Work Text:
The credits were still wandering up the television like snow that refused to land, the empty bowls of takeout leaning together on the coffee table as if they too were drowsy and pleased, and the living room was a warm hush stitched together by lamplight and the soft winter murmur at the windows; she was across his lap in that leopard silk dress he remembered far too well—the one with the mischievous strap that gravity kept gambling with—and Clark was in jeans and a white T-shirt that had clearly been designed by a committee dedicated to testing his willpower, and they were kissing like they would be graded on sincerity instead of form, slow at first.
Then progressively less civilized as mouths learned shortcuts and hands got brave, as if all the patient weeks of almosts and careful stops had been laying track and tonight the train had finally decided to run at full speed. She had his hair in one hand and a fistful of T-shirt at the shoulder with the other, little tugging, grateful things that made him hum into her mouth; he had her waist cupped like he was measuring a miracle and his thumb stroking the silk where it skimmed her ribs, his heart obligingly running at a speed he would have denied under oath.
He broke to her neck because he is only human where she is concerned and because she tipped her head in wordless invitation and he pressed his mouth to the place where her pulse sprinted, kissed there until it steadied the way it always did when she decided she was safe, then kept going, following the line of tendon and the particular geography of her shoulder, warm kisses and a few that were not entirely polite, all of it felt in the intent rather than the pressure because he was a gentleman with the strength of a landslide and the control of a prayer.
She made a sound that was half laugh and half command when he caught the edge of that errant strap with his teeth and set it free like a magician in on the joke. She shifted on his lap, straddling him and her hips found a rhythm that was either invented on the spot or taught to her by a kind witch at birth and he pulled back, a wrecked chuckle in his chest that couldn’t possibly pass for restraint.
“If you keep moving like that,” he whispered against her collarbone, voice low and frayed and fond, “I am not going to be the man who keeps his restraint.”
She looked at him with those warm brown eyes gone dark and certain and so tender it undid him at the root.
“Then don’t,” she said, simple as a door opening, and slid down the other strap, the silk folding away, her torso bared to lamplight and the reverent air and the man who had just lost the argument with his own heart.
He didn’t grab. He didn’t pounce. He looked—slowly, thoroughly, the way you read a letter from someone you love, twice—and then he reached, a hand that had pushed back falling buildings hovering like a blessing, and touched the first small pale mark at the outer curve of her rib, the one he’d noticed once when she’d changed in a hurry and pretended not to see; he pressed his thumb there as if to return it its original name, then bent and kissed it, sealing the act with patience.
“You’re beautiful,” he said steadily, not performative, not negotiable. “Everywhere.”
He moved to the next mark—an old line high on her hip like a crescent, a speck at her side he’d mistaken for a freckle, a faint slash near the sternum that had clearly been an argument with a blade—and he kissed each one as if rewriting their endings, and when he closed his mouth around her left nipple it was with a gentleness that turned indecent in a heartbeat, the warm pull of his tongue and the soft drag of his lower lip enough to make her arch and gasp and hold his head with both hands like she expected a gust of wind to steal him.
He worshiped and then he smiled against her, a small wicked curve and gave the right breast the same careful ruin, suckling until her back bowed like a drawn bow, until his name began to leave her mouth in syllables that sounded like the beginning of a storm.
Then he picked her up because he could and because she lit with delight when he did, the sudden whoosh of height making her giggle into his shoulder, arms slung around his neck like someone who trusted physics mostly because she trusted him; he carried her down the short hallway while she pressed kisses to the hinge of his jaw and the corner of his smile, and set her on the bed like a rare book, like a dangerous treasure, like a decision he would make again and again.
He stripped the dress the rest of the way with a care that mocked the word feral even as his breath betrayed him, and her panties went with it, fabric sliding off her thighs in a whisper she felt in her teeth.
She lay there unabashed and warm, legs parted, the lamplight skimming the soft sheen at her core and it would have been easy to tumble. God, it would have been easy but he knelt instead, kissed the inside of her left knee and then the right, slow, stubbornly sweet, then the curved ladder of her inner thigh until she was making impatient, amazed sounds and reaching for him with hands that had subdued worse men than he would ever be.
“I want,” he said, and the wanting in his voice made her shiver, “to kiss every part of you.”
“Then do it,” she said, rough at the edges now, a woman who had stopped pretending she wasn’t a little wild.
He did. He kissed the skin just below her hipbone where a laugh sometimes lived; he kissed the little soft place where thigh becomes groin; he kissed along the right angle of a scar that had clearly been stitched by someone who loved her only functionally and he kissed it better because that is a thing that can be done.
When his mouth finally reached the heat of her, he breathed out once as if the room had turned to summer, then pressed an open kiss to the slick, swollen seam of her, the tip of his tongue sampling with reverence before he grew greedy and the noise she made then was not a word he recognized but he decided to memorize it anyway; he licked and lapped, slow at first because he liked learning, then with purpose when he found the exact way her body wanted to be sung, flattening his tongue and then pointing it, circling her clit with a patience that bordered on ruthless until her hips were rolling up to meet him like tide, his hands holding her thighs wide not because he needed to keep her still but because he wanted to hold her open for pleasure like a man showing the world where joy lives.
When she started to gasp Clark—Clark—Clark like she’d remembered something important and was afraid she’d forget, he slid two fingers inside and felt her take him like a glove, wet and hot and impossibly tight and he curled them toward the soft swell he knew would make her break and when she did, it was with a sharp cry and then a long, astonished exhale, that wild clench around his fingers shaking up his arm and into his chest.
She flooded his hand and his mouth and he moaned against her, grateful, hungry, drinking like a man promised a river after a desert.
He climbed up the bed to kiss her through the aftershocks, mouth slick with her and entirely unashamed and she kissed herself off his tongue with a little noise of satisfaction that should be illegal.
After a while her breath smoothed out into a thread again and the smile on her mouth got smug and generous, which is how he knew the tide had turned.
“My turn,” she said and in a movement that was a little more Gotham than Metropolis she rolled him onto his back and sat up, hair messy, eyes bright, predator benevolence written in every line.
He reached for his shirt and she peeled it off in one motion that had him laughing and then not laughing. When her hand slid down the front of his jeans he actually forgot to breathe because even a Kryptonian is a man when the woman he loves wraps her fingers around him with a sound of pleased discovery.
She was not shy; she was studied and a little reckless and when she licked her palm, eyes on his and returned to stroke him slicker and tighter he groaned, helpless, hips jerking into her fist with a gratitude that had nothing to do with control and everything to do with trust.
He reached to stop her only because he needed to see her face when he said it. “Baby,” he managed, wrecked and trying to be noble, “if you keep—”
She arched a single eyebrow and then took him into her mouth, slow, indecent, gorgeous, lips sealing around the head and then down, farther than he thought physics would allow, throat opening on a swallow that almost undid his theology.
He made a sound he would deny to the Justice League and slid one hand into her hair not to force but to anchor, the other braced hard in the sheets because he would never take from her what she did not offer but what she offered now was annihilation.
She set a rhythm that was frank and filthy and achingly tender, tonguing the underside, sucking as she rose, hollowing her cheeks at the top like she intended to ruin him for anyone but her.
She broke off once to take him in her hand and lick him from base to tip like an oath, then shifted lower and licked and sucked his balls with the kind of attention that made him gasp her name like a benediction and swear softly into the ceiling because even good men have limits.
He felt the edge arrive hot, urgent, merciful and was about to stammer something gallant when she pulled off with a soft, wicked pop and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, eyes glinting as his jaw went slack in honest, betrayed astonishment.
“Baby—” he said, a warning and a prayer.
“Shh,” she said and in one smooth motion swung a leg over him and sank down, taking him in to the hilt like a woman who had decided to write her own scripture, hot and tight and breathtaking, both of them moaning, low and ragged, as their bodies remembered each other from a future they hadn’t had yet.
He set his hands on her hips because he wanted to hold something when he memorized joy; she braced her palms on his chest and began to move, slow at first, finding the angle that made a starlight white out behind her eyelids and his breath leave his lungs in a rush, then faster, rolling, a litany of circles and sharp little drops, the wet sound of them filling the room and making his skin too tight.
“You feel—” he said, because grammar had left the building.
“I know,” she said, feral and smiling and rode him like a horizon, head tipped back, throat long, hair a fall down her spine and he watched her because he wanted to be a witness to his own miracle; when her rhythm stuttered he sat up, arm snug around her back, mouth finding her breast again and she clenched around him hard enough to make him curse, that perfect, possessive squeeze that sent electricity raining down his spine.
“Clark—baby,” she pleaded into his ear, honest, undone. “With me?”
“Yes,” he said, because he was built for yes and he held her as he thrust up into her, meeting her pace, matching her intent.
When she came she dug her nails into his shoulders and bit his lower lip gently and he broke with her, the two of them shuddering hard enough to make the bedframe announce itself with a squeak that would have been mortifying if they hadn’t both immediately started laughing into each other’s mouths, kissing through the laughter until it melted into small sounds of relief and amazement.
She stayed draped over him, still joined, soft and dizzy, and he stroked slow circles at the base of her spine like a man calming his own heartbeat; the room smelled like salt and skin and the faint apple of her shampoo and for a long minute time courtesied and stepped outside.
When she finally shifted, she felt the unmistakable press of him growing again, quick, eager, earnest as a second question, she lifted her face with a grin that would have started a war in a less civilized age.
“Already?”
He gave her a helpless, delighted look. “I’m… healthy,” he said, as if apologizing for Kansas.
“Prove it,” she murmured, rolling to her back and tugging him over her with both hands.
This time he took the lead because chivalry can coexist perfectly with focus; he slid out and back in with a tenderness that bordered on ruin, kissed her mouth until the world narrowed to a single syllable, hooked one of her thighs over his shoulder to open her wider and found that deep angle that had her cursing beautifully, and moved with a control that would have been scientific if it weren’t so fervent.
He was not gentle with the truth of what he wanted and she was not shy about demanding more.
They gave and took until words didn’t mean anything except yes, until she was shaking and saying his name like a home and he was holding on and promising everything he could and several things he couldn’t, until she came with a sob and he followed her with a groan that sounded like surrender and victory at once.
They dozed and woke and found each other again because curiosity is a virtue and joy is a discipline; later she was sprawled across his chest, boneless and smug and he was kissing the damp line of her hairline and laughing softly when the bed frame squeaked again like a tattletale.
At last the room settled into that particular afterglow where the air feels heavier because it’s carrying secrets for you; she was sore in the way that makes a body feel inhabited rather than used, that deep thrum in her thighs and that delicious oversensitivity at the center of her that turned his idle thumb into poetry, and he was flushed and wrecked and stupidly handsome, hair a wild map, mouth pinked and satisfied, eyes the color of ocean when it’s finally decided not to drown anyone today.
She kissed his chin because gratitude requires an outlet.
“Hi,” she whispered, like they were meeting again on the other side of a long journey.
“Hi,” he echoed, pressing his mouth to the pulse at her wrist, then pulling back enough to look at her properly, that careful, steady scan he does when he’s cataloging injuries, only this time he was checking for joy. “You okay?”
She smiled the sort of smile you don’t give the world because you don’t trust it not to spend it foolishly. “Sore,” she said honestly, eyes still bright. “And… perfect.”
He exhaled like relief had a sound. “Good,” he said, and then, because this is who he is, “Water? Snack? Ten thousand apologies to your bedframe?”
“Water,” she said, nuzzling into his shoulder, “and never apologize for what we did to that bedframe. It had it coming.” She paused, then added wickedly, “Round… later?”
He laughed, kissed her hair, gathering her closer, one big hand spread over the curve of her hip as if reminding fate where to aim its kindness.
“Later,” he promised and for the first time in a long time, later didn’t feel like a gamble. It felt like a plan.