:D I know absolutely NOTHING about nice suits and am not at all confident in my research skills, but I waxed as eloquent about the clothes as I could. /o\ LOOK, I TRIED. WE CAN'T ALL BE SUITPORN!ANON. (And I should also say: if it's not clear what's going on with the cologne here, DON'T WORRY. IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME. Bruce's POV will totally clarify, I just can't switch back to him quite yet.)
Clark's expecting something to prevent this from happening. It's—it's just too ridiculous. He's not actually going to end up at some sort of exclusive Gotham billionaire event, riding Bruce Wayne's coattails past security. Defying physics is easy enough, but some things are still impossible.
Except Mom doesn't stop it. When she steps into the kitchen a minute later and Bruce tells her he's going to borrow Clark for the evening, she just touches his arm and smiles. "Oh, I think that's wonderful," she says, and then, to Clark, "Do you good to get out of this house for a while, honey."
There's no excuse he can come up with, either: Bruce knows perfectly well that Clark doesn't have any other plans, wasn't intending to go anywhere or do anything—
Which, when you think about it like that, maybe means that Mom has a point.
He feels like he's getting away with something, somehow, when he gets in Bruce's car; it's a weird kind of surprise when nobody stops him on the airfield, when there isn't someone waiting inside Bruce's jet to look him up and down and tell him there's been a mistake. It seems like somebody should, like it's just a matter of time before the universe notices that Clark shouldn't be doing this and rights itself.
But he gets in the jet with Bruce, and it takes off instead of stalling. And then Bruce raises an eyebrow at him and says, "Surely Clark Kent always buckles his seatbelt."
"Wh—oh," Clark says, "right." He didn't think the weird fancy seats in here had them, but a little bit of feeling around and his does indeed turn up. He pulls it across his lap—because Bruce is right, Superman doesn't need a seatbelt, but Clark Kent's supposed to be as concerned for his personal safety as anyone.
But he can't quite take the last step and buckle it.
"Bruce, I'm not sure this is a good idea."
Bruce stares at him for a long moment, unreadably, and then glances down at his phone. "Well, Alfred will be sorry to hear that."
Clark blinks. "What?"
"Alfred," Bruce repeats. "Who's in the middle of spending several hours personally herding my tailor through a rush job altering a suit sized for—"
"Are you—kidding?"
"He knew where I was," Bruce says. "He knew why I was asking. And, morbid as it may be, he does in fact have your measurements somewhere." He smiles, and it's the shiny one again, the one with the sharp edges. "We didn't want the coffin to be too small."
He's joking—black humor, it's funny—
(—it's dark, it's dark and he can't see, and it's going to happen the same way it always does, he's going to push and nothing will happen, but he can't not set his hands to the wood—he can't stand it, he can't, he has to get out—)
"Clark."
Clark drags in a breath and opens his eyes—when had he closed them?—and he can see just fine, because there's light all over the place in here. He can see the backs of his hands, the stark straining knuckles of his clenched fists; except only half of them, because Bruce's hand is covering the other half.
"Clark," Bruce says again, so low and quiet and patient he doesn't sound like himself at all.
"Sorry," Clark manages. "I'm—sorry, I'm fine."
He blinks once, twice, and then makes himself look up, and Bruce almost doesn't look like himself either: his face is serious, as calm and still as his tone, a lake without any ripples.
(His eyes are kind of—soft. Clark hadn't really known they could do that.)
"You will be," he says, like him saying it makes it true.
And he's Bruce Wayne, Clark thinks, so probably that usually is all it takes.
He waits another beat, and then sits back, hand lifting away; and his voice is back to normal but his expression is the same when he says, "Trust me, Clark, a little distraction for an evening is just what you need. And you wouldn't want all Alfred's hard work to go to waste, would you?"
And—well, he's not wrong. "No," Clark concedes.
Which is what Bruce expected: he smiles. "I realize it's nothing you haven't seen before," Bruce adds, "but do try to sit back and enjoy the flight."
Presumably Bruce has property all over Gotham—and Metropolis, for that matter—and Clark has no idea exactly where they end up. It's the penthouse of some building that's either a really nice hotel, or else an apartment building so expensive it could pass for a hotel to the eyes of somebody from Smallville; and it's a ridiculous number of floors, but the elevator is astoundingly fast. The outer wall is glass: Gotham at sunset drops away from them like they're flying all over again, red and gold and shadowed.
When it stops, Clark lets Bruce wave him out first and then immediately feels like he should step back in, because he's doing the carpeting a disservice by walking on it. "Um, Bruce, this is really—"
"Ah, Master Wayne," says the voice from over Bruce's phone, and then somebody—Alfred, Clark reminds himself—sweeps into the entryway with a crinkle of plastic, from the garment bag draped over his arm. "And Master Kent! A pleasure to meet you."
"Thanks, you too," Clark says automatically, and then cringes a little at how casual it sounds; but Alfred's smile is warm anyway, so he must not mind too much.
"Apologies in advance for the fit," Alfred says, sounding deeply aggrieved, and then he hands Clark the garment bag: the nicest suit Clark's seen in real life by miles, except maybe for the ones Bruce wears when he comes to the house. "I assure you it is the best that could be done on such short notice—"
Alfred's eyebrows rise. "Good lord," he murmurs. "I begin to see why Master Wayne was so—"
"Alfred," Bruce says, so sharp Clark wants to apologize; but then Alfred's used to Bruce, he must be, because he only sighs a little through his nose.
"So sorry, sir, won't happen again," he says, pointedly rote, without looking away from Clark. And then he bows slightly and adds, "You are very much welcome, Master Kent, to the suit and to the suite, and if you require any assistance, please don't hesitate to ask. A selection of matching ties is hanging in the west bathroom."
Alfred, it appears, is a master of understatement. The suit fits perfectly, at least as far as Clark can tell, and the ties aren't alone: there's a shining pair of men's dress shoes, a frankly intimidating selection of colognes in glittering bottles, and an array of cufflinks Clark's a little terrified to put into his sleeves. If he loses one of those down a bathroom drain, he might as well just mail Bruce his first ten new Planet paychecks directly. Sweet Jesus.
(And yet it seems kind of wrong to wear a suit this nice without any. Clark tries to pick the plainest ones, no diamonds or anything, but they're probably still—like, solid white gold or something, God. Clark doesn't even want to know.)
The colognes actually aren't quite what Clark was expecting. They're as well-made as everything else, he's sure, but—but most of them are off one way or another, too many competing notes in one, the musk way too heavy in another. Which might be his nose: he's never been sure whether he has supersmell, too, and it hasn't been an appealing thing to try to test.
He doesn't even have to open any of them. He just stands in front of the line of them and breathes in, and it takes him a moment to pick the scents apart, but none of them are really—
No, wait. Which one is that? He breathes in again and then leans over the row of bottles, but it isn't any of them.
He opens his eyes, frowning, and then glances down at the cabinets below the sink.
The bottle he finds, after about thirty seconds of feeling around, looks pretty much like the others except that it's barely been used. Clark would put it back, but it has been opened. Just not very often. And he's not sure why, because it's nice: subtler, not quite so many moving parts; smoke, Clark thinks, and leather, and something sharper, a bright edge—citrus, maybe?
Even if Clark didn't like it the best, it seems like it's the one he's least likely to go wrong with, light enough that putting too much on won't be a disaster.
In the end, it's the tie that thwarts him. He manages not to fumble the cufflinks into the sink, and the shoes fit just as well as the suit, and he doesn't spill cologne all over his shirt. But the tie—maybe it's because the suit fits so well, but he can't get it to lie right. Either his knots are all coming out lopsided, or else the ruler-perfect evenness of the lapels is just making it look like it.
He blows out a frustrated breath, and listens: he's missed his chance to get Alfred's help without Bruce noticing, it sounds like, because Bruce is already back out by the entryway. Of course, he also probably didn't take fifteen minutes to pick a pair of cufflinks.
Bruce is going to make fun of him, definitely; use the opportunity to flirt, almost certainly.
But odds are he's also going to be able to get the tie tied on the first try.
(Damn him.)
Clark leaves the tie dangling around his neck, half-tangled—not that Bruce needs any help mocking him, but—
But Bruce's smiles so often seem planned, deployed. He could stand to be surprised by something funny a little more often.
And it works: when Clark comes around the edge of the doorframe and says, "Bruce," just a little plaintively, Bruce turns and sees him and for a second just grins, smug and spontaneous.
Then—of course—he lets his eyes wander down Clark, and very, very leisurely, back up—
"At least you know how to clean up all right," Bruce says, and then takes a second glance down toward Clark's collar. "Even if you can't tie a tie."
"I can," Clark says. "That's the thing. I just can't do it up to this suit's standards. I'm pretty sure," he adds, confiding, "that if I'd messed it up one more time, the whole thing would have just crawled off me in protest."
He only realizes how it sounds after it's already come out of his mouth; but it's not his fault, he thinks. Every third thing Bruce says is a come-on. And of course he doesn't mean any of it, but it's—sometimes it's hard not to reply in kind. That's all.
Bruce raises an eyebrow. "Not that I'd mind seeing that," he murmurs, "but let's try to do a little better," and then he steps over toward Clark, a hand already out for the tie.
He's in Clark's space; it's impossible for Clark to not know that Bruce picked one of the colognes he himself had rejected. Doesn't suit him, Clark thinks. It's not awful, it's just—a little too heavy, a little too sweet. He should have chosen something more like the one that was under the sink—
And he's close enough to know that Clark did. His fingertips land, a dashed line of heat just to the side of Clark's buttons, thumb and forefinger catching what's left of the knot Clark was halfway through undoing; and then he breathes in and his gaze flicks abruptly up to Clark's face, eyes dark.
"I found it in the cabinet," Clark says, a little too quickly—he didn't do anything wrong, no one said the cabinets were off limits, and even if Bruce is angry the worst he'll do is tell Clark to leave. There's nothing to be afraid of.
(But Clark's heart is still pounding.)
"I liked it," he adds, and watches as Bruce's jaw inexplicably tenses.
But after staring at Clark a moment longer, Bruce's gaze leaps away again. "Good choice," he says, bland; and then he pauses for a second and curls his hand around the tie, knuckles brushing Clark's collar. "And on second thought—" and he pulls, the hiss of silk like faraway rain— "no tie."
Clark glances down. It's a three-piece suit—is that even allowed? "No tie?"
He looks up again, and maybe he shouldn't have: Bruce is so close, one side of his mouth slanting up, fingers hot at the base of Clark's throat—
Bruce thumbs precisely one button open. "No tie," he confirms, very low, and steps away.
FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (7/?)
Clark's expecting something to prevent this from happening. It's—it's just too ridiculous. He's not actually going to end up at some sort of exclusive Gotham billionaire event, riding Bruce Wayne's coattails past security. Defying physics is easy enough, but some things are still impossible.
Except Mom doesn't stop it. When she steps into the kitchen a minute later and Bruce tells her he's going to borrow Clark for the evening, she just touches his arm and smiles. "Oh, I think that's wonderful," she says, and then, to Clark, "Do you good to get out of this house for a while, honey."
There's no excuse he can come up with, either: Bruce knows perfectly well that Clark doesn't have any other plans, wasn't intending to go anywhere or do anything—
Which, when you think about it like that, maybe means that Mom has a point.
He feels like he's getting away with something, somehow, when he gets in Bruce's car; it's a weird kind of surprise when nobody stops him on the airfield, when there isn't someone waiting inside Bruce's jet to look him up and down and tell him there's been a mistake. It seems like somebody should, like it's just a matter of time before the universe notices that Clark shouldn't be doing this and rights itself.
But he gets in the jet with Bruce, and it takes off instead of stalling. And then Bruce raises an eyebrow at him and says, "Surely Clark Kent always buckles his seatbelt."
"Wh—oh," Clark says, "right." He didn't think the weird fancy seats in here had them, but a little bit of feeling around and his does indeed turn up. He pulls it across his lap—because Bruce is right, Superman doesn't need a seatbelt, but Clark Kent's supposed to be as concerned for his personal safety as anyone.
But he can't quite take the last step and buckle it.
"Bruce, I'm not sure this is a good idea."
Bruce stares at him for a long moment, unreadably, and then glances down at his phone. "Well, Alfred will be sorry to hear that."
Clark blinks. "What?"
"Alfred," Bruce repeats. "Who's in the middle of spending several hours personally herding my tailor through a rush job altering a suit sized for—"
"Are you—kidding?"
"He knew where I was," Bruce says. "He knew why I was asking. And, morbid as it may be, he does in fact have your measurements somewhere." He smiles, and it's the shiny one again, the one with the sharp edges. "We didn't want the coffin to be too small."
He's joking—black humor, it's funny—
(—it's dark, it's dark and he can't see, and it's going to happen the same way it always does, he's going to push and nothing will happen, but he can't not set his hands to the wood—he can't stand it, he can't, he has to get out—)
"Clark."
Clark drags in a breath and opens his eyes—when had he closed them?—and he can see just fine, because there's light all over the place in here. He can see the backs of his hands, the stark straining knuckles of his clenched fists; except only half of them, because Bruce's hand is covering the other half.
"Clark," Bruce says again, so low and quiet and patient he doesn't sound like himself at all.
"Sorry," Clark manages. "I'm—sorry, I'm fine."
He blinks once, twice, and then makes himself look up, and Bruce almost doesn't look like himself either: his face is serious, as calm and still as his tone, a lake without any ripples.
(His eyes are kind of—soft. Clark hadn't really known they could do that.)
"You will be," he says, like him saying it makes it true.
And he's Bruce Wayne, Clark thinks, so probably that usually is all it takes.
He waits another beat, and then sits back, hand lifting away; and his voice is back to normal but his expression is the same when he says, "Trust me, Clark, a little distraction for an evening is just what you need. And you wouldn't want all Alfred's hard work to go to waste, would you?"
And—well, he's not wrong. "No," Clark concedes.
Which is what Bruce expected: he smiles. "I realize it's nothing you haven't seen before," Bruce adds, "but do try to sit back and enjoy the flight."
Presumably Bruce has property all over Gotham—and Metropolis, for that matter—and Clark has no idea exactly where they end up. It's the penthouse of some building that's either a really nice hotel, or else an apartment building so expensive it could pass for a hotel to the eyes of somebody from Smallville; and it's a ridiculous number of floors, but the elevator is astoundingly fast. The outer wall is glass: Gotham at sunset drops away from them like they're flying all over again, red and gold and shadowed.
When it stops, Clark lets Bruce wave him out first and then immediately feels like he should step back in, because he's doing the carpeting a disservice by walking on it. "Um, Bruce, this is really—"
"Ah, Master Wayne," says the voice from over Bruce's phone, and then somebody—Alfred, Clark reminds himself—sweeps into the entryway with a crinkle of plastic, from the garment bag draped over his arm. "And Master Kent! A pleasure to meet you."
"Thanks, you too," Clark says automatically, and then cringes a little at how casual it sounds; but Alfred's smile is warm anyway, so he must not mind too much.
"Apologies in advance for the fit," Alfred says, sounding deeply aggrieved, and then he hands Clark the garment bag: the nicest suit Clark's seen in real life by miles, except maybe for the ones Bruce wears when he comes to the house. "I assure you it is the best that could be done on such short notice—"
"No, please, I'm sure it's fine," Clark says instantly. "It's—it's amazing, really. Thank you."
Alfred's eyebrows rise. "Good lord," he murmurs. "I begin to see why Master Wayne was so—"
"Alfred," Bruce says, so sharp Clark wants to apologize; but then Alfred's used to Bruce, he must be, because he only sighs a little through his nose.
"So sorry, sir, won't happen again," he says, pointedly rote, without looking away from Clark. And then he bows slightly and adds, "You are very much welcome, Master Kent, to the suit and to the suite, and if you require any assistance, please don't hesitate to ask. A selection of matching ties is hanging in the west bathroom."
Alfred, it appears, is a master of understatement. The suit fits perfectly, at least as far as Clark can tell, and the ties aren't alone: there's a shining pair of men's dress shoes, a frankly intimidating selection of colognes in glittering bottles, and an array of cufflinks Clark's a little terrified to put into his sleeves. If he loses one of those down a bathroom drain, he might as well just mail Bruce his first ten new Planet paychecks directly. Sweet Jesus.
(And yet it seems kind of wrong to wear a suit this nice without any. Clark tries to pick the plainest ones, no diamonds or anything, but they're probably still—like, solid white gold or something, God. Clark doesn't even want to know.)
The colognes actually aren't quite what Clark was expecting. They're as well-made as everything else, he's sure, but—but most of them are off one way or another, too many competing notes in one, the musk way too heavy in another. Which might be his nose: he's never been sure whether he has supersmell, too, and it hasn't been an appealing thing to try to test.
He doesn't even have to open any of them. He just stands in front of the line of them and breathes in, and it takes him a moment to pick the scents apart, but none of them are really—
No, wait. Which one is that? He breathes in again and then leans over the row of bottles, but it isn't any of them.
He opens his eyes, frowning, and then glances down at the cabinets below the sink.
The bottle he finds, after about thirty seconds of feeling around, looks pretty much like the others except that it's barely been used. Clark would put it back, but it has been opened. Just not very often. And he's not sure why, because it's nice: subtler, not quite so many moving parts; smoke, Clark thinks, and leather, and something sharper, a bright edge—citrus, maybe?
Even if Clark didn't like it the best, it seems like it's the one he's least likely to go wrong with, light enough that putting too much on won't be a disaster.
In the end, it's the tie that thwarts him. He manages not to fumble the cufflinks into the sink, and the shoes fit just as well as the suit, and he doesn't spill cologne all over his shirt. But the tie—maybe it's because the suit fits so well, but he can't get it to lie right. Either his knots are all coming out lopsided, or else the ruler-perfect evenness of the lapels is just making it look like it.
He blows out a frustrated breath, and listens: he's missed his chance to get Alfred's help without Bruce noticing, it sounds like, because Bruce is already back out by the entryway. Of course, he also probably didn't take fifteen minutes to pick a pair of cufflinks.
Bruce is going to make fun of him, definitely; use the opportunity to flirt, almost certainly.
But odds are he's also going to be able to get the tie tied on the first try.
(Damn him.)
Clark leaves the tie dangling around his neck, half-tangled—not that Bruce needs any help mocking him, but—
But Bruce's smiles so often seem planned, deployed. He could stand to be surprised by something funny a little more often.
And it works: when Clark comes around the edge of the doorframe and says, "Bruce," just a little plaintively, Bruce turns and sees him and for a second just grins, smug and spontaneous.
Then—of course—he lets his eyes wander down Clark, and very, very leisurely, back up—
"At least you know how to clean up all right," Bruce says, and then takes a second glance down toward Clark's collar. "Even if you can't tie a tie."
"I can," Clark says. "That's the thing. I just can't do it up to this suit's standards. I'm pretty sure," he adds, confiding, "that if I'd messed it up one more time, the whole thing would have just crawled off me in protest."
He only realizes how it sounds after it's already come out of his mouth; but it's not his fault, he thinks. Every third thing Bruce says is a come-on. And of course he doesn't mean any of it, but it's—sometimes it's hard not to reply in kind. That's all.
Bruce raises an eyebrow. "Not that I'd mind seeing that," he murmurs, "but let's try to do a little better," and then he steps over toward Clark, a hand already out for the tie.
He's in Clark's space; it's impossible for Clark to not know that Bruce picked one of the colognes he himself had rejected. Doesn't suit him, Clark thinks. It's not awful, it's just—a little too heavy, a little too sweet. He should have chosen something more like the one that was under the sink—
And he's close enough to know that Clark did. His fingertips land, a dashed line of heat just to the side of Clark's buttons, thumb and forefinger catching what's left of the knot Clark was halfway through undoing; and then he breathes in and his gaze flicks abruptly up to Clark's face, eyes dark.
"I found it in the cabinet," Clark says, a little too quickly—he didn't do anything wrong, no one said the cabinets were off limits, and even if Bruce is angry the worst he'll do is tell Clark to leave. There's nothing to be afraid of.
(But Clark's heart is still pounding.)
"I liked it," he adds, and watches as Bruce's jaw inexplicably tenses.
But after staring at Clark a moment longer, Bruce's gaze leaps away again. "Good choice," he says, bland; and then he pauses for a second and curls his hand around the tie, knuckles brushing Clark's collar. "And on second thought—" and he pulls, the hiss of silk like faraway rain— "no tie."
Clark glances down. It's a three-piece suit—is that even allowed? "No tie?"
He looks up again, and maybe he shouldn't have: Bruce is so close, one side of his mouth slanting up, fingers hot at the base of Clark's throat—
Bruce thumbs precisely one button open. "No tie," he confirms, very low, and steps away.