Through A Glass Dirtily update

“Working—working out?” Kon asked. “What are you talking about? The sex has been great!”

Tana gestured to the couch. “Will you have a seat, please? I think we both need to be rational about this.”

Kon flew over to the couch. “Look, babe, if you think I’m being a bad boyfriend, give me a little time to get into the swing of things! Most of my relationships don’t last this long! Most of my relationships haven’t been relationships! I can bring you more flowers and take you out on dates and whatever else your love language is. I have a calendar app, I can delete all sorts of crap from it and add in your crap. You want me to stop meditating while listen to Joe Rogan? I can do that!”

“Kon,” Tana said emphatically. “Sit.”

Kon stopped flying, plopping down on the couch. “I just think you aren’t giving me a real chance here. And it’s not like I bungled things. The sex was really great! Do you think that was all Roxy?”

Tana sat down beside him. “That’s a little bit my point. Kon, don’t you think it’s weird that you have two girlfriends?”

“No. I’m half-alien, I’m a clone, and I’m best friends with an urban legend and a time traveler. One girlfriend wouldn’t fit my vibe.”

Tana smirked. “Okay, well argued. I can accept that. But face facts. I just implied I was uncomfortable with you dating Roxy and you started arguing for dating both of us.”

Kon bit the inside of his cheek, trying not to look stricken. “Hey, why wouldn’t I? You’re both awesome.”

Tana shrugged a little. “Yeah, I suppose. My point is, you’re not exactly looking for an adult relationship.”

“I so am!” Kon argued. “We’ve been doing adult things with Roxy this whole time!”

“Maybe a better word is a conventionalrelationship. You’re not interested in me being the only woman in your life, are you?”

Kon scuffed his shoes on the carpet, eyes downcast. “Well… I know a lot of great girls… I mean, there’s Supergirl and Secret and Arrowette…”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, Kon.” Tana reached over and turned his head so he was forced to look at her. “What if I wanted to be the only woman you slept with? What then?”

Kon looked away a moment. “Well… I’m not arguing, I’m debating… but why’s that conventional relationship better than what we have? What do you get out of me not sleeping with Roxy? I thought you liked it when I slept with Roxy.”

“I…” Tana rubbed at her eye with the heel of her hand. “It’s complicated.”

“Too complicated for you to sort out? So you just want us to be exclusive because it’s easier to figure out?”

“I didn’t say I wanted us to be exclusive…”

“So you want us to break up?” Kon asked, his voice cracking.

“No, no—“ She reached over to rub his thigh. “It’s not like that, Kon. You’re getting ahead of yourself.”

“You said our relationship isn’t working out and it sounds like you don’t want it to work out—“

“I do!” Tana stressed. “But let’s be realistic. I love you, but you’re never going to love only me. And you’re a teenage boy, for God’s sake! I know people find it cute that you have a crush on me, but if they knew that we were actually—God—sexually alive.”

Kon held up his hands. “Okay, that’s some Earth law! It’s not meant to cover me. I’m Kryptonian. They grew me in a lab with stolen DNA. I never asked to be… decanted! Honestly, if you think I’m too immature to be having sex, how come you let me go out and fight bad guys and risk my life?”

“Kon—“ Tana started.

“Because you trust me to make my own decisions. Because I am old enough! I’m mature enough! And I make you happy, I’m adult enough to make you happy. What else counts?”

“Kon, I didn’t say I agreed with it, I said that’s the way it is. I work in the fame game. Being a newscaster is all about the public liking you and the public won’t like me going out with someone who looks like a teenager, regardless of who you are on the inside. It could ruin my career! All the times you’ve saved my life—don’t you want it to be a life worth saving?”

Kon’s face fell. “Then… you wouldn’t do that for me? It’s asking too much of you?”

Tana knelt in front of him, taking his hands. “I would. But it’d hurt you too. You’d have people making jokes about you and insulting you—“

“I can take it!” he protested.

“We wouldn’t be able to go out in public without someone… and you know how you get when someone’s mean to me. What if you flew off the handle?”

“I wouldn’t do that,” Kon said unconvincingly.

“The first time some late-night host makes a joke about us, you’d be fine with it? The man whose first friend was his publicity agent?”

“That’s, uh…” Kon scratched at his temple. “I mean, that’s more of a coincidence than anything else.”

“Kon,” Tana said, exasperated. “I don’t want to break up with you. But you know how all your superhero friends have secret identities? This has to be a secret relationship.”

Kon blinked a few times. “Okay, so… how are we rethinking the relationship? Because if we’re just keeping the sex under our hats… I mean, for Kal’s sake, I wasn’t going to make a sex tape or anything, so no change there…”

“It’s more than that.” Tana got up and sat in his lap. “We can’t be together in public. Not as much as we have been. Not so much that someone would figure it out.”

“Wait…” Kon looked confused. “So before, when we weren’t having sex, we could be out in public, but now that we are, we can’t, because someone might get the idea we’re having sex, even though—“

“We have to cool it, Kon. People were already suspecting something was going on between us back before… all this. And now that there’s actually something there for them to figure out… It’s not like you take me on a lot of dates anyway. Just… let me know when I can come over and we can have a date in here. We can watch a movie, order in, fool around…”

Kon frowned, for the first time looking around at the Kompound’s four walls like it wasn’t the be-all and end-all of architecture. “I don’t know… staying in all the time… not going out… not even be able to have people over because they’d see us being coupley… that sounds like it would bite. No, it sounds like we’re just each other’s booty call, and we can’t do anything really serious because… maybe that’s not what we want?”

“This is what I want,” Tana said. “We’ll have a lot of fun and we’ll have a really strong relationship. It just won’t be a conventional relationship.”

After a long pause, Kon nodded. “Okay. If you don’t want a conventional relationship…”

“I don’t.”

“And then I guess you don’t mind me and Roxy still…?”

“No, no,” Tana shook her head. “You two are the same age. It’d actually throw people off—so to speak—since they’ll assume that the two of you are… and not the two of us.”

“Okay then,” Kon said. “If you’re cool with everything being that way—I guess I just have to let Roxy know.”