If I can't be everything to you.....you will be nothin to me

No rest for the guilty

Dahlia  reached for the box as soon as they were out of the store doors, and marcel  raised it out of her reach. Dahlia  scoffed and reached upwards. "Just- give me the ring!"

"Ah, ah, ah! I don't think so, My Darling Fiance!" Marcel  waved one 'scolding' finger at her before he stuck the box in the pocket of his suit pants.

Dahlia scowled at him, but it didn't have the same effect it usually had on people.

Marcel  only smiled wider. "You seem awfully keen to wear a ring you didn't want in the first place!" Dahlia opened her mouth to retort, to remind marcel that he was talking about making their engagement 'official', that she hadn't even wanted to bother with it, but she had a right to wear it if she wanted to.

Marcel raised one hand as if to silence her preemptively. "You'll get your ring, My Love, if you let me take you to dinner tomorrow night."

"W-Wha-What are you-? You can't be-!" Dahlia sputtered, trying to find words that would convince him he was stupid, that he should just give her , her  own ring right that instant because it was hers .

but she couldn't. And she really, really wanted that damn ring. Marcel  watched her with eyes full of anticipation, and a, for once, unobtrusive smile.

She thought, if she squinted, she could see a dog's tail wagging happily behind his back.

Dahlia breathed in, then took a hefty breath out. "Fine, but I get to pick the restaurant."

_______________________________________

"Jon?" Lois knocked at her son's bedroom door, then huffed when she didn't get a response.

She twisted the handle, in hindsight without regard for the fact that her son was, in fact, a teenage boy, and shoved the door open. "Jonathan Samuel Kent, you have chores you need to do, Mister. And they're not going to get done if you're still sleeping in your bed!"

Jon was, in fact, huddled up on his covers, back turned to her as he breathed in, breathed out.

His legs were curled to his chest, and the boy of steel looked more like a ball as he huddled into himself for warmth. "I'm not…" He turned over, and the eyes that had been so listlessly staring out the window found hers in bloodshot red.

There were bags under his eyes, more than she'd seen in the earlier nights of their marriage that Clark stumbled in from a Justice League mission that had been particularly grueling.

She hadn't seen her son's eyes so heavy in a very long time. She winced.

"Oh, honey…" She pushed the door open the rest of the way, noticing how the light of the hallway was the only source of brightness in Jon's otherwise pitch black room. Lois sat at the edge of his bed and placed a hand at his curled hip. "It's not like you to get sick."

"I'm not sick, I'm just…" He didn't finish his sentence. He just stared down at his blanket-covered hands and blinked.

Lois frowned. "Is this about Dahlia?"

Jon said nothing, but he did wince. Ah, that made sense. He hadn't said much about it since they'd gotten the invitation in the mail.

That was odd, she and Clark had both decided, because they'd thought for sure that Dahlia would have been the one to tell Jon, and that Jon would have been her Best Man.

That's what best friends did. That's what they'd always thought their son would do. "Jon, honey, I'm sure Dahlia has a reason for not telling you about marcel . Why don't you ask?"

To her surprise, Jon sat up and scoffed. "I did ask, Mom, and Dahlia said she didn't even know the guy."

Lois blanched, not quite sure if she heard her son correctly, because that sounded… so not like dahlia , and certainly not at all like her father to let her do such a rash thing.

A shotgun wedding? In Gotham City's papers? What in the world was he thinking? "That is so irresponsible! Something else has to be going on, you need to talk to her!"

"I already did, Mom! She wouldn't listen!" Jon winced at the height of his own voice, hands reaching up to run over his face, then grab at his hair. His fingers tangled in his messy ink locks,

his face scrunched up in pain, pain she couldn't just kiss away, pain she'd been yet to encounter with him. She'd seen him upset before, seen him mad at himself, disappointed, incensed at the injustice the world sometimes handed to its patrons, but the boy on the verge of tears next to her looked so unlike her son, right then. "She wouldn't listen…"

Lois sighed, mentally crossing her fingers that Clark would do a better job of comforting their child when he got home. For the moment, she wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him into her arms. "You  will get through this, Jon. I promise. You're best friends."

Jon grimaced even as he soaked up his mother's embrace, biting back the response that was at the tip of his tongue.

He wasn't sure him and Dahlia were anything, anymore .

906  words
Two birds one stone I ve done this si quickly I was surprised this is more of s fill in more than a chapter of how jon have been holding up .

Arrevedercci 😁