OH, LOOK, FUCKBUDDY ANGST. As if this needed to get any tropier, right? /o\ YOU KEEP ENCOURAGING ME, OKAY, YOU ONLY HAVE YOURSELVES TO BLAME
It's not going to be an issue. Clark accepts Bruce's demurral easily enough; and Bruce knows exactly where Alfred keeps the spare towels, so he can spend ten minutes cleaning himself up and stripping down to just shirt and slacks, five minutes waiting for the sound of the water in the west bathroom to stop, and two minutes waiting to make sure it doesn't seem like he timed anything.
He could have tried to miss by two minutes going the other way. But then Clark might have invited him into the shower again.
(And Bruce doesn't trust himself to say no a second time.)
When Bruce raps out shave-and-a-haircut against the west bathroom door, Clark opens it, raises an eyebrow, and actually says, "Two bits."
"Oh, I think you could charge a little more for admission than that," Bruce says, tilting his head: Clark automatically positioned himself mostly behind the door, but Bruce still has a pretty good view of his chest—
"I'm not going to ask how much you'd pay," Clark says dryly, reaching for the towel on top of the pile Bruce is holding. "You'd just give me the most embarrassing answer you could think of." But it looks like Bruce doesn't have to; his throat, his ears, the angles of his cheeks, have all pinked up, and it isn't just leftover heat from the shower.
(You know me so well. The natural response, but it stings even to think it.)
"In my defense, you're a lot of fun to embarrass," Bruce says, and smiles.
"I'm not sure that would hold up in court," Clark murmurs, as if to himself, and then turns away to secure the towel around his hips—giving Bruce a single tantalizing flash of his ass, and Bruce would bet he didn't even do it on purpose. God. "So," Clark is saying, "is this the part where I get bundled back onto the jet?"
He's teasing, except that when he glances back over his shoulder at Bruce, there's something uncertain around the edges of his mouth, the lines by his eyes. Always, um, pretty fast, Bruce recalls, and when it hadn't been fast it had been Lois—Clark's never had to try to work out whether he's staying the night somewhere, the answer always obvious one way or the other.
Which means it's up to Bruce to lay down some ground rules. Kicking Clark out the door says something just as vehement as dragging him back to the master bedroom in nothing but a towel, and vehemence isn't the right reaction here.
(Vehemence implies depth of feeling.)
"Up to you," Bruce says easily, and then tilts his head. "And I mean that, considering you could fly yourself back if you wanted to. If you don't want to—west bedroom's free." He leans in, one hand flat against the bathroom door, and catches Clark's chin with the other, tilts his face around for a kiss: hard without crossing the line into lingering, the solid easy kiss of someone who enjoyed himself but has no particular stake in this.
And then Bruce pulls away, smiles, and heads to the master bedroom alone.
That's the end of it. Clark stays for breakfast; Alfred manages to restrain himself from shooting Bruce more than one or two significant glances; and then Clark does fly back, taking off from the penthouse balcony in a blur.
Two days later, the paperwork's finally settled, the court order obtained. Clark Kent, legally alive, is re-employed at the Daily Planet's Metropolis bureau, and Bruce arranges for six months of back pay to be transferred to his newly-reopened bank account.
The apartment he'd been keeping with Lois has already been re-let, of course; the lease had been about to run out and Lois had been heading off to South Korea anyway, there'd been no point in renewing.
(Couldn't keep rattling around that place alone, that's how Martha had put it when she'd mentioned it to Bruce. And Bruce has never mastered the art of moving on, the lingering skeleton of the manor is testament enough to that; he can understand it, but only intellectually. If there had been a space he had shared with Clark while Clark was alive—
The only real question is whether he would have shut it up behind glass or started living there full-time.)
But Clark won't have any trouble finding another place, even if it does end up being in a Wayne Construction building.
And that's the end of it. There's no reason for Bruce to keep flying to Smallville, nothing else Clark needs from him. They'll see each other at Wayne Enterprises events, perhaps—at press conferences or newsworthy ribbon-cuttings. They'll be increasingly distant acquaintances who had a good evening together once, but there's nothing left for them to talk about.
So it's a surprise—yet again, Bruce thinks ruefully—when he hears a knock on glass at the penthouse, and looks up to see Clark waving at him from the balcony.
"Hey," Clark says, when Bruce opens the balcony door and raises an eyebrow at him. "Uh, sorry—it seemed simpler than coming in the front?"
He smiles and ducks his head, as if he's not just as overpowering like this as he is when he's Superman: glasses, plaid button-down, curls wild, grinning and pink-cheeked and windswept from flying. Out here it's doubly picture-perfect, the endless blue sky stretching out over him, the light a little more red than gold as the sun drops lower, Metropolis glittering behind him—
And that was the miscalculation, Bruce thinks dimly. Clark has his job back now; Clark's living and working in Metropolis. The distance between them, left alone, would naturally get wider. But Clark's not letting it alone, because Clark's only seeing it as smaller than ever.
"For you, I'm sure it is," Bruce says aloud. "Something wrong?"
"No, no," Clark says, "nothing like that," and then he stops to hitch his glasses up his nose.
(Jesus.)
"They're having kind of a 'whoops, you weren't dead, welcome back' party for me at the Planet tonight, and I thought maybe if you didn't have anything lined up—or," Clark adds with a laugh, "anything you wanted to pretend you had lined up, to let me down easy—"
The worst part is, it's not even tactical. It's not even a trap. Bruce could smile at him ruefully, could say actually, I do have this meeting, and Clark would accept it—would believe him.
Would come back, and ask again.
Unless Bruce made sure he didn't. If he gives Clark the brushoff, provides the simplest, most unkind explanation—Clark, I'm an important man, I don't have time to waste on shit like this—Clark will leave and not come back. Bruce can guarantee himself that. But then if something goes wrong, if there is a problem with the paperwork or the job or an apartment, what rationale would Bruce give for stepping in to fix it? What rationale would Clark have for letting him?
No. Better to say yes here and there, to allow Clark to remain as he is: at arm's length, no closer but also no farther. Close enough for Bruce to keep an eye on things, and far enough—
Far enough to minimize the damage.
"Unfortunately for you," Bruce says, dry, "I'm free as the proverbial bird."
Clark grins and takes his arm, grip firm and warm just above Bruce's elbow. "Funny you should say that."
"What are you—Clark, someone's going to see—Clark!"
"People really don't look up as often as you'd think," Clark says, once they've landed safely on the Planet's helicopter pad. "Especially if I don't break the sound barrier."
"Yes, I can see restraint's your middle name," Bruce murmurs.
"I'll give you more warning next time, promise," Clark says, and then dimples up, bright and irreverent. "You should have seen your face. Here, let me—"
He steps in close, slides a hand into Bruce's hair; for the first couple passes, he probably is actually trying to put it back in order, but then he slows. Bruce sees him swallow, and when his fingers come to rest, it's at the nape of Bruce's neck, his gaze flicking back and forth over Bruce's face.
"I'm sensing that some ulterior motives were behind this invitation," Bruce says, a little lower than he meant to.
Clark tilts his head, biting his lip like he knows how much Bruce wants to look at it, and then shrugs, easy. "I—liked how things worked out, last time."
"Wasn't a bad way to spend an evening," Bruce hears himself say, and Clark lets that smile shine out like sunlight, takes Bruce by the wrist, and leads him toward the rooftop door.
When the rest of the Planet's staff realizes exactly who's just walked into the office with Clark, there's an awkward quiet beat—but Bruce Wayne has no direct responsibility for Wayne Entertainment or any of its sub-properties. He smiles and waves a hand and says, "Relax, I'm off the clock myself," and after a moment they mostly turn their attention back to Clark.
As it turns out, Clark wasn't paraphrasing or anything: "Whoops, you weren't dead—welcome back!" is written on the cake, word-for-word, in loopy icing letters. Perry White carefully cuts Clark a piece with the exclamation point neatly centered, clears his throat, and says, "Glad you're okay, Kent."
"Thank you, sir."
Perry points the knife at him. "It's chocolate, and if you don't like it you're just going to have to live with it, because nobody else is taking home your whoops-you-weren't-dead leftovers."
"Understood, sir," Clark says.
Judging by the way he digs in, it won't be a issue—the noises he makes are—
(Bruce takes a piece of cake when Perry holds one out, just so he'll have something to do with his hands that isn't inappropriate.)
And Clark grins at Perry, laughs at Ron Troupe's zombie-Clark impression, accepts a hug from Cat Grant; but he never moves more than a few feet away from Bruce. He keeps looking at Bruce, too—at first just quick glances, like he's checking to make sure Bruce is still there. But they get longer, lingering, something dark and hot in his gaze, and it's not hard to guess what he's thinking about.
He gets shaken out of it each time someone comes over to touch him on the shoulder, to hug him and say how glad they are that he's all right; and he laughs, ducks his head, and goes just a little redder each time, half-guilty and flushed and smiling.
(By the time Clark makes his excuses and accepts what remains of the cake, it's not even foreboding anymore. Bruce knows, with something just a little too electric to qualify as resignation, what's going to happen when they leave.)
He tries to convince Clark that they should take a cab back, if only for the cake's sake; but Clark just laughs, wraps an arm around his waist and kisses him, and then lifts them both off the floor with his tongue still in Bruce's mouth. "Flying's faster," he murmurs in Bruce's ear, when he finally pulls away.
They don't take a cab.
It may be brief, but it's still a kind of torture, being pressed up against Clark's body like that, tucked close in the curve of his arm. The swing as Clark brings them around, down, and slows isn't unlike being on the end of a grappling line—so Bruce is careful to stumble a little on landing, like anyone unused to the sensation might.
"All right?" Clark says, and then, easily, "Just let me put the cake away—"
He blurs and is gone, and then is back again just that fast, in the span of one quick breath. He presses Bruce up against the balcony railing and kisses him again—
"Inside, come on," Bruce says when he gets the chance, reaching around Clark to open the balcony door; and Clark grins at him sheepishly and backs into the penthouse, drawing Bruce along by the lapels of his suit jacket.
"So," Clark says, clearing his throat. "Any—particular plans, this time?"
Bruce pretends to think about it, already busy with Clark's belt. "Well," he says, getting a hand inside the waistband and listening to Clark gasp. "I was thinking that perhaps we might—" and he slides it carefully around, over Clark's hip, and then back, back, "expand your horizons a bit."
He doesn't even push the fingertip in, but Clark still startles, surging forward into Bruce's thigh, breath catching. "O—Okay," Clark says, a little wobblier than before. "Okay, yes, let's do that."
"My pleasure, believe me," Bruce says, making sure the leer comes through in his voice; and Clark laughs against his jaw and then tugs him in for a kiss.
FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (10/?)
It's not going to be an issue. Clark accepts Bruce's demurral easily enough; and Bruce knows exactly where Alfred keeps the spare towels, so he can spend ten minutes cleaning himself up and stripping down to just shirt and slacks, five minutes waiting for the sound of the water in the west bathroom to stop, and two minutes waiting to make sure it doesn't seem like he timed anything.
He could have tried to miss by two minutes going the other way. But then Clark might have invited him into the shower again.
(And Bruce doesn't trust himself to say no a second time.)
When Bruce raps out shave-and-a-haircut against the west bathroom door, Clark opens it, raises an eyebrow, and actually says, "Two bits."
"Oh, I think you could charge a little more for admission than that," Bruce says, tilting his head: Clark automatically positioned himself mostly behind the door, but Bruce still has a pretty good view of his chest—
"I'm not going to ask how much you'd pay," Clark says dryly, reaching for the towel on top of the pile Bruce is holding. "You'd just give me the most embarrassing answer you could think of." But it looks like Bruce doesn't have to; his throat, his ears, the angles of his cheeks, have all pinked up, and it isn't just leftover heat from the shower.
(You know me so well. The natural response, but it stings even to think it.)
"In my defense, you're a lot of fun to embarrass," Bruce says, and smiles.
"I'm not sure that would hold up in court," Clark murmurs, as if to himself, and then turns away to secure the towel around his hips—giving Bruce a single tantalizing flash of his ass, and Bruce would bet he didn't even do it on purpose. God. "So," Clark is saying, "is this the part where I get bundled back onto the jet?"
He's teasing, except that when he glances back over his shoulder at Bruce, there's something uncertain around the edges of his mouth, the lines by his eyes. Always, um, pretty fast, Bruce recalls, and when it hadn't been fast it had been Lois—Clark's never had to try to work out whether he's staying the night somewhere, the answer always obvious one way or the other.
Which means it's up to Bruce to lay down some ground rules. Kicking Clark out the door says something just as vehement as dragging him back to the master bedroom in nothing but a towel, and vehemence isn't the right reaction here.
(Vehemence implies depth of feeling.)
"Up to you," Bruce says easily, and then tilts his head. "And I mean that, considering you could fly yourself back if you wanted to. If you don't want to—west bedroom's free." He leans in, one hand flat against the bathroom door, and catches Clark's chin with the other, tilts his face around for a kiss: hard without crossing the line into lingering, the solid easy kiss of someone who enjoyed himself but has no particular stake in this.
And then Bruce pulls away, smiles, and heads to the master bedroom alone.
That's the end of it. Clark stays for breakfast; Alfred manages to restrain himself from shooting Bruce more than one or two significant glances; and then Clark does fly back, taking off from the penthouse balcony in a blur.
Two days later, the paperwork's finally settled, the court order obtained. Clark Kent, legally alive, is re-employed at the Daily Planet's Metropolis bureau, and Bruce arranges for six months of back pay to be transferred to his newly-reopened bank account.
The apartment he'd been keeping with Lois has already been re-let, of course; the lease had been about to run out and Lois had been heading off to South Korea anyway, there'd been no point in renewing.
(Couldn't keep rattling around that place alone, that's how Martha had put it when she'd mentioned it to Bruce. And Bruce has never mastered the art of moving on, the lingering skeleton of the manor is testament enough to that; he can understand it, but only intellectually. If there had been a space he had shared with Clark while Clark was alive—
The only real question is whether he would have shut it up behind glass or started living there full-time.)
But Clark won't have any trouble finding another place, even if it does end up being in a Wayne Construction building.
And that's the end of it. There's no reason for Bruce to keep flying to Smallville, nothing else Clark needs from him. They'll see each other at Wayne Enterprises events, perhaps—at press conferences or newsworthy ribbon-cuttings. They'll be increasingly distant acquaintances who had a good evening together once, but there's nothing left for them to talk about.
So it's a surprise—yet again, Bruce thinks ruefully—when he hears a knock on glass at the penthouse, and looks up to see Clark waving at him from the balcony.
"Hey," Clark says, when Bruce opens the balcony door and raises an eyebrow at him. "Uh, sorry—it seemed simpler than coming in the front?"
He smiles and ducks his head, as if he's not just as overpowering like this as he is when he's Superman: glasses, plaid button-down, curls wild, grinning and pink-cheeked and windswept from flying. Out here it's doubly picture-perfect, the endless blue sky stretching out over him, the light a little more red than gold as the sun drops lower, Metropolis glittering behind him—
And that was the miscalculation, Bruce thinks dimly. Clark has his job back now; Clark's living and working in Metropolis. The distance between them, left alone, would naturally get wider. But Clark's not letting it alone, because Clark's only seeing it as smaller than ever.
"For you, I'm sure it is," Bruce says aloud. "Something wrong?"
"No, no," Clark says, "nothing like that," and then he stops to hitch his glasses up his nose.
(Jesus.)
"They're having kind of a 'whoops, you weren't dead, welcome back' party for me at the Planet tonight, and I thought maybe if you didn't have anything lined up—or," Clark adds with a laugh, "anything you wanted to pretend you had lined up, to let me down easy—"
The worst part is, it's not even tactical. It's not even a trap. Bruce could smile at him ruefully, could say actually, I do have this meeting, and Clark would accept it—would believe him.
Would come back, and ask again.
Unless Bruce made sure he didn't. If he gives Clark the brushoff, provides the simplest, most unkind explanation—Clark, I'm an important man, I don't have time to waste on shit like this—Clark will leave and not come back. Bruce can guarantee himself that. But then if something goes wrong, if there is a problem with the paperwork or the job or an apartment, what rationale would Bruce give for stepping in to fix it? What rationale would Clark have for letting him?
No. Better to say yes here and there, to allow Clark to remain as he is: at arm's length, no closer but also no farther. Close enough for Bruce to keep an eye on things, and far enough—
Far enough to minimize the damage.
"Unfortunately for you," Bruce says, dry, "I'm free as the proverbial bird."
Clark grins and takes his arm, grip firm and warm just above Bruce's elbow. "Funny you should say that."
"What are you—Clark, someone's going to see—Clark!"
"People really don't look up as often as you'd think," Clark says, once they've landed safely on the Planet's helicopter pad. "Especially if I don't break the sound barrier."
"Yes, I can see restraint's your middle name," Bruce murmurs.
"I'll give you more warning next time, promise," Clark says, and then dimples up, bright and irreverent. "You should have seen your face. Here, let me—"
He steps in close, slides a hand into Bruce's hair; for the first couple passes, he probably is actually trying to put it back in order, but then he slows. Bruce sees him swallow, and when his fingers come to rest, it's at the nape of Bruce's neck, his gaze flicking back and forth over Bruce's face.
"I'm sensing that some ulterior motives were behind this invitation," Bruce says, a little lower than he meant to.
Clark tilts his head, biting his lip like he knows how much Bruce wants to look at it, and then shrugs, easy. "I—liked how things worked out, last time."
"Wasn't a bad way to spend an evening," Bruce hears himself say, and Clark lets that smile shine out like sunlight, takes Bruce by the wrist, and leads him toward the rooftop door.
When the rest of the Planet's staff realizes exactly who's just walked into the office with Clark, there's an awkward quiet beat—but Bruce Wayne has no direct responsibility for Wayne Entertainment or any of its sub-properties. He smiles and waves a hand and says, "Relax, I'm off the clock myself," and after a moment they mostly turn their attention back to Clark.
As it turns out, Clark wasn't paraphrasing or anything: "Whoops, you weren't dead—welcome back!" is written on the cake, word-for-word, in loopy icing letters. Perry White carefully cuts Clark a piece with the exclamation point neatly centered, clears his throat, and says, "Glad you're okay, Kent."
"Thank you, sir."
Perry points the knife at him. "It's chocolate, and if you don't like it you're just going to have to live with it, because nobody else is taking home your whoops-you-weren't-dead leftovers."
"Understood, sir," Clark says.
Judging by the way he digs in, it won't be a issue—the noises he makes are—
(Bruce takes a piece of cake when Perry holds one out, just so he'll have something to do with his hands that isn't inappropriate.)
And Clark grins at Perry, laughs at Ron Troupe's zombie-Clark impression, accepts a hug from Cat Grant; but he never moves more than a few feet away from Bruce. He keeps looking at Bruce, too—at first just quick glances, like he's checking to make sure Bruce is still there. But they get longer, lingering, something dark and hot in his gaze, and it's not hard to guess what he's thinking about.
He gets shaken out of it each time someone comes over to touch him on the shoulder, to hug him and say how glad they are that he's all right; and he laughs, ducks his head, and goes just a little redder each time, half-guilty and flushed and smiling.
(By the time Clark makes his excuses and accepts what remains of the cake, it's not even foreboding anymore. Bruce knows, with something just a little too electric to qualify as resignation, what's going to happen when they leave.)
He tries to convince Clark that they should take a cab back, if only for the cake's sake; but Clark just laughs, wraps an arm around his waist and kisses him, and then lifts them both off the floor with his tongue still in Bruce's mouth. "Flying's faster," he murmurs in Bruce's ear, when he finally pulls away.
They don't take a cab.
It may be brief, but it's still a kind of torture, being pressed up against Clark's body like that, tucked close in the curve of his arm. The swing as Clark brings them around, down, and slows isn't unlike being on the end of a grappling line—so Bruce is careful to stumble a little on landing, like anyone unused to the sensation might.
"All right?" Clark says, and then, easily, "Just let me put the cake away—"
He blurs and is gone, and then is back again just that fast, in the span of one quick breath. He presses Bruce up against the balcony railing and kisses him again—
"Inside, come on," Bruce says when he gets the chance, reaching around Clark to open the balcony door; and Clark grins at him sheepishly and backs into the penthouse, drawing Bruce along by the lapels of his suit jacket.
"So," Clark says, clearing his throat. "Any—particular plans, this time?"
Bruce pretends to think about it, already busy with Clark's belt. "Well," he says, getting a hand inside the waistband and listening to Clark gasp. "I was thinking that perhaps we might—" and he slides it carefully around, over Clark's hip, and then back, back, "expand your horizons a bit."
He doesn't even push the fingertip in, but Clark still startles, surging forward into Bruce's thigh, breath catching. "O—Okay," Clark says, a little wobblier than before. "Okay, yes, let's do that."
"My pleasure, believe me," Bruce says, making sure the leer comes through in his voice; and Clark laughs against his jaw and then tugs him in for a kiss.