I believe we've made it to the final third of this fill, which means I should have a reasonable total parts estimate ... um, soon. Maybe next time. :D Which I want to assure you of at this time mostly because this part? Tips us over 40k. D: THIS IS ALL SO EXCESSIVE AND SELF-INDULGENT. OH GOD.
He needs to break things off with Clark. He does. He can see that clear as daylight. Letting this go on any longer is a mistake and he knows it—
(—and you aren't going to make it again. It does matter to you, to not do things that are wrong—)
—but it's so hard to know where to begin. Bruce has always had an eye for tactics, a habit of planning things down to the smallest detail; but this, he can't figure out. This, he's stumbling through as if blindfolded. And he's starting to realize that if he had the self-control he needs to get him out of this, he wouldn't have gotten into it in the first place.
Meditation, deprivation, years of study and struggle and simple suffering, have rendered him capable of ignoring or compensating for all kinds of bodily needs, and even outright injuries. Batman is thrown off a building on Tuesday, struck right on the join between two plates of body armor with a length of pipe on Wednesday—but the thing that hits him hard, the thing that sends him mindlessly fleeing back to the Cave on Thursday, is that quiet conversation with Clark.
Batman is still successfully keeping Clark at a distance. But Bruce's judgment, Bruce's margin of error, are paying for it: Clark was tentative with Bruce Wayne the morning after the nightmare, hasn't come back to the penthouse since, and Bruce discovers, terrifyingly, that he can't stand it.
He has no strategy for fighting this kind of weakness in himself. He's never needed one before. But for the first time he can remember, the strict application of willpower is utterly failing him. It's addiction, unconquerable impulse, an endless raw hunger clawing out a hollow in him that he has no way to fill.
(How can the sensation of emptiness weigh so much?)
He should be glad Clark has suddenly put Bruce Wayne at arm's length, but he isn't.
He isn't.
He doesn't go out on patrol on Friday. He goes to the penthouse, and he stands out on the balcony when the sun gets low, and he turns his face into the wind and says, "Clark."
And whatever Bruce Wayne did wrong, Clark does still have an ear on the penthouse. Seeing that blur in the air, watching it slow and pull up close and resolve itself into Clark, adjusting his glasses with a tentative smile—
In that moment, it's almost like Clark does forgive him.
(Except, of course, he doesn't.
He doesn't know he needs to. He doesn't know Bruce Wayne's done anything that needs forgiving; and once he does know, he's not going to want to.)
He should let Clark stay uncertain, unsure. He shouldn't smile at him so warmly, shouldn't reach out over the balcony railing for him with such helpless panting eagerness. But he's still not sure why Clark's acting so strange—and if it's because he suspects something, even subconsciously, then Bruce has to cajole him out of it. There's no other solution.
(Except breaking it off; except sending him away; except telling him and then watching him leave on his own. But those aren't solutions.
Solutions need to be possible. Solutions need to be things Bruce is certain he's capable of.)
"I think I was starting to forget what you looked like," Bruce Wayne says with a smirk, hands sliding up Clark's forearms. A joke, just a joke, because it's only been three days.
(A joke—because Bruce can picture Clark's face too easily, does it too often, to forget one single thing about it.)
"I was in the neighborhood yesterday," Clark says, leaning in to put his arms around Bruce's neck even though he's still on the wrong side of the balcony railing, standing on nothing. "Didn't see you, though."
Must have been just a little too late. Bruce had convinced himself not to wait for Clark all night, not if Clark wasn't going to show yet again—to go on patrol instead, since he'd skipped it too many times already. "Work," Bruce says dismissively, something in his chest easing at the weight of Clark's arms on his shoulders, the sheer undeniable reality of Clark right in front of him.
Clark grins at him. "How very responsible of you, Mr. Wayne," he murmurs, tilting his head; and then, quite literally, he sweeps Bruce off his feet.
In point of fact, Clark is multiple hackneyed romantic metaphors made real. Bruce's head spins—along with the rest of him—as Clark drags their mouths together and barrel-rolls them in the air at the same moment; it's too fast for Bruce to even feel the absence, but he must lift a hand away for an instant to open the balcony door. Bruce catalogs the impressions as they come, freeze-framed bursts: the rush of air around them, the brief billowed shape of the drapes being blown aside, the light rollercoaster lurch of his gut as they slow again, as Clark settles them to rest on the sofa—
Convenient. Clark can fly sideways, so they're already prone.
And it's so easy to let go. Clark's underneath, but Bruce doesn't have to be careful—it's not as though he can't take Bruce's weight. Bruce can close his eyes and relax into Clark, the heat and the steady solid mass of him, can bite into Clark's lip and shove his hands into Clark's hair and just kiss him and kiss him. It doesn't feel like it's been three days; it feels like it's been three months, three years—
It happens precisely because he's not expecting it. Because he's allowed himself to get distracted, to sink so far into the sensation of touching Clark again that he utterly loses track of what Clark's doing, where his hands are.
He's still Batman. He can control himself well enough not to make a noise. But the reflexive tension, the flinch, follows the pain so closely—and Bruce's mind is too far away to slip in between.
Wednesday, the pipe: a bruised rib, with accompanying contusions just starting to bloom purple over it. Far enough to the side that he should have been fine; except Clark's unbuttoned his shirt all the way, shoved it off one shoulder before running his hand down Bruce's side.
It's just luck he picked the right shoulder instead of the left.
Clark breaks away, and Bruce had been so impatient, out on the balcony earlier than Clark usually arrives—there's still plenty of light left, the sun not even done setting. Clark would be able to get a good look at it even if he weren't Superman.
"Jesus, Bruce," Clark says, wincing in sympathy; he probably doesn't even know what a bruise feels like, but he does at least understand pain.
(The look on his face when Bruce had set that spear to his cheek and cut—)
And then something begins to come over his face, and Bruce braces himself—except it isn't confusion or suspicion, isn't anger.
It's a slow, cold, dawning fear.
"Jesus, Bruce," Clark whispers, staring up at him. "Did I do that?"
For a long moment, Bruce can't even process the question in a way that makes sense. Did Clark do what? Touch the bruise? The answer is obviously yes, or they wouldn't even be having this conversation—
That's when it hits him.
One of Clark's elbows had landed there, or near enough, when he'd slammed Bruce into the bedroom wall.
He hadn't done any damage. Bruce's back had been a little sore afterward, a little stiff; he'd stretched for a minute or two longer than usual before heading out on patrol, and hadn't thought any more about it. Clark hadn't hurt him. And for all that he's aware of exactly what Superman is capable of, he's never worried that Clark would.
Which is probably one of the glaring reasons why he'd somehow managed to miss this.
This is—this is everything he could possibly have asked for, above and beyond the perfect way to explain away the bruising. Not half an hour ago, he'd been standing around wondering to himself why Clark had been acting strangely, keeping his distance with Bruce, and telling himself in the same breath that he couldn't see his way clear to bringing this thing between them to an end, that Batman for once had no plan. And now one's been dropped in his lap—has been sitting there waiting for him to notice it since the night Clark had that dream.
If Bruce tells him the bruise was his fault, Clark won't question it. Clark's afraid of hurting him, and has had that worry eating at him for three days, and now here it is writ large in front of him. It's a blow he won't recover from easily, something he won't be able to set aside or move past—something that could make him decide to leave Bruce Wayne entirely without Bruce even needing to push the issue, whether he wants to keep sleeping with Bruce or not.
And all Bruce has to do is say yes.
Clark's still staring at him, with a sick stricken look like nothing kryptonite has ever put on his face, a tremor in that invulnerable hand as he freezes with it just an inch shy of Bruce's rib, right over the spot where purple deepens to something more like black.
"No," Bruce says. "No, it wasn't you. You didn't do that, Clark, it's okay."
Clark heaves in a breath, fast and shuddering, and then a slower one; and then he closes his eyes and rubs a hand over his face. "God. Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," Bruce tells him.
Clark tugs him down and kisses him again, more gently, and then pushes Bruce up and away just a little to ask, "Is it weird to say I'm glad? What did happen—are your ribs okay?"
"I'm fine, I swear," Bruce says, leaning down to press his forehead against Clark's. "Polo happened."
"What?"
"Polo," Bruce repeats. "Bored rich people, horses, really really big mallets—"
"Are you serious?" Clark says, mouth twitching, like he wants to laugh but isn't sure whether he's supposed to.
Bruce affects an insulted look. "Hey, you get some heiress a little tipsy, put her up on one of those ponies and give her a four-foot-long hammer, she can do some real damage. A stray swing from one of those things at a canter is nothing to sneeze at, Mr. Kent."
That does it: Clark cracks a grin, and then tilts his head back into the arm of the sofa and does laugh. A decent enough distraction—but that was a close call. Tonight's not a night to gamble.
"And now that the mood's been killed stone-dead," Bruce says dryly, shrugging the dress shirt back on over his bared shoulder, "I suppose I might as well ask. Have you eaten?"
"I feel like I should make some kind of joke about trying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before we give up hope," Clark muses, settling his hands onto Bruce's hips; but then he ducks his head and admits, "No."
"Dinner, then," Bruce says. "We'll order in. What are you in the mood for? Steak?"
"... Do steak places do delivery?"
"When I ask them to, they do," Bruce tells Clark, with an arrogant little wink; and Clark laughs again and then, in a rush, one hand careful at the back of Bruce's head, tilts his hips and topples them both onto the floor.
In the end, it takes another fifteen minutes for Bruce to actually get to the phone.
FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (18/?)
He needs to break things off with Clark. He does. He can see that clear as daylight. Letting this go on any longer is a mistake and he knows it—
(—and you aren't going to make it again. It does matter to you, to not do things that are wrong—)
—but it's so hard to know where to begin. Bruce has always had an eye for tactics, a habit of planning things down to the smallest detail; but this, he can't figure out. This, he's stumbling through as if blindfolded. And he's starting to realize that if he had the self-control he needs to get him out of this, he wouldn't have gotten into it in the first place.
Meditation, deprivation, years of study and struggle and simple suffering, have rendered him capable of ignoring or compensating for all kinds of bodily needs, and even outright injuries. Batman is thrown off a building on Tuesday, struck right on the join between two plates of body armor with a length of pipe on Wednesday—but the thing that hits him hard, the thing that sends him mindlessly fleeing back to the Cave on Thursday, is that quiet conversation with Clark.
Batman is still successfully keeping Clark at a distance. But Bruce's judgment, Bruce's margin of error, are paying for it: Clark was tentative with Bruce Wayne the morning after the nightmare, hasn't come back to the penthouse since, and Bruce discovers, terrifyingly, that he can't stand it.
He has no strategy for fighting this kind of weakness in himself. He's never needed one before. But for the first time he can remember, the strict application of willpower is utterly failing him. It's addiction, unconquerable impulse, an endless raw hunger clawing out a hollow in him that he has no way to fill.
(How can the sensation of emptiness weigh so much?)
He should be glad Clark has suddenly put Bruce Wayne at arm's length, but he isn't.
He isn't.
He doesn't go out on patrol on Friday. He goes to the penthouse, and he stands out on the balcony when the sun gets low, and he turns his face into the wind and says, "Clark."
And whatever Bruce Wayne did wrong, Clark does still have an ear on the penthouse. Seeing that blur in the air, watching it slow and pull up close and resolve itself into Clark, adjusting his glasses with a tentative smile—
In that moment, it's almost like Clark does forgive him.
(Except, of course, he doesn't.
He doesn't know he needs to. He doesn't know Bruce Wayne's done anything that needs forgiving; and once he does know, he's not going to want to.)
He should let Clark stay uncertain, unsure. He shouldn't smile at him so warmly, shouldn't reach out over the balcony railing for him with such helpless panting eagerness. But he's still not sure why Clark's acting so strange—and if it's because he suspects something, even subconsciously, then Bruce has to cajole him out of it. There's no other solution.
(Except breaking it off; except sending him away; except telling him and then watching him leave on his own. But those aren't solutions.
Solutions need to be possible. Solutions need to be things Bruce is certain he's capable of.)
"I think I was starting to forget what you looked like," Bruce Wayne says with a smirk, hands sliding up Clark's forearms. A joke, just a joke, because it's only been three days.
(A joke—because Bruce can picture Clark's face too easily, does it too often, to forget one single thing about it.)
"I was in the neighborhood yesterday," Clark says, leaning in to put his arms around Bruce's neck even though he's still on the wrong side of the balcony railing, standing on nothing. "Didn't see you, though."
Must have been just a little too late. Bruce had convinced himself not to wait for Clark all night, not if Clark wasn't going to show yet again—to go on patrol instead, since he'd skipped it too many times already. "Work," Bruce says dismissively, something in his chest easing at the weight of Clark's arms on his shoulders, the sheer undeniable reality of Clark right in front of him.
Clark grins at him. "How very responsible of you, Mr. Wayne," he murmurs, tilting his head; and then, quite literally, he sweeps Bruce off his feet.
In point of fact, Clark is multiple hackneyed romantic metaphors made real. Bruce's head spins—along with the rest of him—as Clark drags their mouths together and barrel-rolls them in the air at the same moment; it's too fast for Bruce to even feel the absence, but he must lift a hand away for an instant to open the balcony door. Bruce catalogs the impressions as they come, freeze-framed bursts: the rush of air around them, the brief billowed shape of the drapes being blown aside, the light rollercoaster lurch of his gut as they slow again, as Clark settles them to rest on the sofa—
Convenient. Clark can fly sideways, so they're already prone.
And it's so easy to let go. Clark's underneath, but Bruce doesn't have to be careful—it's not as though he can't take Bruce's weight. Bruce can close his eyes and relax into Clark, the heat and the steady solid mass of him, can bite into Clark's lip and shove his hands into Clark's hair and just kiss him and kiss him. It doesn't feel like it's been three days; it feels like it's been three months, three years—
It happens precisely because he's not expecting it. Because he's allowed himself to get distracted, to sink so far into the sensation of touching Clark again that he utterly loses track of what Clark's doing, where his hands are.
He's still Batman. He can control himself well enough not to make a noise. But the reflexive tension, the flinch, follows the pain so closely—and Bruce's mind is too far away to slip in between.
Wednesday, the pipe: a bruised rib, with accompanying contusions just starting to bloom purple over it. Far enough to the side that he should have been fine; except Clark's unbuttoned his shirt all the way, shoved it off one shoulder before running his hand down Bruce's side.
It's just luck he picked the right shoulder instead of the left.
Clark breaks away, and Bruce had been so impatient, out on the balcony earlier than Clark usually arrives—there's still plenty of light left, the sun not even done setting. Clark would be able to get a good look at it even if he weren't Superman.
"Jesus, Bruce," Clark says, wincing in sympathy; he probably doesn't even know what a bruise feels like, but he does at least understand pain.
(The look on his face when Bruce had set that spear to his cheek and cut—)
And then something begins to come over his face, and Bruce braces himself—except it isn't confusion or suspicion, isn't anger.
It's a slow, cold, dawning fear.
"Jesus, Bruce," Clark whispers, staring up at him. "Did I do that?"
For a long moment, Bruce can't even process the question in a way that makes sense. Did Clark do what? Touch the bruise? The answer is obviously yes, or they wouldn't even be having this conversation—
That's when it hits him.
One of Clark's elbows had landed there, or near enough, when he'd slammed Bruce into the bedroom wall.
He hadn't done any damage. Bruce's back had been a little sore afterward, a little stiff; he'd stretched for a minute or two longer than usual before heading out on patrol, and hadn't thought any more about it. Clark hadn't hurt him. And for all that he's aware of exactly what Superman is capable of, he's never worried that Clark would.
Which is probably one of the glaring reasons why he'd somehow managed to miss this.
This is—this is everything he could possibly have asked for, above and beyond the perfect way to explain away the bruising. Not half an hour ago, he'd been standing around wondering to himself why Clark had been acting strangely, keeping his distance with Bruce, and telling himself in the same breath that he couldn't see his way clear to bringing this thing between them to an end, that Batman for once had no plan. And now one's been dropped in his lap—has been sitting there waiting for him to notice it since the night Clark had that dream.
If Bruce tells him the bruise was his fault, Clark won't question it. Clark's afraid of hurting him, and has had that worry eating at him for three days, and now here it is writ large in front of him. It's a blow he won't recover from easily, something he won't be able to set aside or move past—something that could make him decide to leave Bruce Wayne entirely without Bruce even needing to push the issue, whether he wants to keep sleeping with Bruce or not.
And all Bruce has to do is say yes.
Clark's still staring at him, with a sick stricken look like nothing kryptonite has ever put on his face, a tremor in that invulnerable hand as he freezes with it just an inch shy of Bruce's rib, right over the spot where purple deepens to something more like black.
"No," Bruce says. "No, it wasn't you. You didn't do that, Clark, it's okay."
Clark heaves in a breath, fast and shuddering, and then a slower one; and then he closes his eyes and rubs a hand over his face. "God. Are you sure?"
"I'm sure," Bruce tells him.
Clark tugs him down and kisses him again, more gently, and then pushes Bruce up and away just a little to ask, "Is it weird to say I'm glad? What did happen—are your ribs okay?"
"I'm fine, I swear," Bruce says, leaning down to press his forehead against Clark's. "Polo happened."
"What?"
"Polo," Bruce repeats. "Bored rich people, horses, really really big mallets—"
"Are you serious?" Clark says, mouth twitching, like he wants to laugh but isn't sure whether he's supposed to.
Bruce affects an insulted look. "Hey, you get some heiress a little tipsy, put her up on one of those ponies and give her a four-foot-long hammer, she can do some real damage. A stray swing from one of those things at a canter is nothing to sneeze at, Mr. Kent."
That does it: Clark cracks a grin, and then tilts his head back into the arm of the sofa and does laugh. A decent enough distraction—but that was a close call. Tonight's not a night to gamble.
"And now that the mood's been killed stone-dead," Bruce says dryly, shrugging the dress shirt back on over his bared shoulder, "I suppose I might as well ask. Have you eaten?"
"I feel like I should make some kind of joke about trying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation before we give up hope," Clark muses, settling his hands onto Bruce's hips; but then he ducks his head and admits, "No."
"Dinner, then," Bruce says. "We'll order in. What are you in the mood for? Steak?"
"... Do steak places do delivery?"
"When I ask them to, they do," Bruce tells Clark, with an arrogant little wink; and Clark laughs again and then, in a rush, one hand careful at the back of Bruce's head, tilts his hips and topples them both onto the floor.
In the end, it takes another fifteen minutes for Bruce to actually get to the phone.