Oh, hello there!

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. 

You at his stove. Him passing the salt before you asked. Flour on his shirt from when you’d accused him of hovering and flicked it at him. Tomato sauce smudged across your cheek after you leaned in to taste from the spoon he held to your lips. 

Clark knew his gaze lingered lately.

Maybe because his apartment started keeping you even after reluctant good-bye's and good-nights: your mug beside his coffee maker, his blanket you stole when you were cold, your stack of books claiming his nightstand with a bossy little, “Trust me, Kent. These are good.”

Somewhere along the way, his favorite part of every day had become waiting for your knock at his door. 

And now, his neighbor's record player crackled through the paper-thin walls. A familiar opening harmonica kicked in as a bright and bold croon followed.

Hey, hey, baby!

You perked up, turning to him with hands clasped to your chest. “Oh, I love this song, Clark!”

He grinned. Of course he knew that! He knew everything you loved with your whole heart.

Before he could answer, you traded the wooden spoon in his grasp for yours and tugged him closer.

“C'mon! Dance with me! I need the practice!”

Clark didn't hesitate. One broad palm settled low on your waist, fingers splayed as he drew you in. The other laced tighter through yours. Your bodies pressed flush from the start, and he couldn't help but tease you.

"'Kay, but careful," he spun you toward the dining table. "Can’t risk burning Metropolis’s star actress before her big audition tomorrow."

Your laugh warmed him clear through as you slid over the hardwood in imperfect sync, singing under your breath while the kitchen gathered around you in all its mess: flour streaked across his shirt, sauce bubbling too hot on the stove, a dusting of parmesan on the counter, your script abandoned dangerously close to a smear of olive oil.

I said, "That’s the kind of gal I’d like to meet."

Your hip brushed against his thigh on the turn, then again, cheekily. Clark’s hand dared to slide lower. Flour dusted from his shirt onto yours as your breasts pressed against him after each twirl and twist.

"She’s so pretty," Clark sang again, eyes holding yours as the words no longer felt borrowed. "Lord, she’s fine."

Your lips pressed together, and you ducked your face into his chest bashfully before he could see too much of what all of this did to you.

But Clark felt it.

Your fingers curled tighter around his bicep.

Your breath caught against the cotton of his shirt.

Clark’s thumb traced a slow circle over your spine as he dipped his head close enough to catch the scent of your shampoo beneath garlic and basil.

"I’m gonna make her mine, all mine," he sang against your hair.

He heard your heartbeat jump instantly, and so did his.

Finally, you looked up at him, face illuminated in the golden kitchen light.

"All mine," you mouthed back, squeezing his hand.

Traces of city noise, music, the sauce, your script all faded beneath the rush of blood in his ears.

All he saw was his best friend. His favorite person.

The one who had been with him through every bad day, every small victory, every lonely stretch of life he'd never quite knew how to fill.

The woman he wanted beside him for every tomorrow he could imagine.

One flour-dusted hand rose to your cheek, thumb swiping gently at the tomato sauce there, but neither pulled away after it was gone.

Gosh, you were so close.

Close enough to notice the way your head tipped just so with a half-lidded gaze fixed on his lips.

Close enough that if he ducked his head just a tad lower—

I wanna know if you’ll be my—

A violent hiss erupted behind him, and you both startled apart gasping.

“Shit, Clark! Our dinner!” you yelped, slipping from his embrace to point.

Clark groaned, lunging to cut off the stove while you scrambled for a dish towel, wiping at the spill with shaky hands and laughing like you hadn’t just almost kissed him in the middle of his ruined kitchen.

The pasta was spared, the kitchen still stood, the actress unscathed. And whatever almost happened between you was merely...delayed.

Because when Clark looked back at you, still smiling at him like he hung the moon and eyes lingering on his lips.

—my girl. Hey, hey, baby!

Only one thought remained.

Soon.

He was going to ask you to choose him differently.

I'm gonna make her mine, all mine.

.

.

"Maybe they were climbing a mountain."

His mother's lips twitched. "A mountain?"

"Or a castle."

"A castle is much more likely."

"I think so too." Dick nodded solemnly. A castle explained the scrape much better than simply falling over.

Castles had stone staircases and secret passageways. Castles had dragons and villains and daring escapes.

His soulmate was probably off on an adventure.

His mother finished securing the bandage before pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

"Your soulmate must be having quite the day."

The thought filled him with excitement.

For the rest of the afternoon, Dick imagined another child racing through hidden corridors, ducking beneath traps and escaping dragons by the skin of their teeth.

The possibility that they had simply tripped over their own feet never even crossed his mind.

←↓→↑

When he was seven, he spent two days complaining about a toothache.

The pain settled deep in his jaw, throbbing every time he tried to smile.

By the third day, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived.

His father explained that soulmate resonance sometimes worked that way.

That his soulmate had probably gone to the dentist.

Dick immediately sat upright. "What if they were scared?"

"I'm sure they were brave."

"What if nobody held their hand?"

John looked up from the costume he was repairing. "Dick."

"What?"

"They're not stranded on a deserted island."

"You don't know that."

His mother laughed so hard from the other side of the trailer that she nearly dropped her equipment.

Dick didn't see what was so funny.

His soulmate was out there somewhere.

They might be scared of dentists. Or hated needles.

The thoughts lingered with him long after the conversation ended.

Sometimes, late at night, Dick would stare at the ceiling and wonder if they ever thought about him too.

Whether they looked at the strange injuries that appeared on their skin and imagined a boy they'd never met.

He didn't know it then, but that question would follow him for years.

↑→↓←

Dick had developed a habit of asking questions nobody could answer.

What was their favourite colour?

Did they like animals?

Could they do cartwheels?

Did they live nearby?

Did they know about him?

Did they ever wonder the same things?

His parents always answered as though the questions mattered. With interest. As though his curiosity wasn't silly.

As though wondering about the person connected to him was the most natural thing in the world.

Maybe that was where it started.

Not the soulmate bond itself, the encouragement. The way nobody ever told him to stop asking. The quiet certainty with which his parents treated his soulmate's existence.

They never spoke about them as a possibility. They spoke about them as a certainty.

That somewhere in the world, there was a person who was completely his.

→←↓↑

At night, after the performances ended and the circus grounds settled into a comfortable hush, Mary often read to him before bed.

Dick's favourite stories weren't fairy tales.

They were stories about connected souls.

The old book lived beside the couch in their trailer, its spine cracked and softened with age. The pages had been turned so many times that the corners curled.

Inside were dosens of accounts collected from all over the world.

Stories about soulmates separated by oceans, soulmates born years apart, soulmates who searched for decades, or who stumbled into one another entirely by accident.

Dick never grew tired of hearing them.

He already knew most of the endings by heart. But that wasn't the point. The point was that every story promised the same thing.

No matter how long it took, how far apart they started, or how impossible it seemed, the soulmates always found each other.

Every single time.

The certainty of it settled somewhere deep inside him. A truth as unquestionable as gravity. As natural as the rising sun.

His soulmate was out there. And one day, they would be his.

By the time Mary finished reading, Dick would already be staring out the trailer window.

Wondering how they would meet. What they looked like. If they laughed loudly or quietly.

If they liked the circus.

Wondering if they were looking at the same stars scattered across the night sky. If they ever touched the marks that appeared on their skin and thought about him.

The thoughts comforted him.

No matter how large the world felt, where he went or how many cities the circus travelled through, there was always someone in it who belonged to him.

Someone he hadn't met yet.

A person he was already learning how to love.

↑→↓←

When he was eight, before the fall, he started keeping things.

Not intentionally at first.

A postcard from a city the circus had passed through. A photograph he liked. A joke that made him laugh. A story he thought someone else would enjoy.

Small things.

The kind of things most children forgot about by the following week.

Dick didn't.

Because whenever he found something special, he caught himself thinking the same thing.

I should tell my soulmate about this someday.

The thought came so naturally he never stopped to question it.

Why would he?

His soulmate was part of his future. Everyone said so.

Some days, he imagined finally meeting them and emptying years of collected memories into their hands.

Showing them every postcard.

Telling them every story.

Introducing them to every place he'd loved.

As though all the little pieces of his life were simply waiting for the right person to share them with.

As though he'd been saving a seat beside him all along.

Years later, after Gotham, after Robin, after everything that came afterward, Dick would still remember those moments.

The scrape on his knee.

The toothache.

The bedtime stories.

His parent's laughter.

The quiet certainty in their voices whenever they spoke about soulmates.

People often assumed his faith in destiny came from the bond itself.

They were wrong.

The bond only connected him to another person.

His parents were the ones who taught him to care. To wonder and to wait.

They were the ones who taught him that somewhere in the world there was a person meant for him.

Someone important who was worth searching for. Someone worth believing in.

Long before he knew anything about them at all.

He loved the idea of them first. Everything else came later.

Before he ever even had a reason to.

Most people loved talking about destiny.

Adults spoke about soulmates with the same certainty they reserved for death and taxes. Teachers smiled when the topic came up in class. Grandparents reminisced over holiday dinners. Entire television networks built reality shows around reunions.

It was impossible to escape.

Not that anyone seemed interested in trying.

Soulmates were proof that the universe cared. Proof that nobody was truly alone. That somewhere out there existed a person created specifically for you.

People loved that idea.

You hated it. Not the concept itself, just yours.

When you were younger, you'd thought soulmate injuries sounded romantic.

A sore wrist because they spent too long writing or a tiny burn from touching a hot pan.

The sort of stories people laughed about.

"My soulmate tripped over again."

"Mine wears his rings on too tight."

"I love when she bites her lip when she’s nervous."

Everyone always sounded so fond when they talked about it. As though every ache was a love letter. Like pain somehow became sweeter when it belonged to someone else.

Bonds manifested differently depending on the pair.

Some people shared emotions, some met each other in dreams. A small percentage could hear each other's thoughts during moments of intense stress. The most common bond, however, was physical resonance.

If your soulmate got hurt, so did you.

Not the injury itself, the consequences. A broken bone wouldn't suddenly appear in your arm, but the pain would. The ache, tenderness, and limitations.

If they twisted an ankle, you'd spend the next few weeks limping around on a perfectly healthy leg.

If they got a migraine, you got one too.

Most people only experienced minor inconveniences.

Nothing life-altering. Nothing that interfered with daily life. At least, not often.

You were not most people.

You stopped finding it romantic at twelve.

Because scraped knees and accidental burns were one thing. Waking up unable to feel your left arm was another.

The pain hit without warning. One second you were asleep, the next you were on your bedroom floor screaming.

Your parents rushed you to the hospital.

The doctors found nothing wrong.

No fracture. No dislocation. No nerve damage. Physically, your arm was perfectly healthy.

Unfortunately, your soulmate's wasn't. Apparently they'd shattered theirs.

Badly.

The pain lingered for nearly two months.

Everyone acted excited.

Your soulmate survived.

Isn't that wonderful?

You received congratulations.

Congratulations.

As though being unable to lift a backpack was somehow a milestone worth celebrating.

The years that followed only got worse.

Your soulmate got shot.

They got stabbed.

Sometimes they manage both within the same week.

You developed a concerning familiarity with painkillers. The nurses at your local urgent care knew you by name. One doctor suggested keeping a journal to track symptoms.

You filled three notebooks.

Looking back through them felt less like medical records and more like a crime scene timeline.

Gunshot wounds. Broken knuckles. Dislocated shoulder. Concussion. Concussion. Another concussion.

You had spent years trying to imagine what kind of person accumulated this many injuries.

At first you'd pictured an athlete.

Then a firefighter.

Maybe a soldier.

Eventually, you'd settled on a simpler explanation.

Your soulmate was an idiot.

At the time, it felt like the only reasonable explanation.

Years later, you would discover that the truth was significantly worse.

But for now, all you knew was that somewhere out there existed a complete stranger whose self-preservation instincts had apparently been beaten to death in an alley.

And for reasons you would never understand, the universe had decided that person belonged to you.

←↓→↑

The first time you missed a school excursion because your soulmate had managed to break something important, everyone treated it like an unfortunate coincidence.

The second time, they called it bad luck.

By the third, people had started joking that your soulmate had a personal grudge against your social life.

You laughed along because it was easier than admitting how much it bothered you.

Most people, hell, everyone romanticised soulmates.

Talked about fate and destiny and finding the missing piece of yourself.

Most soul pairs experienced a handful of major injuries throughout their lives.

Yours seemed determined to collect them.

You remembered when your soulmate somehow got stabbed before your final exams. The pain had hit so suddenly you nearly collapsed in the middle of class.

Your friends had thought you were having some kind of medical emergency.

In hindsight, they weren't entirely wrong.

You sat the exam anyway.

You failed it.

The examiner wasn't interested in hearing that somebody else's knife wound had ruined your concentration.

Life kept moving regardless.

Teachers didn't extend deadlines because your soulmate had been hospitalised.

Employers didn't care that you were limping because someone you'd never met had twisted their ankle chasing God-knows-what.

The world expected you to adapt,

So you did.

You learned how to function through headaches. How to smile through pain. How to swallow frustration before it became bitterness.

You learned exactly how many over-the-counter painkillers you could safely take.

You learned how to fake being fine.

But most importantly, you learned how to stop hoping.

Because every time you wondered if maybe things would get easier, your soulmate proved you wrong.

At first you'd worried about them.

What kind of life were they living? Were they sick? Were they trapped in dangerous circumstances? Did they need help?

That concern lasted until the fourth broken bone.

Then the sixth.

Then the first gunshot wound.

The shot had been a turning point. Because normal people did not get shot. Normal people definitely didn't get shot more than once.

You remembered lying awake in bed afterward, staring at the ceiling while pain radiated through your shoulder.

What the hell is wrong with this person?

The question never really went away.

As the years passed the injuries kept coming. Sometimes there would be weeks of peace.

Then suddenly your soulmate would decide to throw themselves off a building.

Or through a window.

Or into traffic.

At least that's what it felt like.

You didn't know who they were. Didn't know their name. Didn't know where they lived. But you knew they had absolutely no regard for their own safety. No fucking regard for your safety either.

And eventually, concern became irritation. Irritation became anger. Anger became resentment.

Not because of the pain. Not even because of the injuries. Because of what they stole from you.

Your freedom. Choices. The ability to plan a normal life. Every decision came with a silent question.

What if my soulmate gets hurt that day?

You missed birthdays. Missed opportunities. Cancelled plans. Skipped events.

Not because you wanted to.

Because experience had taught you that sooner or later another injury would arrive.

Meanwhile your soulmate remained a stranger. A ghost. A burden you carried without ever being asked if you wanted to.

It always did.

It made you angry.

Not the broken bones. Not the scars. Not even the countless nights spent curled around pain that didn't belong to you.

The fact that someone you'd never met had become one of the most important influences on your life.

Without your permission, your consent, and without ever even saying sorry.

Somewhere out there, your soulmate was choosing to live their life this way.

And every time they did, you paid the price.

You wondered if they ever thought about you. If they ever felt guilty.

If they even cared.

Or if, wherever they were, they simply got back up after every injury and ran headfirst into the next disaster.

Unaware that somewhere across the country, someone was beginning to hate them.

Dick found the post three weeks later.

If anyone asked, it had been an accident. A coincidence.

The sort of thing that happened when someone spent too much time scrolling through soulmate forums at two in the morning.

Nobody asked. That was probably for the best. Dick knew himself well enough to recognise a lie when he told one.

There had never been anything accidental about the way he searched for traces of his soulmate.

The post appeared halfway down a discussion thread titled:

What's the worst injury you've ever shared with your soulmate?

Most of the replies were harmless.

Broken wrists.

Appendectomies.

A woman whose soulmate had somehow fractured their nose trying to impress someone with a skateboard.

Dick smiled despite himself.

Then he kept scrolling.

The smile disappeared.

←↑→↓

I've had more concussions than some professional athletes.

At this point, I'm convinced my soulmate has a death wish.

If I ever meet them, my first question is going to be what the hell is wrong with them.

The post went into concerning details about their injuries dating from over ten years.

Dick stared at the screen.

Read the post again.

Then a third time.

The amusement slowly drained from his face.

Because the timeline matched. Not approximately. Not close enough to be concerning. Exactly.

The gun wounds, the stabbings, concussions, fractures. The endless collection of injuries that had become so commonplace to him he rarely thought about them anymore.

His stomach twisted.

For a long moment, he simply sat there. Laptop balanced on his knees. Apartment fading into the background.

The words blurred.

Not because he couldn't read them. Because he couldn't stop.

Every sentence felt heavier than the last. Not the complaints.

Those made sense.

God, they made sense.

What hurt was everything beneath them.

The frustration. The years of accumulated resentment packed into a handful of sentences.

Not anger born from a single bad day. The kind that settled in after years of disappointment.

His chest tightened.

He scrolled further.

The account wasn't anonymous. There was a username. Years of history.

Dick clicked on it before he could talk himself out of it.

The oldest post was five years old.

The next mentioned another concussion.

A missed birthday.

A cancelled trip.

A broken rib.

An emergency room visit.

Each entry felt like another weight settling onto his shoulders.

Dick had spent years accepting pain as part of his life.

Bruises, bones and cuts all healed.

It had never occurred to him that somebody else had been dragged through it alongside him.

A stranger.

Someone who had never agreed to any of it.

Someone who had spent years waking up with injuries they couldn't explain.

Dick closed the laptop.

Immediately opened it again.

His jaw tightened. He rubbed a hand over his face.

For twenty years, he'd wondered about his soulmate. Wondered who they were. What they were like. Whether they ever thought about him the way he’d always thought about them.

A quiet curiosity that surfaced in the spaces between missions and late-night patrols.

He'd imagined meeting them someday.

Not because soulmates guaranteed a happy ending. Life had taught him better than that.

But because they'd always been there.

Every broken bone. Every near miss. Every moment he'd walked away from something that should have killed him.

They'd felt it too.

Somewhere.

Somehow.

The idea of them had become a constant. A second shadow stretching alongside his own.

And now, for the first time, he was seeing things from the other side.

The reality of it. The cost.

His throat felt tight.

tBecausehey weren't waiting for him.

They weren't searching.

If anything, they sounded exhausted by the idea of him.

And for the first time, Dick found himself wondering whether meeting him would be the last thing they wanted.

The thought hurt far more than it should have.

Dick had managed to stay away from the profile for three days.

He told himself it was respect.

Privacy.

Common decency.

They had spent years dealing with consequences they never asked for, the least he could do was leave them alone.

Three days lasted longer than he expected.

Not nearly as long as he'd hoped.

On the fourth night, he opened the page again.

Just for a minute.

Just to look.

That was the excuse, anyway.

One minute became an hour. Then two. Then the rest of the night.

He read everything.

Posts. Comments. Replies buried in forgotten threads.

Tiny fragments of a life scattered across years of internet history.

Favorite movies, music recommendations, complaints about work.

A rant about a terrible landlord. An argument over whether pineapple belonged on pizza.

Meaningless details.

Except they weren't meaningless. Not to him.

Every new discovery felt strangely precious. Like hearing a voice through a wall after years of silence.

For the first time, his soulmate wasn't an abstract possibility.

They were becoming real.

And Dick found himself wanting more.

What did their laugh sound like? What expression did they make when they were annoyed? Did they drink coffee in the morning? Did they still sleep curled up on the same side of the bed they'd mentioned three years ago?

The questions multiplied faster than he could answer them.

By sunrise, he knew more about them than he'd ever thought possible.

By sunrise, he also knew that it wasn't enough.

↑→↓←

The more Dick learned, the more impossible it became to ignore the distance between you.

You were real.

A real person living somewhere beyond his reach.

A real person carrying scars that belonged to both of them.

And once he knew that, how was he supposed to walk away? How was he supposed to forget? Keep waiting?

Dick spent years helping strangers.

Pulling people out of collapsing buildings. Talking frightened kids off ledges. Running toward people who needed help. Doing nothing had never been one of his strengths.

The realisation should have worried him.

Instead, it felt reasonable. Natural.

Almost inevitable.

By the end of the week, he found himself revisiting old comments. Looking closer.

A mention of weather. A complaint about public transit. A local restaurant.

Tiny details.

Nothing significant on their own, but what became patterns when placed together.

The detective in him noticed before the rest of him did.

A city narrowed to a suburb. A suburb narrowed to three possibilities. Three possibilities narrowed to one.

Dick stared at the screen. His pulse quickened.

A line had been crossed somewhere.

He wasn't entirely sure when.

Only that he should probably stop.

Instead, he opened another tab. Then another.

His fingers hovered over the keyboard. Long enough for hesitation to appear. Not long enough for it to matter.

Because you were out there, and you were hurting.

The first search took less than ten seconds.

The second took even less.

And when the first genuine piece of information appeared on his screen, Dick felt his heartbeat stumble.

For the first time in twenty years, his soulmate wasn't a dream.

You were becoming a person.

And Dick Grayson had never been very good at letting go of the people he loved.

The next morning began the same way most mornings did.

Pain.

You woke before your alarm, blinking groggily at the ceiling while a dull ache settled somewhere between your shoulder blades. Not terrible. Not even particularly surprising. Just another reminder that your soulmate was still out there making questionable decisions.

At least nothing felt broken.

That was practically a victory.

You lay there for another minute before forcing yourself upright. The soreness protested immediately, but years of experience had taught you how to judge the difference between annoying and hospital-worthy.

This fell firmly into the first category. Which meant work.

Lucky you.

By the time you arrived at the coffee shop, Gotham was already awake.

Rush hour traffic crawled through the streets outside. The sidewalks overflowed with exhausted office workers, students, tourists and people who looked like they hadn’t slept in three days.

Which, in this city, narrowed nothing down.

The familiar smell of coffee beans wrapped around you the moment you stepped behind the counter.

Honestly, it was one of the few things you genuinely liked about your job.

The customers were a different story.

By eleven o’clock, you’d already been yelled at twice.

Once because a man believed waiting three minutes for coffee constituted a personal attack.

The second because somebody thought you controlled the weather.

“Rough morning?”

You glanced up, the question knocking you out of your haze.

Your coworker was already grinning.

You sighed. “When isn’t it?”

“Fair.”

The lunch rush arrived shortly after.

Orders piled up. Names blurred together. Your feet hurt. Someone dropped their drink. Another person complained because their coffee was too hot.

You resisted the urge to suggest that coffee was generally known for that.

Then the bell above the door chimed.

Normally, you wouldn't have looked up.

Lunch was a bloody nightmare. There were six drinks waiting to be made, three customers already staring holes into the back of your head, and somebody was arguing over oat milk. You had better things to do.

Yet somehow your eyes lifted anyway.

The man who stepped through the door looked like trouble. Not due to anything he was doing, but because nobody should have looked like that.

For a second, your brain simply failed to process him properly.

Dark hair. Blue eyes. Tall enough to stand out without seeming imposing. Broad shoulders hidden beneath an ordinary jacket that somehow wasn't ordinary anymore because he was wearing it.

The details registered one at a time.

Like your mind was struggling to decide where to look first.

It wasn't just that he was handsome. Handsome was too simple a word. Too ordinary.

Handsome was the guy on a billboard, the actor in a movie, the model in a magazine. This felt different. More annoying.

Like somebody had reached into your head, extracted every preference you'd ever had, and assembled a person around them.

You immediately disliked him for it.

Unfortunately, that didn't make him any less attractive.

His smile appeared as he spoke to the customer in front of him. It transformed his entire face. Softened it.

Made him look approachable in a way beautiful people rarely managed.

The kind of smile that made strangers smile back. The kind that suggested he remembered names. Held doors open. Helped old ladies carry groceries.

He looked like someone that got people into trouble because they assumed nobody that nice-looking could possibly be dangerous.

You tore your eyes away.

Absolutely not.

You were not doing this today.

He was just a customer. A stupidly attractive customer. Nothing more.

Several minutes later, he stepped up to the register.

Up close was a mistake. You realised that immediately.

Most attractive people benefited from distance.

A few feet between you and them gave reality time to point out imperfections.

The lighting changed. The angles shifted. Something human emerged.

Not him.

If anything, proximity made things worse.

His eyes were brighter than you'd thought. Not just blue, more like a deep ocean colour that caught light. The kind that made direct eye contact feel strangely unfair.

There was a faint scar near his eyebrow. Another disappearing beneath the collar of his shirt.

Tiny imperfections that should have made him look less attractive.

Instead they only made him look real.

"Hi." His voice wrapped around the single syllable with effortless warmth.

He sounded so fucking pleased to be talking to you.

"What can I get for you?"

For a moment, he simply looked at you. Like he'd forgotten whatever he'd originally intended to say.

Then he smiled.

And suddenly it felt difficult to remember how to breathe.

"I'll take a large flat white."

Of course.

Of course the voice matched the face.

Why wouldn't it?

You entered the order before your brain could embarrass you.

The register beeped.

He handed over his card.

His fingers brushed yours for half a second.

It was nothing, really. Barely contact at all. Yet something strange tightened beneath your ribs.

Gone before you could identify it.

You frowned. Weird.

"Name?"

"Dick."

You blinked.

He looked entirely too pleased by your reaction.

"You serious?"

His eyes crinkled at the corners as his grin widened. The bastard somehow became even prettier. "I get that a lot."

A laugh escaped before you could stop it.

Hd let out a deep shaky breath, like he'd been hoping for it. Waiting for it.

As though making you laugh had accomplished something important. Like a strangers happiness mattered.

The look vanished so quickly you almost missed it.

For a brief, inexplicable moment, it felt less like meeting a stranger.

And more like being recognised.

The city belonged to him at night.

Not officially. Gotham belonged to no one. It clawed at anyone foolish enough to try and claim it.

But Dick knew its rhythms better than most.

He knew which rooftops held the best sightlines. Which alleyways concealed drug deals. Which fire escapes groaned beneath a person's weight. Which apartment windows stayed lit long after midnight because the people inside couldn't slep.

And he knew yours.

Perched on a neighboring rooftop, Dick lowered his binoculars slightly.

Your bedroom light had turned on twenty-three minutes before your alarm.

Again.

His jaw tightened.

The bond was never subtle.

He rubbed the back of his neck, the strain from yesterday's patrol still lingered. A bruised shoulder. A pulled muscle. Nothing serious.

Yet the thought of you waking up sore because of him left an uncomfortable weight in his chest.

You sat on the edge of your bed for several moments before standing. Slow and careful. Judging whether the pain was worth worrying about.

Dick recognised the routine.

You'd done it countless times.

The first time he'd seen it, he'd nearly broken a criminal's jaw.

It was then that he'd truly realised what years of sharing injuries with a vigilante must have been like.

You'd learned to evaluate pain before breakfast.

His fingers tightened around the binoculars.

You deserved answers.

You deserved him.

The thought arrived as naturally as breathing.

Dangerous. Wrong. Impossible to stop.

Dick watched you leave for work.

Then he followed.

He knew how surveillance worked. Knew exactly how easy it was to make someone feel watched.

So he stayed distant. A block behind, sometimes two.

Just another face in Gotham's endless crowd.

The irony wasn't lost on him.

Nightwing could disappear from sight whenever he wanted. Dick Grayson found excuses to linger near coffee shops.

By eleven, he was seated across the street with a newspaper he hadn't read once.

His attention remained fixed elsewhere.

On the way you tucked loose strands of hair behind your ear when concentrating. On the tiny crease that appeared between your eyebrows whenever customers irritated you. On the exhausted smile you gave coworkers despite clearly wanting to go home.

His chest ached.

He hated seeing you tired.

Hated seeing people take advantage of your kindness.

Hated that he couldn't simply walk inside and tell everyone to be careful with you.

Because you were important.

Because you mattered.

Because.. No.

Dick shut the thought down before it could finish.

This wasn't about ownership.

It couldn't be.

The soulmate bond wasn't ownership. It was connection.

Destiny.

A promise written into both of them before either had been born.

At least that was what he told himself whenever the possessive thoughts became harder to ignore.

By lunchtime, the crowd had thickened.

Good.

That made entering easier. Less noticeable.

The bell above the café door chimed as he stepped inside.

Immediately, he saw you.

The sight struck him with embarrassing force.

Every single time.

He'd spent months watching.

Months learning your routines.

Listening to your laugh from across rooms.

And somehow the impact never lessened.

You stood behind the register looking exhausted. A little annoyed. Ethereal.

Dick looked away before anyone could notice he'd been staring.

The line moved forward.

One customer. Two. Three. His pulse accelerated.

Ridiculous.

He'd fought assassins without flinching. Faced alien invasions. Stood against enemies capable of leveling cities. Yet somehow speaking to you felt more intimidating than any of them.

Because this mattered. Because you mattered.

The customer ahead of him finally left. And then it was his turn.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

Your eyes lifted to meet his. Everything else disappeared. The noise. The conversations. The espresso machines. All of the buzzing was gone, just for a second.

Just long enough for Dick to feel the strange, impossible certainty he'd been carrying since the first moment he'd seen you.

There you are.

His soulmate.

His.

"Hi." The word came out softer than intended.

Your gaze remained fixed on him. Trying very hard not to stare.

Dick nearly smiled.

You had no idea.

No idea how many nights he'd spent imagining this conversation.

How many times he'd rehearsed introducing himself.

How often he'd wondered whether the bond would feel different when you finally met.

Instead, you asked professionally, "What can I get for you?"

For one disastrous second, Dick forgot the answer. Forgot he'd ordered the same thing repeatedly for weeks specifically because it was easy to remember. How human conversation worked.

You looked even better up close.

God, your eyes. Your voice. The tiny signs of exhaustion. The familiar shape of someone he'd spent months studying from a distance. Real.

You were finally real.

"I'll take a large flat white."

Smooth.

Very smooth.

Dick internally cringed.

You entered the order.

The register beeped.

He handed over his card.

Your fingers brushed his. The contact lasted less than a heartbeat. Lightning shot through him anyway.

The first touch.

The first real touch.

Dick forced himself not to react. Years of training saved him. Barely.

Then you asked the question he'd secretly been waiting for.

"Name?"

His mouth twitched. "Dick."

The blink you gave him was immediate.

Perfect.

Dick couldn't help smiling.

For the first time all day, genuine amusement broke through the tension knotting his chest.

"You serious?"

A laugh threatened to escape him.

God, he loved your voice already. Far too much.

"I get that a lot."

Then you laughed.

His breath caught.

Don't.

Don't do this.

Don't build a future out of a single laugh.

Yet he couldn't stop.

For a brief moment, your eyes met his again. Confusion flickered there. Recognition without understanding. A pull neither of you could explain.

And for the first time since entering the café, Dick wondered if you felt it too.

If you could physically feel that he was someone who looked at you and saw the center of his world.

You frowned slightly.

Dick’s smile was warm. Harmless.

The same smile that convinced criminals he was merciful and civilians he was safe.

"Thanks," he said.

Then he stepped aside to wait for his coffee.

And for the first time in months, waiting didn't feel difficult. Because now you knew he existed.

Dick returned three days later.

Then again the day after that.

Soon, the visits became a part of his routine so deeply ingrained that he no longer questioned it.

Patrol.

Sleep.

Reports.

Coffee.

You.

The order never changed.

He learned your schedule without meaning to. Or maybe he had meant to. Dick wasn't entirely sure where the line had disappeared.

At some point, knowing things about you had stopped feeling like gathering information and started feeling lke breathing.

He knew which coworker made you laugh.

Which customer always left you irritated.

Which days exhaustion sat heavier on your shoulders.

He knew the difference between your real smiles and the fake ones. The difference between a smile that reached your eyes and one offered out of politeness. The difference mattered.

Everything about you mattered.

Sometimes guilt still surfaced. Usually late at night. During the quiet moments after patrol, when Gotham finally stopped screaming for a few hours and left him alone with his thoughts.

That was when he remembered the forum posts.

The complaints.

The frustration.

The resentment.

Years of it.

You didn't want a soulmate. Not one who left you waking up sore after fights. Or one whose life seemed determined to get itself stabbed, shot, electrocuted, and thrown off rooftops.

The thought should have hurt.

Instead, Dick found himself staring at the ceiling and feeling strangely calm.

Because you didn't hate him.

You hated the idea of him.

The unknown. The stranger connected to your life.

You hated the inconvenience.

The pain. Uncertainty.

But him?

You didn't know him yet.

How could you hate someone you didn't know?

You didn't know about the nights he spent bleeding through cracked armor because civilians needed help. About the disasters he'd prevented. The people he'd saved. The promises he'd kept.

You didn't know how many times he'd nearly told you the truth.

How many times he'd stood outside your apartment building and wondered if tonight should be the night. How often he thought about you. How he worried.

You didn't know.

But you would.

Eventually.

Dick believed that with absolute certainty.

Because every day gave him something. A conversation. A smile. A joke.

Tiny, worthless things.

Things nobody else would notice.

By the second week, you knew his order.

By the third, you smiled when he walked through the door.

The first time it happened, the entire day felt brighter.

Ridiculously embarrassing of him, he knew that.

Yet the memory replayed in his head for hours.

The way your face lit up with recognition. How you'd greeted him before he even reached the counter.

Like you were happy to see him.

Like he'd become part of your day too.

A crack in the wall.

A tiny one. But cracks spread. Eventually walls collapse.

Dick was patient enough to wait. To let things unfold naturally.

Most of the time.

You still didn't know the truth.

Didn't know that he could identify your footsteps.

Could find your apartment window from almost anywhere in the neighborhood.

Didn't know he'd memorised the route you walked home.

The backup routes too.

The places where the streetlights didn't work. The alleys he disliked.

The intersections with the highest crime rates.

Important information. Necessary information.

Someone had to know those things. Someone had to keep you safe.

The city certainly wasn't going to.

Dick smiled to himself as he watched you lock the café doors one evening.

The sun had already disappeared. Streetlights painted gold across the pavement.

You looked tired. A little cold.

Still breathtaking.

Always so fucking ethereal.

His chest tightened with pure unfiltered need.

The overwhelming, consuming need to make sure nothing bad ever touched you again. To stand between you and every ugly thing Gotham could throw your way. To erase every danger before it reached you. To make the world safe enough that you'd never have to worry.

Hell, even the need to just push you down and capture your mouth in a kiss so intimate that you’d never want to let go.

The feeling had become stronger lately. Harder to ignore.

Before, you had been a concept. A hopeful possibility.

Now you were you.

You had a face. A laugh. A favorite drink. A life.

And every day made the thought of losing you more unbearable.

You disappeared around the corner.

Dick waited.

Five seconds. Ten. Then he rose from his seat. Following. Never too close. Never enough to be noticed. Just enough.

To intervene if something happened.

Making sure you got home safely.

Just enough to reassure the restless part of himself that always seemed to whisper what if?

What if someone followed you first?

What if someone hurt you?

What if someone took you away?

The thoughts were irrational. Dick knew they were.

Most people walked home every day without incident. But most people weren't you.

His jaw tightened.

That was the difference.

People talked about soulmates as though finding them was the end of the story. Like destiny did all the work.

As if fate guaranteed a happy ending.

Dick knew better.

Finding you wasn't the difficult part. Keeping you safe was. Protecting you was. Making sure the universe didn't decide to take back the greatest thing it had ever given him was.

His gaze remained fixed on your retreating figure. Unwavering.

The possessiveness no longer startled him.

That battle had ended weeks ago.

Every justification had been exhausted. Every argument dismantled.

The truth remained.

You were woven through his life. Through his thoughts. Through every future he could imagine.

His soulmate.

His person.

The one thing in this city he couldn't lose.

And somewhere along the way, the distinction between wanting you and needing you had quietly disappeared.

Dick watched you disappear into your apartment building. Only then did the tension leave his shoulders.

Safe.

The word settled warmly inside his chest.

Safe for another night.

His eyes lingered on the illuminated window that he knew belonged to you.

Terrifyingly devoted.

The universe had tied your lives together years ago.

And Dick had no plans on fighting fate.

And if the day ever came when something, or someone, tried to take you away from him, Gotham would learn exactly how dangerous Nightwing could be when the only thing he loved was threatened.

The first time you noticed something was wrong, it didn't feel important. Just strange.

"Wait."

Your friend blinked across the table. "What?"

"You got offered a job in Blüdhaven?"

"Yeah?"

You frowned. "When?"

"A few months ago."

A few months ago.

That couldn't be right.

You'd applied for that same position. Gone through three interviews. Spent weeks waiting for a response.

And then nothing.

No rejection.

No acceptance.

Nothing.

"I never heard back."

"Really?" they said. "That's weird."

It was weird. You'd checked your emails obsessively at the time.

Nothing.

Not even spam.

Eventually you'd assumed they'd gone with another candidate.

The conversation moved on.

You didn't.

↓→←↑

Then another thing happened. And another.

"..You never told me your landlord sold the building."

Dick looked up from where he was cooking. "What?"

"The building."

You leaned against the counter. "The landlord was apparently trying to sell it last year."

Something flashed across his face.

"Huh."

"He said he couldn't find a buyer."

Dick hummed. "Guess it wasn't the right time."

You frowned.

That wasn't what the landlord had said. The exact words had been: "Every buyer that showed interest pulled out at the last minute."

←→↓↑

Then there was your ex.

Not an ex, technically. Just someone you'd gone on a few dates with before Dick.

Someone who suddenly moved overseas without warning.

You only found out because you bumped into one of their friends.

"Yeah, he was furious."

"What?"

"They withdrew the visa investigation thing eventually, but by then he'd already accepted another position."

You blinked. "The what?"

The friend frowned. "You didn't know?"

No.

No, you definitely hadn't known.

↓←→↑

The pieces don't fit together immediately.

Not until one late night, sitting on Dick's couch.

When his phone lit up.

You hadn’t even meant to look, the flash just caught your attention. The “image of the day” was a photograph.

Your photograph.

Not a recent one. Not one you’d sent him.

A candid picture.

Taken months before you met.

You were standing outside of your apartment.

"..Dick."

His entire body goes still at your tone.

Like prey hearing a gun click.

Slowly, he looks up.

You hold out the phone.

The photograph staring back at both of you.

Your pulse begins to hammer. "When did you take this?"

Nothing.

For a second, Dick just looks at you.

Then at the photo.

Then back.

“…Before we met."

Your stomach drops. "What?"

"I took it before we met." His voice is calm. Too gentle. The same voice he uses when you're upset.

Like he was expecting to tell you that everything was okay.

"I found you before the café."

The room suddenly feels too small. "How long?"

"A while."

"Dick."

"A few months."

The answer hits like a truck.

Months.

Your laugh comes out strained. Unsteady. "You're joking."

"No." He doesn't look ashamed.

If he looked guilty, maybe this would make sense. Instead, he looks concerned.

Concerned about you.

Like you're the one having a difficult time.

"Dick, that's stalking."

His jaw tightens immediately. Hurt.

Like you've accused him of something unfair.

"I was making sure you were safe."

"No." You stand. "Dick-"

Your heart is racing now. Too fast. "What the fuck do you mean you were watching me?"

And for the first time since you've known him, Dick looks frustrated.

Not because he got caught. Because you're not understanding.

"You lived alone."

"Dick-"

"You walked home after dark."

"Listen to me!"

"There were three muggings within four blocks of your apartment." His voice rises. Emotion breaking through.

"And I knew what Gotham was like."

You freeze. He sounds desperate. Terrified.

"I couldn't just leave you there." His eyes are shining now. Raw.

Honest.

The truth finally spilling out.

"You think I wanted to scare you?" His voice cracks.

"I spent twenty years looking for you."

You take a step backward.

Dick notices immediately. The devastation that crosses his face is instantaneous.

He actually believes that he's innocent. That every line he crossed was reasonable.

Because every choice was made for the same reason.

Love.

And suddenly all those little coincidences don't feel like coincidences anymore.

The failed job.

The vanished opportunities.

The relationships that somehow never worked out.

The people who drifted away.

The life that kept shrinking until Dick occupied most of it.

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the frame. For a second, neither of uni moved.

You stood frozen in the hallway outside Dick's apartment, one hand still wrapped around the doorknob, your pulse pounding so hard it made your ears ring. The argument replayed itself in fragments. Accusations, denials, half-finished explanations. None of it felt real.

Behind the door, you heard Dick's footsteps. Part of you expected the handle to turn. Expected him to come after you. To stop you before you left. To grab your wrist, block the doorway, force the conversation to continue.

Instead, the footsteps stopped. You could picture him standing there on the other side of the door. Not chasing you. Not arguing. Just... standing there. Devastated.

If he'd gotten angry, maybe this would have been easier. If he'd yelled, if he'd lied, if he'd given you a reason to hate him, maybe the hollow ache opening inside your chest wouldn't have felt so unbearable.

Instead, he'd looked heartbroken. Like he was the victim. Like you were the one tearing something precious apart.

The walk home passed in a blur. You barely remembered unlocking your apartment. The second the door shut behind you, instinct took over. Deadbolt. Chain. The secondary lock.

You checked the windows twice. Then a third time.

Only when every entrance was secured did you allow yourself to breathe.

Your phone vibrated. The screen lit up. Dick.

You stared at the name. The call rang until it stopped. A second call appeared almost immediately. Then a third. The messages started after that.

Can we talk? Please answer. I just want to know you're okay.

For a dangerous second, your thumb hovered over the screen. Then you blocked him.

The number disappeared. You blocked his social media. His email. His Spotify. Every account you could think of. Anything connected to him. Anything that could give him a way back in.

When you finally finished, the apartment felt unnaturally quiet. You'd wanted silence.

Hadn't you?

So why did it feel like something was missing? Why did the absence feel so loud? Sleep never came. Every time you closed your eyes, another memory surfaced.

The internship opportunity that had vanished after months of promising interviews. The friendship that had somehow dissolved without explanation. The coworkers who'd grown distant. The photograph.

At four in the morning, you found yourself sitting on the couch wrapped in a blanket, staring into the darkness. The city lights beyond your apartment window painted faint reflections across the floor.

You couldn't stop thinking. Every memory felt poisoned now. Every coincidence felt deliberate. How much of your life had actually been yours?

How many choices had been choices at all?

You didn't notice yourself drifting into a shallow sleep until your alarm exploded beside your head. You jolted awake.

Immediately regretted it. Pain tore through your leg so violently that for a split second you genuinely thought something had exploded. A scream ripped from your throat. White-hot agony shot from your shin to your hip.

The room tilted. Your knee gave out. You hit the floor hard enough to knock the breath from your lungs. The impact barely registered. All you could feel was the pain. It burned. Throbbed. Pulsed with every heartbeat.

You curled instinctively around your leg, gasping for air through clenched teeth. "What the fuck!" The words dissolved into another strangled cry.

Minutes passed. Or maybe longer.

Time became difficult to measure when every movement felt like driving a knife through bone.

Eventually you managed to drag yourself onto the couch. Sweat clung to your skin. Your stomach churned. The pain wasn't normal. It wasn't a cramp. Wasn't a pulled muscle. It felt broken. A fresh fracture.

Then a bitter laugh escaped your throat. Of fucking course.

You’d barely survived the worst night of your life and apparently your soulmate had decided now was the perfect time to break something. Again.

The bitter laugh that escaped you sounded almost hysterical. The empty apartment offered no response. Not that you expected one.

Your soulmate had never apologised before.

Several hours later, three sharp knocks echoed through the apartment. You froze.

The sound cut through the silence like a gunshot.

Another knock followed.

Then a familiar voice. Every muscle in your body locked. You remained motionless.

Maybe he'd leave.

Another knock sounded, softer this time. Almost hesitant. "…Please open the door." The concern in his voice made your stomach twist.

You hated that it still affected you. Hated that some part of you still wanted to believe him.

Then came the sentence that made your blood turn to ice. "You shouldn't be standing."

Everything stopped. Your breathing. Your thoughts. Your heartbeat. Slowly, very slowly, you turned toward the door. The apartment suddenly felt too small. Too quiet.

"Dick?" A pause.

Then: "I brought groceries." His voice sounded tired. Careful. Like he was approaching a wounded animal. "I also got pain medication."

You stared at the door. A sick feeling began unfurling in your stomach.

"Can you let me in?" No. No, no, no. Maybe coincidence. Maybe a lucky guess. Maybe-

"You need to stay off that leg." The world seemed to tilt. Your pulse thundered.

How? You hadn't told anyone. You hadn't gone to the hospital. You hadn't even texted anyone. There was no way he could know. Unless-

The thought hit so hard it felt physical. You forced yourself upright and limped toward the door. Each step sent another wave of pain through your leg.

By the time you reached it, your hands were shaking. You opened the door only a few inches.

Dick stood on the other side. One arm loaded with grocery bags. Takeout containers balanced in the other hand. A bottle of painkillers tucked beneath his elbow.

The second the door opened, his gaze dropped.Straight to your injured leg.

"There it is." The words slipped out before he could stop them. His expression tightened immediately. "You really shouldn't be putting weight on-"

"How do you know?"

Silence.The question landed between them like a blade. Dick froze.

You felt your heartbeat climbing higher and higher. "How do you know my leg is injured?"

For the first time since you'd met him, Dick looked caught off guard. Not angry. Not defensive. Caught.

Something that looked dangerously close to guilt crossed his face. And suddenly you understood enough to make your blood run cold.

The fracture hadn't happened to your soulmate. It had happened because of them.

Dick's expression changed immediately. Not much, most people probably wouldn't have noticed, but you'd spent months learning the subtle shifts in his face. The slight tightening around his eyes. The way his shoulders stiffened.

"Angel-"

You took another step backward on instinct. Pain shot through your injured leg. A sharp hiss escaped you before you could swallow it.

Dick flinched. The reaction was instantaneous. His hand jerked forward as though he meant to catch you before he stopped himself. The concern that flashed across his face was so immediate, so visceral, that it made your stomach turn.

For a horrible second, you couldn't stop thinking about it. The way he'd known. The way he'd looked directly at your leg. The medication tucked under his arm. The certainty in his voice when he'd told you not to stand.

Maybe he really had felt it. Maybe every pulse of pain that had left you curled up on the floor this morning had reached him too.

"You knew." The accusation hung between you.

Dick's jaw tightened. You stared at him. Stared at the man standing in your doorway carrying groceries and painkillers like some devoted boyfriend stopping by to take care of you after a bad day.

"You knew you were my soulmate." For a second, one stupid, desperate second, you hoped he'd deny it.

Maybe there was another explanation. Maybe you were wrong. Maybe this entire nightmare had gotten out of control.

Dick looked down. "...Yeah."

Every injury. Every unexplained ache. Every ruined plan because somebody you had never met couldn't stop getting themselves hurt.

You remembered sitting in emergency rooms as a teenager, trying to explain symptoms doctors couldn't understand. Missing school because you'd woken up unable to walk on an ankle you'd never injured. The migraines. The broken fingers. The bruises.

The soulmate bond had shaped your life whether you'd wanted it to or not. And all this time, it had been him.

Not a stranger. Not some faceless person halfway across the world. Dick. Your Dick.

The man who knew how you took your coffee. The man who remembered insignificant details about conversations you'd forgotten having.

The man you'd trusted enough to love.

Your hand found the wall beside you before you even realised you were reaching for support.

Dick took a step forward automatically.

You recoiled.

The look that crossed his face was immediate and devastating.

He stopped moving at once. "Angel..."

"How long?" Your voice sounded strange. Thin. Distant. "How long have you known?"

For the first time since arriving, Dick looked genuinely uncomfortable. Ashamed.

His gaze dropped briefly to the floor. "Eight months."

"Eight months?"

"Angel, I know how bad that sounds-"

"You knew for eight months." Every word came out sharper than the last. "You knew and you didn't tell me."

"I wanted to." The answer came immediately. Too quickly. Like he'd rehearsed this argument a hundred times. "I did. God, I wanted to tell you from the beginning."

"Then why didn't you?"

Dick looked away. That was answer enough.

Because he'd been watching. Learning. Getting closer. Fitting himself into your life before you knew what he was.

"You let me hate them."

Something flickered across his face. A strange sadness. Not guilt exactly. Something closer to regret. "I never wanted that."

"You let me spend years hating my soulmate." His expression tightened. "I know."

"You let me blame them for everything."

"I know." The quiet sincerity of the response only made you angrier. He wasn't denying it. Wasn't making excuses. He understood exactly what he'd done. And somehow, he still thought he'd been right.

The apartment fell silent.

Dick stood near the door surrounded by grocery bags and takeout containers. The sight would have been almost domestic under different circumstances. Ordinary.

Something in his expression softened. "You don't have to do this anymore."

You frowned. "What are you talking about?"

Dick hesitated. For the first time since arriving, he seemed unsure of how to explain himself. "..You've spent your entire life paying for things that weren't your fault."

The words were quiet. Measured. His gaze dropped briefly to your injured leg before returning to your face. "I know every hospital visit."

A chill crawled down your spine.

His voice grew softer. "I know every surgery. Every cast. Every time you had to cancel plans because I did something reckless." The guilt in his expression looked genuine. "I know what it cost you."

"Dick."

"I do." His voice cracked slightly. The sound startled you.

"I know exactly what I've put you through."

For a moment neither of you spoke. Then Dick slowly set the groceries on the floor. "You shouldn't have had to deal with any of it alone."

Something about the direction of the conversation suddenly felt wrong. Dangerous. "Dick..." "I mean it." His eyes never left yours.

"You shouldn't have had to worry about medical bills because I got shot. You shouldn't have had to miss work because I decided jumping off rooftops sounded like a good idea. You shouldn't have had to build your life around my mistakes."

A humorless laugh escaped him. "You definitely shouldn't have had to spend years wondering who was responsible." The guilt in his voice was so real it almost hurt to listen to.

And somehow that made what came next even worse. "But you don't have to do that anymore."

The knot in your stomach tightened. "What does that mean?"

Dick looked genuinely confused by the question. As though the answer was obvious. "As long as I'm here, you're not dealing with any of it alone."

"You don't need to worry about rent." The words landed heavily.

You stared at him, dumbfounded. "What?"

"I'll take care of it." "No."

"You don't have to keep working two jobs." "No."

"You don't have to stress about groceries or bills or whether you can afford physical therapy."

"Dick!"

His voice remained calm. Patient. Like he was trying to explain something simple. Something reasonable. "I can handle all of that."

"You can't just decide that." "Why not?" The question came out so naturally that it stopped you cold.

Dick frowned slightly, confused. "As far as I'm concerned, taking care of you is my responsibility."

Your heart dropped. The conviction in his voice was absolute. Not possessive in the way you'd expected. Like he wasn't describing what he wanted. He was describing reality.

"You don't owe me anything," he continued quietly. "You don't have to love me back. You don't even have to forgive me. But I'm not going to stand there and keep watching you suffer because of things I've done."

His gaze held yours. Steady. Intense. Terrifyingly sincere. "You've carried this alone for long enough."

The apartment suddenly felt too small. Too warm. Too difficult to breathe in. Because you finally understood. Dick wasn't asking for a relationship. He wasn't asking for forgiveness. He wasn't even asking for another chance.

He was asking you to hand him control.

The first escape attempt had been almost gentle. A mistake, in hindsight. You’d underestimated him. Underestimated his understanding of you.

By the time you reached the outer perimeter, your leg had already started to fail in ways that didn’t make sense at first. Pain bloomed without warning, sharp, targeted, precise, as if your body had been waiting for permission to collapse.

It was him. Dick Grayson had already noticed you leaving. Already made his choice.

He carried you back without comment when he found you kneeling in the rain like you’d simply run out of endurance. Like your body had just… stopped cooperating. Like he couldn’t even feel his own pain shooting through him.

For three days after that, he barely spoke. Not anger. Not even punishment. Adjustment. Because he was learning how far he could push the bond, and how far he could push himself.

The second attempt cost you more. Not because he was harsher, because he was faster. You barely remember leaving the room. You remember waking up in a different one. Reinforced, seamless, wrong in ways your instincts couldn’t map.

Dick sat beside the bed like he’d never moved. Like time had folded around him. “You dislocated your shoulder,” he said calmly, as though that explained everything.

You tried to sit up. Your body refused. His hand rested on your wrist before you could test it further. “You pushed too hard,” he added. “I had to stabilise it.” “I didn’t-”

“Yes,” he interrupted, still calm. “You did.” But what he didn’t say, what you only began to understand later, was that he had done the same thing to himself at the exact moment you tried to leave.

The third time you tried, there was no hallway. Just motion that died halfway through becoming action. Your body locking down in controlled, precise waves of agony. Like a switch had been thrown. And somewhere behind you, his voice. “I told you not to do that again.”

When you woke, your ankle was wrapped. Your phone was gone. The doors had changed again.

That was when you understood the rule. You could try. He would let you try. Not because he expected you to succeed, but because every attempt gave him data. Every spike of your pain told him what the bond could tolerate. And every time you pushed too far, he matched you. By breaking himself just enough that the connection snapped you both back into place.

Now, in what he liked to call the living room, too controlled to feel like a home, you listened to him in the kitchen. Normal sounds. Water running. A cup set down carefully. Like nothing was wrong.

You swallowed. Your voice weak from disuse. “..I want to leave.”

“You don’t want that,” he mumbled, not looking up from the pan.

“I do.”

“No,” he said gently. “You want the version of it that doesn’t hurt.” He walked patiently over to you. His hand lifted, hovered near your shoulder, then settled. Warm. Certain.

“.. I won’t let it get that far.”

Your throat tightened. “You’re hurting me.”

This time, he didn’t deny it immediately.

He just looked at you for a long moment. Then, “No,” he said quietly. “I’m stopping you from breaking past the point where there’s no coming back.”

“You don’t get to leave anymore,” he said at last. “Not like that.” Not a threat. A conclusion.

“And you won’t try again,” he added, softer.

“Because I won’t let either of us survive what happens when you do.”

Then he turned back toward the kitchen. As if the decision had already been made. As if your life together had always been structured this way.

And in a sense, it had.

10K+ Words, 61K+ Characters, 1K+ sentences, 36 min average reading time, 58 min average speaking time.

DETECTIVE COMICS

Adrian Chase

imo he's borderline aro too LOL

but i've seen more people hc him as ace (which honestly yeapp i see it)

100% supportive even though he's clueless about what it means

when you do break it down to him on what it means to be aro he'd find it cool

if you specifically mentioned you're quoiromantic, he would most likely relate and start questioning himself

"Now that you say it, what is the difference between platonic and romantic?" (#storyofmylifelol)

if you two mutually like each other and get into a relationship? i can see it def leaning more to a queerplatonic relationship

Clark Kent

poor guy would stop his pursuit thinking you're uninterested until he learns that you are aro

he would do his research (knee deep into different umbrella terms/spectrum and find it fascinating)

if he does confess, he would def say that he would understand and respect if you wish to remain as friends and nothing more

he would question you out of curiosity on how do you feel little or no romantic attraction

in a non-offensive way, i think he would try to come up with analogies to help you differentiate between romantic and platonic if you mention you are quoiromantic but immediately backpedal when he realised he sounds like he's trying to mansplain (he meant no harm yall)

Jason Todd

this man is devastated thinking you are rejecting or not reciprocating when he flirts

i can imagine him bringing up the topic of romance / crushes to see if you had any at the moment

would be flabbergasted to find out you don't have any crushes and start to jump to conclusion that he's not your type

until you tell him briefly that you might be aro (which he had to look up)

would finally understand (and calm down a little)

hundred percent would still shoot his shot 'subtly' if you give hints that you are open to the idea of relationships and dating

bad thing is that its gonna take forever until there's progress of you realising he's actually interested in you oops

might be a hot take but he lowkey gives off aro vibes a lil

John Constantine

thinks you're flirting during banters but gets a shock of his life when the one time he was being super straightforward, it goes over your head

or you just blinked at him before laughing in his face thinking its one of the normal usual banters

immediately starts to doubt his charm

once you break the news that you identify as being on the aro spec, he'd raised an eyebrow and be like ???

i feel he wouldn't be judgemental just perplexed and shrug it off (he's seen and done weirder things in life)

if he ever come across you showing interest in someone (or him), he'd probably be like: "Is that in a romantic way or do you think they're just visually appealing?" (i ask myself this question everytime lmao)

MARVEL

Bucky Barnes

when you tell him about being on the aro spec, he thought you were making shit up

internally i can see him thinking that 'you haven't met the right person' but he knows better than to say that

oddly enough he would kinda understand your perception?

once he notices the little things you do that doesn't necessarily equate to love in a (romantic) way he's familiar with would he finally get what it means that there's varying types of love

example: you know how he likes his coffee done but its not because you like him in that way

its because you are thoughtful and would do the same for other people in your life who you regard as friends/family

Benjamin Poindexter

finds it frustrating at first when you show no signs of liking him back

but! i can imagine him being overjoyed once he finds out you are aro because he has the 'if I cant have you, no one else can' vibe

would take whatever crumbs of platonic moment with you and replay and overthink it in his mind

he's more than happy being friendzoned as long as he still gets to be near and around you

would still get jealous if you talk to someone for far too long even though its clear as day you have zero interest in them

Steven Grant

imagine poor steven who has a crush on you and wonder if you liked him

you were nice but he can sense that youre not getting the hint?

colour him surprise when you drop the bomb on being aro

like clark, would read up on it

personally, he can't understand but tries his best to see it in your perspective

if he has his other two self bickering in his mind, i think he can understand it more because hello? remember that scene where he sacrifice eternal peace for his other version in the show?

though it might not be the same kind of feeling and relationship, he would understand the feeling of love that goes beyond romance

MISC

Ryland Grace

would be confused at first when you try to explain

even more confused when you point out how aroace coded he is

once he learns the diff terms he would have an aha moment and realise how much he fits into it too

honestly, you two would probably have the most purest kind of friendship/bond where no one else can really understand and relate

you're basically each other's person (kinda like him and rocky — they are literally the definition of platonic soulmates 🥲)

similar to adrian, if you guys ever established a relationship for whatever reason (and not just romantic): it would be between a queerplatonic one or 'a secret third thing'

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taglist: @starr-jazz, @kryptidfiles, @suosuoe, @starburstbarnes

The storm was raging outside, throwing itself against the windows hard enough to make the glass shudder in its frame. There had been a time, not even that long ago, when sounds like that made Frankie tense instinctively. Sweat gathered at the small of his back while ugly memories flickered behind his eyelids like lightning. A life carved open by violence had a way of following a man home, even years later. It never mattered much that the things he had done were in the name of a country. That kind of reasoning didn’t quiet the ghosts. Didn’t help him sleep either.

The only thing that ever truly silenced the noise in his head was you. 

Your body tucked against his, his arms wrapped around you tight enough to feel real. Face buried into your hair while he inhaled the familiar scent of vanilla and something warmer underneath it. Something impossible to bottle up into words because it was simply you. Home in a way Frankie had never allowed himself to believe existed for men like him.

In all the years Frankie Morales had spent dragging himself across this godforsaken earth, he had become terrifyingly good at running. Never staying anywhere long enough for roots to catch around his ankles. Movement was easier. Easier than explaining himself. Easier than letting anyone look too closely at the wreckage. “No strings attached” had become less of a preference and more of a survival tactic he wore like armor. Or at least that was what he told himself.

Then somewhere along the way, there was you.

You made him pause long enough to wonder if the life he’d been living was actually freedom or just another kind of prison. Frankie had been buried so deep inside himself for so long that some days he couldn’t even see the sky anymore. Days blurred together. Time passed without him noticing. Survival became muscle memory.

But you came into his life like sunlight through storm clouds, soft and stubborn and impossible to ignore. And for the first time in years, he realized he would move mountains just to keep that warmth close to him.

Now peace looked like this: the two of you tangled together in bed while rain battered the world outside. You complaining sleepily about him taking up too much space while simultaneously stealing the blanket for yourself. Frankie smiling quietly against the curve of your shoulder blades anyway, because somehow this became his favorite thing in the world.

To be loved gently.

To be held without expectation.

To learn, little by little, that not every touch had to hurt.

Wrapped up in your softness, Frankie was finally beginning to understand that staying still wasn’t weakness after all. Sometimes it was the bravest thing a person could do.

thanks for reading 💌

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