Archive of Our Own

The road up to the farm is bumpy, and dry. Dust whirls up around them. Bruce has to hold on to the grab handle on the passenger side from all the rocking the car is doing, and Clark is driving painfully slowly. He has been driving slowly ever since they left Smallville’s Main street. The bushes on the side of the driveway are overgrown and touching the windshield, dragging across the glass and the metal of their rental like wooden fingernails. 

“Sorry about that,” Clark says. 

“No worries,” Bruce replies, because he won't care about a couple of scratches on the car; he can easily reimburse for any damages. He is, however, honored that Clark is finally taking him to his childhood home. 

Next to him, Clark is hunched over, focusing on the driveway and the scratches and the white fencing on either side of the driveway that was made back in the day when trucks were smaller than the car they're driving now. And then he sits up, and the sparkle in his eyes lights up for the briefest of moments. 

“And here we are.” The normally cheerful phrase floats away quickly in the space between them and the windshield and the house; yellowed and tall grass, the remnants of a path leading to the front porch, its white paint chipped and flaky from long days in the sun. Another path leads to the barn on the left, which is no longer red, and poles of a fence half-collapsed. 

Clark parks the car to the right, crushing some of the grass in a dry whisper. “Umm, let's put our stuff inside,” he says after the engine dies. “And then I'll show you around a bit.” His usual conviction is barely present, but Bruce still replies, “Okay.” 

Bruce follows him in on creaking floor boards, weekend bag slung over his shoulder. The steps of the porch sigh and strain under their weight, but the front door still looks nice. Intricate detailing in red, white and yellow paint is faded, but speaks of craftsmanship and a house that its residents cared for very much. It opens up to a hallway filled with dancing sunlight streaming in from the back door all the way at the end. To the left is the kitchen, and to the right Bruce can see what was once the living room. The top of the wooden trim on the walls of the hallway is covered in dust, the floorboards are splintering, and sheets cover most of the furniture. 

It's deadly silent.

Bruce looks over at Clark, and there he sees the worry in his lips, and the helplessness in his frown, and he can feel it; guilt. 

Clark puts down his bag. “Oof, sorry, I uhh… haven't been here in a while, as you can see. Just give me a minute and I'll have this place clean so we can settle in.” 

It's only because Clark hesitates that Bruce manages to grab his hand and say: “Wait. We can do it together, at a normal pace. You can tell me things.” 

Clark is one to encourage sharing, he has a way to make you feel safe, open, heard in a way Bruce is absolutely unable to. But he also guards himself well, he shares superficially and just the things that are okay. It's hard to get to know him down to his core - though not for Bruce. It hasn't been for a long time. 

Clark stares back at him now, understanding in his eyes. Maybe this is exactly what he needs. 

Still, as he grabs Bruce's hand back, he says: “Are you sure? I brought you here for a small vacation, not to work.” 

Bruce raises an eyebrow. “Clark. You know the word vacation is not in my vocabulary.”

“Yes, that's exactly what I'm worried about.” 

“Well, I'd be happy to do something with my hands while we're here. And learn more about you.” 

“Okay.” Clark turns to him fully now, and Bruce has learned the importance of physical touch and affirmation. He puts his hand on Clark's cheek and kisses his lips. 

“I wish they could have met you,” Clark whispers. 

“Me too,” Bruce says, though he isn't sure if he's referring to the Kents or if he wanted his own parents to have met Clark. Probably both. It doesn't matter, they're both orphans, Clark twice over, he understands.  

They stand like that for a while in the middle of the quiet hallway as the dust that got swept up in their entry settles again. 

After they both change into shorts and a t-shirt - Bruce has to borrow one from Clark - they start in the kitchen. It's bright even through long unwashed windows, yellow cabinets and a wooden table in the middle lined with yellowish chairs with reed seating. Only one of them is broken. The counters are dusty, laden with dead flies, but not greasy. After all, no one has used it in years. 

Clark stops and looks at things to touch and examine or maybe remember. A cookie jar. Most of the cabinets are empty save for the remnants of a set of plates and cups. Bruce looks at the picture frames on the shelf. Martha, Jonathan and Clark happy on a porch swing that's no longer there. The cork board next to it still has a clipping from the Smallville Gazette of Superboy saving the day. The accompanying picture is blurry, but unmistakably Clark, Bruce thinks. 

“She kept photo albums full of them, if you want to see more,” Clark says next to him. Bruce hums, and he pushes down the questions about incriminating evidence that his brain is wired to ask. He's here for Clark, not to be Batman. So he smiles at his boyfriend, while fighting his own paranoid mind trying to come up with who would ever want to look at a dead lady's photo albums.

“Relax, B. No one is ever gonna look at those.” It's damn unfair, how good Clark is at reading him. 

While Bruce wipes the counters and Clark cleans the oven, Clark reenacts how Martha taught him how to pretend to be burned by hot pots or oven dishes. She must have had a flair for the dramatics, Bruce thinks, judging by the way Clark still does such things. 

Clark tells him about family dinners, the formal dining room at the back of the kitchen that they almost never used, and attempts to make his mother's iced tea. 

“It's delicious,” Bruce says after one gulp. Alfred would probably not call it tea, but he's not here right now. 

Clark puts down his glass. “It's not the same.” 

The living room is very different from the kitchen. The curtains are drawn, the wallpaper peeling in some places and hanging over the dark wood paneling. Bruce can easily see how this room would have been cosy, the furnace on in the evening and Martha knitting while Johnathan read the newspaper or listened to the radio. Two couches and no television are testament to a house where interaction was central, where one could relax after a long day of farm work outside, and where Clark could have dozed off without a worry to his name. 

Now, its darkness holds sorrow, the furniture is covered with ghostly white sheets. It reminds Bruce of most of the Manor back in the day, until Dick, then Jason, and Tim showed up. Now only his parents bedroom is still locked, its furniture untouched by wear or dust. 

There's an old radio on a side table. Clark walks up to it and turns it on, only a little surprised that it still works. He finds a melodious song and pulls sheets off the couches, and pushes them back. Then he holds out his hand towards Bruce. 

As Bruce walks over, Clark explains. “They danced. We'd clear the space and they danced and taught me, even after a hard day of work. In the summer we did it outside.”

“You're hoping all those lessons will finally pay off now?” Bruce grins as he takes Clark's hand. 

“Oh, they will.”

Bruce let's himself get swept into Clark's arms, a spin and right into a dip. It feels as natural as fighting alongside him. And then they just sway. 

“The floorboards still creak the same.” 

The smallest things can make you miss them, Bruce knows. Maybe they're here, dancing the exact same way Martha and Jonathan did years ago. 

“They were really good at appreciating the little joys in life, even if they were tired. They taught me simple is good, and comfortable silence.” 

Bruce says nothing. 

Clark hums along to the song, he puts his head on Bruce's shoulder. A heavy weight that he will gladly carry. They're both orphans, he understands. 

“Why did you keep it?” Bruce asks after a bite of sandwich on the back porch. The view consists of a single tree and rows of corn stalks at half-length. His hands smell like vinegar and lemon from cleaning and he wipes them off on his shorts. 

Clark swallows his own bite before he speaks. “The farm land around here has long since been sold as you know. The house, I couldn't get rid of. The traces of me here are too prominent. I could have erased all that but I just couldn't bring myself to. I just didn't - don't want to. Maybe one day we'll retire here together.” The romantic in Clark comes out, but it's wistful thinking Bruce knows. Retirement is not something that will ever be a reality to either of them.

“What kind of traces of you?” He asks instead, shifting the conversation back to the past. It spurs Clark into action. He leans forward and really looks at Bruce. 

“I could show you where my ship landed.” 

Bruce's eyes light up. “Please.”

As they tread through a field adjacent to the farmhouse - full of grass and weeds and still in the Kent family's possession - Bruce thinks. Of Clark growing up here, a small boy with no one to talk to about the strange things happening to him, with no reference of how to deal with any of it. He must have been all alone, not unlike Bruce at that age. And he figured it out, without anyone to teach him how.

Clark holds his hand firmly now, and pulls him along through the tall grass. 

They come to a stop. “Here we are,” Clark says, and he sounds more like himself again than when he said it that morning.

It doesn't look any different. Grass and weeds, overgrown and unseeded, unplowed, not in use. Bruce isn't sure what he expected to find. A glimpse into the past, a new revelation about Clark. 

“Hmm,” he muses. It's no different from an investigation. He squats down and inspects the ground. There, between the dead brown of the dry grass, he sees it. Two ridges, a shallower one in the middle. They point east. Faint scorch marks in the roots. Clark smiles down at him fondly. That's where I came from , his eyes say. He looks up at the sky. And there . 

“Thank you,” Bruce says as he gets back up. “You'll have to tell me about all the details I can't see, someday.” 

“I'd love to,” Clark replies, and takes his hand. 

Clark's bedroom is blue and under the slanted roof and the ceiling is covered in glow in the dark stars. There's a single bed, a desk, posters on the wall and a calendar from 1998, showing the month of October. Clark opens the curtains and Bruce spots a picture of him with his cheerleading squad in highschool. It's a teenage boys bedroom, so different from the stiff and overly Victorian rooms Bruce had grown up in. 

“I used to climb up on the roof,” Clark explains as he leans over the desk to open the window. 

“Me too,” Bruce says. He'd had to scale a drainpipe from his balcony, unlike Clark who could just climb out of his window and be on the roof.

Clark turns to him now, a hopeful expression on his face. “Come.” He holds out his hand for Bruce to take. “I'm not sure if we still fit through the window but I could always float us up there.” 

Bruce foregoes the offered hand. Instead, he says: “I've fit through smaller holes.” and deftly climbs over the empty desk and swings out and up in a graceful curl, and squats down on top of the roof over the window. 

“Hot,” Clark says as he leisurely floats out after him, looking up at Bruce. 

The shingles creak under their weight when they both sit down, and here Bruce can see some are missing, some have moved. “This definitely needs some work,” he says, looking around. 

“Pa would come up here every year to check and fix anything that was amiss. Because of the Tornadoes, you know. And storms and snow. I haven't done it once, since.” Clark rests his elbows on his knees, and looks out over the fields, awash in late afternoon light. Far away, a small red tractor is leaving hay bales in its wake. 

Doing this at human pace has been good for Clark, no matter what he thinks. Bruce has already gotten more and very valuable information out of him that he wouldn't have if Clark had swept through the place at super speed and they'd just relaxed all day. 

They sit in silence like that for a while, enjoying a rest between cleaning. Bruce finally relaxes his muscles and sits back more. Cleaning is not the same as swinging between rooftops and chasing criminals. He hopes their break gives Clark time to process the things he's touched again. 

He thinks back to the view from the Manor. It was dark trees, the ocean on one side and the smoke and neon lights of Gotham on the other, and he clenches his teeth. 

“Sometimes I'd think about falling,” he says quietly. “On top of the Manor. It would have been a long enough way down. To end the pain.” 

Clark's head whips up at that, but then slows down and reaches out to gently put a hand on his shoulder. Not to make sure Bruce wouldn't jump, but to comfort him, Bruce reminds himself. “I'm glad you didn't.” He searches Bruce's eyes, and then tentatively asks: “How old were you?” 

“The first time, eleven.” 

“Bruce, sweetheart… Jesus.” Clark pulls him into a hug, which Bruce welcomes because that way he doesn't have to look at his contorted face anymore. He'd only feel guilt. They sit like that while Bruce watches the sun descend and shadows lengthen, until Clark asks: “Have you ever told anyone?” 

He thinks back to the days he couldn't trust anyone, not even himself. “Therapists, over the years.” Not all of them. “Alfred doesn't know. I'm sorry for not telling you.” 

Clark sighs into his neck, some of the tension leaving his body and Bruce's. “Don't apologize. Thank you for telling me now, B.” He pulls away to look at Bruce again, and in Clark's cosmic  blue eyes he sees it. Love. 

“I'm glad I waited to start jumping off rooftops until I knew there was someone out there who could catch me if I fell.” 

Clark smiles ruefully at him. “And here I am, thinking you didn't like that at all.” 

Bruce hums. “I tolerate it.” He scoots closer to Clark, so they're touching side to side, arms around each other and watching the tiny red tractor leave its field together. 

They clean Clark's bedroom, which mainly consists of dusting, and his parents’, in which Clark has to sit next to the bed for a long time. Bruce leaves him to take on the bathroom instead. 

By the time he's done wiping the grime off the sink and the tub and making sure the water runs steadily again, it's getting dark outside and Clark has put clean sheets on his parents bed. Fresh air is streaming in through the open window and he offers an unconvincing smile when he notices Bruce. 

In the evening, Clark goes for a walk, alone, he insists, and Bruce lets him. He tries boiling some pasta in a tinny old pot, and burns some sauce, but at least there's food on the table for Clark's return. 

The next morning, Clark takes him to the barn. The red on the outside is faded, and on the inside it's mostly empty save for some stray hay, rusty tools, and a very old tractor. The pens are unlocked, and some surfaces are covered in bird feces. 

Clark takes him to the back, and pushes the tractor out of the way with one hand. He points at a latch in the floor. “That's where we kept my ship.” He opens the hatch, revealing a crude empty hole in the ground. “You know it's at the fortress now. I moved it after… no one was here anymore.” 

“Wow. Was there any security?” Bruce doesn't manage to hold back this time. 

“No. It's a hole in the ground, Bruce. Pa dug it by hand because no one could know. Then one night he and ma managed to roll the ship in here and lower it in, rebuilding the floor on top and adding the hatch.” 

“That must have been some work,” Bruce says. He admires the strength and stamina of Jonathan and Martha Kent. They must have been very special people to have raised Clark the way they had. 

“It was. If I had been anything but a baby, I could have helped them.”

“You were a baby. You don't need to feel bad about that.”

“I think I put them through a lot over the years.” Clark looks distant, but before Bruce can reach out to tell Clark his parents probably didn't experience it like that, Clark puts on a smile and says: “Come. I'll show you my original fortress of solitude.”

There's a loft on the far side of the barn, and a ladder leading up. Bruce climbs it and turns around at the top to look back at Clark. “Is this actually where the name comes from?” Clark nods. Bruce imagines an angsty teenage Clark here, hiding from his parents and pretending to be cool to his friends. “Isn't this where you bring people to make out?” He lets a little bit of Brucie slip into his voice and turns to sit down, legs dangling over the edge.

“Maybe when we were teens.” Clark floats up so he's at eye level with Bruce, his arms crossed. 

Bruce's eyes widen. “Oh? Who did you bring up here? Boys or girls?”

A small but self-deprecating smile tugs at Clark's mouth. “Neither. I wasn't exactly comfortable dating anyone, Bruce. Even with Lana I didn't know how to do it.”

Bruce has never really realized how lonely Clark must have been as a child and a teen until that moment. It must have been the opposite of Bruce's childhood, where there were always people around, even if he didn't want it at all. He had been alone with his thoughts and his pain in rooms full of people pretending to be his friend, but Clark had been alone . Alone and not able to talk to anyone about the things he felt and experienced, not able to relate to anyone - while he might have wanted to much more than Bruce. 

“I had friends,” Clark seems to read his mind. “Lana and Pete. They didn't know who I really was though.” Clark turns a little red and continues. “I was a virgin until Lori - in college.” 

“Nothing wrong with that. Who's Lori? I've never heard you mention her.” 

“A mermaid.” Clark smirks playfully. At Bruce's astonished look, he adds: “It happened underwater. It was all kinds of weird, but fun.” 

“Wow,” Bruce lets out, not for the first time that day. He laughs out loud and pulls Clark closer, so he's floating between Bruce's legs. “Only you could lose your virginity to a mermaid.” He grabs Clark's overall strap between his thumb and pointer finger, bringing them into the present again. “So, you've never made out with anyone up here?” 

“No, never,” Clark says, incredibly serious and his face close to Bruce's. 

Their lips almost touch. “Hmm, we ought to remedy that.” 

“I'll finally get the full teenage farm experience.” 

“Mhmm,” Bruce manages to get in right before they're kissing. Clark's mouth is hot on his, his hair warmed in the sun. Kissing Clark feels like fire and Bruce melts, like always. And Clark molds himself to Bruce, meeting him halfway, like always. 

When Clark finally pulls away, Bruce says, out of breath: “How about sex in the hay loft to complete the fantasy?” 

“Not until after we clean this place. I'm not risking you coming in touch with… whatever is all over the floor up here,” Clark says sternly, killing the mood in the process. 

“Maybe you could use your super speed this time,” Bruce still tries, but it's no use and that's actually not such a bad thing. 

“Nope,” Clark smirks. “I'm enjoying doing this with you. I think you're right. It's good for me.” 

“Alright. Let's see if scrubbing bird shit off an old barn is therapeutic then.” He holds out his arm for Clark to take so they can float down together. “Though it's not a replacement for actual therapy,” he adds when they touch the ground. 

“Hmm.” Clark steps away from him. “I'll get a bucket and some brushes.” 

The barn is hard work. It's sweat and elbow grease and wheelbarrows full of old hay. Bruce gets greasy living his dream working on getting the old tractor up and running again. There are memories of animals. Betsy the cow and Shelby the dog, 2 horses, and chickens that Clark tells him about. 

Bruce can only imagine how lively this place must have been. In many ways, it's like the Manor. Silence fills the empty space around them, the fields, it hangs between the trees. Time has stood still in the house, dust suspended in the air that hangs still as if time was actually frozen, and paint on the furniture faded from the endless summer sun. In the Manor, silence used to fill long stretched hallways, grand rooms. There were rooms that didn't see light for years, their furniture darkened with time and dust. 

Both were filled with laughter and music, a child with parents who loved them very much.

It had taken many years before the Manor was filled with the laughter of a child again, before people danced through its long hallways again. The Kent farm is just a little behind, is all. Bruce suddenly sees himself, old, and Clark next to him on the white slatted porch, huddled together as they watch the evening sun. A dog in the distance and Damian throwing a ball for it. Maybe their children's children will visit. 

On the third day, Bruce is allowed to join Clark on his evening walk. It's along a field, up a hill, through some bushes, along the road for a while and across a creek. Then, there's a small old church. The white paint peels off the siding. 

The gate to the cemetery creaks ominously. 

“Ma and Pa,” Clark says in front of a twin headstone. “This is Bruce. The love of my life.” Bruce feels something in him break. He takes Clark's hand and steps forward. 

“I don't think I've ever taken you to meet my parents,” he whispers.

Clark shakes his head. “That's okay.”

“I will,” he promises and squats down in front of the grave. There are fresh flowers that Bruce recognizes from having seen along the road on the way over. The headstone itself reads “Martha and Jonathan Kent, husband and wife, loving parents, pillars of the community.” Both days of death are in October 1998. In the top right corner, Bruce sees mended cracks that are unmistakably Clark's handiwork. 

“Nice to meet you, Mr. And Mrs Kent.”

“They'd insist you call them Martha and Jonathan.”

“Tell me more,” Bruce prompts.

“Okay.” Clark thinks. He chuckles. “Ma would scold you for your manners in the kitchen, but forgive you because of your charm. Pa would admire you for your work ethic but be appalled by your lack of punctuality…. They'd urge you to join us dancing outside in the summer… and show you my baby pictures by the fireplace in the winter. They'd love you.”

Bruce looks back up at Clark. “Hm. I think I've got a pretty good idea of what they were like through you.” 

Clark kneels down next to him. 

“They'd be proud of you, Clark.”

“Thank you. That means a lot,” Clark says monotonously. The worry in his lip betrays his doubt towards the feeling of pride. Bruce knows it all too well; no matter how many times he would tell himself that his parents would approve of what he was doing, that they would be proud of him, he never believed it. Not until he started taking therapy seriously a couple years ago. 

Bruce inhales. “Can I ask you something?”

As Clark nods, he continues: “Did this help? The past three days, I mean. I know it's not what you pictured when you said you wanted to bring me here, but what we did… I mean, how do you feel?” 

“I feel… fine. More in touch with the place.” Clark scrapes his throat. “With you. My parents feel very far away.” 

“The house will slowly become more yours, and less theirs,” Bruce knows from experience. 

Clark nods again. He really looks at Bruce. “I think you're the right person to do this with me. I don't want to rush it though.” 

Bruce agrees. It took him years to make the Manor feel like a home again, and he had Alfred and Dick who played a big part in that. 

“Every day I think I should have been able to prevent them from getting sick,” Clark suddenly says, looking at the headstone. 

“We can't save everyone.” It's an empty phrase with no impact and Clark is too stubborn to believe it. “Would you consider talking to someone?” 

“As in therapy?” Clark scoffs. “What good would that do?” 

Bruce clenches his teeth. He hears himself, from years ago. “You have so much unprocessed trauma, Clark. That's not stuff that will just go away by punching meteorites every now and then.”

Maybe it's the wrong thing to say, because Clark angles his body away from him. He stares at the grass, ashamed as if he's just been caught stealing from the cookie jar. But sometimes the only way out is through, Bruce decides.

“We both have questionable coping mechanisms,” Clark stabs. With Bruce he's allowed to stab. He can take it, and Clark doesn't have to keep himself composed.

“Batman is not a coping mechanism Clark, and you know that. Just like how Superman is not a coping mechanism for you. It's who you are. It's what I do.” 

Clark clenches his fist and gets up. He holds out his hand for Bruce, still, even with a fight brewing. “Sorry. I didn't mean it like that. Can we not do this here?”

Bruce takes the hand and gets up too. “Of course.”

As they walk out of the cemetery in silence, clouds gather overhead, and the air smells of rain and swells with prickling energy. 

“Finally, some rain,” Clark mutters under his breath. As if on cue, light drops start falling from the sky. 

“I know I have unprocessed trauma,” Clark says as they walk. “On top of very complex feelings of guilt, and responsibility, and an inability to stand still. I know all that. I don't need someone to reiterate and tell me that.” 

Bruce can't help himself. He pushes, like only Clark can make him push. “But do you understand it?” 

“Yes, I fucking understand it, Bruce. Talking about it wouldn't change a thing.” 

“I'm assuming you don't do that with the fortress’ AI.”

Clark stops halfway down a hill. “You're right, I don't. And I can't exactly go to a normal therapist, Bruce. Everything I feel is directly adjacent to the fact that I'm an alien and I will never not be. It's not that simple for me. No one can understand how I feel. The only person who even comes close to having the same experience as me is Kara, and even then her life is wildly different from mine.”

Clark's hand trembles in his, so Bruce lets go to allow him to forgo control for a moment. Then, he allows himself to feel hurt. To feel the pain that Clark is feeling. To feel his own pain of being glanced over by the person he loves. 

“ I understand how you feel, sunshine,” he whispers. “I lost my world at eight years old and remember every single horrifying detail from it every. Single. Day. And I wonder why I didn't die, why I couldn't have prevented it. Just like you.” 

Clark shudders a breath as he looks away. Bruce continues. “And just like you I see the faces of the countless people I've failed to save over the years. I'll never know what it's like to be you, to feel like you, to see like you, but I understand this part of you. I understand the guilt and the loneliness. I can help you with this small part of what makes you you, but you have to let me, honey.” Bruce swallows. “Therapy helps. It's taken me years to reach the point that I can see that and now I can talk about things, or try to at least. And I can recognize how your love, and friends and family make it more bearable even though the pain will never really go away.”

Clark's eyes are glassy with tears. Bruce hates to see him hurt like that, and wipes them away gently. He exhales a shaky breath.

“Fuck. I'm sorry, Bruce. You're right. But I don't want to burden you with that.”

“You wouldn't. We'd share the burden. Relationships are equal, right? You always say.” 

“I knew that'd come back to bite me in the butt one day,” he says and tries a smile. 

“Mhmm. Come here,” Bruce says. He pulls Clark close and his arms come up around him. For a while, they stand like that halfway on a hill in Kansas, as the rain lightly patters down on them. 

“I don't want to push you,” Bruce says into Clark's embrace. “But if you want I'll help you find the right therapist who can know about both sides of your life.” 

“Thank you. I'll think about it.” 

And that is enough for now. “Okay,” Bruce whispers with Clark's head on his shoulder.

They walk the rest of the way back under the cover of comfortable silence and light rain, hand in hand. Though when they reach the porch, Bruce stops and turns to Clark. It's missing a bench. 

“Clark. I could picture myself and you sitting here, old and together.”

“Really?” Clark's face lights up. It's the most beautiful thing Bruce has ever seen.

“Really. Let me buy you a new porch bench. If we make it, I'd like to be here, with you.” 

“We will,” Clark says stubbornly. “I'll make sure of that.” And Bruce doesn't know what to say to that, because he will only turn rational and ruin the moment again, so he just turns to Clark, and kisses him. There's remnant heat from the day exuding from him, even through the slight wetness of his shirt and his overalls. He cradles Bruce's chin. 

They sit down on the porch step, and from there, they overlook the field and the long driveway, the barn to the right. Bruce looks at the foliage leading to the public road that the car got stuck in only a couple days ago. 

“Sometimes I think: ‘what if they could see me now?’ but I know that’s selfish.”

“Hmm,” Clark agrees. “It's easy to spiral in that.”

They don't say anything for a while, until Clark breaks the silence. “What would they do if they could see you now?”

Bruce scrapes his throat. “Sitting on the porch of an abandoned farm house, in dirty clothes, next to some hick in overalls, in a town called Smallville in Kansas? Oh, they wouldn't even know where to begin.” By the end of that, Bruce is grinning, and Clark snorts. “What about yours?”

“Hmm. Inviting some rich asshole from Gotham who doesn't even know how to make some simple canned pasta into their house? Let alone be in a relationship with him? I don't even wanna know.” Clark is full out laughing, Bruce feels tears prickling at the corners of his eyes from grinning, and then he's laughing too. They laugh. It boulders through the field and the porch shakes with it. They laugh at the absurdity of it all, the odds that they have met and fallen in love, and would do it a thousand times over in any universe. They laugh for their parents, who'd be so happy for them, but are not here to see it. 

As it dies down, Clark wraps an arm around Bruce, and he wraps his around Clark in return. They're both orphans, they understand.