Chapter Text
Clark Kent cultivates boredom the way other men cultivate beards—patiently, deliberately, until it seems permanently grafted onto his face. His life is a careful archive of near-misses and almosts, each one neatly filed under a private heading he calls Things That Might Have Made Me Interesting.
Almost got that promotion last year. Almost finished with his exposé on the mayor’s “consulting fees” before the story got buried. Almost asked out the barista at Joe’s Coffee, right up until he discovered she was married to the guy who runs the competing coffee shop across the street. Clark may be many things, but he draws the line at becoming the protagonist of a soap opera.
“I lead a life of quiet dignity,” he tells himself, usually while eating lo mein straight from the carton at midnight, alone in his apartment.
So when Cat Grant descends on him at the Planet’s coffee machine one Monday morning, stilettos tapping like a countdown to disaster, Clark feels the universe slide a degree off-center.
“Clark, darling,” she purrs, “I need the tinieeeest favor. Microscopic. Barely even a favor. Really, a gift. And you—lucky, blessed you—are the only remotely competent soul in this mausoleum of mediocrity who can save me.”
Clark has learned to treat Cat’s favors the way most people treat spam emails about winning a Caribbean cruise. The last time she asked for “the tiniest favor,” he wound up spending seventy-two hours shadowing a city councilman who turned out to be romantically entangled with his campaign manager, his yoga instructor, and possibly his accountant.
The story never runs—Cat later admits the councilman is her second cousin twice removed—but Clark still can’t see a hot yoga ad without breaking into a cold sweat.
He steels himself, coffee cup paused halfway to his mouth like a shield. “What kind of favor?”
“I need you to cover Metropolis’s Shadows in Gotham premiere tonight. Red carpet, interviews, the whole glamorous circus.”
Clark blinks. Once. Twice. The words do not get more rational on repeat.
“Cat, I write about municipal corruption and water treatment scandals. I don’t do entertainment. I don’t even watch entertainment. The last movie I saw in theaters was—”
“But you do have a pulse and opposable thumbs, which makes you infinitely more qualified than half the so-called entertainment reporters in this cesspit of a city.” Cat’s smile sharpens, a predator scenting blood. “Besides, it’s not just any premiere. Bruce Wayne is going to be there.”
“The actor?” Clark asks, with the tentative tone of a man afraid to be wrong in public.
Her eye twitches. “No, Clark, the other Bruce Wayne. The one who runs a hot dog cart outside the courthouse.”
Clark actually pauses, brow knitting like he’s storing the information for later fact-checking. “Wait, really? There’s a hot dog vendor named Bruce Wayne? That’s either the worst coincidence in recorded history or the best cover story I’ve ever heard.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Cat’s voice could etch glass. “Yes, the actor, Clark. The brooding, devastatingly handsome movie star who’s made entire zip codes question their marriages.”
Clark tries to picture himself at a red carpet premiere: photographers shouting names, celebrities gliding past in couture, and people who can tell a tux from a suit without whispering panicked questions to the rental clerk. The image leaves him clammy in a way that has nothing to do with the office’s perpetually broken air conditioning.
His ears warm pink. “Right. Him. I just… don’t usually run into people who make zip codes do that.”
“My stylist ghosted me,” Cat announces, skimming right over his attempt at self-preservation. “Can you imagine? One tiny curling-iron incident, and suddenly I’m blacklisted in the beauty community. I look like I wrestled a badger and lost.”
She touches her hair. It gleams like a shampoo commercial had a spiritual awakening. Clark blinks at it, certain that perfection itself is breaking the rules if Cat still finds fault.
“I need someone reliable,” she continues, eyes narrowing like she’s selecting a champion for ritual sacrifice. “Someone who won’t abandon me the moment things get messy.”
“What about Lois?” Clark blurts, grasping at the last lifeline in reach. “She actually knows about movies. And celebrities. And how to talk to people without accidentally asking them about zoning ordinances.”
“Lois is busy dismantling systemic police corruption.” Cat leans in, jasmine perfume curling into his personal space like smoke. “She doesn’t have time to hold my hand through the shark tank of Hollywood publicity. You, however, have both hands free.”
Clark blinks. “I… don’t think that’s how beats work.”
“Come on, Clark. It’s one night. Ask a few questions, scribble a few notes, try not to body-check an A-lister into a velvet rope. How catastrophically difficult could it be?”
Famous last words. Clark feels it settle in his chest like an omen, but Cat is already flashing that glittering smile, the one that makes refusal feel like a moral failing. He has always been helpless against loyalty, guilt trips, and the creeping terror of disappointing people. It is, unfortunately, his kryptonite.
“Fine,” he mutters, defeated. “But I’m an investigative reporter, not an entertainment blogger. If I accidentally ask Bruce Wayne about municipal water fluoridation, that is entirely on you.”
Cat claps her hands as if he’s just agreed to donate a kidney. “You are an angel, Clark Kent. Hollywood’s glittering elite will never know what hit them.”
The rest of the day unravels in a blur of panic and highly questionable preparation. Clark googles “Bruce Wayne” and is immediately swallowed whole by the internet’s shrine to Gotham’s favorite enigma. There are glowing reviews, paparazzi shots of him brooding in various coats, and fan sites that analyze his every eyebrow twitch with the precision of NASA engineers calculating a rocket launch.
Bruce Wayne is, objectively, absurdly attractive. He is also infuriatingly private, ends interviews faster than most people end small talk, and inspires bloggers to debate whether he is a misunderstood genius or simply the world’s most unbearable man.
Clark rehearses questions in the cracked mirror of the Daily Planet’s men’s room, which is about as glamorous as it sounds.
“So, Mr. Wayne, what drew you to this role?” he asks his reflection. The reflection raises one skeptical brow, unimpressed.
“What’s your process for getting into character?” The reflection layers pity on top of the skepticism, generous in its disdain.
“Mr. Wayne, are you seeing anyone?” The reflection recoils like Clark has just confessed to tax fraud.
By five o’clock, he has changed shirts twice: the first lost to a coffee stain shaped either like Nebraska or a small dog, depending on the angle. He borrows a tie from Jimmy, who swears it is vintage and definitely not “something I pulled from the thrift store dumpster.” Clark repeats to himself—firmly, like a mantra—that he can do this. He can attend a red carpet event, face down one of the most famous men on earth, and ask questions like a professional.
How hard could it be to avoid disaster, really?
The Metropolis Grand Theater is every bit as terrifying as Clark feared, and somehow worse, because his imagination clearly did not have the budget for this level of choreographed chaos.
Red velvet ropes divide the chosen from the condemned. Photographers circle like vultures in designer suits, lenses for beaks, flashes like lightning. Security guards, built like architectural features, stand watch with the weary indifference of men who have seen too much and would like, just once, to see less.
Clark hands his press credentials to a woman with a clipboard. She looks him over the way an appraiser might glance at a chipped vase, cataloguing every wrinkle in his shirt and finding his entire existence surplus to requirements.
“Daily Planet,” she says, scanning the list. “You’re Cat Grant’s replacement?”
“She had a… styling emergency,” Clark replies. The excuse sounds absurd even to him, but it is also factually correct, which feels like progress.
“Mm-hm.” The clipboard woman’s tone suggests this is the least interesting thing she has heard all evening. “Section B. No flash photography during the interviews, no questions about Bruce Wayne’s dating life, and under no circumstances are you to bring up the Method Acting Incident.”
“The what now?” Clark asks.
But she has already moved on, corralling another reporter, leaving Clark to wonder what kind of catastrophic chaos could possibly earn capitalization as the Method Acting Incident.
Clark shuffles to Section B, where photographers bark orders like drill sergeants at celebrities who glide into place with the precision of chess grandmasters. Behind the barricades, fans scream declarations ranging from the enthusiastic “MARRY ME, BRUCE!” to the slightly alarming “I LOVE YOU, DADDY BRUCE!” Clark makes the executive decision not to think too hard about that one.
That is when Bruce Wayne arrives.
The black car door opens, and the atmosphere tilts. Photographers surge like sharks, shouting his name and clawing for angles. Flashbulbs stutter in a manic storm of artificial lightning. The crowd pushes against the barriers with the fervor of the newly converted.
“Bruce! Over here! Give us the smolder!” one yells.
“Bruce, tilt your head twelve degrees—yes, just like that, baby!” another cries.
“Bruce, who are you wearing? Armani?”
Bruce meets the onslaught with composure that borders on superhuman. His tuxedo fits as though divine beings drafted the blueprint and master tailors defended it with their lives. His dark hair does not move in the evening breeze, as if even the weather knows better than to interfere.
And then he smiles. Just barely, the faintest curve of his mouth, but it is the kind of smile that causes traffic accidents, fainting spells, and possibly a measurable uptick in the city’s marriage license applications.
Clark’s pen nearly slips from his hand.
“Bruce, show us the jawline!” someone shrieks.
“Give us the brooding stare from Shadows in Gotham!” another pleads.
“Adopt me, Bruce!” a fan howls.
“I VOLUNTEER AS YOUR SECOND BUTLER!” comes from somewhere disturbingly close to hysteria.
Clark has done his last-minute research. Obviously. He has watched the movies, skimmed the glowing profiles, and endured a YouTube deep dive he regrets. But seeing Bruce Wayne in person is different. More immediate. More there. It is the difference between glancing at a photo of a tiger and realizing you are standing in the same room as the actual tiger, uncertain whether it plans to tolerate you or make you the day’s enrichment activity.
Bruce poses with co-stars, signs programs for fans who appear seconds away from swooning, and fields questions from the big-name outlets. Every gesture is calculated to the millimeter. Charming without carelessness, gracious without eagerness, enigmatic without straying into contempt. It is less red carpet and more performance art, and Clark watches from Section B like a tourist studying hieroglyphics without a guidebook.
“So, uh…” Clark mutters into his notepad. “How’s the… acting business? You like… pretending to be people for money?” He grimaces. “Brilliant, Clark. Pure Pulitzer.”
A fellow reporter side-eyes him. “You okay, new guy?”
“Totally fine,” Clark lies. “Just… practicing.”
“For what, spontaneous combustion?”
Clark is practicing, technically, for the moment he will humiliate himself so catastrophically that future journalism students will cite his implosion in textbooks.
That is also when the canapé cart makes its entrance.
Later, Clark will replay the disaster in his head like a detective reconstructing a crime scene, only the corpse is his professional dignity. The cart is meant to deliver overpriced appetizers to the VIP lounge. Instead, it bursts onto the red carpet like it has been possessed by the ghost of NASCAR, stacked precariously with shrimp cocktails and piloted by a server whose eyes already hold the hollow despair of a man negotiating with fate.
The kid, barely twenty and already a cautionary tale, pushes forward with the doomed determination of someone realizing physics has filed for divorce. The cart wobbles, accelerates, and barrels down the carpet like a seafood-loaded missile.
“Oh shit!” someone screams.
“Everybody move!” another howls.
Photographers dive behind their barricades. Celebrities scatter in heels designed for graceful photo ops, not evasive maneuvers. Security shouts into radios with the urgency of men calling in an airstrike.
Clark does not think. That is his first mistake.
He just moves because the cart is bearing down on a cluster of people that very much includes Bruce Wayne. And Clark may not be smooth, or coordinated, or even in the same postal code as graceful, but he is absolutely not the kind of man who watches a preventable disaster unfold. Never mind that “preventable” and “Clark Kent” rarely coexist in the same sentence.
His second mistake is believing he has any athletic ability beyond jogging to catch the bus.
His third is forgetting that Bruce Wayne, for all his reputation as an ornamental brooder, clearly has the reflexes of someone who has spent years rehearsing fight scenes and taking it personally when a stunt double gets too much screen time.
Clark lunges at the runaway cart, arms out in what he hopes reads as decisive. Bruce, however, sidesteps with the calm precision of a man who has already mapped Clark’s trajectory three moves ahead and resigned himself to the outcome.
Which is how Clark’s grand act of heroism becomes, without fanfare, a full-bodied tackle.
They collide with the graceless impact of two people who have never once successfully coordinated anything in their lives. Clark’s momentum slams into Bruce’s sidestep, and together they crash onto the carpet in a tangle of limbs, silk, and hubris. Clark’s notepad spins off into the night; Bruce’s legendary composure takes flight in the opposite direction.
The canapé cart does not pause to thank them for their sacrifice. It thunders past, shedding shrimp cocktails like confetti, before burying itself into a massive promotional poster for Shadows in Gotham. The crash echoes with the finality of civilization’s downfall, or at the very least, one caterer’s contract.
Clark blinks and realizes he is sprawled on top of Bruce Wayne. In theory, it is a romantic tableau. In practice, they are surrounded by shrimp casualties and paparazzi flashes documenting what will almost certainly become the single most humiliating moment of Clark’s professional life.
Bruce’s hair, flawless thirty seconds ago, now hosts a lone prawn clinging like an unfortunate, overpriced accessory. His tuxedo is skewed, his bow tie has migrated toward his ear, and his expression remains unreadable. Clark cannot tell if it is fury, shock, or the quiet calculation of a man estimating the cost of erasing Clark Kent from existence.
“Oh god. Oh god, Mr. Wayne, I am so sorry, I didn’t—the cart was—heading right for you—I thought you were going to get hit, and I just—”
Bruce sits up slowly, extracting the shrimp from his hair with deliberate care, the kind that suggests either saintly patience or a man counting to ten in several languages to avoid homicide. Around them, chaos rages on. Photographers snap like jackals at a carcass. Celebrities edge past, careful not to risk contamination by proximity.
“Well,” Bruce says at last, voice clipped enough to drop Clark’s stomach into freefall, “that is one way to secure an exclusive interview.”
Clark stares, braced for divine wrath, security intervention, or a blacklisting so permanent it echoes across time. Instead, Bruce simply looks at him.
“Once again, I am so, so sorry, Mr. Wayne,” Clark blurts, because his vocabulary has apparently narrowed to apologies and self-destruction. “I can pay for the dry cleaning, or buy you a new tuxedo, or—”
“It’s fine,” Bruce interrupts, taking a steadying hand from a co-star while Clark flails on the floor like an upended Labrador. His tone is maddeningly even. “These things happen.”
They do not, Clark thinks. Not to normal people. Certainly not in front of forty photographers and several million shrimp.
Bruce should turn away. He should glide back into the curated perfection of his evening, let an assistant scrape the shame off his tuxedo, and never think of Clark Kent again. Instead, his eyes catch on Clark’s and linger a moment too long. Something flickers across his face—something Clark cannot name, which is probably for the best. Because any hint of emotion from Bruce Wayne right now would reduce Clark to ash from sheer embarrassment.
Security finally descends, more worried about headlines than human casualties. Someone presses a monogrammed handkerchief into Bruce’s hand, as though he might duel Clark at dawn. Someone else thrusts a napkin at Clark, who uses it to smear cocktail sauce further across his shirt in a bold new technique of sabotage.
Within minutes, the catastrophe is technically contained, though not remotely forgotten. Not with photographers still snapping like vultures documenting a kill. Not with celebrities skirting them as if humiliation is contagious. Not with the certainty that somewhere, right this second, gossip blogs are already sharpening their knives.
The rest of the premiere blurs into a haze of mortification so thick it feels like a fever dream. Clark stumbles through photo ops, fidgets with his notepad during speeches about “artistic vision” and “creative collaboration,” and tries to convince himself that maybe this particular humiliation will not lead to his immediate firing and lifelong exile from journalism.
Bruce Wayne, meanwhile, navigates the evening with infuriating grace. His tuxedo is mended, his hair restored to impossible perfection, and he moves through the crowd as though the canapé catastrophe never happened. Clark catches him glancing over once or twice, though the expression remains unreadable—balanced somewhere between mild curiosity and active revenge plotting.
At last, Clark’s interview slot arrives. He approaches Bruce with all the confidence of a man walking toward his own execution, notepad clutched in hands that appear to have forgotten how to stop sweating.
“Clark Kent, Daily Planet,” he manages, his voice cracking like he’s thirteen again. “Mr. Wayne, I suppose we should talk about Shadows in Gotham. Though after tonight, I may have cast enough shadows of my own.”
It is, without competition, the worst opening line in the history of journalism. Clark immediately wants to melt into the carpet and live there forever.
But then, the impossible happens: Bruce Wayne’s mouth twitches. Barely. The faintest betrayal of composure, as if he is fighting off something dangerously close to amusement.
“Creative approach,” Bruce says, his voice dry as old stone but not entirely unfriendly. “Most reporters just ask about my process.”
“Right, your process.” Clark seizes on the word like a drowning man reaching for driftwood. “What is your process? Do you do a lot of research, or just… brood until it feels right?”
“I don’t brood.”
“You absolutely brood. It’s practically your brand.”
One of Bruce’s eyebrows arches, a subtle, lethal motion that suggests Clark has either said something interesting or something that will get him sued. “Are you implying my acting is one-dimensional?”
“I’m saying you’ve perfected the art of looking mysteriously tortured under dramatic lighting.” Clark realizes, with some horror, that he’s actually relaxing into this. “It’s a skill. I hope I’m not—well, I hope I’m not being rude.”
Bruce almost smiles this time. Almost. “That’s your professional assessment?”
“That’s my personal observation. Not personal personal. Professionally personal. Journalistically personal.”
“That’s not a thing.”
“It could be.”
And somehow, against all odds, they are talking. Bruce asks Clark about his other work—apparently someone who writes about municipal corruption is, in his words, “refreshingly honest about boring topics.” Clark, in turn, finds himself making bolder and bolder observations about Bruce’s filmography, speculating whether his character choices reveal a deeper psychological pattern or simply very good career management.
“You think I have a psychological pattern?” Bruce asks, his tone unreadable, like he is testing the words before deciding whether to file them under insult or intrigue.
“I think everyone does,” Clark replies.
“And yours?”
Clark actually thinks about it. He has the audacity to treat the question seriously. “Catastrophic overthinking,” he says at last, “followed by spectacular public failure.”
Bruce laughs. Not a polite exhale, not a press-friendly chuckle, but an actual laugh, low and genuine. For a heartbeat, Clark forgets about the cameras, the handlers, the circus of Hollywood publicity. For a heartbeat, it feels absurdly like they are just two men having a conversation—ridiculous, impossible, because one of them is Bruce Wayne, for Christ’s sake—but the feeling lodges itself anyway.
Then Bruce’s handler materializes like a sharply dressed harbinger of doom. She wears an expensive suit and does not so much as glance at Clark, as though he is an inconvenient piece of furniture someone forgot to remove.
“Mr. Wayne,” she says crisply, “we need to move. The after-party is waiting, Fallon is expecting you, and the morning show circuit starts at six in the morning.”
Bruce’s expression shifts so quickly Clark almost doubts it happened. The humor vanishes. The warmth folds away. In its place is the polished charm Clark recognizes from glossy spreads and red-carpet footage—the kind of perfection that looks natural only because it has been rehearsed within an inch of its life.
“Of course,” Bruce says, straightening his tuxedo with practiced grace. His gaze flicks back to Clark, brief but pointed. “Thank you for the… interesting interview, Mr. Kent.”
He’s gone before Clark can respond, swept away in a tide of handlers and assistants and people whose entire job appears to be keeping Bruce Wayne moving from one obligation to the next. Clark is left standing alone on the red carpet, holding his notepad and wondering what the hell just happened.
The interview had been good. For a few minutes, he had spoken to a person instead of a brand, to someone who laughed and argued and looked at him like he mattered. But now Bruce Wayne has vanished back into the orbit of managed appearances and calculated soundbites, leaving Clark with nothing more than a handful of quotes... and the unsettling sense that, however briefly, he had glimpsed the man behind the performance.
The article practically writes itself, which is either proof that Clark has stumbled onto his true calling or evidence that the evening was so surreal it bypassed the laws of normal journalism altogether. He stays up until three in the morning, running on a jittery cocktail of caffeine and adrenaline that makes everything feel both crystal clear and completely deranged.
He covers the premiere, the film, the speeches—everything Perry will expect. But he also leans into the canapé incident, framing it with the kind of self-deprecating humor that somehow makes disaster sound like a quirky human-interest feature instead of professional self-immolation.
He calls Bruce Wayne “surprisingly human amid the glamour,” which feels accurate but also laughably inadequate. He even manages to spin the shrimp-in-hair catastrophe into something endearing, the way one might talk about a very dignified cat caught falling off a counter.
The piece has personality in a way most entertainment journalism doesn’t. It is honest about the absurdity of the night, painfully self-aware about Clark’s own inexperience with celebrity culture, and, most damningly, genuinely affectionate toward its subject without tipping into fawning.
At three forty-seven a.m., Clark hits submit. Panic descends immediately. It is too casual. Too personal. Too weird for the Planet’s usual coverage. He takes two Advil, collapses into bed, and dreams of being hunted down by an army of canapé carts armed with shrimp skewers.
By Thursday morning, the article had gone viral. Not just popular—viral. It is everywhere: quoted by entertainment outlets, dissected on late-night talk shows, and memed into oblivion by fans who find the image of Bruce Wayne with a prawn in his hair not just amusing but apparently absolutely irresistible.
Clark’s phone buzzes nonstop with interview requests, follow-up questions, and messages from college friends he hasn’t spoken to in years, all of them suddenly desperate to know if he is “actually friends with Bruce Wayne now.”
The Daily Planet’s traffic numbers skyrocket. Perry White ambushes Clark at the coffee machine, his grin so blinding it should come with an eclipse warning. Nothing good ever starts with Perry grinning.
Seriously, why is the coffee station everyone’s favorite place to ambush him lately?
“Kent!” Perry booms, because everything Perry says is apparently worthy of booming when website metrics are climbing like rocket launches. “I don’t know what kind of sorcery you pulled at that premiere, but do it again. Three different publications are trying to poach you, and five entertainment editors want to know if you’re free to freelance.”
Clark should feel triumphant. Instead, unease gnaws at him.
It isn’t just that he’s supposed to be an investigative reporter, and none of his corruption exposés have ever made it past page six. He tells himself he isn’t bitter about that. The problem is the article itself.
It was honest, yes, but it hinged on Bruce Wayne’s moment of vulnerability—even if that vulnerability involved nothing more than surviving Clark’s catastrophic tackling skills. Clark had tried to frame it respectfully, highlighting Bruce’s humor and professionalism instead of the humiliation, but the truth lingered: the piece was built on someone else’s misfortune.
He is still wrestling with that ethical tangle, still wondering if it is possible to feel guilty about success, when he gets home that evening and stops dead.
Because Bruce Wayne is sitting on his front steps.
Clark freezes. Bruce is dressed down in black slacks and a dark sweater, his hair mussed like he has been running a hand through it for hours. He looks tired in a way Clark has never seen on a screen—less movie star, more man who has fought three wars and lost at least two of them to insomnia.
“Mr. Wayne?” Clark’s voice comes out in a squeak that is absolutely not the professional, mature tone he was aiming for. “What are you—how did you even—”
“Your address is in the old phone book,” Bruce replies. The explanation is somehow mildly threatening. His gaze flicks to Clark. “And it’s Bruce.”
“Right. Bruce. Okay.” Clark nods too many times because his brain has apparently defaulted to bobblehead mode. He glances at his surroundings—the modest apartment buildings, the laundry strung across fire escapes, the corner store with bars on the windows that do nothing to deter crime—and wonders how this must look to a man who probably has a different wing in his mansion for every day of the week. “This is… unexpected.”
Bruce rises smoothly to his feet, and that’s when Clark notices the paparazzi. They are scattered across the street, pretending to be casual pedestrians, but the telephoto lenses give them away. Half a dozen at least, maybe more, all aimed squarely at Clark’s very unremarkable front door as if he had just become the most fascinating man in Metropolis.
“They’ve been following me since Tuesday,” Bruce says, his voice low. Not angry exactly, but edged with exhaustion, frustration carefully folded into composure. “I was wondering if I could… hide out here for a while.”
Clark blinks. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Hide. Here. From them.” Bruce gestures toward the photographers with the restrained irritation of a man who has survived too many red carpets and lost every battle. “Just until they get bored and move on.”
Clark stares. Bruce Wayne, a man with a team of professionals trained to whisk him out of any crisis, is asking to hide in Clark Kent’s apartment. Like they are friends. Like Clark is the kind of man who has friends who are famous actors, instead of the kind of man whose most intense social exchange this week was a passive-aggressive fight with his landlord about the air conditioning.
“Please,” Bruce adds.
“Yeah,” Clark hears himself say, his voice sounding like it’s coming from somewhere very far away. “Yeah, okay. But I should warn you, my apartment is… not what you’re probably used to.”
Bruce’s mouth quirks—just slightly—in what might be the beginning of a smile. “I think I can handle it.”
Clark fumbles with his keys, which suddenly feel like they’ve multiplied out of spite. Why does he own this many keys? Why do none of them fit when he is under the judgmental gaze of professional photographers? Meanwhile, Bruce stands close enough that Clark can feel his warmth, distracting in a way that makes Clark’s hands shake and his brain short-circuit.
Finally, the lock clicks open, and Clark can only think one catastrophic thought as Bruce Wayne steps inside:
Bruce Wayne is in his apartment.
And nothing in his life is likely to recover.
The apartment feels smaller instantly, as though Bruce’s presence bends the laws of physics. Clark becomes painfully aware of every coffee ring staining the table, every book teetering in a precarious tower on the floor, every dish still soaking in the sink. Bruce takes it all in with that unreadable gaze, cataloguing details without offering the courtesy of judgment out loud.
“Sorry about the mess,” Clark blurts, sweeping newspapers and takeout containers into his arms like he is about to juggle them in a doomed audition. “I wasn’t expecting company. Especially not… you.”
“It’s fine,” Bruce says. He crosses to the window, parts the blinds just enough to survey the street, then shuts them in one quick, decisive motion.
“So… what happened? With the photographers, I mean. Why are they after you now?”
Bruce runs a hand through his hair, mussing it further, which should be illegal given how good he still looks. “Someone snapped photos of me at a pottery class on Tuesday. Now the internet thinks I have a secret love child because I was helping some kid with a clay bowl.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Clark says, and he means it. “Can’t you sue them or something?”
“For what? Taking pictures in public? Inventing parental responsibilities I definitely don’t have?” Bruce gives a short, humorless laugh. “The headline was ‘BRUCE WAYNE: SECRET DAD OR JUST TERRIBLE AT POTTERY?’ They even included close-ups of me covered in clay, looking like I’d barely crawled out of a mudslide.”
Clark bites back a smile. “Were you actually terrible at pottery?”
“Disastrous. The instructor had to rebuild my mug three times. I turned a bowl into something she generously called ‘abstract art.’” Bruce’s mouth twitches, betraying the faintest amusement. “Now half the internet thinks I’m hiding children, and the other half is circulating photos of me looking like I lost a fight with wet cement.”
Clark thinks about his own article, about how he turned Bruce’s vulnerable moment into copy—even though he tried to be respectful—and guilt twists in his stomach.
“I’m sorry,” he blurts. “About the article. I tried to be fair, but I still wrote about you getting tackled by a canapé cart, and that wasn’t exactly your choice—”
“Your article was fine,” Bruce interrupts, shutting down Clark’s spiral before it detonates. “More than fine. It was the first piece written about me in months that didn’t sound like a vulture gnawing on roadkill. And believe me, I’ve read some truly brutal things about myself and pottery.”
Clark blinks. “What? Really?”
“You managed to write something funny without making me look like an idiot. It was ridiculous, and you treated it that way. You could’ve spun it into me secretly having a family, or worse, accused me of harassing you over a canapé cart.” Bruce shrugs, as if he hasn’t just said the most disarming thing Clark’s ever heard. “That’s why I came here.”
“To thank me?”
“To lay low until the world decides I’m not secretly raising a family of pottery prodigies. Bad pottery prodigies, at that.” Bruce hesitates, then adds, quieter, “But yes. Also to thank you.”
Outside, camera flashes flare against the windows like bursts of lightning. The paparazzi have settled in for the long haul, turning Clark’s apartment into something that feels uncomfortably like a bunker. Their voices drift, trading gossip, speculating about Bruce’s supposed breakdown, and comparing lenses like soldiers comparing weapons.
“How long do they usually stick around?” Clark asks.
“Hours. Sometimes days, if they think there’s money in it.” Bruce drags a hand through his hair again, and Clark tries very hard not to notice the way the gesture makes his stomach flip. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dragged you into this. I just… I didn’t know where else to go.”
The thought knocks Clark sideways. Bruce Wayne, Gotham royalty, global celebrity, the man who can book an entire island just to brood in peace, has nowhere else to go. And somehow he has ended up here, in Clark Kent’s cluttered apartment, because it is the only place that feels safe from people determined to auction off his life in real time.
“You can stay. If you want. Until they leave. I’ve got coffee, and tea, and…” Clark waves a hand vaguely at the apartment, trying to come up with anything remotely enticing to a man who probably has staff to mix his beverages and chefs to cook his meals. “Cable?”
Bruce’s mouth quirks, the faintest ghost of a smile. “Cable sounds perfect.”
They end up on Clark’s couch, which is at least structurally sound if you don’t look at it too hard. Clark makes coffee for himself, tea for Bruce, and then sits, hyperaware of every inch between them, every threadbare cushion under scrutiny by a man who probably owns couches worth more than Clark’s yearly salary.
It should be awkward. A journalist and a movie star cornered in a modest apartment, waiting out the paparazzi siege. But it isn’t. Somehow, Bruce Wayne is startlingly easy to talk to when he isn’t flanked by handlers or drowning in flashbulbs. He listens intently while Clark rambles about municipal corruption and zoning board drama, and he offers absurd Hollywood stories in return, delivered with the kind of bone-dry humor Clark is beginning to recognize as his baseline setting.
“So there I am,” Bruce says, gesturing with his mug, “hanging upside down from a helicopter for the third take because the director wanted ‘more authentic fear in my eyes.’ And I’m thinking, maybe my college advisor was right about the accounting degree.”
Clark almost sprays coffee across the room. “You studied accounting?”
“Business, technically. But accounting was part of it.” Bruce’s expression tilts toward something wry. “My parents said I should have something to fall back on.” A shadow crosses his face, brief but unmistakable. “They died when I was eight.”
Clark sets his mug down, voice soft. “I’m sorry. That must have been—”
“Yeah.” Bruce cuts him off gently, the word flat but not unkind. “Acting was never the plan. It just… happened. And now here I am, hiding in a stranger’s apartment.”
“We’re not strangers,” Clark stammers, then immediately regrets how eager it sounds. “I mean—we’re not friends, exactly. But not strangers either. We’re… something. I don’t know. Are we friends now?”
Bruce looks up at him, eyes unreadable, the weight of them making Clark’s heart lurch in his chest. Then, after a beat: “Something like that.”
They talk until well past midnight, their conversation meandering from childhood memories—Clark’s farm chores versus Bruce’s boarding school duels with Latin homework—to career disasters. Clark recounts his infamous hydrant interview, while Bruce admits to an on-stage breakdown during Hamlet that made tabloids question whether tragedy was contagious. Bruce describes directors who mistake shouting for vision and co-stars who insist on staying “in character” through lunch. Clark counters with politicians who treat corruption like a personal brand and sources who vanish faster than free donuts at the Planet.
Somewhere along the way, they drift toward the middle of the couch. Knees brush whenever one of them leans forward, or when Clark gestures too enthusiastically, or when Bruce reaches for his mug with deliberate calm. Clark becomes painfully, acutely aware of the contact.
Then Bruce catches him staring, their eyes locking for a moment that lingers just a little too long. Clark’s breath hitches, his heart pounding against his ribs like it’s trying to break free. For a second, he thinks—maybe—
But Bruce looks away first, gaze flicking toward the window. “I should check if they’re still out there.”
Clark nods, pretending the air between them isn’t humming like a live wire. Bruce parts the blinds, cautious. The flashes have stopped; the street lies quiet, littered with scraps of late-night Metropolis, empty but not entirely safe.
“I think they gave up,” Bruce says, though his voice suggests otherwise. “Or they’re waiting for me to walk out the door.”
“You can stay the night,” Clark offers again, aiming for casual but landing somewhere closer to desperate. “The couch pulls out. It’s not much, but it beats running a gauntlet of photographers.”
Bruce hesitates, weighing his options. “Are you sure? I don’t want to impose.”
“It’s not an imposition.” Clark knows that’s technically a lie—because Bruce Wayne in his apartment feels like the kind of thing that could kill him, albeit in a pleasant way—but he presses on. “I insist. Or you can take my bed. I’ll take the couch.”
“I’ll take the couch,” Bruce says.
And so Bruce Wayne spends the night on Clark Kent’s pull-out couch, which is surreal enough to make Clark consider the possibility of hallucination. But no. Bruce is really there, wearing one of Clark’s oversized flannels, brushing his teeth with a spare toothbrush dug from the back of a cabinet, moving with a quiet ease that makes the apartment feel… different. Like it belongs to both of them for the night.
Clark lies awake in his bed, staring at the ceiling, listening to the sounds of another person inhabiting his space. The couch creaks as Bruce shifts, trying to fold six-foot-something of himself onto a mattress designed for someone shorter. Clark bites back the urge to offer his bed again. Not for romantic reasons. Mostly. The pull-out couch was never built for men who could single-handedly model for a watch ad.
This is insane, Clark thinks. Bruce Wayne is sleeping in my living room because paparazzi chased him here, and tomorrow he’ll leave and go back to his real life.
Then it will be nothing more than a strange story to tell at the office, assuming his colleagues don’t interrogate him into incoherence first.