Chapter Text
“Excellent timing, sir.”
Clark blinked, surprised by the warmer-than-normal welcome. The hours of battle had reduced his higher thinking ability to a trickle. The fact that he’d managed to fly to the Manor in a straight line was a small miracle. And he’d used the front door this time.
“I…thank you?” Clark asked awkwardly. “I’m sorry if I’m a little early for the debrief. I figured I could just shower here, if that was okay. You know…”
He trailed off, glancing at one shoulder. A piece of burnt rubble chose that moment to dislodge from his cape, plummeting to the front step. Clark stared at it for a moment, debating if bending down and picking it up would just cause the rest of the debris on his suit to scatter everywhere.
Probably.
“Please,” Alfred said, gesturing him into the foyer. “Come in. Master Wayne is downstairs, of course. You are more than welcome to the showers, and the clothing in the changing rooms.”
Clark stepped in, refusing to take the lead as they entered the Manor. He could tell that particular quirk bothered Alfred, but his Ma would never let him hear the end of it if he led someone else around in their own house.
With a tilt of his head, Alfred led him through the foyer and toward the stairs. When they reached the door, the butler stepped to the side, giving Clark a strangely purposeful look.
“Is there,” Clark cleared his throat, trying to stand up straighter. Alfred’s eyes were so sharp. Sharper than Bruce’s, even. “Is something wrong?”
“No, sir,” Alfred replied, still staring at him. “Please, let me know if you need anything. I will be downstairs in a few minutes with food.”
“Bruce needs to eat,” Clark said, nodding. “His stomach was growling the whole flight back. I barely saw him eat during the mission. Do you still make those beef roll-ups? He likes those, I saw him eat three once.”
Alfred’s expression didn’t change, but his eyes softened a little. “The beef carpaccio twists are very easy to assemble. Excellent idea.”
Clark stood up a little straighter at the praise, giving the older man a cautious smile. “Sounds great. I’ll try my best to get him to eat a few. Thank you -- you know, I can come up and help you with those once I’m all cleaned up.”
“That won’t be necessary, sir,” Alfred said, gaze settling on the door over Clark’s shoulder. “But very kind of you to offer.”
There was something he was missing here, something obvious, but Clark couldn’t see it for the life of him. And Alfred was clearly too wily to let him figure out what it was. The butler could run verbal circles around him right now, probably real circles too, that’s how tired he was.
“See you soon,” Clark said, reaching for the hidden keypad next to the door. He scanned his palm, waiting until the lock disengaged, then the floor locks, and finally the doorknob itself.
He stepped gingerly into the elevator, wary of shedding anymore metal shavings and random pieces of concrete on the floor. The platform began to descend, humming at such a low level, Clark wasn’t even sure humans could hear it. Bruce was particular about those things.
Bruce was particular about a lot of things. Like timetables, and clean floors. And post-mission debriefs.
The elevator settled at the bottom of the Cave. Clark waited for the doors to open, absently listening to the way the cables hummed and whined with the motion.
“--do that.”
Clark looked up, just catching the last fragment of whatever had been said. It wasn’t Bruce’s voice. Even when he put on Brucie, that awful, higher version of his actual speaking voice, it wasn’t quite that sharp.
“Please.”
Halfway out of the elevator, Clark went stock-still at the sound of Bruce’s voice -- Bruce’s this time, he was sure of it -- breathy and low in a way it never was. His hearing sharpened with his renewed attention, focusing on the source of the conversation.
They were in the locker room -- in the showers, actually. Three of the shower heads were cranked to maximum output and heat. The entire room was covered in steam, the humidity and scent of soap leaking out into the main Cave through the vents.
Clark stepped soundlessly into the center of the Cave, coming to a halt just behind Bruce’s computers. He stared at the monitors, pretending to watch the grainy surveillance footage as his remaining senses focused on the locker room.
“--like that--” the other man said, letting out an obscene noise. “Oh god. Fuck. That’s so good, yeah, just--”
There was an answering moan, another low noise pulled from Bruce’s chest. Clark’s cheeks burned, something twinging in his gut at the sound of -- his friend. It sounded like he was --
“I’m coming, I’m gonna--” the other man said, readjusting his hold on Bruce’s waist. Clark could hear the way his fingers were sliding on wet skin, losing purchase. “Can I? Baby, can I--”
Clark didn’t dare look up from the monitors. But he could imagine the way Bruce’s head must have hit the tile somehow, thrown back and colliding with the wall. Weight shifted, hands were readjusted, and oh god, the sound of his heart. It was wild. If he hadn’t been here already, he would’ve flown halfway across the globe just to figure out what could knock Bruce Wayne’s heart rate up.
“Yeah,” Bruce breathed, barely audible over the sound of the showerheads. “Yeah, Hal, please. Please.”
The warmth in his cheeks drained away, replaced with a cold wave of sensation. Clark dug his heels into the ground, jaw tightening as every single cell in his body seemed to stand on end, all at once.
Hal.
The sudden iciness in his veins brought a strange kind of focus with it. Clark reined his senses in one by one, staring hard at the video of Gotham Harbor in the bottom left corner of the monitors until he was alone again.
Other than the lingering humidity, there was no other sign of Hal’s presence. Of what was happening, assuredly, just a few dozen feet away behind a thick wall of concrete and tile.
Hal, of all people. Clark wasn’t even certain he and Bruce spoke, outside of official channels. They barely interacted up on the Watchtower, save for the semi-regular Founders meetings. They didn’t like each other -- hell, Clark was the one begging Bruce to be more lenient with the Lantern, most days. He and Hal got along fine. Not as fine as this, but --
“Sir?”
Clark turned around, startled. Alfred didn’t flinch away from him, holding a covered metal tray between two hands Clark was certain had never faltered, not for a second.
“Sorry,” Clark said, pasting on a smile he didn’t feel. “I got a little distracted. Did you know they’re building a new pier in the Gotham Harbor? There was a great article about it in the paper this morning.”
Alfred followed his gaze to the monitors, eyebrows raising slightly. “I never thought I’d see the day cruise ships would dock in Gotham. Not in this lifetime, at least.”
“Yeah, it is a little unexpected,” Clark said, reaching up to scrub a hand down the back of his neck. Bad idea, that only dislodged more rubble into his cape. “But the tourism dollars will help improve the Harbor district. They’ll actually have to dredge the rivers, finally.”
“I shudder at the thought of what they’ll find down there,” Alfred said, putting a neat, verbal bow on the end of that conversation. He lifted the tray slightly. “Where would you like this?”
“Oh!” Clark reached out, sliding Bruce’s fancy all-metal keyboard to the side. He shuffled around some notepads and tablets to make room, wincing the entire time. “Sorry. Like I said, I’m a little…”
The door to the inner locker room clicked open. Clark frowned, inadvertently dipping back into his superhearing as a pair of footsteps headed their way.
“Oh hey,” Hal Jordan said, wrapping a towel around his waist. His ring was glowing on one hand, pulsing with an unusual amount of energy. “Didn’t hear you come in, man. And you brought food with you -- fuck yeah. Alfred, you’re the best.”
Clark turned back to Alfred, for lack of anything coherent to say. The butler seemed to tense up fractionally, lips pressing together and eyebrows lowered. “Of course, sir. And Master Wayne?”
Hal reached out for the tray, slipping the metal cover off. Water rolled down his back as he bent down. There were several marks on his lower back, just above the edge of the towel around his waist.
“He’s finishing up in there. Can’t say I blame him, that water pressure is better than anything in this sector.” Hal shook his head. “Hey, what is this?”
Hal held up a beef roll to the light, hand still dripping wet. Alfred raised both eyebrows a full half-centimeter this time.
“Beef carpaccio, sir. Around a creme fraiche and caviar filling.”
“Very keto,” Hal said, making a face. He set the roll back down on the tray, wiping his hand on the towel. The bright white towel. “I’ll pass for now, but thanks.”
“Of course, sir.”
Hal leaned back against the desk, crossing his arms. He held himself like he knew exactly how attractive that pose made him, all lean and tan and still dripping all over Bruce’s desk. “Hey, Clark. What’s up with the…” he waved at his eyes. “...those?”
“Those?” Clark asked, confused. Hal gestured at his face again. “My eyes?”
“Yeah, they’re all red still,” Hal said. The Lantern gave him an odd look. “You doing okay? Maybe Bruce should check you out.”
“Check what?”
Clark didn’t flinch, but it was a close thing. In the doorway to the locker rooms, Bruce cocked his head slightly, drying his hair with one of the pristine towels.
There were no visible marks on Bruce, not with fresh clothes on. He was too smart for that. But there was a looseness to his posture, a fluidness to his stance, that Clark would’ve been loath to overlook, even on a different day.
He’d never seen Bruce post-sex before. That much was obvious. He would’ve recognized the strange pounding of his heart, the particular tang of pheromones lingering in the air around him, the slight reddening of his mouth, the too-calm set of his jaw.
He was so much softer, this way. Suddenly, Clark could see the man he’d been ten, twenty years previously. Even with grey in his hair, with crows’ feet around his eyes, he was startlingly beautiful. Softer, in his rumpled sweatpants and t-shirt, than he’d been in several weeks, if not months.
And all that, because of Hal Jordan.
“I’m fine,” Clark said, looking away before Bruce could see the red pinpoints in his eyes. “Just a little amped up from the fighting still. I figured you wanted to debrief, and…”
“Oh yeah, the debrief,” Hal said, tossing a look toward Bruce. “Let’s do that. I had a couple thoughts about the civilian exfil, actually.”
Clark took an unneeded breath, unmoored. He couldn’t look at Bruce still, so his eyes settled on Alfred. Alfred, who had darted out to the tray and deftly removed the roll Hal had picked up with a napkin, disappearing it into a pocket.
In another world, Clark would’ve called the expression on the butler’s face disgust. But Alfred was above emotions like that. He liked putting things to order, and Hal had -- inadvertently -- thrown them out of it.
“Get dressed,” Bruce muttered to Hal, sounding more and more like the Bat as he continued speaking. “We’ll debrief in the other room.”
Hal tossed them both a cheeky salute, pushing up off the desk. He trailed water and pheromones all the way back to the locker room, closing the door behind him just a tad too hard.
A hand slipped under his jaw, tilting his head back. Clark held perfectly still as Bruce’s face came close to his, examining his eyes.
Maybe a year ago, the fact that he hadn’t even noticed Bruce move would have been unsettling. Now, even in the midst of exhaustion and something that felt a lot like jealousy, simmering in his gut, his touch was relieving. Slightly cool, where his skin was burnt and overheated.
Bruce pulled away with a grunt, apparently satisfied. Clark cleared his throat, awkwardly searching for something to say.
“Alfred made…” Clark waved at the rolls on the desk, “Food. If you’re hungry.”
Bruce’s eyes shifted to Alfred, still standing behind Clark, and then back to the desk. After a long, drawn-out moment, he reached for the tray, pulling a roll from the stack.
Something about it felt like a victory. Clark gave him a genuine smile this time, a part of him wishing that Hal had been present to see it.
Chapter 2
Summary:
“And,” Clark breathed, finally close enough to see the red glow reflected in Bruce’s eyes. “I wanted you to say it to me.”
Notes:
Back again with another chapter! Thank you for all your lovely comments and asks over on Tumblr, I so appreciate them. We're chugging right along here!
Chapter Text
“Smallville.”
Clark looked up just in time for Lois’ third printed draft to hit him in the face, balled up roughly for maximum pointiness. It bounced off his left cheekbone, which was a surprise, because the last time he’d checked, Lois had been sitting somewhere on his right.
“You’re zoning out,” Lois said in explanation. She gave him a pointed look to go along with the pointy, crumpled up draft now sitting somewhere on the carpet by his feet. “Really far out.”
That was Lois’ code phrase for weird Superman shit, in her words. She caught him on stuff like that sometimes, the moments where he couldn’t help but tune out of a conversation and listen to something halfway around the world. It didn’t usually happen at work, not if he could help it, at least. But every now and then, there was something odd and different that made him zone out of a meeting while he was still, physically, in the meeting.
Luckily, today they were just in the bullpen. Clark sat up and rolled his shoulders back, giving Lois a grateful nod.
“You wanna share with the class?” she asked, prodding at his chair with the front of her pointed heel. “You’ve got a look on your face.”
“I always have a look on my face,” Clark said reflexively, too used to her teasing.
“Yeah, sure.” Lois rolled her eyes, just because she knew the sound of eyeballs moving squicked him out in close proximity. “Wanna go get coffee?”
There was an idea. Clark glanced out toward the far window, their only source of daylight on the whole floor. It looked tepidly sunny outside. “The real stuff?”
“If you’re buying,” Lois said, swinging her heels around. She pushed up onto her feet, reaching for her coat. “Not that you appreciate it.”
“I like the store,” Clark defended, slinging his own jacket over one shoulder. He could never make it look as suave as Bruce did, on magazine covers, but he kept trying. “The one over on 7th. With all the plants in the windows.”
“They burn the espresso there,” Lois informed him.
“So where do you want to go?”
“There, duh.”
Ten minutes later, they were standing down by the river, steaming cups in hand. Lois had something spicy, a chai latte she’d reluctantly added a shot of espresso to. Clark was clutching his chamomile tea with both hands, trying to recall, in vain, how long you were supposed to steep non-black tea for. It probably didn’t matter.
Bruce would know. And Alfred -- he’d know for sure. His tea always tasted expensive, even if most times, tea tasted to Clark like the individual molecules of water it was steeped in and the bitter compounds of the leaves.
“You gonna tell me what’s got you so zonked out in the middle of a workday,” Lois started, careful not to look at him directly as she began her graceful, if predictable, probing, “or are you going to make me play twenty questions?”
Clark made a face. “You hate twenty questions.”
“I rail against the rigidity of yes/no answers,” Lois sniffed. She took a sip from her latte. “Well, technically is going to end up on my headstone. I can just feel it.”
The bitter humor was to put him at ease. And normally, it worked. “You remember my friend? At my…other job?”
“Your good friend,” Lois said, squinting out across the water and talking out of the side of her mouth like it was a spy movie. “Tall, dark, and handsome?”
“Lois.”
“What, you won’t let me give them codename codenames, this is what you get.”
“You know what, never mind,” Clark said, nose wrinkling. “It’s stupid. Forget I brought it up.”
“You didn’t bring it up, I did. And I’m not letting you flash that leg at me and then disappear into the night, Smallville.” Lois glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “Tall, dark and handsome. Something happened.”
Sometimes, Clark really hated reporters. They were too sharp for their own good.
“Yesterday,” he admitted, his resolve crumbling. “I walked in on him before the debrief…with someone else. A man.”
“Well,” Lois said, hesitating. “Awkward, but it happens sometimes. You’re making a face. Why are you making that face?”
Clark was, indeed, making a face. “I’m not making a face. This is just my face.”
“So tall, dark and handsome gets around -- is this really news to you?” Lois asked, shrugging. “You’ve mentioned past…flings. Jesus, it’s not like he’s celibate, Clark. Even creatures of the night fuck.”
“You are making this so much worse.”
“That should also be on my headstone,” Lois said, gesturing at him with her cup. “I know you. More importantly, I’ve seen your Google search history. This isn’t some latent homophobic crisis at 32. You’re upset about something else. Who was it?”
“You remember my coworker,” Clark started again, looking skyward for strength. “He’s a real…glowing personality.”
Hal.
“Mhmm,” Lois said, a noncommittal noise if he’d ever heard one. “That’s -- surprising. I thought you said the two of them didn’t really get along.”
“They don’t,” Clark exclaimed. “That’s what’s bugging me. I can’t figure out how they even ended up in the same room, much less -- doing what they were doing. Which was--”
—burned into my mind—
“Very enthusiastic?” Lois cut in, eyebrow raised. “Fun? Consensual?”
“...It sounded like those things, sure.”
“So what’s the problem?”
Clark stared out at the water, zoning out a little bit again. Bruce’s heart was a quiet, even tempo in the back of his mind. If he focused hard enough, he could hear every individual shift of blood through his ventricles and atria. He could slow it down to the pulse of the valves themselves. He could --
“Oh, Smallville.”
That wasn’t a tone Lois used on him often. He looked away from the river’s mottled surface. “What?”
Lois’ lips were pressed together. She’d dropped all of her remaining good humor, staring at him like she was chewing on a thought. A tough, chewy thought.
“You remember when we tried to make a relationship work?”
Clark stared at her, confused. And a little hurt. “Thanks for bringing that up.”
“No, I’m serious,” Lois said, giving him a look. “Remember when we tried to date? And it didn’t work out, and that was okay?”
“I was there, yeah.”
“And we’re still friends after, right?” Lois asked. Clark nodded, feeling like this was a trap somehow. “Pretend that you came over to my apartment last night. You walked in early by accident, and Tom from HR was there. We were getting hot and heavy in my bedroom because I forgot to give you a heads up…” she trailed off, wiggling her eyebrows. “What would your reaction be?”
“Tom from HR?” Clark said. “The guy with the moustache? You have higher standards than that.”
“I do,” Lois said, “But that doesn’t change the fact that you just walked in on us. Me and Tom. Tom and I. Tom from HR naked and--”
“Thanks for that visual, too.”
“So - and I’m setting the scene here, if you didn’t realize. You make a face, you back out, we’re both horrified,” Lois continued. “Maybe there was some screaming. I text you the next day apologizing for the mixup. You say…?”
Clark stared at her, at a loss. “Tom from HR?”
“And what else?”
“I,” Clark took a breath, shoulders lifting. “I guess, if he makes you happy?”
“Tom from HR makes that Lois very happy,” Lois said, nodding encouragingly. “And?”
“And, I guess it’s okay with me,” Clark said, then immediately backed off of that thought. “Not that you needed my approval or anything. You’re a grown woman and--”
“Aha!” Lois cried, lifting her coffee cup high in victory. Some of her latte sloshed out of the front, dampening her coat sleeve. “There it is!”
Clark still wasn’t following. “What?”
“Tall, dark and handsome,” Lois repeated, “You just walked in on him cracking that glowstick. Or being cracked by the glowstick, I don’t know. You were there, not me. The next time you see him, you say…?”
“Him?” Clark waving vaguely at the river. It was a gross, muddy green color, more than suitable to pass for Hal Jordan’s signature color scheme.
“Yes, and?”
“There is no and. That’s it.”
“Okay, bear with me.” Lois reached out, grabbing Clark’s elbow. She squeezed it for emphasis. “He looks you dead in the eyes, and in that weird, growly voice--”
“Lois.”
“--he tells you that the glowstick makes him happy,” Lois said, voice lowering. Her expression sobered, the sudden emotion in her eyes holding Clark’s full attention. “He’s not lying. What do you say?”
Clark stared at her, agonized. There was something awful and hot in the back of his throat, squeezing his vocal chords until nothing could come out. There were no words. All the words in the world, lodged firmly in an eidetic memory, and his mind couldn’t summon a single one.
The thought of Hal Jordan making Bruce utter those words -- he makes me happy -- was so abhorrent to him, he couldn’t even visualize Bruce saying them. There wasn’t a world in which those words were true. They couldn’t be.
“Yeah,” Lois said softly, squeezing his arm again. “That’s what I was worried about.”
It took Clark a moment or two to gather himself. He smiled at Lois, another brisk, rigid expression he didn’t feel. “I’m fine. It’s really not that big of a deal. I’m just…overthinking this.”
“Right,” Lois said. Her hand dropped from his elbow. “If you say so.”
When Clark stepped into the monitor room, the sight of Hal’s glowing suit put him instantly on edge. All thoughts of his upcoming shift left him in a rush, his mind refilled with nothing but an ugly, persistent heat.
The Lantern was relaxed in one of the rolling chairs, leaning back against the headrest, arms folded behind his head. He looked two seconds away from dozing off.
“Oh hey,” Hal said, looking up at Clark’s approach. “Didn’t realize you were scheduled. I thought Barry had this one.”
Me either, Clark thought uncharitably, something already crawling and seething under his skin. “Yeah.”
“Are you feeling better? I was worried about you, man.” Hal asked, turning back to his screens. He was squinting at something Clark vaguely recognized from the news -- a dam in China.
It took a moment for him to realize what Hal had meant. “Oh. I, yeah. Way better.”
“Your eyes are still kinda,” Hal waved at his own face, “You know.”
Clark busied himself with taking a seat, choosing a chair as far from Hal as could be socially acceptable in a situation like this. He tucked his cape over the headrest. “Huh. I didn’t even notice, really.”
“Maybe it’s nothing,” Hal said, the center of his mask pinching inwards. He was concerned, and for some reason -- that bit at something inside of Clark. “Sometimes my ring does odd shit for days after a rough battle. Couldn’t tell you for the life of me why.”
That was the thing about Hal Jordan -- he was rarely thrown off by anything. He had the outlook of an all-weather surfer, calm and flexible in any situation. He was all easy smiles, lazy humor, and less-than-subtle charm. Clark was 90% certain he whitened his teeth professionally, because they were blinding.
Clark made a vaguely agreeing noise, reaching for his keyboard. He typed in his username and password, trying to figure out why his hands were so stiff and clumsy all of a sudden.
“Hey,” Hal started up, glancing over at him. “I was going to ask you -- the debrief at B’s place yesterday. I had a couple follow up questions about the --”
“I’m trying to focus,” Clark snapped, cutting him off. He reached for his mouse, blood pounding in his ears. “Can you ask me later?”
The sudden silence was jarring. Clark was more shocked than Hal by the outburst, which was saying something, considering how far the Lantern had leaned back in his chair.
“Yeah, man,” Hal said after an awkward pause. “Whatever you want. No biggie.”
Clark jabbed the mouse down on a random video feed, a hot, ugly flush of emotion working its way down his neck.
The duty rosters for the next week were posted on the JL server a few hours later. Clark waited until Hal had left the monitor room to log into his account, pulling up Bruce’s latest update.
He was scheduled for a brief mission with Hal next week. And the week after that, another monitor shift. Perfectly interspersed by the rotations Bruce had set up. And yet, Clark suddenly couldn’t bear the thought of seeing Hal routinely in the next few weeks. Even if it was, in theory, completely random.
Using his override codes, Clark reassigned Barry to his next monitor shift, and, with a guilty pang, subbed in Diana for the mission. She got along perfectly fine with Hal, would probably even welcome the change in scenery. And company.
It wasn’t hard to avoid Hal, after that. Without anything formally scheduled, their paths rarely crossed on the Watchtower. When there were Founders meetings, Clark gritted his teeth and didn’t look in Hal’s direction, and that was fine.
The guilt that came, after those moments, churned in his stomach like acid. Clark couldn’t remember what, exactly, was so wrong about what Hal had done. Only that it felt egregious, a personal slight in some way that went far beyond double dipping on beef rolls and wiping his hands on Alfred’s towels.
In those meetings, Clark spent his time focused on Bruce, imagining how, exactly, the two of them had ended up in a shower stall together. Imagining what they had looked like together, pressed up against the tile and gasping. Drenched in hot water from the shower, muffling noises into the other’s skin. What had Bruce’s face looked like, then?
He’d never once, in a Justice League meeting, looked down the table at Batman, at his friend, and reduced him to such an image in his mind. Bruce Wayne was more than his lips, or his jawline, or the soft wave of his hair. Clark had always looked at him as something infinitely complex, and the League only saw a fraction of that person.
But now, even as Batman explained the specifics of an interdimensional anomaly to those assembled at the Founders’ table, Clark could think of nothing but the stubbled column of his throat. His mind idly sketched out Hal’s hand around the base of it, tan fingers in vivid contrast to Bruce’s pale skin.
Had that been the moment Bruce’s head hit the tile, back in the shower? Or worse, had Hal gripped him by the hair instead, forcing him down without any care for comfort? Shoving him against the wall and taking whatever he wanted?
“Superman.”
Clark looked up from Bruce’s throat, gaze settling somewhere between his eyes. The entire table was looking at him, including Diana. Which meant he’d missed something important.
“I -- yes?” Clark cleared his throat, trying to shift back into Superman. It took more effort than he’d expected, like pulling up a buggy program. “Yes.”
“Were you able to confirm the visuals in Green Lantern’s report were accurate?” Bruce asked. To his credit, the clearly-repeated question was devoid of irritation.
“Yes,” Clark repeated, glancing down at the packet in front of him. “I submitted observations to the file in the, uh, server.”
Hal looked surprised by that revelation, even with the mask covering half his face. Clark bit down on the urge to apologize. Every single visual confirmation didn’t need to be a verbal handoff. He’d read Bruce’s reporting standards. Even if Hal clearly hadn’t.
Bruce turned back to Hal, one shoulder twitching upward. “Is that sufficient?”
“I’ll review the report before the next meeting,” Hal replied, still giving Clark an odd look.
It wasn’t a victory -- it really wasn’t. But for some reason, it felt like one again.
“You’re home late.”
Clark flinched, hand tightening around the ring of keys in his palm. After a moment, he peeled his fingers away from the lump of metal he’d made of his apartment keys, trying not to swear.
Bruce stood up slowly from Clark’s living room recliner, managing to make getting out of a decade-old La-Z-Boy look elegant and effortless. He was in slacks, a crisp white dress shirt, and a vest, which meant this wasn’t a work call. But it wasn’t a social call either.
“I thought you would’ve heard me,” Bruce said, glancing down at Clark’s keys. It was almost an apology, coming from him.
“Long day,” Clark offered, pasting on a smile he definitely didn’t feel. “Can I get you something to drink? A beer or something?”
Why are you here? he didn’t ask. His Ma had raised him to welcome guests with whatever food or drink he had on hand. Including, but not limited to, the three month-old Miller Lite he had rolling around in one of his fridge drawers. And the week-old Chinese food on the shelf next to it.
“No, thank you,” Bruce said, flawlessly polite. He reached for the keys in Clark’s hand, weighing the lump of metal in his palm. “It’s not like you to lose control.”
“You should see my last few keys,” Clark said, giving an awkward chuckle. “You know they’re $25 a key if I go through my landlord to get them replaced? It’s a racket.”
Bruce looked up from the metal lump, eyes sharp. “I didn’t mean the keys.”
Clark swallowed. “Right.”
“Right?” Bruce asked, head tilting. He was somehow standing even closer, now, though Clark hadn’t seen his feet move.
“Hal talked to you about my eyes,” Clark said, waving at his own face. “I’m fine. I don’t know why it’s happening, but the Fortress says it’s all good. Nothing to worry about.”
That was a lie. He hadn’t been back to the Fortress in weeks. But if Bruce was aware of that, he’d be surprised. Not overly so, but still. Surprised.
“Hal didn’t talk to me about your eyes. I didn’t speak with Hal at all, actually.” Bruce’s gaze shifted from Clark’s eyes, down to his chest. “But they seem to have something to do with this…lapse.”
“Lapse,” Clark repeated. He ran a hand back through his hair, shaking his head. “It’s been a hell of a week, B. If you’re here to yell at me, I--”
“You’re lying to me,” Bruce cut in abruptly. His eyes narrowed. “And it’s not like you to do that. Forgive me if I consider that a lapse in our friendship, after all.”
Our friendship. Clark looked away, guilt burning in his throat. Bruce waited him out, saying nothing, giving nothing away other than his intent to know. It was what made him such a compelling investigator. And interrogator.
If Bruce really tried, Clark was certain he could pull the truth from almost anyone. By the time he asked a question, he was already three lines of inquiry ahead in the conversation. It wasn’t a question of concealing the truth at all, but of how long.
“I,” Clark started, jaw working. “Saw you. The other night. With Hal.”
It wasn’t often he saw Bruce Wayne surprised. “What.”
“In the Cave, before the debrief,” Clark continued, grimacing. “Alfred sent me down, and I didn’t realize you were--”
“No,” Bruce cut in, shaking his head. His hair was beginning to slip out of its gelled style. “I understand the mechanics of what happened. That’s what this is about?”
Clark felt the strange urge to bare his teeth at his friend, his ally. That hot, ugly feeling was burning in his gut again. “If you’re just going to be an asshole about it, then yeah. That’s it.”
Bruce took a step back, reassessing him. Settling his weight on the balls of his feet, like he was getting ready for a fight. “You have a problem with me sleeping with Hal.”
Is that what you call it? Is that really what you call it?
“No,” Clark said, heart thudding in his chest. “I don’t have a problem with it at all.”
Bruce smiled, and it wasn’t a happy expression at all. “Let me get this straight. In the last few weeks, you just so happen to be antagonistic with Hal. You’re altering the duty roster. You’re reassigning missions and overriding my assignments. You’re making Hal look like an idiot in meetings. And this just so happens to have nothing to do with the fact that you walked in on us the other night?”
“I didn’t -- see anything,” Clark rushed to say, “Hell, Bruce, I barely heard anything. As soon as I knew what I was hearing, I--”
“And you’re swearing,” Bruce cut him off, ignoring his explanation. “Three times now, in just one conversation. That’s more than I’ve heard you say in the last year.”
“You don’t understand,” Clark protested, but even to his ears, it sounded weak.
“Fine,” Bruce allowed, tilting his head. “Explain it to me, then.”
“I already said there wasn’t a problem. So leave it alone,” Clark said, feeling another surge of guilt even as the words came out far too sharp. He didn’t talk to Bruce like this. He never talked to Bruce like this.
“You might not realize it, since you’re generally above things like hero worship,” Bruce started, voice lowering. “But every single person in the League looks to you for guidance. They look to you when the mission goes wrong. They look to you when they’re worried. They look to you when they don’t know what to do next. Are you following me?”
Clark stared at him, jaw tensing. If this was some attempt at a lecture, he would grit his teeth through it. It was too dangerous to do anything else.
“They don’t,” Bruce stepped closer, leaning in, “understand what it means, when Superman is acting out of character.”
The words, by some small miracle, pushed past his aching throat. “You think I don’t know that?” Clark took a slow, shuddering breath. “That there’s people depending on me?”
Bruce’s eyes weren’t without sympathy. That was what hurt the most, he realized. That Bruce was looking at him like he knew, knew what that knot of emotion in the back of his throat felt like.
“Hal and I slept together,” Bruce said, throwing it out casually like he knew how much it made Clark want to flinch. “Why does it bother you so much?”
“Why are you talking about it like that?” Clark snapped back.
“Like what?”
“So casually.”
“Because it is.” Bruce gave him another odd look. This one was even sharper than the last. “It is casual, Clark. It’s two teammates working off stress. Consensually. After work hours.”
He doesn’t care about you, a voice in the back of Clark’s head protested. Sure, maybe it’s casual to you. But it’s even less than that to him. I’m not sure if he even cares about what he’s doing--
Clark swallowed again, praying Bruce couldn’t see how his throat spasmed. “Like I said. I don’t have a problem with that.”
“So what’s the problem, then?” Bruce looked away, finally pocketing the lump of Clark’s keys. He walked toward Clark’s living room window, where there was a half-obstructed view of the Metropolis skyline. “I can tell you my theory, if you want.”
Clark’s stomach dropped. “Don’t.”
“You’re punishing Hal because you’re mad at me,” Bruce said, ignoring his protest. He put his hands in his pockets, gazing out across the city. In the warm glow of the streetlights, he cut a stunning figure. “Am I wrong?”
Clark stared at him, desperate. His eyes began to burn, throbbing in time with the ache in his throat. “Bruce.”
I could never be mad at you.
“I didn’t tell you,” Bruce admitted softly. He didn’t look away from the window. “Because I didn’t want that. I didn’t want you to judge me. To be disappointed in me, rather. Frankly, they feel the same way in my head.”
There was a barely-there hitch in his voice, but it was loud and clear to Clark’s enhanced sentences. The idea of Bruce’s voice trembling with uncertainty, with fear, froze him in place.
“Regardless,” Bruce said, when the silence between them had lingered for too long. He looked away from the window, hands smoothing down the front of his vest. “I came here to tell you, whatever it is -- whatever prompted you to act this way, whatever issue you have with me -- it can’t affect the League. Not if we want to maintain cohesion as a team. Share it with me, or don’t. But it ends here. Now.”
The realization came to Clark in waves, in the span of an infinite moment that must have only been a second to Bruce. Heat rose in his cheeks, chasing away the iciness of Bruce’s sudden subject change. His shoulders shifted back, freed from the last of his indecision and guilt.
“You said please.”
Bruce looked at him strangely. A line appeared between his perfectly-groomed brows. “What?”
“Back in the Cave,” Clark said. He took a step forward, then another, clearly telegraphing the movements. Bruce didn’t move an inch. “I heard you. When you and Hal -- you were. You said please. To him.”
There was a dull satisfaction in the way Bruce’s eyes had to lift slightly to his face, now that he was standing at Superman’s full height instead of Clark Kent’s.
“And?”
“And,” Clark breathed, finally close enough to see the red glow reflected in Bruce’s eyes. “I wanted you to say it to me.”
It was a beautiful thing, watching the way Bruce’s lips parted in surprise. His pupils dilated, imperceptible to the average human, but so so obvious to a Kryptonian. His heart beat erratically for one second, then returned to normal, a there-and-gone indication of a sudden spike in arousal.
“Jealousy.”
Clark closed his eyes, breaking the spell. In a perfect world, it might have even concealed the sudden wetness in them from Bruce.
“I think you should--” Clark cut himself off. “You should -- go.”
He didn’t listen to the sound of Bruce leaving. He listened to his heart instead, the steady thump of blood through his body, from head to toe and back again. He listened to the sound of his own heart, hammering along in imperfect tune.
When Bruce was gone, a part of him knew. He opened his eyes one by one, half-afraid they’d immediately laser a burning hole in the wall across from him.
The misshapen lump of his keys was sitting on the center of the table.
Chapter 3
Notes:
Three chapters in three days? Yep, you read that right. Thank the sauna at my gym, they don't let me bring my phone in so I just sit in there and think. The heat kinda makes you dissociate after a while, it's wild. ANYWAY, here's the next chapter - thank you so much to everyone who's reading and commenting. I truly hope you enjoy.
Chapter Warning(s): This chapter includes shades of dubious or somewhat nebulously-implied consent. Rest assured, it's all enthusiastically consensual, even though it might not be explicitly said on screen. For obvious reasons, once you see those scenes.
Chapter Text
Bruce wasn’t as easy to avoid as Hal. A part of Clark wondered if avoiding Bruce was even possible. They’d built an entire League together. Their chairs faced each other down the length of the Founders’ table. Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne didn’t overlap, but Batman and Superman were nearly one circle, in the League’s venn diagram. Beyond in sync.
It wasn’t as simple as reassigning himself from joint missions, or declining invitations to the next Founders’ meeting. And he didn’t want to leave Bruce alone in the same way he never wanted to see Hal’s smug, pink-lipped smile ever again.
What Bruce had called jealousy in that cool, detached tone of his wasn’t so one dimensional; it was so much more than that, but the words to explain failed Clark, even in the safety of his own mind. It was a sickening feeling of dread, of concern, built on a foundation of friendship Clark had never felt before, and likely never would again.
Duty won out in the end, because it always did. He mourned that friendship, what it could have been, in person instead of absence. He zeta’d up to the Watchtower, he flew out on missions, and he stared into Bruce’s blank lenses and tried not to let any of it show on his face.
Bruce, in turn, gave him as wide of a berth as possible. That hurt more than almost anything else.
“You’ve been withdrawn as of late, my friend. Is there something on your mind?”
Clark was well-practiced at giving reassuring, convincing smiles at this point. He turned it on for Diana, leaning into Midwestern-style small talk because he knew it always threw her off. “Really, you think so? It’s just been a super busy time of year. Things are crazy at work.”
The Watchtower elevator continued upward, humming softly. Diana stared at him, eyes narrowed. Clark didn’t know what she was looking for, but it wasn’t like there was much to find. Work was crazy, he’d smiled and joked with junior staff today after the Founders’ meeting, and he’d even complimented Hal on a save during a previous mission.
“Come to dinner tonight,” Diana said, her voice pitched low like she was talking to a spooked animal. Her eyes slid across his face, watching for a reaction. “I’ll invite Bruce. The three of us can--”
“No.”
Diana’s eyebrows raised into a delicate arch. Clark instantly knew he’d fucked up. “No?”
“No, thank you,” Clark quickly added, turning back to the elevator monitor. Three floors left, just under ten seconds. “I have plans later with Lois. I’m sorry. Maybe another time?”
He didn’t wait for her reaction as the elevator doors slid open. A hand that felt like granite snagged his arm, holding him in place.
“Kal.”
Clark closed his eyes, unwilling to give her more of a reaction. Diana only used that name when it was serious. When she spoke, and intended to be heard. The elevator doors closed, stalled at his stop.
Please, he wanted to say, even as he turned to face his friend. Don’t do this. Don’t make it worse than it already is. I’m trying, okay?
He opened his eyes and already knew, despite his best efforts, that they were red again. Diana returned his gaze, undeterred.
“I am sorry.”
That took Clark aback. “What?”
“I said, I am sorry,” Diana replied. Her eyebrows drew together, an age-old sympathy rippling across her face. “I can see how it pains you. Even if you make great efforts to conceal that hurt from the others.”
There was no follow-up lecture, no further questions, no suggestions or ultimatums. Just Diana’s quiet, ancient sympathy, held between them in the small space of the elevator.
“I’m fine,” Clark said, and it was a phrase he felt like he would say forever, repeating until the sun itself burned out. “I’m -- thank you. For saying that. But I’m fine.”
When he was certain his eyes were no longer visibly red, he hit the button for the elevator doors, stepping back out into the Watchtower.
It was silly, in hindsight, to think that he could have ever truly avoided Bruce. Even when he’d quashed all conscious thoughts of the other man from his mind, he’d never stopped listening to his heart. It had eclipsed Lois and Ma’s heartbeats in the back of his mind, a constant he couldn’t give up, even if he’d wanted to.
It was Diana’s turn to present at this Founders’ meeting, which meant Bruce was seated. Clark had actually been paying attention this time. Or at least making an effort to appear like he was doing so. His eyes never strayed to Bruce’s end of the table unless the other man was speaking.
The effort it took was slowly leaching into his neck and jaw, tensing both. Clark leaned back in his chair, taking advantage of the lack of attention on Superman to stretch slightly.
In the back of his mind, Bruce’s heartbeat spiked briefly. Clark’s eyes instantly shifted to the other end of the table, alarmed.
Bruce’s expression gave nothing away. His breathing was regular, almost artificially so. His hands rested on the table, completely still.
Through the blank white lenses of his cowl, Clark could see that his pupils had dilated despite the lack of a change in lighting. Which was odd, because the last time he’d seen that, they’d been --
“--think, Batman?”
Bruce was too much of a professional to be caught unaware. He tilted his head back to Diana, as if he’d been examining the table in one brief, impersonal scan. “I think we need to speak with the courier one last time to ensure the accounts corroborate each other, but other than that, I believe we can proceed with the plan as outlined.”
As soon as Bruce was done speaking, his eyes shifted back to Clark. Clark stared back, unable to look away. It was almost like a dare. A silent call-out, an unspoken well? that felt Earth-shattering, after so many days apart.
Diana’s briefing re-started in the background. Clark leaned back in his seat again, keeping his eyes on Bruce as he, ever so slowly, stretched his neck in the opposite direction.
Bruce’s heart sped up for just a second, returning to its regular resting rate. His face was blank, but under the lenses -- under the lenses, Clark could see his eyes. And Bruce looked --
“Hungry?”
Clark rolled his eyes. He scrolled down the webpage, “Didn’t you just have breakfast?”
Lois leaned over his desk, flashing her empty Starbucks sandwich wrapper at him. “Those were egg bites. Do you know how stupid those are? They’re basically the appetizer before actual food. Anyone who actually eats these as a full meal needs to reevaluate their life choices.”
Clark wasn’t going to touch that with a ten foot pole. “Yeah, I could eat.”
“Oh, before I forget--” Lois slapped an envelope down on his keyboard, jarring him out of the screen zone. “This was delivered up front for you. I had to sign for it, believe it or not. Is this finally a check from your Propecia settlement?”
“Funny,” Clark said, rolling his eyes as he picked up the envelope. It was a thick, weighty thing. Cream, not off-white like the cheap office envelopes. “Little too big to be a check, Lo.”
“You’re a little too big to be a check,” Lois rebutted. She continued to loom over Clark’s shoulder, unashamed. “Come on, open it. Some of us have breakfast to hunt down after this.”
Clark split the left edge of the envelope with his finger. He reached in, pulling out something hard and cool instead of the paper he’d been expecting.
“What is that, a business card?” Lois asked, leaning in. “Holy shit. That’s a key. Flip it over.”
Obliging her, Clark flipped the thin metal card over. On the back was a laser-etched P. No hotel or apartment name, no logo, no other message.
“P is for penthouse,” Lois said, instantly latching onto the available information. “There’s nothing else in the envelope? Dude, this is so fucking cool. Or creepy, I haven’t decided yet. Want me to go bribe processing to put it under their scanner? They might be able to tell us something about it.”
Clark blinked at her, forgetting himself for a moment.
Oh. I’m an idiot.
He let his gaze soften, seeing through the key instead of looking at it. The outside of the key was unremarkable, polished metal and the single, etched letter. But inside, just beneath the surface, there was a second layer of etching tucked between the RFID chips.
Ritz-Carlton, Metropolis. Penthouse Suite. 10 PM.
Clark’s hand closed around the key, hiding the message from Lois’ view like she could see it. “You know what, I think I know where it’s from, actually.”
“What?”
“It’s a storage unit for a story I’m working on,” Clark lied, “They said something about it during our call last week and I forgot. Unit P.”
Lois’ shoulders drooped a little, but she seemed to be inclined to let it go. “So you’re not having some illicit affair with Tom from HR tonight?”
The laugh that image pulled from Clark was genuine. “Hah. Nope, sorry to disappoint.”
“Very disappointing,” Lois said, giving the key one last, longing glance. “A girl can dream, I suppose.”
At 9:58 PM, Clark had found himself, with directions from the concierge, standing in front of the elevator to the hotel penthouse. The small alcove was tucked away from the main lobby, hidden next to a completely separate entrance off the service hallway. If they hadn’t been pointed out, he would’ve overlooked the slim gold doors entirely.
Clark hovered the metal keycard over the scanner next to the elevator buttons. The up arrow glowed bright yellow as the doors opened, revealing the lush elevator interior.
He stepped in. There were no buttons inside, ostensibly since there was only one destination for each trip. After a beat, the doors closed and the elevator surged upward, ascending past dozens of floors in a matter of seconds.
It felt a little bit like flying, in a roundabout way. By the time he was on the top floor, Clark’s head was buzzing pleasantly. The uncertainty in his chest had turned into something thrilling, instead of something terrifying.
The doors opened. Bruce was waiting on the other side. Clark had already been counting on that part -- he was the type to meet situations head-on.
What he hadn’t counted on, but cherished nonetheless, was the responding jump in Bruce’s heart rate as their eyes locked.
Clark was seated in front of the bay windows, a crystal glass of chilled water deposited in one hand before he could protest. For someone used to a life of luxury, Bruce made the act of service so effortless, so subtle, it was nearly an art form.
A matching glass was filled with a dark-colored liquid -- bourbon, likely -- and swirled around, no ice. Bruce sat on the opposite sofa, one leg crossed loosely over the other.
He was dressed down today, Clark noted. Another perfectly-pressed dress shirt, but no vest. Bare feet poked out from his dress pants. His hair was mussed, like it had been styled earlier on in the day, only to be dislodged by his hands.
Clark gave himself a mental point for dressing up just a tad. Jeans and a nice shirt weren’t on the same level as Bruce Wayne’s dressed down, but they were a far cry from plaid and grease-stained sweatpants. In a perfect world, they almost matched. Almost.
“I swept the rooms before you arrived,” Bruce started, nodding at the suite around them. “No bugs. No cameras. I have a jammer hooked up to the modem in the bedroom. This is as close to secure as I can manage, in an external location.”
Clark leaned forward a little. “Secure?”
“For sensitive…topics,” Bruce elaborated. He kept his eyes on Clark as he took a sip from his glass. “We can talk freely here, on neutral ground.”
Neutral ground. A part of Clark was intrigued by that. “But we’re still in Metropolis.”
“My concession.” Bruce inclined his head, his expression almost rueful. “I have a proposal for you. Will you hear me out?”
Clark didn’t blink. “Of course.”
“Not a professional proposal. Not a League proposal,” Bruce clarified. “A personal one. Verbal. Just between the two of us.”
“Okay,” Clark said, still staring at him. “I’m not a mark, B. You can just tell me.”
It was another small victory, the way that remark made Bruce look down, a smile tugging at his lips. He took another drawn-out sip from his glass, sobering as silence grew between them.
“Hal and I worked out our…disagreements in a unique format,” Bruce began, not meeting his eyes. His gaze was somewhere on Metropolis’ skyline, always looking out a little bit past Clark. “I wanted to extend the same opportunity to you. On a short term, limited basis. I’ve evaluated our recent interactions, and I have determined that--”
“What?” Clark asked, the word ripped from his chest like an expletive. Bruce’s eyes jumped from the windows back to his face, reassessing.
“I. Am,” Bruce re-started, jaw tensing, “naming, whatever this is between us. We are both losing focus. It’s been a distraction for too long. I have a solution.”
“A solution?” Clark let out a bark of laughter, shaking his head. “Jesus, B. Do you sleep with everyone you don’t get along with? Is that how this works?”
From the quick, hurt flash in Bruce’s eyes, that had been the wrong thing to say. Instantly, the shame rushed over Clark again, but he bit down on the urge to apologize. It wouldn’t help. Not with Bruce.
“No,” Bruce said, after a beat of silence. The hand holding his glass tensed, knuckles flaring white. “I don’t. Any other questions before I continue?”
Clark shook his head, suddenly numb. Bruce threw back the rest of his glass, pushing onto his feet. Without thinking, Clark stood, following him over to the open-concept kitchen along the far wall.
Bruce opened a decanter on the wet bar, pouring himself another drink. He glanced back at Clark, ever the gracious host. Even in the midst of…whatever this was.
Clark threw the rest of his water in the sink, holding out his glass. Bruce poured him a serving of the dark-colored liquor, passing it back to him. Their fingers brushed. Bruce’s heart sped up for a beat, then two, before returning to its baseline.
When they were both holding full glasses, Bruce retreated to the other side of the kitchen island, putting space between them. The large, oval shape was vaguely reminiscent of the Founders’ table.
“I’m offering a solution,” Bruce stressed the word pointedly, “Because I don’t think you really want this. You might think you do. But attraction isn’t always rational. It’s chemistry. All of this -- it’s hormones. It’s pheromones. It’s a delightful cocktail of working in close quarters for extended periods of time. And yes -- sometimes the solution is to give into it, simply to see that it isn’t real.”
Clark had rarely heard Bruce speak with such animation. It brought a beautiful flush just under his skin. His eyes were bright. Clark believed him. In that moment, there was simply no other option.
“And you think this will help?” Clark asked. Bruce nodded, some of the fire in his eyes dying down.
“One night to work it out of our systems. One night for you to realize that what you want--” Bruce shook his head, smiling again, “--isn’t worth it. I’m not worth it, Clark. All of this -- this. It isn’t us. Our lines got crossed, fine. Let’s uncross them. A tried and true method.”
Clark stared at him, trying to process all of that. “Our lines.”
“Ours,” Bruce admitted on an exhale. He looked away again, back toward the living room. “It’s like I said -- chemistry. Base functions calling out to base functions. That’s all it was with Hal, and that’s all this needs to be.”
“One night,” Clark repeated, watching him closely. He wasn’t lying. Bruce rarely outright lied. But there was something that wasn’t entirely truthful about what he was saying, either.
“Whatever you want,” Bruce elaborated, tilting his head. It seemed like an oddly purposeful movement, baring his throat just slightly. “It doesn’t leave this room. That’s the only rule. I booked this suite through tomorrow morning. Once we’re done, we’re done. We don’t talk about it ever again. We go back to how we were before. That’s my proposal.”
Clark stared at him, oddly impressed by his chutzpah. It was said so matter-of-fact, so casually, as if the prospect of sleeping together was nothing more than a stopgap measure. And yet, despite his hesitation. Despite the guilt and resentment in the back of his mind, he could see Bruce for the first time in weeks. They were talking, openly.
Clark could look at Bruce, as much as he wanted, without fear of reproach. Without needing to avert his eyes. Without needing to feel guilty for wanting. And so he did, until the conversation stagnated between them, the silence stretched out, and Clark could track the subtle flush that began at Bruce’s chest and traveled up his neck, reveling in it.
“What do you want?”
If Bruce was surprised by the question, he didn’t let on. “Didn’t I just say?”
“Humor me,” Clark said, taking a step closer to the island. He set down his glass. “Summarize it again.”
Tell me again, that you want me. That you want this.
“I want to be right,” Bruce said, like it was obvious. Clark wanted that too. Clark wanted him to be right more than almost anything else.
Two more steps, and he closed the distance between them again. The closer he got, the more his body seemed to shrug off Clark Kent and Superman. And maybe that was okay. Because the man looking back at him, inhaling shakily, wasn’t Bruce Wayne or Batman, either.
The entire world narrowed down to the hand Clark raised, fingers grazing Bruce’s cheek. He imagined that Hal hadn’t done this. Hadn’t dragged it out like this, in the Cave showers. Had any of it been gentle?
“Whatever we want,” Clark reiterated. Bruce nodded, not looking at the hand that hovered millimeters from his cheek. “Anything?”
“Within the bounds of reason. And consent,” Bruce said, lips pressing together. Like he was holding back a smile. “We’re not stuck here, of course. The sooner we get things…out of our systems, let’s say. The better, in my mind.”
Something in Clark’s gut twisted, hot and sharp. He wanted to redden those lips, the same way Hal had. He wanted, and -- and so did Bruce. In his own, logical way.
“For the League,” Clark reiterated.
“For the League,” Bruce agreed.
“We don’t talk after.”
“No.”
“Do we have to talk at all?”
Bruce’s grin -- wide, playful, showing off all of his teeth -- was an answer in and of itself.
They came together like an inevitability. Like the universe had been holding its breath for years, and had finally released it. In another world, fucking his best friend out of the blue would’ve been strange. In this one, it felt so natural, it almost wasn’t real.
The sudden snap of the tension between them was more dizzying than the alcohol or the elevator. Clark couldn’t remember if they’d started with a kiss, or another touch, or something other than desperately ripping each other’s clothes off. Desperation colored everything. The kiss was perfect because it had to be. The weight of Bruce’s body against his was perfect, simply because it was.
Pinned to the shower wall, Bruce’s hands scrabbled at the wet tile as Clark pushed into him. It was slow, achingly slow where everything else had been fast. He’d stretched Bruce on his fingers as the twin shower heads ran endlessly above them, steaming up the bathroom.
The noise Bruce made as Clark bottomed out inside of him was obscene, a half-choked breath barely audible to the human ear. And yet it was more of a victory than anything else yet, because -- the noises he’d made with Hal, it hadn’t been anything like this.
Clark grinded into him instead of pulling out, eager for another sound like that. Bruce closed his eyes, hiding his flushed face against the tiles.
He didn’t need to ask if it was good. He could see Bruce’s body light up between his hands, blood flowing down to his aching cock and back up to his pounding heart. Attraction had a smell, this close up; it was thick and heady and impossible to miss, with his nose buried at the base of Bruce’s throat.
Clark pulled back, sliding back in on a slow, controlled exhale. Bruce shivered against him, hips canting back slightly. The only words his mind could form were a jumble, a constant stream of so good and I don’t care if this is childish and why does it feel like this, how can it feel like this--
Years of being in sync in the field proved their worth in close quarters. Bruce moved before Clark knew that he wanted him to, pressing a palm to the wall and pushing back onto him to change the angle. It was slow, tortuously slow, and suddenly he was seconds away from orgasm, and struck dumb with that realization.
Clark came without asking, without any warning, but Bruce had already known, somehow, moving to accommodate. In sync. Clark buried his face in Bruce’s neck, hips thrusting upward in desperate jerks as he came, and came, and came, inside of him.
When he was done, he pulled out, spinning Bruce around by the hips. He sank down to his knees in front of the other man, swallowing him down as quickly as he dared.
Bruce came down his throat a moment later with a soft, shuddering exhale. His entire body tensed, then relaxed, hands settling on Clark’s shoulders because he knew he could take the weight.
Clark picked him up by the waist, placing his hands far away from the ribs Bruce had cracked two and a half months ago. Bruce’s legs came up around his waist without prompting, locking into place at the small of his back. In sync.
At this angle, they kissed without being directly under the spray of the showerheads. Bruce kissed exactly like Clark thought he would. Clark didn’t even have to think about kissing back, about where his mouth was or why. The heat between them didn’t ebb. If anything, the initial release had made both of them even bolder.
Clark’s hands dropped to Bruce’s ass, squeezing. In retaliation, Bruce’s nails scraped down his back, into nerve endings hidden under impenetrable skin, forcing a subvocal noise out of him and back into Bruce’s mouth. In sync.
They kissed, and kissed, until even Bruce had to pull away, taking a breath. Clark set him back down on the tiled floor, on the leg that hadn’t been broken, three years ago. A femur fracture he could still see the edges of, if he looked closely enough. Then the other.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other. The only sound in the entire suite was the running water from the shower. Like they were both waiting for the other person to run off, screaming. To name, as Bruce had put it, the sudden disappointment between them. To call it all off.
There was a stunned look on Bruce’s face. Clark had a feeling his expression was damn near identical.
“Should we…” Clark cleared his throat, glancing at the door to the bedroom.
Hair plastered to his forehead, face still red on one side from the tile, Bruce was still the most beautiful person he had ever seen. They could have been fully dressed, and Clark still would have thought the same thing.
“Please.”
The laugh Bruce let out when Clark picked him up, flying him back to the bedroom in a sudden rush, was worth it all, all on its own.
Chapter 4
Summary:
It was the most embarrassing moment of his life -- it would have been, at least, if he couldn’t see the way Bruce’s body leaned forward, just as flushed and tense as his own. Responding the same way, as if they were both caught in some nightmare Pavlovian response, feeding off each other in an endless cycle.
Notes:
Back again with another chapter, thank you for being patient! I'm splitting this up a little, so I've added a chapter to our final number. I hope you enjoy this chapter -- the scene at the end was definitely one of my favorites to write so far.
Chapter Warning(s): Lots of sex ahead. You were warned!
EDIT: Now with amazing art by battybat604 over on Tumblr! You can view that art here.
Chapter Text
In a different world, Clark realized, this moment would have been utterly bizarre. Bruce’s hand dug into the center of his chest, using him for balance. He didn’t need it, not with the way his thighs flexed on either side of Clark’s hips. But it was another point of contact between them. A way to slow down the descent of him, inch by inch, down Clark’s cock.
Leaned back against a sea of impossibly-soft pillows, Clark brushed his hands up and down Bruce’s back, silently encouraging him. It didn’t feel weird, but it should have. It should have been weird, encouraging his best friend to sink down on him, to take it, to breathe through it. But it wasn’t. It was as natural as the way they’d come together in the shower. Slowed down, but no less intense for it.
Above him, Bruce’s expression tightened. His breath caught, eyes fluttering slightly. Clark’s hands froze against his lower back. He hadn’t sensed any pain, any discomfort, but maybe this was too fast. Maybe --
“I’m fine,” Bruce said, cutting off Clark’s spiral before it could fully form. He was breathing in through his nose, a slow, extended inhale Clark recognized from his meditation sessions. “Just -- don’t move. Yet.”
Clark held perfectly still. His eyes scanned up and down Bruce’s body, above and below the surface. “If you need to stop--”
“No,” Bruce said immediately. He re-focused on Clark’s face with what looked like some effort. There was a flush high on his cheeks, lending him a feverish appearance. His eyes were heavy and dark, pupils dilated to the very extremes. “I’m -- trying to. Enjoy this, for longer than a few seconds.”
It took Clark a few seconds to fully understand what he meant. When he did, the realization came over him like a hot flush. His head dropped back onto the pillows, heat flaring deep in his gut. Above him, Bruce shifted down just a fraction more, letting out another painfully-measured breath.
“Did you just get -- harder?” Bruce asked, disbelieving. Clark closed his eyes, running his hands back down the other man’s back. He let out a laugh as Bruce squirmed under his touch.
Eyes opening, Clark found himself on the wrong end of an intense Bat-glare. “Sorry. Sorry!”
If this had been Lois, or Lana, or any other hookup he’d had over the years -- that would have been the end of it. Sex was serious, even if it could be light and humorous at times. And yet, Clark had misstepped, Bruce was glaring at him, and it felt far from over.
There was still something simmering between them. There was a desperate glint in Bruce’s eyes, in the way his entire body seemed to tremble, finely, from something that wasn’t quite exertion. From the realization, in the moment, that this was good. Beyond good, even. It was so much more than Clark could put to words. His body just knew.
After a moment, Bruce took another breath, his eyes dropping down to the hand on Clark’s chest. With an athletic roll of his hips, he rose up and down Clark’s cock in one unforgiving motion, bottoming out far deeper than he’d managed at any point.
Clark moaned, suddenly overtaken by how good it was. He’d been holding back ever since they’d gotten into the bed, too afraid to overdo it. To spook Bruce with how much a part of him wanted this. His fingers dug into the muscle of Bruce’s hips, hard enough to bruise.
A half-formed apology was on his tongue when Bruce leaned forward, kissing it away.
“You said anything I wanted.”
Bruce stared at him from under messy, sweat-darkened hair. The last round had finally -- finally -- knocked something loose in his rigid composure. He was sprawled out against the pillows, tucked into the spot Clark had occupied a few moments before.
“I didn’t think you meant…” Bruce trailed off, eyes darting to the plastic menu in Clark’s hand. His lips twitched. “...3 AM room service.”
“We could also get takeout if you don’t like anything on the menu,” Clark offered. “But they have good stuff on here. Cheeseburgers…buffalo chicken sandwich…steak tartare, if you’re into that kind of thing. And…hm, sushi. You like sushi, I’ve seen you out with Ollie.”
“You’re hungry,” Bruce said, as if in disbelief. Clark shrugged, setting the menu down on the rumpled sheets. He pushed to his feet, not missing the way Bruce’s eyes traveled down his naked chest as he moved.
“We should eat. You keep forgetting I can see the contents of your stomach,” Clark said, wiggling his eyebrows. “I know when it’s empty.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Clark shrugged again, reaching down to the floor for his jeans. They were a little damp from their expedited undressing in the shower. But if he had to answer the door or fly to some random drive-thru, he was still going to need pants.
“Well?”
Bruce swallowed a large mouthful of burger, somehow managing to make it look elegant and refined. He used the back of his hand to wipe away a tiny bit of grease, smearing it across reddened lips. He was entirely naked, save for the thin sheet pooled across his lap. Somehow, it was the most scandalous thing Clark had ever seen him do -- eating with his hands.
Well? Bruce seemed to ask Clark with his eyes. Happy now?
Clark took a bite of his own burger, hiding a smile. He used his free hand to nudge the basket of fries toward Bruce, giving him a look until the other man reached for one.
“This isn’t exactly energizing food,” Bruce added, idly swirling the fry in Clark’s tiny river of ketchup. Clark had disassembled several of the tiny glass bottles that came with the order off to the side of their fries, since he knew Bruce didn’t always appreciate it slathered on top.
“Are you having trouble staying up?” Clark asked, genuinely curious. Bruce’s eyes snapped up to his, suddenly sharp.
There was another beat of something between them. Another in-sync, out of sync moment. A reminder that this wasn’t just a shared meal on a random rooftop somewhere.
Bruce took another bite, swallowing. His eyes dipped down to Clark’s mouth, lingering.
That was all it took, with them both this pent up. Clark shoved the basket aside and reached for Bruce, who had already tilted his head back in anticipation of the kiss.
They hit the pillows, Bruce groaning as Clark’s weight hit his midsection. Clark sucked a bruising kiss into the side of his neck, delighting in the way Bruce shivered under him, hands coming up to dig claw-like nails into his back.
He tasted like ketchup and grease and a hint of the bourbon from hours before. Most importantly, he tasted like Clark. It was impossible not to want to chase that taste off Bruce’s tongue. And right now, tonight, in this room, he was allowed to -- allowed to want, to kiss as hard as he wanted, to smother Bruce into the sheets and scatter fries and wrappers in the sheets around them.
Bruce’s hand slipped between them, grasping Clark’s cock at the base. He flattened his hand, stroking upward with a grip so rough, so perfect, it had Clark’s hips jerking and his eyes fluttering shut in pleasure. The muscles in his calves twitched, then his thighs, until his entire body was trembling forward, toward Bruce.
He came like that, rutting desperately into Bruce’s abs like some kind of animal. Bruce’s hand drew out the orgasm until it was torturous, stroking him at an unforgiving angle, the calloused pads of his fingers and palm twisted up at just the right time under the head.
It was the hardest he had come, maybe ever. His hips jerked, come spurting from his cock what felt like endlessly, until the ache between his legs softened and Bruce’s hand stilled. When he was finally done, Clark slumped forward onto Bruce’s chest, breathing heavily.
Bruce’s other hand -- thankfully the one that hadn’t been on his cock -- pushed his hair back from his face, carding through it absently. Clark let out a pleased noise against Bruce’s pec.
“Mmf,” he managed, knowing Bruce would understand. Bruce always understood what he meant, even when he couldn’t form the actual words.
“Let me finish my burger first,” Bruce said, in answer to his silent question. It was a bad excuse. Clark knew he wasn’t going to eat more than a few bites, even when pressed.
“Mmf.”
“Some of us,” Bruce’s fingers tapped Clark’s scalp, “Need more than five minutes of recovery, at a certain age.”
“Mmf.”
“I am getting old,” Bruce rebutted. “I have no problem saying that out loud. You’re the one who makes a face whenever the kids bring it up.”
Clark lifted his face from Bruce’s chest, narrowing in on that admission with sudden, renewed focus. He -- selfishly -- let a little bit of heat build behind his eyes, waiting until he could see the red glow reflected in the white of Bruce’s eyes.
The lurch of Bruce’s heart was like a gunshot, this close up. Clark could hear the very second the breath caught in his chest, the way his heart skipped a beat, then beat irregularly for three and a half seconds after that. The dilation of his pupils was minimal in the low light of the room, but still easy to see, now that he was looking for it.
Clark let out a deliberate breath, cold air ghosting across the front of Bruce’s chest. He let his eyes drop the same way Bruce’s had, telegraphing his intentions as he shifted downward.
When he closed his mouth around Bruce’s cock, lips perfectly cooled, that same heartbeat spiked wildly in Clark’s ears. Above him, Bruce’s fingers dug into the bedsheets, an involuntary gasp torn from his lips.
“I won’t sleep with someone else in the bed.”
Clark lifted his mouth from Bruce’s shoulder blade, not discouraged in the least. “So don’t sleep.”
There was a noncommittal noise, then the sound of Bruce’s legs shifting under the sheets. Clark returned to his previous task, pressing soft, brief kisses up and down his spine -- the warm, active muscles of his back, the spots where there was hardware just under the skin, bruises from patrol and the scars littered in between. Bruises Clark hadn’t managed to prevent, during previous rounds -- burst capillaries and swollen skin, likely to bruise by the morning.
A few minutes later, Bruce settled further into the pillows. His body stilled, his breaths deep and even.
In the soft darkness of the room, Clark’s smile felt blinding. Like he could light up all of Metropolis with the feeling building in his chest, blotting out the very sunrise itself.
Clark returned to his apartment just as dawn broke out across the city. His heart was in his throat. His body was buzzing with unspent energy, even as parts of him ached pleasantly.
We go back to how we were before.
It was too painful, waiting to see that transition break out across Bruce’s expression -- that abrupt downshift of his eyes, his mouth, his posture. To go back to the awkward negotiating of the previous night, Bruce holding himself still and Clark unable to tear his eyes away.
He could handle going back to where they were, before. He could handle -- remembering this all as a good night. A strange, if rewarding, fumble between friends. A rekindling of the in-sync relationship they’d always had. And -- most importantly -- a return to balance between Batman and Superman. A balancing of the League itself.
But Clark couldn’t handle seeing that change in real time. Hal had left the showers in the Cave quickly after his fling, and Clark was starting to understand why. Why it was easier to step away, instead of watching as Bruce painstakingly reassembled the division between them.
I want to be right.
Clark hoped he was. The buzz under his skin would fade. The ache in his throat would be forgotten. The feeling of being so painfully in-sync, so in time with the other that the line between them was all but blurred -- that wouldn’t fade, but it would lose some of that charge, surely. The sharp-edged desire, the thrill of the unknown. Those had all been explored, and examined thoroughly. And…
Set aside, in the light of day. All according to plan.
The next day, his JL comm flashed with a personnel update. Clark, halfway between Lois’ laptop and his own, bent down awkwardly to read the screen in his pocket.
Approval Required: Founder Request, Deep-Space Mission. Duration: Three weeks. Additional Personnel: Lantern H. Jordan.
Clark took a breath he didn’t need, seeking out promised calm. He didn’t need to check if Diana had signed off yet. She would, in the absence of any glaring errors. Bruce didn’t request mission approval without good reason.
He hit the approval button, sliding the comm back into his pocket.
“How’s your other job?" Lois asked, blunt as ever. "Still keeping you...busy?”
Just as Clark opened his mouth to respond, Perry leaned around the corner, eyebrows nearly at his hairline.
“You have another job I don’t know about, Kent?”
Lois made an oh shit face, eyes wide. Clark fumbled for an answer, mentally reviewing the options and coming up with --
“I’m DoorDashing,” he said, “Just to make a little extra money on the, uh side. Mostly at -- uh, night. Sir.”
I spend my nights on a top-secret satellite in the sky, watching endless video feeds because I can’t sleep. And when I’m not doing that, I lie in bed and listen for natural disasters and mass casualty events. Then I go back up to that satellite and spend the rest of the night writing reports for Batman, because he’ll want to read them when he’s back. Oh you know, the vigilante from Gotham with the --
Perry seemed, reluctantly, appeased by this knowledge. “You need to put that on your conflict of interest paperwork.”
Clark would pay money to see Perry’s face if he actually put down Justice League Founder + Active Senior Member on his Daily Planet paperwork.
“Yes, sir.”
“Get back to work.”
The moment Bruce was back on the Watchtower, Clark knew. Hell, everyone knew -- Hal hadn’t exactly been easy on the landing, and the Javelin they’d taken was smoking enough to smell on the fourth level -- but he’d known moments before everyone else.
Three weeks to the day, and not a second sooner. Long enough for the sound of Bruce’s heart to be a familiar, distant thing, and not a painful reminder of their last encounter.
In the Founders Hall an hour later, Bruce’s eyes skirted Clark’s shoulders deliberately. Clark stared at the back of his cowl when he spoke with Diana, letting his gaze linger where it couldn’t be seen.
I missed you. Bruce was his friend. Of course he’d missed him -- he was allowed to miss him, just like any other long-term mission. That was what friends and colleagues did -- they missed each other, every now and then.
They were partners at a fundamental level only Diana, maybe, understood -- to be left alone on the Watchtower had put Clark out of sync. It had likely knocked Bruce off-kilter, though the other man would never admit it. They were a team, and they didn’t take breaks like this. Not unless something was wrong.
Diana’s eyes shifted from Bruce’s face to over his shoulder. Clark looked away before she could catch him, clearing his throat and shuffling some papers around.
The Founders’ meeting finished on time. Clark couldn’t have produced a convincing summary of what had been reported upon pain of death. Hal had spoken -- that much he remembered. Their mission went well, damaged ship aside, objectives completed, yada yada. No injuries. No civilian casualties.
He walked to the elevator on autopilot, getting a slap on the shoulder from Barry and a nod from Arthur on the way. Maybe he’d smiled back -- it was hard to say. He needed to get to his quarters. He needed to --
A hand slipped between the elevator doors just as they were about to close, stalling the elevator. Clark looked up from the keypad, just in time to see --
Bruce’s eyes, dilating under the blank white lenses of his cowl. That tell-tale lurch of his heart, muffled by the suit and the sudden rush of blood in Clark’s ears.
The elevator chimed softly, heading for the personnel floor. Clark couldn’t tear his eyes away from Bruce’s face. The world fell away from him in a blur of heat, something aching deep in his gut.
Bruce’s lips pressed together, almost a smirk. Something about him -- it made that ache in Clark’s gut unbearable. His cock hardened in one rush of blood, standing at full attention against the inseam of his suit.
It was the most embarrassing moment of his life -- it would have been, at least, if he couldn’t see the way Bruce’s body leaned forward, just as flushed and tense as his own. Responding the same way, as if they were both caught in some nightmare Pavlovian response, feeding off each other in an endless cycle.
“God,” Clark breathed, more of a pant than anything else. “I didn’t--”
Bruce’s hand slammed into the emergency stop button, hitting it hard enough to crack the plastic. The elevator lurched to a stop, but Bruce was already between his legs, shoving him back against the wall and slamming their mouths together like it was natural, like this wasn’t something off limits for them, like they hadn’t spent three weeks apart --
“Off,” Bruce growled into his mouth, tugging at the waistband of Clark’s suit, “You--”
“--cameras--” Clark reminded him, kissing him as soon as the word was out. He ripped Bruce’s gloves off, splitting the Kevlar weave like it was tissue paper and throwing them to the side. Bruce already had the cowl off, had one hand down Clark’s pants and into his cup. In a split second, he had Bruce up against the elevator wall instead, the other man’s weight balanced against his hips as he dug his fingers into the priceless switches of Bruce’s armor, disengaging them one by one.
Bruce’s head hit the wall behind him. His eyes were closed, a flush on his cheeks and down his throat. Clark added to the redness there, sinking his teeth in and sucking until Bruce moaned, grinding his hips back in approval. There was a Batarang embedded in the camera lens above them. Clark wasn’t sure when it had gotten there. It didn’t matter.
It was a violent, imbalanced dance of shifting weight and discarded armor. Only they could have pulled it off, a part of Clark realized distantly; he knew when Bruce was moving before he moved, where his hands would be before they dug in. And in return, Bruce knew where Clark’s hands needed to be, the angle of how their lips slotted together, the precise amount of strength needed to tug on Superman’s curls and force an involuntary sound out from deep in his chest.
By the time he got his hand into Bruce’s under suit, they were both close enough to be desperate. Clark’s hand moved up and down Bruce’s cock, holding on with all of his remaining focus as Bruce’s hand jerked him off with rapidly-increasing strokes.
Bruce came first, bowing forward into Clark’s chest as come flooded his hand, splattering down the side of his wrist. Clark orgasmed a moment later, desperately pushing his hips into the punishing curl of Bruce’s fingers, thinking mindlessly of how good this felt, how relieving it felt, how he --
-- missed him.
The world slipped back into focus. Clark stared at Bruce, at his red mouth and mussed hair, and realized he had no idea what the fuck had just happened.
After a moment, Bruce’s legs unlocked from behind Clark’s back. Clark set him down on autopilot, awkwardly wiping his hand on the left thigh of his half-open suit.
The elevator looked like a tornado had hit it. The emergency stop button was in pieces on the floor. The Batarang embedded in the security camera was still sparking. Their armor and suit pieces were scattered on the floor around them.
Somehow, Bruce made the process of picking up his armor and re-dressing seem less indignant than it could have been. He was back in the cowl and somewhat presentable in under thirty seconds. Clark followed his lead after a moment, tucking his softening cock back into his suit and trying to rearrange his hair into something resembling his original style.
The elevator re-engaged, likely a manual override from Bruce’s wrist comm. Clark kept his eyes on the ceiling, heat rising in his cheeks. He wasn’t embarrassed -- he was far beyond something as two dimensional as embarrassment. This was -- he didn’t know what this was. A loss of control. A massive loss of control.
The doors opened to the third floor -- Comms and Engineering. Bruce stepped out, shoulders lifting in a barely-noticeable inhale.
“This,” Bruce said, just loud enough for Clark to pick up. He didn’t look back fully, head tilted in Clark’s general direction.
“I understand,” Clark said, filling it in. This won’t happen again.
Chapter 5
Summary:
Love comes quickly. So does Clark, but -- the love part is key.
Notes:
Hi lovely people! Here is the final chapter, as promised. Thank you to everyone who commented and sent me asks -- this was such a blast to write! I hope you enjoy the longer chapter and everything that happens in it.
Chapter Warning(s): Explicit sex below, some potential overtones of dubcon (due to sunlight and other factors) depending on how you look at it, but all ultimately consensual.
Chapter Text
Clark waited exactly ten minutes and thirty seconds, until the clock above the bullpen read 9:15 in bright, flickering red, before tapping Lois on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Clark said, trying to keep his voice low. Casual, like he was just asking to borrow a pen or something else completely unremarkable. “Coffee?”
Lois’ head jerked up from the notes she was reviewing, eyes already narrowed. She was wearing spiky, black makeup around her eyes today, which only doubled the intensity of her suspicion.
“Coffee,” Lois repeated. There was a steaming mug of coffee by her left hand, full to the brim with the rocket fuel they made in the staff room. A good third of the mug’s liquid consisted of the sixteen hazelnut creamers Lois added to it on bad days. And four splenda packets.
Clark twitched his eyebrows, trying to convey his plea with as few words as possible. “Better coffee.”
“Better?” Lois asked, glancing down at her monstrosity of a mug. It was an oversized plain-white mug, the inside lip ringed in old coffee and lipstick stains that would never fully come out.
In the space of less than a second, Clark super-sped the mug and its contents into the staff kitchen sink, upending it for good measure over the drain. Not hard enough to break it, of course -- he wasn’t suicidal -- but enough to remove the creamer masquerading as coffee.
“Oops,” Clark said, giving Lois a conciliatory smile over the space her mug had previously resided. “Let’s go. My treat.”
Lois reached for the coat on the back of her chair, swearing under her breath.
“You don’t usually like to play hooky this early,” Lois said, which -- from her -- was a merciful starting question. Open-ended. Curious, but not pushy.
Clark didn’t even bother looking at the river this time. The location was for her benefit, far enough away from the office that it was unlikely they’d run into coworkers. His focus was on Lois, on the micro expressions she made without realizing, an answer in every inadvertent blink or frown.
“I needed to talk to you. About…stuff,” Clark said, handing over her latte. It was lavender and sickeningly sweet in his nose. Hardly an improvement. “Tall, dark and handsome.”
“Oh, it’s that kind of trouble,” Lois said, taking the paper cup with a nod. “I thought you were in trouble on a story. You were all twitchy when you came in, like when you’re getting ready to lie to Perry but you don’t know how.”
“I know how,” Clark defended. “But yeah, it’s not a story. It’s -- look, can I start from the beginning?”
“Smallville,” Lois used her cup to gesture at him and the river beyond them. Her eyes were sharp. “I thought you’d never ask.”
“But yeah -- it won’t happen again. That much is really clear,” Clark said, hating the way his voice went bitter at the end. That wasn’t him -- he wasn’t bitter. “It’s not like we don’t know how to be friends. I think we’re just -- forgetting? He was gone for too long, way more than he normally is. But I…” he trailed off, shrugging. “I overreacted. It’s my fault it happened, honestly. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of him during the meeting. And then I -- well, you know how it ended, obviously.”
Lois was staring at him, her latte now lukewarm and untouched in one hand. The edges of her eyebrows were drawn tightly together, defying the rigid hold of her 12-week Botox routine.
“Yeah,” Clark said awkwardly, waiting for her to say something. To respond to the word vomit he’d just projectile-vomited at her feet. “Sorry, I could have explained that a little better.”
Lois’ eyebrows slowly -- painfully -- withdrew to their original positions on her face. Her lips flattened, then pressed out into a more neutral shape. “Don’t -- don’t apologize. Okay? You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“But that’s the whole point,” Clark protested. “I did. If I hadn’t--”
“Smallville.”
“--looked at him like that, nothing--”
“Smallville!”
Clark cut off, surprised at the volume of her yell. A few feet away, a pair of geese in the river took off abruptly, spooked. Lois, to her credit, looked a little ashamed to have disturbed the local wildlife.
“Do you ever,” Lois paused, taking a breath. “Do you ever think, maybe -- maybe -- there’s a reason why this is happening?”
“A reason why what is happening?” Clark asked, a little terrified of what she seemed to be holding back.
“This. This thing you have with him,” Lois waved her cup at him. “The arrangement, the elevator mishap. There’s not a common thread that’s sticking out here for you?”
“Other than me not being able to handle this?” Clark asked, hating the way his voice cracked a little on the last syllable. “I -- because I’m not handling this, Lo. I haven’t even seen him since the other day. I legitimately don’t know what will happen the next time we run into each other. I don’t know what I’ll do.”
“You want my professional opinion?” Lois asked, skipping over that confession like she’d barely heard it. Clark nodded. “My real, honest opinion about what’s going on here?”
“Lo,” Clark said, growing desperate.
Lois finally seemed to remember her latte. She extended Clark’s misery, taking a drawn-out sip from the plastic cup. She exhaled lavender into the chilly air around them, as close as she’d ever get to an outright sigh in public.
“If it keeps happening,” she said, with the weight of an Oracle’s decree on Delphi, “It’s a sign.”
“A sign?” Clark repeated. “A sign of what?”
Lois’ eyes settled on him. There was a strange expression on her face -- Clark couldn’t parse it, even with all of their years together. If he had to guess, it was almost…disappointed?
“You’re a reporter, Clark,” Lois said, “Figure it out.”
The universe took pity on him, probably because Lois hadn’t. The next Founders meeting had been rescheduled, and his next monitor shift wasn’t for another week. There was no reason for him to be up on the Watchtower anytime soon. Which meant he wasn’t avoiding Bruce -- as if he could -- they were just scheduled apart for the foreseeable future. Again.
It was a blessing in disguise, even if it stung in the moment. A part of Clark didn’t trust himself around Bruce. He wasn’t -- Superman wasn’t -- the kind of person who ruined an elevator, broke a promise, and walked away without anything even resembling an apology. Clark didn’t recognize that person, but he hadn’t recognized much of himself in the events of the last few weeks, either.
The corresponding version of Bruce was different, too. His heart beat strangely when they were near each other. His eyes lingered on Clark, full of banked heat. More evidence of his self-professed chemistry.
Base functions calling out to base functions. That’s all it was with Hal, and that’s all this needs to be.
And Clark -- he’d locked them into this cycle. He’d butted his way into Bruce’s bed by picking fights with Hal and causing tension with the League. Of course Bruce had offered this as a solution. Of course Bruce had been willing to work off chemistry for one night. But he hadn’t agreed to more than that, to this tension between them that didn’t seem to ebb, regardless of time or distance.
In the elevator, Clark had been the one to give in first. He’d crossed the line, not Bruce. Jesus -- maybe Bruce’s breath had caught, maybe his pupils had dilated, but he wasn’t the one who’d gotten hard just seeing someone else up close after three weeks apart.
That wasn’t him. He wasn’t the one who broke rules, especially not Bruce’s rules. But -- maybe he was. Maybe he was.
“Kal-El!”
The feeling of Kryptonite slicing into his side hit him a moment after the shrapnel actually tore into his suit. Then the skin underneath, then the muscle, and all the way to the bone --
Clark didn’t remember hitting his knees, but suddenly his hands were on the ground in front of him. They were bleeding, fingernails bent back from the high speed impact. Green fragments -- more Kryptonite -- glittered in the dirt between his hands. Glittered wasn’t the right word -- they pulsed, like every single speck of dust had its own internal power source.
Clark was used to pain, even if it wasn’t a common experience for him. But Kryptonite -- on top of being extraordinarily painful -- was cold. Sickeningly cold, like he’d plunged his own heart into ice water and held it there, squeezing it until no blood could flow. No blood, no oxygen, no breath.
Kryptonite made him feel a sense of dread like nothing else ever had, a kind of hopelessness that took over his body and mind. It immobilized him simply because every single cell in his body was leached of warmth, of blood and energy. He couldn’t have called back out to Diana even if he’d wanted to -- there was no breath in his lungs. And god, he couldn’t even breathe--
Unconsciousness came like a sickening green flash behind his eyelids. Clark went limp, his body pitching forward into the dirt.
Bruce Wayne was overseas for a business trip. That part seemed important -- it had been on the news, even. Something Clark Kent, Daily Planet Reporter would know, and not just Superman, who was sometimes Clark and vice versa.
Too far away to come for an emergency beacon. But that was okay, because Diana was there, her arm like an iron beam around his chest, stronger than the pull of gravity dragging him down. And Bruce --
There wasn’t time to miss him. But if he could have -- could have figured out how to do that while unconscious and dying -- Clark was sure that he did.
Miss him, that was.
Clark didn’t come back fully for a while, after that. He had flashes of sensation -- Kryptonite, icy cold under his skin, the feeling of his head on Diana’s breastplate, something slicing into his side, ten times as sharp as the Kryptonite had been and so cold -- but nothing that amounted to a full-fledged thought.
When he finally surfaced from unconsciousness, it was to the relief of heat. All-encompassing heat, from all directions, in every single wavelength his body craved. He was lying on something soft, something so beautifully warm that it wasn’t too far-fetched to think he was crashed out on the surface of the sun itself.
Clark opened his eyes, wincing when they immediately tried to shift to X-ray vision. It took a moment for him to focus on the wall across from him, the Watchtower’s insides flickering in and out of sight in a dizzying swirl.
He was in one of the private recovery rooms, just off the main medical wing. The warmth he’d been luxuriating in like a sun-warmed lizard came from a row of high-capacity UV lamps on the ceiling above, pointed down at Clark’s bed and angled directly at his body.
Clark closed his eyes, settling back into the pillows he could feel under his head. The bed -- the sheets, the pillows, the feather topper he could feel under the top sheet -- was the softest thing he’d ever touched. Maybe that was the sunlight talking.
It took a few more tries to force his eyes back open, and what felt like superhuman effort to sit up under the lamps’ intense warmth. Clark looked down at the thin sheet covering his legs, then back up to his unmarked side. There was no evidence of the Kryptonite that had ripped into the skin and muscle there. When he pressed down with his hand, it all felt…normal. The same as it always did.
A soft noise redirected his syrupy attention to the far wall. By the window, curled back in one of the visitor chairs just out of reach of the sun lamps, was --
“Bruce,” Clark said. His voice echoed strangely in his head, like there were three of him talking at once.
It seemed to have worked, because Bruce sat up immediately. He was in a pair of dark sweats and a thin t-shirt, one of the standard issue JL sets they kept up here for folks who didn’t bring their own. His hair was slightly damp, pushed to one side and drying in a lopsided wave. There was stubble flecking his jaw and throat, like he hadn’t had time to shave.
He was the most beautiful thing Clark had ever seen.
“You’re awake.” Bruce’s gaze dropped before they could make full eye contact. He was on his feet, by the side of Clark’s bed, faster than should have been possible. “How are you feeling?”
I missed you, Clark thought to himself, suddenly, viciously. It was more true than anything else had ever been. I missed you.
“Warm.” Clark couldn’t help the smile that broke out across his face. Having Bruce this close -- just a few inches away -- was even better than the sunlamps.
“Hn.”
Clark wasn’t so far gone not to recognize Bruce’s handiwork. “Are these new?”
Bruce followed his gaze up to the sunlamps, squinting. Even that, he somehow made look elegant. A creature of the night, delicately disapproving of blinding light.
“We’ve had this suite ever since the last Kryptonite injury. Three years ago, so new is a bit of a stretch. But yes, new to you. We haven’t had to use it in the intervening period, thankfully. Diana uses it for her plants, when they need a bit of a boost.”
Clark blinked, taking all of that in. Now that Bruce mentioned it, he could see several plants in the room around them: a fig tree in the corner by the porthole, where Bruce had been sleeping. A few tropical plants he couldn’t name, over by the door. And a particularly hardy cactus directly under the sun lamps on the table next to Clark’s bed.
Kryptonite injury took a little longer to compute in his brain. “I…I got hit. Didn’t I? I mean -- I didn’t dream that. I went down.”
Bruce’s lips pressed together. “Diana got you up here as quickly as she could. You spent ten hours in surgery, which is why you might be a little groggy still. We gave you diluted K intravenously, to keep you vulnerable enough.”
Clark didn’t feel groggy. Groggy wasn’t the right word for it. If he’d had a better one -- or a way to compare it -- he would’ve called this high.
“Vulnerable?”
“To surgically remove the Kryptonite fragments from your body,” Bruce replied, monotone. His eyes shifted down to Clark’s side. “Your skin kept closing around them. It was quite the challenge for our medical staff.”
There was an odd tension to his jaw, to the way Bruce looked away when he said the word challenge. Clark knew him well enough to know what that meant. It meant Bruce hadn’t been sure the surgery would succeed, in the moment. And if the surgery hadn’t succeeded, and his body had swallowed a million fragments of Kryptonite --
“But I’m okay?” Clark asked, dismissing that train of thought. “You got it all out?”
Bruce nodded. “You have a clean bill of health. We kept you under the lamps as a precaution. Mostly to ensure your body flushed out the rest of the liquid K.”
Clark glanced down at his hands, his arms, and the bare skin of his chest. He couldn’t feel or see any trace of lingering Kryptonite. “I think I’m good.”
“Good,” Bruce said, lips pressing together. It was almost a grimace, and something about it didn’t sit well with Clark. “I’ll send the doctor in when I leave. They’ll have their own accounts, of course. I wasn’t here for the start of the surgery, but I…”
It was an odd place for him to trail off. Bruce didn’t lose his place in sentences often.
“Forgive me,” Bruce said, shaking his head. “It’s been a long week. Let me disconnect your monitors, and I’ll leave you to the mercy of the Watchtower medical staff.”
It was meant as a joke, but it fell flat. Clark watched as Bruce reached out, disconnecting a sensor that fed somewhere under the mattress. Fall detection, probably. In case he’d seized in bed and rolled onto the floor, post-surgery.
Several things happened all at once, in seeming slow motion. Bruce leaned forward, reaching for another line near Clark’s chest. His hair fell across his face, and he pushed it back with his other hand. Clark’s eyes followed his hand, tracking it back to Bruce’s side. Back to the thin cotton of his t-shirt, the JL standard issue sweatpants, the damp hair, putting a series of knowns together in a heated blink.
He came up here as quickly as he could. He waited for you to wake up.
He wants to leave.
When Bruce reached for the next line, Clark’s hand closed around his wrist. Bruce’s eyes snapped up to Clark’s face, widening slightly. Just enough to indicate he’d been surprised.
With his fingers pressed into Bruce’s wrist, Clark had the ability to feel Bruce’s pulse stutter under his thumb. He could feel the way Bruce’s body warmed slightly, a fraction of a fraction of a degree, from his touch. The wrist in his grasp twitched, muscles contracting and tendons tensing.
Bruce’s expression was wrecked when he looked back up. His pupils were blown impossibly wide. He was breathing quickly, lips parted.
Emboldened by the sun lamps, Clark smiled at him. It was so easy like this. So easy to forget all the reasons why this couldn’t happen, why one touch couldn’t lead to another and back again, and yet -- and yet, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
Clark pulled him down, pressing his lips to the corner of Bruce’s mouth. Bruce closed his eyes, making an agonized sound somewhere in the back of his throat.
This…
This won’t happen again.
Clark kissed him again, directly on the lips this time. Even that chaste, sun-warmed kiss was insanely charged, a deepening promise of more that made something ache in Clark’s gut.
He knew Bruce better than he’d known any other romantic partner. And so it wasn’t entirely unexpected, welcome, even, when Bruce returned the kiss with a half-swallowed gasp, splitting Clark’s lips open and reaching up to wind his free hand in his hair.
Clark dropped Bruce’s wrist, pulling Bruce up onto his lap. He deepened the kiss, tilting his head back and framing Bruce’s jaw in his hands, holding on for dear life.
The last of Bruce’s hesitation seemed to disappear once he was on the bed. Every single kiss stole the breath from Clark’s lungs, pressing him deeper and deeper into the pillows. Bruce kissed like he was desperate for it, like he was searching for something in Clark’s body, fingers scrabbling at his bare chest searching for purchase.
Dizzy, Clark pulled back before he lost himself entirely in it. He tugged at the hem of Bruce’s shirt, until Bruce got the message and tore it off, stretching the seams down the left side in his haste.
His mouth returned to Clark’s lips, then his jaw, then down to his throat. Clark shivered as teeth scraped the skin between his neck and shoulders, hips twitching. He’d been hard since he’d set eyes on Bruce in the chair, under the thin sheets designed to give him a fraction of modesty. It had barely registered in the surge of heat that was the rest of his body. But now --
Clark whined as Bruce’s mouth closed around his cock, twitching helplessly. They hadn’t done this yet -- he’d gone down on Bruce several times, averting the possibility. Because maybe a part of him had realized, even then, that the image of Bruce between his legs would have broken him. Forever.
Bruce sucked him like he did all things, which was to say efficiently, with his own graceful, effortless flair. His throat worked around Clark’s cock, lips providing the perfect suction, catching the underside of the head with a dirty swirl of his flattened tongue. He knew, without having ever done this before, exactly what Clark’s body needed.
Clark came only a few seconds after they’d started, too dialed up and sensitive from the lamps to stop. He thrust up into the heat of Bruce’s mouth, coming desperately as his body seized, his world flashed, and the feeling of BruceBruceBruce flooded his senses.
Bruce pulled off of him, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. Clark stared at him for an embarrassingly long moment, chest heaving, the sun lamps beating down on both of them.
The same instinct that had urged him to grab Bruce’s wrist compelled him to move again. Clark reached for Bruce, who was already looking at the door like it held the answers to this unexpected development. Like he was thinking about leaving.
Clark pulled Bruce’s back against his chest, locking his arms around the other man’s midsection. Once he had him in his lap, Clark dropped his mouth to Bruce’s throat, sucking a kiss into the same spot he’d scraped his teeth on Clark. Because he knew Bruce, even if Bruce wouldn’t admit it -- he knew that sex was a reflection more often than it wasn’t.
It was telling, how Bruce twitched and squirmed as Clark’s lips worked up and down his throat. He was hard in his JL sweatpants, tenting the thin material. Every single kiss tasted like adrenaline, sweetened by the undeniable flavor of attraction. In Bruce, it tasted achingly sweet, growing more intense with every beat of his heart.
Clark slid one hand down to Bruce’s left nipple, circling it with two fingers. Bruce jerked in his hold, shuddering from head to toe. His eyes were clenched shut, lips pressed together so tightly they were a bloodless white.
He’s trying not to come again, Clark realized, thinking back to the hotel room. Bruce had made the same expression, sinking down on his cock -- like giving in and coming too quickly was a mark against him, instead of insanely flattering.
Clark rested his other hand on the firm skin just above Bruce’s waistband. After a drawn-out, teasing moment, he slid his fingers down, pushing the elastic pants out of the way. Bruce was so wet, it took him a second to get his hand around his cock.
He jerked Bruce slowly, mouth latched to his throat. He bit down and sucked with every slide of his hand, feeling Bruce’s body react in tandem. It was the hottest thing he’d ever been a part of, feeling the way he was breaking Bruce’s iron will down in real-time, pushing him toward the edge of orgasm.
It was so much more intimate than the elevator had been. Here, there were no barriers between them. The heat of his skin leached into Bruce, deliciously oversensitive. Here, he could bury his nose in Bruce’s hair and breathe him in, could delight in the very second he tipped over into orgasm, how it sweetened his scent briefly.
Clark’s teasing came to a head in sure, inevitable waves. He could feel Bruce’s body bracing, could hear the way his breathing had turned ragged. His hands gripped Clark’s forearm, digging in as his hips twitched upward desperately.
“You’re,” Clark lifted his mouth from Bruce’s skin, whispering into the hot hollow of his throat, “beautiful, like this. So beautiful.”
Bruce made another half-choked noise. His head leaned back against Clark’s shoulder, eyelids fluttering.
“Please,” Bruce said, breathless. Please, a plea for release, but also for Clark to take those words back. To have never said them in the first place.
He came a moment later, all over Clark’s hand and up his chest. It was a great, heaving thing, tearing a soft, continuous noise from Bruce’s throat as his hips worked, his cock pulsed in Clark’s hand, and he shuddered and shuddered against him, held endlessly on the edge.
Hopelessly in sync, Clark thrust up into the small of Bruce’s back, chasing his own, weaker orgasm. He bit down on Bruce’s shoulder as he came, feeling Bruce shudder all over again in his grasp, barraged by sensation.
For a moment, they sat there, back to chest, breathing in sync. Clark’s arms wound back around Bruce’s midsection, holding them together as he buried his face in Bruce’s neck.
What was unexpected, what was out of sync, was the way Bruce simply -- allowed it. Moments turned to seconds, and seconds turned to minutes. Bruce’s heart beat slowed, his breathing evened out, but he didn’t move.
I missed you, Clark thought, in the safety of his own mind. It was an ache, even in the post-orgasm haze. I missed you, and --
“Clark.”
It took a moment for him to untangle himself from Bruce. The heat from the lamps above them made everything slow, and his lizard brain didn’t want to move. It wanted to tuck Bruce into the bed next to him, curl up around his body, and sleep.
He zoned out for a few seconds, just long enough for Bruce to wrench his pants back into place and turn around. Neither of them could look the other in the eye; Bruce looked at him, and Clark looked away. Clark looked at Bruce, and both of them flinched.
Maybe this was why it felt so bad, after. The fact that they went from being so insanely in sync, to so jarringly out of it.
“I,” Bruce said, eyes dropping to Clark’s throat. “I need to…”
Clark cleared his throat. “Right.”
The warmth of the lamps seemed to fall away as Bruce slid off the bed. Clark sat there, frozen, as Bruce re-dressed, straightening his ruined shirt and wiping a hand down the front of his sweatpants.
He didn’t watch Bruce leave, but it was impossible not to listen. And so he heard it when Bruce’s heart began to pick up again, out in the hallway. He heard Bruce’s fist crash into the paneling over the waste chute, splintering the plastic and denting the wall beneath.
He heard the yell Bruce let out, at the tail end of it all. It rang up and down the hallway, loud enough for half the Watchtower to hear.
“Hey man,” Hal said, only a little awkward. “Heard about your little dust-up last week. You, uh…doing okay?”
Clark looked up from the elevator panel, humming. Bruce had replaced the emergency stop button. It was the same, shiny black as the previous button -- but new enough, he could still pick out the differences. Micro scratches in the plastic surface that didn’t match the others. A different thickness for the protective coating.
“Cool,” Hal said, nodding. “You really gave us all a scare. I don’t think I’ve seen Bats that pale…well, ever. You’re lucky he rushed up here so quickly.”
Lucky. Something about that word piqued Clark’s depleted interest.
“Lucky?”
Hal frowned. It wrinkled the mask on his face strangely. “Yeah? I mean, he was the one who pointed out that you weren’t healing right. That’s all I meant -- he really saved you on that one. You know?”
Clark stared at him. There was an ache in his throat again, a pang in his chest, and it all felt like Bruce in his mind. It had nothing to do with the man standing in front of him anymore.
“Yeah,” he said, giving Hal an equally-awkward smile in return. “Hey, I never apologized for a few weeks back. I should have said something.”
“Apologized?” Hal asked.
“I was dealing with some stuff,” Clark waved a hand, trying to encompass the last few weeks. “But it wasn’t anything to do with you. And I was a little short with you, during our monitor shift. And during a few meetings.”
“Trust me, we’ve all been there, man.” Hal was giving him an odd look. “You sure you’re okay? You’re acting kinda weird.”
“I’m fine,” Clark said, and this time he really sold it. His eyes were normal, his stance was relaxed. His smile was as genuine as he could make it.
“Right,” Hal said, almost convinced. “Whatever you say, man.”
From Ma’s porch, he had a near-perfect vantage point of the Watchtower as it orbited Earth 20,000 miles above them. It was too small for humans to see without a telescope. And with Bruce’s cloaking tech, there were only a few people on Earth who even knew that it was there, much less where to pick it out in the night sky.
That had always made him feel special, in an odd way. Like the Watchtower was some inside joke between him and Bruce. Clark had no doubt that the other man could point it out in the sky without even looking, day or night.
“Oh, honey. You should have woken me up.”
Ma stepped out onto the porch, hastily tying off her winter robe like she was in a great rush.
Clark stood up from the porch step. He bent down to hug her, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and squeezing gently.
“It’s the middle of the night. I thought you were asleep.”
“I was, but you know how us Mothers are,” Ma released him, giving him a quick head-to-toe scan. “You look tired, honey. Are you sleeping enough?”
“More than enough,” Clark lied, giving her a weak smile. “I’m fine, Ma. Don’t worry.”
“I’m going to worry whether you tell me to or not. It’s my god given right.” She let it go, though, gesturing back at the porch step with her chin. “Doing some stargazing?”
Clark looked back out at the Kansan sky. “Something like that.”
Ma left him to it, disappearing back into the house. She reemerged a few minutes later with two mugs of cocoa, setting them down on the front step.
Clark sat down, leaning against the railing. Ma joined him, even though the hard step likely irritated her back. She drank her cocoa. Clark let his cool, untouched.
“You gonna tell me what’s wrong?”
“I don’t suppose there’s any use in pretending everything’s fine?” Clark asked, slightly strained. At Ma’s look, he relented. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
“Is it Lois?” Ma asked, worried. “Did you two have a fight again?”
“No, it’s not Lois,” Clark said, shaking his head. “We’re -- good. It’s not her. It’s…someone else. Someone I’m close with.”
“Batman,” Ma said instantly.
“How did you know?”
“Clark, honey,” Ma said, giving him a fond smile. “Those are the only two people you ever talk about. Even an old woman like me can catch on, eventually.”
“I talk about the -- others,” Clark defended. “You know about them!”
“I do,” Ma allowed, ever-patient. She gripped her mug between two hands, leaning forward. “Tell me what’s going on. What did Lois say?”
“She told me I was a reporter,” Clark said, “and to figure it out. And she’s not wrong. I did figure it out. I’m just -- not sure what to do about the conclusion I’ve reached.”
“Tell me,” Ma said, and he knew she didn’t just mean the conclusion.
Clark talked for what felt like ages, until the sky had lightened slightly in the east and his cocoa had gone ice cold on the step next to him. Ma listened, nodding at points, wincing at others, and held her counsel until the very end.
Off-loading this onto her didn’t help, anymore than it had with Lois. They had the same look in their eyes, by the time he was done speaking, like they knew something monumental he didn’t.
“You keep calling this -- behavior -- of yours the same thing,” Ma said, finally, when the silence had stretched too long between them. “Jealousy.”
“Isn’t that what you’d call it?” Clark asked, defeated. His eyes stung with the beginning of tears.
“Honey.” Ma’s hand landed on his shoulder, redirecting his attention. She gave him a kind smile, and now -- yeah, he was definitely crying a little, now. “That’s not jealousy. That’s love.”
Clark stared at her, stunned. Tears ran down his cheeks, hot and stinging. He didn’t have the wherewithal to blink, much less wipe them away. It felt like he’d been punched in the gut by shrapnel all over again.
“Oh,” he said.
Ma squeezed his shoulder.
“Excellent timing, sir.”
Clark snorted, shaking his head. There was no way to have excellent timing when he was, entirely, uninvited. At five in the morning. “Do you say that to everyone who shows up here, Alfred?”
Alfred gave him a layered look, conveying an impressive amount of meaning in a there-and-gone twitch of his lips. “Please, come in.”
Clark awkwardly waved off the butler’s attempt to invite him inside. “I was actually just wondering if you’d -- um. Well, this is awkward. I came over early because I knew Bruce wouldn’t be here, and I could leave this… with you?”
Alfred politely glanced at the envelope Clark held out, then dismissed it with another look. “I must insist, sir.”
Clark couldn’t weasel out of Alfred insisting. It felt too much like he was disappointing the butler, simply by saying no. After a moment of hesitation, he tucked the envelope back in his pocket, nodding.
He stepped inside the foyer, waiting a beat for Alfred to lead the way. The butler glanced at him over one shoulder, amused, and directed them both to the kitchen. The prep kitchen, and not the fancy, polished one for guests to see.
“Master Wayne won’t be back for an hour,” Alfred said when Clark was seated at the small table by the window. “Perhaps you’ll indulge me in a morning ritual?”
Clark glanced at the clock above the stove, doing mental math. If it was five in the morning, Bruce was likely still out on patrol. He rarely went home before dawn, these days. That meant an hour and ten minutes, if he was lucky.
“I--Sure.”
“Excellent,” Alfred said. “Black or green?”
Watching Alfred carefully assemble tea service for two was a relaxing ritual in itself. Clark was thankful that he didn’t seem prone to extensive conversation this early in the morning. His heart couldn’t handle another well-meaning, perceptive person digging into his exact wording and conclusions.
The letter in his pocket had it all -- every thought, written out plainly for Bruce to read. He didn’t need to say it again, because it didn’t need to be said. It merely needed to be read.
Clark accepted his cup of English Breakfast gratefully, making a mental note to apologize to Ma later for not finishing her cocoa before he’d left. He didn’t get the same reactions from caffeine and sugar as humans did, but it was still well-intentioned. It was meant to steady him, to offer reassurance, and Clark had no doubt that this tea was intended to do the exact same thing.
“Lovely,” Alfred said, taking his seat across from Clark. He had his own cup, a green tea Clark didn’t recognize. It was very floral. “Is that a resignation letter?”
The sudden jump from 0 to 100 nearly had Clark spitting out his mouthful of tea. He swallowed it down at the last second, grateful he didn’t have the physiology to actually choke on liquids.
If he thought Lois and Ma were scarily perceptive, Alfred was in another league entirely. Clark didn’t even need to respond -- his reaction had likely given it all away.
“If it is,” Alfred started, giving him a once-over Clark could feel in his teeth. “Then the timing is…remarkable.”
“Why’s that?” Clark asked, defeated.
“Because, I believe there’s a similar letter drafted on Master Wayne’s desk upstairs,” Alfred said -- casually, like the slip of information wasn’t a gut punch of its own. “A few phrases stuck out to me -- unable to continue impartial service, most of all. It’s a funny thing, trying to imagine what he might be suddenly impartial about after so many years. Don’t you agree?”
Clark felt his stomach sink. He took a sip of his tea, but the liquid barely touched the ache in his throat. “I’m here to make sure he doesn’t need to do that.”
“Oh?” Alfred asked, one eyebrow twitching upward.
“Resign from the League,” Clark elaborated. He reached into his pocket, pulling out the letter and setting it on the table. “This is -- this is all my fault. He’s not the one being impartial. I am. And he shouldn’t have to take the fall for that.”
Alfred was too polite to open the letter in front of him, but Clark had a feeling he wanted to. “How so?”
Clark flushed, trying to think of a way to put this that wouldn’t scandalize the other man. “Maybe he should explain that part. All you need to know is -- we had an agreement, and I broke my end of it. I failed him, and this,” he indicated the envelope, “is just me righting things. For the League. For him.”
Alfred studied him for a long time, eyes narrowed. Clark endured his scrutiny, hands wringing together in his lap.
“Master Wayne has been very impartial as of late,” Alfred said, reaching for his own tea cup. “He’s been distant with the children. Not on purpose, of course. He’s been irritable, at unpredictable moments. Distracted while on patrol. Something has been occupying his thoughts, even when he is with others.”
Clark inclined his head, throat burning. “I know. That -- that was my fault. He’s -- he’s a good man, Alfred. He’s. He’s so much more than I deserve, and you can’t imagine the guilt I’m feeling, realizing all of this. I’m trying to make it right, though. I promise you, I’m trying.”
There were the tears again, pricking at his eyes. Clark blinked them away, sniffling a little. If Alfred saw him cry, that was the end of it. He would never recover.
“You two,” Alfred’s voice was kind, giving him a moment of relief, “have known each other for so long. What agreement could cause this much pain between you? Why would you throw that history away over one disagreement?”
Clark smiled at him, watery and far too off-kilter to say anything but the truth at this point. “Because.”
“Because…?” Alfred prompted. His eyes flicked past Clark’s shoulder, then back to his face.
“Because,” Clark repeated, feeling his voice tremble. His chest was tight. His throat ached. “I love him. And that wasn’t part of the agreement.”
Alfred went very, very still. His eyes lifted past Clark’s shoulder again, back to the same spot as before. A pit opened in Clark’s stomach as he recognized the way the butler’s eyes had refocused on something -- someone -- behind him.
Clark pushed to his feet in a hasty, uncoordinated motion. He splintered the handle of the kitchen chair as he tried to push it back into place. He didn’t look at Bruce -- couldn’t look at Bruce, couldn’t bear the heated, awful weight of his eyes anymore. Not when he’d just overheard -- what he’d overheard.
Sometimes, when he was wound up enough, his body simply forgot how to fly. He moved like a human would, with Clark Kent’s stumbling steps and half of Superman’s coordination. And so, instead of disappearing from Alfred Pennyworth’s kitchen, he pushed through the parlor door, into the dining room, back around to the main living room and, through that, to the foyer.
A hand caught his shoulder just as he reached the front door. Clark recognized the warmth and shook it off as gently as he could, feeling Bruce’s fingers slide off his arm.
He made it out onto the front steps, then the driveway, before Bruce adjusted his plan of attack. The other man was in bare feet, and Jesus -- there was snow on the ground, but it didn’t seem to matter. He forced his way into Clark’s path, holding up his hands.
“Stop. Just -- stop, Clark. For Christ’s sake, stop.”
Clark stopped. Walking back to Metropolis wasn’t a viable option, anyway. When he could fly again -- then, he could leave. Leave this all behind him, like he’d intended.
Bruce was seething. His eyes were wide and bright. He was flushed and sweaty from patrol, wearing nothing more than a pair of black exercise shorts and a compression shirt. He should have looked ridiculous, with his bare feet in the snow and his hair sticking up on one side of his face, but he looked so alive. So detached from his normal composure.
“I know you--” Clark cleared his throat, figuring it was now or never. He needed to choke these words out. “I know you don’t feel the same. I know I broke the rules of our arrangement. I wrote it all out in that letter I left -- you should probably read that before Alfred does, actually. I didn’t really skimp on the details.”
Bruce’s hands dropped to his sides, curling into fists. “I don’t give a fuck about your letter, Clark.”
“Great,” Clark said, a little hurt. “Well. I guess that leaves me with -- an apology. You should hear it from me, that was stupid of me to try and get around it. And you -- shouldn’t quit the League, okay? That’s yours, Bruce. I’m not taking it from you because I -- I -- couldn’t handle our arrangement. I was the one who crossed the wires. I ruined the way you handle these things, and I broke the rules. The rule, really. Because I --”
Clark trailed off, throat burning. There were tears streaming down his face suddenly. Bruce didn’t look like he was breathing. His heart was hammering in Clark’s ears, the only evidence he had that the other man wasn’t suddenly a statue.
“I wanted to talk about it,” Clark choked out, “After we were done. I didn’t realize that was what it was, until now. I missed you. I missed seeing you. But every time we spoke after that night, I had this weird feeling in my chest. And I kept wanting to break your rule. Every single second of every damn day, Bruce.”
Clark wiped his face, not caring how undignified it made him look. Not caring if Bruce cared, because even if he did -- it didn’t matter.
“So yeah,” Clark said, looking away. Back to the Manor, where Alfred was. “This is what’s best for the League. Me walking away. I thought I could be like Hal, and I really couldn’t. We tried something, and it backfired. But that’s not on you, B -- that’s on me.”
Bruce’s expression was impossible to read. His lips came together, shaping a soundless word. After a moment, he shook his head.
“Clark.”
“I’m really sorry. Did I mention that part?” Clark realized he was babbling, in a far-off, panicky way. “I need you to know that part. Because I’m -- so sorry, Bruce. For all of it.”
He opened his mouth to say more, to keep explaining until the hole in his chest opened up and swallowed him whole. But nothing else came.
“Are you going to let me talk now?” Bruce asked, in that soft, dangerous voice of his. It was almost Batman’s growl. Almost.
Clark nodded.
“You left the other night,” Bruce said. “At the hotel. I woke up and it was like the last few hours had been a dream. The bed was still warm, but you weren’t there. And I…thought you would have been. That was selfish of me. To think that. To hope for that.”
Clark stared at him, not following.
“Because I lied to you,” Bruce said, through what sounded like gritted teeth. “I said that our wires got crossed after Hal. Mine were… out of order a long time ago, Clark. But you were -- the League was --”
Bruce’s hand landed on his chest, pressing down. Clark’s body remembered the last time Bruce’s hand had been on his chest like this, even if his mind didn’t want to.
“It was like you said,” Clark said, feeling Bruce’s nails dig into his chest. “It was just chemistry. You shouldn’t blame yourself.”
“That’s not what I’m trying to say, you idiot,” Bruce said. His eyes shifted up to Clark’s face, burning with sudden intensity. “I’m saying -- whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re feeling right now. It’s the same for me. It always was. Before Hal, after Hal. We felt the same, but you were the one who had to bear the consequences of that. Not me. And -- for that, I apologize.”
Whatever you’re feeling, it’s the same for me. It always was.
“Are you,” Clark hesitated, not daring to hope. “Are you apologizing for…falling in love with me?”
Bruce’s lips pressed together, and it was almost a smile. “Isn’t that what you’re doing?”
“Bruce.” Clark couldn’t bear teasing right now.
“Yes,” Bruce said, looking back down at his hand. He spread it wider on Clark’s chest, almost possessive. “That’s what I’m trying to do. Yes.”
It took less than a second for Clark to gather Bruce up in his arms, launching them both up into the sky. He flew them just past the cloud cover, up into the tepid Gotham sunshine, clutching Bruce to his chest with a ringing laugh.
They touched back down in the rose garden behind the Manor, Bruce’s legs wrapped around Clark’s waist and Clark’s hands in Bruce’s hair. For a moment, they didn’t kiss. For a moment, they just -- held each other. Forehead pressed to forehead, leaning in just enough to look, to bask in the reality that they could now.
Clark’s feet sank into the thin layer of snow on the ground. He closed his eyes and leaned in, pressing his lips against the curve of Bruce’s mouth. Then, like a blooming rose, it opened into something deeper.
And, because he could, now, Clark held Bruce’s face between his hands, waiting until he had his full attention to speak.
“I missed you,” he said.
Bruce seemed to understand, because he always did. Because when they were in sync, they never missed a single thing between them. He smiled, lips red and cheeks flushed.
“I missed you too.”
Pages Navigation
Just_an_aussie_otaku_hermit on Chapter 1 Tue 07 Jan 2025 11:44PM UTC
Comment Actions
JHSC on Chapter 1 Tue 07 Jan 2025 11:45PM UTC
Comment Actions
sss on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 12:17AM UTC
Comment Actions
Greyspaces13 on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 12:24AM UTC
Comment Actions
trishalynn on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 12:34AM UTC
Comment Actions
Dea626 on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 12:35AM UTC
Comment Actions
Miandraden1 on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 12:38AM UTC
Comment Actions
writing_shark on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 12:46AM UTC
Comment Actions
MoreDeviantThanDefective on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:07AM UTC
Comment Actions
Melithen on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:17AM UTC
Comment Actions
Akumzae on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:23AM UTC
Comment Actions
BeepboopIamaproblemchild on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:26AM UTC
Last Edited Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:26AM UTC
Comment Actions
Cherryhair on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:47AM UTC
Comment Actions
boyrotted on Chapter 1 Mon 13 Jan 2025 01:34AM UTC
Comment Actions
spicy_potsticker_bliss on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:47AM UTC
Comment Actions
bat_chik on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:49AM UTC
Comment Actions
BookwormByNight on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 02:08AM UTC
Comment Actions
JustAnotherWanderingOne on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 02:27AM UTC
Comment Actions
halevu on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 04:34AM UTC
Comment Actions
mellowjazzANDbongodrums on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 05:20AM UTC
Comment Actions
BrachaShakhor on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 05:57AM UTC
Comment Actions
Kintsugi_san on Chapter 1 Wed 08 Jan 2025 01:00PM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation