A/N: I wrote this several months ago, apparently, and recently rediscovered it in the depths of my Documents folder. Enjoy!
~Nicknames~
In reality, Bruce didn't truly dislike Kansas and the Kents' house, although he professed to Clark that he did. It was just that the combination of flat wheat fields as far as the eye could see, three pounds of cornbread a day, and roosters were disconcerting. It made him itchy.
Especially the nickname. The nickname made him twitch.
Not that Clark was ever particularly receptive to his critiques. Especially not when they were in the Javelin, on the way to Kansas. Bruce was sitting in the passenger seat, reading mission reports, because he had resolutely ("bullheadedly" Clark had said) refused to drive. As for Clark, he was grinning, in a way that he no doubt thought was secretive and not ear-to-ear giddy. Bruce tried to focus on the mission reports, but that smile kept distracting him.
"We need to get one thing straight," he said, and closed the binder he was reading.
"Mmm." Clark leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. He should have known by now that that was not an adequate response. When Bruce didn't soften, he sat back and sighed. "What is it?"
"Your mother doesn't get to call me that anymore."
"Call you what?" Clark asked, with big-eyed false innocence, as if he had no idea what Bruce was talking about.
Bruce glared.
"I don't think Ma calls anybody by their real names. Wally and John she calls 'dear' and I think Diana is 'honey.'" Clark grinned, not even bothering to hide it this time. Bruce resisted throwing the binder in his face, knowing that it would do nothing more than bounce off his invulnerable nose. Too bad he hadn't been wearing the glasses. Those would have broken. "She just likes you an extra lot."
He still grimaced. "I don't like it."
"I don't think a nickname is going to make anyone think of you as less dark and scary." Clark sat back in his seat like the conversation was over with, and turned on the radio. To a country music station. Bruce had put satellite radio in the ships, purely as a luxury, every station they could want from anywhere in the world, and Clark chose to listen to Carey Underwood. "And don't give me that look. I like this music. And as we're on the way to Kansas, I think you can put up with some country music before we, you know, go to the actual country."
Bruce decided to cut to the heart of the issue. "You know that if anyone but your mother called me sweetheart, they would end up in the hospital with a few less teeth."
"She thinks you're sweet," Clark said, "and most people would take that as a compliment. And yes, you don't have to remind me that you're not most people. Trust me, I know that. Although I suppose it's a good thing you don't want to punch my mother."
"I don't think that would be conducive to us dating," Bruce replied, which Clark chose to take as a rare attempt at humor.
"I think you like to complain about things you secretly enjoy." Clark turned the landing gear on, which gave him an excuse to break eye contact. "You complain about how messy the boys are, yet I know you adore them. You complain about how Alfred is always pushing you to take a break, but you let him. You complain about Ma's desserts being too sweet, but last time we were here I'm pretty sure you had half an apple pie all by yourself."
Unfortunately for Bruce, they hit the ground before he had a response and Clark jumped out the door, not willing to wait for one. With a long-suffering sigh, Bruce followed him into the cornfield. The Kents had cut out part of the plants next to the barn in a square just big enough for the Javelin to land in and cloak itself. They'd done this despite the fact that Clark could just fly himself over whenever he wanted. Given the number of invitations Ma Kent extended to the other Leaguers at every Christmas party, she apparently liked to have a full house whenever she could.
He had to jog to catch up to Clark, who was literally walking on air (now that deserved an eye roll) and reached him just as they came to the back porch, where Ma Kent was waiting.
"Boys!" she said, and embraced them both, Clark first. "It's so good to see you, honey."
Then she reached over and ruffled Bruce's hair, like he was a kid at his grandmother's house. "And how are you, sweetie?"
Clark reacted to Bruce's visible twitch by smirking. Clearly, he was not about to intercede on his boyfriend's behalf. Bruce tried to extricate himself from Ma before an awkward conversation. "Mrs. Kent, I—"
"Oh, sweetheart, I've told you to call me Martha."
"Well, okay, but I—"
Ma turned towards the house. "I have banana bread in the kitchen that just came out of the oven. Do you boys want a slice before dinner?"
Bruce tried again. "Sure, but—"
"You should bring Dick and Tim over next time you come." Ma was already in the kitchen, cutting thick slices of steaming, chocolate-y banana bread. "The kids are so cute. And remind me to package some of this up for Tim; last time he was here he said he loved it."
Tim did indeed love the banana bread, and had said so over and over and over for at least three weeks after his last visit to the Kents'. Bruce wondered if actually bringing some home would make him more or less annoying about it. Last time he'd brought home sweets from Ma, Alfred had apparently felt the need to prove his dessert supremacy, and they'd had pies, tarts, and puddings for three weeks. Good for the taste buds, bad for patrol.
He accepted the plate from Ma and took a bite to please her, and tried one last time to ask her to please, for the love of god, call him Bruce, but she was up the stairs before he was done chewing. For a woman in her early seventies, she sure was fast. Clark, at this point, was silently chuckling with one hand over his mouth. "Let me make you up a room."
Bruce gave up. "Can you please talk to your mother? Apparently I'm not well versed enough in how to interject into a Kent Family conversation."
"What does that mean?" Clark asked, while getting himself another slice at the same time.
"You're all very opinionated and do exactly what you want to." Bruce reached over with his fork and stole some of the crust off Clark's bread. He figured it was a fair payment for this. "It's quite overwhelming to an outsider."
"Said the pot to the kettle." Clark gave him a look that was clearly verging on annoyance. "Have you met your family? You're not exactly the Brady Bunch either. The disapproval Alfred looks at me with whenever I bring over pizza could freeze Volcana in her tracks. Try getting along with a group of people who are suspicious and paranoid on purpose, all the time, of everyone. You know Tim went through my jacket pockets once, to make sure I wasn't an imposter? You want to talk about imposing families? Try dating the patriarch of the Batclan."
"Well. I'm sorry we're so difficult," Bruce snapped.
"You could try easing up on Ma's nicknames." Clark put his plate down on the counter just a little too forcefully for it to be natural. "I put up with a lot for you; I think you can deal with Sweetheart for the twice a year you deign to come out to the farm. And for chrissakes, stop stealing my banana bread. Just get yourself another slice. I swear, Alfred must have spoiled you rotten as a kid. You can't deal with other people."
"I don't like other people!" Bruce nearly threw his hands up in frustration. "I like you, and I do appreciate your family, but your idea of a good time is thirty people in your apartment watching Christmas movies, and that much humanity in one place drives me nuts. Yet you take it as a personal insult when I want to jump out a window halfway through."
"I think you could grit your teeth for a couple of hours and try to have fun," Clark said.
Bruce crossed his arms. "You could be a little more considerate. I could very well just go on patrol."
Clark rolled his eyes. "You don't deserve a medal for showing up, Bruce. That's pretty much a relationship requirement."
"Well," Bruce said, with an edge to it.
"Well." Clark repeated, with an equal darkness. They stood in Ma Kent's kitchen and glared at each other, four feet apart with a pan of banana bread between them. Almost a minute later he added, like he needed confirmation, "I guess this is a fight, then."
And surprisingly, it was Bruce who broke first. He leaned back against the counter. "I guess I can deal with nicknames for a little while. Sometimes things aren't as bad as I make them out to be."
Clark smiled and wrapped an arm around him in a way that he would usually shrug off. "I'm sorry too. I do like your family, despite their intensity. And I promise not to be so persistent about you staying at parties. Now hurry up and don't look so scowl-y, or Ma will know we had a spat and start mothering, and I know that will drive you crazy."
Sure enough, Ma came back down the stairs, as if she'd been cued. When she saw them together in the kitchen, she made an awww face but thankfully resisted actually cooing. "Pa's going to be a while in town, he has to go to the hardware store to get the tractor fixed up. Just a little leak in one of the tubes. He'll be home before dinner. Speaking of which, you two can help me out. Clark, go to the garden and pick us some carrots, and Bruce, you can chop up the green beans for the casserole."
Clark obediently went out the backdoor (at regular, not superspeed, which Bruce found to be both absurd and homey, seeing as how Clark could cook their whole damn dinner in five minutes if he tried) and Bruce followed Ma into the kitchen. She handed him the cutting board and the knife, and thankfully told him how she wanted them cut, because he was pretty sure he wouldn't be able to boil water without instructions.
"You and Clark look happy," she said, while innocently stirring a sauce of some sort.
Of course this was an ambush. Ma looked like a kindly old lady, but in reality she was sharp as a butcher's knife, and Bruce kept forgetting that. He cleared his throat, trying to think up a response, given that he and Clark had just been yelling at each other about families. "Yes. We are."
He craned his neck to see out the back window. How long was Clark going to take, picking these damn carrots? Why couldn't one of his hundreds of superpowers have been knowing when Bruce needed a save? Forget the whole nicknames issue and fighting, it was just awkward discussing your relationship with your boyfriend's elderly mother.
Ma came over to inspect his handiwork, and again ruffled his hair while she bent over the cutting board, which made him feel like he was all of six years old. One thing he would never, never be able to get used to was how touchy the Kents were. "Those look pretty good, sweetheart. "
Bruce winced, and thanked the stars that Wally wasn't able to hear this. He would never see the end of it.
"Now." Ma dumped the beans into a pot of water, and dusted off her hands on her apron, while Bruce tried to remember if he had ever seen her without an apron on. "What sort of pie should I make for afterwards? Your choice, being the guest. I know Alfred said you especially like peaches."
Bruce started. "You and Alfred talk?"
"There aren't many people who know what it's like to be the family of a superhero," Ma said, as if it were perfectly reasonable that she and Alfred apparently had regular phone conversations. "And Alfred is a wonderful man. Although we do disagree on whether Yorkshire puddings are better than buttermilk biscuits or not."
For a second, all he could do was blink dumbly at the thought of Alfred and Ma Kent having in-depth discussions of the benefits and drawbacks of American versus British biscuits. Biscuits! What had his life come to, that it was beginning to resemble some insane cult sitcom?
"So," Ma said, like he hadn't heard her. "Apple or peach pie?"
"Peach," Bruce replied, because it was true that he did like them.
Ma went to the refrigerator and pulled out an already prepared, unbaked peach pie (of course she had one ready. He chalked it up to the Unexplainable Superpowers of Martha Kent). While she was putting it in the oven, she said, "I hope you don't mind that I call him. I do enjoy his company, and well, since you and Clark have started seeing each other I feel as if you're a little bit mine." She smiled at that, kindly. "I hope you don't mind that either."
"I don't," Bruce said, and found to his surprise that he really, truly didn't mind it at all. Quite liked it in fact. And with the smells of dinner filling the kitchen, he began to consider that he might even not mind being called sweetheart at all, especially if it held the promise of peach pie.
