Sorry.

-Cro

One washed Batmobile, one simmering pot of soup, two work calls as Bruce Wayne's secretary and one prank call to a Barry Allen ("Is your refrigerator running?" "It is now!") later, Clark found himself watching what must be a rare sight even to Alfred: Bruce Wayne, arms spread out messily, mouth wide open, snoring.

With a quiet chuckle, Clark set the steaming cup of tea next to the plate of untouched cookies and sat in the chair beside him.

"I don't think you realize how easy it would be to take a video of you right now," he whispered. "The playboy extraordinaire and fearsome tycoon, Bruce Wayne, snoring like a little kid. I am a journalist, you know. This kind of stuff would go for a thousand dollars a frame at the trash mags." Then he waited to make sure Bruce wasn't just pretending to be asleep.

When Bruce barely stirred, Clark smiled and brushed the formidable Batman's soft hair back and kissed him lightly on the forehead.

"Sweet dreams, Bruce," he purred.

Clark didn't even realize he'd fallen asleep until the cramp in his leg woke him up. He'd slept for about three hours, by the digital clock on the nightstand, kneeling by Bruce's bedside and laying his head upon his arms. So he stretched out his legs and stood up to see if Bruce had kicked a pillow or the quilt off the bed so he could tuck him back in.

But to his surprise, Bruce was sitting up in bed, sipping the now cold peppermint tea.

"Let me heat that up for you."

"It's okay, I don't need it-" But Clark heated it with his eyes up to a pleasant temperature, minding Bruce's bare hands on the cup.

"…thanks," Bruce muttered.

"My pleasure!" Clark grinned. "Can I get you anything? Anything at all?"

Bruce bit his lip and his face flushed, but he remained silent.

"No, no," Clark flustered. "No, don't be shy! Anything you want, I promise! It's just between you and me. What do you want, a book? A dumb book? Another blanket? Do you need to go to the bathroom?"

Bruce huffed through his nose and scowled at the floor. "Maybe…one thing."

"Name it," Clark grinned.

Bruce motioned for Clark to come closer and whispered in his ear.

"Don't laugh." His hot breath tickled Clark's neck.

"O…okay," Clark answered. But before he could register his concern, Bruce's strong, unyielding hands were cupping his face and slowly, as if waiting for Clark to stop him, pulling their lips together.

But Clark didn't stop him. Every single muscle in his body was putty under his bulletproof skin, but not in the sort of sucking, vacuous muscle weakness that comes with kryptonite poisoning, to which he was no doubt more and more exposed the longer Batman's wet breath filled him with warmth and trace amounts of the green poison. But for the moment, Clark could, theoretically, push off the mortal man with his, albeit impressive, mortal strength. But he didn't. Clark would wonder, someday, just why he didn't stop his wounded partner's firm, lightly chapped lips from caressing his own. He'd sit back and think about that moment and wonder why he'd opened his mouth to let Bruce's wet, minty, hot, hot, too hot tongue explore his own. And he'd wonder just how, considering, he had managed to do what he did next.

"Bruce," Clark said, pulling away remorsefully. "We can't."

"Oh," Bruce said, immediately backing away to sit straight against his headboard, flushing a brilliant pink.

"It's not that I don't want to!" Clark clamored.

"Right."

"I do, Bruce, I do want to."

"Yeah."

"But it's just not right, Bruce. I can't take advantage of you like this!"

"Su-what?"

"I mean," Clark despaired, "I gave you pain medication four hours ago! It's still affecting your judgment!"

"The…are you talking about the aspirin?"

Clark grabbed Bruce's hand in both of his own. "I'm so sorry, Bruce!" he cried. "I'll do anything to make it up to you, please forgive me!"

"What?"

"Anything in the world! No, the universe! I promise!"

Bruce's lip twitched, but his expression didn't change. "Anything?"

"Anything at all!"

"Fine," Bruce said, pulling Clark's sloppily tied necktie to himself, watching Clark's face for a shade of revulsion. "Kiss me."

"What?" Only surprise, and barely concealed longing.

"Aspirin doesn't affect judgment, you dope," Bruce explained. "It's an anti-inflammatory. It treats pain by reducing inflammation, not by messing with the brain, and it barely reduce pain for broken bones. I don't even keep opioids in the house anymore, are you really that ignorant about human medicine?"

"You've been in pain this whole time?" Clark blurted in alarm, but Bruce only scoffed.

"You don't think these are the first ribs I've cracked, do you? I'm the Batman, Clark. I've broken more bones than a retired taxidermist. It barely even hurts anymore."

Clark's hands trembled as he fought back several rude instincts. "So…I didn't drug you and take advantage of you?"

Bruce twirled the steel grey tie coyly between his fingers. "If anything, I took advantage of you. I shouldn't have used your unquestioning compliance to make my move. Forgive me." It wasn't a question, just a statement of fact, and one happily accepted as Clark kissed Bruce so hard, it took his breath away.

A gentle moan escaped Clark's throat and Bruce responded by pulling him onto the bed by his necktie, pushing him onto his back and straddling his hips- all, Clark noted, without detaching a single atom from his mouth. He tried desperately to ignore certain parts of Bruce's body that were demanding attention, but when Bruce broke away with a wet "pop" and ground down against Clark's, he had to slap a hand to his mouth to stifle his cry.

"You're hurt," he gasped. "We can't- I can't… you're hurt!"

"And whose fault is that?" Bruce growled, grinding harder against Clark's groin, eliciting a long, embarrassing moan not even Superman could catch in time. "I told you, didn't I? I told you I could develop a vaccination for you. I told you I could dedicate a legion of chemists to fixing your kryptonite allergy."

An image of Superman smashing Batman against a wall and kissing him too hard to draw breath played through Clark's mind. Of him not being able to stop if the world depended on him. Of an all-powerful beast, a god among men, hurting Bruce Wayne, not stopping in time, not even trying to. He shuddered.

"I need a weakness. You know that better than anyone."

"I'll find another," Bruce hummed, licking Clark's neck. "One that only I know. One that that bastard could never find. I'll find it and I'll hold it over your head if you ever tried to run away."

Dammit. The quilt.

As if reading his mind, Bruce sat up, grabbed Clark's mother's quilt and folded it carefully and deliberately before tossing it onto the chair beside the bed.

And in that moment, Clark could have married that man.

"I'm going to find another weakness," Bruce promised. "And when I do, you'll never have to fear the likes of Lex Luthor again. Never."

Clark responded by running his hands up and down Bruce's thighs, up to his tight, muscled butt. "And in the meantime," Clark rumbled, "Promise me you won't jump in front of anything that can kill you, not for me or anyone else."

"No," Gotham's Dark Knight crooned, pushing into Clark's hands and pressing his forehead into the strong, jumping thuds right below that chiseled collarbone. "If I think that you're in danger of so much as a paper cut, I will stop it however I can, no matter what. You're mine," he hissed possessively. "And nothing, nothing is going to take you from me."

But there was nothing in that shameless statement to be afraid of, because when Batman claims you, though the world may be against you, you can't help but trust that he will protect you. No matter the danger, Batman will come for you and save you, because you're his and he can. He'd claimed Gotham, and he bloodied his fists on her foes every night to protect her.

Clark understood and he wondered if all the times they'd fought each other, razing whole city blocks, and fought together, bringing any foe that dared to his knees, and argued about how to apprehend Zod, and stayed all night in the Watch Tower without speaking a single word, and catching each other when they fall, if every moment had really been leading up to this: to Clark Kent cupping Bruce Wayne's taut haunches while the Blight of Gotham's Underbelly ground his groin against and around Superman's in long, languid strokes and quick little circles, while Clark groaned and Bruce panted into his chin, now biting, now licking, now leaning forward and kissing his alien lips until Clark saw stars. He wondered now if all of that was just the process of falling in love, stretched over years and worlds, and he tried to spell it with his fingers.

Bruce pulled away abruptly, letting Clark's spittle linger on his lips. "Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and fell in love with you right now?"

Clark's heart staggered. "Yes," he said too eagerly. "Loads and loads of time. Ages that can be better spent doing lots and lots of other things! Go for it. Fall in love with me, Bruce!"

"Hmm," Bruce hummed in pleasure. "Nah." He rolled off the dumbstruck alien into his cocoon of pillows.

"What?" Clark felt as though he'd jumped up the stairs only to find that the floor was missing. His mind careened. "I thought…"

"You thought I was that easily won?" Bruce smirked. "You didn't even try to woo me."

"Woo…?"

"I'm an old fashioned guy, Clark. I need flowers and chocolates and goodnight kisses."

Ma Kent would smack Clark on the back of the head if she'd heard him jump so suddenly into the "L" word, and remembering himself, he jumped off the bed.

"R-right!" he blushed violently and straightened the mess of his tie. "Right. S…sorry."

If he had dared to look at Bruce Wayne's face at that moment, he would have seen the triumphant smirk that would let him off the hook. But he didn't, and he wasn't.

"Is there… is there anything else I can get you, Mr Wayne?"

Taken a little aback, Bruce straightened himself on his pillows. "Not just now, Mr Kent. The guest bedroom is the next door down. Please feel free."

The knot in his stomach vanished at that. He could stay! "If you need anything," he grinned, "don't hesitate to call me. I'm all yours."

Bruce chewed on the thought before he said it: "And if I want anything?"

"As you wish."

Bruce would have grinned if he wasn't playing hard to get. "That will be all, Mr Kent. Goodnight."

Clark Kent smiled and, to Bruce's shock, bent over the bed to kiss him, virginally, on the mouth.

"Goodnight, Mr Wayne," he whispered on Bruce's lips. "Roses or lilies?"

"Nice try, Mr Kent. I'm not making it that easy for you."

"Then I look forward to you fighting me at every turn, now that I've seen what's on the other side. Get ready to falling in love with me, Bruce."

And with that, Clark left the room, because if he had to be subjected to that flushed, indignant, hungry stare for even one moment more, he felt that he might give into his urges and cover that man's entire, beautiful body with rude, adoring, angry kisses, and he wanted to do it right.

But his restraint didn't stop him from hearing the bewildered mutter as he closed the door: "So do I, Clark. So do I."

Right. The quilt. The Superman backstory is as varied as, say, Marvel's Spider-Man (who is superior to every single character in the DC universe, fight me,) so I picked and chose which parts of which iterations to keep. In half of the Kent storylines, his Pa, Jonathan Kent, is dead. In half of them, Kara Zor-El doesn't hang out with Ma and Pa Kent (and in the Golden Age, which I tend to prefer usually, her whole storyline was about her unrequited love for her cousin, which, I mean, come on, DC.) So this is the multiverse where Jonathan is dead, Ma Kent is Kara's surrogate aunt/grandma, and Superboy ran away from home when he was younger because of reasons I might write about in a prequel to this fic but, suffice it to say, are very much in character for Mr Martyr Complex.

Also, both Bruce's and Clark's moms are named Martha. What's up, DC, time to get some new names.