Thanks so much to everyone who voted, I really wasn't expecting to have that kind of response!! This was actually wonderful motivation and I made a lot of progrees on the initial frontrunner (which didn't end up winning whoops). But as promised, here's a snippet of the winner under the read more, with more to come later!
Bruce repeatedly (and comedically) failing to seduce his boyfriend Clark
Their regular diner was comfortably cozy, the scent of hot coffee and baking pie crust a welcome buffer against the cool October air. Despite that, and despite the steaming mug warming Bruce’s fingers, the room seemed miraculously warmer and brighter when Clark bundled in, like he’d brought the forgotten summer sunshine with him.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said with an apologetic smile. He looked gently windswept, hair ruffled and scarf unraveling around his neck. He slipped it off as he slid into the booth. “You weren’t waiting too long, were you?”
“An eternity. But since you apologized, I’ll let it slide,” Bruce said lightly, pushing his plate forwards. “Here, the pie’s for you.”
Clark’s eyes widened slightly. Then he smiled, wide and pleased, eyes crinkling at the corners. “Thanks, Bruce, you didn’t have to. You know I don’t expect you to pay for me.”
“I know. Don’t worry about it, just give me my one bite and we’ll be even.”
The smile softened. Bruce’s pulse fluttered, which seemed disproportionate considering Clark was just smiling at him as he did nearly every time they met. But then again, Clark was objectively gorgeous when he smiled (which was often) and more so when he smiled at Bruce (which, miraculously, was not infrequent either), so perhaps Bruce could be forgiven for his reaction.
He hid his answering smile behind his mug of coffee. They might be dating, but still. He didn’t want to seem too sappy.
“I got caught up with Perry,” Clark was saying with a gentle grimace, unbuttoning his coat one-handed and fixing his glasses with the other. “Apparently the article I turned in this morning wasn’t my best work, so he had to pull me into his office for fifteen minutes to explain to me exactly what he didn’t like about it.”
“Hm. And was it a fair critique?”
“Well, uh…yeah, maybe? It’s been a busy week, as you know. You were there for most of it.” Finally settled in, he scooped up a piece of pie on a fork and held it out to Bruce with a smile. “Here’s your due, Mr. Wayne.”
Bruce grinned. On a whim, he wrapped his fingers around Clark’s hand instead of the fork and pulled it to his mouth. It was good – perhaps a little sickly for Bruce’s taste, but a single bite on its own was pleasantly sweet and creamy with a perfectly flaky crust.
He let out a soft, pleased hum and let Clark pull back. “Thank you, Mr. Kent,” he murmured.
Clark was faintly pink. He cleared his throat. “Yeah. S’good pie here, huh?”
Bruce suppressed a smirk. Clark was, for the most part, relatively unflappable; being a near-invulnerable alien who took regular trips to other planets meant there wasn’t much he hadn’t seen before. And yet the kind of flirting that even high school students would think tame still managed to get his color up.
It was honestly pretty fun. Sweet, even.
It very nearly made up for the fact that they hadn’t fucked yet.
Clark dug into his pie. Bruce tried not to stare as his tongue darted out to lick a stray crumb from his top lip. He finally succeeded after several long seconds, with the aid of a firm pinch to his thigh.
He was getting ahead of himself, as usual. The lack of fucking was honestly the least of his issues, since they hadn’t so much as kissed yet. Maybe he shouldn’t be surprised: he’d known already that Clark was the type to take things like this slow – unlike Bruce, who usually saw going on an actual date before having sex as a luxury rather than a necessity. The last thing he wanted was to push too soon and ruin things. So with that in mind, he’d decided early on that it was safest to let Clark make the first move.
After three months, though, he’d expected there to be some progress. And by now, he was getting a little antsy. While Batman could crouch for hours in a rain-drenched alcove waiting for the right moment to strike, Bruce himself wasn’t used to exercising that kind of patience – at least, not in this arena. Usually, things happened a lot faster with the people he’d dated. A whole lot faster.
But it wasn’t a problem, per se. Bruce wasn’t a patient man by nature, but he’d trained himself to be, and he’d waited far longer for less. He was more than capable of playing the long game.
…It wasn’t a problem, Bruce reminded himself as he watched Clark’s lips wrap around his middle finger to suck a dollop of whipped cream from the tip. But all the same, if Clark didn’t progress things soon, Bruce was pretty sure he was going to snap.
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