"Mmm." A sound that could be anything, but is probably vague exasperation at being in a position to be busted making out by anybody's mother. And yet he's still here, tracking over snow-covered flatland ground, out here in the plains-- out here in the middle of fucking nowhere.
"Does she?" wry edge more audible, this time. "She's very close to your fiance, I wondered if that might be a perceived issue."
Bruce glances at him, reaches out to touch the back of his elbow, briefly.
"Just so you know: I've been operating under the assumption that Lois is fine with it, since I think the list of things you'd rather do before hurting her could giftwrap the Earth."
No expectation of this being an illicit affair, no demand that Clark leave her. It is what it is - or at least, Bruce hopes so. Maybe it will actually be a problem, and he's misjudged; it's worth it to watch him for a reaction, probably, but Bruce believes with the wild, blind faith of a man convinced of his ability to resurrect an alien that Clark isn't - won't be - a jerk about his love life.
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."
That does something to Bruce's insides. Goddamnit.
"I..."
Mm, words, man. Bruce shrugs, but it's more like he's just loosening his shoulders, rolling them. Sifting through his head for what to say.
"I have nothing but bad advice, considering Alfred just thinks I'm a trainwreck and wishes I'd stop and get married." His tone is sympathetic. He is a trainwreck. Keep that in mind, Kent. "But I've always been--" A pause. "Open, I suppose. Maybe it's because of how I live, but I think I'd have been like this regardless."
Like this, like that aforementioned trainweck. But it means he's fine with Clark and Lois, whatever form they take - and it's not even a case of having to be, which he thinks should be strange, but it isn't. He's too old not to know himself in at least one or two ways, and this is one. His feelings for Clark are a whole other order of thing, but at least he's confident in open relationships and polyagony. Excuse me, polyamory.
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.
What did he think Clark was going to say? No? Clark's taken him into his home, he hasn't been ashamed of his mother seeing, even before he has an explanation to give her. And still, Bruce's pulse does-- that funny thing it does, when Clark makes him feel a certain way.
He exhales, steam rising from him.
"Yeah."
(Are you?)
Bruce looks at him, expression serious, and a little shuttered in a way that means he's feeling vulnerable but doesn't want to look it. (Would probably be an easier sell on someone else.) "You don't-- have to be. Yet. I know it's a lot and it's not fair, strictly, to be expected to be serious after twelve hours, but people will expect that because of all the factors involved and-- I'm just. I need you to understand how not good at this I will be. And that no matter what expectations might be put onto us from anyone watching, from me, I'm fine with-- you."
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.)
It's Christmas like that solves everything, puts soft snowy blanket over every sharp edge and complication. That despite knowing each other in a few truly incredible, intimate ways, they do not really know each other at all, that their respective families are going to struggle to process it, that if they are to be teammates and co-workers at the most insane profession in the universe this could enormously, problematically complicate things, that Bruce is so difficult and has hurt Clark so badly already--
Maybe it does solve it. At least just for now. Bruce stayed. He can't have stayed just to dig his heels in and pull away. Right?
Bruce should know better, with his hard-won isolated privacy and his constant awareness of ending up in tabloids, but pulling away from Clark is an impossibility. Clark kissing him upends the whole world, shuts everything else away so that it's just the two of them out here in the snow. It might as well be, for how deserted this little town is. His hands find the younger man's sides and he holds him, returns that kiss, doesn't pull away.
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.
Clark would probably have some kind of midwestern platitude about that; things moving on, lessons being learned, or-- something, and Bruce is projecting. Bruce, who should be the one with the willpower to stop this, or have never begun. He reminds himself that he made the first move. Because he wanted to. Wanted to so goddamn badly, and he still wants to. So much that he's sure he can't stop.
I'm sorry that I'm not a better person, he needs to say.
Instead:
"You aren't supposed to peek at Christmas presents." Vaguely affronted. That was sheer, unadulterated trust he showed you by not putting those in lead paper, Clark.
"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.
Yes, it's a bad habit, but not in the same circle of hell as any of Bruce's bad habits. A charming quirk, even, without comparison to anything else. He tastes like-- like somebody's stupid mouth, and a little like snow, now.
Sometimes he allows cold logic to tell him that had he not made the kryptonite weapons, Doomsday would never have been able to be stopped. That had he never gotten involved, or had he been more utilitarian about his suicidal intent, there would have been no one to resurrect Superman. What a world.
Crunch, crunch, weather underfoot. Gotham is beautiful in the snow, too. He wonders if Clark would like it.
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"Does she?" wry edge more audible, this time. "She's very close to your fiance, I wondered if that might be a perceived issue."
Bruce glances at him, reaches out to touch the back of his elbow, briefly.
"Just so you know: I've been operating under the assumption that Lois is fine with it, since I think the list of things you'd rather do before hurting her could giftwrap the Earth."
No expectation of this being an illicit affair, no demand that Clark leave her. It is what it is - or at least, Bruce hopes so. Maybe it will actually be a problem, and he's misjudged; it's worth it to watch him for a reaction, probably, but Bruce believes with the wild, blind faith of a man convinced of his ability to resurrect an alien that Clark isn't - won't be - a jerk about his love life.
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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."
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That does something to Bruce's insides. Goddamnit.
"I..."
Mm, words, man. Bruce shrugs, but it's more like he's just loosening his shoulders, rolling them. Sifting through his head for what to say.
"I have nothing but bad advice, considering Alfred just thinks I'm a trainwreck and wishes I'd stop and get married." His tone is sympathetic. He is a trainwreck. Keep that in mind, Kent. "But I've always been--" A pause. "Open, I suppose. Maybe it's because of how I live, but I think I'd have been like this regardless."
Like this, like that aforementioned trainweck. But it means he's fine with Clark and Lois, whatever form they take - and it's not even a case of having to be, which he thinks should be strange, but it isn't. He's too old not to know himself in at least one or two ways, and this is one. His feelings for Clark are a whole other order of thing, but at least he's confident in open relationships and polyagony. Excuse me, polyamory.
"So are we. Serious. About this."
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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.
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He exhales, steam rising from him.
"Yeah."
(Are you?)
Bruce looks at him, expression serious, and a little shuttered in a way that means he's feeling vulnerable but doesn't want to look it. (Would probably be an easier sell on someone else.) "You don't-- have to be. Yet. I know it's a lot and it's not fair, strictly, to be expected to be serious after twelve hours, but people will expect that because of all the factors involved and-- I'm just. I need you to understand how not good at this I will be. And that no matter what expectations might be put onto us from anyone watching, from me, I'm fine with-- you."
Right, so.
"I sound crazy."
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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.)
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Maybe it does solve it. At least just for now. Bruce stayed. He can't have stayed just to dig his heels in and pull away. Right?
Bruce should know better, with his hard-won isolated privacy and his constant awareness of ending up in tabloids, but pulling away from Clark is an impossibility. Clark kissing him upends the whole world, shuts everything else away so that it's just the two of them out here in the snow. It might as well be, for how deserted this little town is. His hands find the younger man's sides and he holds him, returns that kiss, doesn't pull away.
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"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.
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Clark would probably have some kind of midwestern platitude about that; things moving on, lessons being learned, or-- something, and Bruce is projecting. Bruce, who should be the one with the willpower to stop this, or have never begun. He reminds himself that he made the first move. Because he wanted to. Wanted to so goddamn badly, and he still wants to. So much that he's sure he can't stop.
I'm sorry that I'm not a better person, he needs to say.
Instead:
"You aren't supposed to peek at Christmas presents." Vaguely affronted. That was sheer, unadulterated trust he showed you by not putting those in lead paper, Clark.
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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.
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Yes, it's a bad habit, but not in the same circle of hell as any of Bruce's bad habits. A charming quirk, even, without comparison to anything else. He tastes like-- like somebody's stupid mouth, and a little like snow, now.
Sometimes he allows cold logic to tell him that had he not made the kryptonite weapons, Doomsday would never have been able to be stopped. That had he never gotten involved, or had he been more utilitarian about his suicidal intent, there would have been no one to resurrect Superman. What a world.
Crunch, crunch, weather underfoot. Gotham is beautiful in the snow, too. He wonders if Clark would like it.
Where are they going? Bruce has no fucking idea.
Not that it matters. He'd follow him anywhere.