Fic: Mercy
Title: Mercy
Fandom: DC (toonverse)
Characters/Pairings: Clark/Bruce, Diana
Genre: drama/angst
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1800
Summary: Nothing is wrong. That's the problem.
Notes: For The Shuffle Challenge N prompt: "Nothing is Wrong."
“When are you going to let me buy you a better apartment?”
“Hmm…” Clark says, as though he’s actually considering his answer. “Probably when Apokolips freezes over.”
Bruce is sitting backwards on a small, spindly chair in Clark’s tiny kitchenette, watching Clark repair a water pipe beneath the sink. “I’m serious, Clark,” he says, tilting the chair forward at an alarming angle, yet somehow managing not to topple over. “You don’t have to live like this.”
“There’s nothing wrong with the way I live.” There’s no anger, no offense in Clark’s response. They’ve had this conversation before; they’ll most likely have it again before the week is up. Like actors performing in a scene for the one thousandth time, they know their parts well.
“There’s nothing wrong with a total and complete lack of plumbing?”
“I have plumbing, it just needs some tweaking.”
“Well, I suppose you are used to fetching water from wells and using outhouses, aren’t you, farm boy?”
“Why do you always make it sound like I’m from 1846?”
“Why do you insist on living like it’s 1846?”
“I think my apartment has a charming atmosphere.”
“And I suppose the sporadic power-outages only add to this charming atmosphere?”
“No,” Clark says, “you add to the charming atmosphere. Why else do you think I keep a spoiled playboy like you around?”
“Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“That’s not what you said last n-uh, do you smell something?”
“You’re the one with your nose in the plumbing.”
“No, something’s burning.”
“Nothing’s-oh shit!”
Bruce lunges from the spindly chair towards the oven, slight wisps of black smoke beginning to seep out from within it. “Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” he repeats, opening it to reveal the blackened remains of an unfortunate cake.
Clark crawls out from under the sink and cracks open the tiny kitchen window, allowing the smoke to escape before the fire alarms can go off. He then pulls from the smoky oven the burnt confection, placing it reverently upon the stovetop. He and Bruce stand before it for a few moments in silence, like mourners at a wake, saying one last farewell to a friend. Alas, poor birthday cake, Bruce thinks, we hardly knew thee.
“I suppose,” Clark says eventually, “your plan was to burn down the entire complex, thus forcing me into letting you buy me a new apartment?”
Bruce snorts in unexpected laughter. “Actually,” he says, poking at the charred remains of Clark’s birthday cake, “my plan was to take you out to dinner, then come back here, feed you birthday cake, and then have my way with you.”
Now it’s Clark’s turn to laugh. “Well, we can still do those things. There just so happens to be a bakery across the street. Let’s just buy a cheap cake there or something.”
“A cheap cake?!” Bruce exclaims, feigning astonishment. “Clark, I swear upon-” He looks about the kitchen for something worthy enough to hold him to his oath, and his eyes eventually settle upon the ruined cake. Laying his hand atop it, he continues: “I swear upon my first attempt at cake-baking that I shall not rest until I have found the most expensive bakery in Metropolis-”
The pipe below the sink chooses that moment to burst, cold water fanning out towards them, spraying them and everything else within a twenty foot radius. Ten very wet minutes later, the pipe is mended and Clark and Bruce collapse, drenched yet victorious, upon the apartment’s sole couch. It squelches damply beneath their weight, water bubbling up from between the cushions.
“Forget the cake,” Clark says, poking at a sodden pillow. “Buy me a new couch.”
“Forget the couch. I’m buying you a new apartment.”
There’s something about the way Clark’s spit-curl is dripping into his eyes, something about the way his soaked shirt is plastered against his chest, something about the wet shimmer upon his neck, beads of water collecting at his collar bone. There’s something about the way Clark shifts uncomfortably upon his damaged couch that Bruce finds unbearably beautiful, and the next thing he knows he’s on top of him, kissing away the droplets on Clark’s full lips. This is what Clark does best: he makes himself sexy in the most unsexy of situations. And Bruce is unable to resist.
Bruce is in the middle of a detailed exploration of his lips, Clark laughing into his mouth at the rubbery squeak their bodies are making against each other, when it happens.
A woman’s scream startles him and he pulls away, alarmed.
“What’s wrong?” Clark asks, frowning at him. “We were just getting to the good-”
“Didn’t you hear that?” Bruce asks.
“What, this?” Clark replies, running his hands along Bruce’s bare back, laughing at the wet squeaking sound.
“No,” Bruce says, lightly brushing Clark’s hands away and standing up, casting his eyes about the apartment. “Someone was screaming.”
“No one was screaming,” Clark says, moving to stand beside him. “I would have heard-”
“I didn’t imagine it,” Bruce snaps, annoyed. “There was a woman screaming. She-”
BRUCE!
“There!” Bruce exclaims, whirling on Clark. “You heard it that time, didn’t you? She just called my name!”
Clark is looking at him in concern. “I don’t hear anyone screaming, Bruce,” he says quietly, but Bruce ignores him. He rushes to the window, expecting to see someone outside, someone in trouble, but there’s no one there.
Bruce! Fight it! BRUCE!
Bruce clamps his hands over his ears, a terrible weight descending upon his heart. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of his mind, he knows that voice, knows what it means, but he denies it firmly, shaking his head.
“Bruce?” Clark asks, his hands warm and solid and false upon his shoulders.
Heart hammering, Bruce turns into his arms, and wraps himself around Clark, holding on in sudden desperation, as though expecting Clark to vanish into thin air.
“Bruce, what’s wrong?” Clark whispers, holding him tightly in return.
Come back! Fight it!
The woman is shouting louder than ever, and suddenly Bruce can hear other noises: sounds of a struggle, a battle, a monstrous growl of rage, a man’s voice crying out in agony, an agony that Bruce’s heart recognizes. He tightens his hold on Clark, burying his face into his shoulder.
“Bruce,” Clark says, and there is worry and fear in his voice. “Talk to me.”
“I have to call my parents,” Bruce says suddenly.
“Sure,” says Clark, a little taken aback. “Do whatever you need to do.”
Bruce fumbles for his pocket, pulling out a miraculously dry cell phone with shaking hands and calls his parents. He doesn’t know why he needs to call them; he doesn’t understand the sudden terror that they might not answer. And when they do, he falls to his knees on Clark’s flooded linoleum, unable to speak, trembling so hard he can’t see straight.
“Bruce?” his mother asks after hearing her son’s harsh, sobbing breaths on the other end of the line. “Bruce, love, are you all right?”
“I-I don’t know-”
“Bruce? Thomas, I think something’s wrong with Bruce-”
But nothing’s wrong. And that’s the problem. Everything is how it should be, how he always wanted it to be. He’s with Clark, his parents are alive, and there are no battles to fight and no wars to win and no criminals to contend with. His only problems in life are faulty pipes and burnt cakes and a stubborn boyfriend who won’t move in with him. Such a beautiful lie. A merciful lie.
Sitting on the floor of his lover’s apartment, Clark’s hands on his shoulders, his parents’ voices in his ear, Bruce comes to a frightening realization: if this is the wrong world, if this is a lie, he doesn’t want to live in the right world. He doesn’t want to know the truth.
“I love you,” he says into the phone, even as the woman’s voice is screaming in his mind. “I just…wanted to call and tell you that I loved you.”
He’s stays on the phone with them for a few more minutes, the woman’s voice almost impossible to ignore now. Eventually, he hangs up and turns to look at Clark.
“I have to go,” Bruce says, his voice dull to his own ears.
“Where?” Clark asks.
“Back,” he answers.
“What do you mean? I don’t understand-”
He takes Clark’s face in his hands and kisses him hard, his heart breaking. “I’ll make this happen,” Bruce whispers against Clark’s lips, “I promise you, I’ll make this happen for us. We’ll be together.”
BRUCE!
“I have to go,” Bruce says, pulling away slightly, but still holding Clark’s face, fingers tracing high cheek bones and golden skin, casting them to memory.
Then he closes his eyes as the world breaks around him.
When he opens his eyes again, an infinitesimal space of time later, he’s staring at the inside of Superman’s Fortress. Diana is leaning over him anxiously, her face bruised and bloodied. She’s holding a writhing black and purple organic mass in her hands, and reality floods back into Bruce’s mind: the Black Mercy.
“Bruce! Are you all right?”
Before he can answer her, she launches into an explanation of what’s been happening in the brief amount of time in which the Black Mercy was holding his mind captive.
“…and now Kal has Mongul cornered in the main hall. They’re-”
They hear Clark shout something angry and painful, and they run toward the main hall, the violent sounds of battle leading the way. They arrive in time to see Mongul lifting a boulder above Clark’s head, preparing to crush him.
“You know for a moment there,” Mongul is saying to him, a sneering grin spread across his jaundiced face, “I almost believed you were going to kill me. How stupid of you to hesitate like that. Not a mistake I’ll make, I can assure you.”
“Excuse me!” Diana shouts, brandishing the Black Mercy like a sword. “But I think this is yours.” She tosses the plant at him with deadly accuracy and the Mercy latches onto Mongul’s chest like a leech, eagerly sucking at him, undulating tentacles coiling about him. He collapses immediately and lies peacefully upon the floor of the hall.
Bruce and Diana reach Clark’s side and help him to his feet. There are tears on his face though he doesn’t seem to notice, and Bruce wonders what fantasy the Black Mercy forced Clark to live. He wonders if it was as wonderful and as terrible as his own.
He remembers the false sensation of Clark’s lips on his own as if it had really happened. He can still hear his parents’ voices in his ear. And he remembers his own voice whispering, promising: “I’ll make this happen for us. We’ll be together.”
He reaches for Clark and touches his elbow lightly. Clark turns to look at him, his eyes sad and tired, but grateful.
It’s a start.
***
A/N: So this is obviously based on the JLU episode: "For the Man Who Has Everything." I didn't want to mention it before because it would give away the surprise! I've always wanted to do a slashy Clark/Bruce version of this episode. :D Hope you enjoyed!