Chapter Text
“Will you cut that out? You’re going to give yourself a hernia, Clark.”
The annoyed tone of Lois’ remark startled the journalist out of his deep concentration, causing the pen he was gnawing within an inch of its life to explode, splattering the front of his white button-up and navy tie with fresh, black ink. He huffed frustratedly, turning to fire a comeback at Lois, but was met with her back as she strode across the newsroom in the opposite direction. Out of his peripheral vision, he noted Jimmy gearing up to make some smartass sarcastic comment from the desk parallel. Clark decided he didn't care to hear it, grumbling under his breath as he stormed out of the bullpen, fussing over his ruined shirt.
Closing the door to the men’s room behind him, Clark sighed and studied himself in the mirror. The damage to the shirt was likely unfixable. And the rest of him didn’t look too good, either. His blue eyes had been burdened by dark circles, and his lips rendered raw from worrying. Cold water wet calloused hands as he tried to scrub the exhausted frown off his expression and attempted to bring order to black curls that had been the victim of Clark’s aggravated tugging.
He knew that Lois was right, to an extent. Running himself into the ground wasn’t going to help him connect the string of suspicious activity and money funneling that he just knew had something to do with Lex Luthor, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop when he felt so close to cracking it.
Suddenly, it clicked.
Walking back to his desk, sporting an obviously failed attempt to wash out the fresh ink, he hastily shoved his most recent research into his briefcase before speeding out of the Daily Planet building.
After ducking into an alley to shed his work clothes, Superman emerged from the orange horizon and flew towards the dark skyline of Gotham.
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“Master Bruce, why don't you try sleeping for a spell and come back to this issue when you're in a clearer state of mind…and body”, Alfred furrowed his brow in concern, eyeing the younger man’s crusting black eye makeup and sweat-slick muddy hair, frayed from the detective’s frustrated tugging. Bruce made a dismissive grunt and continued his pacing. Alfred sighed and turned on his heel. The younger man heard him mutter “Worth a try, I suppose..” as he paced out of the room.
It was anything but unusual for the millionaire to be stressed, but Alfred knew he was helpless to stop his surrogate son's warpath when his incessant pacing and muttering was this intense.
He had failed again. It was unheard of for a string of shady activity to stump him for this long. He let out a frustrated huff through clenched teeth. Looked at the journal entries and photos scattered on the floor in front of him. It just didn’t add up. The bat cursed himself one more time and turned on his heel, storming out of the room to don his armor.