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."
Bruce tilts his head. Yeah. No more kryptonite. Setting aside the paradox - if he hadn't hated Superman, he wouldn't have made them, and if he hadn't made them, then they couldn't have stopped Doomsday - that was very mean of him. Effective, but mean. And no matter how much he likes hearing Clark say things like Something that didn't yield to me, it's not acceptable to consider other uses.
"It's not something we can revisit," he says lowly.
Bummer.
With deliberation, Bruce pushes to his feet. In that same dishevelled state. He steps over to Clark, hands on his shoulders, pushing him til his spine is pressed up to the back of the chair - if he goes, anyway. All this talk. He might not. Bruce's heartbeat is still elevated. He drags in a breath and doesn't say anything else, not yet, torn between doing so or not. What's the harm, this deep into it. He pulls one hand up along Clark's face, digging fingers into his hair.
Bruce stands up and takes a step towards him, looking the way he does, which is enough for Clark to remember his own cock still pressed against denim, so that's
probably fine
and he sinks back against the chair when pushed. The relief that comes with contact reinitiated—well, what did he expect? That he'd say something that would cause Bruce to reject him, after all this? Well, maybe. A lifetime of not saying anything for exactly that reasons is a hard habit to shake. Sometimes, these moments with Bruce are like taking a step in the dark. He's getting used to always landing well.
So Bruce does touch him and Clark tilts his face up, paying some attention to the way his hair is being gripped so he can bend his neck back with it.
This is crazy. They should not touch again, speak only politely in between intel meetings, if absolutely necessary. Clark should turn Bruce's absurd affections away. Who buys a fucking bank? Who looks into buying an entire newspaper just so it doesn't get screwed by the digital age? (Or snapped up by LexCorp's board. Fuck that.)
As if Bruce could ever reject him.
He crowds in close, gets a knee on one side of Clark's, presses his weight in over his lap. It's an expensive chair, and it doesn't creak just yet. God, he just wants to pull his hair until it frays, get Clark flushed and nearly crimson-eyed with shaking hands. He wants to bite the side of his jaw until his teeth crack.
Comfortable, is how Clark would describe the weight of Bruce settling over him. As are the fingers in his hair, the gravity of Bruce's attention. He is caught a little wide eyed in all these things, hands retracting where they'd rested on his thighs. Hips shifting against the chair and Bruce both, just a fraction.
Comfortable is nowhere to go, and comfortable is the practically limitless depths of Bruce's—desire seems like a small word. Love strains at its definitions too.
If the question hedges on slightly too Socratic for him—a querying twinge of his eyebrows, what is he gonna do about it—it's really his own heartbeat that spurs him on. His hands when he slides them up under Bruce's open shirt are achingly warm, and when he grips the edges of his collar and pulls him down unstoppably into a kiss, so is that.
Bruce might be interested in reading journalist Clark Kent's take on philosophies. How Socratic is What are you going to do about it? How about Do you bleed? What is Bruce Wayne trying to draw out, with the kinds of questions he asks this man in particular? A little hypocritical, don't you think?
(Once, a few years ago, a journalist asked him if he ever thought he'd do anything with the law degree he earned. Not really, he'd said, and downed another drink. I don't remember much of it.)
He goes to that kiss, because he has no choice in the matter. He presses one hand against the side of Clark's throat, fingers digging in at his pulse point, thumb at his jaw. It makes his hand ache. He can't hear the other man's heartbeat, but he can feel it, and maybe if he had the power he'd reach into his chest and feel his whole heart. He's not sure how to make something as intense as they want it (need it) without it being violent but this is somewhere to start, honesty spilled out between them like blood.
I want you to fuck me
is not something he'll say out loud. Yet. He wants Clark to push him again, he wants, he wants. A thousand things. The way he kisses him is too warm in turn in response to that warmth. He's not like this. He doesn't do this, he doesn't let people read things in him, he doesn't permit himself to let emotion speak through sex. He doesn't, he doesn't, he is.
The kiss is ungentle. They do plenty of gentle kissing, and this has the heat that they'd shared moments before breaking to talk about it. Clark kisses him like they've gone for much longer without, the harsh scrape of teeth, the dull and damp pressure of need. There is a dull sting by the time they break—on Bruce's side, of course, just the slightest hint of blood.
Clark's hand had landed high on Bruce's leg, the dig of his thumb likely to leave a bruise. He's still thinking it over, what will he do about it, what is he going to, and then it makes an easy flip into what does he want. They both know: something that is too much, and not enough. He swallows just to feel that hold on his neck, blue eyes dark in the dim light, colour sapped from the room—
—a room that is thrown into a blur, for a moment, at least for Bruce. The weight of Clark suddenly lifted beneath him, floor vanishing beneath the foot still balanced against it, a momentary sense of zero gravity, and then he finds his back is pressed to the bed. The only real sense of momentum and inertia being pillowy spring-back of the bed beneath him.
And Clark on him, watching him, knowing too much, hands on his shoulders.
Inside of his mouth cut on his teeth. Bruises on his skin. Breath nearly knocked out of him, the shift so quick - just about fast enough to disorient him, only clawing to awareness because he is who he is. Beneath Clark, arms beside his head, staring up at him. He rolls his shoulders just to feel the way the other man doesn't budge; someone human would at least flex from it, even if they were putting their full weight onto the hold. He knows Clark isn't even trying.
He's never thought before, specifically, I want to be held down. This isn't that. This is just how to get the other thing, that there isn't a name for, caught in the back of his throat. That's been there for two fucking years.
Bruce gets a knee at the side of Clark's keep, pressed up, grinding against him, the rough feeling of denim against his slacks hardly noticeable for what it is - too focused on Clark himself, every point of contact. He gets a hand between them and scraps down his chest, undoing the closure of the other man's jeans, tugging down for as much as the pin is giving him room for. Not much. Shocked at himself, how hard he is, and he'd be embarrassed about it if there was anything left to be embarrassed about, between them.
Looks at him the whole time. Like he might say something.
Clark's eyes hood a little, staying perfectly and borderline unnaturally still as Bruce's palms slide down his chest, and tug at his jeans. He breathes out, lifting his hips to allow it, doing little more than relishing the feeling of Bruce's hands working the denim down past his hips, the cooler air against his cock once its freed.
Clark smooths his hands around from shoulders to Bruce's throat, thumb stroking along the line from collar to beneath his chin, a hold that keeps him still so Clark can bend down to kiss him again.
It's different, not pretending. There have been casual hook ups in the past he has spooked from just the little things—forgetting to roll when pushed, or failing to react when someone is rough.
Some of the kinks (as it were) worked out for the first time with Lois. Not all of 'em.
He slides a hand between them as well, fingers smoothing down Bruce's abdomen, fingers dipping inside his pants. There is the sound of seams in stress and a tear of fabric, waistband immediately looser than before as knuckles push past. "Sorry," doesn't sound sorry when it's breathed like that against your neck.
"Mmhm." Sure you are. He wonders how often Clark has wanted to tear clothes off someone. If it's frustrating to not be able to hurry anything along for fear of shredding garments beyond repair with barely any effort. Bruce pushes up into the hand at his throat, forcing Clark to press down against his windpipe or pull his hand back. He drags in a breath, so that he can feel it, the ragged effort it takes, the way his pulse hammers faster.
One hand goes around Clark's wrist, at his own throat, and he lets the other move more idly - ignoring his own torn trousers to touch Clark, rub at his stiff cock and slide his fingers around it. A slow contrast to the unhinged stops and starts of the rest of their contact. The sexuality of it, at least this part, seems secondary to whatever else they're doing to each other.
Not that he doesn't want to get off. He's predictable like that.
A self-satisfied sigh, an arch to his back, but attention still paid to the ring of pressure he has placed tight against Bruce's throat. Clark lifts his head, that slight slack to his mouth a contrast to bright eyes, sharp, focused. The hand that had fumbled into Bruce's pants braces on the bed instead, for the moment.
The next adjustment his subtle, but has him further Bruce by just a fraction, hips pushing forward and into the hand stroking him.
Watching him carefully—the room not so dark that Bruce can't find that small blot of darker pigmentation in blue eyes, that comical gesture to defect—Clark settles his palm a little more firmly in place. A flick of a glance, maybe checking the anatomy beneath the layers, before his fingers squeeze.
Just a little. Just enough, for the next thump of heartbeat, rushing blood through major arteries, is felt deeper.
Bruce locks eyes with him as he pulls in a breath, finding it - of course - difficult. It's not like a boa constrictor; there's no give at all, Clark is the most uncompromising being in existence. There's no guesswork. He can't find a way out of this. The only variable is Clark, and when, or if, he will choose to move his hand. What does it feel like? The rough constructs of cartilage around all the soft structures that keep him alive, all as easy to pass through as water. His heart pounds, but it isn't from fear.
His hand grips so hard at Clark's wrist but it's just holding him, not pushing him forward, not trying to pull him away. Slowly, because of course he's the sort of lunatic who can hold his breath for long minutes and ignore the potential pain of bruising on his larynx, Bruce's awareness narrows to Clark's face, and the sound of his pulse hammering in his ears, everything going pinpointed. His other hand has lost its focus and is just clutching at Clark's hip with that same aimless viciousness, holding without intent to push him one way or the other.
This feels as new as the first time he'd taken to the sky, when he wasn't immediately certain if that feeling was fear or thrill. Clark's eyes are big in his head but likewise focused, watching as Bruce calibrates, locks that hand around his wrist, finds a sort of equilibrium that feels core to how he functions.
Clark holds him there for as long as he thinks is worth the risk. His other hand glides again down the centre of Bruce's chest, resting his palm against his erection, both coaxing arousal and relieving it with that warm friction.
Slowly, the iron collar of grip at Bruce's neck lessens, slips into something tender. As soon as he breathes easy, Clark wants that too, kissing him warm and messy and full of desire.
Air fills his lungs again, and the sudden contrast is dizzying— the concept of erotic asphyxiation is not an unknown one, to him, and maybe he's been in the shallow end of the pool before, but nothing like this. Nothing like how much it was, or how sensation seems to slam back into him now, everything his brain had quit paying attention to in favor of keeping him alive flooding over him.
Between that and Clark's hand on his cock he's stupid for a moment, dazed, melted uselessness between him with a look in his eyes that betrays having briefly been in some other dimension.
"Fuck," he grates, into that kiss. Brain clicking back online, hands in Clark's hair again. Gives as good as he's given, and that's another dizzying contrast, like shoving his head into hot water after cold. (What the hell is Alfred going to think, if he glimpses bruises from hands around his throat. Maybe he'll just hide for a week.) Still with edges of twilight clinging to him, Bruce removes a hand and stretches it towards the bedside stand, though he can't quite reach it while pinned. An ocean of a bed, for someone his height, and company. So he says, "Grab that," in a voice that doesn't sound used to a lack of compliance, despite all of this. Because the way he pushes up, grinding hard against hard, is all tangled in shredded fabric and the cold metal closure of a denim zip, and there's lube in the drawer.
(Along with some prescription bottles and other assorted sins, but he's been training himself out of the impulse to hide that sort of shit in a lead box. Clark knows. It's a whatever.)
That heartbeat of moment between Bruce pliant and dazed beneath him, and then grabbing hands in his hair and biting kiss back, is the kind of memory Clark will earmark for later reference. It feels good, and rare, and he can feel privately pleased with himself, privately smug about it, on his own time.
A later time. Because right now he feels like he's been horny for approximately eighty years and it's a problem.
He turns his head at Bruce's direction, catches his own breath, and moves off of the other man to flop diagonal across the mattress to reach for the stand. It is a possibly necessary moment of pause, not just to slow down a second, but also for Clark to kick his own jeans and underwear off without tearing anything further.
There's the telltale skitter and rustle of the drawer being opened, lube taken out, and then the mattress creaks as Clark closes back in. "I wanna fuck you," he says, mouth grazing against Bruce's shoulder. Low, husky, even if it's not his throat that's been constricted with any consequence lately. "Is that what you want?"
In part, part of the mood, but also, a real question.
It's such a normal moment. Clark wiggling over to snag supplies and get his jeans off. For a second they are anyone, and this isn't strange unmapped territory, no one was being nearly choked out a second ago. They're just two men fumbling through the beginnings of a relationship.
Struck by it, he smiles while Clark's distracted. (Or is he. Superspeed, superbrain, does he see; Bruce can't know.) With quick grace befitting of a ninja he slips out of the remains of his clothes, comfortable nude despite the vast coverage of scars, and when Clark comes back to mouth at his shoulder, Bruce is halfway up on his side, body inclined towards his, welcoming, hands gliding, as hungry and demanding as they are warm.
"Yes." Like a lance to his gut. Something hotter than he has words for. Like heat vision. Hah. "That's what I want."
Low and earnest. He doesn't shake when he says it. Somehow. Bruce presses a kiss to his mouth.
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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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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."
no subject
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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"It's not something we can revisit," he says lowly.
Bummer.
With deliberation, Bruce pushes to his feet. In that same dishevelled state. He steps over to Clark, hands on his shoulders, pushing him til his spine is pressed up to the back of the chair - if he goes, anyway. All this talk. He might not. Bruce's heartbeat is still elevated. He drags in a breath and doesn't say anything else, not yet, torn between doing so or not. What's the harm, this deep into it. He pulls one hand up along Clark's face, digging fingers into his hair.
"I still want you like that. I don't care how."
Don't you?
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probably fine
and he sinks back against the chair when pushed. The relief that comes with contact reinitiated—well, what did he expect? That he'd say something that would cause Bruce to reject him, after all this? Well, maybe. A lifetime of not saying anything for exactly that reasons is a hard habit to shake. Sometimes, these moments with Bruce are like taking a step in the dark. He's getting used to always landing well.
So Bruce does touch him and Clark tilts his face up, paying some attention to the way his hair is being gripped so he can bend his neck back with it.
"I want that too," he says.
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As if Bruce could ever reject him.
He crowds in close, gets a knee on one side of Clark's, presses his weight in over his lap. It's an expensive chair, and it doesn't creak just yet. God, he just wants to pull his hair until it frays, get Clark flushed and nearly crimson-eyed with shaking hands. He wants to bite the side of his jaw until his teeth crack.
Bad ideas. Impossible ideas.
"What are you going to do about it?"
But they could get somewhere near.
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Comfortable is nowhere to go, and comfortable is the practically limitless depths of Bruce's—desire seems like a small word. Love strains at its definitions too.
If the question hedges on slightly too Socratic for him—a querying twinge of his eyebrows, what is he gonna do about it—it's really his own heartbeat that spurs him on. His hands when he slides them up under Bruce's open shirt are achingly warm, and when he grips the edges of his collar and pulls him down unstoppably into a kiss, so is that.
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(Once, a few years ago, a journalist asked him if he ever thought he'd do anything with the law degree he earned. Not really, he'd said, and downed another drink. I don't remember much of it.)
He goes to that kiss, because he has no choice in the matter. He presses one hand against the side of Clark's throat, fingers digging in at his pulse point, thumb at his jaw. It makes his hand ache. He can't hear the other man's heartbeat, but he can feel it, and maybe if he had the power he'd reach into his chest and feel his whole heart. He's not sure how to make something as intense as they want it (need it) without it being violent but this is somewhere to start, honesty spilled out between them like blood.
I want you to fuck me
is not something he'll say out loud. Yet. He wants Clark to push him again, he wants, he wants. A thousand things. The way he kisses him is too warm in turn in response to that warmth. He's not like this. He doesn't do this, he doesn't let people read things in him, he doesn't permit himself to let emotion speak through sex. He doesn't, he doesn't, he is.
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Clark's hand had landed high on Bruce's leg, the dig of his thumb likely to leave a bruise. He's still thinking it over, what will he do about it, what is he going to, and then it makes an easy flip into what does he want. They both know: something that is too much, and not enough. He swallows just to feel that hold on his neck, blue eyes dark in the dim light, colour sapped from the room—
—a room that is thrown into a blur, for a moment, at least for Bruce. The weight of Clark suddenly lifted beneath him, floor vanishing beneath the foot still balanced against it, a momentary sense of zero gravity, and then he finds his back is pressed to the bed. The only real sense of momentum and inertia being pillowy spring-back of the bed beneath him.
And Clark on him, watching him, knowing too much, hands on his shoulders.
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He's never thought before, specifically, I want to be held down. This isn't that. This is just how to get the other thing, that there isn't a name for, caught in the back of his throat. That's been there for two fucking years.
Bruce gets a knee at the side of Clark's keep, pressed up, grinding against him, the rough feeling of denim against his slacks hardly noticeable for what it is - too focused on Clark himself, every point of contact. He gets a hand between them and scraps down his chest, undoing the closure of the other man's jeans, tugging down for as much as the pin is giving him room for. Not much. Shocked at himself, how hard he is, and he'd be embarrassed about it if there was anything left to be embarrassed about, between them.
Looks at him the whole time. Like he might say something.
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Clark smooths his hands around from shoulders to Bruce's throat, thumb stroking along the line from collar to beneath his chin, a hold that keeps him still so Clark can bend down to kiss him again.
It's different, not pretending. There have been casual hook ups in the past he has spooked from just the little things—forgetting to roll when pushed, or failing to react when someone is rough.
Some of the kinks (as it were) worked out for the first time with Lois. Not all of 'em.
He slides a hand between them as well, fingers smoothing down Bruce's abdomen, fingers dipping inside his pants. There is the sound of seams in stress and a tear of fabric, waistband immediately looser than before as knuckles push past. "Sorry," doesn't sound sorry when it's breathed like that against your neck.
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One hand goes around Clark's wrist, at his own throat, and he lets the other move more idly - ignoring his own torn trousers to touch Clark, rub at his stiff cock and slide his fingers around it. A slow contrast to the unhinged stops and starts of the rest of their contact. The sexuality of it, at least this part, seems secondary to whatever else they're doing to each other.
Not that he doesn't want to get off. He's predictable like that.
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The next adjustment his subtle, but has him further Bruce by just a fraction, hips pushing forward and into the hand stroking him.
Watching him carefully—the room not so dark that Bruce can't find that small blot of darker pigmentation in blue eyes, that comical gesture to defect—Clark settles his palm a little more firmly in place. A flick of a glance, maybe checking the anatomy beneath the layers, before his fingers squeeze.
Just a little. Just enough, for the next thump of heartbeat, rushing blood through major arteries, is felt deeper.
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His hand grips so hard at Clark's wrist but it's just holding him, not pushing him forward, not trying to pull him away. Slowly, because of course he's the sort of lunatic who can hold his breath for long minutes and ignore the potential pain of bruising on his larynx, Bruce's awareness narrows to Clark's face, and the sound of his pulse hammering in his ears, everything going pinpointed. His other hand has lost its focus and is just clutching at Clark's hip with that same aimless viciousness, holding without intent to push him one way or the other.
As if he could.
(He's still so fucking hard. Maybe more.)
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Clark holds him there for as long as he thinks is worth the risk. His other hand glides again down the centre of Bruce's chest, resting his palm against his erection, both coaxing arousal and relieving it with that warm friction.
Slowly, the iron collar of grip at Bruce's neck lessens, slips into something tender. As soon as he breathes easy, Clark wants that too, kissing him warm and messy and full of desire.
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Between that and Clark's hand on his cock he's stupid for a moment, dazed, melted uselessness between him with a look in his eyes that betrays having briefly been in some other dimension.
"Fuck," he grates, into that kiss. Brain clicking back online, hands in Clark's hair again. Gives as good as he's given, and that's another dizzying contrast, like shoving his head into hot water after cold. (What the hell is Alfred going to think, if he glimpses bruises from hands around his throat. Maybe he'll just hide for a week.) Still with edges of twilight clinging to him, Bruce removes a hand and stretches it towards the bedside stand, though he can't quite reach it while pinned. An ocean of a bed, for someone his height, and company. So he says, "Grab that," in a voice that doesn't sound used to a lack of compliance, despite all of this. Because the way he pushes up, grinding hard against hard, is all tangled in shredded fabric and the cold metal closure of a denim zip, and there's lube in the drawer.
(Along with some prescription bottles and other assorted sins, but he's been training himself out of the impulse to hide that sort of shit in a lead box. Clark knows. It's a whatever.)
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A later time. Because right now he feels like he's been horny for approximately eighty years and it's a problem.
He turns his head at Bruce's direction, catches his own breath, and moves off of the other man to flop diagonal across the mattress to reach for the stand. It is a possibly necessary moment of pause, not just to slow down a second, but also for Clark to kick his own jeans and underwear off without tearing anything further.
There's the telltale skitter and rustle of the drawer being opened, lube taken out, and then the mattress creaks as Clark closes back in. "I wanna fuck you," he says, mouth grazing against Bruce's shoulder. Low, husky, even if it's not his throat that's been constricted with any consequence lately. "Is that what you want?"
In part, part of the mood, but also, a real question.
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Struck by it, he smiles while Clark's distracted. (Or is he. Superspeed, superbrain, does he see; Bruce can't know.) With quick grace befitting of a ninja he slips out of the remains of his clothes, comfortable nude despite the vast coverage of scars, and when Clark comes back to mouth at his shoulder, Bruce is halfway up on his side, body inclined towards his, welcoming, hands gliding, as hungry and demanding as they are warm.
"Yes." Like a lance to his gut. Something hotter than he has words for. Like heat vision. Hah. "That's what I want."
Low and earnest. He doesn't shake when he says it. Somehow. Bruce presses a kiss to his mouth.
"Have you, before?"
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