"Fuck," Bruce said, yanking at him uselessly. Clark's hair was wild from the cowl and his mouth was wet from kissing and Bruce was shivering he was so close to coming, just the friction of his own underwear against his cock might be enough if Clark weren't holding him still with his implacable hands.

"Are you going to get weird about this and pretend nothing happened the moment I leave your office?"

"Why are we having this conversation now."

"You owe me at least three uncomfortable questions."

Being simultaneously so close to laughter and so close to violence was an experience Bruce did not usually associate with sex. "I guess keeping score is in the spirit of the occasion," he said through his teeth. "Why are we having this conversation now?"

"Because if this show is one night only, I have a wishlist--" Clark paused, because Bruce had caught his breath and clenched his jaw, and betrayed his reaction in a dozen other ways, surely; Clark actually glanced down at Bruce's chest, into it, at his rabbiting heart. "To work through," Clark continued slowly, "while I can. But if it's not, I really just want to bring you off."

"What's on the wishlist?" At least Bruce's voice was level.

"Is that the deciding factor?"

"No. I just want to know." His fever-pitch need had subsided a little, but he could still feel the pounding of his pulse in his groin. "Personal reasons."

Clark had a gift for making his grin a little bashful even when that should have been impossible. "Answer first."

They looked at each other. Either the pause lasted longer, or Clark had even less patience, than Bruce realized; it felt like hardly a moment had passed when Clark said, "Come on, Bruce. We don't have to hold hands in front of the League, but don't pretend the genie fits back in the bottle."

"Asking me this when I'm desperate to get off is impressively manipulative, for you," Bruce said, finally.

"Thanks, Professor Backhand, I learned from the best," Clark said. Bruce stared at him, then let the corner of his mouth tilt up a little. Clark dropped his gaze and grinned his aw-shucks grin.

When he looked up, Bruce leaned in and kissed him. No ravenous sensuality this time, no breakneck exploration of new territory; not much more than a peck. He might kiss Clark like this in passing, if they had the kind of relationship in which kisses like that were possible. Clark closed his eyes and swayed into it a little, but didn't follow Bruce when he sat back. Bruce wet his lips.

He'd just felt like doing it, but let Clark think it was some last test if he wanted to.

"You'll just show up on the grounds with a boom box if I try to act like I haven't signed an indefinite-term sex agreement by sucking you off once," he said.

A smile bloomed on Clark's face. It would have simplified things for Bruce considerably if Clark were less radiant when he was happy. "That reference is a little old for me. You're lucky I didn't have any friends in high school." He kissed Bruce again, just a little longer, and pressed his hands into the insides of Bruce's thighs. His hands were each a maddeningly short distance from Bruce's cock, but thrusting against his grip was no use. Bruce knew that and tried anyway. "If you keep talking to me so pretty, I might make you hold my hand in front of the League after all."

"Is that on this wishlist?"

"You really?" Clark couldn't seem to stop smiling. This new flash of his teeth was a little disbelieving. "No, it isn't. I'm not telling you about the wishlist."

"We had a deal."

"Talk to my lawyer. The wishlist is nothing, it's -- what two people can get up to in an office until one of them -- uh, is too tired to--"

"Passes out," Bruce supplied.

"Your ceiling might have featured. I've got a better list."

"I'm listening."

Clark leaned into Bruce again, finally, Jesus, and released his thighs in favor of working his hands up Bruce's sides, pressing his thumbs into hips, ribs, shoulders. His bare hand was silent but the gloved one whispered against the wool of Bruce's waistcoat, the cotton of his shirt. More importantly: he wasn't restraining Bruce anymore, and Bruce was free to grab him and snug their bodies up against each other again. Some part of him reflected that after all that, Bruce deserved at least a proper handjob and not to rub himself off on Clark like they were both teenagers who'd barely discovered how a dick works; the rest of him was busy.

"I actually got the first thing on the list from you," Clark said, running his hands down Bruce's arms now and closing them around Bruce's wrists. His voice slowed and grew less confident as he went on, as saying whatever he was about to say to Bruce moved out of the realm of fancy and became something that might have consequences. Bruce's curiosity only sharpened. He was interested in learning why he needed his hands immobilized for this conversation, too. "It was back during the Darkseid business."

Oh, shit. Bruce went still but Clark took up the slack, bearing him down against the cleared surface of the desk in a long slow stretch that ended with Bruce's arms at full extension above his head.

"I told you about that dream because that information was relevant to stopping an interplanetary invasion," Bruce said, flat as ever, like they were arguing in the cave or on a rooftop and Clark hadn't just laid him out like an offering on Bruce's own altar. "There were four other people in the room."

"Yeah, Bruce, I was paying attention," Clark said. He left Bruce's wrists in the care of his gloved hand, hooked the other one behind Bruce's knee and hitched their bodies into alignment -- God, he'd been paying attention, earlier, to just what angle and pressure made Bruce want to jerk and buck and pull at him. Bruce clenched his fists and twisted against Clark's casual grip; the futility of it set his pulse jumping. "Trust me when I say I don't need you to tell me it's unprofessional. That's how I knew I was in trouble."

He'd been fucking right. He'd been right about their symmetrical denial and simultaneous failures. Clark had wanted him nearly as long as they'd been working together. It rattled Bruce's last defenses like a storm. And he couldn't even gloat about it properly, because Clark was bent over him, rocking their hips together, and Bruce was pressing up into it and groaning, just past the edge of words. It felt like he'd been hard for years, waiting for Clark's improbable body and low sweet baritone to roll against him and through him and bring him here.

"No, maybe I knew I was in trouble when I got the next one," Clark said into his ear, "which was when you were testing that new gliding rig." Clark's voice was even and conversational. He'd never seemed winded earlier, so it stood to reason he wouldn't seem winded now, but Bruce wanted his furtive little gasps, the shuddering tension of his orgasm; he wanted Clark to come with him, on him, God, soon. "I wanted to help you, which would have been redundant, and now you just use that thing all the time. But I wanted to cat-and-mouse you all over Gotham. They're all kind of like that -- they're impossible. Roads not taken."

Clark popped the last of the buttons off Bruce's waistcoat with his free hand; they bounced and rolled away across the desk. He ran his palm up Bruce's side beneath it, over the rumpled topology of his dress shirt. Bruce's cock pulsed against Clark's through the layers of silk and wool that separated them; he thought he might by now have soaked through his pants, too, and Clark would be able to feel it on his bare erection, how wet he got when he was teased and denied. This suit was a loss.

"You hit me with the Batmobile and I rip off the canopy, but you don't stand up, so I have to drag you out." Clark's lips just barely brushed Bruc's ear, and his hand traveled up Bruce's chest, past his thundering heart. "I've captured the Bat who's eluded me for so long and I pull off the cowl to see who's underneath."

Bruce bit his lip hard to keep quiet. The original vision, the desert, the ambush, the terrifying dictatorial Superman -- that had been Barry's doing, not a dream at all. Clark knew that. What Bruce hadn't told him was that his own sleeping mind had cannibalized it for parts like all the other horrors he'd seen. Its terrible possibilities had dogged him into his real dreams, and Bruce had continued to make contingencies, to plan, to half-expect, even though he knew Clark now and knew that future had been averted. Clark's motivation in the dream had had to evolve as their circumstances changed, and each time it had, it cut closer to the bone: Clark just wanted Bruce. He just wanted Bruce for himself.

Or maybe: Bruce was already wholly overcome by Clark, and the dream wasn't about that future anymore, if it ever had been, but about the two of them. About Bruce twisting uselessly on a chain while Clark came nearer and nearer and finally took the heart from him.

"The Clock King," Clark said, then hesitated; his hips thrust and his breath fluttered against Bruce's ear. Oh God there it was, his relentless voice and metronomic rhythm just starting to falter. He was pressed hard and hot against Bruce's hip and Bruc needed to touch him, but he held Bruce down pitilessly with Bruce's own glove and could not be resisted. "The Clock King," Clark went on, "throws Bruce Wayne off a building, and I have to save him."

His hand ran up Bruce's shoulder, the nape of his neck, the back of his head. Bruce was a helpless moaning arch under him, legs locked around his hips.

"There's another way they're all like," Clark said. "They all mean the same thing."

Clark curled his fingers slowly into a fist in Bruce's hair, and pinned Bruce's head down against the surface of the desk. He kissed Bruce's temple and breathed the last words into his ear.

"I caught you, so I get to have you."

This was precisely the worst moment for Bruce to come. He did it anyway.

He was almost completely constrained: head pinned, arms pinned, hips pinned; cock trapped inside his clothing and between Clark's body and his own. So it didn't matter how he thrust or writhed, how violent or abandoned he was, as his orgasm flooded his boxers and shook the breath from his lungs. Clark could contain all of it. He held Bruce down easily through the long wet pounding rush of it, and as it petered out he said into Bruce's jaw, "Please."

The catch in Clark's voice sent one last thrill of pleasure straight down Bruce's spine to his cock. Clark relinquished one of Bruce's hands and Bruce reached down at once to shove it into his own pants.

"Bruce, come on --" Clark said, but cut off with a harsh, surprised noise when Bruce withdrew his hand again and closed his now-slick fingers around Clark's cock. "Oh yes," he said instead as Bruce stroked him, "God, oh, please--"

Clark was still holding him down by the hair and one wrist; he pressed his forehead against Bruce's temple and took fast trembling breaths against his jaw as he fucked the circle of Bruce's fingers. Just before he came again, he hiked Bruce farther away from the edge of the desk. His own feet remained on the floor, and Bruce couldn't tell what Clark thought he was accomplishing until Clark went rigid against him and gasped against his ear.

The first thrust of his orgasm met the edge of Bruce's desk instead of Bruce's pelvis, and the desk, an L-shaped mahogany edifice weighing close to half a ton, skidded a few inches across the floor on its locked wheels. The second nudged it nearly up against the wall on its far side. Beyond that, Clark had it under control and was nearly motionless, even when Clark got his hand back on the wet jerking length of him and stroked him through the rest of it. He'd let go of Bruce's wrist at some point, maybe fumbling, maybe afraid of crushing it; Bruce slipped his fingers into the mess of Clark's hair and kissed his ear, his forehead, and finally his mouth when he raised his head.

Clark seemed dazed; Bruce's bones felt liquefied. They kissed lazily, in long slow bouts, and between them just breathed with each other, foreheads touching. Clark's hand came up and stroked Bruce's jaw, smoothed the hair at his temple. In a moment Bruce would shift his weight and the situation in his pants would become intolerable and the rest of the world would rush back in, but for this sliver of time he need only luxuriate in the comfortable weight of Clark and in his own body totally unraveled by afterglow, and kiss him, and kiss him, and kiss him.