Archive of Our Own

The Bat lands softly, but audibly—by design. Of course Bruce is entirely capable of coming down silently; sometimes, though, it's worth the effort to position the boots so as to generate a muted sound on impact. Heightens the tension. Sharpens the dread. This man is well aware that Batman is hunting him, and being stalked through the darkness sometimes has a debilitating effect on criminals whose commitment to their lifestyle had already been wavering.

"—no, no, no—oh, jesus, please—"

Why do they bother? Do they think it's never occurred to anyone to plead with him before? As if that's all it would take for him to forget what they've done, to forgive them; as if he could justify walking away—

"—I didn't tell him anything, I swear! I didn't tell him anything. Oh, god."

Bruce pauses, and tilts his head.

With the level of light in here, it must look to the man as though he simply coalesces out of the dark, a shadow come alive. The man yelps and jerks backwards, stumbling into a haphazard stack of pallets, and Bruce catches him by the front of his jacket before he can fall, suspending him one-handed with his footing still uncertain. The more off-balance he feels, the more dependent he senses himself to be upon the Bat's forbearance, the more likely it is that he'll say something useful.

The man stares at him, eyes round, and swallows hard.

"Him," the Bat repeats, in a low and deceptively soft growl.

"I don't know who he was," the man says immediately, taking this cue and running with it. "I don't, honest. Honest, I swear to god. Nobody did. He just showed up, that's all. Asking about you, asking everybody what they knew, if they'd ever seen you, what you'd done. Metropolis," the man adds belatedly. "He had that look, you know? Clean. Said his name was—Carr, or Kemp, or something. Something like that."

Not much to go on. But then Bruce already has most of what he needs: there aren't many people who don't know better than to wander around Gotham asking questions about the Bat. If this Carr or Kemp or whoever he is comes back to poke around some more, he'll be easy enough to track down. And then Bruce will make it clear to him that he's far from welcome.

"—didn't say a thing to him—"

Bruce clamps down on the urge to roll his eyes, and gives the man a single sharp shake instead to shut him up. "Enough," he grinds out. "Where are the drugs kept?"

"I—I don't know what you're—"

Bruce leans in, slow, deliberate. "Enough," he repeats, very quietly. "Where?"

Clark doesn't need to go back to Gotham.

He doesn't. At least not to walk around asking people questions, chasing leads. He found what he was looking for—he wanted to know just how much substance there was behind this "Batman", and he got a pretty clear idea. If there's a next step, it's going to be following up on that news report he saw, on that man who died in prison with a brand on his chest; who he was, what happened to him, why the Gotham Bat might have wanted him dead.

He should leave it at that.

It's just that he doesn't feel satisfied, somehow. It doesn't feel like enough. Everything he's been trying to do as Superman has been falling apart on him, over and over—but this is Clark Kent's job. Shouldn't that make it simpler? Shouldn't that make it easy? It's not like the world is counting on him; there aren't thousands of lives on the line. Just one man, who died and shouldn't have. And if the Batman was responsible for it, then Clark wants to—wants to hold him responsible for it. Wants to find him, face him, make him look at what he's done.

Superman's not the only one who should have to be accountable to somebody, when things go wrong.

Not that—not that Clark Kent is anyone the Bat's going to feel accountable to, Clark reminds himself firmly, glancing left and right and then crossing an intersection. Because Clark Kent is just an ordinary civilian. A feature in the Daily Planet is the only way Clark Kent's going to get anybody's attention, and that's if Perry will even agree to run one. Clark Kent can't make Batman agree to anything, can't pin him down and tie him up and deliver him to the GCPD police commissioner's doorstep. Clark Kent's not supposed to be capable of it. And if by some chance he ends up face-to-face with Batman anyway, he needs to remember that.

He spends a couple hours working his way back and forth across the East End, skirting the edges of the Bowery—because if Clark Kent actually gets jumped, that's going to cause him more problems than chasing rumors of the Batman like this could possibly solve. It's grim, unpleasant; not just the East End itself, run-down neighborhoods and wary pedestrians, the way no one will look him in the face even when they are willing to talk to him—which most of them aren't. It's the air, the evening. The sky's started clouding over, as if the gathering dark weren't already enough. Clark feels oddly conscious of the stars overhead—of the way they're vanishing, blotted out a handful at a time as the mist rolls in off the bay.

He should probably take a hint, he thinks. Back off. Go home.

Except just the thought makes his fists clench up at his sides. Everybody's always given up before; everybody's been willing to justify walking away. That's exactly why the Bat's been able to get away with this for so long. That's why Clark needs to take things into his own hands—

Not the way Batman does. Not like that. To stop him, that's all. To fix this before it gets any worse, before anyone else dies.

Clark tightens his fists until his knuckles throb, fingertips digging into his palms. And he'd already let his hearing ease a little past human-normal range, just to help Clark Kent steer clear of anything Superman would be a better match for—but for an instant, it gets away from him. It slips its leash, all of it at once: his anger, his frustration, the petty childish part of him that just wants everyone to leave him the hell alone; and, tangled up in there with it, everything else he has to keep under wraps. His feet are off the ground a moment too long, though he manages to catch himself before he can drift up far enough to be noticeable, and he feels the skin around his eyes heat up. And, in that split second, he hears it.

Above him, and behind him. A scuff, that's all. The faint brief grind of a shoe—a boot—against masonry. A soft sound, a flap. But it could be anything. Clothing, a jacket; a piece of laundry somebody hung out a window to dry.

Except nobody leaves anything hanging out a window in this part of Gotham unless they don't care about keeping it. And given what Clark is here for—given that he's been walking around in the middle of the Bat's territory for hours, asking questions about him—well. It isn't like it would be a surprise if Batman had finally caught up to him.

Clark drags in a slow breath and manages to rein himself in: keeps his feet on the ground, closes his eyes until they cool off, and doesn't do anything with his fists except leave them by his sides. He shouldn't give himself away, not like this. Not to Batman, who's about the last person in the world Clark could possibly trust with his identity.

And Clark Kent wouldn't be able to hear Batman up there. Clark Kent should have no idea he's being followed. Clark Kent—

Clark Kent, in the face of the Gotham Batman, is helpless.

Clark swallows, feeling abruptly off-balance, something twisting up in a sudden knot in his chest. It's not like it matters. Batman won't be able to hurt him, though Clark might have to pretend he has, depending on—on what he wants to do to Clark Kent, when he catches him, and jesus, why does that thought sound so—

Never mind. The point is, Clark is perfectly safe. Clark's as untouchable as always. And if Batman wants to confront him, warn him off or frighten him, then Clark's going to have to remember to balance his own deep desire to tell Batman where he can stick his stupid brand with the alarm Clark Kent, Ordinary Reporter, ought to feel if the Gotham Bat lands in front of him in a dark alley. That's all there is to it.

Which is why it doesn't really make any sense that he finds a shiver of apprehension trying to work its way down his spine, knowing the Bat is back there somewhere—in the dark, waiting, watching. Hunting him down.

It's almost a relief, in the end, when Batman does drop to street level.

Clark had paused at the mouth of one narrow little street, looking for a street sign—and if Superman couldn't pick one out, even in this dimness, then maybe there wasn't one. And then he'd heard an impact, turned; and maybe he'd put the speed on a little as he'd done it. Maybe that's why it feels so sudden, so abrupt, Batman there and right in front of him, looming so solidly out of the dark.

But it's a relief. Or at least that's the only thing Clark's willing to call the jolt of sensation through him, bright and jagged as lightning. He jerks back against the alley wall with his breath caught in his throat, and it should be because he planned on that. It should be because he's doing what Clark Kent ought to do. But honestly he isn't thinking much of anything, in that moment, except to wonder dimly when his heart had started pounding so hard.

He's here for a reason. And Clark Kent might be human, but he's stubborn, too. He can probably get away with not backing down—being too stupid, too headstrong, even in the face of the Bat. Even if he's frightened, too.

He'd have to be, wouldn't he? Clark Kent, just an ordinary guy. Outmatched, overpowered. At the mercy of someone stronger, faster, capable of anything—

"You think you know what you're getting yourself into."

The voice is perfect, Clark observes distantly. Exactly the voice you'd imagine coming from a thing like that: the blackness of the suit so complete it's almost darker than the shadows in this alleyway, the dim shape of the cape trailing like a silent suggestion of folded wings. Deep and even, with a growling undertone like the thump of a bass beat—like it could go right through you if it wanted to, like it could cut clean to the bone.

Clark swallows and lifts his chin, because a little show of bravado isn't out of the question, right? He keeps his shoulders pressed against the wall behind him, as if he's somebody who doesn't need to worry he might knock it down, and he stares at Batman and says, "I think I'm starting to figure it out."

Batman tilts his head. "Think again," he bites out. "You're done here, Kent. Go home."

And Clark's surprised, stupidly, at the shape of his name in that mouth. He should have known—Batman followed him for almost an hour. He must have heard Clark introduce himself at least twice.

But it startles him anyway; and for some reason he can't stop thinking about the picture he must make, like this. Clark Kent with his wide-eyed stare, his glasses, his plaid shirt, pressed up against a wall with the Bat leaning in over him—and god, he needs to get a grip.

"I'm not done until I have the whole story," Clark says. Considering the circumstances, it's not exactly a bad thing if his voice happens to come out a little unsteady.

"You won't get it," Batman growls.

"Won't I? Or was this little exclusive you're giving me right now supposed to be off the record?"

He shouldn't have said it. It's not smart to push. But he wants to. He wants Batman to understand that someone's paying attention, someone noticed; that the Gotham Bat can't just do what he pleases, not anymore. Actions have consequences. Mistakes have consequences, and you're not allowed to make them and get away with it, not when people die. Batman's shown no sign of grasping that, not that Clark can see—but all that means is that it's about time someone explained it to him.

"What record?" Batman says, almost gently. Patronizing, that's what it is, that false softness. "You've got nothing, Kent. Gotham Bat stories are worth their weight in tabloid pulp. Go home."

And jesus, the brass of him; how can he possibly be that sure Clark doesn't have a microphone stowed somewhere? Clark feels a stab of sudden uncertainty. What if he—if he can see—but no, that doesn't make sense. That's not possible. Zod's dead, and the rest of them are gone, sucked into the Phantom Zone. Batman, whatever else he is, is only human. Even if he's a human with some kind of high-tech scanner built into that suit of his.

It's nothing Clark didn't already know. But the acknowledgment tastes bitter going down anyway, and he clenches his fists and says, "And if I don't?"

"You'll regret it."

Batman says it quietly, without inflection. He hasn't moved at all, not since he straightened up out of the crouch he'd landed in; the mask covers most of his face, impassive and alien, nothing to show there's even a person in there except for the chin, the whites of the eyes looking out.

It makes it worse somehow, that flat stare, that expressionless calm. And when he says, a little more sharply, "Find somewhere else to chase your fifteen minutes," Clark can't help but laugh, hard and disbelieving.

As if he's doing this for the fame. As if there aren't already more eyes on Superman right now than Clark can stand. As if he's been on Batman's trail for the attention or the money; as if Batman has the right to question anybody's motives. Jesus.

"If that's all you've got to say, then we're done here," Clark says aloud, already taking a half-step away from the wall. And Clark Kent probably shouldn't be willing to brush shoulders with Batman in passing—to do it with intent, even, and knock him back on his heels—but it's tempting as hell.

Except he doesn't get that far. Batman moves, sudden, fast enough that Clark almost speeds up reflexively to keep track of him, armored elbow coming up against Clark's chest, and—

And Clark has to let it knock him back.

He nearly screws up. For a second, he's just standing there, feeling the impact, Batman's arm pressing into him harder and harder and Batman's nerves about to process the sensation of a whole lot more resistance than he expected to meet. And then, belatedly, he makes himself falter—clumsily, too hard, and he stumbles for real while he's trying to fake it and comes up against the grimy bricks more sharply than he intended.

It's almost real, right then. He's struck the wall, and Batman's forearm is holding him there, braced against his chest, solid as iron; Batman rushed that stride and a half that had been between them and has him abruptly crowded, space thoroughly invaded, physical pressure where psychological hadn't done the job. And for an instant, held pinned, heart hammering, not knowing what the Bat might do next or whether Clark can afford to stop him—this must be what it's like. This must be what it feels like to be afraid. For his own sake, not anybody else's, the pure animal intensity of panic—

Except Batman can't hurt him. Not really. Clark tells himself that and sucks in a breath and doesn't dare call the clench in his chest disappointment.

He wanted to face Batman. He wanted to fight Batman. But this—this is close. This is almost enough.

"This isn't a game, Kent," Batman is murmuring, soft and steady and intent. "Do you understand that?"

"Do you?" Clark snaps. "You're the one playing dress-up—judge, jury, and executioner of your own little kangaroo court—"

Just barely visible under the edge of the mask, Batman's mouth twists; he leans into Clark a fraction harder, free hand coming up to catch Clark by the chin. Hard, thumb pressing into the line of Clark's jaw on one side and fingers digging into Clark's cheek on the other, and the quiet smack of his glove against Clark's skin as he does it is all too audible to Superman's ears—too audible, and somehow almost obscene, unexpected heat crawling up Clark's throat.

He feels caught, exposed. It's just an illusion, he reminds himself. Except how much of an illusion is it, really, when he can't let himself break it? He's trapped almost as thoroughly as he would be if he were really powerless against Batman's grip, and something about that thought is so unbelievably dangerous that Clark can't even bring himself to look at it head-on.

His throat tightens with an entirely different kind of fear, knee-jerk and defensive, resentful. Batman can't know what Clark's thinking, has no way of understanding what he's actually doing to Clark. Clark doesn't understand it either. But in a way that only makes it worse, that to the Bat this is a thoroughly unremarkable encounter and it's still making Clark so—

Clark clenches his fists. In the grip of that surge of resentment, suddenly it's turning the tables that feels irresistible. Because Clark Kent couldn't, but Superman could. Superman could take Batman by the throat and lift him into the air—slam him down against the pavement on his back, hold him there while he struggled; silently, probably, because the Bat wouldn't want to give Clark the satisfaction of hearing him plead, but Clark would—Clark would still be able to hear the hiss and stutter of his breath, the pound of his heart, anyway.

Would he feel like this, then?

Or would it still just be Clark?

"Executioner," Batman repeats, once the silence has apparently stretched long enough to satisfy him. "Passing a judgment or two of your own, aren't you?"

"Someone should," Clark tells him. "Someone has to. I know what you've done, and I'm not going to let you get away with it."

"Spoken like a vigilante," Batman murmurs, in a tone of mocking approval; and then he leans in closer still, grip tightening on Clark's face, and adds, "Leave now, and don't come back. I won't ask again."

And then, just that quickly, he's released Clark entirely, isn't touching him anywhere—is up over Clark's head, somehow finding handholds in the chipped brick—is gone.

Across a roof, that's all. Clark could pop up there and find him inside of ten seconds. But as far as most people Batman interacts with are concerned, that's probably a pretty effective exit.

Clark tips his head back against the wall, and closes his eyes.

He should be happy. He got what he wanted, sort of. The Gotham Batman is real after all, and Clark is onto something, no matter what Perry thinks. He kept hold of himself, he didn't give himself away; Batman doesn't know who he was really talking to, and Clark's secrets are all still safe. That's satisfying. Isn't it? That should be enough.

But somehow it isn't.

Bruce goes to Luthor's fundraiser.

He resents the necessity of it. Maintaining a separate public persona as Bruce Wayne has its merits; but he's found himself more frustrated by it than he used to be, since Black Zero. Alfred wasn't wrong. But in a way that only makes it worse. It feels almost insulting to his own efforts as Batman that this idiot he pretends to be is sometimes the more effective of the two. And there's something ridiculous about it, too—that this, this play-acted farce, is the best he can do, in the face of a threat as unspeakably powerful as Superman.

But the information he needs is information he can only get from Luthor, and this is the best way to gain access to it without drawing unwanted attention. And if he weren't willing to do what's required of him, no matter his personal feelings, then he wouldn't be fit to function as Batman in the first place.

Sometimes that seems like the only thing he is fit for, these days. But if it says something, that dressing up in black making criminals' nightmares come to life feels simpler, easier, than putting on a somewhat more flattering variety of suit to spend a night out smiling at people—Bruce isn't particularly inclined to dwell on it.

He's bracing himself for it, as the car pulls up to Luthor's building and slows; he's readying himself, preparing. The knock-on effect of treating this as a performance is that it inevitably feels false, staged: when the car door opens and he steps out, deploying Bruce Wayne's casual grin in the face of a blaze of camera flashes, he's briefly overwhelmed by an impression that none of the people behind those cameras are real; that they're as flimsy a pretense as the expression on Bruce's face, a crowd of extras green-screened in to complete the scene.

Which is why the single familiar face among them is such a jolt.

Bruce forces his gaze to continue to rove without altering trajectory, lifts one hand in a sardonic little wave, and only then allows himself to glance back. He'd misjudged slightly, he finds. Kent isn't among the pack of reporters, but behind it. He's on the other side of the street, near the entry doors, and part of the reason that split-second glimpse of him had registered so powerfully is that there's no camera obscuring his face; he hasn't raised a hand in front of himself to try to catch Bruce Wayne's attention. He's just standing there, staring straight at Bruce, and his expression is almost neutral except for the barest furrow of his brow, as if he's looking at something he doesn't think he's going to like.

Bruce has to bite down hard on an unhelpful urge to laugh. If only Kent knew. If only he had any idea that his high-minded distaste for Bruce Wayne's celebrity were a mere fraction of the charges he could level against Bruce. That's what it must be, surely, with a man like Kent. An idealist. Someone should. Someone has to—that's what he'd said, as if he couldn't conceive of a world that worked any other way. As if he believed in some higher justice beyond whatever you could force into being with your own two hands.

Put that way, Bruce could almost pity him. Because he'll have to come to grips with reality sooner or later, and Bruce doesn't envy him the wake-up call, whatever the shape it'll take.

He allows himself to pause like that, looking back at Kent, as if it's just Kent's staring that caught his eye—and Kent blinks, like he's only now realizing he's been looking at Bruce long enough to be noticed. He ducks his head a little, reaches up and rubs awkwardly at the back of his neck, and then shoots Bruce another sidelong glance, quick, like he's checking to see whether Bruce is still watching him.

And Bruce smiles at him, the full force of Bruce Wayne's slick insincere warmth brought to bear, and then winks.

The look on Kent's face then is priceless; and Bruce hadn't thought it would be possible, but maybe he's going to enjoy himself this evening after all.

Kent makes it inside before Bruce does, of course. Kent doesn't have to pause and decide on a little snide pablum to regurgitate, doesn't have to make a precisely-calibrated and thoroughly half-assed case for Bruce Wayne's deep philanthropic feelings about ... libraries, or whatever.

And it's probably a bad idea to go looking for him. He has no reason to suspect anything; but he's now one of an extremely small number of people who've interacted directly with both Batman and Bruce Wayne, and if anything that means Bruce needs to exercise greater caution around him. It's just—

It's just that there's something undeniably appealing about the idea. Kent had been so angry, so fiercely self-righteous, in the face of the Gotham Bat; but his distaste for Bruce Wayne must be coming from another direction entirely. What is it he doesn't like Wayne for? Will he be as confrontational as he had been in that alleyway, bright blue stare unwavering even though Batman had him pinned against a wall? What will he do? What will he say?

It's—intriguing. And while Bruce can admit to taking a certain spiteful delight in the thought of toying with Kent when Kent won't understand who it is he's talking to, that's not all that's driving him. These days, it feels as though Bruce's world is made of wrongdoing; seeing it, stopping it, trying to prevent it and so rarely succeeding, a long exhausting grind. But Kent's on the Bat's trail for the exact same reason, and he's on fire over it, alight with it. Looking at him, Bruce almost remembers what it was like to want to set the world right—to believe it could be done.

Besides, it's a perfectly reasonable part of his cover. The wink alone laid the groundwork. Bruce Wayne ignoring the guiding stars and socialites with whom he ought to spend the evening in favor of behaving inappropriately toward a reporter? Thoroughly believable. It even provides him with a handy excuse for wandering around areas of Luthor's home ostensibly closed to the public, if he can pass it off as a drunken attempt to find somewhere private enough for a hookup.

So when Bruce finally steps through those gleaming glass doors, he makes a token effort to be seen, to shake hands, to wave; but he's looking for Kent.

And in the end it's not hard to find him. He's nearly as tall as Bruce, after all, and his ill-fitting suit, the awkward way he hunches his shoulders and the blatantly displeased line of his flattened mouth all set him apart from the crowd. He doesn't want to be here, Bruce would guess—and that fits with what Bruce already knows about Kent, that quixotic crusading attitude he'd displayed. No doubt he approves of the fundraiser itself, its purpose and its goals; but covering it for the society pages instead of getting out there to hunt down something meaningful? Bruce can imagine how poorly Kent took that assignment.

Odd, in a way, that it should be him. Bruce looked him up, of course. He's been working for the Planet for almost two years now, and while as a stringer he isn't beholden to any particular department, the society beat isn't his usual. Otherwise Bruce would have met him before. Punishment for something? Perry White probably didn't give him permission to go haring around in Gotham all night; maybe that's all it is.

Kent sees him coming and twists away, giving the nearest wall a wide-eyed long-suffering sort of stare. But of course that's not enough to prevent Bruce Wayne from holding out a hand, too direct to ignore, and saying, "I don't believe we've been introduced."

"No," Kent agrees, with a chilly bare-boned little smile. But it seems his mother raised him right, and after a moment guilt overpowers distaste: he reaches out and takes Bruce's hand, and reluctantly shakes it. "Clark Kent, Daily Planet."

"Well," Bruce murmurs, "their standards over in HR have certainly gone up lately."

Kent freezes. "Excuse me?"

Bruce smiles, too widely and too warmly, and he was already a half-step closer to Kent than standard American proxemics would deem polite; watching Kent clock it, a faint blotchy flush working its way up his throat, is more than worth it.

And then Kent's eyes narrow, and something in the quality of his grip changes—Bruce might have expected him to drop Bruce's hand with some haste, but instead he's suddenly holding on a little tighter. "Actually, as long as I have you here, Mr. Wayne—"

"Oh, my people will have filed a statement about—" and Bruce flicks his free hand dismissively, "—reading with your office, I'm sure. You won't be needing a quote from me. Which is for the best," he adds, swaying in further still, letting one corner of his mouth climb even higher, "because I imagine most of what I'd like to say to you isn't fit to print."

And of course Kent takes that exactly the way Bruce Wayne would mean it, because he doesn't have any idea what the Gotham Batman would really like to say to a reporter stupid enough to go around poking his nose where it doesn't belong. Bruce watches his mouth go flatter still and is struck with another sweet hit of petty satisfaction, and god, he should be better than this—but Kent earned this with his interference anyway, his unwarranted moralizing bullshit. The arrogance of it, as if some Metropolis busybody has the right to appoint himself Batman's watchman.

Fuck him, Bruce thinks. And he finds he doesn't care to shy away from the potential for double meaning. He wouldn't go that far, not over this—but he can admit, if only to himself, that there's a certain torrid appeal in the idea. Kent wouldn't want to sleep with Bruce Wayne, and if he did he wouldn't want to enjoy it; making him, methodically taking him apart until he's desperate for it anyway, is a mental image that carries with it a jolt of the same vicious gratification that's driving Bruce right now.

Christ. If he's that hard up, he'd better take someone home tonight after all. Clear his head. He can't let Kent distract him, not when he's got Superman to worry about.

"—and I thought you might be willing to put forward a comment," Kent is saying icily, "regarding the activities of a reported vigilante in Gotham. The Bat, I believe he's called."

With no small effort, Bruce swallows a laugh; and in his ear, the carefully-concealed comm crackles to life and delivers Alfred's quiet sigh on a direct line. "Oh, good lord," Alfred murmurs. "This is approaching farcical even for you, sir."

Kent's stare sharpens. "Mr. Wayne?" he prompts, brow beginning to draw down into a frown.

"If you want to take a good hard look at potentially illegal unilateral civic action," Bruce says mildly, "shouldn't you be starting a little closer to home, Mr. Kent? Metropolis has a caped crusader of its own these days. There might be a speck in Gotham's eye, but there's one hell of a plank in yours." He hears his tone sharpen just a little more than it should, and distracts Kent from it by reaching to snag a pair of champagne flutes off a passing waiter's tray. He tips one back for a sip and makes a face, and holds the other absently out toward Kent. "Isn't that what they say?" he adds, and this time he achieves idle disinterest.

Kent's fists are clenched, his jaw tight—but manners win the day again, and he reaches out grudgingly to take the glass of champagne, though he looks like he'd rather spit in it and hand it back than drink it.

"You sincerely believe Superman's actions are comparable to—"

"Cape? Check. Costume? Check. Self-important epithet with ominous undertones? Check. Doesn't ask for permission—or, for that matter, forgiveness? Check." Bruce shrugs lazily. "Not seeing much of a difference from where I'm standing. Except that this Gotham Bat can't set us all on fire with his eyeballs, but I'm inclined to count that as a mark in his favor. Aren't you?"

"You've got no idea what you're talking about," Kent bites out, and somehow that must have managed to touch a nerve. Big Superman fanboy, then—but Bruce supposes that fits Kent's attitude, doesn't it? Wanting someone to step up and change the world, do it the right way; a way Kent feels he can approve of.

Well, too fucking bad for Kent.

"It's been said," Bruce agrees aloud, blithe. And then he flashes Kent a smile and doesn't bother to make it reach his eyes. "But at least I know it."

The flush is steady in Kent's face, now, color high in his cheeks—not embarrassment, but anger. "I know what I'm doing, Mr. Wayne."

"Oh, I'm sure you think you do," Bruce tells him, and leans in to clap him on the shoulder. And then closer, close enough that it must look flirtatious to anyone watching, just so he can murmur into Kent's ear, "But maybe you need to think again."

Kent jerks away from him, staring, startled and wary-eyed, nearly hard enough to spill his champagne—and Bruce would be more than happy to needle him all evening, but that's not what he's here for.

"Sir," Alfred says, as if on cue, "while I do hate to interrupt your fun, it would be advisable to place the device before Luthor begins his scheduled remarks. You have fifteen minutes."

Bruce aims another thin smile at Kent. "And now I'm afraid I have to beg your pardon," he says, and twiddles the champagne flute in his hand pointedly. "Goes right through me. I'm sure I'll see you around, Mr. Kent," and he turns without a backward glance and walks away.

Alfred's directions take him down the stairs without further delay. He doesn't need to reach the main server room; he'd almost certainly be unable to access it without compromising his identity in any case, if Luthor's security is half what it ought to be. He just needs something that's running on the same network. The leech is pre-programmed to handle the rest.

"Is there something I should know about Mr. Kent, sir?"

"I'm sure I don't know what you mean," Bruce murmurs, turning away from the kitchens and down the side corridor Alfred had said would be there.

"Please don't do me the injustice of assuming I remain ignorant of your little field trip the other evening," Alfred says reprovingly. "You turned off your comm, sir, not my brain."

Bruce makes a noncommittal sound as he lets the glass door swing shut behind him; not loud, but the comm's more than sensitive enough to pick it up.

"Are you satisfied yet, or shall we continue to harass poor Mr. Kent in alleyways—"

The sound of breaking glass, sudden raised voices, makes Bruce tense up and Alfred fall silent; but a moment later, sense reasserts itself: it's obviously too distant, too lightly-pitched, to be someone crashing through the door Bruce just passed through. Someone upstairs with a grip stronger than their champagne flute, Bruce surmises, and keeps walking. "Not the best time to discuss it," he tells Alfred, more harshly than he intends to.

But Alfred just hums agreement, and then says, "End of the hall, to your right."

Bruce picks up his pace, and a moment later is in position to slide open a pane—more glass. Luthor seems to favor it. He reaches up past the leftmost rack to the cables running alongside, and as he does, he hears hurried footsteps.

The sweep of the door, he judges, is the soft sound that comes next; he should have more than enough time to get the leech in place before whoever it is has come close enough to see what he's doing—

Except he's barely attached the leech to the cable jack when he feels a hand at his shoulder; someone shoving him, he realizes, startled, off-balance, and he doesn't have enough time to brace himself. He hits the wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him, upper arm twinging, and twists to put his back to it, to face his attacker.

And then he stops short, because it's—Kent?

"You," Kent snarls, and shoves him again, apparently just for the sheer satisfaction of watching him come up against the wall, before setting one broad hand to his chest, pinning him there.

Bruce decides against trying to push away—and it's tactical, logical, Bruce Wayne not all that interested in fighting his own battles, but he also feels suddenly and strikingly aware that it wouldn't be all that easy to do. Kent's the shorter of the two of them, but right now it sure doesn't seem that way; he's pressing Bruce backward with enough force that the blades of Bruce's shoulders are jammed against the wall, Bruce's stance unbalanced and his leverage undeniably poor.

"Me," Bruce agrees, airily. "Don't suppose you're looking for the bathroom, too? I seem to have gotten a little turned around—"

"You have got to be kidding me," Kent says, with a sharp shake of his head, mouth twisting bitterly. "Jesus, I should have known. I should have known. Only somebody like you would be that egomaniacal, that far up your own ass—"

What the hell is he talking about? Is this about some—some Wayne Enterprises project, maybe, something Kent just learned from someone else upstairs that set off an urgent need to get on his high horse? Or if he's somehow guessed what Bruce is doing; not the details, it must look like bog-standard corporate espionage to him. And of course Bruce shouldn't discount the possibility that Kent's having some kind of psychotic break.

But asking him what he means would put Bruce on the defensive, and that's a position Bruce struggles to abide at the best of times. Besides, if there's one thing Bruce knows how to do, it's bluff.

"Oh?" he says aloud, low, raising an eyebrow. And then he leans—not toward Kent, because there's no point when Kent is already doing it for him, crowding aggressively close. Against the wall, instead: tipping his head back just a little, heavy-lidded gaze resting on Kent's face, chin tilted up, throat ever so slightly exposed. Only shows of weakness that are deliberate are permissible. "Have you been giving a lot of thought to my ass, Mr. Kent?"

Kent stares at him. For a moment Bruce can't deny a certain frisson of apprehension; Kent looks like someone carved him out of marble, his eyes chips of ice behind those godawful glasses, and the iron pressure of his hand is inescapable, terrible, bearing all the suffocating weight of the very wrath of God. Bruce's heart is pounding. Kent might even be able to feel it, against his palm.

But Bruce is in control. Of course he is. There are at least half a dozen ways he could break Kent's arm, hand, and nose in less than three movements, from right here. He's choosing not to, that's all, because the less attention he draws to himself tonight, the better.

Kent shakes his head again, more slowly, and says, "You—jesus. What is wrong with you?"

"Mm, let me see. How long do you have?" Bruce makes a show of lifting a hand around Kent's arm against him, to check his watch. "If you want the full list, we may need to reschedule—"

"Is everything a joke to you?" Kent snaps. "Is that it?"

And oh, Bruce can't abide that fucking word

(—HA HA HA—)

and he's sure the smile on his mouth has twisted up bitterly but he can't talk himself into caring. "Far from it, Mr. Kent, I assure you," he says. "But if you didn't follow me down here to admire my godlike physique, then I can only assume you were drawn to my sparkling wit and charming personality."

The words are all Bruce Wayne, and could be said lightly, easily; but he fills his tone with spite instead, and Kent's hand twists into a fist in the lapel of his suit jacket, dress shirt drawing tight across Bruce's chest as Kent's fingers dig in, knuckles dull spots of pressure against Bruce's sternum.

"Fuck you," Kent says, almost gently, the labiodental fricative doing something thoroughly obscene to his bottom lip, and—

And god, it had been just like this in the alley. Why does this keep happening? What is it about Kent that ratchets Bruce's awareness of his body, his skin, so relentlessly high? It had been Kent against the wall then, Bruce holding him there; but their positions are reversed, a mirror image, and still, still, there's a hot vicious tension crackling through Bruce, bright and unignorable.

He affects surprise. "Well, I didn't think you'd care to," he murmurs. "But if you're offering—" and his hands were at his sides, deliberately relaxed; they don't have far to go to reach Kent's waistband.

He's used this kind of maneuver strategically in the past. Straight men tend to jerk away from it—and they'll loosen their hold at the same time, even if they're itching to throw a punch a moment later. That moment is usually all Bruce needs.

But Kent doesn't move. At least not like that; he sucks in a breath, eyes widening, and catches both Bruce's wrists in his free hand so astonishingly quickly that Bruce genuinely can't avoid the hold. "You—what the hell are you doing?"

"I'm sure I don't know," Bruce says, bland, heart hammering. Kent's grip is tight, just on the edge of bruising. Precisely so, in fact, and to such a degree that Bruce can't shake an impression that it's deliberate, that Kent has purposefully calibrated it such that Bruce will suffer no injury but will still feel the shape of Kent's fingers against his wrists with perfect clarity an hour from now.

Christ.

"But then I'm not the one who's got you pushed up against a wall, am I?" he makes himself add, more slyly.

Kent's staring at him, jaw knotted tight, fierce and resentful; and Bruce almost doesn't get the last word out before Kent laughs, one sharp derisive cough of it, thoroughly unamused.

"I'm just saying," Bruce tells him, and then jerks his chin on a line that points over Kent's shoulder. "She's going to get the wrong idea," and as Kent turns, startled, to look at the figure approaching the door at the other end of the corridor, Bruce twists a hand around in Kent's grip and—takes a liberty.

The catch of Kent's breath in his throat is perfectly audible, even over the sound of Luthor's assistant, Ms. Graves, saying, "May I help you gentlemen?"

"I think we're all set, thanks," Bruce replies, as Kent belatedly releases him, and he shoots her a lopsided smile over Kent's shoulder. "I just got a little turned around, and Mr. Kent here was kind enough to come looking for me."

And he'll say this for Kent, at least: the man's not stupid. Headstrong, irritating, too stubborn for his own good, but not stupid. Kent clears his throat and ducks his head, and says, "This way, Mr. Wayne," and he doesn't even sound too much like he wants to strangle Bruce when he says it.

Graves holds the door for them and watches them go, but is circumspect enough not to follow them up the stairs. Kent takes his cover role as guide seriously, and matches his pace to Bruce's until they've reached the main floor, though Bruce can guess from the clenching of his hands that he'd have preferred to take off and leave Bruce eating his dust.

He stops short on the top step, and doesn't look at Bruce. "Have a good evening, Mr. Wayne," he says, "and stay the hell away from me," and then he turns sharply on his heel and strides away, just as Luthor steps up to his microphone on the far side of the room.

Bruce stays there a moment longer, lingering, hand wrapped around the end of the cold metal railing of the stairs. But it doesn't help; when he lifts it away, there's still a shadow of heat curled into the base of his palm. He'd groped Kent to—to put him off, to make him withdraw, to—

To make him angrier. To fan the furious blaze of him that much brighter.

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut, and rubs a thumb across his hand, digging in unmercifully enough to make it ache. That doesn't help either.

Because Kent had been hard against his palm. Bruce had felt it, unmistakably. And of every inappropriate thing he's done to Kent tonight, the most inexcusable might be this: that he can't stop wondering how far Kent might have let him go if Graves hadn't interrupted.

Clark can barely stand to wait long enough to make sure no one's looking at him before he takes off—lucky for him Luthor's got a hedge maze out back, because of course he does, and if he's got cameras in there then it's just going to look like one of them glitched out.

And then it's nothing but night sky and the roar of the wind in his ears, and jesus. Jesus. Bruce Wayne is—the Gotham Bat is—Clark clenches his fists, and before he's even really felt himself decide, he's already swung around in the air and pointed himself straight down.

He left the waterfront behind in a blaze of lights a good four seconds ago; there's nothing under him now but black water. He can't afford to punch a wall, but smashing himself into the ocean is the next best thing, the sheer satisfying burst of kinetic energy that won't do any harm except maybe setting the water boiling for a minute.

He hits hard and plunges deep. Down this far, the water's frigid, and it feels good against his hot face, his blazing eyes. Wayne's lucky Clark hadn't set him on fire by accident.

Or—

Clark swallows. Maybe Clark's the one who's lucky. Lucky Wayne hadn't gotten a chance to do more than grope him for one single lewd half-second.

He's still hard; there probably isn't any water on Earth cold enough to take care of that. He lets himself sink a little further, and rubs his face with his hands. God. He doesn't even know why he—he'd just been so angry. He'd heard that voice: an older man, British. Talking to Wayne, it seemed like, and Clark hadn't been able to guess why Wayne would have some kind of hidden radio on him. So he'd kept listening, even as Wayne moved away, went downstairs somewhere and through a pair of doors; and he'd heard. He'd heard everything.

And suddenly he'd understood. He hadn't even felt the glass break in his hand. He'd just let the pieces drop to the floor, belatedly remembered to curl his fingers up as though he'd hurt himself. Perfect excuse to leave the room, and he'd followed Wayne down there, and—

Had he already been this—this worked up, right then? He can't remember. He'd just wanted to corner Wayne, to make him give it up; because he'd understood how Wayne had been toying with him through that whole conversation, goddamn him, and Clark had meant every word he'd said. Of course it was Wayne. Of course the Gotham Batman could only be someone who was—well, that rich, for one thing, suiting himself up like that, wasting time running around the city all night with state-of-the-art equipment, getting his rocks off frightening people out of their minds.

And that egotistical, too. Thinking he had the right to, thinking there wouldn't be any consequences. That if there were, he could brush them off and keep going. That nobody would hold him accountable.

Clark's clenching his fists just thinking about it, knuckles aching. But—

But along with the thought of the Bat, inevitably, there's the alley. The alley, and Batman's—Wayne's—voice in Clark's ear; being pressed against that wall, bricks digging into the blades of his shoulders, Batman looming over him.

He'd thought to himself then that it was dangerous, in a way he'd tried to avoid defining. Feeling Batman hold him there—letting him, not being able to afford to do anything else.

But he hadn't realized the reverse would be just as dangerous. He hadn't known what it would feel like, to have Bruce Wayne pinned beneath his hand. And god, the way Wayne had acted; letting his head fall back like that, looking at Clark with that lazy half-mast stare, talking about—about his ass, and reaching for Clark like that.

He'd been so angry. He'd thought that was all it was: the heat in him, the tension. The way he'd wanted to trap Wayne there and make him—make him—

Make him explain himself. That's all. That's—that should have been all.

Clark squeezes his eyes shut. The worst part of the whole thing, he finds himself thinking wryly, is that he can't even jerk off. Feels too much like it would be giving up a point to Wayne, Wayne and his abominable come-ons, his crude insinuations, his smug fucking mouth.

Also, he should probably quit thinking about Wayne's mouth.

He lets himself drift down there a little longer, just until his head clears. And then he lightens a bit, the way he does when he's about to take off in the air, and after a few minutes he's almost to the surface, a half-dozen broken wavering moons shining down brighter the closer he gets.

He hesitates there for a second, a couple feet down. He'd almost rather stay under; just because it's so dark, so cool. Just because it's so quiet.

But he can't.

He lets his face break the surface and draws in a breath—he didn't need it, exactly, but it feels good anyway. He still remembers, sometimes, the way it had felt on Zod's ship, the air suddenly wrong; the bright unfamiliar sharpness of pain in his chest and his throat, a sensation he'd never felt before—and how desperate he'd suddenly been for one single breath that didn't hurt.

And then he blinks the water out of his eyes and looks up at the sky, treading water, and makes himself think.

Wayne had been there for a reason. What had that man said, on the other end of Wayne's secret radio? It would be advisable to place the device before Luthor begins his scheduled remarks. He'd given Wayne directions down to that hallway; that's the only reason Clark had known where to go to find him. And Wayne had been doing something when Clark arrived. The computers by the wall, he'd been—attaching something to them, doing something with the cables. Clark should have taken a better look, should have at least scanned whatever it was. He'd just—

He'd just been too busy shoving Wayne into the wall, reveling in the satisfaction it had given him to watch Wayne's eyes flare wide with surprise.

"Okay, also quit thinking about his eyes," Clark says to the water, rubbing a wet hand over his face. Jesus, he needs to get a grip.

The point is: Luthor. Bruce Wayne is the Gotham Batman; Bruce Wayne's interest in Lex Luthor is, therefore, the Gotham Batman's. So if Clark wants to figure out what the Bat is up to, then Luthor is the key. He needs to figure out what about Luthor has caught the Bat's attention—what information it was that Wayne wanted badly enough to attend Luthor's fundraiser for, and what he's planning to do with it.

Sure. Piece of cake.

He shakes his head at himself—and then pauses. There's a half-dozen TVs running by the waterfront, and all of them just switched to the same report; these days Clark can tell just by the broadcaster's delivery, that precise sober tone, when there's been some kind of accident. Then the sound kicks in on the feed of live footage that must have been running in the background: a fire.

He waits just long enough to catch the location of the factory involved, and then bursts up out of the water with a splash.

In the end, he doesn't need to do any research of his own.

Why should he? No point reinventing the wheel. Wayne's doing it for him, with whatever it is he got from Luthor's servers. Clark has the advantage: he knows Wayne and Batman are the same person. To find out what Batman wants with Luthor, all he needs to do is keep an eye on Wayne, wait to see what Batman does next and tag along.

It takes longer than he expects. He finds himself half-wishing for some other public event, a charity ball or a groundbreaking, anything Bruce Wayne might show up for. His vision still gets red if he dwells on it, but there's a vicious part of him that's maybe a little too much like Wayne—that gets why Wayne indulged himself, winked at him and toyed with him so unnecessarily. It must have been funny, in its way, to find Clark in such a thoroughly different setting, to make Clark shake his hand and be polite to him; to have Clark asking him for a statement on the Batman, of all things. And if Clark had the chance to turn the tables—coming at Wayne with all Clark Kent's blithe ignorance, now that he knows what he knows—he can't swear he wouldn't do it, just to get a little of his own back.

But then, at last, it happens.

He's been spending his nights hovering over the bay. He hasn't been suiting up if he can help it; with that congressional hearing looming, he's trying to make sure he only intervenes as Superman when there's absolutely no other way—when an emergency tip or anonymous rescue from a stranger isn't going to cut it. Which means he has even more time than usual to hang in the air over Gotham and listen for the Batman.

He isn't even sure what he's hearing, at first. He knows how Batman's boots and cape sound, in motion. He knows he can keep an ear out for that British voice. You turned off your comm, sir—implying that Wayne did have one, carried it with him even when he was in his other suit, so to speak.

But as he's listening for them through the mess of sound pouring out of nighttime Gotham, sensitivity ratcheted up as high as he can stand, suddenly his ears are flooded with the smooth growl of an engine. Not just any engine, not any kind of car Clark's ever heard before. He zeroes in on it without even trying to, curious. He doesn't know it has anything to do with Batman until the sound of the engine changes—until there's a creak of material, a scrape. Someone's hand tightening around a gearshift, Clark thinks, someone's boot against a floor going from one pedal to another.

And suddenly what had been a vague suspicion solidifies into certainty. He doesn't even know why he's so sure; but he closes his eyes and listens, listens so hard he can hear Wayne breathing, and he knows he's right.

The vehicle, whatever it is, is speeding its way toward the waterfront. A shipment coming in, maybe? Something Luthor's bringing into the city. Legally—but the Bat wants to have it for himself? Or illegally, except the GCPD's evidence lockup would be more difficult for Batman to break into than some warehouse at the docks.

Clark supposes he should try to be fair: maybe Batman's just collecting evidence. Maybe he doesn't even know what Luthor's doing. Maybe he's trying to find out, and once he has, he'll do something ethical and extremely responsible with the knowledge and not brand anyone for life at all.

But the memory of Batman's impassive stare, Bruce Wayne's derisive little smile, makes that somehow hard to believe.

And if there's any chance he's going to end up interacting with Wayne, he'd better be Clark Kent, hadn't he? He doesn't even know whether he could fool Wayne anymore, as close as they've been to each other, as hard as they've stared into each other's faces. The suit, the way he holds himself, his hair, work better than he'd really expected to keep people from looking at Superman and seeing Clark Kent. But he can probably only push that so far.

So when he flies toward the docks, he does it in plaid and jeans, and when he lands on the cracked pavement in the shadows behind a side building, he's pulling a spare pair of glasses out of his pocket with one hand. Wayne's already aware that Clark is a reporter, and interested in his choice of evening entertainment to boot. This might actually be the best cover Clark's ever had.

He eases toward the edge of the side building, in position to glance around it. Obviously he can look right through it, but Wayne shouldn't come across Clark Kent staring at a solid wall.

He listens first. Seems like he was right about some kind of shipment being involved; there's a small cargo vehicle rumbling toward one of the warehouses from the waterfront a little further on, and two of the guys waiting around inside—presumably Luthor employees, even if they're getting paid under the table for this—are griping to each other about how long it took, swapping hearsay about where the cargo ship's come in from. Beyond them, if he strains, he can still pick up Wayne. But whatever he's driving must be in some kind of special gear, stealth mode: the engine's gone silent, though Clark can hear a faint soft hum that might be a separate electric motor.

And then it comes to a stop. Wayne's moving. Climbing? Finding a vantage point with a better view, Clark would guess, since he can't see through walls.

The little cargo truck is coming closer still, backing up. Clark watches as it comes to a halt, as the rear door is opened and the transport crate inside pried open—inspecting, he assumes, to make sure whatever's in there wasn't damaged or spoiled—and then his vision blurs.

He blinks, once and then again. He'd been switched over to x-ray, watching through the walls instead of taking the risk of sticking his head out, but it's—it wavers, the wall half-transparent and then solid in front of him. He shakes his head a little, and then regrets it; the world spins when he does it, disorienting, and he has to put out a hand to catch himself.

The crate, they're—what are they doing with it? What's inside of it? Clark tries to steady himself, squints harder at the wall, but it doesn't work. The corrugated metal siding in front of him stays resolutely opaque. He could listen instead, except most of what he's hearing is his own breathing. There's clattering coming from somewhere, low voices, but it sounds so far away, so muffled. He can't even pick words out of it, except that's impossible unless it's a million miles away.

What the hell is wrong with him?

His breaths are coming faster, harsher. He can't make them slow down. He—he can't tell how much noise he's making, where anyone is, whether they're coming toward him.

His chest seizes up tight; it's like being back in that alleyway with the Bat, except this time he can't just shake it off. He's afraid, uncontrollably, unbearably. He knows it's a mistake, that he's going to draw attention to himself if he's not careful, but he can't not move. He has to get away, he has to get out of here. If they catch him—what will they do to him? What if he can't stop them?

He pushes away from the wall and staggers, stumbles. The ground feels unsteady under him, his feet heavy and clumsy; it's almost a comfort to come down hard on his knees. Or it would be, except for the shockingly bright jolt of the sensation.

It hurts.

It hurts.

"What the hell?"

"Who the fuck is that?"

"What's wrong with him? Is he drunk?"

When he fell—did he make a sound? He must have. Tree in the woods, Clark thinks blurrily, and he tries to lever himself up but he just can't do it fast enough. It's too hard.

There are two of them, maybe three. They grab him by the elbows, the upper arms, and drag him around the corner of the side building, and then let him tumble down in front of the warehouse. That gray thing, that's the little cargo truck. And there's another blob, bigger, white. A second truck? To transport whatever's in the crate out of here. Whatever's casting that weird green light—

They're saying something. Yelling at him. He can't muster the will to pick the words apart or figure out what they mean, never mind answer. He lets his eyes fall shut instead, overwhelmed with an awful lurching sensation that he's pretty sure is nausea, and god, it's revolting; he's never making fun of Mom when she throws up ever again.

He can't move, he can't think. He can't do anything but lie there on his side where they dropped him, helpless, gasping like a landed fish.

There are sounds—blows, Clark realizes dimly. It's just that he can't place them in space, has no context for them. Who's getting hit? Where? He can't—he can't tell, all the tiny cues he'd usually use to work it out thoroughly absent with his hearing like this.

So he has no idea what's happening until everything falls silent. And the scrape of boots, at least, is close enough and loud enough to be audible despite whatever's wrong with him. He manages to turn his head, to squint his aching stinging eyes until the dark shape over him resolves into a figure.

"Wayne," he says weakly, unthinking.

Wayne stares down at him. And between Wayne's hands is—is something, Clark doesn't know what; he can't make his eyes focus on it long enough to understand what he's looking at.

He just knows it's green. Green, and glowing just a little.

"Wayne—"

"I told you, Kent," Wayne says, quiet and very even. "I told you you'd regret it."

Clark lets his head drop back down against the pavement. He doesn't understand. He doesn't understand any of this. "Please—"

Wayne's gone. But then there's a crunch of gravel, a rumble. Hands lifting Clark into something—Wayne brought a vehicle, that's right. But Clark tumbles into a seat and all he can see is that the dark interior is lit faintly green before he's overwhelmed: pulled down, under, gone.

Bruce drives.

He can't concentrate on the road. But even after he's activated the Batmobile's self-guidance systems, he doesn't take his hands off the wheel.

He needs the pretense of something to focus his attention on, while he struggles to contain the slow cold rage that's doing its best to choke him.

He hadn't understood at first. He'd thought they had hurt Kent somehow, struck him, stabbed him. How painfully naive of him. How trusting.

He finds himself gritting his teeth so hard they ache, and deliberately relaxes his jaw, flattening his tongue and catching it between his molars so he can't be unwittingly seized by unintentional reaction again.

He supposes in a way he ought to thank Kent. He'd been anticipating a chase—he'd brought a tracker for the truck, in case by some chance he lost its trail. Batman has never been intended for outright frontal assaults, and taking on a dozen of Luthor's men in an enclosed and fully-lit space had had no strategic advantages. Bruce hadn't precisely preferred the idea of tailing them and picking them off one by one, making a spectacle of himself; but he needed whatever Luthor had found, and that was all there was to it.

And instead Kent had distracted them thoroughly. Bruce had been able to drop into place and take down half of them while the other half had still been shouting at an unresponsive Kent and goggling. And that other half hadn't posed a particularly towering threat. Bruce had plucked Luthor's find straight out of the storage crate—a rock, unearthly green and oddly luminous. Probably radioactive, but a half-hour with it in the Batmobile wouldn't kill him.

It might kill Kent, though.

Bruce allows himself a single sideways glance. Kent has passed out cold, folded into what space there is and unable to register any complaint about the cramped quarters; the Batmobile wasn't built for comfort. He looks pale, sickly, in the greenish light cast by the rock—sweat is beading across his brow, but the tremors working their way through him suggest a chill, and his breaths are harsh, shallow, coming much too fast.

Even that could have been explained, if Bruce were experiencing any of the same symptoms.

But he isn't. He isn't, because he's human—and Kent is not.

He blacked out comms entirely the moment he realized what was happening, though of course Alfred is still tracking his movements from the Cave. He uses the dashboard controls to send out a silent "mission successful" signal, and given that, Alfred won't be surprised if Bruce leaves the equipment maintenance area and holes himself up immediately in the lab. There will be more than enough time.

If Alfred knew he had the alien, knew what he intended to do with him—he'd try to stop Bruce. He couldn't permit it to go on; and if he failed to prevent it, he would consider himself in some part responsible for the consequences.

Bruce may as well spare him that, if he can.

He doesn't rush it. Haste generates error; Alfred's unlikely to come down to check on him or attempt to feed him for hours yet. He parks and secures the Batmobile the way he normally would, lifts the rock out of it and then the alien, and doesn't leave the hatch open or forget to initiate its usual internal diagnostic routines.

It only takes a few minutes to move the alien and the rock into the lab, though the logistics are complicated slightly by Bruce's disinclination to part the two—he can't afford to underestimate the alien. The cameras in the lab are deactivated by default, as there's no point in running them when it's not in active use; if the Cave has been breached with sufficient thoroughness to permit access to the lab in the first place, then he obviously has other problems that far outstrip a lack of passive footage of the interior.

He leaves them off, closes and secures the door, and engages Level 1 security protocols. He strips, systematically and methodically, out of the suit. There's no point in attempting to maintain a pretense with the alien, not anymore, and the alien should be aware immediately that Bruce knows it.

And then he has the alien laid out on the table, the rock gleaming in his hands, and he can't hold back his own mind any longer.

God. How is it possible? How could he have failed to realize it? He'd been inches from Kent, and he'd had no clue. He should have known, should have realized; there must have been some sign of it, something he'd have noticed if only he'd paid attention.

Had the alien understood who it was he was talking to all along? The thought sends a cold shock down Bruce's spine, an equally chilled heady anger at its heels—but no, no, that doesn't make sense. You, Kent had said at Luthor's. You have got to be kidding me. Jesus, I should have known; he'd heard Alfred, that must be it. He'd heard Bruce talking to Alfred, voices lowered, one floor down and half the width of the building away from him, and he'd understood it. He hadn't been toying with Bruce from the start—

Except in all the ways he had. In that alleyway—fuck, he'd been—he'd let the Bat hold him down, let Bruce grip his face and growl at him in what must have seemed like a laughable effort at menace. He could have torn Bruce's head from his shoulders, ripped his heart from his chest, and Bruce would have been utterly powerless to stop it.

He stands there over the alien and feels a shiver trying to work its way underneath his skin, equal and opposite impulses like competing gravities, a deep and seismic strain. Because it's so terrible and strange to think of—to know that he had been so thoroughly at Kent's mercy, that he'd had no idea; and that Kent had been well aware and had, inexplicably, forborne. In the alleyway, and at Luthor's house, Kent had—Kent had chosen to allow Bruce to keep breathing. And more than that: he'd allowed Bruce to make threats in the first case, crude insinuations in the second. He'd allowed Bruce to touch him.

He'd been hard. He'd had Bruce pinned against a wall, Bruce's hands at his hips, and he'd been—

Bruce feels his mouth twist. As if that means anything. How can it? An alien, a Kryptonian. To assume that his anatomy, his physical reactions, could be interpreted correctly by analogy to their human equivalents would be almost as stupid as spending this much goddamn time thinking about his cock when Bruce has him defanged and shut up inside a lab.

And yet, staring down at the alien's slack sweating face in the green glow of Luthor's breakthrough, Bruce finds that all his usual strategies are suddenly unequal to the task of clearing his mind.

Because he wants to wreck Kent. He wants it desperately. He wants to destroy him, to ruin him thoroughly; and if only he thought he meant it in a homicidal sense, he might almost be reassured. As it is, there's a greedy selfish edge to that thought, an intensity and a fixation and a hunger, that's uncomfortable in the very tailored perfection of its fit, unsettling precisely because it feels as though it's been there all along.

He shouldn't be thinking these things. He should be focused on the mission, the goal—on what he can learn from the alien, and how to set about doing it. Everything else has to be put aside.

He closes his eyes, and forces himself to ignore the insistent pounding of his heart.

The rock—mineral? It appears crystalline at first glance, suggestive of a single consistent chemical composition rather than an aggregation—is still emitting light. Preliminary readings from the instruments monitoring the lab environment do in fact suggest that it's radioactive.

Bruce has lead-lined containment units; he's seized a variety of unusual and hazardous devices from Gotham's most wanted in the past. He drags one out from beneath the lab table and sets it on the counter behind him. Four feet from the alien. Considering the intensity of the alien's reaction to the mineral, that's more than close enough.

He sets the mineral inside, but doesn't close the unit. He wants the alien conscious, yes, but otherwise reduced to a bare minimum. The thought that the alien might—might come back from that teetering edge swinging, unstoppable, impossibly powerful, trapped in a room with Bruce—

Bruce decides to call the sensation sparking along his nerves apprehension, in the dim hope that that might make it true.

And then he leans in over the alien where he's draped out prone across the lab table, and gives the alien's cheek, forehead, a clinical brush with the back of one hand. Cool but not cold.

"Kent," he says, testing.

The alien doesn't respond, doesn't so much as twitch.

"Mr. Kent," Bruce repeats.

To describe it as giving in to temptation would be to ascribe it more significance than Bruce is willing to permit. He does the practical thing, that's all: he tenses his hand, and slaps the alien lightly with three fingers.

The alien reacts reflexively, flinching, closed eyes screwing themselves shut further.

Bruce slaps harder, and the alien—

It must be an unusual sensation for him, Bruce reminds himself distantly. The alien probably doesn't experience pain, in the ordinary course of things. It must be a surprise to him; that's why he tenses and gasps in a stuttered breath like that, why his lips part in such a wet wounded sort of way.

"What—?"

Bruce doesn't hit him again. He's responsive; that was the goal. It would be a sick and unconscionable self-indulgence to continue—to want to.

"Mr. Kent," he says instead, and waits until the alien's eyes flutter weakly open, until they stop dazedly roving the expanse of the lab's ceiling and fix on Bruce instead.

"You," the alien says, blinking. "I—what happened? I don't—"

"How many of you are there?"

The alien's breathing is rapid, shallow. He appears to be struggling to concentrate, struggling to keep his gaze on Bruce.

His cheek has pinked up, just a shade or two, where Bruce struck him.

"What?"

"How many," Bruce says again.

The alien stares at him, as if bewildered.

"The radiation emitted by this mineral appears to exert a particularly profound effect on Kryptonians. You collapsed in its presence. You are Kryptonian," Bruce spells out, as inflectionless as he can make it. "How many of you are there?"

He doesn't want to ask the alien whether he's Superman, not directly—he wants to see what the alien will say, unguided. If Superman has another name, a rank or designation among his own people; if this individual has one. They do appear superficially similar, though Bruce would want high-resolution images to compare side-by-side before he rendered a verdict. But for all he knows they're brothers, twins, clones—

"It's me," the alien says, in between rasping gasps. "It's, I—it's just me."

"Just you?"

"Yes. Yes, I—" He stops, swallows hard; the sweat had begun to cool on him while he was unconscious, but now it's breaking out again across his forehead, his cheeks. His eyes are glassy. Wet. "I'm the only one. I'm—I'm the only—"

Bruce bites the inside of his cheek. On the one hand, strictly speaking he has no evidence that suggests the alien is lying. Even the general, Zod, in his original broadcast to the planet, had implied the same: your world has sheltered one of my species. On the other hand—

On the other hand, it's oddly difficult to accept that the larger-than-life figure that has singlehandedly occupied Metropolis's attention for a year and a half, the otherworldly hero dominating the news—the inexorable and merciless Superman of Bruce's nightmares—is here in front of him. Here, in a plaid shirt and jeans, cheap walking boots and ill-favored glasses, too weak to stand.

"The only one," Bruce repeats back to him, pressing, and the alien screws his eyes shut again, twists against the lab table and turns his face away as if to hide.

"I killed him," the alien whispers, hoarse and quiet. "I had to, he was—he was going to—I had to. I killed him."

"There were others—"

"They're gone! They're gone," and the alien makes a small ragged sound and bites his lip. "They're all—I'm alone. I was always alone, I'm—I'll always—"

"What are you planning?"

The alien doesn't answer for a long moment. He just lies there, cheek pressed to the lab table. He's gripping the sides of it with his hands, not as if to brace himself to rise, but as if to steady himself, as if he needs the reminder that it's beneath him.

"What," Bruce repeats, "are you planning?"

"What?" the alien says, distant, as if he didn't hear the question.

"You destroyed half of Metropolis. You killed Amajagh and his men, you flattened a village. You want public opinion on your side and you've still got it, for now. Why? What do you want?"

"What?" the alien says again. "Wayne, I don't—"

"Whatever your game is, whatever you're working toward," Bruce snaps, except the alien doesn't seem to be listening; he's moved against the table, turned his head back toward Bruce, and is staring at him, eyes wide and blue and—and they are wet after all, the skin beneath them shiny with it, the alien's eyelashes sticking to each other in clumps behind those goddamn bullshit glasses.

He's crying.

Deliberate, Bruce tells himself. A play for sympathy. The alien is clearly already constructed to appear disarming, blue-eyed and upstanding, the too-inviting softness of that mouth and the illusory vulnerability of his bared throat; one more trick, that's all—except the alien doesn't even seem aware of it, isn't lifting his hands to wipe at his face, isn't trying to draw Bruce's attention to it.

He just looks overwhelmed. Weak, sick, cracked open. He isn't trying to get away, hasn't tipped himself off the lab table or struck out at Bruce—but he could, Bruce thinks, with a sudden swell of something that's almost resentment, hot and poisonous. He could. So why doesn't he? Why is he letting Bruce do this to him? Why isn't he stopping this?

Bruce turns and grasps the mineral, one hand to either side of the bulky mass of it. He lifts it out of the containment unit, and the alien makes a soft pained sound behind him—he does move, then, as Bruce turns back toward him, flinching away from that gentle green light and scrabbling at the edge of the lab table, but he can't do it fast enough to get out of the way. He can't do it fast enough to stop Bruce from setting the mineral on his chest.

He makes that noise again, quiet and awful, like he doesn't mean to or want to but it's being dragged out of him anyway; he's gasping in huge heaving breaths, and his eyes are wild, panicked. "Wayne," he manages, "oh, god—Wayne," and then he's out of words, teeth digging into his lip, heels scraping weakly against the lab table. He drags a hand up but he can barely stand to set it against the mineral, and even if he could it's clear he wouldn't be able to move it, all the strength sapped inexorably from him. His eyes are rolling back in his head, and Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ, what the fuck is Bruce doing?

He takes one quick stride, picks up the mineral and nearly fumbles as he settles it back inside the containment unit; his hands are trembling.

For a moment that lasts far too long, he stands there looking down at it. He thinks about all the things he should do with it—shouldn't he? This is his chance, everything he's been waiting for since Black Zero handed to him on a plate: the opportunity to neutralize the threat Superman can't help but represent, once and for all. And he thinks about all the things he could do with it, god help him; every torrid vile half-formed fantasy he's shoved down where the light can't reach, all the things he could do with a powerless, broken Superman at his mercy—everything Kent's grip had made him inclined to consider, that single indelible impression of the heat of Kent's cock through his slacks, now irreversibly tangled up with the bitter urge to exact some sort of revenge for all Kent's lies.

And then he closes his eyes, fumbles for the lid of the containment unit, and drops it shut.

If the alien—

If—

If Kent has any sense, he'll murder Bruce before he leaves; and if Bruce is lucky, he'll take the body with him and drop it in the sea, so at the very least Alfred won't find it.

Bruce waits, standing there with his back to Kent, pressing his palms into the edge of the containment unit so hard there will almost certainly be a mark later. He can hear Kent, the half-sobbed gasps of him catching his breath, the shift and creak as he sits up, curls in on himself.

"Get out," Bruce says, sharp. Because it's a risk, of course it is; what will Kent do? Break the door down? Fly straight out, or rip the Cave apart before he goes? He knows who Bruce is. He knows everything. Letting him walk out of here, however he chooses to do it, is easily the most dangerous thing Bruce has ever done.

It's only that Bruce can't shake the sudden conviction that keeping him here, fettered—that facing that temptation, when he so clearly lacks the strength to refuse it—would be more dangerous still.

Except when Kent does move, when he tips himself shakily off that lab table at last and takes one cautious step to bring himself close against Bruce's unprotected back, it isn't to snap Bruce's neck.

He reaches past Bruce instead—caging him in, Bruce thinks at first, and then finds himself sucking in a startled breath when Kent's hands close over his.

"No," Kent whispers. "No, it was—please," he says, and Bruce stares down at their joined hands, at the lid of the containment unit, as Kent uses their combined grip to—to lift it again.

Kent gasps a punched-out little breath almost into Bruce's ear as green light spills out across their wrists and forearms; and then Bruce has to turn quickly as Kent's knees buckle, to catch him before he can hit the floor.

"Kent—"

"You want to," Kent says blurrily. "Don't you? You want to. I want you to. Please, Wayne. Oh, god. Please—touch me. Touch me," and he grabs clumsily for Bruce's hands, leans into Bruce's shoulder, as he says it; the last two words are spoken wetly into the side of Bruce's throat, felt as much as heard.

"Kent," Bruce says, very even, but he doesn't get any further than that before Kent's caught him by the face with one broad hand and is, inexplicably, terrifyingly, kissing him.

It's still working.

Clark could cry for relief, and maybe he already is—it's so hard to tell, to pick anything out of the indescribable rush of sensation, the dullness of his senses countered by the sudden sharp intensity of everything else.

His eyes are stinging, his knuckles ache; his skin is strange and sore, prickling all over, and then he loses track of all of that entirely because Wayne's biting him, and the sweet heavy throb of Wayne's teeth in his lip, his tongue, knocks the breath out of him. He clings onto Wayne all the tighter and leans in hard, chasing the pain of it, desperate.

Coming awake like that had been—he'd had no idea what was happening, Wayne's words almost impossible to focus on with the sting of Wayne's slap still bright against his cheek. It had hurt.

The questions had hurt, too. Not physically, except they might as well have, because it had all felt of a piece to Clark: the pressure of Wayne's stare, the weight of Clark's guilt, the impossible searing pain of that rock when Wayne had set it on his chest. He couldn't do anything about it, couldn't make it stop. He couldn't. And because he couldn't, it was—it hadn't been his fault.

He had been weak. He had been helpless. Not on purpose, not to keep his cover, not because he was pretending. For real. He couldn't have saved himself, not if Wayne had wanted to stop him. He'd been—

He'd been only human, so to speak. And when Wayne had closed the lid over that rock, when it had all gone away again, Clark hadn't been able to think about anything except getting it back.

It occurs to him belatedly that Wayne bit him to get him to stop, and sure enough, a moment after he thinks it Wayne shoves at him. Wayne shoves at him, and he feels himself move and can't stop it, can't just stand there and take it; he stumbles back against the lab table Wayne had him on and he's laughing a little, or maybe crying.

"Kent," Wayne says, taking a half-step in again and reaching out to steady him.

"Sorry," Clark says, "sorry," except he kind of isn't. He closes his eyes and rubs a hand weakly across his face, and then almost falls again—the rock makes him so dizzy, and the way his hearing falls away, his sense of touch so thoroughly dulled, is incredibly disorienting. And then, of course, he can't even use his speed to catch himself, can't ease free of gravity for a second to adjust. "The things you were asking—you think I had a plan. Is that it? You think I was going to depose General Zod, take command of his unit. Rule Earth with an iron fist."

He laughs again, weird and ragged, and Wayne's watching him in a careful expressionless way that probably means Clark's freaking him out.

Then again, he dragged Clark here to interrogate him, or possibly to cut him up for science, so maybe it's only fair that he's gotten himself stuck dealing with Clark's little nervous breakdown.

Clark squeezes his eyes shut and covers his face with his hands, and doesn't look up. Wayne could leave if he wanted to, and for a minute Clark thinks he has; he doesn't speak, and if he did go—would Clark be able to hear his footsteps, like this?

But the next thing that happens is that Wayne curls a hand around Clark's shoulder.

Or—Bruce, Clark decides. He was licking Wayne's teeth a minute ago, he can probably call him Bruce now.

He wipes at his face, and makes himself look up. And he's going ten directions at once, he's sick and weak and terrified and hopelessly, inexplicably exhilarated, so maybe it shouldn't surprise him that meeting Bruce's eyes, the grip of Bruce's hand on him, should be enough to make him tremble.

"But it wasn't—I didn't—that wasn't supposed to happen," he hears himself say. "The city, I was—I didn't know. I was just trying to stop him. I didn't know."

"Kent," Bruce says.

"I didn't know until it was over," Clark blurts, steamrolling over whatever Bruce was going to say—tell someone who cares, maybe. I want to know about your hypothetical government takeover plans, not your feelings. Except Bruce is the one with the rock, and the rock is the only thing on the planet that makes it possible to not be Superman for ten minutes at a time, and Superman—Superman couldn't say this. Superman couldn't tell anyone this.

Clark used to be able to hide. God, he misses that. He never thought he'd want to be a waiter at a diner getting drinks thrown in his face. He'd thought he'd understood what it would mean to put the suit on, to choose to be Superman. He'd thought he'd been ready for it, ready to take on that responsibility. He'd shouldered that burden, and for a while there it hadn't been more than he could carry.

It still isn't. How can it be? He's Superman. He just—

He just wants to set it down anyway, sometimes.

"I didn't know how bad it had gotten. I try hard, I do. All the time. But it's—nothing can touch me. All those people, all those buildings. I couldn't even feel it. I should have, but I couldn't. It couldn't touch me." He shakes his head. "Nothing does. Ever since I was a kid, I've been like this. Everybody else, they struggle, they get hurt, they feel it. But not me. Nothing ever touches me.

"I wish it had. God, I wish it had. I wish it had hurt me to hit those skyscrapers, as much as it hurt everybody in them when they came down—"

"Clark," Bruce says, very quietly.

His hands are on Clark's. He's prying at them, because—oh. Because Clark was digging his nails into his own palms so hard he's left marks. He's left marks, and it hurts, and he couldn't be more grateful.

He thinks about his face: about Bruce slapping him, the long lingering sting. "But you, like this—you touch me. I can feel that. It's real, I'm real. So that's why I—I wanted you to. I want you to. Please—" and he's falling apart again, he knows he is. Jesus, he needs to get a grip.

Except Bruce still has him by the hands, the wrists, and hasn't let go. And it's ridiculous, isn't it, to think he'd give Clark what he's asking for? He'd hit on Clark, yeah, but to make him uncomfortable, to make him leave; before he'd had any idea who Clark really was. If he wants anything from Clark now, it's probably for him to hold still while Bruce makes a nice clean Y-incision.

But Clark can't bring himself to pull away. He'd thought about being at Batman's mercy, and he'd thought about holding Bruce Wayne down and not letting go, surprising that smug arrogance out of him just for a second. And now it turns out that what he's actually desperate for is Bruce, right here, ready and able to take him apart in a way nothing else can.

Bruce is staring at him, unreadable. Clark can't even begin to guess what he might be thinking.

And then his chin comes up just a little, eyelids dropping to a lazy half-mast; and he lets go of Clark's wrist with one hand and reaches up to touch his face—his cheek. "You don't feel it," he repeats. "You never have. But when I hit you," and his voice is quiet, as level as if they're talking about—about a coffee order, about a Wayne Enterprises budget report. "When I hit you, you felt that. Didn't you?"

"Yes," Clark whispers, and it's as obvious a lead-in as he could have asked for but it still somehow surprises him when Bruce slaps him again.

Lightly, the first time. Just enough to turn his head, to start that hot sting rising in his cheek again. He lets his head stay turned for a second, staring at the wall without seeing it, swallowing hard. And then he meets Bruce's eyes again, and Bruce treats that as the cue it is and hits him harder.

His head snaps to the side this time, and his cheek must be turning red; he's gasping for breath and his eyes are wet again, and he feels so—so weird, so obscene, so out of control. What was he thinking, asking someone, asking Bruce, to do something like this for him?

Because he's getting off on it. Bruce must realize that. He must know. What must he think of Clark for it?

Clark swallows again and drags his eyes back to Bruce, half-afraid to see how Bruce might be looking at him. As if it matters, he tells himself. Bruce already despises him, mocked Clark Kent to his face and thinks Superman is some kind of alien overlord in the making—

Except when they do lock eyes, Bruce doesn't look that way at all. He's—his breath is coming faster, too, and he's staring at Clark, dark and intent; and there's something about the wideness of his eyes, a wild unsteady need creeping around the edges of his gaze, that says he can't turn away from this any more than Clark can. That he's feeling it, too—that Clark isn't alone.

"Bruce," Clark chokes out, and Bruce jerks like Clark's the one who struck him and then grabs for Clark's shoulders—his chest, his shirt, gripping the front of it and sliding his thumbs beneath the edges of the top two buttons with exacting precision, flicking upward and snapping a dozen threads at once to send them flying away and clattering to the floor. Two more, two more, and then apparently that's enough; he doesn't bother with the rest of them, just yanks the sides of Clark's shirt apart and tugs it down to bare his shoulder.

"How many things," he says, very low, "have you never felt before, I wonder?" And there's a hint of Bruce Wayne in that cool tone, in the dripping insinuations it carries. But the stare, the steadiness of it, that he doesn't look away until the very last second—that feels more like the Gotham Bat, Clark thinks dimly. Watching everything, seeing everything. Hunting for something, because he wants to make sure he'll be the first and last to find it.

And then he leans in and bites down, and Clark can't think at all. The pain is so sudden, so intense, and he's so weak with that box open, that green light spilling out; he lets his head drop back because he honest-to-god can't hold it up anymore, and who knew pain could be like this? So many levels, so many layers: the sharp intensity of Bruce's teeth in his skin, yeah, but he becomes gradually aware of a deeper throb blooming beneath it, an ache settling into the muscle, as if he's going to bruise.

"Bruce," he gasps again, tipping backward against the lab table, and Bruce just follows him down and bites him again.

Scratches him, too; and that makes it sound like so much less than it is. He's systematic about it, deliberate, scoping out the expanse of Clark's bare skin and then placing his fingertips against it, tilting to dig in with his nails—and of course he keeps them short, trimmed close to the quick, but that just makes it better: how hard he has to press with his fingers, the slow twinge of bruising ripening in the wake of each fiery scrape.

Clark is so caught up in the sensation, wordless and shuddering, that it takes him by surprise when Bruce unzips his fly. And he almost wants to tell Bruce not to, scrambling to put together the words to say that maybe Bruce could go back to biting him again for a while first.

But he should've known Bruce would be ten steps ahead of him. Bruce does bite him after all, taking Clark's face in his hand and tilting it around to get at the angle of Clark's jaw, the side of his throat—and with his other hand he's groping for Clark's cock, except it's—he doesn't even bother to get his hand inside Clark's jeans, thumb skimming Clark's cock through his briefs while he grips Clark through the denim and squeezes. The texture triples the roughness of it, the careless shocking strength of Bruce's hand in such a—jesus, such a vulnerable place. Clark's breathless with it, with the sudden sparking awareness that Bruce could really hurt him there, when every other time he's been hard in his life, "enough to pound nails" hasn't been just a figurative turn of phrase.

He jerks against the lab table, squirms with helpless urgency, something that's almost panic; and Bruce doesn't let go of him. Bruce just holds him there, pins him and grips harder, tighter, and he can't get away, he can't—there's nothing he can do about it.

He screws his eyes shut, an awful wordless sound trapped in his throat. And then Bruce's thumb catches the waist of his briefs to drag it down past the head of Clark's cock, and Clark has to, has to cry out at the sudden blinding jolt of—god, what was that? His thumbnail, catching the underside of Clark's cock and scraping, jesus, fuck.

When Bruce does wrap a hand around him at last, even that is almost too much. He didn't wet his hand at all, doesn't bother, and his grip is too tight but Clark can't stop him, can't even make him slow down, clasping his wrist weakly and panting, helpless.

Which definitely shouldn't be hot. It shouldn't make him harder. It should be frightening, terrifying. It is. Of course it is.

But Clark's getting off on it anyway, and by the time Bruce lets him go again he's almost sobbing with it, his cock hot and heavy and aching, unfamiliar and excruciating.

"Jesus Christ," he hears Bruce say, very quietly, and then he's—Bruce is moving him, turning him against the lab table so he's bent over it instead of tipping backward against it, forced to catch himself unsteadily on his elbows; it's clumsy, ungraceful, with his arms still trapped in the sleeves of his half-unfastened shirt, caught closer against his sides than they should be. Bruce's hands are at his hips, and then he jerks Clark's jeans, his briefs, down to his thighs with a single sharp tug.

The motion jostles Clark in against the table—traps his bare cock against the cold metal lip of it, as if the throbbing pressure weren't already unbearable. He makes a small sound in his throat and writhes a little, not even sure whether he wants to lean into the sensation or get away. And then the choice is gone anyway, Bruce shoving him until there's nowhere left to move, until Clark's pinned.

Bruce's hips are against his ass. Bruce is hard, too; it's impossible to miss, even with Clark's senses dulled like this. It's obvious what he must want to do.

Except he doesn't do it. Clark's open shirt is tugged down in the back so far that he can feel the line of the collar straining just under his shoulder blades, and Bruce pauses to bite at them, to suck on the skin so hard that starts to hurt too, tingling and aching in swathes across Clark's upper back. Bruce is gripping Clark's arms, his sides, to hold him still so he can't jerk away from Bruce's mouth—and then he skims one of them down to palm Clark's ass, to dig his fingers into the curve of it until Clark cries out, half-muffled against the table, watching dazedly as his panting breaths fog up the metal surface.

And then his thumb dips in, and it's—he isn't even doing anything, really, just feeling along the rim, rubbing a little, but Clark screws his eyes shut and shakes anyway. God, why is he taking so long? Doesn't he want to fuck Clark? Why hasn't he just done it already?

But he doesn't. He doesn't.

He starts with just that: just the one thumb, pressing in a fraction of an inch. He didn't so much as lick it first, isn't doing anything to ease the way as he pushes it inside Clark, and the friction, the sensation, is unbelievable. Another one of those things, Clark thinks dizzily, that Superman's never felt before. And then he switches to a finger—up to the first knuckle, that's all. Clark can handle that.

Except it doesn't stay that way for long. Bruce works him open a bit at a time, methodical and unbearably thorough, so that it's—it's always just on the edge of too much, Clark never quite able to catch his breath or figure out what to do or how to move, whether to press back into it or try helplessly to scrabble his way free over the table. Bruce's fingers are long, and he's got a good angle: he makes sure of it, hand at the small of Clark's back to hold him still for it, to make him take it. And he's—he's testing, maybe, assessing his options; does Clark tense and squirm and sob better for a single finger, pressed deep? Or two, working him shallowly, fucking him open a bit at a time, so that he breathes out a harsh little whine every time Bruce's knuckles twist?

Clark loses track completely. He can't keep pace, can't keep count—is it three of Bruce's fingers now? Four? It feels like it could be, like it must be, with the stretch he can feel in himself, that deepening overwhelming burn. It's unutterably stupid to be doing this dry, but Clark can't bring himself to care in the face of how it feels, this startlingly intimate pain: Bruce inside him, forcing him open, taking him apart with an almost clinical deliberateness and leaving him so hopelessly exposed.

And it's like that, braced shakily on his elbows and tipped over the lab table, gasping, cock half-crushed against the edge of it and Bruce at least three fingers deep inside of him, that Clark comes. He can't help thinking afterward, dazedly, that there was something so appropriate about it, feeling everything sharpen to such a wracking shuddering peak, the throb of aftershocks—that in a way, that had almost hurt, too.

He got come all over the table. His fingers skid in some of it as he's trying to find purchase enough to push himself up a little, and then he accidentally brushes the red sticky head of his cock with his own hand and has to bite down on a gasp, even that tiny touch racing along his nerves like fire, he's so oversensitized.

But he manages, in the end. He levers himself up weakly—and jesus, he can't even tell what's the rock and what's the orgasm, whether he might still be shaking like this even if the box holding the rock were closed. One of Bruce's hands is on his back, the other against his ass, and he turns and gets a shaky grip on Bruce's arms; enough to hold himself up with, to stumble the half-step separating them and kiss Bruce again.

He should be angry. With himself, with Bruce. He should hate that he did that, that he let Bruce do it—because it was terrifying, inexplicable and wanton and an unbelievably bad idea.

But standing there, weak-kneed and trembling, clutching Bruce's shoulder and aching everywhere, the only thing he can find inside himself is a dizzy and bewildering gratitude, welling up so high it's brimming over.

Bruce can't pinpoint exactly what he was expecting, when he finally eased his fingers out of Kent and let go. A handful of options had crossed his mind: another rush of those odd undramatic tears, Kent's body overwhelmed and aware of it even when Kent himself seemed not to be; Kent staying where he was, letting the table hold him up, unresponsive. Wanting Bruce to leave—or wanting to leave himself, to take the opportunity he'd inexplicably turned down earlier and get the hell out of here.

But he definitely hadn't thought Kent would kiss him again.

It isn't like the last time. Before, Kent had been desperate, counterintuitively aggressive in his helpless unsteady clumsiness; he'd gripped Bruce tightly, shoved his tongue into Bruce's mouth and pressed into Bruce with all his weight—and even with Luthor's mineral exerting its effects on him, Kent's not a small man. And then Bruce had bitten him warningly, and Kent hadn't backed off in the least. It had gotten a little rough, a little messy, before Bruce had managed to push him away. Not unusual, in Bruce's experience, when you were kissing someone you didn't like, who didn't like you much either. But now—

Kent is exhausted, and it shows. That's the difference. It isn't deliberate, that his mouth is softer against Bruce's, that he's clinging to Bruce's shoulders instead of grappling with them, that he's leaning into Bruce instead of shoving him into the counter. There's no hidden meaning; Bruce fingered him to a satisfactory orgasm—analogous anatomy after all—and he's satisfied, relaxed, the awful driving tension that had strung him taut stripped away.

He's still dangerous. He's still Superman. This shouldn't—can't—change anything.

Though Bruce can admit that none of his strategies for dealing with Superman were constructed to accommodate the possibility that, given the chance to kill him, Bruce would choose to fuck him instead.

Christ. All his hard work, all his plans, and he can't even blame Kent; it's his own goddamn irrationality that's thrown a wrench into that complex machinery. Kent had asked Bruce to touch him, and Bruce had found it impossible—

No. The responsibility is his. He could have refused. He'd chosen not to, chosen to reach out and do as Kent had asked, and if he ever had the moral high ground, he's thrown himself from the edge of it and has long since reached terminal velocity.

He closes his eyes and kisses Kent back, and wonders what the hell he's going to do now.

And then Kent's arm extends around him, past him, and he's unforgivably slow to realize why; he doesn't even think about it, not until he hears the soft thunk of the containment unit's lid.

Because Kent just closed it.

Bruce goes still. Kent's breakdown had seemed genuine; but that's hardly a guarantee. Kent had seemed like an ordinary reporter, too. Kent had seemed human.

But he isn't—and the unit's closure makes it obvious. Kent's mouth is still against Bruce's, but everything about the way he's holding himself begins to change. His breaths had still been coming quick, shallow, against Bruce's lips; but now he isn't straining to chase after them. He's steady on his feet, no longer leaning into Bruce so heavily. And his hands aren't shaking anymore, his grip increasingly confident.

Bruce should be making a note of the dose-response curve, should be keeping track of the pace at which the effects of the mineral's radiation are overcome.

But instead, all he can think is—Superman's hands are on him. Bruce just finished shoving him down and injuring him in every superficial and sexual way he could think of that didn't require additional equipment; and now Superman's hands are on him, and the containment unit's within arm's reach, right in front of him if he turns around, and yet still too far away for him to have any hope of opening it in time to save himself.

"Bruce?"

Kent is looking at him uncertainly, brow dipping low. He lets go of one of Bruce's shoulders, smooths his palm across Bruce's chest, and Bruce's heart jackknifes, unbidden. Kent frowns, and—god, could he feel that? Could he hear it?

Bruce should say something. But his mouth is dry, his head abruptly empty, as if all of himself has been washed away, overcome, by the relentless pounding of his pulse.

Kent flinches a little and eases a half-step away. He might have withdrawn then, apologized or left entirely, if only he hadn't shifted his weight in moving—if only his thigh hadn't brushed the erection Bruce has done absolutely nothing about.

Bruce broke the habit of prioritizing his cock's whims a long time ago. It hadn't been particularly difficult for him. Like so many of the body's needs, it would submit to management with the exercise of a little discipline; and unlike food, water, sleep, ignoring it would cause him absolutely no damage or long-term discomfort. In the past, he's even gotten a certain grim satisfaction out of depriving himself of pleasures he doesn't deserve, indulgences of no practical benefit—and more recently, it hasn't felt like deprivation at all. Bruce Wayne's pickups are a duty, and he performs as is required of him and concludes with quiet relief.

Which is why it makes so little sense that Kent's gaze on him, Kent's raised eyebrows and startled, curious glance send a wave of heat prickling up Bruce's throat and into his cheeks.

Kent had said that he wanted to be touched, to feel real, as though he hadn't expected Bruce to understand. But Bruce had looked at him and thought of Luthor's fundraiser—of stepping out of that car, the sudden sick exhausting feeling that it was all bullshit, that none of it mattered—and had known exactly what he meant.

Funny, to remember it now. It had been seeing Kent's face that had brought him out of it, at Luthor's. And he hadn't even known, then, who it was he'd been looking at.

"I scare you," Kent says.

Bruce looks away and doesn't answer. He feels a surge of resentment, mulish and misaimed; what's Kent even looking for? Why is he toying with Bruce like this? Just trying to force Bruce to say it, is that it? Wanting Bruce to admit it out loud—

Kent hesitates for a second. And then he reaches out and closes a hand around Bruce's wrist, and Bruce has to bite his tongue hard to fight down a shudder.

"I scare you a lot," Kent repeats. "Don't I?" and he reaches out with the other hand and cups Bruce's cock through his slacks.

Bruce's hips betray him with a single reflexive jerk—toward Kent's palm, not away—before he regains control of himself. Pointless, wasted effort, of course; Kent's not going to need more than that. Bruce has already given himself away.

"You know exactly what I could do to you," Kent's saying, leaning in—crowding Bruce back against the lab counter with deceptive gentleness. "Is that it?"

His fingers shift, pressing in, outlining the intolerably obvious, straining shape of Bruce's cock; and then in a blur he's undone the button fly, too fast for Bruce's eyes to follow. Bruce had half-expected him to tear it, payback for the buttons Bruce tore off the shirt that's still hanging partway off his shoulders. But the speed is something else, something no human could ever do, and that casual demonstration of unspeakable power has Bruce clamping his teeth down on a gasp.

"You've done your research, haven't you? You've run the numbers. You probably know more about what I'm capable of than I do. You sit in here and you tell yourself it's tactical, that you need to know; how else could you stop me? How else could you take me down?

"Except you can't. The things I can do—it's impossible. Everything you've got, your suit, your brains, your money, and you couldn't come up with anything. You had to steal that rock from Luthor just to have half a shot at me."

Bruce squeezes his eyes shut, but there's nowhere to turn, nowhere to hide, Kent's soft words and eviscerating truths coming at the same steady relentless pace as his hand working Bruce's cock.

"And you've thought about it," Kent murmurs, surrounding Bruce so closely now that his lips are almost touching Bruce's ear. "You sit up all night doing whatever it is you do, technical analysis, strategic breakdowns. And then you go to bed and you think about it: about what I could do to you, how easy it would be for me. Is that it?"

And god, Christ, just like that Bruce cracks. He grips Kent by the back of the neck, the shoulder; digs his fingertips into the solid bulk of Kent's muscles and fucks upward desperately into the circle of Kent's fingers instead of just standing there while Kent jerks him off. And it's terrifying, astounding, that the animal desperation of his body is mindless enough to want to, to fail to grasp what his conscious mind can't shake: that that's Superman's hand, that every time Bruce thrusts into it he's placing himself in a position to be viciously mutilated by nothing but an easy twist of Kent's wrist.

It's not a duty—the furthest thing from it. It's so unforgivably irrational it beggars belief. He isn't going through the motions, isn't forcing himself through a rote performance he'd have skipped if he thought he could get away with it; the sheer bewildering intensity with which he needs this, can't stop himself from chasing it, only just manages to outweigh the unthinkable risk posed by doing it. He feels seized, compelled, consumed.

He feels alive.

He'd been trying to keep his eyes closed, fumbling for any way to put some kind of sane distance between himself and what he's doing right now. But he has to look at Kent, he has to.

And of course that only makes it all worse, only heightens the effect. Even the lightest brush of Kent's fingertips, Kent's intent blue-eyed stare, makes Bruce shiver helplessly—because Kent could crush him with those hands, Kent's gaze could go red on a moment's notice and leave nothing but ash behind. Bruce isn't even sure which is more arousing: the perverse desire to be destroyed by Kent one way or another, or the idea that all of that impossible ability personified is looking at Bruce and wetting its lips, thumbing the dripping head of his cock with one hand and idly groping his ass with the other. Or, for that matter, which is more frightening—that he's given himself over so completely, thrown himself on Kent's mercy so utterly, and he's about to pay for his stupidity; or that he isn't. That, in doing this, he is in some sense trusting Kent, however temporarily or reluctantly, and that Kent won't make him regret it.

"Bruce," Kent murmurs against his cheek.

"Kent," Bruce hears himself say, and then, terribly, damningly, "Clark"—as if the alien's pretensions toward humanity are legitimate, as if on some level he's been fooled after all. But Kent doesn't seem to perceive it as a victory. Kent just seems surprised; and it's Kent's indrawn breath in his ear, the brief startled tightening of Kent's grip, that tips Bruce at last over the edge, in a white-hot surge of impossible pleasure.

There was a part of Clark that hadn't quite believed Bruce actually wanted any of this, even as Bruce was hard under his fingers and thrusting into his hand; but now he's got Bruce's come on his thumb, his wrist, and Bruce's harsh breaths in his ear, and all he can think is: he really isn't alone after all.

What are the odds? That the one other person in the Metropolis-Gotham metro area screwed up enough to make the step-ball-change from wanting to kill someone to coming all over them just happened to be the Gotham Batman. Clark's lucky day, even if it looked like anything but about an hour ago.

They're bent together, leaning against each other, temples touching and cheeks brushing. It's a weirdly intimate position to be in, and yet there's something that feels kind of safe about it. That they can't look at each other, maybe; that they're so close but their faces are still hidden.

Whatever it is, Clark's almost sorry when it's gone—when Bruce eases backward and a little sideways far enough to meet Clark's eyes.

And he's looking at Clark with a question in his face. As if after all that, somehow, after they peeled each other raw like that, there's still something about Clark he doesn't understand.

"You could have torn me apart," he says.

His tone is level, even. But Clark can hear his heart: still pounding, as hard as it has been since Clark first closed that box and started touching him.

Clark swallows. It had seemed fascinating to him, that someone like Bruce—Bruce Wayne and his casual disdain, his arrogance; Batman and his unhesitating command of nighttime Gotham in all its violence—should be frightened of him. He'd wanted to press Bruce, to force him to acknowledge it, so that Clark—

So that Clark wouldn't be the only one.

But maybe he's only made it all worse.

"You could have killed me," he says.

It comes out wrong, too sharp; not a counterargument but an accusation. Bruce looks away, jaw tight.

Clark fumbles to recover. "You wanted answers, I know that—"

"Torture is an ineffective method of information gathering," Bruce says, quiet and inflectionless, "and yields unreliable results. I—wanted the excuse to hurt you."

Clark stops short, surprised. He'd kind of gotten that impression, yeah; but he hadn't necessarily expected Bruce to admit it. "You stopped," he says, after a moment. "You'd have let me go. But I—" He clears his throat, feeling himself flush. After what they just did to each other—jesus, his fly's still hanging wide open; his hand is still on Bruce's ass. How can it be so hard to talk about it? "I wanted you to have that excuse. I wanted you to use it."

Bruce looks at him, and doesn't say anything. He hasn't moved to clean himself up, to refasten his slacks or to shake off Clark's grip; but his expression is fixedly neutral, unreadable, and suddenly he might as well be on the other side of the room.

Clark bites his lip. "And I do scare you."

"Can you blame me?"

Clark wants to laugh—does, half a breath, even though it isn't funny at all. "No," he says, squeezing his eyes shut. After everything he said, he thought Bruce understood—but maybe he was wrong. Maybe that's too much to ask of anybody. "No, I can't." He closes his eyes. "What are you going to do with me?"

"Do with you," Bruce repeats, carefully measured.

"If I leave—you'll just come after me," Clark says without looking up, shrugging a shoulder. He feels oddly tired, even though with that box closed he should be fine. "You've got that rock. You can track me down whenever you want to and drag me back here. What would be the point? Whatever it is you've got in mind, you—you might as well just—"

He stumbles to a halt, biting his lip again. He keeps his eyes shut, he—he doesn't want to look at Bruce, doesn't want to know how Bruce might be looking at him.

But then Bruce moves. Not away from him, toward him: he sets a hand against Clark's chest. Clark's prepared to be pushed away, reminding himself that with the box closed again, it's his responsibility to make it easy; the barest pressure, and he'll go. He won't make Bruce force him.

Except the pressure doesn't come, beyond the steady weight of Bruce's palm. It's just resting there against Clark's sternum, the tip of Bruce's thumb brushing the dip at the base of his throat.

Right where Bruce had set the rock, Clark realizes slowly, and he has to open his eyes then.

Bruce is watching him, and there's something thoughtful in his gaze, assessing. "Throwing yourself on my mercy," he says, very low, as if to himself.

"I guess you could call it that," Clark agrees, equally quietly.

And then Bruce twists just a little without taking his eyes off Clark, turns and sets his hand against the box, the edge of the lid. There are latches there, thick metal buckles and catches, and Bruce—fastens them.

One, and then the next, and the next. And Clark could tear the box open without bothering to undo them; but not Bruce.

Clark stares at him.

"I've been operating under a set of assumptions," Bruce says a little stiffly, "that—may have been less than accurate." He stops. "I don't like making mistakes," he adds, more wryly, "and something about you seems to invite them." He stops again, looks down at his hand and then back up at Clark's face, and seems to need to brace himself, jaw working, before he can speak again. "Tell me what happened. On Black Zero, in Nairomi. Tell me."

Of all the things he could have asked—Clark's shaking his head before he even realizes he wants to. "You know that, you already—"

"I'm not sure I do," Bruce says. And for him, Clark thinks, that's one hell of a concession.

"And you'll believe me."

"I don't know," Bruce says. "I'll—try."

Throwing himself on Bruce's mercy, Bruce had said; except Clark wouldn't have bet he had any.

But maybe Clark was wrong.

"Okay," Clark says tentatively, and then glances down at himself, at Bruce. "I, uh. Don't suppose we could clean up first?"

Bruce eyes him, and then glances down toward the far end of the lab. "How does a decontamination shower sound?" he murmurs, and his tone is so dry that Clark can't quite bite back the beginnings of a smile.

"What, together?"

Bruce looks at him for a long moment, and then away, and Clark sees his mouth twist, that deliberate lack of expression giving way suddenly to a tinge of ruefulness. "Calling that suggestion inappropriate seems a little disingenuous, at this point," he muses, with an air of carefully calibrated lightness. "Though I'm not sure we should be making a habit out of spontaneous X-rated trust falls, Mr. Kent."

But he still doesn't move away.

It feels like almost as big a risk as—as everything else Clark's done tonight, to reach out and undo the top button of Bruce's dress shirt.

But Bruce stands there and lets him, eyes dark. Lets him. Trusts him, maybe, just a little bit; and that has to count for something. It has to.

"I don't know, Mr. Wayne," Clark says unsteadily. "I think it's working out okay so far," and when he leans in to kiss Bruce, fumbling for the next button down, Bruce goes still under his mouth, his hands; and then comes alive all at once, catching Clark's chin between his fingers and Clark's shirt in his fist, his lips against Clark's: kissing back.