Superman Movieverse Pairings Challenge!
The One I Love the Most | Clark/Martha | 377 words | G | innocent, sincere
Clark is almost ten - they’ve had him for seven years. He’s largely forgotten his past, except for some nights when he wakes from dreams speaking in a language never before heard on this Earth. It’s always Martha who goes in to soothe him back to sleep on those nights. Only once has she ever found the courage to ask him what he dreams, and he said he didn’t remember anything but stars.
He has thrown her entire life off-kilter. Before, it was her and Jonathan, and the farm. Now there’s this little wonder from another world tagging at her heels, his wide blue eyes turned up to hers, full of curiosity and adoration. Her heart squeezes in her chest like a fist every time she looks at him. The love for her husband is powerful and wonderful, a blessing for sure, but what she feels for this little boy is terrible in its way. Martha has lied to keep him, falsified records and lied to everyone she knows in Smallville about where he came from.
She knows she would do so much more than lie to protect him. God help anyone who harms her boy.
It’s Valentine’s Day today, and he comes home from school with a huge card he made just for her. It’s almost as tall as he is, and she can’t help covering her mouth to hide a laugh as he trots up the drive with it in his hands. He’s so very serious, her son, he wouldn’t like it if she laughed at his gift.
Red and pink aren’t Martha’s favorite colors, so Clark made his card in blue and green and yellow, the colors of the farm: azure sky, verdant grass, golden wheat. He shows it to her gravely, and she compliments him as she opens it. Inside is a dedication in letters rather neater than the average ten-year-old’s.
“Mrs. Baker said Valentine’s Day is for telling someone you love them. So I made this card for you, Ma, because you’re the one I love the most.”
Martha can’t help getting a little teary-eyed, and she gathers her son close for a hug and a kiss. “You’re the one I love most of all, too,” she whispers to her own little miracle.
Blood Brothers | Ben Hubbard/Jonathan Kent | 994 words | PG-13 | naked
All the kids skinny-dip. After a certain age, they don’t do it so much anymore, and they definitely don’t go co-ed. But it’s not a hard and fast rule. A group of guys might decide to go jump in the lake or the swimming hole together, leaving their clothes off so their moms won’t find out what they’ve been up to when there’s a little waterweed in the waistband of someone’s shorts.
Rumor has it girls sometimes do the same. The teenage boys whisper their speculations to each other, eyes wide and pulses pounding in their throats at the thought. No one has ever seen the girls go skinny-dipping, except Al Lutter, and he might be lying. He also claims to have seen lights moving across the sky at night, and says they’re UFOs, so he’s not exactly a trusted source.
For Jonathan, on a hot summer day when he’s camping out with his friend Ben, it’s a brilliant idea. They were fishing all morning and never got a nibble, and since they were counting on trout for breakfast they’re hungry and out of sorts by midday. Taking a dip in the lake - ‘soaking your head’ as his Pa likes to call it - sounds like a good way to shake off their annoyance. And if they see a fish, Jonathan thinks he’ll catch it with his bare hands just for spite.
But Ben shies off. “C’mon,” Jonathan says, laughing, and strips his shirt off. Ben gulps and looks away, muttering that he doesn’t want to. Jonathan shakes his head. “Don’t be silly. It’s hot, we’re both sweaty, we might as well just jump in.”
“Nah,” Ben says, just standing there. “We might scare the fish.”
Jonathan makes a rude noise. “Those darn fish aren’t scared of us. They’re laughing at us, Ben! If there’s even any there. It might be they’re way down at the bottom, since it’s so hot.” He stares at his friend, wondering why Ben’s acting this way.
“You go,” Ben says. “I’ll just…”
Jonathan’s having none of it. “What’re you, chicken?” The reminder of the games they played as kids, daring each other to crazy stunts, makes both of them smile. Jonathan tucks his hands into his armpits, crouches down, and starts flapping his elbows while clucking loudly.
Ben laughs at him. “You look like an idiot. Fine, fine, if it means so much to ya.” He takes off his shirt and starts unbuckling his pants.
Jonathan makes one last chicken noise, the cackle of a hen who’s just laid an egg, before straightening back up. “Good on you, Ben.” He’s taking off his shorts as he speaks, thumbs under the elastic of his briefs skimming them off as well.
Ben’s just dropped his own pants, standing there in his briefs, and Jonathan sees a strange thing then. There’s suddenly a peak in the front of Ben’s shorts. They’re both sixteen, they know exactly what that is and what it means.
Jonathan’s eyes flick up to his friend’s face, shocked. Ben turns an incredible shade of maroon, grabs his clothes, and runs blindly into the woods. “Wait!” Jonathan yells, though he’s not sure why. He snatches up his own clothes, yanks his pants on, leaves the shirt behind as he chases Ben.
He catches the other boy when Ben trips over a root and falls full-length in the dirt. Jonathan grabs him, sees he’s put his shirt on backwards as he was running, and pulls him around. For a moment he’s not sure what he’s going to do. Part of him wants to punch Ben wildly; he’s not a queer, he likes girls, and the accepted response of a red-blooded male realizing another guy just got a hard-on from seeing him naked is to end the friendship in a bloody brawl. Jonathan cocks his fist back, his mouth twisting into a snarl.
But this is Ben, his best friend, and he hesitates. They’ve known each other since they were five, they fought off the school bullies together, they’ve gone fishing and hunting and camping and canoeing together. They’ve mocked the same teachers and stared at the same girls, and three years ago when Ben stole one of his older brother’s porno magazines, they sat in the tree house together and marveled at the wonders it revealed. It’s Ben, they’re blood brothers, they promised they’d be friends forever, and Ben’s crying horrible harsh sobs with his eyes all squinched up and red. He’s not even trying to defend himself, hanging limply from Jonathan’s hold on his shirt.
He can’t do it. Instead of beating him up, Jonathan hugs him, and after a startled moment Ben wraps around him like a strangler vine. He’s trying to talk even though he’s sniffling, and Jonathan can barely make sense of it. “Didn’t want you to know…” Well, that he can understand.
“It’s all right, Ben,” Jonathan says, patting his back awkwardly, and Ben’s skin is hot like a little kid with a fever. “It’s okay.”
Ben pulls back and wipes his face on the tail of his shirt. There’s a strange, fey sort of dignity to him when he faces Jonathan again. “I’m not queer,” he says, but his voice trembles.
Jonathan’s mouth quirks up in a wry smile, the grin he doesn’t quite realize makes Ben’s heart skip a beat. “Not the way you stare at Susie Larridan, you’re not.” He imitates Ben’s infatuated face then, exaggerating the slack jaw and the glazed eyes. It makes Ben laugh, which is what Jonathan wanted, and then they’re sort of okay again. In time, if they don’t talk about this again, they’ll be all the way okay.
Ben holds his hand out, turning it palm upward to show the small scar at the base of his thumb. “Blood brothers,” he says.
Jonathan smacks his hand into his friend’s, both of them gripping tightly so the two scars align. “Blood brothers,” he says back, fiercely. “Forever.”
Wish Upon a Falling Star | Jonathan Kent/Martha Clark | 940 words | G | stars
Jonathan throws pebbles at her window until she opens it. “Shh!” she hisses. “What are you doing?”
He grins so broadly it feels like his face is going to split. “Come with me!” he whispers back, trying to pitch his voice so it carries to her and not the rest of the house.
“You’re crazy,” Martha Clark tells him, and goes to shut the window.
“Don’t you want to see the meteor shower?” Jonathan says hurriedly, and that gets her attention.
She cranes her head around, peering at the sky. “I don’t see any.”
“Well of course not,” Jonathan scoffs. “It’s too bright here in town. You have to be somewhere dark to see them.”
Martha crosses her arms and glares at him, but he just smiles up at her, thumbs hooked in his belt, waiting for her to come around. Then she disappears from the window. He sulks for a moment, scuffing the weeds under his shoe, and heaves a big sigh of disappointment. Oh well, there will be other chances.
Then he hears a tiny sound from the back porch of the Clark house, and Martha comes hurrying out. She got dressed quickly and snuck downstairs to join him. Jonathan breaks into a broad grin and sweeps her into his arms for a hug. She hugs him back; they’ve been going together for a month as of tomorrow, but they haven’t kissed.
Then she pulls away from him and looks up seriously. “You’d better have me home before my parents get up, or we’ll never hear the end of it,” she says sternly.
“Of course,” Jonathan whispers, and kisses her cheek quickly. Grabbing her hand, he leads her up the road a ways to where he left his car. She gets in, he puts it in neutral, and lets the car roll down the hill slowly so they’ll be far away from her parents’ house when he fires the engine.
They drive out to the fields, and Jonathan sees her nibbling at her lower lip like she’s wondering why she’d do such a crazy thing. Girls’ reputations have been ruined for far less than this, a midnight excursion alone to a secluded place. But he’s not like some boys. Jonathan’s smart, and kind, and he knows that she knows she can trust him. It’s why he even thought to ask her to come with him.
Jonathan turns the car just into the farm road, cutting off the headlights and navigating by starlight. He keeps it to the middle of the access path cut for the tractor, and parks in the center of the cornfield without leaving any tell-tale traces of their passage. Backing out will be more difficult, but that he can worry about later. For now, they’re alone in the darkness with the sky spread above them like a handful of jewels flung carelessly into the air.
Martha gasps as he opens her door and she gets out. “It’s beautiful,” she whispers.
“So are you,” Jonathan tells her, and she narrows her eyes at him. He quickly grabs a picnic basket from the back seat and spreads a blanket over the hood of the car. “Sit here. I brought us some sodas and some snacks while we watch the show.”
They wind up lying back against the window of his Pinto, sharing slices of hard cheese, beef jerky, and crackers. Above them the stars wheel by in their slow, lovely dance, and the two teenagers point out constellations they know and make up new ones.
When the first shooting star streaks across the sky, it’s Martha who sees it, and she grabs Jonathan’s arm in excitement. “Make a wish!” she exclaims. But soon the sky is full of them, darting here and there, movement glimpsed from the corner of an eye or searing directly above. Hundreds of meteors, hundreds of wishes, but every time Jonathan wishes for the same thing: the girl beside him.
A star flicks across his vision, and he thinks, Let her love me. Another, and he wishes, Let her kiss me. More stars fall, and Jonathan wishes on them as fast as he can think. Let her be mine, let her say yes when I ask her if she’ll wear my ring, let her marry me. Still another, blazing brighter than the rest, and he concentrates fiercely on this one wish. Let us be together forever and always in love.
When the show is over, they both lie there quietly, the engine of car gone cool long ago. “Wow,” Jonathan whispers.
Martha sits halfway up to look at him. “That was the best one-month-anniversary present ever, Jonathan.”
He gives her a silly grin, glad she can’t see his blush in the darkness. Martha continues with a soft smile, “What did you wish for?”
“An A on the math test,” Jonathan replies jokingly, and she swats at his arm. They both laugh; he is the kind of man who could make a stone chuckle, her father says, and that is a gift worth having. “Well, what did you wish for then?”
Martha only looks at him, and little by little her smile fades until it’s a shy, wistful thing. “Guess,” she whispers.
His heart hammers. Jonathan sits up, looking at her, and she looks right back at him with such serious eyes. He reaches out to cup her cheek, and she doesn’t pull away. Slowly, he leans in, and just before their lips meet they both close their eyes.
Unbeknownst to the two teens who are sharing their first sweet kiss by its light, one last meteor streaks across the sky.
Under the Wide Blue Sky | Ben Hubbard/Jonathan Kent/Martha Kent | 582 words | PG-13 | Kent farm
It’s their farm now, Jonathan’s and Martha’s, and they love every square inch of it. They love the old farmhouse with its many bedrooms, the ones they plan to fill with children; they love the creek and the little band of woods that clings to the edges of it; they love the pond where the ducks paddle and the frogs croak; they love the pasture where all the animals graze, placid in the cool morning hours. But best of all they love the wide fields, ripe with corn and wheat. The scent of the growing crops and the fertile earth makes the young couple a little silly, prone to acting like the teenagers they were not so many years ago.
The only difference is, now they’re married. They don’t have to worry about going too far or their parents finding out. So when they walk out to have a look at the corn crop, its silky tassels stirring in the Kansas breeze, it’s not much of a surprise that Martha looks over her shoulder at Jonathan with a sly grin.
He responds by lunging at her, catching her around the waist and kissing her neck with loud smacking noises. Laughing, she breaks free of him and runs. Jonathan chases her, keeping sight of her blue dress flickering between the corn stalks. For a while she evades him, ducking between the rows. Every time she loses him, however, he finds her again as much by following the sound of her laughter as by tracking her footsteps through the loamy soil.
Jonathan stalks her to a break in the rows and pounces. This time they both fall to the ground, cushioned by the grass that grows around the bases of the corn stalks. He tries to pin her down for a kiss, but she rolls him over and sits atop him, beaming proudly. “Did I catch you, or did you catch me?” Jonathan asks, amusement dancing in his eyes.
“A little of both,” Martha tells him, and bends down to kiss him.
The moment their lips meet, however, there’s a rustling in the corn and a rather embarrassed cough. They both look up to see a very red-faced Ben Hubbard watching them. “I’ll just be going,” he says. “I wanted to see if you two… Well, never mind, you’re … um … busy. It can wait.”
Jonathan and Martha look at each other. Ben is their nearest neighbor, which is a lot of the reason why he and Jonathan were always such good friends. He’d dated Martha briefly. And of course, there was that one time on the camping trip. Jonathan told his new wife about that, believing there should be no secrets in a marriage, and she hadn’t flinched from it. Martha was an open-hearted soul.
So was Jonathan. In an instant, the thought flickers between the two of them, and they both nod, the decision made without a single word. Ben is a good friend, someone they can trust, and they are young enough to believe that the purity of their emotions can tear down all the taboos their stuffy elders have set upon society.
“Or you could always join us,” Martha says in a husky drawl. When Ben turns around, shocked, she gives him a come-hither look from blue eyes that melts any resistance he could muster.
When he smiles, shyly at first and then with blossoming confidence, she pulls the light cotton dress over her head and casts it aside.
Left Behind | Ben Hubbard/Martha Kent | 371 words | PG-13 | loss, comfort, tears, memories
Martha won’t cry in front of her son. Poor Clark is staggering around in a haze, barely aware of what’s going on around him. The kid wasn’t ready to lose his father, but then, Martha wasn’t ready to lose her husband, and Ben wasn’t ready to lose his best friend. Martha forces herself to be strong for her son, but when he goes back to school a week after that terrible day, Ben heads over to the farmhouse.
Martha’s glad to see him, her smile shining through the tears she’s shed every day while Clark was out, and Ben folds her in his arm and lets her cry. He sheds a few tears himself. Nothing shameful in that; Jonathan has been part of his life since they were both just kids. And at times, they’ve been more than friends.
Once the crying’s done, for a while anyway, Ben and Martha sit down over coffee and reminisce. They swap memories of Jonathan, sometimes bringing more tears, but more often bringing laughter. He always saw the humor in things, always looked on the bright side, always knew how to make someone else smile along with him. Sure, when he was feeling threatened or protective Jonathan could be a stern man, but those he held close to his heart knew he was kind and gentle beneath the mask of necessary hardness.
By sharing the burden of their grief, they’ve both lightened the loads they carry. It would be nice to sit here all day thinking back on the past, on all the wonderful memories Jonathan left with them both. But the farms wait for no one, and the chores must be done. They both know it, and make their goodbyes graciously.
When Ben reaches for the door, however, Martha catches his hand. He turns to her questioningly, this woman he’s loved for more than thirty years as a friend and sometimes as a lover. She kisses his cheek, and Ben smiles. “Thank you,” Martha tells him.
“No, thank you,” he replies, tucking a strand of her graying hair behind her ear.
They both loved Jonathan, and he loved them both too. At least when they’re together, it’s almost as if he’s not quite gone.