[fic] Little secrets we bring along (World's Finest: Clark Kent/Matches Malone, adult)
Title: Little secrets we bring along
Pairing: Clark Kent/Matches Malone [others mentioned]
Summary: In which Gotham exhibits near-quantum uncertainty, Clark fails at identity porn, and Matches wields the power of sleaze.
Rating: Adult
Setting/Timeline: Some time between "Murderer?/Fugitive" and "Identity Crisis".
Disclaimer: DC, not me.
Notes: Title from Yo La Tengo, "Today Is The Day". katarik suggested the pairing, she and petronelle audienced an early scene, and the divine jubilancy beta'd the whole thing.
On the whole, Clark hates having to keep secrets. Those he does keep, he gathers close to his breast, because they concern his loved ones. His identity, those of his parents and wife, of his friends: such secrets must be guarded, just as he guards the people they concern.
His reasons for following this story to Gotham are much less significant. He cannot quite meet Lois's eyes, lest he spill the beans. He's keeping this story a secret because -- well, it probably won't pan out, and if she hears that he's tracking the incursion of Gotham drugs into Metropolis, she'll shove him out of the way on her way to breaking the case, and he --.
"You need this," Perry had said, nodding behind his steepled fingers. "Good work, Kent."
He does need this, and if he just moves fast enough, he won't have to lie and Lois won't catch on.
Lois is more amused than angry, leaning there in the doorway as Clark zips shut his overnight bag. She shakes her head and says, "Let me get this straight --"
"I'm going to Gotham."
"Right, and that's --"
"For a story." He unzips the bag again and checks inside for his shaving kit. Not there, and not in the front pocket or on the bed. Where the heck...?
Lois touches his hand. "What'd you lose?"
"Shaving kit."
"You didn't go X-ray specs *why*?"
"I did," he says.
"Rhetorical question." Her hair lifts in clean, sharp wave as she looks around; it smells *good*, like snow and tiny tundra flowers, when Clark dips his head toward her.
She tosses her head, smacking into his nose.
Clark steps back, hand going to his face. "Ow!"
"Big baby." Lois crosses her arms. "The kit's not here. Anyway, you don't even shave --
"I have my toothbrush in there," Clark protests.
"And you still haven't answered the question."
He's going to be late for the train. Holding his bag against his chest, Clark exhales slowly. "Which one?"
As she cups his cheek, she gives him the smile that can silence an entire newsroom. "Why are you going to Gotham?"
"A story," he says and clamps his mouth shut.
Too late. Lois narrows her eyes. "You've been working on that Bialyan shipping cartel like a -- excuse the expression -- *stevedore*. There's nothing in Gotham about --"
The window is right behind him. He could be gone in a flash, the curtains lifting in his breeze, if he had to. If she weren't *Lois* and he weren't helpless before her.
"Another story?" Clark hugs his bag a little more tightly and squints so he doesn't have to see the predatory interest sharpening her face. "It's nothing, really, just a couple tips that probably won't pan out, and I'll be back in a couple days, nothing to worry about --"
"Smallville."
"Yes?"
"Shut up."
His shoulders sag slightly and he tips his face against her palm. "Okay."
She pats him lightly and goes up on tiptoe to kiss the tip of his nose. "Now, shoo."
"But --" She never lets go of a hunch or a clue so easily.
Smiling, Lois jabs his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. "Have a good time. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
Clark blinks. "That's a pretty short list."
She nods, wrapping her arms briefly around his neck and kissing him fast. "You're learning."
"I guess I am," he says and hugs her, folding his arms around her sharp, narrow back, and squeezing only a tenth as hard as he'd like to. He kisses the part in her hair before he pulls, reluctantly, away. There's no story so good, no lead so promising, that it could ever rival the scent of her hair and sharpness of her smile. "Right. Well. Guess I should get going --"
Lois smacks his rear as he departs.
*
He should be glad that she didn't ask why he's taking the train rather than flying. But Clark has to account for travel to Perry, and he very much dislikes submitting inaccurate expense reports.
Lois would roll her eyes at that before reminding him that Bruce Wayne's money was *made* for spending.
It's like Ma always said: A good partnership is founded on compromise. "And sometimes," she'd add, lifting her chin toward the shed where Pa was banging around with his engines and tools, "the best compromise is the one you never mention."
He's not so sure that such a principle doesn't constitute a sin of omission, but it *was* Ma who said it, so he needs to trust the source, if not the content.
With all the usual delays -- not counting the side-trips he makes, first to a mudslide in Walla Walla and next to a chemical fire outside Madurai -- the train arrives at Robinson Terminal at dusk.
Clark makes his way against the tsunami-tide of commuters rushing to catch their trains. Once on the street, overwhelmed by the press of bodies and shrieking horns and looming buildings, he has to duck into a niche and catch his breath.
He's never going to get used to Gotham. The city is slippery and grit-laden all at once, sliding from his grasp and abrading as it goes.
Metropolis, from his first day there, opened like an especially thick and beautiful book, an encyclopedia, a catalog of all that is right and optimistic.
He takes another breath and lets himself *listen* to the city. Below the clamor of traffic and curses, anxious pulses and frustrated breaths, he can hear the quick, steady beat of life, almost symphonic in its movement.
He finds his hotel, a cheap and tiny room that is clean, and sets down his bag.
In the jagged slits and angles of gaps between buildings, the sky darkens as far as it ever gets -- a smear of gray-brown, studded with floodlights from the municipal zeppelins, reflecting the ambient neon from the street.
He washes up and heads outside to find dinner.
After he's demolished the pasta primavera and two slices of pie -- "second one's on me, hon," the waitress said and winked; she'd assumed he was new in town -- he walks further downtown. The streets narrow even more, jog at sharp angles, refuse to make sense.
He hears Batman's grapple gun from approximately five blocks away, but keeps walking until the sound of Batman's body shearing through the air ceases, followed by a single thump of boot in an alley.
In the back of his mind, Clark half-believes that Bruce would prefer to play cat and mouse for hours.
Clark, however, has a story to track down. He's never been one for ducking a necessary confrontation, either, so he turns neatly on his heel and steps into the alley.
He has not been scared of Batman for a long while now. All the same, the way Bruce seems to thicken, *emanate*, from the shadows is a bit unnerving.
"What --"
"Journalism, that's all." Clark holds up his hand.
Batman's cape whispers over broken glass. "-- are you doing here?"
"My job," Clark says. Batman doesn't move, so Clark spreads his arms. "My --. My *other* job."
"Elaborate."
Clark ducks his head, glasses slipping down his nose. "Nothing important. There's some talk --" He hears Batman move, but that still doesn't fully prepare him for the *presence* of the man, suddenly a few inches away. Clark can't be intimidated; he knows that Bruce is acting out of habit. He licks his lower lip anyway. "Some Gotham dealers are expanding. New networks, transportation routes, south to --"
"Metropolis."
"Yes."
"You snuck into Gotham." Batman turns thirty degrees, shoulder nudging into Clark's chest.
Clark laughs, lightly, and shakes his head. "I took the *train*." When Bruce doesn't respond, Clark swallows the laughter and reaches out; Bruce's shoulder slides away from his touch. "Amtrak's business class is hardly *sneaking*."
As he turns, Batman's jaw catches a stray shaft of light and glows, hard bone and set determination. "Bruce Wayne spoke to White earlier."
Clark's hand drops, clutching into a fist, to his side. "Oh, for *pity's* sake --" The curve on Batman's lips is all Bat, no trace of Bruce. Clark doesn't know, tries not to care, whether he's angry at the insistence that Batman and Bruce Wayne are somehow *separate* or at the pointlessness of an alleyway interrogation when Batman already knew the answer. "So you know."
Batman nods, the small, mean smile vanishing, and steps away with a snap to his cape. "I do."
There is no point in asking why, but Clark feels the word shape itself in his mouth. He exhales instead. "I don't suppose you'd have any advice for the hick reporter?"
Batman's mouth thins down to nothing. Clark recognizes the thinking expression and adjusts his stance, tries for casual, expectant, *hopeful*.
Gotham has a way of making him all-too-aware of his --. Presence, and behavior, as if he's playing a role like everyone else.
He supposes this is a useful lesson. It still makes him uncomfortable.
"You're not familiar with --" Batman stops.
Clark gives him a grin. "This isn't one of your dares, is it?"
For half a moment, Batman seems almost stumped. He draws himself up. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Widening his grin, keeping his tone light, Clark shrugs. "You know, you can't handle Gotham, she's more than you've ever feared, you're out of your league, yadda yadda --"
Under the cowl, Batman blinks. "Yadda yadda?"
"It's an expression!" Clark protests.
"Gazebo Club on Aparo." Batman sights upward and shoots his line. "I'll get in touch with my sources."
"Why not just --" *Give me their names*, Clark was going to say, but Batman's already four stories up and rising.
That would be too simple, of course.
"And Clark?" Batman is swinging onto a roof two buildings away, speaking under his breath, and Clark isn't sure whether he's touched or annoyed at the man's confidence that he'll be heard. "Do try to blend in, won't you? You look like a Mormon missionary in those trousers."
*
An hour later, while nursing his third ginger ale, Clark realizes that he should have taken a nap before coming out.
There's no earthly reason for him to be quite so tired. All he's doing is sitting here in a decrepit bar, keeping his ears open, waiting.
And waiting is, really, the worst possible thing for him.
He rarely misbehaved as a child, but, as Ma likes to say, brushing his hair back from his forehead, "he had his moments". Flushing a box of Pa's nails down the toilet to see what would happen, throwing a basketball too hard and taking out the big bay window that looks out over the back acreage, cussing out Pete Ross's cousin for calling him a snotface: He had his moments, and the only punishment that ever worked, that ever taught him the lessons of courtesy and care that he needed to learn, was being set down on an ancient bale of hay and told to keep still.
That bale was so old, the hay was almost black, softened and coated with oil from the tractors and years of dust. He can smell it still, feel it brush under his fidgeting hands and scrape the backs of his legs.
"Sugar, don't even *tell* me you just wandered in here." Hot breath on his neck, teeth-grindingly broad Jersey accent in his ear.
Clark's hand clenches around the dirty glass and he has to force himself not to break it, not to jump. He takes a sharp breath, the smell of alcohol-heavy cologne stinging his nostrils.
"Sorry," he says, and doesn't turn around. He squints, but the bottles behind the bar are too filmed with smoke and grease to reflect much more than a jarring collection of color -- red and green and yellow, a nightmare of tartan. "I think you've got me confused with someone --"
"Not many built like you," the man says, his hot breath replaced momentarily by what Clark could swear was a *tongue*.
He must be thrown off by the swirling lights and streamers of smoke, however. For one thing, this is not *that* kind of establishment, and for another -- the man swinging onto the stool next to him doesn't seem to be --.
Well, that sort of guy. Clark blinks, knowing he's "going owlish", as Lois likes to say, but can't help it. This man is large. And garish.
While Clark has nothing approaching "gaydar", this man's entire bearing screams a very particular kind of "straight". Two gold-colored chains are tangled in his chest hair, glossy aviator shades hide his eyes; there is a matchstick clamped in the corner of his mouth and one rough, meaty hand clasping Clark's shoulder. He sports a tartan jacket over a bumblebee-striped shirt and purple pants.
"Word out there is you're looking for some news..." He leans in, fingers flexing around the shoulder joint, and whistles lowly. "Work out, huh?"
"I --" Clark tries to lean, politely, away, but the man's grip doesn't let up. "I'm sorry. *Who* are you?"
The grin is quick, a gleam of teeth, the matchstick rolling to the opposite corner. "Malone. Friends call me Matches."
"Right, well, you see --" Clark looks around quickly, but the bar's population is far more absorbed it in its own business than his own. "Mr. Malone, I think you've made a mistake."
Never letting go of Clark's shoulder, Malone twists in his seat, digging his elbow into the bar, bringing his other hand up to cup his cheek. "Now is that so?"
"I'm pretty sure, yes." Clark hears his voice stammer and winces. "Sorry?"
"Sweet kid," Malone says, absently, waving the bartender down. The signet ring on his pinky finger is almost big enough to collar a Chihuahua.
Clark hasn't been quite so *aware* of another man's relative size in a very long time.
"Two brandies and soda," Malone tells the bartender. His hand shifts up, fingers brushing Clark's neck. "You need a refill, Charles Atlas?"
"I --" Clark looks down at his glass, confused by the double order, apparently all for Malone himself. "No, thank you."
"And polite, too!" Malone squeezes Clark's neck and downs his first drink in one gulp. His neck is thick, his Adam's apple bobbing enthusiastically as he swallows. When he sets the glass down, he smacks his lips and the matchstick bobs. "Don't grow 'em so big and polite around here. Where you from?"
The brutish line of Malone's jaw, the heaviness of his hand, twigs something familiar in Clark's memory. He breathes in, lets himself appear to hesitate, and starts to scan the man with his X-ray vision.
Malone holds up his hand, signet ring winking, its ruby catching the light. "Wait, wait, lemme guess." He tilts his head, the aviator glasses slipping fractionally down his large nose. "Polite, big blue eyes, not much of an accent. I'm gonna say -- Missouri? Iowa. Cornfields and cowshit, if you know what I'm saying."
"Kansas," Clark replies.
Malone's grin is sudden, showing two rows of piano-key teeth, big and regular and faintly yellow. He thumps Clark's shoulder as in victory. "Kansas!"
"Kansas." Clark drains the melted ice from his glass and sets it down as firmly as he can. "Now, Mr. Malone, if you'll --"
He tries to stand up, but Malone presses him back down. "What'd I tell you? Friends. Friends call me what now?"
"Matches," Clark says. "I really should be --"
"Matches, that's right." Malone snaps his fingers and orders another brandy. Clark hadn't noticed him finishing the second one, but Matches's breath is heavy with the alcohol. "Now, Wichita, listen up."
"Yes?"
Matches hauls Clark close, tipping their foreheads together, and Clark tries not to look at the big pores and spidery veins on Matches's cheek. "Word is, you're looking for some info."
"Maybe," Clark says, and closes his eyes. Even so, his senses are assaulted by -- *Malone*, in a word. Tartan and nylon, cologne and aftershave and sharp, musky sweat and brandy. Rasp of accent, wet smack of lips. He finishes the X-ray scan. Five fused vertebrae in Malone's lower back, pinned with steel and what seems to be lead, such that he can't make out the details. He tries to sit up a little straighter. "Bruce?"
Malone holds him in place and barks with laughter. "Who the fuck's *Bruce*? You meeting someone?"
"No, I meant --"
Through the sunglasses, Clark could be sure he can see Malone narrowing his eyes. "You already stepping out on me, farmboy?"
Clark jerks away, as smoothly as he can, and rubs both hands over his face. Confusion prickles like sweat over his skin, digging in, burrowing deep. He'd been so certain, convinced for several nanoseconds, that this was Bruce, playing another game, out to show Clark one more time that Gotham is no place for the likes of him.
"And here I thought we had something..." Matches says mournfully, letting his hand drop on Clark's knee. He shakes his head, slowly, as he frowns and the matchstick dangles precariously.
"Just a mistake --" Clark tries, but Matches doesn't reply. "Matches, I'm sorry, I just think --" He swallows and tastes stale cigarette smoke and the tang of Matches's cologne. "Mistaken identity?"
The shades slide down Matches's nose, just enough to show Clark the wink before Matches straightens up and grins. Hazel eyes, nothing like Bruce's dark blue ones. Although they could be contact lenses, Clark is unsure whether checking would constitute *cheating* in some complicated way. "You ever heard the one about gullible and the dictionary?"
It's one of Lois' favorites. Clark nods. "I have."
"Shame," Matches says, and stands up, digging a money clip out of his breast pocket and peeling off four fives. "'cause it was made for *you*, sweets."
"Yes," Clark says and finds himself standing up, following Matches toward the door. "It probably was."
*
Whoever this character is, whatever his reasons for sticking like cement to Clark, Matches *does* seem to know his way around Gotham's underbelly. He gladhands nearly every hood they pass, introduces Clark to some mid-level flunkies in a rogue branch of the 100 called, unremarkably, the 37, whispers in the ear of streetwalkers and hired muscle alike, and never, ever lets go of Clark's elbow.
Matches steers him through bars and social clubs, discotheques and converted ballrooms. Although Clark learns a great deal, acquires much information on a variety of shady dealings and subcultural mores, and he doesn't ever see Matches break the law, per se, he is, in a word, uncomfortable.
He remains uncertain *why* he is here, just what Matches could believe he's helping Clark *with*.
"Night on the town," Matches says, big hand on the small of Clark's back, as he nudges Clark into the next seedy club. "Be amazed at what goes down in the big city."
Sighing a little at the man's unconscious patronizing, Clark stumbles down the steps.
Matches steadies him with a grin. "Easy there, big fella."
Clark nods his thanks. This -- stumbling and stammering -- isn't something he does, not consciously. It happens and it's always happened (Ma's wedding china was decimated by the time he was two). Maybe it happens because he's trying hard to fit in, maybe because he's concentrating on *not* using his powers, or maybe because he's a klutz who never grew into his own body.
Maybe it's a little of everything. What's more, in Gotham, at least, he's never going to feel entirely surefooted.
After Clark squares his shoulders, he turns to take in the club. There are people dancing on some kind of makeshift stage. These people are slowly shedding their clothes to the beat of the music.
He stops short and Matches bumps -- *presses* -- against his back.
"This is a --" Clark's blush spills across his cheeks, into his hair, down his neck. "Matches."
Matches claps Clark's shoulder and moves even closer. "Nothing illegal here, Kansas, not to fret." His breath breaks, warmer than any blush, down the nape of Clark's neck. "Unless you're *looking* for that..."
Clark shakes his head, which brushes his skin across Matches's lips. The matchstick scrapes down the side of his neck. "It's not that."
The people stripping appear to be feminine, masculine, and many other things. A spotlight catches one young man, shaggy dark hair shadowing his face, as he pulls a royal-blue jersey off one long, tanned arm.
"See something you like?" Matches speaks lowly, raspily, into Clark's ear. Clark can't let himself move, lest he initiate another near-kiss.
"No." The blush deepens, sparking and spreading, as he takes a slow breath.
"So what's the problem?"
Clark holds up his left hand and twists his wedding ring with his thumb. "I'm a married --"
"Sucker," Matches says, loudly enough for a passerby to stop and turn around. "Not you, honey." Matches smacks his lips. "Though we could discuss any sucking..."
The woman -- the *person* wearing the gold lame slip flips Matches off and totters away on spike heels.
"You're --" *Revolting*, but Clark doesn't finish the sentence. Matches is disgusting, cruder than anyone Clark's ever met outside Bibbo's bar, but there's something oddly *charming* about the man, too.
Rather than speak, Clark spins on his heel, intending to head for the door. Matches's shoulders, the tartan gone sickly under the blue lights here, block his way. Matches's face seems to surface like something aquatic, its leer brightening the longer Clark looks at him.
Staring contest: He's reduced to *staring* down this, this *character*, this affable jerk who may or may not be Bruce --.
They're staring at each other like this is fifth grade recess and they both claimed the T-ball bat at the same time.
Never blinking over the edge of his dark glasses, Matches brings his left hand up and pats Clark's cheek.
"That's right, boyo," he says, and Clark believes for a moment that Matches can not only *see* his blush, but is testing its temperature.
That idea goes out the window, however, when Matches turns his hand and brushes his knuckles down Clark's jaw. His touch is surreally, absurdly, gentle. Clark works his teeth together, restraining the strange urge to tip toward that hand, rough as its skin is.
Matches nods and still does not blink. He runs his hand back up Clark's cheekbone and pats him again. His signet ring brushes coolly, tingling, against Clark's flush.
"That's right," Matches says, as if they've come to some kind of decision. "Just two buddies, what's the harm in that?"
Clark could point out any number of facts here.
He's not Matches's buddy. He doesn't even know *who* Matches really is. He doesn't approve of strip clubs, though he accepts that many women -- and, it would seem, young men -- earn a good living in these establishments. He's tired, he has a story to investigate, he's --.
"And a lemonade for my teetotalling friend here," Matches tells the waitress when they've taken a rickety table near the stage. He swats her on the butt as she departs, and while Clark expects her to ignore that, or clock him one, instead she winks.
"Nice girl," Matches tells Clark when she's gone. "Filipino, lives over on the East Side with her ladyfriend, *if* you know what I mean." Clark nods, but Matches leers anyway, rolling the matchstick quickly from corner to corner. "What I wouldn't give for a peephole camera on them. Just the one, mind, for *personal* use. Nothing too exploitational --"
"What are we doing here?" Clark asks quickly when Matches pauses to kiss the waitress on the cheek upon her return. Clark rubs his cheek, absently, only realizing he's covering the side that Matches had patted when Matches tilts his head inquisitively.
To cover his embarrassment, Clark drains his lemonade and asks the waitress for another.
His face feels tight, almost shrunken, with warmth. It must be the tang of the lemons, the late hour, the sense of futility in following Matches around all night.
"You okay there, buddy boy?" Matches slides onto the chair nearest to Clark's, his arm around Clark, one thigh as hard as a side of beef pressed against Clark's own.
"I'm fine," Clark says with some difficulty.
"Gotcha something," Matches says, waving at the stage, curling his index finger in a come-hither gesture.
"Oh, no, I --" Clark looks down at the scarred top of the table when the young man in royal blue weaves toward them.
"No, you, *what*?"
"I --"
"Hello?" The young man smiles, teeth neon under a swooping black light, and leans in.
Perhaps Matches has tugged Clark's chair out, but there's suddenly *room*, his lap is exposed, then filled by this very nice, very muscular young man.
His blue V-neck shirt, the collar edged with gold, plunges much farther down his chest than most men's garments do. His torso ripples and sways, and Clark realizes that he's *dancing*. Around Clark, over him, brushing his hair over Clark's burning face, flexing long fingers against Clark's chest.
Matches leans in, his slick hair against Clark's ear.
The stripper smells like sweat and nothing else, clean and sharp whenever he arches close. Matches chuckles, low and slow, patting Clark's leg to the rhythm.
This is another joke at Clark's expense.
The dancer wets his lips, looking down at Matches's hand, his long lashes shadowing his cheek.
Matches shifts when the dancer does, and Clark tenses against the brush of Matches's knuckles over his crotch, friction-warmth sheeting through him.
"Somebody's endowment got --" Matches seems to address the dancer while Clark remains as still, as unresponsive, as possible. "*Super*-sized."
The dancer laughs and thrusts dramatically into the air.
Another joke, another dare, another stupid schoolboy challenge that Clark does not have to accept.
He's polite, perhaps to a fault, but he's not stupid.
"No, thank you." Clark grasps the dancer's slim wrists and lifts him back to his feet. "You're very handsome, but you're not --"
"Not your type?" Matches sucks hard, loudly, on the matchstick. "Could've fooled me, farmer --"
"No worries, honey." The dancer gives Clark a lingering smile before slipping back into the crowd.
He wasn't Dick. If they're going to keep playing this game, there is no such person as Nightwing anyway, so Clark doesn't respond to Matches's question.
Instead, he takes one meaty, callused palm in his and drags Matches to the fire exit. He shoulders open the door and kicks aside the garbage cans blocking the alley.
"Little riled up?" Matches leans against the door, hands tucked into his armpits, that damn matchstick dancing in his lips.
"You're *infuriating*, you're disgusting, you're --"
Clark stops, spins away, when Matches starts laughing at him and does not stop.
If he had any doubts that this was just a game, they evaporate when he reaches the street.
Because Matches is speaking under his breath.
That he is apologizing should not matter.
"Sorry, brother, never meant --" The accent never wavers, even in the sudden hush, even when Clark stands before him again and Matches tips back his head and Clark sees himself reflected, twinned, in those sunglasses. "Back for more?"
Clark could be a glutton for punishment. He could be a dog with a bone. He might be too nice for his own good.
If, however, the game is going to be played, he's going to play it well.
Win.
His hand closes around Matches's throat, rises, and the tips of Matches's shiny, sharp loafers scrape the asphalt.
"Hey, hey!" Matches raises his hands, palms out, before grabbing at Clark's forearm. "Hey, easy, big boy, just a --"
He could lift Matches by the scruff of the neck, fly him halfway around the world. Show him -- everything, everything outside of Gotham. Sierra Leone, where every boy is a good soldier for some warlord or another; Kerala, where filth is not decorative, not the subject of fashion spreads and perfume ads, but ground into the pores of young and old, deadening the soul and body; Tehran, where a man dancing atop another is worth one hundred lashes and rape by security forces, not a chuckle and grope.
He could drag Matches, and Bruce, and the Bat, through contrails, out beyond the stratosphere, out to where broken rockets and abandoned satellites spin through the last wisps of oxygen.
Hold him up under the shoulders, shake him, *show* him what Clark does deal with, what he *can* confront.
Gotham is nothing, not compared to the world.
Gotham is, merely, always, Bruce's world.
Clark's vision careens from the microscopic -- corpuscles and lymph -- up the scale.
Matches's mouth twists, the matchstick jutting, accusing, at Clark. "*There* you are," Matches says hoarsely.
Reeling, his face slippery with oil-fire heat, Clark lets go.
To both their credit, when Clark releases him, Matches lands on his feet without stumbling. He hisses, slightly, and fussily dusts off his jacket and pants.
Hands at his sides, Clark flexes them open and closed. Matches takes his time, smoothing his ridiculous shirt, patting his slick hair, but when he tips his head back against the wall, he looks far calmer than Clark is struggling to feel.
Clark can corkscrew through the earth's crust, whirl out beyond Saturn. This planet's gravity is a plaything, something as insignificant as that splinter of wood clamped between Matches's teeth.
So if Clark is on his knees, as he is now, that's his decision. That's what he needs to do.
On his knees, hands slipping on the unnatural fabric of Matches's pants, thumbs framing the lump at the crotch, and his eyes are lowered, and this is how human beings pray, and ask forgiveness, and beg another chance.
Rao was only ever a word, a long-obsolete concept, but mercy and fraternity are human, always and anew.
"Zip goes down, baby," Matches says, and touches Clark's forehead. "Easy as anything."
Helplessly, Clark chokes on his laughter, as Matches works his thick fingers through Clark's hair, curls his palm around the back of Clark's neck.
"Down, and out, and back and forth," Matches croons, working his fly open and heavy penis out with his free hand. He runs the head, a little slick already, across Clark's cheek.
Clark tries to turn, chase it with his tongue, and Matches chuckles again. He slaps the shaft lightly and groans, tugging Clark's hair before slapping harder, and then harder again.
The hit reverberates across Clark's skin, tweaks and lights his nerves, and Matches's grunts echo in his groin, down his spine.
Under Clark's grip, the muscles in Matches's thighs shift and flex, so fragile and human, yet he can't loosen, can't move, just gapes and waits. Pre-come splatters his chin and nose as Matches jerks his penis, the ring glinting, glowing --.
Red. The stone is red, and not a ruby, and every bit as hot and urgent as Clark's nerves and need.
"That's right," Matches is murmuring, smearing the head over Clark's mouth, painting his lips, "let me take care of you, just like that --"
He groans loudly, head hitting the wall, when Clark closes his lips around half the shaft and Matches's knuckles. He sucks hard, hollowing his cheeks, neglecting to breathe. He does not know if this is prayer, or sex, or submission to that stone, which scrapes his tongue and ratchets up his own need.
He does not know, because Matches's knees are bending, his thighs tightening. When Clark grasps Matches's testicles, squashes and rolls them in his palm, Matches hums loud and high, hips jerking. He is not gentle, he's -- crude, and needful, fucking Clark's mouth and throat.
Clark can breathe in space; he can certainly survive here, choked on fingers and penis, warm salt-pools and rasping motion, filling and stretching him, the testicles shrinking and shuddering under his fingertips.
On his knees, thighs fanned open, Clark rocks his groin against the ground, against the Earth, and pushes his face forward, all the way down.
"Take *that*, take it so *deep* --" Matches never breaks character, never drops the accent; he hooks his thumb into the corner of Clark's mouth and pries it open, whipping out his penis, gleaming with spit, as he yanks Clark's head back. "Good, fucker, you're so *good*, such a --"
Clark sees smog and zeppelins, no stars, nothing like the heavens beyond. He *does* see Matches's penis and testicles, wet and heavy, and Matches's smile above him, teeth bared and face red. The spurts of Matches's orgasm break over his face, hit hard and slide, dripping, down, stinging his eyes and filling his mouth.
Matches cups Clark's face, using his thumb to rub at the moisture. His palm is callused, his touch neither rough nor gentle, simply firm.
Through the sunglasses, he is regarding Clark.
"Should've known," Matches says, thumb pressing Clark's lips against his teeth. "Teach you all sorts of things down on the farm, don't they?"
Clark jerks away from the touch. "Did you get what you needed?"
"Hm?" Matches tucks himself back into his pants, tugging the zipper up with a harsh squeak, and shoots his cuffs. "What's that, sweet thing? Nah, I'm just getting started." He grins, and is still grinning after Clark swipes his face clean. "What say we round up some pretty little thing? Your dancer friend, or a nice girl, and get, as the kids like to say, jiggy with it?"
Back on his feet, Clark fights for both balance and control. "No."
The matchstick dips and rolls as Matches cocks his head. "No?"
"This is about --" Clark shakes his head and bangs his knuckles into his palm.
"'cause from where *I'm* standing --" Matches doesn't move like Bruce, no catlike grace, just brutal, angular *motion*, and he's right here now, up against Clark, cupping his crotch and squeezing rather hard. "You're in need of some --"
Clark wraps one arm around Matches's waist and knocks their heads together, sealing off the crude taunt with a kiss that aches. He rises six stories and flies northeast, to the roof of his hotel, then half-carries, half-drags, Matches down the fire stairs.
They bang into his room, Matches's sunglasses askew on his face, his mouth swollen and smirking, and Clark is almost all the way undressed and falling back on the bed before Matches speaks.
The matchstick, of course, hasn't moved. "Damnedest thing," Matches says, peeling off that hideous jacket and unbuttoning his shirt. "Too much bourbon, could've sworn I felt the ground *move* --"
So they won't acknowledge anything, nothing that veers toward the truth. As Clark squints at the mat of hair on Matches's chest, his gold chains swinging as he crawls up the bed, he does not, exactly, *care*.
The game is still on, and he is beyond prayer -- though never past love -- and Matches's mouth is slick and warm over his thighs, his appreciative hum beating under Clark's skin, making him open wider.
"Turn over, babycakes --" Matches's hair is in his eyes, greasy but soft to the touch.
"I --" Clark's hips move on their own when Matches blows downward. "I don't understand."
Chuckling as his nails scrape over Clark's belly, through his pubic hair, Matches glances up. "Best thing you've said all night."
"No, I --" Clark bites his lip and thinks of -- anything, flying, or volcanoes, his hitting stats in Little League, to stay calm.
There's no use trying. Not with Matches licking at the head of his penis as delicately as a hummingbird, laughing all the while, as his hands squeeze Clark's hips. Not with that ring on his pinky making doubt swirl together with desire and fog out Clark's mind.
"Turn. Over. Sweetness." Matches slaps Clark's hip with his ring-hand and Clark thrusts again, this time into the air, cold and empty.
Matches sighs heavily and sits back on his heels. He folds his hands in his lap like a choir boy.
It's that gesture, the absence of touch and the sneer snaking over Matches's face, that presses Clark back to action. He can fly, and tunnel, and see halfway around the world, and *hear* anything (Ma's snores, just now, and Lois's harsh little pants as she touches herself, and --).
He flips over, face buried in the pillow, and wonders if later, when this is over, when he's home and healthy, there will be anything more than shame to remember this by.
"Oh, *baby*, just --" Matches's voice is rough and sweet, his big hands sliding up the curve of Clark's buttocks, thumbs crooked into the cleft, opening him. "Nothing sweeter, believe you me."
Much more than shame, then, gentle mouth and blunt fingers moving against and into him.
"Gonna make you feel *so* good, baby boy, just --" The rest of Matches's words are lost in the pressure of his tongue, the questing, squeezing, *probing* strength of his hands, and Clark shouts into the mattress. His backside jerks up and back until he's bent over his knees, trembling, babbling into the spit puddle spreading over the sheet.
His penis is trapped between his belly and the side of his thigh, the sheet moving roughly over it. Matches hums, and chuckles, and swirls his tongue until sheet rips under Clark's hands, until his fingers are curled into the mattress, clutching the springs.
"Talk to me," Matches grunts, and for several long moments, all Clark can do is thrust back onto the three fingers inside him, take the stretch and twist his hips until he's blind with it, with showers of stars and the sharp facets of that ring. Matches works his fingers deeper, groaning a little, his other hand tickling the back of Clark's testicles. "C'mon, *talk* to me or you don't get your sugar."
Clark lifts his head and tries to look over his shoulder. "I --"
"Like this?" Matches crosses two fingers and thrusts shallowly.
"I like that, I --" He falls back down, cheek on the mattress, trying to unkink his hands. "I --"
"You want this?"
Only Matches's fingertips are inside, and Clark tries to move, tries to push back, take more, but Matches slaps his lower back.
He *could* move, he could pin Matches down and spear himself on his *arm*, he could --. Pinwheels under his lids and a yawning tension inside, however, and Clark just nods.
This is something that he must need, or else he wouldn't want it so badly, he wouldn't be moments from coming, he wouldn't be *here* and --.
"So fucking tight inside, you know that?" Matches shifts and his fingers are moving again, as is his mouth, teeth tracing the curve of one buttock, and Clark shudders.
"Please, Bruce, I --"
He's bitten, and he *hears* the grunt of pain that Matches gives when Clark's skin will not break, and then it's silent. Matches snakes his hand between Clark's legs, tugging on his testicles as they're passed, and Clark rears up when Matches touches the side of his penis.
"No, please, *please* --"
His movement shifts Matches's fingers deeper inside, and he looks down, sees through searing need Matches's wide fingers wrapping almost all the way around his penis, and he starts to fall backward. Starts, then hits Matches's shoulder, and moves there, on his knees, forward into the rough, jerking touch, backward onto the three, maybe four, fingers twisting inside, and Matches sucks on his ear until Clark quiets.
"Got you, boyo, don't you worry, got you --" He twists his hold on Clark's shaft and chuckles. "Nicely in hand, you just --"
The need has knotted and re-knotted, gone feral and tangled, in the pit of Clark's gut. He remembers, dimly, a game and a contest, prayer and absolution, but he feels, now, nothing more than a bundle of fear, fear that he won't come, that --.
"Easy as pie," Matches continues, sucking on Clark's shoulder, the bones in his wrists creaking a little as he fucks one hand deeper and speeds the pull of the other.
Clark shudders and rocks as hard as he can. "Please --"
"Please, what, baby?"
His spine twists and doubles up, snaps and knots, and Clark hears himself babble, words that don't fit, Kryptonian and English and Old High Dutch and there is no word for 'please' in Kryptonian, so he makes one, pleading and *shoving* into Matches's double touch.
"Clark." Matches licks his hairline and says his name again. "You want to come. *Come* --"
No language has a word for the desperation raking his body. But his (human) name, in a voice that might be Bruce's, is close enough, just enough, that he falls sideways, hips pumping, spilling himself empty in thrashing, jolting thrusts.
He curls on his side, willing the spasms to slow. Later, heaving open his eyes, he finds that he's curled around Matches's knees, arm over the man's lap, fingers curled in the back of his shirt.
The man who is kissing him, sliding down to meet him and licking his mouth open, cannot be Bruce, any more than this whimpering, twitching mess is the last son of Krypton. Bruce never goes near when he can veer, Kal-El never has to beg for anything.
"Cuddly little thing, ain't ya?" Matches brushes back Clark's hair and hums a tune from the stripclub. "Just close those baby blues."
Gotham is a city of masks, but not all of them are visible.
*
He wakes, aching and muddled, to a cool hand on his wrist and a smudge that partially resolves into dark hair and a pale face.
Clark swallows and tastes bile. The red-K did not give him a serpent's head, or split him down the middle, or grow extra digits. For having escaped the worst of its potential, he ought to be thankful.
"Lois?" His voice sounds grated-hoarse and it hurts to move his jaw.
The figure dips its head and laughs softly. "Guess again."
He tries to prop himself up on his elbow, but fails. He can see, now, a black cape join the indistinct figure. Other than this visitor, he appears to be alone in the room. Matches Malone is, of course, long gone.
"Batman?" Clark's voice is stronger now, but the thudding, grinding ache in his head only worsens.
"Bird, actually." The touch leaves his wrist, and Clark realizes that he was having his pulse checked. He blinks against the grime in his eyes and manages to make out red beneath the cape.
It's Robin, standing straight and slender beside the bed, clean and fresh-faced, a small smile on his lips. Before him, Clark feels all the larger, disheveled and *dirty*. He focuses on the expanse of pale, clean skin between Robin's sleeve and the edge of his gauntlet, and thinks of the recreational springs just outside Kandor, where the water is diamond-clear and cool as spring nights.
As Clark blinks at him blearily, Robin's lips tighten and he cocks his head.
"Sorry," Clark says and closes his eyes. He can still *see*, however, the heat signature of Robin's form, and behind that, a garish tartan and slick nylon and the cherry tip of a half-chewed match. "You look good?"
When Clark opens his eyes again, Robin's smile has tilted fractionally. "Thanks. You, ah --"
"Feel like I went ten rounds with Darkseid."
Robin murmurs a sound of acknowledgment. He really is quite *slim*, but very strong. Clean. Clark lifts his hand, uncertain whether he needs to push Robin away or yank him closer.
"Twenty-four to seventy-two hours," Clark says aloud. "I -- what time is it? What *day* is it?"
Robin folds his arms over his chest. His lower lip is very pink, as are his cheeks. "Your wife's very worried about you."
Clark groans and covers his face with his hands. Lois, hair in her teeth, breasts high and small in Robin's hands, and Clark wants to *see*, wants an excuse to bang them together and -- *watch* and direct --.
"Get away from me."
"Hm, no." The mattress dips when Robin sits next to him. "Kind of delegated to babysitting duty."
"No," Clark says, as distinctly as he can.
Robin's mask moves as if he's raised an eyebrow. "You'd prefer Superboy?"
When first exposed to red-K, he tingles all over; when that wears off, he's left with this, pain in every joint and a coating of sticky, gritty *stuff* on his skin, in his brainpan, around his organs. Clark moves as gently as possible, shifting slightly.
The thought of Kon-El seeing him like *this* -- the thought of dealing with Kon-El while suffering a hangover this terrible -- the image of the boy's back arched and curls plastered to his face --. "No, no, I wouldn't."
Robin nods once. Neatly.
His jaw is very sharp, though he still carries some youthful fat on his cheeks. High on his cheeks, just where his blush disappears beneath his mask.
"I'm dangerous," Clark says.
"You're hungover," Robin says. "Very different."
"Kryptonite --"
"-- is nowhere in your system." Robin touches Clark's arm with his gloved hand. His smile sharpens to steel. "But that can be our little secret."
[end]
Pairing: Clark Kent/Matches Malone [others mentioned]
Summary: In which Gotham exhibits near-quantum uncertainty, Clark fails at identity porn, and Matches wields the power of sleaze.
Rating: Adult
Setting/Timeline: Some time between "Murderer?/Fugitive" and "Identity Crisis".
Disclaimer: DC, not me.
Notes: Title from Yo La Tengo, "Today Is The Day". katarik suggested the pairing, she and petronelle audienced an early scene, and the divine jubilancy beta'd the whole thing.
On the whole, Clark hates having to keep secrets. Those he does keep, he gathers close to his breast, because they concern his loved ones. His identity, those of his parents and wife, of his friends: such secrets must be guarded, just as he guards the people they concern.
His reasons for following this story to Gotham are much less significant. He cannot quite meet Lois's eyes, lest he spill the beans. He's keeping this story a secret because -- well, it probably won't pan out, and if she hears that he's tracking the incursion of Gotham drugs into Metropolis, she'll shove him out of the way on her way to breaking the case, and he --.
"You need this," Perry had said, nodding behind his steepled fingers. "Good work, Kent."
He does need this, and if he just moves fast enough, he won't have to lie and Lois won't catch on.
Lois is more amused than angry, leaning there in the doorway as Clark zips shut his overnight bag. She shakes her head and says, "Let me get this straight --"
"I'm going to Gotham."
"Right, and that's --"
"For a story." He unzips the bag again and checks inside for his shaving kit. Not there, and not in the front pocket or on the bed. Where the heck...?
Lois touches his hand. "What'd you lose?"
"Shaving kit."
"You didn't go X-ray specs *why*?"
"I did," he says.
"Rhetorical question." Her hair lifts in clean, sharp wave as she looks around; it smells *good*, like snow and tiny tundra flowers, when Clark dips his head toward her.
She tosses her head, smacking into his nose.
Clark steps back, hand going to his face. "Ow!"
"Big baby." Lois crosses her arms. "The kit's not here. Anyway, you don't even shave --
"I have my toothbrush in there," Clark protests.
"And you still haven't answered the question."
He's going to be late for the train. Holding his bag against his chest, Clark exhales slowly. "Which one?"
As she cups his cheek, she gives him the smile that can silence an entire newsroom. "Why are you going to Gotham?"
"A story," he says and clamps his mouth shut.
Too late. Lois narrows her eyes. "You've been working on that Bialyan shipping cartel like a -- excuse the expression -- *stevedore*. There's nothing in Gotham about --"
The window is right behind him. He could be gone in a flash, the curtains lifting in his breeze, if he had to. If she weren't *Lois* and he weren't helpless before her.
"Another story?" Clark hugs his bag a little more tightly and squints so he doesn't have to see the predatory interest sharpening her face. "It's nothing, really, just a couple tips that probably won't pan out, and I'll be back in a couple days, nothing to worry about --"
"Smallville."
"Yes?"
"Shut up."
His shoulders sag slightly and he tips his face against her palm. "Okay."
She pats him lightly and goes up on tiptoe to kiss the tip of his nose. "Now, shoo."
"But --" She never lets go of a hunch or a clue so easily.
Smiling, Lois jabs his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. "Have a good time. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."
Clark blinks. "That's a pretty short list."
She nods, wrapping her arms briefly around his neck and kissing him fast. "You're learning."
"I guess I am," he says and hugs her, folding his arms around her sharp, narrow back, and squeezing only a tenth as hard as he'd like to. He kisses the part in her hair before he pulls, reluctantly, away. There's no story so good, no lead so promising, that it could ever rival the scent of her hair and sharpness of her smile. "Right. Well. Guess I should get going --"
Lois smacks his rear as he departs.
*
He should be glad that she didn't ask why he's taking the train rather than flying. But Clark has to account for travel to Perry, and he very much dislikes submitting inaccurate expense reports.
Lois would roll her eyes at that before reminding him that Bruce Wayne's money was *made* for spending.
It's like Ma always said: A good partnership is founded on compromise. "And sometimes," she'd add, lifting her chin toward the shed where Pa was banging around with his engines and tools, "the best compromise is the one you never mention."
He's not so sure that such a principle doesn't constitute a sin of omission, but it *was* Ma who said it, so he needs to trust the source, if not the content.
With all the usual delays -- not counting the side-trips he makes, first to a mudslide in Walla Walla and next to a chemical fire outside Madurai -- the train arrives at Robinson Terminal at dusk.
Clark makes his way against the tsunami-tide of commuters rushing to catch their trains. Once on the street, overwhelmed by the press of bodies and shrieking horns and looming buildings, he has to duck into a niche and catch his breath.
He's never going to get used to Gotham. The city is slippery and grit-laden all at once, sliding from his grasp and abrading as it goes.
Metropolis, from his first day there, opened like an especially thick and beautiful book, an encyclopedia, a catalog of all that is right and optimistic.
He takes another breath and lets himself *listen* to the city. Below the clamor of traffic and curses, anxious pulses and frustrated breaths, he can hear the quick, steady beat of life, almost symphonic in its movement.
He finds his hotel, a cheap and tiny room that is clean, and sets down his bag.
In the jagged slits and angles of gaps between buildings, the sky darkens as far as it ever gets -- a smear of gray-brown, studded with floodlights from the municipal zeppelins, reflecting the ambient neon from the street.
He washes up and heads outside to find dinner.
After he's demolished the pasta primavera and two slices of pie -- "second one's on me, hon," the waitress said and winked; she'd assumed he was new in town -- he walks further downtown. The streets narrow even more, jog at sharp angles, refuse to make sense.
He hears Batman's grapple gun from approximately five blocks away, but keeps walking until the sound of Batman's body shearing through the air ceases, followed by a single thump of boot in an alley.
In the back of his mind, Clark half-believes that Bruce would prefer to play cat and mouse for hours.
Clark, however, has a story to track down. He's never been one for ducking a necessary confrontation, either, so he turns neatly on his heel and steps into the alley.
He has not been scared of Batman for a long while now. All the same, the way Bruce seems to thicken, *emanate*, from the shadows is a bit unnerving.
"What --"
"Journalism, that's all." Clark holds up his hand.
Batman's cape whispers over broken glass. "-- are you doing here?"
"My job," Clark says. Batman doesn't move, so Clark spreads his arms. "My --. My *other* job."
"Elaborate."
Clark ducks his head, glasses slipping down his nose. "Nothing important. There's some talk --" He hears Batman move, but that still doesn't fully prepare him for the *presence* of the man, suddenly a few inches away. Clark can't be intimidated; he knows that Bruce is acting out of habit. He licks his lower lip anyway. "Some Gotham dealers are expanding. New networks, transportation routes, south to --"
"Metropolis."
"Yes."
"You snuck into Gotham." Batman turns thirty degrees, shoulder nudging into Clark's chest.
Clark laughs, lightly, and shakes his head. "I took the *train*." When Bruce doesn't respond, Clark swallows the laughter and reaches out; Bruce's shoulder slides away from his touch. "Amtrak's business class is hardly *sneaking*."
As he turns, Batman's jaw catches a stray shaft of light and glows, hard bone and set determination. "Bruce Wayne spoke to White earlier."
Clark's hand drops, clutching into a fist, to his side. "Oh, for *pity's* sake --" The curve on Batman's lips is all Bat, no trace of Bruce. Clark doesn't know, tries not to care, whether he's angry at the insistence that Batman and Bruce Wayne are somehow *separate* or at the pointlessness of an alleyway interrogation when Batman already knew the answer. "So you know."
Batman nods, the small, mean smile vanishing, and steps away with a snap to his cape. "I do."
There is no point in asking why, but Clark feels the word shape itself in his mouth. He exhales instead. "I don't suppose you'd have any advice for the hick reporter?"
Batman's mouth thins down to nothing. Clark recognizes the thinking expression and adjusts his stance, tries for casual, expectant, *hopeful*.
Gotham has a way of making him all-too-aware of his --. Presence, and behavior, as if he's playing a role like everyone else.
He supposes this is a useful lesson. It still makes him uncomfortable.
"You're not familiar with --" Batman stops.
Clark gives him a grin. "This isn't one of your dares, is it?"
For half a moment, Batman seems almost stumped. He draws himself up. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Widening his grin, keeping his tone light, Clark shrugs. "You know, you can't handle Gotham, she's more than you've ever feared, you're out of your league, yadda yadda --"
Under the cowl, Batman blinks. "Yadda yadda?"
"It's an expression!" Clark protests.
"Gazebo Club on Aparo." Batman sights upward and shoots his line. "I'll get in touch with my sources."
"Why not just --" *Give me their names*, Clark was going to say, but Batman's already four stories up and rising.
That would be too simple, of course.
"And Clark?" Batman is swinging onto a roof two buildings away, speaking under his breath, and Clark isn't sure whether he's touched or annoyed at the man's confidence that he'll be heard. "Do try to blend in, won't you? You look like a Mormon missionary in those trousers."
*
An hour later, while nursing his third ginger ale, Clark realizes that he should have taken a nap before coming out.
There's no earthly reason for him to be quite so tired. All he's doing is sitting here in a decrepit bar, keeping his ears open, waiting.
And waiting is, really, the worst possible thing for him.
He rarely misbehaved as a child, but, as Ma likes to say, brushing his hair back from his forehead, "he had his moments". Flushing a box of Pa's nails down the toilet to see what would happen, throwing a basketball too hard and taking out the big bay window that looks out over the back acreage, cussing out Pete Ross's cousin for calling him a snotface: He had his moments, and the only punishment that ever worked, that ever taught him the lessons of courtesy and care that he needed to learn, was being set down on an ancient bale of hay and told to keep still.
That bale was so old, the hay was almost black, softened and coated with oil from the tractors and years of dust. He can smell it still, feel it brush under his fidgeting hands and scrape the backs of his legs.
"Sugar, don't even *tell* me you just wandered in here." Hot breath on his neck, teeth-grindingly broad Jersey accent in his ear.
Clark's hand clenches around the dirty glass and he has to force himself not to break it, not to jump. He takes a sharp breath, the smell of alcohol-heavy cologne stinging his nostrils.
"Sorry," he says, and doesn't turn around. He squints, but the bottles behind the bar are too filmed with smoke and grease to reflect much more than a jarring collection of color -- red and green and yellow, a nightmare of tartan. "I think you've got me confused with someone --"
"Not many built like you," the man says, his hot breath replaced momentarily by what Clark could swear was a *tongue*.
He must be thrown off by the swirling lights and streamers of smoke, however. For one thing, this is not *that* kind of establishment, and for another -- the man swinging onto the stool next to him doesn't seem to be --.
Well, that sort of guy. Clark blinks, knowing he's "going owlish", as Lois likes to say, but can't help it. This man is large. And garish.
While Clark has nothing approaching "gaydar", this man's entire bearing screams a very particular kind of "straight". Two gold-colored chains are tangled in his chest hair, glossy aviator shades hide his eyes; there is a matchstick clamped in the corner of his mouth and one rough, meaty hand clasping Clark's shoulder. He sports a tartan jacket over a bumblebee-striped shirt and purple pants.
"Word out there is you're looking for some news..." He leans in, fingers flexing around the shoulder joint, and whistles lowly. "Work out, huh?"
"I --" Clark tries to lean, politely, away, but the man's grip doesn't let up. "I'm sorry. *Who* are you?"
The grin is quick, a gleam of teeth, the matchstick rolling to the opposite corner. "Malone. Friends call me Matches."
"Right, well, you see --" Clark looks around quickly, but the bar's population is far more absorbed it in its own business than his own. "Mr. Malone, I think you've made a mistake."
Never letting go of Clark's shoulder, Malone twists in his seat, digging his elbow into the bar, bringing his other hand up to cup his cheek. "Now is that so?"
"I'm pretty sure, yes." Clark hears his voice stammer and winces. "Sorry?"
"Sweet kid," Malone says, absently, waving the bartender down. The signet ring on his pinky finger is almost big enough to collar a Chihuahua.
Clark hasn't been quite so *aware* of another man's relative size in a very long time.
"Two brandies and soda," Malone tells the bartender. His hand shifts up, fingers brushing Clark's neck. "You need a refill, Charles Atlas?"
"I --" Clark looks down at his glass, confused by the double order, apparently all for Malone himself. "No, thank you."
"And polite, too!" Malone squeezes Clark's neck and downs his first drink in one gulp. His neck is thick, his Adam's apple bobbing enthusiastically as he swallows. When he sets the glass down, he smacks his lips and the matchstick bobs. "Don't grow 'em so big and polite around here. Where you from?"
The brutish line of Malone's jaw, the heaviness of his hand, twigs something familiar in Clark's memory. He breathes in, lets himself appear to hesitate, and starts to scan the man with his X-ray vision.
Malone holds up his hand, signet ring winking, its ruby catching the light. "Wait, wait, lemme guess." He tilts his head, the aviator glasses slipping fractionally down his large nose. "Polite, big blue eyes, not much of an accent. I'm gonna say -- Missouri? Iowa. Cornfields and cowshit, if you know what I'm saying."
"Kansas," Clark replies.
Malone's grin is sudden, showing two rows of piano-key teeth, big and regular and faintly yellow. He thumps Clark's shoulder as in victory. "Kansas!"
"Kansas." Clark drains the melted ice from his glass and sets it down as firmly as he can. "Now, Mr. Malone, if you'll --"
He tries to stand up, but Malone presses him back down. "What'd I tell you? Friends. Friends call me what now?"
"Matches," Clark says. "I really should be --"
"Matches, that's right." Malone snaps his fingers and orders another brandy. Clark hadn't noticed him finishing the second one, but Matches's breath is heavy with the alcohol. "Now, Wichita, listen up."
"Yes?"
Matches hauls Clark close, tipping their foreheads together, and Clark tries not to look at the big pores and spidery veins on Matches's cheek. "Word is, you're looking for some info."
"Maybe," Clark says, and closes his eyes. Even so, his senses are assaulted by -- *Malone*, in a word. Tartan and nylon, cologne and aftershave and sharp, musky sweat and brandy. Rasp of accent, wet smack of lips. He finishes the X-ray scan. Five fused vertebrae in Malone's lower back, pinned with steel and what seems to be lead, such that he can't make out the details. He tries to sit up a little straighter. "Bruce?"
Malone holds him in place and barks with laughter. "Who the fuck's *Bruce*? You meeting someone?"
"No, I meant --"
Through the sunglasses, Clark could be sure he can see Malone narrowing his eyes. "You already stepping out on me, farmboy?"
Clark jerks away, as smoothly as he can, and rubs both hands over his face. Confusion prickles like sweat over his skin, digging in, burrowing deep. He'd been so certain, convinced for several nanoseconds, that this was Bruce, playing another game, out to show Clark one more time that Gotham is no place for the likes of him.
"And here I thought we had something..." Matches says mournfully, letting his hand drop on Clark's knee. He shakes his head, slowly, as he frowns and the matchstick dangles precariously.
"Just a mistake --" Clark tries, but Matches doesn't reply. "Matches, I'm sorry, I just think --" He swallows and tastes stale cigarette smoke and the tang of Matches's cologne. "Mistaken identity?"
The shades slide down Matches's nose, just enough to show Clark the wink before Matches straightens up and grins. Hazel eyes, nothing like Bruce's dark blue ones. Although they could be contact lenses, Clark is unsure whether checking would constitute *cheating* in some complicated way. "You ever heard the one about gullible and the dictionary?"
It's one of Lois' favorites. Clark nods. "I have."
"Shame," Matches says, and stands up, digging a money clip out of his breast pocket and peeling off four fives. "'cause it was made for *you*, sweets."
"Yes," Clark says and finds himself standing up, following Matches toward the door. "It probably was."
*
Whoever this character is, whatever his reasons for sticking like cement to Clark, Matches *does* seem to know his way around Gotham's underbelly. He gladhands nearly every hood they pass, introduces Clark to some mid-level flunkies in a rogue branch of the 100 called, unremarkably, the 37, whispers in the ear of streetwalkers and hired muscle alike, and never, ever lets go of Clark's elbow.
Matches steers him through bars and social clubs, discotheques and converted ballrooms. Although Clark learns a great deal, acquires much information on a variety of shady dealings and subcultural mores, and he doesn't ever see Matches break the law, per se, he is, in a word, uncomfortable.
He remains uncertain *why* he is here, just what Matches could believe he's helping Clark *with*.
"Night on the town," Matches says, big hand on the small of Clark's back, as he nudges Clark into the next seedy club. "Be amazed at what goes down in the big city."
Sighing a little at the man's unconscious patronizing, Clark stumbles down the steps.
Matches steadies him with a grin. "Easy there, big fella."
Clark nods his thanks. This -- stumbling and stammering -- isn't something he does, not consciously. It happens and it's always happened (Ma's wedding china was decimated by the time he was two). Maybe it happens because he's trying hard to fit in, maybe because he's concentrating on *not* using his powers, or maybe because he's a klutz who never grew into his own body.
Maybe it's a little of everything. What's more, in Gotham, at least, he's never going to feel entirely surefooted.
After Clark squares his shoulders, he turns to take in the club. There are people dancing on some kind of makeshift stage. These people are slowly shedding their clothes to the beat of the music.
He stops short and Matches bumps -- *presses* -- against his back.
"This is a --" Clark's blush spills across his cheeks, into his hair, down his neck. "Matches."
Matches claps Clark's shoulder and moves even closer. "Nothing illegal here, Kansas, not to fret." His breath breaks, warmer than any blush, down the nape of Clark's neck. "Unless you're *looking* for that..."
Clark shakes his head, which brushes his skin across Matches's lips. The matchstick scrapes down the side of his neck. "It's not that."
The people stripping appear to be feminine, masculine, and many other things. A spotlight catches one young man, shaggy dark hair shadowing his face, as he pulls a royal-blue jersey off one long, tanned arm.
"See something you like?" Matches speaks lowly, raspily, into Clark's ear. Clark can't let himself move, lest he initiate another near-kiss.
"No." The blush deepens, sparking and spreading, as he takes a slow breath.
"So what's the problem?"
Clark holds up his left hand and twists his wedding ring with his thumb. "I'm a married --"
"Sucker," Matches says, loudly enough for a passerby to stop and turn around. "Not you, honey." Matches smacks his lips. "Though we could discuss any sucking..."
The woman -- the *person* wearing the gold lame slip flips Matches off and totters away on spike heels.
"You're --" *Revolting*, but Clark doesn't finish the sentence. Matches is disgusting, cruder than anyone Clark's ever met outside Bibbo's bar, but there's something oddly *charming* about the man, too.
Rather than speak, Clark spins on his heel, intending to head for the door. Matches's shoulders, the tartan gone sickly under the blue lights here, block his way. Matches's face seems to surface like something aquatic, its leer brightening the longer Clark looks at him.
Staring contest: He's reduced to *staring* down this, this *character*, this affable jerk who may or may not be Bruce --.
They're staring at each other like this is fifth grade recess and they both claimed the T-ball bat at the same time.
Never blinking over the edge of his dark glasses, Matches brings his left hand up and pats Clark's cheek.
"That's right, boyo," he says, and Clark believes for a moment that Matches can not only *see* his blush, but is testing its temperature.
That idea goes out the window, however, when Matches turns his hand and brushes his knuckles down Clark's jaw. His touch is surreally, absurdly, gentle. Clark works his teeth together, restraining the strange urge to tip toward that hand, rough as its skin is.
Matches nods and still does not blink. He runs his hand back up Clark's cheekbone and pats him again. His signet ring brushes coolly, tingling, against Clark's flush.
"That's right," Matches says, as if they've come to some kind of decision. "Just two buddies, what's the harm in that?"
Clark could point out any number of facts here.
He's not Matches's buddy. He doesn't even know *who* Matches really is. He doesn't approve of strip clubs, though he accepts that many women -- and, it would seem, young men -- earn a good living in these establishments. He's tired, he has a story to investigate, he's --.
"And a lemonade for my teetotalling friend here," Matches tells the waitress when they've taken a rickety table near the stage. He swats her on the butt as she departs, and while Clark expects her to ignore that, or clock him one, instead she winks.
"Nice girl," Matches tells Clark when she's gone. "Filipino, lives over on the East Side with her ladyfriend, *if* you know what I mean." Clark nods, but Matches leers anyway, rolling the matchstick quickly from corner to corner. "What I wouldn't give for a peephole camera on them. Just the one, mind, for *personal* use. Nothing too exploitational --"
"What are we doing here?" Clark asks quickly when Matches pauses to kiss the waitress on the cheek upon her return. Clark rubs his cheek, absently, only realizing he's covering the side that Matches had patted when Matches tilts his head inquisitively.
To cover his embarrassment, Clark drains his lemonade and asks the waitress for another.
His face feels tight, almost shrunken, with warmth. It must be the tang of the lemons, the late hour, the sense of futility in following Matches around all night.
"You okay there, buddy boy?" Matches slides onto the chair nearest to Clark's, his arm around Clark, one thigh as hard as a side of beef pressed against Clark's own.
"I'm fine," Clark says with some difficulty.
"Gotcha something," Matches says, waving at the stage, curling his index finger in a come-hither gesture.
"Oh, no, I --" Clark looks down at the scarred top of the table when the young man in royal blue weaves toward them.
"No, you, *what*?"
"I --"
"Hello?" The young man smiles, teeth neon under a swooping black light, and leans in.
Perhaps Matches has tugged Clark's chair out, but there's suddenly *room*, his lap is exposed, then filled by this very nice, very muscular young man.
His blue V-neck shirt, the collar edged with gold, plunges much farther down his chest than most men's garments do. His torso ripples and sways, and Clark realizes that he's *dancing*. Around Clark, over him, brushing his hair over Clark's burning face, flexing long fingers against Clark's chest.
Matches leans in, his slick hair against Clark's ear.
The stripper smells like sweat and nothing else, clean and sharp whenever he arches close. Matches chuckles, low and slow, patting Clark's leg to the rhythm.
This is another joke at Clark's expense.
The dancer wets his lips, looking down at Matches's hand, his long lashes shadowing his cheek.
Matches shifts when the dancer does, and Clark tenses against the brush of Matches's knuckles over his crotch, friction-warmth sheeting through him.
"Somebody's endowment got --" Matches seems to address the dancer while Clark remains as still, as unresponsive, as possible. "*Super*-sized."
The dancer laughs and thrusts dramatically into the air.
Another joke, another dare, another stupid schoolboy challenge that Clark does not have to accept.
He's polite, perhaps to a fault, but he's not stupid.
"No, thank you." Clark grasps the dancer's slim wrists and lifts him back to his feet. "You're very handsome, but you're not --"
"Not your type?" Matches sucks hard, loudly, on the matchstick. "Could've fooled me, farmer --"
"No worries, honey." The dancer gives Clark a lingering smile before slipping back into the crowd.
He wasn't Dick. If they're going to keep playing this game, there is no such person as Nightwing anyway, so Clark doesn't respond to Matches's question.
Instead, he takes one meaty, callused palm in his and drags Matches to the fire exit. He shoulders open the door and kicks aside the garbage cans blocking the alley.
"Little riled up?" Matches leans against the door, hands tucked into his armpits, that damn matchstick dancing in his lips.
"You're *infuriating*, you're disgusting, you're --"
Clark stops, spins away, when Matches starts laughing at him and does not stop.
If he had any doubts that this was just a game, they evaporate when he reaches the street.
Because Matches is speaking under his breath.
That he is apologizing should not matter.
"Sorry, brother, never meant --" The accent never wavers, even in the sudden hush, even when Clark stands before him again and Matches tips back his head and Clark sees himself reflected, twinned, in those sunglasses. "Back for more?"
Clark could be a glutton for punishment. He could be a dog with a bone. He might be too nice for his own good.
If, however, the game is going to be played, he's going to play it well.
Win.
His hand closes around Matches's throat, rises, and the tips of Matches's shiny, sharp loafers scrape the asphalt.
"Hey, hey!" Matches raises his hands, palms out, before grabbing at Clark's forearm. "Hey, easy, big boy, just a --"
He could lift Matches by the scruff of the neck, fly him halfway around the world. Show him -- everything, everything outside of Gotham. Sierra Leone, where every boy is a good soldier for some warlord or another; Kerala, where filth is not decorative, not the subject of fashion spreads and perfume ads, but ground into the pores of young and old, deadening the soul and body; Tehran, where a man dancing atop another is worth one hundred lashes and rape by security forces, not a chuckle and grope.
He could drag Matches, and Bruce, and the Bat, through contrails, out beyond the stratosphere, out to where broken rockets and abandoned satellites spin through the last wisps of oxygen.
Hold him up under the shoulders, shake him, *show* him what Clark does deal with, what he *can* confront.
Gotham is nothing, not compared to the world.
Gotham is, merely, always, Bruce's world.
Clark's vision careens from the microscopic -- corpuscles and lymph -- up the scale.
Matches's mouth twists, the matchstick jutting, accusing, at Clark. "*There* you are," Matches says hoarsely.
Reeling, his face slippery with oil-fire heat, Clark lets go.
To both their credit, when Clark releases him, Matches lands on his feet without stumbling. He hisses, slightly, and fussily dusts off his jacket and pants.
Hands at his sides, Clark flexes them open and closed. Matches takes his time, smoothing his ridiculous shirt, patting his slick hair, but when he tips his head back against the wall, he looks far calmer than Clark is struggling to feel.
Clark can corkscrew through the earth's crust, whirl out beyond Saturn. This planet's gravity is a plaything, something as insignificant as that splinter of wood clamped between Matches's teeth.
So if Clark is on his knees, as he is now, that's his decision. That's what he needs to do.
On his knees, hands slipping on the unnatural fabric of Matches's pants, thumbs framing the lump at the crotch, and his eyes are lowered, and this is how human beings pray, and ask forgiveness, and beg another chance.
Rao was only ever a word, a long-obsolete concept, but mercy and fraternity are human, always and anew.
"Zip goes down, baby," Matches says, and touches Clark's forehead. "Easy as anything."
Helplessly, Clark chokes on his laughter, as Matches works his thick fingers through Clark's hair, curls his palm around the back of Clark's neck.
"Down, and out, and back and forth," Matches croons, working his fly open and heavy penis out with his free hand. He runs the head, a little slick already, across Clark's cheek.
Clark tries to turn, chase it with his tongue, and Matches chuckles again. He slaps the shaft lightly and groans, tugging Clark's hair before slapping harder, and then harder again.
The hit reverberates across Clark's skin, tweaks and lights his nerves, and Matches's grunts echo in his groin, down his spine.
Under Clark's grip, the muscles in Matches's thighs shift and flex, so fragile and human, yet he can't loosen, can't move, just gapes and waits. Pre-come splatters his chin and nose as Matches jerks his penis, the ring glinting, glowing --.
Red. The stone is red, and not a ruby, and every bit as hot and urgent as Clark's nerves and need.
"That's right," Matches is murmuring, smearing the head over Clark's mouth, painting his lips, "let me take care of you, just like that --"
He groans loudly, head hitting the wall, when Clark closes his lips around half the shaft and Matches's knuckles. He sucks hard, hollowing his cheeks, neglecting to breathe. He does not know if this is prayer, or sex, or submission to that stone, which scrapes his tongue and ratchets up his own need.
He does not know, because Matches's knees are bending, his thighs tightening. When Clark grasps Matches's testicles, squashes and rolls them in his palm, Matches hums loud and high, hips jerking. He is not gentle, he's -- crude, and needful, fucking Clark's mouth and throat.
Clark can breathe in space; he can certainly survive here, choked on fingers and penis, warm salt-pools and rasping motion, filling and stretching him, the testicles shrinking and shuddering under his fingertips.
On his knees, thighs fanned open, Clark rocks his groin against the ground, against the Earth, and pushes his face forward, all the way down.
"Take *that*, take it so *deep* --" Matches never breaks character, never drops the accent; he hooks his thumb into the corner of Clark's mouth and pries it open, whipping out his penis, gleaming with spit, as he yanks Clark's head back. "Good, fucker, you're so *good*, such a --"
Clark sees smog and zeppelins, no stars, nothing like the heavens beyond. He *does* see Matches's penis and testicles, wet and heavy, and Matches's smile above him, teeth bared and face red. The spurts of Matches's orgasm break over his face, hit hard and slide, dripping, down, stinging his eyes and filling his mouth.
Matches cups Clark's face, using his thumb to rub at the moisture. His palm is callused, his touch neither rough nor gentle, simply firm.
Through the sunglasses, he is regarding Clark.
"Should've known," Matches says, thumb pressing Clark's lips against his teeth. "Teach you all sorts of things down on the farm, don't they?"
Clark jerks away from the touch. "Did you get what you needed?"
"Hm?" Matches tucks himself back into his pants, tugging the zipper up with a harsh squeak, and shoots his cuffs. "What's that, sweet thing? Nah, I'm just getting started." He grins, and is still grinning after Clark swipes his face clean. "What say we round up some pretty little thing? Your dancer friend, or a nice girl, and get, as the kids like to say, jiggy with it?"
Back on his feet, Clark fights for both balance and control. "No."
The matchstick dips and rolls as Matches cocks his head. "No?"
"This is about --" Clark shakes his head and bangs his knuckles into his palm.
"'cause from where *I'm* standing --" Matches doesn't move like Bruce, no catlike grace, just brutal, angular *motion*, and he's right here now, up against Clark, cupping his crotch and squeezing rather hard. "You're in need of some --"
Clark wraps one arm around Matches's waist and knocks their heads together, sealing off the crude taunt with a kiss that aches. He rises six stories and flies northeast, to the roof of his hotel, then half-carries, half-drags, Matches down the fire stairs.
They bang into his room, Matches's sunglasses askew on his face, his mouth swollen and smirking, and Clark is almost all the way undressed and falling back on the bed before Matches speaks.
The matchstick, of course, hasn't moved. "Damnedest thing," Matches says, peeling off that hideous jacket and unbuttoning his shirt. "Too much bourbon, could've sworn I felt the ground *move* --"
So they won't acknowledge anything, nothing that veers toward the truth. As Clark squints at the mat of hair on Matches's chest, his gold chains swinging as he crawls up the bed, he does not, exactly, *care*.
The game is still on, and he is beyond prayer -- though never past love -- and Matches's mouth is slick and warm over his thighs, his appreciative hum beating under Clark's skin, making him open wider.
"Turn over, babycakes --" Matches's hair is in his eyes, greasy but soft to the touch.
"I --" Clark's hips move on their own when Matches blows downward. "I don't understand."
Chuckling as his nails scrape over Clark's belly, through his pubic hair, Matches glances up. "Best thing you've said all night."
"No, I --" Clark bites his lip and thinks of -- anything, flying, or volcanoes, his hitting stats in Little League, to stay calm.
There's no use trying. Not with Matches licking at the head of his penis as delicately as a hummingbird, laughing all the while, as his hands squeeze Clark's hips. Not with that ring on his pinky making doubt swirl together with desire and fog out Clark's mind.
"Turn. Over. Sweetness." Matches slaps Clark's hip with his ring-hand and Clark thrusts again, this time into the air, cold and empty.
Matches sighs heavily and sits back on his heels. He folds his hands in his lap like a choir boy.
It's that gesture, the absence of touch and the sneer snaking over Matches's face, that presses Clark back to action. He can fly, and tunnel, and see halfway around the world, and *hear* anything (Ma's snores, just now, and Lois's harsh little pants as she touches herself, and --).
He flips over, face buried in the pillow, and wonders if later, when this is over, when he's home and healthy, there will be anything more than shame to remember this by.
"Oh, *baby*, just --" Matches's voice is rough and sweet, his big hands sliding up the curve of Clark's buttocks, thumbs crooked into the cleft, opening him. "Nothing sweeter, believe you me."
Much more than shame, then, gentle mouth and blunt fingers moving against and into him.
"Gonna make you feel *so* good, baby boy, just --" The rest of Matches's words are lost in the pressure of his tongue, the questing, squeezing, *probing* strength of his hands, and Clark shouts into the mattress. His backside jerks up and back until he's bent over his knees, trembling, babbling into the spit puddle spreading over the sheet.
His penis is trapped between his belly and the side of his thigh, the sheet moving roughly over it. Matches hums, and chuckles, and swirls his tongue until sheet rips under Clark's hands, until his fingers are curled into the mattress, clutching the springs.
"Talk to me," Matches grunts, and for several long moments, all Clark can do is thrust back onto the three fingers inside him, take the stretch and twist his hips until he's blind with it, with showers of stars and the sharp facets of that ring. Matches works his fingers deeper, groaning a little, his other hand tickling the back of Clark's testicles. "C'mon, *talk* to me or you don't get your sugar."
Clark lifts his head and tries to look over his shoulder. "I --"
"Like this?" Matches crosses two fingers and thrusts shallowly.
"I like that, I --" He falls back down, cheek on the mattress, trying to unkink his hands. "I --"
"You want this?"
Only Matches's fingertips are inside, and Clark tries to move, tries to push back, take more, but Matches slaps his lower back.
He *could* move, he could pin Matches down and spear himself on his *arm*, he could --. Pinwheels under his lids and a yawning tension inside, however, and Clark just nods.
This is something that he must need, or else he wouldn't want it so badly, he wouldn't be moments from coming, he wouldn't be *here* and --.
"So fucking tight inside, you know that?" Matches shifts and his fingers are moving again, as is his mouth, teeth tracing the curve of one buttock, and Clark shudders.
"Please, Bruce, I --"
He's bitten, and he *hears* the grunt of pain that Matches gives when Clark's skin will not break, and then it's silent. Matches snakes his hand between Clark's legs, tugging on his testicles as they're passed, and Clark rears up when Matches touches the side of his penis.
"No, please, *please* --"
His movement shifts Matches's fingers deeper inside, and he looks down, sees through searing need Matches's wide fingers wrapping almost all the way around his penis, and he starts to fall backward. Starts, then hits Matches's shoulder, and moves there, on his knees, forward into the rough, jerking touch, backward onto the three, maybe four, fingers twisting inside, and Matches sucks on his ear until Clark quiets.
"Got you, boyo, don't you worry, got you --" He twists his hold on Clark's shaft and chuckles. "Nicely in hand, you just --"
The need has knotted and re-knotted, gone feral and tangled, in the pit of Clark's gut. He remembers, dimly, a game and a contest, prayer and absolution, but he feels, now, nothing more than a bundle of fear, fear that he won't come, that --.
"Easy as pie," Matches continues, sucking on Clark's shoulder, the bones in his wrists creaking a little as he fucks one hand deeper and speeds the pull of the other.
Clark shudders and rocks as hard as he can. "Please --"
"Please, what, baby?"
His spine twists and doubles up, snaps and knots, and Clark hears himself babble, words that don't fit, Kryptonian and English and Old High Dutch and there is no word for 'please' in Kryptonian, so he makes one, pleading and *shoving* into Matches's double touch.
"Clark." Matches licks his hairline and says his name again. "You want to come. *Come* --"
No language has a word for the desperation raking his body. But his (human) name, in a voice that might be Bruce's, is close enough, just enough, that he falls sideways, hips pumping, spilling himself empty in thrashing, jolting thrusts.
He curls on his side, willing the spasms to slow. Later, heaving open his eyes, he finds that he's curled around Matches's knees, arm over the man's lap, fingers curled in the back of his shirt.
The man who is kissing him, sliding down to meet him and licking his mouth open, cannot be Bruce, any more than this whimpering, twitching mess is the last son of Krypton. Bruce never goes near when he can veer, Kal-El never has to beg for anything.
"Cuddly little thing, ain't ya?" Matches brushes back Clark's hair and hums a tune from the stripclub. "Just close those baby blues."
Gotham is a city of masks, but not all of them are visible.
*
He wakes, aching and muddled, to a cool hand on his wrist and a smudge that partially resolves into dark hair and a pale face.
Clark swallows and tastes bile. The red-K did not give him a serpent's head, or split him down the middle, or grow extra digits. For having escaped the worst of its potential, he ought to be thankful.
"Lois?" His voice sounds grated-hoarse and it hurts to move his jaw.
The figure dips its head and laughs softly. "Guess again."
He tries to prop himself up on his elbow, but fails. He can see, now, a black cape join the indistinct figure. Other than this visitor, he appears to be alone in the room. Matches Malone is, of course, long gone.
"Batman?" Clark's voice is stronger now, but the thudding, grinding ache in his head only worsens.
"Bird, actually." The touch leaves his wrist, and Clark realizes that he was having his pulse checked. He blinks against the grime in his eyes and manages to make out red beneath the cape.
It's Robin, standing straight and slender beside the bed, clean and fresh-faced, a small smile on his lips. Before him, Clark feels all the larger, disheveled and *dirty*. He focuses on the expanse of pale, clean skin between Robin's sleeve and the edge of his gauntlet, and thinks of the recreational springs just outside Kandor, where the water is diamond-clear and cool as spring nights.
As Clark blinks at him blearily, Robin's lips tighten and he cocks his head.
"Sorry," Clark says and closes his eyes. He can still *see*, however, the heat signature of Robin's form, and behind that, a garish tartan and slick nylon and the cherry tip of a half-chewed match. "You look good?"
When Clark opens his eyes again, Robin's smile has tilted fractionally. "Thanks. You, ah --"
"Feel like I went ten rounds with Darkseid."
Robin murmurs a sound of acknowledgment. He really is quite *slim*, but very strong. Clean. Clark lifts his hand, uncertain whether he needs to push Robin away or yank him closer.
"Twenty-four to seventy-two hours," Clark says aloud. "I -- what time is it? What *day* is it?"
Robin folds his arms over his chest. His lower lip is very pink, as are his cheeks. "Your wife's very worried about you."
Clark groans and covers his face with his hands. Lois, hair in her teeth, breasts high and small in Robin's hands, and Clark wants to *see*, wants an excuse to bang them together and -- *watch* and direct --.
"Get away from me."
"Hm, no." The mattress dips when Robin sits next to him. "Kind of delegated to babysitting duty."
"No," Clark says, as distinctly as he can.
Robin's mask moves as if he's raised an eyebrow. "You'd prefer Superboy?"
When first exposed to red-K, he tingles all over; when that wears off, he's left with this, pain in every joint and a coating of sticky, gritty *stuff* on his skin, in his brainpan, around his organs. Clark moves as gently as possible, shifting slightly.
The thought of Kon-El seeing him like *this* -- the thought of dealing with Kon-El while suffering a hangover this terrible -- the image of the boy's back arched and curls plastered to his face --. "No, no, I wouldn't."
Robin nods once. Neatly.
His jaw is very sharp, though he still carries some youthful fat on his cheeks. High on his cheeks, just where his blush disappears beneath his mask.
"I'm dangerous," Clark says.
"You're hungover," Robin says. "Very different."
"Kryptonite --"
"-- is nowhere in your system." Robin touches Clark's arm with his gloved hand. His smile sharpens to steel. "But that can be our little secret."
[end]