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In the end, Bruce only has himself to blame.
(He only ever does.)
It’s a rare sunny day in Gotham, so when Clark arrives at the Manor he drags all the assorted Waynes out into the gardens to have lunch outside. Kara’s in town (well, in planet, Clark had said with a smile) and she and Dick heckle from the sidelines as Kon, Tim, and Cass play a complicated bastardization of croquet on the grass. Clark tries to cheer them on but keeps forgetting the rules, a mistake that’s just frequent and funny enough to make Bruce think Clark is doing it on purpose. Alfred has disappeared into the kitchen, Damian has disappeared up a tree, and Bruce...breathes. He leans back in a chair next to Clark and breathes. Jason isn’t here, but he’s not gone, just not here, and that fact alone fills Bruce with such raw gratitude he’s often found himself standing still in the middle of the Batcave, marveling at the unearned wonder of it. He doesn’t have a name for what he’s feeling right now, the warmth that’s slowly unfurling in his chest, so he just sits in the sunshine and breathes.
(He’d forgotten to brace himself. He’d grown complacent, too invested in this easy stability to assess it objectively. His world is built on a house of cards, but he’d turned a blind eye to it, and because of his own stupidity he’s left wide open and unprotected when finally—inevitably—the other shoe drops.)
Bruce sees a dark shadow on the edges of his vision, but before he can turn he feels a rush of displaced air and Clark is standing, a full glass of lemonade in one hand and an upside-down Damian dangling from the other.
“Unhand me, alien!” Damian snarls, twisting in Clark’s hold on his ankle. Clark laughs and eases him down to the ground, still holding the lemonade high.
“You didn’t adjust your strategy to the situation,” Bruce says, trying to hide a smile as Damian rights himself and brushes off his clothes. “With the brightness outside it’s too easy for Clark to notice a dark, fast-moving shape. You needed to blend in more.”
“What’s this?” Kara peeks out from Clark’s other side.
“Damian keeps trying to get the drop on me,” Clark says.
“The alien has the best reflexive skills of our acquaintances,” Damian says stiffly. “It would be ineffective to train against anyone else.”
Bruce catches the spark of warmth in Clark’s eyes.
“Cute,” Kara smirks, “but I meant, what’s this?” She points up to the glass Clark is still holding.
“Oh! Lemonade,” Clark says, handing it to her.
“Non-harmful attacks only,” Bruce explains.
Kara brings it to her face and takes a sniff. “Huh.”
In a blink, Clark is sopping wet and spluttering, his front drenched in lemonade. He takes his glasses off to rub furiously at his eyes. Kara cackles, waving the empty glass in the air, as the croquet game halts so the players can applaud her.
Damian turns to her, his eyes wide with awe. “You,” he says reverently, “are the superior alien. You must be my new nemesis.”
Tim laughs so hard he has to lie down in the grass.
“Ugh, Kara, that got in my mouth,” Clark says, wrinkling his nose. He strips his shirt off to wipe at his face, and Bruce carefully looks only at Kara, who claps a hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles—
—and drops it, all humor disappearing, as she stares at Clark with a complicated emotion in her eyes. “Oh, Kal,” she murmurs, her voice soft and bittersweet, “you never told me about your til-irrt.”
Clark’s brow furrows. “My what?” He looks down. “You mean my freckles?” He gestures to the smattering of pale brown spots that runs across his chest.
“We don’t get freckles,” Kon says slowly, looking between Clark and Kara. “Not from this sun, anyways.”
“Not freckles,” Kara agrees, “Til.” She looks from Clark to Kon, and when neither gives her a gesture of acknowledgement her face crumples. “Til is the language of music on Krypton. It’s how we write down notes and rhythm. It’s not freckles, it’s not—it’s not random, Kal, it’s Til. It’s your heartsong.”
“Heartsong,” Clark repeats, eyeing the spots on his chest with apprehension. “And that’s called til-irrt?”
“No, that’s not…” Kara huffs out a breath in frustration. “Every Kryptonian has a heartsong. And they’re beautiful, but when you listen to one on its own it feels like something is missing. It’s like...they have something like this too, right?” She gestures outward impatiently, and Bruce forces himself not to flinch at her casual use of they. “Only they have words written down instead.”
“Soulmates,” Clark says, his voice strained.
The word hits Bruce like a bullet through the lung. He keeps his face perfectly relaxed, his heartbeat calm and regular, as he realizes (too late, he's always too late) that he should have expected this all along.
“Soulmates, yes, thank you. It’s like that. Every heartsong has a match. Not an identical match, far from it, but when you play them together, it’s supposed to sound right. They say the songs will weave together and you’ll just know, instantly, that you belong together.” She shakes her head, giving Clark a small, wistful smile. “Humans have soulmates. Kryptonians have til-irrt.”
***
Any hope Bruce might have held for a soulmate had died with his parents in a dirty alley behind a theater.
Bruce can hear Alfred yelling through the thick wooden paneling of the closet he’s hiding in.
(He’d found comfort in darkness, even then.)
Bruce has never heard Alfred yell before, but today he’s shouting at the lady from Father’s company. She wants Bruce to be a pallbearer, whatever that is, but Alfred won’t allow it. “He’s just a boy!” Alfred is saying. “He’s not a zoo animal on display!” The lady is pushing back, saying a lot of important things about public duty and family image.
Bruce isn’t a boy, not anymore. “I’ll do it,” he wants to say. “I’ll do whatever I need to.” But the closet is small and reassuring, and the thought of stepping outside into the harsh light paralyzes him. By the time Bruce finds the courage to leave the closet, the lady is gone, and Alfred won’t tell him anything.
Bruce hadn’t been a pallbearer at his parents’ funeral. It was the last duty Bruce had ever shirked.
Giving up his soulmate had been an obvious decision. Bruce had made a vow to Gotham, and it had required him to give up any semblance of a real life. If he were successful, Bruce would no longer be Bruce, just a shadow haunting the night. It would have been cruel to force a stranger to become a shadow, too.
Besides, Bruce hadn’t had much of a soul left to give.
He hadn’t even noticed when his soulmark had first appeared. He’d been training in the mountains, less than a year after leaving school.
He hasn’t bathed in a week, and he stinks. He hauls buckets full of water up to his cabin and waits patiently as it heats by the fire. When he finally has enough warm water, he strips off his shirt and freezes. There it is, written across his chest underneath the dirt and grime.
“Thanks, but I’m really more of a gin guy.”
His heart begins to race as he gingerly traces the words with a finger. The first words his soulmate would ever speak to him. A prediction and a promise, marking him forever.
He closes his eyes and allows himself a moment to think of a boy somewhere out there, who would grow up into a man who says these words to Bruce. He imagines the boy’s smile—it would be sweet, he decides, the smile of someone blissfully unaware he’s just dodged a bullet named Bruce Wayne. Bruce mourns the loss of that boy, a loss he’ll never truly suffer for a boy he’ll never really meet.
He gives himself another moment, briefly, to mourn the boy he himself might have been, in a different, happier world. He wonders what kind of man that boy could grow to be: a man with uncomplicated choices, like whether to offer another man a drink; a man capable of fulfilling the promise a soulmark implies.
He waits until his heart grows calm and steady, then opens his eyes. He abandons the bath to find a fire iron he can use to burn the words away.
By the time Bruce had rejoined Gotham society, cloaked in his brainless playboy persona, he’d convinced himself he never thought about the burn scar on his chest anymore.
He certainly hadn’t been thinking about it, years later, when he’d milled around yet another Wayne Foundation gala, mentally ticking down a checklist of public stunts he’d needed to pull before the end of the night.
He spots an unfamiliar reporter standing uncomfortably by the bar. Bruce begins walking in that direction, sipping his whiskey. The man was from the Daily Planet, if Bruce remembers correctly, and a bad first impression with a reporter would net Bruce a lifelong enemy in the press.
Once Bruce is a few feet away, he stumbles over his own feet, lurches out of the way of a passing socialite, and runs straight into the reporter, spilling his whiskey all down the man’s shirt. “Whoops,” Bruce laughs, taking a couple unsteady steps back and shaking his head.
To Bruce’s surprise, the man doesn’t react beyond a startled laugh and a tug at his wet collar. “Thanks,” he says wryly, blue eyes shining behind a thick pair of glasses, “but I’m more of a gin guy.”
Bruce doesn’t react. He clamps down on his shock, forcing his heart to remain calm as he flashes the man a vacant smile and turns deliberately to the bartender. “Johnny!” He says warmly.
(The bartender’s name was Jamie. Jamie was used to Bruce Wayne’s uncaring rudeness, and tolerated it because the Wayne Company provided all its catering staff with generous salaries and healthcare benefits.)
“Johnny, pour this gentleman a gin, and put anything else he wants on my tab. I should go home before any more good liquor gets wasted.” Bruce is careful to address everything only to Jamie, and leaves without acknowledging the reporter.
By the time Bruce reaches the Batcave, he is shaking. He wants, he needs—to assess the situation, that’s always the first step. You can’t plan without a solid foundation of knowledge.
Within an hour, Bruce’s computer has found everything ever written about Clark Joseph Kent. Born in Kansas, raised on a farm like a stereotype. Graduated with a B average from Metropolis University, kicked around a few internships before landing a job in the newsroom of the Planet. Close associate of Lois Lane, but not romantically linked with her or anyone else according to the messaging logs of a gossiping coworker. Private, quiet but not unintelligent, generally courteous.
No information on Kent’s soulmark.
Bruce puts his head in his hands, blocking out the screens. The secrecy around Batman, not to mention Kent’s safety, depends on what Kent’s soulmark says.
It is unrealistic to hope this soulmate tie was asymmetrical, that Bruce has Kent’s words but Kent has someone else’s, or maybe no mark at all. Is “whoops” even a word, one significant enough to brand your soul for life? That would be preferable; a common, unobtrusive word Kent would hear all the time. If Kent’s soulmark just said “whoops,” Kent would come away from tonight thinking Bruce was just another false positive, and the fiasco would end there.
The other possibility makes Bruce’s teeth clench. If whoops is not a word and merely a sound, then technically speaking, Bruce Wayne hasn’t said a single word to Clark Kent yet. Kent is walking around, carrying Bruce’s future words to him everywhere he goes.
There is no clever workaround. The actual words spoken are irrelevant, because whatever Bruce would say, the soulmark would match—like Schrodinger’s cat, like the sword of Damocles. Eventually, Bruce will speak to him, Kent will recognize the words, and, once their fates are tied together, Bruce will drag Kent down to hell with him.
Bruce looks back up at the computer screens. Kent evidently doesn’t like his picture taken; the algorithm was only able to pull a few images from the internet and unsecured servers. In almost all of them, he seems tense, smiling tightly, shoulders hunched slightly forward. The only good photo is a candid, taken during an internship a few years back. Clark is kneeling on the sidewalk, hand patiently outstretched towards two kittens peeking out from behind a dumpster. The smile on his face is genuine and gentle.
Bruce cannot put a man with a smile like that in the path of the Joker.
He only has one choice. He can never speak a word to Clark Kent again.
***
Alfred gives Bruce two hours alone before cornering him in the Batcave. It’s a kindness, allowing Bruce to collect himself emotionally before the interrogation. To show his thanks, Bruce removes himself from underneath the Batmobile and stands to give Alfred his full attention.
“Today was quite a shock,” Alfred says mildly, setting down a tray laden with a full tea set on Bruce’s worktable. He offers a cup to Bruce.
“Quite,” Bruce echoes dryly, taking the cup. “I’m happy for him.”
Alfred doesn’t look up from where he’s stirring cream into his own cup. “Are you?” He asks, still sounding disinterested.
Bruce stops himself from rolling his eyes by taking a sip of his tea. “Clark deserves to be happy,” he says, carefully keeping his tone light. “I hope he finds his Kryptonian.” He’s surprised by how true the words are, once they leave his mouth, and he takes another sip of tea to soothe the lump that forms in his throat.
“Good,” Alfred says forcefully, ending their polite little game. Bruce looks up, surprised, and sees Alfred staring at him seriously. “Someone out there has been waiting for Mr. Kent for a very long time.” Alfred pauses meaningfully, and Bruce knows exactly what he’ll say next. “Just as someone is waiting for you.”
Bruce lets out a humorless laugh, setting his cup down. “Trust me, no one is waiting for me.”
“Ah, so you do know who they are, then?”
Bruce doesn’t dignify Alfred’s obvious fishing with a response. He turns his back to Alfred and inspects the Batmobile’s paint job.
“I have never quite understood how a man so obsessed with destiny and duty can dismiss the power of a soulmark.”
“Soulmarks are biological evolutionary traits, nothing more,” Bruce says, reciting the same tired explanation. “They exploit humans’ latent low-level psychic sense to select a genetically advantageous reproductive match. I owe no more duty to a soulmark than I would to a vestigial tail.”
“Ah yes, a mere biological tie,” Alfred says, far too agreeably. “Just like your connection to young Master Damian.”
Bruce whips around, temper snapping, but he restrains himself when he sees Alfred give him a small, apologetic smile. Bruce takes a deep breath, forcing his heartrate to slow back down. “Damian is my son,” he sighs.
“Master Damian was a murderous little xenophobe when he first appeared, and yet you loved him.”
Bruce can’t argue against that. “So did you,” he grumbles, irritated that Alfred has scored a point.
“You are the most loyal man I have ever met, Master Bruce,” Alfred says, his tone unbearably gentle. “You might convince others you don’t care, but that won’t work on me, I’m afraid. You wouldn’t keep yourself away unless you genuinely thought it was best for your soulmate.”
Bruce has to look away from Alfred, so he casts his gaze all around them at the Batcave’s dark, imposing expanse. “This,” he gestures broadly with one hand, “is a lot of baggage to bring on a first date.” One day, this will swallow me whole, he doesn’t say. I can’t let it swallow anyone else, too. Bruce reaches for his cup, suddenly needing to hold something warm.
“There do exist people for whom this—” Bruce suspects Alfred is mimicking his gesture “—would be neither a surprise nor unwelcome. Yet you push them away, too: Ms. Kyle, Ms. Prince...Mr. Kent.”
Bruce forces a laugh. “They’re out of my league.” The joke is weak, but maintaining his composure is more important than true wit.
Alfred is silent for so long that Bruce risks a glance at him. Alfred is staring at him, holding his own cup of tea with perfect etiquette. “It’s convenient,” Alfred says with a small, sad smile. “You must stay away from your soulmate because you are their soulmate. Yet you must stay away from everyone else because you are not their soulmate. In either scenario, they always deserve better.”
Bruce drains his cup and places it back on the tray with finality. “Thank you for the tea, Alfred,” he says, turning back to the Batmobile.
“You deserve better, too, Master Bruce,” Alfred says softly.
Bruce doesn’t turn around. He thinks, absurdly, about how he’s never been able to sing.
After a long moment, he hears Alfred pick up the tray and walk away.
***
Growing close to Superman had been an accident.
(Bruce’s worst mistakes always are.)
When they’d first formed the Justice League, Bruce had insisted that masks and secret identities be used even among each other. Wonder Woman had argued with him, spouting feel-good buzzwords about trust and solidarity, until Superman had interrupted her. “I think it’s a good idea,” Superman had said. “If a villain gets to any one of us, we can’t divulge information we don’t know.”
(Bruce thinks, looking back on it, that this was the beginning. The first stone paved in the path to hell: him making a call, and Superman backing him up.)
Bruce had ended up sharing monitor duty with Superman more often than any other League member. At the time, Bruce had thought it was simply because they were the less social of the group, more likely to be free on Friday nights and weekends. Then, the fourth time Superman had shown up with coffee and donuts, Bruce had realized that he’d grievously miscalculated. Superman actually had been social; it was just that he had viewed monitor duty as a social activity. This strange alien had enjoyed sitting in a room alone with Batman, watching giant screens display absolutely nothing.
Bruce wasn’t supposed to enjoy monitor duty. Bruce wasn’t supposed to make friends with the other League members. Bruce wasn’t supposed to entangle any more people in his life.
“Hey, Bats,” Superman says one day, sliding into the chair next to Bruce, “I won’t be able to hang out after monitor duty tomorrow night, sorry. My best friend got dumped, so she’s dragging me to that new soulmate romcom.”
As Bruce has never once accepted Superman’s invitations to “hang out” in the year since they founded the League, he takes the offered coffee from Superman and says nothing.
“I don’t get it,” Superman continues. “A girl who’s not her soulmate broke up with her, why does that make her want to see a movie about soulmates? It’s like a shark attack victim going to see Jaws.”
Bruce snorts.
“I’m serious!” Superman says, but there’s laughter in his eyes. “Either soulmates are real and your one true love, in which case you’re sitting for two hours while a movie tells you your last relationship would never have worked anyways. Or, soulmates are old-fashioned and meaningless, in which case you’re sitting for two hours while a movie lies to you about your chances at happiness. Neither option seems like a good cure for heartbreak.”
Bruce eyes him suspiciously. “That’s rather cynical for someone who monologues about truth and justice.”
“Just because you dress in black does not mean you have a monopoly on cynicism. And anyways, it’s not cynical. I just don’t understand it.”
Bruce frowns. “Don’t understand watching romcoms?”
“Don’t understand soulmates.” Superman shrugs, but he looks tense. “It’s a, you know, a Terran thing. Kryptonians don’t have soulmarks.”
Bruce keeps his face and posture carefully neutral. “Oh.”
Superman narrows his eyes. “Don’t you start,” he says warningly. “Everyone always looks so sad when they find out. Someone even started crying. ‘Oh, but you don’t know what you’re missing!’ they say, when that’s exactly my point.”
Bruce considers his next words carefully. “I don’t have a soulmark anymore,” he says. At Superman’s confused expression, he continues. “I don’t believe a soulmark should dictate my life,” he says, which is true enough, even if it makes him sound like a soulmark skeptic, like he doesn’t want— “However, someone might still try to identify my soulmate and harm them to get to me. I burned the skin underneath, and now I have a scar instead.”
Superman gives him an assessing look. For a second, Bruce thinks Superman will say something pitying, but Bruce has underestimated him. Superman just nods and turns back to his monitor. “Anyways, the plot of this movie is more offensive than anything else,” he says, and proceeds to detail the ethical issues of a work-place romance for the rest of their shift.
Bruce had started accepting Superman’s invitations after that. They would grab breakfast after a night shift and watch the sun rise over Gotham, or they’d linger at the Watchtower for a game of chess. Bruce hadn’t been able to put his finger on exactly what had changed after their conversation. The fact that Superman didn’t have a soulmark should have had no bearing on Bruce’s behavior. And yet, for all that Superman could have still snapped Bruce’s neck with one flick of the wrist, Superman had felt...safe. (What “safe” had meant exactly, Bruce doesn’t know. Safe from Bruce? Safe for—but no, Bruce doesn’t know.)
He had been starting to consider the uncomfortable possibility that Superman was his best friend, when Bruce Wayne had been kidnapped.
(He doesn’t remember most of it. He remembers stepping outside of a party, under the guise of smoking a joint. He remembers being grabbed from behind, and slowing his reaction down because Bruce Wayne was not a fighter. He remembers a sharp prick in his neck, and everything after that is a blur—just the stench of urine, and cold, and loud voices, and then lastly, finally, a flash of blue.)
Bruce wakes up, alert and ready. The smell of home registers immediately, and Bruce keeps his eyes closed, forcing his breath and heart rate to mimic sleep. He is lying in a bed—his own, he guesses, based off the firmness of the mattress. Two voices are arguing softly to his side.
“I’m not tired, I can watch him,” a voice hisses—high-pitched, fast, indignant. Dick.
“Of course,” someone else responds. Low, steady—Superman? Bruce keeps his eyes closed. “But Mr. Pennyworth is exhausted, and he won’t go to bed for the night until you do. I’ll keep watch for a few hours until you wake up.”
Dick sighs.
“Thank you,” the other voice says, with such sincerity it could only be Superman.
Bruce listens to small shuffling noises that must be Dick moving around. (Dick can move silently. Bruce has taught him how. Is this a teenage tantrum? Bruce doesn’t know what they look like.) The door squeaks on its hinges as it opens, then closes.
“He’s out of hearing range if you want to open your eyes. Or you can keep pretending to sleep, I won’t be offended.”
Bruce’s eyes spring open. Superman is sitting in a chair next to his bedside, inexplicably wearing a giant Gotham U sweatshirt over his uniform. “How could you tell I was awake?”
Superman grins. “You have astounding control over your heartbeat, you know. I’ve never heard anything like it. But you’re just a little too good at it. It’s a little too slow, a little too regular. I can always tell.”
Bruce isn’t sure he wants to respond, so he sits up instead. His temples immediately begin throbbing. “What happened?” He raises a hand to his head, not bothering to hide his injury from Superman because apparently he can’t anyways.
“Right. Well.” Superman looks awkward. “Bruce Wayne was kidnapped.”
Bruce goes very, very still.
“They meant to use Wayne as bait for Batman, actually, which is…” Superman looks at Bruce and coughs. “Anyways, Robin tracked you down. That’s a smart kid you’ve got there.”
Bruce’s mouth quirks up despite everything. “Yeah.”
“He did reconnaissance and figured out he couldn’t get you out by himself. But he knew if he went to the League for help, the first question would be, ‘Where’s Batman?’ So he came to me.” Superman pauses, fidgeting nervously.
Bruce only needs a moment before he nods. It was the right call. If someone has to know, he’d pick Superman, too. “Injuries?” Bruce asks hoarsely.
“None for me and Robin. You’ve got some bruises, and your head will hurt until you sweat out whatever’s left of the drug they put in you. Robin said to fly you here, and Mr. Pennyworth doctored you up as best he could.”
Right. Superman had already known he lived in Wayne Manor, because Superman had already known he was Bruce Wayne. Bruce decides this is acceptable. “Thanks for making Dick get some sleep,” he says, deliberately relaxing into the headboard.
Superman looks at him for a long second, then smiles softly. “That kid doesn’t know when to quit. But part of the reason I sent him away was I wanted to talk to you alone. I’m sorry, B.” Bruce shakes his head, but Superman just huffs a laugh and holds up a hand. “I know, I know. It’s not my fault. But that doesn’t mean I can’t be sorry something bad happened to you. Your secrecy was important to you, and you deserved to control when and if you told me. And while I can’t unlearn who you are, I can even the score a little bit.”
Superman reaches over to the nightstand, where a hardbound copy of Emma sits next to a laptop. Superman picks the book up and pulls a folded piece of paper out of it. “I’ll be outside,” he says, handing Bruce the paper. “I’ll hear if you shout for me, but I promise I won’t listen to your heartbeat or anything else. I figure that’s as much privacy as I can give you while I keep my promise to Robin.” He stands and flashes Bruce a wry smile. “It was nice to meet you, Bruce Wayne.”
Bruce waits five seconds after Superman closes the door to unfold the paper. And then he hopes to hell Superman really isn’t listening closely, because his heart starts beating erratically, making his fingers tremble.
Superman has given Bruce his name. He’s also included his birthdate and social security number, but Bruce already has those memorized.
Superman is Clark Joseph Kent.
(Bruce’s worst injuries are always self-inflicted.)
***
Bruce finds Clark at the Gotham docks, sitting on the edge of a tall roof in his Superman uniform and looking out at the twinkling lights of the Metropolis waterfront. Clark’s presence within Gotham’s borders is practically an invitation to talk, so he drops silently next to Clark and takes a seat. He doesn’t say anything, just listens to the choppy, shallow waves hit the docks below.
“I feel silly,” Clark finally says, still looking out at the water. “All my life I’ve been confused by the importance Terrans place on soulmates. I knew myself, I knew my emotions were real and I didn’t need a soulmark to tell me how I feel. But suddenly, now that I know Kryptonians...now that I know that I…” He swallows harshly. “It’s hypocritical. If it’s an irrelevant quirk of biology for everyone else, then it should be for me, too.”
It’s so needlessly principled, so stubbornly Clark that the corner of Bruce’s mouth quirks up, even as he says gently, “Biology has never been irrelevant to you.”
Clark huffs a laugh. “Well, there is that,” he says, shaking his head. Then he stills. “Doesn’t it seem too good to be true? A heartsong? Wally already calls me a Disney princess. I’ve spent my whole life unsure if I belonged, and now I find out I’ve had this thing with me for years? That all this time, some Kryptonian out there was—” He shakes his head. “I’m not making any sense.”
“Hope is a dangerous thing,” Bruce says, because he understands. If you hope, you risk enduring what Bruce is feeling right now: the blunt, devastating certainty that all hope has been lost.
Clark glances at Bruce. “Do you regret it? Not acting on your soulmark?”
Yes, the selfish, insistent part of him wants to say. “Regret isn’t applicable,” Bruce says instead. “To regret, you first have to know what all the possible outcomes would have been.”
"Right. And since you have no way of knowing what would have happened if you'd pursued it, you can’t evaluate whether you regret not doing so.”
“No,” Bruce says, surprised. “No, the only thing I’m sure of is that if I had acted on my soulmark, it would have ended in disaster. I just have to hope the harm I caused in avoiding disaster will be worth it.”
Clark considers him for a moment. “You know, someone told me hope is a dangerous thing.”
Bruce snorts and looks out at the water.
Beside him, Clark takes a deep breath (a breath Clark doesn’t need, an unconscious ritual, so endearing it makes Bruce’s teeth ache). “What if I never listen to it?”
Bruce doesn’t look away from the water. “A reporter, leaving a mystery unsolved? Impossible,” he says with a humor he doesn’t feel.
“Bruce,” Clark says softly, and the use of his name while they’re in uniform makes Bruce turn to look at him. Clark’s eyes are steady on his. “What if I never listen to it?” Clark says again, asking another question entirely.
Bruce wants to pretend he doesn’t understand what Clark is asking. But Clark is pinning him in place with a wry smile, the one that says, I know what I mean, and you know what I mean, and I know that you know what I mean.
It would be so easy: Bruce will tell Clark to ignore his heartsong. Clark will lean over and kiss Bruce, and he’ll never listen to the song written on his skin. Clark will throw all his considerable energy towards building a life with Bruce, and he’ll never look back, because Clark’s determination is a formidable thing.
But Bruce knows Clark too well. Bruce has spent too many nights listening to Clark questioning soulmarks, hearing the yearning hidden underneath the confusion. Bruce has seen Clark brush away tears at the romance movies he claims to not understand. And Bruce heard Clark right now, calling this too good to be true.
If Bruce asks, Clark will settle for him.
Bruce turns his head towards the dark bay, keeping tight control over his emotions. He evaluates his options. “I made this decision when I was seventeen,” Bruce says, voice calm and heartbeat steady. “I don’t see a good reason to change it.” He forces his mouth into a perfect imitation of a grin. “I knew I could never be with a gin guy.”
Clark’s startled gasp next to him breaks Bruce’s heart, but he doesn’t let it show. He stands up fluidly. “I hope you find your til-irrt, Clark,” Bruce whispers, and disappears into the night.
***
There’s a joke Clark’s friends share, about how ridiculous Superman’s secret identity is once you realize it. They groan good-naturedly and swap psychological theories for why a simple pair of glasses can hide the truth so well.
Bruce hates this joke, because he can’t take part in it. Batman had never met Clark Kent, and Bruce Wayne had only met him once. Bruce shouldn’t have known Clark’s face so well as to be embarrassed not to have guessed.
(Once, Clark asks Bruce if he remembers the first time they met.
Bruce shrugs nonchalantly. “It’s important to keep track of the people Bruce Wayne has offended.” Carefully casual, he adds, “You remember too, I’m guessing.”
Clark smiles, all easy brightness. “Of course,” he says. “That was the best gin of my life.” He pauses, his smile turning wry. “And the worst whiskey.”)
Every once in a while, when Bruce is particularly weak-willed and vulnerable, he catches himself wondering if, maybe, ignoring the soulmark had been a mistake. If he should have broken his silence when he’d learned that the man photographed smiling sweetly at cats could also tear apart a jet plane with his hands. Bruce’s reasons for staying away always seem so flimsy in those moments.
He doesn’t ever act on those thoughts, but once he regains his self-control they always leave him a little more bitter than he was before.
Once Bruce had learned that Superman was Clark Kent, he’d quickly understood what went wrong. Clark is Kryptonian, and Kryptonians don’t have soulmarks. Bruce’s mark is a glitch. When Bruce’s soulmark had come in, he’d been undernourished and half-crazed by the thin air in the mountains. His body had malfunctioned and chosen a biologically incompatible alien. He’d been bound to someone who could never be bound to him.
It should have been a relief. It had been everything he’d told himself he wanted: an asymmetrical soulmate tie, no one for Bruce to hurt, no one for him to disappoint. And if Bruce wants something else now, he never acknowledges it.
Bruce hates his soulmark for a million reasons, but the cruelest, he thinks, is how it robbed him of the chance to fall in love with Clark all on his own.
***
"You are the most infuriating man I've ever met," Clark says from behind him, and Bruce sets the soldering iron he's holding carefully down on the worktable.
If this were a normal day, Bruce would grumble about removing Superman's security clearance to the Batcave, and Clark would reply that he doesn't need clearance as long as Alfred is happy to let him in, and Bruce would counter that maybe they need to put a bell around Clark's neck, how about that—
But Bruce has exhausted his supply of normal days, so instead he just turns around and says, “Good morning.”
“Are you allowed to say good morning if you haven’t gone to bed yet?” Clark asks, and Bruce opens his mouth to retort that his tone seems a little hypocritical considering Clark is still in his Superman uniform. But then Bruce remembers, and closes his mouth.
“I went to the Fortress of Solitude,” Clark says, like he knows what Bruce was going to say. “I was determined to learn everything I could about til-irrt, and how to read Til, and then I was going to have it play my heartsong and tell me how to find the match, and ‘then,’ I thought, ‘then that’ll show him.’” Clark laughs, a wild, breathy laugh that lodges itself somewhere deep in Bruce’s chest. “I should have been excited, thinking about my future with this person out there, and instead I just kept thinking about how angry I was at you.”
Clark begins pacing. Bruce keeps his face impassive, but he tracks Clark’s movements, unwilling to pull his gaze away from Clark’s face.
“‘I knew I could never be with a gin guy,’ seriously? That’s how you’re going to tell me that I’m your soulmate? Don’t get me wrong, I’d be mad at you no matter how you played this. I’ve seen the scar, Bruce, and never once did you tell me those were my words you burned. But if it was just that, the secrets and the rejection, I could’ve taken it. It was the way you said it. It was devastating, Bruce, you were so dismissive, so casual—” Clark stops pacing and shoots an amused grin at Bruce. “And that’s when the penny dropped. You are a lot of things, Bruce Wayne, but you’ve never been casual a day in your life.”
Clark resumes pacing. “Every single thing you do is controlled, purposeful. You wanted me to be angry at you. If you just wanted to turn me down, you would’ve done that gently, because underneath all the grumbling and six o’clock shadow, you are kind.” (Bruce strongly doubts that, but he thinks it’s wise to stay silent.) “No, you wanted me so angry I’d do exactly what I did, run off to the Fortress cursing your name. You wanted me to choose this til-irrt I supposedly have, which is ridiculous because you rejected me. The only way this makes sense is if you thought I actually had a choice. Me choosing you, you thought it was possible. It scared the hell out of you, you thought it was a bad idea, but it was possible. You overplayed your hand, genius.” Clark turns to look Bruce square in the eye. “You think we’re possible. You love me!” He says triumphantly, poking an accusatory finger at Bruce.
Bruce should protest. He should deflect, prevaricate, qualify—but he says nothing. He meets Clark’s gaze steadily. He won’t deny it now. (He can’t.)
Clark’s eyes widen at Bruce’s silent admission. “Right,” he says unsteadily, swallowing. “So. Once I figured that out, I got even more angry at you, because you’re a manipulative bastard scared of your own feelings.” Clark is rebuilding steam, the heat back in his voice. “My new plan was to fly out of the Fortress and ambush you here, and yell at you for a very long time about how infuriating you are, and then tell you that I am choosing you, heartsong be damned, and if you don’t like it then tough because you don’t get a say. It was a very satisfying plan and I enjoyed stewing in my irritation, but then I took a moment to think about what would actually happen.” Clark shakes his head. “You wouldn’t believe me, would you? Oh, you’d say all the right things and you’d play happy houses, but you’d always be waiting for it all to come crumbling down around you. You’d have one foot out the door, convinced I’d meet my til-irrt or listen to my heartsong and instantly think, ‘Oh yeah, I want this random stranger more than my best friend and partner.’ And you’d be so infuriatingly kind about it, so stupidly willing to disappear into the darkness because you think somehow I deserve better than you. It would be this nonsense all over again.” Clark sighs. “And that’s when the second penny dropped.”
“Second penny?” Bruce echoes, unable to help himself.
“Shut up, I’m still angry at you,” Clark snaps. “And yes, the second penny. I realized that this whole thought spiral I envisioned for you isn’t hypothetical. It’s what you’re feeling right now, isn’t it?”
Bruce feels like one of his gadgets on the worktable behind him: stripped down, inner gears helplessly on display while Clark inspects him piece by piece, discovering how he works.
“That’s what I thought. Your soulmark said my words, but I didn’t have a soulmark. So you thought that the soulmark was wrong, somehow. That you were wrong. Maybe if soulmarks didn’t exist you would have told me how you felt, or maybe you still would have been a secretive, self-sacrificing idiot, who knows. But here, you had a sign from the universe that we were not supposed to be together. Something would eventually take me away from you. It happened to be Kryptonian heartsong, and while I don’t think you had this particular square on your doomsday bingo card, it’s just proved your insane logic right. You were never supposed to have me.
“And that—” Clark breaks off, closing his eyes. “And that,” he continues softly, “is more impossibly infuriating than anything else you’ve ever done. Because, Bruce, you have to know, you can’t not know, I was always yours. Always.”
Bruce didn’t know. Bruce doesn’t know, doesn’t know a damn thing. Emotions are rushing through him faster than he can process, it takes all his energy just to stand here and breathe: in, out, in, out. They stand there, Clark’s eyes closed, Bruce’s eyes on Clark, breathing in and out.
“Okay,” Clark says eventually, opening his eyes. His voice is low, with a small tremor betraying his emotion. “Knowing that you are a ludicrous, distrustful blockhead, I listened to my heartsong. And,” he raises his voice, like he knows that’s made Bruce’s thoughts start to spin wildly, “I am going to play you my heartsong. And after, I am going to tell you I love you, and you are going to believe me.”
The silence as Clark removes something from his pocket is unbearable. He keeps his eyes on Bruce as he lifts a small silver box and presses it.
It hits Bruce like a physical thing, knocking him off kilter. The sound spilling out of the little box is impossibly rich, bouncing off the cavern walls and filling the Batcave’s empty spaces with song. Bruce feels a bizarre urge to succumb to the music, to let it wash through him and drive all thought out of his head. It’s strange but somehow comforting, a slow and joyful song. Bruce had assumed it would be one melody, but it’s not, it’s several, weaving in and out of each other. It’s delightful, but Bruce can’t keep up with it, something is missing…
Bruce realizes suddenly he’s let his control slip, and he wrenches himself back to reality. He forces his racing pulse back down, sets his face into an impassive mask.
“There it is,” Clark murmurs, a bright, warm smile on his face. He steps close to Bruce, so close Bruce has to restrain himself from reacting, and places a hand on Bruce’s chest. “This is my favorite sound. Too slow and too steady to be natural. When your heart sounds like this, impossibly calm and precise, I know everything will be okay. Because you’re here, and you’re ready to take on the world. I’ve never heard anything like it. I’ve never met anyone like you.”
Clark’s words are too impossible for Bruce to understand, so he concentrates on the music instead. He can’t make out the rhythm, he realizes. There’s no one rhythm instrument keeping the beat, tying the complex melodies together. Maybe someone musically trained could follow the song, but Bruce can’t track it without something telling his foot where to tap along.
“The third penny,” Clark whispers, but Bruce is too focused on the song. The beat isn’t even, like he would expect. It starts and stops, starts and stops, almost like…
Ba, dum. Ba, dum. Ba, dum.
Bruce looks up into Clark’s laughing eyes as his heart, steady under Clark’s hand, beats in time to the music.
“You boneheaded, infuriating moron,” Clark says fondly. “You’ve always had a heartsong.”
Bruce gives up. He gives up the fight he’s been waging against himself since he was a child wandering the mountains, lost in his own grief. He gives it all up, and gives in to the bittersweet ache he’s felt since he’d spilled whiskey on a reporter. He reaches up a hand to tangle in Clark’s hair, and kisses him.
For a few blissful moments, the constant whirring machinations in Bruce’s mind quiet, and he can let his thoughts be filled with nothing but Clark: the gentle pressure of his hands on Bruce’s skin; the soft slide of his hair through Bruce’s fingers; the quiet huff of air as he laughs into the kiss. But there’s something important Bruce has to do, so he pulls away, relishing the obvious reluctance on Clark’s face. “I believe you,” he says seriously, looking into Clark’s eyes.
“What?” Clark says, looking dazed. “Oh! Oh. Bruce. You don’t have to—it’s okay, I know you’ll need time. It’s not that easy.”
“It is that easy,” Bruce insists. “I love you.”
Clark’s eyes go impossibly soft a second before he tightens his hold, pulling Bruce back into a kiss. Bruce closes his eyes, cataloging the image in his memory, reorganizing his priorities so his life’s main objective is now to make Clark look at him like that as much as possible.
(Later, they will go up for breakfast, and Alfred will wipe his eyes suspiciously on a teatowel. Tim will sneak a picture and blast it out to the group chat. “Holy heartsong, Batman!” Dick will text back. Bruce will submit to it all gratefully, gleefully, the kindest penance for his worst mistakes.)
For now, though, Bruce just leans in closer and feels the heat of Clark’s body warm his own. He was sincere when he said that it’s easy, loving Clark, letting Clark love him. This time, he knows, he doesn’t have to map out contingencies and prepare counterplans for every possible failure. He doesn’t have to believe in soulmarks, or prophecy, or fate.
This time is startlingly straightforward. He just has to believe in Clark.