Kiss it better (karamel AU)

13

Mon-El glares at the plain piece of paper – wrinkled and small in his hands – with a kind of animosity a lifeless thing couldn't have possibly provoked. There is a phone number scribbled across but nothing else. The numbers are staring back at him like they're mocking him. If they had a voice, he knows it would be an intimidating one. But even like this, silent and thin and harmless, they're serving their purpose.

The tightness in his chest has not eased for days. The pestering nudge of old memories is making him wish he could somehow claw out of his skin. His lips are bitten raw and the shadows forming underneath his eyes betray the sleepless nights he's spent glued to his phone, waiting for updates on his parents' whereabouts. They're safe. He made sure of that. But he can't stop worrying nonetheless.

The first time he met them was on a day a lot like this one; gloomy, with a stubborn chill in the air drawing thick jackets out of forgotten winter closets. His chubby cheeks were stained by dried tears, his slim figure shivering without an extra layer to provide some needed warmth. Agent Johns opened the car door, prompted him out of the backseat, then introduced him to the Matthews's. They were good friends of the agent's, he was informed, and they had agreed to take him in for a few days. Just until the dust would settle. That was the deal. But little Mike Gand stepped into Mr. and Mrs. Matthews' house as a scared and abandoned ten-year-old and didn't step out again — not with that name at least.

He didn't know what they saw in him, what made them love him like a son. At first, despite their kindness, he was wary of them. Their house was foreign, the clothes they bought him didn't feel like his own, their voices were soft and calm in a way he wasn't accustomed to. When he cried, they didn't mock him. When he was loud, they didn't scold him. Their eyes were warm instead of scrutinizing, their hands gentle instead of rough. Sometimes he flinched when he saw them, instinctively cowering away from hits that never came. And other times he pushed them on purpose, chasing a punishment he'd been taught to expect even when he didn't deserve it. But the Matthews's were strange; almost too good to be true. Which meant that they were good liars, waiting for him to drop his guard, much like his parents often did, before showing their true colors.

It took a year for them to earn his trust. Even longer before he was completely comfortable with them. Mike eventually became Michael, but that name was just as haunted as the first, so they asked him to choose a middle name to use. Emmanuel wasn't one he liked and that was exactly why he picked it. It was uncommon and meaningless, something different. A year after he was dropped off at Matthews' door, the little boy knew nobody was coming for him. And if they did, at that point, he wasn't sure he would go with them. He had a new room, a new name, a new life. He could be a new person. So that was what he did. And the day Charles and Marie called him Emmanuel for the first time, he decided he wanted a new mom and dad too.

Two years after Larry Gand died and Rhea Gand disappeared, Michael Gand ceased to exist. Michael Emmanuel Matthews wasn't born from the shadow of a scared and abandoned ten-year-old boy. He made up his own story instead. And when the news broke out that the Gand's only son was dead, everybody believed that Rhea had gone back for him, to finish the job. She'd killed her husband, and when she'd found a chance, she'd killed her son too. And Mon-El was free. He wasn't hers anymore. Mon-El was Charles and Marie's; a poor boy who'd lost his parents in a car accident when he was six, bounced around from one foster family to another until the Matthews's adopted him.

He wasn't an easy kid. He had nightmares and wounds and demons that chased after him, both dead and alive ones. But his new parents loved him. From the first day, they always insist. He doesn't believe them, but he pretends to, because he loves them too.

Ever since he was ten, he hasn't spent Thanksgiving away from them. They've spent other holidays apart, but not this one. Thanksgiving is theirs they say. It's about their family and about him. So they always travel to wherever he is, come hell or high water, and his mom cooks too much while his dad wanders around the apartment looking for something to fix. Last year he had leftovers for a week and his bedroom was repainted. And the year before that, he and his mom learned how to make spanakopita with homemade phyllo dough as his dad fixed the running faucet in the bathroom and replaced the cracked window in his living room.