marli

You head back to what you were doing before Hughie’s interruption, unloading the takeout you'd brought onto the table. In the midst of placing the burgers and fries and various condiments in the center, you hear the muffled sound of an engine pull up outside and then fizzle off. Car doors slamming follow accompanied by some voices. If you'd been paying attention, you might have realized an additional person chatted along with your expected two.

But you don't catch that until the door swings open. Before you can look, the deep baritone slices across the space right into your ears.

"So, is she part of your team too?" the man asks.

You freeze. Your heart drops into your stomach. It's almost as if your body has a biological reaction to that low, rumbly way of speaking. You recognize it anywhere. It played over speakers and filled your bedroom most nights of the week when you were younger. The face it belonged to had been plastered across every surface that could hold a poster.

But it can't be his. He's been dead since before you were born. For some odd reason, your mind must have decided today would be a fun day to play tricks on you. To make you think the man of your teenage dreams had been resurrected and brought to you through some sort of star-crossed luck.

You shake your head and swallow down the ridiculous idea before turning to face them. But when you do, he is right there.

Soldier Boy stands between your teammates in all his glory, his brows raised as he assesses you. He sports modern civilian clothes rather than his uniform. It's kind of off-putting to see him in something so current, but the discrepancy doesn't keep your heart from racing. Every other part of him looks just like he used to on your tv screen. His features are still perfectly sculpted. His hair sits on his head soft as ever.

You honestly think you might faint. Your knuckles grip the back of a chair to the point of cramping as you stare at him like he'd risen from the grave right before your very eyes.

"Is she mute or something?" he asks next, still looking unimpressed with you.

Hughie glances between you and him in confusion, not understanding what's stolen your words away. But on the opposite side of Soldier Boy, Butcher eyes you with a small smirk on his face. He shrugs off his coat and hangs it on the wall before walking over to you and patting your shoulder.

"She talks. Must be feeling a bit shy 'round a stranger," he says.

The physical contact seems to snap you out of your little starstruck daze. You straighten up and shrug his hand off.

"I- I'm not shy," you stutter and smooth your clothes out. "I just um... I think I recognize you from like some old movies my mom used to like. Caught me off guard. Sorry."

A shaky breath expels from your lungs, and you hope the cover-up is enough to stave off any further questions. Luckily, that seems to be true as a grin spreads across his face.

"Your mom, huh? She still around by chance?"

You bristle at the sleazy way he asks the question. It's ridiculous to feel jealous over his interest in a lie you made up, but you still feel it prickling at you.

"No," you answer before turning back to the table to empty the rest of the fast food bag.

You shoot a glare at Butcher who's still grinning at you. Of course. This was why he hadn't told you. It wasn't part of his normal failure to consider anyone else's feelings or his typical manipulative ways. He did this to fuck with you.

He was the only one who knew about your soft spot for Soldier Boy. Though, soft spot was an understatement. Attachment might have been more appropriate. Undying love and devotion also good possibilities.

You adored the guy. Part of your lie had been true, you'd gotten it from your mother. She introduced you to his movies and showed you all the tv appearances she'd taped. You inherited her small collection of posters and t-shirts, and styled your room to reflect your Soldier Boy centered world. Eventually, your obsession superseded the one she experienced in her younger years. That was probably because her love for Soldier Boy fizzled out not too long later when she met your father. Yours stayed strong as you kept to yourself and focused on getting through school.

You'd confessed all of this to your team leader one night after too many drinks. Years had passed between now and the height of your obsession, so your drunken-self figured it was fine. The information came out hiccuped amongst a flood of giggling. You had found it so funny, that you had been so hot for a supe when now, your entire life revolved around taking them down.

Honestly you thought, or at least hoped, that Butcher hadn't cared enough to remember it. But clearly you were wrong.

The four of you sit down to eat the food you bought. You're across from Hughie while Butcher takes the seat opposite Soldier Boy. He obviously finds it amusing to dangle the other man in front of you, taunting you with what he knows you want but will never admit to.

You try your hardest not to stare, but it's a challenge. You're not eating much. Your appetite pretty much vanished with the shock of his arrival. Instead you rest your cheek on the heel of your palm, attempting to keep your eyes on the table and not his face.

The whole thing is just too weird. It's like you've been transported to the fantasy world you used to imagine to fall asleep. In there, Soldier Boy, or Ben as you called him in your dreams, went everywhere with you. He took you to the mall, accompanied you to the family gathering you didn't wanna go to, sat beside you on the bench at the park while you listened to music alone. Imaginary Ben stroked your hair when you failed a test, told you he loved you when you cried, and rubbed your stomach when you had cramps.

He was always there for you in those years, filling the void everyone else's lack of attention left. 

That was until he started to fade away. He popped up less and less as you adapted to life and found other people to fill your time. And then one day he just wasn't there anymore. You strolled through the mall with your friends. You went to see your family without anyone on your arm. You sat on the bench alone.

You outgrew the posters and the t-shirts. It all went into a storage bin tucked away in your closet. He went with it. Not thrown away, but no longer a part of your days. Looking back, it feels like you had two different lives — the one when you loved Soldier boy and the other where you remembered him.

But he's actually here now, sitting a foot away from you. Only everyone else can see this version of him, and he writes his own dialogue. Somehow you're just supposed to pretend like it's normal for you.

The guys chatter amongst themselves, but you barely hear it. You consider asking Butcher if you can leave. You'd do damn near anything else to get out of this situation. Your younger self would probably slap you across the face, absolutely maim you for fumbling your chance with him, but you just can't take it. It's like he's radiating humiliation and shame that projects only onto you.

Before you can speak up though, Butcher and Hughie rise from the table. You look up at them, desperation glimmering over your irises.

"Sorry, love. You're on soldier-sittin' duty for the next few hours," Butcher tells you as he goes to grab his coat.

"It's just until we get back," Hughie adds, sensing your discomfort with the situation.

Pouting and rising from your chair, you follow after them. You ignore Hughie and stare right at Butcher putting on his trench coat. "Can I come with you instead? Please?" you ask.

"Why? Thought you would be excited to get some one-on-one time with your-" he starts but you cut him off.

"It's too weird," you whisper. "Plus, he’s not gonna listen to me anyways. Can I please come with you?"

"'Fraid not," he tuts. "This one's for me and Hughie. You'll be fine for a couple hours."

"Butcher," you say, on the verge of begging.

But he holds no sympathy for you. Hughie gives you a kinder look. "Just put on the tv. He seemed pretty interested in filling in his gaps about the world on the drive here."

You weakly nod, watching them gather their remaining things before departing. Their absence leaves you and him alone in the room. It's quiet except for the crinkling of his wrapper and the thundering beat of your heart.

Turning back towards him, you force yourself to return to the room and clean up the other trash Butcher and Hughie had left behind. You gather the greasy papers while trying to keep your hands steady. They're shaking pretty bad, but moving them disguises it. At least you hope so. You don't want him seeing how nervous you are. It's stupid and pointless, but a small piece of you still wants to look cool and collected in front of him.

When you finish, you head over to the small couch that sits against the wall. You can feel his eyes on you. One thing you realize now that your juvenile fantasies failed to account for was that you really had no clue what to talk about with him. What was there to say to someone born nearly a hundred years ago? What could you bring up when he'd missed the last forty years of life? You decide to fill the silence with what Hughie had suggested.

"Do you wanna watch tv?" you ask.

"Not really, but what else is there to do in this shit hole," he says and shrugs.

You nod, reaching for the remote and flicking the screen to life. The first station is on a commercial break. You switch it to the next which is playing a basketball game. Finally, you get to the numbers playing movies and scroll through to find a good one.

While you occupy yourself with the television, he stands from his chair and heads in your direction. He plops down on the couch next to you, spreading his thighs and draping his arm across the back of the sofa. You keep your eyes locked on the screen ahead. There’s no way you’re gonna look over at his open lap. If you do that, you won’t be able to fight off the heat that keeps trying to rise into your cheeks.

You can still feel him looking at you though. The constant weight of his curiosity makes it hard not to shift around in your seat. Your thumb keeps tapping through the channels until you come across one showing something you recognize. It takes you a few seconds to place it, but as soon as you do, you go to skip it.

Before you can, he straightens up. "Wait- what's this? This looks familiar," he says, eyes narrowing.

You glance over at him, blinking a few times before giving an answer. "Um yeah... it's the remake of Red Thunder that came out a few years ago," you explain. You work hard to keep your voice even.

He looks over at you, astounded. "Remake? What do you mean remake? They just did it over again?"

You nod. "Yeah, y'know. Like how Scarface is a remake of the old one from the thirties... Like that."

He scoffs. "They tried to remake my movie?" he asks, still in disbelief. He examines the tv again. "Which one's supposed to be me?"

You wait a few seconds, looking for the updated version of him. "Um... that one," you say and point to the younger actor dressed in Soldier Boy gear.

He laughs, the sound booming across the room. "That guy? That's who they chose to play me?" he mocks. "Jesus, if that's the type of man you kids think a hero is no wonder the world is in the state it's in."

"Yeah..." you say, a little smile rising to your lips. Your nerves begin to settle. This isn't so bad when you keep your mind off your feelings… even if he does talk a little bit like your grandfather. "I like the original way better," you continue.

"Oh do you now?” he asks. That start of a smirk on his face is nearly audible.

"Mhm. This one is just kind of boring," you answer, eyes flitting between him and the screen. "They took all the romance stuff out, and we're not in the cold war anymore so the bad guys are just some vague, random evil army. Plus, I don't understand why they didn't just use one of Vought's new supes instead of imitating you." 

The words flow easily, just as they did to all your friends when the movie had first come out. You don't have as much trouble expressing yourself when the topic of discussion is one of your favorite subjects.

He nods as if he's genuinely interested in your points before commenting. "I thought your mother was the fan?"

You bite the inside of your cheek, your heart rate picking up again under the spotlight of his attention. It wasn't too big of a slip up. You can play it off like you had with your initial anxiety. Though you can't focus enough to answer while gazing into his cocky eyes, so you look down at your lap.

"She was. But I saw some of your movies too. Doesn't take a genius to know they were better than this stuff," you shrug.

There's a little pause. Your heart beats impossibly faster. But he just chuckles and turns back to the tv. "You sure you've only seen some of my movies? Sounds like you know more than a casual fan," he goads.

Hesitation creeps up on you. Maybe this is your opportunity to tell the truth. You can just confess your thing for him like it's an embarrassing story. Maybe then it won't hold so much power over you and this will be a whole lot easier. Your palms flex against your thighs as you steel yourself.

"Well... more than some. I've seen a lot. I just didn't wanna weird you out or anything," you admit, doing your absolute best to seem casual. Maybe they should give you the Oscar they never offered your beloved.

"There you go. Be honest," he praises, and you think you feel something throb between your legs. You glance up at him for a second before your eyes drop back down. He shakes his head. "It doesn't ‘weird me out.’ I'm used to the attention y'know. I lived with it longer than you've been alive."

"Yeah, but I didn't want things to be uncomfortable. Make you think I was like obsessed or something."

"Well are you like obsessed or something?’ he teases. Something in his tone tells you he already knows the answer.

"No," you deny immediately.

"It would make sense if you were. It'd explain why you're so nervous," he says, his voice smooth as polished marble.

"I'm not nervous," you defend.

"C'mon, sweetheart. You can't look at me for more than a second, and I can hear your heart beating faster than a baby bunny runnin' from a wolf."

You practically swoon when he calls you sweetheart, but you force your eyes up and onto his. No matter how many butterflies erupt in your stomach, you're intent on being professional. That little childish crush is a thing of the past, you're sure of it. You're an adult now with a real passion for your job.

"It's just that you're kind of intimidating," you reason. "It's weird seeing a movie star in person."

"A movie star? You flatter me."

Rolling your eyes, an involuntary huff slips from your lips. "You know what I mean. It's just different talking to you like in real life and not just seeing you on a screen. That's it."

"Is that all? I don't know if I believe you, honey. I recognize that look on your face," he says.

"What look? I don't have a look," you say.

"No, you do. You have that look I used to get from the girls hanging around outside set. They'd stand there with their little autograph books, waiting to get a glimpse of Soldier Boy," he says, eyes almost twinkling as he reminisces. "Only every time I'd go over to sign something for 'em, they could never get their eyes off their shoes. Always looking down, stumbling over their words. I don't typically go for you younger girls, but it was pretty cute."

You feel your cheeks heating up along with a small smile forming on your lips. Just like that, your commitment to professionalism has started to wane. It's dumb, but you can't help yourself. He basically called you cute. You just count yourself lucky you haven’t started giggling.

"Yep they used to do that too. That little smile," he continues.

He's making you malfunction with only a handful of words. Your head spins, but you're powerless to stop it. You can't help reacting like one of those girls because, inside, part of you is still one of them.

"C'mere, sweetheart," he says next before patting his lap.

You know you shouldn't. If Butcher and Hughie came back and saw you like this, it would be the humiliation of a lifetime. But you can't resist him. It's easy to declare your commitment to acting professional when the situation is only a hypothetical. When it becomes real, presented right before your eyes, it's a different story entirely.

Tentatively, you scoot towards him, eyeing his thighs. His hand comes to your back between your shoulders to urge you along.

"I'm not gonna bite you, bunny," he says with that action-hero smile.

More timidity pumps through you at the repetition of that term. You find the courage to close the rest of the gap and crawl into his lap. His arms welcome you, shifting you around on his thighs into a comfortable position.

"Perfect. Feels better like this, doesn't it?" he says.

That palm on your back strokes up and down. He runs it along the length of your spine, bringing a chill over every area it touches. You keep your gaze on your hands in your lap until his fingers tap beneath your chin and redirect your vision onto him.

"Don't hide those pretty eyes from me. That's how I know what you're feelin’. They give so much away.”

You honestly believe you're seconds away from melting into a puddle, from slumping over against his chest and becoming some boneless rag doll for him to play with. You can only imagine how stupid you look if even half of the lovesickness you feel reflects on your face.

"Tell me — have you ever thought about this before? I bet you have," he murmurs.

Of course he's right. You'd envisioned yourself on this very lap countless times when you were younger. But a part of you still clings to the idea that you should hide how absolutely pathetic you are for him. You shrug.

"I guess..." you answer. The words come out airy, almost as if your voice is getting away from you.

He simply smirks at the reply while rubbing the pad of his thumb back and forth over your chin. "Yeah? You imagined sitting my lap, hm? Dreamed of me holding you close?"

"Something like that," you reply, feeling as though your throat was constricting.

He chuckles at your squeak of a reply. "Well, how do I match up to your dreams? Am I everything you hoped I would be?" he asks. His voice drops, and there's no question about what he wants from you now. Something you would give without hesitation.

"You're doing a pretty good job," you say. You try to adjust yourself to face more towards the tv, but he keeps you pinned in place.

"I haven't really done anything yet," he says.

A little bout of silence rises between you two. Neither of you say anything. The only sound is the hushed chatter of the tv in the background. Despite the lack of conversation, his eyes stay on your face. His fingers caress your cheek before smoothing down to your neck.

"How'd a pretty girl like you get involved with those two jackasses who brought me here anyways?" he asks.

"It's a long story..." you say. Your skin is on fire everywhere his fingers trace. They're working over your throat down onto your collarbone and shoulders. 

"Too long for you to care about right now, yeah?" he asks, completely smug.

You nod though because smug or not, he's correct about that. Recounting how you got involved with Butcher ordinarily wasn't too hard. But in this moment, on his lap, it seems like the effort of a lifetime for your foggy brain.

"You're too soft and sweet for hunting supes," he says. Despite poking fun at you, he remains gentle and soft, careful not to really upset you and break you out of this docile little haze he's got you in.

"It's not so bad,” you say.

"Sure, sure. You're strong and independent, can do anything a man can and all that. I'm just saying-"

Talk talk talk. So much talking, and you can barely focus on a word he's saying. Your eyes are lingering on his lips. They look so soft and smooth. Nothing’s touched them in forty years. He’s definitely noticed your stare. And you know that means you should stop. You can’t though. You want it, and he’s practically offering it up to you.

He continues speaking, however. “- I can think of a few things you’d be much better at. Things that don’t involve your little hands getting bloody.”

“Like what?” you start to ask.

“Maybe something like this.”

That hand on your chin tugs you closer. Before you register what’s happening, his mouth is on yours. Electricity zaps all through your body like a live wire. You lean into it without thinking, pressing closer and molding your lips to his.

He chuckles as your arms slide up to loop around his neck. You swallow up the low, rough sound, not disconnecting from him for a moment. His hand flattens out along your jawline. It allows him to hold you right where he wants you for a series of more kisses, all of which you reciprocate.

“Atta girl,” he mumbles in the brief interval where you’re forced to drawback for breath. “Not so shy now, are ya?”

You shake your head before diving in for more. He receives you by opening his mouth. His tongue gently flicks over your lip. He slides it against your own as things become deeper. The heat inside you no longer holds the sting of shame or embarrassment. It aches now. It burns with pure want, clustering in the pit of your stomach rather than in your face.

He leans back into the sagging couch. His hands ensure you move along with him. With a firm grip on your waist, he boosts you closer and shifts you around so your thighs are parted across his own.

A small whimper leaves you. You can’t help it. Your bodies are even closer now. Your center is pressed right against his lap, right where his cock is. You can’t feel it yet, but the idea is enough to send phantom sensations rippling through you.

You feel his lips curling into a smirk against yours. Those hands leave your waist. They dip lower, sliding across your curves to grip onto the plush flesh of your ass. That gets a real moan out of you. Your head falls back, away from his mouth. He doesn’t let you go too far though. A second later, his affections move to your neck. His kisses are hot and wet, tongue laving over your pulse point and teeth nipping sensitive skin.

Just a few simple touches, and his strength shines through each one. The firmness with which his fingers knead your ass is unlike anyone else you’ve ever felt. You’ve been with muscular guys before, but nothing like this. Strong is too weak a word to describe the undercurrent flowing through his grasp.

You roll your hips down in an exploratory swivel, something faint to see if you could find some friction. He aides you. His fingers tighten around your ass, pushing you down harder and then dragging your core back over his lap. 

You suck in a little gasp.

“That feel good, huh? Your pretty pussy’s getting wet for me, isn’t she?” he asks with another rotation of your hips.

“Y-yeah,” you stutter. You push your upper-half closer to him so that your chest squishes against his own.

To your dismay, he stops you from fully holding on. He nudges you backwards and boosts you off his lap entirely so that you’re standing on your feet. A whine builds at the front of your mouth, but before you can protest, his fingers come to the button on your jeans.

He flicks it open, looking up at you as he yanks your pants down. “Been forty years since I got some tail. Let’s not waste any more time,” he says in explanation.

You nod along and step out of each of your pant legs, kicking the garment aside. You also take your t-shirt off. The fabric lands on top of your discarded jeans. Once you’re left in just your bra and panties, he tugs you back down.

Your bodies come together with a thud. The material of his sweats grazes your tingly inner-thighs. Before you can get back into rutting yourself on him, he runs his palms over your legs. They’re pretty smooth for someone of his age and experience. You always imagined something a little rougher, something that would contrast against the smooth nature of your own flesh. But forty years in a cryo-tank hadn’t given his skin much opportunity to become weathered.

His hands find your ass again, one coming down to give it a quick smack. Your hips jolt in surprise at the sudden sting. He soothes it away by rubbing over the heated area. His fingers dig into your malleable skin harder now that it’s bare to him.

“Skin’s baby-soft,” he murmurs mid-grope. “Been wanting someone rougher to come and mark it up?”

Your eyes flicker over his mocking smirk, heat filling your face. You grind yourself on him again with a whine. It feels so much better with your clothing out of the way. Even though the thin cotton barrier of your panties keeps you from rubbing down on him raw, the material is skimpy enough that it doesn’t impede. Instead it adds a little extra spark to the building pressure between your legs. Your eyes roll towards the back of your head, fluttering as you rock yourself forward and back.

He helps out just like before. His hands rein your movements into a steady rhythm. In between your bodies, his bulge starts to form. With each swipe of your covered cunt across his lap, you feel it becoming more and more prominent; hard and solid right up against your soaked folds.

“Just like that, get yourself ready for me,” he praises with another slap to your backside. “I’ll teach you how to really ride.”

You moan while biting your lip. Your hips work faster on him. Being so close, so lost in his feel and scent, has freed you of your previous trepidation. You’ve lost the ability to be stuck in your head with him like this.

He shifts you over slightly so that you’re lined up with the flat top of his thigh. It makes no difference to you. You keep your hips moving like nothing’s changed, grinding your throbbing clit down onto the firm muscles in his leg.

“Fuck,” you whimper. Your arms wrap over his shoulders once more. You squish your face into the crux of your elbow.

This time he lets you stay. He wraps an arm around you and lazily pats your back. “Good girl. Keep going. I gotcha.” His voice rumbles beside your ear. “Better than any dream, yeah?”

“Mhm,” you whimper. “Fuck- so much better. You- you’re perfect.”

While you continue to pleasure yourself on his leg, he lifts his hips off the couch just enough to push his sweats down towards his knees. He takes his cock out. It’s fully hard now, stiff in his hand as he gives it a few strokes.

You don’t notice at first, so wrapped up in your own bliss. But when he starts pulling you center again, you lift your head and glance down through heavy-lids.

You’d imagined him big, but seeing his cock for real makes you feel like you didn’t imagine big enough. His length is long and moderately thick. It’s flushed for you, the tip shimmery with the slightest bit of pre oozing out.

Your mouth waters. You want to taste him. You want to show him how badly you want it. You want to drop to your knees and think about nothing but how good he fits in your mouth.

But you know you have limited time. Butcher said you had a couple hours, but he’s also unreliable and a liar and purposefully fucking with you today so… you don’t want to take any chances.

He doesn’t seem too eager to have you like that anyways. He gives you a slight boost and pulls the soaked material of your panties to the side. The silky skin of his tip replaces the feeling. He drags himself across your entrance once, twice, and then nudges inside.

Your teeth sink into your lip as your head falls back slightly. You still can’t understand how this is real, but it undeniably is. The feeling of him working himself in, inch by inch, is not a figment of your imagination. That sweet stretch is absolutely real, and it consumes you more with every passing second until your ass is flush against his thighs once more.

He groans. “Shit, that’s good.” The muscles in his jaw flex. “Haven’t felt anything this nice in a longgg fucking time.”

Your walls flutter around him, eliciting another hiss from between his gritted teeth. Every noise he makes feels as good as a physical touch. You can’t get enough of hearing his voice strained with pleasure — pleasure you’re giving him.

You rise on his lap before sinking down. The rhythm is slow to start, a way for both of you to get used to the feeling. His hands squeeze your hips hard enough to bring a little burst of pain. You like it though. You want more of it.

He smacks your ass again. “C’mon, bunny. I know you can do better than that.”

Your hands plant themselves firmly on his shoulders, giving you the leverage needed to go a little faster. You bring yourself up and then down in quicker succession.

“That’s it. Such a good girl. Show daddy what you’ve been dreamin’ about.”

A shudder tears through you. Your muscles feel weak, like the simple string of praise had loosened them up completely. It doesn’t matter though. You start to bounce faster. Your body works with a mind of its own. It doesn’t let you slow down.

He slides in and out easily with how wet you are. Every drag of his cock on your insides is a straight shot of bliss. You feel even better when he grips your jaw and pulls you in for another few kisses. His mouth moves against your own before moving along your jawline to the space below your ear and then onto your neck and collarbone.

“Every inch of you tastes so fucking good. Like cherry pie,” he mumbles. “I’ll have to try out that pussy of yours next.”

“Mhm, fuck,” you whimper.

You keep riding as his teeth nip at one of your bra straps. The noises of your skin on his fill the small motel room. His tight grip on your waist helps you maintain the rhythm, pulling you down hard and boosting you up quick

The tip of his cock bumps up against your g-spot and gets a squeal out of you. Your nails dig into his shoulders as a way of bracing yourself. Neither of you slow down. You stutter slightly, but his hips lift to meet your movements. His fast thrusts strike at that angle over and over until your legs are quivering to the point that it truly feels like they might give out.

Luckily for you, he makes sure you don’t go toppling to the floor. The firm weight of his hands guide you closer to his body. Your weight shifting gives him the leverage to take over pumping in and out of you.

Your cheek hits his shoulder as your head fills with a warm, thick fog. He pounds into that sweet spot inside of you over and over. You can hear him grunting beside your ear, low and strained sounds that have your stomach full of butterflies.

“Pretty, pretty girl. You were worth the wait,” he mumbles alongside another deep thrust.

You whimper, lazily nodding your head against him. “You- mm- you were too.”

Sweet, tight heat coils in your belly. You know release is creeping up on you. Your eyes flutter shut, waiting for it to take over. You don’t notice his hand sliding between your bodies until you feel the pads of his fingertips rubbing at your sensitive clit. Your hips buck into the pleasure, and your walls clamp around him hard.

He lets out a deep laugh that only makes you tighten up more. 

“Yeah, that’s a good girl. I know what you need, babydoll. Let go for me. Let me see how good you look when you cum,” he says.

His fingers keep swiping at the little bud between your legs. Syrupy shots of bliss shoot through you, pushing you along, taking you to the edge. It’s no time at all before a round of shudders rack through you. Your arms latch around his neck while your thighs clamp on either side of his. Embarrassing strings of whines trickle into the air.

“I- I- fuck,” you whimper. “Feels so- so fucking good, god.”

The last word to leave your lips is pitchy and broken. Your release cuts it short. Moans replace any coherent praise you could have given him. You bury your face in his neck and pant against the warm skin. Vaguely, you can feel his arms tightening around you. One of his hands rests between your shoulders while the other stays at your waist. He keeps pumping up into you, fucking you through each and every wave of orgasmic euphoria.

He’s less clingy as he finishes. His hips snap up into you a few more times before he groans loud and deep. He maintains the solid grip he has on you, hands still clamped around your waist as he spills inside. His chest rises and falls under your own, puffing quick with the exertion of finishing.

Your eyes stay closed for another several seconds as the room goes quiet and your nerves stop buzzing. His thumb lazily drags back and forth in tiny lines along the base of your spine. That almost makes you shiver more than anything you did on top of him.

With the fog of lust clearing from your mind, you separate from his chest and sit up straight. He’s relaxed as can be, head tilted back against the couch, watching you with the same lazy appraisal you’re giving him. Now that your entire body isn’t thrumming with want for him, he doesn’t seem so intimidating. You know that’s not the truth, that he could still crush any of your bones with minimal effort if he so desired — but in a weird way, you just don’t feel like you’re perpetually looking up at him now. It’s not negative, but the mystique is gone. The man of your dreams doesn’t exist anymore. Soldier Boy is flesh and blood, sweaty and spent beneath you.

You roll off of him to the other side of the couch. You’re pretty sure not much time has passed, but you don’t want to risk anything. You’re gonna be well and dressed when Butcher and Hughie come back. The two of them will be none the wiser that anything out of the ordinary occurred.

He stretches for a moment before adjusting his own appearance.

“Gotta say, I’m in no rush to do whatever it is they thawed me out for now. You’re much more fun.” His voice breaks the silence.

A small smile cracks on your face. “Yeah… think I’ll be pretty distracted too.” You look over your shoulder at him.

Little comments bounce back and forth between the two of you with nothing substantial really being said. That’s ok with you. The fact that you really just fucked Soldier Boy has left your mind void of conversational skills.

After the two of you are back to looking plain as you had been before, your collective attention returns to what’s left of the Red Thunder remake still playing on the tv.

“Who’s the head honcho nowadays? Was it Homelander they said?” he asks you. “Guy must not be able to get it done if they’re remaking this old shit.”

You laugh softly and nod. “Yeah… I’m sure Butcher will tell you allll about him when they get back.”

The two of you watch the remainder of the movie, with you chattering here and there about things you don’t like or little facts you know. It’s nice in a weird way. Feels almost like something you would’ve dreamed up all those years ago.

Your little bubble of fantasy bursts when the car doors slam not too far from the motel room entrance. You sit up a little straighter, smooth out your hair a bit, trying to make sure you look totally normal before Hughie and Butcher walk in.

Soldier Boy makes no such effort. His eyes rest on the tv while his legs stay spread and his posture slightly slouched.

The door creaks open and shuts just as quick. Hughie enters first with Butcher right behind him. You keep your focus on the tv. But even though you’re not looking, you can feel Butcher’s curious stare.

“We got everything we needed, so we should be good to go for tonight,” Hughie says, not giving the two of you any real thought.

You nod and take the chance to look over at him walking towards the table all of you sat at earlier. In your sweep of the room, you catch Butcher’s gaze lingering on the two of you. 

“Seems like everything went well here,” he says. You know from that lilt in his tone the words aren’t as innocent as the untrained ear would believe. You know he wants to poke and prod and expose your new dirty little secret, but you won’t let him.

You shrug. “There wasn’t a ton to do here, so yeah,” you huff like it’s obvious.

His boots squish on the cheap carpeting as he takes a few steps closer. 

“So just smooth sailin’. Nothing out of the ordinary happened?”

You roll your eyes. Does he somehow know what you did? Is he sick enough to have left cameras or something?

“Yeah. Everything’s the same as you left it, boss.”

He laughs, brief and short, a prelude to his killing strike.

“’s funny cause I don’t remember your shirt bein’ on inside-out when we left.”

Your eyes zip down only to find he’s right. The seams on your shirt puff out as they do on the interior side of the fabric. Heat rushes into your face. You grab the lumpy throw pillow jammed between your hip and the couch and chuck it in his direction.

“Shut up,” you huff as you take off towards the bathroom, swinging the door shut behind you.

His laughter carries after you, and there’s a bit of Soldier Boy’s as well, lower and deeper in timbre.

“What can I say? She’s a super-fan.” His voice rumbles through the thin walls.

You want to be offended, to go back out there and tell him and Butcher off, to not put up with any of their shit. But hearing him talk about you in that sugar-coated, condescending tone of voice, openly acknowledging he’d been with you… it wouldn’t be honest. 

the team splits across three rooms because keeping everyone together makes the motel look suspicious and because butcher says you need an hour to regroup before anybody starts making decisions with adrenaline still rattling around inside their skulls. 

you end up with soldier boy.

you close the door behind you and throw the deadbolt. then the chain. after, you check the gap in the curtains because motion feels better than stopping, and stopping means noticing the way your body still feels wrong. too alert. too hot beneath your skin. every sound comes in sharper than it should—the ice machine coughing several doors down, a car pulling into the lot, the faint scrape of a key against metal from the room beside yours.

your pulse hasn’t settled since the safehouse. neither has the strange pressure behind your eyes.

you wipe your cheek with the sleeve of your jacket and look at the faint red smear it leaves behind. barely enough blood to matter. annie had checked your pupils before you left the van, fingers firm under your chin while she asked whether you felt dizzy and you lied badly enough that her mouth tightened.

you need water. sleep. maybe several hours of silence. you need to speak to butcher before soldier boy starts asking questions you’re not sure how to answer.

the thought arrives a second too late.

“what the fuck did you do to me?” his voice cuts through the room from behind you.

you stop with one hand still pressed against the curtain. slowly, you turn. soldier boy stands near the foot of the bed. he hasn’t taken off his jacket. hasn’t set his shield down properly either; it rests against the edge of the mattress close enough to grab in a second, leather straps hanging loose against the faded bedspread. his shoulders are rigid beneath his shirt. jaw locked. eyes fixed on you with an intensity that makes the stale little room feel several feet smaller than it is.

you breathe in through your nose. “ben—”

“don’t.” the word lands fast. sharp enough to stop you before you take the first instinctive step toward him.

you stay where you are. “we had to leave.”

“wasn’t what i asked.”

“black noir found the safehouse.”

“i heard you the first time.”

“then you know why we couldn’t stay there.”

his mouth pulls into something humorless. “yeah. i know what you wanted.”

the parking-lot light catches the side of his face when he shifts, leaving the rest in shadow. he looks angry. soldier boy wears anger well enough that it’s become the closest thing he owns to a neutral expression. but there’s something beneath it now that you haven’t seen directed at you before. something meaner than fear because he hates himself for feeling it.

your stomach knots. “i was trying to get everyone out safely.”

“so you told me to leave.”

“you weren’t listening.”

“i was listening just fine.”

“you wanted to stay and fight noir in a safehouse full of people who didn’t have time to prepare for that.”

“it was my choice.”

the words come down flat and heavy between you. you blink. “what?”

“my choice,” he repeats. “you don’t get to make it for me.”

your throat tightens. “i wasn’t trying to—”

“bullshit.”

you flinch before you can stop yourself. not enough to give him the satisfaction of pretending he scared you. enough that his eyes catch the movement.

soldier boy laughs once beneath his breath. no humor. none. “all those little errands with butcher… sneaking off with hughie. closed doors every goddamn time i walk into a room.” he steps closer, slow enough that the space has time to change around him. “that’s what you’ve been doing? figuring out how to put me on a leash?”

the line hits harder than it should. maybe because you know where it came from. maybe because you stood in front of butcher weeks ago with your bruised knuckles curled at your sides and told him soldier boy wasn’t a weapon he could manage with a freezer. maybe because you meant every word.

“no.”

“right.”

“i didn’t know that would happen.”

his expression shutters. “you didn’t know.”

“no.”

“but butcher did.”

you hesitate. wrong. too small. barely a pause. still, it is enough.

his eyes harden. “there it is.”

“ben, listen to me.”

“don’t fucking tell me to listen.”

you take one step toward him before you think better of it, hand lifting automatically. not to restrain him. not to order anything. just to touch his arm because touching him has become habit in the weeks since the gym wall. a palm against his bicep. fingers catching his wrist. your cheek against his chest in the dark when neither of you knows what to say.

soldier boy steps back before your fingers reach him. not violently. worse. his whole body recoils from the possibility of your touch with a quick, instinctive movement that leaves your hand suspended uselessly in the space between you.

for a second, neither of you speaks.

your fingers curl slowly into your palm. “i’m not going to do anything.”

“you already did.”

“it wasn’t intentional.”

“my legs moved!” his voice changes around the sentence. rougher now. scraped down to something you almost wish he’d hide beneath anger again. 

he looks past you for half a second, not at the curtain, not at the parking lot behind it. farther. somewhere colder.

“had a guy on my team,” he says. “crawled inside people’s heads and left ’em trapped in whatever ugly shit their brain could come up with. nightmares. memories. didn’t matter. once he got in, your body stopped belonging to you until somebody pulled you out or you rotted where you stood.”

you swallow. “ben—”

“i know what it feels like when somebody else gets their hands on the controls.”

russia sits beneath the words without needing to be named. the chamber. the restraints. the hiss of gas. decades of waking up into somebody else’s decision and having no way to stop what happens next.

your chest pulls tight. “i’m not them.”

his eyes snap back to yours. “then what are you?”

that hurts because you don’t know yet. not fully. you know about the vial. the ugly green liquid. butcher setting it on the table between you and hughie with an expression too casual to be trusted. you know hughie looking at it like he remembers exactly how it felt to become powerful enough to stop being afraid for a few hours and hates that some part of him misses it. you know the quick burn of the needle. the cold rush under your skin. the headache that arrived twenty minutes later and the metallic taste crawling over your tongue when panic spiked at the sight of noir behind you. you know your voice sounded wrong when you told soldier boy to leave. heavier. doubled for half a second by something that didn’t sound human enough to belong inside your throat.

you didn’t have time to understand it then. you barely have time now. “i took something,” you say carefully.

his jaw tightens. “from butcher.”

“yes.”

“what?”

you look toward the door. the closed bolt. the chain. the narrow room suddenly holding far too much. “i need to talk to him first.”

soldier boy’s face goes cold. “wrong answer.”

he moves toward the door. you step in front of it before he reaches you. not close enough to touch. enough to block the handle.

“move.”

“not until you calm down.”

“move.”

“ben—”

“get out of my way.”

you shake your head once. “you’re not going across that walkway ready to tear butcher apart while everyone is still trying to figure out whether noir followed us here.”

“butcher gave you something that crawled into my fucking body.”

“i know.”

“do you? because from where i'm standing, it don't like it.” 

he takes another step. you hold your ground.

the old version of this would almost be familiar: soldier boy crowding your space, your chin lifting because you refuse to give him the satisfaction of watching you retreat, the two of you turning every conversation into a collision because neither of you knows how to step around anything cleanly. 

but nothing about this carries the charged, almost-playful rhythm training taught you to trust. no opening he expects you to use. no restraint hidden beneath the pressure of him. just anger. just the fact that he doesn't want you touching him.

“last chance,” he says.

your pulse kicks harder. “you need to stop acting like i did this to hurt you.”

“you don’t get to tell me how to act.”

“i’m trying to explain.”

“you’re trying to keep me in a room.”

“because you’re furious.”

“smart girl.”

“because butcher is across the walkway and you look ready to kill him.”

“smarter than you look.”

his hand reaches for your shoulder—not to hit. not to hurt—you know that even with adrenaline pouring too loudly through you. he intends to move you aside. simple. effortless. the same way he always could before. one hand closing around your upper arm, shifting your body out of the path because the difference between his strength and yours has never been a debate worth having.

your own hand catches his wrist and you shove. the movement happens faster than thought. one second, soldier boy's in front of you, solid and immovable and furious enough that the entire room feels built around him. the next, the strength inside your body surges upward in one sharp, unnatural rush, answering the panic before you can understand what it's doing.

his balance breaks. actually breaks. his boots scrape hard against the carpet. his shoulder slams into the dresser with enough force to shove it sideways against the wall. the lamp rattles violently. the water glass tips over and rolls toward the edge before falling to the floor, splashing across the cheap carpet. the framed print above the bed swings crooked on its nail.

soldier boy catches himself with one hand braced against the dresser.

silence.

you stare at him.

your palm tingles where it pressed against his wrist. your breath comes shallow and quick. the rush beneath your skin remains there, humming through your muscles with an intensity that feels impossible and sickeningly good at the same time.

“i—”

soldier boy looks down at the hand braced against the dresser. then toward the few feet of space you put between you. then back at you. 

the surprise leaves his expression slowly. what replaces it is worse.

“ben,” you say.

he straightens.

“i didn’t mean—”

“what the fuck did you take?”

“let me explain.”

“start talking.”

“i will. just—”

his laugh is short and vicious. “just what? calm down? sit? stay?”

your stomach drops. he starts toward you. not slow this time. you know him well enough to understand he still isn't trying to hurt you. beneath the panic. beneath the noise. beneath the image of him shoved backward by your hands and the terrible certainty that you no longer understand the limits of your own body.

but you also know how quickly his anger can become something larger than either of you. you remember the glow under his shirt. the pressure in the gym. the wall breaking beside your head. he closes the distance.

your palm hits his arm. “stop.” your voice changes. the word leaves your mouth carrying something underneath it. a second note laid beneath the first, deeper and heavier, vibrating faintly through the air with enough force that the room seems to tighten around the sound.

soldier boy stops. mid-step. completely.

his boot remains planted against the carpet. shoulders locked. one hand half-curled at his side. breath caught halfway through his chest as if his body has become a photograph of the motion it intended to finish. only his eyes move.

they find yours. betrayal floods them so quickly it makes you feel physically ill.

“ben,” you breathe.

his jaw strains. a muscle jumps near his temple. his fingers twitch once at his side, small and violent, fighting against an order his body has already accepted. the stillness isn’t peaceful. every line of him looks pulled tight against invisible restraints.

you pull your hand away as if the contact burned you. “i’m sorry.”

his nostrils flare. one shoulder shifts. barely. then again. the command trembles under the force of his resistance. you can see it happening. feel it somehow in the pressure behind your eyes, in the sharp ache blooming at the bridge of your nose. soldier boy drags one foot forward by less than an inch, body moving through the order with the ugly effort of someone forcing himself through concrete.

you step backward. he moves again. one small, furious step. his jaw unlocks with visible strain. “don’t—” the word scrapes out of him. “fucking—” 

the last word breaks apart in his throat. his whole body jerks forward. not cleanly. not easily. nothing about it looks like freedom at first. it looks like a man tearing himself through barbed wire made of his own nerves. his shoulders shake once, hard, and the tendons in his neck stand out so sharply they look painful. sweat has broken at his hairline. his breathing turns harsh, ragged, every inhale dragged through clenched teeth while the command fights to keep him where you put him.

your hand lifts before you know what you’re doing. panic moves faster than thought. faster than guilt. your fingers reach for his arm because some stupid part of you still thinks contact can steady what your voice has already broken. then you stop yourself—your hand freezes halfway through the air. the word is there. already forming behind your teeth. stop. one syllable. quick. useful. monstrous.

you clamp your own hand over your mouth. the sound that catches in your throat dies against your palm, small and strangled. your eyes burn. not from tears. from pressure. from fear. from the ugly, electric thing still running beneath your skin and waiting for your voice to give it shape.

soldier boy sees it. even through the command. even through the brutal effort of breaking himself out of it, his eyes flick to your hand over your mouth. 

he forces another step. the carpet bunches slightly beneath his boot. his hand curls into a fist, then opens, then curls again as if his own fingers have to remember who they belong to. his whole body trembles with the effort. not weakness—never that—but strain so violent it almost looks like pain.

then something snaps in him. soldier boy lurches forward, dragging in one brutal breath as the command breaks apart around him. the force of it doesn’t send him at you. it sends him down.

his knee hits the carpet first. then the other. the sound is dull and heavy in the motel room, louder than it should be. his hand slams against the floor to catch himself, broad palm pressed into the ugly patterned carpet, shoulders rising and falling hard. sweat shines along his temple. his jaw’s clenched so tightly you can see it jump.

soldier boy is on his knees. because of you.

your hand stays clamped over your mouth. for a second, you can’t move. can’t breathe properly. you just stand there with fingers pressed against your lips, staring at the impossible shape of him on the floor. soldier boy, who doesn’t bow, doesn’t bend, doesn’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing what hurts. 

he drags a breath in. then another. each one rougher than the last. the command is gone now, but the room still feels full of it. 

slowly, he lifts his head. his eyes find yours.

there’s rage there. of course there is. but under it, it’s something worse than rage. betrayal. violation. the black, horrible certainty of a man who has just learned that your voice can turn his body into a locked door from the inside.

when he speaks, the words come out low and hoarse, stripped down to the bone. “what did you take?”

your palm trembles over your mouth. you lower it slowly, terrified of your own voice now. terrified of what shape a sentence might become if your fear sharpens the wrong syllable. for half a second, you think about lying. not because you want to. because the truth feels big enough to split the motel room open.

but his eyes don’t leave yours. and you can’t handle one more secret. your voice comes out small this time. human. 

“temp v.”

In an enclosed room far away from the tracks, Clark Kent could almost smell degrading rubber against asphalt. Curved screens on the wall in front of him spelled out live data from your car: a metallic blue beauty made of carbon and pure drive. Engines roared, somehow not loud enough to silence his thoughts, and right now, he was caught in a headwind spiral.

None of the active cameras showed your face, but he could see the shit-eating grin on it.

After half a race season on your team, Clark has learned to read your patterns like he did the mathematics of a running engine—something about the way you gripped the steering wheel told him you were taking this easy, as if Turn 4 wasn’t designed to bait a racer’s easily-inflatable ego.

And speaking of ego, you didn’t just possessed it. That grin he pictured may as well be printed next to the dictionary definition for the word cocky, despite being the woman you are.

Ballsy, too. Clark almost rolled his eyes at the way you straddled the apex of that tight line: perfect, but pushing the speed limit for that kind of bend.

Still, you overtook smoothly.

Dangerous on the circuit, probably even more off it. That was who you were.

Just his luck: you also happened to be the most important person in his life right now.

Clark Kent’s job as chief race engineer was to orchestrate your wins from behind the curtain, and he took pride in doing so.

To be fair, you were quite good at winning: the leaderboard showed your name in the top five along with the greats—the employ of some he’d left in the past for more challenging routes… and less challenging people. You’d started the first three GPs with extremely modest points finish, which you more than made up for in the next few.

Your position had went up dramatically after. Stats from GPs eight, nine, and ten had been nothing short of spectacular. Beautiful curves on his screen—of data, of course, not your outline in that tracksuit.

The thing with you, though? You were greedy.

Before lights out, he’d advised you to keep the pace this time. No going off-script. No surprises.

“The remaining twelve races are more than enough for you to climb,” he’d said. “Remember, you get no points for crashing.”

You’d pouted, and it almost scared him to admit that, for once, he understood.

Because it was Silverstone. All 18 turns and 52 laps of it.

You were racing in the historic circuit that birthed the sport some seventy years ago.

Of course you craved to win it, child-like pout or no. And it wasn’t your fault, not when your whole life had been geared to do exactly this: prestige racing.

Nobody got to compete at the top rung of Formula One without being groomed to survive breakneck speeds and intense lateral forces—the g-force of a simple corner alone could probably dislocate your internal organs if your seat wasn’t secured right. Training wasn’t just requirement, it was survival. That Red Bull driver leading the pack, three positions ahead of you? He raced Albert Park Circuit before getting his license for regular driving.

What got Clark on board was that plain-faced, almost naive ambition of yours.

The grin he’d internally labeled shit-eating was the very same that stoked a fire in him when you first met—a meeting meant for negotiations, except he’d made his mind up almost as soon as the words left your mouth.

“Been a long time since a woman won any Grand Prix,” you’d smiled wide: a sunny curve of your lips that had carved itself into his mind ever since, “Are you gonna help me change that, Kent?”

One deafening zip, then another; Clark snapped out of his visit down Sector Memory.

A quick glance at the screen showed two more cars ahead, overtaking yours at the late apex.

Aside from racetrack blares, the cockpit was as quiet as the control room—a grace you didn’t usually grant him, because you preferred to abuse the comms, complaining about the rear wing or asking if your second driver was that far behind.

This could only mean one thing.

You were thinking. Undoubtedly about a risky move.

Again, he could tell, even with just your helmet vizor in view.

“You’ll get them at Turn 15. Just hold for now,” he spoke preemptively, stern through the static.

“…Nah-uh.”

There it was—that sing-song way you hummed. A sane person would never sound like that, not when they’re reclined in a death machine going 200 mph.

“I see a window.”

Clark felt his temper rise.

“Hold. It’s too risky,” he hissed. The upcoming turn you talked about saw a top driver collide in a race just last season—a simple brush of wheels that ended with his car barrelling violently into a wall.

Copse Corner, it was called. One letter away from being Corpse Corner. The thought was followed by a bone chill.

“Worth a shot,” you replied. Light. Like you were branching out of your usual coffee order.

Clark dragged a hand down his bespectacled face, watching your dash cam. The response wasn’t unexpected, but good Lord, you were taking position and giving him a heart attack in the same breath.

Another warning in the shape of your name. “I’m telling you—”

You didn’t let him finish.

“High risk, high reward, baby.”

Steering wheel turned to the right just a touch. The front wing tilted slightly in response.

…Just enough to bump into Car Number 5’s rear, sparks flying from the friction.

Nothing happened.

Except physics kicked in half a second later: velocity and weight working with the impact and against you, sending your car and Number 5 out of balance. Number 5 skittered but eventually retained course, no doubt cursing your existence in the radio.

Meanwhile, your back wheels spun, skidding loudly in full-bodied circles as centrifugal force overwhelmed you, tail-spinning your car to a bumpy stop off-track before any real seconds could tick by.

Time seemed to stop. Smoke rose at the tragic ending. A convoy of cars that was once behind you flit noisily past.

Someone on comms muttered a dejected expletive. A junior engineer held his breath, eyes pinned on the screen.

Clark took off his headset.

His fingers were already pinching the bridge of his nose when laughter echoed within the room: melodious, entertained, and fully female.

Yours.

You stepped out of the boxy machine that was the simulator, rolling your shoulders front and back after taking off your helmet, hair tumbling out behind you. Why they’d make you wear one in a simulated session, who knows—maybe to get you to take it seriously, which was obviously not what happened.

The rest of the team who sat around the long table—data analysts and race engineers—rushed to consolidate timing sheets and dissect deltas. These number crunchers had grown accustomed to what came next: the death machine operator and the air traffic controller who worked to postpone her suicide attempts were going to get into an argument. Again.

This was Team Orbital’s version of reality TV. Today’s episode: Angry or Horny? Part 18.

“I told you to hold,” Clark Kent marched towards you, nearly seething. Your twinkling eyes gathered his jaw and neck as you leaned against the back of the machine—funny how he was more tense in those places than you were after laps and laps of your session.

A vein, you thought to yourself, tracing the faint shape of it on the side of his throat. Hot.

Your delightful smile was the complete opposite of his storm cloud.

“I saw an opportunity.”

“It could’ve gotten you killed,” he clipped.

“Relax, Clark, it’s just a sim,” you picked on a blunt nail, not even meeting his eyes.

“A sim designed for you to practice! Not, not—” he huffed, hands gesturing in a poor attempt to express himself, until he settled on, “you can’t keep fooling around like this.”

“You know I very well can. I’ve done this, like, almost twenty times. Got your orders down pat.”

He shot you a look that said oh really?

You launched into a spiel.

“At lap start, speed up till eighth gear flat out through Turn 1 and 2. Brake hard into 3, get back to entry point for the left in 4—”

Under different circumstances, he’d be more impressed of the ease with which you correctly rambled on, but frustration won the fight to pilot his mouth.

“And yet you still don’t listen when I tell you to hold.”

Your eyes snapped back to his and he got to witness it right then and there: the change in your face that he’d learned to read without looking. Most of the time, he watched you through cockpit cameras trained on a shaded vizor.

Maybe that was why being face-to-face with you never stopped feeling like a confrontation—as if whatever he could see was dialed up to a hundred.

For example, this look you were giving him: intense enough to be normal, but sultry in a way that invited heat to crawl up his neck.

“That’s because look really good when you’re mad,” you cooed.

That voice. Of course you had to use that voice on him. If making eye contact with you turned him into stone (Medusa would like a word), hearing you speak melted him right back.

He looked away, fixing his glasses: the one thing he could do to hope that you wouldn’t notice his blush.

You threw your head back into an earnest laugh. Not at him—or maybe it was? He wasn’t sure. He felt silly. Awkward pre-teen puberty silly. Didn’t matter that this wasn’t the first time you’d teased him.

“One more run, then you better not crash when we practice for real,” he murmured. The flight to Heathrow was less than 24 hours away, and he’d bet you hadn’t even packed.

You crossed your arms, looking like you had all the time in the world to torment him.

“You don’t trust your driver, Kent?”

“I usually do, but most of the time, they aren’t as crazy as you.” Not as beautiful, either.

“I’m not crazy,” you hummed, “I just want to win.”

And that was the truth behind all truths, written dead-center in your eyes. That was the flame that drew him in like a moth. Ambition. The one that he’d heard others describe as ‘terrifying’. And they weren’t wrong, but nobody wanted to admit how alluring it was. Clark would be the first to testify: because it was your sheer determination that convinced him to join Team Orbital until the end of this season.

That confidence—and the pretty smile that wrapped around it—was this flying man’s downfall.

“I wanna win Silverstone,” you repeated, gaze softening, resolve anything but.

God smite him if he didn’t help you.

He murmured back a reply.

“You need to be alive to do that.”

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

The Hilton Hotel was hell on scorched earth.

It was the preferred accommodation for those participating in the GP: four stars and many floors of buzzing chaos, just days before the race. Every elevator was swarming with people wearing uniforms and checkered lanyards. The breakfast buffet saw constant streams of execs, all men, their shirts unbuttoned way past propriety. Whenever the hotel staff smiled, it was in a stiff way that told you they were bracing themselves for impact or already going through the worst mid-shift turbulence of their lives.

Smart team managers would have booked out rooms in advance. Team Orbital was one such prepared customer, with the entire twentieth floor reserved for their highest profiles.

Clark’s luck—or lack thereof—might be inversely proportional to the blessings of his superpowers, or so he’d like to believe.

Otherwise, he’d have no logical explanation as to why your room was next to his.

The weather throughout the week was a beautiful, clear blue. Pretty much miraculous by Great Britain standards. It seemed the unexpected sunshine gave everyone an extra shot of dopamine except for the metahuman that literally regenerated under it: Clark walked around like the dark beginnings of a minor twister.

His upset wasn’t because of your constant daredevilry behind the wheel.

As a matter of fact, you’d been a good driver. A great one, even. You were obedient and kept to the playbook he talked you through the headset—even the back-up ones he prepared like a paranoid Marvel scriptwriter.

Which left him with nothing to blame his gloominess on…

…other than the true reason. One he wasn’t ready to admit.

He was upset because you were flirting. With every. Man. Alive.

Exchanging too-friendly small talk with a blonde at the lobby whom he was certain you’d only met once. Smiling at suit-donning silver foxes by the circuit. Who were they, anyway? Rich people spectating, or FIA directors?

But the most displeasure Clark experienced was when you bantered with your second driver.

James Barnes. More boy than man. Just joined Team Orbital at the tail end of last season to fill up an empty seat. He was of legal drinking age despite his pretty face, with an eye color not so dissimilar to Clark’s, except they didn’t have a hard time looking directly at you.

“Don’t do anything stupid, James,” you unzipped your suit, revealing a white tank top underneath (did you have to do that in front of everyone?), “or Mr. Kent is going to be upset with us.”

James was clipping on his helmet for his turn on the track, but it didn’t hide his handsome smirk. His eyes flickered down to your lips for a very obvious second. Clark wished he didn’t catch that.

“With me, he will,” James stretched a gloved hand, “but how could he ever be mad at a pretty thing like you?”

You chuckled, undeterred by the blatant advances of a junior: “Are you flirting with me so I’d let you win?”

“I’m flirting with you because you’d make it harder.”

—for him to win the race, that was what James meant, but the wording was far too suggestive to be dismissed.

Clark hated that he could hear you from this distance between the back of the garage to trackside. No, he wasn’t tuning in like you were the radio; his range was just that far, promise. But the exchange spiked his blood pressure enough to fake a trip to the bathroom. He quietly murmured his exit to the rest of the team.

Why can’t you be as smooth on the circuit as you are with double entendres, James?! he wanted to yell, almost stomping to the stalls.

“Get a grip, Kent,” Clark said to his own reflection instead, ignoring the confused stare of some guy two steps down the sink next to him.

James’s room was all the way at the other end of the floor. God bless whoever was in charge of hotel arrangements—for putting that man far away, of course. Not necessarily for making Clark your neighbor.

Because even lingering at the outer fringes of your existence was torturous enough for the so-called Man of Steel.

Staying next to your room meant he had to endure an extra five minutes of being with you outside of what his job entailed, multiple times almost every single day: walking out the same gym, taking the same elevator, bee-lining down the same damn hallway until you stopped in front of the door next to his.

Five minutes.

Long enough for you to know he was painfully aware of you. Long enough for him to take you in.

To survey your curves the way he would a racecar’s—claiming it was for study, when really it was admiration. To assess the correlation between that last km on the treadmill with the color on your cheeks—the harder you trained, the lovelier the shade. To flag an errant bead of sweat, outlier to the common pattern—rather than evaporating into something he could inhale, it traced down your bare arm instead.

And yes, while you undoubtedly had some idea of the effect you had on him, there was no way you knew the extent of it.

No way for you to know he had your scent stored in a memory olfactory, labeled The most infuriating person in the world. Couldn’t tell he counted your heartbeat during fitness testing, just in case you pushed too hard. Clueless as to how he stared at you when you were turned away, as if waiting for your eyes to meet—only to avert his gaze when they did.

Lord and Savior, help him. He was a goner. When did he become a goner?

He remembered Night One at the Hilton. The elevator was going up, people filtering out until it’d been the two of you left. You’d been humming some pop song he’d only ever heard on the radio. Stepping out the box were two matching strides: same destination, diverging mindsets.

You’d messed with him then. You always did.

“Why, Clark. Are you following to my room?”

“Mine’s next to yours.”

“Too bad. Kinda wished you were.”

That wasn’t when he fell. He’d already been ensnared long before.

It didn’t help that, on top of your talent in driving (him insane), you were blessed with a creative mind. You never failed to come up with a new remark in the two-second window before keycards were swiped.

“I’m so sticky,” you sighed.

He swiped his first. Beep.

“Take a shower, then.”

“Join me? Save water and all.”

Halfway through the door, he muttered a ‘no, thank you’.

Clark caught your shrug in his periphery.

“Worth a shot.”

Then his door closed a little loud, mimicking the hammering of his heart. He heard you enter your room right after.

Before his treacherous brain could imagine you sauntering barefoot to the bathroom, gym clothes discarded, he raced to recalculate deviations on his laptop—as if he didn’t get them right the first time around.

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

The straw that broke Superman’s broad back landed on the night before the race.

Clark should be asleep, but every time he closed his eyes, calculations ran paranoid behind his eyelids like The Matrix. Whenever he took one step closer towards slumber, he was dragged three steps back to his laptop.

He was in the middle of looking through the same vector for the nth time when some noise occurred outside.

Rustling. It reminded him of his childhood cat, who—aside from killing all the mice like the good girl she was—had a habit of rummaging for extra food in the pantry.

Greedy.

He opened the door to check, even if he didn’t need to. He’d recognize that heartbeat anywhere.

You were in the hallway, going through the abyss of your purse in search for what he assumed to be your keycard. High-heeled, skin generously bared until the hem of your short dress, hair tastefully mussed in a way that suggested a fun night out. The outfit and your make-up glittered in the dim light, shining like a trophy.

Had you been out drinking?

“No, I just danced,” you drawled, finally producing the keycard from your purse.

He didn’t realize he asked out loud.

But Clark being Clark, he knew better—the faint smell of alcohol wasn’t wafting off your dress.

At the stern look he gave you, you placed a hand on your hip, sighing.

“Fine. I only had one watered-down drink.”

He ran a disappointed hand down his face, caring little about leaving fingerprints on his glasses.

“You can’t be serious,” he breathed, “The race is tomorrow and we need you in top shape!”

“Tell me this isn’t top shape.” You had the gall to give him a twirl, the hem of your dress lifting slightly. To your credit, you didn’t stumble on those heels.

And you looked great. Top shape, indeed.

You smiled at him. “I’ll be fine. Race doesn’t start till after noon.”

He crossed his arms like they covered the soft spots he had for you, and boy did he have many. The upset melted away too fast to his liking.

You didn’t need to know.

“I’m gonna put you in the G-force machine first thing tomorrow,” he said, trying to sound more severe than sleep-deprived.

“We don’t have one here, silly,” you smirked, “Unless that’s a euphemism for—”

Red crawled up his cheeks. “Quit it.”

Then he caught it.

Your eyes were tracing down his body that filled up the doorway, languid and slow, just like how his eyes wished they could trace down yours. The smirk on your face broke into a grin.

You pointed at his shirt.

“You’re such a nerd.”

His Star Wars: A New Hope T-shirt stared back at you.

Clark should get an award for not falling for the ‘rage’ part of ‘ragebait’. The fact of the matter was that he was already falling in another entirely different context.

He pretended not to see you appreciating his gray sweatpants.

“You need a nerd to win the Grand Prix,” he righted his glasses. “Now, bed. Please. Tell me you actually know how to go to sleep.”

“I know how to make you not want to go to sleep,” you purred.

He sighed your name. “Get some rest.”

You gave him a mock-salute. “Roger, roger.”

Then you swiped your keycard and disappeared into your room.

Clark’s brows furrowed.

Was that a Star Wars reference you just flung at him?

II. ACCELERATION

The circuit was a living organism.

Grey asphalt sprawled under unusually blue skies, its old veins forming deadly patterns. You and 23 other drivers were its lifeblood, rushing in pulses of red-hot engines and tires that unspooled like thread. Bodies melded into four wheeled-bullets as they shot down corners in supersonic speeds. The air reeked of fuel fumes and burning rubber. Every light brush into heavy impact formed a supernova: disasters so spectacular it was impossible to look away. At the heart of the chase was a need to seize first place in one of the world’s most prestigious Grands Prix.

This was the anatomy of peak human performance.

Still, some people couldn’t help wanting to break the limit.

You were one such person. Right now. In lap 51 out of 52.

“I’m pushing.”

Your car was in second place, a steady shadow behind the irritating backside of a Red Bull. Clark figured anyone who looked at that bright crimson long enough would be inclined to start a fight (who was the Bull now?). Heck, it pissed him off, knowing a sloppy machine like that was in pole position.

To say the formation was packed was an understatement. The top five cars, yours included, looked like they were being pulled on a single invisible string: a choreography followed so precisely that the distance between rear and front seemed no more than a strand of hair.

There was no room for error. No room for anything at all.

From Clark’s point of view (views, considering he had about five up on screen) in the pit wall, you were landlocked.

Fall in line, and you’d end up on the podium—just not the spot you wanted. Move, and you’d be rewarded with broken bones—or worse.

The rock was assumed mediocrity. The hard place was death.

“Clark, I’m pushing.”

“I’m not comfortable with that suggestion,” Clark replied into the headset mic. Words that massively downplayed the wreck in his chest.

The pit wall was divided. Seven critical team personnel, no opinions shared out loud—but Clark saw the unseen statistics.

Out of all of them, half quite literally sagged: the last two laps were as critical as the first two, yet their body language screamed acceptance before you crossed the finish line. Second wasn’t bad. What was wrong about placing second when the alternative could end your career? their resigned faces seemed to say.

The other half were implosions contained beneath Team Orbital uniforms: hearts pumped in a pattern that reminded him of hostage situations, the rush of blood apparent in clenched fists and locked jaws. These were the people begging for a Hail Mary—a small chance to be written into legends. Crashing was mere occupational hazard. A respectful sacrifice for the greater reward.

Clark himself was on the fence.

Clearly, you were not.

“Come on,” you gritted, voice slightly shaky from the engine rattle, “I just need to overtake one car.”

He glanced at the live feed of data. It wasn’t where the solution lived, but seeing your car’s vitals in the green offered a glimpse of relief.

“Negative. Hold. It’s too dangerous.” His voice was steady in contrast, but behind cold articulation was real fear.

“Please,” for once, you sounded like you were actually begging, “if I don’t do this, I’m stuck here!”

“I know, but crashing earns you no points, and if you gamble right now, you just might crash,” he replied.

But between you, him, and everyone else tapped into the public line, the message was clear: this was no longer about points.

This was about you.

“Fuck,” you swore. “Come on. Plan S on Turn 9. I can do it.”

“That’s a 90-degree turn!”

You laughed, crackly through the comms. Not quite as confident as you usually were, but the sound escaped anyway, light above the shrill howl of your car.

“High risk, high reward.”

This was it, he thought.

The thing that kept you apart, yet inseparable. A taut force of nature, greater than attraction and repulsion combined: you pull him one way, he resists to the other, but the center of gravity rests in one formula that trammeled two variables together.

The friction was in his deep care for life against your absolute disregard for your own. The tide was how the two of you were prepared to die.

He’d think you were insane, risking life and limb for the game, but who was he kidding? He would do the same for a squirrel. Actually, he already did exactly that for a squirrel.

And yet there was insurmountable bravery in you: because you weren’t invulnerable like he was.

Because if you crashed, you might actually—

“One date.”

The static from the radio rang loud, temporarily halting the rest of that dark though.

“…What?” his brows knitted.

“If I win, let me take you out on a date. Just one.”

In your voice was teasing, but also a hint of sincerity—and somehow, that was enough for Clark. The circuit’s controlled chaos became his own: his breath hitched the way overworked gears did, a flush washing over him like heat-soaked tarmac.

The convoy finally passed five lights marking the line. On the commercial feed, Clark heard the announcer’s excited exclamations.

Lap 52. The last one.

Your car was hunting Red Bull’s, blue metal bodywork beginning to inch out of formation. You no longer shadowed. You stalked.

“C’mon, Kent,” you goaded. “Dinner. Drinks optional. Or is that too much for you?”

Turn 1 passed with Red Bull cognizant of your maneuver, and with an angled adjustment, the window to overtake closed. You fell back in line. The pit wall groaned collectively.

“Answer her!” the Sporting Director barked from the furthest end of the seven-seater—Perry White’s blood pressure must be unhealthily high right now, but who was Clark to talk? His heart was pumping just as fast.

“Say something,” That was Lang, Head of Track Ops seated to his right.

“Say what?”

“Anything,” she hissed, “Just banter, at least it’s good for publicity. God knows you both already do it all the time.”

The already burning track felt even warmer, but his fingertips on the console grew cold.

Sure. Publicity. Maybe that was why you were saying these things to him—for something people would talk about long after the smoke cleared and the track cooled. Something you could blame on the heat of the moment.

All in all, it was a bad hand in a worse gamble: you ruled as queen of diamonds to his jack-of-all-trades, and the chips could very well fall off the edge of an already precarious relationship. To bet on this would be a tactical failure.

Or would it? Your voice sounded different. Deliberate.

He did it anyway—a part of him wanted to try.

Better to suffer a hurt the sun couldn’t heal rather than live the rest of his life wondering what if.

“Dinner and drinks,” he finally said into your ear, “but I call the shots on what happens after.”

The pit wall team reacted physically: hands ran through hairs, fists clenched as though vindicated in the belief that Chief Race Engineer Clark Kent could rizz you back if he so wished. Meanwhile, Clark tried to forget the fact that the radio line was extremely public. Somewhere in the world, a stream devotee probably sat up straight at this exchange.

You laughed like g-force wasn’t rattling your brain. Or maybe you laughed because it was.

“Knowing you, it’s just ice cream and a kiss goodnight.”

“Were you hoping for something else?”

“Do you have any other suggestions?”

Your dash cam showed that tilt again, the knife-edge balance before the pounce—a maneuver designed to push both your car and Clark’s restraint to their limits. The announcer went wild at your obvious attempt to overtake despite the tight line forming behind the pole position. Clark’s body reacted.

Where the words came from, he didn’t know. At least that was what he’d admit: because in truth, he’d found himself saying them before.

In fantasy, and only in fantasy.

Until now.

Realistically, he’d prefer taking you out for three dates minimum before even considering that. But now was his only chance, and Turn 9 was fast approaching.

“I could teach you how to behave, for once,” he rumbled into the mic.

Someone to his right coughed.

All radio messages were recorded. Somehow, that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was him feeling like this could never be real.

That whatever you saw in him would fade after this, the sparks traded in with large, victorious fireworks. That after the press conferences, after the debriefs, you’d say I was joking or something even more cruel, like how you’d been building towards this all season, and how you were sorry he misunderstood.

Because you loved the game, and you loved winning it even more.

But Clark wanted to help you regardless: not because of the prestige he’d earn, but because he cared for you.

And so he’d do it. Anything. Analyze the calibrations of your car every day. Take your jabs. Watch you flirt. Flirt back at you on radio.

He just wished you knew it was real.

“Deal,” you smiled—again, he didn’t have to see your face to tell, “I’m pushing.”

“Wait, now?” he stammered out of his reverie, “You’re not in position!”

“Then position me, Kent!” you yelled back. The live speedometer told him you were leashing the car at a steady 256 kmph, sitting in Red Bull’s dirty air. “It’s your goddamn job!”

Next to him, other engineers and operators chimed in with reports like they didn’t hear anything inappropriate.

“Deltas optimal. No deviations.”

“Thermals within limit. Confirm to proceed.”

Understanding washed over him right then and there: this was the cusp of everything you’ve worked for. Winning even one race was considered a major achievement, not to mention Silverstone, where this all began. What right did he have to hold you back from this? Everything counted on this final maneuver, and he wasn’t about to tell you to jam the brakes.

He breathed, the exhale slightly shaky. So that’s settled, then.

If you crashed, he’d fly right off to you, secret identity be damned.

He’d do anything to keep you alive.

“High risk, high reward.” Your voice softened.

Are you scared? he wondered. It’s alright. I’m here.

Then came his steady reply.

“On my count.”

“Roger, roger.”

He pictured your mock-salute. The space between his ribs ached.

“Target 300 on dash, then early apex. Plan S on three.”

“Ferrari’s on her tail,” Track Ops warned. Like Clark didn’t see the prowl happening behind you.

“Let him tail! Count!”

“One.”

Eyes trained on the live telemetry of your car. The dial turned up gradually. 298, 299, 300 kmph.

“Two. Keep it tight.”

You did. Wheels nearly touched on both front and rear, he swore he heard the safety car sirens in the distance.

Clark’s fist clenched. Red Bull was in the way, stubbornly blocking your path, but the early apex should negate that.

“Wait for it.”

Just before the 90-degree corner, there it was. A sliver.

“Three. Now!”

You pushed. It wasn’t dramatic—the steering wheel tilted only a fraction of its actual angle, but the acceleration roared alive as you hit top speed on the bend, sparks and smoke flying off the tarmac as you broke free from the locked line, turning earlier. The formation behind you scattered, every driver finding different apexes in the corner.

“Come on!” Perry yelled.

Orbital Blue saddled Car Number 1 now, side by side, before the rush of clean air carried you forward in an aerodynamic push.

Now it was Red Bull who ate your fumes.

The commercial feed blasted alive with the announcer’s enthusiasm. “—Team Orbital comes out of the slipstream! She’s leading!”

The pit wall burst into cheers, but there were still nine more turns until the end. Relief was temporary, fading into baseline tension as you continued to give the other racers a hard time cutting. Clark was with you all the way, talking into the mic.

“Back to Mode 10. You did good.”

“I know,” you laughed back.

“You’re 0.9 seconds ahead,” he read off a graph, trying his best not to smile, but the curve on his lips were widening like the distance between you and the car behind.

You cleared the next turns with a tailwind boon. What came last was the final sector: easy without a Bull blocking your way.

“She’s gonna do it,” Perry hollered, anxiously standing up.

A slashing blur on the track past checkered flags waved in the air, and history was made. The other cars followed too far behind you to matter. Team Orbital’s pit wall erupted in another bout of celebratory hoots twice the volume, while Clark sagged against his chair, breathing once again. His tired eyes watched the screen as the announcer went wild.

“—Team Orbital, winner of this year’s British Grand Prix, passing Red Bull in the final lap! What a moment, ladies and gents—”

There was so much noise in and around his periphery. The crowd in the stands cheered as the last cars flit past. Your second driver James finished at P10 out of 24, earning a point. At least he wasn’t a complete embarrassment.

Just as Clark was about to take off his headset, you spoke into it, playful amidst your victory lap.

“So, about that date…”

III. GRAVITY

The moment you stepped out of your car, there was no moment of calm. It was the storm after the storm.

Cameras flashed, crowds cheered, and you were swept away from one interview to another: trackside, podium, press conference—relentless clamors and sponsored backdrops blurred into something that felt like one long fever dream. Through it all, chaos was the only constant.

The only other constant? The media teasing you about the very public way you asked Clark Kent out on a date.

Every microphone pointed at you seemed to have a spicy question on the other end. How you managed to handle them all after an activity as grueling as professional motorsport racing, you had no clue.

So where are you two going to have dinner?

“I haven’t had the time to look up places. Do you have any recommendations?”

I’m asking for the sake of your fans—are you going on a real date with Mr. Kent?

“If he’ll have me,” punctuated with a light shrug.

How long has this been happening, you and Clark?

“I’m not sure what you mean. Nothing has happened yet, but I’m hoping that tomorrow night, something will.”

The room chuckled good-naturedly, like responding to a joke at a party.

Meanwhile, your answers were all heart-crossed truths.

When you checked your phone in-between being escorted to yet another crowded room, you realized how quickly the internet had picked up the news. Headlines poked fun at your romance-fueled win, some cynically calling it out as a cheap tactic to stir sensation. Instagram was busy speculating your and Clark’s ship name. There were TikToks captioned ‘pov you just asked your chief engineer out mid-race’—that audio, clipped from public comms, was already trending.

You couldn’t blame them. Clark’s voice was smooth and deep even through radio static.

Were you hoping for something else?

I could teach you how to behave, for once.

The volume on your phone was loud enough for your PR manager to cough awkwardly as you walked down the hallway with the rest of the suits, caught off-guard. The suggestive words kept looping.

You locked your phone and bit the inside of your cheek in expectant curiosity.

Was he for real when he said that?

As much as you’d like to confirm with the man himself, the only time you’d been able to catch a glimpse of him was during the debrief. Before the flurry of interviews.

Everyone important had been there: pit wall crew, execs, Marketing, you name it. Clark had dressed down from the official tracksuit to a navy blue Team Orbital T-shirt, its logo stretched deliciously tight across his chest. You found it funny how nobody had addressed the elephant in the room. Perry was all congratulations and rousing speeches, and then Clark himself hyper-focused on data, data, data—but you hadn’t missed the Ferrari red dusting his cheeks, nor his white-knuckled grip around a poor remote control.

That same grip wrapped a cold glass of something during the afterparty, when you finally walked up to him.

To your surprise, he didn’t shy away.

“Any cravings?” you asked from behind the rim of your drink.

“You’re serious?”

He asked so earnestly, your ribcage didn’t have a choice but to ache.

“Mm-hmm.”

Deciding it was too loud, he leaned down to reply above the thrumming bass that masked your heart’s own.

“There’s this place I think you’d like,” his baritone brushed the shell of your ear.

You swallowed, nodding, but your mind pulled you back to the champagne popping earlier that day—and how the violent gush of it looked like a poorly-disguised innuendo.

“Let’s go tomorrow night,” you said back.

Then the party ripped the two of you apart with a tide.

The other drivers had found you, arms flung across your shoulders in boisterous praise while precariously-balanced drinks threatened to spill all over the club floor. Meanwhile, Clark was rushed by one Jimmy Olsen from Marketing and a whole lot of women, their siren-like eyes roaming down Clark’s body as if surprised they hadn’t noticed this man before.

You tried to ignore the rise of jealousy in you, and instead focus on James Barnes’s smirk as you downed a drink together, arms locked, men around you chanting to chug, chug, chug!

There was no time nor space to notice Clark’s gaze on you for the rest of the night.

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

The next day rolled around, and you were surprised that Clark held up his end of the deal.

Clark Kent: Good morning. I hope you’re not too hung over. Do you need some Advil?

A gap in-between texts, sent too early for you to have been conscious—like he’d realized you were probably still asleep.

Clark Kent: I’ll come pick you up at 7 for dinner

You bit back a smile past your headache. Pick you up? The man was literally in the next room.

You: see you at 7 You: what should i wear?

A moment later:

Clark Kent: Whatever you want. I’m sure you’ll look beautiful

The way your heart leapt out of your chest was almost violent. When had you last felt so over the moon over something so simple? You chose your outfit with revenge in mind: hem just short enough to show off skin, cute heeled shoes, and an even cuter matching set hidden from view—which, if the steering wheel took you there, would be not-so-hidden at the end of the night.

There was no way for you to hear his heartbeat, but the look on his face when you opened the door at seven said enough.

“I was right,” he exhaled after looking at you from head to toe.

“I hate to say it, but you often are,” you smiled, a thin disguise for your cluttered nerves.

“You look… really good.”

Bless him for finding the strength to breathe that out, the syllables almost shaky.

Calling him handsome would be a disservice. He looked mouthwatering in that crisp shirt and slacks, the sleeves of the former rolled up revealing forearms, enough to be distracting.

You were merely a woman.

“So do you, Clark,” you managed.

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

Here you were, four hours into one of the best nights you’ve ever had in your life.

Dinner had been spectacular. To fulfill the prophecy, you got ice cream afterwards before wandering the city, laughing because neither of you could stop making jokes out of your jobs. How could you take the words ‘cockpit’ and ‘wet conditions’ in the same sentence seriously?

And maybe it had been the starry sky or the way you’d dressed differently for the occasion, but for the first time in a long time, both you and Clark existed without arguing—an ease so rare, it should be savored to the very last second.

The season wasn’t over yet.

In two weeks, you’d loop back into the same routine: he’d tell you to stick to your marks like a disappointed parent, and you’d push his buttons in return.

Something shifted when you passed the threshold to the hotel lobby. You thought it was some kind of letdown: a normal reaction for a good time that was about to end.

But as the elevator door closed with just the two of you inside, it felt like moments before you were sealed in the cockpit of your racecar—alone with nothing but compressed air. The charge in the atmosphere made itself clear.

It was anticipation.

The same one that tainted every elevator ride you shared with him before the Silverstone race. Before any race—or even longer than that. You recognized its taste, sharper on your tongue this time, making you tingle with awareness at the gap between his hand and yours.

There was a ding and you nearly jumped under your own skin.

You drowned in the same silence. Stopped at the same floor, walked down the same hallway, ignoring the same electric buzz of bodies: except this time, its crackle reminded you of an overheated engine. One that bristled for attention after being left to run for too long.

One that swore vengeance to detonate.

And yet he pushed it to its limits—and you—by not saying anything, wordless even as you reached your door.

You looked over at him.

He was already looking at you, blue eyes polluted with a darkness you weren’t accustomed to seeing.

He looked intoxicated. You knew he was anything but.

Those eyes bored into you as if they were betting for you to break the silence. As if he was saying show your hand, or I’m not playing.

Passivity wasn’t something you’d normally tolerate in a man, but your bones were telling you he wasn’t just compliant. Something in that look clearly showed he didn’t need encouragement. No, not an inch of the six-something-feet of him needed to be encouraged—you could tell by the slight coil in his forearms, the tightness in his jaw.

What he needed was permission.

Of course, you thought. That was the kind of man Clark was.

A good one.

So you gave it to him.

“Aren’t you going to give me a kiss goodnight?” you breathed, eyes studying his face.

He moved in front of you and you almost thought he was going to. Give you a goodnight kiss, that is: the kind that was sweet as the ice cream you had, light with plenty of room for more. The kind that wouldn’t leave a mark when you flew back to HQ, after which he’d be Clark Kent, Chief Engineer again—and not the Clark Kent you went on a date with, who opened doors for you, who cared about you more than anybody in the team ever did.

But then his hand was on your waist.

Shoes brushed yours as he pressed you gently against your room door. His height cast a shadow over you.

His face leaned down, hovering over yours. You could almost taste him when lips inched closer onto your own parted ones, but nothing came.

No kiss. Just him breathing your air, the slant on his face tentative.

The blue in his eyes were nearly gone, swallowed by dilating pupils. You almost gasped.

There he was, not even an inch away, suspended like he was grappled by some unseen wire only you could release him from.

You could almost see him think. This was a good man who feared he might be doing something wrong.

Because like you, he wasn’t just thinking about a kiss.

…But unlike him, you were quite sure this was right.

“I don’t think I can stop,” he whispered, “once I—”

The words floated in the air, lost. You used yours to help him.

“I don’t want you to.”

He swallowed, the bob in his throat clear as a green light go.

“But I don’t just want you once,” the rasp scraped against your lips, desperate, “not just tonight.”

You looked into his eyes, wondering if yours appeared just as hazy. You nodded.

“Me neither.”

But then he pulled back slightly and you felt cold. He licked his lips. Looked down on the carpeted floor:

“I should probably… take you out to another dinner before we—”

Your hand flew to his jaw, bringing him back to that heady closeness, this time separated by even less of a distance. His sentence devolved into heat, breath fanning your mouth, a sigh escaping him as you slithered your hands up his chest, then neck.

“Plenty of time for that later, Clark,” you whispered sultrily, glad to play the part of a serpent to his Eden, “but for now… we’re just—doing things in a different order, ‘mkay?”

That loose justification almost worked, except he still had something to say. His voice shook slightly—from desire or embarrassment or both, you couldn’t decide—yet the hands on your waist were steady.

“You… really want to go out with me?”

You chuckled.

“I was the one who asked you out in the middle of race, silly.” Fingers snaked back down to his chest—oh, his heart was beating so fast, you could feel it. “Yes, Clark, I’d love to.”

His next words were uncertain. “I thought that you—that it might’ve been for publicity.”

You hummed, toying with the second button of his white shirt.

“Rage-baiting you in simulator sessions doesn’t do anything for publicity,” you murmured, eyes low on his broad chest, “Neither does offering to share a shower with you—and I’ve asked you so many times…”

The groan he let out rumbled underneath your hands first before you heard it. Warm palms crawled up your sides, stroking your curves until one of them cupped the side of your face, directing you to look at him.

His blue eyes on you rushed a split-second moment of emotional sobriety amid the physical intoxication. It sank in slow, like a quicksand swallowed it, powerful as the force that kept you orbiting around each other.

This was really happening.

“Kiss me already,” you breathed.

When he did, it wasn’t urgent—not yet. The tilt of his face was patient, the brush of his lips tentative. But once they pressed into yours, he leaned forward like an unyielding force. Your back was flush against cool, painted wood, making you shiver.

The slight part of your lips wasn’t enough to tempt him. His patience was otherworldly, movements unhurried.

Like he was trying to make this last.

You’d never been good at discipline. Lips kissed his: once, twice, thrice, as though trying to coax him out of his impervious temperance. It didn’t work. Not when his hand caged your jaw, subjecting your motion to stillness under his pace.

“Open the door,” he husked.

He sounded impatient then, except he didn’t stop kissing you. Your fingers blindly dug into your purse, scrambling for that thin card. A relieved sigh escaped you when you found it—the beep it emitted yielding the knob of the door when he twisted it. You nearly stumbled inside, if not for his hand on your back.

Then you were pressed against the door again, this time on the other side, and he was all over you.

Clark kissed and kissed and kissed until you were sure you couldn’t breathe. Whenever you tried to, his mouth covered yours. You were dizzy within seconds—it terrified you a little, considering how even ge-forces didn’t affect you much—but the sensation made you melt against him even more.

Hands grasped at his biceps. His chest met yours.

A palm cupped your hip and your toes left the floor.

You should be surprised at how easily he picked you up. His lips distracted you.

“Clark—”

“You drive me insane,” he mouthed into your neck, teeth light as they scraped your skin. Your breath hitched.

“It was the only way to get your attention,” you answered weakly.

He looked up at you, glasses slightly askew. If you’d been a little bit more lucid, you’d have sensed the offense hidden in his gaze—the gaze that never took itself off of you in the name of doing his job, or a secret reason you were about to discover.

“You always had it.”

His reply made you kiss him the way you wanted to—hard, eager.

A weight landed heavy on your stomach.

He wasn’t reciprocating.

In fact, he moved even slower, if that was possible.

You whined, hands pawing at the front of his shirt, wordlessly asking for more. Apparently he’d reverted back to your dear Chief Engineer, because this Clark Kent didn’t bend at your whims.

No. He stood tall, a rock wall in front of you, hand on your jaw letting him kiss you slow, the other steadying your hip despite your heeled legs already hooking on his lower back. The press of his weight kept you at bay the softest way a man could: you were left stewing in your own need.

In return, he took what he wanted, how he wanted.

When his tongue finally slipped into your mouth, you moaned.

Hands began to clutch at his shoulders. A soft mewl escaped you. He huffed, trading breaths with yours, the fingers on your face coaxing your jaw to open more than you already did.

“Always gotta be the bigger person with you,” he grunted into the kiss while big hands roamed—one to your chest, the other up the hem of your dress, “You don’t think I want you just as bad?”

“Then why won’t you—ah—” you gasped, feeling him knead, “—hurry up?”

The answer was plain. Where you thrived in the rush of blood, he was the one who pulled you back. Leashed you to commands designed for your own good. His commands. Breathe and think, he’d once said during a stressful lap.

Funny how you could do neither under his touch.

“So I can savor this…”

His answer was flint on gravel, low and rough while fingers traveled on your body with restrained want. You were left tilting your head back against the door, trembling at the words he fed directly into your ear.

“…Savor you.”

“Clark, please,” you exhaled into the air. He stole it with a kiss.

Its sweetness pained you. He parted before you could deepen it.

“No. Need to teach you a lesson.”

Cool air rushed as he pulled the zipper of your dress down. Your chest heaved, nipples pebbling as the fabric slowly came loose—not quite off, but certainly not on, either.

He stood close enough for your noses to brush.

“I told you, remember?” he said, “You need to learn how to behave.”

You did remember. How could you not? Even if you deleted it from your memory, which you wouldn’t ever want to, the words were recorded in official F1 radio history.

For one second, you wondered if this was what it meant to poke the bear. Where was the mask of clumsy stoicism he wore while he did his job; the lovely flush of his cheeks when you purred a reply loaded with double meaning? He was pink now, yes, but there was no sign of the meekness that usually came with the color.

Then he moved, and you found yourself hanging on to him.

Footsteps carried you to the ensuite. He lifted you with just one of his hands, a fact you registered when heels came loose and clattered off mid-journey. His other twisted the door knob open.

Clark didn’t let your feet touch anything until the soft sheets, laying you down on the very place you often thought of him. His body followed suit. Muscular arms bracketed your head, weight landing soft on the mattress.

He leaned down and stared straight at you.

“Tell me you’ll listen to me.”

Your lips parted.

“No back-talk,” he husked, “I know what’s good for you.”

Ice ran down your spine at his words, though to say the sensation was unpleasant would be a lie. You tried to respond.

Oh, no. Where’d your voice go?

“Say it for me, sweetie.”

That nickname did the trick. You whimpered—a true mark that he understood your reward-based motivation enough to give you just a taste. It landed like an arrow to your heart: he could apparently see the effect he had, because he was smiling at you.

Soft, gentle. As if you were a fumbling kitten and not someone consumed with want.

“Come on. Tell me you’ll be good for me.”

Your insides melted, and so did the last dregs of your cultivated independence. You snaked your arms around his neck again, a serpentine effort to appeal to the side of him you so desperately wanted to please.

“I’ll be good, I promise,” you whispered.

That handsome smile widened, eyes half-lidded.

“That’s my girl.”

Heat zapped south. Your instinct to tease him was fried into nonexistence along with your nerves.

You could say it. Could murmur already calling me your girl after one date, Clarkie? up at his towering form, but you didn’t. The risk of upsetting him was too big of a loss, however imagined.

Tonight, you wanted to be good for him.

Then cold washed over you as he slipped your dress off. It got discarded to who knows where. The chill didn’t last long.

Because he saw what you had on underneath, and his gaze burned. Jaws locked.

“Wore this for you,” you admitted.

He groaned at that, hands tracing lace, partly sheer and wholly delicate. Blue eyes darkened past a point you didn’t know possible.

“Can I take ‘em off?” he breathed, eyes still raking down to your underwear, chest heaving at the ribbon sitting innocently at its center.

You didn’t answer—not with words, anyway. Just sat up and guided his hand to your back. His mouth pressed kisses on your temple and hair as he got rid of the last things that hid you from him, pretty as they were. He sat on his haunches, studying your reclined body under the dim glow of a night light, now bare.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured.

His lips locked with yours again, deeper this time, as if it allowed more of him to fuse into you. But his mouth didn’t stay for long: he moved down your body in a hungry path, sucking a mark into your neck and collarbone before capturing a hardened peak with heat and greed.

You writhed under him—futile thanks to his hand on your hip, the other groping at your chest before switching his attentions. The frame of his glasses brushed goosebumps onto your skin. Fingers darted desperately for some kind of anchor; you found it combing through his hair as his tongue laved and laved until yours nearly lolled out your mouth.

He slid his arm around your waist, and latched.

You cried out. It made him worse, humming as he sucked and nipped and played with you until he was sure your breaths were broken into little sobs.

Eyes locked with yours right as two fingers brushed your core.

Your body twitched in response, as if a simple touch—one you’d imagined more times than you bothered counting—was enough to set you alight. And it was: because it was his fingers that traced up the seam of your slick, not yours. His were callused ever-so-slightly, bigger, and entirely too warm, even when all he did was collect what you were leaking onto his fingerpads, smearing it onto your clit.

His mouth was still on your tit.

“Clark, please just—nggh—!”

Before you could fully beg, he’d read your mind and sank a finger in you.

What you thought would be mercy ended up not being enough—maybe you’d so obviously clenched your want in Morse code, because a second plunged into you in response, and then you gasped, the stretch telling you this was what you wanted to be.

Full.

And to think this was only two of his fingers.

He panted, pulling back to watch you.

“So wet,” the words floated, just as lost as his eyes when they locked on the way your cunt swallowed his digits, “So tight.”

His hand rocked experimentally. Your back replied with an arch, chasing the friction.

“Ah—”

He pumped in. Out. In again, curling in a way that made your head loll to one side. Clark stared all the while, took in the way your skin began to mist with sweat the more his fingers sank into your walls, memorized your moans when he brushed a gummy spot—each one chipped at his thinning patience.

Clark licked his lips, brows knitted, almost with concern.

“Think we’re gonna have to add another, baby.”

The third sank in almost too easily. You gasped at the burn, quickly melting into the mattress underneath you at the feel of him inside—just his fingers, but still much deeper than you’d ever hope to reach by yourself, no matter how hard you’d thought of him while you did.

“Shh,” he cooed against your ear. “You’re okay, sweetie. Just need to open her up for me.”

Okay seemed like too cheap a word to describe the sensation. You squirmed into his hand and he chuckled, eyes dark.

“Alright then. One, just like this, ‘mkay?”

“Please,” you begged.

He was kind enough to oblige, thrusting three in and out of you languidly. The world was quiet approaching the midnight hour, which only served to amplify the slick, wet noises as he finally sped up, your juices already making a mess between your legs.

He hit that spot again. It was too late to stifle the sharp cry that ripped out of you. You didn’t know who stayed in the other room next to yours—you only prayed they weren’t home.

Clark Kent was either the most compassionate person on Earth, or the meanest man who ever lived: he’d bent down and sucked on your tit again, his thumb rubbing your clit.

The outpouring of earnestness with which he moved was enough to send you tumbling over the edge. But perhaps tumbling wasn’t a fair description.

He was dragging you to your peak.

“Clark,” you warned, voice hoarse as you gripped the sheets—his shoulders—the sheets again.

“Hm?” he hummed around your nipple, lighting up your nerves beyond what you thought possible. The white that blurred the edges of your consciousness nearly rendered you speechless as you struggled to form the words.

“‘M gonna—” a thrust in, and your vision blanked, “cum, ‘m gonna cum…”

He moaned at that, loud and shameless, the vibrations reverberating from his mouth to your chest, then to your spine and all the way to your cunt—your hips swayed, craving more.

“So warm,” he mouthed against your tit, “C’mon. Give me one. Want you to come for me—”

As if your body complied, you arched, twisting as your walls clenched and gushed around his fingers. Clark muffled a low sound against your skin, eyes feasting on how your limbs shook and your lips fell into a perfect ‘O’.

It wasn’t just the sight of you that opened an abyssal appetite in him—his fingers felt it, felt you, and from there came a need to taste what you’d given him.

You were laying in your own mess, skin sweat-slick when his fingers left you. Scarcely sentient from the ecstatic buzz that still frayed your nerves, your hazy eyes watched as he took all three fingers in his mouth.

“Mmgh—hh,” his face melted, gaze locked with yours as his tongue wrapped one final swipe, a salacious pop at the release. “Gosh, baby. You’re so…”

He didn’t finish the sentence. Didn’t let you watch his face as his hands flipped you onto your stomach. It should be alarming, how easily he tossed your weight around.

“Clark…? What are you—”

He pushed a pillow under your chin. Kissed the top of your head before peeling his chest from your back.

“In case you need to keep it down.”

You twisted slightly to look behind you, still confused, but then his lips trailed down your back and realization washed over a second too late.

He was already spreading your cheeks.

“Look at you,” his voice rumbled far too close to where you were still twitching. “So pretty.”

The pillow made sense then, because when his mouth was on your cunt, you buried your face in it and screamed.

For someone seemingly worried about noise complaints, Clark was entirely thoughtless about his own noise. He tugged your torso towards him, the other hand making sure you were open as though he needed space to pour murmurs into your cunt, syllable after rasped syllable.

“Taste so good. Can’t believe you’re—mmh—letting me do this.”

You weren’t sure where your first orgasm faded and the second climbed. Even more unsure how you’d ended up this way: stomach pressed on the bed, hips up, your face buried in a pillow while he dragged the flat of his tongue up your leaking pussy, slurping like you were dessert, eating like the two of you didn’t go out to dinner earlier.

“C-Clark—” your hips jerked back without warning even to you, grinding against his face.

“She’s getting wetter, baby, how’s it possible?” he parted with a pop, scarcely giving you time to breathe before diving back in.

Something slipped between your folds. Something that wasn’t his finger.

Your legs shook.

While he kept you spread, his tongue licked up your seam and into your cunt. The intrusion birthed a second heartbeat in your core. Walls clenched. He hummed in return, pursuing deeper as you were dragged back to the climb you’d barely recovered from, the onslaught teetering on the edge of too much.

His words barely made sense with his mouth against your cunt—you didn’t hear them as clearly as you felt them.

“God, sweetie, I could stay here forever.”

The frame of his glasses grazed your ass and made you buck backward.

“Take it o-oh-off,” you managed to breathe out.

“No,” he answered, licking up into you, “wanna see you. Look, she’s clenching.”

A finger dipped into you, in to the knuckle and out to your clit, before his mouth descended to replace it.

If he kept this up, you’d be throwing your toys away in the morning.

You kept your face in the pillow, a stuttered moan spilling into the plush of it as he continued to eat past your orgasm and the tremble of your thighs. While you were busy gasping for dear life, disoriented, drool escaped from the side of your lips, forming a damp spot.

He lavished praises while his hands kept you open for him to take: “Good girl, good, good, girl” muttered as his tongue greedily gathered the drip of your honey, cleaning you up in the dirtiest way possible.

The moment he loosened his deadlock around your abdomen, you sunk into the mattress, limbs limp and shaky, blissfully unaware of what was going on behind you.

Clark watched your body melt in the dim, the rise and fall of your shoulders betraying the state of your lungs—lungs that trained so hard to remember how to breathe while rounding a corner at top speed, collapsed by just his mouth. Your hair was a mess. Sweat clung onto your skin and seeped into the sheets. Even with your back facing him, he’d never seen you look so spent.

He caught the generous glisten of slick on your inner thighs and grew hungry again.

You yelped in surprise when his hands dragged your legs to the edge of the bed. They dangled right before he flipped you onto your back again. Deep blue scanned your ruin—you glimpsed at a vein in his neck, the one that often appeared when his patience was tested.

Then his knees dropped down and he knelt in the space between your thighs.

Your open mouth was about to protest, but the sound quickly melted into a whimper as he hoisted pleasure-numbed calves over his shoulders.

“‘M sorry, honey. Want one more. Just stay still for me, okay?” he said, lips kissing your sensitive cunt again.

You couldn’t move even if you wanted to.

·—̳͟͞͞ ☆

One more turned out to be a lie. Clark had made you cum a third and a fourth time: the third on his tongue, before sinking his fingers into you, all while drunkenly cooing “You can do it, baby, you said you’d be good for me, didn’t you? I know, ‘m sorry, ‘m so sorry,” against your pussy. Your body obeyed for the fourth time despite the impossibility.

Now you laid in the aftermath, useless like a worn-out tire, catching your breath while he held you in his arms. Your back rested against his clothed chest.

Fuck, you thought, he hadn’t even undressed yet.

He’d popped his fingers out of his mouth not too long ago, cleaning out your taste—and then he murmured all sorts of things. Praises, gratitude, everything in between. The slope of his nose that had bullied your clit pressed against your cheek, your temple, your crown, placing kisses to punctuate words.

“Thank you. So beautiful. God, so perfect for me. My perfect girl.”

But if the hard bulge pressing against your ass and the damp fabric concealing him were anything to go by, Clark Kent was far from done.

If you wanted to survive this, you had to gain the upper hand.

It took everything, but you turned in his arms, hips sitting on top of his. He groaned at the grind of you, and that open mouth was the perfect opportunity to slide into a kiss, hands fisting the front of his shirt. The world spun—the kiss both grounded you and made the spin worse. Tongues swept, tasting each other. His fingers traced a lazy line down the nape of your neck, your spine, until the curve of your ass, earning a shiver from you.

While he palmed your tit, your fingers slowly unbuttoned his shirt. Not all the way through; just enough for you to slip both hands underneath and study his body by touch.

He was sturdy. More than he looked. Why an engineer would be so built, you couldn’t care less—right now, you just wanted to drink him in.

So you dragged your mouth down from his jaw to his sternum. Your hands trailed a path for your lips to follow, eventually stilling at his belt.

His exhale of your name was ragged.

Belt off, pants yanked down, you let out a sigh as his boxer-briefs came to view.

Cobalt blue, a pool of wetness darkening the color at the front. If circumstances were different, you’d make fun of how his underwear matched Team Orbital, but right now there are more important things.

Thing, to be exact. It rested under soft fabric, except restless was what it was, hard and twitching even when your gaze had been the only thing to brush against it.

He was big. You didn’t need formulas to tell you that.

But just to be certain, you peeled the waistband of his boxer-briefs down.

His breath stuttered.

There were other things you confirmed aside from his size—which was about nine mouthwatering inches, thicker than even the most ridiculous thing you’d seen online. The dim of the room muddled colors, but you could tell the shade of him was pretty: pink all over, darkening at the tip. Veins ran down his length like rivers, subtle except for one that was larger than the rest.

You traced that one with a finger. His cock twitched alive—more than it already was.

He called for you again. You didn’t look at him, merely brushing featherlight strokes up and down his shaft, humming.

“G-G—od, you don’t h-have to.”

Clark was a picture of abandon: head thrown back against pillows, dark curls tousled against the pillow that once swallowed your breathy moans. It lit an urge in you: half curious, half vengeful.

A window to overtake, metaphorically speaking.

From his arms loose on your body to the pool of lust in his eyes, it looked like he had no dog in whatever fight you sought to instigate. In fact, the way he waited patiently signaled that he was the dog in question.

“Don’t have to what?” you replied with false innocence, already leaning down to breathe hot air on his tip. He writhed. Restrained. Disciplined.

“Don’t have to—ngh—”

The spit from your puckered lips dripped right on his tip. Then your fingers wrapped around his cock, spreading the slick before pumping slowly, and Clark turned speechless, mouth open with nothing but noises to offer.

Delicious noises.

“Baby,” he sighed, voice thin.

“Hm?”

Because you were impatient before anything else, your tongue lolled out to take his tip, letting its weight rest in your mouth. A violent shiver wracked his body, followed by a stuttered cry. You giggled at the sight. The vibrations made it worse for him; or was it better? His hands found your hair, fingers firm on your scalp, pulling a moan out of you even when he hadn’t moved.

“Don’t have to what, Clark?” you teased, swirling once around his already leaking head.

“Don’t have to… do this.”

Yet he moaned when you took an inch deeper.

“I already have your cock in my mouth, silly.”

Clark hoisted himself up on elbows, gaze trained on you as though he couldn’t believe that you were in fact telling the truth. But actions convinced him more than words ever could: the heat of your throat as you took all of him in sent lighting up his spine; the cavern of your mouth so hot, so real, and so fucking perfect.

You let go with a pop.

“Unless… you don’t want me to?”

He shook his head. “No, no, don’t stop, d-don’t stop.”

Despite your eagerness, you learned a thing or two from his torture. You leaned back down. Bobbed slow. Kissed the tip at the agonizing up, breathing on it before the dive, letting his blunt tip hit the back of your throat. That was where you’d hum and hollow your cheek.

As a reward, his spine curled in, weak, almost like a sunflower facing the thing that sustained it.

You let him grip your hair, smiling at how good he was: where most men would crumble and fuck your face with that kind of hold, Clark held on to control. Docile. Patient.

It made you want to ruin him even more.

“Please,” he begged, low and shaky.

Which was why you took him out of your mouth entirely, licking your lips.

He whined, a thin and reedy thing that kicked your pulse to the eighth gear.

“Why—”

The rest of his sentence didn’t make it out, because you were on top of him, a hand keeping his cock steady while you slid it between your folds.

Not in. Just between.

Twin moans tangled in the feverish air. You relished the way he crumbled: subtle, like a slippery slope that forewarned a landslide. The chassis of his infuriating tolerance finally began to wear off with each pass of friction as your slick pussy traced his ridges, ending with his tip kissing your abused clit.

You rode him like that and watched him fall apart slowly.

Lips red like stewed cherry, parted wide. Eyes hypnotized by your movements, drinking in the way his cock gathered your juices, shining the more you glided on him.

His glasses fogged up.

Your mouth twitched into a smirk.

“Want me to put it in?” you purred, a wave of hunger rising in you.

He nodded like he was drunk. There was no focus in his stare. Drool began to leak out the side of his mouth as he looked up at you like you were the only thing he understood aside from the blinding pleasure.

“Yes,” he breathed.

Leaning forward, you nipped at his bottom lip. Once. Stern.

“Then beg for it.”

His hands held your arms—they looked so small under his grip. Meanwhile, your palm snaked up to the side of his face, feigning kindness before the grasp you had on his chin turned commanding. You made him up at you.

“Please,” he whispered.

You kept pace, allowing his tip to breach just a little before pulling back out. His cock glistened with your essence and his precum, wet slides filling the air with debauched noises.

“C’mon. Use your words.”

Shclick. Shclick. Shclick.

“Fu—ghh—ah, baby, please, please put it in,” he strangled out a pitchy whine, “I—hngh—can’t—”

“Good boy,” you huffed, overcome with a strange mix of delight and frustration.

When you finally sank onto him, you pretended it was out of mercy and not your own need for more.

Four orgasms didn’t make his nine inches easier to take; there was the girth to consider, splitting you open more than his fingers did. You couldn’t hide the strain on your face as you slid down slow, lips parted at the distracting burn of the stretch.

And then all of him was inside of you.

Both your head and his lolled forward to look, as if the sensation wasn’t convincing enough.

“Hah—you okay?” he groaned, more vibration than voice.

You nodded. Bounced once.

The strength in your thighs nearly melted, but you weren’t a racer only in name. You’ve trained. Practiced. Pushed your body past further limits than this.

The expression on his face both weakened your will and solidified it: you were just as lost as he, and yet you wanted to put him through worse.

You moved up to the tip, down to the hilt. Slow only because that was what you could afford—any more and you’d find yourself ruined before he was. The grind shot ecstasy to your brain, nerves firing at each roll, relief laced with the demand for more.

Soon, you told yourself, wondering if you’d get used to being stuffed like this. You’d ride him hard and fast once you were sure you could.

But Clark had other plans.

The world spun. Your back hit the mattress, body once again underneath him. The coil of his muscles was clearer from here. So was his molten gaze.

In one thrust, Clark buried himself fully inside of you.

You gasped, feeling him in your throat, eyes wide.

“Clark—”

“Is this what you—hah—hoped would happen?”

He did it again, sinking down faster than you thought you could take. Your brain shorted.

“H-huh? Ngh!”

“In that interview,” he continued, ragged as he fucked you slow and deep, “you said you hoped something will happen. You and me. Is this what you wanted, sweetheart?”

He didn’t make sense. Not while he impaled you like that. Yet there was kindness hidden in the pace, because if he went any faster, you weren’t sure you’d remain conscious.

“I don’t know what you’re ta-ah-alking about,” you managed to pant.

Clark didn’t honor you with a direct response other than another thrust in you, groaning in your ear.

“‘If he’ll have me’?” he quoted, almost roaring, “I wanted you first, since the very, gu—hh, fucking beginning—”

It should be embarrassing how fast the knot formed itself in your lower gut. You clawed onto his bare back. His shoulders were sweaty. When had he taken off his shirt? Nothing made sense anymore. Only the throb of his shaft bullying itself into you, your hipbones kissing his at each downstroke.

He groaned your name.

You had no governance over what came out of your mouth; no power to bite back the keen “Clark, please”, no intention to hide the little mewl that slipped when he filled you.

He was the same, or worse: mouthing at your neck in a poor attempt to silence a moan when he wasn’t feeding honesty that tasted like filth straight into your ear.

“See what you do to me?” he groaned, “how—haa—hard I get around you?”

Your throat bobbed, the column of it exposed wholly to him. Hands grabbed his biceps, while his caged your hips.

“Clark, ’m gonna—”

The sound that ripped out of his throat was growly and dark at the impossible clench of you around him.

“Come? Me too, baby,” he gasped, “You feel so, so good…”

A hand slid up the back of your thigh, pressing it to your chest to sink his cock deeper than you thought possible. Colors assaulted your vision even as you closed your eyes: a heatmap of pleasure shifted behind eyelids as he leaned down for an open-mouthed kiss, trading spit and the taste of each other just as his blunt tip bullied into that spot.

The one that made you scream.

“Fuck, Clark, I’m cumming—!”

So was he, the piston of his hips relentless as he pound-pound-pounded you through the finish line. You moaned out nonsense into his mouth, babbling “please, fuck, so good” over and over until the words melted into nothing but hoarse vowels. The clench and gush of you drove him mad, showering you with sobs of “good girl, gonna c-come inside, please, can I?” like he wasn’t already set on doing so.

Your response was a broken yes, yes, yes, and he thanked you so profusely you’d think you saved his life—when in fact he nearly ended yours at the first spurt.

It was hot, bursting against what had to be your cervix as he rutted deeper into you. Your greedy pussy clenched as if drinking him in, but even when your breath finally slowed, his spend didn’t.

Clark choked out your name against your neck, white-knuckling your hips as he ground—you arched, feeling him fuck his cum to parts of your body you didn’t know existed. You panted, glancing down: fuck, it was leaking, heavy driblets of it, and yet his cock still gave you more.

He was watching, too, blue eyes glazed with fascinated disbelief. Like he wasn’t expecting so much.

And then he smiled.

“Look. She’s drooling for me, sweetheart.”

Lust catapulted up your brain, disabling thought and memory. The only thing you understood was right now: how full you were from his cock and cum. Your chest burst at him kissing your face: eyes, cheek, nose, lips—but the ulterior motive behind such sweetness lived in his hands.

Broad, warm palms tugged and twisted you, coaxing you to lie on your side. He plastered his body against your, chest on back, fingers already working your thigh open and hooking under a knee.

You felt it then—the sensation of him coming alive inside of you as your walls twitched.

On the circuit, he was always pushing for a pit stop.

In bed, he was the opposite.

“Clark,” you croaked. What it meant, you weren’t sure. You couldn’t think.

Thankfully, his next words were one syllable each, quite simple to grasp even at your dumb state. He spoke them against your ear, a low promise dripping behind his voice—like high-octane fuel, nearly making you explode.

“I’m not done with you.”

“You had to insist on tagging along on my story,” you say. “If it had just been me, I'd have already landed at O'Hare by now, my body at a normal, regulated temperature. But no, Clark Kent had to turn on the bumbling charm and tell Perry that it would be more economical for the paper's budget if we drove, and golly gee, I sure don't mind driving, sir, I find it very therapeutic! And now we're stranded in the middle of—where the fuck are we? Nowheresville? Your hometown?”

Clark’s eyes narrow. “We’re in Indiana. And for the record, I found the source first, and Professor Romano and I emailed for a lot longer than you did. That’s why Perry put me on the story. Plus, it's not my fault that the car broke down. That's the rental company's fault.” 

You scowl. “You wouldn't have even found her if it weren't for my digging! This should be my byline.” 

“Goodness, what's with your incessant need to argue all the time?” Clark asks, throwing his hands up. “The professor answered my email first, and this is too big of a story for one person anyway. It'll get a better reception if two people are working on it. People will trust its credibility more.”

“You are so full of it, Kent. Don't act like you're doing me a favor by taking my story,” you snap. 

“No one is taking your story. We're investigating it together. You're being paranoid.”

You march around the hood of the car so you’re inches away from Clark. You point a finger at his chest. He glowers at you, hands on his waist.

“I have a right to be paranoid when you’re around,” you say, teeth chattering. “No one sees through your act but me.”

You used to have people on your side. Namely Lois, and sometimes Steve, even though Steve Lombard is the last person anyone wants on their side. Everyone else instantly bought into Clark's Boy Scout act. Even Perry warmed up to him faster than normal. But there's something there that you've sensed from the start. Something off. Something infuriating. No one is that nice in real life. 

You have a running theory that Clark is like Batman and runs around in a cape and tights at night, like a freak. Lois was on-board with your theories for a while. But then, a year into Clark's time at the Planet, she gave in and joined the dark side. Now she tells you that Clark is alright, if a little too concerned with ethics, and he's a decent reporter, and why fight with him so much? He’s docile. Like a kitten.

A kitten. Sure. Clark never tried to piggyback off of one of Lois’s stories. And he's never gotten her stranded in the middle of Indiana either. 

“Oh my gosh, I am not putting up an act, whatever the heck that means. We've had this conversation before,” Clark says, red-faced. “You wouldn't have even known about the story if I hadn't written that initial op-ed about the professor. Then you went behind my back—”

“I did not! This was my story, fair and square, and—ugh! You are so damn irritating, Kent!” 

You kick the front tire in frustration. It hurts your toes, which feel like ice cubes, but you hide your wince out of pride. Clark folds his arms, pulling his knit cable sweater taut. That's another thing: God wasn't playing fair when he made Clark. How is the most insufferable man in the world also built like Superman? Two weeks ago, Jimmy's desk was found infested with ants from six half-eaten Toblerones he never cleaned out, and Clark had moved the desk all by himself down to the curb to be picked up. Then he'd carried the new desk all the way back up. He might as well have reversed global warming from the way Jimmy treated him. Show-off.

“Well, you're not exactly the prized pumpkin in the patch,” Clark says. 

Your eye twitches. “Save your podunk metaphors. Let's just call Triple A and find a place to wait. Indoors.”

You pull out your phone, trying to look up the nearest town. Cell service is spotty at best. The page takes too long to load, and you give up, your hands shaking. Something went wrong! Google informs you with a frowny face. Yes, something indeed went very wrong, and it happened the moment you got in the car with Clark. You must’ve temporarily lost your marbles, agreeing to this. 

Clark pulls both of your luggage from the trunk as you try every pose imaginable to get a signal. Nothing works. 

“Find anything?” he asks.

“No. Corn fields don’t need wifi, apparently.” You turn off your phone in frustration. 

“Let's walk back that way,” Clark says, pointing the way you came. “We passed that town half a mile back.”

“Town? I wouldn't even call it an imitation of a town. What the hell are we gonna do there?”

It was mostly dust, the “town” you passed. You hadn’t paid much attention to it, too focused on figuring out how to elbow Clark out of your byline. 

“There will at least be a phone we can use. We only crossed state lines half an hour ago, we can’t walk to Indianapolis. You certainly shouldn't.”

You put your hands on your hips. “And what is that supposed to mean? Just because I'm not a big, strong man means I can't walk if necessity requires it?”

Clark looks up to the sky, maybe for support, maybe to pray that you'll get struck by lightning. He exhales sharply through his nose. “That's not what I meant and you know it. Forget Chicago; Indianapolis is hours away. You're wearing flats, it’s freezing, and you have poor blood circulation, remember?”

“How do you know I have poor circulation, Kent? Stalking me?” 

“No, of course not,” he says, annoyingly earnest. “I heard you talking about it with Cat because she wears heels everyday and had tips. She suggested Dr. Scholls.”

“Creep,” you say. “You have been stalking me.” 

Clark rolls his eyes. “Not in a million years.” 

“Obviously, you were. You're obsessed with me.” 

He presses his lips together. “You know what? Let's just walk. We can't call for help from here.” 

“Fine.”

Clark walks ahead of you, carrying, not wheeling, both your and his suitcases. You grab yours from him.

“I can carry my own damn suitcase,” you say, mulishly pulling up the handle.

He shrugs. “Alright.”

You start walking, but you quickly realize your mistake: the unpaved road is uneven and not ideal for rolling luggage. Every dip in the dirt makes your suitcase jerk, and you have to wheel it slowly and carefully so you don’t tip it over. It takes two hands to keep it steady, but you’re determined. At the very least, it starts to warm you up. 

You hear a sigh. “Will you just let me carry yours?”

Clark is about ten feet away, watching you. You make a face.

“No, thank you. Just keep walking. I’ll catch up.” You return to using your entire concentration to keep your suitcase level, your knees bent. 

“Cheese and rice, why are you being so stubborn? I’m just trying to be nice.”

“Oh, sure, so you can—” You struggle over a mound of weeds and rocks, breathing hard. “—Go back to the office on Monday and tell everyone about what a stand-up guy you are, carrying my suitcase. I know what you’re trying to do.”

“What I’m trying to do is get us to town before we die of old age,” he says.

You stop and lean on the handle, raising your eyebrows. “Is that sarcasm I hear, Kent? Didn’t know they had that where you’re from.”

Clark’s smile is as flat as Kansas. “There’s a lot where I’m from, actually. Hospitality, manners. Stuff that’s probably foreign to you.”

“Being fake is not manners.”

“I’m not being fake! Can I just carry your suitcase? I promise I won’t tell a soul.”

You look at Clark. You’ve never known him to be a liar, except when it comes to admitting that a source is yours. He probably won’t tell. And this suitcase is really heavy. What did you pack in here? Anvils? 

“Okay,” you say, and Clark smiles in relief, walking over and pushing down the handle, then picking it up like nothing. He starts walking. You hurry to catch up to him, your feet aching in your flats.

“Slow down, giant.” 

“Sorry,” he says, and cuts his gait in half. 

“Aren’t you cold?” you ask.

Clark shakes his head. His perfect S curl bounces. “No, not really.”

“Aren’t the suitcases heavy?”

“Not really.”

“Well, everything’s just peachy-keen for you, isn’t it?”

He frowns. “Is everything going to be an argument with you? I’m sorry I’m not cold. Do you want to change clothes?”

“Where would I do that?”

He nods at the corn skeletons. “In the field. I did it lots of times as a boy.”

“You could easily peek and watch,” you say.

Clark’s cheeks turn pink. “What? That’s—no, I’d turn around and give you privacy, I wouldn’t—”

You snort. “Too easy.”

Clark's mouth tightens. You love to get his goat. It’s one of your favorite pastimes. Nothing flusters Clark like the implication that he’d do something untoward. He just gets so reactive: his face flushes, his eyes ignite. Sometimes, he starts waving his hands, telling you exactly why you have it all wrong. No one reacts to you like that but Clark. And for good reason: no one deserves your winding up more than he does. 

It doesn’t take long to get to the so-called town. Clark doesn’t drag once, and he has enough sense not to make conversation while you’re suffering through the merciless wind and pinching flats. All you’d like is a shower and maybe for an airport to be built right here. 

An old wooden sign sits outside the town. Deadwood, it reads in faded white paint. Population: 68. 

“We’d better not get Dateline’d here,” you mumble.

“I’m sure it’s perfectly fine,” Clark says. “See, they have a diner and an inn.”

Both look mostly abandoned. No cars or streetlamps. In the near distance, there's a red barn and a farmhouse. There’s a tiny general store and some shodden fences surrounding grass. An orange cat darts out. It stops to rub its face against Clark’s leg. You kneel down to pet it. It bolts.

“Unbelievable,” you mutter. 

Clark clears his throat. “Guess it’s shy around strangers.”

“Yeah, what the fuck ever, farmboy. Let’s call Triple A immediately,” you say, walking to the inn. 

Heat. Beautiful, blessed heat. You let go of your suitcase handle and just stand for a second, waiting for feeling to return to your feet. The Deadwood Inn is a time capsule. It smells like paint and roses. Clean, but old. The desk looks hand-crafted and like it's survived several wars. There's a long scar across the front that's only partly hidden by the dusty, lemon yellow tablecloth covering the top of the desk. 

A severe old woman with a pruny, red mouth and short, spider silk hair looks at you over the top of her glasses, also preserved with the inn. There's a pearl chain connected to the glasses arms and it moves when she does. Her desk plaque says Irma Baker. 

“May I help you?” she asks. She looks at Clark behind you and her mouth quirks up a centimeter. Even complete strangers like Clark. Go figure. 

“Hello, ma'am,” he says cheerily. “Do you have a phone?”

“Yes, in the office.” Irma doesn’t move a muscle. “Are you two going to rent a room, young man?”

“We’re still trying to figure that out, ma’am. My name’s Clark. We’re sort of stranded at the moment. Is that your cat outside? The orange tabby?”

“No, my son’s. His name is Leo. He’s supposed to be in the barn with Daisy, but he likes to wander.”

“Daisy?”

“My son’s heifer. She’s due soon.”

Daisy the cow. It’s like you’ve walked into a sitcom.

“Oh, what a sweet name,” Clark gushes. “How far along is Daisy?”

“About nine months. She’s keeping on.”

“I love calves. I had a bull calf when I was young. His name was Henry.”

Did you die? Are you in hell? Why is Clark waxing on about cows?

“‘Scuse me,” you say, leaning in. “Hi, Irma. Listen, we’re kind of in a hurry. Our car broke down. Can we use your phone?”

Irma puckers her mouth at you. “Young lady, you ought to mind yours.”

You squint. “Excuse me?”

“Ha, sorry! She’s tired from our trip. Miss Irma, we’d really love it if we could borrow your phone for a spell. Would you mind?”

Miss Irma? Clark dodges your glare. 

Irma looks at him and softens. “Why, sure, Clark. Come on back.”

She leads you to the office, which is more like a closet. You and Clark squish yourselves inside. Clark leaves your luggage outside the door. The phone has a cord and is scratched up. You hope it works.

“Thank you,” you say, trying for a smile. Irma just glares at you, then walks away.

“What crawled up her ass and died?” you whisper.

“You have to be a little nicer. People in small towns find it rude when you don’t want to chat,” Clark says, picking up the phone and dialing. 

“I’m fucking delightful! Excuse me that I don’t give a shit about somebody’s pregnant cow when my career-making story is on the line,” you say. “And I think you’re biased, Smallville.”

Clark rolls his eyes. “I am not—hello? Yes, hi! My name is Clark Kent, and my rented Honda Civic broke down in Deadwood, Indiana about half a mile after mile marker ninety… yes, indeedy, I can hold.”

You flick through the stacks of dusty, old papers on the office desk. You're nosy out of habit; the job necessitates it. Most of the stacks are local newspapers. None of them headline Deadwood except one dated three years ago. New Plant Expected to Increase Employment. There's a pixelated photo of the power plant that was built about three miles from Deadwood. You passed it right before the car broke down. 

“Okay, thank you,” Clark says, and you abandon the papers. He hangs up the receiver and looks at you sympathetically. “Triple A said that it's going to take at least a day because there's a snowstorm warning.”

Your eyes widen. “Near us?”

“No, a half hour from Deadwood, but they don't want to risk whoever they send out. We'll be fine, trust me.”

You frown. “Okay… so, what, we have to stay here?”

“Unless you want to sleep in the car.”

“O-ho, there's more of that famous Kansas sarcasm,” you say, elbowing your way past Clark. He grunts when you press almost entirely against him, his warmth instantly seeping into you. You've never met another human being who naturally feels feverish. But Clark never gets sick. Another infuriating trait.

“You could've waited for me to move,” Clark says as you jiggle the office door free and stumble out. 

“Ladies first, remember?” 

You see Clark press his lips together, probably to hold back a smart comment about you being a lady. He obediently takes your luggage and follows you back to the desk. You approach Irma with a hopefully natural smile, trying to be cheerful about the idea of spending a night here, lest she kick you out and actually make you sleep in the car. 

“Hi, Miss Irma,” you say, trying to channel that sticky, caramel-thick charm that Clark lays on so well. “Thanks ever so for letting us use your phone. We'd like two rooms, please. Will you take a credit card?”

She puckers at you. “I do not have two rooms available. Most of our rooms are being renovated.”

Renovated for who? 

“That's alright, Miss Irma,” Clark says, leaning down politely and smiling. “You have a lovely place here.”

“Aren't you a dear,” she says, perking up. “My auntie owned this place, and her auntie before her. We take pride in keeping what's ours here in Deadwood.”

Clark bobs his head. “Oh, I can absolutely tell. Your inn should be more well-known; anyone would be happy to stay here for the authentic Indiana experience. You know, we’re reporters, and I’ve been drafting a piece about the best inns across the Midwest. I’d love to include yours.”

Oh, brother. You suppress your urge to shake Clark by his neck. Deep breaths. 

Irma laughs, smoothing some of her wrinkles for a second. “Why, I don’t know what to say. I’d be honored, thank you. Would you like to rent a room, dear? You should get a first-hand experience before writing your article.”

Dear! He gets dear and you get young lady. Typical. 

“Yes, Miss Irma, please,” Clark says. “Our car broke down and it'll be a while before we can get towed. We'd really love to rest our feet for the night at your charming place.” 

She tuts. “Oh, how awful! Well, I have one room with a king. It's my best room.”

“No way,” you hiss. “I'm not sharing with you.”

Clark smiles at Irma, holding up a finger, and steers you away from the desk. He nudges you toward the glass case of creepy doll figurines. Their painted eyes stare at you. You shudder. 

“We need something,” he whispers. “It'll be at least a day before someone can come pick us up.” 

“I am not sharing a bed with you, Kent!”

“You wouldn't have to—”

“Excuse me, but if you two are not married, I will have to refuse you a room,” Irma says. 

You can't even form words for a witty reply. Clark's eyes widen. 

“I beg your pardon?” he says. 

“You can't expect me to rent a single bed to an unwed man and woman. It’s untoward. I won't allow sinning under my roof.”

Apparently, the desk isn’t the only thing from another century. You puff up like an indignant chicken and march back to the desk, ready to give her a piece of your mind. You can't believe people like this still exist. 

“Sinning? Lady, are you in the right century? Putting aside the fact that I wouldn't even look at his—”

“We are married!” Clark blurts. He smiles, dimples on full display, and puts an arm around you. You almost elbow him in the gut, but Clark seems to anticipate your violent streak and gently traps your arms against your body so you can’t attack. You squirm. 

“You are?” Irma says.

“We are?” you snap. Clark ignores you. 

“Yes, Miss Irma, we've been married for a year. My, uh, wife here is just dehydrated and tired from our journey, please excuse her. We were driving up to Lake Michigan to celebrate our anniversary when our car broke down, and you can imagine she's very upset.” 

You bristle. “I'm upset because you're a fu—”

“Sweetheart, don't you want to rest your feet?” Clark asks loudly, widening his eyes at you. “Your cold, cold feet with the poor circulation?”

Your mouth thins. He does have a point. At the very least, you need to take a shower. You can figure out the bed situation later. 

One breath. Two breaths. Clark tilts his head. You search for a response that's free of profanity. 

“Yes… I suppose I do. A room would be… great,” you say through gritted teeth. “Husband.”

“Why did you ask for two rooms if you're married?” Irma asks, squinting at you. 

“She's mad at me,” Clark says, the first truth he’s told this woman. “I missed our anniversary.” 

You've never seen him lie so much. You wonder if he’ll call his ma tonight and confess to lying to an old lady. That seems like something he’d do.

“I had to book this trip myself,” you say, catching on. “I would've preferred going alone, honestly, but he insisted.”

Clark rests a hand on your back and looks at you, wearing the regretful husband expression quite well. “I didn't want you to be alone and mad the whole time, honey. Especially when it'd be difficult for you to navigate the lake alone.”

Your eye twitches. “I think I could navigate just fine, picklehead.”

Irma shakes her head gravely. “It's bad luck to go to bed angry. I never did with my late husband, George. It'll unravel a marriage quicker than anything, and you two are too young to withstand such pressure. You ought to make up before staying in a room together.”

What is this? Dr. Phil? You look at Clark, who's still golden sunshine despite Irma playing therapist. 

“You're absolutely right, Miss Irma.” Clark turns to you, as smug as Clark Kent can ever look, which really isn’t that much. But you’re still irked. “Sweetheart, let's not fight anymore. I love you, and I want us to enjoy our time together. Don’t you love me?”

He’s enjoying this way too much. 

“That wasn’t the word I was thinking of, sugar booger.” An idea strikes you. You grin. Clark immediately looks worried. 

“See, I don't know if I believe you, shmoopy-poo,” you say, your voice saccharine. “I think you should get on your knees and beg me for forgiveness. Forgetting an anniversary is such a high offense. Don’t you think so, Miss Irma?”

She nods, to your surprise. “My George didn’t forget more than once. I gave him the devil for it.”

“You see, my little wheat germ? You have to really convince me that you’re sorry.” You smile, eyes slitted like a snake's. “Beg. On your knees.”

You expect Clark to sputter, make an excuse about how he can't do that in front of Irma, anything. You expect scolding, or maybe for him to give up the whole act and sleep in the car. 

You do not expect Clark to instantly sink to his knees, his hands going to your calves. He looks up at you, blue eyes big and honest. His glasses glint in the light. You wobble briefly, and you catch yourself on Clark's shoulders. 

“I'm so sorry, my love,” he says, voice low, and for a moment, you imagine Clark as a husband currying forgiveness from his wife. “I truly didn't mean to forget. You know I adore and cherish you endlessly. You know I'd do anything for you. What else can I do to show you how much I love you?”

“Aww,” Irma says, softened twenty years at Clark's grand display. 

Your face is hot. There's no one here besides the three of you, but you feel like you're on stage in front of hundreds. Clark seems to sense how this is backfiring for you, because you see the tiniest smirk on his lips. Jerk. 

You won't flounder and let him have the satisfaction. “Well…” You tap your chin, pretending to think. “I suppose that will do, dearest. I forgive you.” Clark stands and you lean into him, arms around his middle, whispering loudly, “Let's recreate our wedding night, sweetums.”

Clark coughs, cheeks turning pink. You drop your arms, feeling victorious as he quickly detangles himself from you, distracting Irma with questions about the room. Clark pays the meager room rate and receives two real keys for your room. You pluck one key from his hand. Irma directs you upstairs and Clark follows you with the luggage. 

“Really?” he asks when you’re in the hallway. “Begging on my knees?”

“It suits you, Kent. You should kneel at work. I would be fifty percent less annoyed with you.”

“You're unbelievable,” he says as you jiggle open the door to your room. The wood has swelled in the doorframe and it takes a good push to get inside. You get in and stop, staring at the ancient furnishing. 

“This room is unbelievable,” you say, tossing your key onto the little desk in the corner. It smells like Pine Sol, which fills you with hope. You’d throw a fit if on top of everything, you had to withstand a dirty room. The furniture is old but polished. There's a dresser, a chair, a bed with a faded mauve floral bedspread, and a bathroom. You hurry to test the pipes, turning the water on and off. The hot water is reasonably warm. The mirror is small but smudge-free.

“Oh, honey, you've really outdone yourself,” you say, wiping your wet hand on your pants. You sit on the bed and it creaks, springs poking your butt. “What will we do for our five-year anniversary? Camp?”

“Divorce,” Clark says, and that actually makes you laugh. He smiles quietly, pleased by his joke. 

You toe off your flats and watch Clark flit about the room. He dusts off the dresser and puts in his folded clothes in neat piles. 

“What if there are moths?” you ask.

“There aren’t,” he says. “I checked.”

“You checked? With what, x-ray vision?”

“No! I, uh, know what to look for. My first apartment had moths.”

“Oh. I guess it seems clean.”

Clark nods, adjusting his glasses. That damned curl falls over his eyes and he pushes it back haphazardly. It falls right back down. He needs a haircut. You’re pretty sure he’s due; he gets one every two months, like clockwork. You know because his ears stick out for a week, and you tease him for it.

He puts a picture of who you assume are his parents on the dresser. You snort, shaking your head.

“Are you serious?” you ask. “You actually carry a framed photo of your parents when you travel?”

“Well, yeah,” Clark says. “It makes me feel like they’re here with me.”

“How are you real?” you mumble. 

He takes his toiletries and unpacks those in the bathroom. You peek in and see that he’s only taken up a modest corner of the sink counter. He washes his hands, comically large hunching over the tiny bathroom sink. You wonder how he’ll fit in the shower. 

Wait, no. That's weird. Don't think about Clark in the shower. 

“So where will you be sleeping?” you ask when he comes out. You rub your calves, wincing at the ache. You aren’t used to so much movement in your pinchy work shoes. You’re paying the price for it.

“On the floor, I guess,” Clark says. “I’ll ask Irma for extra pillows.”

“Good,” you say, even though your ribs twinge at the thought of Clark sleeping on the floor. Whatever, this whole thing is his fault. And it’s only for a night, God willing.

“Want to try out the diner? Or do you want to unpack first?” 

You snort. “Yeah, I don’t unpack. Gotta be ready to run.”

You haven’t even unpacked all of your boxes in your apartment, and you moved in over a year ago.

“I like unpacking,” Clark says. “Makes a place feel homey.”

“You would think something like that,” you say, brushing past him. 

“What does that mean?” 

You don’t wait for Clark to lock the door. He catches up to you halfway down the stairs. Damn long legs.

“It means that you probably tear up at hotel art. You think everything is beautiful and special. You carry a framed photo of your parents, for God’s sake. Of course you’d want a hotel room to feel like home.”

Irma isn’t at the desk. Clark holds the door open for you. 

“It helps me be a better reporter,” he says, so damn earnest. “And the picture is my good luck charm.”

“Not much luck in the car breaking down.”

He shrugs. “As long as it’s something I can get through, the charm is working.”

“Well, hoo-fucking-ray. I'd better not get food poisoning from this diner. Can your lucky picture secure that?” 

“I think so,” Clark says, upbeat. “This is a really nice town so far. Reminds me of home. Are you limping?”

“Yes, Detective, I’m limping. These flats give me blisters if I wear them too long.”

He frowns and opens the door to the diner, letting you walk in first. “We should see if we can get you some new shoes.”

You wave your hand. “I’ll be fine. When we get to Chicago, I’ll buy Uggs or something.”

“Those don’t support your arches. My ma has flat feet, so I know.”

“Whatever, Kent. It’s not like I’m gonna be jogging while we interview the professor.”

The diner is humble, not trying to be anything it's not. It's got the classic red booths and chrome finishing, but everything is faded, layered in time. There's a host stand but it's empty, like the rest of the diner. You and Clark sit at a booth by the windows. He picks up the menu immediately. You twirl a spoon, staring at the quickly darkening sky outside. You miss daylight savings. 

“How can you eat at a time like this?” you say glumly, looking at the menu without reading the options. “At this rate, we'll never make it to Chicago.”

“I'm sure that's not true, and it's only a day’s delay. We'll be there before you know it.”

“Don't patronize me, Kent.”

He sighs. “I'm not. You know, being a little more positive wouldn't hurt you.” 

“It'll kill me dead,” you mutter, pulling the menu back up so you don’t have to look at Clark. “Just like Irma’s ridiculous ideas about a woman’s place. She wouldn’t even own the inn if it wasn’t for feminism, does she know that?” 

“Probably not,” Clark admits. “You're right about that. That was wrong of her.”

You sit up at Clark telling you that you're right. Of course, you already knew that, but it's always great to hear.

A waitress approaches soon enough. She's pretty: straight red hair, freckles, all smiles. She's wearing a red-checkered shirt and jeans, with no name tag. It's probably not necessary to wear a name tag when the town population could fill an auditorium. 

“Hi, there! How are you two doing today?” she asks, setting down two glasses of water and straws. “We don't get many visitors!”

“Our car broke down,” you say flatly. 

“Oh no!” she says. “That's awful. Have you booked a room at the inn?”

“Unfortunately.” 

She tilts her head, smile shrinking. “Pardon?”

“Uh, you'll have to excuse her. She's cranky from the day’s events,” Clark says.  

“That's alright, Mr…?”

“Call me Clark.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. Oh God. You brace yourself for Clark's flirting. The glasses push is a giveaway. Last time you saw it in action was with the delivery girl at the Planet. Clark tripped over the recycling bin, but somehow managed to get her number. 

“Nice to meet you, Clark. I'm Beth, as you can see from my… whoops! Not wearing my tag.” She giggles. “Where are you folks from?”

You don't bother responding, all your energy drained by evil Irma. Clark has no trouble picking up the slack.

“We're from Metropolis, but I'm originally from Kansas.” 

“No way!” Beth says. “So am I. What part?” 

Clark lights up. “Smallville! I moved to Metropolis a few years ago.”

“Oh, wow! What a coincidence. I moved to Indiana to help my uncle with the diner, but I grew up in Kansas too. Atchison. You know what, I think our football team played yours,” Beth says. “If I remember correctly, we totally beat you guys.”

“I doubt that,” Clark says, grinning. Good God. He's actually enjoying this. Disgusting. “The Smallville Tractors were undefeated.”

Beth smirks. “Well, the Atchison Tigers definitely—”

“Beth,” you say, trying for a smile. “So sorry to interrupt. My husband here likes to talk but forgets that I have low blood sugar. Would you mind putting in our orders now?” 

Beth blinks, mouth opening and closing as she recalibrates. “Oh! Yes, of course. I'm so sorry. What can I get you?”

You order the veggie pot pie; Clark gets the chicken dinner. Beth smiles tightly as she gathers the menus. 

“It'll be about fifteen minutes,” she says, and walks away. 

“Finally,” you say when she disappears. You peel the straw wrapper and stick the straw into your water. “People come into a diner and want to order food. Imagine that.”

When you’re met with silence, you look up. Clark is smiling. You squint.

“And what are you so happy about?”

“Nothing. I just didn't know you were so territorial over your husband.”

“Oh, please. If you want to cheat on your poor, unsuspecting wife with the waitress, that's your prerogative, Mr. Kent.”

Clark doesn’t say anything else. He just smiles like he knows something you don't, which is infuriating. He drinks his water, and that's when the smile slides off. He frowns. 

“What is it?” you ask. 

Clark smacks his lips. “I don't know. This water tastes strange.”

“Strange, how?”

You put the glass to your lips to taste it, but Clark immediately takes it from your hand and puts it aside. You sputter. 

“Kent!”

“It's lead-contaminated,” he says seriously. “Don't drink it.”

You sniff the water. It smells like nothing. “How can you tell? Aren't most contaminants odorless and tasteless?”

“I… I just can. I have a very developed palate.”

“Oh, you do, do you.” 

“Please.” Clark looks at you, pushing the glasses to the edge of the table. “Please just trust me, okay? I don't want you to get sick.”

“You can’t taste lead, dude.” 

“I can.”

“No, you can’t!” you say, throwing your hands up. “No human can taste lead unless it’s, like, at astronomical levels. And she wouldn’t have given us water if that were the case.”

Clark looks around you. He stares very intently at the kitchen door. Then he gets up. You follow him.

“Now where are you going?” you ask.

“To check the pipes. There will be lead corrosion if the contamination has been happening for some time.”

“Kent, I’m hungry,” you whine, following him to the kitchen. There’s a cook chopping vegetables, and Beth.

“Clark! Um, hi. Customers really aren’t supposed to be back here,” she says. 

“Hi, Beth, sorry, but I think your water is contaminated with lead. I wanted to check the pipes, if that’s okay?”

“Lead?” asks the cook, who's an older man with red hair like Beth. He puts his knife down. “How do you figure?”

“Please don’t encourage him,” you say. 

Clark goes to the sink and stares at the pipes, then nods. “Yeah, I think there’s some corrosion, Mr…”

“Call me Lenny,” says the cook. “I own this place. Beth is my daughter.”

“Excuse me,” you say. “Are we just glossing over the fact that he’s pulling this diagnosis out of his butt? Kent, those pipes look perfectly normal.”

Clark shakes his head and squats, pointing at the pipes. “No, see there’s a little bit of corrosion here, where the pipes join, and there’s… I mean, I suspect that there’s more inside. But we’d have to open the pipes to see, of course.”

Beth and Lenny nod, as if this is perfectly normal. Maybe somewhere along the way, you and Clark fell into a portal to an alternate dimension, one where you’re invisible. It’s the Daily Planet all over again; everyone thinks Clark is some kind of godly authority. Or, at the very least, means too well to mislead.

“Sounds like you’ve got experience with this,” Lenny says. “Beth, get my toolkit. We’re gonna open these up.”

You turn to Clark. “You are thoroughly unbelievable. Are you purposely antagonizing me? Is this because I spilled coffee on you accidentally on purpose last week?”

He crosses his arms. “I would not pretend that a town’s water is contaminated to get you back for a stupid prank. That's ridiculous.” 

“Is it? Because I think divining that pipes have lead in them is more ridiculous.”

Beth brings back the tools and five minutes later, Lenny and Clark have screwed open the pipes. Lenny shines a flashlight and there’s a coating of rusted buildup inside. He grimaces.

“Shit,” he says. He looks at you and Clark. “I don’t think you folks will wanna eat your dinner here.”

Clark helps him screw the pipes back on. You lean against the wall, trying to decide if you’re more defeated by the lack of dinner or the fact that Clark was right.

“Have you ever suspected contamination?” Clark asks.

“Sort of. About a year and a half ago, we got an inspector to come out. He tested the water, said it was fine. The Bakers called for one. Said their animals was actin’ funny.”

“Irma Baker?” you ask.

“Her son,” says Beth. “Carl and his wife, Violet. They live up the road, you probably saw their barn. One of their pigs died suddenly, and they’ve been worried about their cow. And, uh…” She chews her lip. “Vi has been complaining of headaches. I thought it was a cold, but…” She looks at you, and you suddenly feel like shit for messing with her earlier. “Oh, I’m really worried about her. Now I’m wondering if she’s sick because of the lead. We drink mostly from our well, but Carl’s older and can’t carry so many buckets. And their animals drink from the hose.”

“Hang on, an inspector came and told you the water was fine?” Clark asks. “This buildup would take years.”

“Sounds like that inspector is in someone’s pocket,” you say. 

He nods. “Do you know the inspector’s name?”

Lenny shakes his head. “I don’t. Carl would know. You should visit them tomorrow, they’ll tell you all about it. I just can’t believe it’s taken this long. Or that the diner isn’t gonna have any water. We’ve got some bottled water and the well, but…”

“I’ll bring you all more water when we get our car back,” Clark says. “I promise.”

Lenny looks at him, awed. “Oh, Mr. Kent, I couldn’t…”

“You’ve been so hospitable to us. It’s only right that we help you. We’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Lenny nods. “Thank you. Oh, but you folks shouldn’t go to bed hungry. I… I think I have some frozen burritos. Irma’s got a microwave. I’m sorry I can’t give you a real home-cooked meal.”

“That’s okay,” you say. “Frozen burritos are more my speed, anyway.”

You and Clark leave with your burritos, bottled water, and a promise to visit the Bakers tomorrow morning. 

“If you think of anything else, we’re in Room Two,” Clark says to Beth. “Stop by, alright?”

“Oh!” Beth looks at you quickly, then back at Clark, her cheeks turning red. “Uh, sure. Or maybe you should stop by the diner instead.”

Clark jolts, glancing at you. “Oh, uh…”

“Good night,” she says, nodding at you both. She goes inside.

“She’s keeping you honest, Kent,” you say, grinning as you walk ahead. “You’re a married man now. For shame! Asking her up to our room in front of your wife? Tsk tsk.” 

“I didn’t mean it that way,” he says, and you can guess that his face is pink. It’s too dark to tell.

“She probably thinks I’m a poor, unsuspecting wife who’s getting two-timed by her new husband. Woe is me.”

Clark hums. “I doubt she thinks you’re unsuspecting.”

“Why?” 

“Well, back at the diner, your blood sugar comment… to some people, it might've looked like jealousy.”

“Oh, please. Jealous of who? She's the one who had to suffer through your flirting.”

“I can flirt,” he says indignantly. 

You burst into laughter. Clark glares at you. 

“What? I can.”

“Is this what you do?” You put on your best imitation of Clark, deepening your voice and pretending to push glasses up your nose. “Oh, jeez, did I knock over your coffee? Goshdarnit, I’m such a silly goose! I'll get you a new one right away, I'm so sorry. It's on me, I know just how you like it. I’m Clark and I’m accident-prone and goofy and the biggest choir boy you’ll ever meet! I trip over my own feet to be adorable!”

“That's not how I flirt! I have wooed… plenty of women, for your information.” 

“Wooed?”

“And many have asked for my number, so… yeah. I have no trouble getting dates.” 

“Come on, Kent. You are not swimming in phone numbers. That homegrown farmboy routine works maybe thirty percent of the time. I've crunched the numbers. It's dire.” 

“Women enjoy my company,” he says, frowning. 

“Hey, I'm not saying no woman ever, but your flirting could use a major revamp.”

“From you? Yeah, sure.” Clark scoffs. “As if you're swimming in phone numbers?”

“Hey, just because I'm selective doesn't mean I don't have options. And it doesn't mean I don't know how to flirt either.”

“Really.”

Your eyes slit as you rise to the challenge. “Kent, you wouldn't know what to do with my flirting.”

“Yeah? Hm, now, do you spit on the guy’s neck first, or just kick him straight in the crotch? I want to be ready.” 

Instead of responding, you strut up to Clark. You take his tie in hand, petting the fabric and smoothing it down. 

“Nice tie, Clark,” you say, looking at him. He looks back, blinking. 

“Uh, thanks?”

“Yeah. Matches your eyes so nicely. Those pretty baby blues. How come you never take your glasses off, hm?” Your voice is soft and powdery. You reach for Clark's glasses, and he scrambles to keep them in place. You let him tug them back, smiling, your lips pursed like you know a secret. His Adam's apple bobs as he swallows. 

“I need them to see, so…”

“I know.” You catch your lip between your teeth, fixing his shirt collar. His skin is warm, sun-hot despite it being close to 8pm. Your thumb brushes his chin and you feel the prickle of new hair. You've heard him tell Jimmy how he has to shave daily to stay clean-shaven. Stupid good genes. 

“Just take them off for a second, I mean,” you say. “Gift me that. You know, I could look into your eyes forever. They're so lovely.”

Clark suddenly steps back. Your hand falls away. 

“See?” you say, turning smug. “Told ya.”

“It wasn’t that great. It’s not like you reinvented the wheel,” he mumbles, adjusting his glasses. 

“Your ears are red!” you crow, but your heart skips a beat at the realization. 

Clark turns around. “No, they're not.” 

“Are too!” you sing-song, going into the inn. “I win. You lose.”

“Whatever.” 

You enter the hotel first. The desk is still empty; Irma’s probably gone to bed. That doesn’t sound like such a bad idea. You go upstairs, Clark on your heels. Your feet ache; you can’t wait to take a hot shower.

“Dibs on the shower,” you say.

“I wouldn’t expect anything less.”

You go to your suitcase to get fresh clothes and make a beeline for the bathroom. When you get out, Clark is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching the tiny black and white TV. He laughs at what looks like a rerun of Little House on the Prairie.

“Wow,” you say, rubbing cream on your face. “You’re such a cliche, man.”

“Little House is Ma’s favorite,” Clark says. “We used to watch it together after school. I can’t believe they still have reruns on cable.”

“I can’t believe anyone still watches it. Okay, your turn.”

Clark finally pulls his eyes away from the TV and looks at you. He stops, fighting a smile.

“Wow,” he says, clearing his throat to poorly hide a laugh. “Big fan?”

You cross your arms over your blue Superman t-shirt. “Problem?”

“No, not at all,” he says, grinning. “I just, ah, didn’t think you’d like him.”

“Superman? Who doesn’t like Superman?”

Clark shrugs. “Plenty of people. I mean, I still get negative comments on my articles about him.”

“Oh, like hashtag Supershit? Yeah, Lois told me about that.”

Clark takes a deep breath. “I really don’t like that one.”

“It’s unimaginative,” you say.

“Right? I mean, if you’re going to hate, at least be creative. Especially on my article page where I can see them!”

“You mean where Superman can see them,” you say.

“Right. Where he sees them.” Clark adjusts his glasses. “Uh, anyway. Nice shirt. I’m gonna shower now.”

He takes less than ten minutes in the bathroom. You’re half-watching Die Hard when Clark comes out in a cloud of steam. He wears a white shirt. Patches of dampness reveal skin through his shirt. His hair drips water onto his shoulders. On the bottom, Clark has on a pair of blue-striped pajama pants. 

It’s easy to forget Clark’s size when he’s drowning in second-hand corduroy suits. You had no idea, for example, that his biceps were so defined. Does he lift trains on weekends? 

“You’re dripping water all over the carpet, doofus,” you say, turning back to the TV.

“Doofus? That’s new. Oddly juvenile.”

“I have R-rated names to call you, if you’d prefer.”

He sighs. “I’m good.”

Clark sets up the extra blankets from the closet on the floor. You take pity and toss him one of your pillows. You settle in bed, trying to ignore the bedsprings poking your back. 

“We should talk to the Bakers tomorrow,” Clark says.

“Clark, we’re practically out of here tomorrow. We have to get to Chicago. There’s not much we can do.”

“We can at least get their statement. Who knows what’ll happen by the time we follow up?”

You let out an obnoxiously loud groan. The worst part is that Clark’s right; if you actually want to help Deadwood, you have to get the story now. If the inspector or anyone else gets wind of two reporters poking around, they’ll bury the town and any evidence of lead contamination before you can return. It’s not their fault you’re so mopey about your stalled car. They don’t deserve water making them sick.

“Okay, fine,” you say, rolling over. “We’ll see the Bakers. Now shut it. I’m sleeping.”

“Thank you.” You hear the smile in Clark’s voice. “Good night.”

You wake up to the smell of something sweet and battered. 

“Good morning,” Clark says, voice hushed. He kneels on your side of the bed, already dressed in a button-down and slacks. His hair is fluffy and curly. 

“Mmph,” you say, squinting at the rays of sunlight peeking through the blinds. “Time ‘s it?”

“Quarter to ten. I figured I’d let you sleep.”

“You’re a peach,” you grumble, lifting the sheet over your eyes. “You should’ve kept me knocked out till we got to Chicago. Do you have breakfast, cabbage head?”

“I do, actually. Beth dropped off some waffles. She didn’t use the tap water, don’t worry.”

“Hmm.” You push the sheet down, your eyes still shut. “Sounds good. Feed me, Seymour.”

Clark snorts. “It’s good that your sense of humor is so sharp before noon. Come get dressed, and I’ll throw in some coffee to sweeten the deal.”

You bend your legs and whine. The pain from your flats has persisted. 

“What’s wrong?” Clark asks, touching your shoulder. Your eyes fly open. He’s so close.

“My feet hurt,” you say, sounding and feeling pathetic, but whatever. It’s early for a Saturday and you’re hungry and stuck with Clark Kent. You can be pathetic, as a treat. 

“I’ll go see if Irma has aspirin. C’mon. You’ll feel better after you eat.”

“I won’t,” you mumble, glowering at the back of his head as he crosses the room. “I’ll never feel better.”

“Someone’s not a morning person,” Clark says, smiling at you. “I’ll be back. Waffles are here.” He points to a plastic bag on the desk. “Don’t eat them all, please.”

“Maybe.”

Fifteen minutes later, you’re full and caffeinated. Clark secured some aspirin from Irma, and you’re feeling less like an angry, hungry blob. You left Clark the lion’s share of the waffles because you’re a kind and generous person. 

“Did Triple A call?” you ask, mouth full of toothpaste. You look at Clark in the bathroom mirror reflection as he puts on his loafers.

“No, I asked. I’m sure they’ll call while we’re at the Bakers. Irma said she’d take a message for us.”

“Hm.” You rinse with the bottle of water you and Clark are sharing. “Okay.”

“She also said that she’s delighted that we’ve made up and love each other again.”

“Does she know that that’s a delicate state? You’ll probably piss me off in the next ten minutes.”

“I’m sure she’ll figure it out soon,” Clark says, deadpan. “Oh, also…”

He gives you a shoebox. You open it. It’s a pair of tan, leather boots. They look new and good-quality. 

“I mentioned your improper footwear to Beth. She gave me those. I think you two are the same size. I would’ve bought you shoes, but the nearest store is fifteen miles away. Which I… can’t get to.” 

You take the box, staring dumbly as Clark keeps on shuffling around the room, getting ready. He digs through his satchel for his recorder and notepad. When you don’t say anything, he looks up.

“What is it? Look, I know you have a thing about using people’s stuff, but I figured it’s too cold for the flats, and these are practically new, so…”

You swallow. “What, um… what did Beth want for the boots?”

Clark tilts his head. “Nothing. She said the soles are too wide for her, so she’s never worn them out. She said you can keep them.”

“Oh. I can pay her back, though. I should go—”

“It’s okay,” Clark says. “Really. She was gonna give them away, but she got them as a present from a friend, so she felt bad.”

You chew the inside of your cheek. “Why would she be so nice? Just for no reason…”

“Sometimes people are nice for no reason.”

“No. People always want something in return, Kent. Always.”

“Not always,” Clark says softly. “Have people… expected things from you?”

“Yeah. Because that’s—” You sit on the bed, frustrated. The box is in your lap. “I don’t have long enough socks for these.”

“You can use mine.”

Clark hands you a pair of black dress socks. You look up at him, speechless for the first time ever. He smiles. 

“Ready?” he says. “I told the Bakers we’d meet them at eleven.”

You nod, his socks in your hands. “Yeah. Ready.”

Carl and Violet Baker live on a four acre farm on the edge of Deadwood. They’re both in their fifties. Violet is pretty, with streaks of gray in her black, curly hair. Carl is a stout man who’s always smiling, it seems. He loves his wife very much, from the way he seeks her out while they speak to you. He holds her hand the whole time as Violet tells you about her headaches and the power plant and the dirty inspector, Robert Beckett. The four of you sit at their kitchen table. Clark records the conversation, and you both take notes.

“At first we were grateful for the plant,” she says. “L.L. Tech brought jobs. A bunch of people in town work there. And it revived local businesses. But it’s been three years and they’ve ignored all of our complaints. Any report we make to the health department leads to a dead end. We think the inspector we met before is tossing out our complaints before they can make it to the state.”

“I carry water from the well for her when my sciatica doesn’t act up,” Carl says when Violet finishes. “It's the only water that doesn't make her sicker. If she drinks from the tap, she gets a headache for hours.”

Clark frowns. “The well is probably the only uncontaminated water source. You said the symptoms began when the plant was built?”

“A little after. We don’t know what to do. One doctor said that our only solution would be to move. Jeez, we can’t do that.” Carl wrings his hat, shaking his head. “This is our home.”

You nod. “I’m sorry. We see this thing a lot, especially in middle America. Corporations take advantage of tiny towns with no one to advocate for them.” 

Carl sighs. “Gosh almighty. I don't know what to do. I'd move us out if I could, or hire a lawyer. but…”

“We're going to help you,” Clark says, strong and sure, putting his hand on Carl's shoulder. “I promise.”

“You will?” Violet asks, perking up. 

“Yes,” Clark says. “We’ll investigate, and get L.L. Tech to pay.”

Carl smiles. “Thank you, son. Gosh, thank you. We've felt so hopeless for years.” He squeezes Violet’s wrist and stands. “If you’ll pardon me, I’ve gotta check on Daisy.” 

You close your notebook and stand. “Kent, can I have a word outside?”

He looks up, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Sure.”

As soon as you’re outside, you grab Clark by his arm and pull him down to your face. 

“Hey, easy!” he says, frowning. 

“Why did you tell him we're going to help?” you hiss. “That was stupid and cruel, Clark. We can’t dismantle a corporation in a day or even a month. Even Lois isn't that good.”

“He needs hope. You saw him. No one cares about him or Violet or anybody else in town. They're sick and alone and… and I wanted to give him hope.”

“You can't do anything,” you say, and you feel a pang of sadness saying so. For once, you don't want to burst Clark's bubble. “God, I’m sorry, Clark, but it’s wrong to tell him we can do something. We can’t.”

Clark straightens, shoulders wide. He looks at you, and the change is so jarring, your hand drops from his arm. 

“Yes, we can,” he says, so sure that you're inclined to believe him. “You and I are great reporters and L.L. Tech doesn’t know we’re here. If we get enough evidence…”

“Even if we did get evidence, we’re supposed to be in Chicago. We promised the professor. And this kind of story takes weeks of reporting. We’d have to get permission from Perry to pursue it, investigate undetected, so many things. You and I both have priority assignments.”

“This takes priority,” Clark says firmly. “For me.”

You open your mouth to reply, but Carl bursts out of the barn then, running to the house. He whoops, waving his hat.

“Daisy’s in labor!” he says. Violet opens the front door, and Carl hugs her. She looks happy but in pain. “The baby’s here, Vi!”

“Oh my goodness. Um.. okay, I’ll bring towels and water and—” She pinches the bridge of her nose, trying to think. “Uh…”

“I can help,” Clark says. “Miss Violet, please rest.”

“Oh, Clark, that’s very nice of you. It’s alright.”

“No, really. I’ve delivered calves and a couple of foals, back in high school. I can do it. I’ve missed helping animals, to be honest.” 

“Honey, he wants to,” Carl says, looking absolutely relieved that someone besides his sick wife can help. “Let him. He’s our guest.”

Violet reluctantly nods. “Alright, but holler if you need help.”

“Of course, honey. Clark?”

Clark springs into action, loosening his tie and handing it to you. You take it, absently rolling it and putting it in your purse. He gives you his suit jacket. You fold it over your arm. 

“I’ll be back,” he tells you. “Or you can—”

“Ah, no, I don’t think I’m ready for live animal birth,” you say, smiling wanly. “I’ll transcribe the recording on your laptop.”

Clark smiles. “Okay, sure. Thanks.” 

He runs to the barn with Carl. You follow Violet into the house. She tells you she’s going to go lie down. 

“Do you need anything?” you ask, fiddling with your hands.

“No, dear. Thank you. Let me know when they’ve finished. It’ll probably be a few hours. Help yourself to anything you want in the fridge.”

The stairs creak as Violet goes. You settle at the kitchen table and open Clark’s laptop. His lockscreen is a picture of a bunch of you in the bullpen from last year’s Christmas party. Lois is next to him, then Jimmy, then Cat, Steve, and Perry. You don’t remember taking photos, probably because you’d drunk way too much champagne that night. According to Jimmy, Clark had driven you home. And in the picture, Clark is next to you, arm politely around your shoulders. You’re laughing and he’s smiling at you. You quickly press the spacebar, and the picture disappears. 

There’s no wifi, which is no surprise, but you can type your notes without it. You play the recording, transcribing. You wonder if Triple A has called, then feel guilty for hoping. Violet and Carl can’t just leave for Chicago like you can. But you’re just being realistic, you think as you type. Clark wants to make a change, and that’s honorable, but it probably won’t happen soon. Skipping Chicago won’t help. True, Violet will get sicker and Carl is getting old and can’t keep the farm running and take care of his wife. But what can you do, besides gather evidence? 

No, Clark’s being ridiculous. He needs to get a grip, seriously! He’s worked long enough at the Planet to know how this stuff works. Hope is great and all, but it can’t save anyone. 

The door opens. You look up, startled. Carl is in the doorway, grinning. You look at the clock. Two and half hours have flown by, somehow. 

“Mama and baby are doing just fine. You’ve got a hell of a partner.”

“He’s a man of many trades,” you say, closing the laptop. 

“Sure is. You wanna meet baby Lily?”

“I… um, okay. Violet said she wanted to be awakened when the calf was born.”

“I’ll check on her,” he says kindly. “Go meet her!”

So you go to the barn and you find Clark with his button-down off and soiled. He’s now only in his undershirt, somehow not cold in the drafty barn. There’s a sheen of sweat on his face and neck. In his arms is a brown and white calf. Daisy is in the corner, watching her baby keenly. 

“Hey,” you say, suddenly overwhelmed by everything.

“Hey,” Clark says, looking like he belongs. “Wanna hold her?” 

You laugh nervously, taking a step back. “She'll probably sense I'm a city girl and bite me or something.”

“Oh no, she won't bite,” Carl says, having returned with a stack of old towels. He pats down Clark with one and gives him another to wrap around Lily. “She's just a little thing. Plus, Clark’s got her safely swaddled. She wants to sleep, even though it was Mama that did all the heavy lifting.”

He laughs at his joke. Clark smiles and holds Lily out to you. 

“Just pet her,” he says at your trepidation. “It’s okay.”

Lily looks at you with her wet, black eyes, looking quite comfortable snuggled in Clark's thick forearms. You gingerly pet the damp chocolate hair on her head, between her ears. They twitch curiously, but she doesn’t react otherwise. 

“See?” comes Clark's warm voice. “She's a sweetie pie. She's just a baby, right? Hmm? New to this world, aren't you, sweetheart?” 

“Are you aware that you're baby-talking the cow?” you ask. 

“Yes,” he says, undeterred. “‘Cause she’s just a baaay-beeee. Yes, you are.”

Lily curls into Clark’s chest, blinking her dark, fat lashes. He looks peaceful like this, in his element. You’ve always been jealous of how Clark can fit in anywhere. Everyone likes him eventually. 

“You two look like this could be your farm,” Carl says, chuckling. “Maybe when you’re done being reporters, you can settle down with some cows.”

You and Clark look at each other, equally flustered. 

“Uh—” Clark begins. “We’re not actually—”

“I’ll go see how Violet’s doing,” you say, touching Clark's elbow. “I'll see you inside, Clark.”

He nods, looking stunned. “Oh. Sure.”

You dart out of the barn, relieved. Your stomach was feeling fluttery back there. Maybe it was the live birth. Yes, that has to be it. You’re just queasy.

Violet is sweeping when you come in. You offer to help and she denies you, but when she starts to sway, you gently take the broom from her and sweep. She sits at the kitchen table, taking a breath.

“How’s the baby?” she asks.

“Healthy,” you say. “She’s, uh, cute.”

Violet laughs. “I take it you weren’t raised around livestock? You’re looking a little green ‘round the gills, honey.”

“Yeah, I’m not really used to cow births,” you say. “Luckily I only caught the smell of it.”

“I understand. Carl’s uncle was a butcher. The first time I saw him kill a chicken, oh.” She shakes her head like she’s in the memory again. “It was horrible. I threw up on Carl’s boots. He proposed a few weeks later. He confessed that he could never stomach killing chickens either.”

“I guess most of us don’t want to know how the sausage gets made,” you say.

“I suppose you’re right. Your guy Clark seems to be comfortable here.”

You nod. “Yeah, he’s from Kansas. He’s one hundred percent cornfed.” You grimace. “Sorry. Is that offensive?”

Violet laughs. “Don’t worry. We’re not all as uptight as Irma. I’m sorry that she made you pretend to be married, but trust me, she’s the only one in town who lives like it’s the last century.”

Your eyes widen. “You heard about that?”

“Just that two newlyweds are staying at the inn,” she says. “But your secret is safe with me. You two fooled the others but I know there’s a certain familiarity that comes with being married. How long have you been together? Few months?”

“We–we’re not,” you say. “At all. Clark and I are just co-workers. We don’t even really like each other that much.”

Violet’s eyebrows rise. “Huh.”

Before you can ask what that means, Clark and Carl come in. Clark is shirtless, which is, um, something. You quickly look away. 

“Clark got Daisy's mess on his clothes, Vi,” Carl says. “I’m gonna go try to find something that fits. If I can.” He chuckles. “Big fella here.”

“I told Carl I don’t mind wearing the same shirt,” Clark says, but Violet hushes him and takes his undershirt and button-up.

“No, don’t be silly. I’ll wash this quickly. It should be fine in an hour; it’s a windy day. Go shower.”

“Oh no, Vi, that’s really okay. I can just wash up out back.”

“In the cold? Don’t be a silly goose. Upstairs, now.”

“Or I can shower at the inn...”

“No, you will not walk back with cow mess on you. Go.” 

Clark swallows, and you can imagine he’s got the same expression when he’d fruitlessly try to argue with his mother. “Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

Clark goes upstairs, and you listen to his footsteps. You finally allow yourself to breathe. Not very gentlemanly at all, strutting around half-naked in a stranger’s house. What’s his problem?

“Oh, gosh, I didn’t give him a towel,” Violet says. “Hon, would you mind taking one to him? I’m just feeling dizzy.”

She gets a green towel from a closet by the stairs and hands it to you. You press your lips together and take it.

“Of course,” you say, heading up the stairs. “No… problem.”

Carl is in one room, looking through the drawers. He doesn’t notice you go down the hall to where the bathroom is almost closed, light peeking through the crack. The water’s running. You stiffly walk to it and grip the door handle so hard, you’re afraid you’ll crush it. You close your eyes and toss the towel blindly into the bathroom. Several things hit the floor, presumably from the sink, and you wince. Shit. 

You go into the bathroom and begin picking up the stuff you knocked over. 

“Hello? Carl?” Clark says through the spray of water.

“No!” you say, panicked. “No, definitely not Carl!”

Clark says your name. “Why are you…”

“I brought you a stupid towel, okay? Shut up. I knocked stuff over.”

Clark peers around the curtain. His hair is wet, sticking to his ears and forehead. He’s absolutely enormous in the Bakers’ tiny shower. 

“You knocked their stuff over?”

“Not on purpose,” you say hotly. 

“There’s a bottle in the corner,” Clark says, pointing. The curtain ruffles, and you see a glimpse of his right shoulder. His pec is rosy with heat, his nipple the same color as his lips. Don't stare at his nipple! 

“Don’t let go of the curtain, Clark, Jesus Christ! I don’t want to see your thing!”

He grabs the curtain, startled. “I-I don’t want you to see my thing either.”

“Stop talking about your thing!”

“You brought it up first!”

“Well, stop! Ugh!”

You rush out of the bathroom, closing the door. Carl is there, shirt in hand.

“Oh, hi,” he says. “I found a shirt that I think will fit Clark. Do you know what size he is?”

“No,” you say quickly. “I barely know him. Um, that looks fine. I’ll just be downstairs.”

Carl blinks, confused. “Alright, I’ll just—”

You descend the stairs before he finishes, uncaring if you seem rude. God, you need out of this town. 

Violet is resting on the couch when you come down. 

“Everything okay?” she asks without opening your eyes.

“Uh-huh, yeah, great. Thanks, Violet.”

You busily pack up Clark’s laptop, trying to get the image of Clark in the shower out of your brain. He comes downstairs with Carl a few minutes later in a blue cotton t-shirt that is at least two sizes too small for him. Is there no end to this torture? 

“Now it’s definitely a tight fit, but it should do for a little while,” Carl says.

“It’ll do just fine. Thank you, Carl.” The shirt matches Clark’s eyes. He reaches up to push his hair back and the shirt rides up, revealing his belly button and a trail of dark hair. Good grief. “I’m sorry to be such a bother.”

Violet shakes her head. “No, a shirt is the least we can do for your generosity.” 

The phone rings. Carl answers it. 

“Hello? Oh, hi, Mama. Yes, they’re here. Uh-huh. Sure.” He holds out the phone to you. “My mother is saying some car guy is here?”

You beat Clark to the receiver. Clark leans in to hear her, dripping water on your neck. He’s warm and smells like strawberries and it’s too much! You elbow him away. 

“Shoo,” you snap. He frowns. “Hi, Miss Irma.”

“Oh. Yes, hello,” she says. “I didn’t know you and Clark were at Carl’s. How is Clark?”

You roll your eyes. “He’s wonderful. He helped deliver Daisy’s calf.”

“What a splendid young man! You hold on tight to him, missy.”

Clark snickers. You glare. “Yes, ma’am, I’ll hold onto him so tight, he’ll explode. Did Triple A call?”

“Yes, yes, they said that their man would be here in ten minutes.”

You pump your fist. “Oh, awesome. Thank you so much, Irma.”

“Hmm. May I speak to Clark?”

“Sure, whatever.” You pass the phone to Clark and try to contain your excitement. Finally! You’re out of here! Wahoo!

“Can you two stay for dinner?” Violet asks. 

You deflate at how earnest she sounds. “Uh, well, no. Sorry, but Triple A is coming soon, and then we have to get to Chicago. We have an interview to conduct there.”

“Oh, of course. Are you sure you don’t want a little something to eat for the road?”

“Uh…” You don’t know if it’s more polite to say yes or no. You turn to Clark for guidance. He’s hung up the phone and looks sadder than you’ve ever seen him. He smiles when he realizes you’re all looking at him.

“It’s alright, Violet, you don’t need to—”

“Now, Clark,” she says sternly. “That’ll be two times now that you’ve tried to refuse my hospitality. I know your mother taught you it’s not polite to decline when someone’s offering you food.”

“Yes, ma’am, sorry. We’d love something for the road.”

The Triple A worker is there when you return to the inn, each of you with a Tupperware of tater tot casserole.

“You Clark Kent?” he asks.

Clark nods. “Yes, that’s me. Uh, can you hold on one moment?”

“Sure. I can tow you guys to Indianapolis, and we’ll arrange a ride.”

“No way are we getting back into a car,” you say as Clark guides you inside and up to your room. You start packing, but Clark stays stuck by the door. You stop.

“Clark?”

He looks down and rubs his neck. “I, um, think I’m going to stay here a few more nights.”

You stop. “What?”

“You can go ahead and do the story with Professor Romano. It’s all yours, I don’t mind.”

“Clark.” You exhale, crossing your arms. “How are you going to get out of here if not with Triple A? C’mon, don’t do this.”

“I’ll figure something out,” he says. “And I know you really want the Chicago piece. It’s okay! I don’t mind.”

You go to him, touching his elbow. “Be realistic. What can you do in a few days here?”

He shrugs. “My best. I can’t leave without trying.”

“We weren’t even supposed to be here!”

Clark nods. “I know, but we are, and they need help. Isn’t this what we do? Help people the best way we know how?”

“You can’t just abandon a story! What will I tell Perry?”

Clark smiles slyly. “I’m sure you’ll figure something out.”

“This isn’t fair! You can’t ditch me. I’m your partner, for God’s sake.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Since when are we partners?”

“Since you showed me the ropes of Indiana living and birthed a cow and all that. We’re trauma-bonded now, Clark. Well, me more than you, but still.”

“Technically, I didn’t birth the cow—”

“You can’t stay,” you say petulantly. “You can’t ditch me. That’s sucky of you.”

He looks at you, blue eyes sulky. Did he learn that from Lily? Stupid.

“Then stay with me,” he says softly. “They deserve our help. You took down that corrupt senator last year all by yourself. You know how to do this.”

“It might be dangerous,” you say. “And we won’t take down L.L. Tech in a day.”

“I know. Let’s at least go to the plant, see what we can find. Then we’ll go to Chicago.”

“If Triple A comes back for us.” You shake your head. “This is so fucking stupid. You piss me off, Kent, you know that?”

“I know,” he says, smiling.

“We’re gonna get caught,” Clark whispers, his legs folded up and cramped in the tiny plastic chair in the power plant’s office waiting room.

You roll your eyes. “We’re not gonna get caught. Shush.”

You’re flying by the seat of your pants today. You and Clark had no plan on how to investigate the plant; if any of them caught wind of you being reporters, the plant would be locked down. But Carl has a cousin who works as a security guard in the plant, and he was able to fudge an entry log and get you two visitors’ badges. Then you called the plant, pretending that you were educators looking for a tour to teach students about power plants. Miraculously, it worked. You’re here now. Carl’s cousin had only one warning: steer clear of Cheryl Beckett.

“No one is going to believe that we’re teachers,” Clark says.

“Sure they will. You look like a substitute teacher everyday, Clark.”

“Ha ha.”

The door to the front office opens. 

“Hello!” you say to the woman that walks out. She’s blonde, maybe forty, and she’s wearing a hard hat. Do you get a hard hat? You hope so. 

“Hello,” she says, holding out a hand to shake as you stand. “I’m Cheryl Beckett.” Ah, shit. “Are you two the teachers from Hawkins?”

“Yes, well, we’re actually teachers-slash-curriculum creators. We wanted to do some real research into power plants for a unit plan we’re designing to encourage children to go into engineering.”

Cheryl smiles, her eyes cold. “Oh, that’s great. We can always use more hard workers to power our world. I’m afraid I can only give you a quick tour…”

“Any time you can spare is appreciated,” Clark says. Cheryl smiles again, a little thawed. God. Is there anyone in this town who doesn’t like Clark ten seconds after meeting him?

“Follow me,” she says, and leads you down a long hallway. She pauses and turns, dropping two tiny cans with cow print into Clark’s hand. L.L. Tech is printed on them in black letters. 

"My boss thinks we should start branding more," Cheryl says, clearly not in agreement with her boss. "So there you go. We have more for your students."

You're sure a class full of moo cans would be your nightmare for a real teacher. But you just smile. "Thank you. So cute."

She nods and keeps walking. You glance at Clark, who puts the cans in his pocket. 

You pull out your phone to check if you have enough storage for the millions of pictures you want to take to hopefully build a case against the plant. Cheryl tuts. 

“Those won’t work here if you’re not connected to our network,” she says.

“Ah.” You lean into Clark. “So if we’re dead…”

He nudges you. You spring back, forcing cheer into your voice. “So, Cheryl, how long have you worked here?”

“I’ve been here since the plant opened. My husband Robert is a health inspector in the area, so it was just good luck that I was hired to be a project manager.”

Yeah, sure. Good luck, your ass. 

“And there’s plans to expand the plant,” she continues. “Which is great for us.”

You and Clark exchange a worried glance. More people will get sick. 

“Do you think we can talk to Robert?” Clark asks.

Cheryl turns, furrowing her brows. “Why?”

“Oh, we’re just trying to speak to as many people as we can so we can create a well-rounded curriculum.” You nod seriously. “For the kids.”

She purses her lips. “He’s not here. He’s doing an inspection in the city.”

“No problem.”

Cheryl squints. “What school did you say you were from again?”

“Hawkins…”

“Conservatory,” Clark says. 

“I thought this was for elementary students,” she says.

“Very advanced elementary students. They’re already learning about the water cycle in second grade,” you say. “And… taxes.”

“And the power cycle,” Clark adds. “Which would apply here.”

“Right.” You smile innocently at Cheryl. “That too!”

She looks like she wants to ask fifteen more questions when her phone rings. She answers it, talking quietly and in one word answers. She hangs up.

“I’m sorry, I have some business to attend to quickly. It won’t be long. You two can wait in the office. If you’ll follow me—”

“Oh, it’s just down that way, right?” Clark says. “We know where the office is. Please, take all the time you need.”

She nods slowly. “Well, alright. Thank you. I’ll only be a minute.”

You start walking the opposite direction, but as soon as she disappears around a corner, you and Clark turn.

“Didn’t know you broke the rules like this, Clark,” you say.

“It’s for a good cause. Good people.”

“Yeah,” you say, sobered. “It is.”

It doesn’t take long to find Cheryl’s office. You jiggle the handle. It’s locked.

“Maybe I can try to pick it,” you say, digging through your bag. You hear a clinking sound and look up.

“Oh, uh…” Clark is holding the doorknob. “It just fell off. Weird, right?”

“A miracle,” you say, slipping through the open door. “Let’s go.”

In the drawer is the most recent complaint filed by the Bakers, dated a month ago. It’s the top complaint on a stack of them. There’s also blueprints.

“Clark, look at this.”

He joins you and takes pictures of everything. You keep rummaging through the drawer. 

“They’re building another ash pond to store the toxic waste from the coal emissions,” he says. “Ten miles out. There’s no way these plans are regulation-grade. The Becketts are in L.L. Tech’s pocket for sure.”

You shiver. 

“Cold?” Clark asks.

“Yeah, a little.”

He slips off his suit jacket and helps you put it on. The sleeves are enormous and it’s so not your color, but it’s warm from Clark’s body heat. You wrap it tighter around you.

“Thanks,” you say, suddenly feeling shy.

“Of course.” Clark turns away and you do the same, focusing on finding evidence. There are maps, reports, charts, dozens of things that you can’t read right now but that you’re sure will make sense when you make your murder board at work. 

“Freeze!”

Or not. 

A guard shines a flashlight in your face. 

“Or I’ll shoot,” he barks.”

Oh. A flashlight and a gun. Great. 

“Shit,” you whisper.

“Drop the papers.” 

You drop them. 

“Walk.”

You walk. Clark tries to wedge between you and the guard. But the guard seems to like his chances better if the gun is on you, and he grabs your arm and yanks you back. His gun digs into your shoulder blade. Your breath catches. Clark turns around, meeting your gaze, panicked.

“Keep walking,” the guard snaps. “Or she gets it. You two are in deep shit. Schoolteachers, huh?”

The guard takes you down a long hallway, away from the entrance. Think, think. What would Superman do? Hell, what would Lois do?

You see Clark fidgeting. He pats his back pocket. Oh.

Slowly, you reach into Clark’s jacket pocket. You feel the moo can. You tip it. 

It bellows out a loud moo. It’s enough for the guard to get distracted, whirling around with his gun. He hauls you with him, but Clark rushes forward. He pries the guard’s hand off of your arm and they topple to the floor. 

Bang! 

Your heart leaps to your throat. “Clark!” 

The gun slides to your feet, smoking. The guard lays on the ground, unconscious. Clark stands, glasses askew. His shirt has a scorched hole in it near his shoulder. You rush to him.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” you say, anticipating blood. You grab Clark’s arm with two hands. “Clark, Clark, oh God, oh—”

“Hey, it’s okay. Bullet missed me.” Clark curls a hand around your back, like he was about to hug you but thought better of it. You throw your arms around his neck, relieved when there’s no blood. 

“Holy shit,” you say, shaking. You pull back. “Holy fucking shit. Don’t fucking do that again.”

“What, save you?” Clark grins at you, stupid and smug with that ridiculous curl still in place. God. Why is he so perfect? Asshole.

“Of course your hair is in place,” you mutter. “You know you’re really annoying, Clark?”

He rolls his eyes, still holding you. “I might’ve heard it a few dozen times.”

“Really, really annoying,” you say, dipping your face to his.

At first, Clark is too stunned to move. Then he kisses back with fervor, wrapping his arms around your back and shoulders. Clark Kent kisses with his whole body. His lips are soft, he tastes like coffee, and, yes, he’s good at that too. Go figure. 

You pull back first. “Next time, we’re taking a plane to wherever the hell we’re going.”

Two Months Later

“‘Insidious power plant inspector and project manager held liable for millions in damage’ by—”

“Why does your name go first?” Clark asks, reading your computer screen over your shoulder. He sets your coffee on your desk. 

“Because I almost got shot.”

Clark shakes his head. “That is verifiably untrue.”

“He was pointing the gun at me the whole time, Clark. I was in mortal danger.”

“He shot at me.”

“Yeah, and you were fine? Not sure why you’re arguing.”

He sighs. “I’m not sure either. There’s no point with you.”

“Exactly.” You look up at him and smile, scrunching your nose. “Remember what Irma said about never publishing an article together angry?”

“A gross misquote, Miss Reporter.”

“Oh, yeah? Prove it, then.” You play with the tip of Clark’s tie. He blinks rapidly. 

“Uh—”

“Kent!” Perry yells from his office. “My office, now! And don’t forget that you two are still grounded from working together.” He turns around, mumbling. “In all my years… never saw such a complete disregard of orders…”

Lois and Jimmy giggle. You should be embarrassed, but you’re too charmed by Clark’s pink cheeks as he hurries to Perry’s office. 

♡ warnings (PLEASE READ!): this is a steve kemp fic, so morally gray is a baseline, not an endpoint. please heed the tags above! however, there is no cannibalism in this fic, neither depicted or alluded to. it's inferred in several places that Steve is responsible for a few disappearances and that he's getting up to some nefarious things off-screen, but most of the fic itself focuses on the reader, which steve needs alive and well by design. so if the whole cannibalism thing is a hard pass for you, this fic should be safe!

it's also my first steve kemp fic! he's so hard to get right on the page, but i hope i've done okay! take care of yourselves, and enjoy! x

(not yet read over for mistakes!)

By the time you finally make it out of your last meeting, the halls are half-dark and the hospital is quiet. 

Your back hurts from hours spent around a conference room, the back of your ankles raw from bouncing your knee in your heels under the table. It was productive at the least, but it’s difficult to focus on enforcing protocol or patient advocacy when your mind is so sharply pulled in other directions. 

The click of your footsteps follows you down the corridors toward your office, your files held to your chest and shoulders tense from glancing over them so much. You know you’re being paranoid. This is a safe hospital, with good people and plenty of security. 

There’s no way that he could already know. 

As you turn a sharp corner toward the offices, you pause at the maintenance door being cracked slightly ajar. You have to pass by it to get out, the open side facing away from you so you can’t see what’s inside. 

Your breathing ticks up, fingers clammy on either side of the tightly held manila folder, feet frozen in the middle of the hall. This side of the hospital isn’t the one that houses the patients or overnight personnel, and most of the administrative staff have gone home for the evening. You glance fleetingly at the security camera in the corner, debating your options. 

There’s shuffling from inside the closet, a sharp clatter of something hitting the ground. You take a fumbling step backward, unsteady on your feet, and curse the fact that you don’t have anything to defend yourself with, not even a pair of keys to tuck between your knuckles. The hospital has never felt as unsafe as it has the last forty-eight hours. 

Inhaling a steep breath, you brace your shoulders and step with your toes, forcing yourself carefully down the hall on the opposite side of the corridor without taking your eyes off the closet. 

The dingy light bulb hanging inside of it doesn’t offer much illumination, but what it does give off spills across the hallway tile, staining the cream and blue in a subtle yellow. There’s a thud inside, a boot, maybe, or something heavy—bleach, rope, chloroform—and you peek around the corner as you creep past, considering how quickly you could kick off your heels and make a run for the exit if you needed to. 

There’s a dark shadow and the faint lines of one of the shelving units, a quiet, manly grunt that makes your hair stand on end. You listen closely for any other noise, the suggestion that someone else might be in there too, might be hurt—

The door bangs open when a burly shoulder knocks into it, and a malfunctioning floor buffing machine pushes its way into the hallway, spitting solution onto the tile until it finally putters out. 

“Kenny,” you gasp, unbelievably relieved to see the face of your custodian. You press a hand to your chest, your held breath leaving you in a long sweep. 

It’s not him. 

“Hey there,” Kenny grunts, wiping his forehead with a rag as he slams a palm against the side of the machine. “I’m real sorry about that. I didn’t mean to scare ya. I’m just puttin’ this equipment away and headin’ out for the night. Givin’ me a damn headache, I swear.” 

“That makes sense,” you chuckle, heartbeat coming back down into range. “Well, I’m—sorry for the panic. I’m just headed to pack up too.” 

Kenny wrangles the machine back by the handles, turning it enough to jam it inside the closet before locking up with his keys. He wipes off his hands then turns back to you. 

“It’s gettin’ pretty late. All the stuff on the news lately…” he says, wrinkled eyes glancing over your face, “I could stay and walk ya out, if ya need.” 

Your fingers twitch on the folder again, your shoulders rising just the slightest bit. You trust Kenny enough, but you’re still not ruling anything—anyone—out. Not just yet. 

“No, no. That—that’s really nice of you, but I’ll be fine.” 

“If you’re sure,” he hesitates. “You have a good night, then. Be safe.” 

You give him a tight smile. “You too, Kenny.” 

The two of you set off in opposing directions, Kenny heading toward the exit while you speed walk the rest of the way to your office, more than ready to get home. Your bag is in the bottom drawer of your desk, with keys and a travel sized mace. It’s probably overkill, but it’ll make you feel safer getting to your car if nothing else. 

Pulling on the badge reel clipped to your waist, you scan yourself inside with your I.D., pushing down quickly on the handle and letting yourself in, then spinning to shut it back behind you.  

Your exhale is heavy and well-earned, the nerves you’ve been carrying with you all day momentarily soothed behind the click of the lock. People have always told you you’re too paranoid, too vigilant, but your gut instinct has been correct too many times to start doubting it now. No  matter how much you wish you were wrong. 

“Late night?” 

You spin until your shoulder blades knock into the door behind you, and there he is. Sitting comfortably in the chair behind your desk in the lamplight, rocking in it idly, a slanted smile on his face and a folder sitting neatly on top of your desk. 

“Dr. Kemp—” you start. 

“Thought I’d borrow your office to get some reading done. It’s riveting stuff. Really. I mean, listen to this,” he talks over you, picking up the folder like it’s a daily newspaper. “While highly proficient in his practice, Dr. Kemp exhibits several concerning behaviors that I feel warrant further evaluation.” 

It’s your review, turned in not even a full 24 hours prior. Your breath hitches, trying not to give him a reaction. The evaluations are confidential; he should never have had access to it. 

“We shouldn’t be discussing this,” you tell him evenly. “If you’d like to schedule a meeting with me you can do so during regular office hours—” 

“Let’s see here…unapproved use of hospital resources, selectively neglecting case information leading to inconsistent reports,” he lists, cutting you off again as his eyes skim the page. “Ah. Here we go: Routinely finds reasons to linger around the clinic after hours, with full, unimpeded access to a variety of medical tools and paraphernalia that would otherwise be inaccessible, with little to no surveillance during these periods,” he quotes from the file. “Given the recent disappearances of women in the area, I cannot in good conscience sign off on Dr. Kemp’s evaluation without first suggesting that an investigation be conducted to rule out any…foul play.” 

The folder shuts in his hands with a deceptively soft whisper of movement, his elbows coming to rest on the wood of your desk when he leans forward. 

“I have to admit, you’re more perceptive than I gave you credit for.” 

Your hand twitches toward the door handle behind your back, catching the lock in between your pointer and middle fingers. But the click is deafening in the silence of your office, and Steve’s head tilts, his eyes narrowing slightly. 

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” 

Taking several breaths, you square your jaw, letting your hand fall visibly back to your side. You knew this was a possibility when you filed that report, even if you’d hoped it wouldn’t be. You’ve seen all the crime shows. If you play your cards right, keep him talking, you can bide time until you can slip out the door and run, and you might even manage to get some more information out of him before that. 

You swallow, and he watches your mouth when you say, “What do you want.” 

Steve leans back in your chair with a shrug. “I’m not hung up about the job itself. It’s not really the lack of pay that bothers me, because I can make about ten times what I make here pursuing…other ventures. Not to brag.” 

He stands from your desk altogether then, and you tense as you watch him round the corner, moving to lean against the back of it instead with his arms crossed over his chest. It puts him closer to you, means that there’s nothing left in between now to keep you separated. 

“But, thing is, if I don’t have this job, then people might start wondering about the cash. The nice house. The lifestyle. Might start asking questions, you know?” Steve continues, looking at you like you’re in on some kind of private joke. “And people usually aren’t fond of what happens when they start asking questions.” 

“You won’t get away with this,” you manage, praying he won’t call your bluff about the security guard downstairs, who’s probably leaned back in his chair snoring by now. “I can call security right now and have them on you in sixty seconds.” 

“You could,” Steve admits with a smile that tells you you’ve been caught, “but you won’t.” 

“Give me one reason I shouldn’t.” 

“I’ve got friends in high places, sweetheart. It took me less than twelve hours to track down this file, and I was at home, asleep for half of them,” he says, glancing back at the papers on your desk. “It doesn’t really take much for me to tidy up the narrative.” 

Your spine runs cold. “To kill me, you mean.”  

Steve’s face twists with faux pity. “Oh, no. No, no. I don’t want to hurt you. You think I haven’t noticed you asking around about me these past few months? Haven’t noticed you sneaking into my office when I’m out, looking for precious evidence?” he croons as you freeze against the door. “It’s on camera, honey. All of it. A brand new QA and an esteemed physician…it wouldn’t take much to suggest that you’re just looking for a reason to lock me down and needed leverage. A broken heart is a hell of a drug, isn’t it?” 

“They won’t just toss out those claims,” you insist, your voice shaking. “It’s a serious accusation. There would be questioning, an investigation, and—” 

“You’ve had this job for less than a year. Doesn’t matter how good you’ve been at it. I’ve brought this hospital dozens of clients, reputation, millions of dollars. I’ve got the credentials, the influence, and a whole lot of experience covering up the skeletons in the closet.” 

When he pushes off of your desk, the inches of height he has on you feel like a threat. You get the feeling that they’re meant to, especially when he begins closing the distance. You’re hyper aware of your chances of escape dwindling the closer he gets but your limbs feel like they’re stuck in concrete, your heart beating too fast to get enough blood to your head. 

“Don’t—” you choke when he closes you in against the door, not touching, but bracing a palm on it beside your head so that you can’t open it even if you did try. Against your will, hot tears burn in the backs of your eyes, and Steve coos at you. 

“Shh, shh. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m not. We can make a deal, okay? That’s all I want.” 

“I’m not helping you with this,” you mutter. 

“I think you might want to hear me out first before you go making any decisions,” he counters calmly. “You’re a smart girl, so I’m sure you can see where this is going.” 

You glare at him with wet eyes, but the lack of reaction only seems to spur him on further. 

“I need a signature on that form to be able to keep practicing here. And I’m going to need it again, every six months. Typically people in your position just sign right off on it, because quite frankly I’ve perfected keeping my hands clean.” 

You scoff at him and turn your head to the side, if only to escape the intensity of his attention. But Steve doesn’t let you get far, his hand appearing seemingly out of nowhere to dig his fingers into your jaw and steer you right back to him. 

“But those other people weren’t as smart as you are, honey. I wasn’t expecting it. But I know better now,” he says, stroking across your lower lip with his thumb while you grit your teeth. “So I’m going to need you to use that big brain of yours and make the right decision here and sign off on the evaluation form for me.” 

“Great,” you mutter. “We can add blackmail and coercion to the list of your offenses.” 

With a tilt of his head, Steve eyes you, appraising, and his mouth stretches into something sinister and deceptively fond. 

“I can end your life so quickly and so quietly that no one even realizes you’re gone,” he whispers, stroking over your jaw with his fingers. “I don’t want to do that, sweetheart. I really don’t. I’m giving you a choice here. It’s just one little signature. Surely that’s not more important than your life, right?” 

“So—what,” you spit shakily. “I’m just—a pawn? Another thing you get to control for your own benefit?” 

“I wouldn’t say that,” Steve argues, dropping his eyes down to your mouth again. “This is a negotiation, sure. But there’s no reason that the agreement we come to can’t be…amicable.” 

“You’re sick,” you sneer. 

Steve, unbothered by your disgust, only smiles wider. “And you have no idea what you got yourself into when you filled out that form.” 

His hand moves from your jaw down to your neck, and the second you’re able, you turn your head away from him again. He makes it impossible to think, every survival instinct clanging together inside your head, caught between fighting or playing along until it earns you your freedom. 

Steve takes advantage of the stretch of skin you’ve unintentionally bared for him, tracing over the lines of your jugular and collar bone with his fingers. His other hand is pressed to the wall beside your hip, preventing an exit. 

“I can be good to you, honey. I promise. I could give you money, gifts, connections,” he goes on. “...But that’s not what you want, is it?” 

Your eyes squeeze shut. “You have no idea what I want.” 

He exhales a chuckle, warm against your cheek. “Oh, but I do. You think you’re the only one that’s been watching? Piecing things together?” 

His thumb drifts over the curve of your chin and down the line of your throat, feeling your stubborn silence from the source. 

“I’ll admit, you were hard to read at first. Always nice, always polite—but just the slightest bit different with every person you talked to. Imperceptible, probably, to anyone else. But I saw you. And in the beginning, I thought maybe you were just like me, changing and shifting things depending on the company, using whatever angle you needed to to get what you wanted from them.” 

With his fingers wrapped around the back of your neck, he drags your face back toward him, and this time he’s close enough that your noses nearly touch. You try not to flinch and fail, and he seems sickly pleased at your reaction. 

“But I was so, so wrong,” he admits. “You’re not like me at all. And what I thought was manipulation was really just a need to be good, wasn’t it? Trying so hard to mold yourself into whatever anyone else needed, even when it made you exhausted. Even when it was hard. Even when you cried in your office and your car when you thought nobody was listening, that nobody heard you.” 

“Stop,” you whisper. 

He shakes his head. “I can’t stop, honey. ‘Cause this—this is the other part of what you crave, isn’t it? Being seen. Being known. Doesn’t even matter if it’s by someone who you didn’t want watching in the first place.” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” you tell him, shifting in his grip. “Someone will find out eventually, no matter what you do to me. They’ll know what you’ve done, and they’ll—they’ll take you and—” 

“Do you even know what I’ve done?” he interjects sharply. “You’ve got such a wild imagination in that head of yours. But you don’t actually have any proof. Do you?” 

“You can’t hide forever. The others, all those women, they’ll—” 

Steve’s gaze falls flat, blank, as he abruptly slips a hand over your mouth and squeezes. 

“I’m tired of talking now, sweetheart.” He flashes you a facetious smile, fading just as quickly as it came. “Time’s up. What’s it going to be?” 

He leans in, and your eyes drift over his shoulder toward your desk. If you’d just put the mace in your pocket instead of in your bag, if you’d just grabbed your keys before you’d left for the meeting, if, if, if. 

Steve pushes a piece of your hair behind your ear, rough knuckles soft against your skin, and makes a pitying noise when you whimper into his palm. 

“I can be so good to you,” he promises, leaning close enough to brush his lips against your cheek, “if you’re good to me too.” 

Inside your head, you try desperately to scale down from the bigger picture. You don’t need to fight here, now. Now you just need to focus on getting out of this room. One step at a time. 

Blinking your eyes open as he pulls back, you meet his gaze and nod. When you don’t try anything else, Steve watches you closely as he removes his hand, which quickly falls to your shoulder to steer you toward your desk. 

You know he must have checked through your drawers, because he doesn’t let you near any of them to grab anything. He walks you to the backside of the desk and pushes the pen into your trembling fingers, a steady hand on the back of your neck, thumb rubbing your pulse as you sign your name on the dotted lines on a fresh copy of an approved, falsified evaluation. 

“Good girl,” he murmurs, warm and solid against your back as he leans over you to pick up the new folder and seal it. “See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?” 

You don’t answer, standing so rigid beside your desk that your muscles feel like they could snap. 

You watch him as he slips on his coat and tucks the folder safely inside of it, dread already curling in your stomach when he steps toward you again instead of the door like he’d forgotten something. 

“If you try to tell anyone else, I’ll kill them,” he says softly. He reaches down and picks up one of your hands, bringing it up to his mouth to drag his lips over your palm. “And we don’t want any blood on these soft, clean hands of yours, do we?” 

He lets you go then and leaves you alone in your office, heart still hammering and unsure of what to do. You stumble backward and collapse against your desk, glancing down at your hand where he’d touched you moments before. It feels like a brand. 

Clean, maybe, for now. But every minute you spend giving into him instead of doing what you know is right, the more they’ll be covered in blood. 

You glance desperately at the shredder in the corner where your report sits in a heap of paper strips, useless. 

The countdown has already started. 

Over the next several weeks, your hope dwindles, and something else, something worse, takes its place. 

Steve makes certain you know that you’re being monitored. There’s suddenly little things moved around in your house from where you’d left them when you got home, your mail sliced open and surveilled before you get it from the box, the subtlest of clicks each time you make a phone call that let you know you’re being recorded. You don’t actually know if Steve is paying much attention to what he’s getting or if it’s an intimidation tactic, but either way, it works. 

It breaks you down slowly and dangerously subtle. You’ve always been so outspoken when it comes to doing the right thing, standing up for those who can’t themselves and standing your ground even when it would’ve been easier to stay quiet. The problem is, that bravery never quite extended to yourself. 

You hate that Steve had you pegged so easily. There’s friends, family, even, who haven’t noticed that your people pleasing tendencies make their lives easier while leaving you spread thin and depleted. Are you really so transparent that someone who’s practically a stranger had figured it out first? 

The feeling of being watched follows you everywhere, even when you’re sure you’re alone. Steve gets into your head like a parasite, planting roots, encouraging your paranoia. He knows exactly the right buttons to press to strip you of your privacy and agency, to leave you vulnerable and right where he wants you to be, and he does it all with a smile on his face when he nods at you in the hospital hallways. 

You avoid the news like a plague. Your guilt wars with your fear; you know you should report him, even if it’s the last thing you ever do. Those women can’t speak up so you should do it for them, before they’re injured or sick or worse. You’d signed oaths promising that you’d uphold morality over personal interest, that you’d committed yourself to an ethically higher standard. 

But then you drive yourself crazy wondering how far Steve’s influence goes. He’d said friends in high places—if you go to the police, are they also in on it? You can’t tell a neighbor or a friend without putting them in danger. You can’t pack your things and get out of town, because you know he’s keeping tabs on your car, your phone, your charges. 

He waits until you’re desperate, until you spend most of your time locked in your bathroom or crying in your office or flinching when people approach you, and then—and then things get worse in an entirely different way. 

The evaluations are filed and the board confirms his standing for another six months, and you’re rewarded accordingly. 

You wake up in the morning to a bouquet of your favorite flowers delivered to your doorstep. Your mother calls you, near hysterical in relief, telling you her medical debt has been paid off by an anonymous donor. Your school debt that’s been haunting you since graduation is quick to follow. 

Other physicians and staff members know you by name now, eat lunch with you, share inside jokes as if you’ve always been a part of them. Within another few weeks, you’re stepping into a new position in the hospital, promoted without much of a say in it at all for all the good work you’ve done. 

Notes start appearing in your things. The top drawer of your desk in your office, folded underneath the windshield wiper on your car, your mailbox, your nightstand. Each of them perfectly tailored to appeal to your most deeply hidden wants—never without making sure that it’s his validation its contingent upon. 

Saw you fix the torn carpet everybody keeps tripping over in the breakroom. You didn’t even tell anyone it was you. You’ve got such a big heart, even when you think no one’s watching. I like that. 

You should take the rest of the day off, sweetheart. You’ve been working so hard. I’m so proud of you. 

You looked beautiful today. Couldn’t stop thinking about you. When was the last time someone appreciated you like you deserve? 

Incredible how you handled that client today -- you’re brilliant, sweetheart. You know that? 

You tell yourself you’re disgusted by it. By him thinking he can give you compliments and it’ll make everything else better. You decide to wait him out. Surely he’ll lose interest in you eventually, and that’s when you can slip out from under his thumb and get help. You just pray that not too many people suffer before you get the chance. 

But even as you tell yourself it’s a gameplan, you feel your control beginning to waver, your mind malleable enough after weeks of fear that it begins to feel like something else. 

You don’t dare give it a name. 

The closer it gets to the next time you’re due to sign off on his evaluation, Steve ups the ante. 

You were already having a hard time handling the indirect attention. When he starts showing up in your space, touching a hand to your lower back when he walks you down the hall, squeezing your shoulder in the back of conference rooms, standing close enough to smell his cologne in the elevator, you start aching for something else. Something more. 

Something you shouldn’t. 

Your own shame isn’t even enough to stifle it anymore. And the worst part of it is that Steve knows. You can see it in the way he looks at you now, like maybe this is what he wanted. Like maybe this was the plan all along. 

Like maybe you’ve played right into his hands, yet again. He’s backed you in, constructed himself as the only way out. 

When you find him in your office a week before the deadline, you’re hardly surprised anymore. 

“I’m going to sign the papers,” you tell him flatly, more drained than you’ve been in ages. 

Your body is sore from being tense so often, nervous system shot from the confusing cocktail of volatile emotion inside you, swinging rapidly from one side of the pendulum to the other: either frantic, paralyzing fear, or complete numbness. 

Steve has the gall to seem confused by this, pushing himself out of your desk chair as you close the door behind you. “I’m not here for that.” 

Ignoring him, you swerve around the opposite side of your desk to unlock your drawers and fish out your bag and belongings, shoving the work folders into the pile for tomorrow when you’re hopefully able to focus more. 

“I wanted to check on you,” Steve continues when you don’t say anything else. He flicks his gaze over the halfhearted glare you give him, narrowing in on the redness and your smeared mascara, assessing. “You’re upset.” 

“I’m fine,” you dismiss. But even as you say it, your heel catches the edge of the rug under your desk, and you stumble forward. Would have fallen completely, if not for Steve’s quick reflexes. 

He grabs your bag from you, slipping an arm around your waist. “You’re dead on your feet, honey. C’mon. Let’s get you out of here.” 

Too exhausted to fight him on it, you let him lock up your office and walk you out of the building, always later than everyone else so you seldom run into anyone else. Even Kenny has a way of disappearing these days, another piece of your life Steve’s engineered to isolate you. 

“Steve,” you tug at his arm when he starts walking the opposite direction of your car in the lot. “My car—” 

“I’ll drive. You just relax.” 

“I want to go home,” you tell him firmly, even though your voice wavers. 

But his keys are already out, his hand on your hip steering you toward the passenger seat of his car. “My apartment’s not far from here. You can rest there, I’ll take you home after.” 

He closes you gently in and crosses around to his side, and you think fleetingly once more about opening the door and running. The questions are sharp and make your temples pulse—where would you go? How far would you get before he ran you down? Would he hurt you? Would you get someone else killed if they happened to see? 

Would you be okay with any of that? If freedom looked a little different now? 

Steve slips into the driver’s seat with a smile, rubbing his hand over your thigh briefly before he puts it on the wheel and pulls out of the lot. 

You drift on the drive, not asleep but not fully aware either. Your body’s most accessible defense mechanism lately. You hardly even register when Steve stops to pick up food for you somewhere, explaining that he knows you won’t trust him to make something for you and you should eat. He gives you a fond look when you only look at him in response. He’s going to do what he wants regardless, so why waste your breath? 

His apartment is on the nicer side of the city, with quaint, quiet sidewalks and brick on the outside, the type of brownstones you often dreamed about having as a kid. He holds your hand as he takes you up the steps, smiling at the neighbors, your bag on his shoulder and takeout in his free hand, and you wonder for a second, deliriously, if it looks like the two of you are coming home from work together, mundane and domestic the way you’ve always wanted with someone. 

If Steve isn’t already aware of the feelings you’d had about him when you first started working for the clinic, you certainly are never going to tell him. Back then, he was just Dr. Kemp, the charming and handsome physician who always smiled when he caught you staring and made your day when he went out of his way to notice something about you. It makes you a little sick to think back on how you’d daydreamed about being with him, about how the fantasy extended to long, lonely nights after work or unlucky dates. 

Steve urges you inside, flipping on the lights and easing off his shoes by the door, and you take a moment to look around. You can’t see any mysteriously locked doors or basement entries, neighbors pressed in close on either side of the walls, and you exhale, relieved, that this probably isn’t where anything particularly devious happens. 

The guilt threatens to swallow you whole. 

Oblivious or uncaring to it, Steve sweeps you inside further and leads you to the couch. You can only blink at him as he hums to himself, moving around the room; lighting a candle on the mantle, putting a record on to spin at low volume, laying out the food on the coffee table and then taking a eat beside you to lift it in forkfuls toward your mouth when you refuse to do it yourself. 

“Why are you doing this?” you ask him when you’ve managed several bites, your stomach rejecting anymore. 

Steve looks at you with a pursed lip, his thumb rubbing at your chin. 

“Gotta take care of my best girl, don’t I?” 

You shake your head. “M’not yours.” 

“But you could be,” he counters. 

“You don’t even like me,” you tell him harshly, your voice returning. “You just want to keep me agreeable so I’ll sign the papers.” 

“Honey—” he starts, but you don’t let him finish. 

“This is just a game for you. You think all those nice things you’ve done make it better. But giving me what you know I’ve been neglected in the past as a way to manipulate me isn’t kind. It’s cruel.” 

You wish you could revel in the slackness of his surprised face for another few minutes or so, wish that you had the guts to dump the food on him or grab the fork and defend yourself. 

Instead, you burst into tears. 

Steve’s embrace isn’t the one you want but it’s the one you get, his arms strong around your shoulders as he tugs you into his chest, sweet words in your ear, a hand petting over the back of your head. 

“I’m tired, Steve, I—I want it to stop,” you heave, unable to catch your breath in between sobs. “Haven’t I done what you wanted? You can leave me alone now, I just—I just want to feel safe again.” 

“You have. You’ve been so good, sweetheart. C’mere,” he says. His brow is furrowed in something like concern, but you don’t trust it. “You’re okay. I’ve got you.” 

It takes a long time for the tears to stop. You’ve been keeping them bottled up the last few months, too afraid what would happen if you allowed yourself to break down, but they’ve caught up with you now, demanding to be felt. Each one feels like it comes straight from your ribs, your chest tight and aching, your throat raw as you choke out sobs and struggle weakly in his grip. 

Food and ambience forgotten, Steve waits you out. Your legs have been tugged over his lap, your head resting on his shoulder, arm wrapped tight around your middle. He forces you to breathe with him when you start feeling like you might pass out, making you ease air back into your lungs and wiping at your cheeks with the napkins until you’re not so dizzy anymore. 

“Those notes you keep in your dresser—” Steve shushes you when you whimper at the shameful reminder, “I meant all of those, you know.” 

You shake your head. “Don’t.” 

“You think I watch you just because of our agreement. But, truth is, that stopped being why a long time ago.” 

“Steve,” you whisper. 

“You don’t believe me,” he says, “but it’s true. Let me show you. Stay the night.” 

You tense, trying to push out of his hold. “No.” 

“If you don’t believe what I’m saying, let me show you with my hands, huh? With this mouth. I’ll be gentle, honey. I’ll be so good to you, swear.” He presses a kiss to your temple, deceptively sweet. His breath is hot against your ear when he murmurs, “Give you everything you’ve always wanted but were too afraid to ask for.” 

Without bothering to wait for an answer this time, he stands, pulling you with him onto shaky legs. Before you’ve even steadied yourself he’s steering you from the room with hands digging into your hips, through the kitchen, up the stairs, down a hallway. The closer you get to the door at the end of the hall the more you struggle, but Steve’s hand on the back of your neck doesn’t give you much of a choice. 

You aren’t sure which you’re more scared of. What he’s going to do to you or the fact that you can’t get his voice out of your head, a dizzying loop that hits you right where he’s already cracked you open. You’ve been so good, sweetheart. I’ve got you. Those notes, I meant all of those, you know. Let me show you. I’ll be gentle, honey. I’ll be so good to you, swear.

Give you everything you’ve always wanted but were too afraid to ask for. 

“This—this isn’t right,” you mutter as your feet pass the threshold, the door clicking shut behind you. Steve turns you, slips his hands onto either side of your face. 

“I know. I know you feel like it’s not okay to want me because you want to be good, and the things I do aren’t very good, are they?” he asks without letting you answer. “But it’s okay, sweetheart, because doing something bad doesn’t make the whole person bad, right? Like when I forgave you for making a mistake on those forms?” 

You pull back. “That’s not—” 

“I can take the weight of the world off your shoulders, how about that?” he interrupts, refusing to take his hands off your face, the swipe of his thumbs a little firmer than it should be. “You can’t please everyone, no matter how hard you try. But you can be so good for me without even having to lift a finger. Doesn’t that sound nice?” 

Steve leans in then, tilting his head to seal his mouth to the side of your jaw. You can smell his cologne, feel the light scratch of a days’ old stubble, the lingering spice of your half-eaten dinner when he exhales against you. 

“Already have been. And I’m so lucky—I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. Making my life so much easier, letting me take care of you the way you deserve,” he goes on, slipping a hand into your hair to catch your head when it drops to the side, your eyes closing at the drag of his teeth over your pulse. “Doesn’t it feel good? Knowing you’ve got somebody to give you what you need?” 

His hands drop to your waist again, your hands fisting in his shirt for balance as he walks you backward. You only caught a glimpse of the room when you walked in so you startle when your knees hit a tall mattress, and Steve takes advantage of your delayed reaction to lift you under the knees and drop you back on top of it. 

His eyes latch onto you like a fixation as he kneels over you, a knee on either side of your thighs, and you have to lean back just to avoid being smothered as he continues to lower himself, pressing you down into the sheets. His fingers trace a line over your brow, your nose, your cheek, your mouth, his eyes following the trail as he goes. This close to him, you can’t escape the intensity of his gaze, the crushing weight of his attention. 

He must feel you tense again when the metal clink of his belt cuts through the quiet in the room, his voice coming back to distract you as it clatters somewhere on the floor. 

“Been thinking about this sweet mouth,” he tells you, tracing over the seam with his thumb. “The way it stretches when you smile. The way it dips right here at the corner when you cry, like you’re trying so hard to hold it in. The way my name fits inside of it.” He presses down until you open for him, drawing a noise from your throat. “I wanna know how it tastes.” 

Steve licks into your mouth like he’s devouring the inside of a pastry, something warm and slick and decadent. His hand closes loosely around your throat to keep you still as spit gathers at the corners of your lips, unsure of even how to kiss him back when it’s something so debauched and unfamiliar. 

Eventually, he decides that for you too. Once he’s mapped out every inch of your slack mouth with his tongue he hones in on your lips, first with his teeth, then with bruising presses of his own. 

Your body seems to move on muscle memory, your jaw beginning to work in slow tilts and drags, pushing into the insistent pressure of his mouth. It’s been so long since anyone’s kissed you now with everything going on lately, and as much as you wish it weren’t with Steve, the feeling is…it’s nice. 

Enough that Steve seems to notice the subtle arch of your body into his, no matter how much you try to hide it. 

“Ask me to touch you,” he murmurs against your mouth. 

Hanging onto the last threads of your control, you shake your head. When you roll your lips together stubbornly, Steve simply moves his mouth down to your neck, sucking and pulsing his tongue over the skin, taking it between his canines until you shudder a breath.  

“It’s just us here. Already know you’re aching for it. I know everything about you, remember?” He pulls off of your neck with a slick pop, the skin stinging. “No point in lying, honey.” 

When that doesn’t work, he gets creative. Shifts one of his knees from the outside of your hip to rest in between your thighs instead, pressing in firm and dragging your leg back to the side when you try to close them before he can get settled. 

His other hand slides under your lower back, pressing you up just a little, just enough to inadvertently grind your cunt against the thick, sturdy weight of his thigh. 

It’s been so long now since you’ve been touched there—by yourself or anyone else—that the first graze already feels like relief. You shiver underneath him, one of your hands shooting up to grip the outside of his bicep, and he grins, crooked and victorious, down at you as he rolls your hips against him. 

“Come on. So close,” he urges, condescending and encouraging. “I want to give it to you. All you gotta do is say the words.” 

The rhythm he’d subtly worked you into keeps going as your body takes on a mind of its own, rubbing yourself mindlessly up against his thigh. You roll your head to take one last, longing glance at the closed bedroom door, but even as you do, your underwear’s soaked enough that it’s staining your thighs, your heartbeat pulsing in between your legs. 

“Steve,” you choke out, wanting and humiliated about it. “Touch me?” 

Grabbing your chin, Steve tilts your face back toward his. “What do nice girls say?” 

Your tongue darts out quick and unintentional to wet your lips in a nervous habit, and the sharp edge of shame coils the pleasure tighter in your stomach as he watches. 

“Please?” 

A thin moan gets stuck between Steve’s teeth, his eyes darkening as he leans down to kiss you roughly again. “Good girl, sweetheart. So fucking good for me.” 

He pulls his thigh away from you and shushes your whine, grabbing your hips to drag you toward the center of the bed. your shirt is peeled off next, and he pauses when he sees the bra you’re wearing; and the matching line of the panties peeking out from your work skirt. 

The matching set he’d mentioned was his favorite in one of his notes. 

Your face burns hot at the unintentional confirmation of his effect on you. It was supposed to be something private, just for you. You knew it was wrong—how could it be anything else? 

But the blatant approval in his eyes as he looks down at you, shirt stripped off and skirt shoved up to your stomach so he can see the bottoms too, makes you feel like you can take a breath for the first time in months. 

“Look at you,” he breathes. He leans up above you on his knees for a full view, framing you between his hands from all different angles. You squirm under the attention, unused to it. “Fucking perfect.” 

It’s not much, just a bit of lace that’s from the slightly nicer part of the store than your regular cotton underwear, but Steve eats it up with his eyes like a man starved. You’re near whining by the time he touches you with his hands, which is probably exactly where he wanted you. 

It means that your back arches at the first press of his knuckles at the curve of your breast, fingering the elegantly frayed edges of the lace. Means that you’re less ashamed by the fact that there’s no padding at the front of the cups so your nipples are visible underneath the thin fabric, even more so with the chill of the air in the room and the arousal building under your skin. It means goosebumps raise in the wake of his touches, both the rough ones and the achingly soft ones alike. 

Means that you don’t struggle as much as you should when he reaches over to the nightstand and returns with a set of leather cuffs, gathering your wrists in his hands and dragging them up to the headboard. 

You make a questioning noise, and he smiles down at you as he fastens them in place. He gives a little tug to test them, and they don’t budge. “Can’t have you going anywhere.” 

The stretch of your arms above your head pushes your breasts up and together, the hardened peaks of your nipples all the more obvious for him when he looks down at you. He lowers himself into the valley between them with a groan, the scratch of his stubble as rough as the lace when he rubs himself against them to watch the flush bloom in his place. 

He sinks his teeth into the sensitive flesh over and over again, leaving darkening marks scattered across your chest before he finally lowers his lips around one of your nipples. The sensation is dizzying; the sharp drag of cheap lace and the soft slickness of Steve’s tongue, the persistent pinch of his fingers on the one opposite until he switches to even them out. 

You can’t remember a time when you’ve felt so desperate. Steve’s looming presence in your life has isolated you from even the simplest of pleasures, and now the slightest touch is enough to make you tremble. Your spine is pushing your chest up for him so much that it aches, your hips rutting up into nothing. The emptiness between your legs echoes in pulsing rhythm, your need a living, breathing thing with you in the bed. 

When Steve’s hand slips down past the bunched material of your skirt and presses on your cunt over your underwear, you don’t even recognize the keening, breathless noise that wrenches itself from your throat. 

“Easy,” Steve chuckles as he presses your twitching hips back down to the bed. “Been a while, hasn’t it?” 

At first, it’s easy to ignore the words. You figure he’s just being cocky or facetious, reminding you of the fact that his presence in your life has made you involuntarily celibate as of late. 

It’s easy to be distracted by the last, lingering sting of a kiss around your nipple before he finally leaves it alone, dragging his mouth down your torso toward your navel as his fingers explore the stretch of your clothed cunt, circling your clit before dropping down to press the material inside of you a little with the tip of a wandering finger. 

And then he keeps talking. 

“You’re good at pleasing people, but you’re not a good liar, honey.” His chin meets the fabric of your skirt as he flicks his eyes up to you. “Then again—that last one was gullible, wasn’t he? Didn’t even notice your orgasm was fake.” 

“Steve,” you gasp, tugging at your restraints. 

That was far before you filed the report. Back when you were only just vaguely suspicious of him, when you could still let yourself be distracted enough to let yourself feel wanted, to take someone home. How could he possibly have known? 

He’d been watching you even then? 

“Shh, I know. I’m gonna make it better. Make you forget all about the four and a half minutes he lasted when he finally got you under him before he knocked out cold beside you,” Steve croons, mistaking your noise as arousal instead of panic. “Should’ve killed him for leaving you like that, honestly.” 

“Steve,” you whine. 

“I won’t, I won’t,” he chuckles, nosing past your skirt. “But I should.” 

His fingers shift enough to drag your soaked panties aside, and he groans as he presses his face into the heat of your thigh, inhaling your scent as he settles in between your legs. He kisses you once there, your leg twitching at the punishing suction of his teeth, before he soothes it with his tongue. 

“Ask me to taste you,” he rasps, eyes fluttering closed as he inches closer to your cunt. “Please, baby. Ask me to put my mouth on this gorgeous pussy.” 

You whimper, dizzy with endorphins and the conflicting signals in your nervous system, tugging at your cuffs but unable to find the desire to actually get away. 

“Please, Steve,” you gasp when his hot breath blows over you. “Please—please taste me.” 

“Fuck,” Steve moans, drawn out and slow. And then he gives you what you asked for. 

His mouth lowers to your cunt with double the vigor he’d had against your mouth and your chest, steady and confident with the press of his tongue and the spread of his jaw as he widens it to encompass all you have to give. 

You think you might scream with the way Steve shoves a hand up your body to stuff your mouth full of his fingers, but you can’t be sure. The abruptness of pleasure after going without it for so long makes you feel like you’re falling, tipping over edge after edge after edge and hoping you can rely on Steve to ground you at the bottom. 

It’s so sharp it nearly hurts, coiled tight in your lower stomach, but Steve doesn’t give you any reprieve. He holds your hips down as you try to buck against his face, your wetness already smeared over his chin and cheeks and undoubtedly his eager mouth. He moans against you as he fucks you with his tongue and suctions your clit against his teeth, his own eyes rolling backward as he takes his fill of you. 

When he rips himself away with something like a growl, he yanks his fingers from your mouth and drags them down to press against your cunt, slipping two of them inside of you as you cry out and squirm at the tight fit. 

“I want you to come on my fingers first. I’ll know if you fake it,” he warns. “I’ve got all night to find out what drives you crazy. What makes you beg. I want every fucking thing, you understand? Every cry, every whimper, every scream. You can’t hide from me.” He tosses one of your legs up his chest, your ankle over his shoulder as he fucks you on his fingers. “By the time I’m finished, you won’t even want to.” 

His free arm curves around your outstretched leg, half to hold it steady and half so he can reach around and use two fingers to spread the folds of your cunt for a better view between your legs. There’s nowhere for you to hide from him at this angle, not with his fingers in you and your wrists chained to the headboard, not when the swell of pleasure in your hips looms temptingly within reach. 

“You think this is fake for me? Still think I’m just using you?” Steve asks. “Could’ve kept you right where I wanted you without even laying a finger on you. But this?” He shoves his fingers in, keeps them straight and presses up, hard against the spongy stretch of the pleasure receptors buried deep as your legs shake around him. “This is just for me. Just ‘cause I want to.” 

“S-Steve,” you hitch, overwhelmed and dangling on the edge of something so sweet it’s scary. 

“And because, if you let yourself admit it,” he continues, bending down to hover above your face as he folds you nearly in half, “you want me just as bad.” 

He kisses you once, bruising, and then kneels up again to look back at your cunt. It’s squeezing around him, you can feel it; desperate to keep him inside, pressed up against where it feels so good. He doesn’t even pull his fingers out of you anymore, just jabs his two middle-most fingers in tight bursts against your spot. His arm works in tandem with them, yanking up every time he presses in. 

You feel full inside in a way that you haven’t before, not even with some generously sized partners. The pressure builds, soaring toward a dangerous precipice, your breaths shortening until they stop coming at all, your entire body taut and waiting for its cue. You’re shaking so bad you can hear the restraints rattling against the dark wood. 

Steve’s hand speeds up further, his free hand pressing down hard against your lower stomach while the one inside of you jerks upwards, your pleasure spot stimulated from both sides. He’s playing your body like an instrument, drawing sounds and sensations out of it that you hadn’t even known existed. 

You’re coming before Steve even finishes telling you to. 

This time you really do scream—you can feel it leave your throat in a startling rush, all the strings Steve’s tied you up in cut at once. Your limbs jerk and flail, your head wrenched back and hips rutting frantically against his hand, your thighs shaking so much your bones rattle. 

And between your legs, the pressure you’d felt earlier releases in a burst of wetness, so intense that stars dance behind your eyelids. When you finally manage to crack them open again, wheezing in breaths through your gasps and tears, the evidence is dripping all over Steve’s arms and chest, written into the proud lines of his face. 

“Fuck,” he spits, taking turns jabbing his fingers in for more and rubbing your clit rapidly with the flats of his fingers until you’re finished. “Good girl. That’s it. Knew you could. Just needed the right touch, huh?” 

“Steve—” you plead, nothing more than a wisp as you twitch away from him. 

He seems to oblige you for a second, his hands and fingers finally relenting with a final gratuitous slap of them against your clit. You blink hazily at the ceiling through blurred vision as your chest heaves to catch up on the breath you’d been holding before, your climax having left you more than a little unmoored. 

You’re so caught up in it that you don’t notice him stripping off his pants and his boxers, sliding your skirt and ruined underwear off of your ankles, easing back on top of you and nudging your thighs apart again. 

Not until you feel the bare press of his cock at the entrance of your cunt. 

You tense again, shifting on the sheets, but you’re even weaker than you’d been before. He holds you steady with a hand on your hip and eases himself inside you slow, using his mouth to stop the tears in your eyes before they can roll down your cheeks. 

“Shh, just take it. Know you can—doing so well, such a good girl. God, you feel fucking incredible.” 

He fucks his cock into you, shallow at first and then deeper as he works himself in, stretching you out until he’s flush against you. His fingers, still wet and smelling of you, dig into your jaw until your mouth opens for him, slipping his tongue back inside again with a groan. 

Your body can’t decide what the proper reaction should be. The logical part sneers that you should hate this, that you should be trying harder, trying to do anything to get away or resist. But the part of you that’s been starved of touch for the last several months and starved of intimacy for far longer than that demands that you give in to every part of it; the warm press of Steve’s body, the sparks of pleasure still dancing on your skin, the wetness of his kiss and your eyes and your cunt as it welcomes him inside again and again and again. 

“Look at those tears.” He slides a hand up the outstretched line of your arm above your head until he reaches your hands that hang limply from the cuffs, slipping his fingers through yours in a mocking display of intimacy. “So pretty when you cry for me, honey. Always so pretty, aren’t you? Just for me.” 

Your eyes grow wetter as if eager for more of his approval, and you gasp into his mouth when his hand wraps around your throat, his hips pushing into you harder now. 

Steve isn’t particularly long but he is thick inside of you, overwhelming and inescapable. He murmurs filth against your mouth in between lazy kisses and rolls of his tongue, his own breathing quickening as his cock spears into you in a way that must feel good for him too. 

It must, you think distantly, because the aftershocks from your first orgasm just won’t seem to subside under the onslaught of continued sensation. You can feel yourself bearing down on him and forced to relax the next moment, can feel the way you quiver inside as you attempt to adjust to his size and rhythm. 

You eagerly take in a lungful of air when Steve’s hand vacates your throat, only for it to leave you in another moan when his fingers dip down to rub messy circles on your clit. You writhe with it, hips lifting from the bed to meet his thrusts as you use the cuffs as leverage, and then scream again when his touch disappears and reappears with a mean slap that’s much harder than the one he’d given you before. 

You lock up around him, whimpering and hovering right on the edge of another orgasm. He slaps you again and you mewl, caught between hiding from the sensation and chasing more of it, twisting underneath him and pulling on the cuffs. 

“What’s that?” Steve taunts. “Y’don’t like it a little rough? I don’t know if I believe you. This tight little cunt’s telling me something different, sweetheart. Suckin’ me in like s’never gonna let go.” 

His hand returns to your upper body again, slipping under your outstretched arm and settling underneath your head to cradle it in his palm. The grip keeps you from turning it away or tilting it back, makes you have to look at him or close your eyes—and he doesn’t let you do the latter. 

Grabbing for the pillow beside your head, Steve yanks it from its place and reaches down to shove it underneath your hips, shifting the angle just enough that his cock jams into you the same as his fingers had earlier, and your mouth drops open at the intensity on your already abused inner walls and sensitive tissue. The unfamiliar pressure swells in your stomach all over again, your eyes threatening to cross and roll backward as you’re knocked around with each of his hard thrusts. 

“That’s it. Let me fuck that pretty head empty, huh? Nothin’ but me in there, just like it should be.” 

You nod before you realize what you’re doing, all too happy when he gives you his tongue to occupy your mouth with so you don’t end up biting through your own. You can feel his hand yanking one of your thighs up higher on his hip, his nails leaving marks down the back and over the curve of your ass. He digs them in there for leverage as he begins fucking into in short, punctuated thrusts, perfectly aimed and determined to unravel you again. You wish, desperately, that this weren’t the best sex you’ve ever had before. 

But it is, so when Steve intuits that you’re close, you’re not even surprised anymore that his wandering fingers find your clit in record time. You’re wet enough that they keep slipping off but Steve is persistent, unwilling to compromise. 

You choke on a sob as he takes you over the edge again, the burst of your orgasm sharp and sudden and taking you over completely. Your hips jump up off the bed as you get him wet with your release again, his cock slipping from you in a rush so that even more of it spills out of you onto his lap. The lack of control over your body makes you feel terrified, makes you feel weightless. 

The haze of it hasn’t even ebbed yet when Steve yanks your hips up and shoves his fingers back in, three this time, working your still twitching inner muscles. 

You cry out, twisting away from him, and he growls as he shoves you back down and makes you ride his hand until you’re already working up to another, unsure if the first ever really even stopped. 

“No,” he demands. “You don’t get to run away. You’ll take it, and you’ll thank me.” 

Another sharp slap to your clit hits you just right in conjunction with his fingers and, helpless to stop it, you feel yourself wetting your thighs, the bed, his hands for a third time. He doesn’t stop rubbing you through it even when he takes his fingers out, chasing your hips as they crawl as far away from him as they can get before the restraints hinder your movement. 

You’re shaking with it when he finally backs off, sliding his knuckles and fingers over your sensitive clit and quivering folds in a casually proprietary show before he mercifully leaves you alone. 

Your cunt, anyway. 

You hardly have your eyes open when you feel a weight on your chest, shadow enveloping your face. You squint up at his torso as he swings a leg onto either side of your chest, at his cock right in front of your face, wet with your slick and peeking at you from the tight ring of his fist as he works himself over. 

“You asked me to taste you,” he pants from above, as if he wasn’t the one who made you say it. “Now it’s your turn.” 

You try to turn your chin weakly when he presses down on your lower lip, but it only earns you a light slap of his fingers against your cheek and a firm slide of his hand as he puts you back where he wants you. Which, evidently, is your mouth stretched wide around his cock. 

He tucks himself past the slick barrier of your lips with a muttered curse, face pinched in pleasure as he slips further inside. He uses his thumbs to tuck your lips over your teeth when you’re too out of it to do it yourself, holding both sides of your head as he gently starts fucking your face. 

It’s a blur punctuated by the spasm of your throat when he shoves himself too deep, the soft way he coos down at you when you choke or when his thrusts make the tears swimming in your eyes finally slip over. 

“Such a good girl,” he mutters, picking up speed. “You’re so—so good for me. Just what I need, baby, you’re—all mine. All. Fucking. Mine.” He punctuates his words with snaps of his hips, eyes narrowed into slits as he looks down at you. “Gonna fuck you good enough that you never fucking forget it.” 

He slides a hand down the back of your head and tilts it up to meet the brutal pace of his hips, only narrowly fast enough to avoid the way your gag reflex flares each time he nudges the back of your throat. You force a breath in through your nose, try to relax as much as you can, push your tongue up against the sensitive fold of skin at the underside of his cock as balls slap against your chin, his thick, corded thighs stealing your air from your chest. 

You shouldn’t like any part of it. You should feel trapped, used, disgusted. 

Instead, primally sated and freed from the ever present weight of having to make constant decisions, you feel your grip going slack in the cuffs, your body and mind twistedly free, for once, to just drift. 

Steve’s filthy praises, the slick noise of him filling your mouth, your own heartbeat—it all grows pleasantly distant, eased by the low level thrum of lingering pleasure. When he finally comes down your throat and over your tongue, the hot, briny taste of him feels like a victory, like relief, even more than when he pulls back to let you breathe again. 

You let him move you easily, forcing your mouth open to make sure you swallowed, easing your hands out and back down from the cuffs, lifting you so he can take away the soiled duvet before he sets you back down on soft, warm sheets and climbs in beside you. 

“Good girl,” he keeps saying, just like he did all those months ago in your office. You struggle to reconcile the length of time in between the memories, the person you were then versus now. “Gonna keep you.” 

You whimper again in his arms, too weak to do much else, and he shushes you. You’re not even sure anymore if it’s a protest or a plea. 

“I know, sweetheart,” he tells you, like an answer. 

Maybe you’ll just keep letting him decide.

.

.

.

the clink of ice against glass stopped. ben turned, his gaze heavy and unimpressed, looking at you like you were a child complaining about a rainy day.

“late?” he huffed , a sharp, condescending laugh catching in his throat. “i was working, doll, unlike you. don’t spend my day picking out jewelry and looking at m'self in the mirror. i’m the one keeping this god damn country on its feet. y'should be thanking me for having a place to wait at all instead of whining like a brat.”

as he went on, his footsteps got closer to you. the sheer mass of his gear making him look twice his size as he loomed over you. “isn't that right?” ben reached down, his leather-clad fingers— rough and smelling of old tobacco and expensive bourbon , hooking under your chin to force your gaze up.

“let’s get one thing straight , angel. you stay in the condo, paid for with my money. you eat the food i buy, you wear the clothes i pick out, and you sleep in the bed i provide.” his grip on your chin tightened just enough to be a warning. eyes searching yours for a spark of defiance he could snuff out. “now i don’t ask for much, but it’s time to show a little fucking respect.”

the air in the penthouse felt suddenly thin. the gaslighting was effortless, the raw, antiquated authority of a man who truly believed your time was his to waste.

“'nd you were rude with that attitude , kid. don't appreciate being greeted with lip service when i get home from a long day,” he continued, his thumb pressing firmly into the dip beneath your lower lip. “s'only fair you make it up to me.”

ben , like usual , didn't wait for a response. he stepped back, the metallic clicks and rasps of his suit’s fastenings cutting through the silence as he began to undo the congested layers. peeling back the reinforced fabric until reaching into the opening of his boxers.

with a grunt, he freed himself. a cock you never got sick of. angry-looking, a heavy weight of salt-scented heat that looked almost as lethal as the shield he carried around all day. the shaft flushed a dark, bruised purple. veins standing out like jagged cords against the rigid length of him. a bead of pre-come sat at the blunt, swollen tip, glistening under the expensive chandelier light.

it was a vile, physical demand for the "respect" he’d just lectured you about.

ben gestured to the floor at his feet, his expression turning into something wilder. you moved, your silk robe whispering against the marble as you sank to your knees before him. hands clumsy as you reached for the meat of his thighs. your movements were hesitant, a bit too cautious for his liking.

ben let out a huff of dark amusement, his hand winding into your hair to tilt your head back, exposing your throat. he looked down at you, his thumb tracing the line of your plush lower lip with a deceptive tenderness while the tip of his cock twitched just inches from your face.

“i know you can do better than that,” ben murmured, his voice lowering into a gritty, commanding register that always made your knees weak. “now go on and show me.”