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Bruce is never much of a morning person, and watching him brood behind his paper, quiet and nonverbal, it's not alarming. Clark watches him, his eyes narrowed with concern because last night's patrol was rough, Batman was vicious in a way that he rarely was. He'd been brusque and standoffish with the victims he assisted, directing them to safety before vanishing, not bothering to shadow them home as he usually did.
It's not strange. Batman could be like that, when he was working on a case, his focus narrowed to exclude the rest of the world.
It's not anything to worry about, and even the absence of Alfred from the kitchen, the quiet bubbling pot of oatmeal on the stove left to burn slightly on the bottom, isn't enough to do more than raise an eyebrow.
He's going to be late for the morning meeting, and he brushes a kiss against Bruce's cheek as he gathers his notes and coat. "I have a meeting--"
"Will you be back, tonight?"
It makes Clark stop. Makes him study Bruce, still hiding behind his paper. It's rare, for Bruce to ask for something, rare for him to make what he wants known.
It's rare, too, for them to spend two nights in a row. The Bat was meant for Gotham, and Superman was meant for the world.
"I can be," he says, cautiously and Brue comes out from behind his paper to smile and shake his head.
"Don't worry about it."
He leans up and presses a quick kiss to Clark's lips, and then he's hiding behind his paper and Clark is slipping away, and only half of his attention is on the flight, on the upcoming meeting, on the way that Lois is going to be furious with his notes.
The rest of his attention is on the tremble in Bruce's breath as he goes.
~
He gets through his early morning meeting, and he gets through his lunch spent helping evacuate a burning building in Chile, and he's halfway through the afternoon, when his phone rings.
"Hey, are you going to be at the Manor tonight?" Dick asks, and his voice is brisk in a way that he isn't usually.
The cheerful sunshine is stripped away.
"Why?" Clark asks, "I was there last night, but--"
"He was weird this morning, right?" Dick says.
And the thing is--he knows it's not an anniversary. He knows those like clockwork--Bruce's birthday and the kids, and the anniversary of all the major losses and deaths in their lives, in Bruce's life.
He licks his lips, and Dick says, "It's Grandpa Wayne's birthday."
And understanding crashes on him like a wave.
~
He finds Bruce in the gardens. It's his mother's domain, and Alfred's but it's also it's a place that Bruce retreats to, when he wants to feel close to his parents, in a way that isn't hurting himself over their deaths.
He's smoking, and sitting next his mother's roses, grey in his hair and lines around his mouth, and so beautiful it hurts.
And the grief he wears like a coat is wrapped around him, closer than ever.
Clark settles behind him, presses against his back insistently until Bruce unbends just enough to sway into him. His head rests against the hollow of Clark's throat, the familiar scent of expensive cologne and Kevlar written over by pungent smoke.
"I'm older than him," he says, softly and Clark closes his eyes. "I've been older than him longer than I had him. You're older than he ever got to be."
"Bruce," he murmurs, and he's never been as aware of the years between them as he is now, with Bruce shuddering in his arms and grieving a father he's outlived and out-aged.
"When I got Dick, when I got Jason--all I wanted was to be their father longer than he was mine. And I got that, with Dick. But I had even less time with Jason than I had with him," Bruce says, his voice thick and broken. "And I can't help but hope that wherever they are, they're together. And I can't help but be jealous of them both, because they have each other when I want them both."
He laughs, and it sounds like glass ground on rock, painful and gritty. "How fucked up is that?"
"It's not," Clark says. "I don't--I know what it's like, to miss a father."
Because he does. With all his faults and all his xenophobic superiority--Jor-El was a shadow cast over his life that he longed to know.
Even with Pa, that ache remained.
Even with Alfred, Bruce missed his father.
And on days like this, summer bright and cloaked in every what if--there's nothing to say.
There is no platitudes and empty promises, just an empty place in Bruce's life that Clark cannot fill or know.
So he presses closer and presses a kiss to Bruce's temple and says, "Will you tell me about him?"
And sitting in Martha Wayne's roses, a cigarette in his hand and tears drying on his cheeks, Bruce does.