stands_for_hope | for knightbynight: For now and hereafter...

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for knightbynight: For now and hereafter...

[some time after the events here]

Superman and Batman were partners in more than a work sense. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent were an adorable (if mildly ridiculous) couple. Kal-El of Krypton and a man who defied any definition outside of the single letter 'B' made time on weekends, worked around world crises and teenage tempers, and occasionally fell into bed together when the stars aligned. Thankfully, they aligned relatively often.

Wayne Manor received a delivery of organic produce and baked goods once a week from a small, independent farm in the heartland. Lois Lane was a little less likely to agree with snide comments about the uselessness of Bruce Wayne, especially after seeing the utter madness that was Clark's desk after a few weeks. The texting habits of a certain blond teenager in Kansas rose sharply... and in parallel to that of a certain former street punk in Gotham.

Life was... well, it was good, even if it was also Life. Until it wasn't. Until everything changed.

They all had enemies, of course. But the problem with Superman's enemies was that they were coherent enough to decide to team up. And crazy enough to use the kind of weaponry that could make whole cars just vaporize into nothing.

Crazy enough to point that weapon at a somewhat-pinned Batman and a Wonder Woman who was digging him out from the rock. Crazy enough to point that weapon at Batman.

Bruce.

B.

Clark didn't even make the choice. His heart made it for him. The beam shot out of the Toyman's mechanical monstrosity and Clark flew, the pain of the beam itself nothing on the fact that he was leaving Bruce behind. That his vision of them as old men together would never happen. That he was leaving behind a world that needed him.

The guilt that, if it meant saving them, saving him, he didn't regret a thing.

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"All right."

That was all. He took the information, didn't read in a lot - well did but didn't let it influence his reaction and filed most of it away for later - and fucking escorted Clark to the bed.

"We can decide how you want sex or if you need it now, once we've taken care of this."

Then turned and went to find the first aid kit himself, for himself. He'd had it over to Clark since Clark could reach, but he was taking care of Clark. Badly, as it turned out, but he was trying.

Clark let him.

Clark let him the same way Bruce had let him hurt him. It wasn't about what someone could do. It was about what they let you do. And right now, Bruce needed to do that, so he let him. And when the first aid box was tossed his way, he applied the antiseptic and the bandage expertly but with as much speed as possible. Because he didn't want to break... whatever this was.

"I don't want sex," he admitted as he put the box over on the dresser and collapsed in the bed.

"I want you. That's all I want right now. You. And bed."

Yeah. That was the answer Bruce was afraid of.

Actually, Bruce was afraid of all of this aftermath, because having someone around for it was exactly where his experience stopped and it didn't stop there by accident - it was pure Bruce Wayne design. Getting himself torn up was familiar. Even if someone he loved doing it wasn't, the feelings were known.

Everything beyond that point wasn't and it changed much, much more on that 'someone who loved him/he loved' front than the acts themselves.

He didn't verbalize a single iota of that, just like he hadn't vocalized while having that injury cleaned, but he could. He could make this about Clark and be okay and forestall crashing until.

Until-

Until something. He'd figure it out.

"Then get into bed," he said, pulled the covers back and nudged Clark toward getting in and under and comfortable.

He climbed into the bed properly, squirming his way under the covers again.

"Next time, we have sex at the end there and then we collapse in the bed over there," he murmured tiredly. Which was insane. They'd just gotten out of bed. And with the sunlight as it was, Clark should be fine.

"I'm fucking it all up now. I can... hear your muscles tensing up again."

He let his eyes close.

"I'll... have a better handle on it. Next time."

"You are not fucking anything up, much less all of it up." He slipped into bed beside Clark and settled himself against him. He was hardcore about taking care of Clark and he, at least, knew damned well why Clark was exhausted - or at least tired. "You did a wonderful job and you're still doing it," he murmured.

See? He could be good at this. He really could be. Still had muscles tensing up and couldn't help that, but he could be good at steadying Clark. Probably. Maybe.

He looked up at Bruce then, deep blue eyes bleary.

"Are you sure?"

Bruce kissed Clark's forehead and looked him in the beautiful, bleary, eye. "I promise you. Now sleep. You need to recover mentally and emotionally, if not physically. I am here, and I will be here."

Clark watched him for another moment before his shoulders dropped and his eyes closed.

Bruce did not sleep. He watched Clark sleep, he eventually closed his eyes and evened out his breathing, but he did not sleep. He just - stayed there and waited, if he was honest at all, for Clark to wake up.

After about an hour, Clark opened his eyes and looked immediately over at Bruce. He knew one thing the moment he was awake: Bruce hadn't slept. Bruce hadn't even tried to sleep.

"I'm sorry," he said as he turned to look at Bruce, "you're probably ready to bounce on the walls. I can head back to the house."

Bruce gave Clark a fairly hard look when he apologized and held up his hand, palm facing Clark. "No." To the apology, to being ready to bounce off walls, going back to the house, none of the above and something else entirely. Something like 'you're fine', maybe. In some odd, badly articulated itineration.

He stretched himself out, tested his body. "I'm going to take a shower. Don't disappear while I do."

"I won't go anywhere," Clark assured him. That was one of the promises he'd made to himself, when they'd started it. Started it all the way back on the boat.

No running out. No hiding out. He couldn't let himself use his powers to give himself an out that Bruce didn't have. It was one small way he could make the relationship fair.

Bruce studied Clark's face while he reached around and peeled the bandage off his shoulder, folded it in half so it stuck to itself and then disappeared into the bathroom.

He... didn't have a change of clothes but he had clothes he could use in the other room. He'd collect them after he'd showered.

And showering was a forty-five minute affair while he worked off the feeling of cold, let himself shiver through some of his reactions and then started trying to figure out ... how to handle where they'd just been with each other. Things felt... so, so fragile to him. Like one wrong move and everything would fall apart - like he would, like Clark would, like everything between them would.

Too much exposure? Too much honesty? He didn't know but it felt like it was going to break and he felt almost like he wanted to preemptively break it but he was fighting that urge, as best he could.

Clark waited in the bed, pushing himself up to sit against the headboard as he let his head settle back against the wall.

He felt like his heart was only just behind his skin, like the barest brush could bruise it and more importantly, the man who happened to take up most of the space inside of it. Vulnerable. Separate in this, opposite instead of two parts of a whole as they usually were. As if they'd just lived the last hour or so in two completely different dimensions and were trying to explain the colors to each other using nothing but semaphore.

It wasn't pleasant, even if he felt like something that had been bunched and waiting was finally released. Even as he heard the street sounds of Gotham and his back didn't so much as clench.

He'd wait for Bruce. He'd always wait for Bruce.

Raw wounds with nerves exposed to air, that hadn't had a chance to scab over yet, much less heal. Separated from Clark, but profoundly and horrifyingly unsteady without him. He didn't know what to do, he didn't know how to be, and he sure as hell didn't know how to find his footing and his way back to anything like a comfort zone.

He pulled his clothes on slowly, only getting most of the way dressed, before detouring into the kitchen and filling to glasses with orange juice and carrying them back into the bedroom. He handed one to Clark before he sat cautiously down beside him, almost-but-not-quite touching and slowly drank.

He took the glass, stared at it for a minute, then drank. Once half the cup was gone, he looked over at Bruce and finally spoke.

"I feel like I never want to let go of you," he admitted, "but I also feel like I shouldn't touch you."

Bruce pulled one knee up while he drank his juice - the one on the outside of the bed, not the one between them. He didn't answer Clark until he'd finished and set the glass on the bedside table.

If Clark touched him....

He didn't know what was going to happen, exactly. Break. That delicate, fragile feeling was going to be broken and maybe. Maybe his urge to smash it to pieces wasn't all that wrong.

So he turned his head, took hold of Clark by the back of the neck, hauled Clark in and kissed him - hard. Not violent, not angry, just hard and forward and aggressive before he could change his mind and decide it was the wrong thing to do.

Clark kissed him back.

Clark kissed him back desperately, pulling him, dragging him back inside his boundaries, leaving the doors wide open. There was nothing between the world and his heart but Bruce and he was

That was

He could do that. He could absolutely do that.

He kissed Bruce back and he shoved all the bullshit, all the fear, all the nervous uncertainty aside.

This. Was. Bruce.

This was his safety. This was his home. This was the man that he loved. This was the man he'd trusted with his darkness, trusted with his pain and his rage. This was the man he'd shown his worst self to only to find a counterpart waiting there to match him. They were always, forever, in all ways a team. How had he forgotten that? How had he let himself forget that?

How could he ever be vulnerable when Bruce was right there?

Bruce's reaction was almost the exact opposite of Clark's.

He didn't close off or throw up walls, but he did start to have a very delayed reaction of an entirely different sort. He didn't bolster up, get steadier and stronger, but fell apart and started collapsing just a bit. It was honestly inevitable given everything and having Clark pull him in, hold him on, meant that he couldn't keep pushing it off.

So he kissed Clark back, but he also started to hold on, hard enough to have really hurt a human, and started to shiver.

That was something he'd put off in favor of trying to take care of Clark, hadn't known how to do or felt safe enough to do but the moment Clark properly had him - Bruce let Clark have him. He held on, he kissed back, but he also just shook and clung - at least when taken by his usual standards.

...It was better, truthfully. It was honest. It was physical and emotional. It was just also Bruce.

And Clark caught him. Clark pulled him in physically and caught him. Held him as he shook and clung and let him fall apart and kissed him. Kissed him and kissed him.

They'd made a time and a place for something that existed beyond times and beyond places. They loved and they loved without reserve, loved the dirty and the clean, the light and the dark, the best and the worst, in weakness and in strength. Sometimes that love was kisses and sometimes it was blood and sometimes it was silence.

In truth, it was all of those things at once. Especially right now.

He pulled Bruce in and let him exist exactly as he was and said nothing.

Bruce ramped up - shook harder, but when he kissed, downright pulled at Clark, dug his nails in harder, clawed at him a little even - but then reversed and it ramped down and bled off, until he was pretty well wrung out and had gotten through the worst of the endorphin crash and feeling of exposure and vulnerability and - fragility.

He actually drifted off with his hand on Clark's chest. It didn't last long - maybe twenty minutes - but he caught that nap, and when he started to wake up again it was with a clearer head and feeling more like himself.

"I could have planned that better," he murmured, without opening his eyes. "I'm sorry."

More like himself. Not quite there, yet.

He looked down at Bruce and it's a look that Bruce has leveled at him more than once: no apologies for something like that. They had no place here.

"Nobody's perfect," was all he said and put his hand over Bruce's. Bruce's hand over his heart on his chest.

He accepted the look and the unspoken message but:

"New rule. Going forward, we work out a specific ... routine at the end. Clean up, food, sleep. Together."

"Good rule," he agreed with a nod before breathing in and giving him a bit of a crooked smile.

"We planned for everything but after."

A part of him wondered if that was because some part of their minds hadn't been able to handle the idea of 'after'.

"We should also try to decide how we feel about combining sex with this. Expectations."

Bruce didn't think his mind could have coped with after. He didn't really believe it would happen, not ... truly. He'd been avoiding this for so long. He still wasn't sure how he was handling after, except by trying to impose order on it.

While still pretty much clinging to Clark.

for knightbynight: For now and hereafter...

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