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Lois literally laughed out loud, a shoulder-heaving bark of amusement and pity.

“Bruce Wayne? Really, Smallville?”

Jimmy squinted, incredulous and a little disappointed. “You can’t just point at the two most famous men in Gotham and be like, yeah, them, those two, same guy.” The corner of his mouth and an eyebrow rose in concert. “By that logic, Superman’s secret identity must be Lex Luthor.” 

Lois continued shaking her head. “No. I’m sorry, what hard evidence is there? You—” She flattened her mouth, her eyebrows creasing towards the middle of her forehead. “You haven’t met him. I’ve met him—”

“I have too met him, he was at the ribbon cutting ceremony for—”

“Okay, but you haven’t talked to him, Kent—”

“I talked to him at the beach cleanup two months ago—”

“For thirty seconds. I’ve interviewed him more than once. Like… he’s a nice guy, and he’s very pretty, but he is just so dumb. I interviewed him about that new high speed rail Wayne Enterprises was funding last year, and halfway through the interview he asked me to ‘remind him what position I was running for, again.’” She tossed her hands out to the side and recrossed her legs, shifting her weight from one side to the other. “He thought I was a candidate for city council— and this was the second time I had interviewed him that month. I asked him why a candidate for city council would be interviewing him, and he smiled at me like a babe in arms and said, ‘this is an interview?’”

“I remember that—” Jimmy snorted. “You looked the councilwoman up later and she was like, some old Vietnamese lady.” 

“Lois Linh. She is sixty eight, a mother of four, and quite famously has a glass eye .”

Clark bit the tip of his tongue.

He had plenty of evidence, and Lois’s anecdote only served to confirm his suspicions. The mix-up was too perfect and too public not to have been a stunt.

Wayne had the same bone structure as Batman. The same teeth. The same vocal timbre, even if he was trying to disguise it. They walked very differently, in exactly the same way Superman and Clark Kent walked very differently— too differently, like stage acting. And the dopey playboy facade went just a stitch too far, considering Wayne Enterprises’ unprecedented success over the last few years. Wayne had the money, too, to fund all the Batman’s ridiculous toys. 

Lois was right that he hadn’t spent much time around Bruce Wayne, but it’s not like the guy’s face wasn’t on TV all the goddamn time. And he’d met Batman once or twice in the dark, too, slithering off in the opposite direction when Clark had tried to make conversation. He also happened to be able to see just a touch better than Lois, Lane or Linh. They were the same guy. 

He probably shouldn’t have mentioned his theory out loud. Certainly he would hate to be in the position he was putting the Batman in, but then again, he didn’t particularly like or trust Batman. He was dangerous. A rich boy playing dress up, LARPing at vengeance. 

But he just smiled his best farm boy smile and shrugged, letting his head fall slightly to one side. “I’m just saying, have you ever seen Batman and Bruce Wayne together at a party?”

Jimmy snorted and Lois rolled her eyes, affectionately.  

The conductor announced over the intercom that Gotham was fifteen minutes away, as if everyone hadn’t already noticed the fog and the darkening sky. Clark glanced up through the luggage rack, absentmindedly checking his and his coworkers’ bags were still where they had put them. Lois tapped the melamine table twice in front of Clark.

“Earth to Kent. You remembered a tie this time, right?”

Clark widened his eyes in practiced surprise. He had quite pointedly forgotten a tie.

“Oh… sugar.” He swore the way his parents had taught him he ought to, instead of the way they both actually swore. “I think I might’ve left it on my bed.”

His ties were all hanging neatly in the closet. But recently Lois had asked him a few too-pointed questions about his upbringing, questions that had indicated she noticed sometimes when the dopey hick had said or done something just a little too shrewd. He had to lay it on a little thick for a while. 

“Jesus, okay. We’ll stop and get you another tie.” Lois sighed and kicked him under the table, suppressing a smile. “It’s like they didn’t have galas back in rural Kansas, or something.”

“Almost like,” he smiled back, his cheek dimpling. 

He purposefully tripped down the last stair on the way out of the train, and when they got to the hotel he had to search all his pockets and every compartment of his bag for his wallet. By the time they got to their rooms, Lois was patting him on the small of the back as they walked like she was there, there ’ing a big puppy. 

They talked over the plan— Wayne Enterprises had invited the Daily Planet to the charity gala, which was either a publicity stunt, a major red flag for behind-the-scenes skullduggery, or just another dumb Bruce Wayne misstep. So, they were going to have Lois and Clark play by Wayne’s rules (mostly by Wayne’s rules. Lois had brought a button camera disguised as a vintage brooch) and Jimmy slip in the back disguised as catering staff. 

Armed with a newly purchased tie and one winning all-American smile, the trio pulled up to the gate of Wayne Manor. Clark waved at the security guard past Lois; she had refused to let him touch the wheel of the rental car. 

Jimmy was in the trunk.

They parked and mingled in the gardens for a while, talking to other Gotham high society regulars. Wayne’s business manager was there— Lois whispered to Clark that he was the only reason Wayne hadn’t run the company into the ground— as well as a number of other CEOs and CFOs and Lead Engineers of various other conglomerates. At one point a gleamingly bald man walked past one of the terrifying water-spewing horses in the hideous Wayne Manor fountains and both Lois and Clark flinched for a moment, concerned it was Luthor. When he turned around— a redhead, with a goatee— they both breathed a sigh of relief. Lois reminded Clark that Luthor and Wayne had been feuding on social media for about three months now. Clark pointed out the outline of Oliver Queen darting into the parking lot with a blonde, and Lois squinted, hard. She asked him how he could possibly tell that was Ollie Queen, and Clark shrugged and asked in return, well, who else would be leaving a party twenty minutes in to go have sex in a car?

When the guests were asked inside, a beautiful, angular, and disconcertingly intense Black woman with a short, sharp haircut grabbed Lois by the arm. 

“You’re Lois Lane, aren’t you?”

Lois glanced towards Clark as he started to get pushed forward by the thrum of people.

She nodded. “Of the Daily Planet, not the Gotham City Council.”

“Yes! I read your article about the ivory smuggling ring— I think your expose was solidly seventy five percent of why they got caught.”

“Thank you,” Lois nodded, eyes darting towards the hors d'oeuvres table Bruce Wayne was leaning on, then back to Clark. “There’s a reason we’re the fourth estate, right?”

“I was wondering, would you be willing to help me with something— there’s a big cat sanctuary that—” 

Their conversation got drowned out by the din as Clark was pushed further into the room. He caught Lois’ eye and she gave him a helpless little half shrug. 

He got himself a slice of cucumber with a funny little shrimp on it, two cubes of very rare beef, various cheeses, and a crispy piece of toast with something creamy and a sprinkling of pomegranate seeds. He watched both Bruce Wayne and Lois, trying to determine the best course of action. Wayne was far more likely to speak to Lois— a beautiful woman— than him, whether he remembered her or not. But the Cat Sanctuary Lady had her arm through Lois’ arm at this point, and Clark wasn’t all that sure he was going to be able to peel her off.

Wayne was talking with two women, both of them dripping with jewels. 

Clark watched him surreptitiously, through a centerpiece, and slowly nibbled at the items on his plate. He listened in on the conversation, which was utterly vapid, and carefully, quietly poured himself a glass of seltzer. When the conversation started to die down, he walked around the table, the wrong way, just in time to cross paths with Wayne as the two women left. He stepped into Bruce Wayne’s personal space, pretending not to see him, and raised his hand— with his drink in it— above his head and called for Lois across the room. 

Anyone else would’ve bumped into Clark’s arm as it went up.

Bruce Wayne— supposedly dopey, inebriated stray tomcat Bruce Wayne— gently lifted his own hand in concert and grabbed Clark’s seltzer before a drop landed on the floor. 

“Easy there, big guy,” Wayne grinned, instantly dazzling. He put his hand on the small of Clark's back and gently lowered his drink back into his own hand. 

Clark felt a flush climbing up his neck. He hadn't expected him to catch it, and he certainly hadn't expected the nickname.

"All good there?" Wayne patted his back— like someone patting an old dog— and then squinted. "Wait, you're— I know you. You're a crab scientist. You study carcinogens."

"Carciniza…" Clark licked his lower lip. "We uh— we did talk about crabs when we met," he admitted. "But that's because we were both talking to Dr. Mehta."

"Is Dr. Mehta a crab scientist?"

"I think she prefers the term marine biologist."

"And you're not a crab scientist."

"Unfortunately not," Clark shrugged, and then offered his hand. He juggled his plate a little to get there, and this time Wayne ignored the clumsiness. "Clark Kent. I'm a reporter for the Daily Planet."

“ Oh! ” Bruce pointed at him, shaking his finger a bit too close to his face. “I remember now. You stepped in a tide pool and wore two different shoes for the rest of the day.”

Clark grimaced. He had, indeed, done that.

“Oh no,” Bruce smiled, sly, almost coquettish. He had incredible eyelashes. “This isn’t an interview, is it?”

Clark smiled his best gee-shucks smile in return, scratching at the back of his head with his drink hand, sloshing a little on the floor. “No, Mr. Wayne, I’m a guest. And—” He leaned in close, oozing country guilelessness, “I’ll tell you a secret— I’m mostly here for the free food.” 

Wayne leaned in even closer, like they were sharing some absolutely nuclear gossip. Charm radiated off his ghost-white skin, like one of those old movie effects with mirrors and fog. “I’ll make sure you get sent home with a goodie bag.” He licked his lips and patted between Clark’s shoulders. “And call me Bruce, please. I’m only Mr. Wayne at board meetings.”

He stood up straight and looked at his watch. “Would you excuse me for a moment? I need to make a speech.” 

“Uh— sure.” 

Clark bit the tip of his tongue. He wasn’t sure how many more opportunities he was going to get to monopolize Bruce Wayne’s time— practically everyone here was hoping to get an audience with him. And it’s not like he could try to spill a second drink on him.

“And keep an eye on those guns of yours, okay?” Wayne mimed a strongman pose with one arm. “Too much ordinance for tight quarters.” 

He winked.

And he left to go make a speech.

Clark rubbed at his throat, suddenly feeling like his tuxedo and tie were the emperor’s new clothes. 

He managed to find Lois again while Wayne was giving his speech.

She looped her arm into his and pulled him down slightly to whisper at him. He felt his ears go red, both from the close contact of Lois’ mouth to his cheek, and from the embarrassment of talking over a speech at a charity event . 

“God,” Lois sighed, quiet, quiet, “He may have a pail of rocks for brains, but I forget every time just how goddamn pretty he is. I want to drizzle him with caramel sauce.”

Clark swallowed. 

He tried not to think about either the image of Bruce Wayne covered in sticky stuff or the image of Lois licking something sweet off someone else’s fingers. 

He cleared his throat. He really wished Lois wouldn’t talk to him like he was one of her gal pals. It was like the moment she’d realized he was attracted to men, she’d completely forgotten that he was also attracted to women. That she continuously told him how much she’d like to get her hands on Superman absolutely did not help.

“And he’s got excellent reflexes.”

Lois half-scowled, fully baffled, and then rolled her eyes and sighed. “We’re still on the Batman train, huh?”

He shrugged. “I’m just saying.”

“How do you know, by the way, that he’s got good reflexes…?” 

“He caught my drink when I almost dropped it.” 

“Clark, don’t take this the wrong way, but if we’re going by ‘ability to catch things you’ve dropped,’ I’m Batman.” 

“Well. I’ve never seen you and Batman at a party together, either.”

Lois snorted.

Clark changed the subject.

“What happened with the cat lady?”

“Oh, normal rich people stuff. Wants eyes on her pet charity." Lois raised her eyebrows and smiled almost… privately. "And she's apparently taking me out to dinner tomorrow."

It also did not make Clark feel any better that Lois happened to occasionally go out with women. So she wasn't like his aunt, eternally forgetting that bisexuality existed— if it was an issue of forgetting, he could do something about it. But it was an issue of attraction. No matter how strong, how fast, how smart he was, that was something he had no power over. 

Especially considering she was attracted to him when he could fly .

He gave her a withering look through his glasses. 

"So we're just leaving journalistic integrity at the door, huh?” He regretted asking this out loud as soon as he said it.

“Clark, we drove here with a grad student in the trunk. We took our eyes off journalistic integrity for one second at the department store and now it’s in foster care.”

He pushed his glasses up higher on his face and breathed in through his nose. Before he could say something even dumber, an older women in a grey fur elbowed him in the kidney.

"Shh!"

"Sorry," he apologized, earnestly, ducking his head down and putting his hands up in supplication. The woman glared daggers.

He stood up straighter, signalling to Lois the conversation was over. She continued holding his arm.

He half listened to the rest of Bruce Wayne’s speech— many pretty words about the needy and second chances and the public need for not just equity but justice — Lois asked, smirking, who the hell do you think wrote this? and Clark didn’t continue to press the idea that it was probably Wayne himself. He also half-listened to the crowd. People’s whispers in crowded places were often very revealing.

The assistant DA, Clark learned, was going to be making a run for higher office next election year. Three girls— probably models— argued over whether the dates they’d had with Bruce Wayne indicated any higher level of interest. One claimed he’d proposed to her, but Clark could tell even without listening to her heartbeat that she was lying. Another pair of women, scientists, Clark surmised, whispered about a recent rash of poisonings at their lab, and one confessed that she found out the product they were making was killing trees in the area. They shared furtive, frightened glances. A sweaty, pale figure in a perfectly tailored suit tapped his foot repeatedly until his friend asked him to stop; the foot tapper leaned in and admitted he was terrified, because the last time he went to a charity event he’d been held at gunpoint by the Joker. He spotted the Gotham chief of police, quietly promising the little girl whose hand he held that she could go play after Mr. Wayne finished his speech. An older gentleman at the back, with bone weary sarcasm, chided a young waiter that he was not here to pick up widows , he was here to hand people canapes . 

Wayne finished his speech, people clapped, couples separated and came together, people wandered to get more snacks. Business deals occurred. The little girl took off at high speed into a gaggle of other kids and tweens, whereupon a boy in a pint-sized tuxedo announced that Bruce had bought him thirty boxes of sealed Pokemon booster packs, and everyone could 'pick out their favorite guys.'

Lois made a beeline for Wayne, but the assistant DA and police commissioner had gotten to him first. She snapped her fingers performatively and returned to Clark.

"I don't think we're getting much of his time tonight," Clark shrugged.

"I don't get it. Why'd he invite us?" 

“I don’t think he even knows he invited us,” Clark admitted. “I get the sense the guest list isn’t entirely his doing. And besides— the Planet was invited, not you and I specifically. He was probably hoping Perry would come.” He pointed across the crowd. “The chief editor of the Gotham Gazette is here.” 

“Oh, brother,” Lois breathed. “Did we pull some kind of Gotham faux-pas? Were we supposed to know an open invitation just meant ‘send the high muckety?’” 

Clark snorted. “Lois, you are asking the wrong man to interpret rich people’s passive aggression. You may as well ask Bruce Wayne for the rules of a quilting bee.”

“And you know the rules of a quilting bee?”

“You’ve met my mother.”

“Fair.” Lois sighed and sipped her drink. “Maybe I’ll try my hand at seducing him.” 

Mirroring Lois with his seltzer at his lips, Clark nearly choked. 

“To get information out of him,” Lois explained. “I think you’re right that we’re not getting much from him otherwise.”

Clark bit the inside of his lip. “Won’t your new girlfriend be jealous?” 

“Maybe,” she shrugged. “But the point is shining a light on the truth.” 

“What truth?” Clark shrugged. “If it wasn’t a conspiracy inviting us here, what are we trying to catch him on? Being a rich jerk?”

Lois’ mouth twitched to the side. She crossed one arm across her body and looked around the room. 

“I’ll keep my ear to the ground.” She shrugged, more with her face than her shoulders and then smiled deviously. “He’s gotta be doing some insider trading or something, right?”

“Or dressing up like a corn maze spook and climbing up drain pipes,” Clark suggested, mostly joking. 

“Keep that up and you’ll be looking for a job at the Central City Inquisitor, Clark.” She punched him in the arm. “Keep me in the loop. Tell me what you pick up, okay?” As she walked away, making another beeline for Bruce Wayne, she winked.

Clark sighed and thought about the times she’d run her fingers down his chest as Superman. Leading a double life was exhausting. 

For the next half hour or so, Clark watched the room. He listened to everyone— kept an eye on Lois’s position— caught a glimpse of a red-face and harried Jimmy through swinging kitchen doors— and then ended up in a pleasant, amicable bit of conversation with the police chief, who seemed as out of place at this kind of soiree as he was. Then, he tried to take a different tactic: he found the kid with the Pokemon cards. He had heard about Wayne taking in an orphan, but somehow he hadn’t pictured this sharp eyed fifth grader, pulled taut in the same way his foster father was. Did he know what Clark knew? That the man financing his trading card empire was a cloaked vigilante?

Of course, about two minutes into his conversation with him, he remembered that he wasn’t actually very good with kids. Kids liked Superman without him having to even try, which was good, because when he tried it usually seemed to backfire. Unfortunately, as plain old Clark, he hadn’t been that great with kids even as a kid. 

After his fourth botched question about Pokemon, the kid gave him a pitying look and asked, “Do you want me to get Bruce for you?” and Clark decided it was time to back off. 

Dancing commenced; Clark watched Bruce Wayne dance with the cat lady, Lois, and a woman he’d overheard telling someone to stop telling her about wheat futures. He also watched him make an overwrought, Three Stooges-esque attempt to convince the assistant DA to dance with him, too. The assistant DA— smooth brown cheeks suddenly elderberry red— looked far more embarrassed than amused, and then both of them looked strangely crestfallen after Bruce turned away theatrically to find a more willing partner. 

Dancing ceased; Clark got more food and talked to a scientist he’d met at an academic conference he covered a few months back. He also managed to wrangle a conversation with the assistant DA— he asked about his campaign (his eyebrows shot up in surprise at this) and his history with Bruce Wayne (and at this he smiled and talked about causing trouble at boarding school.) When an older man came by and greeted him with a ‘long time no see’ and a slap on the back, the assistant DA shook Clark’s hand and cautioned him, “Don’t vote for me. That would be fraud,” and grinned.

A few moments later, pouring himself a cup of punch with a ridiculous crystal ladle, Clark felt Bruce Wayne slide up behind him, almost noiselessly. 

Because that’s what most billionaires were known for— their ninja-like stealth. 

“Clark Who Doesn’t Study Crabs,” he breathed, taking the ladle from his hand before Clark could set it back in the bowl, “You don’t seem like you’re having a very good time.” He refilled his cup and looked Clark up and down, his ice blue eyes surprisingly warm. “What can I do to help you have a better time?”

Clark chose his words carefully. 

"If I tell you you're right, wouldn't that reflect poorly on your skills as a host?" Revealing little. Just cheeky enough that they could both brush it off as a joke. Keeping him on the hook for further conservation.

"Nonsense," he blinked, like a cat, eyelashes fanning together. "It would make me a bad host not to acknowledge it. And besides— maybe it has nothing to do with the party at all. Maybe your girlfriend dumped you or something." He shrugged nonchalantly, but his eyes landed on Lois for a moment. 

"Lois isn't my girlfriend."

Bruce sipped his drink.

"Not everybody is comfortable at these kinds of things."

Clark nodded. "I think my crowd is probably more the people carrying the trays."

Bruce squinted very slightly, his tongue darting out to touch his upper lip. “How long have you lived in Metropolis?”

An odd response. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about the waitstaff.

“You don’t believe I’m a native son?” Clark smiled with a dimple in one cheek.

“Metropolis boys don’t grow that big,” Bruce grinned, instantly dazzling and gallant. 

“A couple of years,” Clark admitted. “I’m originally from Kansas.”

“Kansas! Jesus. Like… on a farm?”

“Yes, actually.” His eyes fluttered shut and his eyebrows arched upwards. “But… not everyone in Kansas lives on a farm, to clarify, you just happen to be talking to the son of actual farmers.”

Bruce shifted his weight from one foot to the other and gave Clark an appraising once-over. He picked up a cheese cube on a toothpick from the snack table and popped it in his mouth, watching Clark as he chewed. 

“You know. When I was a little kid, I would always hide in the kitchen or something like that during these things.” He bit the inside of his mouth briefly, and Clark could hear a little hitch in his breathing. He was either lying, or he’d just said something he wished he hadn’t said. He swallowed, lifted one foot, and looked down at the sole of his shoe, as if looking for gum. He put his foot down and continued. “My parents’ friends all wanted to talk to me, ask me questions about school, fuss over my hair or my bowtie. I hated it— can you believe that? So I’d go talk to the guy baking bread, or I’d go brush the horses, or—” He paused again, looking out over the crowd. His tone was very light, almost cheerful, like he was telling Clark to try the figs next. “I still don’t always feel comfortable.”

Clark watched Bruce’s hands move autonomously over the hors d'oeuvres, picking up a miniature quiche. He did seem kind of squirrelly. Clark felt himself blinking rapidly. He didn’t know what to do with that information— either the fact that Wayne might be faking more than he thought, or the fact that he’d told him. 

He swallowed, and pressed, “Why do you do it, then?” 

“It’s a charity event,” Bruce reminded him, his expression suddenly very similar to the boy with the Pokemon cards. “I do it to… raise money for charity ,” he chided, with a half smile and a little flutter of his eyelashes. 

Clark felt his cheeks go warm, and asked his next question with absolutely no forethought. “I mean, wouldn’t it be better to just have a functioning social safety net? Let taxes take care of that?”

“Ohhh, come on,” Bruce sighed, rolling his eyes. “And we were having such a nice time. Do you have to go all reporter on me and talk politics?”

“That is my job,” Clark shrugged. 

“Okay.” Bruce nodded. “I’ll tell you my opinion on taxes, but it has to be off the record.”

“How can you trust I won’t agree and then print it tomorrow anyway?”

Bruce put out his hand with his fingers curled into a fist and one pinky extended.

Clark snorted but acquiesced. He looped his pinky with Bruce Wayne’s and shook. It was a bizarrely intimate gesture for two grown men in tuxedos. 

Conspiratorially, Bruce leaned in. “If tomorrow they passed a law that taxed away every cent of my wealth, I’d be fine with it.” He paused for emphasis, making stark eye contact with Clark. “Except that there’s no guarantee where the money would go, and I have a problem with that. Do you have any idea how corrupt the Gotham police are? Gordon keeps firing men who shoot unprovoked into tent cities, back over the homeless in their squad cars, take single mothers in on bogus charges and assault them in jail. But every sleazeball he axes, another one slots in behind him. And this is just the stuff he hears about— mostly from guys who are on the take for the mob, but who at least don’t shoot unarmed children.” He sipped his drink thoughtfully. “We’re trying to root it out, and it’s better than it was , but in the meantime, I’d like to know my money is going to feeding people and providing them with homes and not to giving Gotham PD more military weaponry. Or for that matter, to some foreign war where they’re blowing up kids’ homes for ideology. Or to line the pocket of some senator whose pet project is banning books or making it harder to operate a soup kitchen.” 

Clark thought about Lois’s last interview with Wayne. He'd read it— he read all Lois's articles— they had discussed wine, and Wayne's most recent trip to the Bahamas, which he'd kept referring to as Bermuda. When she'd lobbed a few softball grown-up questions, his responses had been cheerful, confident, and utterly incomprehensible. If Clark told Lois that Bruce Wayne had reasoned opinions on taxes and had used the word ideology , she'd probably tell him to lay off the punch.

In fact… almost anyone would react that way.

Was Bruce Wayne… toying with him?

He adjusted his glasses. "Why are you telling me this?”

“You have a trustworthy face.” Bruce smiled like a cat and patted Clark’s cheek. 

He looked like he was about to say or do something else and then squinted past Clark's shoulder.

He sighed. "I'm being summoned. Shareholders— you know how it is."

"Yes," Clark nodded, letting himself be sarcastic. "I know exactly what that's like."

Bruce's cheek crumpled into an utterly inadvertent smile.

"Go talk to Gordon. You two will get along like a house on fire. And remember—" he held up his pinky and winked.

He was gone as quickly and quietly as he'd arrived. 

Bruce Wayne was definitely toying with him.

He wandered back into the crowd, feeling off-balance. Knowing what he knew about Batman, he wouldn’t have expected even half of what Wayne had told him. He had kind of assumed that behind the idiot lothario facade, Wayne was probably a grade-A asshole. The kind of person who lurked on buildings after dark because he got some thrill out of beating up low level drug dealers. 

Briefly, he wondered if maybe he’d been wrong about Wayne’s secret identity.

But then he remembered how Batman had sounded, gravel in the dark, and how Bruce sounded leaning in to whisper in his ear, velvet draped on silk sheets. Exactly the goddamn same , to anyone who was actually listening. 

He sighed and scanned the crowd. He wanted to check in with Jimmy, but he wasn’t sure how to talk to him without making it clear he wasn’t really staff. He pulled his phone out of his pocket as he sipped his drink— no messages— and just texted him:

-Type SOS if you need an extraction.

And waited for a response.

He tried to talk to Lois, but she was busy hounding a group of Metropolis politicians, all but one of whom seemed deeply distressed to see her here. He heard one of them say, ‘you know, we come to Gotham to escape the Planet,’ feigning humor. 

One hand in his pocket, he tried to find Gordon again (as per Bruce Wayne’s wishes, he sighed), but both he and the little girl had disappeared. Wayne’s little mini-me— god, what was his name? Something unfortunate like Randy — was sitting in a windowsill with his chin on his knees and his arms wrapped around his legs. His intense little face was all screwed up in a scowl, black eyebrows heavy over a sharp blue gaze. Clark wanted to go hug him. Bruce Wayne was probably not the most capable nurturer for a traumatized child. The other kids had mostly scattered, playing quietly in pairs or trios at the outskirts of the room, some holding hands with weary parents. 

It was interesting, actually, that there were children here at all, Clark realized— whenever he’d seen anything like this on TV, he couldn’t remember spotting anyone under the age of 16. 

He rubbed at the back of his neck.

It was very loud in here. 

Clark grabbed a glass of water and stepped back out into the garden, circling to the side of the house on a huge wraparound porch. He placed his water on the railing, and took a deep breath, arms stretched up over his head. It wasn’t as bad as the time he and Lois had had to cover a rave , but maybe the real reason he didn’t feel comfortable at a gala had less to do with his rural upbringing and more to do with the fact that he heard everything everyone was saying all the time . He felt like he needed to plop his brain into a bowl of warm saltwater for a few minutes or something. 

He rubbed his eyes behind his glasses and sighed. 

Lois was on the right track, asking why they’d been invited— except, Clark realized, that wasn’t quite the question he had. His question was more like… “what am I doing here?” He wasn’t enjoying himself. He felt bad about abandoning Jimmy. He didn’t get to dance with Lois. 

And what was he going to do, write an expose outing Bruce Wayne as Batman? Even if he didn’t like Batman much, he couldn’t really imagine himself shining that kind of spotlight on another person with a secret identity. And Wayne wasn’t like him— he’d be in terrible danger if people knew who he was as a civilian. 

He checked his phone again for any cries for help from Jimmy. 

Maybe he was just here to eat hors d'oeuvres. 

The grounds around him were quiet, cool, and still, even as warm yellow light, laced with cheerful voices and rich, buttery smells fell upon Clark’s back. Off to the right, where they’d all met around the fountain, one or two people, half-lit from the picture windows, sat and talked or took a smoke break. But off to the left there was only a wide, blue-black expanse of grass and hedges, the pale moon clouded, low on the horizon. Like something Turner would’ve painted.  

He took a picture with his phone, thinking to send it to his dad. Pa liked landscapes. Liked the quiet of the night, even though that’s when the foxes came to break into the hen house. But the backlight of the house and the low contrast of the dark lawn made the picture muddy, indecipherable. He deleted it. 

He turned the camera around and feigned a smile, catching the tall crystal windows and the crowd inside, and sent it to Ma. Not that she was likely to respond— both his parents tended to leave their aging cell phones plugged in on the bench at the doorway, out of sight, out of mind.

He captioned the photo:

-I get sent to the strangest places for work.

And pocketed his phone again.

Something stirred in the bushes, about ten yards away. Probably a squirrel, or—, honestly, probably a raccoon. Wayne Manor might be on the outskirts of Gotham proper, but it was still within the city limits. The cypress trees— briefly he scowled, thinking they were mediterranean cypress, based on the fullness of their branches— an absolutely ridiculous plant to try to grow in New Jersey— but they were just extremely full and well cared for balds— swayed at their tips in the light wind. The sound of the fountain, tumbling and splashing, was punctuated by the low, resonant hoot of an owl. Barn owl, from the sounds of it. Probably lived in the stables. 

Clark looked off into the deepening dark to his left, where the porch wrapped further into the side yard. The lack of lights made it very clear that the party wasn’t supposed to stray there.

He strayed. 

Farther around the corner, there was patio furniture, nicer than most of the real furniture he had in his apartment. He plopped himself down on the love seat and deposited his water on the table, and watched the sky. 

The last thing he remembered was laughing, feeling utterly unhinged, as a cloud of bats— goddamn actual bats — flushed up into the sky and across the moon. 

And the next thing he remembered was the sensation of weight shifting beside him, jarring him out of sleep. 

“I didn’t know you were going to be out here,” Bruce Wayne admitted, low as a whisper but without the insinuation. He crossed one leg over the other beside Clark. 

Clark blinked himself back to his senses.

“I had to take a call,” he lied. He rubbed at one eye behind his glasses. “Guess I dozed off.” He cleared his throat. “Are you just here to make sure no one’s illegally trespassing on your patio furniture? I have five bucks in my pocket if you need me to pay the toll.”

Bruce continued smiling but narrowed his eyes in a way that no one else probably would’ve caught in the dark. He didn’t like that joke much. 

He breathed out slowly, imperceptible to someone without super-hearing. Taking time to make a decision.

“I just needed some time to myself.” An admission. He breathed louder now, somewhere between fear and relief. “Snuck out through the kitchen so I didn’t have to pretend I was taking up smoking or something.”

Clark looked him up and down in the dark. His position was calculated to look casual— one arm resting on the headrest behind them both, one leg crossed over the other at the knees, slumped slightly, head back. 

But all of his muscles were tense, and his heart was hammering in his chest. 

He was a ridiculously good actor. Could’ve been a leading man, easy. Could’ve been a con man, too. 

And technically, he was a con man, Clark reminded himself, lest he let himself be too impressed. 

The polite thing to do would be to leave. 

Wayne had said he wanted to be alone— so let the man be alone. 

But a mixture of warring feelings glued Clark to his seat. He still wanted to prove his theory was correct. And Bruce Wayne was sitting so close to him it should’ve been uncomfortable; why would he have pressed their arms and hips together like that if he wanted to be alone?

Clark licked his lower lip. 

“They wouldn’t let you stay in the kitchen?” He teased.

Bruce smiled a small, quiet, genuine smile. “I was shooed out immediately , ‘you’re in the way Mr. Wayne,’ ‘we can take care of food ourselves,’ ‘your guests are not here for you to pick scraps off trays in the kitchen,’” he sighed. “They’re all onto me.”

"They must like you, at least," Clark chuckled, thinking about the staff on the Kent farm endlessly debating agricultural procedures with his parents. You didn't chastise the boss if you thought the boss was likely to can you for 'insubordination.'

"I hope so," Bruce nodded. "Or at least that they think I'm an entertaining asshole and not an asshole asshole."

It was hard to reconcile this attitude with someone who dressed up in a gimp suit to give the people of Gotham nightmares. Sure, maybe the point was to scare criminals, but Clark had to imagine that if he were sleeping rough on the streets of Gotham and a giant growling bat person leapt off a building in front of him, he'd never sleep again. And what about kids, seeing that through their bedroom windows?

"What about the kid?" Clark pivoted, imagined children recalling the flesh and blood child sulking in a picture window. "How's the whole 'adopting an orphan' thing going?"

Bruce's expression tightened, like a pulled thread bunching up fabric, and then immediately flattened back to neutrality.

"Are you asking as a reporter?"

I'm asking as an adoptee.

"I'm asking as someone who worries about little kids who are trying to bribe their way into friendship with Pokemon cards."

And adults who try to do the same.

Bruce palmed his face. 

"Wonderful." He sighed and recrossed his legs so his thigh was precisely resting against Clark's. Clark did not know what to do with that. “Off the record?”

“Off the record.”

“I…” He shook his head slightly. “It’s going…” He made a noise. “I don’t know what he needs. I’m trying. But I…” He swallowed. “I’m sort of lacking in role models for parenting past the age of eight. And besides, it was easier then, right? No worrying about your kids getting kidnapped on the internet or… I don’t know, having some Youtube racist convince them to join a cult.” 

“At least there’s Pokemon, still,” Clark teased, ever-so-gently.

Bruce’s eyes narrowed. “Pokemon was a thing when we were kids?”

Clark blinked. “You never got in trouble for trying to trade Ekans and Sandshrew on the bus?”

“I…” Bruce licked his lower lip. “Don’t know what Ekans is, and I did not take the bus.”

Clark breathed in through his nose, noting Bruce’s tapping dress shoe against the porch. 

“I suspect you and I had very different childhoods.”

“Maybe you can tell me how to make Dick like me, then.”

Dick . That was it. Not Randy.

“Well, there’s your first issue,” Clark chastised, trying not to think too hard about the fact that he was giving Batman parenting advice, “It can’t be about making him like you. You’re supposed to be his…”

He tripped over the word. Dad? 

…guardian?

“...his… protector, teacher, y’know? Not his buddy.” 

“I get that in theory,” Bruce admitted, “But I can’t get him to talk to me about anything. How am I supposed to get him to open up if he doesn’t like me?” 

Clark waded out where there were almost certainly sharks.

“How long has Dick been with you?”

“Three months,” Bruce sighed. 

“And how long did it take you to talk to anyone about your parents?” 

Bruce’s heart hammered in his chest. Where their legs touched, Clark could literally feel his body temperature tick up a degree.

“I don’t—” He stopped, voice sharp like pointed ears and fangs. His heartbeat slowed, suddenly enough that Clark knew he must be counting it down. When he started speaking again, the steel was gone. “He shouldn’t have to have the same experience I had. It’s hard enough being a kid without having to be a kid like me.”

Bruce looked up at the moon. 

“This is a hard city to be a kid in.” He smiled, and it was as pale as the light in the garden. “Even a sheltered rich boy like me didn’t make it through adolescence unscathed. It’s a hard— or— no. It’s an easy place to lose your innocence. I think… I think a lot about the kids out there, wondering if their mothers are coming home tonight, if their schools are going to be safe tomorrow, if… if their apartment buildings are going to be razed by predatory developers, and…” He breathed out audibly through his nose, and clenched his teeth together. “And Dick was only supposed to be here for a week. How the hell is that fair?”

Clark blinked, totally bereft of a response. Even ignoring his continuing realization that Bruce Wayne might actually kind of be an okay guy, it was all just… 

He swallowed.

Was this guy so damn lonely he just dumped this kind of shit on anyone who'd listen?

So tired of playing any role but himself that he was being sloppy, letting the mask slip?

Or, considering the warmth of his arm against the back of Clark's neck, the press of their thighs together in the dark, was this some kind of pathetic, broken-down flirting?

Clark summoned words. 

"Is that why you took him in? To try to make it fair?"

Bruce looked off to the side, and Clark realized he couldn't tell whether the gesture was genuine. 

It felt genuine. But the sense that he couldn't tell where Bruce Wayne— whoever he actually was— began and ended made his blood run cold. He could usually read people so well.

"I guess? Putting it that way…" He looked pained, expression tight and controlled. "Feels kind of selfish."

"There's no such thing as perfect altruism," Bruce, he left unsaid, the taste of it strange and bittersweet in his mouth. "If you feel… Any decent person is going to feel good about helping others, and that doesn’t make the help less meaningful.”

He and Pa didn’t share a similar tone of voice— presumably, Clark sounded like a dead man from a dead planet— but even so, sometimes he phrased something a certain way and surprised himself with how much he was channeling his father. Pa had told him the same thing a long time ago when, as a stupid teenager, he’d feared the ebullience, the rush of joy and of freedom he felt flying low through cornfields, rushing to put out fires— that that feeling meant he was a bad person. Doing it all for his own gain, somehow, even as he remained anonymous to his grateful neighbors. 

Bruce Wayne took a deep, quiet breath. He removed his arm from the back of the loveseat.

And then he placed his palm down flat on Clark’s knee, and then let the tips of his fingers fall just to the inside, grazing his inner thigh. They sat very quietly like that.

Clark’s mouth opened before his brain turned back on.

“You knew I didn’t study crabs.”

Bruce shrugged, his suit jacket sliding against Clark’s, shoulder to shoulder. 

“I knew who you were, yeah.” 

Clark swallowed. “Why…?”

“It’s easier if people think you’re stupid.” The pad of Bruce’s thumb made a slow, cautious circle in the fabric of Clark’s pants. “But I think you know that, considering you tried to dump a drink over my head earlier.”

Oh boy . 

“I bet people tell you all sorts of shit they’d never tell Ms. Lane.” 

Clark felt like he was flushed to his navel. 

“She’s a better investigative journalist,” he rasped, throat dry.

“That may be, but it’s not what I said.”

Very little time passed between then and Clark finding himself on his back in a half-lit, opulent, unlived-in bedroom.

He was certain that they had kissed there, on the loveseat, in the dark. Whose lips had brushed whose first, whose hands had initially ghosted over jaw and nape, who rose first, chest to chest, clutching— it was hazy. 

How they’d gotten from deck to back rooms to stairs to bedroom— hazy. 

Where Clark had left his sense of decorum and propriety— so hazy he began to wonder if it was actually back in Kansas still. 

Between kisses— needy, hungry to the point that Clark's imagination ran away with him for a moment— was Bruce Wayne a vampire?— he managed to gasp, "Is this your bedroom?"

"No." Bruce unknotted the tie Lois had picked out. "Guest room. I'd prefer Alfred not find us in flagrante if he comes looking for me."

As his shirt buttons loosened beneath Bruce's hurried fingers, Clark felt worry set like cold jelly in his stomach. 

"Who’s— Alfred's not your boyfriend, is he?"

Bruce snorted, his head ducking down with a ridiculous grin. "Alfred is my butler , Clark." He got immediately to work on Clark's belt. "I am unattached, no matter what you might have heard out there." He gestured in what Clark assumed was the direction of the party with his head. 

Clark should've been mortified, thinking about all those people. He could hear them, if he listened. If he really wanted to, he could peek through all these walls and floors at the throng of guests downstairs. Hell, no way Lois wasn't going to start to get suspicious, assuming she already hadn't. But as Bruce started to pull his slacks down, Clark had to admit: it was kind of a turn-on, knowing they were safe and quiet alone up here while everyone else wondered where the host had disappeared to.

Stripped bare of everything but socks and underwear and a clean white tank, Clark put his hand on Bruce's chest to stop him. Bruce looked down at his fingers and knuckles over his tie and licked his lips.

"Hiding all this," Bruce gestured, looking Clark up and down, "beefcake should be a felony."

Clark couldn't help but laugh at this. He was big, bigger than most humans, but it wasn't exactly like he was a chiseled Adonis— hard to get cut when working out didn't actually do anything. Even so, mostly naked, he couldn't hide the beef.

"Sometimes you get tired of people asking you to help them move, y'know? You can only carry so many pianos up so many flights of stairs," he lied, hoping his earnest flush sold it.

"And you struck me as so honest," Bruce teased. He reached for the hem of Clark's undershirt.

Clark intercepted him, palm tight over Bruce's wrist.

Maybe a little more forceful than intended.

Maybe a little more forceful than necessary.

"Everybody has things they aren't entirely truthful about." 

With his other hand, he undid Bruce's belt buckle. He pinned Bruce's hand against his own chest.

Clark felt a jolt of something morally inadvisable run down his spine, and he savored it like warm brandy. He always had power over people— the power to crush, maim, harm— things he'd never do or want to do to another human being— but the power he had here was different. He knew this man in a way he didn't know him back. 

He could play dumb, keep it in the back of his mind, savoring the secret flavor.

He could tell him as they lay side by side afterwards and have won something Bruce Wayne didn't even know was a contest.

Or he could use just an ounce more of his Kryptonian strength, taking control, guiding.

He hated how good it felt. 

He pushed a little harder, gave Bruce a real reason to notice the so-called ‘beefcake.’ He heard Bruce's breathing hitch and took it as permission to proceed.

He grabbed Bruce by the knot of his tie and flipped him onto his back.

"Jesus "

He stripped Bruce of his pants and belt and pulled his own undershirt over his head while Bruce undid his tie and buttons

When he went to divest Bruce of his crisp white cotton underlayer, there was the tiniest of— flinches?— hesitance? But then Bruce swallowed and hastily pulled it off himself.

Clark bit his tongue.

Bruce's head turned off to the side. 

"Car accident," he lied, handwaving the scar tissue crisscrossing his body. 

"I—"

“It’s fine.”

Clearly it was not fine. 

Clark’s mouth continued to hang open.

Bruce licked his lower teeth, eyes darting off to the side. "Can we move on?"

Clark nodded. "Of course. Sorry."

But he could not move on. He leaned in— almost robotically, a tick-ticking down of his vertebrae— and kissed Bruce's neck, mind awash in ridged white lines and jagged pink splotches. Did the people Bruce fucked really believe that lie? How could they not see him, really see him, once they saw the aggregation of damage all along his ribs and his stomach and— 

How could anyone not have everything immediately click into place the moment they got him out of his underthings? Was it willful ignorance— his lovers choosing not to overcomplicate things? 

Clark cupped one hand over Bruce’s jaw and kissed him furiously, channeling confusion and disbelief and anger and guilt into passion. Bruce made a very pleasant noise in his throat and Clark kissed him harder still, sinking him into the ridiculous chintz-and-satin bed. 

And good god, what possessed him to do this shit, anyway? 

He’d kind of thought— kind of— Clark found his train of thought drifting to a different set of tracks as Bruce ran his fingers through his hair, moving beneath him— kind of thought Batman was a power thing, vengeance and punishment and another way other than money to tell Gotham who owned her. 

Clark was good with people, he thought, Bruce's hands on his waist and his ass, that's how he convinced people he was a mild mannered country rube. He read people well.

But there was… 

He breathed in slowly as Bruce kissed his Adam's apple and started sliding off his boxers.

There was a strong possibility he'd so badly misread Bruce Wayne that he'd created a whole new person in his mind. 

"You seem kind of distracted," Bruce muttered against his skin, derision in his voice but fear in his breathing. 

Clark hoped he didn't make an audible noise breathing in at that.

He bit the inside of his lip.

“I just…” He rolled the possibilities around in his mind. He had to lie. But if he had to lie, something he wouldn’t have to walk back later would be the easiest on his conscience.

He also needed to lie quickly , because Bruce was looking at him with a wilting devil-may-care smirk that recalled a cake left out on a hot summer day. 

“I keep thinking about how much guff Lois is going to give me when she figures out where I went,” he shrugged, gee-shucksing a little more than was honest, and then leaned in and kissed Bruce’s neck. “I was making fun of her for agreeing to go to dinner with, uh,” he windmilled one hand, his other hand grazing up Bruce’s thigh. He hooked one finger in the waistband of his very expensive underwear. “The woman you danced with with the short hair, big on tigers.”

“Selina?” 

“Maybe,” Clarked murmured, lips against Bruce’s skin. “I didn’t catch her name. And I just,” he sighed and pulled Bruce free of his briefs, Bruce shimmying beneath him to get his legs out. “I’m not looking forward to being called a hypocrite.”

Bruce helped Clark finish finding his way out of his own boxers, a task left half-done by his distraction. With one hand on the back of Clark’s neck, Bruce was scrambling slightly in a way that made Clark flush. He had seemed so suave earlier.

Bruce pressed his lips to Clark’s chest. “You don’t have to tell her.” 

“I won’t, but she’s very good at her job.”

Bruce half snorted, half gasped as Clark lifted his hips towards him, pressing their cocks together. Clark held him tightly, matching the planes of their bodies. He wondered if Bruce noticed how much space was between him and the bed, or how easy it was for Clark to support his weight.

They kissed, Clark sliding his tongue between Bruce’s lips. Bruce returned the kiss with fervor, heat pouring off him, prickling over Clark’s skin. And then, he fisted the back of Clark’s hair a little too tightly, in a way that felt a little too practiced, and suddenly Clark was left wondering, once again, how much of what he was seeing was real. 

There was something raw and almost nervous about Bruce here, hot between Clark’s thighs, and yet— hadn’t he initiated? Wasn’t he the one who had been flirting before Clark had even the faintest notion that he might be interested? Wasn’t he known for his endless sexual conquests?—and yet maybe that raw edge was calculated. Maybe Bruce was putting on an air of desperate vulnerability to make Clark drop his defenses. 

Bruce kissed the corner of Clark’s mouth and half-smiled. 

“I’m going to be honest with you, Kansas,” he breathed, licking his lower lip. Clark got the sudden sense that Bruce—still about the color of a pitcher of milk— didn’t blush. “I really thought for a second there you were going to tell me, ‘oh, shucks, Mr. Wayne,’” he slid into a gee-willikers register, complete with a Dolly Parton twang, “‘I just don’t usually do this kind of thing . Where I come from, this sort of thing doesn’t happen until your wedding n—’”

Clark flicked him on the forehead. 

“I do not sound like that.”

Bruce laughed, wrinkles forming around his eyes. "And I'm thankful for it." His eyelashes flitted, suddenly sheepish. "I appreciate not being dragged into some stupid roleplay.”

Clark squinted, finding this strange insinuation decidedly unsexy.

Bruce’s eyelashes fluttered, his eyes darting away behind them. “What, you’ve never been an actor in someone else’s fantasy?” He smirked, but there was something undercooked about it.

Clark could feel the tone of his voice change in his mouth— suddenly worried, quiet, vaguely paternalistic— exactly what everyone wanted to hear naked— but he couldn’t quite manage to stop it. He asked, sounding once again a bit too much like his father, “Do people do that to you a lot?”

Taking Clark’s chin in hand, Bruce rolled his eyes. “Don’t be a reporter when your dick’s pressed into my thigh, okay?”

Clark stammered slightly in response to that.

"I'm here to have extremely hot and mildly ill-advised sex, not do psychotherapy."

Whatever the correct response to a statement like that was, Clark knew he wouldn’t come to it in a thousand years.

Maybe the right answer was to put his pants back on. 

He swallowed as quietly as he could.

You can make this easy, Clark. Bite your tongue. Turn it into a joke. You're not here to save his soul.

"If you're not interested in a lot of uncomfortable questions about your sex life, don't have sex with a reporter.” 

"Horrible," Bruce laughed. "They've infected this poor, innocent farm boy with their sleaze ." He reached between the planes of their bodies and palmed Clark's still-straining erection, and kissed the space where his neck and shoulder met. 

Clark put on the same Country Music Awards accent Bruce had faked a moment before, sliding his cock against Bruce's fingers. “Mama told me I was too soft for the big city,” he sighed, fingers grazing the cleft of Bruce's ass. “I'm like li’l ol’ Dorothy, can't never really go back home after seein’ all them things in Technicolor.” 

He kissed Bruce's neck as he laughed at this, feeling a little like the lie of humor was worse than the omission of his identity. Joking about home being a foreign country wasn't actually all that funny, really. Not when your planet was dead. And not when your parents got shot in front of you, either.

But Bruce seemed to find it amusing. Like most people around here, he probably just thought southerners were inherently funny.

“Tell me, Dorothy,” he purred, rolling them both onto their sides. “Tell me what it's like, living in color.” His eyes were soft like the liquid pool of wax on top of a candle. Sultry and dangerous and… and used up. 

The breath caught in Clark's throat. 

He brushed his lips against Bruce's. 

“Don't you live there too?”

“What do you think?” Bruce's smile was thin as cellophane, though his voice was limned with lust. 

Clark pushed his tongue into Bruce's mouth, crashing their teeth together. Bruce tilted his head back with a high, strange little sound in the back of his throat. He kissed him hard, harder, his hand tight on Bruce's nape, his other hand tight around his cock. Bruce parted his thighs, lifting one leg up over Clark's, locking them together at the knee. His tongue slid against Clark's teeth. 

It would be gauche, Clark suspected, to ask a man he had practically just met if he bottomed, but god. God. He wanted to fuck him. He wanted to feel Bruce’s heartbeat from the inside.

Instead he pulled Bruce closer, grinding against him. He gently pulled Bruce’s fingers off his cock and slid in beside him in his own hand, smooth skin and hard heat twinned against his palm. Bruce kissed him like he was an air pocket at the bottom of the ocean, desperate and frantic, and for a brief moment Clark forgot he was having an ill-advised hookup at a charity event with the goddamn Dark Knight. 

And then Bruce gasped against his mouth and pulled away by an inch, looking up at him with the most ridiculously contrived doe eyes Clark had ever seen. Very abruptly he remembered that Bruce was a consummate liar, and thought about all the girls down at the party who were trying to convince their friends and themselves that actually, they were the one person who’d managed to get past Bruce’s defenses. Did Wayne just completely play everyone he fucked? Outside of the need to get off, was any of it genuine?

But then the next words that came out of Bruce’s mouth were “I want to suck you off,” and the goofy ingenue expression was gone. Bruce’s eyes were sharp and hot. He was practically giving off steam. 

When Clark didn’t answer right away, Bruce added, with a sarcastic flutter of lashes, “I mean, if country boys are allowed to do things like that.”

Clark snorted, but his feet had still been taken out from under him. More honest than fair, he responded, “You’re kind of an asshole, you know that?”

A muscle twitched infinitesimally behind Bruce’s face. His tone turned almost bratty, and Clark could feel his heartbeat tick up for a moment with embarrassment. “So you don’t want me to give you head?”

Clark’s stomach dropped— even if he was being played a little, he shouldn’t have said that to him. Especially considering any amount of subterfuge Bruce was running was nothing in comparison to what Clark was doing. He couldn’t even really apologize, because the asshole comment hadn’t been about the corn-pone joke. What was he going to say— sorry I got mad you were faking? 

So instead he kissed Bruce, the pads of his hands on his jaw and his ears. And he flipped him onto his back. Hard.

This time when Bruce gasped and looked up wide-eyed, it was real. Clark’s cock twitched in time with his conscience. He turned around and planted his knees on either side of Bruce’s head and bent low, taking the tip of Bruce’s cock in his mouth.

Bruce muttered a quiet jesus christ and then palmed Clark’s balls. He ran his tongue up the underside of Clark’s length and breathed out slow. Clark stroked his fingers softly up and down Bruce’s erection, his lips over the head only. He teased him like that for a while, whisper-light on his shaft, tight suction and an eager, wet tongue on the tip. Bruce ran his mouth sideways over the length of Clark’s cock, just the right amount of pressure on his balls. 

Clark thought about lifting them both wholesale off the bed.

Picking Bruce up like a handkerchief, throwing those pale, muscular, scarred legs over his shoulders and pinning him against his fancy wallpaper, sliding his fingers inside him and sucking him, cock pushing against the back of his throat, until he came, and then just… continuing, through his orgasm, through exhaustion and a softening cock, trapped against the wall, until he found himself hard again and coming in Clark’s mouth once more.

He thought about floating four feet off the bed, Bruce riding him, grasping at him like a life raft, a little nervous about falling, a lot desperate, splattering Clark’s chest as he used his cock to pleasure himself.

He thought about gathering Bruce in his arms and forcing him to just let go— feeling him relax against his skin, drop all the ruses, too hot to keep acting, and to let Clark do the work, pounding into him with more strength than he’d ever let himself with—

But he didn’t. 

He plunged his mouth over Bruce’s cock and heard him moan against his own. Bruce’s thighs twitched, and he arced his head up to take all of Clark in his mouth. Clark’s eyes fluttered shut. It’s not that no one ever did that— Clark wasn’t so big that it was impossible or anything— but good lord, he was enthusiastic. This man was not a novice cocksucker.

For a split second, Clark remembered Bruce trying to get the assistant DA to dance with him. Hard to get elected anything if the world knew you were up to your balls in a shiftless pretty-boy billionaire’s mouth, he supposed. 

Not particularly needing to breathe nor having any real gag reflex, Clark let Bruce thrust with increasing fervor past his soft palate. He matched the rhythm of his head, tongue soft, lips tight, a little twist of his mouth this way or that, to Bruce’s movements and found himself suddenly hot beyond control, flushed past his neck, stomach clenching, balls tight and sensitive in Bruce’s capable hands. 

He counted down state capitals and increased the speed of his own mouth slipping across Bruce’s length. He swirled his tongue across his cock and ran his fingers along the cleft of Bruce’s ass, hinting less-than-subtly at his mounting desire to fuck Bruce “foolish vigilante with no sense of self-preservation” Wayne silly. Maybe next time, he promised himself, embarrassed and thrilled in equal measure by the idea of a next time .  

Bruce swallowed against Clark’s erection, his own cock buried in Clark’s mouth, grinding into him with ever-growing fervor. His thigh muscles were taut, and Clark could hear his heartbeat hammering faster, faster, in time with his thrusts. His grip on Clark’s thigh got a little too tight, and with a sudden shaking buck of his hips and a muffled, mouth-full groan, he came, explosively, across Clark’s tongue. Clark sucked him harder, his lips and nose buried in the tight dark hair at the base of his shaft.

He slid one more time into Bruce Wayne’s beautiful, lying mouth and felt himself start to spill. Bruce’s tongue circled his cock one more time as he swallowed, his softening cock valiantly twitching once more to life in Clark’s mouth.

As they panted and shook to a conclusion, a hazy mixture of guilt and satisfaction and terror and deeply unwarranted affection suffused Clark. He wanted to fly directly up through Bruce’s ceiling and disappear into the night sky and pretend none of this had ever happened. He wanted to nuzzle Bruce’s neck and curl up next to him and fall asleep, party and Lois and Jimmy be damned. He wanted to go the fuck home— not back out to the party, home . He wanted to take Bruce by the shoulders and shake him and yell why do you beat up jewel thieves in the dark? Why do you dress like a carnival funhouse monster? Why do you let people hurt you like they so clearly have, over and over and over again!?

He took a deep breath.

He shifted, carefully, around Bruce’s prone form, and flopped down beside him with one hand behind his head.

Bruce, gorgeously glassy-eyed, blinked slowly at him, a little smirk at the corner of his mouth.

Clark leaned over and kissed the smirk right off his lips, both their mouths sticky and hot. When he pulled away, Bruce was practically grinning.

“I admire your restraint,” he teased, and Clark grinned along with him, assuming his restraint referred facetiously to the sudden kiss. “I was half-expecting you were going to end up tossing me around like a bag of packing peanuts.”

Clark snorted. “Is that what you were hoping for, what with, uh, ‘the beef?’”

“Not hoping for, exactly. It’s just impressive that you really can modulate how much force you’re using so delicately like that, even all worked up.” His smile turned suddenly calculating. Not cold, exactly. But completely without sentiment— hollow. “But I guess a lifetime of making sure you didn’t crush other children to paste playing football or shatter cows’ bones when you milked them probably means it’s not even something you think about, is it?”

Clark’s blood stilled in his veins. He stopped breathing, and had to will himself to start again. 

As casually, neutrally, non-threateningly as he could, forcing a non-existent smile into his voice, he asked, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bruce Wayne looked at him with absolute piercing clarity.

“I think you know what it means.” Bruce sat up, leaning casually back on one hand. “I don’t have any intention of telling anyone unless you give me a reason to, but not everyone trusts Superman, you know. For what it’s worth, you’ve convinced me for the time being that you’re not a megalomaniac or an amoral would-be god, but,” he paused, briefly, and gave Clark a look so cold it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, “I am watching you. No one with the kind of power you have is completely trustworthy, and even if no one else is thinking about how to keep you in check if that all-American farm boy upbringing ever fails you, I am.” 

Clark let himself be angry, even though that might be proving Wayne’s point.

“And is this threat coming from Batman , then?” He paused, giving him a moment to process what had just been said. “Or just Bruce Wayne? Is the ‘problem’ of Superman one you’re going to solve with your money or your fists?” He spat the last word.

He wanted to hit him. 

He wanted to go home to his mom and cry. 

Bruce’s expression remained neutral, but his heartbeat skyrocketed. After a beat, he squinted, suddenly looking very much like Batman.

“How did you find out? Since when?”

Clark rolled out of the bed and went looking for his clothes, hurt beyond any reasonable expectation. He felt used . 

“How did you find out?” He parroted back, sounding like a child. “When did you figure it out?”

Bruce sat up straighter, brows furrowed. He pulled one knee up close to his face and leaned his arms, crossed, on it. “Why the hell did you agree to come up here with me if you knew?”

Clark shoved his legs into his underwear. 

He felt used and guilty , because he had done the exact same damn thing to Bruce. 

He whirled around and gestured accusingly at the rumpled bed. “Why did you kiss me if you think I’m so damn dangerous?”

“What the hell are you talking about, you kissed me!” 

“You slid your hand down the inside of my thigh!”

“I just wanted to see how you’d react,” Bruce lied, obvious for the first time all night. 

“Well maybe I wanted to see how you’d react. I don’t exactly think Batman is a warm and fuzzy role model, either, you know. You dress up like the bogeyman to throw people in insane asylums!”

Bruce gritted his teeth. “I’m not throwing anyone anywhere, I’m trying to get help for people who can’t help themselves—”

“That’s a really beautiful way of putting it, great work with the euphemism, there—”

“Says the man who could vaporize every one of us in an instant if he felt like it.”

Clark threw his hands up. “Why the hell would I vaporize everyone? What good would that do me or anyone? It’s— it’s like— you could go around stomping on kittens, but I assume you wouldn’t , because it’s wrong —”

Bruce got out of the bed and pushed Clark, square in the chest. “That’s what you think of us, huh? Helpless little animals?” He pushed him again, his face centimeters away from Clark’s. 

“Would you leave me alone and let me get my pants on?” Clark tried to pull away and Bruce grabbed him, an automatic martial arts response. Clark—very lightly— refusing to prove Bruce’s point— pushed him back. Bruce blocked him and, taking him very briefly by surprise, threw him backwards. Clark landed on his back on the bed, pulling Bruce down with him. 

“What the hell is wrong with you?” He yelled, flipping Bruce off of him onto his back. He rolled back off the bed, feet on the floor, leaving Bruce behind him.

Bruce shot up and sucker-punched him.

Clark rolled back on top of him and pinned his wrists. 

…gently, of course. 

Bruce struggled against him even so.

He narrowed his eyes.

He hissed, “do you get off on this?”

Clark rolled his eyes and let him go.

“I get off on going home and forgetting any of this ever happened.” He got dressed in the blink of an eye, refusing to let Bruce extend this ridiculousness a moment longer. “I was really starting to think I had the wrong idea about Batman, but you are deranged.” He crossed his arms and blinked awkwardly behind his glasses. “How do I get out of here?”

Bruce, looking like a human bruise, scowled at him. “You tell me. You can see through walls.”

Clark crossed his arms harder.

“I can also walk through walls, but I would rather know where I’m supposed to be going so I don’t have to.”

With the general affect of an animated shadow, Bruce slunk out of the bed and started collecting his own clothes. “Back the way we came.”

“I don’t really remember the way we came. I was a little focused on your tongue being in my ear and your hand being in my pants. Which, let me reiterate, feels like kind of a crappy thing to do to someone you’re convinced is a future murderer.” 

Mid-buttoning, Bruce stopped and looked him dead in the eye. 

“And how is it any different from you grinding up against someone you think is deranged ?”

Clark’s eyes tripped over the purple circles under Bruce’s, the exposed triangle of his chest criss-crossed with scars, the defiant set of his mouth in direct juxtaposition with his hurt-animal posture. 

He was not an emotionally stable and healthy man. 

But Clark was supposed to be. 

Certainly he thought of himself that way. Figured other people saw him that way, too. 

Bruce Wayne didn’t see him that way. 

And what if Bruce Wayne wasn’t entirely off base? 

After all— what kind of emotionally stable and healthy man does what either of them just did?

He let his hands fall to his side.

“I—” His mouth twitched to one side, sheepish, burying petulance. “I’m sorry.” He jammed his hands in his pockets. “I shouldn’t have said that. And— frankly, I shouldn’t have…” He sighed. “ We shouldn’t have done this.”

He swallowed his pride. 

“I didn’t exactly come to this party thinking I was going to end up with your dick in my mouth, Bruce. I came here thinking I was going to prove you were a grade-A asshole with a fetish for beating up poor people. I only ended up following you up here because you…” He shrugged and crossed his arms again. “Because it seemed like you weren’t, actually. I was starting to kind of… think maybe you weren’t all that bad.” He looked off to the side. “And I am a sucker and fell hook line and sinker for your little ‘sad single father’ routine out there.” 

Bruce subtly uncrumpled.

His voice quiet, a little husky, he admitted, “I shouldn’t have told you that.” He looked down and finished buttoning his shirt. “But it wasn’t a bit.” He bent over and grabbed his tie.

Clark licked his lips. It hadn’t felt like a bit, but it was hard to pull the threads of Bruce knowing apart from everything that happened before he admitted it. 

“Can you see why it’s a little hard for me to believe that?”

Bruce nodded. 

“Everything up to the patio was a bit.” He glanced at Clark from under his eyelashes, daring him to get angry. “I was playing you. Then you disappeared.” He shrugged, tying his tie with practiced ease. “And I stopped thinking about you completely. How long have you known? About Batman?”

“I guessed at it about six months ago but wasn’t sure. When we talked at the beach cleanup I was pretty certain. Your… the way your vocal cords move, your bones, your heartbeat— it’s all the same.”

“That’s incredibly creepy,” Bruce grumbled, apparently forgetting he liked to dress up like a bat and peer in people’s windows in the dark. 

Clark rebutted: “How did you figure out I’m Superman?”

He knew the answer wasn’t going to be any less invasive.

“You started writing articles for the Planet the same time Superman showed up in Metropolis.” Bruce smoothed the collar of his suit jacket. “Which isn’t evidence in and of itself, but then your friend Ms. Lane was supposed to be interviewing me with you a few months back, and you didn’t show up. She mentioned you were a flake and disappeared all the time, and then when I got home I saw that Superman was on the news again, and… I thought back to the first time I’d seen you, at a fundraiser for that bridge collapse, and how incredibly clumsy you were, and it clicked that it was exactly what I do when I’m being Brucie .” He smiled a fake little chipper smile. “So I looked into your parents’ medical history and the fertility treatments they’d done about ten years before you were supposedly born, and—”

“You looked into my parents’ medical history ? I’m sorry, how ? That is a massive HIPAA violation, and way creepier than me being able to see your bones.”

“I am very wealthy and very charming.” 

“And you think someone needs to be watching me ?” 

Bruce swung his jacket back over his shoulders and straightened the knot of his tie.

“Someone does need to be watching you.” He gave Clark a long, dry stare. A challenge. “But you’re right. It doesn’t mean someone shouldn’t be watching me.”

The room felt strange— orange and fuzzy, like the red-gold opulence had started to weave itself over Clark’s eyes. He was frustrated and angry and irritated, and now he was also deeply baffled. 

“Are you implying you solicited me for sex because you think we should be keeping an eye on each other?”

Bruce smoothed his hair back. “No. I solicited you for sex because you’re a large attractive man and I was experiencing a moment of weakness.” He reset his boutonniere, looking down at his chest. “But now I’m suggesting that, given what we know about each other, and given that we both know we can see through each other better than we’d like, it does make a certain amount of sense.” 

Bruce extended his hand.

“I don’t kill people. But I will find a way to kill you if you ever go rogue.” 

Clark looked down at his pale fingers— so obviously calloused and used .

It felt like a deal with the devil, but there was something strangely comforting about Bruce’s threat. Clark’s nightmares had always had a touch of the apocalypse to them, and he was often at the center of it. Even if Bruce didn’t have an answer yet, Clark sort of appreciated that someone other than himself had asked the question— what do we do if Superman goes wrong?

He took his hand, firmly. 

“Then I’ll do the same.”

Bruce shook on it. “It’s a deal, then.” He smiled like a shark. “I’ll have my lawyers call your lawyers and draw up the paperwork.”

“Harr de harr,” Clark rolled his eyes. “Can we get back to the party before Lois starts asking people who last saw me?”

“Sure. Do you want to go back downstairs arm in arm, or…?” The shark grin persisted.

Clark breathed in through his nose. “I’ll pass.”

“Suit yourself.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll walk you down to the back exit and then you can wait there a few minutes while I go in.” He beckoned for Clark after him, and Clark obediently followed, against his better angels. 

Halfway down the stairs, Bruce warned, “This doesn’t mean I trust you.”

Clark agreed. “Doesn’t mean I trust you, either. This is a detente.” 

“Glad we’re on the same page.” 

They wound their way down to the hallway behind the kitchen, sparsely lit and empty of guests or staff. Bruce pointed towards a door at the end of the hall. 

“Wind your way left and under the archway and you’ll be back on the rear side of the porch.” 

“Thanks.” Clark looked around and saw people moving through the walls. “And if someone sees me, do I just say I got lost? Will that work?”

Bruce nodded. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

“First actual lost guest, or first,” he gave an exaggerated wink, “ lost guest ?”

“Either.” Bruce smiled almost genuinely. He stepped forward a few paces and then abruptly turned around on his heel. “Oh. And, Kansas?”

“Yes?”

“Next time there’s a little armistice like this—” His smile spread outward like melting butter, warm and unctuous. “I’m going to fuck the Midwest right out of you.” 

He winked.

And disappeared out the door, dissolving into the dark of the night.