Hubris, a batman fanfic

Author's Note: Written for the "Once Upon a Time in Gotham" fanzine on Livejournal. Edited by tmelange.

When I was uploading, I noticed that had done a few weird things. If there are any strange formatting problems, blame them! :)

"Go through my books, but no ripping of the pages," Professor Scops said. With his aged hand pale like paper—liver spots like fading ink—he clutched Clark's. "This way, we both win. You finish your dissertation and I have house sitter. Water plants. Be sure to feed the dog. Walk him. He will like having you around. You are younger, no?"

The old man's sabbatical was well-deserved. One semester abroad, visiting all the places he wanted to see, studying all the tomes he longed to study. Clark hoped the strict but beloved professor got to spend as much time with the Nowell Codex as he wanted. The night before Clark drove him to the airport, they studied one of many translations together.

"See!" the old man cackled. "Here is the ambiguity. You see it, yes?"

Clark nodded. It was right there in the footnote, even if he hadn't already figured it out on his own. "Maybe he wasn't a monster at all," Clark said softly. And he wanted to believe that. He really, really did.

Scops' face split into an elfin grin and he jabbed his finger at the passage. "Shaped like a man! Walked on two legs!" A thick, unhealthy cough shook his body.

"Professor!" Clark said as he leaned forward to help him, hold him up, do something.

"I am fine, you silly boy. Just excited." He swatted Clark's big hand away with his small one. "It is good for you to question what these fools who make movies think. I believe, and always will, that he was like you and me. Maybe a little bigger. Maybe a little stronger. Different, but not so different."

The words gave Clark hope, the first taste of it he'd had in a long time.

Sometimes he wondered if Scops was like him: Not quite like everyone else. He always wanted to ask, but fear kept him quiet. What if he was wrong?

"But all the terrible things he did…" Clark said. He pushed his glasses up his nose, held his breath.

"We, all of us, have bad days, Mr. Kent," Scops said. And his eyes were vibrant right then. Clark could imagine that, as a young man, he must have been stunning if only for his eyes. There were worlds there.

The following morning, he dropped the old man off at Terminal C and waved at him through the glass of the security gate. The plane Scops shuffled onto was the largest he'd ever seen this close. The wings made him think of some beast of old, out to devour warriors.

The keys to the ancient man's apartment felt heavy in his pocket. He'd been so worried about packing his few belongings, moving from his own small place on the outskirts of the sprawling Gotham University Campus, that he hadn't really paid attention to Professor Scops' large dwelling.

He rode to the 34th floor. The key turned in the lock and he stepped inside. On his own finally, he stood just inside the entranceway and looked around slowly. "It's…massive," Clark admitted to himself. He'd never thought about it before but now it was undeniable. The thin and stooped professor had apparently filled up the space with the force of his personality.

The big white dog didn't have a name. "I call him 'Dog'!" Scops had said. "I feed him so he does not care what I call him. But he is smart. You will see. My smartest student and my smart dog together in one place. Yes, this will be good."

It galumphed out of the shadows and came to stand beside Clark. "Hey…Dog," Clark said. The dog gave a high-pitched whine and nuzzled his hand. Clark was charmed despite himself. So, with Dog at his heels, he took a tour of Scops' apartment. It was, Clark realized, the kind of place he would want for himself. It was spacious and comfortable here. Even the décor suited him. It wasn't the cold, impersonal design he'd seen on TV. Somebody obviously lived here and had put things that they loved everywhere, just within reach. The couch was the kind that made you feel like a sinking ship in a good way.

There were wide, wide windows overlooking Gotham and they spanned the entire wall in the living area and were the main focus of the bedroom. The neon yellow light of late summer reached like fingers into the room, but never seemed to ruin the subdued calm. It was as if dusk and rest hid in the nooks and crannies. But the light spilled around the corner, making the blonde wood of the tasteful kitchen glow.

The boxes of his things in the corner stared at him gloomily. He sighed and gave in.

Over the next few hours, he shook out quilts and placed pictures on the table beside the borrowed bed.

After a few hours, the large bedroom began to look more like Clark's room, instead of just a room. But it didn't even begin to feel like a home. Surrounded by the professor's books and trinkets, Clark felt lonelier than ever. And that was saying quite a lot.

So he slept on the big bed in the big room. And he tossed until the covers were jerked up from where he'd tucked them and the sheets were twisted up beneath him. When sleep came at last, it hit like a train, knocked him into nightmares.

"We never knew the right time to tell you," his mother simpered. His father, as always, stood there looking strong and broad. Even with the lines around his mouth and the gray in his hair, Jonathan Kent was a rock.

"Your mother and I did the best we could."

"We didn't want you to feel like—"

"Like a freak?"

"Clark," his mother began, but he didn't want to hear it.

Learning that his parents had lied to him about everything he was hit him hard. He felt entitled to his anger. His eyes went red.

"Clark," his mother said again, but this time there was fear in her voice. And his father was shouting, "Don't!" but Clark could barely hear him over the quake of his own awakening.

He screamed and it was a roar from dark caverns underneath the earth, high up from caves above the cliffs where flames danced before walls painted with mysteries. It was primal, beasts torn apart and eaten raw, blood dripping into the sacrificial fire, stones flinted to deadly sharpness.

There was smoke in his lungs from it, ash in his eyes. He could crush boulders with his hands, rip the world to bloody tatters with his teeth. And the two who raised him stood before him, cowered, begged.

His skin was diamond hard, his fangs as sharp as swords.

Whatever it was that Clark had become lunged—mouth wide and gaping—and the world before him was red.

His eyes split open on the dark of night, heart beating fast, body dripping sweat. The numbers of his alarm clock were telling him to go back to sleep. But he couldn't. His mouth tasted like copper. He brushed his teeth five times, gargled with mouthwash and spat.

He held the sink delicately because…

They never stayed for long. It was like puberty all over again. Only, instead of pimples and a voice shifting awkwardly from deep to squeaky, he had abilities that came and went regardless of his wishes.

Sometimes he could hear a woman showering across the city. Moments later he'd barely be aware of someone breathing beside him. And while sometimes he felt he could rip the sink from the wall, break it to thousands of pieces with his bare hands, others he didn't feel capable of turning on the tap.

He wanted it over with. If he was to continue on as he had been before the Changes—ordinary and even boring—then he wished it would happen all at once. No more cacophonies of the city or shattered glasses when stress made his fist clench. No more holes burned into the books he read.

But if he was to change, to become something else entirely, then he wanted all or nothing. No more weakness when he wanted strength of delays when he needed speed.

He didn't really recognize the man in the mirror.

When he returned to stare at the big bed that wasn't his, vivid flashes of his nightmare stole before his eyes. Instead of risking a return to that, he turned to his books and his laptop and his stacks of notebooks filled with his own excited scrawl. Long into the night he wondered about the monster in the story and why it was that, sometimes, he felt more like that deformed thing than the hero.

Sometimes he felt like he lived in a bubble that consisted of Scops' eerily empty apartment; the books he'd piled into it; the library where he found more books to pile onto more tables and desks and chairs, where he worked to make more money to learn more things; and the classrooms where he tried to stay awake while he learned them.

Weeks passed. He slept less and less because of the nightmares. Sometimes in his dreams, he wandered the farm until he found the thing in the barn, alien and terrible. There was a hideous infant inside, all fang and claw. One that had his eyes.

In the daytime, he went to class and he worked. He worked because graduate school was not cheap and even his scholarships couldn't pay for everything. He raced to make it to the library on time, curious as to what his next task would be. Every week it seemed there was a surprise and today there was another.

The special collection's librarian was serious about her books. Barbara had hair the color of fire and a smile as white as snow. The white gloves Clark wore during his shift had been ordered at the start of his internship because none of the ones Barbara had would fit him.

He slipped them on and listened to her.

"Illuminated manuscripts and early printed texts," she said proudly and pointed at the sign above the door to the room where they stood. "You're updating our online catalogue so it fits with the new software. Our searches and inter-library loans will be better and faster. Now," she said slowly, "this isn't an easy job. We have more books in the early manuscript collection than Metropolis University and they hate us for it. We even have two Gutenberg Bibles and one very nice reproduction."

Clark hurried after her as she walked and talked, gesturing at all the old bound books and carefully sealed incunabula. They arrived at a meticulously clean table where a small book had been left open.

"I wanted to show you this so you get an idea of what you'll be looking at and how to handle the manuscripts. Okay?"

Clark nodded. "Okay." He had no idea what he was looking at. It couldn't have been seven inches across, but one of the open pages was covered in tiny text while the other had a detailed image of someone he guessed was the Virgin Mary at prayer. It was difficult to be certain because her face was a blur, as if it had been deliberately rubbed out, desecrated. Her robes were still a shockingly intense blue even after all the years the book had survived. The mess that was her face made the perfection of everything surrounding her stand out starkly.

"French. 16th Century," said Barbara. "It's a Prayer Book: Psalms, important dates, and prayers, of course. Everything you needed to be a devout follower of the Church back then." With one gloved finger, she tapped the illustrated page. "We can learn a lot about how people lived and thought by studying their books. Did you know? For example, look at the Virgin's face. What do you see?"

He swallowed, felt like this was a test. "Someone destroyed it?"

"Right. It looks pretty vicious, doesn't it?" A thoughtful expression worked its way onto her features. "She must have been lovely, once, but we'll never know. And, yes, when you first see this, you think it was iconoclasm. But it wasn't. Nobody did this out of hate. This was done out of love."

Clark shook his head.

"They loved her," she said. "They loved her for her honesty and kindness and devotion and goodness. So they stroked her face and kissed her face and, eventually, this is all that was left. They loved her so much they destroyed her. Like the belly of a lucky Buddha in a temple, rubbed all shiny." She winked at him, but Clark didn't laugh at the joke.

Instead, he stared down at the lovely little book with the smashed together, decorative text and the praying Virgin Mary—the angel swooping down to tell her the Good News. He got so lost in the colors that he almost jumped when Barbara cleared her throat.

"And Clark?"

"Yes?"

"By the way?"

"Yeah."

"All that loving and stroking and stuff?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"You are SO not going to be doing that to my books. Wear the gloves; treat them gently when you pick them up and only do that if you have to. If information is missing or incorrect, double-check the manuscript. The catalogue number is usually on the back cover and God knows why people ruin things by putting numbers on them."

She hurried away to retrieve printouts she said he was going to need. A list, she said. Of everything she added mischievously. It left him alone to look and wonder at the very small book.

There was that song about always hurting the one you loved, he mused and found himself staring at the ruined face of the Virgin. He wondered what a man like him—a monster like him—would do if he had someone to love. He guessed he'd break them. He guessed he'd have no choice in the matter.

He thought of the rabbits in that story—Steinbeck, yeah—squeezed so hard they died.

There was a battle in his head. Something like the rhythmic clang of a sword against a shield over and over. Blood went flying and the mud on the ground sucked, sucked at the leather of his shoes, counterpoint to the chorus of screams. Then the thunder and rain came, snare and treble concussive. The horses chased down anyone who tried to flee with a clatta, clatta bass drum of hooves.

And there was a frigid winter wind billowing falsetto across the battlefield.

Clark's eyes popped open.

Music, he realized at last. What he was hearing was music.

Only nothing this loud belonged anywhere but a concert hall. Blearily, he pulled himself into a sitting position. Dog was at the foot of the bed and his big head was aimed up at the ceiling. He whimpered, then barred his teeth at the ruckus.

"What is that?" Clark mumbled. He squinted at his alarm clock: It was just after one o'clock. He'd been asleep for exactly one hour and felt like he'd been put in an industrial dryer. Several times.

He ached. Even his jaw ached. He realized he'd been clenching his teeth against the blare of the music. When he stood, it became clear that he was still clenching his teeth.

He rubbed at his face like trying to erase the bad dream. His head throbbed in time to the music. For a moment, Clark was seized with uncertainty. He didn't know if he should go upstairs and ask whoever it was to turn the music down. The idea of a confrontation caused in him an uncomfortable kind of dread. For him it was fear of what he now knew he was capable.

When the man he used to be got upset, he handled it maturely, with words and compromise. The Changes, however, meant that he had to be careful. What if he lost his temper? What if he hurt someone?

The music seemed to get louder as he thought and thought and thought himself into a hole. Eventually, he padded to the door, the decision made for him by the kind of tired that makes train engineers fall asleep.

The elevator ride was something he wouldn't be able to recall later. The hallway before him was almost comically long. He shuffled down it and stopped before the door that was actually rattling on its hinges with the noise.

Then he banged and banged and banged for five minutes. When someone finally opened the door, Clark was leaned against the wooden frame, trying to ignore the booming bass and stay upright. His eyelids were so heavy, he didn't even look up when he said, "Hi. I live downstairs." Staring at the carpet, he could feel the sleep still in his eyes and he wanted to yank his glasses off and rub the feeling back into them.

"And?" a deep, rumbling voice said. Clark looked up and blinked a few times, like a man struggling to get sand out of his eyelashes. Someone like a movie star was standing before him in a crisp white shirt undone at the collar and holding a glass of some dark amber liquid. He wasn't as tall as Clark, but carried himself like a giant—like he ruled the world, or would, one day. The cost of the man's clothing would have paid for Clark's books for two semesters. Yet, the clothing couldn't hide the stubble on his chin and dark circles beneath his eyes. He smelled like bourbon.

Clark tried to remember why the face was familiar. Maybe he'd seen him somewhere before. On TV or in a magazine? Nothing concrete occurred to Clark's sleepless mind.

"And you're keeping me up with the music," he said at last. "The party." Behind the man in the door, he could see well-dressed men and women dancing, laughing, and lounging about on the furniture. Some of them leaned against walls and talked animatedly. Clark had no idea how they could hear each other over the noise. There were bottles of wine and glasses everywhere he looked.

The man looked over his shoulder then back at Clark. His face split into a grin. Then his eyes raked up and down Clark's frame. He was just in a t-shirt and sleeping pants, but he suddenly felt like he was in much less.

"You're welcome to join us," the man said and held out a hand. "I'm Bruce. Wayne."

He said it like a man expecting the name to do something, open doors or maybe cause choirs of angels to sing. Clark yawned, thought he might fall asleep standing up regardless of the noise.

"Clark," he said. "Kent." He didn't take the offered hand. "And no. Thank you," Clark said and fought another yawn. "Just, please"—one hand gesturing at the party—"with the noise."

"We'll be like mice up here," the man said and smiled again. It was a strange smile in that it didn't reach his eyes. There was something like winter ice to them, bitter cold and sharp like icicles.

"Thanks." Clark turned and shuffled back down the hall, felt like he was about to collapse with exhaustion. Yet even through the heavy fog of sleep that floated through his mind, he could feel the man's eyes on his back. It made his skin crawl.

The music did stop, to his surprise.

But sleep deprivation was catching up to Clark. He fell asleep during a lecture the following morning and got a stern dressing down from his professor.

"You're behavior," she said with a sad shake of her head, "has been erratic." She looked as if she wanted to mention Scops' high opinion of him, question it even.

He dropped a Psalter, got a fiery reprimand from Barbara who said he was lucky she liked him and that it was only a reproduction or else she'd have his head. And so after a crappy day, he came home and shuffled right past Dog without even scratching his big head. All he wanted was his bed.

No shower.

No reading.

No writing.

Just sleep.

And for two nightmare-riddled hours, he got his wish.

The music dragged him kicking and screaming back to wakefulness. He guessed he should have been grateful: It had been another terrible dream, all blood and fear. But he wasn't grateful. He was pissed.

He shoved his glasses onto his face, didn't even bothered to change from his pajamas. Then he took the elevator up and banged on the door, fuming.

Bruce Wayne answered it once again. "Hello. Clark, right?"

"Yes. I'm sorry to bother you—"

"But the music's too loud? You have sensitive hearing," Bruce said, and seemed to study his ears as he stroked his chin. "Fascinating."

"Bruce!" someone cried. When they bounded into view, Clark realized they were a WB stereotype brought to life. He was sandy haired and strong jawed and so pretty Clark imagined he hadn't had an idea in years. His good looks had murdered his brain cells.

The mimbo's arms came around Bruce's shoulders and he slid in close. Despite the fact that he had earned himself a hunk for a cape, Bruce didn't look away from Clark.

"The offer still stands for you to join us."

"I'm in my pajamas."

"That's not a problem," Bruce laughed, voice a little softer. His eyes danced warmly.

Clark rolled his. "No, what I mean is, I'm in my pajamas. This means I'm trying to sleep. Please turn the music down."

Bruce's eyes narrowed, then his playboy smile was back again. "Okay. You win. Whatever you like."

Behind him, the boy band member was scowling at Clark. "Thank you," Clark said, unconcerned with dirty looks from fashion plates who committed PDAs. In the elevator, he could still hear the two of them talking. Pretty Boy said, "Who was that? Friend?"

"Neighbor," Bruce answered shortly.

"Just a neighbor?"

"Yes. Just a neighbor."

Back in his apartment, Clark tossed the pillows again, pulled down the covers and wondered how many nights in a row he could do this before he started to go a little crazy. It almost made him smile. Dog, of course, always smiled. He smiled as he curled up at the foot of the bed, made plans to scoot closer and closer to Clark. He looked curiously at Clark who had yet to turn out the light beside the bed.

"He's going to drive me to an early grave," Clark said. He clicked the lamp off and resigned himself to nightmares.

Clark didn't like the way his voice carried in Scops' apartment. He plugged one ear and pushed the phone closer to the other. "It's K-E-N-T," he said. "Yes, Kent. No, Clark. C-L-A-R-K. I spoke to someone a few weeks ago about the address change. They said it was in the system."

The guy was new and obviously young. Clark imagined him frantically scrolling through page after page of alphabetized address change listings. "Over a month now," Clark answered when the operator asked—for the second time—how long he'd been without his paper.

When all was said and done, he was compensated with a free month of papers. A day later, he'd get a survey in the mail asking him about his customer service experience. He'd give the guy high marks on everything, just because.

But his first new paper came two days later; along with the four weeks' worth he'd been missing. Catching up would be fun, he guessed. He opened the oldest and began flipping as he stood and ate cereal for breakfast, elbows pressed hard into the counter. It was like going back in time, reading old news.

Local marching bands had gone to the parades. A few soup kitchens had had celebrity visitors. A few moms had sobbed as their sons and daughters went to war. A few more had baked cookies endlessly for the troops. The superintendent of the Gotham Public School District had been hounded by the teacher's union about their contracts. Finally, he made it to the paper from a few days ago.

And Bruce Wayne was on the cover of the entertainment section. Something clicked in Clark's mind.

Bruce Wayne, the billionaire son of the Waynes. The Waynes. The well-respected couple spoiled him, tolerated his antics, and never said a thing against him to the reporters who always asked. Clark couldn't believe he'd met the guy and not even known it.

There was a supermodel with him in the picture—standing a foot away, arms crossed—but Clark didn't look at her perfect face. There was no reason to, not when Bruce Wayne had stubble on his chin, and tired lines around his mouth, and a tie slightly askew at his neck.

Clark dumped his bowl and spoon in the sink, folded the paper with practiced ease to read the rest of the column.

Bruce Wayne had been up, the article said, all night at a classy nightclub, dancing hard and drinking harder. The article posited that the supermodel would leave him for his behavior: He'd been draped around anything with a pulse all night long.

Anything but her.

Clark did the math: The day after the article ran, Bruce had kept the world awake with a party.

Trying to forget her? Clark reasoned it was as good a guess as any to explain why Bruce had been quiet for weeks until the breakup.

And she was a pretty thing. Maybe not as lovely as some of the girls Bruce Wayne had been seen with before, but they'd been together for such a long time. Clark wondered what caused a man to ruin the one good thing he had going for him.

He flopped back onto the sofa. As usual, he couldn't be still for any amount of time without earning himself a lap dog. Only Dog was way too big to try and be anybody's lap dog. Even to Clark he was heavy.

"You're a mess," he said to the dog and held out a hand. Dog knocked his solid head against it and panted happily.

"So is he." Clark held the newspaper close for Dog to see and tapped his finger on the picture of Bruce Wayne. He was only a little surprised when Dog growled.

"You're right," Clark agreed. "He's a nasty bit of work."

He crumpled the paper into a ball, tossed it at the trash. It bounced off the rim, but he let it stay there. All through dinner and the evening news and hours of reading, reading, reading about reading, it stayed there, a mess next to the trashcan. The routine of the night unfolded, safe and ultimately lonely. He turned the heat down low, made his bed, tossed the spare pillows onto the nearby chair, and slid beneath the covers. A moment later and the bed dipped as the big, happy dog settled at his feet. Clark knew that, by morning, Dog would have scooted so close that he would wake with a wet nose pressed to his arm and sometimes his neck. It was the most attention he'd had in the nighttime for longer than he cared to think about.

Clark stared at the ceiling. It was so quiet he wondered if Bruce was even home. Maybe he'd gone out. Maybe he was out groveling at the door of his beautiful girlfriend.

Or maybe he was in some hotel, fucking his new boyfriend.

Clark tossed like a possessed man exorcised. He couldn't sleep when Bruce Wayne was there.

And now it seemed like he couldn't sleep when he was gone.

Dog looked at him quizzically when he rose from bed and went back into the kitchen. He stooped to the dark patch beside the trashcan and his fingers found it immediately. By the nightlight in the kitchen, he smoothed the ragged edges and flattened it with his palms. Then with his fingertips, Clark touched the picture gently. He ran them over the inky forehead and the smudged lines of his chin and the ruined crumple of his mouth; tried to sooth the worry away from his cheek, wondered if he could cut himself on the paper sharp edge of his jaw.

He did it again and again until he came to himself, realized what he'd been doing. The page was crushed once again.

This time, it landed in the trash when he threw it.

He awoke when, just after midnight, there was another twisted symphony playing in the apartment above. But it wasn't music. This was, unmistakably, the sound of sex. Loud, bed rattling sex. After the first hour, he thought they'd run out of steam. They didn't.

And it seemed to move from room to room. Furniture slam, slammed against the floor in a steady, tireless rhythm.

"Dammit, is he a machine?" Clark grumbled into his pillow. Dog gave a soft bark at the ceiling as if that would make the noise stop. Grumpily, Clark threw on the sweater and pants he felt like he'd just tossed over the chair minutes ago. He didn't bother with his hair: It was a lost cause. His glasses he fumbled as he slid them onto his face and the smudges obscured his vision, but he didn't really care about that either.

Another elevator ride to the top floor. Clark banged so hard he heard the wood splinter. "Hello!" he shouted.

The door came open and Clark took a step back. The smell of some tangy soap caught in his nostrils, almost made him sneeze. It was everything else that made his throat go dry. Bruce Wayne was wearing a towel.

And nothing else.

Water cascaded, from the tips of his hair, the tip of his nose. He had sandy brown nipples and this teasing line of hair leading down and then hiding demurely behind the towel. There was a voice in Clark's mind telling him that men weren't normally built this way. Fashion models and actors were. Those crazy exercise gurus on TV.

Bruce Wayne was none of those things. For whatever reason, Bruce Wayne was a Greek god and the expression on his face showed that he knew it. He watched Clark watching him and satisfaction spread itself across his face.

Clark swallowed and then swallowed again.

Someone shouted from deeper in the apartment. "Bruce?"

The voice was undeniably masculine. And Clark just knew it was Pretty Boy all sultry and ready for the runway. Or another round with Bruce as the case seemed to be. Something that later he would identify as rage clawed at Clark's skin. That, more than anything, turned his face red. Bruce, however, saw it and took it as the blush of a wet-behind-the-ears country boy.

He thought it funny enough that he smiled. Then he leaned against the doorframe. Muscles bunched, water flowed down the veins and Clark followed one down until it caught on the dark hairs on Bruce's arm and then disappeared into the carpet.

"This is turning into a routine," Bruce said breathlessly. "What can I do for you, Clark?"

"Please," Clark said hoarsely. "I just want to get some sleep."

Bruce Wayne's mouth fluctuated from a devil-may-care smile to a frown. "Why not come in, instead?"

Clark's eyes widened and he felt hot all over. Only half of it was anger. "Um. No. I'm good. Just with the—" again, he gestured, hoping that the vague movement encompassed the entire idea of loud, raucous sex.

"Not a peep from us," Bruce said and winked. Fucking winked. Clark clenched his jaw.

And punched his pillow when he returned to Scops' apartment. Punched it instead of Bruce Wayne's face, that is. Only, he punched it a little too hard. Dog chased the feathers that exploded across the room, the world's happiest dog for the next ten minutes.

And Clark still couldn't get back to sleep, even after the noise upstairs finally, blessedly stopped. When he closed his eyes he saw beads of water dripping down a pale and perfect chest. Water on dark hair, lips bruised by god knows what.

So he wrote about monsters. When the sun came up, he stared at what he had, highlighted it all, and pressed delete.

He made it through the day somehow for all that he'd had no sleep and visions of Bruce Wayne kept crowding their way into his mind when he needed to be paying attention. He crashed hard when he finally made it home.

In his dreams, he stood alone in a world burned to the ground. He was at the epicenter of it, untouched by the flames. The cinders and ash floating on air were tainted by the smell of death.

He awoke with tears in his eyes. Dog was staring at him with worry, as if he knew what Clark secretly feared. He scratched behind Dog's ears and smiled at his complete lack of shame as he flopped onto his belly and asked for more, tongue lolling out of his grinning mouth.

"I'm not a monster yet," he whispered and Dog licked him, seemed to agree.

It was Saturday, he realized halfway through rushing to go to class. There was nothing to do but chores. So he swept and cleaned the kitchen in silence while Dog slept on the couch. He vacuumed the lush carpet that covered almost every floor, which made Dog cover his ears and whine. He scrubbed the bathroom and washed the sheets. The phone never rang because the phone never did.

Finally satisfied, he yanked the kitchen trash from the can and carried it to the dumpster. Just as he was about to throw it inside, he stopped himself. Then he bent, opened the bag and carefully rifled through the contents. Underneath the plastic of a microwave dinner, he found it. And he almost retrieved the rumpled picture, almost shoved it into his pocket.

He stopped because, whatever he had felt that day at the door, staring at Bruce through the steam on his skin, none of that really mattered. You could find a snake beautiful, and it would still bite you.

Instead, he tied the bag again and tossed it with more force than necessary into the dumpster, which jerked back a foot and sent a nails-on-chalkboard scrape through the early afternoon air.

That night, like every night of his time in Scops' apartment, he read more. Wrote more. Scribbled notes and scratched out the names of theories that no longer supported his argument. Everyday he seemed to sleep less and less. He cleaned his glasses with the hem of his shirt so many times the wondered if he was rubbing them thinner each time.

There was a movie turned down low in the background, but he hardly looked at it.

"Innate impulsive tendencies," he murmured. "Primitive, amoral, and lustful urges. And all of this versus the internalization of the culture's values, norms and rules."

He shook his head, fought a yawn and then another. That wasn't what the battle against the monster had been about. Not really. The old illustration in one of Scops' books showed the carnage of the famous scene, the monster limping away with blood oozing from where his arm once had been. Clark studied his grotesque face and felt something like sympathy.

His pencil snapped in half as he scratched out an entire paragraph of his hardcopy. He hadn't been holding it that hard, but that didn't matter anymore. The day he'd first noticed the Changes, he'd ripped a door off its hinges. He'd only been trying to open it, but that didn't matter, either. Just like the dumpster earlier that day, he just couldn't control it.

More frequently when he shut his eyes, he saw the thing his parents had shown him. Slumbering huge and terrible like a giant in the barn, like something from a movie.

"We found you…" his mother said softly. "In that."

Clark opened his eyes, stared at the discordant scraps of paper that were his dissertation. He wanted to throw them all away.

Outside the window, far below, the trees had turned gold and rusty red, but the night hid their colors. The city was getting colder and the semester was more than half over even though it felt like it had just begun. Between the nightmares and Bruce Wayne, Clark was a mess. He wanted to sleep, couldn't.

The clock on the television told him it was nine, but he had to keep working, knew he was behind many of his classmates. Only, he couldn't stare at his laptop screen a minute longer. What he needed was a break.

So he went shopping at the local Supercenter, wandered the aisles to stay alert.

The woman behind one of the countless checkout lanes smacked her gum and curled her lip. "You gonna buy that or what?"

Clark started. It was with rising shame that he realized he'd been standing there motionless while a line of agitated holiday shoppers formed behind him. The magazine—the picture on it, really—had beckoned to his hand, made him stop in his tracks. Only once he felt capable of looking away from the photo did the headline jump out at him in bold, tantalizing letters:

BRUCE WAYNE IS GOTHAM TODAY'S SEXIEST MAN ALIVE

There was a ten-page spread inside.

The cashier had already rang up his other purchases so, red-faced and like a man possessed, Clark slid the slick magazine across the counter with the kind of guilt that used to come with buying skin mags at the drug store on the corner.

He took his single brown paper bag and returned to Scops' apartment. Until midnight, he tried to write more, work through more ideas. What did the dragon represent? Why was it nameless and somehow more menacing for its anonymity?

At last, his fingers grew tired on the keyboard, his eyelids grew heavy. It was his routine all over again: Pillows tossed and blankets turned down so he could sleep.

Only he couldn't because it was there on the counter waiting for him: A magazine with a beautiful photograph of a terrible man. With the same guilt that made him buy it, he grabbed the magazine and brought it with him to bed. Dog stayed away as if he knew that now was not a time to bother Clark.

Grateful for the privacy, Clark propped himself up in bed, took off his glasses. With the magazine on his lap, he wiggled his fingers, readying them to actually open it. He was just…curious.

For ten pages, Bruce Wayne was a man about town. He stood by thoroughbred horses at his parents' sprawling mansion, grinning; he sat on the fine leather seats of classic cars and stared out confidently at the camera; laughed in a famous eatery and rode a motorcycle on a dusty road.

None of them were anything Clark believed. But there was one. Just one.

In a stunning picture all in black and white, Bruce Wayne crossed his arms and it pulled the simple black t-shirt he wore tight across his chest, showed his biceps and the veins running through his arms and hands. He wasn't smiling. Instead, he just looked out at the world and there was an honest weariness on his face, a tiredness about the eyes. Something about his expression was hungry, a man looking for something to sink his teeth into or for a path to follow.

A way to become indelible history, to live on long after his body gave out. A way to become a legend.

Clark couldn't turn the page. With one finger, he traced the lines of Bruce's face. He scooted lower on the bed. It wasn't a conscious decision; it just happened. Clark felt his hand drift down, under the waistband of his pajama pants. He took himself in hand, already hardening.

And Bruce was looking back at him through the shine of the slick pages. And this was what he was hungry for.

"Clark," he said in his dark satin voice. "Can I touch you?"

"Yes."

And he'd be heavy on top of him—just a little desperate for it, how he fumbled, cursed. Clark wouldn't be any better: He'd shake with need. And they could laugh about how clumsy they were together. They'd toss their clothes anywhere, just to be rid of them. "I want you naked," Bruce would say.

"You too."

"Yeah…"

Clark would hold Bruce's lean waist and slide up between Bruce's long legs, endlessly stretching on either side of Clark. And they'd fit together. Their hips would align, like planets, and they'd fuse, right there.

It wasn't Clark's hand around his cock. It was Bruce's, black and white like in that picture, just a little too hard so he could really feel it. Steady, free of calluses from a lifetime of wearing gloves while playing with expensive toys. Golf clubs and luxury cars.

Good at making you feel like the center of the universe because he'd had dozens of lovers fall into bed with him because he was handsome and rich and a very good liar. But now he looked at Clark with rare honesty. Said his name like a prayer. "Clark."

"Bruce," Clark cried. He didn't come by his own hand. He came because of Bruce.

And there were no battles or monstrous versions of himself in his dreams that night.

There was just Bruce Wayne, dripping wet and wanting. Wanting Clark. And his dreams were of Bruce from the magazine, looking like the Prince of Gotham. In those pictures and in his dreams, Bruce was someone whose hand he wanted to shake. Someone Clark wanted to look at him, maybe smile at him.

Even in his dreams Clark knew there was a problem. Because he wanted much more than just a handshake and a smile. More than one night, even knowing the pictures for the lies they were.

So when the music started—louder it seemed, than ever—like a siren demanding his attention, he clenched his jaw, dug his fingers into his blankets and fought the anger that boiled and bubbled below the surface of skin that no longer bled.

His anger was manifold. Some of it was knowing that the Bruce Wayne he made love to in his head was nothing like the real man. Some of it was knowing that he could never really touch Bruce anyway, not without breaking him.

It was all too much. He couldn't go up there; he couldn't face him again. Not when his fingers were covered in the proof of what Bruce could do to him without doing anything at all.

So instead, he called the police.

"Um. The music didn't stop," Clark said to the officer when she returned to his door about an hour later. When she'd first come by to take his complaint, he hadn't really looked at her, had only seen the badge and the gun. Now he found himself outright staring.

"No. No it didn't." She gave a weak smile that was still very pretty. "I did go up and talk to them. The building has a policy about things like this and the tenant still has a window of time to be as noisy as he likes."

"But I can't get any sleep down here."

She shook her head and her hair floated around her pretty face. "Mr. Kent, I'm sorry, but do you know who that is?"

"Bruce Wayne," he answered. "He's rich, I know but…"

"He's more than just rich. He owns this building. He owns the land under it, too. His family owns the whole city. Literally. All I could do was report him to himself. He's not going to throw himself out of his own penthouse."

"But the noise violation! Can't you just arrest him or something?"

The officer looked amused. "For being noisy?" she scoffed. "Besides, they could post his bail at a million dollars and he'd be right back where he is now in an hour. And if it went to trial, he'd hire the best lawyers and win."

She looked up at him curiously. "Why don't you just move out? This is one you can't win."

"I'm house sitting," he admitted. "Watching a dog. Watering the plants."

"You're a nice guy," she said. She tucked her thumbs into her clunky belt. "Still, if I were you, I'd go up there and pop him one. Right in his handsome face."

"Then I'd get arrested for assault."

"Maybe," she said. "But it would feel pretty damn good."

Clark let out a laugh he hadn't known was inside him. And the pretty blonde cop smiled at that, more than at her own joke. She saw him as if for the first time. And she took another look—underneath the glasses, around the corner of the solitude and awkwardness he wore on his sleeve—and liked what she saw.

"I'm Dinah," she said and held out a long-fingered, elegant hand. She was older, but not so much older.

"Well, you know me," Clark said nervously, taking it. "Clark."

"Yes," Dinah agreed. They were still holding hands long after and finally released them simultaneously, like they'd planned it all along. "Well, Clark, I like coffee."

Clark's eyebrows shot up. "Me too…"

"Good. Then buy me some."

In mid-November, he steadied Dinah on the icy pavement by holding her elbow. He'd driven her here in her beat-up old Chevy and she'd gotten tipsy.

Dinah slurred as she told him a story about a crook getting away when she slipped on a patch of black ice in pursuit. They took a few shaky steps away from the car, heading for the elevator that would take them into his apartment. She'd asked to come over and Clark was nervous, trying not to act like it.

He asked about her new partner and she rolled her eyes. She asked about his dissertation and he just shook his head. He got the feeling Professor Scops was the only person who wanted to hear about his research.

Dinah always smelled nice. Like the fields of lavender that popped up near the farm.

Her hair always caught the wind and formed sculptures around her face. When she smiled, she did it with everything: Her eyes went bluer, her lips parted on white teeth and her whole body radiated this light. Clark loved to hear her speak.

And she didn't seem to mind being near him and that was new to Clark who always felt like girls were mysterious and unapproachable. They always seemed so cunning, looking at him like he was a specimen to be dissected. But Dinah laughed at his dorky jokes, looked at him like he was just a regular guy. He very much so wanted to be just a regular guy.

Even though the ice was no longer a threat, she threaded her arms around one of his and snuggled it close to her body. It surprised him enough that he stopped walking, looked down at her. Finding her looking up at him was another surprise. Her expression was serious.

She was very small next to him, so she lifted up on her tiptoes. His hand on the side of her face was massive, but he touched her with deliberate care. "Are you okay?"

"Fine. It's just, you know, we've been together for weeks now. You never touch me," she said, eyes daring back and forth to catch his. "You treat me like glass."

She lifted up higher, straining on her small feet. Meeting her halfway took more bending down than he had imagined and it made him laugh. "Well, you're really short."

She slapped at his shoulder, called him a "Jerk"—the word sending sweet breath against his lips—and held on to his collar to keep herself on her toes. He pulled his other arm free, got it around her back and it was easy just to shift her closer because she weighed absolutely nothing to him. It scared him so much. "Dinah, it's just…I don't want to hurt you."

"You won't."

"You don't know that."

"Come on, Clark. I feel like I'm chasing after you here. Why am I the only one trying to make this work? "

"You're not, it's just—"

"Shhh…"

He felt the tiniest touch of her bottom lip against his, full and painted red, before they were bathed in glaring light. Dinah cursed and covered her eyes, almost lost her footing; Clark staggered back and held on to her petite body, afraid she might fall. He squinted through the over-bright light and made out a sleek black car. At the wheel, of course was—

"Bruce Wayne," Clark ground out from between his teeth.

Handsome as sin, the billionaire was sitting in the parking garage in his expensive car, scowling at them. Clark could hear his own blood coursing angry through his body, wasn't aware of Dinah saying, "What the hell is he doing? Those are his high beams…in a parking garage!"

Clark was staring at the white-knuckle grip of Bruce's hands on the steering wheel, but he finally forced his eyes higher to meet his. It wasn't easy to catalogue what he saw there. Bruce's blue eyes were all flint and danger. There was something in their depths that Clark found hypnotic and terrifying all at once.

So he looked away, shaking his head a little. Dinah once again had his full attention. "Come on," he said. "Let's go."

A little uncertain this time, she smiled and took his arm. They took one step, then two. Then the sound of screeching tires made Dinah gasp and clutch at him. That black car wailed out of its parking spot. It came right at them barreling down, too fast, tires scorching the ground—

And he just held Dinah close while the rear of the car slid in a curve before and then away from them, left them in the smoke from the tires, the angry screech.

Finally it was silent.

"Oh my God," Dinah whispered against his chest. "He's insane."

He stroked her soft blonde hair and stared after the red taillights, thinking.

"Are you okay?" he asked at last.

"Yes," she said and shook her head as if she thought herself a silly girl. "I'm fine. Just shaken up. Not so tough without my badge, huh? Maybe you could take me home?"

He swallowed, nodded. "Okay, come on." He took her hand then surprised her by swinging her around like a ballerina and lifting her into his arms. "Back across the ice with you!"

"Oh, put me down!" she cried, but wrapped her arms around his neck, threaded her fingers through his hair.

"Never!"

But he drove her home, carried her to her door and felt like a knight in shining armor for just a moment. He stood on the top stair, caught in the bright light from her house.

And when he said goodnight to Dinah, he held her hand longer than he thought he should. Wondered why the sad look on her face seemed a lot like goodbye. And a part of him knew he could never be what she needed. The rest of him said, 'Try harder.'

Still, the door closed off the light, left him feeling huge and bumbling on the steps in the shadows. He looked up at her windows, watched her pass before them and behind them. Saw her go into the kitchen through walls and walls and walls. So he closed his eyes, rubbed at them a little behind his glasses. Then he turned and started walking, past Dinah's old Chevy, down the streetlight lit lane.

As he walked, he thought.

He thought about old books loved to tatters and he thought about pretty dyed blond Dinah with her sweet voice. He thought about his parents, worried and bad at showing it; trying to explain to him why everything had gone so wrong so suddenly.

"Clark, we love you. We want what's best for you."

"What if it gets worse?"

"We'll still love you."

Which wasn't an answer and wasn't a solution. Which wasn't anything at all, really.

And he thought about Bruce Wayne. The look on his face as he'd watched Clark almost kiss Dinah. The way he'd looked standing in his door that day, wet and well-kissed.

Clark burrowed his head down in the collar of his jacket, shouldered his way through the gales that buffeted his body.

Under the symphony of wind, he heard a strangled gurgle. Something wet hit the pavement. He turned into a dark corner of the city where grimy windows littered with pink and yellow slips signed in the careless scrawl of some official stared down at the dirty concrete and asphalt. Tucked into all that filth, wrapped around herself, was a little woman who could have been any age from 50 to 80. Her face was aged leather and her hands tree branches, stiff where they wrapped around her tattered scarf. Blood was splattered on her lips and fingers and on the ground near her feet. She reeked of decay and age; of the lonely alleys and corners she'd made her home.

Her frozen breath sent clouds of white into the air. She coughed and more blood bubbled up. Clark raced to her side, didn't know where to touch, how to help.

"Ma'am?" he whispered.

Sad brown eyes fluttered open. "Oh, Allen, is that you? My perfect Allen? My beautiful boy." Her twisted fingers struggled to capture his and she pulled Clark's hand close to her chest and hugged it there weakly, with all the strength she had left.

"How I've missed you. Home in time for Christmas, just like I prayed." She tried to reach up to touch his face, but her arm was shaking too much to finish the motion. "So handsome," she said in a wet, wheezing voice.

Clark felt his throat turn thick and a stinging in his eyes. When he bowed his head, tears drip, dripped onto his glasses lenses, made the world swim in salt and sorrow. "We have to get you someplace safe."

"You always worried too much. Like your father." Her eyes drooped up and down like a ship on an ocean wave. Her whole body rattled with each breath.

"No," he whispered. One arm wiggled through the crumpled newspapers and shredded cardboard to get around her shoulders. She grunted in pain, but he saw no other way to lift her. "We have to get you help. Can you move?"

She made a clucking mother noise deep in her throat and then her sandpaper voice said, "Why would I leave, Allen? I have you again and it's so very warm right here."

And just like that, she faded away, gray head lulling to the side as if in sleep. He wrapped himself around her cold and stooped body. And he cried for a stranger, wondered why he couldn't stop. Something warm suddenly wrapped around him, like one of his mother's knitted sweaters, a bowl of soup after cutting firewood. He blinked through the tears, stared through the smudges on his glasses and saw the sun.

Or, rather, the light of the sun—a lemon yellow glow. It surrounded the dead woman and seemed to pulse as if alive. When it began to move, it was playful, almost free like a child on a playground. It looped around him once, twice—he imagined it might giggle and tap him on the shoulder, "You're it!"—before it went wispy and thin.

Then it was gone, leaving everything dark and his eyes stinging from the brightness. The moment gone, he was left holding the body of a woman who had died alone, imagining she saw a place better than this, a place where her son was still with her and as handsome as sons always are to mothers.

In that moment, it all became so clear: He hated Gotham City.

But he couldn't go back to Kansas.

There was nowhere else for him to go.

That night, when the music started, the smell of that woman's death was still in his nostrils, coating his throat and painting his insides all kinds of shades of angry. Shirtless, he pulled on a pair of jeans, left the belt undone and bounded up the steps two at a time. He didn't knock the door down with his knock—more of a violent rhythm of bang, bang, bang—and that he figured was a miracle.

Bruce Wayne with his vapid, handsome face came to the door, sneering.

And Clark could see all his stupid party guests in their stupid expensive clothing and he wanted to shake them all awake, hold a mirror up to them so they could see what an incredible waste everything they'd ever done was.

Bruce crossed his arms over his black, shining shirt. "Yes?" he said but the word was drowned out by the music. His vibrant blue eyes swept down Clark's shirtless, farm boy muscle, seemed to linger on his narrow hips, on how the bone poked up strong just above the waistband of his jeans. "So you've come to visit after all?" he said all tease. His eyes went up and down again and Clark felt a spasm in his stomach that wasn't anger and it was the absence of that emotion—one that he knew should have been there—that finally turned it into anger.

His voice was like the softest howl of a wolf on the hunt. "Turn it off. Now."

"I don't think—" Bruce began and it was already too late. To Clark, he'd had more than enough chances.

Every expensively matted and framed abstract photo on his expertly painted wall shattered to the ground, glass bouncing every direction. Every vase on every bookcase clattered this way and that before plunging to the carpet, dumping water and flowers like dirt on a funeral casket.

The partygoers went silent.

Clark removed his fist from the wall beside the door. He knew he'd done quite a lot of damage, but his anger still felt just as new, just as potent.

"Turn the music off," Clark rumbled. The music was turned off by a scared looking man in an ugly but expensive tweed jacket. "Get your coats and go home," he finished, just as harshly. There was a moment's delay and then all of Bruce's classy, chic friends were fleeing past him to the elevators and stairs. A few tossed, "Night, Brucie," over their shoulders, but most kept their heads down and ran like frightened cattle.

Bruce and Clark were left alone to stare hatred one way and confusion back the other.

"What the hell is your problem?" Bruce asked as he took a bold step into the hallway. His hand snaked up to Clark's shoulder, thumb brushing along his neck, fingertips soft and tickling at his collarbone. He shook Clark by the shoulder a few times then seemed to reconsider when he saw the feral smile on Clark's face.

"No," Clark growled, "what the hell is your problem. What the hell was that stunt with the car? What is it with the damn parties?"

Bruce went whirling, twirling, tripping into the hallway; spinning, stumbling, crashing into the wall and then Clark was crashing against him. His fingers were still at Clark's shoulder, but they were weak and twisted now because their bodies were this close and he had no grip. All he had was a hot body pressed against his, a man who could shake a wall hard enough to dislodge nails snarling down at him like a savage. Clark's fingers were on his upper arms, holding him easily.

"Wha—?" Bruce said, wide eyed with worry, with awareness of how small he was to this man.

"You know, you have all the money in the world and you waste it on loud parties for your stupid friends," Clark whispered.

"That's not fair," Bruce said softly, tried to wiggle free. All he accomplished was losing more ground as his feet seemed to slide apart. Clark's solid weight pushed in to the opening made by his spread legs as if it had been welcomed.

Clark took a few, shaking breaths. Bruce was close enough that every inhale, every exhale, every heartbeat or swallow was Clark's to feel as they happened.

"It's the truth," Clark said at last. He wasn't staring at Bruce's parted lips. Wasn't staring at his glassy-eyed fear and confusion. He wasn't. He closed his eyes, saw the woman's go dim, saw the golden fire of her aura slip away like the steam from vents into the shadows. "A woman died in the cold in my arms today, and you just want to have a party."

He shook his head, couldn't believe he had this man's picture in his house, had touched it like a devout touched a Psalter.

"Clark," Bruce said as if begging. "Put me down."

And Clark realized that he'd lifted him up, pushed their bodies closer; Bruce's feet were dangling. Their faces were too close, his breath kissing Bruce's breath as it danced between their lips. He complied slowly as if coming to himself in stages: The anger cleared from his eyes, the muscles of his face relaxed. Bruce slid down Clark's body as he was lowered and there was this friction that made him fight a gasp, wish for the safety of space. Clark felt it too and moved quickly away. From that distance, he looked at Bruce Wayne and wondered at exactly what he was seeing. "I can't believe I," he started, but never finished.

His anger like a phantom—here one minute and gone the next—Clark turned and walked away. He wondered how many times he'd be able to walk away from Bruce. When he would finally just snap.

Days went by with no Dinah and no noise upstairs. It was like a thief had stolen both away. Gotham turned even colder.

Clark stared at a blinking cursor. The only word on the entire page was "Monster." He took his hands off the keyboard just in case. He couldn't afford another laptop if he lost his temper now. Partly, he knew he owed Bruce an apology about the broken pictures. He didn't know how to begin making that apology.

He heard Scops' voice say, "He was like you and me. Maybe a little bigger. Maybe a little stronger. Different, but not so different." And he wanted to believe him so much he could taste it.

He looked up from his laptop, stared at the television where it played softly.

On the news, a woman sobbed her gratitude. She'd lost her house. She'd lost everything. Sadly, she wasn't alone. Foreclosures, bankruptcy, unemployment—all these things wandered the Gotham streets like a skeletal ghost, touching many and slowly ruining all.

Over the past year, the face of the city had changed and hardened. But this woman was different. She was all softly running water, eyes and nose red from the tissue in her hand.

"He gave me a home. He said I didn't have to pay a penny until I could afford to."

Gratitude was in every vowel, every whimpered word. The reporter stole the scene a moment later to explain that over one hundred struggling families across Gotham had received such gifts from Bruce Wayne. Food when their children were starving; clothes when they were cold; a home when they had no shelter.

And Clark sat on his borrowed couch in his borrowed apartment and brooded. Because he couldn't reconcile the Bruce Wayne who would treat a woman like an accessory to his fine suit one day—discard her publicly when she was no longer useful—with the one who would give a second chance to a desperate woman the next.

He couldn't believe that Bruce had done this at all. Certainly he couldn't even begin to believe that Bruce had done this for him.

A day passed and then two.

Clark succeeded in thinking less about Bruce's incomprehensible change of heart at work and in his quiet apartment with Scops' lazy dog. Which is to say, he thought about it once every hour instead of once every minute.

And when he passed Bruce Wayne in the lobby of the building, he kept walking. He heard when Bruce stopped, felt his eyes follow him until he was in the elevator. When he turned to hit the button, he got his first glance of what the billionaire looked like when he didn't get his way. His eyes were narrowed and his nostrils were flared.

For a moment, Clark felt like a petty child, glad that Bruce finally understood what he felt.

Two days later, he opened the door to the pounding of a drunken Bruce Wayne, tie askew and bottle of liquor sloshing in his hand. His square-tipped fingers were wet with it and just for a minute Clark thought about sucking them clean.

Then he remembered how despicable he was. Bruce Wayne was frivolous and shallow, thoughtless and immature.

He waited for a moment for Clark to speak and when he didn't, said, "So? I'm trying," loudly.

"Congratulations. Go away," Clark replied. It was so easy to close the door on him. Or it would have been had Bruce not slapped his hand against it and pushed back.

"You know," Bruce slurred, "I think I'm sick of you playing high and mighty."

"You almost hit Dinah with your car."

"I was aiming for you."

Eyes narrowed in disgust, Clark shook his head, crossed his arms like erecting a barrier. "You're drunk."

"Thank you Captain Obvious!" The door got an extra shove, hard enough to make Clark stagger back. Bruce stormed into the room, bottle swinging from his fingertips at his side. His shoulder hit the edge of the door, but the beer had deadened his senses to the point where he didn't even feel it, pushed right on like a puppet being controlled by some unseen puppeteer.

Clark went flat against the wall, tried to stay away from Bruce because he didn't trust himself.

Bruce seemed to sense the distance Clark was putting between them and he rounded on him, got his free hand up on the wall beside Clark's head. He crowded him against the wall with his body, moving in closer with deliberate menace. Clark felt something like fear take hold of him and he pushed himself further against the wall, leaned away from the acrid sour smell of booze.

Bruce just leaned in closer until their mouths were whisper close, his eyes unable to stay on Clark's without crossing. They darted over Clark's face instead, as if Bruce were seeing him for the first time.

"I can't please you, can I? Nothing I do will be good enough."

"What are you expecting from me?" Clark snapped. "You do one flashy good deed and help a bunch of people after a lifetime of doing nothing? What am I supposed to do, be grateful?"

"You're supposed," Bruce said and moved, clumsily tried to press his lips to Clark's. And no, he never finished the sentence.

And in another reality, perhaps it went like this:

Clark stood there, hot with the closeness of their bodies and more, but unable to return the kiss. He was speechless and confused. Bruce's lips were soft and Clark guessed that if he opened his mouth, let Bruce deepen the kiss, that he'd taste like everything he'd had to drink. Bruce angled his head this way and that, brushed their noses together, licked his lips and went back in to kissing, kissing, kissing so slow, it was like he had forgotten that everything ends eventually.

But in this world, at this moment, Clark stopped him. The kiss never happened and Bruce looked down at the heavy hands pushing him away. A frustrated sigh slid past his wet, red lips.

"Clark," he said and made one last attempt, straining forward.

"Stop." Still pushing, his hands slid down Bruce's shirt and it felt nice enough that he brought them up to do it again. Bruce shook his head in confusion. "You want to kiss me."

"Go away, Bruce." He said the words as if speaking to his fingers on Bruce's chest, refusing to meet the other man's eyes.

"I'm going to try to kiss you again."

"No you're not. You're going to go away and forget this ever happened."

"Why?"

"Because you're drunk."

Bruce blinked at him blearily. "Fucking Boy Scout," he said. This time, he was the one who pushed away from Clark, who almost looked disappointed. It was as if part of him had been hoping for Bruce to fight with him about the kiss. He staggered back to the elevator, rode it up, and somehow made it to his apartment.

Clark stared through the ceiling, through the beams and boards and carpet and watched him make it as far as his couch where he slumped. Bruce smacked his lips a few times, winced at the taste of his own mouth.

"Dammit," was all he said. And then he fell asleep.

One floor below, Clark closed the door. He stroked Dog's head when it was shoved against his palm.

"He really is a mess," he whispered and Dog had no argument.

For Clark, there was some good news: The silence continued for days and days. No parties, no rambunctious sex.

And late night, drunken visits from Bruce Wayne proved to be a one-night event. Dinah didn't call and Clark didn't call her. Sometimes he wondered when, exactly, she'd figured out that he was nothing she needed.

Bruce Wayne's good deeds were sweeping across the city and the news and paper only seemed to want to talk about them and him. Clark stopped watching the news, stopped reading the paper.

It was amazing how his sleep didn't improve even with the silence. He still stared at the blinking cursor, realized he no longer had anything to say about the story or the monster or the dragon.

He certainly had no idea what to write about the hero. Every day, late into the night, he tried harder than ever to work, and as a result got nothing done. And so every night, he flipped through the magazine, gone quite wrinkled from all his thumbing through and staring. The temptation was always there to let his hand wander over his body while looking at those intense eyes. But he held back because the photo was not as good as the memory, which came to him as clearly as anything ever had.

It was a sensation he'd never forget: Almost kissing Bruce Wayne.

What lulled him to sleep at night was a phantom memory, completed by imagination. Bruce's lips so soft and yet hesitant, testing, questioning.

Tonight, the memory was so very good, that the shocking re-emergence of the music made Clark sit bolt upright in bed, scaring Dog enough to make him bark and run away.

"You're kidding me," Clark said to the empty room.

Jeans and a t-shirt were jerked on in seconds. He didn't bother with shoes over his socks. Darker, persistent thoughts were circling in his mind. After it all—the peaceful requests and calling the cops and the never-kiss—Bruce was still playing some kind of game. Clark tried to find calm. Then, suddenly, he just didn't give a damn: He was itching for a fight.

He felt that, if he could, he'd sprout wings large and leathery. He'd breathe fire.

He'd tried to be nice. He'd tried to be tolerant of the man's parties and lovers and venom.

Bruce was out of chances. Clark took the stairs three at a time. He was seething by the time he reached the door. A voice at the back of his mind was telling him it wasn't worth it. He told it to shut the hell up.

When he knocked on the door, it was more of a bang.

It was flung open almost immediately. Clark started to shout the minute he saw that face. "Would you and your friends just shut—"

Then he went quiet. He frowned:

Bruce Wayne was alone.

"Clark," Bruce said with a wild, evil smile.

"Y-you…you're not even having a party!"

"No. No, I'm not."

Clark was floundering. Anger and confusion warred in his mind. "So…You're just doing this to be an ass?"

"Yes. Yes, I really am," Bruce agreed. He crossed his arms over his chest.

"I can't believe you. I have the first chapter of my dissertation due tomorrow! I'll have to go before a review board and…and defend my research!"

"I. Don't. Care." Bruce's eyes were cold and unfeeling and Clark felt his face turn hot. When Bruce snarled and said, "So goodnight," Clark felt the last few cords holding him back snap, like charred bones on a battlefield. Bruce pushed the door closed and maybe looked surprised when it encountered a foot.

"Excuse me?" he said with real surprise.

"There's no excuse," Clark hissed and pushed the door open with too much force. "Not for the likes of you."

Bruce stumbled back and Clark saw the scene through the eyes of a beast: All the colors of the room were punched up, saturated beyond the norm. All the reds were slick and inescapable like blood. All the blacks were as all-consuming as midnight. He was grinding his teeth together hard enough to hurt.

Bruce had regained his footing and was looking at Clark as if he had never seen him before.

"Come on, Clark," he said on a whisper. "You don't want to do this."

Clark didn't answer. Something had caught his eye. The radio was in the corner, flanked by massive sub-woofers and speakers. He turned towards it and started walking. Bruce hurried to stand in front of him. "Don't," he said.

"If you won't, I will," Clark said back, voice just as harsh.

He reached for the power button and stopped when a hand caught his wrist. Fire and ice tangled together up and over his arm, wiggled into his senses. His pulse reacted like jumper cables were hooked to his heart.

"I said 'Don't'," Bruce said and his voice was dangerous, but it wasn't that which had Clark on edge. It was the contact, the skin against his, the way his body kicked into high-gear insanity at the feel of those smooth fingers that had never known a day of hard work.

"Get your hands off me."

"Then back off," Bruce snapped back. With his other hand, Clark pried Bruce's fingers off his wrist. He flung Bruce's hand away, tried not to notice how his fingers went hot and then cold at intervals long after.

Clark wasn't working under a plan, so he just wove around Bruce and headed to the source of the music. It was unbearable this close. Pushing the power button was easy, almost anti-climatic. And then Bruce was there with a furious expression on his handsome face. He reached around Clark and turned the radio back on.

So Clark leaned down and jerked the cord out of the wall.

"Plug it back in and I throw the whole radio out the window."

"That's hilarious. You know what? Fuck you," Bruce said. He got Clark in the jaw hard enough that Clark took a shocked step backwards. Seething, Bruce watched as Clark rubbed at his reddening jaw, wiggled it from side to side.

"You hit like a girl," Clark said after a moment and punched back.

Bruce went over the nearest overstuffed chair. Watching the spoiled rich kid go head over heels to the ground was pretty funny. Getting tackled by him when he got up faster than Clark had been expecting wasn't.

"Oof!" he cried as he hit and slid across the carpet with an armful of Bruce. His back hit the side of the sofa, it slid two feet the other way before finally coming to a halt. And they stayed that way for a minute, Bruce draped gracelessly between his legs and close. Very close. When he tried to push himself off of Clark, it just slid their hips together, up, down, slowly. Bruce gasped, Clark just shoved.

Bruce went flat on his back and immediately tried to right himself. It was too late though, because Clark was already attacking again, pouncing on top of him and grabbing hold of his wrists before Bruce could punch. Tendons flexed beneath his fingers and it just felt like victory. Bruce's hips twisted beneath his so he pushed down and—

It wasn't supposed to feel good. He wanted to make Bruce suffer. So he leaned down low with a cruel snarl on his lips edging towards a crueler smile. Faces close, he opened his mouth to say something like, "Not so tough now, huh, rich boy!" but nothing came out when he realized how close their mouths were.

It made Clark loosen his grip on Bruce's wrists, a foolish error.

Bruce smirked, then did something with his legs that had them switching places; had him on top and holding Clark's wrists down. "I win," he said and leaned down lower.

"Hell no!" Clark screamed and crunched up to slam his shoulder into Bruce's. One on top, the other on bottom, they tumbled, switched places, cursed.

One poorly timed roll had Clark overturning a table and Christmas decorations came crashing down on top of them. A wooden nutcracker wedged beneath Clark's shoulder and he hissed then rolled them again. Nothing surprised him more than Bruce working their bodies in such a way to have him on his back again. Straddling Clark's hips and fingers around Clark's wrists, Bruce held him down. Then he suddenly released his wrists.

Clark tried to swing again, to fight back, but Bruce's hands evaded capture.

They traveled down the inside of Clark's arm and then up and over to his chest, up to his neck. Then there was a long sweep back down until his fingers were underneath the shirt instead of over, teasing along the skin of Clark's belly.

Clark's arms came around Bruce's lower back; he told himself he'd meant to wrestle him off and away. But Bruce just pushed down against him, middle to middle like he'd had the same idea Clark hadn't known he'd had. Clark's mouth fell open on a soundless cry. He couldn't even think when Bruce brought his chest down low, arched his hips away and back down once, twice, and then just held down hard on the third, waited for Clark to rock up into him. He did, cried out.

Bruce's lips were warm and dry and soft against his neck. They were breathing too loudly, bodies too close. He felt a smile against his neck and then Bruce was moving again, just a little too hard, crashing again and again against Clark. Whose legs fell open for Bruce to move and slide between. Whose fingers flexed hard against Bruce's back, holding on like he was afraid of flying apart without the anchor of Bruce's body.

When he turned his head, his nose and lips were buried in Bruce's hair and he inhaled deeply, then moved just enough to press his lips to the skin over his jaw. Bruce made a noise—half groan, half purr—and his fingers were playing across his chest, pinching, stroking.

Clark thought maybe the room was spinning, blood rushing in his ears and nothing making sense.

He was hard, wanting it more than he ever had in his life and Bruce was hot and heavy, rubbing against the inside of his thigh. When Bruce stopped, it was only to wiggle his hands down between their bodies, start on the fly of Clark's jeans. Clark's eyes flew open—he hadn't known he'd closed them at all.

All around him were overturned chairs and broken decorations. The walls were bare on one side of the room and he knew the trash was filled with broken picture frames. Fucking on the carpet was probably the last thing they should be doing.

"Stop."

"Not this time."

"Yes," Clark said and found that strength that came and went back full force. "This time."

Bruce found himself on his feet and up against a wall. He had no idea how he'd gotten there. Still just as hard, still wanting Clark just as much, but something like a warning was tainting the edges of his lust. Clark had one big hand fisted in the collar of Bruce's shirt.

"Okay," Bruce said, sneering, but his pupils were blown and his erection was still pressing against Clark's thigh where it was wedged between his legs. "Okay. Just do it then, Clark. If you aren't going to fuck me, you might as well hit me. Get that out of your system at least."

Clark bared his teeth, knew Bruce was just talking that way to ruin what had been good, if only for a second. He was lashing out because it was the only way he knew how to deal with anything he couldn't control. Because he was a child, underneath it all.

"Have it your way," Clark hissed.

He took a swing, saw Bruce's eyes widen. Pulled his punch to the side at the last minute. Bruce flinched, but Clark—

He felt drywall, wood, insulation, steel, all of it like paper to his knuckles.

There was a beat where nothing but silence reigned.

Bruce took two well-informed steps away from Clark.

Clark who had just punched a hole through a foot and a half of wall. Bruce's eyes were wide and his mouth was slack.

But Clark stared at his wrist with its bracelet of building and this lost, hurt expression passed over his face. The dust settled slowly. Whatever had made the feat possible in the first place seemed to leave him. Clark jerked at his arm. There was this awful whine from deep within his throat. He jerked his arm again and—

It was the sound of two earthquakes crammed into one room as the wall fell down. Rubble kept falling, piling up, inside and out, far below on the sidewalk. All of winter darted into the warm space in gales and hit Clark hit in the face, set his teeth to aching and his eyelids felt frozen into place. And cold in Gotham was not normal cold. No matter the temperature in the surrounding cities, Gotham was always five to ten degrees below that.

The dust and small debris from the destroyed wall tangoed with the snow and together they draped over expensive furniture, blanketed lavish rugs. The snow began to melt and soak into the decorative pillows.

Shoulders hunched, Clark stared down at the rubble at his feet, a god-child sorry for trampling the world. "I didn't mean to," he said with a hitch in his breath.

"How did you do that?" Bruce asked in a voice that could never be called soft, but was definitely quiet, cautious.

"I don't know," Clark said. Realizing that it was mostly a lie, he added, "I'm not like you."

"I can see that," Bruce said, recovering quickly. He cleared his throat. "So what are you?"

Clark looked up at him. "I'm tired," he said honestly. "And…I'm sorry about your wall." He took a moment to look into Bruce's eyes to gauge how angry he was with him. It was all in his mind, he knew, but his reflection in the blue surface was that of a beast, feral and deadly.

He had to get away.

He spun quickly on his heels. "I can't—" he began, taking a brisk stride away from the sad remains of the wall, heading for the door. He was fleeing.

But Bruce caught his arm before he could take another step. "Wait," he said, tugging.

"Don't!" Clark shouted and jerked his arm away. Neither man had expected the force of the movement. The faltering step Bruce took occurred in slow motion to Clark, the way his eyes widened in surprise; how his breath came out in a short gasp.

He overcompensated, took one stumbling lunge forward. His feet tap-danced over the rubble and caught and twisted. Arms windmilling, he teetered and, quite simply, plunged.

Through the gaping hole in the wall he fell. It had all happened so quickly, he didn't even think to scream. Clark watched him slipping down and knew he couldn't panic. He also knew he couldn't let him fall. His heart was in his throat and he swallowed it down and simply—

Jumped.

Midnight engulfed him.

He had no idea what he thought he was doing; he just knew he had to try. The wind stung his eyes and rushed loud and terrible past his ears, louder than a train whistle when you stand right next to it.

Thank god this is a tall building, he thought. Thank god he seemed to be gaining on Bruce who was wide-eyed, mouth moving soundlessly, or at least that's how it seemed with all the damn wind in his ears. And he really was very glad the building was as tall as it was.

"Bruce," he screamed and flung his arm out, grasping at one of Bruce's flailing arms. Slippery with sweat, he caught it. Once he did, though, he had no idea what to do with it. So he pulled and ended up with an armful of Bruce. And they were still falling, but their faces were so close and Clark—

Well, he didn't want to be falling anymore.

The wind stopped rushing.

The only noise now was Bruce's ragged breathing. Gotham was a labyrinth of lights and roads spanning everywhere they could see. The city seemed endless from this height. Bruce was shaking but still he clung to Clark, tighter and tighter as it became apparent he was the one keeping them afloat.

"H-how…?"

Clark couldn't speak, so he just moved his head from side to side. Bruce's spastic heartbeat was distracting.

"Hold tight," he said, trying for confidence he didn't feel. He wanted to go up; back to the massive hole he'd punched in Bruce's wall.

They drifted up, hardly steady, but definitely in an improved direction. They clung tighter to each other as the distance from the ground increased. Feet tangling up, Clark twisted them, checking behind him as best as he could. His head still thunked against the building. "Ow," he said. His instinct was to rub at it, but he couldn't figure how to do that without dropping Bruce, so he fought the urge until they were both back on Bruce's carpet.

Bruce immediately went to the floor, obviously grateful to be alive.

"Fuck," he kept saying. When he didn't feel like saying that, he switched to, "Shit."

Clark leaned against the ragged wall and looked down at what he'd barely missed being part of. The entire breadth of the situation was coming to him slowly. "I can fly," he said at last.

"Yeah, no shit," Bruce huffed, still fond of the word.

But Clark wasn't listening to him. He was saying, "I can fly," over and over again with an amazed smile on his face. It was the best feeling of his life. The fear of mere moments before felt insignificant.

The only thing ruining it was the idea that it, like his strength and preternatural hearing, would come and go. It was the sole thing keeping him from jumping out the window again just to feel that freedom.

Suddenly, he remembered Bruce. He was looking up at Clark with a conflicted expression on his wind-reddened face. "This goes a little further than not like me," Bruce said at last.

"Yeah," was Clark's distracted reply. "I can fly."

"You saved my life," Bruce prodded. That made Clark look at the situation from the other side. "Um," he said, but that statement was hard to follow.

"You didn't even think, did you? You just jumped down after me." Without waiting for Clark's answer, he added another question. "You didn't know?"

"No," Clark admitted. "First time for everything…?"

A surprised laugh bubbled up in Bruce's throat. And maybe shock was keeping him from watching his tongue for he said, "You're amazing."

"It was nothing," Clark whispered. "I just didn't want you to fall." He flexed his fingers then wiped them on his pants before reaching down to help the still-shaky billionaire to his feet.

"You can't stay here," he said once they stood face to face. "You'll freeze." He looked again at the blustery wind meandering the room as if an invited party guest. Bruce shivered, realizing that, yes, he was rather cold.

"Do you have somewhere to go?"

Bruce took a step closer to Clark. "I don't know. Do I?"

And for all that he had almost died, he certainly switched gears quickly. Clark was at a loss. Bruce's expression was serious, no hint of a joke in the planes and angles of his movie star face.

A goofy laugh made it's way through Clark's lips, but he wouldn't let it escape. Bruce's body was still out of his control, shaking with fear and cold and more and Clark wanted to grab him and wrap him up and never let him feel a chill or terror again. "What are you talking about?" he asked instead.

Another bold step brought Bruce even closer. "I'll leave. With you. We can go wherever you want."

Clark swallowed, closed his eyes briefly. His mouth and throat felt shoved full with cotton. His head wasn't fairing much better. Bruce was close enough now that his heartbeat was as impossible to ignore as the faint, tangy fragrance he wore. "Why?" Clark asked, shaking his head and wanting to step closer and farther away all at once.

Bruce's eyes were trained on him, shifting from his face to his shoulders—chest, arms, the column of his neck and back to his face. Then he lifted one pale hand and touched Clark's face hesitantly. "To finish what we started. And because…because I want to thank you."

He knew the minute he said it—maybe even as he was saying it—that it was the wrong thing to say. Clark blinked a few times and his mouth dropped down; then it snapped shut quickly.

He stepped back just enough for Bruce's hand to fall away. "I-I don't want your gratitude," he said frigidly.

"That's not—"

"No, Bruce. No more. No more games." He turned and ran, stumbled a little over the tatters of the apartment and Bruce just watched him go.

Wondered why he felt like maybe he was still falling, just about to hit.

Clark thought the note would be enough:

Dear Ma and Pa,

I'm borrowing a few things.

I'll pay you back, I promise.

Love, Clark

He left it on the table and then went to the tool shed.

The thing he hadn't counted on was his own clumsiness and his father's light sleeping. He lifted a single two-by-four, and the whole stack came tumbling down. The rumble and bang made him try to work faster, which only made him clumsier.

He heard the shotgun click a second before he felt a prick on his shoulder. The smell stung his nostrils.

"Come on, Pa!" he cried and threw his arms into the air. "Man!"

Big and old and gray, he squinted through the darkness. "Clark? Christ, ya oughtta feel lucky I din't hit'cha."

"Pa, you're an excellent shot," Clark said. He shoved his finger into the hole and waved at Jonathan Kent with it.

Clark staggered a little when Jonathan laid the shotgun down and rushed to his side. "Are you hurt, boy?" His hands were everywhere, probing at Clark's back and shoulder.

"No, sir, I'm fine."

Jonathan pulled himself together quickly, stood tall and set Clark away from him. "Well then."

"Hi, Pa."

"Hello, yourself. Whatcha doin' here in the middle of the night? Scared your mother an' me half to death."

"I left a note."

"I din't get it."

"I can see that. Um. I need to borrow a few things."

Jonathan's fading eyes took in the gathering of odds and ends at Clark's feet. He didn't ask, he just waited. Clark shifted uncomfortably for a moment before blurting out, "I broke something."

"Something big, I reckon," Jonathan said gruffly. "Can you fix it?"

Clark lowered his eyes, shook his head yes and then no. "I don't know," he said at last.

"But you're gonna try?"

"I am."

"Good enough. Now, since you woke up the whole house, you might as well come in and see your momma. She worries herself sick about you."

Clark shoved his hands into his pockets and shuffled after Jonathan who still seemed like a giant to him for all that he was a head taller.

He hadn't been home in over a year. He always had an excuse even though many of them didn't hold water anymore. His dissertation took up all his time; he couldn't afford transportation. He had finals, summer school, a second job. Always, always something. And his parents never complained though they knew as well as he that distance and transportation were no longer problems. As evidenced by his late night visit, time was becoming less of one, too.

Clark assumed that they knew the real reason he couldn't stomach being around them right now.

In the year he'd been away, his mother had aged. She was a little more bent, moved a little slower. The gray streaking her hair was like the clouds at sunset and those same clouds seemed to dull the shine of her eyes. It was as if her entire body was fading daylight. There was no strength to her hug. Guilt wound its way around his neck like a serpent: How could he say it wasn't his fault?

Martha Kent told him about the farm. Jonathan pitched in every five minutes or so with a grunt or one-word utterance that he thought said plenty. Clark didn't really listen because the farm was always the same. There was always a malfunction with the tractor, always a pregnant mare down at the Miller's, and a spark plug causing trouble in the truck. Life in Smallville moved at one-tenth the speed of life in Gotham. The general store had a new coat of paint, otherwise, nothing had changed.

Except his gradually stooping and weakening folks.

Martha patted his hand, tried to feed him every few minutes. "You look tired."

Clark didn't answer. He just sat on the old kitchen chair in the too-bright kitchen and sipped coffee made just the way he liked it. And the fact that he no longer felt comfortable here was a slap to the face because of the strength of the memory when there was no place else that felt so right.

"Don't you get a vacation? Ever?"

He nodded. "Break starts this week."

She pursed her lips then looked to Jonathan who bowed his head once, a strong, reassuring movement. Whatever Martha saw in it, she looked back to Clark and said, "Come home."

And Clark spun the coffee cup in between his fingers on the worn table and stared down at the single swallow left at the bottom. "Yeah," he said. "Okay."

He took a deep breath. "I just have something to take care of first."

When Bruce opened the door to his apartment, winter greeted him. Or it was supposed to. It had started to snow, so he'd come with a tarp and tape to run damage control before the repair crew could arrive.

Nothing was the way he'd expected it. He guessed with Clark, nothing ever could be.

The room was cold, but the draft he'd expected was gone. Everything was neat and tidy, the furniture back together and back in place. Christmas decorations adorned the table once more. He stood in the doorway and just stared.

He stared at the strong back bunching and stretching before him. The white cotton t-shirt hid nothing, was almost obscene with how it showed every muscle, every jutting bone. Bruce stared at the speed with which his hands moved, lifting, lowering, sliding over the drywall. Stared as, seconds later a paintbrush was in those sturdy hands, moving easily, loving the wall with color. Stared at how the color was a perfect match to the rest of the wall.

Before Bruce could even close the door, the job was finished, the paint drying, and Clark Kent was wiping his dirty hands onto his sun-bleached jeans. Navy blue handprints slithered down his thighs and then dustings of navy blue fingerprints appeared on his ass as he wiped again. Then he hooked his thumbs into the pockets at his narrow hips and turned to face Bruce, one knee bent and one hip up.

No glasses, just a smudge of navy blue on his cheek. The lighter, shimmering blue of his eyes.

"It'll hold," he said in that Kansas drawl. "Keep the cold out. You can have a pro check it later, but it's not a bad job. Not bragging, just," he started, but must have considered a shrug the end of the sentence because he just stopped and looked at Bruce.

Who swallowed and took a step into the room. Then he waved to indicate the good-as-new wall. "Thank you."

"It's…nothing," Clark said. "I mean…I broke it." Without even trying to hide his speed, he started cleaning—gathering the remains of his supplies, and resealing the paint can. "I'll be out of your way in a second," he said, pausing mid-stride. Then he was rushing about again, hurrying, maybe a little clumsy, but still so very fast. Tarp folded, brushes clean, he was ready to go. He bent to gather everything when Bruce said, "Just stop."

To his surprise, Clark did. The blur that had defined his body stilled. The lines and curves and shadows that made Clark's frame came into focus. He was, quite simply, stunning and Bruce had to force himself to breathe.

Clark's eyes darted to the door, then back to Bruce. "Okay. I'm waiting."

Bruce swallowed, seemed to be steadying himself. "The…the first time I ever saw you, you looked right through me. You wouldn't even shake my hand."

Clark's brows pulled into a confused frown. He shook his head. "What?"

Bruce slouched, his posture unconcerned even if he worried his lip with some deeper emotion Clark couldn't fathom. It was the first time he'd heard him have trouble with words, speak haltingly and without confidence.

"I…I think it surprised me," Bruce said, eyes trained on his shoes. "You didn't know who I was."

"I did, I guess," Clark countered in a voice that showed he was still waiting for the punch line.

"Oh. Well, then, you didn't care."

Clark didn't argue. It hadn't meant anything to him in any real sense. Bruce had been handsome.

And selfish.

And petty.

How could fame and money ever fix such things?

"Okay," he said at last. Then he took a page from Bruce's book and added, "And?"

Bruce winced as if he could hear himself in the word, his own ugliness. "And…I didn't like it." When he lifted his eyes, Clark found honesty gazing back out at him.

Clark rubbed at his face and then shoved the heels of his hands against eyes. Stress and tension radiated from his body. Finally, red-faced and unsmiling, he looked at Bruce. Into his eyes.

"I'll ask you this one more time: What are you expecting from me?"

Bruce shook his head. "I don't know. Just…" He was helpless, drowning in a rain swept ocean, screaming to the sky for help. "Don't look at me like that anymore. Just…look at me."

Clark looked at him. And he weighed the honesty in his eyes against everything else he knew about Bruce Wayne. Saw the magazine in his mind, thought of the pages nearly destroyed with his attentions, buried now in the bottom of his suitcase. Thought of the face of the Virgin and knew there was a lesson in all of this. Somewhere, hidden in the details; in the meaningless words of the article shoved in between gorgeous images of a ruined man.

Clark sighed. He suspected he'd been looking at Bruce Wayne clearly from the first moment he saw him.

He leaned down, pulled the brushes and the tarp and the stirrers and the dirty rags under one arm. He walked.

Didn't hurry, just walked as if he had realized that time was nothing he'd ever have to worry about. Never again.

So he walked.

Right up to Bruce, who looked up at him, his face a question, maybe a plea.

Clark saw it, and maybe he cared. Maybe. So he leaned down as slowly as he'd walked, and kissed Bruce in the span of time it takes someone to blink. Just a soft brush of lips, really, a whisper, something so fleeting Bruce would struggle to remember it for years. With his free hand, Clark stroked Bruce's cheek, touched it, thought of lapis lazuli rubbed away to nothing on vellum.

Then he pulled away and was gone. The door was left swinging on its hinges.

The "Wait!" Bruce said was said to an empty room with a perfect wall; an empty apartment that he ran from. He stormed down the steps, slammed through the door to the hallway breathlessly. And it was his building, dammit, so he had the skeleton key, he just couldn't get his stupid fingers to cooperate as he dug into his pocket. Finally, they closed around one of the rings and he stabbed the key into the lock, turned it and ran inside.

To another empty apartment. There were no signs that Clark Kent had ever been there. No quilts and candid shots or stacks of notes or well-thumbed books about books.

Bruce dropped down onto the carpet, right on his ass, and just stared around him. He was still there twenty minutes later, thinking.

The kiss was already like the memory of a dream from another life. Only, he could recall perfectly how it had seemed like hello.

Sitting alone on the carpet, he understood that it had really been goodbye.

Clark pulled his knees up and looked at the old posters on his old bedroom wall. It was obvious to him that he was too big to be in the room. There were boxes of comic books under his bed and that made him feel very strange. Dog was not quite used to his new surroundings. He sniffed at everything and jumped at every noise. Now, he was curled up where he was used to sleeping—at the foot of the bed—but he ended up taking up almost half of it.

Clark's laptop slept on the desk across the room, but he didn't want to write. All too soon, he'd be asked to submit his dissertation. Then he'd have to defend it. Maybe there'd be pressure to publish the damn thing. He just couldn't bring himself to care.

He'd been here for two days. His mother had doted on him and coddled him for the first. Now his mother was in Gotham because he was a coward.

"I can't just leave Professor Scops' apartment empty," he'd said that morning. "He trusted me to watch it. I feel like I'm letting him down."

"Can't you just speed over there and check on it now and then?" his father had asked without looking up from his paper. His mother had shushed him.

Then she'd volunteered to go and check in on the place for a few days. "You stay here and rest. I'll spend a few days in the apartment, see how things are going. Get the mail. Water the plants. It will give me a chance to visit Debbie. She moved there, you know." Clark didn't, but he felt an amazing sense of relief. Going back to Gotham meant he might run into Bruce. That he didn't want.

So he and Jonathan worked on the farm. It kept the old man's mind off Martha because without her, he was as useless as a boat without a rudder, directionless.

The two men barely spoke, which was normal and comfortable for Clark; his father had gotten older, but he hadn't really changed. But the day had ended and now Clark was left alone with his thoughts while his father snored away downstairs. And he wondered how his mother was in Gotham.

The music started as Martha was braiding her long hair. She came around the corner in her long nightgown, looking too young and frail. "What is that noise?" she demanded of no one in particular. And with that, she stormed out of the apartment to the elevator.

Martha Kent did not feel the urge to bang or scream to get Bruce Wayne's attention. She knocked softly as if somehow aware that he'd hear her. He came, but not with the careless smile he'd had when greeting Clark every time before. Bruce took in the slight whole of her quickly and his shoulders slumped almost imperceptibly in disappointment.

He looked thin to Martha who had a good eye for such things and her instinct was to feed him before taking him down a peg or two.

"Before you ask," Martha said, "I'm Clark's mother. I'm watching the place for a bit and no one could sleep with that noise." She pointed into the depths of his apartment. "May I?"

"Please." His voice was hoarse, but his manners impeccable as he stepped to the side and bowed her inside. She strode across the room, stopped before the hulking stereo, stared at it for a moment, and then turned back to Bruce. "Would you turn it off?" she asked without admitting she didn't know how to herself.

Without hesitation or argument, he crossed to stand beside her. Hidden among the toggles and switches and buttons was the one Bruce needed. He pushed it and the blaring sound came to an end.

"Thank you. Now," she said and crossed her arms, "is there something you want to say to me?"

He looked six years old for all that he towered over her and had a five o'clock shadow that was way past its bedtime. "I'm sorry..?"

"That's a start. Next?"

He lowered his head, stared at his flexing knuckles. "Where is he?"

Martha frowned. It was obvious the question was not what she'd been expecting. Then her mouth formed an 'O' as if she had just solved the last clue of a crossword and was surprised that she hadn't figured it out sooner. "Expecting him, were you?" she asked in a voice leaning to softness. It made his eyes snap up, study her for a moment as if he could read her insides by staring at her outside. He didn't answer, so Martha prodded him with, "Is that what all the noise is about? Are you trying to get his attention?"

When he didn't answer yet again, she shook her head, braid like the pendulum on a grandfather clock, swinging between her thin shoulders. "I think you're going about this all the wrong way," she said and gestured to encompass the whole room, as if even his wealth were a fault.

"Clark told me all about you," she said. "Or I thought he did anyway. Looks like he left out the juicy parts." Despite the suggestive statement, in her long nightgown, she looked supremely unimpressed.

Bruce shook his head and held out his hands like a priest asking for alms. "I made a bad impression. I'd like another chance." And Martha could imagine those baby blues causing many girls palpitations. She was immune.

"It seems to me he's made up his mind already."

Bruce's jaw clenched and unclenched almost convulsively. "I can change it."

Martha's eyebrow lifted behind her bangs, but she still wasn't pleased. She sniffed in the way old women sniff, that technique they all have to show displeasure.

"Really? That's rich. Well then, let me say this: He's a good boy. Better than most." Her eyes were stern and they held his in challenge. "And you're an ass."

It took a moment for sound to catch up with the motion of his lips. "Excuse me?"

"There's no excuse," she said and opened her mouth to finish when Bruce cut her off.

"Not for the likes of me?"

If she was put out by having her line stolen by a spoiled billionaire, she didn't say so, only sniffed again. "Indeed," she said.

"There are better ways to live your life," she said. "And until you figure them out, keep your music down, and leave my son alone."

She tilted her head to the side. "Am I understood?"

"Yes."

"Yes, who?"

"Yes, ma'am," he said, but his face showed something like renewed vigor. He wasn't giving up.

Martha saw it, and maybe she was a little impressed, but not that much. She nodded, spun on her heels and headed out the door. Bruce watched her go and had to bite his tongue on all the things he really, really wanted to say.

He even closed the door gently when he wanted to slam it.

In the hallway, Martha paused. She tilted her head as if in deep thought. Then she smiled a secret smile.

Clark spent the holidays at the Kent farm. They were quiet, but filled with warmth. His parents tried their best to understand that Clark needed time alone, for whatever reason. Sometimes his mother looked at him a little too knowingly, but she never talked about her time in Gotham.

The magazine under his mattress was missing a staple and the corners were bent. The black and white photo of Bruce Wayne was a rumpled, worn thing. Clark tried not to be too bothered because, well, old habits.

When he had the courage, Clark began making late night visits to check on Scops' apartment. And if he peeked through the ceiling to watch Bruce sleeping peacefully, well—

January came. Two weeks in, he said goodbye to his teary-eyed mother and stoic father. He'd spent enough time back under that old familiar roof that he'd actually started to miss the solitude of Scops' apartment. But he felt well on the way to being able to forgive his parents for all that they never told him.

Classes began and he reintroduced Dog to his old dwelling. The big dog ran around happily as if he too had missed it.

At long last, Clark greeted professor Scops at the airport with a reserved hug. The old man slapped him on the back and handed him his heavy suitcases. He coughed now and then, but talked animatedly about everything he'd seen, as if he were a young man in love with the world.

"The library! Yes! It looks as if it landed. Very modern. Many stairs, yes? I got lost many times. But," he said and held up a thin finger, "I held it in my hand." He cupped his little hands together and made the motion of opening a book.

"The Nowell Codex?" Clark asked amusedly.

"Indeed! And now, I can die a happy man. How is Dog?"

So they talked. Or, rather, Clark listened to the professor, who seemed to know not to ask many questions.

Careful not to be seen on his late night flights through the city, he moved back to his old apartment. The space was confining after the sprawl of Scops' place. He couldn't remember how he'd ever fit all of his books here.

He went to classes, fought to stay awake; went to the library for his little job, listened to Barbara profess her adoration of books and words like a lovesick devotee.

"They're alive," she told him. "Always calling to you from the shelves. Best friends when everyone abandons you."

He didn't tell her that books did a crap job at keeping you warm at night. He suspected she already knew that well enough.

At night, he wrote about monsters and heroes.

It was very quiet here. Even when he let his hearing go wide, there was nothing but the dedicated writing and page turning of other college students living on the cheap in the old building.

He missed Dog. He was thinking of calling Scops to ask for visiting rights. He got into such a routine that sometimes he forgot what it was like to move desperate and hot against Bruce. Sometimes he forgot the feel of his smile against his neck.

Sometimes.

Late in January, he stretched hugely and blinked sleepily at his laptop. The whole paragraph needed a good editor. He was about to do the deed and delete the whole thing when his fingers stilled. He cocked his head to the side and waited. Listened.

He heard the footsteps first, so the knock wasn't a surprise. He took his time opening the door.

And Bruce Wayne was standing in the hallway. The dark circles beneath his eyes made him look like he'd been punched. The rest of it was just defeat. He was a fighter long after the towel had hit the floor.

"I don't," he said. His arms came up weakly then flopped back down. "I don't always say what I should say."

Clark crossed his arms, stood back away from the door.

"Come in."

Bruce did, but only to stand awkwardly in the center of the room with his hands in the pockets of his slacks like he didn't know what else to do with them.

"I saw you on the news," Clark said, taking pity on the obviously lost man. "You're building a shelter."

Bruce's "I'm…trying" was delayed, as if he didn't know what to say or how to say it. And maybe the words just jumped out on their own to fill the silence. Clark wondered exactly what it had taken to get Bruce to hunt him down and come here tonight.

"That's good."

Bruce looked at his shoes. "I don't really know you, do I?"

"No," Clark agreed. "But it's mutual."

"Oh." Clearing his throat, Bruce added, "I still want. Ahem. I mean, I want to fix that. To change that. I mean, I want to know you."

"Okay," Clark said. "Well, for starters, I don't really need these anymore." Bruce peeked up just in time to see Clark reach up and take off his glasses, place them beside his laptop. Bruce stared at his smooth, timelessly handsome face for stretched moments and then back at his shoes. "Good," he said.

"Your turn."

Bruce rocked on his heels. "I don't really like rap music."

"Okay," Clark tried to say, but evidently Bruce wasn't finished. He just kept talking and it all came out as a rush, a list that maybe he'd been sitting on for weeks or maybe one that had just occurred to him.

He spoke like he couldn't stop himself from speaking even though he stuttered and stumbled over his own ideas and words.

"And I'm not always as bad as I've been. I mean, I have been bad, but…there are reasons. And I can try. To get better. Because…have I ever told you I like your lips?" he said. "And I wish I could see you smile. You never smile. And…I like your voice. I want to ask you about your accent. I want to know why you let me in today when you could have slammed the door on me. I want to know why you saved me and why you kissed me. And…" He finally looked up at Clark who was standing stock still, expressionless. Even though it was hardly encouraging, Bruce kept looking and finished with, "And I want to kiss you again. Properly. Even just once. Because I still want you, Clark. I want you so much it's driving me crazy."

When Clark didn't respond at all for minutes of uncomfortable silence, Bruce smacked his lips then nervously looked around him. He looked everywhere but at Clark. "You need a bookshelf," he said.

Clark inhaled slowly then exhaled on, "I know." Finally, he sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "You can sit down."

"Where?"

"Somewhere where there aren't any books."

Bruce twisted around for a minute. "That leaves the bed."

"The bed's fine."

Almost like a child sent to the principal's office, Bruce shuffled over. Gingerly, he lowered himself onto the corner then bounced a few times. "Springy."

Clark shook his head. "After everything you just told me, are you really going to talk about my mattress, Bruce?"

The tone of his voice made Bruce look up, swallow. "No. Come here." He waited a moment and added, "Please."

And for once, he didn't feel like arguing with Bruce. When he reached him, he slid between his spread knees and Bruce bowed his head until his forehead was pressed to Clark's stomach. Then he rubbed it back and forth against the fabric of Clark's shirt a few times and when he exhaled, his breath warmed Clark's skin.

Clark didn't move when Bruce's hands started a path that began at the sides of his knees and went to his lower back. A few of his fingers drifted lower, rubbed along the top of his ass through the heavy denim of his jeans. Then they slid around to his groin. "Okay?"

A nod was all that Clark could manage. As his fly was undone, he closed his eyes, placed his hands on Bruce's shoulders. The room was so silent that his hitched breath seemed loud when Bruce took him in his hand. With confident, steady strokes, he worked him to hardness, didn't seem to mind the tightness of Clark's grip on his shoulders.

He only squeezed harder when Bruce lowered his head and took Clark in his mouth. Standing was almost too difficult and the room was anything but silent: There were the wet noises from Bruce's tongue and lips on the head of his cock, the slap, slap of his hand stripping the base. And there were Clark's shameless cries, encouragements. He tried to warm Bruce by touching his hollowed cheeks, but it was just an ineffective fluttering of sweaty fingers.

Bruce seemed to understand and didn't seem to care. He just swallowed him down until Clark felt himself hard at the back of Bruce's throat. Bruce kept swallowing as Clark came and couldn't stop jerking his hips, coming more. He would have fallen if it weren't for Bruce's hands steadying him at his hips. His ragged breath was hot against Clark's stomach through his shirt.

There was a pause when nothing happened and then Bruce was guiding him down onto the bed, arranging their bodies so that they were both on their sides, looking at each other.

Bruce raised his hand, seemed to be waiting for permission. Clark didn't flinch away, and maybe that was all the permission he needed. His fingers were just as soft as Clark remembered when they touched his forehead and then curved down past his eyebrows, over his cheek. His thumb ghosted under his eyes, and then four fingers were tracing around his wide mouth. Bruce looked up from his exploration, lifted his eyebrows in a question.

It was Clark's mouth claiming his that formed the answer.

To Clark, it was their first kiss—the first one where they were meeting in the middle for it, both on the same page. If they didn't kill each other first, maybe there would be more to come.

He didn't know. Reading the future wasn't one of his powers.

So he just opened his mouth to the taste of Bruce mixed in with his own taste and closed his eyes because that's how proper kisses were supposed to be: Darkness and sensation, breath mingling and eyelashes brushing against skin. They only stopped long enough to look at each other, breathe.

Then they were kissing again, softly.

Bruce never stopped stroking Clark's face and Clark never stopped wishing he could stop time, make this moment last. Because for just one moment, Bruce wasn't selfish or cruel. For just a moment, Clark wasn't a monster pretending to be a scholar and afraid to live. He didn't have to pretend that he wasn't alone and lonely, and Bruce wasn't pretending that dozens of friends and money lessened the emptiness he felt inside.

Just for the duration of that kiss, they were perfect. Perfect for each other. And it was just the two of them, holding back time and the truth while they kissed and fell asleep in each other's arms.

And Clark smiled in his sleep. Just once, so quickly Bruce almost missed it. But Bruce did see it, memorized it. Fell asleep wrapped up in Clark, wondering how to make him smile again. Forever.

The End