Chapter Text
Clark Kent was not terribly fond of the winter.
He recognized it to be a crucial part of the Earth's patterns, of course he did. Everything on this beautiful planet could only exist because of the cyclical: the going and returning, the lightening and darkening, the ebb and the flood. The smallest bird or insect deserved their time to leave or rest too, before activity would inevitably renew for the spring. But…
Every winter, Clark thought he could sleep for a hundred years and it still wouldn't be enough. The exhaustion was bone-deep, stronger than even him.
He grunted as he slammed into the Metropolitan pavement, thrown from a miraculous height with a wave of fresh rubble flung from the point of impact. It didn't hurt, necessarily, but Clark stayed in the vaguely Superman-shaped pit for an extra second to groan to himself. Unfortunately for him and Earth, Brainiac by comparison seemed to have taken quite the liking to winter visits; his every recent appearance took place during this harrowing time. While bemused anchors and journalists may continue to speculate on the uncharacteristic predictability, Clark knew Brainiac never made his Earth visits for any sentimental reasons about the season. And Brainiac would have long ago made the calculations which proved this to be the most favourable time of an Earth-year for him (or anyone) to best Superman.
A featureless (but no-doubt scientifically sophisticated) pod hovered into the vicinity as Superman finally began to crawl out from the pavement. A proxy of a probable proxy of Brainiac's will; who knew where the real Brainiac was? Not even Superman's presence on Earth was really enough to draw the maestro himself to these parts of the universe lately.
"Why, Superman, I must say you are in fine and pathetic form today. It appears that you've grown soft since I last saw you. Are you sure you should be out here dealing with me, getting in the way of the other, proper heroes?"
Clark didn't deign to answer the pod's tinny voice, refusing to rise to the obvious (and customary) bait. He couldn't help leveling a glare at the little drone, though, contemplating if he should turn it into a molten puddle on the ground.
Brainiac wasn't too deterred, seemingly assured that Superman would eventually give in to anger with enough juvenile jeering.
"Oh, no witty retort? Well, super or not, you are another mere animal at the end of the day, just like the rest of them. Beholden to the baggage of instinct and other such subconscious motivations. Such is the weakness of organic life, Superman, even for you."
Before Clark could even process the bizarrely existential drivel the pod was spouting, Diana — bless her speed and sense of timing — landed precisely on top of it and cleanly flattened it against the pavement. (A move that Wonder Woman and Superman both enjoyed using to spectacularly announce their arrival at a scene.)
"Focus, Superman," she said firmly and calmly, extending a hand to help him up.
Shamefaced, Clark only nodded. They swiftly returned to the fray according to the original plan, but the words of the drone remained rooted in his head. A rather underhanded distraction tactic from Brainiac, in Clark's opinion.
All Superman really seemed to accomplish in the whole skirmish was getting tossed about and wreaking immense collateral damage with his body. He got winded on the impact against a solid tree in a densely wooded section of park. The existing aches in his bones and joints sharpened as he was jostled. Guilt flooded him when he saw the trough of upended dirt and other trees in the wake of his crash. Clark gazed skyward to where the Brainiac clone's ship was obscuring an otherwise lovely day.
His brain churned like molasses, and his body even more so. Clark couldn't decide how to get back, and his slackening muscles would've certainly protested whatever he came up with. Anything that didn't involve a deep slumber, anyway. Almost against his will, his eyes trailed off to instead admire the sky — only scattered with one or two small clouds — and the dark barren boughs of the tree which was steady enough to have stopped his slide across the ground. His heart almost stopped with a shudder then.
He remembers this tree.
Two springs ago, being thrown aside from an altercation as usual, he had narrowly missed one of its younger branches, dotted with budding leaves. Its ends tickled him as he brushed past: not enough force to snap anything, but just enough to dislodge and fling the little birds' nest sat in one of its junctions. Clark course-corrected immediately and caught the nest in one hand and, more delicately, a launched egg in the other.
Quick to forget his surroundings for the moment, Clark deposited the nest back into the tree, checking over the cyan eggs within for any damage. Not a scratch, as though the nest was barely disturbed by anyone other than a parent. Smiling with a satisfied huff, Clark looked back to the lone egg in his fingers. He hoped it didn't get too shaken outside the nest… though he was afraid to risk using X-ray on it to peer inside.
Instead, Clark raised and held up the tiny blue egg against the sun. It glowed red-orange itself, cradled between his fingers. Clark shut one eye to focus. The egg hid its own network of ruddy little branches, the warm colourscape only blotted with an even smaller embryo nestled cozily within its shell. Unharmed. Face full of wonder, Superman carefully tucked the egg back into place, next to its siblings in their nest.
Clark was still recovering from his recent bout of seasonal grogginess and winter yearnings, back then. But with the spring sun warm on his skin (and a brawl to get back to), he'd paid little attention to the big weight those eggs had placed on his heart — an indescribable something that was even heavier than a fully fledged adult could be. And, oh, now that he was reminiscing about it…
Misty-eyed, Clark hopes that little robin family hatched well, and lives well to this day.
Again, Diana eventually found him — still dazed at the tree — shortly after she and the rest of the League had apparently gotten the Brainiac situation under control. Wonder Woman deftly looped her lariat under Clark's shoulders to drag him back into flight, the Harness of Shame having become a rather common technique in her arsenal (usually to the flightless Batman's chagrin). Clark only hoped she would be mindful enough to ask him no questions about his current condition while he was ensnared, as he was also probably in a very willing state to tell her everything about it (to the inevitable embarrassment of springtime Superman).
"…What was that about? With that Brainiac pod?" Diana eventually inquired once Clark was freed and wobbled into his own flight path next to her.
"I… I don't know," he half-lied guiltily.
"I see…" Diana, obviously, was unconvinced. "Well, Brainiac is certainly a strange individual, higher intelligence or not. I'm sure whatever he was saying is simply beyond us now." She pressed the matter no further than that, and they continued to fly in silence, at a more leisurely pace than usual.
On their way to the rendezvous at the docks, Clark's mind brewed with unease in addition to the standard-issue sleepiness. In a strange way, he trusted that Brainiac would jealously guard any useful and rare information he had, enough to not let this particular secret of Superman's to slip into others' hands. But how long would that last, before Brainiac would exchange the strangeness of Clark's condition for even better knowledge? As troublesome as this part of Kryptonian evolution was proving to be for Clark, no one would rely on the same old trick against him forever. (And it was humiliating enough that Brainiac knew about such a vulnerability in Kryptonians' supposedly infallible biology. Clark didn't need anyone else to antagonize him with reminders about it.)
Clark's attention span didn't fare much better at the harbour. He must've missed a bunch of crucial wrap-up details; too bad he was more focused on making himself more unassuming behind Wonder Woman, avoiding the scrutiny of Bruce's gaze. Clark did not want to direct the Bat's annoyance onto him in his sensitized state. (Bruce would surely be irritated to hear that Superman of all people didn't exactly pull his weight in this outing.)
"Sooo, is it…?" Wally leaned as far as he could into the spacecraft doors without actually entering.
Bruce frowned and unceremoniously dropped Brainiac's depowered head against the floor, the Dark Knight rising back to a stand. "A fake," he grumbled before crushing the confirmed-proxy's head under his heel. Electric-blue static lanced out against him to no effect.
"Gah, shoulda figured," Wally mumbled with disappointment.
They were all to meet back at the Hall of Justice for a final debrief and, knowing Bruce, planning for later missions. More unsure of himself than usual, Clark decided to continue tagging along with Wonder Woman, which she graciously permitted. Batman left early to pilot Brainiac's ship back to Gotham, for whatever tinkering and repurposing he had in mind for it. Some of the others lingered for a little longer to talk outside Batman's purview while they had the chance. With the inquisitive part of him stronger than the well-mannered today, Clark listened in as he and Diana flew away.
"…Say, you guys travel the sector a lot; must know some good places. I might see if I can get Bats to let me on a space trip soon. Got any recommendations?" Wally was asking the two Green Lanterns present.
"Oh, I'm glad you asked, there's one I actually owe a small favour. I'll share the coordinates with you." A pause in Hal's response. "It's a bit out of the way from here, hole-in-the-wall type of thing, but I know the one who runs it — decent, honest fellow. A reputable spot that could do with more business, if you can get out there."
"Really, man?" Clark could just imagine John sternly crossing his arms.
"What? Plenty of us get our urges and curiosities every so often. If I can help it, I'd rather they hit up a trustworthy source than get into some deep shit through shadier avenues. Much less trouble for everyone in the long run."
John only sighed, but wordlessly conceded to that point.
"…Forgive my potentially foolish question, Flash, but would a similar place on Earth not suffice?" J'onn politely chimed in. "I don't quite see why one has to travel so far from here for such a shop."
"Oho, you got a lot to learn still, Manhunter," Wally murmured furtively. "Dunno how it was for Martians back home, but y'see… we humans can be pretty open-minded about interplanetary relations, if you catch my drift."
"Oh… perhaps?" J'onn still sounded confused.
None of them said it aloud, but it was clear enough they were talking about a shop of a more adult nature. Clark forced his curious ears to stop listening then; that was what he got for eavesdropping in the first place. Face burning, he soaked up the cool blast of air ahead of them and hoped he would look relatively normal once they landed at headquarters.
First to leave directly for the Hall, Wonder Woman and Superman were the first to arrive. They straightened out some of the chairs and settled into adjacent seats to wait for the others. Clark would like to think he was generally a more patient person than he was today, but he felt awfully fidgety as they sat in a companionable silence.
"Diana, I have a question… ah, I think it'll be a strange one, but I've always been… curious — if that's the right word."
Diana tilted her head, silently urging him to continue and looking so human, so normal, the way she casually rested her powerful forearms on the table.
"Every month, when humans go through their cycle… how do they manage it? Some stories sound… intense." Clark's head dipped down to stare into the table. He worried there was no good way to frame his thoughts without totally exposing himself or discomforting Diana. "I sometimes wonder if you have experience with that first-hand? Wisdom for it, even?"
Diana laughed, but it wasn't unkind.
"Do you mean about menses, Clark?" At his quick and bashful nod, she propped her chin on her knuckles to think. "Well… unlike most, I am borne of the clay under my mother's hands, thus I do not bleed the same. I do not bleed in that way. Though, like you, I hear often about it from my sisters who do, and I have the honour of aiding them through it. That is my only experience with that shedding, so I don't have much wisdom there, that a mortal couldn't already offer tenfold."
Clark blinked at her. He had always taken for granted that everyone would be subject to some inescapable cycle — even unwavering Diana. But now he heard the faint wistfulness to her voice.
"Do you… ever feel like you're missing out on something?" he asked tentatively. "Like, some part of the human experience is just out of the question for us, because we were born too different?"
Diana hummed, though her eyes briefly flickered to him in a sidelong glance. "Perhaps. I do not envy menstruation or wish anything like it for myself: beyond what we Amazons take to be sacred, it is still altogether a messy and sometimes excruciating ordeal. My sisters beautifully and nobly take on whatever pains with pride, for we recognize there is rarely renewal of the self that is not painful or messy. But then I also begin to think… what sort of renewal is it when it's not been chosen by the sufferer? My sisters only tolerate it because they are borne to that fate; I don't believe anyone in the world would even think to bleed if it was never placed upon them.
"Still, that is why it becomes as sacred or as loathed as we wish it to be. Sometimes we must change, even if it feels like we go in painful circles for it, but there remain constant ways for us to decide for ourselves. I've known some who would and could staunch their bleeding, and were all the more changed for it. All the better — though it may seem a similar condition to mine — because they got to choose otherwise. And my own steadfast lifespan, some may regard as a curse or stagnation, but I enjoy seeing it instead as the most profound of my gifts, and even more so, because it is from my mother. Not everyone gets to grow old, in any sense of the word."
Diana let that thought linger in melancholy, then grinned at Clark with an ardent twinkle in her eye. "Sometimes I worry that I am missing out on some sort of solidarity with my sisters, yes, but in my long life I've never witnessed anything more universally human than such willfulness. Humans will often die for what they want most, and they can make a sanctum out of anything. It is foolhardy as much as it is inspiring." She picked up one of Clark's hands from the table to hold it. "Our wills already make us human; you do not need to sanctify anything about yourself, but neither should you have to fear nor hide the parts of you that make you feel foreign, Kal-El."
It all sounded rather simple with the way Diana laid things out — elegant as all things tended to be with her — but Clark felt also the unnerving sense of being seen-through. He often feared that she could somehow discern his deepest worries and shames and vulnerabilities. This particular anxiety was one of the few things that winter amplified. (But of course, he knew Diana would never hate him for any of that.)
"…Right," Clark whispered in awe before he could compose himself. He cleared his throat and smiled back. "Thank you, Diana. I'm honoured you would share your wisdoms with me; it always seems like you don't need much first-hand experience to have plenty of those."
"Trust me, all of that comes with age. Think of them less as wisdoms and more… observations of patterns — that is how all philosophy is born. That besides, it is always a treat to wander through my thoughts with a trusted sibling." Diana warmly patted the back of his hand.
All too soon, the rest of the League streamed into the conference room and their work must continue. As a new discussion started up, Clark wrung his hands in uncharacteristic silence, head too foggy to think of anything to add. All he could think about was the way the measured timbre of Batman's voice began to seep under his skin. He nearly shivered every time the Bat hummed in response to another colleague.
What Clark really wanted was to just curl up in his seat, wind around his stomach-curdle of shame to smother it somehow, but in the end he was grateful the Justice League could seem to guess at his issues when the limited winter sunlight felt so bleak these days. They did not often call on him for his input during these months, especially not December.
He absentmindedly ran a thumb across his knuckles, tracing along where Diana's hand had been and longing to go home.
Hopeful though he initially was, Clark only seemed to feel worse as the week progressed.
Between his body's attempts to conserve energy and its enlarged fat deposits, an all too physical storage of energy built up from the autumn, Clark always felt particularly heavy in these months… Unwieldy. Despite all the specialized compression under his suit, sometimes he'd miscalculate a clearance and his fattened hip would still graze (or worse, loudly bump into) a surface on maneuvers that were normally clean and second-nature, making his ears burn with embarrassment. His superhuman abilities blipped on and off, waxing and waning. (At times his grasp on them felt uncomfortably tenuous: holding everything in like normal but then feeling their energies disperse uncannily — crawl through his flesh in retribution.) Clark felt so very human, but a much too volatile one to really get to enjoy it. He didn't — he couldn't — tell the League the full story, but he gratefully accepted their extra coverage for bigger-scale emergencies in Metropolis during this time; they could not risk Superman's flight or invulnerability giving out at any critical moment.
Clark was content to busy himself with some of the little classics: like assisting firefighters, extracting cats from trees, and helping people with heavier groceries. The cats were warm and soft in his arms as they shivered and clung to him; it didn't snow often in Metropolis, but it was cold enough, and probably scary up there for any flightless creature. Clark trailed behind those he aided, following their lead and never staying long so none could get too close a look at him. Many civilians' eyes sparkled with delight, and varying degrees of self-consciousness, seeing Superman floating down to specifically help them with 'such a small thing'. (Whether they noticed him shaking on the way down, Clark couldn't tell. He hoped they didn't.) Many wanted to give him an offering of thanks from their bags — little treats and sugary things, the way they knew Superman liked — but he would hurriedly refuse and insist they keep and enjoy it for themselves, before haphazardly darting for the skies. He appreciated even an offer of sweets, always, but his body's earlier cravings already had him eating so insatiably in the autumn…
Then there was an old lady who caught him off-guard, who reached up to dotingly pinch and pat his cheek for his work. Clark almost started to cry at the familiar, fond gesture; he suddenly thought again of Ma and Pa.
"Are you keeping warm and eating enough, dear? It's awful chilly this winter — even you might catch cold! Here; young'un like yourself shouldn't be going hungry whatever the season." And as though he were any ordinary youth in her neighbourhood, she rummaged in one of her bags to plop a freshly baked and packaged chocolate croissant into Clark's hands. He could see the steam from the still-warm pastry fogging up its little window.
"Oh," Clark breathed, eyes dampening and lips fighting a wobble as he smiled. "Th-thank you, Miss."
Croissant clutched to his heart, Clark hastily fluttered away, looking down once to see the lady genially waving goodbye at him. He waved back. Only when he was out of sight did he bury his face into his arm, the sting of his eyes finally alleviated with his suit wicking away the tears.
Clark always smiled and laughed along when anyone spoke to him as though he could perish of hunger or the elements like they could. He knew it could be easy to forget the extent of his capabilities on Earth, and he loved being regarded like a friend rather than a saviour. But this time around, he accepted that the kindly woman was right: the grip of the cold season shocked him to the core every year once the invulnerability disappeared for the first time in the cycle, and he feared his freshly temperamental body would only grow more demanding. (And that was before he could even stomach the desperate horrors of his winter hormones.)
Perhaps, if he truly didn't appear to others as bloated as he felt, the compression under his suit must still be doing the trick. Flying further from human sight, Clark glanced consideringly at the croissant in hand.
His unwillingness to let the sweetly aromatic gift go cold was one thing that could beat Clark's current guilt for eating. Hovering and curling up below overcast skies, high above Metropolis, he enjoyed the croissant in careful and controlled bites. The chocolate bits embedded in the buttery folds were still gooey — Clark sank in the air with a bliss even he couldn't deny. He remembered a simpler time, when he was little and barely growing into all of his pesky Kryptonian heredity, when he would share hot cocoa and sugar cookies with Ma and Pa in the Kents' sunroom. No other worry in the world when he was safe and warm with his parents.
Nothing had changed much for Ma and Pa when Clark began to winter as a Kryptonian; he was still their son. They let him rest as his body demanded, sweet old faces peeking into his bedroom door at night to see if he wanted to have the usual hot chocolate and cookies with them. And Clark wanted to, so badly, but the shocking onset of his winter physiology kept him too weary to even leave his bed. So his parents brought themselves and the treats up to him, and it was different, but it was lovely to have Ma and Pa next to him. Clark had cried when he opened his bleary eyes again and saw them, tray of drinks steaming up their faces and casting the whole memory in a warm glaze. He had been too feverish back then to discern between their calloused hands as they brushed the sweaty curls from his clammy forehead.
He is sure he'd recognize them by touch in a heartbeat now, even at his absolute worst. Though he couldn't bear to put that responsibility on them anymore; just as he grew older, so did they — he is theirs, always, but he couldn't be that weakened little boy anymore.
Forgetting himself to his thoughts and hungers, Clark sank his teeth deep into the croissant with fresh tears rolling down his cheeks.
Good thing he had the foresight to call out of work just last week. All the PTO he accumulated every year went to easing the burden of his winters — it just came down to whether he timed it right. Last week he wasn't so out of sorts, just a little stuffy under all his layers and the centralized heating of the Daily Planet's building, with the ill-fitted suit against his winter bulk feeling too snug for his tastes as reporter Clark Kent. And while he could manage the occasional physical task, it would become a painful process to think as well as he normally did, let alone for a full eight-hour workday. So he called it in once the prospect of going in and dragging himself through the next day felt unbearable to his body. Working at the Daily Planet often worsened Clark's loneliness in the winter, with the many other staff going on break and all the empty chairs more noticeable than ever. And sitting in the bullpen would feel all the worse with Lois out of office too.
"…But Clark, it's that time of the year. I can stay back and have Perry get another journalist to cover it."
"No, Lois!" Clark clasped her hand in their shared apartment, while she was still in Metropolis. "I am touched you'd even think of that, but you were digging so long for a lead like this to come up. Don't throw that away on my account. Please."
He had seen the flash of uncertainty in her eyes: Lois loved her work and he would never doubt her whenever she said she loved him too. It was the utmost cruelty for anyone, including herself, to make her choose between the two. Lois had been tracing and documenting one of the major, still-elusive LexCorp supply lines for months — and she'd just gotten a tip for the next place worth investigating overseas. Clark couldn't let her give up the months-long culmination of all her work just like that. And Clark would still be here when she got back.
The conflict continued on her face for a few seconds, then Lois smiled fondly and pressed her other hand to his face. "I'll be sure to call you while I'm there. This was an unexpected development for my winter, but here or half a globe away, you're not escaping me and my… ministrations that easily."
Ears tinting pink at her suggestion, Clark laughed and leaned his head in to kiss her palm.
(To tell the full truth, he had called out of work the evening he saw her off at the airport. Perry was unamused about losing the presence of both of them at the same time, but magnanimous as ever when it came to time off in the hopes of even better work, Perry allowed it.)
All the times Lois had called once she landed — morning for her and night for Clark — his body hadn't been begging for anything in particular yet. So they just talked, and it was wonderful and it soothed Clark's heart. And it was like she never left.
"A shame you're not feeling up to doing anything, though. I was brainstorming on the plane, you know," Lois had said the first time she called, sitting at the cafe she'd come to frequent during her stay.
"You wouldn't actually say what you were thinking in public, right?" Clark basically giggled to hide the rush of breath Lois got out of him.
Despite being seas away, he could see the wry grin behind her sultry tone; he'd witnessed the two in association plenty of times before. "We'll just have to see, hm, weatherboy?"
(That definitely tickled a part of Clark he didn't feel like addressing just then. Regardless of how much his stupid body wanted Lois to undo him right there with her wordsmithing.)
Instead, Lois talked about the sights and people she'd met so far; Clark smiled into his pillow as he got to listen. Quick-witted and charismatic, Lois was a powerful socializer without any need of benevolent super-strength to get into others' good books. It started sounding like she befriended nearly everyone who walked into that cafe, on top of anyone else she serendipitously bumped into during her more touristic outings — a non-insignificant amount being stray cats. She promised to return to him with many good photos of the strays, as well as the local nature and architecture, courtesy of the older camera she haggled from Jimmy.
It was the highlight of his days. The winter nights alone in their apartment were not so lonely when he was still hearing her voice, clear and euphonic as a bundle of bells. Clark would be lying if he said he didn't wish he could see her richly dark eyes again though: deep and profound as the abyss, yet sometimes catching the light from her favourite sweater of violet cable-knit. (She had left that hanging in their closet, never wanting to risk somehow losing it abroad — it had apparently happened before with a previous favourite. But the sweater was completely lifeless without her and only served to make Clark feel worse.)
Lois did not call that night or the next, the bulk of her investigation likely well under way. Clark spent those nights flying with his phone on hand, enjoying the festive lights of Metropolis and quietly wishing Lois luck, worrying all the while. He could not wait to read her final article once this was all over and she was home safe again.
The silent apartment became too much without even her voice to warm it. Clark grew ever restless and achingly sick. Something hotly uncomfortable — unnamable — coiled low in his gut.
Things were too stuffy and distracting in Metropolis this year, Clark finally decided. He would wait out the remainder of Lois' absence at the Fortress instead. Right before he got ready to leave the apartment for a few days, his mind awakened with the blip of a secondary presence.
« Clark; I have scoped out a viable route to the shop Hal had mentioned, as well as the shop itself. It seems a pleasant and culturally insightful place from my perspective, its infrastructure notwithstanding, though I fear there is much I still don't entirely understand. Hopefully you have better luck. I have left the coordinates and detailed directions in your mailbox at the Hall should you wish to visit it yourself. »
Clark smiled to hear from J'onn again, and so soon after Clark expressed in confidence his own curiosity about the coordinates that Hal had shared. J'onn only raised a brow of surprise, then eagerly accepted the opportunity to explore the area. The Martian now lingered in Clark's head to await confirmation that the Kryptonian heard him.
« Thanks, J'onn; you're the best. I owe you one. »
« Nonsense — I simply do what I am able, Clark. I am glad to be of help. »
Then his mind quietened. It was upsetting to his compromised brain, losing even that sense of companionship, but J'onn also had much work to do with the temporary redistribution of League duties. Clark had much ahead of him to repay the others come springtime, when all the winter fat has melted along with the snow, but for the time being he could manage on his own without bothering the Martian further.
Intrigue and other impulses driving him, Clark was fine with taking one more detour before the Fortress. During his stop at the Hall's lobby, his senses (more selective when his body apparently must pick and choose on energy expenditure) sharpened on the approach of Batman. Clark caught sight of the dark hero emerging from the corridor, dramatic bat-shaped shadow and all — a funny contrast to the vibrant paper cup of coffee in the Bat's hand, Clark would think later — before he hastily zoomed out of the main doors with J'onn's notes and a spare League cloak. The only indication Batman saw him was a simple pause in his step to glance at the doors, still swinging closed, then Bruce continued walking and sipping as if he saw nothing at all.
Clark quickly forgot about it with his new objective in mind. J'onn's instruction took him out to the farthest reaches of the sector, hitting a convenient conversion point for the sector's universal currency along the way. Clark ended up close enough to the border that he imagined the neighbouring Green Lanterns' ward there was practically shared. He appreciated the Martian Manhunter's fondness for the public transportation outside their solar system; sitting comfortably and cloaked amidst other extraterrestrial passengers (some similarly veiled) made Clark feel much less noticeable. Though there remained an anxiety that somehow these aliens, of varied backgrounds far beyond the isolation of Earth, would somehow be able to recognize his background down to his current biological predicament. Trying to draw no one's gaze, Clark kept his eyes to himself for the commute.
The little shop sat along a dingy but quaint strip mall of asteroidal foundation, shared with a handful of food places and other small businesses catered to travelling workers and grown passersby. Spacecrafts sparsely parked across open surfaces of the rock, and there was only one stop for a public shuttle: which Clark took in following J'onn. In the cold of exposed space, far from any yellow star, Clark found reason to be glad for the high insulation factor of Kryptonian adipose — perhaps it had always been the intended type of environment for such an adaptation. Along the manually carved walkway, he saw many clerks and the occasional customer through windows with their own manner of coats and blankets. It seemed there was no internal heating, no escape from the cold inside the buildings either. Apprehensively, Clark cross-checked the last storefront's sign with J'onn's uniform penmanship: Feel Deep Inc. The neon pink 'XXX' on the sole window could've technically said enough, but he wanted to make sure it was really one of Hal's (unexpected) associates. The high doorbell chimed upon Clark's entry into the fluorescently lit store.
He saw no one at the counter, which is why he nearly jumped when a disembodied voice rich with age spoke, "Welcome. You need anything, you let me know." Clark quickly nodded his understanding before fleeing to the immediate back of the store.
Not much of an escape, for it was one of the smaller shops on the asteroid: what it lacked in product number it made up for in sheer diversity. There were some recognizable implements of various shapes and sizes, from rings to the snake-like and bullet-shaped. While he was familiar with the rod-and-bud shape (Lois liked to torment him twofold with something similar), his eyes widened at some of the tools tripling their impressive protrusions or rings at a minimum. Some of the aids were even less fathomable to him. Clark's cheeks warmed significantly while he stood there studying the neatly stocked shelves and unwittingly trying to imagine how (or on whom) their contents would work. The simple diagrams on the boxes did not help him much with clarity.
He quickly picked out a toy that he might like, an exceedingly simple one: just one smooth sizable branch (in human standards) that ended in a soft bend and point, bottoming out in a sturdy-looking base. The box also promised vibration, to Clark's shy titillation. On the way back to the counter, he picked up a small bottle of artificial lubricant, 'just in case', as in Lois' personal tenet for comfortable practices.
"Hi. Just these," he said at the empty counter, fitted with only the register and a current-model intergalactic translator (perhaps supplied by Hal?). Clark hoped he didn't sound too breathless, irrationally worrying he'll be kicked out for seeming out of place.
He flinched when a rush of midnight blue from the floor morphed into a standing octopus-like figure. There was no face that Clark could see on their shadowy form, but they donned a charming emerald sweater vest with a nametag that read O'Bleck. Most likely a gift from the human Hal, because the pattern was clearly not designed for O'Bleck's more-than-two arms. They pulled it off incredibly well, though.
"Is that all?" O'Bleck asked, having scanned the items faster than even Clark could process.
Clark stared at them like a deer caught in the headlights. He had come out all this way, surely there was more of a reason for him here than patronage that O'Bleck could find from any other visitor? Clark's eyes wandered to the collage of posters and images behind O'Bleck — in varying shades of salacious.
"Um, sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm not very familiar with this kinda stuff… I'm wondering how many demographics you have in your posters?"
"Many; which demographic you interested in? I might have it."
Trying to ignore any deeper implication of their question, Clark murmured hopefully, "…Kryptonian?"
O'Bleck turned to scan their wall with a considering hum (so they probably did have visual receptors on the front of their head). Then they sank down to multitask a search through their extensive shelves.
"Ah!" O'Bleck finally straightened back up with a little photo album in their tendrils. "You're very lucky. Kryptonian media in general are very rare these days; all old and all out of official circulation, as I'm sure you'd understand given your interest. I'm afraid I don't have any poster copies for these made right now, but you are free to look, still." They set down the album in front of Clark with a little flourish of the arm.
He blinked in surprise. He asked, but he didn't expect there to be anything at all, really. When was the last time he got to see or hear of other Kryptonian individuals as regular strangers, the way many humans got to be? With an overwhelmed smile and thanks for O'Bleck, Clark opened the album.
Understandably, there weren't enough images to have filled the whole album, but it was an impressive surviving catalogue for a functionally extinct species. The album was worn, though well kept. Many of the inner sheets had some manner of creasing, but the pictures themselves were in remarkably good condition for media from presumably decades ago. Through their hidden work, O'Bleck appeared to Clark as a careful recordkeeper, regardless of the subject. A strange sense of wonder dawned on Clark as he perused the pictures.
They were pin-ups, yes — some with levels of exposure that made Clark breathe shudderingly to himself — but none of the photographed Kryptonians looked terribly ashamed or put-out by the bodies that they occupied. The Kryptonians looked near identical to the human pin-ups he'd seen Cat Grant studying for one of her admittedly unusual yet fascinating retrospectives. The only key difference was the unexpectedly comforting feature of Kryptonian garb, ranging from high-coverage and breathable robes to snug and form-fitting bodysuits (which Superman had adapted to maintain some practicality in the field). Of course, the bodysuits were a natural choice, especially without any capes to hide the outline of prominent rumps, but even the robes could apparently be made sensuous: one springtime Kryptonian whimsically jumped into a puddle, lifting their hem unnecessarily high and showing off plenty of bare thigh — plus a sliver of hip crease.
And the wintering Kryptonians got their luxurious robes too, reclining sleepily amidst piled cushions and gazing half-lidded at the viewer. Appraising, amused, unplagued by thoughts of how their plumped flesh folded or spilled from their garments. The robes were dangerously, purposefully unsecured: finely translucent material draped along the soft contours of their bodies, and framed tantalizing glimpses of Kryptonian corsetry and compression-wear — or nothing at all. They all looked luminous with the glow of sweat and the internal combustion of a latent energy source, perhaps with a something else that Clark's Kryptonian hindbrain tried to supply but had no words for.
(The unclothed winterers stirred a deeper forlorn recognition within Clark, as though looking into an imperceptibly bent mirror; though he and they were both Kryptonian, these two categories carried themselves far differently from each other. Some kept on their loose corsets for abdominal support; some wore nothing — except neat lines of gentle Kryptonian-grade rope artfully pressed into their skin, supporting suppler chests and outlining the figures that lay dormant underneath winter bulk. Backs arched to further accentuate the unbridled curve of hips, and their wandering hands blocked the view of only their softest, most intimate parts between the spread of legs. In their place, Clark would've found it horrifically vulnerating, being strung up like a prized decorative animal (and, cosmos forbid, enjoying it), averting his eyes and shrinking himself into a kneeling ball to hide as much of himself from sight. But these Kryptonians defiantly held the gaze of the camera: confident in the desires of their bodies and even playfully daring any viewer to undo the comfort of their bindings. Clark's Kryptonian forebears were undeniably strong and assured, regardless of season and phase of the body.)
Tears welled in Clark's eyes the longer he studied the winter pictures. Their bodies looked just like his and yet they looked…
"Beautiful," was all he could manage to utter.
O'Bleck inclined their head. "Indeed, Kryptonians were a beautiful people; like all other peoples. Didn't have the pleasure of knowing many in my travels, or much about them, but the few I met were good and kind. They all seemed to disappear from the wider universe when their planet grew reclusive, 'haps from some inner politic on their home? More's the shame what happened though… we outsiders only learned their fate when we encountered the scattered remains of Krypton, many parts of it drifted far from its star's orbit and unrecognizable until you got closer to that grave… Ultimately, I don't know what happened to the last Kryptonian acquaintances I knew to be living during that time, but I find myself hoping still that they weren't home when it happened."
Clark's heart sank as his hands lowered the album back to the counter. Though he had to ask in awe, "You were alive to personally know some Kryptonians yourself?"
"Aye, at an earlier age. But… it's been long enough I don't remember how much ago now." O'Bleck crossed some of their arms together. "Can't tell you how many peoples' lights I must've seen going out in my time; sometimes it all blurs together. Makes me wish we had more than just text or these pictures and memory to know Krypton by, but sometimes these pieces of an isolated planet get to live the longest, due to the intrigue and taboo, and it often grows too late to do anything to change that. But they are the most vulnerable parts, some would say, and perhaps help to make any alien feel less bizarre in a universe full of bizarre and wonderful others. A word of caution from an old shopkeep, if you'll take it: many younger folk like you try to find something of themselves in things such as these, not just in my shop, neither… but between you and me — since you seem a kind listener yourself — I think that might be their folly. As well-crafted as some are, these works best serve their main purpose: to inspire fun and satisfy a craving. And of these I only have so many varieties. No one will fully see themselves reflected in such material, not even the Kryptonians who are in the photos; we are all much more dimensional than our forms and these single acts and positions, I'd think."
O'Bleck relaxed to straighten out Clark's items along the counter's edge. "Alas! I still have a job to keep and bills to pay, so these pieces remain if I can help it. No perfect work out there, but I'd much prefer this over the rest: nothing pays like being able to talk about the people in the pictures with the customers who ask. Gladdens me to feel that all my younger self's travels aren't completely behind me, these days."
And like O'Bleck didn't say anything at all, it was business as normal. Clark handed over the money and O'Bleck nestled his items into a brown paper bag. Clark would've liked to ask them more about all the peoples they've known, the things they must've seen in their lifetime, but another customer walked in with a chime. Clark already felt terribly open being in here when it was just him and O'Bleck.
The next customer was big, he couldn't help noticing with a flush when the furtive dart of his eyes didn't manage to catch their face. Some of the other merchandise in the shop started to make a little more sense to him.
"Ah— thank you for your help, O'Bleck. Have a good night." Clark ducked his head and hurried for the door.
He walked right past the lumbering customer, eyes widening at the vast difference in height. It was a very special occasion, indeed, to be met with any two-legged creature that dwarfed him so completely.
"See you around, kid!" O'Bleck called as the tall customer reached the counter, and the doorbell saw Clark out of the shop.
Clark had wanted to check the other places on the asteroid to calm himself afterward, but clutching the brown bag of devious-feeling contents (and that little pulse in his abdomen coming back to him), he felt terribly open and suspicious. He could come back another time just to visit and ask, he reasoned to himself.
Clark sat on the space shuttle back home, even stiller and quieter than before. His unoccupied hand pressed against his rousing abdomen under the cloak in a fruitless bid to nurse the incoming pains away. There was a stickiness between his thighs that even his compression couldn't hide from him, but his mind was far elsewhere. He stared distantly out the window, into the speckled constant night, wondering not for the first time how he would've turned out had he grown on Krypton.
How much more normal his own body would've seemed to him, if he were part of a planetary culture built around its specific biological cycle.
Clark's body savoured the refreshing chill of the arctic night as he descended back to Earth, directly towards the North Pole. Save for a lone seal plunging into the water, he did not see another creature for the rest of his flight back.
His home away from Metropolis glimmered despite the depths of the night, crystal structures illuminated from within under a waxing sliver of the Moon. The ice and snow under his feet glowed a radiant pale blue. When his heightened hearing faded temporarily, all was truly quiet here.
Kara, of course, wasn't there when he arrived at the Fortress of Solitude.
Frowning as he remembered, Clark went to the comfortable little ground-level corner where he made his rest area. Having grown up in a small farmhouse, he liked to have the sheltering overhang of crystal formations (the foundations for an open upper floor) above his head whenever he spent the night at the Fortress. His bed was circular, and light blue to fit the Fortress' natural hues, accompanied by a small cuboid nightstand and a simple desk lamp Ma and Pa had him take. A few steps away from this nook was a sitting area: Clark had formed some scrap metal into a round table and three cushioned chairs (though there were never enough people in the Fortress to occupy all seats at a time), based on the swirling designs of some cute cafe tables he'd seen while flying through Metropolis.
From where Clark sat on his bed, he could see Kara's suspended on a platform a few floors up, near the apex of the Fortress. Her sheets, normally a changing wheel of whichever boldness struck her fancy at the time, were stripped bare to their blank-slate white before she left. Unable to decide on something so trivial with other things weighing on her mind. For some reason, the worst of it for Clark was the tidiness of it: approximately three out of four seasons, Kara either never slept or left her bed unmade like a maelstrom. Now it looked like no one ever used it.
Clark had survived tens of them but still dreaded the harshness of winter; on many despairing nights it seemed to him that all it did was take from its organisms — the hibernating and the migratory both. He watched, sometimes as early as October, while Kara would withdraw and hardly acknowledge anything, not even her little cousin. The main signifier of winter's approach for Clark became Kara: hands folded gravely behind her back, still and silent as a sentinel, hovering for hours at a time to look upon the large Krypton replica which spun at the top of the chamber housing Jor-El's consciousness (also inactive in the winter). She had always been stronger than Clark, having spent most of her formative years on the relative giant that was Krypton; her control over her abilities astounded him to this day, as though spiteful of the winter and what it wrought on them all. Even still, Kara was unable to salvage anything physical from the original planet after all these years, so she slowly built the globe from memory. (And come many springs, with Kara's return Clark would eagerly go to reboot Jor-El, noticing a new detail on their little Krypton while waiting for his father to awaken.)
Clark never pried and thus never knew where Kara spent the winter, only that she would leave, and each time he would worry himself sick that he'd never see her again.
In late-November this year, she paused at the entry of the Fortress, then rushed back — as much as a wintering Kryptonian could — to hold Clark in a loose side hug.
"I'll see you in the spring, Kal." She planted a kiss on his forehead, and before he could think to say anything, she was gone. That was the only time she had touched him in the transition between fall and winter.
Now Clark was alone. No Kara and no Jor-El, their personal losses of Krypton likely worsening the psychological effects of winter. In the later years of his adolescence, Clark had asked why Jor-El didn't make a similar replica of Lara Lor-Van, to at least make the Fortress less lonely when the cousins were away. The image of Jor-El only smiled, warm and sad.
"It is something that I could've only dreamed of in the twilight days of Krypton, my son, to have seen Kara safe and to have watched you grow healthy, but the decision to upload even one of our minds into a drive with your spacecraft was not a simple feat for either of us. As designated thinkers, our bodies were more susceptible to the cold season — our psyches by extension, even long after the body is gone. To artificially extend ourselves in this manner was a great mental risk: one that both of us would gladly take for you always. We did not have the time to upload both of ourselves without corruption, thus she trusted me to be your parental guide, and I do not presume to remake the decision for your mother now. She lives on with Krypton, though in our memory."
Clark understood, but remained a little sad he would never get to meet his mother, even if through an afterimage. Though some days he'd thought perhaps it was better this way, to have one less Kryptonian tormented with a purgatory accompanied by only the memories of a dead planet.
"Make no mistake, Kal-El. This is a difficult status for any Kryptonian, but I have never regretted it since you first awakened me in this state. Knowing your mother, she would've felt the same. But she was already content enough to have gotten to hold you and to have seen your face when you were newly born. 'I think I must be the happiest person on the planet right now,' I remember Lara telling me while we watched you shimmer as one with the distant stars, and while Krypton around us was in the midst of imminent collapse."
Clark was honestly not familiar with the older folks' brand of humour back on Krypton, so he didn't know if it was appropriate for him to laugh despite the familiar twinkle in his father's eye. Jor-El had many tales of Krypton: a staggering amount being about Lara, and so rich with tenderness that Clark felt he had always known her. All the way out here, she seemed a distinctly warm and funny person.
Clark glanced to Jor-El's open chamber, now cold and melancholic without the glow of his systems' usual activity. What Clark wouldn't give to hear another of his father's stories right now…
The heated cramps soon began in earnest. Clark curled into his bed with a groan. He turned, sheets twisting with him, and stared into the wall beside him. Deep breaths, he reminded himself: in, and out. In… and out. He remembered the eleventh hour of a team mission, when Batman crouched low and had a shaken child do breathing exercises with him, explaining in the most Batman way possible why focused breathing worked so well to soothe the mind. Perhaps the child — adorably quick to become starstruck despite their previous scare — retained all the information, especially when gently murmured by the Batman, but it slipped Clark's recollection just now. He was blank-faced in his daze but tears stained the blue bedsheets anyway.
He was empty. He was lonely and he was homesick and he was empty.
Slowly, he cast a glance over his shoulder at the foreboding paper bag he left on the nightstand. His cheeks burned when his eyes, giving in to temptation without his say, peered through the bag to rove over the toy and lubricant inside. His abdomen sharply roiled in agreement at the sight.
"Okay, okay…" Clark crawled over, light-headed and woozy as his shaking hands hastily dug out and opened the box. He soon forgot about the little bottle he purchased with it.
The box showed as much, but it was really something else to behold the vividly purple silicone in his hands. Maybe it was the gravity differential between space and Earth, if not the realization of what Clark was about to do, but it felt bigger and weightier like this.
Slipping off his bed in shame, he slowly peeled the Superman suit from his skin. The uniform neatly folded on his bed, he knelt at the foot of it with the toy in hand again, blocking his own view of that chamber because he was naked as the day he was born — if not for the compression from the waist-down. Clark never looked into making corsets for himself; they seemed too rigid for his line of work, and the high-waisted compression shorts had always suited him fine. Though after seeing Kryptonians in such beautiful fittings, his own shorts' flexibility now came at the cost of seeming painfully bland. (Still better than seeing the skin of his body.)
Leaning back against his bed, Clark glanced towards the high ceiling of the Fortress as he rolled the shorts down to his knees. He bit his lip against the rush of cold air washing over his dampened skin, against the cloyingly overripe notes of his own scent steaming into the air. To finally get it over with, he wetly plunged the silicone into himself without ceremony, hilted flush against hot folds.
The relief was instantaneous. Clark moaned low and it seemed to emerge from the very depths of him, thighs trembling and clamping together around his drooping hand, still clutching on the toy's base like an anchor. Panting heavily, Clark twisted the tendril around, massaging where his swollen ovaries and shifted testes pressed uncomfortably deep against his canal. Every soft, minute bump and scrape of the toy's bend and taper shot warm currents of pleasure up his spine, making his pelvic muscles seize on it, melting the sea of fog in his brain.
The floor was cold, cutting through even the substantial fat reserves padding his glutes, aching dull in his seat bones. It was no good place to be doing something like this, but Clark was too tired to change his mind and drag himself back up. He especially didn't want to soil his bed, where he had so nicely left the supersuit. Besides, the cold only intensified the heat radiating and dripping from between his thighs. A feedback loop between pain and pleasure.
Forbidden maw becoming greedy, Clark's hand soon supplicated it with thrusts on top of twists, wincing at the rapid squelches but too far gone to worry overmuch. Clark never got around to touching or opening himself up like this — self-consciousness getting the better of him — not unless he was putting on a show for Lois. His sharp-eyed Lois… who kept herself wedged between his legs to hold his thighs apart, knowing how much his legs liked to clam up and relishing in those many opportunities to strong-arm him open. And how her presence commanded his attention… wide and watery blue eyes staring into the warm abyss even when it felt like he might burn up with it into the night. Tears spilled onto his heaving chest with a quiet whimpering sob.
God… he misses Lois. If only she were here; she'd know how to make everything better.
…She liked comparing his alien anatomy and physiology to that of an angiosperm; he felt all the earthlier for it. She kissed the sweat off his brow. "My pretty little flower, Clark. You're sweet as a fruit, too." Her fingers tickled and gently spread his labia, tracing his vestibule before dipping into his channel (his stigma), already open and sucking in want of more of her. She carved into his walls with her middle and ring fingers, circling his elastic clitoral sheath with the thumb and pressing in to coax out his shaft (the stamen). Clark's hips lifted off the bed to escape the overwhelming pressure of her digits inside him, but she smoothed her other hand over his lower belly, soothing him back down and into it.
"Shh, it's alright. You're so good to the world; now let me take care of you."
Clark was beginning to see stars on every in-thrust, an essence that puddled messily around his behind and twinged in his arm, in his wrist. An irresistible flame burned deep in his gut and demanded completion before it would extinguish. He didn't dare finger his sheath now; the sloppy collisions of the toy's base against it were already such barbs of stimulation. Lois might've rubbed it for him if she were there, pushing him dangerously close to a teetering edge.
"Be good and let go for me, Clark. That's it. You're the most exquisite like this."
Clark gasped when Lois' voice in his head split and shifted a micropitch lower (in the way it often did), the one phasing into the abstract two, and he came. Hips jolting off the floor, his hands dug into the bed behind him, terrified his muscle spasms would loosen his control and he'd float away otherwise. Pure heat rended and ripped through him, exploding from the charge that he had nursed in his core. It rendered him senseless to everything except his own cries and the violent shake and press of his thighs.
The toy slipped out of his slackened body with a wet plop and he collapsed after it into a panting puddle. His compression shorts slipped to his ankles with the remorseful, chastened clamp of his legs; he chanced a look to see the damage.
He had drenched through his shorts and stockings both, the latter starting to irritate the skin of his turgid thighs as the damp fabric rapidly cooled. Clark uncomfortably shifted to cup a hand against his slippery mound, carefully easing its tremors and shielding his insides from the chill of exposure. The inner aches lanced through him fresh, as though his body were punishing him for daring to trick it with a cold substitute for another's touch and fill. Completely surrendered to his misery, Clark removed his undergarments to use for mopping up his mess, and then retreated to the shower room.
He stopped in front of the mirror, frozen by the sight of his reflection (and everything he had been trying to ignore). Fully undressed and uncompressed, Clark looked… flabby, too doughy to be considered anything like the perfect image of Superman. The shoulder-to-body ratio was not so impressive when he was hormonally bottom-heavy: winter fats depositing most conspicuously along the lower abdomen to the pelvis and thighs. Turning to the side, Clark pressed his hands against his pouched belly, wondering if the defined musculature from the summer had ever been real — if this winter might be the end of that, forever. It was hard not to glance at the puffy vulva in the middle of it all, all the softly unspeakable parts tucked within feeling like the culprit behind his every problem, the glisten between his thighs the most damning.
What did anyone see in something like that, on him? Not even Superman looked, let alone felt, like Superman in the pictures. Superman was just another animal, a creature of habit and instinct, no real symbol of virtue or discipline as the people wanted and deserved.
Faraway gaze crawling up from his body on its own, Clark made eye contact with himself.
Growing distressed by the sight of him, Clark quickly covered up the mirror with one of the many spare capes in the Fortress so he could have his cold shower in peace. The water was sharp on his flushed skin, but a welcome distraction from his deeper unease. He scrubbed himself raw with the desperation that it would get rid of all the dirty feelings sticking to his skin. (Didn't work. Why was nothing working?)
He got redressed in fresh compression and uniform, making his hair presentable and thinking he might go for another nightly flight to see if anyone would need help at this hour. But the journey to an apparently unsatisfying orgasm exhausted him and he made the mistake of sitting quiet to first regain some energy. Clark settled by the foot of his bed again, tucking away the toy under his covers and trying to forget what he did. His aching body and fritzing mind didn't let him.
Trembling with the abdominal pangs, he coiled his cape around himself. Too tired to be tempted into another round of false relief, too tired to even get up off the floor. The silence of the Fortress weighed on him. Knowing and accusatory, almost. Clark squeezed his eyes shut.
This was one of his worst winters yet. Clark imagined it would've been far easier if he was on Krypton, somehow. For most intents and purposes, he was an Earthling with no claim to Krypton save for in his remaining family and biology. In other seasons, he would wonder if that was enough (and he could accept it if the answer was no), but surely his suffering now more than proved it? In the thick quietude of the Fortress, Clark permitted himself to dream about impossibilities.
Of course, his rational mind knew that Krypton could never be restored, never come back, and ever be the same lush place it once might have been. The Kryptonian planet and genepool both were functionally deceased now, and its few remaining individuals — however superpowered — could do nothing to reverse this biological conclusion. 'Kryptonians are now extinct'. His heart clenched as it echoed the matter-of-fact statement with a pulse: first read from an obscure intergalactic reference codex years ago, then inscribed onto his squishiest innermost walls.
His volatile instincts dreamed about it nonetheless, about being good enough that perhaps he'd be rewarded and Krypton could be rebirthed from him, his fatty tissues eaten away as they were most meant to be.
The clench of Clark's eyelids relaxed, and he fell into a restless half-slumber. The voice(s) visited him again.
"I know exactly what your body wants. Allow me."
Many strong, well-worked arms and hands wrapped around him, immobilizing and intoxicating to a wintering Kryptonian. Clark gasped but soon wriggled playfully, egging them on to bind him tighter. A familiar hand solidly pressed against his lower belly: lit a match for his bonfire and wet his inner thighs — made his insides yawn and throb. The limbs entangled around his legs prevented him from squeezing them together, no feeling nor openly delighting in the slip of his lubrication in between skin. The hand traced up his body, farther from where he would've liked it. And it was like Clark didn't know how to speak anymore, only growl or whine his complaints. The brush along his pained chest was but a small salve for his frustrating afflictions.
"…Shhh. I understand."
With Clark's body still held by an uncountable number of arms, the hand gently grasped his throat, pausing to feel his wild pulse, and then cupped his jaw to make him look up into the dark. Clark's breath faltered.
He and the arms were suspended and floating wistlessly through the universe together. The stars were strung generously above him; his eyes darted in a frenzy as he became lost in the sight. The dark and space was all somehow warm despite Clark's exposure, not harsh nor boiling — only bizarre and wonderful. His body protectively cocooned by the arms and hands. And like a pinprick in a dark-canvased cross-stitch only just begun, he saw it.
Krypton, unhurt: a round blue egg, cast in the forever blood-golden light of Rao. As his sight honed in, the painstaking details Kara had etched into their globe revealed themselves. Clear as a fond and desperate memory stored in his own mind's eye, like Kal-El got to be reared by Krypton too.
Another hand started to pet him — softer than the one gripping into his jaw — running over his forehead and carding through his locks. Tears beaded and trailed off into little stars when Clark's eyelids drooped.
"Do you see?" a gruff voice asked. Viscous yet sweeter than molasses. A thickly covered thumb wandered and pressed against his lower lip. Clark licked and kissed it. He hoped this was answer enough, hoped for a reward; he craved to feel the bare skin of such a firmly loving touch on him.
Then something broke the stillness from outside.
Clark woke and sat up with a start, dormant animalistic senses ricocheting in his head to lock onto the disturbance. His limbs jittered in an unusual anxiousness to defend the Fortress.
Another set of dull taps on a crystalline surface. Heart hammering against his ribs, Clark looked up.
It was Batman, perched on top of the Fortress and staring through that icy skylight to peer right at Clark, expression unreadable under the cowl. Seeing Superman finally registered him, the Bat ran off, seemingly unperturbed by the precarious footholds out there. The dark cape fluttered out of Clark's sight.
Soon after, he heard the mechanisms in the looming Fortress doors rolling open. Clark was wholly panicking now — he forgot he had registered Bruce's biometrics into the Fortress just last spring in cases of emergency. Did this constitute an emergency to Bruce? Clark thought the stress might spike his metabolism right there and he would explode like an unfortunate mirror to Krypton.
(Oh, God, he hoped there'd been enough time for the air to clear; Bruce's nose was sharp, too sharp. He would certainly recognize the smell of Kryptonian arousal, especially in the otherwise sterile environs of the Fortress.)
Clark remained frozen to the floor as he watched the doors ominously slide open, the silhouette of a bat waiting patiently on the other side.