Chapter Text
To say finding Kirk swinging upside down from the rafters in the watchtower was surprising would be an overstatement.
Batman always hated what he had become, where Superman found him beautiful for it; a survivor.
Hernan would’ve been able to see his experiment turn sour if he wasn’t visiting Valentina that day, so he berates himself for leaving Kirk alone in front of his lab work while Bekka was gone. X-ray vision gives him good insight to where Kirk is nested, high up in the constructed scaffolding in the ceiling above his birth-ship. It’s an odd place to find him, but Hernan can’t bring himself to approach Kirk yet, observing what he has done to his body now…
He’s curled up in the beams, shredded clothes and strangely a collection of metal rods from the ship below him support themselves like a little hammock in which he cries in. It is a cry, Hernan knows this from growing up with hounds, the sharp and incessant whine dragged from their throats. Superman doesn’t need a light to see what has happened; Kirk, normally slim and small, bulky and jagged edges, cloaked in coarse brown fur and thin membranes stretching from his wrists to his hips. Wings.
In all definitions, Kirk Langstrom would now be considered a bat.
With a frustrated sigh, Hernan takes flight to slowly rise up to the new nest, looking at Kirk’s face with pity. His ears look so soft… The bat is whining too hard to hear his approach, so Hernan gently runs a hand across his wing where it is pressed across his eyes.
Kirk startles with a violent screech and jumps, red eyes ballooned from his skull as he fumbles between escaping and attacking and ends up toppling from his nest to the rafter below with a crack.
Superman is too shocked by the whole revelation to help at first, and it hurts not being able to do anything. With a heavy heart, Hernan notices a plethora of drained rats and squirrels in the space Kirk once occupied. The sheer agony of seeing it spurs him into action, floating down to help the bat scramble to keep hold of the truss.
It’s still Kirk under that animalistic face and swaths of flea-infested fur, evident only because Hernan knows those eyes and those teeth so well, the way he held himself before appearing once again in this new body.
Swallowing the heavy lump in his throat, Hernan raises both hands to the hissing creature. “Kirk, you’re okay buddy, cálmate. Todo va a estar bien. ”
The large ears atop his head flick and swivel at every minute sound, and he tunes into the words Hernan is saying, lips still peeled in a snarl yet hostile tension fleeing his shoulders quickly. There looks to be words on his tongue but he cannot find them, only instead letting the quick clicks and cries free from his jaws. It takes roughly half an hour of cooing and being snapped at to be able to even touch Kirk again, and Hernan runs a labour-hardy palm across the bristled back of his friend, a last-ditch effort to comfort the grieving man.
The bat chortles and climbs back up to his nest with Hernan, glaring only briefly when the stranger makes himself comfortable there first using super speed, discarding the rat corpses. Kirk doesn’t seem to mind the company after that, trilling into soft purrs and scratching up Hernan’s clothes as he wears them to get comfortable.
A dozen attempts at petting are thwarted with a locked jaw around his hand, but Kirk’s addled mind soon learns that the flesh is impenetrable and he would much rather keep his fangs intact, so the grumpy goober lets Hernan play around with whatever he sees fit, growing to admire the positive attention he receives.
Much of this new body is similar to the previous Kirk -- his arms are still pretty skinny and his hips are insanely hollow, bowed only a fragment at the tailbone where his ripped leggings give way to a hint of a tail. His chest is a much paler shade, sparsely covered in bat-fuzz and Hernan rubs soothing circles into Kirk’s firm upturned belly as he twists around in his doze. A snort, and Kirk licks his nose before pressing it into Hernan’s inner elbow, warming the already heated skin with gentle breaths.
He’s still in pain; the bat’s ribs quake with each movement and his claws are shaky, but his growing peace is tended by the sweet kisses of fingers pressing past the thick fur and into rough skin.
“ Buen chico, estás bien. What a snuggle-bug, Kirk... you devilish little blood-sucker.” It’s affectionate, not reprimanding, and Kirk glows under the praise and tone.
Hernan knows these changes will leave by next twilight, for he can see the serum that he had injected swimming about his bloodstream. It looks distilled already. In the meantime, Hernan whispers little words in his native tongue and watches Kirk writhe in his lap to chase sleep. By the time they both pass out cold, Hernan thinks that he had found the “secret spot” Bekka was gossiping about long ago. A sensitive expanse of skin under his jaw and around his chin that makes the purrs rev into full-blown thunder.
Bekka, telling him about how she had let Kirk feed and tickled his chin whilst he drank and found out how elated it made him. He misses her, and he knows Kirk does too.
The sudden spike in distress wakes up Kirk before he is fully unconscious, and the bat snuffles and twists up to prod Hernan’s cheek with his nose, flicking his tongue out to taste the skin on his face. Superman’s body relaxes, and he is soon too-far-gone to wake back up, so Kirk let’s instinct take over, and cuddles up under Hernan and falls fast asleep.
Memories of familiar hands smoothing over his stressed and scarred body flood his usually gored dreams, and for the first time in a long time, Kirk knows peace.