/o\



Bruce goes still against Clark's mouth, under his hands. The wrong reaction, of course: he needs to—he should shove Clark away, he shouldn't let this—

Clark makes a ragged sound in the back of his throat, brings a hand up to settle it tentatively along the line of Bruce's jaw. He's a wild mix of things, a flare of unreasoning joy almost enough to overpower the unsteady desperation, sick swooping uncertainty. He knows Bruce is thinking about pushing him off, making him stop. He's braced for it, ready.

(—because this is how it always works, for Clark: there's always a price. He always has to prove himself, kill or die or bleed—something, there's always something, he never gets what he wants without paying for it. He was always going to have to give this up. He was always going to have to stand here and ask the box to tear the best thing he's ever had out of him by the roots, just to get Bruce to listen to him—)

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut and doesn't move. It's not that he wants to lose this; it's not that he's ever going to regret securing himself the memory of Clark's mouth against his, the soft scrape of Clark's fingertips across his cheek, all Clark's warm strength pressed up so close against him. But he—he can't reconcile this with—it's not possible, that Clark should—

"Bruce."

Bruce blinks, and his whole field of vision is Clark's blurred face, half-focused slant of nose, the plane from cheekbone to jaw, the tender curve of—is Clark smiling at him?

(Strange, that he hadn't noticed Clark had stopped kissing him. But then Clark feels the same inside right now as he had with his mouth on Bruce. As if it doesn't make a difference where he is or what he's doing; as if—

—as if it's something that will last—)

"Bruce," Clark murmurs again, almost against Bruce's mouth, and then one of those steady warm hands slides just far enough to curl around the nape of Bruce's neck, tip him in and bring their foreheads together. "I know you're going to be shocked to hear it, but it has to be said. You're overthinking this."

And Bruce can't help but huff out a bitter little laugh, even though he—he can tell it isn't just a joke. Clark's saying it with wry affection, warmth, understanding, sorrow; with perfect comprehension of what Bruce is thinking and why, everything about him that makes it so difficult for him to let this happen. He must have made Clark do this, nothing else makes any sense—

—but then he'd thought it himself, hadn't he, that Clark seemed the same in every other way? Clark smooths his fingers along the line of Bruce's jaw and draws the memory forward at the same time, the moment where Bruce had acknowledged his influence couldn't have altered Clark so terribly if Martha hadn't noticed.

Doesn't disprove anything. Inconclusive.

Doesn't prove anything either, Clark insists, pressing closer, burning hotter; blue-shadowed ice and furious red light, and when has three hundred feet of ice ever stopped Superman? Let's start small: I showed you, didn't I, how long I've been thinking about this? That memory—you've never even considered the possibility. You've never imagined me lying awake at night longing for you. You couldn't have put that in my head—

And Bruce shudders half out of Clark's grip, as if in the half-hearted hope of escape from the inevitable conclusion, because—no, he hadn't; he'd never let himself. He can't deny it and he can't pretend otherwise. Clark can already tell.

The fierce wave of Clark's insistence catches Bruce up, lifts him off his feet, and it's not just insistence but desperation, too. Clark wants him to believe this, wants it so badly it aches, and Bruce would never have imagined that, either. And for a split second—

—if it really were possible—

Bruce hears himself make a small sharp sound. His hands have been hovering, half-suspended, extended toward Clark without touching him, held back; but now he lets himself tug Clark in even closer, grip his jaw and tilt, catch that generous mouth and drag his teeth against the soft open lower lip.

Clark gasps and surges against him—inside and out, and for a moment Bruce can't tell which sensations are where. The rush of delight, hot bright desire, hope and pleasure and shy gladness, is just as present as the solid lines of Clark's thighs against his, their bumping knees, Clark's fingers curling through Bruce's hair.

You believe me yet?

Bruce tenses helplessly, feels his hands tighten, and Christ, he wishes he could shake the certainty that Clark is even now slipping through his fingers—

No. The answer is unmissable, it's all of him, his whole mind brimming over with it; but it sounds soft as a sigh even to him, hardly the thunderous graven commandment it should be.

But you want to. You want to, and Clark smiles against Bruce's mouth, laughs, so sudden Bruce ends up just licking the bright line of his teeth for a second.

"That's okay," Clark says aloud, gentle, and he keeps his hands where they are and presses one kiss, another, to Bruce's cheek. "That's okay. All right? It's okay."

Bruce swallows and hangs on, and doesn't tell him he's wrong.


*


Clark doesn't speed them up the stairs.

Bruce finds himself obscurely grateful for it. It gives him a little more time to—to try to figure out how to allow this to happen, how to permit something so nonsensical and incomprehensible to carry him along without pinning it down and forcing it to explain itself to his satisfaction.

(Causes, effects, the chains that connect one to the other and each individual factor making up the links—and it's so dangerous not to know what they are, to let them go unrecognized and undefined, to relinquish any hope of controlling the outcome—)

The first few times Clark catches him on a landing and pulls him close, Bruce has to fight not to shy away from his hands, his mouth, all the unfamiliar blazing-hot emotion lighting him up from the inside-out. But he can feel other things alongside it.

Clark is afraid, too. Afraid of asking too much, being too much—wanting more than it's right to expect, too alien and too needy and too desperate—and he doesn't want Bruce to know it, doesn't want to burden him with it, but can't stop whispering it into Bruce's head anyway.

It only makes Bruce kiss him harder. By the time they reach the house, they've stopped bothering to try to take their hands off each other, stumbling up the stairs with greedy hands shoved up each other's shirts, mouths hot and tender. Bruce yanks at Clark's belt, tugs it free with a clank of protest from the buckle, and Clark gasps into his mouth and then sucks sharply on his tongue, dragging an uneven sound from the back of Bruce's throat.

And fuck, it's—it's Clark's tongue, too, Clark's throat—Bruce's belt, someone's open hand skimming the dip of someone else's back and damned if Bruce knows whose. There's a wild and unpredictable electricity building up between them, touching and being touched so simultaneously, the wordless improvisation of instant shared decision and sensation; Bruce tenses his thighs, or maybe he tenses Clark's, or maybe Clark tenses his own and Bruce just feels it, and buttons go flying—Bruce's, almost certainly, but did he pull his shirt open or did Clark? A trailing hand up the line of a bare chest, or tight around a waist, or maybe both at once—and then someone dips below a waistband, fingers against hot damp skin, around a cock, and both of them cry out—

The intensity of it is indescribable—Bruce can't hold all this, his own arousal and Clark's at the same time, the incandescent doubled brilliance flooding high, everything scored with light. He—they—grip close, tighten their shuddering fingers and squeeze their eyes shut and are lost.

He doesn't know how long it takes for him to settle back into his skin and blink his eyes open, but when he does Clark is looking back at him from two inches away, flushed and dazed and just beginning to dimple sheepishly at one corner of his mouth. "Jesus, Bruce," he murmurs, gaze hot and dark on Bruce's face, and then he glances down and laughs.

They're a mess. It really had been Bruce's buttons scattering behind them on the floor; his dress shirt is still on one of his shoulders, pushed half off the other, and he has a vague sense memory of having sucked at least two of those marks into a collarbone, but—but it must have been Clark doing it to him. Clark's shirt is still on, too, rucked up all the way to bare his chest, jeans tugged wide, looking like the best kind of pornography: cock red and wet and still curved high against his belly, even though Bruce's hand is sticky with the evidence that that orgasm was at least half his. But it was half Bruce's, too, even though—

"How about we try that again," Clark says, low, "and this time I actually get your pants off?"

Bruce glances down and then lets his gaze travel back up, leisurely, and—and, god, he can feel it just the way Clark can, both of them shivering helplessly. He can feel the impulse a split second before Clark gives in to it, catching Bruce's wrist and lifting that dripping hand until Clark can slide his tongue between two of Bruce's fingers and lick—

And there's no possible way that Bruce can be hard again, except that he is; he feels like he is, but it must just be Clark, Kryptonian stamina—and it's also Clark, maybe, who's thinking in dazed half-remembered sensations of the floor against his knees, of looking up at Bruce; but Bruce is the one who drops, a rough eager sound caught in the back of his throat.

Even as his knees land, Clark's already planning to pull him back up—but Bruce leans in without hesitating, and then Clark is gasping at the sensation of thick hot weight on his tongue—Bruce's tongue—Christ—

It's too much, it's too much; Bruce is already halfway behind Clark's eyes, ruthlessly pressing his hips backward into the wall even though Clark—Bruce—isn't holding him there, because he can't—he can't let himself—fuck, fuck, and Clark jerks and shudders and grabs at Bruce's shoulders, pushes him back just to slide unsteadily to the floor in front of him, because he'd—they'd—almost lost it again, just like that.

"Your pants, Bruce," Clark says, breathless and scolding, and then his gaze catches on Bruce's mouth—even redder, now, and Bruce has no idea which one of them moves first, but he's the one who skids backward until they come up against the side of the bed.

It takes two or three more false starts for them to actually get onto it; and then Clark does get Bruce's slacks off, skims admiring palms along the muscles of Bruce's thighs and the line of his ass, digs his fingers in and jerks against Bruce and comes again, and Bruce is dragged along behind him in the undertow, doing his best to radiate a dim dazed disapproval. At this rate, they're never actually going to fuck—and Clark curls around him, hands everywhere, laughing, bright and breathless.

Practice makes perfect: it's Clark's giddy exhausted thought, but Bruce gropes around half-heartedly and can't find anything to counter it with, except that—

Except that nothing could be more perfect than this.

Clark goes still against him, then, brightening with cautious hope. Still, still, so cautious; don't ask too much, don't push, you don't work like other people and you need to be careful with them—

Bruce keeps his hands where they are, holds on to him, and casts back for a memory: the rumble of a wall cracking, the crash of a shattering sink; the crunch of metal under Bruce's back. You haven't exactly made a habit out of being careful with me, Clark. Why start now?

As if Clark could exercise care, in this: as if there were any way for him to dim the brilliant rosy light filling him up, the vast shining tangle of—of what he's feeling for Bruce, blinding and undeniable.

As if Bruce weren't feeling it back. And Bruce can't bring himself to name it, doesn't want to touch it or look at it or breathe on it, knows he'll be up nights torturing himself with the thought that one day it will vanish, but—

But it's there right now, it is; every inch of Bruce is singing with it. And there's nothing to be done about it but pull Clark in closer, press their mouths together, and believe.