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The dust and gas of the nearest planet turn the light of its star into a soft, beautiful gold that trickles into the cabin of the shuttle and illuminates Lex’s sleeping face.
He was supposed to take over Bruce’s shift thirty minutes ago, but their energy levels were bound to start declining as the situation dragged on. He’ll probably be embarrassed to have overslept, when Bruce wakes him. Which he will.
Any moment now.
It’s odd, to see a man like Lex Luthor in rest. Awake, he’s a refreshing and alarming match for Bruce’s wits. They just have a foundational disagreement on how to save and protect the world. Batman is a hero and Lex… Lex thinks he’s a hero.
Asleep, he’s just a man like any other. Well. Bruce wouldn’t actually be surprised to find out he dreams in schematics or numbers. If Bruce had been stranded with anyone else, he would be dead by now. Lex had kept the shuttle from completely dying when they were caught in the dimensional anomaly. Without that, all of Bruce’s masterful steering wouldn’t have been worth a damn.
They might still die, of course. The planets and stars around them are not of Earth. The dimensional anomaly fades in and out of existence and they don’t know if they can survive another trip through, or if such an endeavour would even take them home.
If it does, Lex might still kill him before Bruce can hand him over to the authorities for his crimes.
The normal world is busy. And loud. Before the incident, Bruce had been very good at seeming like he wasn’t paying attention while taking in everything that was going on. Now, he genuinely tunes all the voices out until Superman is standing before him, looking serious.
“Batman, are you p—” He catches himself. ‘Paying attention’, Bruce thinks the sentence would have been, before Clark remembered who he was talking to. “Are you alright?”
“I’m fine. Are we done arguing?”
“Yes,” Clark says, as Gardner says, “hell no!”
Superman, Green Lantern, Hawkgirl, Mr Terrific, Rex… and him. They’ve formed an allegiance of sorts. They really need a seventh member to provide a tiebreaker vote when things like this reach an impasse.
Gardner stands up and slaps a hand on the table in a way he probably thinks makes him look powerful, but actually just gives the impression of a middle manager in an admin department having a meltdown.
“I’m the leader here.”
“Of the Justice Gang. Superman and I are not members of your gang.”
“But you agreed we work better as one harmonious unit and that means being harmonious! I don’t know what went down out there, but you are compromised.”
Bruce pushes away from the Hall of Justice table, making no effort to minimise the noise of the chair legs scraping across the floor. Every time he tries to work with a team he regrets it. It’s time to be getting back to Gotham.
Guy squares his shoulders, as if he wants a fight. “Come on then, give me the beatdown you should’ve given Luthor.”
So Bruce steps in close. Looks him in the eye until he can see the man’s courage waver, ever so slightly. Then he smirks.
“You’re not worth my time.”
He hears Clark sigh heavily as he leaves. It’s difficult, working with a group. Much easier to work solo… or with one other person who could keep up with you.
“It’s the thermoregulator,” Bruce says when the alarm jolts Lex out of his sleep.
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything! I was working on the sensors as we agreed.”
They need to communicate with someone. A passing Green Lantern, a futuristic civilisation, even a curious alien explorer. They won’t survive in space forever in a shuttle equipped for a short trip into a pocket universe.
Lex stares at him a moment, then discards whatever he wanted to say in favour of pushing past him and checking the readings for the thermoregulator.
“This has been worsening for at least twenty minutes, why didn’t you wake me?”
“Because I was fixing it,” Bruce says through clenched teeth.
“Oh, it really sounds fixed,” Lex says over the horrible beeping. “Move!”
He steals Bruce’s chair and begins to adjust controls. They’re both sweating and flushed by this point as the cabin heats up.
“You’re just turning it up!” Bruce points out.
“Shut up, I am testing a hypothesis!”
“Your experiments got us stranded out here in the first place!”
There’s a click and the whirring of a fan. Cool air begins to circulate. Lex smiles, proud of himself. “There. A temperature sensor is glitching. We need to fix that or we’re going to get very warm before the fans kick in.” He stretches, his smart suit and trousers about as far away from space-faring clothes as one could get. His waistcoat and tie were long discarded to the corner of the shuttle. “I’ll do it. I think it’s my shift anyway.”
Bruce has a tendency to let him sleep. He’s not sure why. Masochism, maybe. An irrepressible work ethic. “Okay. Call me if you need me.” Lex scoffs at the notion.
He goes over to the comfortable long seat at the back that they use for sleep. Lex’s cologne lingers on it, the recycled air of the shuttle insufficient to disperse it. Eight or so days in, Bruce is almost starting to find it comforting. He closes his eyes as Lex starts tinkering with the wall panel nearby.
It’s strange, to realise he’s glad not to be alone out here. He had always assumed his own company would be preferable to anyone else’s.
At least his cowl isn’t irritating him today. He’d taken it off earlier because it was and—
Touching a hand to his face, Bruce realises the cowl isn’t irritating him because he isn’t wearing it. His eyelids spring open. There it is, across the cabin by their main pilot seat.
And Lex is working nearby as if… as if it doesn’t mean anything.
But then, Bruce supposes, if they die, it won’t.
Since Bruce’s return almost a week ago, Alfred has been insistent on providing comfort food. He descends down the stairs into the cave with a tray of bacon alfredo, a bottle of mineral water, a black pepper grinder, and a little bowl of parmesan with a spoon that looks like it could be used for cocaine. Perhaps it was a hint that Bruce’s enjoyment of cheese is reaching an unhealthy level.
Alfred sets down the tray on the table near the main computer and glances towards the screens briefly before he passes Bruce a napkin and his plate.
“While I am aware that I cannot dissuade you from risking your wellbeing, I do hope you are still employing common sense in your endeavours to take the law into your own hands.”
He begins to sprinkle cheese over the pasta using his little spoon. On the screens, Belle Reve floorplans revolve accusingly.
“I… He could expose my identity.”
“And that is worth freeing a wanted man?”
“Lex won’t reform in Belle Reve, Alfred. You know it, I know it… everyone knows. It’s not a real solution. And if he’s not given freedom, he’ll take it anyway. His escape is a foregone conclusion. If I get him out, he’ll owe me.”
It’s difficult to lie to Alfred, but Bruce isn’t entirely lying. They’re all reasons, some more reasonable than others. But none of them are the reason. Bruce is thinking out loud to try and obfuscate it. To try and find a sane reason to do something insane.
“The Justice Gang know you have argued for his freedom,” Alfred points out. “They will suspect you.”
“They don’t know I’m Bruce Wayne. If Lex is hiding out in Wayne Manor—”
“Superman would be able to find him by simply flying overhead. You would have to keep Mr Luthor here, in the Batcave.”
The lead lining had been more of a complicated mission than expensive, but it was an investment.
“He lived in a smaller space with me before now.”
“And do you think he’d like to return to that?” Alfred asks gently.
“It’ll be better than a small cell, Alfred!”
Surely Lex would agree? Bruce could provide all the materials he wanted for his experiments and he would be free from the scrutiny of Superman, away from the danger that his fellow inmates posed.
“It has not been your way to break criminals out of prison before,” Alfred says. He looks uneasy, like he is trying to challenge Bruce in a way that doesn’t come across as a challenge.
“I’ll supervise him better than any guard or camera.”
“Then, if I may be so bold sir, what would be the point of freeing him?”
Bruce can’t answer. Not out loud. Because he would be with me.
He feels like Alfred hears it anyway, going by the pitying look on the man’s face.
They have to conserve power.
It’s taking more energy to keep fixing the thermoregulatory sensors than they can afford. The latest glitch had the opposite effect of the first – now they are losing heat through their external emitters. Not enough to freeze… yet. But enough to be uncomfortable. Enough to be less effective cognitively.
They have to conserve body heat.
That’s how it begins. Bruce stripped of his batsuit, down to the underlying bodysuit so that Lex isn’t leeching body heat into the cold materials of the bat armour. Staying in close proximity while they conducted their tasks. Always touching. A partnership of heat.
Bruce expected Lex to be reluctant, but the initial touch aversion is on his own side. Since donning the cowl, he has become something else. Bruce Wayne presents a friendly façade, but he isn’t half the playboy the media have made him out to be. He spends more time feeling inhuman and creating fear than he does hugging and handshaking and lovemaking. The same can’t be said for Lex, who is known to rub his employee’s shoulders, sleep with supermodels, and greets people he likes with a firm handshake and pat on the back.
Lex sprawls over him like he’s just another piece of furniture, reaching for controls and the occasional sip of water. The H2O extractor isn’t making enough to keep them hydrated long-term, but there will be other problems before they reach a dehydration deadline.
At first they keep the task-oriented sleep schedule. At very first. Bruce stays awake for his solo work and Lex sleeps with his head on Bruce’s shoulder.
Lex might still try to kill him, Bruce reminds himself. This doesn’t mean anything.
And maybe to Lex it doesn’t… but Bruce can’t remember the last time someone felt safe with him.
“It’s good to see you,” Lex says on the other side of the glass. Seeing him feels like remembering how to breathe. A week without seeing him, touching him, holding him… Almost three months they lived skin-to-skin. Seeing him arrested was like being separated from a limb.
It seems honest. Lex can’t possibly know the mental gymnastics Bruce has been doing lately, the knots he has been tying himself in to justify what he knows to be wrong.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t come sooner.”
Lex shrugs, smiling ever so slightly. “Not like I was going anywhere.”
“Well…” Bruce looks around. The guards seem supremely uninterested. With the kind of prisoners they get in here, Lex is probably refreshingly unthreatening. “I might be in talks with people about that.”
An arched eyebrow. “Surely Superman won’t want to inflict me on the general population.”
“He wants you rehabilitated, not killed by metas in a prison brawl.”
“And what do you want?” Lex asks.
The only way to get it is to voice it, but Bruce is quiet for a long time. Lex just watches him, blue eyes steady and waiting.
A mind that can match his. Someone who feels safe with him.
“I want a chance to find out if it was real.”
“Even if it was, who’s to say it can survive on this planet?” Lex asks. Calm. Closed off.
But ‘even if it was’ is the admission Lex is trying not to make. It was real. Something was felt. Something that seems intangible and unreachable now, like an oasis they crossed a desert for. A sanctuary so far away from this world that all its expectations of them had ceased to apply.
“I’d like to find out for myself,” Bruce says. “Would you?” As he says it, he becomes aware that it may come across as a rather sordid agreement – date me and I’ll free you. Before he can rephrase or rethink, Lex sighs.
“My cell is awfully cold. And loud. And dark. I had rather grown used to the way the starlight looked against your skin.” A sudden tension in him as he grips the phone tighter and winces. “Nothing feels right since we got back, am I going insane, or… tell me you feel it.”
Bruce nods. He feels it. Like they floated so far from Earth that the connection to home snapped. There are unusual smells and sounds everywhere. There are people everywhere.
And that is their right, of course. But he and Lex made a space of their own purely by accident. He wants it back. It’s selfish and insane, but he wants it more than he can remember wanting almost anything.
A part of him had hoped that Lex would reject him outright. Laugh at him for his sentiment, for feeling that maybe he fell in love over a three-month span. They should have been dead in two, would have been, if not for the pair of them having the greatest minds on the planet and a will to survive that would put a Green Lantern to shame.
If Lex had laughed him out of the visitors’ room, that would be the end of it. But he has been changed too and they can’t adjust to this separately.
Bruce stays as long as the guards allow, then bribes them to stay longer.
When he leaves he thinks randomly of Harley Quinn, wandering out of Arkham Asylum back when she was still Dr Harleen Quinzel. Her mind shifting day by day until a vision was shared.
He isn’t insane.
He isn’t insane.
They make love in the glow of spacedust. Clutching one another close, sharing heat, thighs around hips and legs dangling from the pilot seat. Most of the sensors are off now, so there are no sounds to intrude on the noise of their breaths, their lustful murmurs. The engines are shut off too.
Another week’s survival would be a surprise. Bruce can’t say they are resigned to it, because they’re not. They’re too stubborn to give in. But the reality they’re facing grows more insurmountable each day that passes without contact from outside. They’re nearing their dehydration deadline. And according to Lex’s latest calculations, based on a vague notion that he recalls reading about a particular exoplanet, they are over six-hundred light years from Earth.
So they work until they’re exhausted. Then they exhaust themselves further. It no longer matters who they are or what they’ve done. Bruce knows he flew into the pocket universe to arrest Lex and bring him to justice, but that was a lifetime ago now.
Now they are the world’s greatest minds, very far away from that world. They are men removed from humanity. They are wanting, needing mammals in a cage with no solace but each other.
Lex’s breath is hot against Bruce’s neck. Their chests warm together, rub together. Bruce moves his hands over Lex’s spine to put some warmth there.
They’re both so thin now.
Bruce spends inside Lex’s body. “Don’t leave me,” he whispers.
“Keep hold of me then,” Lex replies.
As if death is something they can ignore.
It’s the scandal of the year, but nobody can prove a thing. Bruce Wayne walks out of Belle Reve maximum security with Lex Luthor and they get into his car, where Alfred drives them back to the Manor without comment.
The Justice Gang may well have moved on Batman if he’d freed Lex, but there’s little they can do about a seemingly legal appeal.
Bruce tries not to think about it as corruption and wonders how long it will take before he can meet his own eyes in the mirror.
It should be relief, when the dimensional anomaly manifests and that familiar red, yellow, and blue flies steadily towards them.
And it is, to an extent. Lex’s breathing had become laboured over the past day. They both know Bruce can’t keep him alive through sheer will alone. Bruce’s constitution is superior, his health at peak physical fitness prior to being stranded. He would outlive Lex by days if these conditions continue.
But in addition to the relief, underneath it, there is a sense that Clark is intruding.
“For fuck’s sake,” Lex whispers as Superman approaches with a smile that neither of them return. “I’d have rather died here.”
Bruce, who has always imagined he would die alone, bloody and beaten in a Gotham alley, shares the sentiment.
“It’s not perfect,” Bruce says as they enter a sideroom he has built into the Batcave, “but I’m sure you’ll be able to fix things where it’s not.”
He shuts the door and switches on the environmental simulation. A beep like the shuttle sensors begins the audiotrack, which provides the white noise of the engines. It rumbles quietly in rhythm with the vibration of the metallic walls.
Lex closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. Nods slightly. “It’s good.” Still with his eyes closed, he begins to walk slowly around. His hand reaches out for the sleeping chair and finds it, causing his lips to curl in a slight smile.
By the end, they had slept at the same time. It was easier that way to curl up together.
“I should have left my phone outside,” Lex muses.
“Wouldn’t matter,” Bruce says, “the whole room’s a dead zone.”
Opening his eyes, Lex pulls out his phone to check. “Well fancy that.”
“Nobody can reach us in here. There’s a triple lock on the door, which is depleted promethium. Nobody’s getting in here unless we want them to.”
That earns him an impressed look, and Lex wanders towards the pilot’s seat at the front of the ‘cabin’. “The gravity breaks the illusion slightly. It needs to be slightly lessened. Not so we bounce around, but—”
“I know what you mean,” Bruce says, because he does. They both lived it. By the end they were finishing each other’s sentences, making plans for how they could have fixed the world, discussing… everything.
The simulation continues to run the sound all around them, and the sight of the stars outside the window. They had been the hardest thing, and he can see Lex analysing them, comparing them to his own memory.
The ‘cabin’ drifts around as it did, turning until the dust and gas of the nearest planet turn the light of its star into a soft, beautiful gold that shines through the room.
Lex puts a hand to his mouth. Bruce goes to him and wraps around him.
Bruce hasn’t been able to sleep for more than an hour at a time since he got back. That night they sleep together in the ‘cabin’ for almost ten.
He wakes to Lex sleeping in his arms and feels like they could be the only two people left in the Universe.
It’s peaceful.