Work Text:
Bruce was getting sick of Arkham breakouts. It was the same old shit, just a different day. He catches the rogue, the rogue gets locked up, the rogue breaks out a few weeks later, and then he has to catch them again. It was fucking exhausting.
This year's Wayne Charity Gala was going to be dedicated to updating the security at that godforsaken place. That was final. Alfred would probably tell him he was being dramatic right now, but Alfred wasn’t the one fighting Scarecrow for the 4th time this year.
It was March.
Bruce quickly ducked behind a turned over desk, barely escaping the nasty green spray of whatever new freak-concoction Crane had cooked up this time around. It was disgustingly viscous and Bruce inched away with a grimace as it oozed towards him. His rebreather was firmly fixed to his face, making the familiar schick-chshuuu sound as he took in relatively clean breaths of air. He could make out the outline of Scarecrow inching towards his hiding spot with the sprayer in the grime covered window in front of him.
“Come on out Batman! You cannot hide from your fears forever!”
With a heavy sigh he aimed his grapple-gun over his shoulder, and— using the reflection— he pulled the trigger. The grapple shot out, connecting with Scarecrow’s forehead with an audible thud, a bigger one following when Crane’s unconscious body hit the concrete floor, the clatter of his sprayer following shortly after that.
Bruce took a selfish moment to hang his head. He just wanted to slump over completely but he knew that Crane needed to be cuffed and taken back to Arkham.
Again.
So with a groan he heaved himself up, and walked over to the prone form, ready to participate in the same old song and dance he had for years.
However, he must’ve been more tired and distracted than he had realized, because the second he was grabbing one of Scarecrow’s wrists to cuff it, the other was slinging forward, gripping the sprayer, and letting loose a stream of the foul smelling stuff directly into Bruce’s face.
Bruce grunted and reeled back, the rebreather muffling most of his expletives, and quickly delivered a knock-out punch with (perhaps too much) force.
Fuck.
He took another moment to wipe the dark green goo from the lenses of his cowl, and—after fully securing Crane and tossing the sprayer out of his reach— he pulled a cloth from his belt to wipe the rest of it off of the sliver of skin that was exposed between his cowl and rebreather.
I should be fine as long as I don’t breathe any in, but a de-contamination shower is in order the second I get back to the Cave.
Bruce spared a brief thought for why Crane forewent the gaseous-form of his fear toxin this time around— as it was easier to breathe something like that in— but just shrugged, exhausted and willing to just test it back at the Cave and assuage his curiosity then. No use trying to think about it now.
~
Bruce was just pulling into the Cave, back from dropping Scarecrow off with the proper authorities, rebreather and cowl tossed carelessly in the passenger seat beside him, when a call suddenly came through the speakers of the batmobile.
Bruce sighed, pulling the car to a stop before pressing the answer button on his steering wheel. He grunted in greeting while looking through the middle console trying to find a wipe to get the rest of the sticky residue off of his face.
“Batman!” The sound of Superman’s unmistakably earnest voice sounded through the speakers. Bruce suppressed another groan, scrubbing at his face harshly.
“Yes?” God, he could still feel it. He flipped the visor down and opened the mirror, but grunted in displeasure when he was barely able to make out his features in the darkness of the car.
“Are you alright?”
Bruce paused, “Yes? Why?”
“It’s just- the meeting started 20 minutes ago. I was- we were all getting worried.”
It was now that Bruce did groan out loud. He had completely forgotten about the Justice League meeting.
“B? Is everything okay-”
“I’ll be there in two minutes,” he replied gruffly, before jamming at the end-call button with more force than was necessary.
A cold sweat had built up on the back of his neck, making his underclothes damp.
Maybe I shouldn’t have had that 7th cup of coffee today. Alfred was not going to be pleased when he found out.
Bruce reached over to the passenger seat, grabbing his discarded cowl and shoving it back on his head, ignoring the slight tremble of his fingers as he did so. Oh well, what Alfred doesn’t know won’t hurt him.
Then he heaved himself out of the Batmobile, grunting at the lead-like weight of his limbs before making his way to the zeta-tube in the corner.
He was going to sleep for a full six hours when he got home.
~
With a flash of light he was stepping through the connecting zeta-tube into the WatchTower meeting room. Several pairs of eyes turning his way all at once.
Before he could make it two steps to the table however, there was all of the six-feet and three-inches of Kryptonian that earth had to offer all up in his business.
He sucked in a quick breath, startled, when Clark suddenly appeared in front of him.
“Woah there B! Sorry, didn’t mean to spook ya,” Clark said, taking a step back and rubbing the nape of his neck sheepishly.
“You didn’t-” Bruce started to growl out before he noticed the odd way his heart was galloping like he had just run a marathon. He grit his teeth. “S’fine.”
The others were all watching them fixedly and Bruce hated the way it made his skin crawl, so he tried to shoulder past Clark to go and take his seat at the table. He didn’t get far though, as Clark had grabbed his arm as he was passing by, pulling Bruce to a halt.
“Superman, let go-”
“You smell…off, B. Are you sure you’re all right?” Bruce looked up, finding concerned dark-blue eyes peering down at him, a disgruntled furrow in between Clark’s brows twitching as he took a deep inhale of Bruce right in front him. Clark was likely smelling the remnants of the weird new fear-toxin mixture.
Bruce shook him off, hating the weird sensation the touch sent up his spine. “Don’t sniff me, it's weird.” Then he left Clark behind him, finally claiming his seat at the table. Clark’s own was unfortunately directly next to his, which meant Bruce could hear him surreptitiously continuing to try and smell him after he sat down too.
“Nice of you to finally join us Batman.”
“Oliver,” Bruce replied derisively, and for some reason, agitated.
Green Arrow put his elbows on the table, linking his fingers in front of him. “Well? What was the hold up?”
Bruce grunted, desperately wishing that they could just get the meeting started. “Nothing.” He said not a word of forgetting about the meeting all together.
Hal made a face next to him. “So you just showed up late for fun?”
“Hmmm,” Bruce said in the affirmative.
Diana clapped her hands together from the head of the table. “Alright, now that everyone is here, we can go ahead and get started. Flash, I believe you had some interesting ice related crime patterns within Central City that you wanted to share? How about you start us off today.”
~
The meeting was barely an hour in, they had at least another two hours to go while everyone gave their reports.
Bruce was seeing things, in his periphery, had been for the last 30 minutes at the very least. Dark shapes skulking at the edges of his vision.
Now, Bruce wasn’t stupid, far from it in fact. He knew instantly—the second he had spotted a hallucination lurking in the corner—that he had been dosed with that sorry excuse of a fear toxin. All of his symptoms leading up had also started to make sense. The cold sweat, the shaky extremities, and the racing heart were not all signs of sleep deprivation and over-caffeination, but of something a bit more sinister.
He had been dosed. And not by an aerosol. That weird viscous shit must’ve been some new transdermal recipe from hell. All it had needed was to make direct contact with his skin, and the absorptive organ would do the rest, pulling the toxin into his bloodstream, and circulating it throughout his body.
It seemed to be slow acting too, which suggested that it would only get worse before it got better. His heart was pounding a slowly-increasing-in-pace rhythm inside of the cavity of his chest.
He blinked and his stomach was slit down the middle, organs spilling out onto the table and clutched in his hands.
He blinked again and he was back to normal, not a kevlar plate out of place.
Bruce held himself very still, trying to get an ounce of control over his heartrate, knowing that the faster it beat, the faster the toxin was working through his system. He had to get out of here before it got worse.
He was intimately familiar with worse.
However, every time he looked over to the zeta-tube, the distance dramatically elongated, appearing to him as if it was literally and unattainably miles away. The room was stretching to resemble a perpetual hallway. Bruce had the irrational feeling that if he tried to walk it, he would be trapped in its domain forever.
Sweat, damp sweat, on the nape of his neck, sliding down the column of his throat.
One of the shadows got closer, reaching out to trail a disfigured and gnarled finger after the droplet, Bruce instinctively flinched away from the phantom touch. It drew the attention of everyone at the table. He blinked harshly again and the shadows receded.
Tuning them out was becoming more and more difficult as the minutes ticked by.
“Batman, are you alright?” Diana’s voice sounded from the head of the table. After so long spent trying to keep himself still, it was an effort to move his head in her direction, and even harder to remember how to move his tongue in anything that wasn’t the scream that desperately wanted to escape his chest.
He rolled his useless tongue across the bottom of his teeth, tasting blood where he had seemingly bit through his cheek. “Fine,” he managed to get out.
He watched as her eyebrows drew closer together, and attempted to suppress a shiver as they kept drawing closer and closer, passing each other before dropping and sliding down her face, tugging the rest of her features with them. Her whole face fell to the ground with a wet schlop, exposing red and bleeding muscle and sinew, eyes bulging and filling red with blood before—
Bruce blinked harshly. She went back to normal. His heart pounded furiously. Fuck.
“If you say so,” she replied, voice laden with uncertainty, before turning back to the presentation she had been giving on…Bruce squinted at the board, how to identify black magic?
He really needed to get control over this and pay attention. Hopefully he could last until the meetings end without drawing any more suspicion.
Bruce steadfastly ignored the concerned gaze of Clark sitting to his right.
He couldn’t deal with that right now either.
~
The shaking was getting worse, and Bruce had made an error in judgement when he reached for the glass of water in front of him, suddenly all too aware of how dry his mouth was. His trembling fingers couldn’t get a grip and before he could grab it, he had knocked the thing over onto the rest of the table.
Flash’s quick reaction time saved all of the documents from getting soaked, but nothing was going to save Bruce from everyone’s suspicions this time around.
“Batman! Goodness, are you okay? What’s the matter?”
Now his tongue was useless and his mouth was dry. Somewhere in the back of his head he knew he shouldn’t try to speak, for that would only increase suspicion, but his instincts to deny that anything was wrong were stronger.
“M’fine. Nothin’ s’rong.” The shadows were closing in again, sensing his weakness.
“Are you sure about that Batman?” Aquaman asked with a pointed look down.
Bruce followed his gaze to his hands that were desperately gripping the arms of his chair, knuckles white and crescent shapes tearing into the material. “I’m fine-” he started, trying to steady his voice and lifting his gaze back up.
But it wasn’t the table in front of him anymore, but the Joker. A more fucked up than usual Joker. The image was wrong, so wrong. Four black and knobby limbs, twisted and stretched in a hunched crouch resembling a charred hunk of meat. Lifeless glowing eyes were staring directly into his own, and those smile scars weren’t scars any longer, but fresh wounds still actively gushing blood, the tear so deep that it could no longer be described as such, but as if someone had carved straight through from the corner of the mouth till they were stopped by the bone in the jaw. The thing gave a low demented laugh that resounded throughout Bruce’s skull as if someone had struck a bell with him inside it. And the jaw fell completely open, like it had detached from its hinge, exposing all 32 teeth in perfect clarity, sharp and rotted with pieces of gore stuck in between, like it had been chewing through flesh.
The momentum of the jaw opening sent the head tumbling down in a swing until it was completely upside down, black neck twisted and limp, head swaying and jaw still open. Then it dropped off with a snap, like a bat taking flight from the ceiling of the cave and skittered toward him—
Bruce couldn’t help it, he gave a yelp of terror, thrusting himself away from the table. His chair tumbled back and he rolled away, scrambling backward until his back hit the wall with a thud.
His chest was heaving, up and down, up, up, up, down, down, down, up, down, up, down—
Something was in him. He knew without a doubt that something was in him. Crawling around inside his empty chest cavity, devouring his pumping lungs, his rapidly beating heart—
“B! B! Hey, hey look at me!”
Bruce shook his head, focusing back on reality. Clark was crouched in front of him, fear painting his expression pale and concerned, hand held out in front of himself like he was going to grab Bruce and—
—and crush his neck slowly with one hand, letting Bruce feel the air come less and less into his empty chest, except is wasn’t empty, it was inhabited, something was in there, something was in there, SOMETHING WAS IN THERE—
“B! HEY! Hey! Stop!” Bruce blinked again and Clark had one of his wrists in each hand, Bruce was gloveless, fingers bloodied, one of them looked like it was missing a nail.
The pain was distant. The plated armour on his chest was smeared with red. He looked back up at Clark, then focused behind him where the rest of the team stood around him, varying looks of horror on their faces.
Clark looked the worst, panic and something like devastation marring his ethereal features, making what was always so beautiful startlingly ugly—
No. No, never ugly. He looked the same just… concerned.
“B,” he pleaded, not letting go when Bruce unconsciously tugged on his captured wrists, drawing his knees up in between him and Clark, “what’s going on? What’s wrong?”
Bruce looked desperately toward the zeta, a whine building up in the back of his throat when he found it to look the same as before, stretched and wrong. Forever.
There was no getting out of here and back to the manor to ride this out in some corner of the Cave, till Alfred found him and sedated him before he clawed off all of his skin. No way would he be able to make an antidote in time, this strain was one hundred percent different from the rest, even in spite of the difference in state of matter. He’d have to ride it out this time.
But he couldn’t get to the cave. He would have to do it at the WatchTower. With everyone watching.
Unless he could get to his quarters undisturbed.
He tried to stand up but found his wrists still captured, Clark’s grip unrelenting.
“Let…go,” he tried to demand, but his words came out thick, interrupted by panicked breaths.
Clark shook his head. “No, now tell me what’s going on.”
Bruce kept tugging at his wrists. He had to go, why didn’t Clark understand that?
“B! I’m serious!” His yelling this time was jarring, causing Bruce to jump and try and scramble away, only to find the wall still at his back, his boots making fruitless scrabbling squeaks against the floor.
“Wait, wait, I’m sorry, I’m sorry okay, please just tell me. I can’t let you go until you tell me.” This time the words were barely above a whisper, devoid of frustration but still insistent, but soft against his ears.
Bruce swallowed the awful mixture of metallic tasting blood and saliva that was pooling in his mouth. There was apparently no getting out of this, not as the shadows pressed in further, dancing out of sight the second he tried to focus on them.
“Scarecrow,” he got out. He sucked in a strangled breath, but didn’t scream.
God, he wanted to scream.
“Oh fuck,” he heard from somewhere in his audience. He wanted to agree but in order to keep from screaming he was grinding his teeth together.
Something was working its way into his mouth, prying his jaw open, he bit down harder trying to no avail to keep it out, keep it from crawling down his throat to join the something in his chest—
“B stop, you’re gonna hurt yourself.”
Bruce hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes until he opened them again and Clark was closer than before. In fact, he had a finger wedged between Bruce’s teeth, keeping him from grinding them. Bruce’s wrist was still captured in an awkward four finger hold.
~
Clark was fucking terrified, he had never seen anything like this in his life. He turned to the gobsmacked crowd behind him.
“Can someone help me!?” He half-asked, half-yelled in frustration, at a complete loss of what to do as he held both of Batman’s hands aloft, after the other hero had clawed them bloody on his armour while screaming that there was ‘something inside him’. Clark had heard the godawful sound of teeth grinding against each other too and shoved one of his fingers in between to prevent Batman from doing real damage.
His plea seemed to snap everyone into action, and a flurry of movement was struck. “Clark, pick him up and bring him into the med-bay,” Diana ordered.
Clark had to get creative, as Bruce was still weakly struggling against him, kicking and tugging and biting down on his poor trapped finger, making awful wounded animal sounds in the back of his throat, but eventually he was able to carry the other man to the designated area without further injury.
“Lay him down,” Black Canary said, fluttering around the room with Barry at her side.
Her male medical counterpart grimaced. “And hold him down too I guess. You too Diana.”
So Clark relinquished one of Batman’s wrists, and let Diana take it instead, while he kept one on his side and his finger between Batman’s teeth. Thank god for unbreakable skin.
“We have to see if there’s any sort of wound. He said Scarecrow but I have no clue what that even means. Barry help me remove his armor.” Dinah was clinical in her movements as she began unbuckling the various clasps and whatnot as Batman continued to writhe as if in pain, screaming hoarsely around Clark’s trapped digit like he was being tortured.
Clark could barely watch, horrified at the sight. He could smell the sweat on Batman’s skin, hear the pounding of his heart that suggested he was experiencing pure and unadulterated terror, feel the smear of blood that wasn’t his on his own hands from where Batman’s had clawed while trying to free himself, despite Clark’s best attempts to keep him still.
A man who he had always known as completely stoic, as unshakeable, reduced down to pure and basic instinct.
Reduced to fear.
Clark was filled with it too, especially as Dinah and Barry completely removed his upper armour and underclothes. “I can’t see anything,” Barry said looking queasy, “nothing but hundreds of old scars. No new wounds that I can see.”
Clark looked despite himself and sure enough, Barry wasn’t exaggerating. Hundreds. There were hundreds.
Raised scars, sunken scars, pitted scars, fineline scars, just… all over. Not an inch of skin left untouched.
Clark had never felt rage like this before, not even when Pa died. This was different, this felt deliberate and cruel.
No one should have ever been allowed to touch him like this.
Dinah bit her lip for a second, looking conflicted. “We have to check him for brain damage. He could have a severe concussion for all we know. He seems to be hallucinating or something and that’s typically something with the head, right?” She folded her arms and looked down at Batman with a wince as he kicked halfheartedly at Clark again, letting out a defeated sob. “I don’t know what else to do while we wait for the blood test. I’m not a medical doctor, neither is Barry.”
Clark gritted his teeth, reminded immediately of Batman’s own gnawing on him. “What does that mean?”
“It means we have to take off his cowl,” Barry replied, tone heavy.
Clark was going to protest but Diana beat him to it. “Absolutely not! Have you any idea the hell he will rain down on us all when he comes to and realizes we betrayed his trust like that?”
Clark was about to agree when the words died on his lips. Batman had gone still beneath them, Clark could still hear his heart pounding away at a galloping pace.
“What just happened?” Diana questioned anxiously.
“I don’t know,” Clark said, mouth dry, “I can still hear his heart beating. But…”
Dinah tried again. “I need to check for a severe concussion. It could be causing the hallucinations, or even paralysis.”
No one protested this time.
Clark and Diana backed off slightly, still keeping light grips on Batman’s wrists just in case. Clark eased his finger out of Batman’s now slack jaw, so they could have extra room.
He felt sick with guilt as Dinah raised her hands, listening— with an immense sense of wrongdoing— to the unbuckling of latches.
Yet he couldn’t bring himself to look away.
Finally, the cowl was removed. The first thing Clark noticed were the black-rimmed eyes that were wide open. He was not unconscious like they had thought, just paralysed with terror.
The second thing he noticed was that the beautiful face he was looking down at belonged to none other than Bruce Wayne.
“What the hell?!” Barry exclaimed, taking the words right out of Clark’s mouth.
Dinah was still a moment before she seemed to lock in with more fervor. She grabbed a penlight, shining them into Batman–Bruce’s eyes. “It doesn’t appear like there’s a concussion, but his pupils aren’t responding to stimuli, it's like he’s trapped in a trance.”
The heartrate that Clark had been tuned into for a while was suddenly picking up more speed.
Dangerous speed.
“I think he’s gonna have a heart attack!” He cried out, utterly terrified while he held the frozen hand in his.
“Barry, grab a sedative!” Dinah yelled.
Barry came back almost immediately with a syringe, gentle but fast in sticking it into Bruce’s forearm and pushing down on the plunger.
They waited in anxious silence, waiting for Clark to relay any change in his heart rate.
Clark listened as it stayed steady, steady, steady…then bit by bit, began to gradually slow, until it levelled out at a rate more common to find in sleeping people, although sleeping people having nightmares nonetheless. Clark let out the breath he had been holding when he glanced up to find Bruce’s black-smudged eyes closed, breaths of his own puffing softly through his lips, despite the way his eyes moved around in agitation, like they were still seeing things in the land of the unconscious.
“He’s good,” he said in a trembling voice, moving his hand to smooth out the sweaty hair pasted to Bruce’s forehead. “He’s good.”
Fuck.
~
When Bruce came to, he was unsettled to find not his bedroom ceiling or even the high vaulted cavernousness of the cave above him, but the distinct geometric and futuristic design choices that he himself had employed in the Justice League WatchTower.
What the fuck?
He tried to sit up, allowing a groan to fall from his lips as he felt the weight of his limbs drawing down his body like they were steel beams.
A few more blinks and it started to come back to him…the big pieces at least.
He remembered fighting Scarecrow, getting hit in the face with that viscous fluid. He remembered taking Scarecrow to the police and then being called to attend a meeting he had forgotten and then…
Experiencing… symptoms.
Fuck.
It's all a haze after that but Bruce’s heart begins to race just recalling the feelings of terror that had enveloped him completely. He can’t remember ever experiencing fear to that degree before. He was able to sit through a typical fear toxin trip for hours, everyone around him none the wiser to his predicament. The transdermal strain must be incredibly more potent than the aerosol. He was going to have to do a lot of testing when he got home.
It was with a still shaky, trembling hand that he ran his fingers through his hair, gripping it a second for comfort when—
Hair.
WatchTower.
He was touching his hair in the WatchTower.
He scrambled off the bed, finally recognizing the med-bay around him, ignoring the sluggishness in his body as he ran to the mirror. He was met with exactly what he expected.
His face.
Completely uncovered.
Black eye-makeup was smeared around, white lines carved through it that suggested at some point he had been crying which was…humiliating to say the least.
Who had…? Who had seen?
He was so exhausted that he couldn’t even dredge up the anger and betrayal that he knew he should be feeling, would be feeling in any other case that wasn’t him freshly post fear toxin trip.
He just felt…resigned. He had been talking to Alfred about finally telling them all who he was anyway, he had just thought it'd be on his own terms.
Knock knock.
“B?”
Ah hell.
Bruce took a deep, steadying breath, moving to sit back down on the bed. “Hn,” he grunted.
The door opened with a soft click and the bane of Bruce’s existence walked through the door.
Clark visibly swallowed at the sight of Bruce. “Hi.”
Bruce just raised an eyebrow.
The dam burst. “God B I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to but then you went still and we were all scared and Dinah needed to check you for a brain injury—”
“Clark.”
An audible gulp.
Bruce felt eerily like he was on Lexapro. “It’s fine.”
Clark shuffled closer. “It’s– ‘It's fine’?”
“Yep.” Bruce looked him up and down.
Clark seemed to gather himself, before closing the remaining distance and sitting next to Bruce on the bed. “Are you feeling better?”
Bruce had a sudden flash of a bloody, flesh filled maw, and suppressed a shudder. “Mmm.”
Bruce startled when he felt a touch on his face. When he shot the offender a look, Clark only momentarily paused before reaching back out slowly, like Bruce was a feral cat.
And boy did Bruce feel like one, as he held still waiting for the other shoe to drop. When Clark made contact again Bruce’s eyes fell closed, not of his own volition. He tried to stop it but his body actually shuddered this time when Clark fully cupped his face, he couldn’t help but lean into the warmth.
“How are you really feeling… Bruce Wayne?”
A light tremble was overtaking Bruce’s body. He didn’t reply, just pushed his face further into Clark’s palm, unable to deal with all the tediousness that came with an identity reveal right then.
“It’s okay,” Clark whispered softly. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
The cheesy words shouldn’t have soothed him the way they did, he was supposed to be made of tougher stuff than that. But something about the after-tremors, the low-lighting, and Clark’s soft words all combined to make Bruce weak to it all.
This dancing around each other thing, was another point of confusion that Bruce had been putting on the back-burner as well. But he wasn’t gonna bring it up now either. Not when he felt mildly peaceful and the rest of the team was likely right outside the door.
“It was fear-toxin. New strain,” he mumbled, moving away from Clark’s touch. “Not a gas.”
Clark sucked in a breath. “Yeah we uh- didn’t know what it was exactly, and ended up having to sedate you. We didn’t get the blood test results until an hour ago, they only half-matched the fear-toxin that you have in your database.”
Bruce didn’t normally like being sedated under any circumstances, but he could imagine that he was struggling voraciously and/or at risk of a heart-attack when they did it. “That’s…you guys did good. I’ll have to run more analyses on it when I get back to the cave.”
“So is this cave anywhere near Wayne Manor?”
“Shut up.”
~
Bruce entertained the idea of sneaking out of the WatchTower behind everyone’s back for about half a moment. He would definitely be able to. However, now that they knew who he was, chances were that he would get a group of heroes on his porch trying to break the door down, and Alfred would not be happy about that.
So he followed Clark back out to the meeting room, in a pilfered shirt Clark had procured from somewhere, since they had had to cut his armor off.
It smelled suspiciously like him. Bruce wasn’t fooled for a second.
He carried his cowl awkwardly under one arm, not flinching in the slightest when remnants of darkness edged in on his vision.
He knew from experience they’d go away after a few days.
When they stepped into the room, Clark tried to guide him forward with a hand on his back but Bruce wasn’t quite ready for that so he skirted around the touch and made his way back to his seat at the table.
Someone had cleaned up the water.
“Jesus fucking Christ its true,” Oliver said with a groan, head in his hands. “You bastard, I hate you.”
Bruce couldn’t help but grin at that. “Not my fault you’ve always been slower than me.”
Oliver shot him a glare before turning to Dinah. “Honey hold me back before I throttle the smug son of a bitch.”
Clark sat down next to him. A glare of his own shot Oliver’s way. “No one’s throttling him.”
Warmth filled Bruce’s chest before it was quickly doused by Hal. “Alright lover boy, no one’s gonna touch him, we get it.” His snicker was obnoxious.
Bruce grit his teeth and ignored him. “I was planning on telling you all…eventually. Guess this made that a little easier.”
“Easier?!” Barry exclaimed, aghast. “You were dosed with fear toxin man!”
Bruce waved him off. “Happens.”
A murmur of disbelief sounded off around the table.
Bruce grunted. “I’m serious, it happens more than I like to admit. You guys never would have even noticed if I’d been hit with the normal strain, but this time Scarecrow got me with something new”
“No fucking way dude.”
Dinah raised an eyebrow. “So you’re telling me you make a habit out of attending League meetings while experiencing fear-induced hallucinations that have been known to kill people?”
Bruce sighed. “Not a habit per se, twice has been unavoidable and only once was on purpose.”
“On purpose?!” Clark echoed from beside him, hollowly.
Bruce waved him off too. “Training exercise. Anyway, I hope the meeting was able to conclude nicely after my interruption. I do need to be getting back to Gotham now though-” the disbelieving clamor rose as he got up and made his way to the zeta-tube.
“Bruce, wait!” He ignored them, inputting his code.
“Same time next month?” Then he was beamed back to the cave, stumbling on the lip of the zeta as he finally found himself alone, free to breathe shakily in quiet.
He didn’t have time for the panic-attack-esque post-toxin-symptoms though. He had work to do.
Knowing his luck, that shit was already hitting the streets. Which meant it was time for Batman to redistribute his own version of fear into Gotham’s underbelly.
So he suited up.