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Clark’s knowledge surrounding menstruation was limited to the few girls in his life- Chloe, Lana, and Lois, really, and that was it. They got pissy, they wanted junk food, they cried on his shoulders if somebody looked at them wrong. It was like getting a week-long whiplash. And as much as it confused him, he also felt awful watching it. He knew what it felt like to have no control over your emotions. To be burdened with something painful. But granted the unusual positions his female friends often found themselves in, his perception of periods has been skewed. The women in his life were prone to meteor-freak accidents, which made their monthly torture quite… unique, now and again. There was one time when Chloe got infected by red kryptonite while she was in the luteal phase, and to this day, Clark has never been so afraid of a woman. Ever.
So when it came to you, he wanted to make sure he found the right way to take care of you. Even without kryptonite, you could be quite threatening. And currently, he was helpless.
It was only the second day, but the second was your personal worst. Having a heavy period meant you had heavy sickness, heavy headaches, heavy hunger- it completely threw you out of whack, curling you up in a ball and keeping you down until the throbbing faded. And down you were. Face down, in fact, in the pillows of your bed.
“Hello? It- It’s me, baby, it’s Clark,” a voice floated through the halls of your house, following the clicking of the front door opening. “Where are you?”
You grunted softly, “Bedroom.”
The farmboy shuffled in quietly, dwarfing your doorway with his big shoulders and a bag full of supplies. He gazed upon the sight before him with the most dramatic despair: you, buried beneath a grave of blankets, a heating pad strewn across the mattress in uselessness, a trash can beside your bed for the nauseous moments, two half-drank cans of ginger ale falling flat next to candy wrappers on the night table. The lights were low and the television was humming through reruns of defunct Food Network shows, which you only watched when you felt horrid or hopeless. Clark stopped in slowly, so as not to startle the beast, and he sat down at the edge of the bed.
“Hey, you.”
You moved to sit up, feeling a lightning strike of pain ripple through your right leg and causing a toe to twitch. You were used to the pain, it’s been a lifetime of it now, but it never got more comfortable.
Clark’s face twisted with concern and he nudged you back into the pillows. “No, stay–”
“It’s alright, Clark, lemme sit up,” you croaked, brushing his arms off and hoisting yourself upright.
He gave you a sympathetic smile and brushed a few haywire strands of hair from your face, fingers passing softly over the valley of your cheek. “How are you? Hurtin’ real bad?”
A small shrug punctuated your answer. “I’m working off six hundred milligrams of Motrin, so, it’s probably, like, forty percent numbed,” you chuckled. “I’m just more sick than anything. You know I get that weird nausea thing.”
“I know,” Clark frowned, and he placed the grocery bag between your legs. “Got you some stuff.”
You looked at him with warm eyes. There wasn’t an ounce of annoyance in them like you had expected, especially after the violence of your temper yesterday, the first day, when you were characteristically most angry. It was a simple call to check on his progress building a fence– that was all. But he snickered when you asked how he was faring, and that was a grave mistake. You’d snapped at him over the phone, something along the lines of ‘Well, sorry for caring so much about everything all the time!’ and possibly threw in after some combatance, ‘What do you know, superboy?’...
“Thanks for coming over,” you smiled sheepishly, “M’sorry about yesterday, I didn’t mean anything…”
“It’s okay, grumpy. I know.”
You nudged the bag with a finger. “I just asked if you’d come watch a movie with your mean girlfriend. I didn’t need all this.”
“Just look inside, would you, bossy?”
With a fluttering roll of your eyes, you opened up the paper bag and poked around, unearthing the most ridiculous potpourri of period care. One of his flannels bunched up in a ball, a bag of Cheetos, a bottle of Tums, another can of ginger ale; he threw in a jelly face mask, which made you laugh, and there was a little stuffed lion, and not one but four different kinds of chocolate. You spread the items out on the comforter and giggled.
“You’re insane.”
“What? All this stuff helps! I asked Chloe!”
You reached your hand out to rub his bicep dotingly, shaking your head. “It’s really thoughtful, Clark, it is…” and then you collapsed into a soft fit of laughter, pinching the bridge of your nose. “A lion? What’s he for?”
Clark pouted, puppy eyes in overdrive. “Bravery.”
The fit seized you, and you cradled the fuzzy little thing in your palms, hiding your face in it to stifle some of the laughter. You felt slightly guilty because clearly Clark found this lion to be a true symbol of the tenacity of womanhood, but all it was, was precious and pointless. You adored it.
“Thank you,” you sputtered through the last of your hysterics, “All of it is… very nice, Clark, thank you.”
The farmboy looked quite disgruntled, but he nodded anyway, accepting your gratitude. He detangled the flannel and held it out for you, wrinkled and soft. “Here. I sprayed my cologne on it. Chloe said you’d like that.”
The fabric did smell like him- potently, almost too strong- but you would never complain. It was that piney kind of smell, with all the artificial cinnamon and firewood they pump into male scents these days, and underneath it, the life lived in dirt and hay clung to the fabric, which was the real trace of Clark. You shrugged it on gently, like it was glass, thankful for the little room it provided to still be boyfriend-big. Clark’s heart skipped an unscheduled beat at the sight of you, and his hand reached out to straighten the right side of the collar where it flipped.
“Are you hungry? Do you want me to make you something?”
“I’m okay. What I really want is for you to lay down and watch something with me.”
Clark smiled dorkily. “Oh. Right.”
His hesitance was sweet, it really was. There wasn’t a single move he would make that didn’t feel calculated– the way he crawled into the space beside you on the bed, perching himself gingerly against the headboard, trying to curve his body to the side of yours so you didn’t have to move a muscle. But the one thing you had very little of in the wake of your pain was patience. In his caution, he forgot affection. He didn’t even seem to want to touch you. His arm slithered around your shoulder, but his hand barely ghosted over your arm; he was stiff, he was quiet, and he barely spoke unless it was to make sure you liked what was playing or if you needed more medicine. You ignored it for an hour or two, but only so much time could pass with a guy as gorgeous as Clark Kent beside you before you went insane.
Your pelvic muscles were cramping, a brutal on and off tension that felt like the equivalent of someone’s hands squeezing them for sport. Soft winces escaped you as your hips adjusted over and over, trying to find an angle to lay at where the pressure was eased. Clark watched, afraid to help, because once Lois nearly bit his head off for trying to aid her. In a futile attempt to do something yourself, you pressed your own hand against the warm spot beneath your belly button, right over the throbbing. It quelled it for a moment, but you had to press kind of hard, and you couldn’t keep it up. Your eyes drifted to Clark, who looked a bit perturbed by the whole thing, and rolled your eyes.
“Clark, do you mind?”
“Huh? No, not at all,” he shook his head, lips pursed, as if you really were asking that he minded you putting your hands on your own body.
You wanted to put your head through a wall. “No, smartass, I mean do you mind pressing down for me? You’re stronger.”
Clark’s cheeks flooded with a rosy embarrassment, and it bled all the way to the tips of his ears and down his neck before he answered. “Um, sure. Sure. Just… right there?” He let his free hand come across your tummy to hover where your hand rested.
You grunted softly, laying a bit flatter on the mattress, nodding curtly. “Mhm. Just, like, press, and rub little circles if you can. The pressure helps.”
He was terrified to press too hard without knowing it. He had the power to throw grown men through concrete levels. Your uterine walls were certainly not as structurally sound as a parking garage. But he obliged anyway, and very carefully, he splayed his palm over your plush skin and applied a broad pressure, just enough strength to soothe the ache. You let out a soft sigh of relief and closed your eyes.
“That’s nice,” you murmured. “Thank you.”
Clark rubbed wide, thoughtful circles with the heel of his palm, allowing his gaze to travel over your expression of repose. He felt a curious twinge, and so he asked quietly, “Does it always hurt this bad?”
“Usually,” you grumbled. “The pain medicine kind of helps it from being shooting pain, but it gets draining after a while. Tires me out, makes me sick to my stomach, stuff like that. And it only hurts this bad on the second day.”
Clark watched his own hand, intent on getting the motions right, and something was churning inside him, too. He instantly felt guilty. Here you were, feeling sick and weak and in need of his comfort, and all he could see was how pretty you looked laying down, letting him touch you, wearing his clothes. What was he, a pervert?
“Does anything… else… help make it hurt less?” He asked, and an instantaneous look of regret passed over his face. Stupid, he reprimanded himself. Don’t be a creep.
You quirked an eyebrow, noting how his face changed. “Like what?”
Clark flushed hard, more than the nervousness he was prone to typically allotted, and he cleared his throat. “Oh. Um, nothing, really. Just– y’know, Chloe printed this article out for me, about… about what can help sometimes with really bad cramps…”
Something was up. His breath was hitching, and his eyes avoided yours. You didn’t need super hearing to tell his heart was pounding inside his chest. For a girl with a cycle like yours, you’d tried every pain relief method in the book. The fluster on his face left but one method.
You swallowed hard. “What did you find?”
Clark’s hand stilled between your hips, and a soft smile quirked on his lips. A shy one, and so very cute. “Um…”
You propped yourself up on your elbows and asked again. “C’mon, Clark.”
His eyes seemed to touch everything in the room except your own before he came out with it. “It said that… stimulation helped relieve the pain."
You knew it. You absolutely knew it- come on, that precious little look of humiliation on his pretty face, that same look he gets when he asks for one more kiss, if he can put his hands somewhere they probably shouldn’t go, if he could just perch you on the counter for just a second… and oh, he shouldn’t have brought it up, because now you want it, and bad. It was the one thing you hadn’t tried today.
“Stimulation? Where exactly did Chloe get this article, huh?”
“I– I don’t– it– she just told me–” he began to sputter, red as a tomato, and you cut him off with a merciful giggle.
“Clark, babe, I’m kidding! I’m teasing you. Take a breath.”
His eyes fluttered shut and a soft breath followed, and Clark mumbled awkwardly. “I just wanted to find something that would actually help. I asked her to give me anything she found.”
There was a sincerity in the words you didn’t expect. Sure, he could be a needy thing every now and again, and maybe his motives were not entirely selfless, but most of them were. You could feel it. Even when he wanted you, Clark had always put you first. It was what you needed, and then what he wanted. And he meant this– you needed pain relief, and maybe he could do something about it.
It was your turn to blush. “So, you want to… what, then?”
His hand was still covering the expanse of your womb, big and calloused at the high points, and he applied a little more pressure, easing the growing discomfort. His tone softened up. “I could touch you a little more. If you’re comfortable with it.”
Your attention flicked to his hand, and you suddenly felt a bit conscious. “There’s blood, though, Clark. That’s not gonna gross you out? We– we haven't, like… done anything when I had my period. It’s… messy.”
God bless that boy, because all he did was deal you a silencing smile. “Nothing I can’t clean up.”
Your stomach fluttered, and something warm churned there, the same way it always did when he shed that bumbling skin for something more intimate. His hand left the comfort of the cradle of your hips, and very cautiously, he traced it up your soft tummy. “Only if you want to. I don’t know if you ever tried it yourself, to see if it really worked.”
Your throat clenched. “I have. It– it kinda works. I’ve never had someone do it for me, though.”
Clark’s grin loosened, and he rolled onto his side to scooch down the bed a bit, until he was flat like you. He rested his head on the pillow and curled his arm around your waist, and his lips found a soft spot on your shoulder to land. “It might work better if I try it.”
“Maybe,” was all you could manage.
“Is that a yes?” he nudged, and you knew you were screwed.
“Yeah.”
You didn’t expect the night to go this way. You’d only called Clark here out of a need for his warmth, and to apologize, so maybe you could find a little relief in having your forgiving boyfriend beside you while you fought with frustration and sickness. But his hand was sure, even when his disposition wasn’t at first, as it slipped beneath the hem of your pajama pants. He felt the soft, cushioned outline of the pad pressing against your panties, and he paused thoughtfully. Then, he pulled his hand back out and crawled off the bed.
You almost whined at the loss, wondering why in the world he would stop when he hadn’t even started, but you held onto the complaint when he ducked into your bathroom and returned with a towel. He knelt down before you, knees sinking into the covers, and he looked down with a fond expression.
“Lift your hips for just a second, okay?”
You listened, suspending yourself as he laid the towel over the bedsheets, and he settled you onto it. The heat beneath your skin sizzled as his fingers hooked the waistband of your bottoms and slid them down your thighs, fingers grazing the soft pudge in admiration as they went. He looked more in love with every inch he bared, and soon enough the panties came off too, with painstaking care. He made sure to pull the pad clean off and fold it up, dropping it into the trash can you kept beside the bed. Only then did he pause, when you were laying there with a look of anticipation, and he smiled down at you.
“If it hurts, or you get uncomfortable, you say the word and I’ll stop, okay?”
God, it was so unfair when he did that. It made you want to book a wedding cruise every time.
“Okay.”
Clark anchored his hands beside your head, and for a fleeting moment, he pressed his lips to yours, promising to be careful with his own little language. Then, he traveled back down to your hips, and he sat before them, one leg off the edge of the bed and the other bent and tucked, as if this were a normal conversation he could lounge through. Two big farm hands eased your thighs apart, and he exposed what you were keeping bundled up under all those clothes. What would’ve been pink any other week was now a glossy red, but the valleys looked the same, and you could’ve sworn he licked his lips in starvation.
“Still pretty,” he hummed, “even if you don't feel like it right now.”
Your lungs shuddered as he pressed his palm over your womb, feeling the uncharacteristic heat radiating from it, drinking in the softness of your skin. He let his hand travel down the curve of your mound until the tips of his fingers were close enough to drag through the crimson slick, and he let out a little huff of breath, lips curling into a grin.
You knew it would start the second your throat betrayed you with some kind of soft sound, because it always did. There was this part of Clark that took a little pleasure in keeping you needy. Maybe it stemmed from his desire to always have you relying upon him, but it didn’t really matter in the end. In the mix of his urge to comfort you, an adoring condescension rose from somewhere deep inside him. It was quiet now, low in his throat, as he passed the tips of his fingers through your folds. And it was all over his face, too- eyes shifting from sky to ocean, lashes drooping, canines bared.
“Awh… does it hurt, baby?”
You wanted to ream him out for turning you on to the point of anger, but the desperation in your voice translated it to, “Mhm.”
“And you want me to make it better, don’t you?”
“Mhm…”
Clark’s chest hammered with hunger, and selfishly, he let his pointer finger flick over the bundle of nerves cresting your pussy, light as a feather. The sensitivity from your cramps made it buzz like an electric shock, and your teeth bit down hard on the inside of your cheek. He clicked his tongue as your sudden twitch. “My poor girl.”
His finger found a home there, nothing fancy, just bare bones– he pressed against your clit, applying pressure just like he did a few inches up. It sent a pulse through your hips and down to your toes, and the lack of friction was so aggravating you groaned. “Please don’t play around so much,”
“I’m being gentle,” he quipped, and there was less care than there was teasing in the excuse.
“If you’re trying to make it hurt less, you’re failing.”
“Oh? That right? Well, you know I don’t like seeing you in pain, baby…”
And he made you regret ever saying it. His finger let up before his thumb took its place, and the circles he began were so slow it had your stomach twisting in knots. Your fingers found the edges of the towel under your body and clung to the worn fibers, needing something to grab, to ground you, and you whined quietly. Your insides still ached with pain.
“S’not enough, Clark, please?”
Clark leaned down a bit, letting you get a closer look at how much he loved seeing you this way, and he wordlessly sped his thumb’s pace. “Better?”
You responded with a slight twitch of your hips, and it drew a chuckle from him. His free fingers dragged through the blood again, and for a moment he was surprised how much of it there was. You felt warmer than normal, smoother than normal, and the color was so cute as it stained your skin… and his face felt warm as he stared at it, watching it smear, seeing it shine in the low light of your ceiling fan…
“Gosh,” Clark croaked, because he discovered something about himself he didn’t know until this very second. And in the thrall of his enlightenment, he pushed his middle finger between your folds tentatively, right to the first knuckle.
Your hips lifted off the bed for a second, the throbbing of your walls unaccustomed to the sudden intrusion. It hurt for a split second because the muscles were confused– when they’d been clutching around nothing for hours on end, this required a reassessment, didn’t it? But when the first knuckle transitioned to the second, and then back to the first, you felt the familiarity of him, and your body melted into the mattress.
“There she is,” he cooed, “Good girl.”
A weak moan tumbled from your lips as he carefully pumped his finger in and out, in and out, watching how it made you squirm, thirsting for the way it came out sheathed in red each time.
“Not hurtin’ you, am I, pretty?”
“No,” you panted, “Helps… good.”
A deep rumble of laughter, half-adoring and half-patronizing, rattled his ribs. “I’ve done a lot worse than this to you, and you could talk just fine then.”
You glared at his prod at your mental state, and just to torture him, you drew in a sharp breath and twisted your face up.
Clark’s hand immediately stilled and he dropped the tone. “Oh gosh, baby, did I hurt you?”
You opened your eyes again at the panic in his voice, and a cheshire grin overtook your face. “Kidding.”
The pale skin of his cheeks regained their color, and he wheezed. “That wasn’t funny! I could really hurt you!”
“Sorry,” you giggled, “You are kind of being a little shit, though.”
Clark’s smile was real this time. Not cruel, just sweet, as he crawled over you again and nudged your nose with his. “Not my fault you get so needy.”
“Oh, it absolutely is,” you whispered, kissing the corner of his mouth.
“Yeah?” he lilted, and without warning, he plunged his finger right back inside of you, with a second accompaniment following shortly after.
Your hands cupped his cheeks in the heat of the ambush, and you whimpered in betrayal. “I… oh,”
“Maybe it is my fault,” he crooned, turning his mouth to your palm to press kisses over the plains of it. “But you’re a little greedy by default.”
His digits curled charitably, studying the pulsating of your muscles as they expanded and contracted in pain. It caused you to clench harder around him than usual, and a groan escaped him, his eyes devouring your expression of pleasure. “Okay?”
Your head bobbed against the pillows, eyes closing, hips pushing up to meet his palm. “Mm.”
He let up on the torture for now, smiling. “Atta girl. Take what you want, I got ‘ya.”
His thumb resumed its duties while his others coaxed shakes and shivers from your body, brushing up against the warm, spongy spot deep inside that your fingers could never reach without him. He reveled in every soft cry you let out, and waves of desire crashed over his head as he felt the soft squelching of blood between his knuckles. You rocked your hips slowly into the motions, feeling how the residual sting was mingling with a lighter ache, and every clench was chasing a high rather than shedding skin. Your fingertips scratched gently at the backs of his ears, refusing to let him sit up, needing to keep him close to you. You whined fiercely.
“You’re so pretty when you get like this,” Clark praised, “Wish you could see yourself. Y’get the cutest look on your face…”
“Clark,” you mewled, hips bucking.
“What is it, pretty? Need more?”
You tugged at his hair, nodding eagerly, knees struggling not to writhe.
Clark took pity on you and sped up the thrusts of his fingers, and he broke free of your weak little tugs on his head to sit up; he wrapped his free hand under your hip and hiked you over his thighs, molding the curve of your spine to the angle, and with you draped like this, he was able to get his hands just the slightest bit deeper inside your walls, deep enough that your thighs clamped around his hand and you were coming up off the bed to grab at him, eyes wide and dazed.
“F-fuck, Clark,”
“S’okay, baby, I got it, you just take it for me, huh?”
He didn’t dare pry you open. It was too adorable to watch you struggle, legs clenched around his wrist, grabbing at his arm and trying to keep yourself on Earth. His fingertips battered your soft spot, getting to know it real well, and he admired the way you ground into the curve of his palm like it was instinct. Your breathing hitched over and over, moans turning into whines turning into helpless gasps for air, and he pressed his unoccupied hand to your tummy to keep you down.
“Easy, baby, almost there,” he tutted, “You just need a little more, right? Just a little faster?”
“Please!” You begged, hips rutting, back arching over his lap.
“I know, I know, baby… Jeez, you have no idea how pretty you are.”
Clar refused to let up until you fell limp and exhausted from pleasure snuffing out any pain. He crooked into your heat like a man on a mission, his thumb a master of torture, and by the way you squeezed he knew you were a ticking time bomb. So he went faster, and faster, smiling bigger and bigger, watching how your arm draped over your face, how you writhed like a snake, how you panted for air like a dog, and when your whole body stiffened and twitched before collapsing into a quake of shaky aftershocks, he still didn’t stop. He only slowed, dragging his fingertips gently over your walls, committing the spasms to memory, making sure you were worked through until you couldn’t take it anymore. And he knew when that moment came, because your legs were shaking and you were pushing at his wrist like you wanted to run away from him.
Clark unearthed himself from between your thighs and he lifted you up into his lap, slumping you against this chest and brushing hair from your eyes with the clean hand. Soft kisses peppered your temples and nose as the soft side you knew best took the helm. “That’s it, baby, you’re okay. You did good. You feel good?”
Talking felt pointless, but you tried anyway. “Yeah… hm… mhm…”
Clark raised his dominant palm and ogled the glistening colors under his nailbeds, in the cracks of the skin, and he beamed like it was Christmas morning. He kissed your cheek and dropped it in your lap, but not before flipping the towel over your thighs, so he didn’t get it on your skin.
“See you, baby?”
You could’ve collapsed into another fit there and then. It was the small things like that- countless possessive little phrases that made you want to swallow him whole. You nodded and grabbed the edge of the towel, and very gently you began to wipe the scarlet excess from his rough hands. You were seconds away from taking the fingers into your mouth, but he looked dazed enough at the innocent attention you gave. You could file that move away for next time.
“How does it feel now? Still cramping?” He inquired.
“Mm-mm,” you shook your head. “Just a little ache. It helped.”
The look of reward was more precious than you ever imagined. Maybe he enjoyed the journey, but he started the trek for you. Clark was nothing if not born to keep you happy. “Good.”
You let him lay you back down like one wrong move would shatter you, and you watched patiently while Clark got up to rinse his hands in your bathroom sink. He moved gingerly, grabbing clean underwear from your dresser, searching the sink cabinet for a fresh pad, wetting a washcloth. And when he came back to the bed, he knelt before you and wiped your skin, making sure all was in order. Then, with the care he extolled when he took them off, he shimmed fresh panties with a sterile pad up your thighs, covering you back up again.
“There. All clean.”
You rolled onto your side and gestured for him to slot against you, and he was there in a second, broad chest pressed to your back and weighty arm melting over your waist. A soft exhaustion muffled your head, and you mumbled quietly. “Thank you.”
“Thank Chloe,” he teased, planting a warm peck on your shoulder. “You’re welcome, baby.”
The aching between your hips was a dull roar now, and so you curled up into his embrace, feeling how his chest rose and fell behind you, and took advantage of the grace period. Your eyes fell shut with ease.
Clark just kissed your shoulder, once, twice, three times, and then let his own head fall against the pillow. “Wake me up when it hurts again, ‘kay?”