Chapter Text
What is heart break?
Is it the way your heart aches in two?
Is it the way your lungs stop inflating in a breath?
Is it the way your brain halts frozen in time?
Is it the way your ears ring in knells?
The seconds are ticking, he can hear it echoing all the way down on Earth.
The air is stale and it smells burnt.
The fluorescent lights are shining too brightly—it stings his eyes.
Or is that the tears he refuses to shed?
“I—” He rasps out.
Clark’s lips are upturned, cheeks pink and ears red. His fingers are fiddling nervously with his blood red cape.
And for a moment, Bruce’s eyes flutter closed. He thinks about pushing Clark down, of opening up his chest cavity and burrowing in deep. Bruce thinks about curling himself up into a ball, piercing into Clark’s lung to breathe the same air he breathes.
What would it be like, to be held by those hands, large and warm and soft?
What would it be like, to be kissed by those lips, pink and resilient and gentle?
What would it be like, to be looked at, with love, care and tenderness, drowning in a too blue ocean?
Then his eyes open and Clark remains, fidgeting and blushing. Everything about him giddy at the prospect of it.
“You picked out a ring?” He asks, because it’s the right thing to do.
“Yeah—it took me months, B.” Clark lets out a giggle, frayed but excited, then he looks up from his lap, their eyes locking, “I’m going to do it. Lois—she’s going to say ‘yes’.”
“How are you so sure?” He teases, because it’s the right thing to do. His skin itches and his mind blares.
Clark rolls his eyes, huffing through his nose. A fist bumps into Bruce’s shoulder just enough to jostle the man. “We’ve been talking about it; getting married. Having kids of our own.”
Oh. “Oh.” He mumbles because he has nothing else to say.
Clark is so, so happy. Bruce’s body aches. There’s a constant ringing in his ears that won’t go away and the glare of the lights are blurring out his vision.
Somehow, his throat isn’t working either. He’s gotten sick, he must be. He should be happy too, because it’s the right thing to do.
Bruce can feel his lips trembling with the falseness of it; the fragility of keeping his mouth curved and pleasant to look at. Clark smiles back, teeth biting on his lower lip, eyes shaped into crescents with cheeks bunched up and bright like ripe apples.
He’s so beautifully happy.
“When are you planning to do it?” Bruce finds his mouth moving, lips flapping with his tongue shaping the words out against his brain’s orders. “Proposing—?” A rhetorically stupid question. He doesn’t need to know yet his body betrays him.
A sting is lancing through his chest—it’s getting harder to breathe.
Letting out a shaky exhale, Clark looks away, eyes gazing out through the windows of the Watchtower—Bruce realises, Clark is looking down at Earth, into Metropolis. Planted feet pushing the chair back to further situate himself better toward the window. “Tonight.” Clark lets his cape go, fists balled and clenched.
His face morphs into one of determination. Jaw locked, muscles of his cheeks jerking.
“Congratulations.” Bruce speaks against his mind’s orders once again. “You’ll make a great husband, Clark.”
The man turns to him, tears streaking down his flushed cheeks but his elation is palpable. Excitement rolling off him in waves, Bruce feels winded as if he’s been punched in the stomach hard enough to double over.
“Sorry—I,” Clark wipes away his tears with the heels of his palms, “I just can’t wait, you know?” Softly, a caress in the recycled air of the tower, he breathes, “I didn’t think I’d have this.”
Bruce remains seated, his stomach is eating itself now, roiling about within him.
That lump in his throat has grown to cover his airpipes, pressing up against his vocal chords so that he can’t speak. His lashes are clumping with each blink he’s forced to make, his blood has stopped circulating to his extremities.
“And now, you will.” He replies, because Clark deserves this.
“Thank you, Bruce. Really.”
And then—
“I’m telling you because I want to ask you to be my best man.”
Oh.
“Propose first, then we’ll see about that.”
The Watchtower has never been so dark before. Someone is screeching at his ears and the air is damp and all too cold.
There’s a pounding knocking against his skull, his knees are pricking even through his bat-suit. His chest weighs too heavily, his lungs struggle to keep oxygen in, his body forcing him to breathe it all out.
His limbs are all intact, his spine remains in one row, his blood still fills his veins. He knows he’s still alive. Yet.
Bruce feels himself splitting down the middle, black spots in his vision. The screeching has turned into shouts that he cowers at and no amount of curling up will make the pain go away.
He just wants the pain to go away.
Distantly, people talk to him, stripping him down—too cold hands brushing against his skin. A door slam rattles down his bones, a yell shrills against the windows, footsteps thunder down the staircase.
Bruce stares at the ceiling, black fireworks bursting in his periphery. The shadows elongate, the wind howls; his mattress swallows him in. The sun burns too bright—sears his skin and cooks his flesh.
It’s his only saving grace, he thinks, that his room is devoid of whatever love he thought he was deserving of.