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Clark looks at Bruce.
Bruce looks at Clark.
“Fffffuck,” Bruce says, a long exhale that sends smoke curling over his lips like the arms of an ethereal octopus. He twitches the joint between his fingers and the ash accumulated at the tip falls. Clark tracks its movement absently.
Bruce doesn’t say anything more.
Clark thinks, perhaps, that he’s supposed to say something. “I don’t judge you,” seems the most appropriate,given the circumstances and the way Bruce’s heart is skittering.
“Good to know,” Bruce says cooly, and closes his lips around the joint again for a slow inhale. He has very impressive lung capacity, and very impressive control of his breath. He also has a great poker face, but poker faces don’t mean much to Clark when he can see someone’s autonomic nervous system as clearly as he can see the sky. Bruce is unwinding a little, somewhat assured by Clark’s words but nowhere close to as relaxed as he was before Clark dropped down to hover beside Bruce on the balcony.
Perhaps the saying of more things is required. “I know a lot of people who smoke,” Clark says. “And if you don’t mind me saying, you definitely seem like the kind of person who would benefit.”
Bruce laughs, and this time the smoke comes out in pulses of white that dissipate in the night air. “Fair enough,” he says. “A little late for you to come by, isn’t it?”
Diversionary tactics. Bruce tends to feel better when he’s in control of the situation, whether that situation is a battle, a party, or a conversation. To Bruce, it seems, there’s not much difference between the three. “It’s been a long day. I needed somewhere to crash,” Clark says, “and if I tried to make it back to Metropolis, the crashing would be literal and not euphemistic.” His flight’s been faltering for the past twenty minutes, and he has some nightmare combination of headache and brain fog that makes him keep flying off-course. Additionally, he ate the last of his snacks an hour and a half ago, and the shakes he’s getting from low blood sugar aren’t helping with any of his other problems.
“Mi casa es su casa,” Bruce says, gesturing expansively to the manor. “With certain caveats, of course.”
“Of course,” Clark agrees. Then Bruce makes a move as if to put out his joint on the elegant ashtray resting on the balcony railing. “You don’t have to do that. I don’t want to interrupt your evening.”
Bruce raises an eyebrow, and grinds the lit end of the joint against the bottom of the ashtray precisely. “My evening is already quite interrupted, but I assure you, I was planning to put it out soon anyway.”
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Clark says, drifting over the railing to settle on the balcony. “Just tell me what room to take and if I’m allowed to raid your kitchen and we’ll be golden.”
Bruce snorts. “The super-strong guy in the tight pants doesn’t want to make me uncomfortable. Your sentiment is noted, but it’s a little late for that.”
Clark wilts. He knows he’s hardly on the world’s best terms with Bruce - flower messages, occasional team-ups, and that one weird time they had dinner together nonwithstanding - but he really didn’t know where else to go, when superspeed flight is incredibly inadvisable when he’s tired and less-than-superspeed flight takes a really long time. He hoped this wouldn’t be too much of an intrusion, but… “Okay. I’ll be on my way,” he says, and lifts off. Slow, gentle, so he doesn’t crack the balcony or knock Bruce over with the resulting wind. Of course, the issue with slow takeoffs is that they can be interrupted.
Bruce wraps his fingers around Clark’s ankle and Clark freezes in midair. “I apologize,” Bruce says. “I’m a little too candid and a little too chatty when I’m high. One of the many reasons I don’t indulge often. Please come inside.”
“I really don’t mean to impose,” Clark says. “I know this could definitely be read as impositional, me showing up out of nowhere, but I can go somewhere else and it won’t be an issue.”
Bruce’s fingers tighten. Clark could break his grip in an instant. Clark could fly off with Bruce dangling from his ankle like a fish on a hook. The tightness of Bruce’s grip is absolutely meaningless save for what it conveys - that Bruce wants Clark to stay, and that Bruce is not so perturbed by Clark that he won’t risk making this kind of contact. It conveys a lot, actually.
“I can’t cook you anything,” Bruce says. “And I won’t rouse Alfred at this hour. But I can work a microwave, and we have plenty of things that don’t require much preparation. After you’ve eaten, you can have one of the spare bedrooms.”
Clark’s descent is even slower, so Bruce has ample time to retract his hand and not get yanked down to the ground. “You are a prince among men,” Clark tells Bruce.
Bruce snorts. “I’ve met princes. Most of them aren’t any better than the rest of us men.”
Bruce takes the lead and Clark follows, trying not to pay too much attention to his surroundings lest it look like he’s trying to scope out Bruce’s home but unable to stop himself from taking in details, snapshots, frames from a carefully composed movie.
That’s what the manor is. Composed. Carefully assembled to convey specific impressions. Most of it looks like it was arranged for a photoshoot, everything in perfect order without a hint that people actually live here. The picture frames are all perfectly straight on the walls. There are no dust bunnies, no trails of spiderwebs in the corners or scuffs on the hardwood floors. It’s very nice, and Clark feels like he’s leaving mud and soot and bits of hay all over it, even though he’s only had a run-in with one of those things today. It’s the kind of place that seems to rebuff him for looking at it, for contaminating it.
“We hardly use this wing,” Bruce says, apropos of nothing.
“I’m sorry?” Clark says.
“It’s orderly because it’s for show. I take video calls here, mostly. You’re allowed to walk on the floor.”
Clark looks down.
He’s been hovering half an inch off the dark, polished wood, taking steps on air. He hadn’t noticed. He doesn’t think anyone else would have noticed, either, except this isn’t anyone else, this is Bruce, and Bruce makes it a point to notice everything, even when he’s pretending he doesn’t notice anything. Especially then, really. “Sorry,” he says.
“Don’t apologize for being uncomfortable in the midst of displays of obscene wealth. Especially not when the point of this wing of the manor is to remind people that I’m obscenely wealthy and make them uncomfortable.” Bruce hesitates, continues walking. “That was inappropriate.”
“It was reassuring, actually,” Clark says. “At least you know it’s effective.”
“Mm.” Bruce turns a corner, and suddenly they’re going down stairs. Clark doesn’t think he’s coordinated enough for stairs. He resumes hovering. “I’ll put you in a guest bedroom in a different wing. One that looks like actual people live there, rather than a herd of department store mannequins.”
Clark snorts, then claps a hand over his mouth and pinches his nose between the pad of his thumb and the second knuckle of his index finger. He can’t fully blame the intensity of his response on being tired, but he can try if he has to.
“What kept you out so late tonight?” Bruce asks, as if he somehow missed the explosive noise behind him. There’s no way he missed it. Clark appreciates the lack of comment.
“A whole bunch of small things that sort of piled up,” Clark says, shrugging.
“Such as.”
“A bear cub trapped in a dumpster,” Clark responds promptly. He really, really wants to tell someone about this one, because it was truly absurd and also pretty fantastic. “The lid closed and the mom was freaking out and no one could get close.”
“So they called Superman,” Bruce says, finally reaching the bottom of the stairs. He continues down the hall, then turns and opens a door into a corridor lined with more framed pictures. The frames are just as perfectly aligned, but the subjects are less sober. Fewer oil paintings of dead ancestral Waynes and more pictures of the current and immediately previous generations. Clark recognizes a picture of Bruce meeting with a union at one of his factories, a picture of Bruce giving a speech at a university, a picture of Martha and Thomas Wayne at the dedication of a hospital wing, a picture of Tim accepting an award for a program he wrote. Not quite standard family pictures - these are clearly all press photos - but still less imposing.
“Well, a kid did. And I was in the area, so.” Clark shrugs again, and rubs a thumb over the hem of his cape.
“How good is your hearing?” Bruce asks. “There’s speculation that you can hear everything in the world.”
“Oh, gosh. No. Sound waves degrade and bounce and get blocked, for one thing. No one can hear everything. I definitely can’t hear everything,” Clark says. Bruce opens another door. Clark follows him. “I can hear a lot, but I can’t hear everything.”
“Hm,” Bruce says. He turns a corner.
The kitchen is - well, Clark wouldn’t call it normal, not exactly, because normal to him is a few dishes in the sink and some stains on the counter that won’t come out for anything and just the wrong side of ‘can fit the whole family at once’ - but definitely seems more… lived in. There are notes on the fridge, for one. Held on with little magnets in the shape of animals. Clark tries not to read the notes, because privacy, but he gets a little too entranced by a delicate and artfully crafted deer magnet and reads the note below it without meaning to.
Steph if you don’t stop stealing the guacamole I’m calling the police.
It’s written in a script with a few embellishing swirls and curlicues on the ends of the letters. From the context, Clark is going to guess that’s Tim’s handwriting, because neither Bruce nor Alfred seem the type to invoke hyperbolic threats, especially not over guacamole.
“Where is Tim?” he says aloud.
Bruce glances at Clark sidelong. He’s opened yet another door. This one contains an enormous walk-in pantry. “Theoretically, asleep, since this is a night off. In actuality, probably awake and playing video games with Steph, who really honestly ought to formally move in at this point.”
Clark mulls this over. “Do you mean that sarcastically or genuinely?”
“Can’t I do both?” Bruce asks from within the shelves. Then, “Can you eat this?”
After examining the label on the box of cereal, Clark replies with an affirmative. Bruce sets about gathering the appropriate dishware. “Do you want Steph to move in?” Clark asks.
“I have a very large house and a history of collecting children,” Bruce says. “That is not a question you need to ask. However, Steph has a decent relationship with her mother, despite their disagreements on Steph’s vigilante lifestyle. And I doubt her mother will find the idea of her teenage daughter living in the same residence as her teenage daughter’s boyfriend appealing.”
Clark nods. “Sounds rough.”
“That’s one way of putting it. We have several varieties of non-dairy milk. Do you have a preference.”
“No.”
Bruce selects one. “Therefore, Steph’s residence here is unofficial, despite the fact that she’s slowly taking over Tim’s room with her band posters.” He hands the completed bowl of cereal to Clark. “Complex carbohydrates, a decent amount of protein, and not much sugar. It should hold you over for a while. I would offer a protein shake, but you’ve made your feelings on those quite clear.”
“They’re disgusting,” Clark says, just because he feels morally obligated to.
“I’m not having this argument right now. You’re punch drunk and I’m stoned.”
Clark eats a mouthful of cereal. “Do you ever think about how weird your life is?” he asks after swallowing.
“Frequently. But I’m assuming you have a specific instance of weirdness in mind.”
“I, Superman, am sitting in Batman’s kitchen,” Clark begins, “because I’m too tired to fly home, after a long day that involved rescuing a bear cub trapped in a dumpster. The bear cub and the mom were fine, by the way,” he adds. “Anyway. Batman, who is stoned, just made Superman, who is me, cereal. And now we’re talking about Robin and Spoiler’s relationship like this is just totally normal.”
Bruce tilts his head, considering. “That is weird.”
“Yeah,” Clark says. He eats more cereal. “It’s not weird in a bad way, though.”
“No,” Bruce says. “I suppose not.”
-x-
Clark wakes in the morning beneath emerald sheets that might have more threads in a square inch than a cat has hairs on its body. They’re unspeakably, extravagantly soft, and if the little solar batteries in his cells weren’t compelling him to get up, up, go stand in the light, he would probably see if he could just. Melt. Directly into the sheets. Just for a little while.
There’s a bottle of water on the nightstand and a note beneath it in a blocky, no-nonsense script. And a flower. Well, not exactly a flower - a catkin. Where Bruce found a catkin this time of year, Clark has no idea. If he’s not mistaken, it’s from an oak tree.
Which means hospitality.
Remarkably straightforward, for a Bruce flower.
The note reads
You can come back if similar circumstances arise in the future, but try not to make a habit of running yourself ragged. I can’t recommend it.
Clark smiles, and tucks the catkin into one of the hidden pouches in his costume.