Of Men in Love, Their Mothers, and Misunderstandings
Summary: In which Clark Kent tells his ma about the Dark Knight he can't get out of his head.
Author's Note: Thank you to Sai and Dino for beta reading this fic for me. Any mistakes you still see here are all my fault and no one else's.
Clark takes his mug of hot chocolate out to the porch swing, where he is soon joined by his mother. Martha Kent called him earlier that week and insisted he come home for dinner as he hasn't been to see her in a couple of months. He sighs.
"That's a mighty big sigh for someone who just put away three quarters of an apple pie," she says.
He smiles. "Sorry, Ma. I guess I'm not really great company these days. Even Lois is getting fed up with me, I think."
She sets her own mug down, leans over and takes his free hand in both of hers. "Why don't you tell your mother what's the matter, Clark? Is it work? Or maybe your, ah, other work? Something else?"
He sighs again. "Maybe a little of all three?"
She lifts her hands to his face, cups his chin like she used to when he was a child. Then she smiles. "You're in love."
He lifts his free hand to rub the back of his neck sheepishly. "I wouldn't say I'm in—" Then he meets her pointed gaze. Deflates. "Yeah, I guess I am."
"Well, then. Tell me about her." She sees his slight grimace. "Him?"
He smiles. "Yeah."
"Clark Kent, if you think that makes one bit of difference to me—"
He leans down, kisses her cheek to stop her mid-rant in a move he's been doing since he was in grade school. "Thanks, Ma."
She sniffs indignantly, but stops lecturing. "Just as long as we're clear."
"Crystal, ma'am."
"So," she says again. "Tell me about him."
His face lights up. Finally, someone he can talk to. He has no idea why it took him so long to realize his ma would be the one person in the world who would let him talk her ear off about the man who's been haunting his waking and sleeping hours. Bruce Wayne, Gotham's benevolent prince by day and its Dark Knight after sundown. The man he'd first met as an enemy and yet in so short a time was turning into his greatest friend. If only he could keep thinking of him as only his friend.
"He's brilliant, Ma. Focused and driven and so, so smart, like you wouldn't believe." He lapses into silence; he's a writer, but he often finds himself at a loss for words to describe the scalpel edge of Bruce's mind, his razor wit.
She smiles. "Well and good, Clark. But is he…" She frowns. "Is he kind? Is he a good man? I know you and your father didn't see eye to eye about Lex Luthor when you were in high school, and seeing as what that man has gotten up to in recent years, I can't help but be glad you stopped being friends with him. Still, you described him much the same way, back in the day."
Clark feels that familiar wash of regret at the thought of his greatest foe, who had once been one of his closest friends. He supposes he will always feel that tug of sadness at the lost potential for the good Lex Luthor could have brought to the world. Returning to the present, he smiles when he realizes what his mother is asking.
"You don't need to worry on that score, Ma. He's a wonder. He gives so much of himself to people he doesn't even know. He puts on this air of gloom and doom, but he's even gentler than I am when he deals with children and even small animals, when he thinks I'm not looking. I never knew one man could have so big a heart."
"Your heart's not tiny either, son."
His lips quirk upward. "Thanks, Ma." He takes a sip of his chocolate, realizes it's gone cold, and uses his heat vision to warm it up again. "But sometimes I wonder, would I be out there doing what I'm doing, working to keep some good in the world, if I wasn't… different? If I wasn't faster, stronger, more powerful than your average human? He has none of my powers, Ma. He's 100 percent human, but he goes out every day and he tries to make his city safer for the people in it, tries to do right by the people he couldn't save."
"He does sound like a good man," Martha says. "A paragon, even."
Clark snorts. "Hardly. He's also the most hard-headed, grouchy, stubborn man on the planet."
"I'd be careful who you go around accusing of having a hard head, Clark."
He laughs. "He'd tell you the same."
"So when am I going to meet this boyfriend of yours?"
Clark frowns into his chocolate. He takes a sip, then another and another, to keep from answering.
"Clark."
"He'snotmyboyfriend."
"Clark. Speak up. You know better than to mumble."
He sighs and puts his mug down on a side table. "He's not my boyfriend. I haven't even asked him out."
"Well, why the heck not, Clark? How long have you been mooning over this boy?"
"He's not a boy, Ma!" Martha just raises an eyebrow at him. He already knows he is blushing. "Two years," he mutters.
"Clark Kent, I don't know where you learned to move slower than an obese dairy cow on a hot July day, but it sure wasn't from your Pa or me. Why, he asked me on a date the day we met! And I had him in a haystack on our third night out together."
"Ma!" If his face was pink before, it's bright red now. "You're not supposed to tell me these things! I'm your son!"
She snorts. "All the more reason to tell you when you're being an idiot. Ask the man out, son."
"It's not that simple, Ma!"
"How hard can it be? You must see him regularly enough if you've been mooning after him for two years. Next time you see him just ask him to dinner and a movie. Or coffee."
"I can't, Ma!"
She frowns. "Clark Kent, your pa and I didn't raise a coward."
He scrubbed a hand down his face. "It's not about that, Ma."
"Well, what is it about then? You're telling me you've met a good, kind, brilliant man. You spend so much time thinking about him you forget to visit your mother for two months, and you—"
"He won't even talk to me unless he's dressed up as a giant rodent!"
Shocked silence. Then, "Would… would you please repeat that, Clark? I'm afraid I misheard what you said."
He sighs. "You heard exactly right. The man I'm in love with spends half his time stomping around town dressed up as a giant bat." Clark puts his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands.
Faintly, "Oh." Then, "Hm. Well, I might have read a thing or two about that. And I think I know what you're talking about."
Shocked, he straightens to look at her. "You do?"
She nods. "I do have the Internet, Clark. This may be Smallville, but it's not Backwardsville along with it. I've read about this on websites, seen videos on the YouTube."
He frowns. "What do you know? About him? About what he does?"
"Well, I understand the basics about what he does with his time." She waves a hand dismissively. "But I was real fascinated by what I read about why someone like him would choose to join that world."
"You were?"
"Yes." She nods and smiles gently. "If his story is anything like what I saw on the YouTube, I think that you and he might be good for each other."
"You do?"
"Of course, baby. You love who you love, right? It's not about being male or female. It's not even about being biologically human. He must have made the choices he made because he didn't feel like he belonged anywhere else. Maybe his friends and family didn't understand him. Maybe he didn't feel like he could do what he wanted to do as himself. In fact, he probably feels like he is his true self when he is in his, ah, costume."
"Yes," Clark says slowly. "Yes, I think you might be right."
She smiles archly. "Clark Joseph Kent, don't you know by now you should always just assume your mother is right about everything?"
He chuckles. "True, Ma. True. I promise I won't forget again."
She smirks. "See that you don't." Then she sobers. "But, truly, Clark, don't you see? I think what he's telling you is that he wants you to know him, truly."
Clark frowns. "I don't understand, Ma. How do you mean?"
"Well, you say that he will only talk to you when he's wearing his costume."
"That's true." Clark is nodding. "When I meet him in civilian clothes, he's always putting up an act, sometimes he even pretends we don't know each other."
She sighs. "Well, I'm not sure what that's about," she admits, "but, Clark, the fact that he wants you to engage with him while he's in costume means he only wants to deal with you as his true self. And maybe you should be a bit more understanding of that. Maybe you should show him the version of yourself that isn't klutzy Clark. Or the Superman you pretend to be for the cameras, if he knows that side of you."
"He does. He knows who I am in and out of the suit, same way I know who he is."
"Well that's something, at least." She smiles. "Ask him out, Clark. The worst he can say is no."
"But—"
"No buts, young man. And if he says yes, I expect you to bring him for dinner next month."
"Ma, I don't think he'd be keen on—"
"Tell him I insist. And tell him that I would be happy to meet him in his human clothes, but I would be delighted to meet his—now, what did the man on the YouTube call it? Ah!—I would be honored to meet his fursona."
"His—?" Clark actually floats up so he's staring at his mother from mid-air, eyes wide as saucers. "Ma! Bruce Wayne is Gotham's Batman—he's not a furry!"
Equally surprised, she stares back. "He's not?" Then,
"Batman is real? And he's Bruce Wayne?"
"No, he's not, and yes, he's real." Why, oh, why did he decide to talk to his mother, of all people, about his relationship problems? Also, Bruce might break his no-killing rule and murder Clark for just blurting out his secret identity to his mother like that.
Clark is so lost in thought, he doesn't notice Martha Kent is scowling. "You're in love with Bruce Wayne? The playboy?" She sighs. "Oh, Clark, what is it with you and billionaires?"