The water is running at room temperature and so they are well on their way. Clark strips down properly, giving a sober laugh at Bruce's observation. "Yessir," he says, helpfully buttering on the inflection just for the joke. "Beach holidays were something that happened on TV. And it wasn't even in my top five, leaving Kansas."
No, the novelty had been mountains, in contrast to the endless flat. He steps into the spray, letting it hit him in the face, quick to drag water through his hair which will dry wilder than the neat sidepart he wears it in.
"And Lo's not that interested. Something about being a redhead. She skis."
He looks back at Bruce, checking his progress, maybe a hint of apology for the chattiness. "Water's fine," he reports.
Lois is a hell of a woman, in anything she applies herself to. Work or snowbound sports. They saw little of each other, in the years between, but it's impossible to so much as observe Lois Lane and not be impressed. Further impossible to be involved like this, one step removed and sharing all kinds of cooties, and not imagine her and Clark. (They've flirted a little. Via texting. Bruce hasn't mentioned it but he's certain that Clark knows and that thought is somewhat erotic.)
So's the view, he doesn't say.
"Go on." No apology needed. He likes listening to you, Kansas. Meanwhile, unbuckling his belt.
He goes on also to clean himself down, eliminating the practical stuff even if he is superlistening to the familiar sounds of Bruce taking off his belt, clicking metal and slithering leather. As noted, it wasn't a visibly hard day at the office and all Clark has to clean away is the layer of exertion gathered beneath Kryptonian armor, and the saltwater dried behind his ears.
"And I was thinking about Tibet," Clark says, obliging in sharing his train of thought. It'd be easy to talk about Lois all day, and as much as he in unselfconscious in summoning her name even when standing naked in front of Bruce Wayne, manners dictate he pivots. "I've been doing my homework."
He just means the translation guidebook he got for that one Christmas. The prescribed homework, not the extra credit.
He turns, rinsing soap off his considerable shoulders, the ridiculous V of his back. "Maybe next time we need to get away, you could show me around."
"You'll like it," he says, stepping out of the remainder of his clothing, "but it'll bum you out, too."
What with China and all. But it's still an important place to Bruce, and he thinks Clark will appreciate the old-fashioned traditionalism. It's very midwest, in its way. (Also, at least half of the secret ninja cults are pretty cool.)
The shower is expansive, a blend of stereotypical but artfully applied blue and white tiles, plenty of room and only the suggestion of a need for a door. It makes slipping in beside Clark an easy affair of merely moving over, one broad hand smoothing over his forearm, up to his elbow, around his bicep, his touch little more than ghosting. Feeling the way the water pours over him. He pulls his hand away as he steps fully into the cubicle, standing behind Clark and then putting both hands on the small of his back, sweeping up the strong column of his spine, coming to the base of his skull and rubbing. There are never any knots of tension or sprained muscles, but that's no reason to never engage in this kind of touch.
Getting Bruce's agreement to spend time, to share in something, to keep furthering whatever they have along without protest, still comes with a hint of satisfaction. Minor, here, like the click of a puzzle piece going into place. The smile it brings around isn't visible from Bruce's angle. Privately there.
And then Bruce steps out of Clark's vision, which just means he has his other senses to go off of. The shift in temperature of another body near his, the ever present signal of his heartbeat, the general collection of auditory, sensory input that seems to operate on a subconscious level to give Clark the general physiological awareness of someone standing behind him.
He sighs out when Bruce's hands make their way up his spine, head bowing. Not all relief has to be physical. He is not tense, but that doesn't mean he can't relax a little more.
Bruce's words send his mind back to the thing he was saying, the ocean being a friend—but only from the perspective of the beach. He's seen the ocean a lot since he learned how to fly, more than making up for a landlocked childhood, and hovering between a lightning-forked sky and the roiling churn of the gigantic sea makes the earth seem like the strange and unknowable planet it's supposed to be for an alien. It's not all bad, it's not all good.
Clark is happy to soak up a backrub even after he's rinsed the last of the soap off his body, but eventually turns around, expression serene. His hands, reaching out to glide his palms over the muscle slabbed over Bruce's ribcage, this extreme control behind gentleness offset by the fact he can tug Bruce's considerable self to him just like
this
without any effort, a smile breaking across his face and only visible for a moment before he noses up under Bruce's jaw.
To dream about water symbolizes everything from transformation to repressed sexuality, Bruce might say. This entire detour is dreamlike; improbable, surreal, beautiful. It is a little bit transformative. And it is a little bit—
The other thing. At times. If only because a veil of caution still hangs between them, for Bruce. How often is too often, to reach for someone? How often is too often to reach for someone, who is married? I don't know how to do this, for many reasons, but one of those reasons was that this is not merely a sexual entanglement, which make up the lion's share of his intimate history.
How do I express my feelings, at all.
Resurrecting him was an ambitious step one. Granted.
This is also good. Sliding a hand over Clark's hair, cradling the back of his head. Nigh-invulnerable but he still feels completely normal beneath his hand, against his chest, poking at his jaw. Smiling radiantly. An impenetrable skull that houses a brain that decided to forgive and embrace him. That's like, fuckin wild, man.
Bruce flicks the curve of Clark's ear, silently teasing.
It'd be too much of an easy pass to say that Bruce does not have to express his feelings when those feelings are aimed at an alien with near godlike powers of perception. The heart has its limits, after all. Tends to keep things simple. It is a simple organ.
But suffice to say that Clark can do some interpretive work. The hand cupping the back of his head, long-suffering sarcasm in ordering something other than squid pizza or over-seasoned ceviche but doing it anyway. Not disappearing out a window before dawn hits. Ear flicks.
"Checking for weak spots, Wayne?" murmured into his throat.
He knows that Clark is not psychic; of all his powers, that is not among them. He also knows that it's funny and probably a little suspect that Bruce can express how furious he is about this thing or that thing but chokes on anything positive. So he tries this way, with touches and ordering food and standing in the shower with him, talking about nothing. He has - mostly - stopped trying to self-sabotage. He has accepted the logic that appropriate ways to express affection fall into the realm of kisses and encouragement, and not buying the Daily Planet or sending Lex Luthor to the pits of hell. (Though he has done both of those things.) (Hell being, Arkham.)
When he looks down, tips Clark's face up, he doesn't press a kiss to his mouth. Instead, just to the side of it, like it would be too much to kiss him properly. Too overwhelming, and he needs a moment still to savor Clark as he is.
Might as well wash up since he's in here. No layer of oceanic heroics plastered to his skin, but the water feels nice, and Clark feels better for being against him. Bruce keeps a hand on him at all times, almost idle, like he's orienting himself against him.
Clark draws his eyebrows together like he's prepared for Bruce to say something—just something, but instead he is kissed. Frinkle brow smooths. The edge of his smile softens too but doesn't go away.
He helps Bruce clean down too, while he's there. Luxurious sweeps of his hands along the plain of the other man's back, gentler around where scar tissue might bucker skin from wounds and surgery both, any recent collections of cloudy bruising. He doesn't know enough about the metal pins that keep Bruce's spine in place to know how gentle is gentle, so he mostly avoids more recent evidence of wear, of tear, and otherwise applies pressure where he thinks it might be welcome.
Collects water in his palms, mapping appreciative swoops with his palm over muscle and bone. Tempting to push this further into, like, more of a sex thing than it already is, but equally tempting to draw the night out by only doing that a little.
Like so: a kiss pressed to the meat between neck and shoulder from behind, an intimate enough one that Clark can taste shower water and Bruce beneath it, a hand low on his back.
Bruce's patchwork spine can tolerate all the things he puts himself through in armor - and all the things he puts himself through in bed - so Clark's hand down his spine would have to put effort into being ungentle enough to hurt. That said, he has no objection to the light application, even if he's unused to being touched like he deserves care. Perhaps because of that.
Already kind of is a sex thing. Yes. But also, that non-seafood order will show up eventually, and scribbling out the end of this artfully sensual encounter with a rough handjob to beat the clock feels not great. Despite Bruce being an expert in rough handjobs, and employing them to melt brains, human or otherwise.
Still—
It could. That kiss on the back of his neck that offers the potential for it. Bruce turns his head enough to catch just a glimpse of him, Clark's shoulder and the line of his arm, and he reaches back to press a hand against his hip. Keeping him there. It could. Neither more nor less but just as good is the way he feels like Clark understands and even enjoys the strange silence that makes up most of their conversations.
Bruce can feel the smile pressed into his shoulder, and Clark responds to the hand at his hip by pushing in a little closer where he is, leaning. More incidental bodied contact than articulate hands and kisses, although he keeps those up too. The water streams around them like an embrace, and between them like something more intimate than that, and the best thing about a moment you hope goes on forever is knowing that it won't, but you'll get it again sometime.
The sudden absence of water is a surprise (at least physiologically), Clark having sneaked his other hand around Bruce to flip the tap with the edge of his little finger.
"Guess we'll never find out," he murmurs into his hair, kisses his ear, and detaches.
Ruthlessly cheerful, cheerfully ruthless, but Clark is good enough to toss Bruce his towel before using his own to lash around his waist. He is still dripping wet when he casts him another megawatt smile and makes to go.
Clark's cheer would be more annoying if 1) Bruce hadn't seen so much of him angry, and in pain, and dead, 2) he wasn't Clark. That he can lure that smile out, and tell that it's real, does a thing to the heart he still has. (That he's always had. Nobody becomes Batman because they don't care. It just got hard, and then he got lost.)
"Uh-huh," is about never finding out, faux-cranky. Bruce slicks his hair back and spends a moment on doing nothing more complicated than watching Clark walk away, because wouldn't you. He catches the towel, and pulls it over his own head first, drying top-down.
"Maybe," he calls, lingering in the bathroom long enough for something-or-other for his face, which is subject to drying out and aging. He would look worse and more scars would still be visible if he weren't vigilant about moisturizer. Also he should probably dry off his foot long dick before the delivery guy shows up and trips on something, since he's just going to guess that Clark has noticed someone approaching the villa, a thing he's still adjusting to. That it isn't omnipresence, it's just his flippin' hearing. And that Bruce can't even be annoyed with his multitude of surveillance points.
"Bed," is his vote, called back through thin walls.
In the next room, Clark towel dries off in a negligent enough fashion, enough to put on some sweatpants as an equally negligent gesture towards some state of dress, digging up his wallet, and then saying, "huh, potato skins," to himself in a satisfied manner after a quick glance through some walls.
The delivery guy does not seem extremely impressed by a friendly shirtless bear man greeting him at the door, although a moment of squinting at Clark's face is interrupted with the offer of a generous tip. Graciases exchanged, food retrieved, which turns out to be a myriad of cartons filled with pub fare, including aforementioned paprika-laced potato skins, a collection of fried onion and pepper loops, a couple of crunchy looking grilled mushroom sandwiches doused in olive oil, and fritters that X-ray vision cannot discern.
"I think non-seafood means vegetarian, out here," he announces, digging through cupboards and drawers for plates and cutlery. There is already half a fritter between his teeth.
Little things: ubiquity of sweatpants, not having to answer the door and contend with socialite celebrity recognition roulette, the way Clark's voice muffles with a mystery veggie fritter in his mouth. He can smell freshly fried oil and hummus, and a breeze of ocean air through windows opened variously through the place. No more scorched ozone from flying a mach 30 back from the Virgin Islands, though the bed where he shoves pillows towards the headboard carries mingled remnants of the both of them.
Bruce appears in the kitchen similarly clothed, fetching a few cans of native beer out of the fridge, and going 'mm', which sounds like agreement-acknowledgment. Closes the fridge door with a knee, explains, "I tickied the 'allergy' box."
They probably prepare all meat on the same grill, so. Nuclear non-seafood option, as even though he thinks Clark would probably have been fine with chicken braised on a flat top that used to have shrimp on it, Bruce Wayne does not do things by halves, even ordering munchies off Yelp. Considerate of the restaurant to have the option, in any event.
'Mhfmm' is muffled confirmation around the last bite of fritter, still not wholly certain he could correctly identify its contents. Clark considers an undiscerning palate to be an asset. Insert whatever midwestern cuisine joke you like here.
He stacks food containers on plates along with a couple of forks for spearing things, superbalances these items with the skill that has less to do with alien agility or dexterity and everything to do with the fact he's juggled worse through more treacherous terrain before plenty of times. Stacks of empty grease-wet plates and bowls, platters of fingerprint-smeared beer glasses chittering together, ducking past competitive dart games, roughhousey crowds watching the game on the corner television. This is cakewalk.
Setting out everything like a picnic on the bed, low lamplight. The music from down the beach has mellowed. A fresh gust of sea air pushes through the window, hitting Clark in the back. It's the little things.
He trades a plate and the other fritter for a beer can, says 'thank you', and sits crossed legged on the mattress, back curved away from the headboard. Instinctual table manners see him helping Bruce fill his plate with handed off containers. Bites a potato skin, makes a surprised face at the flavour. Bed vote notwithstanding, sensuality and intimacy of moments ago is traded in for a friendly kind of companionship that is equally as assumptive of space and attention.
Clark talks a little of the Virgin Islands, the hurricane, quietly informative, and checks his phone, notes, "It's dinnertime on the east coast too," with a twinge of amusement.
This is still a kind of intimacy. Very much so. They could choke it by turning the TV on, or fussing with trays. Instead it's comfortable conversation with the occasional bump of knee or crossover of hands, shift of weight on the mattress, an 'oops' about olive oil on the duvet cover. Bruce is more likely to lean back against the headboard, which puts him in a position to occasionally peer over Clark's shoulder, or reach behind him to put something on the night stand. When he sits up to steal half of an uneaten fritter, it puts him nearly curled behind him.
"How's the game going?" The game is of course, Lois vs her current mark. Bruce wonders if Clark will even have an update - he had been endlessly amused to discover how often she lets Clark hang out to dry, guarding scoops and leads from him like she would any other rival journalist. No wonder he was skulking around in Gotham. She'd pulled all the good shit out from under everybody's feet already.
Decent sandwiches, considering they're mostly mushrooms. Bruce informs him what the fritters are; he has no super-senses, he just seems to know everything. You'd think he'd be pickier, with his money and character flaws of things like not knowing how much milk costs, but really, he'll eat anything. Makes up for it with his diet of falcon eggs protein shakes and rocks while at home.
"Mm. No news is good news," Clark says. "Literally."
With the edge of his hunger blunted, he eventually pushes backwards to lean alongside Bruce, setting aside a mostly emptied plate onto the bedside table and taking up his beer instead.
It is nice, being happy in any kind of sustained way. It is nice, knowing it's doing more for you than just 'distraction'.
It's not just with Bruce, of course. Drinking in bed now reminds him of the last time he'd shared a bottle of dark red wine likewise with Lois, how in attempting to reposition for Reasons they'd knocked the bottle (he maintains it was a mutual mistake) and the blur of his hand correcting it had then compelled her to startle and tip the contents of her glass fully everywhere. How the ring of her laughter felt buoying.
But. It is nice to have that with Bruce as well, in its different rhythm and mode. Clark with his effortless smiles and fingers that don't prune and heroic destiny could easily give the impression of someone who didn't believe he'd fucked up the grand majority of his life, even if guilt compelling him not to call Martha Kent on Mother's Day during some bleak interstitial year looks like small potatoes next to snapping the neck of the other last son of Krypton.
"I'm still torn on eating octopus," he says, at some point, presently. At some point having circled back to no seafood. "I'm in favour of not eating something intelligent, but then where does it stop. A chicken's intelligent at chicken things."
And he's still not all the time sure what to say about being brought back from the dead beyond 'itchy' and 'weird'.
Expensive hotels, ordered food, lying around in bed - favored activities, for Bruce and his various paramours. Unusual is how quiet this is, how unfrantic, how safe. He still likes it the other way: if Selina texted him the address of the Gotham West Hilton and her room number he'd go, and they'd leave a whole host of bruises and scrapes on each other, spilled champaign, maybe a broken window, someone else's call to security about the inevitable screaming match that would later simmer back down to whispered passions. That's what he's used to. He's not used to Clark's subtle humor, his keen observations and gentleness despite it, or the surreal experience of remembering how to feel again. He's not used to his own capacity for care being acknowledged, much less appreciated.
Turns out he likes it.
"I think," leaning back, one knee up, a stray plate at the very end of the bed on the corner, "that the only options are eating everything or nothing. If you judge based on intelligence, it's like you said, everything's smart at something. If you judge based on morality, you're either using a purely subjective sliding scale, which is nonsense, or you have to make a scientific baseline, which is not moral. So when you boil down to the last equation there's no difference between eating a human or eating a pillbug. And then there's the problem of: if it's morally wrong to consume a human for food, because of damage to the human, then is it morally wrong to consume crops harvested by veritable slave labor? To say nothing of the ethics of where drinkable water comes from and how its distributed, anymore."
Okay, well.
Bruce sips his beer.
Silently.
Anyway, "Alfred said he was involved in a project to train an octopus as a spy, once. My night was fine."
Edited (oh right the question) 2020-12-31 01:14 (UTC)
Clark listens respectfully, even if the divots in his brow deepen all the more by the time we get to the fact of no ethical consumption under capitalism, even drinking water. He sips his beer when Bruce does, casting his attention back forwards again.
:/
"Good," he says, on Bruce's night being fine, still stuck on spy octopi before he offers, "I think my baseline is," and he thinks about it for a further few seconds, "does it have a name." His farm just did corn, which made things easier, and no one was willing to eat a chicken he'd named Jeannine at age seven.
And Clark adds, on his way to another beer sip, "Let me have that one," in case Bruce was thinking of refuting the logic. The corner of a non-serious smile not quite hidden.
"I suppose I can allow that," Bruce says, in that same flat, too-serious tone he was using to describe the ground-down teeth of misery capitalism (even though it's not like he's an inherent socialist, he's more of an enforcement-oriented anarchist-egalitarian, which is a nightmare, yes, but a lesser one, ranked in a line of Ways Bruce Wayne Is A Nightmare). Most people would not be able to detect the humor.
The spy octopus probably had a name. If it did, Alfred didn't tell him, because Bruce can't remember it. Strange that he didn't ask; he's certain he was pretty young, when the story was relayed. But he'd been weird even then.
"You're a pet person." Shelby Kent. He remembers. And many other offhand references to fuzzy things in years past, some of them in little frames in Martha's house. Bruce is not a pet person; this is not a shock. "No goldfish in Metropolis?"
"I don't wanna give Arthur an inside guy," is dry, at least until Clark smiles at his own joke.
They're thinking about getting a bird. Lois' instincts of someone with a dedicated working life in a big city, reluctant to introduce just One More Stressor in spite of Clark's reassurances that they'd be great bird parents. He mentions this and pulls up the photos of bright orange conures and more mellow lovebirds he has saved as propaganda, passing his phone to Bruce to take a look.
But asks, "No furry friends growing up?" as he leans forward, gathering up some of the empty platters and plates into a neat stack.
Bruce can picture it easily. Lois scoffing and moving on, Clark looking at her with his giant eyes, and his power-point presentation. Bird propaganda. He shifts so that he doesn't knock anything over, looks through the photos, Clark's phone angled slightly out, so that he can peer over his shoulder and commentate if he wants. They are cute, in theory, and he knows Clark will enjoy feeding them little pieces of cut fruit, patiently tolerating beak-bites as they learn to behave.
At least it's not cats.
"Uh," Bruce says, a funny noise like he was automatically going to answer, and then thought better of it. A moment of consideration, as he looks at some pastel blue lovebirds.
"The groundskeeper who looked after the horses," he begins again, and apparently some thread of self-consciousness had been what stalled him, there, the sheer absurd aristocracy of that sentence, "had a dog, but it was a working dog, and not too friendly."
Tiny Bruce Wayne at his riding lessons, scared to pet the enormous hound after his trust, lured in by the promise of soft floppy ears, had been betrayed by a growl. Once upon a time, he was a sweet kid.
Take-out containers, plates, forks, and his mostly empty beer are all gathered together and balanced on the stand, and Clark scoots back again. Nearer than before, slotting himself against Bruce in an automatic kind of way to share in looking at pictures of colourful tiny dinosaurs. He accepts the phone back into his own hand, scrolls through until he finds the YouTube compilation of 'parrots being cute' he'd saved, clearly the defense's final statement.
It's dumb, he knows, but he lets it play as background, paying it less attention than his Travelling Companion, the things he's saying to him.
"Dogs with jobs to do," he muses. Chattiness mellowed, quiet. "Funny you should say that, a horse is my back up alternative. You should introduce me."
All horses have names, even the ones terribly exploited for sport. They have the worst names, but they're names.
"We didn't keep any," he says, because while it is a hilarious aristocrat thing, groundkeepers and Th Horses, it's also not always, out in the Sunflower State. "But there's always been a dog. We had a hutch of rabbits for a while. One hamster. A cat that hung out if we put chicken on the patio for her, or him. Chickens, a goat, but they weren't, you know. Allowed in the house. I don't think I'm forgetting anyone."
Thinking, then, to Bruce looming in his living room, attending to a wiggly Shelby. Clark smiles, and says, "I bet animals like you."
It's a big estate, he could say, mild and dull, of dogs with jobs to do. There was always something to be done, foxes to be kept out of not hen houses, but wine cellars, pool houses, stables. A year ago he might have clipped, Did it look like there were any horses left.
But Clark knows what the property looks like, and their time together has worn down some of the spines on his armor. Acclimated. So,
"Fifteen years or so since I owned any. Richard was very good, technically, but much more interested in trying to get me to adopt retired circus zebras than actually attending lessons."
Man. He bets Clark is great with kids. Bruce draws in a breath, pretending with serious skill that he didn't just accidentally stick a knife between his own ribs, and settles a hand against the other man's thigh. Bird video. He likes the Beach Boys one. Staunching that oopsie emotional bleeding by ignoring it.
The Beach Boys one is really good, it's true, as is the charming notion of the Wayne property hosting rescue zebras, but Clark misses it when the barely perceptible glitch in Bruce's heartbeat draws focus. This close, it'd be impossible not to, not when you can set your watch to Batman's ticker, and Clark has reflected before that the scope of people who can tolerate that particular level of attention is probably extraordinarily narrow. Lois and Bruce both being such.
Anyway. He turns his head around to look at Bruce, as if there'd be something in his expression he could read.
There isn't. Clark's own expression is that of interest, concern, a query stamped into the directness of his stare. His phone in his hand cheeps and tweets with tinny bird sounds, lowered an inch.
His free hand settles on Bruce's. He asks, "You okay?"
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
No, the novelty had been mountains, in contrast to the endless flat. He steps into the spray, letting it hit him in the face, quick to drag water through his hair which will dry wilder than the neat sidepart he wears it in.
"And Lo's not that interested. Something about being a redhead. She skis."
He looks back at Bruce, checking his progress, maybe a hint of apology for the chattiness. "Water's fine," he reports.
no subject
Lois is a hell of a woman, in anything she applies herself to. Work or snowbound sports. They saw little of each other, in the years between, but it's impossible to so much as observe Lois Lane and not be impressed. Further impossible to be involved like this, one step removed and sharing all kinds of cooties, and not imagine her and Clark. (They've flirted a little. Via texting. Bruce hasn't mentioned it but he's certain that Clark knows and that thought is somewhat erotic.)
So's the view, he doesn't say.
"Go on." No apology needed. He likes listening to you, Kansas. Meanwhile, unbuckling his belt.
no subject
"And I was thinking about Tibet," Clark says, obliging in sharing his train of thought. It'd be easy to talk about Lois all day, and as much as he in unselfconscious in summoning her name even when standing naked in front of Bruce Wayne, manners dictate he pivots. "I've been doing my homework."
He just means the translation guidebook he got for that one Christmas. The prescribed homework, not the extra credit.
He turns, rinsing soap off his considerable shoulders, the ridiculous V of his back. "Maybe next time we need to get away, you could show me around."
no subject
What with China and all. But it's still an important place to Bruce, and he thinks Clark will appreciate the old-fashioned traditionalism. It's very midwest, in its way. (Also, at least half of the secret ninja cults are pretty cool.)
The shower is expansive, a blend of stereotypical but artfully applied blue and white tiles, plenty of room and only the suggestion of a need for a door. It makes slipping in beside Clark an easy affair of merely moving over, one broad hand smoothing over his forearm, up to his elbow, around his bicep, his touch little more than ghosting. Feeling the way the water pours over him. He pulls his hand away as he steps fully into the cubicle, standing behind Clark and then putting both hands on the small of his back, sweeping up the strong column of his spine, coming to the base of his skull and rubbing. There are never any knots of tension or sprained muscles, but that's no reason to never engage in this kind of touch.
"Salt water and ozone," he murmurs.
no subject
And then Bruce steps out of Clark's vision, which just means he has his other senses to go off of. The shift in temperature of another body near his, the ever present signal of his heartbeat, the general collection of auditory, sensory input that seems to operate on a subconscious level to give Clark the general physiological awareness of someone standing behind him.
He sighs out when Bruce's hands make their way up his spine, head bowing. Not all relief has to be physical. He is not tense, but that doesn't mean he can't relax a little more.
Bruce's words send his mind back to the thing he was saying, the ocean being a friend—but only from the perspective of the beach. He's seen the ocean a lot since he learned how to fly, more than making up for a landlocked childhood, and hovering between a lightning-forked sky and the roiling churn of the gigantic sea makes the earth seem like the strange and unknowable planet it's supposed to be for an alien. It's not all bad, it's not all good.
Clark is happy to soak up a backrub even after he's rinsed the last of the soap off his body, but eventually turns around, expression serene. His hands, reaching out to glide his palms over the muscle slabbed over Bruce's ribcage, this extreme control behind gentleness offset by the fact he can tug Bruce's considerable self to him just like
this
without any effort, a smile breaking across his face and only visible for a moment before he noses up under Bruce's jaw.
no subject
The other thing. At times. If only because a veil of caution still hangs between them, for Bruce. How often is too often, to reach for someone? How often is too often to reach for someone, who is married? I don't know how to do this, for many reasons, but one of those reasons was that this is not merely a sexual entanglement, which make up the lion's share of his intimate history.
How do I express my feelings, at all.
Resurrecting him was an ambitious step one. Granted.
This is also good. Sliding a hand over Clark's hair, cradling the back of his head. Nigh-invulnerable but he still feels completely normal beneath his hand, against his chest, poking at his jaw. Smiling radiantly. An impenetrable skull that houses a brain that decided to forgive and embrace him. That's like, fuckin wild, man.
Bruce flicks the curve of Clark's ear, silently teasing.
no subject
But suffice to say that Clark can do some interpretive work. The hand cupping the back of his head, long-suffering sarcasm in ordering something other than squid pizza or over-seasoned ceviche but doing it anyway. Not disappearing out a window before dawn hits. Ear flicks.
"Checking for weak spots, Wayne?" murmured into his throat.
no subject
Bruce already knows all his weak spots, anyway.
(Left atrium. Kryptonite. Lois. Mom. Shitty beer, awkward friends.)
He knows that Clark is not psychic; of all his powers, that is not among them. He also knows that it's funny and probably a little suspect that Bruce can express how furious he is about this thing or that thing but chokes on anything positive. So he tries this way, with touches and ordering food and standing in the shower with him, talking about nothing. He has - mostly - stopped trying to self-sabotage. He has accepted the logic that appropriate ways to express affection fall into the realm of kisses and encouragement, and not buying the Daily Planet or sending Lex Luthor to the pits of hell. (Though he has done both of those things.) (Hell being, Arkham.)
When he looks down, tips Clark's face up, he doesn't press a kiss to his mouth. Instead, just to the side of it, like it would be too much to kiss him properly. Too overwhelming, and he needs a moment still to savor Clark as he is.
Might as well wash up since he's in here. No layer of oceanic heroics plastered to his skin, but the water feels nice, and Clark feels better for being against him. Bruce keeps a hand on him at all times, almost idle, like he's orienting himself against him.
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He helps Bruce clean down too, while he's there. Luxurious sweeps of his hands along the plain of the other man's back, gentler around where scar tissue might bucker skin from wounds and surgery both, any recent collections of cloudy bruising. He doesn't know enough about the metal pins that keep Bruce's spine in place to know how gentle is gentle, so he mostly avoids more recent evidence of wear, of tear, and otherwise applies pressure where he thinks it might be welcome.
Collects water in his palms, mapping appreciative swoops with his palm over muscle and bone. Tempting to push this further into, like, more of a sex thing than it already is, but equally tempting to draw the night out by only doing that a little.
Like so: a kiss pressed to the meat between neck and shoulder from behind, an intimate enough one that Clark can taste shower water and Bruce beneath it, a hand low on his back.
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Already kind of is a sex thing. Yes. But also, that non-seafood order will show up eventually, and scribbling out the end of this artfully sensual encounter with a rough handjob to beat the clock feels not great. Despite Bruce being an expert in rough handjobs, and employing them to melt brains, human or otherwise.
Still—
It could. That kiss on the back of his neck that offers the potential for it. Bruce turns his head enough to catch just a glimpse of him, Clark's shoulder and the line of his arm, and he reaches back to press a hand against his hip. Keeping him there. It could. Neither more nor less but just as good is the way he feels like Clark understands and even enjoys the strange silence that makes up most of their conversations.
Muttered, "Do your fingers even prune?"
God. Now that's privileged.
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The sudden absence of water is a surprise (at least physiologically), Clark having sneaked his other hand around Bruce to flip the tap with the edge of his little finger.
"Guess we'll never find out," he murmurs into his hair, kisses his ear, and detaches.
Ruthlessly cheerful, cheerfully ruthless, but Clark is good enough to toss Bruce his towel before using his own to lash around his waist. He is still dripping wet when he casts him another megawatt smile and makes to go.
Down the hallway— "Do we need plates?"
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"Uh-huh," is about never finding out, faux-cranky. Bruce slicks his hair back and spends a moment on doing nothing more complicated than watching Clark walk away, because wouldn't you. He catches the towel, and pulls it over his own head first, drying top-down.
"Maybe," he calls, lingering in the bathroom long enough for something-or-other for his face, which is subject to drying out and aging. He would look worse and more scars would still be visible if he weren't vigilant about moisturizer. Also he should probably dry off his foot long dick before the delivery guy shows up and trips on something, since he's just going to guess that Clark has noticed someone approaching the villa, a thing he's still adjusting to. That it isn't omnipresence, it's just his flippin' hearing. And that Bruce can't even be annoyed with his multitude of surveillance points.
"Dunno what they'll bring. Patio or bed?"
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In the next room, Clark towel dries off in a negligent enough fashion, enough to put on some sweatpants as an equally negligent gesture towards some state of dress, digging up his wallet, and then saying, "huh, potato skins," to himself in a satisfied manner after a quick glance through some walls.
The delivery guy does not seem extremely impressed by a friendly shirtless bear man greeting him at the door, although a moment of squinting at Clark's face is interrupted with the offer of a generous tip. Graciases exchanged, food retrieved, which turns out to be a myriad of cartons filled with pub fare, including aforementioned paprika-laced potato skins, a collection of fried onion and pepper loops, a couple of crunchy looking grilled mushroom sandwiches doused in olive oil, and fritters that X-ray vision cannot discern.
"I think non-seafood means vegetarian, out here," he announces, digging through cupboards and drawers for plates and cutlery. There is already half a fritter between his teeth.
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Bruce appears in the kitchen similarly clothed, fetching a few cans of native beer out of the fridge, and going 'mm', which sounds like agreement-acknowledgment. Closes the fridge door with a knee, explains, "I tickied the 'allergy' box."
They probably prepare all meat on the same grill, so. Nuclear non-seafood option, as even though he thinks Clark would probably have been fine with chicken braised on a flat top that used to have shrimp on it, Bruce Wayne does not do things by halves, even ordering munchies off Yelp. Considerate of the restaurant to have the option, in any event.
"Good?" Since he's already eating.
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He stacks food containers on plates along with a couple of forks for spearing things, superbalances these items with the skill that has less to do with alien agility or dexterity and everything to do with the fact he's juggled worse through more treacherous terrain before plenty of times. Stacks of empty grease-wet plates and bowls, platters of fingerprint-smeared beer glasses chittering together, ducking past competitive dart games, roughhousey crowds watching the game on the corner television. This is cakewalk.
Setting out everything like a picnic on the bed, low lamplight. The music from down the beach has mellowed. A fresh gust of sea air pushes through the window, hitting Clark in the back. It's the little things.
He trades a plate and the other fritter for a beer can, says 'thank you', and sits crossed legged on the mattress, back curved away from the headboard. Instinctual table manners see him helping Bruce fill his plate with handed off containers. Bites a potato skin, makes a surprised face at the flavour. Bed vote notwithstanding, sensuality and intimacy of moments ago is traded in for a friendly kind of companionship that is equally as assumptive of space and attention.
Clark talks a little of the Virgin Islands, the hurricane, quietly informative, and checks his phone, notes, "It's dinnertime on the east coast too," with a twinge of amusement.
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"How's the game going?" The game is of course, Lois vs her current mark. Bruce wonders if Clark will even have an update - he had been endlessly amused to discover how often she lets Clark hang out to dry, guarding scoops and leads from him like she would any other rival journalist. No wonder he was skulking around in Gotham. She'd pulled all the good shit out from under everybody's feet already.
Decent sandwiches, considering they're mostly mushrooms. Bruce informs him what the fritters are; he has no super-senses, he just seems to know everything. You'd think he'd be pickier, with his money and character flaws of things like not knowing how much milk costs, but really, he'll eat anything. Makes up for it with his diet of falcon eggs protein shakes and rocks while at home.
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With the edge of his hunger blunted, he eventually pushes backwards to lean alongside Bruce, setting aside a mostly emptied plate onto the bedside table and taking up his beer instead.
It is nice, being happy in any kind of sustained way. It is nice, knowing it's doing more for you than just 'distraction'.
It's not just with Bruce, of course. Drinking in bed now reminds him of the last time he'd shared a bottle of dark red wine likewise with Lois, how in attempting to reposition for Reasons they'd knocked the bottle (he maintains it was a mutual mistake) and the blur of his hand correcting it had then compelled her to startle and tip the contents of her glass fully everywhere. How the ring of her laughter felt buoying.
But. It is nice to have that with Bruce as well, in its different rhythm and mode. Clark with his effortless smiles and fingers that don't prune and heroic destiny could easily give the impression of someone who didn't believe he'd fucked up the grand majority of his life, even if guilt compelling him not to call Martha Kent on Mother's Day during some bleak interstitial year looks like small potatoes next to snapping the neck of the other last son of Krypton.
"I'm still torn on eating octopus," he says, at some point, presently. At some point having circled back to no seafood. "I'm in favour of not eating something intelligent, but then where does it stop. A chicken's intelligent at chicken things."
And he's still not all the time sure what to say about being brought back from the dead beyond 'itchy' and 'weird'.
"How was your night?"
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Turns out he likes it.
"I think," leaning back, one knee up, a stray plate at the very end of the bed on the corner, "that the only options are eating everything or nothing. If you judge based on intelligence, it's like you said, everything's smart at something. If you judge based on morality, you're either using a purely subjective sliding scale, which is nonsense, or you have to make a scientific baseline, which is not moral. So when you boil down to the last equation there's no difference between eating a human or eating a pillbug. And then there's the problem of: if it's morally wrong to consume a human for food, because of damage to the human, then is it morally wrong to consume crops harvested by veritable slave labor? To say nothing of the ethics of where drinkable water comes from and how its distributed, anymore."
Okay, well.
Bruce sips his beer.
Silently.
Anyway, "Alfred said he was involved in a project to train an octopus as a spy, once. My night was fine."
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:/
"Good," he says, on Bruce's night being fine, still stuck on spy octopi before he offers, "I think my baseline is," and he thinks about it for a further few seconds, "does it have a name." His farm just did corn, which made things easier, and no one was willing to eat a chicken he'd named Jeannine at age seven.
And Clark adds, on his way to another beer sip, "Let me have that one," in case Bruce was thinking of refuting the logic. The corner of a non-serious smile not quite hidden.
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The spy octopus probably had a name. If it did, Alfred didn't tell him, because Bruce can't remember it. Strange that he didn't ask; he's certain he was pretty young, when the story was relayed. But he'd been weird even then.
"You're a pet person." Shelby Kent. He remembers. And many other offhand references to fuzzy things in years past, some of them in little frames in Martha's house. Bruce is not a pet person; this is not a shock. "No goldfish in Metropolis?"
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They're thinking about getting a bird. Lois' instincts of someone with a dedicated working life in a big city, reluctant to introduce just One More Stressor in spite of Clark's reassurances that they'd be great bird parents. He mentions this and pulls up the photos of bright orange conures and more mellow lovebirds he has saved as propaganda, passing his phone to Bruce to take a look.
But asks, "No furry friends growing up?" as he leans forward, gathering up some of the empty platters and plates into a neat stack.
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At least it's not cats.
"Uh," Bruce says, a funny noise like he was automatically going to answer, and then thought better of it. A moment of consideration, as he looks at some pastel blue lovebirds.
"The groundskeeper who looked after the horses," he begins again, and apparently some thread of self-consciousness had been what stalled him, there, the sheer absurd aristocracy of that sentence, "had a dog, but it was a working dog, and not too friendly."
Tiny Bruce Wayne at his riding lessons, scared to pet the enormous hound after his trust, lured in by the promise of soft floppy ears, had been betrayed by a growl. Once upon a time, he was a sweet kid.
"I think they moved to Maine."
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It's dumb, he knows, but he lets it play as background, paying it less attention than his Travelling Companion, the things he's saying to him.
"Dogs with jobs to do," he muses. Chattiness mellowed, quiet. "Funny you should say that, a horse is my back up alternative. You should introduce me."
All horses have names, even the ones terribly exploited for sport. They have the worst names, but they're names.
"We didn't keep any," he says, because while it is a hilarious aristocrat thing, groundkeepers and Th Horses, it's also not always, out in the Sunflower State. "But there's always been a dog. We had a hutch of rabbits for a while. One hamster. A cat that hung out if we put chicken on the patio for her, or him. Chickens, a goat, but they weren't, you know. Allowed in the house. I don't think I'm forgetting anyone."
Thinking, then, to Bruce looming in his living room, attending to a wiggly Shelby. Clark smiles, and says, "I bet animals like you."
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But Clark knows what the property looks like, and their time together has worn down some of the spines on his armor. Acclimated. So,
"Fifteen years or so since I owned any. Richard was very good, technically, but much more interested in trying to get me to adopt retired circus zebras than actually attending lessons."
Man. He bets Clark is great with kids. Bruce draws in a breath, pretending with serious skill that he didn't just accidentally stick a knife between his own ribs, and settles a hand against the other man's thigh. Bird video. He likes the Beach Boys one. Staunching that oopsie emotional bleeding by ignoring it.
"Animals just appreciate calm."
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Anyway. He turns his head around to look at Bruce, as if there'd be something in his expression he could read.
There isn't. Clark's own expression is that of interest, concern, a query stamped into the directness of his stare. His phone in his hand cheeps and tweets with tinny bird sounds, lowered an inch.
His free hand settles on Bruce's. He asks, "You okay?"
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