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“How overprepared do you think your boy is gonna be?”
“What?”
“Tim,” Martha says, and doesn’t let her smile show when Conner finally looks at her for the first time in an hour. “He’s been here for dinner before, but I bet he’ll come with at least two bottles of wine like he’s got to impress us.”
“If it’s just two and he doesn’t have extras in his car just in case you don’t enjoy it - or you enjoy it a lot - I’ll eat my shoe.” Conner snorts, and Martha grins to finally see him smiling - but then he’s back to looking at the remnants of apple chunks on his cutting board like they’re dead children, and Martha sighs.
“Conner,” she says, and steps up to rub the back of her wrist on his shoulder, careful to not get flour on his shirt. “If you need more time-”
"I'm just nervous, Ma!" he’s all grins, all laughter, but he's still too much of a kid to even try fooling her.
"We've met your boy before," she says, but Conner's powers rattle the teaspoons as he brushes his fingers past the benchtop to grab more cinnamon, which is about as good as the words: not like this.
And it's fair. Meeting your kid's friend is pretty different to meeting their partner, even if they started in each other's pockets, and it gets more complicated when all the heroics come into it.
Robin's been a semi-regular feature at their house since Conner's return. He’d even come by with Batman once or twice before Conner had even moved in, curiously peeking around the black cape but uncertain in a farmhouse, cautious about where to put his feet. Since Conner had stayed in Smallville and Robin kept coming by to visit, he's become better at knowing where to step, but in the few weeks crossover when both of them had still been too city-slick to fit in, it'd brought a grin to her face to watch them try and avoid cowpats (or trip each other into them).
But tonight it's not going to Robin, with his sunglasses and his jokes and Conner spiriting him away as soon as he'd arrived, with both boys normally not even appearing for dinner: tonight it's Tim.
That's about as different as it can get, really.
She puts a hand over the teaspoons, quieting the clink, and presses her shoulder into his. "Well even if Pa runs him off with the shotgun we'll have a good pie out of it. I like what you're doing with the lattice on this one."
" Ma ," Conner says, playing at long-suffering but smiling, and the tips of his ears are red. "Don't joke like that, he gets shot at enough."
"He'll be a good dodge, then!"
"Mrs. Martha Kent, as though anyone could outrun your sharpshooting.” Jonathan says as he presses a kiss to her cheek. She jumps a little, surprised by his sudden appearance, and bats his side in recrimination for startling her.
“Well if he’s had practice,” she says congenially, and Conner and Johnathan snort.
“Ma, again, what if we just don’t shoot him?” Conner traces the pastry edge, carefully pushing down with his fingers, and Jonathan leans over to make an approving, delighted noise.
"A pi pie?"
"I thought it'd-" Conner says, staring at it with his lip between his teeth before he grins and presses more firmly against the scalloped rim. Numbers press themselves into the pastry in tiny pinpricks, circling the edge in a decreasing spiral. “Yeah. It’s good, right?"
Martha looks left in time to see Jonathan catch her eye, and she nods. Conner's still thinking about that boy of his, even over making pie, and no matter how long it took it's still sweet to see him so smitten. Sweet to see Conner actually being able to - allowed to - put some of that affection out into the world where it belongs, instead of in his back pocket where Robin used to stay. It’s the only way to get his mind off his own nerves - try and keep him thinking about someone else. All things considered, though, the fact that the current someone else is the reason he’s posturing and preening, well…it’s not the most useful trick.
“It must've taken a while to get right,” Martha says, and then bumps him gently with her hip. “Now scoot for a sec, I need the cups.”
Conner’s moving as soon as she bumps him, well-used to operating in the kitchen with her, and she smiles. Clark still fumbles getting around her, more used to Jonathan and the times they’d cook together to take the job off her chore list, or running through some quick meals for university before he’d moved, but Conner’s idle hands had borne an edge of frustration. When she’d figured out that he’d never used those hands to make things, she’d set him onto the onions until one day he’d walked his way through making dinner for the whole family without realising she’d not stepped in. He’ll never make an eager cook, but he grins when he bakes, and the soft, startled expression when they’d complimented his first curry has made him a semi-frequent companion in her kitchen.
Sometimes it still makes her heart pang to think of that look on his face. So many conflicts, open and unhidden. Clark can lie if he needs to, started learning how to shut his expressions under a calming smile back when he was a kid, but Conner never applied those lessons to anything but heroics. In the farmhouse he’s easy to read. And the reading of him - all that terrified longing, the slight betrayal when he realised Martha hadn’t helped and was now expecting him to serve up his own consequences - had broken Martha’s heart.
She’d done her own research after that, confused as to the extreme reaction, and even the things publicly available…the implications she’d been able to draw had left her wretched. Plus, she knows the more specific details, the ones that hurt - well, they never make it into the news. Clark’s let slip more than a few adventures that Lois has never reported on, and the horror of those had made her wish there was no need for heroes. Why did it have to be her boy, laced up to an alien plant and reliving his greatest, secret dreams? Why was her son the one who had to get back up, again and again, who had enemies corrupt his powers till he walked through her home like a phantom, terrified to touch anything in case he’d break it?
Their whole world was glass, but he’d at least not had to treat her like that, not until his powers stumbled from superstrength to a fluctuating parody and he’d spent weeks skin-starved and panicked when they reached out.
And Clark had at least had them, had home and safety. From the few things Conner has let slip about Hawaii, and the way Cassie, Bart, and Tim all act…
She looks down at the cups with a tiny sigh, and knows she’ll never regret Conner falling into their family, but she wishes that to get here he hadn’t had to suffer. Some part of her, the part that caught Conner sleeping on the roof when he first moved in, the part that still thinks about his expression when he’d first served dinner, will never forgive Clark for not immediately bringing Conner home.
(And Clark had been right not to; she’d heard what had happened regarding Conner’s mind-controlled betrayal, had seen the aftermath of Conner’s clone, she knows their lives, but-
But. )
The doorbell rings, and the breeze that brushes her fringe belies what Conner’s done. “Conner Kent, do not superspeed on my carpets!” she yells, just as Conner says,
“I’ve got it!”
“How many times do you think it will take for our boys to learn?” Jonathan asks, and Martha clicks her tongue and drapes her apron over a kitchen chair, heading for the front door.
She has to try not to smile at the sight of Tim stuck on the doormat. Both boys are hovering awkwardly, their normal process of hello-goodbye disrupted by the fact that Robin - Tim - hasn’t been dragged up to Conner’s room. “Come in, dear. We don’t need you freezing to death before you enjoy dinner!”
“Good evening, Mrs. Kent,” Tim says, and then shoves forward a wine bag. “I bought a white and a red - I understand you and Lois prefer different vintages?”
“See, now why does she get to be Lois but I still have to be Mrs. Kent?” Martha says, sharing a commiserating look with Conner that only makes him look caught. God, that boy. He'd take the fall for a hen house if the fox looked like Tim. Still, the wines are a sweet gesture, so she smiles at him and takes the bottles to the dining room.
“Conner, will you and Tim grab us some glasses?” she says, to get them out of the front door. “Three, I think; Clark and Lois will be here soon.”
Conner’s already taken Tim's wrist and is tugging him away. “Sure, Ma. And the little Christmas charms, too? For the glasses?”
“Oh! Yes, the ones Jon made, please.”
Swiftly, covered by the subtle noises from the kitchen, Martha trades out the glasses already sitting on the table, tucking them into a cabinet. Conner’s probably not paying attention, so she’s pretty sure she’ll get away with the little misdirect. They needed the excuse for a moment together; she knows that Conner would never have let himself ‘skimp’ on helping out, even if she’d tried to give him permission. Not when he’d been the one to request bringing Tim to a family dinner.
Martha takes another extra moment in the dining room, straightening the forks and catching Jonathan heading back outside to finish lighting the lanterns by the barn, before she heads over to the kitchen.
Conner’s definitely not paying attention, because he doesn’t look at the door or the hall as she approaches. Martha doesn’t mean to, but the angles mean she’s hidden with accidental ease. He’s backed against the sink, hands on Tim’s hips and head bent low and close, wanting to bring himself into Tim’s space.
Conner had shot up like a weed when he'd gotten back - a side effect of the 'healing pod' Bart had found him in, apparently - but he still hunches his shoulders the same way to bring himself into Tim’s space. It’s like, just a little bit, that he’s forgotten how tall he is - or that he wants to pretend, for a moment, that they’re still the same height: that Conner doesn’t look more like Clark with each passing day, that Tim doesn’t still look like he’s missing too many meals.
“So am I rating that interaction for you, or did the excel give you a proper prediction this time?” Conner asks, and Tim’s nose scrunches.
“I literally just walked in,” he says, and Conner’s hands slide under Tim’s sweater. It’s a move that makes Tim soften, and his fingers press to Conner’s cheeks. “Besides, I’ve already decided I’ll employ either action plan two or action plan four.”
“Did you really-”
“No,” Tim says, laughing lightly. “Well, not for Mrs. Kent at least. I’ve got a plan if things get awkward with Clark.”
“You work with him.”
“Does this look like a work situation?” Tim retorts, “No, it looks like I'm meeting his mom and his wife for Christmas dinner.” He tugs Conner’s cheeks and Conner grins, poking out his tongue to try licking Tim’s knuckles. Tim yips and steps away, grinning. “You literally have no room to talk either, geeze. Work with him. When B-”
“Don’t give a shit about Batman,” Conner says, grinning, and Tim laughs even harder.
“Get the glasses, clone boy, I don’t know where you keep the fancy cups.”
“What, you don’t have our kitchen layout memorised?”
“Layout? Yes. Set up? No.”
“You’ve been here enough.”
“ Fancy glasses,” Tim says, and then goes, “Oh, hey, is this yours? Hah. Pi pie.”
Conner grins at the kitchen cabinets, and Martha knocks on the door frame gently to get their attention, smiling when Tim steps into Conner’s shadow. It’s instinct, easy and unremarked, the way long-familiar intimacy lets you know a friend’s walking pace. She knows Jonathan’s favourite candles and his least favourite type of hiking trail, and love has awarded them the same familiarity as Tim and Conner wear.
They wear it younger; she and Jonathan have worn it longer. The differences between both still make her feel soft, like a reflection of her past given new life. She still remembers the name of her first best friend, and the other put a ring on her finger. For them it may just end up being one and the same.
They’ve both grown so much, in bits and pieces she’s not been privy to, but she couldn’t be more proud to see them still living the way they want.
“Conner, Tim,” she calls, and watches Conner tilt his head toward her and soften, aware of her heartbeat, her hands, her gentle adoration, and not at all surprised when she gathers them both into her arms. “I'm glad you could make it home.”