A/N: Here it is, the last chapter in my slash saga. I hope you all enjoyed the ride (and that no one will kill me over the ending), and I am *very* sorry for it being the one that was late (ugh!). The short version of my excuse is that 9.5 chapters were written before I started posting but the last half-chapter tripped me up. If it helps, its 3 am right now so obviously I like you people.

Anyway—thanks to everyone who's favorited, followed, or reviewed this story; you're all awesome!

And the same disclaimer from the last one still applies: no one kill me, please.

~Chapter Ten~

It took Bruce twenty minutes to pull himself off the bed and another ten to gather up the composure to go to Wally's party. He only did it because he'd promised, and if he were being truthful with himself because he hoped that showing up and acting like nothing happened would make this whole bundle of stupidity blow over quickly. Then maybe he and Clark could return to their default friendzone setting.

Ha.

He walked into the party, grabbed a cup of punch like he didn't know it was spiked, and immediately afterward caught sight of Clark and Lois, sitting very close on a couch and laughing with Diana. He sipped the punch and was happy for the vodka.

"Didn't go well?" Shayera appeared at his elbow. An evil little voice in his head said he ought to strangle her for suggesting that anything good could come of telling Clark that he'd been fantasizing about him for eight years.

Instead of that, he just dug his nails into the Styrofoam cup and shook his head. "He's going to ask her."

"Wait—did you tell him you want him?" Shayera asked, with the look of a middle schooler who'd just gotten ahold of a juicy piece of gossip. All women were the same, human or alien. "You guys were talking for at least twenty minutes. What did he say?"

The artificial fruit flavor turned sour in his mouth. He could still hear Clark's voice echoing the unvarnished truth. You're broken. Enough that he didn't know how to be around people, and enough that Clark wouldn't take him no matter if he were wanted or not.

Shayera must have read the look on his face, because she touched his shoulder and moved on to talk to John. He'd been to plenty of cocktail parties full of stupid people he didn't know, and yet he'd never felt more lonely and awkward next to a table of cheap alcohol.

He would've gone and talked to Diana—always his fallback—but she was over there, with them, and probably didn't want to spend much more time with the man she'd wasted five years on anyway. Lois was running her hand through Clark's hair like a compulsion by the time he was on his second cup of punch. Clark leaned toward her, but looked ever so slightly uncomfortable. His eyes flicked to Bruce just once—good old Clark, still worrying about offending him.

Bruce so easily could have gone over and ripped Lois's hand off of Clark, damn the stares, damn the consequences—he put his cup down before that started sounding like a good idea.

Every few minutes Clark reached over to his pocket, like he was finally going to step over the precipice. It would've been the perfect time—surrounded by friends, just enough alcohol, Christmas lights strung up to make it a festival. But the ring never appeared.

Eventually Bruce made sure that Wally had seen him actually make an appearance, and then took a teleporter back to the relative safety of the Cave.

****#****

If Clark wasn't a telepath, then at least Alfred apparently was. Bruce was down in the Cave for no more than half and hour before the butler appeared with a pot of tea and a plate of steaming chocolate-chip-walnut cookies. Bruce looked down at them—it was Alfred's sympathy recipe. God forbid he and Ma had been talking again.

He bit into a cookie. It crumbled in his mouth beautifully, perfect as always, but he couldn't taste the sweetness. Even his tongue was numb.

"Trouble with Ms. Prince, Master Bruce?" Alfred asked, as he busied himself with dusting off the Batcomputer's spare monitors.

"No," Bruce replied, and ate another cookie with the dim hope that it would act something like a tranquilizer.

"Forgive me, sir, I could have sworn this was one of your romantic broodings." Alfred tucked away the dustrag and began meticulously picking crumbs from the keyboard. Bruce started running surveillance footage from Gotham's major crime areas, even though what he wanted to be doing was watching replays of the Justice League's battles, seeing Clark swooping down to knock Sinestro off the Empire State Building, powerful and majestic….this grainy black and white was not holding his attention. Worse, Alfred had noticed. "Ah. Someone else, then?"

"I'd rather not discuss it." What the hell would he say? Just to get to the hard part of the story he'd have to explain far more than he wanted to. "Nothing's going to happen."

Alfred took a cookie for himself and sighed at his ward. "We can't win them all, sir, no matter how much we may want it. Now drink your tea before it gets cold."

Bruce poured himself a cup, added the cream and sugar, and finish the pretense of putting the porcelain to his lips. Mercifully, Alfred took the tray and left him in the Cave with his thoughts. They were dark indeed, but at least he didn't have to put on a show of acting like he was being productive.

He could still feel Clark's hand against his chest, cutting off any possibility of a happy ending. And sitting in the leather chair with the sounds of dull wings flapping in the darkness, he had to admit that Clark deserved far more than him. Lois was a good woman—she was strong and sharp where Clark could be overly nice, a hands-on reporter where he was a researcher. They fit together like puzzle pieces.

And it would be his fault if Clark didn't marry the woman who was perfect for him.

****#****

Bruce hotwired the buzzer on Clark's apartment building so he could get in without having to call up. He'd fix it later—if he had to take the long walk up six flights of stairs with Clark already knowing he was there, he'd lose his nerve.

Clark opened the door after the second knock. Apparently he was too polite to use the x-ray vision, because he almost jumped when he saw Bruce standing in the doorway.

"Hi. I—ah—I was meaning to talk to you," he said, and stepped back. "Um. Would you like to come in?"

"No, that's all right. I'm only going to be here for a minute." Bruce kept his hands in his pockets to keep himself from ripping away at his nails. The silence hung in the air. "You should marry her, Clark."

Clark stared at him.

"You were going to ask her last night and you didn't. But you should." His hands clenched into fists, like they were trying to hold on to this last chance. He forced them to release. "You're perfect for each other."

"Bruce…" Clark began, looking almost startled.

"Let me finish." Bruce didn't add This is already hard enough. "I can see how much you want each other." The next part took a deep breath. "I love you but you deserve someone who can be there for you and who actually knows how to act like a human and who isn't irreparably screwed up."

"Bruce—" Clark started again, doubtlessly about to say something comforting.

"Please." If Clark stopped him now, he would turn and run back down the stairs. He was quickly losing what stores of confidence he'd had to build up to get here. "You have to go ask her. It's your happy ending. And if you still want me, I'd be honored to be your best man. Anyway—" He could barely hold the smile. "—you'll have really cute kids."

"Goddamnit, Bruce." Clark grabbed him by the shoulders. Bruce stopped because any swearing from Superman was a novelty. "Shut up for a second."

Bruce's mouth snapped shut.

"You're not irreparable," Clark said, softly. "And I'm sorry, for what I said to you."

"You were right about everything. And I shouldn't have gotten between you two." Bruce looked down. Their feet—his in leather business shoes, Clark wearing blue socks that Lois had gotten him for Christmas—were separated by the line in carpet between the hallway and the living room. "I meant it all—you and Lois are great together."

"We work well together." Clark rubbed his hands together. Bruce glanced down the hallway—this would be a difficult conversation to explain to any passing neighbors. Or maybe he was just looking for an excuse to leave and go lick his wounds. "But I was wrong. There's a reason they call us the World's Finest."

If he hadn't known what cardiac arrest actually felt like, he would've sworn that his heart stopped beating in that instant.

"Lois is a lovely woman," Clark continued, reaching across to tip Bruce's chin up so they were eye-to-eye again. "And there are so many things I admire in her—its why I asked her out and why we kept dating. I was going to ask her last night. I was. But I couldn't."

He looked down, like he was the one who ought to be ashamed over something. "I don't know—we came home after the party and were sitting on the couch and you know what she said?" He smiled softly, and faraway. "She said that there was a point where she thought that there was something going on between the two of us. And all I could think was, 'Even my girlfriend sees it.'"

Now it was Clark's turn to look away. "There's nothing that can replace going through hell together. And we do that every damn day. God—I really screwed this up, didn't I?"

Bruce's brain must have decided that this was a hallucination, because it wouldn't let him believe it. Instead it kept bringing up the Black Mercy, a fatal dose of Joker toxin…any other explanation besides reality.

Clark smiled. "Is this what it takes to make Batman lost for words?"

"You want to be with me?" It came out in a whisper, like if he spoke too loudly he'd shatter the illusion.

Clark nodded, as if he were trying to be silent too.

Elation. He wanted to throw his arms around Clark right then and there. And yet he couldn't—because suddenly his fingernails were pressed into his palms and oh god he would've liked to hit Clark just as much as he wanted to strip off his stupid thrift store suit. Instead of jumping at either he pressed his hands to his sides and tried very hard to keep his head. "You don't get to do this. Christ, Clark, you don't get to change your mind in a goddamn day."

"I know." Clark crossed his arms around himself.

"Next Tuesday are you going to realize that this was a mistake? That you were right and you magically make me into the type of person who goes on movie dates and you into the type of person who can accept that?" His voice rose an octave. He tried to bite it back. "This is not all my fault, either. I know I don't show things well and I know that I don't know how to handle people but I am not the only one who kept things secret for eight years. This was not all me."

Clark nodded. "I know. It's not. And its stupid, but I was nervous already and all I could see was the things that could go wrong. But I promise, I won't leave after a week. This is what I want."

Who was he kidding? He couldn't stay angry. But still, his mouth went and betrayed him: "I promised your mom I wouldn't mess you up."

Clark laughed at that, so thankfully that it was like a dam breaking. And the idea that this was real was beginning to be more acceptable. "Ma likes to protect me—but I think some things are worth taking risks for."

Bruce let himself breathe.

Clark took his hands. Their fingers twined together like they were going to skip off down the hall (this was an unfortunate vision to get halfway through a serious conversation. Bruce bit his tongue to keep from chuckling and wondered if he'd been spending too much time with Wally. That, or he was high on adrenaline) or break into a rendition of some Broadway song. "You have to promise me something."

And Bruce thought: This is actually happening. "Okay." He didn't add: anything.

"I don't want to be pushed away," Clark said. When he was especially earnest about something he tilted his head oh-so-slightly left and didn't blink, which had a tendency to make his eyes look more teal than sky blue. This was not an appropriate time for these observations, but Bruce decided that he was going to let himself get lost in it. "For better or for worse. No locking me out, or hiding in the Cave when something's wrong, or spending days on a mission without at least leaving a note."

Bruce nodded, wanting desperately to have more contact than their clasped hands.

Clark looked at him like he didn't believe him. In his defense, he had had nothing but eight years of white lies and half-truths.

"I'm—" he tried for honesty. "—not very good at this."

Clark laughed at that. And then before it registered in Bruce's head, Clark had bent down and pressed a kiss against his mouth. Electricity ran down his spine and set off fireworks in his curiously empty skull. He'd fantasized this moment so many times that he was having a hard time believing it was anything but a dream, but then Clark's arm wrapped around his back and the weight was enough solidity to kick him out of his dazedness.

He grabbed Clark's hair and pulled him down. He'd waited eight goddamn years; he certainly wasn't going to waste another second.

Clark's mouth was dangerously close to his ear. "You know, Diana called you my work wife."

"That's not going to work out," Bruce said, "I can't cook."

"I'll teach you," Clark replied, like this was a logical conclusion, while his thin fingers traced up and down the tense muscles in Bruce's back. Damn—who would've known that the Kryptonian with his hand-knit sweaters would be so good at this? "Then I can come home to you in an apron making cupcakes."

"Kinky." All right, the logical part of his brain was utterly shot now. "And also very gay, Clark."

Clark grinned against his cheek. "It was a joke."

"So was that."

Clark stepped back and looked him in the eyes, completely serious. "We will have to work on that too."

It took all of Bruce's self-control to wait until he'd hauled Clark into his apartment to tear off that idiotically complicated suit.

*End*

*#*

**#**

***#***

A/N (Part 2): I toyed with the idea of alternate endings for this story. So if anyone is seriously considering showing up at my door with a pitchfork, please nonviolently leave a review about that. If a lot of people want one I'll see what I can do ;)