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Part 1 of the world will turn and we'll grow, we'll learn
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2020-03-12
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i felt an earthquake the first time i heard your laughter

Summary:

Bruce blinks, and stares down at his sink.

Or, more accurately, at the wet bright orange toothbrush sitting on top of his sink.

It's seemingly innocuous. Normal, even.

Except for the fact that Bruce doesn't think he's used an orange toothbrush since he was 7 years old.

Notes:

this is not really a very thorough storyline, and is rather a few snapshots of pivotal moments.

title is from "the one" by maisie peters, but this entire fic was inspired by the song "toothbrush" by DNCE.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Bruce blinks, and stares down at his sink.

Or, more accurately, at the bright orange toothbrush sitting on top of his sink.

It's seemingly innocuous. Normal, even.

Except for the fact that Bruce doesn't think he's used an orange toothbrush since he was 7 years old.

And despite Bruce's apparent inability to admit that this is actually happening, there's only one person the toothbrush could belong to.

 

        

"Clark Kent."

Bruce pulls his gaze up slowly, taking care to make sure he looks properly bored. There's a hand in front of his face, so he reaches out to shake it, lingering just a second too long.

"Oh," Bruce says, "Of course. The Planet interview, am I right?"

Kent smiles, but he looks simultaneously worried and tired, as if he's had a long day. "Yes," he says, and Bruce takes the opportunity to look him over. He's wearing a god awful jacket that's red plaid and has actual, genuine elbow pads. Thick, black glasses rest on the bridge of his nose, completing the harmless, somewhat dorky air he gives off. Despite all that though, he's attractive, and Bruce is willing to bet that the plaid jacket is hiding more than a few muscles.

"Well, Clark Kent," Bruce says, propping his legs up on his own desk, "You're a sight for sore eyes."

"Long day?" Kent asks, seemingly genuinely intrested.

Bruce smiles, and he knows what it looks like, the slightest bit ditzy, like he's a man who considers 2 meetings grueling work. "Oh," he says, waving his hand in the air, "You know how it is."

Kent nods politely and smiles at him. "So," he starts, and that's when Bruce first meets Clark Kent.

Throughout the course of the interview, Clark makes Bruce laugh exactly once. Of course, Bruce Wayne laughs a lot more than that, boisterous laughs that seem more suitable for a music-drenched bar than an office, but Bruce laughs once.

It's just after Clark asks about the future of negotiations between Wayne Enterprises and a global airline parts manufacturer.

"I really can't say, I'm sure you can understand," Bruce replies, grinning. "What's that they say? Don't count your chickens before they hatch?"

Kent snorts suddenly, a lapse in his otherwise perfectly professional attitude.

"Something funny?" Bruce asks, keeping his tone light.

Clark looks back up at him suddenly, and jesus, those eyes of his are insanely blue. "No, no, sorry," Clark says, a flush rising on his cheeks.

Bruce raises an eyebrow. "It's bad form to laugh at the person you're interviewing, Clark." Bruce doesn't actually give a shit, but it's fun to see if Clark can physically blush any harder, which he apparently can, given by the red flooding his cheeks.

Clark looks sharply mortified for a second, then stumbles over himself to explain. "No," he stammers, "It's just that I couldn't-I couldn't picture you, like, actually counting chickens."

Bruce laughs then, a small, barely noticeable snort, but by Batman standards, it most definitely counts. "Caught me red handed," he admits, holding his hands up. "I don't think that I've ever actually touched a live chicken, now that I think about it."

"Well," Clark says grinning, "If you want to rectify that, feel free to swing by my farm in Kansas, Mr. Wayne. She'd love to have you, and I'm sure the chickens would too."

"If I ever find myself needing to pet some chickens, I most certainly will."

Clark grins at him, and Bruce is aware that this doesn't exactly fit his MO, but that's okay. Clark got enough material to write a decent enough article, and if his impression is that Bruce isn't as much of a spectacular asshole as he is to everyone else, well, he'll probably brush it off as flirting.

The interview wraps up easily, and Clark shakes his hand again before shoving loose leaf papers into his similarly haphazard bag. It's funny, and endearing, in an odd sort of way.

In fact, Bruce thinks that Clark's entire existence could probably be summed up as "funny and endearing, in an odd sort of way."

 

 

Batman, Superman and the Flash are all fighting what should be a routine, run of the mill villian, except for the fact that he's wearing some sort of armor that seems to charge him back up, or something like that. Bruce isn't really focusing on the technicalities right now. 

Barry zips past him in a crackle of lightning, and Bruce growls under his breath. This is tiring, and normally he'd let Superman and Barry handle this, but it's right in the middle of Gotham and there's no one he trusts more with his city than himself.

"Batman!" Barry whispers, and Bruce turns to glare at the red blur circling the armored, steel plated man. "I have an idea. Okay, so it looks like this thing has some kind of battery, and anyway, so if you help me out and punch this thing, I think I can turn it off."

Bruce lets out a short clipped affirmation and eyes down the armored man warily. This isn't going to be fun. 

"Yeah, yeah," Barry says after a moment, "I think we can definitely wrap this up soon, which is great 'cuz I've got this like kinda important thing to do-"

Bruce furrows his eyebrows underneath the cowl and barely refrains from shaking his head. "Don't count your chickens," he growls, aware that it probably sounds a little too ominous in the filtered voice of the modulator. 

Somewhere above them, Superman snorts a little into his comm and the noise digs up a recent memory, a niggling feeling of something that Bruce can't quite place. 

After Bruce approaches, the man gets distracted and goes for a few, sloppy blows. In the end, Barry was right, and the suit powers down abruptly after he messes with some of the circuitry in the back. Bruce calls forward the local police and lets them deal with him. Bruce Wayne has a board meeting.

Superman hasn't touched down, is still flying above him, which is more than a little grating, so Bruce waves a hand at him, gesturing him down. 

"That went well." Superman touches down on the ground, light as a feather. He's looking at Bruce, eyes blue, a grin plastered on his face. He'd stayed back due in large part to what Bruce assumes is an attempt to respect Bruce's boundaries, and Bruce respects that. Gotham is his responsibility, not Superman's.

The faint memory of Superman's snort is bothering him though, so he frowns. "What was so funny."

Superman raises an eyebrow, face the personification of confusion. "What?" he says, tilting his head slightly.

Bruce graciously refrains from rolling his eyes. "What was so funny?" he repeats, enunciating clearly. 

"Oh," Superman says, cape fluttering in the wind like it's a fucking Hallmark movie, "I just couldn't picture you actually counting chickens."

Bruce frowns, eyebrows knitting together under the cowl. He's heard that line before. Almost word for word. In the same tone of voice, too.

Superman is still smiling at him as Bruce's mind pieces it together, until suddenly, Bruce finds himself struck with hysterical urge to laugh.

"This is great," he mutters under his breath, and because Superman is Superman, he hears it. 

"What is?"

Bruce snaps his head back up to stare him in the eyes. It's a ridiculous disguise, now that he can see it for himself. In every logical standpoint, it shouldn't work. Except for the fact that it clearly does.

Thick, bulky glasses, to hide Clark's eyes, just a touch too blue to be human. The terrible sense of style, because no one would suspect Superman to have an affinity for plaid and khaki. And mostly, his friendly, country-bumpkin demeanor. 

All at once, everything falls into place, so suddenly and completely it gives Bruce whiplash. 

"I've got to go," he says, ignoring Superman's answering frown. He manages to make it to his meeting on time, and spends the entirety of it thinking about Clark Kent.

 

 

Bruce makes it through his speech with only a few missteps, which is admirable, considering he's currently five days into recovery from a particularly vicious stab wound.

Nothing fatal, just fucking painful.

Every time he so much as moves, pain lances through him, skin pulling at stitches, a bruise so dark it might as well be black surrounding the jagged two inch slash in his side.

He manages to make it to the bathroom before he collapses against the wall of a stall, breathing heavily. He might not have come, except it's a philanthropy dinner for orphans, and really, who better to patron the cause than Gotham's Prince, notorious orphan?

As he leans against the wall, he takes deep, long breaths, trying to slow his racing heartrate. Part of Bruce's brain is calculating how much longer he needs to stay in order to gaurentee a sizable amount of donations, while the other half screams in pain and generally curses the world, which is how Bruce justifies not hearing the sound of quiet footsteps coming up next to him.

"Hey," a voice says gently from around the door, "Everything okay?"

Bruce immediately tenses. He knows that voice, and yep, sure enough, when he glances down, he can see Clark Kent's scuffed leather shoes.

"Everything's lovely," he replies, putting in the effort required to make his voice lilt a little, as if he's just another guy who's drunk too much at a dinner he doesn't give a shit about.

"I know it's you, Mr. Wayne. And I'd feel a lot more comfortable seeing that you're okay myself."

Bruce sighs. Clark's act is a little sickening, especially now that it seems that Superman's goodness isn't just fiction.

He swings open the door, and with confidence he doesn't actually posses, gestures with his arms in a careless motion. "I'm just dandy, Mr. Kent."

Clark glances up and down his body, no doubt scanning for broken bones. He inhales a little sharply when he reaches Bruce's ribs, his eyes snapping up to stare at Bruce intently.

"I knew it," he murmurs, stepping forward. "I knew it was you." His eyes are locked onto Bruce's, and Bruce knows it's a lost cause then and there. Bruce Wayne has no reason for a stab wound in his side, and besides that, he knows he's covered in scars and other gashes that give him away entirely. Plus, there's the fact that just as he recognized Clark, Clark recognized him.

Bruce scowls and drops the smile in favor of a glare. "At least I have a better disguse. Honestly, Kent? Glasses?"

Clark shrugs and ducks his head, similarly caught out. He's smiling a little too, a small, abashed quirk of his lips. It's endearing, in the same sort of way that Bruce had catalogued when he first met him.

"Fooled you, didn't they?" Clark teases.

Bruce glares harder, moving to step around him.

"Hey," Clark says, reaching a hand out to touch Bruce's arm, "Really though, you should go home. That cut is pretty deep, you should be resting."

"I have to be here."

Clark frowns. "You made a speech, I saw you make the rounds. Bruce, you're in pain."

"I'm fine."

"Sure. That why you had to excuse yourself to the bathroom and breathe heavily against a stall for a couple minutes?"

"I'm fine, Kent."

Clark fixes him with a look, those blue eyes softening. "Bruce," he says, quietly, "Let me take you home. You've done more than enough here."

Sighing internally, Bruce gives up. "Fine, Kent. But we're taking my car, not whatever monstrosity yours definitely is."

Clark grins at him, almost insufferably happy. "I'm not complaining."

The car ride to the lake house takes about a half an hour, time that Clark spends telling Bruce stories about his childhood. By the time they make it up the driveway, Bruce has learned more farmhand lingo than he'd ever thought existed.

Clark follows him inside, and only shows signs of leaving when he seems satisfied that Bruce isn't going to slip out the house the moment he does.

"Get some sleep, Bruce," he says, his voice soft.

Bruce glances up at him. "I'll try."

Clark snorts a little and turns to leave, shooting him a fond smile over his shoulder.

 

 

"This is a bad idea," Bruce gasps out as Clark mouths along the length of his neck.

"Probably," Clark says, leaning in to kiss Bruce again, his mouth red and wet.

Bruce tries to cling to rationality, to all the reasons why this is astronomically a mistake, but when Clark's hand rubs at the base of his neck, Bruce finds that he can't remember a single one.

 

 

"Hey."

Bruce glances up from his desk to the sight of Clark walking towards him. He grunts in what he hopes Clark will take as the acknowledgement it is, and turns his focus back to the paperwork in front of him. While Bruce does do most of his work in the cave, there are certain responsibilities he has to fulfill as the CEO of Wayne Industries, despite all pretense.

Clark sits down on one of the chairs and pulls out some of his own work, apparently content. After a few quiet minutes pass, a cup appears in the corner of Bruce's vision, sliding towards him ever so slightly. 

Even from nearly a foot away, Bruce can smell the distinctive notes of coffee, black and strong. It can't be Clark's, then. Clark drinks bastardized  coffee, so diluted with cream and sugar it might as well be cream with a bit of coffee, rather than the other way around. When Bruce looks up, Clark is watching him, eyes soft.

"You brought me coffee."

Clark's smile blossoms into a grin. "I brought you coffee," he confirms.

"Why?"

"I know this might be a foreign concept to you, but sometimes, people in a relationship do nice things for each other. I knew you were still at the office, and I thought it'd be nice. So. I brought you coffee."

Clark's tone is self-indulgent, like he's explaining something to a toddler. Normally, it would be enough to make Bruce bristle, but his brain is caught up on Clark's smile and the word relationship, on an endless loop.

"People in a relationship," Bruce repeats, innane.

"Yeah, Bruce. You know, people you have sex with and go on dates with and occasionally save the world with. People in a relationship."

"Us," Bruce repeats, because confirmation couldn't hurt. It isn't that he doesn't want this to be a relationship, he does, he so desperately does. It's that Bruce has never done this before. He's never been in a functioning relationship with a normal person (although the validity of Superman being normal is somewhat questionable) before, and therefore, is unaware of the parameters.

After all, what, exactly, defines a relationship? Two people having sex? No. Two people having sex on a regular basis? Possibly, but still, no. Two people willing to take a kryptonian bullet for each other who are also having sex on a regular basis? Probably, but still not definitive.

Clark rolls his eyes, but an undercurrent of fondness cuts the harshness of the gesture. "Unless you can come up with another way to define us other than collegues, yes."

Bruce nods then, and tries to process what just happened. It's not that he wasn't aware that what he and Clark have been doing is meaningful, it's that the idea is entirely novel.

He, Bruce Wayne, is in a relationship.

(Alfred will be glad to hear it, if his subtle hints are indication enough.)

Bruce isn't a 17 year old girl getting asked to prom and as such, he doesn't partake in anything as humiliating as sqealing or jumping. But when he looks back down, his heartbeat has kicked up a notch in a way that has nothing to do with the coffee, and even without looking, he knows that Clark is aiming a wide, dopey grin down at his notepad.

 

 

"Morning," Clark says, his voice rough and low with sleep. Bruce doesn't know if that's a genetic Kryptonian quirk, or if Clark has merely grown used to affecting it, but either way, it feels markedly domestic. 

He ambles by past Bruce and grabs the orange toothbrush. He pauses briefly to smile at Bruce, his eyes crinkling at the corners, leaning in to press a soft, familiar kiss to Bruce's mouth.

Bruce looks at him in the reflection of the bathroom mirror. He's wearing an oversized  t-shirt displaying the logo of some band Bruce has never heard of, and his hair is mussed in a way that makes something in Bruce's chest tighten.

Suddenly, and as overwhelming as nightfall in Gotham, Bruce feels affection sweep through him. He would've never thought this would work, Clark in the corner of his benefits, smiling warmly at him, Clark in his office, dropping off coffee because he felt like it, Clark beside him during League missions, fighting in harmony. 

Clark, introducing him to his mother as if they haven't already met, Clark, who still kisses Bruce a little bit sloppily whenever he finds a newspaper flipped to one of his own articles. Clark, who smiles at Bruce like he sees no reason not to, as if it's second nature. 

Clark, who brought an orange toothbrush to Bruce's house, where everything is glass and polished granite. 

Bruce steps forward and pulls said toothbrush out of Clark's mouth to lean forward and kiss him, hooking an arm around his neck. Clark makes a startled noise before he relaxes, bringing his hands up to wrap around Bruce's waist.

Clark tastes like toothpaste and the whole thing is too messy to be perfect, but Bruce can't find it in him to care. 

"I guess you're in a good mood then," Clark says when they pull apart, beaming at him.

Bruce smiles back helplessly as Clark turns, walking back into the bedroom.

Once Clark disappears from his sight, Bruce realizes that he's still holding Clark's toothbrush, and places it gently back into the holder. It slots neatly in place next to Bruce's own black toothbrush, as if it was made to do exactly that, and Bruce can't help but wonder if it was.

Notes:

I still have never watched a Batman or Superman movie, or read a single comic book, so this entire thing is written based off of fanfic.

I might make this into a series! so if you have any suggestions for progressing relationship moments or milestones or just general ideas about that, feel free to drop them in the comments! (please no kids or marriage tho)

(I've been working on this fic for months, which is the longest I've ever worked on any fic, so i hope y'all like
it)

kudos and comments make me really happy!

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