dceu_kinkmeme | DCEU Prompt Post #1

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DCEU Prompt Post #1

Welcome to Round One of the DCEU Kink Meme!

Please have a look at the extended rules here.

The important rules in short:

Post anonymously.
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Please direct any questions to the Ask a mod post. For inspiration: list of kinks .

Prompt, write, draw, comment, and most importantly have fun! Please link to your fills on the fill post.

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We now have a non-DCEU prompt post for any prompts in other 'verses (comics, animated series, other movies or TV shows etc.).

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Bruce sneaks into Clark's apartment late one night, and fucks the Man of Steel into the mattress while wearing the bat suit after he overhears Clark talking to one of the other Justice Leaguers about how sexy he thinks said suit is.

Not the OP, but I sm SO HERE FOR THIS :D

:D Haha, I'm glad to hear it, anon! ♥

And now some Bruce angst, to match the Clark angst from last time! :D \o?

It's a skill Bruce has cultivated over years of long practice, being able to maintain genuinely separate but simultaneous trains of thought—or, in this case, a train of thought and a recitation that can roll on in the back of his mind with only a fraction of his attention devoted to it.

Clark had been confused, disoriented, when he came to on the ship. He hadn't realized what was happening until it was explained to him, and he hadn't been paying any particular attention to Bruce before that. The easy unthinking way he'd replied aloud to Bruce's unspoken thought had said as much.

So it's entirely possible that he missed—or received only the vaguest impression of—that first stark bright moment of sharp-edged horror. Bruce had felt it and it had only been multiplied by his awareness that it might be perceptible to Clark; he had scrambled for something that could distract from it, and it was painfully appropriate that he should have found Dante at his fingertips. He had been thinking of hell at his heels, before.

And now it has caught up to him.

It had been disconcerting, to feel Clark's dismay and discontent so clearly; Bruce had been startled by its intensity. Clark hadn't—he hadn't looked half as upset as he'd felt. But Bruce can't claim to have been surprised in the least by the emotion itself.

In the months since Clark's resurrection, Clark has shown an unexpected willingness to interact with Bruce. To talk to him, to smile at him, to work alongside him—and possibly even to forgive him. None of which could have prepared Clark for the prospect of carrying Bruce around in the back of his mind, ever-present and inescapable. It's no wonder he was surprised, displeased. It's no wonder he was unhappy, when he realized the implications of the connection the mother box has forged between them.

Or—some of the implications, at least. Bruce dares to hope it will be possible to ensure that he remains ignorant of the remainder.

Though, of course, if Bruce isn't careful, Clark might very well be able to simply pluck it straight out of his mind. All of it: every ugly shadowed thing Bruce has so carefully chained away in the darkest corners of himself, the whole strangling mass of it that lurks there, where no one else should ever have been able to find it. And even if Clark never delves that deeply—Bruce has abruptly become thoroughly conscious of how much more there is that lies unburied. His panting pathetic hero-worship, the sick sad obviousness with which he'd fought Diana over Clark's revival or stood there watching Superman battle Steppenwolf—watching, staring, as if there weren't a half-dozen better things Batman might have been doing. Months' worth of helpless desperate fantasizing, the full and vivid range of it, from Superman's wrathful grip grinding his armor plates together to Clark's startled uncertain warmth, the whole bank?—

Bruce lives a life of precision. People who need to see Bruce Wayne are shown Bruce Wayne; in situations that call for Batman, Batman intervenes. The measurements are exact, the borders inviolate, and Bruce has their dimensions and extents duly memorized.

Perfection is out of his reach, as always. But he has deliberately and ruthlessly minimized the potential for an unexpected breach—or he had, once, and has lately redoubled his efforts, after the unforgivable lapse that had allowed Luthor to connect one with the other and manipulate him using the knowledge. And now—

Even Alfred has never possessed such wholly unfettered access to every single part of Bruce. And Alfred has, at times, courteously refrained from pressing, when he deems it wise—but Clark, through no fault of his own, might not be able to. In the same way that Bruce may not be able to avoid having the whole of himself laid out for Clark to see, Clark may not be able to avoid looking at it.

And that, Bruce thinks, is a circle of hell beyond description.

—ch'i' non lo scrivo, però ch'ogne parlar sarebbe poco—

*

He knows he won't be able to get away with silence.

The Wayne Manor renovations are coming along well, but far from complete; Clark has nothing but his uniform, and Victor is his own equipment, but Diana, Arthur, and Barry are all still using the Cave as storage space. Which makes avoiding them somewhat difficult.

Barry keeps casting him quick uncertain glances, opening his mouth and then closing it and then opening it again; and ever since the moment Clark took off into the sky over the bay, Arthur has been watching him with those steady pale eyes.

But—of course—it's Diana who pulls him aside, before he can head upstairs. "Bruce," she says, fixing him with that patient look she gets when she knows he has a dislocated shoulder he's not telling her about. "Are you all right?"

"Of course," he says.

She's unmoved. "I know it must be—strange for you," she says delicately, "to have such a thing happen. To be joined in such a way."

Bruce looks away. "It'll take some getting used to," he allows, letting his tone slide toward wry, because misdirection is an art and he knows better than to try to lie to Diana outright. "But it's fine. I can handle it."

"You aren't the only one it happened to," Diana says.

"We can handle it," Bruce amends, and he has to be very careful not to let it come out snappish. It's already taking up so much of his concentration, keeping up the steady flow of Dante in the background, monitoring the inside of his head so thoroughly for anything trying to slide in Clark's direction. Maybe that's why "Clark is—" slips out before he can choke it off, why he has to scrabble for something else to say that isn't quel cammino ascoso intrammo a ritornar nel chiaro mondo—"Clark is all right. He's at home," Bruce adds, suddenly aware that this is in fact the truth. "He's all right."

"I'm glad," Diana says simply, but she keeps watching him for a long moment afterward, with a look he can't quite parse.

But it is the truth. They can handle it, and Clark is all right. Bruce—Bruce would know if that weren't so. If there were anything wrong with Clark aside from something that sounds like a sigh in Bruce's head, a soft quiet discontent, Bruce would know it. He thinks back to waking on the ship, to the sharp pain in his ribs, his arms, his legs: the spike-bolts. That's where they'd been, in Clark, and Bruce had felt the hurt.

Diana steps away with a smile and doesn't keep him. Bruce walks upstairs with a head full of all the tests he wants to run, and it's perfect timing: he hits the last canto of Inferno and allows himself to transition straight into Das Rheingold. Music is even lower-maintenance than rote recital, and Bruce will need the lion's share of his attention devoted to whatever results his self-examinations can turn up.

(It doesn't matter what he might have said. It doesn't matter that he told one truth and hid another. Clark is—

Clark is like a light, in Bruce's head. The place where he is, the sense of his presence, is—is a window thrown open in a shuttered half-burnt mansion, bright warmth shining hopefully into a vast dark place.

But it doesn't matter. Bruce will figure out how to undo this, and have his mind to himself again, and none of it has to touch Clark at all.)

*

Bruce leans back in his chair and sighs, rubbing tiredly at his eyes.

Nine hours have carried him from Das Rheingold through Die Walküre and straight into Siegfried, and he's staring down both the transition to Götterdämmerung and the looming inevitability of a conclusion he would rather not acknowledge.

Perhaps it had been foolish, but he'd been hoping against hope for some kind of—discernable mechanism behind the bond. Something that could be detected and dealt with, even without the mother box. A range of possibilities had seemed plausible, and some of them came conveniently matched with obvious solutions. Nanites in his system, in Clark's, paired and broadcasting; an EMP might have been enough to take care of it. Some sort of injection from those gleaming silver filaments, some kind of osmotic force sufficient to penetrate Bruce's gloves as easily as his skin—surely it could be flushed from their bodies one way or another, with time or fluids or some variation on dialysis.

But he's scanned and sampled and tested himself in every way he can think of, and nothing's shown itself. Obviously his brain function is deviating wildly from baseline, but he can't pinpoint the cause, can't trace those deviations back to an actionable origin.

He supposes he should have known it wouldn't be that easy. And at the very least, eliminating solutions that are not viable does technically qualify as some sort of progress.

"Perhaps a break, sir."

Bruce makes a face into his own palm, and then spins his chair around to take the cup of tea Alfred's holding out. When Alfred is mother-henning, sometimes giving in to his first few gentle sallies is enough to convince him not to escalate. At least for a while.

He takes a sip, demonstrative, eyebrows raised.

"Why, yes, Master Wayne," Alfred murmurs, "I do indeed observe your obedience and marvel. It's almost enough to make an old man think you might choose to sleep tonight of your own free will."

Bruce glances away.

"Almost," Alfred repeats.

"I have work to do, Alfred."

"I'm sure." Alfred waits a beat, and then sighs through his nose. "Do you truly expect to solve this problem tonight, sir?"

Bruce takes another sip of tea and looks at the monitors, all his test results and useless scans. "No," he says. "But I—need to try."

The weight of Alfred's gaze then is unmistakable. Need: Bruce has never used that word lightly. "Well," Alfred says slowly. "In that case, sir, might I be of any assistance?"

Bruce supposes a second pair of eyes wouldn't go amiss.

He gives Alfred the nod, and Alfred draws up a second chair, settles in beside him, and begins to review the results Bruce has already gone through anew. And Bruce—

Bruce stares grimly at the screen in front of him, and thinks about a clock ticking down. He knows from experience that he's capable of lasting at least 48 hours without suffering particularly deleterious effects, and 72 isn't out of the question. But beyond that, his judgment will be increasingly questionable, and potentially to the point where sleep would no longer constitute a truly significant loss of control. Doing this—wielding the iron-fisted precision necessary to keep his own grasping crawling shadows out of Clark's mind, while at the same time distracting Clark well enough to keep Clark from looking too closely at his—requires a baseline level of focused concentration that may simply prove impossible to maintain, whether Bruce is conscious or not.

Dealing with this within 48 hours would be optimal. Within 72 would be acceptable. But there are only so many stimulants he can take; there's only so far he can push before he'll be compromised one way or another. And if he should fall asleep—

He knows his own mind. Clark lying in those restraints, slack-faced and unseeing, with bloody holes torn all over again through that goddamn Superman uniform—yes, Bruce has some idea what will be waiting for him, if he shuts his eyes and lets it come.

There are some things Wagner can't drown out. And it would be—optimal, if Clark were never forced to find out what they are.

Ah, I really don't know if the title of "Mistress of Miscommunication" should go to you or Susie. You both do it so painfully well.

Then again, I'm not entirely certain that was a compliment or not. ;-P

Anyway. Oh, Clark. Oh, Bruce. Oh, boy, we're in for one hell of an angsty ride.

I adore this to pieces and less than patiently await your update!

Oh, I'll take it as a compliment - trying to work out how to create miscommunication between characters who are currently pretty much psychic was kind of a challenge, and I'm delighted to think I might actually be pulling it off. ;D

Haha, thank you so much, anon! I'm glad you're interested in coming along for this particular angsty ride, and that you've enjoyed it so far. :D ♥

CLARK GETTING A CLUE AND BRUCE BEING A STUBBORN ASS. MY FAVORITE. :D

Clark isn't too preoccupied to sleep. In fact, he can't shake the idea. Sleep, sleep, sleep. The thought won't leave him alone. Which, he decides, makes sense enough: a span of time where he doesn't have to think about any of this, where he won't be able to keep worrying at the corners of it; where he can't fall into the trap of feeling self-conscious about every single thing in his head, helplessly alert to Bruce's unavoidable presence.

Not that Bruce is looking. Clark thinks he can almost tell, can feel his way along the angled edges of Bruce's carefully-averted attention. But he's still there. And even with Mom, even when Clark had lived with Lois—no matter how comfortable you are together, it makes a difference, having somebody else around. It makes a difference, not being alone.

But if he's asleep, he doesn't think he'll be so excruciatingly aware of it. Even if his dreams are nothing but endless distorted opera, the Ride of the Valkyries on a loop—which, thanks for that, Bruce—it'll at least give him a break.

*

It works all right. Or at least he thinks it does. He has an impression of having woken at some point, that it had taken a little while to settle back to sleep. But his dreams, good or bad, weren't vivid enough to leave much of a mark, and overall it feels like it was a perfectly decent night's rest.

Or—it should have been. He doesn't think he can really call himself tired, without any kryptonite around. But he gets up, gets dressed, and he feels strange and slow, full of a vague background discomfort.

It might just be the aftereffects of spending so much time restrained, or healing so quickly afterward. It's probably not serious. He makes sure to eat something substantial for breakfast, and he gives himself a few minutes on the roof of the apartment building before he heads to the Planet office, soaking up some sun.

It doesn't help. The morning drags. There's a tightness creeping up into his neck, his jaw, that he can't shake, and he feels a frustration, an aimless dissatisfaction, dogging his heels. It gets so bad by midafternoon that he's actually started to see a red tinge at the edge of his vision, in the corners of his eyes. He tries to keep his mind on his work, take deep breaths and stay focused, and he just hopes whatever's wrong with him isn't spilling through to Bruce too badly.

He's almost glad when it happens: something in his head changes at the exact same moment his phone buzzes. A message from Victor, about a parademon sighting—and Bruce, Clark thinks. That's what it was, the thing that shifted. Bruce got the message, too.

He feels better, leaving the Planet behind and leaping into the sky. Not good, but better. The dissatisfaction's eased, now that he's—now that he's doing something.

The coordinates Victor gave take him to a bare flat chunk of Saskatchewan. He realizes halfway there, wind screaming, that he's just going; he should have called someone, should have arranged to meet the League at the Cave, even if he wanted to fly instead of riding in the Fox with the rest of them. But there's a sharp, driving urgency in the pit of his stomach, and he can't convince himself to turn around.

Wherever Victor picked up word of the sighting, it was accurate. Parademons are swarming over waves of tall grass, concentrated around—what is that? They're building something, Clark thinks, pausing a couple miles out to examine the structure with his vision. Metal bones, supporting something that's starting to grow into a tower; but it looks like scrap, bits and pieces they've collected from whatever small towns are closest. Clark's pretty sure he can see a refrigerator near the base, a couple of old TV sets and a rusty box spring.

And then Barry blows past him in a sparking whoosh. "Hey, slowpoke!" he yells, voice Dopplering so hard Clark's pretty sure it takes Superman's ears to even understand him.

Clark grins and hurls himself back into motion, quick enough to tag Barry's shoulderblade lightly before he swings around and throws himself up into a half-dozen parademons carrying a chunk of sheet metal.

It's easy to enjoy this. Whatever half-formed instinct the parademons are following—and it can't be more than that, Clark knows, because there's been zero indication that they have minds of their own in any real sense—they were driven to find themselves some space, to construct whatever the hell this is. Which means there's no one around, no risk of injuring civilians or causing collateral damage. Clark hears the hum of the Fox approaching, only a couple minutes behind, and it's everything he ever wanted: a whole team of people just like him, working together to keep the world safe.

Diana and Arthur leap out of the Fox with matching whoops, and Clark catches Victor's laugh over the rush of air as he flies up to catch a fleeing parademon's ankle and sling it to earth. And Bruce—

Clark reins himself in before he can trespass. Listening for Bruce's heartbeat, the soft sigh of his breath, the low scrape of his boots, isn't anything Clark wouldn't have done before. But Bruce is in his head, now, and Clark—Clark could reach for him there, too.

But he shouldn't. Bruce is still a never-ending stream of words Clark doesn't understand, and Clark has to respect that boundary. As well as he can, anyway, when a mother box tied their minds together.

He does glance over his shoulder, split-second. Just long enough to see Bruce, armored up and forbidding, framed for an instant in the Flying Fox's open bay. And inside him—

Inside him it's quiet, just for a moment. Like maybe Bruce set everything else aside to look for Clark, too.

And then Clark gets back to work.

*

This swarm isn't all the parademons who were in Steppenwolf's ship. There just aren't enough of them. Not that Clark was counting, at the time, but he remembers hearing them, the sound of their wings, their hisses and clicks and cries. There were a lot more of them, and this can't be all.

Which is good, because this swarm doesn't seem to have the mother box.

Victor can't feel it, isn't picking up its energies—and no matter how low-power a state it's in, if it were right here, he would know. Clark scans again, just to double-check that it isn't somewhere underneath the looming pile of the tower, but he can't pick out anything that looks like it's the right shape.

And then all at once he feels his jaw tense, his teeth gritting, and he makes a strangled sound and aims a sharp blow at the nearest chunk of scrap.

Which, of course, buckles around the shape of his fist, the tower shuddering with a groan of metal. He manages to pull the punch enough that the tower doesn't just topple entirely, but he—he doesn't want to; it's hard to make himself, all of him suddenly filled with hot intense frustration. They have to fix this, it's essential, and there's nothing here—

"Clark," Diana says, a careful hand on his shoulder, and Clark blinks and looks at it and then at her, and is dimly surprised to see her. Somehow he'd thought she was further away from him, but—but then he's not all that close to the Fox, is he? He's just confused.

"Sorry," he tells her. "Sorry, I just—I'm just—" Angry. Is he? Isn't he? He shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut and makes himself lower his arm and step away from the tower.

Barry looks startled, eyes round and mouth flat, and Victor—Victor's all lit up, which probably means Clark set off his armor's threat assessment system again, even if it was just for a second. Arthur's watching Clark with narrowed eyes, before his gaze flicks over to Bruce. And Bruce—

Bruce looks fine. Impassive. Not that Clark can see much of anything except his chin, without looking through the cowl, but there's no hint of expression at the corners of that level, steady mouth, and under the armor his shoulders look even.

"We'll have to keep our eyes open for signs of other swarms," he says.

And Clark isn't feeling anything from him at all. Is he? He searches inside himself and can't find anything that matches up to Bruce's face, his stance, that cool featureless internal landscape Clark had glimpsed yesterday through all that obscuring Dante, billowing like smoke.

But even if this is Clark, Bruce should be feeling it a little bit anyway, shouldn't he? Or has he figured out how to wall himself off against Clark's spillover?

He can't hold onto the thought long enough to wonder. Looking at Bruce makes it ten thousand times worse, whatever it is, and suddenly he's moving, Diana catching at his arm again, and she's saying something he can't hear over his own shouting. What is he even saying?

"—and the only thing you're ever going to do is make it worse, you know that," he catches, and jesus, jesus, what is he doing? He and Bruce might not be friends, but it's not because Clark doesn't want them to be, and this definitely isn't the right way to handle it— "you greedy, selfish hypocrite—"

He closes his eyes and grabs for Diana's hand, squeezes her fingers and with a monumental effort manages to bite his own tongue—literally, physically, to cut off the flow of words. He draws in one slow deep breath through his nose, another, and keeps holding onto Diana, who kindly doesn't shake free.

He's expecting Barry, maybe, cracking some kind of half-hearted joke. But it's Bruce who speaks, after an impossibly loud silence.

"Yes," he says, quiet and flat. "I do know that."

Clark doesn't open his eyes again until he hears Bruce turn, hears the thump of his boots against the Fox's bay floor—until he's sure it's safe.

*

He thanks Diana carefully, avoids meeting her eyes, and heads back to Metropolis the same way he came: alone. He goes back to the Planet building, but not inside it. Just over it, hovering, high enough that he's pretty sure no one can see him. And then he tips his head back and hangs there in the air, wind streaming past him, sky cool and blue and endless, until that awful hot rage starts to drain away.

It takes a long time. But gradually, slowly, it settles to a boil, a seethe, a slow resentful simmer. And when he finally feels like he has a handle on it, he knows exactly where he wants to go.

Bruce gave them all entry codes—and, more importantly, little keychain fobs disguising wireless code transmitters.

("A GDO!" Barry had said, beaming. And then, looking around at them all, "Garage door opener. You know? Gate, iris, and if you go through without a GDO you're an interplanetary pancake—wait, are you all actually too old for Stargate? Or, you know, too Kansas? That is so weird.")

So Clark Kent can walk up to the edge of the lake with a hand in his pocket, and after a second the water will part and let him in.

And of course Bruce must get some kind of notification when their codes are used. So he must know Clark is coming; he must have deliberately chosen to be elbow-deep in one leg of the Knightcrawler, when Clark finds him.

"Hi," Clark says.

Which is ridiculous, but then this whole situation is ridiculous. He didn't even have to come here; he could have just shoved all his shamefaced regret right into Bruce's head from across the bay. But that feels like cheating—like texting a thank-you instead of writing a note.

(Mom would agree with him, Clark's sure.)

Bruce doesn't turn around or look over. He just pauses, acknowledging, one long beat where those clever hands have gone still.

"I just wanted to say, about earlier? I'm sorry."

And that gets Clark another pause. "You're sorry," Bruce repeats, meditatively, to the Knightcrawler's leg panel.

"Yes," Clark says. "I didn't mean to—I shouldn't have said that. I shouldn't have shouted it, either. I don't know what came over me, but I'm—I'm not trying to make excuses. You didn't deserve that, and I'm sorry."

Bruce does turn, then: just his head, just enough to look over one clean white dress-shirt shoulder and meet Clark's eyes. "You really don't know."

"Don't know—?" Clark says, and then—

He doesn't even understand what's happening, for a second. Nothing about Bruce's face changes, nothing, and yet Clark can feel his own sheepish discomfort, his own mixed rue and resolve, and this is—this isn't anything like that. A sharp sick drop, a burst of bitterness at the back of his throat, the violet-black of a bruise.

Clark hasn't gotten one single word of a thought from Bruce all day, not in a language he can understand. But this isn't a thought—it's a feeling.

"Wait a minute. That was you?"

Bruce looks away again. "The connection appears to be operating on multiple levels," he tells the Knightcrawler blandly. "The conscious projection of thoughts is controllable to some degree, but not—"

"That was you. All of it?" Clark can't help asking, because—because jesus, that had felt terrible. Not just the anger, though that had been pretty overpowering, but all the shadowed undercurrents that had come along with it: the slow grinding frustration Clark had been struggling with all day, and the—the spite, the sheer dislike, with which he'd spat all that crap at Bruce.

At Bruce, Clark thinks again, more slowly. Because—because that's who Bruce had been angry with. He'd been standing there, stone-faced, no sign of it anywhere anyone else could see, and so goddamn angry with himself that feeling it secondhand had made Clark scream at him like that.

Clark looks at him. He's still poking around in the Knightcrawler's limb, as if Clark isn't even there, with a tool in his hand so specialized that there might not even be a word for it, and—

"What is that?" Clark asks at last, because the best he can do is guess that it might be one dialect or another of Chinese.

And an impression of the thought must have crossed over, because Bruce says, "Yes," before adding, "Dream of the Red Chamber. Not the whole thing, but the parts I know will last us for a while."

As if he thinks that's a reassurance Clark has been looking for. As if he thinks Clark prefers classic Chinese literature he can't follow to knowing what's actually going through Bruce's head.

"Okay," Clark says after a moment. "But you know you've done this section twice, right?" He thinks about going to sleep, knowing Bruce was still there—and waking up the same way. "Bruce, did you—have you slept at all?"

And for a moment, the recitation falters. It isn't like it was when Clark first woke up on Steppenwolf's ship, he knows what's going on now. And without the barrier of endless words, he can almost see Bruce rewinding, reviewing; he can feel the burst of rue-dismay-chagrin, can taste the salt of it. And his own half-formed thought—that even if he'd been wrong, Bruce stopping to check would still say something—drifts into the same space. He can feel Bruce perceiving it, share the reluctant acknowledgment, and then the words are back, but it's not Mandarin anymore—

"Don't tell me," Clark murmurs, "this is One Thousand and One Nights."

And that Bruce should switch to that after being nagged about his sleeping habits—Clark can't control the burst of amusement, doesn't want to. He's seen Bruce Wayne crack jokes; but he hadn't known to expect as much from this Bruce.

He realizes after a second that he'd closed his eyes, and blinks them open again. They'd been so utterly unnecessary for a minute there, with Bruce much closer than mere line-of-sight.

"I should try to find a copy in Farsi," Bruce says to the Knightcrawler. "Expand my repertoire."

"Bruce—"

"Clark," Bruce says evenly, and finally tosses Clark another one of those steady opaque glances. "I'm fine. I was doing research, I pulled an all-nighter; it happens. I'm still functioning adequately and capable of fulfilling my role with the League. If that changes, I'll suspend myself from active duty. You have nothing to worry about."

Wow this is the most accurate depiction of Bruce’s slef-loathing I’ve ever seen and it husrts me in my heart ;__;

So, this is lovely. Bruce's less than high regard for himself hurts the heart, but is none too surprising. That Clark finds out about it in such a way and that he thinks it comes from himself honestly hurts me most.

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but I love that Arthur seems to have a good bead on the boys' personalities. That Clark's violent outburst is unusual, but he looks to Bruce because he knows Clark is channeling Bruce.

What I adore the most is the Stargate reference! This was my formative years. And I love that it's Barry that is a fan, it makes me feel more nostalgic and less aged.

Thank you for a beautifully hurtful update!

I wish I could apologize sincerely, anon, but tbh I'm much too glad you found the angst effective! \o/ (And while there's some more on the way, please rest assured this is 100% going to have a happy ending. :D ♥)

/o\ :D Wow, anon, thank you so much! The angsty elements of the prompt really called to me, and I'm thrilled to think I might manage to do them justice.

I'm not sure if it was intentional or not, but I love that Arthur seems to have a good bead on the boys' personalities

:D It was! I'm very fond of the idea that Arthur has a pretty good handle on Bruce, and when I was writing his reaction, I couldn't help but roll with what I thought he would do in that case.

Haha, and thank you for not taking me to task for the Stargate bit. ;D I loved Stargate (still do) and it was just such a perfect analogy - and of course Barry marathoned it at some point. I feel convinced of this in my soul. (It wouldn't even take him that long! He could probably watch it on fast-forward, as long as the subtitles were on! :D)

I'm glad you liked it - thanks so much for reading it, and for this very kind comment! ♥

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa this is so self-indulgeeeeeeeeent /o\ Which is to say: angst everywhere, and I know this meme is CNTW but Bruce is a mess and there's some suicidal ideation/imagery in here. Brief! But present.

He's made a misstep.

He doesn't know what it was, but he knows it happened. Somewhere, one word or another, or his tone, the way he said it—or, of course, something he's simply given away without intending it, without sufficient fucking ability to check himself.

(He's expended so much effort, over the course of his life, to bring himself to heel. To make sure people look at him and see precisely what he wants them to see, no more and no less. His stance, his expression, his attire; the way he holds himself, his manner of speech: under ordinary circumstances, they're more than sufficient to convey any impression he wants to give. He's capable of centering himself, of focusing on what is essential and wiping his mind clean—

His conscious mind, at least. He can put emotion aside, can ignore it, can contain it.

But apparently he's never quite figured out how not to feel it.)

He can't identify the mistake, but Clark doesn't seem to be trying to hide the consequence from him: Bruce can feel the blurry bright splash of a hunch, the slow wave of realization rolling in after.

"It's because of me, isn't it?" Clark says quietly. "It's because of this."

"Clark—"

"It is," Clark says, and now he sounds sure.

And why shouldn't he? Bruce could try to lie to him—but it's more than likely that he would be able to tell, and without even intending any intrusion. He'd only have to want to look, he'd only have to try to, and he'd know.

It's almost funny, really, that Bruce should find himself once again dependent on Superman's restraint, goodwill, and bluntly intuitive sense of ethics.

At least he knows better than to discount them, this time around.

"So you're just—not going to sleep until we find that mother box? Are you serious?"

"Another solution may present itself," Bruce says. "Clark, I'm not flirting with sleep deprivation for the hell of it. For all we know, access to our unconscious minds during a simultaneous REM cycle will make this permanent."

"Yeah, I'm sure that was Steppenwolf's plan," Clark murmurs. "He'd have bound himself to my mind and then dreamed at me. You think his species has REM cycles?"

"Why not? It appears your species does," Bruce says flatly.

He's expecting Clark to snap back at him, to tell him to stop being such an asshole—he's angry with himself, fine, but he's already made Clark feel it all day. It's hardly fair for him to take it out on Clark externally, too.

But nothing happens, for one drawn-out beat of silence. And then Clark says, soft, "I guess I should have known. You never do anything unless you think you have to."

Surely that won't be all. Bruce stares into the Knightcrawler's cracked-open joint and sees nothing. He's bracing himself for multiple eventualities. For Clark to be frustrated with Bruce's stubbornness, his paranoia; for Clark to be angry with him—on Clark's own terms, this time—for insisting on carrying on this way when Bruce has already proven so blatantly unable to prevent the poisoned well of himself from brimming over. For Clark's disdain, or bewilderment, or exasperation. For Clark to reach directly into the heart of him, and pull out every word that's ever been brought to bear on the subject of Bruce and his pathological need for control.

But he waits, and what he feels inside himself, in that strange interior space that they now share, is—resignation. Resignation, deep and shadowed, welling up, a long slow way to drown.

He's done his best to avoid that place where they both are. He's tried not to touch it, not to look at it, to recite The Story of the Stone to it and otherwise stay at a distance from it. But now he can't help but turn to it—he can't help but lean a little closer, in there. Because it isn't just resignation, he thinks. Like Wagner, an opera, an orchestra, there's more than one note being played at once: resignation is the loudest, but there's a harmony beneath in a minor key, the tuning undeniably sour; bitterness, on a scraping sharp, and unhappiness, soft and drearily flat, somewhere below—

"—and I know you wouldn't risk the League over it, I do," Clark is saying quietly. "I didn't mean to make you think otherwise. Just—take care of yourself."

Bruce turns, and Clark isn't looking at him but then does—just a split-second glance, a single glimpse of those eyes, and then before Bruce can even open his mouth, Clark is gone.

(He'd lost that race with Barry. But not by much.)

Gone, but not gone, because of course he's still right there in Bruce's head.

*

Clark had slept, last night.

Clark had slept, and Bruce's suspicions had been confirmed. Conscious attention can to some degree affect what's shared, or at least what's most superficially presented at the connection's upper levels. When they're both awake, and doing their best not to look any deeper, a facsimile of some degree of privacy is possible. They aren't forced to audience each other's every thought. During the day, Clark had focused himself elsewhere, had gone about his usual routine without listening at the threshold of that wide-open door between them—and without shouting across it himself, for that matter. But when conscious attention is gone—

When Clark had been asleep, he had been—there. Relentlessly, he had been there. The soft drowsy presence of him could hardly be called invasive, but it had certainly been unignorable, blurry-edged and warm. Bruce had sat at his desk with ten monitors full of vital information in front of him, and had absorbed none of it. He'd been too busy feeling.

Because he could feel it all: every flicker of reaction to what seemed to have been mostly untroubled dreams. Delight, in a bright loud burst like laughter, settling into the murmur of curiosity, interest; meandering from there to stillness and then back to determination, muddled but insistent—a different dream, Bruce had thought at the time—

And then Clark had woken, thirsty. Clark had woken, had yawned and stretched and sleepily rubbed a hand across his bare sternum. And Bruce had jerked in his chair in the Cave and made himself look at the screen in front of him until the shapes on it were words again, and hadn't allowed himself to try to decide whether he'd been able to perceive the precise texture of Clark's chest hair.

Clark didn't seem to have noticed anything. Not last night, and not today. Even without a direct line into Clark's head, Bruce has no doubt Clark's apology would have been unmistakably sincere. I don't know what came over me. He hadn't been angry, hadn't felt he had any reason to be. He hadn't understood just how thoroughly justified he would have been not only in the emotion itself but in every word he'd hurled—selfish and greedy and hypocrite.

Bruce needs to figure out how to fix this as quickly as possible, and not for the sake of any abstracted concerns over secrecy or security. Not even for the sake of preserving whatever tentative working relationship he and Clark have managed to settle into.

He needs to figure out how to fix this, simply because doing so will permanently remove any temptation to let himself believe it might not be possible.

Because it is tempting. He's scoured himself repeatedly for any indication of a physical mechanism that can be reversed or turned off or removed, and has found none. Perhaps the mother box will be enough—if they can find it, if they can deactivate it, if the connection it created is actually dependent on its energy and not already a whole and separate construction.

Bruce has never liked "if"s very much.

What he'd said to Clark hadn't precisely been a lie. For all they know, shared sleep would affect the function of their joined minds in ways they don't understand. But—

But, for all they know, this already is permanent. For all they know, shared sleep won't do a damn thing that hasn't already been done—or that Bruce hasn't already done by so carelessly letting his own relentless anger seep into the back of Clark's mind for a good eighteen hours.

(Maybe it's a matter of usage, of intensity. Maybe they'll discover that it could have been broken, if Bruce had only been able to keep himself to himself.

Maybe he's already trapped Clark better than a dozen spiked kryptonite restraints ever could.)

Except if Bruce allows himself to think that—to feel the place where Clark is in his mind and believe, even for a moment, that he will never have to give this up—

(It wouldn't matter, then. It wouldn't matter if his lapses only multiplied from here, if he gave up every effort to hold himself back. Even if Clark knew everything, even if he understood that to touch the black roiling interior of Bruce like this was to tarnish himself irrevocably, even if he hated Bruce—

He wouldn't leave.

It would be wrong, it would be vile; he wouldn't be able to leave, he would hate it, it would be unconscionable to let it happen. Bruce would walk into the bay in a three-piece suit with lead-soled shoes before he'd sit back and let Clark stay chained to him forever against Clark's will.

But—

But he wouldn't walk into the bay alone. Clark would be with him, even then. And in a terrible twisted way, Bruce can't help but find that thought almost appealing. Clark would be there; Clark would grasp his willingness to implement the only remaining solution, would perceive the true measure of all his many shades and flavors of guilt and regret. And it wouldn't be his fault. He wouldn't have had to say a word, wouldn't have had to choose to make Clark aware of those feelings—would not, in doing so, have implied that Clark ought to care about him or his actions or his state of mind.

He wouldn't have to do anything except make the right choice, except walk into the water. And Clark would be there, and Clark would know everything, and Bruce wouldn't be able to prevent either—would, for once, in this single respect, be absolved of all responsibility.

Appealing. That is, undeniably, the right word. Helplessly, profoundly appealing.

Which neatly illustrates the precise degree to which the inside of his head is a tripwired, landmined hellscape that should never have had another person in it in the first place.)

—he won't be able to bear it. It can't be permitted to happen that way. He can't allow himself to permit it to happen that way.

He trusts Clark with his mind. Restraint, goodwill, a bluntly intuitive sense of ethics. But

(selfish, greedy—hypocrite)

he doesn't trust himself with Clark's. He can't. They don't know enough about how the mother boxes work, about what Steppenwolf might have had in mind or what the long-term consequences might be, for Bruce to let down his guard.

Bruce already killed Clark once. Clark, in his head, is a light—a light that Bruce has managed to thoroughly extinguish before. And he's not going to let himself do it again.

So obviously these two losers could just go on like this for a while ... and as much fun as that 600-part disaster might be, I'm going to try to keep this a reasonable length. ;D

Clark goes home. He eats something, even though he can't quite convince himself he feels hungry. He goes up to the roof of his building and just sits, watches the sun go down and tries not to think about the anxious unhappy weight in his chest.

Does that matter? Will Bruce feel it anyway? ... Or is it Bruce's, too? Clark closes his eyes and prods at it carefully. He'd thought he had a handle on all this, right after they'd made it back from the ship—he'd been able to sense that that strange feeling of stillness, interior motion so precisely suspended, had been Bruce and not him. But then—

But then he and Bruce had been feeling such different things, that time. He'd been upset, sick and sad and feeling sorry for himself, and then he'd become aware of that carefully deliberate steadiness. Easy enough to tell what didn't belong. And after that, Clark is starting to think Bruce's little linguistic world tour routine had distracted him even better than Bruce had intended. With the anger, it was—it had been easy to say to himself that the stream of Mandarin in his head was Bruce, that everything else must not be. After Steppenwolf and all, it hadn't seemed out of the question. Clark had felt that kind of roaring helpless rage on Black Zero, and after; when he fought Batman, and when he came back from the dead. It could have been him.

Every time Clark's felt it, it's eaten him up. He's never been able to stop himself from acting on it, even when he tries. Strange, to think that Bruce could feel it and just stand there all expressionless. Clark hadn't even considered the idea that it might be coming from him. It just hadn't seemed possible.

But this dull-edged discontent—this feels like Clark's, even if it's Bruce's too. And it certainly could be. Bruce isn't happy right now, he's made that perfectly clear. He's so unhappy about this that he hasn't slept for two days, because he thinks he can't. He thinks he needs to stay awake, or he won't be able to keep Clark out of his mind.

He probably hadn't lied. It certainly is possible that shared sleep could change something; they definitely don't know enough about what the mother box did to them to say one way or the other. But the way Bruce had talked about it, I'll suspend myself from active duty—he's thinking about this as something that might go on so long he'd be genuinely impaired by it, so long he'd have to stop being Batman for a while. Stop being Batman. He'd give that up, over this. Clark can't even get his head around it. There has to be something more behind it than Bruce being unwilling to take a calculated risk.

And Clark's pretty sure he knows what that something is.

(It appears your species does. That's how Bruce still thinks of him, then: an alien, an other, unknown.

No wonder he can't stand the thought of staying like this, of having Clark in his head for one single moment longer than necessary.)

"It's fine," he tells the sky, lying back on the roof. "It's okay. I understand."

He does. And the least he can do is be reasonable about it, and take Bruce at his word. Trust him, even if he can't bring himself to trust Clark. And whether that's out of sheer contrariness, or—or because Clark wants to demonstrate it's possible, wants Bruce to know it, or even just the plain-old petty passive-aggressive desire to make a point out of it—Clark can't be be sure which.

But he has to try. Bruce says he knows where the line is, and

(—when has that ever been true? When has Bruce ever known when to stop?

Except that isn't fair. Once, at least. He'd made that spear, he'd set those traps—he'd cut Clark's cheek; but not, in the end, his throat—)

the least Clark can do is believe him.

*

It works, for another day or two.

Clark finds a radio station he doesn't mind too much, and makes sure it's playing on something he can hear as often as possible. It doesn't make for quite as big a roadblock as Bruce's strategy, but it gives him words, music, to fill his head with—and something to think about besides Bruce.

Besides Bruce, and besides the creeping fatigue trickling through the back of Clark's mind. Because that's definitely Bruce's. Before this, Clark had only the vaguest idea what it was like to be tired. He does sleep, because he can and because he likes to, because it gives him one more little thing in common with everybody else around him—but he probably doesn't need to. As long as he gets enough sunlight and no one's waving kryptonite at him, he's fine.

But Bruce is introducing him to a whole new spectrum, a vast rainbow of endlessly varied shades of exhaustion. And it can't feel all that unusual to him, but to Clark it's—it's almost frightening, the way it deepens so gradually, the way it makes him feel slow and weak and weighed-down. He goes and finds a half-dozen parking meters with crooked posts he can bend straight again, just to remind himself that he can: it's not him, he isn't losing his powers or slowly dropping dead again by degrees. It's not him, it's Bruce.

(As if that's any better. As if it helps, to know that Bruce would rather feel like this than just—)

He lingers in the sunshine, that afternoon, like maybe a little of his own sense of physical well-being can make its way back across to Bruce. And he has to admit that in its own way, it's—it's almost sort of nice. Usually when he has a reason to be concerned about Bruce, there's nothing he can do about it. Bruce wouldn't take well to being checked up on, wouldn't want Clark asking after him and wouldn't answer if Clark did ask. But this way, it's—Clark just knows. He can't help but know, and Bruce can't even get mad at him for it.

Even the language thing isn't so bad; Clark's getting sort of used to it, and

(—it's like he can almost hear it in Bruce's voice, now, that close soft murmur; like Bruce is sitting beside him all day and—reading to him, or something, even if Clark can't understand the words—)

it doesn't bother him as much anymore. Having Bruce there all the time is—well, Clark thought it once already: it makes a difference, not being alone. Clark had compared it to having someone around in person, at first, but the longer it lasts, the more he starts to think it's not really like that at all. He'd been thinking of it in terms of having to be—to be conscious of himself, his actions, in a way he didn't have to when he was by himself; but this thing, this bond they have, is anchored so deep that the whole idea of self-editing, self-restraint, is laughable. Bruce hadn't let one ounce of that anger show on his face, had been so careful, and it hadn't mattered at all. Clark had felt it anyway.

So there's no need to worry about it. In a funny way, it's freeing. Clark can't help but be honest, in there; there's no other option. His concern is bleeding just as freely into the back of Bruce's mind as Bruce's tiredness is bleeding into his, and Bruce can't even dismiss it by claiming to be fine, because he knows as well as Clark does that he isn't.

They don't talk to each other. They don't exchange any actual thoughts on purpose—or, well, mostly they don't. Bruce slips, once, and answers a question Clark had idly marked as something to look up later; and Clark deliberately passes Bruce the sensation of sunshine on his face.

(He knows Bruce hasn't left the Cave all day. And Bruce feels wry, amused, when he does it, but not annoyed. Bruce can't even pretend to be annoyed, because Clark can already tell he isn't.)

But they're together the whole time anyway. Clark would almost be enjoying it, if it didn't also mean he could feel Bruce starting to come apart at the seams.

(Sometimes he thinks that's why he's getting a little more now, why Bruce is coming through more clearly. Bruce's concentration is faltering, that iron self-restraint finally failing him, the edges of his mind no longer as sharply defined. Not coming apart: being pulled apart, by this.

By Clark.)

And then he gets a text—from Diana, this time—with a set of coordinates and the words Definitely not subtle prey, and—

He should be glad they've got another chance to fix this. He tells himself that, focuses on the part of him that is glad, and ignores everything else.

*

Clark beats Barry to the site, this time, and he's not surprised to see another tower rising: clumsy, a little lopsided, but further along in its construction, with a few smaller piles building up nearby. They're somewhere in the northeast of Iceland, a wide flat stretch of scrub and gravel between—well. Clark would call them mountains, but he's not sure they're all that high. They look like it, peaks above the treeline, but that's because there is no treeline, no trees at all.

This time the parademons have had to use more rock than metal—there's probably not quite as many dumpsters or construction sites to forage for scrap here as there were in Saskatchewan. They come at Clark with defensive hisses, and there's more of them this time. A lot more.

But Clark can freeze them, knock them out of the air, zap them with the laser vision. He's doing fine, right up until the Fox arrives.

He doesn't even have to turn and look. He lets his hearing blow wide, and he finds Diana, the creak of leather, the soft sound of her hand tightening around the grip of her shield; Barry murmuring, "You got this, you got this, you're sort of a superhero," to himself, the faint sharp smell of far-off lightning; the whisper of metal on metal, Victor shifting his weight, a crackle of circuits priming themselves; the clink of Arthur's glittering armor, a thunk of contact between his trident and the floor; and—

And nothing. Bruce isn't there.

He probably notified them. Clark would've seen it himself, if he hadn't been so busy breaking the sound barrier somewhere over the Atlantic. And Bruce is still there, Clark can tell as much, but for an instant—

For an instant, his stomach drops. For an instant, he's listening to all the empty space where Bruce isn't, and somewhere deep in the heart of himself, he's flooded with a sudden icy terror at the thought that it's so much worse than he understood, that this has broken Bruce irrevocably.

Terror—fear. And all at once a hundred pairs of glowing red eyes are fixed on him.

He's stronger than they are. He's faster. He's got two dozen different ways to take them down without even raising his fists. But for the first time, it doesn't matter. They have what they need—they've got a hook in him. All they have to do is pull.

He can't breathe, he can't see; he can feel them in there, splitting him open like a landed fish so it'll all spill out, a steaming feast they can pick through. His fear not just of this, of this connection and what it will do, what it has done—but of how it was made, Steppenwolf and mother boxes and power Clark doesn't understand, of kryptonite and spikes, the wet soft sound of being run through; of failure, of weakness, of coming up short—of loss he can't prevent, loss he can prevent but doesn't, of watching himself stand by while everything in him is screaming—and the oldest of them all, the deepest: an eternity of bleak endless rejection, the lightless soundless void of being alone—

Bruce.

It happens so fast Clark almost can't understand it, the whole inside of his head reorienting itself—because he thought they'd been connected, that he'd known what it was like to have Bruce in his head, but he was wrong. Bruce isn't there anymore, but here, here, right where Clark is, sweeping in like—like Batman. Because that's where he's really been, perched up on the edge of some far-off rooftop, present but distant, and now he's not. He's pressing in close, hot white attention swung around, urgent as a searchlight; no Italian, no Arabic, no Khmer, no fifteen-hour operas. Just Bruce, all of him, as much inside Clark's skin as Clark is.

Clark realizes, dimly, that he can hear himself gasping for air, that he's on the ground and shivering, seizing. It's—where the parademons have flayed Clark open, in there, it's not that Bruce can see it; it's just present to him, he knows it. And it's not that he's touching Clark, that he's laid hands on the wound, that it's healing up underneath his fingertips

(—like the ship, the ship, waking with blood on his throat where he hadn't bled, and Bruce's hands—Bruce shouldn't have touched him, it had been clear Clark would be all right, but the unreasoning bone-deep fear hadn't listened—no, no, it wasn't a bad thing; he'd been taking care of Clark, just like he is now—)

but Clark doesn't have any other way to think about it, any words for what it is. A stack of thought-impression-sensation: Bruce crouched over Clark in the Batsuit, cape flared (protectiveness); Bruce's hand on Clark's throat (relief), with the mirror-shadow of Bruce's boot on Clark's chest (guilt, guilt, guilt) trailing a half-step behind; Bruce's hands around the spear, the look on Lois's face (realization); Bruce standing in a graveyard in the wind, the cold (I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't have come)—

And Clark, sense returning, grasps it all at once. Bruce had reacted, reflexive, stepping into him like this—he couldn't stop himself, when he'd felt that dizzying blast of terror from Clark. But he's remembered himself now; trespassing again, Christ, as if he hasn't already done enough—

"Clark? Clark!"

Clark blinks, once and then again, and discovers he's looking into Diana's face: that she's kneeling beside him, Victor at her shoulder, Arthur smacking one last parademon away with a casual swing, Barry just flickering into place opposite, and Bruce—

—quoique ce détail ne touche en aucune manière au fond même de ce que nous avons à raconter, il n'est peut-être pas inutile, ne fût-ce que pour être exact en tout, d'indiquer ici—

"For crying out loud," Clark mutters.

"Are you all right?" Diana says.

"Went down like somebody hit you with a rock," Arthur calls, turning to stride closer.

"Well, not a rock," Barry says. "I mean, he's Superman. If you hit him with a rock, the rock breaks, right? Like, it would have to be a kryptonite-geode kind of rock—"

"A really big rock," Arthur offers placidly, in amendment.

Clark clears his throat and sits up. "I'm fine."

"Yeah?" Victor says. "Because you didn't seem fine."

"They were seriously swarming you there," Barry agrees, eyes wide and sincere. "All over you. And you weren't doing anything about it, just standing there with this look on your face like—well. It seemed bad."

"No, I'm—I'm okay," Clark says. "I—Bruce helped me."

Barry's eyebrows draw down sharply. "Uh, so I know the thing I just said about the rock, but are you sure you didn't hit your head on the way down? Because—oh! Oh, wait, you mean in your mind, Bruce helped you! Because of the thing! Okay, sure. That is so cool. And also weird."

"Yeah," Clark murmurs.

Except the weirdest thing about it was—Bruce hadn't regretted it, hadn't retreated away into himself so quickly, for his own sake. He'd done it for Clark's. Clark had thought he was doing all this, pushing himself and not sleeping and throwing up whatever walls he could, because he resented the intrusion of it, because he hated the idea of someone he didn't like or trust being so wholly connected to him.

But Clark had gotten a clear look at all of Bruce, for the first time since this started, and it hadn't felt like that at all. Which means Bruce is going to the lengths he's going to for some other reason entirely—some reason Clark doesn't know about.

Yet, Clark decides, and takes the hand Arthur offers to pull himself to his feet.

At a party, Lex Luthor serves drinks laced with a drug to put omegas into heat.

When Bruce goes into heat, Lex swoops in to "help" him, offering to take him somewhere private to wait until Alfred can come pick him up.

Bruce accepts, but then blacks out and wakes back up to find himself being mounted by Lex's prized show dogs.

Aaaaaand here we continue our descent into iddy angsty nonsense, omg I am so sorry. /o\

Clark is on his way.

Bruce can feel as much, despite his best efforts. Clark's determination is burnished, hammered, shining; feeling it is like looking at Diana's shield, at her knuckles around its grip and her steady stare over its edge.

At least this time he knows precisely where and how he erred. He has some hope of predicting Clark's response, and can therefore strategize in his turn.

Or he could, if there were any defense to be mustered.

In the moment, Clark had been grateful. Clark had been—glad of his presence.

(Dizzyingly so. Impossibly so. Brilliant with it, scintillating—he always is the brightest light Bruce ever sees, the blazing heart of a star, but this had been—

There aren't words for it. The nearest thing he can find to compare it to is the moment Clark had shared with him, how sunlight feels when Clark turns his face into it: every human thing, warmth and comfort and sheer sensory enjoyment, but beyond that a deeper contentment; being filled, renewed, having every dim tired corner of yourself come alive.

Bruce has been described by a lot of people as a lot of things, but typically not—comforting. And yet he had gone to Clark, and Clark had been comforted. Comforted, touched, even—dare he think it?—pleased; the way they had flashed back together to Steppenwolf's ship, to the last time Bruce had let himself reach for something he shouldn't have. He hadn't thought Clark had noticed that small trespass, but he'd been wrong: Clark had noticed and had—

Hadn't minded. That's the most it's fair to say, and even that may be more wishful thinking than not. Parademons had been swarming him. He'd been injured, mentally if not physically, and disoriented. Bruce shouldn't take the contents of his mind at a moment like that as evidence of anything.)

But now that it's over, the crisis safely resolved, surely he's angry. Surely he's upset. After Bruce has spent the better part of a week screaming Wagner at him to keep him out of Bruce's head, while at the same time sloshing his own idiotic lack of restraint all over Clark right and left, to then go walking right into Clark's mind like that—without hesitation, as if he were entitled. Yes, Clark's undoubtedly going to have plenty to say about this.

And Bruce is prepared for that. He's not afraid of Clark's condemnation.

What he is afraid of, with a terrible dawning sense of self-awareness, is his own reaction to it.

Even when he'd barely been compromised at all, he hadn't been able to keep Clark from feeling his anger. He'd comprehensively failed to do so, in fact. And that was—two days ago? No, three. It must be three by now.

Bruce sighs through his nose and digs a thumb in just at the dip of one temple, where his head is throbbing the most pointedly. He has the precise number of hours somewhere, he does; just—not to hand. But that he can't be sure he's remembering it correctly on his own is—it would worry him, if half a dozen other much more serious symptoms of sleep deprivation hadn't already made themselves known. The moment he began to suspect he'd started involuntarily sliding into microsleeps, he knew he couldn't suit up until this had resolved itself one way or another. If Batman lost the conscious control not only of his body but of all the equipment in the suit—no. It simply could not be risked.

Control is slipping away from him, if he ever had it in the first place. Control is slipping away from him, and Clark is on the way here to share his opinion of Bruce's most recent misjudgment in what will no doubt be exacting and excruciating detail, and it won't matter whether Bruce looks calm. It won't matter whether Bruce can sit patiently through it and keep his expression pleasant and quietly agree that he needs to do better.

It won't matter at all. Clark will be able to tell exactly how he feels about it anyway.

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut and tries to draw as far into himself as he can, fill his head with Hugo—as if he can drown Clark out with it instead of himself, as if it were possible to make himself forget what's coming.

—cette âme est pleine d'ombre, le péché s'y commet. Le coupable n'est pas celui qui y fait le péché, mais celui qui y a fait l'ombre—as if you couldn't be both, couldn't sin and be the shadow cast across your own soul, and maybe this wasn't the best book he could have chosen for this—

A rush of air, a distant noise, and he's out of time. That must be Clark, coming in for a landing one level down. And he isn't merciful, doesn't use the speed: his footsteps sound at a torturously ordinary pace, counting down one scuff at a time as he crosses the concrete and climbs the stairs.

"Bruce," he says.

At least he isn't shouting yet, Bruce thinks, and then turns in his chair.

Except Clark doesn't look angry, either. And he's a lot worse at that than Bruce. He doesn't look angry, he doesn't sound angry; he's standing by the stairs with something Bruce might almost call diffidence if that weren't ridiculous—as if he's not sure he's allowed to be there. But inside—

Inside, he's still all brazen and alight, the flash of setting sun off a raised shield.

He'd tucked his chin down a little, uncertain, but all at once it comes up, and his eyes go narrow—and Bruce has utterly lost the thread of Les Misérables, doesn't even remember dropping it, so it's entirely possible Clark just heard him think that.

Fuck.

The corner of Clark's mouth twitches, and he takes a step closer to Bruce. "Bruce," he says again, a little more comfortably. "Sorry, I should've thought—are you okay?"

Bruce stares at him. What the hell kind of question is that?

"I mean," Clark adds, "doing that—whatever you did for me earlier."

For him. For him, instead of to him.

"You're all right? You didn't hurt yourself?"

"I'm fine," Bruce says, automatic, and feels the slow cool rise of Clark's doubt spill over in the back of his head. "I am, Clark. That's what this connection is for."

He manages to stop himself before he can follow that thought to its conclusion—out loud, at least, and fuck, fuck, this is exactly why he shouldn't be doing this. He shouldn't be interacting with Clark at all. Once he realized he wouldn't be able to hold out, he should have secured a sedative. At least then he would be unconscious for this.

But Clark isn't stupid. He's the one who'd said before that Steppenwolf had hardly been planning to dream at him tyrannically; he can guess what would have happened as well as Bruce can. Steppenwolf wouldn't have been throwing up smokescreens or listening to the radio, thinking filler thoughts. He'd have torn right into Clark's mind the moment he was able. At the absolute least, Bruce was able to hold out for a few days before he did the same—

"Bruce," Clark says, and Bruce blinks and looks up; Clark's watching him, the barest suggestion of a frown forming in the dip of his brow.

Bruce swallows, blinks again, and looks away. He'd planned to offer this as penance, not reassurance—but penance doesn't seem to be what Clark is asking for.

"Clark. I'm all right," and at least it comes out creditably even. "It didn't—hurt, or whatever it is you're thinking. The link is working the way it's supposed to. Try it."

"What?"

"Try it for yourself," Bruce repeats. What's the risk? Where's the harm? All his deepest secrets have already been offered up on a plate, and Clark hasn't made a grab for them. And all Clark has to do is reach in for a moment to understand that Bruce is telling the truth; even the briefest look around will surely be more than he wants to see. There's no reason to think he'll linger. And Bruce can't stay awake much longer in any case. At least this way Clark might be prepared for the worst of it, while Bruce still has a modicum of control over what's being pushed to the front.

He waits. Clark doesn't move—outside or inside.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Bruce tells him, and it isn't even a lie. It's only fair. It's reasonable, it's logical, it

(—god, god, it had been beautiful. Clark, in him and around him and through him, Clark Clark Clark: at all his deepest levels, his thoughts and his feelings and his mind, the brilliant sunlit flavor of his strength and generosity and unhesitating kindness—dimmed, of course, by the shadow of fear the parademons had cast across the inside of him, but—

—but Bruce had gone to him, and everywhere Bruce had passed, everywhere he touched, the light had come back. Of all the impossible things: Bruce, Bruce, had walked into a darkened place and left it brighter—)

doesn't matter if he wants it or can't bear it or has ten thousand other stupid reasons for allowing it. Clark will step close enough to learn that Bruce was right, to be reassured, and whatever else he sees or doesn't see, he'll step away again.

Bruce hears Clark's breath catch first, and then feels it, that sense of presence; and it's going to go away again. Surely it's going to go away. Clark won't want to stay long enough to—

Clark blinks, looking perturbed, and Bruce can feel his curiosity, mild apprehension, uncertainty; and then all at once he lets out a jawcracking yawn.

(Oh, of course: has he ever yawned before? Interesting, that Kryptonians should share the reflex—and maybe Clark has caught himself yawning when other people yawn, contagious, but hasn't ever been moved to do it on his own.)

"Jesus, Bruce," Clark says through the tail end of it, squinting. "You really need to sleep."

And he hasn't moved away, hasn't stepped clear of Bruce again and turned that interior gaze aside. Bruce is filled with his wide-eyed warm attention, cautious and uncertain, fingertips feeling gently through the dark.

And of course the first thing they bump into is the icy prickling edge of Bruce's apprehension.

Clark's reaction is wordless, immediate: hushed dismay like an indrawn breath, a flickering trail of thoughts as visible to Bruce as Bruce's must be to him. Bruce still doesn't want to sleep? Is it—did something happen while Clark was asleep? And Bruce doesn't even get the chance to flash them both into the middle of his half-formed sense memory of touching Clark's chest (Clark touching his own chest, but Bruce had felt it anyway; it had been Bruce's touch, too, just for an instant) because instead his hand is—their hands are—

A neck breaking; Bruce knows the sound but hasn't ever felt it, the jerk and the crack, the stillness after. Something under his feet, the unfamiliar texture of—bones, dozens of them, skulls, a barren field covered over with them—

—is that what he got? Did Clark make him see that? Is he angry? He should be; Clark should have thought of it sooner, it was—he should have known. After Black Zero, after he came back, he'd had nightmares for months, and being taken by Steppenwolf like that must have started them up again. Out of the two of them, Clark's the one who doesn't need to sleep; he should've realized it would be like that, should've been more careful.

He wants to apologize, except that's pointless. Isn't it? Bruce is in here with him, can already feel the whole muddle of uncertainty-regret-shame, and Clark can't express it better by trying to talk about it.

And Bruce—oh, he shouldn't, he shouldn't, and yet there's no way to stop it. There's no gap to step into, none of the space he's used to having between his emotions and what shows on his face, nowhere to pause and intervene. His confusion-understanding-rejection is instantaneous: that's not it.

He's just lucky that Clark interrupts before he can draw them both down fully into his sickeningly rosy-warm perception of what it had been like to feel Clark sleeping, curiosity firing bright all anew. What could it be? The array of options Clark has been considering is flared out in front of Bruce like a hand of cards, and is that—Clark thought Bruce didn't want Clark in Bruce's head? Clark shouldn't want Clark in Bruce's head, Clark should be running in the opposite direction—

And then, for a single strange moment, they're caught. Trapped, suspended, in the conflict between two utterly incompatible thought-impression constructs. Bruce doesn't even know how to describe it, like doubled vision in his mind's eye: because he knows which thought he's having, a half-sketched mental image of Wayne Manor

(—and it's improving now, brighter, cleaner; it'll be ready for the League soon. But somewhere in his heart, it will always stand just as it was: that crumbling, shadowy, ruined shell, and what better metaphor could there be? What is Bruce, what has he ever been, except the blackened remains left after everything else has burned down—)

and the wordless assessment that Clark can't possibly look at that and want to go inside. But Clark is—it takes a moment for Bruce to even parse the image, blue-shadowed ice and furious red light; but it isn't just a picture, it's a memory, and all at once the context is inescapable.

It's the ship. The Kryptonian ship, at the moment Clark had found it. Three hundred feet of ice, but Clark had melted through it at last, and everything he'd ever wanted to know and understand had been right there behind it waiting for him.

Bruce huffs a laugh through his nose. As if that makes any kind of sense. Bruce is three hundred feet of ice, sure; three hundred feet of ice with three hundred more feet of ice behind it, and nothing to be done with it but freeze to death.

It's been seconds, if that, since Clark spoke. Bruce glances up at him wryly, expecting Clark to perceive and understand his grim amusement, to share it.

But Clark is already watching him, unsmiling, and his gaze is strange and searching. "Bruce," he says again, quietly—and aloud, even though they've just proven conclusively that he doesn't need to. "Bruce, come on. It's all right. Go to sleep."

Because I am a huge sucker for bondage, espeically bondage of someone like Barry, who is constantly in motion. I want it to be a loving relationship between Barry and whoever (JL Member please) you pair him with, but with obvious power play elements, where Any is clearly the dominant of the pair.

(for the purposes of this fic Barry can't do the vibration thing yet, so he can't get out of the bondage by himself.)

Things I really would love to see (But not all have to be used);

1) Barry in leg cuffs, with a short chain between so he can walk easily enough so long as he uses short steps, but any use of speed, or an attempt to take a normal step trips him up.
2) He can't get upstairs by himself and has to be carried bridal style by Any.
3)Someone stops by unexpectidly and Barry has to try and hide whatever restraints he's in. He can't leave the room because it's an obvious restraint, and the other person just won't get the hint to go away.
4) Any likes to 'chase' Barry while he's restrained, and catching him results in a sound spanking for letting himself get caught and a good fucking.
5) For Any putting Barry into very restrictive bondage and having him kneel beside their chair and hand feed him.

Mmassive AU... sorta... Ah well.

Bruce and Arthur get together, and despite being awful bickering and assholes to each other and everyone else are actually pretty good for each other because neither takes the other ones shit.

Then one day Arthur comes home with this skinny little kid whose been living in a warehouse, and somehow the three of them make their new werid little family work.

Powered verse or non powered verse.

Everyone is surprised by how much Arthur dotes on Barry.

At first everyone thought their relationship ws a bad idea, a really bad idea, no way was Arthur not going to crush Barry's delicate little soul, and at first it seems to play out just how they feared it would. But then they start noticing all the little things Arthur does for Barry, and how Barry just lights up around him.

And they wonder how they didn't realise before just how much Arthur actually loves their little speedster.

... This may be the cockblockingest thing I have ever written. /o\

Bruce really must be feeling it, going all this time—what is it, now, a hundred hours? A hundred and thirty?—without sleeping. Clark can tell not just because he can feel it, too, but because Bruce doesn't seem to be paying any attention to the fact that Clark's following him until they're already at the top of the stairs.

It's hard to be sure. Even with the connection, it's hard to be sure. Bruce's mind is so—so vast, so quick, so intense. These days Clark's a lot more aware of what a jumble his own thoughts actually are. Sure, they're words sometimes. But more often they're just sort of half-formed impressions, a string of images and memories and references, concepts held suspended without any need to figure out how to articulate them before he moves on to the next.

And Bruce is—Bruce seems to be thinking at least six things at any given moment, feeling two or three more. Like running water, a dozen different ripples catching the light at once, and a moment later a dozen others, never the same river twice.

Right now, Bruce is exhausted, sure. But he's also off-balance, somewhere deeper; off-balance and moving cautiously because of it, even warily. There's some kind of mistake he's trying desperately not to make, and if he'd just hold still in there for a second, Clark might be able to get a good enough look at it to figure out what it is—

He blinks and catches himself a half-step from walking into Bruce's back. It's so easy to get lost in that interior space, now that he's—almost, sort of, maybe—allowed to take a look around.

Bruce has come to a stop at the top of the stairs, and turned to look over his shoulder. And his expression is utterly bland, featureless, but inside—inside, he's suddenly been washed through with apprehension, green and unripened, sour, so strong it makes Clark's heartbeat kick hard for a second.

(Or was that Bruce's, too?)

"Planning to tuck me in?" Bruce says, and his tone is light. As if Clark's going to buy that. He thinks it, deliberately loud, and he can tell Bruce hears it by the way Bruce's gaze flicks away, the slow blue-tinged rue that wells up.

And maybe he's right, maybe it is weird for Clark to have assumed, except— "Bruce," Clark says aloud. "It doesn't matter where I am," and he gestures helplessly to himself, his physical self, and then to his head. "I'll still be in bed with you."

There's no way for Bruce to misunderstand what he actually meant, given that Bruce knows exactly what he's thinking. But it still doesn't—sound quite right, when he says it like that. Clark swallows and feels awkward heat start to climb his throat, his jaw. Maybe he should leave. Except—

Except he said it because it's true. Even if he goes right now, flies back across the bay to Metropolis and turns the radio on so loud even Superman can't hear past it, a part of him is still going to be wherever Bruce is. A part of him is still going to be there when Bruce slides between his sheets and drifts off—and god, is that ever hard to imagine. Batman's so exacting, so vigilant, so unrelenting. It's almost impossible to picture Bruce with his eyes shut, his face slack.

And of course Bruce must be able to tell he's trying. Clark clears his throat and looks up. It's kind of fascinating, honestly. Bruce's expression really is just as inscrutable as ever. But now Clark can feel exactly what's going on behind it, the quick sequential flicker of doubt-uncertainty-foreboding-exhaustion-resignation that Bruce is flashing through. It makes it so much easier to be patient, to wait Bruce out without frustration or resentment. In fact, what Clark's feeling right now is mostly warmth. Warmth, and something that might be the first unfurling bloom of fondness, around the edges of the lingering embarrassment.

He realizes it and feels Bruce realizing it in the same moment, and grimaces as the embarrassment kicks itself back up a notch. He's expecting irritation, maybe disdain—or maybe no reaction at all, maybe Bruce will just think Clark is stupid and rosy about everybody and move on. But instead he gets—what is that?

Clark closes his eyes for a second, just to help himself pick it apart. It's almost the same as before, but not quite: doubt, again, and uncertainty, foreboding—exhaustion, but different, deeper, and—sorrow—?

He looks up, startled. Bruce hasn't moved, and Clark discovers to his own distant surprise that he himself has reached out unthinkingly, not just in there but with his actual hand. He watches his own fingertips brush Bruce's crisp white sleeve, catch the fabric, and Bruce is just standing there, looking back at him.

He doesn't look sad. He doesn't look much of anything. And yet he is, Clark knows it. But it's a little harder to pick out the reason why. Because Clark isn't angry with him? Because Clark likes being able to understand him, even if it won't last?

"Come on," Clark hears himself say, and he curves a hand around Bruce's elbow and doesn't let go.

*

The lake house is interesting, and pretty, but also frankly kind of stupid. It's just such a ridiculous design for a house. There's no rooms, no doors, everything just sort of placed to present the idea of a room with hardly any walls in between. Bruce's bed is just—there, and for once there actually is a wall but it doesn't even cross the whole house, ending a good arm's length shy of the glass on either side. So much glass, and there's something almost ironic about Bruce surrounding himself with all this endless transparency when he's the most opaque person Clark knows.

Plus it must be a pain in the ass to clean.

"It isn't that bad," Bruce murmurs, pausing at the edge of the bed. "Alfred developed a sprayable fluid for it that he's very pleased with."

Clark looks at him. He's poised, steady, but only on the outside. The apprehension's so strong now that Clark is almost sick with it, and jesus, what the hell is it about this that's making Batman feel like that? It's just Clark.

"Bruce," Clark says, and tightens his fingers around Bruce's elbow—squeezes, just a little, and then starts to slide them down Bruce's forearm.

"Clark—" and Bruce has grabbed his wrist, his tone flat, a warning in it, but Clark's not going to—he just wants to—

He keeps moving his hand, and Bruce is still holding his wrist but doesn't quite stop him. He unbuttons Bruce's cuff, and Bruce still doesn't stop him; and then he has to break Bruce's grip, slowly, to reach the other cuff, and Bruce doesn't stop him from doing that either.

Then Bruce's tie—because of course Bruce put one on and tied it perfectly, even while so sleep-deprived he's probably hallucinating. Clark keeps his eyes on the knot as he picks it apart, doesn't dare let his gaze wander up to Bruce's face, and he's so conscious of their—their closeness, his hands, the texture of the tie under his fingertips, the lines of Bruce's chest, that maybe he's not thinking about Bruce's mouth hard enough for Bruce to notice it.

Maybe.

He slides the tie carefully free of Bruce's shirt-collar, and that sick heavy feeling in Clark's—Bruce's—gut is blurring now, its edges overtaken by something tentative and warm, a light sweet taste at the back of Clark's mouth—

Clark's attention is Bruce's attention; Clark noticing it makes Bruce notice it, too, and Clark flinches helplessly away from the sudden bitter recrimination that blots it all black as a shadow. "Wait," he says quickly, "wait, don't—it's okay. Whatever it is. I won't hold it against you."

And that gets him a mingled rush of wordless cynicism (you shouldn't make promises you might not be able to keep) and something almost—wistful? (if anyone could forgive me this, it would be you, wouldn't it—)

He still has Bruce's tie in his hands. He closes his fingers around it and deliberately clears his mind, thinks of nothing at all except Bruce's shoes. And after a second, Bruce lowers his eyes and sinks to the edge of the bed.

He's going to pry them off himself, Clark can feel his intent even before he tilts one foot to settle the heel against the ball of the other. He isn't expecting Clark to sling the loose tie around his own neck and drop to his knees.

And that flush of stupid reckless heat must be Clark's, it must be, but there's no way Bruce can't feel it. Clark swallows and closes his eyes and reaches for Bruce's shoe—and he doesn't miss, which he realizes after a second isn't just down to Superman's hearing or Clark's own aim. Bruce's eyes are still open and he knows where his feet are, and that means Clark does, too.

Bruce jerks, startled, when Clark doesn't stop at the shoes but slides a hand up his calf, looking for the edge of his sock. And it's not—it's not words, as such, just a sudden swift exchange of impressions. It's fine, you don't have to—it's not fine, don't be ridiculous. Who sleeps with socks on?—some people—Bruce, come on—

Clark discovers he's grinning helplessly at Bruce's knee as he tugs Bruce's sock off, and Bruce nudges him unthinkingly with the bare foot (Clark knows, can feel the moment he realizes what he's done and his fierce frustration with the loss of judgment, impulse control—so you do need to sleep, Clark tosses in snidely, just to make him stop yelling at himself) and then leans down to yank the other off.

The movement brings him nearer, and suddenly their faces are almost on a level. Clark squeezing his eyes shut tighter isn't any help when he can smell Bruce—

He jerks to his feet and turns away, and concentrates on sliding his own shoes off, his own socks after. But then he's done. No tie or cuffs for him, he's only wearing a t-shirt. He's got a lot less armor to take off.

It's just an idle thought. But he stops and thinks it again more slowly and then looks up, and Bruce is looking back at him.

(And isn't that always true? Batman's suit—even when it isn't covered in a metal shell, it's got so many parts and pieces, so much damage to absorb or turn aside. Clark only ever needs the one layer, cloth, even if it is technologically-advanced alien cloth. But Bruce can't get away with that. Bruce needs a thousand different kinds of defenses, because—

Because underneath it all, Bruce is so easy to hurt.)

"Come on," Clark says to him gently.

He rounds the bed, and—is it that he thinks he can feel Bruce's eyes on him, or that he actually does know where Bruce is looking? It feels weird and staged, like he's in a play, as he lifts up the covers with Bruce staring at him like that; and then Bruce stands all at once, lifts his own corner and gets in, and they lie down.

Bruce settles on his side, his back to Clark, but of course it doesn't matter. Clark can feel the harp-string tension in him, the doubling and redoubling self-consciousness and recrimination. A nightmare of an observer effect, self-conscious about being self-conscious, recriminating himself for being recriminating where Clark can see it.

Which is, of course, ridiculous, because there's nowhere in him Clark can't see. And nowhere in Clark that he can't see, if he looks. Like this, allowed in, opened up, there's nothing hidden for the simple reason that there's nowhere to hide it. And that should bother Clark, because he's already proven he's got plenty of cause for embarrassment

(—as if he could go to his knees in front of Bruce and not think of—jesus, that had been so stupid—)

but instead he thinks it and all he feels is—

The sudden intensity of Bruce's attention, in there, is impossible to miss: reaching out to take hold, carefully, of what Clark's just handed him, to turn it over and examine it.

Relief? Bruce is startled, uncomprehending. He can't understand how Clark could possibly be glad about this.

And god, it's just so easy, being able to tell him everything without having to figure out how to say any of it. Clark can just—share it, shove the whole armful of remembered moments and impressions into Bruce's hands and let him pick through them. The constant, relentless self-monitoring he has to do, every single second he isn't with the League. Always having to make sure he isn't moving too fast, hearing or seeing anything he can't explain, that he isn't too strong. That if he stubs his toe loudly enough to make somebody look over, then he needs to wince; that if he spills hot coffee on his hand and someone sees, he has to go run cold water on it, wrap it up in paper towel, pretend that it hurts, until they're gone. Ten thousand different things that could give him away, and he'd only have to slip up once—especially now that people know about Superman, now that there's a two to put two together with.

Superman, and in some ways that isn't any better. Superman is an ideal, someone for people to look up to. Clark can use his powers when he's Superman, sure. But the price is that he can't—he can't be Clark anymore. He can't be petty, can't get snappish, can't be rude or have a bad day or just not want to go out. People need saving, it's life-or-death; Clark can't possibly weigh that against the way they stare at him, their rapt attention, all that smotheringly worshipful admiration, and find it wanting. He could never justify it. He—he couldn't call himself Superman, if he let himself be that selfish. But Superman sets the bar so high; and Clark can fly, but only literally.

And now he doesn't have to choose. He can't. Bruce just gets it all, unfiltered, and Clark can't blame himself for failing to keep it from him because it's just plain out of his hands. Clark is, for once, in this single respect, absolved of all responsibility—

Clark blinks up at the ceiling, startled. That wasn't him. Or—it was, but it wasn't; the same thought in a different flavor.

The room is dark. The house is silent. Bruce is lying beside him, still facing away, unmoving. But he's not asleep, they're not asleep, and in that space inside them, Clark looks and finally sees, and there's not one single thing Bruce can do to prevent it.

It is a relief. A relief Bruce has been forcing himself not to grab after this whole time, while Clark was sitting in there next to him doing exactly the same thing, and Clark laughs and wipes his wet face, his stinging eyes, and stretches out his arm: settles one palm against the broad strong angle of Bruce's shoulderblade. It's too much and not enough, nothing compared to what's happening inside their heads

(—what words are there for it? Who else in the world has ever done this? Has ever known and been known, like this—has ever reached so perfect and whole and complete an understanding?

Who else in the world has ever been less alone?)

and yet Clark can't help but catch his breath at the sudden coruscating bloom of colors in Bruce's head when Clark touches him, just before Bruce's exhaustion finally drags them both under.

This is probably not what the OP had in mind, but here's my try
---------------------------
Clark didn’t think he would ever get to see this, Bruce on his hands and knees, his ass up in the air. Clark couldn’t help but touch the broad back, full of old scars and slick with sweat and stray lube. Bruce shivered as Clark’s hand slowly ran through his spine, running back and forth slowly to his ass and his sides, feeling the crevices and bulges of muscle and scar tissue underneath his hand. He could feel the body trembling, the shivers running up from the point where skin met the palm of his hand and up to Clark’s head. The kind of trust Clark got from a man who was often attacked from behind his back -

Clark’s sight moved downward, where his other hand kept three of his fingers inside that beautiful ass, working it open slowly with a lot of lube. He’d found the special spot inside two fingers ago, and he’d done his best in both touching it and avoiding it. Clark was entranced by the sight of Bruce, trembling in both pleasure and pain as his ass was stuffed with Clark’s wide and clumsy fingers while his cock was hard, even after coming once. The ring of muscle was snug around his fingers, sucking him in as he stretched the opening. Even Bruce’s breathing was shaky, his heartbeat was running fast instead of the steady beat Clark was so used to hearing. And it was…

God, Bruce is beautiful.

Clark took the hand caressing Bruce’s away, reaching for the bottle of lube by his side. His hand already missed the sensation of Bruce’s skin, and Clark couldn’t help but smile when he heard the soft, choked whine from Bruce’s throat when his hand left his back. His ass pushed back, pulling Clark’s fingers even deeper, and Clark’s mind translated it as more.

Clark could feel his cock was throbbing, as if he could get even harder than he already was. He ignored the need to touch his cock, to get that little bit of relief. Tonight, Bruce comes first.

Clark leaned down, kissing Bruce’s left cheek as his left hand reached back to Bruce’s hip, his thumb moving in a circle to soothe, even as his fingers kept on their ministration.

“I’m just getting more lube, B,” Clark whispered, before his left hand left its favorite perch to reach for the lube again.

“Hurry the fuck up,” Bruce growled out, impatient, even as his thigh trembled in his effort to keep his ass up. He lifted his head and glanced back to Clark, his copper brown eyes glaring in demand even as his face was red, sweat matting his hair and made his face shine.

Clark bit down the spot he had kissed as his left hand snapped the cap open with his thumb. There was a flinch and a cut-off moan from Bruce. Clark wished Bruce would let out his voice, but he also knew Bruce will, later. Clark stared at the teeth impression on Bruce’s left buttcheek, the light bruise he managed to leave. He wanted to leave many more.

But, there’s still work to do, he thought.

There was a miniscule flinch again when Clark poured more lube to the cleft of Bruce’s ass. He pulled his fingers out, took a second to admire the lube dripping from Bruce’s gaping, fluttering asshole and down to his thigh, before using those fingers to gather more lube and entered three fingers into Bruce again, still slow and careful. His other hand already put the bottle of lube to where he can easily reach again and returned to its perch on Bruce’s left hip.

“I’m putting in another finger, Bruce,” Clark said. He could hear Bruce’s shaky exhale.

“Shit - just fuck me already, Clark,” Bruce rasped in between gasping breath. Clark could hear the tremble in his voice, the excitement, the impatience.

“I need to make sure,” Clark whispered, even though he, too, longed to enter the stretched hole, wondering how it would feel around his cock. But, his cock was too big, too much, always too much.

Lois was the only one that would ever let him try, but even she could only handle less than a half of his cock, just a hint of movement, before she told him to fucking pull out. After Lois, before Bruce, there were others too. Men and women, as he worked over his heartbreak. But, no one dared to even try, cringing away from the sheer size and backed away from him. They’d rather have his mouth or ass, but not his cock. That was probably when he truly realized even physically, he was a freak. As if his ability and being an alien didn’t make him freaky enough.

When he and Bruce finally got together and progressed to bedroom activities, he had been afraid of showing the freak of nature that was his cock to Bruce, scared of the rejection, scared Bruce would change his mind, of losing the wonderful thing he had since Lois. Even as he stripped himself to nothing, he’d assured Bruce he was fine with whatever Bruce wanted to do, he didn’t have to let Clark fuck him, whatever he wanted.

Whatever Clark’s fears were evaporated when Bruce saw the entirety of Clark’s cock, already half hard and too big, and licked his lips instead of grimacing, like Clark used to see his partners did.

“I want that in my mouth,” Bruce had said decisively and Clark thought he had misheard. Until Bruce suddenly knelt down, bare chested and his pants were still on, looking up coyly through his eyelashes, and asked Clark the question that would set the pattern in their lovemaking.

“Yes?”

Clark wanted to ask if Bruce was sure, if he was just teasing and was actually thinking of having his cock in Clark’s mouth. But, the word that came out of his mouth in a breathy whisper was a simple “yes”.

Clark could only stare, still unsure if it was actually happening, as Bruce’s gaze was focused on his cock again, feeling himself just get harder as Bruce concentrated on it and licked his lips again once more. That tongue then licked around the head, the shaft, mouthing and kissing on top of the shaft, as if familiarizing his mouth with his cock, planning and strategizing the best way to have it in his mouth. Clark could only groan, hands gripping tight on each other behind him, unsure of what to do with those too big, too clumsy hands. But then, it didn’t seem to matter when Bruce giving his cock so much attention. His lips, his tongue, his hands on Clark’s hips -

Then Bruce opened his mouth as wide as he could and Clark could only stare, mind hazy with pleasure and the sense of dreaming, as the head of his cock disappeared into Bruce’s mouth. The warmth, the wetness, the feeling of Bruce’s tongue -

Clark groaned, and while Bruce couldn’t smirk, not when his mouth was stuffed with his cock, his eyes did.
And God, how hot is that?

Clark was grateful. He was thankful. He wanted to worship Bruce, give him anything, everything, and he felt like he was too close to coming -

Then Bruce leaned forward, little by little, jaw and throat working to accommodate the sheer size of Clark’s cock until he could feel the tip of his cock touching the back of Bruce’s throat. Clark’s cock was barely halfway in, but God, it was already so fucking good. Bruce’s tongue on the underside of his cock, the wetness and warmth surrounding him, more than he ever felt -

“B-Br-huse - I-I’m about to cum-” Clark moaned, trying to lean back, pulling out from Bruce’s mouth. But, before Clark could really drag his cock out, Bruce’s lips followed his cock. His eyes were glaring at Clark, daring him to pull out. Bruce’s lips had tightened around his cock as well as the hand on his hips, and if Clark was anyone else, his cock would probably be bitten off by now and his hips would be very bruised.

Shaking, Clark stayed, trying his best to stand his ground and trying his best to keep himself from coming. There was something satisfactory in Bruce’s eyes before he concentrated on Clark’s cock again, leaning back just a bit then leaning forward sharply. With his mind too hazy, concentrating on not coming, it took Clark another forward movement for him to realize that Bruce was fucking his face on Clark’s cock, sucking as well as trying to get more of Clark’s cock into his throat.

“Oh God, B-Bruce - B - I’m -“ Clark stuttered out, gasping and moaning, afraid to move his hands or his hips but wanting to grip on something, anything, preferably Bruce’s head. But, he was also afraid he might lose control of his strength, of something, so he kept his hand behind him and his hips still, shaking and straining as he came.

a/n:...Is it cum, or come?
----------------
Clark could hear how Bruce choked when he suddenly came, suddenly afraid if it had been too much, if he had hurt Bruce. But, Bruce still kept his cock in his mouth, not moving away, letting the burst of cum filling his mouth, dripping from his lips sloppily. Bruce’s face was red, eyes not entirely focused anymore, as he dragged his lips backwards until he finally released Clark’s cock, already half-hard again while feeling the drag of bruce’s lips mixing with the sensation of saliva and cum. And also, the sight of Bruce’s mouth overflowing with cum was enough to arouse him again.

Bruce seemed to know this, because he smirked even as his lips was still dripping with cum, then he leaned up and kissed Clark, mouth still full of Clark’s cum.

Clark couldn’t seem to focus beyond the thought that it was his cum inside Bruce’s mouth, his cum that Bruce poured back into Clark’s mouth through the kiss, and Clark could only swallow and licked the taste off Bruce’s tongue, Clark’s cum now staining both of their lips and chin. Clark followed Bruce and fell to his knees, lips still locked together and tongues tasting each other.

When Bruce’s lips parted from his, Clark was too dazed to even close his mouth again, lips and tongue tasting heavily of his own cum. Bruce was licking his lips again, swiping his tongue through the mess on his lips, and smirked.

God, so much smirking.

Clark was hard again. Bruce glanced down, eyebrows raised but already smirking again. His hand reached out to the standing cock, the touch fleeting and Clark’s sock was already twitching in anticipation of being touched.

“How fast is your refractory period?” Bruce had asked, curious and still scratchy from having a too big cock inside his throat.

“Fast, but not usually this fast,” Clark confessed, still dazed by the feeling being stimulated on his cock, hands flopping around stupidly even when all he wanted was to touch back. “Are- Are you okay?”

Bruce smiled, his hand caressing Clark’s jaw, and how is Bruce so beautiful? Clark leaned into the hand, his own hands trying find a grip but instead just uselessly slipping around whichever part of Bruce’s skin he could reach, chest, side, arms, and even back. He couldn’t keep still, he wanted to get closer, closer.

“Let me suck you too,” Clark asked, head leaning down as his hands trailed from Bruce’s sides to his hips. Unlike Clark, Bruce’s elegant, competent hands went to Clark’s jaw, fingers trailing up to his hair, the touch was enough to electrify his desires. His grip on Clark’s hair was gentle, but firm, while Clark felt like he could barely have a grip on Bruce’s pants, already unfastened, but not yet off why.

After Clark pulled the pants down, he stared at the wet patch on the front of Bruce’s black briefs. Of course Bruce would wear black, he thought dazedly. His next thought was I want to taste it. So, he did. He leaned forward, mouthing on the bulge that seemed half-hard (why half hard? Didn’t Bruce enjoy it? Did he get soft?) under the briefs, under his lips. Until he tasted cum on his tongue, not Clark’s, so -

“Did you come?” Clark asked, in awe, looking up to Bruce who blushed so prettily. “Did you come, when you sucked me off?”

Bruce didn’t say anything, but there was just the barest of a nod, something like embarrassment passed through on his face. There was something that felt like awe running through Clark, something like worship, like love. Something special he didn’t know the name of. So, he kissed Bruce, pushed him gently until he was on his back, before Clark put his mouth back to Bruce’s beautiful, gorgeous cock. Clark’s hands roamed Bruce’s hips, gripping around the cheeks of his rump, kneading and massaging in accordance to Bruce’s delicious moans. There was a fleeting thought, wondering how it would feel to have his cock inside Bruce’s ass, but he shouldn’t be greedy. That Bruce didn’t cringe away from the size of his cock was already a blessing he didn’t expect. Just having Bruce’s mouth on his was enough. The memory of it was already more than enough to make him hard.

That was their first night together, which ended when Bruce came again in Clark’s mouth with two of Clark’s fingers in his ass, while Clark also came on Bruce’s hand after. Clark could still go for another round, something that Bruce had pouted about, but Clark already felt satisfied enough and would rather cuddle up with Bruce. He didn’t want to continue if Bruce was too tired for it.

Waking up beside Bruce with his arms around Clark was the only thing that could be better than their night together.

At first, Clark thought it was a one-time thing. Maybe Bruce just wanted to see if he could suck Clark off, see if he could fit the entirety of Clark’s too big cock in his mouth. Bruce had complained about a sore jaw in the morning, and Clark also knew his throat also didn’t come out unscathed. He was grateful that Bruce would even try, no one had even done that before, even Lois had her reservation. Bruce’s mouth could barely fit, then why would Bruce even think of taking Clark’s cock in his ass?

As it turns out, he did think of it.

Enthusiastically.

“I want that in my ass,” Bruce had said (demanded? It was said with such surety, as if there was nothing else he’d like to do more, he wanted more, licking his lips like when he asked for Clark’s cock in his mouth) earlier tonight, 2 value-sized bottles of lube ready by the bedside table, along with condoms that was in Clark’s unusual size. Clark had no idea at first what it meant, thinking that maybe it was just Bruce being over-prepared. Bruce was big, but Clark knew that he could take him. Instead, Bruce had poured the lube over Clark’s hand and guided it towards his entrance, making his intention clear.

“A-are you sure, Bruce?” Clark had asked. “I’m too big, it won’t fit. I don’t-I don’t want to hurt you.”

There wasn’t a trace of doubt in Bruce’s eyes, only desire and want as he flicked another glance to Clark’s cock, already swelling in attention. Bruce’s eyes met Clark again, a smile on his lips.

“Anything’s possible with enough lube and preparation, Clark.”

Clark thought fingering Bruce could become his favorite pastime soon. Or maybe, it already has. Bruce had been impatient, wanting Clark to fuck him, already when Clark only had two fingers in him. But, Clark was afraid he would hurt Bruce.

Fingering Bruce was a pleasure of its own, so while Clark took his time before entering a third finger. Clark listened to Bruce’s breathing, his moans already becoming one of Clark’s favorite sound coming out of Bruce, also the rapid beat of his heartbeat. He timed the thrust of his fingers, giving pleasure and slowing down when Bruce needed to calm down, so he wouldn’t come too soon.

Bruce wanted to come with Clark inside him. Clark wanted that too, even though he was still unsure if that was wise.

He really didn’t want to hurt Bruce.

Bruce moaned even loader when the fourth finger joined the first three. Bruce was shaking, and he had assured Clark it was because he was in so much pleasure.Bruce demanded that Clark put in his cock soon, or I’ll put it in me myself, Clark.

But, even with four fingers in, Clark still wasn’t sure if his cock could fit. But God, how he wants.

“I’m not - haaa - one of your girls, Kent. I can - shit - handle your fucking cock,” Bruce suddenly said without prompting. Clark’s mind was already halfway in sexual haze, it didn’t seem fair how coherent Bruce still was while having his ass stuffed full with four fingers and lube, blush covering his face and chest, and body glistened with sweat and stray lube.

The thought of don’t hurt Bruce, don’t hurt Bruce, don’t hurt Bruce was probably the only reason why he was still so hesitant. But then, Bruce’s head turned back again, glancing at him with lust-filled eyes, and said,
“Don’t you trust me?”

It was really unfair. So fucking unfair.

“I do,” Clark replied shakily. Bruce’s hips then thrust back, choked off moan escaped his throat as he fucked himself once on Clark’s fingers as if making a point. Maybe he was. Clark thought he was.

“So fucking fuck me already.”

It really was very unfair.

“Okay.”

Bruce’s empty hole was gaping and lube was dribbling out. Clark watched in fascination when he was lining himself. It still didn’t look like he would fit. Clark wanted to finger him more. Pour more lube, maybe. Stuff something in that wasn’t as big as his cock.

“Clark,” Bruce growled out, which snapped Clark out of his haze on the sight of Bruce’s hole.

“Yeah-yeah, I’m, I’m going in,” Clark said breathily, one hand gripping Bruce’s hip, steadying either himself or Bruce, while another hand was guiding his cock towards Bruce’s entrance. When the tip of his cock finally touched Bruce’s hole, Bruce moaned, perhaps in anticipation. Clark didn’t want to disappoint, so he pushed his cock, stretching Bruce’s hole even wider until the head was in.

Bruce’s moan got louder.

“More, Clark.”

Even if it was just the tip, Clark could already feel the tightness, the feeling of Bruce’s inner muscles moving, as if unsure what to do with the intrusion. Clark pushed further, gently, slowly, feeling Bruce’s muscles tensing and relaxing, already feeling heady at the thought he was inside Bruce.

Halfway in, Bruce’s hand and knees were trembling, shaking like a leaf. Clark stopped, letting Bruce to get used to the feeling. He needed the time to get used to the feeling too, of having his cock inside such a tight channel, even though he also wanted to thrust in even deeper, get everything of him inside Bruce and never leave again.

(Don’t hurt him, don’t hurt Bruce, be careful, don’t break him)

“Mo-haa-more.”

Clark swallowed, wondering if it was still possible to enter further. But, he trusted Bruce. So, moved, pushing further in, slowly, slowly -
Bruce gasped and moaned, Body trembling in either pain or pleasure, at one point he even sobbed, which -

“Oh God, Bruce, did I hurt you? I’ll pull out -”

“You fucking pull out from me right now I’ll fucking shove a kryptonite up your fucking ass, Kent.”

It shouldn’t be terrifying, the sight of Bruce glaring at him through tears and lust-blown eyes, face red and shining with sweat. It still did terrify him. And also aroused him more. From Bruce’s gasp, he could probably feel it.

“Shit, did you just -”

“Sorry, I -”

“Shit, fuck, shut up,- fuck, - more, Clark -”

Clark’s hand was trembling on Bruce’s hip, or was it trembling because Bruce was trembling? No matter. Bruce wanted more, so Clark pushed in deeper again, with the same slowness, with the same restraint, adding more lube when Clark felt he needed more. Bruce gasped and moaned and sighed, both in pain and in pleasure, while Clark thought he could barely even breathe.

Then, eventually, Clark’s hips was flushed with Bruce’s plump ass and the entire shaft of his cock was inside Bruce’s hole and -

Clark leaned his head on Bruce’s back, both trembling and overwhelmed. Clark wondered if he should move, if he shouldn’t, if there was something he should do. The warmth, the tightness around his cock was almost too much, not enough, he wanted to move -

“Clark, move,” Bruce’s breathed out, voice shaky but still sounded so sure. While Clark couldn’t even word.

He understood though that Bruce wanted him to move.

So he did.

He leaned back a little, just halfway, before he thrusted in again. The squelching sound of lube and the slapping sound on when his hips met Bruce’s ass made him realize that he was fucking Bruce.

He never fucked, really fucked, anyone before.

Clark did it again.

And again.

And again.

Bruce gasped and moaned and cried, especially when Clark’s cock brushed over that spot in Bruce. Tears were running down his face, a litany of Clark’s name was gasped over and over and over again.

Bruce’s name was the only vocabulary Clark had in him too.

Bruce came with a scream, coming hard and Bruce’s ass tightened, leading to Clark’s own release. Bruce moaned at the feel of Clark coming inside him. Clark breathed against Bruce’s back, feeling overwhelmed and he didn’t want to let go of Bruce. He wanted to stay inside Bruce, never letting go.

But, Bruce would probably yell at him if he didn’t pull out soon.

Clark checked on Bruce, who was limp in his arms. His heartbeat has settled, slow and calm like -

“Bruce?” Clark asked, but Bruce couldn’t hear him. He already passed out, eyes closed and tears on his cheeks. Clark took a second to worry, wondering if it had been too much, but Bruce’s vitals only read like he was sleeping. Clark took a breath and slowly pulled out, holding the base of the condom so it wouldn’t get stuck. He also took note of Bruce’s hole, hoping there wasn’t any tear. There wasn't, but Bruce would be pretty sore when he woke up, anyway. Clark should massage him tomorrow.

Clark was just checking to make sure Bruce was really alright, but when he saw how Bruce’s hole was gaping wide, Clark took another second to stare, to marvel how amazing it was, how amazing Bruce was.

He had an urge to stuff his cock back in, but he held himself. Instead, he pulled off the condom and threw the semen-filled condom to the trash. He went to the bathroom and brought back a wet towel to clean Bruce up. Again, when he reached down to clean around Bruce’s entrance, he took another second to admire it.

That his cock had been persistent in getting hard again really didn’t help matters.

Clark sighed, cursing his libido, or maybe his alien physiology, before he set aside the wet towel and went to lay beside Bruce. Once he was settled, Bruce suddenly shifted and snuggled up to him, arms and legs trapping him in place. Clark blinked, he thought this time he could be the one to cuddle Bruce. He glanced to Bruce’s face, to see one of his eyes was half-opened and was sleepily staring at him.

“Bruce?”

The eye closed and Bruce snuggled closer, as if Clark was his personal teddy bear.

“Next time,” Bruce slurred, voice heavy with exhaustion, “just keep it in. I like how it felt.”

Then he snored. While Clark just got even harder.

So unfair.

*____________* Oh, anon, bless you! This was unfairly hot - I love all the sordid details of sweat and lube and everything, all Clark's observations of how wrecked and fucked-out Bruce looks at various points, and that blowjob flashback was fan-fucking-tastic. And of course the angst was spot-on, too. Clark's worries extending to his too-big and too-clumsy hands, and him contrasting them with Bruce's, was a great touch! And his overall concern for Bruce (while Bruce swears at him to get on with it, because of course he does) was a really sweet and even tender note, in the midst of all the scorching porn.

Great fill - I'm not the OP, but thank you so much for this anyway!

ao3 link: http://archiveofourown.org/works/13745730

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DCEU Prompt Post #1

Bruce/Clark: Bruce Fulfills Clark's Batsuit Fantasy

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (2/?)

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (2/?)

FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (3/?)

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (3/?)

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (3/?)

FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (4/?)

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (4/?)

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (4/?)

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (4/?)

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (4/?)

FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (5/?)

FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (6/?)

Omega!Bruce/Dogs, Unwanted knotting (TW: Bestiality, Non-Con)

FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (7/?)

Any/Barry, bondage, leg restraints.

Bruce/Arthur, adopt kid!Barry

Arthur/Barry

FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (8/11ish?)

Fill: Unfair, Bruce/Clark, size kink, Part 1/?

Fill: Unfair, Bruce/Clark, size kink, Part 2/?

Fill: Unfair, Bruce/Clark, size kink, Part 3/?

Fill: Unfair, Bruce/Clark, size kink, Part 4/4

Re: Fill: Unfair, Bruce/Clark, size kink, Part 4/4

Re: Fill: Unfair, Bruce/Clark, size kink, Part 4/4