His words knotted in her chest and jabbed into her heart. He sounded like— like he— knew. Was that just coincidence? Did he already know what she was?
How could he know that and still be here?
No, he couldn’t know, not if he was at the door with cookies and acting all charming and sweet like always and wanting to be with her…
Maybe he thought she just looked like bald M’gann, from when she “revealed” herself in Qurac. If he only knew how far from the truth that load of lies was—
Crap, he was at the door. The knocks reverberated and sent the hysterical butterflies in her proverbial human stomach fluttering. What else could she do? Tell him no? He would probably respect her wishes, but how long could this facade go on?
Just like ripping off a bandage. Get it over with quick and before you can think to regret it.
Okay, come in. If you promise…
I promise, M’gann.
Conner waited for the door to slide open and stepped inside. He didn’t look up from the plate as he made his way over to the bed and placed the plate on the mattress and the cup on the bedside table. He sighed and stretched, back all tight from stressing over the cookies and M’gann’s curent mood. Finally, he looked up at her and smiled.
“I think I got all the egg shells out. Sorry if there’s a little more crunch than they should.” Conner gestured to the plate and picked up a single cookie before looking back at her and raising it as much as he could to her mouth. “Give them a try. It’s your recipe too.”
There was a myriad of things he could say about her “real” form but none of them were what she thought. Sure it was Martian, which meant that she looked like something out of a human sci-fi movie but that didn’t make her any less beautiful. He remembered that she had said bodies were like clothes for the mind or something along those lines. Well, if that’s the case, he fell in love with her mind and most of all her kindness.
As usual, Conner reached out with his free hand and held hers tightly.
Conner, I—
M’gann couldn’t believe it. He looked her in the eye— looked her in the white-martian face— and just handed her a cookie. No running, no shunning, no horror or disgust or any one of the millions of horrible scenarios she had imagined over and over again since she joined the team. He knew. He knew and he didn’t care— and hope and optimism peeked through in golden splinters as she considered the possibility that Conner (and the team) might actually be okay with a white Martian M’gann.
Facial expressions weren’t easy to read on Martians, but she couldn’t help the way he made her glow when he took her hand. She squeezed his back with her large, white fingers.
You know about me? About my white martian form?
Maybe it was foolish to let her naivete show, but she had to ask him these questions and hear the answer from his own mouth.
You don’t care?
Casually ignore that this is like months late BUT yay supermartian <3
(AHH this is perfect and you’re perfect and ILU <3)
Scared? Why would I be scared, M’gann? We’ve fought weirder things than whatever “girly stuff” you said you were doing in there. He squatted down in front of the oven as he opened the door and picked the pans out with oven mitts, setting them down on the pot pads on the counter so he could scrape them off and serve them on a platter.
Once he had a small plateful filled along with a glass of milk (cookies always go with milk after all) Conner briskly walked down the hallway as fast he could without dropping cookies or spilling milk. With his elbow he knocked on the door again, his demeanor light in comparison to M’gann’s somber tone. M’gann I don’t care about your appearance… I know you do but… I told you already. You don’t have to wear a mask for me. I love you for who you are and whatever form you choose to be in. It’s your comfort first since that’s your skin you’re living in, right? Just… is it okay for me to come in? I promise I won’t be scared.
His words knotted in her chest and jabbed into her heart. He sounded like— like he— knew. Was that just coincidence? Did he already know what she was?
How could he know that and still be here?
No, he couldn’t know, not if he was at the door with cookies and acting all charming and sweet like always and wanting to be with her…
Maybe he thought she just looked like bald M’gann, from when she “revealed” herself in Qurac. If he only knew how far from the truth that load of lies was—
Crap, he was at the door. The knocks reverberated and sent the hysterical butterflies in her proverbial human stomach fluttering. What else could she do? Tell him no? He would probably respect her wishes, but how long could this facade go on?
Just like ripping off a bandage. Get it over with quick and before you can think to regret it.
Okay, come in. If you promise…
(Source: msmartian)
He never liked the psychic link for things outside of missions. It felt strange and too intimate for just normal talk; however, with M’gann in this situation it seemed right. He couldn’t break down her door and demand she tell him what’s wrong… nor could he just ignore that she relied so much on the psychic link instead of just being upfront about what was bothering her.
I’m not perfect. I don’t think there is such thing among humans or really any sort of living being. He continued walking down the hall as he answered her and ventured into the kitchen. He didn’t know how long he could keep up this facade but perhaps it would coax her to finally let him know what he could do to help. They had promised they would never cross the line and push themselves onto the other person but he couldn’t help but be concerned.
Conner scanned the various shelves, his fingers tracing over the recipe books’ spines. Everyone deals with stuff so… don’t worry about it, M’gann. Is it the cheerleaders at school? Heh, I still can’t get used to them after they dumped that tub of cold water on you that one time. He finally settled on a thin binder and opened it upon the counter. On the front of it was a printout of a Hello Megan screenshot with a label stuck onto the front, “Hello Megan recipes” scribbled across it in Conner’s handwriting. It was their year anniversary present to her and he spent the majority of his Saturday going through the small boxset to find them all. Flipping to the middle of the book, he removed a singular handwritten page and started taking out the necessary ingredients.
Oh no, it’s not the Bumblebees! They’re great… Even if they did have to give me the whole ‘initiation’ thing, I’m sure that was in good spirit. It’s…
For a moment, M’gann seriously considered telling Conner to come into her room and get this whole thing over with— just tell him the truth and bear whatever consequences that may come of it; and, for a split second, she almost did. But then the doubt, the fear, the knowledge of all that was on the line returned. She could— no, she would— lose her team, her home, her love. She’d have to go back to Mars and face down the shame and humiliation and the discrimination that had been her yoke for so many years. She’d have to give up all hope of finding a life for herself here, on the Earth she loved so much.
In the middle of this train of thought she noticed the distant sound of someone mulling about the kitchen.
Conner, are you cooking?
(Source: msmartian)
Girly things? Conner pressed his ear harder against the door as he frowned. Since when did M’gann do girly things? He heard shifting within the room but nothing that he could really define. Probably just from moving around in bed or in the room. He sighed and pulled away, unsure of what route he should take. He didn’t want to pry into her personal space—he hated when she did that and they never crossed that line… but she sounded upset.
You’re not rambling, M’gann. If… you need the space then… okay, I’ll leave you alone. If you’re upset you can just tell me. Whatever it is. That should be enough to appease her and his guilty conscience. He pulled away and started down the hall, eventually pausing to look back to the locked bedroom door again. Was it something I did, M’gann?
No, Conner! You didn’t do anything, please don’t think that!
M’gann sat up and wrapped her long Martian arms around her knees, tucking her head under like this would all go away if she curled up enough and got smaller and smaller until she disappeared. In Martian form, she couldn’t even cry.
I’m just dealing with some stuff, is all. But it’s just me, you’re great. You’re perfect. It’s just me.
At least her voice couldn’t crack when she was speaking telepathically. If she was still in humanoid form, M’gann probably wouldn’t have been able to speak without bursting into tears— then again, if she was in humanoid form she wouldn’t be having this problem in the first place.
She wondered what Conner looked like there, outside her door. His face was probably contorted into something cute and concerned. He always did that thing where he’d furrow his eyebrows and get really serious when he thought something was wrong. M’gann smiled internally through her imaginary tears. For someone who had such anger and pain, he always was so gentle, so kind… She didn’t deserve him— not while she was a liar and a fake and a monster.
(Source: msmartian)
This was bad. This was really bad.
M’gann had no idea why this was happening or where it came from or why she couldn’t change back, but regardless of the cause the more pressing matter happened to be the fact of the situation, anyway. She was stuck as a Martian— as a white Martian. As the lowest of the low.
She couldn’t go to uncle J’onn. Even if he knew who she was on Mars, even if he might be able to help, she couldn’t risk leaving her room and possibly running into a member of the team and revealing everything and they would see her for the liar and the filth she really was and she’d be sent away… No. She had to stay here. Wait it out and try to fix her shape and not tip off anyone to what was going on.
The bed was small for M’gann’s natural size, but flopping backwards onto it still felt a bit therapeutic. The pillows were still plush and she could at least cover part of her torso with the blanket. If only there were some way she could just curl up beneath the comforter and stay there and not have to lie to the people she cared about, not have to constantly feel like a terrible person for refusing to tell her closest friends just how much she was unworthy of them.
What would Conner think? A brief flash of hope in her mind (“maybe he’ll understand… Maybe he won’t care?”) was snuffed out easily by the overwhelming tide of reality— of course he’d care. Who could ever love someone like her, knowing just what kind of monster she really was? The only reason he hadn’t broken up with her yet was because of the constant shroud of lies that she told. She was a pretender and a fake and a white Martian.
No one could ever really accept her. Not like this. At the bottom of everything she was a monster, and it was hard to shake the looming feeling that she deserved to be alone.
Conner’s smile instantly widened the moment their foreheads touched, the intimacy of the gesture something that he reveled in every single time. Not to mention how her rather cool arms formed some sort of protective barrier between them and the world. In high school, he would often hear about how the boys didn’t want to appear “whipped” or how affection made them seem just a little bit less manly. To him, they were just scared to let themselves be open and he rather enjoyed those sweet touches. “Yeah, I guess,” he replied once they parted and he could really examine the cupcakes. They appeared normal on the outside—what’s the point of funfetti if it’s on the inside? Did it taste any different?
Once at the living room, he set the tray down on the coffee table and turned on the rather large TV along with the theater-style projector. Tornado must’ve been particularly bored being their den mother as the entire DVD collection had been organized by genre and alphabetized. Since the cheer squad often has lunch with the football team, Conner had overheard them talking about how romantic The Notebook was and how they would kill to have their boyfriends watch it with them on Valentine’s Day while cuddling and losing themselves in their own world. He had no idea how the boys reacted or if they were even listening—they probably didn’t.
“Is this good?” Conner tossed the DVD underhand to M’gann while making his way to the massive ottoman in the middle of the room, which stored the majority of the blankets used during movie night. That’s also where he stashed today’s Valentine’s Day present for his dear M’gann. Wrapping it up in M’gann’s blanket, he grabbed his own and returned to her side.
“Perfect.” The DVD stopped in mid-air and floated over to the player, slipping itself into the machine with a psychic hum. She’d been planning on grabbing that one anyway. It was like he could read her mind as much as she could read his— sometimes she wondered if Conner wasn’t a little bit telepathic himself!
He really was just as much of a romantic as she was, he just was so much quieter about it. Then again, she was probably one of the more talkative members of the team. Except for Wally.
M’gann grabbed a cupcake from the tray and unwrapped it, holding it out to him with a little grin in an offering, “C’mon, tell me how they turned out! I put some extra vanilla in this time and made the frosting from scratch with buttercream and everything.” A little blush warmed on her cheeks, “I mean, I wanted it to be special tonight, so I really tried to make them the best I’ve made. So… Taste test?”
(Source: msmartian)
M’gann had been reading up on Valentine’s Day since January.
After the New Year’s celebration, she decided it would be good to know what other holidays she should be looking forward to; and, as soon as she’d heard about what was (arguably) the most romantic holiday of the year, she couldn’t wait to do something fun with her own Valentine.
Between the two of them, it sounded like a better date to spend the night watching movies and eating homemade cupcakes, so M’gann had planned just that. She’d pulled out the batch and let them cool and frosted everything in pink and red, and they were sitting pretty on a decorative plate in the living room by the time she called Conner out to the couch.
“Hey, it’s ready!” The big grin plastered across her face came through in her voice. M’gann had been looking forward to this all month.
Conner checked his reflection in the TV screen as he pulled at his typical shirt (actually he got a brand spankin’ new one from Forever Sixteen just for the occasion) and ruffled his hair to make it more acceptable. Wolf either rolled over and half barked because he approved of the Super’s slightly improved look or because he was going to have the couch for a few minutes. Nevertheless, Conner scratched behind Wolf’s ears before letting out a heavy sigh as he finally got up from the couch and made his way over to the kitchen.
Seeing her in the kitchen was a typical sight: never a day has gone by where the Cave didn’t smell like cinnamon or sugar and the green-skinned martian was nearly flying back and forth from counter to counter in that signature pink frilly apron. To Conner, M’gann was his everything: she never failed to make him smile and without a doubt, he’d always lose his breath. Again, that pink apron, emerald skin and the sweetest of smiles…
“Yeah? All right, let me help you with those.” The Super quickly reached out for the pan, ready to comment on how good they looked. And look, only a few of them got burned around the edges! She’s getting better at this.
M’gann smelled the fresh clean of his shirt and heard the deep rumble of his voice before she even turned to see him behind her, a deep calm settling in her chest just from knowing he was there. The flutters she’d had since the first day she’d met him hadn’t ever really subsided, just changed from the girlish butterflies of an anonymous crush to the giddy dance of a heart in love. Today, it seemed even more acute, and she couldn’t be happier.
“Hey there babe,” She beamed, turning to peck him on the lips as he helped her with the cupcake pan, “I made the Valentines day funfetti ones this time, so they have red and pink in them. You know, to be festive and all.”
He was looking nice today— not to say that she didn’t think he looked nice every day, because she did, but she thought she spied a new shirt, and maybe a whiff of cologne? He was so sweet. M’gann couldn’t imagine what she’d done so right, to deserve such a sweet boyfriend.
“So, are you ready for a night of romantic movies and cupcakes and cuddling on the couch?” She tittered, slipping her hands around his waist and pressing her forehead to his. After the battle in the desert, fighting with Psymon over their wiped memories, the little gesture of touching foreheads had become something of an affectionate comfort. It was something that they did as a reminder, there to recall that special personal connection that had sparked there and helped to start their relationship in the first place. It made M’gann feel at home more than anything else in the world, feeling his skin against hers and feeling his warm breath on her neck.
