shankie | Chronology

Bruce's relationship with Clark finally comes to a breaking point as the manor prepares for Wally's birthday in absentia.

(Thanks to

yazzle and

batfan_sarah for being sounding boards on this.)

Chapter Eight: Fidelity

The present

There weren't any more sightings of the mysterious new figure in Gotham for a week.

And Bruce ran out of excuses to turn Clark away.

He thought about what he didn't know about his city, how that fact unsettled him, personified her in his mind, in a way far more vivid than before. Gotham was like a fickle mistress, her arms hiding his prey from his sight for... too long.

A tangle with the Riddler, and tonight, with Bane. Two down... many more to go.

Batman had to call in Superman for it, as much as his pride rebelled at the thought, but with Robin and Nightwing in Bludhaven and Batgirl in Amherst, as she was often these days, it left him with few options in a fight that quickly became uneven.

Perhaps it was distraction, a preoccupation of the mind that clouded his judgement, but he'd found himself dodging blows and debris, unable to find a swift resolution in his favour, and was waking Clark from his sleep in Metropolis.

Clark had responded immediately, arrived in moments and put an even faster end to Bane's destruction of a loading dock on the harbour.

Bruce stood next to Clark, watching the special task force take Bane away in heavy bindings, locked away in the back of an armoured van. One by one, the police left in their convoy, flashing lights and voices fading until they were out of sight and left only stillness and the sound of waves lapping against wood.

"You're welcome," Clark finally said.

Bruce wanted to retort something along the lines of not needing his help, but didn't. He wasn't sure what to say to him at all. Talking had never been the strong point of their relationship, and it was even less so now.

"I believe Plastic Man is ready for consideration for League membership."

"I read the report, Bruce."

Clark wrapped an arm around Bruce's waist and flew up into the air. Sometimes Bruce didn't mind, enjoyed the distance from Earth and humanity, alone in the clouds with lips on his skin trying to kiss the pain away.

But tonight all he felt was the chill of the winter gusts and shivered.

"Us mere mortals aren't built for the sky."

Clark gave him a long look.

"So it's like that tonight, is it?"

"Just put me down, Clark."

Bruce was almost surprised when they descended again and he was set on the ground next to the Batmobile.

"I can't promise I won't be chasing you home," Clark said with a little grin, his hand lingering on Bruce's waist before it pulled away.

"I'd never deign to tell Superman what to do," Bruce deadpanned, and got a laugh in response.

"No, never."

Sure enough, Clark was following the Batmobile back towards Brisol. Bruce stopped short of the manor, pulling off to the side of the road and retracted the canopy.

There were too many things there, at home, too many thoughts, too many memories.

Clark landed on top of him, didn't give him a chance to shut out the wind blowing in on top of them, but Clark's cape kept out the cold. Clark's hands tracing his armour and the tongue curling in his mouth brought beads of sweat under his cowl and made his heart beat faster in his chest.

Having Clark was like sleeping with a god, being utterly surrounded and overpowered, without hope or a consideration of escape.

Wally's birthday was tomorrow night. He couldn't help but think this was... wrong somehow...

And then Clark's hands worked their way under his waistband and he stopped thinking anything.

Bruce bucked up against their grip, groaned and helped him undress, pulling off those blue tights as his utility belt landed in the passenger seat and their own reclined back, giving them more space to writhe against each other, once boots and tights were draped half-hazardly over the console.

Clark leaned down and licked a scar across Bruce's thigh, then traced another along his hip with his tongue, long and jagged, his favourite one to give attention.

"I could spend eternity tasting your skin," Clark breathed into his stomach, "I could dedicate my life to mapping it's uncharted land."

"I hope you never plan to write romance novels," Bruce retorted, then gasped as Clark licked his erection and took it into his mouth. "Oh god..."

He didn't know how long it was until Clark pulled away, looking down at him triumphantly, only that it left him near the point of begging in helpless desire.

"I want something from you first," Clark said in a low voice, sucking on his index finger, then reaching down with it, pushing it into him in shallow, slow motions that made Bruce moan through gritted teeth. "Yes, just like that."

The ripples of pleasure were laced with sharp pricks of pain, and Bruce clung to both, merely grunted when Clark, distracted, pushed on his hip too hard, grabbed him with bruising force as he flipped him onto his stomach. He didn't care. He wanted to feel it, feel everything.

To Clark, he was fragile as a wine glass, ready to shatter at the wrong movement, break if pushed too hard.

He curled against the leather seat and breathed raggedly into it, the smell of it filling his nose. He could feel Clark trying to be gentle and slow as he pushed in with a shudder and a sigh.

Groaned with each prolonged thrust, arched against the iron grip he was lost in.

"Harder, damnit," he growled, pressing his forehead against the leather.

Superman complied.

Took him, until the pleasure and pain washed together and he was screaming himself hoarse and was deafened by his own voice, his mind blank, his fingers numb in their grip on the seat.

Until he came roughly, pushing Clark into an orgasm that made him press Bruce's ribs dangerously in his hands, made it hard to breathe, made it seem all like a very secondary concern.

He didn't care.

Bruce just let sensations ebb and flow through him, let Clark drape himself and his cape over his body and kiss the back of his neck.

"MisterWayneIheardthescreamingand..."

Bruce pushed Clark roughly off of him, slammed his hand into his chest, which he instantly regretted, holding it in the other as it throbbed, still finding the presence of mind to keep himself covered.

Bart was looking down at him with his eyes so wide they threatened to pop right out of his head, his mouth hanging open dumbly.

They stared at each other for a long, tense moment, until Clark coughed uncomfortably.

"Bart, go home. Wait for me there." He didn't move, despite the measure of authority Bruce managed to find in his voice, raw as it was, until he spoke again, his voice more ragged and uncertain. "Please."

He felt a lump forming hard and sharp in his throat, and didn't dare speak again, but Bart nodded, his expression shifting too fast for Bruce to follow.

And then he was gone.

Bruce's expression was rigid as he pulled away from Clark, cursing the open canopy and Clark and ever doing any of this under his breath as he yanked his clothes back on and crawled outside, standing in a snow drift and waiting for Clark to do the same.

When he finally landed next to him, Bruce didn't look at him, just out at the waves crashing below them, illuminated dimly in the lights from the harbour.

"Bruce... I..."

Bruce cut him off by shaking his head and waving his hand at him.

"We can't meet like this again." He said with finality. "It's over."

"If this is because..."

"Just go home!" Bruce replied tersely. "Just... go."

He didn't look to see Clark's face, didn't know what he looked like as he stared at him for a long, cold moment, and then flew away.

"Goddamn it," Bruce whispered.

His voice sounded hollow... he felt empty, found himself kneeling in the snow, bending forward, trying to fight off the tears pricking his eyes.

"Fuck."

Bruce yanked off the cowl and covered his face in his hands, didn't know what to do with the sorrow tearing a new hole in his heart, let the tears bleed out until he was gasping in sobs, utterly spent and weary.

He howled at the uncaring sky and the god he never really believed in, until he had nothing left but raw nerves, pounding at the ground with his throbbing hand numb with the cold.

When he finally drove home, there weren't any tears left in him to shed.

He parked in the cave, threw his uniform in the garbage, and took a long, hot shower, and noted that his hand should be taken care of. It was turning angry, swollen black and blue, and Bruce was distantly aware that it hurt.

The bones felt bruised, but nothing broken or cracked, which did nothing to alleviate the anger now burning in his chest. At himself, more than anything.

Bruce dressed hastily in black slacks and a t-shirt, shrugging off the cave's chill until he walked upstairs into the front sitting-room.

Bart was waiting for him on the sofa, his arms crossed and his face drawn up as he looked away and didn't acknowledge Bruce's presence. Even as Bruce gently shut the clock entry with a heavy click, he didn't glance up. Bruce swallowed hard as anger was swept away with the return of a kind of sad desperation, and sat in the chair across from Bart, hugging his arms around himself.

"How could you, how could you?" Bart said, finally looking at him with glassy eyes. His lips were pressed hard together angrily, the lower poking out just a bit. "Ican'tevenIdon'teven... how could you?!"

They stared at each other, Bart's hands in little fists at his side. Bruce wanted to say that he was sorry, or defend himself, or even just tell Bart he was too young to understand. That these were adult things, complicated and messy.

All tangled together hopelessly.

He didn't say anything.

"I thought... you said... that he... and then... I can't..." Bart's voice faded and he began to cry quietly.

Bruce wanted to join him, wanted to show him he wasn't alone. Instead, he ended up sitting next to him on the couch, uncertainly wrapping one arm around his narrow shoulders.

"I miss him," Bart said quietly, sniffling a little.

"I miss him, too."

Bart's flung his arms around Bruce and began crying into his shirt. Bruce could do nothing but hold him, rubbing his back gently.

He would let Bart be angry at him later.

* * *

Alfred opened up the ballroom the next afternoon, quietly going about the business of preparing for company. A thin layer of dust was swept off the floor, shaken out of the drapes along the windows facing the gardens, brushed off the light fixtures.

Caterers were coming later, and the part-time staff would be arriving soon, to move long tables against the walls and deck them with flowers. But he took certain duties onto himself.

Bruce had been silent all day, and Bart had only muttered a few words as he ate his breakfast and left for Central City. Rushing about was hardly new for the boy, but he had a kind of different air to his haste, like he couldn't get far enough away fast enough.

Alfred wondered how long he would run away, as he often did these days.

When smiles and cheerful spirit had once again graced the halls of the manor, in a way so rare, it had been the answer to an unspoken wish. The boy he'd watched grow up sombre-eyed and steeled by tragedy had done the unthinkable and become truly happy, found some content place in a soul that had been, it seemed, without room for such things.

He'd watched a procession of lovers come and go, ultimately turned away with intention and regret, never to be seen again, or to be handled with the same delicacy of one of Bruce's more difficult business dealings. He never dared hope, or presume to do more than occasionally point out the futility of a life so led, in his way.

Years went by, and he stayed ever vigilant, and dared one thing; a wish.

That it had been granted once was a miracle. To hold on to that wish, for it to be granted again, seemed a distant impossibility.

Alfred began rubbing the occasional stray fingerprint off the glass of the windows, with a rag clutched in one hand, a bottle of Windex in the other, and his sleeves rolled up to the elbows. They were little fingerprints, those of a boy caught up in running away, and another who'd been doing it less literally for many years now.

They were, all of them, running, and somehow... always ended up back here, back where they'd begun.

A thumbprint vanished under a swipe of his cloth, and he sighed.

Perhaps, he wished unto the the distant sky, joy would come running back here, too.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Posted by

ilyena_sylph

I.. oh, god. Wow.

That was... poor Bruce. Poor Bart. Clark, you jackass. You complete and utter sanctimonious, selfcentered unmitigated bastard--wow. I just called Superman a bastard, and I don't feel a bit guilty about it.

Amazing part, beautifully done.

I love it.

Posted by

Chronology

Links

Expand Cut Tags