Title: Nightmares - posted August 7, 2005
Series:  Beginnings (Shadows and Stone)
Author: Lacey McBain
Rating:  G.  Bruce, Lex.
Summary:  Real friends can talk about anything.  Even nightmares.
Disclaimer: I don’t own them, but if I did they would always sleep peacefully (except when necessary for my evil plots!)
***

Beginnings:  Nightmares

Lex was running.  The corn brushed against him as he ran, sharp green leaves slashing at his face like knives.  He stumbled, breathing in dirt and the smell of something burning.  With clumsy fingers, he brushed damp earth from the grey knees of his school pants.  Dirt clung to his hands.  In front of him, the boy hanging from the cross whispered to him.  Help me.  Lex struggled to find his inhaler.  He couldn’t breathe.  A glance over his shoulder revealed a sky full of smoke trails, green-tinged rocks plummeting to earth as if it were the end of the world.  Help me.  Lex closed his eyes and covered his head with his arms.  A hot wind swept over him.  He felt his hair crackle and lift away from his skin.  He opened his mouth to scream, but he couldn’t catch a breath.  All around him the world was green and burning.

“Lex.  Lex!”

The heaviness in his chest was almost unbearable.  Lex reached out a hand, scrabbling for his inhaler.  It wasn’t there.  He struggled to fill his lungs with air.

“Lex, there’s no inhaler.  Just breathe.  Breathe.”

Something struck Lex in the middle of the chest, and his eyes flashed open.  There was no flame-filled sky, no carpet of green leaves strewn around him.  He stared into Bruce’s dark eyes and realized his roommate was sitting on top of him, both hands pressing on Lex’s chest.

“Lex?  You’re still not breathing.”

Lex blinked at him, realized Bruce was right, and took a deep breath.  And let it out.  Bruce did the same, and somehow that made everything not as bad.  They stared at each other and just kept breathing.  It gave Lex enough time to figure out Bruce was really heavy.  He poked him in the leg.

Bruce slid onto the bed and gave Lex a small shove.  The bed creaked as Lex edged towards the wall, Bruce lying down beside him.  Shoulder to shoulder, they lay in the dark.  It seemed like one of them should say something, but Lex had no idea what.  Just breathing was enough for right now.

“You’ve got to stop doing that,” Bruce said quietly.

Lex felt his face flush hot.  He started to apologize, embarrassed.  “I’m sorry.  I can’t help—”

“Not the nightmares.  The not breathing.”  Bruce turned his head and looked into Lex’s eyes.  “You stop breathing, Lex, and—and it’s not funny.”

Lex didn’t have anything to say.  All he could remember was the terror of being trapped in that field, the frantic struggle to fill his lungs while the air burned around him.  He rubbed at the sore spot in the middle of his chest.

“Did you hit me?” Lex asked, suddenly.

“Well, yeah.  You weren’t breathing.”  Bruce was unapologetic, and Lex figured that was Bruce’s way of telling him he could’ve hit him harder.

“How did you know?”

“What?”

Lex rolled onto his side and stared at his roommate.  “How did you know I wasn’t breathing?”

Bruce suddenly looked uncomfortable.  “You’re okay now.  I’m going back to bed.”  He started to slide off the edge, but Lex reached out and grabbed his arm.

“Bruce?”

Lex got both hands around Bruce’s elbow and hauled him back onto the bed.  Now that he could breathe and Lex knew the sky wasn’t falling, he could think.  Bruce gave a half-hearted pull, but finally sighed and lay down again.  Lex waited.  He’d been having the same nightmare over and over, and every night Bruce was there, waking him up, sitting with him till he fell asleep again.  When Lex woke up in the morning, Bruce was always back in his own bed.  They didn’t talk about the nightmares.  Just went to breakfast and class.  Burning cornfields and meteor showers had no place during daylight hours anyway.

Lex poked Bruce in the side.  Hard.

“Ow.  What was that for?”

“You’ve been watching me sleep,” Lex said.  He wasn’t sure whether to be angry, grateful, or just weirded out.  Mostly he was weirded out, but not as much as he thought he should be.  Things with Bruce were just like that.

“If you’d keep breathing, I wouldn’t have to watch you.”  Bruce sounded huffy, which he only did when he was scared.

“But if you weren’t watching, you wouldn’t know—”

“Come on, Lex.  It’s not a chicken and egg problem.”

“Seems like it is,” Lex said casually.  “How long have you been watching me sleep?”

Bruce shifted again, but Lex still had hold of his arm.  He dug his fingernails into the crisp cotton of Bruce’s pajamas.

“How long, Bruce?”

“Since you got back, okay?”  Bruce twisted out of Lex’s grasp and sat up.  “You scared the hell out of me.  What was I supposed to do?  Let you die in your sleep?  How was I going to explain that to the Headmaster?”

“Why didn’t you say something?”

Lex could feel himself getting angry and he didn’t know why.  Maybe he was as scared as Bruce.  The thought of dying in his sleep was somehow worse than losing his hair or even spending night after night in that horrible Kansas field.

“I don’t know!”

Bruce’s hair was sticking up in all directions, and Lex wondered briefly if he’d gone to bed with his hair wet.  It was casting weird shadows in the moonlight on the wall.  He had the strangest urge to flatten it down.  Since he’d lost his hair, he had a weird desire to touch other people’s.  Bruce indulged him for the most part and didn’t say much about it.

Lex stared at him.  It was awkward since they were still sitting side by side on the bed, but Lex was really trying hard to understand how Bruce could’ve spent two weeks thinking he was going to die and not bother to tell him.  It seemed kind of important.

“When was the last time you slept?”

Bruce mumbled something into his shoulder, and Lex lost the last bit of patience he had.  He was tired and scared and more than a little freaked out, and his best friend in the world was being a jerk about it.  Lex smacked him in the back of the head.

“Ow!”  Bruce whirled around, glaring.  “Will you stop that?”

“When?”

“I—”

“When did you sleep, Bruce!?”

Lex was tired of playing games.  It was three in the morning according to the glowing face of his bedside clock, and he was bloody tired.  He hadn’t slept a full night since he’d gotten back from the hospital.  He was starting to guess Bruce hadn’t either, and for some reason he didn’t understand, it made him mad, not grateful.

“All right, all right.  Latin.  I grab a nap in Latin.”

Lex stared at him, outraged.  Bruce was the top of the class in Latin.  He never got anything wrong.  “How the hell do you do that?  You always know the answers!”

“Alfred taught me a bunch and my father was a doctor.  They haven’t gotten to anything I don’t know.”

“That’s—that’s practically cheating.”

Bruce just looked at him and shook his head.  “Fine, tomorrow night I’ll sleep and you can stop breathing.  See if I care.”  He stood up and went back to his own bed.

“Fine,” Lex said, pulling the covers up around his neck.  He turned towards the wall.  “And your hair looks funny.”

Bruce’s shadow stuck out its tongue.

***

For three nights neither of them got any sleep.  They both knew it.  Lex concentrated on keeping every breath audible, trying not to freak Bruce out.  Bruce made a show out of making fake sleep noises and snoring a little, but Lex knew he wasn’t asleep.  Sooner or later, Lex would drop off, but by then it was so late, he didn’t have time to dream anything, let alone have a nightmare.

It wasn’t such a bad solution.  Except he was exhausted.

“Mr. Luthor?”  Lex’s head snapped up.  He could hear barely muffled giggles around him.  Damn.  He must’ve dropped off.  Mr. Carter, the Latin instructor, was standing beside his desk.  “Am I interrupting your sleep, Mr. Luthor?”

“No, sir.”

“Then would you care to conjugate the verb written on the board for us?”

Lex blinked, bleary-eyed and tried to remember his rules.  He hated conjugation.  It was boring and repetitive.  He’d rather do translations or read something.  It’s not that Latin was difficult, he just wasn’t interested in what Mr. Carter was teaching.

“Well, Mr. Luthor?”

He heard a familiar voice two desks behind him rattle off the conjugation.

“Thank you, Mr. Wayne, but I’ll ask you to keep your answers until called upon.”  Mr. Carter’s voice was only mildly annoyed.  Yeah, Bruce could get away with murder in this class.

“The next verb, Mr. Luthor.”

Again, Bruce’s voice cut in.  The class started to laugh in earnest, and Mr. Carter’s tolerant smile was quickly replaced by a frown.

“Mr. Wayne, I appreciate you wanting to help out your obviously struggling classmate; however—”

Bruce said something else in Latin, and Lex’s eyes snapped open.  Oh, that hadn’t been very nice at all.  He couldn’t help but grin into his textbook.  Bruce hadn’t gotten that one from Alfred or his father.  Nope, that one was one hundred percent Luthor.  What was Bruce doing?

Mr. Carter looked stunned.  “Mr. Wayne, come with me.”  That could only mean one thing:  a trip to the Headmaster’s office.  Lex risked a glance back at Bruce, but he was already gathering up his books.  “The rest of you, keep working on your conjugations.  Particularly you, Mr. Luthor.”

The room was absolutely silent when Mr. Carter and Bruce left.  For about thirty seconds.

“What did he say?” someone asked.  There was a bunch of interested shrugging while people tried to piece together what they’d heard.  Lex rolled his eyes.  None of these guys knew the first thing about Latin pronunciation.  It really wasn’t that difficult.

“Luthor, what did he say?”

Lex smiled benignly and started working on the conjugations he hadn’t finished last night.

“Look it up,” he said.

***

Bruce could hear footsteps following him.  He wasn’t afraid, exactly.  The manor was familiar territory—he knew every hallway, every staircase.  There was nothing here that could surprise him.

Lightning flared outside and rain coated the windows.  Bruce’s heart sped up as the footsteps got louder.  A man’s dress shoes.  A woman’s high heels.  They were coming from downstairs.  He ran for the main staircase and followed the deep brown carpet down to the foyer.  It was empty.  The space echoed with his footfalls.  Bruce stood in the centre and turned in a circle, looking for the people who had made the footsteps.

No one.

The lightning flashed again, and this time it looked like a knife cutting through the sky.  The room around him blazed with silver light.  He stared as a dark figure approached, knife in hand.  The blade glinted.  Bruce put up a hand to ward him off, but the man walked right past him as if he didn’t even see him.  Bruce’s parents were coming down the hall, laughing together, holding hands.  The blue dress was his mother’s favourite and she was wearing her new strand of pearls.  She looked beautiful.

Bruce tried to move, to run.  He knew they were in danger, but there was nothing he could do.  He was frozen to the spot, his mouth incapable of forming words.  The man moved like lightning, a flash against the darkness, and then the floor was rippling red with blood.  His father and mother lay unmoving, and all around him Bruce could feel eyes watching, mouths whispering at him to do something.

He tried to move.  He tried to scream.  Something flew out of the darkness and hit him in the face.  There were red eyes and leathery wings, and he put up his arms and tried to protect himself, but he could feel the bats beating against him, his flesh running pink with blood and tears.

“Bruce, hold still.”

“No, no, get off!”

“Bruce!”

Bruce batted at the wings that were attacking him, slapped at them, felt the soft fleshy thud beneath his fists.

“Ow! Jesus, Bruce, wake up!”

He grabbed a handful of cotton.  My mother’s dress, he thought.  Oh God, my mother.  Blood splashed against his face, and he let out a sob.  He couldn’t help it.

“Open your eyes!”

He did, and was amazed to see he wasn’t at the manor at all.  Or in an alley.  Or anywhere he’d thought.  He was sitting on the floor of his room at Excelsior, tangled in his sheets with a fistful of blanket in each hand, and Lex was sitting on the edge of his bed, a hand covering one eye.

Bruce sat up and wiped his face with one hand.  It was wet.  He stared at his hand, surprised to see it wasn’t covered in blood.  “What?  Were you having a nightmare?”

Lex just glared at him across the room.  The tilt of his head and the roll of Lex’s eyes told him something was drastically wrong with what he’d said, but he wasn’t sure what.  Of course, he was the one sitting on the floor with all his bedcovers around him.

“I was having a nightmare,” Bruce corrected, understanding.  Lex nodded.  “I’m sorry if I woke you up.”

“If?  Yeah, Bruce, you woke me up.  You probably woke up half the bloody floor.”

Bruce cringed and closed his eyes.  He could still see the stain of red spilling from his mother’s chest, his father’s side.  He remembered the burning pain in his own side, the one that had turned cold as he’d lain in the alley that night.  It would’ve been so much better if he’d died with them.

“Bruce?”  Lex’s voice was gentler than a moment ago.  “I’m sorry.  You were screaming.  I—I didn’t know what to do.”

Bruce looked down and realized his pajamas were damp.  He had a moment of panic, then realized Lex was holding an empty glass.  A big glass.

“You dumped water on me?”

There was a reluctant nod.  Bruce was actually kind of relieved.  He wouldn’t have been able to face Lex if he’d wet the bed or something.  Of course, Lex was still holding his eye.  That couldn’t possibly be a good sign either.

Bruce gestured to Lex’s face.  “Did I … ?”

There was a shrug, and Lex pulled his hand away.  His left eye was slightly puffy, and still watering.  Bruce figured it was probably going to turn into a hell of a shiner they might have difficulty explaining.

“It’s not bad.  Lucky punch.”

“Sorry.”

Bruce realized he was still sitting on the floor, and made an attempt to untangle himself.  The bed was completely wrecked, and his sheets and pillow were damp.  Lex had been generous with the water.  Bruce threw the bedding on top of the mattress with a frustrated sigh.  He doubted he was going to get any more sleep tonight anyway.

“You want me to help you make the bed?” Lex offered.

Bruce gave the project up as a lost cause.  “Forget it.  I’ll just lie on top.”

He pushed the bedding onto the floor again and lay down on the mattress.  Lex flopped onto his back and stared at the ceiling.

Nothing but the ticking of Lex’s clock broke the silence until Lex asked:  “Do you want to talk about it?”

“You want to talk about yours?” Bruce returned.

There was a pause.  “Not really.”

“Me neither.”

The clock ticked on.  Bruce tried to get comfortable without a pillow and without any sheets.  It wasn’t easy.  He lay on his back and stared at the shadows on the ceiling.

“I can’t sleep in Latin anymore,” Bruce said finally.

Lex snorted.  “Well, you probably could’ve if you hadn’t told Mr. Carter to put his Roman spear where the sun doesn’t shine.”

Bruce grinned in spite of himself.  Alfred wouldn’t be happy with him when he found out, but still.  It had felt good to use the language for something other than filling in blanks in his workbook.  And he hadn’t wanted Lex to get in trouble.  It wasn’t his fault he was having nightmares.

“Why did you do that anyway?” Lex asked.  “You didn’t have to.”

“I know.”  Bruce rolled over to face Lex across their beds, and noticed Lex had done the same.  “I guess I figured you shouldn’t get punished for something you couldn’t help.”

“I suppose we could just tell them what’s going on,” Lex said.

“No!  Absolutely not.”  Bruce shook his head vehemently.  “They’ll pack us both off to psychiatrists and doctors who’ll say ‘you’re experiencing the aftermath of a deeply embedded psychological trauma,’ and after they’re done poking around in our heads, nothing will change anyway.”

Lex sat silently for a minute.  “I guess you’ve been through that already, huh?”

“Yeah.”  Bruce had gone through the whole barrage of psychologists and psychiatrists until he’d been able to convince Alfred and Leslie it wasn’t helping.  All he needed was time.  And because he was who he was and they’d never really thought of him as a child anyway, they listened and let him have his way.  Bruce didn’t know if it was any better not talking to someone, but he sure as hell didn’t want to talk to psychiatrists and PhD’s anymore.  They’d made him feel like a lab rat.  A poor orphaned lab rat.

“So is there anything we can do?”  Lex’s voice was full of resignation.

“I don’t know.”

A gust of wind rattled against the window and Bruce shivered even though he couldn’t feel it.  Lex’s blanket landed on top of his head.

“I’m too hot anyway.  Take it and don’t argue.”

“Thanks.”  Bruce wrapped it around him.  “They say it helps to talk about stuff.”

“You said—”

“I said no doctors.  But maybe, I don’t know … talking to a … a friend might be different.”

“You’ve got a friend?  Wow, you’ll have to introduce me.”

Bruce froze for a moment before he realized Lex was joking.  They were both still cautious with the word friend.  It was like they were afraid to wear it out.  Bruce had never really had someone it applied to before, and he was pretty sure Lex hadn’t either.

“Yeah, well, he’s a scrawny little bald—”

“And if you want to keep him as a friend …”

Bruce smirked.  It still felt strange to have someone to joke with, but then they’d only known each other a couple of months.  Lex always seemed to get what he was trying to say.  Even when he didn’t say it very well.  Bruce wondered how long it would be before Lex got bored and found someone else to be best friends with.

“I dream about the meteor shower,” Lex said, his voice soft as Bruce had ever heard it.  He had to strain to hear the words.  “Running through the field of corn, and I can’t breathe.  Then the sky starts to fall.”

Bruce held his breath.  He could see it just as Lex described it.  Imagined the horror of it.  He’d seen the television reports, but he knew it was nothing compared to what Lex had seen.  Felt.  Waking up and finding his hair completely gone.

“There’s a guy in the field, hanging on a cross.  I don’t honestly know if that part’s real or not.  He wanted me to help him.  I was too scared to do anything but run.  Everything around me is green and burning.  Which seems really wrong.”

Bruce nodded, waiting to see if there was more.  Lex took a few deep breaths, then nothing.

“I dream about the night my parents were killed.”  Bruce closed his eyes.  It wasn’t a new dream, and it wasn’t always the same.  He didn’t know how to describe it, how the end was always as much a surprise as it was inevitable.  “I know what’s going to happen, and yet I don’t.  I see them, my parents, and they’re happy, laughing.  Then the man with the knife is there and I can’t do anything, can’t warn them.  All I can do is watch.”

Bruce glanced at Lex and could see Lex’s eyes were open, two blue points of light fixed on him with absolute seriousness.  Lex nodded, and Bruce knew it meant, it’s okay, keep going, it’ll be okay.  Or at least that’s what Bruce understood.

“Sometimes there are eyes watching me in the darkness.  The sound of wings.  There were—were bats in the alley that night, at the old theatre.”  Bruce shivered, and Lex’s bed creaked as if he might be getting up.  Everything stopped for a moment.  “I hate bats.  They scare me.”

“I’m scared of heights,” Lex admitted.  “My father makes me go in the helicopter just because he knows it scares me.”

Bruce found himself wanting to kick Mr. Luthor in the shin next time he saw him.  Alfred would never make him do something he was terrified of.  Never.

“I saw your father the first day of school,” Bruce said.

“What?”

“I saw you and your father.  Arguing in front of the school.  Before I met you.”  Bruce hadn’t intended to tell Lex this part.  He didn’t know why he’d even started this story.  This talking thing appeared to be dangerous.  Sometimes you just couldn’t stop.

“You were watching me?”  There was a frown in Lex’s voice, and Bruce figured he was going to have to do something to prove he wasn’t some kind of stalker.  He did spend a lot of time watching Lex.  Maybe that was weird.

“I was waiting for Henri to come back.  I thought your Latin was pretty good.”  Lex chuckled, and Bruce took that as permission to finish the story.  “I saw him say something to you, drag you into the school.  I … it’s stupid.”

“What?”  Lex had rolled onto his stomach and was lying with his chin resting on his folded arms.  “What’s stupid?”

“I had the weirdest feeling.  I—I wanted to protect you.”  Bruce felt his face getting hot.  “I know it’s stupid.”

Lex was rubbing absently at the scar on his lip.  “Nobody’s ever wanted to protect me from him before.”

The silence that slipped between them was comfortable, and Bruce felt himself relaxing.  Telling Lex hadn’t been so bad after all.  When Lex had first come back to school after he’d lost his hair, Bruce had told Lex he could always wake him up or talk to him; he’d meant it, but it was also one of those things he said just to make Lex feel better.  But now they’d done it, Bruce was surprised how much better he did feel.

The clock ticked its way towards morning.  Sometime before the sun came up, they both slept.

***

Bruce listened as Lex’s breathing deepened and slowed.  They’d had two nights with no disturbances.  They weren’t exactly sleeping better, but Bruce figured maybe it was just exhaustion setting in.  The body seemed to know what it needed, even if the mind wanted to be uncooperative.

Lex’s clock ticked soothingly, and Bruce smiled as he heard a gentle snore.  He knew there was going to come a time he’d want to stuff a pillow over Lex’s face, but tonight it meant he was asleep and breathing, so he didn’t care.  Bruce was starting to drift too, his mind full of flaming rocks and dark alleys, crop circles that looked like perfect moons, and silver knives that cut down corn like a scythe.  Lex was there too.  Lex with his hair on fire, red and flaming; Lex with an open-mouth, screaming and trying to breathe.  The sky was full of crows, the flutter of black wings pounding like a heartbeat.

Bruce snapped awake.  Maybe talking about their nightmares hadn’t been such a good idea.  Now he was incorporating Lex’s fears too.  As silently as he could, Bruce tiptoed to the bathroom and got a drink.  He splashed cold water on his face and took several deep breaths.  Lex was mumbling softly when Bruce got back into bed.

The mumbling got louder, and Bruce went and knelt on the floor beside Lex’s bed.  He laid a hand on Lex’s arm, and he seemed to settle down.  Well, at least maybe one of them could get some sleep.

Bruce didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep until he felt someone gently shaking his shoulder.  He blinked up at Lex and realized he couldn’t feel his legs.  He had no idea how long he’d been sitting on them, and that horrible feeling of prickling pins-and-needles was everywhere.

“You were mumbling,” Lex said sleepily.  “And why are you sitting on the floor?”

“You were mumbling too.”  Bruce shifted and groaned.

“What?”

“My legs are asleep.”

Lex snickered.  “You should be too.”  There was a tug on his arm, and Lex slid over against the wall, giving Bruce space to lie down.  It didn’t occur to him to go back to his own bed.  He was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.

***

They worked out a system.  It wasn’t a very good system, but Lex didn’t care ‘cause it seemed to work.  Bruce insisted they write down their dreams, and so Lex rolled his eyes, but he did it because even when Bruce hadn’t known who Lex was, he’d wanted to protect him, and Lex couldn’t help but feel strangely grateful.

No one had wanted to protect him before.  Most people thought his father was intimidating or charismatic.  Yeah, he’d heard that word a lot.  Lex figured he was the only one who thought his father was a little bit frightening.  It made it easier to know Bruce had seen it too, if only for a moment.  He didn’t feel as guilty for hating his father a little bit.

They talked about what they saw in their dreams.  Nightmares.  Sometimes Lex thought torturing Bruce would’ve been easier than trying to make him talk, but they managed.  He knew more about Bruce’s nightmares than he’d ever wanted to know, but it was okay.  At least neither of them was alone in a field or an alley anymore.

Bruce taught him how to meditate, and although Lex didn’t really think Bruce knew what he was doing, Lex sat in the weird lotus posture and tried to empty his mind.  Sometimes he hummed and rolled his eyes, but it helped him feel calmer, find his breath.  He didn’t have asthma anymore, but sometimes his brain forgot.  He didn’t tell Bruce that mostly it was just easier to imagine Bruce running beside him through the field, or standing between him and the meteors.  Occasionally Bruce was standing between Lex and his father, and Lex never had to step into that helicopter again.  The nightmares didn’t entirely go away, but they woke him up less frequently, and the times he did wake up, Bruce was usually there with a hand on his arm.  Lex had learned just to roll over towards the wall and let Bruce slide in beside him.  It seemed the easiest thing to do.

Lex learned to dodge Bruce’s fists, learned how to block and hold him if he needed to.  One black eye and a busted lip was enough for him.  For his part, Bruce never said it, but Lex knew the nightmares weren’t much better.  He still woke up as often, still had as many nights he didn’t seem to sleep, but Lex was learning how to tell when Bruce wasn’t sleeping.  Some nights he’d stumble over to Bruce’s bed claiming sleeplessness, and Bruce would sigh and shift aside, muttering about inconvenience and being tired.  Bruce was usually asleep before Lex was.  There was no explanation for it.

The first morning Lex woke up to find Bruce’s arm around his waist, his dark hair tickling Lex’s scalp, Lex gave him a shove and wiggled closer to the wall.  Bruce was heavy and hot.  He muttered something rude in Latin and rolled over.

The second time Lex woke up with Bruce, he couldn’t move.  Bruce’s arms were wrapped around him tighter than anyone had ever held him in his life.  Bruce was fast asleep.  Lex wiggled and squirmed.  He had to go to the bathroom.

“I’m not a teddy bear, Bruce,” he said, loudly.  “Let me go.”

Bruce just hugged him harder and mumbled something about keeping him safe, which might've been almost sweet, if Lex didn't really need to use the bathroom.  He wondered if it was possible to hug someone to death.  He could barely breathe and if Bruce squeezed him any harder, Lex didn't think he could be responsible for the consequences.  His bladder was about to explode.  He kicked Bruce in the shins until he woke up.

The next time Lex woke up and found Bruce curled around him, he just sighed and figured there was no point fighting.  Bruce was warm and comfortable, and somewhere along the way, they’d become real friends.  Not the kind of friends his parents had—the kind who came for cocktails and dinner parties, and laughed when they didn't mean it—but the kind you could tell your nightmares to, and dump cold water on, and share a bed with if you were scared.

It was weird and he had a feeling most people didn’t have friends like this, but then again, he and Bruce weren’t most people.

Lex patted Bruce’s hair softly and went back to sleep.


THE END

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