Heroes of the Squared Circle 8: Gimmick Match
Title: Gimmick Match
Relationship: Clark/Bruce
Characters: Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Maxwell Lord
Continuity: Heroes of the Squared Circle, a DC/pro wrestling fusion ( click for notes and all chapters).
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count 3400
Summary: As the JLI struggles to keep its head above water, Clark and Bruce find it harder and harder to work there.
We reached the point where we developed a true psychic connection. It's an amazing feeling, being able to know just what the person you're working with is thinking, to know exactly where he's going next. It works both ways--they're as connected to you as you are to them. --Eddie Guerrero
"You know, Clark, I've been thinking about...our relationship." Billionaire Brucie was resplendent in silver snakeskin trunks and hot pink wrestling boots as he brandished the mic in the middle of the ring.
Clark had finally convinced wardrobe to let him ditch the overalls and straw hat for a simple navy-blue singlet and tights, although they had insisted he kept wearing boots that looked like work boots. He scratched the back of his head and looked confused as the crowd booed Brucie. "What exactly do you mean, Mr. Wayne?"
"Well, I've been trying to convince you to be my stableboy, but now I'm thinking I might want you to serve me in a more...personal manner," Brucie cooed. "Would you like a position as my personal valet? You can fetch me breakfast in bed, help me dress..."
Clark laughed. "Now, Mr. Wayne, you know I'll never give up wrestling! I'd rather please audiences like the good people of Metropolis--" The crowd popped like crazy; cheap pop, but it always made Clark happy to hear it. "--than serve just one person." No matter how handsome leapt into his head unbidden, but he decided that didn't really fit his character and bit his tongue.
"Oh, but the idea of you coming into my bedroom in the morning, maybe dressed in a nice sharp tux, bringing me orange juice..." Brucie eyed Clark up and down, and Clark kept his face pleasantly neutral with an effort, "...or maybe we could skip the tux."
"I'd appreciate that," said Clark cheerfully. "I'm not much for dressing up fancy." He smiled at Brucie, getting ready for the big wind-up. "But Mr. Wayne, you never told me you were so lonely."
Bruce actually staggered back a few paces--Clark had argued in practice that it was too overdone, but the crowd's laughter indicated Bruce had been right. As usual. "Lonely?" he hissed as if it were a mortal insult.
"Well, sure," Clark explained. "You seem really desperate for a little company, and I think maybe you have a hard time getting close to people." The audience was eating up Brucie's horrified facial expressions, but Country Clark didn't seem to realize Brucie's reaction was anything less than positive. "I know it's been hard for you, growing up without your parents and all." He reached out and put a sympathetic hand on Brucie's shoulder and the crowd went nuts--they hated when Clark seemed to believe Brucie's lies about being the missing Wayne heir. "It's okay. We all need friends--"
As if the word snapped some internal tension beyond bearing, Brucie smacked Clark in the face with his mic. It made a fantastic hollow booming sound, and Clark clutched at his face as the bell rang and another match began.
: : :
"I'm too big to do a shooting star press." Bruce wasn't listening to him as usual, and Clark didn't even try to keep the exasperation from his voice. "That's a move for a cruiserweight wrestler, not me."
"You'll do fine," Bruce said, waving a hand at him as they walked down the halls of the auditorium toward the locker room. "Just don't think about it too much. You tend to mess up when you think too much."
"I tend to--" Clark sputtered for a second. "What? I haven't screwed up a single aerial maneuver since we started wrestling together! I've hit every one perfectly, I've never given you any reason to doubt me, and I sure as hell can--"
Bruce whirled and patted him lightly on the cheek. "My point exactly, Clark. I'm glad you agree with me."
Clark stared after him as he turned and continued down the hall. "You're a manipulative bastard, you know that?" he called.
"So you'll do the shooting star press?" Bruce's voice came back.
"I'll do the damned shooting star press," Clark grumbled.
And he did.
: : :
"Besides," Bruce pointed out later over a slice of pizza in Clark's hotel room, "We need to keep distracting Max with awesome new moves, or he'll put us into one of those stupid gimmick matches."
Clark winced. In just a month, they'd lost Vixen and Rocket Red to the DCW, and Doctor Light had decided to move to a west coast promotion. The worst thing was that the heart seemed to have gone out of Maxwell Lord. Paychecks were scarcer and scarcer, and an haze of desperation hung around the JLI offices. The bookers and Lord responded by making up more and more high-concept "gimmick matches," involving props or crazy stipulations. Most of them were simply silly, but Clark was increasingly uncomfortable with the matches made to get as much blood and violence in the ring as possible. The Warrior and Kalibak in a "Fans Bring the Weapons" match--where fans got to hand wrestlers items to use against each other--had ended up with both wrestlers bloody and exhausted. A barbed wire steel cage match between Mr. Miracle and Desaad hadn't been much better.
Clark and Bruce had managed to avoid getting booked for matches like that so far, but Clark wasn't sure how much longer they could avoid it.
"Time's running out, Clark. The JLI is going to fold. What will you do then?"
"I...I don't know. I feel like I'm just starting to hit my stride as a wrestler. I hate to go to a smaller promotion, but the only one left is--"
"--Luthor's," Bruce finished for him. "He's a bastard, but the DCW is the major leagues, every wrestler's dream."
Clark took a bite of pizza. "Never gonna happen. Luthor's never even noticed me."
Bruce looked thoughtful, but dropped the topic.
: : :
"A Taipei Deathmatch? Are you kidding me, Max?" Bruce's voice was aghast and he thumped Lord's desk with angry hands. "No way we are doing that."
"A Taipei Deathmatch?" Clark looked between the two set and furious faces. "What's that?"
Bruce threw up his hands. "It's some kind of 'hardcore,' 'edgy' crap that substitutes for good writing and wrestling," he yelled at Max, not looking at Clark. "It's a match where we wrap our hands in tape beforehand, then dip them in glue, then dip them in broken glass."
"That sounds..."
"Grotesque? Dangerous?" Bruce paced to the wall, then back. "Stupid beyond belief?"
"How about 'desperate'?" retorted Max. "How about 'freaking broke'?"
"We will not be booked that way," Bruce said.
Max looked at Clark, who nodded: "I agree with Bruce. It sounds bloody and dumb."
"You know what would be better than a Taipei Deathmatch?" asked Bruce.
Clark and Max looked at him.
"Anything," Bruce hissed.
Max's lips were pressed together so tightly they had gone white. "Very well then," he said, his voice level and cold. "You can opt out of that match. But in that case--"
: : :
"--you know, this is not the kind of match that is going to make the audience say, 'professional wrestling certainly isn't homoerotic at all,'" Clark sighed in the locker room moments later.
"Why?" grumbled Bruce. "Just because we have to wear tuxedos and the winner is whoever strips their opponent down to their wrestling trunks first? That doesn't sound the slightest bit homoerotic." He slumped on the bench, looking more discouraged than Clark had ever seen him. "I don't know if I can take much more of this," he sighed. "What are we going to do when Max Lord shuts this all down?"
Clark sat down beside him, obscurely and absurdly pleased that Bruce had used the plural pronoun. "Look on the bright side," he said. "At least a tuxedo match plays into our angle well. I'm not sure we could have come up with a way a Taipei Deathmatch would have fit our feud."
"I'm not punching you with broken glass," mumbled Bruce.
"I'm sure I'd recover my handsome good looks eventually."
"That's not the point," Bruce snapped, ignoring Clark's light tone. "It's stupid and pointless, and I hate it. Violence in wrestling has to serve a purpose, it has to tell a story, to reach the audience with something more than bloody-mindedness. I'm not beating you to a pulp just to get peoples' attention." He glared down at the ground. "Max doesn't understand."
"I do."
Yes." For a second, Bruce almost smiled at him. "I know you do."
: : :
"Holy sh--uh, wow," Clark said as Bruce strolled into the locker room in his tuxedo. It fit his body as though it were tailored to him; it even had tails. "You look--uh, really classy. I hate to rip that."
"Oh, this?" Bruce grinned. "This was in fashion two years ago. My butler swore it would be no great loss."
"Yeah, right," Clark said, rolling his eyes: Bruce had a distinct tendency to mix Brucie-style statements into his conversations at odd moments. "His butler" was a recurring theme.
"Now, you." Bruce cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, pursing his lips in a silent whistle. "That is impressive."
Clark dusted off his wide powder-blue lapels with some pride, brushing at the ruffled front. "I'm just glad it still mostly fits," said, tugging at the buttons straining across his chest. "I've put on some bulk since high school."
"Since--" Bruce broke off, looking impressed and appalled at the same time. "Clark, you did not wear that to your high school prom."
"Ma sent it to me," Clark said.
"Clark," murmured Bruce, gazing deeply into his eyes, "You...complete me."
"Ha ha," retorted Clark.
"I mean it! I'm in awe!" Bruce followed him out of the locker room and down the hall, burbling delight: "Magnificent! The layers of irony and--"
"--Shut up," grumbled Clark, slugging him on the shoulder. Bruce staggered sideways, crying out that he was bowled over by Kent's fashion sense; other wrestlers were looking at them, and Clark probably should have been more embarrassed.
Bruce kept up the patter until they reached the Gorilla Position; then he fell silent, staring at the entrance ramp. Clark glanced over at him, surprised to see him somber once again, with a gloom Clark had rarely glimpsed since their feud had started. "I hate this," Bruce said under his breath, not looking at Clark. "It's a waste of our talent."
"We'll do our best," Clark said, and held out his fist.
Bruce met his eyes for a long moment, then put his knuckles to Clark's: more of a touch than a bump, really. "We always do," he said.
Then his music hit and he was gone, his tuxedo tails fluttering behind him.
: : :
Billionaire Brucie's lip curled so dramatically they could see it in the cheap seats. "When I said I wanted to see you in a tuxedo, that was not what I had in mind," he sneered.
"Look, Mr. Wayne, I hate to ruin your nice suit," Country Clark said. "Just because Mr. Lord put us in this match, we don't have to fight all gussied up like this." The show's theme was Max Lord had gone crazy for complex reasons involving L. Ron and a mind-controlling computer program, and had taken to putting people into strange matches for no reason. Which was, in Clark's opinion, a bit too on the nose, but you had to go with what you had.
"Oh yes we do," said Brucie. "We have to do what Mr. Lord tells us, don't you know that?" His voice was light, but there was a thread of real bitterness to it that prompted Clark to shoot him a cautioning look. "So let's get this over with." He gestured at the timekeeper to ring the bell, making Clark blink: they had planned on more banter. But he backed away from Brucie, raising his arms as if to defend his precious powder-blue tuxedo.
They hadn't rehearsed the match much: fighting in full clothing made it difficult to do anything too complex, and they'd gotten good enough at their moves together that they had a standard repertoire to fall back on. Brucie stepped forward and grabbed his breast pocket, yanking. With a vivid tearing sound, the cloth gave way, and Brucie tossed the forlorn scrap of cloth out of the ring with disdain.
Not to be outdone, Clark reached out and seized the arm of Bruce's tux with the intention of tearing it off whole. However, the stitches were too strong, and it took him a couple of tugs before the cloth tore and he could come away with a sleeve in his hand.
Belatedly, Clark realized that maybe they should have used rigged tuxedos, because Bruce's was very sturdily sewn.
He held up the sleeve with an air of triumph, showing it off to the crowd, of course unwisely turning his back on Brucie, who was tearing his hair in anguish at his beloved tuxedo being desecrated. Brucie charged him and suplexed him, then grabbed the powder-blue polyester jacket at the back and yanked as hard as he could.
With a dramatic rip, the back of Clark's tuxedo gave way, exposing most of his back. The crowd shrieked and Clark spun around trying to assess the damage, like a dog chasing its own tail.
Under his overplayed reaction, Clark felt worry at the pit of his stomach. This was going to be a problem: Clark was booked to win this match, but his tuxedo was patently flimsier than Bruce's. Well, he would just have to trust Bruce not to accidentally strip him entirely.
It turned out to be harder than he expected to avoid being stripped, although as long as he kept his elbows bent it was almost impossible to pull his sleeves off. But very quickly any attempt at the high-flying moves they were becoming known for had to be abandoned, what with the tatters of cloth flapping everywhere. The crowd was laughing as they grappled, which was the point, but Clark caught a glimpse of Bruce's face and winced--it was set and pale, his teeth gritted together, with no joy in his eyes. He was breathing heavily as he sat on Clark, grimly wrenching at his ruffled shirt-front, sending ruffles flying like confetti. Clark heard curses hissing between Bruce's teeth--not meant for him or for the audience, just an undercurrent of misery.
Bruce was miserable.
Clark grabbed his hands and broke the hold, tossing Bruce across the ring and into the ropes, then catching him with a clothesline as he came back. Lying across Bruce, speaking directly to the clenched pain in his eyes, Clark murmured into his ear, "This isn't how I intended to get your clothes off."
Bruce made a startled sound--a gasp that turned into a whoop of something close to laughter. "Oh God, this is horrible," he whispered, but when he broke the hold and came to his feet again some of the dry anguish was gone from his eyes, and he even managed a Brucie-level smile.
With a quick missed punch, Clark muttered "Facebuster." Bruce tried to punch him in turn, a roundhouse punch that ended with his back to Clark. Clark wrapped his arms around him--strange how like an embrace it was, he thought for an insane moment--then lifted him and threw him down on his face.
The referee leaned down, ostensibly to check and see if Brucie was okay, and muttered, "You've got three minutes left. Take it home." Clark gritted his teeth at the prospect of having to get the rest of Bruce's tux off in three minutes. They were going to run long, and Lord hated that. Unless--
He managed not to smile with a great effort as he leaned down to tug vainly at Bruce's pants cuffs again.
Under cover of tugging, he said to Bruce, still lying face-down on the mat, "You know, considering how Brucie feels, he really should..."
After a moment, he saw Bruce's shoulders shaking.
Clark stood up, arranging his face into a confused expression, and Brucie rolled over, laughing like a lunatic. Improvising like mad, Clark swung away from Bruce to stare out at the audience with a "what is he laughing about?" shrug, and he heard the rumble of the crowd sharpen into a shriek of shocked outrage.
He didn't have to look to know that Bruce had ostentatiously undone his own fly.
When he looked back, Bruce was lying with his arms outflung on the mat, an exaggerated, "Oh no, I'm in trouble!" look on his face. Still playing the oblivious innocent, Clark lunged forward and grabbed his slacks--which of course slid off easily as Brucie squirmed away, leaving Clark standing and staring stunned at the slacks in his hand. He threw them across the ring and grabbed at the jacket, and Bruce did a complicated twirling move and left Clark holding it, gaping at him.
The shirt was a little tougher, but soon enough Brucie had wriggled out of that too, leaving him wearing nothing but the bow tie and trunks. Grinning at Clark across the ring, he did an impromptu bump and grind, reaching up to undo his own tie very slowly. He put it between his teeth and bit at it, then threw it dramatically across the ring, leaving him stripped of everything but his wrestling trunks.
The bell rang and the referee lifted Clark's hand in the air, but Brucie jumped around the ring with glee, smirking as if he was the winner. He winked widely at Country Clark, and Clark knew the match just needed closure to finish up satisfactorily for the audience.
So he decked Brucie.
Bruce took the pulled punch like a champ, spinning almost 180 degrees before he slumped to the ground, still smiling. Shaking his head as if mystified by Brucie's strange ways, Clark headed out of the ring with a sense of relief.
They had survived the gimmick match.
: : :
"We're going to have to come up with a non-homophobic reason why Clark punched Brucie," Clark said later in the showers.
Bruce leaned into the spray and scrubbed his face wearily. "We'll come up with something. It's probably enough that Brucie was gloating, or not taking the match seriously. No one likes being taunted, even if they've missed the subtext entirely." He turned around and let the hot water pummel his back, and not for the first time Clark had to be careful not to let his eyes wander downward much. He'd gotten plenty of practice, but you never knew when the temptation might become too much. He wondered briefly if he should apologize for making that joke about stripping Bruce in the ring, but decided against it. It had broken Bruce's foul mood, and Bruce would know he hadn't meant anything by it.
And he really hadn't, he told himself sternly.
"Clark will just be confused why Brucie let himself get beaten, probably," he said instead.
"Mm," Bruce said, his eyes closed. "Some things are more important than winning a match."
Before Clark could answer, Guy strutted into the showers, wearing full war paint and nothing else. "Max says to get your asses in gear, he wants to see you both," he said as he started to scrub off the paint.
"Oh God," groaned Bruce. "We did the best we could with his stupid match, what more does he want?" But they rinsed off quickly, put on their civilian clothes, and soon were both sitting in Lord's office, their hair still damp.
Max, Keith, and John were all there. The bookers looked nervous, but Max just looked grim. "Well, boys," he said. "I'm sure you're proud of the way you handled that match, but that's not what I called you in here for."
He leaned across the table, teeth gritted in a smile.
"I called you in to tell you--we're ending your feud."
-----
( Chapter 9: The End of the Feud)
Relationship: Clark/Bruce
Characters: Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, Maxwell Lord
Continuity: Heroes of the Squared Circle, a DC/pro wrestling fusion ( click for notes and all chapters).
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count 3400
Summary: As the JLI struggles to keep its head above water, Clark and Bruce find it harder and harder to work there.
We reached the point where we developed a true psychic connection. It's an amazing feeling, being able to know just what the person you're working with is thinking, to know exactly where he's going next. It works both ways--they're as connected to you as you are to them. --Eddie Guerrero
"You know, Clark, I've been thinking about...our relationship." Billionaire Brucie was resplendent in silver snakeskin trunks and hot pink wrestling boots as he brandished the mic in the middle of the ring.
Clark had finally convinced wardrobe to let him ditch the overalls and straw hat for a simple navy-blue singlet and tights, although they had insisted he kept wearing boots that looked like work boots. He scratched the back of his head and looked confused as the crowd booed Brucie. "What exactly do you mean, Mr. Wayne?"
"Well, I've been trying to convince you to be my stableboy, but now I'm thinking I might want you to serve me in a more...personal manner," Brucie cooed. "Would you like a position as my personal valet? You can fetch me breakfast in bed, help me dress..."
Clark laughed. "Now, Mr. Wayne, you know I'll never give up wrestling! I'd rather please audiences like the good people of Metropolis--" The crowd popped like crazy; cheap pop, but it always made Clark happy to hear it. "--than serve just one person." No matter how handsome leapt into his head unbidden, but he decided that didn't really fit his character and bit his tongue.
"Oh, but the idea of you coming into my bedroom in the morning, maybe dressed in a nice sharp tux, bringing me orange juice..." Brucie eyed Clark up and down, and Clark kept his face pleasantly neutral with an effort, "...or maybe we could skip the tux."
"I'd appreciate that," said Clark cheerfully. "I'm not much for dressing up fancy." He smiled at Brucie, getting ready for the big wind-up. "But Mr. Wayne, you never told me you were so lonely."
Bruce actually staggered back a few paces--Clark had argued in practice that it was too overdone, but the crowd's laughter indicated Bruce had been right. As usual. "Lonely?" he hissed as if it were a mortal insult.
"Well, sure," Clark explained. "You seem really desperate for a little company, and I think maybe you have a hard time getting close to people." The audience was eating up Brucie's horrified facial expressions, but Country Clark didn't seem to realize Brucie's reaction was anything less than positive. "I know it's been hard for you, growing up without your parents and all." He reached out and put a sympathetic hand on Brucie's shoulder and the crowd went nuts--they hated when Clark seemed to believe Brucie's lies about being the missing Wayne heir. "It's okay. We all need friends--"
As if the word snapped some internal tension beyond bearing, Brucie smacked Clark in the face with his mic. It made a fantastic hollow booming sound, and Clark clutched at his face as the bell rang and another match began.
: : :
"I'm too big to do a shooting star press." Bruce wasn't listening to him as usual, and Clark didn't even try to keep the exasperation from his voice. "That's a move for a cruiserweight wrestler, not me."
"You'll do fine," Bruce said, waving a hand at him as they walked down the halls of the auditorium toward the locker room. "Just don't think about it too much. You tend to mess up when you think too much."
"I tend to--" Clark sputtered for a second. "What? I haven't screwed up a single aerial maneuver since we started wrestling together! I've hit every one perfectly, I've never given you any reason to doubt me, and I sure as hell can--"
Bruce whirled and patted him lightly on the cheek. "My point exactly, Clark. I'm glad you agree with me."
Clark stared after him as he turned and continued down the hall. "You're a manipulative bastard, you know that?" he called.
"So you'll do the shooting star press?" Bruce's voice came back.
"I'll do the damned shooting star press," Clark grumbled.
And he did.
: : :
"Besides," Bruce pointed out later over a slice of pizza in Clark's hotel room, "We need to keep distracting Max with awesome new moves, or he'll put us into one of those stupid gimmick matches."
Clark winced. In just a month, they'd lost Vixen and Rocket Red to the DCW, and Doctor Light had decided to move to a west coast promotion. The worst thing was that the heart seemed to have gone out of Maxwell Lord. Paychecks were scarcer and scarcer, and an haze of desperation hung around the JLI offices. The bookers and Lord responded by making up more and more high-concept "gimmick matches," involving props or crazy stipulations. Most of them were simply silly, but Clark was increasingly uncomfortable with the matches made to get as much blood and violence in the ring as possible. The Warrior and Kalibak in a "Fans Bring the Weapons" match--where fans got to hand wrestlers items to use against each other--had ended up with both wrestlers bloody and exhausted. A barbed wire steel cage match between Mr. Miracle and Desaad hadn't been much better.
Clark and Bruce had managed to avoid getting booked for matches like that so far, but Clark wasn't sure how much longer they could avoid it.
"Time's running out, Clark. The JLI is going to fold. What will you do then?"
"I...I don't know. I feel like I'm just starting to hit my stride as a wrestler. I hate to go to a smaller promotion, but the only one left is--"
"--Luthor's," Bruce finished for him. "He's a bastard, but the DCW is the major leagues, every wrestler's dream."
Clark took a bite of pizza. "Never gonna happen. Luthor's never even noticed me."
Bruce looked thoughtful, but dropped the topic.
: : :
"A Taipei Deathmatch? Are you kidding me, Max?" Bruce's voice was aghast and he thumped Lord's desk with angry hands. "No way we are doing that."
"A Taipei Deathmatch?" Clark looked between the two set and furious faces. "What's that?"
Bruce threw up his hands. "It's some kind of 'hardcore,' 'edgy' crap that substitutes for good writing and wrestling," he yelled at Max, not looking at Clark. "It's a match where we wrap our hands in tape beforehand, then dip them in glue, then dip them in broken glass."
"That sounds..."
"Grotesque? Dangerous?" Bruce paced to the wall, then back. "Stupid beyond belief?"
"How about 'desperate'?" retorted Max. "How about 'freaking broke'?"
"We will not be booked that way," Bruce said.
Max looked at Clark, who nodded: "I agree with Bruce. It sounds bloody and dumb."
"You know what would be better than a Taipei Deathmatch?" asked Bruce.
Clark and Max looked at him.
"Anything," Bruce hissed.
Max's lips were pressed together so tightly they had gone white. "Very well then," he said, his voice level and cold. "You can opt out of that match. But in that case--"
: : :
"--you know, this is not the kind of match that is going to make the audience say, 'professional wrestling certainly isn't homoerotic at all,'" Clark sighed in the locker room moments later.
"Why?" grumbled Bruce. "Just because we have to wear tuxedos and the winner is whoever strips their opponent down to their wrestling trunks first? That doesn't sound the slightest bit homoerotic." He slumped on the bench, looking more discouraged than Clark had ever seen him. "I don't know if I can take much more of this," he sighed. "What are we going to do when Max Lord shuts this all down?"
Clark sat down beside him, obscurely and absurdly pleased that Bruce had used the plural pronoun. "Look on the bright side," he said. "At least a tuxedo match plays into our angle well. I'm not sure we could have come up with a way a Taipei Deathmatch would have fit our feud."
"I'm not punching you with broken glass," mumbled Bruce.
"I'm sure I'd recover my handsome good looks eventually."
"That's not the point," Bruce snapped, ignoring Clark's light tone. "It's stupid and pointless, and I hate it. Violence in wrestling has to serve a purpose, it has to tell a story, to reach the audience with something more than bloody-mindedness. I'm not beating you to a pulp just to get peoples' attention." He glared down at the ground. "Max doesn't understand."
"I do."
Yes." For a second, Bruce almost smiled at him. "I know you do."
: : :
"Holy sh--uh, wow," Clark said as Bruce strolled into the locker room in his tuxedo. It fit his body as though it were tailored to him; it even had tails. "You look--uh, really classy. I hate to rip that."
"Oh, this?" Bruce grinned. "This was in fashion two years ago. My butler swore it would be no great loss."
"Yeah, right," Clark said, rolling his eyes: Bruce had a distinct tendency to mix Brucie-style statements into his conversations at odd moments. "His butler" was a recurring theme.
"Now, you." Bruce cocked his head and raised his eyebrows, pursing his lips in a silent whistle. "That is impressive."
Clark dusted off his wide powder-blue lapels with some pride, brushing at the ruffled front. "I'm just glad it still mostly fits," said, tugging at the buttons straining across his chest. "I've put on some bulk since high school."
"Since--" Bruce broke off, looking impressed and appalled at the same time. "Clark, you did not wear that to your high school prom."
"Ma sent it to me," Clark said.
"Clark," murmured Bruce, gazing deeply into his eyes, "You...complete me."
"Ha ha," retorted Clark.
"I mean it! I'm in awe!" Bruce followed him out of the locker room and down the hall, burbling delight: "Magnificent! The layers of irony and--"
"--Shut up," grumbled Clark, slugging him on the shoulder. Bruce staggered sideways, crying out that he was bowled over by Kent's fashion sense; other wrestlers were looking at them, and Clark probably should have been more embarrassed.
Bruce kept up the patter until they reached the Gorilla Position; then he fell silent, staring at the entrance ramp. Clark glanced over at him, surprised to see him somber once again, with a gloom Clark had rarely glimpsed since their feud had started. "I hate this," Bruce said under his breath, not looking at Clark. "It's a waste of our talent."
"We'll do our best," Clark said, and held out his fist.
Bruce met his eyes for a long moment, then put his knuckles to Clark's: more of a touch than a bump, really. "We always do," he said.
Then his music hit and he was gone, his tuxedo tails fluttering behind him.
: : :
Billionaire Brucie's lip curled so dramatically they could see it in the cheap seats. "When I said I wanted to see you in a tuxedo, that was not what I had in mind," he sneered.
"Look, Mr. Wayne, I hate to ruin your nice suit," Country Clark said. "Just because Mr. Lord put us in this match, we don't have to fight all gussied up like this." The show's theme was Max Lord had gone crazy for complex reasons involving L. Ron and a mind-controlling computer program, and had taken to putting people into strange matches for no reason. Which was, in Clark's opinion, a bit too on the nose, but you had to go with what you had.
"Oh yes we do," said Brucie. "We have to do what Mr. Lord tells us, don't you know that?" His voice was light, but there was a thread of real bitterness to it that prompted Clark to shoot him a cautioning look. "So let's get this over with." He gestured at the timekeeper to ring the bell, making Clark blink: they had planned on more banter. But he backed away from Brucie, raising his arms as if to defend his precious powder-blue tuxedo.
They hadn't rehearsed the match much: fighting in full clothing made it difficult to do anything too complex, and they'd gotten good enough at their moves together that they had a standard repertoire to fall back on. Brucie stepped forward and grabbed his breast pocket, yanking. With a vivid tearing sound, the cloth gave way, and Brucie tossed the forlorn scrap of cloth out of the ring with disdain.
Not to be outdone, Clark reached out and seized the arm of Bruce's tux with the intention of tearing it off whole. However, the stitches were too strong, and it took him a couple of tugs before the cloth tore and he could come away with a sleeve in his hand.
Belatedly, Clark realized that maybe they should have used rigged tuxedos, because Bruce's was very sturdily sewn.
He held up the sleeve with an air of triumph, showing it off to the crowd, of course unwisely turning his back on Brucie, who was tearing his hair in anguish at his beloved tuxedo being desecrated. Brucie charged him and suplexed him, then grabbed the powder-blue polyester jacket at the back and yanked as hard as he could.
With a dramatic rip, the back of Clark's tuxedo gave way, exposing most of his back. The crowd shrieked and Clark spun around trying to assess the damage, like a dog chasing its own tail.
Under his overplayed reaction, Clark felt worry at the pit of his stomach. This was going to be a problem: Clark was booked to win this match, but his tuxedo was patently flimsier than Bruce's. Well, he would just have to trust Bruce not to accidentally strip him entirely.
It turned out to be harder than he expected to avoid being stripped, although as long as he kept his elbows bent it was almost impossible to pull his sleeves off. But very quickly any attempt at the high-flying moves they were becoming known for had to be abandoned, what with the tatters of cloth flapping everywhere. The crowd was laughing as they grappled, which was the point, but Clark caught a glimpse of Bruce's face and winced--it was set and pale, his teeth gritted together, with no joy in his eyes. He was breathing heavily as he sat on Clark, grimly wrenching at his ruffled shirt-front, sending ruffles flying like confetti. Clark heard curses hissing between Bruce's teeth--not meant for him or for the audience, just an undercurrent of misery.
Bruce was miserable.
Clark grabbed his hands and broke the hold, tossing Bruce across the ring and into the ropes, then catching him with a clothesline as he came back. Lying across Bruce, speaking directly to the clenched pain in his eyes, Clark murmured into his ear, "This isn't how I intended to get your clothes off."
Bruce made a startled sound--a gasp that turned into a whoop of something close to laughter. "Oh God, this is horrible," he whispered, but when he broke the hold and came to his feet again some of the dry anguish was gone from his eyes, and he even managed a Brucie-level smile.
With a quick missed punch, Clark muttered "Facebuster." Bruce tried to punch him in turn, a roundhouse punch that ended with his back to Clark. Clark wrapped his arms around him--strange how like an embrace it was, he thought for an insane moment--then lifted him and threw him down on his face.
The referee leaned down, ostensibly to check and see if Brucie was okay, and muttered, "You've got three minutes left. Take it home." Clark gritted his teeth at the prospect of having to get the rest of Bruce's tux off in three minutes. They were going to run long, and Lord hated that. Unless--
He managed not to smile with a great effort as he leaned down to tug vainly at Bruce's pants cuffs again.
Under cover of tugging, he said to Bruce, still lying face-down on the mat, "You know, considering how Brucie feels, he really should..."
After a moment, he saw Bruce's shoulders shaking.
Clark stood up, arranging his face into a confused expression, and Brucie rolled over, laughing like a lunatic. Improvising like mad, Clark swung away from Bruce to stare out at the audience with a "what is he laughing about?" shrug, and he heard the rumble of the crowd sharpen into a shriek of shocked outrage.
He didn't have to look to know that Bruce had ostentatiously undone his own fly.
When he looked back, Bruce was lying with his arms outflung on the mat, an exaggerated, "Oh no, I'm in trouble!" look on his face. Still playing the oblivious innocent, Clark lunged forward and grabbed his slacks--which of course slid off easily as Brucie squirmed away, leaving Clark standing and staring stunned at the slacks in his hand. He threw them across the ring and grabbed at the jacket, and Bruce did a complicated twirling move and left Clark holding it, gaping at him.
The shirt was a little tougher, but soon enough Brucie had wriggled out of that too, leaving him wearing nothing but the bow tie and trunks. Grinning at Clark across the ring, he did an impromptu bump and grind, reaching up to undo his own tie very slowly. He put it between his teeth and bit at it, then threw it dramatically across the ring, leaving him stripped of everything but his wrestling trunks.
The bell rang and the referee lifted Clark's hand in the air, but Brucie jumped around the ring with glee, smirking as if he was the winner. He winked widely at Country Clark, and Clark knew the match just needed closure to finish up satisfactorily for the audience.
So he decked Brucie.
Bruce took the pulled punch like a champ, spinning almost 180 degrees before he slumped to the ground, still smiling. Shaking his head as if mystified by Brucie's strange ways, Clark headed out of the ring with a sense of relief.
They had survived the gimmick match.
: : :
"We're going to have to come up with a non-homophobic reason why Clark punched Brucie," Clark said later in the showers.
Bruce leaned into the spray and scrubbed his face wearily. "We'll come up with something. It's probably enough that Brucie was gloating, or not taking the match seriously. No one likes being taunted, even if they've missed the subtext entirely." He turned around and let the hot water pummel his back, and not for the first time Clark had to be careful not to let his eyes wander downward much. He'd gotten plenty of practice, but you never knew when the temptation might become too much. He wondered briefly if he should apologize for making that joke about stripping Bruce in the ring, but decided against it. It had broken Bruce's foul mood, and Bruce would know he hadn't meant anything by it.
And he really hadn't, he told himself sternly.
"Clark will just be confused why Brucie let himself get beaten, probably," he said instead.
"Mm," Bruce said, his eyes closed. "Some things are more important than winning a match."
Before Clark could answer, Guy strutted into the showers, wearing full war paint and nothing else. "Max says to get your asses in gear, he wants to see you both," he said as he started to scrub off the paint.
"Oh God," groaned Bruce. "We did the best we could with his stupid match, what more does he want?" But they rinsed off quickly, put on their civilian clothes, and soon were both sitting in Lord's office, their hair still damp.
Max, Keith, and John were all there. The bookers looked nervous, but Max just looked grim. "Well, boys," he said. "I'm sure you're proud of the way you handled that match, but that's not what I called you in here for."
He leaned across the table, teeth gritted in a smile.
"I called you in to tell you--we're ending your feud."
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( Chapter 9: The End of the Feud)