Quality Time II
Having Bruce living with him is some kind experience that Clark could never image.
Yes, they are down to the first name base now.
When the next morning Clark asks him about the preferences of breakfast he correct him.
“Bruce.” He murmurs under breath, voice husky due to lack of use. “Just Bruce.”
“Sure, Bruce.” Clark answers.
It’s all Clark needs to believe they’re building a good relationship.
Flushing out all the neuronal poisons is still a work in process for next few days, if not a few weeks. The blood sample he takes back to the Fortress for analysis indicates the treatment is doing fine. The baby looks good under x-ray vision and moves quite a bit like it can sense Clark’s presence nearby. Sadly Clark still doesn’t know it’s a girl or boy. The curled up, tiny dragon-shaped body makes it impossible to distinguish the gender. He needs to ask Jor. Clark has a lot needs to ask Jor.
It’s hard to tell what Bruce thinks about this. He looks half amused and let out a quiet huff the first time Clark touches his belly, but his expression is too elusive to be sure and Clark definitely not pays enough attention.
Clark is over the moon when he feels the movement under his palm.
“Thank you.” Clark quietly says. There is no other words he could gather at this moment. He holds back the urge to kiss him. Clark doesn’t want to take more advantage of Bruce. A baby is already something he could never dare to dream of.
Bruce hums.
The communication between Bruce and Clark is still jammed though. The only noticeable change between these two is Bruce switches from watching Clark intensely 24/7 to purposefully ignores him.
Bruce doesn’t speak in length, which is so different compared what he looks like in TV or galas. He is always the charming one and gives silly comments and carefree laughs every opportunity he can find, which for sure leading to many of his scandal episodes, but he is a funny nice guy. No wonder Gothamites loves him. His charm always works like a spell. Who can say no when those wet blue eyes look and only look at you.
But the Bruce currently lives with Clark is a totally different man. Clark suspects he spends most of his time crouches on the couch and brooding. Clark never thinks about putting brooding and Bruce Wayne in the same sentence before, but there he goes.
The Bruce living with him is kind of quiet and intense, stubborn and determined, though what drives him is even beyond Superman. Clark has hard time to simply persuade him giving up the couch to rest at the actual bed, where is definitely a lot more comfortable and better for his long suffering back.
This is getting ridiculous.
Bruce has a notorious schedule too. He doesn’t rest at all the first night spent with Clark and would very much likely to watch over the living room at three in the morning. He stays up all night and doesn’t even move one bit on his spot, even when Clark retreats to the bedroom to give him some privacy. It’s almost like Bruce knows Clark is watching him so he does everything on purpose. Clark tells Jor to dial up the sedative in the injection so Bruce at least has some real rest the following days.
Clark thinks Bruce mysterious knows he is the culprit behind his increasing sleeping hours later on. He gives Clark a hard time to administrate the next injection and won’t let Clark gets any closer until his mouth runs dry from explaining all the importance he could think of why Bruce must take the shot or bad thing will happen.
Bruce still doesn’t agree to come to the Fortress. Every time Clark mentions it he will gets a firm “NO” accompanied with a fierce glare.
Well, that’s an improvement if you consider it with non verbal avoidance.
The same goes with every time Clark mentions sending him back home or anything related.
Okay, if Bruce doesn’t want to be found then Clark at least could shelter him from the rest of the world.
Cat is keeping digging around. Finding out what happened to Bruce becomes her pet project. She is about the only one Clark knows semi actively looking out for Bruce Wayne. He contacts some of his more reliable sources, there is no missing person case or demanding of ransom for Bruce. If there is anything, Clark would assume the PR team of Wayne is doing a good job to make people believing Bruce is consistently around this whole time, with all the commercials running on TV and vacation photos and short clips on social media. The Wayne family is eerily quiet these days.
Actually, despite Bruce Wayne, the sole heir of Wayne fortune, other members in his family always keep a low profile. Most people isn’t sure how many kids he adopted, despite Richard Grayson, who came to him after the murder of his parents.
Clark has been debating if he should knock on the front door of the Wayne Manor and ask, but it’s going to raise a hell of questions why suddenly Superman would like to know the whereabouts of Bruce Wayne if he goes in tights, or he will be rejected and sent away and also raise a hell of suspicions how he knows Bruce is not around if he goes in as a reporter.
And there is message he received from Batman simply asks Superman to keep Bruce safe and out of the public.
It’s frustrating when too many unknowns involves and so little he has known. Clark decides to leave a spare phone to Bruce. If he wants to call someone, anyone, he can make the call.
Jor says this pregnancy is high risk and insists Bruce to come over. He has something would like to go over with Bruce in person and a full body scan could help a lot with mitigating these risks. Clark tries his best but no guarantee. Bruce is pretty determined to become a couch potato in Clark’s apartment and play dead to the rest of the world.
Clark wants to make Bruce a lobster dinner for both apology and peace offering, using the lobster, squid, fish he gets as a gift for saving a malfunctioned and slowly sinking ocean-going cruise ship. Lobster is listed high on Bruce’s favourite food on Internet.
Bruce looks delight at seeing the forearm long lobster Clark presents to him until the distinctive smell of fish hits him head on. He is about to throw up right on Clark’s carpet. Thankfully Bruce holds back. Clark tries to salvage the dinner by frying the seafood, which ends upon a completely disaster. The smell is only intensified. Clark could see clearly how Bruce’s Adam's apple moves and his lips stretches to a disapproving thin line.
When dinner is done, Bruce is forced to retreats to sit in the balcony with a glass of fresh squeezed lemonade, enjoying some nightly breeze coming from the open window. Clark packs all the fried seafood and eats it all on the rooftop so his hard work won’t end upon in dumpster.
The fried seafood is delicious. It’s just a devil conjuring morning sickness unfortunately. So fancy dinner to bribe Bruce to come over to the Fortress is a totally failure.
It’s not like Clark has a lot of bargain chips at the very beginning. Think about it. This is a man who is listed high on the wealthiest on earth and has almost everything, top notch quality and nothing less, tied with ribbons and balloons at his finger tip. He donates millions for reconstruction projects after major battles of the League and wants nothing for return, not even publicity, since all the donation is agreed to be anonymous and kept low profile when it’s made by the Wayne Enterprise and Bruce himself.
This man is Clark’s boss in more than one way and now he is also carrying Clark’s baby.
And then there is Clark Kent, growing up on a farm in middle of nowhere and working hard to pay for his monthly bills. The salary at Daily Planet and the extra money from freelancing let Clark buy nice things in life but never too fancy. He still has a kid needs to raise and a farm needs to help pay for mortgage, even thought Lois and his parents are perfectly capable of everything, but Clark insists. He won’t shy away from his own responsibility.
So to speak, Clark has no idea how to deal with Bruce. Get a couple of quotes on galas, easy. Do an interview in a chic restaurant, he will live. Live under the same roof and be a good provider, well, that’s the tricky part. It looks like the most he could provide is safety.
Ghost-Maker, Red Hood, or whoever kidnaps Bruce at the first place has not yet made an appearance, but Clark won’t assume this peace will last forever.
On the other hand, there is no way Bruce will stay in his apartment until the full term. He needs stretch his legs and some fresh air. Clark is not his warden and he won’t act like one.
Clark wants to live upon to his moral standard of a traditional good Alpha, but he feels he is dangerously failing.
At least he should keep the other healthy. He could always start at getting the other enough rest.
If Clark needs to hold the man on the bed to rest he will do that, and that’s what he starts to do since the third night they spend together.
Sometimes Clark feels Bruce is silently challenging him, daring him to get hold of him. Clark tries everything he gets to hold Bruce down and tries to pin him down. Emphasize on “try”. Bruce always seems to slip away from his fingers like a shadow, which is amazing and unsettling the same time. Guess being a wanted rich man must learn a couple of tricks under his sleeve. This quickly spirals into some sorts of tag. The extra weight on Bruce is practically nothing. He is enjoying this silly little game too much and Clark is just frustrated. Clark is the one has the super power and super speed in this room. He is the Superman.
Not that he dares to use his super strength on Bruce. But the point stands.
“How come you are so hard to catch?”
Clark whispers on top of Bruce’s head while finally, finally being able to pin the other man down and cover him with his entire body, after a whole ten minutes struggle or play depending on which one of them is going to define.
Bruce seems content to stay put under Clark for now.
He replies in quiet whisper too, with a hint of smug.
“I’m Batman.”
“Oh, that’s funny.” Clark rolls his eyes.
Bruce lets out a small huff but says nothing. They fall into a moment of comfortable silence. There is some primitive satisfaction coming along from holding your mate in this protecting position, shielding them away from the world, even though Bruce is not his mate. But he does smell like his. The bittersweet smell of slight burned cinnamon and spice almost Omega scents mingles nicely with his own woody and sun bathed Alpha scents, gives feeling like a warm and lazy autumn afternoon.
Clark wants to scent him. Bite him. Mark his as his and seal their fates together.
It must be an instinctive impulse.
Bruce seems to be receptive to the same impulse. He smells good, happy, pleased, with a hint of aroused, but also contented with simply cuddling and hugs. There is part of him smells like responding to Clark’s carnal desire, like old traditional Alphas and Omegas calling to each other.
But this is not right. It must be pregnancy hormones messing up his body and mind. No matter how much he smells like Omega, he is not. Clark starts picking up the scents, or lack thereof, after spending long enough with Bruce to know the difference. Once you know, it’s impossible to let go.
The hormones makes Bruce craving something is not even there. Clark could scent him, bite him, may be temporarily give him a bleeding and swell mark on his neck, extending this small fantasy a little bit longer, but nothing will last forever.
The scar will heal and then Bruce will realize the mate mark doesn’t even exist in the first place. What he longs in his lucid dream is all but a false impression. It’s all in vain. Clark will never be able to bond with him.
The thought and imagination makes Clark feels cruel and sad.
Clark never feels the same way when Lois was pregnant. There was temptation of bonding, too many times, raised from time to time ever since they started to spend time together. Every time when the urge raised one of them would hold back with pure logic, eventually, Clark learned to suppress his need without realizing it. The attraction faded away and this finally became their new normal.
Clark and Lois are good partners in work and friendship, and may be many other things, but never the exemplary husband and wife. Clark doesn’t think they would ever want to be. There is some fundamental lacking in their relationship to make it true. You cannot always think straight in a romantic love. The ecstasy and euphoria doesn’t come with logic and reason. Clark is nothing but a hopeless romantic.
But with Bruce, everything is so different and foreign, never something Clark ever predicts. Funny thing is, Bruce barely exists with Clark the whole time. Half of his mind is still in a wonder land the poison secreted by the pregnancy creates for him. Consistently drifts in and out. Clark wonders how much of him actually stays with him. Sometime Bruce seems like he understands more than he lets on and sometimes he seems so distant that Clark could never reach to him.
There is space, probably too much, left for imagination. Clark finds himself does not treat Bruce with expectation, because he certainly doesn’t know what to expect for the man. But if he lets go all of his prevision, Bruce is a walking enigma that throws Clark abandon vague threads but never enough to solve. He first invades Clark’s dream and then his life. Clark starts to lose the grab of reality of anything related this mysterious man because he doesn’t know if the familiarity to this man is coming from his fantasies or his unconscious obsession, or mixed of both.
It’s like falling. Clark is falling fast and hard. It’s supposed to scare him, like the time he jumped so high he flied first time without knowing how to get down. But it doesn’t, the same as when he flies he doesn’t think about landing.
Bruce gently nudges into Clark and shakes him off from his own thoughts.
Clark take a sharp inhale and pulls back to smile to Bruce.
“I’m okay. Just thinking.”
Clark pulls back a bit so he could see Bruce’s face better.
“I’m going to see Batman tonight.”
Bruce is a bit shocked, Clark would say, then turns confused, finally rests on sulking. He shifts away from Clark and hangs on to the old blanket, which he decides to take a like the very moment he lays his eyes on it when he arrives the first night. It’s cute to see him wrapping himself using this blanket and pretend to not exist.
“Good night to you, too.” Clark needs hold back the urge to kiss on top of his head, but he does put his hand on Bruce’s back to feel the warmth radiated from the solid body. “I will be back soon, but don’t wait on me.”
-x-
Dick feels relief that Bruce is not dead, although Bruce somehow ends up pregnant with Superman’s baby, drugged high as a kite, and mysteriously involves in a traffic ring as a victim, runs into Jason and then decides to run away from him at the first chance he could hop on.
Jason is furious at Bruce’s runaway. He blames everything on Superman and is currently on a murder path for avenge. He comes back to the Cave firstly to stock more kryptonite, which is thankfully being stopped by Alfred, secondly to find any useful information to help him locate Superman if not kill him on sight.
Bruce must have a thorough file about Superman, from his weakness down to his monthly bank statement, well hidden somewhere on Bat Computer, just Tim hasn’t found it yet. Batman must have complete evaluations done about everyone or he won’t agree participant in the Justice League the first place.
Jason storms out before he could be officially introduced to Damian, who is keeping himself busy at the time by messing around in Bruce’s study.
Tim is glad those two never meet. This house doesn’t need more troubles and dramas. Really. It’s going to explode. Or Tim is going to do so with his own hands. No way in the world the Manor will be able to contain three Alphas the same time without descending to a living hell.
Damian is for sure going to present as an Alpha being damned stubborn and arrogant, and also you won’t choose other caste as heir if you must create one in lab tubes.
Oh, by the way, Damian doesn’t think it’s wrong to have a child by using laboratory means, which is, so many levels wrong, but it at least saves Dick lots headache on combing through Bruce’s history to pin point when the kid was conceived. Bruce has scandal every another day on tabloids but it’s still gross to think about him having a night life. The beauty of father-son relationship.
Dick is working with Alfred on how they should integrate Damian into the Wayne family with a proper excuse and without making to much fussing in public. For so many years, the public is semi believing the Wayne’s line is going to extinct. The tabloids constantly gossip Bruce’s reluctance to use IVF to compensate the low fertility for unpresented Omega turned Beta male but instead of adopting street kids .
The reporters are going to have a field day when the announcement for the blood son comes out.
But that’s before they hear about Bruce is pregnant.
Knowing Bruce, Tim is sure he will never be willingly giving up the baby, not even when his own life is on the line. He doesn’t know how Damian is going to react to this news and he doesn’t want to find out. Last time he checks the League of Assassins isn’t some merry place.
They probably need to stall time, until Bruce comes back with a plan. Tim knows Dick shares the same thoughts with him while Jason is determined to get rid of the “freaking monster”.
Tim has no idea what Jason has saw to make him react indignant like this.
Well, it’s alien. Maybe Superman is a bit off when he is young just nobody knows. Martian Man Hunter doesn’t looks like human at all upon close examination and he is a shape-shifter. Who knows what a Martian baby looks like.
But, hey, Superman is ranked top on many lists of “the most desired Alpha one would like to date/bed/whatsoever”. A half of Omega population masturbate with fantasying him. He at least is handsome and strong by a universal standard.
Tim’s point is, it couldn’t be that bad.
Yeah, Alphas are weird.
Alfred accepts everything with a grace only an old English former MI6 intelligence officer turned butler could possess. Tim envies his calmness. This keeps reminding him this is the man who raised up the Batman.
Alfred is drying the dishes when Tim slips into the kitchen.
“Hey, Alfred.” He quietly greets.
“Good evening, Master Tim.” Alfred finishes drying the plate currently occupied his hand, puts it down, then turns around to face Tim. “Trouble sleeping?”
“It’s not the time.” Tim murmurs under the breath. He knows Alfred hasn’t given up to persuade everyone under this roof to have a healthy and normal schedule. Not yet.
In the new normal in the past few months, Tim would be out as Robin with Dick as Nightwing for patrol, but tonight Dick is out as Batman to meet up with Superman to discuss the arrangement for Bruce and Tim is stuck with babysitting Damian so he won’t find out or interrupt this meeting. If Alfred hasn’t broke the news to him, then he doesn’t know Bruce is alive. Not yet.
Since Bruce is going to be out of his suit for foreseeable future, it really comes down to either of Dick or Jason to don the cowl. Knowing he is a just temporal replacement makes things easier on Dick’s mind so he finally decides to do so, additionally to prevent Jason obtains all the resources he need to murder Superman on sight.
It’s always going to Dick’s job. Tim thinks. He braces himself with this truth every time Bruce sustains grave injuries, but it’s still weird to see it’s actually happening.
Right now, Tim is just glad Damian is with Lucius for designing his own Robin costume so he gets time off of being a babysitter. Dick has gone through a lot of trouble to make the boy see the light that he is not ready to be the next generation Batman. A pint size vengeance and night is ridiculous even by Gotham’s standard when Halloween is a half year away.
Tim always has the feeling that Dick will do something like giving the mantle of Robin to Damian when the kid shows up in the front door, but the idea still makes him bristle, especially right now when it comes true.
Now he can relate to Jason a bit more in Robin’s business. Not like he wants to.
He misses Bruce. More than he is willing to admit.
Not like Bruce will make everything better. It’s probably going to be pure chaos even with Bruce present. Like ninety-five percent worse than now. Over thirty years, this man somehow develops a disaster ability to dealing with feelings. But Bruce is always a constant in his life and without him it’s nothing. The family falls apart. Piece by piece. Agonizingly.
Alfred can read Tim like he is an open book, so he kindly suggests, “would you like to have some tea, Master Tim?”
“Yeah, that sounds good.” Tim replies.
Or coffee. But Alfred won’t brew coffee for him this late of night. Frankly, Tim never understands how Alfred holds his hope high that someone under this roof will willingly fall asleep before two in the morning. They’re all night creatures.
“Please take a seat.”
Alfred precedes to boil water. Tim watches him going through his ritual of preparing tea. It’s an art and Alfred uses his tea as a weapon never fails.
When the thin white steam rising from the kettle, Tim clears his throat.
“I’m thinking Bruce sending you some messages?”
Alfred hums, “indeed.”
Okay, so they do has some ways to communicate in case the tracker implanted on suits broken.
“But he never contact the cave.”
He never contact me.
Tim leaves the bitter accusation out. I thought we’re at least partners, if not father and son. He cannot prevent his mind drifts. Must be the side effect of sleep deprive.
The butler doesn’t even raise an eyebrow, “I believe Master Bruce is currently compromised.” He turns off the stove and starts to pour a cup of tea.
“Aren’t you worried about him?” It’s not a real question if Tim knows the answer, but he feels compelled to ask, to check, to be sure.
“Oh boy, I never stop worrying,” Alfred serves him the tea. His stoic expression is a little blurred and wavered by the hot steam slowly rising from the warm drink, “but this is the path Master Bruce chose, and the decision he made, quite a long time ago.”
Tim picks up the cup, but hesitates to drink, “you know I’m not talking about being Batman.”
“What’s the difference then?”
Frankly, Tim doesn’t know. He changes topic.
“What did he say in the message?”
“Not much. Except he’s doing well.”
Tim doesn’t know how well Bruce is doing now. Pregnancy never enters his mind so he doesn’t know much about it. He did a bit research on it but he doubts how helpful it could be, considering the baby is a half Kryptonian. Maybe it’s a better idea to let Bruce stays with Superman.
Alfred must reads his mind, because he agrees, “Superman seems to be a young fine man and a good company.”
“I hope so.”
Tim honestly says.