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Clark Kent meets Matches Malone on a perfectly unremarkable Tuesday.
Bruce hadn't arranged it that way. He hadn't intended for it to happen at all.
But he turns around, tosses half a salute over his shoulder with the matchstick before returning it to the appropriate position between his teeth, and strides along the bar toward the front door of O'Malley's, and the man who's sitting at the end of it glances up—pushes his glasses absently up his nose, blue eyes wide, attention clearly caught.
Clark is almost directly between Bruce and the exit. Ignoring him would strain credulity. Malone would notice the direct eye contact, would perceive it as either challenge or invitation unless he knew already that Clark Kent was just some Metropolis busybody, and there's no reason why he ought to.
Malone would notice Clark. Anyone would notice Clark. Anyone would pause and give the man a second look. And the essential foundation of any cover identity is that it must—must—act believably.
Bruce slows and draws Malone's sunglasses down his nose, the inverted reflection of Clark's absent gesture of a moment ago, and winks. It feels idiotic, absurd, but Malone would do it.
"See somethin' you like, son?"
Clark's mouth curves, just a little, as if unintentionally. Unsurprising; Matches Malone cuts an undeniably amusing figure. Bruce expects a moment's uncertain blinking, a stammered but polite denial, withdrawal. Whether he believes Malone is a stranger, has kept his senses courteously turned down, or has already looked straight through the glasses and pencil mustache and recognized Bruce—it isn't as if that will make a difference. His reaction to Malone's drawled come-on will be the same in either case.
"Can't be sure."
Bruce raises his eyebrows, reflexive. Inquiring, that's all; he has enough control of his face, of Malone's persona, to have kept his surprise from registering. But the lapse feels glaring anyway.
The angle of Clark's mouth alters, the curve now a deliberate smile—warm. He lifts a hand, affects a squint, as if to shelter his eyes from some intense source of light.
"Kind of hard to see past the tie," he elaborates.
Bruce doesn't look down; he doesn't need to. Alfred had, with unimpeachably deadpan gravitas, acted his way through a full two minutes' mimed parody, struck dead in the middle of the hallway by the sight of Malone's violently red-and-pink checked tie fastened around Bruce's collar.
"Aw, that's all right, sweetheart," Bruce murmurs, leaning closer. "Love's blind already, ain't it?"
There's a glass, three-quarters full, on the bar in front of Clark. Bruce flicks his wrist, extends two fingers with a twenty-dollar bill creased neatly between them, and nudges it just beneath the near edge of the glass.
"Next one's on me," he adds in an undertone, and then he twiddles the matchstick between his teeth, aims a finger-gun at Clark with Malone's unselfconscious shamelessness, and resumes his stride.
Clark doesn't stop him. Bruce can hear him laugh, a bright startled sound, just before the door of the bar swings shut again behind Bruce—but that isn't precisely diagnostic. He still can't be sure whether Clark recognized him or not.
Not that it matters, he reminds himself firmly, sticking his hands in his pockets and strolling down the dark street with Malone's loose-hipped stride. If Clark saw through him, he'd been smart enough or merciful enough not to give Bruce away; and if he hadn't, then there had been no problem to solve.
And it's possible. Isn't it? Clark couldn't have had any particular reason to suspect that he'd been looking at anything but a patron of Gotham's nightlife scene who liked to get dressed with the lights off. Why would he have checked? Why would he have suspected a disguise existed to be seen through?
The facts remain the same. Bruce's cover is intact. He can continue to use Malone in future without concern. And it isn't as if the same circumstances are likely to recur.
A fluke, and one that won't be repeated. That's all there is to it.
It doesn't remain a fluke.
Bruce develops half a dozen different theories behind Clark's apparent predilection for sticky-floored Gotham dive bars. Perhaps it's for a story for the Planet. Perhaps he's doing a favor for Lois. Perhaps there's a tip he's investigating—not for Perry White, something more toward the League's end of the scale, but he's still turning over stones, lacking anything conclusive to present to the rest of them as of yet.
It could be anything. Only two things are clear: Clark hasn't felt any need to tell Bruce about it, and whatever it is, it's taking weeks to resolve.
There's no pattern to Clark's appearances, or at least not one Bruce has been able to discern. Weeknights, weekends; early afternoons, moderately late evenings, the small hours of the morning. Bars, clubs, lounges—cheap pleather booths, polished wooden barstools, the brilliant buzzing spill of neon light. Categorization, prediction, prove impossible.
Bruce could almost have talked himself into believing it's deliberate, except Clark is also undeniably inconsistent. Three times one week, not a glimpse the next. Bruce has no need to show Matches Malone's face for almost a month and a half, and Clark doesn't say a word about it—doesn't ask him what he thinks he's doing, whether he needs help, whether he's retired Malone's identity permanently.
He must not know it's Bruce after all. And—
And besides, if it were deliberate, what possible reason could he have for it? What on earth could Clark ever want from Matches Malone?
Admittedly, Clark doesn't seem to dislike Malone, at a bare minimum. He displays that same amused warmth at Malone's expansive manner, Malone's winking and gesturing and nicknames. Bruce attempts to avoid any telling partiality in his choice of epithets: the patronizing—son, kid, pal, boyo—are sprinkled in alongside the overtly overfamiliar. Sweetheart, sugar. Tall drink of water. And, on the unfortunate occasion when Bruce feels he's avoided it too diligently—darlin'. Said without weight or emphasis, dropped unhesitatingly and breezed past with ease.
The second time, the third, the fourth, he tells himself he allows in service of determining whether Clark really doesn't know, whether Bruce should in fact make time to take him aside at the Hall and explain where he picked up Malone, what he uses it for, what Clark ought to do the next time they run into each other.
But that rationalization begins to wear thin quickly. Clark recognizes Malone, yes—recognizes him because he's run into him half a dozen times in as many weeks, because every time it happens Malone pauses to deliver an outrageous compliment, a shameless line, a drink or two. The truth is—
The truth is, Clark seems to enjoy it.
Being Superman is important to Clark; it matters to him, and he won't give it up. Bruce knows that. But it weighs on him, too. And if ten minutes of snorting incredulously at Matches Malone's idea of a clever pick-up line can lighten that weight, it's hardly a price Bruce isn't willing to pay.
He should tell Clark. Of course he should. If Clark knew it was Bruce sidling up to him, winking at him, settling a teasing hand at the small of his back—obviously he wouldn't be happy about it. He wouldn't let it keep happening. He wouldn't shoot Bruce those wry, knowing sideways looks and then not move away.
Clark doesn't know. He can't. And Bruce should tell him, but he doesn't.
Because the truth is, Bruce enjoys it, too. Bruce soaks it up, helpless and greedy and utterly unable to stop wanting it. Not just the reality of it, but the illusion, too: the clean slate of it. The way they could've been strangers; the way Clark might have sat at a bar, might have looked up and met Bruce's eyes and let Bruce buy him a drink, before—
Before Bruce tried to kill him. Before he died anyway, and Bruce dragged him back from the grave. Before Bruce made it irrevocably impossible.
Matches Malone isn't a good man. But the ways in which he's a bad man are small, unremarkable. Bearable. Tolerable.
Forgivable.
It can't last forever. Bruce is well aware of that. He'll give himself away, give Clark something to notice, and Clark will notice it; he'll err, and he'll wreck this, and there will be no excuse.
But that doesn't mean he's ready for it to happen the way that it does.
It's been months. Clark and Malone are something approaching friends; Malone lingers for half an hour at a time, when he happens across Clark Kent on a night out.
The underlying mistake is Bruce's. Of course it is. The fault for the entire situation they're in is Bruce's. And he's—pushing, admittedly. It's occurred to him that Clark could walk away from this untouched, if Matches Malone only finds the right line to cross, if Clark finally loses patience and punches him in the face and leaves. He'd like to think that's why he does it.
But his breath is a little too quick for that, the sizzle of heat just under the surface of his skin a little too bright. He's bought Clark a drink already, and Malone's knee is pressed pointedly against Clark's beneath the bar, but Clark hasn't moved away. The feeling of invisibility is impossibly heady; Clark looks at him and sees Malone, Clark likes Malone, and if Clark minded being plied with Malone's terrible clichés and contrived come-ons, he'd have told Malone to leave him alone weeks ago.
Bruce leans in close, closes his lips around the matchstick and shifts it from one side of his mouth to the other, and Clark's gaze drops to it, follows it—cuts back up, full of that spark, that wry warmth that says he knows what Malone's doing, and he's not falling for it but he's willing to go along for the ride anyway.
Christ. Bruce reaches up, slides a fingertip along the underside of Clark's jaw, and tilts his chin up just a fraction. The last thing he's expecting is to hear Clark's breath catch in his throat; but it happens. It happens, and Clark's eyes are wide and clear and blue behind those awful glasses, and he doesn't move away from the touch of Malone's hand.
"You're a real tough nut to crack, sweetheart."
Clark wets his lips, gaze searching. "And what makes you say that, Mr. Malone?"
Bruce allows the slant of his mouth to broaden. "My battin' average is pretty good. And yet here I am—don't know if you noticed—and I ain't even got a foot on first base yet. Like I said: tough nut."
And if he'd been intending for that swing to get him struck out, it's immediately obvious that he's failed. Clark doesn't even look irritated. He laughs, the barest breath through his nose—but he hasn't looked away from Malone, something strange and even serious, intent, crossing his face.
Bruce registers the shift of his weight, the way he abruptly rises halfway off his barstool, the way the motion carries him directly into Bruce's space. But he still isn't expecting Clark to move into Bruce's hand on his jaw, to reach up and pluck the matchstick from Bruce's mouth with his thumb and forefinger, to sway in close at a gentle angle and—kiss him.
He can't move. He can't think. He is, he understands with a distant, crystalline sort of despair, absolutely fucked. If, the moment Clark breaks this kiss and allows it, the very first sentence to leave Bruce's mouth doesn't unambiguously identify him to Clark, then the least he'll deserve is for Clark never to speak to him again.
Clark persists, for a long moment—soft, steady, as thorough as he can be without licking Bruce's mouth open. Then he relents, releases Bruce and settles back into his seat.
He hasn't moved particularly far, hasn't opened up all that much distance between them. He seems very close, and not particularly shy.
"Clark," Bruce hears himself say.
"Sorry," Clark says, very quietly.
That doesn't make any sense.
"Sorry," Clark repeats. "It's okay. I didn't mean to—" He breaks off, lets out a breath that's shaped almost into a curse, and then squeezes his eyes shut and rubs a rueful hand over his face. "I shouldn't have done that. I wasn't trying to rush you, I can—I can wait. I don't mind."
"You can wait," Bruce echoes, disoriented.
And Clark—Clark is watching him in the dimness of the bar, with a tender uncertain resignation that lodges Bruce's heart firmly in his throat.
"Until you don't mind doing this," Clark says, "without the sunglasses and the mustache."
His voice is pitched so low it's barely audible. Each word lands like a blow anyway.
He did know. He did know. He has, quite possibly, known the entire time; and he kept letting it happen. He went along for the ride. He let Bruce—he—
He enjoyed it. He wanted it. And he realized, somehow, that this is the only way Bruce has been able to conceive of giving it to him.
Bruce shuts his eyes, and lets the understanding, the lurching overwhelming hot-and-cold wave of it, move through him.
And then he opens his eyes again, and stands—slides his hand to the nape of Clark's neck, his fingers in Clark's hair, and leans in close, and murmurs against the shell of Clark's ear, "What d'you say we take this someplace a little more private, darlin'?"
He straightens; Clark meets his eyes, startled, uncertain, and then a soft raw light comes into his face, and Bruce knows what the answer's going to be.
Clark beats him to the lake house, of course.
He's standing just inside the entryway, hands wrapped absently around each other, shoulders tight, by the time Bruce pulls up in the driveway. Bruce forces himself to be measured, deliberate: to open the door and step out, close it behind him, cross the drive at a reasonable pace. His heart is pounding.
Clark looks up, when he steps inside, and goes utterly still.
Bruce plucks the matchstick out of his mouth, and flicks it to the floor.
Clark swallows, and takes a step closer. He's biting his lip; he looks wary, nervous, shy, in a way Clark Kent never has, sitting at a bar across a glass from Matches Malone.
Maybe Bruce wasn't the only one who found that easier, in certain crucial ways. But easier precisely because it was—less, because it meant less. Maybe it means more, like this, to Clark, too.
Bruce shrugs Malone's jacket off his shoulders next, lets it slide to the floor. Clark takes another step, another, and then he's close enough to reach up and help—to take the knot of Malone's tie in his hand and pull until it slides free.
Spared that task, Bruce skips ahead to the sunglasses, draws them off and lets them clatter to the floor beside the matchstick. And Christ, he should've thought this through; the mustache needs a solvent to come off, the pomade never wants to let go of his hair. He can't strip the rest half as easily—
But Clark's already moving. The sunglasses were enough, maybe, because the moment he can see Bruce's eyes again, he makes a rough little sound in the back of his throat, yanks the newly untied tie so it slips free of Bruce's shirtcollar with a soft hiss, and he says, "Bruce."
Close enough, then. Close enough—and Clark doesn't stop, hooks an arm around the nape of Bruce's neck and draws him in, presses his face against Bruce's jaw and lets out a shuddering breath, and then turns into Bruce, holds him there and kisses him again, wants to: it's real after all, and Bruce holds onto him, dizzy with relief, and kisses back.