~”On the day they are ordered out to battle, your soldiers may weep,”~ -Sun Tzu
Everything.
Stops.
A handful of heaving silences, each stiller and sadder than the last, linger. Bruce glares down coldly at him and Clark feels burning in his chest and a frightened species of awe. He hears himself swallowing convulsively.
He can hear what’s coming, too. He can already hear ‘Nobody to fuck in Metropolis, son?’ on Bruce’s breath and he curls his shoulders in as though Bruce is a battering ram, hunches up as though that will protect him.
But, “That’s what I thought,” Bruce murmurs, strangely gentle. “Good. Good, Kal.”
Clark is making a noise. He shivers and over them he hears his own keening.
“I don’t want to fuck Gotham, no, Bruce-”, head shaking wildly.
Bruce is stroking Clark’s hair and his face, wiping away tears, breathing the meaning of “Dammit, Clark,” and the shape of ‘sorry’ into Clark’s hair and mouth, silently, eyes as wide as Clark’s feel.
“You need a new hobby,” Bruce pronounces solemnly.
Clark shakes and cries and leans into him, and Bruce touches him, and says,
“Good,” and “There you go,” and best of all, “That’s it—Gotham fucks us all; cry, son,” and Clark cannot stop bawling.
Bruce pauses and says “Are-you-tapping-out,” so fast and low that it takes a couple of seconds for the sounds to register as more than noise in Clark’s mind. Clark can’t remember if he did or not, but he answers.
“No, Bruce,” he moans, sobbing, still hard. Bruce kisses him, long swimmingly deep kisses that relax and put him back inside his skin; puts hands on him and turns the world back into something he can comprehend and feel.
“Go ahead and cry, Kal.”
He’s coaxed with lips and strong, firm hands and he is known and he blinks dazedly up at Bruce when he realizes that Bruce has begun already, and his senses are being urged back up.
He feels disconnected so he reaches, hollow—
-and gets deflected with purposeful ease and a slap on his wrist that’s more push than impact.
“Hands, Kal.” Bruce doesn’t want to be touched, either, it seems.
And Bruce kisses with his dark eyes open, pushes off the floor, just as assured and bold in ascent as Clark. His left leg tangles, locks with Clark’s right as Bruce stretches out rangy and long against Clark; his right hand slides up Clark’s left arm and around underneath, locks, and it’s an embrace, and Bruce shifts and the muscles of his ribcage ripple and his hip presses and oh, alright, Clark can do this. His arm fits perfectly around Bruce’s back and his hand—Clark twitches but,
A hissed curse and, Yes you can, yes - do it, nodded into the base of his throat and Clark blinks heavy eyelids open, senses saturated.
Oh.
His hand rests light behind Bruce’s right lung, fingers shifting restlessly across a cold smooth bolt of scar tissue and the uneven ridges of healed bone. Once, someone somewhere fractured four of Bruce’s ribs and the thought makes the air rush out of Clark.
Bruce is staring at him, eyes gleaming in the dark. Clark doesn’t know what to do with what he finds there, except flatten his hand against that ribbon of tight skin. His other hand slides down Bruce’s side, glides over heated skin, skimming pocked seams and flexing muscle.
Clark can’t find his equilibrium, but he knows what the floor looks like, and that is not it.
—is Bruce really taking him to the arc of the Cavern—
—where it squirms with the movement of roosting bats—
—a wave of angry chirps and warm musk avoiding them and—
How.
How is Bruce indulging him?
Clark can’t.
Can’t do anything but let himself have this because even if Bruce never speaks to him again, he’s giving Clark this—his sheer vitality, one hundred percent of his attention and Clark so rarely gets what he wants; Clark had never dreamed—and he feels so young—and it’s dangerous.
It is dangerous, this thing—it’s reckless and negligent and unsafe, and he thinks Bruce is cursing the both of them in silence, but Bruce—Bruce speaks Kryptonian and if Clark never gets the chance again in his life, at least he’ll have said it once and meant it—
There are …
There are …
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~”On the day they are ordered out to battle, your soldiers may weep,”~ -Sun Tzu
Everything.
Stops.
A handful of heaving silences, each stiller and sadder than the last, linger. Bruce glares down coldly at him and Clark feels burning in his chest and a frightened species of awe. He hears himself swallowing convulsively.
He can hear what’s coming, too. He can already hear ‘Nobody to fuck in Metropolis, son?’ on Bruce’s breath and he curls his shoulders in as though Bruce is a battering ram, hunches up as though that will protect him.
But, “That’s what I thought,” Bruce murmurs, strangely gentle. “Good. Good, Kal.”
Clark is making a noise. He shivers and over them he hears his own keening.
“I don’t want to fuck Gotham, no, Bruce-”, head shaking wildly.
Bruce is stroking Clark’s hair and his face, wiping away tears, breathing the meaning of “Dammit, Clark,” and the shape of ‘sorry’ into Clark’s hair and mouth, silently, eyes as wide as Clark’s feel.
“You need a new hobby,” Bruce pronounces solemnly.
Clark shakes and cries and leans into him, and Bruce touches him, and says,
“Good,” and “There you go,” and best of all, “That’s it—Gotham fucks us all; cry, son,” and Clark cannot stop bawling.
Bruce pauses and says “Are-you-tapping-out,” so fast and low that it takes a couple of seconds for the sounds to register as more than noise in Clark’s mind. Clark can’t remember if he did or not, but he answers.
“No, Bruce,” he moans, sobbing, still hard. Bruce kisses him, long swimmingly deep kisses that relax and put him back inside his skin; puts hands on him and turns the world back into something he can comprehend and feel.
“Go ahead and cry, Kal.”
He’s coaxed with lips and strong, firm hands and he is known and he blinks dazedly up at Bruce when he realizes that Bruce has begun already, and his senses are being urged back up.
He feels disconnected so he reaches, hollow—
-and gets deflected with purposeful ease and a slap on his wrist that’s more push than impact.
“Hands, Kal.” Bruce doesn’t want to be touched, either, it seems.
And Bruce kisses with his dark eyes open, pushes off the floor, just as assured and bold in ascent as Clark. His left leg tangles, locks with Clark’s right as Bruce stretches out rangy and long against Clark; his right hand slides up Clark’s left arm and around underneath, locks, and it’s an embrace, and Bruce shifts and the muscles of his ribcage ripple and his hip presses and oh, alright, Clark can do this. His arm fits perfectly around Bruce’s back and his hand—Clark twitches but,
A hissed curse and, Yes you can, yes - do it, nodded into the base of his throat and Clark blinks heavy eyelids open, senses saturated.
Oh.
His hand rests light behind Bruce’s right lung, fingers shifting restlessly across a cold smooth bolt of scar tissue and the uneven ridges of healed bone. Once, someone somewhere fractured four of Bruce’s ribs and the thought makes the air rush out of Clark.
Bruce is staring at him, eyes gleaming in the dark. Clark doesn’t know what to do with what he finds there, except flatten his hand against that ribbon of tight skin. His other hand slides down Bruce’s side, glides over heated skin, skimming pocked seams and flexing muscle.
Clark can’t find his equilibrium, but he knows what the floor looks like, and that is not it.
—is Bruce really taking him to the arc of the Cavern—
—where it squirms with the movement of roosting bats—
—a wave of angry chirps and warm musk avoiding them and—
How.
How is Bruce indulging him?
Clark can’t.
Can’t do anything but let himself have this because even if Bruce never speaks to him again, he’s giving Clark this—his sheer vitality, one hundred percent of his attention and Clark so rarely gets what he wants; Clark had never dreamed—and he feels so young—and it’s dangerous.
It is dangerous, this thing—it’s reckless and negligent and unsafe, and he thinks Bruce is cursing the both of them in silence, but Bruce—Bruce speaks Kryptonian and if Clark never gets the chance again in his life, at least he’ll have said it once and meant it—
There are …
There are …
<Your regard is my foundation. I esteem you, Bruce.>
Bruce’s hips rocket forward and he gasps—he gasps!—into Clark’s mouth, tasting of oranges and metal—
Adrenaline and fear.
“Kal-” not the low sweet drawl of Bruce Wayne nor the rough growl of the voice modulator; a demand from some raw, feral deep place between. It feels like reward and rebuke, rolled together into one barely restrained syllable. Clark doesn’t breathe, forgets the illusion completely in his fascination, stares openly, because Bruce wants him to see this; brushes a finger lightly over the delicate webbing between Bruce’s thumb and index finger, feels transgressive and Bruce snarls as if he’s wounded, rhythm arrested.
This is a tragedy, Clark thinks.
This is a tragedy. Stupid, reckless, dangerous.
Maybe it’s always been this way between them and maybe Clark is just seeing it for the first time, but a train-wreck is running through Bruce and Clark can’t look away.
Bruce comes like that, upside down against the ceiling of the Bat Cave with a death-grip on Clark and Clark’s name on his lips as though nothing could be easier. Clark watches him with eyes that feel far too wide for far too long, hearing the slick friction of Bruce working in him and the flutter of countless wings as pleasure hits him low and hard like a gauntlet—
“Situational context,” Bruce mutters, (then something else that Clark only half-hears in that second but will retrieve later) between the uneven span of Cavern and Clark,
“Now.”
—legs twitching enough to warrant the quiet warning, frozen in wordless static, in torturous stillness, with the tinny wash of magnetospheric waves popping in his ears like soap bubbles, the racing beat of his own pulse in his right wrist where Bruce’s fingers are wrapped tight and sure—
Clark blinks violently to keep his sight clear, eyelashes a blur, tracking as every detail sears into his memory; and it’s taken years for him to learn this, how not to be unwillingly destructive, but he knows his eyes are glowing; the pressure in his skull is incredible and it feels as if he hasn’t learned a damned thing. It feels precarious, it feels like impending disaster, but Bruce calms him, and Bruce breathes into his mouth and whispers,
“Yes.”
Yes, Bruce.
Bruce drinks Clark down; he never breaks eye contact. His thumb strokes up and down behind Clark’s ear, his palm cups the small bones at the top of Clark’s spine and Bruce’s covetous gaze darts over Clark’s face.
Yes.
Admiration.
This is the warmth Clark has missed since he woke cold to his core.
If Bruce finds what he’s looking for, he doesn’t act it.
~”[Like water,] the way is to avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak.”~ -Sun Tzu
There is a careful silence for long moments—Clark’s mind processing so quickly, subjectively an eternity to inhale, watch and feel his lover, and no, he doesn’t think a ‘Gosh, Mister Wayne’ is going to do anything but make what’s coming worse, but a ‘Jesus, Bruce’ can’t hurt—and Bruce’s body sounds like he’s grappling in the streets, like he’s fighting for his life and Clark wants, and in the space between what Clark thinks and what he’s opening his mouth to say—
“Down.” Bruce enunciates, tapping the landscape of Clark’s abdominal muscles firmly with two fingers. Inestimably less effort, and all the same compulsion as a Kryptonite spear. The heat banked in Clark’s head ebbs into near unbearable lucidity.
Full stop.
(Time.)
Clark doesn’t appreciate the patrician tone in Bruce’s voice, there is no stopping the blush—because yes, they are equals and no, they are not—but it isn’t the hill Clark wants this to die on—and so Clark opts to say nothing, allows the density of his body to settle, allows the Earth to pull him smoothly back to her surface. Back down to Batman’s floor.
No. Bruce’s floor.
Clark doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands when Bruce’s forehead, then briefly his lips, brush Clark’s temple. He doesn’t move a muscle as deft hands smooth down the sides of his neck and pause fleetingly on his upper chest before slipping down and away, as he listens to Bruce breathe and struggle with his demons. He already knows what wound Bruce is trying to staunch.
Please, Bruce, he thinks, please don’t.
Clark presses his face into the corded muscle of Bruce’s collarbone, silent, and listens to the hypnotic susurration of blood rushing through Bruce’s body, dares to contemplate touching the vulnerable nape of Bruce’s neck, thinks about Bruce allowing his caress.
Surely he could just…hug Bruce? Once?
Then he’s hesitated too long once more, because that pounding heart-beat is unexpectedly, eerily flat, unnaturally steady, and Clark-
Clark hates the artifice, hates the hypocrisy of Bruce’s ninja bullshit, and it’s irritating that he can’t help but feel humbled at the inexplicable that Bruce is capable of all at the same time. He forces himself into a loose sprawl, unsure if his checked hand movement even registered, sees Bruce’s pupils contract sharply and lifts his chin.
He ’s a grown man and he refuses to feel like he just reached into the cookie jar.
He realizes that it’s safe to stop blinking. Makes himself breathe in, and out—like a man Bruce could live with—even though it isn’t oxygen that he needs. He feels another bead of moisture slip down the line of his spine and goddamn.
Bruce extricates himself smoothly, teeth hidden behind tight lips, draws out - without another sound - and stands. He shifts his weight and startlingly, Clark can hear bone and cartilage popping and settling. He’s starting to feel as if he’s hit his staring limit for the night, but he and Bruce obviously aren’t on the same page. Clark finds himself frowning deeply, resigned. Bruce only has about two inches on Clark, but his posture makes that gap seem closer to mountainous. Clark wonders how transparent he is; if Bruce knows how intimidating he is, for how many reasons, rooted there so substantially when Clark’s entire world has crumbled, and of course he does.
Of course he does; Bruce knows how to use all of his weapons.
Bruce needs every weapon, and if he can’t find one, he’ll damn well make one.
Clark feels the dust and sweat heavy in his curls, so he tips his head back and eyes Bruce from the safety of his peripheral vision. His breath moves no air. He doesn’t last long and when he looks up, exasperated, Bruce is still watching him, mouth an unforgiving slant. There is no surprise, no emotion Clark can decipher in his eyes. Bruce is cataloging his responses, cataloging him with clinical detachment. What has Clark done, for Bruce to want to make him feel so small? Clark’s not in the least bit interested in asking.
What does he see.
What is he looking for.
Clark sits there on his cape, leaned back on his hands, and he thinks about it.
Re: FILL: Position Awareness 7/?
Everything.
Stops.
A handful of heaving silences, each stiller and sadder than the last, linger. Bruce glares down coldly at him and Clark feels burning in his chest and a frightened species of awe. He hears himself swallowing convulsively.
He can hear what’s coming, too. He can already hear ‘Nobody to fuck in Metropolis, son?’ on Bruce’s breath and he curls his shoulders in as though Bruce is a battering ram, hunches up as though that will protect him.
But, “That’s what I thought,” Bruce murmurs, strangely gentle. “Good. Good, Kal.”
Clark is making a noise. He shivers and over them he hears his own keening.
“I don’t want to fuck Gotham, no, Bruce-”, head shaking wildly.
Bruce is stroking Clark’s hair and his face, wiping away tears, breathing the meaning of “Dammit, Clark,” and the shape of ‘sorry’ into Clark’s hair and mouth, silently, eyes as wide as Clark’s feel.
“You need a new hobby,” Bruce pronounces solemnly.
Clark shakes and cries and leans into him, and Bruce touches him, and says,
“Good,” and “There you go,” and best of all, “That’s it—Gotham fucks us all; cry, son,” and Clark cannot stop bawling.
Bruce pauses and says “Are-you-tapping-out,” so fast and low that it takes a couple of seconds for the sounds to register as more than noise in Clark’s mind. Clark can’t remember if he did or not, but he answers.
“No, Bruce,” he moans, sobbing, still hard. Bruce kisses him, long swimmingly deep kisses that relax and put him back inside his skin; puts hands on him and turns the world back into something he can comprehend and feel.
“Go ahead and cry, Kal.”
He’s coaxed with lips and strong, firm hands and he is known and he blinks dazedly up at Bruce when he realizes that Bruce has begun already, and his senses are being urged back up.
He feels disconnected so he reaches, hollow—
-and gets deflected with purposeful ease and a slap on his wrist that’s more push than impact.
“Hands, Kal.” Bruce doesn’t want to be touched, either, it seems.
And Bruce kisses with his dark eyes open, pushes off the floor, just as assured and bold in ascent as Clark. His left leg tangles, locks with Clark’s right as Bruce stretches out rangy and long against Clark; his right hand slides up Clark’s left arm and around underneath, locks, and it’s an embrace, and Bruce shifts and the muscles of his ribcage ripple and his hip presses and oh, alright, Clark can do this. His arm fits perfectly around Bruce’s back and his hand—Clark twitches but,
A hissed curse and, Yes you can, yes - do it, nodded into the base of his throat and Clark blinks heavy eyelids open, senses saturated.
Oh.
His hand rests light behind Bruce’s right lung, fingers shifting restlessly across a cold smooth bolt of scar tissue and the uneven ridges of healed bone. Once, someone somewhere fractured four of Bruce’s ribs and the thought makes the air rush out of Clark.
Bruce is staring at him, eyes gleaming in the dark. Clark doesn’t know what to do with what he finds there, except flatten his hand against that ribbon of tight skin. His other hand slides down Bruce’s side, glides over heated skin, skimming pocked seams and flexing muscle.
Clark can’t find his equilibrium, but he knows what the floor looks like, and that is not it.
—is Bruce really taking him to the arc of the Cavern—
—where it squirms with the movement of roosting bats—
—a wave of angry chirps and warm musk avoiding them and—
How.
How is Bruce indulging him?
Clark can’t.
Can’t do anything but let himself have this because even if Bruce never speaks to him again, he’s giving Clark this—his sheer vitality, one hundred percent of his attention and Clark so rarely gets what he wants; Clark had never dreamed—and he feels so young—and it’s dangerous.
It is dangerous, this thing—it’s reckless and negligent and unsafe, and he thinks Bruce is cursing the both of them in silence, but Bruce—Bruce speaks Kryptonian and if Clark never gets the chance again in his life, at least he’ll have said it once and meant it—
There are …
There are …
Everything.
Stops.
A handful of heaving silences, each stiller and sadder than the last, linger. Bruce glares down coldly at him and Clark feels burning in his chest and a frightened species of awe. He hears himself swallowing convulsively.
He can hear what’s coming, too. He can already hear ‘Nobody to fuck in Metropolis, son?’ on Bruce’s breath and he curls his shoulders in as though Bruce is a battering ram, hunches up as though that will protect him.
But, “That’s what I thought,” Bruce murmurs, strangely gentle. “Good. Good, Kal.”
Clark is making a noise. He shivers and over them he hears his own keening.
“I don’t want to fuck Gotham, no, Bruce-”, head shaking wildly.
Bruce is stroking Clark’s hair and his face, wiping away tears, breathing the meaning of “Dammit, Clark,” and the shape of ‘sorry’ into Clark’s hair and mouth, silently, eyes as wide as Clark’s feel.
“You need a new hobby,” Bruce pronounces solemnly.
Clark shakes and cries and leans into him, and Bruce touches him, and says,
“Good,” and “There you go,” and best of all, “That’s it—Gotham fucks us all; cry, son,” and Clark cannot stop bawling.
Bruce pauses and says “Are-you-tapping-out,” so fast and low that it takes a couple of seconds for the sounds to register as more than noise in Clark’s mind. Clark can’t remember if he did or not, but he answers.
“No, Bruce,” he moans, sobbing, still hard. Bruce kisses him, long swimmingly deep kisses that relax and put him back inside his skin; puts hands on him and turns the world back into something he can comprehend and feel.
“Go ahead and cry, Kal.”
He’s coaxed with lips and strong, firm hands and he is known and he blinks dazedly up at Bruce when he realizes that Bruce has begun already, and his senses are being urged back up.
He feels disconnected so he reaches, hollow—
-and gets deflected with purposeful ease and a slap on his wrist that’s more push than impact.
“Hands, Kal.” Bruce doesn’t want to be touched, either, it seems.
And Bruce kisses with his dark eyes open, pushes off the floor, just as assured and bold in ascent as Clark. His left leg tangles, locks with Clark’s right as Bruce stretches out rangy and long against Clark; his right hand slides up Clark’s left arm and around underneath, locks, and it’s an embrace, and Bruce shifts and the muscles of his ribcage ripple and his hip presses and oh, alright, Clark can do this. His arm fits perfectly around Bruce’s back and his hand—Clark twitches but,
A hissed curse and, Yes you can, yes - do it, nodded into the base of his throat and Clark blinks heavy eyelids open, senses saturated.
Oh.
His hand rests light behind Bruce’s right lung, fingers shifting restlessly across a cold smooth bolt of scar tissue and the uneven ridges of healed bone. Once, someone somewhere fractured four of Bruce’s ribs and the thought makes the air rush out of Clark.
Bruce is staring at him, eyes gleaming in the dark. Clark doesn’t know what to do with what he finds there, except flatten his hand against that ribbon of tight skin. His other hand slides down Bruce’s side, glides over heated skin, skimming pocked seams and flexing muscle.
Clark can’t find his equilibrium, but he knows what the floor looks like, and that is not it.
—is Bruce really taking him to the arc of the Cavern—
—where it squirms with the movement of roosting bats—
—a wave of angry chirps and warm musk avoiding them and—
How.
How is Bruce indulging him?
Clark can’t.
Can’t do anything but let himself have this because even if Bruce never speaks to him again, he’s giving Clark this—his sheer vitality, one hundred percent of his attention and Clark so rarely gets what he wants; Clark had never dreamed—and he feels so young—and it’s dangerous.
It is dangerous, this thing—it’s reckless and negligent and unsafe, and he thinks Bruce is cursing the both of them in silence, but Bruce—Bruce speaks Kryptonian and if Clark never gets the chance again in his life, at least he’ll have said it once and meant it—
There are …
There are …
<Your regard is my foundation. I esteem you, Bruce.>
Bruce’s hips rocket forward and he gasps—he gasps!—into Clark’s mouth, tasting of oranges and metal—
Adrenaline and fear.
“Kal-” not the low sweet drawl of Bruce Wayne nor the rough growl of the voice modulator; a demand from some raw, feral deep place between. It feels like reward and rebuke, rolled together into one barely restrained syllable. Clark doesn’t breathe, forgets the illusion completely in his fascination, stares openly, because Bruce wants him to see this; brushes a finger lightly over the delicate webbing between Bruce’s thumb and index finger, feels transgressive and Bruce snarls as if he’s wounded, rhythm arrested.
This is a tragedy, Clark thinks.
This is a tragedy. Stupid, reckless, dangerous.
Maybe it’s always been this way between them and maybe Clark is just seeing it for the first time, but a train-wreck is running through Bruce and Clark can’t look away.
Bruce comes like that, upside down against the ceiling of the Bat Cave with a death-grip on Clark and Clark’s name on his lips as though nothing could be easier. Clark watches him with eyes that feel far too wide for far too long, hearing the slick friction of Bruce working in him and the flutter of countless wings as pleasure hits him low and hard like a gauntlet—
“Situational context,” Bruce mutters, (then something else that Clark only half-hears in that second but will retrieve later) between the uneven span of Cavern and Clark,
“Now.”
—legs twitching enough to warrant the quiet warning, frozen in wordless static, in torturous stillness, with the tinny wash of magnetospheric waves popping in his ears like soap bubbles, the racing beat of his own pulse in his right wrist where Bruce’s fingers are wrapped tight and sure—
Clark blinks violently to keep his sight clear, eyelashes a blur, tracking as every detail sears into his memory; and it’s taken years for him to learn this, how not to be unwillingly destructive, but he knows his eyes are glowing; the pressure in his skull is incredible and it feels as if he hasn’t learned a damned thing. It feels precarious, it feels like impending disaster, but Bruce calms him, and Bruce breathes into his mouth and whispers,
“Yes.”
Yes, Bruce.
Bruce drinks Clark down; he never breaks eye contact. His thumb strokes up and down behind Clark’s ear, his palm cups the small bones at the top of Clark’s spine and Bruce’s covetous gaze darts over Clark’s face.
Yes.
Admiration.
This is the warmth Clark has missed since he woke cold to his core.
If Bruce finds what he’s looking for, he doesn’t act it.
~”[Like water,] the way is to avoid what is strong and strike at what is weak.”~ -Sun Tzu
There is a careful silence for long moments—Clark’s mind processing so quickly, subjectively an eternity to inhale, watch and feel his lover, and no, he doesn’t think a ‘Gosh, Mister Wayne’ is going to do anything but make what’s coming worse, but a ‘Jesus, Bruce’ can’t hurt—and Bruce’s body sounds like he’s grappling in the streets, like he’s fighting for his life and Clark wants, and in the space between what Clark thinks and what he’s opening his mouth to say—
“Down.” Bruce enunciates, tapping the landscape of Clark’s abdominal muscles firmly with two fingers. Inestimably less effort, and all the same compulsion as a Kryptonite spear. The heat banked in Clark’s head ebbs into near unbearable lucidity.
Full stop.
(Time.)
Clark doesn’t appreciate the patrician tone in Bruce’s voice, there is no stopping the blush—because yes, they are equals and no, they are not—but it isn’t the hill Clark wants this to die on—and so Clark opts to say nothing, allows the density of his body to settle, allows the Earth to pull him smoothly back to her surface. Back down to Batman’s floor.
No. Bruce’s floor.
Clark doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands when Bruce’s forehead, then briefly his lips, brush Clark’s temple. He doesn’t move a muscle as deft hands smooth down the sides of his neck and pause fleetingly on his upper chest before slipping down and away, as he listens to Bruce breathe and struggle with his demons. He already knows what wound Bruce is trying to staunch.
Please, Bruce, he thinks, please don’t.
Clark presses his face into the corded muscle of Bruce’s collarbone, silent, and listens to the hypnotic susurration of blood rushing through Bruce’s body, dares to contemplate touching the vulnerable nape of Bruce’s neck, thinks about Bruce allowing his caress.
Surely he could just…hug Bruce? Once?
Then he’s hesitated too long once more, because that pounding heart-beat is unexpectedly, eerily flat, unnaturally steady, and Clark-
Clark hates the artifice, hates the hypocrisy of Bruce’s ninja bullshit, and it’s irritating that he can’t help but feel humbled at the inexplicable that Bruce is capable of all at the same time. He forces himself into a loose sprawl, unsure if his checked hand movement even registered, sees Bruce’s pupils contract sharply and lifts his chin.
He ’s a grown man and he refuses to feel like he just reached into the cookie jar.
He realizes that it’s safe to stop blinking. Makes himself breathe in, and out—like a man Bruce could live with—even though it isn’t oxygen that he needs. He feels another bead of moisture slip down the line of his spine and goddamn.
Bruce extricates himself smoothly, teeth hidden behind tight lips, draws out - without another sound - and stands. He shifts his weight and startlingly, Clark can hear bone and cartilage popping and settling. He’s starting to feel as if he’s hit his staring limit for the night, but he and Bruce obviously aren’t on the same page. Clark finds himself frowning deeply, resigned. Bruce only has about two inches on Clark, but his posture makes that gap seem closer to mountainous. Clark wonders how transparent he is; if Bruce knows how intimidating he is, for how many reasons, rooted there so substantially when Clark’s entire world has crumbled, and of course he does.
Of course he does; Bruce knows how to use all of his weapons.
Bruce needs every weapon, and if he can’t find one, he’ll damn well make one.
Clark feels the dust and sweat heavy in his curls, so he tips his head back and eyes Bruce from the safety of his peripheral vision. His breath moves no air. He doesn’t last long and when he looks up, exasperated, Bruce is still watching him, mouth an unforgiving slant. There is no surprise, no emotion Clark can decipher in his eyes. Bruce is cataloging his responses, cataloging him with clinical detachment. What has Clark done, for Bruce to want to make him feel so small? Clark’s not in the least bit interested in asking.
What does he see.
What is he looking for.
Clark sits there on his cape, leaned back on his hands, and he thinks about it.
One of them has definitely broken a Rule.