#and one of the batkids overhears & they tell the others 'we cant let this happen he needs to screw this up so he can get with clark instead

[brucie-baby]

While the dynamics of Bruce being the hopelessly smitten party in a unrequited love situation is interesting, I personally prefer it when it's the other way around except Bruce actually does love them but he's repressed his feelings so hard that he's kinda forced himself to forget about them and unless something forces them awake, they're cooked.

soo understandable

something i find so intriguing about bruce is that yes, he's a master at forcing his feelings down but as soon as he accepts them, he tends to go all in. straight into the deep end. he doesn't know how to not be so fucking intense.

so i think this situation would be kinda wild kinda fun in the sense that like. you have the whole initial angst of clark ((using him because he was in the original post)) truly believing that bruce does not, can not, will not love him back, and he's so sure of this because bruce is so sure of this. bruce shows no sign of loving him back because of just how deep down he's repressed it all. and generally clark is like "he's still my best friend and i'd love him even if he hated me," but also it still fucking sucks that the love is unrequited, right??

and then something happens and for the sake of this we'll say it's something like,, clark gets severely hurt in the field and someone kind of confronts bruce with his feelings and he finally has this moment of "okay shit yeah this is real" and that's when the repression goes away. that's the moment he accepts it.

now here's the thing. clark didn't know about bruce's feelings because bruce had pretty much forced himself to forget them. bruce does not have this issue with clark. he knows exactly how clark feels (world's greatest detective, obviously). so he does it. he dives straight in. pulls out all the stops.

and that's where the additional angst kicks in. because like. bruce has shown absolutely no sign of being interested in clark in any way. literally none. and now clark gets hurt and suddenly bruce is asking him on dates and saying he's in love with him and what the fuck?? clearly bruce is just confused because of the whole near-death thing. he doesn't actually love clark. clark would've known (he can hear the man's heartbeat, his breathing, can see every microscopic detail of the expressions he wears when talking to clark, and nobody can fake that, not even bruce). and now clark's all extra hurt on the inside because holy shit bruce finally loves him back and it's not even real??

obviously there's a happy ending somewhere in there of clark realising that okay shit yeah this is real. however in my head this is also a comedy so most of it is just bruce trying so desperately to convince clark that he genuinely does love him that he binges as many romcoms as possible and starts copying them. his kids start feeding him fake romcom moments or being like "this worked for a friend of mine" just to make him do the most ridiculous shit possible.