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Bruce cursed out everyone and everything. However, he finally managed to get Clark lying down in the batcave’s medbay. Bruce hurriedly pulled off the gloves of his suit and pulled off the cowl. He couldn’t get much further than that. He took stabilizing breaths to calm his racing heart because that would do nothing but worry Clark further. He shoved on some latex gloves and grabbed the box full of everything he would need to treat a Kyriptonian. He kicked the chair over to the bed and situated himself so he'd be next to Clark. Everything was going to be fine. He was severally talented in many ways, he could- would still his hands so they wouldn’t tremble. He could do this.
Bruce started stripping off the bandage that was helping to somewhat keep the blood inside of Clark. He ignored Clark’s hisses of pain. The wound was ugly, red and swollen. Blood was slipping down his skin from the wound, excited to leave his body for once. It was a gunshot wound on the side of his abdomen. Kryptonite bullet. Barry had gotten it out before it could cause any real, lasting damage but Bruce was nothing if not paranoid. Bruce reached into the box and pulled out a bottle of distilled water and doused the wound. Bruce had to ignore Clark’s cut-off groan once again. Bruce grabbed some tweezers and a scalpel and started digging in the wound, looking for any leftover shells or shrapnel. He kept his expression neutral so as to not push Clark to worry further.
Anyway, Bruce doubted there was any- wait.
“Clark,” Bruce says, much more urgent than before, unable to keep some of the worry out of his voice. “Barry didn’t get all of the residue out.”
“Mmwuh?” When Bruce looked up, Clark’s eyes looked bleary and unable to focus on anything but then he looked at Bruce and his eyes cleared. “What, sorry?”
Bruce glared at the offending shell which was glowing a subdued green. Fuck Barry. Fasted man alive and yet it was his fault- no. Bruce was being irrational. Now wasn’t the time for the blame-game. Besides, it wasn’t (entirely) Barry’s fault. “There’s still some of the bullet inside of you. It's part of the reason you haven't started healing.”
Clark looked confused. “Okay?”
Bruce held back a sigh. “I need to fish it out. It will hurt,” he warned.
Clark leaned his head back and let it hit the pillow. He looked up at the ceiling. “Can you distract me?” He winced as Bruce sprayed the wound again.
“With what?” Bruce stripped the now bloody gloves off and threw them in the trash. He wheeled the chair over to grab another set and pulled them on. How was he supposed to distract Clark? Distracting Dick was easy. He just has to lead Dick to a topic he enjoyed or knew a lot about and let him talk as much as he wanted but Bruce doubted Clark would find that as effective.
Clark bit off another groan. “I don’t know. Want to play Twenty Questions?”
Bruce paused, the tweezers hovering over Clark’s wound. “Very well.” God, he sounded like Alfred. That was horrifying and he never wanted to ever have to deal with that again.
They stay like that for a moment, Bruce frozen in place and Clark silent. “You go first,” Clark said.
“What questions am I supposed to ask?” Bruce figured it would be impolite to start digging around in Clark’s wound so he didn’t have to play the game. God, he was starting to sound like Alfred.
“Um, something like “What’s your favourite colour”.”
“What’s your favourite colour.” It came out more like a statement. Bruce was bad at this.
“Triangle,” Clark promptly replied. What- “Do you like men?”
Okay. How was he supposed to answer that? His hand went forward on autopilot, forcing the ends of the tweezers to butt into the bullet fragment. Clark full-on shouted.
That worked too.
“Yes,” Bruce found himself saying. Now, realistically, there was the rational part of Bruce that was saying what the fuck is going on, what are you doing? but he could barely hear that because his best friend was bleeding out in front of him so he focused on that. He moved the tweezers around more to try and get a hold of the bullet fragment. They pinched at flesh inside of the wound and Clark whimpered.
“Really?” Clark asked.
Bruce found his lips quirking up. He glanced up at Clark through his eyelashes to see the man looking back at him, looking like he’d forgotten about the wound entirely. “Hey, it’s my turn.” He turned his gaze back down to what he was doing and used the scalpel to make way for the tweezers. The scalpel didn’t actually cut into Clark’s flesh but it was helpful to give Bruce more room. “Am I your best friend?”
“Yes,” Clark said without any hesitation. He winced as the scalpel got too close to the kryptonite and cut into the weak flesh. “Do you currently have romantic feelings for anyone?”
Bruce’s brain was fully on autopilot at that point. He almost had the bullet fragment. “Yes. Do you like living in the city more than the farm?”
“No. Is the person you like someone you work with?” There was a tinge of hope in Clark’s voice but Bruce got the bullet fragment. He had it clamped between the tweezers. He was too busy carefully starting to pull it out to focus on Clark right now. The bullet fragment then FUCKING BROKE. That was rude, by the way. It managed to break itself into three separate parts but it didn’t look to have been more than that. He grabbed the smallest part and began to carefully remove it.
“Yes.” Bruce felt a rush of relief pulse through him when he lifted the tweezers out of Clark. He put the piece of bullet onto a tray. “Do you like cats better than dogs?”
“No.” Bruce dug the tweezers back in but Clark didn’t make any reaction. Hey, maybe this was working. “Is it me?”
Bruce gripped the second smallest part with the tweezers and started pulling it from the wound. He freed himself space with the scalpel and Clark winced, his fingers twisting into the bedsheets and oooh Bruce did not need to know what that looked like ohmygod- storing that for later. “Is what you?” He pulled the piece of bullet from the wound and placed it onto the tray. One more. He quickly went back in for the biggest part which was easier to get a hold of.
“Do you like me?” Clark asked, his voice starting to twist with pain.
“Of course I do,” Bruce said. His entire focus was on getting this last piece out. The tweezers skidded across the surface and seemed to push it further into Clark. He groaned out in pain and Bruce held back his own wince. “You’re my best friend, why wouldn’t I-”
“Am I the one you have romantic feelings for?” Clark rushed out as Bruce managed to get the last piece out. He smiled at his work before registering what Clark had said. Then he registered what he had said.
“Oh.” Bruce turned and placed the last bullet fragment onto the tray. He pulled off the gloves and flicked on the sunlamp to help Clark heal. He stood and chucked the gloves into the trash. He walked over to the sink to wash his hands. Some of the blood had gotten onto him when he was taking the gloves off. Clark was forced to stay on the bed while the wound closed. It gave Bruce a bit of time to think of a way out of this. He could fake a heart attack, press the alert button and have the calvary come rescue him, actually have a heart attack- “Yes.”
Yeah, Bruce was definitely actually going to die. Why did he say that? That was so stupid. What was he thinking? Well, he wasn’t thinking, obviously. It was all Clark’s fault really because Bruce had been fighting with his feelings for Superman since the moment they met but it was pure physical attraction so he could shove it away and push it down and pretend like it didn’t exist but then he met Clark and he found out he was also sweet and kind and he cared and Bruce found it way too hard to push that down. Bruce fell in love and he hated himself for it but it was true and it was Clark.
“Really?”
“I thought we talked about how you only get one question,” Bruce said. He grabbed the towel to dry his hands and saw Clark sitting up in the bed, his wound a small scratch now. Clark was grinning like an idiot. Bruce was going to turn on the red sun lamps and then punch him in the face. “Do you like me?”
“Yes," Clark said. His smile only grew and Bruce rolled his eyes.
“You’re an idiot,” he said as he walked over to pack away the kryptonite bullet fragments. He carefully put them inside a lead case and turned around to put that away when he bumped into Clark who was on a sun-high. “Clark, what are you-”
“I’m going to kiss you now,” Clark said before cupping Bruce’s cheeks and pulling him forward. Bruce let it happen and kissed back almost immediately. It felt like every nerve in his body was set aflame and nothing could put them out. There was a small part of him that thought he might’ve been dreaming but then he cut himself with the scalpel and yeah, not a fucking dream.
He hissed and cursed as he stumbled back, grabbing his hand. He hadn’t realised he’d started backing up. He had gripped the tray and sliced his hand with the tool. Worry flashed across Clark’s face and he sped around the room to grab the appropriate things. Bruce opened his mouth but before he could even be sure of the words that would eventually come out, he was sitting on the bed with Clark dabbing an alcohol soaked cloth against the small wound.
“It isn’t even deep,” Bruce mumbled.
Clark just hummed. He grabbed the bandages next to him and wrapped Bruce’s hand. Once he was done, he brought Bruce’s hand up to his lips and pressed a kiss where he knew the cut was. Yep. Bruce was going to have a heart attack. Wonderful. Dick and Alfred were never going to let him live this down.
“All better,” Clark said with a soft smile.
Bruce couldn’t help but smile back which made Clark’s smile all the more brighter. "All better." With Clark? Always.