Batfic/Supermanfic: The Submerged Truth (Bruce/Clark)

[lady_bug_kay]

 Title: The Submerged Truth
Author: ladybugkay
Fandom: DCU
Pairing: Bruce/Clark
Rating: PG
Warnings: a bit sappy and self-indulgent
Word Count: 979
Summary: A relationship with Clark brings to light certain truths about Bruce's sleeping habits.
Disclaimer: DC owns both the boys and their alter egos. Their (other) nocturnal activities belong to me.
A/N: This is for you, jen_in_japan. I've owed you a birthday fic for ages, now, but my Bruce/Clark muses have been completely AWOL until now. I hope this also works as an apology for the shameful delay. It's a bit awkward, I think, as it's been so long since I've written this pairing.

“Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.”

~Virginia Woolf

 

“It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward.”

~Baltasar Gracian

 

 

He lives his life in the back and forth between lies and truths.

 

Batman’s existence is all about laying bare the truth and facing it head-on, eyes open wide. He delves deep into the shadows and the graveyards, unearthing skeletons and stripping away illusions and deceptions. He lives in the dark and forces the crimes of others out into the harsh and unforgiving light of day. Batman makes people see, makes them know; makes them unable to look away.

 

Bruce Wayne, on the other hand, is all about pretense. He dissembles. He adopts a persona of carelessness to conceal the truth about himself, his behaviour in public nothing but an act intended solely to deceive and deflect. Bruce Wayne is mendacity played to the hilt. There are things about which he lies even to himself, pretending not to know, or trying to forget or ignore. Self-awareness is not always beneficial in the day-to-day life of a hero or a vigilante, and Bruce has never been known for emotional honesty. There are only two people in his life who accept this about him and love him anyway.

 

Yet there are some truths about himself even Bruce is willing to admit, and surprisingly or unsurprisingly, most of them seem to be related in some way or another to Clark.

 

Clark, who lies just as elaborately and as consistently as Bruce does about who he is in his ‘real’ life, while Superman is just as obviously intent on finding and shining light on the truth as Batman. They are alike in nearly as many ways as they are different, he and Clark.

 

Another truth, that.

 

One of the things Bruce cannot (or will not) lie to himself about is something so innocuous and yet so undeniable that it has attained a significance far beyond what could be expected. His sleeping habits have rarely been a concern in Bruce’s life, but certain developments that have arisen since the start of this new phase of his relationship with Clark have imbued them with an importance they have never before possessed. They mean something, now, in small and large ways that are almost frightening in their irrefutability.

 

Because the truth is, Bruce likes to fall asleep with Clark lying on top of him.

 

And he knows why.

 

He loves how it feels. He likes the heavy pressure on his chest, the slight strain on his ribs and the sensation that is evocative of suffocation, but is not precisely uncomfortable, all the same. He likes it for different reasons, but he likes it all the time. Every time. Every night.

 

Every chance he has of experiencing it.

 

Sometimes it happens when Clark falls asleep unintentionally after sex – after sweat-dampened skin and gasping breaths, after drawn-out moans and muttered curses – and then Bruce laughs to himself, trying not to jostle Clark as he does, and his own slide into sleep is smooth and effortless. Relaxed. Gentle. Other times, Clark pulls him close and simply surrounds him, enfolding him gently but firmly, and without any intention of letting go. This occurs most often after a genuinely bad day for one or both of their costumed counterparts, and then Bruce breathes deeply and concentrates on Clark’s reassuringly steady inhalation and exhalation. Sleep comes slowly, reluctantly, but comfortingly. All is well.

 

And then there are the times when Bruce needs to feel the weight of Clark’s body pressing his into the mattress, when the urge is all-consuming, flooding over him and drowning him in its intensity. Those times, he tugs insistently at Clark’s arm, forcibly pulling and maneuvering until Clark is lying full-length atop Bruce, spread out and covering nearly every beseeching inch of skin. He craves the solidity of Clark’s presence, then, the incontrovertible fact of his existence, and he covets the feeling of all that bulk – all that muscle and brightness and heart – holding him down. Holding him in. He likes knowing that he can’t pull away unless Clark allows it, and he enjoys the illusion that he has no choice but to do what is necessary for himself. Sleep becomes a surrender to the needs of his own body, a willing capitulation and a voluntary step into the land of dreams, remembered or not. It is a gift Bruce likes to pretend he is forced to give himself: truth disguised as untruth.

 

He can admit to certain facts even as he denies the meaning behind them.

 

Because if he is honest about it all, these are times of selfishness, of self-indulgence, the kind he never allows.

 

There is even a part of Bruce, small but strong, and protected from the light in dark cloth and shadows, that revels in the unshakeable certainty that anyone who wants to get to him – to hurt him or annoy him or just to take him away from this bed and this man that he loves with every piece of his fractured soul – has to get through Superman to do it. He feels safe, is safe – the protected instead of the protector, for once – and he likes it. On some nights, on those nights, he needs it.

 

Sometimes he can’t lie about that.

 

It isn’t every time he sleeps, not every time Clark lies on top of him in the early hours of morning or the late hours of afternoon, but it isn’t a rare occurrence, either. Those times, however, the times when nothing will do but that he live for a few hours in the warm space between soft sheets and a slumbering Clark, those are the times Bruce finds the soundest sleep, the deepest. Those are the hours of rest from which he wakes the easiest and the most contented.

 

Not every night, but the nights that mean the most.

 

It is a truth even Bruce will admit, and one that Batman has no need to force into the light.

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