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Dick knows himself well enough to know when he's lingering.
Clark's helped him more than enough. Dick doesn't need to be in the fortress anymore. He should go — and he knows where to go, now, thanks to Clark. Got to go find Haly's Circus, find himself. Clark could locate the circus for him immediately, and take Dick there just as quick.
He opens his mouth to ask, and what comes out instead is — "Can I stay the night?"
It's barely late afternoon. Dick may as well be painting a sign on his forehead in neon lights. I'm lonely. I'm lost. I just want to hold onto something, can I hold onto you?
Clark's face, always carefully soft and open, softens even further. "Of course, Dick."
There are rooms in the fortress; Clark's is the only made-up one. It makes sense, obviously — who else sleeps here regularly enough to need one? Even Clark doesn't stay here that much. Dick has stayed the night only a few times in the past, when the three of them were working a case together.
The three of them. Now there's only two. Bruce's absence is a missing limb.
In a blur of super-speed, Clark has a guest room prepared for him. Clark hangs in the air a moment, hovering in the room as Dick looks around. Dick doesn't have any stuff with him to put anywhere.
"I'll make some dinner," Clark tells him. "Come help, if you want, or take a moment. Whatever you need."
He sounds so warm. So – caring.
So unlike Bruce.
Clark wouldn't have been planning to stay. He only took Dick out here to tell him about Nightwing; Dick's obvious and desperate need to not be alone right now is keeping Clark from his duties. And yet Dick can't help but be selfish. I'm not looking for a partner, Clark said, and so Dick won't ask him for that, but… this, he'll take. An evening of Clark's attention.
He follows Clark back out to the kitchen, and perches on the bench while Clark prepares a simple tomato soup over the stove. The stove's purpose in this whole affair seems only to be somewhere to rest the hot cookware. Clark doesn't even bother to turn it on, opting to use his heat vision instead.
"Do you ever cook normally?" Dick wonders aloud.
Clark's heat vision shuts off as he looks up at him. "Almost always. I only really do this here."
"Oh. Why?"
Clark's smile is soft. Maybe a little sad. Dick's eyes are drawn, inexorably, to the curve of his lip, the slightest hint of a dimple in his cheek.
"In Metropolis… you never know," Clark says. "Someone might see me through the window. A visitor could come in through the door unexpectedly. Or if it became a habit, I might forget myself in public."
Dick nods. It's more paranoia than he might have expected from Clark, but then, Clark's been keeping this secret longer than he's been Superman.
Clark goes back to stirring the pot. "There's very few places I get to be myself like that, I suppose. With the Justice League, I'm still not Clark," he muses, almost wistfully. "It's just here, and the farm. And— well. Never mind that."
And the Batcave, he was probably going to say. Dick grimaces, and quickly steers the topic in a new direction.
He makes idle chitchat as Clark stirs the pot and seasons the soup — meaningless, surface babbling that avoids the reason he's here, and the subject of their missing third. Clark doesn't call him on it. He holds out a spoonful for Dick to taste and listens to Dick chatter and responds at appropriate times, and the timbre of his voice is as warm and rich as the soup he's making.
Dick watches him, letting his gaze linger on the sparkle in Clark's eyes, the curve of his nose, the strong line of his jaw.
If Bruce was here, Dick wouldn't dare look. Not so long, nor so obviously, because then Bruce would know. Maybe that's why he lets himself do it now. Bruce would be angry, if he knew, and that makes Dick want to watch Clark more. Because, well, because Dick is still so angry. Bruce made a mistake in firing him — and it's not like he even had a right to do that — and he's just so infuriating, and it's a stinging, smarting hurt that Dick ever expected otherwise.
And because… Clark is handsome. An otherworldly beauty, and yet when he's standing at a stovetop, slaving over a pot of hot soup, there's nothing alien about him.
Clark's also observant, and he must know Dick is watching him, but he doesn't call him on this, either.
"It's ready," Clark tells him. Dick jumps off the counter to fetch the bowls.
They eat together, an early dinner. Clark tells Dick about the story he's working on for the Planet, and Dick hangs off his every word. The soup is delicious, seasoned perfectly to Dick's tastes, and it's simple and hearty enough that it doesn't draw to mind Alfred's cooking, something Dick doesn't think he could bear right now.
It's all so carefully, deliberately done to keep Dick's mind from straying back to the raw wound of his firing, and it's so incredibly Clark to do this all for him. Dick's pathetically, endlessly grateful for it.
But Dick can't come first forever. Clark has to dash off to help with a flood evacuation before they finish eating, with a heartfelt apology on his lips that Dick waves away. Dick does the dishes alone and scrubs until his fingers prune and the water goes cold. He retires to bed early.
Lying in the guest room Clark made up for him, Dick can't sleep.
He stares at the ceiling. The room is too big around him, too empty without anything to make it his own. The blankets are warm and the pillows are plentiful and perfectly fluffed, but all Dick can think about is how he's lying there alone.
Stupid. It's the Fortress of Solitude for a reason. Dick's kidding himself, really — Clark doesn't want him here, he's just too nice to kick him out. I'm not looking for a partner. That's the difference between him and Bruce, isn't it? You're fired, Dick. Get out of my cave. Clark's not the kind of guy to make someone leave when he's got nowhere to go.
But Dick's a guest. An unwanted guest. He doesn't measure up. Bruce's standards are impossible, Clark said so. Clark's on his side. He is. But he doesn't want Dick by his side. He doesn't want Dick to stay—
Dick gets up.
He pads out to the kitchen on cat-like footfalls, loath to disturb the eerie quiet of the fortress. It's truly silent — even the electronics don't hum, and the thick walls shield the inside from the sounds of wind and shifting ice. Dick pours a glass of water and leans against the counter, staring off into space.
He's not alone with the silence for long. Clark floats in like a cool summer's breeze, concern painted on his perfect face.
In the fortress, Clark is obviously different from how he is at the Daily Planet. But he's different, too, from when he's out as Superman. Here, he needn't concern himself with not appearing too alien, too powerful, lest he scare someone he needs to save. He floats more than he walks, and there's an otherworldly glow to his eyes that he doesn't hide.
It's only Dick here to see it, after all. Clark isn't performing for him. He's stripped away all his masks, leaving himself bare.
So when Clark opens with "Couldn't sleep? Nightmare?", Dick swallows down his first instinct to lie and agree.
"No nightmare," he says. "Couldn't even get to sleep. I was… thinking."
Spiralling, more like. Clark floats over to him. Close enough that Dick could reach out and touch him, if he dared. Clark moves like a ghost, but Dick knows if he did touch him, he'd be solid.
Clark is always solid. A rock. Wonderful, dependable Clark — Dick can always rely on him to have his back, to save him from trouble, and yet Clark has always treated him as an equal. From even the first time they met — when Bruce was out of town, and Dick was barely into double digits, and Clark didn't even blink before asking Dick's permission to follow a lead he had in Gotham.
There was no question of if Dick was too young, or the mission too dangerous. Dick was Batman's partner, and Clark respected that, quicker even than Bruce himself had done.
It must be nice to have a partner, Clark said then. I'm not looking for a partner, he said tonight.
But Dick is.
Clark's too tall to reach, even on tiptoe. So Dick hoists himself up to sit on the edge of the counter, and takes both sides of Clark's face in his hands to kiss him.
Clark's lips are warm. They're smooth, with no trace of trace of wind-chafing or chapping. The kiss is almost chaste, except for how Dick cups Clark's face in his hands like a lover, and for the longing Dick feels must be spilling out of his mouth.
Clark makes a startled sound, a little "mmph?", and it takes him a second to properly react. He pulls back, breaking the kiss and wraps his hands — big, gentle hands — around Dick's wrists to move them away.
"Dick," Clark says, breathless. Dick did that. Warm pride settles in his chest, surrounding his pounding heart. "Why did you do that?"
Dick wets his lips. "Am I not being obvious enough?"
"Dick, we can't. You're too young."
It's not an outright rejection. A spark of something flares to life. "I'm not. I'm an adult. And I've never really been a kid, anyway, Clark, you know that. I'm more mature than anyone my age."
Clark's face flickers with something; hesitation, maybe, a kind of wavering that makes that little spark burn brighter. Then it smooths out all at once. "No, Dick. I mean it."
The spark is snuffed. To his chagrin, Dick finds a strange kind of anger in the embers. "Is this about Bruce?"
"It's not about Bruce."
But it's always about Bruce. How could it not be about Bruce? Clark lets go of Dick's wrists, and they drop to his sides. Dick grips the edge of the counter so tight his knuckles turn white.
"You're lying." Horrifically, his voice sounds wet. There's a lump in his throat he can pretend is anger, but his eyes are hot. He drops his gaze to the ground, unable to bear to look at Clark anymore. "If you don't– don't love me like that, just say that. Don't make it about my age. That's never mattered before. You've always treated me like we're equal."
"It is about your age. This is different," Clark insists. But he's lying. There's nothing that makes this different. Dick wasn't too young to put on a costume and fight crime and he wasn't too young to lead a team and he wasn't too young to go along with Bruce and Clark to fight threats to the planet, so — this is something else. It has to be.
"You're just worried about how Bruce will react," Dick accuses.
"He'd react poorly, and he'd be right to," Clark says. His voice is steely, firm. "Dick. I won't let this go any further. And it's because I care about you. I won't take advantage of you like that, and I won't hurt you like that, and I know you don't see it that way, but I would be taking advantage."
"You wouldn't," Dick says. The stupid lump in his throat is growing, threatening to choke him. "You wouldn't hurt me."
"That's why it ends here, Dick," Clark says. His tone is gentle, now, but he's shaken off the surprise, and though he speaks softly, he's unyielding. "You're grown-up in many ways, and you grew up faster than most kids, but you are still young. Too young for me to allow this, with someone like me."
Dick swallows. His chest hurts. "And when won't I be too young?"
The look Clark gives him is… soft. Not quite pitying — nothing so condescending — and the fact that Clark is letting him down so gently almost makes it worse. Because of course Clark has to be so Clark about this. "I don't want you to wait for me, Dick. I want you to live your life."
Dick's heart is being squeezed in a vise. He doesn't want to be having this conversation. He wants to take it back, to rewind the last few minutes before he gave in to stupid, lonely impulse. Maybe he can pretend. If he swallows the lump in his throat and packs his injured pride into a box and plasters on that smile he has for when he's feeling like smiling the least, maybe he can pretend.
"Right," he says. His eyes still feel hot. He blinks, trying to clear it. "Right, yeah. Okay. I get it. Really."
"I'm sorry, Dick," Clark says, and it's exactly what he doesn't want to hear.
Dick pushes off the counter. Clark floats back, giving him space. More of what he doesn't want.
"I'm going to the circus in the morning," Dick says. He can't look at him. "Will you take me?"
"Of course. Whatever you need," Clark says. Still that same soft tone. Dick wants to scream, or punch something, and he can't do any of that, so he lets his smile stretch wider instead.
"Great. Thanks," he says. "I'd better get some sleep, then."
"Dick," Clark says. Worried. "Are you all right?"
"Fine. Like I said, I get it."
He risks a look back at Clark; he's still floating there, arms by his sides, hovering a little awkwardly like maybe he wants to— Dick doesn't know, give him a hug, or pat his shoulder, or something, but maybe he thinks Dick will interpret it the wrong way.
Maybe Dick's messed things up between them. His eyes are hot again. Stupid. He's acting so stupid. So childish, everything he's trying to tell Clark he's not.
"I'm going back to bed." Dick brushes by Clark as he walks out, the not-quite-contact making his skin tingle.
Clark lets him go.
It's worse than before. Dick lies in the too-large bed in the dark and stares up at the ceiling like he can see through it, stomach twisting itself into knots. He replays the kiss over and over in his mind. He wants to forget it. The way Clark's lips felt against his, the half-second where he convinced himself Clark might kiss him back.
Childish. Stupid.
It's like Bruce firing him all over again. Worse, maybe, because this time it is his fault. He should've expected the outcome he got — he did expect it, in a way, but between Bruce's absence and Clark's steady presence, something came over him he couldn't resist.
And now he's sulking in bed about it like a teenager getting turned down for the dance. No wonder Clark thinks he's too young. Why can't he get over himself?
It's like Clark rejecting him just reinforced all the ways in which he's suddenly, achingly alone. Without a partner, without even Robin, which Bruce took away like it was his to take. The abject loneliness is gnawing a hole in his chest.
He wishes Clark were here.
Pathetically, he sniffs and swipes at his eyes. He curls up into a ball underneath the blankets.
A creak. The door, opening. At first, Dick thinks he's imagined it; like his desperate wishing for Clark to be here is making him see things. But the rustle of the sheets is real, the dip of the mattress is real, and the arms that pull him close are warm and solid and real.
"Hey," Clark murmurs. "I thought you might need a friend right now."
The ache the words bring is dull, and far overshadowed by relief. Dick hugs him back, burying his face in Clark's broad chest. "Y-yeah. Thanks."
His grip is a little too tight, too needy, but it's Clark. Dick couldn't hurt him if he tried. He can feel that gnawing ache receding, the hole in his chest slowly filling with each moment they just lie there in an embrace. And it's not romantic, Clark's made that clear, but Clark's still here, like it doesn't matter that Dick made a fool of himself. Like turning him down doesn't mean cutting him off.
"I'm sorry," Dick whispers.
"Don't be. It's okay," Clark tells him.
"…Thank you. For being here." For not leaving me.
The hold tightens. "Always."
The cavernous hole has shrunk to a pinprick. Dick breathes out, long and slow, and nestles closer. Nothing's ruined. They're okay. And Dick's going to find his way, and figure out what he wants to do, and Clark will be there to help him when he needs, like he always is.
He thinks of legend Clark told him, about the hero from his homeworld. Who was cast out of his family, and kept fighting anyway, helping those who needed it. Those who couldn't fight for themselves. Using his skills to do what was right.
Clark asked him if he'd thought about giving it up. Just living his life as Dick Grayson. And Dick knows he can't do that, just as he knows he can't go back to being Robin. He needs to be something new. Something better.
He rather likes the name Nightwing.