Archive of Our Own

          Snow does not feel like sand, not at all. Sand has a graininess to it, a grit that trickles between toes and lodges under finger and toe nails. It sticks to skin even when it’s not wet, and it folds under weight, sinking and then pouring over to fill whatever impression is left behind so if someone steps on it, their feet get covered with each step. Snow just sinks under weight, making prints of whatever touches it, until the snowfall from above comes and fills it up again.

Sand has a smell that Kon knows well, a hot, dry scent that he can feel on the back of his tongue and in between his teeth. He knows the smell of sand better than anything else, hot sand, wet sand, sand on leather that’s been made hot by the Hawaiian day. Snow just smells…wet. Cold and wet. Not Gotham cold and wet, or Metropolis cold and wet, or Smallville cold and wet. No, this snow carries the smell of nothing but itself, no smog or city or cow manure saturating it.

Kon’s bare feet press against the snow as he wanders. He could float, he knows that. He just doesn’t want to. Kon wants to feel that faint sting from his bare skin touching the snow, like his limbs have fallen asleep but he knows they haven’t. The snow isn’t everywhere, though. There’s huge chunks of ice that reach up and over his head, reflecting a strange green-blue in the polar light. 

The ice doesn’t feel like sand either. It’s got a graininess to it, that’s true, but it’s too solid even when it cracks and falls apart into chunks that float away from each other. Ice feels like ice, jagged at the edges where it cracks. Smooth on the top, cold and flat like how a stone can be. It’s heavier than anyone would think, but that’s just how water is. Nobody thinks about how heavy water is. The ice that hangs over Kon’s head looks like some monster’s giant teeth, ready to snap down on him. He reaches up, and his fingers brush against one tip, sharp and faintly cold like a needle trying to dig into his skin. The end snaps off with just the tiniest hint of pressure from Kon’s finger, unable to break skin. Kon wanders on.

The ice stretches out in front of him, one flat surface with a hint of the dark depths of the water swirling below. It’s under the ice, under his feet. His toes curl against the rough flatness of the ice and there’s that heavy, deep ‘crrrk’ that echoes out into the dark and windy sky, muffled by the dull roar of the wind and shakes its way up his legs from his heels, the sound catching in the center of his skull. The crack spiderwebs out, and there, the chunks of ice slowly drift apart to uncover the near-black waters below, and Kon’s feet teeter at the edge. He won’t fall in, of course. No, Kon folds himself in layers of TTK, like they’re sheets pulled off the line left outside to dry under the Smallville sun. The faint linen feeling against him, familiar feeling as the day Kon first woke up in glass, clings to him as he steps off the edge, teetering into the water below.

There’s no waves, at least not like the ones in Honolua Bay. He remembers the huge curls of water, pushing up and their foam edges that slam down like steel pipes. The turbulence underneath these oil-black waters is stronger, though. He wouldn’t have thought so, since the ice floes above seem so steady. It’s like being in a washing machine. Kon rocks with that motion, closing his eyes. Like this, he can pretend he is very young again, and he’s in the blue-green cradle of the ocean surrounding Hawaii and its wind-scraped cliffs, its towering green body.

Kon opens his eyes again, and across his sight stretches the pale blue, the watery grey, the mellow green of the ice above him. Below him is the even deeper pitch-color of the freezing abyss. Kon’s hanging above it, and it makes him think of being untethered in space. But here, there’s no stars burning in the distance to offer even a bit of light. To be honest, it makes him think that this is what being dead is like, if he were to remember it. 

He doesn’t remember being dead of course, but he remembers dying, a little bit. Aside from the heavy, sharpness of his crushed bones (that hadn’t been quite as bad as literally having his DNA unravel and go through some weird, fucked-up melt down but goddamn, did it hit the Top Five ‘Ouch’ Moments of Kon’s life) rattling around inside his body, he remembers…this weird floating feeling. Different from flying or using TTK, it felt very distant, kinda, like he was being carried off with the tide like he was driftwood. Waking up again wasn’t as pleasant, but he also remembers that. Floating below the sheets of ice, it makes him think of that.

Kon anchors himself in place, his cocoon of TTK keeping him from drifting away with the current even as the ice floes bump up against each other overhead and push each other away. He can catch flickers of the sky above him. The rocking of the waves, the sound of the water slapping against the firmness of the ice, it makes him drowsy. Kon closes his eyes, and imagines that he’s part of the sea, part of something vast. Kon lets himself drift away.

If Kon were to compare the sound of glass shattering and the sound of ice breaking, he’d say it’s like comparing some fist-sized rocks being rolled down a hill versus a landslide that wipes out over a dozen homes, violently crushing people and things beneath its weight and force. The ice gives way, and it ripples through Kon’s TTK in a way that makes his toenails itch and his teeth scrape. Kon is the ice and there’s a hole in his gut. Kon is the frozen sea, and he is being churned. There’s a familiar hand reaching below the surface of the deep darkness that Kon’s been sleeping in, and Kon stretches out to take it. Somehow, it’s still like being freed from his first tube, that cracking glass like a first heartbeat, this breaking ice like a second breath. Clark hauls Kon up into the air. Clark’s as barefoot as Kon is. 

“Nice nap,” Clark asks as Kon lets the water trickle off of his TTK, and Kon watches the water droplets crystallize in the air before they hit the floes and shatter. 

“Yeah, slept like the dead,” Kon yawns, “Not that I’d know anything about that.”

Kon can tell Clark’s resisting an eye roll. What an ass, he makes as many former dead jokes as Kon. Jerk’s got his ‘Death of Superman’ newspaper clipping hanging in the hallway. Kon drops down back on the ground and starts the trek back to the Fortress. Kon’s as tired as he would be after seven hours of nonstop punching Earth-destroying aliens, the weak light that reaches through the near permanent dark of the Arctic is barely enough. All he wants to do is sleep until the neverending nights end, and there is sunlight on his skin again. Clark reaches over and snags the back of Kon’s shirt, keeping Kon upright. 

“You’re gonna fall right back in if you don’t watch it,” Clark says, then stumbles with a wide yawn through a large bank of snow, still holding a handful of Kon’s shirt in his fist.

“Aw, don’t stretch it, I like this shirt,” he complains half-heartedly, though he doesn’t really swat Clark’s hand away.

“I’ve seen you wipe ketchup off the table with that shirt,” Clark points out.

Kon shrugs. “So? Ketchup comes out. Especially when I’ve got-”

Clark doesn’t let Kon finish what he was saying, which is rude. He’s telling Lois for sure. Clark whistles quietly, and it’d be lost to the howling wind if it weren’t for the fact that who Clark’s calling can hear the call from a much further distance than this. Krypto’s head rams right into Kon’s stomach, knocking the wind outta him and also knocking Kon right on his ass into the ice and snow.

“That’s a dirty trick,” Kon wheezes, trying to defend against Krypto’s garbage-breath licks. 

“Goddamn, what’ve you been eating, we are in the middle of nowhere,” Kon complains, gagging at Krypto’s nasty breath.

Clark, of course, does absolutely nothing to help. He just smiles, waiting until Krypto tires of trying to stick his tongue in Kon’s mouth. 

“You look dumb,” Kon mutters, pointing to the snow that’s settled on Clark’s head and shoulders.

“Uh-huh. I’m not the one lying in the snow covered in drool,” Clark says, because he’s kind of an asshole, then lifts Kon up and just piggybacks him the rest of the way because Clark is Clark and also not that much of an asshole.

“This sucks,” Kon complains, limply hanging on Clark’s back, “I’m so tired.”

“Yeah, the first year doing this is always the worst,” Clark agrees, and even he is yawning and looking paler than Kon usually sees him, “But it’s also…the best, in the end. It’s worth it.”

“Cheer up,” Kara says, swooping overhead, “First time Clark ever did this, he passed out face first in the snow and I couldn’t find him for hours.”

“That is not true, and she’s a liar, and that has never happened,” Clark quickly denies.

Kara nods behind his head, mouthing ‘Yeah, it did.’

“Now, why do I believe her more than you,” Kon chortles, absentmindedly scratching Krypto’s chin.

“Because I’m not lying,” Kara remarks, “Unlike Mr. Passed out on an ice flow once and drifted out seven miles before he woke up.”

Kon cackles as Kara continues to relay some of Kal’s greatest hits, and there, the shards of the Fortress looms. Like a broken mirror, the pieces taken and remade into some kind of palace. Or, rather, it makes Kon think of the time he had to go into a cave system back during his old Young Justice days, when he had been the only one who could deep dive under the sea (not the same shade as the turquoise of Hawaiian waters but not the ink-black of the freezing waters of the pole) into a cave. He remembers the shape of crystals protruding out of crevices, shining in the dark. Clusters of them, jutting out at sharp angles. The Fortress makes him think of those crystals.

Krypto lopes ahead, strings of drool trailing behind him before they fall, freeze, and then hit the ground and crack. Kon lived in warm places. He spent his early life in Hawai’i, and Metropolis may be on the east coast, but it’s warm enough for being pretty close to Gotham and gets a lotta sun. Kansas, it’s sweltering in the summer, August getting hot enough to cook an egg on an old shed’s glaring tin roof. So. The cold. Not an old friend of his. Just before he ducks inside, he brushes his fingers against the metal-glass-crystal shell of the Fortress outside. Like the whole world surrounding him, it’s cold.

       There’s etching on the walls that Kon can’t read. He’s gotta buncha languages rattling around up in his head, but these words aren’t much more than doodles on a page to him. He rubs his thumb against the wall, wandering along the layout of the Fortress. Jon’s passed out, not really able to deal with such low sunlight while also beimg so small. 

“Like he’s on power saving mode,” Kon joked when he picked the kid up and laid him down somewhere comfy looking.

There’s lights in the Fortress, but Kon can feel it. The lack of sun. It makes him feel heavy, like he’s got a whole mountain sitting on his shoulders. And Kon’s carried things pretty damn close to being mountain-sized before. Somehow, despite being so tired, he can’t lay down and close his eyes. So, Kon wanders. In his head, he makes a list of things he sees. Writing on the middle of the walls, set half an inch deep into the surface. He’s barefoot, has been since they got there the first day, and he can feel (see. Feel and see, at the same time) everything. Not just inside- Kara rolling onto her left side, her hair mashed against the side of her face while her right pinkie toe twitches in time with her left thumb- but also outside for miles and miles out. Dipping under the ice and the snow, beyond the soft stirring of critters foraging and burrowing, the ripples of the tide below the ice sloshing against each other while large shapes push through the bone-biting cold of the water. Kon’s lungs are somewhere in the sea, and his heart’s some place buried in the ice.

Kon’s palm scrapes along the wall, the heels of his feet trying to dig into the floor below him. He can feel movement in his space, a presence he’s allowed to enter the place Kon occupies. Clark- Kal, because nobody else really calls Clark that and Kon’s always called Kon so Kon can at least return the favor and call him Kal and Clark- is right there. Kon can hear the thump-thump-thump slow beat of his heart, and it’s just that side of different from the Homo sapiens they surround themselves with that Kon can tell when a heartbeat is a little different from the standard human’s. 

“Trying to read it,” Kal asks, glancing at the wall.

Kon shrugs. “Meh. Gave up on that a while ago. I just like having the feeling of it.”

Kal takes one long, drawn breath in. Kon can feel the shift in the air when Clark inhales, disturbing the space Kon occupies with his invisible force- of the non-Jedi kind unfortunately but TTK really is just as badass- and Kon lets the air flow. He’s gotta let the air be air, and let people breathe, even when it disturbs his space. He can have more air. There’s plenty, he reminds himself.

“For the longest time, I couldn’t make heads or tails of this,” Clark admits, pressing his fingers to the walls (they look a lot like ice or crystal, gleaming and shining like they’ve just been freshly polished like Ma’s fine silver).

“Wait, really,” Kon asks, startled.

“Really,” Kal confirms, “Wasn’t more than a bunch of squiggles. I…I gotta say, I still can’t speak, uh, properly, I guess. Formal, yeah. But the way Kara talks? With slang and everything? I just...can’t do it.”

Kal puts his hand on the wall beside Kon’s, fingers spread and palm covering a section of words. Clark’s eyes slip closed, like he’s trying to search for the words under his hands in his head, hoping he’ll find them in a file somewhere up in his head. 

“I never thought you woulda had trouble with it,” Kon mumbles, dipping his TTK into the grooves in the wall, the grain of the floor, the soles of his own feet.

Clark’s face twitches into a half sorta smile, like he doesn’t mean to make that face but can’t help it. 

“Well. Smallville doesn’t really offer the best range in language classes,” Clark jokes, “I mean, the Spanish class isn’t good and that’s the only thing they got aside from English.”

“Nah, they added French last year,” Kon snorts. 

He presses his hand harder against the wall. He can’t absorb the word, the shape, the meaning of it, what it is through his skin but he can pretend, he can make-believe that just by touching he can- he can be. Kon breathes, and thinks he feels sand in his ribcage, lining the insides. He breathes again, and there’s the snow cracking across his skin, buried in the dimples of his flesh. Ice and Hawai’i’s waters roll over him with the next two quiet inhales of the cold, stagnant air. The words don’t come, and the wind screams outside.

Kara cups the water in her palms as he kneels over the basin that looks like it’s been made out of ice, and she pours it softly over his head. Whatever water doesn’t catch in the curls of his hair drips across his cheeks and the tip of his nose, dropping back into the basin. Some of it rolls down the nape of his neck, down his back. If Kon thinks too hard, it feels like the tips of Tana’s fingers tracing his shoulders. His breath rattles in his chest, and Kara presses the side of her wrist down briefly against the top of his head, and something that had been stuck in his throat comes loose. Tana had never been as light as Kara, and from the corner of his eye, he can see the loose tumble of her blonde hair. Tana’s hair was volcanic glass. 

“Before the light of Rao, we cleanse your hair,” she murmurs quietly, voice still echoing around the cavernous room, “We wash your skin, so you may feel Rao’s brilliance in full.”

She pours another handful of water on his head, and it spills across his shoulders. He can feel the droplets seeping down to his scalp. Kon licks his dry mouth; he’s not sure if he’s gotta say something. There’s something a little…weird about kneeling down, praying to a god or ancestor or whatever the Hell Rao is when Kon doesn’t know shit. Kon feels no one way about God and stuff, it's really hard to believe that religious stuff when one of his best friends is a demigod and two of his other best friends are out n’ out atheists. Besides, the amount of cults they’ve all tangled with when they were younger (that stupid cult that made murder kids with a dumbass program on t.v. was just the tip of the iceberg back then) really just dampens down religious spirits. But here he is, leaning over a small tub, being ‘cleansed’. Cleansed of what exactly, he’s not, like, totally sure. Kon’s pretty sure he got past at least the majority of his ‘no hygiene’ phase so he’s probably not that stinky? Or, well, okay, he could be but Kon’s 97% certain he isn’t. 

“Wash your hands,” Kara whispers, “You have to put them all the way in there and scrub them in the water for a minute.”

Kon nods, flicking water everywhere, and slides his hands under the water. Palms rub against palms, fingers twisting around each other, and Kon cheats a bit, pushing TTK underneath his nails to flick out anything that might’ve gotten all up under there. Kara taps his shoulder and he pulls free from the water. He’s not sure if it’s too rude to wipe his hands on his pants. 

“Is it my turn next,” Jon whispers.

“Hold your horses,” Clark quietly replies, “You’ll know.”

“Kon-El of the house of El, Rao accepts you,” Kara continues, and Kon bites the inside of his lip.

Glad Rao accepts him, wish he had a clue what the Hell Rao is. Was. Dammit. He feels Clark pull gently on his shoulder, and Kon stands up, wet hair matted down at his nape and the front of his face. He steps back and lets Jon take his turn. He can still feel the water trailing down his front, sliding from his jaw to his chest. Like feathers, like Knockout’s clawed hand, a freezing heat and a distinct sharpness. He can feel the way a droplet trickles along his shoulder blade, Tana’s smooth fingertips and the ends of her glossy hair. Kon draws in one shuddering breath, inhaling so deeply he imagines that if they could, his ribs would crack at the seams. He is clean, he is clean. Those are not fingers but water, like the oceans he used to dip into when he wanted a minute where all he could hear was the tides, when all he could feel was the brine of the sea, when all he could see was that endless expanse of clear, clean blue and green. Water is clean and so is Kon. He distantly watches Kara change the water so it’s fresh, and then she pours it over Jon’s head. Jon fidgets and wiggles around like a worm, unable to keep still when the water drips over his ears and into his eyes. She recites the same thing she told Kon, replacing Kon’s name with Jon. It suddenly strikes Kon that this is a family thing. Jon is Clark’s son, Kara is Clark’s cousin, and Kon is…Kon’s….Kon’s also there. He also belongs and his hair is wet and he stands beside Clark, something of a brother, nothing of his father, maybe like a cousin or something and he….belongs. Somehow. He wants to believe he does.

       Kon always liked the sun. The heat and warmth, the way it stirred scents in the air. Not sterile like the labs, not cool and chemical. He can smell hot garbage, rotting and baking in the sunlight, spread out in an alley. He can smell fruit being warmed by the heat, its flesh baking under the skin, so sweet it’s almost nauseating. The rising stink of human sweat and body heat in crowds out during mid-day. He can feel the heat try to dry his mouth and his tongue when he breathes, trying to singe his throat and nostrils. It stretches across his skin, digging into his bones and his teeth and his hair and eyes. It feels good, and when it’s been too dark for too long, he feels like a tub with water circling the drain, slowly depleting. His brain is like those big puffs of cotton candy at the fair in the summertime, huge swirls of fluff that look like dryer lint in pink and blue that melt away underneath a slight touch, leaving behind wooden sticks or paper cones that sit empty. 

It’s been a long time since he’s gone so long without any strong light, and he feels so tired that all he can do is think. The sky out here is beautiful though, and if he could work up any energy to fly for more than a few minutes at a time, he’d go up and see if he could really touch the stars with how close they seem to Earth. He knows that they aren’t actually there but they look it, like silver apples overhead. When Kara shakes him awake one morning, she’s grinning, her hair a nest on her head and faint shadows under her eyes.

“We’re going to receive the first light,” she whispers, dragging him up, “We’re going to leave now so we can feel the first sunrise of the year.”

Kon’s gotta admit, he totally lost track of the days but it’s still surprising to hear that the end of December had come already. It’s still so damn dark out when he stumbles outside, trying to scrub his hands across his face to wake himself up. He’s no better than Jon, who’s drooling on his own shirt half-asleep still. Krypto curls up on top of Kon’s feet, and Kon leans down to scratch at his dog’s head. Tired off his ass and not exactly in his most awake state, Kon asks, senselessly when he thinks back on it, “Did you do the same shit on Krypton?”

Kara doesn’t frown, but she doesn’t exactly smile. Her face goes loose and tired, her smile thin like the cracking ice. 

“No,” she answers, “I had to, um, adapt pretty much everything about this for Earth.”

“Oh,” Kon mumbles stupidly, not looking at her.

“I never asked,” Kal interrupts quietly, “What was it like? Before you changed it?”

It occurs to Kon again that Clark himself has never lived anywhere besides Earth, except maybe those few moments before he had to leave. Kon wonders if somehow he still remembers what the sky looked like there. Probably not, but if Kon remembers the seconds before waking up in his tube, in the fluid sloshing around him, the echoing of the glass and the electrical beeping that reached his ears before it met his eyes, who’s to say Kal doesn’t remember the sky on a dead planet? 

“Well, it was shorter,” Kara muses, “The whole thing went on for a lot less time, though maybe it actually did go on about the same amount of time. Krypton ran on a different time than Earth does. And there were more people. The newborns would be blessed during this time, and there would be dancing. Singing. The guilds…their members would celebrate. My mom took me to once, once, for the science guild. They talked about their research and asked their ancestors for blessings in their discoveries. It was fun.”

Kara turns her face up to the sky, eyes closed. Despite the dry, cold wind and the wet, grey scent of snow, Kon can smell the salt of tears, catching on her eyelashes between snowflakes battering her skin. Kon breathes in, catches the scent on the flat of his tongue, and swallows it down. Jon, thank God for small children, snaps awake and asks, “Are we going yet? I’m tired.”

Kara laughs, vocal chords straining tightly, and beckons Kon to her side. She takes his hand, squeezing his fingers tightly in her palm. Krypto leaps into Kon’s free arms, lazy dog, drooling happily.

“You’ll fly with me,” she tells him, “Ready?”

Kon stares out at the pale land that stretches out all around them, the dark sky, the heavy storm. 

“Yes,” he decides.

Trying to take off is like trying to jump with cement blocks tied to his feet. He stutters, boosting himself with TTK, unsteady. He remembers trying to fly without TTK the first time, bumping away into the air like a balloon released from a child’s hand, then dropping through the air suddenly like an ornery kite. This is a lot like that, but Kara’s hands are warm and strong. Jon’s slung limply across Kal’s back, though Kal himself is more off kilter than Kon’s used to seeing him. 

“We’ll be fine,” Kal promises as they gain altitude, above the clouds to where the air is even more sharp and thin, like the edges of cracked open aluminum cans buried underneath beach sand, “This will be the best part.”

Kon nods. Clark says so, so Kon will…he’ll believe him. He’ll believe this. The world transforms, cold and dark and sharp, the land below them smudging blue-green-grey-brown under the shadows, and then the dawn breaks.

The sun creeps over the horizon, and Kon can feel it, heat filling his veins. It’s on his skin and in his eyes, and with one heartbeat, his heart stops. His cells freeze, body on pause, and then his lungs restart, heart kicking back into function. The sun rises and Kon wants to laugh. Krypto darts from his hold, barking and letting his drool fly behind him and it nearly smacks Kon in the face. He remembers staring up at the sky for the first time after coming back to life. This feels just as great as that did. 

          Kon touches the ground and feels a shock to his system. His TTK has spread out, a bit different than it’d been before. Like when you go to sleep a certain height and wake up an inch taller, not too much of a difference but everything feels different somehow, still. He’s covered the entirety of L.A. before, but he’d been real pissed off when that happened, and his TTK snapped back into place, its natural boundaries, right away. Now, over rolling land and lumpy roads, stretching out over Manchester’s limits, he can feel it all. The scuff of shoes on wet cement by someone on an early morning walk, the smack of spit and mucus from the mouth of a smoker leaning on a chainlink fence, a car driving past town eith its engine bumbling and failing and wheezing in on itself, Bart zipping from his room through the front door without pause and smacking right into Kon’s torso.

“Kon-Kon-Kon-hey-hi-whatcha-doing-why-aren’t-you-with-Superman-Actually-fuck-that-guy-who-cares-HI,” Bart chatters into Kon’s front before climbing up Kon like a monkey so he can get his arms around Kon’s neck and squeeze as tightly as possible, his giant, slippered feet lodged right into Kon’s kidneys. 

“Hi,” Kon laughs, and draws in his TTK like it’s a towel, a warm linen, bundling Bart in it when he crushes his arms right around Bart in return.

Lightning, that ozone smell, something a bit like space dust, bananas, and Christmas cookies. He can smell it on Bart when he breathes. The bananas are from Bart’s shampoo, and the Christmas cookies are from snacks. The lightning-scent and the space dust-kinda burning smell is from Bart himself, a speedster stink. Bart also smells like dog fur. His heart hammers, Kon can hear it, but it's a steady pulse in his chest, too fast for a normal person, but just right for Bart. Kon knows it well, he can count each beat in his head even when he’s not paying attention. The rhythm’s as familiar as a childhood song, though Kon lacks those. But he has this, and that’s better than thinking about something that he’s never going to have.

“Did you just come from home,” Bart asks, slinging himself around to Kon’s back, piggybacking him and speaking right into Kon’s ear.

Bart’s hair tickles the nape of Kon’s neck and his ears. 

“Nah,” Kon answers, “I came right here.”

“Awww, you missed me,” Bart crows.

Kon grins, he really can’t help it. Bart’s heart beats warm and quick, and he can feel the expansion of Bart’s ribcage against him, the creaking of Bart’s replacement knee cap in the cold and the tightness of the winter air, the tapping of Bart’s fingers against Kon’s shoulders. His hair is feathers against Kon’s skin, and Kon feels himself settle, something in his heart being thrown like a blanket on a bed, evenly spread out and soft to the touch. 

“Yeah, I did,” Kon admits. 

“Hey-wait-hold-on-stay-here-give-me-one-sec,” Bart demands, throwing himself off of Kon’s shoulders to dash upstairs really quick, then pokes his head out of his bedroom window overhead.

“Come up here,” Bart calls. 

“I’m taking my shoes off,” Kon hollers as he steps through the front door.

It smells like pecans, butter, brown sugar. It smells like old people too, old people speedster and a young woman’s plum handcream. Mothballs and ozone with burnt space air, flowery perfume with a smudge of the burning crisp edge of hairspray. There’s dog hair too, he catches it on the rug in the living room, prickling upwards from the fibers. Kon feels his fingers (not his actual fingers but TTK is hands-eyes-toes-tongue-skin-touch to everything with each breath he takes and that’s how it’s always been) trace the edges of the wooden floor, the slats pushed together and the grain under him. Wood, real wood, smooth and real. It creaks under his feet when he ascends the stairs, because Mr. Crandall’s got a strict no-powers rule in the house and he hasn’t let up at all on that. The stair runners have discoloration from the sun, paling colors like faint splotches like water color paint spilled unevenly. He can see the faint impressions of Bart’s feet left behind. He can see them down the hall runners too, he can feel the impatient tapping of Bart’s foot on his bedroom floor, and when Kon swings open the door, Bart’s standing there.

Bart’s wearing a blue and white version of his Impulse suit, with his red goggles still, the lenses changed from that orange to something opaque. There’s a hood on his back, and Kon can already see the teeth marks embedded in the strings hanging down the front. There’s lightning bolt wings on Bart’s shoes, and Kon’s struck by the fact that his best friend- one of his best friends, one of the people who made coming back from the future worth it- is more grown up than any of them ever thought they’d get. 

“I’m Mercury,” Bart says, and he grins.

The smile’s still the same, all teeth, all wide eyes like Bart’s been electrocuted and feeling the sudden shock. Kon knocks his fist gently into Bart’s shoulder, and he’s different, and Kon’s different, and he’s glad.

“You sure are,” Kon agrees.

         It’s a secret to all but Kon, but kissing Cassie was the first time Kon ever felt like kissing was right. They didn’t know how to, both of them awkward and smacking their noses into each other, hovering their hands around, unsure. There was a lot of uncomfortable angling, and Kon swears he got a crick in his neck once, but it felt like kissing should.

He’d been kissed by women from the police force, lined up for those pageant contests on the beach where he felt like a pig on a spit, a prize roasted and ready to eat. He supposed he liked it, their sticky lipstick smeared on his face before they went off to their boyfriends or lovers who had grown-up things like jobs and degrees and were of legal drinking age. He remembers the faint aftertastes of cigarette smoke and alcohol.

He thought he liked kissing Tana, when she got off work from the paper, tucking her pager in her pocket and muttering about what it’d been like in the office. Kon didn’t understand that, because he’d only ever been in the lab, or the high school, because that’s where he was supposed to be. In the lab, when he was being the science experiment. In high school, because he was a public teen hero who needed to show kids that supers do school too, so it’s cool. Kon remembers her yelling at him for acting like a little kid who needed to grow up, then smudging her lipstick before her hands slid along under his suit. He’d always end up taking it off, and that wasn’t quite right either.

Kon remembers the kisses Knockout would smack on him, tar-ash-heat-spice. She’d dig her nails into his scalp and yank hard, her teeth sinking along his lips, biting and scraping along. It always tasted like blood in the end. It was wrong in the end, and Cassie made it feel…less wrong. Strawberry candy perfume and cheap strawberry chapstick because she didn’t want to waste her allowance when she wanted to get the League Edition trading cards that were coming out soon. 

She smelled like pencil shavings because her sharpener spilled in her school bag. She didn’t know anything, he didn’t know anything. They were kids, and Kon thinks, after all these years and all these things and all these thoughts, that’s what made him feel right. In the end, though, Cassie-the-girlfriend wasn’t right.

“Hey,” she yells, and bodyslams into him mid-air like a sack of rocks, hugging him tight and digging her knuckles into her hair.

This is right. Cassie’s hair is shorn down, curling around her ears. She’s not wearing the croptop and skinny jeans anymore, instead rocking her golden breastplate, her armored boots, her red cargo pants, her lasso. She’s wearing a headpiece with a star on it, and she’s the most beautiful girl in the whole entire world. 

“Man, is this how you show your love,” Kon wheezes, trying to bully her hands off of him.

“Save the love for your ma,” Cassie snorts, “Do you think you can shave my head?”

“Are you trying to steal the undercut look from me,” Kon accuses.

“It’s not stealing if I look better,” Cassie jokes.

Kon flips on his back, the way he’s seen mom otters do, and lets Cassie rest on him like she’s the baby otter. She still smells like strawberry candy perfume, sweat, metal, something human, and then something that’s from the sky- rain, lightning, condensation. He can feel her twitching muscles, her soft pulse. They are in the sky, and she is the anchor of touch.

With the clouds dissipating, rolling over, planes rushing past miles and miles out, brushing against the edge of him, Cassie is the solid mountain that he holds down to, like one of those trees that sit at a mountain peak, stretching their limps upwards, ready to fall off the edge except their roots are moored down deep. 

“I gotcha,” Kon agrees.

          He shaves the back of her head in a truck stop bathroom, with a razor they bought at a drugstore they found. The buzz of it rattles against his fingers, and he holds it steady. Golden fuzz, bleached streaks from the sun zinging along the edges, fall to the ground. Kon wraps the razor in his ttk and holds it to his head.

There’s a wedge of hair down the back that goes unshaved, curling against his nape, but the sides are cut down. Kon looks in the mirror, and there’s fuzz along his jaw, and not the ratty, moldy kind he had when he was younger. He’s grown. He’s lived, he’s died, he’s lived again. He’s fallen apart God (if there is one. Rao, if he isn’t dead like Krypton) knows how many times, pieced back together over again, holding still in time and then aging like the rest.

He’s older. He’ll keep getting older. Cassie’s there, in the dirty, graffiti-and-vomit-and-shit stained restroom. She’s with him. Her teeth are crooked when she smiles, and she’s got an old scar on her lower lip. She really was the only girl he ever felt right kissing. She really will be the only one, ever, he swears it. 

“Glad you’re back,” Cassie says.

Kon can feel the rusty pipes gurgling, caked with who the fuck knows on the inside. The tiles feel like they ooze moistness, and taking a deep breath in the rank air of the bathroom should be considered hazardous. Their hair brushes outside with a flick of his head, caught in the wind and taken away. Kon leans his head on Cassie’s shoulder, his knees bent a little bit to do so. She smells familiar and good and Kon knows this well.

        Kon has the key to Tim’s place. He wears it on a chain around his neck, right with the keys to Ma’s and Pa’s house out in Smallville, and with the key to Lois and Clark’s house sitting in Metropolis. He doesn’t need them, really. Locks fall apart under his fingers, without him even touching them so long as he wants them to come undone for him. But he has their keys and he can walk right in. He listens to the metal sliders inside the door creak on open for him, clicking smoothly, too softly for anyone to hear regularly. Even a hound wouldn’t hear it. Kon listens, that comforting clink of metal on metal. He opens the door, and Dex is there, perching on a shelf above the couch. He looks regal as ever, fat as ever to boot. His Supreme Fluffiness flicks his tail, stretching out on the floating shelf while his lamplight eyes sternly assess Kon.

“I’ll get you treats,” Kon promises, whispering as he slides his shoes off into the cubby Tim has by the door.

Dex leaps to the floor, purring and meowing like he only does for Tim (or Kon, with the caveat that Kon’s packing treats or is promising treats in the near future, and the fact that Tim’s cat can comprehend a promise and also the concept of the future is mildly intimidating). Kon stoops to scoop the furball, scritching him right behind the ears like he does for Krypto. Under the roaring purr from Tim’s cat, he can hear the slow, soft heartbeat he knows so well. Quiet, soft breathing from a thin, rattling chest, and Kon can hear that kick into wakefulness. Quiet feet plant against the floor, palms spread out on the soft rug by Tim’s left bedside. Kon reclines on the couch, waiting, Dex swishing his tail against the arm of the couch.

Tim creeps in like a hunted animal, peering cautiously around corners. His silver ring, the one he wears all the time and never removes, glints in the tiny light cast by the cinnamon candle on the coffee table, propped up on a ceramic coaster with a mosaic sunset. There’s a little click-click-click, metal on the floors. A pocket knife, Kon guesses, his TTK fanning out to fill up familiar shapes of rooms he knows well. Tim stops, and his heartbeat kicks up like he’s started running a marathon. 

The light flickers on in the hallway, and Tim stands there. He smells like sleep, and his tired eyes widen. 

“You’re back,” Tim breathes, and jumps.

His nose presses into the side of Kon’s neck, thin fingers twisting in Kon’s shirt. Knees dig harmlessly into Kon’s sides. His hair’s vaguely damp, and it smells like Tim after a shower, faintly sweet and clean, not heavy with sweat from patrol, a grime-odor-hot human blood pumping through veins scent. Kon can feel his bones underneath his thin t-shirt and thin skin. He breathes, listening to the sluggish pull of Tim’s guts, nestled in the cavity of Tim’s body, the thrum of Tim’s pulse, the wet slide of Tim swallowing down his own spit before he speaks.

“You’re back,” Tim repeats, the edge of his cheekbone digging into Kon’s collarbone.

He feels so light, and Kon wants to squeeze him till he pops because that’s the only way Kon will ever be able to hold him tight enough, until Tim snaps into pieces. Tim pulls back, nose wrinkled. 

“You smell like literal shit,” Tim complains.

“I was busy,” Kon excuses, “I had a very busy day, Robbie.”

“You need to shower,” Tim insists, “You smell. You can’t be here if you smell.”

“In a minute,” Kon mumbles, and he digs his nose into Tim’s sternum.

Fingers thread through Kon’s hair, and he missed that. He missed Bart’s talking. He missed Cassie’s grinning, and he missed Tim’s…Tim-ness. The way Tim presses his finger pads against Kon’s scalp, rubbing circles into his head. The way Tim’s chest pushes out then drops back in suddenly when he exhales. Tim’s blood pulsing through his body, the soft rush of it under Kon’s ear. 

“Let me wash your hair,” Tim murmurs, and how can Kon say no?

Tim sits on the edge of his bathtub, skin sticking to the porcelain. Kon’s in his underwear, sitting in the tub. His clothes are thrown across the counter, and Tim has the showerhead laying in the porcelain basin of the tub while hot water gurgles from the faucet. Tim cups water in his hands and he drips it over Kon’s head. Water swirls down the drain. Clean, clean, good and clean.

Kon’s hair soaks, and then there’s soap, Tim’s fingers combing through. It’s Kon’s shampoo, because Tim does that. Keep Kon’s soap in his bathroom. The shower head squeaks on, and the shampoo dribbles from his head. The conditioner comes next, and Kon can feel Tim make funny shapes with his soapy, wet hair.

“Having fun,” Kon yawns.

“No,” Tim deadpans, twirling swirls all over Kon’s scalp. 

Kon leans back against Tim’s knees, closing his eyes. Tim’s hands dance around, and the water washes away the soap.

“I have a gift for you,” Tim mumbles, “I’ll give it to you in the morning.”

The water flicks off, and there’s a towel on Kon’s head. 

“Do you want to go home,” Tim asks, handing Kon his pajamas through the crack in the door.

“I’ll stay,” Kon decides.

The bed is soft, and Tim is soft, and Kon…Kon knows he can lay his head here till the end of the world.

(Tim hands him a book full of notes and things in the morning, looking down at his feet.

“It’s Bruce’s notes for learning Kryptonian,” Tim says, “I thought you might be able to learn it with Clark’s help. So, I got you a copy of them I know you’re really good at learning things when they’re all laid out.”

Kon holds it to his chest, and there’s an ache there he didn’t even know was existing in his ribs between his heart and lungs.) 

         Tim urges Kon to go home, so that’s where Kon goes. He sails over the smudged body of the states, fingers brushing through the clouds. He flies until the green-brown-greyness of it all turns blue. He knows this blue, and he knows the pale gold and the green that meet the shining teal of the Pacific Ocean that surrounds Hawai’i. There’s snow-capped peaks of Mauna Kea, Haleakala, and Mauna Loa, and the beaches are a water-logged dark brown. But it’s his first home, his sea brine-and-sand home. It’s his sun-and-forever-green home. When he breathes, he can taste the air, feel the weight of it like its got its own TTK to lay over him. There’s a storm far off, he can scent it in the air. 

“SB,” a familiar voice cheers.

Kekoa, no longer the skinny little 7 year old with four missing teeth. He’s, like, 10 now, skinny as ever, but taller, starting to edge into tweenage gangliness. He’s barefoot, with new-old scars that Kon doesn’t recognize, new cuts that are wrapped in bandages still, and old-old scars that Kon’s never seen the kid without.

“Where’s Pualani,” Kon shouts, swooping down.

“She’s got the flu,” Kekoa calls, shaking his trashbag, “She got it from a tourist who coughed all over her while we were cleaning up.”

Glass and tin clink against each other in the bag. There’s a hole stretching the side of the bag from the top, shards of aluminum sticking far out at points in the trashbag. It’s not their job to be picking up the trash from the beach, but people from all over come and invade Hawai’i’s body, littering it while they pillage, snatching hermit crabs’ shells and grabbing at the bodies of the honu that they aren’t supposed to touch but do anyone (it’s in the nature of people, Kon thinks, to always grab and touch what they aren’t supposed to and then pull it apart).

They drop their plastic beer rings on the sand and bury their pizza boxes underneath. Kids like Kekoa and Pualani, Momi, Ikaika, they take up their trash bags and haul out to the beaches when they can. To Kon, fresh out of the tube and feeling the bite of broken glass under sand and rocks like biting on tinfoil with his molars, he thought about how they were heroes. Not superheroes, no. Just regular damn heroes, good kids.

“Got an extra bag,” Kon asks.

Ikaika’s tall now, and he’s got big ol’ gash scars up and down his ankles. He fell in a pit of broken glass a year ago. Momi’s hair is longer, and she gets teen tourist kids who wander up to her to ask if she speaks native. There’s scraped scars across her knuckles, and Kon’s seen Anita punch enough people in the face to know how Momi got those scars. He reaches into his pocket and takes a sucker he grabbed from Tim’s candy jar. Momi grins and tucks it away before she forges on with her bulging bag of trash.

Kon can close his eyes and push under the sand, digging for chip bags and cast-off diapers. There’s a lot, there always is. It’s like a neverending well of garbage. Sand grits to his feet, and he knows the texture. Wet, scratchy, tiny rocks that tuck into any place they can fit. 

“Where do you live now,” Momi questions him when he pulls her back from a broken edge of a switchblade hidden below the ground, “Does Superman take care of you?”

“Do you have a place to stay,” Ikaika interrupts, “Because if you don’t, I can talk to mom. I know she’ll let you stay, you just gotta do chores!”

“I have a place to stay,” Kon promises, “I’m taken care of.”

The sun rests against his skin, feeding into his blood. The whole island, he can feel it. He knows it, like he knows the way Cassie whistles under her breath when she’s bored, the way Bart likes to fingerdance on flat surfaces, the way Tim likes to hum while he washes the dishes. The day grows strong, then dies out slow, and Kon’s been out here all day. There’s bags and bags of trash, but come tomorrow, there’ll always be more.

“You better come back and see us,” Kekoa yells.

“I will,” Kon tells him, “I gotta go home, but I’ll see you kids soon! Stay outta trouble, and go do your homework!”

Kon takes off, and he’s on his way home again.  

          The tractor is the same fading red. The hay smells wet, and so does the earth, a thick, dark brown and fertilized wetness. Dirt’s different from sand, but it’s close enough in some ways. The driveway is dusty in summer, but when his shoes stamp down on it, it just squishes under his shoes, all mud. Kon flicks the mud off before he even steps on the porch stairs, and then he climbs up, with his key on the chain around his neck clinking against the others. Click. The door swings open, like it always does, because nobody ever changes the locks.

He can smell it, sugar cookies and gingerbread, icing Ma makes at home because the store-bought stuff puts her in a mood with how tacky it tastes. Sugar, and the smell of burning logs in the fireplace. Kon tucks his shoes in the corner, with all the other shoes piled up there. Loud talking in the kitchen, Jon loudly, excitedly yelling about something while Lois laughs. The kitchen floor creaks, and Ma leans her head out to see him.

There’s a flicker to her heartbeat, a kick in the pace. She always approaches him slowly, her hand always stretched out where she can see it. There’s the powder-and-flower in her perfume, and under it, yeast for bread and the fuzzy green scent-taste from tomato plants. Her wrinkled hand touches his cheek, and she never touches him any harder than this, even though he can’t bruise. 

“There’s my beautiful boy,” she greets, thumb smoothing across his cheek, “Everyone’s already in the kitchen.”

Kon nods, and takes her hand. She’s doubly fragile as a regular human, and he can feel the frailness in her bones. But she is gentle, and she is warm, so Kon will try to be the same. 

“I missed you,” Kon mumbles.

Ma kisses her thumb and stands on her toes a little to press it to his eyebrows. 

“I miss you all the time, hon,” she says, “I sent Jonathan to the store real quick, but let’s go eat something. I’ve heard you’ve been all around these past couple days.”

Kon leans into her hand, the wrinkles along her palm and the fine knobs of her fingers. 

“Where’d you hear that,” he asks, wandering with her on their way to the kitchen.

“Mmm, a little bird,” Ma chuckles, “He wanted to make sure you got home safe.”

Kon shakes his head; what a nosy little bird that snitched on him. 

“I’ve been doing stuff,” Kon says, “Just…thinking. Going places.”

“And you always come back home,” Ma sighs softly, rubbing circles into his back. 

“That’s right,” Kon agrees, brushing her greying hair from her face. 

He fits in, like a key in a slot. There’s no spot too small or too big for him to fill…except for one thing. He crouches down by Jon when midnight rolls around, shaking him awake lightly.

“Hey, scout, wake up, I wanna give you something,” Kon whispers.

“Wha’ izzit,” Jon mumbles, wiping drool off the side of his face. 

Kon waggles his finger over, holding up Jon’s mini red play cape. 

“You know, I’m getting kinda old,” Kon tells him quietly, “A little too old to be goin’ around being called ‘boy’. But you know who isn’t too old to be called Superboy?”

Jon’s sleepy eyes snap wide open. 

“But what’ll you be called,” Jon gasps, “You need a name!”

“I got one, don’t worry,” Kon promises, “But listen. You gotta follow the rules of Superboy otherwise you, uh….turn into a shrimp.”

“A shrimp,” Jon repeats in horror.

“A shrimp,” Kon echoes gravely, “You gotta be good. Listen to your mom and listen to your dad, because there’s a good chance they’re telling you something that’ll keep you safe. Know when to tell someone no, ‘kay? Just because you’re being good doesn’t mean always sayin’ yes. And above all…you gotta be cool.”

“How do I be cool,” Jon asks.

“By being Superboy,” Kon answers, “So do your best, alright?”

“What if I mess up,” Jon mumbles.

“Then you mess up,” Kon shrugs, “And then you fix it, and then you do better.”

He taps both sides of Jon’s shoulders, like he's passing knighthood onto him. 

“I dub thee…Superboy,” Kon whispers, “Alright, go to sleep, or you’ll stay this short forever.”

Jon jumps back into bed and rolls over, passing out in just a few minutes. Kon blinks, staring up at the ceiling. He’s been Superboy longer than he’d been just Experiment 13 or when he’d been determinedly calling himself Superman. He was Superboy before he was Kon. He’ll always have a part of him that is that Superboy. But Kon’s too big now, and he’s not going to fit himself in a skin that doesn’t fit, and that he doesn’t want it to fit. It’s time to keep living.