..can I please ask for a transmasc Clark to go with queen transfem Bruce.....? :3
Thank you to @sleepy-tavern for all of your help brainstorming ☺️ and @chaos-and-sparkles for being my sensitivity reader.
"This was yours?" Bruce murmurs.
Clark smiles at her question, eyes shining as he looks at the dress hanging from the doorframe. "Ma's been up in the attic, clearing out some old stuff." He laughs to himself, fingering the hem, running his thumb over the trim. "She tried to get rid of it all, when I first transitioned, back in uni."
Bruce stays quiet, just listening as Clark talks. They've not talked much about Clark's transition. The bare bones, moreso when Bruce came out, but he's still in the dark about a lot of it. "They didn't understand, at first. Small town folk from the Midwest, and I ring up from the big city to tell them I'm a boy? They thought it was about, yknow." He grimaces, waving a hand vaguely. "The alien stuff. Sometimes I wonder if it would have been easier to let them believe that."
Bruce makes the decision to reach out, taking his free hand in her own, and he shakes his head at whatever is going on in there, lifting their joined hands to kiss her knuckles softly, nothing more than a soft press of skin to skin.
"I didn't. I explained it all, and that I'd thought it for so long, and moving to Metropolis and seeing other people like me finally gave me a way to put it into words. They were supportive, even if they didn't get it, at first. They always have been.
"Ma donated half of my wardrobe, the next time I came home Pa had replaced it with his old stuff, even some of his dad's stuff. That's when I got this."
Bruce reaches up, flattening the lapels of Pa Kent's jacket. "Your favourite."
"Yeah, well. It was the first sign I got that he accepted me. Really accepted me. And after he died..."
Bruce squeezes his hand, giving him a moment. He offers her a grateful smile, and turns back to the dress.
"This is one of the ones I didn't let her get rid of."
Bruce frowns without meaning to, following his gaze. "I thought you purged when you transitioned."
Clark bobs his head. "Smallville is very...set in its ways. I knew what a woman looked like, and what a man looked like, and I knew what I was, what I wanted people to look at me and see, so I got rid of everything that could undermine that."
He looks down, scuffing his toe on the floor. "It took me a long time to accept that I have complex feelings to the girl I was raised as. That things aren't black and white, and she's still a part of who I am now. Things like this were a part of that." The dress hangs from the doorframe, nearly reaching the floor, showing how tall Clark was even when he was young, pressed and steamed by Ma before they arrived at the farmhouse.
"It's beautiful."
Again, he reaches out, thumbing at that same spot on the hem, like he can't help but reach out to the relic of his past. "It was the dress my Ma made for my daddy-daughter dance with Pa."
"Clark..."
"For years I couldn't articulate why I didn't let Ma throw it away. It stayed up in the attic, out of sight, so I didn't have to think about it." He steps closer again, chin wobbling slightly as he gazes up at the careful crafting, the imperfect stitches along panels as straight as you could ask for. "It's not just about her. For me, it's about Ma. It's about Pa. She made it for me, spent months sewing it every evening, her old machine rattling away on the table while I did my homework on the floor because it made my pen wobble. I loved the dance I learnt with Pa, we were out in the barn every weekend practising, until we could probably do it blindfolded, but he told me no when I asked to test it."
Bruce chuckles softly, leaning into him, and Clark untangles their fingers to wrap an arm over her shoulders.
"I kept it because it holds a lot of memories for me. And when Ma asked me if I wanted to take it when she dug it out again, I knew the answer was no."
"That's fine—"
"I know." Clark kisses her head, silently apologising for the interruption, and drops his hand from the dress. "But I also don't want to get rid of it."
When he stops talking, silence fills the room, and Bruce gets the distinct feeling there is something she is meant to infer, a hint she has missed somewhere.
"Okay," she ventures. "So what are we doing with it?"
"Well." Bruce narrows her eyes. Clark's nervous now, stepping back to face her properly, rather than stand astride each other to look at Martha Kent's masterpiece. "I was wondering if you might want it."
Bruce blinks in shock. "What."
Clark cringes back, lifting a hand as if to appease her, then dropping it back to his side to hang listlessly. "Well, Damian has that Mother's Day brunch coming up—"
"Which he invited his mother to—"
"Bruce." Clark's voice takes on a firmer tone, and she jolts. She's still not used to being able to say—
"His other mother. Not me."
"And Talia can't make it."
"He hasn't asked me," she protests, which Clark doesn't even entertain, tossing her a disbelieving look out of the corner of her eye.
"I know you noticed, Bruce. Don't play silly beggars."
Bruce thinks of her meeting the day of quietly being moved to the week after. To Cass waltzing up to tell her they were getting their nails done, scheduled for the day before the brunch. To Talia posting her a charming locket with their son's giggling baby face tucked inside.
"I'm not going to force you to say yes, Bruce. But I'd like you to think about it." Clark steps back up cautiously, leaning in to press a kiss to her cheek. "To think about how beautiful you'd look in it."
"I can't...it's yours."
"No," Clark hums. "I don't see it as mine. I see it as a representation of the people I love most, woven into it's very fabric. You are one of those people, darlin'."
Bruce looks at Damian, standing awkwardly in front of her, hands twisted anxiously in front of him, a worried furrow to his young brow, lip shifting as he nibbles on the sensitive skin inside.
She doesn't need to think to find her answer, a smile stretching her painted lips. "I would love to, Damian."
"Really?"
"Oh, yes." She pulls her son into her lap, and kisses his head as he wraps around her to give her a hug. "And I have the perfect dress."
