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nothing feels as good as starting to read again when you haven't held a book in your hand for such a long time and now the setting sun is in your room and there's paper under your fingers and you feel so good about letting the words float into you again
a/n: hey so this request made me go crazy. um this is the result of me rereading yeats' poems and listening to my love song playlist and buying the new nyx ligloss yesterday dont judge me
cw: slightly suggestive, established relationship, reader has she/her pronouns, referred to as a girl, title from when you are old by WB Yeats
wc: 1.5k
mlist
(reblogs are the only way to promote fics on tumblr! please reblog if you enjoyed it :) )
The package is cold in your hands, thin and flat as you thank the deliveryman, shutting the door behind you. The familiar excitement of getting something new zips up your spine, and you hurry into the living room.
Spencer is curled up on the couch, your battered copy of The Collected Poems of W B Yeats in his hands. He raises his head as you come in.
“Spence, look!” He cocks his head to the side.
“You got a package!” He’s happy, but it’s clear he doesn’t understand the mischievous tone in your voice.
“It’s that new lipgloss I ordered.”
“The one that Emily told you about? That’s good, you were really excited about it.” He lowers the book, watching you search through the cluttered contents of the coffee table.
“The box cutter’s there- to your right, next to the candle- yeah.” You straighten up, flashing him a grateful smile before settling on the couch next to him.
Pulling your feet up on the couch under you, you brandish the box cutter dramatically, giggling at the worried yelp that elicits from Spencer.
With a touch more precaution, you bring the blade down to the tape on the package, slicing carefully before retracting the sharp edge.
Spencer leans in, his hand coming down to rest on your back as he watches you fold open the flaps of the box. You reach in, pulling out the reddish-brown tube with a grin.
“Oh, it’s nice! I was worried the shade wouldn’t be right, but I think this suits me, don’t you think?” You hold it up to your face, turning to Spencer.
His eyes soften, dark pupils melting into the brown of his irises.
“I think that’s great, angel. Are you going to try it on?”
You hop up, heading to the bathroom. Even without looking, you know Spencer has risen with you, following behind you faithfully.
He can’t resist watching the way you focus when you apply makeup, a tidbit you know from when he spilled it drunkenly after the last time the team went out for drinks.
Leaning over the sink, you twist open the product, pulling out the applicator and swiping it carefully across your lips.
If your eyes were to stray a little higher than where they’re trained on your lips, you’d see Spencer, hands twitching to hold your waist or hip as he watches you intently, the adoration he holds for you clear in his eyes.
Once finished, you pull back, recapping the tub and setting it down. You spin, facing him with a smile.
“What do you think?”
Spencer reaches for you immediately. His hand reaching forward to rest on your waist, he leans toward you, the thumb of his other hand rising to wipe just under your bottom lip. His voice is emphatic, reverent.
“It’s perfect, pretty girl.” It sends a shiver down your spine to hear his low tone. You have to distract yourself so as to not drag him to your bedroom immediately.
Turning your face to gaze at the tube on the counter, you muse softly.
“Y’know, this gloss is advertised as super longlasting. The colour’s supposed to stay for 8 hours, even after it’s not shiny anymore.”
He hums in response, seemingly content to stand there watching you.
“Do you think we should test it out?”
His brows furrow, the wrinkle that forms between them looking achingly kissable.
“Test the longevity? How are you going to do that?”
You can’t help yourself, a playful smile spreading across your face as you take his hand, tugging him back into the living room.
“Sit, please?”
He frowns, but does as you say, leaning against the back of the couch as he watches you.
“Do you want to help me with my experiment, Spence?”
“Help you?”
You move forward, perching on his lap so you can look down at him, mischief glimmering in your eyes. Leaning down, you press your lips to his cheek once, looking at the mark left on his skin with satisfaction.
“Yeah. If you could help me see how long the colour lasts? I figured, you’re the science guy… But if you don’t want to, I guess that’s okay.”
You move as if to shift off his thighs, but his hands come up to grip your waist, holding you there.
“No, no I can… I can help. Yeah, I’ll help. You just want to kiss me?” His eyes are large, doe-like as he gazes up at you.
“Yeah. You can read the book while I do, it’s okay.” He shakes his head fervently, almost pulling a laugh out of you.
“No, I don’t need to read. Go ahead.” You spring into action at his words, leaning down to begin pressing kisses to the curve of his cheekbone, his jaw, the bridge of his nose.
“So, are you liking the Yeats poems? I want to know what you thought, Spence.” You murmur against the skin of his temple, grinning wolfishly when you feel him shiver.
“Yeah, I’m really- really liking it. It’s a really interesting perspective on the fight for Irish independence. Like, um, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, it was really, uh, interesting.” He’s far less eloquent than usual, a hand coming up to tangle its fingers in your hair as he struggles to get his thoughts out.
“Yeah? What else did you like about them?” You run out of space on his face, and the marks have only just begun to be less pigmented. What else is there to do but to move down to the coloumn of his throat?
His breath hitches at the feeling of your lips moulding to the sensitive skin there.
“I also liked the ones about Maud Gonne. Like…” You hum, prompting him to continue.
“Uh, like Her Praise. ‘She is foremost of those that I would hear praised.’. Made me- fuck- made me think of you.”
How easily he can reduce you to your barest emotions. You feel that all-too-familiar burst of affection in your heart, pulling back so you can see his face.
“Really?”
He seems to regain some of his composure, although his face is still radiating heat, the skin of his cheeks and neck flushing to match the marks you’ve left on him.
“Really. Um, ‘If there be rags enough he will know her name, and be well pleased remembering it,’. I agree with him, ‘her praise should be the uppermost theme.’ I think you deserve praise from everyone who knows you. I can’t believe there’s anything else worth talking about.”
His voice is heartachingly sincere, and you can feel your face begin to blush to match his.
“Spence…”
It’s too much to look him in the eye, and you have to bury your face in your hands to contain the feelings threatening to burst out of your chest.
He laughs, voice slightly raspy from want. Large fingers grip your wrists, pulling them away from your face.
“Look at me, honey.” You do so, meeting his gaze.
“You finished with your experiment?” His low tone rolls over you like a cresting wave.
“I- yeah. I think that was enough.”
He smiles, saccharine with a tinge of longing.
“Can I kiss you this time?” You nod, wordless.
He leans in slowly, until it feels like your eyelashes should meet his. Eyes flutter shut, a soft sound of relief leaving you as his lips slot against yours in a way that makes you want to believe in soulmates.
It’s too chaste, his lips leaving yours so soon that it makes you itch to chase him. But you can’t bring yourself to be irked when your eyes open to the sight of him.
His smooth skin is peppered with kiss marks, varying in pigmentation as they trail down the expanse of his neck.
Best of all, his lips are kiss-swollen, marked in a shiny hue that matches yours.
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summary — you’ve missed a lot of work recently. carmen has no choice but to check on you, especially when you order dinner from the restaurant.
summary — swearing, general mentions of not eating due to finances, reader maybe doesn’t have the best relationship with her parents but that part is glossed over so quick it might as well not be there, reader is struggling financially, reader is heavily implied to be chronically ill, boss/employee relationship
pairing — carmen berzatto x fem!waitress reader
pronouns — she/her, explicitly mentioned as a girl + wears a skirt
word count — 4.3k
note — most of my waitress reader stuff is self-indulgent and that includes this. reader is heavily implied to have chronic pain, this is just my experience with things similar. this might not be everyone’s experience but i wrote this to make myself feel better about how i was feeling. thank you so so much for 250 followers, i hope you enjoy this <3333
Richie is tapping his fingers. They’re both in the office. Carmen’s chair is being held up with a pack of plastic forks that Sydney had banished to his space (“We’re a restaurant, Carmy, we don’t need plastic forks”), and Richie is perched on a box labelled “Important shit.”
Richie is playing Angry Birds on his phone, as he usually is when he’s not yapping to whoever is nearby. He’d probably be talking to Carmen if Carmen hadn’t already pissed him off that morning. He’d asked Richie if there was oat milk in the latte he’d gotten down the street and Richie had called him a “pussy bitch” and a “slave to the milk industry, Carmen, fuck you.”
Carmen’s looking through the schedule, working out the roster for the next month. Everyone’s full-time but Marcus has a few days off this month he needs, Ebra has a doctors appointment and Sydney has a few commitments as well. So in Marcus’s case he needs to move his prep time around so they’ll be ready for service, and for Sydney he’s figuring out what the menu should look like when she’s not there. It’s still constantly changing, but he doesn’t want to load something too heavy on the rest of the chefs without their sous.
And then of course, there’s you.
You haven’t been to work in over a week - eleven days to be exact. You’re in a full time contract, have been for a year. You have leave saved up, Carmen doesn’t know exactly how much, but he knows you have it. He should probably look it up soon; you’re chewing through your paid time off like you haven’t eaten in weeks.
He’d have appreciated a heads up. You requested it three days before it started and he’d granted it because Carmen knew that you wouldn’t do it without a good reason. But it’s been six days since he last heard from you, and he feels like he would’ve known if you were going out of town.
Carmen is your boss. He’s not your anything else. He has to remind himself of that. You have no responsibilities to him when you’re not at work. He is your boss.
It’s hard to remember that though when you’ve been asleep in the passenger seat in his car, listening to his shitty radio station because he can’t stay awake in the silence and you can’t stay awake with the noise. When you’ve sat on the floor of his office during your lunch break, sipping a lemonade and letting the bubbles fizz on your tongue. When his thumbs have ghosted over your pulse points as you place a bandaid on his arm with the utmost delicacy and care. It’s hard to not want more when he’s had everything already.
“When’s she comin’ back?”
Richie’s standing right behind him, hunched over so his head doesn’t hit the ceiling. Carmen’s written your name and underlined it, staring holes at the shapes of the letters as if they’d bring about your return.
Carmen shook his head. “I don’t know, Richie.”
Richie sat beside Carmen, leaning against the desk. “She’s been gone a while, ‘s she doing okay?” He bent down further so he was closer, crossing his arms. “Listen, cousin, is there something I need t’know?”
“Like what?” Carmen doesn’t even look up at him, head resting on one elbow, massaging his temple. He’s only really half listening, the best way he’s found to deal with Richie.
Richie muses, looking up at the ceiling. “Like how you fucked up and lost me my best waitress?” He looks pointedly at Carmen. “Like that, maybe?”
Carmen heaves out a sigh and tilts his head back so he can see Richie properly, squinting at the light. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Richie scoffs. “I’m not a fucking moron, idiot. I let you do your thing, I thought maybe she’d get you to calm the fuck down. But no, because you can’t have a mature adult relationship to save your life-”
Carmen stands on instinct, “Oh, you think I’m immature,” he’s too angry to even scoff out a laugh.
Richie doesn’t stop, “And now because you’re a fucking jagoff, I’ve lost my fucking waitress!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Carmen points at him. “You have no fucking clue what the fuck you’re talking about!” His face is hot, both at the idea that he’s the reason you’ve been not coming to work and also at the idea that whatever is going on between the two of you is important enough that he could’ve screwed it up.
He hasn’t let you know how important he finds it. When he first started with the restaurant, still sickly with the grief of losing Mikey, and resentful that he finally had what he wanted only when his brother was gone, you were literally the only person that didn’t give him a hard time. And sure, he probably deserved it, but maybe he didn’t need it from everyone. You were gentle, probably nervous around him because he’s your employer even though he’s only three years older than you.
“You think I’m fucking blind?” Richie counters. “I didn’t say anything cause I know you get all flighty and scared when you like a girl and I was really fucking hoping you wouldn’t fuck it up with her!”
“Oh, fuck off Richie!” Carmen feels his whole body getting warm. Richie antagonises him on purpose, neither of them possess any tact. It runs in the family, so it seems. Carmen isn’t any better, he’s half way through a facetious “Where the fuck is your wife, huh?” when Sydney hurls the door open.
It’s enough that he’s caught off guard. Sydney always knocks.
“What?” They’re both facing her now, anger directed away from each other.
Sydney looks apprehensive. “Uh, I um,” her eyes flick between the two of them. Carmen, red in the face, and Richie, chest heaving. “The kitchen got a ticket for a to-go order, and, uh.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Richie asks. Carmen doesn’t agree on the gangly motherfucker with much, especially not in the moment, but he does wish Sydney would elaborate on what the issue is.
Sydney holds out the ticket as if it’s about to explode, and Carmen rips it from her hand. She watches him intently as he reads it. It’s normal, it’s for a cacio e pepe, pre-paid for on the website. His eyes dart over the ticket until they finally land on the part he knows Sydney wanted him to see.
Your name. Your address. The price at the bottom has been modified with your employee discount code.
“Okay..” Carmen is struggling to stay composed. “What? What do you want me to do with this?”
Sydney shuffles on her feet. She can tell he feels almost explosive about it, and she doesn’t know what to say in order to not set him off. You and Sydney get along well. From what he’s gathered, you get lunch together on days you’re both not working, you often join her at the farmer’s market before her shift starts, and she spends an hour or so every week explaining the new menu to you and helping you understand why it works from a chef’s perspective. Carmen might not currently have any, but he knows the word for that is being friends.
So he trusts that Sydney also knows what he knows.
You’d told him one night as you were unlocking the front door to your apartment. He was leaning against the wall, looking sideways at you. It had been an unusually cold night, and he’d given you his woollen jacket. You hadn’t objected, you’d been doing this long enough that you didn’t have to pretend you didn’t want it. You’d been wearing tights that night, another thing you didn’t usually do. Everything else was standard - simple black skirt, white button up blouse, silver name badge lit up by the flickering hallway light.
You were rummaging in your bag for your keys, swearing you could hear them jingling in the bottom when you’d sniffed. Normally he’d ignore it, but it was the third time since the two of you had left the restaurant.
“Are you getting sick?” He’d asked it mostly as your friend (he was telling himself that’s what the two of you were), but also as your boss in the food service industry.
You shook your head. “No, I get stuffy when I’m tired. All I need is a good night’s sleep,” you promised.
“If you’re getting sick let me know,” he said as you pulled out your keys. “I’ll bring you soup. What’s your favourite kind?” Carmen enjoyed doting on you, it was the only way he felt like he reciprocated your gentleness. Ten hours of yelling in the kitchen couldn’t be undone by the promise of bringing you a hot meal, but he needs whatever he’ll get.
You wrinkled your nose, still smiling sweetly at him. “Not a soup but when I was a kid my mom would make me cacio e pepe,” you finally muscle open the door. It gets stuck most of the time, which is why Carmen always comes up with you. One time you couldn’t open it and you’d had to call him and ask if you could crash on his couch. You had been mortified but he’d brushed it off.
You liked Carmen a lot. He was highly strung and quick to anger. He was kind of an asshole most of the time, and when something pissed him off he made it everyone else’s problem. He didn’t know how to act around people, and often dug himself into a pit so deep nobody could reach in to help him out of it.
But you were also positive that he liked you too, and that changed things. He was still an asshole, he couldn’t help it, and you were slowly learning the building blocks that had made him the way that he was. But surely, very very cautiously, he was realising that he didn’t have to be defensive around you. You weren’t going to attack him. Taking that away and he was a whole new man.
It’s not your job to help him regulate his emotions. But you find you enjoy being around him so much that even if he’s pissed off and yelling, you don’t mind.
Carmen does this thing, especially when he’s driving you home after dinner service where he’ll leave his palm up, hand open. You like tracing the lines, bringing the tip of your index finger up and down his palm, from his wrist to his fingers. You catch him smiling out of the corner of your eye.
He hasn’t quite figured out how to tolerate people yet. So to see him smiling at something you’ve done that’s born from nothing but pure affection for him sometimes makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world who matters.
You’d invited him inside, which was happening more and more frequently these days. He’d come in, you guys would talk for a bit, and then he’d go home. That was all that ever happened.
“It was the only thing she ever knew how to cook without a recipe,” you said, pulling off your coat and scarf. It was meant to be almost springtime, but nobody had told the weather that. Yet another cold front was headed your way, which meant another couple of weeks of spending every free moment at work under the guise of ‘helping out.’ Carmen’s been making extra at family and then conveniently forgetting to put it out. You went home most nights with a grilled cheese and a warmth in your chest. “I’d, uh, I’d wake up from a nap all sore and dehydrated and all I’d want was black pepper and cheese. She’d have to check, to make sure, but once she was she’d be at the stove talking about coagulation or whatever.”
You looked bashful, cheeks visibly warm in the cool light. “She hated making it, said she only got it right half the time. Never wanted to. Sometimes, I’d…” you looked hesitant. Carmen’s eyes were shining at you, emphasised by the neon of the 24-stop across the street leaking in through your window. The colours were saturated and soaking, and when they hit just right on your face Carmen would forget that he’d seen you with mustard in your hair.
He watched you, wanting you to keep talking but not knowing how to say.
“Sometimes I’d pretend I wasn’t sick,” you tried to sound nonchalant, but he could feel it radiating from you. He wasn’t good at naming emotions, it had never been a strong suit for Carmen. He knew the basic ones, sure; happy, sad, fuck off, angry, ten hour shift, hurt, your hand on his pulse point. The basic ones. He could tell you were somewhere been hurt and ten hour shift.
Carmen couldn’t imagine not giving you whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted it. Especially not if what you wanted was food.
Food he could do.
Normally, he’d never dream of leaving the restaurant during service, but Sydney had shoved the receipt at him, clenching his fist around it for him, and told him to handle it. He’d made himself a little corner on the line and got to work.
It’s not something he makes often, but he’s got it right often enough that he’s confident with it. He pulls out all the stops - two kinds of peppercorns, two skillets (so as to not let the cheese coagulate).
It’s technical, and he’s best when it’s technical. If he can just stir at the right rate, if he can temper at the right speed - hot, cold, on off - then surely he can figure out what to say to you when he’s in your indigo-bathed kitchen, so close he can smell your deodorant.
The pasta should be the hard part, getting it cooked and packaged and driven over to your place with the heater on full blast even though Carmen’s already sweating through his t-shirt. But he’s out the front of your door, looking at the way your paint is chipped off your door.
He knows he has about two more minutes before the food in his hand gets cold, and that means the heater was all for nothing. He also knows where your spare key is kept. It’s nestled right between the key to his place and the back door to the restaurant. It was under your spare mat, but Carmen had shamed you into putting it somewhere more secure.
He knows where you keep your bowls, and that you prefer to eat with a fork in situations where a spoon is an option. He’s quiet, and he’s not sure how you’d feel if you knew he’d been moving around your kitchen, but he’s in too deep to think about that now.
Now that the pasta is in the bowl and it’s twirled delicately around a fork, he has to actually find you. All the lights are off, which isn’t unusual. You worry about the electric bill, he doesn’t have to be observant to notice that. He doesn’t turn any lights on, he takes the bowl in his hands, using his elbow to rest it on and hoping to preserve the heat.
He calls out your name, wincing at the way his voice breaks. It echoes in the cold of your apartment. There’s a shuffle from behind him. “Sweetheart?” It slips out in a way that feels both embarrassing and empowering.
You’re the kindest person he knows, and he’s in your apartment right now calling you a petname.
Carmen knows all the basic emotions, the middle school descriptors. He doesn’t know what to call the feeling that bubbles up when he hears your voice say his name. You’re on the floor beside the sofa, and despite the blue washing everything out, he can see your eyes are red.
“What are you doing here?” Your voice is small, croaked.
Carmen sits down on the floor so he’s facing you. The bowl is still warm in his hands. “I made you pasta.”
Your lashes are watery and it feels like he can hear a piece of you break. You don’t want to be this, you’re aware of how pathetic it must look. Crying, curled up on the floor of your apartment in front of your boss. You’re a grown woman, you can usually handle this.
You’re not quite sure what happened.
“You,” there’s a dip in your voice. It fails completely on the second word and you have to start again. “You didn’t have to bring it here. You’re stealing jobs from delivery drivers.”
He wants to reach out and smooth your hair, instead he puts the bowl down on your coffee table. “I did have to bring it to you.”
Carmen doesn’t know what to say to you. It’s a whirlwind in his head, like when he was a kid and he used to lay on his back and try to follow the blades of the ceiling fan in the living room. But like, if one of the blades was Richie convincing him that he was the reason this was happening.
“I don’t.. I’m not,” he huffs, “good at…” He can feel himself getting frustrated, which makes it worse. You don’t deserve to have him come here and get angry. You deal with it enough. “You haven’t been at work in a while,” he says finally. “I got worried. So, I wanted to come and just,” He inhales shakily, deep and full like he can swallow some of the light in the room. “I wanted to.”
You don’t handle that as well as he’d hoped you would.
Carmen’s seen you cry a few times and, sure, it kind of freaks him out, but he feels like he’s gotten pretty good at soothing you. This is the first time you’ve ever cried in front of him and it’s been his fault.
You let your head fall forward so half is covered by the sofa and the other by your arm. The sweater you’re wearing is new, he knows that, not one of the many you’ve donned over your white button up after the dining room’s cleared out.
He’s not sure what to do, but mercifully, you beat him to speaking up.
“I’m sorry.”
Carmen can’t even fathom how awful he must have been to you for your first instinct to be an apology.
“I’m sorry,” you say again. “I know I’ve missed a lot of work and I wasn't even that good of a waitress to begin with, I’ll be back soon, I promi- if you want me back, I know you could probably find someone more reliable.”
“What do I have to do, give you tenure? Write it into your contract that no matter what I’m not gonna fire you?” Carmen runs a hand through his hair, knowing he sounds about as desperate as he feels and choosing to hope you don’t notice it.
“I didn’t even mean to take all the time off,” you’re still crying. “It just.. I thought it would be a sick day and then I just-” you hiccup. The tears seem to be slipping out of your eyes involuntarily, faster than you seem to be able to choke down the sobs, “didn’t get better.”
Carmen has never seen you like this. You’re inconsolable, to the point where you don’t even notice when he moves some of your hair out of your face.
“Sweetheart,” his voice is so low it grumbles against his chest. “What.. what can I do? Do you need to go to the ER?”
You finally take a gasping breath. “It hurts, Carm.”
He leans towards you, urgently. “What hurts, where? Where? What..” he can feel panic rising in his chest, trying to quash it for the sake of your wellbeing. “What can I do?”
“Everything,” you sound drowsy, voice wet and thick from the heaviness of your throat. “My- my hands, my shoulders, m-my back, fuck, my head.”
Carmen knows none of this is his fault, he knows that. But the idea that this - whatever it is - seems to be swallowing you from the inside, and he can’t do anything to stop it? He’s never felt more useless. He thinks about you more than he probably should - it’s intermittent between the feelings of despair and terrified aching. You’ve expanded in his chest, starting as a name on a roster and slowly filling every cavity of his body.
Like milk on a stove.
“Why didn’t you go see someone?”
You laugh, and that should be enough to make him feel better, but it’s not the laugh he hears at night. It’s tired, it’s cold, and it’s empty. “Do you think I can afford the fucking hospital, Carmen?”
He opens his mouth to reply, but the words die in his throat.
“Look at this place,” you don’t even have the strength to lift your head to look around. One of your wrists twitches in a muscle spasm. “I… this is all I have, Carm. This. What you see here. This is my life, okay? This apartment, this job… you’re all I’ve got.”
Carmen is a success in his field. There’s no contesting that. He has his restaurant, he has his accolades. Some nights he looks at you and thinks to himself “she’s all I need.” He’d never considered the difference.
“I’m sorry,” he folds, not even thinking about getting defensive. This isn’t the first time you’ve gotten pissed at him for this exact thing. You live well within your means, Carmen forgets that sometimes.
He’d have helped already if he thought you’d accept it. He can’t give you more of a raise, you’re already making well above minimum wage and at that point it wouldn’t be fair to the other staff if you were getting a boost. Anything he’d give you would have to be out of his own pockets, and he knows you’d never accept that. So he does what he can to keep you safe and happy. He drives you home from work, he keeps your key on his key ring, he makes sure you’ve always eaten at least two meals every day.
But he can’t fix this, and he knows that.
“I… I’m not mad,” you say softly, fiddling with your fingers. They’ve been stiff lately, but they’ve loosened up over the last few days. “It just hurts, that’s all. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it. I…” you look embarrassed, like it’s just hit you how he’s seeing you. “It happens sometimes, every so often, that’s why I didn’t take all the time off at once. I can usually handle it. Pull myself together until my day off, and then bounce back from it.”
You’re lying to him, only slightly. Some days it seems like your body is punishing you, for what exactly, you’re not sure. You can barely drag yourself up the stairs to get home, before collapsing to fall asleep on the couch. Some nights the migraines at work get so bad you shut yourself in the walk-in under the guise of being upset while you wait for the pills to clear your head. Some days your stomach burns so badly that you don’t eat the food you know Carmen is forcing your way. It goes home, in your fridge, to be eaten when you can stomach it.
But you’re not lying about the fact that you didn’t think you needed more than a few days off. You could feel the flare up getting worse than usual, and with your one day off that week approaching, you’d finally decided to use some of your PTO to take a couple extra days.
Then, like you’d said you just… didn’t get better.
This is the worst it has ever been. You’re crying daily, you can barely move, and Jesus Christ you’re hungry. This is you on the mend. You wouldn’t have dared let Carmen in a week ago.
“Whatever you need,” Carmen tells you seriously. I would give you whatever you wanted. “I’m just sorry that I can’t make it go away.”
Something that you’d googled said stress makes it worse. You’re overworked, you know that, but you’re not sure what to do about it.
Carmen gestures to the bowl of pasta. It’s cold now, but it’s all he has to offer.
You raise your head to look at it. “I tried once,” you admit, “to make it myself when I first moved out on my own. I’d seen her make it so many times, surely I could figure it out.” Carmen is a chef. You know he doesn’t need to hear the story to know how badly you’d messed it up.
“I’ll warm it up for you?” He offers. You nod finally, resting your head on your forearm so you’re looking sideways at him.
It’s a hard dish to make right. It involves making a smooth sauce out of hard cheese. You need to avoid going in too hot so the sauce isn’t clumpy. It needs some time to cool first, before you finally let it melt.
Carmen watches you while he watches the numbers on your microwave shift closer and closer to zero. He doesn’t give a shit if he needs to start paying your rent for you. You can’t keep going on like this. Six days a week is causing your body to chew on itself, making worse something that would be there regardless. He can’t let this get worse.
You’ll be back at work four days later, now only working five days a week and somewhat shaky in your deliberations. He’ll keep an eye on you and you’ll roll your eyes and insist your fine.
But right now, he needs to make sure you’re relaxed enough to melt. To coat his motivations and to spread, pooling in the hollows of his collarbones and in the gaps between his cells.
You eat slowly, the fork scraping against the bowl sickeningly. When you’re done, he asks if he can do anything else.
You let him wrap his arms around you, fully engulfing you. Neither of you mention how it’s more for his benefit than yours.
heart wrenching and gutting but once again, so beautiful!! and *amazing* characterization. love how her pain remains unspecified so i can apply it to my depression or anxiety or wtv i feel like. and carmy is just lovely. the whole fic is just lovely.
summary — you’ve missed a lot of work recently. carmen has no choice but to check on you, especially when you order dinner from the restaurant.
summary — swearing, general mentions of not eating due to finances, reader maybe doesn’t have the best relationship with her parents but that part is glossed over so quick it might as well not be there, reader is struggling financially, reader is heavily implied to be chronically ill, boss/employee relationship
pairing — carmen berzatto x fem!waitress reader
pronouns — she/her, explicitly mentioned as a girl + wears a skirt
word count — 4.3k
note — most of my waitress reader stuff is self-indulgent and that includes this. reader is heavily implied to have chronic pain, this is just my experience with things similar. this might not be everyone’s experience but i wrote this to make myself feel better about how i was feeling. thank you so so much for 250 followers, i hope you enjoy this <3333
Richie is tapping his fingers. They’re both in the office. Carmen’s chair is being held up with a pack of plastic forks that Sydney had banished to his space (“We’re a restaurant, Carmy, we don’t need plastic forks”), and Richie is perched on a box labelled “Important shit.”
Richie is playing Angry Birds on his phone, as he usually is when he’s not yapping to whoever is nearby. He’d probably be talking to Carmen if Carmen hadn’t already pissed him off that morning. He’d asked Richie if there was oat milk in the latte he’d gotten down the street and Richie had called him a “pussy bitch” and a “slave to the milk industry, Carmen, fuck you.”
Carmen’s looking through the schedule, working out the roster for the next month. Everyone’s full-time but Marcus has a few days off this month he needs, Ebra has a doctors appointment and Sydney has a few commitments as well. So in Marcus’s case he needs to move his prep time around so they’ll be ready for service, and for Sydney he’s figuring out what the menu should look like when she’s not there. It’s still constantly changing, but he doesn’t want to load something too heavy on the rest of the chefs without their sous.
And then of course, there’s you.
You haven’t been to work in over a week - eleven days to be exact. You’re in a full time contract, have been for a year. You have leave saved up, Carmen doesn’t know exactly how much, but he knows you have it. He should probably look it up soon; you’re chewing through your paid time off like you haven’t eaten in weeks.
He’d have appreciated a heads up. You requested it three days before it started and he’d granted it because Carmen knew that you wouldn’t do it without a good reason. But it’s been six days since he last heard from you, and he feels like he would’ve known if you were going out of town.
Carmen is your boss. He’s not your anything else. He has to remind himself of that. You have no responsibilities to him when you’re not at work. He is your boss.
It’s hard to remember that though when you’ve been asleep in the passenger seat in his car, listening to his shitty radio station because he can’t stay awake in the silence and you can’t stay awake with the noise. When you’ve sat on the floor of his office during your lunch break, sipping a lemonade and letting the bubbles fizz on your tongue. When his thumbs have ghosted over your pulse points as you place a bandaid on his arm with the utmost delicacy and care. It’s hard to not want more when he’s had everything already.
“When’s she comin’ back?”
Richie’s standing right behind him, hunched over so his head doesn’t hit the ceiling. Carmen’s written your name and underlined it, staring holes at the shapes of the letters as if they’d bring about your return.
Carmen shook his head. “I don’t know, Richie.”
Richie sat beside Carmen, leaning against the desk. “She’s been gone a while, ‘s she doing okay?” He bent down further so he was closer, crossing his arms. “Listen, cousin, is there something I need t’know?”
“Like what?” Carmen doesn’t even look up at him, head resting on one elbow, massaging his temple. He’s only really half listening, the best way he’s found to deal with Richie.
Richie muses, looking up at the ceiling. “Like how you fucked up and lost me my best waitress?” He looks pointedly at Carmen. “Like that, maybe?”
Carmen heaves out a sigh and tilts his head back so he can see Richie properly, squinting at the light. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Richie scoffs. “I’m not a fucking moron, idiot. I let you do your thing, I thought maybe she’d get you to calm the fuck down. But no, because you can’t have a mature adult relationship to save your life-”
Carmen stands on instinct, “Oh, you think I’m immature,” he’s too angry to even scoff out a laugh.
Richie doesn’t stop, “And now because you’re a fucking jagoff, I’ve lost my fucking waitress!”
“Oh, fuck off!” Carmen points at him. “You have no fucking clue what the fuck you’re talking about!” His face is hot, both at the idea that he’s the reason you’ve been not coming to work and also at the idea that whatever is going on between the two of you is important enough that he could’ve screwed it up.
He hasn’t let you know how important he finds it. When he first started with the restaurant, still sickly with the grief of losing Mikey, and resentful that he finally had what he wanted only when his brother was gone, you were literally the only person that didn’t give him a hard time. And sure, he probably deserved it, but maybe he didn’t need it from everyone. You were gentle, probably nervous around him because he’s your employer even though he’s only three years older than you.
“You think I’m fucking blind?” Richie counters. “I didn’t say anything cause I know you get all flighty and scared when you like a girl and I was really fucking hoping you wouldn’t fuck it up with her!”
“Oh, fuck off Richie!” Carmen feels his whole body getting warm. Richie antagonises him on purpose, neither of them possess any tact. It runs in the family, so it seems. Carmen isn’t any better, he’s half way through a facetious “Where the fuck is your wife, huh?” when Sydney hurls the door open.
It’s enough that he’s caught off guard. Sydney always knocks.
“What?” They’re both facing her now, anger directed away from each other.
Sydney looks apprehensive. “Uh, I um,” her eyes flick between the two of them. Carmen, red in the face, and Richie, chest heaving. “The kitchen got a ticket for a to-go order, and, uh.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Richie asks. Carmen doesn’t agree on the gangly motherfucker with much, especially not in the moment, but he does wish Sydney would elaborate on what the issue is.
Sydney holds out the ticket as if it’s about to explode, and Carmen rips it from her hand. She watches him intently as he reads it. It’s normal, it’s for a cacio e pepe, pre-paid for on the website. His eyes dart over the ticket until they finally land on the part he knows Sydney wanted him to see.
Your name. Your address. The price at the bottom has been modified with your employee discount code.
“Okay..” Carmen is struggling to stay composed. “What? What do you want me to do with this?”
Sydney shuffles on her feet. She can tell he feels almost explosive about it, and she doesn’t know what to say in order to not set him off. You and Sydney get along well. From what he’s gathered, you get lunch together on days you’re both not working, you often join her at the farmer’s market before her shift starts, and she spends an hour or so every week explaining the new menu to you and helping you understand why it works from a chef’s perspective. Carmen might not currently have any, but he knows the word for that is being friends.
So he trusts that Sydney also knows what he knows.
You’d told him one night as you were unlocking the front door to your apartment. He was leaning against the wall, looking sideways at you. It had been an unusually cold night, and he’d given you his woollen jacket. You hadn’t objected, you’d been doing this long enough that you didn’t have to pretend you didn’t want it. You’d been wearing tights that night, another thing you didn’t usually do. Everything else was standard - simple black skirt, white button up blouse, silver name badge lit up by the flickering hallway light.
You were rummaging in your bag for your keys, swearing you could hear them jingling in the bottom when you’d sniffed. Normally he’d ignore it, but it was the third time since the two of you had left the restaurant.
“Are you getting sick?” He’d asked it mostly as your friend (he was telling himself that’s what the two of you were), but also as your boss in the food service industry.
You shook your head. “No, I get stuffy when I’m tired. All I need is a good night’s sleep,” you promised.
“If you’re getting sick let me know,” he said as you pulled out your keys. “I’ll bring you soup. What’s your favourite kind?” Carmen enjoyed doting on you, it was the only way he felt like he reciprocated your gentleness. Ten hours of yelling in the kitchen couldn’t be undone by the promise of bringing you a hot meal, but he needs whatever he’ll get.
You wrinkled your nose, still smiling sweetly at him. “Not a soup but when I was a kid my mom would make me cacio e pepe,” you finally muscle open the door. It gets stuck most of the time, which is why Carmen always comes up with you. One time you couldn’t open it and you’d had to call him and ask if you could crash on his couch. You had been mortified but he’d brushed it off.
You liked Carmen a lot. He was highly strung and quick to anger. He was kind of an asshole most of the time, and when something pissed him off he made it everyone else’s problem. He didn’t know how to act around people, and often dug himself into a pit so deep nobody could reach in to help him out of it.
But you were also positive that he liked you too, and that changed things. He was still an asshole, he couldn’t help it, and you were slowly learning the building blocks that had made him the way that he was. But surely, very very cautiously, he was realising that he didn’t have to be defensive around you. You weren’t going to attack him. Taking that away and he was a whole new man.
It’s not your job to help him regulate his emotions. But you find you enjoy being around him so much that even if he’s pissed off and yelling, you don’t mind.
Carmen does this thing, especially when he’s driving you home after dinner service where he’ll leave his palm up, hand open. You like tracing the lines, bringing the tip of your index finger up and down his palm, from his wrist to his fingers. You catch him smiling out of the corner of your eye.
He hasn’t quite figured out how to tolerate people yet. So to see him smiling at something you’ve done that’s born from nothing but pure affection for him sometimes makes you feel like you’re the only person in the world who matters.
You’d invited him inside, which was happening more and more frequently these days. He’d come in, you guys would talk for a bit, and then he’d go home. That was all that ever happened.
“It was the only thing she ever knew how to cook without a recipe,” you said, pulling off your coat and scarf. It was meant to be almost springtime, but nobody had told the weather that. Yet another cold front was headed your way, which meant another couple of weeks of spending every free moment at work under the guise of ‘helping out.’ Carmen’s been making extra at family and then conveniently forgetting to put it out. You went home most nights with a grilled cheese and a warmth in your chest. “I’d, uh, I’d wake up from a nap all sore and dehydrated and all I’d want was black pepper and cheese. She’d have to check, to make sure, but once she was she’d be at the stove talking about coagulation or whatever.”
You looked bashful, cheeks visibly warm in the cool light. “She hated making it, said she only got it right half the time. Never wanted to. Sometimes, I’d…” you looked hesitant. Carmen’s eyes were shining at you, emphasised by the neon of the 24-stop across the street leaking in through your window. The colours were saturated and soaking, and when they hit just right on your face Carmen would forget that he’d seen you with mustard in your hair.
He watched you, wanting you to keep talking but not knowing how to say.
“Sometimes I’d pretend I wasn’t sick,” you tried to sound nonchalant, but he could feel it radiating from you. He wasn’t good at naming emotions, it had never been a strong suit for Carmen. He knew the basic ones, sure; happy, sad, fuck off, angry, ten hour shift, hurt, your hand on his pulse point. The basic ones. He could tell you were somewhere been hurt and ten hour shift.
Carmen couldn’t imagine not giving you whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted it. Especially not if what you wanted was food.
Food he could do.
Normally, he’d never dream of leaving the restaurant during service, but Sydney had shoved the receipt at him, clenching his fist around it for him, and told him to handle it. He’d made himself a little corner on the line and got to work.
It’s not something he makes often, but he’s got it right often enough that he’s confident with it. He pulls out all the stops - two kinds of peppercorns, two skillets (so as to not let the cheese coagulate).
It’s technical, and he’s best when it’s technical. If he can just stir at the right rate, if he can temper at the right speed - hot, cold, on off - then surely he can figure out what to say to you when he’s in your indigo-bathed kitchen, so close he can smell your deodorant.
The pasta should be the hard part, getting it cooked and packaged and driven over to your place with the heater on full blast even though Carmen’s already sweating through his t-shirt. But he’s out the front of your door, looking at the way your paint is chipped off your door.
He knows he has about two more minutes before the food in his hand gets cold, and that means the heater was all for nothing. He also knows where your spare key is kept. It’s nestled right between the key to his place and the back door to the restaurant. It was under your spare mat, but Carmen had shamed you into putting it somewhere more secure.
He knows where you keep your bowls, and that you prefer to eat with a fork in situations where a spoon is an option. He’s quiet, and he’s not sure how you’d feel if you knew he’d been moving around your kitchen, but he’s in too deep to think about that now.
Now that the pasta is in the bowl and it’s twirled delicately around a fork, he has to actually find you. All the lights are off, which isn’t unusual. You worry about the electric bill, he doesn’t have to be observant to notice that. He doesn’t turn any lights on, he takes the bowl in his hands, using his elbow to rest it on and hoping to preserve the heat.
He calls out your name, wincing at the way his voice breaks. It echoes in the cold of your apartment. There’s a shuffle from behind him. “Sweetheart?” It slips out in a way that feels both embarrassing and empowering.
You’re the kindest person he knows, and he’s in your apartment right now calling you a petname.
Carmen knows all the basic emotions, the middle school descriptors. He doesn’t know what to call the feeling that bubbles up when he hears your voice say his name. You’re on the floor beside the sofa, and despite the blue washing everything out, he can see your eyes are red.
“What are you doing here?” Your voice is small, croaked.
Carmen sits down on the floor so he’s facing you. The bowl is still warm in his hands. “I made you pasta.”
Your lashes are watery and it feels like he can hear a piece of you break. You don’t want to be this, you’re aware of how pathetic it must look. Crying, curled up on the floor of your apartment in front of your boss. You’re a grown woman, you can usually handle this.
You’re not quite sure what happened.
“You,” there’s a dip in your voice. It fails completely on the second word and you have to start again. “You didn’t have to bring it here. You’re stealing jobs from delivery drivers.”
He wants to reach out and smooth your hair, instead he puts the bowl down on your coffee table. “I did have to bring it to you.”
Carmen doesn’t know what to say to you. It’s a whirlwind in his head, like when he was a kid and he used to lay on his back and try to follow the blades of the ceiling fan in the living room. But like, if one of the blades was Richie convincing him that he was the reason this was happening.
“I don’t.. I’m not,” he huffs, “good at…” He can feel himself getting frustrated, which makes it worse. You don’t deserve to have him come here and get angry. You deal with it enough. “You haven’t been at work in a while,” he says finally. “I got worried. So, I wanted to come and just,” He inhales shakily, deep and full like he can swallow some of the light in the room. “I wanted to.”
You don’t handle that as well as he’d hoped you would.
Carmen’s seen you cry a few times and, sure, it kind of freaks him out, but he feels like he’s gotten pretty good at soothing you. This is the first time you’ve ever cried in front of him and it’s been his fault.
You let your head fall forward so half is covered by the sofa and the other by your arm. The sweater you’re wearing is new, he knows that, not one of the many you’ve donned over your white button up after the dining room’s cleared out.
He’s not sure what to do, but mercifully, you beat him to speaking up.
“I’m sorry.”
Carmen can’t even fathom how awful he must have been to you for your first instinct to be an apology.
“I’m sorry,” you say again. “I know I’ve missed a lot of work and I wasn't even that good of a waitress to begin with, I’ll be back soon, I promi- if you want me back, I know you could probably find someone more reliable.”
“What do I have to do, give you tenure? Write it into your contract that no matter what I’m not gonna fire you?” Carmen runs a hand through his hair, knowing he sounds about as desperate as he feels and choosing to hope you don’t notice it.
“I didn’t even mean to take all the time off,” you’re still crying. “It just.. I thought it would be a sick day and then I just-” you hiccup. The tears seem to be slipping out of your eyes involuntarily, faster than you seem to be able to choke down the sobs, “didn’t get better.”
Carmen has never seen you like this. You’re inconsolable, to the point where you don’t even notice when he moves some of your hair out of your face.
“Sweetheart,” his voice is so low it grumbles against his chest. “What.. what can I do? Do you need to go to the ER?”
You finally take a gasping breath. “It hurts, Carm.”
He leans towards you, urgently. “What hurts, where? Where? What..” he can feel panic rising in his chest, trying to quash it for the sake of your wellbeing. “What can I do?”
“Everything,” you sound drowsy, voice wet and thick from the heaviness of your throat. “My- my hands, my shoulders, m-my back, fuck, my head.”
Carmen knows none of this is his fault, he knows that. But the idea that this - whatever it is - seems to be swallowing you from the inside, and he can’t do anything to stop it? He’s never felt more useless. He thinks about you more than he probably should - it’s intermittent between the feelings of despair and terrified aching. You’ve expanded in his chest, starting as a name on a roster and slowly filling every cavity of his body.
Like milk on a stove.
“Why didn’t you go see someone?”
You laugh, and that should be enough to make him feel better, but it’s not the laugh he hears at night. It’s tired, it’s cold, and it’s empty. “Do you think I can afford the fucking hospital, Carmen?”
He opens his mouth to reply, but the words die in his throat.
“Look at this place,” you don’t even have the strength to lift your head to look around. One of your wrists twitches in a muscle spasm. “I… this is all I have, Carm. This. What you see here. This is my life, okay? This apartment, this job… you’re all I’ve got.”
Carmen is a success in his field. There’s no contesting that. He has his restaurant, he has his accolades. Some nights he looks at you and thinks to himself “she’s all I need.” He’d never considered the difference.
“I’m sorry,” he folds, not even thinking about getting defensive. This isn’t the first time you’ve gotten pissed at him for this exact thing. You live well within your means, Carmen forgets that sometimes.
He’d have helped already if he thought you’d accept it. He can’t give you more of a raise, you’re already making well above minimum wage and at that point it wouldn’t be fair to the other staff if you were getting a boost. Anything he’d give you would have to be out of his own pockets, and he knows you’d never accept that. So he does what he can to keep you safe and happy. He drives you home from work, he keeps your key on his key ring, he makes sure you’ve always eaten at least two meals every day.
But he can’t fix this, and he knows that.
“I… I’m not mad,” you say softly, fiddling with your fingers. They’ve been stiff lately, but they’ve loosened up over the last few days. “It just hurts, that’s all. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it. I…” you look embarrassed, like it’s just hit you how he’s seeing you. “It happens sometimes, every so often, that’s why I didn’t take all the time off at once. I can usually handle it. Pull myself together until my day off, and then bounce back from it.”
You’re lying to him, only slightly. Some days it seems like your body is punishing you, for what exactly, you’re not sure. You can barely drag yourself up the stairs to get home, before collapsing to fall asleep on the couch. Some nights the migraines at work get so bad you shut yourself in the walk-in under the guise of being upset while you wait for the pills to clear your head. Some days your stomach burns so badly that you don’t eat the food you know Carmen is forcing your way. It goes home, in your fridge, to be eaten when you can stomach it.
But you’re not lying about the fact that you didn’t think you needed more than a few days off. You could feel the flare up getting worse than usual, and with your one day off that week approaching, you’d finally decided to use some of your PTO to take a couple extra days.
Then, like you’d said you just… didn’t get better.
This is the worst it has ever been. You’re crying daily, you can barely move, and Jesus Christ you’re hungry. This is you on the mend. You wouldn’t have dared let Carmen in a week ago.
“Whatever you need,” Carmen tells you seriously. I would give you whatever you wanted. “I’m just sorry that I can’t make it go away.”
Something that you’d googled said stress makes it worse. You’re overworked, you know that, but you’re not sure what to do about it.
Carmen gestures to the bowl of pasta. It’s cold now, but it’s all he has to offer.
You raise your head to look at it. “I tried once,” you admit, “to make it myself when I first moved out on my own. I’d seen her make it so many times, surely I could figure it out.” Carmen is a chef. You know he doesn’t need to hear the story to know how badly you’d messed it up.
“I’ll warm it up for you?” He offers. You nod finally, resting your head on your forearm so you’re looking sideways at him.
It’s a hard dish to make right. It involves making a smooth sauce out of hard cheese. You need to avoid going in too hot so the sauce isn’t clumpy. It needs some time to cool first, before you finally let it melt.
Carmen watches you while he watches the numbers on your microwave shift closer and closer to zero. He doesn’t give a shit if he needs to start paying your rent for you. You can’t keep going on like this. Six days a week is causing your body to chew on itself, making worse something that would be there regardless. He can’t let this get worse.
You’ll be back at work four days later, now only working five days a week and somewhat shaky in your deliberations. He’ll keep an eye on you and you’ll roll your eyes and insist your fine.
But right now, he needs to make sure you’re relaxed enough to melt. To coat his motivations and to spread, pooling in the hollows of his collarbones and in the gaps between his cells.
You eat slowly, the fork scraping against the bowl sickeningly. When you’re done, he asks if he can do anything else.
You let him wrap his arms around you, fully engulfing you. Neither of you mention how it’s more for his benefit than yours.
heart wrenching and gutting but once again, so beautiful!! and *amazing* characterization. love how her pain remains unspecified so i can apply it to my depression or anxiety or wtv i feel like. and carmy is just lovely. the whole fic is just lovely.
summary — summertime at your cafe job yields a lot of new faces, none so comforting as remus lupin.
warnings — swearing, probably dreadfully unrealistic, post!hogwarts no voldemort au, reader with anxiety, reader with not a great home life
pairing — remus lupin x fem!muggle! reader
pronouns — she/her
word count — 10.5k
note — hi lovelies i hope you enjoy this is a bit of a beast it's also kinda heavy but if there's one thing about me it's that i'm going to write a fic and it's going to be LONG and it's going to be self-indulgent. if a reader works in hospitality there's a high chance that i'm projecting, do with that what you will <333
The bus route is long but familiar. You know it well enough that you’re able to hunker down in one of the middle seats and close your eyes. The bumps in the road are close enough together that it’s irritating and far enough apart that they catch you off guard every time. The ride there gives you enough time to listen to your cassette from front to back exactly one time. Sometimes you fall asleep but the muscle memory of the last song in your ears is a preventative enough measure that you’ve never missed your stop.
The fatigue sits deep in your bones, and the sinking feeling doesn’t stop there. It’s been hard consuming art lately, with everything so messy. They feel heavy, weighted with emotions you’ve never felt before. Or maybe you have, you can’t name things up there anymore.
The routine is old enough that the novelty has worn off but new enough that you still feel as though it could be ripped from you at any moment. That all it takes is one silly question to your manager, one time you catch her at a bad moment and you’re unemployed. Doesn’t matter that you’ve worked there for eight months.
You don’t even have to think about it anymore; kill 90 minutes before your shift, clock on, smile so long your cheeks hurt, clock off, kill 90 minutes after your shift, catch the bus home, go to bed.
The cafe is small but busy. The hours are consistent and for the most part the customers are nice enough. You get through most days with little upset, little upset that boils over hour by hour, but it’s manageable. It’s not what you thought you’d be doing, three years after finishing A levels, but it’s money in your account and it’s hours in your day.
The walk to your spot isn’t long, it’s shady and secluded, a walkway that no one goes down, covered from the rain and, most importantly, it’s been yours for the last eight months. Which is why it’s so off putting that there’s a man sitting right where you usually do. He’s lanky, it’s the first thing you notice about him, laying splayed out on the rock wall you usually use as a table with a jumper-covered arm covering his face.
You don’t hesitate, you whirl back around and pretend you didn’t see him. You don’t have a back up spot. Sure, there’s plenty of places to sit around the main street, but none of them are your spot. It ends with you back against a wall in an alley beside a deli, a chef smoking on the stairs around the corner and the scent seeping into your clothes.
You get up. You work your shift. You take the bus home.
He’s back again the next day. You spray perfume on your shirt before your shift starts to get the cigarette stench out of your clothes.
Day three you’ve accepted your new way of life and you show up wearing a different shirt. Then, before your shift you duck into the employee bathroom and put your uniform on. You’re not getting your spot back. The guy who has taken it has unintentionally ruined your life. Your routine is draining but it’s yours, that’s the one thing you have going for you. You don’t have to think about what you’re doing. That’s how you like it.
It’s the second week of changing into your work top and hurrying out of the employee bathroom to flip the sign while tying your apron around your waist when you see him for the first time outside of your bench.
He’s smoking a cigarette on the footpath, watching the cars on main street go by as you shoulder open the door. It’s heavy and broken, it’s been broken since you were hired. Mary helped you close your first afternoon and showed you the only way it would stay propped open.
You’re kicking the door wedge to shove it under the door, he’s turned around and looking at you, and you’re trying not to make it seem like you’ve noticed. You’ve never seen a boy look gorgeous the way that he does. He’s taller than you realised, head on kilter with the morning sun rising, with deep angry lines diagonally across his nose. His eyes are dark and warm, partially hidden by honey coloured curls falling down his forehead.
“Need a hand?”
You slam the wedge into place with a huff, turning to him. “No, that’s okay.”
He puts out the smoke with the toe of a well-loved doc marten. “You guys open?”
You nod, realising you haven’t been in customer service mode yet. “Yeah, just a sec.”
He watches you flip the sign and get yourself ready before you’re behind the till, ready to get the transaction over with. “Can I put in a pastry order for later?”
There’s two small glass cabinets on either side of the till, with one refrigerated and one heated, and an assortment of pastries made by the kitchen. Mary starts two hours before you do every day, and she’s in charge of them. You don’t get pre-orders often, the menu changes at her whim, so it seems.
“Yeah,” you rip off a piece of paper from the pad you carry, ready to take down the details. “If you want stuff we have out, we can keep it aside for you for the rest ot the day, or if you’re after something specific we can have it ready for you by tomorrow morning, depending on what it is.”
He watches you as you root around in your pockets for your pocket for a pen, not bothering to even glance at the display cases. “Can you do croissants?”
You can. Mary will have a fit about it but that’s not your problem.
“How many?”
“Six?”
“Are you sure?”
He looks uncertain. “Yes.”
“You don’t sound sure.”
He bites his top lip and cracks his index finger under his thumb. “They’re for my friend.” You feel a pang in your chest. It’s the type of desperation that comes from wanting something so badly that you can’t even hear about it in passing. You bite the end of your pen to stop thinking about what kind of person would be friends with a boy like this. “I’m not sure how many he’d want.”
You nod, the end of your pen still in your mouth. “We should have some in the hutch,” you say hesitantly. Most days you do, but you don’t want to make promises. “I can set some aside if you decide you want extra.”
He nods slowly, considering it. “Yeah, yeah. That’d be great actually. Six now and maybe two or three tomorrow?”
You nod, scribbling it down. You’re going fast to avoid the awkward silence of waiting. You’ll fix it up later. “Great, awesome.” You look back up at him, hunched over the counter while you’re right. “Can I just grab a surname for it?”
“Lupin,” he replies. It’s a nice name, it suits him.
You jot that down beside the order. “Lovely, and so I’ll call you tomorrow? I just need a number and a time.”
He startles for a second, physically startles, his shoulders twitch and his eyes dart up to yours where he’d been previously looking at the cabinet. Then he sees your hand, paused mid sentence, and relaxes. “Uh, I’ll be working tomorrow, I’ll come grab them on my lunch break if that’s okay? You can call up at like 11, I’ll give you the store’s number.”
You nod and he recites it to you. “You work around here?”
He gestures noncommittally out the front window. “Yeah, up at Clarks,” he says bashfully, as if you’re not both standing in the cafe you work in. “If you call up at 11 I should pick up but if you ask for me I’ll be around. Is that okay?”
“Yeah,” you write down the order and then punch it into the till. “It’s going to be a tenner, we charge a bit extra for the order fee and stuff, is that okay?”
He digs around in his pocket for a worn deep brown wallet, which he hands you a ten pound note from. “That’s great, thanks.” He smiles at you, the corner of one of his scars lifting up with his lips. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
You can’t say anything back at him as he smiles at you, turning away. He’s still looking at you, head turned, as he leaves the cafe and you’re left alone. His skin looks silver in the morning sunlight.
———
The house is dark by the time you reach it. It’s nearly seven in the evening, and the late summer sun is still lighting up the street. You don’t flick any of the lights on, instead toeing off your shoes and collecting them in the hand you’re not clutching your bag strap in.
The family cat comes to curl around your legs and you don’t have the hands to scratch her head. You’d had a very strict curfew of 5:30pm while you were in school, and then you’d started working and sometimes you were home as late as 9:00pm, so your parents eventually stopped caring about where you were and what you were doing. It’s not like you were going out partying.
The latest you’d ever been out was 11 for the work party, and you’d left the city almost entirely sober and very overstimulated.
The TV is playing and you can hear voices in the living room, knowing you’d need to make an appearance lest your parents think you’re avoiding them. You step into the living room, your mother’s eyes flitting to you momentarily. You wave. She looks back at the television.
Your bedroom is clean, bed unmade but tidy and you have to fight the urge to curl up. Your bones sting as you get a glass of water, as you shower, and as you feed the cat, and as you clean the kitchen from your parents’ supper.
By the time you finally lay down, it’s dark outside. Your hair is clinging to your face, damp and smelling distinctly like conditioner. You don’t like sleeping with the curtains open but you don’t bother to move, the sounds of the road by your house mostly quiet by this hour. There’s the occasional car, the whine of the late bus as it turns the corner to go back to the depot, and one of your neighbour’s dog’s barking. Then there’s sleep, and your alarm blaring, and yelling outside your door.
———
You sincerely regret not asking for a first name when you call up the shoe shop down the road.
“Uh, his name’s Lupin? He told me to call.”
The boy on the other end sounds younger, maybe school aged. It’s a Saturday, you realise. You’d thought it was Wednesday. “I’ll go get him.”
You’re hoping he knows who you’re talking about. You don’t know Mary’s surname, or any of your other coworkers. If someone had called up asking for you using your last name, you’re pretty sure none of them would know who you were.
“Clarks shoes,” the voice on the other end is warm the way Lupin’s was, but you don’t want to put all your eggs in one phone call. You stumble over your introduction, and you can feel the familiar tug of words pouring out of your mouth involuntarily.
“Oh, right, yeah. My croissants.” He cuts you off unintentionally, and you’re grateful. “I’m on break in thirty. I’ll pop by then?”
“How much longer are you on for?” The question tumbles out before you can remember you’re a deeply shame-filled person.
“Uh,” there’s rustling. “Finish at six.”
“You’re gonna leave them in the shop all day?”
“That was the plan, yeah.”
He’s not mean spirited, just sarcastic, you have to tell yourself. You don’t know him, though, so the thought provides no comfort.
“We can keep them here,” you offer quietly. “They’ll keep better in the cabinet, we keep it at a specific temperature, and-”
“What time are you guys closed?”
The word vomit halts, and you have to remind yourself to take a deep breath in, one that he probably hears from down the receiver. “Four but I’m usually here till six.” Your bus is at 6:13, Mary lets you stay after you lock up.
“Can I come by after my shift? I don’t want to keep you.”
“I’ll be here,” you repeat.
You’re trying to keep your voice steady, to exhibit a cool girl, ‘yeah, random beautiful man, you can come by after we close, I’ll wait for you, casually’ energy. You feel that trying to exude that energy automatically disqualifies you from it, but he doesn’t say anything other than “sick, I’ll be there.”
The close routine is practically second nature, but it stresses you out every single time. You work six days a week, it’s ingrained in your head, it’s listed on the wall by the sink, and yet every time you spend at least five minutes staring behind the counter, trying to figure out what you’ve missed. The door is still unlocked, but you haven’t left yet, and you’re expecting someone. It’s only half past, you have plenty of time before you have to leave. You’ve already filled your timecard in, so any work that you do now isn’t paid for anyway.
You follow the closing schedule, and then you follow the post-closing anxiety schedule you’ve created for yourself to make sure you don’t fuck up the only job you’ve ever held down.
You’re perched on top of the counter, beside the till, book in hand that you’re not really reading. You’re more focused on the clock. Forty minutes until Lupin’s due, and you run through it a third time. Twelve minutes. You realise you left the notepad in your pocket. You put it behind the counter so Lucas can find it when he opens tomorrow. It’s your day off.
It’s 6:03 and you feel foolish for expecting he’d be on time. No one’s on time. Not the way you are. You forget that. 6:03 isn’t late.
He’s knocking on the glass door, an apologetic smile on his face and polo shirt collar sticking up.
You nod - it’s unlocked - and he steps inside. You realise suddenly this is very much against the rules, and if he robs you you’re fucked.
“Sorry,” he pants. “Was helping Ruby in the stockroom and you don’t know who Ruby is- it’s fine, sorry. Sorry I’m late, is what I meant.”
Any emotion you felt towards his tardiness, regardless of your inability to name it, evaporates.
“Sorry for saying sick earlier, by the way,” his cheeks are tinged pink. “I don’t- I’m not a guy who says sick.” You wouldn’t mind if he was. “I meant great. You’re great. Thank you.”
Working hospitality comes with an understanding that 80% of ‘thank you’s are faked for politeness. This one isn’t. His eyes are baring into yours with a sincerity almost entirely alien to you.
“It’s okay,” you hop down. It’s far from graceful but he doesn’t seem to care. You’ve wrapped his croissants in liner and one of the nice bakery boxes you usually charge another pound for, nine croissants arranged neatly inside. The other four had been left overs that Mary had let you take. You’d donated to his cause.
There’s a post-it note on the top with his surname. “For Lupin.”
He grins at you crookedly. “Uh, it’s Remus.” He says. “I just…” he nods at your chest and you feel a sharp rush course through you before you realise he’s looking at your name tag. “I know yours, is all.” He’s looking at you in that ineffable way again. “How much do I owe you for the rest?” He holds the box with one hand, palm flat on the bottom. He reaches into his pocket with the other.
You shake your head, “It’s fine.”
He’s looking at you in a way you can’t decipher. “Do you like croissants?”
Who doesn’t? “I don’t dislike them.”
He’s still looking at you. You’ve never seen someone look at anything the way he’s looking at you. You look down at yourself self-consciously. Rumpled work skirt, the only pair of tights you own that haven’t laddered yet, white blouse ironed late this morning with the urgency of someone who should’ve done it last night. Name tag gleaming silver in the only light on, black text embossed onto it.
Remus opens his mouth to say something when you hear the familiar whine of the metro taking a corner. You brush right past him to the glass door and watch with dismay as your ride home breezes right past your bus stop a whopping seven minutes early.
He watches you still. You avoid cursing under your breath. He’s still a customer, you suppose. “That you?”
You nod. “It’s early.”
He shakes his head, looking the very picture of a disappointed parent. You know those looks well. “They shouldn’t be allowed to leave early.”
You sigh, readying yourself mentally for another hour of waiting. The next bus, the last one on rotation, isn’t until half seven. “I mean, this is the time on the schedule,” you admit, glancing down at your watch. “But it has never been on time the entire time I’ve caught it.” You know you sound foolish and double down, “I mean, someone even crossed out the time at the stop and wrote the new one with a marker pen.”
“They did it just to trick you then,” he says resolutely.
You feel yourself flush with the knowledge that he’s teasing you to make light of your situation, not to make you feel bad. Like there’s a camaraderie between you. “How awful of them.”
He turns back to you. You’re still looking at the deserted bus stop.
“That brings me back.” To what? You ask him. He realises he hadn’t voiced the thought out loud well enough and frowns. “You like croissants?”
“We’ve established so.”
Despite the angry scars crossing his face, the rest of his skin is smooth. The high points - his cheekbones, the tip of his nose, his forehead - shine. Not oily, something else. You’re envious for a sickening moment.
You sort of just want him to get to the point. You don’t understand what he’s trying to say and you’re tired of feeling stupid for it. You’re tired of the day, if you’re honest. You want to be in the post-day purgatory, where you don’t have to deal with anybody or anything but you haven’t quite fallen asleep yet.
“What do you like more?” He asks. “Is there anything? There’s something.”
You’re caught off guard. That’s not a question you think you’d ever be asked. It’s also an impossible one. “What?”
“The croissants,” he hefts the box with one hand. Now no longer reaching for his wallet his free hand is dangling by his waist. You become acutely aware of where yours are resting. “Is there anything else here you like more?”
You shrug. You haven’t eaten a pastry from work in months. The novelty wore off fairly fast. “Probably. Can’t think of anything, though. We haven’t got anything left.” The leftovers were taken by Mary. She donates them.
He shakes his head like you’re not getting him. “No, I just…” he trails off like you’re meant to infer what he’s saying. Like you’d have some sort of context for whatever it is. He glances down at the box, then back up at your face. “My friend. I think he’d like you. I think…” he says it like he’s aware it’s crossing a line, a boundary, a whatever between two people who are whatever and whoever. “Just curious, that’s all.”
When he leaves, he’s dashing across the street to his car, looking both ways even though the roads are deserted, still glowing under the moonlight.
———
You don’t see him again until a week later. You’re not quite sure how to act. You’d had an extended interaction, but you weren’t friends. You needed to be on the same page as him, you would not be caught in the humiliation that was caring more than someone else did.
He’s out the front of the corner shop you go in sometimes. They have a fizzy lemonade in the back corner fridge you buy on mornings you aren’t feeling well. It’s something at least. He’s smoking again, and you’re lucky you’re already in your spare shirt. You can tell Mary suspects you’ve taken it up.
He nods at you on your way in, and you spend the next five minutes inside the shop kicking yourself for having the audacity to have cared.
Lemonade in one hand, bag strap in the other. He’s still there, leaning against a post. “I’m sorry.”
“Why are you sorry?” You try to keep it light. You have no idea what he’s apparently done.
“For the,” he nods again, a caricatured imitation of the nod he’d done earlier. He tosses his head back in a way that can only be described as douchey, giving you a blank look. “You know.”
You don’t know. “Right.”
“The croissants were a hit.” He straightens up, lifting his elbow off where it’s resting on one of the yellow bollards. “He loved them.”
You smile. “Oh, that’s great.”
“Do you do cupcakes? Can we custom order them or…?”
You’re not really the person to speak to about things like this. Mary’s the one who organises all the bakery orders besides the things you keep in the hutch. “Uh, maybe. What kind?”
Remus reaches into the pocket of his pants with his free hand and pulls out a crumpled piece of notebook paper. “Uh, they’re for a one year old, so… whatever’s easiest I s’pose, he’s just gonna mash them all up anyway, and I’d hate for you to put in effort.”
He doesn’t look nearly old enough to have a one year old, and you feel bad for thinking it. It’s born from a selfish want, you’re ashamed to realise. He could have a little one, it’s not completely insane. Two people from your high school got married two weeks ago. You’d come home to the spread in the paper sitting on your bed one night.
He extends the piece of paper to you with the air of someone offering a bribe. “His mum gave this to me, it’s a list of the dietary requirements of the adults at the party - ‘cause we were gonna have other stuff as well, I should’ve said - and we were hoping a few weeks would be enough time, it’s a bit of a big order but - oh, and you can ignore where it says banana under the allergies, he’s so fucking dramatic and-” he takes a breath. “Yeah.”
The words stopped making sense to you a little while ago, and you know for something of this calibre you need to get Mary on board. She’s usually there by now, even though you guys don’t open for almost forty minutes. Your shift starts in nineteen.
“Are you doing anything right now?” You ask, trying to make out if a smudge near the bottom is meant to be a word.
He looks at you fully. You’re looking a little nicer today than the last time you saw him. You woke up with a little more energy that morning, you’d put a nice hair clip in and put some eyeshadow you’d had to hunt through your vanity to find. You’d felt a little silly, like you were trying too hard, but the corners of his lips twitch up.
“I can free myself up,” he says, shifting his weight on the bollard. He drops his cigarette, snuffing it out. “Why’s that?”
You brighten up. “You’re going to come meet my boss.”
He walks at your side the whole way, stepping back as you shove the door open with your shoulder. Mary’s behind the counter, putting notes in the till drawer. She doesn’t look up as she hears you come in. “Hi, love, there’s a couple of boxes in the back I need you to unpack.”
“Yeah, sure,” you nod, shedding your bag in the designated area. “Uh, first, I have someone here for you.” You’re gesturing to Remus, hoping he’ll introduce himself. That’s never been one of your strong suits
“I’m Remus.”
Mary looks up from the till. “What?”
“Remus,” he says, hand over heart earnest, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Uh, I’m here for cupcakes?” He looks over at you, asking for help with his eyes. You smile politely.
Mary takes Remus aside to work on his order while you open up the cafe. You catch him looking over at you while he’s meant to be listening to Mary. You realise this after you miss the third customer’s coffee order.
———
The espresso machine makes a high pitched wail when it hasn’t been cleaned properly, and you’d made the mistake of letting someone else clean it two days in a row. Yesterday, you’d been able to deal with it and get it cleaned during a lull period.
Now? There’s a line out the door, your Tesco homebrand Aspirin isn’t doing anything to dull the headache that’s been brewing since this morning and you have a drinks list longer than your forearm.
It takes you messing up two drinks in a row for Mary to tell you to go outside. She doesn’t say it unkindly, she doesn’t yell. But you can tell she’s stressed. You did that.
You’re in the alley behind the cafe, not quite sure what to do with yourself. You’d undeniably made her cross, you’d probably get scolded at the very least. What if you cry in front of Mary the way you always do when you’re being yelled at? That would be worse than a firing, because then you’d have to quit.
You’re shaking, you can feel a coffee burn you hadn’t clocked slowly fading into your consciousness on your wrist, there’s milk down your front. There’s cigarette smoke clinging to your shirt.
There's a hand on your elbow for a fleeting moment.
“Are you okay?”
You reply, you must, because Remus is standing in front of you, nodding like he understands. “Are you on break?”
No, you’re not. You’re two hours into your shift, there’s two of your coworkers out there with Mary, you need to be at the least manning the till. “No.”
Remus has the tact to not ask why you’re standing outside. There are teardrops on your blouse that you don’t remember crying, and you’re shaking like a leaf. You understand that there’s a lot of jumbled information going on but you can’t lock down on any one thread of thought. “Can I show you something?”
You stare at him. You don’t want to see whatever he has to show you. You don’t know why he’s here. He’s not smoking like you thought, the smell must have seeped into his uniform the way it is with yours.
He takes your silence as an affirmative. “Do you have a pen?”
You hand him the pen you keep in your pocket. He takes it from you appreciatively, brushing his slender fingers against yours. He holds the pen so the lid is on the asphalt below, crouching down. “C’mon.”
You drop awkwardly, sitting cross legged. He’s crouched in front of you. He holds the pen up with the tip of his finger. You can feel your chest still rising and falling unevenly, your index finger pushing your nail into your palm.
The pen is spinning, it spins once, twice. Remus looks at you, honey eyes looking right through you. “Breathe in when it spins for me?” He’s holding it up with the tip of his pointer finger. You take a shuddering breath in as he gets the pen to twirl without moving his hand. It pauses. You pause. It starts, you breathe out.
Remus looks at you, guiding your eyes with his. His palm is flat on the hand twirling the pen. He, very slowly, very deliberately, lifts his hand. The pen continues to spin, keeping its forward momentum.
You both watch it, inches apart from each other. You can count his eyelashes. His lips are crooking up again, the way they sometimes do when he looks at you.
“Am I allowed to stop breathing in now?”
The pen dops. His laugh is echoing and apologetic in its own nature.
———
One of the things you hate more than anything else is the feeling of your hands being wet. If they’re submerged in water or under running water you can live. But the second you finish washing your hands you’re reaching for the dish towel you keep in your waistband.
Only you’re not allowed to have a dish towel in your waistband when you’re at home. Neither of your parents have explained why, but it’s a rule. So now your hands are dripping and you’re hunched over the sink.
It’s the middle of the night. Your parents have gone to bed, a sink filled with dishes left behind from a dinner for two, and you’re trying to get on their good side. It’s your day off tomorrow and you want to leave the house. That involves buttering them up with a clean kitchen.
Remus has been swinging by more and more as the days pass. Some days your breaks overlap, he’s started hanging around, letting you pick out a sandwich for him to try. You didn’t realise spending more time away from work or home would make you feel so light. You spend your breaks in the break room, you spend before and after work in the shop.
You don’t go out much, not even with your old friends from school. There were post-graduation parties, start of year parties for people who were continuing on with school, general house parties of strangers. Then there’s engagement parties and weddings and baby showers and looking back you’re realising that they’re all torture in the same way.
But spending thirty minutes a day with Remus’s calloused hand in yours, pulling you away from the shop and into the sunshine, has made you feel a lot better.
“They’re so soft,” he said the first time he held one of your hands. He’d shouldered your bag so you didn’t have to carry it. “What have they got you serving customers for?”
He stops, looking down at your palm and then back up at your face. You’re smiling so wide that your cheeks hurt, and not in the familiar pinch of customer service. He’s taking you to split today’s sandwich on the hood of his car, sitting outside in what’s meant to be one of the last hot days of the summer. “These are noble hands. You should be painting and yelling at servant boys for hanging about.”
You haven’t quite figured out how to respond to his compliments yet, and they’re only speeding up. “That’s Mary’s job,” you say quietly, looking down at your connected hands so you don’t have to look up at the golden hour that sits in his irises. “She’s told me you need to stop taking your smoke breaks outside our kitchen door.”
He groans. “What’s even the point of being the manager if you can’t leave the shop once or fifteen times to go smoke down the street?”
He hadn’t become the manager out of a real drive or ambition for selling shoes, or anything. He’d gotten the job after he’d graduated at eighteen, and since then every other employee had quit or been fired. He also smokes a lot less than you’d assumed, with how often you’d seen him do it.
“I have been doing it more often,” he admitted once you asked about it. “I usually go through a pack in a couple of weeks, I’ve been…” he tipped his head back. “I haven’t been feeling super great.lately, it helps take the edge off.”
He’d popped by the shop earlier that afternoon to confirm the order he’d made earlier, and to let you know he wouldn’t be the one picking it up. It felt horrible to think, but he didn’t look good. His cheeks were hollow and there was lingering tiredness that concerned you. You couldn’t say anything, though. You’re not his girlfriend, you’re not even his friend. Doesn’t matter that you freeze up when he gets too close, that he likes to rub his thumb over your knuckles.
He could tell you were worried, it was the first thing he brought up. “I’m fine, don’t worry, dove. It’s just the roster, can’t find staff for next Wednesday. Stressing me out.” He leans down on his elbows, looking up at you. You like it when he’s in a position where he has to look up. Him looking through his lashes up at you makes you feel like you’re the only girl in the world. “I’ll be alright for Harry’s birthday tomorrow.”
Harry is his friend’s kid, which you felt very normal emotions about when he mentioned it wasn’t his child. Pulling information out of Remus is like pulling a thread of a sweater. It took a second but now it flows liberally. He’s mentioning someone every other sentence. His friend Sirius - the one who isn’t allergic to bananas and who apparently hoovered down all eight of the croissants without a helping hand (“I gave one to Lily before he could get his hands on them.”) Harry’s parents Lily and James and how James is trying to learn how to cook and Lily has taken a hunger strike in retaliation.
Sirius is the reason you’re scrubbing the dishes after working all day, according to Remus. “He called me a tosser for not inviting you,” Remus said sheepishly, swallowing his double ham and spinach. “I didn’t think you’d particularly want to come to a one year old boy’s birthday party but you are more than welcome. He’ll be the only kid, if that helps? It’s just gonna be me, Sirius, Harry’s parents and a few friends from school, super small.”
Being in a room full of strangers sounds like torture, especially if you can’t even say you went to the same school, but the way that Remus is looking at you is crumbling your resolve. You want him to think you’re cool. An affable cool girl who goes to birthday parties all the time.
You pick a nice outfit, a pretty dress that you haven’t worn since last summer. You don’t remember why you bought it, but you hope it’s appropriate for a baby’s birthday party. Remus said he’d pick you up, but you feel like you should be at the cafe when James arrives. It feels rude to not, despite the fact that you have the day off.
You feel silly, standing behind the counter at work in your pretty blue and white gingham. You like your uniform; it gives people less reason to judge you for your outfit choices. Now you feel exposed.
You’re not clocked on, Mary has instructed you very firmly that you are not to be working if you’re not clocked on.
The nerves are getting to you, however, and you can’t sit still. The shop is abuzz with activity befitting a Saturday morning in late July. Julia and Andrew are the Saturday openers and they operate just fine without you. You work the most hours out of all the staff but you’re nowhere near the most important. You’re not a manager, you’re not a supervisor. You’re just a twenty-one year old woman who has nothing better to do than to serve coffee and sandwiches and baked goods.
You’re already overstimulated and the party isn’t until one. Remus is working the morning shift over at the shop, due off at 12, and he’d told you numerous times that you were more than welcome to come sit in with him while he did stocktake. Saturday morning at Clarks was a lot different than an indoor/outdoor cafe. It was just Remus and a seventeen year old girl he scheduled purely so she had a quiet space to study for her A-levels and he had someone to watch the store in case Sirius came over to piss him off.
It’s the third time Mary’s scolded you for trying to run food when a messy-haired boy is leaning down, elbows on the counter and glasses on the edge of his nose. “You are lovely, aren’t you?” He’s a touch shorter than Remus, with warm brown skin and an infectious smile that threatens to take you with it, despite how startled you are.
“Excuse me?”
He tilts his head back to look at your face better.
“I have an order to pick up,” he says cheerfully. “It’s under Potter? It’s for my son’s birthday.”
So this is James, then. Remus had warned you about him. Very cheery, very chatty. He’d said it fondly but still like it was a bad thing. You understood where he was coming from, but truth be told you’d been looking forward to it despite your nerves.
“Right,” you have a customer service smile, you don’t give him that. What you try to give him is a more relaxed, authentic smile, to show you have some kind of rapport, but it comes out pinched and awkward. “It’s all in the back, I can help you bring it out?”
“That’d be great,” he says, brushing a stray curl out of his face with a grin on his face where you can see his entire top row of teeth, biting his bottom lip. “Thanks, shortcake.”
There’s five boxes total, not very much to lift, but too much for one trip. James takes three with an airy “‘s all good,” and leaves you with just one; the cake.
“The missus wanted to make one but she’s a bit poorly,” he says as he puts the boxes in the front seat of his car. The back is littered with things, cookie crumbs and toys, building blocks and energy drink cans and seemingly the popped-out lens of a pair of glasses. Full of personhood. “Did she make it with love?”
You’re helping him secure the boxes together with ribbons and his car seatbelt. “Hmm?”
“The cake,” he clarifies. “Did she make it with love? Your boss, I mean. Remus told me she was making it, I’m not misogynistic.”
“Said like an ally,” you puff out, hyper-aware of the fact that you’re bending into a stranger’s car while wearing a dress. “I trust you completely.”
When you’d heard that Remus had a twenty-one year old friend with a wife and a one year old, you’d thought two cruel things: that guy is boring, or that guy is miserable. Not because you think you’d be particularly miserable, but because you didn’t know a single man your age who would be happy in that situation. You clearly haven’t met James Potter before. “That joke doesn’t really land without Lily here to swat at me,” he says.
“How long did it take for him to bring her up?”
Remus is at the corner, jumper thrown over his work polo and rucksack in his hand.
“Fucking sue me,” James boos. As Remus reaches him, James slugs him dramatically on the left shoulder, before rubbing his right one gently. “Hi, mate. It’s been a bit.” Remus winces. “Am I driving you?” He says it not like a question of him doing something kind for a friend, but as a comment on the weather. As a compliment on a new haircut. As a greeting after a long time, which it apparently has been.
Remus looks a bit worse for wear, if you’re being honest. He’s a handsome guy with warm and soft features. James is bright in his expressions. You pretend not to notice the way Remus is leaning on him, or the way that he’s so pale aside from his freckles and scars that he’s almost glowing in the early afternoon sun. You wonder if he has what James’s wife has.
Remus shakes his head. “No, I just came to see if you guys need a hand.”
James frowns at his friend. “You look close to death.”
Remus laughs, eyebrows shooting up. “Yeah,” he agrees amiably, “I’d be a lot closer if you let me drive. You’re colour blind or some shit.” James lets out an offended noise, gesturing to his glasses. “Whatever kind of colour blind means so you can’t read a stop sign.”
“Okay,” James shuts the passenger door of his car. “Fuck you, I’m not taking you anywhere.” You expect that to be the end of the interaction, but then he turns to you. “Do you want a ride? I promise I won’t kidnap you.” You stare at him. “Now imagine I said that with a very angry ginger woman telling me to shut up.”
You decline his offer, which he is visibly understanding about, and he tells you that both him and Lily are both “super duper excited” to meet you properly later at their house before leaving.
You’re not at work, like sure, you’re there, but you have no obligation to them. You’ve spent so much time stressing about meeting James for the first time that now it’s over, you’re again left feeling unsure of what to do with yourself.
Remus doesn’t let the silence settle for long. “My car’s up near the shop,” he says, leaning back against the brick wall. You want to help him into it on instinct once you reach it but don’t for fear of being rebuffed. Remus is awfully kind, it’s probably the thing you’ve seen the most evidence for in the way he talks to you, you don’t think he’d be awful if you were to try and reach out.
He’s also awfully perceptive, as the second you’ve bundled your shoulder bag on your lap he’s turning to the side. “I’m okay.” His voice is so deep it’s scratchy. He looks handsome but tired. “I can tell you want to ask, but I’m alright.”
“Thank you for driving me,” you say instead. Your voice comes out squeakier than you intend, embarrassed at being caught. “Especially if you’re not feeling well.”
His elbow is on the centre compartment, hand resting carelessly on the brake. He’s looking at you in a way that makes you nervous, even more so when he reaches out, open palmed and hesitant. The back of his hand makes contact with your elbow and you feel yourself get goosebumps almost immediately.
“Sweet girl,” he says quietly. You wait for him to keep talking, but he opts for instead stroking your arm with the flat part of his fingernails. “Thank you,” he says. “I am completely fine, it’s not catching, I am more than able to drive, but thank you for caring.” Your ears are warm while he’s doing this, you’re not quite sure how to reply to it. “And look at you,” he continues, “I’ve never seen you outside of your work clothes, other than some of those nice tops you have. You look so lovely.”
He starts the car as if he hasn’t just flustered you to the point of stunned silence. Whenever he doesn’t need the hand it’s coming over to touch you and eventually you settle so his hand is on yours, tracing the bumps of your knuckles.
The drive isn’t very long, the radio is playing quietly and, just as you’re pulling onto the street, the first song of your cassette has started playing. It’s been a while since you’ve heard it, and you’re just realising that now. It’s a staple, usually. On the bus, before work, after work, maybe while you’re in your room in the evening when it’s too early to go to bed but you’re far enough into the day that you want to. It quiets your mind, it’s nice. But lately your head has been so full in a way that doesn’t make you freeze up and shake.
Shocker. Sunlight and socialisation improves your mental state. Who could have predicted that?
You’re leaning back against the seat, eyes half closed and breathing through your lips to the melody of the radio. He’s watching you, touching you. You’re a stunner, windswept and sunkissed.
You both sit there until the song finishes, the afternoon radio host starts talking about something you haven’t heard about. You wait for him to say something and realise that he has no intention to. For a fleeting second, you worry he needs the rest. He’s an adult. You don’t want to be overbearing.
“Inside?”
“You wanna go?”
You touch his hand. “I mean, we did come all this way.” You keep the tone light. Given your track record and overall demeanour, you didn’t trust yourself to make a joke without making it awkward.
Remus hum, running the pad of his thumb over the material of your skirt. “And you look so pretty,” he muses. “I’m going to warn you, Sirius is going to be all over you. He’s all bark no bite, though. I’ll make him leave you alone.”
The thought does little to comfort you as he takes you a few houses up to a small cottage. It’s white brick with ivy crawling up the wall so perfectly it almost looks intentional. The front door is on the second floor, and it’s being thrown open before either of you have the chance to knock.
Lily Potter is a beam of light with a red shock of hair and the cutest baby you’ve ever seen on her hip when she greets you. She brings you into a hug so quickly she then has to backtrack and ask if it’s okay with her arm already half around you.
The house isn’t particularly full, but it is very busy. You appreciate that Remus hadn’t been lying to you about how many people would be there. There’s maybe ten people in total, and for some reason that makes it worse; this means you’ve been invited to an inner circle gathering. Every person you talk to is important. If you fuck up at a party with a hundred people, there’s a high chance that person is an acquaintance. There’s no filler here.
James is in the kitchen with two girls, the three of them having a loud but happy conversation while he slices an apple and they steal pieces. Remus has a breath-stuttering hand on your back through your dress and he takes you through the sitting room, past a slender boy lounging on the couch with his head on a pretty blonde girl’s shoulder. Remus had told you that both Lily and James would scold you for buying a gift if you tried to, which was the only thing that had deterred you from getting anything.
The birthday boy seems perfectly content chewing on the strap of his mum’s dress as she flitted from room to room. “Tea, either of you?” She asks lightly, barely needing to adjust his weight. It looks like he is an extension of her, which you suppose he is. Harry’s only a baby, so it’s hard to be sure, but so far you can see a lot of James in him. Lily looks pleased when you tell her so.
You’d known of parents wanting their children to look more like them, but Lily coos over her son as if that’s the ideal. “Oh, can’t you just?” She beams at you, talking over her shoulder while filling the kettle up.
“Why don’t you ju-”
One of the girls James had been keeping entertained spoke up in a sweet lilting voice from where she was perched on the bench, swinging her legs.
James cut in before she could finish her thought. “Relax, Em,” he says gently. “She makes it a certain way.”
Lily rolls her eyes. “Yes, I understand no one likes the way I make my tea.” She says, almost as if warning you of the fact. “Except, Remus,” she looks at him knowingly in a way that makes you insecure but James doesn’t seem to mind.
“My mum made it the same way,” he says simply.
It seems like everyone understands what he means by that in a way that holds more significance than you can lift, but none of them says anything. None of them says anything more about the way Lily’s making her tea, either.
Remus pulls out a chair for you at the kitchen table, and you sit. The bakery things are still in their boxes, which James looks apologetic for. “It’s been so busy,” he says, still cutting up apples. He hands one to his son for him to suck on. “Let me just get the good plates.”
“I can help.” You’re standing before the words are out of your mouth. Remus looks up at you like he wants to come with you, but he’s slumped into his chair. “It’s not a bother.”
They’d gotten cupcakes – french vanilla, and sausage rolls. The shop also does a selection of pre-chosen sandwiches, which you cut up into triangles while you were there so they could be plated easier. It’s a fantastic spread, probably too much for the amount of people there, but if Lily isn’t feeling well then she’s probably appreciative of the leftovers. You help James lay everything out, finally putting the fact it’s what you do every day to good use. You make it look nice and pretty, wanting to be useful.
Then came the cake. It was a double layered Victoria sponge with jam and buttercream in the centre and a dusting of icing sugar on the top. Mary had made and decorated it, but Remus had dropped in some of Harry’s Schleich dinosaurs and you had placed them tastefully on top of the cake.
The tablecloth on the kitchen table has a slit in it that acts as a door, and upon further inspection you can see that it’s got stitching that makes it look like a house. Lily sets Harry down to finish making tea and he stumbles off, babbling about something none of you can understand, before settling on a cushion someone had placed under the table with a collection of building blocks and, somehow - to your dismay - one of the Schleich dinosaurs.
“How do you take it?” Lily asks you, holding up a steaming mug. It has little flowers on it. You tell her and she abides, coming to sit beside Remus at the table. You take your seat again and feel the way he scoots his chair to be closer to you the second you’re in reach. “Thank you so much for all of this,” she says. “I wanted to do it myself, y’know, for his first, but I haven’t been feeling very good lately.”
You can understand that one hundred percent. The exhaustion runs deep even when you’re not under the weather, and you don’t have a baby. To be fair, you also don’t have a deeply devoted husband, you think as you watch James rub her back.
People flit in and out, taking nibbles off the table and mingling. You stay pretty much stuck to Remus’s side, not feeling up to venturing out into the house. Harry wanders from room to room with a parent on his tail the whole time. You can’t figure out what type of person invites a stranger to their son’s first birthday party. Lily and James are incredibly involved with him, and they hold so many warm people in their orbit. None of the guests have the air that they are there for a grown up party, every single one of them is there for that one year old.
The boy on the couch comes over after a while, plopping right into the chair beside you, freshly vacated by Emmaline, the girl from the kitchen. It’s a bit odd, the way people speak to you, but you haven’t had such a long conversation with somebody who isn’t Remus, a coworker or related to you in so long that you don’t mind. They’re all extremely interested in your work, your life, your upbringing, but most of them deflect on their own. Remus rubs your elbow tiredly and tells you that they’re just excited, they’ve all known each other since their first year of school. You’re new and they like you.
“Moony, you sly dog,” he says, leaning in to look at you. “He didn’t tell me you were such a stunner.”
Remus rolls his eyes. “Leave her alone, Sirius.”
Sirius sits back, smiling innocently. “I’m just saying, a bird like you? Remus has been holding out on me.” You’re looking between the two of them, Sirius’s shit-stirring grin, Remus’s fond but annoyed pinch to his eyebrows. “She doesn’t mind, do you?”
You find that you don’t quite. Sirius might be a lot all at once, but he’s clearly good natured.
“It’s okay,” you force out, making Remus frown deeper. He doesn’t say anything, though, leaving the conversation open for Sirius to keep talking.
“So, has he asked you out yet or am I free to-”
“Sirius!” Remus says, exasperated. His cheeks are tinged pink.
There’s a clattering from down the hall and Lily calls out desperately. “Remus! Can you come here please?”
Remus looks like there’s nothing he wants to do less, not with how tired he is and how much he does not trust Sirius to be nice to you, but ultimately his care for Lily wins him over and he rises from his seat. “Tell me if he harrasses you.”
“I will not harass her!” Sirius sulks, crossing his arms. Remus doesn’t leave until you nod, and the second he’s gone Sirius is leaning back in. “So your parents are…” he seems to rethink his word choice at the last second. “You grew up normal, right?”
“I think so?”
“Do your parents have m- nice jobs?” You tell him, giving a vague explanation of their careers, not really wanting to talk about them. Everyone you’ve met in the few hours you’ve been there has been absolutely lovely, all incredibly attractive twenty-somethings with a lot going for them. You can’t bear for them to know exactly how pathetic your life is.
Sirius watches you intently as you speak. “What are they like?” he asks after you stop talking.
You shrug. “They’re parents.”
Your parents aren’t awful. You love them and they love you. They just have expectations of you that you worry you can’t fulfil. And when you don’t meet them… they love you, that’s all that matters.
“What about you?”
He brushes the question off instantly, “My parents are tossers who’ve never worked a day in their lives. I haven’t spoken to them in five years.”
To be honest, you kind of like that Sirius overshared. You’re not particularly good at giving the correct reactions to things, but it does allow you to worry less about the kind of things you say.
“That sucks,” you say, because you feel you’re supposed to.
Sirius rolls his eyes, smile on his face. “For them, maybe.” He shrugs, like it truly doesn’t phase him. His smile is pinched though, and you recognise the familiar sting of regret spreading through him. He’s grinning like he’s been caught, and you find that you don’t really mind having been left alone with him. “Are you guys doing anything after this?”
You hadn’t really thought of it. Remus had told you that he would be taking you home but you didn’t know when or if he had other plans. You were just going to follow him wherever he went.
“Probably just home.” The thought fills you with dread. “Nothing too exciting.”
You expect Sirius to reply politely, and then move on. Instead, he watches you curiously. “Trust me, you don’t even know how interesting you are,” he says. You’re not quite sure how to take it. If it’s flirting, it’s bad. If it’s a compliment, it’s weird.
“I’m just normal, I guess,” you say, holding your left forearm in your right hand for something to do with your arms. “It’s not much.”
When Sirius speaks up again, it’s with an unexpected earnestness that doesn’t fit with the person you were just speaking with. “It’s enough.”
Something unspoken passes between the two of you, and you nod.
Remus comes and sits back down. “Was he awful?”
You shake your head, telling the truth. “Everything okay?”
Remus hesitates. “Yeah, just kid stuff.” You don’t press. It’s enough that you’re here, in these people’s house, sharing a special moment with them. You don’t need any more than that, not when you have Remus’s hand on your elbow.
James has Harry on his lap on their sofa, chatting avidly with his wife and some people you haven’t spoken to yet. It’s almost three; time to cut the cake and sing, but they’re content to let the moment drag on for a bit. There’s a sense of something in the house that you can’t name, but you’ve never really felt before.
The house is clean but messy, with toys on the floor, snacks littering the surfaces. There’s a pile of laundry you spotted behind the hallway door as it was closing behind Remus. Neither Lily nor James seem even the slightest bit stressed, a polar opposite to how your parents are whenever you have guests over at your house. Neither of them even get cranky when Harry almost pulls his house tablecloth off the table along with all the food on the table.
You can’t imagine how you would’ve been cranky - he’s got such a sweet face - but you’d never seen a pair of parents so… tolerant.
James stands up. “Cake time?”
Everyone starts moving towards the table, where the cake is sitting pride of place. You go to rise from your seat to make room for someone else - someone more important - to sit closer. You know they’re going to take photos, and they probably don’t want you in them.
“Lily?” You ask as she approaches. She’s got a box of matches in hand, looking tired but elated. “Do you want me to take pictures? That way you can get everyone in them?”
“No need, love,” James waves you off before his wife can reply. He sets up a Nikon on a shelf and presses a button. “We’ve got a fancy one, it takes a bunch on a timer.”
There’s a giggle from the girl Sirius has got his arm around, but everyone squeezes in. Remus is squeezing your wrist, pulling you closer to his side. The camera flashes a couple of times, capturing Harry trying to touch the single candle nestled between his ankylosauruses. They get a couple with just Harry and his parents, then a few with just them, Sirius and Remus. You’re going to have to look into this camera. It took about twenty photos after they’d only clicked the button once.
Lily helps Harry cut the cake by forcing his chubby fist into her hand while she makes the first slice, and then they start dishing it out. You take the piece handed to you, not wanting to be rude, but not really having the appetite for it, and lean on the wall behind Remus so you can still be near him, even with someone in your chair.
“Thank you so much for coming,” James hugs you later in the afternoon, just as you and Remus are thinking about leaving. It’s almost dinner time and, despite the fact you believe they wouldn’t mind, you don’t particularly want to eat supper at the Potter’s just yet. “You be good to our Moony, yeah?”
It’s a nickname you’d heard a few people use on Remus over the course of the afternoon, mostly Sirius, and you can’t tell if it’s teasing or not. You’re sure Remus would tell you, but you’re too nervous to ask. It feels like you’ve been overstepping all day, you’re trying your best to minimise it.
You nod and that satisfies him.
When James hugs Remus, it’s with a learned gentleness that Remus visibly appreciates. He wraps his arms around the shorter boy, and you wonder for a moment what they were like in school. Surely they didn’t tower over everyone immediately. Was there ever a version of Remus who had to look up to speak to someone that wasn’t an adult?
It’s Sirius’s turn next, and he places a hand on your shoulder. “Keep your chin up, love.” You’re half touched by the sentiment and half mortified he read you so well.
Lily makes you promise to come around again soon, and vows that she wants to pop by the cafe at some point. Remus stands by and watches as they gush over you, not interrupting until you squeeze his hand to signal you’re ready to go home.
The drive home is similar to the drive there, except this time his eyes land on you whenever he gets a spare moment. His hand is reaching over every five seconds to brush or squeeze whatever part of you he can reach. You have him park a few houses down so your parents don’t see you getting out of a stranger’s car.
“Thank you so much for inviting me,” you say, more appreciative for that than anything in recent memory. “Your friends were all very kind.”
He doesn’t bat an eye. “You deserve it, dovey.”
It’s been a long time since someone has been so nice to you just for the sake of being nice. It’s not something you feel happens to you very often, despite the fact that it’s an energy you try your hardest to put out into the universe. Remus smiles softly at you, happier than you’ve ever seen him despite how much pain he must be in.
You can see the roof of your house through the window. The evening bus chugs along behind you.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” He asks, hopeful. You feel a shiver run through you at the thought. He has nothing but adoration in his eyes.
“You want to?”
Remus doesn’t speak for a moment. He’s looking at you like for the first time since you’ve met, he finally understands what was so confusing about you. His lips twitch up in the way they seem to when he has something he wants to say but he’s not sure how, and then it’s leaning in to kiss you.
You don’t even have to think about it, moving to kiss him back with all the tenderness you’ve been craving. His hand comes to rest open-palmed above your ear, fingers threading into your hair as he kisses you. You can taste some of Harry’s birthday cake on his lips and sorely regret not eating any now. His hands are big as one rubs your scalp and the other draws pictures on your knee. He pulls away for a brief second just to ask “Can I drive you to work tomorrow?”
You don’t wait to finish nodding before your mouth is on his again.
Remus lupin x reader who are strangers until they're not ✩ 5.8k words
summary: You meet Remus at a party you'd rather not be at, and you think that's the end of it... until he manages to make his way into your life properly.
cw: strangers to friends to lovers, fluff, reader is quite lonely and a lil socially inept.
The house is packed with people, most of whom you’re unsure whether you care to know. The air reeks of smoke and cheap booze, and it feels like everyone is watching you. They can see it—the way you stand in the corner of the kitchen, awkward and alone, like you don’t belong. It doesn’t help that you’re staring at the liquid in your plastic cup as though it holds the answers to the universe.
As you study it, lost in thought, you come to the conclusion that you should leave. Go home. Back to your bed, where it’s safe. Keep your life the size of a box. Just as you're about to pull out your phone to text Maddison that you're heading out, a voice from your right startles you.
“The drinks are awful, aren’t they?”
You think he’s talking to someone else nearby, until the toes of a pair of converse step into view, and you look up—mostly because you’re worried you’re the punchline of some joke.
He’s smiling, but it’s not a mocking smile. It’s like he’s in on something you’re not.
“Want something better?” he asks, his gaze playful as he tilts his head, studying you like you’re some kind of puzzle.
“No, I’m fine, thanks,” you mutter, looking down at your hands as they nervously twist the cup. A quiet confusion settles in—you have no idea why he’s talking to you.
There’s a pause. A long one. You almost expect him to walk away, but instead, he shifts on his feet and seems to settle in. You look up, hoping he’s leaving because that means you can go home. But his smile has softened, and he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, an uncertainty creeping into his eyes.
“I’m sorry, but I feel like I know you from somewhere,” he says, voice low, as though he’s trying to piece something together.
You shrug, trying to play it off with a small, apologetic smile. “I think I just have one of those faces.”
“I’d disagree,” he says, a small quirk of his eyebrow.
There’s something in his voice that leaves you uncertain. Your life feels like it’s a never-ending loop of work and home, and you’d definitely remember meeting someone like him. Tall, nice, warm smile—it’s hard to forget. The uncertainty gnaws at you, and you start picking at the skin around your nails. But when you look up, you see his cheeks flush slightly, a shy, almost bashful look creeping in.
It’s you, isn’t it? You’re the one keeping this conversation stalled. But it’s hard, harder than it should be. You don’t know what to say, how to say it, without feeling like a socially awkward mess. And now that you're lost in your head, the words feel stuck.
“So, who do you know here?” His voice is soft, genuine, and he leans down just a little to make sure you can hear him.
“Huh?” It takes a moment for you to catch up, then you blink, trying to pull your thoughts back together. “Oh—nobody, really. Just a friend of a friend kind of thing.”
He nods, like he understands, and you do the same without thinking.
“That makes sense,” he says, his tone light but with a touch of exasperation. “Sirius invites everyone he knows. Every time.”
The way he says it, the affection in his voice, it’s clear he and Sirius are close. And for a split second, you feel a pang of envy. You don’t know them, but just the way he speaks about him, how it sounds, makes you long for something similar. Sure, you have Maddison, but she’s more of a sporadic presence, a friend you catch up with once every few months. The one time she invites you somewhere that's not a cafe, she ditches you before the night even starts. You can’t blame her. She’s always been like that.
Another awkward silence falls, but this time, you rush to fill it. You don’t want him to feel like you’re just standing there in silence.
“I came with Maddison,” you say, almost too quickly.
His smile widens. “Oh, I’ve met her. She’s nice.”
You let out a dry laugh. “She was. Until she left me two minutes after we got here.”
The words slip out before you can stop them, and he bursts into a loud laugh, his eyes lighting up. You freeze, worried he thinks you’re serious and mean, but before you can correct yourself, you scramble. “I didn’t mean it like that,” you say, voice a little too quick. “I mean, she didn’t—well, you know. She had her reasons.”
“It’s okay,” he’s still chuckling like your bluntness really tickled him. But you have the distinct feeling that you’ve somehow made a fool of yourself. It's that exact moment you decide you have to leave.
“I—uh, I need to get going,” you mutter, watching his expression falter just slightly before he nods. “I’ll see you around…”
“Remus,” he adds, offering his name.
You give him yours in return, and then, without another word, you’re gone.
₊✩‧₊˚౨ৎ˚₊✩‧₊
The next day is another loop of the same dull routine that drags on in an endless, gray haze. Home, bus, work. Last night was out of the ordinary. The hours blur, blending together like the monotony of an old, well-worn song. You drag yourself through it all, each step like trudging through mud. But at least, you’re away from the suffocating quiet of your apartment. At least you don’t have to stare at the same walls, the same empty corners, with nothing but your own thoughts for company.
You wait at the bus stop, shifting from one foot to the other. The sky is heavy with dark clouds that seem to threaten an impending downpour. The air is thick with the tension of rain that hasn’t quite arrived yet, and the chill seeps through your jacket. Eyes flicking up to the horizon, praying for some excitement, anything. Maybe the rain will come. At least that would be something.
But still, no bus.
The minutes stretch on in silence. You shuffle your feet, watching up and down the street. You can feel the weight of the sky above you, pressing down like it’s waiting for something to give.
“I knew I recognised you from somewhere.”
You freeze, heart catching in your throat. It takes a second to register the words, and you blink, turning toward the sound of the voice.
Remus.
The same guy from the party last night. His figure is tall and familiar as he walks casually down the path toward you, cigarette dangling loosely from his fingers. The soft glow of the ember flickers as he takes a drag, his eyes fixed on you with an expression of recognition, but also something else—something more curious than you'd expected.
“Remus?” you ask, not quite sure whether you're still dreaming or if the world really does work this way, where you run into people you barely know on the most random of days.
He grins at you, a knowing smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Yeah, I didn’t think I’d run into you again so soon. Lovely to see you.”
Your stomach tightens at his words. You shift uncomfortably, looking anywhere but directly at him. The awkwardness from last night floods back, the way you were so sure he was going to walk away, leaving you alone in your own little corner of the world. And yet, here he is again, standing in front of you.
“I’m surprised you recognise me,” you admit, pulling your jacket tighter around yourself as a gust of wind picks up. “I wasn’t exactly the life of the party last night.” It feels a bit easier speaking to him in a place that you know.
He chuckles softly, almost as if your self-deprecation amuses him. "Well, you were hard to miss, you know? There’s something about you," he trails off, his voice almost hesitant. Then, like he’s remembering something, he adds, “I wasn’t expecting to find you here, though.”
You can’t help but smile, even if his eyes locked on you feels exposing. "Yeah, me neither. I—uh, I take the bus home after work, so..."
“Ah,” Remus cuts you off, the look on his face suddenly shifting to something a little more serious. “The bus won’t be coming for a while. There’s been an accident up the road, a big one. You’re gonna be waiting here for ages.” he sounds apologetic, like he's really sorry he's the one telling you.
You sigh, processing the information, but your mind is too caught up in the reality of being stuck here longer than you wanted. The bus is never reliable, but this is a new level of inconvenience. You feel the familiar unease creep up your spine, the thought of the endless wait stretching before you like a dark tunnel with no light at the end.
“Great,” you mutter under your breath, staring at the pavement beneath your shoes. "Just what I need."
Remus watches you, his expression thoughtful. You feel his eyes on you for a moment too long, and it makes you shift again, the silence hanging heavy in the air between you. Your brain goes into autopilot, spiraling through scenarios—what if the bus never comes? What if you’re stuck here for hours? The thought of waiting outside, in the cold, with nothing but your thoughts for company, fills you with a strange mix of frustration and exhaustion.
Just as the anxiety begins to swell, Remus interrupts the chaos of your spiraling thoughts.
“You hungry?”
You blink up at him, thrown off guard by the sudden question. Hunger. Right. You hadn’t really thought about food until now, but when you do, it’s like your stomach growls on cue. You’re always hungry, but especially now, when your brain feels like it might short-circuit from the sheer amount of time you’ve spent just...waiting.
“Yeah,” you admit, a little embarrassed by how eager the word slips out. "I’m starving, actually."
He gives a simple nod, gesturing for you to follow him. Without thinking twice, you do.
And that’s how you end up across from Remus in a cramped booth, your knees brushing beneath the table as you dig into a burger and fries, the world outside the booth fading into the background.
As you bite into your burger, the warm grease and salt doing wonders for your hunger, you notice how easy it feels to sit across from Remus. The bus stop seems like a distant memory, replaced by the low hum of the diner and his easy going nature. It’s a strange thing, how someone can just slide into your world like that, without any pretence or pressure.
“You know,” Remus says between bites, his voice a little quieter than before, “I come here pretty often. The owner’s been giving me free refills on the coffee since I was sixteen.” He gives a shy, almost embarrassed smile, but there’s a glint of pride in his eyes.
“Free coffee, huh?” you joke, grinning, “So you’re basically royalty around here.”
He laughs, but there’s a trace of humility behind it. “I don’t know about that. I think I was probably quite annoying back then, or at least James and Sirius were. Most of the time I’m reading and writing here.” He looks down at his burger for a second, as though the words aren’t quite meant to leave his lips.
“Oh, you write?” you ask, leaning in slightly, curiosity piqued. You can’t help but wonder what kind of stories this guy has locked away.
He nods, still not meeting your gaze. “I, uh, yeah. It’s nothing serious though,” he quickly adds, as if he’s embarrassed by the idea of someone knowing. “Just something I’ve been working on for a while.”
You tilt your head, eyeing him with interest. “What do you write about? I feel like I'm always reading different stuff.” you remember yourself after, looking down as you add, “You don't have to tell me.”
Remus squirms a little in his seat, and his gaze flickers away. You can tell he’s hesitating, like he’s unsure whether he wants to share or not. It makes you even more curious.
“It’s, um, kind of a mix of fantasy and... I don’t know... life stuff. Nothing too exciting,” he says quickly, sounding almost apologetic, but there’s a subtle spark of passion in his voice when he talks about it. "I just... I guess I like to write things that feel real, even if they’re set in a world that isn’t. Does that make sense?"
You smile, the feeling of him letting you in on a piece of his world not lost on you. “It makes perfect sense,” you say, your voice soft, appreciative. “That sounds amazing. You should be proud of it.”
Remus looks a little taken aback, but a small, shy smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “Yeah, well... I’m still working on it. Not ready to share it with anyone just yet.”
You nod, understanding. There’s something vulnerable about sharing your work, even with the people you trust most. “I get that,” you say.
For a while, you both sit in comfortable silence, your shared laughter from earlier still hanging in the air. It’s strange, but for the first time in a long time, you feel like you’re not just passing time. You’re actually existing in the moment, and Remus is there with you, filling the space with his easy charm and the subtle way he listens to you without judgment.
“So, what about you?” he asks after a beat, his voice steady, as though the shift in conversation is natural. “What’s your story? What do you do?”
It’s an innocent enough question, but somehow, it feels heavier than it should. You feel a little vulnerable suddenly, how do you compare to him? But instead of feeling pressure, you find yourself wanting to answer, to let him see more of you. You shrug, trying to play it cool. “Not much. I work in retail—pretty boring stuff, honestly.”
Remus raises an eyebrow. “Retail, huh? That doesn’t sound boring.”
You laugh softly, then take a sip of your drink. “Well, I guess it’s not boring so much as it is... repetitive? But, yeah, nothing as exciting as writing a book.”
His smile widens a bit at that, and for a brief moment, you feel like you’ve managed to take down some of the walls between you. But just as quickly, the conversation stalls, and you both find yourselves lost in the simplicity of each other’s company.
“I’m glad we ran into each other today,” you say suddenly, the thought slipping out before you can filter it. “It’s nice, you know, having someone to talk to for a change… and i'm sorry for being weird at that party last night.”
Remus looks at you as he nudges your knee under the table, his expression softer now, more open. “It’s alright, it was all a bit overwhelming.”
After a pause, Remus picks up his phone, glancing at it before looking back at you. “Hey, uh, I was thinking... Since we both end up here a lot, maybe we could hang out sometime? Like, outside of weird bus stop encounters.” His voice is tentative, like he’s worried you might decline, but the way his eyes meet yours, hopeful but unsure, makes your heart do a small flip.
You’re caught off guard by the suggestion. Hang out? With him? You hadn’t even realised how much you wanted something like that until now.
“Yeah, sure,” you say before you even really process the words. You can’t help but smile a little at the thought. “That sounds nice.”
A look of relief passes over his face, and he pulls his phone out, his fingers tapping quickly as he hands it over. “Great. Here, give me your number, and we’ll figure something out.”
You type your number in quickly, your fingers moving almost on their own. When you hand the phone back to him, there’s a flicker of something between you.
Remus grins, his eyes warm as he tucks the phone away. “I’ll text you soon. It’ll be nice to actually get to know you, you know? Be more...comfortable.”
You laugh, feeling some weight lift from your chest. “Yeah. I think we can manage that.”
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When Remus said he’d text you soon, you expected it to be about a week—or, honestly, you figured he might never reach out at all. So when you woke up the next day to a text from him asking if you wanted to grab coffee, shocked didn’t even begin to cover it. But of course, you said yes, and now you’ve been meeting up a couple of times a week, sipping coffee and slowly getting to know each other.
There’s a simplicity in talking to Remus that you’ve never quite experienced before. He’s always checking in to make sure you’re comfortable, that you’re enjoying yourself. It feels effortless. He feels effortless. The only moment that’s thrown you off was one evening when he asked what kind of books you liked to read over the phone. You told him, and his response was just, "Okay, great. Talk to you later," before hanging up. It left you with more questions than answers still looking forward to the next time you get to see him.
The coffee shop smells of roasted beans and fresh pastries, the comforting hum of conversation blending with the soft clink of ceramic cups. You slide into the booth, trying to shake off the lingering chill of the walk over, your fingers curling around the warm cup in front of you. It’s a Saturday morning, and the light filtering through the windows has a gentle quality to it that makes everything feel calm and still.
Remus arrives just moments later, a little breathless, but with that familiar easy smile that you’ve grown to look forward to. He orders his usual—black coffee, nothing fancy—and slides into the seat across from you. There’s a small, almost shy smile playing at the corners of his lips as he sets down a small, worn book on the table between you.
You blink at it, glancing up at him. “What’s this?” you ask, your eyebrows knitting together in curiosity.
Remus looks down at the book, then up at you, his cheeks flushing slightly as he rubs the back of his neck. It’s not like him to be this nervous, but the way he avoids your gaze for a moment makes you wonder if he’s second-guessing himself. He clears his throat, still looking at the book with a mixture of nervousness and excitement.
“It’s... a book I thought you might like,” he says quietly, his voice hesitant, as if he’s unsure of your reaction. “That's why I- uh, why I asked the other night.”
Your fingers hover over the book’s cover, the title printed in elegant, curling letters. A title that immediately pulls you in, the kind of thing you’d never pick out on your own but might really enjoy. You glance back up at Remus, noting the soft blush on his cheeks. The vulnerability in his actions surprises you.
“I—thank you,” you say softly, your heart squeezing in a way you hadn’t expected. There’s something about the way he’s looking at you now, his eyes shy but hopeful, like this small gesture means so much to him. “I’ll definitely read it.”
He relaxes a little, his smile widening. “I’m glad. I thought... Well, it’s not exactly the most popular book or anything, but I figured it might speak to you. And if you don’t like it, I’m sorry.”
You shake your head, already flipping the book over in your hands, feeling the weight of it, the smoothness of the cover. “I’m sure I’ll love it.”
The conversation moves on from there, the usual topics filling the gaps—work, the weather, the books you’ve been reading—but it feels different this time. There’s a new layer to the connection between you two, something unspoken, something that feels important but can’t quite be named yet. The coffee passes in a haze of easy conversation and laughter, and by the time you both get up to leave, you feel a strange sense of contentment—like the world is, for a moment, just right.
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Later that evening, you’re curled up in your favourite armchair, the soft light of your reading lamp illuminating the pages. The book feels comforting, a little like a friend you didn’t know you needed. You make it through the first pages chapters, quickly absorbed in the world it creates, and then, as your eyes scan the margins, you pause.
In the very first chapter, there’s a note scrawled in neat handwriting:
“This reminds me of you. You get lost in your thoughts the same way she does.”
A small smile tugs at the corners of your mouth, but you’re already turning to the next page, not thinking much of it. But as you keep reading, the notes continue, each one more personal than the last.
He's put a box around a passage that talks about someone new becoming sunshine in one of the characters lives. Next to it he's written: you.
You pause, fingers trembling slightly as you turn to the next page. And then there’s another one:
“This part just made me think of you, that you’d like it.”
It clicks suddenly like an epiphany that you really, really like him.
The tears catch you by surprise. You hadn’t expected to feel this... moved. This seen. It’s like Remus has captured pieces of you in these notes—things you never said, things you didn’t even realize were there. He’s taken something as simple as a book and turned it into a way for you to see yourself through his eyes, as if he’s been quietly paying attention, noticing things about you you hadn’t even noticed in yourself.
Before you can stop it, your tears spill over, and you grab your phone, feeling the need to reach out to him. You hit his contact, your fingers shaking as you press the call button. It rings twice before he picks up.
“Hello?” His voice sounds a little surprised, but it’s warm, comforting.
“I—Remus, I just—” You can’t even finish the sentence, the tears turning into a full-on sob.
“What’s going on? Are you okay?” he questions gently but there’s a tinge of panic in his voice. “Do you need me to come get you?”
You wipe your eyes, trying to regain some composure, but the emotion is too raw. “I’m fine. It’s just... I don’t know. I didn’t realize how much it would mean to me, and now... I just wanted to say thank you. For the book. For everything.”
He lets out a big sigh of relief. “That's okay, you’re welcome, dove.”
“Thank you,” you whisper, barely able to say the words without breaking down again. “Thank you so much.”
“I’m really glad you liked it,” he replies softly, his voice warm with sincerity. “Really.”
You hesitate, wondering if this is the right moment. Part of you is almost certain that he feels the same way you do, especially after what’s just happened. But another part of you worries—what if you’re reading him wrong? What if you’ve misinterpreted everything?
“Would you…” you begin, unsure, “Would you like to come over for dinner tomorrow night? We could get takeaway, or... anything you want?”
There’s a soft chuckle on the other end of the line. “Yeah,” he says, his voice filled with affection. “I’d love that.”
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You pace around your flat, your eyes darting to the clock on the wall. It’s almost time for Remus to arrive, and you’re certain your stomach is doing somersaults. Why does this feel so much more important than it probably is? It’s just dinner, right? Yet, everything feels magnified. The messiness of your living room seems somehow ten times worse, and the familiar clutter of books, mismatched furniture, and the remnants of your life in its chaos feels more glaring than usual. You straighten up a few things, putting cushions back in place on the couch, smoothing down the edges of the blanket. You pick up a few dishes that you’d left out earlier, trying to make the place look somewhat presentable, even though you know Remus won’t care.
You glance in the mirror, adjusting your hair for the hundredth time, frowning as you tug at the collar of your jumper. It’s nothing fancy. A comfortable knit, a bit oversized, something you know you feel good in. But suddenly, you feel self-conscious, like it’s not enough. What if he doesn’t think you’re pretty? What if you don’t look good enough? You shake the thoughts away. This is ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous. Remus isn’t like that. He’s told you many times that you look pretty even when you’ve just been in your uniform straight out of work.
You make a mental note to stop overthinking, but your nerves don’t seem to want to cooperate. A quick glance at the clock tells you that he’ll be here any minute, and you’re still unsure whether you’re prepared for what might happen tonight. You know you’re about to open up, to tell him something that has been building inside you for weeks now. You can’t stop thinking about the way he makes you feel, how effortlessly he fits into your life. You’re nervous, terrified, but also strangely excited. You want to know if he feels the same way, even if the answer might hurt.
Your phone buzzes, startling you. You pick it up to see a message from Remus: On my way! Can’t wait to see you.
You smile at the text, feeling a wave of warmth settle over your nerves. You try to calm your breath, reminding yourself that this is just Remus—someone who’s become a friend. Someone who’s been kind and patient, and who might just be more than that.
A knock on the door jolts you from your thoughts. You take a deep breath, mentally bracing yourself, and open it to find Remus standing there, looking exactly like himself—tall, with a soft smile that sends a flutter to your chest. He’s holding a small bouquet of flowers, which he quickly extends toward you.
“For you,” he says, his voice low and warm, his smile a little shy.
You feel your cheeks flush at the gesture, the simple thoughtfulness of it. “Thank you,” you say, taking the flowers and feeling an odd sense of gratitude fill you. They’re beautiful. You’re not sure if this is just Remus being Remus or if it means something more, but the sincerity in his eyes makes you feel seen.
“They’re lovely,” you add, feeling a little shy as you take them to put in a vase on the kitchen counter.
“You look lovely too, by the way,” Remus says, his voice just a bit too quiet. He clears his throat and looks at you a little sheepishly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it weird. I just—yeah. You look great.”
You blink, feeling the heat of his compliment spread through you. “Thanks, Remus. You look... nice too,” you stutter, wishing the ground would open up and swallow you whole for being so awkward.
He laughs softly, clearly understanding how the moment is making you feel, but there's no mockery in his tone—just affection. "Thank you."
The two of you settle into the couch, the awkwardness slowly dissipating as you begin ordering food. The simple act of choosing what to eat feels grounding, like it’s a small step toward normalcy. You both decide on pizza—something familiar, easy, and comforting. As you wait for it to arrive, you talk about the usual things. But your mind keeps drifting to the real reason why you invited him here.
You can feel it now, the weight of the conversation you need to have hanging in the air between you two. You feel restless, like there’s something inside you just waiting to burst free.
The pizza arrives, the conversation shifts, and you sit together, eating in the cozy comfort of your living room. Yet, even as you laugh and share stories, your heart is pounding. You know it’s coming. You know you have to say it.
“Remus,” you begin hesitantly, your voice catching in your throat as you look at him. “I... I wanted to tell you something.”
He glances up from his slice of pizza, a curious, open expression on his face. “Yeah? What’s up?”
You swallow hard, trying to calm the nervous flutters in your stomach. Your fingers trace the edge of your pizza box, too aware of the weight of the moment. “I... I think I like you, Remus.” The words rush out before you can stop them, and you quickly add, “I mean, I like you more than just as a friend. And... I don’t know. I just thought I should tell you. It’s okay if you don’t feel the same, I just... thought I should say it.”
You rush the last part out, your face flushing deeply, your heart hammering in your chest as you stare at your hands. You can’t even look him in the eye, afraid of what you might see—or worse, what he might not say.
The silence that follows feels endless. Your mind races through worst-case scenarios: What if he doesn’t feel the same way? What if you just ruined everything? What if he laughs, or worse, gets awkward?
But then you hear him clear his throat. When you finally dare to look at him, Remus is watching you with wide, warm eyes. His lips curl into a soft, genuine smile, and for a second, the anxiety that had been gripping your chest eases just a little.
“I feel the same way.” he says softly, his voice barely above a whisper.
"you- you do?"
He nods, his smile growing just a little. “Yeah, I do. I’ve been... kind of terrified to say it, honestly. But... I like you, too. More than just a friend.”
Relief floods through you, and before you can stop it, a giddy smile spreads across your face. "Oh my god," you breathe, unable to keep the laugh from escaping. "I thought I was going to die just now."
Remus chuckles softly, a quiet, knowing sound that makes your heart race a little faster. He leans in a bit closer, his expression softening, and you feel an electric pulse between you two. The air around you seems to shift, becoming thick with everything unsaid, everything you both now understand.
"You don’t have to be nervous," he says, his voice low but warm. "I promise I’m not going anywhere."
You smile shyly, the tension in your body easing, but the words don’t quite come out right. Instead, you take a deep breath, your eyes locked with his. You’ve already told him how you feel, and the vulnerability is still there, but now it’s accompanied by a quiet kind of hope
Remus reaches out slowly, almost hesitantly, as if he’s testing the waters. His fingers brush against yours lightly, sending a wave of warmth through your skin. You glance at his hand, then back up at him. His gaze is tender, searching yours for permission. There’s a slight hesitation, but it’s not strange—just... careful.
"Can I?" he asks, his voice just barely audible.
Your heart skips a beat. You nod, almost imperceptibly, too caught up in the moment to speak. The room feels smaller now, the space between you two shrinking with every passing second. Remus' hand moves a little closer, his thumb brushing over your knuckles, before he gently pulls your hand into his.
The warmth of his hand in yours feels like everything you’ve been waiting for, and you can’t help but smile softly. And then, without thinking, your thumb traces the edge of his hand, a quiet way of saying you're okay, you're safe. You can feel him relax in response, the tension in his shoulders melting as he inches even closer.
You can feel your heart pounding in your chest, the anticipation growing as you both lean in, inch by tentative inch. The moment feels suspended in time. You close your eyes, a soft laugh bubbling up from you as you let out a nervous sigh.
"Remus," you whisper, barely a breath.
He stops, his face inches from yours, his eyes searching yours with that same softness, that same quiet intensity. The world outside seems to disappear. The sound of your breath and the beating of your hearts are all you can focus on.
Then, it happens. He leans in, his lips barely brushing against yours at first. It’s tentative, soft, like a question. Your breath hitches in your throat, and for a moment, you’re sure time has stopped. His lips are warm, gentle, and the kiss feels like the answer to everything you’ve been waiting for. You feel lightheaded with it—like everything in the world has finally made sense, like this is right, and maybe it always was.
A small giggle escapes you both, just a tiny, nervous sound, and Remus pulls back a fraction, his eyes sparkling with amusement. "I’ve wanted to do that for a while," he admits, his voice hushed.
You smile, feeling the warmth of the moment flooding through you. "Me too."
And then, without another word, you close the small gap between you again. This time, the kiss is deeper, more certain, though still gentle. His lips press against yours with a sweet intensity, like he's savoring it, savoring you. Your fingers move instinctively to the back of his neck, pulling him closer as his hand cups your cheek, his thumb brushing lightly across your skin. Everything feels soft, tender—a slow, steady rhythm between you that’s almost perfect in its simplicity.
The kiss deepens, just enough to make your pulse race, but it still carries that same sweet, careful energy, like you're both savoring each second of it. It’s a slow kind of magic, the kind that makes your heart feel full and light all at once.
When you finally pull away, breathless and a little dazed, you rest your forehead against his, your noses brushing lightly. The laughter that had been bubbling inside you finally spills out, soft and giddy, and Remus chuckles with you, his fingers still gently brushing through your hair.
“You okay?” he asks, his voice barely a whisper.
You nod, smiling wider than you ever thought possible. “Yeah. More than okay.”
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i’m on a hugh dancy kick right now after watching confessions of a shopaholic and i realized he looks like a mix between jonah hauer-king and logan lerman and i have no one to talk about this with
like are y’all picking up what i’m putting down here
There was a beautiful era in the 90s/early 00s of fun, female lead teen movies that just hit different, were like this golden age of girls just being girls and celebrating that feeling, and no matter how Hollywood tries they will never replicate it.
I'm talking "She's the Man," "Bend it Like Beckham" "Princess Dairies" "St. Trinian's" "What a Girl Wants" "Clueless" "Uptown Girls" "John Tucker Must Die" "DEBS".....obviously there's probably a few I missed but you get the idea.
Maybe the stakes weren't as high as saving the entire world, but they were important to the characters and had friendships and silliness and the goal was almost never to get the guy and you just don't get to see that anymore.
Also almost all of them had banging soundtracks.
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Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
summary: you share cookies with your coworker. from that blossoms a cute love story
word count: 9.7k words
content warning: neurodivergent reader, fem reader, tooth-rotting fluff, slight hurt/comfort, baking as an act of love. clark kent is absolutely smitten. lois and reader friendship. reader is an intern at the daily planet. implied size difference and age gap (reader is in her twenties, clark is in his early thirties)
notes: my first fanfiction in a long, long time. also my first clark kent fic. wrote it in 2 days with no beta reading (oops). also i know lois lane's birthday is in august but i took creative liberties with that for the story
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You continue tearing bits from your cookie because you like eating it in crumbs rather than bites and Clark Kent, your coworker, is watching again. The cute one with the thick-rimmed black glasses and the messy curls over his forehead, and the ill-fitted suits over his too big frame. You can’t stare at him for too long because he always notices, and then your face grows hot and uncomfortable. You prefer to steal glances at him like this. It’s safer.
He doesn’t have the same qualms about looking at you.
He’s always staring whenever you eat your lunch at your desk when Lois isn’t available and you wonder if it’s because he’s too shy to ask for a bite. He didn’t seem shy, but you were relatively new to the Daily Planet, and you haven’t found your footing around. People are nice, especially Lois Lane, but you still feel like you don’t belong here yet. Maybe he can feel it too, and he doesn’t really think of you as one of them yet.
“Would you like some?” you ask him. You tear off a big part of your cookie and you hand him the biggest one, the part you hadn’t been tearing at.
He’s startled by your voice, which puzzles you, because he’s been watching you all this time, and he watched you as you tore your cookie in half. Color rises in the tip of his ears, and the sight is slightly endearing for a man his height and his stature.
“Thanks, um, thank you.” His voice isn’t very deep but it’s still deeply masculine, and it sounds like you would expect melted milk chocolate to sound like.
His hand is big and his arm is long as it stretches towards you, meeting your own hand halfway. He’s careful not to accidentally touch you, and you appreciate it.
“It’s vanilla chocolate chip cookie,” you tell him. “But I may have had a heavy hand with the vanilla extract, because it’s all I can smell and taste, but I don’t mind. I love vanilla.”
Intellectually, rationally, you know you’re rambling, the same way you always do when you’re talking about your baking, and you know not everyone likes it when you do that, and you know you should stop and apologize but Clark’s watching you again, and listening patiently, half cookie still uneaten in his fingers, as if he’s focusing all of his attention on you, like what you say matters that much to him, and he has a gentle smile on his face that reminds you of your cinnamon roll dough.
“It’s also very sweet, but not overly so,” you continue. “The chocolate is a little bitter though, so I find that it works well to balance the flavor, even if I personally don’t really like bitter chocolate, but that chocolate was the only one I could find in the store that was in my price range and wasn’t purely sugar masquerading as chocolate, so I got it. I also didn’t think it would be quite bitter, because fifty five percent cacao chocolate didn’t seem that dark to me. But maybe I just have a really bad sweet tooth.”
His eyes are smiling. You’d never understood when people said that eyes can smile but looking at him now, you suddenly get it. If you hid his mouth, his eyes still tell you that he’s smiling.
“I could smell the vanilla from my desk,” he admitted.
“Oh was it bothering you? I didn’t think it would be so potent.”
“No, no. It smelled really good, actually.” He finally takes a bite. “And it tastes just as good. You made them, then? They look store-bought. And uh, that’s a compliment. I don’t mean to say they look fake just… really nice.”
You nodded, pride blooming in my chest until it felt like there is no space left for my breathing. “Yes, I like to bake. I wanted to be a baker, but I like writing more.”
“Lucky for me,” he says, and you tilt your head to the side, trying to figure out what he meant by it. But you didn’t really care all that much, because you were more interested in the fact that you found someone who seemed receptive to your cookie rambling.
“This is actually my sixth recipe. I’m trying to recreate the taste of bakery style cookies without using as much butter. Butter’s one of those ingredients that seem cheap enough until you have to buy it in bulk for your recipes, and then using two sticks of butter for one batch of cookies starts to feel like waste.”
“How much butter is in this cookie?”
“I used one stick of butter for the whole recipe, which yielded about ten cookies, so that’s one-hundred and thirteen grams of butter divided by ten, which is eleven point three grams per cookie, and half of a cookie is around five point… five grams?”
“Five point sixty-five,” he corrects, and you nod.
“Numbers have never been my strongest suite. Unfortunately, baking is a lot of numbers.”
“You’re doing great so far,” he says. “Better than great, I would say.”
“I can bring you cookies tomorrow. I didn’t think I would be sharing today so I only brought one with me, but I still have leftovers.”
And you do. It’s still early enough that the office hasn’t filled yet. It’s only him and you and a couple other reporters by the coffee machine. You bring him five cookies in a white box, the same you get in bakeries, and you tied a pink bow on top. you give him the cookies and he surprises you by handing you a tall cup of coffee in return. It doesn’t look like it’s from the breakroom. It’s an actual travel mug, the kind that costs a lot.
“I don’t like coffee,” you tell him, not wanting to mislead him. It’s only a second later that you realize that you were probably being rude, because he’s obviously gone through a lot of trouble for you. “Thank you, though. I appreciate it. Really.”
“It’s not coffee,” he replies, like he was expecting you to say that, and he winks at you. “It’s hot chocolate, and not the bitter kind of chocolate, but not the sugar masquerading as chocolate either.”
You blink, a little taken aback at having your own words thrown at me. “You listened.”
“I did. I also added marshmallows, but that part was a gamble. I didn’t know if you liked them.”
“I’ve never had marshmallow in hot chocolate. I don’t usually drink hot chocolate, actually. I find it too bitter. I know, I have the palate of a kid but I like sweet things.”
“Take a sip,” he says. You do. You gingerly tip your head back, worried you’ll burn your tongue — you hate when it happens – but the drink is the perfect temperature.
“It’s really good,” you say. You blink again. Like really good. It’s sweet and warm and it tastes like a soft hug from within. “Where did you get it? I’ve never bought a hot chocolate that tasted like this.”
He smiles sheepishly, and you’re struck by how it changes his face wonderfully, like his face was born in a sheepish smile, the kind that smooths out his edges and makes him look like a dream. “I made it. It’s my Ma’s recipe.”
“Thank you. This is the best drink I’ve ever had.”
“Really?”
You nod. “I don’t say things unless I really mean them.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to see that.”
He picks up the box and with a wave, he thanks you for them again. You raise your mug in reply. His eyes crinkle.
When you first started out your internship at the Daily Planet, you didn’t know anyone there.
Then, Lois Lane took one look at you and she complimented your pink headphones – the noise-cancelling one that everyone assumes is just for listening to music during work. Lois Lane was one of those people you couldn’t help but admire. Not only was she smart and talented and a wickedly good journalist. Sometimes you openly stare at her, forgetting you didn’t like staringt too much at people, but you couldn’t help it. Her hair was long and soft and curled over her shoulders and fell all the way to her chest in a gentle swoop.
So you baked her a cake the next day as a thank you. You were eager and hopeful and you tripped over your own feet trying to give it to her because you really wanted her to like you and you wanted her to feel the same way she made you feel when she complimented your headphones.
She bought you lunch as a thank you. So you baked her cookies the next day as a thank you. So she bought you lunch again, and you baked her muffins the next day, thinking that maybe this is what you guys did. It became — routine. Lunch with her, and you bring sweets for dessert.
“This has to stop,” she said one day.
“You don’t like my baking?”
“I do, but you need to stop baking me things every time I try to thank you for baking me something. The cycle will never end otherwise.”
“Is that what it was? I thought you bought lunch and I brought dessert. Forgive me if I misunderstood. I’ll stop bringing treats.”
You guys didn’t do it long enough to feel like it was a routine set in your schedule, so why did it feel so painful? You liked your routine, and you liked her company. You thought she was your friend, but she was only buying you lunch because she felt obligated to.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says. “I like this too, a lot, actually.”
So you kept having lunch together every Tuesday and Thursday, in that cute little bakery down the street.
You stay behind again. You didn’t mean to lose track of time like this. You didn’t see time fly by, the way you never do because you’d been in the zone, writing your first draft for your article about [topic]. You like writing because, aside from baking, it’s the only thing that can completely shut your mind off. And when you get in the zone like that, the rest of the world disappears. You disappear. Your desires, your hunger, your exhaustion, your feelings, they all disappear. Only words mattered.
You don’t even notice when a bottle of water is put in front of you. You don’t even notice when Lois tells you good bye and wishes you good luck, but that’s also because you had your noise-cancelling headphones on. (You hope she doesn’t think you’re rude, because you really didn’t mean to ignore her.)
It’s only when your head starts pounding right behind your eyes that you finally come to. Your eyes had been burning and you didn’t notice until the ache turned into a migraine and suddenly you couldn’t look into the screen anymore. You saved your work and instantly shut it off, finally looking at something other than your screen when you look around.
Clark Kent was still there, in the desk right in front of yours. Removing your headphones feels like waking up from a slumber — underwater. You realize now how painful they were starting to feel, like they were pressing against your skull.
There are still some whispers around, other people staying behind, hunched over screens and talking about something or another. The whispers are soft and distant but they make your ears feel like they’re vibrating and it’s kind of painful.
You pinch the space between your eyes with your index and your thumb, eyes closed.
“You okay?”
Clark’s voice feels like a wave washing off the unwanted sounds in my head. You don’t feel like speaking though, so you just nod. Sometimes, when you lost yourself in something, you forgot basic things like taking breaks or drinking water or even going to the bathroom, and you always think you can handle it until suddenly you’re overstimulated and overwhelmed and everything hurts.
“You should drink some water,” he offers gently, head nodding towards the water bottle you hadn’t noticed until now.
He must have put it there.
Ever since you guys had traded hot chocolate and cookies, there’d been a tentative beginning of friendship. You weren’t an expert in friendships and such, but you could probably wager that you and Clark were becoming friends. You wouldn’t bet your entire life on it, but probably ten bucks. That seemed realistic.
“Thank you, Clark.”
He smiles the way he always does when you say his name. You were good at recognizing patterns, and you’d noticed that one the third time he smiled right after you said Clark. It brightens up his entire face.
“No problem. You ready to get out of here?”
It’s like he knew how eager you were to leave this place. You just want to go home with your favorite show on your laptop and ordering three large portions of fries, maybe five, with your homemade mayonnaise. You’re starting to feel the hunger after not eating anything for the entire day.
“Yes.”
You always tell yourself you’re going to start forcing yourself to take breaks every hour or so, but you never do. Or if you do, and you never respect the rules. You always just turn off your alarm and go right back to work, grumpier because you hate being interrupted.
You hate that you can’t wear your headphones right now, because Metropolis is always louder at night, but your head is still hurting, and you’re almost sure it’s because of the headphone. It’s super old and it feels like your head’s gotten bigger over the years and you’re not talking about the metaphorical kind of big heads, although some people would definitely agree that you have a big head.
Clark is quiet at your side. The elevator ride is uneventful. The moment you step foot outside, your shoulders are up to your ears.
He asks to make a stop at the pharmacy and when he comes out, he has earplugs in his hand. You stare at him like he’d grown two heads when he hands them to you.
“It’s for you.”
“Me?”
“I thought they might help.”
They do. You relax instantly the instant the second earplug is in your ear.
“Thank you,” you say. Your voice is muffled to your ears.
“Of course,” he replies, but you barely hear him. The earplugs are that good. Clark is that good.
Next Monday, a marbled chocolate and vanilla cake is waiting for Clark at his desk.
Two months into your internship at the Daily Planet, you are invited to Lois’ birthday. It’s nothing big, nothing fancy. It feels like a birthday party when you were younger.
You bring her a birthday cake, with three levels, complete with funfetti and whipped cream and frosting. You didn’t really know what to get her as a gift so you figured you couldn’t go wrong with a birthday cake.
You only know Lois, Jimmy and Clark. You know the rest of the people only by sight, and some you don’t know at all.
Lois’ apartment is nice. It’s old but quaint and well-lived in. You sit in the three seat couch on the left side, hands on your knees. Clark’s earplugs were in your pocket. You didn’t need to use them but you liked knowing where they were. You also had your headphones in your bag that Lois took from you once you came in.
Lois had looked overjoyed when she saw you come in with a huge cake box. You had to buy a special one because you’d never had to deliver a cake this big.
She takes it from your arms, safely putting in the kitchen before turning towards you again. “Can I give you a hug?”
“Okay,” you reply, because this is Lois Lane who was already part of your routine. Lois who smells really nice and is always smiling towards you even though you’re just an intern and she’s already a senior.
She gives you the hug and it feels like her. Safe, happy, kind.
“Happy birthday,” you tell her. “I hope you enjoy the cake. I’m not very used to making cakes this big, or decorating.”
“Definitely the best gift ever. Thank you so much, love.”
She stayed behind to greet others and talk to her friends and that’s how you found yourself on her couch. You saw Clark and Jimmy when you came in but you didn’t know whether you should go say hi. You weren’t used to social settings, let alone birthday parties.
So you just wait. You don’t know necessarily what you’re waiting for, but you wait.
There is no loud music but there’s an ambient music playing all across Lois’ apartment. And it smells nice, like her, but bigger. There are snacks and drinks on the table and it reminds you of birthday parties when you were a kid. You always thought grown-ups celebrated their birthday parties during the night in clubs, but you’re glad it wasn’t the case for Lois.
“Hey.”
“Hi Jimmy,” you greet back. You like Jimmy Olsen. He has freckles and when he smiles his entire face lights up and his eyes disappear, and it’s adorable. He looks soft.
“It’s nice you could join us.”
You nod. “I wasn’t expecting to be invited at all.”
“Why not?”
You look everywhere but his eyes. “I am not exactly the kind of person you want to invite anywhere. I am an excruciatingly picky eater, I don’t like bright lights or loud sounds. I don’t talk a lot and I don’t know how to do small talk. I hate small talk. See? You were trying to make small talk but I took it too seriously, and now you must think I’m a buzz killer.”
“Honest to a fault, yes, but not a buzz killer.”
“People don’t like too much honesty.”
“Lucky for you, we’re not like most people.”
“I am starting to see that,” you reply, trying for a smile. “It’s — nice. Thank you.”
“Of course.” His eyes flicker up to something behind you and then back to you. “Hey, what do you think of Clark Kent?”
You frown. “Do you want the honest answer or the socially accepted answer?”
“Honest.”
“I think he’s kind. And he has nice blue eyes.” You grab your earplugs from your pocket and gather them in the palm of your hand before showing it to Jimmy. “He bought me earplugs one time, because my headphones hurt and the streets were too nosy. I don’t really wear them all the time, but I like them.”
“Sounds like something he would do.”
“He does that to everyone?”
“Well — yeah. That’s just how he is with everyone. But with you, it’s—” he interrupts himself, and doesn’t continue.
“Oh.” For some reason you had hoped that it meant something – that you were special. “Yeah. I think he’s really kind and I’m glad to know him. You too, of course. And Lois Lane. And everyone at the office.”
Jimmy smiles at you again.
He said he wanted honesty, so I tell him: “I really like your smile. You look really cute. Sometimes it makes me want to pinch your cheeks.”
His face goes bright red, and you can’t help but smile. “You look even cuter like this. No wonder all the girls like you.”
That was true. It’s one of the few things you had noticed, even if you were usually too in your head to notice anything happening. But you always saw girls at the office staring at him and whispering to each other how hot he was.
He coughs and takes a long sip of whatever it is he’s drinking. It’s bubbly. He doesn’t say anything, but he stays red a long time.
A little while later, Lois Lane says she’s feeling generous and decides to share the cake you made with everyone. “Is that okay with you?” She asked you before she did.
“It’s your cake. I don’t care what you do with it,” you replied honestly. If sharing it made her happy, then so be it.
Half the cake’s gone by the time everyone gets a slice. Lois lets you pick the spoon you want from her kitchen drawer, away from everyone else.
“What did you do to Jimmy earlier?” She asks, leaning against her fridge while you rummage through her utensil drawers looking for the perfect spoon – or fork. You’re not very picky.
“I didn’t do anything to him.” It’s true. You didn’t even touch him. You just spoke with him. “Lois, your drawer is painfully untidy. You should let me organize it for you one day.”
“Oh hush, my drawers are perfectly fine. Anyway, I saw the two of you and he left you looking like a tomato. Spill.” Her eyes are glinting with excitement and something else you can’t name. Her cheeks are rosy, and she looks lighter than ever. She is truly one of the prettiest people you’ve ever seen. You find a spoon that’s perfect. Small and symmetrical and shiny. You grab it and close the drawer.
You tell her she’s the prettiest person you’ve ever seen, and she goes red in the face.
“Is that what you said to Jimmy too?”
“No, I didn’t talk about you. I told him he was really cute.”
She chuckles. “If you keep this up, you’re going to end up with half the office in love with you. Have you complimented anyone else today?”
“No. Just you and Jimmy. And I guess I told Jimmy about Clark, but I didnt really compliment Clark, since I just said what I thought of him.”
“And what do you think of Clark?”
“That he has the kindest and prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.”
you’re sitting in the living room again, except you’re on the armchair this time because the couch was taken by a couple making out. You thought that kind of thing only happened in college parties, not that you’ve ever gone to one.
“Your cake is as good as your cookies, but nothing can top them in my opinion.”
You look up to find Clark already smiling at you. His eyes are smiling behind his glasses. He has a plate in his hand but the cake is untouched.
“You didn’t even taste it,” you tell him trying not to sound annoyed at the blatant lie.
“This is my third slice actually,” he says with a huff, as if he’s saying, do you really think I can lie? “I just got it before Lois could catch me.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“No problem. Can I sit on the arm rest?”
“Sure.”
There were no longer free seats. Someone had braved the making out couple and sat next to them and looked like he was trying not to be dragged into it.
Clark sits and the armchair creaks a little under his weight.
For some reason, you feel better whenever he’s around you. You always look forward to your discussions even if you never really talk about anything serious or consequential. You talk about baking — well, you talk and he listens.
“How’d you make the cake?” he asks, as if he could hear my thoughts. “It’s so… juicy.”
His adjective of choice makes you snort, but you explain to him exactly how you made it anyway. The secret’s all in the syrup, you say. And how much vanilla extract you put in.
“Had a heavy hand with the vanilla again?”
“I had a reason this time. The recipe called for it, this time.”
Your head is buzzing pleasantly by the time you leave the birthday party. You feel mellowed out, like caramel that’s been left in the sun. Not melted completely, just… boneless, if that made sense.
You take the train because Lois’ apartment is far away from yours and you’re feeling too lazy to walk there, even if you prefer to walk everywhere. Subways are dirty and loud and, quite frankly, a little scary. Especially after sunset. You checked on your phone and saw that Superman has been spotted in the vicinity, so you weren’t as scared as you would be.
Before moving to Metropolis for college, you didn’t have any particular opinion about Superman. You weren’t into him nor against him. Tall, big and strong men weren’t high on your list of people you liked. Too much masculinity, too much testosterone – that never bode well for anyone, but you could appreciate the fact that he’d saved the world too many times to count.
Until you meet him. You don’t exactly meet him, but you see him, mid-fight, swooping to protect a kitten from being crushed by a falling tree, even the monster was charging at him. You were so stunned you forgot to rush to shelter, until he was suddenly in front of you, kitten in hand, gently guiding you towards safety.
When you came back home that night, you searched for his name on the Internet. You found yourself on Twitter, clicking on his hashtag. You wanted to see if he’s done it before, if he was known for saving the little guy.
He was. There were countless of videos and pictures and testimonies, all showing how Superman saved their fish or their cat or dog or even their car, or a squirrel.
You wouldn’t exactly say that you were a fan now, but… close. There was something about a 6’4 man who could lift up buildings with one hand saving a tiny kitten that just did things to you. You were too used to heroes sacrificing the little lives for the bigger picture, and while you knew it was impossible to save every single person, it was nice to see that someone tried anyway, rather than just giving up.
Somehow, even Superman had haters. You frowned as you read the seemingly endless hate tweets.
You tweeted I saw #Superman save this tiny kitten mid-fight. NOT #Supershit. And you attached a picture of the kitten in your arms. (Kitten that you’d named Supercat and kept.)
It was the only way you found to show your gratitude, even if Superman was too busy to read fan tweets. He was probably busy saving kittens from trees and helping fish find their way back in the water. He probably didn’t even care for the hate, but still, seeing it was upsetting, especially when you knew for a fact he did nothing that warranted it.
It was stupid, but you’d gone to bed that night with a purring Supercat on your chest and a heart that felt like it grew three sizes inside your chest.
“Hot chocolate coming right up for the lady.”
You look up just in time to see a smiling Clark Kent bending slightly to place a large mug on your desk. He’s not wearing a tie – or a jacket – and it’s unbuttoned at the couple first buttons. He looks – nice. You’re not used to thinking these things about men.
“Me?” you ask, dumbly. “But I didn’t bring you anything.”
“Can’t I be nice without expecting anything in return?”
You frown at that, like the idea had never even graced your mind. “Oh. What’s the occasion, then?”
Today was, as far as you knew, a normal day. You weren’t good at remembering birthdays or special days but you were ninety nine percent sure there was nothing going on today.
“Nothing. Just wanted to be nice.”
You smiled gratefully, sheepishly, and wrapped your fingers around the warm mug. “Thank you.”
He must think you’re weird, for thinking that kindness had to be transactional, but that’s just how you learnt to see the world. People rarely were nice without a reason. You take a small tentative sip, and you find out the drink is the perfect temperature once again.
He smiles, happy that you’re pleased, and he finally goes to his desk.
“Are you not cold?” you ask him. It’s the middle of the winter and it’s not the first time you see him come into work with just a shirt, while everyone else was wearing layers upon layers, including yourself.
His smile turns sheepish. “I forgot to bring my jacket.”
“You must forget it a lot,” you hum. “It’s strange because you never seem to forget other things. Like my hot chocolate or Jimmy and Lois’ coffee.”
He laughs, but it sounds a little strained. “I guess I’m always thinking of others first.”
You hum again. “Maybe I should start bringing you something warm then. Someone has to think of you first too.”
His smile is – heartbreaking.
You bring him a thick and warm comforter, and Clark seems to love it and he wears it like a cape.
The sight is a little silly and weirdly familiar.
He keeps it in his desk all the time.
The break room falls silent when you come in. Lois, Jimmy and Clark look up, and only Clark’s looking like he’s been caught doing something he shouldn’t have been, and weirdly apologetic. Lois and Jimmy look like cats who each got the canary.
You greet them with a wave of your hand and start filling up your water bottle.
“We were just thinking, maybe we should go to the movies tonight,” Jimmy says, and it sounds like he’s been rehearsing. Lois is trying to hide a laughing fit and Clark looks absolutely distraught.
“Okay?” you say, a little confused but not wanting to be rude. “Have fun.”
“The four of us,” Jimmy clarifies.
“Oh.” That made sense now. “Sure,” you reply. “What movie?”
They each say a different movie. Maybe they hadn’t decided on that part yet. Honestly, you don’t mind any movie, as long as it’s with your friends.
Goddamit, you’re actually excited about it. You don’t like feeling excited, you hate it, because it always ends up in disappointment and you know that and still, you can barely stay still on your chair while you’re doing research.
But you keep thinking about – well, Clark, and maybe sitting next to him, if you find a way to discreetly take the seat next to his, and just being with him for a few hours. Of course, you were happy Lois and Jimmy would be there but you weren’t as close to Clark the way you were close with them.
And you certainly don’t have a crush on them the way you crush on Clark.
“Ready to go?” Clark asks you when the clock strikes 5pm and everyone else is already starting to get ready to go home. There weren’t any looming deadlines so people felt free to go home on time.
“Yes,” you reply, almost too excitedly. You’re looking at the space between his eyes and he looks almost excited too, and a little bit flushed. His eyes are fleeing yours, which is weird, because usually it’s only you who does that. “Should we wait for Lois and Jimmy?”
You peek behind him and notice Jimmy still at his desk, and Lois was nowhere to be found.
“Ah, yes, of course,” Clark says. “Jimmy, you ready?”
Then, like he’s been getting ready to say this, Jimmy turns around. “Oh no, I’m sorry. Lois and I have to stay behind, I’m sorry. It’s all last minute. We’re going to try to finish quick and try to catch up, but yeah, just go on without us.”
You blink, feeling a little disappointed. “Oh,” you say. “We can wait, right Clark? I mean we can stay and help them finish quicker.”
They share a look you don’t get. “Oh no, uh, it’s just that it’s something only Lois and I can work on, I’m sorry. But we’ll be quick, we promise.”
“Oh, okay,” you say, trying to smile but feeling a little hurt at the blatant rejection. They were the one who offered to go watch a movie anyway. “Should we just reschedule?”
“I already got us tickets,” Clark says. “I’m not sure they’re refundable.”
“We’ll be quick, I promise,” Jimmy says.
Maybe it’s the fact that your plan has been thrown off that you’re feeling so upset.
“Sorry about them,” Clark says as he lets you inside the elevator first, hand on the edge of it so it doesn’t try closing. “But you know how Perry gets with his deadlines…”
“It’s okay, it’s not your fault,” you reply. “I just don’t understand why we have to go first if they’re going to catch up to us anyway.”
“Maybe they just don’t want us to be stuck at work.”
You’re not really convinced. “They said we would all go out to the movies. All of us.”
“Am I really that bad of a company?” Clark says, a self-deprecating smile on his face.
“What?” You ask with a frown. “No, that has nothing to do with that. It’s just that they said we would all go. I was expecting us to go together.”
“You like it when things go as planned,” he says with a soft murmur.
Your fingers tighten around your bag straps. “Yes. But I feel bad for feeling this way because they obviously can’t help it if they’re held back at work. I’ll deal with it. They’re going to catch up with us soon anyway. And you’re not bad company, sorry for making you think that. I’m just– my brain is weird,” you say the last part lamely, not knowing how to explain it any better.”
He lets you get out of the elevator first again. You don’t notice anything but his warmth next to you and his voice.
“Your brain’s not weird. I think it works perfectly well. You like honesty, you like your routine, and you like things to go as planned. Doesn’t make you weird. Just… a good person to be around.”
You don’t reply, but your fingers are playing with your straps. You don’t dare look at him, because you know he’s looking for your eyes. But that’s too scary.
“We can reschedule, if you want. I don’t mind, and I’m sure neither will they.”
“But your tickets.”
“They’re just tickets. We can always get more of them.”
“I would like to wait a bit first. How long until our movie starts?”
“About twenty-five minutes.”
“We’ve got time.”
“Yeah?”
He’s smiling.
“Yeah. Maybe they’ll finish quickly and we can still go. The movie theater’s not that far.”
“You’re right. Let’s get something to eat,” he says, pocketing his phone after texting something in it. “My treat.”
“Okay.”
Clark Kent is really nice. In all senses of the word. He’s nice to look at, he’s nice to listen to, and he’s plain nice. Although you suppose he’s kinder than he is nice. His goodness seems intrinsic, woven into the lines of his very being.
“You have a cat?” he asks. “Why is that not surprising?”
“Maybe because I am an introvert and all introverts are known to have cats?”
He chuckles softly, bringing a spoonful of ice cream to his mouth. “Something like that. What’s his name?”
“You’re going to make fun of me,” you say, the tip of your ears red.
“I would never.”
“It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Try me. Can’t be as bad as me calling my childhood cat Cat when I was a kid.”
You snort. “That’s not embarrassing, that’s practical, and really cute. But what if you’d had more than one cat?”
“I probably would have named them Cat 2 or something.”
“My cat’s name is Supercat,” you confess shyly, hiding your face behind your giant brookie. You don’t know why you feel so embarrassed about it. It’s just a cat name, and it’s not like Clark would suddenly know all about your Superman obsession.
Clark has a moment of pause before he reacts. “Because he’s a caped hero?”
You snort. “Oh no, actually. He’s afraid of mice and insects, and of his own shadow.”
“Why Supercat, then?”
“Because Superman gave him to me.”
“You know him?”
“Oh no, I just happened to be at the right time right place. Superman was fighting this huge alien creature and then he saved a kitten, even though he clearly had other bigger things to worry about, and then he saw me, and I was too dumbstruck to move so he guided me to safety and asked me to take care of the kitten while he took care of the monster.”
“You like him,” Clark says, and he sounds a little smug.
“What? No! What makes you say that?”
You’re red. You know it because your face is burning and you’re trying to look at anything but Clark’s knowning smile. How’d he know?!
“Oh nothing, it’s just the way you completely light up while talking about him, and how I’ve never heard you talk as much in one go.”
“That’s so untrue. You’ve heard me talk longer about baking.”
“Which further proves my point. You only talk a lot when it’s about something – or someone – you really love.”
“Shut up,” you say. “I just… well, he saved my cat, even if I didn’t know he was my cat yet. So of course I like him.”
“Sounds to me like he saved you as well.”
“Yeah, maybe,” you say, even though there’s no maybe about it. He did save you, but it’s him saving the cat that marked you the most.
“I, uh, I actually know Superman. Kind of. I do interviews with him from time to time.” You knew that because you’ve read every interview there was on Superman, and you’d quickly noticed that it was the same journalist every time. Clark Kent. “I could talk to him about maybe meeting you? I’m sure he’ll want to know that the kitten he saved is safe. And that you’re safe too, of course.”
He looks earnest and shy, and a little awkward, and it’s painfully endearing.
“I don’t know…” you say, even though your heart is beating faster at the idea of meeting Superman and properly talking to him. “Isn’t it a bad idea to meet your heroes? I’m worried I’ll mess up the memory I have of him.”
And honestly, you couldn’t really think of anyone else when Clark was talking to you, even if it was Superman.
“No rush,” he says gently. “If you change your mind, the offer’s still standing.”
“Thank you.”
“Of course. Come on, Lois and Jimmy said they’re already there. Seems like they managed to get away with work.”
You’re sitting next to Clark Kent.
Lois and Jimmy were bickering and before they knew it the seats around you and Clark were taken, so they had to go to the front.
“This is all your fault, idiot,” you hear Lois tell Jimmy as they shamefully walk to the front of the room.
“Should we join them?” you whisper.
“You’re kidding? I don’t want to lose the best spots for them.”
You giggle. “Okay.”
“Beside it’s their fault for not quickly deciding on who got to sit next to you.”
“That’s stupid, when there was literally a free seat next to you.”
You look at each other and dissolve into a fit of giggles.
“Can I walk you home?”
“I live in the opposite direction of your place,” you remind him patiently, even though there are butterflies inside your stomach that are doing a lot of damage to your nerves.
“I quite frankly don’t care about that. I just want to walk you home. Can I?”
“But why?”
Why is he acting like romantic leads did in shows? Surely he doesn’t like you. He’s probably just being really kind and thoughtful. But he didn’t offer Lois to walk her home, even though he knew her longer. Maybe it’s because you’re younger and he thinks it’s his responsibility that you get home safe?
“Because… I am not ready to leave you just yet,” he confesses – because that’s what it sounds like. A confession. His voice is lower, softer, yet sure. He’d never sounded this sure.
“Why?” you ask, dumbly. Or maybe you just wanted him to keep talking about you this way.
“Let me take you home and I’ll tell you,” he replies. “Maybe.”
It’s only because you’re so curious that you say yes. No other reason.
And maybe because his face lights up like you’d just given him the Pulitzer prize.
The walk home is quiet, a little awkward, but it feels – nice, good, safe. Just like Clark Kent.
He instinctively takes the road side of the street, and he gently guides you away from a puddle when you don’t look where you’re going. He’s patient when you check fourt times before crossing the streets.
In the subway, he uses his entire body like a shield between you and the rest of the commute. He grasps the handle with one and he lets you use his bicep as your handle, since you’re too short to reach the bar.
“What are you doing?” he asks, and it still baffles you how you don’t need to look at him anymore to know when he’s smiling.
You blush, realising he must be looking into your phone.
“Whenever I take the subway I check if Superman’s in the area. It, uh, makes me feel safe.”
His bicept flexes underneath your fingers. It’s easy to forget it, because he rarely reminds you of it, but Clark’s really strong and muscular. His biceps are so big you would need your two hands to wrap around the muscle.
“What do you need Superman for when I’m right here?”
“Are you… jealous?”
He scoffs, like the idea itself is ludicrous. “Of course not. Why would I be jealous of him?”
“Because you’re right here with me and I’m still searching for him.”
You don’t know where that came from. You’re not usually this bold or even this teasing. You’re about to retract back what you said but then you see his reaction.
“You’re right, I would be jealous. If it wasn’t my arm you’re holding right now, if it wasn’t me you’re looking with that delicious blush.”
Then, he blushes too, as if just now realizing what he’d just said. You stare at each other, both blushing. At the same time, you both look away, but you don’t remove your hand, and he doesn’t stop protecting you from the people pushing in.
The rest of the subway ride is quieter. Nicer.
He walks you right up to your front door. He obviously wants to see inside, so you invite him in. You tell yourself you’re just being polite.
“I want to see Supercat,” he says, like it explains why he really wants to come in.
You open the door.
“Please come in. Make yourself at home. I think I have some scones, if you want? I made them last weekend.”
Your apartment is humble, which is an euphemism for small. You’re still a student, and despite interning at the Daily Planet, you’re not rolling in dough. So your apartment is more of a glorified room that has a small kitchen area and a tiny oven you bought specifically for your baking (you rarely use it for your meals, since your safe meals usually only need pans). It’s a definite far cry from Lois’ really nice apartment, and what you guessed Clark’s to be. But, this was home, and has been for the past four years. You don’t feel as ashamed as you would usually be, because you know Clark isn’t the type of person to judge.
Supercat is, unsurprisingly, sleeping on top of your dirty laundry. He opens a lazy eye to see whether I brought him any treat, before closing it back, clearly uninterested in the new stranger.
“See? He’s no hero, if you were an intruder right now, he barely would have batted an eye,” you say, though you just sound fond, not annoyed at all.
“Maybe he just instinctively knows I don’t want to cause you any harm.”
“I doubt it – not that I don’t believe you when you say you’re harmless. It’s just… well, I wouldn’t trust him with my life. Come on, come on in. Don’t just stand there. I know my place is small, but not so small it couldn’t fit you.”
He flushes sweetly. “Oh God, no, it’s not–”
You nudge him with your elbow. “I’m teasing you. You can sit on my bed, since I don’t have a couch.”
He obeys, and the sight of him, big limbs and large presence, trying to navigate my tiny apartment is endearing. He looks out of place, like a giant in a dollhouse, and still, completely at home.
“It’s really – cute, here,” he says while you take out cookies (turns out you’d ran out of scones without realizing).
“Thank you. I like it too. My only issue is that it gets too small for baking sometimes.”
“Ah yes, this is where the magic happens.”
The way he says it makes it sound like you’re conducting scientific experiments and creating miracles.
“It’s just cookies.”
“Not just any cookies. Only the best ones I’ve ever had.”
“You’re just saying that because –” Because what, because he likes you? You quickly look down to your hands, embarrassed at the thought.
“Because?” he presses. When you look up, he’s right there, just in front of you. You hadn’t even noticed him moving.
He moved like a big cat. Silent, agile, and deadly.
“Because you’re you,” you say instead. “Because you’re kind. That’s what you do.”
“You think I’m only nice to you because I’m kind?”
“Yeah. Because I’m the new kid and the youngest, and you have strong protective instincts that makes you want to take care of everyone, like it’s your job to do so.” He doesn’t sound convinced and you get desperate trying to convince him, so you add: “Jimmy said you’re like this with everyone.”
“Did he? Did he say that I walk anyone home? That I spend thirty minutes every day making my Ma’s special hot chocolate drink for anyone? That I stay up late at work just to make sure they’re not overworking themselves again?”
“I…”
Clark smiles, and it’s like the sun peeking between two dark clouds.
“You..?”
“I don’t know,” you say honestly. “Do you… like me?”
“Yes. I have ever since you tore your cookie in half just so I could taste it, and you spent twenty minutes talking to me about how butter content can either make or break the recipe, and how you go through vanilla extracts like people go through coffee.”
Your brain short-circuits. He wasn’t supposed to just… agree, like it was that easy.
“Why?” you ask.
“Do I really need a reason? It’s just you.”
“I guess… I’m just a little confused. No one’s ever liked me before. Or they do, until I start rambling about recipes and ingredients and how many times I have to make a recipe before I’m finally satisfied with it. Or until I go nonverbal because everything is too loud and everything hurts and I refuse to be touched. But you knew all this, and you still… like me?”
“Yes, sweetheart. I still like you.”
“Why?” you ask, and you realize you’d already asked why before.
“Because it’s you. Because baking is your love language and there’s not a single person in the office that you didn’t bake anything for, and because you’re adorable with your pink headphones everyone thinks you use to listen to music but you use it as a noise-cancelling device. And because you smile like an angel, and write like a devil, and you bake like nostalgia. And because from the first day I saw you, I knew I was a goner.”
You chuckle nervously, looking around, as if waiting for Jimmy or Lois or both to pop up from somewhere with a camera.
“You like me,” you repeat, as if tasting it on your own tongue helped you understand it.
“I do. And I should have told you before, but I was a coward, and Jimmy and Lois were tired of me whining about how much I liked you and not doing anything about it.”
“The movies,” you say, like an euraka moment.
His eyes go soft. “Yes, the movies. They were trying to set us up. I told them I didn’t like the plan, it felt too deceptive, too manipulative, but…”
“I’m glad they did it,” you interrupt. “But you’re right. It was kind of manipulative, and I was really sad when I thought they weren’t coming. It’s just — I like it— no, I need people to do as they say. Otherwise it messes with my head and I don’t like it, but still, I guess they were just trying to help. You texted them, didn’t you? You told them to come.”
“Yes. As soon as I saw how much it upset you, I told them to come back.”
“And you still like me.” It isn’t a question. You just like to repeat facts, as if repeating them a hundred times would make them truer than if you’d only said them once. “Despite all of this.”
“I still like you. All of you. Your quirks and your habits and your preferences.”
“Thank you,” you reply. Are you supposed to kiss him now? You weren’t sure. No one ever told you how love confessions are supposed to go.
He looks a little scared, a little vulnerable, and it’s not right. It doesn’t look right.
Oh. You are supposed to reply to his confession.
“I like Superman,” you say. Your brain’s not right. “But I like you better. I liked him because he saved animals and because he made the city safer, it’s why I follow blogs about him and search for his whereabouts. But ever since I met you, I didn’t do that as much anymore. So you really don’t need to be jealous of Superman.”
You’re not really sure where you’re going with this, but for some reason you thought mentioning Superman was a good idea.
“You like me better than Superman,” he repeats. Maybe he needed to taste the words himself to believe them better too. The look of fear melts from his face. It leaves only pure, unadulterated, boyish joy behind. He looks — pure. Like the sun.
“Yes. I feel safe around you the same way I feel safe when I know Superman’s near.”
“I’m glad. You deserve to feel safe all the time.”
“Thank you. So do you. Do you still want cookies? They must have thawed a bit since then, but I can still put them in the microwave for a bit.”
He chuckles. “Yes please, I would like some of your cookies.”
You turn around, your cheeks still burning hot. You just confessed to Clark Kent, after he confessed to you first. He likes you. He likes you and you like him.
You both sit down on the edge of your bed, thighs close but not touching. He’s so big he could easily take up the whole space, but he’s making himself smaller so he doesn’t intrude on your personal space.
“Listen, I, I’ve never done this before so excuse me if I’m making a fool of myself but…”
“Yes?”
“Would you like to go on a date with me? A proper one, this time, and not a subterfuge.”
He looks earnest and hopeful, and once again scared.
“Okay. I would love to go on a date with you, Clark.”
────୨ৎ────
Clark didn’t know whether he should thank his friends or ignore them for the rest of his life after the little stunt they’d pulled around you.
He knew that they were just trying to be helpful in that meddling yet endearing way of theirs, but he truly thought his heart was going to stop beating the second he saw you get upset at the unexpected change of plans.
If he didn’t already have no chance with you before this, he definitely didn’t anymore.
You were always physically impassible, eyes shining only when you’re talking about something you liked — baking, cats, Superman. He was used to having to dig deeper to truly understand how you felt, but at that moment in the elevator, he could see your emotions clear as day.
And it broke him.
He was only glad that the night ended the way it did, otherwise he probably would have flown him, Jimmy and Lois into the sun if they’d accidentally hurt you.
A little after finishing your cookie, Superkitten, the cat Clark still remembered saving a couple of years ago, finally moved his spot and graced him with his attention. He sniffed him at first, looked at him suspiciously before continuing his thorough sniffing.
“He is trying to figure out where you’ve been and what you smell like,” you explained to him. Clark felt his heart settle the way it always did when he heard your voice.
“He’s a nosy little thing,” he replied.
“It’s strange, because he’s usually not. There must be something about you that intrigues him enough to get him moving.”
Clark lifted an eyebrow at that, giving his attention back to the slightly obese orange cat who was sniffing his socks now. He was a slip of a thing, really, when he saved him. Too weak, too small to move, to even notice the piece of concrete that was about to kill him. And now, happy and fat and serene and lazy because he knew he had the best owner in the world. No, Clark was not jealous of a stupid cat.
Maybe Superkitten remembered him too. It wouldn’t surprise him. After all, cats often saw things human couldn’t.
“Maybe he just knows I’m special.”
You snorted. Even your snort was endearing, a work of art. “Don’t flatter yourself, Clark. He must smell food on you, that’s all.”
He bent down slightly, telegraphing his movements so that the cat had time to move if he didn’t want to be touched, and he started scratching him softly under his chin. Superkitten started purring almost instantly.
He definitely remembered.
When he looked back at you, you were watching them with a strange look on your face.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Nothing,” you replied. You were being honest, he could tell. “It’s just… I think I’m still trying to wrap my head around all of this. I need time to process change. Everything feels a bit surreal. I always have a difficult time with reality, especially after dark. Everything feels like a dream.”
“A good dream, I hope.”
“Yes. But a dream nonetheless. Something that ends the moment you open your eyes.”
“I’ll still be here, tomorrow morning, when you wake up, when you open your eyes.”
“I hope so,” you replied. “I’m already getting used to the fact that you’re here. I would be upset if you disappeared.”
Clark Kent would rather die a thousand deaths than hurt you.
He wanted to kiss you, hold you. Anything to ease the worry off your eyebrows, to show you that he was here, there and now and for as long as you wanted him.
“Does this mean we’re boyfriend and girlfriend?” you ask, and the changement of subject is so jarring it leaves Clark a bit dazed, before he felt his entire body flush at your words. His entire being was attuned to you.
“I, uh, yes, I mean, definitely yes, if you wanted. I was waiting to ask you officially once we’ve had our first date but… this definitely works too.”
You smiled. “Okay. I know labels aren’t for everyone but they help me.”
He nodded. “Anything you need.”
“Should we kiss now?”
God, yes, he wanted to say. “Do you want us to kiss?”
“Yes. I’ve always wondered what it would feel like to kiss you.”
He was lucky he didn’t need his heart to live because it always skipped beats around you. You wondered what it would feel like to kiss him? He wanted to know when and where and why, and what he can do again to make you wonder that again.
“You did?” he asked, voice hoarse. Tell me more, tell me everything. Tell me every single thought you’ve ever had about me.
“Yeah. Mostly when you eat something I’ve baked. I keep wondering how it would taste on your lips, if it would make it better, sweeter.”
He smiled. “I just had one of your cookies. Want a taste?”
“Can I?” you asked.
Of course. Anything. You could do anything to me.
He nodded.
And then your lips were on his. Tentative at first, always soft. He can feel your hands on your bed, fingers grasping your bed sheets, your shoulders angling towards him, your head tipping slightly back so you could reach him.
And Clark felt like he was reborn. You were the sun and he was the sunflower, chasing the sun rays on your lips and the warmth of your body.
He didn’t know how; he certainly didn’t think it, but somehow you were closer, knees close to his thigh, and his hands were on yours and he’s lifting you gently until you’re straddling his thighs and through it all, the kiss hasn’t been broken once.
He could keep going like this forever, but he knew you needed oxygen.
You were focused like you did on an article when everything else in the world disappeared, and you forgot how to even blink or take a breath.
He broke the kiss reluctantly.
“Breathe, sweetheart.”
You took a huge breath. Your pupils were so wide and dark they ate up your irises. Your eyes looked like black holes Clark would willingly get swept into.
“Wow,” you said.
Clark felt the same way he did whenever he helped someone and they looked at him with gratitude. Pride bloomed in his chest. He did that. You liked his kiss so much you forgot how to breathe.
“How was it?” he asked even if he already knew, because he was selfish and greedy and full of himself.
“I got distracted,” you replied. “By your kiss. I forgot to taste my cookie and compare.”
Clark couldn’t keep the smugness out of his face even if he could. “Let’s kiss again,” he offered, like he was doing you a favor. “You can try again.”
If you think about it…. the acronym KYS isn’t saying “kill yourself,” it’s saying Kill Your Self. Three words. As in, kill the concept of the “Self” - your consciousness’s perception that it is an individual, that it has one meaningful isolated identity that is “you,” that it is not but a droplet in the grand ocean of interconnected souls of all living beings in this universe. I think this is beautiful. Embrace ego death and become one with everything. Everyone should KYS
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