The first Gotham Tattle that Bruce had swiped from a newsstand had been mission-critical. The second one, follow-up. It was a lot harder to justify, even to himself, the full sampler-set of Gotham’s lurid celeb beat rags that Alfred delivered with an incredibly deadpan non-smirk the next week.
He didn’t even try to explain when he directed Alfred to set up a year’s subscription to The Metropolis-Gotham Gossip.
Since the Seven Diamonds club mishap, Bruce hadn’t done anything as outrageous as the Wayne of Shame™, and he refused to cross that line even for--even for this. But if he behaved more like the Gotham Prince in his second unabashed youth, only Alfred chastised him for compensating. Being too much his younger self, when he could in fact just fade gently into the background like a gentleman bachelor his age.
For everyone else, it was business as usual.
---
Patrol had gone wrong from his very first bust. A ring of human traffickers had been tipped off and fled the scene before the Bat showed up. One of the Bat’s informants had been gunned down in the street by a rival gang. Two muggers had escaped police custody minutes after he had dropped them off. He had spent half of the night chasing them down, only to handcuff them to the same streetlamp again. Salvatore Maroni hadn’t been denied bail, and had returned to the East Side to strike up a deal with the Greeks to move illegal arms out through the Gotham ports.
The wheel of justice turned, and ground everyone underneath it alike.
The moment his boots hit the bunker’s metal grating, he knew tonight was going to be the night that he unlocked that night from his memory. The Bat seethed with the fury of thwarted justice. Bruce felt bitterness seep into his heart like a poison. He knew it was perverse to associate failure with desire, but the very thought of his complete failure of separate Bruce Wayne from the Bat burned within him like shame. The memory of standing on the red carpet as both Bruce Wayne and the Bat for all of the public to see brought him to such a frantic hardness, he didn’t know if he could make it to his bedroom to relieve himself.
He wrenched himself free of the batsuit, but he was just too heartsick and horny to remove the undersuit. He leaned back against the Batmobile, just for a moment, and ran his hand up the side of his bulge. Shame bit into him. The Batmobile wasn’t for this. The Batman did not give in to his body; he dominated it. He was in control--except, not, apparently, right now, as his hand moved frantically over his clothed erection. The touch of the slippery material against the side of his cock ripped a long buck up into his own hand. A long, deep groan escaped his lips.
God. He could jack himself off right here. He would enjoy it.
That was one humiliation too far for his--his--first time indulging this kind of thing, so Bruce pulled his hand back.
As he mounted the steps to the lake house, Bruce felt a strange burning in his veins. This was actually going to happen, he was going to--
“Bruce.” The name pronounced with deliberate slowness, drawing out the syllable like a question.
Bruce was shocked into stillness at the edge of the shadow. In the living space, a single lamp spilled light over the floor; Clark Kent lounged on the edge of the couch, his face touched with the edges of that warmth. Clark was in a strange half-way state, dressed in his overlarge Daily Planet button-up and tie, but his glasses were folded and carefully discarded on one of the couch cushions--a studied casualness that belied Clark’s nervousness.
He wanted something.
No. Clark knew something.
“Clark,” he returned, barely more than a whisper.
Clark sat forward, his elbows resting against his knees. “Alfred said I should talk to you. He didn’t say about what.”
“Hard night,” Bruce grunted, as his cock responded to the interruption by throbbing its need. He ignored it as best he could. The frustration was harder to control, but he pushed it down to acceptable levels. “Men who should be punished weren’t.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if--” Clark cut that thought off at the root.
“No,” Bruce said slowly. “I probably wouldn’t.”
Clark nodded once, to signal he understood the issue of whether the Bat required help to patrol Gotham was a closed one for tonight. It was an old argument. Clark--who wasn’t exactly his friend, wasn’t exactly his enemy, but sat on his couch on nights when Bruce pushed himself too hard, like he had a right to do it--respected his boundaries.
Tonight that respect earned an extra twisting dart in his stomach, so close to arousal that Bruce grew suspicious of himself.
“If that’s all, I’d like to--” Bruce mimed his head hitting the pillow, “before the sun comes up. Board Meeting at 10. I’m actually obligated to make an appearance at this one.”
He normally didn’t offer the man excuses; he just dismissed their conversation with a ‘Good night Clark.’ Clark was conscientious of the fragile nature of their friendship. He never pushed. Clark dipped his chin, and wetted his lips so fast it’s nearly imperceptible. Bruce assumed it was a prelude to speech, but the silence stretched out between them.
The sound of blood buzzed in the quiet of the room. The sound suppressors that Bruce had installed in the unit probably dampened his biorhythms, even at a distance, but he couldn’t be sure if they were completely effective--he never ginned up the courage to test them with Clark. The thought that Clark, who would never willingly violate his privacy, at this very moment could see Bruce in the depth of the shadow, hear his heart hammering in his chest, his pupils blown wide by lust. That he could rake his eyes across the Bat absolutely mastered by desire--the humiliation of that exposure before Clark’s calm, alien mastery of his own kryptonian body.
(Bruce had never so much as seen him with an accidental erection.)
The room took on a slightly glassy sheen as a double-awareness settled on Bruce. How exposed he was in the undersuit; the black Lycra clinging as tightly as any Superman suit, leaving nothing to the imagination.
He felt his muscles tense instinctively, as though he were gearing up for a fight. Bruce’s whole body lit up in an endorphin rush, as his senses tuned themselves to the man in front of him. He registered the rise and fall of Clark’s chest, the white column of his throat, the tensing of the muscles of his jaw.
There were a number of moves he could make now that could bring the situation to a resolution that would satisfy himself, all he had to do was step forward into the light--bare himself to the kryptonian’s complete scrutiny without any idea of how Clark would react to seeing Bruce so uncontrolled…
And suddenly, Bruce was harder than he’d been in his life, his cock straining at the meager confines of the undersuit. He felt absolutely sodden with lust. It was cowardice to linger in the shadows, but stepping into the light felt too much like willingness.
Clark sank back into the lake house’s couch with a faintly puzzled look on his face.
“The shadows don’t hide you from me, Bruce--” but it’s a feign. Clark had not actually stripped his privacy away. Bruce would know, because Clark blushed as easily as a schoolboy--
“You’re a terrible liar, Clark. Alfred told you about the tabloids.”
Guilty, Clark held up one of the rags. The title was unreadable at this distance, and the picture of him--eyes heavy-lidded, a curling smirk on his face, one arm draped over a blond and a brunet man--generic enough that he can’t even guess which rag it is.
“What’s the headline on that one again,” Bruce said lightly. “I can’t remember if it was publicist-approved or not.”
“Sex Games: The End of the House of Wayne,” Clark read, and his color rose. See? Schoolboy. “Actually, Alfred asked me to do something about this. His suggestion wasn’t exactly ethical. It involved massive property damage to a certain publishing house. I was tempted to say yes, Bruce.”
“You, boyscout?”
“This is disgusting.” Clark waved the paper to punctuate his sentence. “Bruce, they make you sound like a slut.”
Bruce had never thought of slut as a particularly degrading word. Blame his upbringing, but being broad-minded about promiscuity meant that shaming Bruce Wayne took a stronger constitution than most gossip rags had in them. But the combination of affronted horror and anger in Clark’s voice, like being a slut was something shameful to call another human being--it punched right through Bruce’s tissue-paper thin defenses.
If Bruce thought he was hard before, his knees shook with the force of the blood draining into the lower half of his body.
He bowed his head against the dart of lust; the desire to touch himself clawed at his chest, and bit back a moan of pleasure. Desire and resisting temptation had become so tangled up in Bruce’s mind, that touching--and resisting the desire inflamed him further. Bruce threaded his fingers through his hair in frustration. Mainly to keep them from shoving them down his pants.
That board meeting at 10 am was suddenly the furthest thing from Bruce’s mind.
He needed to hear that word again in Clark’s mouth more than he needed to touch himself.
“Maybe that’s the point,” he said, with a catch in his voice as he schooled his desire into an impassive tone. “Look hard enough at Bruce Wayne the playboy, nobody’s looking at all of the details that don’t fit.” Bruce tried to make his laugh sound natural, and not half-strangled with lust. “And that’s becoming difficult. I didn’t care enough, after Bane. I let it all slip. I almost exposed my--the Bat--a month ago.”
“I saw the pictures,” Clark said flatly.
--Bruce burned to ask impossible questions--
Clark held up a hand to forestall Bruce from interrupting him. As if Bruce in any way shape or form wanted to stop Clark from speaking. “You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I know what you’re doing, when you’re doing that.”
Bruce could read the absolute discomfort in Clark’s body language now, there was no way to mistake it. His body responded to Clark’s with a fresh wave of humiliation that rolled down his spine as sweet as any pleasure.
“What, in your estimation, am I doing?” Bruce was barely in control now. His voice was breathless to his own ears.
“I think you’re--well, it’s clear that you’re doing a good job of keeping the cover. The gossip rags imply you’re wanton. This one’s borderline pornographic about what you were doing in Boîte du Lak,” Clark paused, and continued in a smaller voice. “I can’t believe they would say that about you.”
The words threatened to tear a long-drawn groan from his throat.
“Kent,” Bruce said sharply, bringing Clark’s eyes to him. “Do you think I have something to feel ashamed--” and it was a testament to his great willpower that his voice did not crack on ashamed-- “about? You haven’t even asked if those rags are true.”
“Are they?” Clark asked, his voice faint but resolved. Bruce kept his mouth shut with the force of his will. He would not deny it until he’d made Clark say it. And Clark was too wrapped up in his sense of injustice that he for once didn’t require further goading to do what Bruce wanted him to do.
“This one said you were in a grope booth. That you were willingly naked in public, on display, open for anyone to touch.”--Clark’s voice scraped the rawest place inside of Bruce, like touching the nerves in the pit of his stomach, and he can’t help himself, his back arching--
“Like they owned you.”--an impossible tightness against the base of his spine--
“Like you were anyone’s who had two hands and a hot body--”--his thighs tensed--
“And you wouldn’t even know who they were. You wouldn’t have known whose hands were even on your body, they could have been m---anyone’s, Bruce, anyone’s.”
Bruce moaned then, a strangled thing, that lived and died in the rattle of his throat. His entire body spasmed, and he jerked against the air, then slumped forward like a marionette whose cords have been cut. He clenched the muscles in his stomach as he felt the horror break on him. He just orgasmed in front of his friend, his future teammate.
The haze of desire burned down to give Bruce clarity for the first time since he’d jumped out of the Batmobile. A wave of shame broke across him. He had used the trust of his friend, made him complicit in a sexual situation without his knowledge or consent. And to add to the humiliation, Bruce was still painfully hard.
Thank god for small mercies; at least there would be no evidence of what just happened when he finally emerged from the shadows; Bruce had achieved a dry orgasm.
Clark coughed into his fist, and Bruce couldn’t tell whether the dampeners worked, or whether Clark struggled to allow him some portion of modesty in his absolute humiliating .
Bruce said slowly, “What if every word they printed is the God’s Honest truth?”
“You are not a whore,” Clark’s eyes blazed, but his voice was so gentle, and so quiet. It felt like a caress against his cheek.
“That story’s not true,” Bruce agreed at last, drawing on his last reserves of calm. He needed to get himself off the good ole fashioned way, put this insatiable lust back into its box, and never, ever, let it out to play again. “Bruce Wayne plays around, but he can’t be that flagrant.”
“But--?”
“I would. If I were--” anyone but who Bruce was, anyone who could be that open with their desire to be desired. “If I could, I would.”
Bruce stepped out of the shadow, then, because he had never felt as exposed as he did now, and walked across the living room floor, to his bedroom.
He stopped when his back was to Clark, on the other side of him, where he didn’t have to see Clark’s condemnation. It was one thing to fantasize it, but he wasn’t prepared to watch the respect die in Clark’s eyes while his emotions were rushing this close to the surface.
“Good night Clark.”
When the reply came, it felt like whispered silk right next to his ear.
FILL: Vogue Le Magazine (2/3) Bruce/Clark, dirty talk, humiliation/degradation
The first Gotham Tattle that Bruce had swiped from a newsstand had been mission-critical. The second one, follow-up. It was a lot harder to justify, even to himself, the full sampler-set of Gotham’s lurid celeb beat rags that Alfred delivered with an incredibly deadpan non-smirk the next week.
He didn’t even try to explain when he directed Alfred to set up a year’s subscription to The Metropolis-Gotham Gossip.
Since the Seven Diamonds club mishap, Bruce hadn’t done anything as outrageous as the Wayne of Shame™, and he refused to cross that line even for--even for this. But if he behaved more like the Gotham Prince in his second unabashed youth, only Alfred chastised him for compensating. Being too much his younger self, when he could in fact just fade gently into the background like a gentleman bachelor his age.
For everyone else, it was business as usual.
---
Patrol had gone wrong from his very first bust. A ring of human traffickers had been tipped off and fled the scene before the Bat showed up. One of the Bat’s informants had been gunned down in the street by a rival gang. Two muggers had escaped police custody minutes after he had dropped them off. He had spent half of the night chasing them down, only to handcuff them to the same streetlamp again. Salvatore Maroni hadn’t been denied bail, and had returned to the East Side to strike up a deal with the Greeks to move illegal arms out through the Gotham ports.
The wheel of justice turned, and ground everyone underneath it alike.
The moment his boots hit the bunker’s metal grating, he knew tonight was going to be the night that he unlocked that night from his memory. The Bat seethed with the fury of thwarted justice. Bruce felt bitterness seep into his heart like a poison. He knew it was perverse to associate failure with desire, but the very thought of his complete failure of separate Bruce Wayne from the Bat burned within him like shame. The memory of standing on the red carpet as both Bruce Wayne and the Bat for all of the public to see brought him to such a frantic hardness, he didn’t know if he could make it to his bedroom to relieve himself.
He wrenched himself free of the batsuit, but he was just too heartsick and horny to remove the undersuit. He leaned back against the Batmobile, just for a moment, and ran his hand up the side of his bulge. Shame bit into him. The Batmobile wasn’t for this. The Batman did not give in to his body; he dominated it. He was in control--except, not, apparently, right now, as his hand moved frantically over his clothed erection. The touch of the slippery material against the side of his cock ripped a long buck up into his own hand. A long, deep groan escaped his lips.
God. He could jack himself off right here. He would enjoy it.
That was one humiliation too far for his--his--first time indulging this kind of thing, so Bruce pulled his hand back.
As he mounted the steps to the lake house, Bruce felt a strange burning in his veins. This was actually going to happen, he was going to--
“Bruce.” The name pronounced with deliberate slowness, drawing out the syllable like a question.
Bruce was shocked into stillness at the edge of the shadow. In the living space, a single lamp spilled light over the floor; Clark Kent lounged on the edge of the couch, his face touched with the edges of that warmth. Clark was in a strange half-way state, dressed in his overlarge Daily Planet button-up and tie, but his glasses were folded and carefully discarded on one of the couch cushions--a studied casualness that belied Clark’s nervousness.
He wanted something.
No. Clark knew something.
“Clark,” he returned, barely more than a whisper.
Clark sat forward, his elbows resting against his knees. “Alfred said I should talk to you. He didn’t say about what.”
“Hard night,” Bruce grunted, as his cock responded to the interruption by throbbing its need. He ignored it as best he could. The frustration was harder to control, but he pushed it down to acceptable levels. “Men who should be punished weren’t.”
“You wouldn’t tell me if--” Clark cut that thought off at the root.
“No,” Bruce said slowly. “I probably wouldn’t.”
Clark nodded once, to signal he understood the issue of whether the Bat required help to patrol Gotham was a closed one for tonight. It was an old argument. Clark--who wasn’t exactly his friend, wasn’t exactly his enemy, but sat on his couch on nights when Bruce pushed himself too hard, like he had a right to do it--respected his boundaries.
Tonight that respect earned an extra twisting dart in his stomach, so close to arousal that Bruce grew suspicious of himself.
“If that’s all, I’d like to--” Bruce mimed his head hitting the pillow, “before the sun comes up. Board Meeting at 10. I’m actually obligated to make an appearance at this one.”
He normally didn’t offer the man excuses; he just dismissed their conversation with a ‘Good night Clark.’ Clark was conscientious of the fragile nature of their friendship. He never pushed. Clark dipped his chin, and wetted his lips so fast it’s nearly imperceptible. Bruce assumed it was a prelude to speech, but the silence stretched out between them.
The sound of blood buzzed in the quiet of the room. The sound suppressors that Bruce had installed in the unit probably dampened his biorhythms, even at a distance, but he couldn’t be sure if they were completely effective--he never ginned up the courage to test them with Clark. The thought that Clark, who would never willingly violate his privacy, at this very moment could see Bruce in the depth of the shadow, hear his heart hammering in his chest, his pupils blown wide by lust. That he could rake his eyes across the Bat absolutely mastered by desire--the humiliation of that exposure before Clark’s calm, alien mastery of his own kryptonian body.
(Bruce had never so much as seen him with an accidental erection.)
The room took on a slightly glassy sheen as a double-awareness settled on Bruce. How exposed he was in the undersuit; the black Lycra clinging as tightly as any Superman suit, leaving nothing to the imagination.
He felt his muscles tense instinctively, as though he were gearing up for a fight. Bruce’s whole body lit up in an endorphin rush, as his senses tuned themselves to the man in front of him. He registered the rise and fall of Clark’s chest, the white column of his throat, the tensing of the muscles of his jaw.
There were a number of moves he could make now that could bring the situation to a resolution that would satisfy himself, all he had to do was step forward into the light--bare himself to the kryptonian’s complete scrutiny without any idea of how Clark would react to seeing Bruce so uncontrolled…
And suddenly, Bruce was harder than he’d been in his life, his cock straining at the meager confines of the undersuit. He felt absolutely sodden with lust. It was cowardice to linger in the shadows, but stepping into the light felt too much like willingness.
Clark sank back into the lake house’s couch with a faintly puzzled look on his face.
“The shadows don’t hide you from me, Bruce--” but it’s a feign. Clark had not actually stripped his privacy away. Bruce would know, because Clark blushed as easily as a schoolboy--
“You’re a terrible liar, Clark. Alfred told you about the tabloids.”
Guilty, Clark held up one of the rags. The title was unreadable at this distance, and the picture of him--eyes heavy-lidded, a curling smirk on his face, one arm draped over a blond and a brunet man--generic enough that he can’t even guess which rag it is.
“What’s the headline on that one again,” Bruce said lightly. “I can’t remember if it was publicist-approved or not.”
“Sex Games: The End of the House of Wayne,” Clark read, and his color rose. See? Schoolboy. “Actually, Alfred asked me to do something about this. His suggestion wasn’t exactly ethical. It involved massive property damage to a certain publishing house. I was tempted to say yes, Bruce.”
“You, boyscout?”
“This is disgusting.” Clark waved the paper to punctuate his sentence. “Bruce, they make you sound like a slut.”
Bruce had never thought of slut as a particularly degrading word. Blame his upbringing, but being broad-minded about promiscuity meant that shaming Bruce Wayne took a stronger constitution than most gossip rags had in them. But the combination of affronted horror and anger in Clark’s voice, like being a slut was something shameful to call another human being--it punched right through Bruce’s tissue-paper thin defenses.
If Bruce thought he was hard before, his knees shook with the force of the blood draining into the lower half of his body.
He bowed his head against the dart of lust; the desire to touch himself clawed at his chest, and bit back a moan of pleasure. Desire and resisting temptation had become so tangled up in Bruce’s mind, that touching--and resisting the desire inflamed him further. Bruce threaded his fingers through his hair in frustration. Mainly to keep them from shoving them down his pants.
That board meeting at 10 am was suddenly the furthest thing from Bruce’s mind.
He needed to hear that word again in Clark’s mouth more than he needed to touch himself.
“Maybe that’s the point,” he said, with a catch in his voice as he schooled his desire into an impassive tone. “Look hard enough at Bruce Wayne the playboy, nobody’s looking at all of the details that don’t fit.” Bruce tried to make his laugh sound natural, and not half-strangled with lust. “And that’s becoming difficult. I didn’t care enough, after Bane. I let it all slip. I almost exposed my--the Bat--a month ago.”
“I saw the pictures,” Clark said flatly.
--Bruce burned to ask impossible questions--
Clark held up a hand to forestall Bruce from interrupting him. As if Bruce in any way shape or form wanted to stop Clark from speaking. “You don’t have to justify yourself to me. I know what you’re doing, when you’re doing that.”
Bruce could read the absolute discomfort in Clark’s body language now, there was no way to mistake it. His body responded to Clark’s with a fresh wave of humiliation that rolled down his spine as sweet as any pleasure.
“What, in your estimation, am I doing?” Bruce was barely in control now. His voice was breathless to his own ears.
“I think you’re--well, it’s clear that you’re doing a good job of keeping the cover. The gossip rags imply you’re wanton. This one’s borderline pornographic about what you were doing in Boîte du Lak,” Clark paused, and continued in a smaller voice. “I can’t believe they would say that about you.”
The words threatened to tear a long-drawn groan from his throat.
“Kent,” Bruce said sharply, bringing Clark’s eyes to him. “Do you think I have something to feel ashamed--” and it was a testament to his great willpower that his voice did not crack on ashamed-- “about? You haven’t even asked if those rags are true.”
“Are they?” Clark asked, his voice faint but resolved. Bruce kept his mouth shut with the force of his will. He would not deny it until he’d made Clark say it. And Clark was too wrapped up in his sense of injustice that he for once didn’t require further goading to do what Bruce wanted him to do.
“This one said you were in a grope booth. That you were willingly naked in public, on display, open for anyone to touch.”--Clark’s voice scraped the rawest place inside of Bruce, like touching the nerves in the pit of his stomach, and he can’t help himself, his back arching--
“Like they owned you.”--an impossible tightness against the base of his spine--
“Like you were anyone’s who had two hands and a hot body--”--his thighs tensed--
“And you wouldn’t even know who they were. You wouldn’t have known whose hands were even on your body, they could have been m---anyone’s, Bruce, anyone’s.”
Bruce moaned then, a strangled thing, that lived and died in the rattle of his throat. His entire body spasmed, and he jerked against the air, then slumped forward like a marionette whose cords have been cut. He clenched the muscles in his stomach as he felt the horror break on him. He just orgasmed in front of his friend, his future teammate.
The haze of desire burned down to give Bruce clarity for the first time since he’d jumped out of the Batmobile. A wave of shame broke across him. He had used the trust of his friend, made him complicit in a sexual situation without his knowledge or consent. And to add to the humiliation, Bruce was still painfully hard.
Thank god for small mercies; at least there would be no evidence of what just happened when he finally emerged from the shadows; Bruce had achieved a dry orgasm.
Clark coughed into his fist, and Bruce couldn’t tell whether the dampeners worked, or whether Clark struggled to allow him some portion of modesty in his absolute humiliating .
Bruce said slowly, “What if every word they printed is the God’s Honest truth?”
“You are not a whore,” Clark’s eyes blazed, but his voice was so gentle, and so quiet. It felt like a caress against his cheek.
“That story’s not true,” Bruce agreed at last, drawing on his last reserves of calm. He needed to get himself off the good ole fashioned way, put this insatiable lust back into its box, and never, ever, let it out to play again. “Bruce Wayne plays around, but he can’t be that flagrant.”
“But--?”
“I would. If I were--” anyone but who Bruce was, anyone who could be that open with their desire to be desired. “If I could, I would.”
Bruce stepped out of the shadow, then, because he had never felt as exposed as he did now, and walked across the living room floor, to his bedroom.
He stopped when his back was to Clark, on the other side of him, where he didn’t have to see Clark’s condemnation. It was one thing to fantasize it, but he wasn’t prepared to watch the respect die in Clark’s eyes while his emotions were rushing this close to the surface.
“Good night Clark.”
When the reply came, it felt like whispered silk right next to his ear.
“Good night Bruce.”