*Sigh* You're lucky you're my youngest. I (unfortunately) do have a soft spot.
-
Bruce can feel the way his throat closes up, saliva building up in his mouth.
There's a growing warmth in his core, an itch between his legs that he highly, highly wants to ignore.
Under the sun, hauling large bales of hay is Clark, working shirtless and glistening with sweat. His biceps bulge with each heft of his arms, his triceps popping when he bends down to pick up another bale. His back on full display as he turns to throw the hay into the stack he's building.
Sweat sliding down the prominent line of his spine and down to where the garter of his boxers are, his jeans sitting lower from the movement.
The sun is beating down, already feeling like it's at its peak at 10 in the morning, and yet it's not the heat that has him feeling warm.
Pressing his thighs together, Bruce is reminded the burn of his skin, that lingering scratch of rough facial hair rubbing his flesh raw until he was shaking, squirting just from feeling the texture of a beard in the crease of his thigh and crotch.
Clark bends down and takes the bale by the straps keeping it all together in its rectangular shape before turning, the movement fluid, natural, routine. Then he throws it, easily, quickly, adding it to the stack, before moving closer to it, reaching up effortlessly to take the reins of the bales and shuffling them around.
His height making it simple to just reach up and fix the structure he's building.
Bruce swallows and crosses his legs, shifts his weight to lean forward, elbow on the table and chin perched on his palm. The weight helps with putting the slightest bit of pressure, his thighs keeping his mass centered to where he wants it to be.
It's not satisfying, but it's enough to keep the pressure building.
Clark ineffectively wipes at the sweat dotting his forehead by sweeping his sweaty forearm across it, but it does have the effect of flexing his arm naturally. A move born out of habit.
The hair on his chest must be drenched now, the hair on his pits sticking to his skin. And Bruce closes his legs tighter as he imagines that body pressing against him, the sweat of their skin mixing, their scents mingling.
Oh, he thinks, Clark musk would be potent. And now he's torn between filling his mouth or letting himself be bent over.
"Hey, doll." He jumps, blinking at the spot where he'd just last seen the man, and lifting his head to see Clark standing by his side, wiping his sweat away with the shirt he'd discarded earlier. "You should go inside, take a nap."
"I'm not tired."
Clark hums, leaning down to press a kiss to the crown of Bruce's head, "You were spacing out, thought the heat was getting to you."
He turns to the pitcher he'd set out, instead of responding. "Lemonade?"
Dimples pop, mouth stretching into a smile, "Yes, please." Clark leans in then, just enough to loom over Bruce's head as he reaches out to take the pitcher and pour himself a glass.
Like this, Bruce can smell that scent of scent, of Clark's natural musk, and he tilts his head just enough to get the most of it without being obvious.
When Clark takes a step back, glass to his mouth, their eyes meet, locked as Clark drains the lemonade in large, audible gulps—a quick three swallows and he's done.
His Adam's apple bobbing along the line of his moist neck.
When he puts the glass down, he positions himself to stand in front of Bruce instead, his free hand reaching forward and propping up on the back of the chair.
"Got something in your mind, doll?"
Bruce's gaze flickers downward then, from his wet chest up to the where he can see the short texture of stubble around his neck, to the thicker bush currently growing on his chin and jaw, then further up to where Clark's look at him, eyes half-lidded but inquiring. Prominent eyebrow raised.
"No." He says with a subtle shake of his head.
"No?" Clark repeats back to Bruce with a tilt of his head, just before leaning down to breathe against a pink-tipped ear. "So, if I do this—" The hand that he'd had gripping the glass comes down, laying flat on a taut thigh, feeling the tension there and the way Bruce squeezes his legs harder together, his fingers are just about skimming along the crotch line, "You don't get any ideas?"
"No," Bruce breathes out with a barely contained shudder, shifting his weight just a bit further forward now to use the fabric of his underwear to run along the seam of him.
Leaning back swiftly, Clark grins, "A'ight, if you say so." With that accent of his, leaning in to give him a peck on the cheek.
Just as he's about to think that Clark would go back to lifting his bales of hay, his chair is tilted, pushing to lean on its two back legs, and the gravity has his stomach in knots, and his thighs pressing so firmly together that the muscles are starting to ache.
Clark looms above him with a smirk, making a show of his one hand sitting on his hip while the other remains on the back of the chair, pushing him down.
Hands gripping the chair, Bruce tries to glare in admonishment even if he knows it won't work, if the smugness on the other man's face is anything to go by. "Put me down."
He makes a thoughtful face, then leans the chair further backward. He can feel himself shaking, trying to keep himself still. "Clark!"
"Care to tell me what goes on in that pretty little head o' your's?"
"I wasn't—" Clark leans the chair even more and at this point, Bruce fears that he's almost parallel to the porch floor. He lets go of the chair in favour of wrapping his fingers around a strong wrist, digging his nails into skin as he holds on. "Clark, put me down!"
Then, his eyes dart down, and Bruce knows the moment their gazes lock once again. "I can cross my legs whenever I please."
"I ain't seein' you opening them either."
He lays his hand down on Bruce's thigh again, subtly, carefully shifting his left foot to lean it against one of the teetering chair legs, a anchor just in case. And uses himself to keep Bruce's attention solely on him. "You hidin' somethin' from me now, pretty?" He leans in, presses his jaw and nuzzles it along a flushed cheek, "Don't r'member you keepin' them this hidden from me last night."
"I-I don't know what you're talking about."
"Oh?" He dips down to give Bruce's neck a kiss, right over where a bruise is black and purple now. "Always so cute when you're coy."
"You're within kicking distance."
"Can you even kick me?"
Then, Clark puts the chair back down, taking Bruce's momentary gasp of breath to spread his legs open, pulling him to the edge easily, swiftly, just before he shoves his hands on the underside of each thigh and hefts Bruce up with a few bounces for added effect.
"Nice and open. Was that so hard?"
"Shut up." Bruce wraps his arms around broad shoulders, tucking his face against sweaty skin. And doesn't pay mind to the small little hitches of his hips rubbing against the man.
I think Bruce, despite his immense paranoia and untouchable wits, would be the first one to fall for a trap when he thinks someone innocent is in danger. Sure his wits are unmatched but his heart is the biggest of them all no matter what anyone says or believes.
He's the kind of person who will stop in the middle of nowhere if he sees an abandoned baby crying on the road or some homeless kid searching for food. He knows it very well could have been a trap but his conscience won't let him leave anyone in need/help behind.
He would time and time again choose death/ambush over a suspicious situation where the life of an innocent person is concerned than think with cold blooded logic. And he has been hurt in scenarios like this before but it never stops him from doing the right thing. His altruistic personality is a compulsion and a toxic religion to his conscience rather than a trait.
Bruce never spoke to the Justice league, not one word, not one grunt, not one hum
Just silence from him.
Not mean silence just, precise
Justice league don't really press Batman about him speaking, they assume that he's mute in some way
Or he simply just doesn't want to talk, they're fine with it even if a bit dissapointed
They know his name is Batman from the stories from Gothamites so of course they assume that he's a man
(they're right, but they don't know that)
One night when some of the JL members got a rare clearing from Batman to meet up with him in Gotham they encounter another, bright blue vigilante talking to him, yapping away without a care
They get closer to try and hear but when the new vigilante spots them he simply smiles at Batman and flips away
"bye mom!"
Was all they could from the vigilante, Batman waved back at him as he got further away.
Established batlantern; Bruce’s kids actually upset Bruce (hurt feelings kind of way, not angry kind of way) enough that he leaves the room and suddenly the normally super chill hands off pseudo step dad is MAD and that military background is really shining through.
Love your work, hope you’re having a good day❤️
Oh gosh, this was actually really hard to write. Serious things aren't my forte, but I tried my best. It might have ended up a bit more introspective than I intended, but I had fun writing it. Thanks for the prompt. 💚💚
———
It had taken Damian his entire life to come and claim the place that had always been his by blood. Ten years of training, of discipline, of proving himself worthy. Ten years of waiting for the moment when he could finally step up and take what was his. Not by chance or circumstance, but by design.
Mother had sent him for her own reasons, but Damian was not merely an envoy of her will. He had not come to Gotham as a child to be battered between warlords, but as a son. The son.
His father had accepted him, as Damian knew he would. How could he not? Damian was an excellent warrior, after all, and now doubt he would be the perfect addition to this war on crime Father seemed so insistent upon waging. It would have been an insult to logic itself for him to be denied his rightful place.
So Damian had come to Gotham. It had not been long since Mother delivered him, but after a few weeks of being granted entry into the world Batman built, Damian was beginning to understand something that perhaps unsettled him far more than it should have.
There was a hierarchy here, and he was not at the top.
It was a strange, tangled thing, this household. A collection of contradictions stitched together by duty, the weakness of grief, and something a little more that Damian had not yet found a name for.
Father was not unlike Grandfather in that way. He amassed his own warriors and loyalists. He trained them and shaped them and bound them to his cause. Damian would have respected his methods, if not for the fact that where Grandfather’s forces were an army, sharpened and efficient, Father’s were something else. Soldiers, certainly, but also something messier. Something weaker.
Grayson and Drake called themselves sons not of Batman, but of Bruce Wayne. They wore the title like it belonged to them, like they had earned it. But they were both missing the blood ties Damian could boast. He was set apart from the others in that regard, which should have given him Father’s favour.
Blood was supposed to mean more.
It wasn’t much of a problem. Damian had proven himself once before and could do so again. Father just had different standards that he’d have to learn.
Which would have been a straightforward task if he had any idea of what Father’s standards were.
He knew he would doubtlessly expect perfection in the field. Precision, control, efficiency. Those were things Damian had been honed for. The mission had rules he understood. The Manor did not.
Father was making plans to send him to school next year — after he had ‘adjusted’ to the…family. The word itself felt foreign, like a uniform he had yet to be fitted for. He had expected battle strategy, tactical drills, rigorous assessments of his skill set. Instead, Father spoke of integration.
Pretenders to the mantle weren’t the only thing Damian had to contend with, because Father had a paramour.
It wasn’t something Damian had expected. He was not naïve, he had known that Father must have taken lovers at some point, but it had come as a surprise somehow. It was…undesirable, he realised. A complication he hadn’t accounted for.
He had carried, perhaps foolishly, the assumption that Father would eventually return to Mother. That once Damian had proven himself, once he had secured his rightful place at Father’s side, the distractions would fall away. That they would be whole, as they were meant to be.
A very childish notion. He brushed it aside.
Regardless of his feelings on the matter, it didn’t change the fact that Father’s lover was a fool.
Harold ‘Hal’ Jordan was reckless and undisciplined. He carried himself flippantly, like he had never needed to face true consequences in his life. He spoke in quips, in irreverent asides, as if nothing in the world was serious enough to warrant any kind of gravity.
Damian had researched this Jordan person, of course, but the intelligence he received was unsatisfactory.
Oh, there were accolades. Too many accolades. The Greatest Green Lantern, a war hero, a strategist, a leader. There were classified files, buried records of missions that should have ended in disaster but, somehow, did not.
It was all information verified by Father’s sources, but Damian struggled to reconcile it. The man in those reports — the disciplined officer, the fearless tactician, the warrior — was not the man Damian saw lounging in the Batcave, making idle conversation with Alfred, daring to tease Father.
It was a test, Damian decided. Just like dealing with his new so-called siblings.
Of these siblings, there had been three. Damian had only met two.
The memorial erected in the Batcave was a stain on the legacy. It was a mark of failure. A Robin who was incompetent enough to die. Damian had thought it absurd when he first saw it, this shrine to incompetence. It was the suit encased in class, preserved as if it were a revered artefact instead of a mortal reminder of deficiency.
The League did not honor the weak. It made no sense that the Batman would do so.
“Damian, are you alright?”
Instinctively, Damian straightened up at the sound of his father’s voice. He had been taking advantage of the cave’s training facilities while Grayson was elsewhere, sparing himself the strange attempts at bonding. He had already cycled through multiple regimens, and had allowed himself a moment of respite. Which he spent staring at Jason Todd’s memorial.
“I am fine, Father,” he answered, controlling his breath despite the exertion. He would not show even the slightest sign of fatigue as Father approached.
“What are you—” Father cut himself off as he realised what Damian had been appraising.
He watched as his father’s expression shifted. It wasn’t dramatic. Father was not the kind of man who wore his heart so easily on his sleeve — save for the very sappy looks he would sometimes send towards Jordan (which, Damian found particularly disgusting). In the weeks he’d been a resident in Gotham, he learnt to decipher the subtleties of his father’s expression. There was a slight tightening around his mouth and his shoulders drew up as if he was suddenly bracing himself for weight. A reaction, however small.
Behind them, Jordan was loitering by the Batcomputer. Casual, far too bright and completely out of place in Father’s domain. He, like Father, was not in uniform. That meant this was a social visit, which likely meant Lantern was staying the night. Damian contained his grimace and focussed on Father instead.
“It’s an odd thing,” he remarked. He felt Father’s attention sharpen onto him, but neither of them looked away from the glass case. “You have no memorials for the many others who have fallen in this city, but you would give this failure a place of honour.”
Father drew in a sharp breath, and that puzzled Damian. The logic was sound. This Jason Todd, the second so-called son, had taken up the mantle and had died for his efforts. That was proof of incompetence. It was proof that he had not been worthy. Damian would never be so inadequate.
When Father spoke, his voice was quiet. “Jason wasn’t a failure,” he said.”
“He was weak enough to be killed,” Damian replied evenly. “That is his failure."
He realised too late that the air between them had thickened. It was not rage. If it had been, perhaps he would have understood it better. No, no. This was something colder. Deeper. Something uncomfortable that made the fine hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
Father did not look at him, and for the first time since Damian arrived in Gotham, he had the distinct feeling that he had truly misstepped. “It wasn’t Jason’s failure,” Father said. And, without turning or saying anything more, he turned to leave the cave.
Another test, maybe. One that Damian had just failed, and failure was unacceptable. He watched Father leave, a little surprised and a little taken aback, but he would not be so sentimental as to follow him out to try and beg for a redo. He would do better next time, he resolved. If only he knew what Father wanted from him.
“Alright, fall in.”
The order from behind came so abruptly and so sharply that Damian’s whole body reacted before his mind could catch up. His spine straightened, his shoulders locked into place, and he instinctively awaited his next command. It was only after he had obeyed that he realised what happened. His head snapped around with a scowl.
Jordan.
The Lantern was no longer lounging by the Batcomputer. He stood rigid, shoulder squared, and all of the playfully irreverence Damian had come to expect from him was now completely absent. His expression was unreadable. Not cold, but firm in a way Damian had never seen from him before.
“I don’t take orders from you,” Damian said.
“Right now, you do. So stand up straight and listen up.”
Damian bristled and curled his hands into fists at his sides. He could not accept such an insult from someone so beneath him. He had faced down masters of the craft, warriors bred for battle, men who would have slit his throat for the smallest error. Harold Jordan was none of those things. He was an undisciplined, reckless, fool of a man who laughed in the face of rules.
But, inexplicably, when he commanded, Damian listened.
He hadn’t realised how tall Jordan was until he was directly in front of him. “You think you get it, don’t you?” Jordan said sharply. “You think because you’ve been trained by your murder-death cult, because you can kill a man twice your size, because you’ve survived your own war, that you understand what loss means.”
“I do underst—”
“I didn’t say you could speak yet.” Damian automatically shut his mouth. “You don’t understand loss. You understand death. There’s a difference.”
There was no levity there. Just something brutally steady. Damian was not used to this version of Jordan.
“I’m gonna cut you some slack because you don’t know any better, but I’m not gonna let you run your mouth. So you’re going to stand there, and you’re going to listen to me, got it?”
“...Yes.” It was a very near thing, Damian realised in horror, not to tag ‘sir’ on the end of it.
“You’re so trapped in your way of thinking that you think loss is about failing to stay alive,” Jordan went on. “You really think survival is the only thing that matters? That the dead don’t mean anything just because they’re gone?”
Damian’s lips parted, but he didn’t get a word out.
“Let me tell you something, Junior.” Jordan’s voice was quieter now, but no softer. “The dead don’t go away. They don’t just disappear because you weren’t strong enough to hold onto them. They stay. Right here.” He tapped his fingers against Damian’s chest, and Damian didn’t quite understand why he allowed the insult to go unpunished.
Jordan continued. “They sit with you. They follow you. You carry them in the things you could have done differently, in the things you didn’t do at all.” His eyes flicked toward the glass case, just for a second, before settling back on Damian. “That’s what happens when someone you love dies. You get it?”
Damian did not get it and Jordan seemed to notice that.
“You think Jason was weak ‘cause he died, right?”
“Survival dictates strength,” Damian said, but even as he said it, it sounded like a regurgitation.
“No, survival is happenstance. You can be the best fighter in the world and it still won’t be enough. Sometimes, you don’t even get the chance to be enough. Sometimes you don’t get to fight your way out. Jason wasn’t weak. He was just a kid, just like you.”
“He is nothing like me.”
“There aren’t many kids like you,” Jordan said, his voice falling back to his usual state for just a moment before he snapped it back to the firm, uncomfortable cadence. “Jason didn’t die because he wasn’t good enough. He died because someone stronger decided he should.” He looked at Damian seriously. “Now, what do you think that did to someone who loved him?”
Damian didn’t know the answer.
Or, rather, he knew what he was supposed to say. There was some saccharine answer that would have stopped the conversation here and now. Something about empathy and feelings and all that terrifying weakness he had been trained against.
But the moment he opened his mouth, nothing came out.
Jordan’s gaze didn’t wave. It didn’t soften, but there was no gloating or arrogance in it either. Just something unforgivingly steady, like a commander delivering a briefing nobody wanted to hear.
“I fail to see the relevance of this line of questioning,” Damian said finally.
Jordan let out a soft sigh. “Yeah, that’s the problem.”
He took a step back then, some of the weight in his stance easing, but the atmosphere in the cave didn’t change. It was still heavy, still pressing down on Damian’s chest, still lingering like something unfinished.
Jordan sighed, scrubbing a hand down his face before looking at him again, less like an adversary, more like — Damian wasn’t sure. He was…unsettled by this turn of events.
“I don’t expect you to get it,” he admitted. “Not yet. You will, though. But I want you to understand something, Damian. Are you listening to me?”
Damian nodded stiffly. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to listen, but he did so instinctively anyway — just as he would listen to Grandfather or Mother when it came to instruction. Jorgan had a way of commanding attention that Damian was only just now beginning to recognise.
“Your old man is one of the toughest, strongest bastards I’ve ever met,” Jordan said. Despite the dressing down, Damian couldn’t help the burst of instinctive pride. “And he still wakes up every goddamn day carrying that kid’s death on his shoulders.”
“But—”
“Do you think your dad is a failure?”
“No. I think—”
“So you think he’s strong?”
“Of course. He is the Batman.”
“Yeah, well, all that strength didn’t mean shit when he lost Jason.”
“That was different.”
“How?” Jordan shot back immediately. “Explain it to me.”
Damian forced himself not to shuffle uncomfortably where he stood. “From what I know of the situation, it was Todd who put himself in that position. Father was obviously not to blame for his mistakes.”
“Do you think Bruce sees it that way?” Jordan asked. “He trained Jason, he was responsible for him. Do you think he doesn’t blame himself for what happened?”
“That isn’t rational.”
“No. It’s not. But grief isn’t rational.” He gestured toward the glass case, toward the preserved emblem of loss that stood at the heart of the cave like a wound that refused to close. “You look at that and see failure. Your old man looks at it and sees the kid he didn’t bring home.”
“I…” Damian hesitated. He hated the feeling of hesitation, but it was there. Surprised at himself, he looked towards Todd’s memorial. And wondered.
“Now,” Jordan said flippantly, “if you ever say anything like that again, I’m gonna whoop your tiny assassin ass, you get me?”
Damian blinked and snapped his head towards Jordan, whose entire posture had turned back to the lax, infuriating ease of a man who had no problems in the world. It was like a switch had flipped back into the off position, like the soldier had vanished and replaced once more by a man who put his dirty feet on the Batcomputer console and called Father Spooky, just to get a reaction.
The sheer audacity of this cretin.
Indignant, Damian opened his mouth, outrage crawling up his throat, but Jordan just grinned easily. “I could cut you down before you are even aware I have moved,” he hissed.
“Yeah, but you’re about three inches tall and I’ve got a Lantern ring, so I really wouldn’t test me on this.” Jordan had the nerve to clap Damian on the shoulder, as if he was allowed to do such things. “I mean it though, kiddo. You run your mouth like that again, and I’m gonna put you in a ball and send you to space for a time out.”
“Father would never allow such nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense, it’s character building.”
Damian grit his teeth. “You are—”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever you’re about to say I’ve probably heard a million times before. Probably from your dad, too,” Jordan said. “Speaking of, I better go check on him. Because I, like, care about him, or something like that.” He gestured around the cave. “Now, you sit here and think about what you’ve done. That’s what adults are supposed to say, right?”
“Go away, Lantern.”
“God, you’re just like him, it’s so weird.” Jordan waved and headed upstairs, leaving Damian once again alone in the cave.
He hated that Jordan managed to get in the last word. Hated even more that he intruded in on this conversation that should have been between Damian and Father. Hated most of all that, despite his contemptuous existence, something about what Jordan had said was starting to stick.
He looked back at the glass case.
And for the first time, he was so sure of what he saw anymore.
Mama Bruce who’s pups are forced under his chin every night they snuggle in the nest. They’re wrapped in blankets and kissed on their head. Whenever he has to get up, he can wordlessly push them into Clark’s strong grip. Bruce knows his pups are safe in their dad’s arms.
When he holds his smallest pup at night, he’s often awoken to them softly feeding on his chest. Midway through the night Clark softly pulls Bruce back into his hold. Whenever they can’t sleep, they stay awake and watch their pup softly snore.
Into the night, Bruce continues to tuck the blanket around his pups. His fingers are freezing, so his pups must be freezing. Not an inch of their forehead can show, or he’s too worried they’ll wake up with a cold.
When his pups are too old for nesting, they still come home to him after bad patrols. Bruce will mewl and chuff when he finds all of his grown pups in the nest, laughing and already snuggled in his blankets that he’s been folding for them. He’ll greet each of his pups with a snuggle and a kiss, before wiggling into the middle. He’ll happily chirp whenever they slowly work their way closer to him.
My piece for @absolutefanzine ! Go check the zine out! It's full of amazing creations of all sorts - arts, fics, poems, essays, etc. - and is completely free! There is even a free copy for printing! So go check it out!!!
incredibly dc trinity-pilled rn i love them as (usually) platonic soulmates who are so codependent and insane about each other. it’s not just that the three of them clearly but unofficially co-lead the justice league, it’s not just that they accidentally created a wall around them. they may have other friends and they may trust other people and they may love their fellow heroes deeply and truly but it doesn’t come close to what the three of them share.
and it tastes so good when it’s slightly (maybe more than slightly…) toxic. diana and clark know bruce wants his death to be final; he doesn’t want ti be revived. but clark and diana know they can’t handle it without him, can’t handle the weight of their trauma and the world and the league without him. there is no hope or truth without justice: what does truth matter if no justice will be served from it? how could you have hope when there is no certainty to fairness? there is a reason a triangle is the most structurally sound shape.
clark and diana hate it, hate themselves for it, hate that they don’t really hate it at all, but they refuse to let bruce die. clark will search every galaxy for the technology to save bruce and diana will walk through hell and demand the magic to bring him back.
but, god, bruce can’t feel too victimized or upset about it. he’s doing the same shit to them, though it’s different since they’re both far more invulnerable than he is. but he’s watching them, watching over them, preparing to step in to soothe his own paranoia.
and it surprises other heroes, seeing the three of them interact. on their own, they’re fairly normal. sure, batman is standoffish and demanding, as unknown as the shadows. sure, there's something a bit uncanny valley about superman, a hardness in his body that no soft smile can belie. sure, wonder woman's gaze is uncomfortably piercing, her words weighty even when she is light-hearted and jesting.
but together? when trinity are standing shoulder to shoulder? there is a love and a shared understanding of each others’ souls that even an outsider can see. they are innate, they are three, they are one.
if trinity defected, and there is no one defection without the other two following suit, there is doubt that the league could stand in their way. they are THE skeleton team, generational. every working team, young justice and the titans, have their own trinity, a legacy and love shared.
there is no reality without them. they are inherent to life; their souls know each other through every timeline. like the universe built itself on their foundation. like fate bends to twine these three together. like multiverses fall apart when one goes missing. like history exists as prologue to their entry.
stormborns
tangentwithtanner
titsay
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snowghoul
ellievsbear
annaxmalina
