all the shit that's unfit to print

seven years old

the pie was lemon. you remembered that later, the specific fact of it, because your mama was sick and the house smelled of eucalyptus and that flat sad smell that settles into a place when someone is lying down in the middle of the day, and then there was this other smell cutting through it, butter and sugar and citrus, and you opened the door and there was a boy.

he was big for seven, serious-faced, holding a pie dish in both hands with the focused attention of someone who had been given a task and intended to complete it without error. he had dark hair and very blue eyes and he said, in a voice that was already practicing being careful, "my mama made this for yours. she said to say she's praying for her."

"thank you," you said, and took the dish from him, and he stood there one moment longer than made sense, like he was performing a quality check on the handoff.

then another boy materialized at his shoulder. same dark hair, same blue eyes, same height, same face arranged entirely differently, wearing an expression of total relaxed confidence that seemed excessive for someone who was seven years old and standing on a stranger's porch.

"i helped," this one said.

the first boy said nothing, which you would understand later was a form of charity.

"i'm clark," said the first boy.

"scott," said the second.

"i know," you said, because smallville was small and you went to the same school and had for two years, which they either hadn't noticed or hadn't thought to mention. "i'm--"

"we know," said scott, cheerfully, and clark gave him a sideways look that meant something between them, some whole language already developed and in use. "you sit two rows ahead of me in mrs. patton's class. you got a hundred on the spelling test last week and mrs. patton put a star on it."

you looked at him. "you noticed that?"

"i notice everything," scott said, with no apparent self-consciousness about this, like noticing everything was just a fact about him the same as his name.

clark said, "you should tell your mama we hope she feels better soon."

you said you would. you said thank you again. you stood in the doorway and watched them walk back down the path, scott already talking, clark already listening, the two of them moving through the afternoon like they were the only weather in it, and something settled in your chest that you didn't have a name for yet, something like recognition, something like the particular comfort of a thing clicking into place.

your mama got better. the pie dish went back across the road. and the three of you became a trio.

nine years old

by nine the arrangement was simply a fact. you walked to school together every morning because it was on the way and because it had started happening before anyone decided to do it, drifting into habit the way the best things did. scott did most of the talking. clark carried your backpack the days it was heavy without making anything of it, just took it when you shifted it on your shoulders and put it on his own and kept walking. you brought them cookies your daddy made on sundays, oatmeal raisin, and scott ate all of his and half of clark's without apology and clark let him without complaint, and this was one of approximately ten thousand things that told you everything about who they both were.

clark was in the middle of reading everything. he read the way some people breathe, continuously and without apparent effort, and he talked about what he was reading in this careful wondering way, like he was turning something over to look at all its sides. he asked you questions that made you feel like your answers mattered, which was not a feeling nine-year-olds gave each other very often. he asked you once what you thought happened after you died and then listened to your whole answer, the real one, the one you'd never said out loud, and then he said, "i think about that too," and the conversation moved, and you felt lighter afterward, like something had been witnessed.

scott wanted to know how everything worked. not in the theoretical way clark did, in the immediate tactile sense, taking apart the radio in their daddy's workshop and getting most of it back together, climbing the grain elevator on a dare and standing at the top like he was surveying something that belonged to him, coming to school with engine grease under his nails that he hadn't bothered to fully scrub. he was funny in a way that was fast and instinctive rather than performed, the kind of funny that caught you off guard so you laughed before you'd decided to. he was also, even at nine, the person you would want in your corner in a fight, something about the way he took up space that suggested he had decided very early what he would and would not allow.

the three of you built a fort in the kents' back field that summer. it took two weeks and several arguments about structural decisions and collapsed once and was rebuilt better. you brought lemonade and scott brought complaints about clark's engineering choices and clark brought a level that he produced from his pocket like a person who had anticipated exactly this situation. it stood until october, when a storm took it, and none of you were sad exactly because it had already done everything a fort was supposed to do.

twelve years old

there was a boy in your class named danny marsh who told everyone that you had a crush on him, which was not true, and which was, in the taxonomy of twelve-year-old cruelties, a fairly specific kind of awful because it made you the subject of a story you hadn't written. you spent a week being very careful at school and trying to look like you didn't care, which you were not good at because you were twelve and caring was essentially involuntary at that age.

scott found out on a tuesday. you didn't tell him. someone else did, or he overheard it, or he noticed, because scott noticed everything, which he had established at seven and continued to prove at regular intervals. on wednesday danny marsh had a very bad day at recess that involved scott appearing next to him with that particular quality of stillness that scott almost never had, a stillness that was the specific opposite of peaceful, and saying something to him that you never learned the full content of. danny didn't spread stories about you again. he barely looked in your direction for the rest of the year.

you asked scott what he said.

"nothing important," scott told you, and ate the last of your lunch without asking, and that was that.

clark, who had watched the whole thing from across the schoolyard, found you afterward and said, "are you alright?" in the way he asked things, like the answer genuinely mattered to him.

you said you were. you said it had been embarrassing.

he said, "being embarrassed doesn't mean you did anything wrong," which was such a clark thing to say, accurate and useless as comfort in the way that true things sometimes were, and you laughed despite yourself, and his expression did something pleased and a little shy, like making you laugh was a thing he had been trying for.

you thought about it sometimes, the two of them. the way scott removed problems and clark named them. the way one of them made the world smaller and more manageable and the other made it seem less strange. you didn't have a word for what you were to each other yet. friend felt thin. something closer to family, maybe, but that wasn't quite right either, because family was something you were born into and this was something you had made, or that had made itself out of you, which felt more accurate and more like something you wanted to keep.

fourteen years old

high school was a different country with unfamiliar rules, and you spent the first month learning them with the dedicated attention of someone who did not want to make the same mistake twice. the kent twins did not seem to need to learn anything about it. scott walked the hallways of smallville high like he'd been there before and was confirming his recollection. clark was quieter, more contained, but people were drawn to him in a way that seemed to happen without his participation, teachers who wanted his opinion, classmates who wanted to sit near him, a quality he had that was difficult to describe except that he made people feel settled.

you had your first real boyfriend at fourteen. his name was tyler, and he was a year older, and he had a truck, which at fourteen read as a significant qualification. he was mostly fine. he had a habit of interrupting you that he didn't seem aware of, and a habit of being surprised when you had an opinion that he seemed genuinely puzzled by, as if opinions were a feature he hadn't expected to find.

scott didn't like him. scott communicated this not with words but with the method he generally preferred, which was existing in tyler's vicinity with a precise quality of attention that made tyler understand, instinctively and correctly, that he was being assessed and not doing especially well. he was perfectly polite, which was somehow worse. he asked tyler questions about his truck in a way that was entirely reasonable in content and entirely unnerving in delivery, because scott asked them with the tone of someone who had already reached a verdict.

clark was kind to tyler the way clark was kind to everyone, with that even and genuine attention, but he told you once, quietly, when it was just the two of you, "he doesn't listen to you very well." not as criticism. as an observation. clark offered observations the way other people offered opinions, without agenda, just the fact of what he'd noticed.

tyler lasted three months and ended it, which at the time you experienced as a small devastation and which afterward you understood had been a mercy. you cried in clark's truck on a tuesday evening, not because you missed tyler especially but because you had wanted to be someone's, and the not-being was a lonely kind of feeling. clark sat with you and didn't try to fix it, which was exactly correct, and handed you a coke from the gas station cooler and said, "you're going to be fine," not as reassurance but as information, the same tone he used for facts.

you were fine. you knew he was right while you were still crying about it, which was one of the things about clark, he made you believe the true things even when the feeling hadn't caught up yet.

scott, when he found out tyler had ended it, said, "good," with a brevity that was final, and then changed the subject, because scott's relationship with your emotional states was practical and solution-oriented and once there was no longer a tyler problem to solve there was nothing further to process.

sixteen years old

summer before junior year, the three of you drove martha kent's old chevy to the lake every weekend it didn't rain, which in a kansas july was not many weekends, but you went anyway on the good ones and came back sunburned and loud and smelling of lake water and scott's terrible taste in radio stations. clark always drove and scott always sat in the middle even though there was a perfectly good window seat and you sat against the door with your feet on the dash, and no one ever discussed or changed this arrangement.

this was the summer scott decided to teach you to drive a stick shift, which was motivated partly by genuine helpfulness and partly, you suspected, by a desire to watch you stall out and then explain what you'd done wrong. you stalled out eight times in the kent's back field before you got it, and scott's running commentary throughout was informative and only occasionally annoying, and when you finally got it right and pulled a clean shift he said, "there you go," like he'd never doubted it, and it felt better than any praise you'd gotten in a classroom.

clark taught you to name constellations the same summer, which was the opposite experience entirely, the two of you lying on the truck bed in the dark while scott was ostensibly looking for frogs in the creek and actually just giving you space because scott occasionally understood things and this was one of them. clark's voice in the dark was different than his daytime voice, softer and slower, and he pointed out scorpius and sagittarius and the northern cross and talked about how far away the light was that you were looking at, years and years of it, distance that had no human scale, and you felt that particular feeling that big things gave you, the feeling of being very small and not minding it.

you were aware of things that summer that you hadn't been aware of before. the specific way clark's shoulder felt when you leaned against it. the fact that scott's hand on the back of your neck when he was steering you through a crowd felt different from other people's hands in the same situation. you didn't examine these things. they were there and you let them be there and turned away from the looking the way you turned away from looking directly at the sun, knowing instinctively that the looking itself would change something.

the boys were sweet on you. you understood this the way you understood background music, present and shaping the texture of everything without you having to focus on it. sweet on you was different from in love with you. sweet on you was the way clark always knew when you were cold, the way scott always noticed when someone had been unkind to you before you'd said a word. it was something they'd grown into the same way you'd grown into each other, natural and unremarkable and just the shape of things. you let it be what it was. you didn't look directly at it.

seventeen years old

there was a boy named marcus webb who was objectively good-looking and had a kind of confidence that you mistook for substance, which was an honest mistake that many people made before they knew better. he played baseball. he told you you were pretty in a way that was specifically about your face rather than anything else, which should have been information but which at seventeen read as romantic.

you dated marcus for six weeks. in the first two, scott was coldly cordial in a way that marcus experienced as approval and scott intended as suspension of judgment. in the third week marcus said something about your daddy's job, a small thing, a throwaway comment with a slight in it that he didn't seem to know was there, and scott heard it.

you were not present for what happened. what you know is that marcus came to school on monday looking like someone had introduced a new perspective into his life over the weekend, and that when you asked scott about it scott said, with complete serenity, "we had a talk," and declined to elaborate. marcus broke up with you that thursday, citing unspecified incompatibility, with the specific haunted look of a person who had recently learned something about the world.

you were annoyed at scott. you said so.

"you can be annoyed," scott said, which was scott for i'm not going to defend myself but i'm also not going to apologize.

"i can handle my own relationships," you said.

"i know you can," he said, and the agreement in it was complete and sincere and also somehow contained no indication that he intended to stop doing exactly what he'd done, and it was so perfectly scott that your annoyance couldn't maintain a solid form.

you cried to clark about marcus later, not about the breakup but about the comment marcus had made about your daddy, the one scott had heard, because it had stung in a place you didn't usually let things sting. clark listened to the whole of it with his full attention and then said, "your daddy works hard and loves you. whatever marcus webb thinks about that doesn't weigh anything," and the specific structure of that sentence, the precision of the dismissal, was enough. you felt lighter. you always felt lighter after clark.

"what did scott actually say to him?" you asked.

clark's expression was carefully neutral in a way that meant he knew. "i wasn't there," he said, which was technically true and also not an answer, and you both knew it, and clark smiled at the edge of his mouth and looked at something in the middle distance, and you laughed, and that was the end of marcus webb.

eighteen, senior year

college applications in october and the particular grief of understanding that the three of you would go somewhere, which meant the three of you would go somewhere different. clark wanted journalism, had known it for years, had that quality of attention and that careful way with words that fit the shape of it. he was looking at schools in metropolis. you had a partial scholarship to a state school two hours away, environmental studies, something about it feeling like a direction you could trust. scott was going wherever scott decided to go, which in the case of scott meant the decision would be made confidently and late and turn out to be right.

the night you all got your first acceptances, martha made dinner and jonathan kent gave a small toast that was very midwestern and therefore not so much a toast as a series of practical hopes delivered in a warm voice, and scott stole the good chair and clark pulled another in from the kitchen and your daddy came over with a bottle of wine from the occasion box he kept on the top shelf and for a while the two houses were one house and the two families were one family and you sat between the twins on the porch steps after and said nothing much for a long time.

"it'll be different," you said.

"everything's different," scott said, with that flat prairie practicality, not dismissive, just accurate.

"we'll still be us," clark said, and said it quietly, not as reassurance but as the other kind of true thing, the kind that named what was already the case.

you went to each other's graduations. you sat with martha and cried a little, which martha permitted without comment, putting her hand over yours briefly the way mothers did. scott gave a speech as class president that was funny and warm and didn't go on too long, which was not a given with scott but he'd apparently read the room. clark got an academic award and stood at the podium looking like he wanted to hand it to someone else, which was so clark that your chest did something complicated.

the last night before clark left for metropolis the three of you sat in the truck bed until almost two in the morning and said not much of anything, which was its own kind of language by then, and when you finally drove home scott said out of nowhere, mid-silence, "you know you're stuck with us," and clark made a small sound that was agreement and you said yeah, you knew, and the three of you understood that this was the closest anyone was going to come to saying what they meant, and it was enough.

twenty-two, after

college was good. college was also four years of intermittent homesickness that was specifically and mostly about two people, which you understood was embarrassing and which you had no intentions of examining in any organized way. you called clark on sundays, long calls that went wherever they went, the way conversations with clark always did, and he told you about metropolis and the student paper and a professor he thought was brilliant and a professor he thought was problematic and what he was reading and you told him about your courses and your roommate and the creek near campus where you went to think. he always asked how you were before he said anything about himself. he always noticed when the answer to that was different from the words you used.

scott called you on no fixed schedule and at unpredictable hours and talked about whatever he was doing in the tone of someone who assumed you'd be interested, which you always were, because scott's life contained events at a higher density than most people's. he was at a state school on a partial athletic scholarship and an engineering program that he was apparently excellent at in the way scott was excellent at things, through a combination of genuine aptitude and a refusal to be beaten by problems. he came to visit you twice and both times ended up fixing something in your apartment that you hadn't gotten around to, the second time staying up until midnight to argue with your neighbor's boyfriend about something structural and leaving the neighbor's boyfriend visibly unsettled. you didn't ask. scott did not explain.

there was a boy in your junior year, a grad student, quiet and thoughtful and actually good for you, and it lasted almost a year, which was the longest you'd been in something, and when it ended it was mutual and sad rather than dramatic and you spent a night on the phone with clark that went until four in the morning and covered the relationship and its ending and then drifted into everything else and you fell asleep mid-sentence and he didn't hang up. you knew he didn't hang up because you woke up to static and the knowledge that he'd stayed until you were asleep, which was such a clark thing to do that you lay there for a while feeling it.

scott's response to the breakup was a brief "his loss" and then a six-hour drive to take you to dinner, during which he told you exactly twice that you deserved better and then did not repeat it because scott believed in stating true things once and letting them settle. you ate too much and drove back with the windows down and scott's terrible radio choices filling the car and you thought, not for the first time and not directly, that there was something about the specific quality of being loved by the kent twins that no one else had managed to replicate.

not looked at. not named. just felt, the way you felt weather, something in the air that changed the temperature of a room.

twenty-four years old

clark got a job at the daily planet and moved to metropolis properly, which was the thing he'd been working toward and which suited him so specifically that it was difficult to imagine it having been otherwise. he called you from his new apartment the night he moved in, voice doing that thing it did when he was quietly pleased about something, and described the view of the city and the smell of the newsroom and you listened and felt proud of him in a way that was outsized for a friend and which you filed under things not to examine.

scott went to work for an engineering firm in metropolis too, lateral decision, clark already there, the logic of it apparently enough. he texted you a photo of the city skyline his first week with no caption at all, which was scott saying i made it, and you sent back a photo of the field behind your parents' house, which was you saying i know, i'm glad. you had gotten a position with an environmental consulting firm an hour and a half from smallville, close enough to be home easily, which had been a quiet intention in the back of your mind since the day you'd left.

the shifting happened slowly and then all at once, the way it does. clark came home for christmas and you noticed things about him that you noticed every time you saw him, familiar things made sharp by absence, the way his attention landed on you like a hand on a shoulder, the way he laughed at something you said and looked genuinely happy about it rather than polite. you were standing in martha's kitchen and he was explaining something about a story he was working on and you thought, with a flatness that meant it had been true for a while, that you were in love with him.

you thought it the same way you thought about the weather. not a decision. just a fact you were now aware of.

you didn't do anything about it because you were in martha's kitchen and there was no doing anything about it that didn't have consequences you hadn't worked out yet, and also because it was christmas and you were not going to take a feeling you'd apparently had for years and do something precipitous with it just because you'd finally named it.

two weeks later you drove to metropolis to help scott move furniture in his new apartment, the two of you wrestling a couch through a doorway and scott giving instructions in his usual style, which was precise and not gentle, and when you finally got it through and sat down on it in the middle of the floor and caught your breath, scott handed you a water bottle and sat down beside you and said without preamble, "you're quiet today."

"i'm always quiet," you said.

"you're a different kind of quiet," scott said. he was looking at you with that thing he did, taking inventory. "something happened."

"nothing happened," you said, probably too quick.

he waited. he was good at waiting when it suited him, which was rarer than his usual mode but more effective.

"i figured something out," you said finally. "about myself. i'm still figuring out what to do with it."

he said, "does it have anything to do with clark?" and he said it the way you said something you already know, steady and without edge.

you looked at him.

he looked back.

"it might," you said.

he nodded, once, the kind of nod that meant he was thinking and would come back to it, and then he said, "help me with the bookcase," and you did, and the conversation sat between you in the way scott let things sit, present and not dismissed, waiting for its moment.

twenty-five, back to smallville

you were back in smallville for a long weekend in late october, your parents' anniversary, and clark had driven down from metropolis and scott from his apartment on the other side of the city, and the three of you were where you always ended up, the back field of the kent property, the same field where the fort had stood, where clark had named constellations, where you'd learned to drive a stick shift with scott's running commentary and eventually, finally, got it right.

the air had that specific october quality, cold and clear with the smell of harvest dust in it, and you were sitting on the tailgate of scott's truck because he had a truck now and it was new and he'd made you compliment it twice already, and clark was standing in the field with his hands in his jacket pockets looking at the sky the way he sometimes did, like there was something personal between him and it.

"i should tell you something," clark said, still looking at the sky.

you and scott looked at each other.

"that sentence never means good news," scott said.

clark turned around. his expression was doing the thing it did when he'd been carrying something for a while, not heavy exactly, but held, like he'd been keeping it carefully and was now putting it down. he looked at you specifically, the way he always looked at you, that quality of attention that was its own kind of declaration, and said, "i've been in love with you for a long time. and i understand if that changes something. i just thought you should know."

he said it simply, the way he said things that cost him something, without adornment, not asking for an answer, just returning something to you that had apparently always been yours.

the field was very quiet.

scott made a small sound beside you that you recognized as him deciding whether to speak, and then deciding to. "since we're doing this," he said, with the tone of a person who had also been holding something and had just been given permission to put it down, "i'm in love with you too." he said it looking right at you, no preamble, no apology, no detour through anyone else, just the fact of it delivered in his flat warm voice. "have been. i don't know exactly when it started, probably when you told off mrs. ellison in sixth grade, probably before that honestly."

you sat on the tailgate in the cold october dark between the stars and the kansas grass and the two people who had been the fixed points of your whole life, and you were aware of things that had always been true now sitting in the open air where you could see them clearly.

the feeling you'd been not looking at directly, all these years, the thing in the air that changed the temperature of a room.

you understood, with the same flatness that had accompanied the recognition in martha's kitchen, that it had never been one of them.

that it had always been both, and had been since before you were old enough to have a word for it, since pie and lemon and a boy on the porch and another boy at his shoulder, since spelling tests and fort-building and the back of a truck in the dark, since constellations and stick shifts and danny marsh and marcus webb and the specific way clark's shoulder felt and scott's hand on the back of your neck.

you didn't say all of that. you sat in the cold and looked at both of them, clark standing in the field with his hands in his pockets waiting, scott beside you with his particular quality of stillness that meant he was letting you have time, and you said, "i know," and then because that wasn't enough, "i mean i know about both of you. i think i've known for a long time. i just didn't know what to do with it."

clark came out of the field and stood in front of you, close enough that you could see his expression, and it was doing something you hadn't seen before, something that was mostly relief and underneath it something larger.

"what do you want to do with it?" he asked, and he asked it the way he asked things, like your answer was the only answer in the world.

you looked at scott. he was watching you with that inventory look, patient, present, waiting in the way he only waited for things that mattered.

"i don't know yet," you said. "but i don't want to pretend it's not there anymore."

"that's enough," clark said.

"that's enough," scott agreed, in the same words and an entirely different cadence, and that too was them, that was the thing they were, the twins who couldn't have been less alike, meeting at the same point from opposite directions the way they always had.

from the very beginning.

from a porch and a pie and two boys with the same face arranged entirely differently, and you between them the whole time, the thing they shared, the fixed point, the constant that the rest of it rotated around.

Clark finally reaches your table, a relieved smile painted across his face. “Almost got lost there for a minute.” He jokes. His glasses started to slip on the journey, they sit on the edge of his noise, barely hanging on. Just like you. “For the lady.” He puts your drink on the table, but before he slides it over he pulls a straw from his pocket and in one quick movement unwraps it and slips it into the glass for you.

Your thighs squeeze tighter, the heat in your lower stomach growing.

This is so stupid, you think, he’s just a guy!

Expect he’s not, he’s Clark.

You feel like a teenager, ruining your panties at the drop of a hat, practically creaming at the smallest gestures. A door that’s held open, a chair that’s pulled out, one time he switched with you on the sidewalk so you were on the inside. The motion had been smooth, effortless, he just pulled your hand until you were in-front of him, then he dropped it and side stepped so he was closest to the street. He didn’t even acknowledge it afterward, just continued walking, switching his bags to the other hand so he could hold yours.

You nearly pulled him into the first alley you saw.

That doesn’t even count the things you’ve watched him do as Superman, the times you’ve ridden him into oblivion after a reading a story about how he saved a cat from a tree or something equally as ridiculous.

“Thank you.” You hum, bringing the straw to your lips and taking a sip. “What is it?” You ask.

Clark slid into the booth across from you, taking a sip from his own drink- a water. “Just a dirty Shirley, was gonna get a Bay Breeze but I remember you said pineapple juice gives you heartburn.”

You imagine all two-hundred and forty pounds of him at the bar asking for a Dirty Shirley with that sweet farm-boy smile. You wonder if he’d let you drag him the bathroom.

“It’s perfect.” You assure him, taking another sip to avoiding adding something sappy like ‘so are you.’

Clark beams, then starts telling you about how he saw an ad for a furniture store that’s going out of business.

“Lois said the deals are crazy.” He explains, hands waving as he talks. “Thought I might pickup a new bedroom set.”

You tilt your head, “What’s wrong with the one you have?” Most guys hardly have a bed frame and a top sheet, Clark has a matching headboard and armoire.

Clark shrugs, “I only have one end table, you should have one for your side.”

Your side. Your cunt pulses again, needy and inconvenient, you can’t take her anywhere.

“I also want a bigger dresser, so you can have more than just one drawer.” He explains. You actually have two drawers, and at least a quarter of Clark’s closet. Nevermind your spot in his medicine cabinet or the key to his apartment in your purse.

Maybe he’s trying to get you pregnant. Seduce you with domesticity and home furnishings.

“Something wrong?” Clark asks.

Nothing honey, you think, just imagining you installing car seats and holding babies.

“Nothing.” You promise.

You insist he continue telling you about furniture and all of his other home decor plans. You wonder if he’d want to live on a ranch some day, you’d bet it’d have a great big porch with a swing. Or was he more of a suburbs guy? You wonder if he’s thought about it, owning a house, having a mortgage and hosting barbecues. Visions of Clark in front of grill wearing a cheesy apron and nothing else. Your brain spins.

You make a joke about reinforcing his new headboard and Clark’s entire face turns red, then he admits he already ordered a kit to mount it to the wall.

Dear god.

You only last another half hour, resolve cracking after when you try to pay the bill and Clark swats your hand away with a dismissive ‘Don’t be silly.’ You splurge for the extra fast Uber.

Clark’s apartment gives you butterflies. It’s perfectly mundane, filled with bookshelves, a couch and floor to ceiling windows. What really gets you is way he actually has seasonings in his cabinets, multiple pots and pans in the drawers, cleaning products under the sink. In the bedroom he has room darkening blinds, hanging on real curtain rods instead of those cheap tension rods. A shoe rack by the door and above it a hook he added for your purse.

“I did some laundry with the clothes you left here,“ Another pulse, she’s furious now. “-I hope you don’t mind I ironed that white blouse with the flowers.”

You know exactly what you blouse he’s talking about, it’s cotton, has pleats and wrinkles if you so much as look at it wrong. A total pain in the ass to iron.

“You ironed it?” You ask, incredulous.

Clark shrugs, “I iron all my shirts, Ma says life is too short for wrinkles.” He’s at the fridge, grabbing each of you a cold bottle of water before moving towards the bedroom.

You want to eat him alive, tear his button down off with your teeth and ride him until he forgets his name. You feel like a rubber band that’s been pulled too tight, or a rope that’s fraying from tension, you’re about to snap. Your cunt screams, refusing to be ignored any longer.

You trail Clark to the bedroom, like a lioness stalking her prey.

Clark rests on the edge of the bed, kicking off his shoes, then his socks.

When he catches you waiting in the doorway, he jerks his head, as if to say ‘come here,’ and welcomes you between his legs without a second thought, knees spreading to make room for you to stand between them. Your hands curl around to the back of his neck, fingers tangling in the rogue strands of hair. His smile is intoxicating, as sweet as it is devastating.

You crawl into his lap, legs landing in either side of his hips as he shifts backward to make enough room for you. His hands, big, strong, and capable, find your waist.

Your kiss is searing, an entire evening of pent up energy channeled into your lips. Into your hands pulling at his curls, into your thighs clenching against his hips. Your tongue is in his mouth, like you’re trying to capture his essence and swallow it. Clark is playing catchup, a startled noise erupting from the back of his throat.

What he lacks in preparation, he makes up for in enthusiasm, hands sliding down to your ass and squeezing the soft flesh. His lips press hard against yours, teeth clashing as he rises to the challenge, determined to match your intensity.

Your nose hits his glasses, once, then twice, and by the third time you need to break for air anyway. Your hands reach up, grabbing the arms and pulling them off his pretty, pretty face. You fold them and despite the urge to throw them across the room, you place them on his end table. Mr. Terrific would be pissed if you broke another pair anyway.

You’re leaning back in when Clark seems to remember himself, moving his hands off your ass and pulling his lips out of your reach.

Uh oh.

“Honey.“ He clears his throat. “Are you sure this is a good idea?”

The fuck?

“Is there a reason you don’t want to have sex with me Clark?” Your cunt asks. The words have more bite than you intend, but honestly you don’t really care. You’re too horny for patience.

Clark goes stiff as steel beneath you, ears turning bright red. “Not what I said!” He defends, eyes screaming Innocent! Innocent man here! “I just wanna make sure you’re up for it.”

“Clark I climbed onto your lap, I’m very much up for it.” You assure him.

“Not complaining about that, trust me.” Clark says, his hands have found their way back to your waist and he gives it an affectionate squeeze. “Just,” he says tentatively, “You have that big presentation in the morning and I want to make sure you get a full eight hours.”

Once again he knocks you breathless. What man would willingly give up sex so his girlfriend (who totally forgot about that presentation by the way) can sleep? Your cunt flares, white hot and screaming his name.

Instead of answering you drop your full weight onto his lap, your thighs landing firmly on top his, your heat pressing tight to his crotch. His hips jerk, reacting to the sudden heat of you.

You grind down, chasing any friction you can get. You’re so wet you can almost smell it, you wouldn’t be surprised if he can feel it already. You should be embarrassed, but what else is a girl to do when her boyfriend spends all of date night promising domestic bliss and being built like a brick shit house.

“Clark.” You nip at his ear, “I’m sure.” The words come out low and lusty, whispered against his lips and punctuated with an achingly slow roll of your hips.

Thankfully, Clark is easily swayed. “Okay.”

You make quick work of his buttons, pressing a kiss each sliver of skin that gets exposed.

He’s burning up under your hands, thick cords of muscle rippling as you pull the fabric off of him. A smattering of chest hair decorating his pecs and abdomen, trailing into his pants like a map.

You reach for his belt next, giving it a hard tug and smirking when his hips jump. It lands with a thud somewhere across the room. You yank off his jeans, working fast and aggressive, until you only have his briefs left. Your index fingers are crooked into the waist band when Clark’s hand stops you, dwarfing your wrist in his grasp.

He gives you that look, the pleading one that makes his eyes look like saucers. You love when he’s like this, at your mercy, happy to let you take and take and take. “You’re still fully dressed,” he says, pressing a wet kiss to your jaw, then another to your pulse point, a third to your collarbone. “Not fair.” He whispers.

Sweet, perfect man.

You stand, and he reaches after you, hands flexing when he catches himself. Your top lands on the floor, and your bottoms quickly following suit.

Clark watches you undress, ands grabbing at the sheets beside him. You can see his cock straining where it’s still trapped under fabric, you’d bet money on there being a wet spot pooling against his tip. The thought makes your mouth water. A little voice in your head coos, mine mine mine mine.

“You wanna take care of me right?” You ask, doing your best impression of silk, making sure each word drips with want.

He nods, frantic, eager to please.

You crawl back onto the bed, walking on your hands and knees towards him. Your Clark, big blue all scared and excited, lets you chase him. His long legs kicking at the sheets for traction as he shuffles back, not stopping until he hits the headboard with a ‘thump.’

You don’t stop until you’re back in his lap, even closer than before. Your tits pressed so tight to his chest you can feel his ribcage shudder with each breath. Gotcha.

Despite your victory, you can’t help but think that he’s exactly where he wants to be.

His lips are parted, pink and swollen from your kisses.

This time when you kiss him it’s almost soft, at least the closest you’ve come to it all night. He moans against your mouth, and you can feel his hands hovering over your body as he brings them higher and higher. You wonder where he’ll land, what part of you he needs to touch the most.

He bypasses exposed skin, all the soft places just begging to be groped and cradles your face instead. His thumbs swipe delicate strokes over your cheekbones, like you’re something precious.

In contrast, your hands are rabid. A wave of want so strong you swear you feel wetness drip down your thigh. You’re too impatient to take his briefs off now, instead you pull him out, his cock thick, heavy and hot in your hand. His tip is red and angry, like he’s the one who’s been worked up all night.

You think it’s only right, that a man who is so good, so thoughtful, was rewarded with a dick pretty enough to make angels cry.

You tuck the waist band under his balls, making sure to give them a soft little tug, (something you know he likes), and then you start sink onto him.

The stretch is immediate, intense and overwhelming. Like your body is rearranging itself to find every spare inch of room, whatever it takes to make him fit.

Normally Clark prepares you, eats you out until you can hardly spell your own name, then he fingers you until you can’t remember the alphabet, but tonight you need the stretch, need a fullness only he can provide. You want to sit at your desk tomorrow and feel him every-time you move. Want every curve, every vein etched into your walls.

Clark makes a noise, something between a gasp and a moan, as if you’ve stolen the air out of his lungs. Then he kisses you, hard and messy like he’s trying to do the same to you. You don’t pull back until he’s bottomed out.

“This is how you can take care of me.” You murmur against his lips.

It’s like you can feel him in your lungs, and suddenly the lines of lion and lamb are blurred. You whimper, hips grinding down even though you have no where to go. A smug smile pollutes Clark’s pretty face, beneath you, ever so slightly the tables start turning.

In an effort to keep your lead, you rise up, stopping just short of his tip, and then drop down again, putting your all your weight behind the it. He hits so different like this, finding that spongey spot inside you with every pass.

His smile disappears into a moan, his head tipping back in pleasure as you give him the tightest squeeze you can muster. You watch the veins on his neck pop, he’s already closer than he wants to admit.

“Gosh, honey.” He whispers, “So tight.” His voice is full of reverence, the kind most men reserve for praying. His gaze is locked on the sight of you wrapped around him, the ring of your arousal that’s forming at the base of cock. He stares at it like it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, eyes wide and hands shaking. A sacrificial lamb at the alter of your cunt.

It makes you feel drunk.

Your thighs are burning, trembling on either side of him as you try to raise yourself again. Between the width of his body, and the sheer length of cock you have to travel, you’re already struggling to find a rhythm.

You can feel his heart racing, body tense and all but vibrating as try to steady your self, both of your palms pressed flat to his chest for support. You’re trying to find the will, doing vaginal acrobatics to try and distract him from the fact that you’re falling apart. But Clark, who has made himself an expert in reading your body, doesn’t fall for it. You’re suddenly reminded of his strength, of the superhero hiding under a mop of a curls and dimples. You foolishly mistook his tension for want; you realize now, as his hands curls around your hips and lift you up, that it was restraint.

Instead of pushing you back down, he holds you there, letting your cunt flutter around just the head of his cock. You can’t even think as you try to fuck yourself down onto him. Your hips thrash with the efforts, but gravity is no match for his strength.

“Clark what are you doing, please.” You beg, angry red welts appear under your nails as you claw at his skin, willing him to let you fall.

Your breaths, which had been up to this point been controlled and even, become heaves, borderline sobs. Your hips trashing in his grip as you try to get friction.

He shushes you, gentle and loving. As if it’s obvious he says. “Taking care of you.”

Then without warning, Clark pushes you down, faster than you could ever achieve yourself. Then he lifts you back up, and brings down again, fucking you on his cock until you’re crying out with each pass. Until your hips start to move with his hands, canting in time with each thrust.

“Tell me what you want.” Clark says.

You gasp, when did you lose control of this?

“Touch me.” You beg anyway. You grab one of his hands and drag it off your hip until it finds where your bodies are connected. “Please.”

Clark obliges, his thumb zeroing in your clit and beginning a familiar rhythm of slow, tight circles. The rest of his fingers spread against his cock, resting alongside your folds, teasing your weeping hole where it’s stretched around him. His fingers dance along the edges, like he’s threatening to slip one in. You’re already so full of him, but your pulse stutters at the thought.

Your hips jerk again, chasing his thumb as he bottoms out again, this time Clark lets you stay there, grinding against his hand while you fuck yourself down onto the base of his cock.

“That’s it, use me honey. Take what you need.” He says, his hand is sandwiched between you at an awkward angle in this position, but Clark is unphased, his thumb pressing even harder against your clit.

You cry out, your head falling into the crook of his neck as you chase your orgasm. You can feel it creeping up your spine, pushing your nerves to the edge, every hair standing at attention.

“Tell me-“ You hiccup, your own moan interrupting you. “Tell me about the bedroom set again.”

Clark freezes, surprised, but only momentarily. Then he resumes his efforts with fervor, shifting his hips so he can thrust up into you while his thumb doubles its speed.

“The end tables have outlets.” He tells you, “So you can plug your laptop in, work from bed when you’re too sore to walk.”

You bite down on his throat, feeling his pulse jump under your lips. You’re so close, so fucking close.

“Need a better bed,” He pants, “So I can fuck you through it.”

You clench, another ragged moan of his name falling from your lips. You can see your orgasm, the wave creating as it prepares to knock you over.

“Finance or buy?” You ask, voice shaking.

“Finance.” He punctuates it with a thrust. “Good-“ Another thrust “-for credit score.”

The earth shatters, your vision turning white and your blood to lava. Your orgasm crashes into you with the power of a tsunami, the power of it sweeping Clark away with you. Despite his own orgasm, his thumb never stops, he keeps circling your clit, dragging your orgasm out as long as possible, not pulling away until you finally stop twitching.

When you try to breathe again, you’re covered in sweat, both of your thighs are drenched in your ecstasy. So are the sheets.

“Jesus.” You pant, still not finding the strength to move, letting his cock soften inside you.

“Nope.” Clark says, pressing a kiss to your hair. “Just me.”

“Ha. Ha.” Your body sags against his, limp and exhausted.

You stay like that until your bladder finally gets the better of you. You pull off of Clark with a hiss and a wet sound that can only be described as vulgar.

It takes a minute to remember how to stand, legs uncertain as you take your first steps.

When you come back from the bathroom, clean and ready to sleep. Clark has changed the sheets, and is setting two Tylenol down next to the water bottle (he already broke the seal on it for you) that he grabbed earlier. “So your thighs don’t ache as bad in the morning.” He explains.

Folded in a neat square, one of his t-shirts is sitting on your side of the bed. He’s already slipped on sweats, and to your delight, he hasn’t bothered with a shirt. The clothes you’d abandoned on the floor earlier are gone, probably in his hamper (You love that he has a hamper).

Sweet, perfect man.

“Thank you.” You slip on the shirt and slide underneath the covers.

Clark climbs in beside you, holding his arm out so you can take your place curled against his side. He doesn’t speak until you’ve settled.

“So.” He starts, your head is on his chest, listening to his heart beat. “Since when are you so horny for furniture?”

You hum, too tired to be embarrassed. “IKEA catalogues are my Playboy.” You joke, a beat of silence passes. “I like how responsible you are. It’s really hot.” You admit.

You feel Clark nod, he doesn’t say anything but you hear his heartbeat pick up. Mid-yawn, you throw your leg over his waist, a silent ‘down boy.’

Then you remember what he said, right before you came.

“Since when are you worried about your credit-score?” You ask.

Clark doesn’t speak for a minute, like he’s weighing his options. His hand traces a lazy path up and down your spine.

“Wanna buy us a house someday. Good credit means a better mortgage.” He explains, point-blank and nonchalant. “Paying off stuff like furniture can build a positive payment history and they have a deal with no interest rate for the first two years.” Like the journalist he is, Clark Kent has done his research.

You freeze, head tilting up so you can see his face. Clark isn’t even looking at you, just smiling at the ceiling like he’s picturing it. You and him, a white picket fence and a freshly mowed lawn.

Your cunt roars back to life.

“Oh my god.” You groan.

Clark looks down at you, brows furrowed. “What?”

You don’t answer. Instead you sit up and despite the protest in your muscles, straddle him once more.

Authors note: that’s all folks!!!! In all seriousness I hope you liked this, if you made it this far thank you so much. If you enjoyed this fic please holler at me. I had a lot of fun writing this and ignoring the 194729 other wips I should be finishing! Go stream mans best friend by sabrina carpenter! Okay love you, say it back!

You were a friend of Chloe’s from Metropolis, and one day you stopped into the Planet to say hello. It was there that you saw Clark. He was leaning back in a desk chair, the dusk sunlight spilling over his reposed head like honey, somehow glowing with that soft effect only an aged vaseline lens could achieve. With heat in your cheeks, you asked…

  “Has anyone ever told you that at a certain angle, you look a lot like Marlon Brando?”

Clark narrowed his intrigued eyes at you, only to reply, “What, like The Godfather?” 

And you shook your head, rocking on your feet: “No… more like… Streetcar Named Desire.” 

Clark smiled. 

It was kismet from there. 

Your first date was to the movies, and it was your doing (of course). Clark figured you were taking him to see something new, but you in fact had a special membership at the Metropolis Monoplex and were taking him to see an anniversary showing of Casablanca. He had never seen it, and you were intent on changing his life. 

“What do you know about World War Two?”

“Enough,” Clark chuckled, nestling into the seat beside you. The theater was packed. 

“What about romance films?”

“Maybe less.”

“Everyone says this is a romance, and I wouldn’t say they’re wrong, y’know, because there’s absolutely romance and the structure is driven by it, but personally I feel the morality question is what makes this movie so poignant– to decide between selfishness and righteousness, between duty and desire, those are hard choices to make, especially in a political hotbed. It’s the impossibility of getting everything you want, and the poetic justice of making the most reconcilable choice, you know? Do you see what I’m saying?”

Clark stared at you as your fingers poked the popcorn and you chewed your way through thoughts he had never entertained about anything before. As those words poured out of your mouth, he watched you glimmer. Like light catching a knife, or sun dancing on water. You sounded pretentious, sure, but he didn’t care. Not at all. At that moment, he had never seen anyone more beautiful. 

“I don’t know what you mean at all,” he said. “How about you explain it to me?”

You had never loved seven words more. And they came up again and again. 

Clark would let you sit and blab for hours, from anything between the sociological destigmatization of learning disabilities by Finding Nemo to the reasons why Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a necessary film as the decades-long fallout from Roswell and increasing questions of conspiracy drove a wedge between the American public and its leaders. In the theatre, in his barn loft, in your city apartment, and even in the bed of his truck in the way-out drive-in theatre (the last of its kind in the state of Kansas), it didn’t matter where– Clark prompted you to open that pretty mouth and speak. Speak about what you thought and saw, what you believed. What angered and inspired you, what made your heart skip. It really meant something when he was more in love with your talking than the standing opportunity to shut you up with a kiss. He had never felt so passionate about a single thing in his life. 

Clark was constantly thinking about film when you were gone– what to watch next, what you hadn't yet shown him. He looked up old theatres to visit and movie stores to hit. He researched traditional techniques just to be able to identify a word you used, or show you he knew one when he commented on a shot or trope. Clark would read your books on filmography and quiz you, just to hear you giggle and spit out an answer like it was easier than breathing.

“Wait, so you’re telling me the guy actually died?”

“Yeah! Brandon Lee,” you laughed incredulously. “You haven’t heard about this? They were shooting his character’s death scene in The Crow when a blank hit him in the gut. He died in a prop malfunction. There was a whole ordeal where the weapons master got fired and a bunch of people who had no idea what they were doing fucked up the gun prep. Sparked a huge issue in the prop side of Hollywood.”

“Weapons master?”

“Yes, dummy, the prop manager who knows how to ensure firearms are safe and nobody dies!” You rolled onto your tummy on his bed, peeking up at him while he studied your book.

“I can’t believe you know all this stuff,” he grinned. 

“Someone has to impress you.”

“You do impress me,” Clark quirked a brow. He tossed the book down and grabbed you, hoisting you into his lap.

“Mm, well, thank God for that.”

“Yeah,” Clark smiled, and he tugged you down to taste the sugary gloss on your lips. 

Ever since meeting you, Clark took on a new life. New vocabulary, new sight, new outlook. He noticed clues everywhere, all of these allusions to famous films he never would have known in drinks and on shirts and within people. His culture grew so wide that he could talk to anybody and get by, making jokes and connections without feeling like he was missing out on something. He saw the nods in new films to old ones. He recognized voices in animated pieces. He never aced your quizzes, but he got a lot right on his best days. Clark read a lot of books and lived a lot of life, but there was a certain magic that film brought to living, and he could only attribute the spark to you. His depth of understanding, and his love and care for stories, where things that you made burrow within him. You helped something fresh take root. Without you, he’d still have no idea who Jimmy Stewart or Baz Luhrmann or Stan Lee were. Without you, he’d be floundering the same way he had been all his life, feeling disconnected and untethered.

“You know,” you started, snuggled against his chest in the warmth of your city apartment. Tom Hanks was busy writing an email to Meg Ryan on the television as you fiddled with the hem of his shirt. “I thought when I first met you that I would be a bit much. You get so quiet sometimes when I talk, originally I thought I was overwhelming you.”

Clark ran his fingers over your scalp, feeling the strands of hair. “You could never overwhelm me.”

“I’m glad,” you grinned, resting your chin on his chest. “But I am curious about something.”

Clark tilted his head, gazing down at your big eyes. His heart fluttered. “Yeah? What?”

You hummed softly, cheeks pinking. “What’s the one thing you could talk forever about? Like, I have my movies. You do pretty well with that. But you have to have something, right? Like, before you met me?”

Clark could only smile wider. His fingers brushed over your nose. “Before you I didn’t. But after you I picked something up.”

“Really?”

Clark cupped your cheeks and lifted you up, pressing a warm, welcome kiss to your lips. Against them, he muttered, “I could talk forever about you. You’re my special interest.”

“That’s incredibly corny,” you melted.