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Bruce was always the last one to leave the Hall. There was no significance in his presence there late at night, nor in his having chosen to linger in the monitor room; he often did so, and the rest of the League tended to informally consider it "his", though he persisted in asserting that building security should be a priority for all of them.
His full attention wasn't required. If it had been, he would have considered it a serious flaw in the Hall's security setup. He often brought small pieces of equipment up here and worked on them, while he sat in front of the bank of screens that showed every camera angle possible both internal and external to the Hall. No one paid them any particular attention, except him.
No one else could have picked out the device from among the rest of them. No one else even knew what it was.
He didn't look at it. He didn't let himself.
But he knew it was there. He knew exactly how far away it was from his hand. He was persistently, relentlessly conscious of it.
And he knew it was only a matter of time until he gave in, and used it.
He'd discovered it months ago. He'd been working his way a piece at a time through the inventory of Kryptonian equipment stowed within the scout ship, now that he had not only Clark's permission but Clark's encouragement to do so. Clark didn't know what half of it did, and there was no way he could figure it all out on his own. The ship had tried to help him, when asked; but its data cores had been damaged by its crash landing in the middle of Metropolis, by everything that had been done to it afterward. It couldn't always give him answers, and sometimes when it could, the answers made no sense, or were three-quarters Kryptonian technical terminology that Clark couldn't translate.
Bruce had made the original offer diffidently, tentatively, reminding himself that it wouldn't be a surprise if Clark refused—if Clark didn't trust anyone but himself with any of it, after what Luthor had used it to do.
But Clark had looked at him with shy warmth and then laughed, sheepish, rubbing at the nape of his neck, and admitted that he didn't even know where to start. That he was pretty sure Bruce had a better grasp of the fundamentals underlying Kryptonian technology than he did, and also of the scientific method in general.
The device had been one of a number closed away in what appeared to have been personal quarters, presumably intended for the ship's crew. Clark's faith in Bruce's scientific principles notwithstanding, Bruce had chosen to investigate its function in part simply because it was small, easily transported, readily examined: the size of an especially large marble, apparently made up of multiple overlapping pieces, delicately curved, that gave it the look almost of an orrery.
It fit well in the cupped palm of one hand. The first time Bruce had activated it had been sheer accident. He had simply been holding it, looking down at it. That had been a late night, too, and his mind hadn't been at its most sharply focused. He'd been examining the patterns that crossed the surface of the device; but he'd also been thinking of where it had come from. Of the ship. Of Clark.
And then it had happened.
Afterward, it had been straightforward enough to generate a working hypothesis. The device was clearly a sort of mental projector, capable of reading and interacting with internalized sensory representations—capable of taking what it was given and stabilizing the brain's own shaky half-formed efforts, re-rendering them in breathtakingly enhanced unreality.
In the moment—
In the moment, he had been utterly and inarguably transported. Mentally, not physically; but the subjective experience created by the device had made one functionally indistinguishable from the other. He'd been seated at the desk in the monitor room. And then he'd been somewhere else.
Within the ship, he'd realized. He'd tested himself as best he'd been able. But the appearance of the ship, the soft hollow partial echoes as he moved—the sensory experience of motion itself—it had all been perfect, precise. Even the faintly metallic smell of the air that passed through the ship's recirculation systems, the taste of it at the back of Bruce's throat, had been accurate.
The only thing that had saved him from assuming in error that the device was a transportation apparatus had been Clark.
Clark, who had been there in the ship, though Bruce had seen him seated in the lounge, head tipped back on the sofa, eyes closed, on one of the screens in the monitor room only seconds ago.
It had seemed like seconds ago, Bruce had thought, already trying to decide whether the device might have moved him between dimensions, or generated some sort of time dilation effect in the course of transportation—but why design such a thing?
And then Clark had turned and looked at him, and he'd understood.
Clark had smiled at him, broad and bright, all sweetly pleased surprise. He'd said Bruce's name, in a tone in which he'd never said Bruce's name before and never would. He'd crossed the room and reached for Bruce, touched him; leaned in, quiet, and taken Bruce by the nape of the neck, and pressed their foreheads together. "God," he'd said quietly. "I wish—" And then he'd stopped, and shaken his head a little, and kissed Bruce.
It hadn't been real. That was obvious.
So Bruce had let him. Bruce had kissed back.
Once he'd figured out how to play the scene to its close, how to exit the illusion again, he'd sat at the desk for a long time in silence.
He had formulated and reformulated possible explanations. Obviously the scenario hadn't been coming out of nowhere. It presumably was not the device's sole purpose to give you an illusory space in which to imagine yourself being kissed; surely such a thing would have been a curiosity, a toy, and not a standard-issue item multiple members of the crew had apparently possessed. And he was perfectly well aware of how deeply, how desperately, he'd wanted to shove Clark into the wall of the ship and kiss him, the last time they'd been standing within it together.
The device had to know it. Somehow, it had drawn upon that wish, that want—scanned him somehow, determined the contents of his conscious and subconscious desires, and smoothly made them manifest. What would otherwise have been quiet fantasy, unremarkable daydream, had been rendered for him in such convincing detail it was the next best thing to real.
For people who'd been sent halfway across the galaxy, to evaluate and then colonize a world—a psychological support, surely. To be able to close their eyes and revisit the home they'd left behind, with such vividness it would be as if they'd been returned to it; to comfort themselves, to steady themselves, to remind themselves what it was they were working for. Plausible enough.
And then, in Bruce's hands, it had been turned instantly into a single-purpose simulator of romantic and sexual expressions of interest from Clark Kent.
Mortifying.
Mortifying, and—and relentlessly, inexorably, unremittingly tempting.
He'd used it again. Again, and again, and again. These days, it never left the desk of the monitor room. It sat there, idle, round and gleaming. And he sat there in front of it, and pretended he wasn't going to use it, until he did.
He had trodden and retrodden his own arguments so frequently that he knew them by heart; tonight, he sat and retrod them anyway.
It would harm nothing, no one. No one knew. No one ever had to. It consumed no resources, except his time and attention—and in the way of dreams, the brain allowed to work without restriction or constraint, time passed more rapidly within the illusion than outside it. Bruce had determined as much through repeated tests: subjectively, he could spend hours being touched, kissed, slowly and lovingly fucked, by Clark; objectively, he would emerge from the illusion and find it had been approximately twenty minutes.
And if the device drew power from an internal source—
It would be for the best if he were eventually to drain it, and render the goddamn thing unusable.
He kept his eyes on the screen in front of him. He clenched his hands, dug his nails into his palms. He swallowed.
And then, inevitably, he reached for it where it lay on the desk, picked it up between his fingers and let it settle in the hollow of his palm, and closed his eyes.
He felt a tightening in his gut that was almost anticipation, waiting to learn what it would pull out of his head this time. It drew on well-worn casual fantasies and the deepest and least rational yearnings of his heart with equal ease. He never knew, from one use to the next, which would confront him.
He kept his eyes closed. He regulated his breathing. He'd determined that the device could be controlled in part through biofeedback; he felt his pulse settle, cleared his mind, centered himself.
He wasn't seated anymore. He was standing. Sunlight touched his face, bright against what were no longer the physical backs of his eyelids, warm against what was no longer his actual cheek.
He opened his eyes, and his heart contracted in his chest.
Oh. This one.
Bruce had used the device multiple times before he had encountered this scenario. The first time, he'd barely moved, barely breathed; he'd managed, with only the most desperate effort, to speak a word or two when the circumstances made it clear that he must, when Clark had begun to look at him with a cautious uncertain furrow between his eyebrows.
He had endeavored with everything in him to minimize his response. To—
To avoid a wild alteration in biofeedback that might terminate the session.
When it had ended, he'd sat alone in the monitor room until the sun rose. He hadn't touched the device again for six weeks.
But then he had. And it had happened again, and again.
This was the eighth time, to date. Interspersed between encounters on rooftops and in back alleys, in uniform or outside of it, meeting for the first time in a dozen different ways or touching each other with every certainty of their welcome, fucking in every conceivable position, there was—this.
And by now, he could look at Clark without surprise. He could look at Clark like this, standing in front of him in what was instantly recognizable as the kitchen in the Hall itself, leaning comfortably against the edge of the counter—greeting him with a warm smile, and reaching out to him with one hand.
The nearer hand. The left.
The one with the wedding ring on it.
"Bruce," Clark said. "There you are."
"Here I am," Bruce agreed, in a mild teasing murmur, and stepped in, and took that hand with his own.
No one knew. No one ever had to. He could let himself have this, and it never had to matter.
He let Clark catch him by the waist and draw him nearer. Clark's smile became smaller, softer, infinitely more difficult to bear; Bruce bore it. Clark touched his face, his jaw, trailed the backs of his fingers with idle gentleness down the side of Bruce's throat.
He reached to skim his other hand up Bruce's chest. And then he slowed, and stopped.
Bruce looked at him. He was looking at his hand, framed against the clean crisp white of Bruce's dress shirt. His left, his goddamn left. The ring.
Not that it could have been a surprise to him. He was as illusory as the rest of this.
His eyes fell shut. He drew a slow breath. And then he looked at Bruce again, and there was something strange in his eyes: something wistful, something yearning.
Of course, Bruce thought. Of course Bruce's greed couldn't be satisfied even by this. Of course he insisted on dreaming of Clark both his already and at the same time still longing to be—as if that made any sense.
Clark reached for Bruce's hand in turn, thumbed the cool curve of Bruce's own ring; matching, of course. And for an instant, his face was—
A glitch, no doubt. The struggle of the device to reconcile Bruce's relentlessly contradictory desires. Clark's expression had changed within a moment to something much more congruent with the situation. His mouth curved sweetly, his eyes dark and steady on Bruce's face, he lifted Bruce's hand without a word, and pressed his lips to the knuckle of Bruce's third finger.
Christ.
Bruce closed his eyes. His throat felt tight.
"Well, hey there, stranger," Clark murmured, and drew him closer still—swayed in, and kissed Bruce's mouth this time.
It could go several ways, from here. Sometimes they kissed deeply, hungrily, and then fucked against the counter, left hands clasped tight, rings touching. Sometimes they were moved, seamless and impossible, and found themselves on a bed: curled themselves around each other, kissing and drowsing quietly, sharing the sheer fundamental pleasure of touch without more than a slow simmer of heat behind it. And sometimes—
Yes, of course. Bruce should have known. After a day like today, having seen Clark barely at all, feeling harried and tired and at a distance from himself, of course this was what he wanted. Of course this was what the device had seen in him.
Clark kissed him softly. Gently. Lingering over it, without urgency, as if it were a pleasure in and of itself to have Bruce's mouth against his, as if he wanted nothing more. He put his arm around Bruce, hand settling against the small of Bruce's back, soothing steady warmth leaching its way through Bruce's shirt. He held Bruce close, and he was broad and strong and touched Bruce with almost painful tenderness; and gradually, by degrees, Bruce felt himself surrender to it.
They parted, now and then. Brushed their mouths against each other's cheeks, the lines of each other's jaws, and then returned. Leaned into each other, held and were held. Slid hands into each other's hair; touched each other's shoulders and wrists and throats, simply because they could and knew they were allowed to.
And then, at last, Clark drew back just a little—just far enough to look Bruce in the eye. There was still the dim suggestion of a smile around his mouth, in the lines around his eyes. But his gaze was grave and searching.
"I wish I knew how to talk to you about this."
Bruce went still.
"How to talk to me about this," he heard himself say.
One corner of Clark's mouth drew up, a wry lopsided slant that wasn't particularly amused. "Yeah," he said quietly. "That I—that I think about this. That I want this. You. But I know—" He stopped, and bit his lip. "I know I'm lucky you changed your mind about me at all. I'm lucky you brought me back, I'm lucky you wanted me in the League. We even kind of get along sometimes. That's so much more than I expected it still blows my mind." He laughed a little, a quiet huff of breath through his nose; and then the laugh was gone, and the slant of his mouth went with it. "I know," he added, barely over a whisper, "that I shouldn't push it."
"Clark," Bruce said, very evenly.
"Besides," Clark murmured, and took Bruce's hand again, lifted it and rubbed his fingertips over the ring. "This is about fifteen steps too far for you, bare minimum. You wouldn't believe me if I told you I wanted to sleep with you and get it out of my system, never mind if I said—" He broke off, swallowing hard, throat working. "If I said that I—"
His mouth twisted. He shook his head.
"Forget it. Forget it, I'm ruining it. Sorry." His mouth quirked again, the barest degree. "Not that you mind, I guess. How can you?"
He touched Bruce's face, leaned in and kissed Bruce again.
Bruce couldn't think. He couldn't move.
Clark eased away, brows drawn down, frowning just a little. "Bruce?"
Bruce's breath had begun to come quick, fast and harsh through his throat. His mouth was dry. His heartrate was picking up. His hands were shaking.
He'd never done this in front of—
In front of the illusion of Clark. It was only an illusion. It couldn't be anything else.
The point was, he'd always—he'd always let each scenario play itself through to its end, falling "asleep" beside Clark, or at least waiting for a quiet moment, face hidden in the aftermath of whatever it was they'd been doing together here, eyes closed.
But he couldn't. He couldn't. This made no sense, it was—surely it was simply meta-engagement by the device, Bruce's own hopeless desire for this to somehow turn out to have been real.
He swallowed, and took a sharp unsteady half-step away from Clark; made his breathing rapid and shallow, felt his heart accelerate wildly.
The illusion began to destabilize. And the representation of Clark—
The representation of Clark stared at Bruce. Blinked, and looked at the kitchen, eyes wide, as it smeared around them; and then looked at Bruce again with sudden intensity, threw out a hand and said sharply, "Wait. Wait, Bruce—?"
Bruce was seated at the desk in the monitor room.
He jerked, involuntary, the impulses sent by his brain in separating him from Clark at the close of the illusion suddenly reaching his actual muscles. He forced his hand open, and the device fell from it and struck the desk, rolling away.
He blinked, and swallowed. His throat hurt.
That hadn't—that hadn't been what it had seemed to be. It was impossible. He was—he'd been using the device too often, that was all. He would set it aside for a few days. Create a schedule. Run tests—
He forced himself to his feet.
And then, in a sudden overwhelming rush of air, Clark was there.
Bruce froze.
Clark looked harried, rushed. He was in civilian clothing: loose shorts, a t-shirt that had been hastily yanked on and was still askew. His hair was wild; he'd sped, flown, both, without a thought for the wind.
And he was staring at Bruce, eyes wide and dark, mouth parted.
"Clark," Bruce made himself say.
The device was still rolling along the desk, with a soft metallic sound. It reached the edge, and fell to the floor between them.
Clark looked at it. "Is that—"
The temptation to lie to his face was, for a split second, so intense that it felt only just short of pain. Bruce could convince him that nothing had happened, that it had been a strange and baseless dream. That Bruce had no idea what was wrong, why he'd come in such a hurry.
But Clark deserved better from him than that. And he refused to fail Clark again, whatever it might cost him.
He bit the inside of his cheek, and set his jaw. "It's one of several that were on the ship," he said, and marveled distantly at how bloodless he'd succeeded in making the words sound. "It facilitates internal mental projection—generates a full sensory experience. I can only assume that it—" and Christ, he should have known, he should have guessed. "—somehow keyed itself to you, perhaps once you took command of the ship or perhaps because you were the only Kryptonian individual it could detect within its operational range. Therefore, when I—"
His throat closed. He made himself breathe, made himself meet Clark's eyes. The bare minimum he owed Clark was some goddamn honesty.
"When I—"
But, Christ, how could he? How could he say it? When I used it to experience my deepest subconscious desires involving you, my own fantasies rendered in high definition, over and over and over again, because I couldn't get enough, I couldn't stop, I wanted more—
"Oh, god," Clark said, breathless. "I thought—Jesus, I don't know what I thought. I've always seen things, heard things, felt things so much more than everybody else. No one ever seems to remember anything in the same detail I do. Nobody ever seems to be able to picture it as clearly as I can. But I thought it had changed. I thought it had gotten more real, somehow. I just didn't know—"
So it had drawn him in after all. He just hadn't felt the distinction as clearly, with Superman's mind and senses already at yellow-sun heights.
Fuck.
"But that was you," Clark said. "That was really you."
"Clark," Bruce said, a hoarse and helpless warning.
But he was too late: Clark had already crossed the monitor room, a single rush of speed. He was—he was right in front of Bruce, and he swallowed and reached out and set his hand against Bruce's chest.
Still a white dress shirt, Bruce thought dimly. Almost the same.
Almost the same, except for every way it wasn't. Except that this time, it was real.
Clark didn't look away. Bruce couldn't. Clark had caught Bruce's left hand in his right, drew it up, and—and, eyes locked with Bruce's, breath hot against the backs of Bruce's fingers, pressed his mouth to the knuckles.
Bruce's breath caught pointlessly in his throat. His eyes were hot.
"It was you," Clark said, as if he'd still somehow feared it might not be true, until Bruce had let him—and Christ, fuck, Bruce shouldn't have let him—
Clark caught Bruce's face in his hands, and kissed him.
It wasn't soft this time, wasn't sweet and leisurely. Clark kissed him hard, desperate and frantic, real, and Bruce was helpless to do anything in the face of it except match him every step of the way: he made a sharp greedy sound against Clark's mouth, reached blindly for Clark's arms, his shoulders, the nape of his neck, and kissed back with all the furious heat that filled him.
"Jesus Christ, I didn't know," Clark said against Bruce's jaw, when it was over. "I didn't—I couldn't understand why it was happening. I'd just be lying there, trying not to think about you, and then suddenly there you were in technicolor, surround-sound." He closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead to Bruce's. "I thought I was just getting desperate. I thought that was why my imagination was working so much overtime. I didn't care, if it meant I got to pretend I had what I wanted with you, even if it was only for a little while."
Bruce's chest wrenched itself tight.
"I didn't know either," he heard himself say. "I didn't—I thought it was me. I thought it was only showing me."
"I know," Clark said, quick, soothing, and Bruce realized distantly that that was probably because Bruce's hands and arms were shaking. "I know. God, you should have seen your face in there. I was trying to figure out why I'd suddenly started fantasizing about you having a heart attack—"
He cut himself off with a laugh, unsteady, and kissed Bruce again.
And then he stopped and drew away, and looked down at his foot.
It was bare; and the device had come to rest against the side of it.
He bent down and picked it up, and held it in his hand. And then he looked at Bruce.
"I'll return it to the ship," Bruce made himself say.
Clark watched him searchingly for a second.
And then he started to smile, and he took Bruce's hand in his and pressed the device into it, and closed Bruce's fingers deliberately around it. "No need," he said. "Keep it."
"Clark—"
"Keep it," Clark repeated. "I'm betting we can get some pretty good use out of it."
Bruce felt himself flush; and Clark grinned at him, wicked, laughing, and then kissed him again.