Before the Riot

Sorry this is actually on Saturday-- I'm afraid the holidays caught up with me and I was actually sort of sick.  But I DID write you fanfic--  and I thought I'd tell you that Vulnerable is available for FREE from DSPP today  and that Winter Ball is available for presale from DSP (at 35% off!).  So I hope you enjoy angst with your turkey-- I can't seem to write this fandom and keep it light!

***


Thanksgiving was usually pretty quiet--Bruce would do a couple of patrols and then go out to a charity benefit, catch a few hours of sleep and be out in time for Black Friday, when his day really began. Black Friday was actually sort of fun-- he could stop a Walmart riot with a single ninja throwing star and he liked doing that.

It made him feel badass, and it was really one of his few indulgences.

But that was in the past.

This present--the one in which a tight and mighty ass in a pair of blue tights blurred through his waterfall most nights--this confused him.

Today-- the day itself, not the charity benefit he planned to attend with a news anchor of astounding beauty and very little brains--he was apparently not allowed to go out on patrol.  In fact, he'd awakened that morning to find a little plastic slag pile on his dresser that used to be the key-card to the BatCave.

"What the--"

"No," Clark said sleepily from bed.

"How'm'I--"

"I'll take you."

"I can get there by myself, thank you."

"Yes, but it will take you hours, when, if you just behave, I'll take you there in seconds. C'mon, Bruce-- you're the one who's always complaining about time wasting. Now come back to bed."

Clark cocked his head from the melted slag to the sleepy man and then back.

He sniffed the air. "There's turkey cooking," he said in awe.

"Alfred cooks turkey for you." Clark propped himself up on one fist, the covers sliding from his bare chest.  Bruce glared at him longingly... he really did want to touch... touch... just slide his palm all over that smooth, hairless, be-muscled chest. But...Thanksgiving... self-imposed suffering... Walmart! 

"It's usually just a breast," Bruce explained, feeling like using the word "breast" in their bedroom was almost sacrilege. "He... I mean, I asked him not to... but..."

"It's small," Clark said softly. "We used to have my mom and dad, their nieces and nephews, aunts and uncles--hell, my high school friends. It was big."

"It's just us," Bruce said, shrugging. "Thanksgiving for three."  Dick. Tim. Barbara. Jason. Jason.  "Sometimes four or five," he said, voice choking. Okay, it hadn't always been small. There'd been a year or two there when it had been... family.

Clark knew all that. The Justice League had helped that search for Jason. Helped relocate Tim. Used Nightwing like the resource he was.

"Dick's coming," Clark said quietly, shocking Bruce from his grim contemplation of the melted slag. "So's Diana. And Barbara."

Bruce stared at him. "They hate each other."

Clark gave a toothy grin. "It'll be just like a regular family. Barbara's boyfriend. And Green Lantern--Hal."

"Why?"

"He's fighting with his girlfriend. And--"

"If you say Lois, I'm going to a soup kitchen."

Clark made a face. "No. I was going to say that nobody's going to be here for a couple of hours. And that Alfred canceled your date tonight."

"He what?"

"I told him to. Yell at me."

"But..."  Bruce flailed for a reason he should actually make that date. Besides appearances. And orphans. He liked the cause but--

"You made the date months ago. Before there was us." Clark nodded reasonably. "I mean, I know nobody can know..." His face fell, as though it had just occurred to him that nobody could ever know, outside the League and whoever he'd invited to this little shindig.  "But you don't have to go somewhere with someone you don't like. Not tonight. Not this time."

Bruce swallowed. "Walmart?" he asked cautiously.

Clark grinned wickedly. "If you get in bed, we can go together."

He bit his lip, because, oh God, the thought of Superman busting up a Walmart riot with his laser vision was both amusing and arousing.

But then...

"Company?" he asked, his voice strangled. "I mean..."

"Yes."  Clark's moment of wicked joy faded. "Not alone."

"How can you even say that--"

"Six years," Clark said, voice tight. "I watched as you and Dick tried to destroy each other, you and Barbara tried to heal each other--"

"Failed," Bruce muttered.

"Damn right you did. I watched..." His voice lowered gently. "I was there--I saw your face as you carried his body from the wreckage."

"Stop," Bruce whispered.

"And then it was my turn... I carried you out... and... you were just... God. You must have willed your heart to beat," Clark continued, inexorably, "because you looked worse than Jason did, and you were still... still..."

"Why are you--"

"Do you think I'm going to let you go?" Clark's voice cracked, and Bruce took the three steps to the bed and hovered, uncertainly. Because the Man of Steel's eyes were red-rimmed and shiny, and Bruce didn't know what to do with tears.

"I... I'm--"

"A neurotic bastard," Clark's half laugh did it--set the one tear free to spill down his cheek. "I'm well aware. You have more scars on the inside than the outside. I know that too. But..." He didn't meet Bruce's eyes, even when Bruce combed his fingers through that black, glossy hair. The strands were coarse and slick, like tensile steel, and Bruce wondered sometimes, if he could use them as a garrote or a tiny, undetectable blade. But weaponizing Superman's follicles was the last thing on his mind right now.

"But what?" he asked, when Clark's voice failed him.

Clark managed to look at him finally. "But I'm grateful for you. And I want a goddamned day to celebrate that. Not Valentines Day or Christmas-- I want a day of pure fucking gratitude, and this is it. This is the day when I get give someone a big hearty thank you that you, Bruce Wayne, have kept breathing in and out for the last six years and somedays... somedays..."

Bruce kissed him, salt tears and warm man, feverishly possessing his mouth. The kiss turned fierce, almost feral, as Bruce used hands and mouth to still the fall of tears, the intensity, the fear that spilled from the man in his arms. Clark Kent, small town boy, had planned a day for his lover--Bruce Wayne, lonely millionaire, wanted to give him everything he'd yearned for.

Heated kisses, bare skin, tangled sheets. The taste of Clark's cock on his tongue, against his palate, the spurt of spend down his throat.  When Bruce drove into that perfect, vice-like body, the man beneath him was mindless, wordless, head thrown back, abandoned to passion, to sensation, to sex.

Love hurt too much for this moment. Love was all of the things they could lose. Love was that moment, after Bruce had roared and climaxed, then collapsed, trembling against Bruce's side, naked and defenseless, vulnerable and weak.

That was love.

Bruce closed his eyes tightly, not wanting the fissure in his heart to open. He clenched Clark in his arms, praying he could be the strong one, praying he could keep his heart tucked in chest where it belonged.

"I'm thankful for you," Clark whispered, shaming him.

"I..." Bruce rested his forehead against a muscled shoulder. "I'm grateful," he whispered back. "I... I have no words..."

"Stay in bed," Clark said, and the air between them grew lighter. "We don't need words."

They got out in a couple of hours, and Alfred had, indeed, made a complete turkey, with fixings, and there were guests. Dick managed to stay civil, Barbara brought her new fiancee, Diana brought sarcasm and wine, and Hal brought all the other alcohol, including the hard stuff that got even aliens drunk.

And the next morning, there was, in fact, a rash of Walmart riots--but the news cameras couldn't catch anyone actually fighting or looting on camera. In fact, most of the riots seemed to be a wash of red laser lights and green power, with a fairy dust sprinkle of ninja stars shaped like bats.

Police Commissioner Barbara Gordon said it was possibly an invasion-- or a new super villain.

She very carefully hoarded all of the footage that involved three drunken super heroes tossing would-be rioters in the air like beach balls and bat-starring their wallets to the walls.

And she was very careful that only she alone saw the furtive, intimate brush of hands between the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight before they left the last crime scene... uh, riot scene... uh... Walmart imbroglio.

It was, as she told Dick Grayson that night as they left the mansion, the happiest they'd ever seen Bruce Wayne.

They were
grateful for that.