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This is not a beginning. It is a return.
Clark has always known that some stories do not begin or end they simply return.
They return like storms.
Like poorly healed wounds.
Like echoes that cannot be ignored.
Seven years have passed since the first time they touched with intention.
He shouldn’t remember it so clearly... but he does.
Almost against his will.
It was after the battle against Darkseid, one of many, but that one left an invisible weight on them both.
The Tower was silent.
Not the functional silence of the corridors, but that deep silence that only comes when the world is one step from collapse and yet still keeps turning.
Bruce collapsed to his knees.
Clark caught him by reflex, as if his body had decided before his mind.
Blood, sweat, the tremor of exhaustion running through the tense muscles of the man who never allowed himself to appear vulnerable.
Bruce lifted his gaze.
There was no gratitude in his eyes.
No permission.
Only that old fury, that determination to stay alive despite himself.
And then it happened.
It wasn’t gentle.
It wasn’t rational.
It was an inevitable collision.
Their mouths met as if both had been walking toward that crash for years without admitting it.
There was no romance.
There was no promise.
Only need.
Raw, urgent, honest.
After that, nothing was ever the same.
They tried to break it off.
They tried to ignore it.
They tried to run, each in their own way.
But they always came back.
Sometimes after two months.
Sometimes after two days.
Sometimes after two hours.
What they had was not love.
At least, not one Clark recognized.
It wasn’t tender or luminous or stable.
It was something that burned with an intensity that hurt, that consumed.
Clark once called it “dependence.”
Bruce called it “excess.”
Neither of them was entirely wrong.
It was fire that wouldn’t go out.
It was a bond that strained but never broke.
It was a refuge as painful as it was essential.
And, above all...
It was impossible to leave behind.
Because even when they hurt each other, even when distance turned into an abyss, even when they pretended indifference in front of the entire world...
there was always something that forced them back to the same point of origin.
A point that was not a beginning.
Nor an end.
Just a return.
The first of many.
...
Clark always knows when Bruce needs him.
Not because he is Kryptonian.
Not because of super-hearing, vision, or any ability that could be explained scientifically.
He knows because Bruce vibrates on a frequency of his own.
A frequency Clark recognizes even when he tries not to.
There are always signs.
The first: silence.
Not Bruce’s usual silence, the sharp, unbreakable kind that is part of him.
This is different.
It is a silence that echoes, that stretches through League communications, that sounds empty when it should be firm.
The second: the call of Gotham.
Not a literal call, Bruce would never be that direct, but a dark tide that runs through the city whenever Batman acts with too much rage.
A rage with an edge.
A rage that carries his name.
The third: his deliberate absence.
In meetings, training, missions, Bruce appears and disappears like a shadow, but sometimes the shadow stretches longer than usual.
When he avoids him without reason.
When he cuts conversations short before they begin.
When he looks through him as if he didn’t exist.
That’s when Clark knows it’s only a matter of time.
And then it happens.
There is no schedule.
No prior agreement.
No message.
Bruce simply appears.
Sometimes at his Metropolis apartment, drenched in rain, suit torn, hands still trembling from the night’s violence.
Other times on a rooftop, waiting motionless like a shadow made of flesh that only breathes when it sees him arrive.
And other times, the hardest ones, at the Tower, when the rest of the world sleeps, with a hard gaze and a body stained with blood that isn’t his.
And always the same:
—Don’t talk—Bruce says, voice low, rough, needy.
And Clark doesn’t talk.
Because if he does, the balance breaks.
Because if he asks “What’s wrong?” Bruce would vanish like smoke between his fingers.
Because if he says “I missed you,” the world would become too real for them both.
So he simply yields.
He lets himself be pushed against the wall.
Lets Bruce touch him with an urgency that isn’t desire, but a desperate attempt not to fall apart.
Lets him pull him closer, hold him tighter, claim him as the only stable point in a world that always tries to take everything from him.
They don’t make love.
Not the way ordinary people do.
What they have is... something else.
There is no tenderness, no care, no time.
Only bodies seeking each other with a precision that years have turned instinctive.
Only mingled breaths, hands gripping too hard, hearts pounding against ribs that already know that rhythm.
Sometimes Bruce leaves as soon as it’s over.
Takes a breath, composes himself, shuts down again.
Clark doesn’t stop him.
He never has.
Other times, the heaviest ones, Bruce stays.
He doesn’t say it.
He doesn’t ask permission.
He simply collapses onto Clark’s chest, as if that were the only place in the universe where he can show exhaustion.
It’s the only time Clark sees him sleep without tension on his face.
Mouth relaxed.
Hands still.
Breathing deep.
In those moments, Clark doesn’t move even a millimeter.
He doesn’t even breathe harder than necessary.
He doesn’t want to break something as fragile as that rest.
Bruce doesn’t know it, but Clark memorizes every second.
Every tremor of sleep.
Every exhale.
Every warm weight on his chest.
Because there, in that silent vulnerability, Clark understands something he never says:
this is the only place where Bruce can be human.
And that’s why he always lets him in.
Again and again.
Even when it hurts.
Even when it confuses him.
Even when it leaves him empty when Bruce leaves at dawn.
Even when the pattern never changes.
Because Clark has learned to accept a truth he didn’t want to accept:
Bruce doesn’t come looking for love.
He comes looking to survive.
And he... always lets him in.
...
Clark never imagined that something as small as a sheet of paper could weigh so much.
It took him five years to write it.
Five years of a cycle that repeated endlessly:
encounter, need, silence, distance, return.
A spiral that Bruce seemed to control, but that was slowly wearing Clark down from the inside.
It wasn’t physical pain.
It wasn’t the waiting.
It wasn’t the absence.
It was uncertainty.
That ambiguous place where you don’t know if you’ve been chosen... or merely useful.
So one night, after Bruce left without a word, as always, Clark did something he never thought he’d need to do: he wrote.
It wasn’t a speech, it wasn’t a lament.
Just three lines.
Three simple truths.
Three open wounds:
I don’t need you to love me.
But if I’m going to keep being yours,
let me know I’m something to you too.
Three lines that cost him more courage than any battle he’d ever fought.
The Batcave was the worst place to deliver it.
There, Bruce was less man, more armor.
But Clark knew that if he didn’t do it at that moment, if he didn’t do it in that space where everything was control, precision, and masks... he never would.
Bruce was repairing one of the surveillance drones.
He didn’t even look up when Clark descended.
—You show up unannounced—Bruce said, without surprise or annoyance.
—You always know when I’m coming—Clark replied.
The silence that followed wasn’t hostile.
But it was dense.
As if both knew something was about to break.
Clark took out the letter.
Held it a second longer than necessary.
Then placed it on the table.
—Read it—he said, without a tone of pleading or reproach.
Bruce took it.
Opened it.
His eyes skimmed the lines quickly, just once.
Clark waited.
He waited for a word, a gesture, a denial, a shove, an insult, anything.
But Bruce said nothing.
He simply folded it with almost surgical precision, as if each fold were a way of processing what he didn’t know how to answer.
And he put it in the inner pocket of his suit.
Right there.
In that compartment where Bruce only keeps what’s absolutely essential: critical coordinates, codes, old portraits of fallen soldiers, secrets that weigh like lead.
Clark saw his fingers close the suit.
And although Bruce offered no explanation, something inside Clark loosened.
For the first time in years.
Not because Bruce had answered.
Not because he had promised anything.
But because he hadn’t thrown it away.
Bruce doesn’t keep anything he doesn’t consider essential.
And he had decided to keep this.
The following weeks were a gentle torture.
A purgatory.
Bruce acted the same.
Cold in public.
Relentless on missions.
Measured in his words.
Clark kept telling himself:
Don’t expect what he can’t give.
But doubt, that deeply human doubt, slipped into his thoughts.
Until one night, one of those nights when Bruce sought him with silent urgency and ended up falling asleep before saying anything that might seem vulnerable, Clark woke and saw him resting beside him.
Bruce’s breathing was slow.
Deep.
Weary.
Clark got up silently, more out of habit than necessity.
Batman’s suit hung over the back of the chair, still damp from Gotham’s rain.
And then he saw it.
The pocket.
The one pressed against his heart.
Clark opened it carefully.
Pulled out the letter.
It was worn.
Edges softened from use.
Folded and unfolded so many times the paper seemed touched by entire days.
Stained with sweat.
With blood.
With rain.
He hadn’t carried it once.
He’d carried it every time.
Every night.
Every mission.
Every fall.
And that was the answer Clark hadn’t wanted to admit he needed.
He didn’t say it with words.
He never would.
But he carried it with him.
Pressed to his chest.
Protected like something he couldn’t afford to lose.
Clark put it back where it belonged.
Returned to bed without making a sound.
And settled against Bruce’s back, feeling the warmth of his body, the residual tension, the weight of the man who would never have confessed anything if not for that piece of paper folded a thousand times.
That night, Clark slept deeply.
For the first time in years, he didn’t fear Bruce would disappear at dawn.
Because even if Bruce didn’t say it... he was holding on.
In his own way.
Clumsy.
Silent.
Imperfect.
Real.
...
Talking was never their way of communicating.
Or not, at least, about the things that mattered.
Bruce mastered silence as both weapon and refuge.
Clark mastered it out of habit, learning not to say too much, not to crush the world with the force of his emotions.
For years, what they had was a language made of presences, held breaths, hands reaching for what the mouth wouldn’t admit.
But something changed.
Maybe it was the letter.
Maybe it was their shared exhaustion.
Maybe it was the need, the one they never wanted to name.
Whatever it was, one night they started talking.
That night Gotham was especially quiet.
Bruce had spent the entire day on a case, with that intensity he only showed when trying to avoid thinking about something deeper.
When he arrived where Clark waited, a hidden refuge at the docks, one of those places where Bruce could take off the mask without ceasing to be Batman, he said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
But the way he touched him was different.
Not urgent.
Not brutal.
Not desperate.
It was slow.
Deliberate.
As if he wanted to remember every reaction, every breath, every line of the body before him.
Clark noticed.
And though his heart reacted before his mind, he said nothing.
When it was over, there was no immediate distance.
Bruce didn’t pull away.
He didn’t shut down.
He didn’t dress like someone rebuilding a wall.
He simply stayed there, forehead resting on Clark’s collarbone, breathing as if he’d found a rhythm he could hold onto.
The world outside held itself in improbable stillness.
And then Clark asked:
—Why do you never let me go?
He said it softly.
Without reproach.
Without expecting a clear answer.
He only wanted, just once, to hear the truth without Bruce fleeing behind an excuse.
Bruce stayed still.
A stillness that wasn’t defensive... it was vulnerable.
Then he lifted his gaze.
His eyes had that gray tone that only appeared when he was too tired to pretend.
—Because when you leave...—Bruce swallowed— the world turns gray again.
Clark felt something deep and warm, something he’d wanted to hear for years but never expected to hear aloud.
He smiled.
Barely.
A small, intimate gesture, just for himself.
—And when you leave—Clark replied— I stop feeling real.
Bruce didn’t question him.
He didn’t look away.
He made no sarcastic comment to break the moment.
He just looked at him for a second, as if trying to memorize him from the inside.
Then he kissed him.
Not like the kisses they’d shared before, urgent, frantic, necessary.
But a soft, slow kiss, filled with an uncomfortable meaning neither dared name.
A pact.
An acknowledgment.
A crack in both their armors.
Another night, weeks later, Gotham wrapped in thick fog, the Tower silent, the world believing them unshakable as ever, they spoke again without expecting to.
Clark was above him, bracing himself on trembling hands, breathing deeply as he felt Bruce guide him with firmness.
Not desperately, but with an almost reverent precision.
Bruce gripped his hips.
His voice came out hoarse, nearly broken.
—No one else makes me feel... this.
Clark felt a shiver.
The kind that starts in your spine and rises to your throat.
—What?—he whispered, heart pounding too fast for someone who shouldn’t feel fear.
Bruce closed his eyes.
Took a deep breath.
—Alive.
One word.
A truth that weighed more than any confession.
Clark rested his forehead against Bruce’s.
He said nothing.
He didn’t need to.
The silence that followed wasn’t uncomfortable.
It was full.
A silence that spoke for them.
A bridge between two men who had hurt, avoided, sought, and found each other so many times they no longer knew how to exist apart.
From then on, talking became part of them.
Not a habit.
Not a routine.
A rare luxury.
A space where they could be something more than heroes.
Something more than weapons.
Something more than need.
Bruce never talked much.
But what little he said... was enough to keep Clark anchored.
Enough to remind him that what they shared, though imperfect, chaotic, contradictory, was real.
And Clark responded with gentle truths, the kind Bruce never asked for but always heard.
In the dark, they weren’t Superman or Batman.
They weren’t symbols.
They weren’t myths.
They were just Clark and Bruce.
Two men trying to survive the world.
And, somehow, surviving each other.
...
The intimacy between them was never soft.
Clark accepted that years ago.
It wasn’t about caresses or whispered promises.
What they had spoke another language:
one where the body said what the mouth kept silent,
one where heat, pressure, trembling were silent confessions.
Bruce loved with ferocity, even when he said it wasn’t love.
And Clark responded with an intensity he didn’t know how to moderate.
It was fire.
Disordered fire.
Fire that burned from within.
Once, at the Tower, the city was so clear Metropolis looked like a photograph paused in time.
The observatory room had a huge window overlooking the world Superman protected with almost religious devotion.
Bruce had sought him that night.
He hadn’t said why.
He never said why.
Clark barely had time to breathe when he felt the push, hands on his arms, back softly hitting the glass.
Bruce didn’t kiss him.
Not at first.
He held him there, with the world stretching below as a reminder of who each of them was.
—Look at them—Bruce said, voice low and warm against his ear—
All those humans who admire the Man of Steel...
Clark felt Bruce’s breath trail down his neck.
A shiver.
An anchor.
—...and don’t know that right now you’re trembling for a man who doesn’t even believe in heroes.
Clark laughed, barely.
A short, almost broken sound.
—You believe in me—he whispered.
Not as an affirmation.
As certainty.
Bruce didn’t answer.
But the way he touched him, with strength, control, something almost protective hidden beneath the hardness, was more honest than any words.
Metropolis glittered below.
They breathed above.
And in that suspended space between sky and glass, Clark felt the world was more real than ever.
On another occasion, it was different.
Darker.
Rawer.
Bruce stumbled into the Batcave.
Suit torn.
Lip split.
One of his gloves stained with dirt, blood, and something Clark preferred not to identify.
Clark descended before he could think.
—Bruce—he said, concern he couldn’t hide in his voice.
—I’m fine—Bruce replied, not looking at him.
It was a lie.
But it was one of those lies Clark already knew how to handle.
He tried to clean a wound on his side.
Bruce let him... for a second.
Then stopped him with his hand.
A firm pressure, more emotional than physical.
—I don’t want you to heal me—Bruce murmured, eyes dark, emotional mask momentarily gone.
Clark looked at him, understanding something deeper behind those words.
—Then what do you want?
Bruce inhaled.
Exhaled.
Stepped closer.
Another step.
—I want you to keep me here.
Clark felt the meaning behind those words.
Keep.
Anchor.
Prevent him from getting lost behind that rage that dragged the whole world down.
Bruce pushed him onto the metal examination table.
Not with violence.
With desperation.
—I want you to use me—Bruce said, barely audible.
Clark didn’t understand it as submission.
Nor as physical need.
It was something else.
It was Bruce trying to ground himself in the only sensation that made him feel alive.
It was a request for connection.
For reality.
For belonging.
Clark took him with strength.
With energy.
With an intensity he used with no one else.
Let Bruce hold him, guide him, mark him.
The sound of metal, the smell of sweat, the dampness of the cave’s air.
Everything mixed with Bruce’s trembling as he clung to him like he was falling from an invisible cliff.
When it was over, Bruce was exhausted.
Trembling, not from pain, but from something softer and more terrifying.
Clark took a towel.
Cleaned him carefully.
With a tenderness Bruce rarely received.
As he ran the cloth over his skin, Bruce spoke:
—Never stop doing this to me.
Clark looked up.
Bruce’s eyes burned with an impossible mix of pride, need, and fear.
—I never will—Clark replied.
And it wasn’t an empty promise.
It was a commitment.
One that carried as much weight as any sacred vow.
There were other scenes.
Many.
One in a ruined attic, Gotham’s lights reflecting in broken glass.
One in the desert, during a secret mission, where night and heat had turned the improvised shelter into an almost unrecognizable space.
One in a broken elevator at the Tower, where the silence was so deep both heard their own breath amplified by the metal.
In all of them, there was fire.
That fire that didn’t know how to go out.
That fire that hurt, healed, razed, and rebuilt.
But there was never tenderness disguised as sweetness.
What they had was another kind of tenderness, the kind born of survival, of hands that cling before falling, of shared trembling that doesn’t come from fear but from recognition.
Because in each of those encounters, no matter how intense, harsh, or chaotic, there was always an invisible thread between them.
One they couldn’t cut.
One neither wanted to let go of.
...
Seven years have passed.
Seven years of finding him in shadows and saying goodbye in silence.
Seven years of touching him without having him.
Seven years of losing him without him ever leaving.
Clark always thought time would wear this down, that the intensity would fade, that Bruce would eventually, definitively, expel him from that part of his life where he never allows anyone.
But time hasn’t fixed anything.
It’s only made it deeper.
Quieter.
More inevitable.
And although he knows it, he doesn’t say it.
Neither of them ever does.
At the Tower, in front of everyone, Bruce remains the same impenetrable figure.
Cold touch.
Sharp gaze.
A voice that cracks before showing affection.
Clark smiles, as always.
The perfect facade.
The bright hero.
The one who never trembles.
But alone is enough for reality to shift.
Sometimes Bruce enters his room without knocking.
Sometimes Clark arrives at the Cave without announcing himself.
There are no rules.
No schedules.
No agreements.
Only that same invisible gravity that, no matter how much they pretend to ignore it, always ends up dragging them back to the same point.
There are nights when Bruce appears with his suit torn, blood on his jaw, trembling in fingers he swears he doesn’t feel.
And Clark holds him before he falls.
In those moments Bruce doesn’t speak.
He doesn’t need to.
Clark listens even when there’s no sound:
the quickened breath, the irregular heartbeat, the guilt that weighs more than any bruise.
He sits him down.
Cleans him.
Heals him.
And Bruce, who never allows weakness in front of anyone, lets his forehead rest on Clark’s shoulder as if it were the only stable surface in a world collapsing all around him.
Clark never says it out loud, but for him... those are the most dangerous moments.
The most intimate.
The most human.
The ones that cost him the most.
Because in that silence, in that closeness, in that shared exhaustion, Clark feels something that has no name, or maybe it does, but neither dares speak it.
Sometimes, when Bruce arrives late to League meetings or fails a mission, Clark tries to convince himself he should stop worrying so much.
He should.
But he can’t.
Because, although he’d never say it out loud, the mere thought that something might happen to Bruce leaves a hollow feeling in his stomach, as if someone had turned off part of the sun.
And the worst part is he knows Bruce feels something similar.
He knows it from the way he looks at him when he thinks no one’s watching.
From how he furrows his brow when Clark leaves on a solo mission.
From that tension in his shoulders that only disappears when he sees him return.
They never say it.
They’ll never admit it.
But they need each other.
In a clumsy, uncomfortable, painful, and real way.
In the dark, when the city sleeps and the League is busy with its own affairs, Bruce seeks him out.
And Clark lets him in.
There are no sweet words.
No promises.
No explanations.
Only a touch at the door.
A held breath.
The weight of the other, recognized even before they make contact.
Some nights Bruce falls asleep on his chest.
Breathes slowly, as if he’s finally lowering his guard.
Clark watches him in silence.
Runs a careful hand through his hair.
Holds him as if that were the only place where Bruce can rest.
And although he knows he shouldn’t...
although he knows tomorrow everything will be the same...
although he knows this cycle never ends...
Clark accepts it.
He accepts it because, deep down, he needs it too.
They’re not a couple.
They’re not lovers in the common sense of the word.
They’re not friends.
They’re not enemies.
They’re something different.
Something that has no category or logic.
Something that hurts.
And sometimes saves.
Bruce calls him “Kal” only when he’s breaking.
When the night was too long.
When the mask weighs more than his body.
Clark touches him with the gentleness no one else sees in him, as if Bruce were his only truth amid all the noise.
They don’t need to say it.
They couldn’t, even if they wanted to.
What they have isn’t a relationship.
It’s not a love story.
It’s not a secret.
It’s an instinct.
A unique frequency only they hear.
A line they were never meant to cross, but that they no longer know how to retrace.
The cycle continues.
And it will go on as long as the world keeps turning...
as long as Bruce keeps breathing...
as long as Clark keeps seeking him even when he promises not to.
What they have is imperfect.
It’s damaging.
It’s beautiful in its own darkness.
And neither of them has found the strength to let it go.