Chapter Text
“What?” Clark says, in complete and utter disbelief.
“I’m sorry, Kent.” The man can’t quite meet his eyes. “Building’s being converted, and the new owner has a contract requiring all units to be vacant at closing.”
“But I… I only have a month to find a new place? That’s such short notice, Mr. Kline.”
“It is what it is.” The man gives a helpless shrug. “Look, son, best I can give you is the notice. My hands are tied.” And then he’s gone, already halfway down the hall before Clark can open his mouth again.
He shuts the door slowly. Even as it clicks shut, he can still hear the faint echo of his landlord's footsteps, mixing with his own whirling thoughts. He stands there, in the middle of his apartment, the notice in his hand crumpling a little where his fingers tighten around it.
Clark drops back onto his worn out couch, and it creaks in protest under his weight. He runs a hand down his face.
Okay. Not the end of the world... He has a month.
A month to find a new place in Metropolis. Thirty days to pack up everything and somehow figure out how he’s going to afford first and this month’s rent on a reporter’s salary. Never mind the fact that he has another full-time job on top of that, that is just as (if not more) demanding than being a journalist.
He feels the pressure loom like storm clouds overhead.
But he still puts on his tie the next morning, and he goes to work.
By the time he makes it to the Daily Planet, he’s already talked himself out of feeling sorry. He’s Superman, for crying out loud. He’s fine. He’ll be fine. It's just another problem that needs solving, and he's good at that. Sometimes.
But apparently, he’s not hiding it as well as he thought. Not even an hour after clocking in, Lois is already there at the edge of his desk, coffee cup in hand and one brow raised.
“Everything alright, Smallville?” She asks.
“Why wouldn’t I be alright?” He says.
“I don’t know.” She gestures to his monitor. “You’ve been glued to your computer for almost an hour and you haven’t typed a single thing down.”
Sure enough, a pristine white Word document stares back at him on the screen. The cursor blinks accusingly.
“I…” He scratches the back of his head, sheepish. “I just got a notice. I need to find a place in, uh, about a month.”
“What?” Lois straightens immediately. “You’re being evicted? On such short notice? That can’t be legal.”
Clark sighs, fiddling with his pen as he speaks. “I looked it up. Turns out, they can actually do that. They’re converting the building, and I apparently don’t really have a strong enough basis to stop the eviction. I wasn’t sure whether I should start on—uh—” He gestures vaguely at his empty screen, “—or start apartment hunting.”
Lois’s expression softens. “I’m sorry, Clark.”
Clark tries not to scrunch his face at the words. (It replays in his head, "I’m sorry, Clark—")
“I’ll see if I can help you find a new place.” She says.
Clark startles. “What? Why? No, Lois, you don’t have to—”
“Come on,” Lois says, cutting him off with a grin. “Even someone like you needs help sometimes.”
She winks, then before he can offer about five more protests, she’s already marching back to her desk.
Clark watches her go, tries to ignore the knot in his stomach. He glances at the blank document again, sighs, and finally starts typing.
***
It takes twenty-three days before he finds a place. Twenty-three days of scouring rental listings, answering dead-end ads, and in the end, he only finds it because of Lois.
He’d tried to refuse, really. (Mostly because there’s a complicated feeling crawling around his ribs every time she offers. This quiet, sharp awareness that they used to live together, that they used to be in love, that once upon a time her toothbrush was next to his on his sink. And now she’s just a friend, and that’s good, that’s enough, but—but—)
Nonetheless, he’s grateful. The new place is bigger than his old apartment, cheaper too, and semi-furnished. Lois had said it was through her friend’s mother’s nephew (or maybe her nephew’s mother’s friend’s brother, he honestly lost track halfway through her explanation). What mattered was that she’d found out he was moving out and managed to get the landlord to let Clark take over the lease.
Now, standing among a scatter of boxes and furniture that doesn’t quite belong to him yet, Clark breathes a sigh of relief.
“Really, Lois, thank you so much.”
Lois rolls her eyes, setting down a box. “I got it the first hundred times you thanked me. It’s fine. This is nothing compared to what you’ve done for… well. For humanity.”
“That’s not—” Clark starts, but the protest dies in his throat. He shakes his head instead with a faint smile. “At least let me try and make it up to you. Dinner, maybe?”
She raises one perfectly arched brow.
“…Not anytime soon, of course.” He rubs the back of his neck. He is, after all, flat broke right now. “I meant some time in the future.”
“Fine,” She says with a sigh. “Because I don’t think you’ll let me refuse.”
She surveys the room, the boxes stacked against the walls, some opened, others still taped shut. “Is this all your stuff?”
“Oh, not all. I was going to—” His head snaps to the side.
Beneath the distant hum of traffic and conversation. Screaming, dozens of panicked voices, the shriek of tires, the clash of metal, and police sirens weaving through it all. The world filters itself into layers of sound, and...
Is…
Is that a gigantic lizard?
“Lois,” He says, already moving toward her, eyes never leaving the unusually large reptile. “We have to go.”
“What—Whoah!”
In the next heartbeat, they’re out of the building, his arm braced around her waist, the wind whipping past as he sets her down safely behind a line of parked cars on the very, very far end of the street.
“What the hell are you—!” Lois starts, but her voice trails off when she turns and sees it.
The creature is easily ten stories tall, green scales glinting under the sun, tail lashing through concrete like wet tissue paper.
“Oh,” she breathes.
“I’ll be back, okay?” Clark says.
A gust of air tugs at her hair as he disappears.
Thankfully, he’d already packed his suit in one of the boxes. It takes seconds to find it, seconds more to become something else entirely.
And then he’s soaring upward—no longer Clark Kent, fumbling tenant and tired reporter, but Superman.
***
He swoops down through the smoke and chaos. A bus teeters on its side, passengers trapped inside, and he tears the door off, hauling the people clear of the bus just as a massive scaled foot slams down where they’d been. The shockwave ripples through the asphalt.
He looks up.
Its tail whips through another traffic light and it sends sparks across the street, the lizard's roar rattling windows for blocks.
There is a bright streak across the sky, and then Wonder Woman lands. She plants her feet, heels gouging the pavement, muscles coiled and radiant with divine strength as she stops the lizard from advancing with her hand on its clawed feet. Her lasso flashes, looping around the creature’s snout as it attempts to snap at her.
High above, emerald light flares and Green Lantern descends. “You’re late!” Lantern calls over the thunderous noise.
Superman winces, flying in beside him. “I was preoccupied.”
“Preoccupied?” Lantern snorts, forming a massive glowing fist that slams into the monster’s shoulder. “Don't you have super-senses or something?”
“I’m aware,” Superman mutters. He still isn’t sure how someone with supersight and superhearing manages to overlook a giant reptile materializing out of nowhere in the middle of the city, but here they are.
Wonder Woman jumps up to drive her sword into the creature’s flank. It roars best as it can with its mouth tied shut, then it whips an arm out to catch her across the chest. She flies and crashes through a parked truck but is already back on her feet in seconds, dragging the golden lasso taut, and the lizard struggles against it.
Lantern’s construct morphs into giant green chains that snake through the air, wrapping around the creature’s limbs. Superman dives low, sweeping through the smoke to clear another cluster of civilians, ferrying them toward a line of emergency responders setting up barricades.
“Metropolis PD’s got most of the block evacuated!” One officer shouts up at him. Superman nods once before shooting back into the fray.
The lizard thrashes harder, scales scraping against Lantern’s constructs and Wonder Woman's lasso. The green chains strain, glowing hotter with every twist of its massive body. Superman streaks past its head and drives a punch square into the creature’s jaw to stun it so it stops its attempt to break away from the chains. The impact sends it reeling, and does its intended effect.
“What’s the plan!?” Superman shouts over the chaos, rejoining Lantern in midair.
“There is no plan! Just—”
Lantern doesn’t finish, because Wonder Woman is already moving. She leaps from a nearby rooftop, winding her lasso back to whirl it out into a bright arc before it snaps tight around the monster’s neck. The creature jerks back with a strangled roar as she plants her boots against its scaled back and yanks with all her strength.
“Bring it down! Now!” She yells.
Superman nods once and rockets forward, slamming into the creature’s ribs. The lizard shrieks, flailing wildly against all its restraints.
“Clear the airspace!” Lantern shouts.
Superman shoots upward, breaking through the smoke as Lantern’s ring flares white-green. The glow expands into a massive construct, an enormous hammer that hangs suspended in the air for a single, trembling heartbeat. Then it slams into the creature.
The lizard hurtles backward just as Wonder Woman breaks away from it, its body heading straight toward a tall beige building.
Superman’s stomach clenches.
Before it can hit, he dives. Wind screams in his ears as he descends faster than sound, scanning the building with his vision. Shapes flicker behind concrete walls—people who haven’t made it out.
He smashes through a window, moving room to room in a blur. A man huddled beneath a desk— A woman clutching her phone— A little boy crying beside a stairwell—
The walls tremble.
He bursts through the lobby doors just as the shadow of the lizard falls over the building. He lands across the intersection, putting the civilians down, and the world behind him erupts.
The sound hits first, the load roar of collapsing steel and glass. Then a blast of air sending debris spinning in every direction. Superman braces himself, shielding the people with his body. Chunks of concrete bounce harmlessly off his shoulders while smaller shards scatter across the street like rain.
When it’s over, the silence rings louder than the noise. Smoke curls upward in lazy plumes.
Lantern lowers himself beside Superman, panting, his ring still glowing faintly. “That’s what I call pest control,” he says, with a grin.
Superman laughs a bit—
Wait.
Beige?
A beige building?
He turns around.
The building. Beige walls. White window shutters. The one he’d been so relieved to find. The one Lois had helped him move into just moments ago.
It’s gone.
His newly rented apartment is now flattened beneath a hundred tons of alien lizard.
“Uh… Supes?” Green Lantern turns to him when he doesn’t respond. “Everything good, man?”
“Sure.” He says, with a voice he can’t quite hear. “Just… dandy.”
***
The next few hours are a blur. He wouldn’t be able to tell you what he’d said or who he’d been talking to or what he’d been doing, not even with a gun to his head. (Provided said gun had kryptonite bullets in them, of course. If those even existed.)
Now he stands before the rubble. The air smells of dust and ozone, and his apartment building lies in pieces. Even with x-ray vision, he can’t tell which twisted shapes used to be his things
“I’m sorry, Clark.” Lois says, earnest. She places a hand on his shoulder. “You can stay at my place for a while. Just until you get back on your feet.”
Memories flash. Her smile, her laugh, the way she’d hold him close at night, and the smell of her hair. I’m sorry, Clark. She’d said back then too.
He shakes his head, and musters a smile he hopes isn’t strained. “No, it’s okay. I’ll figure it out.”
“Are you sure?” She asks, the turmoil inside Clark unknown to her. “Seven days isn’t a lot of time to find a new place. It’s really no trouble at all.”
It is to me.
“It’s alright, Lois. I’ll be fine.” He says it like a promise, but the words sound a lot like wishful thinking.
***
It definitely was wishful thinking.
He’s standing on the curb with a cardboard box in his hands. Inside are loose papers, his laptop and phone charger tangled around a half-empty shampoo bottle, a bar of soap, and a few cans of soda clinking together every time he shifts his grip.
His old duffel bag sits at his feet, zipper held together with stubborn hope and one good prayer. Half of his clothes made it in. The other half didn’t survive the lizard incident. His laptop is in his shoulder bag, along with his phone and his wallet.
So.
This is all he has left.
And as of this morning, he has nowhere to put it.
Contingency plans were always more of Batman’s thing, and between putting out fires, both literal and metaphorical, he hasn’t had time to think, let alone plan. The days just blurred... The lizard, the rescue, the wreckage, the clean-up, the press, the League... Somewhere in the noise, the end of his lease arrived.
He hadn’t realized he needed to be out today until the landlord’s message showed up, final and non-negotiable.
He huffs, then kicks at a pebble near his shoe. He forgets his strength and it shoots forward and punches a neat hole through the apartment building’s brick wall. Clark stares at it for a moment.
He’s not the kind to feel vengeful, but he has to admit, that felt good.
He adjusts the box and begins to run through names in his head as he considers his options.
Staying with Lois is— Yeah. Nope. Not happening.
Jimmy? … They’re not that close.
Diana? Maybe, but she deserves her privacy, and Clark’s not sure what the etiquette is for crashing at an Amazon’s place.
His thoughts snag, unbidden, on Batman. Clark sighs out loud. “Yeah, right,” he mutters.
A new idea suddenly flickers through his head.
The League Headquarters.
Bruce Wayne had been generous enough to buy the lot and fund construction not long after the League formed, apparently with Batman’s full blessing. Clark still thinks it’s weird that a billionaire and a vigilante were on such friendly terms, but he figured stranger alliances had built the League, and he wasn’t about to question a good thing.
It’s perfect, really. There’s more than enough space, and a section of the fourth floor that’s never used. He remembers stumbling across it once when he’d gotten bored waiting for a meeting and let his x-ray vision wander.
There are showers there too, those had to be built after too many instances of needing to wash off suspicious muck or radioactive slime before attending the debriefing.
If he hides his things carefully, it’ll be fine. The rest of the League isn’t always there, and even if someone was there, it’s not like they’d catch him easily. Between his hearing and vision, he should be able to tell when anyone’s nearby long before they reach the door.
It’s temporary. Just until he finds something else. A week, maybe two. Then it’ll be like it never happened.
He looks up at the sky, shoulders straightening.
See? He thinks, almost convincing himself.
He’s figuring it out.
***
Superman has been acting strange lately.
Stranger than usual, anyway, even if being strange is sort of baked into the deal when you’re talking about a flying, heat-vision-shooting alien who decided, out of sheer altruism, to dedicate his life to “saving” humanity.
Bruce has never understood that.
People don’t just do the right thing, not without motive, not without some kind of reward at the end of it. And yet Superman drifts through the world as if immune to cynicism, the sun shining out of his well-muscled ass. Untouchable and impossibly good. As if nothing on Earth, or beyond it, can ever get him down. (Which, to be fair, is mostly true.)
So subdued is not a word Bruce ever expected to associate with him, but that’s exactly what he’s been lately.
“Is this about the random giant lizard in Metropolis?” Flash says, halfway through a mouthful of popcorn, lounging backward in his chair like this is movie night instead of a League debriefing.
“And why, exactly,” Hawkgirl adds, arms crossed, “was there a giant lizard in Metropolis?”
Bruce glances across the table, waiting for Superman to answer, but it’s Green Lantern who speaks instead.
“Some kind of experiment gone wrong, maybe,” Green Lantern says, tone clipped. “Radiation readings don’t match anything local. Could be alien tech. Something leftover from one of your cleanup sites, Big Blue?”
Everyone turns toward Superman.
Superman who startles like someone just said his name in class while he wasn’t paying attention. “Oh! Uh. Yeah. Yes. Giant lizard because of—science. We’re… uh, still looking into it.”
Stunned silence.
It’s immediately clear he hadn’t been following the conversation. Superman, who normally speaks with effortless authority, suddenly seeming to struggle to remember how words work is just as surprising as him not knowing what’s going on in his own city. The alien fidgets under the weight of their stares, a faint flush creeping into his cheeks.
Bruce studies him, but at first glance, there’s nothing wrong. He has good posture, the skin under his eyes aren’t dark… Hm… Maybe, his hair is a little less kept? Is that a slight slackness to his shoulders—?
“Are you alright?” Wonder Woman asks, voice gentle but concerned. “You’re uncharacteristically distracted.”
“Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry.” Superman replies with a wince. “Just going through some personal stuff.”
Bruce resists the urge to scowl. Personal stuff. That could mean anything, and the problem is, he doesn’t know this man well enough to fill in the blanks.
It bothers him more than he’ll admit.
“Oooh, divorce?” Flash pipes up immediately, grinning.
“I’m not married,” Superman says with a touch of humor.
“You aren’t?” Lantern looks genuinely surprised. “Well, hell, if you’re single, then what hope is there for the rest of us?”
“I mean…” Superman glances across the table. “Wonder Woman isn’t married.” A pause, “I think?”
Flash leans forward, eyes gleaming. “Oooh, so you think Wonder Woman’s hot?”
Superman balks. “I don’t—”
“No, no," Lantern wags a finger, "He’s saying they’re of equal hotness.”
Wonder Woman rolls her eyes. “Children,” she mutters.
“Hey,” Bruce cuts in sharply. “Can we focus? Some of us actually have things to do today.”
“Yeah, yeah, Mr. Brooding Deadline,” Lantern mumbles, but the tone dies under Batman’s glare.
Bruce calls up a hologram with the press of a button. The data scrolls rapidly across the air, blue and white. “The creature’s biology doesn’t match any known terrestrial species. The radiation at the site was residual but consistent with high-grade energy output. Doesn’t seem to be nuclear or standard weapons testing. Might be experimental, or literally from out of this world.”
He nods toward Lantern. “You and Hawkgirl, sweep for similar radiation spikes along the eastern seaboard. Start in Metropolis and expand outward.”
“Got it,” Lantern says.
“Flash,” Bruce continues, “Cross-reference recent shipments of high-density alloys, power cores, and xenon derivatives. Labs, research facilities, military contracts, find out if anyone’s working on something they shouldn’t be.”
“Yep." Flash gives him a thumbs up.
“I’ll go see if this could be magical in nature, or divine. Shouldn't be too hard to check whether there's been any disturbance near the gateways." Wonder Woman says. "But, if this creature was summoned, not created, then we may be dealing with something larger."
The thought hangs heavy in the air for a moment.
Superman clears his throat. “And… me?”
Bruce hesitates. He hadn’t planned to sideline him, but... “Check in with Metropolis PD and the relief teams. The public’s still shaken, and cleanup’s still ongoing. Make sure the people affected have what they need. Hospitals, shelters, supply runs…”
Normally that kind of assignment would’ve earned him an immediate retort. I’m fine, Batman. I can help with the search. But instead, Superman just nods, his expression bordering on relieved. “Right. Of course,” he says.
The table falls quiet again.
“And you’re… o…kay with that…?” Flash asks, drawing out each word.
“Why wouldn’t I be? We’re restoring order and rebuilding trust. People are scared. They need to see that someone’s there, and that we haven’t just moved on to the next crisis. It’s still important work and I’m happy to handle it.”
It’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But he’d also normally be very hostile to the idea of Batman very obviously benching him.
“Alright then,” Bruce says, shutting down the projection. “Meeting adjourned.”
No one moves at first. Lantern exchanges a glance with Wonder Woman, and Flash’s gaze flicks between all of them, waiting for someone to call out the obvious. But Superman doesn’t say another word, he just sits there, hands clasped loosely in front of him, gaze already fixed somewhere far away.
After another long, awkward pause, chairs finally scrape and boots shift.
“Don’t work too hard,” Lantern mutters as he passes, clapping Superman on the shoulder. Diana gives him a single pat on the head as she leaves.
Then they’re gone, leaving only Batman and Superman.
Superman hasn’t moved from his seat. He’s staring out the window, lost in the far away corners of his mind.
“Superman,” Bruce says.
The man twitches—like he’d genuinely forgotten he wasn’t alone—and turns slowly, as if surfacing from deep water. “Yeah?”
“… Got nowhere to be?” Bruce asks, trying not to sound as curious as he feels.
That gets a strange flicker of emotion on Superman’s face. “Oh.” He says, “I was just… resting.”
They hold each other’s gaze for several long seconds. Superman breaks it first, looking away and clearing his throat.
Bruce debates saying nothing, letting it end there. Batman isn’t good at this part, the small talk, comfort, and anything that doesn’t involve strategy or mission plans. But the moment feels weighted, something he can’t quite leave alone and it keeps him rooted to his chair.
Their relationship might’ve had a rocky start (punches, posturing, mutual suspicion) but they’ve grown past that. Over time it’s become something steadier, and Bruce is confident enough now to call Superman a friend.
A close friend even. As close as secret identities and separate cities will allow, anyway.
“Are you sure it isn’t divorce?” He says at last. “I could always ask Bruce Wayne to hook you up with a good lawyer.”
Superman blinks, surprised, before a small laugh escapes him.
(Bruce realizes, almost in the same breath, that he has no idea how old Superman actually is, or if Kryptonians even age like humans do. For all he knows, Superman could be a century old, old enough to have been married five times. Or twenty-five, and still learning how to navigate the world.
It’s absurd that he’s never asked.)
“I wasn’t lying when I said I wasn’t married, Batman,” Superman says, smiling softly now.
Bruce knew that already. Superman is a terrible liar most of the time.
“Just going through a rough patch in my life,” Superman admits after a moment, some of the brightness slipping from his face.
“That sucks.”
Superman snorts, one corner of his mouth quirking upward. “Seriously? That sucks?”
“It’s concise,” Bruce replies. “What else did you want me to say? There’s not much I can do. I don’t even know what’s going on.”
He wonders if he would’ve said more, done more, if he’d been Bruce Wayne instead of Batman at the moment. Batman deals in facts, not feelings, and there’s nothing to fix here, nothing his hands or gadgets can solve.
Superman exhales, weary. “I know.” He opens his mouth like he might continue, and finally tell Bruce what's wrong, but something unreadable moves across his face, and he shakes his head instead. “I’ll, uh, head out then. See you, Batman.”
He disappears, leaving behind a gust of wind, the chair he'd been sitting on spinning for a few seconds before stilling.
***
Bruce rubs at his temple, the beginnings of a headache blooming behind his eyes. Another charity dinner, another night of champagne, hollow laughter, and the kind of conversations that make him question whether oxygen is wasted on Gotham’s elite.
He pulls at his tie the moment the doors close. The silk slides free from his collar, and the simple act already feels like shedding a disguise.
In some ways, it is.
Down in the cave, the air is cool and metallic, welcoming him in. The hum of machines and the shadows swallows the noise of the world above. He drapes his jacket over a chair, flexes his hands once, then sinks into the main console’s seat. The glow from the monitors washes his face in cold light.
The League’s remote feeds flicker to life—satellite visuals, security systems, background telemetry. A hundred different layers of quiet vigilance.
Something catches his eye, however, as he skims through the data on the screens.
He frowns.
Power usage… in their headquarters?
That in itself isn’t unusual, there are always backup systems running, servers cycling, overnight personnel. But this is different, it’s coming from a supposedly unused part of the fourth floor.
Bruce's hands fly over the keys.
Doors opening and closing, movement sensors being triggered… And at odd hours too, 2:00 a.m., 4:30, then again just before dawn. Every day for almost two weeks.
He pulls up the camera feeds. They’re all empty, and yet the systems register movement. Could this be a malfunction? Perhaps the software is due another update—
The logs update again.
[22:47] LHQ_4D: Movement detected.
His eyes snap to the surveillance feed, but finds nothing.
Bruce’s jaw tightens.
The suit’s on within minutes, gauntlets sliding into place, seals snapping shut around his forearms. Then he dons the cowl, and becomes the night.
***