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dceu_kinkmeme2016-04-14 12:37 am
dceu_kinkmod) wrote in dceu_kinkmeme2016-04-14 12:37 am
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DCEU Prompt Post #1
Welcome to Round One of the DCEU Kink Meme!
Please have a look at the extended rules here.
The important rules in short:
- Post anonymously.
- Negative comments on other people's prompts (kink-shaming, pairing-bashing etc.) and personal attacks of any kind will not be tolerated.
- One prompt per comment. Warnings for common triggers and squicks are encouraged, but not required.
- Prompts should follow the format: Character/character, prompt.
- Keep prompts to a reasonable length; prompts should not be detailed story outlines.
- No prompt spamming.
Please direct any questions to the Ask a mod post. For inspiration: list of kinks .
Prompt, write, draw, comment, and most importantly have fun! Please link to your fills on the fill post.
Here's the discussion post for all your non-prompt/fill needs.
We now have a non-DCEU prompt post for any prompts in other 'verses (comics, animated series, other movies or TV shows etc.).
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FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (23/24)
(Anonymous) 2016-08-24 11:14 pm (UTC)(link)"Upstairs," Clark adds, to Diana, and only realizes when Bruce tenses that Bruce doesn't understand why. "Sorry, I—it's Diana, I was telling her where we are. She's coming up."
"So I can call him an idiot to his face," Diana murmurs under her breath, about forty feet away, and Clark can't help smiling.
Not that he isn't still angry with Bruce. He's—he's so angry with Bruce. But the days where he hadn't been able to actually let it out at Bruce had been good for him: by now, he's not so angry that his brain isn't working. If they'd tried to have that conversation any sooner, he'd never have figured anything out—he'd have yelled himself hoarse and then walked away without any idea what had really been happening. But they didn't; and he didn't; and he thinks maybe, just barely, the full picture is starting to come into focus.
(For one awful moment, he almost had believed it. You wanted to—that had been the really scary part. Because he can see now, knowing what he knows, that Bruce had felt guilty; showing up like that the second Mom had called him, and taking all that time to put Clark's life back together; hearing what dying had done to him and then taking him out to the gala right after, trying to help him figure out how to be alive again.
And then Clark had kissed him, and—what had Bruce been thinking? Clark hadn't been able to guess for himself, while Bruce was unconscious. Everything he'd considered as a rationale had felt equally implausible. And then Bruce had woken up and had said worth a go, had said you wanted to, and abruptly it had seemed all too likely that he'd thought he owed Clark something; that he'd gone along just because Clark had asked him for it, because he hadn't felt like he could justify saying no—
That's a worse nightmare than any dream Clark ever had about Batman.)
The thing is that half of everything Bruce says is crap. Maybe three-quarters. And he could have tied Clark in knots with it, except that Clark's gotten better at noticing what Bruce isn't saying. Because it was stupid of him to sleep with Clark—it really, really was, and Bruce has told all kinds of other lies but hasn't once tried to argue that point. It was stupid, and he'd done it anyway; Batman had done it anyway, endlessly calculating and maximally efficient Batman—and wasn't that a head trip? That under Batman's stern mask, behind that terse growl, was someone who'd clutched Clark to him on the penthouse sofa and made helpless pleading noises when Clark slid three fingers into—
Diana opens the bedroom door and smiles: warmly at Clark, and then, a little more measured, at Bruce. "You're looking much better than the last time I saw you," she tells Bruce, and then, gently, "I'm glad you're all right."
Bruce doesn't seem to know what to say to that.
"Please allow me to tell you how impressed I am," she adds, this time to Clark, "that you haven't punched him in the head."
"Thanks," Clark says. "I'm impressed too, now that you mention it."
Diana's mouth twitches; and then she looks from him to Bruce and tilts her head. "Since we're all here, we're all awake, and we all now know exactly who we're talking to, I thought perhaps we should discuss the future of the League sooner rather than later."
The future of the—?
"I see no reason why it shouldn't continue to function exactly as it has," Diana says, eyes fixed on Bruce; and then her gaze cuts sideways for just a moment to Clark, and all at once he gets it.
Bruce likes to burn things down—likes to stare at their scorched bones and make memorials out of them, likes to put what's left of them behind glass where no one can touch them and tell himself stories about how he ruined them. He hadn't talked to Superman, he'd stolen a giant piece of kryptonite and made a deadly weapon out of it. He hadn't been able to see a way out of what he was doing with Clark, and he'd set fire to it. He likes clean breaks, or if not clean then at least complete. He doesn't do half-measures.
And now Diana thinks he's going to try to quit the League; and she's probably not wrong.
"Really," Bruce says.
"We can make it contingent on Superman's approval, if you like," Diana says, deceptively conversational.
And Clark has to wait a beat, two, three; but Bruce is tired and in pain and human, and even he can't control himself perfectly. He tries to keep his gaze on Diana, but in the end it flicks helplessly to Clark.
Luckily, Clark's pretty sure he knows what he wants to say. Or—not what he wants to say right now; but what he wants to have said at this moment, looking back. What he will want to have said, once the anger's all melted away. "You didn't tell me right away because you didn't need to—because there wasn't any reason to. And then there was a reason to, but you still decided you couldn't. You still decided that confiding that to me was going to cause more problems than it was ever going to solve.
"And I don't want it to be like that. I said I wanted us to be able to depend on each other—to be able to trust each other. I said that even when the only thing I knew about you was that you'd tried to kill me, and also maybe darned the hole in my suit shut while I was dead." He reaches out to put his hand back on Bruce's knee. "You think that got less true just because I know who I'm saying it to?"
"What," Bruce says, sharp, "you think you're going to be able to trust me more now that you know exactly how many lies—"
And that's Bruce trying to make him angry again. "I think I can trust you more now that I know the truth," Clark says firmly. "Besides, that's one really big thing you can't ever lie to me about again." He hesitates for a second, and then lets himself shrug. "If you're asking me if I should—I have no idea. But I want to, so I'm going to try. Once I stop feeling like I'd rather punch you in the head," he adds.
Bruce—of course—doesn't look relieved or pleased. He looks upset. There's more dismay visible on his face now, Clark thinks, than there had been when he'd looked at Clark and said suit yourself with a fresh bullet wound and a cracked rib hidden under his clothes.
And Clark must be in love, God help him, or that wouldn't hit as hard as it does: that after deliberately deceiving Clark twice over for months, the thing that's finally troubling Bruce is the idea that no one's going to hurt him for it.
"You want to remain part of the League," Diana says.
Bruce is still staring at Clark when he says, "I—"
"I'm not asking whether you think you should," Diana interrupts, and Bruce finally looks at her instead. "I'm asking whether you want to."
Bruce is silent for a long moment; and then, very low, he says, "Yes."
Like a confession of wrongdoing, like something he wishes he could take back—but he says it, and Diana nods. "All right," she says, solemn, all Wonder Woman. And then she sits down on the bed next to Clark and leans around to put a hand on Bruce's ankle, a companion to Clark's on his knee. "Not that it matters, for the moment, since I'm given to understand Alfred has hidden all your equipment. Somehow he seems to have the impression that you might still try to fly back to Gotham and go on patrol, even with broken ribs and a head injury."
"How ridiculous," Clark murmurs, and then grins at Diana over his shoulder.
Diana only stays for half an hour—at least on purpose. Clark suspects it'll probably take her another twenty minutes to successfully turn down the invitation Mom's going to give her to join them for dinner. Bruce doesn't say very much; but then again his head is probably aching fit to split.
He doesn't try to hold Diana off when she leans in to kiss his cheek before she leaves.
But once the door's closed behind her, Clark says, "Bruce," and Bruce looks away.
"I'm tired," he says quietly.
And the last thing Clark can trust is his own judgment when it comes to Bruce; but it sounds true, he can't help thinking. It sounds true.
Besides, Bruce isn't going anywhere. Even if he somehow manages to dodge Clark until he's recovered completely, Batman's still part of the League—and thank God for Diana. Whatever else he tries, he can't just cut himself neatly out of Clark's life and disappear. Not anymore.
"All right," Clark says, easy. "I'm—I won't spy on you or anything, but. If you need something, you can just say my name. I'll hear you."
Of course Bruce doesn't do it. Clark should have expected that.
But he's hearing what Bruce doesn't say, too, these days. He checks in now and then, brings Bruce some of Mom's trays and comes back to take them away after, and carefully leaves Bruce alone in between. He kind of wants to yell at Bruce some more, for a day or two, except he doesn't: he just wants Bruce to listen to him. He just wants Bruce to—to explain himself, to let Clark understand what the hell he thought he'd been doing. Which parts had been real, which parts hadn't—
(Some of it was—surely, surely, even Bruce isn't that good a liar. And the things he'd said the day he kicked Clark out; he'd had the bullet wound to hide, Clark knows that now. But—)
—whether he'd meant any of it.
But Bruce isn't stupid, for all that he did a lot of stupid things. He knows what Clark wants, he has to; Clark can see in his face that he's waiting to be cornered again, and that's exactly what keeps Clark from doing it.
Until, in the end, Clark can't stand it anymore.
He tries to be strategic about it: he tries to be like Bruce. Just talking is—Bruce can probably still tie Clark in knots that way, if Clark lets him. So the approach Clark would usually take won't work. He has to do something Bruce isn't expecting and hasn't already prepared fifteen levels of plans to deal with. He has to try coming at this from a different angle.
He gets his chance after another day, when he brings up dinner. Bruce is moving around a little, though he's under serious Mom-enforced restrictions until they're sure one of those ribs isn't going to end up in his lung; but he still sits to eat, and he must be in more pain than he's letting on. He grimaces partway down, and Clark catches his shoulder and helps ease him back against the pillows.
"Careful," Clark says, and smiles at Bruce; and then he braces himself and slides his hand from Bruce's shoulder and down, fingers trailing over Bruce's collarbone—
Bruce catches his wrist almost instantly, his gaze snapping to Clark's face, eyes dark and wary.
"What?" Clark says, and does his best to sound honestly surprised. "You said it was convenient—it's still convenient. Because I wanted to; well," and oh, it's going to come out a little too wistful, a little too true, but Clark lets it: "I still want to." He makes himself keep smiling. "What, it's not worth a go—"
"No," Bruce says.
"Didn't you enjoy yourself?" And Clark can't keep the smile on for that, he can't, but it ends up not mattering—Bruce looks away.
"Clark—"
"Why not?" Clark says, and he doesn't have to force that one out. What's different? What was okay about Bruce Wayne that isn't okay about this Bruce, quiet and bruised-up and serious—that isn't okay about Batman?
(Why did Clark only ever get the chance to get to know one of them?)
"You—know why not," Bruce says, very soft. "You have to know."
Clark goes still. That's not what he was expecting. What exactly does Bruce think is so obvious?
"Tell me anyway," he tries, more gently this time. "I understand why you said it didn't matter, Bruce, I do, but I—it mattered to me. It does matter, it—"
He's the one who has to look away, then; but he swallows and then makes himself look back up.
"That's why I'm angry at all, Bruce. That's why it hurt."
Bruce is silent for a moment. "I didn't intend that," he says at last.
It's the wrong time for it, but oh, that makes Clark snort. "Right," he says, "right, you were going to fix that with the thing where you'd make me think you were a worthless asshole so I wouldn't care if I never saw you again. That was a great idea."
Bruce draws in a slow breath—and then he lets it out without saying anything, eyes down, his hand still wrapped tight around Clark's arm.
"Look, if it just didn't mean anything to you at all, that would be one thing—"
"It mattered," Bruce says.
He forces it out, a sharp heft of effort like he's throwing a stone, and Clark's so surprised to hear it that he stops short.
"All of it," Bruce adds, almost stumbling over the words. "It—mattered. I wanted you there; I wanted you there all the time, I wanted you to know and not leave—I wanted to, I, when you had nightmares—but I was the nightmares. I was—you just didn't know—"
He's gone pale, forced himself still under Clark's hand, and Clark's never seen him look so much in pain. Clark wanted to hear it; but not like this, this jagged cracking litany of regret and failure and missed chances—he finds his voice somehow, says, "Bruce, Bruce, hey—"
"I wanted not to have let you die," Bruce adds, so low even Clark almost doesn't catch it, and closes his eyes.
Re: FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (23/24)
(Anonymous) 2016-08-25 10:08 pm (UTC)(link)But I'm re-reading the section and crying again. Bruce's confession. It hurts, identityporn!anon (don't stop). I never expected Bruce to be so lucid with his feelings, to lay it out so baldly, and so brokenly. And Clark's wonderful assertion (to himself, at least), about why he should only be able to know one of the versions of Bruce... what made Bruce Wayne the least objectionable Bruce for him to know?
I JUST. *helpless gesture at these two* I NEED TO LAY DOWN UNTIL THE NEXT PART ARRIVES.
Re: FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (23/24)
(Anonymous) 2016-08-26 11:15 pm (UTC)(link)Oh, gosh, WHAT EVEN TO SAY - thank you so so much for all your emotions! Part of the reason this got so epic is that I think I need about 50k to get Bruce to a place where I feel like he might actually say what he's thinking. /o\ JESUS, BRUCE And I'm delighted you liked Clark's thought processes - the way Bruce thinks about things does not come naturally to him AT ALL, but he's trying! He's so close!
/o\ :D ARISE, MY FRIEND, IT IS (almost) HERE
Re: FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (23/24)
(Anonymous) 2016-08-26 04:19 pm (UTC)(link)If they'd tried to have that conversation any sooner, he'd never have figured anything out—he'd have yelled himself hoarse and then walked away without any idea what had really been happening. But they didn't; and he didn't; and he thinks maybe, just barely, the full picture is starting to come into focus.
Because I'm awful, part of me wants that sooner conversation and Clark being furious and all that, but for the sake of them not being awful at each other some more, it's probably good that things happened like this. :D
abruptly it had seemed all too likely that he'd thought he owed Clark something; that he'd gone along just because Clark had asked him for it, because he hadn't felt like he could justify saying no—
Oh, Clark, Clark, you sweetheart. D: And then this bit here, I love this, Clark realising that Batman of all people did something incredibly stupid for him: It was stupid, and he'd done it anyway; Batman had done it anyway, endlessly calculating and maximally efficient Batman—and wasn't that a head trip? That under Batman's stern mask, behind that terse growl, was someone who'd clutched Clark to him on the penthouse sofa and made helpless pleading noises when Clark slid three fingers into—
Haha, and Diana's little comment about punching Bruce in the head. ;D And dfgkhbdfkjghd that entire paragraph about Bruce trying to burn things down when they don't go his way, aaaaaaaaah, it's so true. And Claaaaaark, Clark saying what he thinks he should say, even if right now it's not what he wants to say yet. <3
And Clark must be in love, God help him, or that wouldn't hit as hard as it does: that after deliberately deceiving Clark twice over for months, the thing that's finally troubling Bruce is the idea that no one's going to hurt him for it.
Just so you know, I made an extremely undignified squeaky noise just now. And I love Clark trying to channel his inner Bat and figuring out the strategically best way to talk to Bruce. ;D Of course he ends up using Bruce's own words against him: "What?" Clark says, and does his best to sound honestly surprised. "You said it was convenient—it's still convenient. Because I wanted to; well," and oh, it's going to come out a little too wistful, a little too true, but Clark lets it: "I still want to." He makes himself keep smiling. "What, it's not worth a go—"
It's the wrong time for it, but oh, that makes Clark snort. "Right," he says, "right, you were going to fix that with the thing where you'd make me think you were a worthless asshole so I wouldn't care if I never saw you again. That was a great idea."
*snorts* I am so here for Clark being done with Bruce's bullshit. ;D And then AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH THOSE LAST THREE PARAGRAPHS, OH M GOD! BRUCE! POOR BRUCE! All that guilt and regret! This is so absolutely wonderful, and I'm a little heartbroken that there's only one more part to this amazing fic, but I'm also really looking forward to them getting their hard-earned happy ending. You are the best. <3 /OP
Re: FILL: as to which may be the true; Bruce/Clark, identity porn (23/24)
(Anonymous) 2016-08-26 11:30 pm (UTC)(link):D Haha, oh, there is absolutely some alternate universe where this is 150k instead of 50, and Clark is SO MAD and Bruce fucks it up SO BAD and there's another gazillion words of Batman and Superman icily working together and being bitter exes and then IDEK ~shenanigans~ or ~truth spells~ or SOMETHING and then they finally get their shit straight. But over here in this universe? I need to start working on my exchange assignment. /o\
:DDDDDDDDDDDDDD Oh, thank you - I do love that once some insight into what Bruce's thought processes are like is provided, he actually does become tellingly transparent in certain ways. :D Oh, Bruce.
/o\ Oh, it's possible you can tell I'm terrible at writing angry people and I just want them to hug, oops. :D I tried really hard to not let Clark be too calm and understanding too quickly! So I'm glad that his choice to be thoughtful there felt reasonable to you. \o/
:DDDDDDDDDDDD Haha, I'll admit that I made a few undignified noises when I was brainstorming this conclusion. ;D And I'll also admit that when I wrote that line, part of me was like, "Clark. Clark, LOOK AT BRUCE'S LIFE. LOOK AT HIS CHOICES. 'What would Bruce do?' is a TERRIBLE QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF." /o\ And yet it is the one thing Bruce wouldn't be expecting ...
Oh, gosh, what can I possibly say that I haven't already? I too am sad that there's only one more part left, because it means I'll need to plan and begin a whole new fill to get any more of your incredible comments. ♥ Thank you so very much for sticking this thing out with me, it is such a joy to write fills for you and you make it so much fun!
NO U ♥