A friendly drunk, at that, and at least somewhat accommodating which is good, given givens, while still being difficult to wrangle even then, given even more givens. At least he hasn't tried to hug Alfred. Asked him if he misses England, it seems nice there. Once he rescued a people from an England building, on fire. That wasn't nice. What are you sticking on me.
Bruce Wayne, though--
Well, first he gets the sunniest of smiles, hazy eyed. Hand on the shoulder apparently translates as a signal to open his arms -- electrodes and wires ignored, ruining Alfred's efforts -- and list inwards where he's perched to pull him into a hug. Heroic chin bumps against a shoulder.
"I can'get drunk Alfred," sounds -- in tone and content -- like something a drunk person might say, admonishing, assuring. "I'm fine. Your car beeped at me but I didn't mean to."
Alfred's gaze on his ward is immediately accusatory at the way Clark reaches out to him. (He'll get used to it-- it's not that Clark is a man, not even that the situation is unorthodox, he just worries. About everyone, but especially Bruce, and it's easier to appear generally disapproving than admit he's afraid Superman will break his alcoholic disaster child's heart.)
Despite that look, one arm slips around Clark's back, holding him up and close. There is something in Bruce's chest that's still trembling, thinking about Clark being dead or permanently damaged. Because of me. Because he dove in there trying to help me. If we weren't-- he wouldn't have.
"It's okay," he says, of car beeping, and realizes just how fast his heart's beating. Relief hasn't quite taken hold yet, but there's at least a ribbon of it cutting through his anxiety at being in the same room with him, at being able to touch him. He reaches out and tilts a readout screen to an angle that permits him to read it.
"Depressed behavioral inhibitory center in the cerebral cortex," he's murmuring, "Lowered glutamate, stimulated hypoth-- uh."
Vaguely accusatory as much as approving, and conventionally untrue, given no one can possibly smell fantastic post vigilante superheroism, and yet, there remains the faint traces of cologne and aftershave molecules, and probably some vaguely fanfiction notion of whatever registers as uniquely Bruce to supersenses. This observation is made from where Clark has comfortably tucked his head against Bruce's shoulder, the world spinning while Bruce remains solidly reliable, unmoving, holding him. Hug has turned into cling.
He will 100% die when he remembers/is told about stating this observation in front of Alfred Pennyworth, so that's something to look forward to.
"In soph'more I drank this whole thing of vodka as a dare and e'ryone kept expecting I get sick or drunk and they said I was cheating and it was water." He lifts his head. "But it wasn't. It was Pete's dad's. I'm drunk?"
Bruce's arm around him is firm, and where his hand curls into side, he occasionally strokes his thumb over unearthly fabric. His shoulder is sturdy, able to hold the weight of Kal of house Drunky easily-- though it's much appreciated he isn't wasted to the point of forgetting his strength, or Bruce would be a pudding of bashed bone and blood on the floor regardless of how nice he smells.
"Chemically, what you're experiencing is like alcohol intoxication," Bruce tells him, and points at the screen. "Obviously we can't take your blood or check how your liver's filtering anything, but as far as the waves in your brain are concerned, 'drunk' is you sorted out, Kansas."
Alfred re-sticks Clark with more electrodes as Bruce continues to explain, his low voice almost comforting as he runs through the whys and whats of the things they can detect happening inside of him with sensors and scanners. During this, Alfred gives them some space, either deciding he's done all he can or that, frankly, he doesn't need to see them canoodling. (The security feed will be plenty.)
"It's because you inhaled a bunch of neurotoxin." Bruce is quieter, now that they're alone. He presses a kiss to the top of Clark's head.
Hard to say how much of this Clark follows, but he is listening, maybe more to the sound of Bruce's voice than the words it's actually saying. Grasping enough, anyway, that he is more helpful than hindrance to electrode placement, and his solid grip on Bruce finally relaxes, even if he keeps his hands on him.
Mouth presses into a line. Neurotoxin. :/
"I threw it," he says, "off the planet."
What else did he do? He saved a guy. He saved Batman. "Did all those people okay? I mean." Now that he is more conscious as to what the fuck, there seems to be a concerted effort to counter it -- at least for whole moments at a time. "We saved them. Bad guys though?"
Bruce had assumed Clark hurled it out of the atmosphere, trusting him enough at this stage to have enough awareness not to just drop an unknown contaminant into the ocean - and is glad he was correct with that assumption; it means the satellite he tasked with finding the container might have results by now. He can plug in an equation and see how long it'll take the toxin to disperse and become inert in a vacuum, and if he has to send nanites up there to clean it up.
A pain, but much less of a pain than being dead from neurotoxin.
"All the hostages survived," Bruce assures him, the hand at his side moving up and down every so often, more to reassure himself than comfort Clark at this stage. He's not normally so plainly affectionate, preferring to keep his touches brief unless they're leading to something else, but the incident's rattled him-- and maybe Clark won't remember very well, when he sobers up.
If he sobers up.
"I took care of the traffickers." A few unconscious, a few bleeding and handcuffed to a pipe, one upside down. Giftwrapped for GCPD; Happy New Year. Bruce lets out a sigh and presses the bridge of his nose against Clark's temple. "You scared the shit out of me. You're still scaring the shit out of me. Please don't do that again. Gotham isn't like Metropolis, Clark, they're just going to get meaner when Superman shows up."
This would suck if it were forever. An eerily valid outcome given the substance involved, but then, his Kryptonian body is a remarkably capable vessel, coming back from (almost) anything given enough time, enough sunlight. Eventually, readings will show a slow rate of improvement, of normalising. For now, the only cure for the fact that the world seems like it might spin off without him at any moment is Bruce.
But drunk's okay. He feels pretty good, in that straight sentences are hard and there is now a glimmer of worry with the science and consequences explained to him, but his blood is warm and Bruce is being sweet to him. He closes his eyes, content, at the feel-sound of Bruce's voice at his ear.
Registers what he's saying, opens his eyes and lifts his head to look at him.
"You," he says, placing his words very deliberately down, pointing, "were in trouble. There were many guns with guys, and I saved you."
Until those readings begin to slip downwards towards normal (and of course Bruce has readings of him at normal) (somehow), he will remain this level of abnormally clingy. Because standing with an arm around his lover, occasionally bumping his nose to his head, counts as clingy (and definitely abnormal), when you're Bruce Wayne.
Moment of silence, considering-- being mad right now is tempting, but he thinks it'd be lost on Clark, or it'd just upset him in a way that would be too unkind, given his mindset.
"You did save me."
Technically. From the thing that came after, not from anything that he swooped into stop. Well, probably. Bruce has dealt with armed men (many guns with guys) en mass before, and come out the victor. Barring something completely insane happening, he's sure he would have tonight, too. He's going to have to talk to Clark about it, and seriously; intervening in shitty gunfights in Gotham between thugs and figment of the city's imagination isn't going to trigger any senate hearings - and it's important that divide remain.
That would absolutely not have flown with a sober Clark Kent, who must by now be getting used to wading through Bruce's fronts, knowing what lies behind them. It flies for this Clark, who leans into him again, content as a labrador who's been well walked and getting petted for his efforts. Frisbees caught, sticks fetched, bats rescued.
"I heard your heart," he says, like that's a normal thing to say. His fingertips touch over where that heart is, the body's busiest little muscle, twitching tirelessly. His hand is warm, flattening there. "Had to see what it was doing."
"Do you normally hear my heart?" is gently (and genuinely) curious. Bruce shifts so that he can half-sit on the bed beside Clark, resigned to camping out until those readouts tell him something good, at least.
Of course he's well aware how much Clark can hear, is aware that he keeps close tabs on Lois Lane, with her lifestyle of constant danger, and since Luthor's meddling, his mother. It's just never occurred to him that Clark might be listening in on him, at least not remotely. While they're with it each other, it always seemed like a given.
Bruce sits down and Clark leans all the more. Distantly, he is aware that maybe he said something that he'd subconsciously been keeping in check -- not out of a desire to be secretive so much as it's never his first instinct to make people uncomfortable with the sheer amount of things he can do. But he isn't fully focused on all that.
Bruce is asking him so gently. "Normally," he says. "Normally and I don't always notice it, 'til I notice it. Heart, and." He gestures, loosely. And other things. But the heart is the first thing, the thing that can't be helped.
"Ss'how I knew you liked me after all," is added, with a broad grin, pushing into the lean. Eyy.
For a moment, no response, as Bruce considers the full implications of this, his hand still moving rhythmically against Clark's side. It should infuriate him - it's an invasion of privacy far beyond just listening when he's in the same room with him, it means Clark has him so memorized that his biometrics are standard background noise. Normalized to the point where drastic changes are immediately noticeable, even when Clark is hundreds of miles away. It means he was listening even before they engaged each other in-- whatever it is they've been doing. At least a little. Enough to recognize his pulse picking up out of flushed interest.
What he feels is not anger at all, and he has to be very careful not to let his heart rate tick up as he thinks about it. Unhelpful.
This is ... a bad thing to be slightly turned on by. And unlike him. But it feels like reaching out and being reached back to, it feels like reciprocation of something just a little bit shameful, that Bruce knows he shouldn't be doing and yet finds himself unable to stop. Does Clark feel the same way?
"I like to look out for you, too," is what he says after a while, his voice a low rumble next to his cheek. Which Clark probably knows already. Satellites aren't sneaky.
See? Bruce gets it. There will be time enough for Clark to actually consider the proper ramifications of this accidental confession, what it means in return, and what it says about them as people. This strange, mutual intensity, this fascination, how quickly Bruce went from someone who was abhorrent to Clark in every way -- the 1%, justice that punched down, that wielded his personal power to create terror instead of hope -- to someone he flies cross-country to try to protect.
Right now, of course, nothing seems very strange. Of course they want to look out for one another. They are team mates, and more than just that.
"I like that you like to look out for me too," Clark says, a little too accurately, though he seems pleased with himself for all those words happening in order, with syllables only bumping together a little bit with a slur. Mainly because he's murmuring it, in the quiet space they've created together. "S'nice." Nailed it.
Following what he considers to be the natural order of things, he turns enough to meet Bruce in a kiss. Something electronic beeps at them as readings adjust. Getting closer to normal.
Well. If Clark never lives down admitting that he listens so closely, he will also never escape admitting he likes that Bruce keeps such an obsessive watch. So there's that.
And--
Some flicker of thought occurs to Bruce that it's inappropriate to put the moves on a drunk person, but his self-control with Clark is an anemic thing at best. He presses into that kiss, light, and then something beeps. Bruce raises his head and leans forward, curling his arm more securely around Clark as he does so that the Kryptonian doesn't sway or float off anywhere. Free hand holding the edge of the monitor, he makes a 'mm' noise that sounds pleased.
"Good," he says, then dips his head back down to capture Clark's mouth in a proper kiss.
Bruce kisses a dreamy smile, which will be a feature between them, and Clark is not so drunk that he isn't ready to receive it, a hand flattened to Bruce's chest. "Y'know," he says, mumbled into kiss, "drunk's not so bad. Gotta," kiss, to the corner of Bruce's mouth, "maybe get some more've that," his jaw, his throat, "neurotoxin stuff, jus'in case."
Maybe that comment is Too Soon, but he's drunk, not stupid, albeit there is a fine line, a line enough to recognise that beep for what it is.
"Broosh," he says. Then fixes that with a more sibilant, "-Ce. Bruce. I, uh."
He stops, brow crinkling, as if some thought has caught his attention but voicing it is eluding him.
Yes, that's Too Soon, and Bruce's small growl against his mouth punctuates that fact. (Wasn't kidding, about how scared he'd been, still is to some degree-- how he's kissing Clark now is a show of restraint, because he wants it to be rougher, wants to hold him viciously close and feel how alive he is--)
He switches modes so fast between affectionate and distantly professional it's almost dizzying, pulling back and leaving just a bracing hand at his side.
Guilt pants him. He'd just been telling himself not to do this, wasn't he? You're an asshole, Wayne. His attention, fixated on Clark, can't help but skitter briefly to the readouts, paranoid.
Slurred speech, lowered inhibitions, and perhaps a more emphatic emotional response than what he is used to. The sudden physical absence doesn't quite help, only sharpening the keenly felt surge of want that all at once felt very important to try to describe before vanishing from his vocabulary.
A little oblivious to whatever is going on with Bruce right now, Clark reaches out again, a sort of pawing touch to face, throat.
"I dunno," is his brilliant response. "Nothing. I'm okay."
Heart beats. He leans in, gracelessly, for more kissing, despite that distance.
Nervous raccoon hands. Bruce holds him more securely again, returns his kiss, but with much more care. Trying to think about tipsy first-timers instead of his own tried and true routines. He nuzzles close, winds his arms around him, protective. Resists the urge to ask Are you sure you're all right, sweetheart? for eight hundred million reasons, but mostly because he's sure Clark has no idea if he's all right or not.
Heart beats. Soft kisses. Why is everything that happens to you my fault?
Bruce is so gentle with him as he comes down from everything, definitely more in control of himself after that stop-start moment. He's nervous still even when the readings even out and Clark's left simply tired, too nervous to allow him to take a shower for fear of temperature changes impacting his blood pressure, instead simply herding him to bed. Bruce's. He leaves the glass clear instead of setting the dimmers, so that when the sun rises, it'll find Clark right away.
Sleep is for people who aren't paranoid over their drunk alien boyfriends.
And Clark sleeps deeply, when sleep does find him.
Wakes up, and, wholly unfairly, feels perfectly fine. Sort of. There's no violent hangover to contend with, and the strange sleepiness that had captured him towards the end has been siphoned off through rest. Maybe a little like not every cobweb has been cleared out of the corners of his mind, but most of them. Less and less, as he elbows up to sit in bed, back curled, sunlight striking skin.
Maybe in need of a shower, just for the warm reassurance of it.
Memories that aren't recalled with pristine detail are fairly rare. Dreams are like this, a little blurry around the edges. But he can recall enough, enough of his own behaviour, to compel him to rub his hands in his face and sink back down among the pillows and covers, a groan levering out of him from low in his chest. Almost a laugh, on the back of it.
He remembers, too, Bruce being gentle. Bruce being caring. Bruce kissing him. These recollections are nice to have, and also not quite enough to immediately counter the embarrassment of the behaviour that invited it.
There's no telltale sound of a heartbeat speeding up, no breath becoming shorter, but something clenches in Bruce's chest anyway at the sight of Clark waking up. For a while he'd lain in bed with him, curled up with him, petted his hair and his back, pressed kisses against his forehead until he fell asleep, and even after. But he'd been too restless, and now, finds himself sitting in a chair nearby.
Which he rises from, making no effort to be a soundless ninja (not only because it would be pointless), and sits on the side of the bed. One broad hand finds Clark's back, running up his spine, into his hair.
"Good morning," he says, sounding rough from sleeplessness. There's something restrained about him today, still tactile enough, but a little withdrawn. Tired. He was so fucking worried.
Better morning, markedly improved, but all the way into good is to be determined. Still, Clark immediately relaxes a little as Bruce touches him, hands dropped from his face as he rolls over. Nuance will be lost on him for the next few seconds, the space given, the reserve, and he reaches out to lay a hand on Bruce's knee, a gentle clasp. "I don't remember being that tired in a long time. Firsts for everything."
A deep breath out, readjusting his head on the pillow to look at Bruce. To squint at Bruce. "You don't look much better." His next inclination is to pull Bruce down for some insistent, lazy morning cuddling, maybe the kind that lapses into sleep, but he's observant enough that he doesn't immediately initiate this.
He sits up, instead. Leans in, without really doing the things yet he's inclined to do: like nudging his head against Bruce's shoulder, or nuzzling that spot beneath his ear, or kissing. Just peering.
It's almost unbelievable, how much Bruce wants him. How badly he wants to crawl over him and press down, to press kisses into his mouth and onto his warm skin and assure himself that he's whole and fine and no wounds have bloomed anew, brought back like digging up bones in a graveyard. How desperately he wants to hear Clark sigh, feel his chest when his breath hitches, experience the flushed heat of him.
Bruce knows what that is. The shape of the word of it, the impossible truth of how he feels.
His hand smooths over Clark's hair, and his gaze skitters to one side. Looking at the clock on the bedside table, maybe. (No bottles, not of alcohol, not of prescriptions. Cleared away somewhere, whenever he knows Clark will be present.)
"You should take a shower. Alfred'll be getting breakfast going soon."
Bruce withdraws his hand. Stands up. Gives Clark space and privacy - he knows where the bathroom is, how to use the overdesigned shower, where a spare change of his own clothes will be stashed (and that he's free to fish something out of Bruce's if he'd prefer). The Bat makes himself scarce, as if haunting his own home.
Every part of Clark wants to reach out before Bruce can slip away, and reclaim that hand. Drag him in, or offer to share the overdesigned shower, but then, it's not exactly the conventional intimacy that such a thing implies that he wants, so much as he doesn't want to be apart. He should, however, want space and privacy, and it's a ridiculous enough impulse to go stifled in the face of practicality -- showers, breakfast -- that Clark doesn't.
Only just.
He showers, dresses, feels a little better in his own civilian clothes, some khakis and a plaid shirt, buttoned. When he retrieves breakfast, he finds himself mostly alone, a little residue embarrassment seeing him out of Alfred's hair quickly after some uttered, sincere apologies. When Bruce does not come back to him, Clark thinks maybe this is the part where he goes home. He fidgets with his glasses without yet putting them on.
And instead, he follows that sound of a distinct heartbeat under the ground. His feet are bare, still, his hair a little wet, the subtle grain that had started to darken his chin lasered away. Pauses, when he sees him, hovering (not literally) at the edges, restlessly tapping folded non-prescription glasses against his palm.
Memories of Bruce being so tender are just that. He is somewhere very different, today, emotionally. Screen before him busy with work, line of his shoulders straight and cold. Fingers pause on keys and Bruce realizes just how angry he is. He is several miles pas angry, actually, which is surprising. He'd thought he'd lost the capacity to feel so intensely this side of the spectrum, about Clark, and experiencing it is at once freeing as it is sickening.
There's nothing he can say that will impress his fear and worry on Clark-- the way he'd acted says it with more sincerity and grace than Bruce will ever have the vocabulary to describe. He hadn't been able to let him out of the circle of his arms, much less out of his sight. Clinging to him, whispering endearments, like he never does, fucking never, because it leaves him too vulnerable. But that's it. That's his heart being removed from his chest and handed to Clark, warm and wet and still beating.
"Your judgement is seriously impaired," he says, and there's nothing warm about him now. Bruce turns around in his chair, his gaze stony. "I don't mean the neurotoxin. I mean the fact that you bulldozed into a situation you knew nothing about - a situation that I had under control - and escalated it. Those hostages weren't in play before you arrived. The toxin being released wasn't in play before you arrived. You made a decision based on my heartbeat that nearly got people killed - got one person shot - and exposed you to an element that significantly impacted your physiology.
Too quiet, too gentle, probably, slipped in the midst of Bruce's words after bulldozed and then swept away in their current as Clark stops and listens. Surprise that borders on confusion characterises his alert stillness, the fidget gone from his hands as well. And then, the almost dizzying realisation that yes, he'd admitted what drew him to the site, and the idea of hurt civilians as his fault piercing through that haze like a dart.
It's a lot, condensed and succinct, and so he is quiet for a second. Another second. Processing. "My judgement," he repeats, then shakes his head, clearing it, restarting. "It was already escalating, Bruce. That's why I heard you, that's why I flew there. That's why I landed. You're saying that with that many guys with guns," he did it, "your plan was, all along, to engage them like that?"
Part of him doesn't think it's the right call, to spar with Bruce on this point, but it's at least one means of getting his bearings.
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Bruce Wayne, though--
Well, first he gets the sunniest of smiles, hazy eyed. Hand on the shoulder apparently translates as a signal to open his arms -- electrodes and wires ignored, ruining Alfred's efforts -- and list inwards where he's perched to pull him into a hug. Heroic chin bumps against a shoulder.
"I can'get drunk Alfred," sounds -- in tone and content -- like something a drunk person might say, admonishing, assuring. "I'm fine. Your car beeped at me but I didn't mean to."
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Despite that look, one arm slips around Clark's back, holding him up and close. There is something in Bruce's chest that's still trembling, thinking about Clark being dead or permanently damaged. Because of me. Because he dove in there trying to help me. If we weren't-- he wouldn't have.
"It's okay," he says, of car beeping, and realizes just how fast his heart's beating. Relief hasn't quite taken hold yet, but there's at least a ribbon of it cutting through his anxiety at being in the same room with him, at being able to touch him. He reaches out and tilts a readout screen to an angle that permits him to read it.
"Depressed behavioral inhibitory center in the cerebral cortex," he's murmuring, "Lowered glutamate, stimulated hypoth-- uh."
Alfred raises his eyebrows, exasperated. See?
Huh.
"He's drunk."
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Vaguely accusatory as much as approving, and conventionally untrue, given no one can possibly smell fantastic post vigilante superheroism, and yet, there remains the faint traces of cologne and aftershave molecules, and probably some vaguely fanfiction notion of whatever registers as uniquely Bruce to supersenses. This observation is made from where Clark has comfortably tucked his head against Bruce's shoulder, the world spinning while Bruce remains solidly reliable, unmoving, holding him. Hug has turned into cling.
He will 100% die when he remembers/is told about stating this observation in front of Alfred Pennyworth, so that's something to look forward to.
"In soph'more I drank this whole thing of vodka as a dare and e'ryone kept expecting I get sick or drunk and they said I was cheating and it was water." He lifts his head. "But it wasn't. It was Pete's dad's. I'm drunk?"
Wait, what?
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"Chemically, what you're experiencing is like alcohol intoxication," Bruce tells him, and points at the screen. "Obviously we can't take your blood or check how your liver's filtering anything, but as far as the waves in your brain are concerned, 'drunk' is you sorted out, Kansas."
Alfred re-sticks Clark with more electrodes as Bruce continues to explain, his low voice almost comforting as he runs through the whys and whats of the things they can detect happening inside of him with sensors and scanners. During this, Alfred gives them some space, either deciding he's done all he can or that, frankly, he doesn't need to see them canoodling. (The security feed will be plenty.)
"It's because you inhaled a bunch of neurotoxin." Bruce is quieter, now that they're alone. He presses a kiss to the top of Clark's head.
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Mouth presses into a line. Neurotoxin. :/
"I threw it," he says, "off the planet."
What else did he do? He saved a guy. He saved Batman. "Did all those people okay? I mean." Now that he is more conscious as to what the fuck, there seems to be a concerted effort to counter it -- at least for whole moments at a time. "We saved them. Bad guys though?"
:\
A pain, but much less of a pain than being dead from neurotoxin.
"All the hostages survived," Bruce assures him, the hand at his side moving up and down every so often, more to reassure himself than comfort Clark at this stage. He's not normally so plainly affectionate, preferring to keep his touches brief unless they're leading to something else, but the incident's rattled him-- and maybe Clark won't remember very well, when he sobers up.
If he sobers up.
"I took care of the traffickers." A few unconscious, a few bleeding and handcuffed to a pipe, one upside down. Giftwrapped for GCPD; Happy New Year. Bruce lets out a sigh and presses the bridge of his nose against Clark's temple. "You scared the shit out of me. You're still scaring the shit out of me. Please don't do that again. Gotham isn't like Metropolis, Clark, they're just going to get meaner when Superman shows up."
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But drunk's okay. He feels pretty good, in that straight sentences are hard and there is now a glimmer of worry with the science and consequences explained to him, but his blood is warm and Bruce is being sweet to him. He closes his eyes, content, at the feel-sound of Bruce's voice at his ear.
Registers what he's saying, opens his eyes and lifts his head to look at him.
"You," he says, placing his words very deliberately down, pointing, "were in trouble. There were many guns with guys, and I saved you."
They're a team, Bruce. :\
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Moment of silence, considering-- being mad right now is tempting, but he thinks it'd be lost on Clark, or it'd just upset him in a way that would be too unkind, given his mindset.
"You did save me."
Technically. From the thing that came after, not from anything that he swooped into stop. Well, probably. Bruce has dealt with armed men (many guns with guys) en mass before, and come out the victor. Barring something completely insane happening, he's sure he would have tonight, too. He's going to have to talk to Clark about it, and seriously; intervening in shitty gunfights in Gotham between thugs and figment of the city's imagination isn't going to trigger any senate hearings - and it's important that divide remain.
"Thank you."
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That would absolutely not have flown with a sober Clark Kent, who must by now be getting used to wading through Bruce's fronts, knowing what lies behind them. It flies for this Clark, who leans into him again, content as a labrador who's been well walked and getting petted for his efforts. Frisbees caught, sticks fetched, bats rescued.
"I heard your heart," he says, like that's a normal thing to say. His fingertips touch over where that heart is, the body's busiest little muscle, twitching tirelessly. His hand is warm, flattening there. "Had to see what it was doing."
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"Do you normally hear my heart?" is gently (and genuinely) curious. Bruce shifts so that he can half-sit on the bed beside Clark, resigned to camping out until those readouts tell him something good, at least.
Of course he's well aware how much Clark can hear, is aware that he keeps close tabs on Lois Lane, with her lifestyle of constant danger, and since Luthor's meddling, his mother. It's just never occurred to him that Clark might be listening in on him, at least not remotely. While they're with it each other, it always seemed like a given.
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Bruce is asking him so gently. "Normally," he says. "Normally and I don't always notice it, 'til I notice it. Heart, and." He gestures, loosely. And other things. But the heart is the first thing, the thing that can't be helped.
"Ss'how I knew you liked me after all," is added, with a broad grin, pushing into the lean. Eyy.
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What he feels is not anger at all, and he has to be very careful not to let his heart rate tick up as he thinks about it. Unhelpful.
This is ... a bad thing to be slightly turned on by. And unlike him. But it feels like reaching out and being reached back to, it feels like reciprocation of something just a little bit shameful, that Bruce knows he shouldn't be doing and yet finds himself unable to stop. Does Clark feel the same way?
"I like to look out for you, too," is what he says after a while, his voice a low rumble next to his cheek. Which Clark probably knows already. Satellites aren't sneaky.
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Right now, of course, nothing seems very strange. Of course they want to look out for one another. They are team mates, and more than just that.
"I like that you like to look out for me too," Clark says, a little too accurately, though he seems pleased with himself for all those words happening in order, with syllables only bumping together a little bit with a slur. Mainly because he's murmuring it, in the quiet space they've created together. "S'nice." Nailed it.
Following what he considers to be the natural order of things, he turns enough to meet Bruce in a kiss. Something electronic beeps at them as readings adjust. Getting closer to normal.
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And--
Some flicker of thought occurs to Bruce that it's inappropriate to put the moves on a drunk person, but his self-control with Clark is an anemic thing at best. He presses into that kiss, light, and then something beeps. Bruce raises his head and leans forward, curling his arm more securely around Clark as he does so that the Kryptonian doesn't sway or float off anywhere. Free hand holding the edge of the monitor, he makes a 'mm' noise that sounds pleased.
"Good," he says, then dips his head back down to capture Clark's mouth in a proper kiss.
(Upstairs, Alfred turns the CCTV off.)
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Maybe that comment is Too Soon, but he's drunk, not stupid, albeit there is a fine line, a line enough to recognise that beep for what it is.
"Broosh," he says. Then fixes that with a more sibilant, "-Ce. Bruce. I, uh."
He stops, brow crinkling, as if some thought has caught his attention but voicing it is eluding him.
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He switches modes so fast between affectionate and distantly professional it's almost dizzying, pulling back and leaving just a bracing hand at his side.
Guilt pants him. He'd just been telling himself not to do this, wasn't he? You're an asshole, Wayne. His attention, fixated on Clark, can't help but skitter briefly to the readouts, paranoid.
"What is it?"
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A little oblivious to whatever is going on with Bruce right now, Clark reaches out again, a sort of pawing touch to face, throat.
"I dunno," is his brilliant response. "Nothing. I'm okay."
Heart beats. He leans in, gracelessly, for more kissing, despite that distance.
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Heart beats. Soft kisses. Why is everything that happens to you my fault?
Bruce is so gentle with him as he comes down from everything, definitely more in control of himself after that stop-start moment. He's nervous still even when the readings even out and Clark's left simply tired, too nervous to allow him to take a shower for fear of temperature changes impacting his blood pressure, instead simply herding him to bed. Bruce's. He leaves the glass clear instead of setting the dimmers, so that when the sun rises, it'll find Clark right away.
Sleep is for people who aren't paranoid over their drunk alien boyfriends.
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Wakes up, and, wholly unfairly, feels perfectly fine. Sort of. There's no violent hangover to contend with, and the strange sleepiness that had captured him towards the end has been siphoned off through rest. Maybe a little like not every cobweb has been cleared out of the corners of his mind, but most of them. Less and less, as he elbows up to sit in bed, back curled, sunlight striking skin.
Maybe in need of a shower, just for the warm reassurance of it.
Memories that aren't recalled with pristine detail are fairly rare. Dreams are like this, a little blurry around the edges. But he can recall enough, enough of his own behaviour, to compel him to rub his hands in his face and sink back down among the pillows and covers, a groan levering out of him from low in his chest. Almost a laugh, on the back of it.
He remembers, too, Bruce being gentle. Bruce being caring. Bruce kissing him. These recollections are nice to have, and also not quite enough to immediately counter the embarrassment of the behaviour that invited it.
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Which he rises from, making no effort to be a soundless ninja (not only because it would be pointless), and sits on the side of the bed. One broad hand finds Clark's back, running up his spine, into his hair.
"Good morning," he says, sounding rough from sleeplessness. There's something restrained about him today, still tactile enough, but a little withdrawn. Tired. He was so fucking worried.
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Better morning, markedly improved, but all the way into good is to be determined. Still, Clark immediately relaxes a little as Bruce touches him, hands dropped from his face as he rolls over. Nuance will be lost on him for the next few seconds, the space given, the reserve, and he reaches out to lay a hand on Bruce's knee, a gentle clasp. "I don't remember being that tired in a long time. Firsts for everything."
A deep breath out, readjusting his head on the pillow to look at Bruce. To squint at Bruce. "You don't look much better." His next inclination is to pull Bruce down for some insistent, lazy morning cuddling, maybe the kind that lapses into sleep, but he's observant enough that he doesn't immediately initiate this.
He sits up, instead. Leans in, without really doing the things yet he's inclined to do: like nudging his head against Bruce's shoulder, or nuzzling that spot beneath his ear, or kissing. Just peering.
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Bruce knows what that is. The shape of the word of it, the impossible truth of how he feels.
His hand smooths over Clark's hair, and his gaze skitters to one side. Looking at the clock on the bedside table, maybe. (No bottles, not of alcohol, not of prescriptions. Cleared away somewhere, whenever he knows Clark will be present.)
"You should take a shower. Alfred'll be getting breakfast going soon."
Bruce withdraws his hand. Stands up. Gives Clark space and privacy - he knows where the bathroom is, how to use the overdesigned shower, where a spare change of his own clothes will be stashed (and that he's free to fish something out of Bruce's if he'd prefer). The Bat makes himself scarce, as if haunting his own home.
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Only just.
He showers, dresses, feels a little better in his own civilian clothes, some khakis and a plaid shirt, buttoned. When he retrieves breakfast, he finds himself mostly alone, a little residue embarrassment seeing him out of Alfred's hair quickly after some uttered, sincere apologies. When Bruce does not come back to him, Clark thinks maybe this is the part where he goes home. He fidgets with his glasses without yet putting them on.
And instead, he follows that sound of a distinct heartbeat under the ground. His feet are bare, still, his hair a little wet, the subtle grain that had started to darken his chin lasered away. Pauses, when he sees him, hovering (not literally) at the edges, restlessly tapping folded non-prescription glasses against his palm.
"Hey," is how he announces himself.
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There's nothing he can say that will impress his fear and worry on Clark-- the way he'd acted says it with more sincerity and grace than Bruce will ever have the vocabulary to describe. He hadn't been able to let him out of the circle of his arms, much less out of his sight. Clinging to him, whispering endearments, like he never does, fucking never, because it leaves him too vulnerable. But that's it. That's his heart being removed from his chest and handed to Clark, warm and wet and still beating.
"Your judgement is seriously impaired," he says, and there's nothing warm about him now. Bruce turns around in his chair, his gaze stony. "I don't mean the neurotoxin. I mean the fact that you bulldozed into a situation you knew nothing about - a situation that I had under control - and escalated it. Those hostages weren't in play before you arrived. The toxin being released wasn't in play before you arrived. You made a decision based on my heartbeat that nearly got people killed - got one person shot - and exposed you to an element that significantly impacted your physiology.
It's not acceptable."
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Too quiet, too gentle, probably, slipped in the midst of Bruce's words after bulldozed and then swept away in their current as Clark stops and listens. Surprise that borders on confusion characterises his alert stillness, the fidget gone from his hands as well. And then, the almost dizzying realisation that yes, he'd admitted what drew him to the site, and the idea of hurt civilians as his fault piercing through that haze like a dart.
It's a lot, condensed and succinct, and so he is quiet for a second. Another second. Processing. "My judgement," he repeats, then shakes his head, clearing it, restarting. "It was already escalating, Bruce. That's why I heard you, that's why I flew there. That's why I landed. You're saying that with that many guys with guns," he did it, "your plan was, all along, to engage them like that?"
Part of him doesn't think it's the right call, to spar with Bruce on this point, but it's at least one means of getting his bearings.
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