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?"
Something else that's new, is the way Bruce does not recoil. He's adapted to a number of things about Clark, but he is not yet used to being so easily read (expression notwithstanding; poker face intact). Or rather, he is not yet used to the way Clark has ceased to pretend he isn't reading him. Biometrics is the word. Would be, for a human.
He doesn't say anything for a while, but he doesn't go tense. Wades in the untested waters of neither shutting down nor immediately changing the subject. He shifts his fingers beneath Clark's, rubbing a thumb against his, watching their hands.
Bruce gives him a look, and it's softer than he even means it to be, but that's alright. I'm okay, yes. Also slightly, Sorry. Like they're just sitting here and it's nice and his pulse does a weird thing. Think he could blame the olive oil? Probably not.
"The boys would have liked you," is what he says, eventually, soft-spoken.
He doesn't all the time expect an answer, and not just because Bruce is Bruce. As established, Clark Kent is not literally psychic, and it's only fair there are some frontiers he can't just access as easily as the rest of them, even when he has a lead to go off of. But also: Bruce is Bruce.
Clark loosens his hold to permit the tangling, careful. Everyone is very fragile. Fingers feel especially delicate. When he returns the gesture with a soft squeeze, it is feather-light.
So is his expression, softening too, worry lines smoothing. He even smiles, but it's a very different kind than happy kind. It is only barely there. "Tell me about it," he invites. It's flat like a request, but should read as a question. He doesn't know enough to give more than platitude, and he doesn't want to give platitude.
Bruce tips his head, considering. Does not immediately say No. That'd be silly, as he's the one who went ahead and answered in the first place. Every moment he feels more even-keeled, and that's nice - for some given value. By himself it would be very easy (and common practice) to spiral, but he lists away from it, here. Not purely because of Clark's company, though that helps.
"There isn't much to tell." There are a million things to tell, but Bruce isn't that way, usually, no matter the topic. He says vague and implicative things about his own experiences, and only offers stories if they're someone else's.
"I do mean— you."
Also Superman. Who doesn't like Superman? (Shush.) But they'd really like Clark.
Clark can't not make his eyebrows do something very subtly skeptical at the idea there's not much to tell, but it doesn't feel right to pry. Not as directly as he might, normally, and not when he only picked it up after some involuntary muscle flinch.
"I mean," he says, "people get there eventually." The unspoken, even you. Old joke, not super funny.
However, he is very likeable.
But he is also not for everyone, and maybe it's a surprise to know that boys brought up by Bruce Wayne in Gotham City would like him. Cultural differences across America aren't nothing, he's encountered them all the time. But maybe that's part of why. He can only guess. "I wish I could meet them," he says, more seriously. He knows a little of the circumstances of both, but there is too much foregone conclusion in Bruce's voice to refute.
He lifts up Bruce's hand, brushes his mouth across his knuckles.
One child is dead, but: "You could probably just drop in on Richard sometime. The trick would be not mentioning me, and I taught him how to be a detective."
Nightwing is not as brutally effective as Batman, but he's just as smart, and also emotionally insightful. The horror.
Bruce watches that kiss to his hand, and squeezes in response. He waits a moment before leaning in to replace it with his mouth against Clark's, a little more intent than just soft. But only a little.
"I was a different person, then. You might have liked that man better." A beat, and, "Though I still didn't like anybody."
The permission (which is how Clark is taking it) is a minor surprise, but taken in good faith. His expression skews thoughtful, a silent maybe I will to the tip of his head, eye contact unbreaking.
Until he is kissed, anyway, eyes closing on auto. Occurs to him only then that their kisses have thus far tonight been a little sideways, never matching up, and he can feel himself warm to it now, as though the delay had been by design. He returns the subtle intention of it, and the subtlety itself.
Kind of.
"Well, I like this guy plenty," Clark says. The bed creaks as he shifts his body around, to face Bruce a little better, knee bumping knee. The start of crowding in on him. "Not sure how you'd take me dialling it up a notch."
It'll happen sooner or later. Might as well acknowledge it, so that Bruce can't rightfully act so offended over the invasion when it does. (Keyword: rightfully. He'll still probably flip out. But Clark will have some edge of leverage in the argument, set up that way on purpose, like speedbumps for his future self.)
They have time. Neither of them are dead. Subtle is alright.
So's this. Clark kissing him back, moving to face him, get up into his space. Bruce reclines against the headboard and lays one hand at Clark's side, just resting there, moving with him as he moves. His dark eyes on the other man's light ones, an unnamable emotion tucked into the corner of his lopsided almost-smile. (A good one.)
"Mm. Yeah. You know me, always gun-shy about doing too much."
Not a dramatic or intense bone in this guy's body. Bruce Wayne, the picture of lowkey. His hand moves, fingers against the waistband of Clark's sweatpants. He tilts his head back to look at him, a hint of daring.
Hands and knees, the mattress sinking beneath the density of them both converging around the same spot. Clark reaching past him to find a grip on the headboard, and the next time he kisses Bruce, Bruce can hear the creak of wood under stress from just the slight flex of Clark's hand.
Daring is met with more guileless interest reflected back at him, a lazy heat in clear eyes. He's never all the time exactly certain how this will go, what they might do together and to one another, even though the conclusion is generally a safe bet. Sometimes it's a trick, that the simple and easy moments feel so familiar, that he forgets they're still finding things out.
His other hand lands on Bruce's chest, gentle, feeling the thrum of his heart before he draws that hand downwards, fingertips seeking out sensitive points as he kisses Bruce's mouth again.
If asked, Bruce would say that when it's easy, it's because that a longing for something this-shaped existed before that shape was filled with a person. The acceptance of moodiness, the creak of a headboard underneath a light touch, a particular kind of ugly honesty that's taken as comfortable. Is comfortable. Have you ever wanted to be as fucked up as you actually are, and know that the other person in bed with you is, too. It's great - better - when that other person is good, and making you good. They're surely doing something positive for each other, here, too, but there is a difference between the kind of honesty that compels the purchase of a wedding ring and the kind that forgives murder attempts.
If asked, Bruce wouldn't actually say anything. But that's what he'd think.
"What are we moderating?" is murmured into Clark's mouth, a rasp of gravel that's as much his voice as it is his perpetual state of five-o-clock. He wonders sometimes what it feels like against skin that can't be irritated by it. His heart is steady, elevated now from interest, and not fumbling with his own weak spots. He closes a hand over the back of Clark's head and kisses him, like everything barely-there all evening was just lying in wait for this. The hand at his middle pushes at elastic, encouraging his pants down and off of him, devoid of any instinct for coyness.
A break in kissing without backing up, just to help—knees shifting to work fabric off completely, reaching backwards to unhook crumpled sweatpants off his own ankles, flipped aside. Another swell of a kiss, of kissing, a little hungrier than before, as if forgetting he was asked a question. Or intent on making Bruce forget he asked a question.
(Probably, Clark would not call them fucked up. But he'd probably get around to that same premise. Maybe with a twee puzzle piece metaphor.)
"Nothing," he mumbles against Bruce's mouth anyway, voice pitched breathier, kiss broken further with his smile, "I was being sarcastic." He's allowed.
At some point, his fingers have slipped into Bruce's waistband. Every part of him is always a few degrees warmer than most might consider comfortable, usually, and that extends right down to the knuckles now press against that divot between hip and pelvis.
Kissing graduates down to his throat.
Edited (whole sentences just for you) 2021-01-01 11:41 (UTC)
"Were you." Bruce likes it. Clark's sarcasm. How it's understated like weaponized midwestern passive-aggression. Kitten-teeth bitey. He wants to hear him complain about getting stuck in traffic. He wants him to keep kissing him.
Bruce shifts up enough as he's able - no point pushing too hard against Clark - so that he can touch him, hand over his back, sides, around to the front of his thighs and slipping one between, though he doesn't reach for his cock. Contact his only made incidentally, instead rubbing over his hipbone and down, pressing against the line that follows his femoral artery, palming the inside of his thigh.
Clark is overheated and Bruce is always too fucking cold; east coast genetics and nerve damage, a black hole on the other side of solar power. He makes a low noise at that touch, the mouth against his throat. The hand at the back of Clark's head splays out and tangles fingers in his hair, pulling slow and close to the root, not particularly out of any concern that he'd be hurt if he yanked on it, but because it feels good to do that, in his opinion.
The hair grip gets an appreciative hum. The hand pressed inside his thigh can feel the subtle twitch and flex of muscle as Clark moves a little to encourage it. The amount that Bruce declares he likes him gets a laugh breathed against his shoulder.
"Sounds like there's room for improvement."
—not a complaint, apparently. An impetus. It's what dumb banter is for.
Clark turns his wrist so that when his hand slips into Bruce's pants, it's to circle his fingers around his cock. He flexes his wrist so that waistband slips further down, give them both some room. The first time they'd done this, Bruce could probably have clocked that he's not Clark's first male partner, but that there haven't been a lot of them. Probably not a lot of people in general.
However, shyness on its own hadn't been too much of an issue. But don't worry, there were plenty of hangups to work through at the time.
There are enough hangups between them that one might wonder if they're mutually part of the appeal. Bruce has had a lot of sex, with a lot of people - fewer of them men, than women, and with men he's been nearly exclusively in charge. It's been a wonder, learning that there are still new things to experience. To discover about himself, and share, to look up at Clark dazzled or dumbfounded with a total absence of cynicism in a way he didn't believe himself capable of.
The only room for improvement, perhaps, is becoming even more comfortable with each other as time goes on. As it stands, there's no hesitation as he shifts up into Clark's touch, at a bit of a funny angle for it against the headboard with the other kneeling over him, but that hardly matters. He's not hard yet but on his way, always easy to convince. You'd think he'd want less physicality with how much time he puts into violence, but no; it's the language he speaks most fluently, the thing he can't seem to get enough of, one way or another. (Maddening for someone so unsocial and private.)
"Feel like anything in particular?" is very quiet. Bruce in general can be very quiet, and there is something he likes very much in knowing that Clark can hear him no matter what. He drags blunt fingernails over his scalp and teases his dick with the backs of his knuckles, a slow slide of skin that's parts soft and scarred even there, hands broken too many times and ways to count.
There are things left to figure out, which is its own kind of nice. One of them, at least for Clark, is figuring out the balance. It's not missed on him, Bruce's level of care, for little things and for big things. It's different to what he might anticipate from Lois, where she makes him feel like a safe port in a storm, how right and good that feels. Whether it's Bruce's audacity to resurrect him or Lois admitting how far she'd fallen, how ready she was to be caught, through to—
Well. This stuff, maybe. Clark glances at Bruce for that question, hand gentle around him, coaxing him. Gentle, considering the friction of dry skin.
"Not in particular," he says, thinking about it. There'd been a hint of motion like he could get something more satisfying out of the brush of Bruce's knuckles against his cock, on its way to hard since Bruce had touched the waistband of his pants. Now, instead, he scoots backwards, giving Bruce space to find something more comfortable, and himself more room. "But I think I wanna take care of you to start with," with a gentle emphasis on the 'you'.
Mostly he means this: curls his fingers firmer around Bruce's cock, and lower his head down to take it only shallowly into his mouth, once he gets any sense of acquiescence.
As slow as it is - easy, almost sedated, the late hour and post-dinner idleness - there is still something electric, for Bruce, in the way they brush together, and shift into a comfortable position. For a second, just a heartbeat, he can feel a moment like finding the seam in a clay cup with his fingertips, where he could push it into something faster, harder, dare him to crank it up by several degrees. And either it would happen, or it would become a presence to be held onto.
He doesn't. (Not yet?) (They have time. Tonight, tomorrow, all week.)
Clark is mostly out of literal reach now, so Bruce occupies his hands with his hair, his shoulder. Thumb over his ear in an echo of the shower, but this time it's a sensual touch instead of a teasing one. He lets out a breath, a near-inaudible sigh, and relaxes to let the other man do whatever he'd like. And there is nothing about this he doesn't acquiesce to. Knock yourself out, Kansas.
"That's what your eyes look like sometimes," he says after a while, composure as stone as ever, even as his breath ticks up and his cock fills, everything flushes warm. "The ocean, looking at it from the shore. Way out at one of the poles, where everything is still blue and white. But you're never cold."
Nice to do this. Nice to settle down flatter on the bed, and easily pick up that near-inaudible sigh and the uptick in breathing, and feel Bruce's fingers follow or disrupt the natural wave in his hair. Nice to focus on this one thing, of stroking his hand up and down Bruce's cock as it warms and hardens against his palm, the going made easier when Clark lowers his head to lick along.
All lazily paced, non-frantic, and when he takes Bruce into his mouth, he doesn't push himself to do so deeply.
No pause as Bruce speaks save to look up at him. There's warmth there, as noted. Bruce would be forgiven for thinking that Clark is easy for flattery, as probably would Lois, when really it's mainly the source that matters. Eventually, he lifts his head a little, still stroking Bruce, more pressure in then upwards motion of it.
"Cold's not so bad," he says, quieter in the way he gets in bed. But then says, "When?"
Flattery implies insincerity. One's own interests being served, sure, with the way Clark strokes him, takes him into his mouth like they've got all those days to just do this one thing, but he's never going to tell Clark his eyes are pretty to get a blowjob out of him. Speaking like this, finding the right note and capturing the lack of self-restriction to let it go, is as perilously sincere as the unhinged mission to bring about resurrection.
Bruce is too fucking weird.
"Mmm." A low rumbled exhale, raking through his hair slow and firm, now. "When you're surprised. I don't mean... shocked." It'd be easy to push for faster. The ache is there, temptation a fine line; but he likes waiting there, too, letting everything get wound up. Increasingly like the satisfying, maddening burn of shoving fingers against a sore muscle. "When someone makes you laugh and you didn't expect it."
He nearly follows that with, Sometimes you look amazed by the smallest gestures, but doesn't. It sounds patronizing in his head, and he's not sure how to articulate why he thinks that's beautiful. Bruce doesn't smile at people being kind to him at random. He's grown too bitter. Clark hasn't and he admires it. Wants to cup his hands around it or sink his teeth into it, he's not sure. Both.
Clark smiles, but it a subtle variant that manifests more around his eyes. Not surprised in the way Bruce is describing, but close, maybe. "That's sweet," he says, too sincere to be only making fun, if not immune to the fact it's also a call out. He likes the things Bruce's notices. Takes note of.
His arm curls around Bruce's leg, finding a grip beneath his thigh, and with a gentle tug—inasmuch as inevitable strength can be gentle—he pulls Bruce further down the bed by a few inches, as though that were easier and more convenient to do than for him to reposition his sprawl.
Stroking ceases, replaced with a hold and opened-mouth kissing, eyes half-closed, in search of those sensitive spots that elicit response, both voluntary and not. Patient. His own erection he can press into the mattress with the subtle shift of his hips and barely relieve some of the building ache, and he doesn't mind that at all.
He gives a contented hum against sensitive skin the next rake through of Bruce's fingers. What time is it again. What timezone, even. Who knows.
How sweet, and Bruce grunts at that, a lazy volley back at teasing; he tugs Clark's hair, sharp, but not with any intent to get a reaction. (How could it.) He doesn't tense against the way Clark pulls him, only finding it a little disorienting to be moved with such ease - because it's only a little movement. A different type of creature, he has not yet developed Lois' affinity for being caught mid-air.
But his pulse does tick up, and there's no hiding the way arousal flickers through him. Bruce would never let another man - any other man, not human, not alien - handle him anywhere near roughly, and he would never like it with another man. What are you doing to me, he had asked once, in the early days of sexual contact ramping up past stolen kisses, when Bruce was still entrenched with too much guilt to function with.
Less so, these days. Ever closing in on equilibrium between the two of them. Helps that it isn't one-sided, that Bruce has come to understand why, even if he still sort of thinks Clark's bananas for it.
Just, glass houses. So.
He drags in a breath. His cock twitches. "Fuck," is low and rough.
The lock he has around Bruce's thigh is almost so casual as to be negligent, and yet as unmoving as set concrete. In reality, nothing is truly negligent, Clark keenly aware of everything, including what he's doing, a thought behind each touch, each point of contact, happy to soak each little detail at his own leisure.
The baritone sigh out of Bruce stirs him, enough that Clark almost echoes it. Pulls Bruce's cock into his mouth, shallow again, and then deeper, sustained teasing and testing traded in for something firmer.
(The tug to his hair doesn't net a reaction, not an obvious one. Certainly not an ow. But if it triggers a memory, a dim and barely conscious sensation of what it had felt like when the indestructible nature of his material body had been compromised enough that he had known the prickle of pain of a hand grasping through his hair, firm enough to lift his head—)
He could not get away, unless he forced it. But only because if he forced it, Clark would probably acquiesce and allow it. To do anything with Clark, so much as stand next to him, requires a trust so absolute. Whether it's a trust that Clark will bow to his will voluntarily, or a trust that Clark's is what he really wants, Bruce isn't sure—
Clark takes him in like that and Bruce's breath hitches. His hand rakes over his head, through his hair, scraping across his scalp in a way that might be painful for someone else. Might. Maybe it would just be pleasing, on a knife's edge. Depends on the person; Bruce is not over-rough by default, but as a person he is too much, and sometimes it happens. Kryptonian or not.
He doesn't think about the first time he grabbed the other man's hair. He couldn't feel it. He'd had that gauntlet on, the only thing keeping his bones intact as he slammed his fist into Superman's face over and over. He hadn't done it again with his bare hands until later, later, when,
Bruce remembers:
They were in his house, in his bedroom. A cloudy unremarkable night, letting little light inside the glass walls, and they had been going back and forth. Kissing each other and pulling at garments, raised voices now and again (mostly Bruce), lowered now and again (mostly Clark), neither of them able to decide what kind of tension was taking over. The urge to fuck or fight. And the way those tensions were beginning to become one indistinguishable thing.
Beginning to?
Bruce sits at the edge of his bed, shirt open, mouth kiss-bruised, breathing harshly and watching Clark. Something dangerous about it. He's not afraid - he should be, probably, but he isn't, arousal obvious between his legs, hands at his sides itching to do something besides hold still, which he's forcing himself. Instead of grabbing at him harder than he means to, even though he knows full well (does he) that he can't hurt Clark (can't he).
"Well," he says, thick and grating, but nothing else comes after that.
Clark's mouth is not kiss-bruised. In fact, his hair is barely out of place. His breathing is level.
Not his heart, though. That's beating faster. His shirt was half off his shoulders by the time they broke apart, having pushed Bruce with just enough effort to force the other man backwards and sitting, only from Clark's perspective, he was as gentle as a regular person would have to be in setting down a china teacup. There's probably gonna be a bruise there tomorrow morning, heart-sized and in the same neighbourhood.
And the itch to do more—more what—has him backing up, hands flat on his thighs as if to stop himself from that more. Doing more would be a line crossed in some direction or another. He is also uncomfortably hard in his jeans. That's another problem.
Well says Bruce. This is where they come to their senses.
"What are you doing," says Clark. Never mind. Maybe his breathing isn't completely level.
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no subject
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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
He doesn't say anything for a while, but he doesn't go tense. Wades in the untested waters of neither shutting down nor immediately changing the subject. He shifts his fingers beneath Clark's, rubbing a thumb against his, watching their hands.
Bruce gives him a look, and it's softer than he even means it to be, but that's alright. I'm okay, yes. Also slightly, Sorry. Like they're just sitting here and it's nice and his pulse does a weird thing. Think he could blame the olive oil? Probably not.
"The boys would have liked you," is what he says, eventually, soft-spoken.
no subject
He doesn't all the time expect an answer, and not just because Bruce is Bruce. As established, Clark Kent is not literally psychic, and it's only fair there are some frontiers he can't just access as easily as the rest of them, even when he has a lead to go off of. But also: Bruce is Bruce.
Clark loosens his hold to permit the tangling, careful. Everyone is very fragile. Fingers feel especially delicate. When he returns the gesture with a soft squeeze, it is feather-light.
So is his expression, softening too, worry lines smoothing. He even smiles, but it's a very different kind than happy kind. It is only barely there. "Tell me about it," he invites. It's flat like a request, but should read as a question. He doesn't know enough to give more than platitude, and he doesn't want to give platitude.
no subject
"There isn't much to tell." There are a million things to tell, but Bruce isn't that way, usually, no matter the topic. He says vague and implicative things about his own experiences, and only offers stories if they're someone else's.
"I do mean— you."
Also Superman. Who doesn't like Superman? (Shush.) But they'd really like Clark.
no subject
"I mean," he says, "people get there eventually." The unspoken, even you. Old joke, not super funny.
However, he is very likeable.
But he is also not for everyone, and maybe it's a surprise to know that boys brought up by Bruce Wayne in Gotham City would like him. Cultural differences across America aren't nothing, he's encountered them all the time. But maybe that's part of why. He can only guess. "I wish I could meet them," he says, more seriously. He knows a little of the circumstances of both, but there is too much foregone conclusion in Bruce's voice to refute.
He lifts up Bruce's hand, brushes his mouth across his knuckles.
no subject
Nightwing is not as brutally effective as Batman, but he's just as smart, and also emotionally insightful. The horror.
Bruce watches that kiss to his hand, and squeezes in response. He waits a moment before leaning in to replace it with his mouth against Clark's, a little more intent than just soft. But only a little.
"I was a different person, then. You might have liked that man better." A beat, and, "Though I still didn't like anybody."
lol
no subject
Until he is kissed, anyway, eyes closing on auto. Occurs to him only then that their kisses have thus far tonight been a little sideways, never matching up, and he can feel himself warm to it now, as though the delay had been by design. He returns the subtle intention of it, and the subtlety itself.
Kind of.
"Well, I like this guy plenty," Clark says. The bed creaks as he shifts his body around, to face Bruce a little better, knee bumping knee. The start of crowding in on him. "Not sure how you'd take me dialling it up a notch."
no subject
They have time. Neither of them are dead. Subtle is alright.
So's this. Clark kissing him back, moving to face him, get up into his space. Bruce reclines against the headboard and lays one hand at Clark's side, just resting there, moving with him as he moves. His dark eyes on the other man's light ones, an unnamable emotion tucked into the corner of his lopsided almost-smile. (A good one.)
"Mm. Yeah. You know me, always gun-shy about doing too much."
Not a dramatic or intense bone in this guy's body. Bruce Wayne, the picture of lowkey. His hand moves, fingers against the waistband of Clark's sweatpants. He tilts his head back to look at him, a hint of daring.
no subject
Hands and knees, the mattress sinking beneath the density of them both converging around the same spot. Clark reaching past him to find a grip on the headboard, and the next time he kisses Bruce, Bruce can hear the creak of wood under stress from just the slight flex of Clark's hand.
Daring is met with more guileless interest reflected back at him, a lazy heat in clear eyes. He's never all the time exactly certain how this will go, what they might do together and to one another, even though the conclusion is generally a safe bet. Sometimes it's a trick, that the simple and easy moments feel so familiar, that he forgets they're still finding things out.
His other hand lands on Bruce's chest, gentle, feeling the thrum of his heart before he draws that hand downwards, fingertips seeking out sensitive points as he kisses Bruce's mouth again.
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If asked, Bruce wouldn't actually say anything. But that's what he'd think.
"What are we moderating?" is murmured into Clark's mouth, a rasp of gravel that's as much his voice as it is his perpetual state of five-o-clock. He wonders sometimes what it feels like against skin that can't be irritated by it. His heart is steady, elevated now from interest, and not fumbling with his own weak spots. He closes a hand over the back of Clark's head and kisses him, like everything barely-there all evening was just lying in wait for this. The hand at his middle pushes at elastic, encouraging his pants down and off of him, devoid of any instinct for coyness.
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(Probably, Clark would not call them fucked up. But he'd probably get around to that same premise. Maybe with a twee puzzle piece metaphor.)
"Nothing," he mumbles against Bruce's mouth anyway, voice pitched breathier, kiss broken further with his smile, "I was being sarcastic." He's allowed.
At some point, his fingers have slipped into Bruce's waistband. Every part of him is always a few degrees warmer than most might consider comfortable, usually, and that extends right down to the knuckles now press against that divot between hip and pelvis.
Kissing graduates down to his throat.
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Bruce shifts up enough as he's able - no point pushing too hard against Clark - so that he can touch him, hand over his back, sides, around to the front of his thighs and slipping one between, though he doesn't reach for his cock. Contact his only made incidentally, instead rubbing over his hipbone and down, pressing against the line that follows his femoral artery, palming the inside of his thigh.
Clark is overheated and Bruce is always too fucking cold; east coast genetics and nerve damage, a black hole on the other side of solar power. He makes a low noise at that touch, the mouth against his throat. The hand at the back of Clark's head splays out and tangles fingers in his hair, pulling slow and close to the root, not particularly out of any concern that he'd be hurt if he yanked on it, but because it feels good to do that, in his opinion.
"Guess I like you alright, too."
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"Sounds like there's room for improvement."
—not a complaint, apparently. An impetus. It's what dumb banter is for.
Clark turns his wrist so that when his hand slips into Bruce's pants, it's to circle his fingers around his cock. He flexes his wrist so that waistband slips further down, give them both some room. The first time they'd done this, Bruce could probably have clocked that he's not Clark's first male partner, but that there haven't been a lot of them. Probably not a lot of people in general.
However, shyness on its own hadn't been too much of an issue. But don't worry, there were plenty of hangups to work through at the time.
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The only room for improvement, perhaps, is becoming even more comfortable with each other as time goes on. As it stands, there's no hesitation as he shifts up into Clark's touch, at a bit of a funny angle for it against the headboard with the other kneeling over him, but that hardly matters. He's not hard yet but on his way, always easy to convince. You'd think he'd want less physicality with how much time he puts into violence, but no; it's the language he speaks most fluently, the thing he can't seem to get enough of, one way or another. (Maddening for someone so unsocial and private.)
"Feel like anything in particular?" is very quiet. Bruce in general can be very quiet, and there is something he likes very much in knowing that Clark can hear him no matter what. He drags blunt fingernails over his scalp and teases his dick with the backs of his knuckles, a slow slide of skin that's parts soft and scarred even there, hands broken too many times and ways to count.
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Well. This stuff, maybe. Clark glances at Bruce for that question, hand gentle around him, coaxing him. Gentle, considering the friction of dry skin.
"Not in particular," he says, thinking about it. There'd been a hint of motion like he could get something more satisfying out of the brush of Bruce's knuckles against his cock, on its way to hard since Bruce had touched the waistband of his pants. Now, instead, he scoots backwards, giving Bruce space to find something more comfortable, and himself more room. "But I think I wanna take care of you to start with," with a gentle emphasis on the 'you'.
Mostly he means this: curls his fingers firmer around Bruce's cock, and lower his head down to take it only shallowly into his mouth, once he gets any sense of acquiescence.
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He doesn't. (Not yet?) (They have time. Tonight, tomorrow, all week.)
Clark is mostly out of literal reach now, so Bruce occupies his hands with his hair, his shoulder. Thumb over his ear in an echo of the shower, but this time it's a sensual touch instead of a teasing one. He lets out a breath, a near-inaudible sigh, and relaxes to let the other man do whatever he'd like. And there is nothing about this he doesn't acquiesce to. Knock yourself out, Kansas.
"That's what your eyes look like sometimes," he says after a while, composure as stone as ever, even as his breath ticks up and his cock fills, everything flushes warm. "The ocean, looking at it from the shore. Way out at one of the poles, where everything is still blue and white. But you're never cold."
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All lazily paced, non-frantic, and when he takes Bruce into his mouth, he doesn't push himself to do so deeply.
No pause as Bruce speaks save to look up at him. There's warmth there, as noted. Bruce would be forgiven for thinking that Clark is easy for flattery, as probably would Lois, when really it's mainly the source that matters. Eventually, he lifts his head a little, still stroking Bruce, more pressure in then upwards motion of it.
"Cold's not so bad," he says, quieter in the way he gets in bed. But then says, "When?"
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Bruce is too fucking weird.
"Mmm." A low rumbled exhale, raking through his hair slow and firm, now. "When you're surprised. I don't mean... shocked." It'd be easy to push for faster. The ache is there, temptation a fine line; but he likes waiting there, too, letting everything get wound up. Increasingly like the satisfying, maddening burn of shoving fingers against a sore muscle. "When someone makes you laugh and you didn't expect it."
He nearly follows that with, Sometimes you look amazed by the smallest gestures, but doesn't. It sounds patronizing in his head, and he's not sure how to articulate why he thinks that's beautiful. Bruce doesn't smile at people being kind to him at random. He's grown too bitter. Clark hasn't and he admires it. Wants to cup his hands around it or sink his teeth into it, he's not sure. Both.
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His arm curls around Bruce's leg, finding a grip beneath his thigh, and with a gentle tug—inasmuch as inevitable strength can be gentle—he pulls Bruce further down the bed by a few inches, as though that were easier and more convenient to do than for him to reposition his sprawl.
Stroking ceases, replaced with a hold and opened-mouth kissing, eyes half-closed, in search of those sensitive spots that elicit response, both voluntary and not. Patient. His own erection he can press into the mattress with the subtle shift of his hips and barely relieve some of the building ache, and he doesn't mind that at all.
He gives a contented hum against sensitive skin the next rake through of Bruce's fingers. What time is it again. What timezone, even. Who knows.
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But his pulse does tick up, and there's no hiding the way arousal flickers through him. Bruce would never let another man - any other man, not human, not alien - handle him anywhere near roughly, and he would never like it with another man. What are you doing to me, he had asked once, in the early days of sexual contact ramping up past stolen kisses, when Bruce was still entrenched with too much guilt to function with.
Less so, these days. Ever closing in on equilibrium between the two of them. Helps that it isn't one-sided, that Bruce has come to understand why, even if he still sort of thinks Clark's bananas for it.
Just, glass houses. So.
He drags in a breath. His cock twitches. "Fuck," is low and rough.
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The baritone sigh out of Bruce stirs him, enough that Clark almost echoes it. Pulls Bruce's cock into his mouth, shallow again, and then deeper, sustained teasing and testing traded in for something firmer.
(The tug to his hair doesn't net a reaction, not an obvious one. Certainly not an ow. But if it triggers a memory, a dim and barely conscious sensation of what it had felt like when the indestructible nature of his material body had been compromised enough that he had known the prickle of pain of a hand grasping through his hair, firm enough to lift his head—)
Well, he's busy.
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Clark takes him in like that and Bruce's breath hitches. His hand rakes over his head, through his hair, scraping across his scalp in a way that might be painful for someone else. Might. Maybe it would just be pleasing, on a knife's edge. Depends on the person; Bruce is not over-rough by default, but as a person he is too much, and sometimes it happens. Kryptonian or not.
He doesn't think about the first time he grabbed the other man's hair. He couldn't feel it. He'd had that gauntlet on, the only thing keeping his bones intact as he slammed his fist into Superman's face over and over. He hadn't done it again with his bare hands until later, later, when,
Bruce remembers:
They were in his house, in his bedroom. A cloudy unremarkable night, letting little light inside the glass walls, and they had been going back and forth. Kissing each other and pulling at garments, raised voices now and again (mostly Bruce), lowered now and again (mostly Clark), neither of them able to decide what kind of tension was taking over. The urge to fuck or fight. And the way those tensions were beginning to become one indistinguishable thing.
Beginning to?
Bruce sits at the edge of his bed, shirt open, mouth kiss-bruised, breathing harshly and watching Clark. Something dangerous about it. He's not afraid - he should be, probably, but he isn't, arousal obvious between his legs, hands at his sides itching to do something besides hold still, which he's forcing himself. Instead of grabbing at him harder than he means to, even though he knows full well (does he) that he can't hurt Clark (can't he).
"Well," he says, thick and grating, but nothing else comes after that.
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Not his heart, though. That's beating faster. His shirt was half off his shoulders by the time they broke apart, having pushed Bruce with just enough effort to force the other man backwards and sitting, only from Clark's perspective, he was as gentle as a regular person would have to be in setting down a china teacup. There's probably gonna be a bruise there tomorrow morning, heart-sized and in the same neighbourhood.
And the itch to do more—more what—has him backing up, hands flat on his thighs as if to stop himself from that more. Doing more would be a line crossed in some direction or another. He is also uncomfortably hard in his jeans. That's another problem.
Well says Bruce. This is where they come to their senses.
"What are you doing," says Clark. Never mind. Maybe his breathing isn't completely level.
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