Fic: Home Movie
Title: Home Movie
Fandom: DC
Characters/Pairings: Clark/Bruce, Alfred, Martha Wayne, Thomas Wayne
Genre: Fluffy, slashy angst
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1700
Summary: While waiting for Bruce to return from patrol, Clark watches the Wayne's home videos.
Clark Kent slipped the old tape into the VHS player and hit play. I’m certain this will keep you occupied while you wait for Master Bruce to return from patrol, Alfred had said, leaving Clark alone in the entertainment room with only the Wayne home movies for company.
The video began with a wide shot of the grounds of Wayne Manor, multi-colored leaves spiraling in the wind as the camera slowly focused in on a small figure playing in a sandbox several yards away.
“What have you got there, Brucie-boy?” Thomas Wayne called to his son.
The wind roaring past the camera would normally have made any answer impossible to hear, but Clark’s sharp ears picked up Bruce’s faint response: “Bug!”
“A bug?” laughed the father, walking over to where the toddler was. “What kind of bug?”
“Black,” the boy replied, pronouncing the word carefully. Going by the date at the bottom of the screen, Clark calculated that Bruce was only two years old.
Thomas squatted beside his son and angled the camera in for a shot of the black bug that had so fascinated Bruce. It was a rather bloated-looking carpenter ant.
“That’s an ant,” Thomas informed the boy.
“Ant,” Bruce repeated, and then squealed in fearful delight as the insect began to crawl up his leg. “Daddy!” he shrieked, and Clark couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the sight of a tiny Bruce Wayne being waylaid by an even tinier enemy.
***
“Daddy!” screamed the girl, reaching for the empty air where her father had been standing only a few seconds ago, before he had fallen backwards off the landing.
Reacting immediately, Batman cast a line toward the tumbling man, catching him before he hit the street. Pulling him back up onto the landing, he was dimly aware of small fists pounding against his shins. Sparing a brief moment to look down, he saw the young girl beating at his armored legs, tears on her face, blond hair in disarray.
“Leave my daddy alone!” she wailed as Batman handcuffed the suspect. Her father. “He didn’t do nothing! Leave him alone!”
“It’s okay, Stephie,” the man said as Batman dragged him out the door. “It’s okay.”
***
“It’s okay, Brucie,” Martha Wayne was saying, holding her son on her lap. “Here, let Mama see.”
Thomas Wayne was filming a scene that, according to the date, took place a few days after the incident with the ant. The family was inside this time, the hall of the Manor decorated with colorful leaves and jack-o-lanterns.
Bruce was sniffling, looking as though he was on the verge of bursting into tears.
“What happened, Bruce?” Thomas asked, focusing the camera on his son’s face.
“Mama said no run,” the boy mumbled, burying his face against his mother’s chest. Martha smiled knowingly to her unseen husband, who must surely have returned the smile, for Clark could practically hear his silent laughter rumbling in his chest.
“And why did Mama say not to run in the kitchen?” asked Martha.
“Mama say Brucie get hurted,” Bruce answered. And as if saying it was as terrible as reliving it, the child’s face scrunched up and he began to cry.
“Oh Brucie-baby,” Martha crooned, lifting the boy’s elbow to her lips and giving it a kiss. “It’s just a little bump, see? Next time you’ll listen to Mama.”
***
Batman rubbed his sore elbow absently as he sat perched above his city, a living gargoyle among his stone fellows. Below him, Gotham writhed in a dangerous panorama of dim lights and blaring sirens: the death throes of an aging city as she wrestled with the villainous and the corrupt, the hungry and the desperate.
Batman watched her in silence until he heard her crying for him, and with wings spread black against a blacker sky, he answered.
No, not death throes, he thought as he descended swiftly towards her underbelly.
Birth pangs.
***
“Ut-racker,” Bruce said, shaking his new toy up and down enthusiastically.
“Nutcracker,” Martha corrected patiently from behind the camera, and then Clark heard her shout: “Does the red light mean it’s recording? Thomas?”
Clark watched as Bruce opened his Christmas presents, Alfred collecting the discarded wrapping paper in the background. After each gift was revealed, Bruce would show it to the camera, announcing, as best he could, what it was he had received.
“Bear,” Bruce said, holding a large white bear that was practically the same size as he was. He hugged it to himself, tiny arms barely able to encompass the stuffed toy.
“That’s a polar bear, baby. They live at the North Pole,” Martha said, accepting a steaming mug of coffee from Alfred, who ducked away from out of the camera’s range. “Why Alfred! Are you camera shy?” she teased, panning to capture the butler’s swiftly retreating form. When she focused the camera back on her son, Clark saw the Bruce had seated the bear next to him, looking thoughtful.
“What is it, Brucie-love?”
“Santa live at North Pole, too, Mama,” Bruce answered, and Clark recognized the way the child’s eyes were focused inwards, piecing the facts together. “Like Bear!”
“That’s right,” Martha said. “Santa does live at the North Pole.”
“Our little detective,” Thomas said, sitting down behind Bruce and helping him to open his next present. “Nothing gets past him.”
“I go, too?” Bruce asked.
“To the North Pole?” Thomas laughed, grabbing his son round the waist and pulling him onto his lap. “No, Brucie, you can’t go to the North Pole. Only Santa and his elves are allowed up there.”
“And Bear,” Bruce insisted, pulling his new stuffed toy up on his father’s lap as well.
“And Bear,” Thomas agreed, winking at Martha.
“Bear gonna take me,” Bruce said, an odd certainty in his voice.
“Maybe when you’re all grown up,” Thomas said, ruffling Bruce’s hair. “Maybe then Bear will take you to the North Pole.”
***
Batman shivered, cranking up the heat in the batmobile as high as it could go. This time of year, the freezing waters of Gotham Bay could rival those of the North Pole, a fact with which he was all too familiar. A fact that Killer Croc had been all too eager to remind him of.
I hate the water, he thought, pulling off his cowl and shaking his damp hair, bay-water droplets splattering the consol. His cape was soaked, but he wrapped it about his shoulders regardless as he revved the engine and streaked off towards home. Towards safety. Towards warmth. Towards Alfred, who would be waiting with hot coffee and towels and relieved affection masked with disapproval.
Maybe Clark would be there, too.
He accelerated.
***
Three-year-old Bruce Wayne’s laughter was infectious, as Clark was quickly learning. Sitting in a bright red, yellow, and blue kiddy pool, the boy splashed mercilessly at anyone or anything that was brazen enough to get within ten feet of him. Martha Wayne was already soaked head to toe, kneeling by the pool in a bathing suit as the summer sun beat down upon the little family. She gently splashed at her son, laughing as Bruce sent water flying back at his mother in retribution.
“He sure loves the water,” Thomas said, zooming in on Bruce’s exuberant expression, his hair plastered to his forehead and his eyes shining with mischief. “Our little fish.”
Clark paused the tape, staring at the image on the screen: a happy, carefree boy with loving parents, frozen in time, forever laughing and playing on a summer’s day.
Clark stood up abruptly, on the verge of some sort of action that had been building within him since he first hit play. He had to do something, he just didn’t know what. Save them? Impossible. But he wanted to. He wanted to so badly it ached. It ached to watch them being happy while knowing that there was no way to stop the future from barreling down upon them. If only he could reach through the TV screen and pull the little family out, keep them safe from the shadows of dark alleys and the guns of desperate men. If only he could shout a warning at them, make them hear it from across the years. If only.
Clark realized suddenly that he was hovering in the air before the paused image, his fists balled and his eyes itching. Slowly he sank back down onto the couch, relaxing his grip long enough to hit play again. He watched the family do normal family things and knew that they were doomed.
He wouldn’t have become the man you love without that tragedy, he told himself.
I would trade my love for his peace of mind, Clark countered. I would trade ever having known him if it meant him being happy.
Would you?
***
Bruce slipped between the warm soft covers of his bed and sighed in contentment as he felt a pair of arms twine themselves around his waist, pulling him against a bare chest.
“Ah, careful,” Bruce grunted as Clark inadvertently bumped his bruised elbow.
“Are you hurt?” Clark asked, concern sharp in his voice.
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, terribly. I’m dying slowly from elbow-related trauma.”
Carefully, he felt Clark pull his arm towards him and plant a soft kiss to the bruised skin of his elbow. “There, all better.”
“Are you gonna kiss all my boo-boos, Clark?” Bruce asked sarcastically, eyebrows arched.
“If you want me to. Why? Where else does it hurt?”
“Hmm,” Bruce considered, rolling over to face Clark directly. “My mouth kind of hurts…”
Clark wasted no time in kissing his lips all better, too, but when Bruce pulled away, he saw something in Clark’s eyes that made him wary.
“Clark? You okay?”
“I…yeah. I was just thinking about…things…”
“What things?”
“You…and…Bruce, are you happy?”
“What?”
“Are you happy? You know. Happy being here. With me. I just…I want you to be happy.”
Bruce looked down at Clark’s abdomen, absently tracing the lines of muscles, feeling his lover’s body react pleasantly to his wandering finger.
“I’m happy with you, Clark.” His voice was serious, unsmiling, and Clark seemed unconvinced.
“Is it enough, Bruce?”
Bruce pressed his mouth against Clark’s again. It was perhaps a good enough answer in of itself, but when he pulled away, he couldn’t help but add: “It’s more than enough, Clark.”
And it was.
Fandom: DC
Characters/Pairings: Clark/Bruce, Alfred, Martha Wayne, Thomas Wayne
Genre: Fluffy, slashy angst
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1700
Summary: While waiting for Bruce to return from patrol, Clark watches the Wayne's home videos.
Clark Kent slipped the old tape into the VHS player and hit play. I’m certain this will keep you occupied while you wait for Master Bruce to return from patrol, Alfred had said, leaving Clark alone in the entertainment room with only the Wayne home movies for company.
The video began with a wide shot of the grounds of Wayne Manor, multi-colored leaves spiraling in the wind as the camera slowly focused in on a small figure playing in a sandbox several yards away.
“What have you got there, Brucie-boy?” Thomas Wayne called to his son.
The wind roaring past the camera would normally have made any answer impossible to hear, but Clark’s sharp ears picked up Bruce’s faint response: “Bug!”
“A bug?” laughed the father, walking over to where the toddler was. “What kind of bug?”
“Black,” the boy replied, pronouncing the word carefully. Going by the date at the bottom of the screen, Clark calculated that Bruce was only two years old.
Thomas squatted beside his son and angled the camera in for a shot of the black bug that had so fascinated Bruce. It was a rather bloated-looking carpenter ant.
“That’s an ant,” Thomas informed the boy.
“Ant,” Bruce repeated, and then squealed in fearful delight as the insect began to crawl up his leg. “Daddy!” he shrieked, and Clark couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the sight of a tiny Bruce Wayne being waylaid by an even tinier enemy.
***
“Daddy!” screamed the girl, reaching for the empty air where her father had been standing only a few seconds ago, before he had fallen backwards off the landing.
Reacting immediately, Batman cast a line toward the tumbling man, catching him before he hit the street. Pulling him back up onto the landing, he was dimly aware of small fists pounding against his shins. Sparing a brief moment to look down, he saw the young girl beating at his armored legs, tears on her face, blond hair in disarray.
“Leave my daddy alone!” she wailed as Batman handcuffed the suspect. Her father. “He didn’t do nothing! Leave him alone!”
“It’s okay, Stephie,” the man said as Batman dragged him out the door. “It’s okay.”
***
“It’s okay, Brucie,” Martha Wayne was saying, holding her son on her lap. “Here, let Mama see.”
Thomas Wayne was filming a scene that, according to the date, took place a few days after the incident with the ant. The family was inside this time, the hall of the Manor decorated with colorful leaves and jack-o-lanterns.
Bruce was sniffling, looking as though he was on the verge of bursting into tears.
“What happened, Bruce?” Thomas asked, focusing the camera on his son’s face.
“Mama said no run,” the boy mumbled, burying his face against his mother’s chest. Martha smiled knowingly to her unseen husband, who must surely have returned the smile, for Clark could practically hear his silent laughter rumbling in his chest.
“And why did Mama say not to run in the kitchen?” asked Martha.
“Mama say Brucie get hurted,” Bruce answered. And as if saying it was as terrible as reliving it, the child’s face scrunched up and he began to cry.
“Oh Brucie-baby,” Martha crooned, lifting the boy’s elbow to her lips and giving it a kiss. “It’s just a little bump, see? Next time you’ll listen to Mama.”
***
Batman rubbed his sore elbow absently as he sat perched above his city, a living gargoyle among his stone fellows. Below him, Gotham writhed in a dangerous panorama of dim lights and blaring sirens: the death throes of an aging city as she wrestled with the villainous and the corrupt, the hungry and the desperate.
Batman watched her in silence until he heard her crying for him, and with wings spread black against a blacker sky, he answered.
No, not death throes, he thought as he descended swiftly towards her underbelly.
Birth pangs.
***
“Ut-racker,” Bruce said, shaking his new toy up and down enthusiastically.
“Nutcracker,” Martha corrected patiently from behind the camera, and then Clark heard her shout: “Does the red light mean it’s recording? Thomas?”
Clark watched as Bruce opened his Christmas presents, Alfred collecting the discarded wrapping paper in the background. After each gift was revealed, Bruce would show it to the camera, announcing, as best he could, what it was he had received.
“Bear,” Bruce said, holding a large white bear that was practically the same size as he was. He hugged it to himself, tiny arms barely able to encompass the stuffed toy.
“That’s a polar bear, baby. They live at the North Pole,” Martha said, accepting a steaming mug of coffee from Alfred, who ducked away from out of the camera’s range. “Why Alfred! Are you camera shy?” she teased, panning to capture the butler’s swiftly retreating form. When she focused the camera back on her son, Clark saw the Bruce had seated the bear next to him, looking thoughtful.
“What is it, Brucie-love?”
“Santa live at North Pole, too, Mama,” Bruce answered, and Clark recognized the way the child’s eyes were focused inwards, piecing the facts together. “Like Bear!”
“That’s right,” Martha said. “Santa does live at the North Pole.”
“Our little detective,” Thomas said, sitting down behind Bruce and helping him to open his next present. “Nothing gets past him.”
“I go, too?” Bruce asked.
“To the North Pole?” Thomas laughed, grabbing his son round the waist and pulling him onto his lap. “No, Brucie, you can’t go to the North Pole. Only Santa and his elves are allowed up there.”
“And Bear,” Bruce insisted, pulling his new stuffed toy up on his father’s lap as well.
“And Bear,” Thomas agreed, winking at Martha.
“Bear gonna take me,” Bruce said, an odd certainty in his voice.
“Maybe when you’re all grown up,” Thomas said, ruffling Bruce’s hair. “Maybe then Bear will take you to the North Pole.”
***
Batman shivered, cranking up the heat in the batmobile as high as it could go. This time of year, the freezing waters of Gotham Bay could rival those of the North Pole, a fact with which he was all too familiar. A fact that Killer Croc had been all too eager to remind him of.
I hate the water, he thought, pulling off his cowl and shaking his damp hair, bay-water droplets splattering the consol. His cape was soaked, but he wrapped it about his shoulders regardless as he revved the engine and streaked off towards home. Towards safety. Towards warmth. Towards Alfred, who would be waiting with hot coffee and towels and relieved affection masked with disapproval.
Maybe Clark would be there, too.
He accelerated.
***
Three-year-old Bruce Wayne’s laughter was infectious, as Clark was quickly learning. Sitting in a bright red, yellow, and blue kiddy pool, the boy splashed mercilessly at anyone or anything that was brazen enough to get within ten feet of him. Martha Wayne was already soaked head to toe, kneeling by the pool in a bathing suit as the summer sun beat down upon the little family. She gently splashed at her son, laughing as Bruce sent water flying back at his mother in retribution.
“He sure loves the water,” Thomas said, zooming in on Bruce’s exuberant expression, his hair plastered to his forehead and his eyes shining with mischief. “Our little fish.”
Clark paused the tape, staring at the image on the screen: a happy, carefree boy with loving parents, frozen in time, forever laughing and playing on a summer’s day.
Clark stood up abruptly, on the verge of some sort of action that had been building within him since he first hit play. He had to do something, he just didn’t know what. Save them? Impossible. But he wanted to. He wanted to so badly it ached. It ached to watch them being happy while knowing that there was no way to stop the future from barreling down upon them. If only he could reach through the TV screen and pull the little family out, keep them safe from the shadows of dark alleys and the guns of desperate men. If only he could shout a warning at them, make them hear it from across the years. If only.
Clark realized suddenly that he was hovering in the air before the paused image, his fists balled and his eyes itching. Slowly he sank back down onto the couch, relaxing his grip long enough to hit play again. He watched the family do normal family things and knew that they were doomed.
He wouldn’t have become the man you love without that tragedy, he told himself.
I would trade my love for his peace of mind, Clark countered. I would trade ever having known him if it meant him being happy.
Would you?
***
Bruce slipped between the warm soft covers of his bed and sighed in contentment as he felt a pair of arms twine themselves around his waist, pulling him against a bare chest.
“Ah, careful,” Bruce grunted as Clark inadvertently bumped his bruised elbow.
“Are you hurt?” Clark asked, concern sharp in his voice.
Bruce rolled his eyes. “Oh yes, terribly. I’m dying slowly from elbow-related trauma.”
Carefully, he felt Clark pull his arm towards him and plant a soft kiss to the bruised skin of his elbow. “There, all better.”
“Are you gonna kiss all my boo-boos, Clark?” Bruce asked sarcastically, eyebrows arched.
“If you want me to. Why? Where else does it hurt?”
“Hmm,” Bruce considered, rolling over to face Clark directly. “My mouth kind of hurts…”
Clark wasted no time in kissing his lips all better, too, but when Bruce pulled away, he saw something in Clark’s eyes that made him wary.
“Clark? You okay?”
“I…yeah. I was just thinking about…things…”
“What things?”
“You…and…Bruce, are you happy?”
“What?”
“Are you happy? You know. Happy being here. With me. I just…I want you to be happy.”
Bruce looked down at Clark’s abdomen, absently tracing the lines of muscles, feeling his lover’s body react pleasantly to his wandering finger.
“I’m happy with you, Clark.” His voice was serious, unsmiling, and Clark seemed unconvinced.
“Is it enough, Bruce?”
Bruce pressed his mouth against Clark’s again. It was perhaps a good enough answer in of itself, but when he pulled away, he couldn’t help but add: “It’s more than enough, Clark.”
And it was.