DCEU Prompt Post #1

[dceu_kinkmod]

Welcome to Round One of the DCEU Kink Meme!

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The important rules in short:

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Prompt, write, draw, comment, and most importantly have fun! Please link to your fills on the fill post.

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FILL: and if sun comes; Bruce/Clark, involuntary soulbonding (10/12ish?)

[(Anonymous)]

OH YOU IDIOTS *shakes them*



Bruce sits there and looks at Clark across the sunlit table, the perfect steaming stack of pancakes, and says nothing.

Not that he has to. Clark's been in his head for the better part of a week, now, and he's starting to learn his way around. He's starting to understand a lot of things he hadn't understood before.

"I get it," he tells Bruce—and then can't help but shake his head and laugh at the immediate, silent upswell of doubt. "I do. You let me in, you have to know that I—I can see it," but of course that doesn't help, only turns Bruce's mind grim with creeping shadows, sour with regret. Clark tries shoving all of his own—his own comprehension, earnest and bone-deep sympathy, in there; because he does understand, on a level so profound that there's just no room for anger or frustration. He feels what Bruce is feeling, remembers what Bruce remembers, can look right down the long line of choices and actions and consequences that have combined to make Bruce exactly who he is at this moment.

(He's even a little relieved. Just—that it really hadn't been him, that he hadn't been the problem. Or at least not the way he'd thought: Bruce is afraid, yeah, but for him, not of him.

After everything they've tried to do to each other, that's about the last thing Clark was expecting.)

"I get it," Clark repeats. How could he not? All the agony and failure, the death and loss, the way Bruce just keeps piling it all onto himself instead of letting go—it's the easiest thing in the world, really, to understand how all that weight presses down on him. How he measures everything in terms of it: that bad outcomes are real, that he knows it by how they add to his burden; that good outcomes are meaningless, insubstantial, beside all the endless miles of clanking chain he's dragging.

"And you're used to it. You think that's how it should be. But last night didn't hurt. Last night this started to look like maybe it wasn't a problem after all. It made you happy, even if it was just for a little while, and that's why you don't trust it. That's," Clark adds slowly, "why you don't trust me."

He looks at Bruce's expressionless face, the carefully-staged spread of pancakes. If he'd come in here and found Bruce like this on any other day, when he couldn't feel Bruce's dread and apprehension and dim frigid self-disgust from the other end of the house—what would he have thought? What would he have done? He's suddenly defiantly glad for the goddamn mother box, for having been given the x-ray vision to see through this kind of wall just as well as any other. The next time they see Steppenwolf, Clark's going to tell him "thank you" before punching him into next Tuesday.

He lets the bright fierce determination inside him overflow, flash-flood all the way to the high-water mark, so Bruce can't possibly pretend to miss it; and he leans in over the table and says softly, "I'm glad you brought me back, Bruce. I'm glad I didn't stay dead, and that I'm okay, and that I could help you defeat Steppenwolf and save the world. I'm glad that we're in each other's heads like this, that you can't stop me from understanding you. I want to be the exception that doesn't follow your stupid rules. I want to be the thing that proves you wrong."

He doesn't know what he's expecting. For Bruce to argue with him, maybe, to feel resentful or impatient, to use a lot of short sharp words to try to explain to him how wrong he is.

But Bruce just looks at him for a long moment. He swallows; his mouth parts; and then he closes it again without saying anything, and squeezes his eyes shut.

Doing that looks strange on him, weird and vulnerable, and Clark reaches across the table at the same moment that he reaches out in there, palm settling across the knotted line of Bruce's knuckles just as he gets a good enough look to realize what's wrong.

What Clark said is—Bruce wants that, too. That's the problem.

Clark huffs half a laugh, aloud, and doesn't let go of Bruce's hand. It's kind of appropriate that Bruce is clogged with enough catch-22s to choke on.

"I guess you want me to want to eat these pancakes, too," he says, and waits for Bruce to open his eyes again before carefully cracking half a smile. "Well, too bad: I do."

Bruce stares at him. "Clark," he says, low, strained. "You can't—" and then he cuts himself off and Clark can tell exactly why, can follow every strand of the knot he's tying himself into: can't possibly be all right with this, except he might be if Bruce is making him be all right with it. And oh, what an old familiar rut, what a well-worn and routine agony it is, that everything should be suspect, that nothing can be trusted. Clark's hand on Bruce's—but Bruce wants it there, after all. Bruce is already addicted to the treacherous joy of Clark's kindness, his patience, his understanding; is desperate for his lack of censure, his forgiveness, his heedless and freely-given closeness. Which Bruce both does and doesn't have, if Clark only thinks he's giving freely of it—and maybe Bruce is compelling that, too, is subconsciously forcing Clark not to believe Bruce is responsible even though all the evidence suggests as much—

"Bruce," Clark interrupts, just to stem the tide a little. "I know you aren't going to listen to anything I say right now, especially not the stuff you want to hear. But I'm not upset. You aren't doing anything to me at all. I told you, it's been months for me. I knew I wanted you already." He hangs on grimly through Bruce's immediate internal rejection of the whole idea, sharp as a shove, and says again, "And I still do. I never stopped. You—" and jesus, it's so easy to give up on the words, to just let Bruce see it. Coming back, that gut-deep recognition Bruce had stirred in him even while he was still half out of his head. Trying to step carefully, to make it clear to Bruce that he understood the terms of his revival, and Bruce's short I don't—not, an unexpected and unlooked-for olive branch, the disproportionate gladness Clark had felt over it.

He'd thought he just wanted Bruce to like him, at first. The Justice League was new, and had been three-quarters formed even without Clark—who knew whether he'd really fit, whether he'd help it last or blow it apart? But if he and Bruce could find a way to work with each other, surely it had a chance. That was all.

But then he'd gotten weird, fixated on it. Noticing every time Bruce touched him, counting the instances, tallying; watching Bruce all the time, for any sign it was about to happen again. Listening for Bruce at night, lying in his bed and sorting through the nighttime sounds of Gotham all the way across the bay, just to find the soft scrape of boot-soles on rooftops, Alfred's voice low and tinny through a communicator. Finally, eventually, realizing what he was doing and making himself put it aside, because it was stupid to dwell on it—except when he couldn't stand it anymore, couldn't shake a glimpse of the line of Bruce's back or a quick wry glance Bruce had shot him; had to give in, alone in the dark, and kick off the sheets, wrap a hand around himself, and wish—

Somewhere far away, Clark hears his breath catch. It isn't coming from him, the sudden rush of imagined sensations, impressions, Bruce's hand on his face pulling him in and Bruce's fingertips smoothing along the line of his cheek—where he'd bled, once; and that spirals off suddenly into the dark, a fight, Clark's face twisted in anger, his throat under Bruce's fingertips—then? That early?—then, and earlier still, and Christ, Clark, don't look at this, you weren't supposed to ever have to look at this—

But I want to, Clark can't say, because of course Bruce won't listen.

Clark blinks, swallowing hard, and it feels impossible that after all that they're still just sitting at the table over plates of cooling pancakes.

Bruce's eyes are still closed, his mouth twisting, as though he's in pain.

(As though. He is; Clark can feel as much.)

"Clark," he says, very low.

"I know. It's okay," Clark interrupts. "I know you're about to ask me to leave, and I will. And it won't be because you're making me—I know I can't prove it to you right now, but I want to say it, just so you'll remember it that way later.

"And I want you to remember this, too: I meant it. You aren't making me think or feel anything. You aren't making me do anything I didn't already want to do. And one way or another, I'm going to figure out how to make you understand that. I'm going to say all this to you again, and next time you're going to believe it."

And he's sure about it, solid, seated deep as bedrock. But Bruce is filled with an equally solid determination not to let Clark make a mistake, not to let him come to ruin over this—which would be ridiculous, infuriating, if only he couldn't tell how earnestly Bruce means it.

Jesus. And Bruce had somehow thought Clark would want him less, after this. For all the ways Bruce is basically a genius, Clark thinks distantly, he's also kind of an idiot.

"I promise," he says quietly. "I promise. You'll believe it." He lets himself squeeze Bruce's hand, just once; and then he speeds away, air and light and color smearing around him, before he can do anything stupid.



*



Of course there isn't really any distance he can get from Bruce, not in the ways that matter most. But Metropolis is—it feels full of Bruce, Clark's eyes catching on every Wayne building from the bay to his apartment, knowing Bruce was three blocks over from here on Black Zero, that he'd seen Clark above him in person for the first time then and Clark hadn't even

(—then, and earlier still, and just how early did that mean? Surely not that first moment, not on that terrible day; but how soon after? Bruce had seen him as a threat to be put down, had hated everything he'd represented, and had still thought of Clark's hands on him and wanted it—)

known, hadn't had the slightest idea, and this really isn't helping at all.

Clark walks to his apartment building, and then keeps walking; and then, when he's a little further away, he runs. And then he runs, because there's only one place he ever wants to go when he doesn't know what else to do.

Mom doesn't even look surprised to see him—it's earlier in Kansas than it was in Gotham, she's only just finishing her breakfast out on the porch, and she finishes swallowing the sip of water she was partway through before she sets the glass down and says, "Hi, honey."

"Hi, Mom," Clark says, leaning in to kiss her on the cheek, and she tilts her face up for it with a smile.

He asks her how she is, how everything's going. No, there hasn't been any trouble with the bank; yes, she's found that last box she'd misplaced during the move back in. He lets himself relax into the sweet familiarity of morning at the farmhouse, the way the light falls, the smells, the sounds, and he hopes some of that feeling of comfort is trickling across to Bruce.

(He can't quite tell for sure. Bruce is focusing as hard as he can on other things, poring over scans and readouts, and frantically ignoring the corner of his own brain caught on a loop of Clark what did you do Clark how can you fix this Clark figure this out Clark you can't let him Clark—)

"Clark. Clark."

Clark blinks and looks up: Mom is watching him, lips pursed, one eyebrow raised. And then, without looking away from him, she digs her spoon sharply into the last quarter of the grapefruit on her plate, neatly carving it open, and says, "Not that I'm not glad to see you, but I get the feeling there might just be a little something on your mind."

Clark feels an abrupt sense of kinship with the grapefruit.

"Trouble sleeping again?" Mom prompts gently. "I know you got away from that bastard all right," and Clark can't help but laugh; he's told Mom Steppenwolf's name, but she refuses to use it. Ever since Russia, he's been that bastard every time. "—but that kind of thing isn't always so easy to shake off. Not that you need me to tell you that, sweetheart—"

"No, it's—" Clark stops and rubs a hand across his face, trying to decide where to start. "I didn't tell you everything, Ma, there was—something else happened."

And it sounds ridiculous, more than ridiculous, but then Mom's used to that coming from Clark. She sits and listens to all of it: the mother box, the link, the way he and Bruce had tried to ignore it. Bruce's idea of a solid strategy for dealing with it, the books and the operas and the not-sleeping. The parademons—

"—and that's how they work. Whatever you're afraid of, they find it. They drag it up, you can't think about anything else. And you know—" Clark looks at Mom and then away, and swallows. "You know I've always been afraid of being alone."

Mom squeezes his hand. "I know," she says, soft.

Clark closes his eyes. "But I wasn't," he lets himself say. "Mom—I wasn't. Bruce was right there. He came for me, I was—I couldn't have been alone. Bruce was with me. He is with me, right now." And Clark hadn't quite known it, hadn't quite let himself, but when he hears himself say it like that, he's—he realizes all at once where that leads. "And I like it. I don't want it to stop. It's not something I want to fix."

"But Bruce doesn't feel that way about it?" Mom says, after a moment.

Clark snorts helplessly, scrubs at his eyes and then looks up at her, and he can feel the corners of his mouth twisting wryly. "He thinks it's hurting me. He thinks he's figured out how it works, that it's doing something to me." He pauses for a second and thinks about it, and then adds slowly, "But even before that, he thought it would hurt me just to be—touching him. Just having him around."

And something crosses Mom's face then that makes Clark swallow hard.

"You think he's right?"

"No," Mom says instantly, "no, Clark," and she settles a careful hand against his face, warm and steady. "If you say it helped you, I believe you. Whatever this is, it sounds complicated. But sometimes complicated things are good things—sometimes they're the best things. All right?" She stops, and doesn't look away, doesn't move, until he nods; and then she leans in to press a firm kiss to his forehead. "But I can't help thinking about it from his side, honey, and if it were me, if I thought somehow I were hurting you just being near you? Even for a minute, even for a second—oh, I couldn't stand it." She shakes her head, bites her lip, and she's got both hands against his face now, eyes wide and wet, and Clark hadn't expected— "I couldn't stand it," she whispers again. "Do you understand? I'd do anything to stop it."

And Clark closes his eyes and thinks about it

(—"and the only thing you're ever going to do is make it worse, you know that—"

"I do know that.")

(—Stop being Batman. He'd give that up, over this—)

(—if anyone could forgive me this, it would be you, wouldn't it—)

and is pretty sure he knows exactly what she means.