The permission (which is how Clark is taking it) is a minor surprise, but taken in good faith. His expression skews thoughtful, a silent maybe I will to the tip of his head, eye contact unbreaking.
Until he is kissed, anyway, eyes closing on auto. Occurs to him only then that their kisses have thus far tonight been a little sideways, never matching up, and he can feel himself warm to it now, as though the delay had been by design. He returns the subtle intention of it, and the subtlety itself.
Kind of.
"Well, I like this guy plenty," Clark says. The bed creaks as he shifts his body around, to face Bruce a little better, knee bumping knee. The start of crowding in on him. "Not sure how you'd take me dialling it up a notch."
It'll happen sooner or later. Might as well acknowledge it, so that Bruce can't rightfully act so offended over the invasion when it does. (Keyword: rightfully. He'll still probably flip out. But Clark will have some edge of leverage in the argument, set up that way on purpose, like speedbumps for his future self.)
They have time. Neither of them are dead. Subtle is alright.
So's this. Clark kissing him back, moving to face him, get up into his space. Bruce reclines against the headboard and lays one hand at Clark's side, just resting there, moving with him as he moves. His dark eyes on the other man's light ones, an unnamable emotion tucked into the corner of his lopsided almost-smile. (A good one.)
"Mm. Yeah. You know me, always gun-shy about doing too much."
Not a dramatic or intense bone in this guy's body. Bruce Wayne, the picture of lowkey. His hand moves, fingers against the waistband of Clark's sweatpants. He tilts his head back to look at him, a hint of daring.
Hands and knees, the mattress sinking beneath the density of them both converging around the same spot. Clark reaching past him to find a grip on the headboard, and the next time he kisses Bruce, Bruce can hear the creak of wood under stress from just the slight flex of Clark's hand.
Daring is met with more guileless interest reflected back at him, a lazy heat in clear eyes. He's never all the time exactly certain how this will go, what they might do together and to one another, even though the conclusion is generally a safe bet. Sometimes it's a trick, that the simple and easy moments feel so familiar, that he forgets they're still finding things out.
His other hand lands on Bruce's chest, gentle, feeling the thrum of his heart before he draws that hand downwards, fingertips seeking out sensitive points as he kisses Bruce's mouth again.
If asked, Bruce would say that when it's easy, it's because that a longing for something this-shaped existed before that shape was filled with a person. The acceptance of moodiness, the creak of a headboard underneath a light touch, a particular kind of ugly honesty that's taken as comfortable. Is comfortable. Have you ever wanted to be as fucked up as you actually are, and know that the other person in bed with you is, too. It's great - better - when that other person is good, and making you good. They're surely doing something positive for each other, here, too, but there is a difference between the kind of honesty that compels the purchase of a wedding ring and the kind that forgives murder attempts.
If asked, Bruce wouldn't actually say anything. But that's what he'd think.
"What are we moderating?" is murmured into Clark's mouth, a rasp of gravel that's as much his voice as it is his perpetual state of five-o-clock. He wonders sometimes what it feels like against skin that can't be irritated by it. His heart is steady, elevated now from interest, and not fumbling with his own weak spots. He closes a hand over the back of Clark's head and kisses him, like everything barely-there all evening was just lying in wait for this. The hand at his middle pushes at elastic, encouraging his pants down and off of him, devoid of any instinct for coyness.
A break in kissing without backing up, just to help—knees shifting to work fabric off completely, reaching backwards to unhook crumpled sweatpants off his own ankles, flipped aside. Another swell of a kiss, of kissing, a little hungrier than before, as if forgetting he was asked a question. Or intent on making Bruce forget he asked a question.
(Probably, Clark would not call them fucked up. But he'd probably get around to that same premise. Maybe with a twee puzzle piece metaphor.)
"Nothing," he mumbles against Bruce's mouth anyway, voice pitched breathier, kiss broken further with his smile, "I was being sarcastic." He's allowed.
At some point, his fingers have slipped into Bruce's waistband. Every part of him is always a few degrees warmer than most might consider comfortable, usually, and that extends right down to the knuckles now press against that divot between hip and pelvis.
Kissing graduates down to his throat.
Edited (whole sentences just for you) 2021-01-01 11:41 (UTC)
"Were you." Bruce likes it. Clark's sarcasm. How it's understated like weaponized midwestern passive-aggression. Kitten-teeth bitey. He wants to hear him complain about getting stuck in traffic. He wants him to keep kissing him.
Bruce shifts up enough as he's able - no point pushing too hard against Clark - so that he can touch him, hand over his back, sides, around to the front of his thighs and slipping one between, though he doesn't reach for his cock. Contact his only made incidentally, instead rubbing over his hipbone and down, pressing against the line that follows his femoral artery, palming the inside of his thigh.
Clark is overheated and Bruce is always too fucking cold; east coast genetics and nerve damage, a black hole on the other side of solar power. He makes a low noise at that touch, the mouth against his throat. The hand at the back of Clark's head splays out and tangles fingers in his hair, pulling slow and close to the root, not particularly out of any concern that he'd be hurt if he yanked on it, but because it feels good to do that, in his opinion.
The hair grip gets an appreciative hum. The hand pressed inside his thigh can feel the subtle twitch and flex of muscle as Clark moves a little to encourage it. The amount that Bruce declares he likes him gets a laugh breathed against his shoulder.
"Sounds like there's room for improvement."
—not a complaint, apparently. An impetus. It's what dumb banter is for.
Clark turns his wrist so that when his hand slips into Bruce's pants, it's to circle his fingers around his cock. He flexes his wrist so that waistband slips further down, give them both some room. The first time they'd done this, Bruce could probably have clocked that he's not Clark's first male partner, but that there haven't been a lot of them. Probably not a lot of people in general.
However, shyness on its own hadn't been too much of an issue. But don't worry, there were plenty of hangups to work through at the time.
There are enough hangups between them that one might wonder if they're mutually part of the appeal. Bruce has had a lot of sex, with a lot of people - fewer of them men, than women, and with men he's been nearly exclusively in charge. It's been a wonder, learning that there are still new things to experience. To discover about himself, and share, to look up at Clark dazzled or dumbfounded with a total absence of cynicism in a way he didn't believe himself capable of.
The only room for improvement, perhaps, is becoming even more comfortable with each other as time goes on. As it stands, there's no hesitation as he shifts up into Clark's touch, at a bit of a funny angle for it against the headboard with the other kneeling over him, but that hardly matters. He's not hard yet but on his way, always easy to convince. You'd think he'd want less physicality with how much time he puts into violence, but no; it's the language he speaks most fluently, the thing he can't seem to get enough of, one way or another. (Maddening for someone so unsocial and private.)
"Feel like anything in particular?" is very quiet. Bruce in general can be very quiet, and there is something he likes very much in knowing that Clark can hear him no matter what. He drags blunt fingernails over his scalp and teases his dick with the backs of his knuckles, a slow slide of skin that's parts soft and scarred even there, hands broken too many times and ways to count.
There are things left to figure out, which is its own kind of nice. One of them, at least for Clark, is figuring out the balance. It's not missed on him, Bruce's level of care, for little things and for big things. It's different to what he might anticipate from Lois, where she makes him feel like a safe port in a storm, how right and good that feels. Whether it's Bruce's audacity to resurrect him or Lois admitting how far she'd fallen, how ready she was to be caught, through to—
Well. This stuff, maybe. Clark glances at Bruce for that question, hand gentle around him, coaxing him. Gentle, considering the friction of dry skin.
"Not in particular," he says, thinking about it. There'd been a hint of motion like he could get something more satisfying out of the brush of Bruce's knuckles against his cock, on its way to hard since Bruce had touched the waistband of his pants. Now, instead, he scoots backwards, giving Bruce space to find something more comfortable, and himself more room. "But I think I wanna take care of you to start with," with a gentle emphasis on the 'you'.
Mostly he means this: curls his fingers firmer around Bruce's cock, and lower his head down to take it only shallowly into his mouth, once he gets any sense of acquiescence.
As slow as it is - easy, almost sedated, the late hour and post-dinner idleness - there is still something electric, for Bruce, in the way they brush together, and shift into a comfortable position. For a second, just a heartbeat, he can feel a moment like finding the seam in a clay cup with his fingertips, where he could push it into something faster, harder, dare him to crank it up by several degrees. And either it would happen, or it would become a presence to be held onto.
He doesn't. (Not yet?) (They have time. Tonight, tomorrow, all week.)
Clark is mostly out of literal reach now, so Bruce occupies his hands with his hair, his shoulder. Thumb over his ear in an echo of the shower, but this time it's a sensual touch instead of a teasing one. He lets out a breath, a near-inaudible sigh, and relaxes to let the other man do whatever he'd like. And there is nothing about this he doesn't acquiesce to. Knock yourself out, Kansas.
"That's what your eyes look like sometimes," he says after a while, composure as stone as ever, even as his breath ticks up and his cock fills, everything flushes warm. "The ocean, looking at it from the shore. Way out at one of the poles, where everything is still blue and white. But you're never cold."
Nice to do this. Nice to settle down flatter on the bed, and easily pick up that near-inaudible sigh and the uptick in breathing, and feel Bruce's fingers follow or disrupt the natural wave in his hair. Nice to focus on this one thing, of stroking his hand up and down Bruce's cock as it warms and hardens against his palm, the going made easier when Clark lowers his head to lick along.
All lazily paced, non-frantic, and when he takes Bruce into his mouth, he doesn't push himself to do so deeply.
No pause as Bruce speaks save to look up at him. There's warmth there, as noted. Bruce would be forgiven for thinking that Clark is easy for flattery, as probably would Lois, when really it's mainly the source that matters. Eventually, he lifts his head a little, still stroking Bruce, more pressure in then upwards motion of it.
"Cold's not so bad," he says, quieter in the way he gets in bed. But then says, "When?"
Flattery implies insincerity. One's own interests being served, sure, with the way Clark strokes him, takes him into his mouth like they've got all those days to just do this one thing, but he's never going to tell Clark his eyes are pretty to get a blowjob out of him. Speaking like this, finding the right note and capturing the lack of self-restriction to let it go, is as perilously sincere as the unhinged mission to bring about resurrection.
Bruce is too fucking weird.
"Mmm." A low rumbled exhale, raking through his hair slow and firm, now. "When you're surprised. I don't mean... shocked." It'd be easy to push for faster. The ache is there, temptation a fine line; but he likes waiting there, too, letting everything get wound up. Increasingly like the satisfying, maddening burn of shoving fingers against a sore muscle. "When someone makes you laugh and you didn't expect it."
He nearly follows that with, Sometimes you look amazed by the smallest gestures, but doesn't. It sounds patronizing in his head, and he's not sure how to articulate why he thinks that's beautiful. Bruce doesn't smile at people being kind to him at random. He's grown too bitter. Clark hasn't and he admires it. Wants to cup his hands around it or sink his teeth into it, he's not sure. Both.
Clark smiles, but it a subtle variant that manifests more around his eyes. Not surprised in the way Bruce is describing, but close, maybe. "That's sweet," he says, too sincere to be only making fun, if not immune to the fact it's also a call out. He likes the things Bruce's notices. Takes note of.
His arm curls around Bruce's leg, finding a grip beneath his thigh, and with a gentle tug—inasmuch as inevitable strength can be gentle—he pulls Bruce further down the bed by a few inches, as though that were easier and more convenient to do than for him to reposition his sprawl.
Stroking ceases, replaced with a hold and opened-mouth kissing, eyes half-closed, in search of those sensitive spots that elicit response, both voluntary and not. Patient. His own erection he can press into the mattress with the subtle shift of his hips and barely relieve some of the building ache, and he doesn't mind that at all.
He gives a contented hum against sensitive skin the next rake through of Bruce's fingers. What time is it again. What timezone, even. Who knows.
How sweet, and Bruce grunts at that, a lazy volley back at teasing; he tugs Clark's hair, sharp, but not with any intent to get a reaction. (How could it.) He doesn't tense against the way Clark pulls him, only finding it a little disorienting to be moved with such ease - because it's only a little movement. A different type of creature, he has not yet developed Lois' affinity for being caught mid-air.
But his pulse does tick up, and there's no hiding the way arousal flickers through him. Bruce would never let another man - any other man, not human, not alien - handle him anywhere near roughly, and he would never like it with another man. What are you doing to me, he had asked once, in the early days of sexual contact ramping up past stolen kisses, when Bruce was still entrenched with too much guilt to function with.
Less so, these days. Ever closing in on equilibrium between the two of them. Helps that it isn't one-sided, that Bruce has come to understand why, even if he still sort of thinks Clark's bananas for it.
Just, glass houses. So.
He drags in a breath. His cock twitches. "Fuck," is low and rough.
The lock he has around Bruce's thigh is almost so casual as to be negligent, and yet as unmoving as set concrete. In reality, nothing is truly negligent, Clark keenly aware of everything, including what he's doing, a thought behind each touch, each point of contact, happy to soak each little detail at his own leisure.
The baritone sigh out of Bruce stirs him, enough that Clark almost echoes it. Pulls Bruce's cock into his mouth, shallow again, and then deeper, sustained teasing and testing traded in for something firmer.
(The tug to his hair doesn't net a reaction, not an obvious one. Certainly not an ow. But if it triggers a memory, a dim and barely conscious sensation of what it had felt like when the indestructible nature of his material body had been compromised enough that he had known the prickle of pain of a hand grasping through his hair, firm enough to lift his head—)
He could not get away, unless he forced it. But only because if he forced it, Clark would probably acquiesce and allow it. To do anything with Clark, so much as stand next to him, requires a trust so absolute. Whether it's a trust that Clark will bow to his will voluntarily, or a trust that Clark's is what he really wants, Bruce isn't sure—
Clark takes him in like that and Bruce's breath hitches. His hand rakes over his head, through his hair, scraping across his scalp in a way that might be painful for someone else. Might. Maybe it would just be pleasing, on a knife's edge. Depends on the person; Bruce is not over-rough by default, but as a person he is too much, and sometimes it happens. Kryptonian or not.
He doesn't think about the first time he grabbed the other man's hair. He couldn't feel it. He'd had that gauntlet on, the only thing keeping his bones intact as he slammed his fist into Superman's face over and over. He hadn't done it again with his bare hands until later, later, when,
Bruce remembers:
They were in his house, in his bedroom. A cloudy unremarkable night, letting little light inside the glass walls, and they had been going back and forth. Kissing each other and pulling at garments, raised voices now and again (mostly Bruce), lowered now and again (mostly Clark), neither of them able to decide what kind of tension was taking over. The urge to fuck or fight. And the way those tensions were beginning to become one indistinguishable thing.
Beginning to?
Bruce sits at the edge of his bed, shirt open, mouth kiss-bruised, breathing harshly and watching Clark. Something dangerous about it. He's not afraid - he should be, probably, but he isn't, arousal obvious between his legs, hands at his sides itching to do something besides hold still, which he's forcing himself. Instead of grabbing at him harder than he means to, even though he knows full well (does he) that he can't hurt Clark (can't he).
"Well," he says, thick and grating, but nothing else comes after that.
Clark's mouth is not kiss-bruised. In fact, his hair is barely out of place. His breathing is level.
Not his heart, though. That's beating faster. His shirt was half off his shoulders by the time they broke apart, having pushed Bruce with just enough effort to force the other man backwards and sitting, only from Clark's perspective, he was as gentle as a regular person would have to be in setting down a china teacup. There's probably gonna be a bruise there tomorrow morning, heart-sized and in the same neighbourhood.
And the itch to do more—more what—has him backing up, hands flat on his thighs as if to stop himself from that more. Doing more would be a line crossed in some direction or another. He is also uncomfortably hard in his jeans. That's another problem.
Well says Bruce. This is where they come to their senses.
"What are you doing," says Clark. Never mind. Maybe his breathing isn't completely level.
"Sitting here," he snaps. Always quick, like a predator clicking its jaws in warning whenever he's approached - even though in this bedroom, right now, he is the farthest thing from one. Managing to carry himself likewise anyway. Shirt open, bruise not yet formed (it was like that in his dream, hands on his chest over his heart), pants undone but not off, dishevelled and still radiating something like authority.
Dark eyes watch Clark closely, like he could pull him in and make him drown. Ticking from his face and lower, to how hard he is, to his hands made restful, back up to his face.
Silence expands. He isn't sure for how long.
"That night."
He does not specify which night. He doesn't have to. A force given voice in the back of his head is gripping tight enough to make something shake; Do not, it says. But ruining it is better. Isn't it.
They only need to specify when it's not that night. That time they fought; no, together, against someone else. That night in Gotham; no, not that one, the other one. Clark's expression stills when it is evoked without qualification, fingers curling defensive into his palm, waiting for—
Not that. Open surprise gentles his features, staring fixed across at Bruce. In some other context, he might have thought this were a diversion, and a cheap one, distracting from the moment they're in now.
But it's not. It seems to snare right up in the now.
He remembers—one of a few times in the course of several wild minutes, having been slammed into concrete and barely moving, laid out on his back, and feeling as much as hearing the reverberating sound of Bruce's heavy metallic footfalls approaching him. He remembers thinking about the man hidden beneath layers of scratched up metal, the dull thump of his heartbeat, steady and reliable.
So he doesn't say, don't be fucking ridiculous, when he probably should.
"So were you," he says, which is only better than a confirmation by a matter of degrees, spoken quietly but not shyly. "As soon as you landed a hit."
It should turn him cold, the way Clark knows. Because of course he does, he's not the kind of person who'd bluff it, and Bruce is pretty sure he'd be able to tell. Instead of twists heat further into his gut, thinking about Superman paying such close attention to him while they were tangled like that, furious and unhinged. Even in between bouts of being choked cell by cell with kryptonite, Clark was focused sharp enough on him - through him - to pick it up.
He had been. And it had been less of a shock than he was generally prepared to acknowledge, at the time; his obsession and the very particular setups his unconscious mind chose to craft for him were not always subtle. Even after death, when he fully believed in Clark's goodness, he dreamed of Superman holding him down. Taking revenge. It would only make sense. Be deserved.
Part of him still expects it. Not really because he thinks Clark would. But.
"Yes."
Was he getting off on beating the shit out of him specifically, or was he getting off on letting loose with the most ferocity and force he's ever engaged in. Or both. Or does one follow the other. Everything hurt in him the second it connected, and everything felt the most alive. For a while the point of what they were doing didn't exist, and he was only chasing more, without thought. Like he'd never considered thought to be a thing worthy of existing in his cracked psyche.
(The funny thing about his control is how he can say I am done having a breakdown now and it's almost like it stops.)
"So are we going to be ashamed of that, or what." Not really a question. They should be, and yet. "Because it seems... like we're both thinking about it, and not saying anything about it, the same amount."
They should. 'Shame' is not an unfamiliar emotion to Clark Kent, and yet it hasn't quite gotten its claws in over this. Guilt, yes, for losing his temper, for some old wellspring of rage to find something it can beat its head against, for how he had other more important things to do while he was busy throwing Batman through a wall, and for the way it very nearly got himself disastrously killed.
But.
That's well worn ground, paced over and over in the back of his mind. This feels like new territory.
"I don't know what to do about it," he says, opting for honest. Hackles lowering. He'd still been expecting a fight of some kind, and they still could, but Bruce's words are too measured. Inclusive. "But I guess nothing's not working for us."
So. What's left? Talking about it. Sex things aside: they've managed to avoid it altogether.
Clark reaches to tug his shirt back over his shoulder, but doesn't do it up yet. He wants to join Bruce on the bed, but—the distance still feels like a necessary thing. "Was it 'cause I was losing?" he asks, finally.
Nothing could work, probably. They could continue to ignore it and bite at each other and get frustrated and walk away, over and over. The reality that they touched that dark place during their fight is only one layer to the conflict; even without it, this thing between them would be an ill-advised tangle of problematic elements. This thing is more than a physical reaction. This thing is I wanted you and in the middle of that and despite that all at once.
Bruce lets out a breath. "No." He smiles, but it's mostly just a flinch of his mouth that shows his teeth for a moment. "No, not because you were losing. I don't know if I actually convinced myself I was going to 'win' or not, but I didn't for a minute believe I'd live."
That much was probably obvious. Has been. Bruce is not terribly concerned with his own life; he seems to think it ended when his son's did, and the years between that point and this one have been strange, to say the least. For a while he's quiet, then, watching the way that denial (truthful) lands or doesn't land, considering what else to say. Because he thinks he'll have to be the one, to spare them the slow consider death of Clark's better manners. He closes his eyes, and opens them again.
It's not pain free, all of it. Bruce believed some big things about him, back when, but it's nothing Clark is capable of holding over either of them ever since, and given the anvil of a warning he had dropped on Batman in prior evenings, maybe some of it had even been fair.
Still. He feels some late pulse of hurt on Bruce's behalf, and waits patiently.
The answer that comes, in contrast, almost makes Clark laugh—it does make him smile slightly, a twinge of it nested in the corner of his mouth.
Now he moves. He sits in the chair he remembers Bruce's inhabiting when he'd come to from his neurotoxin episode, listed more forwards, elbows to knees. "You had a place to do it in," he says. It's a little more nuanced than guessing at Bruce's own feelings. It is a tentative comparison of notes. More questioning; "An outlet."
Bruce could say he is spoiled for outlets. More nights than not, per month, he is violently terrorizing someone. Someone is always mortal, always breakable, always the losing opponent who never stood a chance. There have even been times where he did not stop himself, despite knowing it would result in death at his own hands; concussions, internal bleeding, left unattended. No conspiracy theory prison shankings or careless rockets required.
Clark sits. Bruce watches.
"And you."
Is that - he had a place, an outlet, and Clark, or is that - and what about you, Clark. Bruce doesn't clarify. (It's both. If it were just violence, if he didn't find him perversely attractive, if he hadn't spent so long feeling nothing, it would be easier.)
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."
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Until he is kissed, anyway, eyes closing on auto. Occurs to him only then that their kisses have thus far tonight been a little sideways, never matching up, and he can feel himself warm to it now, as though the delay had been by design. He returns the subtle intention of it, and the subtlety itself.
Kind of.
"Well, I like this guy plenty," Clark says. The bed creaks as he shifts his body around, to face Bruce a little better, knee bumping knee. The start of crowding in on him. "Not sure how you'd take me dialling it up a notch."
no subject
They have time. Neither of them are dead. Subtle is alright.
So's this. Clark kissing him back, moving to face him, get up into his space. Bruce reclines against the headboard and lays one hand at Clark's side, just resting there, moving with him as he moves. His dark eyes on the other man's light ones, an unnamable emotion tucked into the corner of his lopsided almost-smile. (A good one.)
"Mm. Yeah. You know me, always gun-shy about doing too much."
Not a dramatic or intense bone in this guy's body. Bruce Wayne, the picture of lowkey. His hand moves, fingers against the waistband of Clark's sweatpants. He tilts his head back to look at him, a hint of daring.
no subject
Hands and knees, the mattress sinking beneath the density of them both converging around the same spot. Clark reaching past him to find a grip on the headboard, and the next time he kisses Bruce, Bruce can hear the creak of wood under stress from just the slight flex of Clark's hand.
Daring is met with more guileless interest reflected back at him, a lazy heat in clear eyes. He's never all the time exactly certain how this will go, what they might do together and to one another, even though the conclusion is generally a safe bet. Sometimes it's a trick, that the simple and easy moments feel so familiar, that he forgets they're still finding things out.
His other hand lands on Bruce's chest, gentle, feeling the thrum of his heart before he draws that hand downwards, fingertips seeking out sensitive points as he kisses Bruce's mouth again.
no subject
If asked, Bruce wouldn't actually say anything. But that's what he'd think.
"What are we moderating?" is murmured into Clark's mouth, a rasp of gravel that's as much his voice as it is his perpetual state of five-o-clock. He wonders sometimes what it feels like against skin that can't be irritated by it. His heart is steady, elevated now from interest, and not fumbling with his own weak spots. He closes a hand over the back of Clark's head and kisses him, like everything barely-there all evening was just lying in wait for this. The hand at his middle pushes at elastic, encouraging his pants down and off of him, devoid of any instinct for coyness.
no subject
(Probably, Clark would not call them fucked up. But he'd probably get around to that same premise. Maybe with a twee puzzle piece metaphor.)
"Nothing," he mumbles against Bruce's mouth anyway, voice pitched breathier, kiss broken further with his smile, "I was being sarcastic." He's allowed.
At some point, his fingers have slipped into Bruce's waistband. Every part of him is always a few degrees warmer than most might consider comfortable, usually, and that extends right down to the knuckles now press against that divot between hip and pelvis.
Kissing graduates down to his throat.
no subject
Bruce shifts up enough as he's able - no point pushing too hard against Clark - so that he can touch him, hand over his back, sides, around to the front of his thighs and slipping one between, though he doesn't reach for his cock. Contact his only made incidentally, instead rubbing over his hipbone and down, pressing against the line that follows his femoral artery, palming the inside of his thigh.
Clark is overheated and Bruce is always too fucking cold; east coast genetics and nerve damage, a black hole on the other side of solar power. He makes a low noise at that touch, the mouth against his throat. The hand at the back of Clark's head splays out and tangles fingers in his hair, pulling slow and close to the root, not particularly out of any concern that he'd be hurt if he yanked on it, but because it feels good to do that, in his opinion.
"Guess I like you alright, too."
no subject
"Sounds like there's room for improvement."
—not a complaint, apparently. An impetus. It's what dumb banter is for.
Clark turns his wrist so that when his hand slips into Bruce's pants, it's to circle his fingers around his cock. He flexes his wrist so that waistband slips further down, give them both some room. The first time they'd done this, Bruce could probably have clocked that he's not Clark's first male partner, but that there haven't been a lot of them. Probably not a lot of people in general.
However, shyness on its own hadn't been too much of an issue. But don't worry, there were plenty of hangups to work through at the time.
no subject
The only room for improvement, perhaps, is becoming even more comfortable with each other as time goes on. As it stands, there's no hesitation as he shifts up into Clark's touch, at a bit of a funny angle for it against the headboard with the other kneeling over him, but that hardly matters. He's not hard yet but on his way, always easy to convince. You'd think he'd want less physicality with how much time he puts into violence, but no; it's the language he speaks most fluently, the thing he can't seem to get enough of, one way or another. (Maddening for someone so unsocial and private.)
"Feel like anything in particular?" is very quiet. Bruce in general can be very quiet, and there is something he likes very much in knowing that Clark can hear him no matter what. He drags blunt fingernails over his scalp and teases his dick with the backs of his knuckles, a slow slide of skin that's parts soft and scarred even there, hands broken too many times and ways to count.
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Well. This stuff, maybe. Clark glances at Bruce for that question, hand gentle around him, coaxing him. Gentle, considering the friction of dry skin.
"Not in particular," he says, thinking about it. There'd been a hint of motion like he could get something more satisfying out of the brush of Bruce's knuckles against his cock, on its way to hard since Bruce had touched the waistband of his pants. Now, instead, he scoots backwards, giving Bruce space to find something more comfortable, and himself more room. "But I think I wanna take care of you to start with," with a gentle emphasis on the 'you'.
Mostly he means this: curls his fingers firmer around Bruce's cock, and lower his head down to take it only shallowly into his mouth, once he gets any sense of acquiescence.
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He doesn't. (Not yet?) (They have time. Tonight, tomorrow, all week.)
Clark is mostly out of literal reach now, so Bruce occupies his hands with his hair, his shoulder. Thumb over his ear in an echo of the shower, but this time it's a sensual touch instead of a teasing one. He lets out a breath, a near-inaudible sigh, and relaxes to let the other man do whatever he'd like. And there is nothing about this he doesn't acquiesce to. Knock yourself out, Kansas.
"That's what your eyes look like sometimes," he says after a while, composure as stone as ever, even as his breath ticks up and his cock fills, everything flushes warm. "The ocean, looking at it from the shore. Way out at one of the poles, where everything is still blue and white. But you're never cold."
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All lazily paced, non-frantic, and when he takes Bruce into his mouth, he doesn't push himself to do so deeply.
No pause as Bruce speaks save to look up at him. There's warmth there, as noted. Bruce would be forgiven for thinking that Clark is easy for flattery, as probably would Lois, when really it's mainly the source that matters. Eventually, he lifts his head a little, still stroking Bruce, more pressure in then upwards motion of it.
"Cold's not so bad," he says, quieter in the way he gets in bed. But then says, "When?"
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Bruce is too fucking weird.
"Mmm." A low rumbled exhale, raking through his hair slow and firm, now. "When you're surprised. I don't mean... shocked." It'd be easy to push for faster. The ache is there, temptation a fine line; but he likes waiting there, too, letting everything get wound up. Increasingly like the satisfying, maddening burn of shoving fingers against a sore muscle. "When someone makes you laugh and you didn't expect it."
He nearly follows that with, Sometimes you look amazed by the smallest gestures, but doesn't. It sounds patronizing in his head, and he's not sure how to articulate why he thinks that's beautiful. Bruce doesn't smile at people being kind to him at random. He's grown too bitter. Clark hasn't and he admires it. Wants to cup his hands around it or sink his teeth into it, he's not sure. Both.
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His arm curls around Bruce's leg, finding a grip beneath his thigh, and with a gentle tug—inasmuch as inevitable strength can be gentle—he pulls Bruce further down the bed by a few inches, as though that were easier and more convenient to do than for him to reposition his sprawl.
Stroking ceases, replaced with a hold and opened-mouth kissing, eyes half-closed, in search of those sensitive spots that elicit response, both voluntary and not. Patient. His own erection he can press into the mattress with the subtle shift of his hips and barely relieve some of the building ache, and he doesn't mind that at all.
He gives a contented hum against sensitive skin the next rake through of Bruce's fingers. What time is it again. What timezone, even. Who knows.
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But his pulse does tick up, and there's no hiding the way arousal flickers through him. Bruce would never let another man - any other man, not human, not alien - handle him anywhere near roughly, and he would never like it with another man. What are you doing to me, he had asked once, in the early days of sexual contact ramping up past stolen kisses, when Bruce was still entrenched with too much guilt to function with.
Less so, these days. Ever closing in on equilibrium between the two of them. Helps that it isn't one-sided, that Bruce has come to understand why, even if he still sort of thinks Clark's bananas for it.
Just, glass houses. So.
He drags in a breath. His cock twitches. "Fuck," is low and rough.
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The baritone sigh out of Bruce stirs him, enough that Clark almost echoes it. Pulls Bruce's cock into his mouth, shallow again, and then deeper, sustained teasing and testing traded in for something firmer.
(The tug to his hair doesn't net a reaction, not an obvious one. Certainly not an ow. But if it triggers a memory, a dim and barely conscious sensation of what it had felt like when the indestructible nature of his material body had been compromised enough that he had known the prickle of pain of a hand grasping through his hair, firm enough to lift his head—)
Well, he's busy.
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Clark takes him in like that and Bruce's breath hitches. His hand rakes over his head, through his hair, scraping across his scalp in a way that might be painful for someone else. Might. Maybe it would just be pleasing, on a knife's edge. Depends on the person; Bruce is not over-rough by default, but as a person he is too much, and sometimes it happens. Kryptonian or not.
He doesn't think about the first time he grabbed the other man's hair. He couldn't feel it. He'd had that gauntlet on, the only thing keeping his bones intact as he slammed his fist into Superman's face over and over. He hadn't done it again with his bare hands until later, later, when,
Bruce remembers:
They were in his house, in his bedroom. A cloudy unremarkable night, letting little light inside the glass walls, and they had been going back and forth. Kissing each other and pulling at garments, raised voices now and again (mostly Bruce), lowered now and again (mostly Clark), neither of them able to decide what kind of tension was taking over. The urge to fuck or fight. And the way those tensions were beginning to become one indistinguishable thing.
Beginning to?
Bruce sits at the edge of his bed, shirt open, mouth kiss-bruised, breathing harshly and watching Clark. Something dangerous about it. He's not afraid - he should be, probably, but he isn't, arousal obvious between his legs, hands at his sides itching to do something besides hold still, which he's forcing himself. Instead of grabbing at him harder than he means to, even though he knows full well (does he) that he can't hurt Clark (can't he).
"Well," he says, thick and grating, but nothing else comes after that.
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Not his heart, though. That's beating faster. His shirt was half off his shoulders by the time they broke apart, having pushed Bruce with just enough effort to force the other man backwards and sitting, only from Clark's perspective, he was as gentle as a regular person would have to be in setting down a china teacup. There's probably gonna be a bruise there tomorrow morning, heart-sized and in the same neighbourhood.
And the itch to do more—more what—has him backing up, hands flat on his thighs as if to stop himself from that more. Doing more would be a line crossed in some direction or another. He is also uncomfortably hard in his jeans. That's another problem.
Well says Bruce. This is where they come to their senses.
"What are you doing," says Clark. Never mind. Maybe his breathing isn't completely level.
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Dark eyes watch Clark closely, like he could pull him in and make him drown. Ticking from his face and lower, to how hard he is, to his hands made restful, back up to his face.
Silence expands. He isn't sure for how long.
"That night."
He does not specify which night. He doesn't have to. A force given voice in the back of his head is gripping tight enough to make something shake; Do not, it says. But ruining it is better. Isn't it.
"You were turned on."
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Not that. Open surprise gentles his features, staring fixed across at Bruce. In some other context, he might have thought this were a diversion, and a cheap one, distracting from the moment they're in now.
But it's not. It seems to snare right up in the now.
He remembers—one of a few times in the course of several wild minutes, having been slammed into concrete and barely moving, laid out on his back, and feeling as much as hearing the reverberating sound of Bruce's heavy metallic footfalls approaching him. He remembers thinking about the man hidden beneath layers of scratched up metal, the dull thump of his heartbeat, steady and reliable.
So he doesn't say, don't be fucking ridiculous, when he probably should.
"So were you," he says, which is only better than a confirmation by a matter of degrees, spoken quietly but not shyly. "As soon as you landed a hit."
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He had been. And it had been less of a shock than he was generally prepared to acknowledge, at the time; his obsession and the very particular setups his unconscious mind chose to craft for him were not always subtle. Even after death, when he fully believed in Clark's goodness, he dreamed of Superman holding him down. Taking revenge. It would only make sense. Be deserved.
Part of him still expects it. Not really because he thinks Clark would. But.
"Yes."
Was he getting off on beating the shit out of him specifically, or was he getting off on letting loose with the most ferocity and force he's ever engaged in. Or both. Or does one follow the other. Everything hurt in him the second it connected, and everything felt the most alive. For a while the point of what they were doing didn't exist, and he was only chasing more, without thought. Like he'd never considered thought to be a thing worthy of existing in his cracked psyche.
(The funny thing about his control is how he can say I am done having a breakdown now and it's almost like it stops.)
"So are we going to be ashamed of that, or what." Not really a question. They should be, and yet. "Because it seems... like we're both thinking about it, and not saying anything about it, the same amount."
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But.
That's well worn ground, paced over and over in the back of his mind. This feels like new territory.
"I don't know what to do about it," he says, opting for honest. Hackles lowering. He'd still been expecting a fight of some kind, and they still could, but Bruce's words are too measured. Inclusive. "But I guess nothing's not working for us."
So. What's left? Talking about it. Sex things aside: they've managed to avoid it altogether.
Clark reaches to tug his shirt back over his shoulder, but doesn't do it up yet. He wants to join Bruce on the bed, but—the distance still feels like a necessary thing. "Was it 'cause I was losing?" he asks, finally.
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Bruce lets out a breath. "No." He smiles, but it's mostly just a flinch of his mouth that shows his teeth for a moment. "No, not because you were losing. I don't know if I actually convinced myself I was going to 'win' or not, but I didn't for a minute believe I'd live."
That much was probably obvious. Has been. Bruce is not terribly concerned with his own life; he seems to think it ended when his son's did, and the years between that point and this one have been strange, to say the least. For a while he's quiet, then, watching the way that denial (truthful) lands or doesn't land, considering what else to say. Because he thinks he'll have to be the one, to spare them the slow consider death of Clark's better manners. He closes his eyes, and opens them again.
"I felt more than I ever had. Suddenly."
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Still. He feels some late pulse of hurt on Bruce's behalf, and waits patiently.
The answer that comes, in contrast, almost makes Clark laugh—it does make him smile slightly, a twinge of it nested in the corner of his mouth.
Now he moves. He sits in the chair he remembers Bruce's inhabiting when he'd come to from his neurotoxin episode, listed more forwards, elbows to knees. "You had a place to do it in," he says. It's a little more nuanced than guessing at Bruce's own feelings. It is a tentative comparison of notes. More questioning; "An outlet."
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Clark sits. Bruce watches.
"And you."
Is that - he had a place, an outlet, and Clark, or is that - and what about you, Clark. Bruce doesn't clarify. (It's both. If it were just violence, if he didn't find him perversely attractive, if he hadn't spent so long feeling nothing, it would be easier.)
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"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."
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