Chapter Text
It didn’t matter where they were. This time it was on expensive sheets in a room he’d never be able to afford, his knees still raw after fucking on the ground, palms damn and pale, the taste of alcohol lingering in his throat and burning like bile. Last time it was behind a dumpster.
What mattered was Bruce kissing him, open-mouthed and wet, sucking down his tongue like he couldn’t get enough. The way Clark’s nails scoured down his back, holding him close, urging him deeper, faster. His lungs screamed for air before he could pull away, biting down before he gave away too much. Said something he shouldn’t, couldn’t take back. This thing between them had too many rules and none at all. Don’t mention her. Don't call home. No bruises, no marks where they could see. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t mean it if you do.
If you can’t do it better than her, why am I here?
The ground was crumbling beneath him, but this was where Clark made his stand. This was where he broke his vows and made them anew, begging on his best friend’s cock. He was an addict on the sickest high, tearing himself open for the promise of nirvana. It was easier every time.
His hands on Bruce’s wrists, mouth on his chest. He’d make him want it as much as Clark did, need it until it tore him apart. Make him hate Clark for it, for giving him everything, the same way Clark hated him. Hated him so goddamn much. He spilled between them with a cry, trembling through the aftershocks before he collapsed into stained sheets.
Clark was still the first one to pull away. He told himself it would be the last time. He always did.
-
Bruce swore that each time would be the last time. It never was. He was more addicted to Clark Kent than the alcohol that ran thick through his veins more often than not, alcohol that numbed the pain of bad choices and life circumstances.
Ever since he’d fallen in love with his best friend, after meeting at the Wayne family’s Arabian horse farm in Kansas, Bruce had sworn that things wouldn’t happen some certain way and things always ended up happening that way regardless. It was as if the universe was mocking him, showing him that he had no power over anything, that he was doomed to do things that he could plainly see were wrong. The boys ended up spending most of their summers together, exploring and solidifying their relationship, something that transcended their differing family tax brackets and the distance between them when Bruce was back in Gotham.
When they were together, innocent boys, the rest of the world didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that Clark was smiling and looking at Bruce with those beautiful blue eyes. Eyes that drew Bruce in and gave him a taste of his first, but certainly not last, addiction.
He knew he shouldn’t have pushed Clark that fateful summer. He did. He swore to himself that he wouldn’t. But how could he help himself when Clark had looked at him with those eyes, his mouth silently begging to be kissed, so very close to him that all Bruce had to do was lean in an inch or two and that was that. Their first kiss that had led to weeks of exploring and learning and Bruce’s increasingly intense dependency. When summer was over and they had to part ways, Bruce nearly failed the first semester of school. He was distracted, couldn’t remember simple things, always daydreaming about everything Clark. He’d been heartbroken to hear about Clark’s fling with whatshername, Lana something or other, taking the news quite hard. He was sure that it was Clark’s way of telling him that he didn’t want to be with Bruce and Bruce had hardened his heart, throwing himself into his schoolwork and his father’s liquor cabinet with abandon, somehow managing to graduate with honours.
Even traveling across continents couldn’t keep Bruce from thinking about Clark and now that he was back in Gotham with Clark just across the river in Metropolis - unhappily married to a reporter named Lois - things picked up where they had left off, with a rather darker bent to it. He figured Clark was using him as a distraction from said unhappy marriage, just looking for something physical to get out of his head for a bit. Nothing more, nothing less.
And Bruce had to be satisfied with what he could get even though he wanted so much more. There was no way he would open his heart up again to have it broken by Clark again. But he forgot, again, that things had a way of going exactly contrary to whatever Bruce wanted and he was reminded of that when something inside of him twinged painfully when Clark pulled away after they came, sweaty and panting. Clark just… rolled over, forcing Bruce to pull out, making him wince at both the overstimulation to his cock and complete lack of intimacy that he craved.
He didn’t bother staying in the bed, rolled out and grabbed his boxers, wiping his cock as he headed to the bathroom and shut the door so he could get a hold of himself. He couldn’t ask for more. Couldn’t ruin Clark’s relationship with Lois. Clark was unattainable and he had to be happy with what he could get.
In the bathroom, Bruce stood in front of the sink, hands gripping the cool marble, head bowed, trying to force the thoughts of Clark’s mouth on his skin out of his memory. It wouldn’t work if he couldn’t stop thinking about him. He tried to recall the memory of Grace? Greta? Glory? what was that old fashioned name on that very new-fashioned girl he’d fucked in the men’s room at the bar last night. Think about her. Think about her long blond hair and her too-bright lipstick that got all over his collar. Stop thinking about Clark.
-
When Bruce came back, Clark was out on the patio overlooking the best Gotham had to offer, the twinkle of Metropolis’s lights a comfort only because of their distance. Smoking again. It was an old habit he kicked long before the Peace Corps. Bad habit had a way like bad pennies. His boxers hung low over his hips, but other than those and a pair of hotel slippers, he was bare. His lopsided coke-bottle glasses still rested on the vanity, where they’d only just remembered to leave them.
He looked older. He felt it, too.
He could have run. He’d been doing that for a long time, but he’d known Bruce for so much of his life, longer than he knew almost anyone else. They found each other again and again. First on a dusty road with nothing but gold as far as the eye could see, then in the middle of a busy campus. On a cramped train to nowhere, with teary eyes and numb fingers. Each of them a gateway to a thousand different lives they could have had, but they always came back to this, to Clark and Bruce, in any way they could have each other On his good days, Clark called it fate.
On the bad ones, he wondered when he’d accept responsibility for the worst in him.
Today was both. Neither. His legs still felt weak, but he wouldn’t let Bruce see that. Instead he held out his hand, offering the remainder of his smoke.
“Are you getting back to the party?” He asked, as casual as anything. There was nothing in his tone that suggested Clark would join him. He didn’t want to. That was Bruce’s world, a world of color that blinded and touches that burned. The making of a storm. It wasn’t a world Clark belonged in. Clark was asking how much time he had in the room before Bruce brought up his next conquest. He’d learned his lesson the last time he stayed for too long.
-
Bruce fully expected Clark to be gone when he came out of the bathroom and he was surprised to see him standing on the balcony. Grabbing a robe so he wouldn’t be charged with indecent exposure, his dirty boxers discarded on the bathroom floor, he joined Clark in the cool air and took the offered cigarette. While he inhaled deeply, he shook his head as answer to Clark’s question, his exhale more of a sigh than anything.
“No, ‘m done with them…” Bruce murmured as he lightly ran the end of the cigarette against the stone of the railing, knocking off the excess ash, “They’re a bunch of idiots…” I’d rather be with you stuck in his throat and he swallowed thickly, working his jaw before smoking some more and looking out over the city to the water and Metropolis beyond. He took in another quick drag before How’s Lois came out and looked down at the street, the people tiny from their 14th story view, and he wondered how many of them consistently fucked up their lives.
Probably a few?
“Read that story you did about Luthor… took guts, goin’ after him…” This was painful. It was more than painful it was excruciating and Bruce didn’t think he’d be able to handle it. One little jump and it could, technically, be over with but deep down Bruce knew he was too much of a coward to go through with that. He’d stick to drinking, drugging, and fucking himself into an early grave.
-
“Not interesting enough for you?” Clark asked as he watched Bruce’s lips curl around the butt of his cigarette. Tried not to notice how easy he was with it when on most days, Clark still risked snapping the damn things in half or having them slip between his fingers, like he was in high school again and trying to sneak one out behind the barn.
Nothing ever could keep Bruce’s attention for long. Not now, not a decade ago. Once Clark learned how to stop competing, it stopped mattering as much. Sometimes he just forgot his own rules. A lot of times, when Bruce was involved.
“Yeah,” Clark said, honestly startled for a moment. He shouldn’t have been. Bruce and he used to spend entire nights talking to each other, over the gravely static of a phone, a thousand miles between them, a dozen countries to boot. That was years ago. “He’s slapping a lawsuit on the Planet. I think I got through to him. Feels pretty important. Kinda feel like one of your celebrity friends.”
He was scathing only if you looked too closely. The article gave him something to think about when the house was too quiet. That had been happening more and more lately. He laughed, a quiet, bitter sound.
“I should learn to stop messing with fucked up billionaires.”
-
Bruce snorted and smirked and shrugged one shoulder, shaking his head as he focused on the cigarette, barely one puff left, watching the little flashes of orange eating away tobacco. It was comforting in a way, entropy, maybe it meant that Bruce was just ahead of the game. He was just so sick of the duplicity of everyone, himself included. Things would be so much simpler if everyone could just be honest about what they needed. What they wanted.
He was just about to offer Clark and the Planet his lawyers, no charge of course, in case Luthor actually had some sort of case, when Clark laughed and said the most honest thing he’d heard in a long time. Bruce went very still, the cigarette still burning between his fingers, knowing he should laugh, or snort, or make some snide comment back but he couldn’t do anything except watch the god damn cigarette burning out. As the last wisp of smoke curled away, Bruce pinched it between his fingers to make sure it was fully out before he turned to Clark with a why but tired smile.
“Don’t think you’ll ever learn that lesson…” he meant it to be more lighthearted than it came out and he was stuck with the lingering ache of knowing that Clark, his friend, thought he was fucked up. Why that hurt was beyond him. It’s not like it was a lie. He was fucked up and damn near everyone knew it but the fact that Clark could say it so… easily…
-
Then stop calling me. As if he didn’t call half the time, as if he didn’t answer on the first ring. Bruce Wayne was rich enough that he could buy anyone he wanted, and attractive enough that he wouldn’t even need to ask. He didn’t need to string along a married man from nowhere, Kansas, but they were best friends. And all the shit between them never meant anything. A flare of anger burned through Clark. It was extinguished as quickly as it came, and the evening breeze felt far too cold.
Clark threw his head back and laughed, his smile wide and easy on his face. Kansas taught him how to be polite even when he didn’t want to be. The big city taught him how to really sell it.
“Some day, Bruce. Just you wait.”
He turned guilelessly at the sharp chime of his ring tone. His mother always said he could hear a dog bark a town over. As quick as he was to answer Bruce, he was always as quick to drop him. It wasn’t always Lois, but it could have been.
This time it was only Perry White, of the Daily Planet. Something was happening in Japan that needed to be on the Planet’s website now, and if Clark hurried, it might make page two. He got dressed as they spoke, picking clothes off the floor with all the familiarity of one of Bruce’s one night stands.
-
Bruce’s slick smile dropped when he heard Clark’s phone. He had never hated a piece of technology more in his life than he did that phone. He couldn’t stop the snort of derision as Clark turned his back, left him like he was nothing as he answered the phone.
At least it wasn’t Lois. As much as Bruce envied the woman he couldn’t hate her. He had tried but it just didn’t work.
“Leaving me for a page two,” he tried not to let his anger filter through but he failed. It was all too much and he was sick of it. Sick of the lies and the bullshit on his own side as well as Clark’s. Bruce looked over the edge one more time, just to remind himself of how much of a coward he was before he was back in the room and pulling on his trousers, fully intent on going back to the farce of a party with all his false friends to find someone to fuck Clark out of his system.
At least with those people things were simple. Pure lust and nothing else. Simple. Neat. No muss no fuss.