This is Just Routine Part One

Clarity Scifiroots
Disclaimers apply. (A lot of dialogue is directly quoted or mimicked from the episode script.) Title from Afterhours' "There's Many Ways."
Rating: FRM
SPOILERS: The entire episode of "Vanguard" specifically, all mythos leading up to it
Summary: Bruce felt uneasy from the moment he met Alex Conners.
May!fic 21 of 31

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Bruce noticed the spark the instant Alex Conners sauntered up to Johnny, challenging his former teacher to see what he'd taken a decade ago; (a time when everyone in the room but Bruce had known John as Johnny the teacher and Johnny the fiancé.) A distinct look of interest lit up Alex's eyes and triggered a wave of uneasiness in Bruce.

"Who is he?" Bruce asked Sarah when the party turned to mingling. He watched Johnny settle next to Alex on one side of the room. The smiles Bruce had grown familiar with over the years alternated on Johnny's expression, sometimes giving way to other expressions Bruce had never seen.

Sarah smiled, a hint of pride in her eyes. "Alex Conners. One of Johnny's greatest achievements."

Bruce hid a grimace. "I'm afraid to ask," he said.

Thankfully Sarah seemed oblivious to his discomfort. "Johnny took him under his wing, helped him get a scholarship to MIT." She shook her head with a small grin of amusement. "Spent more time with that kid than he did me," she admitted.

The sinking feeling in his stomach tugged more insistently. "So our boy was into rescuing before he got knocked on the head," he said. He remembered the few stories Johnny shared of pre-coma indicators of his psychic ability. Johnny had been saving people all his life, long before Bruce entered the picture.

"Alex was a prodigy. Johnny was the first one to recognize his talent. They hit it off real well." A fond smile touched her lips but there was a hint of sadness in her eyes. "Alex even came to visit once, not long after the doctors told me Johnny wouldn't be waking up..."

"Seems like a nice guy," Bruce murmured, quickly looking down at the plastic cup in his hand. He gulped down the rest of his drink, needing an excuse to get away for a few moments. Sarah eyed him suspiciously but didn't push. He excused himself and went into the kitchen to refill his cup.

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Days later, after reviewing Johnny's Armageddon timeline and puzzling over Alex's involvement, Bruce sat in Johnny's kitchen casting his friend surreptitious glances. The day before Johnny had joined Alex at the research lab. Within the hour, Johnny would go back.

Bruce sat at the breakfast table and flipped through sections of the newspaper restlessly as Johnny used him as a sounding board.

"If anything, they're going to save lives," Johnny said, consternation coloring his tone.

Bruce stared at the picture of Greg Stillson on the front page; the man's smile dripped with an overabundance of charm that made Bruce's stomach churn. "But when you touch him..." he said, looking up at his friend. "Kaboom!"

Johnny looked a little paler than normal although his voice remained steady. "Something strange about that, too. Before D.C. explodes, Alex gets consumed by fire."

As he stared at Johnny, Bruce could see that spark of something hinting at a deeper emotion. Bruce quickly glanced down at the paper again. "Maybe he's not the cause of the blast."

"Maybe he's a flashpoint..." Johnny considered.

Bruce fingered the three-by-five color photo of Stillson as he added, "My money's on the original Dark Prince."

Focus on Stillson, he told himself. Don't think about it. Bruce didn't want to acknowledge the increasing heat from the flames ignited by the sparks he'd seen. He didn't know what it meant to Alex or Johnny, but he felt ready to burst. Even the stab of cold jealousy couldn't contend with the overwhelming heat.

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"I can't let him perfect the process... I've got to believe stopping him will save more lives..."

"Listen to yourself!" Bruce protested. "You're talking about sabotaging his work."

Johnny didn't say things like that. He hadn't been willing to sacrifice Rebecca or Purdy or Bruce in the name of preventing Armageddon—this case wasn't any different. Johnny couldn't know exactly how Alex fit into the scheme of things.

"Whatever's got to be done, right?" At that moment Bruce saw Johnny as many outsiders did—a man possessed by the ability that made him extraordinary. "It's the Apocalypse. The Four Horsemen are on their way.

"He's not going to give them up," Johnny muttered as he tore out a page from the slim hardcover book he'd picked up from a box. Bruce watched with growing uneasiness as Johnny brought the page to the board. "Alex trusts his teacher," he said quietly.

Bruce couldn't find his voice for a moment. "You're going to get close to him. Just to mess up the formula, make him think it's a design flaw." He shook his head. "God, John. There has to be another way."

Johnny circled Alex's picture on the yearbook page with a marker; he stood staring at the picture, his lips pressed tightly together. Bruce jammed his hands into his pockets, afraid Johnny would see the tremors belying his outer calm.

"I don't want to," Johnny said quietly. "I don't know what else I can do." Because he felt sure Alex would never believe the truth. "Too much of a scientist," he argued.

When Bruce left the mansion a few hours later he felt dizzy from all the information Johnny had dumped on him.

-- --

All day Bruce was distracted by a disturbing dream. In it he had walked into the mansion as he always did, but when he searched the downstairs rooms he couldn't find his friend. "John?" he called, heading up the stairs. As he approached the bedroom he heard voices making very distinctive noises. Against his better judgment he opened the doors and got an eyeful. Johnny lay on his back, legs splayed, with his hands buried in the curly hair crowning the head between his legs. Alex Conners had the bed sheets tangled around his body as he sucked Johnny's cock into his mouth. Johnny groaned and emitted an occasional high-pitched keen of pleasure. Bruce could only stand and watch, stunned and appalled that either man would let this happen.

It was only a dream.

Bruce picked up Chinese before heading over to Johnny's after work. His breath caught in his throat as he pulled into the drive. Alex's bike leaned on its stand by the front steps, leaving more than enough room for Bruce to park. But he was in Bruce's spot.

He carried the bag of takeout to the kitchen and set in on the countertop. It took little time to confirm that Johnny wasn't downstairs. Bruce braced himself as he followed in his dream's footsteps: up the stairs, down the hall...

The bedroom doors were partially opened. Bruce tried not to think about how they'd gotten that way. (Hurried motions, anxious hands clutching at clothing, bumping into the door and stumbling through.) Bruce took a deep, silent breath and inched along the wall until he could look in. The noises from his dreams were blessedly absent. Yet he did hear voices, too soft to distinguish the words.

Through the half-open doors he could see the bed. A chill ran up his spine. He suddenly felt disconnected from his body. He stared at the figures entwined on top of the dark bed sheets. Johnny's skin looked strikingly tan beneath the pale, slender body lying on top of him. Johnny's hand brushed over Alex's hair. Bruce watched with numb fascination as Alex canted his head and started kissing Johnny's neck. When Johnny's free hand caressed Alex's ass, Bruce stepped back and fled.

When reality returned Bruce found himself clutching the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip. He forced his fingers to uncurl. His hands settled in his lap, he looked around and saw the Bannerman's residence across the street. He didn't remember anything since the shocking scene at Johnny's.

His head throbbed. He could feel his pulse in his fingers as the blood resumed circulation. In his mind's eye he imagined Johnny arching into Alex's touch, quiet encouragements spilling from his lips. In his better dreams Bruce would slide over Johnny's body as gentle hands caressed his sides. "What took so long?" Johnny would ask. Bruce responded that he didn't know. He kissed the parted lips with a silent promise that no more time would be wasted.

The sound of rain brought his mind back to the present. He watched the tiny streams of water trace patterns on the windshield. Involuntarily he thought about how Johnny's damaged knee acted up during the changes in weather. Alex wouldn't know what to do, how to ease the pain. For a moment he thought spitefully that the psychic deserved it for such a betrayal.

Not a betrayal. Bruce had no hold on Johnny, there was no commitment.

In a few minutes the simple rain shower turned into a downpour. Bruce exhaled with an explosive sigh and started the engine. The windshield wipers flung off the accumulating raindrops in a valiant attempt to keep the window clear. He pulled away from the curb carefully and focused on getting home – to an empty apartment – safely.

As he stood in the shower later that night he wondered how Alex would react if he found the guest bedroom stocked with a small supply of Bruce's belongings. (A selection of clothing – for work, casual, and an old pair of shorts and a T-shirt for the projects he occasionally found himself doing around the mansion; a couple of the more useful books of psychic theory and meditation; a toothbrush; and other odds and ends.) He usually spent an average of three or four nights a week staying at Johnny's. He wished that Alex would find the room and demand why Johnny would sleep with someone else when he was already involved.

Only dreams, he reminded himself.

Bruce didn't see much of Johnny in the following days. The blonde never mentioned finding the Chinese food and Bruce had all but forgotten it until he saw a fortune cookie tucked between a ceramic canister and the coffee maker the one morning he'd been invited to breakfast.

Johnny turned down Bruce's offers of company with requests for privacy in order to work through the current piece of the apocalyptic puzzle. For his part, Bruce didn't push past the first "No" and didn't bring up Alex unless absolutely necessary. He knew it had to be more than a one night stand.

Johnny made no indication of noticing anything unusual in Bruce's behavior. He made no personal reference of Alex, at most commenting on his moral character not fitting in with the conspiracy surrounding Stillson. Bruce said nothing since he had nothing to refute. But in his mind he yelled at Johnny for keeping secrets – from him and from Alex. Johnny took Alex to bed yet refused to even attemptexplaining the visions. His disappointment with Johnny's approach matched the pity he felt for Alex. Despite his dedication to Johnny and jealousy over his relationship with Alex, Bruce recognized that it would end in a spectacular disaster. Both men would walk away with permanent scars. Bruce didn't know if he could help Johnny in the aftermath; he'd have scars of his own.

Johnny called him in the late morning the day Alex figured things out. Bruce found the blonde pacing in the kitchen

"Why didn't you just tell him?" Bruce asked quietly. Why not at the beginning? Anytime earlier... before sabotaging the formula, before sleeping with the guy!

"They were dragging me out!" Johnny replied, his face creased with worry. "Only thing they forgot was the straightjacket."

Bruce busied himself by putting away the dishes in the dishwasher. The domesticity of the action unsettled him even though it was nothing new. Now he felt like the intruder. (Pale and tan limbs tangled together in bed sheets, fingers tracing the curve of shoulder and hip and ass...)

"Maybe you should grow a beard and get a cardboard sign that says 'The end is near'," he said.

When he turned around he found Johnny staring at him disapprovingly; a hint of confusion flickered in his eyes. Bruce looked away with a sigh. "Look, if you saw Alex laughin' it up with Stillson, then that'd be your answer. The future connection with Stillson through his work is giving you the Armageddon vision."

"Alex is in the vision, too," Johnny murmured. "He's the first to die." Bruce shuddered at the hopeless conviction in that statement.

He didn't know what to do. The Armageddon visions were always hard to handle given their secretive nature, Bruce's vision of an alternate John Smith who'd been prepared to assassinate Stillson, and the difficulty of believing the visions in the first place. Bruce could admit to having his doubts. By now he couldn't deny the elements of truth in Johnny's visions even if he saw things differently from an outside perspective, though he wasn't convinced he could do much to stop something as monumental as the end of the world. And now with Alex (naked, sweaty bodies sliding together) he felt even further out of his league. Jealousy and longing would affect his thinking, Bruce knew; even if that wasn't the case, what could he really say to help a situation that was as much about Johnny's relationship as it was about Armageddon?

Johnny made a strangled sound that he abruptly cut off. Bruce closed his eyes helplessly and swallowed his heartache. "This is crazy, John. You can't keep living like this."

Bruce opened his eyes to Johnny angrily taking a step forward. "You think I want this?" the blonde demanded. He spread his arms. "You think I like the fact that I can't shake someone's hand without seeing crazy things?"

"That's not what I mean." You can't keep getting personally involved. In nightmares Bruce sometimes wondered how things would be had Rebecca followed through on her plan to kill Stillson.

"What do you mean?" Johnny snapped, his glare challenging.

Bruce resisted the urge to look away as he spoke. "Maybe there's nothing we can do to stop the end of the world. Maybe... maybe the prophets got it right." He paused when fury flared in Johnny's expression. Before the blonde could interrupt, he hurried on. "Maybe it's just..." he shook his head helplessly, "supposed to happen."

"You're not asking me to give up," Johnny said in a warning tone that chilled Bruce to the bone.

With a sad smile Bruce replied, "I learned to stop doing that a long time ago, John." A lesson learned right away, and he had reminders again and again in the years following.

"Good." The blonde cast him a final warning glare and left him alone.

Bruce slumped against the counter-top and dragged his hands over his face. What else could he do? It wasn't in him to hide his opinions from his best friend, especially when it involved something this important. Johnny should know by now that even if Bruce didn't agree, he'd be there to play Alfred to Johnny's Bruce Wayne.

After so many years it was difficult to think what could possibly make Bruce abandon Johnny. In spite of the blonde's past attempts to shake him, Bruce stayed. ("If it turns out that somehow I'm the one who causes Armageddon...? Bruce, you have to promise me you'll do the right thing... You have to do whatever it takes to stop me! Whatever it takes." I'll lay down my life for you, in a heartbeat. But don't ask me this.)

Bruce went outside to sit on the steps, needing some space and fresh air.

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