Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Rough night?” 

Bruce whipped round, shuriken ready to fly in his hand, only catching himself at the last second. He pinched the bladed edge between his clammy fingers. Across his shadowy bedroom, outside the balcony doors he’d thrown open to escape the oppressive summer heat, floated Clark. Just Clark. The tension sagged out of his muscles. He tried to hide the slow exhale of relief, but Clark could undoubtedly hear every single beat of his surprise-spiked heart. It had been a rough patrol; he was still on edge. 

Instead of slipping the shuriken back into the leather scabbard sewn into his sweatpants, he chucked it on top of his dresser with a cathunk. Fiddled with his bandage wrapped hands. Tried to force the adrenaline surge out of himself. “You know the Gazette sometimes sends paparazzi to the gate. What happens when they finally catch you flying in here?” 

Taking that as a permission of some kind, Clark, who had been hovering like a glowworm against the dark backdrop of the city, sank down onto the balcony itself. His bare feet brushed against the railing like stairs. A light breeze ruffled his loose curls, his baggy Mighty Crabjoys t-shirt, and his flannel pants, and disturbed the lofty summer curtains in a gentle bluster. It carried his smell towards him. Clarks scent was always clean like dried pinewood, and spiced underneath like cardamom. 

Superman smelt the same way. He supposed it made sense, they were the same person, but it always caught him off guard the few times that he’d stood shoulder to shoulder with Superman that the man should smell so… Human. So ordinary, and placeable, and not at all like stardust and spaceships.  

“Bruce Wayne makes a statement about the platonic nature of his relationship with Superman?” Clark ribbed, as he padded across the waxed oak floor towards him. 

“That might work, if you weren’t wearing pyjamas.” 

It had taken considerable effort in the beginning, for him to not match every step Clark took towards him with one step backwards. For them to build a trust, a language of their own in gesture and expression. Now it was easy to stay still. The instinct still flared up a little, an age old habit, but it was tempered with the flicker of desire. Sometimes, Bruce wanted to take that step back. Just to see if Clark would chase. 

“Friends don’t visit friends in pyjamas?” Clark asked. He crossed the space between them and, pressing all along his front, walked Bruce the two and a half steps back against the dresser. Oh. It was one of those visits. The edge of the furniture cut a solid line into his bruised bare back, but he didn’t care. Instead of kissing him like he expected, Clark softly dropped his forehead against his, closed his eyes, and let their ribs fight against eachother until they settled into breathing as one. The moment felt sweet, no need for anything else, and Bruce felt all the leftover agita from patrol ebb out of him. 

No. No, friends didn’t really visit friends in pyjamas like this. 

They weren’t necessarily friends anymore though, were they? Bruce wasn’t sure what to call them now. Hadn’t been brave enough to broach it, wanting to stand back and watch how Clark was handling it, figure out what he thought about it, and infer from there. Maybe they were still a type of friends, but they couldn’t possibly be Just Friends. Right?

With barely any room between them, Clark caught one of his wrapped hands from where it had braced on a drawer handle, and pulled it close to his face. All of his fingers he examined in turn, before wrapping his lips around the most scuffed knuckle in a mournful kiss. He did that a lot - checking him over after patrols, like he was a precious toy someone else had been playing with. Or a glass hammer, he was waiting to find cracks in. 

Almost as an afterthought, thinking the conversation had been left behind, Bruce mumbled to himself, “Not through the bedroom window, they don’t,” And bright eyes flashed up to him. They gleamed from under thick eyelashes, mouth still parted around his skin. Even to his own ears he’d sounded a little breathless. A little awkward. 

Clark dropped his hand as quickly as he’d grabbed it up. A prickle of ice shivered over him, radiating out from the offending limb - maybe he should cut it off, burn it, set it on fire, why did he say that - and just when he thought he’d ruined it, Clark said, “Maybe I should take them off then.” Then, shucked his t-shirt in one smooth motion. Bruce's mouth flooded with saliva. The copper tang of his split lip tainted the sudden taste of need. The taste of oh shit. 

The overcast night illuminated Clark in an unearthly glow. The corded silhouette of his neck muscles rolled like the whoosh of waves, connecting to his broad shoulders that spanned like almighty tidal rocks - but all the forces of nature couldn’t have dreamed up a man like Clark. A beauty like Clark. His golden skin was so soft, the envy of Arabian sand, that you could almost imagine if you reached out to touch him your hand would slip right through. Glass shuddered to think of what cut the lines of his face just so, and for all of existence flower-filled meadows had been trying to figure out how to say what he said with just a soft quirk of his lips - is this okay? Do you like me? Will you stay?

The few inches of distance his sudden move had put between them felt criminal. Feeling cocky, and needing to act on it in case he never felt that way again, Bruce looked down and arched an eyebrow at his flannel trousers. “Those are pyjamas too, you know.”

A grin split Clarks face. He surged forward, one hand guiding the side of Bruce's jaw, the other coming up low and gripping on the back of his thigh, and kissed him. Filthy. In the same motion, he hoicked him up onto the edge of the dresser, and Bruce clamoured at his shoulders yelping his surprise into his still half-smiling mouth. He jerked out a hand to balance himself, as Clark tried to seat him properly - then pricked his clumsy fingers on the edge of the abandoned shuriken. He yanked them back with a sharp hiss. Clark fumbled, his own hand shooting out to balance them, and knocked a set of photo frames askew, scattering them like dominoes. “Ah shit! Sorry!” He said between kisses that Bruce had turned back on him, “Sorry!” 

Clark stepped back, tried to unbusy his hands to absently right the mess they’d made, but Bruce coiled around him and yanked him back in. “I don’t care,” He suckled him back in by the bottom lip, watching his pupils bloom wide. “I don’t care. Bed?”

Clark nodded, echoing the word back almost soundlessly, as he scooped him up under both thighs this time in a tight grip. The squeeze of those broad fingers nearly drove a moan from him, but he swallowed it back alongside Clarks tongue. The world spun, as he carried him. He’d never felt so weightless before, inside and out. 

The Fear came crashing back down, when Clark threw him onto the bed. A bolt of anxiety-anticipation-alertness shot through him, and the veil that had parted to allow him to grab Clark in and kiss him so brazenly closed again, draping him in shyness once more. 

When Clark didn’t immediately follow down on top of him, he worried the white sheets under his hands and worked at his split lip with his tongue. (Maybe today would be the day he decided this was a mistake.) He watched Clark lean against the end of the mattress with intent, focused, eyes. Like they had all the time in the world. 

A single finger began to draw neat figure of eights over Bruce's knee, where it dangled next to Clarks thigh, nail dragging across the cotton fabric tantalisingly. He’d attached his other hand to one of the bed posts, leaning against it in a suave, casual, brace. “Now what?” He said with a clever smirk, not unkindly. Something twinkled around the edges of his face. A trace of his own insecurities started to bleed through the longer he stood like that, like Bruce might laugh at him for playing the tease. 

His mind zeroed in on his knee, the only place they were touching. The shape he was drawing seemed mindless, but it could’ve almost been an ‘S’ over and over again. He wondered if the other man realised. If it was a comforting motion for him, or a nervous tic. 

Rather than saying anything, easier than a come back, he sat up out of the soft down and hooked a single finger around the waistband of Clarks trousers. The teasing expression fell from his face to make way for something sweeter. Vulnerable. With hesitance, Bruce placed a light, open-mouthed kiss on his exposed navel just above the light dusting of hair that trailed into a thick thatch hidden beneath, and looked up again. From this angle, he could see the heavy bob of his adams apple as Clark swallowed. Hard.

This time, when he lay back down onto the bed, he held onto Clarks waistband with that lone finger and pulled - and Clark followed. Easily, eagerly, he fell over him, chasing him up the mattress. Their hands tangled as they both wrestled with the flannel trousers, desperate to lose them but hardly wanting to pull away from the allure of each others lips. 

He tasted like oranges 

Maybe they’d been passing round popsicles at the Daily Planet offices to stave off the summer heat wave, enjoying it more than they ever could here in Gotham. Maybe he’d stood at his fridge door in his apartment, and gulped down half a litre of juice after he’d eaten breakfast-for-dinner in front of the TV again. Or maybe, he’d been back to Kansas, floating up to the top of the orange tree in his Ma’s garden to pluck the fruit she couldn’t reach, helping her peel them to make marmalade and getting his knuckles rapped when he squirrelled the odd segment in his cheek behind her back. Or maybe he just tasted like oranges. 

Desire burned in him like a furnace. 

Between the two of them, they were finally able to shove his trousers down, and Clark pushed back again, kneeling to untangle them from his ankles. Embarrassingly, as if giving him privacy was what he was meant to do at this moment, Bruce averted his eyes. He scolded himself for being stupid, but then, looking now after looking away might have been more stupid and it’s not like he hadn’t seen it before so really- Fwoosh!

Clark grabbed him by the ankles and whisked him down the bed again, pulling him so that his legs splayed wide around him, Bruce's thighs resting over his folded own. Framed between them, bobbing against the dark fabric of his sweats that now stretched wide between his legs, hung Clarks hard, heavy, glistening cock. 

Bruce swallowed. 

Clark nuzzled low against his ear, nibbling softly, “I can hear you thinking,” before pulling back again. That was the thing about Clark - he was always giving him space to think when he needed it. This time though, he didn’t need it. Didn’t want it. Wanted to not think at all. 

“I thought Lex made up that mind-reading stuff.” 

Clark snarled at him playfully, laughing, and bit a gentle bite right over his collar bone, and it snatched a gasp right out of him. Glimmering eyes were over him again soon enough though, always eager to watch him, always eager to see. It still made him just as self-conscious as it did at the start, but the warmth of embarrassment was slowly starting to morph into something else. He couldn’t quite pinpoint what yet. He also couldn’t quite figure out yet what it was about his face that made Clark want to stare at it. Especially like now, when they were otherwise occupied. 

Lying prone, Bruce brought his hand up to gently cup his jaw, and let his thumb wander exploratively across the light stubble around his chin. Clarks mouth parted to draw in a deep breath, and his thumb was drawn of its own accord to the soft divot in his bottom lip. Clark stilled like a huntsman watching a fawn creep closer. Bruce let it sit there a moment, thumbpad shyly pressing into the plumb-soft flesh. Clark breathed around it for another beat. Then, closed his mouth, and squeezed the tip of his thumb between his teeth. In that second, Bruce felt like a grape ready to burst, but he didn’t have time to revel in the feeling for long, because Clark dipped forward and swallowed down the entire digit in one greedy swoop and he sucked - The pressure was hot, and wet, and tight. 

Against his hard-fought self control, his pelvis pushed up off the mattress desperately seeking out relief, but Clark snapped onto his knees and danced away from any touch, keeping only Bruce's thumb trapped firmly in his mouth. A pathetic whine keened out between them, and he felt a blush rush suddenly to his cheeks. Clark grinned around his knuckle, but there was no malice in it, no teasing, only pure simple delight. He blushed darker.

Fuck, Clark had to know what he was doing to him.

He stretched his other hand up, almost had to drag himself off the bed to reach, but something in him wanted, no needed, to be petting at the other side of Clarks face. He felt like cool marble. A loose dark curl hung over his eye, and Bruce had to physically force back the urge to twine it round his forefinger and pull, to push his whole hand into that thick black mop and drag him back down, yank his head back so he could lap at every inch of his neck until all he could taste was Clark, all he could smell, all that knew and all he ever wanted to be consumed by and- “Please,” He found himself saying, begging, “Please.” 

Please touch me, please hold me, please press me down and ravish me, he didn’t know he just please needed Clark to get back down here and do something. 

The sharpness in his eyes melted a little, and he relinquished his thumb and swooped down to press close against him everywhere. Lying just so, his meaty thighs weighed into him, pushing his own down and apart. Their hipbones jutted against each other, Clarks ample chest squeezed into his, and his broad calloused hands skirted across his collar bones, his shoulders, and ran down his forearms - the pumping veins he glided over carting the anxiety in his heart to every other corner of his body - until their hands intertwined. Clark squeezed, and Bruce squeezed back. It would’ve been sweet, if he could have focused on anything other than the hot, hard, line of Clarks dick crushing down against his own. 

Bruce wanted to claw off his sweats and then crawl out of his skin too. Clarks mouth glistened with the saliva quickly drying on Bruce's thumb, and Christ, was he thirsty for it. He watched him flick out his tongue to roll across it briefly, tasting the traces of Bruce's touch, before diving down to capture him in a kiss. Fuck. The kiss was a cool, soothing, balm compared to the burning prickling sensation across the rest of his skin. A glance of ice in a desert. A gasp of clean air above an electrical storm. 

No matter how confident his commanding hands were, how insistent the push of his body was, Clarks kisses were always tender. Sensual and soft, prodding as if trying to lure Bruce into taking charge, never rushing and never impatient. Gentle. That tongue, that maddening tongue, slipped between his lips and curled behind his teeth into the soft part of his mouth. Fireworks burst behind his eyelids, and he gasped. Clarks tongue lapped deeper. He freed one of his hands from Clarks, and wrapped it around broad muscled shoulders. Hesitant, letting the self conscious tingle roll through him and trying to push it out through his toes, he pressed his tongue back. 

Clark sighed out a moan. He fluttered at the noise. It set alight sparklers under his fingernails, and unleashed a jackhammer in his chest that could’ve bounced him off the mattress. Clark let his weight sink impossibly harder across him, and Bruce snaked his ankle around his calf to keep him there. 

Clark’s spare hand caressed against his pale ribs, verging on ticklish, venturing lower and lower until Bruce had to fall back out of their embrace to catch his breath - but Clark chased, peppering him with hot, wet, kisses persisting even when his mouth fell open, and dragging his hand ever lower. Tantalising, daring, Clarks nimble fingers pulled at the waistband of his sweats in a matching gesture to the way he’d been pulled about. He teased the sensitive skin underneath. 

“Can I…” Clark swallowed, chest heaving. A small part of Bruce was glad for the evidence that this was affecting him too. A larger part was just hoping that baring his neck like prey would get him what he wanted. “Can I, uh, get rid of these?”

“Yes,” He nodded, gasping against Clarks cheek. 

In a flash, Clark disappeared half way down the bed, lifting at his legs and yanking at the fabric this way and that (and what a lonely distance that suddenly stretched between them, what a chasm, such pain to be left alone up here) until he could fling the sweats over his shoulders, and press back against him sly and quick. 

Nudity had never been something he’d been squeamish about, but that was before Clark’s gaze had settled over him. That was before they started doing whatever this was. 

“You’re so beautiful,” Clark muttered into his neck. 

“Ungh.”

They weren’t even moving, weren’t even rubbing against each other, but somehow even just the feeling of he and Clarks erections squeezed between their bodies was enough to render him dumb. The pressure was simple, and delicious. He tried to rut up into him, but Clarks sheer weight kept him pinned. 

Just when he thought he might die like that, Clark finally squeezed both of Bruce's hands that he’d reclaimed, and sucked the skin beneath his jaw hard. His eyes bulged. Clark mouthed and teethed and sucked and licked a whole path around his neck, while Bruce's legs scrabbled uselessly against the sheets for some kind of purchase, any and all attempts at trying to get some friction between them fucking useless. 

Then, Clark slid ever so slightly lower, in order to suck a bruise into his collar bone. The unexpected drag over his arousal sent him reeling. He keened, a short burst of noise, high in his throat, but when Clark suckled at the tender skin over bone just as hard, he moaned loud and deep and completely against his will. Christ, the things he was doing to him. He’d never felt so out of control before, and never felt so okay with it. 

He sank further and further down Bruce's body, bites growing shorter and sharper. Each pitted a fresh gasp out of him. Bruce tried to snake his hands up into the man's luscious thick curls, but Clark kept his hands pinned by his side. As his perfect teeth closed slowly around his oblique, Clark batted his eyes up at him, almost seeming giddy to let the moment laze around them. He wanted to drop his head back onto the bed, but he couldn’t bear to look away. 

It was mortifying to look down and see Clarks perfect face so close to his aching cock. It stood to valiant attention against his stomach, the drag of Clarks washboard abs having teased a pearl of precum from it that now threatened to roll free. Clearly, this hadn’t escaped Clarks notice either. Since the bastard knew he held all the cards too, he turned to face Bruce's cock at a frankly leisurely pace, resting his jaw against his hip with a drunk look in his eye. He eeked towards it slowly, and with painstaking precision, reached his tongue out and curled it around the curve of his head, licking up the drip in one dragging swipe. 

“Ungh!” 

For good measure, he licked at the small patch of his stomach underneath as well. 

“Fuck!” 

“Not yet,” he drawled, and promptly gulped the head of his cock into his mouth. No amble, no teasing, just a sudden hot swallow around the tip setting his nerve-endings alight. Bruce spasmed, jerking up into the wet heat, but Clark had anticipated it and followed the motion so that he didn’t broach a millimetre beyond what he’d been given. 

Only after he settled, trying to muscle his control back, did Clark bob a tiny motion, nudging his foreskin back with his pouting pink lips, before swirling his tongue round and round and drawing a fresh litany of moans from him. He pulled off with a pop, mouthing down his shaft. His devious teeth nipped at the sensitive skin in his groin for a split second, soothed with a wide lick, before trailing lower, and ever so gently, he suckled one of his balls into that wicked mouth and then quickly exchanged it for the other, spreading his drool over them. Before his brain could even catch up, Clark was pulling back and blowing cool air over him. 

“Shit!” 

“Good?” He asked, and God, Bruce wanted to wipe that knowing smirk off his face and show him good, the smug prick and all his gentle affection, he knew exactly what he was doing- But he could only manage a dizzy nod. 

Clark ducked lower. A single hot, wet, swipe parted his cheeks and teased over his hole, and he jumped in surprise, Clarks hands entwined with his keeping him from leaping too far. 

“This good?”

“Yes! Oh fuck, yes.”

As soon as the first agreeal left his lips, Clark disappeared down again and circled his tongue around his entrance thoroughly. The tip prodded into him gently. His toes squeezed, and he fought the urge to wriggle, terrified that if he did Clark would stop altogether. It pulled away, and pushed forward again, testing his tightness. 

And the thing is, Bruce had incredible control over his body, he should be able to relax no problem, but everything he ever learned and everything he thought he knew about himself seemed to vanish out the window when it came to Clark Kent, never mind everything he thought he knew about Clark. So when his tongue pulled back a third time, he expected the same cautious push but then-

Clark’s tongue arced into him. The air in his lungs punched its way out, and he ripped his hands free to scrabble at the sheets, the headboard, the hair on the top of Clark’s head, anywhere he could grab. With less dexterity than fingers offered, less finesse at his disposal, his tongue pushed forward, unyielding, leaving nothing but a hot pillar of relentless force spearing through him. 

Then, he curled it. 

“Aahhh!” His cry echoed up into the four-poster, swirling round the canopy. 

Clarks tongue suddenly slipped out. He spat a fat glob of saliva against him, teased it around his entrance with the clever point and then pushed it in again, even further, almost all the way, working his spit as deep as it could go and stretching him around the widest part of his unrelenting muscle. The quick stretch would’ve been painful, if not for the squirming, wriggling, sensation of tongue distracting him. If it wasn’t Clark, who his body obeyed more than himself right now. 

It gave no relief, only wound him tighter and tighter. Pushed him closer to mindlessness, but it wasn’t nearly enough to get him there. It explored this way and that, teasing and playful, then forceful and serious, back and forth, and in wide circles and sharp jabs, curling where it cared to, and doing its damndest to get that tight ring of muscle to relax. Bruce moaned like he was getting paid for it. When Clark moaned back, the vibrations shot straight to his dick. He wanted more, needed more, he-

Suddenly, Clarks tongue was gone. He felt its absence pulse through him, and a little cry tore its way free. 

He stayed completely still when Clark leaned back up over him, panting as he watched him reach over into the bedside table. (The one that wasn’t on Bruce's side of the bed, the one that was mostly empty, and didn’t belong to anyone in particular but might one day, the one that he thought about way too much after Clark always left.) He knew exactly what he was reaching for, but watched just as bashfully as he had the first time. That time Clarks x-ray vision had obviously settled over it, accidentally or not, and he’d blushed a rosy warm pink and started stammering, embarrassed to have been caught peeking, and Bruce started stammering back, for once embarrassed to be prepared. He heard the tube roll in the otherwise empty drawer, and squirmed. 

Clark made quick work of sitting back, slicking up his fingers, and gliding the first home with little resistance. He keened. Even that one broad finger felt wide and vast, the lube tinglingly cool. Bruce scrabbled at his shoulders, his forearms. No matter how many times they did this, the intrusion still felt new and foreign, and his heart ached to think it might one day become familiar and he trembled knowing what was to come. How much wider Clark was going to stretch him. How much fuller he would fill him. Fuck. 

Not unlike a stab-wound he once took, Clarks finger stole the air clean out of his lungs, and he couldn’t sip in enough to replenish it, and as he began to work it, Bruce felt the beginnings of a sob building its way up his throat. Clark was probing everywhere except where he needed him to. 

The second finger wriggled in with little fanfare, with Bruce so worked up that he barely realised it was there until they were tapping out opposing rhythms inside of him. The thick breadth of his knuckles began to pop back and forth through his tight muscle, the lube squelching so loudly that he wanted to throw the sheets over his head and die. 

The third finger- fuck, the third finger stole that building sob straight out of his gullet. It felt like fire blazing through his coiled muscles, and it was… Too much. Too much pain, too much stretch, too much a reminder of how impossibly far bliss lay ahead, and the word ‘stop’ was right there, right on the tip of his tongue - where Clark found it, and stole it away. He leaned down over him, and kissed him sweetly, and his mind went enchantingly blank. 

“You okay, sweetheart?

“Ngh.”

“Slow down?”

“Ughhh.”

He prescribed him another delicate kiss. “M’kay.” 

The middle finger stuffed inside of him, crooked. Bruce gasped. “Ahh- fuck, you fucking fuck, shit, holy-!” 

“Sh,” Clark nosed along his jaw, letting Bruce’s hips roll and wave with the warm burst of pleasure his finger elicited. “Slow, baby, slow. Sh, It’s okay. We’re going slow, it’s okay.” He bent his fingers again, and the sting of his instinctive clench, the burn of being spread wide around Clarks hand, was drowned out entirely by the honey-dripping pleasure. 

Time melted. The only thing keeping him from floating away entirely was Clarks forehead pressed to his. The longer his fingers slowly fucked in and out of him (brushing that place only a couple more times) the wider Clarks eyes grew. How much of him could he see? When his fingers eventually slipped out, Bruce felt well and truly hollowed. 

“C’mon,” Clark breathed into the shell of his ear, accent dripping through. The sweat between their naked bodies allowed their chests to glide together, as Clark finally ground down into him, thumb pressing deep into the hollow of his groin. It ripped a moan straight from his chest. “Say it baby, please. For me.”

Between his lidded eyes Bruce could see the smile Clark was warring with. The man knew well enough that one burst of a chuckle and it would be game over, that he’d call the kibosh on the whole thing. No matter how many times he tried, Clark hadn’t yet been able to blot out the vulnerable, fluttering, feeling high up in his stomach that he was being laughed at, being made fun of, whenever he grinned at him like that. Clarks thumb pushed up, hand squeezing around the meat of his hip, and it chased all thoughts of laughter from his head. 

“C’mon,” He traced his nose up along his adams apple, chin, over his lips, the point of his nose, and then flicked his eyes up to lock onto his. They were so blue. He was pinned under that gaze, giving him no choice but to drown in it. Another grind, harder this time, pushing him deeper into the mattress, and Bruce moaned even lower. “Say it.”

“Fuck me,” he gasped like a drowning man, “Please fuck me.”

Like it was the starting gun he’d been waiting for, Clark scrambled. Adjusting Bruce's legs around his hips, he took hold of himself and lined them up, pushing his blunt head forward, forward, forward, against Bruce until- He forced in with a pop. Bruce clasped at the sheets. They moaned into each others mouths. 

His bulging head was intense, hot, humbling, dizzying- and Clark smoothed a shaking hand high along his cheekbone as Bruce whimpered, and adjusted, and settled. 

“Goddd, you’re so- Ugh, fuck. You feel so- unhhh.” He could feel Clarks thighs shaking under his own, juddering with the tension of keeping still. Of holding himself back. 

“Y-You can-” He swallowed, his mouth full of saliva, “You can-” He swatted at Clarks back, motioning for him to go further, but if he noticed then he didn’t say. Stayed bolted to the spot, eyes screwed shut. And Bruce was learning things about himself like this; learning that he probably wasn’t as patient as he once thought himself to be. So, in spite of the white-hot-pleasure-pain of Clarks dick inside of him barely beginning to settle, he whimpered out a little, “Please… More…”

Clarks eyes snapped open, blotted with desire. He pushed further in, and they groaned in tandem. The drag was delicious, it was satiating, it was everything and more, it was fucking sexy. Then pushed in more of it. And more of it. And more. “Fuck! Fuck, fuck!” Unconsciously he grabbed at Clarks bronzed, bulging, biceps, and the man stilled. His heart was rabbiting harder than when he threw himself from the cathedral spire, earlier in the night. “S’okay,” He puffed, “Maybe slower… Maybe slower.”

Clark nuzzled against his face, pushing through the curtains of his hair to press a kiss against his pliant lips. The next little nudge forward was tauntingly slow, but when Bruce peeked up at him through slitted eyes, there was nothing but pure adoration on his face. Maybe that was what was making him blush, rather than the lying on his back to take his best friend's dick. 

Just when he thought it was too much - at the point where he always worried it was too much - Clark bottomed out. A noise like a dying wheeze escaped him. Split on Clarks girth, stuffed to bursting with him, he felt-

He felt like if you filled a coffee mug with static, and then spilled it everywhere. He felt like too-thick a swab of leather wax on shoes. He felt like the shimmering veneer on an oak antique, pressed with particles of hundred-year old dust. He felt like just a person, wrapped around someone he cared about, who shared the little vulnerable parts of his heart with him in exchange for nothing at all, and only wanted to wrap themselves around him in turn. Extraordinary, yet normal, grounded, yet freed.

Clark whimpered softly, as he tried to find the most comfortable corner of Bruce's neck to bury his face in. “Fuck,” He cried, still hiding from him, “You feel so good. You always feel so good.” 

Bruce had been told he’d had pianists hands once - he used them to stroke soothing motions along Clarks back, plucking a tune out of him better than he’d been able to any instrument. Testing, Bruce curled his hips. Clark yelped. The motion was barely anything, barely a hint, but he took it for what it was, and drew his hips back just as gently as they’d pulled forward.

If the pushing in felt good, the pulling out felt unreal. Clark worked him slowly at first, enough to make him regret ever asking for it slow, but then, thrust by thrust, he got faster. More purposeful. He shuffled on one of his knees, and suddenly every stroke was brushing that place and Bruce was caterwauling like a madman with every pump of his hips, all traces of discomfort long gone. The thrill was heady, the desperation unmatched, and the noises it was pulling out of him, the helplessness of his flailing arms trying to choose somewhere to land - it darkened something in Clarks eye. He began to fuck into him not just brushing past his prostate, but vengefully aiming for it, ploughing him deep and hard and good. 

The harder Clark worked, the more winded Bruce felt. 

They were just starting to build a rhythm, or rather Clark was and Bruce was doing his damndest to keep up, when a sudden feeling took hold of him. It felt like the beginning of a tsunami. Everything washed out of him completely, drawing back, and he had a brief moment to wallow in dread before everything hit him like a wall of concrete and - whiteout, static, spasming limbs, oxygenless freefall, electrifying, indescribable pleasure - it was over with a gasp. 

For him at least.

Clark froze suddenly half-way inside of him. Still rock hard. Without missing a beat, he eased his weight more evenly onto his elbows and knees and began licking and kissing in his neck where his face had been hiding, trailing up to his bitten-raw lips. He peppered a few kisses there, that Bruce tried and failed to reciprocate with all his might, before pulling back. 

“You good, baby?” His dark eyes were still heavy and sex-drunk. 

The warm spray of cum Bruce had spent over himself, without any attention to his cock, was already beginning to grow upsettingly cold on his skin. The balcony doors were still open, and he’d left the light on out in the hallway. These things itched at him. 

“You wanna wait and keep going, or you wanna stop?” 

How did he do that? How did he seem so cool and collected and completely at ease, while breathless and sweating and half inside of him? How could he just pull it together so fast? It wasn’t fair when Bruce felt like such a mess, when Bruce felt so incompetent and virginal next to him. The beautiful bastard. 

The first time it had gone like this, he’d said to stop, and Bruce had gotten him off with his hands instead. The time after that, which for the record had taken longer than that first occasion, he’d shyly gotten him off with his mouth. The most recent time it had happened, Clark skipped over the asking, slipped out, and they rolled around until he was done - and he loved being able to take Clark apart like that, he really did. Never felt so high on power when it happened. But, in the afterglow, he’d said ‘Why didn’t you ask? You usually ask’, and Clark had panted back, ‘I’m sorry, baby. I’ll ask next time’. 

And hadn’t that pigeon come home to roost, because here he was, now, asking, and Bruce maybe hadn’t expected it to come so soon but-

“Bruce?” 

Fuck it. He wanted more. “Keep… Keep going.”

“Mkay, baby,” Before he carefully lowered himself back down over him, he grabbed a stray corner of the bedsheet and mopped up the white sticky mess Bruce had made all over himself. It was… doting. He flung the sheet away again carelessly, eyes only for Bruce. He felt more devoured like this, trapped in his gaze, than he did when Clark was fucking him. 

Gently, careful of pushing him too far and scoring him where he was already sensitive, Clark began to trace delicate fingers over his body. Mouthed softly at his cheek, brushed thick swathes of his hair from his face. Clark left little invisible paths of delight across Bruce’s skin, stirring up comfort and reassurance, beginning to draw from that well of arousal deep down inside of him once more. Never once did his hips so much as twitch. 

Somehow, Clark knew exactly how to reassure him without saying a word. 

There had always been apprehension to this beyond Bruce’s own insecurity. Clark was clearly practiced at this game, but there was no knowing when the levee might break. When he might lose control over his raw power and snap him in half with no more force than snapping a toothpick. The tiniest slip in his composure and he could kill him. Snap his hips too hard and he could paralyse him, pull his hair the wrong way he’d break his neck, push a kiss into his mouth for a moment too long and he’d never breathe again. But the more often they did this, the harder Bruce was finding it to remember why that mattered. The light, the window, the dregs of mortal fear, all swirled away from his mind with the rest of his worries under the pads of Clarks fingers. 

Clark looked at him like he was the sun - like he was the source of all warmth and healing and beauty in this world. Like he mattered. Bruce could pretend for a minute that maybe, just right at that moment, he was the most precious thing in the world to Clark. It scared him to imagine those moments lasting any longer. (He wanted them to.)

“You ready?” Clark drawled, eventually, after what seemed like a lifetime of coaxing. Bruce's cock jumped as the man's thumb brushed errantly across it, as if appraising him. Deeming him fuck-able again. He felt Clark throb within him as he clenched. His touch was almost too much, burning and overstimulating, but glassy eyed and beet-pink up to his ears Bruce nodded anyway. 

He’d gotten used to the feeling of being full, when Clark drew his hips back nearly all the way. The sudden pull-back was world-shattering. “Ohhh… God!” He didn’t set quite as punishing a pace as before, but it was steady. Working up to something. 

“I wish you could see yourself right now,” He raked his teeth against the ridge of his ear, bottom lip dragging behind and soothing over the sharp sting. “So beautiful.” 

Bruce laughed at that, and he did so freely, but he could barely get it out between the rhythmic, unfaltering, rolling of Clarks hips and the litany of moans it reeled out of him. 

He was pretty sure he did not in fact make a beautiful picture. His shower-damp was an hair an unruly mess on the pillow around him, probably flicking up in that horrible way it did when he lay on it, the kohl he hadn’t bothered to scrub off had to have been running amok by now, and he couldn’t remember the last time he had shaved, not to mention the flaky mess he’d made between their bodies. 

Clark stilled, buried to the hilt inside of him. He groaned at the sensation, the sudden halt making him throb around the full ache. Clark propped himself up, locking his arms straight so that he was towering over him. “Is that funny, Mr Wayne?” 

He sounded only half as wrecked as Bruce felt, so he threw his ankles around the small of Clarks back and pushed him deeper, clawing at his unmarkable skin. His brows knit together, and a grunt escaped him, his locked elbows trembling. 

A pearl of sweat rolled down Clarks upper lip, dangling from his cupid bow. Despite the full force of him bearing down on his hips, Bruce leant up onto his elbows and lapped up the drop in one filthy lick. It burned, a salty bead on his tongue. “You tell me.”

Clark shook his head in small, tight, jerks. “It’s not funny.”

“No?”

“No,” He ran one strong hand through the long front of Bruce's hair, guiding his head where he wanted it, and dipped to lave at the unshaven juncture of his jaw. “No, it’s not funny, I'm serious, you’re so beautiful.” In shallow thrusts, he began to pump his hips once more. “You’re so damn beautiful, don’t you dare laugh at me for thinkin’ that.” The words had him softening into putty, and had Clarks hand not been there to keep him where he pleased, to keep him together, he would’ve dissolved into the mattress. “I wish you’d believe me. You’re so beautiful.”

Embarrassingly shameless noises spilled out of him, as Clark began to work his hips harder, but he didn’t care. Each thrust filled him deeper than the last until he was outright fucking him again, and Bruce curled like a coiling spring under his body, tighter and tighter and tighter, that deep sensation building all over again. Their skin sizzled where it touched. 

Clark squeezed a hand along the outside of Bruce's thigh, across the soft hair and hard muscle, until he was able to tease his legs from untwining around his back. 

Suddenly, both of those sure hands were clamping around his waist and in a move his drooling brain couldn’t possibly follow, he was whipped around onto his elbows and knees. The gasp as Clark fell out of him was so ragged, so uneven, that his lungs froze up when his hard length pressed back against him. He couldn’t manage a single noise when the thick head popped back inside. However, he whined when the ice cold drip of lube trickled down around him, and the heft that split him in two. 

Clark wasn’t letting it distract either of them for long - his hand briefly came between them to spread it liberally, concentrating his fingers around where they met, before pushing back in. Bruce squirmed at the new angle. He tightened, and maybe that’s what alerted Clark to go slower, or maybe he could just hear his heart trying to thunder its way out of his ribs. 

Either way, his palms reverently circled the meat of his hips in a gentle motion, sliding down over his thighs briefly before soothing up and under him. One hand settled around his achingly hard length and the other resting behind it, low on his belly in a flat spread of his hand. Right where Clark was buried inside of him. Air rushed back into his lungs. 

Trying not to protrude too far into him all at once, Clark lay down against his back as far as he dared, and placed a chaste kiss against his sweaty shoulder blades. They both held still. 

“I know you think it’s just talk, but I’m gonna make you believe it ok?” Clark hushed it into his skin like prayer. He turned his face to rest it against his back, like they were only holding each other, like Bruce wasn’t gripping onto the last vestiges of his sanity, and Clark wasn’t teetering them both off the edge. “I think I came all this way just for you, you know” He said with the open-hearted conviction of a Kansan farmboy, “It’s like my whole life nothing made sense. Until you. Like everything just clicked into place. Ever since we first met, I can’t stop thinking about you, thinking about the way you move, the way you walk, the way you pull out your chair, the way you open doors, the way you put your sunglasses on, all of it. And even when we’re not together, you’re everywhere I look. I close my eyes, and somehow you’re in every corner of my mind. Your eyes… Your hands… God, it’s so embarrassing how gone I am on you. Let me worship you, please, please. It’s all I can think about.”

Bruce groaned and collapsed forward into his pillow, elbows finally buckling under the weight of Clarks words. He could’ve held Clarks actual weight forever. And the man followed. Bruce cried out as more of him slid in, fluttering and pulsing, and Clark grunted in response, tightening his hands around his hips so strongly they’d leave bruises for weeks. 

He started to thrust again, small shallow circles that nudged his prostate with every move. Fuck. Gasping, he buried his face into the pillow, hands not quite tearing into it but trying their best to. With that, Clark pulled himself back up, keeping his granite grip in place, pulled out and slammed back in deep. The thrust rammed straight forward, and stars dazzled behind his eyes. 

He wrenched back and drove home, again, and again, and meek little cries began to spill out into the pillow. This pace… This pace was punishing. Scorching and shameless and too good, he wanted to touch, needed to touch, his own cock bobbed freely so far away from all kinds of attention.

He brought a careless hand up to try and scrub at his too-hot face, but it lost steam halfway through, and fell back alongside him smeared in kohl. He felt like a marionette, like someone else was trying to flop around his unfeeling limbs. Vaguely, distantly, he realised his makeup must be making a mess of the pillow cases. With a struggle, he managed to get his elbows underneath him again. Great black smudges marred the pristine cotton, so he jerked his own head back for a second, tilting his chin up, but the relentless pounding of Clarks hips against him made it impossible to keep his head balanced upright under his own power. He let it loll forward again. All of a sudden, fat grey splodges began to blossom over the pillow. 

The burning wetness in his eyes clouded over his vision and- oh. He was crying.  

Clarks hips stopped suddenly, “No!” He sobbed out in response, feeling the tear tracks labyrinth across his face, “No, no, don’t stop! Don’t- Please,” He gasped a ragged wet breath as Clarks strong arms wound their way about his torso again even tighter this time, and he tried to spear himself back messily and uncoordinated, until Clark took over charging into him just as steady and hard as before, “Please no, don’t stop-”

Bruce couldn’t control it. The words kept blabbering out of him with each thrust, only stuttering when Clarks hand squeezed around his peck, and he broke down into hazed wordless wailing. With just as little warning as he’d gotten the first time, Clark flipped him back over onto his back. He could barely make sense of what happened through the tears distorting the world. 

(It was all pleasure, and hedonism, and too-much-not-enough.)

But then, they were blinking away, rolling down his cheeks in big fat black blots. And there was Clark, haloed above him by the dark canopy, his face as beautiful as the moon in the sky. His cheeks were ruddy with exertion, his mouth agape and glistening, his pupils wide. Shit, he was so beautiful. His hands reached up to grab onto the headboard, and he slipped straight into him like he belonged there, thick and hard, and began rutting into him fast. 

“Yes - please - don’t - stop-” His mewling cries were barely whispered out between sobs as the tears streamed freely down his face. He tried to brace himself against the headboard too, but failed to stop himself from being pounded into a contorted angle, each thrust shoving him higher and higher. 

Clark grabbed his hips and yanked him down, pulling him away from the headboard and further onto his cock, and the force of being split so hard and mercilessly shocked a yowl of a moan straight out of his throat. 

Clarks pounding hips stuttered, if but for a second. He kept driving into him, brow scrunched with effort, and screwed his eyes shut when Bruce wound his arms around his neck. “Look at me, look at me, look at me,” Took up his new mantra, and Clark instantly flashed them back open again. He pressed their sweating foreheads together. 

Suddenly, Clark snarled. One, two, then he stilled, and hot, thick, wetness was pouring into him so deep it might’ve bubbled up his throat. Fuck. Filling him up, bloating him full, Clark collapsed on top of him and his length slid out. A trickle of semen leaked out of him and he gulped at the sensation, quivering. 

Tears still streamed down his face, he could feel them, but he couldn’t be sure how much of it was sweat mingling with his black tear tracks. He brought a trembling hand to soothe through Clarks hair. The man's thick set thighs rocked with aftershocks and he bodily jerked. Bruce held him through it, gasping as well. When he finally sighed, stilling, Clark latched onto his lips, brought a hand between them and had barely wrapped it around Bruce's throbbing neglected dick before it was over and he was spilling free as well. 

They blinked awake in the pale morning light, tacky sweat dried into them, sealing them together in a tangle of soft limbs. 

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Aren’t you late for work?”

“It’s Saturday.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“... You want breakfast?”

“I’d love to.”

Downstairs, after pulling on a mismatched collection of Bruce's gym clothes, they were greeted with the smell of frying bacon and the sound of a complete ruckus. Clark blanched white as an almighty ‘boof’ trembled the floorboards, “Oh god,” and burst into the lower casual dining room straight ahead of him. When Bruce rounded his wide shoulder he was met with a somewhat confusing sight. 

Alfred cut a broad figure, standing tall and unrelenting, and in front of him stood a scraggly white mutt with all four of its legs splayed. Between them was a newspaper, one end in Alfred's fist, the other in the dog's mouth. 

“Krypto no! Bad dog! Drop it!” Clark lurched forward, and at the sight of him, the dog sped away, dancing around the other side of the table. Literally sped. At un-dog-like speed. Bruce cast Clark a long sideways look, and Clark pointedly was trying not to look at him at all, a blush gathering high on his cheeks. 

“You heard him!” Alfred barked at the dog, pointing at the open patio door, unimpressed with the intruder in his house, “Out!” 

It barked back. 

Clark looked completely panicked at the situation unfolding. The dots connected themselves in Bruce's head, fast. Meaning, this was probably the one creature on the planet that Clark couldn’t catch, couldn’t overpower, and likely couldn’t coerce. He smirked. 

“Does he eat bacon?”

“Oh Bruce, for the love of god,” Alfred rolled his eyes into the back of his head. He tucked his prized paper tightly under his arm. 

“What?” Clark deadpanned. 

The dog barked again. 

“C’mon, breakfast’s getting cold.” He pulled out a chair around the table, and sat (hoped it wasn’t obvious that he did so gingerly), and the dog wagged it’s - his - tail. He trotted over to him, as if forgetting Clark and Alfred were there at all, that game no longer interesting to him now Bruce was closer and minding his own business. The dog nosed into his lap rudely, but Bruce cleared his throat and he looked up at him with sparkling intelligent eyes. He barked again. “ Sit.” 

Clark skidded into a seat on the same beat the dog hit the floor. He swallowed back a laugh. He did quirk an eyebrow at him though, teasing, and Clark scowled in response. “Good boy,” He said to the dog. 

“You too,” Alfred teased, lightly skelping the slightly chewed newspaper over Clarks shoulder as he dropped it in front of him. “Protect that with your life. Right, well if that racket hasn’t woken up the rugrat then I better go make sure he’s not flung himself off a chandelier in the middle of the night. Or trapeze’d his bed linen again. You two didn’t see any yea-high bodies on the way down, did you?”

The skin across his neck prickled - you two . He wanted the world to curl in around him and implode with how casually Alfred said it, but then Clark was humming back, “Hmm, can’t say we did,” And the ease with which he said it, the completely earnest confidence, warmed that little insidious horror inside of him like a flame to an icicle. The completely self-grown terror that what they were doing was somehow illicit and that they would be in trouble was awful; and the general mortification of having someone he loved, like Alfred, knowing what he was getting up to with Clark, someone he-

“Right. Well make sure and let the chef know to hold off on the next round of eggs until we know he’s alive then, ey?”

“Yessiree,” Clark winced a grimace at the table as Alfred strode on out, the embarrassment of having his dog crash breakfast clearly too much for even his Midwestern charm to handle. 

Bruce examined his profile as they began sorting plates for themselves. After a moment, Clark noticed he was being watched, and began to watch him back. With nothing to say (nothing he was brave enough to say), he threw out, “Isn’t it a bit morbid, naming your dog Krypto?” Bruce chewed on a bit of bacon that the dog was whining for. A strand of his drool dripped onto the tile, but he didn’t twitch, eyes (metaphorically) lasered onto Bruce and his breakfast.

“Kara named him.”

“It’s like if I named a dog Nuclear. Or Cancer.” 

“Isn’t that your starsign?”

“Didn’t know you wrote the horoscope section, Mr Kent.”

Clark sighed, finally reaching over and pouring himself a coffee, “We’re Kryptonians from the planet Krypton, he’s not named after Kryptonite.”

“Oh so since I’m Terran from the planet Terra, my dog woud be called Terr? Great idea, except it sounds quite similar to that pesky life-threatening Terranite. Oh, wait-”

“Do you enjoy being facetious?”

“Yes.”

“Hugh is a name. A hu-man name.”

“True, but I’ve never met a dog called Hugh.”

“That doesn’t mean you can’t name a dog Hugh,” He passed the toast rack up to Bruce from the centre of the table before he’d even realised it was down there. Matches and ice, and matches and ice. “Go on then, what would you name a dog?

“Ace.”

“Ace?! That’s a terrible name for a dog.”

“It’s an excellent name.” 

“It’s boring!”

“Krypto is a terrible name. People will start to think you're shilling bitcoin.” Just as Clarks mouth dropped open, the door clattered in on its hinges. 

“WE GOT A DOG?” Dick came careening in, still in his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pyjamas, hair in a tangled mop. Alfred came rushing in not far behind with a hairbrush, but just like the dog, the boy had clearly managed to slip away from his command. 

“No, Dick, we did not get a dog.” 

“Puppy!” He ran towards it, and the dog, noticing him running at him, met him halfway. They leaped at each other gleefully. Bruce caught himself from calling the dog back the second that Dick erupted into giggles. 

“Mornin’ squirt!” Clark chirped at him. Then quietly, he turned to Bruce and said, “Don’t talk to me about names. How’d ya sleep, Dick?”

“Great! Can we keep him?” Dick slouched to the floor, letting the dog clamber all over him, reaching up to pat and scritch at him everywhere he could. 

“No.”

“Sorry, buddy, we’re only looking after him for my cousin.”

“Aww.”

“There is no we, you’re looking after him. Krypto, sit!" The dog's butt smacked the floor again, letting Dick sit up. The dog leaned into the boys attention with slightly less mania. The pair then cast wide puppy-eyed looks up at them both, as they clung to each other. The dog whined sadly as Dick ‘aww’ed again, more dramatically this time. “We’re not keeping him!”

Clark smiled at him, and laughed a little, as he reached into the fruit bowl stacked high with oranges.

“Hmph!” Dick pouted playfully, but with enough warning edge for them to all understand he meant business, “We’ll see!”

“Mhm,” Bruce only had eyes for sun-brown hands and orange peel, “I guess we will.”