Chapter Text
Clark was lying in bed, drifting in a haze of half-sleep, when he heard Bruce call his name.
He was in his suit and flying towards Gotham in less than a second, mind racing. It wasn’t necessarily unusual for Bruce to summon him by name, although he usually defaulted to the League communicator for hero business and cell phones for anything social. But when Batman wanted a consult on a case, his voice was a steady, even growl. When Bruce wanted a friend to talk to and didn’t quite know how to admit it, he sounded hesitant but still carefully neutral.
This time, his voice was strangled and almost desperate, like he’d said the name involuntarily.
And he hadn’t called for Superman. He’d called for Clark.
Flying as fast as he was, Clark had just enough time to work out Bruce’s location (his bedroom at Wayne Manor), his vitals (elevated) and check for the presence of external threats (none; he was alone) before he was hurtling in through the open balcony. “Bruce! Is everything—”
He froze.
“Clark,” Bruce said. There was that neutrality that had been so markedly absent just seconds ago, despite the fact that a clearly unexpected visitor had just appeared in his bedroom in the middle of the night. He sat up in a way that might have seemed casual, if not for the circumstances. The circumstances being that Bruce was fully nude on his bed, and that the movement subtly shifted the sheets so that he was partially covered. His right hand rested conspicuously out of sight.
“Can I help you with something?” he said in that same, even tone.
The room smelled undeniably of ejaculate.
“Oh,” Clark said, immediately mortified. “I’m sorry. I heard my name. I thought you—”
“I wasn’t,” Bruce said.
Clark felt a panicked laugh bubble up in his throat. “Yeah, I… I got that,” he said, tearing his eyes away to stare at anything that wasn’t Bruce, naked in his own bed, barely covered with a thin, white sheet. “Sorry again. I’ll just…”
He was out of the room as quickly as he’d entered it, face crimson.
God. How embarrassing.
Maybe Bruce had a point about diving into things without first assessing the situation. When Bruce told him off for that, he was usually referring to more combat-oriented scenarios and the fact that Clark’s invulnerability was not itself invulnerable. But although the risk was different, the outcome felt almost as dire.
There was no question here that Clark had messed up this time. Before storming into his friend’s bedroom in the middle of the night, metaphorical guns blazing, he probably should have at least considered the possibility that Bruce was—
That Bruce was—
That. Bruce was…had been…
He squeezed his eyes shut. Don’t think about that, Clark. Do. Not.
He had to take a couple laps around the planet before it felt safe to attempt sleep again.
They didn’t talk about it.
Clark wished he could say he was surprised. But when he arrived on the Watchtower for their regular meeting, after several days of radio silence from Bruce, Batman simply greeted him with a neutral nod.
“Superman,” he said. “We’re about to start. Take your seat when you’re ready.”
Clark blinked. It wasn’t as if he’d expected Bruce to hash it out with him in front of all their fellow League members, or even to drag him away to discuss it in private. But he had expected something. Some tacit acknowledgement, maybe a subtle air of awkwardness, or even avoidance. But Bruce showed no sign that he cared at all. He took his seat beside him as if everything was perfectly normal; talked strategy with Diana and sniped at Hal and bluntly critiqued every suggestion anyone put forward about anything. Business pretty much exactly as usual.
Clark didn’t know how he did it, honestly. If it had been Clark who’d been walked in on like that, had his privacy violated like that, there was no way he’d be able to stay so calm. Just the thought of it made his skin hot. Of Bruce catching Clark with a fist lazily curled around himself, Bruce’s name on his lips. Of Bruce seeing Clark the way Clark had seen Bruce. Bruce’s expression when he’d flown in, cheeks flushed and pupils blown. His cock, laying against his stomach, only just starting to soften. The way the splatter of his own seed had caught in the coarse, dark hair there, trailing down from his navel. As he watched Batman talk, he remembered how Bruce’s mouth had looked too – open and red, as if he’d been biting—
“—have an opinion?”
Startled, Clark realized the question had been addressed to him. He blinked. The assembled League members were watching him expectantly. “Sorry,” he said sheepishly, “I wasn’t paying enough attention. Could you repeat that?”
Bruce made an irritated noise in his throat. Diana helpfully supplied, “We were discussing the personnel for this upcoming trip. Do you have any thoughts?”
Clark really should have been paying attention, because he did have thoughts, but expressing them required rehashing several points from the conversation he’d just missed. Batman quietly seethed with undisguised disapproval, obviously unhappy with the delay to their discussion. Clark winced subtly at every unamused grunt, feeling guilty for more than Bruce knew.
He tried to catch Bruce after the meeting, because clearly not talking about it wasn’t really working for him. But Bruce just growled, “Do better next time,” and flounced off towards the zetas. Unsure whether Bruce had been referring to the meeting or his ill-advised late night break-in, Clark didn't have the heart to chase him.
The real problem was that ideas could be insidious. Some ideas took root, grew, flowered, flourished. Others were like Japanese knotweed, and grew and grew and grew until they’d subsumed the garden of his mind and Clark’s sense of rationality was quietly strangled into submission.
Bruce masturbated. It wasn’t exactly a wild revelation – lots of people did, after all – but the stark confirmation somehow still felt like one. He’d known Bruce had sex, of course, as did half the gossip rags in Gotham. Famed bachelor Bruce Wayne was attractive and wealthy and, when he wanted to be, charming enough to have almost anyone he wanted – and although the rumors of Bruce Wayne’s promiscuity were exaggerated, Clark had always been quietly sure that Bruce had built that persona for himself in part because he enjoyed it, enjoyed flirting at parties and having glamorous flings with the occasional supermodel.
Bruce liked sex, sure. But that knowledge felt different from this, the idea that Bruce was a man like any other, prone to taking himself in hand after a long, stressful day. There was something unobtrusive and unglamorous and vulnerable and achingly human in that simple act, in a way that Bruce rarely let himself be seen. In a way that Clark had seen regardless.
But the most insidious thought of all was the fact that Bruce had said Clark’s name. Did that mean that Bruce had been thinking about him as he touched himself? Had he imagined it was Clark’s hand around him, jerking him off; Clark braced above him as he came apart? Had they kissed, in his fantasy? What else might Bruce want with him?
Did he know that Clark would give him anything?
The idea of it all made Clark’s skin feel hot and itchy, like it didn’t fit right, like there was something buzzing beneath it. Unhappily, Clark knew exactly what that something was. Lust wasn’t a novel feeling for him, especially not when directed at his best friend.
Bruce was Bruce, after all. The sky was blue, the grass was green, and Bruce – with his movie star good looks and razor-sharp mind and general Bruceness – pushed every single one of Clark’s buttons without fail. Usually, Clark did a much better job of shoving that particular emotion down and bravely and heroically Not Thinking About It. But now, preoccupied as he was, he wasn’t able to stop his attention from lazily drifting in the direction of Bruce’s heartbeat when that familiar itch assaulted him one sleepless night. In fact, he barely noticed himself doing it.
Not until he heard the stutter in Bruce’s pulse.
Clark’s hand stilled in its slow journey towards the waistband of his briefs. Without conscious intent, his focus shifted entirely to Bruce: the gentle uptick of his heartrate; the harshness of his breathing; the rhythmic shift of bare skin against expensive sheets; the wet, unmistakable sound of a lubricated hand sliding urgently over a cock. Bruce would be flushed again, like last time, he thought. He’d be rolling his hips up into his fist with every stroke, eyes gone hazy and dark with pleasure.
Clark had an excellent memory and a powerful imagination. He could picture exactly what that would look like.
He withdrew his hand. It wouldn’t exactly be the first time he’d touched himself to thoughts of Bruce, but it was one thing to do it in the abstract and another to do it like this: having heard him, and knowing that he was doing the same. It would be wrong. Even though, with just that brief auditory glimpse, his half-hearted arousal had blazed into a small inferno within seconds.
He didn’t know what Bruce thought of him, not explicitly. He didn’t even know for sure if he’d been the Clark Bruce was calling out for that night, although it did seem likely. But even if he had been thinking of Clark as he touched himself (and Jesus, just the thought sent another guilty shiver of lust through him), that didn’t mean he’d be okay with Clark listening in on him like this.
It was a violation. Bruce deserved better. Clark ought to be better.
He sighed and clenched his hands to fists. If he couldn’t make himself stop listening, he was determined to at least wait Bruce out.
But then Bruce’s breathing stuttered and he groaned, “Clark,” as the slick sounds sped up, the name barely a whisper—
This time, Clark didn’t fly to his side. This time, Clark let out a helpless curse into the echoing silence of his apartment and shoved his hand into his underwear; jerked himself off with harsh, desperate strokes until he was shuddering through an orgasm of his own. When he was done, he cleaned himself off with a tissue and fell into a dreamless sleep, nauseous guilt churning low in his stomach.
The real problem was that after the first offense, the second came so much easier.
It was honestly distressing to keep finding himself crossing his own carefully maintained boundaries. His powers were meant for helping people, not for invading their privacy. But searching Bruce out was already second nature to him. After all, Bruce had always been a constant presence burning in the very background of his awareness, even before all this had started. Trying not to think about him was like trying not to think about a pink elephant: futile and ultimately counterproductive.
With the memory of Bruce groaning out Clark’s name (twice!) at the height of orgasm achingly fresh, Clark’s mind often drifted to his friend when he was bored or distracted – and with that drift in attention came a drift in hearing. Sometimes, he’d hear Batman on patrol, a rush of wind and the sounds of judiciously applied violence. Sometimes he’d hear Bruce in his home, working in the cave or his study, the quiet clack of a keyboard or the flip of pages, a rumbled sigh.
Spending time with Bruce didn’t help either. In fact, proximity seemed to make his distraction worse: Clark spent most of their next meeting on the Watchtower tuned in to the soothing, metronomic thump of his heartbeat. He didn’t think he was obvious about his inattention this time, but Bruce still fixed him with an oddly penetrating look before he left the Watchtower. Clearly, Clark hadn’t been as subtle as he’d hoped.
It wasn’t great of him, honestly. Clark knew that. None of it was. But when he eavesdropped only to find Bruce doing something innocuous, it at least felt harmless. He wasn’t making himself privy to anything Bruce wouldn’t show him willingly.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t always the case. One sunny Tuesday morning at his cubicle, he let his attention drift while stuck on a sentence for an article, only to hear the sound of slick flesh moving against slick flesh, a timbre that had haunted his dreams for the past week. In his shock – because Jesus, it was the middle of the day – he’d whipped his head in the direction of Gotham and—
He'd looked. Before he could stop himself, he’d looked, and seen Bruce in bed again. Rare sunlight streaked across the room, making Bruce’s pale, scarred skin glow golden wherever it fell. This time, Bruce was on his front, hips pressed slightly into the air and rolling in smooth undulations, like he was fucking his fist. Three of the fingers of his left hand were buried inside himself.
Clark’s mouth went dry.
The fingers twisted and Bruce’s breath caught. He sighed in obvious pleasure and pressed his hips back against his own touch. Back in Metropolis, Clark’s own fingers twitched against his keyboard, face flaming.
Great. To add to the ever-lengthening list of basic social etiquette he couldn’t stop breaking these days, Clark had gone from flaccid to rock hard in seconds. At his desk. Thank god his loose jacket covered him. Lois was shooting him a concerned glance, but she wouldn’t realize what was happening if he could just pull himself together. That is, she wouldn’t notice that he was hard at work— God, there was so much wrong about this, this was…this was insanity.
He needed to stop watching, he thought, wrenching his gaze away. He needed to stop listening. He needed to cool down. He needed to—
Bruce turned his head into the pillow. Clark could hear the rasp of his morning stubble against the fabric. “Clark, you feel so good,” he moaned, apparently lost in the throes of fantasy, breathy and muffled but still unmistakable.
Clark mumbled something to the bullpen at large about a stomachache and made a beeline for the only single-stalled bathroom on his floor. As soon as he’d locked the door behind him, he stumbled over to the toilet. He shouldn’t be doing this at work – shouldn’t be doing it at all – but he felt almost dizzy with need and he wasn’t sure he could fly anywhere else like this without being spotted.
He was very consciously not watching Bruce anymore, gaze focused on his own shaky fingers undoing his pants. The feeling that flooded him when he finally closed a hand around himself was relief as much as it was desperation. He could hear Bruce’s soft groans coming a little rougher, a little breathier. Clark forced himself not to look, but it was horribly easy to picture Bruce’s fingers pumping into himself faster, the shifting curve at the dip of his spine as he rolled back into the pressure, the slight tremble in the thick muscle of his thighs. Clark bit back his own noises and braced himself against the wall with one arm, furiously stripping his cock with the other.
“Clark,” Bruce gasped one last time as he came, and god it was so, so hard not to look, because it was the most beautiful sound Clark had ever heard. Within seconds, Clark was splattering his own release into the bowl, biting the sleeve of his jacket to stop any sound from coming out as his orgasm hit him like a freight train.
When he was done, Clark collapsed onto the seat, pants around his ankles, and just sat there for several long minutes. In Gotham, Bruce’s heartbeat was slowing as he caught his breath. There was the shifting of fabric, the soft pad of bare feet on carpet, and the sound of a shower turning on.
Clark tipped his head into his hands, groaned, and wondered what in the ever-loving hell was wrong with him.
The real problem was that after the second offense, the third and fourth and fifth almost felt like nothing at all.
Almost.
Clark didn’t like to admit that he was hoping for something when his hearing shamefully drifted to Bruce late at night, but he knew he’d be lying to himself. Another, saner part of himself was hoping that he’d be disappointed, that he wouldn’t be forced once more to reckon with what he was doing. And usually, he wouldn’t hear anything crazy, just the sounds of Bruce working or sleeping or talking with his family. Relieved, Clark would close his eyes, and try not to latch onto the sound of that ever-steady heartbeat as he drifted off to sleep.
But that didn’t happen every night. For all that Bruce often forwent food or sleep or basic human self-maintenance in favor of his work, he seemed to find time at least twice a week for this less vital of pleasures. And the sound of his enjoyment was maddening, even from a city away.
Even when Clark managed to force himself not to listen, the inevitable gasp of his own name from Bruce’s lips would pull him back.
In his weaker moments, he told himself that Bruce didn’t care, that obviously the World’s Greatest Detective knew what Clark was doing and just didn’t care enough to say anything. He was probably doing it on purpose, even. Maybe he liked the idea of Clark listening in, maybe he got off on it. After all, why else would he keep saying Clark’s name, after that first time had gone so embarrassingly wrong? If Bruce knew and kept doing it anyway, didn’t that make it all okay?
But deep down, he knew that didn’t matter. Bruce’s intentions were only theoretical, even though Clark was fairly sure Bruce had a strong inkling of what was happening. More importantly, knowledge was not consent, and they still hadn’t talked about it. Any of it. Not about that first night, or why Bruce kept saying Clark’s name as he came, or why and whether Clark knew about it.
But still, Clark would listen. And they didn’t talk about it.
Once, when he listened in, he heard Bruce fucking.
He almost didn’t realize what was happening at first. The sounds weren’t coming from Bruce’s bedroom but from somewhere else in Gotham – one of Bruce’s penthouses, maybe – and that surprised him a little until he noticed there were two heartbeats in the room. Which meant that the slick sounds he could hear weren’t just Bruce, but two people moving together.
Clark felt stricken. This was so much worse than listening in on Bruce when he was alone. Whatever half-hearted justifications he could come up with for eavesdropping on his friend, this violated the privacy of some stranger too, someone Clark didn’t even know—
“Fuck, you’re so tight,” came a voice, low and rough. Masculine. “You like my cock in you?”
The voice was a shock of ice water. Without entirely realizing it, he’d made certain assumptions when he’d heard that second heartbeat. He’d automatically pictured Bruce buried in some waifish model, the kind he might be pictured with on the cover of the Gotham Gazette.
Clark had years to inure himself to the thought of Bruce with women. But that wasn’t what was happening here. Bruce was with a man. Bruce was getting fucked. Bruce was letting another man fuck him.
Bruce, who liked to fuck himself with his fingers while gasping out Clark’s name, was letting another man fuck him.
Clark’s vision tinged red.
The sudden wave of possessive fury he felt was hard to justify, even to himself. Jealousy was never a pretty emotion, but this felt especially hideous. Bruce wasn’t his in any way. Bruce could do whatever he liked, have sex with whoever he liked, in any way he wanted. Clark was the outsider here, the intruder. Clark was the one in the wrong.
The thought did not make the jealousy ease. He burned with it.
While Clark stewed silently in his lonely bed, Bruce and his partner were picking up the pace. “Mm, yeah,” Bruce groaned, a little higher and threadier than he normally got. “I love it, baby. Don’t stop,” he said, and Clark realized abruptly that this wasn’t Bruce. This was Bruce Wayne – the mask, not the man.
Good, he thought viciously. It shouldn’t have made any difference, but god help him it did.
This stranger didn’t know Bruce. He hadn’t earned the right to know what Bruce was really like when he was turned on: the soft, almost inaudible noises he’d make, the low growls of pleasure, the way lazy indulgence would shift to brutal efficiency as he neared his peak. And more than that, he hadn’t earned the right to Bruce. Bruce’s brilliance and compassion; his rare, genuine smiles; the way his hard-eyed stare softened when he thought of his city, or his children, or his friends. Or of Clark.
Bruce, who Clark had known long and closely enough that he could map joy or sorrow from the flat, grim line of his mouth; could hear the meaning behind every quiet grunt. Bruce, who knew Clark better at times than he knew himself. Bruce, who Clark would willingly die for, if ever the choice was forced upon him. Bruce, who Clark knew would do the same for him.
This stranger would never know the real Bruce. Not like Clark did.
“Fuck me,” Bruce demanded breathily, and for the first time Clark allowed himself to imagine it. With all that he’d seen, he could picture it all too clearly. Clark himself sliding into that tight, wet space at the apex of Bruce’s thighs. Clark fucking him until he was loose and needy and gasping for it, arching back with every thrust, the way Bruce did when it was his own fingers. The Clark from Bruce's fantasy.
Clark felt heated and furious and desperately horny, a combination so overwhelming he almost felt sick with it. But that didn’t stop him from twisting onto his front and greedily humping his own fist, as if it were Bruce’s eager, willing body beneath him, tuned into the sounds of Bruce shaking apart by a stranger’s hand.
Muffled into the pillow so his partner couldn’t hear, Bruce rasped out Clark’s name again, and Clark came so hard he saw stars.
This couldn’t continue. Clark couldn’t let it.
He didn’t know exactly what kind of game Bruce was playing, only that there was one (because there had to be, because there was no universe in which Bruce didn’t know by now that Clark was listening); and that Clark was losing. Badly. But whatever Bruce’s intentions were with this – whether it was to taunt him, or to punish him, or to test how far he’d let himself fall – the continued erosion of Clark’s own self-restraint was unconscionable. This had gone too far already.
He’d never had such trouble restricting the use of his powers before. Even as a frustrated teenager growing up in the middle of nowhere, with laughably terrible internet connection on a family computer, he’d never used his enhanced senses to abuse anyone’s privacy like this before. Never. The very thought of it was repugnant to him.
Somehow, it felt different with Bruce. Everything felt different with Bruce.
As unpleasant as the idea was, Clark knew he had no choice but to come clean. He sent Bruce a message asking to meet and talk somewhere private. All day, he anxiously checked his phone, waiting for a reply that never came.
Instead, Bruce was sitting on Clark’s couch when he came home.
In retrospect, maybe Clark should have expected it.
“Hi, Bruce,” he said as he dropped his bag by the door. But it wasn’t Bruce, exactly. It was Batman in full costume, leeching shadows from the darkened walls of his apartment. Impassive and silent but for the steady, familiar thump of his heartbeat and the almost imperceptible sound of his breathing. It almost certainly meant something that he’d come to this conversation fully armored. “I’m guessing you got my message?”
“You’ve been watching me,” Bruce said.
Clark stiffened, then let out a breath. Okay. So they were cutting right to the chase, were they?
“Only once, sort of by accident,” he admitted with an ease he didn’t feel. But coming clean was the whole point of this. There was no point in holding anything back. “Mostly, I’ve been listening.”
“Why?”
Clark almost wanted to laugh. The question felt absurd. “Why do you think?”
Bruce tilted his head slightly in concession. “So you like to listen. It brings you pleasure,” he said. The answer was all but self-evident, but hearing it said out loud still made Clark’s stomach roil with shame.
He closed his eyes and took a breath. “I— Yes.”
“Do you listen to a lot of people like this? Your other friends, colleagues? Strangers?”
It was a valid question. Especially from a mind like Bruce’s, always trying to piece together the bigger picture, cataloguing every variable. Cataloguing threats. A Superman who gratified himself by eavesdropping on people in private moments was undeniably a threat.
But there was something else in Bruce’s voice there, below his usual clinical detachment. Something that made it easier for Clark to open his eyes and meet Bruce’s even stare with one of his own.
“No,” he said quietly, honestly. “Just you. Only ever you.”
He’d told himself he’d be honest. Still, this confession felt heavy in a way that his sins never could. If he wasn’t so tuned to Bruce, so practiced in it, he might have missed the momentary catch of his breath, the barest twitch of his jaw.
There was a beat of silence. Then: “I see,” said Bruce. There was no glimmer of emotion to read from his voice, and yet there was a crackling tension in the air between them, every action and reaction a lit match in a haze of drifting gunpowder.
Clark swallowed thickly. “That first time really was an accident. I thought you might have been in danger. But I have no excuse for what I’ve done since then. I’ve invaded your privacy on multiple occasions, and for that I can only sincerely apologize.”
Bruce was silent. Clark had the desperate urge to ask Bruce all the questions he’d kept bottled up. How long had he known? Why hadn’t he said anything before? Why did he always say Clark’s name? Was he really thinking of Clark when he came? Did this, any of this, actually mean something to him?
But no. He had to right his own wrongs first.
“I understand if you can’t forgive me,” he continued, “but if there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, I’d…I’d like to try.”
Bruce was quiet for a moment more before he spoke. “There is something you can do.”
“Anything,” Clark said and meant it.
Bruce gestured between them. “There’s an imbalance here. You’ve seen me in ways that I haven’t seen you. I want you to even the scales.”
Clark forgot to breathe. The gunpowder had caught, and he was aflame. “You mean…?”
“Show me,” Bruce said.
Clark nearly shuddered. Now, finally, he understood the rules of the game. Finally, he knew how not to lose. The knowledge was relief and trepidation and anticipation in equal measure.
“Okay,” he breathed, eyes still fixed on Bruce, and heard his heartrate pick up, sensed his skin warming beneath the protective layers of his suit.
“Strip,” Bruce said. And Clark did.
Bruce hadn’t specified that he should hurry, so he didn’t. With slow, careful movements, he placed his glasses on the coffee table, let his suit jacket drop to the floor, then pulled off his tie and let that drop too. Tugged his shirt out of his slacks so he could undo the buttons and slip it off his shoulders. Loosened his belt and unfastened his slacks, stepping out of them when they pooled the floor. When Clark Kent lay crumpled on the floor around him, he was left in his Superman suit, the House of El crest bold and bright on his chest. Bruce didn’t say anything, but he knew he wanted that gone too, so he wrangled himself out of the tight, clingy fabric and let it fall just as carelessly.
Bruce didn’t take his eyes off him for a second. He wished he could see Bruce’s face properly, could see the expression there. But he knew that wasn’t what this was about.
Finally, he stood fully bare, barely out of the entryway to his apartment. Naked in more ways than anyone other than the two of them might understand. Stripped of both of his masks, gently illuminated by the soft moonlight through the room’s single, large window. Seen.
Bruce was seated on the couch watching him, a silent shadow. Clark was already half-hard.
“What now?” he asked. The cliché of air being thick with tension was just a metaphor, but in that moment Clark felt like it was true: every breath felt heavy and syrupy-slow, sweetly suffocating.
Bruce’s pulse was racing in his throat. His unseen gaze burned like a brand on Clark’s bare skin.
“Bedroom,” he said.
They moved to the bedroom. Bruce settled into the chair in the corner of his room he usually used to dump his clean laundry on. He leaned back, legs splayed wide and confident. Somehow, he made Clark’s crappy folding chair look like a throne. “Get on the bed. And touch yourself, like you would if you were alone. But slow,” he said, voice a low, dark rasp, and even though Clark couldn’t see his eyes through the lenses of his cowl without breaking the rules, he could picture them just from that: lidded, dark and hungry.
It was tempting to wrap his hand around his cock straight away, but he knew that wasn’t what Bruce wanted from him. ‘Slow’, he said. Superman had never been particularly interested in being obedient to Batman, bossy as he was – but Clark wanted to be now.
So he took his time settling back against the headboard, legs comfortably splayed, feeling Bruce’s gaze bore into him. He returned that gaze as he trailed his left hand down from his sternum to low on his stomach; then back up again, short nails scraping lightly across his chest hair. Raised his right to his mouth so he could lick a broad stripe up his palm. His cock was fully hard by now, flushed and throbbing even though it was untouched, and when he finally wrapped a wet hand around himself, the relief of it was almost heady. His eyes briefly fluttered closed as he let out a soft, shaky groan.
What little he could see of Bruce’s face below the cowl was impassive. But his heart was racing.
“Like this?” Clark asked. His hand was moving on his cock in languid, familiar strokes, just the way he liked it. Just like Bruce had asked for. He let his eyes droop shut, let that tingling heat wash over him, let the pleasure slowly build—
“Slower,” Bruce said. “Look at me.”
The idea of slowing down was almost painful, desperate as he already felt. But he did. He slowed the pace of his hand to glacial, teasing; opened his eyes to watch Bruce.
There was a tension to the sprawl of his limbs, as if he were holding himself back. “Tell me what you heard when you listened.”
“You,” Clark said. Arousal had tightened his throat, lending a throaty rasp to his voice. His own hand wasn’t moving fast enough to do much more than tease, but just saying it out loud was liquid fire in his veins. “The sounds you made. Your hands on yourself. And…and you saying my name.” He wet his lips. “You said it every time.”
“Did you touch yourself?”
“Yes, yeah, I did. I couldn’t…couldn’t help myself.” He trailed his fingers around the underside of his cock, and bit back a groan. “You sounded so good, Bruce.”
At the sound of his own name, Bruce finally reacted visibly, albeit barely; a muscle jumped in his jaw. “You said you only looked once. What did you see?”
“You, on your bed,” he said. Even watching Bruce now, the image came back to him with near perfect clarity. The sharp tug of arousal he felt in his gut at the memory nearly squeezed his eyes shut, but he forced them open; Bruce had told him to look.
The grim, still shadow beside his bed might feel at odds with the sunlit figure from his memory, if Clark couldn’t see the inescapable core of Bruce within both and didn’t crave every part of him totally. “You were on your front, hips up,” he continued. “One hand on your cock while you had three fingers in your ass. Fucking yourself with them.”
Bruce shifted slightly in the chair. He must be hard, Clark thought. Hard and aching and trapped, cock hidden behind layers of armor. “Show me.”
“God,” Clark groaned. “God. Okay.”
He stilled his hand. The cessation of that contact was almost a relief, torturously slow as it had been. He fumbled in his bedside drawer for his bottle of lube and slicked up three of his own fingers, then settled back down on his front. It was difficult to keep looking at Bruce like this, face down on his bed with his ass in the air, but he thought that Bruce wouldn’t mind that now. Bruce wanted to see him.
He was already breathing hard before he’d slipped one finger into himself. At two, he was arching back into his own touch, eager to feel that touch deeper. At three, his every outbreath was edged with a groan, rolling his hips back against that maddening pressure and forwards into his tight fist, and—
“Bruce,” he moaned when he twisted his fingers inside himself, brushing against that spot that made his whole body shiver, just as Bruce had—
Bruce swallowed thickly and swore under his breath. It was the first time that Bruce had truly let slip how much he wanted this, wanted to watch Clark come apart. Wanted to hear how Clark had listened to him. How he’d seen him.
“Did you touch yourself?” he asked. “Watching me?”
Clark nodded – or tried, but it was more a shift of mussed hair against the pillow. “At work,” he said. “I was—at work. Jerked off in the bathroom.”
“Fuck,” Bruce swore, aloud this time. His breath was coming in harsh gasps now. He sounded like he was unravelling. “What else. What else did you hear.”
Clark knew what Bruce wanted. “I heard you getting fucked.”
Bruce made a wordless noise, soft but strangled, and suddenly it felt unbearable that Clark wasn’t looking at him. He shifted, bent his head at an awkward angle so he could see and— God, Bruce was touching himself, palming his cock roughly through his armor, eyes still fixed on him. Clark might have made a noise, but he couldn’t hear it over the sudden rush of blood in his ears. Bruce’s own touch couldn’t have felt like much to him, shielded as he was. But there was something overwhelming about the contrast at play, that stern façade overcome by lust.
“Did you like it?” Bruce was asking him. “Did you like listening to another man fuck me?”
Clark’s grip tightened around his cock. He shivered. “No. No, I…I hated it.”
“But you still listened.”
“Yeah, I—”
“Why?”
Clark’s eyes fluttered shut. “Because I… I wanted it to be me. Fuck, Bruce, I wanted it to be me so badly.”
Bruce let out another wordless noise as he ground his palm down more firmly. “God, you… God.”
“Bruce,” he pleaded. “Bruce. I need…”
“What do you need?”
Clark had all but run out of patience. His own hands weren’t enough anymore. And Bruce felt so far away, even though the distance between them was only a few feet.
The sight and sound of him weren’t enough. He needed touch.
“You,” he gasped. “Just…you. Whatever you’ll give me.”
Bruce shuddered, a whole body thing, mouth falling slack. Then he was standing in a whirl of black, the shadows sliding from him as he ripped off his cowl. For all that he was still clothed and just as dangerous, it felt like a voluntary disarmament. Beneath it, his eyes were dark and wild.
“Do you want me to fuck you like this?”
Clark moaned, hips twitching, which maybe should have been answer enough. He found himself responding anyway, desperate: “Yes. God, yes. Please, Bruce, just—”
“Clark,” Bruce breathed. The first time he’d said his name all night.
At last, they’d reached détente. The game was over. Clark slipped his fingers out and shuffled forwards on his hands and knees. There was the sound of armor being unclipped and fabric shifting; Clark felt himself shiver, breathless with anticipation.
Then Bruce was kneeling behind him and gripping his hips with still-gloved hands. Bruce slid into him in one smooth thrust and barely waited for Clark to adjust before he started fucking him mercilessly.
Clark let out a shout, hands scrabbling at the bedsheets. The sudden heat and fullness was nearly overwhelming, as was the punched-out groan of the man behind him. To hear that now-familiar sound in the flesh rather than from across a city was dizzying, almost more so than the thick cock splitting him open with firm, decisive thrusts.
“Please,” he begged, although he wasn’t sure for what. Bruce seemed to understand it anyway, rolling his hips faster, deeper; adjusting the angle so that Clark was crying out wordlessly with every thrust. Bruce was as meticulously thorough in taking Clark apart as he was in everything. And god, both of them were so riled up already that it wasn’t long until they were close, close and aching with it.
“Bruce,” Clark gasped when Bruce wrapped a hand around him, and it only took a few frantic pumps before he was coming, mind shorting out in a thundering wave of ecstasy. Bruce grunted, sped up his thrusts and then Clark was being flooded with warm wet as Bruce body shuddered above him, hips jerking, rasping a desperately growled, “Clark,” into his ear – and Clark must have been thoroughly conditioned to that name from those lips at this point, because he almost felt like he could come again just hearing it.
After a few, hazy seconds, Bruce pulled out. Clark all but collapsed onto the bed, dazedly listening to Bruce strip out of the rest of his armor and pad out into the bathroom. When he returned, he was holding a damp washcloth and cleaned both of them off as best he could. Finally, still sweat-damp but mostly clean, he flopped onto the bed beside Clark with an uncharacteristic lack of grace, the effort of moving evidently having depleted what remained of his energy. Both of them stared up at the ceiling.
“So,” Clark said after the brief eternity it took to piece his mind back together had passed, voice still rough, “I’m guessing you’re not mad at me?”
Bruce let out a quiet snort of laughter. “I think you’ve more than made up for it.”
“Good. Because that means I get to be mad at you now.” Clark turned his head to glare at him. “You were toying with me for weeks, weren’t you? What do you have to say for yourself?”
Bruce shrugged lazily. “Technically, I was just enjoying myself. You didn’t have to listen.”
“That,” Clark said tiredly, “is exactly the problem.” When Bruce just shrugged again, he added dryly, “The mind games were unnecessary, you know. You could have just asked me out.”
Bruce smiled, sharp and sly. “Ah, but where’d be the fun in that?”
“The fun was mostly one-sided,” he muttered. He’d spent weeks in self-induced crisis over his own actions, wracked with guilt. Even if Bruce didn’t mind, Clark still had his own conscience to reckon with. And meanwhile, Bruce had probably known all along. Played him like a fiddle, for his own gratification. Even though, as he said, technically he hadn’t done anything wrong.
Bruce was absolutely infuriating. What was most infuriating was that Clark still wanted to kiss him.
He levered himself up. Bruce’s eyes tracked him as he moved to straddle his hips, alight with the lazy hunger of a sated predator, his heated gaze flitting over Clark’s skin. Clark bent down to lick a bead of sweat from the hollow of his neck, and Bruce’s breath stuttered.
“I think,” Clark murmured against his skin, “I’d like you to make it up to me.”
Bruce’s hands came up to wrap around his back, callused fingers fluttering almost hesitantly over his spine before they settled on his skin, rough and warm.
“Yes, Clark,” he breathed. “Anything.”