Kryptonese for Dummies

It takes some maneuvering, but Bruce eventually manages to convince Clark to let him swipe some of the Kryptonian tech and install it in the cave. The man has a stubborn streak a mile wide and while it's good to get to know him better, Bruce doesn't find it his most edifying trait. It's not like the tech was going to do anything but sit in government quarantine otherwise, waiting for the next supervillain with delusions of grandeur. And Bruce will make good use of it—if he can figure out how to get it to interface with his system.

"Any luck?" Clark asks, quite literally hovering at Bruce's shoulder.

"I think so," Bruce says, as he takes a Kryptonian cable tentacle-thing and lets it slide through his hands with eerie, mercurial grace. A little firm guidance, and it molds itself inside a usb slot. "Though it's easier to concentrate when you're not breathing down my neck."

"Sorry," Clark says, pretty much an absent reflex because he's already ignoring Bruce and looking up at the screens. They've woken up, an array of silver glyphs spilling across the displays. "It's working."

"Heh. Figures it'd be simpler than getting my network to recognize the wireless printer. Is that Kryptonese?"

"Yeah," Clark says, and taps at the keyboard. A fresh cascade of glyphs appear; Clark stares at them intently, eyes scanning back and forth.

Bruce glances at him, raises an eyebrow. "You can read it."

"I can."

"Is it difficult to learn?"

"Uh, I didn't learn, exactly." Clark gives a diffident shrug. "It's a pretty weird story." He navigates through a few screens, pulling out matrices of elaborate symbols, moving them into a more familiar structure of folders on Bruce's desktop. "But you'll like this. It's a dictionary, kind of."

"A lexicon," Bruce says. This will be incredibly useful for communicating in the field. Their own cipher, a secret code. "You're going to teach me."

Bruce throws himself into the task. Clark's a decent teacher, and sets him to learning in the simplest tenses—

("It makes you sound like a five year old, but we all have to start somewhere."

"I'm a quick study. Move me up a grade.")

—and explains what enough of the glyphs mean to navigate the database. Bruce spends his late mornings transliterating Kryptonese script into roman and buttonholing Clark into translating pages of the stuff whenever he can, ignoring his good-natured complaints about too much homework. At first it seems impenetrable, but then things begin to fall into place; he learns enough to draw parallels between the languages he already knows, and apply it. It's rewarding to have the words begin to roll off his tongue without thought, worn into familiarity.

"" he says to Clark one morning, shuffling through the sheaves of notes spread across his keyboards. It's a well-used greeting, partnered with a new phrase Bruce encountered recently. He's figured that it means 'partner'. Something like a chosen bond, a connotation of complementary duality. Seems apt.

"...what," Clark says. He stares at Bruce, a little incredulous.

"Pronunciation off?" Bruce asks him. "," he says again, trying more weight on the second syllable.

Clark continues to just stare at him wide-eyed, like he doesn't know what to do with himself.

". Clark? ?" Damnit, he was sure he had this down. He tries again, watching Clark for some indication that he's got it right. "?"

Clark blinks, takes a short breath and clasps Bruce's shoulder. "," he says in that resonant voice of his, slowly, almost like he's tasting the words. "You had it right the first time."

Later on Bruce comes across the phrase again, along with a substantial amount of unambiguous context. It takes a moment to sink in and then he has to go pace around the cave for a while, trying to shake off the jags of mortification (and ignore the keen edge of exhilaration).

After that Bruce selects a word that is more appropriate to use, and thrashes the pronunciation to within an inch of its life. Later, when Clark hands him a coffee he says, "."

Clark covers it quickly, but Bruce didn't miss the brief collapse of his smile. "."

Bruce's pronunciation is impeccable. That should please him, but it doesn't. He sips his coffee and thinks about the way Clark had looked at him when he'd misspoken. The embarrassment has faded, but the way Clark had echoed him, gaze unwavering and voice utterly sincere even for him, has not.

(And maybe Bruce has been thinking on that a lot, lately.)

"Clark," he says, without stopping, without giving himself the opportunity to reason himself out of it. "."

Clark's smile is brilliant. "," he says. "Your accent is improving."