solarcore: (#11893084)

[personal profile] solarcore 2017-12-27 05:16 am (UTC)(link)
A huff of a laugh, just a breath, steam striking the air. "Yeah. She's fine with it."

Clark stops, considers. It's not complicated, and Bruce sort of makes it seem easy, as easy as reaching across and kissing Clark that first time seemed so easy. Lois, too, had put everything in very simple terms. When he stayed the the night the first time, when he'd come back, when he'd proposed, and what their future would be.

He needs to call her, too. A couple of Christmas texts aren't gonna cut it.

"We talked about other people, before. And after, too, when I came back. And I talked about you," is said like perhaps he had decided against saying that in the first sentence, and then changed his mind, and said it anyway. Qualifies it with; "Kinda.

"It'll be the first thing mom asks about. Lo, and me."
solarcore: (#11916687)

[personal profile] solarcore 2017-12-27 07:11 am (UTC)(link)
Stop and getting married. Continue and get married. Martha is someone who does not have to understand to accept something, to love someone; else Clark's upbringing would have worked out differently. But Clark knows how much she likes Lois, roping her into a part of the family sphere, and maybe Lo's heart by now is as important to her as Clark's.

Maybe reassuring that no one's getting hurt is what matters. And yes, eventually--

Clark doesn't have time to graduate from that thought to the next, of openness, before Bruce says this last thing. Fortunate, because he's not sure what thoughts he has about it, except that so long as the people he loves are happy and love him back, that should be fine, right? Maybe that's too good to be true.

But no time to test that, because Bruce says this last thing, haltingly, into the cold air. His heart does a thing, a lift inside of him, even if 'this' seems so nebulous and undefined still, but maybe they can make it solid together. Give it shape and sense. Clark steps around to be in front, a hand touching the inside of Bruce's arm, pausing them properly.

"I am," he offers. The are you? is on the tip of his tongue, and forgotten.
solarcore: (clark2)

[personal profile] solarcore 2017-12-27 09:26 am (UTC)(link)
This is what he meant. About charm being a common misconception. But it's certainly within the eye of the beholder.

Just on the tail of the word crazy, Clark's hand comes up, touches Bruce's face gently, thumb resting next to his mouth. "I don't care about the fine print," he says, serious eyebrows, smile still present at the corners of his mouth. Shh, in other words. That's as far as he can tell of what factors means, and anyone else, and expectations: details. "It's Christmas."

And if you think about it, it takes a lot of audacity to put on a cape and be a hero, let alone enter into unorthodox relationships without much in the way of notice, or kiss people on the street.

Which Clark does, this last thing, with enough cues telegraphed in eye contact and pause that Bruce can back up out of it before mouths touch, if his mom's house was fine but an open, if empty, wintry street in Kansas is not. (God only knows, Smallville's kept bigger secrets.)
solarcore: <user name="oslo" site="insanejournal.com"> (135)

[personal profile] solarcore 2017-12-28 12:29 am (UTC)(link)
As a big city journalist whom Perry delighted in giving bullshit stories ever since he was brought on fulltime and is probably Superman, Clark has no excuse either, and yet, here we are. Being serious, gently, under a flat white sky and a sign advertising Christmas trees now sold out. He kisses Bruce's mouth, shallow and then just a little deeper, and then against his cheek, his jaw, other hand hanging onto coat, before pulling back again.

"I hear you," he promises, in close proximity. "And it's okay."

Bruce doesn't have to be good at anything, as far as Clark cares. As long as he's this, and they can be this together. At the back of his mind: hadn't Lois worried, too? In different ways, with different concerns, but it's always the other person who worries.

('Always', like he's had this experience more than twice. But it 'always' ends the same, kissing it away, loving it to irrelevance.)

He pulls himself in closer, before letting his grip on Bruce slacken. "Thanks for the presents, by the way. I looked. Sorry." A by now familiar bitey smile. Welcome to this particular world order, Bruce Wayne. Lois hates this too.
solarcore: (#11916683)

[personal profile] solarcore 2017-12-28 09:01 am (UTC)(link)
"I know." His pseudo remorse is more of a wince, like that's just how things go. "Bad habit."

Has to know everything. Like what Bruce got him for Christmas and the number of metal nails hammered into his spine, and the pills he didn't take with him and. On it goes. Clark kisses him again, shallower, briefer, and his mind never even enters the territory that Bruce's does. That it should not be okay.

Bruce brought him back. Bruce was manipulated. Bruce knows these things, besides, but maybe one is just evening the score and the other is unacceptable. They'll find out.

Not on Christmas.

Clark's hand finds Bruce's, pulling him along in the path they were headed. He doesn't keep that hand, but only after a lingering tangle of fingers.