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Cover by ctbn60
Bemused, Clark Kent pushed at his glasses and looked at the cup of Java Jolt that had appeared at his elbow. It had been placed—pointedly, he suspected—directly over Richard White’s face on the front page of today’s edition. Clark picked up the cup and savored the rich flavor of the coffee; strong but sweetened with milk and sugar just the way he liked it. “Mmm. You always remember.”
“It’s an important detail.” Flawless in Armani, Bruce Wayne settled a hip on the desk and sipped his own coffee—black, no interference.
Clark, rumpled in J.C. Penny, set the cup down again, not on Richard’s face. “He’s a great guy, actually.” And if his gaze lingered on the wedding photo and Lois’ radiant smile a fraction of an instant too long, well, the pang of regret that he felt was brief enough. “He’s what she wants.”
“Hmm.” Bruce looked like he might be parsing those words for half-truths and bitterness as he fiddled with the lid on his cup and took another sip. Clark had already conducted that examination, though, and had only turned up some twinges of disappointment. “Well, let’s hope she doesn’t discover that having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting.”
Clark stared at him, blinked, and asked, “Did you just quote Star Trek at me?”
Lips pursed slightly, Bruce replied with a minuscule shrug. “Strictly classic.”
It was Friday night, the bullpen was dark and deserted but for the island of his desk…and Lois had married Richard White that morning. And while he didn’t feel bitter, Clark had anticipated this might be a bleak weekend and had found himself hoping for a volcanic eruption or maybe an asteroid hurtling straight for Earth to provide some distraction. This was better.
He smiled and confessed, “I never liked that episode.” At Bruce’s look of accusatory disbelief, he hastened to explain. “It’s just…when I found out what I was, an alien, it used to worry me that some of those science fiction things might really happen to me.”
Bruce nodded, thoughtful. He reached over to fix Clark’s tie. “Have you ever experienced a biological imperative to mate?”
“Not an imperative, per se,” Clark said. He did feel something begin to stir as Bruce’s long, graceful fingers moved on to his vest to straighten out the buttons. “When I saw Alien, though, I had nightmares that I was incubating a monster that would burst out of my chest one night at dinner. That stayed with me awhile.”
“Yes, I can see how it would.” Bruce touched the untidy hair at his temples and tucked the strands neatly behind his ears. “That never happened, though,” he murmured as he traced one finger along the edge of Clark’s ear.
Clark shivered at the touch. “No; no, it didn’t.”
Bruce nodded; this time his inquisitive fingers ran along Clark’s jaw and tipped up his chin. “And you’ve never ripped off your face to reveal you’re really a highly advanced reptiloid with a taste for mice?”
“Can’t say I have.” Interesting: he’d never realized the dimple in his chin was an erogenous zone. “Are you trying to seduce me, Mr. Wayne?”
“Mmm. How’s it working?” Those magical fingers skimmed light as a feather along the outline of his bottom lip as Bruce watched his reactions to every touch.
“Pretty well,” Clark said, teasing the way they always did, even thought he had to bite back a quiet moan at what Bruce was doing to him. It wasn’t even the expertise on display that got to him; the way Bruce could play him the way a virtuoso coaxed exquisite notes from a violin. No, it was the deep understanding he saw in Bruce’s eyes. Understanding and an emotion neither of them had put a word to yet because even superheroes had things that scared them. “I’m glad you came.”
“Wouldn’t have missed you for the world.”
Now it was Clark who wanted to dissect a sentence to find every nuance and hidden meaning. He didn’t get the chance. The kiss Bruce pressed to his lips, brief as it was, effectively drove every other thought from his mind and only left behind oh yes, more please…
“Bruce…” He didn’t want to form coherent thoughts and poke this with a stick but after such a long time of skillful avoidance, approaching this very thing only to veer off at the last instant, this was all a little sudden. “Is this because you feel sorry for me?”
A more familiar glower settled over Bruce’s face then. “Clark…” He breathed out a sigh laced with exasperation. “This is because you didn’t plaster yourself to a church window and scream Lois’ name, or burst in and declare you knew an impediment why those two could not be wed.”
Now it was Clark’s turn to frown as he sorted through all of that for hidden meaning. A smile broke out over his face like sunrise as he connected everything together. “You’ve been waiting for me to get over Lois?”
There was less of elegance in Bruce’s shrug this time and more of yeah, and what’re you gonna do about it.
Luckily, Clark had an answer for that. “I’ve been over Lois for a long time.”
“Hmm. So you’ve just been putting on a show of moping after the love of your life?”
And while Clark could not entirely dispute that, fortune was still with him because he had given this all quite a bit of thought lately. “I think she was more the infatuation of my life.”
Bruce just looked at him and waited for more.
Stumbling for words only because the idea was so new, Clark said, “I loved the idea of her. She was something to aspire to—but she barely knows I’m alive.” He glanced away, at the coffee, and smiled. “If you asked her how I like my coffee, she wouldn’t have a clue.” He looked back in time to catch a thoughtful expression on Bruce’s face. “Like you said, little details are important.”
Voice quiet, Bruce said, “I guess they are.”
Not sure what happened now, Clark got to his feet and fidgeted with his coffee cup until Bruce took it from him. “If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would that be?”
Clark blinked. “Ah… Anywhere?”
“Anywhere. I have a plane standing by to whisk us away. Just name a destination.”
He thought about rain forests and mountains and tropical beaches and somewhere with all of those things, but mostly of being alone with Bruce there and all the things that could happen. Diverting asteroids of doom paled in comparison.
“Surprise me.”
Bruce smiled. “Count on it,” he said as he moved in for another kiss.
That probably meant they would wind up in Gotham but that was fine by Clark. As long as Bruce kissed him like this, anywhere felt like paradise.