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"So," Bruce says, accent firmly in place, broad enough to drive a truck through, "are you gonna let me take a look at the goods, or what?"
Clark carefully keeps his face straight, and gives a hard blank look to the men across the table from Bruce.
He's standing, looming at Bruce's shoulder, with his hands linked at the small of his back. Bruce had told him to do it, had run through the specific details of positioning with him, so he'd manage to give the impression of a military background of some kind. The expression is Bruce, too; he'd said anything more inventive than this, any glaring or sneering, ran the risk of undercutting itself, creating an impression of insecurity. Unreadable, expressionless, implicit intimidation was the better option.
"Prove you got the money, first," one of them says, chin high, a challenge.
Bruce gives him a level look over the tops of Matches Malone's massive sunglasses, shifting the match from one side of his mouth to the other; and only then, after a long deliberate beat, does he turn and reach for the briefcase he'd set on the floor beside his chair, lifting it up to lay it on its side on the table. He doesn't rush himself, leans forward to undo one catch and then the other, and opens it to reveal neat stacks of bills, the crisp green "100" on the top bill in each stack clearly readable.
"There," he says. "Now you know I'm good for it if I like what you got. So let me fuckin' see what you got."
The men look at each other. And then one of them reaches into the small duffel bag they brought into the room with them, and takes out a small container.
Clark already knew it was there, obviously. He looked through the bag—the bag, the men's coats and shirts, slacks, shoes. They both have guns, which isn't a surprise; one of them's got a much smaller back-up piece strapped to his ankle, too, and the other one has a knife tucked away against his waist. But Clark had only been able to see the dark lump of the container, inside the bag, and nothing else. Bruce had glanced up at him, when the men had first come into the room, and Clark had moved his head the barest fraction to the side, the ghost of a shake, to let him know that there was nothing to see—that whatever was in there was lead-lined, had to be.
Which had been only one of a number of possibilities Bruce had raised. There had been a frustrating lack of intelligence on the ground about what exactly these two men had—all Bruce had been able to find out was that it was supposedly some kind of weapon, and he'd speculated that that might well mean anything from stolen strontium-90 intended for a dirty bomb to a sample of biological weaponry, a vial of live smallpox or a canister of gas that would be accompanied by a chemical formula for more.
Clark figures lead-lined has to put the smart odds on the strontium.
But then the man actually opens the container, and that's not what's inside it.
Clark tenses, bracing himself, the moment he understands what he's looking at—the uneven, crystalline chunk of rock, the way it's glowing. It's a brilliant pink, not green, but there's something about the light in it, the specific structure of the crystals, that's distinctive, unmistakable. Clark had gotten a glimpse of the same thing, the last gasp of his vision sharpening itself unpredictably, a closeup of the nearest particle in the air, before he'd inhaled the cloud of pressurized dust Bruce had shot into his face. And then he'd barely been able to see anything at all.
Except—
Bruce huffs half a breath through his nose, as if skeptical, and turns his head to share a dubious glance with his bodyguard. But Clark can see the tension in his shoulders, and the way his eyes move over Clark once his face is turned away from the other men in the room says he's preparing for anything, already trying to invent a way to explain why Clark's about to fall over, throw up, or both.
Except—Clark feels fine.
Bruce had felt like he'd had no choice except to arrange a negotiation, the only way left for him to learn what it was that was being brought into Gotham; what it was for, what kind of damage it could do—where it had come from, who had made it, how it would be distributed. He'd asked Clark to come with him in case something went wrong, which Clark knew had been code for in case it gets set off and I'm killed by it. He'd never have done that, not in a million years, if he'd known it might be some new kind of kryptonite, if he'd thought Clark might be in more danger than he was.
So it's weirdly satisfying, in a way, to meet his eyes and give him the tiniest one-shouldered shrug Clark can manage. Clark would've kind of hated it, if Bruce had finally, finally actually asked for Clark's help with something, only to have to turn around and save Clark instead.
But whatever that is—if it's slower-acting somehow, or it isn't even kryptonite but something somebody grew in a lab trying to mimic the structure—it clearly isn't going to take Clark out at the knees just yet.
Bruce watches Clark for a moment longer, and then seems to come to approximately the same conclusion, and turns back around. "This?" he says aloud. "This is your big deal I can't afford to miss out on? Some kind of rock?"
"Not just any rock, pal," one of the men says. "This here is—"
"Kryptonite, yeah, yeah. Superman goes all weak in the knees for the green stuff. But everybody knows that, which means you can't spit in this town without hitting some schmuck trying to sell you his mama's emeralds with a fuckin' LED under 'em. How'm I supposed to believe this shit's going to do anything to him at all? You amateurs didn't even get the color right."
The men object, deeply offended by this slight to their respectability as businessmen. Bruce keeps spinning it out, goading them into telling him where they got it, what makes them so sure it's real.
And Clark keeps standing there, waiting to feel something, waiting to learn he was tempting fate after all by wanting to make himself useful to Bruce even once.
But there's no spike of agony, and no slow building discomfort, either. He tries to pick out something, anything, but his skin was already prickling anyway, coming down from the sharp rush of fear that had gone through him the moment that container had opened. A flicker of pink light, maybe—or a trick of the eye, in the moment right before he blinks. He just can't tell for certain.
He tries to make sure his face stays in the right lines, and he keeps his senses turned up just a fraction—just enough to be certain he won't miss any signals Bruce tries to give him, so he'll know what he's supposed to do next.
And it's fine. He doesn't start feeling weak, or sick, or heavy all over. The senses don't start to cut out on him. He even lets himself come up just a little way off the floor, moving as if he's shifting his weight, to double-check—but the flight is still there, too.
Eventually, Bruce is done, must have learned as much as he thinks he can get out of this. He stands up, takes two stacks of money out of the briefcase and pushes them across the table, and says, "That's all you're gettin' out of me if you can't prove this stuff actually works. If you think you can find a better deal somewhere else, be my fuckin' guest."
The men look at each other, and then at the money, and then at each other. One of them pushes the pink kryptonite, still in its container, across the table toward Bruce.
And Bruce takes it, closes the container and hands it to Clark, and shuts the briefcase again. "Pleasure was all yours, I'm thinkin'," he says, dry as dust, and then he turns and walks out, and Clark follows him.
"And you didn't experience any new symptoms on the way here," Bruce says, the container in his hands, watching Clark with gimlet eyes.
"No," Clark says. "There wasn't anything I couldn't tell you about while we were in there, and I didn't feel anything different once you'd closed the container again, and I'm not feeling anything now. Every other kind of kryptonite we've ever run into has affected me pretty much instantly, so I don't see why this one would be time-delayed, but if it is, I'll tell you. I'm fine. Unless pink kryptonite's power is making me think it hasn't done anything to me—"
"We haven't ruled that out," Bruce murmurs, tone mild.
But he stands there for a moment longer, hands tight around the container with the kryptonite in it, and when he meets Clark's eyes for real, his face is grave.
"I'd never have asked you to step into that room if I'd known they had kryptonite with them."
Jesus. "I know that, Bruce," Clark says firmly. "There was no way you could've known. And I really am fine."
Bruce doesn't say anything else. Which Clark assumes means he can't bring himself to agree that it wasn't his fault, and at the same time he can't figure out how to disagree and sound even superficially reasonable about it when Clark is, in fact, fine.
He looks away.
"I'm going to run some tests," he says at last. "I might be able to figure out what it was supposed to do, or—if it is doing something, and for some reason it just didn't work on you. If it's genuinely harmless to you, if we can process any other kind of kryptonite somehow and turn it into this to make it harmless to you permanently, that will be invaluable." He pauses, and breathes out a fraction of a laugh. "Perhaps I should've given them the rest of the money after all."
Clark smiles. That's good of him to say. "Let me know what you find out?"
"Of course," Bruce says.
And—
It's then, right that moment, looking at him, that Clark does feel something he can't quite account for. He can't put his finger on it, it's just—a strange sensation, of having somehow missed a step he was expecting his foot to land on, as he lingers there in the doorway like he always does anytime he's about to walk away from Bruce.
He frowns outright for an instant before he catches himself, and makes himself back out into the hallway.
It doesn't necessarily mean anything.
That there had been something, something he'd—expected to feel, in that instant, and hadn't, isn't a problem in and of itself. He shouldn't even have let himself get in the habit of doing that, lingering that way, staring at Bruce an extra moment too long. It's just that there's usually something holding him there, something that makes it briefly impossible to look away.
But it's fine. That isn't a bad thing. Maybe he's finally getting over it, the weird possessiveness he's always struggled with around Bruce—like he's been a kid who didn't want his best friend to have any other friends. Maybe that was just a phase, the natural result of having died in a world where Bruce had loomed so impossibly large for him and then coming back in another, one where Bruce had surrounded himself with people just as exceptional as Clark had ever been, and hadn't had to try to kill any of them before he could be convinced they were worth his time.
Clark hadn't felt it in the park, for the very simple reason that he hadn't really been able to understand that there was anybody else in the park except Bruce, until Lois had shown up. The rest of the League had been obstacles, that was all, something that was between him and Bruce and shouldn't have been, something he needed to get out of his way in order to reach Bruce.
But it had started to kick in pretty fast, after that. He'd felt gratified, so stupid and pointless a feeling that he'd never have admitted it out loud, when they'd needed him to help them stop Steppenwolf. See, Bruce, they're not enough. It has to be me, you have to have me; you aren't going to be able to replace me, not ever—
Ridiculous. Embarrassingly self-involved. And of course it's only ever gotten worse, the longer he's known Bruce, the more time they've spent together. He can't count the number of times he's told himself, after, that he needed to cool it—stop looking for Bruce's attention all the time, stop trying to come up with ways to be around Bruce more often, stop feeling that—that thing, that odd warm spark somewhere in his chest, every time Bruce looked at him or spoke to him, every time Bruce seemed to want to spend time with him, too.
So it's a good thing, if here, today, for whatever reason, he's suddenly managed to get a grip on himself after all.
It's just—
The awareness of it, something strange, something off, only gets stronger. It had been Thursday afternoon, the meeting Matches Malone had set; Friday, the entire rest of the weekend, it only gets worse. It's like everything is set a few inches to the right of where he's expecting it to be, like all these—all these habits he hadn't even known he had, muscle memory, are silently betraying him.
He finds himself looking at things—the TV, athletes or actors who are on it; the covers of magazines; the man who's almost always in line in front of him for coffee at the corner near his apartment—and not knowing why he's doing it. There are places his eyes land, reflexive, that are—that should be—
It was never just girls he'd caught himself looking at, in high school in Smallville. He and Pete had kissed once, thirteen and nervous, palms sweating, just to try it, just to see what it was like. They'd never talked about it again. Clark had gotten used to telling himself it didn't have to matter, and then making it true. He'd been different enough; he hadn't needed to make anything more difficult than it already was.
He hasn't thought about it, really thought about it, in years. Sometimes, maybe, in a wistful kind of way—wondering, now and then, whether there was a version of him out there in the multiverse somewhere who'd been a little braver, a little less willing to try to make sure he fit the definition of "normal" the way it was measured in a small town in Kansas. Who'd actually—done something about it, had feelings for a man, sometime in his life.
But that version isn't him. Clark doesn't—Clark hasn't ever—he looks, that's all.
Except now he's still looking, but those athletes on the TV, the actors on the magazine covers, the man in the coffee line, it's—
Their arms are just arms. Their shoulders are just shoulders; their thighs are just legs. He ends up staring even longer than he means to, longer than he ever would have let himself before, trying to pinpoint the difference, trying to understand what's changed, what it is that's missing: feeling out the edges of the gap in him, like tonguing around the space where a tooth's come out.
And then, on Monday afternoon, he sees Bruce again. On Monday afternoon, he finally understands exactly what he's lost.
He's sent to Wayne Enterprises for an interview.
It's not supposed to be with Bruce, but that basically never matters. Whoever it is Clark's supposed to be talking to, even if he was only scheduled for five minutes with a middle manager, he'll end up getting ushered into Bruce's office instead, for a minimum of half an hour that Perry is somehow never particularly angry about.
So when Clark walks up to the front desk in the lobby, and the receptionist's instructions for him have changed since an hour ago when he called to confirm the meeting, he just shakes his head and lets it happen. He rides the elevator up to the top floor feeling—fine, gently fond of Bruce and his relentless nosiness. He steps out, gets shown down the hall, opens Bruce's office door, and—
He must only just have been starting to really feel it, the change, before. It must have been hardly there, barely settled into him at all, when he'd been standing there in the doorway of Bruce's lab.
Because now it feels obvious, unmissable. Now, his gut lurches, a sharp warning, practically the worst he's ever felt without green kryptonite in the room.
He's looking at Bruce, in one of Bruce Wayne's suits; perfect fit, long legs propped up on the corner of the desk, Bruce's head just turning toward the door, a little afternoon stubble starting to come in dark across the line of Bruce's jaw, and he feels—
Not nothing. Of course it's not nothing. He likes Bruce. Bruce is one of his closest friends. It isn't that he's forgotten anything, and it isn't that he doesn't know Bruce as well as he ever has, since he came back and got the chance to figure the man out for real.
But the open buttons of Bruce's collar parting over the hollow of his throat, the line of his slacks with his feet crossed like that, the shape of his shoulders under his suit jacket, don't mean anything anymore. There's—there's no shiver to suppress, none of the bright prickling feeling of anticipation that always, always comes with knowing he's about to spend at least half an hour with Bruce, uninterrupted.
He's happy to see Bruce. But that's all. There's no brilliance in it, no glow, no ache. Jesus, he'd just thought—he'd thought it only made sense, that he felt as strongly, as intensely, as much about Bruce as he did, considering everything they've been through, everything they've done to each other and forgiven each other for.
But now it's gone, that feeling. And he's starting to think, a cold slow clenching through the pit of his stomach, that if it had been what he'd believed it was, what he'd told himself it was—then it wouldn't be.
Bruce has turned all the way around, in the stretch of silence Clark's left for him to do it in. Clark doesn't even—doesn't even know how long he's been standing here, staring at Bruce. But apparently it's been long enough that even Bruce Wayne would have started to frown at him, because that's what Bruce does.
"Mr. Kent?"
Clark swallows, opens his mouth and then closes it again.
"Mr. Kent—"
"I," he manages. "Mr. Wayne, I'm sorry, I'm—I'm not feeling well."
Bruce gives him a searching look. Those words aren't one of the signals Bruce established with him, with the rest of the League, in case any of their civilian identities need to exchange information with each other in public. He's probably trying to work out what Clark could possibly be attempting to tell him with them, when all they are is the truth.
"Then I think I'd better take you home," he says slowly, after a moment.
That isn't a good idea. Is it? Unless Bruce means the Hall, or—Clark doesn't know, can't guess. "Mr. Wayne—"
"I think I'd better take you home, Mr. Kent," Bruce repeats, firmer, standing, and Clark can't figure out how to argue.
Bruce does take him to the Hall.
Probably because he's assuming it must be a Superman problem, that that's why Clark didn't just tell him exactly what was wrong right there in his office. But it's a relief anyway—somewhere familiar, somewhere where Clark doesn't have to try to keep track of who he's pretending to be, what to call Bruce, what he should and shouldn't be able to do.
Bruce doesn't ask him anything during the drive, barely talks at all until they're actually inside. He guides Clark into one of the first-floor lounges, a light hand steady against the small of Clark's back, and then he draws Clark around to face him, grip settling on his shoulders, his upper arms, and says, quick, quiet, "All right, Clark, what's happened?"
"The kryptonite," Clark says. "The pink kryptonite—you still have it, right?" He hadn't even thought about it, but if Bruce didn't figure out anything useful, if he got rid of it or destroyed it—
"Yes," Bruce says slowly. "Of course."
Thank god. "I need it," Clark says. "I need to be exposed to it again."
That should work. Shouldn't it? It flipped the switch one way. Surely it can flip it back. Or—jesus, maybe he'll have to try it two times, three times. Ten, for all he knows—how many options are there? Do Kryptonians have more of them than humans do, or less?
But he has no idea what else to try.
Bruce's face has gone unreadable. "Clark," he says, steady, precisely measured, "what did it do to you?"
Clark stops short.
He knows what it did. He knows. But it's not like he has any actual proof, any objective evidence he can hand over to Bruce to explain it. He never told Bruce he'd kissed Pete once when he was a kid, and that's—once, nothing, hardly conclusive. He hasn't made any public statements, hasn't ever done anything, doesn't have even a single boyfriend to set across the scales from Lois. Does it even count, if it's barely real for anyone but him? What if it doesn't? What if Bruce doesn't believe him?
He screws his eyes shut, covers his face with his hands. "It's stupid," he says into his palms, "it doesn't make any sense, it's—it won't make any sense to you—"
"Clark," Bruce says.
"It made me straight," Clark chokes out. "It made me—I don't—I don't feel—"
And he can't look, has to at the same time. Bruce is still holding onto him, hands at his shoulders. Clark has never seen his expression so thoroughly, unimpeachably blank. But his eyes seem very sharp and very dark.
"You weren't before," he says.
Clark shakes his head, convulsive. "No."
It's barely more than a whisper. But apparently it's enough. Bruce draws in a breath, says, "Wait here," and then it's—he's gone.
Without him there, the gravity he brings to everything without even trying, Clark feels like even more of an idiot. He sinks down onto the edge of the sofa behind him, puts his head in his hands and bites at his mouth. This is stupid, he should have just—he should've just let it go. This isn't hurting him, isn't killing him. He doesn't even know whether it's permanent. Maybe all he needs to do is wait another week, a month. Maybe one day he'd have looked up and wanted Bruce again, loved Bruce again, just as thoroughly as he ever loved Lois, and he wouldn't have had to say a word—
He looks up, at the sound of footsteps. Bruce is framed in the doorway for a moment, with the container in his hands, and then he steps through it—brings the container to Clark.
Clark takes it from him, too fast, practically snatching it out of his hands, and then has to fumble to find the catch, to open it.
But the pink kryptonite is still inside. Clark grips the container tight, looks down at it, and it's—there is something after all, the faintest little shimmer of pink light across his hands, his skin. He'd had them tucked behind his back, in that room; he'd never have been able to notice it passing over him, then.
And that must mean it's worked. Instantaneous, stronger with less distance, just like every other kind of kryptonite he's ever seen.
It worked—or it isn't going to. God, he's almost afraid to test it, but there's no other way to know. He swallows hard, throat tight, and snaps the container shut again; and then he makes himself look up at Bruce.
It did work. That quickly, that completely. The rush of relief is almost as heady as the feeling itself, raw and trembling, brimming over—looking at Bruce, in and of itself, is almost too much, almost enough to tip it an inch too far and spill it everywhere. The warmth, the fondness, the familiarity, is all still there; and it's not less than any other part of the feeling, but when it was the only part, when the rest had vanished so completely, it was—it wasn't the same, it couldn't have been. But now it's all there, the whole thing. Everything Clark hadn't understood, couldn't have named, until it was gone.
He laughs, breathless, grateful, and that's probably enough for Bruce to have figured it out, but he says, "It worked," anyway, glad just to get to hear it, to know that it's true.
"Clark," Bruce says.
Clark sets the container down carefully at his feet, and scrubs his hands across his face. He's so relieved that he's still smiling when he looks up at Bruce again.
Bruce. Bruce, who isn't stupid. Bruce, who just listened to Clark tell him that the pink kryptonite had made him straight, that he needed to re-expose himself to it to try to fix it—who just watched him do exactly that, and then look at Bruce to see whether it had worked, before saying that it had.
"You're certain of that," Bruce says.
"Yes," Clark says, helpless.
Bruce wets his mouth. Clark tries not to watch him do it, and almost succeeds. "You're certain of that," he repeats, "now that you've checked, by—"
He stops, like he can't figure out how to say it in a way that will leave room for reasonable doubt, like somehow he still isn't sure.
"By being in a room with you," Clark says for him, almost steady. "Yes."
Because he isn't going to lie about it. He doesn't want to lie about it. He kept it to himself for such a long time, he hid it and he was embarrassed by it; he even used to want it to go away, sometimes. But now that he's just had it taken from him outright, taken and then, miraculous, given back, for at least a few minutes, he can't figure out how to be afraid of it. It's only the truth. Losing it, the way he feels about men, about Bruce, his capacity for it—that had been wrong, had felt wrong. Having it back, being able to feel it again, isn't.
"Clark," Bruce says, hushed, strained. "Clark, you—"
He takes a half-step forward, practically clumsy, as if he can't help it; his hand is extended, his fingertips an inch from brushing Clark's upturned face.
And Clark knew from the papers, the tabloids, that Bruce Wayne had never been straight, but he hadn't thought for a second that Bruce would—that Bruce might actually—
"Yeah," he says, blank, startled. "Yeah, yes. It's—you."
It's clumsy, awkward, rising halfway off the sofa belatedly at the same moment Bruce sways down toward him, their mouths catching for a glancing instant and then breaking apart, catching again. Clark doesn't know what he's doing, doesn't know where to put his hands for this; Bruce has caught him lopsidedly by the back of the shirt.
It's—pretty much perfect, Clark decides dimly, and manages at last to find the length of Bruce's tie, to hold him where he is by it, so he'll know better than to stop.