Chapter Text
The Watchtower comms sparked to life, static flaring across the screen before the image settled into two blurry silhouettes. Green Lantern leaned casually against the console, green ring faintly glowing, eyes sharp but amused. The Flash slouched beside him, grin lazy and unconcerned, like this was just another afternoon’s entertainment. They’d taken over Superman and Batman’s monitor duty after they had to run off to rescue Damian and Jon.
“Spooky. Supes. Status report?” Hal asked, tone carrying enough suspicion to make Dick hesitate for a heartbeat, but not nearly enough to undo all the careful preparation.
Dick stepped into the frame first, donning a spare Bat-suit pulled from one of the glass casings within the cave. Unlike his usual lightweight armor, this one was bulkier, designed for maximum protection. The cowl fit snugly but unfamiliar, and the cape fell heavy over his shoulders. He folded his arms over his chest, voice dropping into a low, gravelly approximation of Bruce’s measured growl. “…Mission complete. The kids… are good,” he said, stiff and awkward, trying to match the iconic authority of the Dark Knight.
Conner stood beside him, having slipped into a League-issued Superman suit several sizes too large. The shoulders drooped past his own, sleeves swallowed his wrists, and the cape bunched in ridiculous folds around his feet. Although half cloned from Clark himself, the similarities merely ended at the facial features. He forced a smile so wide it looked like it might crack his face. “Truth! Justice! Hope!” he added, boots slipping slightly as he tried to stand heroically.
Dick’s gaze cut to him, lips twitching in an attempt to not burst out in laughter as Conner’s boots caught on the cape, sending him stumbling into Dick’s side. The cape slid sideways, half covering his face, flapping as he scrambled upright.
Tim sat at the side, fingers flying across the console, deliberately keeping the feed blurry, static-filled, and poorly framed. He muted the audio any time something unecessary was said, preventing them from being caught red-handed. “Perfect,” he hissed under his breath. “Fuzzy enough that Hal and Barry won’t notice how terrible you two are at this.”
Jason’s metallic laughter drifted faintly from just outside the shuttle hub, sharp and amused. “I can’t believe they’re actually buying it,” he said, voice modulated back to its usual.
Conner inhaled sharply, trying to square his shoulders under the cavernous suit. “…All under control,” he said to the two on the screen, voice too loud and strained, forcing himself to behave like a poor caricature of Superman. Hal and Barry squinted their eyes in suspicion.
Dick cleared his throat, muttering under his breath. “…Yes. Everything’s secure,” his attempt at calm authority wobbling with tension. He waved a hand, motioning someone to come over.
Movement came from the side of the frame. Jon and Damian stepped forward, carefully positioned so Hal and Barry could see them. The Supersons appeared in front of Dick and Conner, their faces half-blurred by static but unmistakably safe.
Dick’s hand shot out instinctively, resting on Damian’s shoulder in a pseudo-Bruce gesture of reassurance. Damian stiffened immediately, grimacing and tilting his head away. “Do not touch me,” he muttered, clipped, though not loud enough to break the feed.
Dick froze, muttering something about Damian being a little asshole, then let his hand drop. Conner gave a stiff thumbs-up, cape flopping, grin proud but awkward.
Hal’s eyes softened. “They’re fine. Both of them,” he said, voice casual but sincere. Barry leaned back, shrugging, clearly unconcerned. “Yep. Looks like everyone’s accounted for. Good work… or, uh, whatever that was.”
The comms clicked off, leaving the shuttle quiet except for the hum of life support and Jason’s muffled laughter echoing down the corridor. Dick and Conner exchanged a glance, relief and exhaustion mingling. Outside the window, stars twinkled silently. Inside, the small crew exhaled in unison, having successfully convinced the two easiest-to-fool League members that the supersons were perfectly safe and that Batman and Superman were definitely not stranded and desperately trying to reach them.
Bruce stood rigid, cape snapping lightly in the faint wind, jaw tight, every muscle coiled. He scanned the skyline, weighing every option. No League transport visible, no shuttle bay in sight, and to make things worse—a flightless Superman. The comms were dead—every attempt to contact the Watchtower or even nearby satellites returned static, bursts of indecipherable noise. He twisted his wrist, tapping the sleek computer embedded there, only to be met with the flickering faces of miniature laughing Robins.
“Tim,” Bruce muttered under his breath, teeth clenched. The tiny avatars giggled on the screen, looping, impossibly cheerful and bouncing across the screen like old DVD logos. Every attempt to contact for help was met with a cruel joke. Bruce’s shoulders began vibrating with barely contained anger, the air around him sharp as ozone. He knew exactly what this was—an intrusion, a deliberate tampering. His children had cut him off, boxed him in, all so they could run their little scheme.
And it wasn’t just the violation that grated. It was the intent. He knew where this was leading.
Clark stepped closer, unfazed by the storm brewing beside him. He rested a broad hand between Bruce’s shoulder blades, thumb drawing idle, grounding circles through Kevlar. “It’s okay, B,” he said, calm and certain, even under Rao’s oppressive red glare. “The kids, the League… they can handle things for a couple of weeks. Really. We don’t need to worry.”
Bruce’s head snapped toward him, glare sharp beneath the cowl. “Two weeks? On a red sun planet? You’re powerless, Clark. We have no ship, no communications, nothing but alien terrain and—” He gestured curtly at the closest glowing billboard, where a purple, three-eyed alien posed in something meant to be seductive. “…that.”
Clark’s mouth twitched into an easy smile, his head tipping as if to defuse Bruce’s anger with sheer gentleness. He was doing a good job at pretending the added weight of gravity didn’t phase him, despite his forehead shining with sweat. “Vacation,” he said simply. “Two weeks. We explore, have some fun, and get some rest. God knows the last time you slept a full night. Could be worse.”
Vacation. The word hit Bruce like a bad joke. His jaw set, harder than steel. It wasn’t the time for rest, not when his children had deliberately sabotaged him. They weren’t subtle. He knew exactly what they were doing—sending him and Clark off, forcing proximity, betting that endless hours pressed together in this neon nightmare would lead to something inevitable.
But nothing about this was inevitable. Nothing was simple. Not when Clark was still raw from the divorce, not when Bruce had never been able to untangle his own feelings long enough to imagine a future. They had always been complicated, impossibly so. And now the children had ripped away his ability to hide behind distance or duty. Bruce felt the trap tightening.
Clark’s hand lingered, warm and heavy, too familiar. They’d come far enough in their relationship throughout the years that this comforting touch was normal to them, but now it was too much. Bruce shook it off, almost brusque, needing the contact gone before it unraveled him further. “They couldn’t book me a cruise to the Bahamas?” he muttered. “They had to strand me on a different planet with you?”
The faint crack of hurt across Clark’s features made something twist in Bruce’s chest. He covered quickly, low and bitter: “I just don’t think their goal is that simple, is what I meant.”
It wasn’t. They thought they were being clever, that pushing the two of them into proximity would force the pieces to fall into place and that Clark would magically reciprocate whatever Bruce felt. Bruce’s own feelings were a maze he had never trusted himself to navigate. There was no neat resolution waiting at the end of this trap—only tension. Only risk. And now he was locked in a cosmic city that never slept, forced to spend every waking second beside the one man who made it hardest to keep his walls up.
Clark didn’t press. Instead, he crouched by one of the duffel bags and rifled through the contents until he produced a glossy brochure. Alien glyphs danced across the page in bold neon colors, incomprehensible, but the map printed inside had one building circled in red. A note scrawled in Dick’s handwriting marked it: Go here and show your fake IDs xoxo
Clark held it up, lips quirking despite the absurdity of the situation. “Come on, B. Let’s at least find somewhere else to figure this out.”
Bruce said nothing, only letting his eyes linger on the circled mark, on the careless handwriting of a son who thought this would make him confront the truth he refused to face.
In no time, they made it to the center of the city. The streets were crowded with beings of every size and shape. A cluster of tall, willowy figures with translucent skin moved in a pack, their bones glowing faintly beneath the surface as they spoke in a chorus of clicks. Near them, a squat, four-armed vendor stirred a vat of something neon pink, ladling it into floating bowls for a line of customers. A group of children, scaled and finned like amphibians, darted between the legs of the crowd, their laughter bubbling like water poured into glass.
When Bruce and Clark passed, eyes followed—not the black cowl or the familiar “S” stretched across fabric, but their pale skin, hair, no horns or bioluminescence. Ordinary in a place where ordinary didn’t exist.
Clark, stripped of his Kryptonian strength beneath the red sun, kept his posture easy, offering a smile to those who stared. Bruce did not bother; his scowl was carved in stone, every line of his body radiating tension. Together they looked less like tourists and more like fugitives adrift in someone else’s home.
The building circled on the map rose above the city like a jewel. A resort—massive, gleaming, draped in signs that shimmered with projected advertisements no translation device could touch. At the entrance, attendants in flowing, iridescent uniforms bowed them inside with rehearsed grace.
The lobby was cavernous, all polished marble and cascading water features that glowed from within as alien guests milled about. At the reception desk, Bruce and Clark approached together, drawing the staff’s undivided attention. The attendant’s features were smooth and shifting, their voice melodic but incomprehensible. Clark attempted to respond, polite as ever, but the language barrier turned his words into blank silence. Bruce’s jaw tightened as he silently slid their fake IDs across the desk, along with a sticky note Dick had left stuck to the cards. He thought, too late, that he should have probably read the fake names that had been given to them before handing them off to a stranger.
The attendant’s bug eyes flickered from the note to them, widening slightly before her lips turned into what could only be a smile. They spoke quickly to another staff member, who nodded and hurried off. A series of gestures followed—welcoming, warm, almost conspiratorial. Keys were pressed into Bruce’s hand, the staff bowing low before ushering them down a wide hall and up an elevator. Once in front of their destination, the staff gestured toward a gilded door and strode off.
Clark raised a brow at Bruce. “That seemed… easy.”
Bruce grunted. “Too easy.”
The doors slid open to reveal their room—and for the first time that night, Bruce’s composure cracked.
The suite was enormous, walls draped in gauzy fabric that glowed with soft pink light. A scattering of rose-colored petals was strewn across the singular bed where a myriad of candles lit a path towards it. In the center of the room, like a shrine, sat a sunken hot tub carved in the shape of a heart, already steaming invitingly. A bottle of something sparkling chilled on the bedside table, two glasses set neatly beside it.
Clark stopped dead in his tracks, his lips parting in shock then curling into suppressed laughter. Bruce’s expression hardened into absolute, silent horror, his left eye twitching under the cowl.
They’d been put in a goddamn honeymoon suite.
The door hissed shut behind them, sealing with a sound that was just a little too final for Bruce’s liking. Without a word, his cowl lenses narrowed, shifting into scan mode. He swept the walls, ceiling, fixtures—every movement sharp, precise, economical.
“Checking for surveillance,” he muttered to no one in particular. He crouched by the baseboards, gloved fingers brushing along seams, his ear tuned for even the faintest hum of hidden tech. Nothing. No cameras, no mics, no trackers.
He straightened, mouth a thin line. “I’m surprised. Thought they’d want to watch after everything they’ve done to get us here.”
“Gross,” Clark said immediately, nose wrinkling. Realizing too late what that implied, his voice pitched higher, tripping over itself. “Uh—not that we’d be doing anything that’d be gross for them to watch, of course—”
Bruce rolled his eyes and tugged the cowl back, letting it drape against his neck. He stepped closer, gaze sharpening. “How are you feeling?”
Clark rolled his shoulders, as if trying to summon strength by instinct. Nothing came. He pressed both palms against the dresser and pushed. The wood didn’t budge. His jaw tightened. The absence of power felt alien, a hollowness where there should have been unshakable certainty.
“…Nothing,” he admitted, breath shallow. “No strength. No hearing beyond human range. Flight’s gone. Everything’s gone.”
Bruce cataloged it all: the faint slump of his shoulders, the sharper edge to his breathing, the sheen of sweat gathering along his brow. He didn’t need confirmation. He already knew. “You’re vulnerable.”
Clark gave a small shrug, though his smile didn’t quite hold. “Guess that means I’ll have to trust you to keep me alive.”
“I’m sorry about this whole thing.” Bruce unclasped one gauntlet, setting it aside with a muted click. His voice was low, edged with something like guilt. “It seems like my demon spawn are a bad influence on Conner and Jon.”
“A bad influence on Conner?” Clark barked out a laugh, bright, disbelieving. He shook his head. “As for Jonathan… well, he’s needed friends that take his mind off things now more than ever. After the divorce…”
The words trailed into silence, his expression tightening, something old and raw flickering across his face. Bruce had heard almost nothing about what happened between Lois and Clark. Anytime Clark tried to bring it up, his voice would catch, his eyes rimmed red, and the subject would dissolve into silence. The only things Bruce knew for certain: Lois still spoke to him, still worked with him, still co-parented amicably. Beyond that—nothing.
Bruce never asked. The less I know, the better, he thought. Dealing with a lovesick Clark was already difficult without having to hear how much he still loved his black haired, blue-eyed soulmate. Nineteen years had been long enough for Bruce’s own heartache to calcify into something strong enough to withstand it, make it dull enough that he could function around it. But reminders—fresh, pulsing, living reminders—only threatened to crack through the armor.
Bruce remembered the day Clark had told him. They’d been standing on a rooftop in that rare sliver of calm between patrols, the city humming quietly below. Clark’s voice had carried a nervous brightness when he said, “Lois said yes.”
Bruce had given the expected response: “Congratulations” with all the smoothness of a man who’d rehearsed it a thousand times in his head. He’d even managed something that passed for a smile. Inside, though, the words had carved him hollow. Yet he had made peace with it, in his way. Because if anyone deserved forever, it was Clark Kent. And if anyone could hold him steady through decades of battles, near-deaths, and impossible burdens, it was Lois Lane. Their love seemed unshakable, the one constant Bruce could never hope to compete with.
He’d built his resolve around that certainty, told himself he didn’t need to want more, didn’t need to imagine what it might have been like if Clark had chosen differently. Lois was Clark’s forever. Bruce had accepted it. He had to.
Which made the divorce all the more destabilizing. If even that bond could fracture, what did that say about anything Bruce thought he understood about them—or about Clark?
He glanced over at the Kryptonian now, watching him attempt to laugh off his powerlessness, pretending the red sun didn’t dig under his skin like a weight pressing him earthward. Bruce could see it, though—the faint lines of strain at his eyes, the smile that didn’t quite reach them.
And maybe that was the truth of it. Maybe Clark needed this more than he did. Time away from the League. From Lois. From the relentless expectations of Superman. A forced pause, even if it came in the ugliest, most contrived way possible.
Bruce still hated it—hated the manipulation, the vulnerability, the inevitability of being trapped together for days on end. But he could live with discomfort. He always had. What he couldn’t live with was Clark shouldering everything alone.
So Bruce told himself he’d make it tolerable. A decent distraction, if nothing else. He didn’t have to agree with this so-called “vacation,” didn’t have to relax, didn’t have to want what the kids clearly wanted for them. He only had to make sure Clark walked away from it lighter than he’d arrived.
If Bruce was good at anything, it was burying his own wants and putting on a mask. This time, a different one—of a billionaire playboy, careless and glib, a man who had nothing better to do than indulge in whatever absurdities this planet called leisure. If it kept Clark from brooding, from spiraling back into the shadows of a home he no longer shared with Lois, then Bruce could play the role. He had played far more difficult parts before.