I am no jedi

Agony. You've never know pain this acute, pain so utterly horrible that you can barely stumble through the door to collapse on one of your chairs. It creaks under your weight, sliding across your wooden floor and almost causing you to topple off in your unbalanced state. Your breaths are laboured, uneven, and it's hard to even keep your eyes open enough to scan the room for anything to help. Pressing your hand against the wound on your stomach makes the pain even more unbearable, but you've been told before to apply pressure to wounds to stop the bleeding. This one doesn't seem to take the hint and continues to ooze blood all over your hand, and it's now that you notice the trail of blood leading in from your door. Shit, that's going to be a pain to clean. There's nothing around for you to clean the wound with. Well, there's a half-full bucket of water by the window but judging by how you can barely stay upright in the seat, there's no chance you'll be able to get it. As for any herbs to treat the wound and bandages... they're not even in the same room. A shiver runs down your spine. You're cold, freezing, and your skin feels clammy, like you've been dipped in some sort of oil. It's getting harder and harder to breathe, but you can't get up to get those damned supplies. Dear Odin, you're going to die. And then there's a knock, a soft little rapping on your door that you wouldn't have noticed if not for your dragon's head darting round to face it. A low growl comes from its mouth as the door is opened before it ceases, realising who's just entered. "Gods, y/n," Hiccup says, gaze fixed on the bloody trail leading through the hut. "What's all this blood? You go hunting or -" His eyes land on you, on the sheer amount of blood dripping from your hand, the same hand that is trembling so much you can barely keep the pressure on the wound. "What happened? Oh, gods, y/n, what -" "Get water," you manage to say, your voice sounding quieter, shakier, than you remember. It's a struggle to get the words out. "Water, herbs and bandages, please." Without a word, Hiccup darts up the stairs where he knows you keep most of your things, and you'd laugh at the sound of him clamouring about if it weren't for the sense of impending doom, of death waiting on your doorstep. You swear you can see her dark figure looming by the windows, lurking, waiting to pounce, and you can only pray to Hel to let you live. Hiccup rushes down the stairs, holding a roll of bandages and your small containers of herbs, ones Gothi convinced you to take before you all left to journey beyond the archipelago. He all but drops them onto the table before grabbing the bucket of water by your window and crouching by your side. "I'm going to take care of you," he promises. "You're going to be fine." Gently, he moves your hand away from the wound and, in a way, some of the pain is relieved, but the sickness you feel at the sight of your completely bloodied hand becomes overpowering. If not for your dragon on the other side of you, you would've toppled over, too weak to even sit up. "Deep breaths," Hiccup instructs, grabbing a rag and dipping it into the water. "You need to stay awake. Mind telling me what happened?" He's trying to sound calm, and you appreciate that more than he could ever know, but you can hear the worry laced within his tone, see the crease in his brows at each of your flinches and winces when the cold, wet rag touches your skin. "We were just out flying," you say slowly, fighting to stay conscious. Your stomach roils with dread. "Saw a ship, it looked pretty - ow!" "Sorry." "It looked pretty normal so we stayed on course and flew over it." Your face scrunches in pain as he cleans more blood away before dropping the bloodied rag on the table. "Ah! Get that off my clean table." A laugh bursts from him. "Okay, we're getting somewhere. You're shouting at me already. Carry on." He places your hand back on the wound and presses, silently instructing you to apply pressure, while he grabs a bowl and scatters some of the herbs in it.

Not because you hurt him. Because you could. Not with a blade. Not with green stone. Not with a spell carved from old gods. You hurt him by standing too close to his pain and refusing to look away.

The first time Clark met you, he was bleeding green. That was not a metaphor. It had been a League mission in Coast City. Some weapons dealer with more money than wisdom had bought a shard of kryptonite, ground it into powder, and loaded it into bullets.

Hal had called it “deeply tacky.” Bruce had called it “predictable.” Clark had called it nothing, mostly because one of the bullets had lodged between his ribs and breathing had become an extremely complicated group project.

The Watchtower medbay had been bright and cold around him. Diana stood at his left, one hand on his shoulder. Bruce was at the monitors, jaw locked, pretending his worry was data analysis. J’onn lingered near the doorway, his expression quiet and grave. Clark lay on the exam table and tried not to tremble. He failed. Green veins crawled under his skin from the wound, branching outward like poisoned lightning. Every breath dragged fire through his lungs. Sweat gathered at his temples. His hearing flickered in and out, catching fragments.

“Shard is embedded.” “Radiation levels rising.” “Can’t cut without exposing him to more.” “Lead-lined tools?” “Not enough.”

Clark closed his eyes. The room tilted. He heard Bruce say your name. Then he heard your footsteps.

Not fast. Not frantic. Steady. That was the first thing he noticed about you. Not your face, not your voice, not the warmth of your hands. Your steadiness. You came into a room where Superman was dying by inches, and you did not panic.

Clark opened his eyes. You stood beside the table, looking down at him with an expression that was gentle but not afraid. That surprised him. People were afraid when he was hurt. Not only for him. Of him. Of what it meant. If Superman could bleed, then maybe the sky was not as safe as everyone thought. You only looked at Clark.

“Hi,” you said softly.

He tried to smile. It probably looked awful. “Hi.”

Bruce moved closer. “He was shot with a kryptonite round. Fragment remains lodged between the seventh and eighth ribs. Radiation is spreading through his bloodstream.”

“Rude place to put it,” you said. Clark huffed a laugh. It hurt. You looked at him. “Sorry. Bad time?”

“No,” Clark managed. “Good distraction.”

“Great. I have many terrible jokes.”

Bruce’s stare could have frozen lava. You ignored him entirely. Clark liked you immediately. Which, in hindsight, was the first warning sign.

You held your hands near the wound but did not touch.

“Clark,” you said, “I can help. I need to touch the wound. Is that okay?”

He blinked. People did not always ask him that. Not because they meant harm. Usually, because he was Superman, and Superman’s body was treated like a tool in emergencies. Armour. Shield. Rescue equipment. Something useful and indestructible until suddenly it wasn’t. But you asked. Like his pain was his. Like his body belonged to him even when it was failing.

“Yes,” he whispered.

Your hands settled over the wound. The pain changed. At first, it sharpened. Clark gasped, back arching off the table. Diana’s hand tightened on his shoulder. Bruce snapped your name like a warning. You did not move.

“Clark,” you said, voice steady. “Look at me.”

He did. Your eyes held his. Warm. Human. Determined.

“I’ve got you.”

Heat bloomed beneath your palms. Not solar heat. Not sunlight. Something else. Something soft and impossible.

The kryptonite burn receded. The green veins faded under his skin. The shard pushed itself out of his body into your waiting hand, slick with blood and glowing faintly. The wound closed. His lungs opened. The poison drained from his bloodstream so quickly that the relief was almost painful.

Clark inhaled. Fully. He heard everything again. The hum of the Watchtower. Bruce’s heartbeat. Diana’s breath. Your pulse.

Too fast. Your pulse was too fast. You stepped back, dropping the kryptonite shard into a lead-lined tray Bruce thrust toward you. Your hand shook. Then you folded it behind your back and smiled.

“There,” you said. “Better?”

Clark stared at you. He could still feel your hands on his ribs.

“Yes,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” You turned to Bruce. “He’ll need rest.”

Bruce looked deeply offended by the concept of someone else issuing medical orders in his medbay. Clark nearly smiled. Then he heard it. A tiny shift in your breathing. Controlled. Suppressed. Pain. His eyes narrowed slightly.

“You’re hurt,” he said.

Your gaze flicked back to him. For half a second, your expression went blank. Then the smile returned. “Just tired.”

Lie. Clark heard it. Not in your heartbeat. Not exactly. It was not always that simple. Heartbeats changed for many reasons. Fear. Pain. Embarrassment. Relief. But your voice had gone too careful. Like you had wrapped the lie in gauze before handing it over.

Bruce noticed too. Clark saw the way his eyes sharpened. But you stepped back from the table, already looking toward the next injured hero, and the moment passed.

Clark let it. He had just nearly died. You had just saved him. He was tired.

That was what he told himself. Later, he would hate that.

You became part of the League’s rhythm after that. Not officially at first. You were called in for emergencies. Then difficult cases. Then anything involving injuries too strange for standard medicine. Magic burns. Alien venom. Psychic backlash. Curses. Broken bones from battles fought in gravity fields human bodies were not meant to endure.

Eventually, people stopped saying, “Should we call them?” They just called.

Clark saw you often. In medbays. On battlefields. At disaster sites. In the quiet hallways after missions, when everyone had stopped bleeding and started pretending they were fine. You were good at seeing through fine. Mostly because you said it so poorly yourself.

He noticed that too. Clark noticed many things. People assumed his powers made him observant, and they helped, of course. Hearing through walls, seeing microscopic cracks, smelling ozone before lightning struck — useful, all of it. But journalism had trained something different in him. Attention. The patient kind. The human kind. The kind that looked at a person and asked, What are you not saying?

You were not saying a lot. After healing Barry’s fractured femur, you leaned on the medbay counter for exactly twelve seconds when you thought no one was looking. After healing Diana’s sword wound, you walked with a stiffness in your side that lasted the rest of the day. After healing Hal’s concussion, you wore sunglasses in three different Watchtower corridors despite the fact that the lighting had not changed. After healing Bruce from a magical burn that had eaten through three layers of armour, you vanished for six hours.

Clark found you in the observation deck afterwards. Not because he was spying. Mostly. You stood with one hand pressed against the glass, looking down at Earth. The planet turned beneath the Watchtower in impossible blue silence, cloud systems curling over oceans like brushstrokes. Your shoulders were tense.

Clark stopped at the entrance. “Can I come in?”

You turned. Surprise crossed your face first. Then something softer. “Of course.”

He entered slowly, giving you space. He had learned that about you. You gave everyone space and did not seem to know what to do when it was offered back.

“You disappeared,” Clark said.

You smiled faintly. “That sounds dramatic.”

“You vanished from Batman’s medical follow-up schedule.”

“Ah. So I committed a felony.”

“At least three, I think.”

Your smile widened. Clark felt absurdly proud of that. He came to stand beside you, not too close. Earth glowed beneath both of you.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

“Tired.”

“Only tired?”

You looked at him. There was no accusation in his voice. That seemed to make the question harder for you.

Your gaze moved back to Earth. “Mostly tired.”

Clark nodded. He did not push. You seemed to relax by a fraction.

“I know you can hear when people lie,” you said after a moment.

“Not always.” Your eyes flicked toward him. He smiled slightly. “It’s not magic. Heartbeats are complicated. People can lie calmly. People can tell the truth while terrified. Sometimes I hear that someone is upset, but not why.”

“Huh.”

“Disappointed?”

“No. Relieved.”

Clark looked at you. That was honest. It hurt more than the lie would have. He rested his hands lightly on the railing. “I try not to listen unless I need to.”

“That must be hard.”

“It is.”

“Especially in rooms full of injured people.”

“Yes.”

You were quiet for a while. Then, softly, “Does it hurt? Hearing that much pain?”

Clark breathed in. The question was not one many people asked. He looked down at the Earth.

“Yes,” he said.

Your expression changed. “What do you do with it?” you asked.

Clark huffed a quiet laugh. “Some days? Fly faster.”

“And other days?”

“Go home. Call Ma. Make soup. Write something no one will publish because it’s too honest.”

You smiled. “Reporter problems?”

“Reporter problems.”

“I’d read it.” Clark looked at you. You looked back. The quiet between you changed shape. Then you glanced away, clearing your throat. “For the record, Bruce’s burn was worse than he admitted.”

“He’s bad at hiding pain.”

“He’s excellent at hiding pain.”

Clark’s mouth curved. “He’s bad at hiding from me.”

You laughed softly. It warmed the room more than the Earth’s reflected sun.

After that, Clark started finding reasons to talk to you outside of emergencies. Sometimes it was coffee. You liked yours with too much sweetness, which delighted him. He brought it once after a mission and tried to pretend it was incidental.

You took the cup, read the label, and looked at him with raised brows. “Clark Kent, did you memorise my coffee order?”

“No.”

“You are lying very badly for a journalist.”

“It was a lucky guess.”

“My name is written on the cup.”

He glanced down. It was. In bold marker. With a tiny heart next to it because the barista at the Watchtower café had apparently chosen violence. Clark adjusted his glasses, which he was wearing despite being in uniform because he had come from the Daily Planet and forgotten to take them off.

You smiled into the lid. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

Later, he found tea waiting for him outside the debrief room. Chamomile. Honey. A sticky note attached to the cup. For when the world is loud.

Clark kept the note. Not in a sentimental way. Obviously. Just folded neatly in his wallet behind his press badge.

Normal behaviour. Entirely normal.

Diana noticed.

“They are kind,” Diana said one afternoon, watching you from across the training room as you argued with Guy Gardner about whether “walking it off” counted as a medical plan.

Clark looked up too quickly. “Who?”

Diana’s smile was terrible. “Subtlety does not suit you, Kal.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You do.”

Across the room, you poked Guy in the chest and pointed sternly toward the medbay. Guy, astonishingly, went. Clark smiled before he could stop himself.

Diana’s expression softened. “You are fond of them.”

Clark looked down at his hands. Fond was a small word. Safe. Manageable. It did not cover the way his attention found you in every room. The way your tired smile stayed with him long after missions ended. The way his chest tightened whenever you swayed after healing someone. The way he wanted to know what made you laugh outside emergency lighting.

“I am,” he said.

Diana did not tease. That was how he knew she understood it was serious. “Be careful,” she said.

Clark’s smile faded. “With them?”

“With yourself.” He looked at her. Diana’s gaze was gentle and ancient. “You have spent your life being the shield,” she said. “It is difficult, sometimes, to let another stand before you.”

Clark looked back toward you. You were laughing now, head tipped slightly back, light catching on your face. His heart ached.

“I know,” he said.

Diana touched his shoulder. “I suspect they know too.”

The first kiss happened in Smallville. Clark had not planned it. 

He had planned many things that day, actually. He planned to introduce you to his mother because Martha Kent had asked about “that healer you keep smiling about” enough times that avoidance had become impossible. He planned to show you the farm. He planned to not look too pleased when you immediately fell in love with the barn cats. He planned to make dinner with his mother and not use heat vision for shortcuts because she always noticed and called it cheating. He planned to fly you back to Metropolis before midnight.

He did not plan to kiss you in the cornfield at sunset. That part just happened.

“You grew up here?” you asked, standing between the rows as evening light turned everything gold.

Clark walked beside you, hands tucked into his jacket pockets. “I did.”

“It’s beautiful.”

He looked at the fields. The farmhouse. The horizon. You.

“Yes,” he said.

You glanced at him. He looked away too late.

Your smile softened. “You’re different here.”

Clark laughed quietly. “Different bad?”

“No. Different like…” You searched for the word. “Quieter.”

He considered that. “I learned how to hear the world here,” he said. You slowed. Clark stopped with you. “When I was young, everything was too loud,” he continued. “Heartbeats. Insects under the soil. Planes miles overhead. People talking in town. My own blood moving. I didn’t know how to separate anything.”

You listened with your whole body. That was something you did. Made attention feel like a place to rest.

“Ma would bring me out here,” he said. “She’d tell me to find one sound at a time. Wind through corn. Tractor engine. Her heartbeat. My Pa’s boots on the porch.”

Your eyes shone.

Clark smiled faintly. “It helped.”

“I’m glad.”

The words were simple. They landed deep.

You reached out, fingers brushing the sleeve of his jacket.

“Can I?” you asked. His breath caught. It was only his arm. He could lift planes. He could hold collapsing bridges. He had survived bullets, bombs, alien invasions. But your hand hovered near his sleeve, asking permission, and Clark felt undone by it.

“Yes,” he said.

You touched him. Lightly. Your fingers rested over his forearm, warm through the fabric. “You’re always so careful with everyone,” you said.

Clark looked at you. “So are you.”

Your smile faded a little. “Occupational hazard.”

“Is that all it is?”

The question came out softer than he intended. You looked toward the horizon. Gold light gathered along your profile.

“No,” you said.

His heart changed rhythm. Truth. Not the whole truth. But truth.

Clark stepped closer. You did not move away.

“Sometimes,” you said, “if I’m not careful, I think I’ll disappear into what people need from me.”

Clark knew that feeling. God, he knew it.

“The healing?” he asked.

You looked back at him. “Everything.”

The word held a door inside it. Clark wanted to open it. Instead, he said, “You don’t disappear when I look at you.”

Your breath caught. Clark’s face warmed. That had sounded smoother in his head. Possibly because in his head, he was less farm-boy-in-love and more responsible adult man with emotional coordination.

You stared at him. “What?”

“I mean,” he said, then stopped. Nope. No recovering. The cornfield was silent except for crickets, wind, and his mother’s heartbeat from the porch, where she was absolutely pretending not to watch.

Clark cleared his throat. “I mean I see you.”

Your face changed. The way it had on the observation deck. Like the words hurt because they mattered. “Clark.”

He loved the way you said his name. Not Superman. Not Kal-El. Clark. The name his mother called from the kitchen. The name written on bylines. The name that belonged to flannel shirts, broken tractors, coffee-stained notebooks, and a boy who once hid in cornfields because the whole world was too loud.

“I see you too,” you whispered.

Then you kissed him. Or maybe he kissed you. It became difficult to assign responsibility afterwards. Your hand slid up his arm. His palm found your waist. He bent carefully, always carefully, even though you tugged him closer like you were not afraid of his strength at all. The kiss was soft. Then not. Then soft again, because Clark smiled into it and you laughed against his mouth.

When he pulled back, your eyes were closed.

“Was that okay?” he asked.

Your eyes opened. Your smile was devastating. “Clark, you floated.”

He looked down. His boots were four inches above the dirt. “Oh.”

You laughed.

From the porch, Martha Kent called, “Dinner’s getting cold!”

Clark dropped to the ground so fast you laughed harder. His ears burned.

“Your mom saw.”

“Ma sees everything.”

“She’s smiling.”

Clark glanced toward the house. His mother waved with the supreme confidence of a woman who had raised Superman and feared nothing.

You waved back. Clark covered his face.

You kissed his cheek. He decided embarrassment was worth it.

Loving Clark was not difficult. At least, you made it look easy. That frightened him sometimes. Not because he thought you were careless with love. Because you were careful with it. You learned the difference between Clark and Superman without ever making him feel split in two. You did not treat his softness like a secret identity or his strength like a performance. You understood that both were real.

You sat beside him while he wrote articles at two in the morning, your legs tucked under you on his couch, editing his sentences with ruthless affection.

“Too noble,” you said, pointing at a paragraph.

Clark blinked. “It’s about city council corruption.”

“You still made it sound like a moral epic.”

“It kind of is.”

“It’s zoning laws.”

“Zoning laws matter.”

“Clark.”

He leaned over your shoulder. “What would you write?”

You thought for a moment, then rewrote the sentence in the margin. It was better.

He sighed. You smiled. “Don’t pout. It’s unbecoming for a Pulitzer winner.”

“I am not pouting.”

“You are farm-boy brooding.”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is now.”

You were also the first person outside his family to learn how he listened when the world became too much. Sometimes he would go quiet mid-conversation, head tilting slightly. You would pause. “Emergency?” He would listen. Sometimes yes. Then he would kiss your forehead and leave in a blur of red and blue. Sometimes no. A siren already handled. A baby crying but safe. A car backfiring. A fight resolving without violence. On those nights, you would touch his hand and say, “Come back.”

Not from danger. From listening. From spreading himself across every cry in the city until Clark Kent became only a receiving station for pain. He always came back. For you, he came back. But he still worried. Because he noticed you, too. Your disappearances after major healings. The way your smile sometimes arrived half a beat late. The way you treated your own pain like an administrative inconvenience. He asked. You answered. Sometimes.

“Does it hurt you?” he asked one night on his balcony after you healed a burn across J’onn’s shoulder.

The city hummed below. You leaned against the railing, wrapped in one of Clark’s sweaters. It was too big on you. He had opinions about that. Several. None appropriate for the serious mood. “My power?”

“Yes.”

You looked down at your hands. “Sometimes.”

His heart tightened. “How much?”

“Clark.”

“I’m not trying to interrogate you.”

“I know.”

“Then tell me.”

You looked up. The city lights reflected in your eyes. “If I tell you it hurts, you’ll stop asking for help.”

“I don’t ask for myself often.”

“That’s not better.”

He sighed quietly. You touched his hand.

“There are costs,” you said. “But there are costs to doing nothing, too.”

“What costs?”

You smiled sadly. “You know those.”

Clark did. That was the problem. You were both too good at making sacrifices sound reasonable. He turned his hand and laced his fingers through yours.

“One day,” he said softly, “you’re going to have to trust me with the whole truth.”

Your fingers tightened. “One day,” you echoed.

Lie? No. Not exactly. Hope disguised as a delay. Clark let it rest.

He would regret that later. He would regret many things later.

The mission began with Lex Luthor. Technically, Clark could not prove that at first. Batman frowned upon “I know it was Lex because it has his emotionally constipated billionaire stink all over it” as evidence.

Still. Clark knew. The first sign was a tremor in the Arctic. The second was a burst of red solar radiation detected by the Fortress of Solitude. The third was the emergence of a black-market satellite network using stolen Kryptonian coding from one of Brainiac’s old probes.

By the time the League traced the signal to an abandoned observatory in northern Canada, Clark’s stomach had already tightened into a knot. Kryptonian technology. Red sun radiation. Unknown magical overlay. That last part had Zatanna concerned, which made everyone else deeply concerned because when Zatanna looked at a spell and said, “That’s rude,” things were usually about to get apocalyptic.

You came to the briefing. Clark did not want you there. He also knew better than to say that in front of everyone unless he wanted Diana to give him the disappointed-warrior-princess look and Bruce to silently agree while pretending not to. So he waited until after. You were packing a medical kit when he approached.

“No,” you said before he spoke.

Clark stopped. You did not look up. “I haven’t said anything.”

“You have a face.”

“I always have a face.”

“Currently it’s the ‘please stay somewhere safe because I love you and I’m terrified’ face.” His mouth closed. You glanced up. Your expression softened. “I’m going, Clark.”

“It’s Kryptonian tech. And red sun radiation. And magic.”

“I know.”

“That combination could affect your power unpredictably.”

“That combination could kill you.” He had no answer. You zipped the kit shut. “I’m not going because I think you’re weak,” you said.

“I know.”

“I’m going because if something hurts you, I want to be there.”

Clark looked down at your hands. Hands that had healed him before. Hands that shook afterwards. Hands he had kissed in his kitchen, in his apartment, in the cornfield where he first floated because you touched him like he was only a man and still somehow enough.

“I don’t want you hurt because of me,” he said.

Your face gentled. “That’s not a choice you get to make for me.”

He looked at you. The sentence would come back later. A knife thrown forward in time.

He almost argued. Instead, he stepped closer. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

You smiled faintly. “I will be as careful as hero work allows.”

“That is not comforting.”

“It wasn’t meant to be.”

He leaned down and pressed his forehead to yours. For a second, the Watchtower faded. Only you remained. Your heartbeat. His. The fragile, ordinary rhythm of two people who loved each other in a world addicted to ending.

“I love you,” Clark said softly.

Your hand touched his cheek. “I love you too.”

He kissed you.

Bruce walked in seven seconds later. “Are you done?”

Clark pulled back, ears burning. You smiled against his mouth. “Hi, Bruce.”

Bruce looked unimpressed. Or as unimpressed as a man could look while clearly relieved Clark had someone to kiss before dangerous missions.

“We leave in five,” he said. Then he left.

You laughed. Clark tried to smile. It did not quite land. You noticed. You squeezed his hand.

“Come back to me,” you said.

His chest tightened. “Always.”

Another promise that would soon become complicated.

The observatory stood beneath a dead sky. No stars. That was the first wrong thing. Clouds smothered the moon, but even beyond them, Clark could feel an absence above the facility. The air tasted metallic. Sound behaved strangely, swallowed at the edges by a field of red solar interference that made his skin prickle. The League approached in formation. Batman, Wonder Woman, Zatanna, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Superman. And you, near the rear, protected but present, carrying a medkit and an expression that told Clark you knew exactly how often he glanced back.

“Stop checking on me,” you said over comms.

Hal snorted. “Trouble in paradise?”

Bruce said, “Focus.”

Barry whispered, “That means yes.”

Diana sounded amused. “Indeed.”

Clark closed his eyes for half a second. 

You laughed softly into comms. The sound steadied him.

Then the observatory opened.

Not the doors. The building itself. Metal panels unfolded like petals, revealing a core of alien machinery beneath old stone. Kryptonian script crawled across black pylons, wrong and corrupted. Red light pulsed from the central tower, spilling over the snow in long, bloody shadows.

Zatanna inhaled sharply. “That is not just technologu.”

Batman’s voice was grim. “Magic?”

“Necromantic structure. Solar inversion. Something is using death as a battery.”

Clark’s blood went cold.

Then the first beam fired. Red sunlight lanced across the snow.

Clark dodged, barely. The beam struck a ridge behind him and vaporised stone.

“Scatter!” Bruce snapped.

The battle became chaos. Diana flew toward the central tower, shield raised. Hal constructed a barrier around the medical evacuation point. Barry blurred between pylons, planting disruptors. J’onn reached out telepathically and recoiled with a hiss of pain. Clark flew high, scanning for the source.

He found it beneath the observatory. A chamber carved into the mountain. At its centre stood a Kryptonian crystal engine wrapped in chains of spellwork and threaded through with kryptonite.

Green veins. Red sun core. Black magic.

Clark’s stomach dropped.

A voice came through the tower speakers.

Lex’s voice filtered through something else. “Hello, Superman.”

Clark hovered midair. Batman cursed softly.

“Luthor,” Clark said.

“Predictable, I know. I’d apologise, but neither of us would believe me.”

The red solar field intensified. Clark’s flight faltered. He dropped ten feet before catching himself.

You said his name over comms. He heard the fear.

He looked toward you. You stood near the rear line beside Zatanna, eyes fixed on him.

“I’m okay,” he said.

Lie. You knew.

“Kal,” Diana warned.

The mountain shook. From beneath the observatory emerged something shaped like a man but built from wrongness: armor plated in lead-black metal, veins glowing kryptonite green beneath transparent sections, a core pulsing red in the chest.

Metallo technology. Kryptonian engine. Magic binding. A weapon designed by someone who knew exactly how to hurt Superman and had decided that was not enough.

The thing looked at Clark.

Its chest opened. Kryptonite light flooded the snow.

Clark fell. Not far. Diana caught him midair, but the radiation burned through him even at a distance. His muscles seized. His vision tunneled green. The red solar field stripped strength from his cells while kryptonite poisoned what remained.

He hit the ground on one knee.

The weapon advanced. Diana slammed into it with a force that cracked the mountain beneath them. It staggered, then drove a kryptonite blade into her shoulder.

She cried out. 

Clark moved. He did not think. He never did when someone he loved was hurt.

He launched himself forward through the red field, through the kryptonite radiation, through every alarm his body screamed. He struck the weapon hard enough to send both of them through the observatory wall and into the chamber below.

The world went green and red.

They crashed beside the crystal engine.

Clark tried to rise. His arms shook.

The weapon stood over him.

“Subject responsive,” Luthor’s voice said. “Escalating.”

The engine activated. Kryptonite spikes rose from the floor.

Clark rolled away from the first. The second punched through his side.

The pain was absolute.

He screamed. Far away, someone screamed his name.

You.

No. He tried to push himself off the spike.

Another red solar pulse hit him. His strength vanished. The weapon seized him by the throat and lifted him against the engine core. Kryptonite radiation poured directly into his bloodstream. Magic hooked into the wound, preventing his cells from closing around the damage.

He could hear his heart. Too slow.

He could hear the League fighting above. Too far.

He could hear you running. Too close.

No.

No, no, no.

“Stay back,” he tried to say over comms. It came out as a wet gasp.

The chamber doors blew open. Batman entered first, cape torn, armour smoking. Diana followed, bleeding gold-red from the shoulder. Hal’s constructs slammed into the weapon, driving it back. Barry blurred to Clark’s side and stopped with horror across his face.

“Clark.”

“Don’t touch the spike,” Batman snapped. “It’s saturated.”

Clark could barely focus.

Then you were there. You slid to your knees beside him, ignoring Bruce’s sharp command to stay back.

Your hands hovered over the wound. Your face was pale. Clark had never seen you look afraid like that.

Not for yourself. For him.

“Hey,” you whispered.

He wanted to smile. Couldn’t.

“Hi,” he breathed.

Your mouth trembled.

Bad. Bad if you could not hide it.

“Don’t,” he said.

You shook your head. “Clark—”

“Don’t.”

The kryptonite spike pulsed. Pain tore through him. His body arched, but the spike held him pinned.

You reached for him. Clark caught your wrist. Barely.

His grip had no strength. He hated that.

“You can’t take this,” he said.

Your eyes filled.

He knew. Enough from your disappearances. Your tremors. The lies. The way pain followed your miracles like a shadow with teeth.

“You don’t know that,” you whispered.

“It’s kryptonite.”

“I know.”

“And magic.”

“I know.”

“And red sun radiation.”

“I know.”

“You’re human.”

Your face broke. “No,” you said softly. “I’m yours.”

Clark’s heart stuttered. Not from kryptonite.

From terror. From love. From the terrible understanding of what you had already decided.

“Please,” he whispered.

Your hand touched his cheek. “I can’t watch you die.”

“You ask me to come back to you,” he said, voice barely there. “Don’t leave me instead.”

The tears spilled over. For one second, he thought maybe it was enough. Maybe you would stop.

Then the weapon surged back to its feet behind you.

Diana shouted. Batman threw a batarang that shattered one of the pylons.

The engine pulsed. Clark’s vision went almost black.

His heart stumbled. You felt it. Your face changed.

Not fear now. Decision.

“I love you,” you said.

“No.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No.”

Your hands closed around the wound. And you breathed in.

Clark’s world became sunlight.

Not yellow. Not warm.

White. Blinding. The kryptonite spike slid out of his body as if expelled by force. The wound closed. Magic snapped. Red solar weakness evaporated. His cells drank in the faint solar energy stored deep inside him and reignited.

Strength flooded back. Breath. Heartbeat. Heat vision flickering behind his eyes. He gasped and fell forward onto his hands. Whole. Alive.

Then you screamed.

Clark turned.

The sound ended the world.

You collapsed where he had been, one hand clamped to your side as green-black veins spread under your skin. Blood soaked through your suit. A wound opened beneath your ribs, not identical to his but close enough, deep and glowing faintly with corrupted light. Your body convulsed once as red solar radiation and kryptonite poisoning tried to translate themselves into human biology.

You were not Kryptonian. You had no cells waiting for yellow sun. No alien physiology built to process the poison. No invulnerability to slow the damage.

Clark caught you before your head struck the floor. “No,” he said.

It was not a word. It was a denial of reality.

Your eyes rolled, unfocused with pain. He cradled you against his chest, one hand over the wound, and felt blood slide between his fingers.

His blood. No. Yours. Because of him.

“No, no, no.”

Batman was beside him instantly. “Kal.”

Clark heard him. Barely. Diana and Hal fought the weapon behind them. Zatanna’s voice echoed through the chamber, spells unraveling the engine. Barry was moving so fast the air shook.

But Clark could only hear you. Your heart. Too fast. Too weak. Wrong.

“Can you hear me?” Clark asked, voice cracking. “Please. Please, sweetheart, can you hear me?”

Your eyelids fluttered. You looked at him.

Relief.

Clark nearly broke in half.

“You’re okay,” you whispered.

“No.” His hand pressed harder over the wound. “No, don’t do that. Don’t look at me like that.”

Your mouth trembled. “Knew… it’d work.”

“You didn’t know you’d survive.” Your eyes drifted. He shook his head. “Stay with me,” he begged. “Stay. Come back to me.”

The words were yours. They hurt coming from his mouth.

Your fingers twitched weakly against the front of his suit. Trying to hold on. He covered your hand with his.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

You had said that to him once. In the medbay. With green poison in his veins. He had believed you. Now he understood the cost of that comfort.

Your breathing hitched.

Batman’s voice cut through his panic. “The wound is radiological and magical. Watchtower medbay won’t be enough.”

Clark looked up. Bruce’s eyes were grim.

“Fortress,” Bruce said.

Clark did not wait. He gathered you in his arms and launched upward through the shattered observatory roof. Snow exploded around him. The sky opened.

He flew.

Clark had flown fast before. Faster than sound. Faster than bullets. Faster than disaster when he had no other choice. 

He had never flown like this. The world became a blur of white and black beneath him. Cold air tore past his face. He shielded you with his body, one hand pressed to your wound, the other cradling your head against his chest.

“Stay,” he said again and again.

He did not know if you heard.

Your heart answered. Weakly.

Still there. Still there. Still there.

The Fortress rose from the Arctic ice like a memory of a world Clark had never truly known. Crystal towers caught the dim light and fractured it into pale, cold brilliance.

The doors opened before he landed. The Fortress recognised his distress. Or perhaps it recognised yours. Either way, Clark carried you inside.

“Kelor,” he called, voice breaking.

The Fortress AI responded immediately, calm and melodic. “Kal-El. Medical emergency detected. Patient is human. Severe radiation poisoning. Unknown magical contamination. Kryptonian cellular trauma signatures present.”

Clark stumbled. Kryptonian trauma. In your human body. Because you had taken it from him.

“Can you treat them?” he asked.

“Partial treatment possible. Human biology is incompatible with several injury markers. Recommend solar isolation chamber, magical contamination quarantine, and immediate stabilisation.”

“Do it.”

Crystal panels unfolded from the floor. A medical platform rose beneath golden lamps designed to simulate yellow sunlight for Kryptonian recovery. Clark placed you down as gently as he could.

Too gently. Not gently enough.

You whimpered. Clark flinched.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Mechanical arms moved around you, scanning, cleaning, sealing. A golden field lowered over your body. The wound in your side pulsed green-black. Clark stood beside the platform, hands stained with blood. Your blood.

“Radiation type resembles kryptonite but is altered by transfer through metahuman ability. Damage is less severe than original Kryptonian injury but remains critical.”

Less severe. Clark almost laughed. The sound would have been horrible.

Less severe did not mean survivable. Less severe did not mean fair. Less severe did not mean you had not taken a death sentence into your own body because you could not bear his.

His knees weakened. He gripped the edge of the platform. The metal dented beneath his fingers.

“Clark,” you rasped.

His head snapped up. Your eyes were half-open. Pain-glazed. Still searching for him.

He moved into your line of sight. “I’m here.”

You tried to smile. It failed. “Fortress?”

“Yes.”

“Pretty.”

A broken laugh caught in his throat. “Yeah. Pretty.”

Your gaze moved over his face. “You’re healed?”

Clark closed his eyes. Tears slipped free before he could stop them. When he opened them, you were watching him with aching tenderness.

“I’m healed,” he said.

“Good.”

“No.”

Your brow furrowed faintly. He leaned over you, careful not to interfere with the scanners.

“No,” he said again, voice shaking. “It isn’t good. Not like this.”

Your face shifted. Understanding. Guilt. Pain.

“I couldn’t let you die,” you whispered.

“And you thought I could let you?”

Your eyes filled. The golden lamps reflected in your tears.

Clark’s hands hovered uselessly. He wanted to touch you. He was afraid to. Afraid that even his gentleness would be too much for your damaged body. You noticed.

“Hand,” you whispered.

He stared. You moved your fingers weakly.

Clark broke. He took your hand with both of his, holding it as if it were made of breath. Your fingers were cold. They should not have been cold under artificial sunlight.

“Kelor,” Clark said, voice tight. “Why are they cold?”

“Circulatory instability. Treatment ongoing.”

“Fix it.”

“Treatment ongoing,” the android repeated.

Clark hated machines. Not always. Right now.

You squeezed his hand weakly.

“Bossy,” you whispered.

He laughed once through tears. “You’re one to talk.”

Your mouth twitched. Then pain seized you. Your back arched. The monitors shrilled. Green light flared beneath your skin, veins bright and horrible along your throat.

Clark froze.

Kelor’s voice cut through the alarms. “Magical contamination spike. Administering counter-frequency.”

The golden field brightened. You screamed. Clark almost shattered the platform.

Batman’s voice came through comms. “Clark. Status.”

Clark had forgotten the comm was still active. He could hear the League on the other end. Bruce, Diana, maybe everyone. The battle had ended. The weapon destroyed. The observatory collapsing into snow. He could not care.

“They’re in pain,” Clark said.

His voice did not sound like his own.

Bruce was quiet for half a second. Then, softer, “Are they stable?”

Clark looked at the monitors. He could read Kryptonian medical notation well enough. He wished he couldn’t. “No.”

You gasped as the spike passed. Clark bent over your hand, pressing his mouth to your knuckles.

“I’m here,” he said. “I’m here. I’ve got you.”

Your eyes fluttered. “Don’t… be mad.”

He went still. Then lifted his head. “What?”

Your lips barely moved. “Please.”

Clark stared at you. Something inside him, already cracked, gave way.

“You almost died,” he said. You blinked slowly. “I almost watched you die in my place.”

Your eyes shone.

“I’m angry,” he whispered, like confession. Like sin. “I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with it.”

Your breath hitched.

Clark shook his head quickly, tears falling now. “Not because you saved me. I’m grateful. God, I’m grateful. I’m alive because of you.” His voice broke. “But I’m standing here whole while you’re poisoned with something meant for me.”

Your fingers twitched in his. “I chose it,” you whispered.

“I know.”

That was the problem. That was the wound beneath the wound. You had chosen. Not accidentally. Not under ignorance. Not because you failed to understand danger. You had looked at him dying and decided your suffering was acceptable if it meant his stopped.

Clark loved you for it. He hated it. He hated that his body was grateful. He hated that his lungs opened easily while yours struggled. He hated that some shameful, relieved part of him had felt the first breath after healing and thought, I get to live. He hated that your pain was the reason.

“You should have asked me,” he said.

Your face crumpled. “If I had asked…”

“I would have said no.”

“Yes,” you whispered.

Clark closed his eyes. 

The truth. The soft, terrible theft inside the miracle.

When he opened his eyes, you were crying silently.

“I’m sorry,” you said.

He leaned down and pressed his forehead carefully to yours. The golden field hummed between you like warm static.

“I love you,” he whispered. “And I am furious with you. I don’t know how to be both.”

“You’re doing it.”

A laugh broke out of him, wet and wounded. Even now. Even now, you gave him that. You gave him a way through.

Clark kissed your forehead.

“I love you,” he said again.

Your eyes closed. “I love you too.”

Then you lost consciousness.

Clark did not let go of your hand.

Time moved strangely in the Fortress. Maybe because there were no windows that showed normal weather, no clocks that ticked in human increments, no city noise pressing in from all directions. Only ice. Crystal. Machines. Artificial sunlight.

Your heart.

Clark counted that instead.

Beat. Beat. Beat.

He sat beside you while Kelor filtered the contaminated radiation from your bloodstream. He sat while the wound in your side stopped glowing. He sat while magical residue burned away in tiny painful increments that made your body twitch even in sleep.

The League came after six hours.

Bruce arrived first. He stepped into the medical chamber wearing a thermal suit beneath his cape, cowl down, expression carved into something too controlled to be calm. Diana came behind him. Then J’onn. Then, after a moment, Lois.

Clark looked up when he heard her heartbeat. He had not realised Bruce called her.

Lois took one look at him and crossed the room.

No hesitation. No fear of alien machinery or Arctic cold or Superman with blood on his hands.

She wrapped her arms around him. Clark nearly fell apart. He held her carefully, because he always held carefully, and buried his face briefly against her shoulder.

“They’re alive,” Lois said into his ear.

“For now.”

“For now is where we start.”

He let out a broken breath. When she pulled back, her eyes were red. She looked at you on the platform.

“Oh, honey,” she whispered.

Lois loved you. She had from the first dinner, when you corrected Clark’s overdramatic article draft, and Lois declared you “the only person in this room with taste.”

Clark had been offended. Mildly. For show. Mostly, he had been happy.

Now Lois stood beside your bed, one hand hovering near yours. She glanced at Clark for permission.

He almost laughed at the ache of it. Permission. Everyone was learning too late.

He nodded. Lois touched your hand gently.

Bruce stood on Clark’s other side. For a long while, he said nothing. Then, quietly, “I should have known.”

Clark closed his eyes. “No.”

“Yes.”

Clark turned to him. Bruce’s face was grim. Of course he was already assembling blame. Of course he had found some way to make your secret his failure. Batman could turn sunrise into a contingency if given enough time.

“No,” Clark said again. “Not right now.” Bruce looked at him. Clark’s voice roughened. “I don’t have room to help you blame yourself. I’m using all of it.”

Bruce went silent. Diana stepped closer, her gaze full of sorrow.

“They have saved many of us,” she said.

“Yes.”

“At cost.”

Clark looked at you. “Yes.”

J’onn’s voice entered gently. “They carried pain in silence because they believed silence was kindness.”

Lois’s hand tightened over yours. Clark swallowed.

“It wasn’t,” he said.

“No,” J’onn agreed. “But it was love.”

Clark looked at him sharply. J’onn did not flinch.

“Love can be misguided,” he said. “Even harmful. It does not become hatred because it wounds.”

Clark looked down. His hands were still stained faintly red despite washing them.

“I don’t know how to forgive them for saving me,” he said.

The words entered the room and opened something.

Lois looked at him. Bruce looked away. Diana’s eyes softened.

Clark laughed once, broken. “That sounds awful.”

“It sounds honest,” Lois said.

He shook his head. “I’m alive because of them. And I’m angry.”

“Yes.”

“They almost died.”

“Yes.”

“I should be grateful.”

“You are,” Lois said. “You’re also scared out of your mind.”

Clark’s throat tightened. 

Lois touched his arm. “Smallville, listen to me. You don’t have to make your feelings neat before they’re real.”

He looked at her. 

She smiled sadly. “You love them. You’re angry. You’re grateful. You’re hurt. All of that can sit at the same table.”

Clark exhaled slowly. The Fortress hummed around them. Artificial sunlight poured over your still body. All of it at the same table.

Messy. Human. Hard.

He could do human. He had been raised human.

He nodded. Only once.

But it helped.

You woke on the second day.

Clark was the only one there when it happened. Lois had gone to sleep in one of the guest chambers after threatening Clark with bodily harm if he did not “at least close his eyes for ten minutes.” Bruce had returned to Gotham to investigate the remnants of the weapon. Diana and J’onn were coordinating with the League.

Clark sat beside you, reading aloud from a book of poems his mother had sent years ago. He did not know if you could hear him. He read anyway. 

His voice stopped when your heartbeat changed. Your fingers twitched.

Clark set the book down immediately. “Sweetheart?”

Your eyelids fluttered. Opened. Your gaze wandered across the crystal ceiling, unfocused, before finding him.

Clark forgot how to breathe.

“Hi,” he whispered.

Your mouth moved. No sound came out.

He reached for the water. Helped you sip. You winced. He felt it like a blow.

“Easy,” he murmured.

Your eyes stayed on him.

“Sun,” you rasped.

Clark blinked. “What?”

“Feels… like sun.”

He looked up at the golden lamps. “They’re solar emitters.”

“Nice.”

A laugh escaped him. Small. Shaky. “Only you would review alien medical equipment.”

Your lips curved faintly. Then your eyes moved over his face.

Checking. Always checking.

“Are you hurt?”

Clark closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, you were watching him with worry.

Not relief this time. Worry. Progress, maybe.

“No,” he said. “I’m not hurt.”

Your face softened. He held up a hand before you could speak.

“But you are.”

Your eyes lowered.

The room went still. Kelor’s machines hummed quietly.

Clark leaned forward. “Do you remember what happened?”

“Yes.”

“Everything?”

You swallowed. “Yes.”

He nodded. His chest felt too small. “I need to ask you something.”

Your gaze lifted. Fear moved through it.

He hated that. He hated more that he had to continue. “How long has your healing worked that way?”

You closed your eyes. Clark already knew. That did not make it hurt less.

“Always,” you whispered.

He bowed his head. The word landed with all the weight of every miracle he had accepted.

Always.

The kryptonite bullet in Coast City. Bruce’s magical burns. Diana’s sword wound. Barry’s shattered bones. J’onn’s psychic backlash. His own injuries, again and again.

Always.

“All of it?” he asked.

Your eyes opened, wet. “Most of it.”

Clark’s laugh was barely a sound. “Most of it.”

“I’m sorry.”

He stood. Not because he wanted distance. Because staying still had become impossible.

You flinched. He stopped immediately. The reaction cut through him.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly.

“I know.”

But your heartbeat had jumped.

Clark sat back down. Slowly. Carefully. He folded his hands together so he would not reach for you too quickly.

“You were afraid I’d stop you,” he said.

You looked at the ceiling. “Yes.”

“You were right.”

Your mouth trembled. “I know.”

“You lied to me. You let me believe healing me didn’t hurt you.”

Your eyes squeezed shut. “Yes.”

Clark inhaled. The air in the Fortress was crisp, sterile, cold beneath the artificial warmth. He could hear ice shifting miles away. He focused on that for one second. Then returned to you.

“Do you know what kryptonite feels like?”

You opened your eyes. Confusion flickered. Then understanding.

Clark’s voice stayed quiet. “I don’t mean now. I don’t mean after the transfer. I mean before. Do you know what it feels like for me?”

You shook your head slightly.

“It feels like every cell in my body forgetting the sun,” he said. Your face went still. “It feels like something inside me is being unmade. Not burned. Not cut. Unmade.” Tears slipped down your temples. “And you took that into your body without knowing if human biology could survive the translation.”

Your mouth parted.

No defense came. No soft lie. Only tears.

“I knew the transfer would change it,” you whispered.

“You hoped.”

You flinched.

Clark leaned forward, voice shaking now. “You hoped it would change enough.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“You know why.”

“I need you to say it.”

Your face crumpled. “Because I love you.”

The words hurt. They should not have hurt. Clark had heard them from you a hundred times by now. In his kitchen. Over sleepy phone calls. Pressed into his shoulder after long missions. Laughed into his mouth in the farmhouse kitchen when his mother pretended not to smile. Here, under artificial sun, with green poison still fading from your veins, they hurt.

“Love isn’t supposed to make you my shield,” he said.

Your breath broke. “You’re always everyone else’s,” you whispered. Clark froze. There it was. Your truth, sharp and shining beneath the wound. “You stand in front of everything,” you said, voice thin with exhaustion. “Bullets. Buildings. Monsters. Gods. Grief. You hear everyone, Clark. All the time. And you go. You always go.”

He looked down.

“I couldn’t stand there and watch the world finally be too heavy for you.”

His eyes burned. “I’m not the world.”

“You are to me.”

Clark’s breath left him.

You looked almost startled by your own honesty. Then you kept going, because apparently, pain had burned away whatever caution remained. “You’re Clark. You’re coffee rings on article drafts and half-burned pancakes because you use heat vision when you’re distracted. Your phone calls to your mom during storms. You’re pretending not to cry at dog adoption stories. You’re the way you say thank you to vending machines.”

“I do not—”

“You do.”

He closed his mouth.

“You’re not just Superman to me,” you whispered. “And I couldn’t watch you die like everyone had the right to ask it from you.”

Clark looked at you. The anger did not vanish. But love rose through it, terrible and bright.

“You think I could watch that from you?” he asked.

Your eyes filled again. “No.”

“But you chose it anyway.”

“Yes.”

“Because you thought my life mattered more?”

“No,” you said immediately.

Clark waited. 

You swallowed. “Because in that moment, I thought I could survive it better than you could.”

He stared.

You continued, voice shaking. “And maybe that’s arrogant. Maybe it’s awful. Maybe it’s unfair. But I saw that thing killing you, and I knew my body might twist it into something less. Not harmless. Never harmless. But less.” Your uninjured hand curled weakly in the blanket. “I thought I could take enough of it to keep you here.”

Clark understood then.

Not forgiveness. Understanding. You had not thought yourself worthless. That might have been easier to argue against.

No. You had calculated pain like weather. You had seen a storm built to kill him and believed your body could break the wind. You had been right.

That was worse.

Because he was alive. And you were not dead. And some part of him, some grateful, horrified part, knew the math had worked.

He hated the math.

He reached for your hand. Paused. “May I?”

Your face crumpled. “Yes.”

He took it gently. Your fingers curled around his with weak desperation.

“I love you,” he said. You closed your eyes. “I love you so much that I don’t know where to put the anger.” Your hand tightened. “I’m grateful.”

“I know.”

“I hate that I’m grateful.”

A tear slid down your cheek. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I’ll keep saying it.”

“I know.”

He lifted your hand and pressed it to his mouth. Artificial sunlight warmed both of you.

“You saved me,” he whispered against your skin. You breathed shakily. “And you hurt me.”

Clark looked at you. Both truths sat there. Neither erased the other.

“I know,” you said.

“I don’t forgive you yet.”

Your face twisted. 

He leaned closer. “But I’m here.”

A sob caught in your throat.

“I’m not leaving,” he said. “I’m angry, and I’m here. I’m scared, and I’m here. I love you, and I’m here.”

You cried then. Clark stood and bent over you, careful of every wire, every bandage, every bruise he could see and every one he could not.

He kissed your forehead. You clung weakly to his hand.

“I’m here,” he repeated.

Like a promise. Like a prayer. Like the first thing he could give you that did not require either of you to bleed.

Recovery happened under yellow sun.

Not the real one at first. Kelor insisted you remain in the Fortress until your bloodstream showed no trace of transferred kryptonite radiation. Clark translated the medical explanations into human terms, then Lois translated them again into “normal person English” because Clark, despite his best efforts, had started saying things like “cellular resonance contamination.”

You laughed so hard you winced.

Lois pointed at Clark. “See? You’re hurting the patient with nerd behaviour.”

Clark pushed his glasses up. “I’m not wearing glasses.”

“Spiritually, you are.”

You smiled from the medical platform, pale but alive.

Clark would take the teasing. He would take anything if it meant you kept smiling.

The wound in your side healed slowly. Not like a normal human wound, according to Kelor. Not like Clark’s either. Something in your power had absorbed, translated, and muted the injury, turning a fatal Kryptonian trauma into a survivable human catastrophe. A phrase Lois hated.

“A survivable catastrophe is still a catastrophe,” she said.

You nodded meekly. Clark raised an eyebrow.

You pointed at Lois. “I’m scared of her.”

“Correct,” Lois said.

Martha came on the third day. Clark met her at the Fortress entrance and immediately folded into her arms like he was ten years old again.

She held him without comment. That was his mother’s gift. She knew when words helped and when they only made the wound echo.

After a while, she patted his back. “Take me to them.”

You cried when you saw her.

“I’m sorry,” you said immediately.

Martha Kent looked at you in that way she had. Soft as pie crust, strong as a tornado shelter.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she said, sitting beside you. “I know.”

“I hurt him.”

“Yes.”

You flinched.

Martha took your hand. “And you saved him.”

Your eyes filled.

“And now,” Martha continued, “you’re going to have to do the harder thing and let him be hurt without trying to fix it.”

Clark stood near the doorway, throat tight.

You looked at him. Then back at Martha. “I don’t know how.”

Martha smiled sadly. “Most of us don’t, at first.”

She stayed the whole day. She brought soup, because apparently even alien fortresses benefited from soup. She made Clark eat. She made you drink tea. She charmed Kelor into raising the ambient temperature by two degrees.

“You negotiated with Kryptonian AI,” Clark said.

Martha shrugged. “I raised you. I’m used to stubborn alien things.”

You laughed. Clark loved both of you so much he had to look away.

That evening, after Martha and Lois had gone to sleep in the guest quarters, Clark sat beside you under the solar lamps.

You were more awake now. Still weak. But present.

Your fingers traced the edge of the blanket.

“Do you hear it?” you asked.

Clark looked up from the book he was pretending to read. “Hear what?”

“The world.”

He listened. The Fortress dampened most external sound by default, but not for him. Not fully. He heard ice shifting. Wind. Distant ocean. Farther, if he reached, the blur of civilization. Satellites. Planes. Faint cries and laughter and music scattered across the curvature of Earth.

“Yes.”

“Is it hard not to go?”

He closed the book. “Sometimes.”

“You’ve stayed here for days.”

“Yes.”

“Because of me.”

Clark looked at you.

“With you,” he corrected.

Your eyes softened. “That sounds nicer.”

“It’s also truer.”

You were quiet for a moment. Then, “Are you angry right now?”

Clark appreciated the question. He hated the answer.

“Yes.”

You nodded. Your fingers tightened in the blanket. “Thank you for telling me.”

He set the book aside and leaned forward. “I’m less angry than yesterday.”

“That’s something.”

“It is.”

“Still not forgiving me?”

“No.”

Your smile was sad. “That’s fair.”

“I’m working on it.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to punish you with it.”

Your eyes lifted to his.

Clark’s hands curled together. “I need you to know that. I’m not withholding forgiveness to hurt you. I just…” He exhaled. “I still see you on the floor when I close my eyes.”

Your face crumpled. “I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I still see you pinned to that machine,” you whispered.

Clark went still.

Your voice trembled. “I see the spike. The green in your veins. Your face when you realised I was going to do it.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry,” you said. “I know I keep saying that.”

He opened his eyes. You looked broken open by it.

“I don’t want you to stop,” he said softly. Your brow furrowed. “Not because I want you to suffer. Because I need to know you understand.”

Your gaze dropped. “I do.”

“I know.” He reached for your hand. “And I need to keep hearing it for a while.”

You nodded. “Okay.”

Clark lifted your hand and kissed it. “Thank you.”

You looked at him with a tiny, wounded smile. “For apologising?”

“For staying honest when it hurts.”

Your eyes shone. “You make that sound beautiful.”

“It is.”

“It sucks.”

“That too.”

A laugh escaped you.

Clark smiled. Small. Real.

Your breath caught.

“What?”

“You smiled.”

His smile faded into something softer. “I do that.”

“You haven’t much.”

“No.”

You looked at your joined hands. “I missed it.”

Clark leaned closer. “I missed you.”

“I’m right here.”

“I know.” His thumb brushed your knuckles. “I missed you while you were here.”

That made you cry.

He kissed your forehead and stayed close while you did.

No healing. No taking. No miracle. Just tears beneath artificial sunlight, and Clark learning that sometimes the brave thing was not stopping pain but remaining beside it.

The first time you tried to stand, Clark hovered. Literally.

You opened one eye from the medical platform. “Clark.”

His boots dropped silently to the floor.

Lois, sitting nearby with a tablet, smirked. “Busted.”

“I wasn’t hovering.”

“You were six inches off the ground.”

“That’s not hovering. That’s…” He searched for a word. You raised an eyebrow. “Vertical concern,” he finished.

Lois snorted. You laughed, then pressed a hand carefully to your side.

Clark moved forward. Then stopped.

You saw the effort. Your expression softened. “I’m okay.” He gave you a look. You sighed. “I am sore. Dizzy. Slightly nauseous. My side feels like it lost an argument with radioactive evil. But I am medically cleared to attempt standing.”

Kelor’s voice chimed, “With assistance.”

You pointed upward. “See? The house agrees.”

Clark did not like thinking of the Fortress as a house. Except maybe, with you in it, it had become one.

He came to your side. “May I help?”

Your face softened again. “Yes.”

He placed one hand at your back and offered the other for you to hold. You leaned on him heavily as you swung your legs over the edge.

Clark kept his strength carefully checked. Enough support. Never force.

You stood. For three seconds. Then your knees buckled.

Clark caught you instantly. You gasped, half from pain, half from frustration.

“I’ve got you,” he said.

You went very still in his arms.

He realised too late.

Those words. Yours. His. The wound between you.

He started to let go.

Your hand grabbed his shirt.

“No,” you whispered.

He froze.

You looked up at him, eyes wet. “Say it again.”

Clark’s throat tightened. He held you carefully. “I’ve got you.”

Your face folded. This time, the words did not mean you had to bleed. They meant someone else could hold the weight.

You buried your face against his chest. Clark wrapped both arms around you, gentle as sunlight.

“I’ve got you,” he said again.

Your shoulders shook.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered into his suit.

“I know.”

“I love you.”

“I know.”

You huffed a weak laugh against him. “Say that again too.”

His eyes warmed. “I love you.” Your hand tightened in his shirt.  “I love you,” he said, softer. “I love you. I love you.”

Outside the crystal walls, Arctic wind screamed across the ice. Inside, beneath yellow lamps, Clark held you upright. You trembled. He stayed steady.

That was something he could do. Not as Superman.

As Clark.

The League meeting happened one week after the mission.

You hated it. Clark also hated it.

Bruce insisted. Lois agreed. Martha said, “Secrets don’t heal just because you tuck them under the bed,” which ended the debate more effectively than Batman ever could.

So you sat in the Watchtower conference room wrapped in a soft sweater, one hand pressed protectively near your still-healing side. Clark sat beside you. Diana sat across from you, gaze kind but serious. Bruce stood behind his chair because apparently sitting remained a moral defeat. Barry fidgeted with a pen. Hal looked unusually subdued. J’onn’s expression was gentle. Zatanna watched you with the careful sadness of someone who understood magical costs too well.

You explained. All of it. The transfers. The pain. The way injuries changed inside you. The way some wounds softened and others didn’t. The way emotional and psychic pain could sometimes be taken, but unpredictably and dangerously. The way you had hidden symptoms because you believed everyone would refuse if they knew.

No one interrupted. That made it harder.

Clark could hear everyone’s heartbeat. The grief in the room had a rhythm.

When you finished, silence sat heavily over the table.

Then Barry said, very quietly, “My leg.” You looked at him. His voice shook. “After Gorilla City. You healed my leg.”

Your eyes filled. “Yes.”

Barry looked down. “I thanked you and ran six laps around the medbay.”

“You were relieved.”

“You were limping later.”

You said nothing. Barry closed his eyes. Hal leaned back, rubbing a hand over his face.

“I made jokes,” he said.

“You always make jokes,” you whispered.

“Yeah, well, now I feel like an ass.”

Diana reached across the table and placed her hand over yours. You looked at her.

“You should have told us,” she said.

“I know.”

“Your choice to bear pain does not erase our right to understand it.”

Your face crumpled. “I know.”

Diana squeezed your hand. “And still, I am grateful to be alive because of you.”

You sobbed once. Clark’s hand tightened under the table.

Bruce spoke next. “We need consent protocols.”

You let out a watery laugh. “Of course you already have a folder.”

Bruce’s eyebrow lifted. “Three.”

Hal muttered, “That tracks.” Clark almost smiled.

Bruce continued, “No healing without informed consent except in pre-authorised emergency conditions. Everyone will establish directives. Injuries must be disclosed afterward. No solo high-risk transfers. Mandatory monitoring.”

You looked exhausted just hearing it.

Clark leaned closer. “You don’t have to solve all of it today.”

Bruce paused. Then nodded. “Not today.”

That was Bruce being gentle. You seemed to understand, because your expression softened.

“Okay,” you said.

J’onn looked at you. “There is one more thing.”

You tensed. Clark did too.

J’onn’s voice remained calm. “You are more than the pain you can carry.”

The room went quiet. You looked away.

Clark wanted to wrap himself around you.

He did not. Not here. Not unless you asked.

J’onn continued, “Many of us have relied on your gift. We must now learn to rely also on your personhood.”

Your eyes closed.

That one landed. Clark knew because it landed in him too.

Your personhood.

Not power. Not function. Not miracle.

You.

The meeting ended slowly. Not cleanly. There were tears. Apologies. Awkward hugs. Hal made one terrible joke and looked relieved when you laughed. Barry cried openly and then apologised for crying, which made you cry, which made him cry harder.

Bruce handed you a tablet with the draft protocols. You stared at it. Then at him.

“Three folders?” you asked.

“Four now.”

You smiled faintly. “You’re a menace.”

“So I’m told.”

Clark waited until the room emptied. Then he turned to you. “How do you feel?”

You leaned your head against his shoulder. “Tired.”

“Only tired?”

He felt your smile against him. “No.”

Progress.

“I feel scared,” you said. “And guilty. And relieved. And like everyone is going to look at me differently now.”

Clark rested his cheek against your hair. “I do.”

You went still.

He lifted his head and looked at you.

“I look at you differently because I know you better.”

Your eyes searched his. “Not because you love me less?”

“No.” His voice softened. “Never that.”

You nodded. A tear slipped down your cheek. Clark wiped it away.

“May I take you home?” he asked.

“Fortress or apartment?”

“Smallville.”

Your face changed. “Really?”

“Ma has been texting me soup emojis for two hours.”

You laughed. Clark smiled. There it was. A small patch of sunlight through the ache.

“Smallville sounds good,” you said.

Smallville healed differently than the Fortress.

The Fortress had alien medicine, yellow lamps, crystal diagnostics, and an AI that could identify seventeen forms of radiation poisoning in six seconds. Smallville had Martha Kent. Which was better, in several ways.

You stayed in Clark’s childhood room because Martha insisted, and because Clark turned very red when you pointed out the little wooden airplane still sitting on the shelf.

“It’s cute,” you said from under three quilts.

“It’s old.”

“It’s cute.”

“It was a gift from my dad.”

Your teasing softened.

Clark picked it up carefully. His father had carved it by hand. The edges were worn now from years of a little boy’s fingers tracing the wings.

You watched him.

“He loved you a lot,” you said.

Clark smiled, sad and warm. “Yeah. He did.”

You patted the bed beside you. Clark sat. The bed creaked. Your eyes brightened with amusement.

“Don’t.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You thought it.”

“I thought you are very big for this bed.”

He laughed. You smiled, triumphant.

That night, Clark slept in the chair beside you and woke to find Martha draping a blanket over him with the long-suffering tenderness of a mother who had absolutely expected this.

“Clark Joseph Kent,” she whispered. He opened one eye. “You are not guarding the national treasury.”

He blinked sleepily. “No. Something more important.”

Martha’s expression softened despite herself. Then she smacked his shoulder lightly with the folded edge of the blanket.

“Bed. Guest room. Now.”

“I’m fine here.”

“You are six-foot-whatever and folded like laundry. Move.”

You stirred, eyes half-open.

“Listen to your mom,” you mumbled.

Clark looked betrayed.

Martha smiled. “I like them.”

“I’m injured,” you added. “You have to listen to me too.”

“That feels manipulative.”

“It is,” you whispered.

Martha laughed quietly.

Clark went to the guest room. Mostly because both of you were terrifying.

The days that followed were slow. You walked through the kitchen with one hand on the counter while Clark hovered within acceptable ground-level parameters. You sat on the porch in the morning sun, eyes closed, letting real yellow warmth touch your face. You helped Martha shell peas one-handed and complained that Clark kept trying to do everything for you.

“He gets that from me,” Martha said.

Clark looked up from the sink. “I’m right here.”

“I know, honey.”

You grinned.

He loved seeing you at the farm. Loved it so much it scared him. You looked softer there, wrapped in one of his flannels, sunlight on your knees, bandage hidden beneath fabric. Not healed. Not untouched.

But safe. Or as close as the world allowed.

One afternoon, he found you standing in the cornfield. The same place you had first kissed him. You wore his jacket over your shoulders and held one hand lightly against your side.

Clark approached slowly. “You okay?”

You looked over. “I think so.”

He stopped beside you. The corn rustled around you both. For once, the world was not screaming. Clark could hear cows in the distance. A truck on the road. His mother humming in the kitchen. Your heartbeat, stronger now.

You turned toward him. “I need to tell you something.”

He nodded.

You took a breath. “I don’t regret saving you.”

Clark’s chest tightened.

You continued quickly, “But I regret how. I regret not telling you the truth before. I regret taking your choice. I regret making you wake up to my pain.”

His throat worked.

“I don’t regret you being alive,” you said. “I don’t think I ever could.”

Clark looked down. The corn moved in long, golden waves.

“I don’t regret being alive,” he said. Your eyes filled. “But I regret what it cost you.”

“I know.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely okay with it.”

“I know.”

“And if it happened again…”

You went very still.

Clark looked at you. “I don’t know what I’d choose either.”

That startled you. He gave a sad smile.

“I want to say I would respect your no. I want to say I’d let you make the choice and accept it. But if you were dying in front of me and I could stop it?” His voice lowered. “I don’t know…I think,” Clark said slowly, “that’s why I’m so angry.”

You whispered, “Because you understand.”

“Yes.”

He hated admitting it. Needed to.

You stepped closer. “Where does that leave us?”

Clark reached for your hand. You gave it to him.

“In progress,” he said.

A faint smile touched your mouth. “That’s very journalist of you.”

“It’s also true.”

“Do we make rules?”

“Yes.”

“Protocols?”

“Yes.”

“Bruce is rubbing off on you.”

“Unfortunately.”

You laughed softly. Clark lifted your hand to his mouth and kissed your knuckles.

“But more than rules,” he said. “We keep telling the truth. Even when it’s ugly. Even when it doesn’t make either of us look noble.”

“I can try.”

“So can I.”

You looked at him. “I’m scared you’ll always see me on the floor.”

Clark’s hand tightened around yours.

“I will,” he said.

Your face fell. He touched your cheek.

“But I’ll also see you here.” Your eyes lifted. “In my mom’s kitchen. On the porch. In the cornfield. Rolling your eyes at my drafts. Laughing at Lois. Falling asleep with three quilts because you say the farm gets colder than the Arctic, which is objectively false.”

“It does emotionally.”

He smiled.

“There,” he said. “That too.”

A tear slipped down your cheek.

“I don’t want the worst thing to be the only thing,” he said.

You leaned into his palm. “Me neither.”

Clark bent and kissed you. Gently at first. Then with all the careful longing of the days he had spent afraid to touch you too much.

You kissed him back with your uninjured hand curled in his shirt.

He did not float this time. Progress.

Then your mouth curved against his. “You’re trying very hard not to float.”

Clark’s ears warmed. “I am grounded by discipline.”

“You are grounded by trauma and corn.”

He laughed, startled and helpless. You smiled. The sound moved through the field, small and human and alive.

Clark kissed you again. This time, his feet left the ground by maybe an inch. You noticed. You did not mention it.

Kindness. Mercy. Love.

you roll your eyes, “i’m not even that close.”

jack winds up for a shot he shouldn’t have. you can tell the second it leaves his stick that it’s off, too high and way too fast. you turn your head just as the puck hits you square in the face.

it’s not pain at first. it’s shock. this loud, hollow crack and then your eyes water so badly you can’t see anything. your hands fly up automatically and when you pull them away, they’re red.

like, really red.

“oh my god—”

jack drops his stick. “jack! are you fucking stupid?” luke spits. quinn is moving before anyone finishes a sentence. “damn it jack fuck, y/n holy shit.” quinn exclaims, already there, hands on your wrists. “hey. hey. look at me.”

you try to say something but your nose is pouring blood and your voice comes out in a wince, panicked slightly woozy from the blood.

“okay,” quinn says quickly. “okay, hey don’t tilt your head back. lean forward. like this.” he guides you down, one hand firm between your shoulder blades, the other holding your hands away from your face like he’s afraid you’ll touch it too hard.

jack’s pale. “i’m so sorry. i swear i wasn’t aiming i didn’t mean to hit you y/n.”

“fuck,” luke says. “i didn’t even see it coming. y/n, i’m so sorry.”

quinn doesn’t look at either of them. his attention is locked on you, laser-focused. “does it hurt to breathe?” he asks. “tell me. right now.”

you shake your head, tears mixing with blood and dripping onto the pavement. your nose already feels like it’s throbbing. “okay,” quinn murmurs. “that’s good. that’s good.” he pulls off his hoodie and presses it gently under your nose, his hands steady in a way that doesn’t match the tension in his jaw.

“pressure,” he says. “just pressure. i’ve got you.”

jack’s hovering uselessly. “do we need to call someone? go to the hospital? i can drive—” “we’re going inside,” quinn cuts him off, his older big brother protective side coming out even more than it was before. “now.”

he doesn’t ask. he just steers you toward the house, one arm around your shoulders, guiding your head down. you feel him tense every time you sniff or wince.

inside, it’s chaos. quinn sits you down on the edge of the tub, turns the light on too bright, grabs towels like he’s on autopilot. “lean forward,” he repeats. “don’t touch it.”

blood keeps coming, it feels endless. your nose starts to swell fast, pressure building in a way that makes your stomach flip. the smell making your stomach churn as you hold back gagging at the smell of blood and metal.

“i think it’s broken,” you say, voice small. quinn’s mouth tightens. “don’t jump ahead. we’ll get it checked.”

jack’s pacing in the doorway, hands in his hair. “i can’t believe i did that. i’m such an idiot.”

luke’s quieter, crouched nearby. “i should’ve said something. i’m sorry.”

quinn finally looks up. “i know it was an accident,” he says, controlled but strained. “just, give me a second, okay?”

his hands soften when he turns back to you. he replaces the towel with another one, so gently but still enough firmness to make sure no blood seeps out the edges.

“talk to me,” he murmurs quietly. “any dizziness? blurry vision?” you shake your head again. “just hurts.”

“okay,” he says. “okay. that i can handle.”

the bleeding slows eventually but the swelling on the other hand doesn’t. your nose feels like it’s way too big for your face.

quinn insists on urgent care. by insists, it’s moreso non-negotiable. the doctor confirms it’s likely broken. not badly, but enough. quinn nods through the explanation, jaw clenched. jack looks sick. luke stares at the floor.

back home, quinn sits you on the couch and immediately starts babying you. ice pack wrapped in a towel, the lights dimmed and one way too many water bottles within reach.

“don’t touch it baby,” he says gently. “i know it’s instinct. just don’t.”

jack sits across from you, guilt written all over his face. “i’m really sorry. i swear i’ll never mess around with a puck near you again.”

you sniff, wince. “i know jack, really it’s okay.”

luke nods. “same. i feel awful.” quinn’s hand finds yours, squeezing it slightly reassuringly.

later, when things quiet down and jack and luke finally give you space, quinn sits close, afraid to leave you alone. “you scared me,” he admits, voice low. “the blood and all i thought,”

he pauses, letting out a small but shaky exhale. “i don’t like seeing you hurt. especially when i could’ve stopped it.” you look at him and shake your head. “you warned me.”

“still.”

that night, the pain sets in deeper. dull and throbbing. you wake up with pressure so bad it makes your eyes sting. quinn’s there almost immediately. like he never really went to sleep.

“hey,” he whispers. “i know. i’ve got you.”

he helps you sit up, replaces the ice, presses a kiss to your hair without thinking.

you’re holding your phone, screen dark, thumb frozen mid-scroll like you forgot what you were doing halfway through.

“sorry,” you say quickly. “what?”

he studies you for a moment, like he’s deciding how to approach a skittish animal. “i asked if you wanted dinner. you’ve been standing there for like… a minute.”

“oh.” you force a small smile. “yeah, sure. whatever’s easiest.”

that answer; whatever’s easiest has become your go-to lately. it’s safe. non-committal. it doesn’t invite questions.

but quinn doesn’t miss things like that.

he turns the stove off and leans against the counter, crossing his arms. “you okay?” you nod immediately. too immediately. “yeah, i’m fine.”

there it is again.

fine.

you say it like armour, like if you repeat it enough times, it’ll become true. like if you don’t let anyone look too closely, nothing can fall apart. quinn exhales through his nose. “you’ve been zoning out a lot.”

“i’m just tired.”

“you said that yesterday.”

“and the day before,” you add lightly, trying to make it a joke. “congrats, you’ve cracked the case.”

he doesn’t laugh.

you feel that familiar tightening in your chest, the instinctive urge to retreat. you don’t know how to explain this feeling; how being cared for this deeply feels almost threatening. like you’re waiting for the catch. like if you lean into it, something bad will happen.

no one’s ever hovered over your silences before. no one’s noticed when your smile is a second too late.

quinn steps closer. “you don’t have to keep telling me you’re fine.”

you shrug, eyes dropping to the floor. “because i am.”

“y/n.”

that tone. gentle, but firm makes something in you bristle. you feel cornered, even though he hasn’t done anything wrong. “i don’t need fixing,” you say, sharper than intended. “i’m allowed to just… exist without it being a problem.”

his jaw tightens. “i’m not saying you’re a problem.”

“then why are we doing this?” you ask, hands gesturing vaguely between you. “why can’t you just believe me?”

“because i can see you,” he says, frustration bleeding through now. “you go quiet. you stare through walls. you barely sleep. that’s not nothing.”

your heart starts to beat faster.

“i didn’t ask you to monitor me,” you snap.

“you don’t have to—”

“i want to,” he interrupts. “that’s the point.”

the words hit harder than you expect.

want to.

your chest feels too tight, your breaths shallow and quick. you feel suddenly exposed, like the walls you’ve spent years building are cracking under the weight of his concern.

“i said i’m fine,” you insist, voice trembling now. “why isn’t that enough?”

“because i care about you,” he says, voice rising just slightly. “and watching you disappear into your own head every day is killing me.”

that’s when it happens.

the room starts to tilt, the edges blurring. your hands go cold, then numb. you try to inhale, but your lungs won’t cooperate, stuck somewhere between breaths.

“no,” you whisper, more to yourself than him.

“no, no—”

you take a step back, panic surging like a wave crashing over your chest. you need space. you need out. you turn, intending to escape to the bedroom, the bathroom, literally anywhere but quinn reacts instantly.

“hey,” he says urgently, reaching out and catching your wrist, gentle but firm. “don’t go.”

the contact makes everything worse for half a second. your pulse is roaring in your ears, vision swimming.

“i can’t—” you gasp. “i can’t breathe.”

quinn’s frustration evaporates in an instant, replaced by pure focus. he moves in front of you, crouching slightly so you’re eye level, hands warm and grounding as they slide from your wrist to your forearms.

“hey,” he says softly. “look at me, you’re okay.”

you shake your head, tears spilling over now. “i’m not. something’s wrong. i— i don’t feel right.”

“i know,” he says calmly, like he’s done this a thousand times. “i know. but you’re safe. i’ve got you.”

your chest heaves, breaths coming out sharp and uneven. you feel embarrassed, exposed, terrified all at once. quinn keeps his voice low, steady. “can you take a deep breath for me, hm?”

you try. it comes out shaky, broken.

“that’s okay,” he reassures immediately. “we’ll do it together.”

he exaggerates his own breathing, slow and deliberate. in through his nose. out through his mouth.

“just match me,” he murmurs. “nothing else matters right now.”

you cling to his sleeves, fingers curling into the fabric like an anchor. another breath. then another. slowly, the spinning eases, the pressure in your chest loosening just enough for air to get in.

“there you go,” quinn whispers. “that’s it. i’ve got you.”

the tears keep coming, but the panic loosens its grip. you sag forward, forehead pressing into his shoulder as your body finally gives in to exhaustion.

“i’m sorry,” you choke. “i didn’t mean to—”

“hey,” he cuts in gently. “no apologies. not for this.”

he wraps his arms fully around you now, holding you like you might shatter if he lets go. one hand rubs slow circles into your back, grounding, steady.

you breathe him in. his soap, his warmth, the solid reassurance of him being here. after a while, you pull back just enough to speak. your voice is small. honest.

“i’m scared,” you admit. “not of you. just… of being cared about like this. i’ve never had it before, and it feels like if i let myself need it, it’ll disappear.”

quinn’s throat bobs as he swallows.

“y/n,” he says quietly. “i’m not going anywhere because you’re struggling. i’m here because you are.”

you nod against his chest, letting the words settle.

“i don’t know how to ask for help,” you whisper.

“that’s okay,” he says immediately. “we can learn together.”

you’re curled up on the sectional beside quinn, legs tucked under you, shoulder brushing his arm. at some point, the movie switches from something loud and action-packed to something slower, background noise more than anything else. the room dims, conversations splintering into smaller groups.

you’re tired. more tired than you realized.

quinn notices before you do.

at first, it’s subtle; the way your head tips slightly toward him, the way your body shifts closer without conscious thought. your responses to conversation become slower, quieter. when he says your name, you hum in response instead of answering.

he glances down just as your head settles fully against his shoulder.

still.

warm.

asleep.

his body freezes.

“oh,” brock mutters from across the room. “oh my god.”

elias leans forward, squinting. “is she—?”

thatcher grins immediately. “she’s out.”

quinn doesn’t move. not a muscle. he barely breathes.

“she fell asleep on you,” nils says, like he’s witnessing a rare wildlife event. “that’s insane.”

quinn clears his throat quietly. “guys.”

you shift slightly in your sleep, forehead nudging into the side of his neck. your hand curls unconsciously into the fabric of his hoodie.

quinn’s heart does something dangerous.

“don’t move,” brock whispers loudly. “if you spook her, you’re dead.”

thatcher snaps a picture. quinn flips him off without looking.

“she’s drooling,” elias adds helpfully.

“she is not,” quinn snaps, then glances down just in case.

you’re not drooling. you’re just… soft. completely relaxed. trusting.

“dude,” brock says, tone suddenly fond. “that’s actually adorable.”

quinn swallows. “she’s just tired.”

“sure,” nils teases. “that’s why she chose you specifically as a pillow.”

the teasing ramps up; whispers, exaggerated gasps, mock commentary like they’re narrating a nature documentary.

“and here we see the wild quinn,” thatcher murmurs. “frozen in fear, afraid to disturb his beloved—”

“she’s my best friend,” quinn mutters.

“yeah,” brock replies. “and i’m the queen of england.”

quinn adjusts slightly slow, careful so you’re more comfortable, his arm lifting to rest loosely around your shoulders without waking you. your body melts into him even more, like you’ve been waiting for it.

the room collectively loses its mind.

“oh, he’s so done for,” elias says. “look at her.”

“she looks so safe,” nils adds, softer now.

and you do.

your breathing is even, cheek warm against quinn’s chest. you make a tiny sound, something between a sigh and a hum and burrow closer.

quinn’s chest tightens.

he doesn’t care who sees. he doesn’t care about the teasing. all he can think about is how right this feels. how natural.

time passes; ten minutes, maybe more before you stir.

at first, it’s just a small shift. a furrow of your brow. then your eyes flutter open, unfocused and glassy with sleep.

you blink once.

twice.

you become acutely aware of warmth. of arms. of a steady heartbeat beneath your cheek.

oh no..

your eyes widen.

you lift your head too fast, immediately flushing when you realize where you are—and who is staring at you.

the room erupts.

“she’s awake!”

“ladies and gentlemen, she lives!”

“oh my god, she was OUT.”

you groan softly, mortified, bringing your hands up to your face. “i’m so sorry—i didn’t mean to— i just—”

your cheeks are on fire. you feel like everyone can see exactly how flustered you are.

quinn laughs quietly beside you, not mocking but fond.

“hey,” he murmurs, leaning in slightly. “you okay?”

you nod, still hiding your face. “did i really fall asleep on you?”

“like a rock,” brock says cheerfully.

“i want everyone to know,” elias adds, “this man did not move for twenty minutes.”

you peek out between your fingers, eyes landing on quinn. he’s smiling, soft, amused, absolutely unbothered.

“you could’ve woken me up,” you mumble.

he shrugs. “didn’t want to.”

that does not help your embarrassment.

you notice then how close you still are. how his arm is still around you. how no one seems weird about it at all.

if anything, they look… pleased.

“i’m never living this down,” you whisper.

quinn tilts his head toward you. “probably not.”

you make a small noise of protest and without really thinking, lean back into him again, turning so your face presses into his chest, hiding from everyone.

the reaction is immediate.

“oh my GOD,” brock groans. “she went back.”

“that’s criminally cute,” Elias says.

quinn’s arm tightens around you instinctively, his chin dipping to rest lightly on the top of your head.

you peek up at him, voice barely audible. “i didn’t mean to do that.”

“i know,” he says softly. “you can stay.”

your heart stutters.

“you sure?” you ask, still pink.

“yeah,” he replies easily. “you’re comfortable.”

the teasing fades into background noise as the movie resumes, volume turned down. the room settles again, but something has shifted; something warm and unspoken.

you relax slowly, tension draining from your shoulders. quinn’s hand rubs small, absent-minded circles into your arm, grounding.

you sigh, eyes fluttering closed again—not fully asleep this time. just resting.

“this is how it starts,” nils whispers dramatically.

quinn doesn’t respond.

he’s too busy memorizing the weight of you against him, the way you fit like you belong there. the way your embarrassment melts into trust.

and when you finally murmur, half-asleep

“thank you…personal pillow,”

he smiles to himself, heart full.

“anytime,” he whispers back.

and this time, no one teases him for not moving.

High school was a blur of state championships and headlines that always seemed to include the word “female” before “phenom.” You hated it. You weren’t a female phenom. You were a goalie. Full stop.

Then came college. The NCAA. The wall.

“The rules are clear,” the athletic director at Boston University had said, his face a mask of practiced sympathy. “The men’s team is for men.”

“The rules are discriminatory,” you’d shot back, your voice steely, betraying none of the fear churning in your gut. “I made the team. I beat out two other goalies in tryouts. Put me on the roster.”

He didn’t.

So you fought. Your family fought. You found lawyers who believed in the simple, radical idea that the best player should play. It became a national story. A lawsuit that crawled through the courts, each headline a fresh wave of pressure. Commentators debated your right to play on primetime television. Legends of the game weighed in, some for, some against. Through it all, you just kept training. Waking up at four in the morning, spending hours on the ice before class, facing down a puck-shooting machine until your legs screamed and your glove hand ached.

The day the judge ruled in your favor, you didn’t celebrate. You felt a quiet, bone-deep relief, as if a weight you’d been carrying your entire life had finally been lifted. The next day, you walked into the locker room, your nameplate freshly installed above a stall, and you pulled on the jersey.

And then you won. You won the Beanpot. You won the Hockey East championship. You carried the Terriers to the Frozen Four two years in a row, your save percentage and goals-against average shattering school records. You became a legend not because you were a woman, but because you were impenetrable. You were a wall.

Now, the fight is over. A new one is about to begin.

***

The air in J.P. Barry’s office is different. It’s thin and smells of money, glass cleaner, and the faint, lingering scent of a very expensive cigar smoked hours ago. His office is a glass box suspended forty stories above the glittering chaos of Manhattan, and from this vantage point, the world looks orderly, manageable. Deceiving.

You sit in a leather chair that costs more than your first car, a bottle of Voss water sweating onto the polished mahogany table beside you. Your hands are resting in your lap, still. A goalie’s hands. Calm. Ready.

J.P. Barry, your agent, paces slowly in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows. He’s not a large man, but he commands space, his presence filling the room. He’s dressed in a tailored suit that probably costs more than your college tuition, his movements precise and deliberate. He’s been your agent for exactly six months, but in that time, he’s become the calm center of the hurricane that is your life.

“The media narrative is … predictable,” he says, his voice a low, even baritone. He stops pacing and turns to face you. His eyes are sharp, analytical. He’s not looking at you; he’s assessing an asset, calculating variables. “They’re calling it ‘The Great Experiment.’ ‘The Next Frontier.’ They’re treating you like a curiosity.”

You give a small, humorless smile. “I’ve been a curiosity since I was twelve.”

“This is a different level of curiosity,” he counters, walking back towards the massive desk. He taps a thick folder lying in the center. “This is a multi-million dollar curiosity. Every GM in the league wants to be the one who breaks the barrier. They want the good press, the ticket sales, the marketing bump.”

“And a goalie who can stop the puck?” You add, your voice quiet but firm.

A genuine smile touches the corner of his mouth. “And a goalie who can stop the puck. That, thankfully, is the one variable that isn’t in question. Your college career speaks for itself. The lawsuit proved your right to be there, and your performance proved you belonged.”

He sits down opposite you, lacing his fingers together on the desk. “Which brings us to this.” He gestures to the folder. “The offers. As an undrafted free agent, you’re in a unique position. You get to choose. We’ve fielded calls from nearly every team in the league. We’ve narrowed it down to the most serious, viable options.”

Your heart starts a slow, heavy drumbeat against your ribs. This is it. The moment every kid who ever played road hockey dreams of. The NHL.

“Lay it on me, J.P.”

He opens the folder. “Alright. Option one: The Utah Mammoth. They’re offering a two-year, entry-level max deal. The appeal here is opportunity. Their goaltending situation is … fluid. You’d go into camp with a very real, very immediate shot at the starting job. It’s a low-pressure media market. You could go there, find your footing, and make your mark without the intense scrutiny of a major hockey city.”

“The ‘safe’ option,” you surmise.

“The strategically sound option,” he corrects gently. “There’s no shame in starting your career on solid ground.”

You nod, processing it. Utah. It feels alien. “Okay. What’s next?”

“Option two: The New York Rangers.” He lets the name hang in the air. The history, the prestige, it’s all implied. “They’re offering more. Three years, ELC max, with significant performance bonuses. They want to make a splash. They see the marketing potential of having you in the biggest city in the world. The lights would be blinding. Every save, every goal let in, would be magnified a thousand times. You’d be a superstar overnight, for better or for worse. But … you’d be behind Igor Shesterkin. You’d be a backup, unequivocally. Learning from one of the best, yes, but your ice time would be limited.”

You think about Madison Square Garden. The roar of that crowd. The pressure. It’s tempting, the sheer glamour of it. But he’s right. You haven’t fought this hard your whole life to sit on a bench, no matter how nice the view is.

“I didn’t go to court for a front-row seat,” you say quietly.

J.P. nods, as if he expected that answer. “I figured as much. Which brings us to the third, and in my opinion, most interesting option.”

He slides a piece of paper across the desk. On it is a logo you know well. A stylized blue and green orca forming the letter ‘C’.

“Vancouver,” you breathe.

“Vancouver,” he confirms. “The Canucks. The offer is similar to Utah’s. Two years, ELC max. But the situation is … different. They have a clear number one.”

“Thatcher Demko.”

“Exactly. One of the best in the league when he’s healthy. They’re not looking for a savior. They’re not looking for a marketing gimmick. Patrik Allvin was very clear about that on the phone.” J.P. leans forward, his voice dropping slightly, becoming more earnest. “They’re looking for a partner for Demko. Someone who can push him. Someone who can reliably take thirty, maybe thirty-five games a season and give them a chance to win every single night. They want to build the best goaltending tandem in the NHL.”

He lets that sink in. A tandem. A partnership. It’s not about being the star. It’s about being part of a whole.

“They’re in a Canadian market,” J.P. continues. “The media pressure will be intense, no question. It’s a religion up there. But it’s different from New York. It’s a hockey-literate pressure. They’ll criticize your glove hand, not your gender, if you’re playing well. They want to win. That’s all that matters.”

You stare at the logo. The Canucks. You think of the West Coast. The mountains, the ocean. You think of Thatcher Demko. You’ve watched his tape for years. His calmness, his economy of motion. The idea of sharing a crease with him, of learning from him, of competing with him … it feels right. It feels real.

“What’s the catch?” You ask.

“The catch is you have to earn it,” J.P. says plainly. “Nothing is guaranteed. They want to sign you, but you have to go into training camp and prove you’re the best option for that number two spot. You have to beat out the other guys. They’re not just going to hand it to you because of your story.”

A slow smile spreads across your face. “That’s not a catch, J.P. That’s the whole point.”

He leans back in his chair, a look of satisfaction on his face. “I thought you might say that. Utah is safe. New York is glamorous. Vancouver … Vancouver is a challenge. It’s a hockey decision, not a business one.”

You look out the window, at the endless grid of streets below. For so long, the fight was just to get a seat at the table. Now you have three seats offered to you, and you have to choose the right one. The one that leads not just to a job, but to a career. To a legacy.

“I don’t want to be the woman who broke the barrier,” you say, your voice clear and steady. “I want to be the goalie who won the Cup. Everything else is just noise.”

“And Vancouver gives you the best chance to do that?”

You think it over. A team on the rise. A passionate, hockey-mad city. A chance to be part of a tandem, to grow and develop without the crushing weight of being the immediate franchise savior. A chance to earn your spot, just like you always have.

“Yeah,” you say, a feeling of certainty settling deep in your chest. “I think it does.”

J.P. picks up his phone. He doesn’t look triumphant, just professional. The decision is made. Now comes the execution.

“So you’re telling me to call Patrik and tell him you want to be a Canuck?”

You take a deep breath, the filtered office air feeling suddenly fresh, full of promise. The pond behind your house. The taunts from the other kids. The sympathetic smirk of the athletic director. The slam of the judge’s gavel. It’s all led to this single, quiet moment, forty stories above the world.

“Yeah, J.P.,” you say, and the smile that breaks across your face is real, and bright, and full of fire. “Tell him I’m coming home.”

***

The air that hits you as you step out of the jet bridge at Vancouver International Airport is different. It’s clean, carrying the faint, briny scent of the Pacific and the crisp promise of pine from mountains you can’t yet see. It feels less like air and more like an inhalation of pure potential. The butterflies in your stomach, which had been performing a frantic, anxiety-fueled ballet for the entire six-hour flight from Boston, seem to calm, their wings beating a slower, more purposeful rhythm.

You navigate the terminal, a rolling duffel in one hand, your custom goalie sticks in a massive travel bag slung over your shoulder. People give you a wide berth. You’re used to it. A woman of your height, with the broad shoulders built by a thousand push-ups and the unmistakable gear of a hockey player, tends to part crowds. You scan the faces in the arrivals hall, a sea of reunions and greetings, looking for a sign. J.P. had said a team rep would meet you. You picture a fresh-faced kid from the media relations department, or maybe a grizzled, old-timer from the equipment staff, someone with a face like a well-worn catcher’s mitt.

Then you see him.

He’s leaning against a concrete pillar, away from the main throng, trying and failing to look inconspicuous. He’s tall — taller than you expected — and built like someone carved him from the side of a mountain. He’s wearing a simple black hoodie, the hood pulled up, and a pair of jeans. In his hands, he’s holding a small, slightly crumpled piece of printer paper. On it, in surprisingly neat block letters, is your last name.

Your brain takes a moment to process the image. The face under the hood is one you’ve seen a thousand times on television, in highlight reels, on hockey cards. The calm, intense eyes. The strong jaw. The placid expression that goalies perfect, the one that says nothing can rattle them.

It’s Thatcher Demko.

The starting goaltender for the Vancouver Canucks, a Vezina finalist, one of the best in the world, is standing in the arrivals terminal at YVR holding a makeshift sign for you like he’s an Uber driver.

Your feet feel suddenly rooted to the polished floor. You take a breath, tighten your grip on your duffel, and walk towards him. As you get closer, he looks up, his eyes meeting yours. A flicker of recognition, and then a small, genuine smile spreads across his face.

“Hey,” he says, his voice a low, easy rumble. It’s exactly as you’d heard it in post-game interviews. Calm. Steady. “You made it.”

“I … yeah,” you manage, your own voice feeling ridiculously small. “You’re Thatcher Demko.” It comes out as an accusation, a statement of blatant, unbelievable fact.

He glances down at the piece of paper in his hands and then back up at you, a hint of amusement in his eyes. “I was trying to be subtle. Guess it didn’t work.” He crumples the paper and shoves it into his hoodie pocket. “Figured it was better than having some stranger pick you up. Welcome to Vancouver.”

He reaches for your stick bag, and you instinctively pull it back a little. “Oh, I can get it.”

“I’m sure you can,” he says, his smile widening. He gently takes the bag from your shoulder anyway. “But let me. It’s a big bag.” The transfer is seamless, professional. He handles the cumbersome bag with an ease that tells you he’s done this a million times.

You walk together towards the parkade, the silence between you punctuated by the squeak of your shoes and the rumble of your duffel’s wheels. Your mind is racing. Why is he here? Is this some kind of test? A rookie initiation?

“So,” he says, breaking the silence as you step into the elevator. “I have to say, this is pretty cool.”

“Cool?” You echo, confused. “What’s cool?”

“This. You. The whole thing.” He shifts the weight of your sticks on his shoulder. “I, uh, might have spent a few hours on YouTube last week watching your college highlights.”

You blink. “You did?”

“Oh yeah.” He nods, completely serious. “That glove save you made in the Beanpot final, second overtime, on that BC forward … Ryan Leonard, was it?”

“James Hagens,” you correct automatically.

“Hagens, right. The way you read the pass and pushed across, you were already there before he even shot it. Your anticipation is … insane.” He says it with the genuine, unadulterated enthusiasm of a true fan.

You don’t know what to say. Thatcher Demko is geeking out about your save. The world has officially tilted on its axis. “Thanks. He … he has a heavy shot.”

The elevator doors open, and he leads you to a large, black Ford F-150 that looks like it could drive up the side of a building. It’s immaculately clean. He loads your gear into the back with practiced efficiency before opening the passenger door for you.

“So you’re a truck guy,” you say, climbing into the cab.

“You kind of have to be, with the size of our gear bags,” he says, shutting the door and walking around to the driver’s side. “Tried a sedan once. Lasted about a week. Felt like I was solving a Rubik’s Cube every time I went to the rink.”

He starts the engine, and the truck hums to life. As he navigates out of the parkade and onto the highway, the city begins to reveal itself. Glass towers glint in the late afternoon sun, framed by the dark, majestic peaks of the North Shore mountains. It’s beautiful. Breathtakingly so.

“So, listen,” he says, his eyes on the road. “I know things are probably going to be … a little weird at first. With the media, and, you know, everything.”

“I’m used to weird,” you say with a small smile.

“Yeah, I bet you are. But I just wanted to be the first one to say it doesn’t matter. None of that stuff matters in the room, and it definitely doesn’t matter in the crease. You’re here because you can stop the puck. Period. Anyone who has a problem with that is an idiot.”

The directness of it, the simple, unequivocal statement of support, loosens a knot in your chest you didn’t even realize was there. “Thank you,” you say, and the words are heavier than just two syllables. “Seriously.”

“Don’t thank me. Just be ready to work.” He glances over at you. “And don’t be afraid to be a weirdo.”

You laugh. “A weirdo?”

“Yeah. You’re a goalie. You have to be a weirdo. It’s in the job description.”

“Okay,” you play along. “What’s your weirdest goalie thing? Your biggest superstition?”

He thinks for a moment, a slight smile on his face. “Alright. Don’t tell anyone this. Especially not Ian Clark, he’d kill me. But before every period, when I skate out to the crease, I have to tap the left post, then the right post, then the crossbar with the butt-end of my stick. In that order. Always. If I mess it up, I have to skate a little circle and start over.”

“Okay, that’s pretty standard,” you say, nodding. “The post-tapping ritual. I get that.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the weird part,” he continues. “The weird part is … I say hello to them.”

You turn to look at him. “You what?”

“I say ‘Hey, Lefty. Hey, Righty. Hey, Top,’ under my breath. Every single time. Gotta make sure we’re all on the same page, you know? They’re my best friends out there.” He says it with such deadpan sincerity that you can’t help but burst out laughing.

“Okay, you win,” you say, wiping a tear from your eye. “That is officially weird.”

“Your turn,” he says, grinning. “Spill it. What’s your thing?”

You hesitate for a second, then decide he’s earned it. “My glove,” you say. “The night before a game, I take it to my hotel room. And I put it on the pillow of the other bed. Like it’s a person.”

He nods slowly, thoughtfully. “Okay. Okay. I see it. You want it to be well-rested. Limber. Ready to perform. That makes a weird kind of sense.”

“And,” you add, emboldened, “I never, ever, let my pads touch on the floor of the locker room when I’m getting dressed. They have to be standing up against the stall, perfectly parallel. If someone bumps one and it falls over and touches the other one, I have to … well, it’s not good.”

“It throws the whole alignment of the universe out of whack,” he finishes for you, his expression deadly serious.

“Exactly!” You exclaim. “You get it.”

“I get it,” he confirms. “We’re the same kind of crazy.”

The rest of the drive passes in an easy flow of conversation. You talk about gear, the never-ending quest for the perfect skate sharpening, the agony of breaking in a new blocker. You talk about the mental side of the game, the deafening silence after letting in a soft goal, the weird Zen-like state you can get into when you’re seeing every puck like it’s a beach ball. He doesn’t treat you like a rookie, and he doesn’t treat you like a woman. He treats you like another goalie, a fellow member of the strange, lonely union.

He pulls up in front of a sleek downtown hotel. “Team puts all the new guys up here until they find a place,” he explains, putting the truck in park. “It’s not bad. Good gym. Decent room service.”

He gets out and helps you with your bags, walking you into the lobby. The concierge greets him by name.

“Thanks for this, Thatcher,” you say, as he hands your duffel over to the bellhop. “You really didn’t have to.”

“Demko,” he corrects. “Everyone just calls me Demko. Or Demmer. And yeah, I did. Wanted to make sure you got a proper welcome.” He offers you a hand. You shake it. His grip is firm, confident. “Get some rest. Camp starts in two days. It’s gonna be a grind.”

“I’m looking forward to it.”

“Good.” He gives you one last nod. “See you at the rink. Try not to let your pads touch.”

And with that, he’s gone. You watch him walk out of the lobby, leaving you standing there with a feeling you haven’t had in a long, long time. The feeling that, for the first time, you might have just found a place where you truly belong.

***

Two days later, that feeling of belonging is replaced by a tidal wave of pure nerves.

You walk through the corridors of Rogers Arena, following the signs to the Canucks locker room. The air is cool and smells of Zamboni fumes and stale popcorn. You can hear the distant, echoing clicks of pucks and the shouts of the early-arriving players. Every step feels momentous.

You push open the heavy door, and the room goes quiet.

It’s not a dramatic, movie-style silence. It’s more subtle than that. Conversations don’t stop mid-sentence, but they trail off. Heads turn. The dozen or so players already there, in various states of dress, all look at you. It only lasts for a second, but it feels like an eternity.

The room itself is exactly what you’d imagined. A large oval, stalls lining the walls, the iconic orca logo woven into the massive carpet in the center. Jerseys are hung with pristine care, a sea of blue, green, and white.

A man with a sharp suit and an even sharper expression detaches himself from a conversation with two other men in tracksuits. He walks towards you, hand extended.

“You’re here,” he says. It’s not a question. His voice is gravelly, no-nonsense. “Adam Foote. Welcome to camp.”

“Coach,” you say, shaking his hand. His grip is like iron. “Thank you for the opportunity.”

“Opportunity’s gotta be earned,” he says, but there’s no malice in it. It’s just a statement of fact. He turns to the rest of the room, his voice booming. “Alright, listen up! This is Y/N Y/L/N. She’s here to compete for a spot, same as everyone else. Introduce yourselves. Make her feel welcome.”

He gives you a short, sharp nod, and then he’s gone, back to his conversation. The ice is broken. A few guys call out a “Hey” or “Welcome.” One by one, players start to come over as you make your way to the empty stall someone has clearly designated for you. It’s between a veteran defenseman and an empty space.

A tall forward with a friendly, open face is the first to offer a proper handshake. “Brock Boeser. Good to have you here.”

“Conor Garland,” says another, his handshake firm, his eyes assessing. “Heard a lot about you.”

“Elias Pettersson,” a lanky Swede with intense eyes says with a polite nod.

You go through the motions, shaking hands, learning names, matching faces to the players you’ve watched for years. It’s a blur of polite greetings. Then, a goalie in full gear, minus his helmet, waddles over. He’s got a bright, optimistic look on his face.

“Kevin Lankinen,” he says in a slight Finnish accent, pulling off his blocker to shake your hand. “Welcome to the competition.”

You look him in the eye. He is, in the most direct way, your rival. The man you have to beat to earn that job. The smile he gives you is genuine, but his eyes hold a competitive fire that you know well, because you see it in the mirror every morning.

“Good to meet you,” you say, your tone even. “Looking forward to it.”

“May the best goalie win,” he says with a cheerful grin, and waddles back to his stall. There’s no animosity, just the clean, simple reality of professional sports.

You finally get to your stall and begin the long, familiar ritual of getting dressed. It’s a comfort. The specific order of things — shin pads, pants, skates, chest protector — is a meditation. You focus on the task, blocking out the low hum of conversation around you, trying to ignore the feeling of being watched.

“So, is it true?”

The voice is quiet, coming from your left. You turn your head. Leaning against the adjacent stall is a player you recognize instantly. Quinn Hughes. The captain. He’s smaller than most of the other guys, but he has an aura of quiet confidence. He’s watching you with a curious, almost academic interest.

“Is what true?” You ask, pulling a skate lace tight.

“That you sued the NCAA and won.” He says it casually, like he’s asking about the weather.

“Yeah,” you say, starting on your other skate. “That’s true.”

“That’s pretty badass,” he says with a small smirk. “Must have cost a fortune.”

“It did,” you admit. “My parents remortgaged their house.”

His smirk fades, replaced by a look of genuine respect. “Wow. So no pressure, then.”

You can’t help but smile. “None at all.”

He pushes off the stall and sits down on the bench in the empty spot next to you. He’s already in his lower gear, his skates on but unlaced. “I watched some of your games from last year. You, uh … you don’t move a lot.”

It’s an odd observation. “I move when I have to.”

“No, I mean, that’s a compliment,” he clarifies, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. “A lot of goalies are all over the place. Hasek wannabes. All flash. You’re … efficient. Calm. Like you know where the puck is going before the guy even shoots it.”

He’s a student of the game. You can hear it in the way he talks. He’s not just seeing a goalie, he’s analyzing a system.

“It’s called anticipation,” you say. “Kind of important for the position.”

“Right.” He nods. “So, are you going to be able to anticipate my shot?” There’s a playful challenge in his eyes now.

You finish lacing your skates and stand up, looking down at him. “Which one? The slapshot you never use or that weird, jerky little wrist shot you release from your hip?”

His eyebrows shoot up in surprise, and then he breaks into a wide, infectious grin. “Okay. Okay. You’ve done your homework. I respect that.”

“You have to,” you say, grabbing your chest protector. “It’s called being a professional.”

He laughs, a genuine, happy sound that draws a few glances. “I like you,” he declares. “You’re alright.”

“Glad I have the captain’s seal of approval,” you say dryly, pulling the bulky protector over your head.

“You don’t need my approval,” he says, his tone shifting back to something more serious. “You just need to stop pucks. That’s all anyone in here cares about. You do that, and you’ll be fine.”

He stands up, his presence suddenly feeling closer. “For what it’s worth,” he adds in a lower voice, “I’m glad you’re here. It’s good to have someone in the room who had to fight to get here.”

Before you can respond, Foote’s voice cuts through the room. “On the ice in five! Let’s go!”

Quinn gives you a quick tap on the shoulder pads. “See you out there. Try to keep up.”

He skates away, and you’re left with the echo of his words, a warmth spreading through your chest.

Stepping onto the ice at Rogers Arena is like stepping into another dimension. The lights are brighter, the ice is colder and harder, the rink feels both bigger and more intimate than any college barn you’ve ever played in. You take your place in one of the nets, Demko in the other, and begin your warm-up stretches, the movements as familiar and comforting as breathing.

Ian Clark, the legendary goalie coach, skates over. His eyes are piercing, and you feel like he’s taking a complete inventory of your technique, your stance, your very soul, in a single glance.

“Alright,” he says, his voice quiet but commanding. “Let’s see what you’ve got. Just movement drills to start. T-pushes. Shuffles. Butterfly slides. I want to see clean edges. No wasted energy. Let’s go.”

For the next twenty minutes, he puts you and the other goalies through the paces. It’s grueling, precise work. He corrects your hand positioning by an inch, the angle of your skate by a few degrees. He doesn’t offer praise, only corrections. You just nod, absorb the information, and execute. You feel Lankinen next to you, matching you move for move, his own movements economical and sharp. The silent competition has begun.

Then, the team drills start.

A 3-on-2 rush comes down on you. Garland is carrying the puck, Pettersson on his left, Boeser on his right. It’s a blur of elite speed and skill. Garland dishes to Pettersson, who one-touches it back. You read the return pass, sliding across the crease, every muscle screaming. Garland fires it, a hard, low shot aimed for the far corner. You extend your leg, the toe of your pad just catching the puck, deflecting it wide.

A defenseman taps your pads with his stick. “Great save!”

You just nod, resetting. The next rush comes.

For an hour, it’s a relentless onslaught. You face shots from every angle, every type of release. Breakaways, backdoor tap-ins, point shots through traffic. You feel yourself slipping into the zone, that hyper-focused state where the puck seems to slow down, where you’re not thinking, only reacting. You make saves you have no business making, your glove snatching pucks out of the air, your pads slamming shut on five-hole attempts. You let in a few, too. A perfect snipe from Pettersson that goes bar-down. A tricky deflection you can’t track. But you don’t let it rattle you. You reset. Next puck.

Late in the practice, you see him. Quinn, gathering the puck at the blue line. He skates laterally, his head up, surveying his options. He’s not looking at you, but you know he knows you’re there. He fakes a pass, freezing the forward covering him for a fraction of a second. In that tiny window, he lets it go — that jerky, deceptive wrist shot you’d mentioned in the locker room. It’s not a hard shot, but it’s perfectly placed, ticketed for the top corner, short side.

You don’t have time to think. It’s pure muscle memory. You explode upwards from your butterfly, your glove hand shooting up, and you feel the sharp thud of the puck nesting perfectly in the pocket.

The whistle blows. You hold the glove up for a second, then toss the puck out. You look over at him. He’s standing at the blue line, stick resting on his hips, just watching you. He doesn’t smile. He just gives you a slow, single nod. A nod of pure respect.

In the world of hockey, it’s better than a standing ovation.

When the final whistle blows to end practice, you’re drenched in sweat, your legs feel like jelly, and you’re utterly exhausted. But you’re also exhilarated. As you skate towards the gate, Demko glides alongside you.

“Not bad,” he says, his face impassive behind his mask, but you can hear the smile in his voice. “Not bad at all.”

“Just trying to keep up,” you pant.

“Well, you did.” He taps your pads. “Good work. See you tomorrow.”

Back in the locker room, the atmosphere is different. It’s lighter. The curiosity has been replaced by a quiet acceptance. You didn’t just show up. You performed. You proved, on day one, that you belong on that ice.

As you’re pulling off your skates, Quinn walks by your stall. He stops, leaning an arm against the frame.

“So,” he says, a small grin playing on his lips. “I guess you anticipated that one.”

“I told you,” you say, trying to keep your voice even, trying to ignore the way your heart is beating a little faster. “It’s my job.”

“Yeah, well,” he says, pushing off the stall. “Tomorrow, I’m scoring.”

He winks, then walks away, leaving you to stare after him, a smile you can’t contain spreading across your face. It’s only day one, and the fight is far from over. But as you sit there in the loud, bustling, sweat-soaked locker room of the Vancouver Canucks, you feel a sense of rightness, a deep and profound certainty that you chose the right city. You chose the right team. You came to the right place.

***

Training camp is a blur. It’s a relentless, soul-crushing, beautiful grind. The days bleed into one another, marked only by the searing pain in your legs during bag skates and the fleeting satisfaction of a perfectly executed drill. Your world shrinks to the ice, the gym, the hotel, and the film room. It is monastic. It is punishing. It is exactly where you want to be.

You and Kevin Lankinen exist in a state of professional orbit. You are never far from each other, a silent, magnetic push-and-pull of competition. You watch him during drills, noting the efficiency of his pushes, the quickness of his glove. He watches you, his eyes lingering after you make a sprawling save in a scrimmage. The respect is mutual, the goal singular. There is only one job.

Your friendship with Demko solidifies. He’s your unofficial mentor, your confessor in the church of goaltending. He’ll skate by your net after a drill, offering a quiet word. “You’re opening up your five-hole a hair early on your butterfly slides,” or, “Keep that blocker hand active. Don’t let it go dead.” It’s never criticism, only data. He’s helping you, sharpening you, not because he’s a saint, but because he wants the best possible goalie playing behind him. A strong tandem makes the whole team stronger.

And then there’s Quinn. The interactions are small, fleeting moments that somehow feel more significant than entire conversations. It’s a shared laugh in the middle of a brutal stretching session. It’s him skating by the bench and squirting water from his bottle at you, earning a playful glare. It’s him seeking you out in the lunchroom to ask a question about a defensive breakdown in the scrimmage, his tone treating you not as a rookie, but as a peer whose opinion he genuinely values. You find yourself looking for him, your eyes scanning the ice for the smooth, effortless stride of number 43.

The preseason arrives like a judgment. Six games to decide your fate. Foote announces that you, Lankinen, and a prospect from Abbotsford will split the first three starts. The math is simple and terrifying. Every single shot matters.

Your first test is in Seattle. You’re backing up Lankinen, which means you spend the first half of the game chewing on a towel and trying to keep your leg muscles from seizing up. The Climate Pledge Arena is loud, a wave of teal and navy blue. Lankinen looks … tight. He lets in a goal on the first shot, a wrister from the point that he seems to misread. Ten minutes later, a bad rebound kicks right out into the slot, and a Kraken forward buries it. You can see his shoulders slump.

At the halfway mark of the second period, during a TV timeout, Ian Clark skates to the bench and looks directly at you. “You’re in.”

That’s it. No pep talk. No instructions. Just “You’re in.”

Your heart hammers against your ribs, a frantic bird trapped in a cage. You pull on your helmet, grab your stick, and skate to the net. Lankinen is already there. He lifts his mask, his face slick with sweat and frustration.

“See ‘em well,” he says, his voice tight. It’s the goalie’s equivalent of ‘break a leg.’

“You got it,” you say, tapping his pads.

You do your ritual. The familiar routine is a rock in a stormy sea. The whistle blows. The puck is dropped. A Seattle forward carries it over the blue line and fires a slap shot from a mile out. It’s a tester, a nothing-burger of a shot. You swallow it up in your glove, holding it for a second before the whistle. You feel the tension drain out of you. Okay. Just hockey.

For the next thirty minutes, you are a black hole. Everything they throw at your net, you absorb. A frantic goalmouth scramble where you lose your stick and have to make a save with your blocker while lying on your stomach. A breakaway from Matty Beniers where you match his speed, hold your ground, and force him to shoot it wide. You aren’t spectacular. You’re just … there. A calm, immovable object. You make the saves you’re supposed to make, and one or two that you aren’t. The Canucks end up losing 3-1, but you let in zero goals. In the silent, brutal accounting of a goalie battle, that’s a win.

A few nights later, in the home locker room at Rogers Arena, Foote walks up to your stall. “You’ve got the Oilers tonight.”

A cold dread mixes with fiery excitement in your stomach. The Oilers. McDavid and Draisaitl. The two-headed monster that haunts the dreams of every goalie in the league.

“Yes, coach,” you say, your voice betraying none of your internal chaos.

Before you go out for warmups, Demko, who is sitting this one out, comes over to you. He leans in close.

“Forget their names,” he says quietly. “They’re just 97 and 29. They’re just two guys with sticks. Watch the logo on their chest, not the name on their back. Stop the puck.”

You nod, the simple advice cutting through the noise in your head. Stop the puck. It’s the only thing that’s ever mattered.

The game is the fastest you have ever experienced. The speed is breathtaking, particularly Connor McDavid’s. The first time he comes down on you with a head of steam, it feels like he’s warping reality around him. He skates past two of your defensemen like they’re traffic cones. He’s in alone on you. He dekes left, dekes right, his hands a blur. You don’t bite. You hold your depth, your focus narrowed to the six-ounce piece of vulcanized rubber on his stick blade. He tries to slide it five-hole. You slam your pads shut. The puck thuds into your pads and dies right there.

The arena, which had held its breath, explodes. You see Quinn skate by the net and bang his stick on the ice in appreciation.

You make forty-two saves that night. You rob Draisaitl on a one-timer that he blasts from his office at the side of the net, your glove shooting out to snag it. You stop a wraparound from Zach Hyman. You stand on your head. But they are who they are. McDavid scores on a ridiculous individual effort where he banks the puck off the back of the net to himself. Draisaitl scores on a power play. You lose 2-1.

But as you skate off the ice, exhausted and aching, the crowd is on its feet, giving you a standing ovation. You lift your stick to acknowledge them, a sense of gratitude washing over you. You lost the game, but you proved you could stand in the fire.

Your last chance is the final preseason game, on the road, against the Calgary Flames. The Scotiabank Saddledome is a sea of red, hostile and loud. This is it. The final exam. You feel a strange sense of calm. You’ve done everything you can. Now you just have to play.

And you do. You play the best game of your life. You’re in that surreal state of flow, the zone, where time slows down and you see everything. You’re reading plays before they happen, sliding into position a half-second before the pass is even made. You stop a 2-on-0 shorthanded breakaway. You make a glove save that is so audacious the Calgary crowd lets out a collective groan.

You pitch a shutout. The Canucks win 2-0.

In the locker room afterwards, it’s a quiet, happy scene. Guys are packing their bags, excited for the real season to start. You’re sitting in your stall, slowly peeling off your gear, when Quinn sits down on the bench next to you. He’s still in his gear, helmet off, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.

“You know,” he says, looking straight ahead, “you’re a real pain in the ass.”

You turn to look at him, confused. “What?”

“For Foote,” he clarifies, a grin spreading across his face as he turns to you. “You’re making this decision impossible for him. Lankinen has a contract. You don’t. And you just came in here and outplayed him at every turn. It’s a real headache for management.”

“Oh,” you say. “Sorry to be a bother.”

“Don’t be,” he says, his voice softening. “It’s the best kind of problem to have. You were unbelievable tonight.”

“Thanks, Cap,” you say, a genuine warmth spreading through your chest.

“Anytime,” he says, standing up. “Get some rest. Tomorrow’s gonna be a long day.”

He’s right. The next day, the final cut day, the air at the arena is thick with tension. The rink is quiet. Players walk around like ghosts, waiting for the summons. You sit in the players’ lounge, staring at a cup of coffee, your phone face down on the table. Every time a door opens, you jump.

At 11:30 AM, a team staffer finds you. “Foote wants to see you.”

Your blood turns to ice water. This is it. You walk down the hall, your footsteps echoing. The hallway to the executive offices feels a mile long. You knock on the door that says ‘HEAD COACH.’

“Come in.”

You open the door. Adam Foote is sitting behind his desk. Patrik Allvin is in a chair beside him. They both look serious. Your heart sinks. This is the ‘thanks for coming, but we’re going in another direction’ face. You’ve seen it before.

“Sit down,” Foote says, gesturing to the chair opposite them.

You sit. The leather is cold. You place your hands on your knees to keep them from shaking.

Allvin speaks first, his Swedish accent precise and clear. “We brought you into camp to compete for a job. We told you nothing would be handed to you. We told you that you would have to earn it.”

He pauses, letting the words hang in the air. You just nod, your throat too dry to speak.

“Well,” Foote cuts in, leaning forward. “You did. You came in here, you worked your ass off, you didn't say a damn word, and you were outstanding in all three of your games. You earned it.”

You stare at him, the words not quite registering.

Allvin smiles, a warm, genuine smile. “What Adam is trying to say is, we would like to offer you a two-year, two-way NHL contract. We want you to be Thatcher’s partner this season.”

The breath you’ve been holding for your entire life rushes out of you in a single, silent gasp. The room swims for a second. You feel a lightness in your head, a dizzying, overwhelming wave of relief and joy and disbelief. You swallow hard.

“Thank you,” you manage to say, your voice cracking. You clear your throat. “Thank you, sir. You won’t regret it.”

“We know we won’t,” Foote says, his stern expression finally breaking into a small smile. “Now get out of here. J.P. is waiting for your call. We’ve got a press conference to arrange.”

You stand up, shake both their hands, and walk out of the office in a daze. As the door clicks shut behind you, you lean against the wall in the empty hallway, closing your eyes. It’s real. You did it. All the years on the frozen pond, the taunts, the lawsuits, the 4 AM practices, the remortgaged house … it was all for this.

When you open your eyes, Demko is standing at the end of the hall, leaning against the wall, a huge, knowing grin on his face. He doesn’t say anything. He just gives you a slow, deliberate nod. You nod back, a wide, shaky smile spreading across your own face. He knew. Of course he knew.

***

Two hours later, you’re standing in the Canucks media room, but it feels more like a gladiator pit. The room is packed. Every major sports network in North America seems to be here. Cameras flash like lightning, and the low hum of dozens of conversations creates a palpable buzz of energy.

You, Allvin, and J.P. sit at a table on a small stage. Allvin makes the official announcement. “The Vancouver Canucks are proud to announce that we have signed goaltender Y/N Y/L/N to a two-year contract.”

The room erupts in a cacophony of camera shutters. After a few minutes of formal statements, they open the floor to questions. Most of them are for you.

They start easy. “How does it feel to make history?” “What does this moment mean to you?” You give the practiced, humble answers you’ve been preparing your whole life.

Then, a reporter from a major network in the front row gets the microphone. He has a smug, confrontational look on his face.

“A question for you,” he says, his voice amplified by the speakers. “We’ve seen a similar phenomenon in basketball with Caitlin Clark, who chose to embrace the WNBA and help grow that league. The PWHL is having incredible success in its own right. Why do you think you’re too good for the Professional Women’s Hockey League?”

The room goes quiet. It’s a loaded, cynical question, designed to trap you, to paint you as arrogant or as someone who is turning her back on women’s hockey. You can feel the weight of every female hockey player in the world on your shoulders.

You take a slow, deliberate breath. You look directly at the reporter.

“First,” you begin, your voice calm and steady, projecting through the room. “Let’s be clear. I think what Caitlin Clark is doing for the WNBA is incredible, and I think the PWHL is one of the most important things to ever happen to our sport. I have watched every game I can, and I am in awe of the talent in that league. I’m not too good for that league. No one is.”

You pause, letting that sink in.

“But my dream was never just to be a professional hockey player. It was to play in the best league in the world, against the best players in the world. Period. When I was a little girl, my dad didn’t tell me, ‘One day, you can play in a great women’s league.’ He told me, ‘One day, you can play in the NHL.’ My whole life, every decision I’ve made, every battle I’ve fought, including a lawsuit that took years off my parents’ lives, was for the right to have the opportunity to compete for a spot here.”

You lean a little closer to the microphone.

“This isn’t about me being too good for one league. This is about me finding out if I’m good enough for this one. The women in the PWHL are building something special, and they have my absolute respect. I’m trying to prove something different. I’m trying to prove that in hockey, the only thing that should matter is your ability to play the game.”

You lean back. The room is silent for a beat. You’ve answered the question, disarmed the trap, and stated your case without disrespecting anyone.

The scrum breaks up shortly after that, dissolving into a chaotic swirl of reporters trying to get one last quote. As you step down from the stage, you feel a hand clap you firmly on the back. You turn. It’s Quinn, a huge, proud grin on his face. The entire team had been watching from the back of the room.

He leans in close so you can hear him over the noise. “That,” he says, “was the best damn answer I’ve ever heard.”

He gives you a quick, conspiratorial wink, and then he’s swallowed up by the crowd of your new teammates, all coming over to congratulate you. But the wink lingers. It’s a seal of approval, a sign of alliance. It feels less like a welcome to the team and more like a welcome home.

***

The first four games of the season are a unique form of torture.

You are in the NHL. You have the contract, the stall in the locker room, the number on your back. You are living the dream. But you’re living it from the best seat in the house, on the bench, watching Demko do his job.

It's a strange purgatory. You are part of the team, but not yet part of the game. You chew on the nub of a Gatorade towel, your leg bouncing with a nervous energy that has nowhere to go. You track every puck, your body making phantom saves, your muscles twitching in sync with the action a hundred feet away. You are a loaded gun with the safety on.

“It’s the worst, isn’t it?” Demko says to you after the season opener, a solid 5-1 win against the flames where he was brilliant.

“What is?” You ask, looking up from the tablet where you’d been re-watching one of his saves from the third period.

“The waiting,” he says, leaning his head back against the wall. “Being the number two. You do all the same work, all the same prep, but you don’t get the release. It’s like being a race car driver who only gets to sit in the passenger seat. You just have to stay ready.”

“How do you do it?” You ask, the question genuine. “How do you stay sharp when you don’t know when you’ll play?”

“You get weird,” he says with a shrug. “Weirder than usual, I mean. Your practices become your games. Every shot in a morning skate is the Stanley Cup Final. You get into a competition with yourself. And you watch. You watch everything. You learn my tendencies, you learn the shooters’ tendencies. You become a librarian of hockey information. So when they finally call your number, you’re not thinking. You just know.”

You take his advice to heart. Your practices become legendary among the coaching staff. You stay out thirty minutes late every day, begging anyone — Pettersson, Garland, Boeser — to take extra shots on you. You become a student of your own team, learning how each defenseman likes to play a 2-on-1, which forward is most likely to block a shot.

Your bond with Quinn deepens, not through grand conversations, but through the quiet language of the game. He learns that you like to play the puck behind the net, and he starts presenting a better, more predictable target for your passes. You learn that on the power play, he loves the deceptive shot-pass, and you start anticipating the deflection. Before each game, as the team lines up in the tunnel, he’s the last one you see before you take your spot on the bench. He has a ritual. He skates by, taps Demko on the left pad, then skates to you and taps you on the right. Every single time. A small gesture of inclusion. A reminder that you’re part of the tandem.

After a tough 3-2 loss to the Blues at home, he finds you in the gym, long after most of the team has gone home. You’re on the exercise bike, churning out your frustration.

“Hey,” he says, walking over. He’s in sweatpants and a t-shirt, his hair still damp from the shower. “Shouldn’t you be at home eating pizza or something?”

“Not tired,” you say, your breathing heavy.

He just nods, understanding. He grabs a foam roller and starts working on his legs a few feet away. You ride in silence for a few minutes, the only sound the whir of the bike and the squeak of the foam roller.

“That second goal,” he says finally, his voice quiet. “That was on me. I bit on the pass, left Hronek out to dry.”

You slow your pedaling. “It was a 2-on-1, Quinn. It happens.”

“It shouldn’t,” he says, his voice tight with the frustration of a perfectionist. “Demmer had the shooter, I’m supposed to take the pass. I got greedy. I thought I could strip the puck.”

He’s not looking for absolution. He’s just analyzing the data, frustrated with his own error. It’s the same way you break down goals against yourself.

“Next time you’ll take the pass,” you say.

He looks up at you, a small, grateful smile touching his lips. “Yeah. I will.” He gets up, stretching. “Don’t stay too late. We’ve got a flight to catch tomorrow.”

“Yes, Captain,” you say with a mock salute.

He rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling as he walks away.

The moment finally comes on a gray, drizzly morning in Dallas, Texas. The team is going through a light morning skate ahead of their game against the Stars. It’s the fifth game of the season, and the second half of a grueling back-to-back that saw the Canucks lose a tight game in Chicago the night before. Demko had faced forty shots.

You’re in your net, feeling loose, tracking pucks, when Adam Foote skates over. His face is its usual stony mask.

“You’re in tonight,” he says, his voice a low gravel.

You freeze for a fraction of a second, a shot from Boeser sailing harmlessly past your ear. You turn back to the coach.

“You got this,” is all he says, before skating away to yell at a defenseman for a lazy pass.

Your stomach does a complicated series of flips. This is it. No more waiting. No more watching. The race car is yours to drive.

Demko skates over to your net, leaning against the crossbar. “Hear the news?”

“Heard the news,” you confirm, your voice coming out steadier than you feel.

“Good. It’s about damn time.” He looks around the American Airlines Center, at the thousands of empty green seats. “This is a tough barn to play in. They’re a heavy team. They love to crash the net. Stand your ground. Don’t let them push you around.”

“Got it.”

“It’s just another net,” he says, tapping the post with his stick. “Six feet by four feet. Same as it’s always been. Go have fun.”

The rest of the day is a slow, agonizing crawl towards 7 PM. You try to nap at the hotel, but your mind is racing, playing out every possible scenario. You eat your standard pre-game meal of salmon and quinoa, but it tastes like cardboard. You sit on the bus on the way to the arena, your headphones on, but you don’t hear the music. You just hear the thumping of your own heart.

In the locker room, the atmosphere is loose, but professional. The team is tired from the back-to-back, but they’re ready. As you go through the long, meticulous ritual of putting on your gear, you feel a sense of calm finally settle over you. This is your church. The smell of the room, the feel of the pads, the specific order of operations — it’s all familiar. It’s home.

When you’re almost dressed, Quinn walks over. He’s leaning against your stall, his expression unreadable.

“Ready for this?” He asks.

“Born ready,” you lie, trying for a confident smirk that probably looks more like a grimace.

“Good,” he says. “Because we’re gonna be running around a bit tonight. Tired legs. We’re gonna need you to be our best player.”

It’s not a pep talk. It’s a statement of fact. It’s a transfer of responsibility. He’s not trying to pump you up, he’s telling you what the team needs from you. It’s more effective than any rah-rah speech could ever be.

“I’ll be there,” you say.

“We know.” He offers you a fist bump. You meet it with your blocker. “See you in the tunnel.”

Walking down that tunnel is the most terrifying and exhilarating moment of your life. The lights of the arena are blinding, the roar of the Dallas crowd a physical force. You step onto the ice, and a chorus of boos rains down on you. They know who you are. They know this is your first start. They want to see you fail.

You skate to your crease, do your ritual.

The puck drops.

The first five minutes are a whirlwind. Dallas comes out flying, pinning the tired Canucks in their own zone. The puck is a blur. A shot from the point through a screen that you have to fight to see, your glove snatching it at the last second. A wrap-around attempt by Wyatt Johnston that you get your skate on, kicking it out of danger. A one-timer from Jason Robertson in the slot that you get your chest on, the puck thudding into your protector like a punch.

With each save, you feel the nerves melt away, replaced by the cool, clear focus you’ve been chasing your whole life. You are in the zone. The game slows down. The hostile crowd fades into white noise. There is only you, the puck, and the five skaters in front of you.

The Canucks weather the storm, and the game settles into a tense, grinding affair. It’s 0-0 at the end of the first. You’ve made 15 saves.

In the locker room, Foote is pragmatic. “Good period, good period! We bent, we didn’t break. She’s holding us in it,” he says, jerking his head in your direction. “Now let’s get our damn legs moving and get her some support. We can’t let her stand on her head all night.”

The second period is more of the same. It’s a goaltending duel. At the other end, Jake Oettinger, another young American star, is matching you save for save. He robs Pettersson on a breakaway, his long legs stretching to deny the deke. You stop Mikko Rantanen on a deflection from the top of the crease, the puck changing direction at the last second.

Late in the period, the Canucks finally break through. Garland forces a turnover at the blue line and feeds a pass to Boeser, who wires a wrist shot over Oettinger’s glove. 1-0 Vancouver. The small pocket of Canucks fans in the upper deck goes wild. You bang your stick on the ice, a jolt of pure joy running through you.

The third period begins, and Dallas comes with a desperate push. They are a proud, veteran team, and they hate losing at home. They throw everything at your net. The game gets chippy. A scrum ensues after you freeze the puck, and you get a little shove from a Stars forward. You don’t even flinch.

Then, it happens.

About eight minutes into the third period, there’s a mad scramble in front of your net. The puck is loose in the blue paint. You dive, covering it with your glove just as a skate kicks it. The whistle blows. You’re lying on your stomach, the puck safely under your glove.

As you start to get up, a massive weight lands on top of you. It’s Jamie Benn, the Dallas captain. He doesn’t just fall. He lands, and then he pushes. He grinds his weight into your back for a split second too long, a deliberate, antagonizing act of disrespect. A clear violation of the code.

You feel a flash of hot anger, but before you can even react, he’s gone. Because he’s been ripped off you.

Quinn, who had been the defenseman closest to the net, moves like a viper. He drops his stick, grabs the back of Benn’s jersey with both gloves, and yanks him back. Benn is bigger, stronger, a renowned tough guy. He turns, surprised, a snarl on his face. Quinn doesn’t care. He gets right in Benn’s face, his expression a mask of cold fury.

“Don’t you ever touch our goalie!” He screams, his voice raw, audible even over the crowd.

Benn shoves him hard. Quinn doesn’t go down. He shoves back. And then the world explodes.

Filip Hronek, Quinn’s defensive partner, is the next one in, grabbing Benn from behind. Another Stars player grabs Hronek. Suddenly, it’s a full-blown line brawl. Gloves are dropping everywhere. Garland finds his dance partner. Joshua squares off with another Dallas heavyweight. Every skater on the ice is paired up, grappling, shoving, throwing muffled punches that land with dull thuds against shoulder pads and helmets. The referees are overwhelmed, blowing their whistles uselessly, trying to separate the tangled knots of angry men.

And you? You get up, brushing the snow off your jersey. You watch the chaos unfold in your crease for a moment, a strange sense of calm detachment washing over you. This is insane. And it’s all for you. They are defending you. Your team.

You see Oettinger at the other end, standing in his crease, watching the mayhem just like you. A strange, unspoken goalie etiquette takes over. This isn't your fight. You look at him. He looks at you. You both give a slight nod, a silent agreement.

You calmly skate out of the warzone in front of your net, leaving your stick behind. You skate towards center ice. Oettinger does the same from his end. You meet right at the red line, the giant Stars logo beneath your skates. You both stop, standing a few feet apart, turning to watch the brawl like two patrons enjoying a particularly rowdy dinner theater performance.

“Well,” Oettinger says, his voice muffled by his mask. He leans on his knees, casual as can be. “That escalated quickly.”

“Tell me about it,” you say, shaking your head. “Benn get a little too friendly a lot?”

“That’s his move,” Oettinger says with a sigh. “Loves to stir the pot in the crease. Never does it when I’m in net, though. Professional courtesy, I guess.”

“Guess I haven’t earned that yet,” you say with a dry laugh.

“Oh, I think you just did.” He gestures with his blocker towards the pile of bodies, where Quinn is still trying to get at Benn, held back by a linesman. “Your captain seems to like you.”

You watch Quinn, his face flushed, still yelling at Benn. A strange, warm feeling spreads through your chest, a feeling that has nothing to do with the game. “Yeah,” you say softly. “He’s a good captain.”

“So, that save you made on Moose in the second,” Oettinger says, changing the subject with the ease of someone completely disconnected from the violence being perpetrated by his teammates. “The deflection. Did you read that off his stick or did you just get lucky?”

You can’t help but laugh. Your teams are engaged in mortal combat, and the two of you are here at center ice, breaking down film. “A little of both,” you admit. “I saw him get his stick free, and I know that’s his spot. I just tried to get my body in the way and hoped for the best.”

“Nice,” he says, nodding in appreciation. “Real nice. You’re looking solid tonight, by the way. Sucks that it’s against us, but, you know. Respect.”

“You too,” you say. “That stop on Petey was larceny.”

The linesmen finally start to get control of the situation, peeling players apart. The ice is littered with gloves and sticks.

“Well,” Oettinger says, straightening up. “Looks like the intermission’s over. Good luck the rest of the way.”

“You too,” you say. “Try to keep your captain in his pen.”

He chuckles. “No promises.”

You skate back to your crease, a small smile on your face. You pick up your stick. The rink crew comes out to scoop up the yard sale of equipment. The referees convene. The penalty box doors are about to get a workout. When the dust settles, Quinn gets two minutes for roughing. Benn gets two for goalie interference and two for roughing. The Canucks are going on the power play.

As Quinn skates to the box, his face still stormy, he looks over at you. You meet his eyes and give him a sharp, deliberate nod. A thank you. He nods back. An ‘anytime.’

The fight galvanizes the Canucks. They play the rest of the game with a ferocious energy. They kill off a late penalty with a desperation you haven’t seen all season. Every player on the ice is blocking shots, sacrificing their bodies. They are not letting this game slip away. Not tonight. Not your first start.

With ten seconds left, the Stars pull Oettinger for an extra attacker. A shot comes from the point. It’s deflected in front. You don’t see it, you just react, your body lunging to the side, your glove thrown out in desperation. You feel the puck hit the very tip of your glove, just enough to send it fluttering wide of the net.

The final horn sounds.

You’ve won. 1-0. Your first NHL start is your first NHL win is your first NHL shutout.

You’re immediately mobbed by your teammates. They swarm you, banging on your helmet, hugging you, their shouts of celebration a joyous, deafening roar. You feel Hronek’s arms wrap around you, lifting you off the ice in a bone-crushing hug. You see Garland’s ecstatic face, Pettersson’s rare, wide grin.

In the locker room, it’s euphoric. Foote comes into the center of the room.

“Hell of a win!” He yells over the music. “Hell of a gutsy, greasy, road win! That’s how we gotta play!” He looks over at you, a proud, almost fatherly look on his face. “And how about this one? Stood on her head. Unbelievable.” He tosses you the game puck. “Congrats on your first. Many more to come.”

The room erupts in stick taps and cheers. You hold the puck, the black rubber cool and heavy in your hand. It’s the single greatest object you’ve ever owned.

Later, after the media interviews and the chaos, when the room has mostly cleared out, you’re sitting in your stall, the puck on the bench beside you. You’re just staring into space, replaying the entire night in your head.

“You okay?”

You look up. It’s Quinn. He’s changed into a suit for the flight, but there’s a small, fresh cut above his right eye, a souvenir from his tangle with Benn.

“Yeah,” you say, your voice a little hoarse. “I’m okay. Are you okay?” You nod towards his cut.

He touches it gingerly. “It’s nothing. Just a love tap.” He sits down on the bench next to you. “You earned that one tonight. You were … incredible.”

“I had some help,” you say, looking at him meaningfully. “Thanks for … you know. Back there.”

“Hey,” he says, his voice low and serious. “No one touches our goalie. Ever. That’s the rule. I don’t care who it is. That’s my job.” He pauses, a small smile playing on his lips. “Especially when it’s you.”

You feel a blush creep up your neck, and you’re suddenly very grateful for the dim lighting of the locker room. You look down at the puck in your hand, then back up at him.

“Well,” you say, your voice softer than you intend. “It was nice of you to do your job.”

He just holds your gaze, his eyes warm and sincere. The noise of the world — the equipment managers packing bags, the distant sound of the bus engine starting — fades away. In the quiet aftermath of the battle, sitting on a bench in a locker room in Dallas, Texas, it feels like you’ve won more than just a hockey game. You’ve found your place. And you have a very strong feeling that the captain, the one with the cut above his eye, is a very big part of it.

***

The two months between your first start and the December road trip are a whirlwind of learning and adjustment. You settle into the rhythm of being an NHL goaltender, a rhythm that is both monotonous and exhilarating. You get ten more starts, winning six of them. You are no longer a curiosity, you are a reliable, effective number two goalie. You are part of the team.

The life is a series of airports, buses, hotels, and arenas. You learn which cities have the best coffee near the team hotel (Calgary) and which have the worst morning traffic (Los Angeles). You learn that Conor Garland is a fiend at cards, that Brock Boeser can sleep literally anywhere, and that Elias Pettersson analyzes crossword puzzles with the same intensity he uses to break down power-play footage.

And you learn Quinn Hughes. You learn him in the small moments. You learn that he hates losing more than he loves winning. You learn that he can be quiet and withdrawn after a bad game, but he’s the first one to crack a joke the next morning to reset the mood. You learn that he always asks the flight attendants their names and thanks them personally when he deplanes. You develop an easy rapport, a shorthand built on the ice that translates seamlessly to life off it. It’s a shared eye-roll during a boring team meeting, a quiet conversation in the back of the bus about a missed defensive assignment, a shared bag of peanut M&Ms on the plane. It’s simple. It’s comfortable. And it’s starting to feel like something you look for, something your day feels incomplete without.

The five-game East Coast swing in December is a notorious grind. New York, New Jersey, Long Island, Boston, and then Philadelphia. A ten-day sentence in the hockey gulag. The team is tired. You lose a sloppy game to the Devils. You grind out an overtime win against the Rangers.

The night before the game against the Islanders, you’re in your hotel room on Long Island, studying film, when your phone buzzes. It’s a text from Demko.

Demmer: Foote just told me I’m in tomorrow.

You stare at the message. Of course he is. The Islanders are a tough, veteran team. It’s the first half of a back-to-back. It’s the logical choice. But a knot of disappointment tightens in your gut anyway. The next game, the second half of the back-to-back, is in Boston.

You: Go get ‘em. Be great.

Demmer: Don’t you get it?

You: Get what?

Demmer: He’s giving you Boston. On purpose. Your homecoming.

You read the text again. And again. Demko is right. Foote could have easily started you here, against the Isles, and given Demko the more prestigious Saturday night game in Boston against the Bruins. But he didn't. He was giving you your stage. The city where you became a star. The city where you fought the NCAA and won.

A fresh wave of nerves, far more potent than anything you felt in Dallas, crashes over you.

The next day, you watch from the bench as the Canucks play a hard, heavy game against the Islanders, ultimately losing 2-1 in a shootout. Demko is brilliant, but the team looks gassed. After the game, on the short flight to Boston, the mood is subdued.

Quinn slides into the empty seat next to you. “You good?” He asks, his voice low.

“Yeah,” you say, a little too quickly. “Just tired.”

“Bullshit,” he says, not unkindly. “You’re thinking about tomorrow.”

You turn to look at him. He’s got that look on his face, the analytical one he gets when he’s reading a play. Right now, he’s reading you.

“It’s just another game,” you try, the words feeling hollow even to you.

“No, it’s not,” he counters gently. “It’s Boston. It’s where you played college. It’s where you became … you. Don’t pretend it’s not a big deal. It’s okay for it to be a big deal.”

His understanding, the simple act of him acknowledging the pressure you feel, makes the knot in your stomach loosen. “There’s going to be a lot of people there,” you admit quietly. “People I know.”

“Good,” he says, a small smile playing on his lips. “Then we’d better put on a show for them.” He bumps his shoulder against yours. “Don’t worry. We’ve got your back.”

***

TD Garden is electric. From the moment you step onto the ice for warmups, you can feel it. It’s different from the hostility in Calgary or the nervous energy in Dallas. This is … love.

You see them immediately. Scattered throughout the lower bowl, hundreds of them, maybe thousands. Boston University jerseys. Terrier red mixed in with the Bruins’ black and gold. You see signs. ‘WE STILL LOVE OUR GOALIE.’ ‘ONCE A TERRIER, ALWAYS A TERRIER.’ BOSTON, BE NICE TO HER!’

As you skate your laps, a chant starts, low at first, then growing in volume. It’s not a Canucks chant, or a Bruins chant. It’s your name. The sound echoes through the cavernous arena, a surreal, overwhelming wave of affection from a crowd that is supposed to be rooting against you. You tap your heart with your glove, a lump forming in your throat.

At the other end of the ice, Quinn is leaning against the boards, watching you, a curious smile on his face. He’s never seen anything like this. An opposing player being serenaded by the home crowd before the game has even started.

The game itself is a war. The Bruins are one of the best teams in the league, and they play a heavy, punishing style. The tired Canucks are on their heels from the opening faceoff. The first period is a siege. You face nineteen shots. Nineteen.

You are a wall.

You stone Fraser Minten on a breakaway, refusing to bite on his deke and smothering the puck with your pads. You make a lightning-fast glove save on a David Pastrnak one-timer from the circle, a shot that has beaten the best goalies in the world. The Bruins fans groan in frustration, but their groans are mixed with a loud, appreciative roar from your personal cheering section.

You get lucky, too. A shot rings off the post with a deafening PING that vibrates through your bones. A puck trickles through your five-hole, but Hronek is there to sweep it off the goal line at the last second.

You go into the first intermission tied 0-0. Your teammates skate by your net, tapping your pads, their expressions a mixture of relief and awe.

“Just hang in there,” Quinn says as you skate to the tunnel. “We’ll get our legs under us. You’re keeping us alive.”

In the locker room, Foote is calm. “They gave us their best punch, and we’re still standing,” he says, his eyes finding yours. “Because our goalie is a damn rock star. Now, let’s get our heads out of our asses and go play some hockey. Let’s reward her.”

The second period is a different story. The Canucks come out with a renewed energy. Five minutes in, Pettersson threads a perfect pass to Garland, who rips a shot past Jeremy Swayman. 1-0 Canucks. The building falls silent, except for the pocket of Terrier fans who erupt in joyous celebration.

The lead is short-lived. The Bruins come back with a vengeance. Elias Lindholm crashes the net, creating chaos. In the ensuing scramble, the puck squirts out to Pavel Zacha, who flips it over your outstretched pad. 1-1.

The game is a track meet from there. Brock Boeser scores on a wicked wrister. Charlie McAvoy ties it for the Bruins on a blast from the point that you never saw through a screen. It’s 2-2 heading into the third.

The third period is the most intense twenty minutes of your life. Every save feels like the most important save you’ve ever made. The crowd is a single, roaring entity, living and dying with every shot. With five minutes left, the Bruins get a power play. It feels like the air has been sucked out of the building. This is it. The breaking point.

They set up in the zone. Pastrnak with the puck on his stick is a terrifying sight. He winds up for a one-timer. You slide across, every fiber of your being focused on that puck. He fires. You get your blocker on it, the puck deflecting high up into the protective netting. Faceoff.

They win the draw. The puck goes back to the point, then over to Morgan Geekie. He fakes a shot, freezing you for a split second, and slides a pass across the royal road to a wide-open Pastrnak. The net is empty. It’s a sure goal.

You don’t think. You explode. You push off your right skate with all the force you have left, throwing your body, your glove, your entire existence across the crease. The puck is already on its way. You feel a sharp, stinging impact in the webbing of your glove, your arm fully extended, parallel to the ice.

You’ve got it.

The entire arena, Bruins fans and your fans alike, rises to its feet with a single, unified roar of disbelief. It’s the save of the year. It’s the save of your life.

The Canucks kill off the rest of the penalty, feeding off the energy. The horn sounds. 2-2. You’re going to overtime. You collapse onto your knees in the crease, head bowed, utterly spent.

Overtime is a frantic, chaotic blur of 3-on-3 hockey. There are chances at both ends. You stop a 2-on-1. Swayman stones Pettersson. Finally, Quinn gets the puck in his own end. He sees a seam and takes off. He flies through the neutral zone, his skates barely seeming to touch the ice. He cuts around a Bruins defenseman, the move so slick it looks like the other player is standing still. He’s in alone on Swayman. He fakes the shot, pulling the puck to his backhand and sliding it gently, perfectly, into the open net.

The Canucks win.

The bench empties, a wave of white jerseys flooding the ice and heading straight for Quinn. But he just skates past them, his arms raised in triumph, and comes directly to you. He crashes into your crease, wrapping you in a hug that lifts you off your skates.

“You did it!” He yells into your mask, his voice filled with pure, unadulterated joy. “You stole that game! You were unbelievable!”

The rest of the team piles on, a joyous scrum of exhaustion and victory. When they finally disperse, you’re named the first star of the game, to absolutely no one’s surprise. You skate your lap, saluting the crowd, your heart feeling like it’s going to burst.

As you head towards the tunnel, you see them. Pressed up against the glass is a sea of familiar faces. Your old BU teammates, the ones who are still on the team. They’re banging on the glass, their faces split with massive grins.

“Y/N!” Yells your old defenseman, a big kid named Mick. “Get over here!”

You skate over, a huge smile breaking across your face. “You guys came!”

“Are you kidding me?” Shouts your old backup goalie, Mathieu. “We wouldn’t miss this for the world! You were insane!”

You open the gate at the end of the bench and step out onto the walkway. You’re immediately swallowed by them. They’re all talking at once, a chaotic, loving cacophony.

“That save on Pastrnak! What was that?”

“You’re buying drinks for the whole team for the next year!”

“Coach watches every game from his office, he screams so loud I always think he’s gonna have a heart attack!”

Mick, who is about six-foot-two and built like a lumberjack, grabs you and lifts you effortlessly onto his shoulders. You yelp in surprise, your helmet still on, as the whole group cheers. They’re parading you around the small concrete walkway like you just won the national championship all over again. It’s loud, it’s chaotic, it’s ridiculous, and it’s the purest form of love you’ve ever felt.

You’re laughing so hard you can barely breathe, your body aching, your heart soaring. This is your family. The boys you went to war with for four years. The ones who saw you cry after a tough loss and who celebrated with you after a huge win. For a moment, you’re not an NHL goalie. You’re just their goalie.

***

Down the long, sterile tunnel that leads to the visitors’ locker room, Quinn is leaning against the concrete wall. He’s watching the scene unfold at the edge of the ice, a small, genuine smile on his face. He sees the joy, the friendship. He sees you, beaming, being hoisted onto some giant defenseman’s shoulders. He’s happy for you. Truly.

But there’s something else, too. A strange, unfamiliar pang in his chest. It’s a feeling of distance. He’s watching you be a part of a world he has no access to, a history he wasn’t there for. He sees the easy way they touch you, the inside jokes he can’t hear, the shared history that radiates from the group. And he feels … separate. An outsider.

“She’s not going to see you from all the way back here.”

Quinn jumps slightly. Petey has materialized beside him, silent as a ghost. He’s leaning against the wall in a similar pose, his intense eyes also fixed on the scene.

“I’m not trying to be seen,” Quinn says, trying to sound casual. “Just giving her a minute. It’s a big night for her.”

“Yes,” Petey says, his gaze unwavering. “She is very popular.”

Just then, Brock strolls up, a towel around his neck and a wide, easy-going grin on his face. “What are we lookin’ at, boys? Oh, wow. Look at that. They’re treating her like she’s the Stanley Cup.”

“She basically won it for us tonight,” Quinn mutters, his eyes still locked on you. He sees the big defenseman finally set you down, only for you to be pulled into a dozen different hugs.

“You have a funny look on your face,” Petey observes, his tone flat and analytical.

“I do not have a funny look on my face,” Quinn retorts, a little too quickly. “I’m happy for her. That’s my ‘happy for my teammate’ face.”

Brock snorts. “Dude, no offense, but that is not your ‘happy for your teammate’ face. That’s your ‘I just watched Garland take the last donut’ face.”

“I’m not …” Quinn starts, then stops, frowning. He can’t quite name the feeling himself. It’s a weird, protective, possessive knot in his stomach. He hates it.

“You look like a little puppy who has been left in the car,” Petey adds, with absolutely zero malice. It is a simple statement of fact, as he sees it.

“I do not look like a puppy!” Quinn snaps, finally tearing his gaze away from the celebration to glare at his teammates. “What is wrong with you two? I’m the captain. She’s my goalie. I’m just … watching out for her.”

Brock’s grin widens. He exchanges a look with Petey, who allows the barest hint of a smirk to touch his lips. They know. Oh, they know.

“Right. ‘Watching out for her’,” Brock says, making air quotes with his fingers. “From fifty feet away. Behind two security guards. Very effective protection, Cap.”

“You are jealous,” Petey says, the words landing with the simple finality of a judge’s gavel.

“I am not jealous!” Quinn insists, his face flushing. The accusation hits a little too close to home. “Jealous of what? A bunch of college kids? That’s ridiculous.”

“It is not ridiculous,” Petey counters, pushing off the wall. “They know a part of her you do not. They are lifting her up. You wish you were the one lifting her up.”

Quinn opens his mouth to argue, but nothing comes out. Because, in a way the quiet Swede couldn't possibly understand the full scope of, he's right. It’s not about lifting you physically. It’s about being part of that inner circle, about being the one who gets to share in that uninhibited joy.

“Whatever, guys,” he finally mumbles, turning to head towards the locker room. “I’m gonna go shower.”

“Don’t want her to see your sad puppy face when she gets back?” Brock calls after him, laughing.

Just as Quinn is about to round the corner, he hears your voice, bright and breathless, echoing down the tunnel.

“Quinn! Wait up!”

He freezes, caught. He turns around as you jog to catch up, your face flushed and glowing, a smile so wide it looks like it hurts. Your old teammates are waving from the edge of the ice before being shooed away by security. Petey and Brock are standing there, identical looks of smug amusement on their faces.

“Did you see that?” You say, completely oblivious to the conversation that just took place. “That was my whole team! Mick put me on his shoulders! Can you believe it? I think my ribs are bruised.”

Quinn has to physically reset his face from ‘flustered and annoyed’ to ‘happy and supportive.’ He shoves the strange, confusing feelings down, deep down.

“Yeah, I saw,” he says, and he’s relieved to find his voice is normal. He even manages a genuine smile. “Looked like fun. You deserved it. You deserved every second of that tonight.”

“It was the best,” you say, still buzzing. You look up at him, your eyes shining with leftover adrenaline and pure happiness. “Thanks for scoring that goal, by the way. You kind of saved my butt.”

“Nah,” he says, his smile softening as he looks at you. “You saved ours about twenty times first.”

He gives a pointed look over your shoulder at Brock and Petey, who are failing to hide their laughter. “Come on. Let’s go. These two are weirdos.”

He puts a hand lightly on your back, guiding you towards the locker room, away from the prying eyes of his far-too-observant teammates. And as you walk beside him, still chattering excitedly about the game and your friends, he feels that strange, possessive pang in his chest again. But this time, it’s a little less confusing. And it feels a little more like home.

***

The months after the Boston game are a crucible. The easy comfort between you and Quinn deepens into something more charged, a low-voltage current that hums just beneath the surface of every interaction. It’s in the way his eyes find yours across a crowded locker room after a big win. It’s in the way you start saving the seat next to you for him on the plane without even thinking about it. It’s in the lingering moments after practice when you’re the last two on the ice, him feeding you pucks for one-timers, the only sound the scrape of your skates and the echo of the puck off the boards, a rhythm that feels more intimate than any conversation.

He imagines asking you out a thousand times.

He plays the scenarios in his head on a loop. A casual coffee on an off-day. A well-planned dinner during a road trip. A simple, direct question after a practice. Each version is smooth, confident, charming. Each version ends with you smiling and saying yes. And each version evaporates into a cloud of anxiety the moment he’s actually near you.

The timing is never right. The stakes are too high. What if you say no? What if it makes things weird? What if it messes with the delicate chemistry of a team that is, against all odds, scratching and clawing its way into playoff contention? So he says nothing, and the unspoken thing between you grows, a tangible presence in the room.

April arrives, cold and cruel. The final two weeks of the regular season are a gauntlet. Every game is a playoff game. The city of Vancouver is holding its collective breath. You, the surprising Canucks, are on the bubble, locked in a brutal three-way race for the final wild-card spot.

The second-to-last game of the season is at home, against the Vegas Golden Knights. The math is simple and devastating. A win, in any fashion, and you clinch a playoff spot. A loss, and you need a miracle on the final day. The pressure is a physical weight, pressing down on the entire city.

Demko gets the start. Of course he does. He’s the number one, the Vezina candidate, the man you trust with the season on the line. Your job is to be ready, to be the best teammate you can be from the bench, to open the door and have a towel ready.

The game is a masterpiece of tension. Rogers Arena is a shaking, roaring cauldron of blue and green. Every save Demko makes, every blocked shot, every hit, is met with a deafening roar. The first period ends 0-0. The second period is just as tight, a chess match played at a hundred miles per hour.

And then, disaster.

With three minutes left in the second, there’s a collision in the crease. A Vegas forward drives the net, gets tangled with Hronek, and they both go crashing into Demko. It doesn’t look malicious, just a hockey play gone wrong. But Demko stays down.

The arena falls silent. You’re on your feet, peering over the boards, your heart in your throat. He tries to get up, and his left leg buckles. The trainer is on the ice. After a tense few minutes, Demko is helped off, unable to put any weight on his leg. He gives you a grim nod as he passes the bench.

Ian Clark is at your side before Demko is even off the ice. “You’re in,” he says, his voice eerily calm. “Stay square. Breathe. You’ve done this a hundred times.”

Your blood runs cold. You have to go in. Cold. Into a 0-0 game, with the entire season on the line. Your mind is a screaming siren of panic, but your body goes on autopilot. You do the stretches, take the sips of water. You are a machine built for this, even if the ghost inside is terrified.

You step onto the ice. The crowd, which had been silent with worry, gives you a tentative, hopeful cheer. You skate to the net, give it a few taps with your stick.

You survive the final three minutes of the period. The horn sounds. In the locker room, the mood is grim. Demko is already in the trainer’s room. Foote is pacing.

“Listen up!” He barks. “Nothing changes! We feel for Demmer, but we’ve got a game to win. And we have all the confidence in the world in the person in that net.” He points his clipboard directly at you. “We’ve seen what she can do. Now let’s go out there and play our asses off for twenty minutes and get this goddamn thing done.”

The third period is the most intense, high-stakes hockey you have ever played. It’s a track meet. The Golden Knights, sensing blood in the water, come at you in waves. You make a save on Jack Eichel. You stop a point-blank shot from Mark Stone. You are no longer thinking, you are pure reaction, a vessel of instinct and muscle memory.

With ninety seconds left on the clock, the game is still tied 0-0. And then, a turnover. A bad pinch by a defenseman at the Vegas blue line. Suddenly, it’s a 2-on-0. William Karlsson and Mitch Marner are streaking down the ice, all alone, with only you between them and the Canucks’ playoff death.

Quinn is the lone man back, skating for his life, but he won’t get there in time. The arena holds its breath. This is it. This is the season.

Karlsson carries the puck, his eyes locked on Marner. He knows you have to respect his shot. You hold your ground, refusing to cheat to the pass. He slides it across at the last possible second. A perfect pass. A backdoor tap-in. Marner has the entire right side of the net empty, a gaping four-foot by six-foot invitation.

He one-touches it.

You have already pushed off. It’s not a calculated move, it’s an act of pure desperation. You throw your body across the crease, your stick fully extended along the ice, your glove hand reaching, reaching, reaching for something that seems impossibly far away.

You feel it before you see it. A faint vibration up the shaft of your stick. The puck, ticketed for the back of the net, hits the paddle of your outstretched stick and deflects up, over the crossbar, and out of play.

The buzzer for a TV timeout sounds a second later.

The sound that erupts from the crowd is not a cheer. It’s a sonic boom of disbelief. A primal roar of catharsis. Your teammates are staring, mouths agape. Quinn, who had dove in a last-ditch effort, just lifts his head from the ice and stares at you, his eyes wide.

You just lie there on the ice for a second, your heart trying to beat its way out of your chest. You did it. You saved it.

The team skates over to you, a jumble of white jerseys. They’re banging your helmet, screaming your name. “Unbelievable!” “Holy shit!” “You’re a maniac!”

Quinn is the last to arrive. He skates right up to your crease, his hair matted with sweat. He’s looking at you with an expression you’ve never seen before. It’s awe. It’s relief. It’s something so raw and open it makes your breath catch in your throat. He leans in close, his mouth right next to the earhole of your mask, the arena noise fading into a dull roar around his voice.

“That was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen,” he breathes, his voice shaky with adrenaline. And then he says the words that shatter the world. “Go out with me.”

You freeze. The blood drains from your face. You are certain you misheard him. The roar of the crowd, the adrenaline, the exhaustion — it has to be a hallucination.

“What?” You manage to say, your voice a faint croak.

“After the season,” he says, his eyes, wide and intense, pleading with yours through the bars of your mask. “One date. Please.”

The referee is blowing his whistle, gesturing for the players to get ready for the faceoff. Foote is screaming from the bench. You have to finish the most important ninety seconds of your season, and your brain has just short-circuited.

You don’t know what to do. You don’t know what to say. So you just give a single, tiny, bewildered nod.

He squeezes your shoulder, his eyes never leaving yours, and then he skates away to the faceoff circle. You’re left alone in your crease, your mind a complete blank. Did that just happen? Did the captain of the Vancouver Canucks just ask me out during a TV timeout after I made a save?

Somehow, you get through the rest of the game. You get through overtime. You get to a shootout. And you stop all three Vegas shooters stone cold. The Canucks win. They’re going to the playoffs. The arena is pure bedlam. You are mobbed, the hero, the savior. But all you can think about is him.

***

The locker room is a joyous, chaotic asylum. Champagne and beer are spraying everywhere. The music is so loud the walls are vibrating. Players are hugging, screaming, celebrating a hard-fought, year-long battle finally won. You are at the center of it, guys lifting you up, chanting your name.

But your eyes keep finding him across the room. He’s celebrating, too, but every few seconds, his gaze meets yours. There’s a question in his eyes. An apology. A hope.

An hour later, the room has finally cleared out. The music is off. The puddles of beer are being mopped up by the equipment staff. Most of the players have left to meet their families. It’s just you and him. You’re sitting in your stall, still in your undershirt and hockey pants. He’s sitting in his, a few stalls down. The silence is deafening.

He’s the first to break it. He gets up and walks over, pulling a rolling stool with him. He sits down in front of you, his knees almost touching yours.

“Hey,” he says softly.

“Hey,” you reply, your voice barely a whisper.

“I am so, so sorry,” he says, and the sincerity in his voice is overwhelming. “That was … I don’t know what that was. I didn’t plan it. I swear. It just … came out. My brain shut off and my mouth kept working. It was the stupidest possible time to do that, and I’m sorry.”

You just nod, looking down at your hands.

“I’ve wanted to ask you for months,” he continues, his voice low and earnest. “Since the fall. I kept trying to find the right time, the perfect moment, and I just … I kept chickening out. And then you made that save, and it was just … you were incredible. And I …” He trails off, running a hand through his damp hair. “I’m an idiot.”

You finally look up at him. You see the genuine remorse in his eyes, the nervousness. And you know you have to say what’s in your heart.

“Quinn,” you start, your voice trembling slightly. “You know what my life has been like. You know what I’ve had to fight for. The headlines, the lawsuit, the commentators … it was always ‘the girl goalie.’ For years, that’s all I was. I fought so hard, I worked so hard, for people to just see ‘the goalie.’ For my play to be the only thing that mattered.”

You take a shaky breath. “If I start dating the captain … I become a story again. A different story. A cliché. ‘The first woman in the NHL finds love with her captain.’ It sounds like the plot of a bad movie. It’s not fair, but it’s the truth. People will talk. They’ll say I didn’t earn my place, that I had a distraction. It threatens to undermine everything I’ve ever worked for.”

Tears well up in your eyes, and you hate it. You hate feeling this vulnerable.

He doesn’t say anything for a long moment. He just listens, his eyes never leaving yours. He doesn’t try to interrupt or argue. He just lets you speak your truth. When you’re finished, he reaches out and gently, tentatively, takes your hand. His touch is warm and steady.

“I hear you,” he says, his voice full of a quiet strength. “I get it. And it is completely and totally unfair that you have to carry that weight. That you have to even think about those things. What you’ve accomplished, what you’ve earned … it stands on its own. It’s historic. Nothing and no one can ever undermine that. Especially not me.”

He squeezes your hand. “But it’s also not fair for you to have to build a wall around your life because of what a bunch of idiots with microphones might say. We can’t let them write our story, Y/N. That’s their narrative. We have to be able to write our own.”

He looks at you, his expression so sincere it makes your heart ache.

“One date,” he says, his voice dropping to a near-whisper. “That’s all I’m asking. After the playoffs are over. We’ll go somewhere quiet. No cameras. No jerseys. Just you and me. And if it’s weird, or if it feels wrong, or if it’s just not right for you, we go right back to being teammates and friends. And I will never, ever bring it up again. I swear on my life. But …” He hesitates, his thumb stroking the back of your hand. “What if it’s not weird? What if it’s great?”

You look into his eyes, and you see your future. Not the one the reporters will write, but the one you want. A future where you can be the goalie, the trailblazer, and a person who gets to be happy. You see a future with this man, who waited, who respected you, who fought for you, and who just laid his heart at your feet.

A slow smile spreads across your face. The tears are gone, replaced by a feeling of profound, heart-stopping hope.

“Okay, Hughes,” you say, your voice clear and steady. “One date.”

The relief that washes over his face is so absolute it’s like watching the sun come out from behind the clouds. He breaks into a grin so wide and boyish it makes you laugh.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” you confirm, laughing. “Now, are you going to let go of my hand, or are we going to sit here all night?”

He laughs, too, a sound of pure joy, and reluctantly lets go. You both stand up, the quiet locker room suddenly filled with a new, fragile, wonderful energy.

You walk out of the room together, side-by-side. As you step into the main hallway that leads to the players’ parking lot, you see a strange scene unfolding.

Clustered near the exit are Petey, Brock, Garland, Hronek, Joshua, and at least five other players. They’re all gathered around Demko, who is leaning against the wall with his injured leg propped up on a chair. And every single one of them is pulling out their wallet and handing cash to Demko, their faces a mixture of disgust and grudging respect.

Demko is raking in a pile of twenties and fifties, a smug, triumphant grin plastered on his face. “Pay up, boys,” he says cheerfully. “The bookie always wins. Told you it’d happen after a season-defining moment of emotional vulnerability.”

Quinn stops dead in his tracks. You stop with him, staring at the bizarre transaction.

“Are you kidding me?” Quinn says, his voice a mixture of disbelief and horror. “There was a betting pool?”

Demko looks up, completely unfazed. He gestures to Quinn with the wad of cash in his hand. “Of course, there was a pool. What do you think we talk about on road trips? Defensive pairings?”

Brock claps a dejected hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “Don’t feel bad, man. I lost a hundred bucks. I had ‘day after the end-of-season party’.”

“I had ‘during bye week’,” Garland grumbles, handing a fifty to Demko. “I thought you had more game than this, Huggy.”

Petey shakes his head, his expression deadpan as he pays his debt. “I was logical. I predicted he would ask after the first playoff series win. I did not account for him being a complete lunatic.”

Demko points a thumb at Quinn. “That’s where you went wrong, Petey. You gotta factor in the crazy. I was the only one who bet on ‘in the middle of the most important game of the season immediately following an impossible save.’ High risk, high reward.”

You look at Quinn. His face is the color of a ripe tomato. He looks mortified. And then you start to laugh. Not a small chuckle, but a full, deep, belly laugh. The absurdity of it all, the tension of the last few hours, the ridiculous, supportive, wonderful stupidity of your team — it all comes bubbling out.

Your laughter is infectious. Quinn looks at you, then at his teammates, who are all grinning now, and a reluctant smile spreads across his face. He shakes his head, defeated but happy.

This is it. This is the story. Not the one the media will write. This one. The real one. Messy, and chaotic, and dramatic, and funny. It’s yours. And as Quinn takes your hand again, this time with no hesitation at all, you know, with a certainty that settles deep in your bones, that this is only the first chapter.

***

Two Years Later

The air in the arena is thick enough to breathe. It’s Game 6 of the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The weight of an entire city, desperate and dreaming, rests squarely on your shoulders. Two years ago, that pressure would have terrified you. Now, it’s just fuel.

The ‘you’ of today is not the same person who stepped onto the ice for that first start in Dallas. This version is etched from playoff wars and Vezina nominations. The ‘rookie sensation’ and ‘female phenom’ headlines have long since faded, replaced by simpler, more powerful words: ‘elite,’ ‘unflappable,’ ‘franchise goalie.’ You are the starter. The number one. The last line of defense for a team, and a captain, that you love.

Demko is still here, your partner and best friend, a formidable 1B in the best tandem in the league. But tonight, this series, this run — it’s your net.

The game against the Los Angeles Kings is a street fight on ice. It’s 2-1 for you in the third period, and every inch of ice is contested with a slash or a cross-check. They crash your net relentlessly, a swarm of orange and black, trying to break you through sheer force of will.

There’s a scramble in your crease. You make the initial save, but the rebound sits dangerously in the blue paint. You lunge, covering the puck with your glove a split second before a Kings forward can poke it home. The whistle blows, a shrill mercy in the chaos.

As you lie there, Joel Edmundson, a player who seems to exist purely to irritate, skates by and deliberately sprays you with a shower of ice shavings, right in the face. It’s a classic, infuriating act of disrespect.

The old you might have ignored it. The current you does not. You look up, your eyes locking with his through your mask, and you give him a slow, deliberate whack on the shin pads with the paddle of your stick. A clear message: Not in my house.

He snarls something at you. But he doesn't get to finish.

Because Quinn is there.

It’s not the frantic, furious rush of two years ago. This is something far more dangerous. It’s a cold, calculated arrival. He glides between you and Edmundson, a silent, blue-and-green wall. He doesn’t shove him at first. He just gets in his space, forcing him back, his eyes burning with an intensity that could peel paint.

“Are we doing this again, Joey?” Quinn’s voice is deceptively calm, a low rumble that cuts through the din. “You seem to forget the rules.”

“She’s a goalie, not the damn queen,” Edmundson spits back, trying to push past him.

Quinn’s hands come up, grabbing the front of Edmundson’s jersey. He shoves him back so hard the King stumbles. “She’s my goalie,” he says, his voice dropping to a near-whisper that’s more threatening than any shout. “And my only rule is that scum like you doesn’t get to breathe her air. Now get the hell out of the crease before I help you.”

A jolt, sharp and electric, goes through you. It’s not fear. It’s not even just gratitude anymore. It’s a dark, thrilling, proprietary feeling that is yours and his alone. Watching him, your captain, your partner, stand guard over you with that cold fire in his eyes … it’s a language only the two of you speak. Two years of this, of these moments, and it still lights a fuse deep inside you.

The referees move in, separating them before it can escalate further. As Quinn skates away from the scrum, he circles back past your net. He doesn't say a word. He just looks at you. His eyes, dark with leftover aggression and something else, something deeper, lock with yours. It’s a look that has nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with the hotel room that awaits you both in a few hours. A silent, searing promise.

You just give him a slow, deliberate nod, your heart hammering against your ribs for an entirely new reason.

***

An hour later, the locker room is vibrating with the joy of a 2-1 series-clinching win. You’re advancing to the Western Conference Final. The music is blasting, players are celebrating, the weight of the game replaced by the giddy anticipation of what’s to come.

You’re sitting in your stall, peeling off your drenched gear, when Quinn comes over. He leans against the stall beside yours, a towel slung around his neck, that intense look still lingering in his eyes.

“You okay?” He asks, his voice a low murmur meant only for you.

“Never better,” you reply, your own voice dropping to match his. You meet his gaze, and the noisy, crowded locker room melts away. There’s only him, the promise in his eyes, and the echo of that on-ice fire.

You are so lost in the moment that you don’t notice the audience you’ve gathered.

“Uh oh,” Garland says, not even trying to be quiet. He’s sitting across from you, taking off his skates. “Everybody see that? They’re making the eyes.”

Brock, sitting next to him, grins. “Yep. That’s the ‘Quinn played knight in shining armor’ look. It’s got its own gravitational pull.”

You feel a blush creep up your neck, but you can’t bring yourself to look away from Quinn. He just rolls his eyes at his teammates, a small, private smile playing on his lips. He’s used to it. They all are.

Garland sighs, a loud, dramatic sound that cuts through the music. He stands up and stretches, making sure he has the attention of the entire room.

“Alright, boys,” he announces, his voice booming. “Just a friendly reminder for everyone on the leadership group’s floor at the hotel …” He pauses for dramatic effect.

“I certainly hope you all brought your earplugs.”

The room explodes. A wave of laughter, catcalls, and stick taps echoes off the walls. You finally break eye contact with Quinn, burying your hot face in a towel, your shoulders shaking with laughter. You feel mortified and ridiculously, incandescently happy all at once.

Across the way, Quinn just shakes his head, a huge, unbothered grin spreading across his face. He picks up a crumpled roll of sock tape and wings it at Garland’s head, who ducks it with a triumphant laugh.

The noise eventually dies down. You look up from your towel. Your eyes find his again across the room. The laughter is gone, replaced by that same, searing look from the ice. It’s a look of profound love, of shared history, of a fierce, protective partnership that transcends the game. And it’s a look that still holds the silent, thrilling promise of later.

tongues collided. you couldn’t help it. quinn just returned from a week and a half long road trip, and you needed to show him how much you missed him. you barely waited for the man to cross the threshold before jumping into his arms. he greeted you with a smile and caught you. your legs instantly wrapped around his waist as he carried you through the apartment to settle down on the couch. now, on the sofa, your lips had yet to separate from each other as your mouth opened to invite him in.

his hands instantly found your hips, magnetized to your skin. though he had every inch of you memorized, he didn’t mind having a reminder after so long without you. his fingers slid under your sweatshirt – one that had gone missing from his collection a while ago – as he kneaded your flesh. the sound that escaped you made the long road trip worthwhile. being away from you was never easy, but seeing you so desperate and needy fueled the fire in his belly. he already knew he wouldn’t last long. slow to pull away, he had the cockiest smirk on his face, “fuck, my love, it’s almost like you missed me.”

you whined, trying to chase his lips. “q, please,” you whispered, “need you.” to add to your desperation, you ground your hips against his, begging for any friction. quinn wanted you, too. his cock was pressing against your center, and it was blissful yet not enough. you needed more. “quinny,” you leaned forward to kiss along his jaw, “couldn’t get you out of my head.” his head tilted back, inviting you to keep going. you eagerly took the invitation, instantly nipping at the sensitive flesh where his jaw and throat meant. you knew better than to leave a mark during the season, but that didn’t stop you from making the skin red. when quinn thought you were going too far, his hand squeezed your hips and pressed you down into his lap. the gasp that escaped you had him chuckling. “quinn, that’s not fair,” you huffed.

“all is fair in love and sex,” he smirked as you rolled your eyes. he captured your lips again without further complaint. he took the opportunity to gain an advantage and bit at your lips. it wasn’t a punishment, but he had no problem letting you know he was in control. it didn’t matter how needy you were. you were at his mercy, and he would remind you of that.

time stilled while you enjoyed your boyfriend’s presence. though you were only separated for a short while comparatively, a week and a half felt like a lifetime. you needed quinn like you needed water and air. you lived and breathed for him. when he was gone, you forgot how to breathe. it didn’t take long for you to feel wet, either. need mixed with pure arousal, and your panties were soaked through. you ground down once more, trying to entice quinn to take you to the bedroom. he got the hint, pushing you off of his lap slowly. he was ready to pull you into the bedroom and fuck you into the mattress until the sun rose. you stood, holding quinn’s hands to your hips. even as you walked to the bedroom, he would not let you go.

before you could begin the short journey to your bed, your heart sank to your stomach, and your cheeks flared. in your absence, you could see why you were so wet. a red stain was plastered over quinn’s bulge, painfully obvious on his light gray sweatpants. you froze, a deer in headlights, unable to stop staring. embarrassment pooled in your stomach, quickly replacing the feeling of arousal. usually, you kept meticulous records of your period. you liked to track your cycles so you wouldn’t be surprised in moments like this. how had you not remembered that your period was about to start? though you didn’t want to, you pushed quinn’s hands off of you. suddenly, you weren’t interested in being touched. “i-i’m so s-sorry.”

quinn’s hands dropped off of your hips immediately, respecting your space. “hey, my love, it’s alright. it happens,” he spoke calmly. throughout his career, he’d gotten blood out of several jerseys and shirts. this was no problem. “nothing that the laundry can’t get out.” his words offered reassurance. quinn wasn’t mad. your period was completely natural. there was nothing gross about it. “i’ll start a shower for you so you can clean up, okay? fresh sweats for us, and we can cuddle afterwards.”

you were still staring at the stain on quinn’s lap, not listening to him at all. he stood, hooking his index finger under your chin and tilting your head up to make eye contact. “baby, it’s not a big deal, okay?”

finally, you nodded, processing his words. a shower sounded nice. realization set in, and you felt disgusted. you couldn’t believe your body would betray you, and you wanted to crawl out of your skin. quinn’s thumb brushed over your cheek, caressing your face. his touch was tender, filled with love. he would do what he did best: take care of you.

you allowed quinn to take your hand, guiding you through the apartment and into the bathroom. though you didn’t mean to, your eyes watered. the man did not have to be so kind about your mess. your stomach flipped with embarrassment, yet quinn didn’t make you feel guilty for having your period. it was an accident, of course, so you had no control over your bodily functions. in the past, you had been shamed for having an accident like this, but quinn was working to make it better. he was thinking for you. it was a massive relief.

slowly, quinn helped you step out of your soiled sweatpants and panties. his hands still traced over your skin, unafraid of the mess. next, he lifted the sweatshirt over your head. though he wanted to be respectful of the circumstances, he couldn’t help but flick his eyes over your naked body, reveling in the sight. no matter what, he would always think you were beautiful. just as the thought entered his head, his gaze returned to your face. he reached up to capture your hair into one hand before grabbing one of your various hair ties from the vanity. he haphazardly put your hair up for you, knowing you hated going to bed with your hair wet. the less work you had to do, the better. the last step was to start the shower. he quietly leaned into the shower, adjusting the water temperature for you. you were always so particular about your shower temperature, but he would try to get it as close as possible.

with the water running, he turned his attention to you once more. “there you go, beautiful,” he praised, knowing you felt everything other than beauty. “take your time. i’m going to throw these clothes into the wash. i’ll be waiting for you,” he leaned forward to press a soft kiss to your forehead. “baby,” he pulled your attention, “i promise it’s okay.”

with that, you finally moved from your spot and climbed into the shower. through the door, you saw quinn gather your pile of dirty clothes from the floor and disappear out of the bathroom. relief washed over you like water. your boyfriend was quick to react and rectify the situation. your embarrassment was yours and yours only. there wasn’t a shred of embarrassment from the man. he could’ve made a stink about your period, throwing his disgust in your face. however, he didn’t do any of that. he immediately launched into how to make you feel better. you couldn’t help but think you didn’t deserve it. you were instantly in the shower, being pampered by quinn hughes.

you washed up, taking your time, as quinn asked you to. the water felt warm, a perfect temperature. you smiled at the thought that quinn nailed it on the first try. it was just another way he reminded you that you were important to him. he was nothing shy of amazing. it was a breath of fresh air. no one compared to him, and he’s essentially ruined any other man for you. quinn made you feel loved and safe. you could have an accident and know that you were still priority number one in his mind. that was so important to you. accidents and mistakes could happen, and it was a safe space to do so. truly, it was unconditional love.

turning off the shower, you slid the glass door open to find a towel hung on the hook. it wasn’t there before you stepped into the shower. you glanced around and found a fresh set of sweats on the counter. quinn has snuck in while you were in the shower to deliver clean clothes and a towel. a smile spread across your face as your heart fluttered. you wrapped the plush towel around you as you grabbed the clothes left out for you. to your surprise, you lifted your new pair of underwear to find a pad already in place. you blushed as you thought about the lack of secondhand embarrassment from quinn as he unwrapped and placed a pad on your underwear for you. it didn’t take you long to dry off, eager to curl up in bed with your boyfriend. his warm body next to yours sounded like heaven on earth.

you emerged from the bathroom to see quinn resting on the bed, in his own fresh pair of sweatpants. he was shirtless, scrolling on his phone. as soon as the door opened, he placed it onto the bedside table. you had his full attention.

“there you are, my love,” he smiled, lifting the blanket for you to crawl in next to him.

you took the invitation without a second thought. you lay on your side, quinn’s chest sturdy against your back. he threw the blanket over you, smiling, and placed a soft kiss against your exposed neck. without asking, his arms wrapped around you, and his hands rested on your stomach. his warmth would fight off the inevitable cramps, but in case it wasn’t enough, he had your teddy bear warmie on standby. it was the least he could do while you went through the worst week every single month.

quinn felt your body relax, and it wasn’t long before your breathing evened out. “good night, my love,” he pressed his lips to your shoulder and nestled into the bed, falling into his own sleep.

that’s how you stayed all night, surrounded by love, warmth, and quinn hughes.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

as always, dedicated to @definitelynotdomanique for listening to the whorish thots first and letting me run ideas past you c: i love you forever baby girl

tag list: @kodzuvk @miserymeats @hodgepodge-musings @barneswinchester

You were pretty sure he broke every traffic rule trying to get you there, but you were too delirious to make sense of anything.

There were flashes—headlights streaking past, the sharp sound of honking, Quinn muttering curses under his breath. His knuckles were white against the steering wheel, gripping it so tightly it looked like he was trying to keep the entire world from falling apart. Everything blurred together, a mess of fragmented memories you couldn’t quite piece together. Then—hospital lights, the sterile chill of the emergency room, the sharp sting of antiseptic in the air. Unfamiliar hands everywhere, pressing, prodding, asking you questions you couldn’t answer to, trying to assess you. 

But through it all, there was Quinn.

You could hear him above everyone else, snapping at nurses, demanding someone check your vitals. You see a brief scene of him hovering so close they had to physically push him back. He only relented—barely—when they hooked you up to an IV, but even then, his eyes stayed locked on the bag, on the heart rate monitor, almost as if he didn’t trust them to do their job fast enough.

You see him pacing, checking your chart, running a hand through his already messy hair before he all but rips open the curtain to leave the small station they’d set up for you in the emergency room. You hear faint voices coming from outside as he pries them for updates. You hear muffled sounds of him pulling rank when they enter the room. Leveraging whatever he could to get information out of them until someone actually listened. Until they moved quicker, until you got better faster.

“C’mon, I’ll get you guys good tickets to the next Canucks game—just get them in a room.”

“Sir, we’re doing the best we can, but the combination of dehydration and exhaustion isn’t something to overlook. Especially with a fever starting to set in.”

Quinn groaned, a sound of pure impatience. “Then at least get them out of this damn hallway. Somewhere quiet where they can actually rest.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

More muffled voices. A heated back-and-forth. You couldn’t focus on it, the exhaustion pulling you under.

The next thing you knew, you were moving. Or maybe the bed was.

Where? You didn’t know. But sleep was already dragging you down before you could figure it out.

Finally, finally, your eyes flutter open. The room is hazy, the fluorescent lights buzzing faintly above you, but you're awake. Awake enough to function.

“Quinny,” your voice is hoarse, barely above a whisper, but it’s enough. He’s at your side instantly, like he was just waiting for a sign, any sign, that you were still with him.

His touch is gentle, the back of his hand brushing your forehead, checking for any lingering fever before his fingers find yours. He links them together like he’s afraid to let go, pressing a firm kiss to your knuckles. Like he needs the contact to ground himself.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters, his voice low and strained. “Don’t do that again.”

You blink up at him, still dazed, but the sheer worry in his expression makes your chest ache. His jaw is tight, shoulders tense like he’s still running on the adrenaline of getting you here. Like he hasn’t let himself breathe properly until now.

“Come here,” you murmur, barely able to lift your hand, but reaching for him anyway. “Please.”

He exhales sharply, like he wants to argue, but one look at you, and it’s over. He doesn’t hesitate, just climbs into the impossibly small hospital bed without a second thought.

It wasn’t meant for two people, but he makes it work, shifting until you’re tucked against his chest, his arms caging you in, careful of the IV in your arm. You feel the weight of his body, the warmth of him, and suddenly, everything feels a little less cold.

“They didn’t even want to give you a proper bed,” he huffs against your hair, his grip tightening like he’s afraid you’ll disappear again. “Had to make a fucking scene.”

You smile weakly, pressing your cheek against his hoodie. “Of course you did.”

Quinn lets out a breath, finally, finally relaxing for the first time since you collapsed. His fingers trace absentminded circles on your back, soothing, grounding. “Next time, just drink the damn water,” he mutters, and you can almost hear the pout in his voice.

“And get some sleep,” he adds, softer this time, like he knows you’re already slipping under again.

You hum, your body melting into his, exhaustion pulling you under. But as long as his arms are around you, you figure you’ll be okay.

"when am i not?"

that was a great question you proposed, even if you were being rhetorical. you always find yourself here. after a long, tiring day you seem to gravitate towards his apartment. on your good days, too, when you have exciting news you find yourself there searching for him. there was a spare toothbrush right next to his you’ve claimed as your own. your shoes had it’s own place on the rack by the door. your coat had a hanger. your keys sat next to his in a glass bowl. if anyone were to ask, you’d claim his apartment to be your second home.

you sit yourself back down on the couch after letting sam know joaquin’s whereabouts. your legs fold up beside you, draping a blanket across your lap to warm your cold limbs back up. he found his way to the couch with you, securing his spot on the other end, leaning back casually. his eyes rested on the tv in front of you two. the show was too intriguing to take your attention away from it, not until you heard the bathroom door creak open, joaquin’s footsteps creaking the floorboards beneath him. his head peaked around the corner to find the scene in the living room.

with a towel wrapped around his waist, he let out a small huff through his nose. it took everything in you not to let your eyes travel down to his damp, toned chest. his lips met your temple as he neared, bending down just slightly to reach your level. he did this like it was the most casual thing in the world.

“what did i say about letting strays in?” he questions with a small smile. you crack a smile, too, eyes shimmering up at him as you make eye contact briefly.

“hilarious,” sam deadpans, interrupting the moment. “go put on some clothes so i can talk to you.”

—

you found yourself falling into a rhythm with joaquin. greetings were accompanied by cheek kisses, hugs lingered longer than they do with others. days with him were never dull. still, you always said that he was your friend. your best friend, sure, but you always introduce him as your friend. cause that’s what you’ve always been to each other.

—

some days all you could do was go home and collapse onto your bed. your sheets were always so warm and welcoming. a fresh set of pjs and a shower was all you needed before you crawled into bed. your head was heavy when it hits your soft pillows, eyes drooping on impact like a sedative. even your phone couldn’t entertain you, your exhaustion depriving you of your endless scrolling. you discard of your phone to your nightstand after hooking it to its charge.

after switching off your lamp, you let your eyes flutter shut in relief. there wasn’t much that could tear you away from your descent into slumber, you thought, until you heard some shuffling coming from your living room. you pry one of your eyes open as you listen in, searching the darkness as you freeze. a wave of relief washed over you the moment you heard mumbling coming from the one person you gave a key to. his footsteps found your bedroom, coming to a stop as he creaks your door open slowly. he doesn’t say a word when he shuts it behind him, tiptoeing his way towards your bed. you lift up your sheets without question. he slips into bed right next to you, settling down like he’s done it a million times before.

“long day?” you hardly whisper out.

“yeah,” he affirms in a small voice, laying shoulder to shoulder with you. “didn’t wanna be alone.”

“you never have to be,” you tell him. as long as you’re away, you’ll stand by that promise.

—

the next morning, you two get ready together in a dance. he goes one way, you head the other in an instant. no toes were stepped on and only one shoulder bump occurred, two less than usual. you leaned against the kitchen counter as you nibbled on your bagel, giving him his space to make himself some much needed coffee. without you noticing, your eyes fixated on your phone, joaquin came towards you wordlessly. what caught your attention was his gentle fingers wrapping around your wrist, holding you steady. his mouth came down to take a bite of your bagel without asking. you didn’t even bother to argue. you let him take his bite, and in return, he made you a cup of coffee.

—

what brought your attention to how odd your friendship was with joaquin was your girl friends. one late night, after a few too many drinks and a mediocre karaoke session, you found yourself heading home. you were ordering yourself an uber, still sat in the booth you’d been occupying all night. you hadn’t realized one of your friends was glaring over your shoulder, eyeing up what you were doing in their own drunken haze. she couldn’t help but giggle a little, leaning into your body slightly as she takes a better look, focusing her eyes.

“an uber?” she asks, a slur in her voice as she grins cheekily at you. “i thought you’d be calling your boyfriend.”

your face heats up at her words, head snapping over to look at her. you had the cutest furrow in your eyebrow and a crease between them joaquin liked to soothe carefully with his thumb. your lips part slightly as you think, trying to find the words to reply. it’s not that you didn’t know what to say. it was simply that you were confused.

“boyfriend?” you question. “i don’t have a boyfriend.”

“so joaquin,” one of your other friends started, a shit eating grin on her face, too. “he’s just, what, a good bud?”

“yeah,” you emphasize quickly, eyes flickering between your friends. “you guys know that! he’s my best friend!”

“well i don’t treat any of my friends the way you treat each other.”

—

that conversation came to mind again a few days later, just after you thought you’d moved past it. you’d been racking your mind trying to figure out how they’d gotten to that conclusion. you’d reckoned you two were a little close, a little touchy. it’s been that way for as long as you could remember. you, at first, chalked it up to them being drunk. they got into your head and you were overthinking. though, when you found yourself sitting in the passenger seat of joaquin’s car, his hand in your lap as you play with his fingers, you couldn’t help but think about it again.

your eyes trail from the glovebox to his focused face and the way his tongue was sticking out slightly. you were caught up in the 5 pm rush, so there wasn’t much else to do but wait it out. even if the traffic was a major pain in the behind. even if it felt suffocating in here as you thought. the air conditioner that blew against your warm skin wasn’t doing much to ease the sting. your words began to bubble up before you could get much of a second thought in.

“did i tell you my friends thought you were my boyfriend?” you question quickly, nervousness dripping from your voice. it didn’t help your hands were a little shaky against his.

“you did not,” joaquin laughs, eyes drifting over to you briefly, before turning back to the road.

“i called an uber so i could get home from the bar. they assumed i’d call you instead.”

“i would’ve came to pick you up!” he says quickly.

you nod your head before he could even finish his sentence. of course you knew he’d come pick you up, he’d always make sure you got home safe. there wasn’t a doubt in your mind about that.

“i know,” you agree, giving his hand a quick squeeze.

silence fell inside the car for a few long moments. between the rumbling of the car engine, the quiet music playing, and the distant honks down the line of traffic, you somehow managed to have a halfway proper train of thought. it seemed the same for him, too, maybe just a little more precise than yours.

“sam said the same thing when he came to visit,” joaquin told you, filling the silence. “he called you my girlfriend.”

your bottom lip was tugged between your teeth in an instant. even sam could see it, and he was around so often. he knew you two were just friends. he wouldn’t have mentioned it if he wasn’t sure there was something going on. and, now that you’re thinking on it properly, his hand in yours and his eyes now boring into you, it all started to sink in.

“i kinda like it,” you squeak out, a lot more shakily than you intended. “girlfriend.”

“Yeah, hang on,” you say, stepping out into the little hallway lined with mirrors. Clark’s leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed over his chest, the sleeves of his white button-down rolled neatly to his elbows. His glasses sit low on his nose as he glances up.

He blinks.

“Oh,” he says.

You tilt your head. “Too much?”

“No,” he says quickly. “No, not at all. It’s—wow. It’s really nice.”

“You’re just saying that ‘cause I agreed to come shopping with you.”

He huffs a soft laugh, pushing off the wall. “I’m saying that ‘cause it’s true.”

You step back toward the mirror, smoothing your hands over the fabric, your reflection looking back at you like she belongs somewhere fancier than the local mall’s boutique lighting and faint hum of overhead music. Somewhere, like, say, the Daily Planet’s annual holiday party, an event you’d only heard about through Clark’s ramblings at your shared apartment.

“It’s just weird, you know?” You spin slowly in place, letting the fabric sway. “Thinking about going somewhere that requires a dress like this. I’d have to, like, shave my legs and everything.”

Clark coughs, the tips of his ears turning pink. “Well, I mean, that’s entirely up to you. No pressure.”

“Relax,” you laugh. “I’m teasing.”

“Right.” He rubs the back of his neck, glasses slipping a little further down. “I knew that.”

You look at him again and notice something—he’s watching you like he always does when he thinks you’re not paying attention, like you’re the centre of gravity in whatever room he’s standing in. You’ve seen that look before: when you made him laugh so hard he snorted noodles through his nose, when you looked after Krypto for him for three days and he came back home and found the puppy sleeping on your chest, when you won your office’s impromptu trivia night by naming all fifty states in alphabetical order and brought home the giant jar of salsa and nachos they gave you as a prize. But it always disappears as quickly as it comes, tucked away behind the warm smile and careful distance he maintains.

You turn back to the mirror and say, “So, why are we here, really?”

“I told you,” Clark says. “I need a suit.”

“You own four,” you point out.

“This is a fancier party than usual.”

You shoot him a look.

He sighs, pushing his glasses up his nose. “Okay. Maybe I also wanted your opinion. Is that so bad?”

“No. I’m flattered.” You slip back into the dressing room and start unzipping the dress, your voice carrying through the curtain. “Still, feels a little like you’re preparing for a wedding or something.”

“It’s not that formal,” he calls back, but there’s something evasive in the way he says it.

“You’ve been talking about this party all month.”

“I have not.”

“You absolutely have,” you insist. You tug the zipper the rest of the way down and begin carefully stepping out of the dress. “You brought it up when we were at that Thai place downtown. Then again when you were fixing the kitchen light. Oh, and three times last week when I caught you practicing small talk in the bathroom mirror.”

“That wasn’t for the party,” he protests.

“Clark, you were practicing how to introduce me.”

“Yeah, well. It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

You straighten up, fabric bunched in your hands. “Prepared for what?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “People ask questions, sometimes.”

You frown, slipping your jeans back on. “What kind of questions?”

“The usual. If I’m seeing someone. If I’m bringing someone. And I guess—sometimes I talk about you a lot. So people assume.”

“Assume what?” You tug the curtain open a crack and peer at him.

Clark’s eyes flick up to meet yours. They’re unfair, honestly, the kind of soft blue that you can’t look at for too long without feeling weak at the knees. He pushes his glasses up again, then lets his hands fall to his sides.

“Just. You know,” he says helplessly. “People are nosy, and Perry White and Jimmy think I don’t have it in me to bring a girl with me to the party.”

You snort, pushing the curtain fully open and stepping out with the dress draped carefully over your arm. “That’s what this is about? You’re trying to prove Perry and Jimmy wrong?”

“I mean… maybe not prove them wrong, exactly. Just—Jimmy was needling me. You know how he gets.”

You’re not dumb. You know what Clark meant when he said people assume things. Does that mean you won’t allow yourself to enjoy what is, arguably, the most hyped up social event you’ve ever attended? Of course not. You’re not dumb.

You’re just… a little hopeful.

Hopeful enough to let him zip up the back of your dress without flinching at the way his fingertips brushed the bare skin between your shoulder blades. Hopeful enough to ditz on the most expensive perfume you own, and to wear the necklace he complimented months ago even though it doesn’t match your clutch. Hopeful enough to feel something flutter in your chest when he smiled at you in the elevator, that small, earnest grin of his that always makes your stomach flip.

Now, you’re standing in the gilded foyer of the Metropolis Grand Hotel, on the kind of carpet that silences heels, surrounded by chandeliers that drip with crystals and laughter that spills like champagne. Everyone looks beautiful. Everyone looks like they belong.

But Clark—Clark looks like he was built for this.

It’s the suit, partly. Dark charcoal, perfectly cut, the kind that makes you realise just how broad his shoulders are and how unfair it is that he ever hides them beneath sweaters. But it’s more than that. It’s the way he stands beside you with the confidence of someone who could command a room, but doesn’t. Someone who could be the centre of attention, but always turns it gently towards someone else. Towards you.

He does, over and over again, with small touches and soft glances and little jokes whispered in your ear. You try not to think too hard about it.

The ballroom is warm with low lights and gold accents, the string quartet tucked into the corner playing something festive and rich. Clark guides you to the bar with a hand on your back, and when he leans in to ask if you want red or white, his breath skims the shell of your ear.

You’re not dumb, but you might be a little dizzy.

He disappears for a minute to find Perry, leaving you with a promise to get you a glass of wine and a view of the skyline through the tall, arched windows. You fold your arms over your chest, trying not to read into how often his hand finds the small of your back or the way he introduces you and just your name, like that’s explanation enough.

You catch your reflection in the mirrored column across the room and don’t recognise yourself for a moment. The girl standing there isn’t the one who steals his socks or leaves Post-Its on the fridge or snorts when she laughs. She’s elegant, someone who could be on Clark Kent’s arm and not look even a little out of place.

He returns, two glasses in hand, his tie a little looser than it was thirty minutes ago. He hands you one and you smile up at him. He smiles back.

“You having a good time?” he asks.

“Yeah,” you say, nodding. “Surprisingly.”

He nudges your shoulder with his own. “Told you it wouldn’t be so bad.”

You hum in response, lifting your glass in a silent cheers before taking a sip. The wine is good—crisp, dry, a little sweet on the finish. Definitely not the kind of bottle you and Clark would ever spring for on your own. You glance back at him, watching the way he surveys the room with that same warm attentiveness he gives the world every day.

It’s comforting. Familiar. Easy to lean into, which is exactly what you do, tilting your head just enough to rest briefly on his shoulder. He stiffens for half a second, surprised, but you feel him ease. He shifts just slightly, just enough that you fit a little more comfortably against him.

“You get to tell me that you told me so,” you say. “It’s not bad.”

Clark chuckles. “You sound shocked.”

“I just thought it’d be stuffy,” you say, looking up at him through your lashes, teasing. “Or boring. Or full of people I wouldn’t know how to talk to.”

“And is it?”

“Still deciding,” you say, smiling.

“Do you want to dance?”

“What?”

Clark offers a hand. “Dance with me.”

And because it’s Clark, and because you’re not dumb, and because you’re maybe just hopeful enough to believe in moments like this, you take it.

He doesn’t lead you to the centre of the floor. He guides you instead to the edge, where the music is quieter and the chandeliers spill soft gold across the polished parquet. The band has moved on to something slower now, less jazzy, more swoon than swing. It wraps around you like velvet as Clark tucks your hand gently into his and rests the other at the curve of your waist. Your fingers settle against the smooth line of his lapel. He’s warm beneath the fabric. The rest of the room seems to fade in your periphery—just the blurred glitter of gowns and the murmur of conversation, the music, the breath between you.

You look up at him, trying not to read too much into the way his thumb traces idle, absent circles along your waist. “You looked like you were deep in conversation with Perry,” you say softly.

“Perry was just asking about the article I filed last week,” he replies. His eyes flick down to meet yours. “And Lois. And you.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, I, uh, won the bet, I guess.”

“…Oh. Right.” You swallow hard and look away. “Was Perry proven sufficiently wrong?”

“Let’s just say he didn’t see it coming.”

Your gaze dips to where your hand rests in his. The warmth of his palm bleeds into your skin like something you’ll still feel hours from now. It makes you ache a little, in that soft, impossible way you’ve been trying not to name for months. He looks at you like there’s no one else here—like all the champagne laughter and shifting gowns and symphonic music is just background to this moment, to you.

He shifts, subtle, drawing you a little closer as the music swells. You let him. You let your body follow his like it knows the steps already. You want him. You want him so badly you think it might be stitched into your DNA at this point, threaded through your bones.

“Well, that’s good then,” you say, trying and failing to suppress the tiny, needle-like prick of disappointment that pokes your heart. “Were Lois and Jimmy convinced, too?”

“Lois thinks you’re too good for me,” he says, voice low, breath brushing against the shell of your ear. “Jimmy started taking bets again.”

You laugh, surprised. “Bets on what?”

“Nothing scandalous.”

You lean a little closer, playful now, emboldened by the press of his hand at your waist. “Clark Kent. Are you withholding journalistic information?”

“I’m practicing discretion,” he murmurs.

You don’t ask what the bets are. You don’t want to know, really, not when your pulse is already a warm thrum under your skin, not when his gaze keeps flicking down to your lips like he’s not sure he should, but can’t stop himself. You’re dangerously aware of how little space there is between you. How easy it would be to close it.

But the song ends.

It fades into the hum of another, and Clark lets out the smallest breath, as though the moment—whatever it was—is retreating, swallowed by the crowd again. His hand slips from your waist, and yours from his hand.

“Come on. Jimmy and Cat and the rest want to meet you.”

Clark doesn’t give you much time to think about it. About the dance, about the way your pulse is still doing this uneven, skittery thing like you’ve just stepped off a roller coaster. He offers you his hand again, not to dance this time but to lead you through the throng of glittering dresses and dark suits towards a cluster of people near the far side of the ballroom.

“They’re going to love you,” he says over his shoulder, warm and certain in that way he always is when it comes to you.

You don’t say anything because you’re too busy smoothing your hair with one hand and trying not to trip over your own heels. You feel like you’ve stumbled out of one dream—Clark’s hand on your waist, the music wrapped around you—and straight into another. You’re aware of everything: the swish of your dress against your legs, the faint citrus scent of his cologne when he moves close enough to open a path for you both.

Lois Lane is exactly what you expected, and somehow more. She’s stunning, with cheekbones that could cut glass and lipstick perfectly in place even after what must be hours of cocktails and conversation. She’s in the middle of telling Jimmy something when she sees you, and her eyes sharpen immediately with interest.

Jimmy’s grinning, camera hanging around his neck, and beside him, Cat Grant leans elegantly against the table, champagne flute in hand.

“Hey, guys,” Clark says.

Three pairs of eyes turn towards you. You resist the urge to fidget.

“This is—” Clark says your name, glancing at you briefly, and for some reason the sound of it in his voice feels… different here. “She writes for Metropolis Monthly.”

Lois’ mouth curves into a knowing little smile as she shakes your hand. “Ah. The famous one.”

“Famous?” you repeat, startled.

“Clark talks about you. A lot,” Jimmy chimes in.

You shoot a look at Clark, who suddenly finds the floor very interesting.

“Don’t let him fool you,” Lois says, delighted. “He doesn’t talk about anyone. Half the time we have to drag words out of him about himself, but you? We’ve heard about the coffee you make, the movie nights, the way you write circles around half the bloggers in this city—”

“Lois,” Clark says, almost warning, a faint colour rising in his cheeks.

Cat takes a slow sip of her champagne. “She’s even prettier than you said, Kent.”

Your face warms. Clark clears his throat. “Okay, and on that note—”

“No, no,” Jimmy cuts in. “Don’t stop on our account.”

Lois leans in, conspiratorial. “For what it’s worth,” she says to you, “we’ve been taking bets on when the two of you would finally show up to something together. Perry owes me twenty bucks.”

You laugh, startled and flustered all at once. “I’m not sure what to say to that.”

“Say,” Lois says, “that I was right.”

Clark sighs. “We came here to have a good time, remember?”

“We are having a good time,” Cat says, setting her glass down. Her gaze sweeps over you once, thoughtful, before she offers a small, sincere smile. “It’s nice to finally meet you. He’s picky about who he lets into his life.”

Clark isn’t looking at anyone now but you.

The group falls into easy conversation after that, talk of work and the ridiculous gala food (tiny crab cakes that vanish in two bites, champagne that tastes expensive enough to make up for it). Lois tells you about chasing a lead last week through half the city; Jimmy complains about his camera lens fogging in the winter; Cat rolls her eyes at both of them with long-suffering grace.

Clark stays close. When someone brushes by too near the table, his hand finds your elbow, steadying you. When Lois cracks a joke, he leans in slightly, like he wants to hear you laugh before anyone else. When he looks at you, you feel it like a warm current under your skin.

Jimmy drags Lois to the dance floor. Cat follows with a bemused shake of her head, and suddenly it’s just you and Clark again, standing at the edge of the room with half-empty glasses.

“What do you think of them?” he asks softly, watching your face.

“They’re… not what I expected.”

“Better or worse?”

“Better,” you say. “They like you a lot.”

His mouth tilts in a small, self-deprecating smile. “They like you, too.”

You think about Lois’ teasing, about Cat’s sharp little smile, about the way Jimmy had grinned like he knew something you didn’t. You think about Clark’s hand, steady and warm, guiding you here in the first place.

You think you might be in trouble.

“Cat was right, though, you know,” he says, ducking his head bashfully. “You do look—I mean, pretty isn’t the right word. You’re gorgeous.”

For a second, you forget how to breathe.

The noise of the gala doesn’t quite go away—it can’t, not with the quartet playing in the corner and the laughter bubbling from the dance floor—but it feels like someone’s turned the volume down just enough for the words to settle between you, soft and weighty all at once.

You glance up at him. He doesn’t quite meet your eyes when he says it; he’s looking somewhere past your shoulder, as though he can’t quite bring himself to watch your reaction.

“Clark,” you say, and your voice doesn’t come out the way you mean it to. It’s quieter.

He rubs the back of his neck with his free hand, gaze finally dropping to meet yours. “Sorry. I just—” He exhales, as though the sentence got away from him before he could catch it. “You do. That’s all.”

Your stomach swoops. You’ve known him long enough to tell when he’s teasing, when his voice takes on that light, joking cadence he uses with friends and coworkers and anyone trying to get a rise out of him. This isn’t that.

You should say something back. Something witty, or graceful, or at least coherent. But your brain seems to have been replaced by static, so all you manage is a soft, “Oh.”

Clark laughs, shaking his head at himself like he’s the one being ridiculous here. He takes a sip from his glass, giving you a moment to gather the parts of yourself scattered like confetti across the floor. You fail spectacularly.

Across the room, Lois spins under Jimmy’s arm, her laugh ringing out above the music. Cat leans against the bar now, phone in one hand, champagne in the other. Perry White’s surrounded by boisterous councilmen, all laughing at some joke you can’t begin to make out. The chandeliers catch the movement on the dance floor in fractured golden light, everything sparkling like it’s been dipped in stars.

And you’re here, at the edge of it all, pulse rabbiting in your throat because Clark Kent just called you gorgeous like it was the simplest, truest thing in the world.

You clear your throat, finally finding your voice. “You clean up pretty well yourself.”

“Thanks,” he says. His mouth tilts in that small half-smile he gets when he’s trying not to look too pleased.

“You don’t wear suits often.”

“Not unless I have to.” He looks down at his tie, loosening it a little more with one hand. The motion tugs his collar open just slightly, enough to show the faintest triangle of skin at his throat. “Do you like it?”

You blink. “The suit?”

“Yeah. On me, I mean.”

The words make heat creep up the back of your neck. “I… yeah. It looks good.”

Understatement of the century, you think.

Clark’s eyes crinkle a little at the corners, amusement threading through them, but he doesn’t press. He nods once, like he’ll tuck the answer away somewhere secret.

A waiter passes by with another tray of champagne, the glasses catching light as they go. Clark shifts slightly, resting his forearm on the high table beside you so he can lean just a fraction closer, voice dipping low enough that it barely carries over the music.

“You want to people-watch with me?”

“People-watch?”

Clark nods towards the dance floor, where Perry’s somehow gotten roped into dancing with someone from the city council. It looks… painful.

You can’t help laughing. “Oh, absolutely.”

Clark flashes you a grin, before he tilts his head towards the crowd. “Okay. See the guy by the bar in the blue suit? Third glass of wine, hasn’t stopped checking his phone all night. His wife is mad at him, I’m calling it now.”

“Ouch.”

“Couple by the window,” Clark says next. “Third dance in a row. Either married for twenty years or they just met tonight. No in between.”

“What’s your vote?” you say, grinning.

He considers, eyes following the couple as they turn lazily under the chandelier light. “Just met. He’s been smiling the whole time, like he can’t believe his luck.”

It’s impossible not to notice the warmth in Clark’s voice when he says it. Like he likes seeing people happy. Like he collects these little moments the way other people collect photographs.

Your chest does that annoying fluttery thing again.

“Okay,” you say, scanning the room for yourself this time. “The woman in the green dress. She’s here for business. Networking. She’s pretending to enjoy herself, but she hasn’t danced once.”

Clark follows your gaze, eyebrows lifting. “You’re good at this.”

“Observational skills,” you say, shrugging and trying not to look too pleased with yourself.

The music swells again, a slow, easy rhythm. Someone laughs nearby; someone else calls for more champagne. The whole room glitters, alive and bright, but somehow it feels like you and Clark are set just outside its orbit, in your own quieter little corner.

“You having a good time?” he asks again.

“Yeah,” you say. “The best.”

Clark smiles, small and pleased, like maybe that was the whole point of tonight.

You don’t mean to overhear the two girls by the bar.

It’s not like they said anything malicious, anyway. Something about Clark being “a total golden retriever” and how “guys like him don’t stay single for long.” It’s said with a fond little laigh, the kind reserved for someone universally adored, like the quarterback of a small-town football team or the boy who volunteers at soup kitchens on the weekends. Someone who’s good in a way that’s rare.

It shouldn’t sting, but it does.

Maybe it’s because they don’t know him like you do—the small, ridiculous details of Clark Kent: how he hums when he’s pouring coffee; how his ties are always a little crooked until you fix them; how he somehow believes he’s unremarkable, despite literally glowing with the kind of goodness people write novels about.

Or maybe it’s because part of you is terrified they’re right—that someone else will see all of that, see him, and you’ll be left watching from the sidelines like a fool.

Either way, the words burrow into your skin, and suddenly the gala feels too warm, too loud, too bright.

You murmur something to Lois about needing air and slip through the crowd before Clark can notice. The balcony doors are open, the night cool and velvet-soft against your skin when you step outside.

The city stretches out before you, glittering and endless. Wind whips gently at your hair as you grip the railing, trying to shake off the strange ache building in your chest. You’re not sure how long you stand there, staring out at Metropolis like it might give you answers.

“There you are!” His voice comes from behind you, warm and familiar.

You turn, just enough to see Clark step out onto the balcony, the light spilling over his shoulders before the door closes behind him. Out here, he looks different. Softer, maybe, without the warm glow of the chandeliers gilding every edge. The wind tugs at his hair, and he pushes his glasses up his nose the way he always does when he doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

“You disappeared,” he says, moving to stand beside you. His presence fills the space easily, the way it always does. “Everything okay?”

You nod, too quickly. “Yeah. Just needed some air.”

Maybe it’s the champagne, or the music drifting faintly through the glass doors behind you, or the fact that he looks devastatingly good tonight and doesn’t seem to know it—but suddenly, the words tumble out before you can stop them.

“Do you ever think about… hypotheticals?”

“Hypotheticals?” Clark turns his head, brow furrowing.

“Like,” you say, fiddling with the end of your clutch, “what if you liked someone. Just—hypothetically.”

“Okay…”

“And maybe everyone else saw it before you did. Like it was obvious or something.” You keep your eyes fixed on the skyline because looking at him feels impossible right now. “But you weren’t sure if saying anything would ruin everything.”

Clark goes very still beside you.

You rush to fill the silence, words tangling. “Hypothetically, maybe you live with this person. Maybe they’re your best friend. And if you said something and they didn’t feel the same way, it would… I don’t know. Break something you can’t put back together.”

The wind catches your hair, sweeping it across your cheek. You tuck it behind our ear.

“So instead,” you continue, softer now, “you just keep it to yourself. And you wonder if they’ll ever figure it out, or if you’re supposed to—I don’t know. Still hypothetical, obviously.”

“Right,” Clark says slowly.

“Hypothetically,” you add quickly, “what would you do? If it were you.”

“I’d tell you.”

Your heart stutters. “What?”

Clark swallows hard. His eyes stay on the city, not you. “I’d tell you, because—hypothetically—I wouldn’t be able to keep it in anymore.”

“Clark…”

“Y’know, funny thing is,” he says, tilting his head just so, “I brought you here with me to have a good time. I don’t like stuff like this, you know that, and I—I really, really want to go home now, just so I can have you all to myself.”

Clark’s gaze stays fixed on the glittering sprawl of Metropolis below. The wind ruffles his hair again, pulls at the edges of his jacket, but he stands steady beside you like the whole world couldn’t move him if it tried.

You open your mouth. Close it. Try again.

“Hypothetically,” you say, “what would you do if we went him?”

His eyes catch the city lights when he turns to you, reflecting something warm, something that makes your stomach flip in a way that no amount of champagne could explain. His voice is low when he speaks; each word has to be chosen carefully before it leaves his mouth.

“First?” he says. “First, I think I’d finally get you out of those heels your hate.”

You almost laugh, because of course he noticed the way you’d shifted your weight a dozen times tonight, the faint wince every time someone made you cross half the ballroom.

“And then?” you ask, trying to keep your voice steady.

He exhales slowly, the sound mingling with the wind. “I’m trying really hard not to scare you off,” he admits.

“You’re not,” you manage.

“Good,” he says, barely more than a whisper. “Because all I’ve been thinking about, all night, is how badly I want to get you out of here.”

His hand finds the railing beside yours, close enough that your fingers twitch with the urge to reach for him.

“And then what?” you ask again, the words threading out like smoke.

“Then,” he says slowly, “I’d make you tea because you’ll complain about your hangover tomorrow morning otherwise. I’d listen to you tell me what you thought of tonight while you tried to pretend you weren’t exhausted. And then, I’d tell you all the things I should’ve told you before this gala, before the dance, before tonight ever even started.”

“Like what?”

“Like how many times I almost kissed you in the kitchen,” he says. “Or how hard it is to see you in my shirts on Sunday mornings and not tell you how beautiful you look. Or how every time you laugh at one of my stupid jokes, I—”

“Clark,” you whisper, because it’s the only thing you can think to say.

“Still hypothetical, of course,” he mumbles.

“Right,” you say, though your heart is doing somersaults.

“But,” he adds, “I really hope it’s not.”

You think you might finally understand what the girls at the bar meant. Only, they were wrong about one thing.

Clark Kent might be the kind of man everyone adores, but right now, his whole attention, his whole quiet, steady world, feels like it belongs to you.

“It’s not,” you breathe out, “but hypothetically, I really do want to kiss you right now.”

So Clark does.

“Tell me a secret,” Clark says, once he closes the door to your shared apartment behind him.

“Easy. I only bought this dress so you could take it off, Kent.”

Clark smiles against your mouth, fingers trailing up your spine and hooking into the zipper at the back of your dress.