The phone rings in the middle of the night jerking them both out of sleep and Clark reaches at once for the little folded-up phone jangling its away across the nightstand. This late, the only news is bad news and he flips open the phone and brings it to his ear, the bottom dropping from his world as the possibilities race through his mind.

"H-Hello?" he manages, and Richard squeezes him, sleepy eyes awake enough for jumbled worry.

"Hi Clark," Martha Kent's warm voice is immediate balm for the panic.

"Mom," Clark says, trying to re-swallow his heart, "is everything all right?" Richard relaxes beside him.

"Perfectly all right," Martha says with a touch of bewilderment, then gives a dry chuckle. "Oh, darling, I forgot the time difference. I'm sorry, I must have given you a start."

"That's all right," Clark says, smoothing a hand over Richard's hair as the man mutters something relieved against his shoulder, dropping off into sleep again.

"Actually I thought you'd be out and I'd be leaving a message," Martha says. "I haven't really had a chance to talk with you since you ducked out of the hospital."

"Oh! Oh," Clark says, dispelling the last vestiges of anxiety. Then he considers how many things have really happened since then and his world caves in again. "Ohh." That last is all but a groan.

"Clark?" Martha questions. "Now don't you tell me something's wrong on your end!"

"You called to talk, Mom?" Clark prompts, unable to contain all traces of amusement. He makes a split-second decision and disentangles himself from Richard, pressing a brief kiss to a tumbled glossy-brown wave of hair that covers the man's eye. "Why don't I come over?" There are so many things, he knows, that should be imparted in person.

"I'll put on a pot of tea," Martha replies, and they say a brief goodbye, or rather, au revoir.

I have so much to tell you, Clark thinks as he puts down the phone, and there's a touch of apprehension tangled up in the larger skein of excitement and joy. He's never broached the subject of Kryptonian bisexuality with his Kansas born-and-bred mother; he's never had occasion before now. It's as if his stomach has taken flight without him, preceding the change of locale.

He dons the super-suit, makes for the skylight, and with a lift of his hand the world falls away.

+end+