[fic] Salt Point (pre-Crisis DCU: Robin/Superman, NC-17)
When I offered icon ficlets, sweptawaybayou asked *so nicely* for Superman loves Robins. How can I resist, [a] Snow herself and [2] Robinosexuality? I cannot.
To make it easier on Snowy, this is set pre-Crisis, with nothing of current (insane, verging on lame-ass) canon, but plenty of mid-1970s wackiness. Robin I is a freshman at Hudson University (and my fondness for Dick outgrowing the Robin suit is, um. *Well-known*. See icon) while Clark Kent is the news anchor at Galaxy Broadcasting's flagship station in Metropolis, WGBS.
Title: Salt Point
Pairing: Robin/Superman
Timeline/Setting: Batman Family v.1/Superman c.#300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Clark is doing his best to broaden his horizons.
Disclaimer: DC and Time Warner, never mine.
Warnings: Content that most readers should find to be World's Finest and some may find linguistically porny.
Notes: For sweptawaybayou with much, much love. Thanks to thenotoriousg for...inspiration and such.
Clark believes that he is settling in well. He anchors both the six and eleven o'clock broadcasts, but also does on-the-spot reporting as well as his favorite in-depth investigations. His new apartment is a brisk five-minute walk from the studio; it is the only luxury he has afforded himself since taking the job. Everything else goes back to Smallville, of course.
Tonight, he is puttering around the apartment, jacket and tie hung up in the closet, milk warming on the stove while he washes the make-up off his face in the bathroom. Listening to WGLJ out of Gotham, he hums along with the smoky soul song.
Superhearing is very helpful, of course, with alerting him to trouble, but it has other benefits, as well. No DJ in the Metropolis area can hold a candle to GLJ's Midnight Songbird.
At the most recent JLA meeting, Green Arrow called him -- yet again -- a "Super-square". Clark is doing his best to broaden his horizons.
He is just about to splash clean his face when another sound filters through the ether. Past the bebop horn solo, the sound twines and flowers, filling his mind with a sudden warm rush. As if sound could partake of the other senses, as if some voices trigger synesthesia.
"Kal --" The voice is young, male, unmistakable: Robin's.
Clark strips down to his suit, donning his cape as he turns off the water and the stove's burner, leaping into the air in time to catch the last chorus of the Curtis Mayfield tune.
He flies north, enjoying the wind on his face, through the darkness between cities and then through their glare -- Metropolis, Gotham, New York -- before turning west at the mouth of the Hudson.
The river is darker than the sky, alive with motion, invisible to anyone not him. He slows his progress slightly as he passes the Palisades, Sleepy Hollow and Bannerman's Castle, in order to relish the sight. Like the Mississippi and Volga, the Nile and the Amazon, the Hudson is a river wider, deeper, than myth.
Both river and estuary, it is subject to oceanic tides -- the Mohawks called it Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk, long water that flows both ways. Below him, the river moves in crisp dark pleats, speckled with reflected lights from either bank. This low, it appears much wider than his own hand. Salt water from the sea stretches into the river's fresh water in long, twisting fingers, all the way here, and yet farther north.
Regretfully, though only slightly, Clark banks west again and descends over the Hudson University campus. The mix of Edwardian mansion and outbuildings with postwar modernist slabs is jarring after the breadth of the river.
The university library is housed in one of those Edwardian buildings. He descries Robin, dressed in civilian clothes, at the end of a long table. There are books spread out before him, shared with a pretty blonde girl.
"-- cium," Robin -- no, *Dick* -- finishes saying. "Wait, we need calcium? Where're my lab notes?"
Clark hovers outside the narrow, frosted-glass window. His hands clutch into fists and release. He was so excited to *hear* Dick's voice that he failed to *listen*.
"Richard, *really*," his girlfriend says, passing him a hardcover notebook. "We've gone over this a thousand times."
Dick flips through the notes quickly, chewing his bottom lip. Clark recognizes that expression -- Robin, pacing around a cuffed criminal, hands on his hips, asking the important questions. He shouldn't be surprised to see it here in Dick's civilian existence.
There is very little -- if any -- boundary between Dick and Robin.
Before he can reconsider, Clark opens the window and speeds through the library, dropping a note for Dick as he passes the table and continues up to the top floor.
Their books and papers move in his breeze.
He stands between the last two stacks and listens as Dick folds the note and shoves it into his pocket. "Lori, I need to get another book. Be right back --"
"But --" She stops. Dick's kiss on her forehead is soft. "The science section is downstairs.... Oh, forget it!"
Clark shakes a lock of hair off his forehead and tries to breathe regularly as Dick's footsteps move up the stairs.
"Passing notes, Clark?" Dick asks quietly, rounding the end of the bookcase. "Feels just like junior high."
Clark coughs. "Hello."
Dick stands just out of arm's reach, his head tilted, a fond smile on his lips. "Hi there. What's going on?"
Lifting, then lowering, his empty hands, Clark can only shrug. "I thought --"
Dick takes a step forward. "Yeah?"
They're both using low, careful voices, as appropriate for a library as a stake-out mission. Heat spills and spreads over Clark's face and down his neck. "I thought I heard --"
There are *other* voices whispering. Urgently, and not here in the library; close by, however, and accompanied by the distinct smell of sulfur and burning ozone.
"Dick. What's next door?"
"Physics labs," Dick says. In a moment, all trace of the relaxed college student vanishes and Robin surfaces beneath the varsity sweater and casual slacks, sharp-eyed and intent. "Why?"
"Get everyone out of here," Clark tells him, one leg over the windowsill. "Call the police. There's a --"
Bomb, he was going to say, but there's no time. He dives through the glass ceiling of the main lecture hall and runs down to the basement. The stench of burning air, thick and toxic, grows stronger with each step. In the distance, he can hear fire alarms sounding in the library, the confused shouts of students shoved out into the cold air without their coats or books.
He trusts Robin to see to the crowd. For now, he bangs his shoulder against the last, locked door in the basement. Greenish-brown smoke billows at him, the fire crackling in the background. He can make out two figures huddled in the far corner, clutching each other and gasping wetly for breath.
Two flaps of the cape puts out the worst of the fire, and then Clark takes a victim in each arm and drags them to the hall.
The first figure, a pudgy Black boy, shows some superficial burns, but nothing fatal. An exhalation of Arctic-breath helps stem the worst of his burns. The second, a skinny White, is in much worse shape. The fire caught him around the legs, and the burns reach up, fanning out, over his chest. It's almost as if he had been *wearing* the fire.
"Superman!" Robin dashes down the hall. "Everyone else is out of the surrounding buildings."
"Give me a hand," Clark says and points to the Black student. "He needs O2 and his burns dressed."
As Robin lifts the man, the kid clutches at his cape. "Andy -- Andy --" he croaks, trying to move back into the room.
"Steady there, man," Robin tells him, shaking free and helping him all the way to his feet. "I've got you."
A tank in the room explodes then, shoving Robin and his stumbling charge into the wall.
"Go!" Superman shouts, lifting the second kid like a bride across the threshold and pushing Robin ahead of him. The fire chases them down the hall, singing his cape as he buffets them forward. When they break out the side door, the cold air nearly slams them back inside again.
Clark will never stop admiring how *gracefully* Robin goes about his work. He is no longer the stout, reckless boy he once was; his energy has been tamed, redrawn and redirected, but he is no less beautiful to watch. He sees his charge to the ambulance, fends off the angry crowd of students seeking to get back into the library, *and* counsels the local fire marshal on what sort of damage awaits them downstairs.
Somehow, armed just with human senses and boundless care for those in danger, he can master all the competing situations. Though his cape is burned, his bare skin streaked with greasy soot, he commands attentive respect.
"There's a visiting physics professor," he tells Clark as the firemen don hazmat helmets. "Extra-credit project to the student who could make a working rocket belt."
"Ah," Clark says and makes a mental note to speak with Ray Palmer. "That would be Andy?"
"Think so." Robin scrubs the sweat and soot from his cheek and leans a little against Clark's shoulder. "Upside is, I think my chem midterm just got postponed."
Clark smiles down at him. "You've taken on quite a bit. All these responsibilities."
"Nah, it's nothing." Robin shakes his head and his hair -- longer than it used to be, very much in the fashion of young men of his generation -- slides over his forehead as he returns Clark's smile with a wide, open grin of his own.
Clark is struck, once again -- or perhaps *still*, always -- at the set of contrasts and juxtapositions that Robin presents. He grows taller, stronger, but still wears what Clark will always think of as a boy's costume. The short pants and a cape as bright as a canary's wing move over a man's musculature now, as naturally as they ever did. His mask is superfluous, hiding nothing of his innate humor and beauty.
"Nothing?" Clark asks. "College, heroism, and -- was that your girlfriend?"
"Who, Lori?" Robin shrugs and scratches his neck. "She's real pretty."
"Yes, she is." At a loss for anything else to add, Clark claps Robin's shoulder. "Excellent work tonight, as always. Shall I see you back to your dorm?"
Robin bounces briefly on the balls of his feet. "Hmm. Still pretty jazzed, actually." He cuts his glance away as he fiddles with his utility belt. "Don't suppose you've got a min--"
Clark's cape nearly *cracks* against the air as he wraps an arm around Robin's waist and jumps.
To his great relief, Robin is laughing. His cheeks are red from exertion, his arm slung companionably, *familiarly*, around Clark's waist. When Clark catches his eye, Robin tips his head back to the sky and laughs even louder.
"Don't waste any time, huh?" he asks as the laughter slows to chuckles. He hooks his left leg around Clark's right knee in order to lean forward, scanning the grounds below. "Turn right at the end of this street. My boarding house is --"
Clark complies and, breathless, Robin squeezes his waist.
"-- right down there, okay."
Clark lands gently amid the pines and oaks in the backyard. The house is dark and silent, and he remembers with a pang just how late it must be.
"Boarding house?" he asks, loath to release his arm from Robin's waist any time soon.
"I wanted to live in the dorms, but --" Robin smiles wryly. "Bruce reminded me of certain..."
"Considerations?" Clark's hand toys with the hem of Robin's tunic, sliding underneath to rest in the hollow at the base of Robin's spine.
"Mm, yes --" Robin cants forward, leading with his shoulder, until his mouth finds Clark's throat. "Oh, wow, I always forget --"
Clark doesn't let him finish. The pressure of Robin's mouth sends out streams of heat, agitated and *urgent*, beneath his skin. He turns, digging his shoulder into the trunk of the nearest tree, wrapping both arms around Robin and kissing him until that warm pressure opens for him, floods his own mouth, runs faster and deeper, lower.
Robin has always kissed with a precocious flair, eager and attentive all at once, but the *body* that accompanies this kiss is taller, *harder*, under Clark's roving hands. More insistent, too, as Robin works his knee between Clark's calves and tugs his head down.
"-- how *warm* you are," Robin finishes with a gasp. "Holy --"
"Yes --" Clark tangles one hand in Robin's cape, dragging it out until Robin's head is bent back, his throat exposed. He shivers with his whole body, somehow imbuing *trembles* with enviable grace, as Clark kisses him again, then his throat. Robin throws his arm around Clark's neck and sighs quickly, deeply, as Clark licks clean the fire and sweat off his skin, leaving only the fresh, boyish taste of *Robin*.
When Clark works loose the laces on his tunic with his teeth, Robin backs up against the tree, hands slipping over Clark's chest, fingers tracing the crest, digging in until his thumbs brush Clark's hardening nipples. He chuckles at that, then gasps again as Clark's mouth moves over the exposed skin on his chest.
Robin's hips are rocking erratically against Clark's thigh. Clark spans the solid, tense curve of Robin's buttocks with his hand and pulls him closer, until Robin's head bangs the trunk and he's draped over Clark's bent leg.
The fabric of Robin's shorts is thick, arranged in overlapping scales, damp with sweat. Robin sucks on Clark's neck as he wriggles, trying to work them down.
Clark could rip them off, but --.
No, this is better, the shorts stretched taut between Robin's knees, his damp warm skin prickling under Clark's fingertips in tune with the scattered sighing moans falling from Robin's mouth.
"Robin," Clark breathes against Robin's cheek, holding him tightly, hand splayed flat against Robin's belly. "Oh. *Rob*--"
This time, Robin is the one to stop him from finishing. His back twists, impossibly fluid, as he kisses Clark and slips his hand inside Clark's waistband.
Clark stifles the whipcrack jolt and yell at the first brush of Robin's touch. He feels Robin's grin against his own lips *anyway*, and then there is nothing to do but *move*. One knee planted in the frosty dirt between the tree's roots, Robin riding his thigh, shoulders hitting the trunk with each thrust. Robin's hand is not large, but it's bigger than Clark has ever felt, and his fingers are as deft and sure as they ever were. He pulls on Clark, pushes his tongue inside Clark's mouth, and rocks what feels like his entire body into Clark's grasping hand.
As their motion speeds up, Robin moves in every direction, into Clark's touch, against his mouth, up and down the tree. The sounds he makes --.
"Beautiful," Clark whispers into the curve of Robin's ear as the gasps and moans go ragged, high and a little sweeter each time, as Robin buries his face against Clark's neck and arches back and up, offering and open, boundless as he contorts and jerks with orgasm. Clark kisses his forehead, the corner of his mouth, holds him through the shaking aftershocks. "So --"
Robin grins at him. Sweat decorates each of his eyelashes, weighing them down, brightening his eyes. "Not yet --"
Clark doesn't know what he means, and then -- then Robin *moves*, standing on trembling legs, pushing Clark against the tree, sinking down to his knees, all in a single, complexly *liquid* motion -- and, in the wake of the movement, Clark understands.
He lets his knees fall open, reaches for Robin and finds him already there, burned and wrinkled cape falling over the high curve of his back. He sucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, drinks down the taste of Robin's mouth, then tastes his own fingers as Robin's dark head moves in his lap. As Robin kisses the root of his shaft, makes him swallow hard, licks his way up to the head.
"Robin --" Clark says around three of his own fingers.
Robin's eyes flicker up at him, heedless of the mask. "Present," he says, smiling, and wraps one hand around Clark's penis. "And currently occupied."
"Robin," he says again, helplessly, tightening the muscles in his legs lest he simply *shove* forward. He can only taste his own skin now, yet he can't seem to stop sucking.
"Superman," Robin replies. His grin widens, just before he looks back down and dark hair obscures his eyes. His mouth opens.
Clark can *hear* the hinge of Robin's jaw moving, the hot glide of saliva over Robin's tongue, the beat of blood in Robin's face, and then -- then he *can't*. He can only *feel* the hot, insistent suction, feel and *watch*, brush the hair back from Robin's eyes, watch the muscles in his face and neck work. *Feel* the stretch of Robin's mouth, the motion of his tongue scrolling heedlessly, urgently, the contraction of his throat as he swallows and pushes forward, down, *closer*.
His hips are bucking like a wild colt, his breathing is coming in jagged shards, and he has to bite down on his fingers, try to keep still, try to make this last.
He can't. His legs strain, his groin shrinks and constricts against waves of heat, and *still*, the orgasm manages to shock him, hit and shake him like a gale. Clark's free hand thumps Robin's shoulder, claws at his arm, and, finally, Robin pulls free, licking his lips.
"Mm," Robin says, tilting forward against Clark's chest.
When Clark touches Robin's elbow, he should not be surprised to feel the cold, goosebumped skin there. But he's always been able to withstand temperatures beyond the capacity of human beings.
"Let's get you inside," he says hoarsely, then coughs to clear his throat, chafing his hand up and down Robin's arm.
Robin's smile tilts flirtatiously. "Why, Mr. Kent, are you asking to come up?"
Clark bites his lip before he realizes that Robin is teasing him. "Yes."
"Groovy!" Robin's on his feet, running across the grass glowing with frost, jumping for a trellis. It doesn't look as if it can support the weight of a *toddler*, but Robin scrambles upward confidently. At the third floor, he swings out until his toes find the window ledge, and then he slides inside.
Unwilling to strain the trellis more than necessary, Clark follows him by flying.
Robin's room is fairly neat for a college student's. Posters on the wall advertise the Flying Graysons and the rock band Great Frog. Robin cartwheels silently toward the closet, stripping off his costume as he goes.
"My landlady locks the door at eleven," he says when he's naked. "So I needed an alternative mode of --"
"Ingress?" Clark finds himself moving forward faster than he meant to, tipping Robin back onto the bed.
"That, too," Robin says, giggling. Sitting up on one elbow, he peels off his mask. The skin beneath is markedly clean compared to the rest of his face.
Smiling, Clark kneels on the edge of the bed, hands on Robin's shoulders, moving down his arms, testing the ropes and cords of muscle. Robin moves with him, tugging Clark's jersey from his waistband, touching his waist and lower back, smiling all the while.
"Still jazzed?" Clark asks softly. When he kisses Robin, it is shallow, just the tip of his tongue sliding over Robin's lower teeth. He tastes himself and groans a little.
"A bit," Robin admits, kneading the muscles over Clark's ribs. "You?"
"Around you..." Clark shakes his head, lets the statement trail off, and blinks away the rueful question on Robin's face.
"Hey --" Robin pokes him hard. "You never said why you were here."
"Oh, I --" Clark kisses the hollow beneath Robin's jaw, sucks a little, then lifts Robin by the waist. "Turn over for me?"
Robin's eyebrows jump, as gracefully as he somersaults through the air, and he grins before complying.
The room is dark, lit only by the nascent moon, so Robin's body, outstretched on the bed, looks much paler than it actually is. There are, Clark knows, networks of scars on his skin, lacework and bruises, but all that's visible to human eyes is this silvery expanse. He runs his hands up the backs of Robin's legs, over the hard, egg-shaped muscles of his calves to the long, twisting columns of his thighs. When his hands reach Robin's buttocks, Robin looks over his shoulder, sighing as he lifts up and spreads his legs.
"I thought," Clark says, and feels clumsier than ever, "I thought I heard you. Say my --. My other name."
Robin's smile, half-seen over his shoulder, is gentle, without a single trace of teasing. "Kal?"
Clark's fingers tighten against the muscle of Robin's buttocks.
"Kal," Robin says more firmly. Clark's thumbs press inside the cleft and spread him further. "Ah, *jeez*, Kal --"
"Like that," Clark says, dropping his head out of Robin's line of sight, dropping a kiss on the small of his back. Against the skin there, he adds, "Yes, please."
"Kal," Robin replies, under his breath, against the bedspread, as his hips lift and he gets his knees under him. "Kal. Kal-El.... Um, I should remember more Kryptonese --."
Clark's mouth drags down Robin's cleft, meets his thumbs, then presses harder. As Robin shudders and moans, he licks short, persistent strokes around the shirred skin, working his tongue inside the tiny hole as his thumbs slip up and down the cleft's damp, untouched skin.
"Oh! Oh, *oh* --" Robin trembles beneath and before him, the line of his spine rising like the horizon at dawn. «To Rao, father of light, I offer gratitude and bounty--»
The sound of his own language, hoarse and hesitant, twanged out over Robin's humanly *fragile* vocal cords, makes Clark groan long and *low* against him. Into him, nearly, the sound reverberating down his own backbone, into his genitals, the heat tightening everything all over again.
"Was that --?" Robin twists again, reaching back blindly to touch whatever of Clark he can reach. "Right? Close?"
For several moments, Kal cannot speak. He concentrates on tasting and feeling Robin, inside and outside, communicating purely *literally* with his tongue, with sensation and something, he hopes, of his own need. He can smell the sweat sliding over Robin's skin, smell the young man's arousal, feel it in the contraction and dilation of his hole.
"Yes," Kal says finally, sucking his own thumb wet before easing it inside.
Robin shouts into the mattress, pushing back, rocking fast and needfully. "*Jesus*, Kal, oh --"
Kal blinks the moisture from his eyes and bites the undercurve of one buttock. Robin's balls swing against his cheek, and he licks a wavering path to them as his thumb sinks inside all the way to the last knuckle. The heat inside is -- there isn't anything like it, it is storm-soaked velvet and star-bright, so tightly *intimate* that he cannot hope to speak, in English or Kryptonese.
He busies his mouth with -- other things, skin and blood, light sucking kisses at the fresh *flavor* of the boy as his thumb eases in and out, a little deeper, twisting whenever Robin moans.
This is more than a beautiful sight, but all he can do is *watch*, and feel, and press more deeply, until Robin cannot stop trembling, driving forward to rub against the bed before pushing back onto Kal's thumb and -- his index finger is inside now, too, and he's lost track of time.
All he knows is the prayer, resounding in Robin's cracking voice, unforgettable, as he rolls Robin over and scissors his fingers inside. Robin yowls and pants, yanking at Kal's hair, thrusting his dark, swollen penis between them.
The head is very slick already, running with more as Kal swallows around it. Robin's body jerks, and he's making *those* noises again, making his hips push and fall with just *that* beautiful, decadent rhythm. His face is red, his chest and arms shining with sweat, his hole clenching and *sucking* Kal deeper in. Orgasm wracks through him, flooding Kal's mouth before Kal's nose reaches the root.
«The bravery of one soul is greater than all the dead gods,» Kal tells him, crooking his fingers inside one more time, extracting another breathy moan.
Robin blinks blearily up at him, scrubbing at his eyes, his body gone perfectly loose and slack. "Huh?"
When he eases his fingers out and sits back on his heels, Kal is -- he is Clark again. He bites the corner of his mouth and smiles. "I --"
All at once, and he cannot possibly begin to explain why, it is Dick before him.
The phone rings and Dick tosses himself bodily at it. "Hold that thought --" he says over his shoulder before picking up the receiver. "Hello?" Dick pulls himself up until he's sitting cross-legged, leaning against the wall. "Bruce, hi!"
Clark returns the grin as Dick reaches for him, urging him up onto the bed. He feels terribly *aware* of his own body, too big for this room, potentially clumsy, disastrous. Even when Dick slips the fingers of his free hand through Clark's, he feels out of place. Fully dressed beside a naked, chattering boy, he --.
"No, everything was okay. Some stupid physics project and luckily Clark was here --" Dick covers the receiver with his hand. "Bruce says hi."
"Ah," Clark says and closes his eyes. "Hello."
"No, he's probably heading back any minute now," Dick continues. He sighs heavily. "I'm *fine*, Bruce, promise. Get back to work, okay?" He ducks his head, turning slightly away from Clark, though he's still gripping Clark's hand. When he speaks, his voice is low, intimate. "I know. Me, too. Night."
After he hangs up, Dick rests his head against Clark's shoulder and squeezes his hand. "I swear, he has a mole in the local police department."
Clark smoothes down Dick's hair. "I wouldn't be surprised if he did."
Chuckling, Dick rubs his face against Clark's cape. "I probably shouldn't keep you --"
"I --"
Dick kisses him. "I want to, though. You know that, right?"
Clark considers him for longer, probably, than is strictly necessary. "It's...mutual."
Dick grins with half his mouth. "I've got an Eco Club meeting in the AM, though, so --"
If Bruce is his best friend, then what is Robin? What is Dick? Clark prefers to leave tricky questions of logic to others, like Bruce, who are far better equipped to tackle them.
Right now, however, he knows the answer. It can't exist in words, certainly not in *Earthly* words, but that answer carries connotations of estuaries, the sea's fingers creeping up the land, companionship and sub-verbal understanding.
He kisses Dick once more, then starts for home.
Sirens on the highway near Poughkeepsie draw him north, however, so it is near dawn when Clark is over the river again. He tarries a bit as the world wakes up, watching the water turn pink and red beneath the sky.
Later, he is glad that he dallied. The river is...sick. Down here, yes, but higher in the stream, around Albany and points immediately south, something is very wrong. Clark squints until his vision ticks into the X-ray range. There are few fish, far fewer than there ought to be, and those that are present move sluggishly, exhibit muscular degeneration and hermaphroditic organs.
He looks upstream to Hudson Falls, looks at the river all the way down to the level of molecules. Where there should be, at best, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, he finds the spiky presence of polychlorinated biphenyls.
PCBs are drifting through the river, killing the fish and plants, mutating and poisoning whatever manages to survive.
At lunchtime, he calls Dick's room. "What does your Eco Club know about toxic dumping?"
He can hear Dick exhale. "We know that GE's a bunch of liars, I can tell you that."
Clark smiles. "I'll be up tomorrow afternoon, if you're free?"
"I'd like that," Dick says quietly. "A lot."
"Good," Clark replies. "We've got a lot of work to do."
"Wouldn't have it any other way."
[end]
To make it easier on Snowy, this is set pre-Crisis, with nothing of current (insane, verging on lame-ass) canon, but plenty of mid-1970s wackiness. Robin I is a freshman at Hudson University (and my fondness for Dick outgrowing the Robin suit is, um. *Well-known*. See icon) while Clark Kent is the news anchor at Galaxy Broadcasting's flagship station in Metropolis, WGBS.
Title: Salt Point
Pairing: Robin/Superman
Timeline/Setting: Batman Family v.1/Superman c.#300
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Clark is doing his best to broaden his horizons.
Disclaimer: DC and Time Warner, never mine.
Warnings: Content that most readers should find to be World's Finest and some may find linguistically porny.
Notes: For sweptawaybayou with much, much love. Thanks to thenotoriousg for...inspiration and such.
Clark believes that he is settling in well. He anchors both the six and eleven o'clock broadcasts, but also does on-the-spot reporting as well as his favorite in-depth investigations. His new apartment is a brisk five-minute walk from the studio; it is the only luxury he has afforded himself since taking the job. Everything else goes back to Smallville, of course.
Tonight, he is puttering around the apartment, jacket and tie hung up in the closet, milk warming on the stove while he washes the make-up off his face in the bathroom. Listening to WGLJ out of Gotham, he hums along with the smoky soul song.
Superhearing is very helpful, of course, with alerting him to trouble, but it has other benefits, as well. No DJ in the Metropolis area can hold a candle to GLJ's Midnight Songbird.
At the most recent JLA meeting, Green Arrow called him -- yet again -- a "Super-square". Clark is doing his best to broaden his horizons.
He is just about to splash clean his face when another sound filters through the ether. Past the bebop horn solo, the sound twines and flowers, filling his mind with a sudden warm rush. As if sound could partake of the other senses, as if some voices trigger synesthesia.
"Kal --" The voice is young, male, unmistakable: Robin's.
Clark strips down to his suit, donning his cape as he turns off the water and the stove's burner, leaping into the air in time to catch the last chorus of the Curtis Mayfield tune.
He flies north, enjoying the wind on his face, through the darkness between cities and then through their glare -- Metropolis, Gotham, New York -- before turning west at the mouth of the Hudson.
The river is darker than the sky, alive with motion, invisible to anyone not him. He slows his progress slightly as he passes the Palisades, Sleepy Hollow and Bannerman's Castle, in order to relish the sight. Like the Mississippi and Volga, the Nile and the Amazon, the Hudson is a river wider, deeper, than myth.
Both river and estuary, it is subject to oceanic tides -- the Mohawks called it Muh-he-kun-ne-tuk, long water that flows both ways. Below him, the river moves in crisp dark pleats, speckled with reflected lights from either bank. This low, it appears much wider than his own hand. Salt water from the sea stretches into the river's fresh water in long, twisting fingers, all the way here, and yet farther north.
Regretfully, though only slightly, Clark banks west again and descends over the Hudson University campus. The mix of Edwardian mansion and outbuildings with postwar modernist slabs is jarring after the breadth of the river.
The university library is housed in one of those Edwardian buildings. He descries Robin, dressed in civilian clothes, at the end of a long table. There are books spread out before him, shared with a pretty blonde girl.
"-- cium," Robin -- no, *Dick* -- finishes saying. "Wait, we need calcium? Where're my lab notes?"
Clark hovers outside the narrow, frosted-glass window. His hands clutch into fists and release. He was so excited to *hear* Dick's voice that he failed to *listen*.
"Richard, *really*," his girlfriend says, passing him a hardcover notebook. "We've gone over this a thousand times."
Dick flips through the notes quickly, chewing his bottom lip. Clark recognizes that expression -- Robin, pacing around a cuffed criminal, hands on his hips, asking the important questions. He shouldn't be surprised to see it here in Dick's civilian existence.
There is very little -- if any -- boundary between Dick and Robin.
Before he can reconsider, Clark opens the window and speeds through the library, dropping a note for Dick as he passes the table and continues up to the top floor.
Their books and papers move in his breeze.
He stands between the last two stacks and listens as Dick folds the note and shoves it into his pocket. "Lori, I need to get another book. Be right back --"
"But --" She stops. Dick's kiss on her forehead is soft. "The science section is downstairs.... Oh, forget it!"
Clark shakes a lock of hair off his forehead and tries to breathe regularly as Dick's footsteps move up the stairs.
"Passing notes, Clark?" Dick asks quietly, rounding the end of the bookcase. "Feels just like junior high."
Clark coughs. "Hello."
Dick stands just out of arm's reach, his head tilted, a fond smile on his lips. "Hi there. What's going on?"
Lifting, then lowering, his empty hands, Clark can only shrug. "I thought --"
Dick takes a step forward. "Yeah?"
They're both using low, careful voices, as appropriate for a library as a stake-out mission. Heat spills and spreads over Clark's face and down his neck. "I thought I heard --"
There are *other* voices whispering. Urgently, and not here in the library; close by, however, and accompanied by the distinct smell of sulfur and burning ozone.
"Dick. What's next door?"
"Physics labs," Dick says. In a moment, all trace of the relaxed college student vanishes and Robin surfaces beneath the varsity sweater and casual slacks, sharp-eyed and intent. "Why?"
"Get everyone out of here," Clark tells him, one leg over the windowsill. "Call the police. There's a --"
Bomb, he was going to say, but there's no time. He dives through the glass ceiling of the main lecture hall and runs down to the basement. The stench of burning air, thick and toxic, grows stronger with each step. In the distance, he can hear fire alarms sounding in the library, the confused shouts of students shoved out into the cold air without their coats or books.
He trusts Robin to see to the crowd. For now, he bangs his shoulder against the last, locked door in the basement. Greenish-brown smoke billows at him, the fire crackling in the background. He can make out two figures huddled in the far corner, clutching each other and gasping wetly for breath.
Two flaps of the cape puts out the worst of the fire, and then Clark takes a victim in each arm and drags them to the hall.
The first figure, a pudgy Black boy, shows some superficial burns, but nothing fatal. An exhalation of Arctic-breath helps stem the worst of his burns. The second, a skinny White, is in much worse shape. The fire caught him around the legs, and the burns reach up, fanning out, over his chest. It's almost as if he had been *wearing* the fire.
"Superman!" Robin dashes down the hall. "Everyone else is out of the surrounding buildings."
"Give me a hand," Clark says and points to the Black student. "He needs O2 and his burns dressed."
As Robin lifts the man, the kid clutches at his cape. "Andy -- Andy --" he croaks, trying to move back into the room.
"Steady there, man," Robin tells him, shaking free and helping him all the way to his feet. "I've got you."
A tank in the room explodes then, shoving Robin and his stumbling charge into the wall.
"Go!" Superman shouts, lifting the second kid like a bride across the threshold and pushing Robin ahead of him. The fire chases them down the hall, singing his cape as he buffets them forward. When they break out the side door, the cold air nearly slams them back inside again.
Clark will never stop admiring how *gracefully* Robin goes about his work. He is no longer the stout, reckless boy he once was; his energy has been tamed, redrawn and redirected, but he is no less beautiful to watch. He sees his charge to the ambulance, fends off the angry crowd of students seeking to get back into the library, *and* counsels the local fire marshal on what sort of damage awaits them downstairs.
Somehow, armed just with human senses and boundless care for those in danger, he can master all the competing situations. Though his cape is burned, his bare skin streaked with greasy soot, he commands attentive respect.
"There's a visiting physics professor," he tells Clark as the firemen don hazmat helmets. "Extra-credit project to the student who could make a working rocket belt."
"Ah," Clark says and makes a mental note to speak with Ray Palmer. "That would be Andy?"
"Think so." Robin scrubs the sweat and soot from his cheek and leans a little against Clark's shoulder. "Upside is, I think my chem midterm just got postponed."
Clark smiles down at him. "You've taken on quite a bit. All these responsibilities."
"Nah, it's nothing." Robin shakes his head and his hair -- longer than it used to be, very much in the fashion of young men of his generation -- slides over his forehead as he returns Clark's smile with a wide, open grin of his own.
Clark is struck, once again -- or perhaps *still*, always -- at the set of contrasts and juxtapositions that Robin presents. He grows taller, stronger, but still wears what Clark will always think of as a boy's costume. The short pants and a cape as bright as a canary's wing move over a man's musculature now, as naturally as they ever did. His mask is superfluous, hiding nothing of his innate humor and beauty.
"Nothing?" Clark asks. "College, heroism, and -- was that your girlfriend?"
"Who, Lori?" Robin shrugs and scratches his neck. "She's real pretty."
"Yes, she is." At a loss for anything else to add, Clark claps Robin's shoulder. "Excellent work tonight, as always. Shall I see you back to your dorm?"
Robin bounces briefly on the balls of his feet. "Hmm. Still pretty jazzed, actually." He cuts his glance away as he fiddles with his utility belt. "Don't suppose you've got a min--"
Clark's cape nearly *cracks* against the air as he wraps an arm around Robin's waist and jumps.
To his great relief, Robin is laughing. His cheeks are red from exertion, his arm slung companionably, *familiarly*, around Clark's waist. When Clark catches his eye, Robin tips his head back to the sky and laughs even louder.
"Don't waste any time, huh?" he asks as the laughter slows to chuckles. He hooks his left leg around Clark's right knee in order to lean forward, scanning the grounds below. "Turn right at the end of this street. My boarding house is --"
Clark complies and, breathless, Robin squeezes his waist.
"-- right down there, okay."
Clark lands gently amid the pines and oaks in the backyard. The house is dark and silent, and he remembers with a pang just how late it must be.
"Boarding house?" he asks, loath to release his arm from Robin's waist any time soon.
"I wanted to live in the dorms, but --" Robin smiles wryly. "Bruce reminded me of certain..."
"Considerations?" Clark's hand toys with the hem of Robin's tunic, sliding underneath to rest in the hollow at the base of Robin's spine.
"Mm, yes --" Robin cants forward, leading with his shoulder, until his mouth finds Clark's throat. "Oh, wow, I always forget --"
Clark doesn't let him finish. The pressure of Robin's mouth sends out streams of heat, agitated and *urgent*, beneath his skin. He turns, digging his shoulder into the trunk of the nearest tree, wrapping both arms around Robin and kissing him until that warm pressure opens for him, floods his own mouth, runs faster and deeper, lower.
Robin has always kissed with a precocious flair, eager and attentive all at once, but the *body* that accompanies this kiss is taller, *harder*, under Clark's roving hands. More insistent, too, as Robin works his knee between Clark's calves and tugs his head down.
"-- how *warm* you are," Robin finishes with a gasp. "Holy --"
"Yes --" Clark tangles one hand in Robin's cape, dragging it out until Robin's head is bent back, his throat exposed. He shivers with his whole body, somehow imbuing *trembles* with enviable grace, as Clark kisses him again, then his throat. Robin throws his arm around Clark's neck and sighs quickly, deeply, as Clark licks clean the fire and sweat off his skin, leaving only the fresh, boyish taste of *Robin*.
When Clark works loose the laces on his tunic with his teeth, Robin backs up against the tree, hands slipping over Clark's chest, fingers tracing the crest, digging in until his thumbs brush Clark's hardening nipples. He chuckles at that, then gasps again as Clark's mouth moves over the exposed skin on his chest.
Robin's hips are rocking erratically against Clark's thigh. Clark spans the solid, tense curve of Robin's buttocks with his hand and pulls him closer, until Robin's head bangs the trunk and he's draped over Clark's bent leg.
The fabric of Robin's shorts is thick, arranged in overlapping scales, damp with sweat. Robin sucks on Clark's neck as he wriggles, trying to work them down.
Clark could rip them off, but --.
No, this is better, the shorts stretched taut between Robin's knees, his damp warm skin prickling under Clark's fingertips in tune with the scattered sighing moans falling from Robin's mouth.
"Robin," Clark breathes against Robin's cheek, holding him tightly, hand splayed flat against Robin's belly. "Oh. *Rob*--"
This time, Robin is the one to stop him from finishing. His back twists, impossibly fluid, as he kisses Clark and slips his hand inside Clark's waistband.
Clark stifles the whipcrack jolt and yell at the first brush of Robin's touch. He feels Robin's grin against his own lips *anyway*, and then there is nothing to do but *move*. One knee planted in the frosty dirt between the tree's roots, Robin riding his thigh, shoulders hitting the trunk with each thrust. Robin's hand is not large, but it's bigger than Clark has ever felt, and his fingers are as deft and sure as they ever were. He pulls on Clark, pushes his tongue inside Clark's mouth, and rocks what feels like his entire body into Clark's grasping hand.
As their motion speeds up, Robin moves in every direction, into Clark's touch, against his mouth, up and down the tree. The sounds he makes --.
"Beautiful," Clark whispers into the curve of Robin's ear as the gasps and moans go ragged, high and a little sweeter each time, as Robin buries his face against Clark's neck and arches back and up, offering and open, boundless as he contorts and jerks with orgasm. Clark kisses his forehead, the corner of his mouth, holds him through the shaking aftershocks. "So --"
Robin grins at him. Sweat decorates each of his eyelashes, weighing them down, brightening his eyes. "Not yet --"
Clark doesn't know what he means, and then -- then Robin *moves*, standing on trembling legs, pushing Clark against the tree, sinking down to his knees, all in a single, complexly *liquid* motion -- and, in the wake of the movement, Clark understands.
He lets his knees fall open, reaches for Robin and finds him already there, burned and wrinkled cape falling over the high curve of his back. He sucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, drinks down the taste of Robin's mouth, then tastes his own fingers as Robin's dark head moves in his lap. As Robin kisses the root of his shaft, makes him swallow hard, licks his way up to the head.
"Robin --" Clark says around three of his own fingers.
Robin's eyes flicker up at him, heedless of the mask. "Present," he says, smiling, and wraps one hand around Clark's penis. "And currently occupied."
"Robin," he says again, helplessly, tightening the muscles in his legs lest he simply *shove* forward. He can only taste his own skin now, yet he can't seem to stop sucking.
"Superman," Robin replies. His grin widens, just before he looks back down and dark hair obscures his eyes. His mouth opens.
Clark can *hear* the hinge of Robin's jaw moving, the hot glide of saliva over Robin's tongue, the beat of blood in Robin's face, and then -- then he *can't*. He can only *feel* the hot, insistent suction, feel and *watch*, brush the hair back from Robin's eyes, watch the muscles in his face and neck work. *Feel* the stretch of Robin's mouth, the motion of his tongue scrolling heedlessly, urgently, the contraction of his throat as he swallows and pushes forward, down, *closer*.
His hips are bucking like a wild colt, his breathing is coming in jagged shards, and he has to bite down on his fingers, try to keep still, try to make this last.
He can't. His legs strain, his groin shrinks and constricts against waves of heat, and *still*, the orgasm manages to shock him, hit and shake him like a gale. Clark's free hand thumps Robin's shoulder, claws at his arm, and, finally, Robin pulls free, licking his lips.
"Mm," Robin says, tilting forward against Clark's chest.
When Clark touches Robin's elbow, he should not be surprised to feel the cold, goosebumped skin there. But he's always been able to withstand temperatures beyond the capacity of human beings.
"Let's get you inside," he says hoarsely, then coughs to clear his throat, chafing his hand up and down Robin's arm.
Robin's smile tilts flirtatiously. "Why, Mr. Kent, are you asking to come up?"
Clark bites his lip before he realizes that Robin is teasing him. "Yes."
"Groovy!" Robin's on his feet, running across the grass glowing with frost, jumping for a trellis. It doesn't look as if it can support the weight of a *toddler*, but Robin scrambles upward confidently. At the third floor, he swings out until his toes find the window ledge, and then he slides inside.
Unwilling to strain the trellis more than necessary, Clark follows him by flying.
Robin's room is fairly neat for a college student's. Posters on the wall advertise the Flying Graysons and the rock band Great Frog. Robin cartwheels silently toward the closet, stripping off his costume as he goes.
"My landlady locks the door at eleven," he says when he's naked. "So I needed an alternative mode of --"
"Ingress?" Clark finds himself moving forward faster than he meant to, tipping Robin back onto the bed.
"That, too," Robin says, giggling. Sitting up on one elbow, he peels off his mask. The skin beneath is markedly clean compared to the rest of his face.
Smiling, Clark kneels on the edge of the bed, hands on Robin's shoulders, moving down his arms, testing the ropes and cords of muscle. Robin moves with him, tugging Clark's jersey from his waistband, touching his waist and lower back, smiling all the while.
"Still jazzed?" Clark asks softly. When he kisses Robin, it is shallow, just the tip of his tongue sliding over Robin's lower teeth. He tastes himself and groans a little.
"A bit," Robin admits, kneading the muscles over Clark's ribs. "You?"
"Around you..." Clark shakes his head, lets the statement trail off, and blinks away the rueful question on Robin's face.
"Hey --" Robin pokes him hard. "You never said why you were here."
"Oh, I --" Clark kisses the hollow beneath Robin's jaw, sucks a little, then lifts Robin by the waist. "Turn over for me?"
Robin's eyebrows jump, as gracefully as he somersaults through the air, and he grins before complying.
The room is dark, lit only by the nascent moon, so Robin's body, outstretched on the bed, looks much paler than it actually is. There are, Clark knows, networks of scars on his skin, lacework and bruises, but all that's visible to human eyes is this silvery expanse. He runs his hands up the backs of Robin's legs, over the hard, egg-shaped muscles of his calves to the long, twisting columns of his thighs. When his hands reach Robin's buttocks, Robin looks over his shoulder, sighing as he lifts up and spreads his legs.
"I thought," Clark says, and feels clumsier than ever, "I thought I heard you. Say my --. My other name."
Robin's smile, half-seen over his shoulder, is gentle, without a single trace of teasing. "Kal?"
Clark's fingers tighten against the muscle of Robin's buttocks.
"Kal," Robin says more firmly. Clark's thumbs press inside the cleft and spread him further. "Ah, *jeez*, Kal --"
"Like that," Clark says, dropping his head out of Robin's line of sight, dropping a kiss on the small of his back. Against the skin there, he adds, "Yes, please."
"Kal," Robin replies, under his breath, against the bedspread, as his hips lift and he gets his knees under him. "Kal. Kal-El.... Um, I should remember more Kryptonese --."
Clark's mouth drags down Robin's cleft, meets his thumbs, then presses harder. As Robin shudders and moans, he licks short, persistent strokes around the shirred skin, working his tongue inside the tiny hole as his thumbs slip up and down the cleft's damp, untouched skin.
"Oh! Oh, *oh* --" Robin trembles beneath and before him, the line of his spine rising like the horizon at dawn. «To Rao, father of light, I offer gratitude and bounty--»
The sound of his own language, hoarse and hesitant, twanged out over Robin's humanly *fragile* vocal cords, makes Clark groan long and *low* against him. Into him, nearly, the sound reverberating down his own backbone, into his genitals, the heat tightening everything all over again.
"Was that --?" Robin twists again, reaching back blindly to touch whatever of Clark he can reach. "Right? Close?"
For several moments, Kal cannot speak. He concentrates on tasting and feeling Robin, inside and outside, communicating purely *literally* with his tongue, with sensation and something, he hopes, of his own need. He can smell the sweat sliding over Robin's skin, smell the young man's arousal, feel it in the contraction and dilation of his hole.
"Yes," Kal says finally, sucking his own thumb wet before easing it inside.
Robin shouts into the mattress, pushing back, rocking fast and needfully. "*Jesus*, Kal, oh --"
Kal blinks the moisture from his eyes and bites the undercurve of one buttock. Robin's balls swing against his cheek, and he licks a wavering path to them as his thumb sinks inside all the way to the last knuckle. The heat inside is -- there isn't anything like it, it is storm-soaked velvet and star-bright, so tightly *intimate* that he cannot hope to speak, in English or Kryptonese.
He busies his mouth with -- other things, skin and blood, light sucking kisses at the fresh *flavor* of the boy as his thumb eases in and out, a little deeper, twisting whenever Robin moans.
This is more than a beautiful sight, but all he can do is *watch*, and feel, and press more deeply, until Robin cannot stop trembling, driving forward to rub against the bed before pushing back onto Kal's thumb and -- his index finger is inside now, too, and he's lost track of time.
All he knows is the prayer, resounding in Robin's cracking voice, unforgettable, as he rolls Robin over and scissors his fingers inside. Robin yowls and pants, yanking at Kal's hair, thrusting his dark, swollen penis between them.
The head is very slick already, running with more as Kal swallows around it. Robin's body jerks, and he's making *those* noises again, making his hips push and fall with just *that* beautiful, decadent rhythm. His face is red, his chest and arms shining with sweat, his hole clenching and *sucking* Kal deeper in. Orgasm wracks through him, flooding Kal's mouth before Kal's nose reaches the root.
«The bravery of one soul is greater than all the dead gods,» Kal tells him, crooking his fingers inside one more time, extracting another breathy moan.
Robin blinks blearily up at him, scrubbing at his eyes, his body gone perfectly loose and slack. "Huh?"
When he eases his fingers out and sits back on his heels, Kal is -- he is Clark again. He bites the corner of his mouth and smiles. "I --"
All at once, and he cannot possibly begin to explain why, it is Dick before him.
The phone rings and Dick tosses himself bodily at it. "Hold that thought --" he says over his shoulder before picking up the receiver. "Hello?" Dick pulls himself up until he's sitting cross-legged, leaning against the wall. "Bruce, hi!"
Clark returns the grin as Dick reaches for him, urging him up onto the bed. He feels terribly *aware* of his own body, too big for this room, potentially clumsy, disastrous. Even when Dick slips the fingers of his free hand through Clark's, he feels out of place. Fully dressed beside a naked, chattering boy, he --.
"No, everything was okay. Some stupid physics project and luckily Clark was here --" Dick covers the receiver with his hand. "Bruce says hi."
"Ah," Clark says and closes his eyes. "Hello."
"No, he's probably heading back any minute now," Dick continues. He sighs heavily. "I'm *fine*, Bruce, promise. Get back to work, okay?" He ducks his head, turning slightly away from Clark, though he's still gripping Clark's hand. When he speaks, his voice is low, intimate. "I know. Me, too. Night."
After he hangs up, Dick rests his head against Clark's shoulder and squeezes his hand. "I swear, he has a mole in the local police department."
Clark smoothes down Dick's hair. "I wouldn't be surprised if he did."
Chuckling, Dick rubs his face against Clark's cape. "I probably shouldn't keep you --"
"I --"
Dick kisses him. "I want to, though. You know that, right?"
Clark considers him for longer, probably, than is strictly necessary. "It's...mutual."
Dick grins with half his mouth. "I've got an Eco Club meeting in the AM, though, so --"
If Bruce is his best friend, then what is Robin? What is Dick? Clark prefers to leave tricky questions of logic to others, like Bruce, who are far better equipped to tackle them.
Right now, however, he knows the answer. It can't exist in words, certainly not in *Earthly* words, but that answer carries connotations of estuaries, the sea's fingers creeping up the land, companionship and sub-verbal understanding.
He kisses Dick once more, then starts for home.
Sirens on the highway near Poughkeepsie draw him north, however, so it is near dawn when Clark is over the river again. He tarries a bit as the world wakes up, watching the water turn pink and red beneath the sky.
Later, he is glad that he dallied. The river is...sick. Down here, yes, but higher in the stream, around Albany and points immediately south, something is very wrong. Clark squints until his vision ticks into the X-ray range. There are few fish, far fewer than there ought to be, and those that are present move sluggishly, exhibit muscular degeneration and hermaphroditic organs.
He looks upstream to Hudson Falls, looks at the river all the way down to the level of molecules. Where there should be, at best, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen, he finds the spiky presence of polychlorinated biphenyls.
PCBs are drifting through the river, killing the fish and plants, mutating and poisoning whatever manages to survive.
At lunchtime, he calls Dick's room. "What does your Eco Club know about toxic dumping?"
He can hear Dick exhale. "We know that GE's a bunch of liars, I can tell you that."
Clark smiles. "I'll be up tomorrow afternoon, if you're free?"
"I'd like that," Dick says quietly. "A lot."
"Good," Clark replies. "We've got a lot of work to do."
"Wouldn't have it any other way."
[end]