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~~~ (Clark) ~~~
Bruce was frustrated.
Clark thought that maybe that was an understatement. He’d say understatement of the year, but there had to have been something else that had been given less credit in comparison to what it actually was before. At least once.
They had just gotten back from a week long mission on the planet Vivaran 3 trying to help negotiate peace between opposing factions, and, as a thank you, the Vivarians had given the League some kind of machine. They hadn’t explained what it did, nor how to make it work. So, in the Watchtower the thing sat, which meant, in the Watchtower Bruce sat.
Clark hated watching Bruce become upset over a piece of machinery, but truthfully, it made sense. Bruce’s whole thing were his gadgets. Being faced with a new one he couldn’t figure out? It’d be like Clark suddenly finding a new star that he couldn’t derive energy from even though it was perfectly yellow and shiny. The thought gave him pause, in that case, Bruce would’ve already been all over it, helping Clark to figure out exactly what wasn’t going right. Maybe, after 12 hours of increasingly concerning grunts and “leave me alone”s Clark needed to just step in anyway.
Clark did just that.
Looking back on everything, it may have been better if Clark had left Bruce to his own devices, let him work out his frustration until he inevitably asked for Clark to take him to the fortress. Maybe the whole situation could have been avoided if he had left well enough alone.
Clark hadn’t ever known how to leave things alone when it came to Bruce though.
~~~
“B,” Clark called out as he walked into the room Bruce had set aside to tinker with potentially dangerous Alien technology. “Here to help if you need.”
“Hnnn.”
Clark let the grunt wash over him, it sounded less pissed off than the one earlier, the one that had sent Clark running to the kitchen to stay out of the line of fire.
“Got anything worked out yet?” He asked, not expecting much in the way of a response.
“Hng.”
Clark just nodded and floated up behind Bruce where he could look at the device from a different angle. He knew that Bruce would nudge him if he was blocking the lighting or was in the way somehow.
Clark was just curious, and per usual, he let him indulge in that curiosity.
It was nice to be able to. Over the years, Bruce had slowly warmed up to Clark’s unending desire to know what he was doing. What piece of technology he was tinkering with. What new addition he was working on for the Batmobile, or Batplane, of Batsubmarine. (Maybe Bruce should work on a new naming system, one that wasn’t decided on by a nine-year-old.)
Clark was just happy to get to be around. Whether that was because Bruce actually enjoyed his presence or just tolerated it, he wasn’t going to be picky.
He watched as Bruce finally seemed to give up. He hadn’t put the thing down for twelve hours, and before that he had been on the last flight rotation, meaning he hadn’t slept in at least 24.
“You think taking a break and coming back at it with fresh eyes will help?” Clark asked, little more than unhelpful. He received a glare in return. Maybe Bruce had been awake for more than the 24 hours Clark thought.
“Sorry, sorry. I was just thinking that if you got some sleep you might have some fresh ideas and perspective that would help you to figure it out. The thing isn’t going to explode in the meantime. And it’s not like Hal is going to waltz in here and figure it out.” Clark shrugged and let his feet touch back down on the floor. If he couldn’t convince Bruce that sleep was indeed going to help him more than coffee, he was in for a long night.
He knew that he didn’t necessarily HAVE to stay, but as much as Bruce hated when Clark pointed it out, Bruce was only human. And Kevlar only protected from so much. Clark just felt safer knowing that he was there, where he could jump in and help if nee-
POP!
The noise interrupted Clark’s train of thought. He looked down at the device thinking that Bruce had somehow managed to open (was that the objective?) it in the time he had let his thoughts wander. The slightly-off sharped sphere was still in one piece and unmoving where Bruce had set it down.
Clark glanced around, nothing seemed out of place, Bruce still looked dead on his feet, and no one had walked in. The noise sounded like it came from an extra dimensional space almost.
Clark felt his stomach drop at that thought. If the noise really did come from nowhere, and sounded extra dimensional, he had bigger things to worry about than the Machine.
“Oh hello there, Superman,” came the nasally unpleasant voice he had come to only be able to associate with trouble.
Bruce was on alert immediately. Even though the noise hadn’t affected him the way it had Clark, throwing him off balance for a moment. Maybe Bruce hadn’t been able to hear it.
“I see that your batty little boyfriend has bitten off more than he can chew,” Clark spun again, finally locating Mxyzptlk off in a darker corner of the room, hovering and slowly moving closer to the center as he spoke. Well shit.
“He is perfectly fine. We are going to figure this out in the morning.” Clark spoke before Bruce had a chance to.
“Oh, no no no,” Mxyzptlk laughed, “I think that he needs a little perspective. ”
POP!
Clark could have sworn that he saw little lines in the air closing in around the spot Mxyzptlk disappeared from. It wasn’t technically possible, but then, nothing about Mxy really should be considered possible.
“Well, um,” Clark forced as he turned back to where Bruce was standing. “B?”
Clark looked around the room. Had Bruce left? Why would he do that? Clark was trying to get him to go to bed. If Bruce was in the kitchen making another pot of coffee, Clark was going to kill him, he thought as he stormed over to the kitchen.
Bruce wasn’t in the kitchen. Or anywhere else on the Watchtower. That he could see anyway. Clark thought he might be going crazy. He could hear Bruce’s heartbeat. He could tell that the man was close. It’s not like Mxyzptlk took him to whatever higher dimensional place he lived in. There had to be an explanation.
Clark took a breath. Facts, facts first.
He tuned into his hearing. Bruce was close by, but his heartbeat was faster than usual, so he wasn’t sleeping. He was… somewhere.
Clark picked his feet up, trying not to make extraneous noise and floated from room to room, turning around when the sound of Bruce’s heart got quieter. The sound led him back to the room that he started in. Which didn’t make sense, Bruce wasn’t there. He wasn’t there the last time Clark had checked, and he wasn’t there now.
Maybe Bruce was invisible? Maybe he had gotten so good at blending into the shadows that he became one. Clark shook the thought off, crazy theories wouldn’t help him now.
“B? Are you in here?” Clark asked, trying his best to find the sound of Bruce’s voice.
“Kal-El,” a voice with Bruce’s cadence and intonation, but several octaves higher, replied.
Clark looked down to where the voice was coming from, what looked like a Batman action figure right below where his feet would be if he had been walking. Suddenly he was grateful that he had chosen to fly from room to room instead of walking.
Clark leaned down and picked up the miniature Bruce, studying him as though he were the device that they had brought back from their mission.
“B..?” He knew that he had an incredulous look on his face, but there was no way for him to look, to feel , normal in this circumstance. Bruce was unimaginably small. Kandor small.
This man who felt larger than life in so many ways, was reduced to the height of half an apple. Somehow, it felt fitting. Clark knew that feeling was something that only he would understand, he had his entire world in the palm of his hand in the most literal sense. He had Bruce in the palm of his hand, high-pitched and squeaky, but Bruce. His Bruce.
“Why me?” A tiny voice exclaimed, frustrated but adorable. “And what did he mean about me needing perspective?”
Clark let himself puzzle on the idea for a moment. He was struggling to think of anything over the intense feeling of protectiveness that had overtaken him. He always wanted to make sure that Bruce was safe–Bruce was human, was fragile–but this was something different. There were a million things that could hurt Bruce like this.
Clark tried his best to shake off the surge of feelings that were threatening to almost drown him. What was Mister Mxyzptlk’s motivation with this? It wasn’t unlike him to just show up and cause chaos in Clark’s life. But why now? And why was he messing with Bruce as well? Was he that obvious about the fact that the best way to shake Clark to his very core was to mess with Bruce?
“Maybe he knows what that device is? Trying to help?” Clark knew that he didn’t sound convincing. He wasn’t even convincing to his own ears, but he also knew Bruce, who would want to investigate every single possible scenario in order to fix whatever was happening. “Mxyzptlk’s motivations haven’t ever really been all that clear to me outside of trying to inconvenience me in the strangest ways.”
Brue grunted in return. Clark had to physically hold himself back from laughing at how insane the grunt sounded up a couple of octaves. He really never thought that he would be able to describe Batman-Bruce as cute, socialite Bruce maybe, but this was starting to get too weird even for him.
Clark watched as Bruce studied the device in front of him, trying to move it around with the decidedly diminished strength that came with his reduced size.
“Here,” Clark offered, “let me.” Bruce crossed his arms across his chest in a very strange version of a pout. Clark was so screwed. He would never be able to go back to looking at Bruce in the batsuit without remembering how cute he was at that very moment.
“Can we just go to the Manor?” Bruce grumbled out in a voice so small that Clark would have missed it if not for his super hearing.
“Yeah, let’s-” He was caught off guard. Bruce never wanted him at the manor, the few times that he had been there were purely for a mission. This was something that Bruce definitely could handle on his own. Or, with the help of Constantine or Zatanna, or really anyone who was magically equipped. Clark really couldn’t be of any help in this scenario, so he wasn’t sure why Bruce would ask him to be around.
Or, at least, he had to convince himself that it couldn’t mean what he wanted it to mean. If he let himself think that it was because Bruce wanted him around. That Bruce was letting him be around without any extra layers of protection between desire to be around each other and themselves, then Clark might just lose his mind the next time Bruce came up with an excuse as to why Clark wasn’t allowed around.
There had to be a reason, even if that reason was simply that Bruce was more comfortable with Clark being the one to transport him around. (Nevermind that Bruce had always been cautious of Clark’s strength and made sure to take precautions against it in any circumstance where Bruce might be unreasonably vulnerable to it.
Clark was not letting himself get his hopes up, because it would be the death of him.
“Please, Clark,” Bruce whispered. “Can we just go?”
Clark was not going to read into that tone. He wasn’t.
It just wasn’t fair that Bruce had decided that he was capable of being vulnerable physically and emotionally all at once. So, Clark could be mad at him for it. Right? He probably could.
“Yeah, sorry, just got distracted by how weird it is that the bat ears are so small. I’m used to them being threatening.” He forced out a laugh, and if Bruce noticed that it wasn’t his normal, he didn’t say anything about it.
~~~ (Bruce) ~~~
Bruce sat in the palm of his best friend’s hand. It was strange to be so small in comparison to a familiar world. It wasn’t the first time that he had been affected by magic, but it was the first time that he had been so reliant on someone else to help him with the consequences and not just the solution. He hated it, but he was also grateful to have an excuse to just let Clark take care of him.
Bruce figured that he could be excused for asking for help when crossing even just the Watchtower would be a monumental task in his current state. He could be forgiven for looking to Clark for comfort in that moment. Even if that meant being a little more needy than he would typically allow.
He watched Clark zone out for a moment before trying to get his attention. Admittedly, whispering when his voice was already so quiet probably wasn’t the best way to get Clark’s attention, but he knew that it would pull Clark’s focus anyway. He wasn’t really in the mood to get anyone who wasn’t Clark’s attention, so whispering would have to work until they got to the manor. Until he could let himself relax.
Bruce smiled for a second remembering that Dick had left a Batman action figure in the cave that had some form of clothes on it. Something that wasn’t the batsuit sounded really nice right in that moment.
As they finally made their way into the relative comfort of the Cave, Bruce let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he had been holding. No one could see him here that he didn’t trust implicitly. It was better here.
“Clark,” Bruce said, the end of the word lilting up like a question. “Could you-” He cut himself off. Why was asking for this so hard? He had gotten himself to ask for Clark to get him to the cave. He was able to knock down one of the walls that felt larger than him on a normal day.
“B, if you need something, I got it.” Clark peered down at him. Bruce felt himself retreat into himself at the feeling of being seen in his entirety.
“I just…” he trailed off for a moment before deciding how exactly he wanted to ask. Why did being physically small make him feel metaphorically small as well? “It’s dumb, but Dick made clothes for an action figure of me and left it here with a joke about Bruce Wayne being my secret identity. It has what I can only hope are normal clothes on it and not another strange tiny version of the batsuit.”
He did it, he asked for what he needed. And it didn’t feel horrible. Maybe whatever Mxyzptlk did to him also loosened his inhibitions. Made him more able to express the trust that he held in his heart for Clark, his partner in all things, his best friend, probably the love of his life.
He shut down the thought as Clark put him down. Surely even though he was small Clark would be able to tell that his heart had sped up. He was admitting to himself that he had feelings for Clark. When he was tiny. When he couldn’t do anything about it.
Well. He could do a couple things about it. He could plan.
Maybe having a plan would help him to feel slightly more normal about this. Something that didn’t feel as though it was just him letting things happen to him.
He sat on the desk next to his unnecessarily large keyboard as Clark went off in search of miniature clothes for him. He should have told Clark to grab something comfortable for himself. They were likely in for a long night.
Bruce wanted Clark by his side for the whole thing.
He felt safer with Clark.
Was his keyboard always this large?
“B, I think I found the do- action figure you were talking about, but the only thing on it is this long pink robe?” Bruce heard the questioning tone of Clark’s voice as he approached. Bruce felt himself relax. Dick really did know him, a robe, no matter the color, was the thing that he had always felt the most comfortable in when he wasn’t in the Batsuit.
“Could you,” Bruce trailed off, it wasn’t necessarily that Clark hadn’t ever seen him get changed, or rather, had never seen him out of the suit, Bruce had been injured enough to guarantee that Clark had seen him in all states of undress. This, however, was the first time that Bruce would have been undressing, intentionally in front of Clark. It was different. “Could you turn around?” Bruce tried again.
“Oh,” Clark looked at him like he hadn’t even thought untoward. Which, of course he hadn’t, Bruce needed to get his head out of his ass. Clark wasn’t attracted to him at normal size, he hadn’t ever been, it shouldn’t have hurt to know that Bruce was still unattractive when he was small.
Bruce took off the mask and raised a tiny eyebrow at Clark. That seemed to be the end of the discussion, at least as far as Bruce could tell, because Clark was turning around and Bruce was trying his best to get changed into the only clothes that would now fit him. He may be prepared for as many possible scenarios as he could think of, but for some reason an entire 1/16 scale replica of his closet hadn’t actually occurred to him. At least he would have a properly scaled down Batsuit if this were to happen in the future.
Bruce cleared his throat in an attempt to signal to Clark that he was done changing.
Clark definitely missed the signal, so Bruce dug through the small pile of clothes at his feet and found his grappling gun, shooting it over Clark’s shoulder and hoping that it would hold on enough to allow him to climb up onto Clark’s shoulder.
“Clark,” He said into the normal-sized man’s ear once he was perched on his shoulder. “If we are going to figure this out we need to have our collective brain power at top performance, I suggest we go to bed and resume our investigation in the morning.”
Bruce knew that it would sound weird, a suggestion of sleep coming from him, but he was already feeling vulnerable, and he would prefer Clark to be the one to help him. Plus, if anyone would be able to catch him before he did something incredibly reckless for his size, it would be Clark.
Bruce watched the expression on Clark’s face go from one of slight disbelief to a wash of calm. Everything would be okay, Bruce just had to believe that.
~~~ [Morning] ~~~
Bruce woke up to Clark floating ever so slightly above his bed in the manor. It was an odd sight. He had seen Clark off to bed, and sleep ruffled, and asleep during a mission, stock still and still on guard despite the impression that he was attempting to give off. Bruce had never seen Clark in such a state of calm. Even the nervous tension that he had been exuding for the hours he was awake and Bruce was tiny was gone as Bruce stared up at him from his vantage point in the nest of blankets they had arranged on the bedside table.
Bruce let the realization wash over him that he would like to wake up like this with Clark more often. Perhaps on the bed, and at full size, but still. Being able to see Clark truly relaxed instead of stretching an easygoing and cheerful facade over his stressed self was a privilege that Bruce wanted to have more often.
He supposed that he could probably let Clark sleep a little longer, and figure out what he needed to do to get ready for the day. Then he realized the problem that he faced. He was on his bedside table, which was currently over double his height, meaning the drop would not be forgiving on his tiny body. He wasn’t usually one to mind all too much about a fall, but he couldn’t help but think about the excessive worry that had pulled at Clark the day prior. Everything was a potential hazard.
Maybe it wouldn’t be the end of the world to curl back up in his little nest of blankets and get more sleep.
~~~ (Clark) ~~~
Clark awoke with a start, wondering, hoping that the day before had been some elaborate bad dream. If it wasn’t then he had failed Bruce, in a million different ways, but especially by allowing that extra dimensional imp to get his annoying little hands on him.
Clark looked around the room and found the semi-familiar stylings of Bruce’s bedroom in the manor. Definitely not a dream then, he thought, as his eyes landed on the miniature version of Bruce curled up in the blanket pile on the nightstand.
There was only so much Clark could have done to protect him. He’d dealt with Mxyzptlk before, and he knew that whatever was done was going to happen no matter what he had tried. But maybe, today, he could figure out how to reverse it, how to fix the problem so that Bruce wouldn’t have to.
Mxyzptlk had said something about needing perspective, and most of his tricks came with some sort of catch, if only he could figure out what it was in the moment.
Maybe if he could figure out how to get Bruce back to full size, Bruce would be so grateful that he’d-
Clark cut off the unhelpful line of thought and scouted around the room for something to write with. He could leave Bruce a note to call for him if he was needed and then he could try to go work on fixing this insane issue.
Eventually, Clark was able to make his way down to the Cave, having left a note for Bruce to shout for him, and then tried his best to get to the Watchtower and back before Bruce was able to wake up. If he could just figure out this stupid device, maybe then he could get Bruce back to normal. Back to the stoic glares and barely audible grunts that made ignoring his feelings easier.
Clark figured that he had accomplished his mission when he made his way back into the cave after retrieving the device that somehow definitely had something to do with the whole situation. He scanned the entirety of the exterior, finding almost no imperfections in the surface of the sphere.
Almost.
There was one hole in the bottom, a crack really. He hadn’t thought much of it when they had first received the device. The weird little crack didn’t have much of a tactile feel to it, nor was it incredibly visible until he focused, but it was there. Maybe, with a little bit of maneuvering, he could get the crack to be bigger, or open up whatever compartment was inside.
Something. Anything.
He messed with it for a few moments before he heard, from upstairs in the Manor “Clark?” in a sleep-roughed voice, he immediately placed the device down on the bench that was in front of him, making sure to leave the crack in the sphere facing up.
He was up in Bruce’s room within moments, hoping that he hadn’t left his friend for too long. He felt his breath hitch when he got a look at the tiny sleep-ruffled Bruce that was rubbing his eyes. “Sorry, I just thought I would try to get a headstart,” Clark breathed out, trying to hide the awe in his voice at how vulnerable he was allowed to see Bruce.
It felt like a rarity. A beautiful, incredible rarity. One that didn’t last all too long as Bruce’s features snapped to attention at the mention of their current predicament.
“Did you find anything?” The rough edge that belonged in Bruce’s voice had returned, alongside something ever so slightly more defensive. He had closed himself back up, the previous lowering of his defenses having been a fluke, something that Clark knew he wasn’t likely to repeat.
“I think so? It seems you may be better suited to figure out the rest of it, given your current size.” Clark shrugged, trying to force nonchalance back into his countenance.
“Then, what are we waiting for?” Bruce grumbled, clearly frustrated that Clark hadn’t woken him up sooner.
Clark just nodded and picked up his pink-robe clad friend, flying them back down to the cave as quickly as he could without fearing harm coming to Bruce. He knew that Bruce would hate it if he ever told him that he was deliberately slower when ferrying him around, but Bruce wasn’t bulletproof. He refused to take any chances.
Clark deposited Bruce onto the workstation and shifted the device’s position so that the crack was facing towards Bruce and within touching distance. He kept his hands on it in an attempt to keep it stable, looking down at Bruce and pointing out the small flaw in the device.
Bruce nodded back at him and traced along the imperfection, or at least he began to, because the moment he touched it, the sphere opened along the crevice. Clark tried to peek inside, but found that he couldn’t see in, at least, he didn’t think that he could. The entire interior looked like a void. He wasn’t sure exactly how this was anything useful, or even desirable, but he hoped that somehow Bruce would understand better than he did.
What could have triggered it? The only thing Clark could think was that they had somehow both touched it at the same time for the first time? Maybe? Maybe Bruce had to be tiny for him to be able to see into it. Mxyzptlk wasn’t trying to do them a favor by miniaturizing Bruce was he? He supposed he wouldn’t know what Bruce saw until he was told.
Bruce’s form turned back to look at him, a look of understanding and somewhat residual realization crossing his features. He whispered words that Clark tried desperately to ignore, but couldn’t.
“Chase after the things you desire,” came a whisper.
“Clark, could you pick me up and bring me closer to your face?” came a louder question.
Clark refused to let himself hope. He couldn’t. Instead, he picked up Bruce and took a deep breath, holding it until Bruce let his body weight sag, shoulders dropping in an attempt to calm himself. Clark braced himself to accept whatever Bruce may say. Maybe he just needed to whisper that he needed Clark to take him somewhere else, to what he truly desired.
Clark felt the tiniest pinprick of pressure against his lips, as though something small had landed on them. He closed his eyes, allowing himself to just feel. The tiny hands pressed on either side of tiny lips, pressed against his own.
Bruce pulled himself back.
“I don’t know that I was really expecting true love’s kiss to fix me, but I was hoping that maybe you would have figured out a way to kiss me back.”
Clark blue screened momentarily. He was still trying to process that Bruce had kissed him, on purpose, and without pretense.
“I-” Clark began before pulling Bruce back towards him and turning him around, pulling the light pink robe from around his shoulders, pressing a delicate kiss in between Bruce’s shoulder blades.
“I don’t want to hurt you, but I want you to understand that I could do this every day for the rest of our lives. No matter what size you are. It’s you B, it’s always been you.”
He pressed another kiss to Bruce’s back, feeling the shiver that ran down his body.
“Good,” Bruce whispered, turning around and pushing himself up against Clark’s chin. “We are going to figure out how to fix this and then I am going to kiss you properly every day for the rest of our lives.”