Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I'm serious, Ma. Just be nice."

"I'm always nice."

Jonathan laughed, but stopped when Martha glared at him. He returned his attention to his coffee and his book rather than contradict his wife's sweet nature. Clark had bought him an ereader, but his father simply couldn't resist cheap thrift store paperbacks. He also did not seem to feel any shame regarding how many of them featured shirtless cowboys on the cover.

"If I drag him out here and he ends up getting interrogated about his business practices, he's going to sulk for a month. At least." Clark had his hands around a mug of cocoa, but he'd been neglecting it long enough that all his marshmallows had melted.

"You're really winning me over, you know, telling me all about your sulky friend." She was scrubbing the dishes she'd made in the process of making the cookies now in the oven, even though Clark had bought her a dishwasher. Unless there were enough dishes to fill the thing, she never used it.

"You know that's not what I meant," he sighed.

"I know, I know. I'll be nice. Where do you think he'll want to sleep? Upside-down in the barn?"

"Maybe," he said, and Martha laughed. "We can put a mattress in my room. He'll want Diana to have the guest room, I know that for sure." Clark looked down at his cocoa to reheat it, a difficult-to-explain tightening in the backs of his eye sockets.

"I assume I need to be nice to her, too."

"I'm not as worried about that," he said. "Everyone loves Diana. I don't know if anyone's really done Christmas with her, yet. She seemed excited about it."

"Aww." Martha grabbed a towel to dry her hands, checked the time and grabbed an oven mitt. "I hope we don't disappoint her."

"You won't."

"These are for guests," Martha warned as she set the cookie sheet on top of the stove to cool. "Don't either of you go trying to steal some."

"Are you accusing Superman of theft?" Clark teased.

She pulled off the oven mitt, reached out to ruffle his hair. "I am accusing Clark Kent of being a little pig is what I'm doing. I'm still mad about those cupcakes."

"Ma, I was eleven."

"I'll be mad as long as I want to be mad." She kissed the top of his head. "I'm going upstairs to make sure the guest room's fit to be seen, don't think I won't know if you try to be sneaky."

"Sneaky isn't my thing." He sipped at his cocoa as his mother left the kitchen, and tried not to feel nervous. It was less that he was worried what his friends would think of his parents, and more the reverse. Insofar as Bruce could be said to be anyone's friend. More of a grudging coworker, but that was close enough to friends where Bruce was concerned.

"You know," Jonathan said, eyes still on his book, "you can always invite your friend Lois over."

Clark stared at the foam of melted marshmallow on top of his drink. "She's got her own family to celebrate with."

"It doesn't have to be for Christmas."

He made a weak attempt at a smile. "I don't think she'd be particularly interested in coming out to Kansas."

"Not even for Superman?"

"Not for Clark Kent." That might have come out a little more bitter than he'd meant it to. He sipped at his cocoa, as if that would make it sweeter.

"Still not planning to tell her?"

"Not really."

"Huh." Despite his apparent inattention, Clark knew his father's focus was actually on the conversation. It was just the way Jonathan was, always seeming half elsewhere. Secretly, he was interested to see what happened when Bruce met him. "Don't trust her?"

"It isn't like that."

"No?"

"I don't think she'd tell anyone."

"There's more to trust than keeping secrets, kiddo."

Clark started heating his cocoa again, not for any reason except that he could. "I know." He stopped when it started to boil.

"When I was a kid," Jonathan began, before stopping. "Lord, what an old man thing to say." He set down his book with a look of disgust. "Should I just quit while I'm ahead?"

This time Clark's smile was real. "You know I love your old man stories." He told them so rarely, after all. Especially from any point when he could have been called a kid. Clark had only a patchwork image of his father before he'd been a father, patchier the further back it went, built mostly of scraps dropped in non sequiturs and stories told by his mother.

He knew enough to know there was a reason he didn't know his grandparents. He didn't blame Jonathan for not talking about it much. But he still cherished the times that he did.

Jonathan sighed. "I wasn't a kid-kid, mind, but I was a kid. Before I met Martha, I was dating this girl—I liked her a lot, but I had a problem. Me and my health troubles, you know. Felt like I couldn't be myself until I dealt with it. Growing up real religious, it takes a long time to be able to shake that feeling. Secrets are second nature in a house like that. But I was on my own for the first time, I loved her, I felt like the world was my oyster. So I told her." He sighed again, took off his glasses to wipe them against his shirt. "She didn't take it well. Don't blame her for it, necessarily, but it ended the whole thing right there. She didn't see it as me having a problem, just that I was a problem. That was a hell of a thing to have happen, opening myself up only to find out the person supposed to love me best didn't love the real me at all. Felt like dying, if I'm honest." He was very matter-of-fact about it, now, with so many years between him and her. He slid his glasses back on, adjusted them to see if he'd managed to get the dirt off.

"So when I met Marty… well. I'd learned to keep my fool mouth shut by then. I was still better off than I'd been back with the church, that's what I told myself. Your ma, though, she could always tell I wasn't happy. Could tell I was hiding things from her, but she didn't pry. Might've been older by then, but we were still a couple of runaways at heart, living in the city and taking what we could get. And I went a long time keeping my secrets. Long, long time. I knew she was different, I was sure she was, but I didn't tell her anyway. Long as I didn't tell her, she'd never have a chance to prove me wrong. Didn't want to give her a chance to disappoint me, figured false hope was better than none." Clark felt his stomach twist with something like recognition, tried to ignore it.

"Wish I could tell you I was brave—if I'm teaching life lessons, seems like that'd be a better one. But it was Marty that took a leap of faith, figured me out and asked if I wanted help. Don't know if I ever would have told her, otherwise. Wasn't even mad that I hadn't trusted her with it. My problem was her problem, and we'd work on it together. It was everything I'd ever wanted, us against the world, and I'm still not sure what I did to deserve it. Might not have. Might not still. But if I could do it all over, I'd have told her a lot sooner." Jonathan looked at what remained of his coffee, debating whether to make more. "That's all I'm going to say about it."

They were quiet a while as Clark waited for the lump in his throat to subside. He could hear his mother upstairs, humming as she changed out the sheets in the guest room for nicer ones. "There's two things a person can think when they find out," he said finally. "It's either: Superman is actually Clark Kent. Or, it's: Clark Kent is actually Superman."

"And she could go either way."

"Basically." He shrugged, as if it was of no consequence. "We're not really anything. Not really. It's more of a game. Rearranging a puzzle while she tries to put it together." He frowned. "It's more fun than that makes it sound."

"Is it? Fun, I mean. For you."

His smile was faint. "Yeah. I think so, yeah." That felt like damning with faint praise, but he couldn't think of a better word for it. A dance where the lead kept changing.

Depending on what suit he wore, their relationship was completely different, and he couldn't decide which he preferred. He made her laugh when he was Clark. She trusted him more, but only because she thought she had him figured out. Superman was a mystery to be solved, and he suspected sometimes that she didn't really want to. Maybe for the same reason he didn't want to let her. Didn't want him to disappoint her.

Now there was a thought.

"She's never boring," he said finally, which really seemed no better than calling her fun.

Jonathan smiled and picked his book back up. "As long as you're happy, kiddo." He looked over Clark's shoulder at the stove. "Think those cookies are cool enough to eat?"

Clark leaned back in his chair, further than he should have been able to without falling over, and reached for one. "Clark! Don't you dare!" He froze. He looked through the walls, and confirmed that his mother was still upstairs in the guest bedroom, boxing up some of the clutter that had found its way in there.

Jonathan sighed. "It was worth a try."

Bruce was primarily in Kansas for Alfred's sake.

Dick had decided he wanted to spend the holidays with his new team. Bruce couldn't fault him for that. He'd have been perfectly happy not to bother with any festivities at all. He'd told Alfred more times than he could count that it was alright for him to take a vacation, visit old friends and relax. But the man refused to leave Bruce home alone at Christmas.

Thus: Kansas. The nearest airport, which wasn't near at all. A rental car, driving through a snowy landscape with a minimum of visual interest. The occasional barn.

It might have been relaxing, but the stillness made him anxious. Inactivity felt wrong, wrong like being able to see the horizon without a city skyline in the way. Somewhere that wasn't here, something was happening, and there was nothing he could do about it. Technically, that was always true. But usually he was at least doing something.

He had no expectation of enjoying himself. It wasn't anyone's fault. It just was what it was.

Fortunately, he was very good at pretending to enjoy himself. He might not be able to fool the living lie detectors, but Clark's parents deserved a nice holiday.

The Kents' farm had a driveway long enough to be a road. It was no wonder they'd managed to hide an alien in a place like this. Who would ever think to look? Even if they wanted to, they'd need binoculars. Clark was waiting by the porch as Bruce pulled in. It was strange to see him with neither suit nor glasses. An unfamiliar space between both identities.

"You made it!" Clark sounded entirely too pleased.

"I said I would."

"I know you did." Bruce resented the implication, regardless of its accuracy. Rather than acknowledge it, he circled the car to open the trunk. "Bruce, that is—I told you that you didn't have to bring presents."

"You did," Bruce agreed. Without asking, Clark started to help unpack the car. Bruce didn't protest.

"I hope you didn't spend too much."

"That's relative."

"You did literally the opposite of what I told you."

"I'm a loose cannon." Clark lead the way inside, and Bruce followed.

"Did you put lead foil around these boxes?"

"The fact that you can tell means I was justified."

Their parade toward the living room did not go unnoticed by Clark's parents. "Oh good Lord." Bruce had never actually met them before. Mrs. Kent was both older and younger than he'd expected. He wasn't sure what he'd expected. Someone wider, softer around the edges.

"Hello, Mrs. Kent."

"You're as big as Clark," she said, sounding faintly offended. "He's an alien, what's your excuse?"

"My house has tall ceilings." He set his boxes down beside the ones Clark had already deposited beside the tree. It was a real tree covered in a rainbow of lights, the ornaments all mismatched. Bruce and Diana had their own stockings on the mantle, less worn than those that belonged to the Kents.

"Bruce, this is my mother. Ma, this is Bruce Wayne."

"You look smaller in pictures," she said, holding out a hand.

"So I've heard." He accepted the handshake with a well-practiced smile.

"Oh, no, don't do that," she said, making a face as she put her hands on her hips.

He blinked. "No?"

"It's…" She gestured vaguely, then snapped her fingers as she tried to find the word. "Johnny, what's that creepy thing?"

Jonathan Kent had not stood yet from where he sat in an easy chair, reading a book with a very floral cover. "Victorian-era porcelain dolls?" he suggested.

His wife huffed. "No—well, yes, but I mean the reason they're creepy."

"Uncanny valley?"

"Yes!" She looked triumphant. "Uncanny valley, that's what it is."

"I probably should have warned you not to fake smiles around Ma," Clark said, apologetic.

"I'll try not to be creepy."

"It's Christmas, be as creepy as you want as long as you mean it." She'd turned her gaze back to her husband. "Johnny, get up and say hello, quit being rude."

"One second." Mr. Kent held up a hand, still reading, and Mrs. Kent rolled her eyes. "Sorry," he said as he set the book down. "It looked like they were finally going to kiss, but it was a false alarm. You know how it is."

Bruce did not. "That's always disappointing."

Clark's father was definitely shorter than he'd expected. About the same height as his wife, about as lean. Softer around the eyes. It was surprising that anyone believed they'd had a son so tall and broad and bronze. Even setting aside the other, more obvious problem.

"Clark takes after his grandmother," Jonathan said, unprompted, as they shook hands.

"They say it skips a generation," Bruce said.

"Clark said you'd want to give Diana the guest room," Mrs. Kent said, "so we put an air mattress in Clark's room. Is that okay? It's more comfortable than it sounds."

"That's fine."

"The couch unfolds into a bed, but it's harder to fall asleep in the living room. And that mattress is awful, really."

"I'll take your word for it."

"If you'd rather share a room with Diana, just let us know."

Bruce kept his face carefully neutral.

"Ma," Clark scolded.

"What?" Mrs. Kent was not at all apologetic. "Obviously she'd have to be okay with it, too—"

"Ma."

"—but you are all adults and what you get up to is your business. You can all share a room, if you want! As long as you keep it down while I'm trying to sleep."

"Ma, please." Clark's voice was muffled by his hands, because he'd buried his face in them.

"We'll be careful not to wake you," Bruce assured her.

She patted him on the arm. "That's all I ask." She looked back to her son. "Will Diana be getting here soon, do you think?"

Clark frowned. "She should have been here first, actually. She said she was in town a couple of hours ago."

"She's driving?" Mrs. Kent seemed surprised.

"She doesn't like flying for extended periods," Clark explained. "Prefers to be grounded."

Diana of Themyscira might be flesh and blood, but she'd been made from clay. She didn't like being too far from the earth. An interesting personality quirk. Bruce hadn't examined it too closely.

Not because it wasn't worth examining. More because he did not care to be examined in return. She could, in theory, see into a man's soul. If it was true, he'd managed to avoid it thus far. He would rather continue to do so, if he could help it.

Staring into the abyss, et cetera.

"Maybe she got distracted by the scenery," Bruce suggested.

"She could have been," Clark said, a hint of defensiveness. "It's scenic."

"Clark," his mother said, "it's Kansas in winter. I wouldn't live here if I didn't love it, but that doesn't mean you have to lie about it."

Bruce felt a pull at his mouth. Clark looked toward the door—and probably through the door, as well as any walls between him and it. "There she is. I wonder what kept her?"

What had kept her, it turned out, was the locals. "I stopped for gas," she explained, "and when I told them I was here to visit you, they were very enthusiastic."

"Was it Troy's?" Clark asked.

"The sign said 'liquor' and the woman was named Dory."

"That's Troy's," Clark said with a nod. "Technically not Troy's anymore, but everyone still calls it Troy's."

Diana opened the back door of the car. "Well, Dory wanted me to give you this." She pulled out a dusty cardboard box filled with glass bottles and handed it off to him. His brow furrowed, and he balanced it on one hand so he could lift a bottle out of it. The contents were a bright red bordering pink, the label crude.

"What! I thought they stopped making these!"

"Dory said she found that box in the back and knew you'd want it."

As she got her luggage out of the trunk, Bruce left to grab his duffel bag from his car. He leaned against it and watched introductions from a distance. There was a lot more hugging than there'd been previous. Diana's bracelets could be seen under the sleeves of her sweater as she moved. He didn't think either Clark or Diana had any need to dress for warmth, but they'd done it anyway. He was the only person not wearing jeans. He almost felt overdressed.

Not that it mattered. They'd only be staying a little over a day.

Diana glanced in his direction. That was his cue to follow them back inside. The house looked smaller in the context of this many people, though he knew that wasn't fair. This was a normal number of people for a normally-sized house.

"We'll let you give them the tour," Mrs. Kent said to Clark, moving out of the front hall with her husband in tow. Bruce was the only one with a coat that needed to be taken off, and Clark put it up for him. "We don't want to get in your way."

"You're not in our way, Mrs. Kent," Diana said, and he didn't think anyone would be scolding her for smiling. Even if she looked every inch the statue she'd been made as, clay skin and soft curls and dramatic features.

Uncanny valley. Not her, but him.

"You can call me Martha, you know," Mrs. Kent said.

It was just a name. Plenty of people had it. It really didn't matter at all. But Clark and Diana both looked at him, making it into a thing. Even if they tried to pretend that they hadn't.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Kent," Diana said, "but I don't think that I will."

Mrs. Kent looked at Bruce. "Oh!"

"It's fine, really," he began.

"Fishsticks, I didn't even think about that."

"It isn't a problem."

"All the same," Mrs. Kent insisted, "you go right on ahead being as formal as you like, I'll be in the living room trying not to embarrass myself if anyone needs me."

"That's… not necessary." But she'd already bustled off, and Bruce was left feeling as if he'd scattered the floor with eggshells just by existing.

He was usually very good at being sociable.

"Fishsticks?" Diana asked.

"Ma gets creative with her interjections." Clark had cleaned off one of the mysterious bottles so he could drink it. Bruce was curious to see if it was still any good. How long did carbonation even last in a glass bottle? "Come on, I'll show you the guest room." They followed him up the narrow stairway, pictures along the wall of young Clark and younger Kents.

"This'll be your room, Diana," Clark said, opening the door to the left of the stairs and standing aside so she could get by. Bruce remained in the hallway.

"It's lovely," Diana assured him. Bruce thought she'd have said that no matter what. There was a frame across the hall filled with old polaroids assembled into a collage. The white borders had been scrawled on with permanent marker, dates and words that may have been names or may have been places. Faces, buildings, occasional crowds. He thought he could guess what word had been scribbled out in front of 'Nixon', a blurry picture centered around a fire. There were a lot of scribbled out words, actually.

"Is it still good?" Diana asked, and Bruce looked over to see Clark nodding mid-drink.

"Want to try it?" Clark asked, offering her the bottle. Diana accepted, but took only the smallest sip before making a face and holding it at arm's length.

"Is that how it's supposed to taste?" she demanded. She looked horrified. Bruce's mouth twitched.

Clark laughed. "Yes! It's great! You don't like it?"

"That," she said, disgusted, "is pure sugar."

"You say that like it's a bad thing."

"I don't think they have that brand in Gotham," Bruce said, examining the label at a distance. Tuckers Straw'berry Cream. That was a very oddly misplaced apostrophe.

"I don't think they have it anywhere," Clark sighed. "Never saw it anywhere except Troy's. Supposed to have been local, I think it was just some guy Troy knew. It was always my favorite."

"Dory told me," Diana said, smiling again. Her smiles weren't rare. She still managed to make them feel like it.

"Alright, well—bathroom's right over there, I'm going to show Bruce where he'll be and let you get settled."

"Thank you, Clark. I'll probably join you in a minute, if that's okay." She'd set her larger bag onto the bed, and unzipped it to reveal that it was full of presents she'd need to unpack. Clark's insistence that no one bring gifts continued to go unheeded, much to the surprise of no one.

"Yeah, that's fine." Clark looked to Bruce for confirmation, and he nodded. "So," he said as he lead the way, "we're going to be over here, and for the record, I moved out when I was eighteen and it's not like I've bothered to redecorate since then. That means you don't get to say anything about it."

"I'm not agreeing to that."

Clark sighed dramatically as he opened the door and lead Bruce inside. "I'm sorry we don't have anything better than an air mattress. I've been petitioning for a bunk bed for twenty years now, but I keep getting vetoed."

"It's fine," Bruce said, dropping his bag beside it. "I've slept on worse. You wouldn't have let me take the top bunk, anyway."

"I absolutely would," Clark said. "Give you a chance to feel tall."

Like most childhood bedrooms, it was mostly empty, stripped of anything that Clark would have wanted to keep. "A Hubble deep space poster and a map of Middle Earth."

"I had very diverse interests," Clark said, setting his drink down on the desk.

"Did any of them involve girls?"

"Hey, Lana was way more into Lord of the Rings than I was. And you're the one who recognized a map of Middle Earth."

"Fair."

"I'm sure you had nothing but original Rembrandts and pictures of yachts."

Bruce considered it. "I'm not sure if I had anything on my walls, actually. I'd have to ask Alfred." He glanced at Clark. "Don't give me that look."

"I don't have a look." He had a look.

"You and Diana do realize I'm a grown man capable of taking care of myself, right." Bruce asked.

"As if you'd ever let us forget it." That still sounded very patronizing.

"I'm older than you are. You don't have to keep checking to make sure I'm not sad."

"Diana is older than you, does she get to check?"

"You can both safely assume that I am fine unless told otherwise."

"But you have such a sensitive soul," Clark said, and Bruce shook his head. "Sometimes you look like you're not telling us what's on your mind. Like right now. You look like you could use a hug. Do you need a hug, Bruce?"

"I don't." Bruce had a vague hope that if he kept his tone neutral rather than irritated, Clark would drop it.

It did not work. Clark was already spreading his arms. "I feel like I should give you a hug just to be safe."

He was not going to give him the satisfaction of leaving the room to escape. "Clark, I know where to find significant amounts of Kryptonite."

"That sounds like something that someone who needs a hug would say."

He crossed his arms over his chest. It would be physically impossible for any hugs to be mutual. "I can say very authoritatively that it does not."

Bruce was being hugged. He remained stock-still and ramrod straight, arms crossed and face expressionless.

"Clark. Let me go."

"Let's just enjoy the moment."

"I am not enjoying the moment."

"Give it a couple minutes."

"We are not staying like this for a couple minutes."

Diana cleared her throat in the doorway. Bruce shut his eyes, and would have rubbed at his temples if Clark had not trapped his arms. "Should I leave you two alone?" she asked.

"Please help." Bruce's flat affect made her laugh.

"Get in here Diana, let's make it a group hug."

"Clark," Bruce said, "please don't give your mother ideas."

Clark finally let Bruce go, but only because he was laughing. Diana had covered her mouth with her fingers.

"I leave you alone for five minutes and I miss out on hugs," Diana sighed.

"You two are free to hug each other whenever the mood strikes," Bruce said.

"That isn't the same," she said, hand on her hip.

"You only like hugs when there's the potential to break ribs?"

"I would be very gentle," she assured him.

"That won't be necessary."

"You don't want me to be gentle?" She didn't have to sound so intrigued about it.

"You know that isn't what I meant."

Her grin was not as reassuring as she wanted it to be. "You know I would never hug you without your consent."

"See, Clark?" he said, gesturing to her. "Why can't you be more like Diana."

"I can try," Clark said, "but I'm not sure I'll be able to find the boots in my size."

Jonathan had been very insistent that no one ruin their appetites, as he was making a quite frankly ludicrous amount of spinach-and-artichoke baked macaroni and cheese.

Despite this, Mrs. Kent was nibbling on cookies as they sat in the living room. Diana had already eaten two. Clark had been given the job of digging through the closet to find a suitable board game.

"Have a cookie," Mrs. Kent suggested, pushing the plate closer to Bruce's side of the couch. "Maybe it'll cheer you up."

"Wouldn't want to get too cheered," he reminded her. "I might smile again."

"Don't be silly," she chided. "It's just the fake smiles, makes you look like you just found out your exes are dating."

"I can see how that would be a problem."

"I should hope so."

"Some people think I have a nice smile," Bruce said. "Some of them even smile for a living." Which in theory made them experts.

Mrs. Kent raised an eyebrow. "Bruce. Can I be honest?"

"I don't see why you should stop now."

She reached out to pat him gently on the shoulder. "I don't think those people care about you very much."

He considered this. He considered, also, that Mrs. Kent was far from the first person to ask him to stop smiling. "Probably not, no," he conceded.

"Cookie?" she suggested again, holding the plate up for him. This time he took one, and she looked satisfied.

Clark sighed as he surveyed the contents of the closet, scratching the back of his head. "I'm not sure we have any games you guys would know," he admitted.

"We've mostly got flea market, yard sale stuff," his mother clarified. "It's all very old-fashioned."

"I'm much older than you are," Diana reminded her.

"Maybe," Mrs. Kent said, as if it were not an objective fact. "But I don't know that they have many old board games where you're from, either."

"True. What about card games?"

"I don't play those with Clark," she said with a slight sniff of displeasure.

"Ma, I don't cheat at cards."

"Then find me a deck with lead in the middle of the cards. It shouldn't make any difference to you."

Bruce made a mental note to see if that was possible. "As long as I don't have to play Monopoly," he said. Clark whipped his head around as if Bruce had just said something horribly offensive.

"Did Marty buy another Monopoly board?" Jonathan demanded, poking his head into the living room. How he had heard them was a mystery, since he was still wearing a very large pair of headphones. Mrs. Kent had insisted on it, as she did not share his affection for Top 40 stations. Bruce could hear the bass from where he was sitting.

Mrs. Kent huffed. "No, we were just having a conversation."

He disappeared back into the kitchen with a, "Thank god."

Diana was leaning forward, resting her chin on her palms with a smile. "I feel like there's a story there."

Mrs. Kent scoffed, waving away the notion. "I'm not that bad."

This time it was Clark's turn to scoff. "You made Pa cry."

"Tch! Don't say that like it's hard. He cried when the Spice Girls broke up."

"Didn't everyone?" Bruce asked, and Mrs. Kent laughed. His mouth twitched, and he grabbed another cookie.

"Besides, Clark," she added, "you're the one that used to use two pieces. At least I followed the rules."

Clark looked indignant. "If you put the Scottie on the cannon, it becomes a dog on a unicycle. That's one piece."

"Don't say it like it like that's a rule," she said. "He even tried putting the top hat on it, once," she added to Bruce.

Bruce swallowed his cookie. "Unbelievable," he said.

"Thank you, Bruce," she said, and Clark glared at him.

"I can't believe you," Clark said, and Bruce shrugged. "And after we shared a moment earlier."

"Oh, don't say anymore, I don't want to know," Mrs. Kent said, recoiling and looking ready to cover her ears.

"I did not consent to that moment."

"Clark!"

"It was a hug!" Clark protested, throwing his hands up, as Diana tried to smother a giggle fit. "It was just a hug, Ma. Honestly. I'm your son, what are you even accusing me of here."

"That's not better!" Mrs. Kent insisted. "You can't just go around hugging people without their permission. Respect Bruce's right to set boundaries."

Bruce had turned his head so that she couldn't see the upward curl of his mouth, lips pressed into a thin line, but Clark could see it just fine. "What happened to being a grown man capable of taking care of himself?" Clark asked.

"I have a sensitive soul," Bruce reminded him. Diana hiccuped a laugh, and Bruce looked without meaning to at where she was curled up in Jonathan's chair. Their eyes met for a half-second, contact that felt tangible, magnetic. Not least because she had very expressive eyes, the palest shade of blue; she could say a lot with just a look. He couldn't tell if she had that effect on everyone. He wasn't going to ask. Bruce pulled his gaze back to Clark, safer territory.

"Let's just play halma," Mrs. Kent suggested.

"You're only saying that because you always win at halma."

"You let me."

"I really don't."

"We can do teams! You and Diana versus me and Bruce."

"Why does Bruce get to be on your team?" Despite his tone, Clark did not seem genuinely hurt.

"He's already sitting next to me." She patted Bruce's knee as Clark pulled the box down from inside the closet. "Clark and I will play a round first so you two can see how to play, that sound alright?"

"Sure you don't want Diana on your team?" Bruce asked. "More evenly distribute the superhumans?"

"Don't sell yourself short," she chided. "Just because my son's smart doesn't mean he's any good at strategy. Sorry, Diana."

"Why are you apologizing to her?" Clark asked.

"That's alright, Mrs. Kent," Diana assured her. "If we were both as good as I am, it wouldn't be fair to Bruce."

Both men narrowed their eyes at Diana as Mrs. Kent cackled.

Rather than pull up a chair, Clark sat on the floor beside the coffee table, across from his mother. "I'm not that bad at strategy," he insisted as he set up the board.

"We had to stop playing chess because you gave up whenever you lost a pawn," Mrs. Kent reminded him.

"I was nine!"

"Do you just not like games you can't win by having powers?" Bruce asked, raising an eyebrow.

"You don't need powers to be good at poker," he said. He sat back once the board was ready, waiting for his mother to make the first move. She moved her first piece, and he moved his; they kept going in quick succession, neither of them seeming to take much time to think about the moves they were making. It was more impressive from Mrs. Kent. Clark could think even faster than he could move, and he was capable of breaking the sound barrier. It wasn't hard to see how the game worked. Trying to trade places with their pieces, they could only move one square unless they were jumping others. A variation on checkers, though in this one no pieces were lost.

Which made sense, if losing pawns was all it took to make young Clark quit.

"You used to count cards," Mrs. Kent accused.

"Not on purpose. And that's not a power. I didn't even have powers, yet."

"Did you not?" Diana asked. She moved to sit on the floor beside Clark to watch the board.

"Those came later," he explained, as he moved a piece that would allow his mother to jump five times. He frowned when she did exactly that. "High school."

"The worst possible time for a boy to get super speed," Mrs. Kent said, blocking off the only useful move Clark could have made.

"Not like it did me any good," Clark said. "You banned me from using super speed to do chores to teach me the value of work. Which made no sense, incidentally—" Mrs. Kent started laughing again, and Bruce found himself watching Diana as she watched mother and son.

"Is that what I told you?" Mrs. Kent asked. "Lord, you were sixteen, I was just trying to get you out of the house and doing something with your hands. Tissues don't grow on trees. Well, they do, sort of, but—you know what I mean."

Clark stopped playing to cover his face with both hands. "Ma," he said, muffled, "you can't just say that in front of people."

"What?" She was no more abashed than she'd been when she'd insinuated they might wake her with orgies in the night. "It's not like you're the only one here to have ever been a teenager. You were a teenager, once, weren't you?" This last was directed to Diana, who was trying to interpret Clark's horror. His ears had turned red.

"I was," Diana confirmed.

"See?" she said. "No point being shy about it. Don't know where you get this puritanical streak from, it's certainly not me." Clark dragged his hands down his face, resumed moving game pieces in ill-advised directions. He was still blushing. "You should have seen him when it came time for The Talk, I thought he was going to jump out the window. And he couldn't fly yet, so you know it was serious."

"That was the least helpful The Talk in the history of The Talk."

"I did my best! All I know's the birds and the bees, for all I knew you were an iguana."

"It took three hours. I counted. There were diagrams. You brought homework."

Bruce was surprised to see Diana pull her phone out of her pocket in the middle of this fascinating exchange, more surprised when his pocket buzzed. He pulled out his own phone, opened up the secure messaging app that had alerted him.

JoeyBee: There are a lot of idioms going around that I'm not clear on
JoeyBee: I assume I get the gist from context but I'd like to be sure
JoeyBee: I don't want to embarrass myself later

Bruce glanced up from his phone. Definitely Diana. Definitely waiting for a reply. Clark and his mother were having an argument about Our Bodies, Ourselves.

6625211850: I don't remember giving you my info.
JoeyBee: I got it from Dick last time I was in Gotham
JoeyBee: He warned me you don't text
6625211850: I don't.

That had been months ago. Many months ago. He wasn't sure what to make of that fact. That she was trying to save it for emergencies?

6625211850: You know you could probably just ask Clark.
JoeyBee: I don't want to interrupt
6625211850: The birds and the bees are a euphemism for sex.
6625211850: "The talk" is a talk about sex.
6625211850: Do you want etymologies, or do you think you're good?

Diana looked up from her phone. Bruce raised an eyebrow at her. They both glanced toward the ongoing argument, then back to their phones.

JoeyBee: Why not flowers and bees?
JoeyBee: Birds and bees have nothing to do with each other
6625211850: They have other traits that lend themselves well to metaphor.
JoeyBee: How does the iguana factor into this
6625211850: Clark is an alien.
6625211850: In theory he is neither bird nor bee.
6625211850: I have not confirmed this theory, nor will I.
JoeyBee: Oh
JoeyBee: Thank you for the clarification

Diana set her phone down in her lap. That should have been the end of the conversation.

6625211850: Aren't you a telepath?
JoeyBee: ?
6625211850: Why did you have to message me?
JoeyBee: As opposed to direct mental contact?
6625211850: Yes.
JoeyBee: Without my lariat, it requires physical contact and an open mind
JoeyBee: A willingness to by touched both physically and mentally
JoeyBee: I was respecting your right to set boundaries

Bruce looked up at Diana's small, impish smile. He hadn't actually been aware of that limitation. It was comforting, in a way, to think that she couldn't get into his mind without his permission. Without tying him up. That part was less comforting.

6625211850: I appreciate the consideration.
JoeyBee: You know, in this context your use of a full stop makes you seem terse
6625211850: Yes.
6625211850: I know.
6625211850: Was I supposed to recognize your username?
6625211850: Because if I hadn't seen you messaging me, I wouldn't have.
JoeyBee: I guess I didn't think of that
6625211850: Why not just WonderWoman?
JoeyBee: That was taken
JoeyBee: So was WanderWoman
JoeyBee: Barry said a good technique was to combine things you like

Barry's username was SciencePizza. She should not have been taking advice from Barry. About anything.

6625211850: So, bees.
JoeyBee: Bumblebees!
JoeyBee: 🐝~ bzz bzz
JoeyBee: And baby kangaroos
JoeyBee: There is no emoji for those
JoeyBee: It is a grevious oversight
6625211850: I can see that.

There were times that the warrior princess of Themyscira confounded him utterly.

"Can I not make any moves?" Clark asked his mother.

"You can't," Mrs. Kent said, apologetic. She clapped her hands together. "Should we set the board for four players?" she asked, looking to Bruce and Diana. Both of whom hid their phones with a vague sense of guilt.

"Certainly, Mrs. Kent," Diana said.

Clark added new pieces and reset the old at lightning speed. "I'll try not to hold you back too much," he said to Diana, sounding resigned.

She smiled. "Oh, Clark." The smile disappeared. "I'm going to be telling you what to move and where."

"… that's probably for the best."

Mrs. Kent looked thrilled. "Isn't this exciting, Bruce?"

He could see out the corner of his eye where Diana had risen to kneel on the floor, preparing herself for war.

"Truly," Bruce deadpanned, "I have never felt so alive."

The game had ended in a contentious tie, made less contentious by the fact that dinner was ready. Diana was grateful that they'd gone through the trouble of making something vegetarian to accommodate her; she knew very well that it was not the standard when it came to American meals. The table had only four chairs, so Clark had found another that did not quite match.

Martha and Jonathan sat together, of course, and Clark sat beside them. That left Bruce and Diana beside each other at the table, and it was remarkable how little elbow room he needed when he put his mind to it. Maybe contortion was among his many and varied skills. She spread her own elbows out to take up as much room as she could ever need, just to see if he'd notice. If he did, he didn't show it. She might have gone so far as to sprawl out if it wouldn't have been a difficult thing to explain to the Kents.

Or maybe 'I was trying to irritate Bruce' would be explanation enough. It seemed good enough for Clark.

"This is very good, Mr. Kent," she said between bites. Bruce nodded his agreement.

"Glad you think so," Jonathan said. "How's a goat cheese and squash pie sound for tomorrow?"

Diana was in the middle of another bite, so she covered her mouth with her hand to speak. "Fantastic."

"Good," he said, "because I already made the pie crusts." Martha snorted. "I was going to be in trouble if you said anything else, I'm not sure why I asked."

"I'll be taking care of the goose," Martha said. "If you're a vegetarian because you like animals, you should know this goose was a real jerk." Diana giggled. "I'm not kidding, she was an awful bird. Absolute worst. Keeping her alive until Christmas was the hard part."

Clark looked thoughtful. "I'm not convinced there's such a thing as a nice goose," he said. "Or any kind of waterfowl."

"He just thinks that because a swan chased him into a tree when he was six," Martha said to everyone and no one.

"If you really wanted to strike fear into the hearts of criminals," Clark said, pointing his fork at Bruce, "you'd dress up like a swan."

"I considered it," Bruce said. "I scrapped it because the feathers were too high-maintenance."

Diana was pretty sure that was a joke. It was hard to tell, sometimes. One of these days she would accidentally laugh when he was being serious and offend him horribly. She was hoping it would get easier with practice. She'd enjoyed messaging him earlier. A private conversation, something they did not often have. Or ever. She didn't know why she enjoyed it so much, when he always had to make everything so difficult. Though that may have been an answer in and of itself. She didn't know if he would respond, if she messaged him again when they were back to their lives. She might not try.

"Speaking of costumes," Martha said, "Diana—"

"Ma," Clark said, a warning.

"I'm not judging!" Martha insisted. "I'm genuinely curious. When I was a kid they taught us Amazons wore pants and cut off one breast, clearly they had some bad intel."

"I… don't know where the breast thing came from," Diana said. "But it has long been tradition among my people that when traveling in the world of men, we wear whatever is least likely to get us confused for a man. In the time of the Greeks, trousers were considered quite feminine."

"Aaaaah." Martha nodded. "Spite."

"Yes. And unlike some people, I do have several costumes. Some are more comfortable than others, but sometimes I just…"

"Want to wear a red bustier?" Martha suggested.

"Exactly."

"I can sympathize with that," Martha said, and Jonathan raised an eyebrow. She caught his expression out of the corner of her eye, nudged him under the table to get him to behave. It was, Diana thought, extraordinarily cute. They were such a lovely couple, so very in love still; not long in the life of an Amazon, and yet it felt like an achievement. It was no wonder they had raised a boy into Superman, in a house so full of love. It reminded her of home.

"In my defense," Clark said, "I do have a couple of different costumes. I just like to be consistent, is all."

They both looked at Bruce. Bruce did not sigh, but he came very close to it. "Would it make you feel better if I wore my business casual cape next time."

"Not good enough," Diana said. "I won't be satisfied until you have a hole in your costume shaped like a bat." Clark choked on his drink.

"A hole," Bruce repeated, "in my bulletproof suit."

"Yes." Diana felt like she was improving her poker face. Clark was still trying not to spit out his drink. "You're very unlikely to get shot there, anyway. And it will distract your enemies."

"I would find that very distracting," Clark agreed, still sounding a bit strained.

"Bat-shaped hole in the chest," Bruce repeated. "Any other notes? As long as we're workshopping this."

She'd thought for sure that would get him to make some kind of face. Any kind at all, really. He was much better at this than her. She hummed thoughtfully as she took another bite of her dinner. "Sleeveless," she decided.

"Really," Bruce asked. "No gloves, nothing?"

"No, keep the gloves. I just think you should show off your biceps more."

Bruce's first concession to the absurdity of the conversation was to look down at his own arm. It was even larger than Diana's, and that was saying something. Then he looked up at her, one eyebrow raised. She fluttered her eyelashes to denote innocence.

"You do recall that I'm not bulletproof," he said, as if her suggestion had been even remotely serious. Though if he did start wearing an alternate costume—

"I'm not saying it would be appropriate for every mission," she said, continuing the farce. "But sometimes, surely, you could stand to dress more like… Aquaman?"

"He seems like a bad role model," Bruce said, "since about half the time he doesn't actually finish getting dressed."

"Yes," Diana agreed. "Exactly."

"I'm starting to think you don't have my best interests at heart."

"I never said that I did."

"True."

"Do these kinds of conversations happen often in your line of work?" Martha asked her son.

"Conversations about skimpier Batman costumes? Yes. Too often. And yet he never listens."

"What can I say," Bruce shrugged. "I'm shy."

Chapter Text

Bruce woke up because he'd had the nightmare again.

At this point in his life, it was no more eventful than waking up for the usual reasons. Nothing as dramatic as calling out in his sleep, or even jolting upright. Just opened his eyes, so he wouldn't have to see blood burned into the backs of his eyelids.

He'd never actually told the police what happened. Alfred, later, but never the police. They'd thought it was shock. Maybe it was. It had been easy enough for them to figure it out, from the evidence, from other eyewitnesses. He'd never corrected it. All of the re-enactments were wrong. He'd seen enough of them by now to be sure.

The re-enactments always went like this:

When the gun went off, Thomas leapt in front of Martha. Thomas was shot trying to protect his wife. He died instantly. Martha screamed. Martha was shot to silence the screaming. She died instantly. Her necklace broke and fell to pieces, her hair around her face. The mugger ran rather than shoot a child. Bruce was left there to weep with the corpses of his parents until police responded to reports of gunfire.

The re-enactments didn't bother him. Not really. They were too wrong. It made him grateful that he'd never told the truth.

The nightmare always went like this:

The man with the gun didn't even know Bruce was there. He was too far away. The first bullet was meant for Thomas. It may have been an accident. It hit Martha instead, pierced her abdomen, went through her left lung and settled near her spine. She did not die instantly. She never screamed. Scream was not the right word for what Thomas did. No human, no animal, could ever make a noise like that. His wife's name had come out of him like the sound of his soul being torn in two. Sometimes Bruce thought that the gun had been aiming for that terrible noise. The bullet went through his skull and lodged itself in his brain. He had died instantly.

Bruce had not known, then, the exact organs that the bullets hit. He found that out later, when he'd read the coroner's report. He'd thought he'd be able to handle it. He'd been wrong. He'd spent a lot of time vomiting, afterward.

They'd been left there on the pavement. Bruce had run to them. Martha had not a hair out of place, not once in her whole life, not even as she'd lain there with her lungs filling with blood. That was the thing they got most wrong, always so wrong. Martha Wayne would not dignify so low a thing as death with dishevelment. She told him it would be okay. She told him he needed to call Alfred. She told him to trust no one but Alfred. She told him to hurry, because Alfred would know what to do.

He would realize later that she'd told him this so he wouldn't watch her die. She'd already resigned herself to dying then and there. She'd always been very practical, that way.

Bruce had run faster than he ever thought he could to the nearest payphone. Gotham still had payphones, then. Alfred took too long to answer. Bruce was incoherent when he did. Everything took too long. He gave up, and ran back. In his absence Martha had lain beside her husband, and laced her fingers with his. She had shut his eyes, and fixed his coat. They used to stargaze that way, out on the lawn behind the house in summer, when the air was hot and filled with fireflies. With nothing left that he could do, Bruce had curled up between them. He'd thought maybe he would die. He'd thought maybe he could go wherever it was that they had gone. It was the only thing he could think of. Their blood had soaked hot through his clothes. He couldn't see the stars past the city lights. The police had thought he was dead, too, when they got there.

Maybe he was, in his own little way.

He always woke up when they tried to take him away. He always thought the nightmare might end when Thomas screamed, but it never did. He didn't understand how he could sleep through that. That was always the worst part, not the bullets or the blood, but that sound. It echoed in his heart long after he woke up.

He was a very particular kind of cynic. He did not think, but knew, that true love was a real and tangible thing. True love looked like bloodless hands trapped together by rigor mortis, true love sounded like a man's will to live escaping through his throat, true love tasted like copper and bile.

Anything less was a pale imitation settled for by people who didn't know any better.

He stared at the ceiling of Clark's childhood bedroom. Someone—maybe his mother—had painted glow-in-the-dark constellations on the wood.

He rolled silently off the inflatable mattress on the floor, pulled on a spare sweatshirt from his bag. There were three creaky steps on the staircase. He'd counted them earlier, so he could avoid them now. In the living room, he could see that the Kents had already been through. There were more presents piled beside the others, and the stockings had been filled. Including his.

Bruce pulled on his boots in the half-light of the tree, threw on his jacket but nothing else. The Kents didn't have an alarm system for him to disable before he went out the door. It wasn't even locked. He could see his breath in the cold night air when he stepped out onto the porch. Snow, nothing but snow stretching out into the distance. A pure sheet of white reflecting the moonlight. This much open land existed nowhere in Gotham. His house was the closest. He looked up. The stars seemed to burn brighter, this far away from everything.

He started walking, told himself he just needed air and that he wasn't patrolling.

He was patrolling.

It made him feel better.

He stopped as he turned the corner toward the barn, watched his breath dissolve into the air. There was a bonfire lit nearer to the barn than the house; the Kents were sitting beside it. He could hear her laughter, smothered and distant though it was. He hesitated.

His approach was slow along the cleared-out path, because he wanted to be sure they'd see him coming. At least in part because he didn't think it was the cold that had Jonathan exhaling thick white clouds. Mr. Kent did not make any move to hide what he was doing, despite the advance warning. Firelight glinted off a pipe made of glass.

"Hello, Bruce," Mrs. Kent said, waving cheerfully. "Couldn't sleep?"

"Something like that." He shoved his hands into his pockets, and thought perhaps he ought to have put on a heavier pair of pants. "I'm not interrupting anything, am I?"

"Naw," she scoffed, waving away his concern. "We got extra chairs if you want to pull up a seat."

"Now, wait a minute, Marty," Jonathan interrupted. "That all depends." He squinted at Bruce over the fire. "You a narc, boy?"

Mrs. Kent cackled before he could answer, hit her husband on the shoulder with the back of her hand. "Johnny, you ass, don't pick on him. Come on, Bruce, sit down. Get close to the fire, you're going to freeze to death looking like that."

Bruce hesitated again, but did eventually pull a chair up near the fire. He crossed his arms over his chest to try and get warmer faster. "Does Clark know?"

She snorted. "He pretends not to."

"Least he can do," Jonathan said, "after all those times we pretended not to notice him sneaking back into his room after he'd been out drinking."

"That was back when he could drink," she reminded him. "I think it stopped doing anything for him before he even turned eighteen." She leaned toward Bruce. "This probably makes me a terrible parent, but I'm glad he got to see what it felt like. Speaking of which." She held up her beer. "You want one? It's nothing fancy, but it'll get you buzzed." She looked him over. "Maybe. You might be a little out of my weight class." Jonathan was blowing smoke rings toward the sky.

"I'll take one," he said with a shrug. Might as well. He was on vacation.

"Good man," Jonathan said as he pulled a bottle out of the snow and handed it to his wife. She used her wedding ring to crack the cap off before handing it to Bruce.

"We used to do this a lot more when Clark was young," she sighed. "We don't have to worry about waking him up anymore, but now we just do it for old times' sake. Funny how that works. Start doing things out of necessity and develop a taste for it." Bruce nodded, though he couldn't relate.

Although he had been patrolling. The farm. To make him feel better.

Jonathan had his head tilted so far back he was almost looking behind himself, eyes narrowed suspiciously at the moon. "Now, is it just that you're used to being up all night?" he asked. "Or is it holidays dredging up some feelings?"

Bruce stared at him. "I… yes. I usually work nights."

"Aw, hell," Mrs. Kent said. "I am real sorry about earlier, by the way. Didn't even occur to me your mama had the same name, that must have been a real punch in the gut."

"It really is fine," he said. His grip had tightened on the bottle in his hand, and he forced himself to relax and take a drink.

"Nothing wrong with not being fine," Jonathan said with an impressive exhale, still regarding the moon. "Bad memories sneak up on you in the dark. Make it easier to sleep once it's light out."

Bruce watched the fire, beer hanging from his fingers off his knee. "I've had a long time to deal with it," he said, almost by rote. "It's fine."

Mrs. Kent leaned closer again. "Boy, you jump off buildings dressed like a bat to punch clowns. That doesn't sound like the sort of wound time heals."

Bruce froze with the bottle almost to his mouth. "… touché." He tilted his head back to drink more than he probably should have, and she patted his knee. They listened to the crackle of the fire awhile. Jonathan tapped the burnt contents of his pipe into the snow so he could jam it into his coat pocket. Bruce looked up at the stars. "She taught me how to lift fingerprints," he said finally. "Cornstarch and packing tape. I kept an inventory of my Halloween candy and my peanut butter cups were disappearing. I thought it was Alfred."

"Was it?" Jonathan asked.

"No. I fingerprinted everyone in the house. Turned out it was Mom."

Mrs. Kent chuckled. "I used to steal Clark's taffy. Don't think he ever found out about that. Sure as hell never taught him how to catch me."

"He probably didn't keep a carefully updated inventory of his candy."

"Lord, no. It barely ever lasted more than a week. Pickiest eater you ever saw, found something he liked and he'd eat it 'till he made himself sick."

"Was he really?"

"Hm?"

"A picky eater." The thought of Superman refusing to eat his vegetables amused him.

"Oh, god yeah," she said, taking a swig of her beer as she reminisced. "Still is. Never drinks real coffee, it's always that sweet stuff's mostly milk. Thank god he started drinking cow's milk eventually, for a long time it had to be fresh goat's milk. Wouldn't touch anything else, couldn't even be a day old. Wouldn't eat a tomato he didn't pick himself. Sugar snap peas, no garden peas, never figured that one out. He'd only eat German Butterball potatoes, no idea how he could tell the difference. You remember that, Johnny, you tried to trick him with some Yukon Golds?"

"You've never seen a toddler look so betrayed in all your life," Jonathan confirmed.

"You should just see some of the faces he'll pull, you put a little pinch of white pepper in anything."

"I'll make a note of that," Bruce said, the smallest upward curve to the corner of his mouth.

"Aw, hell." Mrs. Kent held up her bottle to the firelight to see how much she had left. "Get a beer in me and I start blabbing all his weaknesses."

"I'll make sure Luthor doesn't find out about the white pepper."

"That's kind of you." Martha tapped him on the knee again. "How about you? Can't imagine you eating chicken nuggets."

Bruce snorted. "I liked quail." He didn't recall if he'd actually liked the taste, or if he'd only liked the idea of being able to eat an entire bird by himself. It felt very impressive, at the time.

"So, fancy chicken nuggets."

"Basically. I think the only thing I didn't like was octopus. Threw up in the middle of a sushi place. Dad had to give me extra gold stars to make up for it."

Mrs. Kent was grinning. "He gave you stickers for trying octopus?"

"No, it was…" He held up a hand to use his fingers to indicate size. "He actually had these little things made, like tokens. Made it feel very official when I traded them in for prizes. There was a whole list he wrote up of things I could do to earn them." He hadn't thought about that in years. He used to keep them in a treasure chest that he kept buried in the backyard. Every time he got a new one he dug it up and moved it. It was amazing the gardener put up with it. Ms. Julia. She'd been one of the last members of the staff to leave.

"Wish I'd thought of that," Jonathan sighed. He'd picked himself up a beer, still looking at the sky. Bruce could think of nothing else he could add. To say any more felt as if it ran the risk of turning maudlin. This, by contrast, was… nice. It was Jonathan who broke the new silence. "So what's the deal with you and Diana?"

Bruce may have resembled a deer in headlights. "I don't believe there is one."

"No?"

"No," he said, more firmly.

"She know that?"

"Yes." He was not as certain as he sounded.

"Hm." Jonathan did not sound convinced. "If you say so."

"Oh!" Mrs. Kent snapped her fingers. "That reminds me—Lois Lane. You met her?"

"I have," he said warily.

"What do you think? Is she nice?" He took just a second too long to respond. "Oh, hell. That bad?"

"No, that's not it at all," he said, trying to do some damage control. "She's great. Smart, brave. Big heart. Tough as nails. I might not say nice, but I don't think you get to where she is by being nice."

"Huh." She mulled this over. "She does like men, doesn't she?" Jonathan started to laugh. "What?" she asked him, defensive. "She's got the Ls and everything, that don't bode well. The kid's got a type, Johnny."

"Takes after his old man that way," he agreed, still chuckling. She hit him on the shoulder again, made a disapproving noise.

"She does like at least some men," Bruce confirmed, mildly as he could as he took another sip of his beer.

Jonathan's eyebrows shot up. Then his eyes narrowed. He leaned over to rest his elbow on his knee. "You didn't."

Mrs. Kent blinked. "What? He didn't what?"

Bruce had resigned himself to a faint sense of bafflement. "Was there something that happened here that gave me away?" he asked, gesturing to the whole of his face.

Jonathan shrugged. "I thought the implication was deliberate."

"What implication?" Mrs. Kent demanded.

"Excuse me." The Kents and Bruce all turned. Diana was standing at the edge of where the light reached, clearly loathe to interrupt. She was wearing fleecy blue pajamas and honest-to-god bunny slippers. Bruce turned his attention back to his beer. "Is this a private gathering?"

"Course not," Mrs. Kent said. "Pull up a chair, get cozy. We were just talking about Clark's friend—do you know her? Lois?"

"I've met Miss Lane," Diana confirmed, and she set a chair beside Bruce. He watched the fire. "Didn't you two date?" she asked him. Bruce winced as Mrs. Kent gave a dramatic gasp.

"Clark never mentioned that!"

Diana at least had the grace to look abashed. "Was I not supposed to say?" she asked Bruce.

"It's fine," he shrugged. "It was before we really knew each other. It wasn't anything serious." He'd wanted to know more about Superman. She'd wanted an interview. Anything more had been purely accidental.

"I wonder why he never said anything," Mrs. Kent said with a frown. "Usually we talk about that sort of thing."

"Probably didn't want to have another Suzie Perkins incident," Jonathan said, a faint smile.

"Oh, Lord," Mrs. Kent said, all exasperation and disgust. "Now why'd you have to go and remind me about her?" Her voice took the mocking tone of repeating something heard too often. "Suzie Perkins, Suzie Perkins, Suzie Perkins." She huffed. "I don't think they even really dated, she just used him like a chauffeur. Finally gets interested in a girl that isn't Lana, and it's that nasty little thing."

"Now, see, if you hadn't called her that he might've given up sooner," Jonathan said.

"That girl was a bully."

"Really?" Diana asked with obvious surprise. "And Clark liked this girl?"

Mrs. Kent sniffed with disdain. "I know they don't have teenage boys where you're from, so you're going to have to take my word for it, but: he was a teenage boy. That's really all you need to know." Diana looked to Bruce as if for confirmation, and his shrug was a resigned admission. "And anyway, she was this tiny little waif of a thing, real good at playing the victim." She sighed.

"But Ma," Jonathan teased. "You're not even giving her a chance."

"Fuck's sake, Johnny," she groaned. "I already went through that once, don't go making me relive it. Hand me another beer, would you? And one for Diana—you want one? I should probably ask first, shouldn't I?"

"I'll take one," Diana said.

"How many have you had, Mrs. Kent?" Bruce asked.

Her eyebrows shot up, her expression affronted. "Not enough for you to be asking me that question, that's for damn sure."

"I think he's asking on account of all the language, Marty," Jonathan said as he handed her two more bottles.

"Oh, hell." She handed Diana her bottle without opening it first, apparently trusting in the Amazon's ability to take care of it herself. "That hardly signifies, I've always been terrible."

"He's only seen you around Clark," Jonathan reminded her.

"I swear around Clark!" Mrs. Kent paused. "Don't I?"

"You said 'fishsticks'," Diana reminded her, taking a cautious first sip.

"Oh, hell." Mr. Kent started to laugh, and Mrs. Kent scowled at him.

"Don't want to be a bad influence?" Bruce suggested.

Jonathan spoke before his wife could defend herself. "One of Clark's first words was hell." Diana made the very specific muffled noise that indicated someone was trying not to laugh because their mouth was full of beer. "I ended up having to set up a swear jar. And look how well it worked! Still can't say 'damn' where our son might hear."

"I'm unfamiliar with the concept of a swear jar," Diana said.

"Traditionally," Bruce said, "it's a jar you have to put a quarter in every time you use a word you shouldn't."

"Traditionally," Jonathan agreed. "But I am an innovator." He tapped at his temple. "Instead of putting something in, ours you had to take something out. Little slips of paper, with, ah. Chores on them. Trickier than just losing a quarter." Mrs. Kent had started to blush, and Mr. Kent only looked more pleased. "Ought to bring that back, come to think of it."

"Hush, you." They exchanged a look that made them seem, for a moment, much younger than they were. Then the moment passed, though it left Mrs. Kent with a small and secret sort of smile half-hidden in the firelight.

"When I was young," Diana said, "I had a bird—some kind of parrot, I think. I doted on it at first, but as other things caught my interest I paid it less attention. Which is why I think it was revenge that it began repeating all the words I didn't want my mother to know I'd been saying." Mrs. Kent laughed. "You might be interested to know that 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' is a phrase that exists on Themyscira as well."

"You know, I don't think I ever said that? I did get mad. What about you, Johnny, you ever pull that line?"

"As if I had to," he said. "Just had to give him a look and he'd be disappointed in himself enough for the both of us."

"You raised him very well," Diana assured them.

"We tried," Mrs. Kent sighed. "Not that we ever managed to get him to mind his own business. Clark, I know you're listening, you might as well just come on out. Don't run in the house!"

Clark stood beside the fire looking sheepish. "Sorry."

She huffed. "You know that's bad for the floors."

"Sorry, Ma." Clark hovered rather than grab a chair, and yawned. His bedhead was prodigious.

"We were just telling your friends embarrassing stories about you," Jonathan told him.

"You didn't tell them about the car, did you?"

"No," Bruce said, "but now I'm curious."

Mrs. Kent's poorly-contained laughter was near a hiss. "Oh, Lord, I hadn't thought about that in—it was all real upsetting at the time, but looking back on it, what a mess. Very first car, he crashed it into a tree, just about tore the thing in half getting out of it, and then—this is the part where it gets funny—he panicked and threw the whole thing in the lake."

"Why would you throw it in the lake?" Diana asked Clark. Jonathan had handed him a bottle, and Clark squinted at it to check that it was soda before he opened it. Apparently his parents had accounted for his eventual presence.

"I panicked," he repeated with a shrug, as if that spoke for itself. "I was fifteen, I had a provisional license. I think I thought if I hid the evidence I couldn't get in trouble. It might still be down there, I have no idea. I wonder if that's what happened to my jacket."

"That jacket was hideous," Mrs. Kent said. "Good riddance."

"It was the height of fashion at the time," Clark assured Diana.

Bruce did a mental calculation to figure out the year it would have been the height of fashion. "Definitely hideous, then."

"Next time we should do Christmas at your house," Clark told him. "I bet Alfred has some stories."

"Absolutely not," Bruce said. "I've seen what you do to floors." Martha snorted. Though Bruce couldn't help but think that Alfred might like this, sitting around reminiscing about memories less painful in retrospect. Isolated by secrets just the same, but theirs had been a family of two, not three. It didn't seem like it ought to make much a difference, but maybe the difference was Bruce. There'd been opportunities for nostalgia. He'd never taken them.

"When I first learned to drive," Diana said, "I kept accidentally carrying the car." Clark started to laugh. "It was so unsettling! Logically I knew the car was under control, but it didn't feel like it. It felt much safer to just carry it. But, of course, most vehicles aren't designed to be carried by the driver's seat…" Bruce exhaled a quiet chuckle. "I got used to it eventually. I only broke a few. And I never threw any of them in a lake!"

"Is that going to be the new bare minimum?" Clark asked. "Everyone gets to feel better about themselves because they never threw a car in a lake?"

"I made Alfred teach Dick how to drive," Bruce admitted. "Tried it once, never again. I couldn't handle it."

"You're kidding," Clark said.

"I still don't let him drive if I'm in the car," Bruce said. Diana laughed. "Let him drive you through Gotham sometime, see how funny you think it is then."

"Were you so much better, the first time?" she asked.

"When Alfred taught me how to drive, it was in a quarry with a rally car. With a roll cage." He paused. "Alfred has very particular ideas about what constitutes necessary driving skills."

"Alfred… the butler?" Mrs. Kent asked.

Bruce shrugged. "He wasn't born a butler."

"You ought to bring him, next time you swing by," Jonathan said, looking up at the stars. Bruce looked up as well, hunted down a particular grouping of constellations. Ursa Major, all the way down to Hydra. They used to make their own constellations, the way someone might try to identify shapes in clouds. He'd forgotten most of them. But Thomas and Martha had an extensive debate, one night, as to whether this was Godzilla or a T-Rex. Martha had been very determined in favor of Godzilla. Bruce had voted in favor of a T-Rex. He couldn't remember why.

"We'll see."

Chapter Text

Bruce and Diana were already sipping coffee at the kitchen table when Clark meandered in. Both had offered to help Martha with dinner preparations, but she had emphatically insisted that they were guests and would do no such thing. It was hard to argue with a woman in a gingerbread sweater, singing along to Springsteen. Clark may have just woken up, or else he may have not bothered to brush his hair despite having time for it.

"Aw, Ma! You got started without me."

"You're darn right I did," she said heatedly. She pointed an accusatory wooden spoon at him. "Don't you go trying to help, I know what you're about." Despite his mother's preemptive scolding, Clark gave her a sideways hug and a kiss on the cheek as she worked.

"Can't a guy just want to help his mom out on Christmas? What about that, can I help with that?" He pointed to nothing in particular on the other side of her, and when she turned to see what he meant he stole stuffing out of the bowl with his fingers. Martha turned back around just in time to see him popping it into his mouth, looking horribly pleased with himself.

Bruce was pretending not to watch the exchange as intently as he was. Diana had no reason to bother with the pretense.

"Clark!" She attempted to give him a swat on the backside with her spoon, but the handle of it ended up snapping in half. "Now look what you made me do."

"I put more spoons in the drawer when I got here," he said, completely unrepentant as he licked his fingers. "Don't act surprised, you do this every year."

Martha moved to get another spoon with an indignant huff. "That stuffing is for dinner, not for you to pick at."

"Kay." The word was a little too round, because he was trying to talk around more stuffing now that she was distracted.

"Oh honestly, you're as bad as your father."

JoeyBee: If he wanted he could very easily take all of the food much faster than he is doing
JoeyBee: I assume there is some kind of ritualistic significance to this
6625211850: That's one way of putting it.
JoeyBee: Is there an explanation for it?
6625211850: Not really.
JoeyBee: It's kind of cute
6625211850: Yeah.

"Jonathan!" Martha called outside the kitchen window, where he was sitting on the porch swing with a book and a meerschaum pipe. "Could you come collect your son, please?"

"Uh oh." Jonathan lowered his book but didn't set it down, adjusted his glasses to look inside. "Hear that? You're my son, now."

"I fink 'at meansh I'm in trouble," Clark agreed, and this time he was talking around a mouth full of mini marshmallows intended for hot cocoa.

"I think that means it's snowman time. You kids wanna help?"

It took Diana a moment to register that she was being addressed. Her reminders of her age did not seem to be sticking. "I would be happy to, Mr. Kent. Bruce?"

She could tell that he was weighing his options as he finished off his coffee. He was not enthused about the idea of snowmen. But staying inside when Martha was cooking, not being allowed to help her cook, was awkward. Even Bruce Wayne couldn't entirely ignore that. Maybe not even Batman.

"I can supervise," he said dryly.

"Obviously we wouldn't expect the CEO of Wayne Enterprises to do manual labor," Clark assured him.

"I might ruin my manicure," Bruce agreed.

"Go get your sweater on, Clark, and get out of my kitchen," Martha said, unmoved by the fact that her son could as easily wander the Arctic in shorts. "And brush your hair!"

"But it's Christmas," he protested.

JoeyBee: I don't understand what the holiday has to do with his grooming habits
6625211850: Absolutely nothing.
6625211850: He just doesn't want to.

"Oh! Before I forget, bring the two presents on the side table in here." Despite her earlier scolding, Martha was now nibbling on a marshmallow. "We'll do most of the presents after dinner," she explained to Diana, "but these ones are special."

"You really didn't have to get me anything," Bruce protested, shifting uncomfortably in his seat.

"Hush, you."

When Clark came back he'd thrown on a monstrosity of a sweater, chunky red knit and a snowflake pattern that actually glittered. He still hadn't brushed his hair or put on shoes, and he was humming along with the song that had come on the radio. He was holding two gift bags, squinting at the tags. "This one's for Bruce," he said as he handed him the one with a Santa on it. "And this one's Diana." Her bag had a polar bear. It was very cute, actually. She wondered if it would be rude to keep it.

"Thank you, Mrs. Kent."

She snorted, leaning against the counter. "Don't thank me until you see what it is."

"Oh?" Diana opened it slowly, pushing tissue paper out of the way. She lifted it out and held it up to see it better, though that did not actually make it easier to tell what she was looking at. The obvious answer was that it was a sweater. It was in various mismatched patterns of green and red, and on the front there was… a sloth. In a Santa hat.

"I didn't quite know what to get you," Martha admitted with a sigh, "but I saw the sloth and I had to get it for somebody."

"I love it." Possibly her declaration was a little too intense. She stood immediately to pull it over her head, and once she had it on she looked down at herself with great satisfaction. She felt extremely festive. "I will treasure it always."

"I'm so glad," Martha said, further pleased when Diana suddenly hugged her.

Bruce did not share Diana's enthusiasm. He stared at his new sweater, knit in green. He had that very blank look he sometimes adopted, which could mean that he was trying not to laugh, but which could also mean he was trying not to look horrified. "It's really not that cold out," he ventured.

Martha sighed and gave a very dramatic pout. "Well, if you don't like it, that's your decision. Just because it takes forever to find sweaters that'll fit you boys doesn't mean I can make you wear it. Do what you'd like."

Bruce's thousand-yard stare spoke volumes. Wordlessly, he pulled the sweater on over his tasteful black turtleneck. It was patterned with ornaments, and made him look like a Christmas tree. Diana giggled. Fortunately, unlike Clark, Bruce could not set things on fire just by looking at them.

"I was so worried it wouldn't fit," Martha confided in Diana. "I have the same problem with Clark, I do my best but those shoulders just throw everything off."

"Thank goodness you found something." Bruce did not actually sound very thankful.

"You look so handsome," Martha insisted, and without asking she bent down to give him a hug as well. Bruce turned very faintly pink. "Now go on, all of you, go make yourselves a snowman so I can finish this bird in peace."

"Couldn't you just assemble the snowman using super speed?" Bruce and Jonathan, as mere mortals, had been assigned to rolling up the head. Clark and Diana were in competition to see who could make the larger ball to form the base. Both were currently at around seven feet in diameter. Eventually, surely, they were going to run out of snow.

"It either falls apart or it melts," Clark explained. He'd started hovering while he pushed the enormous ball around, which seemed a little like cheating, even if he wasn't very far off the ground.

"So you've tried it," Diana said.

"Of course I've tried it."

"Was that the year you tried to build the army?" Jonathan asked. His sweater featured a polar bear, complete with real fur. It did not make Bruce feel better about his sweater. He and Jonathan were also the only two people who needed to wear gloves for the endeavor, although Diana had put on a pair of mittens and a beanie despite this. For festivity reasons, she had explained. The beanie had cat ears, and the mittens looked like paws. It was completely, inexcusably absurd.

"An army?" Bruce asked.

"I was… I don't remember, it must have been late high school. Right?"

"Must have been," Jonathan agreed.

"I thought it'd be funny to fill the field with snowmen. Snowmen as far as the eye could see. Hundreds and hundreds of snowmen."

"You weren't wrong," Jonathan said. "He gets his sense of humor from me," he added to Bruce.

"Except it turned out you couldn't use super speed," Diana said, extrapolating to the end of the story.

"Right. Took me a while to figure that out. Once I did, I only managed to get about five in before giving up."

"The Man of Steel giving up in the face of adversity," Diana teased. Against all odds, she was making the sweater and beanie combo work. This failed to make Bruce feel better about his sweater. Quite the opposite.

"The Boy of Steel giving up in the face of a failed punchline," he corrected. "The joke didn't work if they saw me assembling the army, so it wasn't worth the effort."

"I taught you well, my son," Jonathan said, solemn. Bruce was letting him set the pace on their snowball, and so it wasn't as large as it could have been. But he wasn't feeling particularly competitive.

He still didn't think they were going to be able to find a carrot big enough for the nose.

"Clark, if I may ask," Diana began, "why exactly are you leaving your hair to do as it pleases today?"

Bruce snorted, then pretended he hadn't.

"Because it's Christmas."

"I have it on good authority that Christmas is not a traditional time to leave hair untended in the world of men."

"I'm allowed to be lazy on Christmas morning. If I had a comb, I'd show you, but you're just going to have to take my word for it when I say it's on the list of things not worth the effort."

Jonathan stopped where he stood. "I've got a comb." All eyes went to him. Out of his back pocket, he produced a piece of plastic, and pressed a button to reveal it as a novelty switchblade comb. Clark groaned and rolled his eyes.

"Pa, I'm not taking your weird gag comb. You've probably been holding on to that thing since the seventies."

"Nah, I got about fifty more of the things."

"What?" Clark's confusion came as an odd relief to Bruce. He didn't think he was that out of touch.

"Bought 'em about twenty years back, some guy was selling them on the side of the road. Fell off the back of a truck, I guess."

"So you bought a whole box?"

"Figured I might as well." He tossed the comb to Clark, who caught it, but looked no more edified. "Never hurts to be prepared, kiddo."

"That's—okay, we can talk about that later." He sighed. "I'm only going to do this once, okay?"

"I'll try not to blink," Diana said.

Clark stuck the comb in his hair. Then he tried to drag it through. It snapped immediately, leaving him holding a handle while the plastic teeth remained in his hair. Diana covered her mouth with a mitten to hold back a laugh. "Ta-da." She stifled a snort.

"Your hair is invulnerable?" she asked, muffled by knitwear.

He pulled the broken comb out of his hair and shoved it into his pocket. "Not as much as the rest of me, but basically. Is yours not? What happens if your hair's on fire?" He resumed pushing his comically oversized snowball, and the rest of them followed suit.

"Fire cannot harm me."

"Specific, but useful."

"You know," Bruce said, "it's really no wonder Luthor hates you." Clark laughed, ran his fingers through his hair, though it was not enough to make it settle down. Bruce turned his attention back to Jonathan. "How often do you buy things off the side of the road, exactly?" he wondered. That didn't seem like a habit his wife would encourage.

"Oh, not at all these days. One-Eyed Danny was the guy with the good stuff. Clark probably doesn't even remember him, died years back after that thing with the cats. No idea why we called him that when he had two eyes. Ought to have called him No-Legs Danny, but there's no accounting for nicknames. Bought a whole crate of lighters from him, once, still got about half of them. Good guy."

Bruce nodded, as if this had clarified something rather than raised more questions than it answered.

"Will we also be having a snowball fight?" Diana asked Clark. "I've been lead to believe they are traditional."

"Eh." His snowball was easily at eight feet, now. "Might take a while. Maybe you can have one with Barry, sometime."

Bruce's mouth twitched.

He shouldn't.

"I think what he's saying," he told Diana, "is that he doesn't want us getting our feelings hurt when he wins."

The effect was immediate on Diana's face. "That is not what I said," Clark insisted, but the fact that Jonathan was laughing did not much help his argument. "Diana, I didn't mean that."

"I believe you." She did not remotely look as if she believed him. "To assemble this, I need to set my ball of snow on top of yours, yes?"

Clark's hovering grew more pronounced with suspicion, moving away from his carefully collected snow. "… yes…?" If Bruce could fly, he would have been doing so much faster. Diana could fly too, after all.

"Then allow me." Awkward though it was, she knelt, managed to get her arm underneath the great mass to lift it up into the air. She rose off the ground, enough that she could easily place it on top of the other. At which point, predictably, she dropped it on Clark's head. For a moment, the two giant snowballs sat next to each other, looking practically identical. Then Diana's collapsed, cracked in half to reveal Clark standing in the middle of it. She'd managed to ground him. His hair, now wet, hung in front of his eyes; his hands were splayed helplessly.

Jonathan was practically doubled-over with laughter, leaning on the snowman's head and holding his glasses in place.

"You realize this means I won," Clark pointed out, since his snowball was now the largest by default.

"And yet I find I feel like a winner," Diana said, hands on her hips as she admired her handiwork.

"That girl has some damn good comedic timing," Jonathan said.

Bruce was not clear on why this statement was directed at him.

They had moved their snowman components closer to the house before assembly, and so Mrs. Kent met them outside, holding a camera and Clark's glasses. The head was a little too small for the single ball the the body was made of, and Clark had stuck old tires in its face for eyes. The mouth was made of fist-sized rocks, and the arms were not so much twigs as saplings.

It was completely hideous.

Diana adored it.

Mrs. Kent struggled with the tripod, then sighed. "Clark, do you know how to set up the timer on this thing? I want to get a picture with all of us." She looked at Bruce. "That is alright, isn't it?" He only shrugged. Getting a picture of all their secret identities together was hardly prudent, but if anyone could keep a secret…

Clark worked on getting the camera set up as his mother tried to arrange everyone. "Boys on the inside, girls on the outside, how about that? No, that won't work, you're too tall—no offense, Diana."

"None taken."

"Tall people in the middle, then. Johnny, you stand next to Diana and I'll stand next to Bruce, leave a space for Clark in the middle."

"No, don't leave a space for me," Clark called from behind the camera, looking through the lens. "Go ahead and get closer together, I think I figured out a good way to do this."

"Are you sure? You know I want to get you in the picture, baby."

"I'll be in the picture, it'll be fine. I'm putting this on burst mode, we should get at least one good shot. Everybody ready?"

Diana had draped an arm over Jonathan's shoulder, so Bruce did the same, putting an arm gently around Mrs. Kent. She looked up at him, then tapped the back of her hand against his chest in a scold. "No fake smiling in my photo album," she ordered. "You grump like you mean it, boy."

"Yes'm."

"Okay, everyone except Bruce—smile!" Then in a flash Clark was in front of the camera instead of behind it, kneeling on the ground in front of them with his arms spread wide. The shutter went off multiple times in quick succession, and when it was done Mrs. Kent tapped Clark on the head in a way that was clearly disapproving.

"You better not have made any faces," she warned, as all assembled reclaimed their limbs. Bruce all but glowered at Diana, but she only fluttered her eyelashes. It didn't make her look as innocent as she wanted it to.

"Only in one," Clark said as he got up to check the camera. "Or two."

"Clark." Mrs. Kent did not actually sound upset. "Tell me we at least got one good one."

"I'm checking, I'm checking," Clark assured her. Mrs. Kent tried to look at the screen at the same time as he scrolled through the recent photos.

"I knew you were making faces," she scolded. "You goofball."

"I am extremely serious, always, as befits my station." Mrs. Kent snorted. "Look, I was nice for this one! Bruce looks a little weird, though." Clark turned the camera around to show Bruce, and on the small screen he had zoomed in on his face. The camera had managed to catch him in a moment of wide-eyed surprise. Despite himself, Bruce looked at Diana.

She had gone right past pleased and shot straight into smug.

Clark narrowed his eyes, then scrolled downward. To where Diana had wrapped her arm around Bruce's waist, sudden and unexpected.

"What happened to not hugging me without my consent?" Bruce asked.

"It's Christmas," Diana said, as if this was any explanation.

Mrs. Kent was delighted. Bruce rubbed at the bridge of his nose, and hoped no one could tell that he'd started to blush. "Aww—that one! We're framing that one, I love that one." Clark zoomed back out, and showed it to Bruce for his final approval. As if he had any say at all in the matter. Objectively speaking it wasn't a bad picture. Their abomination of a snowman loomed large in the background, and Clark in front looked like he was showing off the lot of them, his glasses askew on the tip of his nose.

"My only regret is that we can't make it the League Christmas card," Bruce said.

"Oh, that really is too bad," Mrs. Kent sighed. "Maybe you could take another one in your costumes?"

"I think it might lose something without the sweaters," Jonathan said.

"You could put the sweaters on over your costumes," she suggested.

Clark and Bruce's eyes met. "I don't think we'll be doing that," Clark said.

Mrs. Kent shrugged. "It was worth a try."

"I made enough to feed three Clarks," Martha said, "so eat as much as you want and then eat more, because we don't have enough room in the fridge for leftovers."

They were having dinner far earlier than was the usual custom; when dinnertime came, Clark would need to be back in the city. Superman always volunteered at soup kitchens and foodbanks and shelters on Christmas. As reliable as Santa. Maybe moreso.

"Every discussion of this holiday that I have been a part of," Diana mused, "has inevitably come around to the matter of Santa Claus, and the age at which he was discovered to be fictional."

"Oh, we were just awful at that," Martha sighed. "Did you ever believe in Santa?" she asked Clark.

"Not really," he admitted. He'd finally brushed his hair, as apparently sitting at the dinner table with a tangled mass of curls was where he drew the line.

"He pretended for a while," Jonathan said. "Trying to make us feel better about it, I think."

"What about you, Bruce?" Martha asked. "Do stakeouts for Santa?"

"They never even tried to convince me," Bruce said. "Mom thought it set a bad precedent."

"She was probably right," Martha said. "I'd have thought the same thing, if I'd thought about it at all. We just had no idea what the heck we were doing."

"Did your families not celebrate Christmas?" Diana asked.

"Marty's did," Jonathan said, "but we never celebrated when it was just the two of us."

Martha's nose wrinkled in brief disdain. "I thought it was consumerist propaganda masquerading as a holiday," she said primly, and Clark laughed. "Then Clark got to be about two or three, I think, and it just felt… sad. Not celebrating Christmas, no presents or anything. I lacked the courage of my convictions, I suppose."

"Secretly I was excited," Jonathan said. "I'd always wanted to do the Christmas thing."

Martha huffed. "You could have just told me that, you know! We'd have done it every year if I'd known." Jonathan just shrugged.

Clark made a sound that indicated he wanted to say something as soon as he'd finished swallowing whatever it was that he was eating. "You should tell the story of how you met," he said finally.

"I can't imagine why you like that story so much," Martha said.

"It's cute."

"I'm sure your friends aren't interested in that."

"I am," Diana said.

Martha made a face, seemed conflicted about contradicting Diana. "Johnny, why don't you tell it?"

Jonathan was in the middle of buttering a roll, looking quite focused on what he was doing. "At a bar," he said simply. "She punched a guy and then moved into my van with me."

Martha hit him in the shoulder with the backs of her fingers. "You didn't even try!"

"What? I figure that's everything." He took a bite of his roll, ensuring that he couldn't speak even if he'd wanted to.

"Fine," Martha said. "If you wanted me to tell it you should have just said." Jonathan shrugged. "I was still in Iowa at the time, must have been around sixteen I think. This would have been long before your time, about '71."

"I am much older than you," Diana reminded her again.

"I'd been saving up to get out of there, splitting rent with some other girls, but all I had was my bike and that wasn't a safe way to go cross-country. That's the only reason I was still there, I hated Iowa. I was at this real dive, they didn't check ID and drinks for girls were half-price so I was there just about every night. Might have had a bit of a drinking problem, actually."

"Oh, you definitely had a drinking problem," Jonathan said.

"Hush. You had your chance to tell it, now I'm talking. Anyhow, this night Johnny happened to be passing through. Hard to resist cheap drinks. There were these local boys that showed up every night, drank too much and got nasty. They knew to leave me well enough alone but Johnny was just kind of trying to ignore them. You know how he is. I did okay trying to blend in, but he had this real short hair and his shirt was three sizes too big and they just didn't know what to make of it. I had a couple drinks in me, decided I was sick of listening to these hicks try and play tough. And I know I'm one to talk, but when I say hicks, I mean some real hicks. So I went over and socked the big one in the nose."

Jonathan looked wistful. "All hell broke loose," he said.

"I thought this poor kid was going to get trampled, so I grabbed him and we booked it. Got on my bike, got in his van, we met up down the road. He had a VW bus, all decked out." The look on her face suggested that this was impressive, and so Diana looked impressed.

"All these years," Jonathan said, "and I still can't figure out how me living in a van was a selling point for you."

"You were rebellious and free," Martha said with a grin.

"I was homeless and kept getting robbed."

"Same difference. That night we decided I'd move in with him and we'd drive to San Francisco, see if it was as nice as everyone said."

"You decided that," Jonathan corrected. "I'd been on my way to Canada."

"You wouldn't have made it, anyway," Martha said dismissively. "You kept drifting left! No sense of direction."

"Kept losing track of what I was doing, for some reason," Jonathan admitted.

"For some reason," Martha repeated with a roll of her eyes. "Not exactly the cutest story, all together, but there it is."

"It's super cute," Clark countered. "My parents are adorable," he added to Bruce. Bruce's mouth curled just the smallest bit, even as he pretended to be busy eating.

"Was San Francisco not as nice as you had been told?" Diana asked.

"Nice enough," Martha said. "City life just didn't agree with me. Needed somewhere quieter."

Jonathan had piled more mashed potatoes onto his plate, and was carefully arranging it into some manner of gravy volcano. If this was unusual behavior for a man of his age, no one mentioned it. "You can just say you had PTSD," he said.

"Jonathan!" Martha sounded scandalized. "Don't just be telling people that, you'll give them the wrong idea."

"No I won't," Jonathan said, not at all concerned. "You got better about the drinking in Oregon, though."

"You're making me sound like a mess," she accused.

"We lived in a van."

"How did you end up in Kansas?" Bruce asked, the first thing he'd said unprompted. When he put his mind to it, he could eat an impressive amount of roast goose.

"I had some health problems," Jonathan said mildly, making surprising progress demolishing his volcano. "Caused some trouble in Oregon, so we thought we'd look for a place that agreed with us both.

"We were trying to travel Route 66," Martha said, "but we kept wandering off looking at balls of twine and whatnot. Got to Kansas and we wanted to go to the center of the U.S. Drove through Smallville and decided to stay."

"You took more convincing than I did," Jonathan said. He had a dreamy sort of a smile. "Still remember when I decided this was it."

"Bet I know when it was," Martha said.

"Yeah?"

"Down at the Starlight Diner. Mike Richardson—that was the old mayor—said you were an upstanding young man and you ought to make an honest woman out of me."

Jonathan's smile broadened. "And I did, too."

"I still can't believe it," Martha said with a frown. "Of all the things I thought I'd end up doing, living in a small town with a husband and a son wasn't even on the list."

"I've still got the van if you want to move out for old times' sake," Jonathan suggested.

"I spent years trying to get you to give me that van," Clark sighed.

"It's a good thing he didn't," Bruce said as he took a sip of his drink. "It'd be in the bottom of a lake by now."

Diana could see the smile he hid behind his glass as Martha laughed.

Bruce looked, to put it mildly, perplexed. Diana could almost sympathize. After such a large meal, a stocking full of candy was hardly appetizing. But she doubted Bruce would be eating his even after he'd finished digesting the enormous amount of bird he'd eaten.

Still. It was the thought that counted. And Diana might steal some when he wasn't looking. There were a lot of very peculiar hard candies that Diana suspected were Clark's childhood favorites, and perhaps Jonathan's childhood favorites before that.

The majority of the presents had been for the Kents, out of deference as guests. Clark, being their son, had bought them all the various things they had mentioned in passing throughout the year. Diana's gifts had been mostly from home, things meant to help with aching joints and sore muscles and other minor inconveniences. Blankets warmer than they had any right to be, wine that would pour more than could fit in the bottle.

The usual.

Bruce had somehow determined which records Martha was missing from her collection, including some that—by Martha's response—were quite rare. Jonathan got gadgets. He was already playing one of his new video games. Most of the gifts from the Kents were things like homemade jam and fresh honey, and Diana was not sure they believed how pleased she was to receive them.

Clark was sorting through boxes trying to find the ones that still had gifts in them. "Oh! This one's for you, Diana." He handed it to her, his name scrawled across the tag. He'd wrapped it in glittery gold paper, and it almost felt a shame to tear it open. Almost.

Whatever it was, it was cute.

"Is this… pajamas?" she ventured.

"Yes."

"Meant to make me look like a panda?"

"Yes."

"… I should probably wait to put this on."

"Probably."

"I want to wear it now, though." It was so soft. Diana looked over to Bruce, who was watching her with a neutral expression. "I won't," she added, in case he was worried. "But I want to." She looked back down at the panda hood. "Do they make ones that look like bats?" she wondered, unable to help herself.

"I couldn't find any in his size," Clark said, anticipating what she was thinking.

"Thank god," Bruce said.

"This is what you get instead," Clark said, and he set down a box that was quite frankly enormous. It was impossible to say how heavy it was, because even the heaviest box would look lightweight with Clark holding it.

"If I open this," Bruce asked, "will there be something alive in it?"

"No."

Bruce was nonetheless wary as he opened the box, and when he saw what was inside it, he sighed. And removed… another box. With the attitude of a man who knew exactly what was going to happen, he opened the second box to find a third. "I'm going to go out on a limb," Bruce said, "and guess that this gift could have fit in an envelope."

"It could, and did," Clark confirmed.

Martha snickered. "I did that to him on his birthday, once," she told Diana. "He was so mad."

"I learned from the best," Clark agreed, as Bruce continued to open boxes to find more boxes. Clark handed Diana another box, this one of a more reasonable size; it had no name, which meant it was from Bruce. It was heavy in her hands, and she genuinely could not imagine what it could be. The paper was more subdued, so she didn't feel as bad about tearing it.

It was a chess board, the kind built to keep the pieces within it. Carved out of very dark wood, with inlays in gold along the sides. Familiar zigzagging shapes which could only mean that he'd had it custom made; Ws for Wonder Woman. She ran her fingers over it, traced the letters. She opened it to see the pieces inside, sitting snug in red velvet. Obsidian and quartz, and the pieces were handcarved into tiny and intricate statues. Gently she lifted out a crystal queen. It looked like Aphrodite.

"It's beautiful," she said, which felt like damning with faint praise. She looked up at Bruce, who was acting as if he hadn't been watching her; she knew that he had, because the room had been momentarily silent. "Will you play with me? Later?"

"It's not like I can tell you to play with Clark," he muttered. He was finally getting down to the smaller boxes.

Clark was shaking his head. "I guess I'm glad you opened mine first," he said to Diana, "since there's no way I'd be able to follow that with pajamas." Diana thought he was not giving enough credit to the pajamas. "But I'm still mad you went overbudget," he added to Bruce.

"No I didn't," Bruce said. "I just have a bigger budget than you do." He opened the final envelope, unfolded the pages that it contained so that he could read them. He narrowed his eyes. "What am I looking at."

"The article Perry's waiting until next week to publish," Clark said.

"Thinktank Uncovers Strange New Twist in Study of the Batman," Bruce read, faint incredulity.

"I'm going to spoil the ending for you," Clark said. "Their extensive research has lead them to the completely plausible, unassailable conclusion that Batman is a sewer mutant."

Diana started to laugh, covered her mouth with her hands.

"Actually," Clark corrected, "five sewer mutants. Working together to impersonate a single non-sewer mutant."

Martha was torn between amusement and horror. "They're letting you publish that? In a real newspaper?"

Clark shrugged. "I'm not asserting anything! I'm just reporting on what was said by a very reputable thinktank. The Daily Planet publishes articles about how I'm an alien, this isn't that out there."

"When this issue comes out, will you send me a copy?" Bruce asked.

"Going to frame it for the Batcave?" Clark teased.

"Yes." He folded the pages back up to put them in the envelope, tucked it into his pocket. "I look forward to finding all of the subtextual ways you've managed to insult me this time."

Clark picked up another box, but apparently this one was for him, because he started to open it. "If you need any help, let me know and I'll be happy to point some of them out. I'm particularly proud of the bit about moths."

"Is it a joke about me wanting to mate with the Batsignal."

"Yes."

"Clark!" Martha was trying not to laugh.

"It's subtextual!" he said, as if this were a defense. "I'm pretty sure Bruce is the only person who will even identify that it's a joke. Maybe some entomologists." Clark pulled a framed picture out of the box Bruce had given him, and frowned as he looked at the picture. He turned it around, a woodland scene disturbed by the presence of a large green rock. "What am I looking at, here?"

"A twenty pound meteorite made of kryptonite."

"Ah." Clark turned it back around to look at it again. "Thank you for… the reminder of my own mortality…?"

"I bought it months ago and had it destroyed."

"Oh." He blinked. "Thank you, Bruce. I appreciate that."

"You should."

Clark looked around for another box, picked one up. Diana recognized it immediately. "That one's for Bruce," she said, before Clark could even check the tag. Clark shrugged and handed it off.

Diana ran her hands over the chessboard again rather than watch him open the gift. She had decided to run the risk of overstepping her bounds, and she hoped that he wouldn't take offense. She knew that, despite his claims, Dick was very much like a son to him; she knew, as well, that this was Dick's first Christmas away. She'd thought it might be nice to make him a photobook, something sentimental that neither man would ever allow themselves.

Bruce paged through it very slowly, and once again she could not interpret the blankness on his face. Except to say that it looked almost more blank than usual. She hadn't even known that was possible.

"Where did you get these?" Bruce asked. He sounded neither angry nor accusatory; the question was softer than she'd heard before.

"I asked Dick if he could try and find some to email me. And I asked him to ask Alfred, as well. I'm told they made something of a project of it."

She'd wanted as many pictures as they could find of all three of them together, but it had turned out to be quite the challenge. Most were pictures taken by Alfred of Bruce and Dick, or pictures taken by Dick of Alfred and Bruce. But there were a few of Dick and Alfred together, some of all three of them. She'd felt a bit voyeuristic sifting through their personal photos, but told herself it was for a good cause.

If this odd stillness that had settled over him could be called a good cause.

"Thank you," Bruce said finally, closing the book and setting it aside. He said nothing more.

"Merry Christmas, Bruce," she ventured.

Bruce looked at her, really looked at her, but it lasted for only the briefest of moments. "Merry Christmas," he said.

"Is that everything?" Jonathan asked, looking up from his game.

"There's a couple more last-minute gifts," Bruce admitted, pulling his phone from his pocket.

"Oh, no," Clark said. "What did you do?"

Bruce scrolled through something, stopped and half-read. "SuperModern Foods Company, a subsidiary of et cetera, acquired the rights to once-defunct beverage company et cetera, I'm putting that apostrophe where it belongs but otherwise we'll probably keep it the same for kitsch."

"Acquired—?" Clark leaned closer, staring. "You bought Tuckers?"

"Tucker-apostrophe-s," Bruce corrected.

"When did you even do this?" Clark asked.

Bruce shrugged. "Couldn't sleep, sent some emails."

"That apostrophe added character."

"That apostrophe was a menace to society."

"That is so sweet, Bruce," Martha said, and she was utterly genuine in the exclamation. Bruce started to turn pink again.

"It's not entirely altruistic," Bruce said. "I'm pretty sure we'll be able to turn a profit on it."

"Actually," Diana said, "the other present was also Bruce's idea. He may secretly be sweet, after all." The look he gave her suggested that she'd betrayed him. "It's for you, Mrs. Kent." She handed her the small present, and Mrs. Kent accepted it warily.

Bruce had suggested it earlier, when both the Kents had been busy in the kitchen. The snowman was still outside, and they did all bring their costumes. They always did.

Martha started to laugh the instant she'd pulled the paper off, handing it off to Jonathan almost immediately so that she wouldn't drop it. Jonathan's chuckling was more subdued.

Diana's sweater had nearly covered her costume entirely. Clark's sweater had nearly matched his costume. But Bruce. Even though it had been entirely his idea, he looked incongruously sullen with the garish green over his suit.

Diana had insisted on keeping a copy for herself. So had Clark. Bruce had grudgingly made one for himself, which she thought he would probably put next to his sewer mutant article.

It would have made magnificent blackmail material, if they could ever have convinced anyone it was real.

"Bruce," Martha said as she stood, "you get over here and you give me a hug this instant."

"That present was from everyone," he insisted, even though he stood as ordered.

"Hug," she repeated, holding out her arms, "now."

Bruce acquiesced, let Martha wrap her arms around him even as he did the same. He looked, Diana thought, like he was worried he might hurt her. Clumsy, despite his being one of the more graceful men that Diana had ever met.

"I hope you had a good Christmas," Martha said, hugging him tight.

"I did," he assured her. "Thank you."

"Bye, Ma." Clark was hugging his parents goodbye, and it was a strange thing to see when he was in costume. He looked so much larger when he wore it, and his mother looked so small. Yet he was still Clark, not yet Superman. Something about his posture made it easy to tell which was which. "Bye, Pa."

"Merry Christmas, baby," Martha said.

"Happy holidays, kiddo," Jonathan said, patting him on the back.

"Thank you again for having us over," Clark added.

"Any time," Jonathan said. "Get going before you're late, we'll see you tonight."

Clark kicked off the porch, floated slow and gentle away from it as he turned to wave to Bruce and Diana. "See you guys later."

"Goodbye, Clark," Diana said with a smile. "Merry Christmas." Bruce waved two fingers, which was about as much enthusiasm as anyone could hope for.

Clark grinned. "Merry Christmas." Then he rolled his shoulders back, and all of a sudden he was Superman; he looked skyward and took off, and they watched him disappear into the clouds.

"You know," Diana said, "he does that just to be dramatic. It's better to avoid clouds, you end up soaked."

"Oh, I know," Martha said. "Ruined a pair of suede boots. Blessing in disguise, but still. You two heading out?"

"I'm afraid so," Bruce said, and it almost sounded like he meant it. "Thank you for having us."

Martha scoffed. "You're a sweet kid. Come by any time as long as you call ahead, we'll be happy to have you."

"Thank you, Mrs. Kent," he said as he gave her a goodbye hug. Unprompted, even. He had apparently come to terms with it as a necessity, since he even hugged Jonathan.

"Goodbye, Bruce," she said as he stepped off the porch. "And goodbye, Diana," she said with yet another hug. "That applies to you, too. Stop by any time."

"I will keep that in mind," she assured both Kents. "Merry Christmas—and a happy new year, as well."

She caught up to Bruce next to his car, before he had climbed inside. "Bruce?"

He was wary. "Yes?"

"Be honest," she said, voice low enough that only he could hear. "Did you actually destroy all the kryptonite?"

"No," he said, and he didn't even hesitate. Which surprised her. She thought she was going to have to catch him in a lie. Despite the nature of his confession, she smiled.

"You really do keep contingency plans for everyone," she said, not a question and not quite admiration. Intrigued, at best.

"Not everyone," he corrected, and she raised an eyebrow. "Not everyone has the kind of weakness I can keep on hand. You don't."

Her smile did not fade. "I do, actually." That brought him up short, that wonderfully rare softening around his eyes that happened when he was genuinely surprised. "Do you want to know what it is?"

He should have said yes immediately. According to everything she knew about him, everything he was, there should have been no hesitation. And yet, he hesitated. This close, it was easier to see the subtle expressions he suppressed so well; she could practically see his mind going in all different directions. Conflicted, she could see it in his eyes.

Because if he knew how to bring her down, it would be his responsibility, if it ever came down to it.

"Maybe next time," she said before he could answer, taking the choice out of his hands. A little twitch of the muscles in his neck, relief in the set of his jaw. "But, Bruce—there is one tradition I didn't get to try."

"I don't carol," he said, and she grinned. She reached into her pocket, and slowly lifted its contents above her head.

Bruce stared at the mistletoe.

"This is how it works, isn't it?" she asked.

A brief crinkle of his nose, a curl at the corner of his mouth, lips pressed together as he shook his head and tried not to smile. "That's cheating, Princess," he said, his voice a low warning that curled like smoke around her spine.

"I have it on good authority," she said, "that all's fair, under the circumstances."

"There are two circumstances that could apply to," he reminded her. "Which is this?"

"Do I have to choose?"

His kiss was sudden, but it wasn't some perfunctory thing, a chore to get out of the way. His fingers slid into her hair, his other hand at her hip, and Diana lowered her arms to wrap them around him. No shortage of kisses in her memory, but she could have sworn this tasted sweetest, carried with it all the thrill of victory. Love and war, but war wasn't what this felt like; this felt like the hunt. This felt like catching something ethereal, intangible. Her heart fluttered like a sparrow trapped in the cage of her ribs. When his hand moved to the small of her back to press her closer, she fitted herself against him, tried to memorize his warmth in the cold winter air.

She still had to be careful not to hold him too close, since she didn't want to break his ribs.

He broke away first, and his hand left her hair to frame her face, callouses rough against her skin. "Diana?" he asked, close enough still that she could feel his words. She opened her eyes, met his, that fascinating color like the ocean meeting the sea.

"Yes?"

"You're going to have to put me down."

She froze.

She'd picked him up off the ground.

She had picked them both up off the ground.

She shut her eyes in mild horror as she lowered them both back down, until she felt the ground beneath her feet. He surprised her by kissing her again, soft and swift but a kiss all the same, before he let her go. Her face felt hot, and she wasn't sure if it was the kiss that had done it or the mortification. If it hadn't been for her, he might have kept kissing her, might be kissing her still.

"Fishsticks."

And then—and then! He smiled. A real smile, the kind that spread outward from his eyes, lopsided and imperfect around porcelain teeth, and she thought that her heart probably stopped. As if to even let it beat would break the spell, that smile that shot electric right through to her fingertips.

"I'll be seeing you, Princess," he said as he opened his car door, said it like a promise; for a moment, she could imagine that he was her knight, and not his city's.

"Merry Christmas," she said, at a loss for anything else.

She waited until his car had pulled away to pirouette, a giddy spin before she returned to her car.

Clark was going to be so mad he'd missed it.

JoeyBee: Guess who got a kiss? 💄
MajorTom: WHAT no how 👀
JoeyBee: I have my ways 💅🏽
JoeyBee: Maybe he was just overwhelmed by the Christmas spirit
MajorTom: lmfao
JoeyBee: There may have been mistletoe involved
MajorTom: omfg cheaterrrrr 💔💔💔
JoeyBee: It's not cheating!
JoeyBee: Mistletoe isn't legally binding
JoeyBee: He could have refused
MajorTom: 😂
MajorTom: admit defeat? 😱
JoeyBee: You will just have to take my word for it
JoeyBee: He really did want to kiss me
JoeyBee: And did
JoeyBee: 😘
MajorTom: 🙌🎉🎊🎆🎇
MajorTom: xmas miracle 🎄👼
JoeyBee: You know what this means?
MajorTom: UGH
MajorTom: fine
MajorTom: no more adele
JoeyBee: 😩🙌
MajorTom: but u had to kiss bruce
MajorTom: so who is the real winner
JoeyBee: Even more me 😈
JoeyBee: There is no bat emoji
MajorTom: Or kangaroos
JoeyBee: I know!!
MajorTom: alt bman options: 💰🎃🌑🐁🌃
JoeyBee: 🌃 is more like Gotham
JoeyBee: Bruce is more like 😐
MajorTom: 😂😂😂
JoeyBee: What do you think he'd say if I sent him a panda selfie?
MajorTom: 😐😶
MajorTom: and then secretly save it
JoeyBee: I'm doing it 😤
MajorTom: godspeed
MajorTom: 🎄☃️🎅