Chapter Text
“I can’t believe Perry’s giving this to you,” Cat said enviously, as Clark slipped his things into his messenger bag. “Of all the times for me to break my stupid foot.”
Clark sighed. “Cat, believe me, I would much rather have it still be with you.”
“Please. As if you’re not going to love living the high life for two weeks.”
“I won’t be!” Clark protested. “It’s a shadow for a few hours a day, I seriously doubt any ‘high life’ is gonna happen except a lunch.”
“Shadowing Bruce Wayne,” Cat said, and whapped him in the arm with a rolled-up paper. She’d rolled her desk chair over to his and Lois’ cubes, her walking cast enough for this much. “Make sure you ask him all those questions I wrote out for you.”
“Cat,” Lois said, not looking up from her computer screen, “there is no way in hell Clark’s asking him about that thing with the supermodels and the Hotel Royale fountain.”
“What she said,” Clark said, pointing vaguely at his writing partner as he looked around his desk for anything he’d forgotten. “I will be asking him about getting this new branch of the Martha Wayne Foundation open and that’s it. If it’s been a week and he doesn’t hate me, I might ask some of those questions, Cat.”
Cat huffed in outrage and rolled her eyes. “If you don’t at least get a good quote about his own kid in a story about a new family services charity, I will never forgive you.”
“Oh, yeah, the kid he famously never trots out in front of reporters?” Clark sighed, pushing a hand through his hair, and did one last check for his tape recorder and spare batteries. “I’ll do that.”
“You can have a little fun,” Lois said, looking up at him in amusement. She could talk; she was getting to stay here and solo their deep dive into lead paint remediation scams on the waterfront. (Clark had a personal investment in that one, and she knew it.)
“I can, but I don’t think I will,” Clark said, and decided there was no way he could stall any longer. “Wish me luck.”
“Let him flirt with you!” Cat yelled after him as he headed for the elevator. “It’s how I get all my good quotes!”
Good God. Clark didn’t know how he was going to survive the next two weeks.
The staff meeting after Cat had broken her foot had involved a lot of reassigning, since she couldn’t exactly do the usual society beat with her foot in a boot. So much that Clark hadn’t really thought twice when Perry had said “and Kent, you’ll take the new Wayne foundation piece,” because sure, he liked working the philanthropy stories occasionally. It wasn’t until they’d gotten back to their desks that Lois had burst into a fit of snickering and said “oh, I would pay money to see how you’re going to handle Bruce Wayne for two weeks,” and Clark had realized how majorly screwed he was.
Wayne had agreed a month ago to allow the Daily Planet a two-week shadow for an in-depth profile on the launch of a new branch of the Martha Wayne Foundation, focused on expanding family safety nets after loss—helping maintain housing after losing a breadwinner, medical bills after a serious illness or loss of a family member; the kinds of thing that a lot of charities would ostensibly help with but might need more hoops jumped through than a grieving family could manage while trying to keep their heads above water.
The Planet was interested in how much coordination would be happening across a lot of local networks, Gotham and Metropolis both, to make this kind of aid feasible, and since Wayne was the only common denominator across it all, they’d be focusing on Wayne as the charity got off the ground. Two weeks of following Wayne through meetings and lunches and launch events, with one formal reception at the end—Cat knew how to report on these kinds of things, the glad-handing and loose end-tying that came with high-society types patting themselves on the back for a job well done, so it had been her story at first.
But now it was Clark’s, and as he dropped into his seat on the mid-morning train across the bay to Gotham, he felt a sinking sense of dread. He hated these high-powered business situations; he was more interested in how the people on the ground worked, and he’d rather be meeting the local coordinators than the man at the top. He’d met Bruce Wayne at one or two Planet events and he wasn’t looking forward to two solid weeks of coy flirting and bad jokes.
More than that, though—it was that Wayne never took anything seriously, and it drove Clark insane trying to parse his glib, insincere patter for actual substance.
He’d do it, because he was a goddamn professional, but he found himself hoping for just a minor planetary emergency as he caught a cab from the train station to the Wayne Foundation offices. Just enough that Superman might be needed and Clark Kent could reschedule.
But it was a sunny, clear day with no signs of robots or monsters or interstellar portals, and Clark sighed, shaking his head. Just his luck.
-
“If you can bribe Dick to do his homework before dinner, I’d appreciate it—I’ll probably be home later than usual,” Bruce said into his earpiece as he grabbed his suit jacket off the back of his chair. His one o’clock from the Daily Planet would be here any minute, and he needed to look like he was just pretending to be busy, not actually going over financial statements with his sleeves rolled up. “Involving the press in this was a terrible idea. I just want it on the record I’ve said that now that it’s getting started.”
“I will remind you, Master Bruce,” Alfred said with just the hint of a long-suffering sigh, “of your own reasoning, which was that allowing the Daily Planet an in-depth look at the opening of the safety net program would create goodwill for later this month, when you may need the assistance of the paper of record in exposing Daggett Industries’ latest misdeeds.”
Right. Bruce snorted humorlessly as he shrugged his jacket back on. “That doesn’t sound like something I’d say.”
“Your disingenuous persona is, as ever, impeccable, sir.”
Bruce’s desk speaker buzzed, the front desk reporting his visitor was here, and he sighed. “Send them up,” he said, bending down to the intercom, then returned his attention to Alfred. “All right, I’m going off comms until this is over with. Remind Dick to use the actual phone if he needs me, please, but not to be afraid to call.”
“I shall. Though I have much more faith in Master Dick knowing when to ask for help than in certain people,” Alfred said lightly. “Sir.” The radio clicked off before Bruce could come up with a retort to that, as Alfred clearly intended, and he shook his head with a smile he couldn’t quite hide.
There was a polite knock on his office door as it opened, and Bruce let his face fall into an easy, smooth smile, taking a deep breath as he turned. His secretary Angela cracked the door open—his reputation did wonders for wariness of walking in on him, though Bruce had never actually put any of his employees in a situation where they’d have to deal with that and never would—and gave him a nervous smile. “Your appointment from the Daily Planet, Mr. Wayne?”
“Thanks, Angela,” he said easily, coming around his desk, and she smiled and stepped fully inside, holding the door open behind her. “Ms. Grant, always a—” He broke off in the middle of his sentence, blinking at the figure who followed Angela in and was decidedly not Cat Grant. “Pleasure,” he finished belatedly, reflexively falling back into Bruce Wayne’s flirtatious mask to hide his own surprise. “Very much a pleasure.”
The man gave him an awkward, tight smile, and Bruce rarely regretted the necessity of his public persona as much as he did at moments like this. “Clark Kent, Mr. Wayne,” he said, extending a hand. “Cat’s unfortunately not able to make it, so you’ll have to put up with me instead.”
“Oh, that won’t be a hardship,” Bruce drawled, putting himself on playboy-autopilot. It was, for once, not a stretch; Kent was…distractingly handsome, even behind the unflattering glasses and worse suit. “Please, sit down. Drinks are on the house, if I can get you anything.”
“Oh, I’m fine, thank you.” A hint of the Midwest, in his vowels; they’d met before, Bruce was sure, the name and face ringing a faint bell. “I’d—really just be glad to jump right in, Mr. Wayne?”
Bruce allowed himself one suggestive once-over, because Angela was still hovering in the doorway. “I love to jump right in.”
Kent’s cheeks turned slightly pink, even as his bland smile stayed stubbornly in place, and God, this was going to be a long two weeks.
“Thank you, Angela,” Bruce said, dragging his eyes away and offering his secretary a more real smile. “Can you give us a ten minute warning when we need to head out for lunch?”
“Of course, Mr. Wayne.”
“Lunch,” Kent said, somehow simultaneously sounding deeply apprehensive and totally neutral at the same time.
No sense in making the two weeks longer than they had to be, Bruce thought—probably a better investment to set Kent at his ease a bit, and then drive him insane with nonsense once they had their footing a little more. “Yes, a last planning lunch for next week’s launch. Don’t worry, you’re my only plus one.”
Kent gave a courtesy laugh, going into his bag for a notebook, and Bruce mentally ordered himself to turn it down a notch. “A little late in the game for a planning lunch?”
“Well, there’s always a few last-minute issues that come up the closer you get to the finish line,” Bruce said. “And food gets everyone in the room and makes them play nice.”
Kent gave a startled little laugh, a real smile flashing across his face for a moment, and Bruce locked down with extreme prejudice any biological response his body wanted to give to the glimpse of that. The reporter being hot was not going to be a problem.
“Have people not been playing nice, then?” Kent asked, disarmingly casually, as he opened his notebook on his lap.
“It’s a lot of overlapping areas of responsibility.” Bruce relaxed back into his chair, Bruce Wayne’s louche posture masking Bruce’s own sense of relief. Kent was going to treat this all like an interview, which was fine by him. Less chance of boundaries blurring, of a particular level of familiarity being expected due to the level of access. Kent wasn’t being cold, but he clearly did not want to pretend that they were just two friends talking, the way Cat Grant usually did. “And we’re doing something new, with all these groups of services in the same place. Growing pains were going to be par for the course. Not that I like golf enough to use it as a metaphor, but you get it.”
Kent bit his tongue, stopping himself from either smiling or rolling his eyes, and took a tape recorder out of his bag, too. He looked inquiringly at Bruce, who nodded, and clicked it on and set it on the coffee table between them. “I read the interviews you’ve given before about the project, Mr. Wayne, but I’d like to hear it from you fresh, if that’s all right. Lives After Loss is an ambitious initiative—what made you decide to give it the Wayne Foundation’s backing?”
Bruce couldn’t allow himself to seem either too serious or too flippant, but it was hard about this, specifically. “Besides the obvious?”
Kent’s eyes softened a fraction. “Besides the obvious, yes.”
Bruce shrugged one shoulder. “It’s an idea that needs a lot of groups to buy in across a lot of sectors—debt, housing, healthcare, social services. We have a lot of connections, and—” He smiled, sunny and winning. “I like bringing people together.”
“I’m sure,” Kent said, voice even but amused. “No personal attachment?”
Calmly. “I have a personal attachment to every Wayne Foundation project,” Bruce said lightly, wrestling down the part of himself that abruptly wanted to punch the reporter in the face. “I want to make it so more people can have the chances I had. Not everyone’s as lucky as me.”
Kent’s neutral smile was all at once less attractive and more infuriating. “No,” he said simply, and held Bruce’s gaze for half a beat too long before he looked back down at his notes.
All right. If that was how he wanted to play it.
It was definitely going to be a long two weeks.
-
By the time Friday rolled around, Clark was outright grateful to have the League dealing with Toyman animating a horde of life-size toy soldiers. He really wanted to punch something.
“You’re in a mood,” Batman remarked dryly from the top of a nearby building, as Clark ripped the plastic bayonet from a soldier’s hand and drove it through its head.
“Long week,” Clark grunted, unleashing a blast of heat vision to melt them down.
“Mm.” He heard the tiny explosion of Batman’s grapnel gun, the whir of a cable, and a moment later Batman swung in a clean arc past him, knocking four soldiers into each other so Clark could level the whole bunch with a single blast of heat vision.
Clark grinned, looking back around at his friend. “You, too?”
He caught the flash of one of those tiny half-smiles as Batman glanced back at him. “Possibly.”
It always felt good, like this—back to back with Batman, the two of them moving in sync. They knew each other so well by now, their fighting styles and silent tells, and sometimes Clark couldn’t help smiling too wide or letting himself float a little higher every time he got a rare word of praise. He could take a lot of the world’s shit, as long as this was still perfect.
Or Bruce Wayne’s shit, specifically. Clark hadn’t had to spend this much time with someone he found this frustrating since he was in goddamn high school.
It was fine, on the surface. Everything was going fine. Clark had been to two lunches and gotten to eat decent food while watching a handful of mid-level managers kiss Wayne’s ass, and sat in on one meeting that actually had an engaging conversation on planned community outreach. He had plenty of material to write about when it came to the organization’s hopes for the future, and the collaborations between different charity sectors that hadn’t worked together before, but Perry wanted the Bruce Wayne angle—and Clark was beginning to think he wasn’t going to get it.
There was no way Wayne could be as much of an airhead as he’d come across every time Clark was in the room this week. People kept mentioning this or that project he’d helped with, a call he’d made or a day of volunteering, but Wayne just smiled and let it slide right off him. He hadn’t done anything special, he’d say; he was just putting in a good word, or charming someone who was being difficult. Every time Clark tried to get a deeper statement on something, Wayne gave him a sound bite, something everyone already knew—statistics with a cute word on how he was trying to change them, or a mention of a favorite charity of his mother’s that came up every time he talked about helping families.
It was driving Clark insane. He knew there had to be a real person behind the smirking playboy facade, but Wayne’s endless stream of airy charm kept him completely obscured.
The flirting was really the least of his problems, in the scheme of things.
When the last of Toyman’s soldiers had been reduced to twitching plastic or melted pools, Green Lantern and Flash started on cleanup, while Superman and Batman went over the damaged parts of downtown to make sure none of the control devices had broken off and gotten left behind.
“What was your tough week about?” Clark asked, checking under the debris with his x-ray vision as the two of them combed over the torn-up park. One of the gazebos at the end had been destroyed, and some picnic tables were rubble, but not too much in the scheme of things.
Batman made a noncommittal noise, sweeping his palm-sized metal detector in a slow arc as he walked, Clark floating a few feet above him. “Problem of my own making, really. Yours?”
“Just…frustrating,” Clark sighed. “Somebody I’m having to work with.”
They didn’t talk about their other lives, as a rule; he had no idea what Batman did for a living—the man knew so much about literally everything there wasn’t even a field he could pin it down to—and Clark was careful, himself. He’d let slip enough that Batman knew that he had a day job in Metropolis, period, but he knew exactly which security protocols Batman would cite if Clark tried to tell him more than that.
Batman cast a glance up at him. “Personality conflict?” he said, with such an exactly bland corporate tone of a workplace training, that Clark snorted with laughter.
“You can say that,” he agreed, focusing on the next patch of rubble on his side. “I’ve cracked tough nuts before, but this one’s a doozy.”
Batman gave one of those huffs of not-laughter he had. “You’ll wear them down, I’m sure,” he said with a certain wry self-awareness.
Clark laughed. “I’m certainly try—” He broke off, head snapping around, as he heard something near the collapsed gazebo. He focused his hearing, listening more closely—
—a high, choked sound, a whimpering sob—
“There’s someone over there,” he said urgently, and Batman wordlessly held up a hand for Clark to catch and tow him over there at speed.
Half of the gazebo had come down, five cracked columns splayed out in a tumbling collapse of wood and tiles that was the roof. The stairs up to the raised platform were intact, though chunks of the platform were caved in, and Clark scanned the structure as they flew, looking for that source of that crying—
Oh, no.
“There’s a girl under that piece of roof,” he said, and felt Batman’s hand clench on his. “I don’t think she’s hurt, but I don’t know if there’s a way out. It doesn’t look stable.”
“I’ll handle her,” Batman said. His voice had gone totally serious, the way it always did when a civilian—particularly a child—was in danger. “You worry about the structure.”
“Got it.”
He swooped low next to the gazebo and let go of Batman’s hand, and his friend landed silently on the grass, hurrying to the edge of the collapsed structure. Clark saw him reach up to his cowl, probably turning on the infrared, and turned his own attention to the pile of debris, scanning it quickly for weak points—but his hearing was locked on that crying little voice now, and he heard as Batman spoke.
“Hey, there.” His voice was gentle, steady, and Clark heard the little girl gasp in surprise and relief. “Are you okay?”
“I–I think so,” the small voice came in reply, wobbly with tears. “Are you—are you Batman?”
“I am. Superman’s here, too. We’re going to get you out. What’s your name?”
“L-Leslie.”
Batman’s voice was always so soothing, with children. “I have a friend named Leslie. She’s one of my favorite people. How did you get stuck, Leslie?”
Clark could see the piece of splintered timber that was holding the collapsed portion of the roof up, creating the little sheltered spot Leslie was curled up into a tiny ball in. It didn’t look like it was going to hold much longer, and Clark very carefully eased in beside it, slowly taking the weight of the broken slates onto his shoulder.
“We were having a birthday party in the park for my friend,” Leslie said, her voice a little calmer—she still sounded scared, but Batman was calming her. It always amazed Clark, how terrifying Batman was to villains and how comforting to children. “I know we all had to go when the big scary Army guys showed up, but—I left my tiger toy. I had to come back for him, but then one of their big boots came through the roof, and—and I got scared, and I ducked under the wall, but then it all came down.”
“Did you get your tiger okay?” Batman said, completely serious.
“Yeah, he’s—he’s here.”
“What’s his name?”
Clark’s heart twisted in his chest with helpless affection. Batman kept the little girl talking about her tiger, glancing up occasionally to check Clark’s progress, and finally Clark had taken enough of the roof onto his shoulder and back that he could carefully fly up, and up, and get the pressure off that wood. Nothing else shifted when he did, thank God, and he rose carefully straight up until he could dump the load off onto a clear piece of grass.
He could see Leslie now beneath a criss-cross of broken beams—a tiny girl with tangled black braids, couldn’t be more than six. She looked up with another sharp gasp of relief, and Clark smiled reassuringly at her as he floated back closer. “Hi, Leslie,” he said. “Let me pick some of this up—can you scooch over toward Batman when he tells you to?”
“I think so,” she said, clutching her tiger to her with one arm, and she twisted to look around at Baman, kneeling at the edge of the debris. “I’m—I’m scared.”
“It’s okay to be scared,” Clark said gently, as he drifted down and got a firm, careful grip on the crossed pieces keeping her trapped. “But you know, you’re really brave? You saved your tiger from those bad guys already today.”
She sniffed, and some of the fear left her face. “I guess so.”
“Absolutely,” Batman said, and even with the lenses in the cowl Clark could tell Batman was looking at him, a faint twitch up toward him and the smallest smile before he looked back down at Leslie, shouldering his way under what debris he could. “Just come straight to me when I say. You can do it.”
Leslie took a deep, shaky breath. “Okay.”
Clark shifted his arms under, feeling out the tension in the wood, and—yeah, he had it. “I got it, B.”
“On three, Superman,” Batman said. “Leslie, come when I say ‘now,’ okay?” Presumably she nodded, because Batman raised his voice. “One, two, three—” Clark lifted it, holding it all as straight as possible. “—And now.”
A scuffing of knees on grass, a sharp little breath, wood scratching on Kevlar—
“Got her,” Batman called, and Clark eased the structure down with a sigh of relief.
He turned to them as Batman straightened, Leslie absolutely tiny in his arms, and the little girl gave a tiny sob of relief, throwing her arms around Batman’s neck. “Thank you, Batman. Thank you, Superman.”
“You’re welcome,” Batman said, still gentle and completely serious. “Who were you with, for the birthday party? Did you have a place to meet if you got separated?”
“The fountain,” Leslie said, muffled against his cape. “But I think it got smashed up, too. My friend’s named Janie, and her mom’s Miss Andy.”
Batman looked inquiringly at Superman, and Clark drifted up a few feet, listening.
“—just stay with your dad, Janie, I’ll have to find the police—oh, my God—”
“Yeah, I got her,” Clark said.
Batman smiled briefly, and carefully untangled Leslie’s arms from around him. “Superman will take you to them. It’s okay.”
“Okay,” she said, letting Batman hand her up to Clark in midair. “Bye, Batman.”
Clark flew her across the park, slow and careful, to the absolutely frantic woman with a group of children behind the police barricade. It took longer to calm her down than it had Leslie, and Clark had to accept quite a few hysterical tears of gratitude before he could fly back to Batman, where his friend was examining the remains of the gazebo still.
“Mission accomplished?” Batman asked absently, scanning over the collapsed wood.
“Safe delivery. Thanks for letting me deal with the hysterical adult in charge.” Batman flashed him another half-smile, and Clark rolled his eyes. “Someday, you’re going to have to show the public that Batman’s actually great with kids.”
Batman snorted. “People already know too much about me.”
Clark sighed in fond exasperation, shaking his head. “Of course they do.”
He didn’t think much more of it as they wrapped up, the League saying their goodbyes and Batman melting off into thin air as he always did—but something about the phrasing lingered in Clark’s mind, when he was home that evening.
He looked at his notes spread out—half-sentences about Wayne, a transcribed interview that was all flash and no substance, and all at once Batman’s voice came back to him: People already know too much about me.
When you lived a life as public as Bruce Wayne did…
All right. Maybe he knew where to go from here, now.
-
Alfred had spent all weekend making pointed commentary on how beneficial good press would be for spreading awareness of the Lives After Loss programs, to the point that Bruce went in early to his Foundation office on Monday just to get away from it. He was well aware he was not showing to his best advantage by constantly deflecting any genuine question from Clark Kent.
He just absolutely hated that the angle was always him. His personal tragedy. His son’s tragedy, now, too, though at least Kent hadn’t started dropping any personal questions about that into the equation. Yet.
It was hard to make himself smile at Kent when he arrived promptly at eleven, but he managed, because he always did. “Good morning, Mr. Kent. Have any fun this weekend?”
“Had a nice time with a work friend,” Kent said, that pleasant, bland reporter expression firmly in place. “And yourself, Mr. Wayne?”
Bruce flashed a winning smile. “Oh, I always have fun on the weekends. If you like yachts, I can invite you next time.”
“I’m not sure that’d be appropriate, Mr. Wayne,” Kent said, desert dry, as he sat down in his usual place on the office couch. “Angela said there was a site visit on our agenda today?”
Indeed, and Bruce would be looking forward to it, if it weren’t that… “Yes, walking through with the executive team. Making sure everything’s shipshape for Friday’s launch.”
Kent nodded, writing that down—but then his eyes flicked up to Bruce. “Mr. Wayne—”
“Bruce, please,” Bruce said for the eighth time in a week, because he got some petty satisfaction out of doing that to people who would never take him up on it.
Kent’s eyes snapped up to him again, over his glasses, and the sliver of them that flashed was astonishingly blue before Kent took a breath and put a lid on his annoyance. “Mr. Wayne,” he said again, with no particular emphasis. “I was wondering something, actually.”
“Oh?”
Kent folded his hands over his notebook. “I would really like to talk to the people that are going to be on the ground in the offices,” he said, looking Bruce square in the eye. “Last week, the head of strategy mentioned you’d handled a lot of the hiring personally, so I was hoping you’d be able to show me what’s going to make this group special.”
Bruce blinked at him.
Then he leaned over to his desk and tapped the speaker. “Angela, can you call the executive team for LAL and let them know we’re going to have a minor change of plans for today?”
Kent smiled, and it looked like the real smile, that Bruce hadn’t seen in a week.
He returned it with a wink, desperate to cheapen the moment, because he had a feeling he might do something stupid to see that smile again.
-
“...and so we’re really looking forward to getting our first few families in here, because it’s not going to go smooth until we get a few under our belt,” Lourdes said, animated and excited as she led them down the hall of the center.
“Yeah, of course,” Kent said, just as animated as he followed her. He was more lively than Bruce had seen him in a week, alternating between keeping his tape recorder extended and furiously jotting down notes. “Is there a waiting list already?”
Lourdes glanced back over her shoulder at him, and Bruce took his cue to chime in. “There’s been a waiting list for six months; we’ve done our best to provide some bridge assistance through the main foundation.” Lourdes was the lead case manager, and he had indeed hired her personally; she liked keeping him in the conversation, which was sweet but unnecessary. This was her show.
“Mr. Wayne’s been a big help in getting some of those grants extended,” Lourdes agreed. “The unrestricted funds in the main Foundation are our own organizational safety net.”
Kent’s gaze flashed back to him—still keen and assessing, but warmer. He was much more lively here, talking to people doing the actual work. Bruce felt the same. “The unrestricted funds need your personal sign-off, don’t they, Mr. Wayne?”
“They do.” Bruce flashed a smile to Lourdes. “But our case managers do excellent work, and I trust them implicitly when they say what we need.”
Kent smiled, that real smile again, and looked back at Lourdes. “Tell me about how you built out the team here.”
“Well, we have great benefits, so it got around through word of mouth…”
Bruce drifted along behind them, pleased to be irrelevant. This was what he’d really hoped they could do, if he had to do this inane profile: get the story out of the actual work being done. Kent was obviously on the same page—though it was clear he’d been paying attention all last week, sifting out some actual operational details through the executive nonsense Bruce had been forced to drag him through. He knew enough to be asking good questions, and the whole staff was charmed by him already.
Barring the executive team, who’d been fidgeting in the main lobby for—Bruce checked his watch—twenty minutes now. They could wait; they’d seen enough of Bruce over the last week.
Kent had enough time to talk to two more case workers before someone finally bit the bullet and came to find them. “Oh, I’m so sorry, Gerry,” Bruce said breezily, ostentatiously checking his watch. “We just got talking and completely lost track of the time.”
Kent’s eyes found his over the wall of the case workers’ cubicles—bright, amused, and this time it felt like they were in on the joke together when Bruce smirked back.
As they walked back down the hall to the lobby together, Kent leaned in toward him. “Did you do the hiring for the cross-sector coordinators, too?”
Bruce couldn’t hold back the smile that wanted to start. “I wanted to be sure all our managers were clear on the vision, yes.”
Kent’s voice was warm, for the first time. “Are they free tomorrow?”
Bruce grinned. “I’ll ask.”
Kent looked at him in some surprise. “You’re the boss. You ask?”
Bruce gave him a look right back. “They have real jobs, Mr. Kent. I don’t. They fit me in when they can.”
Kent laughed, ducking his head to hide the smile, and Bruce could tell that was a much bigger, brighter laugh, when Kent wanted to let it be. He glanced sideways at Bruce again, and those very blue eyes considered him for a moment. “Clark,” he said finally.
Bruce felt a curl of pleasure that he very, very rarely felt when he was playing Bruce Wayne. And he could think of a thousand reasons it was a terrible idea—so much of his cover depended on Bruce Wayne being intolerable to anyone remotely upstanding, and no one assuming he had good ideas beyond spreading money around—but he so rarely got anyone to see something beautiful about this city, and the work they were doing.
“Bruce,” he said again, a little teasing, a little chiding.
Kent—Clark smiled and nodded. “Bruce,” he agreed. “We got off on the wrong foot last week, I’m sorry. It took me a minute to—get the angle right.”
Bruce indulged in another perk of his reputation, and draped an arm around Clark’s shoulders. “I told you, Clark. I like bringing people together. And sometimes, I even count as ‘people.’”