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Clark doesn’t notice at first, that Batman always wears gloves.
Not because he’s unobservant, because he’s not, or because he doesn’t care, because he does, but because every time the thought occurs to him, a thousand objection come to his mind.
The man needs to hide his fingerprints, his gloves contain secret, super-advanced technology, he has a skin condition, there’s a distinctive symbol on them he needs to hide, or the world will figure out who he is… and so forth, until some part of Clark’s brain is asking him why he is so obsessed with Batman’s hands.
They look perfectly normal, but the more Clark thinks about it (he thinks about it a lot), the more he thinks about how bizarre it is that they’ve never seen Batman’s hands. Not once in the decades they’ve known the man for.
And he knows he can’t just ask the man – both because it’d probably a little bit rude of him, and because ‘I ask of you that you show me your hands’ is the weirdest thing you can ask someone – but the thought keeps coming back to him, until he can’t even have one conversation with the man without staring at them – until he realises and glances away.
He’s stuck in this state of puzzlement until a seemingly-average day where Batman – Bruce motherfucking Wayne – reveals his identity to them.
Clark is. Shocked, to say the least.
The realisation that his boss - his clumsy, very rich, very publicly a moron – is The Bat. Has been The Bat, terror of the night who strikes fear into the heart of evil and doesn’t blink in the face of the Abyss, for years.
The knowledge is disturbing. Thinking back to all the times the fucking Batman laughed obnoxiously after making a shitty joke is disturbing. The thought of the articles he almost wrote – and the ones he proofread, or even just read – is disturbing.
Interacting with the man when Aware is on a whole other level. Clark doesn’t know how exactly he is surviving, but he’s not sure he wants it to continue. Every time Batman – Bruce – opens his mouth, it feels like some heartless deity somewhere pulls out a grater to slowly – painfully slowly – rasp at Clark’s soul.
Every time the man laughs, a feeling of wrongness comes over Clark, and forces him to shudder.
And he’s supposed to interview the man.
He’s asking one of the questions on the list that’s been given to him, trying to ignore how wrong it is to ask Batman if there is a lucky woman, when his brain suddenly registers that the man isn’t wearing gloves.
It makes him stutter, and the sharp spark that appears in Batman’s eyes for a second is the most normal thing he’s seen tonight.
Still, he has a job to do, and he tries his best to not stare at the two perfectly normal hands the man has. Except from a few scars, they are the most average hands a human being could possibly have. Not to say that they aren’t pretty but they are quite literally, just some hands.
Clark thinks he’s solved the mystery of Batman’s hands – that it was never a mystery to begin with – and forgets all about it, until he’s in the Batcave, anxiously watching while Agent A stitches Nightwing’s wound. It’s a bad one, painful and dangerous, and he’s not surprised when the man extends a hand in Bruce’s direction.
He is struck in astonishment when the man takes off the bloody gloves is wearing, puts on another, identical pair, and then gets closer to his son.
Clark blinks and is hit with the realisation that he’s never seen Bruce touch anyone barehand. As Batman, he has gloves – to protect himself? Others? – and as Brucie Wayne, now that Clark’s thinking about it, he’s always carefully making sure to never touch anyone.
And the thought is… worrying.
Clark can explain Bruce always wearing gloves, as Batman. There is nothing – at least nothing reassuring – he can think of that could explain why the man doesn’t touch anyone. And it worries Clark.
**
Jason doesn’t remember much of the first few weeks he spent with Bruce, though it has less to do with the numerous occasions he received head-trauma and all to do with the gigantic amount of memories he’s created with… everyone, really.
He remembers when he noticed Bruce wouldn’t touch people, years after arriving. Young Jason was observant and careful, but Bruce would ruffle his hair, carefully try to make the boy like him, so why would he have noticed that the man always wore gloves?
The gloves weren’t special, and there were other things he had to pay attention to – where was the food stocked? what was hidden in the man’s desk? What did he drink when he was partying? – why would he have cared for a few shitty pairs of gloves.
And they were shitty, especially if you knew exactly how rich the man was. That was what had ticked him off, really. He thinks he would have noticed if Bruce had forgotten them one day, like he had with Batman, but there had never been an accident with the gloves. So, years after joining the man, Jason had been stroked with the realisation that Bruce was wearing gloves, and that they were identical to the ones he had worn yesterday, and the day before yesterday, and the day before – and more than that, that they were of poor quality, full of obvious tears and fix.
Jason’s eyes had lingered a bit too long on the man’s hidden hands, a thousand questions had formed in his mind, had pressed on his tongue and behind his lips, and he had been ready to ask them, ready to uncover yet another mystery.
Until he’d noticed the tenseness in Bruce’s shoulders, thought about the fact that the man – who trusted them with his life, who would have died for them without a second thought, who only ever hid secrets in fear of endangering them – had done his hardest to hide it for him, had managed to do so for years, until Bruce had put his hands in his pockets, trying to hide them from view – ashamed? Secretive?
So Jason had kept his burning mouth shut and run away in almost shame.
Bruce had never prodded, never asked, never been invasive in any way. Why wouldn’t Jason do the same? If the man wanted to talk, he would have done saw already.
He’s never seen them – Bruce’s hands. He thinks he’s felt them before though.
Jason thinks he’s felt their warmth before, burning, almost acidic warmth, far stronger than the burning sand of the desert, than the melted bits of his burning suit.
He thinks he’s felt them, first trying to fight for him, to keep him alive – pressing against his side, burning hotter than the blood he’s losing – then comforting, pushing hairs out of his face, light as feathers over his face, holding his hand tight, tight, tight and warm, as if Bruce could hold him together forever.
Then – a blink – hands on his shoulders – on his eyelids, as scorching as tears and then – Cold.
Jason’s not sure if he’s changed, if the pit has changed him. If he was feverish and dying, and hallucinated all that. Or if Bruce really is like that – as hot and burning as a thousand suns.
But now Jason is cold, freezing cold, always – though, when Bruce looks at him, eyes burning bright with adoration, when he hovers just a few feet away, when Jason gets so close that he could touch him, he feels just a little warmer.
**
Sometimes, Bruce thinks he’s lucky his parents died when he was ten, and not earlier or later.
He has cherished memories, enough to think of them fondly, not so much that he fears forgetting some. He has very few regrets, very few if I could change one thing-
But the few he has…
They are monumental, stand taller than him, crumble him like giants would an ant, attacking by surprise and able to take him out as swiftly as would an assassin. But he would far prefer a sharp blade through the chest – than the feelings regrets attack him with.
Some nights, when they are particularly vicious, visions of a particular night haunt him, and he would lose to a thousand assassins if it meant they left him in peace – but didn’t leave him, for he does not mind the pain, when it allows him visions of his parents.
He cannot remember the movie. He has watched it again, older, but from that night his memories start when he leaves the theatre and is hit by the cold of the night. He remembers… cheeks flushed by the warmth of the theatre, bitten by the teasing wind.
He remembers walking ahead, mind filled with excitement and joy.
He sees the love in his parent’s eyes, the way they follow him with their eyes, smile at his innocent bliss. He hears them calling him back when he wanders too far.
Then, the painful part begins. The part Bruce watches while acidic regret spread through his body, melting him from the inside out.
Bruce always sees himself, carelessly tugging a glove – the left one – off. Then, he takes off the other one, and happily runs back towards his parents. He can only watch as his younger self almost- aggressively take hold of his parents’ hands, selfishly bringing them towards him.
Then-
Fear on their face. A gunshot. Blood, blood, blood all over him.
And he goes back to the wind that gently strokes his flushed cheeks, to the warmth that slowly rises through him, until he finds a way to shatter it.
Bruce never forgets, that everything he touches he burns.