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Clark loved when the stars aligned and the universe handed him an opportunity to interview Bruce Wayne. That’s something that hadn’t changed since they started dating officially a few months back. Clark had always enjoyed the excuse to visit his best friend. Now it just came with the added bonus of a dinner and cuddles following an hour of questions both men tried and usually failed to be professional through. It was always so hard to keep from laughing when faced with an inside joke, but they managed. Mostly.
Following the other man out of one of the many offices Wayne Manor seemed to contain, Clark couldn’t fight the smile off his face. And, seeing a matching grin when Bruce turned to check on him, he could admit he didn’t really want to try.
In a swift move that reminded Clark Bruce was every inch as much the Bat outside the suit as he was in it Clark found himself with his back against a gothic wall and Bruce on every other side of him boxing him in.
“What are you smiling about?” He asked, and Clark smiled harder.
“You.”
Clark watched Bruce’s eyebrows inch incrementally toward his hairline.
“That’s pretty earnest country boy.”
“Anything for you Sunshine.”
Bruce’s head landed on Clark’s shoulder with a dull thud and Clark could feel the soft timber of the other man’s baritone voice resonate through his chest from his quiet laughter.
“Cute.” Bruce muttered after pulling his head back up to meet Clark’s gaze ruefully.
“Thanks, I thought so.”
Bruce huffed and whacked the side of his arm as he stepped back enough to let Clark stand up from where he’d been leaning on the wall. Clark would be the first to admit he had a slightly biased pain scale given most cars hitting him at sixty miles an hour wouldn’t leave a bruise but he was pretty sure not even a new born of the human variety would have called the touch anything more than a playful tap.
“So Mr. Wayne,” Clark asked once he was up. “What’s the agenda for the rest of the evening?”
“Bold of you to assume I have an agenda.”
Clark gasped and clutched at where he assumed pearls might rest on him if he ever chose to wear any.
“The fearsome Gotham Bat without a plan? Let the world pray we never see the day.”
“Hardy Har,” Oh god, Clark was wearing off on him. “I was thinking a quick dinner downstairs before retiring to a more comfortable position.”
Clark grinned at the opportunity laid before him.
“A more comfortable position?” He asked, leaning forward. “Any in particular you have in mind?”
Bruce paused at the question for a handful of seconds before his brain caught up to his unintentional innuendo and laughed.
“Oh, Darling, I can be however you want.”
“Well then,” Clark followed up, tilting his head to the side. “How do you want to be?”
And instead of being flirty, or coy, or annoyed, or any other number of things Clark would have reasonably expected to be a response to such a forward question, Bruce froze.
It was only for a second of course before Bruce was firing back a flirty little line of some kind or another that Clark admittedly missed, but it was long enough to be noticeable. And Clark felt himself pause in kind half a second later, because Clark had seen something distant and brittle flash to life in those blue gray eyes that he didn’t recognize and didn’t much like the look of.
He leaned back slightly from where he had been leaning into Bruce’s space attempting to take in as much of the other man as he could. Bruce eyed the motion with a quizzical look and a stiffness in his shoulders that betrayed his apprehension at the movement.
“Something wrong?” He asked lightly and Clark took a second to think over the question.
“You didn’t answer my question.” He ended up settling on.
“I think you’ll find that I did.” Bruce answered with a cheer that felt put on. ”'If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of a wet dream I would be happy to describe it for you. I’m sure it would make my being one easier to understand.”
“No Bruce, that’s not what I meant.” Clark said quietly, watching with a growing sense of dread as Bruce disappeared behind the bumbling Brucie persona he put on for the social elite. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“That thing where you pretend not to understand what I’m saying.”
Bruce raised an incredulous eyebrow, but the lines of his face seemed sharper to Clark somehow.
“Maybe I just don’t know what you’re saying?”
“Maybe you’re trying to get me sidetracked because I hit a nerve.” Clark said evenly, his gaze steady and unblinking like a plea.
Bruce stared back, and for a moment Clark had a sinking feeling this was well and truly as far as the other man would let him in.
“Don’t push me away,” Clark asked softly, almost in spite himself. “Please.”
Still, like a stone wall Bruce watched him, unmoved and unreadable. And then, all at once, he seemed to deflate inward on himself with a sigh. Even his shoulders sank from where Clark had missed them creeping up to a place by his ears.
“What did I not answer?” He asked again and this time it was Bruce Clark was looking at, all tired eyes and hesitation.
“I asked you what you wanted to be, and you didn’t want to answer me. You didn’t answer me.” He said. “Why, what was that? What happened?”
Bruce looked down at his feet and Clark didn’t take it as anything other than what it was, a tick that helped the other man get his thoughts in order. It took a minute before his head swam back up, but it did.
“I don’t know,” He answered finally. And then, like he was scared of how long the words were taking to come to him, continued: “No one’s asked me that before. I didn’t have an answer for you, and I panicked.”
“No one’s asked you how you wanted to have sex before?”
Bruce shrugged.
“A couple have tried, but usually a little line about being a ‘wet dream' or ‘whatever you want’ is more than enough to get the conversation moving again. The people I’ve been with are usually pretty content to have the reins once I hand them over.”
“Huh,” Clark said, more to fill the space between them as he processed the new information than anything else. “So, do you have a preferred way to-”
“No.” Bruce cut him off before he could say anything really dumb, like ‘do the do’.
“Like a top five?” Clark found himself asking before his woefully incompetent filter could catch up with the rest of him.
Bruce shrugged again, looking smaller than Clark had ever seen him. And all of a sudden, a different thought popped into his mind.
“Do you like sex?”
Bruce hummed.
“I don’t not like sex.”
Clark tried not to grimace.
“That’s not what I asked.”
Bruce breathed a staccato beat between them that might graciously be called a chuckle. And Clark waited him out.
“I don’t feel any particular way about it, really.” Bruce admitted. “Other people like sex. I’ve never really seen a reason not to give it to them when they’ve asked.”
Clark felt the top of his head dip, subconsciously nodding along to Bruce’s confession as he tried to make sense of it.
“So, just to clarify,” Clark said, gearing up to sound very much like a broken record. “You do not like sex.”
“I- uh, no. I don’t really get anything from it. If that’s what you mean.” Bruce said. And then continued with a tentatively rueful smile: “It’s kind of sticky.”
Despite himself Clark felt a giggle building up in the back of his throat at the little Bruce-ism and smiled.
“Yeah,” He agreed. “It can be.”
Clark watched Bruce fiddle with the hem of his jacket sleeve. It was so unlike the extreme masks of stoicism and hedonism he put on for the public it left him breathless at the realization of how few people really met Bruce Wayne as he truly was.
“You don’t have to let that stop you though.” The other man said. And Clark didn’t understand.
“What?”
“If you want to have sex with me, I’m okay with it. I’ve never let it stop me before.” Bruce said, eyes wide and earnest where they bore into Clark’s. And Clark felt his stomach drop like a stone at all that sentence implied.
“I’m not going to ask you to do that.” Clark answered. “I would never ask you to do that.”
Bruce paused, the little furrow in his brows getting deeper like it was Clark who was the one being confusing.
“If you’re sure.”
Clark didn’t hesitate to respond.
“I am.” He said and waited for Bruce to nod at him.
With a quick tip of the head, Bruce did just that. And the two stared at each other, the silence between them growing heavy like stagnant water, filled to the brim with films and moss of unsaid sentiment.
“Have you ever told anyone else this?” Clark asked as carefully as he could manage.
“That Gotham’s Most Wanted Bachelor doesn’t like sex?” Bruce answered with a playful tilt to his smile that dulled the edges of the teeth underneath. “No.”
Clark rested a hand on Bruce’s arm in a way he hoped was grounding and smiled back.
“I’m glad you told me.”
Bruce took the hand as an invitation and wrapped his arms around Clark until his head was nestled in the crook of his boyfriend’s neck.
“Me too.”
The two men stood wrapped around each other for a length of time that Clark couldn’t force himself to keep track of. Instead, he listened to the combined pitter pattern of their hearts and breathed. There would be a time coming, and coming soon, where they would need to face what this really meant for how they would operate together. But right now, they were warm. And that felt like enough.
With a grin only he could see, Clark lowered his mouth closer to Bruce’s ear and asked in his best attempt at a stage whisper: “So, would your preferred position tonight be lounging in the general direction of a Grey Ghost marathon then?”
And, like he’d hoped, Bruce downright cackled at the suggestion.
Clark felt something frayed at the edges of his nerves smooth at the sound. They had a lot to figure out, but looking down at his best friend, at his boyfriend, at the man who had agreed to love him, Clark had a feeling they were going to be alright.