stands_for_hope | for knightbynight: For now and hereafter...

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for knightbynight: For now and hereafter...

[some time after the events here]

Superman and Batman were partners in more than a work sense. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were an adorable (if mildly ridiculous) couple. Kal-El of Krypton and a man who defied any definition outside of the single letter 'B' made time on weekends, worked around world crises and teenage tempers, and occasionally fell into bed together when the stars aligned. Thankfully, they aligned relatively often.

Wayne Manor received a delivery of organic produce and baked goods once a week from a small, independent farm in the heartland. Lois Lane was a little less likely to agree with snide comments about the uselessness of Bruce Wayne, especially after seeing the utter madness that was Clark's desk after a few weeks. The texting habits of a certain blond teenager in Kansas rose sharply... and in parallel to that of a certain former street punk in Gotham.

Life was... well, it was good, even if it was also Life. Until it wasn't. Until everything changed.

They all had enemies, of course. But the problem with Superman's enemies was that they were coherent enough to decide to team up. And crazy enough to use the kind of weaponry that could make whole cars just vaporize into nothing.

Crazy enough to point that weapon at a somewhat-pinned Batman and a Wonder Woman who was digging him out from the rock. Crazy enough to point that weapon at Batman.

Bruce.

B.

Clark didn't even make the choice. His heart made it for him. The beam shot out of the Toyman's mechanical monstrosity and Clark flew, the pain of the beam itself nothing on the fact that he was leaving Bruce behind. That his vision of them as old men together would never happen. That he was leaving behind a world that needed him.

The guilt that, if it meant saving them, saving him, he didn't regret a thing.

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Bruce... didn't join Clark, but instead stretched out on the bed and waited quietly. He knew Clark could hear him, but he also wasn't going to walk in and join Clark in the shower. This time, very intentionally, he was waiting for Clark to come out to him.

Clark didn't take long. Soon enough, he was walking out with a bathrobe wrapped around him and his hair hastily dried with a towel. He didn't say anything; he just walked over to the bed, crawled on, and put his head down next to Bruce's.

He couldn't say thank you, because in the same way that Clark wouldn't accept his apologies, Bruce didn't like to accept Clark's appreciation. But in that moment, he was so grateful that his skin practically buzzed with it.

He hadn't trusted himself. He hadn't trusted himself to go out and he'd asked Bruce, whether there'd been a question mark at the end of his sentences or not, and Bruce had trusted him. Bruce had told him to go. And because of that, many many people were alive.

And a small part of him was angry at himself, angry at his own fear for what it had almost cost others. But a much bigger part of himself was too busy being thankful and settled near Bruce in his new bed, in his new home, so so glad he hadn't been flying back to an empty apartment. He wasn't sure he would have been able to handle that at the moment.

"I'll shampoo that part of the rug," was what he finally said, and he almost sounded matter-of-fact. "I'm assuming you have a rug cleaner?"

Bruce waited silently for Clark to settle, and then dropped an arm around Clark's waist. He even tucked his hand a bit inside the robe, so it was warm skin against skin.

"Hm?" Which part of the rug? Why did he care about the rugs. "I have no idea. You'd have to ask Alfred." He just - had no damned idea. In some ways this house wasn't his home. It was Clark's though, and Alfred's, and Jason's, and that meant it was somewhere he belonged.

"I think he may hire someone to do the carpets."

He'd give Clark a minute or two, and then say something more worthwhile.

"I'll go ask," he said with a flutter of one hand before his hand dropped back down to settle lightly over Bruce's hand on his waist. "In a bit. After the car."

He looked over at Bruce.

"I'm still doing the car programming, right?"

He actually looked like he was somewhat looking forward to the whole thing. A challenge, one that didn't have him on edge, would be nice.

The challenge that didn't have Clark on edge was the idea behind the car programming. He didn't say that. "You're still doing the car programming. You can talk to Alfred once you've done that." Which was to say he wasn't in a rush about the carpet. It was just carpet, after all. "Just make sure your suit goes downstairs with you, please."

He looked up at that, a little confused. More than a little confused.

"No working in bathrobes down in the cave?" was the question he asked.

"You can work naked down there as long as I have Jason with me." He smiled, faintly, and pointed to Clark's desk chair. "Don't leave your uniform up here. At least not out in the open."

He glanced over at the uniform for a moment before wincing just a little and letting his face bury itself in the closest pillow. Dumb. He'd been so eager to get into a hot shower, to wash off the feel of the mud and the water and all the people who'd been clutching at him as he swept them up...

"I'll bring them all down. That, and the pieces of Kryptonian technology that I kept at home. The Legion ring."

Then--

"'As long as I have Jason with me'?" because that was worth an eyebrow raise.

Bruce worked his fingers into Clark's hair and rubbed the back of his neck when he went facedown in the pillow. It wasn't something he could just let go, but it also wasn't the end of the world. It had been addressed.

And if ever there was a sign Clark's absence had effected him, and he was concerned about Clark's state now, it was the ease of which he let that go and relatively gentle method of handling it to start with.

"Yes. If you're going to work naked down there for an extended period of time, I'd rather it be while I'm out with Jason instead of-" He stopped. Talk about dumb. "No one's sneaking up on you, naked or otherwise. Never mind."

If Clark was a barely-held-together facade in front of most everyone else, it somehow made him all the less defensive around Bruce. His layers, the various protections and stoppage points that had made up his system of trust, had changed considerably over the time he'd been gone. Now, it was one big wall... and there was, at current, a very small population inside that wall.

That was why he was as much of a cat as he'd ever been to that touch.

"I'll keep that nakedness rule in mind in the cave," he said, as if Bruce hadn't said something mildly ridiculous. "Though it's a bit chilly down there for me to really head down there without at least a robe. Maybe my fuzzy slippers. I think I grabbed those."

Bruce kept rubbing Clark's neck, quite literally massaging it with one hand and taking periodic breaks to lightly scratch up into his hair.

"Mm. I'll be disappointed if they don't have little ears and faces." The slippers, he meant.

Clark made the softest sound at the back of his throat and moved in to get more of Bruce's touches, not just encouraging but insistent. All the same--

"No ears, because they're sharks, but there are little fins."

Bruce stopped moving his hand when Clark got pushy and left it resting there. For a moment. "You aren't a shark person." Wrong animal slippers, Clark, how dare you.

Clark tipped his head up to look at Bruce.

"They were a gift. And they're warm."

"You need bunny slippers," he insisted.

But went back to massaging Clark's neck and even worked his way down Clark's back a bit.

Clark's shoulders shook slightly in soft laughter.

"All right. If you insist."

As discussions went, this was definitely edging towards the most ridiculous of them.

"Why a bunny, though?" he couldn't help but ask. "Thought I was a cat."

And he certainly wasn't disabusing Bruce of that theory at the moment. Clark usually didn't have many qualms about enjoying Bruce's affection when he got it, but he'd definitely graduated a level in shamelessness.

Bruce was not being affectionate. Bruce was giving Clark a massage, for entirely selfish reasons.

He rolled up and straddled Clark's hips with his knees, sat up and was able to use both hands, now, and that was likely going to make him much more effective at digging his fingers into muscles, stroking over cloth covered skin and just touching.

"You can be a cat who killed bunnies and are wearing their corpses as slippers. Sharks would just eat the cat."

"Rabbit is stringy," Clark murmured because Bruce was getting in there and for whatever reason that Bruce was doing it, Clark was enjoying it just as selfishly. But he had enough of his brain still online to tilt his head back to look at Bruce.

"...that's just a bit ghoulish, Bruce."

"I dress up like a bat to scare people," Bruce said, dryly. "I'd hope being a bit ghoulish isn't entirely surprising." He was sitting there and, actually, basically sitting on Clark's ass now. It was working for him, and giving him the access he wanted.

Except Clark's head up.

He responded to that by putting his hand on Clark's head and pushing it back toward the pillow. "Head down."

"Yes, dear," Clark said obediently, with a little smirk into the bedding. And, perhaps, a little shift of his hips underneath Bruce.

Bruce swatted Clark's shoulder a bit, but mostly got busy giving Clark a proper massage. Nothing overly suggestive, just a good, heavy, weight and a lot of touch and physical contact. Things that he couldn't have done just cuddling but could do like this, with a concrete objective.

"Don't call me that," he said, way later than necessary.

"Absolutely, honey," Clark answered, his shoulders shaking just once in withheld laughter.

"Clark. I am at your back, you live in my house, I have a rainbow of kryptonite and I am Batman. If you think I can't find a way to make you regret this, you don't know me nearly as well as I think you do."

This entire thing had gone from profoundly painful to profoundly ridiculous but he was serious about the threat. Clearly. Probably not the green stuff, definitely not the red stuff, but silver? Yeah. Okay, maybe not since he'd pay for it as much as Clark but he would find something.

Clark looked back at Bruce and the smile was so very wide. A little smug, of course. Because he'd always be a little smug at Bruce since they'd gotten together. Being with Bruce, he thought, would make anyone just a little smug. It was one of the few manners of smug he allowed himself, as a matter of fact.

That was why his answer was--

"Looking forward to it," was his answer, because sometimes, just sometimes, Bruce wasn't the only one who enjoyed a bit of a challenge.

Bruce narrowed his eyes at Clark in a way that very few would have found funny but he had no concerns about Clark taking as too much of a threat or warning signal - or even stopping that smug, ridiculous grin.

"Well, you're feeling better." He was glad.

for knightbynight: For now and hereafter...

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