"Fine," Clark manages, "I'm fine," except that's a lie. A lie he's been believing anyway for the past couple days, but being here with Bruce has shown him how thin a farce that is. There's definitely something wrong with him.
(And isn't that what always happens, with Bruce? Superman is noble, distant, and rises above the petty unkindnesses of humanity—except when he's in a wet dark alley with Bruce. How thin a farce: how very, very easy it is to make Superman angry, to render him as violent or careless or cruel as anyone.
Always, always, stripping Clark's illusions bare—
And now it's back to nakedness again. Jesus, Clark tells himself, get a grip.)
Bruce raises an eyebrow. "Are you sure? You look a little—flushed."
"No, it's—just too much sun," Clark says, because Bruce will understand that that means something different for Superman than it does for anyone else.
And then he doesn't go around the desk himself, doesn't slide his arms around Bruce's back and feel Bruce grip his shoulders for balance; doesn't heave Bruce up and backward into the wall and listen to him gasp—
He doesn't do any of that. He's made a mistake. He can't ask Bruce for the database, he can't stay in this room for one minute longer than he has—he's got to go to Antarctica, where he can get his answers and he can't—he won't—
Where he'll be alone. Where he won't hurt anyone.
So he closes his eyes, shakes his head, and says very carefully and precisely—
(—Bruce, oh, god, touch me, please touch me, I want to fuck you through the floor—)
—"I just wanted to let you know I'm—I'll be out of town. For a few days. I'm sure the League can manage without me and all, but I—I just wanted to let you know."
"Yes," Bruce says slowly, "you said that already," but Clark doesn't—can't—check to see the expression on his face.
"Great, okay," and Clark backs up blindly, hits the corner of a filing cabinet; he probably dents it, but he's—he needs to get out of this room. "So I'm leaving. Now. I'll—I'll see you."
Something in him quails at the idea of trying to make it all the way back down through Bruce's building feeling like this. But one thing is working in his favor: he didn't just come to see Bruce. He came to see Batman. There's a balcony opening off almost all of Bruce Wayne's offices.
"I have to go," Clark says, and he opens his eyes just long enough to blur his way across, yank the doubled door wide, and throw himself into the sky.
(His hearing is still working just fine; he can't get far enough fast enough to not hear Bruce shout his name. But he still has enough self-control to not turn around.)
He has his phone. He gets lucky, and Mom doesn't pick up—she must be out in the garden. He leaves a message with the important points: he's got something to take care of, something important; and because he's said it like that, she'll know it's a Superman thing. He remembers to add that he's told the Planet it's a family trip, so it would help if she didn't pick up the phone for Metropolis area codes for a week or so.
And then he does tell the Planet he's got a family trip. More specifically, he tells Lois. He knows already that she's away from her desk for an interview, so she won't pick up either, which is for the best right now. Better her than Perry, after that dressing-down Clark got this afternoon. She'll make fun of Clark for asking her to clear the absence for him, when he gets back; but she'll also do it.
He's pretty sure he manages to explain without anything obscene slipping out. And then—
Then he flies to Antarctica.
He's almost grateful for whatever this is, right then. Another day, with his head clearer, he'd have the presence of mind to be afraid. He hasn't spent very much time with the ship since Luthor laid hands on it, crawled into its insides and shaped it to his purpose.
(And it hadn't been like that before, Clark is almost sure. When he'd found it and used it, when it had explained to him who he was, it had been—bright, hadn't it? Clean. An ebb and flow of neat interlocking pieces; Father's mind in control. Hadn't it been like that?
He thinks it had. But that memory's been superseded by the way it had looked when he'd found Luthor and that—thing inside it. Dark; strange and close and—sticky, clinging, grasping.
Maybe that was what it was like inside Luthor's head. Maybe that was why.
Luthor is gone now, and so is Father. Clark is in command of the ship; and he's not sure he wants to see what it looks like in there now.)
As it is, all he can think as he flies—besides increasingly pornographic things he's trying really hard not to focus on—is that he should have known. He's speeding through the air at speeds that would probably suffocate a normal person, and it's air that should by all rights freeze him solid. Instead it's a chill he can barely feel over the heat radiating off his skin, as some kind of weird Kryptonian—sex fever does the best it can to boil him from the inside out.
And he should have known. He's spent so long trying to blend in, trying to be like everyone else, and it never ever works. He's gotten close, sometimes; and then he has to cauterize Lois's gut wound with his eyes. Or Zod shows up and tells the whole world there's an alien around. Or an irradiated corpse with delusions of grandeur starts tearing up portside Gotham. This is just one more thing to add to the list: one more way in which Clark will never quite be human, no matter how hard he tries.
By the time he skids in for a landing, thoughts that complicated aren't really on the table anymore. And he does skid—carves a furrow into the ice that's almost two Clarks deep, and leaves a pool of steaming water behind when he manages to get it together enough to climb out.
(It feels good. The water surrounding him, and for a brief instant blissfully cool against him before he can heat it up all the way, soaking in and around and through, touching him everywhere—
Jesus, Clark needs to get to the ship.)
Luckily, he doesn't need to do anything complicated to get the door open. He just puts a hand against the ship's side (resists the urge to slide his palm across the surface, to press his cheek to it—) and says, "Ship—"
"Welcome," it says, and as though it means it, it opens for him.
"Ship, can you—what is this?" Clark says, trying not to lurch sideways into any walls. "What's wrong with me? Am I sick, or—"
"Scans will be completed momentarily," the ship says, almost gently. Everything about it is helping him: doors are opening in front of him before he can even touch them, and the floor is shifting—not away from him but toward him, moving with his feet so that every step he takes is in the right direction.
Something about that should make him happy, but he can't focus long enough to remember what. He lets his knees go out from under him the way he wants to, and sure enough, the ship catches him—did he know that would happen? Does it matter, when as long as he doesn't have to walk anymore, that means he can finally shove a hand into his pants? He almost can't decide where he wants it more, his ass or—
"According to the last data burst that was received from mission headquarters," the ship says, "the number of Kryptonians experiencing regular mating cycles was decreasing sharply, in part due to increased adherence to Codex regulations. However, you are—not regulation."
Not even a normal Kryptonian, Clark thinks dimly, with a deep slow ache that's an utterly different temperature from the one that's been consuming him all day. The contrast brings him back to himself, just for a minute. Just long enough for him to re-hear mating cycles and feel his jaw literally drop. "Oh, god," Clark says, staring sightlessly at the ceiling; and even then, with the bottom crawling out of his stomach, he still can't keep from wrapping a hand around himself and groaning.
FILL: wildest dreams (burn it down); Bruce/Clark, heat (1b/4)
Clark blinks again.
Bruce hasn't moved.
"Fine," Clark manages, "I'm fine," except that's a lie. A lie he's been believing anyway for the past couple days, but being here with Bruce has shown him how thin a farce that is. There's definitely something wrong with him.
(And isn't that what always happens, with Bruce? Superman is noble, distant, and rises above the petty unkindnesses of humanity—except when he's in a wet dark alley with Bruce. How thin a farce: how very, very easy it is to make Superman angry, to render him as violent or careless or cruel as anyone.
Always, always, stripping Clark's illusions bare—
And now it's back to nakedness again. Jesus, Clark tells himself, get a grip.)
Bruce raises an eyebrow. "Are you sure? You look a little—flushed."
"No, it's—just too much sun," Clark says, because Bruce will understand that that means something different for Superman than it does for anyone else.
And then he doesn't go around the desk himself, doesn't slide his arms around Bruce's back and feel Bruce grip his shoulders for balance; doesn't heave Bruce up and backward into the wall and listen to him gasp—
He doesn't do any of that. He's made a mistake. He can't ask Bruce for the database, he can't stay in this room for one minute longer than he has—he's got to go to Antarctica, where he can get his answers and he can't—he won't—
Where he'll be alone. Where he won't hurt anyone.
So he closes his eyes, shakes his head, and says very carefully and precisely—
(—Bruce, oh, god, touch me, please touch me, I want to fuck you through the floor—)
—"I just wanted to let you know I'm—I'll be out of town. For a few days. I'm sure the League can manage without me and all, but I—I just wanted to let you know."
"Yes," Bruce says slowly, "you said that already," but Clark doesn't—can't—check to see the expression on his face.
"Great, okay," and Clark backs up blindly, hits the corner of a filing cabinet; he probably dents it, but he's—he needs to get out of this room. "So I'm leaving. Now. I'll—I'll see you."
Something in him quails at the idea of trying to make it all the way back down through Bruce's building feeling like this. But one thing is working in his favor: he didn't just come to see Bruce. He came to see Batman. There's a balcony opening off almost all of Bruce Wayne's offices.
"I have to go," Clark says, and he opens his eyes just long enough to blur his way across, yank the doubled door wide, and throw himself into the sky.
(His hearing is still working just fine; he can't get far enough fast enough to not hear Bruce shout his name. But he still has enough self-control to not turn around.)
He has his phone. He gets lucky, and Mom doesn't pick up—she must be out in the garden. He leaves a message with the important points: he's got something to take care of, something important; and because he's said it like that, she'll know it's a Superman thing. He remembers to add that he's told the Planet it's a family trip, so it would help if she didn't pick up the phone for Metropolis area codes for a week or so.
And then he does tell the Planet he's got a family trip. More specifically, he tells Lois. He knows already that she's away from her desk for an interview, so she won't pick up either, which is for the best right now. Better her than Perry, after that dressing-down Clark got this afternoon. She'll make fun of Clark for asking her to clear the absence for him, when he gets back; but she'll also do it.
He's pretty sure he manages to explain without anything obscene slipping out. And then—
Then he flies to Antarctica.
He's almost grateful for whatever this is, right then. Another day, with his head clearer, he'd have the presence of mind to be afraid. He hasn't spent very much time with the ship since Luthor laid hands on it, crawled into its insides and shaped it to his purpose.
(And it hadn't been like that before, Clark is almost sure. When he'd found it and used it, when it had explained to him who he was, it had been—bright, hadn't it? Clean. An ebb and flow of neat interlocking pieces; Father's mind in control. Hadn't it been like that?
He thinks it had. But that memory's been superseded by the way it had looked when he'd found Luthor and that—thing inside it. Dark; strange and close and—sticky, clinging, grasping.
Maybe that was what it was like inside Luthor's head. Maybe that was why.
Luthor is gone now, and so is Father. Clark is in command of the ship; and he's not sure he wants to see what it looks like in there now.)
As it is, all he can think as he flies—besides increasingly pornographic things he's trying really hard not to focus on—is that he should have known. He's speeding through the air at speeds that would probably suffocate a normal person, and it's air that should by all rights freeze him solid. Instead it's a chill he can barely feel over the heat radiating off his skin, as some kind of weird Kryptonian—sex fever does the best it can to boil him from the inside out.
And he should have known. He's spent so long trying to blend in, trying to be like everyone else, and it never ever works. He's gotten close, sometimes; and then he has to cauterize Lois's gut wound with his eyes. Or Zod shows up and tells the whole world there's an alien around. Or an irradiated corpse with delusions of grandeur starts tearing up portside Gotham. This is just one more thing to add to the list: one more way in which Clark will never quite be human, no matter how hard he tries.
By the time he skids in for a landing, thoughts that complicated aren't really on the table anymore. And he does skid—carves a furrow into the ice that's almost two Clarks deep, and leaves a pool of steaming water behind when he manages to get it together enough to climb out.
(It feels good. The water surrounding him, and for a brief instant blissfully cool against him before he can heat it up all the way, soaking in and around and through, touching him everywhere—
Jesus, Clark needs to get to the ship.)
Luckily, he doesn't need to do anything complicated to get the door open. He just puts a hand against the ship's side (resists the urge to slide his palm across the surface, to press his cheek to it—) and says, "Ship—"
"Welcome," it says, and as though it means it, it opens for him.
"Ship, can you—what is this?" Clark says, trying not to lurch sideways into any walls. "What's wrong with me? Am I sick, or—"
"Scans will be completed momentarily," the ship says, almost gently. Everything about it is helping him: doors are opening in front of him before he can even touch them, and the floor is shifting—not away from him but toward him, moving with his feet so that every step he takes is in the right direction.
Something about that should make him happy, but he can't focus long enough to remember what. He lets his knees go out from under him the way he wants to, and sure enough, the ship catches him—did he know that would happen? Does it matter, when as long as he doesn't have to walk anymore, that means he can finally shove a hand into his pants? He almost can't decide where he wants it more, his ass or—
"According to the last data burst that was received from mission headquarters," the ship says, "the number of Kryptonians experiencing regular mating cycles was decreasing sharply, in part due to increased adherence to Codex regulations. However, you are—not regulation."
Not even a normal Kryptonian, Clark thinks dimly, with a deep slow ache that's an utterly different temperature from the one that's been consuming him all day. The contrast brings him back to himself, just for a minute. Just long enough for him to re-hear mating cycles and feel his jaw literally drop. "Oh, god," Clark says, staring sightlessly at the ceiling; and even then, with the bottom crawling out of his stomach, he still can't keep from wrapping a hand around himself and groaning.