#raineyday

“That’s not—” Clark cuts himself off with a sigh, because that’s not what he said, but when does Conner ever hear him anyway? When does Conner ever listen to him anyway? “Conner. Ma and Pa don’t need trouble, alright? They have the farm to take care of, for one thing, and upsetting people in town is going to reflect poorly on them for not raising you right.” 

“Why?” Conner asks sourly. “They didn’t raise me. Everybody in Smallville knows they didn’t raise me.” 

“Conner,” Clark says in exasperation. Just–he knows Conner doesn’t mean it badly, but what a damn ungrateful thing to say after Ma and Pa took him in. 

“What?!” Conner demands with a scowl. “They didn’t! If anybody’s pissed at me and taking it out on Ma and Pa instead of me, then they’re the stupid pricks with a problem.”

"A problem that they're bringing to Ma and Pa," Clark reminds him shortly, trying not to snap it. "Which is the same difference, Conner."

Conner just looks even angrier, for some reason, his shoulders hunching defensively.

"We're not in front of any fucking civilians, you don't have to call me that," he snaps himself, and Clark—blinks, a little thrown by that comment.

"What, your name?" he asks blankly. "I—Conner, I'm not going to call you Superboy on the farm, for God's sake. Why would I do that?"

"What the fuck ever," Conner snaps again, visibly bristling, and again, just looks angrier.

Clark—exhales, roughly, and pushes up his glasses just enough to outright pinch the bridge of his nose this time. It's just . . . this is just—they're just getting off-topic. Again. Like always.

He just doesn't understand why the kid's gotten so hard to talk to. He can't say he and Conner ever really communicated as well as he would've liked, but at least the kid was willing to try, and at least it didn't always feel like pulling teeth.

Specifically, like pulling an animal's rotted tooth before it could get infected and getting a hoof in the gut or fangs in the arm for the effort, because they didn't understand it was for their own good. Just—metaphorically, obviously.

Ma left them both a plate of sup-purr on the little round table in the keech-enn, and left a single sheet of paper with a circle drawn on it with a copy of the wall counter’s circle of symbols and clicking wands recorded carefully inside of it stuck to the fridd-juh. The wands aren’t in the position that Ma drew them in, but Kara knows they move–it’s a counter, after all–so . . . 

So Ma and Pa will . . . be back when the wands move to the position Ma drew, Kara thinks? She thinks that’s what Ma had meant by that. Ma had made a point of pointing from the diagram to the wall counter and then back again before they’d left, so . . . so she thinks that’s what Ma had meant by that. 

She hopes that’s what Ma had meant by that.

Then they’re alone again, just like they were alone in their ships–alone all the way to this planet. Kara doesn’t know what to do, left all alone like this for the first time since Ma and Pa found them after the two of them had crashed in their fields together. 

At least this time she can hold Kal without having to crawl through the wreckage of their ships for it, she thinks. 

Kara feeds Kal his sup-purr carefully in his tall little chair with the attached tray, and eats her own mechanically but efficiently in quick snatched bites as he chews his own. It doesn’t taste like anything, but she needs to eat even if it doesn’t taste like anything. She needs to stay healthy and strong and alert, and she needs to be what Kal needs her to be, and she needs to be strong enough to protect him. 

She’s not strong at all, but Kal needs her to be strong, so–so she has to be strong. Has to be strong enough. Has to be whatever he needs to stay safe. 

If she’s not that–if she’s not that, then what did their family even save her for? 

“Under the circumstances and given the source, I’m assuming it’s either about a girl or property destruction,” he replies resignedly. “Or more likely a few girls.” 

“Clark Joseph Kent!” Ma says, looking even more offended. 

“I just can’t imagine what else would have her that bothered, Ma,” Clark says, because Cathy Mueller is just as vehement as Ma in her righteous indignation, so if she feels her boys or her nieces or whoever else were treated poorly or taken advantage of . . . well, it’d definitely explain why she’d been so blatantly, seethingly upset, if nothing else. He can’t say he’s ever even seen her that upset with anyone under the age of twenty-five before, in fact. 

“I just saw Cathy this past Tuesday,” Pa says with a frown of his own, folding his arms. “She didn’t say a thing.” 

“Last I saw her she was telling me she thought Conner was a decent kid, just awful quiet,” Ma says, still obviously upset. “She’s never said a word against him to me!” 

“Well, Conner hasn’t been in town that long,” Clark says as diplomatically as he can, because clearly that conversation took place before Cathy’d ever heard a thing about Conner, because while “decent” applies, “awful quiet” is the exact antithesis of the kid. There is just not a version of Conner that’s ever been any kind of quiet. Even when he’s sulking, it turns into a blowup more often than not. “Maybe he just . . . needs to settle in a little more.” 

“It’s been six months, Clark, that’s a damn lifetime at the boy’s age,” Pa says, raising an eyebrow at him. “Probably feels even longer for him than it does for the other kids his age, in fact, given it’s been a bigger chunk of his life than any of theirs.” 

Clark doesn’t even know what he’s supposed to do about that, actually. Talk to him about it, he supposes, but that always feels so damn awkward. Conner never really seems to respond well to it or really understand the point he’s making anyway. Especially lately, because every time Clark’s tried to talk to Conner about problem behavior since he moved out here, the kid either sits there like a sullen brick wall or gets his back up and starts snapping at him. It’s just not . . . productive, really. 

Clark doesn’t remember being like that as a kid, when a teacher or coach or just any adult in his life had told him that he was doing something wrong. He’d gotten upset at adults who’d had unreasonable or unfair expectations or just hadn’t known what they were talking about, yes, or ones who’d refused to listen to his side of things, but not ones who’d just been offering basic life advice or correcting a misstep. He’d definitely never made trouble for Ma and Pa because he’d decided to act out around town, cheerleaders or not. And definitely hadn’t done any deliberate property destruction, since obviously that’s still on the table too. 

He just doesn’t understand the kid, sometimes. Or–most of the time, really. He genuinely cannot think of a single kid who’s ever been in his life that was so hard to just talk to, across literally every single age range. Jimmy was only a couple of years older than Conner when he first met him; Dick was half his age. Jason–well, he didn’t know Jason as well, but he was younger than Conner too and the poor kid got himself killed while acting out less than Conner tends to. Tim’s polite to a fault, and Damian . . . well, Damian’s a bit difficult, but you just have to be sure to approach things from his perspective. There’s never been a sidekick or a Titan or any teenage hero in the community that was any worse than a civilian teenager just trying to figure themselves out, but talking to Conner is just . . . 

He just doesn’t understand why Conner always makes it so damn hard to just talk to him. The kid’s more stubborn and less willing to listen and more unpredictable than some supervillains Clark’s known, or at least it feels that way. Even after a good two or three years of knowing each other, Clark never really knows what’s going to set him off, it’s–actually, it’s closer to four years now, isn’t it. 

Well . . . Conner was about fifteen or sixteen when he’d met him in Metropolis; he’d spent a while in Hawaii and the Wild Lands, and then a while with Cadmus, and then a few months back in Metropolis where he’d managed to get the entire apartment building he was living in destroyed, so . . . closer to four, yes. And at least a year of that he wasn’t actually aging for, and essentially none of it he’d spent in school, so when Clark had been getting papers set up for the kid he’d just written him down as “seventeen” and made up some excuse about his previous guardians home-schooling him. The school had given him a few assessment tests and placed him as a junior–which honestly had been better than Clark would’ve expected considering Conner’s patchwork education–and Clark had left all the necessary forged paperwork with Ma and Pa and assumed Conner would know better than to make trouble for them.

Given the amount of times the kid’s played hooky already, probably he should’ve expected a situation like whatever’s got Cathy Mueller in a twist to come up by now, Clark has to admit. 

“Well, that’d be the place to start, I’d imagine,” Clark says, because again, it’s not as if Conner would have said anything, but he doesn’t want to upset Ma by saying that. And that’s assuming Conner’d even noticed that he’d upset anyone anyway, because that is also very much an issue that the kid has historically had on multiple occasions. “I’ll just see what he has to say, Ma; figure out what happened from there.” 

“You really don’t need to, Clark, we can talk to Conner fine on our own,” Pa says, then snorts wryly. “We ain’t that out of practice with having a teenage boy ‘round the place.” 

“Well, as I recall I left for college a good eighteen years ago, Pa, so you might be a tad out of practice,” Clark says, unable to repress a faint little smile in response. Just–he can only hope he's being half as good a father to Jon as Pa's been to him, even after all this time. That only makes him want to avoid sticking Pa with an unpleasant conversation with a moody teenager even more, though. 

“It's like riding a bike, boy, you don't forget,” Pa scoffs, and Clark . . . exhales, briefly, and thinks–maybe Pa's right, and he should just leave this one to him and Ma. But Conner’s just so damn stubborn and volatile, and Clark hates the idea of the kid talking back to or even yelling at them while they're just trying to figure out what he's gotten himself into and see if there's anything to be done for it. Especially since they’re going to have to deal with whatever mood Conner’ll be in after the conversation either way; that just seems like too much to put on them. At least he can make sure if Conner gets upset over this, he’s going to be upset with him and not them, and by the next time Clark’s back in Smallville it’ll hopefully all have blown over. 

Just–he really doesn’t know what to do about the kid, sometimes. He needs  to figure out what’s got Cathy Mueller so upset before it gets any worse, though, so unfortunately he’s going to have to do something. 

He just wishes Conner would meet him halfway at least on something; at least once. He feels like the kid used to be more willing to do that kind of thing, but lately . . . 

Doesn’t this dude have an actual, like, job and career? Like, a pretty good one? Do locally-famous investigative journalists in Metropolis not make enough money to buy work clothes that didn’t come from, like, Burlington or an outlet mall or whatever? 

Major ew. 

Superboy has no idea how Superman got a soulmate who’s so bad at dressing himself that he looks like he dressed himself bad on purpose. Like, what even is that? Kent is a way bigger dude than that suit is making him look–which his shitty posture is not helping with, for the record–and like, not actually as hopeless-looking as those big clumsy glasses and terrible hairstyle would imply either. Again, Superboy has no idea how or why Lane is willing to be seen with him, much less, like, be marrying him. 

Yeah, they’re definitely soulmates. There is literally no other explanation. For one thing, Superman is right there, so Superboy doesn’t know how she even noticed Clark Kent to begin with, much less noticed him long enough for them to realize they had matching marks. Which–he has no idea if Superman and Lane had a situationship thing going before that or if they just acted like they did because it distracted people from figuring out Superman’s actual soulmate. Because, like, Superman occasionally being seen with the hot reporter chick he’s saved about a thousand times makes way more sense than Superman being seen with the dweeby reporter dude, and Superboy cannot imagine how anybody wouldn’t have figured out they had to be soulmates if they were hanging out. 

. . . actually, Superboy’s not sure, but are they, like . . . romantic soulmates? ‘Cuz he kinda just assumed they’d be platonic and Lane and Kent were romantic, but like . . . he doesn’t actually know or anything. Shit, maybe Lane and Kent are platonic and they’re just getting married as, like, another smokescreen thing or for, he doesn’t know, fuckin’ tax purposes or something. Superman doesn’t even pay taxes, he’s pretty sure, so . . . yeah, fuck if he knows. 

It is so, so weird that Superman’s soulmate is Clark Kent, though. Though like, maybe it’s because of the thing where Clark Kent is the literal last person that Superboy is pretty sure anybody would assume would be Superman’s soulmate. Like, that might be a thing there. 

“Ah,” Jazz pants, and Red Hood clings to her like she’s the one and only life preserver in a thousand miles of open ocean. 

“Alpha,” he keens very, very quietly, and sobs again. His hips jerk against the bricks. Her knot aches. “Alpha, alpha, alphaaaaa.” 

“S’okay,” Jazz manages roughly, resisting the itch in her teeth. She wants to bite him. She is not going to, but she very much wants to. “You’re okay. You’re good. You’re doing so good. Just like that, omega. Come on.” 

Red Hood keens again, a little louder and a lot more unevenly, and she presses a kiss against his bared throat where she isn’t going to bite. He smells so good, even past the lingering traces of stress and fear. He smells so good. 

But he also still smells like stress and fear, so she’s not really enjoying it all that much anymore. 

“You’re good, omega,” she repeats, her voice gone even rougher. Red Hood sobs into her shoulder again. She tries to stroke a soothing hand over his hip and thigh. He sobs louder. 

She really, really regrets telling him she was going to breed him. 

“M’not,” Red Hood chokes, and Jazz isn’t sure what–“M’bad. Did everything bad. Fucked it all up so bad. Always fuck it up. Always.” 

Dammit, she thinks, pressing her lips into a thin line for a moment and digging her fingers into his hips. 

“Not with me,” she says, because she obviously isn’t going to just tell him platitudes when she knows nothing about what he thinks he fucked up; whether he actually made the mistakes he thinks he made or not, he won’t believe that. Who would? “You’re being so good for me, omega. You smell so good and you take me so good and you’re so, so pretty when you come on my knot.” 

. . . the pollen is definitely influencing some of the things she’s saying, yeah. But, well–it’s not like it isn’t true too. 

“Liar,” Red Hood croaks against her shoulder. He didn’t believe that she liked the way he smelled before, either, and she wonders if he believes her calling him “pretty”. 

“Only when it’s more practical to be. And I’m really not feeling very practical about you right now,” she says, and sparks her pseudo-core against his to reinforce her point. Just a gentle little spark, though, because his core is still cracked and creaking and she still doesn’t actually know how it’s made out of two things, not just–

Oh, she realizes when the wick catches. 

It’s not a metal core or a glass core: those elements are just the cracked and battered lantern wrapped around his actual core. It’s . . . light. A light core inside a lantern, low and guttering but just bright enough now to illuminate the sharp, dark angles of it. 

She might not have picked sparking her pseudo-core against it, if she’d realized that sooner.