Clark holds his gaze, but it does take more effort than it normally does. Easy to swivel and talk to the ground or the ceiling or even unfocus and let the entire world and Bruce within it fall away into a confusing overlap of translucent layers and shifting shadows, but he doesn't do those things.

"The first time I swung at you," he says. "After the kryptonite. Which was awful, by the way," he feels moved to say, with a crook of an eyebrow. Let's be clear on that one, about what he is or is not into. Green smoke, nauseating and choking, infecting him with a painful kind of necrotic weakness, his heart fluttering and flinching in his chest. He would care to avoid that sensation again if at all possible.

Brow smooths, and he says. "But. After.

"I was coming up against something that didn't yield to me. Someone. And there were these moments where you could do whatever you wanted." Now he ducks a look away, even if every other sense is keyed into the man sitting a few feet away. "And so could I, without destroying you. That's never happened."

There were the Kryptonians, of course—he hasn't forgotten. But they were trying to kill him and everyone around him and little else, and he barely remembers the lightning speed strikes in the sheer sensory overload that was his first attempt at superheroism. Even in the murkier, hazier moments with Bruce, distinct moments still have a way of simmering up through his subconscious.

"And like you said. I felt more than I'd ever had, before. Literally."