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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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.

Clark nodded in agreement. It was a line and one that they had to negotiate beforehand.

"Are you against it in general?"

"I think the aftermath would have been... easier today, " the come down smoother, "if it had involved an orgasm for one or both of us by making disengagement less abrupt." He was - "But I'm flying blind here, Clark. This isn't... the sort of thing I do with anyone else."

"Then I think the question is still whether we both want it, or even need it," Clark pointed out, "or if we just think it's... something to help deal with the aftermath."

He held up a hand.

"I agree with you. I do. But since we are flying blind, I want to make sure we're sure about it."

He looked at Bruce.

"Does the idea appeal to you? Sex with that dynamic in place?"

Bruce's eyes widened minutely and for just a moment there was something startled in them. Like for all this discussion he hadn't been thinking sex with that dynamic in place.

Because he hadn't been.

He hadn't thought about the dynamic at all.

Not even in the midst of what they'd been doing.

Maybe. Depending.

"Define the dynamic," he all but demanded. Before he put a single toe out onto what could be thin ice.

One eyebrow cocked thoughtfully at that reaction.

"The dynamic where I actively do what I want, including harming you, within a set of parameters with the intended result of giving us both emotional and physical pleasure while you gain a sense of release from the passive position while still ultimately holding control over the situation?"

He turned his hand.

"I told you ages ago, Bruce. I'm not a sub."

Edited 2016-01-05 03:44 (UTC)

That was effectively what they'd just done, anyway.

Bruce knew it. Bruce recognized it. Bruce also recognized that Clark was carefully reiterating that Bruce had all the ultimate control and only using the wording in reference to himself. Those were all things that illustrated just how intelligent Clark was, particularly when it came to handling veritable land-mines named Bruce Wayne.

That was very, very thoughtful, considerate, and compassionate as well as just being smart.

It didn't really resolve the issue where Bruce had in no way been looking at this as a dominant-submissive dynamic (even though it applied perfectly well), or finding the idea of applying those labels to them or their sex life threatening.

"Neither am I." Yes, he actually kind of was at least as it pertained to Clark and this, but his back was up in a totally irrational way. "Orgasm Clark. I'm just suggesting we have orgasm, either alone or together, as part of the interaction we've agreed on."

"Then I'll admit that I would be interested in adding orgasm to the proceedings as well," he admitted with a shrug.

So basically... yes.

"Are there any particular acts or positions that you would prefer to avoid?"

Clark was suddenly in danger of being the 'owner' of one slightly rabid Batman with something to prove, and it wasn't because of something he'd done wrong. It was because Bruce had just realized that maybe this wasn't entirely about sadism and masochism and was processing that poorly.

Fortunately for Clark, unfortunately for Bruce ,he wasn't being given a real reason to start 'proving' things. He was being somewhat disarmed by... well Clark having a PhD in Bruce's Bullshit.

He narrowed his eyes very slightly at Clark. "We have sex all the time. Why would the rules be different."

"Some acts may pull you out of the state that's ultimately the point of what we're doing," he pointed out. "While you may want to reserve other acts a separate from anything we do here. Sacrosanct."

He turned a hand palm up.

"For instance: I countered gentle touch with pain, but you may find that extended tenderness during things gives your body a chance to dull the pain to an extend that would be counter to the point. On the other hand, you might find rough sex to be too much of a good thing and blur the edges of things in ways you don't enjoy."

He looked up at Bruce.

"It's like anything else in that situation: there are parameters. So I'm asking what, if any, parameters there are."

He honestly went from nearly snarling at Clark to nearly laughing at him over the course of the answer.

Of course Clark would take the time and actually spell this out for him, the same way he'd describe a menu. There was nothing there to get angry at, and Clark was doing it on purpose. Clark spent a lot of time managing Bruce, and while that could have been enormously threatening and was incredibly annoying....

It was also not really new, even in the realization.

He gave a huffy sigh and then shook his head. "I think this is something we're going to have to play by ear. What's acceptable and what works is going to vary depending on what we've been doing. Where your head is, where my head actually is, what I'm physically capable of, and whether we're in the thick of things or where we're coming down. It's against the commonly accepted rules and most common sense, but we're just going to have to see what works. If you want to play it safe for a while we can avoid actual fucking. Reassess in a few months."

"I'd be more inclined to go with what feels right and adjust as necessary," he admitted with a spread of his hands as he looked over at Bruce. "Or I feel it's more realistic to think of it that way."

They could both be terribly impulsive, especially about each other, and the intensity level of things between them had led to any number of wonderful things. Better to aim for something that incorporated that instead of pretending it wasn't likely.

"You've always got your safeword and if I'm honest, there are very few times I feel as completely in control like I did earlier."

"That's right. I have a safeword." like he'd just remembered. He looked Clark in the eye, dead on and said, "I'm willing to go with what feels right." And trust Clark - he already trusted Clark.

A pause and then. "Chill." As in: End this conversation. He was being pushed to assess things about himself and his life with Clark and who he was and what he was doing and what control he did and didn't have and various illusions and realities that he wasn't quite prepared to deal with the implications of.

He needed some room and time with that.

"Not," he added, "about you feeling in control. You looked better than you have in a while."

Edited 2016-01-05 14:24 (UTC)

"The street noise isn't making me twitchy anymore," he admitted quietly. It had helped. It had let him sieze control of himself, of the situation, and he'd reclaimed part of that time directly from Bruce's skin.

for knightbynight: For now and hereafter...

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