Smells
Gotham was a dark jewel beneath him, skyscrapers and streetlights glinting like silver fish. On most occasions, Kal was not eager to make the trip down to the bay where the stench of the polluted water and the bodies hidden in their murky depths made his stomach roll. That and the magic. This side of New York State had once been a cesspool of black magic; from voodoo to necromancy to crossroad dealings, the remnants of which lingered like a sour smoke on every rooftop and alleyway.
Of course Bruce didn't believe of any of that 'superstitious and unfound bullshit'. Magicians and witches were the things of fairytales, and Bruce being Bruce had long since discarded his childhood.
But it didn't change the fact that Gotham reeked. Or that on smoggy nights like this, with the air thick with spirits and exhaust fumes, Kal felt like he'd fall out of the sky any moment.
As he dipped, he could smell the undercooked meat of hot dog vendors and the leaking sewage pipes of the Narrows. In his guilt for being away on the Night of Fear, he'd offered his help to rebuild the island but his offer had been rebuked, gently by some, vehemently by others. Gotham took care of its own, no matter how bad it got.
Maybe it was the dark presence that ebbed like a heart under the concrete and steel, the very same presence that held Bruce in the inky shadows and rooftops of Gotham. The being, for he could find no other name for it, seemed to watch Kal whenever he stepped a proverbial foot in the city, be it in his shapeless coat or his flapping cape. It smiled at him with sharp teeth and licked at his heels and whispered in his ears in a language no man or alien could understand. It was the language of an old magic, a magic that sneered at him while swathing Gotham's Dark Knight in darkness.
It was in this darkness that Kal saw Bruce. The vigilante stood on the edge of Wayne Tower, eyes looking out on his city with an intensity that made something ugly twist in Kal's chest.
He'd heard about Joker's "Social Experiment" with the ferries. He'd seen the psychopath's scars on Bruce's face, chest and arms – and the empty coffin at Rachel Dawes's funeral and how hard Bruce had held the cane he'd needed after he'd sprained his ankle, not from a three-story fall but a Polo game. But how to tell such a man you wanted to hold him gently in arms that could crush every bone in his body? Or that you yearned to run your tongue along a bottom lip that jutted out in unyielding coldness at you presence?
Bruce didn't acknowledge him as he stepped lightly onto the roof. Kal caught a whiff of salty sweat on the man's upper lip and shivered despite himself. An odour he could endure (and secretly relished) was the very human scent of Bruce, the sweat on his face and back, running in rivulets under Kevlar and matted hair. Kal had spent many a lonely night imagining the taste of that sweat, sweat tinged with blood and smoke, the sweat of an arched, scarred back.
You're a sick man, Clark Kent. Lusting after a man who's lost the only person he's ever –.
"I need a shower," Bruce murmured more to himself than Kal. He looked directly at the blue-and-red clad man, hazel eyes bright under black contacts. "The smell must give you a headache." His voice was bemused under the rasp.
Kal smiled, shaking his head and looking down at the city so he wouldn't have to meet the eyes of its protector. "You have no idea."