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*
Bruce is sitting on the bench at the airport, legs pressed tightly together as if he doesn’t want to take up any space. His eyes are lowered in the way of someone who probably hasn’t slept a wink on the plane, his hands shoved into his coat pockets against the cold - that’s the first thing Clark notices about him when he arrives.
“You cold?” Clark says.
Outside it’s minus three. People usually don’t fly after Christmas. The terminal feels too quiet, empty in a way that’s unusual for Smallville but not for Gotham. Bruce sometimes thinks he carries Gotham around with him like luggage, the way Clark carries Smallville.
“I forgot my gloves,” Bruce mutters.
Clark is already taking his suitcase, talking in his bright voice. He doesn’t feel the cold, not really, not in the same way a human does. He’s already saying things like: do you want to go buy a pair? want to hold my hand?
Bruce supposes that’s normal behavior - for a Kryptonian, or for a “lover.” Lately, he struggles to tell the difference. Being inexperienced with both, he wonders if Clark’s fussing over him means something special or if it’s just the way Clark is with everyone. Even Alfred had told him once: he’s such a nice young man, that Clark. Bruce had nearly choked on his drink when he said it.
Clark calls his name again. Bruce looks up at him finally, meets his eyes, then notices his hair falling over his forehead, messy in a way that could be called attractive. He sees how easily Clark lifts the suitcase, the line of muscle under his office clothes. He wonders if this, too, is some sort of alien act.
“No,” Bruce says, pulling his hands out of his pockets. “Let’s go to the car.” He walks ahead toward the parking lot, leaving Clark a few steps behind.
* * *
In the car, the heater is loud. Pop songs play on the radio - tracks Clark doesn’t recognize and Bruce probably doesn’t like. Clark’s fingers tap against the steering wheel in time with the beat, his eyes fixed on the wet road, but every red light tempts him into stealing a glance at the rearview mirror.
He’s already asked twice if Bruce is comfortable, if the heat is too much. A third time would be ridiculous. Bruce doesn’t like when he fusses. Clark doesn’t like it either, the version of himself that comes out around Bruce - nervous, overthinking. He doubts even the cologne he put on before leaving, worrying it’s too obvious in the car or just too cheap compared to whatever Bruce uses.
How long has it been? Two months. Fifty-two days, exactly. He counted.
“Soo..” Clark says, looking at the leather case in the backseat. “You didn’t bring much with you,”
“I don’t think I’ll stay more than a day,” Bruce replies.
“Wouldn’t that be a waste? You flew all the way here. You can crash as long as you want at mine, a month even-”
“That I know, Clark. But I'm very busy”
That ends it. Clark fixes his eyes on the road. Stupid, stupid, he thinks.
* * *
It’s hard for Clark to enjoy the time they have together. There is never enough of it. They both work too much. For him, it isn’t difficult to fly to Gotham. Slip into the manor. Cook something in the kitchen under Alfred’s scrutiny, pretending not to judge his culinary skills. He always wants to see Bruce. No matter how much he has on his plate at the Daily Planet, he makes it work.
For Bruce it’s different. Visiting Smallville means leaving behind obligations, catching a plane. Sure, Clark has suggested they could just fly there, but Bruce always rejects anything that seems legally ambiguous or too risky. Human pride, Clark thinks. He doesn’t want to be “carried through the sky like cargo”. The excuse is believable. If Clark were someone like Bruce Wayne, high-profile, visible, he would be just as cautious.
So the visits are rare. Private.
And last time, Bruce told him to stop coming at all.
“Stop coming here uninvited, Clark” he’d said. Clark had been in the kitchen, wearing an apron too small for him, flipping ridiculous stack of pancakes. They hadn’t argued. They ate them half-burnt in silence, until Bruce excused himself for a case and disappeared into the Batcave. Ambiguity wasn’t unusual for him, but rarely did he speak so directly about how he felt. It was the first time he’d told Clark he didn’t want to see him - so Clark decided it meant he was tired of him.
* * *
Clark unlocks the front door. The lock is loud, stiff with rust. He steps aside. “Come in,” he says.
Bruce walks past him. Looks around. Books everywhere, spilling off the shelves, stacked under the couch, piled on the kitchen table that’s far too large for one person.
Clark reaches to help with his coat but Bruce does it himself, then hands it over.
“Want something to drink? Tea? You can sit on the couch- hold on.”
He smacks the cushions, gathers up the papers he’d left there. “There,” he says, before darting into the kitchen to put on tea, or coffee, or whatever he can find. He feels on edge, desperate not to make a fool of himself in front of the man currently pacing silently through his modest living room, inspecting furniture he can’t remember the last time he cleaned. Photographs, polaroids, messy clippings on the wall connected with threads. Bruce must think it’s ugly, chaotic - nothing compared to the gloomy luxury of his manor or the elite spaces he frequents as Wayne.
If only Bruce had given him notice instead of calling from the airport out of the blue. Maybe Clark would’ve had time to straighten the place up before inviting him. The call had felt unreal. After months of nothing, suddenly Bruce’s voice again. Clark drove too fast, hands tight on the wheel, heart racing. He hasn’t processed it yet. Now, with Bruce here in his house, in silence, it is finally sinking in.
Clark sets a glass of water on the table. Bruce is looking at a photo above the TV. Clark as a boy, with a bad haircut. Back when kids at school didn’t like him much.
“I was a fan of the Mighty Crabjoys then,” Clark says.
“Yes, I remember you said that,” Bruce replies.
“Guess I did.”
Bruce sinks onto the couch. He looks exhausted, as always. Dark circles, messy hair, no effort to hide it. Even a cut at the corner of his lip, fresh and unexplained, makes Clark clench his fists. Such a beautiful face, treated like it’s worth nothing. Clark swallows hard. He feels the urge to back away before he does something stupid. Lately, he has to check himself constantly, and he’s sure Bruce wouldn’t even be here if he didn’t trust this composed, polite version of Clark he tries to maintain.
He clears his throat. “You must be tired from the flight,” he says. “Maybe you want to wash up, rest.”
“Not really.”
“Do you want me to make a bed?” Clark starts to rise, but Bruce catches his shirt. The grip is weak. Clark could move away easily. But he doesn’t.
“Bruce?” he says. His name keeps slipping off his tongue so easily.
Their eyes meet. Bruce’s are dark, unreadable. His fingers press into the fabric of Clark’s shirt.
“Your bed will do,” he says, quietly.
Clark thinks his strength means nothing here. This is the moment he should use his head - say no to the man who ignored him for nearly two months without a word. The man he probably shouldn’t kiss like he’s been waiting for it all this time.
*
Bruce hadn’t expected to get tangled up in sentimentality when he agreed to join a league of vigilantes. From the beginning, the only purpose he had ever assigned to his work was to fight greater evil so that justice might prevail. Not about ending up in bed with one of his teammates. But things rarely went as planned.
He met Clark first in his professional role, an interview about alleged corruption at Wayne Enterprises. The article was cutting. It damaged the family name. There wasn’t much Bruce could do except issue vague statements about letting the public “judge for themselves,” while dismissing Clark as a farm boy playing at journalism. Alfred had told him off for it. Not because the words were harsh, but because they weren’t true. They were just Bruce lashing out.
Bruce had grown up surrounded by privileged heirs. He hated people who lived on names and titles. But Clark wasn’t like that. The insult wasn’t judgment, it was only personal. Something about Clark’s harmless presence across the desk irritated him. The simple way he spoke, his invasive handshakes. The glasses that made him look like the caricature of a nerd. Something about the way he seemed ordinary when he clearly wasn’t. His strength was obvious the second Bruce shook his hand. Veins prominent on the back of it, the grip firm enough to hurt. Bruce had pulled away too quickly.
“Not dirty, you know” Clark had said then, half a joke, half something else.
Afterward Bruce He looked him up online, saw that Clark was from Smallville. A farm. Maybe that was the reason for the comment, the idea of dirt on his hands. Gotham didn’t suit him. He belonged to daylight, not to clouds and smoke. By shaking his hand he had shown something vulnerable. And Bruce, in pulling away, had done the same.
Months later they were on the same team. Their eyes met and they knew exactly who they were dealing with.
* * *
It hadn’t started as a joke. Sleeping together, touching each other. That wasn’t what it was. But Clark insisted on small gestures after missions - high fives, pats on the back, an arm around Bruce’s shoulders. Every time Bruce’s body went stiff. Like ice. He would push him away. Clark always laughed it off.
“I thought you hated me, that day of the interview,” he said once. “Turns out you’re just always like this.”
Maybe understanding Bruce’s rigidity as a part of him, not a reaction to Clark, was what let him move on from the first insult. For a while things were manageable.
Bruce spent his evenings monitoring Gotham. Sewing his cuts. Coffee and disinfectant in the air. Alfred still worried about his health. Then a headline about Smallville, or Washington. Between public appearances and scattered rest, there were Clark’s hands on his back, on his shoulders. His skin buzzed under the suit until he finally lost patience.
* * *
“Stay back,” Bruce had said. His knuckles still bloody. His stance defensive, even though he could barely breathe. His mouth full of ash.
“What else was I supposed to do?” Clark had snapped. “You're so damn childish,” he called him. He had only been trying to carry Bruce out of a burning building after he’d passed out. The flames, the smoke in his lungs, the mobsters he’d been tailing had already escaped. His vision had blurred, then gone black. He remembered waking up in the sky, his cheek pressed to Clark’s chest, Clark’s chin against his forehead. Kryptonians could sense changes in heartbeats, Bruce recalled vaguely, but he didn’t care until they landed on a nearby rooftop.
Childish or not, Bruce hated how Clark spoke as if he knew him. Just because he’d seen the professional mask of Bruce Wayne in that interview, and the mask of Batman on the battlefield, he thought he could draw conclusions about his private life too. Bruce’s face still burned, his lips, the spots Clark had touched without meaning to. That was the most irritating thing.
* * *
At the Justice League one year anniversary party they kept looking at each other from opposite sides of the room. They hadn’t spoken properly since Bruce’s outburst, the one about Superman lifting him off the ground when it wasn’t necessary. The air between them was still tight with that. For Clark it was carelessness. For Bruce it felt like something heavier, the slow build of bad habits.
There were drinks everywhere, vodka in little glasses, the flicker of Green Lantern’s disco ball, jazz music under the sound of rain on the windows. Even so they didn’t stop watching each other. Every time Bruce felt a jolt of something move through him, sharp and physical. He kept drinking, as if that would flatten the feeling. He wasn’t the type to drink, not usually, and he wasn’t the type to behave irrationally. He was already reaching for more when Clark’s hand closed around his wrist.
“That’s enough,” he whispered.
Bruce was glad for the suit then. It covered more than it revealed.
* * *
They ended up at Bruce’s place. Bruce doesn’t remember how it happened exactly. The mask coming off, the door opening, the entry code typed wrong three times in a row while Clark kissed the side of his neck.
On the bed, Bruce pressed his fingers into his thigh. Watching Clark. Half curious, half defensive. His shirt was half open, hair damp from the rain. Clark didn’t tell him to take off his clothes. His hands hovered just above Bruce’s hips, hesitant. Maybe afraid it would feel like harassment, or the wrong kind of provocation. His throat kept moving, swallowing. Careful in a way Bruce never was - he hadn’t even offered him a drink, or a towel. He doubted Clark needed one anyways. More than that, he didn’t want to think about what was happening.
“Actually,” Clark said. His hands moving lower, his mouth at Bruce’s ear. His lips were warm, wet. Bruce swallowed hard.
“Yes,” he whispered.
“You like me touching you, don’t you?”
The rain kept sliding down the windows, their faces blurred in the reflection. Their hands met nervously. Bruce’s back pushed further into the mattress, his body open, unprotected. He felt naked without Kevlar between himself and the world, without armour to hide behind. Clark brushed his cheek with his hand, pushed his hair back, left him breathless. No one had ever touched him like that. His heartbeat was fast, not fear exactly, but not far off.
Then Clark held him closer, and whispered, asking for something, anything, to ease the hunger he’d been carrying for too long.
*
“Shouldn’t we talk first?” Clark said. “You call me after months of nothing, and you think I won’t say anything about it? I’m not that easy as you think-”
Bruce tilted his head and kissed him on the chin. It was quiet, deliberate, his lips were soft, trembling slightly, the kind of tremor Clark could feel in detail. He didn’t want to give in, really he didn’t, but God, he had missed Bruce.
Since the first night they slept together, they had ended up in bed almost every weekend. Takeaway pizza, beer, sometimes pancakes. Their feet brushing lazily against each other on the couch. Clark asking what he’d been doing in the Batcave all day while touching his hair. Bruce replying in monosyllables or words too complicated for small talk. Clark liked leaning close, telling him to open his mouth, and watching as Bruce obeyed without complaint.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen anyone,” Bruce had said once, mumbled more like. It was obvious. The way he looked startled by his own body, as if it belonged to someone else, as if they were involuntary or coming from somewhere outside of him, every time Clark slid inside him - it was enough to see how much Bruce Wayne had starved for physical contact, maybe even more than Clark. He rarely took initiative, mostly let Clark do what he wanted. His eyes went wide when he put his hands on Clark’s shoulders, careful, uncertain.
But now it’s different. Now he touches Clark like it’s something he’s always done, and it drives Clark crazy. He yanks Clark’s shirt collar, doesn't wait for permission before kissing him. His lips are hot, burning.
“Bruce,” Clark breathes, gripping his wrists. He looks up and sees the flush spreading over Bruce’s face. He pretended until now to be more capable than Clark, but just a glance at his eyes sent him back to the beginning: a young, unpracticed virgin
“Seems like you didn't really practice a lot while I was gone,” Clark says. His hand moving between Bruce’s thighs. Bruce doesn’t push him away, just squeezes his eyes shut. The gesture irritates Clark enough to make him stop altogether.
“Tired?” he whispers. He watches Bruce’s throat move as he swallows, his tongue passing over dry lips.
“…no.”
“Then keep your eyes open when I make love to you.”
Bruce’s eyes open, wet, feverish, scared. For some reason Clark likes them that way, though he hates how dependent he is on it. He doesn’t want to hurt him, doesn’t want to see him cry. But the fact that these things happen specifically for him, because of him, warms something deep inside. He wishes Bruce could see the way he burns for him in return, but Bruce seems always too caught up in himself to look up properly.
“Is that why you came here? Bruce? Just to get fucked?”
“…”
“You could find someone else in Gotham. Or do I do it so well you had to get on a plane?”
“Clark…” Bruce’s voice low, his legs tightening around Clark’s torso, supported by his warm hands. The vulgar words make his body shiver with excitement. Clark knows it, knows this shameful side of him, and it excites him in turn.
“Why are you doing this to me,” he whispers as he undoes Bruce’s shirt, running his fingers across every curve, touching every scar.
* * *
After the Justice League anniversary party’s night, the days at Wayne's manor were difficult. Confusing. His conflicted feelings bled into everything.
In the morning, sunlight spilled across Clark’s back, and from up close Bruce thought he looked like a small hill. Clark would whisper against his cheek: “What do you want for breakfast?” while he was still half-asleep. A hand at his waist, a thumb brushing over his scars.
“…I don’t usually eat breakfast.”
“That’s no good, Mister Wayne. After my pancakes you’ll want breakfast every day.”
Clark ruffled his hair, then stood and pulled on his wrinkled shirt. The sun cut through the fabric, outlining the broad shape of his back.
Normally Bruce was self-sufficient, independent, living with such a thin inner life no one else could perceive it. He wasn’t the type to rely on others, or ask anything of them. But when Clark whispered tenderly in his ear and cooked for him, he felt like exactly that type of person - someone with needs that deserved to be understood, to be met.
On long nights in the cave, Clark touched his shoulder and said: You’re working too much. You should get some sleep. The words were the same Alfred always used, but from Clark it was different. Going to bed suddenly sounded tempting. Bruce usually refused. The physical sensations he felt around Clark were debilitating. His body felt unfamiliar, fragile, as if it no longer belonged to him. He wanted things he had never allowed himself to want before. He imagined Clark’s body inside his, even before it happened. The thoughts distracted him from his work. He wasn’t himself.
Clark sneaking into Wayne Manor through his bedroom window, avoiding Alfred, while Bruce, as silent as ever, let him take the lead. He liked Clark, but he wasn’t used to this comfort. For years he told himself sex wasn’t for him, or that he didn’t have time for it. On the surface, he hoped this was only sex. That it couldn’t be lost. That it could be replaced.
But the smell of coffee in his room, the trail of it to the kitchen, where Clark stood in his boxers, hair sticking up, making breakfast - those noises, those smells, that sudden heat inside his body when Clark said Good morning - all of it felt irreplaceable. As irreplaceable as his parents. That’s why the anxiety returned: the fear of not being in control. The fear of emptiness, as Alfred sometimes psychoanalyzed him without asking.
“I love you, Bruce.” Clark said it pressing his hand against his side, grinning that full grin, kissing the top of his head. “Maybe I should have said it from the start, so you wouldn’t look so shocked now.”
Bruce said nothing. He let himself be kissed, then went to the cave to think until it was late. Until he could be Batman again. Strong, fearless, fists striking. Blood on his lips that Clark insisted on tasting.
Days later, slumped at the table, nearly asleep while Clark talked about groceries, Bruce sighed.
“Clark, stop coming here uninvited.”
* * *
Clark doesn’t understand it. The way Bruce moves between extremes. Cutting off contact completely, then showing up again like this, restless and hungry.
“Why are you here?” he asks. He’s inside him when he says it, holding back nothing. Bruce digs his fingers into the sheets. He doesn’t answer, only clenches his jaw, trying to stay composed. Clark knows by now that words don’t come easily to him. Sometimes it feels like Bruce is the alien, not him, because of how badly he communicates with other people.
On missions he leaves without saying goodbye. He never laughs at jokes, never really accepts teamwork.
“Why now?” Clark says. “I thought you were done with me.”
Bruce lets out a short laugh. It’s sharp, not fitting the moment. Clark feels a flicker of anger, pushes harder, watches the movement of Bruce’s body beneath him. His scars catch the light. Every time Clark sees them like this, spread across his back, he feels something close to grief.
He stops moving. They’re both still, breathing hard. Clark presses his forehead to Bruce’s shoulder. “Does it hurt? I didn’t mean to- I’m sorry.”
Bruce exhales, low. Clark can feel the dampness of his own tears on Bruce’s skin, and hates himself for it.
“I missed you,” Bruce says. His voice is steady, almost gentle. Clark clings to him, pushes his face against his shoulder like he can’t stop himself. “I always end up doing it.”
“Why” he says. “You tell me not to come, then you don’t look for me after.. and now you want me to believe you missed me? I'm not your damn toy boy”
Bruce pulls back and sits up against the headboard. His hair is damp, his chest still rising fast. Clark looks at him, eyes red, body still tense with need.
It was stupid, Bruce thinks. Keeping away had only made him miss him more and book the fastest flight he could find in a rainy ugly day. Now Clark looks hurt and it unsettles him. He wipes Clark’s eyes with his thumbs, and Clark catches his hands, holding them there.
Bruce laughs quietly.
“What?” Clark says. “It’s your fault I cried.”
“Yeah.”
Bruce kisses his forehead. A small, clumsy kiss, the kind he remembers giving only once before - to the puppy he had as a child. A dog he struggled to let go of when it died, and later tried hard to forget.
“Clark,” he says. Clark looks up, still cupped between his hands “Being with you is the scariest thing I do.”
Clark looks like he might speak but Bruce touches a finger to his lips. Then he pulls him close again. His thumb slids over Clark’s shoulder, between his shoulder blades, pressing him closer until their lips meet again and Bruce’s back is against the mattress. Bruce kisses him with weak, broken sounds, burying his face against Clark’s chest whenever Clark pushes inside him, whispering softly in his ear how much he wants him.
“I love you,” Clark says. Over and over. Bruce can’t bring himself to say it back, but he accepts it with closed eyes, unable to refuse.