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It's four in the morning and Dick is just sliding into his REM cycle after a very, very long day of patrol when he hears footsteps in his living room and jolts out of bed, suddenly more awake than he's been in months. Whoever it is has managed to not only find his civilian residence but also disable the alarms and traps he keeps on the doors and windows. He fumbles for his comm, about to dial Oracle and let her know that he, and by extension most of the Bats, are compromised, when he sees the shadowy figure by the coffee table and realizes it's Tim. Jesus Christ, the kid is gonna be the death of him.
"Oh hi, Tim," Dick says, putting down his escrima sticks. "You know, most people would use the front door. Or, you know, text first."
"Hey, Dick," Tim says. He's in costume, and fiddling with his gloves, but he doesn't remove his mask: nervous, and trying to hide it. "You've had sex with aliens, right?"
"I'm not going to like where this is going, am I?" Dick says, resigned.
"How did you deal with the whole. Junk situation," Tim says, in his best professional Mission Report voice. Its success is kind of undermined with how red his face is below the domino.
"Well, first of all, what I did with Kori is none of your business. And second of all, having sex with someone who isn't human is just like having sex with someone who is. They know their body best, so you talk to them about it. You respect their boundaries, and they should respect yours, and you figure out what works for both of you." There. That's a normal and responsible thing to tell his kid brother who is thinking about having sex with his alien clone boyfriend.
"And third of all," he adds, "I'm not going to tell you not to have sex, because that would be enormously hypocritical and you would just ignore me. But also, just because you're both horny doesn't mean you have to do anything. Take it slow. Feel it out. Use protection," he adds, as an afterthought. "Just a good habit to get into."
"Oh my god," Tim says, into his hands. "Please stop talking."
"If you can't talk about sex, you're not ready to have it," Dick says in a kind of sing-song tone, poking at Tim's shoulder. "Also, and hear me out on this, have you tried talking to Bruce?"
"To Bruce?!" Tim shrieks. "No! I haven't talked to Bruce, because I'm not an insane person, and I'd like to see Kon again sometime this century!"
"I'm just saying, he might have some insight into the particulars of Kryptonian biology," Dick says.
"I am trying not to think about the implications of what you just said." Tim shudders.
"Tim, you've been calling him Uncle Clark for like three years. What did you think was going on?"
"I thought they were friends! Brothers in arms! I thought– I don't know! I was trying not to think about it!"
"Okay, well, consider talking to Bruce. I know you've done a horrible amount of googling already. So just, you know. Remember to talk to the person you actually want to have sex with, instead of making assumptions based on shady internet websites."
"I wouldn't do that," Tim says, and he sounds a little hurt. "I just– I mean, he doesn't even really know what's going on with him. It's not like there's a 'welcome to your body' book for Kryptonians."
"And he hasn't talked to Clark, huh."
"Would you?"
"Point," Dick admits. The idea of how Clark might deliver a Kryptonian birds and the bees talk is vaguely horrifying. "Okay. I have to be at work in–" he checks the microwave clock– "3.5 hours, so I am going back to sleep. You can crash on the couch if you text Bruce and let him know where you are."
Tim grumbles, but Dick just looks pointedly at him until he pulls out his phone and taps out a message.
"Wait, take off your boots before you lay on my couch–" Dick says, but it's already too late. Tim is out like a light. Well, his couch has seen worse. Probably.
"Bruce, could I have a minute?" Tim says. He's picking at his nails.
"Of course, Tim," Bruce says. "You didn't have to come to the office, we could have talked at home."
"I just thought it'd be easier for you if I came here," Tim, who lives in Bruce's house, says.
"Okay," Bruce says, and tries not to let his face do the thing he knows it does when Tim gets squirrelly about living in the Manor. "What did you want to talk about?"
Tim is silent.
"Tim?"
"Never mind," Tim says, too quickly. "Dick was being stupid. This was a bad idea."
"You can always talk to me," Bruce says. "I'm always here for whatever you need."
"Are you and Clark really dating?"
Bruce blinks, then clears his throat, then blinks again. "Are Clark and I– no," Bruce says. "No, we are not dating."
"Oh," Tim says, shoulders slumping. "Sorry. Dick seemed really sure, so I just thought, with the Kryptonian stuff– never mind."
"Why was Dick talking about– you know what, it doesn't matter." Bruce squares his shoulders. He is going to do this right, this time around. "Clark and I aren't dating, but I have dated men in the past." Dating is definitely the wrong word for most of what he'd done with men in the past, but Tim doesn't need to know that. "So if you have any questions, or if there's anything you want to tell me, I'm always happy to listen."
"No, it's– wait, did you think I was here to come out to you?"
"Are you... not?"
"No!" Tim says, throwing his hands up. "I've been openly dating a boy for like four months! I brought him over for dinner!"
"I thought you were bringing a friend."
"We held hands! At the table! You saw me kiss him good night!"
"Conner's always been tactile, I just assumed–"
"Oh my god," Tim says, throwing up his hands. "You know what, screw this."
"No, wait," Bruce says. "Are you being safe? It's really important that you talk to your partner. Especially with a... stronger... partner, it can be easy for them not to notice limits they don't have."
"I hate this. I hate this so much. I didn't think it could get worse than Dick's version, but congratulations!" Tim stabs a finger at Bruce. "And I resent the implication that Kon would ever– he's spent so much time learning how to control a situation he never asked for– that's just stupid–"
"Tim," Bruce says, coming around the desk, "thank you for coming to me," and he wraps Tim, who is still gesticulating, in his arms. Tim freezes, and it would be almost comical if it wasn't also very sad.
"Sure," Tim says, quietly. He doesn't hug Bruce back, but he leans into Bruce's shoulder. For Tim, that's basically the same thing.
Jason: hey dickface why did tim just break into my apartment to ask about superboy's junk
Jason: DICKWAD ANSWER YOUR PHONE
Jason: YOUR LITTLE BROTHER IS IN CRISIS!!!!!!!
Jason: I'm serious he's on the couch having a conniption
Dick: the convo with Bruce went that badly huh
Jason: color me completely unsurprised this is Bruce's fault
[Dick is typing...]
[Dick is typing...]
Dick: listen he's trying he was never equipped for this part of raising teenagers
Jason: maybe he should have thought of that before adopting three of them, then
Dick: im actually out rn and rly don't want to have this fight over text again
Jason: sure sure fine
Jason: have a good night.
Dick: you too
Jason: i have a hyperventilating teenager in my living room i think "good" is a little too ambitious
Dick: god is he really that upset? i can come over
Babs: Jason please do not text Dick any more tonight
Jason: ..............
Jason: You got it.
Jason: no he'll be fine, we're gonna do some circular breathing and then i'm gonna make him watch the legally blonde boot
Jason: have a good night, get back to whatever you were doing champ ;)
[Dick is typing...]
[Dick is typing...]
[Dick is offline.]
Dick looks across the room at his phone, which has neatly landed atop a pile of folded t-shirts. "Babs," he whines.
"Your brothers are going to be fine," Babs says. "You are a very caring and generous and giving person. I love that about you." She tilts his chin up with a finger. "I also need you to focus a little more of that attention back here."
"Yes ma'am," Dick says, and dives back into her arms.
Bruce picks up the phone, his heart plummeting into his stomach, as soon as Jason's name appears on the caller ID. He's in his office, but he can suit up in less than five minutes in the executive suite. There are few constants in their tumultuous relationship, and one is that Jason doesn't call. Ever.
"Hey old man," Jason says, without waiting for a greeting. "Just a question. This is kid number three, right? How the fuck are you still so bad at this?" His voice echoes slightly, like he's in a stairwell.
"Jason? What's wrong? Are you safe?"
Jason barks a laugh. "I'm fine, Jesus. Tim is on my couch having a meltdown about his boyfriend and apparently it's your fault."
The tension leaves Bruce's shoulders with a rush, then creeps back in slightly as he processes what Jason had actually said. "We spoke today, but I thought the conversation went well." Tim had been upset, but it had seemed by the end of it like he was going to figure things out. He didn't think he'd given Tim bad advice, even if Tim hadn't wanted to listen to it at the time. "What did he say?"
"Oh no," Jason says. "If you and Tim have problems you need to sort them out yourself. I am not gonna go-between with your son." There's a little twist of venom behind "your son." Bruce still doesn't know how to tell Jason that he is also Bruce's son. That nothing– not death, or heartbreak, or vicious anger– has stopped that being true.
"Jason, please," Bruce says. "You know Tim isn't going to tell me what's actually wrong. He kept talking around the issue and then got mad at me for not guessing what he meant."
"Wow, wherever could he have picked that up from," Jason says. "Fine. But only because I'm tired of cleaning up your messes."
Tim had come to Jason's apartment and asked the same question he'd asked Bruce, but about Kori. He wanted to know how Jason navigated sex with an alien. Jason had told him (predictably) to fuck off, and Tim had gotten upset.
"Freaked the hell out. I think he's running on like two hours of sleep. Do you just not supervise him at all, or what?"
"Tim's old enough to be setting his own sleep schedule," Bruce says, defensively.
"Whatever keeps you tucked in at night," Jason says. "Anyway. Apparently Kon has super freaky junk and Tim doesn't know what to do with it and has sent himself into a full conniption. He was gonna ask you, but you declined to share the details of what goes on with Big Blue. Which, to be clear, I am not asking for!"
"Why does everyone think Clark and I are together?"
Jason is silent for nearly 30 seconds, and Bruce nearly pulls the phone away from his ear to check if the call dropped. If Jason's in a staircase, the connection might not be great. Jason probably shouldn't be having this conversation in a staircase, but Bruce trusts him to have good security, if nothing else. Then Jason bursts into loud, raucous laughter. "Oh my god," he says, breathlessly. "Dick owes me so much money."
"Are you betting on my relationship with Clark?"
"You're the world's greatest detective. You figure it out," Jason says, and hangs up.
"Ja– dammit," Bruce says, and glares at his phone. Great. Now he has to fix things with Tim, and also figure out why the hell all his kids think he and Clark are dating, and he has a morning meeting he absolutely cannot miss, or Lucius will have his balls for breakfast.
He doesn't actually have to figure out why his kids think he and Clark are dating. It's not an unreasonable assumption. They've all seen how he and Clark move together in the field, seen Clark throw Bruce towards a target with a second of eye contact to confirm the move, seen Clark change trajectories on the fly after a quick glance and a jerk of the head from Bruce. They are seamless, the kind of ease with each other's bodies born of years of practice. Alfred had put on figure skating last Winter Olympics, and Bruce had been struck by how familiar the pairs skaters looked. The habitual, unshakeable trust required to fling yourself into the air and trust your partner to catch you.
And he knows Clark, and Clark knows him, in a way neither of them allow most other people. He knows that Clark watches This Old House reruns when a mission goes badly, because they remind him of watching his father work on the farmhouse. Bruce has helped Jonathan Kent pick potato bugs off of the side garden (a solid half acre of land.) Clark and Alfred trade recipes. Bruce took off his cowl with Clark, before he did with anyone else. Deep in the bowels of the cave behind eight layers of security there is a little green vial. Clark gave it to him, and it is the possession he cherishes most in the world and also a recurring vision whenever Scarecrow makes an appearance. So it makes sense, that people would think– that people would make assumptions.
And it's not as if he hasn't thought about it. At a party, he's wondered what clever aside Clark would mutter under his breath for Bruce's ears alone. At a restaurant, he's wanted Clark across the table from him for the way his whole face crinkles into delight. In his bed, he's wondered– well. He's wondered what Clark would look like, when he came. How his voice might sound, wrapped in pleasure, around Bruce's name.
He's never let himself act on it. He won't jeopardize their partnership on a whim. Clark is his best friend, and they fight frequently. Their relationship has withstood villains and mind control, Bruce's aloof high-handedness and Clark's foolish nobility. He's not sure it can withstand something as mundane and dangerous as sex.
Bruce's curiosity has always been his downfall. He opens a private connection and an incognito window. "Kryptonian reproduction," he types, and then feels deeply ashamed of himself. It's all fake anyway, tabloid interviews with women who claim Superman took them to the heights of orgasm midair; clearly faked porn gifs where Superman has not one, not two, but four penises; someone else claiming that Kryptonians reproduce via spores and thus after he rescued her from a robotic army at the supermarket she's pregnant with Superman's baby.
Clark is a deeply private person. He doesn't even shower in the League locker rooms. He would be embarrassed to know that people were thinking about him this way at all. It's lurid speculation, exploitative and voyeuristic, and Bruce makes a note to let Oracle know to add this and related searches to her monitoring list. He can't stop people posting; he isn't God. But he can at least make it harder to find.
On the screen, one of the porn actresses starts moaning loudly as fake-Clark crams a tentacle-shaped dildo inside of her. Bruce slams his laptop shut so hard he cracks the screen. Well, that's one way to ensure data security.
The problem is that he can't stop looking at Clark. He needs to stop, because Clark may play bumbling and mild-mannered but that doesn't mean he's stupid. It's his job to notice things, and he is going to notice if Bruce can't get his shit together and quit mooning after Clark like a teenager with her first crush.
It's just the way he holds the light.
He knows it's gotten bad when Diana pulls him aside after a meeting. Clark had been standing by the large Watchtower windows, and so he'd been bathed in the soft glow of Earthlight. Bruce had been listening and contributing to the discussion. But he also hadn't been able to look away from the way that glow of home caressed Clark's cheek, and run down his chest, and lit the broad muscles of his arms.
Clark had turned to gesture at a distant star, and the curve of his ass as his cape had swirled– Bruce had had to look down at the table, aroused, and furious with himself for it.
"Are you all right, friend?" Diana asks, with a hand on his arm that's probably meant to be solicitous, but because of how strong she is, has landed somewhere to the left of threatening.
"Fine," he says. Her hand tightens slightly on his arm. People always forget that Diana only uses the lasso as a last resort. Most of the time, she doesn't need it. "I have it under control," he revises.
"It is very common and natural for comrades in arms to take pleasure in each other's bodies," she says. "Even here in the world of men, I hear it is called 'stress relief.' Hal tells me--"
"I am not using Clark for stress relief," Bruce splutters, rather than hear how Hal has explained the concept of fuckbuddies to Diana.
"But you want to," she says.
"That doesn't matter." His voice comes out too sharp.
"And he wants to, so I do not understand where the problem lies."
"No he doesn't." Bruce begins to pull away. Diana lets him. She is the strongest person he knows, bar one, and she values honesty above all else, but she has always respected his choice to leave.
"You are sure of that?" she calls after him, and it lodges like a spear in his shoulder.
He is sure of that. He thought he was sure of that. The way Clark's eyes meet his on a mission, electric and too-bright, that's just adrenaline, just the excitement of the field. That's just the way they work so well together. The way Clark puts his hand on Bruce's arm, that's just Clark being affectionate. He's met Martha Kent, who punctuates every third sentence with a hug.
Clark's touch is always careful, intentional, mindful of his strength, but he grew up in a house full of physical affection. It's normal for him, to touch Bruce. A hand on his shoulder as Clark leans over the cockpit of the Javelin to peer at something on the HUD. A touch to the small of his back, ushering him towards an open doorway. A shoulder knocked against his as Clark tells a joke he thinks Bruce will appreciate.
Bruce didn't grow up in the Kent household. He grew up in the Manor, with Alfred, who he knows has a deep well of affection for him but is not what anyone would call physically demonstrative. He has had years to grow accustomed to Clark's easy physicality. He never has. Every touch lights him up like it's the first time.
"Do you mind if we stop by my apartment?" Clark asks. He has that sort of sheepish hopeful expression that he wears regularly. Bruce still isn't sure if it's a mask or not. Bruce had come to Metropolis to help out with Brainiac's latest disaster. He's sweaty, and exhausted, and even now that he's out of the cowl and cape he'd like to just be home.
"No, that's fine," he says, because whether or not it's put on, earnest Kansas is in fact an expression that does it for him.
"It's just that odds are I'm going to get called away again tonight, and I haven't watered my plants in ages, and if the schedule gets off it's a whole nightmare."
Clark has plants? Clark does have plants. Bruce follows Clark into through the beat-up door of his little shoebox apartment, where Clark is toeing off his shoes and turning on lamps and telling Bruce to make himself at home. There's a large painting on the wall, something abstract: towers, reaching for an empty sky. The windowsills are crowded with greenery, all leaning towards the meager windows. Like Clark must, in the winter.
"I know, they're getting leggy. Oliver says I need a grow light," Clark says, "but they're pretty expensive, and I'm not sure I could hang one in this apartment anyway." He's puttering around with a mister and a little blue plastic watering can shaped like an elephant. A light spray of water bursts from the elephant's trunk. Clark must have gotten it at the hardware store down the street, or maybe it was a gift from Martha. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing Clark would have purchased on purpose. But then Bruce is rapidly reevaluating how well he knows Clark.
He's bent over all those growing green things, adjusting leaves, rotating pots, testing the soil with his finger. He dwarfs them; Bruce is not a small man, but he has never had Clark's sheer presence. The muscles of his back shift beneath his thin plaid shirt. Bruce feels something crawl up his throat and tighten there. It's not arousal, or not just arousal; that would be simple. It's something else, something that in all honesty has been growing in his chest for years, and he's terrified of it.
"The monstera I've got to repot, because it just keeps getting bigger. I'm not sure what to do about that, actually. It's too big for the windowsill, and too small to just put on the floor." Clark looks over at Bruce, who has just been standing there gazing at him like an idiot. "Do you– sorry, you don't care about this at all, do you? And here I am babbling."
"It's fine," Bruce says. He can't bring himself to add, 'I like hearing you talk.' "Alfred would probably have some advice, if you wanted to ask him. Maybe a hanging basket?"
"Oh, that would be perfect," Clark says, and he honest-to-god lights up at the idea. "There is a beam overhead, it just won't support a whole lighting rig. But a plant would be fine."
"You have a nice apartment," Bruce says. "It's not what I expected." It seems like the thing to say, surrounded by Clark's plants and his little side table lamps. There's an afghan on the couch that looks like Martha's handiwork, or maybe one of the bevy of church ladies who Clark has said descend on the Kent house every other Tuesday night.
Clark snorts a little. "Don't hurt yourself."
"No, I mean it."
"You thought I lived in bachelor squalor?" Clark quirks an eyebrow. "Have you met my mother?"
"I don't know," Bruce says. "I hadn't really thought about it." And wasn't that embarrassingly narcissistic, that Clark had been haunting both his thoughts and his fantasies for weeks, and he hadn't given the slightest thought to how Clark might exist when he wasn't in Bruce's company.
Clark turns back to his plants, his shoulders rounding. "Well," he says, and there's something in his voice Bruce can't quite place. "Here it is." He moves past Bruce to refill that idiotic little watering can, but instead of putting his palm on Bruce's shoulder to guide his sidestep as he normally would, he just walks around him.
Hurt. That's what that note in Clark's voice had been. Bruce had hurt him. He didn't think that was something he could do.
"Clark," he calls, into the galley kitchen with its yellow-and-brown checked linoleum and warm fluorescent light. "Do you want to get dinner?"
Clark leans out of the doorway. "I thought you had to get back to Gotham."
"They'll live without me for an hour or two."
"Sure," Clark says, setting down his watering can and drying his hands on a checked dishtowel. "There's a good Armenian place down the street, they should have tables. I don't know the fancy restaurants really, but I can give Cat a call. I'm sure she has a rec."
"What about takeout?" Bruce says. It's as close to an apology as he can get, without making Clark uncomfortable. He can see now, how it must have looked. Him in his overtailored black suit, descending upon Clark's homey little apartment and just standing there like he was too good to sit on Clark's well-squashed armchair. He hadn't even taken his shoes off. He goes over to the door to do that now. "Does that Armenian place deliver?"
And so they sit around the round dining table Clark has crammed into the corner of his kitchen and tear into lamejun and kibbeh. Clark laughs with his whole body, Bruce knows, but it's another thing to see him shake a table with it because his knee is hitting the frame. He has to make a grab for his drink, and Clark apologizes, and then Bruce is laughing, the creaky cackle he only lets himself make around people he doesn't need to impress anymore.
Clark looks alarmed, briefly, and then his eyes crinkle at the corners with realization. He is so goddamn beautiful. His knee is so close to Bruce's, because they are two large men around a very small table. Bruce thinks, very calmly, if he touches me, I am going to do something I'll regret.
There is a silence, warm and quiet. Bruce doesn't want to break it. It feels fragile, like something Clark might coax to life in a little pot on his windowsill. Clark is still looking at him with those inhumanly blue eyes. It's easy to forget, here in the little apartment full of comforts Clark has surrounded himself with, who else Clark Kent is.
They're really quite close together, across from each other at this table. Bruce could lean over and kiss him. He thinks– the way Clark is looking at him, he thinks Clark would kiss him back.
He doesn't, in the end, remember who broke first. Whether it was Clark who stood to clear the dishes, and Bruce who grabbed his hand and pulled him down into a kiss, or Bruce who looked away, and Clark who reached across the table to bring him back.
It doesn't matter, really. They're kissing. That's the only thing he can think about: Clark's mouth on his. He's careful, like he's testing his own strength, and Bruce makes a growling sound in his mouth and bites at Clark's bottom lip until Clark lets him in, and then things get a lot less careful.
Clark has Bruce up against the terrible wallpaper in the kitchen, body to body. Bruce has never been so hard in his life. Clark kisses like he does everything else: with his whole self.
"Wait," Clark says, grabbing Bruce's hands as they fumble with his belt.
"No?" Bruce says, eyeing the sizable– and noticeably twitching– bulge in Clark's pants.
"I–" and Clark is blushing, which is so charming that Bruce has to exert all his iron control to keep from kissing him again. "It's not what you're used to."
"You've seen the tabloids," Bruce says. "I can promise that whatever you're packing, I can handle– oh."
Clark has unzipped his pants and is standing there with his arms crossed. His jaw is set, and he looks both defiant and slightly nervous. But Bruce isn't really looking at Clark's face, because freed from the confines of his pants Clark's penis has– unfurled? Into three frilled, frond-like segments that surround a central, pulsing nodule. As he watches, the fronds twirl together into a single form, and then separate again. Thin threads of wetness drip from their tendrilled edges.
"Well, I can't say I was expecting that," Bruce says.
"Yeah?" Clark says. "Anything else you want to get out of the way? Any Star Trek references? You need to take some notes?"
"Not really," Bruce says, and reaches for him. "Mostly I just want to get my hands on you."
"Fuck," Clark gasps, all his defiant brittleness collapsing as Bruce's hand brushes one of the fronds. It trills against his hand, the other two twining to meet it. "Fuck, Bruce," he says, and keens as Bruce runs a finger up and down the little filaments along the edge.
"What gets you off?" Bruce says, swirling his hand and watching with fascination as the fronds follow his fingers. "How do you touch yourself?"
"I–" Clark is having trouble forming a full sentence, and Bruce is having too much fun watching all that indomitable will crumble under the lightest brush of his hand. But he does want to know, and so he pulls his hand away. The fronds lean towards him, furled back together into a shape almost-but-not-quite like a human cock.
Clark huffs against Bruce's shoulder. "Can we– move to a bed for this conversation," he says, and then he blurs and is standing, naked, at the end of the hall.
"I wanted to do that," Bruce grumbles, and joins him in the doorway. Immediately he realizes a problem with Clark's plan. "Clark, you are a very large grown adult. How do you sleep in a double bed?"
"Well, I'm not exactly bringing people back to Clark Kent's place to have sex with– this," Clark says, gesturing at his fronds, which ripple with the movement of the air. He sighs. "Look, we can go to yours."
"No, it's fine." Clark is already uncomfortable, and Bruce hasn't helped put him at ease. Clark will feel more secure in a space he considers his own than in any of the cavernous bedrooms back at the Manor or in Bruce's various impersonal safehouses. "I can work with this."
He walks Clark backwards, pushing him back against the bed, and climbs on top of him, relishing the feeling of all that power between his thighs. Clark surges up to kiss him, only to fall back with a gasp when the movement brushes the seam of Bruce's pants against him.
"Too much?" Bruce asks, and Clark just grimaces. Bruce climbs off of him and flings his pants and boxers into a corner. "There," he says. And then they're skin to skin, Clark's long stretch of unbroken perfection rubbing up against all of Bruce's scars.
He'd assumed sex with Clark would be– athletic, and sweaty, and probably kind of rough. That Clark might like to be thrown around, the way he himself often does. But Clark likes light touches, Bruce discovers. Bruce run his hands all over Clark's body, little brushes of fingertips where he's most sensitive: his nipples, and the inside of his elbow; the line of his beautiful throat; the line of hair trailing down to his groin, which is sticky with sweat and arousal. The fronds are wet, the tendrils beginning to clump together.
Clark is also incredibly responsive. His breath speeds before Bruce even touches him, just from the nearness of his hands. He's vocal, too, little half-stifled moans and pants of breath dripping from his lips for Bruce to kiss away. When Bruce runs his tongue over his nipple, he arches his back like a bow and bites his own forearm to stifle his cry.
Bruce reaches for the nodule at the base of the fronds, intending to rub it like he would a clit, but Clark yelps and grabs his hand. "It's– not like that," he says, and moves Bruce's hand back upwards.
So instead Bruce uses all of his formidable strength to hold himself up so that he's barely brushing against Clark, the tendrils yearning towards him. He lowers himself slowly down, and the fronds surround his cock and hold it, thrumming, against the nodule at their base. The sensation is indescribable: a thousand little paint brushes, rolling, breath-light, against his cock; like fucking a cloud of feathers; like having an extremely strong vibrator held just next to his cock, so that only the air is moving. It's too much. It's not enough.
Clark curses and gasps and clutches at Bruce's back when the head of his cock hits the nodule. It's throbbing against Bruce, blood-hot and tender, and Bruce can't even thrust, because Clark is holding him in a vise grip, those fronds pulsing faster and faster against his cock. It won't be enough for him to come, he thinks, surely not, surely just the grip of Clark's hands around his shoulders and this maddening feathery lightness–
And Clark grasps him unimaginably tighter as his whole body locks in pleasure, the tendrils tightening in a vise around him, and Clark is coming, wet spurts of liquid flooding around Bruce's cock. He's made Clark's magnificent impossible body come.
That's what sends him over the edge, in the end. Clark's face buried in his shoulder; his hands on Bruce's arms; the undeniable proof of Clark's arousal. His orgasm feels like it starts in his fingertips and lights up his whole body. He's aware of every inch of his skin, and all of it is filled with pleasure so intense it's almost painful.
"Jesus Christ," he says, as Clark breathes great heaving breaths against the divot of his shoulder. He's not sure Clark is verbal yet. Bruce rolls off of him and lets him come back to himself, keeps a grounding hand on his arm.
"Every time I think you can't surprise me any more, you do," Clark says, finally. He's staring at the ceiling, his hands folded on his chest. He looks like a cartoon of a child stargazing. His profile in the streetlight that leaks through the window is the most beautiful thing Bruce has ever seen. "You'd think that wouldn't be possible anymore, not after so many years. But it is."
"You too," Bruce says, and when he reaches for Clark's hand, Clark rolls over and presses a kiss to his knuckles. Bruce has to swallow against it. "You do the same to me." Clark has more courage in the single thumb currently stroking Bruce's knuckles than Bruce has in his entire body. He can't stop thinking of the expression on Clark's face when he'd unzipped his pants. The beautiful defiance of it.
He had always thought Clark was at ease in his body. As Superman, he inhabits his physical frame so completely that he seems somehow more alive than everyone else. He moves like he invented the concept of limbs. As Clark Kent, he wears his body like an old soft sweater that he has to keep pushing up at the wrists; to Bruce, who has seen Clark shed his journalist slump in seconds, the lie had always seemed so obvious. Bruce hadn't realized that both might be an act.
"Thank you," he says, "for trusting me."
"Jesus, Bruce, it's not exactly a hardship to have sex with you." Clark swallows, and closes his eyes. "Thank you for being worthy of that trust. It hasn't exactly– well, you can imagine."
Bruce can. He can imagine Clark growing up and always pissing in a stall, always changing in the bathroom before gym, always deferring to his partner. 'Oh, I don't need anything. Oh, I already came. Let me get you off again.' The many mundane little lies he must have used to keep people at arm's length. No wonder his secret identity, despite its tissue-paper thinness, has never been in much danger. Has anyone else ever even come to this apartment?
Bruce is suddenly seized with the image of Clark, moving in and unpacking by himself. The forest of spindly little plants on the windowsill, the single mug in the drying rack, the pair of sensible business shoes by the door. The long loneliness of it. It isn't that Clark doesn't have friends. There's the whole Justice League– but then, those are Superman's friends. Are they Clark's?
"You're beautiful," he says, instead of any of that, which Clark would probably find either concerning or insulting.
"You already got in my pants, Bruce," Clark says, with some asperity. "You don't need to put on like that."
"I thought you might not have heard it before," Bruce says.
"No," Clark says. "Not about– that." He's staring back up at the ceiling. "It really doesn't bother you?"
"Did it look like I was bothered?" Bruce says. He props himself up on one elbow so he can see Clark's face better. "I thought it was the hottest thing I'd ever seen, you losing control like that." He takes a breath. Clark deserves, he thinks, to be repaid for all that brittle courage earlier. "But frankly, I wouldn't have cared what you have down there. As long as it was you." His voice sounds stiffer than he means it to be. He's not good with words. He's not Clark, whose earnest and impassioned speeches can draw a room to him like moths to a burning light.
Clark has the oddest expression on his face.
"I know– you might not feel similarly," Bruce says. "I don't have any expectations. I just thought you should know. Can you say something, please," he adds, because Clark is just looking at him, like he's using his X-ray vision on Bruce's heart.
"Bruce," Clark says, his voice rougher than usual. "Do you mean it."
"Do you know me to be in the habit of saying things I don't mean?" Bruce says. He pulls away, moving to sit up, when Clark grabs his arm.
"Bruce, you have to be sure," Clark says. "This isn't something I can take back."
Bruce tries to squash down his hurt. He knows his reputation. It's carefully cultivated: Brucie Wayne, billionaire playboy, sleeps with anything with a pulse and an ass, as long as it smiles at him. He didn't think Clark, of all people, would have fallen for it. "I don't lie to you, Clark," Bruce says.
"No," Clark says. "I know you don't. I trust you. I just– can you understand that this isn't something I have a lot of experience in?"
"This," Bruce says, sharply, "being what, exactly?"
"Any of it," Clark says, and he puts his hand on Bruce's shoulder, a silent request. Bruce is good at hiding his face in plain sight. But not from Clark. He turns back and lets Clark see it, all of it: how much he wants Clark, has wanted him, for years, in every possible way.
Clark looks at him, that steady assessing journalist's gaze, and then, all his hesitation gone, he hauls Bruce to him and kisses him like he's dying for it, like every last barrier has been breached.
"I'm not sure," Bruce says, against Clark's frantic mouth. "Clark, wait–" and Clark pulls back, but not far, not far enough to stop touching Bruce.
"Yes, you are," Clark says.
"I'm sure about you," Bruce says. "But the rest of it. I don't know how this works any more than you do."
"That's fine," Clark tells him, and kisses his way up Bruce's jaw again.
"What do you mean that's fine," Bruce grumbles.
"You're the Justice League's best planner," Clark says. "And I trust you."
He sounds, Bruce thinks, as he loses himself in the movement of Clark's mouth, like he's saying something else.
In the morning, Bruce is rudely awoken by a knife to the eyeballs. It's unbelievably bright outside, and Clark has opened the curtains and is sitting on the edge of the bed texting.
"Good morning," he says.
"Is it," Bruce grumbles, trying his best to burrow back into the pillow.
"Hey Bruce," Clark says, very lightly, "care to tell me why your son is texting me to ask in incredibly roundabout ways about Kryptonian genitalia?"
"It's too early for this," Bruce moans.
"Well, he texted me at 3 AM last night, so I think it's more of a question of him being too late rather than too early."
Bruce sits up, grinding the heels of his hands into his eyeballs. "I don't know how much you talked to Kon about what being half-Kryptonian might mean for him," he says, which is really too many words to be uttering at such an ungodly hour. But this is important.
"Oh shit," Clark says, with the vaguely panicked air of someone who's realized he left the stove on.
"Oh shit indeed," Bruce says, dryly. He didn't interfere, when Clark first fucked things up with Kon. Clark hadn't interfered when things had first gone south with Dick, or with Jason. But look how that had ended.
"You've been talking to him more?"
"He doesn't really want to spend time with me," Clark says, staring down at his phone. Bruce puts a hand on the slumped line of his shoulders.
"He knows you resent him," Bruce says. "That's hard for a kid to get over."
"I don't resent him," Clark says. "I resent the circumstances of his creation."
"And he knows the difference?"
Clark grimaces. "I hate taking parenting advice from you."
"Well, I've fucked it up enough that you can probably use me as an example of exactly what not to do." Bruce quirks a smile. Knowledge of his faults has not, unfortunately, made him stop having them.
"I think I should go take care of this," Clark says apologetically.
"At 7 in the morning? Kon won't be awake. Stay and have breakfast with me," Bruce says, running his hand down Clark's arm, enjoying the warmth of him through his terrible shirt. Maybe now Clark will let Bruce buy him some shirts that aren't made of polyester.
Clark is looking at him with those laughing eyes. God, Bruce wants him to always look like this, the sunlight through the window in his hair, the crinkles at the corner of his mouth when he's trying not to smile.
"Bruce," he says, with that irrepressible humor in his voice, "it's half past 11."
"I take everything back, you're terrible, get out," Bruce says, and has to push a smiling Clark off of him.
Kon: heyyyyyy tim do you know why kal showed up on my doorstep with a pizza and then proceeded to give me a SEX TALK i think im blind now
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Kon: jesus dude don't hurt urself
Tim: I have no idea.
Tim: and also how did it go, was it helpful, did you learn things
Kon: yeah i learned things ;P
Kon: i can come over and show you exactly how much i learned if u want ;P
Tim: Someday your phone is gonna get hacked and your texts are going to be the laughingstock of the internet
Kon: no one can hack my phone im dating you
Kon: so that's a no on coming over?
Tim: give me five minutes
Kon: there's underwear on your lamp again isn't there
Tim: I Said Give Me Five Minutes
Kon: see u soon :*
Tim: see you soon <3
"Oh shit," Tim says. He's shoving three separate piles of laundry into his closet (thank God for walk-ins) when he happens to look out the back window. "Pick up the phone, pick up the phone," he mutters, and is relieved when Kon answers. He sounds like he's in a wind tunnel.
"Oh thank God," Tim says. "Listen, you can't come in the back entrance, you have to go around the side."
"Little hard to hear you, babe," Kon yells, over the roar of air moving past him at 300 MPH. "Go around the back? Why?"
"Because–"
"Never mind, I'm here," Kon says, and hangs up.
"–Alfred is trimming the hedges... in the back..." Tim trails off as a small tornado of leaves whirls up in the back courtyard. In the center of it, Kon is apologizing profusely to an irate Alfred.
For about three seconds, Tim considers abandoning Kon to his fate. The way Alfred's waving those shears means business. But that's probably not good boyfriend behavior, and also Kon just looked up and saw him watching out the window.
"Help," he mouths, and he's doing the puppy eyes. Tim is not immune to the puppy eyes.
"Coming," Tim mouths back, and Kon looks like he's going to make a joke, and then Alfred grabs him by the sleeve and shoves the shears into his hands. Tim throws on a sweatshirt. Time, as usual, to go rescue his boyfriend.