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So, I've read a fair amount of Elseworlds Batman, but not so much basic recent Batman. This story's Batman owes more to JLA: Tower of Babel than to current Superman/Batman, but he has yet to adopt any wards.
No Darker Than Yours
Summary: You have kind of a dark side, don’t you?
Warning: Explicit violence, and sex of course. As to the former, consider that I don't often warn about content, okay?
Many thanks to tireless beta readers: Cassandra (who liked Lois!), CJ, and Caroline Baker. Title, summary, and "deeply resentful" taken from Batman Returns. Hey, *I* liked Michael Keaton in the role.
Part I: Metropolis
If one possesses a thing securely, one need never use it. – Graham Greene
Bruce lay in the darkness and watched Clark Kent get dressed.
When he didn’t think anyone was watching, he moved like a lion, a hawk, any predator comfortable in its own skin. Bruce wondered what it would take to make a man like that hide himself.
He was not without a sense of irony.
At least Kent probably wasn’t secretly the scourge of Metropolis. Metropolis's scourge didn't even wear a mask, and he looked nothing like Clark Kent.
After the disaster that had been Selina, he’d sworn off people with secret identities. There was only room for one split personality in his bed. And since everyone carried strangers within, that meant sticking to one-night stands, meaningless motions designed only to cement Bruce Wayne's sybaritic reputation.
Unfortunately and unpleasantly, Bruce Wayne hadn't responded obediently to the Batman’s diktat. A few months back, he’d found himself putting his hands over a debutante’s face, fingers splayed to curve over her cheeks. It looked just like a butterfly mask. She thought he was caressing her, but that wasn't it at all. He’d known then that it was time to take Bruce Wayne out of circulation entirely for a bit.
Thus, Kent had been something of a surprise.
****
“I’m not always a journalist, you know,” Clark Kent said, leaning forward just enough that Bruce felt hot breath in his ear. Sidelined, half-hidden from the dance floor by a seven-foot-high cardboard cutout representing the firemen the fundraiser was meant to honor, they were in no danger of being discovered.
Bruce turned, and saw an answering spark in Kent’s eyes. “What are you when you’re not a journalist?”
“Just a man, with the same needs ... desires ... as anybody else.” Kent was staring at his mouth. Subtle, he wasn't.
“Well, I’m not always a playboy,” he said, enjoying the thrill of an unheard confession. He put his champagne glass down on an abandoned table without taking his eyes from Kent’s.
“You want to get out of here?” Invitation accepted. Kent didn’t waste any time. Bruce liked that.
He nodded and turned to go, feeling Kent a pace and a half behind him.
****
In Bruce’s experience, if he found himself with a desire to see someone again, that meant trouble, so he went down to the cave and started researching Clark Kent. “A reporter with the Daily Planet” was, as he’d suspected, false modesty. Three Pulitzers shared with his writing partner (romantic partner?) Lois Lane, a host of other awards, and, more than that, two resignations from state-wide office, three major public works projects cancelled or reconceived, five kingpin-level arrests, and a host of other reforms made as a result of the duo’s reporting.
One of the good guys, or so he seemed.
A local boy, from a suburb of Metropolis with the rather unimaginative name of Smallville.
Bruce knew that name. Lex Luthor had also emerged from Smallville, like a poison moth unfurling from its chrysalis. After Kent and Lane's second Pulitzer, Lex’s name had begun to come up in Metropolis politics, as a new face untainted by prior corruption. Kent and Lane had written some nasty things about him, but unlike their other reporting, it hadn’t stuck.
He started looking for a connection.
The Smallville Ledger online went back only to mid-2005, a few months after Lex had moved back to Metropolis. Clark Kent showed up exactly three times in its archives, once in 2006 back from his freshman year at Met U, helping in the reconstruction after a freak storm leveled half of Main Street; once at the wedding of two high school classmates, Lois Lane in tow; and once attending the funeral of his father.
None of the news services carried the Ledger further back, and neither the University of Gotham nor Met U had microfilm. Bruce was willing to bet that no one did, at least for that critical few years early in the century. Lex was plainly hiding something. For his own safety, Bruce had to assume it concerned Kent.
He started a program that would trace Kent’s finances and those of his widowed mother.
The phone rang. “Yes?”
“Master Bruce, Mr. Lex Luthor is on the line. Shall I put him through?”
That was surprising. Both because Lex never should have been able to trace Bruce’s queries back to him, and because Lex knew better than to confirm the connection with such an overt act. “Please do, Alfred.”
There was a click. “Hello, Bruce. How are you?” The voice was, if anything, smoother than he remembered, rich with the promise of sex, power, and danger.
“I’m well. And you?” He tapped his fingers against the console, feeling ridiculously exposed, as if Lex could see him in the cave.
“Also well. I’d appreciate it if you’d curb your enthusiasm for Clark Kent.”
This was all wrong, too unsubtle. “Why? Is he one of yours?”
“Not in the sense that he’s been yours, no.” Lex sounded as if he were smiling. So he’d had them watched, last night, at least at the party. Bruce thought that the Manor was proof against surveillance, but if anyone could have gotten audio or visual of their encounter, it would have been Lex. “But I thought we’d agreed to a division of territory. I don’t interfere with visitors from Gotham, and you let Metropolis take care of its own.”
Bruce could make out the edges of his own reflection in the computer screen, dark and poorly defined. “Are you threatening me?” After LexCorp had swallowed LuthorCorp, Lex had grown more aggressive in his acquisitions, but he had maintained a careful distance from Wayne Industries.
Lex laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Bruce. You're smarter than you are pretty, whatever you pretend to Gotham’s high society. Believe it or not, I retain some fondness for you from our schooldays. Clark is an incorrigible, incorruptible do-gooder, true to his image, but people who get too close to him tend to end up dead. Or deeply resentful.”
The computer beeped, finished with its task.
“That search you just ran isn’t going to find anything. You’ve never felt the need to extend your wings further than Gotham, and this is no time to start.”
Bruce froze in his chair. Lex had always chosen his words carefully.
“Bruce? You still there?” Lex’s voice was not quite merry.
“Of course. Do you think Superman would tell me the same story you just did?”
There was a pause. “Superman tells many stories.” Now Bruce had the sense that Lex wasn’t quite talking to him, at least not only to him. “As I’m sure you’ve -- heard, he doesn’t have much tolerance for amateur do-gooders.” That pause was another red flag – Bruce remembered only too well Superman’s reaction to the Batman’s decision to stay out of the so-called 'Justice League.' It was then that he’d begun to take steps towards compiling his own stock of mystery mineral. Just in case.
With the elder Luthor out of the picture, Lex was his biggest competitor in that market.
“If Clark is being a bad boy, Superman will send him to his room without any dessert. Let it go, Bruce.” Lex’s voice had softened, become rougher, almost sincere.
“You're almost guaranteeing that my interest is piqued.”
Lex let out a breath, loud over the telephone wires. “It would have been anyway. Clark is like that, you think you’ll just peel back one more layer and then you’ll know what it is about him. And maybe a new obsession would be good for you. But not this one, not Clark Kent. There’s enough insanity in Gotham. Stick with the kind of crazy that ends up in Arkham, not the kind that walks the streets of Metropolis.”
Bruce leaned back in his chair, staring at Kent’s nondescript finances. “Thanks for calling, Lex. We should stay in touch.”
That earned him a snort. “Feel free to call me when you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into. I so rarely give advice, I'm looking forward to saying 'I told you so.'”
The phone clicked, and Bruce found himself listening to a dial tone.
That had been disturbing on any number of levels. Bruce stood, seized with the desire – the need – to patrol. The Batman could puzzle over Lex’s bizarre warnings and implications while taking out his nightly dose of criminals.
****
After Bruce checked in to the Metropolitan Grand Hotel, scandalizing the bellhop by insisting on carrying his own bag, he headed over to LexCorp, a few hot city blocks away. His name got him to the executive floor. His name and a request for a meeting got him fifteen minutes in a waiting room, a drink offer that he declined, careful scrutiny by a blonde woman who moved like an assassin, and, finally, entrance to Lex's office.
Lex rose from his desk as the door closed behind his stunningly beautiful assistant. The blonde had tried to follow Bruce in, but Lex had waved her back.
“Bruce,” Lex said, walking up to him and standing too close. He didn’t extend his hand. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
Bruce made no reply. In person, Lex was a slightly bulked-up version of the boy he’d known. If he was still ghost-haunted, it no longer showed to casual observation. His eyes, fixed on Bruce’s face, were gunmetal-gray.
“I have business in town,” he said at last, stepping to one side. Lex swiveled to follow, his hips like ball bearings – that, he remembered too.
“Mmm,” Lex agreed, a bit too indulgent for Bruce’s comfort. “I don’t think Clark likes to be referred to as ‘business,’ though he wouldn’t be happy with ‘pleasure’ either. He's hard to satisfy that way.” His hand came up and tugged at Bruce’s tie.
Bruce knew he should be reacting, but it was impossible to pull away from Lex’s unblinking stare. The hand was almost an afterthought. Lex loosened the tie and pulled it down as Bruce swallowed against his knuckles. Then he unbuttoned the first three buttons of Bruce’s shirt, pushing the fabric aside and seeking out the bullet scar under Bruce’s right collarbone. The fact that Lex obviously knew what he was looking for, even more than the heat of his fingers, made it difficult not to tremble.
“Did it hurt?” Lex asked, dreamily. His fingertip traced the puckered circle, and only the last dregs of Bruce’s training kept him from panting, or fleeing.
“With all you’ve done, I’m surprised you haven’t been shot yourself,” he said severely.
Lex smiled, slow and secretive. “I have been. I want to know if it hurt *you*.”
“Of course it did.”
“Of course,” Lex repeated, and stroked his fingers down to where Bruce’s shirt opened, then began rebuttoning it.
It was at this point that Bruce realized that he was aroused to the point of half-insanity. The reason criminal madmen did so well, he thought, was that they were hypnotizingly unpredictable. You didn’t want to kill them, because then you wouldn’t know what happened next. Bruce tried not to let the potential for redemption interfere with practicality, but the existence of Arkham, instead of another graveyard, was evidence of his weakness as much as it was proof of his vow not to kill.
“Would you like to spar, Bruce? Work off some of that tension?”
He hated that mocking tone, guaranteed to reduce the Dalai Lama to a high-school geek who’d just spilled milk down his pants in front of the entire cafeteria. Hitting Lex sounded like the best idea in creation, even if it did come from Lex himself.
Lex’s blonde bodyguard followed them from the conference room to a large gym on a high floor of the building. There were clothes in Bruce’s size waiting, and he and Lex changed quickly, without taunting looks, which left him equally relieved and disturbed.
“No interventions, Mercy,” Lex ordered as Bruce followed him to a section of the gym that was just black rubber matting. The bodyguard looked fractionally more unhappy, but didn’t protest.
“What about gloves?” he asked as Lex backed away, settling into a defensive stance.
Lex’s lips twitched. “I don’t think I have any that would suit you.” Bruce could see padded red boxing gloves draped over a chair near the wall, so this could be another suggestion that Lex knew who Bruce really was, designed to keep him off guard.
“Fine,” he said, and lashed out with his right fist.
Lex dodged and spun into a kick, which Bruce took on his hip and grabbed Lex’s ankle, sending Lex to the mat. Lex sprang up as if his shoulders were magnetically repelled by the floor. The parameters of the fight were clear. He had a longer reach than Lex and a hell of a lot more strength. Lex was fast and in no way considered this a game.
They traded and dodged blows for several minutes. Lex did substantially more dodging than Bruce. He was stronger than Bruce initially thought, as Bruce discovered when he let Lex close enough to land an uppercut. And the left-handedness was useful for training purposes.
After five minutes, Bruce's right ear was ringing and he could taste blood from his lip and nose. Lex's left eye was already swelling closed, and he held his right shoulder back in a way that suggested moderate damage. He was still just as fast as he'd been in the opening seconds, though, and Bruce was beginning to wonder whether he'd have to let the Batman out to win.
Then Lex zigged when the smart money was all on zag, and Bruce’s fist caught him on the side of his chest. Bruce could hear the snap of ribs breaking, and he pulled away in horror as Lex looked down at his fist with a genuine smile.
The noise continued, and it wasn’t Lex’s ribs but a window shattering inwards.
What was Superman doing here? Lex followed Bruce’s stunned gaze and smiled wider, even as his hand went to his chest in instinctive, belated self-protection.
Superman was glaring at him with what looked weirdly like betrayal – he spared a moment to turn the same expression on Lex’s bodyguard – and Bruce briefly wished for the lead-lined vial of mineral he’d added to the suit for this trip, though it was back at his hotel with everything else.
“What are you *doing*? You could kill him.”
Bruce couldn’t contest the accusation, because he could and he’d wanted to, and what that said about his sexuality -- and probably his sanity -- was not at all pleasant.
“Don’t worry, Superman. I’m saving myself for you.” There was blood on Lex’s chin after he finished speaking.
The bodyguard was muttering into a phone.
Superman pretended to ignore Lex. “Mr. Wayne, I don’t know what you do in Gotham, but in Metropolis we frown on this type of behavior.”
“In other words,” Lex said helpfully, “Superman says to go pick on someone your own size. I started the fight, alien,” he paused to turn his head and cough into a clenched fist, “and I’ll heal. I always heal; like fucking Tithonus, asked for health but forgot to ask not to get hurt.”
“Luthor,” Superman said, his blue eyes shining with regret and worse.
“Heroes,” Lex said with contempt and started walking to the door, even as it opened and admitted two worried-looking people with medical kits. He moved as if he’d break open if he wobbled even a bit.
Superman’s hands twitched, as if he wanted to reach out. When Lex and his attendants had left the room, he turned his attention back to Bruce. “Lex Luthor is – he’s not well, Mr. Wayne. I don’t know why you’re here, but I advise you to stay away from him.”
And the gym was empty except for Bruce himself, shattered safety glass like sharp drops of water across the black mat. Bruce blinked, looked out at the view of the Metropolis skyline through the destroyed window, and then examined his bruised and split-knuckled hands.
This is going swimmingly, the Batman whispered. This city doesn’t want you. Go home.
Yet he hadn’t figured out the mystery of Clark Kent, and now there was the equal mystery of why Superman was acting as Lex Luthor’s belated guardian angel. Luthor was going global, and the Batman couldn’t pretend that Gotham was separate from the rest of the world. Ra's al Ghul had shown him that.
If Superman and Luthor were more than simple nemeses, Batman would have to be aware of that. Obsession, especially reciprocated obsession, was more dangerous than any rational villainy or heroism.
Selina and Harvey had shown him that.
But neither Harvey nor Selina could punch a hole through a mountain, no matter how bad things got. He couldn’t say the same about Superman. No, the Batman needed more information.
He tried to shake off the feeling that his presence itself was somehow destabilizing as he headed towards the elevators, out of the LexCorp complex. Superman follows Luthor and Luthor follows Kent. So was there a third side to the triangle?
****
"I'm very pleased that you contacted me, Mr. Wayne," Lois Lane said, wrapping her hands around her coffee. Her manicure was a few days old, the polish the color of a robin's breast. "But my sources tell me that you never give interviews. What's changed? And please," she leaned forward, her blouse parting a fraction more, "don't tell me that it's my charm and grace, because I hate to walk out on a man so soon after I've met him."
Bruce smiled his brainless playboy smile at her. "I met your partner Clark Kent in Gotham recently, and he spoke highly of you."
Lane leaned back and took a sip of coffee, her brown eyes missing nothing as she stared at him. "Clark didn't mention you."
He shrugged. "My reason for contacting you is rather embarrassing." He paused long enough for her to school her face into a welcoming, friendly expression that didn't quite hide the shark fins cruising behind her eyes. "You've interviewed Superman."
She nodded.
"I – I want to know what he's like. In person."
"You want to know what Superman is like," she repeated, as if he were a bit slow.
He nodded sincerely. "The behind-the-scenes story, the things that don't get into the published interview. He's a hero – well, I don't need to tell you, but – I admire him tremendously. So, if you'll tell me –"
Lane looked at him skeptically, doubtless wondering if he were a front for someone trying to find Superman's weaknesses. As long as she was worried about that, she wouldn't pay much attention to his other questions.
At last, she leaned forward, her nails grazing the surface of the table. Bruce almost expected to hear the screech of metal scratching. "All right, Mr. Wayne. A backstage pass, in return for an exclusive interview on Wayne Industries' recent activities."
He smiled. "You might be disappointed. I don't pay much attention to that sort of thing, but I'll tell you whatever I can. And, please: call me Bruce."
After that, the interview went smoothly enough. He said nice things about his board of directors, and she told him useless Superman trivia, like the maximum number of people he'd rescued in any one day. He described the glittering life of a useless multibillionaire, and she recapitulated the material in her published interviews with Superman. He gave her boarding school stories, which led to a question about Lex that required actual deflection and denial, and she gave him behind-the-scenes anecdotes showing that Superman was just as nice a guy – an alien – in private as in public.
Bruce recalled some of Kent's editorial comments, which weren't as favorable to Superman as the average Metropolist columnist's, and certainly not as glowing as Lane's hagiography. No direct criticism, nothing like what Lex Luthor risked saying against the world's most popular superhero, but always a tone of distance, surprising in someone who'd had as much direct contact with Superman as Kent had. He asked Lane whether Kent shared her high opinion.
She shrugged, her shoulders drawing together as if she were slightly uncomfortable. "They really respect each other, but they don’t hang out much. I think Superman's a little goody-two-shoes for Clark. All that wholesomeness intimidates him."
Bruce raised an eyebrow, smiling with just a hint of incredulity. "Clark doesn't seem like the type to be easily intimidated."
"Off the record, Bruce?"
"Yes?" His expression was pleasant, unthreatening. He knew which muscles were contracted.
Lane stared at him; he could almost feel her gaze bouncing off him. "About Clark. You know how some people repress because they think if they start something, they won't ever be able to stop? That's Clark. Right after he started at the Planet, he discovered sex. He's never really slowed down. Some woman or man is always calling to see whether he's available, or to see what happened when he didn't show up for a date. He tends to blow people off when something better comes along, and by 'something better' I mean 'someone he hasn't already hooked up with.' I love him dearly, but not even FEMA and the Justice League combined could clean up the disaster that is his personal life. I think he's worried that if Superman knew him better, he'd lose respect. Superman isn't the type to break promises or treat the Metropolis white pages as his version of a little black book."
Bruce kept his face distantly amused as he wondered just how much of a fool he was. "To be honest, Clark sounds like he's a lot more my speed than Superman. I'm more about variety than commitment."
Lois Lane was a good enough reporter that she didn't show the contempt she must be feeling. "I guess it's a good thing that not everyone can be Superman. It gives us someone to look up to."
Bruce nodded politely and turned the conversation to more social matters.
****
After the interview, Bruce went to the main branch of the Metropolis Public Library to access the minor local papers that weren't archived anywhere else and to review the material that his research assistants had put together for him, each of them responsible for only a small piece and unaware of the others' existences. It was a methodology that had served him well in the past, allowing him to assemble relevant information and synthesize it without needing to rely on the discretion of someone who knew where Bruce's interests really lay. He sat at a terminal in the corner of the main reading room, quickly breaking through the library's security so he could make the computer do his bidding, and emanated enough hostility that no one came near him while he worked.
He reviewed the earliest reports about Luthor's struggles with Superman. Luthor had managed to suppress most such accounts, since they weren't consonant with his image as Metropolis's prodigal son, but he hadn't been able to get at the Department of Homeland Security.
Superman had been active in Metropolis for several months by then. He'd given two exclusive interviews to Lois Lane, and the full-page headlines and one-hour news specials had fallen back to two-column pieces below the fold and five minutes on the nightly news.
Then Superman had destroyed a research facility engaged in illegal animal testing – preparatory, Bruce was sure, to illegal human testing. The company was a LexCorp subsidiary, about five miles of paper insulated from Luthor, but his nonetheless. According to the janitor who'd talked to the investigator two days after the incident (and who had disappeared shortly after that), Superman had smashed the medical equipment and melted the computers to slag. Then, what looked like a mighty wind swept through the cage room, after which all the doors were open and the rats and monkeys began pouring out of their prisons, adding to the chaos. The janitor didn't know what was being tested, but Superman must not have thought the animals were dangerous. Either that, or he didn't care.
Superman was corralling the researchers, putting them with admirable efficiency in the very cages he'd just emptied, when a black-clad security force arrived. They'd been wearing masks. The janitor had thought they were US Special Forces, and the interviewer had done nothing to enlighten him. Superman's eyes had narrowed and he'd started towards the newcomers. To the janitor's shock and dismay, he stopped halfway and took a faltering step back. His face, the janitor reported, showed no fear, only resolution and – it seemed – disappointment. The people in black had been carrying thick staves, like police riot sticks but tipped with something strange and green, their guns holstered at their hips.
"You've had your fun," the lead person – woman, the janitor emphasized, as if he couldn't believe it himself – had said. "Now get out."
And Superman had gone, shakily. When he'd left, the glowing stones embedded in the commandos' nightsticks had faded to a dull dark green.
The NSA had concluded that this was Luthor's security force. Industrial espionage and bribery revealed that Luthor had a large stockpile of the green stones, but their provenance was still unknown.
Bruce had resources not available to the NSA. He'd been able to track the mineral back to LuthorCorp holdings in Metropolis as early as 2002, when Lionel Luthor was still in charge and Lex was in exile in Smallville.
Smallville, home of Clark Kent.
Bruce pulled up other databases. Government surveys, property records, news reports. There was a point at which absence of information became as telling as the presence of suspicious data. There was a hole in recorded history, a hole in the middle of Kansas.
Smallville, site of the largest meteor strike in the US in the past hundred years. Smallville, where death rates had been more appropriate for a war zone than a Kansas hamlet and large insurance claims more common than county fairs. Common wisdom held that LuthorCorp Plant #3 was responsible for the many and varied ways in which people met their dooms in Smallville, but Bruce had never found common people to be all that wise.
Working hypothesis: Luthor's mineral came from the meteors, which were related to the fact that Superman first appeared in Kansas. As for all the deaths, maybe meteor residue was equally dangerous to humans.
It was all confusing, illogical, tangled and ugly, with the promise of something uglier still behind the alien's perfect face.
The NSA report also revealed that the government had approached Luthor to get its own supply of the mineral. When Luthor politely told the feds to fuck off, the FBI (with the highly illegal assistance of *actual* Special Forces) had raided seven LexCorp facilities simultaneously, to no avail. The refined bars of mineral so carefully documented by the snitches were gone, dissolved into air, or at least hidden by more reliable employees. Only a speedy invocation of the Patriot Act III had kept Luthor's lawyers from publicly crucifying the government.
As it was, Luthor ended up with five very lucrative no-bid military contracts, while the NSA sulked and plotted to seize samples the next time Superman confronted a LexCorp operation. This meant, however, that Luthor's research installations were de facto guarded by the best American technology had to offer, and whether for that or some other reason, Superman had yet to revisit any of the LexCorp operations of which the NSA was aware.
Combined with what Bruce had witnessed during his visit to Luthor the other day, the facts suggested an odd symbiosis, each protecting the other from the rest of the world. Or was the antagonism fully feigned, the two playing an even deeper game, Clark Kent some sort of accomplice? No, Bruce couldn't believe that what he'd seen was play-acting. Lex's contempt had been too raw, and he'd always had a far worse poker face than he liked to think.
Times like this, Bruce could have used a sidekick to discuss the possibilities, to offer a more human perspective. Bruce was never entirely sure he understood how people thought – and while that was irrelevant to Superman and quite possibly to Luthor, he still would have liked to hear a trusted person's opinion about the whole mess.
But to trust another person, someone who wasn't Alfred, who hadn't spent his life with Bruce, who'd have an agenda of his own – it was dangerous, and not worth thinking about.
****
"Clark Kent."
Bruce hesitated, though he hadn't meant to. "Clark, it's Bruce Wayne."
"Bruce!" He sounded sincerely pleased, if a little surprised. "How have you been?"
"I've been well," he said, trying to relax into his role as empty suit. "I'm in Metropolis on business, and I wondered if you wanted to have dinner."
There was a pause. "I'd ask what business," Clark said, "but I'm guessing you don't really want to tell a reporter." His tenor voice had no cajoling in it, only amusement.
"Come on, Clark," he said, "you know I don't have much to do with the day-to-day operations of Wayne Industries. Anyway, I just gave an interview to your lovely partner, so there's nothing left to investigate. The only question you should be asking me is where I'm taking you to dinner."
Clark chuffed, somewhere between charmed and exasperated. "Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint you."
In the event, Clark was thirty minutes late, much as Lois Lane had suggested. Bruce hadn't had that happen to him in – ever, in fact. He should have found it a useful lesson in humility, but he felt wounded instead. It made him wonder about the women he'd stood up over the years, when the Batman was too busy to come up for air. Had they felt personally insulted? He'd always thought their protests were mostly for show, because they hadn't known Bruce at all, not really, so they couldn't be too hurt. The curious emptiness he felt as he nursed his slowly warming chardonnay suggested that he might have been wrong.
When he finally arrived at the restaurant, Clark's wide grin as he caught sight of Bruce was almost enough to make Bruce forget the last half hour. There was nothing to suggest that Clark's charm was cultivated. It was more effective for seeming natural.
Bruce stood and shook Clark's hand. It was warm, the skin soft in the way he hadn't thought a farmer's son's could be. Clark didn't even have a writer's callus, he noticed – a real child of the computer age.
They made not-quite-idle conversation through dinner. Clark had spent considerable time in Africa, as Bruce already knew from his researches, and his travels had left him with a number of entertaining stories to share. Bruce matched them with stories from his perambulations in Asia, the ones that didn't reveal too much about him other than a taste for adventure.
When the dessert plates and coffee cups had been cleared, Bruce looked across the table. "Come back to my hotel."
Clark smiled, and if Bruce hadn't known better, he would have sworn that the room got brighter. "I was hoping you'd say that."
When they'd collected their respective briefcases and overcoats, Clark suggested that they walk back – it was only six blocks, and a beautiful night, the moon brighter over Metropolis than it ever seemed to get above Gotham. Bruce agreed. Well-lit or not, the night always had a calming effect on him.
They walked past cozy restaurants and then hit a block of businesses closed for the night. A neon sign flickering in a copy shop window made Clark's face shine red and blue, the colors of flashing police lights.
The street was empty except for the two of them, passing by unoccupied parking meters and trashcans newly emptied and ready for tomorrow's commuters.
Bruce automatically noted the footsteps behind them. Three men, walking quickly, one whose foot dragged a little. No talking, which was a bad sign.
"Hey."
Preying on two fairly large men, a worse sign. Bruce turned and saw two men with guns and a third who just had a bad attitude. Clark was stiff beside him, frozen either in fear or in hopes of preventing any accidental escalation.
"Give us your wallets," the man in the middle demanded. He had one of the guns; the guy on his right had the other. The third, that was the problem – he was bouncing up and down on his feet, high on something and ready to create a fight. One part of Bruce's mind recorded their descriptions, cataloging moles and scars and clothing, while another prepared to fight.
He stepped forward and in front of Clark, shielding him.
"Bruce, just –"
"Run," he said as he threw his briefcase to the side; he would have used it as a weapon, but it was awkwardly sized. Instead, he just kicked the man in front of him as his right hand swept out to knock the gun out of the second man's hand. The one in the middle collapsed, losing his grip on his gun as he struggled to breathe; he'd be out of the picture for a good thirty seconds minimum.
Left hand punch – the third man wasn't so high on drugs that he couldn't dodge, though. The rattle of footsteps behind him suggested that Clark had wisely taken Bruce's suggestion. He was smart enough to call the cops as soon as he was at a safe distance, so Bruce had better make this quick.
The second man was still on his feet, looking for his gun on the sidewalk. Bruce took another step forward and slammed his fist into the side of the man's head, sending him toppling back into a parking meter.
A side kick kept the man on the ground where he was, and then there was just the third. Unpredictable, possibly not sensitive to pain – and, Bruce saw, holding a knife in each hand, shifting his feet with the grace of an experienced fighter. He didn't need to see the prison tattoos to know that this one was the worst of them.
Bruce leaned back, avoiding the first, almost casual thrust. The man smiled at him, predator to prey, and darted forwards, close enough that Bruce could see his blown pupils. Bruce ducked to one side and twisted, managing to get his hand on the man's upper arm and shove. The momentum pushed them apart as Bruce pivoted and brought his leg up for a solid kick on the outer thigh, which caused the man to stagger back a step.
His teeth were bared as he recovered his balance, twirling the knife in his right hand in a way that was probably supposed to be frightening. Twirling with only one hand meant his left was weak, nondominant, unlikely to be good for precision – Bruce didn't think this guy was good enough to be playing him. Bruce took the opportunity to shrug off his overcoat and wrap it around his arm. He missed his real suit, but this would provide some protection from slashes.
"Pretty boy wants to play, I'll play," the man said, just a little bit louder than conversationally.
Bruce nodded at him, and he rushed forwards. Bruce dropped down, braced on his hands, and swept a leg out, tripping the man and then somersaulting forwards, out of the way of the strike he delivered on his way down. His left-hand knife clattered on the sidewalk as he released it in order to keep from falling face-first. Bruce jumped to his feet, spinning, and managed a good kick just below the man's left shoulder before having to break off the attack to deal with assailant number two, who was moving around at the edges of Bruce's vision. Bruce spun, grabbed him, and shoved down so that the back of his head met the top of the parking meter with a meaty thunk.
Then he had to dodge around the parking meter and the slumping body as the third man, now armed with only one knife, came at him, face purpling with fury and effort. Bruce threw his arm up, feeling the blade catch on his sleeve and then drag through the coat as he twisted it, locking their arms together and trapping the knife so it couldn't do further damage. He pulled until he could see the man's back, his dirty neck and ragged-collared sweatshirt, and wrapped his left arm around the man's neck, squeezing so hard that consciousness left within seconds.
Bruce disentangled himself, collecting the knife on the way, and pulled back, letting the man slump to the ground with his compatriots. He looked at his forearm – the overcoat and suit jacket were destroyed, but the dress shirt underneath was only frayed, and he'd probably get away with less than a welt.
While he waited for the police, he retrieved the other discarded weapons and examined the attackers. Number one was conscious, but in no mood to go anywhere; he looked up at Bruce and ducked his head like a beaten dog.
They didn't look like Luthor's goons, which might have been part of the point. If Lex had wanted to see him in real action, as opposed to sparring, he might have sent them. Or it might be just another random violent incident, the kind that he seemed to attract the way other people were particularly vulnerable to mosquitoes.
"Bruce!"
"Clark," Bruce called back, without taking his eyes from the bodies on the street. Clark moved fast and light, slowing to a halt about six feet away. "You called the police?"
"Yeah – my God, what did you -- ?"
"I hope they get here soon. I don't want to press my luck."
"Are you all right?"
Bruce decided he liked Clark even more, based on the honest concern in his voice and the fact that he had yet to mention turning this into a story. "I'm fine," he said, letting some amusement into his voice. "My coat's a mess, but that's what tailors are for."
"You were – really impressive," Clark said, edging around so that he could see Bruce's face. "I mean, what I saw of it." He didn't seem to know where to look, his gaze bouncing from the would-be muggers to Bruce's face to his arm.
Bruce shrugged, then decided that his role required something more boastful. "I've taken some self-defense classes, and of course I stay in shape."
A frown. "Still, I wish you had just given them what they wanted."
"They didn’t look like they’d be satisfied with that," he said.
"You think your money makes you invulnerable," Clark continued, as if Bruce hadn't spoken. "It just makes you a bigger target."
"Maybe I know that, and I'm ready," Bruce suggested.
Clark shook his head with what looked like regret. "It's more dangerous than you think. It always is. You can't control – you could have been *shot*."
"But I wasn't," he pointed out.
At that point, the sirens of the approaching police car took over, and they waited for the cops.
Unfortunately, the officers insisted that Bruce go down to the station to give his statement – understandable, given that he'd taken down three attackers, but still cramping his style, and Bruce was careful to play the nonchalant and jaded aesthete, distantly amused by all the fuss, not quite understanding that playing his martial arts games in a real-life situation had put him in danger. The sergeant in charge got angry with him, another unpleasant necessity, but he managed to keep his flippancy under control so that he got out with only a five-minute lecture and a promise to return to town should his testimony be needed at trial.
When he was finally released, he was not shocked to find Clark Kent waiting for him, his coat on his lap and his eyes behind his glasses observing every detail of the waiting room.
"This must be familiar territory to you," Bruce said as he pulled out his phone to call for a car.
"Yeah, I worked Metro for a few years when I – have you been checking on me?" Clark blinked at him, intrigued and a few inches from suspicious.
Bruce finished the call and smiled self-deprecatingly. "I wanted to see how you wrote. Prize committees are one thing, keeping *my* interest is another – and you are good."
"Thanks," Clark said wryly.
"While we're waiting to be picked up," Bruce suggested, sitting down next to Clark on an ugly orange chair whose graffiti dated it to no later than 1978, "why don't you tell me some of your favorite stories from the Metro section."
Clark looked skeptical, but didn't say more about Bruce's snooping. As a reporter, he had to have some sympathy for researching a potential subject.
"When I was just starting at the *Planet*," he said at last, leaning back into his bowl-shaped plastic chair, "Superman was still pretty new. There were lots of – human interest stories, I guess. How are grade schools being affected by Superman's existence, how's fashion affected, the stock market, the Billboard Top Ten, the price of tea in China. *Everything* had to have Superman in it to get any attention. Oh," he said and checked Bruce's expression, almost too quickly for Bruce to catch it, "Lois says you're a big fan, and it's not anything against Superman, just the *reaction* to him – which was a little over the top. Anyway, there I was, stuck on the Metro beat.
"So I followed this one officer around for a week. He helped organize a neighborhood watch, talked to kids at a couple of schools, investigated some muggings – ordinary stuff. Meanwhile, Superman was saving lives, defusing bombs – I remember he gave CPR to a dog that had nearly drowned in Central Park." Clark winced in involuntary sympathy, as Bruce was tempted to do – smelling a dog's breath was bad enough without mouth-to-mouth.
"That was the same day Officer Frank walked into a convenience store in the middle of a hold-up. I'd been called away on other business, so I didn't see it, but he talked the robber into putting down his weapon. And then the store owner, who'd had his unlicensed handgun pointed at the guy under the counter, got so excited that he squeezed the trigger and shot Officer Frank in the arm. When I got there, the EMTs were treating him, and I knew the dog was going to be on the front page and he was going to be in the middle of the Metro section."
Bruce leaned further towards Clark, drawn in by his evident passion, the throb of injustice in his voice.
"I asked him what he thought about Superman. Whether he resented Superman, whether he thought Superman was making his job seem silly. He said Superman and the metahumans like Batman and the Flash made his job even more important, to remind people that you didn't have to be superstrong or superfast or invulnerable to do the right thing. That it was important to protect and serve other people even though it put you in danger. Even though you were no different from anyone else. *Because* you were no different from anyone else.
"I wrote my story about him, and Perry White put it in the Sunday commentary section." Clark smiled now, his eyes unfocused as he remembered. "Lost a few subscriptions, people who couldn't hear a word that implied that Superman wasn't the be-all and end-all. But we got a lot of thank-yous from firefighters and police officers, too."
"What happened to Officer Frank?"
Clark's smile widened. "He retired a few years later. I get a Christmas card from him every year. He still talks to kids at public schools."
Bruce had expected a rather worse end to the story. In Gotham, Officer Frank would have ended up stabbed by some fifteen-year-old punk.
He was also, as always, amused to hear Batman referred to as a metahuman. He was very much in agreement with Officer Frank about the need for humans to fight their own battles – though to be fair, being a billionaire didn’t hurt his ability to get the right equipment to enhance his capabilities.
"Bruce," Clark said quietly. Bruce looked at him. "You don't mind that I ran?" Clark was shy now, afraid that he'd shamed himself.
Running was a lot better than standing frozen, waiting like a rabbit for whatever fate a criminal decided to inflict. "Of course not. As you pointed out, it's not sane to stand up to armed men."
"You did," Clark pointed out.
"I'm a little bit crazy." Bruce smiled, to make clear that he wasn't taking any of this seriously. "And insanely lucky, as that cop was happy to tell me at length. I don't think the reality of it has set in – it feels like a game, or a play."
Clark opened his mouth as if to ask a question, then shut it. Bruce's phone buzzed to let him know that the car had arrived.
"Shall we go?" He rose, and with a sweep of his hand invited Clark to precede him out the door.
The car turned out to be a long black limousine. Bruce Wayne couldn't afford anything less flashy.
The driver rushed out to open the door for them.
As the car started to move, Bruce turned, leaning over Clark, braced with one arm as his other reached for Clark's glasses. "Maybe you can take my mind off reckless endangerment."
Clark let his head fall back further, his lips parting. Bruce carefully removed the glasses, noting as he folded them and put them on the seat that the prescription must be extremely mild; the view through them seemed undistorted. Clark was either mildly hypochondriacal or convinced he'd look more reporterly with glasses.
The kiss was warm, comforting, as if Clark thought he needed to take care. He moved until his hands cupped Clark's shoulders, pressing him into the softly creaking leather. Clark opened his mouth and started kissing back in earnest. His hands rose up, brushing Bruce's upper arms. Hot mouth, big hands. It was nice to be with someone who didn't seem little and fragile, even knowing that he could crush Clark's windpipe with one blow.
They were playing, wrestling one another for dominance. Clark tried to pull Bruce's shirt off, which would have been a bad idea with the lights on because of all the scars and bruises.
He pulled away from Clark's mouth and bit kisses over his chin, down his neck, over his Adam's apple. Clark made a soft noise and arched up.
Bruce was flexible, but he was in an awkward position. He slid down so that he was on his knees between Clark's legs, undoing his belt and trousers and burying his face in the crease of Clark's thigh, where his scent was strongest.
He smelled – earthy, with a strange hint of ozone, the smell of new wood exposed by a broken branch.
Clark groaned and Bruce stopped teasing, moving his mouth to suck on the fabric above Clark's hardening cock. "This is turning out to be a really good day," Clark said to the ceiling.
Bruce wondered if Luthor had managed to bug the limo. The good thing about being rich, dumb and pretty was that he didn't have to worry about blackmail. So he sucked men off in limousines; no one would stop inviting him to the best parties if pictures showed up in the Gotham Gazette. Actually, it might even improve his image. Clark wasn't vulnerable to that sort of pressure, either, not if Lois Lane was right about his promiscuity; and Bruce already knew that Lex had some obsession with Clark, so if he did track them he'd keep Clark's secrets for his own private enjoyment.
Maybe he should have said something about possible surveillance, Bruce thought as he tugged down Clark's boxers and licked down his cock. Just because Luthor wasn't going to go public didn't mean Clark wouldn't object to being observed. Clark moaned, his hands resting gently on Bruce's hair, as Bruce ran his tongue back up along the shaft and sucked him in.
After a few minutes, he was able to relax into the moment, alert for surprises but otherwise focused on the feel, taste and sound of the man underneath him. It was even better than fighting, because there was little need to plan ahead, just letting their bodies negotiate towards pleasure.
Clark's hands rubbed over his shoulders, a mere graze but enough to make him open his jaw and take Clark's cock as far down as he could.
"That's really good," Clark said, as if he were surprised. "Suck me, yeah, been thinking about this since you called –"
Bruce worked his tongue up and down, and Clark shifted to grunts. His muscles were long, lean and solid under his awkwardly fitting clothes; he needed a tailor.
Wet sounds, along with Clark's panting breaths, filled the back of the limo. It was dark and warm; his fingers sought out Clark's thighs, damp with sweat as he pushed Clark's legs apart against the resistance of his trousers.
"Oh God," Clark managed. "You – you are so – that's so good – harder, now!"
Bruce was amused at the disappearance of Clark's good manners, but he complied, hollowing out his cheeks with the force of the suction.
With one last, drawn-out groan, he came, pumping down Bruce's throat, his hands raised to clasp his own head as if holding himself together.
Bruce pulled away with a smile just as the limo came to a halt. With Clark slumped against the seat, it was up to him to rearrange Clark's clothes, making him decent in time to allow the driver to open the door and let them out.
Clark stayed in the car a moment, recovering his breath, but he followed Bruce inside the hotel with a smile on his face.
****
"I want to fuck you," Bruce said when they were in his suite. Clark's attention had been wandering to the view over Metropolis, which was glittering like a dragon's hoarded treasure in the darkness below. Bruce's declaration got that focus snapped back to him.
"Sounds like fun to me," Clark said, smiling. It was a blinding smile, wide and toothy and careless. Bruce found himself staring. He'd known beautiful women and men, but mostly they'd acknowledged their beauty and polished it to a fine gloss or, blaming it for their pain, tried to destroy it. Clark Kent wore his like it was a blessing to be shared with other people, but nothing to him in itself.
His eyes were dark, wide with desire, the city lit up behind him making him seem to glow around the edges.
Bruce crossed the room in three long strides, his mouth on Clark’s almost before his hands found the broad shoulders, turning that smile into something more specific. His hands tugged at Clark’s shirt, unbuttoning and sliding it half off, his fingers moving across Clark’s skin. Even on his shoulders and back, that warm skin was as soft and fine as talc, so different from Bruce’s callused hands that they might have been different species. He nipped at Bruce’s mouth as Bruce backed them towards the bedroom.
Their progress was halted when Clark tripped over his own feet, wobbling precariously. His arms flew out to the sides for balance. Bruce grabbed his shirtfront and held on, not having to fake a smile at the comically dismayed expression on Clark’s face, so different from the suave man who’d approached him in Gotham. Rocking forward almost to the point of pitching into Bruce’s arms, Clark barely managed to right himself and Bruce let go.
“Sorry,” Clark said, smiling again. “You’re kind of distracting.”
“I could say the same for you,” Bruce said, hearing how his voice had roughened and deepened with lust.
The smile edged towards a smirk. Clark shrugged the shirt from his shoulders and let it fall as he turned to precede Bruce into the bedroom. Bruce heard the click of a belt buckle, then watched Clark cast his leather belt to one side with the carelessness of a very messy man. The muscles of his back stood out in golden relief above the tan slacks. There was a slight gap between the fabric and his skin, a line of shadow like the terminator between night and day.
Bruce followed, tugging at his tie. Despite the sound of Clark's pants falling to the floor, he carefully rolled the tie, took off his cufflinks, and hung his shirt and pants in the closet before turning to the bed. It was worth the wait; Clark lay naked on his back, one knee drawn up and tilted to the side in a classic pinup pose, his head pillowed on his bent arms. His smooth chest reminded Bruce of Michelangelo's David, or perhaps an athlete on a Greek vase, ruddy against the dark hotel bedspread. His cock, half-hard, lay against his thigh, a shade darker than the rest of his skin.
Clark grinned up with him with complete confidence – and complete justification, Bruce had to admit. Before joining Clark on the bed, he walked to the lamp over the nightstand and turned it off, leaving only the lights of the city to illuminate them. Light in Metropolis seemed somehow brighter than light in Gotham.
He rolled onto the bed and over Clark, retaking his mouth as if there'd been no interruption. He rested most of his weight on his arms, bracketing Clark, but pressed their lower bodies together. Their legs rubbed against one another. Bruce liked the friction, the feel of the hard lines of their shinbones and the yielding heat of the muscled calves.
Clark had a gorgeous chest, the pectorals outlined like an anatomy diagram. Bruce licked and bit his way across, sucking at one nipple until it was as red as Clark’s lips. Clark’s head was tossed back against the pillows, the line of his throat like a rainbow’s arc.
"Like this," Bruce said, pulling back and urging Clark to turn over on his hands and knees. It was a good position, one where he could see the beauty of the man beneath him, see and not be seen.
Bruce stopped to grab the bottle of lubricant he’d left by the bedside when he unpacked. It was cool and shiny on his fingers, and he rubbed them together to warm them before moving between Clark's legs and pressing inside. Clark made encouraging noises while Bruce squeezed the back of his thigh with his free hand. The skin there, damp with sweat, was just as sleek and perfect as the rest of him, the large muscle yielding when he ran his fingers down, not quite hard enough to raise a welt. Bruce slid his hand down to caress the crease at the back of Clark's knee. "Ah!" Clark said, and Bruce pressed a little harder.
But he wanted to be inside Clark, so he took his hand back and grabbed a condom, also waiting by the bedside, ripping it open with his teeth and sliding it on himself as fast as he could.
Clark sighed with satisfaction when he removed his fingers and spread Clark’s cheeks with his hands, and sighed again as he slid inside. Bruce watched the muscles in Clark’s back, like a map of some unconquered country, the broad shoulders narrowing to the waist, the slight widening at the hips, the sweet dip at the small of his back leading down to his tight and welcoming ass.
“Any time you’re ready,” Clark said, his voice strained, and Bruce began to move.
They found a rhythm quickly, Bruce braced with one hand on the bed and the other between Clark’s shoulders, Clark moving back in counterpoint with Bruce’s thrusts. Clark had balanced himself on one arm; he jacked himself with the other, the wet sound like a backbeat for Bruce to pace himself with.
They were racing, together and separately, towards the horizon. Clark’s pleased grunts were easy to interpret, his body shaking beneath Bruce’s every time Bruce pushed into him. Bruce moved his hand down Clark’s side and curled over him, breathing in the scent at the nape of his neck, tasting him there with tongue and teeth. Cocoa and oranges, sweeter than Bruce would have expected but somehow just right. The rest of the world fell away, leaving the two of them locked tight, moon and planet orbiting each other, Clark pulling him in with the force of high tide.
When Clark stiffened and called out wordlessly, his hips jerking out of rhythm, Bruce followed, the orgasm rushing out of him in white waves. Only his hand at Clark’s waist prevented him from collapsing where he was; instead, he pulled off, quickly disposing of the condom, rolling onto his back while Clark slumped face-forward onto the bed.
If he’d moved to avoid the wet spot, Bruce would have let him get closer, but he appeared content as he was.
The noises from outside, distant sirens and the background hum of a working city, seeped back into Bruce’s consciousness as he laid back. The lights from outside played across Clark’s back, false bruises. Clark’s eyes were open, observing Bruce and the rest of his surroundings.
This was a chance for a reporter, or even a lover, to ask more intimate questions, learning more about his real beliefs and wants, getting information so he could develop theories about who Bruce was and why. Clark stayed silent.
An ordinary man might have felt ignored or unwanted, but Bruce liked the idea that Clark wasn't trying to know him. He had secrets, but he wasn't hiding them from Clark in particular, any more than he was keeping secrets from anyone else whose life only knocked up against his. Saying otherwise would be like saying he was hiding from a person he bumped into on the subway because that person never knew his name.
He liked Clark’s lack of curiosity, and at the same time it made him curious himself. As if maybe Clark was too wrapped up in his own secrets to pay attention to anyone else’s.
He hadn't forgotten that Clark Kent was mixed up with Lex Luthor somehow, but he was fairly sure that Clark was not on Luthor's side.
"What do you think of Lex Luthor?" Bruce asked.
Clark blinked. "What do you mean?" He lifted his head from the pillow, leaning on his forearms, looking at the headboard rather than at Bruce.
Bruce hadn't expected stonewalling. "You've written about him, you've followed his rise over the years." He wasn't going to mention their youthful connection – wouldn't want Clark to get the idea that Bruce was checking up on him that seriously. "I'm interested in your perspective on the man you've studied so closely."
"Oh." Clark's eyes dipped. "He's dangerous."
"You can't stop there, not after such a provocative statement."
"He'll take every advantage – he doesn't believe in rules, only in not getting caught. And he wants it all, power, wealth, public approval, fear, obedience. There's a hole inside him, Bruce. I think he knows nothing's ever going to fill it, but he keeps trying anyway. That's what makes him dangerous: he *wants* so much and he doesn't know how to stop."
"And your mission is to keep him under control."
Clark rolled over, making his distractingly well-formed back into a wall between them, turning his face away. "My mission is to let everybody know the truth and hope that that's good enough."
****
Bruce started awake, the rattle of pearls on rain-damp concrete fading into the prosaic nighttime creaking of strange hotel furniture.
Someone was watching him.
He turned to find Clark, stretched out with one hand propping up his head, his expression thoughtful, as far as Bruce could tell in the near-blackness.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Clark asked.
"No," he said automatically. It was always the same dream. His parents were falling, falling, and he knew that when they stopped the world would end. There were a thousand bats, swirling above them like the funnel of a tornado. They were calling for help, and Bruce couldn't move.
The bats screamed out for help, never his parents. It was already too late for them. Bruce couldn't remember his mother's face, a blur in the dream, though the color of her dress that night came through every time. He remembered so little of them. He remembered watching his father shave, the gleam of the straight razor and the silken smoothness of the shaving cream. The smell of pine always took him back to that steamy bathroom, that interrupted ritual.
"My parents –" he said. "I was just – remembering."
"I'm sorry," Clark said, entirely sincere. "I was orphaned when I was very young. I don't remember my biological parents at all. I've often wanted to know what they were like, to have some memories of my own. But memories always have a price, I guess."
Bruce wondered whether he'd trade his knowledge of what he'd lost for Clark's complete uncertainty. Neither was right, neither was fair. He shrugged, as best he could with one shoulder pressed into the bed, and flipped the sweat-soaked sheet off of his body. In the night, his scars were invisible. He reached towards Clark, who was so hot that it was like putting his hand to a radiator, the warmth tangible from inches away. "Well, while you're up –"
Clark's voice held a smile. "I'd really like to, but I have to get going. Lois is going to be at my apartment in an hour or so for a stakeout, and I do *not* want to disappoint her. Even you aren't worth her wrath."
He sighed, already thinking about the patrol he'd do when Clark was gone. He couldn't afford to take a night off, even in a strange city. It was too easy to let his edge dull.
Some might say that was proof his weapon was too weak for the purpose to which he put it. But they'd never say that to his face.
Clark squeezed his shoulder and rolled out of the bed, his feet hitting the floor with a thump that sounded too gentle for a man of his size. Bruce let his hearing track Clark's actions in the dark, pulling on his clothes, very definitely *not* fumbling for his wallet or his shoes, as if he knew exactly where he'd put them before Bruce turned off the lights.
A spy, maybe? Pulitzer-winning journalist wasn't a particularly muted cover, though. And Clark had no military record. It was a puzzle.
Bruce just didn't know if he was the one to put it together.
further to follow ...
No Darker Than Yours
Summary: You have kind of a dark side, don’t you?
Warning: Explicit violence, and sex of course. As to the former, consider that I don't often warn about content, okay?
Many thanks to tireless beta readers: Cassandra (who liked Lois!), CJ, and Caroline Baker. Title, summary, and "deeply resentful" taken from Batman Returns. Hey, *I* liked Michael Keaton in the role.
Part I: Metropolis
If one possesses a thing securely, one need never use it. – Graham Greene
Bruce lay in the darkness and watched Clark Kent get dressed.
When he didn’t think anyone was watching, he moved like a lion, a hawk, any predator comfortable in its own skin. Bruce wondered what it would take to make a man like that hide himself.
He was not without a sense of irony.
At least Kent probably wasn’t secretly the scourge of Metropolis. Metropolis's scourge didn't even wear a mask, and he looked nothing like Clark Kent.
After the disaster that had been Selina, he’d sworn off people with secret identities. There was only room for one split personality in his bed. And since everyone carried strangers within, that meant sticking to one-night stands, meaningless motions designed only to cement Bruce Wayne's sybaritic reputation.
Unfortunately and unpleasantly, Bruce Wayne hadn't responded obediently to the Batman’s diktat. A few months back, he’d found himself putting his hands over a debutante’s face, fingers splayed to curve over her cheeks. It looked just like a butterfly mask. She thought he was caressing her, but that wasn't it at all. He’d known then that it was time to take Bruce Wayne out of circulation entirely for a bit.
Thus, Kent had been something of a surprise.
****
“I’m not always a journalist, you know,” Clark Kent said, leaning forward just enough that Bruce felt hot breath in his ear. Sidelined, half-hidden from the dance floor by a seven-foot-high cardboard cutout representing the firemen the fundraiser was meant to honor, they were in no danger of being discovered.
Bruce turned, and saw an answering spark in Kent’s eyes. “What are you when you’re not a journalist?”
“Just a man, with the same needs ... desires ... as anybody else.” Kent was staring at his mouth. Subtle, he wasn't.
“Well, I’m not always a playboy,” he said, enjoying the thrill of an unheard confession. He put his champagne glass down on an abandoned table without taking his eyes from Kent’s.
“You want to get out of here?” Invitation accepted. Kent didn’t waste any time. Bruce liked that.
He nodded and turned to go, feeling Kent a pace and a half behind him.
****
In Bruce’s experience, if he found himself with a desire to see someone again, that meant trouble, so he went down to the cave and started researching Clark Kent. “A reporter with the Daily Planet” was, as he’d suspected, false modesty. Three Pulitzers shared with his writing partner (romantic partner?) Lois Lane, a host of other awards, and, more than that, two resignations from state-wide office, three major public works projects cancelled or reconceived, five kingpin-level arrests, and a host of other reforms made as a result of the duo’s reporting.
One of the good guys, or so he seemed.
A local boy, from a suburb of Metropolis with the rather unimaginative name of Smallville.
Bruce knew that name. Lex Luthor had also emerged from Smallville, like a poison moth unfurling from its chrysalis. After Kent and Lane's second Pulitzer, Lex’s name had begun to come up in Metropolis politics, as a new face untainted by prior corruption. Kent and Lane had written some nasty things about him, but unlike their other reporting, it hadn’t stuck.
He started looking for a connection.
The Smallville Ledger online went back only to mid-2005, a few months after Lex had moved back to Metropolis. Clark Kent showed up exactly three times in its archives, once in 2006 back from his freshman year at Met U, helping in the reconstruction after a freak storm leveled half of Main Street; once at the wedding of two high school classmates, Lois Lane in tow; and once attending the funeral of his father.
None of the news services carried the Ledger further back, and neither the University of Gotham nor Met U had microfilm. Bruce was willing to bet that no one did, at least for that critical few years early in the century. Lex was plainly hiding something. For his own safety, Bruce had to assume it concerned Kent.
He started a program that would trace Kent’s finances and those of his widowed mother.
The phone rang. “Yes?”
“Master Bruce, Mr. Lex Luthor is on the line. Shall I put him through?”
That was surprising. Both because Lex never should have been able to trace Bruce’s queries back to him, and because Lex knew better than to confirm the connection with such an overt act. “Please do, Alfred.”
There was a click. “Hello, Bruce. How are you?” The voice was, if anything, smoother than he remembered, rich with the promise of sex, power, and danger.
“I’m well. And you?” He tapped his fingers against the console, feeling ridiculously exposed, as if Lex could see him in the cave.
“Also well. I’d appreciate it if you’d curb your enthusiasm for Clark Kent.”
This was all wrong, too unsubtle. “Why? Is he one of yours?”
“Not in the sense that he’s been yours, no.” Lex sounded as if he were smiling. So he’d had them watched, last night, at least at the party. Bruce thought that the Manor was proof against surveillance, but if anyone could have gotten audio or visual of their encounter, it would have been Lex. “But I thought we’d agreed to a division of territory. I don’t interfere with visitors from Gotham, and you let Metropolis take care of its own.”
Bruce could make out the edges of his own reflection in the computer screen, dark and poorly defined. “Are you threatening me?” After LexCorp had swallowed LuthorCorp, Lex had grown more aggressive in his acquisitions, but he had maintained a careful distance from Wayne Industries.
Lex laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous, Bruce. You're smarter than you are pretty, whatever you pretend to Gotham’s high society. Believe it or not, I retain some fondness for you from our schooldays. Clark is an incorrigible, incorruptible do-gooder, true to his image, but people who get too close to him tend to end up dead. Or deeply resentful.”
The computer beeped, finished with its task.
“That search you just ran isn’t going to find anything. You’ve never felt the need to extend your wings further than Gotham, and this is no time to start.”
Bruce froze in his chair. Lex had always chosen his words carefully.
“Bruce? You still there?” Lex’s voice was not quite merry.
“Of course. Do you think Superman would tell me the same story you just did?”
There was a pause. “Superman tells many stories.” Now Bruce had the sense that Lex wasn’t quite talking to him, at least not only to him. “As I’m sure you’ve -- heard, he doesn’t have much tolerance for amateur do-gooders.” That pause was another red flag – Bruce remembered only too well Superman’s reaction to the Batman’s decision to stay out of the so-called 'Justice League.' It was then that he’d begun to take steps towards compiling his own stock of mystery mineral. Just in case.
With the elder Luthor out of the picture, Lex was his biggest competitor in that market.
“If Clark is being a bad boy, Superman will send him to his room without any dessert. Let it go, Bruce.” Lex’s voice had softened, become rougher, almost sincere.
“You're almost guaranteeing that my interest is piqued.”
Lex let out a breath, loud over the telephone wires. “It would have been anyway. Clark is like that, you think you’ll just peel back one more layer and then you’ll know what it is about him. And maybe a new obsession would be good for you. But not this one, not Clark Kent. There’s enough insanity in Gotham. Stick with the kind of crazy that ends up in Arkham, not the kind that walks the streets of Metropolis.”
Bruce leaned back in his chair, staring at Kent’s nondescript finances. “Thanks for calling, Lex. We should stay in touch.”
That earned him a snort. “Feel free to call me when you realize what you’ve gotten yourself into. I so rarely give advice, I'm looking forward to saying 'I told you so.'”
The phone clicked, and Bruce found himself listening to a dial tone.
That had been disturbing on any number of levels. Bruce stood, seized with the desire – the need – to patrol. The Batman could puzzle over Lex’s bizarre warnings and implications while taking out his nightly dose of criminals.
****
After Bruce checked in to the Metropolitan Grand Hotel, scandalizing the bellhop by insisting on carrying his own bag, he headed over to LexCorp, a few hot city blocks away. His name got him to the executive floor. His name and a request for a meeting got him fifteen minutes in a waiting room, a drink offer that he declined, careful scrutiny by a blonde woman who moved like an assassin, and, finally, entrance to Lex's office.
Lex rose from his desk as the door closed behind his stunningly beautiful assistant. The blonde had tried to follow Bruce in, but Lex had waved her back.
“Bruce,” Lex said, walking up to him and standing too close. He didn’t extend his hand. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
Bruce made no reply. In person, Lex was a slightly bulked-up version of the boy he’d known. If he was still ghost-haunted, it no longer showed to casual observation. His eyes, fixed on Bruce’s face, were gunmetal-gray.
“I have business in town,” he said at last, stepping to one side. Lex swiveled to follow, his hips like ball bearings – that, he remembered too.
“Mmm,” Lex agreed, a bit too indulgent for Bruce’s comfort. “I don’t think Clark likes to be referred to as ‘business,’ though he wouldn’t be happy with ‘pleasure’ either. He's hard to satisfy that way.” His hand came up and tugged at Bruce’s tie.
Bruce knew he should be reacting, but it was impossible to pull away from Lex’s unblinking stare. The hand was almost an afterthought. Lex loosened the tie and pulled it down as Bruce swallowed against his knuckles. Then he unbuttoned the first three buttons of Bruce’s shirt, pushing the fabric aside and seeking out the bullet scar under Bruce’s right collarbone. The fact that Lex obviously knew what he was looking for, even more than the heat of his fingers, made it difficult not to tremble.
“Did it hurt?” Lex asked, dreamily. His fingertip traced the puckered circle, and only the last dregs of Bruce’s training kept him from panting, or fleeing.
“With all you’ve done, I’m surprised you haven’t been shot yourself,” he said severely.
Lex smiled, slow and secretive. “I have been. I want to know if it hurt *you*.”
“Of course it did.”
“Of course,” Lex repeated, and stroked his fingers down to where Bruce’s shirt opened, then began rebuttoning it.
It was at this point that Bruce realized that he was aroused to the point of half-insanity. The reason criminal madmen did so well, he thought, was that they were hypnotizingly unpredictable. You didn’t want to kill them, because then you wouldn’t know what happened next. Bruce tried not to let the potential for redemption interfere with practicality, but the existence of Arkham, instead of another graveyard, was evidence of his weakness as much as it was proof of his vow not to kill.
“Would you like to spar, Bruce? Work off some of that tension?”
He hated that mocking tone, guaranteed to reduce the Dalai Lama to a high-school geek who’d just spilled milk down his pants in front of the entire cafeteria. Hitting Lex sounded like the best idea in creation, even if it did come from Lex himself.
Lex’s blonde bodyguard followed them from the conference room to a large gym on a high floor of the building. There were clothes in Bruce’s size waiting, and he and Lex changed quickly, without taunting looks, which left him equally relieved and disturbed.
“No interventions, Mercy,” Lex ordered as Bruce followed him to a section of the gym that was just black rubber matting. The bodyguard looked fractionally more unhappy, but didn’t protest.
“What about gloves?” he asked as Lex backed away, settling into a defensive stance.
Lex’s lips twitched. “I don’t think I have any that would suit you.” Bruce could see padded red boxing gloves draped over a chair near the wall, so this could be another suggestion that Lex knew who Bruce really was, designed to keep him off guard.
“Fine,” he said, and lashed out with his right fist.
Lex dodged and spun into a kick, which Bruce took on his hip and grabbed Lex’s ankle, sending Lex to the mat. Lex sprang up as if his shoulders were magnetically repelled by the floor. The parameters of the fight were clear. He had a longer reach than Lex and a hell of a lot more strength. Lex was fast and in no way considered this a game.
They traded and dodged blows for several minutes. Lex did substantially more dodging than Bruce. He was stronger than Bruce initially thought, as Bruce discovered when he let Lex close enough to land an uppercut. And the left-handedness was useful for training purposes.
After five minutes, Bruce's right ear was ringing and he could taste blood from his lip and nose. Lex's left eye was already swelling closed, and he held his right shoulder back in a way that suggested moderate damage. He was still just as fast as he'd been in the opening seconds, though, and Bruce was beginning to wonder whether he'd have to let the Batman out to win.
Then Lex zigged when the smart money was all on zag, and Bruce’s fist caught him on the side of his chest. Bruce could hear the snap of ribs breaking, and he pulled away in horror as Lex looked down at his fist with a genuine smile.
The noise continued, and it wasn’t Lex’s ribs but a window shattering inwards.
What was Superman doing here? Lex followed Bruce’s stunned gaze and smiled wider, even as his hand went to his chest in instinctive, belated self-protection.
Superman was glaring at him with what looked weirdly like betrayal – he spared a moment to turn the same expression on Lex’s bodyguard – and Bruce briefly wished for the lead-lined vial of mineral he’d added to the suit for this trip, though it was back at his hotel with everything else.
“What are you *doing*? You could kill him.”
Bruce couldn’t contest the accusation, because he could and he’d wanted to, and what that said about his sexuality -- and probably his sanity -- was not at all pleasant.
“Don’t worry, Superman. I’m saving myself for you.” There was blood on Lex’s chin after he finished speaking.
The bodyguard was muttering into a phone.
Superman pretended to ignore Lex. “Mr. Wayne, I don’t know what you do in Gotham, but in Metropolis we frown on this type of behavior.”
“In other words,” Lex said helpfully, “Superman says to go pick on someone your own size. I started the fight, alien,” he paused to turn his head and cough into a clenched fist, “and I’ll heal. I always heal; like fucking Tithonus, asked for health but forgot to ask not to get hurt.”
“Luthor,” Superman said, his blue eyes shining with regret and worse.
“Heroes,” Lex said with contempt and started walking to the door, even as it opened and admitted two worried-looking people with medical kits. He moved as if he’d break open if he wobbled even a bit.
Superman’s hands twitched, as if he wanted to reach out. When Lex and his attendants had left the room, he turned his attention back to Bruce. “Lex Luthor is – he’s not well, Mr. Wayne. I don’t know why you’re here, but I advise you to stay away from him.”
And the gym was empty except for Bruce himself, shattered safety glass like sharp drops of water across the black mat. Bruce blinked, looked out at the view of the Metropolis skyline through the destroyed window, and then examined his bruised and split-knuckled hands.
This is going swimmingly, the Batman whispered. This city doesn’t want you. Go home.
Yet he hadn’t figured out the mystery of Clark Kent, and now there was the equal mystery of why Superman was acting as Lex Luthor’s belated guardian angel. Luthor was going global, and the Batman couldn’t pretend that Gotham was separate from the rest of the world. Ra's al Ghul had shown him that.
If Superman and Luthor were more than simple nemeses, Batman would have to be aware of that. Obsession, especially reciprocated obsession, was more dangerous than any rational villainy or heroism.
Selina and Harvey had shown him that.
But neither Harvey nor Selina could punch a hole through a mountain, no matter how bad things got. He couldn’t say the same about Superman. No, the Batman needed more information.
He tried to shake off the feeling that his presence itself was somehow destabilizing as he headed towards the elevators, out of the LexCorp complex. Superman follows Luthor and Luthor follows Kent. So was there a third side to the triangle?
****
"I'm very pleased that you contacted me, Mr. Wayne," Lois Lane said, wrapping her hands around her coffee. Her manicure was a few days old, the polish the color of a robin's breast. "But my sources tell me that you never give interviews. What's changed? And please," she leaned forward, her blouse parting a fraction more, "don't tell me that it's my charm and grace, because I hate to walk out on a man so soon after I've met him."
Bruce smiled his brainless playboy smile at her. "I met your partner Clark Kent in Gotham recently, and he spoke highly of you."
Lane leaned back and took a sip of coffee, her brown eyes missing nothing as she stared at him. "Clark didn't mention you."
He shrugged. "My reason for contacting you is rather embarrassing." He paused long enough for her to school her face into a welcoming, friendly expression that didn't quite hide the shark fins cruising behind her eyes. "You've interviewed Superman."
She nodded.
"I – I want to know what he's like. In person."
"You want to know what Superman is like," she repeated, as if he were a bit slow.
He nodded sincerely. "The behind-the-scenes story, the things that don't get into the published interview. He's a hero – well, I don't need to tell you, but – I admire him tremendously. So, if you'll tell me –"
Lane looked at him skeptically, doubtless wondering if he were a front for someone trying to find Superman's weaknesses. As long as she was worried about that, she wouldn't pay much attention to his other questions.
At last, she leaned forward, her nails grazing the surface of the table. Bruce almost expected to hear the screech of metal scratching. "All right, Mr. Wayne. A backstage pass, in return for an exclusive interview on Wayne Industries' recent activities."
He smiled. "You might be disappointed. I don't pay much attention to that sort of thing, but I'll tell you whatever I can. And, please: call me Bruce."
After that, the interview went smoothly enough. He said nice things about his board of directors, and she told him useless Superman trivia, like the maximum number of people he'd rescued in any one day. He described the glittering life of a useless multibillionaire, and she recapitulated the material in her published interviews with Superman. He gave her boarding school stories, which led to a question about Lex that required actual deflection and denial, and she gave him behind-the-scenes anecdotes showing that Superman was just as nice a guy – an alien – in private as in public.
Bruce recalled some of Kent's editorial comments, which weren't as favorable to Superman as the average Metropolist columnist's, and certainly not as glowing as Lane's hagiography. No direct criticism, nothing like what Lex Luthor risked saying against the world's most popular superhero, but always a tone of distance, surprising in someone who'd had as much direct contact with Superman as Kent had. He asked Lane whether Kent shared her high opinion.
She shrugged, her shoulders drawing together as if she were slightly uncomfortable. "They really respect each other, but they don’t hang out much. I think Superman's a little goody-two-shoes for Clark. All that wholesomeness intimidates him."
Bruce raised an eyebrow, smiling with just a hint of incredulity. "Clark doesn't seem like the type to be easily intimidated."
"Off the record, Bruce?"
"Yes?" His expression was pleasant, unthreatening. He knew which muscles were contracted.
Lane stared at him; he could almost feel her gaze bouncing off him. "About Clark. You know how some people repress because they think if they start something, they won't ever be able to stop? That's Clark. Right after he started at the Planet, he discovered sex. He's never really slowed down. Some woman or man is always calling to see whether he's available, or to see what happened when he didn't show up for a date. He tends to blow people off when something better comes along, and by 'something better' I mean 'someone he hasn't already hooked up with.' I love him dearly, but not even FEMA and the Justice League combined could clean up the disaster that is his personal life. I think he's worried that if Superman knew him better, he'd lose respect. Superman isn't the type to break promises or treat the Metropolis white pages as his version of a little black book."
Bruce kept his face distantly amused as he wondered just how much of a fool he was. "To be honest, Clark sounds like he's a lot more my speed than Superman. I'm more about variety than commitment."
Lois Lane was a good enough reporter that she didn't show the contempt she must be feeling. "I guess it's a good thing that not everyone can be Superman. It gives us someone to look up to."
Bruce nodded politely and turned the conversation to more social matters.
****
After the interview, Bruce went to the main branch of the Metropolis Public Library to access the minor local papers that weren't archived anywhere else and to review the material that his research assistants had put together for him, each of them responsible for only a small piece and unaware of the others' existences. It was a methodology that had served him well in the past, allowing him to assemble relevant information and synthesize it without needing to rely on the discretion of someone who knew where Bruce's interests really lay. He sat at a terminal in the corner of the main reading room, quickly breaking through the library's security so he could make the computer do his bidding, and emanated enough hostility that no one came near him while he worked.
He reviewed the earliest reports about Luthor's struggles with Superman. Luthor had managed to suppress most such accounts, since they weren't consonant with his image as Metropolis's prodigal son, but he hadn't been able to get at the Department of Homeland Security.
Superman had been active in Metropolis for several months by then. He'd given two exclusive interviews to Lois Lane, and the full-page headlines and one-hour news specials had fallen back to two-column pieces below the fold and five minutes on the nightly news.
Then Superman had destroyed a research facility engaged in illegal animal testing – preparatory, Bruce was sure, to illegal human testing. The company was a LexCorp subsidiary, about five miles of paper insulated from Luthor, but his nonetheless. According to the janitor who'd talked to the investigator two days after the incident (and who had disappeared shortly after that), Superman had smashed the medical equipment and melted the computers to slag. Then, what looked like a mighty wind swept through the cage room, after which all the doors were open and the rats and monkeys began pouring out of their prisons, adding to the chaos. The janitor didn't know what was being tested, but Superman must not have thought the animals were dangerous. Either that, or he didn't care.
Superman was corralling the researchers, putting them with admirable efficiency in the very cages he'd just emptied, when a black-clad security force arrived. They'd been wearing masks. The janitor had thought they were US Special Forces, and the interviewer had done nothing to enlighten him. Superman's eyes had narrowed and he'd started towards the newcomers. To the janitor's shock and dismay, he stopped halfway and took a faltering step back. His face, the janitor reported, showed no fear, only resolution and – it seemed – disappointment. The people in black had been carrying thick staves, like police riot sticks but tipped with something strange and green, their guns holstered at their hips.
"You've had your fun," the lead person – woman, the janitor emphasized, as if he couldn't believe it himself – had said. "Now get out."
And Superman had gone, shakily. When he'd left, the glowing stones embedded in the commandos' nightsticks had faded to a dull dark green.
The NSA had concluded that this was Luthor's security force. Industrial espionage and bribery revealed that Luthor had a large stockpile of the green stones, but their provenance was still unknown.
Bruce had resources not available to the NSA. He'd been able to track the mineral back to LuthorCorp holdings in Metropolis as early as 2002, when Lionel Luthor was still in charge and Lex was in exile in Smallville.
Smallville, home of Clark Kent.
Bruce pulled up other databases. Government surveys, property records, news reports. There was a point at which absence of information became as telling as the presence of suspicious data. There was a hole in recorded history, a hole in the middle of Kansas.
Smallville, site of the largest meteor strike in the US in the past hundred years. Smallville, where death rates had been more appropriate for a war zone than a Kansas hamlet and large insurance claims more common than county fairs. Common wisdom held that LuthorCorp Plant #3 was responsible for the many and varied ways in which people met their dooms in Smallville, but Bruce had never found common people to be all that wise.
Working hypothesis: Luthor's mineral came from the meteors, which were related to the fact that Superman first appeared in Kansas. As for all the deaths, maybe meteor residue was equally dangerous to humans.
It was all confusing, illogical, tangled and ugly, with the promise of something uglier still behind the alien's perfect face.
The NSA report also revealed that the government had approached Luthor to get its own supply of the mineral. When Luthor politely told the feds to fuck off, the FBI (with the highly illegal assistance of *actual* Special Forces) had raided seven LexCorp facilities simultaneously, to no avail. The refined bars of mineral so carefully documented by the snitches were gone, dissolved into air, or at least hidden by more reliable employees. Only a speedy invocation of the Patriot Act III had kept Luthor's lawyers from publicly crucifying the government.
As it was, Luthor ended up with five very lucrative no-bid military contracts, while the NSA sulked and plotted to seize samples the next time Superman confronted a LexCorp operation. This meant, however, that Luthor's research installations were de facto guarded by the best American technology had to offer, and whether for that or some other reason, Superman had yet to revisit any of the LexCorp operations of which the NSA was aware.
Combined with what Bruce had witnessed during his visit to Luthor the other day, the facts suggested an odd symbiosis, each protecting the other from the rest of the world. Or was the antagonism fully feigned, the two playing an even deeper game, Clark Kent some sort of accomplice? No, Bruce couldn't believe that what he'd seen was play-acting. Lex's contempt had been too raw, and he'd always had a far worse poker face than he liked to think.
Times like this, Bruce could have used a sidekick to discuss the possibilities, to offer a more human perspective. Bruce was never entirely sure he understood how people thought – and while that was irrelevant to Superman and quite possibly to Luthor, he still would have liked to hear a trusted person's opinion about the whole mess.
But to trust another person, someone who wasn't Alfred, who hadn't spent his life with Bruce, who'd have an agenda of his own – it was dangerous, and not worth thinking about.
****
"Clark Kent."
Bruce hesitated, though he hadn't meant to. "Clark, it's Bruce Wayne."
"Bruce!" He sounded sincerely pleased, if a little surprised. "How have you been?"
"I've been well," he said, trying to relax into his role as empty suit. "I'm in Metropolis on business, and I wondered if you wanted to have dinner."
There was a pause. "I'd ask what business," Clark said, "but I'm guessing you don't really want to tell a reporter." His tenor voice had no cajoling in it, only amusement.
"Come on, Clark," he said, "you know I don't have much to do with the day-to-day operations of Wayne Industries. Anyway, I just gave an interview to your lovely partner, so there's nothing left to investigate. The only question you should be asking me is where I'm taking you to dinner."
Clark chuffed, somewhere between charmed and exasperated. "Well, I wouldn't want to disappoint you."
In the event, Clark was thirty minutes late, much as Lois Lane had suggested. Bruce hadn't had that happen to him in – ever, in fact. He should have found it a useful lesson in humility, but he felt wounded instead. It made him wonder about the women he'd stood up over the years, when the Batman was too busy to come up for air. Had they felt personally insulted? He'd always thought their protests were mostly for show, because they hadn't known Bruce at all, not really, so they couldn't be too hurt. The curious emptiness he felt as he nursed his slowly warming chardonnay suggested that he might have been wrong.
When he finally arrived at the restaurant, Clark's wide grin as he caught sight of Bruce was almost enough to make Bruce forget the last half hour. There was nothing to suggest that Clark's charm was cultivated. It was more effective for seeming natural.
Bruce stood and shook Clark's hand. It was warm, the skin soft in the way he hadn't thought a farmer's son's could be. Clark didn't even have a writer's callus, he noticed – a real child of the computer age.
They made not-quite-idle conversation through dinner. Clark had spent considerable time in Africa, as Bruce already knew from his researches, and his travels had left him with a number of entertaining stories to share. Bruce matched them with stories from his perambulations in Asia, the ones that didn't reveal too much about him other than a taste for adventure.
When the dessert plates and coffee cups had been cleared, Bruce looked across the table. "Come back to my hotel."
Clark smiled, and if Bruce hadn't known better, he would have sworn that the room got brighter. "I was hoping you'd say that."
When they'd collected their respective briefcases and overcoats, Clark suggested that they walk back – it was only six blocks, and a beautiful night, the moon brighter over Metropolis than it ever seemed to get above Gotham. Bruce agreed. Well-lit or not, the night always had a calming effect on him.
They walked past cozy restaurants and then hit a block of businesses closed for the night. A neon sign flickering in a copy shop window made Clark's face shine red and blue, the colors of flashing police lights.
The street was empty except for the two of them, passing by unoccupied parking meters and trashcans newly emptied and ready for tomorrow's commuters.
Bruce automatically noted the footsteps behind them. Three men, walking quickly, one whose foot dragged a little. No talking, which was a bad sign.
"Hey."
Preying on two fairly large men, a worse sign. Bruce turned and saw two men with guns and a third who just had a bad attitude. Clark was stiff beside him, frozen either in fear or in hopes of preventing any accidental escalation.
"Give us your wallets," the man in the middle demanded. He had one of the guns; the guy on his right had the other. The third, that was the problem – he was bouncing up and down on his feet, high on something and ready to create a fight. One part of Bruce's mind recorded their descriptions, cataloging moles and scars and clothing, while another prepared to fight.
He stepped forward and in front of Clark, shielding him.
"Bruce, just –"
"Run," he said as he threw his briefcase to the side; he would have used it as a weapon, but it was awkwardly sized. Instead, he just kicked the man in front of him as his right hand swept out to knock the gun out of the second man's hand. The one in the middle collapsed, losing his grip on his gun as he struggled to breathe; he'd be out of the picture for a good thirty seconds minimum.
Left hand punch – the third man wasn't so high on drugs that he couldn't dodge, though. The rattle of footsteps behind him suggested that Clark had wisely taken Bruce's suggestion. He was smart enough to call the cops as soon as he was at a safe distance, so Bruce had better make this quick.
The second man was still on his feet, looking for his gun on the sidewalk. Bruce took another step forward and slammed his fist into the side of the man's head, sending him toppling back into a parking meter.
A side kick kept the man on the ground where he was, and then there was just the third. Unpredictable, possibly not sensitive to pain – and, Bruce saw, holding a knife in each hand, shifting his feet with the grace of an experienced fighter. He didn't need to see the prison tattoos to know that this one was the worst of them.
Bruce leaned back, avoiding the first, almost casual thrust. The man smiled at him, predator to prey, and darted forwards, close enough that Bruce could see his blown pupils. Bruce ducked to one side and twisted, managing to get his hand on the man's upper arm and shove. The momentum pushed them apart as Bruce pivoted and brought his leg up for a solid kick on the outer thigh, which caused the man to stagger back a step.
His teeth were bared as he recovered his balance, twirling the knife in his right hand in a way that was probably supposed to be frightening. Twirling with only one hand meant his left was weak, nondominant, unlikely to be good for precision – Bruce didn't think this guy was good enough to be playing him. Bruce took the opportunity to shrug off his overcoat and wrap it around his arm. He missed his real suit, but this would provide some protection from slashes.
"Pretty boy wants to play, I'll play," the man said, just a little bit louder than conversationally.
Bruce nodded at him, and he rushed forwards. Bruce dropped down, braced on his hands, and swept a leg out, tripping the man and then somersaulting forwards, out of the way of the strike he delivered on his way down. His left-hand knife clattered on the sidewalk as he released it in order to keep from falling face-first. Bruce jumped to his feet, spinning, and managed a good kick just below the man's left shoulder before having to break off the attack to deal with assailant number two, who was moving around at the edges of Bruce's vision. Bruce spun, grabbed him, and shoved down so that the back of his head met the top of the parking meter with a meaty thunk.
Then he had to dodge around the parking meter and the slumping body as the third man, now armed with only one knife, came at him, face purpling with fury and effort. Bruce threw his arm up, feeling the blade catch on his sleeve and then drag through the coat as he twisted it, locking their arms together and trapping the knife so it couldn't do further damage. He pulled until he could see the man's back, his dirty neck and ragged-collared sweatshirt, and wrapped his left arm around the man's neck, squeezing so hard that consciousness left within seconds.
Bruce disentangled himself, collecting the knife on the way, and pulled back, letting the man slump to the ground with his compatriots. He looked at his forearm – the overcoat and suit jacket were destroyed, but the dress shirt underneath was only frayed, and he'd probably get away with less than a welt.
While he waited for the police, he retrieved the other discarded weapons and examined the attackers. Number one was conscious, but in no mood to go anywhere; he looked up at Bruce and ducked his head like a beaten dog.
They didn't look like Luthor's goons, which might have been part of the point. If Lex had wanted to see him in real action, as opposed to sparring, he might have sent them. Or it might be just another random violent incident, the kind that he seemed to attract the way other people were particularly vulnerable to mosquitoes.
"Bruce!"
"Clark," Bruce called back, without taking his eyes from the bodies on the street. Clark moved fast and light, slowing to a halt about six feet away. "You called the police?"
"Yeah – my God, what did you -- ?"
"I hope they get here soon. I don't want to press my luck."
"Are you all right?"
Bruce decided he liked Clark even more, based on the honest concern in his voice and the fact that he had yet to mention turning this into a story. "I'm fine," he said, letting some amusement into his voice. "My coat's a mess, but that's what tailors are for."
"You were – really impressive," Clark said, edging around so that he could see Bruce's face. "I mean, what I saw of it." He didn't seem to know where to look, his gaze bouncing from the would-be muggers to Bruce's face to his arm.
Bruce shrugged, then decided that his role required something more boastful. "I've taken some self-defense classes, and of course I stay in shape."
A frown. "Still, I wish you had just given them what they wanted."
"They didn’t look like they’d be satisfied with that," he said.
"You think your money makes you invulnerable," Clark continued, as if Bruce hadn't spoken. "It just makes you a bigger target."
"Maybe I know that, and I'm ready," Bruce suggested.
Clark shook his head with what looked like regret. "It's more dangerous than you think. It always is. You can't control – you could have been *shot*."
"But I wasn't," he pointed out.
At that point, the sirens of the approaching police car took over, and they waited for the cops.
Unfortunately, the officers insisted that Bruce go down to the station to give his statement – understandable, given that he'd taken down three attackers, but still cramping his style, and Bruce was careful to play the nonchalant and jaded aesthete, distantly amused by all the fuss, not quite understanding that playing his martial arts games in a real-life situation had put him in danger. The sergeant in charge got angry with him, another unpleasant necessity, but he managed to keep his flippancy under control so that he got out with only a five-minute lecture and a promise to return to town should his testimony be needed at trial.
When he was finally released, he was not shocked to find Clark Kent waiting for him, his coat on his lap and his eyes behind his glasses observing every detail of the waiting room.
"This must be familiar territory to you," Bruce said as he pulled out his phone to call for a car.
"Yeah, I worked Metro for a few years when I – have you been checking on me?" Clark blinked at him, intrigued and a few inches from suspicious.
Bruce finished the call and smiled self-deprecatingly. "I wanted to see how you wrote. Prize committees are one thing, keeping *my* interest is another – and you are good."
"Thanks," Clark said wryly.
"While we're waiting to be picked up," Bruce suggested, sitting down next to Clark on an ugly orange chair whose graffiti dated it to no later than 1978, "why don't you tell me some of your favorite stories from the Metro section."
Clark looked skeptical, but didn't say more about Bruce's snooping. As a reporter, he had to have some sympathy for researching a potential subject.
"When I was just starting at the *Planet*," he said at last, leaning back into his bowl-shaped plastic chair, "Superman was still pretty new. There were lots of – human interest stories, I guess. How are grade schools being affected by Superman's existence, how's fashion affected, the stock market, the Billboard Top Ten, the price of tea in China. *Everything* had to have Superman in it to get any attention. Oh," he said and checked Bruce's expression, almost too quickly for Bruce to catch it, "Lois says you're a big fan, and it's not anything against Superman, just the *reaction* to him – which was a little over the top. Anyway, there I was, stuck on the Metro beat.
"So I followed this one officer around for a week. He helped organize a neighborhood watch, talked to kids at a couple of schools, investigated some muggings – ordinary stuff. Meanwhile, Superman was saving lives, defusing bombs – I remember he gave CPR to a dog that had nearly drowned in Central Park." Clark winced in involuntary sympathy, as Bruce was tempted to do – smelling a dog's breath was bad enough without mouth-to-mouth.
"That was the same day Officer Frank walked into a convenience store in the middle of a hold-up. I'd been called away on other business, so I didn't see it, but he talked the robber into putting down his weapon. And then the store owner, who'd had his unlicensed handgun pointed at the guy under the counter, got so excited that he squeezed the trigger and shot Officer Frank in the arm. When I got there, the EMTs were treating him, and I knew the dog was going to be on the front page and he was going to be in the middle of the Metro section."
Bruce leaned further towards Clark, drawn in by his evident passion, the throb of injustice in his voice.
"I asked him what he thought about Superman. Whether he resented Superman, whether he thought Superman was making his job seem silly. He said Superman and the metahumans like Batman and the Flash made his job even more important, to remind people that you didn't have to be superstrong or superfast or invulnerable to do the right thing. That it was important to protect and serve other people even though it put you in danger. Even though you were no different from anyone else. *Because* you were no different from anyone else.
"I wrote my story about him, and Perry White put it in the Sunday commentary section." Clark smiled now, his eyes unfocused as he remembered. "Lost a few subscriptions, people who couldn't hear a word that implied that Superman wasn't the be-all and end-all. But we got a lot of thank-yous from firefighters and police officers, too."
"What happened to Officer Frank?"
Clark's smile widened. "He retired a few years later. I get a Christmas card from him every year. He still talks to kids at public schools."
Bruce had expected a rather worse end to the story. In Gotham, Officer Frank would have ended up stabbed by some fifteen-year-old punk.
He was also, as always, amused to hear Batman referred to as a metahuman. He was very much in agreement with Officer Frank about the need for humans to fight their own battles – though to be fair, being a billionaire didn’t hurt his ability to get the right equipment to enhance his capabilities.
"Bruce," Clark said quietly. Bruce looked at him. "You don't mind that I ran?" Clark was shy now, afraid that he'd shamed himself.
Running was a lot better than standing frozen, waiting like a rabbit for whatever fate a criminal decided to inflict. "Of course not. As you pointed out, it's not sane to stand up to armed men."
"You did," Clark pointed out.
"I'm a little bit crazy." Bruce smiled, to make clear that he wasn't taking any of this seriously. "And insanely lucky, as that cop was happy to tell me at length. I don't think the reality of it has set in – it feels like a game, or a play."
Clark opened his mouth as if to ask a question, then shut it. Bruce's phone buzzed to let him know that the car had arrived.
"Shall we go?" He rose, and with a sweep of his hand invited Clark to precede him out the door.
The car turned out to be a long black limousine. Bruce Wayne couldn't afford anything less flashy.
The driver rushed out to open the door for them.
As the car started to move, Bruce turned, leaning over Clark, braced with one arm as his other reached for Clark's glasses. "Maybe you can take my mind off reckless endangerment."
Clark let his head fall back further, his lips parting. Bruce carefully removed the glasses, noting as he folded them and put them on the seat that the prescription must be extremely mild; the view through them seemed undistorted. Clark was either mildly hypochondriacal or convinced he'd look more reporterly with glasses.
The kiss was warm, comforting, as if Clark thought he needed to take care. He moved until his hands cupped Clark's shoulders, pressing him into the softly creaking leather. Clark opened his mouth and started kissing back in earnest. His hands rose up, brushing Bruce's upper arms. Hot mouth, big hands. It was nice to be with someone who didn't seem little and fragile, even knowing that he could crush Clark's windpipe with one blow.
They were playing, wrestling one another for dominance. Clark tried to pull Bruce's shirt off, which would have been a bad idea with the lights on because of all the scars and bruises.
He pulled away from Clark's mouth and bit kisses over his chin, down his neck, over his Adam's apple. Clark made a soft noise and arched up.
Bruce was flexible, but he was in an awkward position. He slid down so that he was on his knees between Clark's legs, undoing his belt and trousers and burying his face in the crease of Clark's thigh, where his scent was strongest.
He smelled – earthy, with a strange hint of ozone, the smell of new wood exposed by a broken branch.
Clark groaned and Bruce stopped teasing, moving his mouth to suck on the fabric above Clark's hardening cock. "This is turning out to be a really good day," Clark said to the ceiling.
Bruce wondered if Luthor had managed to bug the limo. The good thing about being rich, dumb and pretty was that he didn't have to worry about blackmail. So he sucked men off in limousines; no one would stop inviting him to the best parties if pictures showed up in the Gotham Gazette. Actually, it might even improve his image. Clark wasn't vulnerable to that sort of pressure, either, not if Lois Lane was right about his promiscuity; and Bruce already knew that Lex had some obsession with Clark, so if he did track them he'd keep Clark's secrets for his own private enjoyment.
Maybe he should have said something about possible surveillance, Bruce thought as he tugged down Clark's boxers and licked down his cock. Just because Luthor wasn't going to go public didn't mean Clark wouldn't object to being observed. Clark moaned, his hands resting gently on Bruce's hair, as Bruce ran his tongue back up along the shaft and sucked him in.
After a few minutes, he was able to relax into the moment, alert for surprises but otherwise focused on the feel, taste and sound of the man underneath him. It was even better than fighting, because there was little need to plan ahead, just letting their bodies negotiate towards pleasure.
Clark's hands rubbed over his shoulders, a mere graze but enough to make him open his jaw and take Clark's cock as far down as he could.
"That's really good," Clark said, as if he were surprised. "Suck me, yeah, been thinking about this since you called –"
Bruce worked his tongue up and down, and Clark shifted to grunts. His muscles were long, lean and solid under his awkwardly fitting clothes; he needed a tailor.
Wet sounds, along with Clark's panting breaths, filled the back of the limo. It was dark and warm; his fingers sought out Clark's thighs, damp with sweat as he pushed Clark's legs apart against the resistance of his trousers.
"Oh God," Clark managed. "You – you are so – that's so good – harder, now!"
Bruce was amused at the disappearance of Clark's good manners, but he complied, hollowing out his cheeks with the force of the suction.
With one last, drawn-out groan, he came, pumping down Bruce's throat, his hands raised to clasp his own head as if holding himself together.
Bruce pulled away with a smile just as the limo came to a halt. With Clark slumped against the seat, it was up to him to rearrange Clark's clothes, making him decent in time to allow the driver to open the door and let them out.
Clark stayed in the car a moment, recovering his breath, but he followed Bruce inside the hotel with a smile on his face.
****
"I want to fuck you," Bruce said when they were in his suite. Clark's attention had been wandering to the view over Metropolis, which was glittering like a dragon's hoarded treasure in the darkness below. Bruce's declaration got that focus snapped back to him.
"Sounds like fun to me," Clark said, smiling. It was a blinding smile, wide and toothy and careless. Bruce found himself staring. He'd known beautiful women and men, but mostly they'd acknowledged their beauty and polished it to a fine gloss or, blaming it for their pain, tried to destroy it. Clark Kent wore his like it was a blessing to be shared with other people, but nothing to him in itself.
His eyes were dark, wide with desire, the city lit up behind him making him seem to glow around the edges.
Bruce crossed the room in three long strides, his mouth on Clark’s almost before his hands found the broad shoulders, turning that smile into something more specific. His hands tugged at Clark’s shirt, unbuttoning and sliding it half off, his fingers moving across Clark’s skin. Even on his shoulders and back, that warm skin was as soft and fine as talc, so different from Bruce’s callused hands that they might have been different species. He nipped at Bruce’s mouth as Bruce backed them towards the bedroom.
Their progress was halted when Clark tripped over his own feet, wobbling precariously. His arms flew out to the sides for balance. Bruce grabbed his shirtfront and held on, not having to fake a smile at the comically dismayed expression on Clark’s face, so different from the suave man who’d approached him in Gotham. Rocking forward almost to the point of pitching into Bruce’s arms, Clark barely managed to right himself and Bruce let go.
“Sorry,” Clark said, smiling again. “You’re kind of distracting.”
“I could say the same for you,” Bruce said, hearing how his voice had roughened and deepened with lust.
The smile edged towards a smirk. Clark shrugged the shirt from his shoulders and let it fall as he turned to precede Bruce into the bedroom. Bruce heard the click of a belt buckle, then watched Clark cast his leather belt to one side with the carelessness of a very messy man. The muscles of his back stood out in golden relief above the tan slacks. There was a slight gap between the fabric and his skin, a line of shadow like the terminator between night and day.
Bruce followed, tugging at his tie. Despite the sound of Clark's pants falling to the floor, he carefully rolled the tie, took off his cufflinks, and hung his shirt and pants in the closet before turning to the bed. It was worth the wait; Clark lay naked on his back, one knee drawn up and tilted to the side in a classic pinup pose, his head pillowed on his bent arms. His smooth chest reminded Bruce of Michelangelo's David, or perhaps an athlete on a Greek vase, ruddy against the dark hotel bedspread. His cock, half-hard, lay against his thigh, a shade darker than the rest of his skin.
Clark grinned up with him with complete confidence – and complete justification, Bruce had to admit. Before joining Clark on the bed, he walked to the lamp over the nightstand and turned it off, leaving only the lights of the city to illuminate them. Light in Metropolis seemed somehow brighter than light in Gotham.
He rolled onto the bed and over Clark, retaking his mouth as if there'd been no interruption. He rested most of his weight on his arms, bracketing Clark, but pressed their lower bodies together. Their legs rubbed against one another. Bruce liked the friction, the feel of the hard lines of their shinbones and the yielding heat of the muscled calves.
Clark had a gorgeous chest, the pectorals outlined like an anatomy diagram. Bruce licked and bit his way across, sucking at one nipple until it was as red as Clark’s lips. Clark’s head was tossed back against the pillows, the line of his throat like a rainbow’s arc.
"Like this," Bruce said, pulling back and urging Clark to turn over on his hands and knees. It was a good position, one where he could see the beauty of the man beneath him, see and not be seen.
Bruce stopped to grab the bottle of lubricant he’d left by the bedside when he unpacked. It was cool and shiny on his fingers, and he rubbed them together to warm them before moving between Clark's legs and pressing inside. Clark made encouraging noises while Bruce squeezed the back of his thigh with his free hand. The skin there, damp with sweat, was just as sleek and perfect as the rest of him, the large muscle yielding when he ran his fingers down, not quite hard enough to raise a welt. Bruce slid his hand down to caress the crease at the back of Clark's knee. "Ah!" Clark said, and Bruce pressed a little harder.
But he wanted to be inside Clark, so he took his hand back and grabbed a condom, also waiting by the bedside, ripping it open with his teeth and sliding it on himself as fast as he could.
Clark sighed with satisfaction when he removed his fingers and spread Clark’s cheeks with his hands, and sighed again as he slid inside. Bruce watched the muscles in Clark’s back, like a map of some unconquered country, the broad shoulders narrowing to the waist, the slight widening at the hips, the sweet dip at the small of his back leading down to his tight and welcoming ass.
“Any time you’re ready,” Clark said, his voice strained, and Bruce began to move.
They found a rhythm quickly, Bruce braced with one hand on the bed and the other between Clark’s shoulders, Clark moving back in counterpoint with Bruce’s thrusts. Clark had balanced himself on one arm; he jacked himself with the other, the wet sound like a backbeat for Bruce to pace himself with.
They were racing, together and separately, towards the horizon. Clark’s pleased grunts were easy to interpret, his body shaking beneath Bruce’s every time Bruce pushed into him. Bruce moved his hand down Clark’s side and curled over him, breathing in the scent at the nape of his neck, tasting him there with tongue and teeth. Cocoa and oranges, sweeter than Bruce would have expected but somehow just right. The rest of the world fell away, leaving the two of them locked tight, moon and planet orbiting each other, Clark pulling him in with the force of high tide.
When Clark stiffened and called out wordlessly, his hips jerking out of rhythm, Bruce followed, the orgasm rushing out of him in white waves. Only his hand at Clark’s waist prevented him from collapsing where he was; instead, he pulled off, quickly disposing of the condom, rolling onto his back while Clark slumped face-forward onto the bed.
If he’d moved to avoid the wet spot, Bruce would have let him get closer, but he appeared content as he was.
The noises from outside, distant sirens and the background hum of a working city, seeped back into Bruce’s consciousness as he laid back. The lights from outside played across Clark’s back, false bruises. Clark’s eyes were open, observing Bruce and the rest of his surroundings.
This was a chance for a reporter, or even a lover, to ask more intimate questions, learning more about his real beliefs and wants, getting information so he could develop theories about who Bruce was and why. Clark stayed silent.
An ordinary man might have felt ignored or unwanted, but Bruce liked the idea that Clark wasn't trying to know him. He had secrets, but he wasn't hiding them from Clark in particular, any more than he was keeping secrets from anyone else whose life only knocked up against his. Saying otherwise would be like saying he was hiding from a person he bumped into on the subway because that person never knew his name.
He liked Clark’s lack of curiosity, and at the same time it made him curious himself. As if maybe Clark was too wrapped up in his own secrets to pay attention to anyone else’s.
He hadn't forgotten that Clark Kent was mixed up with Lex Luthor somehow, but he was fairly sure that Clark was not on Luthor's side.
"What do you think of Lex Luthor?" Bruce asked.
Clark blinked. "What do you mean?" He lifted his head from the pillow, leaning on his forearms, looking at the headboard rather than at Bruce.
Bruce hadn't expected stonewalling. "You've written about him, you've followed his rise over the years." He wasn't going to mention their youthful connection – wouldn't want Clark to get the idea that Bruce was checking up on him that seriously. "I'm interested in your perspective on the man you've studied so closely."
"Oh." Clark's eyes dipped. "He's dangerous."
"You can't stop there, not after such a provocative statement."
"He'll take every advantage – he doesn't believe in rules, only in not getting caught. And he wants it all, power, wealth, public approval, fear, obedience. There's a hole inside him, Bruce. I think he knows nothing's ever going to fill it, but he keeps trying anyway. That's what makes him dangerous: he *wants* so much and he doesn't know how to stop."
"And your mission is to keep him under control."
Clark rolled over, making his distractingly well-formed back into a wall between them, turning his face away. "My mission is to let everybody know the truth and hope that that's good enough."
****
Bruce started awake, the rattle of pearls on rain-damp concrete fading into the prosaic nighttime creaking of strange hotel furniture.
Someone was watching him.
He turned to find Clark, stretched out with one hand propping up his head, his expression thoughtful, as far as Bruce could tell in the near-blackness.
"Do you want to talk about it?" Clark asked.
"No," he said automatically. It was always the same dream. His parents were falling, falling, and he knew that when they stopped the world would end. There were a thousand bats, swirling above them like the funnel of a tornado. They were calling for help, and Bruce couldn't move.
The bats screamed out for help, never his parents. It was already too late for them. Bruce couldn't remember his mother's face, a blur in the dream, though the color of her dress that night came through every time. He remembered so little of them. He remembered watching his father shave, the gleam of the straight razor and the silken smoothness of the shaving cream. The smell of pine always took him back to that steamy bathroom, that interrupted ritual.
"My parents –" he said. "I was just – remembering."
"I'm sorry," Clark said, entirely sincere. "I was orphaned when I was very young. I don't remember my biological parents at all. I've often wanted to know what they were like, to have some memories of my own. But memories always have a price, I guess."
Bruce wondered whether he'd trade his knowledge of what he'd lost for Clark's complete uncertainty. Neither was right, neither was fair. He shrugged, as best he could with one shoulder pressed into the bed, and flipped the sweat-soaked sheet off of his body. In the night, his scars were invisible. He reached towards Clark, who was so hot that it was like putting his hand to a radiator, the warmth tangible from inches away. "Well, while you're up –"
Clark's voice held a smile. "I'd really like to, but I have to get going. Lois is going to be at my apartment in an hour or so for a stakeout, and I do *not* want to disappoint her. Even you aren't worth her wrath."
He sighed, already thinking about the patrol he'd do when Clark was gone. He couldn't afford to take a night off, even in a strange city. It was too easy to let his edge dull.
Some might say that was proof his weapon was too weak for the purpose to which he put it. But they'd never say that to his face.
Clark squeezed his shoulder and rolled out of the bed, his feet hitting the floor with a thump that sounded too gentle for a man of his size. Bruce let his hearing track Clark's actions in the dark, pulling on his clothes, very definitely *not* fumbling for his wallet or his shoes, as if he knew exactly where he'd put them before Bruce turned off the lights.
A spy, maybe? Pulitzer-winning journalist wasn't a particularly muted cover, though. And Clark had no military record. It was a puzzle.
Bruce just didn't know if he was the one to put it together.
further to follow ...
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*covets more*
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If it's a SV story, then there isn't really an underlying "integrity" requirement for it to conform to DCU canon. SV isn't *in* DCU canon; you can make up your own SV-version Bruce Wayne, Green Lantern, etc., without "violating" canon, because there isn't any.
Of course, there's the underlying problem that borrowing the name of an ill-understood DCU character and basically using him or her as an OC can lead to catastrophic Mary Sue-in-disguises (there are popular Mercys out there in SV fanfic that make me *weep blood,* not really because they're inconsistent with any form of DCU Mercy, but rather because they're such *badly-written and -designed characters*, but the author feels justified in foregrounding them because "Mercy is canonically important!"). I think a lot of the interest of introducing a broader DCU character into SV canon lies in how you adapt the preexisting material to the differing circumstances and needs of the SV universe, but I certainly wouldn't argue that that's the *only* possible way in which an extended-DCU character's presence can be good for a story.
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And, fair warning: Mercy eventually has dialogue in this one.
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Hey, I wrote a whole SV story from Mercy's POV (http://www.aliencorn.net/stories/protect.html) once. The inclusion of extended-DCU characters is just another potential avenue for fic writers to explore; like most avenues, it has its benefits and its perils (I yell about this *particular* set of perils more because I think many writers are particularly badly-placed to notice it). Badfic writers use it as a means to write badly, but they use everything else for that, too. ;)
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"He'll take every advantage – he doesn't believe in rules, only in not getting caught. And he wants it all, power, wealth, public approval, fear, obedience. There's a hole inside him, Bruce. I think he knows nothing's ever going to fill it, but he keeps trying anyway. That's what makes him dangerous: he *wants* so much and he doesn't know how to stop."
I really enjoyed seeing the Lex/Clark dynamic at work in this story- they're like a binary star system, pulled by one another's orbit and helpless to break away. This manwhore!Clark is facinating- and something I could see in the evolution of SV S-4 Clark becoming.
I look forward to more. *g* I'm hooked.
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*bookmarking*
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I like the way Bruce picks up on Clark's various oddities. Wonder how long it will take for him to put it together?
The martial artist in me sat up in interest when you introduced the kryptonite-laced singlesticks. Nice touch, that. I think there's a way for Superman to get around the problem, though.
Most people write Superman as being all about the powers. The JL stories especially annoy me with their tendency to have the metahuman types do damage control while Batman figures out the solutions. Clark/Kal-el speaks at least two languages that we know of (English and Kryptonian) but there are probably others. Clark was smart enough and a good enough writer to pick up a couple of Pulitzers, too, which isn't all that easy. He's competent to operate quite a few Kryptonian machinery, too.
Underestimating his intelligence is probably a mistake.
As a side note -- you indicated that Batman has so far refused League membership. Do you suppose that, when he finally accepts, he and Superman will avail themselves of the chances for 1/6 G sex in the League Watchtower on the moon?
Not on nights when they have monitor duty, of course. That would be wrong...
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Anyway, you may like what Clark uses against Kryptonite in one scene in Part II, which will be from his POV. He's not dumb, but he doesn't think the same way as the other two.
I haven't given much thought to 1/6 G sex. If you can already float, do you think it's much different?
Thanks for the comments!
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And I'm looking forward to your Superman's approach to solving the green K problem.
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1) He could melt {or vaporize) the K with heat vision. On second thought, though, melting it only turns it to liquid form and you've still got the same problem. Vaporizing it means turning it to gaseous form, which means he might inhale it, so scratch that too. Hm.
2) Superman has super-speed. There have been comics in the past where he races the Flash for one reason or another. When Flash goes into his speed thang normal humans essentially become statues (relatively speaaking). This gives him all the time in the world to do whatever he decides to do in any given situation. From the POV of the crooks, if Superman were to exercise this option, the kryptosticks would just seem to disappear. Something clever involving the laws of physics would probably be involved. Energy equals mass times velocity, you know.
3) Superman might prevail upon the kryptonian devices in his Fortress to come up with something. For example, a gun that spits out a quick-hardening epoxy containing enough lead to shield Superman from the K would work. Also, the visual of Superman packing "heat" might be interesting...
That's what I get off the top of my head. More ideas might occur with deeper consideration of the problem.
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2. Similar considerations -- but you'll see what I came up with soon.
3. Neat idea. Maybe also imbue his suit with lead -- that would shield, but leave his face free to he could see, etc. I wonder, though -- that might prevent the sun's energy from reaching enough of his body to charge him up.
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Do we know the effective range of green K radiation? At what point does he first feel the effects? Is it immediately debilitating or does the effect worsen with proximity? If so, what's the factor -- geometric? logarithmic? Presumably, from my reading of it in the old days, there's pain at first, followed by nausea and/or weakness, followed by coma and/or death.
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I can't wait to see where you are going with it.