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Clark doesn’t know when it started. When that friendship with Batman shifted to something akin to dependency. Hell, he doesn’t even know his real identity. (Bats asked him not to look. So Clark swallowed every investigative bone in his body and agreed, as long as Batman did the same. He’s ninety percent sure Batman knows his identity anyway, though.)
And it’s fine, really, this strange sort of friendship they have. The kind where Batman claims they don’t have one at all. The kind where Superman is the only one who can coax a rare smile out of Batman. The kind where Superman is the only person who’s ever been properly introduced to Batman’s sidekick, Robin.
(He’s not allowed to admit it, even to himself, but he loves Robin. That smiling, ice cream-loving, prankster.)
Anyway, they’re a sort of family to Superman. Something he can’t say out loud, because Batman would glare at him and probably vehemently disagree. And even if he didn’t, Clark wouldn’t risk it. Wouldn’t risk admitting to anything that he can’t take back.
For example, one thing he can’t admit to?
He has Batman’s heartbeat memorized. Most heartbeats are too similar to tell apart, and Clark has to spend real time trying to pick a single one out of the crowd. Ma and Pa are easier, because he’d listened to them for so many years. He’s working on Lois’. But there’s something about Bats…something like a low, deep hum. It’s a few ticks slower than everyone else. It’s calming, and it’s something Clark listens to more than he should. Far more.
When they’re next to each other. When they’re fighting together. When Clark is lying in bed at night, anxious without reason, he closes his eyes and listens for that familiar drum beat. He doesn’t track it, doesn’t listen for how far it is or where it’s located. He can’t risk accidentally revealing Batman’s identity. He just listens. It’s like a strange sort of lullaby, and it works every time.
It's a dependency, he knows.
And it’s a secret he’ll take to the grave.
“It’s a quiet night,” Clark remarks, listening to the soft, steady pulse in the silence.
“Ngh,” Batman agrees. They are perched on the rooftop nearest Gotham’s borders, just a block away from the bridge connecting to Metropolis. Superman is listening, of course, for any problems in his own city. But it really does seem like a quiet night, and whenever Batman watches his city from here, Superman knows he’s saying he doesn’t mind company.
It’s all about the little tells.
Batman picks this rooftop, so that Superman can join him, and fly back to his own city within a second. He’s never said as much, but he’s also never complained about Superman joining him here.
“How is Robin?” He asks, just to make conversation.
“Fine.”
Clark smiles, tilts his head, listening for the kid’s heartbeat. It’s about as hard to find as Lois’, although he has a suspicion Bats has been trying to teach him to slow it down. After a while of searching, he zones in on the sound, and its steady beat tells Clark that Robin is probably asleep. Good—it’s a school night.
“Do you ever get curious?” Batman asks, after hours of silence have passed between them. (Clark never minds the silence. He just likes the company.)
“Curious?” Clark repeats.
“You could look under the mask, if you wanted to,” Batman supplies.
“Oh.” Clark thinks this over. “Yes, I suppose I could.”
“But you don’t.”
“You asked me not to.”
“Ngh.”
Silence falls between them again. Usually it’s only when they’re moving, blood pumping, that Clark gets more conversation from the bat. He isn’t sure why. Maybe something about the adrenaline that fires him up, gives him a kick of Robin’s sarcasm. But Clark finds he doesn’t mind this side of Bats, either.
“Anything new, lately?” Clark wonders after a while.
“New suit. Almost done,” Batman answers in a grunt. Clark nods.
“I’m excited to see it,” Clark replies with a smile. Batman looks him over.
“Of course you are.”
He’ll never be able to prove it, but Clark could swear Batman was rolling his eyes.
Eventually the sun begins to rise, and Clark has to go home. Work and deadlines and his morning patrol of the city. Batman simply nods goodbye.
If Clark had known what would happen later that day, he would’ve hugged Batman. They’d never hugged before, but he would have done it then. He would’ve grabbed him for all he was worth and squished him into his chest and made sure they had a proper goodbye.
But Clark, naive and unthinking, only waves.
It happens when he’s at the Daily Planet, sitting at his desk, bored out of his mind, trying to finish the last few paragraphs of his article. An itch starts in the back of his head, an absence he can’t place. Suddenly, and completely out of nowhere, Clark feels he’s missing something. Something important.
He looks around the office, hesitant to give away his expression but desperate to know why the hairs on the back of his neck are flaring up.
Clark naturally listens, then, to all of Metropolis. Fires? Runaway train? Lex, up to an evil plot?
But there’s nothing.
Something is missing.
So, he broadens his scope. Earth—natural disasters, flooding, anything out of place. Anyone who needs his help.
Something is missing, something is missing, something is…
Clark dials back into his closer range, and hears a buzzing in his ear. A warning. But he still can’t place it. He doesn’t know what’s wrong.
Much like his anxiety at night (has he saved enough people? Is he doing the right thing?), Clark decides the best thing to calm himself down is to listen for Batman’s heartbeat.
It’s only then that he realizes what’s wrong.
What’s missing.
Batman’s heart is nowhere. There is no beat, no smooth drum. There is only silence. Well, noise—car horns and yelling and laughter and a billion other hearts—but from Batman? Nothing. Radio silence. It’s the most horrible sound Clark’s ever heard.
Clark launches out of his seat before he realizes what he’s doing. He’s shaking, he thinks. He doesn’t know what to do. He can’t remember how to function.
“Clark?” He hears, and oh, there’s Lois. Worried.
But he can’t—he can’t waste time on that. Is this how humans feel, all the time? Is this what it is, to need air?
He listens closer, trying to find Robin’s heartbeat. Maybe then he can find out what’s wrong. Can he bring someone back from the dead? Oh, God, is Batman really dead?
Something is missing.
But the kid’s heartbeat is nowhere to be found, either. Clark's knees buckle, and Lois only manages to hold him up with the help of a wall.
“No, no, no,” he mutters to himself. It’s daytime! What could they have possibly been doing that took them both out? No. No, he refuses to believe it. Batman is not dead. Robin is not dead. His second family, his home away from home, is not dead.
Distantly he hears Perry dismissing him for the day, something about him looking sickly and not wanting to get infected. Good. Clark was going to leave anyway.
“Clark?” Lois asks again, walking him to the elevator. He just shakes his head. She knows about Superman, sometimes even teases about his…friendship…with Batman. But this? This is too horrible to speculate out loud.
“I have to…” And with that, he peels away from her, around the corner, into the alley, barely checking to make sure he’s alone. Clark shrugs off his civilian clothes, revealing the symbol hidden on the suit beneath. Then he takes off, speeding for Gotham.
But he doesn’t know what to do when he arrives there. He doesn’t know where to look. Clark feels suddenly like he’s flying blind. He doesn’t know how to find his Batman, especially in the daytime. He listens, desperately, for that familiar heartbeat, that sound that he’s grown so accustomed to having. But there’s nothing.
There’s nothing.
He scours the entire city, one street at a time, using his x-ray vision on buildings. Nothing, nothing, nothing, and Clark is going crazy, and the world doesn’t make sense, and how can he do this on his own?
They’d been making plans, hesitant and unsure, of forming some sort of superhero league. But it hadn’t come to fruition, yet, and Clark knows he can’t do it on his own, and how can he save people knowing he hadn’t saved little Robin? How can he exist in a world without Batman?
The answer comes quickly: He can’t.
Days pass. Clark weeps.
Something is missing.
Clark is dying. Everyone sees it. Lois is worried. He won’t answer her questions.
Something is missing.
He breaks the calling device Batman had given him for emergencies. He didn’t mean to, had grabbed it too hastily in a moment of grief, but what does it matter? It’s not like he’d be using it anyway.
Something is missing.
He doesn’t patrol anymore. He only flies as Superman if there’s an immediate threat, if there’s a problem the police can’t solve.
He doesn’t fly over Gotham.
Clark can’t even bring himself to look in its direction.
The worst part, he thinks for the millionth time, is that there will never be a funeral, for either of them. The news hasn’t reported Batman’s body, which means he must have died out of costume. Which means Clark will never know who he was. Never know his real name. Never be able to stand at his grave and apologize.
He failed them. He’d failed them both. If he’d only skipped work that day, stuck around a little longer…
He’s stopped trying to listen for their heartbeats. The silence he hears instead is too depressing. It’s ruining his life.
Clark hates his super-hearing.
Something is missing.
Clark can barely get himself out of bed. All he wants to do is lay there and stare at the ceiling.
But the world keeps spinning. He doesn’t understand how.
(Sometimes, when he’s been lying in bed too long in the morning, he could almost swear he hears Batman’s heartbeat again. Which worries him, because his friend is dead. Clark might be going insane. And anyway, by time night falls, the sound is always gone again.)
Perry is sick of Clark’s moping, he can tell. It’s hard for Clark to care. He doesn’t actually need this job. Doesn’t need money because he doesn’t need his apartment because he doesn’t need to sleep or eat. He doesn’t need to be a civilian at all, actually.
But Lois is sort of the only thing holding Clark together at the moment, so he tries his best for her.
And anyway, he can’t picture being Superman twenty-four seven and not also taking Gotham under his care, and he’s simply not ready for that.
Clark barely has it in him to save Metropolis.
But his fragile existence breaks when Perry demands he take a gala event, because Lois has been requested elsewhere, and all the other reporters are double booked.
Lois says Perry is actually just worried about him. Is trying to get him out and about again. But the gala is a charity event in Gotham, and Clark genuinely wants to die at the thought of going.
“I can’t, Lois,” he says on their way out of work. “I’d rather quit.”
“Please, Clark,” she begs, grabbing his arm. “I know it’s all still fresh, but you’ll regret quitting. I know you will. I’ll try to finish with my evening super quick, and then I can join you at the gala. And if it’s really too much, you can always leave halfway through. Fly home.”
He’s shaking his head before her sentence is even finished. He can’t do it. He’s not brave enough.
Something is missing.
And yet, he finds himself in his cheap, ugly suit, getting ready for a night of glamor in a city he’s afraid to look at.
He can’t fly there. Clark doesn’t have it in him. He knows he’d just plummet.
The gala is a big event in a fancy mansion, hosted by one Bruce Wayne. All Clark has to do is get a quote from the man, and then he can leave. Go back to moping and crying and living with the knowledge that he will never really be okay again.
Except as soon as he steps through the doors, he hears it.
That heartbeat.
It’s unmistakable. Loud and ringing in his ears. It’s been twenty-one days without it—except for the rare times Clark’s mind has been playing tricks on him.
Oh, Clark realizes belatedly. That’s what it is. His mind is trying to cope with Batman’s absence in Gotham.
His brain is trying to comfort him.
Instead of it working, however, it launches Clark into a hole of anxiety. Of course, usually when he has anxiety, he listens for Batman. But now the sound is ringing in his ears, taunting him, and how is everyone laughing? How are people smiling and chatting and Clark can hear the scrape of heels against the floor, the sound of every bite each person is chewing, and that heartbeat. That goddamn heartbeat.
Clark runs. He isn’t sure where. His exit is blocked by other reporters, and he could maybe shove his way through but he’s so shaky and fragile that he can’t risk it.
He hides in a room that seems empty enough, but Batman’s heartbeat is still echoing through him, and Clark can’t help but cry.
He pulls his knees up to his chest, feeling small and powerless.
Maybe he wasn’t allowed to acknowledge it out loud. But it doesn’t change how he felt. Batman was his best friend. He understood Superman in a way Lois never could, as much as she tried. They got along, and Clark had known, deep inside of himself, that he was in love. He’d been in love with Batman.
How could he not be? His mystery and his strong build was appealing, of course, but that was never what did it for Clark. It was his kindness. His softness with Robin, and any other kids they found and protected. His loyalty to his city. His fierce protection of human life, even the bad ones. A man who believed, just as Clark did, that everyone deserved justice and the opportunity to be better. That people were complicated. Batman refused to be a killer, and as much as he painted himself as the grumpy, sullen, withdrawn vigilante, Clark knew there was a strong and brave heart in him.
And he knew what it sounded like.
He knew it so well, in fact, that his brain was laughing at him with it now.
“Cla—um. Reporter…guy?” A voice speaks from the doorway. In his hysteria, Superman hadn’t heard the door creak open. He looks up and it takes him a moment of furiously rubbing at his eyes before he can see well enough to make out the star of the night, Bruce Wayne, standing only a few feet from him.
“Oh,” Clark says softly, unreasonably close to crying again.
The heartbeat is louder now. Clark hates it. He hates his brain for what it’s doing to him right now.
“Are you,” he coughs, looking genuinely concerned, “are you alright?”
“Just fine, Mr. Wayne,” Clark lies in a shaky, unbelievable voice.
“Bruce,” he corrects. Clark nods.
“Bruce,” Clark repeats. The heartbeat riles up again. Clark swallows the bile in his throat. He knows he’s supposed to get a quote from this man, but he couldn’t make the words form if he tried. The drums are too loud. “You ever lose someone, Bruce?”
He doesn’t know why he asks.
He doesn’t know why Bruce moves to sit beside him. He takes one of Clark’s hands, which had been curled up in a tight, shaking fist.
“Yes,” Bruce answers quietly. He sighs, and the heartbeat is so loud that Clark barely hears it.
But then, Bruce surprises him.
Or, rather, he shocks Clark back into reality.
“Superman.” The voice is soft, still, but gruff and familiar in a way Clark can’t place. Clark pretends to look around.
“Uh…Where?” He asks desperately, tears nearly forgotten because how had billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne figured out his identity?
“Look,” Bruce says, “we’re alone in here. I know you know who I am.”
Clark blinks at him.
“You do know who I am…?”
“Bruce Wayne,” Clark replies, confused. Now it’s Bruce’s turn to look confused.
“What? No. I mean, well, yes. But, Clark—Superman—” Clark blinks furiously at him. “It’s me. It’s Batman.”
Clark is off the floor and across the room from him within the second.
“Are you trying to make some sick joke?” He demands. Bruce’s brows shoot up, surprised. “Do you know something?” Clark charges for him then, stopping only a few feet away. “Do you know what happened to him?”
“What…what do you mean?” Bruce asks. Clark nearly snarls.
“You know who I am. Now you’re pretending you’re him? Pretending he’s alive? Bold, I’ll give you that, Mr. Wayne.”
Clark realizes belatedly that he’s maybe seconds from killing this man. He’s never killed anyone. He’s never wanted to. But the heartbeat is loud, again, and faster, maybe? Which Clark knows is wrong because it’s never faster.
“Superman,” Bruce answers gently, as though trying to calm a wild animal, which perhaps is what Clark is at the moment. “It’s me. It’s Batman. Look.” He grabs Clark’s arm. Clark doesn’t know why he allows this, doesn’t know why he follows. But Bruce leads him through hallway after hallway, down and down until they’ve reached a sort of…cave.
The Batcave.
Robin had mentioned it, sometimes, and Batman would glare at him, and Clark never knew its location or what it looked like. But he knows, intuitively, that this is it.
Just as he’s about to question his guide, though, a voice booms from the corner.
“C’mon, old man, I told you I was watching out! I don’t need you checking on me.”
Clarks turns around faster than he ever has before because he knows that voice. He knows that voice like he knows Batman’s heartbeat. Hope fuels through him for the first time in weeks, a spark of life igniting in him that he thought was long dead.
There, standing in front of him, is Robin. Robin, alive and breathing and speaking and—
He doesn’t have a heartbeat. Clark listens for it, intuitively, without meaning to. It’s not there.
“A projection,” he mutters to himself, feeling stupid. He returns his gaze to Bruce. “What is this?! How did you find this place?!”
Bruce rolls his eyes.
“Clark, it’s me. It’s Batman. Come on. Robin is right there.”
“Robin is dead,” Clark growls, outraged. “And this…whatever this thing is,” he points at the imposter, “isn’t breathing. You think I’m an idiot, Mr. Wayne? Batman and Robin have been dead for three weeks.”
Bruce furrows his brows, crossing his arms.
“What? Look at him, of course he’s breathing!” Clark, angry and irrational, forces himself to look.
He…is breathing. He can see Robin’s chest rising up and down. It breaks him, almost as much as the confused look on the kid does.
“I don’t know what this is—what your plan is. He doesn’t have a heartbeat.”
Bruce blinks at him. The change in his face is slow.
“Do I have a heartbeat, Clark?” He asks. Clark glares at him, but listens.
Except all his tired, heartbroken ears can come up with is Batman’s heartbeat, which doesn’t make sense. Batman is dead.
Clark chooses not to answer.
“Dick, take off your suit, please.” Bruce does not break eye contact with Clark. Fake Robin—Dick—complains, and oh, his voice sounds just like the real Robin, Clark’s Robin, and he disappears to change.
Clark hears it within the minute. He doesn’t know what changed—doesn’t understand how it’s even possible. But one moment, there’s nothing. And then boom, like a firework, there’s Robin’s heartbeat. He returns to the room without a costume, without even his mask, and Clark is staring at Dick. Dick. Robin. Has to be. That’s his—that’s his heartbeat. Clark is sure. He’s more sure of it than he’s ever been of anything in his life.
He turns slowly back to Bruce, who is still staring at him.
Clark blinks at him and he doesn’t entirely understand what’s happening but he’s hearing both their heartbeats, strong and real, for the first time in twenty-one days. His knees go weak again and Clark is pretty sure he’s crying and Bruce—Batman?—catches him before he hits the ground.
“Superman? Supes, are you alright?”
And it has to be Batman, has to be, because his heart is right there and his chin looks sort of the same, actually, and Batman only ever calls him ‘Supes’ when he’s worried he’s dying. That is to say, it’s happened twice.
“Is it…Is it actually you?” Clark whimpers, knowing he will believe whatever this man says next.
“Yes. I promise. It’s me.”
Clark starts sobbing. His arms wrap around Batman—his Batman—gripping him so tightly that he worries he’ll break him in half. But he can’t stop. He fears that if he does, he’ll wake from this dream and feel dead all over again.
“And that’s Robin?”
“That’s me!” Robin—Dick—chimes in. Clark cries more into Bruce’s chest. He’s vaguely aware of the man wrapping his arms around Clark, pulling him closer, running a hand through his hair.
“You’re alive,” he whimpers quietly, “you’re both alive.”
When he calms down enough, Bruce pulls away, a bit, but Dick holds his hand.
And Bruce explains.
And Clark hates him for it.
“YOU LACED YOUR SUITS WITH LEAD AND YOU DIDN’T THINK TO TELL ME?”
Bruce at least has the good sense to look sheepish.
“YOU REALIZE IT’S DANGEROUS, RIGHT? FORGET ABOUT ME—YOU WANT DICK TO GET CANCER?!”
Bruce tries to explain to Clark how the plating is thin, and they’re protected by other metals blocking it from coming in contact at all with their skin or lungs.
“OH, SO YOU THOUGHT OF THAT, BUT DIDN’T THINK, HEY LET’S TELL POOR SUPERMAN WHO LISTENS FOR YOUR HEARTBEATS?”
“I didn’t know you listened to our heartbeats,” Bruce answers quietly. “I was more concerned with our identities.”
“YOU JUST TOLD ME YOUR IDENTITY!”
“Yes, because you looked at me at the gala like you’d seen a ghost and then ran away? And you hadn’t been picking up your comms? And I thought you already knew, and had been angry about it! And then it turned out that you didn’t but you were so upset I realized I…”
Batman trails off. He looks uncertain, nervous, even.
“I realized I didn’t mind you knowing.”
“OH, GLAD TO HEAR IT. TWENTY-ONE DAYS OF HELL FOR NOTHING, THEN,” Clark bellows, still upset but not really angry, anymore. They’re alive. Robin is safe beside him and Bruce is talking more than he ever has and Clark knows what it is to be happy in a way he never has before.
“I’m really sorry, Clark. I had no idea you thought we were dead.”
Clark deflates, the last of his energy depleted as Dick gives him a squeeze of his hand, as if to emphasize his father’s point—which, oh, yeah, is something to think about. Batman has a child. Batman’s sidekick is his child.
Clark’s sure Batman has a good reason. And, knowing Robin, Dick would likely have gone down this path either way.
Also. Batman—his Batman—is actually a billionaire. A playboy. A magazine cover, a gossip rumor, a ditzy rich boy. Brucie Wayne…what a cover story. Clark would never have guessed it in a million years.
He wonders how much of both personalities is actually the real Bruce. Clark gets the sense that the man sitting in front of him, disheveled from Clark’s hug, worry lines evident on his face, missing his own party to make sure his friend is okay…this seems like the real Bruce, to him.
Eventually Dick starts falling asleep, leaning on Clark’s shoulder, and Bruce has his butler—Alfred—collect him and take him to bed. Clark gets to watch as Bruce kisses the top of his kid’s head, and his heart swells three sizes.
“I’m so sorry, Clark,” Batman says when they’re alone. “If I’d known that was the reason you weren’t answering, I would have come and explained then and there.”
“I broke it,” Clark answers softly, “it was an accident. I picked it up too harshly.”
“I’ll make you another,” Bruce promises. Clark nods.
“How long have you known? Who I am?” Clark asks eventually. Bruce looks down.
“Seven months.”
“We’ve only known each other for a year and a half!”
“It’s not my fault, you and your stupid flight patterns—I wasn’t even looking for it, but then once I figured it out I couldn’t exactly un-know it…”
“You’re the worst,” Clark teases, and Bruce scoots closer to him. Clark surprises himself by leaning on Bruce’s shoulder without really thinking about it. He just wants to be closer. He wants to hear that pulse as near as he can. When he speaks again, it’s a whisper, and he realizes he’s begging. “Please take the lead out. I can’t—I need to hear that you’re both okay.”
“Superman, I haven’t been wearing the suit all of the time. Surely you’d have heard it then?”
Clark nods into his shoulder.
“I thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was just grieving.”
Bruce moves, then, and fully enwraps Clark in his embrace.
“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m so, so sorry.”
Clark cries a little more. Batman lets him. He does not let go.
“I listen for it all the time. Your heart—it’s like my north star. I hear it, always.”
“I’ll take the lead out, love.”
Love. Love? Is Clark’s hearing broken again? Love. Love. Love.
“Shit,” Batman whispers.
“Love,” Clark murmurs. “I like it.”