Work Text:
contentment
It's midnight, and Martha's in the nursery, rocking their son.
The thrill of it hasn't worn off, not even two months later. Of course, it's been an adjustment: Clark is theirs now, but he is also so obviously someone else's, and it’s taken some time for him to get used to looking for her and Jonathan instead of the parent or parents he was surely used to. But it's been such a worthwhile journey. He's a sweetheart, is her Clark, curious and easygoing and content. These days, when Jonathan comes in from the fields, Clark will stretch his arms out to him, already gabbering away like he's got to make sure to catch his father up on his day, and then listen to Jon's responses as if he understands everything he's being told. His little mouth has just started to form around familiar sounds, and Jon had had to tearily excuse himself when Clark had managed something that sounded rather distinctly like Pa earlier today. Mush.
Clark's been asleep now in her arms for near about fifteen minutes, but it's hard to let go of him. She's still humming under her breath, the melody of an old hymn she remembers her own mom singing to her about the importance of counting your blessings. It’s the song that always comes to mind when she’s sitting here, watching the way his little face moves in his sleep. He fills her heart so full of love she can hardly stand it sometimes.
“All right, honey,” she murmurs to him, after another few minutes have ticked past. “Let’s get you back to your bed.”
Clark snuffles in his sleep, curling towards her a little more, one tiny fist wrapped around his blanket. His face turns up towards her.
And then - well -
He starts to purr.
There isn't any other way to describe it. It’s not a hum; instead, the vocalization seems to flutter through his chest, in and out in time with his breathing. It’s closest to the kind of sound the barn cat might make, when she has opportunity to climb into someone’s lap to be pet. Here and there the sound hitches, though, like her little boy isn’t quite sure how to make use of whatever part of him is producing that noise.
Martha isn’t an expert on any of this. Even with how much they’ve come to love Clark, the uncertainty remains; they’d taken him from a spaceship, for god’s sake. Her first time trying to coax a bottle of formula into his mouth, she’d been scared to death it wouldn’t be something he could even take. It’s lucky, she thinks - or good planning, on the part of whomever had stuck him into that ship - that he’s so like any other baby, so capable of being cared for by just your average country folk. But wherever she can’t know, she can try.
The purr isn’t so unlike humming, after all. And snuggled here, in her arms, she doesn’t think it’s so far off base to imagine he’s responding to her. To whatever she can offer him that is some small part of the home he doesn’t have anymore.
She settles back into the chair, and back into the hum.
What’s fifteen more minutes, for her little boy?
☀️
need
“Pa,” Clark says, for the tenth time in half as many minutes. “I’m hungry.”
“Ma’s working on supper, Clark,” Jonathan says. “She's making that special steak and egg scramble you like, remember? It'll be done soon.”
Clark's been asking for a breakfast-for-dinner day for a whole week, which Jonathan could imagine must feel like half a lifetime to a seven-year-old. As a treat today, Martha'd set to work making their boy's favorite, but she'd gotten delayed by a phone call from Rita over at the diner - their usual waitress, going through a terrible divorce - that had set her back half an hour in prepping the meal. Their mealtimes are usually prompt as clockwork, and Jonathan isn't surprised Clark’s feeling hungry; he is too.
“Here,” he says, making a bid for Clark's attention by holding up a wrench. “Why don't you come help me over here while we wait?” He's been working under the hood of the tractor, which he hopes to get up and running soon.
Clark obediently comes over, pushing up onto his tiptoes so he can peer inside.
Jonathan lowers himself into a crouch, boosting Clark up a little with his knee and passing him the wrench. “Here,” he says, directing Clark's hand. “Help me loosen this here.”
As they work, Jonathan explains the process carefully. He remembers being Clark’s age and having his own father bark out orders at him without ever explaining a thing, only to be mad when nothing seemed to click; he's determined to do better by Clark. Boy's brilliant anyway, clever and confident and, best of all, genuinely kind. He wants to help everyone. Jonathan's little part in that is giving him the tools to help people well.
They've just gotten the part free, Jonathan closing one hand carefully around one edge to keep it from dropping into the tractor's innards as Clark's last twist gets the bolt free, when his son starts to purr.
It's a familiar enough sound, one Jonathan hears most often when they're snuggled together on the couch watching a show before bed and Clark's half-asleep. Except it's different this time: a touch higher, quite a bit less peaceful. Almost like he needs something.
Jonathan's brow wrinkles. “Clark?”
Clark glances up at him, wrench still in hand. The purring cuts off. “Yeah?”
They don't make it a habit to call attention to Clark's idiosyncrasies. It ain't fair to him, for one; Clark's people, the ones he was born to, are giant question marks that Jonathan doesn’t know the answers to. He’s spent many a night talking to the stars, where they figure Clark’s come from, and when Clark’s older, they’ll get out the ship and see if it triggers some sort of knowledge in Clark, somehow. But for now, all they can really give him is the connections to his family that come natural, and the purring is one of those things.
But that’s the other thing, really: it ain’t like Clark is making an active choice to do it. Most of the time, Jonathan doesn’t think he even notices it. So it’s not like Clark can explain, if he’s asked. Like as not, this is one of them things his folks ought to be explaining to him.
Clark’s face is open and earnest as he looks up at Jonathan. Fumbling, Jonathan asks, “How’re you feeling, son?”
Clark’s nose wrinkles up like Jonathan’s teasing him. “I’m hungry, Pa,” he says, and oh right. Of course.
And then he thinks: oh right. Of course.
“Here,” Jonathan helps him down off his knee, gesturing towards the work bench where he keeps a few snacks Martha doesn't know about. “Let’s get a snack. Just don’t let it spoil your dinner, or your ma’ll have my head.”
Clark giggles like that’s silly, accepting the pack of jerky Jonathan pulls out. Jonathan ruffles his hair, taking the wrench back, and lets him enjoy his snack.
And he takes note when Clark doesn’t make that purring noise again.
☀️
pain
“Mrs. Kent?”
Lois is hovering. She knows she is. Every time there’s a pause, some kind of delay while Jimmy looks into something for her, she’s right back here. She’d like to stop, but her heart kicks up when she’s away from Clark for too long, the memory of the Kryptonite poisoning coursing painfully through his veins still too fresh in her mind.
And the sound -
“Yes, dear?” Clark’s mom looks up from where she was in the process of smoothing back Clark’s hair. Her eyes are damp, but she quickly dabs at them with the corner of her apron and summons up a smile that looks, honestly, pretty convincing. Clark sure hadn’t inherited her poker face, she thinks, and then winces.
“I just…” She’s the one who should be offering them reassurances. And Mr. Terrific had said he’d be okay, and Mr. Terrific is clearly a person who knows his stuff. But, “When we were… on the way over. Clark was, um. Making a noise?”
Mrs. Kent blinks, her brow wrinkling briefly. And then her face clears, softens.
“Come sit, dear,” she says, patting the empty chair next to her that Mr. Kent had vacated a few minutes ago to go pace on the rickety porch outside. Clark’s parents move around him like they’re performing a well-rehearsed dance, one of them always in the room, the other always keeping busy and walking off nervous energy. Mr. Kent takes the porch, always passing her by with a quick smile that seems to tremble at its edges, while Mrs. Kent goes around the house, straightening things, fluffing pillows, checking on Lois. A natural caretaker. Like Clark.
Lois comes and sits.
“We always called it purring, when he was a kid,” Mrs. Kent says, when Lois is seated next to her. She pats Lois’s hand. “There’s a proper name for it, in Clark’s language, but I don’t have the pronunciation exactly right yet, and I don’t want to get it wrong your first time hearing his language. It’s such a pretty language when you hear it spoken clearly. I’ll have Clark say it for you when he wakes up.”
It’s not the first time Lois would have heard his language; everybody in Metropolis had heard his language in his other parents’ voices, in the background of the English translation of their words. Lois herself, waiting in Clark’s apartment for him to come back home that first day, before he’d decided to turn himself in, had listened to the newscasters clip portions of it and play it in full, decrying the words for sounding too foreign, too ugly, too alien. Typical shit.
Even knowing what she supposes they know now, Lois likes the thought of hearing it spoken by Clark instead.
“Near as Jonathan and I figured, it’s not so different from purring anyway,” Mrs. Kent continues. “There’s a sound he makes when he’s hungry, and a sound he makes when he’s very comfortable and calm.” She pulls her hand away from Lois’s in order to lay it over Clark’s. “And then there’s one he makes when he’s in pain. We don’t…” Mrs. Kent pauses, takes a deep breath. “We’re blessed not to hear that one very often. It’s to self-soothe, I suppose. Sometimes it helps him if we hum back. It’s not quite the same, but it’s as close as we can get.”
She starts to hum then, soft and low and gentle. Lois watches Clark’s face, feeling oddly out of place in this quiet moment that is so filled with love; watches as he turns, just slightly, towards them, the drawn lines of his face smoothing out a little. It reminds her of the way he’d turned towards Mrs. Kent when they’d first laid him down on this bed, his barely-conscious instinct to tell his mother what was wrong, like she could fix it. The sound that comes out of him in response does remind her of purring, although there’s a faint keen to it. It’s the same sound that had worried her in the T-Craft, but it only tugs at her heartstrings now, as Mrs. Kent leans closer, brushing her hand over his cheek. Comforting. Letting her learn how to comfort.
She wants to be there for Clark like this, she thinks. In all the little ways, the ways only the people who love him know and see. She doesn’t want him to hide these things from her, these things that are so clearly an intrinsic part of him.
She wants to make him feel safe, in all the ways he has made her feel safe since she’s known him.
And she’s going to. She’s determined.
And when Lois Lane is determined, things get done.
She makes sure of it.