FIC: Two Forms, One Soul (7/9)
Title: Two Forms, One Soul (Chapter Seven)
Pairing/Characters: Bruce/Clark
Continuity: Animated series, a few years after B:TAS.
Rating: PG
Summary: Clark and Bruce discuss their relationship and prepare to face down Bruce's sire.
Word Count: 2000
Warnings: None needed
Notes: Written for the 20_inkspots challenge with
rai_daydreamer , who drew an absolutely perfect Fiorella!! Prompt #18: "Under the glass moon." (see the full table here).
Clark Kent woke slowly, for a moment unsure where exactly he was. He'd been dreaming of Bruce again, a long, slow dream of bliss in which he'd held the other man close and let him take what he needed, and the giving had been ecstasy beyond belief...
Beside him, someone made a low murmuring sound in their sleep, and Clark woke up more fully. His limbs felt heavy, hard to move. He was exhausted, and his neck ached very slightly.
He also felt wonderful, filled with a contented, sated well-being that transcended his physical weariness.
He propped himself carefully on one arm and looked over at his companion. Bruce Wayne was still asleep, a small smile on his face. His skin was glowing with health, vigor, life; he looked more vital and more beautiful than Clark had ever seen him. He stirred a bit, then stretched in his sleep, a long, lazy exaltation of limbs, and Clark could feel the new power in those strong muscles, coiled and ready. He was still smiling, a tiny, satisfied smile that made Clark's entire body prickle. Then his eyes opened slowly, blinking, and fixed on Clark.
The smile fell away and was replaced by concern; Bruce sat up quickly. "How are you feeling?"
Clark reached up and touched the pleasant ache on his neck. "Tired," he admitted, smiling.
"I may have...overindulged a bit," Bruce said. He reached out and touched his fingers lightly to Clark's neck and Clark tried not to shiver. "I don't think I'll need so much in the future."
"The sun should restore me," Clark said. "How long do you think it will be until you need to feed again?"
"It shouldn't be that often," Bruce said. "If I over-exert myself I might need to do it more frequently, but I suspect it will usually be once every two weeks or so."
"Ah," Clark said. "That rarely."
"I..." Bruce was looking at him oddly. "I could probably feed more often, but I don't think I'd have to."
"Mm," Clark said, trying to sound casual. "Well. I wouldn't want you to grow weak."
There was a flicker of motion, and suddenly Bruce was straddling him, gazing down at him. Clark realized with an odd shock that with his vampiric powers, and with Clark in his weakened condition, Bruce might well be stronger than him.
The thought didn't seem to alarm him as much as it should.
"It didn't seem to hurt you as much as I'd expected," Bruce said, looking down at him.
Clark remembered the bliss of dazed pleasure, like an orgasm with no climax, no end. "It didn't hurt," he said. Had the other man noticed his sexual arousal during the feeding? Clark couldn't remember much of it beyond his frantic rapture. "I think I could bear doing it more often than every two weeks."
For a moment, the sleepy, satisfied smile was back on Bruce's face. He leaned down and touched his lips to Clark's neck, very lightly. Clark hissed, but the sound became a moan partway through. He was tired, weak, drained--and he wanted it more than anything. "Go get some sun, Clark," Bruce murmured. "I'm going to face Fiorella tonight, and I'll need your help." His hands suddenly encircled Clark's wrists, pinning them above his head. "And in your condition, any vampire could probably simply hold you down and drink their fill of you, no matter how you might struggle." Clark twisted against the warm hands, but couldn't budge. "You'd be quite helpless, wouldn't you?"
"Yes," Clark said, hearing the faint whimper in his voice and cursing himself. The hands released him and Bruce sprang from the bed, casting him an elliptical glance. Clark rose from the bed, heading for the door, then paused. "Bruce," he said, "What are we?"
"What do you mean?"
"I...I don't know," Clark said.
"We're a damned soul and a Kryptonian, bound together for all eternity by thirst and need," Bruce said, his voice incongruously light as he opened his closet.
"We're...friends?"
"Best friends forever, apparently."
"I'm serious."
Bruce closed the closet door with perhaps more force than was necessary. "Clark," he said, "If you don't know what we are to each other--what you are to me--you haven't been paying attention." He walked back to Clark and cupped his face with a hand, infinitely gentle. "Get some sun. You'll need all the power you can get tonight. And make sure to wear the cross."
: : :
The final remnants of the sunset were fading into a glowering purple as Superman came out of the sky to land next to the gargoyle Bruce was waiting on. "You're looking well," Bruce noted.
Clark stretched. "A day in the sun and I'm as good as new. I could probably do it all over again tonight." There was a faint note of hopefulness in his voice that Bruce tried not to hear too clearly. It had been so good--too good. He couldn't get in the habit of biting Clark every night just because Clark didn't seem to mind.
"That shouldn't be necessary," he said before he could dwell on the idea of doing that again. If he thought about it too much he'd be too busy seducing Clark into removing that cross and baring his throat to deal with Fiorella.
"You're looking good as well," Clark said, his voice appreciative. "Not going as Batman?"
"I don't want Fiorella or anyone else to know Batman is connected with Bruce Wayne. I should be able to fight them using just my vampiric powers and forgoing the gadgets." He had picked out a training outfit, something severe and sleek in black. That it made him look, as Dick had noted once, "alarmingly sexy," had nothing whatsoever to do with that choice. Nothing at all, he reminded himself, feeling Clark's eyes on him. He raised his hands above his head and stretched, cat-like, feeling the leashed power humming in his limbs. Power borrowed from the man at his side, taken from his blood.
Somehow knowing that the warmth and vitality he felt was freely given by Clark only made it more satisfying, more pleasurable. He should hate the fact that his existence was dependent on Clark's, but somehow...it felt right. It felt good.
Almost as good as Clark's admiring look.
"As long as you're wearing that cross, she can't bite you," he said. "That gives us a major advantage. She can still attack you, but it will weaken her to get too close to you." He started to make his way to the graveyard, leaping lightly from rooftop to rooftop, Superman flying by his side. He braced himself as he crossed into the moonlight, then almost lost his footing in surprise. It didn't hurt as much as it had last time.
Last time, before he had drunk of Kryptonian blood.
Could it be that Clark's blood could fortify him against the light of the sun?
Whatever the reason, it was a distinct advantage that he might not be feeling as much pain as Fiorella when they met.
"I don't like waiting," Clark grumbled as they reached the graveyard. "I should face her by your side."
"You're my ace in the hole," Bruce said. "If I can intimidate her into retreating, that's good. Gives us time to prepare more before facing her again." He paused and looked at Superman. "Clark. I need to know. When the time comes, will you--"
"--Be willing to use lethal force?" Clark's jaw tightened. "You were right, earlier--my code doesn't apply to the undead. I've ended their existence in the past, and I'll be willing to do it again tonight." His mouth curved in a smile that wasn't entirely a pleasant thing to see.
Bruce nodded. Then he moved forward into the graveyard, bathed in light from the full moon glowing above it.
He made his way between the marble stones, their shadows dark and clear-cut in the light of the moon. Intuition drew him to his own parents' grave, where a dark shadow sat atop the monument. Fiorella perched next to the trumpet-blowing angel, one arm flung around it in perverse familiarity. She was wearing a black cloak of some silky material that trembled in the breeze, her silvery-golden hair touched with moonlight, her eyes deep. "Brucie," she said sweetly. "I was afraid I was going to have to come fetch you." Her gaze raked up and down him. "I see you've fed, my dear child. At last you know the delight of it, the joy of power in sweet, fresh blood. Was it good, my dear?"
Her words elicited a flash of memory, razor-sharp: Clark's thoat under his teeth, the aching, throbbing pleasure of it. "Oh yes," he said, hearing the hot, velvety yearning in his voice.
"You'll never know rest until you drink again," she said. "You'll want it again and again."
"Again and again," he agreed, feeling Clark's presence nearby, listening. "Forever."
She held out a hand, smiling. "You're one of us now."
He matched her smile. "Oh, I think not." Baffled disbelief flashed across her face as he continued. "I'll never serve you willingly, Fiorella. I'd tell you to go to hell, but that would seem a bit redundant, wouldn't it?"
She stared. Then she hissed, a terrifying sound in the silence of the cemetery. Bruce dropped into a fighting stance, hoping she would retreat, give him more time to learn the full extent of his powers...
Fiorella stood. Her cloak unfurled from around the statue, lifting up into the night: great black wings, leather and sinew. "I was afraid you would say that, dear," said the vampire. "So I brought some of your brothers and sisters to talk sense into you."
From all around the graveyard, a sudden rustling of wings. A dozen dark shapes rose from the shadows, eyes glinting, fangs bared and curving in the moonlight.
Fiorella pointed a pale, imperious finger at Bruce. "Destroy him."
: : :
Superman surged forward as the first of the vampires lunged at Bruce, heat vision cutting a swath in front of him. The vampire shrieked and fell from the sky, one wing a mass of flames. Clark had a brief glimpse of Bruce dodging, leaping lightly from gravestone to gravestone, and then the flock of vampires wheeled into the sky to regroup, Fiorella crying orders.
Clark followed them into the sky, leaving Bruce on the ground below, honing in on the golden-haired vampire. Other winged shapes clutched at him, their nails tearing cloth, leaving trails of pain behind, but they fell away quickly, unable to bear the agony of the holy symbol around his neck. He intercepted another vampire preparing to plunge down at Bruce, sending it careening off course and into the ground with a sickening crunch.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bruce jump from a gravestone onto the back of a vampire wheeling by, saw him produce a sharp wooden stake and drive it home. Bruce jumped clear of the collapsing vampire, landing on the moonlit grass with inhuman lightness. Clark saw him look up, saw his eyes widen. He followed the gaze to see Fiorella casting a jagged piece of stone torn from a statue at him.
He went straight at her, not even bothering to dodge the bit of stone, letting it shatter on his invulnerable skin. Too late he realized the goal hadn't been to hurt him, as he felt the stone spear catch on the chain around his neck, felt the links give way.
The cross fell downward to the ground far beneath.
He didn't even have time to react before they were on him in a rush of dark wings.
---
See Rai's portrait of Fiorella in full here!
Chapter Eight
Pairing/Characters: Bruce/Clark
Continuity: Animated series, a few years after B:TAS.
Rating: PG
Summary: Clark and Bruce discuss their relationship and prepare to face down Bruce's sire.
Word Count: 2000
Warnings: None needed
Notes: Written for the 20_inkspots challenge with
rai_daydreamer , who drew an absolutely perfect Fiorella!! Prompt #18: "Under the glass moon." (see the full table here).
Clark Kent woke slowly, for a moment unsure where exactly he was. He'd been dreaming of Bruce again, a long, slow dream of bliss in which he'd held the other man close and let him take what he needed, and the giving had been ecstasy beyond belief...
Beside him, someone made a low murmuring sound in their sleep, and Clark woke up more fully. His limbs felt heavy, hard to move. He was exhausted, and his neck ached very slightly.
He also felt wonderful, filled with a contented, sated well-being that transcended his physical weariness.
He propped himself carefully on one arm and looked over at his companion. Bruce Wayne was still asleep, a small smile on his face. His skin was glowing with health, vigor, life; he looked more vital and more beautiful than Clark had ever seen him. He stirred a bit, then stretched in his sleep, a long, lazy exaltation of limbs, and Clark could feel the new power in those strong muscles, coiled and ready. He was still smiling, a tiny, satisfied smile that made Clark's entire body prickle. Then his eyes opened slowly, blinking, and fixed on Clark.
The smile fell away and was replaced by concern; Bruce sat up quickly. "How are you feeling?"
Clark reached up and touched the pleasant ache on his neck. "Tired," he admitted, smiling.
"I may have...overindulged a bit," Bruce said. He reached out and touched his fingers lightly to Clark's neck and Clark tried not to shiver. "I don't think I'll need so much in the future."
"The sun should restore me," Clark said. "How long do you think it will be until you need to feed again?"
"It shouldn't be that often," Bruce said. "If I over-exert myself I might need to do it more frequently, but I suspect it will usually be once every two weeks or so."
"Ah," Clark said. "That rarely."
"I..." Bruce was looking at him oddly. "I could probably feed more often, but I don't think I'd have to."
"Mm," Clark said, trying to sound casual. "Well. I wouldn't want you to grow weak."
There was a flicker of motion, and suddenly Bruce was straddling him, gazing down at him. Clark realized with an odd shock that with his vampiric powers, and with Clark in his weakened condition, Bruce might well be stronger than him.
The thought didn't seem to alarm him as much as it should.
"It didn't seem to hurt you as much as I'd expected," Bruce said, looking down at him.
Clark remembered the bliss of dazed pleasure, like an orgasm with no climax, no end. "It didn't hurt," he said. Had the other man noticed his sexual arousal during the feeding? Clark couldn't remember much of it beyond his frantic rapture. "I think I could bear doing it more often than every two weeks."
For a moment, the sleepy, satisfied smile was back on Bruce's face. He leaned down and touched his lips to Clark's neck, very lightly. Clark hissed, but the sound became a moan partway through. He was tired, weak, drained--and he wanted it more than anything. "Go get some sun, Clark," Bruce murmured. "I'm going to face Fiorella tonight, and I'll need your help." His hands suddenly encircled Clark's wrists, pinning them above his head. "And in your condition, any vampire could probably simply hold you down and drink their fill of you, no matter how you might struggle." Clark twisted against the warm hands, but couldn't budge. "You'd be quite helpless, wouldn't you?"
"Yes," Clark said, hearing the faint whimper in his voice and cursing himself. The hands released him and Bruce sprang from the bed, casting him an elliptical glance. Clark rose from the bed, heading for the door, then paused. "Bruce," he said, "What are we?"
"What do you mean?"
"I...I don't know," Clark said.
"We're a damned soul and a Kryptonian, bound together for all eternity by thirst and need," Bruce said, his voice incongruously light as he opened his closet.
"We're...friends?"
"Best friends forever, apparently."
"I'm serious."
Bruce closed the closet door with perhaps more force than was necessary. "Clark," he said, "If you don't know what we are to each other--what you are to me--you haven't been paying attention." He walked back to Clark and cupped his face with a hand, infinitely gentle. "Get some sun. You'll need all the power you can get tonight. And make sure to wear the cross."
: : :
The final remnants of the sunset were fading into a glowering purple as Superman came out of the sky to land next to the gargoyle Bruce was waiting on. "You're looking well," Bruce noted.
Clark stretched. "A day in the sun and I'm as good as new. I could probably do it all over again tonight." There was a faint note of hopefulness in his voice that Bruce tried not to hear too clearly. It had been so good--too good. He couldn't get in the habit of biting Clark every night just because Clark didn't seem to mind.
"That shouldn't be necessary," he said before he could dwell on the idea of doing that again. If he thought about it too much he'd be too busy seducing Clark into removing that cross and baring his throat to deal with Fiorella.
"You're looking good as well," Clark said, his voice appreciative. "Not going as Batman?"
"I don't want Fiorella or anyone else to know Batman is connected with Bruce Wayne. I should be able to fight them using just my vampiric powers and forgoing the gadgets." He had picked out a training outfit, something severe and sleek in black. That it made him look, as Dick had noted once, "alarmingly sexy," had nothing whatsoever to do with that choice. Nothing at all, he reminded himself, feeling Clark's eyes on him. He raised his hands above his head and stretched, cat-like, feeling the leashed power humming in his limbs. Power borrowed from the man at his side, taken from his blood.
Somehow knowing that the warmth and vitality he felt was freely given by Clark only made it more satisfying, more pleasurable. He should hate the fact that his existence was dependent on Clark's, but somehow...it felt right. It felt good.
Almost as good as Clark's admiring look.
"As long as you're wearing that cross, she can't bite you," he said. "That gives us a major advantage. She can still attack you, but it will weaken her to get too close to you." He started to make his way to the graveyard, leaping lightly from rooftop to rooftop, Superman flying by his side. He braced himself as he crossed into the moonlight, then almost lost his footing in surprise. It didn't hurt as much as it had last time.
Last time, before he had drunk of Kryptonian blood.
Could it be that Clark's blood could fortify him against the light of the sun?
Whatever the reason, it was a distinct advantage that he might not be feeling as much pain as Fiorella when they met.
"I don't like waiting," Clark grumbled as they reached the graveyard. "I should face her by your side."
"You're my ace in the hole," Bruce said. "If I can intimidate her into retreating, that's good. Gives us time to prepare more before facing her again." He paused and looked at Superman. "Clark. I need to know. When the time comes, will you--"
"--Be willing to use lethal force?" Clark's jaw tightened. "You were right, earlier--my code doesn't apply to the undead. I've ended their existence in the past, and I'll be willing to do it again tonight." His mouth curved in a smile that wasn't entirely a pleasant thing to see.
Bruce nodded. Then he moved forward into the graveyard, bathed in light from the full moon glowing above it.
He made his way between the marble stones, their shadows dark and clear-cut in the light of the moon. Intuition drew him to his own parents' grave, where a dark shadow sat atop the monument. Fiorella perched next to the trumpet-blowing angel, one arm flung around it in perverse familiarity. She was wearing a black cloak of some silky material that trembled in the breeze, her silvery-golden hair touched with moonlight, her eyes deep. "Brucie," she said sweetly. "I was afraid I was going to have to come fetch you." Her gaze raked up and down him. "I see you've fed, my dear child. At last you know the delight of it, the joy of power in sweet, fresh blood. Was it good, my dear?"
Her words elicited a flash of memory, razor-sharp: Clark's thoat under his teeth, the aching, throbbing pleasure of it. "Oh yes," he said, hearing the hot, velvety yearning in his voice.
"You'll never know rest until you drink again," she said. "You'll want it again and again."
"Again and again," he agreed, feeling Clark's presence nearby, listening. "Forever."
She held out a hand, smiling. "You're one of us now."
He matched her smile. "Oh, I think not." Baffled disbelief flashed across her face as he continued. "I'll never serve you willingly, Fiorella. I'd tell you to go to hell, but that would seem a bit redundant, wouldn't it?"
She stared. Then she hissed, a terrifying sound in the silence of the cemetery. Bruce dropped into a fighting stance, hoping she would retreat, give him more time to learn the full extent of his powers...
Fiorella stood. Her cloak unfurled from around the statue, lifting up into the night: great black wings, leather and sinew. "I was afraid you would say that, dear," said the vampire. "So I brought some of your brothers and sisters to talk sense into you."
From all around the graveyard, a sudden rustling of wings. A dozen dark shapes rose from the shadows, eyes glinting, fangs bared and curving in the moonlight.
Fiorella pointed a pale, imperious finger at Bruce. "Destroy him."
: : :
Superman surged forward as the first of the vampires lunged at Bruce, heat vision cutting a swath in front of him. The vampire shrieked and fell from the sky, one wing a mass of flames. Clark had a brief glimpse of Bruce dodging, leaping lightly from gravestone to gravestone, and then the flock of vampires wheeled into the sky to regroup, Fiorella crying orders.
Clark followed them into the sky, leaving Bruce on the ground below, honing in on the golden-haired vampire. Other winged shapes clutched at him, their nails tearing cloth, leaving trails of pain behind, but they fell away quickly, unable to bear the agony of the holy symbol around his neck. He intercepted another vampire preparing to plunge down at Bruce, sending it careening off course and into the ground with a sickening crunch.
Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bruce jump from a gravestone onto the back of a vampire wheeling by, saw him produce a sharp wooden stake and drive it home. Bruce jumped clear of the collapsing vampire, landing on the moonlit grass with inhuman lightness. Clark saw him look up, saw his eyes widen. He followed the gaze to see Fiorella casting a jagged piece of stone torn from a statue at him.
He went straight at her, not even bothering to dodge the bit of stone, letting it shatter on his invulnerable skin. Too late he realized the goal hadn't been to hurt him, as he felt the stone spear catch on the chain around his neck, felt the links give way.
The cross fell downward to the ground far beneath.
He didn't even have time to react before they were on him in a rush of dark wings.
---
See Rai's portrait of Fiorella in full here!
Chapter Eight