my 50k slowburn alternating chapters clark kent/bruce wayne roleswap au about disarmingly kind pretty boy journalist clark and paranoid Jersey goat farmer slash consulting detective bruce where they don't even meet until chapter 11

Jim Gordon is maybe an old friend of Alfred's from Gotham and he calls Bruce in on a case... word gets around... he starts getting more jobs... he works a case in Metropolis that goes sour and Superman flies in to save the day only to find Batman already there...

"Batman" not a known figure, just a local crimefighting cryptid in some Jersey papers so Clark of course has a journalistic duty to go ask around... see what he was doing in his fair city

MEANWHILE Bruce goes into Gotham once a week to get coffee with darling of the DA's office Harvey Dent & it's definitely innocuous, they met at school before Bruce dropped out & Harvey just likes running some case details by him for his unique perspective

& Clark has a very quippy charged INTERESTING friendship with fellow reporter Lois Lane, who's the only one who seems to, as she puts it, "see past the good rich kid act to the actual good rich kid beneath"

Lois thinks Clark is wasting his time pursuing this Bat-person—it's Jersey, Kent, what kind of leads are you going to find in JERSEY?—but Clark is happily befriending Alfred, who is serving him homemade biscuits & Wayne Farms goat cheese

he is also proving perhaps the toughest journalistic nut that Clark has ever attempted to crack, and by the time Bruce walks into his kitchen after they've been at it three hours the only thing Clark has learned about the local news report that the Batman was sighted next to

the Wayne Farms goat pen was that the local news had in fact reported it. Bruce is unamused when Clark relays this to him, even though he used his best light-anecdote-to-make-you-feel-at-ease voice. Kind of attractively unamused, though, damn.

Clark gives up for a while until things break bad with Harvey and then all of a sudden there are TONS—well, not tons, but UPWARDS OF TWO Batman-sightings in Gotham, and even LOIS can't argue with GOTHAM, news definitely happens in Gotham!!