Chapter Text
Silence had always kind of been their thing.
They figured that out pretty early in their first month of working together, back when every convo felt like a hostage situation and both Kal and Bruce treated small talk like the Black Plague. Not that the plague would’ve done much to either of them. Kal was an alien, and Bruce was…well, Bruce. He’d probably have a to-go cure for it anyway, hidden somewhere inside that bull-like vessel of his.
Anyway—
The point was, talking had never come naturally to either of them. So, they learned each other’s silences instead—the pauses, the gestures, and the subtle shifts in expression that somehow translated perfectly for two men incapable of communicating normally.
Which meant that Kal-El recognized the signs immediately when Bruce was pretending otherwise.
And that led directly to the question of the evening: How stubborn does a man have to be to decide bleeding out is less embarrassing than asking for help?
Answer: Bruce Wayne levels of stubborn.
Tonight, the Bat’s pride has once again turned a manageable situation into this.
He’s come home with a fresh little charcuterie board of injuries, courtesy of thugs, more thugs, and Gotham’s endless subscription service to violence.
Kal offers him Sunstone dust, which is objectively the smartest solution in every possible category: efficiency, common sense, basic survival instinct.
Unfortunately, Bruce Wayne measures all incoming assistance against a completely different metric system called: does this make me look emotionally dependent-imeters.
Naturally, he refuses the help.
Absolutely not. Healing is for people with a healthy relationship with being perceived. Bruce will suffer alone, thank you very much. Gotham didn’t raise a quitter. It raised a man who would rather sit there marinating in pain than accept help from glowing, red space dust, no matter how useful it might be.
Bruce reaches for his battered first-aid kit. The old thing smells hideously of dried blood, antiseptic, and every bad decision he has ever made. Inside are battlefield dressings that have already survived several wars. Now, they are being ordered to clock in for yet another.
Across the room, Kal hovers with his arms folded over the S on his chest, quiet as a saint, yet internally battling with the last scraps of his patience. He has learned, rather quickly, that Bruce is the sort of man who can turn concern into a personal attack if it’s delivered at the wrong angle.
Scratch that—at any angle.
Bruce has already stripped the suit down to his waist, leaving his chest and back exposed. Without all the armor, he looks a certain way that Kal is still learning how to name. Not weak. Never weak.
Bruises are blooming all over his back. Fresh scrapes shine red where the suit has dragged against him. Dark red tracks run along the ridges of muscle beside his spine. There are even places where his skin has split. Places where Kal can see how little stands between Bruce and ruin.
Something behind Kal’s ribs twists.
Concern, he tells himself. Perfectly normal concern. Regular, platonic, save-your-stubborn-ass concern.
“You can’t reach your back,” Kal says at last, breaking their usual silence.
Bruce doesn’t look up from wrapping his bicep. The muscle jumps beneath the added pressure.
“I’ll manage.”
Kal narrows his eyes.
“How? By pouring saline down your spine and hoping for the bus?”
“It’s ‘hoping for the best’. And yes, if necessary.”
Kal fixes him with a look so heated that Bruce actually considers taking a big step away from the alien with built-in death beams.
“That’s inefficient.”
Which is Kal’s less-talky way of saying: Bruce, you are bleeding out like an idiot, and I am tired of watching you turn basic wound care into moral philosophy.
“Let me,” the Kryptonian adds, already drifting across the room.
Bruce answers with obstinate silence and a small shake of his head.
It’s him all over. Pushing away even the faintest suggestion of dependence, as if one band-aid from Kal might crack his shell. As if accepting help is the first step toward unraveling completely and having a little vent sesh about feelings under a weighted blanket.
God fucking forbid.
Kal understands the impulse, maybe better than Bruce realizes. Neither of them is particularly graceful about being cared for. They have both learned to treat tenderness like an enemy until it passes several security checks and proves it isn’t armed.
But understanding Bruce doesn’t make this any less infuriating.
Not when he can see the blood. Not when help is right there, waiting in Kal’s hands, and Bruce would rather suffer than reach for it.
Enough, Kal thinks.
He grabs a clean cloth, dips it in saline, and draws in the sharp medicinal bite of it through his nose. Then, he floats behind Bruce before the man can drag another protest up from the depths of his terrible coping mechanisms.
Up close, the damage is much worse.
Kal stills.
For a second, all he can do is stare at Bruce’s back.
There is… a lot of blood. Torn skin. Bruising darkening beneath the surface. Swelling rising everywhere, his body already trying, stubbornly, to hold itself together.
Kal does not understand how it manages.
Bruce looks like something sliced up and pieced back together by force of will alone. It is not the first time Kal has noticed the scars. The first time had only been a glimpse. But now, it is crystal clear.
Kal wants to ask.
But he knows Bruce.
It is still foreign to him, the way injury lingers in a human body. Kal has known pain before. He’s experienced it on his home planet. He knows what hurt is, what loss is, what it means for the body to remember what the heart would rather forget.
But this is different.
This pain has weight.
Weight that stays behind long after the blow has passed, making a home in the skin, the bone, the muscle.
And somehow, miraculously, Bruce carries all of it.
Kal presses the damp cloth gently to the first wound.
“Does it hurt?” he asks, soft-spoken.
Bruce gives him the same answer he always gives:
“I can handle it.”
Kal ignores the false front entirely.
He begins to clean the wounds in slow strokes. The cloth comes away pink at first, then red, then pink again. Blood loosens beneath his touch, diluted, sliding over the hard planes of Bruce’s back.
Bruce barely reacts. Why? Because reacting would imply he is a person with nerve endings and not a big, brick wall.
Well, unbeknownst to Bruce, but knownst to Kal, the alien can see through everything. Such as: the tension riding high in Bruce’s shoulders, the tiny jump of muscle under his skin when the cloth passes over a deeper cut, and the sharp hitch in his ribs when the saline bites too hard.
Even so, Bruce’s face stays impassive.
The man may be fluent in pretending he’s fine, but Kal has spent months learning his dialect.
Before they met, Bruce had treated Kal like a walking disaster. A reckless thing. Something that might, at any moment, decide to swallow the Earth whole because some invisible alien switch flipped in his head.
But forced cooperation has an annoying little habit of revealing the truth.
And the truth was that Kal wasn’t a bomb waiting to go off. He was protective by instinct. Ridiculously so. The kind of man who used his sandy cape as both shield and shelter, who stepped between danger and the vulnerable without thinking. The kind of man who had care woven so deeply into his bones he probably couldn’t zap a dehydrated mosquito even if he wanted to.
“We accomplished a lot tonight,” Bruce says abruptly. “You did well. That’s progress.”
Of course that is where Bruce goes. Not “thank you.” Not “please continue touching my back with the gentle hands of someone who could crush steel and is choosing not to.”
No.
Progress.
The man’s middle name. Bruce Progress Wayne.
“Thank you,” Kal replies, smiling as he reaches for the gauze.
He lays it over the cleaned wounds, taping each edge down so it won’t pull at Bruce’s skin when he moves. His gaze drifts, tracking the map of scars across Bruce’s back.
Pink ones. White ones. Raised ones catching the warm lamplight whenever Bruce moves. Thin silver scars crossing thicker, older damage in jagged lines. Hurt layered over hurt over hurt, all packed together like sedimentary rock.
Kal’s hand slows.
Something catches in his chest. And before he can stop himself, he reaches out.
His fingertip traces one of the larger scars cutting across Bruce’s back—the notched one that looks almost like barbed wire embedded in skin. Kal follows the massive line over Bruce’s shoulder blade, across muscle crowded with dozens of other scars intersecting over it like fault lines.
His touch lingers too long.
He realizes this at roughly the same moment heat rushes through his veins in a way that has absolutely nothing to do with Sol or yellow sunlight.
What is this? he wonders, distantly.
“Uh,” Bruce begins, voice rougher than usual, “what are you doing?”
Kal’s hand retreats immediately.
“Sorry,” he says, glancing away. “They just… remind me of constellations.”
Bruce turns his head enough for Kal to catch the confusion across his features.
“What?”
“Your scars,” Kal soon realizes this is somehow making the situation worse instead of better. “There are many of them. The patterns resemble the night sky.”
Bruce just stares at him.
“They’re just scars.” Even so, crimson creeps slowly up the back of his neck, staining across his cheeks. “Don’t touch them,” his eyes flick away, but the words lack any real bite.
“Okay,” Kal agrees. Then his eyes drop to a thin line of red beads slowly along Bruce’s inner thigh, where his suit is sliced open.
Kal’s brows pull together.
“…That is also bleeding.”
Bruce follows his line of sight and sighs.
“Damn it.”
He hooks his fingers beneath the edge of the suit and peels it down farther. The shiny, black material sticks slightly where dried blood has glued it to skin before finally giving way.
Kal watches.
He does not intend to watch this intensely, but his focus appears to have abandoned him entirely in favor of conducting a thorough investigation.
Bruce works the rest of the suit down, muttering under his breath as it peels away from sweaty skin. Even annoyed, there’s something vulnerable about it. Bruce spends most of his life armored, so watching him remove the suit feels like seeing something private.
Something most people never get access to.
Bruce’s thighs are thick with protruding muscle. Built for sturdiness. For impact. For kicking the absolute shit out of criminals. Honestly, most of Bruce looks purpose-built for ass-kicking.
Kal stares a second too long.
Then suddenly he’s moving.
One moment he’s hovering around to face him. The next he’s directly in front of Bruce, lowering onto his knees.
The thump against the wooden floor lands loudly in the quiet room.
Bruce goes completely still.
Kal carefully spreads Bruce’s legs apart, and Bruce lets him. He focuses on the cuts lining Bruce’s inner thigh, wiping away any blood there. The soaked cloth slides across heated skin, and Bruce inhales sharply through his nose.
His mouth parts like he’s about to say something cutting—
But nothing comes out.
When Kal glances up briefly, Bruce’s hands are clenched hard into fists beside him, tendons popping out.
“You possess remarkable strength,” Kal shares, returning his attention to the injuries. “Especially for a human.”
While wiping, his knuckles brush the inside of Bruce’s thigh by accident and Bruce’s entire leg twitches in response.
Kal pauses for him.
“Achieving this level of physique would be difficult for me,” he admits with open admiration. “Your body has adapted through repeated physical trauma and recovery cycles. It is…” He presses down, softly, on a large gash. “… impressive.”
Bruce’s jaw flexes.
“You should try training in Svalbard during winter,” he advises, staring determinedly at the far wall instead of Kal.
Which is probably wise.
Eye contact right now would almost certainly kill them both.
“You’re suggesting I deliberately deprive myself of sunlight for an extended period of time,” Kal trails off, “in order to build physical mass while weakened?”
Bruce nods once like this is an entirely reasonable fitness recommendation.
Kal considers this with genuine seriousness.
“That’s…” He turns the idea over carefully in his mind. “Not entirely illogical.”
Actually, it is monumentally ill-advised, Kal-El, Sol remarks in the back of his consciousness. Aesthetic improvement is a uniquely human fixation. You are above this.
Kal’s eyes flick downward again to Bruce’s thighs. Muscle shifts each time he rubs Bruce’s injuries.
Kal is no longer convinced he’s above anything.
“Whatever you say,” he murmurs, mentally advising Sol to rest for the time being. And he does.
Bruce throws him a look. “You… good?”
“Yes,” Kal reassures.
He reaches for a scrape higher along Bruce’s thigh. The damp cloth pats it, and Kal leans closer without thinking, intent on helping. Then, his fingers brush the edge of Bruce’s black briefs.
Kal goes completely still.
Heat surges through his nervous system like lightning, sudden enough to steal the air from his lungs.
He has absolutely no context for what just happened.
“…Kal?”
Bruce’s voice sounds strangely distant, because Kal has become catastrophically aware of proximity.
Of Bruce’s legs spread apart.
Of the heat trapped beneath black briefs.
Of Bruce himself.
Something twists low in Kal’s stomach and instinct overrides thought before he can stop it. He leans in closer toward the heat source.
There’s a scent there, too.
Sweat. Blood. Gun smoke from Gotham streets still clinging to Bruce’s body beneath antiseptic. Something warm. Some… biological concoction that Bruce Wayne is producing at close range.
Kal’s logic flies out the window.
His face dips lower before he fully realizes he’s moving, pulled forward by a feeling he does not understand. Close enough that his breath ghosts across Bruce’s inner thigh.
Then his nose brushes damp skin.
Bruce goes absolutely rigid.
“Wh-what do you think you’re…?”
The Kryptonian freezes.
Why did he just do that?
A less compromised man might have pulled away immediately. Kal, unfortunately, is functioning on one brain cell and a deeply inconvenient amount of superhuman sensory overload.
He hesitates, pulling back barely an inch.
His plump lips remain parted and his pupils are blown so wide the blue has nearly vanished.
“Sorry,” he says, swallowing. “You just…”
Frustration colors his features at his own inability to explain whatever is happening to him. Kal looks almost dazed by it, as he tries to make sense of the urge pulling at him.
“You smell good… here.” He gestures between Bruce’s legs.
Bruce stops breathing for a second.
Before he can respond, Kal lowers his head again.
Slowly this time.
Like he’s sinking.
His face presses into the briefs stretched taut across Bruce’s hips, nuzzling closer with absent-minded need. The fabric shifts beneath the drag of his nose.
One inhale.
Another.
Longer this time.
His eyes slip shut.
Each breath seems to drag Kal deeper into whatever trance has taken hold of him.
The room starts feeling hot.
“Haaah…”
The sound slips out before he can stop it, his breath pouring against Bruce through the fabric in a wave of startling heat. Not metaphorically hot, either. Actually hot.
Bruce’s stomach clenches hard.
Because there is suddenly a very real possibility Superman might accidentally set his dick on fire.
“Kal, w-wait…” he manages, voice strained.
But Kal barely processes the words, because every sense he has is locked onto Bruce completely.
His fingers tighten against Bruce’s legs.
Then big, strong, steady hands close around his shoulders, grounding him before he can sink any deeper.
“Kal.” Bruce’s voice is rough around his name. “If you keep doing that, I’m not going to be able to—”
Kal looks up immediately.
Like waking from a dream.
His eyes are blue and bright, his expression completely open and honestly confused now that the fog has cleared for half a second. He looks devastatingly innocent for someone currently kneeling between Bruce Wayne’s legs breathing hot air through his underwear.
“Not be able to… what?”
Bruce grits his teeth.
Because… Christ…
Because Kal sounds genuinely concerned.
Meanwhile, Bruce is hanging onto self-control by a thread.
“… control myself,” he finishes, tone absolutely wrecked. “You need to stop doing that, or we need to decide whether this is actually happening.”
Kal tilts his head at him, like a fucking puppy.
“If what is happening?”
The sincerity in the question hits Bruce like a ton of bricks. He drags one hand down his face, trying to scrape together enough composure to survive the fact that an absurdly beautiful alien is kneeling between his legs getting high off his musk.
“You’re killing me.”
The haze snaps out of Kal’s expression. Worry replaces it at once, sweet and genuine.
“I would never harm you.”
“I know.” Bruce almost laughs, but it comes out rough. “Not literally.”
Kal blinks. Then, proving he has learned absolutely nothing, he inches closer again. His palms are still spread over Bruce’s thighs and when his thumbs push into muscle, Bruce’s brain promptly throws itself off a roof.
He tries to remember how thinking works.
Thinking has always been useful.
Thinking has gotten him out of explosions, kidnappings, and several would-have-been conversations.
And yet, thinking is not helping him now.
Not with Kal looking at him like that.
“Kal,” Bruce sighs, barely holding himself together. “What exactly do you know about sex?”