Fic: Of Capes and Pearls
Title: Of Capes and Pearls
Fandom: DC
Characters/Pairings: Clark/Bruce, Diana, Hal Jordan
Genre: hurt/comfort
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2200
Notes:Happy Birthday to the lovely mithen
Prompt: For the worlds_finest birthday celebration prompt: Superman is seriously (not mortally) injured in a battle. Batman is trying very hard not to freak out about it (and failing).
Unfamiliar.
Strange red light paints the backs of Bruce’s eyelids, and he struggles to open them, finally focusing on a blurry shape in front of him. It’s long and black with oddly sharp fins and it’s moving and-oh, that’s his gauntleted left arm. He moves it again, flexing his fingers, and tries to rouse himself from the fog in his mind.
Taking stock of his surroundings-unfamiliar-and his position within them-lying on his left side on the floor, in his Batman suit-he mentally lists his injuries, the most serious of which seems to be a pretty severe concussion. He can’t remember being knocked unconscious, can’t even begin to think where or when, and meanwhile everything is…unfamiliar. No, that’s not the word. Not unfamiliar…
Alien.
The word kindles a memory within him-Superman grappling with something, his cape gone, his eyes wild-and Bruce sits up quickly as though expecting a fight, the red-lit room spinning wildly about him. He reaches reflexively for a batarang in his belt, until he realizes that his belt is gone. Typical.
Ignoring the dizziness and nausea any movement causes, he glances around himself cautiously. He’s in a cell of sorts; unfamiliar-alien-scribblings adorn the shining black walls. There is a small light fixture on the ceiling, spilling scarlet beams down upon him. There are no windows. No visible doors. He feels as though he’s been sealed in a tomb, all alone…
“Br…Bruce…”
Turning, he sees a figure huddled in a far corner, semiconscious and awash in the crimson light.
Superman.
“Clark…? Clark!”
Alarm takes hold of Bruce at the sight of him. He’s capeless and blood-stained, and his posture is awkward: shoulders hunched inward and arms wound tight around his waist as though he is holding something securely against himself.
Bruce climbs to his feet hurriedly, intending to make his way across the room to where his injured teammate is, but his first step sends him tumbling back towards the polished obsidian floor of the cell. Abandoned by his equilibrium, he crawls instead, finally reaching Superman’s side.
“Clark…are you all right?”
Clark’s eyes are shut, his head nodding forward, and he mutters to himself: “Bruce…Bruce…I won’t…I won’t let them…I can’t…”
“Clark. Clark!”
“…Can’t let them hurt you…”
“Clark, wake up!” Bruce grabs his shoulders and shakes them, and Clark’s head lolls backwards against the wall, his eyes slitting open. He groans, blinking against the ruby glare of the room, and it’s only then that Bruce realizes what that red light is: artificial red sunlight, enough to zap Superman of his abilities.
Putting this knowledge-and its implications-aside for the moment, Bruce places his gloved hands on either side of Clark’s face, slapping him lightly. “Can you hear me? Clark? Can you-?”
“I’m so sorry,” Clark croaks, his eyes focusing on Bruce. “Please…I’m so sorry.”
“Clark, snap out of it,” Bruce says, apprehensive of Clark’s nonsensical ramblings.
“They made me…I couldn’t…”
“Come on, Clark, wake up. Come on, Superman.”
Clark blinks again, and this time he seems more himself, frowning up at Batman hovering above him. “Bruce…? Are we still…you’re still…we’re still here?”
“Apparently,” Bruce answers. “Wherever ‘here’ is.”
“On their ship,” Clark whispers, tightening the hold on his stomach with an obvious grimace.
“Ship? Whose ship?”
“I don’t know.” Clark shifts away slightly from Bruce, as though seeking to hide whatever it is he has tucked away in his arms. “Some alien race I’ve never heard of before. They call themselves the Hyandard. We were fighting them…remember?”
“No,” Bruce admits, rubbing the base of his skull. “I guess one of those Hyandard got lucky.” He glances curiously at Clark’s entwined arms. “What are you hiding?”
“It’s nothing,” Clark says, shaking his head.
“Let me see.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Clark-”
“Bruce, please,” Clark says, his voice betraying the futility of his actions. He knows Bruce won’t stop bothering him until he reveals whatever it is he’s hiding.
Gently prying Clark’s arms away from his stomach, Bruce is surprisingly unalarmed to see that Clark’s lower abdomen has been cut deeply. Too deeply.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Clark insists, sounding like a child trying to negotiate his way out of a punishment.
“Clark, how old is this wound? How long have we been here?”
“Several hours,” Clark answers, hissing in pain as Bruce skims his fingers lightly along the gash.
“You’ve been bleeding like this for several hours?”
“It’s not that bad…”
“We need to get out of here.”
“We can’t.”
“There has to be a way.”
“I have no powers. You’ve lost your utility belt. We’re both in pretty bad shape.”
Bruce slams a fist into the unyielding wall beside him, his hand throbbing with the impact.
“I’m sorry,” Clark whispers.
“Shut up,” Bruce snaps. “It’s not your fault.”
“They come back every once in a while to check on us,” Clark continues. “They want me alive, but only if I agree to help them. So far, I’ve refused. But they’ll keep coming back in here, asking me, until I either agree or bleed to death.”
“Hold on,” Bruce says, his addled brain trying to keep up with Clark’s words. “Start from the beginning. What do these Hyandard people want?”
“They want to use me to help them conqueror worlds,” says Clark, his arms twining around his waist again. “Starting with Earth.”
“And if you refuse,” Bruce deduces, “they’ll let you bleed to death.”
“Yes.”
“Then why am I here?”
Clark looks away, his eyes squeezed tight, his face the picture of agony.
“Clark? Why am I-?”
“Added incentive.” Clark meets Bruce’s eyes again, slowly and shamefully. “I’m so sorry. They guessed that I’d be willing to sacrifice my own life to protect the Earth, but…”
“But?”
“They gambled that I wouldn’t want to sacrifice your life.” Clark looks away again, shaking. “During the battle, they sensed a…connection between us. They think you’re special to me.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Bruce says, his heart pounding.
“If I agree to help them, they’ll let you live. They say that they’ll give you to me to keep. They say that if I ever betray them, if I ever stop helping them, they’ll kill you. I’m so sorry, Bruce. This is all…this is all my fault. I never meant for you to be-uhng…”
Clark doubles over, moaning, and Bruce grabs his shoulders, pulling Clark against his chest. “Don’t want you to die because of me…” Clark groans against his neck.
“I won’t. We won’t. The League will be here. They’ll stop them. Everything’s going to be fine.”
For awhile they sit in silence, Bruce listening as Clark’s breathing evens out again. He doesn’t even realize that he’s been counting each breath until Clark stirs against him.
“Stomach hurts,” he says.
“I bet,” Bruce answers.
Clark makes an effort to sit upright, casting his eyes downward to inspect his wounded torso. “Oh,” he says, and there’s a strained note in his voice as he sees the dark blood, violet against the blue of his costume. “That’s…that’s a lot more blood than there was before…”
“It’s fine,” Bruce says, his voice remarkably calm, starkly at odds with the stuttering pace of his heart. “You’ll be fine. Just…just don’t think about it. Think about something else.”
“I think…I think that’s probably more blood than there should be,” Clark says, laughing nervously, his words laced with a swiftly rising hysteria. “It…ahaha…it hurts-”
Bruce grabs Clark’s face in his hands and forces his eyes away from his bleeding belly. “Don’t think about it,” he orders in his most commanding tone. “Don’t look at it. You’re going to be fine, do you hear me? You’re going to be fine!”
For some reason he’s yelling, though he doesn’t mean to. His face is a few inches away from Clark’s, whose eyes are wide and frightened. He can’t remember ever seeing Superman frightened before. It almost makes him angry. Almost makes him want to…
“Bruce…?” Clark whispers, uncertain and childish.
Without warning, Bruce closes the distance between them, pressing his mouth against Clark’s. The kiss is hot and desperate and makes Bruce’s head pound even harder. Then Clark makes a sound, halfway between a sob and a laugh, and Bruce deepens the kiss, tugging at Clark’s hair, pulling him closer, wanting him to make that sound again.
Clark tastes like blood and sweat. Like freedom. Which is ridiculous; you can’t taste freedom. But in that moment, Bruce swears he can. He tastes freedom and sunlight and laughter and a thousand other things that should be impossible, but somehow aren’t. Impossible in the same way that Clark is impossible, but somehow isn’t.
“Must’ve gotten hit harder than I thought,” Bruce grunts when their lips finally part. Clark gives him a weak smile and moves to lean against his shoulder again, trembling slightly. Bruce pulls off his black cape, silking it from his shoulders and wrapping it securely around Clark’s instead.
He doesn’t know how he feels about Clark now. But then, he’s never really known. Throughout the years, his relationship with Superman has been a confusing jumble of trust and mistrust, annoyance and fondness, arguments and begrudging gratitude, hope and fear. The kiss they’ve just shared should have changed everything, but somehow it hasn’t. Perhaps it’s always been this way between them, perhaps they’ve always known, that the only people willing to put up with the two of them would be each other. Bruce doesn’t know if it’s love, this unnamed emotion he’s always associated with Clark, but if love means fearing for someone beyond one’s own life, then maybe it is. If love means looking forward to arguments because of the way Clark’s eyes blaze when he’s riled, then maybe it is. If love means pretending to be annoyed when Superman bothers him while he’s patrolling Gotham, then maybe it is.
“I think, perhaps, I might love you, maybe,” Bruce whispers, but Clark doesn’t answer. His eyes are half-shut and his breathing has slowed and Diana and the others better get there fast before-
There are shouts from outside the room, muffled and distant, but blessedly familiar. Several moments later, a door materializes as a portion of the gleaming black walls melts away, a stable entrance forming. Red light spills into a corridor beyond and Hal comes rushing through the newly made doorway, green ring buzzing electrically.
He tosses something at Bruce, something long and winding and yellow, and it’s only when Bruce reaches for it automatically, snatching it from the air, that he realizes that it’s his utility belt.
“How bad is he?” Hal says, kneeling beside Clark and laying a finger against his neck.
“Fine,” Bruce says frantically. “He’ll be fine.”
There’s chaos in the hallway-he can hear Diana shouting something-and soon the chaos makes its way into the prison cell. In the sudden din he finds himself in, surrounded by friends and foes, crouched in a corner as he shields Clark from energy bursts, the only thing that Bruce would later remember clearly is Clark’s face, grayish in the mixed red-green light from Hal’s ring and the light fixture above.
Then Diana is there, saying something to him, and the red room fades mercifully to black.
***
Eventually, the Watchtower quiets down. Eventually, Bruce-imprisoned by Diana in the medbay-is left alone.
Well, not completely alone.
Superman lies on the bed across from his, unwaking.
Still feeling lightheaded, though he’d never admit it, Bruce moves carefully from his cot to Clark’s, sitting down on the edge of it. Superman’s cape-safely recovered from the fight-is folded by the end of the bed, and Bruce takes it, wrapping it around his shoulders like some sort of childish security blanket. He knows it’s ridiculous, but he can’t help but think that if only Clark hadn’t lost the cape during the battle, he wouldn’t have gotten hurt. It’s a foolish idea, almost as foolish as another thought he’d had as a child: If only she hadn’t worn those pearls, they wouldn’t have died. A stupid, pointless thought, as though capes and pearls make a difference when guns and knives are involved.
“Please don’t die,” Bruce says into the quiet of the room, and he hates how his voice cracks, hates how it sounds like he’s been crying.
“Not dyin’,” Clark mumbles, turning his head towards Bruce, though his eyes are still shut.
“Clark,” he says, and his voice cracks distressingly again.
“Mmm?”
“How do you feel?”
Clark blinks up at him, his eyes unfocused and his pupils large. “Floaty.”
“Floaty?”
“Uh-huh. S’nice. Like flyin’.”
“That would be the morphine,” Bruce says, feeling relieved enough to let a little amusement color his voice.
“Drugs don’ ‘fect me,” Clark slurs, shutting his eyes again.
“Well, you’re pretty de-powered at the moment.”
“If tha’s true,” Clark says, “then how come ‘m flyin’?”
“Go to sleep, Clark.”
“I’ve decided…’m gonna take you flyin’ sometime…”
“Hrrn. You know I hate it when you pick me up and carry me around like some sort of helpless damsel,” Bruce grouses, and he realizes just how hard it is to sound irritated when one is smiling.
“I know…bu’ it feels right…”
Bruce watches him fall back into sleep, his breathing growing slow and deep again, then he lays down beside him on the bed and covers them both with the Superman cape.
Curled together, warm and safe, they dream of flying.
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