DCEU Prompt Post #1

[dceu_kinkmod]

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.).

Newest page | Flat view | Flat view newest page

Comments

FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (2/?)

[(Anonymous)]

Why, yes, I am picking the most ostentatiously apropos lines of Inferno cantos to quote, because this is a kinkmeme and my self-indulgence knows no bounds. :D



A problem—as if they didn't already have about six, by Clark's count. He shakes his head and then has to brace himself against the wall for a second. Superman doesn't get injured like that very often; Clark's still not used to how much it can take out of him, to fix it. And however many hull breaches there might have been, none of them are in this hallway: there's no sunlight in here.

And maybe it's the injuries lingering, but maybe it isn't. There's—there's something strange about the way he feels, the cracked-open blurry sensation of space in his head. He has a sudden muddled impression of loudness, a cold sharp feeling so intense that he flinches and squints and presses a couple fingertips to his temple—but it's all inside. It's all—it's—is that Italian? Clark doesn't even know Italian, can only pick out chunks of shorter words in snatches—mi ritrovai per una selva oscura—so where the hell is it coming from?

"Steppenwolf intended to render Superman harmless to him," Bruce is saying, tone cool, where he's crouched at Clark's shoulder. "He was using the box to do it."

"But we stopped him," Barry says. "Right? I mean, whatever it was he had in mind, he didn't get the chance to do the thing. Because—well. He ran away. Which, I guess that is kind of weird. Why would he just leave like that?"

"He didn't," Bruce says.

—esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte—

"There was a final step that needed to be undertaken. Whatever process he had begun, it hadn't been completed."

—tant' è amara che poco è più morte—

"And it still isn't. Right? We stopped him—"

"We slowed him down," Bruce allows. "But the process itself wasn't terminated. That final step was achieved."

—ma poi ch'i' fui al piè d'un colle giunto—

"It was?"

"Not by him." And then, as if it ought to mean something, as if any of this makes any sense: "I reached the box first."

—che m'avea di paura il cor compunto—

Clark grits his teeth, closes his eyes and grinds a knuckle into his forehead. Bruce clearly has a point he's trying to make, and there's absolutely no good reason why he shouldn't just spit it out, instead of all this nonsense. "Bruce—"

"He intended to link his mind to yours," Bruce says.

And for a blissful moment, that stream of relentless Italian is gone. Clark blinks and looks up, meets Bruce's eyes; they stand out so clearly against the cowl, and not just the whites of them, literal, against all that black, but the expressiveness of Bruce's gaze, when the rest of his face is so thoroughly hidden.

And—wait. Wait a second. What?

"He intended—but you did," Clark says slowly. "You—we're—"

Bruce doesn't look away from Clark. "Did any of you hear me say anything about potential problems tracking the energy output of the mother box?"

"What? No. I mean, Clark said—oh," Barry says, sounding suddenly far away. "Oh, okay, I get you. You didn't say it, but Clark heard it and replied to it, because—oh. Oh. Uh—"

Clark swallows, hard, and can't quite figure out where to look. Above them, Arthur is arguing that Clark is right, there must be other ways to find the box, and Diana agreeing that if the parademons took it, they are hardly subtle prey; and then all at once there's a sudden bold-faced headline, blaring—

—uscito fuor del pelago a la riva, si volge a l'acqua perigliosa e guata—

And Clark flinches again, helpless. "Will you please stop that?" he says aloud, rubbing absently at his forehead. "I can't think with you yelling whatever that is." As if he hadn't been having enough trouble getting his mind settled, after having a mother box feeling around inside of it. What is Bruce even doing? What's the Italian supposed to accomplish, except drowning out everything else inside Clark's head—?

He understands and feels himself react against the understanding in the same moment, the brief sharp stab of pain and startlement and sheer helpless unhappiness—Bruce is the one who flinches this time, jerking back a crouched half-step, and oh, god, that means he felt it. Clark bites his lip and hurriedly tries to focus, tries to concentrate on the things he should be thinking.

"It's fine," he says aloud, quickly. "It's fine, I understand. I realize this is going to cause us both some problems, and I know your privacy is important to you. I'll try not to do anything to jeopardize that if I can help it."

Bruce has settled into position again—further away now, Clark can't help noticing, a careful arm's-length of distance between them. "I appreciate the thought," he murmurs in that flat Batman growl, "but I'm not sure that's up to you." A moment's pause. "I'm responsible for this. I apologize. Reaching the box first was the only option open to me, in the moment."

And Clark has no reason to doubt it. Bruce bows to nothing less than the direst necessity. That's why Clark is alive right now, after all. The rest of them argued about it, Barry's let that much slip; and Bruce hadn't fought to bring Superman back for Clark's sake, but for the world's. Because he had to—because as risky as it had been, he had determined that it was necessary. Even if Bruce had known exactly what touching the box would do, he might still have done it, and it would have been because any other choice would lead to even less acceptable outcomes.

He would never have permitted Steppenwolf's plans for Superman to succeed, whatever the cost to himself, however uncomfortable it might make him. Earth's survival means too much to him.

It makes perfect sense. Clark shouldn't have expected any less, from Bruce.

"No need," he makes himself say aloud. "It's not your fault—and I can guarantee I prefer you to Steppenwolf."

He aims half a smile at Bruce, and feels the rest of them ease, Diana's shoulders dropping and the lights in Victor's armor dimming as the situation is downgraded. This is unexpected, awkward, but Bruce and Clark won't come to blows over it; it doesn't qualify as an immediate threat to either of them, or the rest of the League.

Clark repeats this thought to himself, and ignores the way Bruce is still watching him. Not Italian, but it'll do for the moment.

"Well, okay," Barry says, "so if that's not going to be a problem right now—the thing is, we landed in the middle of the Pacific? And Victor wasn't kidding about how many holes there are in this ship."

Which, now that Clark thinks about it, he can hear the rush of water drawing nearer.

"Yeah, that's not really a problem either," Arthur says, giving his trident a lazy graceful spin.


*


Clark offers to go with Bruce back to the Cave. Just, if there are tests he wants to run, or samples he needs to take, or—

He falters at the look—the non-look—on Bruce's cowled face, and then silence and Italian stretch between them, until Bruce says, "That won't be necessary."

Necessary, Clark thinks bitterly. And then he remembers Bruce can probably feel him thinking it, and does his best to stop.

They reach the bay. Clark flies around at high speed for about fifteen seconds just in case, even though his uniform doesn't exactly seem to get wet the way most fabrics do, and then retrieves one of the sets of clothes he has stashed around Metropolis, with a pair of spare glasses perched on top. Clark Kent walks up to his apartment building, smiles at a neighbor, and tries to open his door with the wrong key before shaking his head at himself and choosing the right one.

And then Clark closes the door behind himself, and can't keep his mind quiet any longer.

He's almost certain the distance doesn't matter. Bruce is still as present to Clark as he was when they were two feet away from each other. Now that Clark knows what to look for, he can feel Bruce in there, vague impressions of tightly-controlled stillness, artificial motionlessness, and that endless rolling murmur of words Clark can't understand, io ch'era d'ubidir disideroso, non gliel celai, ma tutto gliel' apersi—

Clark rubs his eyes, blows out a breath and drops onto his couch. He'll try to stay inside his own head, if he can. He will. But Bruce wasn't wrong: it's not really up to him. And if what Clark is feeling bothers Bruce, well—well, that's too bad, Clark thinks, with an edge of something that's almost defiance. Bruce is just going to have to put up with it until they figure out how to make this stop.

Clark doesn't know enough Kryptonian yet for anything else.

And besides—

Besides, nothing Clark's thinking can possibly be a surprise to Bruce, anyway. After the day Clark has had, mother boxes and parademons, Steppenwolf appearing out of nowhere in a whirl of air to strap him into that thing—Clark swallows convulsively and runs his palms over the insides of his wrists, one at a time. Repeated exposure really hasn't warmed him to having holes drilled into him.

So it's probably all right, if Clark's yelling discomfort and resignation almost as loudly as Bruce is yelling Italian. And Bruce is doing his best to pretend none of this is happening—he's not going to come poking around in Clark's head looking for reasons.

Not that he needs to. He knows it all already. He was there. He brought Clark back from the dead, sorted out the job and the apartment, made the Justice League and slotted Clark into place in the lineup. He's been more than generous. Hell, he bought a bank.

But none of that has ever meant he likes Clark. And, more to the point, none of that has ever meant he trusts Clark, either.

Clark closes his eyes, tips his head back against the couch and covers his face with his hands. It's so, so stupid—he's being so childish, so selfish, so unfair. Bruce hardly even knows him, and what Bruce does know is—what? That Superman could with relative ease be goaded into attacking someone he knew perfectly well was human, someone he could have damaged beyond repair; that Bruce brought Clark back from the dead for the sake of saving the world, only to have Clark grab him by the face and throw him into the side of a car. To Bruce, Clark's an asset, a heavy hitter, willing to stand beside the rest of the Justice League and defend Earth from equally heavy-hitting threats. They're teammates.

None of that implies that Bruce shouldn't mind that Clark suddenly has a window directly into his brain. That Clark has—has killed people, for the sake of the planet—that he killed himself—doesn't have anything to do with whether or not Bruce should be comfortable with Clark perceiving his every thought and feeling.

It's just that Clark can't talk his own wordless, unreasoning gut into agreeing with any of that. He remembers coming back, sort of; he remembers the moment he'd realized who it was who was there, why they felt and smelled and sounded so familiar. You won't let me live—you won't let me die. The frustration of it, that Bruce still wasn't satisfied, that even dying hadn't been good enough; what else did Bruce want from him? How many different ways was he going to have to prove himself to get Bruce to just—to just believe—

But that's stupid, and childish, and unfair. This happened in the first place because Bruce was trying to help him, because Bruce considered it so crucial to save Clark from Steppenwolf that he took an action with consequences he couldn't control. That has to count for something, coming from Bruce.

It doesn't amount to much, next to what Clark wants: next to Bruce's respect, his trust, his friendship; next to

(—that gaze, those eyes, the half-dried smear of blood just to one side of the hollow of Clark's throat—he hadn't been injured there, he was sure of that; Bruce had touched him—)

everything else Clark could, in all his thoughtless desperate greed, think to ask for. Bruce isn't withholding it just to—to hurt him, no matter how it feels. And—

They look out for each other. They try to be careful of each other. They're teammates. Clark has to figure out how to let that be enough.

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (2/?)

[(Anonymous)]

Not the OP, but I sm SO HERE FOR THIS :D

Re: FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (2/?)

[(Anonymous)]

:D Haha, I'm glad to hear it, anon! ♥