A Midnight Drive

Clark Kent was in the foyer of an anonymous European hotel, laptop bag slung over one shoulder and sipping a late-night latte to go that would be ill-advised for anyone else, when his phone rang.

He fumbled it out of his pocket. B calling, the display read. The associated profile picture was of a gray square.

It was almost midnight where Clark was, so it must have been coming up to six in Gotham; the dusk in brief parity with the night, cut jagged by the city's silhouette. No doubt the Bat was restless. Clark stepped into the elevator, found it empty and private, and swiped to answer.

"Bruce, hey."

"Clark. Good evening."

There was the low hum of a car engine in the background. Bruce sounded entirely like himself, except for the way he didn't say anything further. Usually he would have delivered a game plan without preamble and left Clark arguing with a dial tone by now.

"Everything okay?"

"Fine. Had a heavy workload lately. It's tiring—how long have you been in Copenhagen?"

Bruce's days sometimes crashed into one another. Long nights perched on concrete ledges and longer days unsettling his executives with his presence would do that. Alfred kept an elaborate calendar for him, but sometimes Clark thought Bruce could do with the simple kind you tore off. Something tangible.

"Two days," Clark said.

"How much longer are you there for?"

"Did you call to nitpick my schedule?" No reply. "Two more. Why?"

Bruce made a faint noise of disgruntlement. He was driving—Clark could hear the grit of the road over the car's hum; a muted strata of environmental noise. A moment later there was the hush of the steering wheel sliding against Bruce's palm and the creak of shoe leather as he depressed the clutch, shifting gear. He must be hands-free, listening to Clark's voice over the dashboard speakers.

"Busy?" he said.

"No, but I get the feeling I'm about to be."

"If that were the case I'd have used the other line."

"A more low-key problem, then?"

"There's no problem." More road noises, the tick of the turn signal like a countdown. "I wanted to talk to you."

Clark laughed. "Is your commute that boring?"

"I'm not sure it counts as a commute if I only do it when I need to."

"Ah—the shipping division merger today, wasn't it? Went smoothly, I hope."

"Last-minute snag in negotiations, but I didn't call you to make small talk." The car vibrated over rumble strips and drew to a standstill; Clark could hear the bite of the clutch and the crosswalk signal, the impatient bip of car horns. He was probably at Eleventh and Merchant, about to aggressively navigate the intersection out of Gotham.

"Yeah, about that," Clark said, amused and growing faintly puzzled. "Why did you call, exactly?"

"Where are you right now?"

"Copenhagen." Teasing. Bruce always wanted specificity.

"Narrow it down."

Clark smiled to himself. "Hotel elevator."

It dinged a moment later as it reached his floor.

"Tell me when you're somewhere more private."

Portentous as ever. Clark wedged the phone between his shoulder and cheek, juggling his coffee so he could slide his keycard into the lock.

"Okay," he said with a sigh, relieved to be back and already more relaxed, despite Bruce and his ominous presence. He kicked off his shoes, switching the phone to his other ear so he could untangle his press pass lanyard and pull it off over his head. "I've reached home base. What's this all about?"

Bruce went quiet awhile. Clark was patient, listening to the tires on the blacktop and the minor susurrations of Bruce's movements as he drove. Then, there was a distinct, separate sound: Bruce wetting his lips.

"I was thinking about," Bruce said, and then stopped and made a contemplative noise. "No. Wait a moment."

"Hey, it's your phone bill."

He heard Bruce take a deeper breath than was usual.

"Is there something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong. I just have to unfasten my tie."

That seemed an unnecessary narration.

Or a very necessary one, if Clark let himself cast a different light onto things. He sat himself on the edge of the hotel bed. He heard the hush of silk drawn over itself, the tiny crackles of static as Bruce tugged the fabric through his calloused fingers.

"It's the navy suit today," Bruce said with an odd casualness. "You know the one."

Clark did. Apparently Bruce was aware of this fact. Clark wasn't certain how he felt about that, only that there suddenly seemed to be a lot to negotiate here.

"Thanks for the visual," he said cautiously.

His neutrality seemed unwelcome, because Bruce said, "I'm very good at reading people, Clark. But if I'm wrong in this instance, have the courtesy to hang up now."

A warmth primed itself in Clark's chest. He'd thought about this moment once Bruce's focused attention had stopped triggering a hypervigilant defensiveness, and, through some strange chemistry he wasn't certain he wanted to know the components of, had transmuted into something desirable. Thought about it quite a lot, in fact. A hundred different scenarios, and some of them almost like this. Though, in the course of his iterating, Bruce had become a lot less circumspect. Clark would've liked that kind of certainty.

Then again: Bruce.

"Please," Bruce added quietly.

Clark could count on one hand the number of times he'd heard Bruce say please. It would take even fewer fingers to count the times he'd said it to Clark.

"I'm not going to hang up on you," he said, equally quietly.

Bruce's exhale was unmistakably relieved. Somehow it was that, and not the obfuscated proposition that got Clark's heart beating harder. Just like him to want to do this with the safety of six time zones between them. But then, the distance was probably part of the appeal.

"Good," Bruce said.

And it did, Clark admitted, listening to the soft sounds of Bruce unfastening a shirt button, have an appeal.

The hum of the road was steady over the phone, no longer with a metropolitan bustle in the background. Bruce was gunning the engine, quickly moving up through the gears. He must be outside of Gotham proper, flying through the outlying suburbs. Clark could be flying through those same suburbs in an instant, but if that was what Bruce wanted, he'd had ample opportunity to initiate things before now.

"Are you aiming to start the night with a rap for careless driving?" Clark said, instead of launching himself to the other side of the world.

"No." Bruce's voice took on a low rasp. "Public indecency, perhaps."

"I suppose you have a reputation to maintain."

There was a short pause. It was warm in the hotel room. Clark unfastened the second button of his own shirt, and the third.

"What they say about me," Bruce said. "It's not all true."

"I know."

"But some of it is."

Even if Clark hadn't been a journalist, he'd know when he was being led. He wondered how much of this Bruce already had scripted out. How many times he'd already gotten himself off to it.

He knew what kind of hedonism the public at large thought that Gotham's favorite son indulged in his glittering hotel suites. His appetite was reportedly wide, and as voracious as the paps that followed him. In his daily browsing, Clark scrolled past most of it.

Most of it.

"Which parts?" he asked.

Bruce laughed, a rich manufactured sound, and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in quick staccato. "I sleep with women, Clark. Do you really want to hear about what I do with them?"

Did he?

Maybe Bruce hoped to light some jealousy in him, but he only felt a mellow thrill at the thought of him with somebody, bringing all his skills to bear in single-minded pursuit of something other than justice. Bruce never did anything halfway. Heat steadily beat through Clark's veins. The zipper of his pants was becoming something of a discomfort.

And that, he supposed, answered that question.

Before he could voice a reply, Bruce said, "Or maybe you'd rather hear about what I let them do to me. Gotham's starlets, they like to play catch and release."

Blonde, brunette, redhead; shining faces turned to him, coy smiles. Slender hands resting on his arm. Lurid speculation the next day.

"They're half your age, Bruce."

"They are," Bruce said lightly. "I don't chase them. I'm a—an initiation rite. I get their names on the front page, whether I take them home or not."

"And do you?"

"Hm?"

"Take them home."

"What do you think, Clark?"

It was a genuine question. Clark sucked on his lip and thought about it. Blonde, brunette, redhead; shining hair cascading over his sheets. Slender hands pressed against the wide span of his back. Polite dismissal the next day.

"They have—" Bruce said. "Some of them have a lot of pent-up aggression towards me. A certain amount of contempt."

"I can't imagine why."

"You don't need to imagine," Bruce said, still with that low grate to his baritone, same pitch as the road rolling under his vehicle. "It's all a matter of public record. Black and white and read all over."

"I don't read—" Clark cut himself short. There had been that one story. A right-click, open-in-private-browser kind of story. His ear felt hot. He swapped his phone to the other. "Um."

"Tell me what you've heard. Don't spare the details."

Clark closed his eyes and shuffled his glasses off so he could pinch the bridge of his nose. He wasn't quite sure why he thought this was going to be straightforward. "Let me get this right. You called me just to get me to tell you about your own escapades, third-hand?"

"Escapades."

"Why don't you go read the society pages. Jeez, Bruce."

"Do what with the society pages?" Bruce's tone was one part arch, two parts provocation.

Clark groaned. "You haven't."

"I've yet to reach that level of narcissism. Clark. Humor me. Was it Harborgate Towers?"

"It wasn't."

"The Holiday Regents Affair?"

Clark moved his phone away from his ear and stared at the hotel's magnolia walls until his eyes unfocused themselves.

Are you there? Clark?

He took a breath and brought the phone back. "I'm not touching that one."

"That's fair," Bruce said. Clark could sense his perverse satisfaction from four thousand miles away.

"It was the Hotel Aventine."

Bruce made a thoughtful noise, and Clark could picture his mouth turned up a fraction of an inch, the lazy arch of his brows. He heard the car decelerate. Taking a turnoff, the friction of rubber on blacktop. "I don't recall that one. Refresh my memory."

"You've never forgotten a thing in your life."

"That doesn't seem likely," Bruce said. Then, with a hint of wistfulness, "I'm only human."

Clark sometimes had his doubts about that. "The time with the handcuffs," he said.

Bruce tutted. "Clark."

"God, how often have you—" Clark sighed. "Never mind."

"In the grand scheme of things," Bruce said, "taking into account the day-to-day paraphernalia required in the course of my work, handcuffs are fairly vanilla. Don't you think?"

"I don't want to scrutinize that too closely, Bruce."

"You're learning."

"More than I'd like."

"Is that the case?" Bruce's voice held a challenge.

Clark hesitated. He hadn't hung up. That had sealed an unspoken agreement between them.

"Alright," he said. He could feel his pulse jump in his throat just thinking about what he'd read. "I'll play, but honestly, the article was pretty tame. Considering the headline, anyway."

"That's clickbait for you."

"But the comments—"

"Ah," Bruce said, a long, low sound that sent a wash of heat through Clark's body. It would be easy to imagine Bruce making that sound in a different context. "Never read the comments."

The comments had been… well, filthy. Clark had wondered if all the kiss-and-tells on Bruce Wayne were subject to the same degree of prurient speculation, or if there was something special about that particular liaison. He'd not been prepared to check. All he knew was that a lot of people were apparently very interested in the exact length, girth and heft of—

Clark tightened his grip on his phone.

"I read that your date left you cuffed to the bedframe and the concierge had to arrange for a locksmith."

"Wait, that does ring a bell. Nicole LeBlanc, I think."

Clark cleared his throat. "Yes."

"Nice girl."

That had been a matter of some debate. "I heard you came out of that one pretty bruised up."

(The uncomfortable prevailing sentiment was that Bruce had probably deserved it.)

"I'm always bruised."

"But you let her do that to you?"

"It was all very consensual."

"That's not my point."

"My point is that she had a particular way of holding my face. She'd tip my chin up so gently, Clark. So delicately. Then she'd slap me like I'd fucked her sister."

Clark took a quick, sharp breath, as though he'd been slapped himself. His dick strained against the confines of his pants. He didn't ask if Bruce had, in fact, fucked her sister.

"Do you think that story is true?"

"I—" Clark swallowed and brushed his palm over himself. "You could have easily gotten yourself out of the cuffs. But that doesn't mean you would have."

"So, you want it to be true."

He imagined Bruce, restrained on a bed, half-undressed, or maybe entirely. A woman astride him. His face a violent red, and the expression that would come with it.

"I don't know about that," Clark said, though his dick was less ambivalent on the matter. He unbuckled his belt as quietly as he could and thumbed open the button of his fly, just for a little relief, only for his erection to force the zipper down of its own accord, and with a lot less subtlety.

"I think you do," Bruce said. "Getting comfortable?"

Clark ducked his head in reflexive embarrassment, even though there was nobody to see the color sharpening on his cheeks. He could play this off easily enough—it's late, he could be getting ready for bed—but Bruce had called him for a reason, even if he'd felt the need to preface it with a whole lot of bullshit.

"I'm not going to lie," he said. He let out a slow breath. He knew nobody would hear him or would even care if they did, but his voice caught as he tried to keep it at a hush anyway. "I'm kinda turned on right now."

Bruce shifted. Clark heard the fabric of his suit whisper against the car seat. "Only kind of?"

Clark worked his fingers into the open V of his slacks, heel of his hand over his dick. He was rigid under there, his boxers getting damp. "Kind of… a lot."

"Better."

"Are you?"

"Am I what."

"Bruce, come on." Clark wrestled down a frustrated laugh. Specificity. Sometimes, Clark wondered what he and Bruce might say to each other if they were inclined to genuinely talk about these things and not in circles. There was enough of a pause that whatever Bruce said next would be a lie, but at least it was one Clark was supposed to catch.

"I'm not," Bruce said, "but I'm thinking about it."

There was a slight strain in his voice. Clark closed his eyes and focused, and could hear the quick push-pull of Bruce's pulse under the thrum of the car's motor. He imagined his knees parted, dark navy wool against a triangle of cream leather upholstery, the jut of his erection.

Clark felt out the underside of his dick through his boxers, fingers skimming lightly over it. Just a hint of pressure, nothing more. "Think harder," he said.

Bruce made a breathy, amused sound. It sent frissons down Clark's spine. His dick twitched hard, and he swallowed back a groan.

"Hmm. Harborgate Towers, then."

"And back to this again," Clark said, but there was no annoyance to it. He was rapidly approaching a point where it didn't much matter what Bruce was saying, only that he was saying something. He stretched out onto the bed and freed himself from his boxers, shuddering under his own warm hand.

"Silver St. Cloud," Bruce said.

There was a candid that everybody had seen, and had little chance of unseeing.

Bruce Wayne, head tipped back, bow-tie unfastened and his tuxedo shirt untucked, caught in the moment the elevator doors had slid open. His date on her knees in front of him, face turning to the camera in a surprised pout, her platinum finger-waves framed by the pixelated squares where Bruce's crotch should have been.

It had reminded Clark of a risqué fashion shoot. Her lipstick had been flawless. He came to a belated realization.

"That was staged."

"Of course." Bruce sounded fairly indifferent about it. In fact, he sounded like he was thinking about something else entirely. "It was only Silver's hand on my thigh, but they all censored it anyway. Can't say the result wasn't flattering."

"It was… something."

Clark let his fingers glide over the head of his dick. He was slick with precome already, and so hard he was aching with it. He sighed softly at his own touch, and heard an echoing sigh a moment later.

"We had a good thing, for a while. That night…" Bruce blew out an appreciative breath. "Height of summer. August fifth. A hot, sticky night."

"Keep talking."

"Her scarf was a thousand-dollar Valentino. Red. That was the night she made me kneel on the floor at the foot of the bed. Kept me there for hours. Didn't touch me skin-to-skin even once. She said it was too damn hot, she couldn't bear to. Just with the scarf. It might be the second-most expensive thing I've had around my neck."

He'd pared back the licentious tones of earlier. Bruce delivered this anecdote almost like a report. It did nothing to mitigate Clark's arousal to think about Bruce at his terminal, in the Bat's skin, briefing him.

"She braced a foot on my thigh for leverage. Those shoes, they're called stilettos for a reason. Left a nice memento. I think she came just from that. Or wanted to."

"And did you?" Clark imagined St. Cloud, toe of her shoe pressed against Bruce's bare hip, holding the scarf taut around his throat until all of him was taut as well, sweat dripping, straining for air. The release of the scarf, and Bruce releasing in turn, breath rattling. "Come?"

"No," Bruce said. "The scarf was good, but it would have been better bare-handed. There's something more… fundamental about it. In a way."

Clark swallowed hard. He could feel his pulse beating in his throat and his dick, building as he stroked himself, his hips rising. He clutched his phone tight, pressing it against his face as though he could somehow feel Bruce through it. If he laid it on the bed, he'd still be able to hear him perfectly, and could use both hands. He could bury his face into the hotel bed's coverlet to muffle himself and then, later, tell Bruce what he'd done.

"But I was still hard for hours after that, off and on. Made the suit uncomfortable. I'm surprised you didn't notice."

Clark's hand slowed, and then paused. August fifth. A Saturday. He remembered now—Bruce had grudgingly called him in for backup, late evening. He'd smelled faintly of perfume and sauvignon blanc, but nothing more. They'd tracked their mark throughout the night. One of his flunkies had put a knife in Bruce's thigh in the process.

Of course he hadn't noticed.

"None of that happened," Clark said.

"Didn't it?"

"You're so full of it."

"Is that a problem for you?"

"Are you making it all up, just to get me to, just to—"

"Maybe. Is it working?"

They weren't scenarios calibrated for Clark's preferences, not with what Bruce knew of him. They were for Bruce's benefit from the ground up. He'd been gauging Clark's reactions. His interest. Maybe whether he'd be amenable to this kind of play.

And he'd planted a seed for Clark to germinate his own fantasy from. Maybe Bruce would like to hear that Clark had known, and had spent the whole night desperately hard with that knowledge, in agony over whether he could, or should, touch him. That he'd gone home at the end of the night, frustrated and inflamed, and had thought of Bruce while he'd jerked off.

"Yes," Clark bit out, his breath catching in his throat. He let his orgasm rise up and take him, pulsing hot into his hand. It shook a groan from his throat.

"That's it. That's good." Clark heard the crunch of gravel as Bruce pulled over to the side of the road. His breathing was loud and hard without the ambient road-noise to muffle it. "Clark. Get here."

The balcony doors rattled in their frames as Clark threw himself into the sky. He pitched down into the wildflowers a few meters from Bruce's idling vehicle, weak-kneed and trembling through the aftershocks.

Bruce was breathing deeply, eyes closed and head tipped back against the headrest. He opened the car door and rolled his head to the side as Clark approached, regarding him with an even look.

"You were too slow." He wound his hand into Clark's shirt and pulled him down, but didn't get as far as kissing him.

"Maybe you were too fast. Did you ever think of that?" Clark leaned in and pressed his fingers over Bruce's ruined pants, dragging the wet fabric over his cock. "You're a mess, Bruce."

"You don't know the half of it." Bruce's eyes fluttered closed. He mouthed a silent curse, then laughed softly. "You have strong hands."

"Bruce, I can't stay. I still have two days in Copenhagen."

Bruce didn't open his eyes, just turned a corner of his mouth up. He touched the hollow of his throat with his fingertips. "Hmph," he said. "I'll call."