A ficlet.
Irredeemable Clark/Bruce fluff with bonus OOC Clark POV, I'm afraid.
Rated mature.
For the latest contrelamontre challenge; has jack-all to do with Easter.
Miscommunication
Bruce mouths something into the needles of water when he drops the soap. I can't make out the word because I'm distracted by the curve and flex of his tired, slippery body, and it's gone in a dirty huff of steam, too ephemeral even for my ears to catch. Something he picked up from the docks? Alfred would disapprove. I'm sitting in my costume, on the edge of Bruce's bed, as if that way it won't actually count. I don't have to wait very long, which is definitely a good thing. Bruce is done with his shower, having skipped the shampoo for fear of smelling too nice (he's Batman, by the way). He stubs his toe once on the door and the wince travels all the way up the slope of my shoulders. I've been rehearsing a dozen different non-apologies and none of them sound remotely non-apologetic, so I settle for 'Hey.'
It began with a foul-smelling egg on an alien planet, as so many of these stories are wont to. (My inner Lois - please, no more jokes - lifts a brow at 'wont'.) One moment we were planting our fists on the conference table, oblivious to the others' sighs and glares, and the next we were listening to what might well have been the last gargles of a dying civilisation. You'll excuse me if I admit that I... kind of have a thing about those. Naturally, Batman was completely sure that it was a trap. Naturally, Batman was the one team member on the site to go sticking his face over an unidentified egg roughly the size of France. The egg stuck back, unfortunately - right after the Flash remarked that he'd seen a movie like that, once. To top it all off, the egg turned out to be the larval form of a species of monster that proliferated like bunnies and was so viscerally horrifying that for the next five red-eyed hours I couldn't see why a regular Kryptonian guy like me should complain about not being exactly human. Relativism can be useful, sometimes, you see.
By the time we'd returned to the Watchtower, Bruce had worked up a decent sulk. Never mind that he had gone into the fray despite his misgivings. Never mind that the egg-monsters happened to have decimated the populations of several planets in the neighbourhood. Never mind that he and Hawkgirl figured out the sound strategy that freed the Glaoi from their oppressors' yoke - Sorry, sorry. The point is that all Bruce could think was that he'd been humiliated. And that he had failed.
The other point is that there's something peculiarly nasty about seeing an evil alien trying to crawl down your best friend's throat, especially when you've had... somewhat similar thoughts.
Deep breath, Kent. Now you're just being silly.
Bruce mouths something else now, and again I'm swimming in something, because I can't hear him. It can't be water, water conducts sound very well. Let's put it this way: you don't want to know about what whales can get up to in dolby digital. As I was saying. Conveniently enough, Bruce's preferred method of coping with humiliation is to punch the kidneys out of some of Crane's new recruits. At least it is this week. There was the ritual after-quarrel at the Watchtower - I could tell J'onn wanted badly to smack our foreheads together hard enough to dent both. Then the docks for Bruce and a nice quiet evening sweating over deadlines at the laptop for me. And now here we are, being ridiculous at each other. I guess it's something.
Bruce is rubbing his hair very softly with his towel and looking at me. In fact he is looking at me like I have a basket of tropical fruit growing out of my skull. Maybe not, though. When the Glaoi reach puberty, that's one of the physical changes that occur to them. It signals their growing desire to meet others of their species in order to ... procreate. Right. The perils of getting too creative with the similes, Kent. You live and you learn.
'Clark.' I have no idea what Bruce was thinking when he designed his suit. It's a little pornographic in a slightly kinky way, if you realise that the only part of his body it exposes is his mouth. And the area around it. But mostly the mouth. I know I'm not one to talk, with the ugly suits and the old-fashioned glasses, but there's a lot you can remember and identify just from the mouth. I haven't ever actually crawled down my best friend's throat, for the record, and even I know just which teeth he's chipped, broken over the years, gotten replaced. To say nothing of the precise alignment of the facial muscles necessary for the lopsided smile he saves for extremely special occasions. He's definitely not giving me that smile now. For the record.
He's just climbing onto the bed past me, the mattress dipping happily under his weight. I've got a death-grip on the headboard and he's got a bruise on his jaw. I have to turn my neck to see his face by about 90 degrees. Bruce is lying on his side, head propped up on one elbow. 'Do you have somewhere else to be?' He looks comfortable, and also naked.
I'm forced to conclude that I don't have somewhere else to be.
'Good,' says Bruce. 'I think you should fuck me now.'
Ah, so that was the word, I think.
--
Rated mature.
For the latest contrelamontre challenge; has jack-all to do with Easter.
Miscommunication
Bruce mouths something into the needles of water when he drops the soap. I can't make out the word because I'm distracted by the curve and flex of his tired, slippery body, and it's gone in a dirty huff of steam, too ephemeral even for my ears to catch. Something he picked up from the docks? Alfred would disapprove. I'm sitting in my costume, on the edge of Bruce's bed, as if that way it won't actually count. I don't have to wait very long, which is definitely a good thing. Bruce is done with his shower, having skipped the shampoo for fear of smelling too nice (he's Batman, by the way). He stubs his toe once on the door and the wince travels all the way up the slope of my shoulders. I've been rehearsing a dozen different non-apologies and none of them sound remotely non-apologetic, so I settle for 'Hey.'
It began with a foul-smelling egg on an alien planet, as so many of these stories are wont to. (My inner Lois - please, no more jokes - lifts a brow at 'wont'.) One moment we were planting our fists on the conference table, oblivious to the others' sighs and glares, and the next we were listening to what might well have been the last gargles of a dying civilisation. You'll excuse me if I admit that I... kind of have a thing about those. Naturally, Batman was completely sure that it was a trap. Naturally, Batman was the one team member on the site to go sticking his face over an unidentified egg roughly the size of France. The egg stuck back, unfortunately - right after the Flash remarked that he'd seen a movie like that, once. To top it all off, the egg turned out to be the larval form of a species of monster that proliferated like bunnies and was so viscerally horrifying that for the next five red-eyed hours I couldn't see why a regular Kryptonian guy like me should complain about not being exactly human. Relativism can be useful, sometimes, you see.
By the time we'd returned to the Watchtower, Bruce had worked up a decent sulk. Never mind that he had gone into the fray despite his misgivings. Never mind that the egg-monsters happened to have decimated the populations of several planets in the neighbourhood. Never mind that he and Hawkgirl figured out the sound strategy that freed the Glaoi from their oppressors' yoke - Sorry, sorry. The point is that all Bruce could think was that he'd been humiliated. And that he had failed.
The other point is that there's something peculiarly nasty about seeing an evil alien trying to crawl down your best friend's throat, especially when you've had... somewhat similar thoughts.
Deep breath, Kent. Now you're just being silly.
Bruce mouths something else now, and again I'm swimming in something, because I can't hear him. It can't be water, water conducts sound very well. Let's put it this way: you don't want to know about what whales can get up to in dolby digital. As I was saying. Conveniently enough, Bruce's preferred method of coping with humiliation is to punch the kidneys out of some of Crane's new recruits. At least it is this week. There was the ritual after-quarrel at the Watchtower - I could tell J'onn wanted badly to smack our foreheads together hard enough to dent both. Then the docks for Bruce and a nice quiet evening sweating over deadlines at the laptop for me. And now here we are, being ridiculous at each other. I guess it's something.
Bruce is rubbing his hair very softly with his towel and looking at me. In fact he is looking at me like I have a basket of tropical fruit growing out of my skull. Maybe not, though. When the Glaoi reach puberty, that's one of the physical changes that occur to them. It signals their growing desire to meet others of their species in order to ... procreate. Right. The perils of getting too creative with the similes, Kent. You live and you learn.
'Clark.' I have no idea what Bruce was thinking when he designed his suit. It's a little pornographic in a slightly kinky way, if you realise that the only part of his body it exposes is his mouth. And the area around it. But mostly the mouth. I know I'm not one to talk, with the ugly suits and the old-fashioned glasses, but there's a lot you can remember and identify just from the mouth. I haven't ever actually crawled down my best friend's throat, for the record, and even I know just which teeth he's chipped, broken over the years, gotten replaced. To say nothing of the precise alignment of the facial muscles necessary for the lopsided smile he saves for extremely special occasions. He's definitely not giving me that smile now. For the record.
He's just climbing onto the bed past me, the mattress dipping happily under his weight. I've got a death-grip on the headboard and he's got a bruise on his jaw. I have to turn my neck to see his face by about 90 degrees. Bruce is lying on his side, head propped up on one elbow. 'Do you have somewhere else to be?' He looks comfortable, and also naked.
I'm forced to conclude that I don't have somewhere else to be.
'Good,' says Bruce. 'I think you should fuck me now.'
Ah, so that was the word, I think.
--