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“I actually wanted to talk to you about something.”
I hadn’t noticed, Bruce didn’t say. Dinner tonight hadn’t been anything unusual, per se—just takeout at Clark’s apartment—but Clark had been nervous the whole time, fidgeting and glancing at Bruce out of the corner of his eye with a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. Bruce had been just about ready to ask himself, put them both out of their misery.
Bruce made a noise of interest, setting his glass down on Clark’s coffee table and angling himself more towards Clark. They weren’t quite touching anymore, Bruce’s knee brushing up against Clark’s thigh on the couch; he swallowed down the bitter little voice in his head that was confident that Clark was five seconds away from breaking things off.
(But things were going well, weren’t they? The dates were nice, even if Clark always seemed to skirt around the topic of their alternate selves when they talked. The touching—mostly initiated by Clark, but Bruce was trying—was nice. They hadn’t slept together, per Clark’s request to take things slow, but the kissing was nice. Wasn’t it?)
“I like you,” Clark said. A small laugh escaped him. “I like you a lot, Bruce.”
Four seconds.
Clark cleared his throat. “And I appreciate you taking things slow with me. I know I’m not what you’re used to.”
No, he was better.
“I told you I don’t care about that.”
That much was true; the sexual misadventures of his past—well, two months ago—had been, for the most part, just part of the cover for his playboy identity. If Clark never wanted to go any further than making out on the couch and bare-chested cuddling in bed, Bruce would be perfectly fine with that.
(If it came down to it, there was very little Clark could ask for that Bruce wouldn’t at least compromise on. Not if it meant keeping Clark.)
“No, I know, I just…” Clark sighed. “I might need an exception. To the monogamy.”
“A hall pass,” Bruce supplied coolly. He wasn’t going to be upset. Clark was perfectly allowed to feel attraction to non-Bruce people.
“Sort of.”
No.
Respectfully, Clark was his. And Clark was the one who’d brought monogamy up in the first place, worried about Bruce not taking the relationship seriously—as if Bruce didn’t take everything seriously. As if Bruce could even want someone else when he had goddamn Superman in his bed.
But this was Clark. He wouldn’t be asking if he didn’t have a reason. Bruce could trust that, at the very least.
Still, Clark could obviously read the distaste on his face, because he quickly added, “It wouldn’t be for a person, just one set of very specific circumstances. If I need it. It’s hard to explain.”
Yes, it did certainly seem that way. They were Batman and Superman; there weren’t that many secrets they still had from each other. Unless Clark really couldn’t explain it, because someone else was listening in…but they had code words for that exact situation, and Clark hadn’t invoked it.
(Also, he hoped his boyfriend wasn’t stupid enough to leave active bugs around his living room. Unless they were Bruce’s—not that Bruce had bugged his boyfriend’s living room, just thought about it. From a purely strategic angle.)
Bruce raised an eyebrow. “If this is about kinks…”
He didn’t think Clark was that much of a prude that he couldn’t even say the word, but then again, they were raised in very different places. He supposed he could understand why Clark said he’d need it, under “one set of very specific circumstances”, but it didn’t explain why he’d need someone else. Bruce could do it, and better.
Clark, flushing bright red, quickly said, “Oh, gosh, no. No, I would—that’s not what this is. It’s more of a…work thing.”
“Your work is making you choose someone to have sex with?” Bruce deadpanned.
Metropolis wasn’t Gotham; reporters were more in danger from shattering glass as aliens crashed into the floor-to-ceiling windows of their office buildings than they were of noxious gases or bomb threats. And unless Clark had crawled his way into a very specific subgenre of romance novel, he severely doubted said aliens were forcing people to have sex with them.
“I…it’s a job hazard,” Clark said, gaining a sudden and rather unearned amount of confidence. “Exposure to an aphrodisiac gas that makes you…”
Oh. Of course. The Daily Planet wouldn’t, but Batman absolutely would. “Sex pollen.”
Clark almost brightened at that. Bruce couldn’t fathom why he didn’t just say the word from the beginning.
“How did—of course, you’re from Gotham,” Clark said to himself. He cleared his throat. “Yeah, sex pollen. If I inhale it, and it affec—you know, if it takes, I want to make sure that it’s okay that I…”
“Yes, Clark, I’d rather you have sex with someone else over dying,” Bruce said. If that was Clark’s only concern, that part was fine. Clark had non-Bruce people on his consent form list the entire time they’d been dating. “But you should find me first.”
If Clark was hurt—if Clark found himself susceptible to any sort of chemical gas, regardless of what the effects were—Bruce deserved to know. Even if he was fairly certain neither of them really wanted their first time sleeping together being under duress.
Clark hesitated.
Bruce swallowed. Three seconds.
They’d been each other’s number one on the list for years. What changed—just their relationship? Shouldn’t that make the choice easier? Now Bruce could be Clark’s first and second option, for plausible deniability, secret-identity-wise.
The silence dragged on.
“It’s not—this isn’t about you,” Clark said quietly. “I have a—a friend. Colleague.” A light laugh escaped his throat, along with a soft, almost wistful smile that had nothing to do with Bruce. Bruce wracked his mind for when he’d ever seen Clark looking this way while talking about his friends. “Someone I trust implicitly. I’ll introduce you one day. But when I get…out of my head, he’s one of the only people I can trust to handle me.” Looking up at Bruce, he said honestly, earnestly, “I don’t want to hurt you, Bruce, and I don’t want to see me differently, either. Not when we’ve just started dating. I—”
“You’ve tried to kill me, Clark.”
Clark froze. “What?”
Bruce failed to come up with some form of I’m not arguing, but that didn’t sound petulant or manipulative. He also pocketed the vicious you sound like you’re in love with him. Clark had still chosen Bruce, for things far more intimate than a fuck-or-die scenario. That meant something.
“You’ve tried to kill me, and you’re still one of the people I trust most. Seeing you high on sex pollen isn’t going to make me think you’re a danger to the planet again. And I do know how to handle you.”
Clark’s eyes were wide open. Bruce knew he was…light on unmitigated praise, but he didn’t think it was that surprising, except—
Ah. Well.
Now that Bruce thought about it, there was a very good reason that Clark had never mentioned their respective secret identities while on dates with his new boyfriend Bruce Wayne.
“You’re Batman,” Clark stated.
“You’re Superman,” Bruce replied, for lack of a better response.
“You knew that.” The flush was back, creeping up Clark’s cheeks like ivy on a stone wall. “You weren’t going to put me out of my misery?”
“I didn’t know what you were talking about. You should trust your boyfriend more.”
Bruce realized, a little too late, that Clark might’ve been more so referring to the half-dozen times he’d come up with some poor excuse before canceling on their dinner plans.
Despite the clear embarrassment, Clark’s lips quirked into a wry smile. “I didn’t want to scare him off. Some people hear ‘alien with superpowers’ and assume the worst.”
“Some people hear ‘I need an exception’ and hear the worst.” More seriously, he asked, “You were talking about Batman, weren’t you? The one you trust?”
“How did you know?”
“Because I’ve seen you talk about everyone else on the League, and I’d remember if you looked like you were half in love with them.”
“You were jealous,” Clark accused, eyes sparkling with fondness. He edged a little closer to Bruce on the couch and leaned in for a kiss, sweet and reassuring. Bruce was grateful for the excuse to break up the wall of space between them, but he made his argument known as soon as his mouth was free.
“No, I wasn’t.”
“You’re kissing me like you’re jealous.”
“This is tactical,” Bruce replied, moving his lips to skim across Clark’s jaw. “This is me proving no one else stands a chance.”
(They did not, in fact, end up sleeping together for the first time under chemical-enforced duress.)
(But there would be a moment, months later, when Clark’s skin burned fever-hot with aphrodisiac gas, and Bruce’s name was like a prayer on his tongue, and Batman snapped something at Hal along the lines of, we are not calling Bruce Wayne, I don’t trust him on this, I’m on Clark’s list too—and Bruce would admit to himself, and to Clark when he finally came back to his senses, that he might’ve been a little jealous.)