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“You’re alright, honey,” he hisses against her ear, lips moving at her temple, trying to press the words into her skin.
Kara thrashes against him, and she’s stronger than him but she’s drunk and he isn’t, so he’s got her wrists pinned. It still isn’t easy but she wails, kicking, sobbing. “I hate it. I hate it. I hate it. I want to go home.”
There is no home and the little that’s left of it is all in him. It’s just him.
“Calm down!”
“No!” Her screech could break the sound barrier. It might’ve. Clark rubs his cheek on the top of her head.
Her nails dig into him. She might draw blood but he wouldn’t know. It doesn’t bother him. He was the only one that could take this. They bled the same.
“Kal,” she blinks up at him, her expression both dazed and dreadful. He tries to ignore the bitterness, the resentment she must harbor. Maybe she wouldn’t have taken her anger out on him if he’d suffered the same way she had. “How–do you not–care?”
“I promise, I do,” he frowns, still petting her. He stops half way when it dawns on him he’s coddling her like one of the animals back on the farm. Pa used to have him hold them steady when they got too sick, one at a time, so that he could gently kill them with the bolt gun. Her lips twitch and quiver from the loss of his touch before he resumes stroking her soft head. “It’s different, I know. But I do care. And I hate to see you like this, Kara.”
“You don’t,” she snarls something vicious. She tries to pull away from him but he’s still got her by the wrists.
“I do.”
Kara moans like she’s a sick wounded animal. She all but howls, her head lolling back. The living room spun around her.
“I do,” Clark says again. “Honey. How can I prove it to you?”
She twists on his lap but cannot seem to wrench free. Maybe she’s not trying hard enough. Maybe she wants to give the illusion of effort because what she really wants is someone that will hold her and make her stay. Maybe she would’ve rather died with her planet than be shipped off to care for a little boy that wouldn’t have needed her after all. There was no point. Her large selfless sacrifice all for naught.
“Kal,” she mumbles pathetic. He cringes at the name. He seems to recoil at anything Kryptonian as of late. It’s a marvel he doesn’t rebuke her.
The message from a different world than the one he knew. Just because it was different didn’t make it wrong.
"Cold," Kara's voice trembles. He softens at that, eases off of the pressure he held on her wrists. She's still squirming. She stuffs her face in the crook of his neck like she's found some sort of heat there, emanating. His whole body was aflame, she could've found it anywhere. But he was still in his clothes from work, covered neck to toe. It's how he found her when he got home. She'd blasted the door open and was there on the couch, fumbling with the remote, cursing the technology ancient to her. She'd gotten the time wrong. Only meant to come here to kill the hangover with the yellow sun. When she found that it had already set, she searched for him.
"I know," Clark sighs, his other hand stroking down her back. It had made him sad to do, knowing they were about to die, but it brought him some relief knowing he was comforting the animals when his father brought the muzzle to their foreheads. These innocent things, their only blameless fault being born sick. He thought about taking Kara to the farm. He'd suggested it to her before, wanted to show her how he grew up, but she'd only looked at him with offense, as if the idea of pride in these earthly connections was an affront to their heritage, to their kind, to his real parents.
He's still thinking about the cows when she starts her whimpering again. Then he thinks about the dog, only because she sounds a lot like it. Then he's wondering where the dog is, but he's pulled from that thought as quickly as her hands tighten around his collar, panting in his ear.
His eyes widen.
She mumbles unintelligibly, maybe their language, what it was exactly, he couldn't say. His hands hastily drift down to her hips as they bucked and rolled against his, thrashing like an animal as she chased some foreign feeling, and tries to ease her off of his lap without completely embarrassing her.
"You've gotta settle down, honey," he murmurs low, something caught in his throat he tried to force down. "Y'still cold?"
Kara looks up at him blearily. His enormity offended her. He was supposed to be a baby. She was sent to care for him. Finding him a full grown man with a whole life already lived only served to remind her of her failure. His rejection of their kind made her feel so small. It disgusted her. He disgusted her.
But he still looked down at her reverently. His eyes were so kind and soft as he stroked her cheek. She could kill him.
But she only nods.
He makes her wait for him on the sofa and he comes back with another odd article of earth clothing. It's an ugly beige thing that he has to help her shrug on, one arm, then the other.
"You're gonna be okay," he insists as he takes her back into his arms. Which shocks her. She thought partially he only moved to get this coat as a way to get her off of him. All her life, she's only ever known that the people she loves will push her away. Cast her off. Send her to foreign planets even when she begs to stay, begs to die with the ones she loves. "I promise."
Kara hiccups, rubbing the sleeve of the coat over her face. "Ugh."
"The sun will be up soon," Clark says. "You won't feel this forever."
She thinks he means many things. The hangover. The sadness. The unbelonging. She was usually pessimistic but decides maybe to believe in him.
Many people did.