nightlife | maybe in a million miles, on the highway through the skies

You're not that person who loses control, Clark says, and it touches Bruce that he thinks so. Makes him worry a little, too. Because he is that person. He keeps himself under such extreme control because he knows the consequences of losing it; he knows what he's capable of, and he knows he isn't infallible.

Joker is a choice. One that carries the significant risk of making Bruce feel like that's an acceptable choice to make.

Over his son. Over a dream. Revenge? A preventative measure? What's next down the line, for someone else? Does a creature like that deserve this kind of moral questioning? Is he a person anymore? What right does Bruce have to decide?

He's never been able to answer those questions for himself. Not well enough to do anything with.

Bruce raises their linked hands, kisses Clark's knuckles. Fuck, this is all stupid. He looks away, carrying a look of tension around his eyes. Clark shouldn't have this kind of faith in him.

"Agonizing over it, and it's just bullshit dreams."

Clark's fingers fan a little after they're kissed, but settle into a comfortable hold around Bruce's hand. There's the sound of flapping, and Woodstock flutters across the room to land on the outside of his cage, performing some easy acrobatics to get at the cuttlefish bone wedged between bars. These antics earn a glance out of Clark, mostly to make sure nothing terrible is happening to his parrot.

Back to this, though, and Clark finally lets a smile crack across his face, subtle and crooked, as he says, "Or you just don't want to admit you have superpowers."

He leans in, his aim to kiss Bruce on the head, and then go about putting some dishes away. Hosting sensibility being to break up a little of the tension that's begun to form crystals in the air.

Bird Kent, the ultimate mood stabilizer.

Dishes and leftovers in glass containers (far more sustainable), Bruce does not ask about wine, but makes coffee, and later, they're pretending to be people who need sleep, or sleep at normal hours. In the moonlight streaming into the bedroom from tall windows, Bruce's hair looks much more grey than it does normally. Peering down at Clark from his perch sprawled partially on top of him, arms crossed over the younger man's bare chest.

Sleeping is out, it'd never work. But it's nice to pretend, and to have the intimacy of being together in whatever state; talking quietly about nothing, wondering if the rain will let up. The bedsheets smell like the kind of detergent Lois likes. Bruce always feels like an intruder here, even on rare occasions when it's the three of them. He hopes he always will. He never wants to lose the seriousness with which he respects their marriage, and the priority of that bond.

(What would it have been like, if he and Selina worked out?)

Silent observation. He wonders how clearly Clark can see him in the dark.

"Why do you want me to have superpowers?"

The grey is good. Not because Clark has a thing for ~older men~ (probably?) or anything, it's just nice to look at, and nice to do this, which is: carding his fingers through it, lazily and gently, meditative. He thinks this is probably annoying sometimes, for Bruce, but probably not as many times as it's fine, or desired, just for the intimacy of it. It's a nice kind of no thoughts head empty activity, while they fail to sleep.

The question pulls focus, though. Clark can see him fine. His hand stills, trying to bend his brain around the shape of that question.

"If you have superpowers," he says, slowly, like untangling a logic riddle, "then what I want is for you to be okay about having them."

That's not the answer to the question so much as twisting the question around.

"I just don't think it's so crazy."

The penthouse has become the place for this, despite Bruce having once pitched the mobile versatility of the device. But the variables here are smaller. There is no absent other resident to work around, no sprawling laboratory to distract. Windows that can be shuttered. An en suite whose doors can be left open to absorb the same radiation that emanates from the lamp set up on the bedside table. Washing everything in simulated firelight; dark curtains turned bloody, white sheets tinted a pleasant grapefruit. Skin warmed.

Human eyes won't really adjust, but human brains will. Automatically white balancing, and growing used to the difference.

"What's your favorite color?"

On the bed, Bruce sits up beside him. Making out for the duration of the light taking hold is a different dynamic than pushing him until it seems to stabilize. Sweeter. Bruce his been distracting him for a while, running his hands over Clark's chest, letting the bite of his nails increase steadily. Unlike the bulk of their encounters, they've actually talked about the set-up of this one. A bit. Still miles away from what would pass muster for a safe sane and consensual checklist, but everyone's got their kinks.

As Clark answers - whatever it may be - he clips a clothespin onto one nipple (where the fuck did he get that), and observes the reaction.

There are a lot of benefits to the relocation. Of them all, what Clark likes is, perversely, having a place for this at all. Neutral territory. (One day, they'll do some training.)

He also likes: making out, particularly in the lead up to now. Sitting around and waiting is its own kind of tension build, and he's not sure he needs anymore of that right now. Would prefer to be distracted by warm kisses and the odd rake of blunt nails over his skin, than to be distracted by his brain paranoidly circling around each little change as his strength diminished, as his senses dulled. The potential for nervous energy build is expended in languid kisses, his hands feeling along all the familiar territory of Bruce's chest, shoulders, receiving attention in turn.

Slowly, that's how he knows, how they both know, when these touches leave subtle little marks on his skin, quick to fade, hard to discern in the red wash of light, but there if you're looking for it. Feeling for it, in Clark's case.

Anyway. Favourite colour. Clark has a ready answer, where the only pause is just clocking that he was asked it at all before he says, "Blue," because obviously, and then there's that pinch of sensation, and the reaction is a hitch in breathing, a tension that ripples up along his spine as he glances down. Where the fuck did he get that, both just now and in general. Billionaires don't hang up clothes.

"Ow," he reports, like they're still taking notes, trace humour. "Yours is black."

He might end up with a thing for older men from here on out. Only the future can say.

Clark's hand stills, and Bruce leans his head into it. Watching him and thinking about that answer, turning it - and this entire issue - over in his mind. With less tension than earlier. Sometimes he just needs some distance, and the room to be less ticked off. Difficult, when the thing in contention is so disorienting. But it helps to have Clark; something reliable in the mess of his head. The younger man deserves better than to be his crutch, in this or any scenario, but Bruce is (mostly) evolved enough to grasp that these are the kinds of things committed partners do for each other. Only a little residual internal squirming.

"The possibility of it isn't something I can deny," he murmurs. "Especially not given the way we're all pulled together like magnets. But if it's real, I can't control it. If it's a power, then it's just over me."

And it is no fun coming to terms with that. Something he thinks Clark understands, at least in part.

Bruce has thought about ways to ease him into it: in his mind's eye he has contemplated the merits of restraining Clark on his knees, arms over his head, attached to the well-camouflaged beam. Slowly letting the position become more difficult, putting more weight on his arms, more demand on his knees, and abdominals.

Maybe someday. That's a lot. Depends on how he likes this, probably; a bit different than the intensity of getting socked in the face.

Bruce lets the ghost of a fond smile find him, and then he ducks his head down, sucking a kiss near where that pin meets flesh. Jostles it, incidentally. The initial bite of pain will fade, but then the pressure will build. It'll hurt more and more. The little thing can only do so much, but the point it's affixed to is small, and sensitive.

"Mine's blue," he corrects, rough voice sounding warm as he places kisses over a pectoral. Clark's hands are free, unlike their previous encounter with the non-fuzzy cuffs, but that may be a For Now situation. Sleight of hand must have been involved during that make-out session, because there are a number of things on the bed beside them, now. "Black is just the better ally." He closes his teeth around the opposite nipple.

That hand resumes its little idle movements, littler now that they're speaking.

"Maybe right now," Clark says, voice low in the intimate space they're sharing. "But maybe not forever."

A pause, thinking it over, before speaking again. "Besides the fact I came down in a flying saucer, there wasn't much to me for a while. Then one day, it was like the whole world kind of cracked open. I was sitting in class, and then it all just rushed in. Pencils on paper, heart beats, clothing rustling, a fly on the wall in another room. And I'd look around, and the walls would disappear, and my classmates, the other kids were gone, and the teacher was gone, and they were replaced by monsters made of muscle and bone. Skulls, all with the same grin.

"Mom had to come get me. There wasn't anywhere I could go to get away from it. Walls, doors, closing my eyes." His tone is even and easy as he speaks, one of those things you'd made peace with a long time ago. Still letting a silvery lock of hair slide between thumb and forefinger. "She helped me. And at the time, I thought, of course she knew what to do, how to get me to focus on just one thing, how to breathe, how to make it stop. Looking back, I can't even imagine being her, trying to deal with that."

He'd started looking at the ceiling at some stage, but looks back at Bruce then. "Say it's a superpower. Therefore, it needs practice. And trust. Hard to do when you're asleep, but maybe there are ways you can practice dreaming when it's not happening." Some humour creases in the lines at his eyes and says, "I'm not saying guided meditation's the answer, but—"

It's not not the answer.

Clark relaxes back from that initial tensing up, head back, watching the top of Bruce's head down the length of his nose. His hands come up to ride the other man's shoulders, his back, fingers creeping up the back of his neck and toying with the finer hairs that grow there.

Hums a sound at both this correction—hey, add it to the list of things they have in common—as well as in response to the twinned sensation of that little point of pain and the gentler kisses happening around it. He can trick himself into thinking he will get used to it, at least until Bruce moves over, applies some teeth.

Distracted, and so not paying a lot of attention to his surroundings, even though he really should. (Tactical foreplay.)

"If you're asking 'cause you wanna surprise me with a car," he says, sighed out from the last hitched breath, shifting to gaze up at the ceiling, concentrating on keep still, "you should know by now I can't be bought."

He knew, in some dully scientific way, that there had to have been a point when Clark realized what he was capable of, and that the transition could not have been easy. But to hear him explain it in such ordinary terms, small and overwhelming at once, a confused and terrified kid - something Bruce has such distinct empathy for, on top of everything else - humbles him.

"I bet she couldn't imagine being you, dealing with all that."

Martha Kent is an incredible woman. And she raised an incredible son. Bruce hopes he doesn't look as dopey as he feels, emotion uncharacteristically obvious on his face. But he doesn't dare look away. Not everything is about your dumb ass, Wayne.

Lighter, "You just want to be able to teach me something."

Even though Bruce is the only one, between the two of them, who has done enough meditation to control their own heartbeat. He understands what Clark means, though. Working at something in a way that isn't like learning how to punch properly. This is another realm.

"Do you even have a license?"

Bike riding nerd. Teeth worry more, exert more pressure. When Bruce raises his head and smooths his hand over it, he tugs teasingly at chest hair. Strange, to think about all the tiny things Clark has never experienced discomfort over. Stubbed toes. Hangnails. Catching a finger in a door.

He leaves the pin where it's at, sticking up from his chest attacked to one nipple, and slides both hands down, shifting as he goes, palming over his stomach and the tops of his thighs. Rakes his nails, harder than he'd started with the last time they did this. Clark wants to know how far he can go without tapping out, to understand, but Bruce wants him to enjoy the experience. Even if it only hurts and ends up less pain-and-pleasure, there can be psychological release and intimacy in it.

Bruce lays one broad palm along the inside crest of his hip, forefinger and thumb spread around the base of his cock without touching it. He strokes the soft skin of his inner thigh with the other, keeping part of his attention on Clark's breathing. Finds a patch of delicate skin between groin and knee, clips a clothespin on.

The last time they did this, he'd been quick to start squirming, each minor twinge and discomfort too new to ignore or stoically absorb. This time, Clark's going in with the intention not to be so easy, simply breathing around the little sharp nervy pulses of feeling where teeth are dull-sharp against sensitive skin, where fingers tug at hair, or nails rake skin.

At that question, Clark says, defensively, "Yes," and then, "well," and then, "I did." Shut up, says a minor tug at the hair at the nape of Bruce's neck, before the other man moves out of easy range.

He's already somewhat hard from all the intimacy that led up to this point, but not desperately so, just a calm rerouting of blood flow, an ever present ache that is not as at the forefront of his mind at that passively constant bite of the clip at his nipple. Clark rests a hand on his ribcage, as if to be conscious of his own ability to relieve that pain without giving into the temptation to do so.

The next one gets a soft grunt of discomfort, and also a twitch at his cock. It feels like the kind of minor pain that's meant to be dismissed, like a biting insect brushed away, but instead remains. But, Clark is still. Breathing normal. That both things are deliberate is probably hard to miss, when you're the world's greatest detective.

Clark does not think Bruce looks dopey, even if he can see the sentiment cross by through his expression. And it warms him. He wouldn't have expected anything else, of course, intellectually and instinctively, but maybe there's still some small part of him that can never be sure until it happens, the ease and acceptance and understanding.

And it's the point of sharing, anyway. He doesn't want Bruce to feel alone in it either.

He laughs, quiet and breathy, and then reaches to go and hook his arms up under Bruce's, and draw him up those few inches until their faces are level. "Yeah," he says. "You caught me."

They are, after all, in Metropolis for once.

"Fully electric, ethically sourced products, not even from Tesla," he says, in his seductive voice. Maybe he is going to buy you, with a blue car. One that totally exists.

Clothespins are deceptive. They don't seem like they're going to be a problem, but the pressure doesn't let up, the metal springs don't budge, the wood has no give. (Still, less brutal than the plastic ones. Bruce isn't a monster.) He strokes over Clark's inner thigh and clips on another, then another, creating a nice curved line of spines, which would look more ridiculous if there was time to think about it outside the way sensation is no doubt beginning to radiate and compound.

Bruce rubs one knee, the little dip in cartilage, as he leans in to place kisses at the base of Clark's cock, and the flat of his belly above it. Pins still there. When he sits up, it's to facilitate him shifting his knees wider; as he moves, his skin will stretch, and the pins will hold everything in place.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, leaning over him again. He flicks the clothespin on his nipple.

Bruce shifts up (not that he could stop himself from being moved, but he's happy to go), and gives Clark a soft kiss. Not one meant to encourage them in any particular direction; companionable, grateful, sweet.

"I'm a detective."

Catching people is what he does.

One palm is flat over Clark's chest, maybe not-so-incidentally feeling his heartbeat. Over that spot where the spear Bruce had forged shot through him, leaving a gaping, black hole. It's a worse memory than the slice over his cheek, and a worse fear experiencing death at his hands.

"You know how much medication I'm on," is not quite a question. Bruce has given up hiding pill bottles, and even taken some in front of Clark. Unavoidable, with daily prescriptions lashing down severe depression. Relevant factors to consider, concerning bad dreams. And a fragile subject he has no confidence in.

Maybe he could be bought with a not!Tesla. The rare couple of times he's driven some of Bruce's ridiculous sportscars probably show his hand a little. No confirmation either way, just an exhale like a laugh, a sharp edge of a smile. When you say it like that—

And then Clark just breathes out as carefully, but efficiently, more pins are added, more little points of pinching pressure that all seem to get worse faster, all in close proximity like that, but he only makes a sound when his leg is pushed out, a twitch of muscle up from the back of his knee, through his thigh.

Clark's hands gravitate back to Bruce once he's suddenly there, palms smoothing up against his chest. Some remark is swallowed at that flick, drawing his mind back up from the line of building pain down his thigh. Okay.

"Good," he says, quietly, taking these little check ins for what they are. As he says so, he lift his leg and lets that row of clips bump against Bruce, only gently, quick to rest his thigh back down. No visible flinch, otherwise. "Had a line, forgot it. You would've laughed, I bet."

An easy smile fades, but doesn't vanish entirely. Just sobers, some. Clark's hands slide down Bruce's ribs, curl around to rest on his back.

Clark nods. Yes, he knows, and has had at least an idea of that even before Bruce gave up trying to conceal it.

He doesn't say anything immediately, just tips his head as he studies Bruce's face, trying to read what he's going to say next ahead of it.

"You always do get me with those." Does he. Bruce kisses him, then, deep and sensual and heated up a degree past where they were before he started turning Clark into laundry. Lets that go for a while, lets clothespins sway and shift with every breath, pulling on him, making that ache go deeper; lets his cock in its half-hard state brush against Clark's.

When he next moves with intent, it's to capture one of Clark's wrists. With steady ease, he gets a wide leather cuff around him, buckling it and testing for slippage, not wanting to pinch him too much. (That's what the clothespins are for.) The thing about it is: no chain. Just a cuff, with the buckle and a d-ring, on its own. If Clark finally decides to perceive the things spilled out on the bed next to him, he'll see yet more clothespins, another cuff, and a fairly inexplicable length of black fabric neatly tailored into fat strips, like bandages.

Then, the next cuff. Bruce raises his knee to push against Clark's thigh and the line of pins there.

"It could all be manifestations of mental illness."

And he is already mentally ill. Sometimes these things progress; comorbidity, exacerbation, and so on. He doesn't exactly go easy on himself when it comes to maintenance. The long, excruciating episode that culminated in attempting to murder Superman is definitely something that could be clinically identified as a psychotic break. The fact that he was able to shake himself free of its clutches and perform is a testament to his ability to work under extreme conditions, not a magic cure from future episodes.

"I mean, I... could be having them, but the way I'm perceiving them is wrong. Processed through a broken lens."

The kisses does something to loosen him up, for the stillness he'd been working on to come a little more naturally, where the meditative press of Bruce's mouth to his own seems to exist in the same space as the determined, orderly grips of clothes pins passively latched to his skin. When it's over, the mood doesn't shift immediately, Clark watching as Bruce buckles the cuff into place.

Then the next one, and he does glance now to see where it came from. The Yet More Clothespins, he has mixed feelings about—not exactly bad, but a slight spark of anticipatory nervousness—and the strips of fabric.

When Bruce nudges the row of pins, it's unexpected, and Clark twitches his leg wider and away with a hiss between his teeth. Quick as it is, it's obviously more startle than pain, and more exaggerated as a result. Up until this point, he'd been doing a pretty good job at pretending he's not wholly unused to it. No accidental cuts from paper edges, no bloody knees, no bug bites or bruises.

Tries not to laugh. Be cool, Kent, at all.

"It was something about," he says, "being hung out to dry."

Clark's mouth presses into a line of protest, at first, but this gentles at the rest, eyes hooded as he thinks that through, absorbs it. It's not you, he'd said, has said before, when it comes to that spiral that Luthor had sent him down, and even in the context of trauma, of fragility, of treatment and its fallibility, the sentiment stands. If either of them were wholly defined by their worst moments, no matter the cause of those moments, and if those moments wholly defined their futures, they wouldn't be here.

"Maybe," he says. Not doubtfully, really. For prophetic dreams, they sound like they get under Bruce's skin more profoundly than they need to. Clark's hand gently sweeps down Bruce's spine. "I guess the question is, if it distorts the delivery, does it corrupt the message?"

"I'd have to clean you up, for that." Bruce licks a warm stripe from his jaw to his ear, sets teeth into the delicate lobe. As always finding it easy to be doing two things at once, and keeping his balance the whole time.

He doesn't clip the cuffs together. He leaves Clark's hands 'free', and then moves one of his own down to snatch the clothespin off his nipple. The shock of blood rushing back into it, the scrape of the removal, and then, suddenly, Bruce's fingers clamped over it—

That'll hurt. It comes at the same time as him shifting his hips down, rubbing them together, stroking against his cock. The other pins in Clark's thigh make gentle clackclack sounds as they brush up against each other, twisting his skin, pulling it taught and increasing the sensation of near-burning pressure.

Bruce hopes that he's conveying a practical concern, and not a self-hating fear. If they want to figure it out, they can't ignore core components. And one is, simply, that Bruce has a condition that can warp how he views things. He takes his medication, he is very analytical, and severe episodes are not common. He's used to living with it, just like millions of other people. But millions of other people are probably not having maybe-prophetic dreams.

"That's what I have to decide."

:/

There are definitely spots on his body that whenever Bruce puts his mouth there, they tend to have Clark want to melt into the bed, or wherever they are. High up his neck is one of them, lifting his chin up and aside as teeth set against his earlobe—that, too—and it's enough to distract him, until focus is jerked right back—

And the sound he makes is short and sharp, followed by a more familiar sounding groan as Bruce's fingers pinch back down over sensitised flesh. "God," through gritted teeth—don't say it—as the pins in a row on his thigh all click together and pull and tug, as friction does the same against his cock, slow drags of skin on skin.

Clumsily, he jerks his hips up against Bruce's, one hand clutching to a shoulder and the other having landed further down on his hip, like he might push him away despite everything else he's doing, the way Clark pushes his face against Bruce's face.

maybe in a million miles, on the highway through the skies

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