Chapter Text
Bruce Wayne had never intended to fall in love with Superman.
If he were being honest - and he rarely was, even with himself - he’d never intended to fall in love at all. Love was a luxury, something fragile and impossible to maintain alongside the life he lived. Gotham didn’t sleep, and neither did he. He’d built his world out of discipline and isolation, a fortress of control where no one could reach too far inside.
Then came Clark Kent.
It had started as all dangerous things do: slowly, quietly, with an undercurrent he refused to name. A simple conversation after a League mission turned into late-night strategy calls. Strategy calls turned into shared dinners under the guise of “coordination.” And coordination - somehow, impossibly - turned into something Bruce never saw coming: laughter.
Clark Kent laughed easily. At his own expense. At Bruce’s dry remarks. At the world. It was the sort of laugh that started in his chest and broke the air open, warm and disarming. It irritated Bruce at first, the way Clark refused to let the darkness of the world crush him. But then, that same warmth started to find cracks in Bruce’s walls and before he could stop it, the sound had become something he waited for.
He still remembered the day it all changed.
Clark had shown up at the manor - as Clark, not as Superman - to drop off a folder of League intel Bruce had requested. He’d knocked. Waited, politely, even though Bruce had told him the security system could just let him in.
When Bruce opened the door, Clark had been standing there awkwardly, holding the folder and… a pie.
“It’s from my Ma,” he’d said, sheepish, cheeks pink. “She said no one trusts a man who doesn’t eat pie. I, uh, didn’t tell her who it was for. Just that it’s for someone who looks like they need it.”
Bruce had stared at him for a long, unblinking second. “You brought me pity pie.”
Clark had blinked. “I - no, not pity! Just… polite pie.”
It had been ridiculous. And somehow, perfect.
That pie - a flaky apple crumble that Alfred had later declared “surprisingly decent for a country recipe” - marked the beginning of something Bruce hadn’t realized he’d been waiting for.
The next week, Clark invited him out for coffee. The week after, he asked again. Then again. Until, finally, Bruce realized it wasn’t just coffee. It was him.
Clark Kent had been asking him out. And Bruce Wayne, somehow, had said yes.
Dinner dates had become their quiet ritual.
Sometimes they went out - discreet, expensive places with private booths and curtained corners - but Bruce found he preferred the nights they spent at Clark’s apartment.
It was a small space by Gotham standards, warm and a little cluttered, with plants on the windowsill and books stacked in uneven piles. Clark always insisted on cooking, even though Bruce offered more than once to bring something. (“You’d just order something French I can’t pronounce,” Clark had teased.)
Those evenings blurred into a kind of comfortable domesticity that Bruce hadn’t realized he missed. Clark talked while he cooked - about work, about Ma and Pa, about the latest movie he wanted Bruce to watch. He moved around the kitchen like he’d been born in it, sleeves rolled up, curls falling into his face, humming some old country song under his breath.
They watched movies, too - though “watched” was generous. More often than not, they ended up half-tangled on the couch, acting like teenagers who couldn’t believe they’d gotten away with this. Clark, surprisingly, wasn’t as innocent as Bruce had assumed; the man had confidence and experience hidden behind that farmboy grin, and Bruce - who’d had and raised four sons - thought he’d seen it all - found himself constantly caught off guard.
Clark could go from whispering something that made Bruce’s pulse stutter to ranting about a movie’s continuity error, all wide-eyed and earnest. Bruce didn’t know what to do with that. The same hands that made him see heaven were now waving midair about how “that one scene ruined the whole plot,” and Bruce just sat there, dazed, thinking that if this really was heaven, he’d gladly never leave.
They had their wild moments - nights where laughter and heat blurred together, where Clark’s apartment looked like a storm had swept through it. They were always careful, always gentle with each other in the ways that mattered. Clark’s passion was steady, focused, always making sure Bruce felt wanted, safe, known. He swore his own life had started the moment he met Bruce Wayne.
But Bruce’s patience wasn’t endless. Sometimes, in the middle of all that closeness, when Clark started talking about slowing down, about making it last, Bruce would grumble, “Forget it. We’ll worry about it later.” It was his way of trying to control what he couldn’t - his own heart, the fragility of it all.
Later, he’d wish he hadn’t said that. Later, “forget it” would echo back at him.
Because the truth was, no matter how much distance he tried to put between them with words, his body never listened. Even when silence fell, even when he thought he could retreat into it, Clark would reach for him - and Bruce would always reach back. It was instinct. It was surrender, in its quietest form.
They were opposites even there. Clark’s love was loud, constant, overflowing - acts of service, words of affirmation, laughter shared between kisses. He showed affection the way he breathed: endlessly.
Bruce’s was quieter. Physical. Weighted in small gestures - the way his thumb stroked over Clark’s knuckles when they held hands, or how he’d hum softly in acknowledgment when Clark spoke. He didn’t say much, but he didn’t have to. His touch carried the words he couldn’t voice.
They’d spend hours tangled together afterward - Clark sprawled half over him, head resting against Bruce’s chest, Bruce’s arm wrapped around his waist, tracing the slope of his spine. Sometimes Clark would talk, rambling about a childhood memory or a farm story. Sometimes they’d just listen to the rain against the window.
Bruce would breathe him in, the warmth, the safety, the realness of him. Clark Kent - clumsy, over-earnest, infuriatingly kind - had somehow made Bruce Wayne feel human again.
And Clark? Clark looked at him like he hung the stars themselves. There was no hiding the way his eyes softened, how every glance said I love you even when he didn’t. Bruce would catch that look and shake his head faintly, pretending to be unaffected but his hand would find Clark’s anyway, thumb brushing over his skin in a silent confession.
It wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t supposed to be. But it was theirs - built on warmth and quiet understanding, on the unspoken truth that Bruce had found something he thought he’d never have again.
Now, a year later, they’d settled into an impossible rhythm - a secret, fragile balance between Gotham’s shadows and Smallville’s sunlight.
Publicly, Batman and Superman were the League’s most professional pair. Stoic. Efficient. Unshakably serious.
Privately, Clark Kent texted him too often, brought him lunch at the office (“You forget to eat, B, I swear”), and once accidentally called him “babe” during a debrief in front of Diana.
Bruce pretended not to notice. Diana didn’t. The smirk she gave him said more than the silence in the air.
Clark, for his part, was hopelessly, catastrophically in love. The kind of love that made him beam when Bruce said his name. The kind that made him fly from Metropolis to Gotham after a twelve-hour shift just to drop off dinner, a press of lips to Bruce’s temple, and a shy “You look tired, sweetheart.”
Bruce would roll his eyes, but his pulse always betrayed him. He’d told Clark, from the beginning, that this relationship was serious to him - that he wanted to take it slow. That it wasn’t a game, and it couldn’t be public. Not yet. Not with Gotham watching, not with his sons watching.
Clark had agreed, immediately. “I’d wait forever, B,” he’d said with that earnest, infuriating sincerity that made Bruce’s chest ache. “But maybe not longer than forever, because I do get impatient.”
It was absurd. It was everything Bruce never knew he wanted.
The tabloids had, of course, caught on.
Gotham Prince Bruce Wayne Spotted with Mystery Reporter in Metropolis!
Wayne Enterprises CEO Seen Smiling. Who’s Responsible for the Miracle?
Superman’s Boyfriend? Internet Thinks So.
The League knew now too. And that had been… complicated.
They were professionals about it, in the way a family of nosy coworkers could be. Hal made jokes. Barry took bets. Diana offered very serious congratulations that sounded suspiciously like amusement.
But no one quite knew how to process it: Batman and Superman, the world’s most serious men, were actually… dating. And somehow, it worked.
But Bruce hadn’t let Clark meet the boys yet. Not because he didn’t trust him - he trusted Clark with his life - but because he knew what that meeting meant.
Dick, at seventeen, was charming but fiercely protective. Jason, fifteen and all fire and edge, would have opinions. Tim, thirteen, would probably run a full background check. And Damian - twelve, blunt, territorial, and too much like him - would take one look at Clark Kent and decide whether he was a threat or a fool.
Bruce didn’t want Clark to face all that. Not yet.
Clark, of course, was terrified. “What if they hate me?” he’d confessed once, half-laughing, half-serious, his voice softer in the dark. “I can fight alien warlords but not your twelve-year-old son.”
Bruce had chuckled, the sound low and rare. “You’ll survive. Probably.”
Clark had grinned, pressing his forehead to Bruce’s. “That’s not very reassuring, you know.”
What Bruce didn’t say - what he couldn’t - was that Clark Kent had already changed everything.
He’d softened edges Bruce thought were permanent. Made the world a little less gray. For the first time in years, Bruce wanted more than the mission. Wanted mornings. Wanted the quiet sound of Clark humming while making coffee. Wanted to live, not just survive.
And if Clark ever asked him for the stars, Bruce thought, he’d point to himself first.
Because Clark didn’t realize it - not yet - but he was the only light Bruce had ever really let in.
That morning, Bruce woke to an empty side of the bed and the faint smell of pancakes drifting through the manor. Alfred never made pancakes - too “undignified,” as he said - which meant only one person was responsible.
Bruce exhaled through his nose, faint amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Clark was here. Again.
And if his sons decided to wake up early that morning, if they happened to find Superman in pajama pants in their kitchen flipping pancakes and humming along to the radio. Well. Bruce supposed the secret wouldn’t stay secret much longer.