You guys, I promise I wrote all of this before I saw the new Batman vs. Superman movie. I swear. The mommy issues are just a total coincidence.

-Cro

"Hustled," Clark grumbled. "I can't believe you hustled me. On our first date, too."

"I don't know what you were expecting," Bruce scoffed in Clark's arms as they blazed through the sky. "Bruce Wayne, bad at mini golf? Please."

"You didn't have to lie about how good you are, though!"

Bruce laughed again. Another real, genuine laugh, touched with mirth but not a bit of cruelty. "With stakes like these? Eighteen favors of the remarkable Clark Kent, to use at my discretion?"

"I wouldn't have offered that forfeit if I knew you were cheating me."

"At the least, you should have suspected," Bruce said, loosing his tie. "Now for my first favor. Let me blindfold you."

Clark started, bouncing off a wind current and struggling to keep from jostling Bruce's ribs. "You can't blindfold me, I'm flying here!"

"I'll direct you," Bruce said. "By the time Diana gets Hawk Girl into the plane, our trail will be cold, and we're already out of the scope of Watch Tower surveillance. Come on. I want to surprise you."

"You've already surprised me," Clark protested as Bruce slipped his grey tie over his eyes. "For starters, you wore a lead-lined tie."

"I plan for every contingency," Bruce said as he knotted the tie tightly at the back of Clark's head.

"Every contingency," he added in a low whisper at Clark's ear, and Superman blushed under the lead-lined silk.

"A little lower," Bruce proceeded to direct Clark. "Okay, I know where we are."

For ten minutes they flew, and though Clark tried to keep track through all the circles, double-backs, abrupt halts and diversions, he had to admit that he was completely lost. Bruce remained smug, solid and hot in Clark's arms, and it would have been hard enough to concentrate just holding the man's body to his chest in the high, thin air.

Once Bruce was satisfied, he nodded. "Alright. Start coming down. A little to the left. Left. Steady on."

But as the air grew warmer and thicker, Clark's nose and ears started working overtime to make up for the temporary blindness.

The first thing to hit him was the warm, familiar scent of grass and cows and tea and warm, heavy wool blankets and sunbaked skin. The second was a warm, familiar voice singing a new song.

"Blame it on Aleve! Got me calling Steve! Blame it on Excedrin, got me up inbed an' blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-aspirin, blame it on the a-a-a-a-a-aspirin!"

"Kara?" Clark wondered aloud. "Are we in…Kansas?"

Bruce groaned. "Well, that spoiled that at least." Clark felt Bruce's thumb slip under the tie, pulling it off in a swift, fluid motion, and Clark saw his family's sprawling, comfortable farm just below him.

He stopped, hovering over the little white house that shone like a beacon in the black night. "Why are we at the farm?"

Bruce shrugged casually. "It's movie night," he said.

"But," Clark was flabbergasted. "But why are we in Smallville for movie night?"

"Kara," Ma Kent's voice called in the house. "I think I hear them. Check on the pizza pockets, would you?"

"They're fine, Aunt Martha, I checked a minute ago!"

"Then go grab them, please, the popcorn is getting cold!"

"Because," Bruce said as a curvy, grinning blonde jumped out the kitchen window and flew up to meet them, "your family is important to you, and I want to meet them."

Kara smirked a little at Clark, hovering in front of him. "Surprise!" she said.

"Nice song."

"I love you too, cuz!" Her beam could have melted a plane to juice. "And you must be Bruce!"

There are very few people that can manage to look dignified while being carried bridal-style by an enormous man twenty yards in the air. Luckily, Bruce Wayne was one of them.

"Pleasure," he said, proffering his left hand, which Kara shook. "Thank you very much for your help today, Ms. Zor-El."

Clark narrowed his eyes at Kara, but she ignored him. "I wish I could have seen his face! Ugh, was it funny?"

"Very."

"Come on in, you guys!" Kara grinned, sinking slowly to the ground. "Wait till you try the ice cream! I helped Aunt Martha make it!"

"You called my cousin," Clark accused as he set Bruce onto the walk. Kara ran inside to yell for Ma Kent.

"I called your mother," Bruce replied casually. "Your cousin interrupted. I suspect that's not unusual."

"I think it should bother me that you called my mother."

"I would have eventually anyway. This way, I know to take you miniature golfing instead of to a fancy French restaurant you'll hate, and you know I hate roses."

Clark's eyebrows furrowed in consternation. "But…isn't this jumping the gun a little? This is only our first date."

"With your permission," Bruce said, leading Clark up the walk to the house, "I'd like to consider this the first of several."

"R…really?"

"I'd like to take it as fact that we were going to get to this point eventually, and since you've met everyone that is important to me already, and since I daresay we already know each other at least as well as the average couple at the point that they meet each other's families, in some respects at least, I see no reason not to meet your family for movie night."

Unbidden, the fevered memory of Bruce, heavy and hot, pressing his burning forehead into Clark's chest filled his mind. "You're mine," he'd hissed.

"Mine."

"Clark? Is that alright?"

Clark looked back up at Bruce on his mother's porch. His dark hair was mussed a little from the flight and his cheeks were still red from the cold and the wind. He'd swung his coats over his shoulder and put his other hand so comfortably in his perfectly tailored pocket, and gave Clark such a relaxed smile, and was so softly lit against the house's warm, yellow light that there was only one answer.

"It's perfect."

"And just what does my son think he's doing," Martha Kent's voice yelled from inside, "trying to heat the neighborhood? Come in, close the door!"

Clark startled, feeling nine years old again, and dashed inside, dragging Bruce behind him.

Martha greeted them in the door. "Hello, Clark!" she grinned, pulling his face down with her little, wrinkled hands and kissing him on both cheeks. "Welcome home!"

All the annoyance he'd felt at his mother going behind his back and telling Bruce how to woo her son disappeared. "Hey, Ma, how are you?"

"And this must be Bruce!" she said, ignoring him. "Oh my, you're so much taller than your picture!"

Clark was mortified. "You have a picture? Ma!"

"Kara gloopled him for me," Martha said with a wave of her hand.

"Googled!" Kara called from the kitchen.

Bruce offered his hand. "It's nice to finally meet you, Mrs. Kent."

Martha brushed his hand aside. "We don't shake hands in this family, Bruce," and before Clark could finish saying "Ma, no," she'd stood on her toes and wrapped her arms around Bruce's chest.

Shit. When was the last time anyone hugged Bruce Wayne? Bruce stood frozen for a moment and Clark tried to find a reason for his mother to let go his date. "Um, Ma! Popcorn! Uh, is the movie ready? Ma, you, um… Kara!"

But before Clark's cousin could come intervene, Bruce hugged Martha back with a laugh. "Ha! Alright, then!"

"What's the haps?" Kara asked, poking her head into the foyer. "Oh! Aunt Martha, okay! Hey, Bruce only just met you, Auntie!"

But as Martha tried to release Bruce, he pulled her in tighter. "No," he smiled, and Clark's heart thudded. "I feel like I already know you so well, between Clark's stories and our phone conversations. Really, there's no need to be shy."

"W…what?" One of the reasons Clark had been so mystified by this turn of the date was because he couldn't imagine Bruce Wayne meeting anyone's parents. From eight on, the closest thing he's had to a parent was someone he paid.

But then, Clark thought, the closest thing Bruce had to a parent was someone he paid. This show of maternal affection was probably the first in twenty five years that he'd experienced. With a stab of realization that Bruce felt comfortable hugging his mom, probably the first maternal figure in ages, Clark smiled sheepishly at Kara.

"So," he said, knowing full well Kara and Ma changed their minds about it every twenty minutes, "what's on the program tonight?"

Martha finally released Bruce with an affectionate pat of his chest, and he colored, remembering himself.

"Princess Bride," Martha said. "Final answer."

"We don't even need the sound!" Kara grinned. "Aunt Martha knows it by heart! Voices and all."

Martha led everyone into the living room. "Oh hush," she said. "We want poor Bruce to like us! Bruce, dear, have you seen the Princess Bride?"

Kara plopped onto the soft, cushy couch and motioned for Clark to sit beside her. The yellow sofa was older than Clark, and laden with several of his mother's warm quilts, and pillows fluffier than they had any right to be, and before them was a coffee table laden with bowls of popcorn, plates of pizza rolls and junk and a remote large enough for Martha's weakening eyes. It was warm and familiar, and Clark tried to bounce his cousin a little when he sat heavily on the couch, patting the empty cushion next to him for Bruce.

"Years ago," Bruce responded, sinking into the cushion beside Clark. His body heat filled Clark with a warm, fuzzy sensation, and Martha sat lightly on the end.

"Oh, you'll love it!" Martha smiled. "It's my second favorite love story in the world!"

Bruce, thankfully, recognized the setup for what it was and responded accordingly. "What's your first?"

"Dad and hers," Clark said with affection.

"It all started with a junker and a race!" Kara added dramatically.

"Jonathan Kent, small town farm boy with big town racing dreams…"

"And Martha Clark, small town farm girl with big town mechanic dreams!"

"ALL right!" Martha said with mock irritation. "Don't make me separate you two!"

Bruce smiled softly. "I'd love to hear it sometime," he said.

Kara made a face. "Clark, your boyfriend's a liar."

Boyfriend? Clark panicked a little, but Bruce was as smooth as ever.

"Clark, your cousin's a cynic." Not an agreement, not a disagreement. A safely tabled topic. Clark breathed a sigh of relief.

Martha patted Bruce's cheek fondly. "I have to have you over for tea one of these days, dear! You're a treat!"

Bruce cleared his throat self-consciously and Clark hurriedly changed the subject to save him from answering. "So! The Princess Bride!"

"Princess Bride!" Kara agreed, pulling a white and red quilt up to her chest, and it was then that Clark remembered his Ma's TV was barely a foot and a half tall, whereas Bruce's guest bedroom had a projector with a six foot display. But as he looked at Bruce to mouth an apology, the billionaire pulled the quilt at their feet up over their shoulders and put a hot hand on the inside of Clark's trembling thigh. Then his thick index finger started tapping rhythmically in Morse.

:Are you alright: he tapped, with a double scratch like an ASL question.

Martha turned on the movie and they all settled into the soft, fluffy couch, and as Buttercup instructed Wesley around the farm, Clark put his large hand on Bruce's hard, warm thigh.

:I didn't think you'd like this: he tapped. :It's nothing like you have at home:

Bruce gave Clark's leg a light squeeze and Clark grinned a warm, silly grin. :If I wanted to stay at home: he tapped, :I'd have cooked:

:Wait, you cook: double scratch.

:I like your family a lot: Bruce tapped. :Don't be so nervous:

Clark sighed happily and shifted his body into Bruce's. :Thank you:

Bruce leaned into Clark and Kara elbowed his ribs playfully, but Clark didn't care if she knew that Bruce's fingers were running down his arm and slowly, one by one, intertwining them with his own. Or that they watched the rest of the movie lie that, hand in happy hand, letting Kara eat all the pizza rolls herself.