Chapter Text
Clark had expected that interlude to be the beginning of another downswing, but strangely he was… fine. As well as he ever was these days, maybe even feeling a bit lighter.
He mostly slept through the nights, and eventually found that he didn't need the sleep quite so desperately anymore. He still couldn't go entirely without it the way he used to, but four hours a night left him reasonably well-rested.
He and Kal started trading off the mantle of Superman. They worked out a rotation.
Being Superman had always been a 24/7 job. Even when there wasn't an emergency that urgently required his particular skills, he always knew there might be. Some part of him was always listening. Any break he took from it, any moment he was fully focused on himself or the people around him, felt stolen from that greater responsibility. He'd never been able to take a day off without feeling like he was abandoning the world.
It was a startlingly huge relief to be able to hand off that weight. When Kal was on duty he could stop listening, and know there was still a Superman to answer the call when he was needed.
He still kept the League comm on him, so Kal could alert him to anything big enough to require both of them, but emergencies on that scale didn't come along too often.
As much as he enjoyed the breaks, he found that he could enjoy putting on the suit once more, as well. He'd always liked being able to help, and he finally felt able to shoulder that responsibility again. He could smile at people with Superman’s confident expression and not feel like a fraud.
He went on a few bigger missions with the League, attended to Metropolis’s every day emergencies, and felt like he'd more or less found his footing.
So of course something had to go wrong.
"Superman!" rang out in a woman's panicked voice.
Clark accelerated towards the sound just in time to see the explosion take out half the first floor of a five story building. He could hear people shouting in terror on the upper floors.
Clark grasped a tilting support pillar and braced it up, keeping himself in the blurred unreality of superspeed so he could take a moment to assess the situation. Sometimes it made more sense to stabilize the structure and let emergency services take care of evacuating the people than to try to snatch everyone out at superspeed with a building going to pieces around him.
The next explosion went off right in his face: a blinding light, a landslide of debris raining down on him, and then a familiar, sickening pain: kryptonite.
The ground gave way underneath him. He fell with it, strength and speed gone.
He landed badly, half buried in rubble. His left ankle twisted with a nauseating crunch and a burst of agony.
The air was thick with acrid dust, burning at the back of his throat. He tried to gather the breath for a scream. Kal was off duty, he wouldn’t be actively listening anymore than Clark did when it wasn’t his shift, but Clark had to at least try. All that happened was that he found himself choking on violent coughs. His lungs hurt. At least some kryptonite must’ve gotten into the air with the explosion.
"Quickly, now!" someone said.
Flashlight beams cut through the dusty air. At least five men in gas masks and combat fatigues, heavily armed. They were on him before he could do more than heave himself halfway to sitting upright. His legs were still pinned down by rubble.
They yanked his arms behind his back and cuffed them with a pair of oversized manacles, thick steel covering the width of his forearms, a short chain between them. Another chain wrapped around his waist. They used it to yank him out of the heap of rubble.
Clark would’ve screamed if he’d had the breath for it when his injured ankle twisted free of whatever had pinned it, and again when they forced shackles around his legs as well. They bent him backwards to connect his wrists to his ankles with another length of short, heavy chain.
They were in a basement space beneath the half collapsed building. One wall had been opened up to reveal a large tunnel.
There was a truck already waiting. It listed strangely; it must be loaded right to the top of its capacity, Clark realized when the men yanked the doors open. The trailer was filled halfway to the roof with the same sharp-edged black rubble Clark had landed on.
They picked him up, four of them working together.
"Wait! Who – are you?" Clark managed, in between choking, painful gasps.
He could’ve saved his breath. They didn't respond to him at all. They tossed him bodily into the truck, atop the heap of rubble, and then closed the doors behind him with a bang. The truck started moving.
Clark lay gasping. The air was a little less dusty in here, but it took a while until he managed to stop coughing. The first shock of pain had subsided, but everything still hurt. His ankle throbbed, hot and swollen inside the tight clasp of the cuff. His chest felt bruised all over. He thought maybe he’d cracked a rib. It still hurt to breathe. And overlaying it all there was the constant, acid sting of kryptonite exposure.
He couldn't see anything in the close darkness of the truck’s cargo space, but a few moments of cautiously shifting around atop the rubble didn't bring any relief. He couldn't figure out where the kryptonite was, to move away from it. They must have several fragments spread around the space.
There was a heavy, muffled quality to the air. Some sort of sound-baffling equipment? When Clark tried again to scream for Kal his voice sounded flat in his own ears, and there was no response.
Bruce could probably have tracked where they'd taken him just from the turns of the truck. Clark had barely known where he'd been to start with, blindly following the sound of that scream, and found it impossible to keep track now, through the haze of pain.
He'd never even got the chance to activate his comm’s emergency button. He tried to get to it now. He couldn't reach the compartment in his belt with his hands, hog-tied as he was, but maybe if he could manage to lie on it enough to press the button –
Shifting his weight to his side brought a renewed stab of pain from his ribs, and the distinct metallic tinkle of an electronic device in tiny pieces.
Right. There went that hope.
Clark put his head back down and focused on taking deep breaths. Maybe once the truck stopped he could finally talk to his captors. They didn't want him dead. They could've killed him already, if that's what they wanted.
Which meant they had some kind of use for him, or were bringing him to someone who did.
Clark’s mind flinched away from those thoughts. He couldn't think about that, not if he wanted to be able to reason with them later.
The truck came to a sharp halt, and then started backing up. The doors flew open, revealing a dark, claustrophobic space: a small, windowless room filled with yet another heap of the black rocks that had been in the truck with him.
The same four men came to pick him up again.
“Please! Who are you? What do you want from me?” Clark asked.
He might as well have been shouting into hard vacuum for all they reacted to his words.
They grabbed him by the arms and legs again and dumped him unceremoniously in the middle of the rubble. There was a thick metal post sticking up from the floor that they chained him to. The sense of being surrounded by kryptonite radiation never let up, even though he couldn't see the green glow of it anywhere.
“Get the suit off him,” one of the men said.
Clark had been reasonably cooperative until now. No sense doing anything else, one against four, with his strength gone and heavy chains on him. But when one of the men tugged his suit up by the collar and pulled out a knife, something inside him snapped.
He fought wildly, blindly: no strategy, just a driving animal need to get away. He twisted violently, wrenching his bound limbs. Surprise bought him a moment's advantage: the man with the knife didn't get out of the way quickly enough. Clark managed to clamp his teeth down where the man's sleeve had ridden up.
He bit down hard, the iron taste of blood in his mouth. The man howled. The knife dropped to the ground.
Something smashed down on the back of Clark's head.
The man wrenched his arm out of Clark's slackening mouth. He couldn't keep fighting, could barely tell which way was up. His vision exploded into stars.
Pain. Several thuds in quick succession, smashing into his arm, his thigh, his ribs. Agony burst out from the point of impact. A nightstick, or possibly a metal bar.
There was a crackle of electricity. Shock stick shoved up against his groin. A horrible, biting, sizzling pain. Clark screamed, nerves convulsing in agony. Please stop, it had to stop, why didn't it stop –
“Please,” he managed, “I’m sorry. Please. Please.” It came out in a tiny scared whimper of a voice. All the fight had gone out of him at once. Why hadn’t he known better than to make them angry? When had fighting ever done anything but make it worse?
“Please!”
The shock stick turned off.
Clark gasped in relief. Everything still hurt, all the new bruises he’d just brought on himself, his muscles twitching in the aftermath of the shocks. Slowly, slowly the pain settled down until it was almost bearable.
“Thank you,” he managed, although his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth.
“Let's try that again. Cut that suit off. And careful this time.”
This time, Clark didn't fight.
The man with the knife was clearly nervous, clumsy with haste: the knife sliced easily through Clark’s suit, but the tip kept catching on his skin, carving sharp, burning lines of pain into him.
Clark held as still as he possibly could. He could be good. He wasn't going to make it worse.
The suit came off in a single tattered piece: sliced open along the arms, legs, and sides, but still recognizable.
“Good enough,” the man in charge said. “Let's go.”
They left him there. The heavy doors closed behind them, cutting off the last faint light.
Clark lay gasping in the darkness. Rational thought returned slowly.
For a little while, he'd been back in his cell, being punished. Enduring. But this wasn't that.
He was still in the other universe. He had allies here, people who’d be looking for him.
Clark shifted carefully, taking stock of his aching body. No new broken bones, he was pretty sure, and no more than a slow trickle of blood from the shallow cuts. But his ankle didn’t feel good, deep bruises throbbed everywhere from the nightstick, and his skin burned where the shock stick had touched him. His head pounded queasily.
He was naked, the briefs he wore under his suit cut away with everything else. They shouldn't have been able to cut the suit like that. That knife hadn't come from Earth, although the men seemed to be human.
They hadn’t touched him.
They could've. Four of them working together could've easily subdued him. Just one might've been enough, with the chains, and a knife to his neck. Once he’d panicked, after he’d gone away in his head, it wouldn't even have taken the chains. He’d have tried to be good for them.
Clark squeezed his eyes shut, feeling small and angry and ashamed.
But there wasn't any point in that. He’d get through this. The League would be looking for him. They wouldn’t stop until they’d found him.
He tried calling for Kal again, but there was still that strange, deadened hum in the air. He didn’t have much hope that the sound of his voice would make it out of the room.
Clark spent some time testing his restraints: the cuffs, the chains that connected them, the post he'd been fastened to. None of it had the least bit of give.
At least in the truck there’d been a tiny bit of light coming in around the edges of the doors. In here, the darkness was absolute, so total Clark could see little phantom glimmers of light in front of his eyes. He desperately missed his x-ray vision.
Except once he’d been in there long enough, once his pupils had fully adapted to the unrelenting darkness, he could see that there was a light after all: a very faint green glow rose from the rubble around him. It wasn't coming from any particular spot, and nowhere near bright enough to make out any details of his surroundings. Just a steady even glow all over those stones, right on the border of too faint to detect.
He could feel it perfectly well, though: the constant thrum of Kryptonite radiation leeching his strength away.
At least in the truck, he'd had the suit for a little bit of protection. Lying naked on a bunch of sharp-edged stones was getting more miserable by the minute. There wasn't a way to get comfortable, no matter how much he shifted. Every time he moved, something cut or scraped against his skin; the tiniest of surface cuts, but they stung like acid.
There wasn't anything to be done about any of it. Clark closed his eyes, because the darkness behind his eyelids was somehow less horrible than that treacherous green glow. He stopped shifting around.
He hurt, and he was going to keep hurting. But right now, in this moment, he could endure it. And this moment would pass, and there would be another one.
It took a bit of time to find the right place in his mind. Clark hadn't had to do this in a while. But he’d gotten plenty of practice. Eventually he managed to let go. He drifted in the blurry, timeless space where there was nothing to do and nothing to think, and Clark could endure each moment at a time as it passed.
The door crashed open with a bang.
Clark startled up, but it took him painfully long to track what was happening. Everything hurt. His head throbbed, his ankle, the broken ribs. The light from the doorway stabbed at his eyes like laser beams. As soon as he moved, the pounding in his head redoubled and his mouth filled with bile.
He needed to move, he needed to be ready to fight and he wasn’t –
"It's me," Bruce said. "We're here, Clark. You're safe."
The rush of terror ebbed as quickly as it had come, leaving him dizzy.
Between one blink and the next Bruce was crouching by his side, hands running over his body, lingering briefly on the throbbing bruise at the back of his head, on his ribs, his ankle.
"You came," Clark said. The words came out slurred.
"Yeah.“ Bruce curled a heavy, gauntleted hand around the back of his neck, squeezing gently. "You're safe now."
Clark gasped out a sob. The world was going fuzzy and far away again, but that was okay now. Bruce was here. He’d tell Clark if he needed to do anything.
"I'm cutting the chains," Bruce said.
There was a godawful noise and a shower of sparks. The pressure holding his arms and legs painfully twisted behind his back finally stopped, except moving them hurt just as badly. Ow.
Bruce caught his arms and straightened them gently, hands rubbing at his shoulders. The chains drooped off the cuffs on Clark’s arms and legs, no longer connected to anything.
“I'm sorry. We’ll have you out in the sun in a moment. But I need to get those cuffs off you first, they’re covered in kryptonite dust. Just bear with it a little longer.”
That, Clark could do. He put his head down and drifted, and was quiet and still and good while Bruce rubbed the worst of the spasming cramps from his muscles.
There was a gentle tap on his shoulder, asking for his attention. Clark blinked his eyes open.
“You don't have to come all the way up. But I need you to make a choice for me,” Bruce said.
He waited until Clark twisted his head to look at him.
“I can cut the cuffs off you.” He held up the plasma cutter. “It’ll be fast. Couple seconds, and then you can be out of here and in the sun. But I might burn you. Or I can pick the locks, but they’re complicated. It’ll take a while. Which do you want?”
“Slow. Please. If it’s okay,” Clark said. He didn’t want to hurt anymore.
“Okay. It’s okay,” Bruce said.
There was a rustling noise. Something heavy and warm wrapped around Clark's body. Blanket, a nice one. It even smelled familiar: the laundry powder Alfred used, the very faint hint of machine oil and damp air that clung to everything that had been in the Cave. Clark pressed his face against the soft warm fabric and squeezed his eyes shut.
Bruce started with the cuff on the bad ankle. Clark felt every little shift and twist cutting through him like glass shards as Bruce fiddled with the lock, swearing softly.
"I'm sorry. Just a bit longer. Fucking hell. We’ll have to take these along to R&D.”
Eventually, the cuff came off. The pressure around his ankle eased. Clark drew in a hissing breath. Oh, that was worse, that was a lot worse: all the pinched capillaries expanded at once, and Clark was pretty sure he could feel his bone shifting under the skin.
Bruce swore again. He tucked something soft and slippery around Clark’s ankle. It expanded with a hiss into a brace that encased half his shin and the top of his foot.
"Better?” Bruce asked, carefully settling Clark's ankle back down on the stones.
"Yes,“ Clark said. It still hurt, but at least now it didn't feel like things were shifting around in there.
The other ankle was next. It took another few minutes of fiddling until the cuff finally came off.
“How are you doing?” Bruce asked. He didn’t sound like he did when he demanded a status update in the field. This was the gentle prompting tone he used when he wanted Clark to talk so he’d come back out of his head. That meant it was okay not to struggle too hard for the answer. Which was a relief. His head throbbed. It was so hard to think.
"Hurts," Clark managed.
"I bet," Bruce said. "What's the worst pain right now?"
"Head," Clark said. “And the rocks.”
"What about the rocks? Lying on them?"
“Uh-huh.”
Bruce paused, putting his tools down for a moment. He sat down with his back against the metal post and pulled Clark up to lie in his lap, his head resting on Bruce’s chest.
“Better?”
“Thanks,” Clark gasped.
It was a staggering relief to be off the jagged stones, to be able to feel the faint warmth that made its way through Bruce’s armor, to have a blanket around him.
Bruce reached around him so he could pull up one of Clark’s arms and start working on the next cuff.
"I want you to stay awake. Talk to me,” he said.
It was a struggle to find any words.
"What… what did they want?" Clark asked.
"New mercenary organization, trying to make a name for themselves by selling Superman to the highest bidder. Too clever by half about it, too," Bruce said grimly.
"You got ‘em?"
"Every last one. Arthur and Diana are guarding them. And Clark – Kal – is right outside the door, guarding us."
“Tell him not to come too close," Clark said anxiously.
"He knows there's kryptonite in here. Clark's gonna be careful. Kal,“ Bruce corrected himself again, sounding faintly frustrated. It wasn’t like him to be slipping on names, but he still clearly had most of his attention on the lock he was working on. “You know, it took me a long time to train myself into thinking of him as Clark. I wasn’t exactly on a first name basis with a lot of people back then. Not as myself.”
He said it in the easy voice he always used when he let Clark rest with him, the soothing patter that didn't demand any thought. And Clark was meant to be talking, so he said the first thing that came to mind:
“I used to think of him as your Clark.”
In the beginning, before he understood how things worked here. Back when he’d thought of Bruce as the kind of man who'd keep a pet Kryptonian.
He smiled a little to himself: sometimes it was nice to remember how much of a better universe he'd managed to land himself in.
It took him a moment to realize something was wrong. Bruce had gone weirdly still, his hands frozen on the cuff.
Clark twisted his head back to look up at him.
Bruce’s face had gone hard and blank in a way that set all of Clark’s alarm bells ringing. He knew that expression: Bruce putting himself on a leash so he wouldn’t do something awful. It woke Clark up in a hurry.
“What?” Clark asked.
“Nothing,” Bruce said, lying so badly it was kind of fascinating, coming from him. He started working on the cuff again.
“You just thought something,” Clark said. The words came easier now; some of the fuzziness in his head had cleared.
“Yes. And it wasn't acceptable even as a stray thought. It certainly doesn't bear saying aloud.”
“Just say it. I’m now definitely imagining worse things than whatever it is you’re thinking.”
“I’d say I doubt it, but I suppose you’re more than familiar with all my worst impulses,” Bruce said darkly. He’d gotten one wrist cuff off now, and was working on the remaining one with grim determination. Still avoiding the question.
“It’s about what I said, right? That I used to think of Kal as your Clark? And, what, you started thinking about how he could’ve been?”
Not a surprise, if that was it. Bruce was very different from the Batman in Clark’s original universe, but he had dark sides of his own. It wouldn’t be a shock if this Bruce, too, had looked at the power Superman represented, the threat, and thought about putting a leash on it. What mattered was that he’d never done it, and never would.
“No,” Bruce bit out. “I thought… He’s not my Clark. You’re my Clark.”
Maybe it should’ve been terrifying, to have any version of Bruce express any sort of possessive feeling towards him.
It wasn’t.
With every opportunity to keep him, with a safe-house purpose-built to contain a Kryptonian, with no one in this universe even knowing that Clark existed, Bruce had chosen to let him go.
Bruce was, right at this moment, unlocking the last of his cuffs. He’d found him in a dark hole and freed him, not once, but twice. He’d made a space for Clark in his closely-guarded life, and kept him safe there when Clark had bared his softest, most vulnerable spots to him.
And that’s where those words had hit Clark, in that same soft spot.
“What if I want to be your Clark?” Clark whispered.
Bruce closed his eyes for a moment. He very slowly set down the cuff he was holding. One of his hands was still wrapped around Clark’s wrist: a warm, living restraint. His fingers tightened slightly.
And then Bruce gently guided Clark’s arm down and released him.
“Let’s get you out of here,” he said.
Bruce didn’t even try to make him walk, just heaved him up into his arms and carried him out, climbing carefully over the shifting rubble. Clark had to squeeze his eyes shut against the bright light when they reached the outside.
“Kal, can you take him?”
“Yeah.”
Clark was transferred into a different set of arms, cheek resting against the smooth surface of the Superman suit. They took another few steps, out of the shade and into the sun. Clark turned his face towards it hopefully. It felt good, warm and reassuring, but the pain barely lessened.
"Why isn't he healing?” Kal asked. "Even if there's still some dust on him, that can't possibly be enough to make a difference. I can barely feel the Kryptonite.”
"It's the cumulative dose,” Bruce said. "I don't think he's finished healing from the long-term exposure. His strength and speed never quite reached your baseline. "
Which Bruce had been tracking, apparently. Of course he had. He probably had spreadsheets somewhere.
“We need to get him to a decontamination shower. Can you fly like this, Kal?”
“Yes. There's some residue on him, but it’s not enough to be a problem,” Kal said. “Clark? I'll take you to the Fortress, ok?”
“No,” Clark managed. He twisted around until he could catch Bruce's eyes. It wasn't hard. Bruce hadn’t actually stepped back after handing him off. He stood close enough that his chest brushed Clark's side, watching him intently. “Lake house? Please?”
Bruce hesitated for a long moment.
“Of course. If that's what you want,” he said.
Clark nodded, and then dropped his head back down against Kal's shoulder. God, he was exhausted. Everything still hurt.
A hand closed over his, heavy leather gauntlet around his cold fingers. “You’ll have to let go of me.”
Clark twisted his head around. One of his hands was fisted in a death grip in Bruce's cape. He hadn't even realized.
“Sorry,” he said, and tried to convince his fingers to loosen.
“I could just take you both,” Kal said.
“No, it’s fine,” Clark said hastily, pulling his hand back against his chest. Bruce hated being carried.
“Yes. Thank you,” Bruce said.
He stepped up behind Kal's back and slung an arm around his shoulders. With his other hand, he reached around to find Clark's and tangled their fingers together.
Clark clutched at him gratefully. He quickly hid his face against the Superman suit again. His eyes felt hot.
“Go in through the lake entrance. We're all going to need to decontaminate,” Bruce said when they reached the Cave.
“Think you can stand, Clark?” Kal asked, landing them right in front of the narrow alcove that held the decontamination shower.
“Of course,” Clark said. He sort of could, once he was carefully balanced on his good leg. But it turned out the other one wouldn't bear any weight at all.
He clutched at Kal with a gasp, black spots swimming through his vision. Apparently, his body just wasn't going to heal until the rest of the kryptonite dust had come off.
“You'll need help with the decontamination,” Bruce said, in his careful voice. “I’d rather not expose Kal to the kryptonite run-off. But if you'd be more comfortable –”
“It’s all right,” Clark said. “You can help me.”
“Okay,” Bruce said. “Kal, get some towels,” and then, in an entirely different, much more careful tone: “Okay to take the blanket off?”
“Yeah,” Clark said.
He wished Bruce hadn't asked. It just made him more aware of standing there fully naked when Bruce gently pulled the blanket off his shoulders. But of course Bruce would ask. Clark knew that if he’d said no, Bruce would've stood there, patiently, with radioactive dust all over him, and waited for him to be ready.
Bruce bundled the blanket into a heavy-duty plastic bag with warning labels all over it. Shame; it had been a nice blanket.
The shower came on with a hiss, blasting him with a harsh jet of ice cold water. Clark flinched away from it with a gasp, his whole body trying to get away on pure instinct.
Bruce caught him by the shoulders, gloved hands forcing him gently but inexorably back under the freezing stream.
"I'm sorry, Clark,” he said, but he wasn't letting up. “It has to be the decon shower. You're still covered in kryptonite dust. We can't let that crap drain into the sewers.”
Bruce helped him scrub down. He’d been right, Clark did need the help. It was all he could do to keep standing under the freezing spray, clinging to Bruce for balance, wobbly on his one good leg while Bruce scoured his skin with a harsh chemical soap that stung like acid in his cuts.
But he could tell it was helping. The nauseating sensation of kryptonite exposure finally faded. His healing still hadn't kicked in, but then there was no sun down here.
Eventually it was done, and he got to wrap himself in a soft warm towel and change into equally soft warm pajamas while Bruce and Clark took their own turn in the shower.
“You better carry him on the stairs, Kal,” Bruce said.
Clark thought about objecting, and then thought about dragging himself up the stairs on his broken leg and decided pride could wait until he hurt a little less.
Bruce took point, so Clark could watch the way the lines of his body became stiffer and more defensive with every step they took. He didn't understand it until he saw the total lack of expression on Bruce's face when he directed Kal to set Clark down on Bruce's own bed.
“He'll get the most sunlight here,” Bruce said, his voice as carefully expressionless as his face. He gestured at the walls as if maybe Kal might not have noticed they were made of glass.
“Of course,” Kal said mildly, transparently humoring him.
Clark bit his lip and knew he was blushing.
Kal already knew he spent a lot of nights at Bruce‘s. He’d never asked about it. Clark tried not to wonder what Kal thought they were doing. It would be less embarrassing if they were having sex, instead of Bruce babysitting Clark through an endless series of slow nervous breakdowns. But Bruce clearly did not want Kal to think that’s what was going on.
Kal put him down in the middle of the bed, right in the centre of the bright patch of evening sunlight. The slanting rays enveloped Clark in warmth, washing his injuries away. Clark twisted his face into the pillow, hiding his helpless tears as the pain finally, finally stopped.
"You guys gonna be all right in here? I should probably go help with the cleanup." Kal said.
“I'm okay,” Clark got out.
"I'll keep an eye on him. Go," Bruce said.
Kal left. Clark slowly uncurled himself from the pillow. He was pretty sure his face was still blotchy, but whatever. Bruce had seen him cry plenty of times at this point.
“How are you feeling?" Bruce asked. He leaned down and tugged up the hem of Clark's pajama pants to bare the rapidly fading bruise on his ankle to the sun.
"Better," Clark said. "Bruce. About what I said –"
"Don’t worry about it. You were exhausted and in pain. We don't need to mention it again. Get some sleep," Bruce said with finality.
Clark twisted onto his side, turning his back to Bruce. Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes again. But then, he’d been in pain for a long time. They didn't need to make anything of it.
He slept restlessly, woke up with a gasp.
“You're in the lake house. It's 11:34 pm. You're safe," Bruce said.
He was sitting by the side of the bed in a chair he must’ve dragged in from the living room. His hand was warm when he leaned over to give Clark’s shoulder a squeeze.
"You got them all, right? They didn't escape?" Clark asked, in a small voice.
In the dream they'd been here, dragging him from Bruce's bed while Bruce watched, laughing Batman’s cold laugh.
"They're in police custody. The League is monitoring them,“ Bruce said.
"Do we know where they got the kryptonite?" Clark asked.
"Yes. An oversight on my part," Bruce said grimly. "There's a quarry near Smallville that has microscopic kryptonite deposits dispersed all through it. I haven't been monitoring it closely, because the concentration is so low that you'd have to refine several tons of ore to harvest a harmful amount. Which would require large amounts of chemicals that I do monitor.”
A muscle ticked in his cheek as he clenched his jaw.
“It didn't occur to me that you could simply dump a few tons of raw ore in an enclosed space with you for the same effect. I'm sorry, Clark.”
“Not your fault. You got me out.”
"After they’d already hurt you.” Bruce's hand tightened briefly on his shoulder before releasing him. "Try to get some more sleep, if you can. You're not done healing.”
The next time Clark woke it was the middle of the night. His throat ached like he'd been screaming.
“Clark. I'm here. You're all right, you're safe," Bruce was saying, in an urgent tone, like he'd been saying it for a while.
His hand was tight around Clark's shoulder.
"I'm awake," Clark said. He cleared his throat. It didn't really hurt, not physically, not now that he was awake. There wasn't any kryptonite in this room. He could scream the house down if he wanted to, shatter all those glass walls, and it wouldn't do anything to him at all. It was just his mind that wouldn't fucking heal.
He looked around the room. 04:47, said the clock on the bedside table. Bruce was still sitting in the chair, one of the chic, uncomfortable ones from the living room. He looked awful, dark bruises under his eyes.
"You should go get some sleep. I'm fine," Clark said.
“Clark, don’t take this the wrong way, but being woken up by screaming is worse than just staying up. The only thing – the only thing worse,” Bruce said, cutting sharply across Clark’s attempt to protest – he could go sleep somewhere else, the soundproofed guest room, the Fortress, somewhere he wouldn't wake Bruce up – “would be to know you’re somewhere, screaming, and there’s nothing I can do to help. Let me do this. Please.”
Clark looked at him, at his dark, tired eyes.
He scooted all the way over to the other side of the bed and patted the big empty stretch of mattress beside him.
"At least come lie down. There's plenty of space.”
Bruce hesitated.
"Come on," Clark said, too sharply. "I'm not such a mess I'm gonna molest you in your sleep."
“That's not –"
"Then what?”
Bruce shook his head. "All right.“
He got into the bed and lay down stiffly on his back.
Clark looked at him, his big shoulders under the thin T-shirt, his solid chest. Some part of him was thinking about how warm he'd be if Clark curled into his side. Bruce would let him. He’d pet his hair and make soothing noises like Clark was a wet cat he’d found under a dumpster somewhere, some pathetic shivering thing he felt sorry for.
Clark flipped over to his side, turning his back on Bruce.
Eventually, he slept. When he woke up it was still dark. There were hard hands on him, clutching at his shoulders.
"What? Wha –”
He didn't think he'd been screaming again. It didn't even feel like he'd been dreaming. But Bruce was leaning over him, eyes wide in a pale face, his hands so tight on Clark's shoulders he would've left bruises on a human.
"You're here," Bruce said, and then he flinched, and suddenly he was all the way on the other side of the bed, hands clenched. He took a long, shuddering breath.
Clark listened to Bruce’s racing heart slowly, slowly settle down.
"We didn't have any leads for the first five hours. Nothing at all,” Bruce said abruptly. Clark reached over and tentatively put his hand on top of Bruce's white-knuckled fist.
"You found me.”
“Not quickly enough,” Bruce said grimly. He took another deep breath. "Sorry for waking you up.”
Clark rolled his eyes. "Yeah, god forbid anyone have a nightmare.”
Bruce snorted, a skeptical sort of noise – of course he thought it was different when it was him – but the tight knot of shame in Clark's chest had loosened a little.
There was a debriefing at the Hall the next day. Clark attended it in the suit – a spare Bruce kept at the cave – and did his best to look calm and Superman-like.
He thought he managed it okay. At least everyone stopped giving him concerned glances after a while.
Afterwards, he felt so exhausted he was tempted to check his pockets for kryptonite.
But his body was fine. It was just his brain that couldn’t keep up.
“Get some rest,” Bruce told him quietly when he found him in the kitchen, staring blindly into a mug of coffee. “I’ll be out late tonight. Lake house is all yours, if you want.”
It was a relief to stretch out in the afternoon sun, in a bed that still smelled faintly like Bruce. Clark slept deep and hard and dreamlessly. He woke up in darkness.
He blinked, trying to focus through the gloom. He could’ve sworn he’d heard something.
After a moment, a deeper shadow in the corner of the room resolved itself into Bruce’s silhouette, backlit by a faint light from the corridor.
“Bruce?”
“Sorry,” Bruce said. He sounded strange. Tense. “Just wanted to check you were all right.”
Clark reached over to flip on the bedside lamp. Bruce looked as bad as he’d sounded: tightly-wound, too pale.
Clark wordlessly lifted a corner of the covers. After a moment, Bruce slid in with him. He lay on his side, shoulders tense, visibly working to control his breathing.
“Hey,” Clark said. He reached out, tugging him closer. Bruce breathed out shakily and pressed his forehead against Clark’s shoulder.
“I found you too late,” he whispered, his breath warm through the sleeve of Clark’s shirt. “You’d been impaled. Spear through your chest. And then I remembered it was me who’d done it.”
“You didn’t,” Clark said. He cupped his hand around the back of Bruce’s neck the same way Bruce always did for him. “I’m fine.”
“You’re safe,” Bruce murmured. “You’re safe.”
He sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
“I am,” Clark told him.
It had never occurred to him that Bruce would have nightmares, too. It probably should have. It wasn’t like Bruce even pretended to be a well-adjusted sort of guy.
The next time he woke, it was with the first rays of the morning sun full in his face. Clark stretched with a luxurious sigh, soaking it up. That first hit of sunlight for the day was always the nicest one.
There was a grumbling noise from the other side of the bed. Clark turned his head.
Bruce, who usually came back from patrol somewhere in the later half of the night and rarely got up before noon, was pawing at his eyes with sleepy, uncoordinated motions, as if he was trying to physically shove the sunlight away. Clark watched in fascination as he managed to fumble a pillow over his face without ever quite waking up. It was a very different side of Bruce than he usually got to see.
Bruce had shown him how to work the controls for the glass walls. With a bit of trial and error, Clark managed to turn them opaque. The room darkened. Bruce made a sleepy sigh of relief from under his pillow, and then twitched, having apparently woken himself up with that sound. He emerged with pillow creases on his cheek and his hair sticking up.
“Clark?” he wasn’t quite slurring his words, but he wasn’t far off, either.
“Good morning,” Clark said, smiling.
“Ngh,” Bruce said, and then, "You should – sun. You’re not done healing.”
“I’ll be okay. I’ll go out in a bit. Get some more sleep,” Clark said.
“Mmngh.”
Clark gave in to temptation and smoothed down his tousled hair. Bruce looked so exhausted, almost fragile with his hollow, sunken eyes.
“You need to sleep more. I’ll go back to the Fortress tomorrow, let you have your bed back.”
Bruce lifted his head from the pillow and squinted at him with bleary eyes.
“If you want,” he said. “You should sleep where you’re comfortable. But not on my behalf.”
“You sure?” Clark’s heart was beating a little too hard in his chest.
“Mm,” Bruce said.
Clark was back in Bruce’s bed the next night, and the ones after that. Bruce didn’t tell him to stop.
Bruce always joined him eventually, usually in the middle of the night after patrol, freshly showered and with the heat of new bruises radiating off his body.
He was cranky and incoherent and miserable in the morning, when Clark woke up with the sun. Sometimes, if Clark gave in to temptation and dimmed down the windows and let himself doze back off, he got to see Bruce wake up slowly, blinking and grumbling to himself and stretching his back into a long arch.
Other times Bruce would go still, curl in on himself with his back to Clark, and pretend, somewhat unconvincingly, to not be awake yet at all.
It baffled Clark the first time. He blinked through the artificial dimness. His vision shifted into infrared to compensate, and then the pattern of heat distribution through the thin sheet made it perfectly obvious what Bruce was trying to hide.
He blushed and squeezed his eyes shut, willing his infrared vision away until there was only the featureless gray of a darkened room again. He could hear the sound of Bruce’s slow, steady breathing as he took himself through what Clark could now recognize as a biofeedback exercise.
The next morning, Clark woke up hard himself.
That had happened before, too, but usually he just snuck out of bed and to the shower at superspeed. It felt weird to touch himself in Bruce’s bathroom, with nothing but a wall separating him from the bed where Bruce slept, so he usually didn’t. It had never felt very urgent.
It felt urgent now.
Bruce was curled up with his back to him, still deeply asleep. He was relaxed and warm, breathing steadily. It was late enough into the morning that Clark knew he could wake him without Bruce being a total bear. He thought about it. He could curl himself up against Bruce’s back, run his hands down his sides, kiss the back of his neck.
He thought… Bruce might want him to. Maybe he’d get hard before he even woke up properly, again. Maybe he’d let Clark see, this time. Let him touch.
And then he thought about what it would be like if he was wrong.
Bruce had told him no before.
That had been under different circumstances, of course. He’d been trying to protect Clark. He hadn’t wanted to take advantage. He hadn’t… not wanted to.
Or maybe that was just what Clark wanted to think.
If Bruce woke up with Clark’s hands on him, and he didn’t want them there….
Clark felt horribly, painfully conscious of his own power. He was so much stronger than Bruce. He wasn’t going to force Bruce, of course. Not ever. But he could. He could hold Bruce down with one hand, with no effort whatsoever; could overpower him as totally as Clark’s master had ever done to him.
He never, ever wanted Bruce to have to worry about that. And if Clark touched him, and he didn’t want it – hell, if Clark touched him, and he did want it – he knew perfectly well Bruce would be thinking about it.
If there was one person on Earth who was aware of the full scale of the threat Clark could pose, it was Bruce.
If Clark moved too quickly, grabbed him too harshly, forgot to pay attention for even a second….
The thought made him feel sick.
Clark sighed and twisted away, arousal thoroughly quelled.
Clark was on call as Superman for the next three days straight, because Kal had a deadline at the Planet and a date planned with Lois in Paris. It was a relief to lose himself in the straightforward work of dealing with emergencies.
He collapsed into bed at odd hours, whenever he could catch some peace in between the sound of screaming, and didn’t have to think about anything at all.
And yet, the thought never quite stopped rotating somewhere in the back of his mind.
By the time he could hand their shared responsibilities back over to Kal, he realized he’d made up his mind.
Clark had gotten in late, so late Bruce had actually been in bed before him for once. When he woke up Bruce was already awake, curled up on his side with his back to Clark. The windows were dimmed halfway down, so the room wasn’t too bright, but Clark could feel a patch of sunlight on his bare feet.
Clark said quietly, so quietly Bruce could pretend he was still asleep and hadn't even heard him, if he wanted to:
“Bruce? I'd really like to touch you.”
Bruce stiffened.
That wasn't promising, but it also wasn't an immediate What the fuck or Get out of my bed. But then, it couldn't really be a surprise to Bruce at this point. Clark had been embarrassingly, pathetically obvious.
He took a deep breath and barreled on before he could lose his nerves, or Bruce got around to choosing whatever version of letting him down gently he wanted to go with.
“If you don't want me to, just tell me and I'll never bring it up again, I promise. But I think you do.”
Bruce, if anything, became even more rigid, everything about the lines of his body screaming Caution, back off.
Clark swallowed hard. If he'd read him wrong….
But he didn't think he had.
“If you’re worried I’m only doing this to please you, or whatever, you can stop,” he said. Clark swallowed hard. “It’s probably not going to be all that exciting for you. I’m not even sure how much I can… do.”
Bruce abruptly flipped over to face him. “Hey,” he said. He picked up Clark’s hand and tangled their fingers together, squeezing. “I have all sorts of concerns about this. But whether I’d enjoy myself is not one of them. No matter how much you’re comfortable doing.”
Clark swallowed hard. “So you want –”
“Of course I want to.” Bruce’s fingers tightened around Clark’s hand. “I’m fucking terrified I’m making you do this somehow.”
He pulled Clark’s hand up and pressed a kiss to the back of his knuckles. “I’m going to go. Take some time, okay? Just… think about it. Be sure this is really what you want. Please.”
“All right,” Clark said.
Bruce untangled their fingers, his thumb brushing gently over the side of Clark’s hand. He rolled out of bed.
“Wait,” Clark said.
Bruce paused.
“Come back here for a moment,” Clark said.
He beckoned Bruce closer, and then closer still, until Clark could take him by the arm and pull him down. Bruce was tense. Wary. He braced himself on the bed on stiff arms.
Clark leaned up and kissed him.
Bruce was very still for a moment, so still Clark almost pulled back. And then he softened, his lips sliding gently against Clark's. He cupped Clark's face with one hand, but he kept the kiss careful, shallow, only a hint of tongue.
Clark was the one who pulled back first.
"Thank you,” he said. “Okay. You can go now. I’ll think about it, all right? And you should, too.”
"Okay," Bruce said. He sounded slightly dazed. "I’m… gonna go. I’ll be at the company today, and then patrol after.”
"All right," Clark said. "Be careful out there tonight.“
Bruce nodded, and then he was gone.
Clark flopped back on the bed. He took a deep breath. His lips tingled.
Bruce wanted him.
He turned the thought carefully around and around, looking at it, waiting for it to scare him.
It didn’t.
Bruce had shown him in a dozen different ways he wasn’t going to force anything Clark didn’t want. If Clark never tried to kiss him again, he’d never say another word about it.
Clark smiled, and got up to start his day.
Bruce stayed out for a long time that night. The first grey light of dawn was creeping into the room when Clark woke up to the sound of his footsteps. There was enough light to see him properly, barefoot and in pajamas, with his hair still damp from the shower. Bruce hesitated, hovering awkwardly at the threshold of the room.
"I can sleep somewhere else tonight,” he said.
“Don’t," Clark said. "You’ve given me time to think. Now will you come here?“
He reached out. Bruce hesitated for a moment longer. His chest rose and fell with a slow, deep breath, and then he came into Clark’s arms.
Clark ran his hands over his shoulders, down his sides. “You're okay?"
Bruce got banged up on patrol all the time, and he'd hide it when he could.
"Don't scan me," Bruce said.
Clark raised an eyebrow at him.
"I'm fine," Bruce said. "I'm not hiding broken bones, I'm asking you to respect my bodily privacy.“
His tone was only a little prissy, so it was probably even true. He got more aggressive about it when he was actually trying to hide something.
Clark tried to pull Bruce down on top of himself, but Bruce shifted them around instead, so smoothly Clark found himself sprawled half on top of him before he even knew what had happened. Bruce gave him a tentative smile.
Clark kissed him. He took his time about it, letting himself explore: the scrape of Bruce’s stubble against his own, the fine line of a scar on the inside of Bruce’s lip, the way Bruce’s breathing changed when Clark carefully dragged his teeth against Bruce’s lower lip.
Bruce cupped his face with both hands. Clark pulled back to look at him. Bruce’s hands were trembling.
Clark turned his head and kissed Bruce's fingertips. “Hey. You don’t have to be so careful with me.”
“I do. Have to. Want to. Let me, please?” Bruce said. He stroked one hand down the side of Clark’s neck and his arm. “There’s no hurry. We can go slow.”
Bruce slept in pajamas, or at least he did when Clark was in his bed. Clark suspected he’d have slept naked otherwise. Bruce ran hot. He was forever kicking the covers off or leaving a window cracked despite the chill. Clark put a hand on his chest and felt the heat radiating off him through the thin, silky material. He hooked a finger into the collar, toying with the top button. “How slow? Can I take this off?”
“You can do anything you like,” Bruce said.
Clark flicked the buttons open one by one. Bruce’s chest rose and fell more quickly as Clark trailed his fingers down along the skin he’d revealed.
Clark shoved the sides of the shirt out of the way. There was a lurid purple bruise running down the side of Bruce’s ribs.
“Seriously, do not x-ray me,” Bruce said. “I swear to god, I’m walking out of this bed.”
“What happened to ‘anything you like’?”
“That’s how consent works. I get to change my mind,” Bruce said flippantly.
Clark bent down to press a soft, careful kiss to the middle of the bruise. The skin was too hot under his lips, but he didn’t actually think anything was broken under there. It took a bit of effort to keep his vision from shifting into x-ray mode, but Bruce had asked him not to; he was going to respect that.
Bruce's hands settled on his waist, nudging up under the hem of his pajama top.
“That okay?" he asked.
Clark yanked his top off over his head in wordless answer, and then took a deep breath and kicked the pajama pants off as well.
"You too, come on," he said.
Bruce followed his example, so there was nothing in the way when Clark kissed his way down lines of muscle and scars. Bruce's body was a work of art: not like a painting, but like one of those swords in the Metropolis History Museum, a weapon honed to perfection by a master of the craft.
Clark enjoyed getting to explore it like this. He took his time about it, working his way slowly down until he was kissing Bruce's hip. Bruce was breathing heavily.
Clark turned his head. Bruce's cock was hard and flushed and… familiar, of course.
Clark remembered with sudden, unwanted, excruciating clarity what it felt like to be forced down on that cock: the pain in his throat, the desperate struggle for air.
He wasn’t panicking. It wasn’t the kind of flashback that made him forget where he was, that he was safe with Bruce. It was just… a memory, right there in the bed with them, where Clark hadn’t wanted it. And Clark wasn’t a very good actor.
Bruce went still.
Clark drew back a little. He squeezed his eyes shut. “Darn it,” he said quietly.
He made himself look up and meet Bruce’s worried eyes. Bruce reached out for him automatically, offering comfort as he always did when Clark got upset, and then visibly remembered he was naked and – well, not actually particularly hard anymore, but certainly exposed. He drew his hands back quickly.
Great.
He really wanted that hug Bruce had been about to offer. Screw it.
He nudged in under Bruce’s arm and put his head on Bruce’s shoulder. Bruce’s arms came around him, tentatively at first and then more tightly.
“I’m sorry,” Bruce said.
“What are you sorry for,” Clark said. There was an embarrassing hitch in his voice. “I really wanted…. Sorry. I told you this wasn’t going to be very exciting. You can go, if you want to.”
“If I… Clark. I’ll leave if you want me to.”
“Look, I… really appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” Clark said.
"Let me stop you right there. I'm not here because I'm doing you a favor. If this is as much as you’re comfortable with tonight – or ever – that’s fine, and I’ve had a really good time."
"Then do we have to stop?" Clark blurted. “I know I've killed the mood, but…."
He looked down at Bruce's lap, where Bruce's cock lay soft against his thigh.
"Jesus, give the mood a minute to recover with no one staring at it," Bruce said, pointedly twitching a corner of the sheet over his lap.
He tugged Clark up and kissed him, nipping at his lower lip.
"This okay?” he asked, pulling back just far enough to talk.
"It's nice," Clark said. "Kissing’s not a problem. It's not like he ever made me –"
He broke off, mortified. Clark Kent, king of the sexy pillow talk.
“It's all right to talk about it. I'd rather know where the trip wires are,” Bruce said. “What was it, earlier? If you can talk about it. Same anatomy?"
"I'm sorry. I know you're not the same person," Clark said "It's just –"
"I look the same. It's not a surprise it would be a problem. Maybe it's something that'll take getting used to it. You got used to my face. Maybe it'll keep being a problem, and we'll have to come up with something else. It's not anything you have to apologize for."
“Sorry. This can't be a lot of fun for you,” Clark said, and then winced at himself.
“Stop that,” Bruce said firmly. “I get to have you in my bed. Everything else is a nice bonus. It's okay if we try something and it doesn't work.”
"All right," Clark said. “If you’re sure.”
“Want to try something I bet he's never done with you? Let me up a moment,” Bruce said.
He turned over onto his stomach, spreading his legs a little, inviting.
“Get on top of me.”
Clark hesitated. God. He did want to. But…
“I'm not sure I'm ready to, um.”
He could feel himself flushing, which was ridiculous. They were naked in bed together. He could say “fuck.” Except apparently he couldn't, and anyway, the words that had been on the tip of his tongue were ‘make love,’ and he definitely couldn't say that to Bruce. It was just… how he'd always thought of it, until… Well. It had been something else, with Batman. But those didn't feel like the wrong words to use when he imagined doing it with Bruce.
Still. He didn't think he was ready for that. Saying it or doing it.
“Nothing that advanced,” Bruce said. “You want to rub off between my thighs?”
Clark swallowed hard. “Okay,” he said, a little squeakily.
He carefully stretched himself out of top of Bruce, knees on the outside of Bruce's legs, trying not to put his full weight on him. Not that Bruce couldn't take it.
They pressed together, naked skin to naked skin. Bruce shivered.
“You okay?” Clark asked.
“Mm. It's nice,” Bruce said. “I just never do this.”
“If you don't like it –” Clark pushed up onto his elbows.
Bruce pulled him back down.
“I like it. I just don’t do it much. When you're fucking face to face, with someone between your legs, it looks vulnerable, but it’s a pretty good defensive position. Depending on where you put your legs, you’re three quarters of the way to a triangle choke. But like this, you could….”
Bruce reached back over his own shoulder, fished up one of Clark's arms, and arranged it around his own neck in what would’ve been a chokehold if Clark had tightened his arm even slightly.
“If you lock that up with your other arm, like –” Bruce made a gesture that might've been illustrative if Clark knew anything whatsoever about martial arts. Since he didn’t, Clark just had to assume Bruce probably wasn’t suggesting he ought to tie his arms into a knot. “– and hook your legs under mine, there’s basically no way to get loose before you could choke me out. Bad place to be in, even with someone smaller or weaker than me. So I don’t let people get me in that position if I can avoid it. In case you were wondering: you’re not the only person in this bed who’s got some issues.”
Clark carefully unhooked his arm from around Bruce’s neck.
“We can do something else. I want you to feel comfortable.”
“I am. I trust you.” Bruce twisted around to give him a smile. “Also, Superman, if you wanted to take me out it’s not like you needed to trick me into a rear naked choke to do it.”
Clark let out a startled laugh. “Is that really what it’s called?”
“Mhm. Usually the ‘naked’ part is metaphorical.”
“I like the naked part.”
Clark had mostly lost his hard-on during the interruption, but like this, pressed up naked against Bruce, his body was taking an interest again. He shifted to nudge his cock between Bruce’s thighs, and they tightened around him. Oh, that felt nice. Clark closed his eyes and thrust a few times, slow and gentle, easing into it. “Mmm.”
“It’ll feel better with lube,” Bruce said. He stretched out his arm and pulled a pump-top bottle out of the bedside table drawer.
“Was that there the whole time?” Clark asked.
“You’ve been sleeping in my bed this whole time and you’ve never snooped through my bedside table?”
“No!” Clark said, appalled.
Bruce shook his head incredulously, like basic respect for people’s privacy was too strange a concept for him to wrap his head around.
“There’s also at least one dildo. Probably some other toys,” Bruce said.
Clark peered over, intrigued. It was kind of hard to get the x-ray vision going when he was hard, though.
“Stop that. You can explore some other time,” Bruce said.
He squeezed lube into his hand and reached back to slide his hand in between them, holding Clark’s cock in a slippery-wet grasp. Clark gasped and thrust against him a few times. It felt amazing, but he could tell it was an awkward angle for Bruce’s wrist, so he didn’t protest when Bruce took his hand away again. Anyway, oh, that was good, thrusting into the hot tight space between Bruce’s thighs, slick with lube, his cock bumping up under Bruce’s balls.
Bruce seemed to like it, too. He was moving into Clark’s thrusts, squirming a bit so he could get his lube-slick hand underneath himself. Clark didn’t think he was jerking off. He probably didn’t have the space for it, flat on his stomach with Clark’s weight on top of him. But the heavy sound of his breathing said he was enjoying himself anyway.
Clark thrust harder, holding Bruce by the shoulders to pull him back into it. God, this was good. It was nice, too, uncomplicated, easy to enjoy, nothing like anything that had… happened to him. Just him and Bruce, with the sun warm on Clark’s naked back and Bruce’s low groans of pleasure.
The head of his cock caught briefly against Bruce’s hole, just a moment of pressure, the briefest sensation that there’d be give, if Clark pushed. Clark quickly fixed the angle, even as Bruce made a low noise and went tense underneath him.
Clark froze. “Sorry, sorry, I won’t –”
“I know. It’s okay,” Bruce said.
“I wouldn’t –”
“I know,” Bruce said, again.
“I didn’t mean to freak you out,” Clark said.
“You didn’t.”
Clark let the words hang in the silence between them for a bit, because he wasn’t going to call Bruce a liar, but he’d felt Bruce’s whole body react.
Bruce sighed. “Clark. There’s a reason I’m not usually honest with people. You won’t like what you’ll find if you keep making me tell you what I’m thinking.”
“It’s been working out okay for us so far,” Clark said. He bent down to kiss the back of Bruce’s shoulder.
Bruce sighed again. “I liked it. It was hot, it almost made me come. I like that you could just… take me.”
“Oh,” Clark said.
“I like how strong you are. I like you on my back. I keep thinking… you could choke me, just a little. It’s safe enough, if you’re careful.”
“Oh,” Clark said again. He didn’t even know how he felt about that.
“Don’t actually do any of that. One of us would end up freaking out, and I can’t guarantee that it wouldn’t be me. But you wanted to know what I was thinking.”
“Yes,” Clark said. “Thank you for telling me.”
“And now I’ve freaked you out.”
“No.” Clark kissed the back of Bruce’s neck and started moving again, gently.
It was a big thing that Bruce, who had such a hard time trusting people, trusted him enough to be honest. Maybe too big a thing to look at in its entirety, right now. Some of that stuff he might not ever be able to do. But he didn’t mind knowing Bruce had thought about it.
He sped up a little, letting the urgency build again. “Can I touch you?”
“Anything you like,” Bruce said, which was an unhinged thing to say in light of the conversation they’d just had. Clark thought, somewhere in the part of his brain that wasn’t busy luxuriating in the feel and taste and smell of Bruce, of sex, that he’d have to be as careful with Bruce as Bruce was with him. Because Bruce wasn’t going to be careful with himself.
But right now, all he wanted to do was wrap his hand around Bruce’s cock. Bruce certainly didn’t seem to have any objections to that.
Clark sped up more. God, this felt good. He was panting. Bruce groaned a little every time Clark squeezed his cock, the muscles in his thighs flexing. This really wasn’t going to last much longer.
He tried to jerk Bruce off in time with his thrusts, except frustratingly it didn’t work very well. He couldn’t really move his hand with Bruce stretched out flat on his stomach, and when Bruce tried to pull his knees up to give him space, it changed the whole angle of Clark’s thrusts. It was still good like that, but not that really great, satisfying slide he’d been chasing to orgasm.
“Bruce, can I – Would you mind – Can I pick you up? Just a bit –”
“Please,” Bruce gasped. “Yes, if you want, yes, please –”
Clark slung an arm under Bruce’s hips and lifted him off the bed, just enough to give his other hand space to work. He stopped bothering to keep his knees on the mattress and let himself float. God, that was good. He could find that really good angle again and just move.
Bruce was making noises with every thrust, twisting in Clark’s hands, but not at all like he was trying to get away. Clark hadn’t thought Bruce would be loud in bed. He was always so controlled. But he’d let himself relax with Clark, he’d trusted him, he’d let Clark use his strength to pick him up and he liked it. Clark could feel Bruce’s cock pulsing, hear his heart thundering in his chest.
Bruce came with a shout. Clark lost himself in it, the sight and sound and scent of Bruce, all the details his enhanced senses could feed him. It dragged him right over the edge along with Bruce.
It was a long, drawn-out orgasm, a series of powerful pulses and then another shiver of pleasure and another. He kept moving between Bruce’s thighs, chasing those last little shocks of sensation, even as Bruce went limp in his grasp with a satisfied sigh.
Eventually, it stopped. Clark lowered Bruce gently back down to the bed and laid himself out on top of him. He felt blank, stunned into a daze. Bruce was slick with sweat. Clark petted his side, fingers sliding easily over damp skin.
“That didn’t really go how I thought it would,” he said, when words finally came back to him.
He felt Bruce tense.
“Not in a bad way,” he added hurriedly. “I just thought we’d keep it… simple.”
“Nothing’s ever simple,” Bruce said, startling Clark into a laugh.
Clark hadn’t really had a plan, nothing that detailed; he hadn’t been able to make himself think about it in any amount of detail. But he’d vaguely pictured them jerking each other off, kissing the whole time, slow and careful.
He’d meant to be careful with Bruce.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Mmm,” Bruce said.
He shifted, and then suddenly he was out from underneath Clark and lying on his back, with Clark tucked against his side. Clark had no real idea how he’d got there.
“Needed to breathe. You’re heavy,” Bruce said.
Not that that seemed to stop him in the slightest when he wanted to maneuver Clark around. Clark could replay the motions in his memory, but he still wasn’t sure how Bruce did it, with nothing more than human strength to work with.
“I thought that was a difficult position to get out of,” Clark said.
“If your opponent gets a proper chokehold. Or has any idea what they’re doing. Not if they’re just lounging around on top of you.”
“You sure you’re okay?” Clark asked. “I know you don't like to be picked up.”
He'd asked, but it wasn't really fair to spring things on people that close to orgasm. Clark hadn’t exactly given him a chance to think things through.
“I'm willing to make an exception in bed,” Bruce said. He raised one hand to cover a jaw-cracking yawn.
"Jesus, Bruce, get some sleep. You've been up all night.”
"In a bit," Bruce said.
He tugged at Clark's shoulder until Clark pillowed his head on his chest, and then petted his back. His breathing started to slow into a familiar pattern: Bruce about to go to sleep. He'd have an easier time if Clark dimmed the windows, but Clark couldn't reach the remote from here, and he didn't want to duck out from under Bruce's hand. With all the powers he already had, it would probably be greedy to wish for telekinesis.
He’d get up in a bit, he decided. Unlike Bruce, he’d had a good night's sleep. He'd go and start his day. In a minute or so. Maybe just a little bit longer.
EPILOGUE
Unsurprisingly, Bruce didn't understand the lagoon. He inspected the waterfall, followed a palm-sized blue butterfly with his eyes, sniffed a tropical flower, and then clearly decided he'd sampled the local attractions to his satisfaction.
“Pretty,” he said, giving Clark an expectant look that said, And now what?
Clark sighed. “Meditation,” he said, because that was the only reliable way to get Bruce to sit around and do nothing for a bit.
That worked for maybe ten minutes.
“I can tell you're not meditating, you know. That zoning-out thing you do doesn't count,” Bruce said without opening his eyes.
“Shh. I'm doing mindfulness.” Clark watched a dragonfly alight delicately on a waterlily blossom. He was stretched out in the warm sand, his head pillowed on Bruce’s thigh.
“That's like the opposite of mindfulness. You just turn your brain off,” Bruce said, but he shifted slightly so he could get his hand in Clark's hair and stroke him.
“Now who isn't meditating.”
“I can pet you and meditate at the same time. It's not mentally taxing.”
“Ouch,” Clark said.
“Shh. You're being mindful.”
“Mhm,” Clark said. Bruce’s hand felt really good.
“It's not that I don't understand the appeal of escaping your own brain,” Bruce said abruptly, so clearly he wasn't meditating either. “But there are more effective techniques –”
“Bruce. I'm not trying to escape anything right now,” Clark said. He tilted his head a bit, so Bruce would scritch the good spot behind his ear, and also so he could see Bruce's face, framed by the waterfall. There was a streak of extra-high-performance sunscreen across the bridge of his nose, like a reminder that this was a nocturnal creature. And yet he’d allowed Clark to drag him all the way to the tropics just to sit in the sun doing nothing with him.
A butterfly fluttered erratically over their heads. The sand was warm under Clark's back.
“I'm good right where I am,” Clark said.
THE END