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It's apparent to Bruce almost immediately that his time at the 15th Annual Gotham-Metropolis An Evening of Giving Charity Gala won't be wasted.
Not that he would have allowed the time to be wasted in any case. Even less-than-ideal circumstances would simply have necessitated a change in strategy—if nothing else, he could always have used the evening to make a few introductions, maneuver a handful of the Wayne Foundation's least generous donors into making drunkenly grandiose statements about the amount they intended to give tonight that they could then be shamed into upholding.
But as it is, he can do even better. He'd planned for the night on the premise that if any opportunity for image management presented itself, he would take it—in the abstract, always worth doing, for the same reasons as ever; and in practice, more urgent than it has been in a decade or two, thanks to Bruce Wayne's unfortunately public ties to the Justice League, genuinely well-earned public goodwill reflected secondhand where it isn't deserved but can't be avoided. Bruce Wayne is toothlessly well-meaning at best, as long as no effort is required of him, and a vapid, brainless, vaguely ridiculous public spectacle at worst. And the firmer a reminder he can provide of that, the better.
Which means he's grateful to see, among the crowd of CEOs, local celebrities, and socialites filling the ballroom, none other than Jaina Hudson.
The best possible outcome, by far. It would have required more resources than he could have justifiably committed to this evening to have been certain in advance—any given night, a dozen different people would have heard, in a dozen different places, that Jaina Hudson had plans to attend a minimum of four events, and in different cities, different states, or even across multiple continents, at times. She's so incredibly hard to track, to keep up with, that Bruce doesn't commit himself to trying unless it's absolutely necessary.
But she's also sharp, well-connected, conveniently beautiful—which makes it easier to justify Bruce Wayne's interest in her—and fantastically good at spreading gossip.
Most people are unaware of it, obviously. They wouldn't speak to her as freely as they do otherwise. But Bruce once dedicated a great deal of time and effort to identifying the source of an especially nasty—and entirely true—rumor that had ruined the reputation of a certain Metropolis businessman. And since then, to him, the pattern has been unmistakable.
People Jaina likes fare well, in the court of public opinion; people Jaina doesn't like are significantly less fortunate. But her approach is delicate, and proportional. She doesn't dislike Bruce Wayne, exactly, but his arrogance inevitably grates on her—which means she'll almost certainly accept the opportunity to embarrass him, to a moderate but ultimately harmless degree.
It's been almost a year since the last time they saw each other. But unless her taste for the game as a whole has changed, she'll serve Bruce's purposes to a T—and he'll serve hers. She's never minded being hit on by Bruce Wayne, not when she so often gets something useful out of it, and she'll make it as difficult to pinpoint a source as she always does, without any help from him. They'll both walk away with something they want and nothing to apologize for, which is as much as Bruce could ever have asked; and the majority of Gotham's elite will have precisely the reaction Bruce wants them to have, which will make this whole effort straightforward for once. Bruce had prepared for the best possible scenario just as thoroughly as he had for the worst, and that fact is about to pay off beautifully.
He has to make a circuit of the room first, of course. Bruce Wayne wouldn't have spotted Jaina as quickly as Bruce has, and his goals for the night couldn't be more different from Bruce's in any case; efficiency is, unfortunately, not in his nature.
So Bruce gets himself a drink, and then another, and shakes hands, pretends to have only the vaguest idea what this shindig is even about, smiles at some of the richest people in the room as if he's not entirely sure who they are. He says a handful of things that would be deliberate insults if Bruce Wayne had put any thought into them at all, claps a shoulder or two in an overbearing kind of way, and allows himself to catch glimpses of Jaina out of the corner of his eye, just often enough to let him track her progress around the ballroom in the back of his head.
And at last, she moves toward the bar: the perfect excuse.
Bruce Wayne makes a bad joke, laughs too hard about it, and then downs the rest of his glass—twiddles it between his fingers as explanation, and wanders off.
Jaina is at one end of the bar, waiting; Bruce walks up to the middle, sets his empty glass down and then starts sliding it back and forth across the bartop when he realizes the lone bartender's attention is fully occupied. He glances one way, sighs a little, leans in across the bartop like he might just reach back there and pour for himself if he thinks he can get away with it—and then, only then, glances the other way, to see who might be looking at him, and allows himself to discover Jaina.
"Well, hello there," he says. "I know you, right? Jaida?"
Jaina cuts him a sideways look, mouth twisting; amused, just a little bit, despite herself. "Close, Brucie," she murmurs. "I suppose I should take that as a compliment."
He steps closer, slides his glass down the bar with him to keep him company, snaps the fingers of his free hand once and then again and squints into the middle distance like he's straining the lonely remaining brain cell Bruce Wayne has. "No, that's right, it's—it's—Jaina, isn't it?"
Jaina raises an eyebrow. "Oh, well done, good boy; would you prefer applause, or a cookie?"
Bruce grins, in a way Bruce Wayne would assume is impossibly attractive, and spreads his hands wide. "Why not both?"
And Jaina rolls her eyes, but there's still the shadow of a smile lingering around her mouth, and she doesn't turn and walk away. "Mm, you'll have to work a little bit harder than that."
"Let me buy you a drink?"
"It's an open bar, Bruce," Jaina says, with a warm sort of condescension that's almost pity.
"Oh—right, right. Well, let me carry one for you. Won't have to get up and go get your second, huh?"
And she snorts and shakes her head, but ultimately doesn't turn down the opportunity. When the bartender finally turns back around, she asks for a golden Cadillac—and then loads Bruce up with a pair of appletinis.
Already in the mood to make him look mildly ridiculous, by the regressive, conventional standards of their audience. Better and better.
And Bruce Wayne, of course, would think nothing of it. Bruce Wayne presumes himself to be so suave, so handsome, so thoroughly charming that Jaina must be mere minutes from simply throwing herself at him—believes that at worst she's trying to conceal how desperately alluring she finds him, playing hard-to-get. Bruce Wayne would like to get a little bit more drunk than he already is and then fuck a beautiful woman, as his reward for having done the bare minimum in showing up tonight: the physical equivalent of the tax break he'll get for throwing some money he doesn't even need at life-saving charities.
There's seating scattered around the edges of the ballroom at intervals. Jaina moves toward the nearest, and Bruce can't ignore the opportunity to guide her along—even if he has to settle for using the line of his arm, his closeness at her shoulder, since his hands are both occupied with appletinis. Maybe that's why Jaina asked for two; she's no doubt well aware of how low-cut the back of her dress is. She may be perfectly happy to watch Bruce Wayne put on a floor show, but that doesn't mean she's interested in giving him excuses to get too handsy too early.
Jaina sits, and Bruce settles in beside her as close as he can get, steels himself and "accidentally" positions himself at an angle that maximizes his view down her neckline. Jaina isn't stupid; she'll notice.
He talks. Rambles, self-interested, veering from one topic to another without any appearance of thought or care—drops tidbits as he goes, major investments that have fallen through or vacation homes in Mallorca abruptly sold, things Bruce Wayne might plausibly have heard without thinking through their implications for certain individuals' fortunes.
And Jaina picks them up, one at a time, the line of her mouth growing steadily more and more smug.
Excruciating, to have to dole it all out so haphazardly, without focus or clear intent; slow, grinding work. But it has to be done.
Bruce Wayne forgets whose drinks he's supposedly holding, and starts sucking down one of the appletinis—laughs just a little more loudly at his own jokes, leans just a little too far in Jaina's direction. It's about time to escalate, and the empty glass will let him do it.
There are no waiters in this room; Bruce Wayne reaches up behind himself without looking and pushes the martini glass into someone's hands anyway, and for better or for worse, the startled socialite who was passing him reflexively grabs for it, catches it, instead of letting it smash to the floor.
And, hand free, Bruce doesn't even bother to pretend to stretch—simply extends his arm around the back of Jaina's chair, and braces himself to slide his thumb beneath one strap of her dress for a single deliberate stroke.
"Oh, oops," he murmurs, waggling his eyebrows.
Jaina's expression is unimpressed. But after a moment, she clearly decides to allow it—to string Bruce Wayne along, the better to make sure he doesn't lose interest and wander off before she's gotten everything useful out of him.
"Subtlety, thy name is Bruce," she says, cool, amused.
And then, with no further prompting required, she shifts her weight, angles the curve of her body toward him instead of away, and sets her own hand on his thigh—in just the right place to feel, through his slacks, the scratchy extra thickness of the lace band.
Her gaze turns sharp. "Oh, my. Dressed up a little extra pretty tonight, are we?"
Bruce Wayne's never had any use for either shame or modesty, and is currently more than a little drunk, ostensibly. Bruce shrugs his shoulders. "Just hoping to have a good time, you know?"
"Yes, of course," Jaina says. She slides her thumb along the band, finds one strand of hosiery and follows it half an inch to locate the first crisscross join. And there it is, the awareness spreading across her face. She's sure of it now, knows exactly what she's found, and is already thinking ahead a dozen steps—what a salacious little detail this is going to be to drop in the right places, to give all the right people exactly the wrong mental image the next time they come face-to-face with Bruce Wayne. They'll look at him and think of the things they were told he likes to wear under those business suits when he wants to get off, and any chance they might have taken him seriously in any respect will be utterly gone.
Ideal, Bruce thinks. He's just been saved the trouble of orchestrating some way to be caught with his pants down in front of Jaina; and now that she's discerned his apparent tastes, he won't be required to find some other woman to sleep with tonight, either. The best of all possible outcomes, by far.
And then the wall ten feet away from them explodes.
The pressure wave alone is staggering, and Bruce has nothing to brace himself against; he goes toppling, along with his chair. He is at least able to reach out, to catch Jaina against him as they both roll, to find the back of her head with one hand and keep her tucked into the lee of his shoulder as rubble rains down around them. His ears are ringing, full of false noise, but he can still tell when the worst of it is over. He pushes himself up, and Jaina's hand closes tightly on the lapel of his suit—she's gasping, only just catching her breath, but tense, alert, eyes wide.
Well. That eliminates the simplest option.
"Sure is one way to crash a party," he says, just a little slurred, blinking: startled, thrown, but too drunk to appreciate the actual degree of danger.
"Bruce," Jaina says. "Bruce, we need to get out of this room—are you hurt?"
"What?"
"Are you hurt, you idiot—"
"No, no," Bruce says, as if only just catching up; but it's oddly kind, a show of consideration he hadn't expected, that Jaina should be taking even a moment to worry for Bruce Wayne.
The screaming around them has begun to die down, but the air is full of dust, billowing smoke, and they're surrounded by toppled furniture, chunks of stone and plaster.
"Stay down," Jaina hisses, tugging on Bruce's lapel punctuationally before letting go, rolling herself over beneath him so she can crawl on her elbows. She angles herself in the general direction of what's left of the wall—presumably in order to follow it toward the nearest doorway, or at least an alcove she can take cover in, before anything else explodes.
Perfect.
Bruce crawls along beside her, keeping pace, until approximately the point at which, given her height, she should be able to reach out and find the edge of the nearest archway leading out into the corridor next to the ballroom—and yes, that must be it, beveled marble resolving itself out of the gritty, clouded air.
A handful of bangs; not guns, Bruce understands, because a moment later there's a shift in the air, a fresh swirling rush of smoke.
"Oh, hey, shit," he says, "forgot my drink."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Jaina bites out. "Bruce—"
But he's able to make sure her hand—grabbing for his cuff, his jacket, anything—is misaimed, and rolls away. The smoke grenades are going to help him as much as they're going to help whoever threw them, and surely Jaina's unforced generosity toward Bruce Wayne is about to run out.
He can hear her swear some more, but he must be thoroughly obscured to her by now, and there's a significant gulf between leaving him to die behind her and venturing out of the relative shelter of the corridor to try to look for him in this mess; surely she'll come down on the sane side of the cost-benefit analysis this time around. He gets his elbows underneath him, eels along until he can find the wall again approximately ten feet past where he left Jaina, and then he turns to set his back to it, without rising, and takes stock.
The haze of dust and smoke seems impenetrable at first. But he waits, and after a moment, he can pick out a figure—and then another, another. Not dressed in tuxedos, in backless gowns; masked, Bruce understands, masked and armed, moving with purpose. Organized, coordinated, which is not good.
And they're sweeping the ballroom, a foot at a time: grabbing anyone they find, hustling them up and off the floor, and, at least to judge by their trajectory before they vanish into the billowing smoke again, escorting them over to the far wall.
Taking them somewhere, via another exit? Lining them up there to point guns at their heads? Either way, presumably intending to take as many hostages as possible—and at a gathering where every single attendee has massive amounts of money at their disposal, practically self-selected to maximize the overall ransom available. Of course.
But the devil is, no doubt, in the details; and Bruce will have no opportunity to discern what those details are if he doesn't get himself rounded up, too.
He aims for the nearest smoke canister, finds it with his outstretched fingertips and rolls it away from him, coughing sharply. That ought to catch someone's attention. He crawls a little farther, fumbling around as if genuinely searching for something; and, miraculously, sliding his hand across wet marble covered in the cool sharp shards of half a dozen glasses that smashed, he locates the side of a single intact tumbler, and gets his palm around it an instant before someone grips the back of his suit jacket.
"Hey, don't make me spill, jeez!"
He's hauled up unceremoniously. "Shut the fuck up," the man at his back snaps, and then he's pushed forward, one stumbling stride, another, and that carries him far enough from the canister on the floor to take him out of the thickest smoke.
Good news, in a sense, that his second hypothetical proves correct: everyone else the masked attackers have located in the confusion appears to be lined up along the ballroom's facing wall. If whoever is running this operation had been separating the hostages, splitting them up and dragging them away, significantly more urgent action would be required.
As it is, however, there are several masked men standing some distance away—keeping a general eye on the crowd, guns leveled, so no one gets any ideas—and one, another, are moving along the line of frightened civilians, and—
And checking their faces, Bruce understands, unforgivably slowly. Checking their faces, forcing them to look up. Searching for someone in particular.
And then he's shoved forward one more step, and one of the men in front of him glances over, eye drawn by the movement—sees him, and then, a brief double-take, recognizes him.
"Hey, boss, we got him!"
He is, abruptly, yanked around; a gun is pressed up underneath his chin. And for a moment, he's left with no idea why.
Bruce Wayne's net worth is impressive enough—but not to as great a degree as usual, in this room, and certainly not compared to one or two of the individuals already lined up along the ballroom's wall. There are no public projects Wayne Enterprises has embarked upon recently that these men are at all likely to want him to—halt, or redirect. And yet what other reason could they possibly have to single him out?
Fortunately, Bruce Wayne is also allowed to find himself hopelessly confused.
"What?" Bruce says, blinking. "Me?"
The man standing at his shoulder, holding him where he is with a heavy hand at his back, huffs out a breath; the man in front of him, holding the gun where it is, snorts.
"Really going to pretend you don't know, huh?"
For an instant, Bruce perceives nothing but the sudden stab of ice down his spine.
Alexander Luthor, Jr, is locked away, and officially diagnosed with severe psychosis on top of it. Bruce had been as thorough, as painstaking, as he knew how, in evaluating whether Luthor had shared what he knew, whether there existed even a single shred of evidence suggesting that word had or could spread. But if somehow it did, if whoever is running this operation knows Batman's identity—
"We got serious business here tonight," the man is saying. "Serious money. You think we're stupid? You think we want your fucking Justice League on our asses?"
Ah. Reasonable enough, from a certain angle, Bruce supposes; an acute relief, from another.
"They're coming any minute. No helping that. But you call 'em off when they get here, understand? You tell 'em—no sudden moves, no superspeed, nothing. They get half a second to move, they can take some of us. But they can't take all of us, and we only need one guy still on his feet to shoot you in the head. Got it?"
Bruce makes a bewildered expression to give himself a moment to consider his response. On the one hand, Bruce Wayne is a bit of an egomaniac; with his overinflated sense of self-worth, he's unlikely to claim the League doesn't or wouldn't listen to him. But too much confidence, too breezy an assurance that he can keep the League from interfering, could come across as a failure to take their threats seriously—could even get someone else shot, if they feel a need to prove to him that they are both willing and able to kill.
"I mean, sure, I can try," he says aloud, wide-eyed, drunkenly earnest. "I guess they owe me one, right? Kind of their landlord and all?" He sways a little closer, heedless of the mouth of the gun pressed beneath the line of his jaw, and lowers his tone, confiding. "Honestly, though, it's great PR. For me, not them. Not like they need the help, anyway. They could go build themselves a base on the moon or something if they wanted, you know? Actually, that would be pretty sick—"
He's prepared to spin it out as long as he needs to—to try to get them talking, if nothing else; to try to give Clark, Diana, even Victor, every opportunity to listen in, to learn whatever there is to learn about what these men are doing here before they move in.
But he's interrupted by a rush of air, by the familiar crackle of Barry.
And then Diana shouts a war cry, Arthur's trident clanging off the gun some poor idiot must've tried to point at him in the hallway, and—Bruce looks up, already certain what he'll see, heart thumping pointlessly anyway.
Clark. Resolving out of the cloud of smoke and dust that's still hanging in the air where the wall of the ballroom, the ceiling of the building, used to be; bright against the dark sky beyond him, red cape snapping with leftover speed.
"Don't!" the man in front of Bruce shouts, demonstrating a genuinely admirable reaction time. "Don't, or I swear to god, we'll do it," and he lowers the gun away from Bruce's face, clearly intending to make a show of his resolve by shooting Bruce somewhere less likely to be immediately lethal; the foot, probably.
It doesn't work as intended. He's fractionally too tense, strung tight, jittery—who wouldn't be, with Superman himself looming overhead, frowning down at you? The man squeezes the trigger an instant too early; Bruce feels a sharp line of heat open up along the outside of his thigh, and the gunshot, this close, is practically an impact instead of a sound.
And since the opportunity has presented itself, he promptly does the most embarrassing thing Bruce Wayne could do, and simultaneously the most tactically valuable: he faints.
The man behind him had still had a hand on Bruce, had clutched Bruce's suit jacket reflexively when Clark showed up. He shouts when Bruce goes down, grabs after his dead weight—removes the gun he had at Bruce's back from the equation, in other words, and suddenly the noise quadruples, the ringing in Bruce's ears multiplied by the screams of the people lined up along the wall, yelling from the masked men. Bruce forces himself not to react to it, remains carefully slack so no part of himself will get in Clark's way—
The rush of superspeed comes with a familiar, disorienting jerk in the pit of Bruce's stomach. He rides it out, braces for the sudden shift from overcrowded ballroom to cool night air, and when the world has settled back into place around him, there's pavement underneath his feet, strobing light cutting sharply through the dimness—the first handful of police cars pulling up to the front of the building, though it's been barely ten minutes, a crowd only just gathering to stare up at the collapsed roof and the smoke rising from it. Victor must have reached into both police departments' systems and set something off before the League even arrived.
There are additional sirens in the distance, the volume of the crowd's murmurs increasing sharply because Superman and Bruce Wayne have just landed thirty feet in front of them—and, in the distance, faint and very startled shouts, which presumably testify to the fact that all those masked men are having their guns jerked out of their hands by a flicker of white lightning.
And Clark hasn't let go of Bruce's arms.
His hands are tense, his fingertips pressing in a little harder than he would usually allow them to; his eyes are wide, but his gaze isn't on Bruce's face, has dropped—
Ah. The gunshot. The gunshot, and then Bruce had crumpled—very much deliberately, but of course Clark would only have parsed it as faking for as long as it took him to smell blood. And Clark's ability to lose all perspective when he believes Bruce has managed to get hurt operates at superspeed just as well as the rest of him.
"I'm fine," Bruce says, barely voiced, swaying a little in place so the crowd will see nothing but Bruce Wayne trying to catch his balance.
And that earns him a quick glance—sharply dubious, because naturally Clark's not going to take his word for it.
Fortunately, the crease left by the bullet is high on Bruce's left thigh, with the crowd thirty feet away in the street to his right. No one is going to be able to see what's happening well enough to accidentally parse it as Superman copping a feel. Bruce has an instant to steel himself for it; Clark's fingers are careful, clinical, finding the narrow slice of the wound, the tackiness of blood but only a little bit. And he'll notice, of course he will, but perhaps he'll laugh—snort a startled breath through his nose, the way he tends to do when Bruce has surprised him with anything perfectly in-character for Bruce Wayne but incongruous with Clark's perception of Bruce himself—
The flicker of a puzzled frown crosses Clark's face, as one fingertip catches against a vertex. "What's—?"
And Bruce has every intention of stepping back, of reminding Clark wordlessly where they are and that they need to play out the conclusion to this rescue for their audience; but Clark reflexively catches the strand he's found against his finger more tightly, exploratory, testing, and pulls, drawing an unexpected circle of tension around the entire span of Bruce's thigh, and Bruce's head is abruptly empty.
Clark draws in a sharp breath.
Bruce forces himself ruthlessly back into gear: raises his eyebrows, and makes himself say, "Didn't realize good timing was one of your superpowers."
Clark's still looking—where his hand is. His eyes come up strikingly slowly. A flush is climbing his throat, his cheeks.
"Superspeed," he says faintly, blinking once and then again, swallowing. "It's the, um," and then he grinds to a halt, shakes his head a little. "I. I mean—you'll—be fine, Mr. Wayne."
In-character. It's in-character. Bruce adopts an offended air. "Some would say I already am fine, Superman."
And under normal circumstances, he would expect Clark to roll his eyes at that, to shoot Bruce a flat look, but apparently these are not normal circumstances. Clark is still staring at him, hot-faced, wide-eyed. "I have to," he says, and then stops. "I should—"
"Go," Bruce fills in for him pointedly.
But Clark still doesn't snap out of it, doesn't laugh and agree. He jerks away all at once, the hand against Bruce's thigh and the hand still around Bruce's upper arm at the same time, and then he's—gone, overhead in a sudden swirl of air, and Bruce stares up after him, blinking, trying to understand what in the hell just happened.
He refuses to leap to conclusions.
He has time to give the available evidence the attention it deserves. Trapped as Bruce Wayne—who has an established tendency toward mild hypochondria, of the sort specifically designed to encourage emergency services to dismiss his complaints, wrap him in a shock blanket to make him feel as though he's being treated with care, and then abandon him in favor of patients who actually need their help—he allows crowds, lights, cameras, and city services to move around him, and he thinks about it.
He turns it over, carefully, again and again, the better to consider it from all possible angles.
There are other reasonable interpretations. Of course there are.
Clark may simply have been—surprised. Discomposed, by such an unexpected series of events occurring in such rapid succession: awareness of the incident, the danger, however it happened to come to the League's attention, and the gunshot, the rollercoaster ride of assuming Bruce had faked injury only to encounter the smell of actual blood, only to be reassured in turn mere seconds later that the wound was in fact superficial. He's demonstrated a distinct tendency to lose his grip on his "Superman face", on the gravitas and equanimity he wants Superman to project under most circumstances, when Bruce—or anyone he cares about at all—has been even temporarily at risk.
But there were certain—certain indicators
(—that indrawn breath, the sweet startled hitch of it; the instant and utterly unschooled change in expression, the soft overwhelmed slackening of that mouth; the flush, lovely slow heat rising up the column of that throat, those fucking cheekbones—)
that are not congruent with that assessment, and are difficult to dismiss.
It—wouldn't be a completely nonsensical hypothesis to test.
Clark has sometimes looked at him for a little longer than he had expected; has sometimes—watched his hands move with an uncalled-for degree of attention. Has, occasionally, seemed briefly distracted when Bruce is speaking to him or touching him, in ways Bruce hadn't been able to fully account for at the time. But now, considering it all in context—
It wouldn't be a completely nonsensical hypothesis to test.
Since Bruce Wayne had been so publicly involved in the incident, Bruce can't simply vanish and follow the rest of the Justice League back to the Hall to debrief. Which means he is going to be guaranteed precisely the opportunity he's looking for: between half an hour and forty-five minutes after Bruce Wayne has left the scene at last, Clark is going to show up in the Cave to check in, as he always does under circumstances like these.
It can be simple. It can be straightforward. Bruce can assess the validity of this particular possibility by means so naturalistic as to cause Clark no embarrassment or confusion, nor even particular discomfort, if Bruce is wrong. Because Bruce will simply act almost exactly as he might have if he had noticed nothing at all—but for the timing.
He positions himself in the Cave, as he would have otherwise. He has a fresh set of clothes with him; a dress shirt that doesn't smell like the contents of a smoke-bomb canister, slacks without a conspicuous slice opening the fabric across the thigh. He pulls off his socks, and then unbuckles his belt, feeling oddly aware of every movement of his hands, registering the texture of the leather and the cool smoothness of the metal with unnecessary intensity, as if the action is much more important than it is. He undoes his fly.
And then he stops, and waits.
The timing needs to be right, that's all.
It shouldn't pose a problem. It's nothing unusual. Technically speaking, Bruce has stripped in front of Clark several dozen times in the past six months, changing into or out of the Batsuit; that fact is precisely what Bruce is relying on here, precisely what will make this situation unremarkable to Clark if the hypothesis in play proves itself to be incorrect. And yet—
And yet, there is some indefinable, unquantifiable sensation, almost of tension, or—Bruce can't characterize it clearly, even to himself. He barely exerted himself at all on the way here, but his heart is pounding, his skin prickling. That feeling of—oversensitivity, practically overstimulation, in the firm sharp way that touching his belt, undoing the buckle, sliding each button in his button fly free of its hole, had impressed themselves upon him has not gone away even now that he is standing still. The sound of his own breath is peculiarly loud in his ears; the movement in his diaphragm, his ribs, against the insides of his arms, the tiny brush of the shirt he is wearing against itself that it creates, feels inexplicably marked, unignorable.
He should use this time for something. He should plan, strategize. Mentally review potential routes for tonight's patrol. Think.
He doesn't. He can't. He stands there by the worktable, fresh clothes folded in front of him, the weight of his open, dangling belt feeling obscenely fucking conspicuous against his hips, and he breathes, and he waits.
And then, at last, there is the distant grinding sound of the lake entrance opening, and a far-off rush of air.
He leans forward a little, catches the waistband of his slacks against his thumbs—moves at a normal pace, now, without pausing or lingering, because in about a second and a half, Clark is going to be—
—there.
He turns his head at the sound of Clark's feet touching down against the floor, says, "Clark," in a level steady tone, and pulls his slacks down his thighs: exposes black briefs that could plausibly be called tight, and the tops of the stockings, thick black bands of lace and elastic rounding his upper thighs, the criss-cross of the fishnet pattern running down toward his knees.
And, since he turned his head, exactly as he normally would have, acknowledgment of Clark's presence, he gets to—see.
Clark had begun to take half a step toward Bruce; he goes still, full-body, unmistakable, breath catching sharply in his throat. His gaze is trained on the line of Bruce's nearer thigh, moving in a vague stunned way from the lace downward. His mouth opens, and then closes, tongue passing briefly along the curve of his lower lip. He swallows. He's reddening all over again, hot color along his throat and cheeks, his ears.
And then, abruptly, he seems to realize exactly how exquisitely obvious he's being, cutting a glance upward—finding Bruce's eyes on him, and visibly coming to the understanding, comprehension and the first traces of shame crossing his face in an instant, that Bruce has noticed.
"Bruce, I," he says, hoarse, and then stops, wets his mouth again. The flavor of the awareness in his face changes, sudden, the line of his mouth twisting bitterly, his eyes dark with something too close to hurt for comfort. "You did that on purpose."
Ah. He thinks it was a trap—a deliberate effort to expose him, in order to condemn him or to force him to redirect his attentions.
But he'll understand what it really is in a moment. No reason to abandon the plan.
"I was testing a hypothesis," Bruce says aloud, calmly, evenly.
Clark blinks. Not the response he was expecting. "Bruce—"
Bruce leans forward an inch farther, pulls the slacks the rest of the way to his knees and then lets them slide from his thumbs and fall down his legs to the floor.
"I've been engaged in a little image management tonight," he says, straightening up, lifting his hands to the buttons of his dress shirt. "The idea of Bruce Wayne, rapidly approaching fifty, wearing what is functionally low-grade women's lingerie on an evening out—it's laughable. Anyone who remembers it the next time they come face-to-face with him will be amused by it, will experience the urge toward condescension that comes with knowing something ultimately harmless but ostensibly embarrassing about him, and will therefore continue to underestimate him.
"And I'll admit I'd expected you to react in much the same way, even if you'd at least understand why I was doing it." The last button comes undone beneath his fingers. He fights the urge to stand in some ridiculous contrapposto pose, to attempt to show himself off somehow; either this will be enough, or it won't. He meets Clark's eyes instead, and allows himself a wry smile. "But this isn't the first time you've surprised me."
Clark is watching him, still. Whatever bitterness had been in his expression, it's gone now, and the hurt, thankfully, has given way to a much more promising uncertainty. His throat works. "Bruce," he says, very quietly.
Bruce steps out of the puddle of his slacks, and toward Clark.
"Bruce, just—wait a second. Don't you think we should—?"
Bruce finds himself powerfully disinclined to wait a second, or any other span of time. It's manipulative of him. Of course it is. But, given a chance to think, Clark is all too likely to decide this is not a good idea, and not for any of the reasons it is actually not a good idea but out of some obscure sense of scruple, some lingering Midwestern inclination to assume having sex with someone you aren't going to have sex with again is inherently cheapening or dirtying or simply wrong.
And Bruce doesn't want Clark to decide this is not a good idea. Bruce doesn't want Clark to turn him down. What a stroke of luck it is, that this should be it—a thing he can offer Clark, a thing he can give Clark that Clark would never have asked for that has nevertheless accidentally been placed in the light where Bruce can see it. There are kinks far more difficult to accommodate, far more difficult to find out about in the first place, that Bruce could so easily never have been in a position to help Clark indulge. But this—Clark wants this, Clark will enjoy this, even though it's Bruce who's giving it to him. Or not even that; especially because it's Bruce who's giving it to him, because he can for once allow whatever misguided attraction he's felt toward Bruce to take full sway without fear that he's overstepped or committed himself to anything in particular. And Bruce feels a terrible, selfish urgency at the thought of delaying, of allowing such a moment to slip through his fingers—
He steps closer, takes Clark's hands and guides them to his thighs until Clark's open palms settle tentatively against those bands of lace. "Should what, Clark?" he murmurs.
"Jesus, Bruce," Clark says unsteadily.
"What do you think we should do now, hmm?" Bruce repeats. "Because I have a few ideas."
He's close enough, now, to lean in—to decrease the distance between their faces to an overtly suggestive degree, less than an inch remaining, the radiant heat of Clark's flushed cheek palpable against the corner of his mouth. Clark draws a shivering breath, and breaks all at once: turns into it, catches the curve of Bruce's mouth against his own, and makes a small hoarse sound in the back of his throat.
Insofar as Bruce has allowed himself to expect anything, he had expected that. No matter how fundamentally sexual Clark's motivations tonight may be, he simply isn't the sort of person who can fuck someone without kissing them—without wanting to, at least, and it is if anything a good sign that Clark is letting himself act on his wants, letting himself act on Bruce in service of them.
Beyond that, well. The fishnet stockings are clearly the centerpiece tonight; and this is for Clark's gratification. Surely that means—hmm. He can't hurt himself fucking between Bruce's thighs, but that doesn't mean the texture will feel pleasurable to him. Perhaps he'll simply want to fuck Bruce; get Bruce's legs up over his shoulders, fold Bruce in half and dig his fingers into Bruce's stockinged thighs—
Bruce has perhaps two and a half seconds to wish he'd known this was coming, to think distantly that he could have prepared for it, shaved: maximized the appearance and feel of the fishnets, minimized certain unfortunate realities that might interfere with Clark's enjoyment of the evening.
And then Clark reaches up, catches Bruce's face in one hand and says, "Bruce," against his mouth in a breathless pleading way, and kisses him again—harder, more deeply, thumb dragging at Bruce's lower lip, firm sweet pressure of his tongue against Bruce's. And his other hand, still against Bruce's thigh, is—he's curling his fingers, Bruce assesses vaguely, sliding them in through the open fishnet pattern to rub the backs of them over Bruce's thighs.
So perhaps the hair isn't a problem for him after all, somehow.
He presses closer, shifts Bruce with him one step at a time toward—the worktable, Bruce understands dimly, coming up against it, metal shockingly cold against his ass through nothing but his briefs. Clark's still got three fingers caught in the fishnet, and each step is—it's almost the same as it was out there in the street outside the gala, the way the stocking draws tight around Bruce's thigh as he moves his leg, the weight of Clark's hand pulling at it, that brief feeling of finding himself—leashed—that seems to drive all thought straight out of his head.
Clark kisses him again, again; bites at his mouth, the swell of his lower lip, and it's quick at first, tentative, but Bruce doesn't pull away from it, makes an unintentional sound into it, and then it's—Clark bites harder, urgent, startlingly and gratifyingly greedy.
Bruce still has an open dress shirt hanging off his shoulders. Clark's hand against his face drops to the side of his throat, the nape of his neck; finds the collar, and follows the line of buttons clumsily down the front of Bruce's shoulder until he clears Bruce's arm—until he can get his hand in underneath the shirt, push it across the line of Bruce's back. That broad strong palm settling in the curve of Bruce's spine feels hot, huge, even though Bruce is hardly a small man; down to Bruce's overactive awareness of what Clark could do with it, how easily Clark could move him or push him or pin him with it, no doubt.
Clark breaks away from Bruce's mouth at last, and he finds himself panting, licking at his lips—it's been barely two minutes, at the absolute most, but nevertheless they feel slick and oversensitive, and as if they must be very red. Maybe Clark's been using the superspeed, compressed half an hour of luxurious kissing into a hundred and twenty seconds.
And then Bruce shuts his eyes, head tipping back helplessly, because Clark is mouthing at his jaw, now—at the side of his throat, the dip at the base of it, the length of his collarbone. He's—sinking downward, Bruce grasps, but it can't be on purpose, can it? Bruce clutches after him, tangles a hand in Clark's shirt just over the frankly unfair swell of muscle across his shoulder, and the other finds Clark's head a moment later, catching in the thick loose curl of Clark's hair. "Clark, what—?"
But Clark has folded himself to his knees, now, and the hand that had been spread across Bruce's back has gone with him, has slid down along Bruce's side, his hip. Clark hooks two fingers in the waistband of Bruce's briefs, and says, soft and hoarse and strange, "Let me."
"Clark—"
"Let me," Clark repeats. "Please. Bruce, please."
"Of course," is all Bruce can think to say. "Of course, you—anything you want," and he almost wants to call a stop to the whole thing himself for an instant, wants to be able to signal for a time-out and force Clark to tell Bruce what he's thinking, because the look that crosses Clark's face then is incomprehensible—his eyes fall shut, something fierce and sharp and yearning twisting the line of his mouth. But within a moment he's tipped himself forward, resting his forehead against Bruce's thigh, hiding there; and Bruce can't bring himself to do anything with that but respect it, allowing his fingers to slide unsteadily through Clark's hair, hoping Clark will perceive it as reassurance.
One way or another, it doesn't last long. Clark exhales against Bruce's thigh, clears his throat and lifts his head, and he's—he still has the waistband of Bruce's briefs caught against his fingers, drags it open and down easily. Bruce isn't at the end of his rope, not yet; but after a good half-hour of relentless anticipation, after stripping his slacks off with Clark's eyes on him, after being kissed and touched by Clark's mouth and hands, and now with Clark on his knees in front of him—Bruce isn't exactly soft, either.
And whatever it was that had snagged Clark in its grip just then, it seems to be gone. Clark looks at Bruce's cock with a staggeringly obscene intensity, yanks Bruce's briefs down until they're rolled up in a tangle around his upper thighs, and then takes a long, scorchingly hot moment to just run his open palms down Bruce's thighs and back up—rubs his thumbs against the texture of the stockings, the netted strands pinching and stretching, catching at the hair on Bruce's thighs, and Bruce shudders involuntarily, hands tightening, fingertips digging themselves into Clark's shirt, his hair.
"Christ, Clark," he gasps, and Clark grins up at him for an instant, bright and wicked, and then leans in—presses his face to Bruce's cock, his cheek; shifts in and—Christ, and down for a moment, straining the trapped fabric of Bruce's briefs where it's caught there, nose practically against Bruce's balls, breathing in the scent of Bruce's body where it must be the strongest. But perhaps there's something about the smell of arousal that does it for him. Or perhaps—perhaps that's the true explanation for the attraction he's clearly been experiencing toward Bruce: pheromones, pure arbitrary chemistry, despite all his rational faculties knowing better.
"Bruce," he murmurs, barely audible, fingertips pressing tight into Bruce's thighs. And then he opens his mouth, and—licks.
It's a little like the biting, when they were kissing. He starts slowly, cautiously. He—hasn't done this very often, Bruce begins to understand, dimly; he's experimenting, testing, sliding his tongue here and there; assessing the taste, the feel, Bruce's reactions.
It takes him almost three full minutes to actually put the head of Bruce's cock in his mouth, and by then, Bruce is trying to control a full-body shiver and unfortunately failing, digging his teeth into the inside of his cheek. He does at least manage not to thrust into Clark's mouth; he holds carefully still, forces his hands to open themselves, fixes all his concentration on the task of gently rubbing a few strands of Clark's hair between his thumb and forefinger so he can be certain he won't grab Clark by the back of the head and fuck his face.
Christ, the noises Clark's making—the sounds of the blowjob itself, thick and wet and obscene, are practically too much, and Clark is breathing hard through his nose, little whining hums building up in his throat as he starts to work out how to create a genuine rhythm. His hands are moving restlessly over Bruce's thighs, fingers twisting in the fishnets, palms rubbing back and forth across the pattern of them, and then he—he presses himself up, just a little, into Bruce's hands.
Bruce swallows, closes his hand carefully in Clark's hair in response, pulls just a little; and Clark makes a strangled frantic sound, takes Bruce's cock even farther than he has been already, almost—almost—
"Fuck, Clark," Bruce hears himself say, and Clark works his fingertips around the edges of the lace bands, uses them to yank Bruce's hips away from the worktable and toward him—it's too much, it's got to be too much, but his mouth is so hot and so wet, the suction briefly perfect, Bruce's hands tight in his hair, his eyes blissfully closed like he's never been happier than he is right now, with Bruce practically balls-deep in his mouth, fuck, fuck. And then Clark sucks harder still, presses up with his tongue against what feels like the entire length of Bruce's cock, and Bruce is gone.
The lurch of pleasure starts at the base of his spine, spreads white-hot through his limbs, curls his toes, arches his back; he makes a thin strained noise that must sound incredibly stupid, nowhere near proportional to the overwhelming intensity of the sensation, and comes and comes and comes. Clark doesn't—jerk away, push Bruce off him, spit—he clutches Bruce's hips, pulls Bruce's body impossibly closer and sucks Bruce straight through it, dragging the orgasm out into a staggering set of successive peaks, so agonizingly good that Bruce feels distantly certain he will never want a blowjob again.
(—never from anyone but Clark; so, never again, presumably, unless he should be so unfathomably lucky as to have Clark's evident fetish for men in fishnet stockings, his persistent attraction to Bruce, overwhelm his good sense more than just this once—)
"Clark," he manages at last, when he can feel his fingers and toes again. "Clark, stop, come—come here—"
Clark makes a soft reluctant sound, as Bruce's cock slides from his mouth; but he heeds the clumsy jerking of Bruce's hands in his hair, his shirt, and rises from his knees. And Christ, he's—he came in civilian clothes, jeans and a t-shirt, not the suit, and he's so hard behind his zipper that it's curving out obscenely, the denim gone genuinely damp in an irregular oval—
"Oh, god," he chokes out, when Bruce drops a hand to the shape of his cock and squeezes. "Oh, god, Bruce, Bruce—"
"It's okay," Bruce says, inane, "I've got you, I've got you," and he takes Clark's face in his hand, kisses him—kisses the taste of himself from Clark's red red mouth, as he pops the button on Clark's fly and drags the zipper down.
It's genuinely difficult, trying to work Clark's fly open past his straining cock. Bruce has to press with his knuckles, push the curve of Clark's cock closer to his hips for a second, to make the zipper work. Clark gasps into his mouth when he does it, shudders and clutches at his shoulders, twisting the fabric of the dress shirt that's practically falling off them between his fingers, and Bruce wants to fuck him so absurdly badly but that isn't what he needs right now, would take far, far too long when he's clearly already balancing on the edge of a knife—
Bruce settles his ass more firmly against the edge of the worktable, even though it's fucking freezing with his briefs still down, and pulls Clark with him, hooks an arm around Clark's shoulders and keeps kissing him; and with the hand still in between them, he finally gets that goddamn fly down, shoves the waist of Clark's underwear out of his way and closes his hand around Clark's bare cock at last.
He has to break the kiss to say, "Here, come here, come on," against Clark's cheek, and he gives Clark's cock one quick stroke, reassurance that he isn't teasing, before he moves his hand away—catches the open waist of Clark's jeans and hitches Clark closer with it, brings his thigh up at the same time between Clark's legs, the right position to let Clark ride it. "Here, is this—?"
"Yes, fuck, Bruce," Clark gasps against Bruce's jaw, and Bruce evidently shouldn't have worried about texture, sensitivity, at all: Clark tips his head down, presses his temple against the hinge of Bruce's jaw, and Christ, he's watching it, using one shaky hand to hold himself against Bruce's thigh, rubbing himself off against the neat black diamond pattern of the stocking. Bruce traps a noise between his teeth, holds Clark against him tightly—Clark's panting, squirming, the hot sticky weight of him leaking steadily against Bruce's thigh.
It feels like no time at all, far too soon, when Clark starts trembling all over. Bruce digs his fingers into Clark's back, says, "Yes, yes, come on," and it sounds scraped, gravel-hoarse, but Clark jerks against him, Clark's body weight abruptly heavy, the pressure of Clark's cock sliding all the way up and over the edge of the thick band of lace—and that's enough. Clark makes a thin shocked sound, gasps against the side of Bruce's throat, and fuck, Bruce can fucking feel it, come spilling up and over the span of his thigh, trickling down over the strands of the stocking.
"Oh, jesus," Clark murmurs. "Jesus, Bruce," and he loosens a hand, frees it from Bruce's wrecked shirt and clumsily finds Bruce's face—tips his head up, and kisses Bruce again.
Not necessarily remarkable, in and of itself. Bruce kisses back, aiming for gentle, soothing. But then Clark's—he's—
He doesn't move away. He stays there, wrapped up tight against Bruce, Bruce's thigh close between his legs. He kisses Bruce's mouth again, again, quick, as if he can't help it; and then Bruce's face, catching his breath against Bruce's cheek, kissing there too.
When he does pull back, he doesn't go far. He brings his other hand up, rubs his thumbs softly along the lines of Bruce's face. And he's just—looking at Bruce, throat working, the look in his eyes dark and intent and oddly bittersweet; knowing. Resigned.
Shit, Bruce thinks. Oh, shit.
Clark evidently clocks the realization as it passes across his face, Bruce utterly without the resources needed to successfully conceal it, and Clark's expression turns gently rueful. He gives Bruce a grim little half-smile.
"Yeah," he says. "Sorry."
"You," Bruce manages. "You're—"
"In love with you," Clark agrees. "Yeah."
"I didn't know," Bruce hears himself say.
Clark grimaces a little. "Yeah. I figured that out about twenty minutes ago. You can be kind of—thoughtless, when you're focused on something else. But you're not cruel."
Bruce stares at him.
"You were trying to do something nice for me," Clark elaborates. "Something you could tell I would like, even if it was—way, way too much, which is you all over. And you have sex with people a lot, so you thought, you know. You thought it could be hot, I'd have fun, it wouldn't have to be a big deal. I get it. Or—I get that that's what it was for you, anyway. I'm sorry," he says again. "I should've stopped you. I know you wouldn't have done it if you'd—"
"I didn't know."
Clark blinks at him, and starts to frown a little. "Yeah, Bruce, I know that. That's what I was just—"
"I didn't know," Bruce rasps, because those are the only words in his head; because he can come up with no other way to try to tell Clark—to tell Clark—
Clark's eyes widen. He looks abruptly startled; it is much, much better than that awful expression he had had before, that quiet self-aware hopelessness. "Wait, you—?"
Bruce's mouth is dry. He fumbles a clumsy hand up to Clark's perfect fucking face, gets an arm up and around the intolerable fucking sculpture that is the line of Clark's shoulders, and drags Clark in with all the strength that remains to him, to kiss him.
It isn't like before. He feels suddenly incompetent; his hands are shaking. Kissing Clark because Clark wanted to kiss had been easy, ultimately inconsequential. Ten thousand times more important now, to—to get it right, to be convincing, to offer up enough of himself to make it clear, when the words could never be enough, when Bruce lies like he breathes and Clark knows it—
Clark makes a sweet breathless noise into Bruce's mouth, catches everything Bruce is throwing at him at once. He still has his hands against Bruce's face, and he keeps touching Bruce carefully, smoothing his thumbs over Bruce's cheeks—gentling Bruce, gentling the kiss, transmuting all Bruce's frantic uncoordinated effort into something warmer, fluid and easy, but no less fierce.
And then, at last, he shifts away just far enough to say, breathless, "Bruce, jesus, you—really?"
But it isn't a real question. He's—he smiles, slow and bright and unsteady, and he still hasn't let go of Bruce's face, and his eyes are wet. He does know, he understands, after all.
"Yes," Bruce manages anyway, hoarse; and Clark laughs, half a breath, soft and awed, tips his head to press his forehead to Bruce's: everything Bruce could never have asked for, placed at last in the light.