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It wasn’t the sort of place that Clark would normally seek out of his own volition.
To be fair, he was fairly certain there wasn’t anything like this in Metropolis. He didn’t want to sound too self-congratulatory, but most of the denizens kept to less unsavory haunts, and anything like… this he would have found and broken up already.
Clark didn’t fault Bruce for not addressing it- Gotham requires more attention than most cities on the best day, and low level crime like this didn’t exactly rank high on priorities when the Joker had slipped out of Arkham again, or when the flow of a new drug into the city has the other man looking even more exhausted than usual.
Still, when he’d awoken alone in Bruce’s bed, well after when he’d expected the other hero back, he wondered. His suspicions had been confirmed by the sour look on Alfred’s face when Clark had asked after Bruce’s location. Clark had dressed, and went to find him.
Still, knowing and seeing were two different things.
He manages to focus down on the repeated sound of hard blows, the jeers of the crowd, and gets close enough to drop down in an alley nearby, almost to where he can hear them gathered. There, in the middle of it all, steady and reassuring, is Bruce’s heartbeat. Clark ignores the flush at how easily he picks it out, and how quickly it settles like a weight across his shoulders, solid and real.
It takes him longer to find someone to follow, a way into wherever Bruce has gone tonight, but the nervous tick of a man’s heartbeat, fluttering, anxious, catches Clark’s ear and he shadows the stranger until he’s led right to the entrance.
Clark isn’t as good as Bruce at stealth, he’s never needed to be. But years of being a journalist has at least taught him how to be unobtrusive. He’s thankful for it when he can dart forward after the stranger and catch the heavy metal grate he disappears behind before it slams shut. With one more furtive glance down the alley, Clark ducks into the dark stairway leading down underneath the street.
Clark is fairly sure the smell, hot and fetid, would be overwhelming and unpleasant for someone even without super senses, but he grits his teeth and presses on. The stairs are steep, slick with moisture and algae, and he tucks his shoulders in to keep from brushing against the stone walls. They lead down, well below the level of the street, until eventually, as he watches the retreating back of the stranger ahead of him, the passage gets brighter, and the roar of the crowd gets clearer.
When he gets to the bottom of the stairs and passes through the thick metal fire door, he’s confronted a wide expanse of a room, low ceilings hanging over Clark and making him want to hunch more than usual. Pipes and duct work hang lower still, and the press of bodies around the makeshift ring in the center of the space would be claustrophobic if he stopped moving for too long.
He sees Bruce first.
He’s shirtless, and even in the harsh light of the room, the web of scars that covers his chest and arms are like a second skin, stretching and flexing with him as he spars with an olive-skinned man several inches shorter than either of them. They’re fighting, somewhere between boxing and mixed martial arts, and the hard thuds of fists meeting bodies seems deafening to Clark’s ears.
Clark doesn’t stop moving, keeping his gaze on Bruce as the other man fights. He doesn’t often get to watch, at least not like this.
He’s seen Bruce fight countless times, knows the sound of his fist or foot cutting through the air even before it makes contact with a jackboot’s face, could draw the clear precision of his movements with his eyes closed. It’s nearly an art, and Clark knows that Bruce has spent decades working to make it such.
This is not that.
The grace is still there, certainly. But here, under the harsh lights and in the muggy press of bodies, the care Bruce normally wears like a skin as much as his cape and cowl are gone. He moves with a ferocity that is absent in Batman, face pulled tight with concentration and a fiery stare that never leaves the man in front of him.
It’s animalistic.
Clark doesn’t get closer.
Instead, he works a careful circuit of the room, taking care not to push, and lets his ears track the fight instead. He’s still not quite sure what he’s doing here, if he wants to try and cajole Bruce out, or to watch and see exactly what the other man is capable of, or if he just wants to bolt and pretend he never saw any of it.
He finally reaches the far wall, where the crowd is slightly thinner and he can push up against the metal racking that lines the perimeter of the space. He’s doesn’t know what this place was originally for, before it was usurped for its current use. He’s not sure if it was Batman who drew Bruce to this place, or something else.
As he’s carefully pressing back against the racking, feeling the tension of steel and wire strain against his back, Bruce notices him.
If Clark hadn’t been so familiar with how he fights, the pattern and rhythm of his blows and movements, he doubts he would have noticed the moment of hesitation. Nor the brief stutter in his heartbeat, otherwise even and measured despite the ferocity of the fight.
Clark can imagine the frustrated and bemused tone his voice would take over the comms, the chastisement of blowing his cover on whatever this case was. But this isn’t Batman. Not right now.
Instead, Bruce seemingly doubles down- Clark wouldn’t have called the fight reserved before now, but he can practically feel the way Bruce stops pulling his blows, lets each one follow through a little bit harder and a little faster, until-
The punch isn’t anything showy, or flashy. It’s only because Clark is watching, sees the split second of recognition flash across Bruce’s face from a room away, that Clark notices the way his opponent drops his fist just a hair too soon, elbow flashing down to protect his side.
Bruce does too.
The strike is clean, hard, and the crack of the other man’s jaw is clear enough that Clark isn’t the only one who winces at the sound.
The man drops. Clark doesn’t bother checking, knows without x-ray vision that Bruce broke something, and the sick swoop of his own stomach meets a frisson of something he doesn’t want to name as he watches Bruce pull back, send a cursory glance at his own knuckles before letting someone in the crowd shove past him to the downed man’s side.
Clark doesn’t have to watch as Bruce slips back and melts into the press of bodies between them. Clark can follow the steady thrum of the other man’s heartbeat as he moves around the perimeter of the room, in a careful but unmistakable trajectory towards Clark.
He doesn’t let him get close enough to talk. Before Bruce can get to him, Clark turns, and weaves through the bodies around him back towards the stairwell that brought him down here. He’s not running, even if it feels like retreat.
The cold air of the alley when he finally gets above ground is a relief, and he doesn’t waste any time striding away from the entry, away from the steady thrum of Bruce’s heart as the other man follows Clark.
Clark finally pauses, lets his steps slow as he turns down the narrow press between two buildings. He’s never gotten used to this element of Gotham, how everything presses in, shadows growing like weeds. With a snort, he recalls the way his science teacher in Kansas, Mrs. Reilly, had described how creatures adapt to suit their environment. He wonders idly if Batman was inevitable in a place like this, as he hears the man himself draw closer.
“Did Alfred rat me out?”
Clark looks back as Bruce’s voice cuts through the quiet of the night. He’s pulled on a jacket, half closed over his bare chest, shoved his sweaty hair back and out of his eyes. If Clark couldn’t see the marks on his knuckles, or the shadow on his jaw that was liable to bloom into a bruise in a little while, he might even look normal.
He didn’t precisely look like Bruce Wayne sometimes. Clark isn’t sure exactly what it is, how Bruce changes how holds himself, or the expression he wears, that makes him look like anything other than who he is, but he does. Maybe it’s how incongruous it seems, Bruce Wayne in a seedy basement with his fist in some thug’s kidney, but Bruce manages it somehow. Vicki Vale could have walked into that room and Clark doubts she would have recognized who was in front of her. But standing in front of Clark, he’s just- Bruce.
“He didn’t say anything,” Clark says, and lets himself rock back on his heels, tucking his hands deep in his pockets.
“So, you decided to explore Gotham’s nightlife?” Bruce asks, and his tone is deceptively light. He steps closer, slowly, casually, and his gaze flicks between Clark’s eyes and the subtle tension of his shoulders. He knows, somehow, that Bruce isn’t sorry to have been caught here. Clark’s not sure he has any reason to be.
“Well, you’re out so late, so often, I figured I should see what all the fuss was about.” Clark shrugs, aiming for a joke and missing by what seems like a mile. He lets his shoulder lean into the brick of the building beside them with a feigned casualness.
Here, the light from the street barely bleeds in, and despite everything, it feels insulated. He can still hear the muffled noise of the fighting below their feet, the rustle of money clutched in sweaty palms, and the quiet lap of tires on the rain-damp streets beyond them. But still, he finds himself caught instead on the sound of Bruce’s feet on the concrete as he draws closer.
“And?”
“Jury’s still out,” Clark replies, and watches as Bruce finally slows to a stop a few feet in front of him, as he hears the soft reproach in Clark’s voice. As the other man quietly scrutinizes him, Clark speaks again. “So what brings you out here, then? Business or pleasure?”
Bruce fully stills at that. Something shutters across his expression, and he glances over Clark’s shoulder for a moment before he responds.
“Business,” he says, and his voice has lost any former levity.
“Yeah?” Clark pushes, and Bruce’s eyes cut back to him.
“The gentleman in the ring with me was about to provide a false alibi to one of Falcone’s men.” His gaze is hard, assessing Clark’s reaction, and Clark tilts his head at the explanation.
“A broken jaw won’t keep him from talking. At least not for long.” Clark leans further into the wall, and Bruce takes the invitation for what it is, pushing in closer. There’s still a careful buffer of space between them, but this close, Clark can feel the faint vibrations in the air as Bruce huffs quietly.
“No, but it makes him hot enough that the defense won’t put him on the stand.” Bruce’s lips tilt fractionally, and Clark knows it’s the equivalent to a broad grin in anyone else. Still, something in Bruce’s delivery sticks in his head, and Clark licks his lips before speaking again.
“So you knew he’d be here tonight?” It’s an innocent enough question, and Bruce just keeps his gaze trained on Clark. It takes a moment before he speaks.
“I can capitalize on an opportunity when presented with one,” Bruce answers instead, and Clark bites down on the sigh that tries to work its way out. He doesn’t understand why Bruce comes out like this, why he risks recognition, despite how he’s tried to explain.
Clark lives his life in control, he has to, has to let care and precision guide every movement so he doesn’t accidentally put his hand through a door he’s trying to open or bruise when he’s trying to touch. He can’t fathom Bruce’s desire to shed that control, even for a moment. It’s foreign. And yet-
Clark glances down again, and the darkening shadow across his knuckles reminds Clark of exactly what he’s just watched. The flash of intuition across Bruce’s face, and the rippling flex of his arm as he struck out, hard and fast. A flush of heat chases up Clark’s spine, and his knowledge of the strength of the other man’s hands echoes like a muscle memory through him. He tries to keep his expression from betraying the sudden flicker of something heady and alluring that settles in Clark’s chest.
When he looks up again, Bruce’s gaze is dark, and fixed on him. Clark doesn’t think he’s imagining the slight increase in the other man’s breathing, steady throughout the fight, but now getting the softest hitch as he closes the half step of space between them.
“No one’s ever said you don’t know how to press an advantage when you see one,” Clark finally replies, and immediately feels color rise in his face at the slightly breathless tone. It sounds like a come on, and it startles an actual laugh out of Bruce, low and warm.
“Like anything, it’s tactical.” Bruce replies, and this close, away from the stagnant air of the basement, Clark can smell Bruce, the warmth of him, the tang of sweat and musk and whatever trace of cologne that still clings to him under all of it. Clark sucks in a deep breath, tries to focus on anything other than the steady heat coming off the other man, still flushed and warm from the fight. He thinks its working, at least for a moment.
But then Bruce leers at him, lips pulled back in a sharp edged expression that’s more a snarl than a grin, and as Clark stares at the curve of his lower lip, it splits. Clark can’t pull his gaze away as blood wells up, so bright it’s almost pink, and watches as Bruce’s tongue darts out over the fresh cut.
A ragged noise forces its way out of Clark’s chest, and before he can think, his hands are fisting in the front of Bruce’s jacket and pulling him closer. Clark dives in to press his lips to Bruce’s in a frantic kiss, suddenly desperate to chase the taste of copper off the other man’s mouth.
If Bruce is surprised he doesn’t show it and instead, he lets Clark drag him closer. He uses the momentum to push against Clark’s shoulder, to muscle the other man’s broad form flat against the building behind them, and when they finally press flush together, braced against the brick, Clark feels a minute shudder run up the length of the other man’s body.
Bruce’s hand comes up to grip Clark’s jaw, firm and unyielding, and tips his head to the exact angle he wants as he presses in, bites at Clark’s lip, and swallows down the breathless noise it draws from him.
It feels good- astonishingly good- to go pliant and easy in Bruce’s grip, to let the other man move him where he likes, to chase after his lips with mindless desperation. He should be embarrassed, should slow down whatever it is they’re doing here, but he can’t make himself do anything but lean into the kiss, and open his mouth to Bruce’s searching tongue.
It seems too soon when Bruce draws back, spit trailing in a slick line between their lips as they separate. He’s got his hands tangled in Clark’s shirt, low on his sides, pushing him hard against the wall like he thinks the other man is liable to try and get away. But when Clark leans forward, tries to catch his lips again in another heated kiss, Bruce keeps his head back.
“Clark-” Bruce starts, and he hates it.
“Shut up,” Clark says, breath coming in ragged pants. He doesn’t want to hear whatever Bruce has to say, doesn’t want to think about the way the other fighter’s body had crumpled, doesn’t want to think about how the sickening sound of bone cracking under Bruce’s fist had done anything but repulse him. And some of that must show, because Bruce takes one more long moment to glance back and forth between Clark’s eyes before he pushes back in for another hard kiss.
Clark isn’t sure who moves first, if he lets his thighs spread invitingly or if Bruce pushes his leg in more deliberately, but either way, the sudden pressure on Clark’s rapidly hardening cock makes him gasp, breaking the kiss with a breathless noise. He ruts down on Bruce’s thigh, suddenly irate that he’s here, that he had to track the other man down across the city, that each kiss is flavored with the iron tang of Bruce’s split lip. He moves thoughtlessly, selfishly, as he chases his own pleasure.
And Bruce-
Bruce lets him.
Clark sinks one hand into the sweaty strands of hair at the nape of Bruce’s neck, the other biting hard into the other man’s hip, and pulls him against him, rides his thigh with a single minded focus.
And Bruce just leans forward, shifts his weight so that his hip presses hard against the heated line of Clark’s erection through the thick denim of his jeans. He ducks his head down, mouths at the dip of Clark’s neck near his collar, and smirks against his skin.
And suddenly, Clark wants him to- to bite, wants the other man to suck marks along his skin, lurid and dark. He can’t, knows its a fruitless endeavor, but he suddenly, desperately wants the other man to mark him the same way he’d marked that fighter.
His mouth is half open to tell Bruce to do just that, tugging at the hair still clutched between his fingers, when Bruce finally moves one of his hands. He rubs the heel of his hand in a slow, firm press along Clark’s groin. It’s familiar, and presuming. It’s possessive.
The hot rush up Clark’s chest, sudden and intense, makes him suck in a hard breath, hips jerking into the pressure. He fights to still them as Bruce flicks open the button of his jeans with a practiced ease, and pulls down the zipper with a quick tug- like- like he’s owed this-
The relief of the pressure off his cock is short lived, as Bruce pushes his hand down into Clark’s briefs and wraps those long, callused fingers around him. It draws a full body shudder out of Clark, and he shifts to grab Bruce’s shoulders, helpless to do anything but hold on.
Bruce moves enough to look down between them, and Clark can’t help but stare alongside him, transfixed by the steady movement of Bruce’s hand on him. It’s deafening to Clark’s ears in the quiet of the alley, the wet slide of the head of his cock peeking between the iron band of Bruce’s grip. In a hot flash, Clark realizes its the same hand that had broken the man’s jaw, and he sucks in a hard breath through his nose.
It’s a mistake, because suddenly all he can smell, all he can sense, is Bruce. Pushed against the wall, shielded from view by the broad span of Bruce’s shoulders, pinned by the brutally efficient way he’s jacking Clark, and surrounded by his scent, Clark is overwhelmed, enveloped and suddenly desperate.
He lets go of Bruce’s shoulders to reach down, paw frantically at the front of the other man’s own pants, barely taking enough care to make sure he doesn’t just rip them open. He needs to feel the other man, to get his hands on the hot skin of his cock, and he can hardly focus on anything else.
And when Clark finally manages to open his jeans, he can’t stop the deep noise that comes from his throat when his fingers meet wet fabric- Bruce is leaking, precome slicking the material of his underwear to his dick like a second skin, and Clark can only drag his fingertips along the length. Bruce’s hips hitch minutely under his touch, and Clark does it again, and again, until Bruce’s free hand comes down like a vice on Clark’s wrist.
“Clark-” Bruce says, and his voice is wrecked, raw and dark. It sparks the same urgency up again in Clark, and he has to force himself to move at a human speed, to wrap his own hand around Bruce’s length until they’re stroking in unison, pressed together from knee to hip in a frantic, mutual spiral.
The heated skin underneath his touch is intoxicating, and Clark feels lit up, like he’s 20,000 feet in the air under the hot radiance of the sun. His chest is tight with it, and as Bruce tilts his head in to catch Clark’s mouth in an open mouthed kiss, he can’t help but marvel at its source.
He’s startled, if only for a moment, when Bruce’s free hand pushes in, pushes down, and the hard pressure of his fingers pushes on the skin behind Clark’s balls, rubbing steadily. There’s no other word- he whines, throws his head back against the brick wall, and the tightness in his stomach pushes out until he’s coming, hard.
Clark’s only aware of Bruce in the barest sense as aftershocks ripple through him weakly, eyes shut against the sensation crawling up his spine. When he finally tilts his head forward, opens his eyes to meet the dark gaze of the man before him, he’s not sure what expression he wears, but Bruce pushes Clark’s hand away with a growl and wraps his own hand around his cock.
Clark just presses back into the wall behind him, ignoring the faint grinding noise of the brick underneath his shoulder crumbling against the pressure, and pulls Bruce in by his hips. The weight of the other man against him sends residual arousal sparking low in his stomach, and Clark wants more of it, immediately. He slips his hands up, higher, under the edge of the jacket, until his fingers find the bare skin of his back. Those same scars he’d watched in the lights weave like lace under his fingers, and he traces along the rough edge of one where it wraps towards the cut of Bruce’s hipbone.
He can hear the ragged edge to Bruce’s breathing, can feel the way his hips rock into his own fist as his hand moves faster, stripping himself with hard strokes. Bruce leans in, chases the sensation of Clark’s pulse in his neck, lips a ghost on his skin. He nips at the edge of Clark’s jaw, rough with stubble, and follows it with a soft kiss that’s surprisingly gentle.
It makes something familiar and overwhelming squeeze tight in Clark’s chest. He can name it, if only in his own head, and his heart flips traitorously.
In the dark of the alley, pressed tight to damp brick and utterly exposed, Clark is paralyzed. He does what he’s wanted to, since he first walked in to see Bruce fighting. He pushes his hand against the hard skin of Bruce’s side, squeezing along that rippling scar tissue, and feels the bone deep shiver that it draws from the other man.
And Clark is so glad the other man’s lips are still on the skin of his neck, so the broken, needy noise Bruce makes is clear in his ear. He’s desperately grateful for his perfect memory, so he can recall this sound whenever he can, whenever he wants, the way his name falls from Bruce’s lips in perfect fidelity.
I can give you this, Clark thinks, if you just let me.
Suddenly, Bruce is yanking up Clark’s flannel, shoving it up roughly to expose the skin of his stomach. The shock of cold air on his skin is brief, until with another few, desperate strokes, Bruce is coming in hot streaks across Clark’s abs.
Clark lets his fingers flex and stroke idly across Bruce’s skin as the other man jerks through his orgasm, breath slowing incrementally. The sound of a car backfiring, near enough that Bruce can hear it as well, makes them both start, hands freezing on each other’s skin.
After a beat, they both relax, and Clark looks back to meet Bruce’s gaze. He’s not surprised at the heat still present in his eyes, but the soft fondness alongside it pins him almost as effectively as Bruce’s hands on his skin.
“What’s that look for?” Clark says quietly, one hand moving to grab the edge of his jacket, to tug Bruce forward into a kiss, softer than any other they’d shared that evening.
It takes a long moment before Bruce responds, and when he does, there’s an unexpected sheepishness to his tone.
“I’ve got to go back in there,” he says, and Clark’s hands freeze where they are.
“You’re joking.”
“No,” Bruce says, glancing over his shoulder towards where they’d come from. “I can’t just leave.”
Clark waits, stares at Bruce, until it’s obvious that he’s not going to say anything else. Clark pushes down the irritation that flares, lets it fight the knowledge that Bruce is doing something important, not just chasing whatever sick thrill he gets here, until he’s sure he can speak without swearing.
“Your timing is abysmal.” Clark says, and Bruce huffs out a laugh in the warm space between them.
“You’re the one who followed me, not the other way around.” He catches Clark’s lips in another kiss, and despite it all, Clark is helpless not to open his mouth to it, to trace his tongue against Bruce’s with a soft sigh.
Still. When he breaks away, he makes sure Bruce’s gaze is fixed on him. With one hand, he reaches down, and drags a finger through the cooling lines of come on his stomach. Slowly, deliberately, he brings it to his lips.
As Bruce watches, he licks it off smoothly, quickly. He shrugs slightly, and pushes his glasses back up his nose where they’d slipped down.
“Don’t let me stop you, Wayne. Get back in there.”
The noise of a ringing phone wakes him.
Clark gropes for it, glancing at the clock on the bedside table in his apartment in Metropolis. It was- Jeez, four in the morning, and he’s fairly certain who’s on the other end of the call before he looks at the screen.
“-Ello?” He says, voice rough with sleep.
“There are words for people like you.” Bruce’s voice is dark, tired, but filled with enough amusement that Clark can only grin up at the ceiling above him.
“And what would that be?” Clark pushes up into a sitting position, and listens as the sound of rustling fabric carries over the line.
“Someone who makes promises without following through,” Bruce says, and Clark can hear the rustle of water through the pipes a moment before Bruce moves again. He’s tired, but not so tired the image of Bruce stripping down for a shower doesn’t make his face heat. “Imagine my surprise to come home to an empty bed after such a promising display.”
Clark bites down on a laugh. “I was hoping it might motivate you.”
“Yeah?” Bruce asks, and there’s a quiet thud of clothing hitting the smooth tile floor. “To do what?”
“Next time the urge strikes, to try out the nightlife in Metropolis instead.”
The warmth of Bruce’s laughter echoes over the line, and Clark closes his eyes, pushes out with his hearing, focusing until-
The quiet rhythm of Bruce’s heart, across the bay, settles something in Clark’s bones. When Bruce speaks again, it’s in stereo, from Clark’s phone speaker and the lakehouse both.
“It’s a date.”