mithen | Music of the Spheres: A World of Cut Glass

Title: A World of Cut Glass
Pairing: Clark/Bruce
Notes: "Music of the Spheres" is a series set in the combined universes of "Batman Begins" and "Superman Returns." Other stories and notes on the series here.
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Clark and Bruce visit Smallville and misbehave slightly.
Word Count: 1300

Bruce rinsed the last soap suds off a goblet and handed it to Clark to dry. Outside the Kent's kitchen window, the night sky was thick with stars, the deep velvet silence of the country wrapping around the farmhouse. On the windowsill a glass bird dipped its head up and down in perpetual motion, and a clock in the shape of a black cat ticked on the wall, its tail going back and forth.

The last few weeks had been particularly difficult. Superman and Batman had clashed three times--Clark and Bruce were fine, but for various reasons their superhero personae had been required to square off in public. A good fake row now and then was fun, but three so close together was exhausting to both of them, and Clark's relief when Bruce had suggested a weekend getaway to Smallville had been palpable.

Clark took the goblet and meticulously dried the last bits of water from it. Bruce watched him as he plied his strawberry-print dishcloth, face intent with concentration. He wasn't wearing his glasses--his one concession to being in private--but the drying wouldn't go one iota faster than if a normal human were doing it. Bruce knew this from hard experience. Clark flatly refused to use his powers when he was "being Clark"; he slipped up now and then, but always seemed deeply unhappy when he realized it. Usually he managed to keep his powers in check, no matter how tedious this made doing the dishes.

"Thank you, boys." Martha's voice came from the door to the living room. She was in a lavender nightgown, combing out her long silver hair. "I'll be going to bed now; feel free to stay up as late as you like."

Clark kissed her on the cheek and she smiled and rumpled his hair, then leaned over to give Bruce a one-armed hug before climbing the creaking stairs to the second floor. Bruce could hear her moving around upstairs, but besides that the house was still.

As Bruce handed Clark the last goblet and watched him apply himself diligently to it, he found himself amazed once again at the amount of self-control it would take to keep those abilities in check, to live at a human pace, with human strength. He had asked Clark once if it was difficult to try and keep his powers limited, and Clark had just smiled wryly. "I wish I could limit them more. I wish I could be hurt when I wasn't in uniform...on the job, as it were." He had smiled at the look on Bruce's face. "God, Bruce. What I wouldn't give to be sure that in private I could live a normal human life, that I could be the same as everyone else."

"You are not the same as everyone else," Bruce had said. "I wouldn't want you to be."

"I know," Clark had said. "And that makes it all possible, believe me."

Bruce watched Clark's hands on the thin glass of the goblet, so careful, so gentle. It must be like living in a world of cut-glass, he thought suddenly, surrounded by infinitely fragile things that you could crush to powder with a careless touch. He felt a shiver go through him, a frisson of tender lust, seeing those Kryptonian fingers turning the glass, polishing every drop of water away with loving care.

He moved to stand behind Clark, slipping his hands in his lover's pockets, sliding them along the heat of Clark's thighs. "Whoa, careful there," said Clark, still drying. "You might break something."

"As if," Bruce murmured, slipping his hands further inward, coaxing and stroking.

"Hey," said Clark a little faintly, but he didn't speed up his drying at all. He wiped the last bits of moisture from the glass and finally put it on the sideboard, then turned into Bruce's kiss hungrily. "Hey," he said again, slightly more forcefully, when Bruce began to unzip his fly. "Bruce, not--"

Bruce grabbed Clark's belt loops and pulled him into a stagger that ended with Clark's back against the olive green refrigerator festooned with magnets of every type and shape imaginable. There was a clatter as the "I (Heart) Metropolis" magnet and a few fruit-shaped magnets fell to the floor. "Shh," Bruce said into Clark's ear, slipping a hand through the fly, curling around heated flesh.

"Nng," said Clark indistinctly. He was already hard enough that it was difficult to maneuver his erection out of his fly, but Bruce managed. As he went down on his knees a few more magnets rained down next to him: a rock with googly eyes glued on, one of the Gotham skyline, a banana and what looked like a papaya. He ran his tongue along the skin he could reach and looked up to see Clark muffling any sound he might make with the strawberry-print dishcloth, his eyes closed. Bruce smiled to himself and went back to work, licking and swallowing at invulnerable skin soft as satin, savoring the taste of Clark's arousal, the small sounds that escaped his lover.

Hands that could rip a skyscraper apart cupped his head with infinite delicacy, legs that could shatter concrete with their impact trembled with growing need. Nothing--no anguish, no pleasure--could make this man lose the exquisite control that defined his life, and Bruce felt familiar lust and wonder grip him at the power leashed in his lover, the raw strength reigned in and turned to tenderness.

Clark shuddered and made a small, broken sound, a gasp of something like surprise, and magnets scattered all about the kitchen like brightly-colored hail. Bruce took his time swallowing until Clark's knees started to give way and he slid down the refrigerator as if his bones had liquefied. "Mm," he said, blinking at Bruce.

"Mm," agreed Bruce, licking his lips.

Slowly, Clark's eyes focused beyond Bruce's face, and his face filled with chagrin. "The magnets," he whispered.

"We'll pick them up," Bruce whispered back, reaching out to zip up Clark's fly.

Clark nodded and got to his hands and knees, crawling on the linoleum floor, searching. Bruce joined him, gathering up wooden cows, felt hearts, glittery unicorns and plastic fruit. He glanced over at Clark--meticulously crawling, no faster than a normal human--and suddenly the image of Superman and Batman, the world's mightiest being and the world's greatest detective, crawling around on the floor looking for refrigerator magnets, struck Bruce as rather amusingly absurd. Laughter bubbled in the back of his throat, but he fought it down and kept looking for magnets.

"I can't find the cherry," Clark hissed.

"What?" Bruce managed, clamping down on giggles.

"The cherry. I've got all the other fruit, but I've lost the cherry," Clark whispered as though this were incredibly obvious. "I'm not going to lose Ma's cherry!"

It was the final straw. Bruce lay down on the black and white linoleum squares and laughed; after a surprised moment Clark joined in, and then they couldn't seem to stop. The spasms would finally die down and then one of them would say "But we still haven't found Ma's--" and then they'd be off again, rolling on the floor, unable to stop.

"Oh, here it is," said Clark, reaching under the oven and extracting the last magnet, still giggling helplessly.

Bruce propped himself up on the kitchen floor by his elbows. His sides hurt; these were not exactly muscles that martial arts training kept in shape. He shook his head. "Vacations with you are never dull," he said.

"Now, there's no need to get sarcastic," Clark said, putting the cherry onto the refrigerator.

Bruce looked at his lover, his hair tousled, cheeks red from laughing: a man of steel in a world of cut glass and crystal.

"I wouldn't dream of it," he replied.

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Sweet and cute and full of giggles!

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