Clark comes by sooner than Bruce had been expecting.
Then again, he supposes he should have known. It's Clark, and Clark doesn't avoid things that will hurt him. Far from it: he's shown a distinct tendency to impale himself on them instead.
(And that's a worse double entendre than any line Bruce Wayne's ever used. Christ.)
Bruce is ready, of course. He's had plenty of time to determine where he'd gone wrong; aggressively casual had been a thoughtless tack to take when Clark had no doubt still been feeling disoriented, used—violated. It had been unclear how much he remembered, but it had been enough to have him dodging Bruce's hand, placing himself carefully out of reach.
There is still some uncertainty as to what might be foremost on Clark's mind. Will he be angrier about the sex itself or about the assault on his privacy, the interference? Does he intend to end their acquaintance, to insist that Bruce remove himself from the League immediately—or to settle for insisting that Bruce never again intercede in this particular variety of Kryptonian medical crisis?
Fortunately, Bruce's strategy in response will be the same no matter what. He'll remain calm. He'll explain the essentials: that he'd had no way of knowing whether Clark would or even could recover without outside intervention, that he'd deemed it preferable to do what seemed likeliest to help than to wait until it might have been too late to help at all. He can perhaps apologize for the effects of his decisions, if Clark insists on it—but he will not apologize for making them. And, so Clark doesn't walk away with the wrong impression, he will state as clearly as he can that with Clark's life on the line, he'll make them the same way again in the future, if he has to.
What he'd done to Clark had been wrong. He knows that. The commander wants you inside, and—doesn't; and what that meant was that Clark had wanted anyone inside, had been next to mindless with it, but had been doing his best to turn Bruce away anyway.
But he'd do worse things—to himself, certainly, and perhaps even to Clark—to keep Clark from dying again. And on that particular point he will not—
(cannot)
(cannot)
—compromise.
Clark's generous, as ever. He doesn't come to Bruce in the office, but he doesn't just crash into the lake house, ambush Bruce at somewhere above the speed of sound. He flies in slowly enough to allow the motion detectors at the perimeter to perceive him—he gives Bruce warning. And he doesn't come inside. He lands at the end of the deck and waits there, and refuses Alfred's invitation with a quick bland smile.
"Sir," Alfred murmurs into the radio, already moving toward the Cave stairwell. "Sir, you have a visitor—"
"Yes," Bruce says, and stands, looking away from the exterior camera feed at last. "Yes, Alfred, thank you."
"Sir," Alfred replies, clearly taking the cue for what it is: by the time Bruce is upstairs, he's vanished.
Though Clark probably knows precisely where he's gone.
And he probably also knows precisely where Bruce is; but he's courteous enough to not turn around until Bruce has stepped out onto the deck, closed the door, and cleared his throat.
He looks well. Sleeves rolled up again, but it's warm today—Bruce's are rolled up, too. None of the hectic flush that had been in his face, his ears, last time; his gaze on Bruce is steady, focused.
"Bruce," he says, and then pauses, swallowing. "I—we have to talk."
Best to cut to the chase. "If you're here for an apology," Bruce says, and Clark jerks back a half-step, paling, but what is there to do but finish?—"you won't get one."
Clark's gone still. And then he blinks, eyes narrowing, and frowns. "Bruce—"
"There was no other reasonable course of action," Bruce says. "I couldn't take the chance that it would have killed you."
"I know that," Clark says quietly, looking down at his hands: wrapped around each other in front of him, knuckles white.
"I'm not sure you do," Bruce says, and takes a step forward—and Clark doesn't take off, so that must mean he's listening, willing to be convinced. "If—"
(—and he's said this before, arguing for an utterly opposing course of action. But he didn't have all the data then. He didn't. That was what had made it a mistake. And now—)
"—if there's even a one percent chance of an unacceptable outcome, it has to be treated as a certainty."
Clark stares at him for a long moment, and then shakes his head, looking out across the lake. "I died before," he says, "and I'm all right."
As if Bruce should count on miracles to repeat themselves—as if he'll ever be that lucky twice. "I couldn't take the chance," he says again, and that makes Clark's gaze snap back to him.
"And what about your chances? At least I died for something that had a point, Bruce. I died saving Metropolis, I died saving the planet—who wouldn't take that deal? I could have killed you just for being there, just because I didn't know what the hell I was doing—"
Bruce blinks and scrambles to reorient himself. This sounds almost like anger, but that's not what it is. It's—guilt.
Unexpected, but still manageable. And it does make a certain kind of sense: it's Clark. Of course Clark considers uncontrollable biological issues something he has to make amends for. He's used to being able to break all the rules, to save everyone from everything even when by all rights it should be impossible—but his own body is the one rule he can't break, the one danger he can't contain.
And Clark has always been a little too conscious of himself. Of the space he takes up, of his height and build—of crowding people or overpowering them, being too insistent or too forceful. He could kill or physically coerce almost anyone into almost anything he chose, demand any price; and he's so aware of it that he hardly even lets himself ask.
(He hadn't this time, after all. He'd known there was something wrong with him, he had to have known: that was why he'd taken time off at the Planet and flown to Antarctica in the first place. Bruce had had to chase him down. If he hadn't come to the office that day—would Bruce even have found out at all? Or would Clark just have gone off and died down there alone—)
But a change in tactics is called for.
"Except you didn't kill me, Clark," Bruce says. "I'm fine." And then, a little more warmly—shades of Bruce Wayne, but no more than that—"It's hardly the worst way I've spent a day. Diana's done more damage flipping me onto a mat." He reaches for his tie, and Clark's eyes snap to him; it only takes the top two buttons to free his collar up enough to tug it aside and show off the truly massive hickey Clark left. "That's as bad as it gets, I swear."
And that, perhaps, was an error. Clark's gaze sticks on the bruise and he swallows hard—for someone who's invulnerable, Clark has developed a habit of dwelling on injuries, and always seems to disapprove of how Bruce handles his.
This is apparently no exception. Clark drags his eyes back up to Bruce's face and says, "But you didn't know that, Bruce, you couldn't have. And I didn't have to break your bones to—to hurt you." He swallows again, and adds much more quietly, "I know you had to. That's what—I know you thought you had to."
And that's the crux of it, Bruce thinks. It must be, the way Clark's shoulders drop saying it; the confession offered up, and Clark standing there trying to make himself small, tacitly promising to accept his punishment.
He's not going to get over this because Bruce Wayne smiles at him convincingly enough. Hell, he's never liked Bruce Wayne that much anyway—even at the beginning, even when he didn't know who he was actually talking to. That tack won't work. But what has worked on Clark?
What ever has, except telling the truth?
Bruce draws a slow breath and braces himself. "I knew what I was getting into," he says, carefully meeting Clark's eyes.
"Yeah, I know," Clark starts, not looking any less troubled, but Bruce doesn't let him finish.
"If anyone got taken advantage of here, Clark, it was you. I wasn't the one who was out of my head with fever. I wasn't the one experiencing a physical compulsion. I knew the stakes and I had a choice, and I made it." And it's so difficult not to hesitate, not to pause on the edge with the opportunity still open to turn back—but Clark needs to realize who's at fault here, and there's only one way to make that happen. So: "I wanted it," Bruce explains, even, without wavering. "All of it."
Clark is staring at him, silent, eyes wide; and then his gaze flickers down again to Bruce's collar, still tugged open—to the bruise there. "All—all of it," he repeats unsteadily.
"Yes."
"But I—" and Clark breaks off, looking out over the water again, brow furrowing. "You can't have wanted it like that. Bruce, I was—maybe you thought you wouldn't mind having sex with me, but I was all over you, I—"
Bruce doesn't permit his expression to change. "You remember," he says, and it comes out perfect, without inflection.
Clark glances at him, a quick darting cut, and then away, and reaches up to rub at the back of his neck. "Some of it," he admits. "It's still, uh, pretty hazy. But I know I was—I must have been—I know what I must have been like." He's gone pale, voice dropping low; he stays where he is for a moment, and then takes a step, two, closer to Bruce, and says very softly, "I know what I would have wanted to do with you, if I could."
He reaches out, and he's—he's entirely himself, Bruce catalogues distantly: no redness in his face or throat, no tremor in his outstretched hand. Temperature, motor function, and all other superficial metrics apparently within the usual range.
But his fingers on Bruce's skin, just where the collar gapes open, feel exactly the same; reverent, intent. The way he slides his hand up to the side of Bruce's neck, the look on his face when he does it—
"Yes," Bruce says—
(—yes, it was like that, that was what I wanted—for you to look at me like that, to touch me like you—like you—)
"—yes," and Clark's expression turns wondering, caught and disbelieving; so in the end Bruce has to tug him the rest of the way in himself.
"Clark. Clark."
"Hmm?"
"Clark," Bruce says again, and he can't quite stop his hands from tightening on Clark's shoulders, even though Clark has one arm wrapped very firmly around the small of his back.
Clark stops doing whatever he had going on with Bruce's neck, regrettably, and looks down. "Oh! Oh, jesus, Bruce, I'm sorry—" and he lowers them carefully, until the deck is once again actually touching Bruce's feet.
"Kryptonian thing," Bruce says, deliberately light, and doesn't move his hands.
Clark stops apologizing and looks at him. "Kryptonian thing," he agrees slowly, and then starts to smile, creeping up bright like sunrise. "Oh, and, hey, if the ship calls you something—odd?"
FILL: wildest dreams (burn it down); Bruce/Clark, heat (4/4)
Clark comes by sooner than Bruce had been expecting.
Then again, he supposes he should have known. It's Clark, and Clark doesn't avoid things that will hurt him. Far from it: he's shown a distinct tendency to impale himself on them instead.
(And that's a worse double entendre than any line Bruce Wayne's ever used. Christ.)
Bruce is ready, of course. He's had plenty of time to determine where he'd gone wrong; aggressively casual had been a thoughtless tack to take when Clark had no doubt still been feeling disoriented, used—violated. It had been unclear how much he remembered, but it had been enough to have him dodging Bruce's hand, placing himself carefully out of reach.
There is still some uncertainty as to what might be foremost on Clark's mind. Will he be angrier about the sex itself or about the assault on his privacy, the interference? Does he intend to end their acquaintance, to insist that Bruce remove himself from the League immediately—or to settle for insisting that Bruce never again intercede in this particular variety of Kryptonian medical crisis?
Fortunately, Bruce's strategy in response will be the same no matter what. He'll remain calm. He'll explain the essentials: that he'd had no way of knowing whether Clark would or even could recover without outside intervention, that he'd deemed it preferable to do what seemed likeliest to help than to wait until it might have been too late to help at all. He can perhaps apologize for the effects of his decisions, if Clark insists on it—but he will not apologize for making them. And, so Clark doesn't walk away with the wrong impression, he will state as clearly as he can that with Clark's life on the line, he'll make them the same way again in the future, if he has to.
What he'd done to Clark had been wrong. He knows that. The commander wants you inside, and—doesn't; and what that meant was that Clark had wanted anyone inside, had been next to mindless with it, but had been doing his best to turn Bruce away anyway.
But he'd do worse things—to himself, certainly, and perhaps even to Clark—to keep Clark from dying again. And on that particular point he will not—
(cannot)
(cannot)
—compromise.
Clark's generous, as ever. He doesn't come to Bruce in the office, but he doesn't just crash into the lake house, ambush Bruce at somewhere above the speed of sound. He flies in slowly enough to allow the motion detectors at the perimeter to perceive him—he gives Bruce warning. And he doesn't come inside. He lands at the end of the deck and waits there, and refuses Alfred's invitation with a quick bland smile.
"Sir," Alfred murmurs into the radio, already moving toward the Cave stairwell. "Sir, you have a visitor—"
"Yes," Bruce says, and stands, looking away from the exterior camera feed at last. "Yes, Alfred, thank you."
"Sir," Alfred replies, clearly taking the cue for what it is: by the time Bruce is upstairs, he's vanished.
Though Clark probably knows precisely where he's gone.
And he probably also knows precisely where Bruce is; but he's courteous enough to not turn around until Bruce has stepped out onto the deck, closed the door, and cleared his throat.
He looks well. Sleeves rolled up again, but it's warm today—Bruce's are rolled up, too. None of the hectic flush that had been in his face, his ears, last time; his gaze on Bruce is steady, focused.
"Bruce," he says, and then pauses, swallowing. "I—we have to talk."
Best to cut to the chase. "If you're here for an apology," Bruce says, and Clark jerks back a half-step, paling, but what is there to do but finish?—"you won't get one."
Clark's gone still. And then he blinks, eyes narrowing, and frowns. "Bruce—"
"There was no other reasonable course of action," Bruce says. "I couldn't take the chance that it would have killed you."
"I know that," Clark says quietly, looking down at his hands: wrapped around each other in front of him, knuckles white.
"I'm not sure you do," Bruce says, and takes a step forward—and Clark doesn't take off, so that must mean he's listening, willing to be convinced. "If—"
(—and he's said this before, arguing for an utterly opposing course of action. But he didn't have all the data then. He didn't. That was what had made it a mistake. And now—)
"—if there's even a one percent chance of an unacceptable outcome, it has to be treated as a certainty."
Clark stares at him for a long moment, and then shakes his head, looking out across the lake. "I died before," he says, "and I'm all right."
As if Bruce should count on miracles to repeat themselves—as if he'll ever be that lucky twice. "I couldn't take the chance," he says again, and that makes Clark's gaze snap back to him.
"And what about your chances? At least I died for something that had a point, Bruce. I died saving Metropolis, I died saving the planet—who wouldn't take that deal? I could have killed you just for being there, just because I didn't know what the hell I was doing—"
Bruce blinks and scrambles to reorient himself. This sounds almost like anger, but that's not what it is. It's—guilt.
Unexpected, but still manageable. And it does make a certain kind of sense: it's Clark. Of course Clark considers uncontrollable biological issues something he has to make amends for. He's used to being able to break all the rules, to save everyone from everything even when by all rights it should be impossible—but his own body is the one rule he can't break, the one danger he can't contain.
And Clark has always been a little too conscious of himself. Of the space he takes up, of his height and build—of crowding people or overpowering them, being too insistent or too forceful. He could kill or physically coerce almost anyone into almost anything he chose, demand any price; and he's so aware of it that he hardly even lets himself ask.
(He hadn't this time, after all. He'd known there was something wrong with him, he had to have known: that was why he'd taken time off at the Planet and flown to Antarctica in the first place. Bruce had had to chase him down. If he hadn't come to the office that day—would Bruce even have found out at all? Or would Clark just have gone off and died down there alone—)
But a change in tactics is called for.
"Except you didn't kill me, Clark," Bruce says. "I'm fine." And then, a little more warmly—shades of Bruce Wayne, but no more than that—"It's hardly the worst way I've spent a day. Diana's done more damage flipping me onto a mat." He reaches for his tie, and Clark's eyes snap to him; it only takes the top two buttons to free his collar up enough to tug it aside and show off the truly massive hickey Clark left. "That's as bad as it gets, I swear."
And that, perhaps, was an error. Clark's gaze sticks on the bruise and he swallows hard—for someone who's invulnerable, Clark has developed a habit of dwelling on injuries, and always seems to disapprove of how Bruce handles his.
This is apparently no exception. Clark drags his eyes back up to Bruce's face and says, "But you didn't know that, Bruce, you couldn't have. And I didn't have to break your bones to—to hurt you." He swallows again, and adds much more quietly, "I know you had to. That's what—I know you thought you had to."
And that's the crux of it, Bruce thinks. It must be, the way Clark's shoulders drop saying it; the confession offered up, and Clark standing there trying to make himself small, tacitly promising to accept his punishment.
He's not going to get over this because Bruce Wayne smiles at him convincingly enough. Hell, he's never liked Bruce Wayne that much anyway—even at the beginning, even when he didn't know who he was actually talking to. That tack won't work. But what has worked on Clark?
What ever has, except telling the truth?
Bruce draws a slow breath and braces himself. "I knew what I was getting into," he says, carefully meeting Clark's eyes.
"Yeah, I know," Clark starts, not looking any less troubled, but Bruce doesn't let him finish.
"If anyone got taken advantage of here, Clark, it was you. I wasn't the one who was out of my head with fever. I wasn't the one experiencing a physical compulsion. I knew the stakes and I had a choice, and I made it." And it's so difficult not to hesitate, not to pause on the edge with the opportunity still open to turn back—but Clark needs to realize who's at fault here, and there's only one way to make that happen. So: "I wanted it," Bruce explains, even, without wavering. "All of it."
Clark is staring at him, silent, eyes wide; and then his gaze flickers down again to Bruce's collar, still tugged open—to the bruise there. "All—all of it," he repeats unsteadily.
"Yes."
"But I—" and Clark breaks off, looking out over the water again, brow furrowing. "You can't have wanted it like that. Bruce, I was—maybe you thought you wouldn't mind having sex with me, but I was all over you, I—"
Bruce doesn't permit his expression to change. "You remember," he says, and it comes out perfect, without inflection.
Clark glances at him, a quick darting cut, and then away, and reaches up to rub at the back of his neck. "Some of it," he admits. "It's still, uh, pretty hazy. But I know I was—I must have been—I know what I must have been like." He's gone pale, voice dropping low; he stays where he is for a moment, and then takes a step, two, closer to Bruce, and says very softly, "I know what I would have wanted to do with you, if I could."
He reaches out, and he's—he's entirely himself, Bruce catalogues distantly: no redness in his face or throat, no tremor in his outstretched hand. Temperature, motor function, and all other superficial metrics apparently within the usual range.
But his fingers on Bruce's skin, just where the collar gapes open, feel exactly the same; reverent, intent. The way he slides his hand up to the side of Bruce's neck, the look on his face when he does it—
"Yes," Bruce says—
(—yes, it was like that, that was what I wanted—for you to look at me like that, to touch me like you—like you—)
"—yes," and Clark's expression turns wondering, caught and disbelieving; so in the end Bruce has to tug him the rest of the way in himself.
"Clark. Clark."
"Hmm?"
"Clark," Bruce says again, and he can't quite stop his hands from tightening on Clark's shoulders, even though Clark has one arm wrapped very firmly around the small of his back.
Clark stops doing whatever he had going on with Bruce's neck, regrettably, and looks down. "Oh! Oh, jesus, Bruce, I'm sorry—" and he lowers them carefully, until the deck is once again actually touching Bruce's feet.
"Kryptonian thing," Bruce says, deliberately light, and doesn't move his hands.
Clark stops apologizing and looks at him. "Kryptonian thing," he agrees slowly, and then starts to smile, creeping up bright like sunrise. "Oh, and, hey, if the ship calls you something—odd?"
"Yes?"
"That's a Kryptonian thing, too."