Fic: Stay (2/2)
Part One is HERE
Part Two: Nightfall
Evening
For Clark, fighting Metallo has always been more difficult for him than fighting most other villains. He must employ avoidance maneuvers and long-range tactics, which aren’t exactly his favored approaches when battling his enemies. He hates all the ducking and running, how he seems to spend more time fleeing than fighting. When it comes to villains like Grodd or Mongul or even Darkseid, Clark is able to meet them face to face, fight them face to face, but to do so with Metallo would be a disaster.
Even from a distance of thirty feet, Clark can still feel the radiation of Metallo’s Kryptonite heart, wisps of heat and pain reaching out towards him like fiery fingers, threatening to knock him over, sicken him, burn him, kill him. To get any closer would be suicide.
Clark hates fighting Metallo.
The battle had begun around six o’clock, when Metallo had broken into one of S.T.A.R. labs’ divisional branches on the outskirts of Metropolis, and now, nearly two hours later and with darkness well upon them, Clark is beginning to seriously doubt his ability to win this fight. Despite being badly dented by invulnerable fists and scorched by heat-vision, Metallo’s mechanical body is somehow holding up better than usual, his weapons more effective than ever before. Clark suspects someone’s been helping him, funding him, and he thinks he knows exactly who that person is: someone whose name begins with an “L” and rhymes with “hex”.
And so, weary, radiation-sick, and fighting a battle with no end in sight, Clark is beyond relieved when the familiar streak of a black plane touches down nearby. When Batman reaches his side, they fall into their usual roles, working together in unspoken unison to defeat their enemy. Superman is bold, bright, and distracting, while Batman is hidden, stealthy, and surprising. And for awhile, the tide of the battle turns in their favor and Clark feels his confidence returning.
Then Metallo’s iron hands grab hold of Bruce, wrapping themselves around his neck, unresisting steel choking, squeezing…
And Clark doesn’t really have any other choice but to throw himself at Metallo, erasing the safety zone between them, because when it comes to saving Bruce’s life or preserving his own, Bruce will always come first. There is no other option, no other choice, nothing else to do but to fall headlong into danger and hope that Bruce can forgive Clark for risking his own life in order to save his lover’s.
Clark pummels Metallo into the ground, asphalt cracking and breaking beneath them. Having been released from Metallo’s death grip, Bruce is now lying a few yards away, coughing and spluttering and yelling something that Clark can’t understand. His ears ringing, his hands burning, his vision filled with sickly, green light, Clark is only aware of two things: Metallo’s screams, and the near-debilitating agony of Kryptonite exposure.
And then, amidst a sudden burst of vermilion light that tears through him like lightning, Clark ends the battle, impaling Metallo through the heart with his fists, shards of Kryptonite slicing at his worn knuckles. Without his power source, Metallo shuts down, his glowing eyes fading, and with them, Clark also fades…down, down, down into timeless darkness, unknown minutes, days, millennia passing by in a ringing silence of pain and exhaustion, before he finally comes back to himself. His vision is nothing more than a watery blur of dim light, and his hearing is coming through like a pair of faulty headphones, snatches of intermittent phrases reaching him from beneath an underlying, deafening buzzing.
“Clark…why didn’t you listen to…had to save…didn’t you…Clark…damn alien…always think you know what’s best…Clark…of all the stupid…Clark…stubborn Kryptonian…Clark…”
“Uhhh…” Clark replies, as articulately as he can manage. He’s dimly aware of someone-Bruce-beside him, talking to him, but it hurts too much to respond. He tries to move, and whatever he’s lying on squeaks faintly, like leather, which means he’s no longer lying on asphalt.
“Lay still,” Bruce says, and puts a hand on Clark’s shoulder.
Sudden agony screams through him at the touch, and he cries out, more from the unexpectedness of the pain than from the pain itself.
“I’m sorry!” Bruce exclaims, his voice hoarse and cracking. Metallo must have injured his throat worse than Clark originally thought. “I’m sorry. But it’s all right. I’m getting you to the Fortress. You’ll be safe, you’ll be fine.”
Something’s wrong. This is different from the kind of Kryptonite exposure he’s experienced in the past. Something happened. Clark racks his brain, trying to remember the moment right before he deactivated Metallo…something happened. But all he remembers is a bright light, and Bruce shouting something, and lightning pain and…
“Clark? Clark, stay with me. Stay.”
Clark wants to obey. Obey like he did this morning, a million years ago, when he was safe in Bruce’s bed, and Bruce was so beautiful…always beautiful…
“Stay, Clark, stay with me…please…”
Clark thinks about how angry Bruce would be with him if he dies, and tries his best to hold on. To stay. He feels Bruce clasp his shoulder again, and, even though the slight touch hurts beyond bearing, Clark doesn’t cry out, doesn’t pull away.
The last thing Clark feels is Bruce’s lips on his own, hot and desperate. Deliriously, he thinks he can taste Bruce’s soul and it’s probably the best kiss he’s ever had in his entire life, but he can’t summon up enough energy to tell Bruce that because he’s falling again, down into painless blackness…
Night
Clark doesn’t wake when Bruce kisses his forehead. The Fortress’ ethereal, crystalline surroundings chime with an alien music, as soft as the whisperings inside of a seashell, and as echoing as the choral music within a high-ceilinged cathedral, indefinable and unattainable. And Clark doesn’t wake.
Bruce is hovering worriedly, starting at every noise Clark makes. He paces a small three foot radius around the unconscious Kryptonian’s bed, stopping every few minutes to place his hand on his lover’s cheek or to smooth his hair. Clark’s mouth is open slightly, shallow breaths hissing in and out, and Bruce thinks it may be the most beautiful sound he’s ever heard because, for a few minutes, there hadn’t been any sound at all. There had been no breath. No pulse. No heartbeat. Nothing but the steady, flat-lining beep on the vitals display. Nothing but Bruce’s own sobbing breaths pushing air into Clark’s mouth. Nothing but Bruce’s fists pounding upon an invulnerable chest, willing it back to life.
But none of that mattered now because Clark was alive. And he would stay alive. And he would be fine.
“Bruce…”
Bruce jumps at the unexpected voice and leans over Clark, anxious and excited. “Clark? Clark, can you hear me?”
Silver-blue eyes crack open, unfocused and glassy, but they find Bruce and lock onto him. “Bruce? Rao…you’re so beau’iful, y’know tha’?”
“Clark,” Bruce sighs, relieved.
“Wha…wha’ happened? Wha-”
“Metallo,” Bruce says, eagerly seizing upon a subject that has everything to do with science and technology, and nothing whatsoever to do with thinking he’d lost Clark forever. “He apparently has a new toy. Some sort of ray gun-two guesses who gave it to him-that shoots concentrated Kryptonite radiation. It’s faster and more effective than the bullets he usually carries around. Your robots are analyzing it now.” He looks down at Clark, bandaged and bruised and breathing, and adds: “But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. You’re fine. You’re safe.”
“Y’kissed me,” Clark says, and though his voice is slurred from drowsiness and pain, there is definitely amusement in his tone. “Kissed me ‘fore I passed out.”
“I administered CPR,” Bruce answers, curtly. “You were dy-you were in respiratory arrest-”
“No,” Clark says, laughing lightly. “’Fore I blacked out…y’kissed me. It was real good. Really good an’ I wanted to tell you jus’ how good it was, but I…couldn’…”
In hindsight, Bruce can now see that he had overreacted: of course Clark wasn’t going to die there, but Bruce had kissed him like he was. He had kissed him like it would be the last time. It had almost been the last-
No, Bruce’s mind says, cutting the thought off sharply. Clark is fine and alive and nothing else matters.
“What’s your point, Clark?” Bruce asks with a sigh.
“My poin’,” Clark says, eyes slipping shut once more, “my poin’ is…I wancha to…to do it ‘gain…Kiss me. Now. I’m hurt an’ tha’s an order. Um…please.”
“Yes, sir,” Bruce says, fighting a smile. He leans over Clark, bending to touch his lips to his lover’s.
He thinks it’s probably the best kiss he’s ever had.