Prompt Post - Part Seven [CLOSED TO NEW PROMPTS]
THIS PART IS NOW CLOSED. YOU CAN CONTINUE POSTING FILLS, BUT PLEASE PROMPT ALL NEW THINGS HERE.
Part one here!
Part two here!
Part three here!
Part four here!
Part five here!
Part six here!
Feel free to reprompt posts from parts one, two, three or four in part five once. If you do so, I'd recommend leaving a link to your fill on the original prompt, in ( Read more... )
The cheerfulness cracked slightly, when Dick tried to grin for Bruce again. “Maybe I should go stay with Uncle Richie for a bit. I mean, he’s always after me about how little time we spend together, and lately he’s actually been kinda right.” Gaining steam, he kept going, straying dangerously close to babbling: “Or if that doesn’t work, Mr. Haly’ll hire me back for the summer. Miranda told me they’re touring the East coast ‘til school starts again, so with the zeta beams, I’ll still be super convenient for home and the Cave. I kinda miss having an audience, y’know? Nothing like getting paid for positive attention.”
There was a long as silence as Bruce looked down at the pillowcase. He looked like an aging Atlas; if Clark concentrated, he could pick out a few fine lines forming between his eyes. Bruce had already spent most of his life courting serious forehead wrinkles, but the sheer depth and magnitude of the frown he gave Dick when he finally looked up was enough that Clark doubted his ability to turn it off.
This was the coolest customer in the superhero business, Clark thought. Batman was normally difficult to read. Clark was good at it, Diana was slightly better, and Dick didn’t have to read him; he tended to just know. Batman was an enigma, a mystery, a force of justice and the hammer of God striking swift and silent from the deepest umbra. It was all a carefully constructed image, one Clark had never known to waver. Oh, he’d seen windows open, here and there, but windows didn’t open of their own accord. The castle walls weren’t any less thick just because the occupant needed a bit of light and fresh air.
It was strange and compelling to watch now, and troubling, too, because Clark was distinctly aware that Bruce and Dick had no idea he was there. This was the worst sort of abuse of his powers-intrusive, invasive, and voyeuristic-his intentions were altruistic, admittedly. That was maybe half a point in Clark’s favor. He’d been worried about his friends, but this was exactly the reason Batman and Robin would disdain superpowers even they could have them. Humans were not supposed to be able to do this, to wait outside, unseen, undetected, listening and watching like a family’s inner workings were simple entertainment. Even the government generally needed peer approval and a court order to do this.
Clark could console himself with the fact that he wasn’t a Martian (yet again), that he was still plainly visible if only you looked up, and that he was still not privy to what exactly was passing within the two agile minds. He could, if he tried, focus his X-ray and microscopic vision on the firing synapses and the bright-red blood cells that ferried fresh oxygen from the heart and lungs back into the gray matter, but the thoughts themselves were invisible.
This was only the coldest of comforts when one remembered that Dick and Alfred were the two people that Bruce felt safest with, the two people he’d be most likely to confide in. Clark could tell himself that he wasn’t reading Bruce’s mind, and that made it okay-but nothing could change the fact that he was spying and eavesdropping on a conversation with one of the few people Bruce wasn’t afraid to share his inner thoughts with-indeed, one of the few people who didn’t really need him to share those thoughts; Dick’s peculiar gift was to get Bruce.
“Thank you,” Bruce said, voice low enough that Clark had to strain to catch it, “for mentioning your uncle and Jack Haly, instead of one of your friends or something. It makes me feel a little less terrible about you not feeling welcome at home.”
Reply
Leave a comment