantly belittled Clark for his optimism and disagreed with him about the best way to complete a mission, but ever since the two of them had established a professional rapport, the only times Batman actually told Clark off were when Clark put himself in harm’s way.

Clark filed the thought away for later, not quite sure yet what to make of it. On his next mission with Batman, he paid close attention to Batman’s behavior. He was all business when they were in the thick of it, and rolling his eyes at Clark whenever they had a moment’s peace in which Clark could say or do something that would inevitably get on Batman’s nerves (maybe Clark did this a little bit on purpose), and then after the mission was done, if Clark had done anything reckless, Batman tore him a new one.

And, to Batman’s credit, Clark did the same exact thing when Batman was reckless and put himself in harm’s way. But Clark did it because he actually gave a shit whether Batman lived or died. He may not have liked Batman, but he didn’t want anything bad to happen to him.

Wait a second.

Did Batman care whether Clark lived or died? Is that why he got so upset when Clark had close calls or acted without thinking in the heat of the moment?

The idea that Batman cared about him on any level was a revelation to Clark, but it made sense. Batman had saved Clark’s life more times than anyone else Clark knew. He was always watching Clark’s back. He complained about it the whole time, but he did it nonetheless.

Clark felt stupid for not realizing this sooner. And once he had, he started noticing the way Batman reacted when the other heroes they worked with endangered themselves. He told off the Flash constantly for reckless behavior; he wasn’t even afraid to lecture Wonder Woman.

On every mission, Batman constantly had his eyes on everyone else around him. Clark did too, but for Clark, it was easy to keep track of his teammates; his superhuman senses helped him keep track of his surroundings, including whether or not any of his fellow heroes were in danger, and his lightning-fast reflexes allowed him to react in a split second before things went sideways. The fact that Batman managed to do the same thing with no superpowers of his own was an impressive feat, and a testament to the fact that he did care about others, even if he acted like he didn’t.

It made Clark wonder whether Batman had someone looking out for him the same way he was constantly looking out for everyone else. Sure, the guy was an asshole, but he deserved to have somebody watching his back. And if nobody else would do it, then maybe it would have to be Clark.

Clark was still thinking about this on their next joint mission. Batman was the one who’d been a little too reckless this time, and though he’d managed to escape the situation unscathed, it had been touch-and-go for a minute there. Once they were in the clear, Clark took him aside and told him, “A successful mission means no one dying. That applies to you too.”

Batman glowered at him. “I had it under control.”

Clark raised a skeptical eyebrow. “If that was ‘under control,’ then I don’t want to see ‘out of control.’”

Batman shoved away from Clark. “No,” he threatened gruffly. “You don’t.”

Okay, so Batman didn’t necessarily want anyone looking out for him. To be honest, that just made Clark want to do it even more.

Bruce

The thing about Superman that was so infuriating was that he was so goddamn likable. Everything about him seemed designed to make a person let their guard down. It was fucking insidious. From that handsome face and brilliant smile to his positive attitude and friendly demeanor, Superman appealed to nearly every person he met. It was part of what made him Superman.

And it was part of what made Bruce trust him even less. Nobody could be that perfect. Like a beloved actor who turned out to be a raging misogynist behind the scenes, Superman had to be hiding something.

Despite his suspicions – despite his very nature, which always defaulted to disliking and distrusting people – Bruce sometimes found that even he got sucked in by Superman’s charm. It didn’t happen often, and Bruce always caught himself before he let his guard down, but it was frustrating that it happened at all.

Like when Superman had introduced himself to Dick. He’s been so polite and charming, and Dick had eaten it up. And after witnessing Dick spend so much of his time battling his inner demons, Bruce had almost been grateful to Superman for giving Dick a little spark of joy.

But if Bruce felt he couldn’t trust Superman in general, then it was especially unwise for him to trust Superman around Dick. If Superman ever did break bad, Bruce didn’t want his new ward anywhere near the catastrophe that was sure to ensue.

At least Superman seemed to have given up on trying to get Bruce to like him. It probably helped that every time he showed a glimpse of kindness, Bruce was quick to shut that shit down. Pushing people away was, after all, a skill set Bruce had spent many years developing. He was pretty good at it by now.

Outside of hero work, however, Bruce had to utilize a completely different skill set, one that didn’t come as naturally to him. His public persona was, by design, the opposite of his Batman persona. Where Batman was brooding and grim, Bruce Wayne had to be bright and charismatic. He got pleasantly drunk at parties and schmoozed with the rich and flirted with anyone who showed a glimmer of interest.

It was exhausting.

Bruce had taken a bit of a break from the public eye after adopting Dick, but he knew he would have to get back to it soon. He’d been training Dick in high-society mannerisms at the same time as he’d trained him in the art of combat, and Dick had taken to it just as quickly. He had the basics down already: “please” and “thank you,” shaking hands, making small talk with adults. He had perfect posture and knew how to smile and pose for a camera. Bruce had him fitted for a suit, taught him which forks and knives to use at a formal dinner, taught him enough French pronunciation to order off a menu.

Dick was eager to show off his new skills, and with a Wayne Foundation event on the horizon, he would soon have the perfect opportunity. Bruce ran him through the schedule of the event, including the point of the night at which he would have to leave and go upstairs to bed, because no, he wasn’t allowed to stay up late with a bunch of adults no matter how mature it made him feel, and besides, he’d probably be bored out of his mind by that point anyway.

When the night of the event came, Dick put on his suit and let Alfred comb his hair and stood next to Bruce to smile and greet people as they arrived. He was an enormous hit. Bruce hadn’t expected Dick to buckle under the pressure of having so many eyes on him – he was a born performer, in a literal sense of the word – but it was still a relief that he managed not to slip up on his manners all night.

In particular, the journalists and photographers covering the event couldn’t get enough of Dick. He had more pictures taken of him that night than anyone, which was saying something, given how many Gotham society darlings were in attendance. He even managed to make small talk with a photographer from the Daily Planet. Bruce hovered off to the side and listened to the two converse.

“How have you liked living with Bruce Wayne?” the photographer – Jimmy Olsen, his press badge read – asked.

“It’s great!” Dick said enthusiastically. “He’s really nice, and I’ve already learned a lot. Did you know Gotham has the highest crime rate in America? That’s why Bruce made the Wayne Foundation.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows at Dick’s miniature sales pitch. A born performer, indeed.

Jimmy was impressed too. “Do you think you’ll get involved in charity work when you’re older?”

“Hopefully I won’t have to wait until I’m too much older,” Dick said. “I really want to make a difference. There are lots of kids in Gotham who aren’t as lucky as I am.”

“That’s true. Hey,” Jimmy glanced over at Bruce, “If it’s okay with Mr. Wayne, do you think my friend from the Daily Planet could get a quote from you about the Wayne Foundation? Maybe you could both give him a quote.”

Dick looked at Bruce too, and Bruce nodded. It sounded like a good media opportunity. “We’d be happy to.”

“Great. Let me go get him.” Jimmy disappeared into the crowd and returned moments later with his colleague, who was wearing an identical press badge.

Bruce kept his surprise off his face. The colleague was… well, there was no other way to say it. He was attractive. He was exactly Bruce’s type, actually. Tall, dark hair, looked like he worked out. If Bruce had met him at a bar instead of his own charity event, he would have offered to buy him a drink.

“Hey.” The colleague reached out to shake Bruce and Dick’s hands. “Clark Kent, Daily Planet. Jimmy tells me you’re both willing to give me a quote about the Wayne Foundation?”

“Of course,” Bruce said smoothly. “I’m always happy to talk about the Foundation.”

Bruce gave the attractive reporter a few lines about the importance of the Wayne Foundation’s work, and then it was Dick’s turn. For the first time that night, Dick hesitated. Bruce hadn’t taught him how to talk to reporters yet. He hadn’t thought it would come up this soon.

“What should I say?” Dick asked Bruce.

“Tell him what you told Mr. Olsen,” Bruce prompted.

Dick nodded, looking more sure of himself. “I just told Mr. Olsen, I really want to make a difference, because there are a lot of kids in Gotham who aren’t as lucky as I am.” He paused, frowned. “Do you need more than that?”

Clark, the other reporter, smiled. “No, that’s perfect. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Wayne.”

“You can call me Bruce,” Bruce said. He didn’t know why he was bothering to flirt when he knew there was no chance of anything happening between the two of them that night, and he’d probably never run into Clark again. But it never hurt to charm a reporter.

“Bruce,” Clark corrected himself. “That was really helpful.” Then, to his colleague, “You almost ready to go, Jimmy?”

Jimmy looked apologetic. “Actually, I may have gotten a little carried away talking to Mr. Grayson here.” Dick puffed up his chest at being addressed as “Mr. Grayson.” “I still need to get a few more pictures. I’ll meet you at the entrance in half an hour?”

“That’s fine,” Clark said. “I’m sure I can find something to do until then.”

Bruce saw his chance and took it. “I’d be happy to keep you company.” As Jimmy turned to leave, Bruce leaned down to tell Dick, “I think it’s about time you went upstairs to bed.”

Dick didn’t look happy at being dismissed for the night, but they’d had this talk already, so he knew not to argue. He said a polite goodbye to Clark and exited the ballroom through the door that led to the rest of the house.

When they were alone – well, as alone as they could be in a room full of people – Bruce said to Clark, “I don’t think I’ve seen you at one of these before.”

“It’s my first time covering an event in Gotham,” Clark explained. “I don’t cover many events, in general. I mostly cover superhero news.”

For a publication like the Daily Planet, that meant Clark followed Superman’s every move. “Do you enjoy it?” Bruce couldn’t imagine enjoying it, but he had an unorthodox outlook on Superman. Maybe this guy was a megafan.

Clark shrugged. “For the most part. It can get a little repetitive. I’d like to do more investigative journalism, but Superman gets clicks.”

Investigative journalism sounded far more interesting than writing about Superman. Bruce got Clark talking about that, and the next half an hour disappeared in no time at all.

Clark glanced at his watch. “Jimmy’s probably waiting for me outside,” he said. “Thanks for giving me something to do while I waited. I’m sure this has been a busy night for you; I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience.”

“It wasn’t inconvenient at all,” Bruce said. Not for a man who looked like that, he didn’t add. “You have a good evening.”

He watched Clark leave, and made a mental note to start paying more attention to journalists in the future.

Chapter Text

Clark

Watching Batman’s back was a lot harder than Clark had expected it to be.

Clark was always watching his teammates’ backs to some extent, but unless they were in obvious and immediate peril, he trusted that they generally knew what they were doing and could take care of themselves. He’d never worried about it that much; certainly not to the degree that Batman seemed to worry about what everyone else was doing. Batman came out of every team mission with a detailed list of everything everyone else had done wrong, and it was one of the reasons almost everyone else he worked with disliked him as much as Clark did.

Clark was trying to be more understanding. There was probably a good reason Batman was cynical and paranoid about everything. He didn’t know Batman’s background, but he couldn’t assume it was anything like his own. Clark’s upbringing hadn’t been some idyllic small-town fantasy – money had been tight, and he’d never really felt like he fit in – but his parents had sheltered him as best as they could from the harsh realities of life. The only loss he had ever suffered was that of his birth parents and the rest of his home planet, which he couldn’t remember.

Batman, being from Gotham, had surely grown up in rougher circumstances than Clark. The city had gotten a little better since Commissioner Gordon had cleaned up the corrupt police force and Batman had shown up on the scene, but it still wasn’t a place Clark would want to raise a child. The only Gothamites who seemed to escape from tragedy were the wealthy elites, and not even all of them were safe; Clark had heard about what happened to the Waynes.

Whatever Batman’s history, whatever had made him so unlikable, there was a reason everyone still put up with him: he was a damn good fighter. And that was exactly what made watching his back so difficult.

Clark knew Batman’s fighting style inside and out, the same way Batman knew his; it was part of what made them such an effective team. He knew Batman relied more on strategy than strength, that he assessed a situation and came up with plans and backup plans the instant he entered a fight so he could perpetually stay two steps ahead of his opponent. Clark knew Batman had a solution to any problem and that he was most dangerous when he was cornered.

It was easy enough for Clark to react quickly when he realized Batman was in danger. He’d pretty much been doing that all along. He did the same thing for anyone he fought alongside. It was much harder to predict when Batman was going to do something stupid that would put him in danger, and stop him before he could go through with it. In fact, it was nearly impossible. Because Batman wasn’t just two steps ahead of his opponents in a fight; he was two steps ahead of everyone else around him, including Clark.

And also because, Clark realized with alarm as he began paying closer attention to Batman during their joint missions, Batman did stupid things that put himself in danger way more often than Clark could have ever imagined.

Clark had, apparently, been giving Batman too much credit by assuming he generally knew what he was doing and could take care of himself. Did he know what he was doing? Absolutely. Could he take care of himself? Maybe. But did he take care of himself? No. Not even a little bit.

Despite being the only superhero Clark knew who had no superpowers of his own, Batman behaved as though he were invincible. He even regularly put himself in harm’s way to save his more powerful superhero colleagues (further evidence that Batman did care about people, however hard he tried to act like he didn’t).

Batman’s apparent disregard for his own life might have annoyed Clark a little, if he hadn’t been able to completely relate. When it came down to it, Clark was also willing to put himself in harm’s way to save his colleagues, or any random civilian. He did it all the time. It was part and parcel of being a superhero. It was just a lot more alarming to see that behavior from someone who, again, had no superpowers.

Clearly Batman needed someone watching his back even more than Clark had first thought. But therein came Clark’s next problem: Batman didn’t want anyone watching his back.

This problem Clark had at least seen coming. Batman always wanted to be the one taking the bullet for someone else; he never wanted someone else to take the bullet for him, and he got indignant when anyone tried.

Clark pushed Batman’s buttons for fun sometimes, but he wasn’t trying to cross any lines. He couldn’t give Batman any reason to believe Clark doubted his ability as a superhero, which was exactly what Batman would assume if he realized Clark was looking out for him (or trying to).

It was a challenge, but a worthwhile one, because over time, Clark found that by making a concerted effort to keep Batman from dying, he was becoming even more familiar with Batman’s modus operandi. Eventually, he found that he could predict what Batman’s next move would be, and when that next move was going to be something stupid and reckless. Clark lost count of how many times he swooped in to lend a hand when he realized Batman was outmatched, how many times he took out a threat Batman was about to throw himself at, or, in the most dire circumstances, how many times he picked Batman up and flew him away from danger. (Batman hated when Clark did this, and usually stayed mad at him for weeks or months afterward, but sometimes it was unavoidable.)

Batman was no longer two steps ahead of Clark at all times; they were perfectly in step. Their teamwork improved. Batman seemed to have noticed the way Clark stuck close to his side whenever possible during a mission and started using it to his advantage. He began incorporating Clark’s superpowers into his strategies, and would direct Clark where he needed him. So Clark began to do the same, and was shocked when Batman actually took his direction. Sure, they fought about it sometimes afterward, when one of them thought the other had given the wrong orders, but in the heat of battle, they listened to each other without question.

The only times Batman didn’t listen to Clark during a mission were when Clark tried to tell him to take it easy and maybe not get himself killed. He still refused to take care of himself even a little bit, and that was kind of infuriating.

That was exactly the situation Clark found himself in when he’d called Batman in to help him take down Lex Luthor’s latest army of killer robots. Clark had witnessed Batman take the hit; he hadn’t been able to tear himself away from the fight in time to stop it from happening. A laser cut through Batman’s armored suit like butter, and he lost his grip on his grappling hook and fell through the air.

Clark caught Batman before he hit the ground. “Are you okay?” he asked, already knowing what Batman’s answer would be (the same as it was every time).

“Fine,” Batman said gruffly. It wasn’t convincing. He’d had the wind knocked out of him and was still catching his breath, and he was unsteady getting back on his feet. The laser had instantly cauterized the wound that slashed across his abdomen, so he wasn’t going to bleed out, but he wasn’t in good shape.

“You should sit the rest of this one out,” Clark said, even though he knew it was useless. Batman had never listened to Clark when Clark told him to take it easy. But Clark still deluded himself into thinking that he could find some magical combination of words to convince Batman.

“Fuck off,” Batman said.

Clark steeled himself. He wasn’t going to give up easily this time. He was certain if Batman went back out there, he wouldn’t get out alive, and Clark couldn’t live with that on his conscience. Batman was only there because Clark had gone to him for help. “No. You can barely stand. Let me take it from here.”

“I’ll be fine. I can handle it.”

There had to be something Batman cared about enough to make him not want to die. Clark ran through the short list of everything he knew about Batman and came up with the only possible answer. “At least think about Robin, will you?” he said. Clark had seen, in his minimal encounters with Robin, that Batman cared about him like a son. If there was anything or anyone in the world that Batman would keep living for, it was that kid. “Are you going to make me tell him you died fighting a battle I asked you to join?”

Batman glared at him. “You don’t get to use Robin against me like that.”

“I’m not using him against you,” Clark insisted. “I’m trying to keep you alive.”

By some miracle, even though it pissed Batman off, bringing up Robin actually worked. Batman sat out the rest of the fight. He didn’t get torn apart by robots. Superman took care of the rest of Luthor’s army, and Luthor himself, and saw that Batman got safely back to Gotham before returning home himself.

That night, in his apartment, Clark was still relishing in his victory. Not his victory over Luthor – that was nothing special – but his victory over Batman. Convincing the stubborn hero to take care of himself, sort of. Clark was already thinking about how he was going to brag about it to Lois the following day. He’d been keeping her up to date on his effort to watch Batman’s back; she’d even given him a few good ideas that he’d used throughout the process.

Clark stripped off his Superman suit and walked to the bathroom to shower. By force of habit, he stopped in front of his bathroom mirror to check for fresh cuts and bruises, courtesy of his soulmate.

He didn’t have to look too hard. The fresh mark was glaringly obvious, and it sucked the breath out of Clark’s lungs.

A giant slash cut across Clark’s abdomen, like a laser had sliced right through him.

Bruce

Dick bounced up and down on the balls of his feet. His patent leather shoes squeaked against the ballroom floor. Bruce’s fundraisers had lost their sheen, now that he’d been to a few of them. Bruce understood. He remembered finding his mother’s fundraisers very boring.

“Do I have to stay here with you?” Dick asked. “Or can I go walk around?”

“As long as you stay in the ballroom,” Bruce said.

Dick nodded and disappeared into the crowd, most likely in search of food. He’d just celebrated his thirteenth birthday, and it was as if a switch flipped the second he’d become a teenager; he’d shot up a couple inches and he was hungry all the time.

Dick’s appetite wasn’t the only thing that had changed. He’d grown comfortable in Wayne Manor, in Bruce and Alfred’s company, and in the role of Robin. And while that was a good thing, it also meant his unquestioning obedience had started to wane; he was asserting his independence in small ways, not always listening when Bruce or Alfred told him to do something. He hadn’t fully entered his rebellious teenage phase – hopefully it would be at least a few more years before he did – but he wasn’t a meek little kid anymore, either.

Bruce was glad Dick was growing up and becoming more sure of himself. He wanted Dick to be comfortable in his new life. But he was starting to understand what parents meant when they talked about their kids growing up in the blink of an eye. Dick’s first year living at the Manor had flown by.

Speaking of flying by, it felt like Dick had only been gone for a minute before he was coming back to Bruce with a familiar face in tow.

Bruce recognized the reporter, Clark Kent. He hadn’t expected to see him again.

“Look who I found,” Dick said proudly.

“I remember you,” Bruce said, reaching out to shake Clark’s hand. “Clark, right?”

“Right,” Clark said with a smile. Bruce found it encouraging that Clark was pleased to see him. He still hadn’t gotten a read on whether Clark was interested in him.

Usually if Bruce couldn’t easily tell whether someone was interested in him, he didn’t bother trying to pursue them. There were plenty of fish in the sea, and he wasn’t going to waste time on someone he would only sleep with once or a handful of times. But he’d changed his habits since adopting Dick; he wasn’t bringing people home practically every night. It might be worth it to start putting more effort into these encounters, if they weren’t going to happen nearly as often as they used to.

“I wasn’t expecting to see you at another one of these,” Bruce said, starting to test the waters. If he could collect enough evidence that Clark might be interested, he’d make a move.

“Well, Jimmy and I enjoyed ourselves last time, so when our boss suggested we come back, we figured, why not?”

Dick perked up, looking around the room. “Is Jimmy here too?” he asked.

“He should be here somewhere,” Clark said.

“I’m gonna go find him.” Dick darted back into the crowd, weaving between people in search of Jimmy Olsen.

Bruce turned to Clark, both of them amused. “He likes you,” Bruce said.

“I think he likes Jimmy,” Clark replied. “I can’t blame him. Everybody likes Jimmy.”

“Have you gotten to do any hard-hitting investigative journalism since I last ran into you?” Bruce asked.

Clark chuckled. “Not really.”

“Just more Superman?”

“Just more Superman.”

Bruce had read some of Clark’s writing since meeting him. Not his articles about Superman; Bruce wasn’t interested in that. But Clark’s investigative reporting was well-written and engaging. It was a shame he didn’t get to do more of it.

“I hope you’ve at least got something exciting going on outside of work to make up for it,” Bruce said. “Although my expectations aren’t high if you think coming to one of these is fun.” This was a test. Did Clark mean it when he’d said he’d enjoyed himself last time he’d been at the Manor, or was he just being polite?

“I didn’t say it was fun,” Clark corrected. “But I enjoyed our conversation.”

That was an encouraging response. “So did I.”

A beat of silence passed, and Clark added, “I do have other things going on in my life. Just so we’re clear.”

Bruce laughed. A genuine laugh, which was rare for him. Maybe Clark was worth the effort. “I believe you,” he said.

Clark paused again and looked around them. “You don’t need to… I don’t know, make the rounds or something, do you?” he asked. “I don’t want to monopolize your time.”

The responsible answer to this was “yes,” but it would hardly be the first time Bruce had let a pretty face distract him from an otherwise boring social engagement. In fact, it would probably be good for his image. He hadn’t ended up in the tabloids much recently. He needed to keep people talking about what a playboy he was so they wouldn’t start asking questions.

“You can monopolize as much of my time as you’d like,” Bruce said, taking a half-step closer to Clark and then another when Clark didn’t move away. “Tell me more about yourself. Are you from Metropolis originally?”

“Not even close,” Clark said. “I’m from a tiny town in Kansas. Smallville.”

Bruce raised his eyebrows. “It’s not actually called Smallville,” he said, disbelieving.

“It is,” Clark insisted.

“How did you end up out here?”

Clark shrugged. “I was never cut out for small-town life. I couldn’t find what I wanted there.” Seemingly aware that this answer was a bit too serious for a second conversation, Clark added, “Not a lot of news to report on, for starters.”

“No, I can’t imagine making a successful journalism career in rural Kansas.” Bruce smirked. “I have to admit, Clark, you claim to have other things in your life besides work, but so far you haven’t given me any evidence of that. What exactly are your hobbies?”

Clark paused a second too long for someone who actually did have a thriving personal life outside of work, but Bruce didn’t count that against him. It would be pretty hypocritical of him. “Okay, you got me. I’m a workaholic,” Clark admitted. “But what about you? Tell me more about your charity work.”

“What do you want to know?” Bruce asked. “I already gave you a quote about it last time I ran into you.”

Clark shook his head. “I don’t want the prepackaged stuff you give reporters. Off the record, tell me why you do it.”

Why did he do it? It was an incredibly personal question, although Clark didn’t know that. So Bruce gave him the most honest answer he could give. “Because I can,” he said simply. “Not many other people have the resources I do. That’s a responsibility I take seriously.”

Clark looked surprised. “That’s not a mindset a lot of people have.”

“Isn’t that the reason these problems exist in the first place?”

Their conversation turned away from more serious topics after that, reentering the realm of flirtation, and this time, Clark was actually flirting back. By the time Dick reappeared with Jimmy Olsen in tow, Bruce and Clark both had drinks in their hands, and Bruce was strategizing how he could get Clark into his bed without his thirteen-year-old noticing.

“It’s getting pretty late, Clark,” Jimmy said. “We’re gonna miss the last train to Metropolis if we don’t leave soon.”

Clark looked at his watch. “I didn’t realize how much time had passed already.” He turned to Bruce apologetically. “We should go. It was nice seeing you again.”

Bruce smiled. “I hope it isn’t the last time,” he said, and meant it. And if his gaze lingered on Clark as he walked away, well, no one could blame him.

Dick looked up at Bruce strangely, and when Bruce turned to meet his gaze, he quickly looked away.

That wasn’t normal.

“Bruce, can I… ask you something?” Dick said timidly once Clark and Jimmy were gone. And that wasn’t normal, either. Dick hadn’t been nervous around Bruce since he’d first moved in.

“What do you need?” Bruce asked, instantly concerned. He was spinning through worst-case scenarios by the time Dick replied.

Dick chewed on his lip for a long moment before shaking his head. “Never mind. It’s nothing. We don’t have to talk about it.”

“No, whatever it is, I want to talk about it,” Bruce said. He wanted Dick to feel like he could tell or ask Bruce anything. It was important that they were honest with each other. That was something Bruce had realized after letting Dick in on the secret that he was Batman. “Come on, let’s talk in the study.”

In his study, Bruce waited patiently while Dick gathered his thoughts. “I was just thinking about…” Dick began, before stopping again. Bruce continued waiting, and after another tense silence, Dick took a deep breath and said quietly, “Some guys at school have been saying things about you.”

Ah. Now Bruce was pretty sure he knew what this was about. “Does it have something to do with my… relationships?” he asked.

Dick nodded. Bruce held in a sigh. He’d known he’d have to have this conversation with Dick eventually, and now that Dick was a teenager, he should have expected it would be sooner rather than later. Teenage boys weren’t exactly known for their subtlety when it came to discussing adult relationships, and of course one of them would have heard about Bruce’s history and spread rumors that inevitably got back to Dick.

Bruce had already had The Talk with Dick – or rather, confirmed that Dick had had The Talk with his parents, and that they’d taught him all the important things like safety and consent – so he didn’t have to worry about that now. Instead, thinking back to what had prompted this conversation, he asked, “And does this also have something to do with Clark?”

Dick blushed. “It kind of seems like you have a crush on him,” he said.

Bruce almost wanted to laugh. Either Dick was becoming a better detective, or Bruce was being embarrassingly transparent. He hoped it was the former.

“Does that bother you?” he asked. He didn’t want to do anything to make Dick uncomfortable, especially after all the progress they’d made together.

“No,” Dick said, after taking a moment to think about it. “He’s nice. Do you think he could be your soulmate?”

Bruce was taken aback. Dick had never mentioned anything about soulmates to him before, and Bruce had never mentioned it to him. Yet another sign Dick was getting older. “I don’t think so,” Bruce said. And then, in the interest of honesty, he added, “I don’t have one.”

“Oh.” Dick looked down at his hands in his lap. A long stretch of silence passed while he appeared to consider his next words. “I don’t know if I do yet. I hope I find out soon.”

“I’m sure you do,” Bruce reassured him. “But even if you don’t, that doesn’t mean anything bad about you. You can live a good life with or without a soulmate.”

Dick looked up and smiled. “Like you,” he said.

Bruce chuckled. “Hopefully better than me.”

Chapter Text

Clark

Clark didn’t want to believe it at first. For days after the initial discovery, whenever he was alone, he would check to see if the mark was still there, hoping that somehow he might have imagined it, and it always was, though it began to shrink and fade with time.

He started to sink slowly into denial. Clark had spent so much time wishing he would find his soulmate, waiting for the day when it finally happened. He’d built up this mystery person in his mind, fantasized about all the ways they would be perfect for each other. To find out that it was Batman, his polar opposite, the person Clark argued with more than anyone else and the person who disliked Clark the most outside of all the people who regularly tried to kill him… it was too much. It couldn’t be true.

Clark had realized, over the past year or so, that Batman wasn’t a bad person, and he surely had his reasons for why he was the way that he was. Clark had learned how to work with him. They made a good team. But they didn’t get along. They didn’t like each other. That hadn’t mattered very much to Clark until now. He and Batman didn’t need to like each other; they just needed to get the job done.

But if they were soulmates…

No. They couldn’t be soulmates. One matching injury didn’t mean that they were. Sure, maybe it made sense for Clark’s soulmate to be a fellow superhero, given how frequently he ended up with their cuts and bruises on his body. Especially a superhero as reckless as Batman, a superhero without any superpowers who got injured all the time. But it wasn’t the only possibility. There were other types of people who fit the bill. There had to be.

Clark threw himself somewhat manically into work after that. He was a workaholic at the best of times, but especially when he needed a distraction. He even started agreeing to write about things that weren’t usually his area, which was how he ended up at another Wayne Foundation fundraiser with Jimmy.

He hadn’t expected to actually get to talk to Bruce Wayne at the first fundraiser, let alone the second one, and he’d been even more surprised when Bruce started flirting with him. It was… weird. But not in a bad way. Bruce Wayne was an incredibly attractive man, not to mention a famous one. It felt special to capture his attention. And he was a lot friendlier than Clark would have expected. Clark enjoyed listening to him talk about his charity work, and he seemed to enjoy listening to Clark talk about almost anything.

Clark didn’t understand why his soulmate couldn’t be someone more like that. Someone friendly who he could have meaningful conversations with. A good-looking guy who was good with kids. He didn’t have to be rich, but Clark wouldn’t complain about it if he was.

Clark allowed himself to wallow in denial and self-pity for several weeks after discovering his and Batman’s matching wound, but Clark wasn’t built for wallowing, and after enough time had passed, he was ready to keep moving forward. He didn’t have enough evidence yet to conclude that Batman was definitely his soulmate, but he’d accepted it as a possibility.

During his subsequent team-ups with Batman, Clark tried to act normal. He wasn’t sure how successful he was. Whether Batman was Clark’s soulmate or not – Clark really, really hoped he wasn’t – the mere idea of it changed the way Clark thought about him. He’d only just realized that Batman was capable of caring about people. The jury was still out on whether Batman was also capable of romantic relationships.

It was entirely possible that Batman was a different person when he wasn’t on duty. Clark’s Superman persona and his Clark Kent persona weren’t that different. He held himself to a higher standard as Superman, and Superman had to be a lot more serious than Clark Kent could be most of the time, but no matter what identity he was portraying, Clark was always a friendly, optimistic kind of guy. But maybe Batman was only a cynical hardass when he was Batman, and in his day-to-day life he was someone different. The type of person Clark might actually get along with.

Or maybe Clark was just trying to make himself feel better.

Clark started paying closer attention to when and how Batman got injured on their joint missions. Every time Batman fell or took a hit, Clark mentally catalogued it and checked himself for marks when he got home. He felt his spirits fall every time the cuts and bruises matched up. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the truth.

At a certain point, Clark couldn’t keep the information to himself any longer. He’d just gotten home from a team-up with Batman and Wonder Woman, and he was covered in evidence of the fact that Batman was, in fact, his soulmate. He called Lois up, and upon hearing the defeated tone in his voice, she ordered him to come over immediately, and he did.

Within minutes, Clark was standing in Lois’ kitchen, watching her sift through a plastic bag of takeout on her counter. It was such a normal thing, going to a friend’s place to eat their leftovers and vent for an evening, and it was exactly what Clark needed when he felt like his life had just been turned upside-down.

“Hungry?” Lois asked him, unpacking the takeout bag. “I ordered too much Chinese food. I can stick some in the microwave for you.”

“From that place down the street? Absolutely.”

Lois stuck the takeout containers into the microwave to reheat. “Anything to drink?”

Clark sighed and slumped forward onto the kitchen counter with a regretful smile, watching the food spin in the microwave. “I actually wish I could be drunk for this conversation,” he admitted, “But unfortunately that’s not an option.”

Lois raised an eyebrow. “Should I be drunk for this conversation?” she asked.

“Up to you,” Clark said.

Lois poured herself a glass of wine, debated putting the rest of the bottle back in the fridge, and ended up keeping it with her. Just in case. The microwave beeped and she presented Clark’s food to him, and they sat down across from each other at her kitchen table.

“Alright, I’m all ears,” Lois said, sipping her wine.

Clark didn’t see any point in beating around the bush. He opened the first takeout container, took a bite of the microwaved noodles inside, chewed, swallowed, and said, “I found my soulmate.”

Lois’ eyes went wide. “Are you serious? How?”

“They were actually someone I already knew.”

“But who do you know who gets injured so frequently?” Lois frowned, trying to puzzle it out herself before Clark told her. Clark took another bite of his noodles, and by the time he’d washed it down with a sip of water, Lois had the answer. “Oh my God,” she said. “Is it another superhero?”

Clark had to admire Lois’ brilliance. She could give Batman a run for his money as the World’s Greatest Detective if she wanted to. “It is.”

Lois shook her head, incredulous. “I can’t believe neither one of us thought of that. It seems so obvious now that I know.” She raised her wine glass like she was toasting Clark’s success. “Good for you, finally figuring it out. I’m really happy for you.” When Clark didn’t reply right away, her expression changed. “Am I happy for you?”

This was the part where Clark thought it would be really nice if he could be drunk. “It’s not who I thought it would be. They actually might be the last person I would have thought it would be,” he said, looking down at his food instead of meeting Lois’ inquisitive gaze. This time, he didn’t give her time to come up with the answer on her own, although she might have been able to. He just told her. “It’s Batman.”

Lois wasn’t often at a loss for words, but that seemed to do it. Apparently agreeing with Clark that now would be a good time to be drunk, she took a large gulp of wine. “How did you figure it out?” she finally asked.

“I saw him get injured, and when I got home, I saw the same injury on myself.”

“That could have been a fluke.”

“That’s what I thought,” Clark agreed. “So I started paying attention every time he injured himself. It all matched up. And like you said, it makes sense. Batman gets hurt all the time. He doesn’t have any superpowers.”

“But you two hate each other,” Lois argued, already refilling her glass.

“‘Hate’ is a strong word.” Clark didn’t hate Batman. He didn’t like him, either, but he didn’t say that.

“You’ve used plenty of strong words to talk about him in the past.”

“I’ve told you, he’s not as bad as I used to think. He’s an asshole, but he genuinely cares about people.”

“You know that’s a contradiction,” Lois pointed out.

“Yeah.” Clark sighed. Again. “He’s a contradiction.”

“Well, even if you don’t hate him, clearly you’re not jazzed about him being your soulmate. Are you sure he is?”

Clark had been asking himself the same question for months. “There’s always the possibility that I’m wrong, but it would be one hell of a coincidence. The only way to know for certain is to talk to him about it, which I’m definitely not doing.”

“You’re not going to tell him?” Lois seemed surprised. Clark didn’t know why she would be. Clark had told her enough about his history with Batman that she should have known Clark wouldn’t be eager to start any kind of romantic relationship with him. And even if Clark was interested, Batman definitely wouldn’t be.

“If I tried to tell Batman he’s my soulmate, he’d kick my ass.”

“Could he kick your ass?”

“He would find a way.”

Bruce

It wasn’t lost on Bruce that Superman had started treating him differently. The change had happened some time ago, but Bruce had never said anything about it, because so far it had all worked out mostly to his benefit.

Superman had become a near-constant presence at Bruce’s side, or not far away from it, during their joint missions. At first this had annoyed Bruce, but he’d quickly figured out how to use Superman’s proximity to his advantage. Now he had easy access to Superman’s wide array of superpowers, and Superman seemed perfectly willing to use them at Bruce’s direction. And if Superman occasionally used Bruce’s abilities in the same way, Bruce was willing to make that trade. It turned out Superman actually had some decent ideas sometimes.

Against his better judgment, Bruce’s feelings toward Superman began to change.

Bruce was spending a lot less time thinking about and planning for the day when Superman’s power “inevitably” got to his head. He still held on to his stash of Kryptonite, but it was starting to feel less like a necessary precaution and more like a handgun in a bedroom drawer: the sort of thing a person hoped they’d never have to use, didn’t think they’d ever have to use, but kept around just in case, because a slim chance of something bad happening was enough of a reason to be prepared.

A number of things had caused Bruce to start letting his guard down. First and foremost was the way Superman treated Dick. If Bruce had found Superman annoyingly likable before, seeing him interact with Dick only made it worse. Dick adored Superman, and Bruce could hardly blame him. Whenever they had the opportunity to interact, Superman was friendly and kind, complimenting Dick on the progress he’d made as a crimefighter, expressing admiration for his acrobatic abilities, and generally treating him like an equal instead of talking down to him like a kid. It was… “endearing” wasn’t a word that Bruce ever wanted to use for Superman, but god damn it, it fit.

There were many other, smaller factors that contributed to the erosion of Bruce’s distrust, that on their own would have amounted to nothing but together were gradually wearing away at his resolve. It seemed that Superman was once again making an effort to be nice to Bruce. He didn’t coddle Bruce or pretend to agree with him when he didn’t, but he was a lot more patient with Bruce’s personality quirks and he gave Bruce’s opinions respectful consideration before disagreeing with them. And when he made jabs about Bruce’s darkness and cynicism, they came across more as friendly banter than actual criticism.

It was a marked difference from the enmity that used to exist between them. And it was unexpected. Bruce thought Superman had finally given up on trying to be nice to him.

He should have found it irritating. Bruce didn’t want Superman to be nice to him. He didn’t want anyone to be nice to him. He’d added exactly one person to the short list of people he cared about by adopting Dick. He wasn’t interested in expanding that list.

Except… it wasn’t terrible to have someone fighting by his side. Bruce had kind of gotten used to having Dick around. In some ways, Superman was an even better partner than Dick. Dick was still young and inexperienced, and Bruce didn’t mind training and looking out for him – he wouldn’t trade the time they spent together for anything in the world – but it was refreshing to fight alongside someone as capable and powerful as Superman. It unlocked a whole host of new strategies that Bruce could employ in the fight against evil.

It also wasn’t terrible when Superman started defending Bruce against their fellow superheroes when they made comments about his leadership or fighting style. Previously, Wonder Woman was the only person who had ever stood up for Bruce in those situations. And Bruce was no stranger to being outnumbered, but it got tiring to listen to the same complaints over and over again from his colleagues.

Faced with someone who would no longer be goaded into petty arguments, who treated him like a person instead of a machine, and who had saved his life more times than he could count, Bruce found himself becoming more agreeable around Superman. He didn’t start as many of those petty arguments. He acted more like a person than a machine. And… well, nothing changed in regards to how often Bruce saved Superman’s life. He did that all the time back when they still hated each other, because Bruce could hate someone easily, but wanting them dead was a line too far even for him.

Bruce still disagreed with Superman on most things, but rather than hold those differences against Superman, Bruce would debate him on matters he thought were especially important – more often than not they were able to find some sort of middle ground or compromise – and agree to disagree on more trivial things. And Bruce still couldn’t fathom how Superman could remain so unwaveringly optimistic about everything, but it grated on him less than it used to. After spending so much time with Dick, he was used to having an optimist around, and he could appreciate that it provided a sort of balance to his own admittedly cynical approach.

None of these changes were conscious decisions on Bruce’s part. The simple fact was, it was hard to maintain his previous level of hostility toward someone who refused to take the bait. It was much the same way Wonder Woman had gotten on Bruce’s good side; she never caused any problems with him, and so he never caused any problems with her. Over time, this had evolved into a mutual respect. It had just taken Batman and Superman longer to get to that point, because they were stubborn and their differences were greater than Batman and Wonder Woman’s were.

After the dynamic between Bruce and Superman started noticeably changing, the chatter surrounding them shifted to match. Wonder Woman used to roll her eyes at Superman and Batman’s nonstop bickering; now she commended them on their effective teamwork. The Flash and Green Lantern used to trade jokes about how Superman and Batman were like oil and water; now they referred to them as “work spouses” (but only when they thought Bruce couldn’t hear them, after the way he reacted the first time they used the phrase around him).

And, like a nail in the coffin of Bruce’s skepticism, Bruce’s friendlier relationship with Superman paid off in spades when the Earth came under threat and Batman, Superman, and their colleagues joined up to form the Justice League. Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman became the de facto leaders of the new organization, and the fact that they all now got along with each other was crucial to their success (not that either of them had ever struggled to get along with Wonder Woman).

Perhaps it was mere practicality that forced Bruce to accept that he and Superman were, not quite friends, but something closer to friends than they used to be. Or perhaps it was the same thing that had led to him adopting Dick: loneliness.

Having Dick around had alleviated Bruce’s loneliness. Wayne Manor was a less empty, less gloomy place. But Bruce’s personal life still hadn’t recovered from the fact that he now had a child to raise. He’d taken a handful of attractive strangers back to the penthouse he kept in Gotham for the one-night stands he didn’t want to bring home to the Manor in recent months, but these dalliances were fewer and farther between than they’d once been.

Bruce hadn’t expected this to affect him, but strangely it did. His motivations for sleeping around had always been to maintain his public image, or so he’d thought, but he was starting to suspect that these casual, almost meaningless interactions had also been an attempt to fill a void that he hadn’t been willing to admit existed. And it wasn’t the same void that adopting Dick had filled. Dick was family to Bruce now, but family wasn’t the only thing in his life that Bruce was missing.

When Bruce realized this, he almost reached out to Selina. Their breakup hadn’t been nearly as clean as it probably should have been; they’d slept together a few times since calling it off. But Bruce knew better than to try to rekindle that flame. Even if Selina did take him back, their relationship would end the same way it had the first time.

In his least rational moments, Bruce thought about Clark Kent, the handsome reporter. They’d only interacted twice, but they’d gotten along well enough. Clark hadn’t been fazed by Bruce’s celebrity, and he hadn’t tried to use Bruce’s obvious interest in him to his own benefit. He was intelligent and funny and he seemed like a nice guy. Bruce kind of wished he had Clark’s number, that he didn’t have to just wait around and hope they’d run into each other again. (He could look Clark up and contact him, but there was a good chance Clark, like any normal person, would find that creepy.) Not that Bruce thought there was much potential for a long-term relationship between the two of them, but it might have been a pleasant, temporary distraction.

In the absence of Clark or anyone else who Bruce might have gone to for company, Bruce was especially vulnerable to Superman’s charm. And in his paranoid moments – because he still had plenty of those – he wondered, what could have possibly changed that made Superman decide to start treating him so differently?

Chapter Text

Clark

It had been a while since Clark had been in Gotham. As Superman, he stayed out of the city unless Batman invited him, and as Clark Kent, he hadn’t been asked to cover any events in Gotham since the last Wayne Foundation fundraiser.

This time, he was in Gotham for a completely different reason.

Lois hadn’t been in the office that day. That, in itself, wasn’t unusual; Clark assumed she was off chasing a story and planned to ask her about it later that evening. It was Wednesday, trivia night at the bar down the street from the Daily Planet office, and it was tradition for Lois, Clark, and their coworkers to go there after work and destroy all the other trivia teams with their collective knowledge.

Only Lois didn’t show up at trivia either. Clark texted her before it began to ask her if something was wrong. No answer. He called her. No answer.

He called her several more times.

“Does anyone know what story Lois has been working on?” Clark asked around the table. His concern was spreading; Jimmy and Cat had both tried to call Lois from their phones, to no avail. None of them were paying attention to the trivia questions. They were going to ruin their winning streak, but right now, that was the farthest thing from their minds.

“Last week she asked to see the photos I took at those two Wayne Foundation fundraisers you and I attended,” Jimmy said. “It didn’t seem like she found what she was looking for. She did ask me if the mayor was in attendance at either one, and I told her he wasn’t.”

“Now that you mention it,” Cat added, “About a month ago she picked my brain about everyone I know in Gotham. Who’s who and all that. She asked me some questions about their mayor too. Politics isn’t really my area; I told her that.”

Clark’s stomach sank. He knew exactly where Lois was. “I’ve gotta go,” he told his coworkers, and he left them standing there in the bar, anxious and confused.

He flew to Gotham, already formulating the excuses he would give Batman if the vigilante questioned what he was doing there. Sorry, Batman, I had to come rescue a friend of mine because apparently everyone I know has the self-preservation instincts of a goldfish. That should work.

It was a good thing Clark’s super senses were so attuned to the sound of Lois’ voice; it made it easier to find her. When he did, she was trying to negotiate her way out of a situation where two angry, armed men were intimidating her in an alley next to a nightclub. They looked like they very much wanted to murder her and dump her body in a nearby dumpster.

Clark wished he could say it was the first time he’d found Lois in a situation like that.

As soon as one of the men made a move to reach for his sidearm, Clark leapt into action, sweeping Lois off her feet and flying her away from there. She was not happy about it.

“Put me down,” she insisted, struggling out of Clark’s arms and onto the roof of a building far away from the armed criminals. She tucked her shirt back into her slacks and straightened out her hair. “What were you thinking?” she demanded.

Clark had known this would happen. Lois appreciated being rescued from danger about as much as Batman did when she was trying to do her job. That didn’t mean Clark wasn’t still going to rescue them, though. “I was thinking my best friend was about to get murdered and I didn’t want that to happen,” he said.

“I wasn’t about to get murdered. I had it completely under control.”

“Really? That’s what ‘under control’ looks like to you?”

Lois stared Clark down for a long moment with her arms crossed over her chest. “Fine,” she finally relented. “I’ll admit things got a little dicey. But it was nothing I couldn’t handle. And I was getting valuable information!”

Of course that was what she cared about. “Your job is important, Lois, but not more important than your life.”

“The truth is important. Those people knew something about the mayor; I know they did. If I could just get them to admit it, even off the record, it would validate all the work I’ve put into this investigation.”

“Is that what this is about?” Clark asked, exasperated. Lois had been trying to substantiate the rumors that the Mayor of Gotham had ties to major criminal organizations ever since Clark had found out about the human trafficking ring operating out of Gotham and told Batman about it. Several key suspects had died in jail under mysterious circumstances, and Lois was convinced the corruption went all the way to the top. She had compelling circumstantial evidence, but it wasn’t enough for the Daily Planet to print the story. “I thought we talked about this. Everyone knows Gotham politicians are corrupt, but no one has ever been able to prove it. If they could, those politicians would be in prison by now, or at least out of office.”

“I can prove it,” Lois insisted. “I’m close.”

“You’re close to getting yourself murdered in an alley. That’s what happens to people in this town when they mess with someone in a position of power.”

Lois huffed. “It wouldn’t be such a dangerous investigation if you hadn’t gone and told Batman as soon as you realized something was going on. Now everyone involved is either dead, in jail, or on high alert. And the ones in jail aren’t talking.”

“At least they’re in jail, where they can’t hurt anyone,” Clark argued. “I have a job to do too, Lois. I can’t decide not to do it just because you have a hunch.”

“When has one of my hunches not turned out to be correct?” she asked. Clark didn’t answer, because she kind of had a point. “If you’re not going to help me, then you’re just going to have to stay out of my way, because I’m not stopping until that man is out of office and in a prison cell. That’s only going to take longer if I have to worry about Superman swooping in to save the day every time I get close to a potentially dangerous source.”

Lois sighed, and some of the harshness in her tone dissipated. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this,” she said. “You’ve never been this worried about me chasing a story before.”

“This is Gotham we’re talking about. Things work differently here.”

“I think you’ve let Batman get to your head.”

As if he’d been summoned, a dark figure emerged from the shadows, trailed by a smaller, brightly colored figure. How had Clark not sensed their presence? He must have been too preoccupied by his and Lois’ argument.

“Am I interrupting something?” Batman asked, not sounding as though he particularly cared whether or not he was.

“Yes, actually,” Lois said.

“Hi, Superman,” Robin said, giving Clark a friendly wave from behind Batman.

“Hi, Robin. Nice to see you again,” Clark said with a smile before turning to Batman. “I’m not trying to interfere in your city. I just came here for her.”

Batman regarded Lois somewhat skeptically. “And you are—?”

“Lois Lane.” Lois kept her arms crossed in front of her and glared Batman down, unintimidated and unamused.

“A friend of yours?” Batman asked Clark.

“Yes,” Clark explained. “She’s investigating claims that the Mayor of Gotham is somehow connected to those human traffickers you caught last year.”

Batman nodded. “I’m familiar with the allegations.” He looked at Lois again, seeming to reevaluate her based on this new information. “Are you a detective?” he asked.

“An investigative reporter,” Lois said. “I work for the Daily Planet.”

This seemed to satisfy Batman. He said to Clark, “I didn’t come here to tell you off for being in Gotham. It’s actually convenient that I found you. There’s been an… interesting development I think I’ll need your help with.”

Clark’s eyebrows shot up. Batman had never outright asked for his help, with anything. Ever. “You— what?”

“We’ll need to talk privately,” Batman said.

Lois looked between the two of them. She was still pissed at Clark, but she understood that whatever Batman needed to talk to him about was probably more important for the time being. “I’ll wait,” she said.

Batman led Superman across the roof. Robin, seemingly unsure as to whether he was invited to take part in this private conversation, stayed behind with Lois.

Once they were out of earshot, Batman nodded toward Lois and asked, in a low voice, “Is she—?” He left the sentence hanging in the air, like Clark would automatically know what he meant.

He didn’t. “What?”

“Are the two of you together?”

“No.”

“Just friends.”

“Exactly.”

“But you trust her.”

What was with all the questions? “Of course I trust her. She’s my friend.”

“I’m being serious,” Batman said. “If I had evidence to prove her allegations against the mayor, could I trust her with that information?”

“You have evidence of that? Why haven’t you given it to the police?”

“I have. It isn’t permissible in court. My evidence collection methods aren’t always by the book.” That was probably an understatement, but Clark didn’t say anything. He let Batman continue. “But the election’s coming up and I’ve been trying to find another way to get him out of office. A story in the Daily Planet about his ties to criminal organizations might do the trick.”

Clark nodded, understanding. “Lois could do that. She’s the best investigative reporter they have.”

After a brief pause while he seemed to debate whether or not he trusted Clark’s judgment, Batman said, “Alright. Tell her the evidence will be in her desk tomorrow morning.”

“In her desk? At work?” Clark asked. He had a mental image of Batman sneaking around the Daily Planet office in the middle of the night. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that.

“It would be safer to drop it off in her place of residence, assuming she lives alone – less chance of anyone else getting to it before she does – but I didn’t think you would appreciate me breaking into your girlfriend’s apartment.”

“She’s not my girlfriend,” Clark repeated. “And you’re right. Absolutely do not do that. Her desk at work will be fine.”

Bruce

“Is that what you wanted to talk to me about?” Superman asked after Bruce finished asking him about Lois Lane and whether he could trust her with his evidence about the mayor. The fact that she worked for the Daily Planet certainly helped her case. After meeting Clark (and Jimmy), Bruce was slightly more inclined to trust that particular publication than he otherwise might have been.

“No,” Bruce said. When he’d spotted Superman on a rooftop in Gotham with a woman Bruce had never seen before, for the first time, Bruce’s gut reaction wasn’t to kick Superman out of his city. He’d actually been meaning to find Superman in Metropolis so he could tell him about the somewhat disturbing discovery Bruce had recently made. “The Joker escaped from Arkham Asylum again,” Bruce began.

“What does that have to do with me?” Superman replied.

Bruce bit back his annoyance. If Superman would just let him explain before he started asking questions— “It didn’t happen the usual way. His escapes are always chaotic, to say the least. They’re loud and obvious, designed to make a statement. That’s what he does. That’s usually how he ends up getting caught. But this one was carefully orchestrated. None of the guards even noticed he was gone until the morning. And he didn’t take Harley with him.”

“That’s unusual?”

“Not in itself, no.” The Joker and Harley were an on-again, off-again, mostly one-sided disaster of a relationship. Not that it was any of Bruce’s business. The only reason he cared was, when the Joker left Harley behind, Harley held a grudge. Bruce continued, “But it meant I could get Harley to give up some information about who helped him escape. She’s pretty sure the Joker is working with Lex Luthor on something.”

“And you believe her?” Superman sounded doubtful. He didn’t trust criminals. Which was a fine enough stance to take, but in the real world – and especially in Gotham – things were often more nuanced than that.

“She’s generally pretty reliable when she’s pissed at the Joker.”

Superman considered this information. “I have noticed Luthor’s been laying low lately,” he said.

“See what you can find out about his plans. I’ll do some more work on my end, and we’ll reconvene.”

“Sounds good.”

The pair of them rejoined Dick and Lois on the other side of the roof. “Let’s go, Robin,” Bruce said. Dick followed obediently, waving goodbye to Superman.

“See ya, Superman,” he said.

“Take care of yourself,” Superman said fondly. Bruce tried not to find it sweet. He mostly succeeded.

Back in the Batmobile, Dick turned to Bruce and asked him, “Are you and Superman friends now?”

“Not quite,” Bruce said.

“But more than you used to be.”

“You could say that.”

Dick was getting a lot better at reading Bruce. Bruce wasn’t sure what to do about it. On the one hand, he wanted Dick to be the best detective he could be. On the other hand, sometimes Dick needed to mind his own business. Especially when it came to Bruce’s personal relationships.

“I don’t know why you used to not like him,” Dick said. “He’s so friendly.”

Bruce didn’t want to get into the details, so he just said, “It’s hard to trust someone with that much power.”

“Why? Just because he could use it for evil?”

“It’s enough of a risk that I have to prepare for it,” Bruce explained. “But I don’t think it’s likely.”

A few seconds of silence passed between them. Dick changed the subject. “That woman from the Daily Planet said she’s friends with Superman. I didn’t really think about Superman having friends who are normal people.” He paused. “You don’t.”

Ouch. “Superman is a lot friendlier than I am,” Bruce said in a tone that communicated, in no uncertain terms, that their conversation was over.

Taking his cues from Bruce, Dick didn’t bring Bruce’s not-quite-friendship with Superman up again, but Bruce didn’t stop thinking about it.

He didn’t have much experience with friendship. He’d had friends as a child, his parents’ friends’ children and his classmates at school, but those relationships had mostly died with Bruce’s parents. That was when he’d started pushing people away. And he became extremely good at it. He managed to graduate high school, college, and graduate school years early, in part due to his genius but in part due to the fact that he didn’t have a social life to distract him. He’d inherited his father’s position as CEO of Wayne Enterprises, and he feigned friendships with his fellow executives or anyone else he needed to impress for business or charity reasons, and he slept around a lot to keep up his image, but he didn’t form any genuine relationships.

The only people Bruce had were Alfred and Dick, who were family to him, not friends. And Selina, but their relationship was still complicated. Clark was a sort of acquaintance, at most.

Bruce didn’t know what he would consider Superman. Or any of his other superhero colleagues. The question needled at him, and finally he found himself asking Wonder Woman about it one day when they were both on the Watchtower.

“Would you consider us friends?” He tried to pose the question like he wasn’t particularly invested in her answer.

Wonder Woman looked up at Bruce, unfazed by the non sequitur and likely seeing right through Bruce’s feigned indifference. “I consider you a friend, yes. Why do you ask?”

“You don’t even know my name. You don’t know anything about me,” Bruce pointed out. “You don’t think it’s strange to know nothing about someone you consider a friend?”

“I think a lot of things about your world are strange,” Wonder Woman replied. “The same way, I’m sure, you would think a lot of things about Themyscira are strange. By this point, strangeness no longer affects me. Besides, I know enough about you. I know you’re a formidable warrior, a practical leader, and a loyal ally. I’ve fought alongside you. Nothing you tell me about who you are or what you do when you aren’t Batman could possibly matter more than any of that.”

In hindsight, asking someone like Wonder Woman, who didn’t have anything approaching an ordinary outlook on life, probably wasn’t the best metric of friendship Bruce could have used. But he couldn’t ask Superman. Whatever their relationship was, it was still too fresh and fragile to hold up to interrogation.

“Do you consider Superman a friend?” Bruce asked.

“I do. The same argument holds true for him.” Wonder Woman met Bruce’s gaze warmly, the hint of a smile teasing at her features. “Do you consider me a friend?”

If friendship, to Wonder Woman, meant Bruce admired her as a warrior and leader and considered her a worthwhile ally, then the answer was clear. “I guess I do.”

“And Superman?”

Bruce didn’t answer.

This conversation with Wonder Woman gave Bruce even more to think about. By Wonder Woman’s standards, he and Superman were friends. They’d fought alongside each other. They trusted each other’s skills and judgment in the heat of battle. Even when he still hadn’t fully trusted Superman not to somehow turn and use his powers for evil, Bruce had repeatedly trusted the man with his life, although he hadn’t thought about it in those terms at the time.

Now, Bruce trusted Superman with his life almost without thinking. It was an instinct that came as easily to him as breathing.

There hadn’t been any sign of the Joker in Gotham, and according to Superman, there wasn’t any sign of him in Metropolis either. Wherever he was, he was definitely planning something. Biding his time. And apparently he had Luthor helping him.

The Joker and Lex Luthor seemed like a deadly combination, in that they were equally likely to end up killing each other as they were to succeed in killing Batman and Superman. Bruce was hoping for the former option, but he wasn’t counting on it. He’d never been that lucky.

At least this meant Bruce still had time before he and Superman had to work together to put a stop to the Joker and Luthor’s joint endeavor. Time to do what, Bruce wasn’t exactly sure. To figure out exactly what they were. To figure out what he wanted them to be. He’d never thought about wanting anything from Superman other than to never have to see or work with him again, but then things had changed. Now they were in limbo, in the space between hating each other, and then putting up with each other, and then actually making an effort with each other, and then… whatever was next.

Bruce was familiar with the concept of opposites attracting, but had always dismissed it as something people said to justify their relationships with people they were wildly incompatible with. But the push-and-pull of Bruce’s relationship with Superman was starting to make him reconsider this assumption.

Bruce didn’t know why his feelings for Superman couldn’t be as simple and straightforward as his feelings for the rest of his superhero colleagues. Those relationships were blissfully uncomplicated. Bruce liked and respected Wonder Woman, tolerated the Flash, strongly disliked certain Green Lanterns and felt more positively toward others. Mostly his feelings toward other superheroes were some mixture of respect and measured skepticism; anyone who was too powerful was a potential threat, the same as Superman, and he collected information on each of his colleague’s weaknesses because it was always better to be prepared.

Perhaps the difference was that none of these people challenged Bruce the way Superman did. And Bruce had always liked a challenge.

Chapter Text

Clark

Something was definitely different about Batman. Clark had noticed a shift in his behavior, beginning not long after Clark’s attitude toward Batman had begun to change, but running into Batman in Gotham that night with Lois had really driven it home.

Batman hadn’t kicked Clark out of Gotham. He hadn’t even been upset that Clark was there. And then he’d asked for Clark’s help. Batman had come to Clark for assistance before, but only as a last resort, and he’d never been so straightforward about it. He was too stubborn, and too proud. But apparently not anymore.

Even though he didn’t know what had brought it on, any change in Batman’s behavior was a welcome one as far as Clark was concerned. It made working with him a whole lot easier. Clark no longer dreaded their team-ups; he actually found himself, bizarrely, looking forward to them. Being a superhero was a lonely gig most of the time, and having someone like Batman by his side was a comforting feeling, now that the vigilante was a little bit more pleasant to be around.

Their partnership wasn’t perfect, but it had improved in leaps and bounds in such a comparatively short period of time. Clark, ever the optimist, held onto a glimmer of hope that maybe having Batman as his soulmate wasn’t the life sentence it had once felt like. There still wasn’t anything approaching romantic chemistry between them, as far as Clark could tell, but maybe there would be. One day. Clark had to continue to trust the process.

In the meantime, he devoted all his energy outside of work toward figuring out what Lex Luthor and the Joker were up to. Trusting that Batman was trying to track down the Joker in Gotham, Clark focused on Luthor and Metropolis.

He knew how to look for signs that Luthor was up to something. Before one of his big schemes, Luthor typically made a series of suspicious purchases. They were often difficult to trace, made through a series of shell corporations, but Clark was an investigative journalist, and he knew how to interpret shady financial dealings. Before long, something showed up on his radar that he knew he had to look into.

Within days, Clark was in Gotham, tracking Batman and Robin down to share his discovery. He found them handing Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn over to the police. Apparently Harley had gotten sick of waiting around in Arkham for the Joker to break her out. Clark waited until Batman and Robin had wrapped things up with Commissioner Gordon before approaching them.

“I think I found them,” he said once the three of them were alone.

“Are you talking about Lex Luthor and the Joker?” Robin asked, excited to be included.

Batman spoke up before Clark could answer: “Where are they?”

Clark explained, “I try to keep an eye on corporate real estate purchases in Metropolis and the surrounding areas, so I noticed when a company I’d never heard of bought up a row of warehouses along the bay. I traced the purchase back to LexCorp. When I flew over to check it out, all the warehouses were boarded up and empty, except for one. Which could have also been empty, but I had no way of knowing because the entire building was lined with lead.”

“Sounds like a health hazard,” Batman deadpanned.

Clark blinked. Was that a joke? Did Batman just make a joke?

Before Clark could finish processing what had just happened, Batman continued, “Did you investigate?”

“I wanted to tell you about it first,” Clark said, shaking off his shock. “If the Joker isn’t hiding out there, then Luthor is using it to hide something else. Either way, it has to be related to their scheme. There’s no way it’s a coincidence.”

“Of course not,” Batman agreed. “Do you want me to come with you to check it out?”

“If I do run into the Joker, I’ll want you to be there.” This was partly because Clark didn’t want to get in trouble with Batman for fighting the Joker without him, but it was also because Clark didn’t know what to expect when it came to the Joker, and because he knew that he and Batman would be more effective together in this fight than alone.

“We can go tomorrow night,” Batman said.

“Can I come?” Robin asked.

Clark looked to Batman. His answer would be “hell no” – it would be irresponsible as fuck to bring a kid into a fight with Lex Luthor and the Joker, even if that kid was a crimefighting prodigy – but he wasn’t in charge here.

“Absolutely not,” Batman said, and Clark breathed a sigh of relief.

Robin, on the other hand, was not pleased with this answer. “I’ve helped you fight the Joker before,” he argued petulantly, sounding even more like a kid than usual, which wasn’t helping him make his case.

“This isn’t just the Joker,” Batman pointed out. “This is the Joker and Lex Luthor. They’ve never teamed up before. We don’t know what to expect. I don’t want to bring you into that type of situation.”

“But what if I could help?”

Clark had seen people – fellow superheroes – try to argue with Batman many times before, but he’d never seen Batman keep his cool like this. He really was an entirely different person around Robin. “The best way for you to help is by staying home and letting Superman and I take care of it,” Batman said, not raising his voice.

“Batman’s right,” Clark chimed in, thinking maybe he could help by voicing his agreement. Robin seemed to like and respect him; maybe he would also listen to him. “Lex Luthor is an incredibly dangerous man and you don’t have any experience fighting him. If something happened to you, I would never forgive myself.”

Clark turned to Batman again to get some sense of whether he’d said the right thing, and was taken aback by the look he saw on Batman’s face, or as much of it as was visible. Batman looked… grateful.

That was another first.

Sensing that he wasn’t going to win this argument, Robin crossed his arms over his chest and scowled. “Fine.” It was kind of adorable, although Clark would never say so to his face.

Clark and Batman made plans as to when and where they would meet in order to investigate the warehouse, and then they went their separate ways, Batman taking Robin back to the Batmobile and Clark flying off toward Metropolis.

A little less than twenty-four hours later, Batman and Superman were standing on the roof of a building that overlooked the row of warehouses Luthor had purchased.

“Ready?” Clark asked, not feeling super ready himself. But the longer they waited, the more time the Joker and Luthor had to prepare for their arrival. Batman and Superman were already at a disadvantage; they needed to move now to at least, hopefully, take advantage of some element of surprise.

“I’d feel better if we had any sense of what’s waiting for us in there,” Batman said, echoing Clark’s concerns. “But otherwise, yes.”

“Robin was pretty upset about being left out of this one,” Clark observed. Even though he was mostly focused on the mission, he also kind of wanted to test how much he could get Batman to open up. It seemed like Robin was the key to getting him to do that.

“I’d rather have him upset than dead,” Batman said frankly.

“Oh, of course. I completely agree. I just mention it because it seems like he didn’t used to get upset about that sort of thing. Is that a recent development?”

Batman looked at Clark, like he knew what his game was and was trying to decide whether he was going to play along. “He’s reaching the age when you start to feel invulnerable,” he admitted. “It concerns me. That mindset is especially dangerous in our line of work.”

Clark knew it was risky, but he decided to attempt a joke of his own: “Some people never grow out of that phase, you know.”

He braced himself for an angry outburst, but Batman just looked at him. “Are you talking about me or are you talking about yourself?” he quipped back.

Clark laughed. And, if he wasn’t mistaken, he thought he caught the barest flash of a smile on Batman’s face, but it was gone before Clark could confirm it. “I guess it’s something we have in common.”

The jovial mood didn’t last; Batman shifted back into Business Mode in an instant, and Clark couldn’t blame him. They were about to do something potentially very dangerous. They should be taking it seriously. “No more stalling,” Batman said. “We need to get this done.”

“What’s our move?” Clark asked, reentering Business Mode himself.

“You know this is a trap, right?” Batman said.

A lead-lined warehouse right on the harbor, where Superman was certain to find it? “Obviously.”

“Luthor will be expecting you to barge in through the ceiling, and the Joker will expect me to try to sneak inside. I say we go with an unexpected approach.”

“What would that be?”

Another flash of a smile, this one more dangerous than the one before. “Walk in through the front door.”

Bruce

It was clear when Batman and Superman entered the warehouse that the Joker and Lex Luthor hadn’t been expecting them. It was exactly the element of surprise Bruce had been banking on.

What he hadn’t been banking on was how Luthor would react to being taken by surprise. The Joker never liked having his plans interrupted before they could come to fruition, but he could roll with the punches if it happened. Luthor, on the other hand, was irate. Bruce knew the billionaire had serious anger management problems (and this coming from another billionaire with anger management problems), but this was a level he’d never seen before.

The Joker and Luthor didn’t put up much of a fight before falling back on their emergency escape plan, promising to come back stronger than before. Bruce was just about to edit his mental calculus from “Joker + Luthor = extremely dangerous” to “Joker + Luthor = not that much of a threat, it turns out” when Luthor got a shot off on his way out.

Superman leapt in front of Bruce, taking the bullet for him.

It wasn’t an ordinary bullet.

Bruce watched, seemingly in slow motion, as Superman realized the bullet hadn’t deflected off his skin and fell to his knees. Dread filled Bruce from the inside out, but he reacted as he would in any life-or-death scenario. He hoisted Superman over his shoulders and got him out of the building, which Luthor had (of course) rigged to self-destruct.

As soon as they were out of the danger zone, Bruce sat Superman down – he barely had enough strength left to prop himself up on his elbows – and inspected the wound in his thigh.

The bullet had ripped right through Superman’s impenetrable suit and embedded in his flesh, not too far from the surface. It had broken apart into pieces, each of them glowing a menacing green.

“How does it look?” Superman asked. His face was pale and he was breathing heavily. It was the most vulnerable Bruce had ever seen him, and he didn’t like it one bit. As skeptical as he’d once been about Superman, Bruce found he much preferred an all-powerful Superman to this version of him, stripped of his powers and slowly bleeding out onto the pavement.

“Not good,” Bruce said honestly. “Looks like Luthor designed the bullet to break apart inside your body. You’re lucky it didn’t hit any vital organs.” He didn’t say anything about how Superman should have just let him take the bullet. The Kryptonite mixed into its composition had sabotaged its effectiveness, and it hadn’t struck Superman with as much force as a normal bullet would strike an ordinary human. Bruce’s body armor might have been able to deflect it, but embedded like this in Superman, it would slowly kill him unless Bruce could get all the pieces out.

Bruce would tell Superman all of this later, but he wasn’t going to lecture a dying man. He wasn’t that heartless. (Besides, he had to hold onto the belief that there would be a “later.”)

“I don’t feel lucky,” Superman said. Bruce looked back up at his face before quickly looking away. He couldn’t see Superman like this, and he didn’t want Superman to see how worried he was. He had to maintain his composure.

“We’ll still need to get all the pieces out,” he said, years of practice keeping his voice calm and professional.

“Can you do that?”

“It’s exactly the opposite of how you’re typically supposed to treat ballistic injuries,” Bruce said.  “But yes, I can.” Normally only a surgeon would remove a bullet, and only if they determined the risk of damaging the surrounding tissue was low enough. Bruce was not a surgeon, but he was the only one Superman had right now. He took out the first aid supplies he kept in his utility belt. He always kept everything he would need on him to treat a bullet wound, due to… his own personal history. (And practicality, of course. He had to be prepared for anything.)

“You’ll need to hold still,” he warned. “This is probably going to hurt.”

Superman remained conscious long enough for Bruce to remove most of the Kryptonite from his leg, clenching his teeth and trying not to make a sound, but as Bruce was digging out the deepest piece, he heard Superman’s head hit the ground with a thunk.

He didn’t look up from his work. He was running out of time.

Once he got the last piece out, Bruce started cleaning the wound so he could bandage it, but it didn’t turn out to be necessary. With the Kryptonite safely removed and placed into a lead-lined pocket of Bruce’s utility belt, the wound was already beginning to close.

Bruce finally let himself look at Superman’s face again. He saw when Superman blinked his eyes open, and waited for them to focus on him so he knew Superman was fully conscious again. “Good,” he said, keeping most of the immeasurable relief out of his voice. “You’re alive. It’s out. You’re already healing.”

Superman brought himself back onto his elbows, looking down at his leg, which already looked as though it had never been injured before. The color was returning to his face, and his voice, when he spoke, was much steadier. “You saved my life.”

“It’s not the first time,” Bruce said dismissively, although they both knew none of the other times had been anywhere near as close as this one.

Superman sat up fully as Bruce packed away his first aid supplies. “You’ll need to teach me how to do that,” he said. “If I get shot with another one of those when you’re not around, I’m done for.”

Bruce had been thinking the exact same thing. It made him feel sick to his stomach. “It shouldn’t be too difficult. Because the bullet is designed to break apart upon contact with your body, it doesn’t penetrate too deeply. The only trick will be staying conscious long enough to get it out.”

“Do you think I’ll be able to do that in a life-or-death scenario?” Superman asked.

Bruce met Superman’s gaze and saw his own worries reflected back at him. The idea of Superman dying on one of his solo missions made Bruce feel almost as awful as the idea of losing Robin or Alfred, and that shook him to his core. Somehow he’d gotten to the point where he cared about Superman almost as much as his own family, and there was nothing he could do about it but add Superman to the list of people he needed to keep alive at all costs.

And if that meant giving away some of his secrets… “I have Kryptonite we could practice with.”

Superman looked a little offended. “You have Kryptonite?”

“Don’t act surprised,” Bruce said gruffly, and he looked away again, because the idea that Superman thought Bruce didn’t trust him felt wrong, somehow, even though Bruce hadn’t trusted him for most of their relationship.

Bruce helped Superman up, just in case, although it seemed like Superman had regained his full strength. “Back to square one,” Superman said. When Bruce looked at him for clarification, he explained, “We’re going to have to fight them again, probably soon.”

“Let’s try to be more prepared next time,” Bruce said. Sensing their team-up was over (for now), he turned to head back to where he’d parked the Batmobile, but Superman stopped him.

“Batman.” When Bruce turned, Superman said, so sincerely it was like a punch to the gut, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. You would have done the same for me.”

Back in Gotham, Dick was waiting impatiently for Bruce, pacing back and forth across the Batcave. When Bruce got out of the Batmobile, covered in Superman’s blood, Dick ran up to him. “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?” The fear in his voice was the same fear Bruce had felt upon seeing Superman hurt. Bruce took off the cowl, knowing Dick would feel more reassured if he could see his face.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Superman got shot with a Kryptonite bullet, but we got it out, and he’s fine now too.”

“Did you catch the Joker and Lex Luthor?”

“Not this time,” Bruce said regretfully. “But the most important thing is that we both got out in one piece.”

Dick frowned, unable to tear his eyes away from the blood. “I’m pretty sure I could have helped,” he said in a small voice.

God, the idea of Dick being there when Superman got shot was a terrible image. If Bruce wasn’t already going to have nightmares, he was now. “It was too dangerous. I don’t say that lightly. I need you to trust my judgment.”

Dick didn’t answer right away, so Bruce leaned down and forced eye contact. “Dick?”

“I trust you,” Dick said.

Chapter Text

Clark

Clark went home feeling shaken. He’d almost died. Sure, he’d almost died before, but this time had been way too close for comfort. When he’d lost consciousness, a part of him hadn’t believed he would wake up again. Batman’s quick thinking and cool head were all that had saved him.

In the shower, he inspected the area where the bullet had entered his flesh. There wasn’t any sign that it had been there. Clark hadn’t expected there to be; his body healed quickly from even Kryptonite-induced injuries. It had stitched itself back up again before he and Batman had said their goodbyes.

Which meant there was no chance of Batman seeing the injury on himself.

Clark should have felt relieved about that. And he did, sort of. But a part of him was also starting to feel guilty about carrying this secret from Batman. Not that they didn’t have plenty of secrets between them, but secret identities were an accepted part of the whole superhero gig. Clark doubted it would matter to Batman who Superman was. But it would matter that Superman was his soulmate.

Still, Clark couldn’t bring himself to reveal the truth. He and Batman were just starting to get along. Everything between them was still so fragile, and Clark was hyper-aware that one false move could set them back to where they’d begun.

Even if Batman took the news of Clark being his soulmate well – even if he didn’t refuse to have anything to do with Clark afterward – it wasn’t like they were going to start dating. Clark wasn’t interested in Batman like that, and he was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. And again, they had their secret identities to contend with. They could hardly start a romantic relationship without first revealing who they were.

Clark set his guilt aside for the time being. He would have to tell Batman eventually – he couldn’t keep this secret forever – but not yet.

In the meantime, Batman and Clark arranged to meet on the Watchtower to work on preparing Clark in case Luthor managed to hit him with another Kryptonite bullet. Batman set them up in one of the training rooms, and he had all his first aid and emergency care supplies at the ready by the time Clark arrived.

The last thing he took out of his utility belt were a few chunks of Kryptonite, ranging from the size of Clark’s thumbnail to the size of his fist. It was enough that Clark could feel the mineral’s effect on him from across the room, but not enough that he felt like he was in any danger. Clearly Batman had put a lot of thought into this.

“Is that all you have?” Clark asked.

“You think I should have brought more?” Batman replied.

“I didn’t ask if it was all you brought,” Clark clarified. “I asked if it’s all you have. Which it sounds like it isn’t.”

“Of course not,” Batman said.

Clark almost asked how much Kryptonite Batman did have, but he didn’t think he wanted to know the answer. Instead, he asked the question he’d been wanting to ask since learning Batman had Kryptonite in the first place: “Why do you have it?”

“Just in case I ever need to use it.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It’s a contingency plan,” Batman explained. “I have one for every hero, in case they turn evil.”

Clark shook his head. He knew Batman was paranoid, but he hadn’t realized the extent of it. “I can’t believe you think about that sort of thing.”

“Someone has to.” Batman said this all so matter-of-factly. It drove home how different he and Clark were. Clark had never thought about what he would do if any of his colleagues turned evil. Maybe that was a byproduct of Clark being as powerful as he was. He could take down just about any other superhero if it came down to it. Batman couldn’t. So instead, he came up with “contingency plans.”

“What if you turned evil?” Clark asked, curious what Batman’s plan was for himself.

“You could take me down easily.”

“Not if you have a ton of Kryptonite lying around,” Clark pointed out. “It would have to be Wonder Woman.”

Batman looked at Clark like he had never considered this. It wasn’t a look Clark had ever seen on him before. Usually Batman was prepared for everything. But he had apparently never considered that he might use the Kryptonite against Clark for any reason but to stop Clark if he turned evil. It was kind of comforting, actually.

“If you don’t have any other questions,” Batman said, changing the subject, “We should get started.”

“Okay,” Clark agreed. “What’s the plan?” He gestured toward the Kryptonite. “None of those look like the right shape to shoot me with.”

It was a lame attempt at a joke, and it fell flat. “I don’t shoot people,” Batman said. And of course, Clark knew this. Batman never used guns. He was against it. “And even if I did, it would be irresponsible to actually shoot you with a Kryptonite bullet, or a regular bullet while you’re under the influence of Kryptonite. Any bullet wound is a potentially fatal injury. That’s a risk I’m not willing to take. Instead, I’ve come up with a few ideas to help you build up the skill set you need in a controlled environment.”

Clark wasn’t willing to risk his life here either, so he was glad Batman had worked out all the details. They spent their first training session working on the basics, learning Clark’s tolerance around Kryptonite, what he could handle and what he couldn’t, how it affected him and for how long and under what circumstances. It was all stuff Clark already knew about himself – this wasn’t his first Kryptonite rodeo – but when Clark told Batman this, Batman shook his head and said, “Today’s session isn’t for you. I need to know how much you can handle before I try anything that could potentially hurt you.” That sounded reasonable enough, so Clark went along with it.

By the end of the session, Clark was tired in a way he wasn’t used to, down to his bones. Being around Kryptonite for so long, even in a controlled environment, was wearing on him. His whole body hurt, and when Batman put the Kryptonite away, he breathed a sigh of relief.

“What does it feel like?” Batman asked as he was cleaning up the medical supplies they hadn’t needed to use.

“What does what feel like?”

“Being around Kryptonite.”

Clark thought about his answer. He’d tried to describe it before, to his parents, to Lois, and he never felt like he had quite the right words. But he tried his best. “At first, I just feel… off,” he said. “Then I start to get weaker. I lose my superpowers. And then it starts to hurt. I don’t have a normal frame of reference for what pain feels like, so I can’t describe it in a way I think anyone else would understand. But it’s like my body is shutting down, and I can feel it happening. It’s a gradual process when I’m around a small amount of Kryptonite, but with a larger amount, or when I’m very close, it happens much faster. I go from feeling normal to barely able to move because everything takes so much effort and it all hurts.”

Batman had finished packing up all his supplies, and the way he looked at Clark, his features unreadable but strange made Clark wish he could see underneath the cowl. He’d never really felt like that before. Clark had gotten used to interpreting Batman’s emotions from only the parts of his face that were visible; he could distinguish between Batman’s various frowns, scowls, and grimaces and read them like tarot cards. But lately Clark seemed to be unlocking several new emotions that he’d never seen on Batman before. Was this one pity? Concern? Or something else, something Clark didn’t have a name for?

He wondered what the rest of Batman’s face looked like. And then he wondered why he’d never wondered that before.

“Is that all for today?” Clark asked, realizing abruptly that it had been a while since either one of them spoke.

“That’s all,” Batman said. Even his voice sounded strange. Something was hanging in the air between them, so palpable Clark felt like he could reach out and grab it. He just didn’t know whether he wanted to.

“Same time next week?” Clark offered.

“Sure.” The strange look on Batman’s face and tone in his voice were gone, just like that, and so was the tension between them. Almost as if Clark had imagined it.

In their subsequent training sessions, Batman helped Clark develop strategies for handling exposure to Kryptonite. It was a grueling, painful process, but Clark knew it would be worthwhile. And as he started to make noticeable progress, he started to understand Batman’s prepare-for-everything mentality. Clark hoped he would never end up in a situation where he would have to use some of the skills he was building with Batman, but if he ever did, he would be grateful he’d put in the work.

In between the actual training, there were more moments like the one that had passed between Batman and Clark at the end of their first session. More moments when Clark wondered about the man beneath the cowl. Moments when Clark felt like he’d somehow caught a glimpse of him.

There were endless layers to Batman, it seemed, and Clark had only begun to peel them away. Maybe, underneath all of them, the dark vigilante actually had a heart.

Clark kind of wanted to find out.

Bruce

There was no sign of the Joker anywhere. Bruce had searched Gotham high and low. He’d interrogated every criminal he knew with any connections to him. He’d even talked to Harley, who was back in Arkham again after her crime spree with Poison Ivy. She said she hadn’t seen the Joker, and given how pissed she still sounded at him – “I swear,” she said in her thick Brooklyn accent, “The Joker and I are never getting back together, even if he comes crawling back, even if he begs” – Bruce was inclined to believe her.

Meanwhile, Superman had been tracking Lex Luthor’s activities in Metropolis, and claimed he had yet to pick up on anything suspicious. He continued to train with Bruce, but outside of that, there wasn’t much else the pair of them could do to prepare.

There was a similar lack of forward momentum in Bruce’s personal life. He was still terminally lonely, outside of Alfred, Dick, and occasionally Selina. So when he ran into Clark at an event in Gotham – not a Wayne Foundation event this time, but a campaign fundraiser for one of the candidates who was running against Gotham’s corrupt mayor – he decided to take advantage of the opportunity.

“It’s been a long time,” Bruce said, approaching Clark from across the room. “I thought your boss might’ve finally let you move on to bigger and better things than covering fundraisers.”

“At least this time I’m writing a political story instead of a fluff piece for the Style section,” Clark said, once again looking genuinely pleased to see Bruce. “No kid this time?”

“Dick only attends the events I host at the Manor,” Bruce explained. “I’m not trying to ruin all his evening.”

Clark frowned at his watch. “You don’t have to get home early to put him to bed or something?”

“He’s fourteen, not two.”

Clark laughed. “I don’t know much about raising children,” he said. “I don’t have any, and I was an only child. I just wanted to make sure I’m not keeping you from anything.”

“You’re not.” Bruce turned on the charm, something he hadn’t had a reason to do in a while. “I’ve got all night. Why don’t you tell me what you’ve been up to lately?”

“At work,” Clark asked, “Or just generally?”

“Whatever you want to talk about.”

“I’m not working on anything very exciting right now,” Clark said. “But I’m sure you read the article one of my coworkers recently published. The exposé about the current mayor of Gotham.”

The article Lois Lane had written, using the information Batman had given her. Of course Bruce had read it. “I think everyone in the city has read it. Certainly everyone here tonight.”

“Now you know why I don’t get to do much investigative reporting. That’s what I have to compete with,” Clark said with a smile. He didn’t sound jealous or upset, and to drive that point home, he added, “I’m not even bitter about it. Lois is insanely talented and I’m lucky to know her. She puts everything she has into her work.”

Bruce couldn’t tell if the emotion in Clark’s voice was friendly admiration or something more substantial. Maybe he had some competition. “It seems to me like you’re dedicated to your work as well,” he said.

“I am,” Clark agreed. “But not to the degree that Lois is. She lives and breathes it.”

Again: was that friendship or romance in Clark’s eyes when he talked about his coworker? Bruce wished he knew. “I’ll admit that she does good work. I don’t think the mayor stands a chance of winning this reelection.”

As their conversation turned to politics, Bruce added a note to his mental file on Clark: He’d been pretty sure, up until now, that Clark was single and unattached, given the way Clark had flirted with him. But if Lois was more than a friend – or if Clark wanted her to be – then Bruce wasn’t going to try to get involved. As much as he liked Clark, he wasn’t interested in getting tangled up in any love triangles.

He just needed to find out for sure what the situation was. So, once he and Clark had said everything there was to say about Gotham’s current political situation, Bruce asked: “How’s life outside of work? Still no hobbies?”

“When you put it like that, I sound so boring,” Clark said good-naturedly. “Although maybe I am, compared to you. I’m not hanging out with executives or sleeping with models. My friends are mostly other journalists.”

“Is Lois a friend of yours?”

“Absolutely,” Clark said, without hesitation. That was promising. “She’s the first friend I made at the Daily Planet. And she’s saved my job a handful of times when I’ve gotten in trouble with the boss.”

So maybe there wasn’t anything romantic there. Which meant Bruce’s lane was clear. And Dick wasn’t around. If Bruce wanted to try to sleep with Clark, it was the perfect night to do it.

He almost opened his mouth to start guiding the conversation in that direction when he thought about it a second longer. Did he want to sleep with Clark tonight? He’d never really given his dalliances this much thought in the past – they’d mostly been a means to an end – but he wasn’t trying as hard to keep up his playboy reputation now that he had Dick. He was cultivating a more family-friendly image these days. Which meant he didn’t necessarily have to sleep with every willing, attractive person he encountered. Only if he wanted to.

Bruce definitely found Clark attractive. That was never a question. That dark, windswept hair; those cloudy blue eyes, like the sky before rain; that strong jawline and that winning smile. All of it added up to the sort of face Bruce would happily make out with in his car on the way to a more private location. And Clark’s professional attire didn’t do much to hide his physique. Bruce could easily envision that body in a variety of exciting positions.

But something made Bruce hesitate, and it took a moment for him to identify what it was: The way he felt about Clark wasn’t the way he’d felt about any of his one-night stands. It was closer to how he’d felt about Selina in their early days, when they only knew each other as Batman and Catwoman. He was intrigued by Clark. He felt drawn to him, like a moth to flame. He didn’t just want to have sex with him once and go their separate ways. He wanted to get to know him. No, he wanted to know everything about him.

That was why Bruce hadn’t been able to get Clark out of his mind in all the months since they’d last seen each other. He wasn’t just attracted to him. He had feelings for him.

A couple years ago, Bruce’s instinctive reaction to realizing he had feelings for someone would have been to run. To push that person away. To get as far away from them as possible. But he’d learned how to let people in, sort of. He still wasn’t very experienced with it, but he’d done it once, with Dick, and that had turned out to be probably the best decision he’d ever made. So maybe it also wouldn’t be so bad to let Clark in, on a temporary trial basis. Strike up some kind of relationship and see where it led.

Fuck it. Why not give it a shot?

It was getting late. The fundraiser was winding down. Bruce seized his opportunity. “You don’t have to catch the train soon, do you?”

Clark looked at his watch. “I guess I do,” he said, although he didn’t sound too hurried. Maybe he didn’t want to go just as much as Bruce didn’t want him to. Maybe. “Thanks. I don’t have Jimmy here to remind me.” Clark gave Bruce a genuine smile, and Bruce certainly felt something at that. “Hopefully I’ll see you around again. It seems like the two of us can’t stop running into each other.”

Bruce drew on all his years of seducing people. He took a half-step closer to Clark and said, in a low voice that he knew could make people weak at the knees, “Maybe we can meet somewhere other than a fundraiser. I could take you out to dinner.”

Clark’s eyebrows shot up. “On a date?” he asked.

“If you’re interested.”

“I didn’t think that was how you did things.”

“It’s usually not.”

They held each other’s gaze for what felt like ages. Clark had leaned, unconsciously, toward Bruce, like he felt the magnetism between them the same way Bruce did. His lips parted slightly to give an answer, and Bruce could almost hear the yes on his breath. But then, just like that, something behind Clark’s eyes shifted and his expression changed, from open and interested to closed-off and regretful.

“I want to say yes,” Clark said. He sounded like he was turning down a million dollars, which was some small consolation. “I think you’re incredibly attractive and I truly enjoy talking to you. But I can’t go out with you. I’m sorry.”

He didn’t give a reason, and Bruce wasn’t going to ask for one. “That’s fine,” he said, succeeding in keeping the disappointment out of his voice. “I understand.”

“I hope we can still be friends,” Clark said, the death knell for any relationship. “Like I said, I look forward to these conversations.”

“Of course. Have a safe trip back to Metropolis.”

Chapter Text

Clark

Clark hated turning Bruce Wayne down. He liked Bruce. They had chemistry, and Clark could see things working out between them. But Bruce wasn’t his soulmate.

Clark had dated people who weren’t his soulmate before, but he’d only done it twice. He’d dated Lana, in high school. It was typical for teenagers to date people who weren’t their soulmate if they weren’t one of the lucky ones who found their soulmate at an early age. And then he’d dated Lois, naively hoping she was his soulmate, and stayed in the relationship even after learning she wasn’t because he’d liked her so much. Now that Clark knew who his soulmate was, though, it didn’t feel right to date someone else.

He was still a little upset about the whole thing by the time his next training session with Batman rolled around. He thought about canceling – he didn’t know if he could be around Batman right now – but that would be unprofessional of him, and it wasn’t Batman’s fault. He didn’t know Clark had turned down Gotham’s most eligible bachelor for him.

In the end, Clark was glad he went. Batman hadn’t brought any Kryptonite with him, and when Clark asked why, the answer shocked him.

“Rough week,” Batman admitted. “I don’t want to mess around with the stuff when I’m not in peak condition.”

This was surprising for two reasons. First, it was further proof that Batman actually cared about Clark, which was touching. But second, and more importantly, Batman was usually careful to avoid saying anything that could be construed as admitting weakness. And yet, that was exactly what he’d just done. He was being… vulnerable. Like people did when they felt close to someone.

Just like that, Batman had stripped away another layer of the emotional armor he kept around himself at all times. Clark was that much closer to finding out what lay behind it.

Instead of practicing with Kryptonite, Batman proposed that they do some regular training, which was all good with Clark. Although he accepted the necessity of it, training around Kryptonite had become one of his least favorite activities. The only upside was the time he got to spend with Batman, and those rare moments that passed between them – moments like the one they’d just had – when Clark felt like they were making progress toward… something. Something good, hopefully.

Without any Kryptonite around making Clark miserable, the hours passed like minutes. He and Batman traded advice and constructive criticism, and during their breaks shared what little information they’d managed to gather about the Joker and Lex Luthor.

“I don’t understand why they gave up so easily last time,” Clark said. It was something he’d been thinking about ever since that night at the warehouse. Aside from the Kryptonite bullet that had almost killed Clark, Luthor and the Joker had barely put up a fight. Clark had been expecting to walk right into a trap that he and Batman would have to strategize their way out of, but instead, they’d caught their enemies completely unprepared.

“I’ve been asking around Gotham,” Batman said, “Tracking down anyone who might know anything about what the two of them are up to. I haven’t gotten any information about their plans, but I did learn that apparently they don’t get along. Luthor broke the Joker out of Arkham hoping they could team up and take both of us down, but I think he found out that the Joker might be more than he can handle.”

“They do seem like polar opposites,” Clark said. “But then again, so do we.”

“We’ve had years to work on our teamwork,” Batman pointed out. “And even in the beginning, both of us were willing to temporarily put aside our differences in order to get the job done. But the Joker doesn’t like being told what to do, and Luthor is too narcissistic to treat the Joker as an equal. I don’t see either of them getting over themselves any time soon. But that doesn’t mean they won’t try to make our lives hell in the meantime.”

Clark had to agree. Even if the Joker and Luthor didn’t get along, they were both dangerous enough on their own that, combined, they could do some serious damage. He wasn’t going to let his guard down, and it didn’t sound like Batman was going to either.

But speaking of the progress Superman and Batman had made in their relationship, there was something Clark had been meaning to ask Batman for a long time, a question he’d kept to himself because he wasn’t sure how Batman would take it. It had been needling him even more since he’d turned down a date with Bruce Wayne for the distant possibility of something with Batman. If Clark was going to put his life on hold for Batman, he needed to know where they stood.

Clark waited until the next break in their training to bring it up. “I know I probably shouldn’t question it – don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and all that – but I’m curious. You mentioned our teamwork; obviously that’s gotten a lot better over the last year or two. We’ve both been putting the work in, and I think it’s paid off.”

“I agree,” Batman said. “What’s your question?”

Clark tried to soften what he said next with a wry smile. “At what point did you decide to stop hating me?”

Batman didn’t answer right away. His face was utterly unreadable. Clark waited patiently, crossing his fingers that he hadn’t pissed Batman off.

“I never hated you,” Batman said. “I didn’t trust you.”

Didn’t. Past tense. Which meant Batman trusted Clark now. That was a giant step in the right direction. But it still didn’t answer Clark’s question. “What made you decide to trust me?”

Another pause, and Clark still couldn’t tell what Batman was thinking. “It wasn’t a decision,” Batman finally admitted. “It just happened. You earned it.”

Clark liked to think he was a trustworthy kind of guy, but Batman’s trust wasn’t easily earned, so Clark knew how significant it was that he’d managed to do exactly that. And it was even more significant that Batman was willing to admit it. Clark felt a swell of satisfaction.

“What about you?” Batman asked, turning Clark’s question around on him. “What made you change your mind?”

Clark thought about giving a vague answer, like Batman had, but he’d always been of the opinion that honesty was the best policy, so he told Batman the truth. He said it with a smile, almost like he was joking, but they both knew he wasn’t. “After seeing the way you act around Robin, I realized you actually do have a heart. I haven’t found it yet, but I know it’s there. Buried underneath all that darkness and cynicism.”

Batman looked at him. And then he looked away. “I need to get going,” he said gruffly.

The moment was officially dead. Clark wondered why Batman had killed it.

He spent an evening with Lois later that week, and she asked him, “How are things with your soulmate?”

How were things with Clark’s soulmate? On the one hand, Batman was telling jokes and indirectly admitting that he trusted Clark. On the other hand, Clark had just discovered Batman’s tolerance for emotional conversations, and it was only a little higher than Clark had expected. “Complicated,” was the best answer Clark could come up with. “I’ve decided I actually like being around him. So that’s progress.”

“No romantic feelings, though?”

Clark was about to say “no,” but then he thought about all the moments that had passed between him and Batman. That nameless tension that had been building, a different version of the tension he’d always felt around Batman, that had kept them always at odds with each other.

Maybe that was something. Maybe Clark had been ignoring it because it wasn’t the same easy, simple attraction he’d felt for Lana or Lois or Bruce. It was darker, more mysterious, like Batman himself.

Clark didn’t answer Lois’ question, and he was grateful when she didn’t call him out on it. Because he could see it in her eyes: She’d noticed his hesitation, and she knew that it meant something.

“I just wish it wasn’t such a waiting game,” Clark said. “I spent years waiting to find out who my soulmate is, and now that I know, I’m probably going to spend years waiting to find out whether anything will happen between us. Meanwhile, I’m putting my love life on hold.”

“Is there someone else you could be seeing in the meantime?”

Clark hadn’t told Lois about Bruce Wayne asking him out yet. He hadn’t really wanted to talk about it immediately after it happened. But he could talk about it now. “Remember how I told you Bruce Wayne was flirting with me at the two Wayne Foundation fundraisers I attended?”

“I remember.”

“Well, we ran into each other again at that campaign fundraiser I attended in Gotham. He asked me out.”

Lois raised her eyebrows. “On a date?” She was just as aware of Bruce’s playboy reputation as Clark had been, so she was just as surprised to hear that he would ask Clark out on a date instead of trying to sleep with him.

“Yeah. I know.”

“You seemed like you were kind of into him the last time we talked about it.”

“I am,” Clark said. “But I have a soulmate.”

“You’ve dated people who weren’t your soulmate before,” Lois pointed out, echoing the exact same points Clark had made to himself already. “And it’s not like you and Batman are getting together any time soon. You just said so.”

“Probably not, no. Still. It didn’t feel right to say yes.”

Lois rested a hand on Clark’s shoulder. “You’re a good person, Clark. And sometimes… it bites you in the ass.” She shook her head, smiling. “Poor Bruce Wayne.”

Yeah. It hadn’t felt good to turn Bruce down. But it would have felt even worse to string him along knowing they weren’t meant to be. “I’m sure he’ll move on with someone else,” Clark said.

Bruce

“We can’t keep doing this.”

Selina sighed and got out of bed, stretching her limbs and patting down her hair. Everything about her radiated “disappointed but not surprised.” Disappointed in who: Bruce or herself? Probably both.

They were equally at fault for what kept happening between them. They were both trying to move on, but every time either one of them hit a bump in the road they ended up crawling back to the familiarity and comfort of their failed relationship, falling into bed with each other only to swear afterward that it was the last time, and then a few months later, it would happen again. It wasn’t good or healthy, but neither of them had anyone else to turn to when it was late at night and loneliness hit like an ache in their bones.

Bruce had almost had someone. He’d almost had Clark. He’d put himself out there in a way that felt fresh and raw and new, only to have Clark turn him down. Normally Bruce could bounce back from a rejection in an instant, but normally he didn’t have any skin in the game. This time had been different. There were feelings involved.

He’d tried to ignore those feelings in the wake of Clark’s rejection, tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, that it was for the best. He wasn’t built for relationships. It never would have amounted to anything. But he must have been getting worse at lying to himself, because it didn’t work this time.

And then there was Superman. Watching him take that bullet had shifted their entire relationship, at least in Bruce’s mind. It had forced him to realize, in an instant, how much he truly cared about Superman. And then Superman had to go and say things like how he knew Bruce had a heart…

It was too much. And that was when he’d called Selina. He’d known it was a mistake even as he was doing it, but that had never stopped him. And she’d said yes, also knowing it was a mistake; it had never stopped her either.

“I’m serious,” Selina continued, picking up her clothes off the floor. “This is the last time.” Something in her voice sounded different this time. She meant it. This wasn’t going to happen again. That was also probably for the best.

“I know,” Bruce said. He felt it too. Something had finally changed between them, shifted out of place. Despite their best efforts, they were moving on.

“What made you decide to call me?” Selina stepped into her lacy black underwear and fastened her bra.

“You’re going to think I’ve gone soft,” Bruce warned.

Selina shot him an amused look. “You went soft when you decided to become a father. Nothing else you do or say could surprise me after that.”

It was a fair point. And it wasn’t as though Bruce had never been vulnerable with Selina before. So he told her the truth. “I think I have feelings for someone.”

“And to make up for that, you decided to sleep with her ex. Instead of sleeping with the person you may or may not have feelings for. Makes sense.”

Well, when she put it like that, it sounded stupid. (Probably because it was stupid.) But she was missing one key detail. “He’s not interested,” Bruce said. He looked down at where his clothes were laying in a heap by the bed. Selina was nearly dressed; he should probably get up.

“Now I understand.” Selina gave Bruce a sympathetic smile. “Listen, far be it from me to tell you not to use sex as a coping mechanism for your emotional issues. But maybe that’s something you and I should both work on.” She noticed Bruce was searching for his underwear; she picked them up and tossed them to him. “How did you meet him?”

“He’s a journalist. He sometimes covers events in the area, and I’m sometimes in attendance.”

“So he met you as Bruce Wayne and decided he wasn’t interested?” Selina sounded surprised, which Bruce took as a compliment. “Is he straight?”

“I don’t think so.” Bruce was pretty sure Clark would have said something sooner if he was.

“He must be blind, then.”

Bruce snorted. “Maybe he senses all the emotional issues.”

“You think people can sense those?” Selina said with a grin, now fully dressed and turning to face Bruce. “That must be why I’m still single.”

Selina’s eyes tracked over Bruce’s torso and the grin faded from her face. She reached out to stop Bruce before he could start buttoning up his shirt. There was something in her eyes that made Bruce nervous. “You told me you don’t have a soulmate,” she said quietly.

“I don’t,” Bruce said, confused.

“You might not anymore. Look.”

Bruce looked down at where Selina’s hand was framing a bullet wound on his abdomen. His breath caught in his chest. It obviously wasn’t his. He would know if he had been shot recently. And there was no depth to the wound; it was just an impression, left behind from someone else. Unlike anything Bruce had ever seen on himself, and he’d seen his fair share of injuries.

“Believe me,” Selina said, “That wasn’t there a second ago.”

“I believe you.”

Selina’s hand fell away, and Bruce traced the injury. The texture of his skin over the bullet wound felt completely normal. It was a strange sensation, one he’d never felt before, one he’d lived his life thinking he would never feel.

“You’ve never seen one of their injuries before?” Selina asked.

“Never.”

“What kind of person doesn’t get injured their whole life and then gets shot?”

What kind of person, indeed? Bruce walked into the bathroom so he could get a good look at the wound in the mirror. Selina followed him, concerned and intrigued.

Bruce was well-versed in combat injuries. He knew how to differentiate between the wounds left behind by different bullets from different guns. “It doesn’t look like an ordinary bullet wound,” he observed. “It looks shallow.”

“Do you think it’s fatal?”

“That all depends.” If the person got medical attention, they would probably live. But if they were bleeding out in an alley somewhere… or if they got shot again…

Bruce felt sick to his stomach. He had a soulmate. And they were out there, somewhere, in trouble, and he couldn’t do anything about it. He twisted and turned in front of the mirror, looking for any more marks that weren’t his. “There aren’t any more of them, are there?” he asked Selina.

“Hold still; let me check.” Selina turned slow circles around Bruce, looking him up and down before shaking her head. “No, just the one. And no exit wound.” She paused in front of him again, brow furrowed. “Hold on. That’s not what it looked like before.”

Bruce turned to face the mirror again. Selina was right. The bullet wound was shrinking, fading. “That’s impossible,” Bruce said. Even if his soulmate got medical care immediately after being shot, the wound wouldn’t just disappear. But it was gone, in a matter of seconds. Right before his eyes.

“Superpowers,” Selina said, the gears in her mind turning almost as fast as Bruce’s were. “It has to be, right? Who do you know who has healing abilities like that? The Flash can heal quickly, can’t he?”

“Not that quickly,” Bruce said.

“Wonder Woman?”

“I would have noticed if she had any of my injuries.” Wonder Woman typically had plenty of skin on display, and she wouldn’t have tried to hide it if she had injuries on her from her soulmate.

“Do the Green Lanterns have any kind of healing factor?” One by one, Selina ticked through every superhero she knew. “Aquaman’s married, isn’t he? I have to assume it’s not him. And Superman is invincible; he wouldn’t get hit with a bullet in the first place.”

The sick feeling returned. The bullet wound… Bruce hadn’t been able to match it to any of the common types of ammunition that criminals or the police used, or the types of ammunition people used for self-defense or even at a shooting range. But now that Selina mentioned it, Bruce realized he’d seen a wound just like it before. One that had vanished just as quickly, once the bullet had been removed.

“He could if it was a Kryptonite bullet,” Bruce said.

“Does that exist?”

He nodded, feeling like he was in a daze. “One of Lex Luthor’s recent inventions.”

“And it would explain why you’ve never seen your soulmate’s injuries on you.”

Selina left shortly after that, sensing that Bruce needed some time alone to process his discovery. He stood in front of the mirror, staring at where the bullet wound had briefly been. If it was from Superman, it meant their training had been successful. He’d managed to save his own life.

Bruce didn’t want to believe the conclusion he and Selina had come to, even though all the evidence pointed toward it. Because if it was true, how could Superman not have known? Bruce got injured almost on virtually every mission. Superman was a smart guy. He would have put two and two together.

Bruce even took hits to the face sometimes. But he’d never seen cuts or bruises on Superman’s face. Which would have to mean either Bruce was mistaken, or Superman was deliberately hiding the marks from his soulmate. Bruce was no stranger to using a little concealer to cover up the souvenirs he’d earned fighting crime in Gotham. Was Superman doing the same thing, covering up the fact that he had a soulmate? And if so, why?

Chapter Text

Clark

Something had changed.

First Batman canceled his and Clark’s next training session, and then he canceled all their future training sessions going forward.

When Clark pressed him for an explanation, Batman cited the upcoming election in Gotham. The GCPD had still yet to press charges against the corrupt mayor – the DA’s office didn’t have enough evidence to prosecute – which meant he was still free. With public opinion turned against him, he was almost certain to lose his reelection, but he wasn’t going without a fight. Organized crime was higher than it had been since James Gordon had risen to the rank of police commissioner. The mayor’s opponent was under armed guard around the clock; there had been multiple attempts on his life.

It made sense for Batman to need to take a break from focusing on Lex Luthor and the Joker with Clark and instead focus on the chaos happening in Gotham. But for some reason, Clark didn’t entirely believe him. The timing was too coincidental. And the way Batman spoke to him, Clark could tell he was trying even harder than usual to keep any trace of emotion out of his voice. Which meant he had some emotion to hide.

If Clark was more conspiracy-minded, he might have worried that Batman could somehow sense that Clark was developing… complicated feelings for him. But how could Batman have noticed that when Clark had only just come to the realization himself?

Whatever the real reason was for Batman canceling on him, there wasn’t anything Clark could do about it. He asked if they could resume their training after the election, and Batman gave a noncommittal answer and promised to stay in touch if he heard anything new about the Joker. Clark shared the information he’d gathered from sneaking around the new LexCorp warehouses, which wasn’t much. He hadn’t really been expecting to find anything there, since Luthor knew that Batman and Superman knew about the warehouses, but it had been so long without any developments that Clark felt like he had to explore every avenue. He had managed to run into Luthor and get shot by another Kryptonite bullet. But he’d taken care of it.

And that was that.

Soon enough, Clark didn’t have much time to dedicate to worrying about Batman. Even though the Daily Planet was a Metropolis-based newspaper, Lois’ story about the Mayor of Gotham had roped the Planet’s reporters into covering every new development in Gotham’s election. Most of that coverage ended up falling on Clark’s shoulders. Lois couldn’t set foot in Gotham; Perry had expressly forbidden it, which came as a great relief to Clark. He wouldn’t have to try to convince her to stay away from all the powerful people who now wanted her dead.

The election came, the results were announced, and no one was surprised to learn that the incumbent mayor had lost by a significant margin. Perry instructed Clark to cover the new mayor-elect’s celebration in Gotham, where he would be thanking all his campaign contributors. Including Bruce Wayne.

Clark wasn’t sure how he felt about seeing Bruce again. When he spotted him across the room at the celebration, his first instinct was to walk the other way and pretend they didn’t know each other. But he’d been telling the truth when he said he hoped he and Bruce could still be friends, and that was never going to happen if Clark didn’t make an effort.

So he approached Bruce and said hello.

“Good to see you again,” Bruce said, polite but distant. “How have you been?”

“Fine. You?”

“Fine.”

An awkward silence settled between them. Apparently their conversational rapport had suffered in the wake of Clark’s rejection. Clark flailed around for a neutral subject, something that Bruce would be willing to talk about with anyone, and he came up with just the thing. “How’s Dick?” he asked.

“He’s doing well. Getting good grades in school,” Bruce said, any unease gone from his voice. Clark had made the right move. “Staying out of trouble, mostly.”

“Mostly?” Clark repeated with a smile.

“No teenager can stay out of trouble completely.”

“I just can’t picture Dick getting into trouble. He seems like such a good kid.” Clark shrugged. “Maybe I’ve only seen him on his best behavior, though.”

Bruce gave a slight smile that felt, to Clark, like a win. “He’s way better than I was at that age, I’ll give him that.”

“You had a rebellious streak?” Clark grinned at the image. Of course Bruce Wayne would have been a nightmare of a teenager. “Why am I not surprised? I’m sure you gave your parents hell.”

Shit. As soon as Clark said the words, he wanted to take them back. He’d forgotten the one thing everyone knew about Bruce Wayne, the one thing no one talked about. He watched Bruce’s face fall and felt his chances of friendship with Bruce crumbling.

“My parents weren’t around by the time I was a teenager,” Bruce said, averting his eyes. His tone was carefully devoid of emotion. It almost reminded Clark of the way Batman had sounded when he’d canceled their training sessions: keeping his feelings carefully bottled up inside himself, where no one could see them.

“I knew that,” Clark said, feeling terrible. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

Another silence, somehow even more awkward than before. Clark searched for a different topic of conversation. What else did Bruce care about, besides his kid?

Gotham. He cared about Gotham. “I’ve always thought Gotham seemed like a difficult place to raise a kid,” Clark said. Maybe it would give Bruce an opening to talk about his charity work.

Bruce took the bait. “That all depends on your circumstances. Raising a kid when you can barely make ends meet is going to be difficult no matter where you live.” He looked Clark in the eyes again. His gaze was still carefully guarded, but there was a glimmer of something there that gave Clark hope. “Besides, this city isn’t all bad. I wouldn’t be putting so much time and money into making it a better place if I didn’t think it was worthwhile.” He paused. Clark could tell he had more to say, so he waited.

“Let me show you something,” Bruce said abruptly. He turned, and Clark followed him out of the hotel ballroom the mayor-elect had rented for the evening.

“I’m pretty sure this area is supposed to be off limits to guests,” Clark warned as they passed the restrooms and continued down the hall.

Bruce tossed Clark a quick smirk over his shoulder that silenced Clark’s doubts. “I’m not going to tell anyone.”

They emerged onto a balcony that looked out over the city. They were far enough away from downtown that there weren’t any skyscrapers obscuring the view, but they did line the horizon, the lights in their windows blinking in the dark. The moon was high in the sky, and the stars glittered overhead. Rows of old brownstones with flowers in their window boxes lined the streets. A stray cat slunk into a dark alley. Sirens wailed in the distance, and if Clark stretched out his hearing, he could probably make out who or what the police were chasing down, but he didn’t. Instead, he lived in this moment that Bruce Wayne had brought him. He breathed in the cold night air and tried to see Gotham with new eyes.

“That’s quite a view,” he said.

Bruce didn’t say anything, and when Clark turned to look at him, he saw that his eyes were fixated on the horizon, looking at the city like someone else might look at the love of their life. The sheer romanticism of it sunk like a stone in Clark’s stomach. His guilt washed over him all over again.

“About the last time we talked—” he began, but Bruce cut him off.

“You don’t owe me an explanation. If you’re not interested, you’re not interested.”

Clark kind of felt like he did owe Bruce an explanation. He hadn’t given one because he hadn’t wanted to get into his own complicated personal life – soulmates were an incredibly private topic for most people – but maybe Bruce deserved to know. “I want to be interested,” Clark said. “I would be interested. But there’s something—”

This time, Clark cut himself off.

There were certain sounds that Clark’s ears were trained to pick up, from any distance, under any circumstances. The sound of someone calling for help. The sound of police sirens.

Just outside the room they’d come from, where the mayor-elect and his supporters were toasting the election results, Clark heard low voices and footsteps. He heard the telltale sounds of people armed with weapons: inserting a magazine, disengaging a safety.

“Get down,” he said, putting a hand on Bruce’s shoulder and forcing him toward the ground. Bruce shook him off, annoyed.

“What?”

The sound of gunshots split the air. “Get down!” Clark repeated.

Bruce dropped to the floor without question. Clark followed him. The gunshots had come from the ballroom, inside the hotel and far enough down the hall that Clark didn’t think they were in any immediate danger, but he wasn’t taking any chances. He listened carefully to what the attackers were yelling, and used his x-ray vision to watch the scene unfold.

“It sounds like they’re inside,” Clark said. Although he could hear and see everything that was going on, he had to pretend to be making educated guesses. “The gunshots have stopped. They must be taking everyone hostage.”

“We need to get out of here,” Bruce said. He sounded appropriately alarmed. Clark felt for him. Gunshots, hostages… it was more than enough to rattle any ordinary civilian, let alone one with Bruce Wayne’s history.

It had been a while since Clark had been stuck in a situation like this. His number one priority was to keep Bruce safe, as well as all the people inside. But he also had to try to avoid revealing his secret identity. Luckily he was in Gotham, and he knew Batman was following the crimes surrounding the election closely. He was probably already on his way. As long as the hostage-takers didn’t sound like they were going to start shooting anyone, Clark would sit tight and wait for Batman to arrive and take care of it.

In the meantime, Clark needed to keep Bruce from panicking or making any rash decisions. “I don’t think we should go inside,” he said, keeping his voice low. He surveyed the balcony around them, searching for another way out for Bruce. There wasn’t one. They were too high off the ground to jump. “And there’s no way we could make it down from here.”

“I have experience rock climbing,” Bruce said. “I could try to make it down the wall.”

That sounded like a terrible idea. “From this height, if you fall…” Clark didn’t want to freak Bruce out any more than he already was, so he didn’t describe exactly what would happen to Bruce if he fell, but it wouldn’t be pretty. “I don’t think you should risk it. I’m sure Batman will get here soon.”

Bruce

It had been a while since Bruce had been stuck in a situation like this. He and Clark were lying face-down on the hotel balcony while inside, armed criminals were holding the mayor-elect and his supporters hostage. As the minutes ticked by, while he put on a good show of fearing for his life, Bruce was singularly focused on getting away from Clark long enough to summon the Batmobile and change into his Batsuit. So far, it seemed like climbing down the wall was his best bet, but Clark was right about it being a dangerous climb, and if he saw Bruce do it easily, he’d surely suspect something.

Red and blue flashing lights and sirens signaled the arrival of the GCPD. If Bruce squinted, he thought he could see the department’s hostage negotiator exiting a police cruiser, and off to the side, Commissioner Gordon ordering officers around and gesturing emphatically at the Bat Signal in the sky, which had been lit now for a good fifteen-or-so minutes.

“I’m climbing down the wall,” Bruce said resolutely, moving to get up.

Clark’s hand between his shoulder blades shoved him back down. “Don’t. Even if you make it, there are men with guns patrolling the perimeter.” Bruce knew that; he’d spent the past fifteen minutes listening to their movements, which was how he knew now was the perfect time for him to make his escape. But he couldn’t reveal that information, so instead he started brainstorming ways he could distract Clark long enough to get away.

“The safest thing to do is sit tight and wait for Batman to arrive,” Clark was saying. “I don’t know what’s taking so long.”

More time passed. Commissioner Gordon was pacing along the sidewalk in the distance while the hostage negotiator spoke into a phone. Bruce was getting desperate.

A rustling sound beneath them had both Bruce and Clark snapping to attention. It wasn’t the same sound the armed criminals patrolling the building made when they passed by. They moved slowly, methodically, carrying guns and wearing heavy boots. This sound came from someone lighter, faster.

A streak of yellow, red, and green darted across the lawn and into the building.

Fuck.

“Look,” Clark said, pointing. “There’s Robin. That means Batman must be around here somewhere.”

Bruce needed to get off that damn balcony, and he was starting not to care whether he had to reveal his secret identity to Clark in order to do it. But Clark was a journalist; if he learned Bruce Wayne was Batman, the whole world would know.

Maybe Dick would do the smart thing, post himself up somewhere hidden and wait for Bruce to arrive.

The sound of more gunshots put that dream to rest almost immediately. In unison, Clark and Bruce shot to their feet, uncaring whether they alerted anyone to their presence.

Clark made for the door into the building, holding a hand out to Bruce in warning. “Stay here,” he said frantically. “For fuck’s sake, don’t climb down the wall.”

“Where are you going?” Bruce called after him. “Clark, don’t be a hero!”

Bruce didn’t have time to run after Clark. He could only hope Clark wouldn’t do anything stupid and get himself killed. He leapt off the balcony, descending the exterior wall of the building in a matter of seconds, using windows and ledges as handholds and footholds. He landed silently in the grass, his earpiece already in his ear. When he tried to tune it to Robin’s frequency, all he heard were gunshots, so he tuned it to Alfred’s.

“If you gave him permission to come here—” he warned. Alfred interrupted indignantly.

“Of course I didn’t give him permission. He wouldn’t listen when I told him you would take care of it. I wonder where he gets that from.”

“Where is the Batmobile?” Dick must have taken it – using its autopilot feature, Bruce could only hope, or else he was grounded for even longer than he was already going to be grounded for – if he’d come all the way from Wayne Manor in such a short time.

“South side of the building,” Alfred reported.

“If he gets hurt, I’m grounding him for the rest of his life.”

“I fully support that decision.”

Sprinting across the lawn, Bruce ran into one of the gunmen. For a split second, he considered trying to keep up his Bruce Wayne act, and in that split second, the butt of the man’s rifle made contact with his head, knocking him backward.

Forget about keeping up appearances. In a series of swift movements, Bruce had removed the magazine from the man’s rifle, knocked him off his feet, and left him lying on the ground with a nasty concussion and no ammunition.

Bruce found the Batmobile and changed into his Batsuit, finally managing to get a hold of Dick shortly after he did so. “Status report,” he demanded.

“Everything’s under control!” came Dick’s voice through the earpiece. Bruce’s fear ratcheted down about a million degrees. In the precious few minutes since he’d seen Dick enter the hotel, Bruce had thoroughly convinced himself he was going to find Dick’s lifeless body waiting for him inside.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“I would have included it in my status report if I was.”

Bruce glared, even though Dick couldn’t see him. “Don’t be smart with me. You’re on thin ice. You should have let me handle this one.”

“I didn’t know if you’d be able to take care of it without giving anything away. And I was right.”

They could continue this argument later. “I’m almost there,” Bruce said. “How many hostiles?”

“Zero,” Dick said. “I told you, everything’s under control. Superman showed up.”

Bruce burst into the ballroom just in time to see Superman rounding up the hostage-takers, their assault rifles splintered into bits on the floor. He skidded to a stop, dumbfounded. “What are you doing here?”

“I happened to be in the area,” Superman said, like showing up in Gotham and fighting crime was something he did on a regular basis and not something Bruce had reamed him out for the few times he’d tried it. “Where were you?”

“Unavoidably detained.” This was another argument that Bruce was going to have to save for later. “Are there any casualties?”

“None.”

At least Bruce had that to be grateful for. “You get everyone out of here,” he instructed. “I’ll talk to the police.”

After a heated discussion with Commissioner Gordon, who was both grateful to see Batman and furious at him for taking so long – “Maybe the GCPD should invest in a Super Signal, since apparently Superman is the only one who takes these things seriously,” he threatened, but Bruce knew he didn’t mean it – Bruce returned to Dick and Superman. He scanned the crowd of traumatized partygoers, but he didn’t see Clark among them. Worry wormed its way back into his heart. “Is that everyone?” he asked.

“It should be,” Superman said.

“You said there weren’t any casualties?”

“There weren’t.”

Bruce and Dick walked to the Batmobile, where Bruce changed back into his civilian clothes. “What were you thinking?” he asked. His voice didn’t sound as angry as he knew it should. It had been a long night.

“I wanted to help you,” Dick said, unrepentant. “I thought you needed it, and I was right. When I got there, you were still stuck being Bruce Wayne somewhere.”

“I would have figured it out,” Bruce told him. “I didn’t need the added pressure of worrying about whether you were going to get shot.”

“I know how not to get shot. You taught me.”

Bruce sighed. Arguing was getting him nowhere. If he was going to make Dick understand how important it was for him to be safe, he was going to need to take a different approach. So he said, in a sincere, caring tone, “That doesn’t mean I don’t worry. It’s my job, as your guardian, to protect you. Anything bad that happens to you is my responsibility.”

Dick let his defenses down. Slightly. “You have to let me do things on my own sometimes,” he said. “I don’t know why you don’t trust me.”

“I do trust you. I need you to trust that I don’t make up rules for no reason. Okay?” He placed a hand on Dick’s shoulder and squeezed. “Take the car home,” he said. “There’s something I need to take care of here before I go.”

Back inside, Bruce ran into Clark in the hallway leading to the balcony. He crossed another name off the list of potential dead bodies he was going to run into that night.

“There you are,” Clark said, sounding equally relieved. Once he got a good look at Bruce, though, he frowned. “Oh my God, what happened to you?”

Bruce touched his forehead, where the gunman outside had hit him with his rifle. He noticed Clark had a bruise of his own forming across his face. He must have run into one of the armed criminals too. “Same thing that happened to you, it looks like,” he said.

“What?” Clark looked confused for a moment before apparently deciding it didn’t matter that much, in light of everything that had happened. “Never mind. Do you need me to walk you to your car?”

“I’ll be fine,” Bruce said. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

“Likewise. Well, mostly alright.” Clark motioned again to Bruce’s forehead.

They went their separate ways, Clark out onto the street and Bruce down to the parking garage. Once he got into his car, he let out a deep breath. He could feel the adrenaline starting to fade. Everything was fine. Everyone was okay. He didn’t have to worry anymore.

He checked his reflection in the rearview mirror. He was going to have two black eyes from that fucking rifle. He needed to buy more concealer; he was going to be using it for a while.

Hold on.

Bruce’s exhausted mind rewound several steps. Standing in front of Clark Kent, noticing the bruises that were forming on his forehead too.

The exact same bruises that Bruce was looking at now.

Fuck.

Chapter Text

Clark

Clark realized it as soon as he got home that night.

He wasn’t firing on all cylinders after the fiasco at the mayor-elect’s celebration. Being stuck like that, unable to do anything or help anybody without revealing his secret identity, was basically his worst nightmare.

He’d spent the whole way home pissed at Batman, wondering why he’d taken so long to arrive at an ongoing hostage situation involving some of the wealthiest people in Gotham. Wondering why Batman had sent Robin in first. It didn’t make any sense.

And then there was Bruce Wayne, who had seemed hell-bent on putting himself in danger for no reason, who’d ended up with a nasty bruise on his face and could have ended up with much worse – like a bullet in his brain – because he couldn’t just listen to Clark and stay put on the balcony.

It all made sense when Clark caught a glimpse of his reflection. Bruce had made that comment about him and Clark having similar injuries, but it hadn’t registered with Clark at the time. He’d been too relieved to see Bruce alive.

Clark did have a bruise on his face. And it looked exactly like Bruce Wayne’s.

That was what had taken Batman so long. He’d been there the whole time, but like Clark, he couldn’t reveal his secret identity. And that was why Bruce Wayne had been so eager to get off that balcony.

Bruce Wayne was Batman. Batman was Bruce Wayne. And they were both Clark’s soulmate.

Even with all the evidence laid out before him, Clark still found it hard to believe. Batman and Bruce were so different. Bruce was friendly and charming and had gone out of his way to talk to Clark every time they saw each other. Batman was withdrawn and hypercritical and had taken years to open up even a little. How could they both be the same person? Which version was the real him?

As if things weren’t complicated enough, Clark now knew that he’d turned down his soulmate. He’d done it for the right reasons, but Bruce didn’t know that, because Clark hadn’t had a chance to explain.

Would Bruce get home and realize Clark was his soulmate? He had to. He might even go one step farther and make the connection that Clark was Superman. He must have noticed that he’d never had a lasting injury from his soulmate. Combine that with the fact that Superman had shown up conveniently to save the day, and it must have been obvious, especially to someone like Batman.

Clark didn’t know what to do. Should he fly back to Gotham and confront Batman? Should he try to contact Bruce Wayne? Should he wait until tomorrow?

Just as Clark was debating this, his phone started buzzing. Lois was calling him. Perfect timing, Clark thought; he could use an outsider’s perspective on this one.

“Hello?”

“I saw what happened in Gotham,” Lois said, sounding concerned. “Are you alright? Is everyone there alright?”

“Everyone’s fine,” Clark reassured her. “The police took the perpetrators away and there were no casualties. But… something else happened.”

“What?”

“I found out his secret identity.”

Clark didn’t need to specify who “he” was. Lois knew right away. “He told you? Or you figured it out?”

“I figured it out.”

“Are you going to tell him?”

“I think I have to.”

“How do you think he’ll react?”

That was the million-dollar question. “I’m going to have to reveal that we’re soulmates,” Clark said. “That’s how I figured it out.”

“Maybe it’s time you told him that anyway,” Lois reasoned.

She was right. Lois was usually right. “Do you think I should talk to him tonight? Or wait until tomorrow?”

“Wait until tomorrow,” Lois advised. “Give yourself the rest of the night off. You deserve it.”

“I still have to finish writing about tonight.” Perry had called Clark as soon as the hostage situation was over asking for a firsthand report, due by the morning.

“Send me your rough draft. I’ll clean it up for you and get it to Perry,” Lois said.

Clark felt a rush of gratitude. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. Just answer one question for me.”

“What?”

Clark heard the smile in Lois’ voice. “Is he attractive?”

Clark laughed. “Yeah. He is.”

“How attractive? Scale of one to ten.”

“Ten. Easily a ten.”

“Well,” Lois said, “That’s something.”

“It is something, isn’t it?”

The next day was a Saturday, so Clark didn’t have to worry about going into work. He flew to Gotham in the early afternoon, heading straight for Wayne Manor.

The gates to the Manor were closed, so Clark stood outside and rang the intercom.

“Wayne residence,” a British-accented voice said.

“This is Clark Kent, here to see Bruce Wayne,” Clark said tentatively. He was nervous. He didn’t know what was waiting for him inside. “I hope this isn’t a bad time.”

“I’m sorry, Master Bruce isn’t expecting anyone today.”

“I know. But is there any way you can tell him I’m here to see him? It’s about what happened last night.”

There was a pause that stretched out for minutes before the gates opened and the British voice returned. “Come in.”

Clark walked up the gravel driveway to the front door. By the time he reached it, a well-dressed older man – the apparent owner of the voice Clark had heard over the intercom – had opened it and was beckoning Clark inside.

“Welcome, Master Clark,” the man said. “I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting.”

“We haven’t,” Clark replied. “Clark Kent. I work for the Daily Planet. But that’s not why I’m here.”

“Alfred Pennyworth. Master Bruce is waiting for you in the study.”

Alfred led Clark down the front hall, past numerous rooms, and to the back of the house, where he knocked on a heavy wooden door and said, “Master Bruce. Master Clark here to see you.”

“Come on in,” Bruce called out. “Thank you, Alfred.”

Another reason Clark hadn’t ever connected Bruce Wayne to Batman: Their voices were different. Bruce’s natural voice was somewhat low and smooth, whereas the voice he put on as Batman was much lower and gravelly. Now that Clark knew they were the same person, he could hear the similarities, but he wouldn’t have put it together before.

Alfred and Clark stepped into the study. Bruce was sitting at a tall mahogany desk, dressed more formally than Clark would have expected from anyone at home alone on a Saturday, in a crisp white shirt with the sleeves cuffed. He motioned for Clark to take a seat in a leather armchair across from him.

“Can I get either of you something to drink?” Alfred offered.

“I’m fine,” Clark said, not wanting to impose.

“So am I,” said Bruce.

“Let me know if either of you change your mind.” Alfred left and closed the door behind him, leaving Clark and Bruce alone.

Bruce turned his gaze on Clark, eyes sharp. “What on earth are you doing here?” he asked.

“I need to talk to you about something,” Clark began. “It couldn’t wait until the next time we happened to run into each other.”

“I’m listening.”

Where to begin? Clark had stayed up all night thinking about what he was going to say and how he was going to say it, but now that he was sitting here, looking at Bruce Wayne and knowing that that meant he was also looking at Batman, he found himself at a complete loss for words. So he skipped all the preamble, and very straightforwardly said, “I know you’re Batman.”

Clark didn’t catch more than a flash of momentary surprise from Bruce, and that told Clark everything he needed to know. Namely, that he wasn’t the only one who’d figured out someone’s secret identity last night.

Sure enough: “I know you’re Superman,” Bruce countered.

“How did you figure it out?”

Bruce scoffed. He was looking and sounding a lot more like Batman now, to the point where Clark had a hard time believing he’d never seen it. “You ‘happened to be in the area’?” he said, quoting Clark. “Please. One minute you’re running off toward danger, the next minute Superman shows up and saves the day. I assume you found out the same way.”

“Sort of,” Clark admitted. “That’s actually the other thing I needed to talk to you about. You noticed we had matching injuries that night. You got pistol-whipped in the head, it looked like—”

“It was an assault rifle,” Bruce corrected him. “Not a pistol.”

Clark fought to keep from rolling his eyes. Of course Bruce would choose now to be pedantic. “The mechanics of hitting you in the head with it are the same. Either way, you ended up with that on your forehead, and you saw that I had the same one.” Clark motioned to the purplish bruise on Bruce’s face, which he hadn’t bothered to cover up.

Clark had. He’d learned how to use concealer to cover up his soulmate’s injuries back in high school; Lana had taught him. Ever since then, he’d made a habit of it. He didn’t want to worry people in his day-to-day life with all the bruises that showed up on him, and as Superman it was important for him to present an impenetrable image, which visible injuries would detract from.

“I noticed you’ve covered it up,” Bruce noted, thinking along the same lines as Clark. “Is that why I’ve never seen one on you before?”

“I’ve gotten pretty good at it. I have a lot of practice,” Clark said. “You get hit in the face a lot.”

“How long have you known?”

“I started figuring it out about a year ago.”

Bruce nodded. “You did have a lot more clues to work with than I did.”

Clark was surprised. He’d expected Bruce to be angry or upset when he learned how long Clark had kept this secret from him. “I have to admit, this isn’t the reaction I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“I at least expected some yelling.”

“I can yell at you if that’s what you want,” Bruce offered. “But I’ve had time to accept the fact that we are, apparently, soulmates.”

He’d had time? How? How had he figured it out earlier than last night? “I didn’t think I had ever been injured long enough for you to notice,” Clark said, hoping for some explanation.

“For a long time you weren’t. I spent most of my life thinking I didn’t have a soulmate.” Bruce said this without a trace of emotion, like he couldn’t care less whether or not he had a soulmate. Clark wondered if that was true. “But the timing happened to line up perfectly, and I caught what I have to assume was you getting shot with another Kryptonite bullet when you went back to Luthor’s warehouses.”

That explained Batman’s sudden change of behavior. Batman had been so upset to learn Superman was his soulmate that he’d no longer wanted to be around him. It hurt, but honestly, Clark couldn’t hold it against him. He’d been similarly upset to learn that Batman was his soulmate. They just seemed so wrong for each other.

At least, that’s what Clark used to think. But the longer he’d sat with the knowledge, the more it had started to make sense. He and Batman had always made a great team. They balanced each other out. They’d understood each other, even before they’d liked each other.

And learning Batman was Bruce Wayne made it make even more sense. Clark had felt an instant attraction to Bruce, and it seemed like Bruce had felt the same way about him. They hadn’t been able to stay away from each other.

Clearly they were soulmates for a reason. These things didn’t happen by mistake. But would Bruce see it the same way?

Bruce

Bruce was used to being tired. He could function for weeks or months on just a few hours of sleep every night. But something about the night before – the stress, the lack of sleep, and of course, the startling revelation that had rounded out his already unpleasant evening – had him feeling especially drained.

After the mayor-elect’s celebration-turned-hostage situation, Bruce had gone home, told Dick he was grounded from hero work for a month, and then gone back out into the night, even though he was exhausted, because he couldn’t stand the idea of trying to sleep. He knew he would either spend the whole night lying awake thinking about the fact that Clark Kent was Superman, and Superman was his soulmate, and trying to figure out how he felt about it and what he was going to do, or he would somehow manage to drift off and have nightmares about Dick getting shot.

When he got home from fighting crime, Bruce managed to catch a couple hours of fitful rest, and he did dream about Dick dying, and he also dreamed about his parents dying, because Clark accidentally mentioning them had brought Bruce’s traumatic memories of their deaths to the forefront of his mind. Surprisingly, he also dreamed about Clark dying, except his unconscious mind couldn’t keep Clark Kent and Superman straight and kept blurring between the two.

Oh, and his face hurt.

So Bruce was sitting here in front of Clark – in front of Superman – talking about the fact that they were soulmates, on his third cup of coffee, and the only reason he didn’t look visibly exhausted was because he had bruises all over his face that conveniently hid the dark circles under his eyes.

He wasn’t having a good day.

“Why didn’t you say anything to me when you realized?” Clark was asking him.

Bruce sighed. At least this question had an easy answer. “Like you said, I get injured frequently. If by some miracle you hadn’t already figured out that I’m your soulmate, I wasn’t going to be the one to tell you. And if you had, then you were keeping it to yourself, which I thought was the best decision you’ve ever made.”

Bruce assumed Clark had kept the information that Batman was his soulmate to himself, firstly, to preserve their professional relationship. He hadn’t wanted to do anything that would negatively affect their teamwork. Bruce thought that was very wise of him, actually. He had always believed that the safety of Gotham and of the world should come first, before his own personal feelings and relationships.

But Clark also probably kept it to himself because, well, he wasn’t interested in Batman, or in Bruce. There was no other way to put it. As guilty as Clark seemed to feel about turning Bruce down, he’d still done it, and that was all that mattered. Bruce didn’t need excuses. A no was a no, and he would respect it and move on. Even if they were soulmates.

Bruce had lived this long without a soulmate. He could live the rest of his life without one, for all he cared.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Bruce asked, wondering if Clark would confirm his suspicions.

“I didn’t think you would believe me,” Clark said. “I didn’t think you’d want to.”

Clark was mostly right about that. The realization that Superman was his soulmate had been a difficult one for Bruce to accept. He’d long ago adjusted to the idea that he wasn’t destined for a lifelong romantic relationship the way some people were. Having that reality turned on its head over the space of mere minutes, and then learning that the person he was apparently destined to be with was perhaps the one person in the world with whom he had the most complicated, most fraught, and most confusing relationship… It was a lot to take in.

Bruce no longer disliked Superman. He’d even mostly accepted that he cared about Superman. But learning that Superman was his soulmate had unlocked a Pandora’s box of emotions that Bruce didn’t feel prepared to reckon with.

It was the reason he’d canceled his and Superman’s training sessions, at least until Bruce had a chance to come to terms with the truth. He couldn’t handle being in such close quarters with Superman for an extended length of time. The idea of it had made him feel… emotionally compromised.

“I was surprised when I made the discovery,” Bruce admitted. “But it doesn’t actually change anything. I’m not interested in having a soulmate.”

Clark looked skeptical. “You asked me out,” he said.

Yes, and you turned me down. But Bruce wasn’t going to say that. Instead, he said, “That was before I knew who you were, or that you were my soulmate.”

“So you were only interested when you thought I was just Clark Kent, ordinary reporter,” Clark surmised. “Now that you know I’m also Superman, you’re no longer interested.”

It wasn’t exactly the truth. Bruce had been interested to see where things went with Clark Kent, ordinary reporter, but he hadn’t been expecting it to last or turn into any kind of serious relationship. As for how he felt about Superman… he wasn’t going to think about it. That Pandora’s box should have stayed closed.

And now that he knew they were the same person, it didn’t matter how Bruce felt, because he knew Clark – Superman – wasn’t interested.

“I don’t know why you’re offended,” Bruce said. “You said no. You weren’t interested either way.”

“So you’re suggesting we do nothing and act like this never happened?”

Clark said this like he thought it was a crazy idea, but Bruce didn’t see anything wrong with it. “I’m content with our relationship as it is. Why mess with something that works? Wasn’t that your thinking when you decided not to tell me?”

“More or less.” Clark sounded almost reluctant to admit it.

“Like I said, best decision you’ve ever made.”

“What are we going to do about the fact that we now know each other’s secret identities?” Clark asked.

“Nothing,” Bruce said. Why was Clark so hung up on the idea of them doing something? The status quo was working just fine.

“Are you going to tell Dick? I have to assume he’s Robin.”

“You assume correctly. And I’m not going to tell him who you are. I won’t tell Alfred either.” Even back when he still disliked Superman, Bruce never would have done anything to compromise Superman’s secret identity. That was a step too far for any self-respecting superhero.

“Who is he, by the way?” Clark said, referring to Alfred.

“My butler, officially,” Bruce explained. “But he raised me.”

Clark nodded his understanding. “I won’t tell anyone either,” he said. “Obviously.”

“I trust you,” Bruce said. He knew what it meant to Clark to hear that. He’d seen it during their conversation at their last training session. However Clark felt about him – whether he thought of Batman as a soulmate or a friend or just a colleague – he clearly valued Batman’s trust. Maybe that was why Bruce felt like he could give it to him.

And he wanted Clark to know that, even though he wasn’t interested in having a soulmate, and even though he knew Clark wasn’t interested in having him as a soulmate, their professional relationship – friendship, Bruce might even go so far as to call it, though he would have to give the idea some thought before committing to it – was still strong.

“I can’t talk all afternoon,” Bruce said, cutting off their conversation. “Dick’s probably going to wake up soon, and I still don’t think I’ve made it clear to him exactly how much trouble he’s in.”

“That was really dangerous, what he did last night,” Clark agreed. “If you need someone else to talk to him for you, I’m more than willing to help out.”

Dick did seem to value Superman’s opinion. Maybe Bruce would take Clark up on that offer. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

As an afterthought – because he really didn’t want all this to impact his and Clark’s professional relationship, as much as he tried to act like he didn’t care – Bruce added, “We should resume our training sessions, now that the election is over. The police are going to be interrogating the men they brought in last night, and Commissioner Gordon is optimistic that they’ll get at least one of them to testify against the mayor in exchange for a reduced sentence.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Clark said sincerely. “I’ve missed training with you.”

Bruce walked Clark to the front door and saw him out, and then he went to the kitchen, where he found Alfred making breakfast for Dick, who still hadn’t come downstairs yet. He was probably awake by now and stalling, in no rush to face the consequences of his actions.

“Who was he?” Alfred asked Bruce, carefully casual, though Bruce knew him well enough to know that it wasn’t a casual question.

“A friend from work,” Bruce said. He sat down at the kitchen table and Alfred offered him a plate of bacon, eggs, and toast. Bruce turned it down. He wasn’t hungry. He never was after a night with no sleep.

“Just a friend?” Alfred asked, leaving the plate in front of Bruce just in case he changed his mind.

“Yes,” Bruce answered firmly.

Alfred didn’t look convinced.

Chapter Text

Clark

“How did it go yesterday?”

Clark was reclining on Lois’ sofa, the remains of their lunch – more Chinese, because the restaurant down the street from Lois’ building really was the best in Metropolis – lying empty on her coffee table. So far Clark had managed to avoid talking about his conversation with Bruce the day before by keeping Lois talking about the political situation in Gotham, but apparently his luck had finally run out.

He thought about trying to change the subject, but knew Lois would see right through him if he did. And besides, as much as he was still picking at the tangled knot of his own feelings regarding Batman and Bruce Wayne now that he knew they were the same person, Clark knew it would do him some good to talk things out with a friend.

So he answered, “Not as bad as I expected. Turns out he’d figured out my secret identity too.”

“That’s convenient,” Lois said. “What about the soulmate thing? He took that well too?”

“He already knew about it.”

“Wow.” Lois shoved around some takeout containers to make room to prop her feet up on the coffee table. “So the two of you just… laid it all out on the table.”

That was one way to put it. Although… “I don’t know about ‘all,’” Clark said hesitantly.

“What do you mean?”

“There was no real discussion of feelings,” he explained. “Which I should have expected. This is Batman we’re talking about.”

Clark was still a little frustrated that Bruce had been so insistent on maintaining the status quo, that he hadn’t wanted to do anything with all the knowledge they’d gained about each other. But what, exactly, did Clark want them to do? That was the part he was still figuring out.

Part of him really just wanted a friend in Bruce. It had felt for a while there like they were close to that. It still kind of felt like they were. Clark longed to have someone in his life who knew all his secrets, and who understood what it was like to live with those secrets. Now that everything was out in the open between them, Bruce could be that person. And Clark could be that person for him, if he needed it.

But another part of Clark – the hopeless romantic in him – wanted more. Or at least wanted the option of more. He wasn’t completely sold on the idea of him and Bruce as a couple, but he wanted to give it a shot.

After all, they were soulmates, for fuck’s sake. They were literally meant for each other. There had to be something to that. Clark’s parents were soulmates, and their relationship was the stuff of sweet country ballads. It was everything Clark had aspired to growing up. A part of him couldn’t let that dream die.

“What kind of feelings were you hoping to discuss?” Lois asked, unaware of what a loaded question this was. Or maybe she was aware of it. She was scarily good at reading Clark. (She was scarily good at a lot of things.)

“I don’t know,” Clark said with a sigh. “I should probably decide how I feel about him first.”

“You said he’s attractive,” Lois helpfully provided.

“Attractive” wasn’t even the half of it. Clark wished he could tell Lois who Batman was, so she would understand exactly what he was dealing with here, but Bruce had promised to respect Clark’s privacy by not revealing his secret identity to those closest to him, and Clark had to return the favor.

But… Christ. It had taken some time to fully sink in, after Clark had made the connection that Batman was Bruce Wayne, because he’d been too preoccupied with all the other, more important implications of that revelation. But somewhere around when Clark was flying home from Wayne Manor after talking it out with Bruce, it hit him.

Clark’s soulmate was Bruce Wayne. Gotham’s most eligible bachelor. The perfect specimen of a man: that dark hair, those too-blue eyes, that body, those cheekbones. Clark would have gone weak at the knees for a man like that back in his college days, when he’d first discovered his own bisexuality. And though he was mature enough, now, to maintain his composure around insanely attractive people – because they were just people, at the end of the day, and realistically, Clark knew he was easy on the eyes himself – that didn’t mean he didn’t notice.

“He is very attractive,” Clark said, leaving out his hyperbolic thoughts about just how attractive Bruce was. “And I swear there’s something between us. I kind of wish we could give things a shot.”

“Did you tell him you were interested?” Lois asked.

Clark’s face fell as he remembered Bruce’s words. That was before I knew who you were. Bruce might have carried a torch for Clark Kent, but he had no interest in Superman. “No. He had already made it clear that he wasn’t, so I didn’t see a point.”

In the weeks that followed, Clark was surprised by how little seemed to have changed between him and Bruce. In many ways, this was a good thing. Clark’s fears that Batman finding out Superman was his soulmate would ruin their budding friendship were swiftly disproven. Although it had evidently taken Bruce a bit of time to adjust to the idea – causing him to temporarily call off their training sessions and withdraw from Clark – he was once again making an effort to bridge the remaining gaps between them, and Clark was more than happy to meet him halfway.

But it was strange, too, to have this great unspoken thing between them. Clark wondered if he was alone in feeling awkward about it. He kept wanting to say something, to acknowledge it, but he didn’t know how, or to what end. They’d talked, and it had gotten them nowhere. Clark could try to make Bruce talk about it again, but he couldn’t expect a different outcome.

Contributing to the awkwardness, a new set of rumors were circulating the Justice League. Clark was always the first to hear League gossip, not because people shared it with him – they almost never did – but because his fellow superheroes almost never remembered that he had superhuman hearing. Clark didn’t try to eavesdrop (well, most of the time he didn’t); it just happened. Within a certain radius, he couldn’t help hearing things.

So he heard it when the Flash reacted, with the appropriate amount of shock, to the Green Lantern telling him he had it on “good authority” that Batman and Superman were together.

“Bullshit,” Flash said, instantly skeptical – as anyone should be – of anything Green Lantern said about Batman.

“Doesn’t it kinda make sense, though?” Green Lantern replied. Clark could hear the grin in his voice. “They used to hate each other, but they started acting different a few years ago, and now I swear I can smell the sexual tension every time I’m in a room with them.”

“First of all, gross,” the Flash said. “Second… no, I’m still hung up on what you think sexual tension smells like.”

“It’s a metaphor. The point is, I’m right.”

“Whatever you say, GL.”

Clark waited to see if anyone else would pick up the Green Lantern’s gossip. Sure enough, he started hearing it more and more around the Watchtower, in snippets of conversation: “Did you hear about Batman and Superman?” “You don’t actually believe—” “Have you noticed they train together every week?” “Does Batman even like people? Like, at all?”

A debate began to form, much like the debate over whether Superman or Wonder Woman would win in a no-holds-barred fight (the answer was Wonder Woman, but everyone thought Clark was just being modest when he said so). Half the Justice League was convinced Batman and Superman were secretly fucking, while the other half steadfastly refused to believe it.

Thankfully, everyone had enough sense to never mention these rumors around Batman. As a result, Clark couldn’t be sure whether Bruce knew about them or not. On the one hand, he was supposed to be the World's Greatest Detective, so how could he not notice that the entire Justice League was talking about his sex life? But on the other hand, he never paid attention to League gossip. It was like his brain had some sort of filter installed that tossed non-mission-relevant information straight into the garbage without processing it first.

Either way, Clark wasn’t going to be the one to break the news to him. He’d had his fair share of awkward conversations with Bruce for the time being. Let someone else take this one.

Bruce

Bruce heard people talking about him and Clark. He acted like he didn’t, because it was the easiest way to keep people whispering about it behind his back instead of ever mentioning it to his face. It was annoying, the way certain League members would exchange meaningful looks with each other every time Superman and Batman were in the same room, but it was less annoying than anyone trying to actually talk to him about it.

He knew his solo training sessions with Clark were mostly to blame. People were so used to seeing the two of them together lately that it became natural to think of them as a single entity, two halves of the same whole. But he wasn’t going to stop training with Clark just because there were rumors about them, especially after they only just started their sessions back up again. It was good for their teamwork. It made them both more effective fighters.

And, yes, okay, Bruce had been lonely during the months without them. And apparently being lonely made him do stupid things, like sleep with his ex and get rejected by handsome reporters. So he couldn’t have that.

He didn’t mention the rumors to Clark, though he assumed Clark was aware of them, because if Bruce had overheard people talking, then Clark definitely had. But it didn’t affect their working relationship. Their sessions continued to be productive. Neither one said anything about the rumors, or their soulmate bond, or ventured into any other potentially emotional subject matter.

Bruce had decided, in the time since his and Clark’s conversation at the Manor, that he did think of Clark as a friend. And accordingly, he would sometimes open up about things that seemed like the sort of things friends would talk about. He extolled Dick’s accomplishments and complained when Dick was being difficult. In coded language – because they were in costume, and Bruce was insistent on keeping his two lives separate to the extent that it was possible – Bruce would talk about how busy his work life was, and Clark would commiserate. They discussed the evolving situation in Gotham: The DA’s office had finally filed charges against the mayor, and after an unsuccessful attempt to flee the country thwarted by the FBI, he seemed intent on bringing as many of his criminal connections down with him as possible.

It was all mostly surface-level stuff, but it was nice. Bruce hadn’t had someone to talk to like this before, other than his society friends, who only knew one side of him, only had half of the picture, and the less important half at that.

And if Bruce sometimes looked at Clark and thought about how he’d once been willing to try to make a relationship work with him, and if Clark sometimes looked at Bruce like there was something he desperately wanted to say but couldn’t, then Bruce was willing to let the court of his emotions dismiss that evidence.

After a few weeks of rumors circulating and building, the first person to bring them up to Bruce’s face wasn’t Clark trying to have another emotional conversation, and it wasn’t one of the other heroes accidentally slipping up and forgetting that they were supposed to be keeping their knowledge of Batman and Superman’s “relationship” a secret. It was Wonder Woman.

The conversation started off innocently enough, although Bruce knew better than to assume it would stay that way. “I take it you’ve heard what people are saying about you and Superman,” Wonder Woman said when she caught Bruce alone in the Watchtower one day.

Bruce looked up at her, one eyebrow raised, not that she could see it. “What about it?” he asked. He was wary, but not as wary as he would have been if someone else had tried to broach the subject with him. If Wonder Woman wanted to talk to him about something, that meant she had a good reason.

“I wanted to make sure it’s not bothering you,” she said. “Because if it is, you know I can shut it down.”

She could, and Bruce knew it. Wonder Woman, Defender of Truth, had put an end to numerous false rumors circulating around the Justice League before. “I don’t understand why hardly anyone bothers to verify information before they start spreading it around to everyone they know,” she once complained to Bruce, and he had agreed with her.

“You don’t need to do that,” Bruce told her. “If it were up to me, the rest of the Justice League would spend less time talking about each other’s personal relationships and more time focused on keeping the world safe, but I know that’s never going to happen.”

“Not everyone can be as laser-focused as you, Batman,” Wonder Woman said with a smile.

“That’s one way to put it.” Bruce was pretty sure most other people would describe his aversion to talking about his personal life as “boring” or “cold,” but not Wonder Woman. She saw the best in him.

“It’s the truth,” Wonder Woman persisted. “Anyway, you know I don’t care whether you’re in a relationship with Superman or not.”

“I’m not,” Bruce said, almost automatically, a hint of his annoyance at the rumors creeping into his tone. “And I still haven’t figured out why people think we are.”

Wonder Woman didn’t say anything right away, and when Bruce looked up from the satellite views of Earth he was studying, he saw she was looking at him like she had something to say and wasn’t sure how Bruce would receive it. “What?” he prompted.

“Well,” she said, “You do have chemistry.” At Bruce’s skeptical look, she continued, “I’m serious. That saying you have, ‘opposites attract.’ It’s not always true, but sometimes it is. Sometimes when people argue all the time, it means they dislike each other. But sometimes, it means the opposite. Sometimes it means they care about each other and haven’t admitted it, to each other or to themselves.”

“I don’t dislike Superman,” Bruce said. “And he knows that.”

“And he doesn’t dislike you,” Wonder Woman provided, letting the implication of this hang in the air: If your arguments weren’t a symptom of you disliking each other, then they must have been a symptom of something else.

Though this conversation lingered in Bruce’s mind, he didn’t agree with Wonder Woman’s conclusion. He had evidence to refute it. Clark cared about him, but not in the way Wonder Woman meant. Not in a romantic way.

The rumors about him and Clark faded from Bruce’s mind as he started to finally make some headway on tracking down Lex Luthor and the Joker. He brought the news to Clark during one of their training sessions: “I think I’ve got them. Lex Luthor and the Joker.”

Clark raised his eyebrows. “You found them?”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. I’ve been trying to track down information about the Joker in Gotham, and you’ve been keeping an eye on Luthor in Metropolis. But it finally occurred to me that, if he’s working with the Joker and they’re trying to take down both of us, I should be looking for signs of Luthor in Gotham too. It didn’t take long after that. I did what you said you do, looking at real estate purchases. That led me toward a property I couldn’t believe hadn’t sold yet. It’s right on the harbor, prime development territory, but no one’s buying. So I talked to a colleague of mine who’s in real estate. He says there’s plenty of interest, but the real estate company that currently owns the building keeps delaying its plans to renovate the place before selling it.”

“Let me guess,” Clark said, seeing where this was going. “The company is owned by LexCorp.”

Bruce nodded. “It was a smart move. The Joker must have known the election would keep me busy, so I wouldn’t be paying as much attention to small things like this. And Luthor knows you don’t go flying around Gotham, so there was no chance you’d find them.”

“But we’ve got them now. Do we have any idea what their plan is?”

Bruce didn’t know the details, but he could guess the gist of it. “Kill us both,” he said.

“I don’t think they stand much of a chance. Unless their teamwork has significantly improved.”

Bruce wished he could share Clark’s optimism, but it simply wasn’t in his nature. “They’ve clearly gotten more strategic,” he pointed out. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought they had some sort of ace up their sleeve. Something neither of us would expect.”

“Lucky for us,” Clark said with a teasing smirk, “You prepare for everything.”

“Now you know why I do it,” Bruce replied.

Chapter Text

Clark

Gotham Harbor was a creepy place at night. Silent ships bobbed up and down in the black water, straining against their moorings. Rows of brick buildings loomed against the cloudy, starless sky. There was no one around in this part of town, all the dockworkers gone home for the evening. It looked like rain. Clark could smell an oncoming storm in the air, could hear gunshots and sirens in the distance.

Maybe it was the knowledge that he was here to face the Joker and Lex Luthor that had predisposed Clark to look for the worst in his surroundings. He knew Bruce loved Gotham, and if he looked hard enough, Clark could almost see the city the way Bruce saw it, even tonight. Underneath the sounds of crime and violence, people were coming home from their closing shifts, or stumbling around laughing with their drunk friends. Though Gotham had a high homeless population, there were hardly any folks sleeping on the street; the homeless shelters, mostly owned and operated by the Wayne Foundation, had recently expanded their capacity for the winter.

It was easy to forget that good people lived in Gotham, too; that it wasn’t a city entirely inhabited by gangsters, thieves, and corrupt politicians. But Bruce had never forgotten. Not even after losing his parents.

Clark wished he could go back in time and slap some sense into his past self. He couldn’t believe he’d ever been so wrong about Batman.

Then again, Batman had also been pretty wrong about him. Hopefully that made them even.

Clark heard Bruce coming from blocks away. It made him realize how attuned his senses were to Bruce, after years of fighting by his side and now months of training with him. The swish of a cape, the soft thuds of footsteps across rooftops, the metallic sound of a grappling hook finding purchase. But beyond that: Bruce’s heartbeat, his breathing. Clark was familiar with those sounds too.

Bruce approached almost silently – silently to anyone without superhuman hearing – and came to stand beside Clark, his expression stern and serious, his cape billowing in the rising winds. They were facing the building Lex Luthor owned. It looked abandoned, but then, so had the warehouse in Metropolis.

“I’m getting a serious sense of deja vu,” Clark said. He didn’t like it one bit. He didn’t like that Luthor and the Joker were working together. He didn’t like that he and Bruce hadn’t seen or heard from them in so long. He didn’t like that they didn’t know what was waiting for them inside.

“You’re not the only one,” said Bruce. “Let’s make this the last time we have to do this.”

Clark wholeheartedly agreed. Which brought him to a point he wanted to make before they got started: “If Luthor shoots me again, I want you to let me take care of it.” He met Bruce’s gaze, like eye contact would somehow help him make his case. “You know I can.”

Of course, Bruce couldn’t just agree with him. “It would be a lot safer for me to treat the wound. I have experience—”

Clark cut him off. He was firm about this. “So do I, now, thanks to you. And I don’t want Luthor and the Joker to be able to distract you again by hurting me in order to get away. They might try it again, now that they know it’s an effective strategy.” Evildoers were always taking advantage of the fact that heroes actually cared about other people. Like caring was a weakness. It occurred to Clark that perhaps that was why Bruce pushed people away. He’d never thought about it like that before.

“If one of us is out of commission, the other one still needs to go after them and keep them from escaping,” Clark continued, unable to dwell on his revelations about Bruce’s emotional landscape during a time like this, though he bookmarked the thought for later. “Otherwise we’ll be stuck in this chase forever.”

Bruce looked torn. Surely he recognized the logic behind Clark’s plan, but he was apparently struggling with the idea of leaving Clark to his own devices. Leave it to Bruce to worry about the most powerful man in the world. “You realize that applies to you too,” Bruce said sourly. “If I get hit, you can’t let it distract you either.”

“I know.” Clark didn’t know if he’d actually be able to follow through on that promise, but he would try.

“And no taking bullets for me. Especially Kryptonite bullets,” Bruce added.

“Alright. Deal.”

With that settled, Bruce turned to face the building they were about to break into. “I take it you can’t see anything in there?”

Clark shook his head. “The whole building isn’t lined with lead, but sections of it are. The first floor and the top floor. Everything else is empty.”

“Good to know. Should we start on the ground floor and work our way up, or start on the top floor and work our way down?”

“If I know Luthor, he’ll be on the top floor,” Clark said. “So I say we start low and go up.”

“Hopefully this won’t take all night,” Bruce said, “But I warned Commissioner Gordon that it might. The GCPD is on its own, for now.”

“What about Robin?” Clark asked, concerned after what he saw Dick try to do on election night. “He’s not going to try to sneak off and fight crime solo while you’re away, is he?”

“He’d better not,” Bruce said darkly. Clark cringed on Dick’s behalf. He’d been on the wrong side of one of Bruce’s bad moods and it wasn’t a fun place to be. Hopefully Dick didn’t break the rules tonight.

With a rough estimation of a plan in place, Clark and Bruce descended from the rooftop. The front entrance to Luthor’s building was boarded up. “How quietly can you get that open?” Bruce asked.

“Not as quietly as I know you’d like,” Clark told him. On his own, Clark rarely opted for the stealth approach, but he knew it was Bruce’s bread and butter, and they were in Gotham, so it was probably best to do things Bruce’s way.

“Fly around and see if any of the windows aren’t boarded up,” Bruce said. They found one, and Bruce took a glass cutter – shaped like a bat, of course – out of his utility belt. “Learned this trick from Catwoman.”

Bruce cut away an oval of glass large enough for them to squeeze through. It took a bit of awkward maneuvering, but they made it inside without a sound.

Clark opened his mouth to warn Bruce that there might be pressure or movement sensors, but before he could get a word out, blinding light illuminated the space around them. Clark had to blink several times before he could see anything.

The room they were in was large, taking up the entire first floor of the building, with high ceilings. It was hard to tell what the space had once been used for. Everything in it had been stripped away and replaced with a maze of brightly colored booby traps and torture devices. It didn’t take a genius to decipher whose brainchild this was.

The Joker’s familiar cackle echoed through deafeningly loud speakers all around them. Clark cringed. He didn’t know if this was simply the Joker’s propensity for over-the-top grand gestures or if Luthor had informed him that Superman’s Kryptonian senses made him vulnerable to sensory overload. Either way, Clark was already annoyed.

“Nice of you to finally make it, gentleman,” the Joker said mockingly. Clark tried to scan their surroundings for where the Joker might be hiding, but flashing, multicolored strobe lights obscured his vision. Definitely Luthor’s doing.

“And here I thought the two of you were supposed to be the World’s Finest,” the Joker continued, putting gigantic air quotes around the words. “It took you months to find us. But now that you’re here, you can enjoy this fun little obstacle course I’ve created for you! Oh, and don’t worry, Superman; I haven’t made it too easy for you. I’ve borrowed some of Lex’s Kryptonite for my traps, because I know otherwise you’ll cheat. You superheroes never play by the rules.”

At the mention of Kryptonite, Bruce almost snarled, like a guard dog warding off an attacker. Though Clark was touched by his concern, he had been expecting to run into plenty of the stuff tonight. “Don’t worry,” he said in a low voice, so hopefully the Joker wouldn’t hear them. “I told you: I can handle it. This is what we’ve been training for.”

For a moment Bruce continued to look skeptical, but at the look in Clark’s eyes and the reassuring tone of his voice, he nodded. Still, Clark felt like he needed to add, “Remember our agreement.”

“I remember,” Bruce said. He didn’t sound happy about it.

Bruce

What followed over the next hour or so mostly involved Bruce and Clark running around like rats in a literal maze, dodging deadly weapons and Kryptonite. Their teamwork paid off; Bruce escaped with a few minor scrapes and bruises, and Clark took no lasting damage. They found and cornered the Joker and Clark had him in restraints within an instant.

Lex Luthor was still nowhere to be found.

“You don’t sense him anywhere?” Bruce asked, looking around like Luthor was going to jump out of a dark corner. But of course, it wouldn’t be that easy.

Clark shook his head. “He must be on the top floor.” The other part of the building that was lined with lead.

Bruce scowled down at the Joker, who was grinning like they were the ones tied up. It was unnerving. “I don’t trust him alone for a second,” he said. “Take him to the police and make sure they lock him up. I’ll stall with Luthor until you get back.”

“Oh, goodie,” the Joker said. “Lex has got a special surprise for you, Batman.”

“What does that mean?” Bruce demanded, in his most intimidating Batman voice. But the Joker just laughed.

“I’m not telling,” he said in a lilting, singsong voice. “That would ruin the surprise. I was hoping I would get to see the look on your face when he reveals it. He’ll have to tell me all about it when he breaks me out of Arkham again.”

“He’ll need to break himself out of prison first,” Bruce said. He turned to Clark, waiting for him to take off with the Joker, but Clark hesitated.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” he admitted, referring to the Joker’s threats. “Maybe I should go with you.”

“I’ll be fine,” Bruce replied dismissively. “And you’ll only be gone a few minutes.”

Clark seemed to accept this. “Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone,” he warned, and then he and the Joker were gone.

It was a long way up, but Bruce still took the stairs. He’d been trapped in enough elevator shafts in his day.

Luthor was waiting for Bruce when he reached the top floor, and his surroundings couldn’t have been more different from the Joker’s multicolored maze. The floors and walls were bare concrete, and the room was empty save for Luthor himself, who stood calmly near the far wall, regarding Bruce coldly.

“It’s over, Luthor,” Bruce said, swallowing his own apprehension. “You and the Joker have failed. Superman is taking him back to Arkham as we speak.”

Luthor’s lips turned up in the twisted approximation of a smile. “You’re awfully smug for someone who’s about to lose the only person you’ve ever cared about.”

For a moment, Bruce worried that he was talking about Clark. But how could Luthor possibly know that Bruce cared about Clark? Bruce had only recently become aware of it himself. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growled, slowly advancing on Luthor.

Luthor held up something in his hand that gave Bruce pause. It looked like some sort of remote. “The Joker told me all about your little Boy Wonder,” Luthor said. “Awfully foolish of you, giving yourself a weakness like that. I couldn’t help but exploit it.”

Bruce felt sick to his stomach. His thoughts swam with visions of Luthor or his minions breaking into Wayne Manor and kidnapping Dick out of his bed. But that wasn’t possible. Not only was Wayne Manor an impenetrable fortress, but Luthor didn’t know who Batman really was. “You’re bluffing. Robin’s not here,” he insisted.

“Are you sure?” Luthor taunted. “Or did he follow you here, like a loyal little sidekick?”

Luthor pressed a button on his remote and the wall behind him crumbled away, revealing a giant metal arm reaching out over the harbor, dangling a bruised and bleeding Dick Grayson from its grasp, his Robin suit torn and domino mask askew.

The arm holding Dick hadn’t been there when Bruce and Clark had arrived at the abandoned building, which meant the Joker’s maze hadn’t just been an attempt to kill them. It was also Luthor’s way of stalling while he captured Dick and arranged this sick scenario.

It took everything in Bruce not to lunge for his adopted son; he knew without being told that Luthor would punish any move he made toward Dick by pressing another button and releasing him into the harbor. Dick was a strong swimmer, but his hands and feet were bound, his breathing was labored, and there were weights attached to him that would drag him down to the bottom of the bay. The metal arm, weights, and restraints also glowed a telltale green; Dick had been Superman-proofed.

“Robin!” Bruce called out, heart racing, vision turning red. If he was ever going to make an exception to his personal rule against using lethal violence, it would be tonight, against the man who’d hurt and captured his son. “Are you okay?”

“I’m sorry, Batman!” Dick shouted back, voice broken. “I wanted to help! I should have listened to you.”

Clark returned in a flash of blue, coming to stand next to Bruce. He’d already assessed the scene and seemed to have come to the same conclusion Bruce had: He couldn’t get too close to Dick. Not with all that Kryptonite.

“Perfect timing,” Luthor said to Clark.

“What do you want, Luthor?” Clark sounded just as furious as Bruce felt. That kind of rage was rare to see on Superman.

“I want to make up for the fact that the Joker failed to kill either of you with that preposterous scheme of his,” Luthor said. “I should have known from the beginning that working with that idiot was a bad idea. But he served his purpose. And now I have you all right where I want you.” He paused, frowned. “On second thought…”

Luthor pressed another button on his remote, and Clark and Bruce both frantically looked toward Dick, expecting to see him fall, but that didn’t happen. Instead, a hatch in the ceiling above them opened up, and another robotic arm reached for Bruce. Clark reacted exactly as he always did – exactly how Bruce had made him promise not to – and pushed Bruce out of the way, getting snatched up by the arm’s giant claw hand instead. This one, like the one that held Dick, was imbued with Kryptonite. Bruce clambered to his feet, running after Clark as the arm moved with Clark trapped inside, suspending him over the harbor as well.

“Now I have you right where I want you,” Luthor amended, that twisted grin back on his face. “It looks like the Joker and I will only succeed in taking out one of you tonight, Batman. To keep things fair, I’m only going to allow you to save one of your fellow heroes. The choice is yours: Robin or Superman?”

With that, Luthor released both Dick and Clark. The arm holding Dick dropped him, tied up and weighed down, into the harbor, and the claw holding Clark separated entirely from the rest of the arm and plunged in after Dick.

Bruce dove in after them. It wasn’t a choice, and Luthor knew it; was probably counting on it. He had to save Dick first. He swam fast enough that he caught Dick before he reached the bottom, cutting the rope that attached him to the Kryptonite weights, prying open his restraints, and dragging him to the surface. He deposited Dick on the pier. He didn’t want to leave him alone with Luthor still out there, but he couldn’t let Clark drown.

“Can you stand?” he asked. Dick nodded, teeth chattering from the freezing cold waters, and rose shakily to his feet. “Run to the Batmobile. Don’t wait for me, and don’t look back. Lock the doors and tell Alfred to be ready in the Batcave to treat your injuries.”

Bruce didn’t stop to make sure Dick was following his orders. He didn’t have time. He had to trust that Dick had finally learned his lesson. He dove in again.

The claw holding Clark had landed in the sand and debris at the bottom of the bay. Bruce turned on a light to see in the black water. He could hear Clark struggling inside, which was good. It meant he was still breathing.

The claw was too heavy for Bruce to lift or pry open. But the Kryptonite would compromise its structural integrity, meaning he could probably cut through it. He took out a laser cutter from his utility belt and aimed for the hinges that held the claw together.

The process took longer than Bruce would have liked. By the time he got the claw open, Clark was limp inside it, and Bruce had to swim with Clark’s body to the surface, not knowing whether Clark was still alive. He pulled him up onto the same pier that he’d dragged Dick onto, cleared his airway, and started CPR.

Midway through chest compressions, Clark’s eyes fluttered open and he sputtered water out of his lungs, his body healing itself now that he was out of the Kryptonite claw. He looked up at Bruce, and Bruce felt a wave of relief knock him off his feet.

“Where’s Robin?” Clark asked immediately.

“I told him to go to the Batmobile,” Bruce said.

“And Luthor?” Clark didn’t wait for an answer. He sat up and scanned the area around him with his enhanced senses. After several seconds, he shook his head. “He got away.”

Chapter Text

Clark

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said as he and Clark walked together to the Batmobile. “I had to save Robin first.”

“Don’t apologize. It was the only thing you could have done.” Clark said this with a reassuring smile to drive his point home. Dick was Bruce’s kid. Bruce would always, always put him first, and Clark wouldn’t expect anything else. Even in the worst-case scenario, where Luthor had been right and Bruce had only been able to save one of them, if Clark had to die so that Dick could live, it wouldn’t be the worst death.

The Batmobile was parked, as it usually was, in a dark alley, not far from Luthor’s building. The lights were on inside, and Dick was in the passenger seat, soaking wet and shivering in a trauma blanket. Bruce opened the door, and when he saw the scene inside, his face went pale.

“Robin!” he exclaimed. Dick, the blanket, and the front seat were stained with blood. Dick was weakly putting pressure on a wound on his leg, and he blinked up at Bruce, water in his eyelashes, lips blue. He was wearing the cold weather version of his Robin suit, but now that it was thoroughly drenched from the freezing bay, it wasn’t doing much to keep him warm. Clark felt a fist clench around his heart at the sight. He could only imagine how Bruce felt.

“I’m sorry,” Dick said weakly. “I got blood on the car.”

Bruce knelt in front of him, nudging Dick’s hands aside so he could get a better look at the injury through the torn kevlar material of his suit. “I didn’t realize it was this bad,” Bruce said quietly, more to himself than anyone else. He met Dick’s gaze, mouth set in a thin, determined line. “I’m going to wrap this up for now, but we need to get you to the Batcave. Did you tell Alfred to get ready for us?”

“Yeah,” Dick said.

“Good job.” Bruce didn’t take his eyes off Dick as he said, “Superman, keep pressure on that for me while I get my supplies out.”

Clark didn’t hesitate to comply. He used a corner of the trauma blanket to press against the deep gash in Dick’s leg; he didn’t want to put his dirty hands directly on it, although the wound had already been thoroughly rinsed with murky water from the bay, so it wasn’t exactly sterile. Running to the Batmobile had probably made it worse, but there wasn’t anything else Bruce could have told Dick to do. Not without leaving Dick sitting out in the open, where Luthor could snatch him up again, or else wasting precious seconds that Bruce needed to save Clark. Clark felt a twinge of guilt at putting Bruce in such a terrible situation.

Bruce took gauze, medical tape, and a tourniquet out of his utility belt and started bandaging Dick’s wound. Clark watched, wishing there was something he could do to help. And then it occurred to him. There was something he could do. “If you need to get him to the Batcave fast, I can fly you both there,” he offered.

Bruce hated it when Clark flew him anywhere, but that was only when he himself was injured or in danger. This time, with Dick bleeding out in front of him, he didn’t hesitate. “That’s probably best,” he said gravely. “There.” He looked up at Dick again. “That’ll hold until we get there.”

Bruce gingerly lifted Dick out of the Batmobile, trauma blanket at all, and handed him over to Clark.

“You’ll have to tell me where it is,” Clark reminded Bruce. He figured the Batcave was probably somewhere around Wayne Manor, but he didn’t want to waste time looking for it when Dick needed urgent medical attention.

“Directly under the Manor,” Bruce said. “You should be able to see it with your x-ray vision.” Bruce glanced over at Clark, and his gaze paused on Clark’s face. He frowned.

“What?” Clark asked.

“Nothing. Let’s go.”

Clark had the three of them in the Batcave in seconds. Alfred was waiting, standing next to a gurney surrounded by enough medical supplies to run a field hospital. “What happened?” he asked, failing to conceal the panic in his tone.

“Somehow Robin snuck off to the harbor,” Bruce informed him as Clark deposited Dick on the gurney. “Luthor captured him while the Joker was distracting us.”

“I’m sorry,” Dick said again, directing the words at all three of them, but mostly at Bruce.

“You don’t have to be sorry,” Bruce said, replacing his gauntlets with nitrile gloves while Alfred removed the temporary bandage on Dick’s wound and cleaned the area. “Alfred and I are going to stitch you up.”

Dick reached up to Bruce’s face. “You’re bleeding,” he said. Clark looked over at Bruce. Dick was right. There was a thin trickle of blood emerging from Bruce’s cowl.

“It can wait until after we get you taken care of,” Bruce said. “Don’t worry about me. You just lie down.”

“Okay.” Dick lay back, but he continued to watch as Bruce prepped a syringe and hypodermic needle.

“This is a local anaesthetic,” Bruce explained. “It’s a large wound, so I’m going to have to stick you a couple of times.” To keep Dick talking and distract him from what he and Alfred were doing, Bruce asked, “How did you get out of the house?”

“I told Alfred… I was going to bed early,” Dick said. “And then I climbed out the window.”

Bruce looked away from Dick’s leg for just long enough to glare at Alfred. “Yes, I realize this one is on me,” Alfred said, accepting the blame. “I neglected to consider how much more acrobatic young Robin is than you were at his age.”

“He was literally raised in the fucking circus—” Bruce grumbled, before Alfred cut him off sharply.

“If you could refrain from using that sort of language in front of your child.”

Having administered the local aesthetic, Bruce allowed Alfred to start stitching up the wound. “Does that hurt, Robin?” Bruce asked.

“No,” Dick said.

“Can you feel it at all?”

“No.”

“Good.” Bruce took Dick’s hand and squeezed it. “You don’t have to worry. You’re going to be okay.”

“I’m not worried,” Dick said. “I trust you.”

Clark felt suddenly as though he was intruding on a private moment. He’d served his purpose by getting Bruce and Dick quickly and safely to the Batcave. He wasn’t needed here any longer. “Should I go?” he asked Bruce.

Bruce tore his eyes away from Dick and said, “Only if you want to.”

Clark didn’t want to. He wanted to stay and make sure Dick was going to be okay. So that’s what he did. He waited and watched while Alfred stitched up Dick. Alfred’s hands were steady and his movements precise. He’d done this before, many times. And all the while, Bruce periodically made sure Dick wasn’t in any pain, that the anaesthetic was still working, and reminded him – and probably himself – that everything was going to be okay.

“How do you feel?” Bruce asked once Alfred had finished his work.

“Tired,” Dick said. He looked and sounded so young. Clark felt another surge of anger toward Luthor for what he’d done, getting Dick wrapped up in all this. He wished he could say he was surprised, but he knew there was no low Luthor wouldn’t stoop to in his mad quest to see Superman destroyed.

Clark could only hope that Luthor was telling the truth about how much he’d hated working with the Joker, and that it meant he wouldn’t break the Joker out of Arkham. Then, at least, Clark could face Luthor one-on-one, and settle this as it always should have been settled, between the two of them. No more forcing Bruce to make terrible choices. No more putting Dick in danger.

Bruce handed Dick a pill and a glass of juice. “Take this,” he instructed. “It’ll help you sleep through the night. And drink all of that. We need to get your blood sugar back up. I’ll take you up to bed soon.”

“It’s your turn, Batman,” Alfred said, ready to stitch up Bruce.

Bruce looked at Alfred, and then at Dick, and then at Clark. He let out a deep, tired breath. “You don’t have to call me that,” he said. “He knows.”

Clark’s heart skipped a beat. He watched, for the first time in his life, as Bruce reached up and removed his cowl, revealing his true face. Even though Clark had already known his identity, it was still a shock. Ever since their conversation at Wayne Manor, Bruce had acted as though nothing between them had changed. This was the first time that he was acknowledging that it had.

Alfred looked between Bruce and Clark, carefully neutralizing his expression after a momentary flash of shock passed across his features. Clark looked at Bruce, and saw that the source of the blood trickling out of his cowl was a cut on his brow, just deep enough that it probably needed stitches. Clark knew, with a sinking feeling, that he had the same cut on his own face. And that Alfred had just seen them both.

“I see,” Alfred said dispassionately, changing into a new pair of nitrile gloves like this revelation hadn’t fazed him, though Clark could tell that it had.

“Batman,” Clark warned. “Your face.”

“I know,” Bruce said.

“Why don’t you sit down, Master Bruce?” Alfred motioned to the gurney, where – because Dick was so small – there was enough room for Bruce to sit on the end of it.

“I don’t believe you and I have had the pleasure of meeting,” Alfred said as he cleaned the cut on Bruce’s face.

“Actually,” Clark said, as he realized that he was willing to trust these people just as much as Bruce trusted them, “We have. My real name is Clark Kent. I work for the Daily Planet.”

Dick turned to look at Clark, surprised. “Hold on. You’re… Clark Kent?”

“I am.”

Dick removed his domino mask. “I’m Dick Grayson. I’ve met you before too.”

Clark smiled. “I remember.”

Alfred put just a few stitches into Bruce’s brow. “That should do it,” he said. “Were you at least successful at turning Luthor and the Joker over to the police?”

A fresh wave of guilt hit Clark. He and Bruce had both failed to hold up their end of the bargain they’d made that night. Clark had, once again, taken the (this time metaphorical) bullet for Bruce, and Bruce had let Luthor get away while he saved Clark.

Apparently saving each other was in their nature. They couldn’t fight it. In the heat of battle, when all logic went out the window, they always came to each other’s rescue.

“The Joker is back in Arkham, but Luthor is still out there,” Bruce said. “He could break the Joker out again. Or he could decide to come after us himself.” Bruce set his jaw firmly, adding, “Next time he won’t get the upper hand.”

“I have complete faith in you both,” Alfred said, sounding not dismissive but entirely serious. “Would you like to put Master Dick to bed, or shall I?”

“I can go by myself—” Dick began to protest.

“I’ll do it,” Bruce said. He turned to Clark. “Do you need anything before you go?”

“You know me,” Clark replied. “I heal quickly.”

Bruce looked at the cut on Clark’s face, the cut that belonged to Bruce. His expression was undecipherable. “Yeah. You do.”

Bruce

Once Clark left, Bruce carried Dick upstairs to bed. His arms were tired after fighting through the Joker’s maze and then fishing Dick and Clark out of the harbor, but he didn’t let it show.

“I can walk,” Dick insisted. Even in his current state, it stung his teenage pride to let his father figure carry him when he was still conscious.

“I believe you,” Bruce said. “But I don’t want you to pull out your stitches.” This, Bruce knew, was entirely hypocritical of him. He’d pulled out plenty of Alfred’s stitches in his day. But he was allowed to be reckless, because he was an adult. Dick was a child, and he needed to start listening to Bruce and following his rules, or he was going to give Bruce an early heart attack.

Or worse. Bruce replayed the moment Luthor’s robot arm had released Dick into the water of the bay. He was lucky Dick hadn’t drowned, or suffered from hypothermia. He was lucky Dick hadn’t bled out in the Batmobile.

How much longer would Bruce’s luck last? How many more close calls could he take?

In the morning, he knew he would be angry. At Luthor, for putting his son in jeopardy. At Clark, for not sticking to his promise. At Dick, for sneaking out. At Alfred, for not keeping a closer eye on Dick. At himself, for everything, as usual.

But right now, all Bruce could feel was a contradictory mixture of worry and relief. He was once again going to be up all night worrying about Dick, but at the same time, he was relieved that Dick was now stable, that he was okay.

“You’re going to have to stay home from school this week,” Bruce said, dwelling in practicalities to try to keep his thoughts from spiraling. “And no fighting crime until you’re completely healed.” Even after that, Bruce wasn’t letting Dick back out unless he was positive Dick had learned his lesson and wouldn’t disobey Bruce again.

Bruce understood that it was in every teenager’s nature to break the rules. He’d done plenty of that in his younger years. And Dick could break the rules at home as much as he wanted. It was annoying, but Bruce and Alfred could handle it. But he couldn’t keep breaking the rules out on the streets of Gotham, or he was going to get himself killed.

They reached Dick’s room, and Bruce asked, “Can you change into your pajamas?” As much as he wanted Dick to minimize movement, Bruce knew that helping Dick dress was a step too far for the teen’s pride.

“Yes,” Dick said, favoring his injured leg when Bruce set him down. Bruce turned away to give Dick some privacy, and listened as Dick hobbled around his room.

“I’m done,” Dick said after a few minutes, and Bruce turned around to find him in bed, under the covers. Bruce came to sit next to him. Dick needed a warm shower; Gotham Harbor was filthy, and he was still covered in dried blood from his more minor injuries. But that would have to wait until morning, because what Dick needed most was ten to twelve hours of sleep.

“I can’t believe Superman is Clark Kent,” Dick said incredulously. He yawned, the sleeping pill Bruce had given him starting to kick in. “Did you already know?”

“I did,” Bruce confirmed.

“How did you find out?”

“I figured it out that night at the mayor’s party.”

Dick frowned at Bruce’s forehead. “He had your cut on his face,” he said. “I noticed. I bet Alfred did too.”

“Yeah.” Bruce sighed. He had known it was all over as soon as he’d seen the cut on Clark’s face, when Clark had offered to fly them to the Batcave. It was probably for the best. Bruce didn’t want to keep secrets from Dick and Alfred.

“I thought you said you didn’t have a soulmate.”

“I didn’t know. Superman doesn’t get injured very often, so I never noticed.”

This seemed to make sense to Dick. “Do you still like him?” he asked. “I know you liked Clark.”

Bruce couldn’t think about this right now. Not with so much else on his mind. “I like him as a friend,” he said. “It’s time for you to go to sleep.”

Dick’s eyelids were beginning to droop. “Can we talk about it more in the morning?” he asked.

“In the morning we’re talking about how much trouble you’re in,” Bruce reminded him.

“Oh,” Dick said.

Bruce didn’t want to leave things between them on a bad note, so he added, “Right now I’m just glad you’re okay.”

“Only because you saved me.”

Dick’s words flew right over the walls surrounding Bruce’s heart, walls that had been crumbling like ancient ruins ever since Bruce let Dick into his life. And Bruce couldn’t find it within himself to regret that fact. He would trade his emotional armor for Dick’s presence a thousand times.

“I always will,” Bruce said softly. “I love you. I hope you know that.”

“I do.” Dick managed a small smile as he drifted toward unconsciousness. “I love you too. I’m sorry.”

“I know. I’m sorry too.”

Bruce waited until Dick was fast asleep before leaving. He found Alfred back down in the Batcave, cleaning up after his two patients and sterilizing Bruce’s medical equipment. Bruce came over to lend a hand. He was still mostly dressed in his Batsuit, minus the gauntlets and cowl. He hadn’t had time to change, or shower, or eat anything. He wasn’t thinking about himself.

Alfred gave Bruce’s stitches a pointed look, and Bruce knew exactly why. He, like Dick, had noticed that Clark shared Bruce’s cut on his forehead.

“I don’t want to talk about it right now,” Bruce said.

“I wasn’t expecting you to,” Alfred conceded. “But you will have to eventually.” A long pause. “How is Master Dick?”

“Asleep,” said Bruce, grateful for the change of topic. “I think he’ll be okay. I don’t know what got into him.”

“He’s too much like you. He feels a responsibility to protect the people he cares about.”

Bruce recognized, with a sinking feeling, that Alfred was right. He wondered if Dick had learned that behavior from him, but he knew that probably wasn’t true. Bruce’s training had certainly (unintentionally) reinforced Dick’s propensity for self-sacrifice, but it had always been there. Dick was like Clark in that way: He was just a really good person.

“I wish he would protect himself,” Bruce said, feeling exhausted and defeated.

Alfred gave him a sad smile. “I know how you feel.”

Bruce didn’t go out again that night. He called Commissioner Gordon, confirmed that the Joker was still in custody, warned him that there was about a fifty-fifty chance of Luthor attempting to break the Joker out again, and alerted him to the crumbling building Luthor had left behind and all the Kryptonite that now sat at the bottom of the bay. “I’ll take care of it,” Bruce promised. “Just not tonight.”

After that, he went over to the bank of monitors he had hooked up to security cameras around Gotham. He didn’t think he had any eyes on the building Luthor owned, but he wanted to be thorough, so he checked the footage from every camera in the vicinity for any sign of Luthor. He found nothing.

It was so late that it was early by the time Bruce finally changed out of the Batsuit and took a shower. He had work the next day; he was going to have to come up with an explanation for his forehead. A simple “tripped and fell” excuse would probably suffice. His employees already thought he was exceptionally clumsy.

He did actually make it up to bed that night, but he didn’t sleep. He lay awake thinking about what he was going to say to Dick in the morning, how he was going to talk to Alfred about Clark being his soulmate, and how he and Clark were going to compensate for the fact that, apparently, they couldn’t stop saving each other.

Chapter Text

Clark

Oddly enough, the fact that Clark had nearly drowned in the harbor wasn’t what stuck with him most from that night. Although perhaps it wasn’t that odd; Clark had always cared more about other people than he cared about himself. And he’d had so many near-death experiences that, while thrashing underwater in what amounted to a Kryptonite cage with his lungs burning from a lack of oxygen had certainly been stressful, it was also more or less par for the course in an encounter with Lex Luthor.

No, what stuck with Clark the most was the image of Dick Grayson in his Robin suit, dangling precariously over the water, bruised and bleeding. The look on Bruce’s face, knowing it was up to him to get everyone out alive. And Dick in the Batmobile, wrapped up in a bloody trauma blanket and shivering.

Logically, Clark knew that nothing that happened that night had been his fault. But he still felt responsible. Lex Luthor was his villain. His end goal was always to kill Superman. That was why he’d kidnapped Dick in the first place, and tried to force Bruce to choose who he would save. Fortunately, he’d underestimated Bruce in a major way. But Clark wished it hadn’t happened. He wished he had been able to spare Bruce and Dick that pain.

Clark was the most powerful man on earth. But he never seemed to be powerful enough when it really mattered.

As the shock of the encounter began to fade, there was something else about that night that stuck with Clark, and it was the fact that he had actually seen Bruce remove his cowl. Bruce had laid out all his secrets, and Clark had laid out his, and in front of Bruce’s family no less. Bruce could continue to act like that didn’t mean anything, like it wasn’t a big change, but Clark knew better. It meant something. At the very least, it meant Bruce wasn’t ashamed to have Clark as a soulmate, if he was willing to tell Alfred and Dick about it.

It had been strange, seeing Bruce like that, still wearing most of his Batsuit but with his face exposed. His hair matted from the cowl, the cut on his forehead bleeding, his mouth drawn into an anxious frown. Clark still sometimes found himself thinking of Batman and Bruce Wayne as two different people, or at the very least as two different versions of the same person. But they were the same. Every time Batman had fought by Clark’s side, that had been Bruce. Every time Clark had flirted with Bruce Wayne, that had been Batman. It was finally all starting to fit together in Clark’s mind.

Ahead of their next scheduled training session, Clark got a call from an unknown number. Expecting a spam call – “We’ve been trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty” – he answered: “Hello?”

To Clark’s surprise, the voice that answered wasn’t a robotic-sounding female. It was Bruce. “About our next training session,” Bruce said, without preamble.

“How did you get this number?” Clark asked.

There was a brief pause. “Really?” Bruce replied, sounding unimpressed.

Right. World’s Greatest Detective. “No, you’re right. Stupid question. What were you going to say about training?”

Clark expected Bruce to explain that he needed to cancel a session or two while Dick recovered – which Clark would completely understand – but instead he said, “If you’re interested, we could start meeting in the Batcave instead of the Watchtower, now that Alfred and Dick both know. It would be more convenient than going to space. At least for me. And I’d prefer to stay home as much as possible right now.”

That all made sense. Clark also suspected that Bruce would prefer meeting at the Batcave instead of the Watchtower so the rest of the Justice League wouldn’t see them together as often, and the rumors about them might die down, or at the very least Bruce wouldn’t have to hear them as much. “I’m happy to meet at the Batcave,” Clark said.

The next day, Clark flew to the Batcave. It was a large space, containing everything a billionaire vigilante might need, including all of Batman’s tech and vehicles, various Batman and Robin suits, rows of monitors, a gigantic central computer, the medical equipment Clark had seen when he’d flown Dick there, a chemistry lab, and a training-slash-workout area.

Clark found Bruce over by the workout equipment, finishing up what he probably considered a warm-up. When Clark saw him, his friendly greeting died on his lips.

Although Clark was no fitness expert, he could tell that Bruce’s “warm-up” was a bit excessive. But that wasn’t what caught his attention. He was distracted by the fact that Bruce was shirtless, wearing only a pair of gym shorts and a towel slung around his neck. He was sweaty and breathing heavily and lifting more than Clark’s body weight. All his scars were on display, scars that had once been injuries that Clark had had on his own body. That concept had never felt more intimate than it did now.

Clark realized he was staring. No doubt a man like Bruce was used to people staring – how could they not? – but Clark was supposed to be here for business, not pleasure.

Bruce finally noticed Clark was standing there, gawping at him, and dropped the barbell he was lifting with a clang. He used the towel around his neck to wipe the sweat off his forehead and took a long drink from his water bottle. “Hold on,” he said, voice low and husky. Did he always sound like that, or was it Clark’s libido talking? “Let me put the suit on.”

Clark was grateful for the brief reprieve when Bruce walked away to get changed. Fuck, he’d found Bruce attractive before, but he could have done without seeing him like that. It made him think of all the other ways he hadn’t seen Bruce. In bed. On his knees. On top of him. Underneath him. He’d entertained the idea, in the past, of sleeping with Bruce, but he’d never been able to visualize it quite like this.

Why had Clark turned Bruce down when he’d asked him out again? Oh, right, he hadn’t known Bruce was his soulmate yet. Clark was seriously regretting that decision.

“How is Dick doing?” Clark asked when Bruce returned, desperate to give his mind something else to think about. The thought of what had happened to Dick at the harbor was an instant mood-killer.

“Better,” Bruce said. “Still grounded.”

“Do you think he finally learned his lesson? Or do I still have to worry about him?”

“I think he did.” Bruce sounded confident about this, so Clark decided to take his word for it. He knew Dick best. “But please do continue to worry about him,” Bruce added. “That can be something else we have in common.”

Clark laughed – he was realizing he was a fan of Bruce’s often unexpected sense of humor – and they started their training session.

“Can I ask you a question?” Clark asked some time later, when they were wrapping things up, Bruce stripping away pieces of his Batsuit: the cape, the cowl, the utility belt, the gauntlets. Clark was feeling bold.

“Sure,” Bruce said easily. He was letting his guard down around Clark in so many ways. It was almost miraculous.

“Was part of the reason you wanted to train here instead of the Watchtower because you’re sick of hearing the rumors about us?”

Bruce met Clark’s gaze. They still hadn’t acknowledged the rumors to each other. They had remained a silent piece of the complicated puzzle that was their relationship. But as more and more things about them came out into the open – their identities, the fact that they were soulmates – Clark felt less compelled to watch what he said around Bruce. He, too, was letting his guard down.

“It was a factor in my decision,” Bruce admitted. Those blue eyes saw straight into Clark’s soul. He’d taken the stitches out of the cut in his forehead, probably a little too soon, but Clark wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that. At least it’d leave an interesting scar.

“Any idea where that rumor started? Or why?”

“According to Wonder Woman, it’s because we have chemistry,” Bruce shared. “I don’t know what she’s talking about.”

Not that long ago, Clark would have agreed. But what he felt when he was with Bruce – what he’d felt seeing Bruce today – wasn’t that chemistry?

“Well,” Clark said, “We get along.”

“Recently, yes,” Bruce agreed. “But you get along with everyone.”

“I don’t work as closely with anyone else.”

“You work closely with Lois Lane at the Daily Planet, don’t you? But that doesn’t mean there’s necessarily anything romantic between you.”

Clark couldn’t help but chuckle at the example Bruce had chosen to give. “I’m not sure that’s the best comparison. Lois and I are friends now, but we used to date.”

Bruce looked… Clark couldn’t find the word for it. Not jealous. Curious, maybe. “Does she know—?” he began.

“That I’m Superman? Of course.”

“Does she know about me?”

“I haven’t told her who you are, no. I wouldn’t do that.”

Bruce accepted this without question or doubt. “I know you wouldn’t. I meant, does she know I’m your soulmate?”

“I did tell her that.” Clark didn’t know how Bruce would take this, so he tried to sound apologetic. “I needed someone to talk to, and she’s my closest friend. She’s the only person I’ve told.”

“Well,” Bruce replied, not sounding too happy about it but not sounding upset either, “At least I know she can keep a secret.”

Bruce

Clark found him attractive.

Bruce had more or less known this ever since they’d first met in their civilian identities. But it was affirming to see that it hadn’t changed. If anything, judging by the way Clark stared, he was more attracted to Bruce than he had been.

The feeling was mutual, obviously. Not that it necessarily meant anything. Bruce wasn’t an expert in love, but he knew enough about human relationships to know that mutual attraction wasn’t the only thing required to make a relationship successful.

Even when it came to casual sex, Bruce hadn’t slept with every willing person he found attractive. Sometimes he knew the publicity he would get from sleeping with them wasn’t the kind of publicity he wanted. Sometimes there was someone else involved, and Bruce had no intention of being a homewrecker. Sometimes their personality was so bad that he couldn’t even put up with them for a few hours.

In a real relationship, there were even more caveats. Clark could be attracted to Bruce, and Bruce could be attracted to Clark, and it didn’t have to mean Clark wanted to be in a relationship with him. And Bruce still hadn’t decided, after learning everything he now knew – that Clark was Superman and Bruce’s soulmate – whether he wanted that relationship either. Mostly because it felt wrong to want something that seemed doomed to fail.

It was no secret: Bruce had commitment issues. He pushed people away. He could be harsh and hypercritical, and he had more emotional baggage than he or anyone else knew what to do with. He was struggling to parent a teenager. Sometimes he thought the only reason Alfred stuck around was out of loyalty to Bruce’s parents, although deep down he knew this wasn’t true. But it was what his insecurities whispered to him. Right before they told him that he wasn’t worthy of Clark and never would be.

Bruce knew he wasn’t the soulmate Clark wanted.

At night, Bruce was still going solo. Dick hadn’t complained. He knew Bruce would let him go out again when he was sufficiently healed, and when Bruce trusted him to be safe. It was also the holidays, which had become a much happier time in the Wayne household since Dick joined the family.

Although Bruce was relieved to know Dick was home safe every night, he missed Dick’s company on patrol. He wasn’t used to fighting crime alone anymore.

In the lull after New Year’s, Bruce ran into an unexpected familiar face on the streets of Gotham. Her voice carried in the clear, cold night as Bruce was running and grappling across rooftops, following a lead from Commissioner Gordon. It was a particularly dangerous part of Gotham, and that was why he stopped. Because he remembered the argument he’d overheard Clark having on a rooftop in Gotham so many months ago.

Bruce descended in a streak of black that he knew was nearly invisible on a moonless night like tonight. Lois started, but regained her composure quickly. The man she was talking to, on the other hand – obviously the type of person who resided on the wrong side of the law – took one look at Bruce and broke into a dead run.

Lois narrowed her eyes. “That was my source,” she said sharply. “You’re lucky I got everything I needed out of him, because now he’s never going to talk to me again.”

Bruce ignored this. “You shouldn’t be here,” he said.

“I fail to see how that’s any of your business.”

“You’re a friend of Superman’s. And so am I.”

At the mention of Superman, Lois hesitated. “He doesn’t have to know about this,” she said. It sounded more like an order than a request. Bruce admired her bravery. He was beginning to see why Clark liked her.

“I’m not in the habit of keeping secrets from Superman anymore.”

“So I’ve heard. But you don’t have to tell him about this. We’re just going to argue about it again. You know what he’s like.”

Bruce did know what Clark was like. Mostly because he was, in many ways, the same. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“Following up on the mayor story,” Lois said. “Obviously.”

“There are a lot of people in this town who want to see you dead.”

“There are a lot of people in a lot of towns who want me dead. I can’t let that stop me from doing my job. I feel like you, of all people, would understand that.” Lois let that hang in the air before continuing. “Anyway, I’m taking precautions. Not even you knew I was coming here until tonight. Right?”

Hold on. “How many times have you been here?”

“A few.”

Bruce held in a sigh. On second thought, maybe he didn’t understand what Clark had ever seen in this woman. But then again, Bruce’s ex could be equally infuriating at times. So add that to the growing list of things they had in common.

At the thought of Lois being Clark’s ex, Bruce had an idea. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Clark was attracted to him. And he knew that Clark had turned him down when he’d asked him out. But that had been before they’d learned they were soulmates, and learned each other’s secret identities. It was possible that the way Clark felt about Bruce had changed.

Bruce hesitated to admit to himself that he cared that much about how Clark felt about him. But he was beyond denial, at least in one regard: He wasn’t just attracted to Clark. His feelings went deeper than that. He didn’t know how much deeper, and he wasn’t going to entertain them until he knew that there was a chance they might be reciprocated.

Lois, as Clark’s closest friend, would know whether they were.

“Did you take the train?” Bruce asked.

“Well, I certainly didn’t fly here,” Lois said.

Bruce made a split-second decision. One he would probably regret. “I won’t tell Superman. On one condition.”

Lois folded her arms over his chest. “I’m listening.”

“Let me drive you to the station. I have some questions I think you can answer for me. About Superman.”

“Can’t you just ask him yourself?” Lois asked, sounding skeptical.

“Sure,” Bruce lied. “Right after I tell him about how I found you here tonight.”

Lois glared him down, but after a few seconds, she broke. “Where’s your car?”

The Batmobile was a few blocks away. They didn’t speak on the way there. Lois got in the passenger seat and tried to conceal how impressed she was by the vehicle’s high-tech interior.

“So how fast does this thing go?” she asked.

“Fast,” Bruce answered vaguely. “But I’m not in a rush.”

“Right.” Lois buckled her seatbelt and leaned back in the seat, legs crossed in front of her. “What did you want to ask me about Superman?”

“You can call him Clark in here,” Bruce said.

“And what can I call you?”

“Batman.”

Lois shrugged, as if to say, “It was worth a shot.”

“I know the two of you used to be together,” Bruce began. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with Clark’s ex-girlfriend, but apparently he was that desperate. The things Clark could make him do… “When you were, did you know that you weren’t soulmates?”

“That’s a very personal question,” Lois remarked.

“I’m not going to force you to answer it.”

Lois considered this. She stared at Bruce like she could read his intentions. And then finally she said, “We figured it out pretty early on.”

“Was that why the relationship didn’t work out? Because he only wants to be with someone, long-term, who is his soulmate?”

“That was always his goal,” Lois confirmed. “The fact that you’re not interested kind of threw a wrench in those plans, but I think he’s holding out hope. He even turned down Bruce Wayne for you. I bet he didn’t tell you that.”

Bruce’s train of thought screeched to a halt. “What?”

“You know, billionaire Bruce Wayne? Voted Sexiest Man in Gotham I don’t even know how many years in a row? I’m sure you’ve heard of him,” Lois said, starting to sound impatient. “He asked Clark out one time, and Clark turned him down because by then he knew you were his soulmate. He didn’t want to do it, either. He liked Bruce Wayne.”

Bruce didn’t have anything to say to this. His first instinct was to wonder why Clark himself hadn’t told him, but then he realized: Clark had tried to explain his reasoning for turning Bruce down, and he’d never gotten the chance.

“I’m only telling you all this so you’ll get it through your thick skull that he wants to be with you,” Lois continued, oblivious to Bruce’s internal crisis. “He wants to at least try.”

“I thought you were telling me so I wouldn’t tell Clark about your escapades in Gotham,” Bruce retorted.

“That’s a secondary benefit.”

They reached the train station not long after. Lois moved to get out of the car, but before she did, she paused and said, “I should probably thank you. For the evidence you gave me about the mayor.”

“Clark assured me you would be able to get the word out about the things he did and the kind of person he was,” Bruce said. “And you did.”

Lois nodded. She hesitated once again, then added firmly, “Think about what I said. Clark is a good guy. I’m not saying you have to be interested in him if you’re genuinely not, although I don’t know why you wouldn’t be. But if there’s some bullshit reason you’re not giving him the time of day, then ask him out already. Or whatever you superheroes do.”

With that, she finally exited the Batmobile and walked away, disappearing into the station.

Chapter Text

Clark

Clark kept coming to the Batcave to train, and luckily he didn’t run into Bruce mid-warm-up again, although the image was still fresh in his mind. He found himself thinking about it at inopportune moments, especially when he was around Bruce, and he almost felt guilty. But it was too late. Something had shifted, clicked into place. Clark had gone from passively wishing he and Bruce could attempt a relationship, if only because they were soulmates, to actively wanting to be with Bruce.

Fat chance of that happening. Bruce had made his feelings clear. Clark could only hope that one day Bruce would change his mind, and that that day would come sooner rather than later. In the meantime, Clark would settle for Bruce’s friendship, which was already more than he would have ever thought they could have.

At least that friendship seemed to be thriving. Since relocating to the Batcave, Bruce and Clark’s training sessions had become a lot less structured. The sessions were still productive, but the two of them also spent a fair amount of time catching up and socializing. Bruce was clearly more comfortable on his own turf, and he started opening up even more. They were learning more about each other, developing a rapport.

Clark had spent his entire life wanting to find and be with his soulmate. But he’d also spent his entire adult life wishing he had a friend who knew all his secrets and understood what it was like to live a double life. Bruce wasn’t willing to be his soulmate – not yet, maybe not ever – but he fit nicely into that second role that Clark had created for him.

As he spent more time in the Batcave, Clark also saw a bit more of Alfred and Dick. He didn’t have as much of an opportunity to properly get to know them, but at least he saw them around. Sometimes Dick would be training in the gym while Bruce and Clark were training or talking in another part of the Batcave. Sometimes Alfred would come down to relay a message to Bruce or ask if he or Clark needed anything to eat or drink.

On one occasion, Clark arrived at the Batcave to find only Dick there, idly throwing batarangs at a target. He looked up and smiled when he saw Clark.

“Hi, Clark.” He paused, seeming to second-guess himself. “Can I call you that?”

“Please do,” Clark said.

“Bruce sent me down to tell you that he’s on a work call and he’ll be down as soon as he can,” Dick explained. “He said to tell you sorry for keeping you waiting.”

“I don’t mind waiting.” Clark took a seat on a weight bench and watched Dick’s target practice. “How have you been? Leg feeling better?”

“It feels fine,” Dick replied. “I can walk and run on it. But Bruce still won’t let me go out, even though the mayor’s inauguration is soon, which means it’s going to get bad out there again. He’ll need backup.”

“You know why he’s waiting so long, right?” Clark said, hoping maybe he could explain things in a way that Bruce couldn’t, in a way that might get through to Dick. “He wants to be completely sure that, when you go out again, you’ll be safe. You had him really worried there. You had us both worried.”

Dick threw another batarang. It hit the center of the target. He turned and looked apologetically at Clark. “I know,” he said. “I’m sorry. Really, I won’t do it again. I promised Bruce, no more fighting Superman villains. And I mean it.”

He sounded sincere. Clark could only hope he stayed that way. He knew how changeable teenagers could be. “It’s dangerous to go up against an enemy you don’t understand,” he continued. “That’s part of why Bruce and I spent so much time training to fight the Joker and Lex Luthor. I don’t have much experience fighting the Joker, and Bruce doesn’t have much experience fighting Lex Luthor, so we needed to share strategies.”

Clark paused, and tried to think of the best way to phrase what he was trying to say. Fortunately, he’d always been good with words. “One of the most important things you can learn as a superhero is not to get yourself into situations you can’t get yourself out of. Once he feels like you’ve learned that, I’m sure Bruce will let you go out again.”

Dick seemed satisfied by this explanation. “You’re probably right. He won’t make me wait forever.” He turned away again, threw another batarang, and said, almost under his breath, “But it feels like forever.”

“I know what you mean.” Clark remembered being a teenager, and all the adults in his life telling him about all the things he had to wait to do until he was older. The wait felt impossibly long. “You know what else feels like forever? Waiting for Bruce to finish that call and get down here.”

Dick chuckled at this. “He’s always really busy with work at the beginning of the year.”

“I know how that is,” Clark empathized.

Dick walked over to the target and pulled out all the batarangs he’d stuck in it, picking up the few that had fallen to the floor. “I haven’t seen you at a Wayne Foundation fundraiser in a long time,” he remarked. “You don’t write about that stuff anymore?”

“I don’t cover events often. And now I know I don’t have to attend a fundraiser to see you or Bruce.”

“That’s true.” Dick put the batarangs away, then came to sit on an exercise machine next to Clark. “And you could spend time with Bruce outside of training, too, if you wanted to. If you asked him to do something, he’d probably say yes. You could even ask him on a date.”

Clark didn’t know what to say to that. Dick blinked up at him, those brown eyes staring right into his. He must have known, by then, that Clark was Bruce’s soulmate. Like Alfred, he must have figured it out the night Bruce and Clark had faced the Joker and Lex Luthor. He was probably wondering why the two of them weren’t together yet. How was Clark supposed to explain that in a way that was respectful of both his and Bruce’s privacy?

As luck would have it, Clark didn’t have to, because at that very moment, Bruce appeared. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Clark.”

“No problem,” Clark said with a smile and no small measure of relief. “I had a good time catching up with Dick here.”

“Can I stay and train with you guys?” Dick asked Bruce.

Bruce regarded him for a moment. “You can train next to us,” he decided.

Dick jumped up, bursting with energy all of a sudden. “I’ll go put my suit on.”

Dick wasn’t the only one who seemed to be pushing for Bruce and Clark to take things to the next level. The next time Clark hung out with Lois, they were watching movies in her apartment, talking about all the things they normally talked about: work, friends, family, politics. And, of course, the matter of Clark’s soulmate.

“How are things with Batman?” Lois asked, sounding casual. Almost too casual. Usually Clark was the one to bring up Batman, not the other way around.

“The same as usual,” Clark answered with a shrug. “If I had any major updates, I’d tell you.”

Lois fished a chocolate-covered pretzel out of the bag she’d set open on her coffee table. “He hasn’t made a move?”

“No. And neither have I. I told you, he said he’s not interested. I have to take that at face value.”

Lois crunched down on the pretzel. Chewed. Swallowed. Pointedly stared at the screen in front of them instead of at Clark. “Maybe he’s changed his mind.”

Clark narrowed his eyes. He knew Lois well enough to know when something was up, and something was definitely up. “Why would he have changed his mind?”

This time, Lois did meet Clark’s gaze, giving him a look that Clark couldn’t even begin to decipher. “People change their minds for any number of reasons,” she said cryptically.

“Lois,” Clark said, trying to sound serious. “Do you know something?”

“Clark,” Lois said right back to him, even more serious. “Why on earth would I know anything about Batman, of all people?”

It was a good question. As far as Clark knew, the only interaction Lois had ever had with Batman was when Bruce had found her arguing with Clark on a rooftop in Gotham and decided to give her evidence for her story.

As far as Clark knew. And another thing Clark knew: that Lois was extremely good at keeping secrets. “I don’t know,” he said. “You know a lot of things about a lot of people.”

“The only thing I know about Batman,” Lois assured him, “Is that he’s an idiot for not taking advantage of the fact that you’re his soulmate.”

Lois said this with a finality that brought their conversation to a definitive close. Clark wondered if he was just being paranoid. What could Lois possibly know about Bruce that he didn’t? What could she have learned that would lead her to believe Bruce might make a move?

Clark couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer, so he bookmarked these questions for later and returned his attention to the movie.

Bruce

“Do you and Clark ever see each other outside of your training?” Dick asked Bruce one evening after one of said training sessions. Bruce was suiting up in the Batcave, getting ready to go out for the night, and Dick was watching him like tonight could be the night Bruce would relent and let Dick rejoin him.

Tonight wasn’t the night. But it would probably be soon. Dick had mellowed out considerably since his brush with death; he was taking things more seriously, and being remarkably patient about Bruce keeping him benched for so long. And his leg was almost completely healed. There would be a scar left behind, but it didn’t seem to impact Dick’s movement. He would still be just as effective a fighter and acrobat as before.

“Sure,” Bruce said, in answer to Dick’s question. “On Justice League missions.”

“That doesn’t count,” Dick said. “You guys don’t hang out?”

“Not really.”

Dick frowned, looking confused. “I don’t get it. I thought you liked him.”

Bruce pulled on his gauntlets, then his utility belt. “I do like Clark. He’s my friend.”

“He’s supposed to be more than just your friend,” Dick reminded him with a glare. Ah. So that was where this conversation was going. Bruce had been worried it might veer in that direction; this wasn’t the first time Dick had tried to talk to his guardian about the matter of soulmates since he’d learned that Clark was Bruce’s. “He’s your soulmate. Aren’t you supposed to fall in love with each other?”

“I’m afraid it’s more complicated than that,” Bruce said vaguely, putting on the cowl to complete his nighttime ensemble.

Dick realized their discussion was coming to an end, whether he liked it or not. Bruce was about to leave (without him, again). He crossed his arms and grumbled, “Only because you make it more complicated.”

Though Dick had started not-so-subtly trying to get Bruce to talk about Clark being his soulmate since pretty much immediately after finding out about it, Alfred – with all the patience and maturity that came with his age – at least waited a respectable amount of time before bringing it up. It was after a joint mission that had ended in Bruce taking quite a battering and Clark flying him back to the Batcave (against Bruce’s wishes) so Alfred could patch him up.

Clark didn’t stay to chat, not wanting to push his luck, but he’d been there long enough for Alfred to once again see some of the new matching head injury he and Bruce had. Alfred mentioned it as he was disinfecting Bruce’s wounds, which had gotten a fair bit of ash and soot in them.

“Am I permitted to talk about it yet?” he asked. He didn’t need to specify what “it” was.

“I’ve already heard about it enough from Dick,” Bruce told him. He couldn’t keep the irritation out of his voice. He was in a bad mood already, and the idea of talking to Alfred about Clark made him feel even worse.

“Master Dick doesn’t know you quite as well as I do,” Alfred said with a glimmer of humor in his eyes. “Perhaps I would have some additional insight that your fifteen-year-old child has not been able to provide.”

“I’m not looking for advice, Alfred.”

“That’s a shame. You need it.” Alfred paused, momentarily allowing himself to focus on Bruce’s physical well-being over his emotional state. “Any broken bones?”

“Clark said he didn’t see anything broken,” Bruce answered. Clark had also said some choice words about Bruce’s “reckless lack of concern for his own health,” but Alfred didn’t need to know that he had an ally in that fight. He also didn’t mention that, while his bones were intact, he had definitely bruised some ribs.

Alfred looked at Bruce skeptically but decided to accept Clark’s word. “I worry about you, Master Bruce,” he said.

“You always do.”

“I wouldn’t have to if you behaved in a less worrisome manner. How long have you known Clark is your soulmate?”

Alfred was looking at Bruce with a steely gaze, one that told Bruce, in no uncertain terms, that there was no getting out of this conversation. He was literally trapped, with Alfred pulling a surgical needle and thread through his skin (although it wasn’t unheard of for Bruce to storm off mid-stitch).

Bruce was too worn-out to put up a fight, so he answered, “Not long before you found out.”

“Have you spoken to him about it?”

“I have.”

Alfred seemed surprised. “And nothing came of it?”

Bruce sighed. “I didn’t think he was interested.”

“What gave you that impression?”

Was Bruce really going to get into this? Apparently he was. “I asked him out,” he said bluntly. “He said no.”

“You asked him on a date,” Alfred clarified, “Or you propositioned him?”

Clearly Alfred thought Bruce was completely emotionally inept, if he thought Bruce didn’t know the difference between asking someone out and propositioning them. “On a date, Alfred.”

Now Alfred looked even more surprised, and a little chagrined. “Oh,” he said, somewhat quietly. “I see.”

Bruce could have left it there, with Alfred thinking Clark just wasn’t interested, feeling sorry for Bruce but thinking there was nothing he could do. But Bruce hadn’t stopped thinking about what Lois had said to him in the Batmobile. According to her, Clark was interested. So interested that he’d turned Bruce down, even though he was attracted to him, because he hadn’t yet known that Bruce was Batman, was his soulmate.

Bruce didn’t have to tell Alfred this. But, although he didn’t enjoy the process of talking to Alfred about his feelings, Alfred did usually have useful insight. And Bruce, in this matter, felt truly lost.

Maybe he was looking for advice.

So he explained, “I’ve since learned it wasn’t that straightforward. Clark didn’t turn me down because he wasn’t interested. He turned me down for other reasons. It’s complicated.”

Alfred took this in thoughtfully. He finished stitching up Bruce’s deepest wounds and began bandaging them. “What are you going to do about it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Bruce said truthfully.

“He’s your soulmate.”

Bruce felt a surge of frustration. “That’s what everyone keeps telling me. But I don’t know what that means. I lived most of my life without one.” He looked away. “I know what it means to him. At least I think I do. And I don’t know if I can be that for him.”

When Bruce turned back to Alfred, the older man was looking at him sympathetically. It was an old, familiar look. It was the look Alfred gave Bruce when he thought Bruce was judging himself too harshly. When Bruce was young and trying something new and didn’t get it right on the first try. When he was older and had failed to catch one of the criminals terrorizing Gotham. When he got into an argument with Dick and convinced himself he was a terrible parent.

“You’re putting too much pressure on yourself,” Alfred told him. “As usual.”

This was one of many subjects on which Alfred and Bruce had never seen eye to eye. Bruce was a perfectionist, and on some level he knew it was unhealthy, but he also didn’t believe he could afford to be any other way. Not when he was the only person standing between Gotham and complete chaos. Not when he was the CEO of a multibillion dollar corporation. Not when he was one of the leaders of the Justice League. And not when he was responsible for raising and protecting a child. But Alfred didn’t see it that way. All he saw was how Bruce’s perfectionism was destroying him.

“You know your parents were soulmates,” Alfred said, when Bruce didn’t say anything. As it always did, the mention of Bruce’s parents was like a knife, but it was a knife that had dulled with time. And while Bruce refused to let almost anyone else talk to him about his parents, Alfred had always been the exception, because he’d known them even better than Bruce had, and had suffered almost as much from their deaths.

Bruce had known that his parents were soulmates. The way their obituaries and, later, their biographies told the story, they were a perfect match. They had the same interests, the same passions; they both cared deeply for Gotham and wanted to make the city a better place. They’d dated for only a year before getting married. In pictures of them, they looked almost unbearably fond of one another. That was what soulmates were supposed to be.

Alfred continued, telling his version of the story. “They were, as they say, meant to be together. But that doesn’t mean their relationship was perfect. They had their differences, plenty of them. They argued. About their charity work. About their families, who never liked each other. About what school to send their son to.”

Now that Alfred mentioned it, Bruce did remember heated discussions in hushed tones taking place in his father’s study. His parents would cut themselves off midsentence when Bruce entered the room. When he got a little older, he learned to listen through the crack in the door, but Alfred always caught him before he heard anything interesting.

“When they fought, doors were slammed, words were said that neither of them truly meant.” Distant memories of slamming doors and raised voices, always after Bruce was put to bed. “But they always forgave each other, and they never stopped loving each other.

“Even a relationship between soulmates takes dedication and work from both parties. And it also takes time. It doesn’t blossom overnight.”

Bruce was pulled from his memories when he realized Alfred had finished talking. He didn’t often let himself think about the time before his parents’ deaths. He’d forgotten so much of how things used to be, had glossed over the pitfalls in his parents’ relationship the way people so often did when they remembered the dead. But Alfred was right. His parents’ relationship hadn’t been perfect. No relationship was.

Still, it felt like a stretch to apply that lesson to Bruce’s relationship with Clark. “All those sound like typical problems every couple faces,” Bruce argued. “I don’t have typical problems.” He had a city – and a world – to protect. He had a kid who was, realistically, old enough to be his younger brother. He had severe trauma and multiple mental illnesses.

But Alfred was unconvinced. “Neither, I daresay, does Master Clark,” he pointed out. “Perhaps, instead of deciding for him that you can’t give him what he wants, you should talk to him about it and let him come to his own conclusion.”

Alfred bandaged the last of Bruce’s more serious wounds and sent him upstairs to rest. Bruce didn’t think he would get much sleep. Not with everything Alfred had just given him to think about.

Chapter Text

Clark

Clark wasn’t keeping Bruce updated on Lex Luthor’s activities. The Joker was still imprisoned in Arkham Asylum – Luthor hadn’t broken him out again – and as far as Clark was concerned, that meant he could take over from here, without Bruce’s help.

It wasn’t that Clark didn’t enjoy teaming up with Bruce, because he very much did. They were more effective together than either of them were on their own; they always had been. And now that they were friends, their team-ups also doubled as bonding experiences.

It wasn’t that Clark was possessive of Luthor as a villain, either. Bruce had helped him fight Lex Luthor many times, even before Luthor teamed up with the Joker. Sometimes Clark needed a hand with the detective work involved in deciphering one of Luthor’s plans; sometimes he just realized he was in over his head and decided he liked the odds of two-on-one better than one-on-one.

But this time was different. Clark still felt guilty about what had happened to Dick the last time he and Bruce had faced Lex Luthor. He still felt guilty for putting Bruce in such a terrible position, having to choose who he would save first, knowing he had to get both Dick and Clark out of the water faster than they could drown.

Clark was sure that the next time he and Bruce faced Luthor, Dick would actually listen to his adopted father and stay home and out of danger. But that didn’t mean Luthor wouldn’t come up with some equally diabolical scheme to exploit the fact that he now knew that Bruce and Clark were always going to save each other, even if it meant putting their own lives in jeopardy or letting Luthor escape.

Clark couldn’t risk that happening. He couldn’t, in good conscience, take Bruce with him into this fight. And now that the Joker was no longer in the picture, Clark felt confident he could finish the job and take Luthor down.

There was another reason Bruce would want to join the fight against Luthor. Ever since Luthor had almost killed Dick, Clark could tell Bruce was nursing a personal grudge against the man. Which was even more incentive for Clark to keep Bruce out of it. Bruce got scary when he held grudges, and sometimes ended up doing things he otherwise wouldn’t and would later regret. He leaned more toward vengeance than justice. He never broke his personal rule not to kill anyone, but he could inflict plenty of pain without killing.

As much as Luthor deserved everything he had coming to him, Clark couldn’t, in good faith, let Bruce take out his anger on him. Not for Luthor’s sake. For Bruce’s.

Not that Clark wasn’t also a little bit tempted to dropkick Luthor into orbit for what he’d done to Dick. But – no offense to Bruce – Clark had more faith in his own self-control than in Bruce’s. Besides, this wasn’t the first time Clark had dealt with Luthor coming after the people he cared about.

Of course, Clark didn’t tell Bruce any of this. He knew Bruce would insist on making it a joint effort. Luthor had been leaning heavily on the Kryptonite lately; he was really trying to take Clark down, and Clark could tell it made Bruce nervous. But Clark had been training with Kryptonite for months with Bruce. He knew he could handle Luthor on his own.

Clark used all his usual tricks to figure out Luthor’s next move. This time there were no fishy real estate purchases, but LexCorp did receive a mysterious shipment from overseas; Clark flew to the harbor and watched workers in LexCorp jumpsuits unload the shipping containers in the middle of the night. He was entirely unsurprised to find that the crates the workers were carting into the back of a LexCorp truck were lined with lead.

Clark followed the truck to its destination, watched the workers unload its contents into a warehouse (it was always a warehouse, wasn’t it?).

It would probably be smart for him to gather more intel and come back later. That was what Bruce would do. Really everything about the whole scenario screamed “trap”: the mystery shipment, the clearly labeled LexCorp truck driving through Metropolis in the middle of the night, the lead-lined crates.

Luthor’s last warehouse-based trap hadn’t worked because he and the Joker hadn’t been able to get their shit together before Clark and Bruce found them. Otherwise, his traps were usually effective. And Clark, admittedly, fell for them all the time.

But surely whatever was in those crates was either extremely dangerous or extremely illegal, likely both. And if Clark caught Luthor red-handed with dangerous or illegal materials, Luthor would go to prison. And then he wouldn’t be able to hurt anyone (until he inevitably made parole, because he was ludicrously wealthy and the American justice system was broken).

Later on, Clark wouldn’t feel guilty about flying headfirst into what he knew was probably a trap. But he would feel a little guilty about how quickly he made the decision.

At least he was stealthy about it. He’d learned something from Bruce. He couldn’t see through the warehouse’s walls – and Bruce was right, all that lead had to be a health hazard, and probably a violation of some sort of health or building code, but Clark was a journalist, not a lawyer, and he was trying to send Luthor to prison, not force him to pay a hefty OSHA fine – but he could hear the workers’ movements inside. He forced open one of the loading doors – just enough for him to crawl inside – in a part of the warehouse where he couldn’t hear any activity.

Clark’s vision adjusted to the low light. Now that he was inside, he could scan his surroundings. The workers were still unloading the truck across the warehouse; in between them and Clark were rows and rows stacked with various raw materials for manufacturing. Perfectly ordinary. Nothing lined with lead. The only suspicious items – more lead-lined crates – seemed to be over near the workers.

Clark waited until the workers finished unloading and piled back into the LexCorp truck. If this was a trap, he didn’t want any civilians involved. It wasn’t Luthor’s employees’ fault their boss was an evil megalomaniac.

Finally, when the loading door opposite him slammed shut and plunged the entire warehouse into darkness, Clark flew over to the lead-lined crates. He chose one at random and pried it open with his super strength.

It was empty.

The lights throughout the warehouse came on, and an alarm blared. Clark cursed. He didn’t feel the same sense of dread or impending doom as he used to when he fell for one of Luthor’s traps, but he didn’t feel good about it either. He’d known from the beginning that entering the warehouse was a bad idea, and he’d done it anyway.

He was never going to hear the end of this from Bruce.

Clark took off, intent on getting out of there before Luthor showed up, but was immediately grounded when a fine green mist sprayed out of the ceiling. What had appeared to be a garden-variety fire sprinkler system installed in the warehouse was instead part of Luthor’s elaborate trap. (Of course it was; the kind of CEO who didn’t care about exposing his employees to hazardous amounts of lead wasn’t going to bother with fire safety. Maybe the OSHA angle was worth looking into, if Clark made it out of this alive.) The aerosolized Kryptonite wasn’t concentrated enough to instantly depower Clark, but flight was always the first of his powers to go, and he went crashing to the ground. He got up and ran, his speed fading with every step.

By the time Clark reached the nearest loading door, he was coated in Kryptonite and starting to feel its effects. He couldn’t lift the door more than a few inches off the ground before his strength gave out.

In a last-ditch effort to escape, Clark got a running start and threw himself at the loading door. He left a Superman-shaped dent, but didn’t break through.

There was nothing Clark could do but sit and wait for his nemesis to arrive.

Thankfully, the not-sprinklers ran out of Kryptonite to spray at him before Clark’s body started shutting down, but he was still coated in the stuff, and so was the entire warehouse. He tried to shake some of it off to no avail. He felt sluggish, weak; his whole body hurt.

Maybe he should have brought Bruce along on this mission after all.

Bruce

Bruce was getting ready to go out for the night when Dick noticed the bruises.

“You have something on your face,” Dick said, staring at Bruce curiously. “It looks like a scrape or something. It wasn’t there a second ago.”

Concern bloomed on Dick’s features as he and Bruce realized, in unison, what that meant.

Bruce looked into the nearest reflective surface and confirmed that what Dick had said was true. He stepped out of the Batsuit, which he had just finished putting on, and pulled his undershirt over his head. Just as he’d feared, a whole series of marks and scrapes trailed from his face down his torso, disappearing under his leggings.

“But Clark doesn’t get injured,” Dick said. “So it has to be Kryptonite, right?” He couldn’t take his eyes off the marks. Neither could Bruce.

Clark must have gone after Lex Luthor without him. Bruce should have seen this coming. He should have seen it coming because, if the Joker had been the only one to escape instead of Luthor, Bruce would have done exactly the same thing.

“I need to find him,” Bruce said, putting his undershirt and the Batsuit back on. “Go back upstairs. You’re staying home tonight.”

Dick hesitated, and Bruce could tell he wanted to argue, but he ultimately complied, changing out of the Robin suit while Bruce booted up the Batcave computer.

Bruce had never been more grateful for his inside knowledge of how massive multinational conglomerates operated. Combined with the advice he’d received from Clark on how to track down Luthor and a bit of hacking, it took Bruce less than half an hour to identify a suspicious late-night shipment one of LexCorp’s warehouses had just received.

He didn’t know how much more time he had, if he had any. He had to run with the one lead he’d found and hope it was the right one. He flew the Batplane to Metropolis, landed it near the warehouse (not directly on top of it, in case this one was also rigged to self-destruct). He knew he wasn’t strong enough to force open one of the loading doors, so he broke in through a window, which was set high in the building, above the loading doors, and just tall enough for him to slide through. He descended quietly once he was inside and surveyed his surroundings.

The panic in Bruce’s chest that had arisen when he’d seen Clark’s injuries on his body abated slightly when he laid eyes on Clark, alive. But the scene inside the warehouse was grim. The entire space was coated in a radioactive-green film. So was Clark himself. Bruce had never seen so much Kryptonite.

A familiar fury curdled Bruce’s insides when he saw Luthor. This was the man who had tried to kill his son. This was the man who had tried to kill his soulmate.

“And this time,” Luthor was saying in that smug, arrogant voice, “You don’t have Batman here to save you.”

Bruce watched Clark’s expression shift from equal parts fear and determination to relief when he spotted Bruce creeping up behind Luthor. Clark turned to Luthor with a confidence that didn’t match the rest of his appearance – bloody, battered, and green – and said, “I wouldn’t be so sure about that.”

Luthor spun around to find Bruce standing directly behind him, glowering. He tried to salvage the situation for himself by quickly masking his surprise. “Batman,” he said, and Bruce felt a surge of sick satisfaction at the way the smugness had evaporated from Luthor’s tone. “Just as I expected. I’ll have you know—”

Bruce cut Luthor off by clapping restraints onto his wrists. “You’re not talking your way out of this one, Luthor,” he said in a voice that was closer to a growl. “You’re going to prison.”

“I’ve been before,” Luthor gloated. “It doesn’t seem to stick.”

“And I’ll be there when you get out again. I’ll be there wherever you go. You’re probably too much of a narcissist to ever admit that you made a mistake, but know this,” Bruce got right up in Luthor’s face, and he enunciated his next words clearly, because if he wanted Luthor to remember anything, it was: “You never should have come after Robin.”

Once the police had arrived, taken Bruce and Clark’s statements, and carted Luthor off to jail – on charges of attempted murder and maybe even the use and possession of a chemical weapon, although Luthor’s lawyers could probably argue out of that one – Bruce finally allowed his righteous anger to ebb. His concern for Clark swelled to take its place.

“So you just thought you’d finish this fight without me,” he said. A truck of firefighters had shown up with the police, at Bruce’s request, and hosed the Kryptonite off Clark. He would still probably need a second, more thorough scrubbing, but his wounds had healed, and hopefully he’d regained most of his strength.

“Luthor didn’t break out the Joker again,” Clark replied. “I figured that was where your involvement stopped.”

“You didn’t think I would want to help capture the man who tried to kill my son?” Another surge of anger; Bruce tamped it down before it took over. He was getting better at that.

“I didn’t want to give him a chance to do anything else to you.”

“So instead you let him do terrible things to you.”

“I realize now that it was stupid,” Clark admitted. “But Luthor is my villain. He’s my responsibility. I’m the one he wants dead. That was why he captured Robin in the first place: to keep you occupied while I drowned. I also—” Clark cut himself off, sighed, and continued. “I didn’t know how you would handle fighting Luthor after what he did. I underestimated you.”

Surprisingly enough, Bruce was less bothered by Clark calling into question his objectivity and more bothered by the first part of Clark’s statement. “You don’t blame yourself for what happened that night,” he said slowly, “Do you?”

“Of course I do,” Clark confirmed. “How could I not? You and Robin ended up in that situation because of me.”

Bruce shook his head. “That’s not how this works. Robin is my son. It’s my responsibility to protect him.”

This didn’t seem to satisfy Clark. “I know he’s your son, but I care about him too. I care about both of you.”

The words slid past a chink in Bruce’s emotional armor that he hadn’t known existed. He felt unexpectedly warm inside. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to, but instead of pushing it away like he usually would, he allowed it to stay, inspected it closely like a sample under one of the microscopes in the Batcave.

Clark cared about him.

For someone who’d spent so many years of his life convinced he was destined to be alone, convinced he was unlovable, that meant… It meant something.

“And we both care about you,” Bruce said. It wasn’t quite the “I care about you too” that Clark deserved, but it was the best Bruce could do at the moment, still raw from the whirlwind of events that had unexpectedly gone down that night. Hopefully it was enough for now. The smile Clark gave him told him that it might be.

They boarded the Batplane – Bruce wasn’t letting Clark fly so soon after being exposed to that much Kryptonite – and flew to Gotham. Bruce said he wanted to run a few checks on Clark to make sure he was in the clear, but he mostly wanted to keep Clark nearby for at least the remainder of the night. His irrational brain couldn’t be convinced that Clark was no longer in danger.

“How did you find me?” Clark asked mid-flight. “How did you even know to look?”

“When your injuries started showing up on my body, I knew something was wrong,” Bruce explained. “I used all the tricks you taught me for finding Luthor, plus a few of my own. But you’re lucky it happened before I went out for the night. With the cowl on, I never would have seen your injuries. I might still not have noticed them if Dick hadn’t been there to point them out.”

Bruce paused, wondered if he was going to add what he wanted to say next, and decided it was worth it to try to convince Clark not to take chances with his life. (Not that either of them would ever stop.) “And you’re lucky I’m your soulmate,” he said. “I had the skills and knowledge to find you and stop Luthor before he succeeded in killing you.”

In Bruce’s peripheral vision, he saw Clark gazing at him with some emotion plain on his face, but he couldn’t take his attention off the sky, so he couldn’t figure out what the emotion was. “You’re right. I am lucky. Thank you for saving my life. Again.”

“Maybe one of these days we’ll be even, with how many times you’ve saved mine,” Bruce said, almost a joke, although it didn’t manage to sound like one in the midst of such a serious conversation.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Clark said, “We already are.”

For several long minutes, they flew in silence. As Bruce thought about how reckless Clark had been to try to finish this fight without him, he was reminded of another fight against Lex Luthor, years ago.

“You told me once to consider how Robin would feel if I died.”

“I remember,” Clark said.

“How do you think he would feel if you died?” Bruce paused again, felt the weight of his next words before he spoke them: “How do you think I would feel?”

And still, it wasn’t “I care about you,” but it was something very close.

Chapter Text

Clark

One thing Clark realized about Bruce was this: Every time Clark thought he had a handle on how the man felt about him, and what the state of their relationship was, everything would change.

It happened three years ago, when Clark assumed he and Bruce would continue to dislike each other for the rest of their uneasy alliance. Then Bruce had adopted Dick, and Clark had realized he actually was capable of feeling things, and caring about others.

Their professional relationship had improved, and Clark would have been content to remain distant-but-not-unfriendly colleagues, if only because it was miles ahead of where they’d begun. Then he’d discovered Bruce was his soulmate, and not long after, Bruce had come to the same conclusion.

They were already on the road to friendship when they happened to learn each other’s secret identities, and that sped things along. And now Clark was finally feeling secure in that friendship, feeling like he and Bruce had something good between them, and maybe it wasn’t romance, but it was camaraderie and trust, and that was almost as good.

And now. Now Clark didn’t know what to think. After the way Bruce had spoken to him after saving his life (again) – the way he’d basically admitted, not once but twice, to caring for Clark, and Clark knew how much that meant, coming from him – the lines between friendship and romance were starting to blur.

Where there had once been occasional moments of tension between Bruce and Clark, now it felt like they were constantly walking on a wire, standing on the edge of a cliff; tension permeated the air between them at all times.

Clark didn’t know what to do about it. He still didn’t know for sure whether he and Bruce were on the same page. Whether Bruce’s admissions meant he’d changed his mind, decided he was interested in Clark after all, or whether they were simply another display of (completely platonic) trust. Clark couldn’t risk ruining all the progress they’d made so far by reaching for something that wasn’t there. It was still possible the tension was entirely one-sided, or if it wasn’t, that Bruce wasn’t ready to acknowledge it.

But at the same time, Clark desperately wanted. There were times when he looked at Bruce and all he could think about was shoving him up against the nearest wall and kissing his lights out. Other times when he looked at him and felt bowled over by the sheer force of all the words he wanted to say but couldn’t.

He just needed a sign. And maybe he’d had plenty already, but Clark was still learning how to read Bruce, so if there were any, he’d probably missed them.

He’d hoped things might finally come to a head when Bruce asked him to stay the night after Lex Luthor’s arrest. Bruce told him it was because they didn’t know how the aerosolized Kryptonite would affect Clark’s system – he’d been exposed to a lot of it – but Clark suspected there was another reason. Bruce wanted to keep Clark nearby.

Briefly, Clark entertained a fantasy that Bruce would take the opportunity to make a move. He already had Clark staying the night. It would be easy to ask Clark to spend the night in his bedroom. Clark would have said yes. But instead, Bruce led him to a guest room and told him to sleep well.

Clark didn’t know what to think.

Winter turned to spring, and Clark waited. Lois was nominated for a Pulitzer for her exposé of the Mayor of Gotham. She was going to New York for the awards ceremony, and there was an afterparty she’d invited Clark to as her plus-one.

No surprise, Lois won the award, and Clark couldn’t have been happier for her. Of course, she didn’t explicitly mention Batman in her acceptance speech, but she did thank a nameless “friend of a friend” for the vital role he’d played in her investigation.

Clark was looking forward to celebrating Lois’ victory at the afterparty. For the first time in a long time, Bruce Wayne was the farthest thing from his mind.

So of course that would be exactly when Clark ran into him.

He was standing off on his own with a champagne flute in his hand, looking handsome as ever. In his suit in the dim lighting of the room, he almost didn’t look real. He looked like he belonged on a movie set, or the cover of a magazine.

That was Clark’s soulmate. He was a lucky man.

Lois was deep in conversation with the winner of that year’s Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting, so Clark didn’t feel guilty about walking over to Bruce with a stupid grin on his face and saying, “I didn’t expect to run into you here.”

Bruce grinned right back at him. This was accompanied by an appreciative glance up and down Clark’s body that gave Clark a quiet thrill. Bruce hadn’t looked at him like that since before they’d learned each other’s secret identities, back when they were just a billionaire and a journalist, flirting. “I got an invitation,” Bruce said. “And I thought you might be here with Lois, so I accepted it.”

Bruce had come all the way to New York just to see him. Even though they saw each other every week. That had to be some kind of romantic gesture. Didn’t it?

They started a conversation about the other prize winners and finalists. Bruce had read all the relevant material, because of course he had, and so had Clark. They shared their opinions on who they thought should have won, and traded their usual barbs when they disagreed. It was just like the times they’d flirted at Bruce’s fundraisers, only with an added layer underneath it that neither of them acknowledged but both were aware of.

Clark had never felt more like they were on the edge of something. Tonight was the night; he was sure of it. If Bruce didn’t ask him out, then Clark would do it. He couldn’t wait any longer.

Everything screeched to a halt, though, when Lois pulled him aside.

“What are you doing?” she hissed, looking scandalized.

“We were just talking,” Clark said, because of course, she didn’t know. She still thought Bruce was just some billionaire who’d asked Clark out once.

Lois gave him a look. “That wasn’t just talking. That was flirting. You already turned him down once because you have a soulmate. Did you change your mind?”

She sounded honest-to-God concerned about the prospect of Clark going out with Bruce instead of waiting for Batman. It sparked a memory: the movie night at her place, when Lois was acting weird about Batman. Like she knew something Clark didn’t.

“It’s complicated,” Clark said. “I’m not giving up on Batman, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He squinted at her, suspicious. “Although I don’t know why you would be.”

“He’s your soulmate,” Lois said, like she’d ever cared about soulmates before. She respected that Clark cared about it, but she’d never set much stock in the idea herself. Until now. For some reason.

“You were the one who told me I should date Bruce if I wanted to,” Clark reminded her. “What made you change your mind?”

Lois didn’t answer. Clark crossed his arms and pulled out a look he hadn’t used on her since they’d dated: the Guilt Trip. “Lois,” he said, putting emphasis on the word.

Lois caved. She was already whispering, and now she lowered her voice so only Clark could hear it. “I talked to Batman.”

That was just about the last thing Clark had expected. Up until that point in his life, Lois and Bruce had existed in two completely separate spheres. The idea that those spheres had collided… Clark should have known it would happen eventually, but it honestly hadn’t occurred to him. “When?” Clark asked, though the first question that had come to his mind was how?

“I was in Gotham a few months ago—”

“What?” Gotham was still a dangerous place for Lois. Clark couldn’t believe— Scratch that. He could definitely believe that she’d gone there anyway, but he still strongly opposed it. “What were you doing there?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Writing another story?”

“Yes, we can talk about it later.” Oh, they would talk about it later. “I ran into Batman and he asked me about you and I told him you turned down Bruce Wayne for him. And if you turn around and start flirting with that man again I’m going to look like a liar.”

Everything Lois had said thus far had come as a surprise to Clark, but this above all: “He asked you about me?”

“Like a fucking middle schooler with a crush, Clark, yes,” Lois confirmed, and something in Clark’s heart leapt.

His conversation with Lois may have crushed Clark’s dreams of spending the rest of the night flirting with his soulmate – he didn’t want to upset Lois, on today of all days – but it also sent his hopes skyrocketing. Bruce’s presence at the afterparty had been the sign he was looking for, and now he had even more information to confirm his suspicions. Bruce was interested.

“Are the two of you going back to Metropolis tonight?” Bruce asked Lois and Clark when they returned from their sidebar.

“That was the plan,” Clark said apologetically, trying to communicate nonverbally that he wished he could stay.

Lois glanced between the two of them, nervous again. “We should probably leave soon, now that you mention it,” she said quickly.

Bruce turned to Clark, like he really didn’t expect Clark to leave. “She’s right,” Clark had to say. He saw the brief flash of disappointment cross Bruce’s features before he shut it away.

“In that case,” Bruce said, extending a hand to each of them in turn. “Congratulations again on the win tonight, Ms. Lane. It was well-deserved.”

“Thank you,” Lois loosened up enough to give a polite smile. “Now we need to get Clark one.”

“I’m sure it’s only a matter of time.” Bruce caught Clark’s gaze one last time, those blue, blue eyes staring right into him. “Goodnight, Clark.”

“Goodnight, Bruce.”

Bruce

The Pulitzer afterparty had ended… disappointingly. Bruce had only attended in the hopes of seeing Clark. Not just seeing him, but asking him out again, this time (hopefully) with a different result.

Bruce had done a lot of thinking about it. He’d known he felt more than just friendship for Clark for quite a while, but he hadn’t thought those feelings were reciprocated. Once he discovered that they probably were, it had taken time for Bruce to decide whether having a soulmate was really something he wanted, after so many years of convincing himself that it wasn’t.

He had still been thinking about it the night Clark almost got himself killed (again). He lay awake all night after returning to Wayne Manor, knowing that Clark was asleep in the guest room just across the hall.

Some time in between saving Clark, flying him to Gotham, and inviting him to stay the night, Bruce had made his decision.

This thing between him and Clark, this bond… Maybe it only existed because they were soulmates. Or maybe he and Clark were soulmates because of the bond that existed between them. Bruce would never know. All he knew was that he’d gone from distrusting Clark to trusting him with his life, and his secrets, and his family. From disliking him to genuinely caring about him. He didn’t just want Clark; like an ache in his chest, Bruce needed him.

It was terrifying. And exhilarating. He should have run away from it, but Bruce had spent his entire vigilante career running toward the things he should have run away from. It was a bad idea, to act on this thing between him and Clark, but it was a bad idea in the way that adopting a twelve-year-old orphan from the circus had been a bad idea, in that it might just be the best bad idea Bruce had ever had.

So he’d secured himself an invitation to the Pulitzer afterparty. He’d found Clark there, and talked to him, and flirted with him, in the uncomplicated way they used to, but with a new undercurrent of something dangerous and exciting. He’d been about to ask Clark the question he’d asked him once before – “Will you go out with me?” – when Lois had pulled Clark away.

They’d left shortly thereafter, and Bruce had panicked, wondering if it was possible that he’d misread the situation again.

He was driving back to Gotham when he got his answer. His phone rang, showing up on the touchscreen dashboard of his car: Clark Kent, the caller ID read. Bruce answered immediately.

“I need to explain.”

Clark hadn’t even said hello; he sounded breathless, almost frantic, like he’d flown straight to Metropolis, dropped off Lois, and called Bruce the second he was alone.

“Explain what?” Bruce asked, guarding his tone in a way that he’d fallen out of the habit of doing around Clark. He still felt off-kilter. Bruce was used to trusting his own judgment, but relationships were one area where he didn’t feel like he could.

“I realize you were flirting with me tonight,” Clark said.

In his anxiety, Bruce took this as Clark accusing him of something, even though Clark’s tone held absolutely no malice. “I wasn’t—” Bruce began defensively, but Clark cut him off.

“You were,” he insisted. “And I was flirting back, until Lois pulled me aside and told me that apparently you and her had a little chat when she was in Gotham.” Okay, now Clark was accusing Bruce of something, but he still didn’t sound upset about it. Merely surprised. “Apparently she told you that I turned you down because I had a soulmate. Right?”

Bruce didn’t know why he’d ever thought Lois would keep that conversation between them. “That did happen, yes.”

“At the time, obviously, I didn’t realize who you were,” Clark explained.

“Yes, I put that together.”

“But Lois still doesn’t know who you are. So when she saw me flirting with you, she thought I was going back on what I’d told her about how I wasn’t going to date you because I wanted to date… you.” Clark said all of this quickly, and trailed off at the end, sounding a little confused by his own words. Bruce was relieved he wasn’t the only one of them who was in over his head.

He decided to attempt a joke, because he knew Clark enjoyed it when he did that. “Are you sure alcohol doesn’t have any effect on you?”

“No,” Clark replied with a smile in his voice, “But you sure do.”

Bruce felt like his heart had stopped beating. “What does that mean?”

Clark was silent for seconds that felt like hours. Bruce didn’t breathe the entire time. He was grateful to the highway ahead of him, quiet though it was at this time of night, for giving him something to focus his attention on.

“It means I can’t fucking think straight around you sometimes,” Clark admitted.

Bruce exhaled, struck with a sudden image of the way Clark had looked at him in the Batcave when he’d caught Bruce mid-warm-up. “And I didn’t even have to take my shirt off this time,” he said.

“Oh my God.” Clark sounded scandalized. “Did you do that on purpose?”

Bruce laughed, loud and clear into the night. He felt something like the adrenaline rush of a fight, something like the thrill of a sexual encounter, and something else he couldn’t compare to anything he’d ever felt before. “No,” he said. “But I did enjoy it.”

“Well, take me on a date first next time.”

It was a joke. Bruce knew it was a joke. But he said, “Okay.”

Clark was audibly taken aback. “‘Okay’?” he repeated, a question.

It seemed Bruce hadn’t been clear enough the first time. So he said it as plainly as he could: “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

“Yes.” Clark got the word out before Bruce had even finished asking the question, and Bruce felt that same swell of emotion: the adrenaline, the thrill, the something else. He realized, all at once, how ill-equipped he was to handle this new phase of his and Clark’s relationship.

“I—” Bruce paused and gathered his thoughts. “We should probably talk about this more.”

“I agree. Apparently we haven’t been doing enough of that.”

“We probably shouldn’t do it over the phone.”

“How about we do it on our date?” Clark had a smile in his voice again. Bruce could picture his face. “When did you have in mind?”

“We already have a training session on the calendar,” Bruce said. “We could repurpose it.” Bruce knew he wasn’t going to be of any use to Clark if they did attempt to train later that week, before they had a chance to go on their date; he was good at blocking out his emotions and focusing on the task at hand, but even he had his limits.

“Sounds good,” Clark said. “Should I still meet you at the Batcave?”

“You can meet me at my front door.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Looking forward to it.”

Bruce smiled. “So am I.”

Dick was suited up and ready in the Batcave when Bruce finally made it home. He took one look at Bruce and frowned. “Why do you look so…?” He trailed off and squinted at Bruce, like he couldn’t decide exactly how Bruce looked, but he knew there was something off about it.

“What?” Bruce asked brusquely, already disliking where this conversation was going.

“…Happy?” Dick concluded uncertainly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

This was exactly the wrong thing to say, because it only convinced Dick that he was right. “You look like you just won the lottery,” he said as Bruce suited up. “I mean, not that winning the lottery would make a difference for you, but you know what I mean. What happened? Was Clark at the party? Did Lois win?”

“Yes, Lois won,” Bruce confirmed, “And yes, Clark was at the party.”

A light went on in Dick’s eyes. “Did he finally ask you out?” he asked, practically bouncing up and down with excitement. In moments like this, he was every bit the twelve-year-old Bruce had adopted and trained, despite the three years and many fights between then and now. Maybe that – the warm feeling of nostalgia in his chest – was why Bruce responded the way he did.

“I asked him out.”

Dick’s eyes went wide under the domino mask. “Seriously? On a date?”

“He’ll be here Thursday.” Bruce tried to sound like he wasn’t anxiously awaiting the day. Dick knew him well enough by now that he probably failed.

“He’s coming here? Wow!” This time, Dick actually did bounce up and down. “And that reminds me, I didn’t want to tell you because, well, things with you and your soulmate have been so, um… complicated,” he said diplomatically, “But, uh, look at this!”

Dick undressed just enough to reveal the top half of his torso and pointed to a line of bruises across his chest. “They’re not mine,” he said. “And they’re not the first ones I’ve had. I can’t always remember if they are mine or not, because I have a lot of bruises, but these ones I definitely remember aren’t mine.” He grinned up at Bruce, awaiting his adopted father’s response.

Bruce gave Dick an answering smile that he hoped adequately conveyed how happy he was for his son. “That’s great,” he said.

“I hope I meet them soon,” Dick said.

“Don’t be in too much of a rush,” Bruce admonished. “You’re only fifteen.” He paused, and belatedly noted Dick’s careful word choice. “‘Them’?” he repeated. He’d been expecting “her.” Dick had never said anything about his sexuality, and Bruce had simply assumed. Even though he, of all people, should have known better.

Dick shrugged, looking only a little self-conscious. “Yeah. I dunno. They could be a guy or a girl. Either way would be okay with me.” He was blushing. “I didn’t tell you that either because I’m still figuring it out. But… yeah.”

“Good to know,” Bruce said, completely nonjudgmental. He was, privately, thrilled that Dick trusted him enough to open up about two extremely personal subjects in a row. “And it’s okay to still be figuring it out. Like I said, there’s no rush.”

Dick’s blush deepened. “Thanks, Bruce.”

Chapter Text

Clark

Clark didn’t tell Lois about his date. He still wasn’t entirely convinced it was real, that his phone conversation with Bruce wasn’t a detailed, hopeful dream. Talking about it felt like jinxing it. Clark wasn’t normally superstitious, but the matter of soulmates could make a believer out of the most hardened skeptic.

Case in point, it even seemed to be making a believer out of Bruce.

On Thursday, Clark left work earlier than he usually would – Lois shot him a questioning look as he gathered his things, and Clark replied with an expression that hopefully communicated I’ll tell you later, because he would have to tell her eventually – and spent a good hour agonizing over what to wear. Like a middle-schooler with a crush, he thought, remembering Lois’ words.

He ended up not changing much out of what he wore to work: same button-up, same shoes, no tie, exchanged his slacks for khakis. He checked his hair no less than four times in the mirror, even though his hair always looked good, even after flying; it was a point of pride for him. Clark had good genes. But so did the man he was about to go on a date with.

Once he ran out of things to micromanage about his appearance, Clark flew to Gotham, taking a winding, circuitous route because he knew the wind in his face would clear his head. Not that it mattered. He landed on the front steps of Wayne Manor and rang the doorbell. Bruce himself answered the door, not Alfred, and one look at him sent Clark back into an emotional tailspin.

Bruce also looked like he hadn’t changed much after coming home from work – crisp white shirt, slacks, but no jacket or tie – although Clark was attuned enough to him by now to notice the small differences. For one, Bruce was wearing a different cologne than he usually did.

This was, Clark thought distantly, another reason Clark had never suspected Bruce Wayne of being Batman, or Batman of being Bruce Wayne: The only thing Batman ever smelled of was blood, sweat, and kevlar, with a distantly clean scent underneath it, the smell Clark associated with people who had good hygiene but didn’t bother with fragrance. But Bruce Wayne had always worn the same cologne, with notes of tobacco and vanilla. Today he’d changed it up. It was more of a leathery scent, something closer to his Batman smell. Clark wondered if that was on purpose. Knowing Bruce, it almost certainly was.

Bruce’s hair was also different, less perfect than it usually was, and it lent him an air of intimacy. His sleeves, rolled up to his elbows, contributed to the effect.

Clark felt more breathless than he had when he’d seen Bruce working out in the Batcave. That had merely been a happenstance. This… this was for him.

“You look good,” he managed as Bruce ushered him inside.

“So do you.” Bruce let his gaze linger appreciatively. “But that’s always the case.”

Fuck. And here Clark had thought a brush with Kryptonite on a bad day would be what ended his life. Bruce Wayne, with the charm turned up to eleven, was infinitely deadlier. Clark wasn’t going to survive the next few hours.

“Where are we going tonight?” Clark asked.

“I thought we could eat here, if that’s okay with you. Then we don’t have to censor ourselves.”

It was practical, not that Clark would expect anything else from Bruce. They could talk freely about both sides of their identities. But it was also romantic. They were having dinner for two in Bruce’s home, the house he’d grown up in, the house he’d inherited from his parents. The house he lived in with his family. “That sounds perfect,” Clark said. “And you’re not worried about Alfred and Dick being around?”

“Alfred is the one cooking for us. You’re in for a treat there,” Bruce explained, leading Clark through the house. They passed a formal dining room, and Clark was mildly relieved when they kept going into the kitchen, which had a much cozier atmosphere, with a circular table set for two, complete with candles. “And I told Dick he can stay in his room, train in the Batcave, or hang out in the study, but if he tries to spy on us – and you’ll know if he does – he’s grounded again. He just got un-grounded, so I don’t think he’ll risk it.”

Clark reached out with his super senses and located Dick easily, down in the Batcave doing back handsprings. “You thought of everything,” he said.

“That’s what I do,” Bruce replied, with a hint of a smirk that Clark returned.

“I know. I’m starting to like it.”

Alfred set the table with their meal, garlic shrimp and lobster (Clark distantly remembered reading somewhere that lobster was considered an aphrodisiac, but he didn’t read into it), and a bottle of wine in the center for both of them. “Thank you, Alfred. This looks delicious.”

“You’re welcome, Master Clark,” Alfred said with a fond smile directed at both of them. “Unless you require anything else of me, I’ll leave the two of you to your evening. Master Bruce, you may find me in my rooms when you and Master Clark are finished.”

“Thank you, Alfred,” Bruce said, and Alfred left quietly, with one last glance over his shoulder at the achingly romantic scene.

Bruce waited until Alfred would be well out of earshot before uncorking the wine. “I don’t know how much you know about wine—” he began.

“Nothing,” Clark said before Bruce could get his hopes up.

Bruce chuckled. “That’s okay.” He poured them each a glass. It was a white wine, and that was all Clark could tell from looking at it. It was probably going to be all he would be able to tell from tasting it, too, knowing him. His super-sensitive taste buds couldn’t help him much when he didn’t have the requisite knowledge base to back them up. “This was my mother’s favorite vintage,” Bruce said as he held up his glass. “I’ve been saving it for a special occasion.”

Clark felt something like an ache in his chest. Bruce never mentioned his parents. He’d saved a bottle of his mother’s favorite wine. He considered their date a special occasion. “In that case, you shouldn’t waste it on me,” Clark tried to tell him, feeling a little bit guilty. “I can’t even get drunk.”

“You don’t drink wine like this to get drunk,” Bruce said, like this should be obvious. “And I don’t consider it a waste.”

Clark decided not to put up a fight. If Bruce wanted to pull out all the stops, far be it from Clark to complain. He still felt like he was living in a pleasant dream, like he would wake up and discover that the past week – perhaps even the past three years – had only existed in his imagination.

They took their first few bites in silence. “You weren’t wrong about Alfred’s cooking,” Clark said. It was an understatement. Alfred’s cooking was restaurant-quality. Better than that. It was a fine dining experience. “And, bearing in mind that I have no idea what I’m talking about, I feel like the wine really does add something.”

“It should,” Bruce said. “Alfred planned the whole meal around it.”

Score one for Clark. Maybe those taste buds were more useful than he thought they were. “I knew I was onto something there,” he said.

“See?” There was a gleam in Bruce’s eyes when he caught Clark’s gaze. “Not a waste. This is the beginning of your education.”

Clark’s answering joke about Bruce undertaking the task of transforming him into a gentleman died before it reached his lips, because Bruce had said “the beginning.” As if this was the first of many dates. As if that was a foregone conclusion.

Speaking of which— “We were going to talk,” Clark reminded Bruce.

Clark couldn’t help hearing Bruce’s pulse spike. He was nervous. Clark was used to Bruce being afraid of almost nothing, and the idea that this – a conversation – could elicit that reaction from him was comforting, in a way. There was a part of Clark that still remembered viewing Bruce as an inhuman creature, almost robotic, entirely foreign. A dark, disagreeable vigilante beyond understanding. It sounded hypocritical, coming from an actual alien. But Clark couldn’t blame himself too much; Bruce had cultivated that image on purpose. Clark had only fallen for it.

Now he knew better. He knew Bruce was capable of caring. Capable of loving, even. That he even cared about Clark, against all odds. And he knew that Bruce wasn’t invulnerable, physically or emotionally. The opposite: Bruce guarded himself so fiercely because he knew just how vulnerable he was.

“We were,” Bruce said cautiously. That, in itself, was progress. Clark hadn’t failed to notice that Bruce would usually rather shut off all emotion than give himself away. But he wasn’t doing that; instead, he was letting himself be vulnerable. “Do you still want to?”

“I do.”

Bruce

Bruce’s heart hammered in his chest. He was sure Clark could hear it. In the back of his mind, the familiar urge to run, but he suppressed it. Ignored it, actually. It was easy enough to do, with Clark sitting there across from him, looking handsome and hopeful.

“I knew I had a soulmate as soon as I was old enough for your injuries to start showing up on me,” Clark began. He hadn’t even needed to ask; they both knew that he was better suited to pilot this conversation. Bruce wouldn’t even know where to begin. “I desperately wanted to find you. I built the whole thing up in my head, convinced it would be like the movies. We’d find each other and it would be love at first sight. You would be everything I ever wanted. Happily ever after, the end.”

Clark paused, watching Bruce’s reaction. A few years ago, Bruce would have torn Clark apart for his childlike optimism, his firm belief that everything would always work out alright in the end. He would have considered it a weakness. But Bruce had seen Clark’s optimism in action, had seen the unrelenting force of it. It wasn’t a weakness at all, even if it may have occasionally led him astray. At the end of the day, it was his greatest strength.

And it was what had made him and Clark so perfect for each other, in every conceivable way: as colleagues, as friends, as soulmates. They balanced each other out, Clark’s optimism and Bruce’s cynicism. Neither of them was right all the time, and neither of them was always wrong. In fact, most of the time, they were both half-right, and could only get a full sense of the truth when their worldviews collided.

So Bruce didn’t react with a scowl or an insult or a roll of his eyes. He did raise one eyebrow, if only at the sheer predictability of Clark’s admission, and Clark accepted it with grace.

“I know,” he said. “It was incredibly naive of me. I realize that now. When I figured out you were my soulmate, I’ll admit, I was disappointed. We didn’t like each other yet. It felt like we never would.”

Bruce wasn’t surprised by this either. But it did remind him of something he’d been meaning to ask Clark for a long time: “Was that when you started making more of an effort to get along with me?”

“There were other factors. Seeing the way you were with Dick, for example, made me realize you actually had feelings. But the soulmate thing was a big part of it.”

How much of his budding relationship with Clark did Bruce owe to his son? For making Clark see him in a new light. For showing up at the mayor’s party and forcing them to accidentally reveal their secret identities to each other. For spotting Clark’s injuries on Bruce when Clark had been depowered and alone in the warehouse. For not-so-subtly pushing them together.

For teaching Bruce how to love in the first place.

Bruce would never admit any of this Dick (except perhaps the last part, which he hoped Dick already knew). He would never live it down if he did. But, not for the first time and not for the last, Bruce silently thanked whatever madness had compelled him to decide to become a father when he could barely even manage being a person.

“It made a difference,” Bruce said, returning to the topic of his feelings for Clark. He had plenty of time to be sentimental about his self-made family when he wasn’t on a date. “It changed the way I feel about you.”

“I’m glad it did,” Clark said sincerely. “I started to feel hopeful when it seemed like we were becoming friends. And then…” he waved a hand vaguely to encompass a chaotic series of events, “Everything that happened at the mayor’s party. I realized I’d turned down a relationship with you. I was afraid that was my only chance, and I blew it. It seemed like you weren’t interested anymore, now that you knew who I was.”

“I didn’t think you were interested,” Bruce explained. “Because you turned me down.” I was too proud to admit I had feelings for someone who didn’t have feelings for me, he didn’t say, but he implied it. “Until I learned from Lois that you had other reasons.”

Clark nodded. “I should have explained it to you,” he acknowledged, although to be fair, he had tried. “When you started flirting with me at the Pulitzer party, and when Lois told me about your conversation, I started to hope again. And then you asked me out. And now we’re here.” Clark held his hands out, gesturing to their current situation.

It explained everything neatly, in a tidy little bow. Bruce wondered if Clark had practiced what he was going to say, or if this all just came naturally to him. God, he hoped it was the former. He already felt woefully inadequate at this whole business of emotions and relationships; it would sting even more to know Clark was effortlessly good at it. But then again, maybe that was what he needed. Someone to compensate for his weaknesses, and take him down a peg or two in the process.

Wasn’t that what Clark had always done?

It was Bruce’s turn to talk. He hadn’t prepared a speech, so he decided to hit on the most important point first. “I need you to understand that I spent most of my life believing I didn’t have a soulmate.”

“I know,” Clark said.

“Which means I can’t possibly understand what it means to you.”

“I thought I knew what it meant. But that’s changed recently.” Clark leaned forward, intent on making this next point. “I don’t expect ‘happily ever after’ anymore. I know that’s not how the real world works. But I truly believe we’re meant for each other. Romance aside, I trust you more than anyone. I trusted you before I even liked you. And we’ve always made a great team. I wouldn’t rather have anyone else by my side.”

That was all well and good (more than well and good, it made Bruce’s heart feel like someone had reached into his chest and wrung it like a wet towel), but… “Romance is supposed to be part of it.”

“I think you’ve seen the way I look at you,” Clark said. And yeah. Bruce had. It was the way Clark was looking at him now, actually. Like Bruce was everything he’d ever wanted. “I think you saw the way I looked at you the first time we met outside of our superhero work. I think that’s why you decided to talk to me.”

“I decided to talk to you because you were the most attractive man I’d ever seen.”

Clark looked momentarily stricken, but he recovered. “And what does that mean to you?” he prodded, trying to peel back Bruce’s layers, and fuck, Bruce was actually going to let him. “Let’s pretend we’re not soulmates. Let’s go back to when you first asked me out, not knowing who I was or who I was to you. Why did you do it? If it was just because you found me attractive, you wouldn’t have asked me on a date. You would have just taken me to bed.”

“I liked your personality,” Bruce said. “I enjoyed talking to you. And I was… I had no one else in my life. Besides Alfred and Dick.”

“You were lonely?” The look in Clark’s eyes wasn’t pity. It was, actually, a look Bruce recognized most from the first time he’d met Dick and told him, unflinchingly – the first person he’d ever talked to in such honest terms before, other than Alfred – about his parents. It was a look that said, you too? I thought it was only me.

Clark was lonely, just like Bruce was. Bruce didn’t know how that could be possible – Clark still had both parents, had friends, was on better terms with most of the Justice League than Bruce was – but it was, apparently, the truth. And really, Bruce should have known better than to judge a book by its cover.

“I feel… less that way,” Bruce said haltingly. “When I’m with you.”

“So do I.” Clark just looked at him for a moment, and then, seeming to come to a decision, said, “You know what I want. I want to give this thing between us a chance.” Another, shorter pause. “What do you want?”

“That’s what I want too,” Bruce said, because he couldn’t put everything he wanted into words and that sounded like a pretty good start. “But I… I’m not…” He tamped down a flash of frustration, entirely self-directed. He wished he was better at this. “It isn’t easy for me,” he finally managed.

“I can tell,” Clark said, still not pitying, still not judging. “That’s okay. I can work with that. We’ll take it slow.”

“I don’t know that it will ever get easier,” Bruce added, feeling obligated to warn Clark.

Clark was undeterred. “It doesn’t have to be easy.”

When their date was over, Bruce walked Clark out, stood with him on the front steps with the door closed behind them. “Next time we’ll go somewhere,” he promised. He knew how dating was supposed to work, even though he’d never done it before.

“We don’t have to,” Clark said. “I like just talking with you. And we could always do it at my place if you want some more privacy.”

Speaking of privacy… Bruce was trusting Clark to speak now or forever hold his peace if he detected any fifteen-year-old boys or British butlers spying on them, when he reached out and put a tentative hand on Clark’s waist, and when Clark leaned into the touch, he wrapped both arms around him and drew him near.

They kissed. Bruce closed his eyes and sank into it, felt something like longing and something like peace settle over him.

It wasn’t anything like any kiss he’d ever shared with anyone before, snuck in the middle of fervent undressings, a means to an end. This one was slow, and gentle, and when they finally pulled away, it hung in the air like a question they both knew the answer to.

“I’ll see you again soon,” Clark said, keeping mere inches between them. On an impulse, Bruce kissed him again, briefly.

“Don’t let it be in a warehouse this time.”

Chapter Text

Clark

The first thing Clark did when he got home from his date with Bruce was call Lois and get her up to speed, because Clark knew that if he didn’t update his best friend on such an important development that she would be mortally offended and he would never hear the end of it.

The second thing he did was text Bruce to schedule their next date. Clark was not the type to play games; he’d heard all the different rules about waiting twenty-four hours or three days or however long to text someone after a first date and he thought they were bullshit.

Their second date took place at Clark’s apartment roughly a week later. The promise of privacy was apparently a big draw for Bruce, which made Clark wonder just how much Alfred and Dick had been badgering him about the fact that they were finally together (and reinforced his own decision not to tell his parents anything about the soulmate situation until his relationship with Bruce was more of a sure thing).

Clark offered to cook this time, even though he knew there was no way he could follow up on the amazing dinner Alfred had made them. But he put forth his best effort. He dug out one of his mother’s recipes, spent hours googling wine pairings, bought flowers to put in a vase on the table (Clark didn’t know how Bruce felt about flowers, but he liked flowers), dug out a tablecloth his mother had given him when he’d moved to Metropolis that he’d never once used. He cleaned his apartment until it was spotless and he had to open the windows to air it out because it smelled too strongly of artificial citrus for Clark’s sensitive nose.

Bruce arrived right on time. Clark had heard he had a reputation in Gotham for always being “fashionably late,” but he was almost never late to anything he and Clark did together.

“Thanks for coming over,” Clark said as he opened the door to let Bruce inside. He watched as Bruce took the place in. “It’s no Wayne Manor, but hopefully it’ll do.” Clark wasn’t self-conscious about how his living situation stacked up next to Bruce Wayne’s. He lived in a modern apartment in a nice part of town that he paid for with his respectable salary from a job that he loved. (And if he did feel like making comparisons between the two of them, he also had an ice fortress in the Arctic filled with advanced alien technology. So that was something.)

“It’s nice,” Bruce said, likewise seeing nothing wrong with Clark’s one-bedroom. “And whatever you’re cooking smells delicious.”

The oven timer dinged, and Clark plated their food and poured the wine. They sat down at his romantic table for two, Bruce looking appropriately impressed by all the effort Clark had gone to. “It’s my mother’s recipe,” Clark explained. “Hopefully I executed it correctly; I didn’t want to call her for tips and risk giving away that I’m dating someone.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Clark worried that perhaps “dating someone” wasn’t the correct terminology to use after not even two completed dates, but Bruce didn’t object. Instead he asked, somewhat surprised, “You haven’t told your parents?”

Clark hadn’t really talked about his parents with Bruce all that much. It felt like rubbing it in – I have living parents and you don’t – but Bruce knew the basics, that Jonathan and Martha Kent still lived in Smallville and that Clark had a good relationship with them, kept in touch, and visited regularly.

“If I told my parents, especially my mother, that I’d found my soulmate and was going on a date with him, she’d freak out,” Clark explained. “In a good way; she would be very happy for me. But she’d jump straight to planning the wedding, and you and I agreed to take things slow. I didn’t want that added pressure.”

“How long do you think you’ll wait before telling them?”

Clark hadn’t come to a decision on that yet. “I’ll play it by ear. Probably wait at least a few months.” He cracked a smile. “As soon as I tell her about you, she’s going to want to meet you.”

“Fair enough,” Bruce agreed, to Clark’s surprise. He didn’t look comfortable with the idea of meeting Clark’s parents, but he didn’t look entirely opposed to it either.

Not that it mattered right now. They still had plenty of time to work up to that stage of their relationship. Realistically, this only being their second date, they shouldn’t have even been discussing the prospect of Bruce meeting Clark’s parents. But Bruce had been the one to bring it up. “Which version of me are you planning on telling her about?”

Clark had thought about that too. It was an easier question to answer. The fact that Clark was dating billionaire Bruce Wayne would certainly be a shock to his parents, but less of a shock than telling them he was dating Batman. (Although by this point in their lives, having adopted an alien son who became a superhero, Clark’s parents weren’t the type to be shocked by anything, so maybe it wouldn’t matter.) “I was going to tell her about your mild-mannered alter ego,” Clark joked. As he said this, a thought occurred to him, and he frowned. “But I’m just now realizing that I told Lois I’m dating Batman. She’s going to find out who you are if we keep this up.”

If we keep this up. The two of them had been speaking like their relationship was already a foregone conclusion, and Clark had to remind himself that longevity wasn’t guaranteed. He couldn’t start thinking too far ahead.

But it was hard not to. It was hard not to feel overly attached to a man Clark had spent years fighting beside, a man who’d saved his life on multiple occasions, a man whose life Clark had saved even more than that.

They’d done things out of order. On a second date with anyone else, Clark would still be getting to know the person. On his second date with Bruce, Clark felt like he already knew everything he needed to know.

Not everything, Clark reminded himself. He knew Batman, the superhero, like the back of his hand. And he knew Bruce Wayne’s public persona pretty well too, from being a reporter. But he still had a lot to learn about who Bruce was underneath all of that. And he was eager to get started.

“After winning a Pulitzer for her investigative reporting,” Bruce said, returning Clark’s thoughts to the subject of Lois, and the fact that there was no way in hell they could keep Batman’s identity a secret from her now that they were together, “I’d be almost disappointed if she didn’t.”

Clark hadn’t expected that response. (See? There were still things for him to learn about Bruce.) Bruce was even more protective of his identity than Clark was, and that was saying something. The idea that he would let Lois – a woman he barely knew – in on the secret was unthinkable to Clark. “You don’t mind?” Clark asked, not bothering to hide his surprise.

“It’s not ideal,” Bruce admitted. “But I can’t expect you to keep your love life a secret from your closest friend. And she’s been trustworthy with your identity thus far. And with her investigation into the former mayor.”

“She can definitely keep a secret,” Clark assured Bruce.

“Then I’ll just have to get over it,” Bruce said. He didn’t say anything else, but Clark was getting better at reading between the lines, and the implication was clear: Bruce didn’t like that being in a relationship with Clark meant that another person would eventually uncover his secret identity, but he was willing to endure it, because being in a relationship with Clark was more important to him than his secret identity.

Holy shit.

Clark reined in his expectations. The prospect of being in a relationship with Clark was, at the moment, more important to Bruce than the prospect of giving up his secret identity to a single, trusted source. It was an important difference. Bruce wasn’t giving up his entire vigilante lifestyle just to be with Clark, and Clark would never ask him to. And it wasn’t as though Clark hadn’t recently made a similar decision, sharing his secret identity with Alfred and Dick.

But still. It was a tradeoff Clark doubted Bruce would make for anyone else. It meant he was serious about this. And Clark had seen the lengths Bruce would go to for something he was serious about.

When Bruce set his mind to a task, there was no stopping him.

Bruce

After dinner, Bruce and Clark moved their conversation to the sofa. Clark asked about Dick. Bruce asked about Clark’s parents. Clark bringing them up had made Bruce realize how little he knew about them, and about Clark’s childhood.

He realized Clark would probably, at some point, expect Bruce to talk about his parents and his childhood. He would cross that bridge when they came to it.

For now, Clark seemed content to share his story and not ask for Bruce’s. Bruce liked hearing about it. He used to feel a pang of jealousy hearing about others’ happy childhoods, but he didn’t anymore. And Clark was clearly trying to be sensitive about it.

It helped that Clark’s storytelling was entertaining. He had an endless supply of anecdotes, various mishaps and shenanigans his superpowers had gotten him into growing up. Bruce was forced to remember how he’d once viewed Superman, as this untouchable alien being with limitless power. And now here he was, on a date with the man, listening to him relate how he’d once accidentally run all the way to Winnipeg when he missed the bus and had to get to school on time, and when he’d tried to run back had ended up in Nuevo Leon.

It was starting to get late, but Bruce didn’t want to leave. He was enjoying himself. He was enjoying Clark’s company.

And he was pretty sure Clark had invited him to his apartment for a reason. And it wasn’t just so Alfred and Dick couldn’t spy on them.

Bruce put an arm around Clark, and Clark settled into him, looking comfortable and content. Bruce continued to listen as Clark described the disaster that had been his senior prom, but he let his gaze fall from Clark’s eyes to his mouth and kept it there until Clark started to trail off, equally distracted by Bruce’s rapt attention on him as Bruce was by the way Clark’s thigh was pressing up against his.

“Are you even listening to me,” Clark said, sounding amused, not offended, “Or are you too busy planning what you’re going to do to me later?”

“I’m multitasking,” Bruce said. His voice dipped into a low, gravelly tone that wasn’t unlike the voice he used as Batman. Because he knew that was what Clark liked. “You can keep talking. You were telling me how you found out that alcohol has no effect on you.”

“Was I?” Clark asked, leaning almost imperceptibly closer to Bruce. “I can’t recall.”

There was no telling who closed the distance between them, but either way, they ended up kissing. Bruce buried his hand in Clark’s hair. Clark’s hand settled on his thigh.

Bruce was the one to deepen the kiss, tilting his head and opening his mouth. Clark made a soft noise in the back of his throat, something close to a sigh but a little more needy; his grip on Bruce’s leg briefly tightened. Their tongues brushed against each other, just briefly, and Clark chased after the sensation, leaning forward like he could get any closer to Bruce than they already were. Still not satisfied, he angled his body so he could get his free hand on Bruce, just underneath his jaw, like that extra contact would keep Bruce kissing him longer.

Speaking of alcohol, Bruce felt a little drunk, though he’d only had a glass of Clark’s wine. It had been a while since anyone had made him feel this way. Clark’s thumb traced idly back and forth across Bruce’s cheek. Bruce’s nails scraped lightly across Clark’s scalp, and Clark shivered.

“When you said we would take this slow,” Bruce said, drawing back just enough to speak, “You meant emotionally, right?”

Clark answered without words, by lifting the hand off of Bruce’s thigh and placing it on Bruce’s shoulder, then maneuvering onto his lap – there might have even been a little floating involved, the show-off – with a satisfied smirk. Bruce quirked an eyebrow at him, then took a hold of Clark’s waist and pulled him in for another kiss. This one was far less polite; Clark practically fell into him, and within minutes they were both breathless and Bruce was definitely not going back to Gotham any time soon.

A thought occurred to Bruce. He smirked into the kiss and then pulled away, tilting his head back in invitation. Clark took the hint, kissing along Bruce’s jaw. Sliding one of his hands back into Clark’s hair, Bruce guided him where he wanted him, to the base of his neck, and Clark sucked a mark there that Bruce knew would leave a bruise for at least a few days.

Just as Bruce was reaching the point where they needed to start taking some clothes off or he was going to lose his mind, Clark reluctantly got off of him and held out a hand, dragging Bruce into the bedroom.

“I want you to tell me what you were thinking,” Bruce said, unbuttoning his shirt, “When you saw me warming up in the Batcave. You were fantasizing about something.”

“There were multiple fantasies,” Clark admitted with a grin.

“Pick your favorite.”

A little while later, they were lying in Clark’s bed, the moonlight from Clark’s bedroom window casting a pale glow on Clark’s features. He looked every bit as superhuman as Bruce had always known he was. The difference was, Bruce no longer found it intimidating. He found it inviting.

Bruce remembered the mark Clark had left on his neck. He leaned over Clark and located it on him, a little red spot that would be purple by morning. He grinned.

“What?” Clark asked. Bruce tilted his own head to show off his matching hickey. Clark stared at it blankly for a moment before realization dawned. “You did that on purpose,” he said, the accusation in his voice belied by the smile on his face. “You may not have paraded around shirtless in the Cave in front of me on purpose—”

“‘Paraded’?” Bruce echoed.

“—But that you definitely did on purpose.”

“Of course I did,” Bruce said, kissing the spot on Clark. “You won’t be able to cover that with the Superman suit. And you better not put any concealer over it.”

“What are people going to think?” Clark said, on the verge of laughter. Bruce was feeling quite giddy himself. He blamed the endorphins.

“They’ll know you’re taken,” he replied.

“What if Hal sees it?” Clark asked, horror dawning in his expression. “Bruce, he’ll be insufferable.”

“I think you can handle Green Lantern.”

“He’ll know you gave it to me,” Clark warned. “You know he was the one who spread those rumors about us.”

“Technically,” Bruce corrected, “You gave it to yourself. And maybe he will. But no one believes those rumors anymore.”

After Bruce and Clark had stopped training together on the Watchtower, the rumors about them had died down, and the rest of the Justice League – save for the perpetually stubborn (and apparently smarter than he looked) Hal Jordan – decided there had never been anything to them. Now every time Hal tried to claim that no, really, Batman and Superman were definitely fucking, everyone else rolled their eyes and dismissed it as Hal being Hal.

Bruce found his pants on the floor, fished his phone out of the pocket, and checked the time. It was past midnight. He’d told Dick he would be home late, but he was going to be very late, especially factoring in the drive back to Gotham.

“I can fly you home if you need to get out on patrol,” Clark offered.

“Then I have to pay for overnight parking,” Bruce deadpanned. He glanced over his shoulder at Clark, who was giving him an unamused look. “I’m joking. You can fly me back.” He paused, then added, “Wear a shirt with a collar on it.”

“Oh, now you want me to cover it up.”

Bruce was holding out hope that they’d manage to avoid running into Dick, but they had no such luck. Clark dropped Bruce off in the Batcave, where Dick was waiting impatiently in his Robin suit, doing one-handed cartwheels to burn off some of his pent-up energy.

Of course, being the polite gentleman that he was, Clark couldn’t just leave. He had to stop and say hello.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, Dick,” Clark said. “We didn’t realize how late it was.”

Dick looked torn between his ongoing delight that Bruce had gotten together with his soulmate (and that that soulmate was Clark) and disgust at what he (correctly) assumed the two of them had been doing all night. “We were supposed to go out two hours ago,” he said.

“We’ll leave now,” Bruce said. “I just need to change.” He turned to Clark, ready to put an end to this interaction before it had a chance to get even more awkward. “Thank you, Clark.”

Clark flew off, but not before sneaking one last kiss from Bruce while Dick scrunched up his nose and made a gagging gesture. Bruce changed into the Batsuit, and he and Dick got into the Batmobile.

“Gross, Bruce,” Dick said, sounding every bit the teenager that he was.

“You’re the one who wanted us to get together,” Bruce reminded him.

“Yeah,” Dick admitted, “But I didn’t think about this part.”

Bruce laughed. Dick looked at him strangely. Bruce laughed infrequently enough that it never failed to catch his family by surprise when he did. “Are you gonna be like this all the time from now on?” he asked.

“I’ll try not to be,” Bruce said.

“No,” Dick said quickly, “It’s good. I like it. It’s just… weird. But I’ll get used to it.”

Chapter Text

Lois

Lois was the type of woman who liked to be prepared. It was something she’d learned growing up with a father in the military, and she applied it to her life in many different ways. One of which being that she liked to finish her holiday shopping well before December. She wasn’t going to be one of those last-minute buyers who braved the apocalyptic hellscape that was any mall, department store, or shopping center in America post-Thanksgiving, and she’d been burned before by shipping delays when she’d tried to order things online a week or two before she needed it.

So it was October, and she was already thinking about what to give Clark for Christmas.

Everyone else in Lois’ life was easy enough to shop for. She always knew what her mother wanted. Her father was content with an expensive bottle of scotch. Her sister always sent her a link to exactly what she wanted, which admittedly took some of the fun out of it, but Lois could appreciate the efficiency.

But Clark. Clark was impossible to shop for. Part of that was due to the fact that he and Lois had been friends for so long that Lois felt like she’d already bought him everything. Part of it was due to Clark’s insistence that he “didn’t need anything, really.” And part of it was due to the fact that men, in general, were always difficult to shop for. Lois had never known what to get her father for Christmases, Father’s Days, and birthdays growing up, until she’d turned twenty-one and had been able to legally purchase alcohol.

After asking Clark what he wanted, which was as useless an endeavor as it always was, and skimming at least a dozen “Holiday Gift Ideas for Men” lists online, Lois resorted to the nuclear option and called Martha Kent.

Lois had interacted with Martha a few times since breaking up with Clark. Martha always called her on her birthday, and she’d called to congratulate Lois when she won the Pulitzer Prize. Martha was a lovely woman, and speaking with her made it immediately clear how Clark had grown up to be such a polite, respectful, and genuinely kind person.

Martha picked up after a few rings. “Hi, Martha, it’s Lois.”

“Lois!” That was something else Lois liked about Martha: She was always happy to hear from her. “How are you? It’s been too long.”

“It has,” Lois agreed. “I’m doing well, thank you for asking.”

“You should come visit,” Martha said, as she always did. “Just because you and Clark aren’t dating doesn’t mean you’re not still welcome here anytime.”

Lois still thought it would be a little bit awkward to spend time with her ex-boyfriend’s parents, even though they were also her best friend’s parents, so she’d never taken Martha up on this offer. But maybe now that Clark was dating someone else – his soulmate, no less – Lois could visit Martha and Jonathan as “Clark’s friend” and not “Clark’s ex.”

“Thank you, Martha,” Lois said. “I’ll see if I can find time. I do miss your home-cooked meals.” Neither of Lois’ parents had ever been very talented cooks, and neither was Lois herself. Clark was more than decent, but he wasn’t as good as his mother.

“Was there anything you needed from me, dear?” Martha asked.

“Actually,” Lois said, tucking the phone between her ear and her shoulder as she typed away at her computer, working on an article even though it was the weekend, “There was. The holidays are coming up and I’m trying to figure out what on earth to get Clark. You know how difficult he is to shop for.”

“You know, I was just thinking about that last week,” Martha said. “Every year he tells me I don’t have to get him anything—”

“He tells me that too!” Lois commiserated.

“And I tell him, ‘I’m your mother, I’m not going to get you nothing for Christmas, so you’d better give me some ideas.’ And then the ideas he gives me are boring things like new sweaters and socks. No one wants socks for Christmas.”

Lois laughed. “Clark might,” she said. “He’s very practical.”

“Too practical.”

“I could always take him somewhere,” Lois said, thinking aloud. “A weekend trip. We could go to New York and see a show.”

There was a Broadway musical Clark hadn’t stopped talking about since one of their colleagues at the Daily Planet had reviewed it. Lois had told him he should see if Batman wanted to see it with him, since they were dating and all, and Clark had reacted as though Lois had just suggested he take Batman on a romantic date to an ongoing military conflict.

“He’s not a big theater person,” Clark had said.

“I’m sure he could sit through a couple hours of singing for his boyfriend,” Lois retorted. Sure, it tracked with what she knew about Batman that the guy wouldn’t be a fan of musicals, but relationships were supposed to be about compromise.

“I’m not gonna ask him to do that,” Clark told her, and that was the end of that.

“I’m sure he’d love that,” Martha said. “I know he enjoyed it when you took him to see Hamilton.”

Lois had secured those tickets through one of her connections in New York when Hamilton was the hit new musical. They’d been expensive as hell, and Clark had tried to pay her back, but she had refused, because she could be just as stubborn as he was.

“Alright,” Lois decided. “That’s what I’ll do. Thank you, Martha.”

“Of course,” Martha replied. “Do you have time to tell me what you’ve been up to lately? I’d love to hear more about my favorite Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist.”

“Will I still be your favorite after Clark wins one?” Lois teased.

“You’ll be a close second.”

“I’ll take it.” Lois couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t know if you read my follow-up article about the effect the transition of power had on organized crime in Gotham—”

She talked for several minutes about her recent and ongoing work, until she’d gotten into the weeds and realized she was probably giving too much detail for someone who wasn’t a fellow journalist. To her credit, Martha didn’t sound bored. “As usual, Lois, you continue to amaze me,” she said. “And you know I’m so grateful Clark has a friend like you out there in Metropolis. I know he’s grateful too.”

“He’s done just as much for me as I have for him. Probably more.” What with all the times Clark had literally saved her life.

“If you don’t mind me asking, have you met that new boyfriend of his?”

Oh, boy. Lois had known this was coming. Of course Martha would want to ask Clark’s best friend (and ex-girlfriend) for her perspective on Clark’s love life. Lois didn’t know what Clark had told Martha about who he was dating, and she had to be careful not to give anything away that Martha might not already know.

“I haven’t,” Lois said. Which wasn’t entirely the truth, because she had met Batman, but she hadn’t interacted with him since he and Clark had started dating, so it was enough of the truth that she didn’t feel like she was lying.

“It’s just that I’ve been trying to convince Clark to bring him and his son with him when he visits for Thanksgiving. He keeps telling me their relationship isn’t serious enough for that. I don’t know what he means by that; they’re soulmates!”

Lois didn’t say anything about how Clark and his boyfriend probably weren’t at the “Thanksgiving with the parents” stage of their relationship just four months in – Clark had told Lois that he and Batman had agreed to take it slow – because something else Martha said caught her attention.

Batman had a son?

Maybe Clark had told Martha that Robin was Batman’s son. Hell, maybe Robin was Batman’s son. “I didn’t even know his boyfriend had a son, so you’re one step ahead of me.”

“You didn’t?” Martha sounded surprised. “I would have thought you’d have looked into him. Being a reporter and all. There’s plenty of information out there about him; even I was able to find it. He seems to be quite famous.”

Martha’s words made something click in Lois’ mind. Something she couldn’t believe hadn’t clicked before.

Martha didn’t know Clark was dating Batman, because Clark hadn’t told her. Clark had given her Batman’s other identity, his secret identity. Someone who was famous, and wealthy enough to bankroll a vigilante lifestyle. Someone who lived in Gotham. Someone who had a son. Someone who had a traumatic childhood experience that would make him want to avoid the theater. Maybe even someone Clark had flirted with in the past.

Suddenly it all made sense. Lois felt like an idiot. Of course that’s who he was.

“I’ll do some research,” Lois said quickly, realizing all at once that she needed to end her call with Martha so she could talk to Clark. “I’m afraid I need to get going. It was lovely talking to you.”

She hung up and immediately dialed Clark.

“What’s up?” Clark said, sounding friendly and casual. God, he had no idea.

“Are you free?”

Clark picked up on the urgency in Lois’ voice, and said, “I can be. What do you need?”

“I need to talk to you in person.”

“Be right there.”

Clark was at Lois’ door in minutes. “What’s going on?” he asked when Lois let him in.

“Did you tell your mother the identity of the man you’re dating thinking it wouldn’t get back to me?” Lois asked, skipping past the bullshit and aiming straight for the heart of the matter. “Or were you just waiting for the two of us to finally talk so I could figure it out from her?”

Clark looked guilty. “Honestly,” he said, “I thought you would have figured it out by now on your own.”

“I didn’t look into it because I didn’t think you’d want me to. I was trying to respect your – and his – privacy.” Now that Lois knew who Batman was, there was no doubt in her mind that she could have figured it out on her own. But she hadn’t tried to, because she was a good friend.

“Thank you,” Clark said sincerely. “We both appreciate that.”

Lois couldn’t be mad at him. It wasn’t as though she’d actually expected him to reveal Batman’s secret identity to her just because Clark was dating him. But it was still a shock. She shook her head. “Bruce Wayne?” she said incredulously.

Clark huffed out a laugh. “Yeah.”

“When you said he’s a ten out of ten, I thought you meant ‘regular person ten,’ not ‘literal celebrity ten.’” Of course Clark, biologically perfect as he was, had managed to land that . “You’re dating Bruce Wayne. Is he—?” Lois cut herself off, not sure if what she was about to ask was out of bounds.

“Just say it,” Clark told her. He knew.

“I’m sorry. I have to. Is he as good as they say?”

“Yes.”

Well, hey. Good for Clark. “And you’re telling me that man dresses up like a bat to fight crime by night. Bruce Wayne does that.” Lois was full of questions. “No wonder he can afford all those high-tech gadgets. Now you have to tell me the whole story. How did you find out who he was? What was his reaction? When do I get to meet him? Does his kid like you? His kid is Robin, right?”

Hal

Okay, so maybe Hal had been wrong about Batman and Superman.

It had been about a year since Hal had first gotten the idea in his head that Batman and Superman were together, and then told Barry about it, and the rumor had ended up spreading to the entire superhero community. Which hadn’t been Hal’s intention. Really. He wasn’t trying to drive Batman crazy. At least, not this time.

But he had been so certain about it! The way Batman acted around Superman, it was different from how Hal had seen him act around anyone else. Batman could be a cold, calculating bitch most of the time, but around Superman, he practically melted. And back then, they’d trained together all the goddamn time. Their teamwork was already better than any other two superheroes in the Justice League; in the universe, probably. What did they need to do so much training for? It had to just be an excuse for the two of them to spend time together. Maybe those training sessions were actually secret sexual liaisons. Far be it from Hal to judge a couple guys wanting to get down and dirty in orbit. He’d done weirder.

But then the training sessions had abruptly stopped – probably, Hal would admit, as a result of the aforementioned rumors, because God forbid anyone think of Batman as a person with feelings and relationships – and the rumors had died down. And everyone was blaming Hal for starting them. Which, again, hadn’t been his intention. He’d just wanted to confide his suspicions in his good friend Barry Allen. And then in the rest of the Green Lantern Corps. And maybe in a few other people besides that.

Totally not his fault.

Even though they were no longer training together, Batman and Superman still acted differently around each other. Whatever was going on between them, they were definitely closer than they used to be. They’d reconciled their differences and learned to trust each other. Batman didn’t throw a fit every time Superman saved his life or flew him somewhere. Batman even made jokes sometimes, and Superman would laugh at them, while the rest of the League looked on in shock, trying to absorb the revelation that Batman had a sense of humor.

In short, Batman wasn’t as grim and dark and emotionless as he used to be. And it seemed like Superman had something to do with it.

But maybe they weren’t together. Maybe Hal had overreacted. They could just be good friends. Might’ve even swapped secret identities; Hal swore some of their inside jokes sounded like they knew a lot more about each other than anyone else did.

This was the conclusion Hal had come to when he was on monitor duty on the Watchtower one day, which always sucked, especially when Barry didn’t have monitor duty with him. Hal swore Batman coordinated the schedules specifically to keep Hal and Barry apart, because apparently they “spent more time fucking around than doing their jobs” when they were together. Which Hal objected to. He and Barry were capable of fucking around and doing their jobs at the same time, thank you very much.

Hal handed off monitor duty to J’onn, who came to relieve him when Hal’s shift was up, and was headed for the nearest airlock when he swore he heard something. He crept around to investigate, following the source of the noise. It was coming from down the hall and around the corner, a part of the Watchtower that led to some storage rooms where hardly anyone ever went.

Hal floated over so whoever (or whatever) had made the sound wouldn’t hear his footsteps. And then he peeked around the corner.

And, boy, did he feel vindicated.

It was Batman and Superman. Superman had crowded Batman up against a wall, and they were currently glued together at the mouth, like a couple of horny teenagers under the bleachers. Superman had his arms bracketing the sides of Batman’s head, and Batman had a fistful of Superman’s cape and his other hand in Superman’s hair. They looked really into it. It was definitely not their first time.

Hal probably should have left quietly. That was the polite thing to do. But no one had ever accused Hal Jordan of being polite.

He landed on his feet and gasped, a little obnoxiously. Superman prised himself away from Batman, looking at Hal with his eyebrows raised in expectation. Like he’d known Hal was there. (He did have super senses.) But if he’d known, why had he kept on making out with Batman? Did he just not care?

“I knew it,” Hal said triumphantly. “I knew there was something going on between the two of you. But damn, making out on the Watchtower? Where anybody could walk in on you? That’s risky business. If the rest of the League heard about this, you’d never live it down.”

“You could tell the rest of the Justice League,” Batman said, an almost unsettling edge of humor in his gravelly voice. “But no one would believe you.”

Hal considered this. Batman was right. After being accused once of spreading false rumors about Batman and Superman, no one would believe Hal if he said he’d caught the two of them making out outside the storage rooms. They’d think he was making it all up.

Hal had walked in on the juiciest piece of gossip anyone in the superhero community had ever seen, and he was going to have to keep it to himself.

He couldn’t even be mad. It was a stroke of genius. He shook his head and grinned. “You sly dog,” he said, not sure which one of them he was referring to. Both of them, probably. They were a team, after all. And a couple, too, apparently. “I was right, though. That’s good enough for me.”

“Actually,” Superman corrected him, “We weren’t together yet when you spread those rumors about us.”

Damn. So he had been wrong. Well, not completely. He’d noticed sexual tension between Batman and Superman. He just hadn’t realized it was sexual tension of the unresolved variety.

That didn’t make him “wrong,” per se. Just… preemptively right.

And then another thought occurred to him, even better than the idea of him foreseeing Batman and Superman’s relationship. Maybe his rumors had been what led them to get together. Or been part of it, anyway. “Did you guys get together because of me?” he asked, grinning even wider.

“Absolutely not,” Batman said, all traces of humor gone from his voice. He was sounding a lot more normal now.

“You got together because of me,” Hal repeated, definitively this time.

“Hal, no—”

“When people eventually find out about this,” Hal pointed at them, “I’m going to tell everyone I’m the guy who matchmade Batman and Superman.”

He turned and walked to the airlock with a new swagger in his step. He was never going to let them live this down.