The hands around Bruce's are now looser in their hold, but engaged. Soft and intermittent fingerstrokes, gentle presses of his thumbs against sensitive points. Almost negligent while Clark nods, thinks, making the slow and slightly reluctant shift from reassuring to something more analytical. Trying to balance between both, at least.
And beneath this conversation, he's still reeling a little, circling that word, love, turning it over and over like spun sugar. And he thinks he gets it, about what is and isn't his business. Maybe. There are times when Clark has said something or done something cognizant to the fact that a normal person would probably think it's too much, too far, too quick, too soon, where mild manners aren't enough to quite throw a blanket over it. There are still, somehow, things he hasn't told Bruce for fear that there is some kind of upper limit.
Here's something crazy: sometimes he thinks he, Clark Kent, is made for someone like Bruce Wayne, and the other way around. No, not someone like. Just him, singular. From the atoms up.
Which isn't to take away from what he has with Lois, what Bruce has with Lois, with Diana, with anyone else he might open himself up to. It's just something else, a force, a magnetism, where love feels like it has its own measurable energy. Transmutable too, taking on various qualities, of violence, of awe, of hunger and desire. And all of that, a lot of the time, feels more like Clark's problem rather than something he needs to unpack, out loud, with Bruce.
(He has tried a little, with Lois, just to make sure she understood and would be accepting that something he had ran deeper than just sex. She hadn't laughed at him, just—well, smirked. That was very kind. But she was right: he has it pretty bad.)
Anyway. It's good they're not just talking about their feelings.
"I'll stay tonight," he says, and it is suggestion, in spite of the absence of a question mark lifting his tone.
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And beneath this conversation, he's still reeling a little, circling that word, love, turning it over and over like spun sugar. And he thinks he gets it, about what is and isn't his business. Maybe. There are times when Clark has said something or done something cognizant to the fact that a normal person would probably think it's too much, too far, too quick, too soon, where mild manners aren't enough to quite throw a blanket over it. There are still, somehow, things he hasn't told Bruce for fear that there is some kind of upper limit.
Here's something crazy: sometimes he thinks he, Clark Kent, is made for someone like Bruce Wayne, and the other way around. No, not someone like. Just him, singular. From the atoms up.
Which isn't to take away from what he has with Lois, what Bruce has with Lois, with Diana, with anyone else he might open himself up to. It's just something else, a force, a magnetism, where love feels like it has its own measurable energy. Transmutable too, taking on various qualities, of violence, of awe, of hunger and desire. And all of that, a lot of the time, feels more like Clark's problem rather than something he needs to unpack, out loud, with Bruce.
(He has tried a little, with Lois, just to make sure she understood and would be accepting that something he had ran deeper than just sex. She hadn't laughed at him, just—well, smirked. That was very kind. But she was right: he has it pretty bad.)
Anyway. It's good they're not just talking about their feelings.
"I'll stay tonight," he says, and it is suggestion, in spite of the absence of a question mark lifting his tone.