Work Text:
Clark was slowly going insane.
He was out in the open, completely exposed, and also completely trapped.
Specifically, he was trapped at his desk at the Daily Planet, in full view of all his co-workers, and there was a smudge on his glasses. It was directly over his line of sight, and it was driving. Him. Insane.
But he couldn’t do anything about it.
If he took his glasses off, he risked revealing his identity as Superman; specifically, revealing it to a room full of reporters. It would be breaking news in seconds, and then there would be no taking it back. There was also the temptation to use his superspeed to take them off and clean them, but there was still the risk of someone noticing the blur of superspeed movement, and, once again, bye-bye secret identity - the people in this office were not the types to see something odd and just let it go.
So Clark was stuck at his desk, alternating between staring around the office and at the half-written article on his computer, all the while slowly losing his sanity over the stupid smudge on his glasses.
Maybe if he tried really hard he could use his x-ray vision to see exactly through the smudge but not straight through his computer screen — he did actually need to write this article, the deadline was…concerningly soon, considering how little he'd done of it so far.
“-Clark. Clark.” Clark got the sense that Lois had been saying his name repeatedly before he noticed. She waved at him from her desk across from his.
He blinked and focused on her, doing his utmost best to ignore the way the smudge on his glasses blurred most of the right side of her face.
“Hmmm? Yeah?”
Lois rolled her eyes. “What’s eating you? You haven’t touched your keyboard in nearly twenty minutes.”
Had it really been so long? Oops.
“Nothing,” Clark said quickly before realising that it was Lois he was talking to and there was absolutely no way she was buying that. Hurriedly, he amended, “writer’s block.”
She hummed and nodded in a way which suggested she absolutely did not believe him, then turned her attention back to her own computer screen, her nails tapping and clacking away at her keyboard.
And Clark was back to slowly going crazy.
Clark will admit that he possibly should have been paying more attention to where he was going, but, to be fair to him, he didn’t usually need to pay much attention to the other Metropolitan pedestrians. Also, he had reason to be distracted, he had a deadline in a few hours, and a Justice League meeting that he was praying wouldn’t run overtime (this was probably futile, League meetings never ended on time, only extremely early, usually because Batman decided he had something else to attend to, and there was no point having a meeting without Batman, or more commonly, way overtime) because then he had a date with Lois.
So, yeah. Distractions. Lots of things to think about that drew his mind away from the streams of people moving around him.
Lots to think about that meant that he didn’t notice the person running full-pelt around a corner and straight into him.
Being Superman, and just generally a very large and sturdy type of person, Clark barely stumbled at the impact, though his half-drunk coffee went flying from his hand, and, knocked by his accidental assailant’s flailing limbs as they tried to right themself, his glasses also tumbled off his face and towards the pavement.
Curses flashed through his mind and he ducked his head to follow the descent of his glasses before anyone could see his face.
“Sorry, ohmigod, I’m so sorry dude, sorry,” the guy who had crashed into him spluttered, glancing at Clark’s face as if to gauge just how angry Clark was.
Clark’s glasses were on the ground now, miraculously intact, but they were not on his face. The guy did a double take as he looked at Clark’s face. Clark’s mind became a litany of act normal, act calm, this is fine, it’s just a few seconds, as he reached down and scooped up his glasses and shoved them back onto his face.
When he straightened up, the guy blinked a few times, looking a little confused and as if he was doubting himself, and then he repeated, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Clark gave him a friendly smile and assured the guy he was fine, and then they both continued on their separate ways, Clark breathing a deep sigh of relief as he was relatively sure that, for now at least, his secret was safe.
“I’m just saying ,” Jason was explaining, gesturing wildly with both hands and a torn piece of bread, “that, like, no offense, but glasses are not a good secret identity. How does no one recognise you?”
Clark was beginning to think that himself. Maybe he should have followed Batman’s lead and incorporated a mask into his suit. But it was too late to go back now, which meant that this, apparently, would be the hill he was going to have to die on, at a dinner table in Batman’s house. “No one recognises me because they don’t expect Superman to be an ordinary, nerdy guy. The glasses work perfectly well.”
“The glasses are a weak identity,” Bruce said in an indecipherable tone from the head of the table, which was unsurprising because he had been saying that for years, but was also somewhat surprising because he was agreeing with Jason, something which, particularly over trivialities, he usually made a point of not doing. Or maybe it was Jason that made a point of disagreeing with Bruce. Clark never could keep up with this family. “But,” Bruce continued reasonably, “they seem to have proved effective. There’s relatively minimal conspiracy and speculation of your dual identity.”
“Thank you,” Clark said, nodding at Bruce in thanks for supporting his defence.
A few beats of silence passed as everyone ate. Then, Tim paused, fork still, hovering over his plate with pasta twirled around it. He had a considering look on his face as he addressed Jason. “If you want to criticise Clark’s glasses, I suppose you have to criticise our dominos. In terms of masking, they’re probably about as effective as sunglasses, and most people are recognisable with or without sunglasses.” Statement over, he took a large bite of his pasta and was silent again.
“That’s what I’ve been saying!” Jason agreed emphatically, nearly whacking Bruce in the face in a way which seemed at least possibly deliberate.
“Jason, please,” Bruce said wearily, gently pushing Jason's arm down, away from his face.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Dick put in, and it was just about then that Clark realised he may just be about to find himself in the middle of a famous Wayne-family dinner-fight, of which he had heard many stories, mostly from a disgruntled Bruce. “We’ve already established that dominoes and glasses and whatever works just fine because it’s about the persona.” Dick leaned back in his chair with a gotcha expression. “People see what they want to see,” he said smugly.
A knife sailed through the air at Dick’s face. Though he was relatively sure Dick was capable of either dodging or catching it himself, Clark shot out a hand and caught it mid-air before setting it calmly back on the table. He glanced at Bruce, who was glaring at his youngest child. Damian was sitting in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest and a sour expression on his young face.
“What have I told you about throwing knives at dinner, Damian?” Bruce asked in a voice so low it was almost his batman voice. “And about throwing knives at your siblings?”
Damian’s scowl deepened. “Don’t,” he answered tersely.
“And?”
“I am sorry,” Damian said stiffly, directing it in the general direction of both Dick and Clark, who were sitting side by side.
Dick smiled broadly. “Apology accepted.”
Clark nodded. Was every night in this house like this? How were the bats always so serious in their work when they acted like this at home? And, most importantly, really how bad was having glasses as a secret identity?
Clark had had A Day. Or, more accurately, A Week. Capitalised, because it had been hectic as hell and he may have been Superman and not even human, but he was exhausted. And yet he still had to show up for work at the Daily Planet, even though he was about three seconds from falling asleep at his desk. Still, he had work to do, so he forced himself to sit up straight and read what he’d already written, and put his fingers on the keyboard and start to type out more. He got a word! Hurrah! A whole entire word! And then another, and another, and miracle of all miracles, they all fit together!
He got halfway through the sentence before his overtired brain noped out and he forgot where he’d been going with what he was trying to say. Having to put in the conscious effort of keeping them open, he dragged his eyes back to the beginning of the sentence to re-read it.
He was way too tired to be here.
He went to rub at his eyes and cursed when his hand hit the lenses of his glasses. Feeling thoroughly defeated, he slumped down on the desk, head pillowed on his arms, and then mentally bemoaned the way the arms of his glasses digged into his face and the bridge digged into his nose for all of three seconds before he fell sound asleep.
“Clark?” Someone hissed in his ear. He woke with start, and swung his gaze round to see a blurry version of Lois with her hand on his shoulder, painted nails standing out as bright, smudgy ovals of colour against the plain brown of his tweed jacket. “You fell asleep,” Lois said helpfully.
In response Clark sighed and pulled away, leaning back and stretching out. He blinked, hoping it would clear his oddly unfocused vision. It didn’t.
Lois was already returning to her own desk as Clark reached up to his face and realised… he was wearing his glasses. And they were smudged as hell.
He was actually going to go insane.