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For supposedly being the World’s Greatest Detective, Bruce didn’t realize something was off until swinging open Chief Perry’s office door, immediately catching eyes with a bumbling Clark Kent in the Daily Planet bull pen.
Clark smiled, the corners of his lips twitching, a blush covering his pale cheeks, and his eyes crinkling under the fluorescent lights of the Planet. He ran his fingers through his jet black hair, tousling it just-so, ruining the gel-laden facade Bruce had become accustomed to as a part of Clark’s reporter persona.
Zig-zagging between frazzled reporters, jittery photographers who probably had one coffee too many that morning, and eager interns, Bruce made his way over to Clark’s small, yet homey cubicle. The chaos of the office floor faded away with each step. The ever constant sounds of the news being broadcasted on what seemed to be a million TVs mellowed, the chit-chatter of staffers falling dull. In this moment, all of Bruce’s well defined senses were solely trained on Clark.
“Hey Bruce,” Clark commented warmly, stretching his broad shoulders across his cheap swivel chair. “I didn’t know you were stopping by today?”
Bruce chuckled, flashing a classic Brucie Wayne smirk in case anyone was watching too closely. “Trying to get to know Perry some more before the Wayne Enterprises acquisition of the Planet goes through. No rest for the wicked,” he said, smirking slightly.
Clark shook his head, laughing softly at Bruce’s demeanor. After years of being partners, building the Justice League from the ground up, fighting battle after battle side by side, Bruce figures Clark may be one of the few people ever to truly know him. To see past the artificial exterior Bruce embodies at galas or towards the press. To understand him deeper than the explanation the cowl provides; Bruce may be Batman, but he’s more than a gruff vigilante.
The black frames of Clark’s worn glasses – Seriously, Bruce thinks, he must let me buy him a new pair – droops down his seemingly perfectly sculpted face. Alien biology, Bruce fondly huffs.
Pushing the Warby Parker knock-off’s higher up, “Are you staying for the whole day?” Clark says. “I have to catch up on this sewer drainage piece,”
Bruce shoots him a quizzical look. Clark sighs, “Trust me, I know. Maybe though…”
Oddly, he seems nervous. “C’mon Kansas, what is it?” Bruce jokes.
Another rise of red floods the Kryptonian’s cheeks. “Maybe you could come over? If you’re not going back to Gotham, or maybe you need to be with your boys tonight, sorry it was stupid,” Clark rambles. “But if you do! Uhm, want to stay, I could bring in Thai? A new spot opened right up next to the Jitters near me,” he continued, his hands twisting with the whites of his shirt cuffs.
Bruce smiled at his antics. One would think that after years of knowing each other, Clark would be less nervous around him. Unfortunately for Bruce, he thought it was unbearably cute.
“I’ll be there,” Bruce smiled warmly, a real smile this time. “I’ll call Alfred and let him know I’m gone for the night.”
Clark looked shocked. “Really,” he asked, pushing his hands through his curls once again. “I- okay. 7:30, my place. I can send you the address!”
Address?, Bruce wondered. He may be partial to the streets of Gotham but it’s not as if he hasn’t ever visited Clark’s before. Long nights after a Justice League mission, or visiting whenever he was in Metropolis, Bruce was no stranger to the shoe-box apartment Clark called home. And yet here he was, acting as if Bruce coming back to his flat was an absurd, uncommon request.
“Clark, are you–,” but right as Bruce began to question if Clark was okay, the unfathomable happened. Bruce watched in awestruck horror as Superman divulged the one part of his outfit that kept hidden his secret identity. Time began to slow as Clark shakily removed his shitty-but-necessary glasses, exposing his face to the entirely filled office floor of the Daily Planet.
“Clark,” Bruce hissed under his breath, “What are you doing?”
“Ah, sorry,” he ran a self deprecating hand over the crick of his stupidly perfect neck. “Sometimes they cause me a headache, you know,” shrugging to the tossed aside pair of cheap glasses.
Bruce looks around. The bull pen is as busy, and as unconcerned, as ever. No one seemed to care that Superman (of all people!!) is sitting at a reporter’s desk, face fully bare to the world. Time didn’t stop, the world didn’t collapse. In fact, everyone treated the occurrence of Clark’s apparently not-so-secret identity being revealed as perfectly normal. A mundane movement in the otherwise hectic stratosphere of the news room floor.
Slowly, as if hit by bus, Bruce began to comprehend that something was drastically wrong. Sure, Clark’s hair being out of place of its quaffed gel hairstyle was unusual; a notch in what was usually Superman’s carefully curated civilian persona. But shamelessly throwing aside his one line of defense from the rest of the world, to be Clark Kent with and without his signature frames, was bizarre. Unheard of.
Awkwardly chuckling while glancing around at the staffer filled room, Bruce asked, “Clark…were three young girls saved by a–,” he struggled to describe “Superman” in layman's terms, “a flying super hero yesterday?”
Yesterday evening, Superman had been fighting an alien invasion in Metropolis. The Justice League were present assisting in the fight, and mid-battle, Bruce vividly remembers Clark swooping down to save a group of girls, his red cape shining under the bright sun. At that moment, Bruce couldn’t help but whole-heartedly love him.
Clark tilted his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he laughed, nervously. “That would have been huge news, and yet I’m here still writing about Metropolis’ god-awful plumbing.”
Bruce nodded, assessing that in the span of twenty four hours, something terribly wrong has occurred. “Right, yes, silly me,” he says, plastering a Brucie smile for good measure. “Well…tonight, Thai.”
Clark brightened immediately, forgetting the weird interaction Bruce had forced upon him just moments ago. “My place at 7:30,” he says, “I, uh, have your number? From a story a while back. So can I use that? To send you my address?”
“Yes,” Bruce responds, a pit forming in the bottom of his stomach. “See you then,” flashing an all-teeth grin.
Stepping out of the cubicle, he heard familiar voices (those that must belong to Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, if Bruce remembered correctly), congratulating Clark. Like inviting The Bruce Wayne over for Thai was a big deal. As if it wasn’t a common occurrence.
As he finally made his way out of the Daily Planet building, he analyzed Metropolis with a new gaze. The bright colored sheen to the city seemed to have dimmed, a factor Bruce failed to realize in his Clark-filled haze on the car ride over that morning. He looked up at the Daily Planet sign plastering the building, and no longer did it have the cartoon-style font with bright cobalt and stark red adorning its letters. It was opaque and dull.
Wherever I am, it’s not home, Bruce realizes. Fuck.
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Bruce couldn’t help but spend the remaining hours trying to find a way back home. Hopped dimensions, Bruce reasoned. That was the only explanation for the reality he was currently experiencing. A world where there were no Batman nor Superman; there were no heroes at all. A place where Bruce was still a playboy billionaire with a hoard of children, but Clark was simply a reporter. Not “Uncle Clark” as Dick affectionately refers to him, or his strong willed, warm Kryptonian Bruce had come to love. No, they were strangers.
And when Bruce returned home after an enlightening, yet delightful, evening with a man who is not his Clark Kent, he still could not figure out how to return home. There was no Watchtower to try to Zeta from, no alien contraption cultivated by the likes of supervillains to steal. For all Bruce could piece together, he was multi-dimensionally stuck. Would he be trapped in this universe forever? Or would his Clark somehow find him?
But when Bruce woke the next morning, any semblance of a plan was thrown out the window. Looking around at what he knows to be the Kent family home, he realized that he must have jumped dimensions yet again.
Still warm from the quilt thrown over his body on the Kent Family couch, Bruce wipes his eyes, struggling to comprehend how and why he ended up here. Is this Clark’s childhood home from my universe, or am I stuck somewhere else?
Bruce shrugged off the blanket, standing up on the creaky floors of the Kansas home. Looking down, he realizes he must be wearing Clark’s clothes, drowning in a too-big Smallville High ratty t-shirt and long flannel sleep pants. As he finally begins to wake, he smells delicious bacon wafting through the air and overhears small chatter coming from within the kitchen.
Grudgingly, Bruce makes his way over to the kitchen, figuring that if there were to be one thing that was the same across time and space, it would be the dependable home of Ma and Pa Kent. As he enters, he watches Pa Kent take a slow drink of a cup of coffee with his newspaper open as Martha works the kitchen, plating up a stack of pancakes a mile high.
“Bruce,” she smiles openly. Bruce always admired Martha, a woman strong in her convictions, but so extremely kind to those around her. It made sense his Clark was so warm, given the model that she provided. She moved around the kitchen counter, past Pa’s seat at the small wooden table, beelining to give Bruce a hug.
“You feeling better, sweetheart?” She asked, cupping his cheek as she mused what Bruce assumed was his ratty nest of hair.
“Yes ma'am," he smiles back, “Thank you for cooking breakfast.”
She lightly hit him on the shoulder in response. “Now Bruce honey, you know to call me Martha by now. You’re a part of the family.”
Blushing and about to argue, Bruce falls silent as Clark enters the kitchen. He looks…young, Bruce realized with a stuttering halt. Looking down at his own features, he noticed his own lack of scars, his skinnier, teenage limbs, and felt his lack of stubble.
Adorned in a similar pajama outfit to Bruce’s, Clark stretched his wide wingspan in a yawn, his own Smallville High shirt (that hugged his body much better than Bruce’s, he noted) riding up slightly, showing a sliver of skin. He knew that if this version of Clark had his powers, Bruce was sure that he would have heard the skip in his own heartbeat. As a teenager, Bruce knew he was scraggly, but Clark, it seemed, was beautiful at every stage of life.
“Hi Pa,” Clark greets as he claps him on the shoulder. He turned around to hug Martha, kissing her cheek in hello.
When Clark makes eye contact with him, it seems that his whole face lights up. Shuffling over to Bruce’s side, he bends down, giving Bruce an identical kiss on the cheek in greeting.
Oh. Oh.
“Goodmorning, B,” he whispers into Bruce’s ear, his nose tickling his cheek. Stunned, Bruce watches in awe as Clark rises to his full height, towering above Bruce. Inwardly, Bruce bemoans his late growth spurt.
“Lemme get you some breakfast, hmm?” Clark somewhat asks, already fixing Bruce a plate.
“I– thank you,” Clark just beams back in return, his eyes shining a You’re Welcome.
The rest of the morning passes Bruce in a daze, with Martha shuffling around the kitchen, and Pa and Clark commenting back and forth about a high school football game Clark seems to want to skip.
“Clark, honey, it’s your last Homecoming game, you have to go,” Martha adds in.
“I know you don’t like em’ son,” Jonathan starts.
“No dad it’s just, I have better things to do than attend a stupid football game,” Clark huffs. “I mean! I got Bruce here, shouldn’t I be spending time with him?”
“I don’t mean to impose,” Bruce butts in, not wanting to be a burden to whatever life this Clark is currently living.
“You’re not, B,” he reaches over and curls his hand over Bruce’s boney fingers. “You’re not.”
“Why don’t you take Bruce down to the game, hmm?” Marth suggests while picking up the empty plates from the table. Bruce moves to get up to help her, but Clark holds him steady by his hand. Reluctantly, Bruce sits back in his chair, taking a sip of his water as he watches teenage Clark go back and forth with Ma and Pa.
“It would do some good to introduce your boyfriend of yours to some good football,” Jonathan mentions headheartedly. Bruce almost spits out his water. Boyfriend? “Doubt they got that back up in Gotham, now do ya?”
Not fully comprehending that Pa is talking to him until Clark squeezes his hand, Bruce looks up. “Uhm, no. But I just want to do whatever Clark wants to do while I’m here.” How long have I been here? Am I visiting? Boyfriends?
Martha comes up behind him and squeezes him on the shoulder, “That’s sweet, honey.”
“Yeah,” Clark smiles shyly, a grin Bruce recognizes from long night talks at the Watchtower, from dinners together with Dick, Jason, Tim, and Damian. From private moments where Bruce wondered if him and his Kal were more. Clearly, in this universe, they are.
“Maybe I’ll go,” Clark appeases, “You know I just don’t like going because they think I’m…you know, weird.”
“You’re not,” Bruce finds himself saying.
Clark grins, “Thanks B, but you’re special. Not everyone is as accepting of a superhuman freak like me.”
So he does have powers in this universe, Bruce notes. “You’re not a freak, or else what does that make me,” Bruce jokes, bumping their shoulders together in an effort to lift Clark’s spirits.
He stands, pushing the chair back from the kitchen table and lifting Bruce up with him by their still conjoined hands. “We’re gonna go get dressed,” Clark mentions, pulling Bruce out of the room and up the neighboring stairs to his bedroom. “Thanks for breakfast!” he yells down.
Still directing Bruce into his bedroom, he pushes him onto his bed, Bruce hitting with a creaky thump on the mattress as Clark lets go to close the door. He turns around, his mouth splitting open in a wide beam as he looks at Bruce. Clark crawls on top of him, knees on either side of Bruce’s pushed together legs.
Clark tilts his head, taking Bruce in before leaning down for a sweet, sentimental kiss.
Shocked, Bruce kisses back, chasing Clark’s lips as he leans back before shifting his face into the crook of Bruce’s neck. Tingling, he feels Clark’s mouth meet the junction of his collarbone and shoulder with wet, hot heat. Open mouth kisses begin to line up his neck, Clark planting each one hot and fast as he takes Bruce in.
“I’m so happy you’re here,” Clark whispers, sighing into Bruce's neck.
Bruce wraps his arms around his middle. Greedily he thinks, me too.
But he knows he can’t stay for long. That this reality he somehow has become a part of isn’t forever, isn’t real for him, not like it is for this version of Clark and Bruce. The young teenagers besotted with love. Bruce knows that this needs to end, so he can go home.
“Hey,” he says quietly, petting down Clark’s scalp. He shifts Clark over, that way both of them are on their sides in the middle of Clark’s small twin bed. Bruce inches closer, resting his head on Clark's broad chest, arm thrown under his waist. Savouring this moment.
Looking deep into Clark’s eyes, he can’t help but be taken over by an intense emotion. Kissing the spot right next to his lips, Bruce softly breathes, “I love you.”
He feels Clark’s warm lips meet his forehead. “I love you too, B.”
Bruce feels his eyes start to droop, sated by syrupy sweetness and what could have been.
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“Bruce,” someone murmurs. “Bruce.”
He jolts awake, wincing at the bright bulbs overtaking his eyesight. Rubbing his eyes, he takes in his new surroundings. Examining him at his seat at the head of a steel, oblong table were advisors keenly tuned into whatever meeting Bruce just woke up to. Their beady eyes bore into Bruce’s soul, awaiting his next word.
“Your opinions on the new intergalactic energy deal,” Clark suggests. Clark. Taking him in, this version Superman bared striking similarities to his own. The crimson cape draped around his broad shoulders, a singular perfect curl placed in the middle of his forehead. The El Family emblem stretched over his wide pectorals, his suit rippling over Clark’s well defined muscles.
His eyes sparked red, bringing Bruce back into the present.
“Ah yes,” he coughs. “I think it’s,” Bruce makes eye contact with Clark sitting right next to him at the head of the meeting table.
Clark nods, trying to convey an opinion for Bruce to have. His eyes, though, shine with concern. Clearly he knows something is wrong.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Bruce finishes. “Good work,” he cringes.
Clark slams the binder in front of him shut. “I think we are done here for today. Thank you all.”
The rest of the officials scurry out, keeping their heads low as quiet murmurs exit the room, creating a suffocating silence between just him and this version of Clark.
Meeting eyes with the Kryptonian again, he encounters a concerned stare, his eyebrows downturned and a curl to his lips. “Bruce, what’s going on? You never zone out from meetings like that.”
Bruce’s brain is moving a mile a minute. If there were to be any version of Clark that could get him home, it’s this one. The one most similar to his own, clad in Superman’s signature suit.
“Clark, this is going to sound monumentally…I don't even know how to describe it,” he begins. “I think I’ve…somehow hopped universes.”
Clark’s jaw goes slack, his mouth opening in disbelief.
“Clark,” he breathes out, a crackle to his voice. “You haven’t called me that in ages.”
What? “Where are we?”
Clark – or maybe not Clark, maybe Kal, maybe..? – stands, pacing around the conference room. Bruce’s eyes track him, catching sight of the banners displayed on the expansive ironclad walls. One reads “House of El” with a large S crest painted down the middle, the other “House of Wayne” with a bat symbol proliferating over its fabrics. In the middle, a plague which reads: "Intergalactic Council of Superhuman Affairs.”
“You and I, we…” Clark trails off, each step he takes clacking heavily under his boots. “We’re politicians, to say the least.”
Now Bruce knows that he really is in the wrong dimension because he would rather die than become engrossed with politics. “We run this…council?” he guesses.
“Sort of, “ Bruce watched Clark wince. “You and I are…kings.”
Bruce felt his heart stop, seeing Clark’s eyes go wide as he clearly heard the skip. “Kings.”
Clark stopped pacing. “Yes.”
Bruce leaned back, putting all his weight into the embroidered chair he’s sitting on. One, he starkly realizes, fit for a ruler. He feels his body sit in the plush seat, and suddenly, Bruce was oh so very tired.
“You really aren’t from here, are you?” Clark questions, still standing a foot away from Bruce.
Solemnly, he nods.
Clark jolts, as if something important has dawned on him. “Come,” he waves Bruce up, leading him out of the conference space.
“You and I are husbands, of sorts. Really in name only,” Clark says, his timber bouncing off the steel walls of whatever palace complex they are weaving through.
Listening to Not-Clark, Bruce observes the high walls caving in on them. Royal portraits line the otherwise bare walls. Some depicting the two husbands on their lonesome, others showing their brute strength leading a battle.
“There was a war between Earth and surrounding alien planets. We became the generals, and after the battle was over, the intergalactic community needed a new order.”
Bruce stares at the back of Clark’s neck as he follows him down steps into a dark chamber, noticing the way his muscles twitch under the collar of his cape. “So we married,” he voices, “as a way to preserve order?”
“You didn’t want to,” Clark sighs, “but our allegiance to each other needed to be proven outside of the battlefield.”
“I see,” Bruce calculates, “And we are not…in love? Our marriage is false?”
Clark scoffs. “No, no my Bruce can’t stand to be in the same room as me. Only refers to me as Kal and Lordship.”
Bruce thinks that's the most unbelievable part of it all. Not that they fought in a war so large in scale it required a new widespanning regime change, nor that they jointly rule the universe together. That this Bruce doesn’t love this Clark. Bruce can’t fathom a world where he doesn’t. Where the Kryptonian’s bright, blinding smile fails to enrapture his heart. Where his kindness fails to break down Bruce’s walls. Where Bruce and Clark are partners on paper, but share no deeper connection.
“Here,” Clark points to the array of books and gadgets strewn across the chamber. “This is where Bruce and I work. It’s mainly for strategic battlefield plans and safeproofs if a war were to outbreak again, but it’s yours for however long you need it.”
Bruce can sense the animosity Clark holds for his Bruce, so he’s stunned at the generosity he provides. “Thank you.”
Clark turns to look towards him, face-to-face. Bruce stares as he wriggles his hands together, picking at his finger nails.
“You and your Clark,” he starts, “You’re…friends?”
“Yes.” And so much more.
With that, he leaves the room, his red cape flowing as he walks away, abandoning Bruce in his wake
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Despite his best efforts, the array of maps, plans, and data provided by Not-Clark are no use. Sitting alone in the airtight work station, Bruce tries to wrack his brain around how he could have come to this predicament. Time travel was one thing, no foreign to Batman and the League, but traveling through time and space to enter a world that is clearly not his own is unheard of. Well, Bruce thought, If – No, when I return home I know Tim will have a field day.
With no way to figure out how and why he keeps jumping universes, all Bruce figures he can do is go along for the ride. It irritates him, the waiting. Batman did not just sit idly by, but rather he attacked when danger neared. He was the Caped Crusader, a vigilante that strikes fear into the heart of corrupt politicians, Gotham elite, and psychomaniac crime lords. He was a businessman, a strategist, a son, a father. A partner. His hands itch with the need to uncover the truth of his situation. To put his detective skills to use. To be reunited with Clark, his Clark, and be greeted with his blinding smile again.
All he could do now is hope. Ironic, isn’t it? To have to fully put faith in The Symbol of Hope. Bruce couldn’t help but laugh at the comical way the universe tests him.
Maybe in the next dimension, the next universe, he will return home.
When he rouses next, he inhales the familiar scent of Alfred’s posh laundry detergent. His cheek senses the caress of his silk pillow case, his sheets a familiar comfort.
Shrugging awake, he notices his nightstand sitting with a well-known photo; one of Clark and Bruce with the boys in front of Gotham Academy after Damian’s art show. He remembers that day like it was yesterday. Damian’s shining face when Bruce and Clark arrived, shyly showing Clark his family portrait he created for school, with both of the superheroes standing on either side of him. Ingrained in his memory is the crinkle of Clark’s eyes, his crow’s foot the singular perfect imperfection on his sculpted visage. Ringing in his ears is Jason’s hearty laugh, Dick’s loving arm around his shoulder, Tim’s sneaking smirk, and Alfred’s shaky hands as he holds up the camera for a photo. To capture the moment in time. To solidify that this was family. Bruce finally had a family.
He hears a knock on the door, which Bruce immediately recognizes as Alfred’s distinct tap. “Master Bruce?” he asks.
“Come in, Alfred,” Bruce responds, pushing down the covers and rolling up his pajama sleeves.
“You slept quite late sir,” the butler remarks, his eyes peculiarly downcast.
Maybe I’m home, finally? Bruce wonders. “What day is it Alfred?”
He looks up, the butler’s frail body seeming to melt under Bruce’s curiosity. His frown lines deepen, a frown taking over his demeanor.
Oh no.
“Sir, you don’t remember?” Alfred questions. “It’s October 8th, sir.”
Bruce’s face shows no recognition, his brow still arched in a forever question. In response, Alfred sighs. “The anniversary of Master Clark’s death, sir.”
A gasp was punched out of Bruce’s chest, his heart crumpling under Alfred’s words. Death? Out of all the dimensions, all the possibilities, why must he encounter this one? A world without Clark is not a world at all. Bruce feels only nothingness.
He feels himself start to dry heave, with each breath uncontrollably getting faster and faster. Bruce claws at his neck, trying to will himself to stop. He can’t get control, he can’t stop, he needs this to stop, he needs to get out of here, he needs–
“Master Bruce,” Alfred strongly grabs his hands, pushing them off of his neck. He feels the old man’s grip tighten on his own. “You need to stop this, sir. Everything will be okay,” Bruce’s head collapses on Alfred’s chest in response as Alfred rubs his back, “Everything will be okay, my boy.”
Alfred lifts up his chin, shaky fingers grasping his chin as the other smooths back his unkept ebony locks. “Come,” he says, “We are leaving quite soon to visit. The boys are already ready. Time to dress, sir.”
Following the push of Alfred’s sturdy hands, Bruce stands. Getting dressed is a blur. Fog fills his mind as Alfred hands him a pre-ironed obsidian dress shirt and matching slacks. His brain feels like rusty cogs in a barely working machine, each gear turning slow as molasses. Each sluggish tic to keep his grief stricken body moving, pace by pace. He blankly stares down as Alfred clicks on his cufflinks, the initials B.W.K. adorned the metallic silver.
As if his body has been taken over by an unknown being, Bruce fails to register Alfred’s firm grasp on his arm. He simply moves, like water trickling down a still river. His weak bones are not engaging in locomotion, just slight movement with no real purpose.
As he enters the living room of the Manor, he sees Jason – his sweet, scarred Jason – with his head in hands on the couch. It looks old, unused. Dicks sits on the arm rest next to him, staring off into space. Damian languidly pets Titus on the floor, leaning back on Tim’s legs where he rests on the couch with his eyes shut. His boys look…absent. Gone.
As Bruce takes in the state of the Manor – not his Manor, he reminds himself, as this is not real – it dawns on him how heavy the grief has taken hold. A living room, one that used to be family game nights and movie marathons, is essentially bare. Dust collects on dark, worn curtains that stretch down from the tall windows. There is no light. There are simply five broken family members marginally holding the pieces of their family in their hands. Bruce feels like an intruder in their grief. He knows his Clark is still out there, but for these Waynes, they must exist in a world without him.
He gathers Dick in his hands, meeting the eyes of his youngest while doing so as he cradles Titus. Jason lifts up, blearily shaking Tim awake.
“Sirs,” Alfred signals, “The car is ready.”
Not only does the Manor look taken over by a grey-scale, but the rest of Gotham holds an aura of death. And not the usual decrepit atmosphere that stems from the depths of Arkum, but a different kind. A sense of grief wraps around the city. As if the loss of Clark Kent is so monumental even Gotham takes a moment of silence.
Clark’s plot at the cemetery is simple, clean, elegant. It’s clear that this version of Bruce takes good care of it. The headstone is pristine, with a sparkling gem of Kryptonite embedded at the very top of the tombstone.
Here Lies Clark Kent
Husband, father, last son of Krypton and Kansas’ shining star.
October 8th, 2026
Bruce kneels to the ground, ignoring the wet dew of the grass wets his dark slacks. He reaches for the top of the stone, petting his palm across its triangular top, as if feeling the cold cobble will somehow transport Bruce to the feeling of Clark’s warm cheeks under his skin. It doesn’t work.
“H-hi Clark,” Dick breaks the tension, kneeling next to Bruce. “We miss you.”
Bruce feels Tim putting a hand on his shoulder. “The world isn’t the same without you.”
Jason huffs. “We aren’t the same without you,” his voice cracks, clear evidence of his tears.
“Kent…” Damian starts, “I drew you for another class project. It’s not the same without a real model.”
“We are going over to Martha’s tomorrow,” Dick continued, wiping at his wet eyes.
“To celebrate you,” Tim adds.
“The whole world is, I guess,” Jason shakily grumbles.
“But you’re ours,” Damian finishes, absolutely.
Bruce feels tears streaming down his face, the fat droplets hitting the floor below him. “Ours.”
“Here, Master Bruce,” Alfred nudges him on the shoulder from where he stands behind him. “The flowers.”
He reaches for the roses, the same color as Superman’s distinct cape. He feels a faint prickle from its thorns. But it doesn’t hurt. Nothing hurts as much as this.
He places them against the headstone, lifting two fingers to his lips and pressing it back to the indent of the Kryptonite jewel.
“Partners,” he whispers. “In every universe.”
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“C’mon grumpy,” he hears a precise, annoying voice. “You’ve been asleep too long and good ole’ Supes is getting anxious.” Ugh. Hal.
Taking in whatever new dimension Bruce is now calling home, he feels a dull pain behind his eyes. Like he’s had a migraine that he can’t get rid of for ages. A sky blue and white hospital gown wraps around his sore physique, his arm connected to an IV bag.
“Where am I?” Bruce croaks, long given up on the possibility that this universe was his own.
“The med bay inside the Watchtower,” Diana responds, wearing casual jeans, hair up, and glasses perched on her Amazonian nose.
“You took a nasty hit,” Hal adds, picking at his cuticles like he has no care in the world.
“What happened,” Bruce says, still raspy from and dazed from the events of the last dimension. The most recent thing he remembers is returning to the Manor with Alfred and his sons, retiring to an early night inside his bedroom, shunning himself from the pungent grief overtaking him. Distantly, his sore throat reminds him of the burn of aged scotch trickling down his throat, a remedy he pushed back after visiting the grave in hopes to forget the terrible world he was then living in. Now, it seems, he’s in a new one, surrounded by Green Lantern and Wonder Woman.
Hal scoffs. “You don’t remember?”
“Metropolis was invaded by an alien sector three days ago,” Diana, oh sweet, kind, helpful Diana, says. “They seemed to have new technology the League had yet to encounter.”
“Some multi-dimensional bullshit,” Hal butts in.
“We have been trying our best to recover you, and it seems to have finally worked. You remember the fight, no?”
Bruce’s heartbeat quickens. Is he really home? “Yeah. I've been hopping around alternate timelines. Been to maybe four, five of them?”
Diana smiles. “We are glad to have you back, Bruce.”
He feels his hand twitch, overcome with a burgeoning need to see Clark. His Clark. Bruce needs to feel his heartbeat under his palm, needs to touch the glow of his cheek, needs him.
“Clark?” he asks.
“Hi, B,” Clark says softly, entering due to possibly overhearing Bruce’s call from outside the enclosed door. The tips of his lips tilt upwards, his shoulders falling inward like the Kryptonian can finally relax.
“Diana, Hal,” Bruce looks at the two of them, “Thank you for your help. I appreciate it. Truly.”
They both nod, exiting the room as Clark takes several steps forward.
Bruce shifts on the cot, patting the spot right next to him so his partner can sit. “Hey, you.”
Clark sits and sighs, grabbing hold of Bruce’s hand, intertwining their fingertips into one. “You don’t know how scared I was.”
“I’m glad to be home.” More so than Clark probably knows. “This is going to sound crazy but…”
Clark squeezes his fingers. “When those aliens invaded Metropolis, you,” Bruce hesitates. “You saved three little girls? Down next to the Jitters coffee shop? Right?” Please be right.
Clark softens. “Yeah, I did. Didn’t know you were watching though,” he laughs softly.
“God,” Bruce breathes, letting out a sigh he didn’t know he was holding. “You don’t know how much I missed you.” Bruce brings their conjoined hands up to his lips, pressing a firm kiss on the side of Clark’s expansive hands. He breathes in his musk, savouring this chance to truly touch Clark, his Clark.
The Kryptonian’s eyes widened. “Bruce, are you sure you’re okay?”
“Better. Now.”
The pair stare at each other, seemingly drinking each other in. Blue irises meet blue, getting lost in the oceans of each other.
“I don’t think I can live my life without you, Clark,” Bruce confesses, chest heavy with the weight of what he just admitted to his longest, closest, and bestest friend. “I don’t want to, not anymore.”
Clark takes a shaky breath. “What are you saying, B?”
“You’re it for me,” Bruce meets his steely eyes, gripping Clark’s palm harder. “You’re my partner. In everything. I’m tired of pretending like we’re not,” Bruce takes another deep pause. “You…you take my kids to baseball games, you stay up with me on late nights at the Watchtower, you open me into your family with open arms.”
“You did all of that, too, Bruce,” Clark grins. That shy, private one. It reminds him of one of the other Clark’s; the one from their teenage timeline. The one so hopelessly in love with him, even across time and space. And Bruce knows: Clark’s in love with him.
Embolden by this realization, Bruce continues. “Clark, you’re everything and more to me. I’m sorry it took me so long to realize what has been in front of me this entire time.”
Bruce shifts forward, bending his head so that it’s leaning on Clark’s. You got this, Wayne. “I love you. In every possible timeline, I do.”
He feels Clark wrap his free arm around his shoulder, bringing him in impossibly tighter. “I love you too, Bruce.”
Clark presses a feather light kiss to his forehead. “I love you.” To his cheek. “I love you.” To his lips. “I love you.”
Bruce meets him halfway, sealing their lips together, their fates, in every universe, for eternity.