Title: Before a Live Studio Audience (Transcripts from an Unaired Episode of "U.S. Cops"), Chapter 11

Author: Ren Makoto (harmless_one, Mostly Harmless III)

Pairings/Characters: Clark/Bruce, Clark/Matches, Clark/Hemingford. Gordon, Bullock, Kara, Lois, Jimmy, Dick

Warnings: Adult themes, adult content, strong language. Not beta-read and my spelling and grammar are worse than ever! Woot! The semi-colon has never been so abused.

Chapter Summary: Bruce Wayne really likes dark private places where he can accost Clark Kent. To ask him for his help, of course. He just loooooves asking a wet, shirtless, steamy Clark for help in dark, cramped spaces…It's all perfectly innocent. Honestly. Ahem. Right.

Story Summary:

Clark Kent has been sent to Gotham to follow Matches Malone for a reality television show. But he's getting wrapped up in a murder case that seems connected to Gotham's popular new mayor and a deadly drug called Live. Solving this case means Clark has to deal with three mysterious men who are all maybe in cahoots. Throw in the fact that Clark is developing strange abilities—coinciding with the unexplained disappearance of Superman—and things get really complicated.

In the last chapter, Clark asked his cousin Kara for help in tracking down Matches Malone and Hemingford Gray's license plate numbers. He has a hunch that the information on the cars will give him much needed answers. He also met Officer Dick Grayson, Bruce's son, and was surprised to learn that Dick is working under cover in the drug cartel.

Our story continues…

Monday, Day 16

Clark's head was still filled with Kara and Dr. Crane and Dick Grayson by the time he made it back to his new home away from home: Gotham's worst motel.

Clark struggled with the door for a moment, and the reward for his effort was his stale and smoky smelling room. He flipped on the little light nearest the door; it barely lit the space; he knew the motel staff put dim bulbs in deliberately because darkness could do more for the stains and grime of the room than the lazy cleaning crew. So, yes: his glum and beaten down motel room utterly failed to make him feel any better about being back in Gotham.

Despite an early morning shower, he felt suddenly grimy. One day back in Gotham was enough to make anybody feel grimy, Clark reasoned. He stood in the center of the empty room for a minute, just resigning himself to being there. Then with a sigh, he fished out a clean pair of boxers and some sweatpants and then made a beeline for the bathroom. He wanted another shower, and then he wanted to sleep straight through the night—no weird dreams about flying, no nightmares riddled with the color green.

He probably killed the motel's water heater with how long he stood under it, cranked all the way to HOT, trying to wash away all the little things—and big things—that were bothering him. There was corrupt Matches Malone who somehow expected Clark to trust him when every fiber of his being told him to have the man arrested by the FBI; there were dead girls turning up in the river and questionably ethical mayors with agendas Clark couldn't fathom; there was Dick Grayson undercover in a drug ring that maybe connected all the dots; then there was Hemingford Gray doing his best to romance Clark AND play red herring; not to mention that tame, ultimately pleasant kiss they had shared; and then there was Bruce Wayne who made Clark feel like he was drowning in a pretty nice way.

Clark watched the water swirl around the drain and off to wherever water went and imagined that it was taking his worries with it. It didn't work, but it was a nice idea.

Red and steaming, he grabbed a towel and dried off enough to throw on his boxers. He looked around confusedly for a minute before realizing that the sweatpants he'd thought he'd had with him weren't in the bathroom at all. He must have dropped them somewhere on the way to the bathroom. Rubbing at his hair with the towel, he walked back into the main room in a haze of steam. He squinted into the dim room and decided that he really was out of it: he'd dropped his sweatpants smack in the middle of the floor and hadn't even noticed. He chuckled softly at himself, strolled to the pants and stooped to pick them up.

"You were missing for two days," a voice said from the shadows.

Clark's heart leapt to his throat. He squeaked and stumbled, dropped his towel, and never managed to grab his pants. Barely regaining his balance, he stared into the dark, seeking out the voice.

After a moment, a familiar shape all in black came into focus before his eyes.

Clark let out a ragged breath and clutched at his heart.

After thinking about it for a moment, Clark decided he was a fool to have been so surprised: of course Bruce Wayne could get into his motel room. The guy could probably break into Fort Knox with an ink pen.

"Detective," Clark said, still a little winded, "we've got to work out a system or something. Is a phone call too much to ask?"

There was a silent pause during which Clark suddenly became aware of the fact that he was standing in plain sight in nothing but a pair of boxers that were starting to feel pretty flimsy. He let his hand fall from over his chest where his heart was steadying at last and then didn't know what to do with his hands at all. As a last resort, he fidgeted; he ran his hands through his hair, and then let them fall again. He crossed his arms, and then uncrossed them; wiped water from his forehead and then ruffled his hair; crossed his arms again and then gave up, letting them hang at his sides.

He couldn't see Bruce's eyes, but he knew they were watching him and it made his skin feel tight and tingly. Clark imagined that they were having a minor contest of wills and that he was losing.

"Where were you?" Bruce asked finally, as if Clark hadn't spoken at all.

Clark frowned. It was a stupid thing to be upset about, he guessed, but he didn't like the idea that Bruce expected Clark to explain himself and where he went and why. Especially not when Bruce Wayne himself was this mysterious specter that came and went at will without so much as a by-your-leave.

Clark refused to answer at all. Instead, he stooped and retrieved his towel and sweatpants. He defiantly strode back to the steamy bathroom, deposited the towel on the towel bar and took a moment to slip into his sweatpants. He wiped a hand across the foggy mirror, looked at himself and felt his cheeks heat at the wet, half-naked picture he presented. The flush didn't make a difference because he was already red and starting to sweat a little from the hot shower. His eyes were overly bright and his mouth too red. He looked, well…

If Bruce had been staring at him, Clark couldn't blame him: he looked a bit of an overheated mess. It was a lost cause, but he swept his damp hair back off his face. Then he took a fortifying breath and made to move back to the main room only to find himself face to face with Bruce Wayne. He had moved away from his dark little corner and was now standing just out of reach of the light directly before the bathroom door. And he was, Clark noticed dumbly, indeed, staring at him. Had he watched Clark slip into his sweatpants; stare at himself in the mirror and run his fingers through his hair?

Clark took another step forward, letting his eyes adjust again to the darker space.

With the light from the bathroom, it was pretty clear to see the direction Bruce's eyes took down Clark's naked torso and then down further. Clark swallowed and those dark blue eyes shot to his throat and then finally, finally back up to his face.

"Um," Clark said stupidly.

Bruce wasn't crowding him or anything, he was a good six feet away, but Clark's body acted like the man was much closer. He went hot, so hot he imagined that he went even redder, which was maybe impossible.

Bruce's fingers flexed at his sides. Clark dropped his eyes, looked left, right, then down, and then shuffled forward. He didn't look up again until he was toe to toe with Bruce's spotless black sneakers.

Bruce's face was granite, but his eyes were almost black with some kind of emotion he couldn't hide so quickly. The muscles at his jaw flexed and jerked as if he were clenching his teeth rhythmically. And he was close, so close, and not pushing Clark away. Clark leaned a little closer, knew Bruce could feel the heat coming off him in waves. "I'm maybe reading things wrong," Clark started. "Or maybe I'm not. But, tell me if I'm wrong, either way."

He leaned in even closer, could smell how clean Bruce smelled. "Um…is this okay?" Clark asked, a little low, a little breathless.

"No," Bruce said. Then he grabbed the back of Clark's head, jerked him forward hard and then…

pointedly didn't kiss him.

They were, what Clark estimated, one fourth of a centimeter apart and annoyingly not kissing.

"Jesus," Clark whispered and tried to move forward. They were sharing breath and their noses were brushing together on every inhale. Bruce's hand tightened in his hair hard, keeping him at bay. As if he couldn't stop himself, Bruce's other hand came up to brush questioningly over Clark's face, barely a whisper of a touch. His fingers ghosted over his temple, down his cheeks, and then just a little roughly over his bottom lip. It made Clark lose his balance a little and somehow his hands ended up on Bruce's hips, his palms pressed into the muscles and bone that defined his tapering middle. He let out a little gasp and Bruce's eyelids fluttered just once.

"Stop," Bruce barked roughly. "Now," he added. But his hands were still moving—over Clark's face, through his hair, down his jaw…

"No," Clark said. His hands stilled on Bruce's hips then squeezed once, making them both shudder, though Bruce's was so small that Clark questioned if the man had moved at all.

"I'm giving you your first, last, and only warning, Mr. Kent: whatever you think you're trying to do here, it won't work."

"It's not just me," Clark said defiantly. "We're both in this." He squeezed again and heard Bruce swallow hard.

And then, suddenly, Clark was pushed away so forcefully that he was surprised he didn't fall. It seemed a miracle that he righted himself at all and he had no idea how he pulled it off, he was just glad that he did.

When he looked again at Bruce's eyes, there was a measure of surprise there, but he quickly shut it away again. The cold, intimidating routine was back and Clark felt the loss of the moment so strongly he could taste it.

Bruce took a few steps further away from Clark and the room was suddenly colder to Clark. The heat of his shower—hell, the heat of standing that close to Bruce—had all faded away and he felt hollow.

Bruce's voice was as harsh as he had ever heard it when he spoke: "I don't know what you are, Mr. Kent—"

"Call me Clark."

"—but I'm not above using it to my advantage."

Clark went still for a moment and studied the rigid posture of the shadowy figure across the room from him. It was almost impossible to believe that not a minute ago the same man had caressed his face like a lover. Clark felt the loss of the moment painfully, but had no idea what to do to win it back. Perhaps he and Bruce were always going to have this strange, twisted attraction to each other and never do anything about it? Clark felt some strange panic at the idea.

"So that's how you're going to play this?" he asked. "You're going to change the subject and act like nothing's going on?" He laughed then, mostly because he couldn't shake the feeling that Bruce was behaving like a five-year-old.

"We're going to discuss business," Bruce said. He took another step deeper into the dark, closer to the door like a man on the brink of running.

"Business?" Clark laughed again and just felt tired all of a sudden. He settled heavily onto the bed and grabbed the nearest shirt he could find. He needed another barrier between him and the intimacy of a moment ago; it only confused him.

"Sure, we can discuss business. I told you before: I want to help."

"And if you're serious about that, I have a job for you."

"Look: I'm tired of fighting with you," Clark said, having anticipated, apparently, the wrong conversation entirely. He paused, held up a finger, cleared his throat and asked, "Excuse me? Would you repeat that?"

"I have a job for you," Bruce said and Clark didn't want the smile he heard in Bruce's voice just to be his overactive imagination.

"Okay," Clark answered after a long pause. If he couldn't resolve whatever it was between him and Bruce, the least he could do was help bring a murderer to justice. "We should talk. Have a seat?"

Instead, Bruce found a bare patch of wall beside the outdated television. Nearer, but not too near. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, but to Clark it looked more like he was trying to think of something to do with them, not refusing to be communicative. After all, if he hadn't wanted to talk to Clark, he wouldn't have broken into his motel.

"All ears," Clark said and waited.

"How were you able to get past the alarms and security at the Beautify Gotham Campaign Headquarters?" Bruce asked.

Clark really had to think about how to answer that, and his concentration helped to hide his surprise at the question itself. Finally, he realized that he would just have to be honest, even if Bruce didn't like the answer. "I can't honestly tell you," Clark said. "I just don't know." His arms went up in a shrug and then flopped back to his knees uselessly.

"Were you trying particularly hard to avoid the motion detectors? The laser fields? The security cameras?"

Clark shook his head. "I didn't even think about them having things like that. I just thought maybe there were answers there and I should have a look. I didn't mean to ruin your…investigation," he finished, barely keeping the last word from sounding like a question. Breaking and entering sounded more accurate than "investigating" to describe what Bruce had been doing that night with his still unknown partner. If investigating were all he'd been up to, he wouldn't have needed Hemingford Gray to cover for him, after all.

Bruce studied him for a moment and Clark couldn't tell if it was to gauge the truth, or just to pick his next move. At last Bruce spoke.

"The Beautify Gotham Campaign Headquarters has the information I need to wrap up this case. I need to get in there before someone else does. Someone who wants to hide things."

Clark frowned as he thought. "You want me to break into that building again?"

"Yes," Bruce said simply and Clark felt suddenly terrified of the idea of it all happening again—the alarms, the noise, the further proof that he was not normal. Clark's hearing had taken in the whole city that night letting him hear things no man was meant to hear; had hurt him so badly his ears had bled. He wanted to help, but that desire was warring with his fear. "H-how do you know what you're looking for is still there at all?" Clark stuttered nervously. "Maybe it's been moved?"

"The building is on lockdown. It's a crime scene. Nobody has been allowed in except for cops since the day you triggered the alarm."

Clark felt his face flush with embarrassment again. "But you're a detective. Surely you can go in, have a look around?"

"I'm a homicide detective. Until they agree that this break-in has something to do with my case, I'm not allowed on the scene."

"Um…can't you just break in again?"

"They've increased security."

"Oh. Well…why'd you break in in the first place? Why couldn't you just get a…a search warrant and go in there?"

Bruce stared at him coldly from the dark. "This might surprise you, but I already tried that. My warrant was denied. Try to understand this, Mr. Kent: things with the case are not what they seem. There are powerful people blocking progress."

And Clark didn't know if he meant Mayor Hunt, or someone else. Was there someone out there worse than Hunt?

Clark felt like he'd just hit a brick wall, as if the dead end of the conversation had jumped up out of nowhere to knock all of his fearful questions out of his head. He swallowed his nerves. "So this is your best option, then? You need me to go back in there and…take whatever it is you didn't get the last time?"

"Yes," Bruce growled. The sound should have been just plain scary—and it was—but it was also darn sexy too. Clark decided to go see Dr. Crane again soon and work out exactly when danger started to turn him on. He pushed it from his mind and asked the question that he was most afraid to ask.

"How do you know I can do it at all? It was a fluke the last time. Maybe I'll just screw up the minute I walk through the door."

Bruce looked at him steadily. "That's why we're going to run a test."

"A test?" Clark squeaked.

"Yes." That sexy growl again and Clark realllly needed to focus, here.

"Um…when?"

"Now," Bruce said and his grin was feral.

Clark looked at the ancient alarm clock beside his bed. "It's almost ten at night."

"And?"

"Oh, well, um. Just thought you'd want to know."

"I don't. Get dressed."

Instead of being indignant about the command, Clark found himself grabbing street clothing out of his still-packed duffel and tossing them onto the bed. At Bruce's command, he was less afraid, suddenly excited to know that Bruce was giving him a chance to help. He didn't know what about him could squash his fear so quickly and he really didn't take the time to consider it. He was practically humming with energy. In fact, he was so eager, and Bruce so quiet—practically merged with the shadows in all that black that he wore—that Clark had already shucked his shirt and was tugging off his sweatpants before he remembered that the man was there at all.

When it hit him that he'd been undressing in front of Bruce, he looked up suddenly and didn't meet Bruce's eyes all. That being because Bruce's eyes were trained…ahem…elsewhere. And Clark really had to wonder how he'd ended up mostly naked in front of Bruce Wayne twice in the same day.

He cleared his throat and Bruce's eyes snapped up at last. His face was as unreadable and cold as always, but Clark wasn't buying it. He surprised himself again with what he did next—and perhaps some dormant part of him was an exhibitionist—for he made a slow show of taking his sweatpants off and sliding on his jeans.

And Bruce watched him. Unblinking and unashamed. He watched.

And just at the moment, Clark's hearing expanded, snapped to life and Clark could hear Bruce's heartbeat thundering, could hear his breathing, which was deep and ragged. His face could look as unaffected as he wanted, but his body was anything but, and Clark rejoiced silently at the fact. For the first time ever, he felt like he could almost control how much he heard. He tuned in to that speedy thump, thump, thump rhythm of Bruce's heart, savored it.

Dressed at last and loaded up with his wallet, cell phone, and keys, he came and stood before Bruce, not as close as before, but still close enough. Bruce didn't look ruffled, but he did pull back as much as he could with a wall behind him.

"Look," Clark sighed, "are we ever going to talk about this?" he finished boldly.

"This?" Bruce asked, and damn he was a good actor. Clark almost let it drop because Bruce's tone of voice implied that he was a fool and a clown. He did it so effortlessly that Clark felt a creeping doubt. More than that, Bruce had his heartbeat completely under control again, steady and sure. Were the sparks between them just Clark's imagination? But then he let that doubt just go back into its hole. He wasn't imagining this.

"Yeah, 'this.' You and me. Whatever. Whatever this is between us."

"There is nothing between us to talk about, Mr. Kent."

"Are you kidding me?" Clark laughed. "We almost ki—"

But Bruce pushed away from the wall, brushed past him and moved to the door of the motel before he could finish the sentence.

"Let's go," Bruce said. Clark just shook his head and followed him out into the night.

"Where are we going?" Clark asked, resigned to let Bruce be, well, Bruce, for a little longer at least.

"You'll see," Bruce answered and there was something like a smile on his face when he said it. And Clark couldn't put his finger on why, but he'd be damned if it didn't remind him of Matches Malone.

To Be Continued…

Up Next, the Batcave! True Dat! And a new, dangerous player enters the story…