The third time...

[moonshadows]

The third time, he was prepared.

Clark had learned long ago that Batman’s ability to plan was just as formidable as any superpower. That’s why he wasn’t really surprised when the package was delivered, even if the contents were more extensive than he’d expected. A pair of linen pajamas, jeans, and a long-sleeved T-shirt were packed on top. The tube of gel and the bag of nutrient paste were wrapped up in a blanket that was soft fleece on one side and waterproof on the other – clearly meant to protect his bed from blood – along with a gag that looked like it had been made specifically to muffle sound and was probably fitted exactly to Batman’s head, and five thousand dollars. In cash.

Clark glared at the bills, a mix of hundreds and twenties. A check or money order, he could have refused to cash or ripped up. Damn him for being so good at this. As he reluctantly separated the large bills from the smaller ones, a folded paper fluttered out. It was a hand-written note, unsigned.

This is payment for your past consultations. Feel free to investigate standard consultation fees and determine a more fair rate for the future, but $200/hr is the lowest I’ll go.

Take Lois out to dinner.

….damn him for being so good at this.

Lois accepted his dinner invitation, and she didn’t bat an eye when he told her the meal was being paid for by a consulting fee. He wasn’t sure she liked him as more than a friend, but it was a pleasant evening anyway. The box stayed under his bed, an out-of-sight reminder that the next time Batman got seriously injured, he’d come to Clark expecting help.

Not that Clark had any choice, really. Or was objecting. With Batman, severe injury was an inevitability rather than a possibility, and he was glad, in a grim kind of way, that he was now equipped to deal with the next emergency. He just hoped he wouldn’t have to use the contents of the box for a while, and that maybe he’d get a little forewarning.

As it turned out, he got a lot of forewarning.

The crowd caught his attention first. They always did; humanity clustered around the unexpected, and the unexpected was usually something that needed his attention. This time, though, the unexpected was being broadcast on the TVs in the window of an electronics store. The owner might have objected to his shop being blocked by non-paying customers, but he was glued to one of the sets inside, just as spellbound as the people outside. Clark – because he was on his way home from work – stopped to see what everyone was watching.

The Joker had hijacked a news station somewhere and was laughing over having trapped Batman in some lethal maze, providing mocking narration for each minor injury Batman suffered and insincere praise for evasions and destruction. He was already limping – a muttered question to a bystander revealed that Batman had taken some kind of arrow in the thigh – and Clark watched, helpless, as he suffered minor cuts and major bruising. He was doing well enough, destroying each threat with minimal injury, until the javelin. He could have dealt with the robot, he could have dodged a spear being hurled at him. But he couldn’t do both at once, and the crowd cried out in sympathetic pain as the blade went completely through his upper arm. Batman collapsed, but Clark began an internal countdown and just as he reached the end of it, the Dark Knight surged to his feet and ripped the weapon out of his flesh, stabbed it into the robot’s face, and used it as a stepping stone to launch himself into the shadowed ceiling. The Joker didn’t like that, but the crowd practically held its breath, waiting.

Batman didn’t disappoint. He burst into the studio like a whirlwind of darkness, dispatching thugs with silent fury. Clark, however, noted that his right arm hung limp at his side. Batman advanced grimly on the Joker, who drew what looked like a toy gun and shot it. A flag that read BANG! emerged. Batman’s eyes narrowed and he took another step, and then the flag was suddenly embedded in his chest. That made him falter, and his involuntary cry of pain had Clark wincing. Joker shrieked with glee and smacked him with a chair, knocking him into a bank of monitors that cracked and smoked as he broke them with his body and fell to the floor.

The crowd held its breath. Three. Two. One. Batman lifted his head, the glare powerful enough to make onlookers take half a step back, and stood up. Cape completely enshrouding him, hiding all evidence of the numerous injuries he’d sustained, he stalked towards the Joker with implacable, relentless menace. Then he leaped. The cape and camera angles hid whatever he did next, but when he stood, the Joker was handcuffed and barely conscious. Police burst in moments later, and the feed cut out.

Clark ran for home. Some part of his mind was already calculating what would need to be done: the suit would have to come off, probably entirely. Luckily, both the thigh wound and the arm wound were on the right side. More spooning, maybe. It would depend on that chest wound. He’d have to split the gel between at least three injuries, maybe more.

The instant he got home and saw his kitchen table, another thought elbowed the others out. Food. Bruce would need food after this, and lots of it. Clark picked up the phone, chose a magnet at random off the fridge, and dialed.

“Hello, Pizza Palace? For delivery, please. Um...what’s the largest size you have? …uh-huh. And it feeds how many? Great. I’ll take two. Uh…one meat lover’s and the other…what’s on the steak one? That sounds good. Okay. Yes, a two-liter of root beer. Okay. Clark Kent. Yes, that’s my number. Yes, that’s correct. Cash. Great, thanks.”

Food was on its way. Hopefully, it would arrive before Batman did. Clark opened the balcony door, closed the curtains, and dove for the box under the bed. Pajamas and clothes on the chair for later, check. Waterproof blanket, fleece side up, on the bed. Check. Nutrient paste on the bedside table – hastily, he removed everything else from the table and put it on the floor – for easy reach, check. The gag got draped on top of it; the gel placed next to it. Clothes. He stripped out of his and pulled on some battered old jeans and a promotional T-shirt that bloodstains could only improve. The stained towel from last time and a washcloth floating in a bowl of water went onto the counter in the kitchen, leaving him nothing to do but make sure the table was clear for the pizzas and wait.

Five minutes later, he picked up the phone again.

“Wayne Manor,” Alfred said politely.

“Clark Kent, Daily Planet.” The words were out of his mouth before he could think; sometimes, that reflex got on his nerves.

“Ah, Mr. Kent. So good of you to call. Master Bruce will be leaving momentarily, but I can assure you that the, er, package should arrive in roughly half an hour.”

Half an hour. Clark glanced at his watch; pizza should arrive in twenty. “Thank you, Alfred,” he said with audible relief. “Tell him I’m wishing him a safe trip, and I’m ready for the package.”

“I’ll do that, sir. If it’s not too bold? Thank you.”

Twenty minutes later, the pizza delivery man handed over two enormous boxes and a bottle of soda, then walked off in a daze with a hundred-dollar bill and the words “Keep the change” echoing in his ears. Ten minutes after that, Batman stumbled through the curtain and would have fallen if Clark hadn’t been waiting to catch him.

“Pizza or paste?” he asked quietly as he helped the other man to the bed.

“Paste,” came the grunted reply.

Clark closed and locked the balcony door, then offered him the nozzled bag. Bruce took it with his left hand, he noted. “What are we dealing with?”

“Flesh wounds. Major tissue damage only.”

He wasn’t reassured. “Arm, leg, chest…am I missing any?”

A lesser man might have looked guilty. Batman scowled. “Nothing major.”

“Good. Now get out of your suit.”

The scowl deepened, although the effect was somewhat ruined by Batman drinking sludge out of a bag.

“I’m serious, Bruce,” Clark said firmly, arms crossed. “I saw you take that arm wound. I heard about the one in your thigh. I know you; you’ll hide anything you don’t think is bad enough to worry about. I want you out of the suit so I can get at the ones that need gel, and I’ll be the judge of whether or not they do. You came to me because you trust me. Well, trust me.”

The silence stretched while Batman discovered his glare had just as much effect on Clark’s determination as it would have had against a steel door. “The cowl stays,” he ground out finally.

“That’s fine. Do you need any help getting the rest of it off?”

“No.” Coming from anyone else, it would have sounded petulant.

Clark took the bag of paste and Batman’s cape and deliberately kept his back turned while soft sounds of effort and pain mixed with the rustle of cloth and the quiet rattle of the impossible number of things he kept in his utility belt. Finally, there was a hissing sigh.

“Satisfied?” Batman growled.

The leg wound was the first thing Clark looked at when he turned around to see Bruce mostly prone, the pieces of his costume strewn on the floor, clad only in his briefs and his cowl. It was seeping, but not bleeding heavily. Then he noticed the faint discoloration of other, older wounds alongside minor scrapes and cuts and the blues and purples of deep bruising. His eyes went to Batman’s arm next; that wound looked more serious. It was several inches long and had to hurt immensely. The one on his chest wasn’t nearly as worrying. Whatever armor the Batsuit contained had prevented it from going too deep, and hitting the floor must have pushed it out at an angle rather than forcing it deeper. The fact that his broad chest was crisscrossed with the remnants of past injuries just made Clark press his lips together firmly. He wondered how many times the material of Batman’s costume had hid evidence of cuts or punctures, and how many times some punk had been frightened out fighting because his adversary had unflinchingly taken the hit and not been felled by it.

The weight of Batman’s gaze – angry, furious, but hiding fear and shame – demanded an answer. “I think I should put gel on both sides of the arm wound,” he said evenly. “Unless you think I should try to get it inside.”

Something in the other man’s fierce demeanor snapped, tension bleeding out intangibly. “If you can manage it,” he replied warily. “I’d like to not lose the use of the arm completely.”

Clark nodded and reached for the gel. “I’m going to want you on your left side this time. Ready?”

“Gag first. The strap clips…”

“I see it.” Grimly, because he hated having to do this even if it was necessary, Clark unclipped one side of the gag and slipped the leather around the back of Bruce’s head while he grunted and sat up enough to take the thick roll between his teeth. Just as he’d suspected, it was made to Batman’s measurements and the clip just barely reached to connect. “Comfortable?” he asked, then added, “Well, more comfortable than using a cape?”

A tiny nod was his answer. The chest wound got gel dabbed into it first. Then the thigh puncture got a good squeeze. Finally, using super-speed, he squirted the lion’s share of the gel into the wound that was less a stab and more nearly slicing muscle from bone. Bruce rolled onto his side as soon as it was done, eyes closed, and held still while Clark lay down behind him. One leg over Bruce’s to hold them still, like last time. Both arms around Bruce’s torso, pinning his arms, and his head cradled against Clark’s chest. Too late, Clark remembered the washcloth and the intent of wiping at least some of the blood off first. Then Bruce grunted and began to strain against him, the short, violent jerks that meant he was fighting his own reactions, and Clark realized the wounds would have resumed bleeding anyway.

The first hour was the worst, he thought as he paid close attention to Bruce’s arm and monitored the strength he was using to keep it pinned so that he didn’t cause more damage than he was trying to prevent. In the first hour, the screaming was fresh and raw and loud. The gag kept the noise down significantly, better than rolled-up capes had, but that meant nothing to super-hearing. The first hour, neither of them were yet resigned to things and Clark whispered reassurances, mangled lullabies, and wished there were something he could do to ease his friend’s torment.

The second hour, Bruce started losing his voice and the tension in his body eased. That wasn’t entirely accurate; during the first hour, he thrashed – or tried to – in an instinctual attempt to escape the pain. In the second hour, he merely held himself rigid. Clark found himself nuzzling Batman’s cowl, silently crying for his friend and whispering promises that everything would be alright in the end.

In the third hour, something new happened. The familiar rhythm of Batman’s nearly-silent screams faltered, fracturing into shorter cries, and the tension in his body changed from trying to arch or thrash to trying to curl up. His left hand kept trying to reach for the healing chest wound, and finally Clark threaded his fingers through Bruce’s and held his hand down. Several minutes later, it occurred to him that the level or quality of pain must have shifted to something too strong to fight entirely, but not as strong as it had been. The shuddering quality of his inhalations was the final clue that Bruce was crying.

Using more wisdom than Batman might have credited him with, Clark did nothing. The deepest trust that had been placed in him was the trust that he would maintain Batman’s dignity, and the proof of that trust lay scattered on his floor. It wasn’t the threat of physical vulnerability that Batman feared, but emotional. He told himself that what he was doing – restraining Batman without seeming to notice that he was sobbing in pain – was no different than standing between him and a falling object when he wasn’t able to move out of the way. He wouldn’t call attention to it if it were a collapsing wall or falling rock, so it behooved him to not call attention to this.

Shortly into the fourth hour, the tension left Batman’s body and his breathing evened out. Clark loosened his grip cautiously, waiting several minutes until he was sure the other man was asleep, then disentangled himself and promptly fell out of bed. Feeling foolish, he shook out his limbs and collected the pieces of Batman’s costume, piling them in the corner with the cape. No reaction from the bed. He went to the kitchen and ran the hot water until it warmed up, rinsing the washcloth and refilling the bowl. Then gently, carefully, he rolled his guest onto his back and washed every bit of dried blood he could find off of Bruce’s exposed skin. The puncture wound in the thigh looked close to healed. All the scrapes and cuts had closed up. Even the deep bruising looked like it was fading. The gash on Bruce’s chest was closing nicely, although it had bled quite a bit. It was the arm he was worried about, though.

Slowly, he washed the dried blood off of Bruce’s arm. There was a lot of it. The wounds were still angry and raw, but they weren’t bleeding anymore. Clark looked at them for a long minute before bringing the bowl back into the kitchen. If last time was any indication, Bruce would be waking up soon, and he’d be hungry. The paper plates wouldn’t do, here; Clark grabbed a real one and piled several pieces from each cooled pizza onto it before returning to the bedroom. Unclipping the gag was a trick, but he got both sides undone and slid the leather strap out from behind Batman’s head. After a moment’s contemplation, he gently pulled the thick roll out of Batman’s mouth and put it, and the strap, aside.

That was out of the ordinary enough to wake him, it seemed. Clark gently pressed his right wrist against the bed while he stirred, blinked, and finally scowled.

“What…?” It was a whisper, nearly soundless thanks to vocal cords that hadn’t yet repaired themselves.

“You passed out,” Clark said quietly, still not releasing the other man’s wrist. “I thought you might wake up hungry soon. Paste or pizza?”

“Paste.”

Bruce’s jaw was probably as stiff as Clark’s arms and legs had been, he realized. Something to note for the future: Bruce wouldn’t be up for anything he had to chew until the morning. “Alright. Let me help you up. Your arm still looks pretty rough; how does it feel?”

“Hurts.”

Well, that was no surprise. Clark once again lifted his friend and slid behind him, acting as a support while holding the bag of nutrient paste. It felt like nursing a very large and muscular baby.

“Going back to sleep when you’re done?” he asked quietly. Bruce nodded. “Okay. I’m going to put the pizza away before I come back, and then I want you on your side again so I can hold your arm still. I’m glad it’s Friday, though. I was on eggshells the whole day last time you were here.”

“Sorry,” came the breathy whisper.

“Not your fault. Although what you were doing getting involved with LexCorp again is beyond me.”

“Getting a foothold.”

Clark wondered what it meant that Bruce was actually talking to him despite pain, exhaustion, and near-inability to speak at all. Getting a foothold? In other words, Bruce was positioning himself to get a controlling interest in LexCorp. Luthor was clever enough to be a real threat to Superman, ambitious enough to be a real threat in other ways, but he didn’t have that relentless ability to plan that Batman had. Which meant that some day in the future, Luthor would find himself financially defanged and declawed.

“You’re a very dangerous man,” he said, not sure whether he was expressing awe or attempting to chide.

Bruce laughed soundlessly. “Sleep,” he breathed when he was done laughing.

Clark set the bag of paste safely out of the way. “Alright.”

“Wait,” Bruce whispered as he began to move. “Cowl.”

“You want it off? You’re sure?”

“Hot,” was the terse reply.

Gently, Clark pulled the cowl off and tossed it onto the pile with the rest of Batman’s costume. Bruce sighed with relief as the cooler air hit his sweaty hair, left hand twitching as though he wanted to run his fingers through it but didn’t have the energy. Clark held his breath and gently scratched that tousled black hair the way he’d ruffle a dog’s fur, feeling the other man relax even more and wondering if he should be filled with delight and warmth at having elicited this reaction. Guiltily, he stopped, but Bruce didn’t protest. Probably asleep already. It was awkward sliding back out and laying him down, but the pizza had to be put away.

Clark spent several minutes staring at the boxes – a foot and a half by two feet – and at his fridge before stacking the rest of the square slices into a solid block on the plate, cocooning the whole thing in gratuitous amounts of plastic wrap, and shoving it into the unused fruit drawer.

“And that’s why Batman’s the tactician,” he muttered as he flattened and folded the pizza boxes until they fit in his recycling bin.

Making sure to support the still-healing arm, he rolled Bruce onto his side and crawled into bed behind him again. This time, he was able to get into a more comfortable position as he only had to worry about holding the wounded arm still, and he wound up with his face pressed into the back of Bruce’s neck.

 

When he woke up, Bruce was standing by the chair in his pajama bottoms, moving his right arm experimentally and frowning.

“Something wrong?” Clark asked muzzily.

“Just seeing how it healed. Everything seems to be reconnected, but I’ll have to wait until the metabolic acceleration ends to really test it.” Satisfied that his arm wasn’t going to burst open and cause him to bleed to death, he pulled the pajama top on and buttoned it briskly.

Clark sat up and rubbed his eyes, wondering what time it was since the clock was on the floor. “Pizza’s in the fruit drawer,” he said in Bruce’s general direction. “I got meat lover’s and steak with peppers and onions.”

Footsteps indicated Bruce leaving for the kitchen. Nearly falling out of bed a second time gave Clark the alertness brought by adrenaline, and he bundled up the waterproof fleece, the gag, the empty tube, and the empty paste bag so he could dump them in the hall, out of sight. After a moment, the pieces of the Batsuit followed. Once the bedroom was clear, he pulled back the curtains and spent several blissful minutes staring, eyes closed, into the rising sun and letting its yellow light wash over him, into him, through him until he felt like he was a glowing vessel filled with luminous gold. Only then did he turn around to see Bruce leaning against the bedroom door holding a plate stacked high with cold pizza, working his way steadily through the slices and looking…wistful.

“Don’t you ever do that?” Clark asked, somewhat self-conscious but glutted enough with life-giving light that he didn’t feel silly.

“That would require being awake before ten,” he answered dryly. “I keep later nights than you do.”

“One of the perks of not having a nine-to-five job, eh?” Cheerfully, he stretched. “How’s everything feeling?”

“You don’t want me to answer that,” Batman growled.

Too full of sunlight to care, Clark asked, “Why not?”

“Because you’re an optimist.”

It took him a second to realize that was the answer to ‘why would I not want you to answer’ instead of ‘how do you feel’ and therefore, the answer to the latter had to be discouraging. “Still hurts?”

“It’s tolerable,” Bruce said shortly around a mouthful of pizza.

It occurred to Clark that Batman cared. That he hadn’t answered, not out of his usual hiding vulnerability, but out of wanting to spare Clark’s feelings. That, in fact, he hadn’t intended to do anything but answer honestly. He wanted to grin foolishly, he wanted to hug the other man, he wanted to do something, anything, to call attention to and celebrate this voluntary crack in Batman’s ironclad defenses…but doing any of that would cause him to retreat. Instead, he opened his mouth and said, “You know, you can heat that up in the microwave.”

Bruce stopped chewing and for a long moment, speared him with an intensely searching look. Unsure what was going on, Clark met his gaze and held it. Then, apparently satisfied, the older man gave a tiny nod.

Clark desperately wanted to ask what had just happened. Instead, he scratched at his scalp. “I need a shower. You want one before I use all the hot water?”

Swallowing, Bruce shook his head. “I’m going to finish these and borrow your bed for another couple of hours.”

“Help yourself,” he replied cheerfully.

Shower, shave, dressing, paper and coffee. Saturday-morning cartoons because dammit, he was an adult and he could watch cartoons if he wanted. Somewhere around ten-thirty, he heard Bruce get up and use the bathroom, followed by a shower. Just as the last cartoon ended, he came over and sat on the other end of the couch with what looked like half a pizza stacked on a plate and a gas-station tumbler of root beer, wearing the clothes that he’d included in the box. Clark couldn’t help it; he started laughing.

“What’s so funny?” Bruce growled, glowering.

“You look like a frat boy,” Clark apologized. “The jeans, the shirt, the pizza and soda. It’s funny enough seeing Bruce Wayne being so…informal middle-class. Knowing that you’re…” he trailed off, laughing harder.

Batman’s scowl thawed into a wry smile. “I suppose I can’t argue with that. At least I don’t have to worry about my enemies seeing me like this and losing any fear they ever had of me.” He took a long drink from the tumbler. “If you ever breathe a word of this to anyone, though, I’ll sneak in while you’re at work and blow three ounces of kryptonite dust into every corner of this apartment.”

He was fairly sure Bruce wouldn’t actually do that. Mostly. Still, he was laughing too hard to be properly intimidated. “Duly noted,” he chuckled. “It’ll be our secret.”

“I sense you’re not taking me seriously,” Bruce deadpanned.

Clark grinned at him. “World’s greatest detective!”

He didn’t take the bait. “Did you take Lois out to dinner?”

Well, that killed the fun. “I did. I still don’t think she likes me as more than a friend, but she seems fond enough of Superman. Maybe if she knew…”

“What makes you think she doesn’t?” Bruce asked, then shoved half a slice of pizza in his mouth.

“If she knew, she’d…” Clark frowned. “Unless she was trying to…” He looked at Bruce, still chewing grimly. Damn him, he’d done that on purpose. “I have enemies,” he said slowly. “Either she’s protecting Clark Kent from Superman’s enemies, or…she doesn’t want to get any more involved than she already is.”

Bruce chewed his way through the rest of the slice, watching as the reporter’s instinct kicked into action.

“But if she knows who I am, then it’s not much of a stretch to figure you out since neither Batman nor Bruce Wayne are in town often…” He frowned into the distance. “That LexCorp-WayneTech robot that went rogue. I called out sick. Bruce Wayne was nowhere around. I would have put the pieces together if I’d only had a suspicion; those were some very irregular dots just begging to be connected. And she…” Clark shook his head and sighed. “No wonder you’re so grim all the time. Think I should give up on her?”

Bruce washed the last of his pizza down with the last of the root beer. “I think you should ask her that,” he said in Batman’s gravelly tones.

“Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised?” Clark sighed again. “Probably not.”

“I’m sorry,” Bruce said softly.

“Don’t be. I should have thought of all this myself a long time ago. I guess I should do that today, before she picks up on me acting weird around her and asks where someone could overhear.” He laughed briefly. “And here I thought the laundry was going to be the highlight of my day.”

“What am I, then? Chopped liver?”

There was a smile on Bruce’s face. Clark stared at it for a moment. It was small and somewhat self-mocking, but it was a smile, and he found himself grinning foolishly. “Not anymore,” he teased. “That was last night. Now you’re just liver.”

For the second time, Bruce’s laughter washed over him, untainted by bitterness or pain, and Clark soaked it up the way he’d reveled in the morning sun. However things went with Lois, he still had this rare treasure to bolster him. He’d made Batman laugh, and if he could do that – twice – then he must be doing something right.