FIC: Two Forms, One Soul (2/9)
Title: Two Forms, One Soul, Chapter Two
Pairing/Characters: Bruce/Clark
Continuity: Animated series, a few years after B:TAS.
Rating: R
Summary: Clark tries to distract himself from his sudden attraction to Bruce Wayne.
Word Count: 2100
Warnings: None necessary
Notes: Written for the 20_inkspots challenge with
rai_daydreamer (you can look forward to her art in later chapters!). Prompt #18: "Under the glass moon." (see the full table here)
Clark woke up slowly, feeling fragments of dreams like cobwebs fray and fade around him. He was vaguely, restlessly aroused, so they must have been dreams of Lois, he supposed. He remembered the pressure of her arm in his last night as Bruce had stalked toward them, predatory and enraged.
Bruce.
He came more fully awake, shaking off the last shreds of dreams. He owed it to Dick and Alfred, to the whole superhero community, to speak to Batman again, get to the bottom of whatever the trouble was. He changed into his costume, smoothing the shining material, and slipped into the morning sky, heading for the Manor.
The cave was empty. There were no sounds of movement in it or in the mansion above, no rustle beyond the ceaseless whisper of the bats overhead, no human heartbeats at all. The silence was deep and somehow eerier than usual. Clark moved through the cave, the hair on the back of his neck prickling despite himself. A strange, irrational urge to flee was battering at his hind-brain; he tamped it down severely. There was nothing here to fear, nothing at all--
"You shouldn't be here," said a voice as dark as midnight behind him, and Clark managed to keep from yelping with only the greatest of efforts. He turned--slowly, deliberately, there was no need to whirl, no reason for his heart to be pounding--to face Batman, his cape wrapped around his body, his eyes concealed under the flat white lenses.
"You can't hide from me forever."
Batman cocked his head with an odd, almost preternatural fluidity. "I could if I wanted," he said.
"Why did you dismiss Alfred?" Clark attempted to force a jovial note into his voice. "You know perfectly well you can't possibly get by without him. You can't do laundry, you can't cook, you'll probably starve to death."
Bruce seemed to be staring at him, though with the lenses obscuring his eyes it was hard to tell. "I'm..." he swallowed. "I am hungry," he said in a near-whisper.
Clark wished he could see Bruce's eyes again, a wish that seemed to coil tightly in his chest. He focused on Bruce's mouth instead: the gentle curve of the lower lip, the severe bow of the upper. The sheen of the skin, dark against the pallor of his face. He saw a faint flash of teeth as Bruce's lips moved, and he shuddered slightly, unable to look away. "Clark." Bruce's voice reached him as if through a long tunnel. "Clark. Stop it." Bruce turned his back on Clark abruptly and Clark blinked, feeling as if some cord between them had been snapped.
"You should eat something," Clark said inanely.
There was a hoarse sound that could have been laughter from the dark figure. "Don't tempt me."
Clark took a step forward, then another. The part of him that wanted to flee began to clamor again; but there was another part of him that refused to leave his friend, that wanted to understand, to comfort, to wrap the black-clad figure in his arms and...and...
He took another step. "Really, Bruce. You need to eat something. Let me--"
Batman whirled on him. "I said, don't tempt me," he growled.
The force of the man's full attention was broke upon Clark like a dark wave; he felt himself foundering within it, lost. There was no lighthouse, no beacon, only deep water closing over his head, over his heart. He staggered forward like a drowning man, knowing that if he didn't move he would go to his knees. "Bruce," he gasped, but the space in front of him was empty.
"Go home." The voice resonated from the shadows, untraceable. "Let me be. You don't want to be here."
"But I do," Clark said into the silence.
Nothing responded, not even echoes.
: : :
Clark slipped Lois's underwear off as she undid her bra with an inviting smile. She kissed him, twining her arms around his neck, and they tumbled onto the bed together, Lois on top. She tasted of whiskey, with a dark, almost metallic tang underneath it, and Clark felt arousal surge in him, demanding.
She smiled against his mouth at the feel of it, then moved against him, breaking the kiss to plant a tiny kiss on his chin. Then she leaned in and kissed him on the neck.
His pulse leaped again and he made a sharp, stuttering noise of desire. She purred against his neck and started to work her way down his body, kissing and biting as he cried out again and again, until her dark head was between his legs. He tangled his fingers in her hair--it should be shorter, he thought dimly--and she chuckled low in her throat, almost low enough. Almost low enough, he thought, as her mouth closed over him and pleasure ravaged his body. Almost right.
The mouth on him was gentle at first, but as he rocked in a delirium of rapture it...changed. It was hungrier, greedier. It demanded. Commanded. And he was lost in that, lost in the bliss of submitting to it. Hard, so hard, the pressure was tight and fierce in him and the sweetly curved mouth rapacious, avid. He felt a brush of teeth, cool and sharp and precise, stroking across his length, and at that touch Clark's senses erupted into bliss and he twisted upward, upward--
--into sheets and air, out of the dream and into his empty bed, hearing his voice stammering, begging, pleading for something. Someone. There was no one there.
He cleaned the sticky sheets, grimacing, and went to work, still feeling muzzy-headed, like the world was wrapped in thistledown, far away and blurred. The sun never seemed to get bright enough to burn through the haze in his mind; he mis-filed paperwork three times, earning him a scolding from Perry that he nodded through, unhearing; he dealt with two major emergencies as Superman on auto-pilot, the thankful cheers of the crowd a dim murmur in his ears. And as the sun started to go down, he felt the lights of Gotham glimmering like will-o-the-wisps, inviting, alluring. The witchlight green and blue of Gotham seemed more real than than the blaze of Metropolis gold and white, and somehow he found himself there, walking the cobbled streets, his shoes tapping out a gentle rhythm. Batman wouldn't want Superman here, so he was Clark: fedora pulled down, trench-coat closed against the tendrils of fog that seemed to twine around everything, caressing his feet, curling around his gray flannel pants legs.
He didn't know why he was in Gotham, but it fit his mood: dreamy, lost in the fog, yearning for something, unsure what.
When he felt the cold, hard muzzle of a gun against his ribs, he almost laughed. "Hand over your wallet and you won't get hurt, hear?" muttered a nervous voice. As he fumbled for his pocket, struggling to focus on the sweating, fidgeting thug, there was a sudden motion and the mugger went flying against the wall.
Batman was between Clark and the mugger, his black cape cutting through the fog like an obsidian knife, the vigilante's presence cutting through the haze in Clark's mind. His attention focused on the dark figure almost painfully, a pinpoint awareness, as if Batman were the only real thing in the world. A strange, dark eagerness seemed to leap in him as Batman closed on the mugger.
Clark could see the thug's face over Batman's shoulder, could see it pale abruptly at whatever the man saw in Batman's expression. “Go,” said the vigilante, and the man gave a mewling cry of panic and turned and scrambled away.
There was a whirling motion, the fog agitating suddenly, and Batman was beside Clark. Very close. "Do you want to die?" whispered the Dark Knight. Something was hammering in Clark's body, some pulse like he had never felt before, and he realized with a sort of dreamy shock that it was lust. The echoes of Batman's question seemed to curl around him, and he knew he wanted to step forward into the circle of that dark cape, to pull the cowl off and gaze fearlessly into those glittering eyes, to put his mouth to that curve of passion and lick into softness and sharpness, to consume and to be consumed.
“That gun couldn't have hurt me,” he forced himself to say, trying to keep his voice casual. Desire made everything seem distant, drifting. Bruce wet his lips, a tiny flicker of red, and Clark felt his knees go loose and liquid, felt himself wavering on his feet. He wanted. He wanted so much.
“I didn't mean the gun.” Beneath the distinctive Batman rasp, Clark could hear Bruce's voice, and it was low and yearning as the fire in Clark's spine. Bruce wanted him too, he realized, and the knowledge pulled him a step closer. “Stay away,” said the low growl. Come to me, come to me, be mine, said the voice under the growl, clear as a song. How I hunger for you.
Clark was close enough to touch him now. Bruce was as still as stone, a statue carved of onyx, or night itself. Clark reached out and touched Bruce's cheek, the skin cool and smooth under his hand. His touch slid to Bruce's lips, tracing the outline of that passionate mouth. “You're so beautiful,” Clark heard himself whisper, unable to say anything but the simplest, deepest truths of his life. “I want you.”
Bruce was totally motionless, unresponsive to Clark's touch, but Clark knew with all his being that Bruce was not impassive, that he burned with the same need Clark did. The alley was still, silent, all of Gotham holding its breath, and Clark realized suddenly what sound was missing. “Your heartbeat,” he said without thinking. “You've found a way to cloak it. I can't hear it at all.”
Bruce drew back at the words, away from Clark's touch, leaving Clark yearning and empty. “Go home. Go back to the sunlight.”
Clark blinked, desolate. “But you want me too,” he said stupidly. “I know you do.”
The mist was between them now, twining, blurring Clark's vision. "Pray you never know how much I want you," said a voice from the fog, and Clark was alone again.
: : :
A long night of dreams, feverish and burning. Whenever Clark managed to drift off to sleep for a moment he would dream that Bruce was by his bed, bending over him, eyes bright in his pale face, a faint whisper like silken wings all around him. He dreamed of cool hands on his body and woke up with the blood pounding in him, a riot of desire and heat. He finally gave up and dressed to patrol, steeling himself against the siren call of Gotham's dancing lights on the horizon, calling him to fly, to lose himself in the bliss of Bruce's voice, to demand that Bruce touch him, take him, pierce him with pleasure, pierce...
He saved two cats from trees, stopped a bank robbery, found two lost dogs and a lost ferret, and gave directions to a confused tourist from Wichita, part of his mind marveling at how well he was managing to function. At work he managed to complete a story before deadline and even banter with Lois and Jimmy a little bit, but at lunch he found himself unable to eat and decided to take a walk in the park. Sitting on a park bench, gazing dreamily at the cloudy sky, he suddenly found himself imagining how it would feel if Bruce were to slip up behind him, whisper in his ear. He imagined the breath stirring his hair, the lips almost touching him: Don't move, Clark. Hold still. Let me touch you. Here. Transfixed on the bench, oblivious to the world around him, Clark imagined cool lips touching his skin, his neck, and shuddered, torn between desire and a strange fear. Let me kiss you. Let me claim you. Yes. Submit to me.
Clark came to himself with a shock, achingly erect, horrified to find himself inches away from touching himself in public, from losing himself in the fantasy completely. He whirled, but there was no one there, of course.
He was late back to the Planet from lunch. "Package for you, Mr. Kent," said Jimmy cheerfully. Clark's heart leapt again at the sight of the familiar spiky handwriting; when he tore it open a small, rectangular box of black velvet fell out. Inside was a note: Wear this. Please.
From a shining chain hung a silver cross, twined around with thorns and roses.
---
Chapter Three
Pairing/Characters: Bruce/Clark
Continuity: Animated series, a few years after B:TAS.
Rating: R
Summary: Clark tries to distract himself from his sudden attraction to Bruce Wayne.
Word Count: 2100
Warnings: None necessary
Notes: Written for the 20_inkspots challenge with
rai_daydreamer (you can look forward to her art in later chapters!). Prompt #18: "Under the glass moon." (see the full table here)
Clark woke up slowly, feeling fragments of dreams like cobwebs fray and fade around him. He was vaguely, restlessly aroused, so they must have been dreams of Lois, he supposed. He remembered the pressure of her arm in his last night as Bruce had stalked toward them, predatory and enraged.
Bruce.
He came more fully awake, shaking off the last shreds of dreams. He owed it to Dick and Alfred, to the whole superhero community, to speak to Batman again, get to the bottom of whatever the trouble was. He changed into his costume, smoothing the shining material, and slipped into the morning sky, heading for the Manor.
The cave was empty. There were no sounds of movement in it or in the mansion above, no rustle beyond the ceaseless whisper of the bats overhead, no human heartbeats at all. The silence was deep and somehow eerier than usual. Clark moved through the cave, the hair on the back of his neck prickling despite himself. A strange, irrational urge to flee was battering at his hind-brain; he tamped it down severely. There was nothing here to fear, nothing at all--
"You shouldn't be here," said a voice as dark as midnight behind him, and Clark managed to keep from yelping with only the greatest of efforts. He turned--slowly, deliberately, there was no need to whirl, no reason for his heart to be pounding--to face Batman, his cape wrapped around his body, his eyes concealed under the flat white lenses.
"You can't hide from me forever."
Batman cocked his head with an odd, almost preternatural fluidity. "I could if I wanted," he said.
"Why did you dismiss Alfred?" Clark attempted to force a jovial note into his voice. "You know perfectly well you can't possibly get by without him. You can't do laundry, you can't cook, you'll probably starve to death."
Bruce seemed to be staring at him, though with the lenses obscuring his eyes it was hard to tell. "I'm..." he swallowed. "I am hungry," he said in a near-whisper.
Clark wished he could see Bruce's eyes again, a wish that seemed to coil tightly in his chest. He focused on Bruce's mouth instead: the gentle curve of the lower lip, the severe bow of the upper. The sheen of the skin, dark against the pallor of his face. He saw a faint flash of teeth as Bruce's lips moved, and he shuddered slightly, unable to look away. "Clark." Bruce's voice reached him as if through a long tunnel. "Clark. Stop it." Bruce turned his back on Clark abruptly and Clark blinked, feeling as if some cord between them had been snapped.
"You should eat something," Clark said inanely.
There was a hoarse sound that could have been laughter from the dark figure. "Don't tempt me."
Clark took a step forward, then another. The part of him that wanted to flee began to clamor again; but there was another part of him that refused to leave his friend, that wanted to understand, to comfort, to wrap the black-clad figure in his arms and...and...
He took another step. "Really, Bruce. You need to eat something. Let me--"
Batman whirled on him. "I said, don't tempt me," he growled.
The force of the man's full attention was broke upon Clark like a dark wave; he felt himself foundering within it, lost. There was no lighthouse, no beacon, only deep water closing over his head, over his heart. He staggered forward like a drowning man, knowing that if he didn't move he would go to his knees. "Bruce," he gasped, but the space in front of him was empty.
"Go home." The voice resonated from the shadows, untraceable. "Let me be. You don't want to be here."
"But I do," Clark said into the silence.
Nothing responded, not even echoes.
: : :
Clark slipped Lois's underwear off as she undid her bra with an inviting smile. She kissed him, twining her arms around his neck, and they tumbled onto the bed together, Lois on top. She tasted of whiskey, with a dark, almost metallic tang underneath it, and Clark felt arousal surge in him, demanding.
She smiled against his mouth at the feel of it, then moved against him, breaking the kiss to plant a tiny kiss on his chin. Then she leaned in and kissed him on the neck.
His pulse leaped again and he made a sharp, stuttering noise of desire. She purred against his neck and started to work her way down his body, kissing and biting as he cried out again and again, until her dark head was between his legs. He tangled his fingers in her hair--it should be shorter, he thought dimly--and she chuckled low in her throat, almost low enough. Almost low enough, he thought, as her mouth closed over him and pleasure ravaged his body. Almost right.
The mouth on him was gentle at first, but as he rocked in a delirium of rapture it...changed. It was hungrier, greedier. It demanded. Commanded. And he was lost in that, lost in the bliss of submitting to it. Hard, so hard, the pressure was tight and fierce in him and the sweetly curved mouth rapacious, avid. He felt a brush of teeth, cool and sharp and precise, stroking across his length, and at that touch Clark's senses erupted into bliss and he twisted upward, upward--
--into sheets and air, out of the dream and into his empty bed, hearing his voice stammering, begging, pleading for something. Someone. There was no one there.
He cleaned the sticky sheets, grimacing, and went to work, still feeling muzzy-headed, like the world was wrapped in thistledown, far away and blurred. The sun never seemed to get bright enough to burn through the haze in his mind; he mis-filed paperwork three times, earning him a scolding from Perry that he nodded through, unhearing; he dealt with two major emergencies as Superman on auto-pilot, the thankful cheers of the crowd a dim murmur in his ears. And as the sun started to go down, he felt the lights of Gotham glimmering like will-o-the-wisps, inviting, alluring. The witchlight green and blue of Gotham seemed more real than than the blaze of Metropolis gold and white, and somehow he found himself there, walking the cobbled streets, his shoes tapping out a gentle rhythm. Batman wouldn't want Superman here, so he was Clark: fedora pulled down, trench-coat closed against the tendrils of fog that seemed to twine around everything, caressing his feet, curling around his gray flannel pants legs.
He didn't know why he was in Gotham, but it fit his mood: dreamy, lost in the fog, yearning for something, unsure what.
When he felt the cold, hard muzzle of a gun against his ribs, he almost laughed. "Hand over your wallet and you won't get hurt, hear?" muttered a nervous voice. As he fumbled for his pocket, struggling to focus on the sweating, fidgeting thug, there was a sudden motion and the mugger went flying against the wall.
Batman was between Clark and the mugger, his black cape cutting through the fog like an obsidian knife, the vigilante's presence cutting through the haze in Clark's mind. His attention focused on the dark figure almost painfully, a pinpoint awareness, as if Batman were the only real thing in the world. A strange, dark eagerness seemed to leap in him as Batman closed on the mugger.
Clark could see the thug's face over Batman's shoulder, could see it pale abruptly at whatever the man saw in Batman's expression. “Go,” said the vigilante, and the man gave a mewling cry of panic and turned and scrambled away.
There was a whirling motion, the fog agitating suddenly, and Batman was beside Clark. Very close. "Do you want to die?" whispered the Dark Knight. Something was hammering in Clark's body, some pulse like he had never felt before, and he realized with a sort of dreamy shock that it was lust. The echoes of Batman's question seemed to curl around him, and he knew he wanted to step forward into the circle of that dark cape, to pull the cowl off and gaze fearlessly into those glittering eyes, to put his mouth to that curve of passion and lick into softness and sharpness, to consume and to be consumed.
“That gun couldn't have hurt me,” he forced himself to say, trying to keep his voice casual. Desire made everything seem distant, drifting. Bruce wet his lips, a tiny flicker of red, and Clark felt his knees go loose and liquid, felt himself wavering on his feet. He wanted. He wanted so much.
“I didn't mean the gun.” Beneath the distinctive Batman rasp, Clark could hear Bruce's voice, and it was low and yearning as the fire in Clark's spine. Bruce wanted him too, he realized, and the knowledge pulled him a step closer. “Stay away,” said the low growl. Come to me, come to me, be mine, said the voice under the growl, clear as a song. How I hunger for you.
Clark was close enough to touch him now. Bruce was as still as stone, a statue carved of onyx, or night itself. Clark reached out and touched Bruce's cheek, the skin cool and smooth under his hand. His touch slid to Bruce's lips, tracing the outline of that passionate mouth. “You're so beautiful,” Clark heard himself whisper, unable to say anything but the simplest, deepest truths of his life. “I want you.”
Bruce was totally motionless, unresponsive to Clark's touch, but Clark knew with all his being that Bruce was not impassive, that he burned with the same need Clark did. The alley was still, silent, all of Gotham holding its breath, and Clark realized suddenly what sound was missing. “Your heartbeat,” he said without thinking. “You've found a way to cloak it. I can't hear it at all.”
Bruce drew back at the words, away from Clark's touch, leaving Clark yearning and empty. “Go home. Go back to the sunlight.”
Clark blinked, desolate. “But you want me too,” he said stupidly. “I know you do.”
The mist was between them now, twining, blurring Clark's vision. "Pray you never know how much I want you," said a voice from the fog, and Clark was alone again.
: : :
A long night of dreams, feverish and burning. Whenever Clark managed to drift off to sleep for a moment he would dream that Bruce was by his bed, bending over him, eyes bright in his pale face, a faint whisper like silken wings all around him. He dreamed of cool hands on his body and woke up with the blood pounding in him, a riot of desire and heat. He finally gave up and dressed to patrol, steeling himself against the siren call of Gotham's dancing lights on the horizon, calling him to fly, to lose himself in the bliss of Bruce's voice, to demand that Bruce touch him, take him, pierce him with pleasure, pierce...
He saved two cats from trees, stopped a bank robbery, found two lost dogs and a lost ferret, and gave directions to a confused tourist from Wichita, part of his mind marveling at how well he was managing to function. At work he managed to complete a story before deadline and even banter with Lois and Jimmy a little bit, but at lunch he found himself unable to eat and decided to take a walk in the park. Sitting on a park bench, gazing dreamily at the cloudy sky, he suddenly found himself imagining how it would feel if Bruce were to slip up behind him, whisper in his ear. He imagined the breath stirring his hair, the lips almost touching him: Don't move, Clark. Hold still. Let me touch you. Here. Transfixed on the bench, oblivious to the world around him, Clark imagined cool lips touching his skin, his neck, and shuddered, torn between desire and a strange fear. Let me kiss you. Let me claim you. Yes. Submit to me.
Clark came to himself with a shock, achingly erect, horrified to find himself inches away from touching himself in public, from losing himself in the fantasy completely. He whirled, but there was no one there, of course.
He was late back to the Planet from lunch. "Package for you, Mr. Kent," said Jimmy cheerfully. Clark's heart leapt again at the sight of the familiar spiky handwriting; when he tore it open a small, rectangular box of black velvet fell out. Inside was a note: Wear this. Please.
From a shining chain hung a silver cross, twined around with thorns and roses.
---
Chapter Three