JL fic

[icarus_chained]

Part 2 of Human.
Same down the line. Don't own.

Bruce had disappeared. Kal was mildly annoyed about that, underneath the worry. Bad enough what they had had to witness, bad enough to chase futilly through the Tower to find a hurting J'onn, but to return unsuccessful to find that Bruce had slipped off to the Cave in his absence ... Had he not been so terrified for them both, Kal would probably be fuming by now. As it was, his anxious mind insisted on repeating that whole sequence of events in an unending reel, pointing out his every wrong move, revealing exactly how badly he'd managed to hurt his friend, and his ... What was Bruce, now? Not lover. Not yet. So fragile, so tenuous, his grasp on Bruce's trust. So easily shattered.

Which was why Clark Kent was knocking hesitantly on the doors of Wayne Manor. Not Superman, appearing in the Cave, because that would only give Bruce exactly the excuse he needed to recoil behind professional antagonism. And not Kal El, because Bruce would sometimes talk to Clark in a way he wouldn't to the alien. And sometimes vice-versa. It depended on what needed to be said. It was almost a way of speaking in and of itself. I wear this face to talk to that part of you that needs me most. There were times when Bruce's unveiled humanity, his bared compassion, were too much for Kal to bear, when the calm courage of the Bat was the face that inspired the easiest confidence. So many shattered fragments of self, that somehow managed to fit, if never perfectly.

So. Clark Kent. Standing in the Gotham wet, shuffling his feet as Alfred opened the door, glancing up through wet hair to ask the silent question. Can I come in? It meant so many things in this house, and the welcome was always tenuous. He half-expected a grim shake of the head, though not a polite brush-off, because Alfred never gave him those anymore. But the butler nodded tiredly, and opened the door wide to take him in. It was all Kal could do not to kneel at his feet in gratitude.

He let Alfred take his wet things, a reasonably auspicious beginning, and started to ask. "Am I ...?"

"He's downstairs, sir." He's brooding, sir. Or, equally likely, he's hurting, sir. "I do hope you've eaten this evening." Because you're on your own from here.

"Ah, yes. Thank you, Alfred." The white-haired old man shook his head slightly, tiredly, and waved him on deeper into the house. Clark swallowed slightly. Had he hurt him that badly? To have Alfred at emotional Def-con 2? He stepped hesitantly onto the Batcave stairs, and paused. Was this the right thing to do? Was coming here only going to make things worse?

Feeling tears that refused to be shed under his fingers, seeing mute longing in harsh blue eyes, knowing fear as Bruce trembled against him.

Clark took the rest of the stairs at a determined pace.

When he reached the bottom, his eyes automatically gravitated to the figure wrapped in the womb-chair, fingers typing restlessly, shoulders hunched against his intrusion. Bruce never looked up, knowing who he was without needing flimsy visual proof. Knowing which him he was, too. Only Clark walked down those steps. Only for Clark could Bruce track the path of shoes across the Cave to come to a halt at his shoulder. And only Clark could he safely ignore if he needed to.

Clark let him keep typing, allowing them both to settle, waiting for some of the tension to bleed away from taut shoulders before he began to speak. It could sometimes be a long wait, but this time Bruce obviously had something on his mind. Clark braced himself.

"How's J'onn?" A brusque demand, fully Bat.

"I ... I didn't find him."

"Hnh. He didn't want to be found." And there was worry there, Bruce coming to the surface, and something more. Clark stiffened.

"No," he answered softly. "But I'm not surprised. What we felt ..." Bruce's fingers paused in their ceaseless dance across keyboards. Ah. "Did you ... did you know? Before?" Bruce barked out a laugh, a pained thing more effective than a slap across the face, and Clark flinched a bit.

"Do you think I deliberately act oblivious in order to hurt people?" Bruce sneered, face turned resolutely away. Clark was silent for a long moment.

"Do you think I do?" he asked softly, and Bruce quaked slightly. Clark reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder, feeling the thin, fine tremors of his friend's pain. Bruce didn't shrug him off. An apology. "I didn't mean ..." he offered.

"I know."

Clark nodded, swallowing the lump in his throat. "Yes. Of course."

"And I ..."

"I know that too, Bruce." Bruce's head dipped ever so slightly towards the keyboard, and Clark knew he'd closed his eyes. "But?"

"But ... I ... Kal? ... I ..." Clark frowned at the stammers, and taking the name as permission, turned Bruce, chair and all, to face him. The glow from the side monitors painted Bruce's face in shining shadows, an arresting sight, but what caught Kal's breath was the look in his eyes. Fear, of loss if he was any judge, and shame. And slowly the pieces fell into place with a nearly audible click. "I won't hurt him, Kal," Bruce finished softly.

"Oh," he breathed, heart clenching. Bruce looked away, the remote aspect of the Bat slipping down in defense. "Bruce! You ... you love him, don't you? Don't you!"

Bruce's hand was clenched so tightly on the arm of the chair that, had he any super-strength whatsoever, it would have been powder, but he nodded grimly. Bruce did not believe in lying, not where it meant something. Kal stared down at him, at the warrior suddenly humanised, made frail and vunerable and ashamed, and anger throbbed in his veins. He considered, for an instant, striking Bruce. He considered smashing the Cave to pieces. He considered fleeing to Metropolis. Fleeing Earth altogether. The urge was so strong that he shuddered with it.

But something stopped him, some fragile hold on his heart, and he remembered the reverence of Bruce's gaze as Kal's hand traced his jaw, he remembered the silent apologies that were only gifted to him, he remembered the trust Bruce granted him, and he remembered what it was that Bruce hadn't said.

He knelt slowly in front of Bruce, laying his hands over the human's as they rested on the arms of the chair, and suddenly the vunerability of the position Bruce had allowed himself to be placed in hit him like a kick in the gut. He could do anything to him like this, anything at all. His hands trapped against the chair, Bruce couldn't reach for a single weapon or defense, his chest and bared face utterly open to attack, and Kal retained a whole range of abilities that didn't require hands to wound. Bruce watched him silently, waiting.

Kal swallowed. "And ... and me?" he whispered, and Bruce closed his eyes. His answer was so low it strained even Kal's hearing, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered at all, beside that single word. Kal bowed his head against the weight of it.

"Always."

Kal stared at him, the ache of emotion singing in every limb and vein. Slowly, keeping his hands pressed on Bruce's arms, he stood and leaned in. Bruce tilted his head back so that their eyes never slipped from each other's, and said not a word. Waiting, for whatever Kal needed to do. Yielding, whatever Kal needed to take. In a moment so stretched and thin and trembling it could have stabbed either through the heart had it shattered, Kal leaned over, his weight on shaking arms, and pressed a burning kiss to Bruce's forehead, holding it there for a brief eternity.

Until Bruce sobbed, once, beneath him, and all his control was shattered.

Before either fully realised what he'd done, Kal had pulled Bruce onto his feet, one arm locked around his waist, the other hard and unyielding at the back of Bruce's neck. Then, equally suddenly, Kal's feet left the floor, and he rose steadily, pulling Bruce along with him. Instinctively, Bruce's arms came up to lock around him, a human's automatic response to the threat of gravity and uncertain support. Kal only looked at him, stared into wary eyes turned the colour of bruised skies with pain, and waited, hoping without expectation.

And Bruce understood. Slowly, the clutching hands fell away, the entirity of Bruce's weight entrusted to Kal's hands, and the eyes stayed open, thawing, allowing a glimmer of hope to shine through, and it was the single most beautiful thing Kal had ever seen. Overcome, he pulled Bruce's head in to kiss his forehead again. Then his temples. Then his eyelids. Then his cheekbones, where tears suddenly flowed, the taste of their salt a shock of love through Kal. Then his lips, with an almost fearful tenderness, and suddenly there was a hand in his hair and another curled around his right shoulder, and Bruce was kissing him back, and crying into Kal's mouth, and shaking in his arms until Kal wondered that he didn't shake his bones out of his skin. Bruce was a storm of pain and sorrow and love against him, and the power of it took him like a bullet to the heart.

He pulled out of the kiss, raising his head until Bruce's nose brushed the taut line of his throat, tears spilling unheed down over his cheeks and into Bruce's hair, clutching the other man to him with a strength just shy of crushing. Bruce pressed a kiss against the pulse of his throat in answer, mouth wet and heated, and Kal found himself darting higher, holding closer, begging it to be enough. He leant back down rub his cheekbone desperately over Bruce's temple, to trace the curve of his ear with his lips, to whisper needlessly the choked words. "Trust me." Trust me. Rao, only trust me.

And Bruce did, completely, and it was the most terrifying thought that Kal had ever known. All his strength and power quailed beneath the weight of that trust, all the might of Superman, insufficient. Against the weight of a human heart, what matter the power of a thousand suns? Against the love he was offered, what was the cost of allowing another his fair share? What price to let J'onn in, to embrace another friend into this desperate circle? They would be matched between them, pain to pain, strength to strength, love to love, and Kal knew J'onn wouldn't flinch from helping him bear up Bruce's human heart.

He only prayed that between them, they might be enough.

"Bruce," he whispered, rising still higher, until they were two shadows among the stalactites and bats, entwined and embracing, and Bruce had to know what a fall from this height would do to him, and Kal wanted him to. "Bruce," he said again. "Trust me. Please." I love you.

"Always."

***

"Master Bruce?"

The soft call cut through the wisps of dreaming, and Kal woke with a start, blinking as he tried to figure out where he was. The jump brought a quiet moan from beside, and Kal's head snapped around in panic, memories of the previous night (?) flashing through him. Then he relaxed.

Perched crazily on the edge of their ledge with only the weight of Kal's arm to hold him, teetering out over a chasm to give the most hardened spelunker nightmares, Bruce slept the sleep of the righteous. Arms curled up between them so his hand rested lightly on Kal's chest, his head pillowed in the crook of Kal's elbow, he was a stunning image of innocence and trust. If it weren't for the pale tracery of scars that overlaid his skin, you would never have guessed at his power and ability. The sight of him like that was a gift Kal would not soon forget, a wonder he desperately wanted to etch into eternity.

"Master Bruce?" Alfred called again, and Kal recalled himself with a start. He looked down at the worried older man, some forty feet below via a crazy forest of stalactites, and called out softly.

"Up here."

Alfred looked up quickly, and frowned. Kal, realising what a bizarre sight they must make, perched naked like a couple of love-drunk bats, blushed to his toes. Nowhere in any advice on relationships he'd ever read or heard had it mentioned the ettiquette for when what amounts to your father-in-law calmly walks in in the morning with breakfast, and idly starts picking up ... Kal blinked. That was his boot. He could tell by the colour. And the other red thing, which garnered a raised white eyebrow ... couldn't possibly be matching his face at this moment. He shrank down behind the curve of Bruce's shoulder, all of Clark's midwestern upbringing screaming murder in his burning ears.

"Am I to take it by the melodious snores currently emanating from your elbow, sir, that you are both as yet among the living?"

"Yes!" Kal squeaked, and blessed Alfred's English heart for it's discretion.

"Ah. Breakfast is in an hour, then. I'm sure Master Bruce can find you something to wear." If you hadn't been looking for it, you would never have noticed the relief in the older man's tone. It was mostly hidden beneath the dry humour.

Kal ducked his head in mortification, and was met by fuzzy blue eyes turned smoky by the curl of a lazy grin. Bruce smiled up at him, a smug playboy leer glittering in the dimness. Kal glared at it.

Then sleep slipped from those eyes, clearing away all traces of smugness or humour, and what was left was wonder so vivid and bright that it seared Kal's heart. Bruce reached up with a shaking hand, and reverently touched the edge of Kal's jaw, tracing calloused fingers up along its edge, then spreading them out over his cheek until the thumb brushed gently over his lips. Kal kissed it softly, Bruce's tiny gasp infinite reward, and rubbed his head gingerly into that caressing palm.

"You're still here," Bruce breathed, awed. You're still mine. Kal smiled, and dipped down so his lips hovered over Bruce's.

"Always," he murmured, huskily, and kissed his lover good-morning.