Bruce can see the different way he moves, little micro-expressions across his whole body, which no longer pushes the world around itself like the center. It revolves around him in another way now, purely in Bruce's imagination, and he interacts like he's
not ordinary. Never that.
"Tell me if you start to feel anxious about it," Bruce says. "And keep in mind I'll be pissed off if you don't."
Don't suck it up. Actually say something. Ok? Ok. He nods at the mat. "Lay down on your back."
Clark's chin drops to look across at Bruce as if to say: great anxiety deterrent, Wayne.
But the almost smiling is mirrored, and he moves across the room and towards the mat. Practice will make perfect, maybe, with the not overthinking thing, but for now there's quite a bit of thought that goes into going from standing to lying down. Not so bad. He spent most of his adult life unaware of his ability to control his own gravitational force. Something about the knowing, though.
Anyway, he's down, stretching out onto his back. A little anxiety never harmed anybody, right, and maybe that's what he ought to be feeling, but what he is feeling is curious. If he didn't completely trust Bruce, he's not sure they'd have gotten to this point.
Their loved ones would think they are so stupid, if they knew the half of it.
"What about if I feel weird about it."
So flat as to be indistinguishable as a joke, if Bruce didn't already know better.
Veering a bit into the 'games we shouldn't be playing' lane, but there's a method to Bruce's reckless madness, here, as there so often is. He waits, leaving Clark there for a while as he gets used to the way gravity pulls him down to the floor and keeps him horizontal, knowing that he'll be feeling new heaviness, intangible elastic bands pulling his spine, his knees, his elbows, the back of his head. Letting him straighten out every vertebrae against the lightly padded floor. Find the least uncomfortable angle for the back of his skull to rest. He's got enough muscle, superpowers or no superpowers, that he shouldn't feel much in the way of a bite from a hipbone.
Bruce is careful when he walks over, cognizant of the way sound will be different. He kneels down next to Clark, and then, perhaps unsurprisingly, straddles his hips.
Hi.
No weight on him. Hovering there over him. Bruce raises his hands, posture obvious, though he says, "Give me yours."
Once their hands are linked, Clark's shoulders still on the ground, Bruce pushes lightly.
Fingers lace with Bruce's like they've done countless times before. That had always been something to think about. It's embarrassing the amount of times he's flipped a sink tap around to run the water hot only to snap the whole thing off, even if most of that was left behind in clumsy adolescence. Only left behind because he became cognizant to the potential, though.
Now, Clark tests it, squeezing their hands rather than doing what Bruce says, immediately. It's very tentative, that much Bruce can tell, as if still doubting that strength has left him even if he has the distinct impression of being invisibly pressed to the surface of the earth as inexorably as a butterfly pinned to a board.
That grasp relaxes, and he applies pressure to Bruce's hands. Like that squeeze, it's almost comically gentle, and then more force is slowly applied, until Bruce can feel proper effort applied through muscle and joint, Clark's expression the picture of focus.
Tentative is appreciated. Clark should probably not lose that instinct, even if they nail this. Bruce likes having fingers.
Once Clark is putting in effort, Bruce stops holding himself, and starts pushing down. Clark will have to start straining to keep himself from being flattened - there might even be a swoop of sudden unease, a previously absent lizard-brain response to a potential incoming collision. Though of course Bruce is fully capable of pausing no matter how forward tilted he becomes.
Pressure from his hands, through his wrists, stressing elbows and rotator cuffs, making shoulders and biceps tired. He'll feel it through his upper back, and shoulder blades. Even if they were evenly matched pound-for-pound and in applicable experience, Bruce has enough leverage in this position to pin him, if he really presses down.
Even while super, Clark has pushed himself beyond even his considerable limits, normal stuff like dragging stranded ships across ice or separating sentient cosmic computers from one another before they could destroy the world. In these scenarios, he has applied a little effort. And doing so felt different to this. It just—worked differently, in a way difficult to describe. Accessing new stores of himself.
This is bone and tendon and muscle and blood. It doesn't make sense that he should feel Bruce's weight and strength pressing down on his hands in, say, his lower back, but he does. Heels dig into mat. That he is reminded to breathe is timely, because he had forgotten for a hot second.
"Uh huh," he says, a smile cutting sharp across his face, a laugh at the edge of newly returned breathing.
And because he had tested his newfound superpowers that one time by almost flinging himself off the whole earth, Clark tests newfound weakness by suddenly doubling his effort, a meaningful attempt to shove Bruce up, powering against that odd burn lashed through muscle.
Recognition in Bruce's face. There you are. There's a smile hidden in one corner of his mouth.
For a second he's pushed up, feeling the force of Clark's effort, practically balanced against his hands, a funny insect pose between the two of them. Elbows doing things. And then he pushes back, steady but hard, unfettered by heavy armor or the need to keep his own momentum going to leap off the next ledge. His considerable strength focused down to just Clark, the way his considerable attention is so often focused down to just Clark.
He feels the same burn, the same strain in this joint and that. A prickly twinge in his spine where the worst of the damage was repaired, years ago. But he always feels those things, and so he doesn't really notice them, and they don't have any impact in how he directs his weight.
"Oh yeah," Clark says, mock-certain, teeth together. "Totally."
This after a completely genuine hrrgh when Bruce bore back down. The odd wobble of his hands beneath it could almost spark the anxiety that Bruce warned him about if not for the fact he—does not feel it, feeling too many other things, like an odd splash of giddiness, of adrenaline.
After he says 'oh yeah, totally', literally nothing happens but what feels like to Bruce the same amount of pressure bearing back up at him. Clark's head falls back down against the mat with another breathless laugh—yes, an attempt had been made—before he collects himself again.
He just needs an angle. (Story of his life.)
And so there's a twist, strength thrown into his right side in an attempt to off-balance Bruce and fling him in the other direction. There is none of the training they've attempted, there doesn't feel like there's room for that at all, just brute strength or an attempt at it.
Clark tries to throw himself upward, and Bruce just. Stays right where he is, shifting his weight slightly in a counter-balance on autopilot, possessing nothing like a Kryptonian's unmovable object strength, of course, but so well-versed in physical brawling that getting him into a throw is like trying to grab running water.
Oh, that was the attempt. Bruce helpfully shifts back the other way, like a well-meaning and well-trained pet dog doing the trick on a delay.
"Get your foot under my shin," he instructs, trying very hard not to laugh. "There. Shift your shoulders the other way. Push."
The failed throw has a leg kick out seemingly on its own, thumping heel back down onto mat in the wake of failure to launch. It could be embarrassing, probably, but it doesn't occur to Clark to feel so. Embarrassing would have been accidentally misjudging this whole situation and flinging Bruce across the room, right after panic at whether he broke him or not.
This is nothing. This is—
"If you laugh," is a hanging threat, anyway. He sees you, Wayne.
Clark slips foot under shin as instructed, takes a short breath, and heaves again.
"Clark." A warning. Do not tell him not to laugh, it's just going to make it twice as hard to stop. And since Bruce doesn't have trouble not laughing, ever, it would be very nice of his boyfriend (!) to politely ignore it. Even at his own expense, perhaps.
This time, Bruce is forced to move - or really fight back, and that's not what they're doing - shifting off of Clark and back on his heels beside him, pausing while he watches to see if the younger man will follow it through with an attempt at his own pin or not. Clark is still strong, he can tell; of course he would be, built the way he is. Brown eyes check in on the vitals screens, and then he's back to focusing on Clark. Eyebrows quirk.
"That was almost like something I showed you once."
Clark laughs. At himself, when he rolls Bruce off, away, at the sheer effort that just took, lying on his back and grinning at the ceiling. He's also not looking at the monitors, personally, like the science behind this all has fallen into the background of the moment. Later, it'll be interesting.
Right now, he's feeling the way that initial burn of exhaustion has left him. He is still strong, if we're grading on a curve here. Human-strong, and not—nerfed-alien, which is different, he thinks.
He rolls a look at Bruce just as he says that, already speculative, already ready.
That self-conscious care he'd demonstrated initially, that guarding against clumsiness, is apparently gone as he rolls, getting a knee beneath himself to lever off and tackle Bruce back down to the mat. It is not as graceful as the times he's followed such motions through when they train, like gravity is a shackle he's getting used to as opposed to pretending he has to consider, but the weight of him slamming into Bruce feels very human.
And solid, and also locked an arm up under Bruce's to lever him back into a pin.
Edited (get back here icon) 2021-03-17 09:50 (UTC)
Bruce lets it happen, so it's more of an oof than it might be otherwise, but he wouldn't have it any other way. There's a fine line to walk in between underestimating Clark - who is still a huge guy very much capable of doing damage - and going too aggressive with it.
Which becomes: half a lesson, half messing around, reminiscent both of sparring in the practice room at the lake house and shoving each other around in bed. Bruce gets him a little too hard and has him land with his own hand behind Clark's head, not wanting to give him a concussion, even though it means they end up hilariously tangled together on the floor for no good reason.
Bruce squeezes his side, barely below his ribcage, thumb pressing into the would-be-soft tummy area if not for his thirty-pack, or whatever it is, which is still very Man of Steel even without the powers. A ticklish zone. Threatening.
Thirty-pack or no, it jolts him, head swiveling around in probably outrage as he says, "That never came up," on the topic of things shown him.
Clark has his own balancing act to do, not dissimilar to Bruce's. Sure, he isn't at typical Kryptonian brute force now, and sure, he is wrestling Batman who could probably do about twenty different things at every given pin attempt, but he's still formidable, and he doesn't quite know how much yet.
And so this kind of playfighting is probably reminiscent of interacting with an adolescent Doberman who isn't sold on not being a puppy. More prone to hurting itself, probably, but could leave a bruise when not paying attention.
But here, in this tangle, he reaches up and back to find where Bruce slipped his hand beneath his head, and before he can ease it away, Clark keeps it there, which keeps them close. His eyes are bright, and he hasn't quite stopped smiling since that first broke. Breathing harder, too, when normally that tends to only happen for feelings reasons.
"You're holding back," is not an accusation, but only because it's a fact. And a taunt.
A man confident he could wipe the floor with this cornfed, albeit shredded, dweeb. He's not pressed close to Clark despite how close they are, holding himself just so above him; his shirt touches the younger man's in places, but no pressure from body to body. Impressive core strength.
"You've never felt that before, have you."
From me.
A taunt right back, though there's some recon in it, too. He is watching Clark very closely, and part of his attention is ever on the monitors.
Training like this being, he expects, a balancing act, where they could never actually match one another so much as go through motions. Any holding back on Bruce's part would have been more to avoid injuring himself on Clark, or preventing Clark from accidentally doing so himself.
And then there was that one time. He glances when he spies Bruce checking the monitors, and says, "Prognosis, doctor?"
He's not quite used to this enough to be impressed by incredible feats of core strength or appreciate that they are even happening, although maybe through subtle adjustments of his posture, Bruce might be able to tell he's taking his time in lining up a counterstrike.
Bruce doesn't move, and he lets his eyeline stay on the monitors. Pointedly, the hand in that threatening tickle location stays there, his touch almost light; prepped for immediate movability, if needed. Ominous. There is the matter of knees, and of course the hand behind Clark's head, and how close they are.
"I don't want to keep you in here for too long. We'll have to try to replicate this a few more times. Think you can thread that needle?"
Bruce's thumb indents. Slightly. Well? You gonna try and knock me over or what?
The news that his stay on earth, as it were, is likely to be limited for right now seems to twinge disappointment, although not too overtly, and it doesn't show up on the monitors besides. It's not just the excuse to bodily roll around with Bruce without fear of harm, although it's not not that.
But what it is is that it's nice. Nice because it's temporary, true, but nice to feel human in a more visceral way than he has before, and not from pain, or mortality. He will need to monitor the situation, but his own prognosis indicates something good about that, a different sort of intimacy.
He twitches at that pressing in of Bruce's thumb, and twists beneath him.
His knee bumps into a pressure point, his rolls his weight, loops an arm around the arm he already has caught. On top of Bruce, half kneeling, a hand pinning him down against the mat. (Flip a coin on whether he is about to get face planted into the mat with his own momentum or not.)
It's incredibly strange. Pushing against Clark has ever been a sensation that is wholly different from pushing against a human body— even when he'd gassed him with kryptonite, there was a sense he was hitting something else. Like trying to crush a stone in your hand and having it go soft instead of shatter. Now, he can feel the way they collide and it's all normal, standard almost-pain, knees against fascia, hands and fingers gripping, the elbow he nearly collides with would just hurt, and not risk crushing his entire ribcage.
Bruce is pinned. He could get out of it. Perhaps Clark can even tell. But this deliberate surrender is about more than not wanting to break Clark's nose; Bruce looks up at him, curious and daring.
"Here," he says, pitched a little lower without thinking. Getting his hand under Clark's, encouraging him into a mirror of their earlier position.
"You don't have to stop."
His wrists won't shatter. His shoulders won't go through the floor. Maybe he'll get a boner and forget about the way he's planning on comically tumbling Clark over his head in a second.
Clark is thinking that if he can get his leg over like that and then pull his weight like this then maybe he could actually lock Bruce down. But Bruce makes his suggestion instead, and that curious look being tipped up at him is mirrored back. You don't have to stop calls out to him, to test the premise.
The stress of the pin lets up, Clark shifting his weight to properly straddle and grip Bruce's hands under his own.
In a reversal of earlier, there's that gentle pressure that finally builds into itself, a little faster now that he's had some time to get a feel for this human thing. Force and then weight as he bears down on Bruce's hands. They've done this before, Clark over him, effortlessly bending Bruce's arms down against the ground, or the bed, or wherever it is they landed.
Which means they haven't done this before, force and object trembling between the pressure of either, muscles straining.
This is not only alluring on principle, but they'll see if he breaks something. Stress testing.
It's fine.
Bruce does not go effortlessly. For a while he can push up, keeping Clark suspended in a battle between gravity and his own strength, but the angle makes him concede or strain past good sense. Clark will have to work to get his wrists against the ground, though, and Bruce shifts one knee like he's threatening to throw him. Doesn't follow through. Yet.
"It can be satisfying," he says, breath a little thin from strain, "pushing so hard it burns."
Definitely a concept they know about, intimately, in themselves and each other; he's verbalizing purely to watch Clark's eyes as he listens.
He is sure Bruce is cheating. Clark hasn't worked out how, just yet.
There is a minute shift in his positioning like he intends to counter that knee, but it doesn't get anywhere, all his focus directed into this one thing. Bad habits, leaving himself open. Tempting to bear down on one side, but also seems like he'd deserve to get thrown if he sacrificed his own balance that badly, and instead Clark stays put, so there's that.
He'd been watching Bruce's face already but in a less directed way, eye contact then snapping into place accordingly. How are you talking, first of all.
Lot of key words in that sentence, second of all.
"I missed it," he says, instead, not easily. Rare, that they—that he—will point directly to their fight, mostly because they don't always have to, but also because it's still weighted in his mind, dangerous, edged.
Next time, when Bruce is speaking so stilted and strange in his armor, Clark will perhaps understand the twofold reason of the voice modulator. One, anonymity. Two, it takes the embarrassing edge off of gasping for breath after extreme exertion and just sounds spooky. Wheezing not very intimidating.
Anyway. This is not extreme exertion. Sorry, Clark.
Bruce moves a little beneath him, but it's nothing more than re-settling his weight. Flexing his shoulders. Grounding himself a little better, in the event he flips the other man. And illustrating how close he is, how trapped, and yet how still dangerous. If he pushes now, it won't be a matter of trusting Clark to move and prevent Bruce from hurting himself. It'll just be a fight.
Will diplomacy work? Can he talk Bruce into a collapse? Is he actually going to give up? Wait—
That prospect seems to enter his brain as sharp and sudden as an exclamation point. Sure, he imagined being overpowered, imagined losing, has in fact lost before, but that's different to making the concerted decision that you just can't do the thing you're trying to do. That he literally isn't strong enough. (A gasp of laughter, here.)
Which makes sense, obviously. Both of them are physically ridiculous, but Bruce has an edge, is used to his own limitations, is a gigantic person. He had said, you don't have to stop, but not that he won't need to.
Slowly, Bruce feels that pressure start to lessen, Clark careful not to take his foot off the gas too fast.
Oh my god, and Bruce smiles, unable to stop himself. It's a little bit edged, because that's just who he is, but mostly it's warm, and nearly a laugh. Clark is so fucking charming, he almost can't stand it. Somewhere occasionally infuriating. The Bat is dead, and Bruce had tried very hard not to let it filter into the more embarrassing dreams, and then he's just some dopey farmboy—
He lets Clark back off by degrees, breathes deep. When he's almost there, just on the cusp of being able to sit up, Bruce moves.
Push. Both hands, forcing Clark back, and he'll either right himself on his knees or topple. Should be knees, if he remembers anything at all from the painstaking lessons. Either way, Bruce gets hands on his shoulders, fisted into his shirt, hauling him practically onto his own lap. A funny not-pin, but somehow, it seems like Bruce still has leverage. He shifts one hand forward from shoulder to neck, against his pulse. Checking in. Awfully close.
"We're going to shut it down for now," is what he says, instead of doing something stupid. "And you'll need to wear a monitor for 24 hours." Don't worry, it's just a sticker. Bruce is good at this.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
not ordinary. Never that.
"Tell me if you start to feel anxious about it," Bruce says. "And keep in mind I'll be pissed off if you don't."
Don't suck it up. Actually say something. Ok? Ok. He nods at the mat. "Lay down on your back."
Bruce is almost smiling.
no subject
But the almost smiling is mirrored, and he moves across the room and towards the mat. Practice will make perfect, maybe, with the not overthinking thing, but for now there's quite a bit of thought that goes into going from standing to lying down. Not so bad. He spent most of his adult life unaware of his ability to control his own gravitational force. Something about the knowing, though.
Anyway, he's down, stretching out onto his back. A little anxiety never harmed anybody, right, and maybe that's what he ought to be feeling, but what he is feeling is curious. If he didn't completely trust Bruce, he's not sure they'd have gotten to this point.
Their loved ones would think they are so stupid, if they knew the half of it.
"What about if I feel weird about it."
So flat as to be indistinguishable as a joke, if Bruce didn't already know better.
no subject
Do you want me to stop?
Veering a bit into the 'games we shouldn't be playing' lane, but there's a method to Bruce's reckless madness, here, as there so often is. He waits, leaving Clark there for a while as he gets used to the way gravity pulls him down to the floor and keeps him horizontal, knowing that he'll be feeling new heaviness, intangible elastic bands pulling his spine, his knees, his elbows, the back of his head. Letting him straighten out every vertebrae against the lightly padded floor. Find the least uncomfortable angle for the back of his skull to rest. He's got enough muscle, superpowers or no superpowers, that he shouldn't feel much in the way of a bite from a hipbone.
Bruce is careful when he walks over, cognizant of the way sound will be different. He kneels down next to Clark, and then, perhaps unsurprisingly, straddles his hips.
Hi.
No weight on him. Hovering there over him. Bruce raises his hands, posture obvious, though he says, "Give me yours."
Once their hands are linked, Clark's shoulders still on the ground, Bruce pushes lightly.
At first.
"Resist me."
no subject
There are worse times to flirt. Clark thinks so.
Fingers lace with Bruce's like they've done countless times before. That had always been something to think about. It's embarrassing the amount of times he's flipped a sink tap around to run the water hot only to snap the whole thing off, even if most of that was left behind in clumsy adolescence. Only left behind because he became cognizant to the potential, though.
Now, Clark tests it, squeezing their hands rather than doing what Bruce says, immediately. It's very tentative, that much Bruce can tell, as if still doubting that strength has left him even if he has the distinct impression of being invisibly pressed to the surface of the earth as inexorably as a butterfly pinned to a board.
That grasp relaxes, and he applies pressure to Bruce's hands. Like that squeeze, it's almost comically gentle, and then more force is slowly applied, until Bruce can feel proper effort applied through muscle and joint, Clark's expression the picture of focus.
no subject
Once Clark is putting in effort, Bruce stops holding himself, and starts pushing down. Clark will have to start straining to keep himself from being flattened - there might even be a swoop of sudden unease, a previously absent lizard-brain response to a potential incoming collision. Though of course Bruce is fully capable of pausing no matter how forward tilted he becomes.
Pressure from his hands, through his wrists, stressing elbows and rotator cuffs, making shoulders and biceps tired. He'll feel it through his upper back, and shoulder blades. Even if they were evenly matched pound-for-pound and in applicable experience, Bruce has enough leverage in this position to pin him, if he really presses down.
"Breathe," is a reminder, only faintly amused.
no subject
This is bone and tendon and muscle and blood. It doesn't make sense that he should feel Bruce's weight and strength pressing down on his hands in, say, his lower back, but he does. Heels dig into mat. That he is reminded to breathe is timely, because he had forgotten for a hot second.
"Uh huh," he says, a smile cutting sharp across his face, a laugh at the edge of newly returned breathing.
And because he had tested his newfound superpowers that one time by almost flinging himself off the whole earth, Clark tests newfound weakness by suddenly doubling his effort, a meaningful attempt to shove Bruce up, powering against that odd burn lashed through muscle.
no subject
For a second he's pushed up, feeling the force of Clark's effort, practically balanced against his hands, a funny insect pose between the two of them. Elbows doing things. And then he pushes back, steady but hard, unfettered by heavy armor or the need to keep his own momentum going to leap off the next ledge. His considerable strength focused down to just Clark, the way his considerable attention is so often focused down to just Clark.
He feels the same burn, the same strain in this joint and that. A prickly twinge in his spine where the worst of the damage was repaired, years ago. But he always feels those things, and so he doesn't really notice them, and they don't have any impact in how he directs his weight.
"Think you can throw me off?"
no subject
This after a completely genuine hrrgh when Bruce bore back down. The odd wobble of his hands beneath it could almost spark the anxiety that Bruce warned him about if not for the fact he—does not feel it, feeling too many other things, like an odd splash of giddiness, of adrenaline.
After he says 'oh yeah, totally', literally nothing happens but what feels like to Bruce the same amount of pressure bearing back up at him. Clark's head falls back down against the mat with another breathless laugh—yes, an attempt had been made—before he collects himself again.
He just needs an angle. (Story of his life.)
And so there's a twist, strength thrown into his right side in an attempt to off-balance Bruce and fling him in the other direction. There is none of the training they've attempted, there doesn't feel like there's room for that at all, just brute strength or an attempt at it.
no subject
Oh, that was the attempt. Bruce helpfully shifts back the other way, like a well-meaning and well-trained pet dog doing the trick on a delay.
"Get your foot under my shin," he instructs, trying very hard not to laugh. "There. Shift your shoulders the other way. Push."
no subject
This is nothing. This is—
"If you laugh," is a hanging threat, anyway. He sees you, Wayne.
Clark slips foot under shin as instructed, takes a short breath, and heaves again.
no subject
This time, Bruce is forced to move - or really fight back, and that's not what they're doing - shifting off of Clark and back on his heels beside him, pausing while he watches to see if the younger man will follow it through with an attempt at his own pin or not. Clark is still strong, he can tell; of course he would be, built the way he is. Brown eyes check in on the vitals screens, and then he's back to focusing on Clark. Eyebrows quirk.
"That was almost like something I showed you once."
inb4 tackle
no subject
Right now, he's feeling the way that initial burn of exhaustion has left him. He is still strong, if we're grading on a curve here. Human-strong, and not—nerfed-alien, which is different, he thinks.
He rolls a look at Bruce just as he says that, already speculative, already ready.
That self-conscious care he'd demonstrated initially, that guarding against clumsiness, is apparently gone as he rolls, getting a knee beneath himself to lever off and tackle Bruce back down to the mat. It is not as graceful as the times he's followed such motions through when they train, like gravity is a shackle he's getting used to as opposed to pretending he has to consider, but the weight of him slamming into Bruce feels very human.
And solid, and also locked an arm up under Bruce's to lever him back into a pin.
no subject
Which becomes: half a lesson, half messing around, reminiscent both of sparring in the practice room at the lake house and shoving each other around in bed. Bruce gets him a little too hard and has him land with his own hand behind Clark's head, not wanting to give him a concussion, even though it means they end up hilariously tangled together on the floor for no good reason.
Bruce squeezes his side, barely below his ribcage, thumb pressing into the would-be-soft tummy area if not for his thirty-pack, or whatever it is, which is still very Man of Steel even without the powers. A ticklish zone. Threatening.
no subject
Clark has his own balancing act to do, not dissimilar to Bruce's. Sure, he isn't at typical Kryptonian brute force now, and sure, he is wrestling Batman who could probably do about twenty different things at every given pin attempt, but he's still formidable, and he doesn't quite know how much yet.
And so this kind of playfighting is probably reminiscent of interacting with an adolescent Doberman who isn't sold on not being a puppy. More prone to hurting itself, probably, but could leave a bruise when not paying attention.
But here, in this tangle, he reaches up and back to find where Bruce slipped his hand beneath his head, and before he can ease it away, Clark keeps it there, which keeps them close. His eyes are bright, and he hasn't quite stopped smiling since that first broke. Breathing harder, too, when normally that tends to only happen for feelings reasons.
"You're holding back," is not an accusation, but only because it's a fact. And a taunt.
no subject
A man confident he could wipe the floor with this cornfed, albeit shredded, dweeb. He's not pressed close to Clark despite how close they are, holding himself just so above him; his shirt touches the younger man's in places, but no pressure from body to body. Impressive core strength.
"You've never felt that before, have you."
From me.
A taunt right back, though there's some recon in it, too. He is watching Clark very closely, and part of his attention is ever on the monitors.
no subject
Training like this being, he expects, a balancing act, where they could never actually match one another so much as go through motions. Any holding back on Bruce's part would have been more to avoid injuring himself on Clark, or preventing Clark from accidentally doing so himself.
And then there was that one time. He glances when he spies Bruce checking the monitors, and says, "Prognosis, doctor?"
He's not quite used to this enough to be impressed by incredible feats of core strength or appreciate that they are even happening, although maybe through subtle adjustments of his posture, Bruce might be able to tell he's taking his time in lining up a counterstrike.
no subject
Bruce doesn't move, and he lets his eyeline stay on the monitors. Pointedly, the hand in that threatening tickle location stays there, his touch almost light; prepped for immediate movability, if needed. Ominous. There is the matter of knees, and of course the hand behind Clark's head, and how close they are.
"I don't want to keep you in here for too long. We'll have to try to replicate this a few more times. Think you can thread that needle?"
Bruce's thumb indents. Slightly. Well? You gonna try and knock me over or what?
no subject
But what it is is that it's nice. Nice because it's temporary, true, but nice to feel human in a more visceral way than he has before, and not from pain, or mortality. He will need to monitor the situation, but his own prognosis indicates something good about that, a different sort of intimacy.
He twitches at that pressing in of Bruce's thumb, and twists beneath him.
His knee bumps into a pressure point, his rolls his weight, loops an arm around the arm he already has caught. On top of Bruce, half kneeling, a hand pinning him down against the mat. (Flip a coin on whether he is about to get face planted into the mat with his own momentum or not.)
no subject
Bruce is pinned. He could get out of it. Perhaps Clark can even tell. But this deliberate surrender is about more than not wanting to break Clark's nose; Bruce looks up at him, curious and daring.
"Here," he says, pitched a little lower without thinking. Getting his hand under Clark's, encouraging him into a mirror of their earlier position.
"You don't have to stop."
His wrists won't shatter. His shoulders won't go through the floor. Maybe he'll get a boner and forget about the way he's planning on comically tumbling Clark over his head in a second.
no subject
The stress of the pin lets up, Clark shifting his weight to properly straddle and grip Bruce's hands under his own.
In a reversal of earlier, there's that gentle pressure that finally builds into itself, a little faster now that he's had some time to get a feel for this human thing. Force and then weight as he bears down on Bruce's hands. They've done this before, Clark over him, effortlessly bending Bruce's arms down against the ground, or the bed, or wherever it is they landed.
Which means they haven't done this before, force and object trembling between the pressure of either, muscles straining.
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It's fine.
Bruce does not go effortlessly. For a while he can push up, keeping Clark suspended in a battle between gravity and his own strength, but the angle makes him concede or strain past good sense. Clark will have to work to get his wrists against the ground, though, and Bruce shifts one knee like he's threatening to throw him. Doesn't follow through. Yet.
"It can be satisfying," he says, breath a little thin from strain, "pushing so hard it burns."
Definitely a concept they know about, intimately, in themselves and each other; he's verbalizing purely to watch Clark's eyes as he listens.
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There is a minute shift in his positioning like he intends to counter that knee, but it doesn't get anywhere, all his focus directed into this one thing. Bad habits, leaving himself open. Tempting to bear down on one side, but also seems like he'd deserve to get thrown if he sacrificed his own balance that badly, and instead Clark stays put, so there's that.
He'd been watching Bruce's face already but in a less directed way, eye contact then snapping into place accordingly. How are you talking, first of all.
Lot of key words in that sentence, second of all.
"I missed it," he says, instead, not easily. Rare, that they—that he—will point directly to their fight, mostly because they don't always have to, but also because it's still weighted in his mind, dangerous, edged.
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Anyway. This is not extreme exertion. Sorry, Clark.
Bruce moves a little beneath him, but it's nothing more than re-settling his weight. Flexing his shoulders. Grounding himself a little better, in the event he flips the other man. And illustrating how close he is, how trapped, and yet how still dangerous. If he pushes now, it won't be a matter of trusting Clark to move and prevent Bruce from hurting himself. It'll just be a fight.
"I know."
You'll have to trust me more than that.
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Just, in general.
Will diplomacy work? Can he talk Bruce into a collapse? Is he actually going to give up? Wait—
That prospect seems to enter his brain as sharp and sudden as an exclamation point. Sure, he imagined being overpowered, imagined losing, has in fact lost before, but that's different to making the concerted decision that you just can't do the thing you're trying to do. That he literally isn't strong enough. (A gasp of laughter, here.)
Which makes sense, obviously. Both of them are physically ridiculous, but Bruce has an edge, is used to his own limitations, is a gigantic person. He had said, you don't have to stop, but not that he won't need to.
Slowly, Bruce feels that pressure start to lessen, Clark careful not to take his foot off the gas too fast.
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He lets Clark back off by degrees, breathes deep. When he's almost there, just on the cusp of being able to sit up, Bruce moves.
Push. Both hands, forcing Clark back, and he'll either right himself on his knees or topple. Should be knees, if he remembers anything at all from the painstaking lessons. Either way, Bruce gets hands on his shoulders, fisted into his shirt, hauling him practically onto his own lap. A funny not-pin, but somehow, it seems like Bruce still has leverage. He shifts one hand forward from shoulder to neck, against his pulse. Checking in. Awfully close.
"We're going to shut it down for now," is what he says, instead of doing something stupid. "And you'll need to wear a monitor for 24 hours." Don't worry, it's just a sticker. Bruce is good at this.
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