Oh, hello there!

And when Superman came home from saving the world he became just your Clark. You remember the day he told you he loved you. It was late. About 2 in the morning. He had come back from his Superman duties and you were making him pancakes. He just watched you for a while. You were tired but still you insisted on him getting some food in his stomach.

It's not like it hit him like a truck, he knew he loved you for a while now but this just solidified the fact. I love you He blurted out causing you to freeze. In that moment home had become something more to the two of you. This was home.

So of course Clark would ask you to be his date at a hometown wedding and of course you accepted. You had met his parents a couple times but you hadn't met the town of Smallville. Gossip spreads like wildfire and you knew that Clark Kent's city date would be on the list of town gossip.

It was terrifying.

You were stepping into the unknown. Seeing a side of his life that you hadn't been apart of. It felt silly to be so worried about it. The Kent's loved you and so did Clark so nothing else should matter. But that poison seeped into your head the more you let yourself think about it.

You glance at the mirror of the Kent's guestroom for the hundredth time this morning. The dress you bought just for today laying on the bed as you work up the courage to put it on. You're wasting time and you know it. The ceremony is supposed to start in an hour and the drive was 10 minutes and you know that the Kent's are going to get stopped to chat which adds another 30 minutes before you can even get into the venue.

"Honey? We're leaving soon." Clark calls through the door. The door twists open and he peeks his head in.

"Oh!" He blushes as he covers his eyes with his hand when he see's your state of undress. You let out a laugh as you pull him into the room.

"Clark you don't have to cover your eyes, you've seen me naked before." You tease as he keeps his hand firmly over his eyes.

"That's different." He argues and you just shake your head.

"Not to rush you, but we do have to get going soon. Ma loves to chat and I already know that Mrs. Baker is going to stop us and that conversation is going to be very embarassing for me." Your smile falls slightly as you turn away.

"Just, a little nervous is all." You pick the dress up off the bed and step into it.

"Nervous for what? They're all gonna love you." Clark says with such confidence you almost believe him. What could possibly be nerve-wracking about going to a wedding in your boyfriends childhood hometown where everyone is going to gossip and grill you about your relationship with him?

"Can you help me?" You ask, dodging his question as you stare into the mirror.

Clark finally puts his hand down, grinning like a fool as he walks up behind you. His hands ghosting your hips as he kisses your cheek.

"You know it's rude to outshine the couple honey." He teases as his warm hands gently trace your back. The blush on his face still burning through his skin as he zips up your dress.

"Oh please, you've shown me the engagement photos I don't think that's possible." You say as you turn to adjust Clark's tie.

"Well, you outshine anyone in the room to me."

Kids! Come on we gotta go!" Martha calls from the kitchen.

"Coming Ma!" Clark calls back.

With a flash of his smile he grabs your hand and leads you down the stairs. Thank god for Mrs. Kent's ability to talk because she kept Clark busy the whole car ride. It was so sweet how happy she was to have Clark actually home for more than just a quick visit. He slipped back so easily into that charming farm boy persona that you had only seen glimpses of back in Metropolis. It suited him.

It seems this wedding was a whole town affair as you saw the group of people standing outside of the church. With a deep breath you tell yourself to calm down as the truck came to a stop. Clark hops out of the car first and jogs over to the other side before you can even think about opening the door.

He never let you open doors anymore, that was his job now. He holds his hand out to help you out of his dad's truck. Smiling as he offers you his arm to take as you walk towards the group who's eyes had turned to you and Clark.

"Well I'll be, Is that Clark Kent?" An older lady calls, a big smile on her face as she walks over.

"Told you." Clark mumbles in your ear before flashing a smile. Ah, Mrs. Baker.

"Yes Ma'am it is."

"I haven't seen you since you were a little boy." She grabs Clark's face and squishes his cheeks. You laugh as he gently pries her hands off his face.

"And you must be his date! Oh aren't you a pretty thing." She turns her sights to you and you smile nervously.

"I used to look after Clark when he was just a baby. Oh he was just the cutest thing. When he was three he had this blue blanket that he would refuse to let go of and cried when Martha tried to wash it." You laugh as you look at Clark who has turned bright red. She leans in closer to you winks at Clark.

"He swears he got rid of it by 5 but between you and me he slept with it till he was 10."

"Okay thank you Mrs. Baker, We should really be finding our seats soon." Clark interrupts, gently guiding you away from the woman before she could reveal any more embarassing things.

"She's exaggerating." He says as he tries to calm his burning face. You look over at him and nod, though your face smiling too wide for it to be sincere.

"I'm sure she is. So what did you name it?" You ask jokingly and he just huffs.

"Blankie..." He mumbles and you pinch his cheek teasingly.

He takes your hand and guides you through the crowd of people. It seems everyone knows him as they call his name and try and drag him into a conversation. He does his best to evade them but right as you're about to sit Martha calls his name.

"Clark! You remember the Lang's right? Come over and say hi." He groans and looks at you sadly.

"Go say hi honey, I'll be here." He hesitates, clearly wanting to stay here with you.

But you knew this was going to be a part of the day so you push him towards his mother. You could survive a few minutes alone and frankly it also means you can let yourself breathe for a second.

"Hi there!" A perky blonde woman appears in front of you. Her smile scares you a little as you reach out and shake her extended hand.

"Hi…" You look over and Clark was deep in conversation. Shit. She follows your line of sight and gasps as she puts two and two together.

"So you're Clark's date! Well aren't you just a lucky duck." She looks you over and you start to feel uncomfortable.

"So so glad you could make it, ever since Martha let it slip that her son was seeing someone we've all been dying to meet them. I mean after Lana what other great love story could Clark have?"

"Lana?" You ask and her expression turns curious.

"Lana Lang? Clark's old girlfriend. Oh they were so good together. We all thought they were going to be together forever but then she got accepted to a school on the other side of the country. Brillant one she was. And then Clark left for Metropolis and well." She sighs as she fails to notice the growing unease on your face.

Clark had never told you about Lana. Sure you never asked and it really wasn't your buisness either but seeing the way this lady was making them out to be some epic fairytale romance, it made you wonder why you hadn't even heard her name.

"I always thought they'd meet down the road one day. Right person wrong time kind of thing you know? But it seems I was wrong and you seem lovely!" She flashes that smile again and you let out a strangled hum. Was it hot in here or was it just the ugly feelings brewing in your stomach.

"Well I better go, nice to meet you." As she leaves Clark slids into the pew right next to you barely giving you time to breathe.

"Jeez am I glad to be out of that conversation." He mumbles as he takes notice of the woman you were speaking to.

"That's Mrs. Haroldhaus. She is the leader of the PTA and as my ma put it, a very unkind woman."

"Wow, those are some harsh words coming from her." You try and joke back. Clark looks at you for a moment.

"Did she say something? Because whatever it is is complete nonsense." You dig your nails into your palm but Clark locks his fingers with yours the moment he sees it.

"No she didn't say anything, it's just a lot of people I don't know who all seem to know me already." You tell him.

"That's Smallville for you, but I promise it's nothing but town gossip. Seeing your beautiful face is probably the most exciting thing to happen in weeks." He leans in to kiss your forehead and for a moment all the voices in your head are silenced.

He doesn't let go of your hand for the whole ceremony. His thumb brushing the back of your hand soothingly throughout it. Clark swears he's not a crier but you saw him wipe his eyes as the vows were said. And you almost cry when he leans over and whispers that he loves you as they say I do. The bells ring and everything that woman said has left your mind. Clark's very presence doing enough to quiet the doubt that's been growing in your heart.

It's no surprise that the reception is held at a barn just down the road from the Kent's. It's the biggest venue in town after all. It barely feels like a barn with all the decoration and the distinct lack of animal smell. It was interesting watching Clark almost revert back to his Smallville self. A southern drawl even slipping its way out now and then.

He looked so free. So natural back here. Free from the weight of Superman and the deadlines of the planet. Was this what his life was like before?

You meet his eyes and his body seems to relax. His smile becoming more natural as he sends you a small wave. You wave back and take another sip of your drink. You decided it was best to stay planted at your assigned seat. Making small talk occasionally but nothing more than complimenting the couple or admiring the decoration. The people of Smallville were still watching you.

Maybe not literally but there's a lot of people here and as you've witnessed, they love to talk. The music slows as couples start to move to the dance floor. Clark finally breaks from a conversation with an old high school friend to make his way back to you.

"Can I have this dance honey," Clark beams as he holds his hand out.

"Of course." You take it and he leads you to an emptier spot. He rests his hands on your waist as you wrap you place your hands on his shoulders.

"You look beautiful. Gosh I am the luckiest guy here." He hums and you look away. Compliments from Clark always made you so flustered.

"Oh please, I'm the envy of everyone here. I'm Clark Kent's date." Now it's his turn to get all nervous as he shakes his head.

"Careful, my ego can only handle so much." You snort as you pull him in closer, hands now around the back of his neck. You look into his eyes and everything just feels so right. Like you are meant to be here dancing with him. There's a ripple of whispers and excited voices as the barn doors open.

"I'm so sorry I'm late. My flight got delayed and I only just landed and came straight here." An angelic voice floats through the room. Cutting through the music and the noise of everyone around you. Clark's eyes widen as his head snaps in the direction of all the commotion.

"Lana?" Clark whispers. Your heart drops. Lana…Lang? Clark's high school sweetheart Lana Lang? Clark looks back at you, then at her. The crowd of people part like a fucking movie so that it's just Lana and Clark.

Lana and Clark and You. His arms fall to their side and so do yours. People go back to talking, the music never even stopped but to you it was like your world had completely frozen. You could feel a million eyes on you and you wanted to puke.

"I'm going to get a drink." You mumble. Clark's head whips back to face you. His eyes wide as he starts to stutter out something. His hand reaches for yours but you dodge it.

"Honey?" He asks, frowning as you refuse to look hin in the eye.

"Clark? It's been forever!" Lana's soft voice fills your ears.

Echoing across your head until its all you can hear. Clark looks at a loss. Torn between you and his former love. You take a step back from them. Shooting Lana a weak smile as she smiles at you. God you wished she was cruel about it. It would be so much easier if she was. But no. She was completely sincere in the way she introduces herself to you. She's beautiful. No wonder everyone in town seems to love her.

Your eyes shift towards Clark who was staring at her. Not you. Her.

"I'll let you two catch up," You blurt out before you can stop yourself.

God even Clark looks confused as you walk away. Why would you say that? Why would you leave your boyfriend to speak to his high school fucking sweetheart. It's like you want him to be as cruel as he is in your head right now.

"Oh Clark and Lana, still as perfect as they were in high school." Someone says with a sigh. You should keep walking. Tune them out and go but your feet feel like they're tied down. Forcing you to listen to words you know will only hurt you more.

"I always thought he was soo dreamy but even I couldn't deny the connection they had." Someone else says.

You refuse to turn around, afraid that if you do you'd see what everyone else sees. That Clark belonged to someone who isn't you.

You walk right past the refreshment table. Slipping past people until you were finally out of that barn. The cold air helps as you feel tears threatening to fall. Maybe you should have grabbed a drink before coming out here. You really need one.

"It's too cold for you to be out here alone hon." You wipe your eyes as you turn to see Clark's mom has followed you outside.

"Hi Mrs. Kent, I'll be back in a moment." You say but she doesn't seem convinced. She see's right through you and the look on her face says it all.

"I told you to call me Ma." She scolds and you let out a tired laugh. She looks sadly at you before grabbing your hand.

"Did Clark ever tell you that he called us after your first date?" She asks and you shake your head.

"He sounded so giddy, told me Ma, I think I'm gonna marry this girl one day." She brushes your cheek as a stray tear falls down.

"He loves you more than anything in the world. Now I'm not saying he's perfect, he is his fathers son after all and you and I both know boys can be a little foolish sometimes." You let out a real laugh this time and she pulls you into a hug. You see where Clark gets his warm hugs from. You try not to get your tears on her dress as she squeezes you tightly.

"Thank you, really." You reluctantly let go of her. Wanting to stay in her safe embrace for longer.

But you can hear the laughter coming from inside and you suddenly feel so silly for getting so upset. But in truth you don't think you could go back in there and pretend everything was okay. But today isn't about you and your black hole of insecurity. It was about that happy couple inside.

"I think I'm going to head back to the house, if that's okay with you." You say quietly.

"Let me go get-"

"No no, you guys stay here." You interrupt her before she can finish.

"Please I don't want this to ruin anyones night. Besides its just down the road I swear I won't get lost." Smallville was as safe as you could get and you refused to let anyones night be cut short because of you. She looks like she doesn't want to let you go but to your surprise she relents.

"Call as soon as your home alright and tell Clark the spare key's still under that one rock." She gives you one last hug before disappearing back inside.

"Mrs. Kent what…ah nevermind." You kick off your shoes and start down the dirt path towards the Kents.

The stars shined so bright they almost lead the way back to the farm. They're never this clear in Metropolis. You wonder if Clark ever stargazed when the sky was the clearest. He probably did, perched up in that barn on the hay past his bedtime watching the stars and knowing that's where he came from.

Then your brain wonders if he ever brought Lana with him and the thought sours. You curse yourself for letting your mind wander to that again. But you'd be a fool to pretend like all of yours and Clark's firsts hadn't happened with someone else. You were unbelievably and embarassingly jealous.

Clark…he'd never hurt you on purpose. You know that. He loves you, you know that too. But the idea that he could have settled for you haunts every step. He loves you, but did he love her more?

Was your relatonship something easy for him? Were you just the consolation prize because he couldn't be with his high school sweetheart?

A literal blur stops you in your tracks. You let out a scream as Clark suddenly stands before you. His tie is undone and he looks upset.

"Clark! I told you I hate when you super speed right next to me!" You huff as you try and walk past him. His hands grip your waist, stopping you from leaving.

"What are you thinking?! Walking back alone?? In the dark?? With no shoes on??" His hands move to cups your face, he quickly checks over you.

As if you could have sustained any injury in the 5 minutes you were walking. The barn is still in view yet he's acting like you went around the streets of Gotham.

"Clark I'm fine, what could even hurt me on the 10 minute walk back to your house anyways?" You ask and he thinks for a moment, his hands not leaving your face.

"A…bear?"

"A bear. In Smallville, Kansas." You repeat.

"Clark go back to the party, I'm fine." But he doesn't budge.

"You walked away in tears. I don't mean to push but I don't think that means your fine."

"Clark please. I really don't want to talk about this. Just go back to the party and back to Lana." The last part comes out much more venemous than you intend.

The guilt hitting as soon as the words leave your mouth and the way Clark's face falls only makes it worse.

"What?" He asks and you feel bile rise up your throat.

"Nothing, forget I said anything." You mumble as you're able to get out of his hold. He grabs your wrist firmly, not in a way he could hurt you but in a way that tells you he isn't letting you run. Not this time.

"No. I won't."

"Clark." The tears in your eyes break his heart.

"I won't because you're upset and I know you think it's easier to push me away but I'm not going to let you this time." He wraps an arm around your waist, pulling you close enough to where you have to put your hands on his chest to steady yourself. His blue eyes silently begging you not to run anymore.

"Please honey, talk to me. I'm here. There's nothing you could say that I can't take."

"Sometimes I forget that you're more than just my Clark." You say quietly. Your eyes are trained on the top button of his shirt. On the tie that you helped straighten this morning that was now undone.

"It's so stupid and I hate that I feel this way but seeing you today, Seeing the way you looked at Lana…I don't know it was like I was…nothing." Clark nearly whimpers hearing you say that. Nothing? In what world could you ever be nothing to him.

"All day I've watched you fit back into Smallville like a puzzle piece. I don't. I get stares and whispers and-and people talking about how they thought you'd end up with someone else. It's like im the side character in some movie that gets tossed aside once the hero realizes they don't belong."

"Stop." Clark says firmly. He can't take it anymore.

"You are not nothing. You could never be nothing. Not to me, not to anyone. So please. Don't say that." He frowns as he sees your face tightens like it's trying not to cry.

"I am so sorry I didn't see you were hurting. That I made you feel like you don't belong in my life." His lip wobbles as he sees the hurt in your eyes. "Lana is in my past. It's been a long time since I've seen her and I was just surprised. I swear." His stomach twists remembering the look on your face.

Guilt eating him alive at the very thought that something he did could cause you so much pain. He should have stopped you from leaving right there in that barn but he was too shocked. Too confused by your sudden exit. Then he saw his Ma follow you outside and it made him relax just a little bite. Still he believes he's failed you by letting you think for even a moment he doesn't love you.

"I won't deny that I loved her a long time ago. But that's when I thought love was just butterflies in your stomach and holding hands." He explains. One of the greatest things about humanity is love. Clark learned that multiple times throughout his life.

"Don't get me wrong honey, you give me butterflies every day but I didn't understand what it truly felt like to love and be loved until I met you. I promise on every star in the sky that you're the only one I want."

"You just seem so happy here. So at peace. What if Smallville and…everything that comes with it is where you're meant to be. You could be Superman anywhere. So why Metropolis?"

"I'm happy because you're here with me. Because I get to share this part of my life with the love of my life. And why Metropolis? Because where else would I find a bossy photographer who makes me pancakes in the middle of the night?" He presses a soft kiss to the corner of your lips.

"Smallville is the place I grew up and I love it here, but you're my home now. Where ever you are is my home." He presses another kiss to the other corner.

"I'm sorry for letting you feel like you're not. Even if it was just for a second. I can't stand the thought of you not knowing how much you mean to me." He presses a final kiss to your lips.

It's gentle and loving and so careful and so Clark. You feel yourself relax into his embrace. You drop your shoes and tangle your hands in his hair. Ruining the slicked back hair he messed with all morning. He lets out a small relieved laugh when you part.

"It's not just your fault. I let the worst parts of my head get to me tonight when I should have just talked to you." You admit.

It's embarassing to face your worst parts head on. It's ugly and irrational and something you wish Clark never has to see again.

"Hey, I am always here to talk to. I love everything about you. The good parts and the not so good parts. You've seen both sides of me so please, trust that I can handle both parts of you too."

"Okay…Okay." You want to cry again. You were expecting the worst and here he comes to break every horrible thing your mind has already built up. He's too nice you swear it'd be annoying if you weren't so in love with him.

"I love you."

"I love you too."

"Now, let's get you home." He reaches down and grabs your shoes, holding them in one hand as he picks you up in his arms.

"But the reception Clark." He silences you with a look.

"Like I'd force you to go back in there with those vultures." He huffs, still upset at all the pointless town gossip.

"That's not very Supermany to say." You tease, used to his goody-two shoes attitude and he shrugs.

"They made you cry. If they apologize then maybe I'll consider taking it back." You bury your face in his neck, laughing as he walks you back home. Could he have used his powers to get you back faster? Yeah, but why would he when he could spend an extra 5 minutes with you in his arms.

The insecurities haven't gone away. In fact they'll probably live there for a while. But you don't have to fight them alone anymore. He can't fix it with his super speed or heat vision, but he can hold your hand and kiss you until your brain goes fuzzy.

There are 60 to 100 heartbeats in a minute, and in the elapsing of them, he hears every single one of yours in endured, melodic fashion. When the two of you pace the perimeter of your shared apartment, he relies on the metronomic passage of them to ground him in the moment. He uses it to luxuriate in the loveliness of your presence.

They document the moments enjoyed together as you rise in the early hours of morning for work—as the two of you return home to this safe haven—as you both make dinner crafted by combined efforts—as you return to bed to begin the cycle anew—

Your heartbeats demarcate every moment, lulling, encompassing—comforting. It reassures him that you are here, that you are with him. When he is summoned across the world to parts unknown for services yet rendered, if he focuses—

He can hear the rhythm of a heart that beats in anticipation for his return. And it reminds him of the necessity of his return.

And he appreciates it now, sonorous and mediated as you doze on the couch besides him. In the honeyed amber of this sterling moment, with soft dusky rays that stream through curtained window, with low ambience from the TV playing in soundtrack. Your heart sounds clear and true as it ever has, as he watches you sleep.

As he watches you in rest, the struggles of the day, the burdens of yesterday, and the promises of tomorrow vanished as you dream. You sit beside him but you are worlds away, the only piece of you tethered to him the pace of your heart.

You are so small in the vastness of the universe he is housed by, but contain multitudes that are so valuable to him beyond vocabulary. Beyond emotions.

He watches you sleep a moment longer before he turns back to the sluggish ticker-tape trail of the screen. Then it happens. Everything can endure in slow-motion to him, but he is distracted by the lull so it's less sluggish for him.

As you fall against the implacable slope of his shoulder in the doldrums of your sleep. As you take comfortable perch against him in the safest of havens—and he turns to look at you—

And your heartbeat, which is of invariable comfort to him, speeds up at the contact made between you. A sigh, tuneless and restful, hums through as you mumble something inaudible to anyone without accentuated sense—

"Love you, baby—"—You murmur through the veil of sleep—and then you are lost again, a quiet snore vocalized in addendum.

And your heartbeat restores back to homoestasis, reverberating in the walls that mark your home with him.

Clark doesn't realize the tender smile that breaks over his face as you recline on him. All he is aware of is the magnetic pull you draw him into, summoned into your orbit as he presses a kiss to the crown of your head. Baptizing you with tangible enunciation of his fealty to you.

"Love you too, honey," he whispers. In answer, through the slumbering mists—the rhythm of your heart affirms the affection given. And all is well once more.

just needed a little pick-me-up to cheer myself up after yesterday, hope you all enjoyed :)

dividers and banners made by me :)

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Clark’s night had been a particular kind of hell. He didn't remember landing on your terrace.

One moment he was standing in the cratered ruin of what used to be a warehouse district on the outskirts of Metropolis, his hands still trembling from the echo of kryptonian fists meeting flesh, and the next he was here—boots silent on the weathered tile, the city sprawling beneath him like a circuit board of light and shadow.

The villain had called himself Pavor. A meta-human with the unsettling ability to weaponize fear, to reach into the deepest, most vulnerable parts of a person's mind and pull out their nightmares made manifest. Clark had faced worse. He'd faced world-enders and reality-benders, creatures from the Phantom Zone and gods from distant pantheons. But Pavor had done something that none of the others had managed.

He'd made Clark watch you die.

Not just once. A hundred times. A thousand. Each death more intimate and horrible than the last. A car accident on a rain-slicked street where Clark was too slow, too far away, his super-hearing catching your final breath across seven city blocks. A terminal illness that ate through your beautiful, laughing body while Clark held your hand and felt the life drain out of you, powerless to stop it because even he couldn't cure the incurable. An explosion in your apartment building that he arrived at two minutes too late, your favorite mug still warm on the kitchen counter, your scent still lingering in the hallway.

The worst one—the one that still had his hands shaking even now—was the simplest. You'd been walking home from the grocery store, a bag of oranges in your arms, and a man with a gun had wanted your wallet. In the vision, Clark had been standing right there. Right. There. And he'd still been too slow. The bullet had entered your chest before he could move, and you'd looked at him with such confusion, such betrayal, as if to say why didn't you save me? when you didn't even know he was there at all.

The villain was neutralized now. Sedated in a meta-human containment cell, his fear-dust swept up by biohazard teams. But the images lingered, burned into Clark's brain like afterimages from a nuclear blast.

He needed to see you.

The thought was urgent, desperate, clawing at his chest with something that felt dangerously close to panic. He needed to see your face, to hear your heartbeat, to feel you—warm and solid and alive—under his hands. The rational part of his mind, the part that had been doing this for almost two years, told him to go home first. Change out of the suit. Put on the glasses and the flannel shirt and the carefully constructed persona of Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter. That was the agreement, wasn't it? Not a formal one, not something you'd ever demanded, but something he'd built between you anyway. With you, he got to be just Clark. Not Superman. Not the symbol, the icon, the guy who caught planes and deflected asteroids. Just the man who burned his toast in the morning and left his socks on the bathroom floor and kissed the back of your neck while you were trying to make coffee.

But tonight, the thought of putting on that mask felt unbearable. Like another layer of separation between him and the thing he needed most.

So here he was. Boots on your terrace. The cape heavy on his shoulders, the House of El crest emblazoned across his chest. He'd never shown up like this before. Not once. You knew who he was—he'd told you, three months into the relationship, sitting on this very terrace with his heart in his throat and the words “I'm Superman” tasting like broken glass in his mouth—but you'd never seen him like this. The suit had always been something that happened somewhere else, in a different part of his life, the part he tried so hard to keep separate from the quiet sanctuary he'd found with you.

The sliding door was unlocked. It was always unlocked when he visited, a small act of faith that still made something in his chest ache. He could see you through the glass, curled on the couch with a book in your lap and a mug of tea steaming on the side table. You were wearing his university sweatshirt—the one he'd almost thrown away a dozen times because it was faded and threadbare, but you'd fished it out of the donation bag and claimed it as your own. Your hair was loose around your shoulders, still slightly damp from a shower, and you were absently chewing on your lower lip the way you did when you were concentrating.

His knees nearly buckled.

He'd watched you die tonight. He'd watched your eyes go dark and your heart stop and your blood pool on pavement, on tile, on the pristine white sheets of a hospital bed. He'd screamed your name in a dozen different nightmares, had reached for you a thousand times and come up empty. And here you were, reading one of your favorite books with your feet tucked under you, completely unaware that somewhere across the city, a so called God had been weeping over your corpse.

Clark slid the door open and you looked up immediately, a smile already forming on your lips—and then froze. Your eyes went wide, traveling from his face down the length of his body, taking in the suit and the cape and the way he was standing there like a man who'd just survived something he couldn't name.

“Clark?” Your voice was soft, uncertain, already tinged with concern. You set the book aside and rose from the couch, moving toward him slowly, carefully, the way you might approach a wounded animal. “Baby, what's wrong?”

He tried to speak. Tried to form words, to explain, to apologize for showing up like this without warning. But the sound that came out of his mouth was closer to a sob, raw and broken, and suddenly he was crossing the room in two strides and pulling you into his arms.

The contact nearly undid him.

You were warm. So impossibly, achingly warm, your body fitting against his like you'd been made to be there. Your heartbeat thrummed against his chest, steady and strong and alive, and Clark buried his face in your hair and breathed you in. Lavender shampoo. The faint trace of the tea you'd been drinking. Something underneath that was just you, the scent he'd committed to memory months ago, the one that meant home.

“Clark.” Your hands came up to cup his face, gentle but insistent, pulling back just enough to look at him. Your thumbs swept across his cheekbones, catching tears he hadn't realized he'd been shedding. “Talk to me. Please.”

He closed his eyes, leaning into your touch. “There was a man tonight,” he said, and his voice came out rough, scraped raw. “He could—he could show people their fears. Make them real, somehow. In their minds.” He swallowed hard, and the next words came out on a shudder. “He showed me you. Dying. Over and over again. I watched you die so many times, and every time—every single time—I couldn't save you.”

Your breath caught. He felt it, felt the slight hitch in your chest, the way your fingers tightened almost imperceptibly on his jaw.

“Clark,” you whispered.

“I know it wasn't real.” The words came faster now, tumbling out of him like water through a broken dam. “I know that. I've dealt with fear-manipulators before, I know how it works, I know none of it actually happened. But I couldn't—I couldn't shake it. I couldn't stop seeing your face, couldn't stop hearing—” His voice cracked. “I needed to see you. I needed to hold you. And I couldn't go home and change first, I couldn't put on the glasses and pretend to be someone else for one more second, because I'm not—I'm not someone else, not with you, I've never been someone else with you, and I just—”

The words were coming too fast now, tripping over each other, spiraling. Clark could feel it building in his chest—that familiar, terrible pressure, the one he'd learned to recognize over years of burying things too deep. His heart was hammering, which was ridiculous because his heart didn't do that anymore, hadn't done that since he was a teenager learning to control his powers, but here it was, pounding against his ribs like a caged animal. His breathing was too quick, too shallow, and he couldn't seem to get enough air even though he didn't technically need to breathe at all, not really, not the way you did, but his body didn't seem to care about technicalities right now.

She's dead. She's dead and you're hallucinating and any second now you're going to blink and she's going to be gone and you're going to be back in that warehouse with her blood on your hands and—

“Clark.”

Your voice cut through the spiral like a blade through silk. Not loud. Not demanding. Just there, steady and warm and impossibly, impossibly present.

“Clark, look at me.”

He couldn't. He couldn't look at you because if he looked at you, he'd see the bullet hole or the sickness or the closed eyes or one of the thousand other ways he'd watched you die tonight, and he couldn't—he couldn't—

Your hands moved from his face to his shoulders, and then you were guiding him, gently but firmly, until his back hit the wall beside the sliding door. Not hard—you didn't have the strength to move him if he didn't want to be moved—but he went willingly, bonelessly, because some deep part of him recognized that you were trying to anchor him, and he needed an anchor more than he needed air.

“There you go,” you murmured, and your hands were on his chest now, right over the S-shield, and he could feel the warmth of your palms even through the suit. “I've got you. I'm right here. Feel my hands, Clark. Can you feel them?”

He nodded, a jerky, desperate motion. Your hands. He could feel your hands. Smaller than his and soft and warm, pressed against the symbol of his house, against the place where his heart should have been beating out of control but was instead starting, slowly, to calm.

“Good.” You stepped closer, and now your body was pressed against his, not in a way that was sexual but in a way that was grounding, solid and real and undeniable. You were warm all along his front, from his chest to his thighs, and he could feel every point of contact like a lifeline. “Now breathe with me, okay? Just breathe. In...” He felt your chest expand against his. “...and out.”

He tried. He really tried. But the images were still there, flickering behind his eyelids every time he blinked, and his breath came out in a shuddering gasp instead of anything resembling controlled.

“That's okay,” you said, and your voice was so soft, so impossibly gentle, like you were soothing a spooked horse rather than the most powerful being on the planet. “That's okay, baby. Just try again. In...”

This time, he followed. His chest rose against yours, and he felt the way you smiled—felt the curve of your lips against his collarbone where you'd pressed your face.

“Good. So good. Now out...”

He exhaled, and some of the pressure in his chest went with it.

“That's it.” Your hands started moving on his chest, slow circles over the fabric of his suit, soothing and repetitive. “You're doing so well, Clark. Just keep breathing with me. In...”

She's warm. She's warm and she's solid and she's here.

“...and out.”

Her heart is beating. I can hear it. I can feel it.

“In...”

It's not the vision. The vision was cold. She was cold in the vision.

“...and out.”

She's not cold. She's never been cold. She's the warmest thing I've ever known.

“In...”

She's alive.

“...and out.”

She's alive. She's alive. She's alive.

Clark's eyes opened. He hadn't realized he'd closed them. And there you were—your face tilted up to his, your eyes soft and patient and full of so much love it made something in his chest crack open all over again. But this time, it wasn't the bad kind of cracking. This was the kind that let light in.

“Hi,” you said softly, and there was the barest hint of a smile playing at your lips.

“Hi,” he managed, and his voice was wrecked, scraped raw, but it was his again.

Your hands slid up from his chest to his face, cradling his jaw, your thumbs tracing the curve of his cheekbones. You were so gentle with him, so careful, like he was something precious rather than something dangerous. He didn't understand how you did it. Didn't understand how you looked at him—at the suit, at the symbol, at the man who'd just fallen apart in your arms—and saw something worth holding.

“I'm here,” you said, and it wasn't the first time you'd said it tonight, but somehow it felt different now. Slower. More deliberate. Like you were pressing the words into his skin, making sure they stuck. “I'm here, Clark. I'm not a vision. I'm not a hallucination. I'm not going to disappear.”

He opened his mouth—to apologize, probably, because apologizing was what he did, was what he'd been training himself to do since he was old enough to understand that his existence was complicated—but you shook your head slightly, your thumbs pressing gently against his lips.

“No,” you said. “Don't. Don't apologize for needing me. Don't apologize for falling apart. You're allowed to fall apart, Clark. You're allowed to be scared and tired and overwhelmed and human, even if you're not—even if you're more than that. Especially because you're more than that. You carry so much. All the time. You never stop. You never let yourself just... be.”

Your hands moved from his face to his hair, pushing back the dark waves that had escaped the gel, your fingers carding through the strands with a tenderness that made his eyes sting.

“So here's what's going to happen,” you continued, and your voice was still soft but there was something underneath it now, something fierce and protective and utterly, utterly sure. “You're going to stand here with me for as long as you need to. And I'm going to hold you. And you're going to feel me—every part of me—and you're going to let yourself believe that I'm real.”

You took one of his hands—his stupid, heavy, dangerous hands, the hands that could punch through steel and crush diamonds—and pressed it flat against your chest, right over your heart.

“Feel that?” you asked.

He felt it. Of course he felt it. He could feel the steady thrum of your heartbeat against his palm, could feel the expansion of your lungs with every breath, could feel the warmth of your blood moving through your veins. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever felt.

“That's me,” you said. “That's my heart. It's beating because I'm alive, Clark. I'm alive, and I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. Not for a very, very long time, if I have anything to say about it.”

“But you can't promise that,” he whispered, and the words came out broken, aching, almost childish and he didn’t stop himself. “I can't protect you from everything. I couldn't in the visions. I tried, and I couldn't, and what if—what if one day—”

“Then we'll deal with that day if it comes.” Your voice was firm, unyielding, nothing like the soft, soothing tone from before. This was the voice you used when you were drawing a line in the sand, when you were refusing to let him spiral any further. “But it's not today, Clark. Today, I'm here. Right now, I'm here. And you're here. And we're together, and we're alive, and we love each other, and that's enough. That has to be enough, because it's all we have.”

You lifted his hand from your chest and pressed a kiss to his palm, right in the center, your lips warm and soft against his skin. Then you turned his hand over and kissed his knuckles, one by one, a slow and deliberate ritual.

“These hands,” you said between kisses. “These hands have caught airplanes. These hands have held up buildings. These hands have saved the world more times than I can count.” You looked up at him, and your eyes were shining. “But do you know what my favorite thing about these hands is?”

He shook his head, not trusting his voice.

“They hold me,” you said simply. “They hold me when I'm sad. They hold me when I'm scared. They hold me when I'm happy and when I'm angry and when I'm so tired I can't keep my eyes open. They hold me like I'm something precious, something worth protecting. And every time you hold me, I feel safe. Not because you're Superman. Because you're you. Because you're the man who loves me.”

A tear slipped down his cheek. You caught it with your thumb, wiping it away like it was nothing, like it didn't matter that he was crying in front of you for the second time tonight.

“I love you,” you said, and the words were so simple, so small, and yet they filled every empty space in his chest. “I love you, Clark Kent. I love the reporter and the hero and the farm boy from Kansas. I love the man who burns toast and leaves socks on the floor and cries at dog commercials. I love the man who showed up on my terrace tonight in his Superman suit because he was scared and he needed me. I love all of you. Every broken, beautiful piece.”

Clark let out a breath he felt like he'd been holding for hours. The tension in his shoulders—the tension he hadn't even realized was there until this moment—began to ease. The images were still lurking at the edges of his mind, but they seemed dimmer now, less urgent, like nightmares fading in the light of morning.

You stepped back just enough to look at him properly, your hands sliding down to rest on his hips. Your eyes traveled over him—the suit, the cape, the S-shield—and instead of fear or uncertainty, he saw something else. Something that looked like wonder. Like acceptance. Like love, pure and simple and absolute.

"You know," you said, and your voice was lighter now, teasing at the edges, “I've always wondered what this suit would feel like. Before meeting you, of course.”

Despite everything—despite the nightmares and the panic and the tears—Clark felt the corner of his mouth twitch. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Your fingers traced the edge of the S-shield, following the curve of the symbol. “It's softer than I expected. I always imagined it would be... I don't know. Hard. Impenetrable.”

“It is,” he said. “Impenetrable, I mean. Mostly.”

“Hmm.” You looked up at him through your lashes, and there was something in your expression now that made his breath catch for an entirely different reason. “And yet I can still feel you through it. Still feel how warm you are. Still feel your heart beating.” Your palm pressed flat against his chest, right over the symbol. “Still feel how much you love me.”

Clark's hands came up to cover yours, pressing them more firmly against his chest. “I don't know how to explain how much I love you,” he said, and his voice was raw but steady now. “I don't have words big enough. I don't have gestures grand enough. I just... I love you. I love you in ways I didn't know I could love someone. I love you in ways that scare me, because it's so much, and if I ever lost it—if I ever lost you—”

“You won't,” you said, and it wasn't a promise—not really, not one either of you could guarantee—but it was close enough. It was hope, and sometimes hope was all anyone had.

You rose up on your toes and kissed him, soft and slow and sweet. It wasn't the desperate, frantic kiss you always have. This was something else. Something that felt like a vow. Like a benediction. Like you were trying to pour every ounce of love you felt into him through the simple press of your lips.

When you pulled back, your eyes were bright, and your smile was the one he fell in love with—the one that crinkled the corners of your eyes and made him feel like he'd come home.

You kissed him again.

But now, it wasn't a gentle kiss, not the soft, sweet kind you usually shared over morning coffee or lazy Sunday afternoons. This was urgent, desperate, your mouth slanting over his like you were trying to pull the pain out of him through sheer proximity. Your fingers tangled in his hair, not caring that the gel he used to keep it tamed was probably leaving residue on your palms, and you kissed him until he forgot how to breathe.

When you finally pulled back, your eyes were bright with unshed tears. “I'm here,” you said, fierce and quiet all at once. “I'm right here, Clark. I'm not going anywhere.”

He made a sound—something broken, something grateful—and kissed you again. And again. And again, each kiss softer than the last, until he was just pressing his lips to your forehead, your temples, the corner of your mouth, the pulse point at your throat where your heartbeat still sang its steady, beautiful rhythm against his skin.

“I love you,” he said against your neck. The words felt too small for the enormity of what he felt, but they were all he had. “God, I love you so much.” He murmurs, nipping at your neck. “Can I take you to bed?,” he said softly, and his voice had shifted into something lower now, something that made his stomach tighten. “Please. I need—I need to feel you. All of you.” All you did was nod and that, besides that look in your eyes, was all he needed.

He started to lift you—one arm under your knees, the other around your back, the way he always did because he could and because you made that delighted sound every single time—but you pressed a hand to his chest and stopped him.

“No,” you said, and there was a new edge to your voice. Something determined. Something that made him pause, his hands stilling on your hips. “No, Clark. Tonight, I was going to—I was going to take care of you.” Your fingers curled into the fabric of his suit, right over where his heart was hammering. “When I saw you standing there, in the suit, looking like you'd seen a ghost—I thought, “okay. I've got this. I'm going to hold him. I'm going to love him. I'm going to make him forget every single terrible thing he saw tonight”.”

His throat tightened. “Sweetheart—”

“But then you kissed me.” Your voice softened, your thumbs tracing small circles against his chest. “And I felt how much you needed this. Needed me. Not in a way that I could fix by being on top, or by taking control. You needed to hold me. You needed to feel me underneath you, alive and warm and yours.” You looked up at him, and your eyes were so full of love that it almost hurt to meet them. “So I'm not going to fight you for it. But I am going to get this suit off you first.”

Clark blinked. “What?”

A small smile tugged at the corner of your mouth—the first real smile he'd seen from you since he'd arrived, and god, it was like watching the sun come out after months of rain. “You heard me, Kent.” Your hands moved to the clasp of his cape, fingers working with a determination he'd only ever seen you apply to stubborn jar lids and particularly difficult crossword puzzles. “I love you. I love that you showed up here like this, that you trusted me enough to come to me when you were falling apart. But I am not having sex with you while you're wearing enough spandex to make a 1980s rock band jealous.”

A surprised laugh escaped him—shaky, wet, still caught somewhere between a sob and actual humor. “It's not spandex. It's a Kryptonian combat weave—”

“I don't care if it's woven from the beard hairs of Zeus himself,” you interrupted, finally managing to unhook the cape and letting it pool to the floor in a dramatic puddle of red. “It's coming off.”

And just like that, something in his chest loosened. Just a little. Just enough for him to remember that this was you, that you'd never once treated him like a symbol or a savior, that you'd always been more interested in the man beneath the armor than the armor itself.

“Help me with the boots,” you said, already reaching for the zipper on the side of his right boot, and Clark found himself sinking onto the edge of the couch, letting you kneel in front of him and pull each boot off with a kind of focused intensity that made his heart ache.

You worked in silence for a moment, the only sounds the soft rasp of fabric and your steady breathing. When both boots were off—thrown unceremoniously into the corner, where they landed with two heavy thuds—you looked up at him, and your hands came to rest on his knees.

“Stand up,” you said softly.

He stood and you rose with him, your hands sliding up his thighs to hook your fingers into the waistband of the suit. “Arms up,” you murmured, once you saw it was a two piece suit and he obeyed, lifting his arms above his head as you peeled the top half of the suit off him in one smooth motion. The Kryptonian fabric whispered against his skin, and then he was standing in front of you in nothing but the blue undersuit and you paused, your hands flat against his chest.

“There he is,” you whispered, and your voice cracked just slightly on the last word. “There's my Clark.”

He couldn't speak. Couldn't form words around the lump in his throat. He just stood there, trembling under your touch as your hands explored the landscape of his chest—the scars you'd memorized months ago, the hard planes of muscle, the places where his heartbeat pulsed warm against your palm.

“Let me see all of you,” you said, and it wasn't a demand. It was a question, soft and open, and Clark nodded because he couldn't say no to you. Not tonight. Not ever.

You peeled the undersuit off him slowly, almost reverently, your knuckles brushing against his stomach, his hips, the sensitive skin at his sides. When it pooled at his feet and he stepped out of it, leaving him in nothing but his briefs—black, plain, the kind he bought in multipacks from the department store because who was going to see them anyway—you made a sound low in your throat that made his cock twitch.

“Beautiful,” you breathed, and your hands were on him again, tracing the lines of his hips, the jut of his hipbones, the soft trail of hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his briefs. “You're so beautiful, Clark.”

“Sweetheart, mmhm I—” His voice came out strangled.

“Shh.” You pressed a finger to his lips, then replaced it with your mouth, kissing him slow and deep. “You said you needed to take care of me tonight. So take me to bed. But I want you naked when you do it. I want to feel you—all of you—nothing between us.”

He lifted you then—finally, finally—and you wrapped your legs around his waist with a quiet moan, your center pressing against the thin fabric of his briefs, and he could feel how warm you were, how ready, and it took every ounce of his considerable self-control not to just take you against the wall right there.

The walk to your bedroom was short but eternal. He could feel your heartbeat against his chest, fast and steady, and your mouth was on his neck, your teeth scraping against the sensitive skin just below his jaw, and by the time he laid you down on the bed, he was so hard it was almost painful.

You reached for the hem of his sweatshirt—the one you were wearing, the one that still smelled faintly of him underneath your shampoo—and pulled it over your head in one fluid motion. You weren't wearing anything underneath, and Clark made a sound like a wounded animal at the sight of you, bare and beautiful and spread out on the sheets like an offering.

“Clark.” Your voice was soft but steady. "”our briefs. Off. Now.”

He couldn't help the broken laugh that escaped him. “Bossy tonight.”

“You almost died in a who knows where and then watched me die a thousand times in your head,” you said, and your eyes were serious now, deep and unwavering. “I think I'm allowed to be bossy.” A pause. “Besides, you're the one who wanted to take care of me. Can't do that if you're not even undressed yet.”

He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs and pushed them down, his cock springing free, hard and flushed and already leaking against his stomach. Your eyes dropped to it, and your lips parted, and Clark felt a surge of heat so intense it nearly knocked him off his feet.

“Come here,” you said, reaching for him. “Come here, I need you, honey.”

He crawled onto the bed, settling over you, his weight braced on his forearms so he wouldn't crush you. The contact was overwhelming—skin to skin, chest to chest, his cock pressing against your thigh—and you both groaned at the same time.

“I kept hearing your heartbeat stop,” he admitted, the words spilling out of him in a whisper as he pressed his forehead to yours. “In the visions. It would just... stop. And I would scream, and it wouldn't start again, and I couldn't—” He pressed his face into your neck, breathing you in. “You have to understand. I've heard things. Seen things. In all my years doing this, I've witnessed horrors that would break most people. But nothing—nothing—has ever hurt like watching you die.”

Your hands slid down his back, fingers digging into the muscles there, pulling him closer. “I'm here,” you said, and your voice was steady even though your eyes were wet. “Feel my heartbeat, Clark. Feel it.”

He did. He pressed his ear to your chest, right over your heart, and listened. thrum-thrum, thump-thump. Steady and strong and real. Your hand came up to cradle the back of his head, fingers threading through his hair, and he felt the vibration of your voice through your ribcage as you spoke.

“I love you,” you said into the quiet. “I love you, I love you, I love you. That heartbeat is yours. It's always been yours. Every single beat, from the moment we met until the moment I die—and I'm not dying tonight, Clark, I'm not dying anytime soon—every single one of them is for you.”

He kissed his way down your body. Slowly. Deliberately. Each kiss a confirmation, a reassurance, a tiny prayer of gratitude. He kissed the spot where your pulse beat at the base of your throat. He kissed the hollow between your collarbones. He kissed the swell of your breasts, took one nipple into his mouth, and you arched beneath him with a cry that went straight to his cock.

“Clark, mmhm oh fuck”

He sucked gently, then harder when your fingers tightened in his hair, and your other hand scrabbled at the sheets like you were trying to anchor yourself. He switched to the other breast, giving it the same attention, and your hips were rolling against his, your wetness slick against his stomach.

“Please,” you gasped. “Please, Clark, I need you inside me—”

He lifted his head, looking down at you. Your eyes were dark, your lips parted, your chest heaving. You were the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen, and he'd seen galaxies born and die.

“Not yet,” he said, and his voice was rough but steady now. “I'm not done taking care of you.”

He kissed lower, trailing his mouth down your sternum, your stomach, the soft curve of your belly. When he reached the waistband of your pajama shorts—the tiny cotton ones you wore to bed, the ones with the little strawberries on them that made him smile every single time—he hooked his fingers into them and pulled them down your legs along with your underwear, tossing them somewhere behind him.

And then you were bare beneath him, open and wanting, and Clark settled between your thighs like he was coming home.

He kissed the inside of your knee. Then your thigh. Then higher, and higher, until his breath was hot against your center and you were shaking, your hands fisting in the sheets.

“Clark—”

“Shh,” he murmured, and then he licked you—one long, slow stripe from your entrance to your clit—and the sound you made was enough to bring him to his knees if he hadn't already been there.

You tasted like heaven. Like home. Like everything he'd been desperate for since the first nightmare had taken hold. He buried his face between your thighs and worshipped you, his tongue drawing patterns on your clit, his fingers sliding inside you and curling just so, and you were crying out his name, your hips bucking against his mouth. He loves spending his time with you, licking, sucking and sometimes his teeth are involved.

“That's it,” he murmured against you, and the vibration made you whimper. “Let me hear you, my love. Let me feel you. I need to know you're real, sweetheart, I need to feel you come apart for me—”

You came with a shattered cry, your whole body convulsing, your thighs clamping around his head, and Clark didn't stop. He licked you through it, gentler now, softer, until you were pushing at his shoulders with trembling hands.

“Too much,” you gasped. “Too much, honey, I can't handle more.”

He crawled back up your body, kissing you so you could taste yourself on his lips. Your arms wrapped around his neck, pulling him close, and he could feel your heart hammering against his chest.

“I love you,”he said, and it came out like a prayer. “I love you, I love you, I love you so much, baby.”

“Then fuck me,” you said, half-laughing, half-sobbing. “Please, Clark, I need to feel you deep inside.”

He reached between you, positioning himself at your entrance, and paused. Looked down at you. Your eyes were wet, your face flushed, your lips swollen from his kisses. You looked utterly wrecked, and utterly here, and something in his chest cracked open and healed all at once.

“Talk to me,” he said, and his voice was raw. “While I'm inside you. I need to hear your voice. I need to know you're with me.”

“I'm with you,” you said, and your hands cupped his face, pulling him down until your foreheads touched. “I'm always with you, Clark. Now please—”

He pushed inside you. Slowly. So slowly. Inch by agonizing inch, watching your face the whole time—the way your eyes fluttered shut, the way your lips parted, the way you gasped his name like it was the only word you remembered how to say. When he was fully seated, buried to the hilt inside your heat, he stopped. Just held there, letting you both adjust, letting himself feel every pulse and flutter of your body around him.

“Gosh,” he breathed. “Oh Gosh, you feel so good, my love.”

“I know.” Your voice was wrecked. “I know. Move, Clark. Please.”

He pulled back and thrust forward, and the sound you made was obscene, perfect, the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard. He set a rhythm—slow at first, deep and deliberate, each thrust a reaffirmation that you were here, you were alive, you were his.

“I watched you die,” he said, and the words came out between thrusts, ragged and raw. “I watched you die in a hospital bed. I watched you die in a car crash. I watched you die in something that could be our shared home.” His voice broke, and he thrust deeper, and you moaned. “I watched a man shoot you in the chest while I was standing right there, and I couldn't—I couldn't, oh damn.”

“Clark.” Your hands were everywhere—his face, his shoulders, his back, pulling him closer, holding him like you could keep him from flying apart. “I'm here. I'm here. Feel me—feel me, honey.”

He did. He felt the way you clenched around him, the way your nails dug into his shoulders, the way your heels pressed into the backs of his thighs, urging him deeper. He felt your heartbeat thrumming against his chest, faster now, matching the rhythm of his hips. He felt the wetness on his cheeks—tears, his or yours, he couldn't tell anymore—and the warmth of your breath against his neck.

“You're so beautiful,” he said, and he was crying now, actually crying, the tears falling onto your face and mixing with yours. “You're so beautiful and I can't lose you, I can't—”

“You won't.” You kissed his tears, your mouth soft and desperate against his cheeks, his eyelids, the corner of his lips. “You won't lose me, Clark. I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here. I'm right here, I'm right here, I'm always here.”

Your words became a chant, a mantra, a prayer, and Clark fucked you through it, hard and deep and desperate, his hand sliding between your bodies to rub your clit in tight circles.

“Come for me,” he said, and it wasn't a request. “Come for me, sweetheart, I need to feel you—I need to know you're real, that you’re here, that you’re mine.”

You shattered. Came apart around him with a cry that was almost a scream, your body convulsing, your inner walls clenching around him like a vice, and Clark followed you over the edge with a groan that was torn from somewhere deep in his chest. He spilled inside you, wave after wave, his hips stuttering as he buried himself as deep as he could go.

For a long moment, there was nothing but breathing. Nothing but the sound of your hearts—his steady and strong, yours fast and fluttering—and the rustle of sheets as you both trembled through the aftershocks.

Clark collapsed beside you, pulling you into his arms, your head tucked under his chin and your legs tangled with his. He could feel your tears on his chest, could hear the little hitches in your breath as you cried, and he held you tighter, his lips pressed to the top of your head.

“I'm sorry,” he said after a long moment, his voice muffled by your hair. “For showing up like this. For—for dumping all of that on you. You didn't sign up for all this mess, baby.”

“Stop.” Your hand pressed flat against his chest, right over his heart. “Don't you dare apologize. Not for this. Not for needing me.” You tilted your head back to look at him, and your eyes were red-rimmed but fierce. “I signed up for all of you, Clark Kent. The good days and the bad ones. The nightmares and the morning coffee. The cape and the glasses. You don't get to hide parts of yourself from me just because you think they're inconvenient or scary or too much.”

He pressed a kiss to your forehead, then your nose, then your lips. “I love you,” he said, because the words were inadequate but they were all he had. “I love you more than I know how to say.”

You smiled—that soft, devastating smile that had undone him from the very first moment he'd seen it—and snuggled closer, your ear pressed over his heart.

“Then show me,” you said quietly. “Every day. For the rest of our lives.”

Clark looked down at you—at the tear tracks on your cheeks, the love in your eyes, the way your body was pressed against his like you were trying to crawl inside his skin and stay there—and he felt something shift. Something settle. Something that felt like hope.

“I will,” he said, and his voice was steady now. Certain. “Every day. For the rest of our lives.”

Outside, the city hummed its endless night-song. Inside, wrapped in each other and the quiet aftermath of love, Clark Kent let himself believe that everything might just be okay.

He had you, after all. And that was enough. That was everything. You are his everything.

He was nursing a bourbon he’d probably make last the entire night and he was half-listening to Langdon tell some story, his leg stretched out into the aisle, and he hadn’t seen you yet. You had a second. You could have turned around and texted Dana some bullshit excuse of getting the full eight hours and walked back to the parking lot to go home to your dog and half your bed.

You never did, though. You told yourself afterward it was because the leaving would’ve told the table something. But the truer thing, the one you didn’t want to look at directly, was that an evening without Jack had started to feel like a room with the bulb burned out. You’d gotten that bad. 

“There she is,” Dana said, twisting around in the booth, already sliding to make room. “Sit. I saved you the good side. It doesn’t wobble.”

You sat, and the good side put you diagonal from Jack, close enough that his stretched-out leg was a fact you had to arrange your own legs around under the table. He hadn’t acknowledged you yet. He was letting Langdon finish; Jack always let people finish, it was something that made patients trust him and made you, toward the end, want to put a plate through the wall because he’d let you get to the bottom of sentences you’d have killed to be interrupted out of.

But you watched the back of his neck change as his shoulders went from loose to aware. When he turned, his eyes found yours like a bad number on a monitor, faster than he could’ve chosen. For half-a-second, before his face caught up, he looked so completely undefended. Then it was gone and he looked at you like you were weather he'd been told about. 

“Huh,” he breathed, picking his bourbon back up. “They let your department fraternize with the help now, or are you slumming?”

“Dana kidnapped me.” You reached over and took the lime off his rim. He’d never once in his life used it—he hated citrus in bourbon—and only got it because Marlene behind the bar had been putting it in each time. Jack had decided somewhere around your wedding that debating her on it was more than what the lime was worth. 

You bit it and set the rind into his napkin where it went, where it had always gone. 

His eyes tracked you as you did it without any comment. The better half of five years of the lime and he’d never once said anything, only bought you the garnish on his own drink. 

“How was your floor?” you asked.

“Slow.” He turned the glass a quarter-turn on the table, an old tell, the thing his hands did when he was trying very hard to keep his words scarce. “Knock on something.” 

“But I like watching you suffer,” you drawled. 

He huffed at that. “I know.”

That was it. He was good at letting things sit, it was the worst of his habits, the way he could absorb a thing you said and just hold it instead of returning it. Half your sentences to him used to end in a silence you'd eventually have to fill yourself. You'd forgotten how much work it was. You'd forgotten you used to do all the talking and call it conversation.

“You got Kevin this week?” Dana asked from beside you. 

Jack, without a beat of hesitation, said, “She’s got Kilo this week.”

Javadi, the new and curious med student in the ER, looked between both of you with furrowed brows. “Sorry. Kevin or Kilo? Is that—are those two dogs?”

“One dog,” you said.

“Yup. One dog,” Jack agreed.

“Then why—” Javadi started.

“His name’s Kilo,” Jack said.

“No, his name’s Kevin.”

Javadi’s head went between you as though she was watching a tennis match. The table laughed because they’d heard this a hundred times and it never stopped being funny to them; the divorced two doing their oldest bit, the one argument that had outlived the marriage that spawned it.

“His papers say Kilo,” Jack said in Javadi’s direction.

Robby, who’d been completely invested in his own drink, said, “And your papers say divorced.”

“And we very much are, thank you,” you said, picking it up before the laugh had finished.

Jack stayed silent then. Robby, he’d have something for. But this was you saying it, easy and completely certain in front of everyone. The leg that had been stretched into your space this entire night drew back slowly, a small retreat nobody at the table except you could’ve felt. He turned the glass a quarter-turn. 

You’d done it on purpose. You’d felt the whole night immediately tilting into the warm dangerous fiction of it and you’d reached for the one sentence that would shut it, and you’d swung it at the only person who’d actually feel the blade. 

The facts of your divorce were no concern to anyone but the two of you at the table, but you could feel Jack flinch inwardly by the announcement that blanketed it all; that you now lived in separate homes, that the dog was scheduled like a custody hearing; that the word ‘we’ had a tense and it was past. None of it was news. He’d signed the same papers you had in the same flat conference room, with the same pen the mediator kept clicking until you'd wanted to scream. He knew the facts better than anyone. And still you'd watched him wince when you said it out loud.

He'd built a whole life on the difference between a thing being true and a thing being spoken; it was how he ran a trauma bay, how he told a family the worst news in the world in a voice that never broke, how he'd ended your marriage without ever once saying the words that would've made it real, just withdrawing by degrees until you were the one who had to say them for him. He'd made you do that too. He made you do all the saying. And now you'd said this, and he was sitting there absorbing it the way he absorbed everything, quietly, like he'd decided long ago that taking it without a sound was the least of what he had coming.

“Just fucking do it, Jack.”

And he did—finally, finally—push into you with a single long stroke that dragged a sound out of both of you, his coming out through his teeth, and yours into the pillow. His forehead came down between your shoulder blades. He stayed there for a second, breathing, one hand splayed wide over your hip and the other braced into the mattress beside your hips. His weight settled onto the left leg the way it always settled, a decision his body stopped having to make years ago. You could feel him shaking with the effort of not moving yet, of dragging it out, because he always did this, he always made you ask twice. 

“Christ,” he breathed into your spine. “You feel—” he started, and let the words die as his teeth gently pressed into the bone at the top of your shoulder. It was then he started to move.

He fucked like he did everything else with his hands; he was methodical, attentive, and so devastingly present. He went in believing there was always a correct rhythm, and he intended to find it just to ruin you with it. He’d learned by repetition until it stopped requiring thought, until he could play you without looking, and the worst part—the one you’d never say out loud—was that it worked. It always worked. He knew the exact angle that made you stop being a person with opinions about him. 

That long stroke dragged slow on the way out and snapped deep on the way back in, and your whole body misfired around him whether you’d given it permission to or not.

His palm slid up from your hip to flatten between your shoulder blades and pressed, folding you down into the mattress, taking the choice out of your spine. And the new angle had you gasping into the sheets because he’d done it on purpose; he always did everything on purpose, and now he was hitting that place that made your fingers curl and your thighs shake and a thin embarrassing whine climb out you that you’d have died before making it sober. 

Jack felt the exact second your control went and he leaned into it, hips grinding deep and unhurried, holding you right there on the edge of too-much like he was reading everything under your skin. 

“That’s it,” he drawled out, his voice low and even, the bastard, like he had all night, like he wasn’t already wrecked behind the voice. “Yeah, I’ve got you.” And he did. He had you exactly where he wanted you and you let him, because no one had ever taken you apart this precisely, this patiently, like your falling apart was the only thing on his list and he intended to do it right.

The dog tags swung forward and dragged close across your back when he leaned over you, then warm when they settled against your skin, and you thought—stupidly, with the part of your brain that should’ve been offline—that you used to fall asleep listening to that chain shift when he breathed. You thought there had been a version of this where afterward he stayed. You shoved that thought down. You arched your back into him instead and he made a punched-out noise, low in his chest, his grip going tight on you to leave the marks.

“Slow down,” he muttered more to himself than you, but he didn’t. His hips stuttered out of their careful rhythm because this was the one place his composure failed; it was the one place where the sealed-up, gallows humor, watching-you-over-the-glass version of him came apart at the seams. 

You’d figured this out over the months. This was the only place Jack was honest. He’d never say the things across a table, in daylight, with his clothes on. But here, with his cock buried inside of you and his composure shot, the truth leaked out of him in fragments he wouldn’t be accountable for later. 

“Missed this,” he got out, ragged, his mouth at the back of your neck now, words pressed into your hairline like he could bury them in there. “Missed you, fuck. You’ve got no idea, sweetheart, the things I—” 

“Don’t.” You didn’t want it. You wanted it so badly your chest ached and that was exactly why you didn’t want it, because you knew what it was worth in the morning, which was nothing, which was a text about whether you’d remembered to walk Kevin. “Jack. Don’t talk. You can’t—” You let out a gasp as he pressed his hips completely flush against yours, chasing you to the hilt, as if he could physically expel the words out of you. “Can’t fuck me into being with you again.”

You felt him falter at the words, just for a beat, the rhythm catching like you’d reached back and put a hand flat on his sternum. He slowed, dragged himself almost all the way out and held there, trembling, his whole weight coming down over your back so his mouth was now at your ear and you could feel everything against the shell of it.

“I know,” he said, words ragged. “I know I can’t. Doesn’t mean I can’t try.”

His hand moved around the dip of your waist, and he pulled out of you slow, the loss making you bite down on a sound. Then he was rolling you, one palm flat and insistent on your hip, turning you under him onto your back like it was the easiest thing in the world.

“No—” You got an arm up, forearm against your own eyes, because you knew what he wanted, and you weren’t going to give it to him. The face, the looking. From behind, you could keep it what it was; turned over, you’d have to be there for it. “Jack, leave it. I don’t—”

“Hey.” He held your wrist, thumb working into the soft inside of it where your pulse was going stupid. “C’mon. Move the arm.”

“No.”

“You won’t even—” He let out a low laugh, disbelieving, almost wounded. “You’ll let me do every other thing but you won’t even look at me?”

“That’s different.”

“Yeah.” He went quiet for a moment, and his hand slid up the inside of your thigh, holding you open, patient as anything. He knew exactly what the looking was and exactly why you were hiding from it, and he was going to wait you out. “I know it is. Move the arm anyway.”

He braced over you on his arm, the other hand drawing slow idle circles high on your thigh, his cock notched against you and not pushing in, just there, the threat and promise of him, while he looked down at the arm over your face. You could feel him watching.

So you did move the arm, mostly just to spite him by giving him exactly what he wanted. His face was right there—jaw tight, eyes gone dark and fixed on you like you were the only lit thing in the room—and the second you met it, the slight smugness melted clean down the middle and there was just the wanting underneath, naked and his.

“Thank god,” he breathed before pushing back into you. His eyes tracked your face scrunch up at the familiar—too familiar—pleasure like he’d been starving for exactly this. His hand left your jaw and found your knee, hooking it up higher over his hip. He’d always known your left hip sat wrong, that this was the angle that didn’t ache after; the same way you knew, without ever being told, to take the weight off his right side, the two of you arranging yourselves around each other the way you always had. “Knew you were in there somewhere.”

“Don’t get sentimental, Jack” you said, breathless. “You’ll pull something.”

He huffed a laugh against your jaw. Your hand had gone to his left shoulder and you pressed your thumb into the knot that always sat under the blade after a long shift, working it slow while he moved in you. He groaned low and helpless at the unexpected mercy of it.

“Mouthy,” he managed to say. “Even now.”

“You’re so—so insufferable.”

His mouth found the corner of yours and his hand slid up your ribs so his thumb could catch the underside of your breast exactly where he knew; your back came up off the mattress for him. “You married me anyway. What’s that say about you?”

You got your fingers to his hair and scratched once at the base of his skull, the thing that used to put him to sleep in under five minutes, something you’d done about a thousand times in a bed you no longer shared. You watched his eyes go briefly unfocused with how much his body remembered it meant being safe. You hated that you’d done it. 

The easy heat in him went somewhere graver, and his hand came up to cover yours where it rested in his hair. He pinned it there, keeping the touch on him, like he couldn’t bear for you to take it back.

“Why’d you—” His hips stuttered. “Why’d you have to go, huh?”

“Don’t,” you said quickly, and your hand came out of his hair—you made it come down, fighting the pin of his fingers—and you planted your palm against his chest to put an inch back between the two of you. “Don’t talk. Just—shut up. Jack, shut up and—”

He took in a breath, lips still parted like he wanted to talk. You’d expected it. Jack was fabulous at saying everything important while inside you or when he was halfway asleep.

“Yeah.” He nodded shakily. “Yeah. Okay.”

He got an arm under the small of your back and hauled you up into him, and the next stroke was just deep and selfish, like he’d stopped trying to make his point and now was only trying to get somewhere. The slow ruinous tenderness burned off into something with no thought left in it, and your body surged up to meet it—God—yes, this, you could do, this didn’t ask you for anything you’d sworn off. This was just the white-hot animal fact of him and you could be all the way in without losing a single thing. 

“There,” he ground out, forehead dropped to yours, both of you breathing into the same inch of air. “There—fuck—there you go.”

Your mind went black. That was the mercy of getting it like this; the part of you that counted the times he’d said your name, that totted up what the morning had cost, went quiet, drowned clean in the simple overwhelming good of him. You grabbed at his back and pulled him in past where there was room and made a strangled noise.

His hand found yours where it was fisted in the sheet and laced through it, knuckles white, pinning it down beside your head—needing the anchor—and you gripped back just as hard. The bed was loud. Neither of you cared. You'd gone past the place where you could have stopped even if the smarter version of you had walked in and ordered it, both of you just chasing the finish now with a kind of grim mutual desperation, like if you got it done fast enough you wouldn't have to deal with what it was.

“Close,” you breathed. “Jack, I’m close—” 

“I know. C’mon, let me feel it—” His hand let go of yours and dropped between you, fingers finding you without a second of searching, the muscle-memory of you deathly absolute. “Been thinking about this all night.” 

He worked you up to the edge with his face buried in your throat and his hips snapping. The whole thing finally cresting into something neither of you could've talked through if you'd tried.

You went over first, the peak tearing through you with your nails dug into his back and your spine bowed clean off the mattress. He fucked you through every second of it, hips ramming, dragging it up past the point you could stand. And right at the end of yours his rhythm broke and went erratic, deep and grinding and graceless, and you felt the exact moment it caught him.

His arms hooked tighter under the small of your back and hauled you up into him so there was nowhere for him to go but deeper, like the thought of any distance between the two of you right now was a thing he couldn’t tolerate. Your legs wrapped around the backs of his thighs anyway, your heel pressed into the base of his spine.

“Gonna—” His voice came out shredded, into your throat. “Sweetheart, I’m gonna—fuck—”

With a low broken sound, his whole weight crushed down and his hips gave those last helpless grinding pushes, burying himself to the hilt, spilling into you with his face shoved into your neck and his hand fisted in your hair. He continued moving even then, small, greedy rolls of his hips, working himself deeper through the aftershocks, wringing every second out. 

“God.” He shuddered out the word against your pulse, hips still flush, seated as deep as he could get. His arms came around you completely—there wasn’t any inch he wasn’t holding—and he stayed there long after he finished, unwilling to give up the last of it. Greedy even now, especially now. Jack would take every second he was handed and a few he wasn’t.

His heart slammed against your ribs. His breath dragged itself slowly back down. For a moment, you let him have it. You let him stay heavy on and inside you, and you stared at the ceiling. 

After a minute—because that’s all you could grant him, a mere sixty seconds—you put your palm flat on his chest, over the spot where the dog tags had settled cold against his skin, and you pushed.

He came up on his forearms and he looked down at you. That was the hundredth mistake of the night, letting him be that close to your face with the lights of the street coming through the blinds in stripes across him. He looked at you the way he looked at you in the one place he ever did, like you were something he'd been allowed to hold and was already being asked to set back down, and the wanting in it was so total and so useless that you had to look at his collarbone instead.

Then his fingers came up to your chin, tilting your head up gently to meet his eyes again. “I wish you weren’t so cruel to me in front of people.” he said, voice coming out so rough. 

You knew exactly which part of the night he was talking about. He’d carried it the whole way here—through the parking lot, through the drive, through all of this, your body still humming with him—and he’d held onto it the entire time, only to let it out now because now was the only time he could.

“It’s not cruel if it’s true,” you said. “Nobody thought it was cruel.”

“No, nobody thought anything.” He caressed your jaw just slightly, and you stilled under the grazing touch. “I still felt it.” 

Maybe it was the hour, or the drinks still thinning in you, or just the unbearable fact of him looking at you. Regardless of what it was, the lid you kept on the old thing slipped, and you didn't get it back down in time.

“Don’t talk to me about cruelty, Jack,” you said quietly, holding his eyes even though you could feel your own burn. You could do it for once, because he was the one that looked like he needed a collarbone to fix his gaze on. “It was your cruelty that did this.”

His thumb stopped at your jaw. And then, instead of the stillness you’d expected, his hand slid back into your hair and his arm came around you and he pulled you in, the whole weight of him bearing down. His face went into your neck. 

You froze under him, suddenly hating him all over again for making this harder and harder each time.

“Go home,,” you said, and it came out lower than you’d wanted it to.

He let out a shaky breath against your skin. “I’d like to stay with you for one night. If you asked.” 

Your hands came up to his shoulders. You gently pushed. “I’m asking you to go.”

He came up off you slow, by degrees, and the cold rushed into every place he’d just been. He never argued; he only gave you offers where with the condition of you having to ask welded into them. He sat up on the edge of the bed with his back to you and reached for his shirt off the floor.

People at the hospital had a word for you and it was ‘difficult.’ You’d made peace with it years ago. What you didn’t have a word for was the tired. You’d been tired before; this had a different grain to it, bone-level and sitting-behind-your eyes. Twice this week the floor had gone soft and far away when you stood up too fast. You’d put a hand on the counter and waited it out and told no one.

You hadn't eaten, either. The granola bar was still in your bag. So when you stood up from the workstation to walk the corrected units down yourself, the room didn't gray at the edges this time. It dropped. The whole thing tilted bright then dim, your hand reached for the counter and missed it by an inch, and the next clear thing was the floor being closer than it should be and a hand hard around your arm.

“Okay—I’ve got you. Sit.” Dana, you recognized. Of course it was Dana; she had a sixth sense for the exact second a person stopped standing upright. She steered you down to a chair before you’d finished falling. “Head down. Between the knees. You’ve told a hundred people to do this—do it.”

“I’m fine,” you said, voice coming out depleted. “I just got up too—”

“Yeah, you’ve been getting up fast a couple times this week.” " Her hand was on the back of your neck, two fingers at your pulse, and she wasn't looking at your face, she was looking at her watch, counting, and the professionalism of it—the way she'd switched you from colleague to patient without asking your permission—made something cold go through you. “When’d you eat, hon?”

“I ate.”

“When?” When you stayed silent, she said, “That’s what I thought.”

She straightened up and you heard her turn. “Hey! Somebody grab Robby. No, he’s not—just grab him.” She turned back to you, and gentler than you wanted, in a way that told you exactly how bad you looked, she said, “We’re gonna put you in a room. Don’t make a face. We’re gonna put you in a room, run some fluids, check a couple things. If it’s nothing—thank god—then it’s nothing, and you can be insufferable about it for weeks. But you went down, sweetheart, and I’m not arguing with you about it.”

You wanted to argue; you wanted to refuse the chair and go back to work instead of occupying a bed at work. But you were so tired. You were tired, and some animal part of you had already known that for two weeks and had been waiting, with a patience that frightened you, for someone to make you stop.

So you let Dana walk you to the room. You let her pull the curtain. You sat on the edge of the gurney in a department you'd worked in for over a decade and let a colleague put a line in your arm, and you stared at the corner of the blood pressure cuff and did not let yourself think the one thought that had started, very quietly, somewhere underneath the tired, to assemble itself, and would not finish assembling until Robby came in twenty minutes later with your labs and a look on his face you couldn't read, and asked you, carefully, like a man stepping onto ice, when your last period was.

You’d seen him tell a people about death with more steadiness than he was managing right now, standing at the foot of your gurney with a tablet he wasn't looking at, asking you about your cycle like the answer was already on the screen and he was just giving you the courtesy of arriving at it yourself.

“Why?” you asked flatly.

“Just humor me. Tell me.”

You told him and he had no reaction, and that was how you knew. Robby’s face had gone completely neutral.

“Okay,” he said, setting the tablet down. “Your labs came back. Everything’s—the anemia’s mild. That’s the lightheadedness and not-eating. We’ll sort that out.” He paused, took a breath in, and the cold thing that had gone through you on the floor came back and sat down in your chest and stayed. “Your hCG’s elevated.”

You felt your body run cold then.

“That’s the pregnancy hormone,” he said gently. He was a teacher before anything, and that reflex was still on, even with you.

“I know what hCG is, Robby,” you said, the words coming out sharp, voice cracking the last word in half. You saw him nod sharply as he decided to ignore it. “I—I know what it is.”

“It’s early,” he said. “Numbers are consistent with early, which means you’ve got time. That’s what I’m saying. You’ve got time to think about whatever you need to think about.” He was being so careful. “I didn’t put it into anything yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”

Early. You’ve got time. 

He picked the tablet up—done being a doctor about it now, the official part handled—and leaned a hip against the counter, and his voice changed, going off-duty.

“Hey,” he said. “Congratulations.”

You nodded, your mind already distant. 

“You gonna tell Jack?”

Your mind sharpened. For a second, you genuinely didn’t understand the sentence. Your brain refused it wholly, turned it over to look for the trick. There was no way Robby knew—there was no way anybody knew—because you’d been so careful, the whole thing happened in the dark precisely so it wouldn’t seep into the light, so nobody could say a sentence like that. Your stomach dropped through the gurney.

“Huh?” 

Robby looked at you, then shrugged. “I just figured, because you two still talk. He’d want to know. Big life thing.” Then, he added softer, misreading your face completely, “I guess it’s really over between the two of you then?”

You felt your breath hitch in your throat. That was what people would think when it got out, that the door has finally shut. They’d think you were getting clear, a baby with somebody new means the Jack-of-it-all was finally done, mercifully done. That you’d moved on and met someone, that you were building a thing past the divorce you survived. This was supposed to be proof of it. The sad civilized arrangement nobody named, ended at last by a life you were starting without him.

Robby had it exactly backwards and he had no way to know it. It was the furthest thing from over. It was likely the most permanent thing that had ever happened to you, and it had Jack’s name and only Jack’s name. The thing Robby believed to be your way out was the thing that could mean there’d never be a way out. Not anymore, if you chose to have this child. Not ever. You’d be tied to Jack Abbot. A year and a half of getting clear by inches.

You realized Robby was still standing there and that he’d asked you something. He was waiting for an answer you didn’t have the throat for.

“Can you give me a minute?” Your voice came out hoarse. “Just—a minute. Please. And don’t put it into anything yet. Just—don’t let anyone know.”

Robby nodded, probably thinking you needed a beat to let the good news settle, to feel something private and large before the world got its hands on it. “Course. I’ll hold the room, keep people out. Take your time.” 

His hand found your shoulder on the way past, squeezing, and then the curtain rings scraped along the rod and he was gone. 

It all came up at once, fast and without warning. Your hand was flat on the edge of the gurney and you watched it shake, and you made it stop. You could always make your hands stop. What you couldn’t do was make the rest of it stop. The rest of it was the thought you wouldn't think of, thinking itself anyway, and the worst part was the voice it came in, your own, flat, professional, the one you used to walk a frightened patient through their options without ever letting it shake. You could end it. It's early. Numbers consistent with early. You knew exactly how early early was. You knew the window, the way you knew the shelf life of a unit of platelets down to the day. You knew how clean it was, how legal, how completely nobody's business but your own. There was a door. Right now, there was still a door.

There was a door. There was, right now, still a door; it was the realest door, the one that actually led all the way out that would let you walk back into the life where you got clear of Jack Abbot for good and never had to share a child or a custody calendar or a name with him. He would give you Kevin, you knew that. Over would mean over, for good, where in five years you’d be a woman the hospital remembered being married once, to the ER’s night shift attending, you know the one.

You could take that door. It was yours to take. Nobody even had to know. 

You sat in the small bright room and made yourself look directly at the door and waited to feel the relief of it, yet it didn’t come. What came instead, rising up under the grief like a second tide, worse than the first, was a thing you had no word for and no right to and could not, would not, look at straight on, was that it was Jack’s.

You wished you could see it as a curse, and somewhere in the last thirty seconds it had turned over in you and come up as something else; a small, traitorous, and warm thing. It was the exact warmth that had locked your ankles around him, the same warmth that had opened the door for him every night. A piece of him you could get to keep, that no amount of divorce could put back in its box. The one version of forever you two were going to get. And a part of you, a part you despised with everything you had, wanted it. More than the baby in the abstract. His, specifically and unforgivably. 

You put your hand over your mouth as you felt it all come up, and you cried—the real way, the way you hadn’t since the lawyer’s office. You cried a cry that came up from the root and shook you apart, alone, in a place where you worked, with only a curtain covering you. 

You couldn’t have heard the shift change happen on the other side of the curtain. The hospital had kept turning around your little curtained box, that somewhere out there it had ticked over into evening and the day people were handing the floor to the night people. You hadn’t heard any of it. 

You hadn’t heard Dana catch him at the board, and she would have—you know she would have tried—put a hand flat on his chest the second she saw which way he was moving. You only heard the curtain rings scrape against the rod. 

You looked up—ruined, mid-breath, your hand still pressed over your own mouth with your face holding an expression no one had ever seen you do. And there was Jack with one hand still fisted in the curtain he'd thrown back, stopped dead in the gap of it.

He’d come in braced, almost with the same register he came in when there was a level 1 trauma, except this one was a case of lightheadedness. His sleeves were shoved to his elbow, jaw already set, and he’d walked in expecting to find blood or something else equal to that, a thing he’d be able to clean up and fix. He had a hand half-raised for it, and it stayed there, hovering, for it had nothing to fix. 

You knew his face better than your own; there’d never once been a thing he could’ve kept from you, not even when it felt like he was hardly your husband, especially then. You watched the readiness dissipate off of Jack’s face, watched the doctor leave him by degrees until what was left standing was just Jack. 

Just Jack had no protocol for this; there was nothing he’d been taught to do with his face when you were crying because you didn’t cry.

He of all people knew so. He’d sat at a conference table with you while a mediator clicked a pen and you signed your name with a hand that was too steady. He’d carried his own boxes down to the truck while you watched from the upstairs window, dry-eyed, because tears would have made it all real and you refused—out of spite, out of the last thing you had—to make it real where he could see. 

His mouth opened, and his throat worked around words, any word. When he finally spoke, it was just your name, and it came out cracked down the middle, like a plea and a prayer. 

He had no idea. It made you sob slightly louder than you would’ve liked, the realization that he was standing there gutted with fear for you, scared past the edge of himself, and he did not know. Jack could not have known that he was the answer, that you were the answer. If he’d asked you what had happened, the whole truth would have been his name and your own; it would have been the thing you’d done together in the dark a couple dozen times and called nothing. 

“I hate you,” you said, because the only thing you’d been capable of doing was throwing up a wall, driving him out with your own two hands. And it didn’t work, because the words had come out between sobs, wet and wrong, the cruelty falling apart on the way out. 

He didn’t argue it. He never argued the ones he thought were true. He just took it the same way he’d taken every other blow you’d ever landed, without ever lifting a hand to stop it, as though he’d decided a long time ago this was the least of what he had coming.

Still, something moved through him when the words hit, a flinch, a wince that started behind his eyes and pulled his whole face down with it. 

He came the rest of the way to you anyway, and your hand came up between you—far from a hit, there was nothing left in your arm to make one, just the heel of your palm landing against his chest, more sob turned outward than strike. It pushed against nothing. Jack didn’t even rock with it. And then your fingers were curling into the fabric over his sternum instead, gripping when you’d wanted to shove, the same failure of your hands as two weeks ago; pushing him away and hauling him in, your body unable to decide which.

“You—” Another blow, glancing off his chest. “Why did we have—”

“Okay.” He let you continue, letting the first ones land, face stricken and bewildered as he absorbed the blows for a crime he couldn’t name. “Okay. Okay, hey—”

You drew back, and when your hand closed in again, his own came up and closed around your wrist. You could’ve pulled free—he’d left you room for it—but you let him keep holding it there against his chest where you’d been striking him.

“What happened,” he said, words coming out quietly, not even a question. “Whatever it is. Talk to me. What happened?”

He started to move into you, closing the space between you by inches, his other hand coming up to your face, your shoulder, somewhere, anywhere, his whole self trying to fold into your orbit the way it always had. “Just tell me,” he said, closer now, voice dropped lower, into a register it stayed it when it was only the two of you. “Let me—”

“No.” You twisted your wrist in his hand and turned your face away from the one coming toward it. “You can’t just—I won’t let you—”

His forehead had dropped down to hover over your temple, the warmth of him crowding into every place you’d been trying to wall off. “I’m not. I’m not doing anything. I’m just here—let me be here.”

Here. He’d said the word so softly, with so much surety, like it was a small thing to ask, like it had been a place he’d ever once been. The wall you'd been holding with both hands didn't come down so much as it went out from under you, the way the floor had two weeks ago, all at once and without your permission.

You stopped twisting away. You felt him feel the fight going out of your wrist under his fingers and felt the new alertness move through him.

“You want to be here,” you said into his chest, where your fists were still knotted in his shirt, the words coming out muffled aimed at the fabric. Then, through a disbelieving laugh devoid of any humor, you said, “You want to be here?”

“Yeah,” he breathed out. “Yeah. I’m here.”

“Fucking—” The laugh that tore out of you was anything but one. “Congratulations, then.” Your forehead pressed down hard against his sternum, your eyes squeezed shut, because you couldn’t say it and knew you were going to anyway. At least you wouldn’t have to watch. “Fuck—You’re gonna be a father.”

Everything that had been moving stopped all at once; the hand at your jaw, the thumb that had been working slow along your wrist, the whole restless warmth of him trying to fold into you went motionless. For a second, he didn’t even breathe.

You forced yourself to look up. You wanted, somewhere mean and small and ten years old, to see it touch Jack. You wanted to finally watch something get all the way through. 

You got it, and it was worse than you’d let yourself imagine.

The first thing that fell of was the part that told you he was ready to fix this, fix you. It fell clean off, his brows furrowing in worry, a tell that looked too tiny for something this large. 

For a second—less than that, before he could pull the reins on it—something that had no business being there moved under the fear. You knew it because you’d felt the exact same thing only a few minutes ago, alone, the warm traitorous thing rising up under the grief. It was there, on his face—unguarded, naked, wanting—and you watched him catch it. You watched his whole face wilt as he understood, in real time, that he wasn't allowed to feel it, that the wanting was obscene standing next to your wreckage, and you watched him put it away. He got it back behind the wall fast, the way he got everything back behind the wall.

Only his hands gave him up. The one at your jaw had started to shake.

He let out a choked sound, like he was trying to lift the words out of his chest but they kept getting stuck halfway. 

“You’re—” He stopped himself and swallowed, not being able to get the back half of a sentence out of his own throat. “We’re—?”

“Yeah.”

His fingers around your wrist pulled it closer to his chest, as if he could press it through his body and into wherever the words wouldn’t come from.