Chapter Text
The Wayne Corporation had many hotel ventures all over the world, one in every continent was what they boasted. Yet the chains that resided in Gotham were particularly spectacular. The Saltu would be the newest edition, boasting the most luxurious amenities while also being carbon negative, the most accessible building in all of Gotham, and with the lowest water usage out of all other Wayne Corp. hotels. If it was any other hotel by any other company, the Daily Planet wouldn’t bat an eye. But because it was so grandiose and under such a famous company, it piqued their interest.
Clark Kent managed to score the story by landing the front page last week, Lois hated him for that. The first time he did so all month and it was the only time Perry White made the prize a weekend trip to a five star hotel with an opening held by the biggest party animal on the east coast. Clark was thankful, of course, but in all honesty, he didn’t enjoy Gotham that much. It was way more cloudy than Metropolis, so he was weaker, but also the city was so old that half the buildings had lead paint or lead pipes. That much lead would be concerning for anyone, but for Clark it meant that it was one of the most difficult towns to navigate in the world. It was somehow overwhelming and blinding at the same time.
But he took the trip with a smile, turned down the complimentary flight (it was economy, and he never fit into those seats anyway), and began his work in Gotham. Like any place he would visit, he would check into his room, then sit in silence as he adjusted to the new sounds the city offered. Normally, Superman would make an appearance about 15 minutes after Clark Kent did, but he was wary. Gotham had a dedicated protector, and unlike the Flash or even Hawkgirl, the Batman was known to be unkind to strangers. So far he had assumed that Batman must have been either a metahuman, another alien, or a separate earth species. Accounts on Batman varied from him being a literal man-bat to a sentient shadow. With Hawkgirl, the two met up almost immediately and bonded over living on an alien planet, most other aliens on his side were the same. In fact, everyone on his side tended to be like that. But this wasn’t anyone, this was the bat.
Clark decided against breaking out his colors until he could meet Batman, so instead there were about 20 instances of an unnamed muscular civilian deescalating robberies, saving pets, and preventing accidents, that seemed to disappear once the police arrived. Over dinner, Clark did some last minute research on Bruce Wayne and the Saltu, formulating his final questions, then made his appearance in the hotel lobby in his tux with his ‘reporter’ badge.
His room was as nice as the advertisements said, but the ground floor was another story. It managed to encapsulate the noir soul of Gotham with tropical foliage perfectly. The main event space everyone was corralled into multiplied on that theme; chandeliers with organic shapes, ironwork that contained both local and non-native plants by seemingly endless windows, and a smartly placed waterwall that stretched an entire wall that was cleverly placed by the vents, causing a subtle, crisp breeze. It was clearly a Wayne Corp. property.
Clark made his way to the reporter section and warmly greeted his peers from other papers, and waited for the opening speech to begin. He was in the back of the crowd, just in case he had to step out and so that those shorter than him could see, which resulted in him having the perfect vantage point to see a waitress drop a tray full of topped champagne flutes. Without hesitation, he rushed over.
“Are you okay?” Clark knelt down to pick up her silver tray. Just as he did, he could hear applause and an introduction for Bruce Wayne. His back was to the stage, but with his hearing it didn’t matter.
“Yeah, I’m so sorry it’s my first day here and I guess I’m just nervous, but you should get back–” the woman tried to pick up a piece of glass but Clark snatched it up before she could.
“I’ll be okay, they all say the same thing at these kinds of events anyways. You should go wash up, you’re,” Clark pointed to her foot that was cut when the flutes fell.
“Oh my god I didn’t even notice, but are you sure? I could get one of coworkers to do this,”
“I’m on the clock too, don’t worry. I’ll handle this,” Clark flashed his midwestern smile and with hesitation the waitress scurried off to the bathroom. He put the largest pieces of glass on the tray as he listened to Bruce Wayne’s speech.
“Now, I know you’re thinking that Saltu is a weird name for a hotel. Or anything really, but our lovely marketing team told me that Saltu means ‘jungle’ in latin, and since this place is focused on being eco friendly, and let’s be honest, also having the most plants in Gotham not owned by a certain green thumb, I couldn’t argue. I could go on about the engineering choices made that makes this the most eco-friendly high end hotel in America, but we both know I’d just be stealing words out of our engineer, Lucius Fox’s, mouth. So may I introduce Lucius Fox himself, the man who made this place possible!”
The crowd applauded yet again and Clark when he heard a clap through the microphone he winced. Whoever was responsible for that clap had multiple hairline fractures that just grinded against each other. Clark tried to play it off as him ‘cutting his finger’ on the glass, and once he put all the pieces back on the tray, walked over to a huddle of waiters.
“Someone dropped a tray over there,” Clark pointed to a sharp wet puddle on the black marble, “I picked up all the large pieces, but if someone could clean up the small parts that would be lovely. And if you could point me in the direction of a trashcan that’d be great too,”
Two waiters broke off to clean up the mess and another stepped forward, “I can take that from you,”
“Oh no! That’s okay, I’ve kinda balanced it just right to not get cut and I wouldn’t want you to get hurt. Just tell me where to throw the glass away and I’ll hand the tray back,”
The waiter nodded and pointed over to the corner of the room. Clark did as he said and was sure that all the shards were off the tray before he weaved through the crowd and back to the waiter. “Thanks,” he said.
“Thank you,” the waiter said back. Clark nodded and shuffled through the crowd once more back to the reporter section. Lucius Fox was still talking, and Clark quickly jotted down the key points.
“Now we’re going to open it up to any questions the press has for Mr. Wayne,” Lucius spoke. Clark was still working on his notes, recalling what he heard while he was cleaning up the spill. The reporters pulled numbers beforehand so the Q&A portion would be civil, and Clark was fourth. He managed to get caught up right as it was his turn and for the first time Clark Kent looked at Bruce Wayne.
Maybe it was the low-energy LEDs, the frazzled nature he would get into while writing, or the nearby reporter who forgot deodorant, but Clark accidentally slipped into x-ray vision. He instantly regretted doing so, as the first layer he saw was the splint under Bruces pants and bandages around his torso. Well-applied makeup melted away under his sight to reveal bruises ranging in every color and shade. One in particular stuck out, a yellowed bruise in a perfectly straight line across his stomach with broken blood vessels. Clark couldn’t help himself as he then looked at the skeleton that barely held Bruce up.
Every. Single. Bone. Had been broken at one point. At the moment, he had two cracked ribs that grinded with every breath, his feet were cobbled with steel plates and screws, and the splint revealed his tibia freshly broken. The clapping Clark heard earlier came from him too, his hands were like broken pasta glued back together by a blind child. It took everything in Clarks being to force back tears. He pulled people out from collapsed buildings before, and they were in better shape than the man in front of him.
“Daily Planet?”
Bruce was talking to him.
“Daily Planet, are you just going to ogle me or are you going to ask me a question?”
Clark began to stammer, fumbling for the page he wrote his questions on.
“I guess someone has a crush,” Bruce chuckled. He shouldn’t be able to chuckle, he shouldn’t be able to stand. A few people laughed at the comment, “how about you ask me those questions later, hm?” Bruce said coyly. Clark looked back up to him, mouth agape, and Bruce winked back. A woman on the other side of the room whistled.
The rest of the papers asked their questions yet Clark could barely focus. When the interviews were done, Bruce exited the stage and began to socialize. The steps down the stage made his already inflamed tendons scream through his nervous system, yet Bruce navigated the crowd with a charming smile and coy attitude. It was as if he was possessed. Clark began to rack his brain for any information on Bruce's social life. No recent trips, no hospital trip for the past few months, no known accidents of such magnitude. He didn’t want to explore the possibility, but Clark began to consider the reality that Bruce Waynes injuries were intentional.
He wasn’t known to have any long-term lovers, but a few broke the mold. Pamela Isely had him poisoned for about two months a while back to try and drain him of his money, but after her arrest they never crossed paths again. Ms. Isely never really had a penchant for relying on physical force, but she might have been responsible for at least a few injuries. Selina Kyle and him were off and on again for years now, even after she was revealed as catwoman; she was known to be violent and when they were together his social life dropped. Isolating, history of assaults, and the few times he met her, she proved cunning enough to manipulate. Yet she was in prison and if Clark was right, hadn’t escaped. Minhkoa Khan, maybe? Childhood friend, studied abroad in the same locations as Bruce, they’ve partied together and rumor had it they often hooked up. But they met every few years and Minhkoa didn’t have a criminal record nor any history of violence.
Bruce greeted every willing person with a kiss on the cheek and always had something to say, once and a while he would take a sip of his drink and a balding butler would suddenly appear to refill his glass. Most victims of domestic violence have a hard time breaking the cycle, it could be that Bruce just was stuck in an endless loop. The oldest injuries Clark could place would be from when Bruce was about 18, but that was the same age that a human's bones stopped growing so there was no way to tell if that was when this all began. Maybe not every injury was on purpose either, Bruce was known to be clumsy, but that would be a great cover as well. As Clark was looking at Bruce's skeletal system, he noticed he couldn’t look through the glass he was holding. Nor the decanter the butler used to refill his drink.
Clark had moved onto Bruce's skull and brain, seeing if he had any major concussive damage. Clark squinted, trying to see as many details as possible, and thankfully Bruce was slowly getting closer to him. Bruce was slowly getting closer to him because he was walking right up to him. Clark got his pad of paper and pretended that he was jotting something down, but it was too late.
“You’ve been eyeing me all night,” Bruce walked in an almost straight line. He was pretending to be drunk, by the look of his shoddy liver he was fully sober.
“I just…” Clark didn’t think he was that obvious, “hadn’t seen the prince of Gotham in the flesh yet,”
“Am I all you thought I’d be?” Bruce kept getting closer to Clark, invading the small bubble of space he managed to make.
“Not at all,”
“Good,” Bruce smirked and finished his drink, the butler seemed to teleport beside them and refilled his drink. It smelled sweet and candy-like, Clark looked closer and realized it was just a high end juice. “You know, I’m still waiting for your questions,”
“Is there a reason you’re saving the fancy glasses for yourself?” Clark nodded to the elaborate glassware Bruce held in his hand.
“Didn’t listen earlier? The hotel uses recycled glass,”
“But not you?”
“I have a friend who owns a fine lead crystal glass arthouse in Prague. It’d be an insult to her if I didn’t use it myself,”
Nowhere in the world must have as much lead as Gotham. “So you only save the nice things for yourself,”
Bruce leaned in close to Clark. The sound of grinding bone shot through Clarks ears and caused him to whimper in sympathetic agony. “I’d be happy to share all the luxury with you,”
No amount of heat could make Clark go red, but something about the low pitch Bruce dropped his voice to, caused blood to flood Clarks face. Bruce turned to look at Clark, his eyes darkened in a way he hadn’t done yet, and all Clark could push out of his throat was a weak “okay,”
Bruce was quick to put his hand on Clarks neck and gently kiss his jawline before softly biting his earlobe. No restraint could keep Clark as still as he was in that moment. He didn’t know how to proceed, no one made such an aggressive move on him before, nor near so many people. Clark always skirted crowds but at the moment it wasn’t as if he was huddled off in some corner.
“You two having fun?” A person draped in silk called from a huddle of people. The other with them snickered at the comment.
Bruce only pulled his head away, “why? Care to join?”
Clark couldn’t believe what he was hearing and covered his face with his notepad.
“I would, but it seems like you chose a shy one this go-around,”
“Next time then,” Bruce winked and turned back to Clark, “prefer somewhere more private?”
Clark didn’t uncover his face. “Uh–” he was cut off by the sound of a door being broken down three blocks away. It was the first time he was happy to hear that sound. “--I’m having some stomach issues,” Clark sprinted off at a believable speed to the bathroom and from there Superman made his Gotham debut.