ballfondler

"should i get it cut?" he offers, cheeks pressed against his pillow.

your ministrations stills, "hmm. dunno." you answer honestly, pulling at the curled edges to make them stick out more. "it's sort of…hot. gives you a dishevelled…rugged look." you lower yourself, resting your cheeks onto his traps.

"…"

his arm wraps around your lower back. and with a swift movement, you feel your vision tilt as he plops you beneath him. "ack!" you gasp, steadying a palm by his thick bicep, which he flexes, for your enjoyment.

clark shuffles to cage you in his arms, favouring his weight with his left forearm. one side of his head is visibly styled out in a messy swoop from where you were combing through. though a shorter, unruly strand curls past his forehead.

"i'm not sure if it's good for the hero image. to look unkempt," he ponders seriously, palms pressed against his cheeks as he lays on his side.

you blink up at him. still thrown by the sudden adjustment."…i'm just saying." your knuckles graze past the stray lock, melting into him, with a thigh draped along his ribs. "i like you like this. softer. just f'me." your words trail into murmurs, but he catches them anyway.

the dimples, deep in his cheeks makes themselves known first, and he lets out a huff, sizing you with a dopey smile. "that so?" clark leans on, pressing a kiss to the sensitive spot below your ears. the first peck tickles you, with his messy hair brushing past your ears. "hahah. hey! that tickles." you groan, catching a brief glimpse of his blurred, dark locks," geez…like some…wild beast."

"hmm. make up your mind," he rumbles, trailing teasing kisses past your collarbone, to your sternum. clark lifts his head up, eyes glinting in wanton adoration for you. "am i a beast, or some cool…hip dude?"

you stare at him, in mild disgust. "cool hip dude? nevermind. you can never be rugged."

he nips at your wrist when it comes to rest at the back of his head. "ow!" you yelp, shooting him a displeased look. clark just laughs, replacing the sting with a chaste peck. he guides your hand to the back of his head, as though encouraging you to keep it there.

"got your verdict yet?" the shift in the playfulness is subtle as he makes his way down your midsection. pressing another breathy kiss beneath your breasts to your navel. your eyes don't leave him, and neither does your idle palm, half-vanished in his curls.

before you can think to answer, clark lifts your hips up for a second to slide your sleep shorts down. keeping his gaze locked on yours as he presses his lips to your inner thighs.

you swallow the shudder that threatened to give away your building arousal, hands imperceptibly tightening where it was once lax.

3 // Killshot SUMMARY: Clark Kent scores an interview with Bruce Wayne's infamous sister — you. Except you don't make it easy for him.

4 // Everybody Here Wants You SUMMARY: Clark and you share a room at a motel for the night.

the bats above have flapped their wings in sudden, waking alarm. the same way the pages of your heaviest, most tattered sketchbook flattered across the cave's floor, revealing, to the eyes of many who can see the papers closest to them—

photographs, diagrams, illustrations, layouts, even notes about their vigilante identity.

displayed to them like artworks you'd find in museums. intricate pieces of evidences, headlines, even fucking graphs that gathered data comparing the frequency and correlation of their public sightings and presence along the manor. drawings of their hero costumes, old and new, from when dick was a young robin, to even the updated suits right after tim took charge of the mantle.

dick, who had been silent throughout the ordeal after jason had ended the call, was too shaky and afraid of what knowledge the entries hold. yet he had gathered all the willpower and courage to grasp the collection of paper that had landed right near his foot. his fingers rub along the frayed edges, but even with its age can he read the blurred ink lines running meticulously across the pages.

(yet his panicked eyes also run over the splotches of dried blood carelessly painting the papers. it wasn't just a tiny amount too. it was everywhere. like paint thrown across a canvas, it's smeared over some texts, blotched the sides and the bottom and— why was there blood? why was there so much? whose blood was it? the questions flood endlessly in his brain, and he's afraid even the answers would devastate him to the point of no return if he ever discovered it was yours.)

despite his disbelief, he skims over some paragraphs, takes in every bitter word, every spiteful phrase that had filled every blood-stained page.

the first thought that came to dick's mind was... well, it was impressive. any child of bruce, adopted or not, was destined for great things. yet even outside of bruce, dick knew his baby bird was always capable. but he never knew the extent of how great those things were.

it was another failure on his part.

it was another failure as your eldest brother.

he never really knew you, had only seen a part of you in his memories, but never the true you—

before he even discovered countless of your sketchbooks, journals, even the medals alfred had forgotten to store away, all hidden within your room; to dick, you were just the kid with shining, bright eyes in the face of your mother's tragedies. hopeful, naive, one of the youths dick had promised to protect as long as he lived. but he never had put an effort to know about your hobbies, your interests, your goals or your true thoughts.

not until now...

where even then he's hesitant to know, in fear that your hope for him had rotten and all that remained was rightful hatred.

so much so that when he flipped the paper to its back, his worst nightmares had begun to fester into reality.

he feels as if his heart had begun traversing its way up his throat, ceased, and then refused to move.

"journal entry #15: dick grayson and nightwing." it starts, followed with printed pictures of him swinging around the city, captured by cameras on standby. colored illustrations of his suits had a timeline plastered to its bottom, ranging from him as robin, to his transitions as nightwing.

you long knew about his identity of nightwing; your entries dated from nearly six years ago, when you were about to hit your thirteenth birthday mark—

then he vaguely recalls back-reading through one of your messages, and remembers your invitation to have him come to your small celebration.

"my bday's coming soon!" his phone screen had never looked so blurry until the time he'd scroll through the far dates of your texts, noticing how by every new message, your enthusiasm slowly dwindled. yet your first ones were once so full of life — and he realized he should've never dismissed your message as just some trick towards him; maybe then things would've been different. maybe you would be here, with him, laughing and painting the manor with your shining presence — he never realized you'd even went through great effort to ask for his number through alfred.

"you don't have to buy me a gift or anything, your presence is enough of one already!" you invited him alone. it should've done a great deal of pride to him, and yet all he ever did was make mistake after mistake, restricting your phone number to limit the spam.

you also said you planned cupcakes instead of a cake, said it was too much for you to finish. it was unusual at first— but then, sitting in your creaking room with the humid air of your tiny room clogging his brain, it took a little thinking to realize you'd been celebrating all your birthdays alone.

when your mother had died, when jason had already been dead, everyone, even alfred, was too wrapped up mourning and grieving. dick had spiraled enough with every argument towards bruce, then tim came into the fray— without your mother, it had just been you and alfred. you were never close to tim.

you've been reaching milestones alone.

another failure as your older brother.

he wants to vomit, crumple on the floor and dry heave— he wants to die thinking some more.

you were so desperate to even have one guest to your birthday party. was it even a party in the first place?

you were so fucking desperate you'd even told dick you'll do whatever flavor of frosting he'd prefer. you never thought of yourself at that moment, you only thought about dick coming to your celebration, of anyone coming.

then all of a sudden, dick realized that during the date of your birthday, he had actually been in the manor.

and worse? he'd spent it with alfred by his side the entire time.

he spent your birthday with alfred.

fuck...!

he could've spent it with you!

it was only after the late hours of the night did the butler dismiss himself with a worried furrow of his brows, seeming more insistent in leaving early rather than staying with the athlete. dick before didn't understand why for the first time in a while, alfred had other matters to attend to when tim was at a sleepover and bruce was in the middle of press conference. dinner would come later that night, dick was about to ask alfred why if he hadn't left his side already.

at that, he shrugged his shoulders, returning to his room, opting to sleep the night instead and waking up at midnight where he'd follow up with bruce over patrols, see if they could talk things out.

he should've known.

alfred's hasty footsteps echoing across the hallways should've been a sign of suspicion, but dick had been far too consumed with other worries. about his team, about his argument with bruce, about bludhaven and everything else weighing his mind.

worries that he shouldn't have to prioritize when he'd done nothing that day except converse with alfred, ranting to the manor's butler about mundane things to distract himself with that clawing feeling that something felt wrong amidst the silence—

because then he wouldn't have to imagine his baby bird, standing there all alone in the kitchen, ingredients at stand by, looking around to find every hallway, with no one coming to their little celebration.

how many times has that happened?

how many times have you been left to your own device, hopelessly waiting for a miracle?

how many birthdays of yours had he rejected without knowing, in favor of prioritizing something else, someone else?

how many birthdays, milestones, celebrations did you have while the entire family spent nights separate from each other— or spending with each other, whilst without you, instead?

dick completely understands if you've fucking despised every bit of him after always ditching your invitations—

because now, you've written your personal notes about him beside all the drawings. even a single skim of the paragraphs of text was enough for dick to know this was written not out of awe. the more he reads under his breath, the faster the pace in his heavy heart quickens.

"dick is- is nightwing." he stutters, ignoring the squeak of barbara's wheelchair nearing him, too engrossed to even notice her grabbing some of the pages from his hands.

he continues to read, as if under an unwilling trance, mind fogged with every word that shifts into vivid imaginations of your self writing these entries in your too-small bedroom.

"it's- it's obvious from the way they share the same acrobatic moves that... that he does in secret in rooms where he thinks i'm not looking.

his eyes flip to another carelessly erased line, making out every letter through blurry eyes — a reflection to what you truly think, but still ashamed to admit — lips quivering as he whispers, "he- he does it in front of everyone but, but me. like he's ashamed of even acting like himself, like i'm undeserving of even seeing a part of him natural to others—

"no, little bird. you were never..." he disrupts through his narration, tries not to tear the paper out, which kept revealing every bit of resentment you felt for the athlete from the start. he could feel every venomous word injecting into his veins, he couldn't do anything to stop reading at the same time.

dick wanted to know every emotion you felt, and yet, biting his lips—

"it's me who doesn't deserve you. you shouldn't... shouldn't talk about yourself like this. nobody deserves you..."

it was all he could comment. he wish you could hear these sentiments in person, he wishes you were here just so he could disprove every line, every insult you'd written off as cruel jokes meant to hurt yourself.

cruel jokes that always came with dripping ichor.

no matter how aged and dry the blood may be, he couldn't wash away the scent of it clinging on shriveled paper; another wave of guilt clings to his heavy heart.

yet the truth continues.

"he does these— these flips i see him perform on TV as nightwing, and i remember all the times he'd mindlessly do handstands or jump from the second floor to the next, smiling to anyone who'd see. they don't know how lucky they are, dick was never this way to me...sometimes he'd also do it when i'd sneak into the cave and find him talking with the others...

"every time he does, he's got the same..." charming, was what was supposed to be written next, but you've scribbled over the word, violently, as dick's trembling fingers runs over the back of the paper, feeling the torn page, the heavy handed words engraved in every line; imagining just how much animosity had filled your entire being to the point you'd replace charming with—

"he's got the same... dishonest— the same disgustingly huge smile he always gave me whenever he made excuses that he's busy, that he's got work, hero work — he never says, i pretend to never suspect — to do.

"i- i understand that," he stutters, biting his lips at the sarcasm which bleeds into every word. "you can't stop someone like dick. when he's got his mind set on a goal, not even bruce or damian can talk him out of it. in that order of things, my opinion would never matter, hah. i just was never considered into a goal. so i understand. it's not like i can be mad for any longer when he still smiles at me while making all these excuses and- and sometimes even promises of next time's. at least he doesn't see me as a villain, he doesn't mistreat me or anything. so i can't blame him, he's... still nice.

"but then again, it's also so obvious, of course, that the only difference between me and the people he saves on TV is... is that the smile he shows them... is genuine.

"and the one he shows me is still just the product of an afterthought—"

dick couldn't finish reading the entire entry before slamming the papers down on the panels beside him, quivering hands wracking across his hair and slamming into his face.

his eyes, they fill with salty water faster than he could swallow down the heavy lump residing in his throat.

for a moment, the manor's air stills once more.

his thoughts betray him and fill him with pictures of your younger self, your scarred fingers writing alone in your room— the blood dripping down and on to the paper from the deep cuts etched into your skin, from your swollen fingertips sore from all the words you've etched with faded ballpens. how, despite the pain wracking throughout your very body, you'd continue to write down the feelings too heavy to express, once hopeful eyes slowly dimming until it bursts to flames.

until all you felt was resentment dick deserved to feel from you.

the more he imagines your own pen stabbing every word into paper, the more it starts to feel like every word was a thousand knives stabbing into his very skin. if not for the panels keeping his stability, leaning to his side, he'd collapse.

"no..."

god no.

have you always thought of him this way? was he always like this to you?

he didn't mean to treat you like you were nothing.

he didn't mean for you to portray his tired smiles and his dismissive hands as a sign of disinterest, of falsified emotions, of dick acting like you never mattered when he was just— he was just so oversaturated with the guilt of jason's death, his fights with bruce, his teammates, the teen titans, the loss, the grief. he didn't mean anything—

but that wasn't a fucking excuse.

not when he'd left you waiting for thirteen years, not when he'd treat you like a second option, waved you, told you, "not today!" with a smile betraying his every intention.

he'd never given you a chance, that was an undeniable fact. even when you were always home, even when he found the time to be home for all the others.

he doesn't understand himself, he wanted to so badly—

call you, his baby bird.

he wants to fix things, correct his mistakes, even if it were too late, even if the image of him, once bright and shining, was now tarnished into a stranger you'd despise. dick just wanted to — no matter how much he rubs his eyes with his arms to rid the spilling tears, bites his lips, crumples the fragile paper with shivering fingers to numb his emotions down before the guilt devours him whole — he wants to apologize a thousand times. he wants to take back every wrong action of his and consume you in all his emotions, the good, the bad, the ugly—  just so your opinion of him would change.

just so you wouldn't see him as the brother who was never there.

who was always running off to bludhaven to avoid you.

dick wanted to grovel, he wanted to crumple into a ball and remove the aching lump that had resided in his throat ever since he found your room. the tears he thought would never fall from his eyes were already bursting before he could even cease it. and ashamed as he may be from being seen in all his rawest form by the others; the pain, the guilt, the memory of your wide-eyed smile, the sensation of your tiny fingers holding tight against his palm overpowers any embarrassment he thought he'd felt.

god, he misses you.

he wants to see you — the paper has long since been shriveled by his powerful grip, his head buried in his arms, all the tears he'd been holding back came rushing out of him 'til it turned to dry heaves, and alfred's gloved palms patting his back doesn't compensate for anything other than unneeded sympathy. the silence that the others had allotted for your grieving older brother wouldn't change the fact that you're still the missing piece inside the manor. and for the first time in a while, he felt the same shadow that had cloaked his entire being from the moment he'd found out jason died after he'd returned from that space mission, that he was too late to even save the boy; too late to save you from yourself — dick had never despised himself as much as he did now.

he knew he could never be forgiven, he knew that for as long as he lived, he would never live up to the image of him you once held in high regard anymore.

yet as he laments all the moment he could've been your older brother, could've been your family, your hero— he still pictures the quirk in your tired steps, the way your eyes lightened, the way your wide smile revealed your chipped teeth from the very moment he first left you at your room; and it only makes the tears run down faster.

he imagines that little child all alone in the kitchen on the day of their birthday, blowing on the little candle of their cupcake in the dark of the night, making a wish for a better one next year.

have you even received a gift from any of them before?

— god, his eyes clamp down harder, drowning the world in all the darkness — a sight you've probably been accustomed to living here, dick hates thinking about it — he doesn't even want to imagine anymore, biting down at his tense arms, trying to stifle his sobs.

yet no matter how much he tries, he couldn't get rid of the hole that had ripped right into his chest, the ache thumps louder in his heart every time your little smiling face appears in all his thoughts, it was a pain that clawed into emptiness, settled deeply in every scar wracking across his body.

a reminder that even with all his sacrifices, all the battles he fought— he still couldn't save you.

he still couldn't save his baby bird.

if you had wished for a new family in that lonely birthday of yours, he understands you.

if you had wished for one you can actually call your own, for a father who was never absent, for a family who never turned their backs on you, for an older brother to never once break any empty promises; he truly understands.

because dick could be the leader, the dependable older brother, the hope of bludhaven. he could spend his entire life saving others. he can grow, fix his relationship with bruce, with jason, raise damian, become the idol everyone knew and loved and never once doubted.

he can be the change his city needs to be a better place—

but no matter what, at the end of the day—

he'll always hate himself.

the voices within the cave remained silent.

at the same time, no words were needed to be said.

it was difficult to ignore dick's weeping all throughout, his lonesome bawling was the only sound that filled the empty space. the only sound that penetrated the suffocation everyone but alfred felt.

even the bats had stopped their panicked wings from flapping due to the earlier commotion. the stalagmites that once dribbled water had deafened into nothingness. if it was because everyone had succumbed to their own thoughts, or if it was because it seemed the manor had stilled the noise for you— nobody knew the answers.

there was truly nothing filling the air except for dick, and even then his sobs were stifled by his arms.

the clawing silence remained, the volume of dick's sobs had grown softer. he had been mumbling "sorry's" and incoherent apologies all throughout. sometimes there were promises, other times he'd choke on his own tears and beat at his chest, begging for something they couldn't hear.

nobody could easily approach him, let alone ask if he was alright.

the answers were already obvious.

alfred had ceased from any physical comfort he'd offer to the shivering hero, withdrawing his palms and returning to bruce's side. bruce, whose face, once neutral, now softened when he shared a glance with the butler.

like him, he knew his words wouldn't do any help. it might even make things worse—

it might make dick storm off the manor and find you alone.

as much as they felt pity, both alfred and bruce knew dick was too far gone to be even offered anything to make him feel better. any affirmations, small or big, words or not, couldn't soothe the all consuming guilt he'd felt.

all they could do was leave him to his own bubble, ignore the guilt eating at their conscience too. not even a remark was heard from a wide-eyed damian, who had watched his eldest brother the entire time, who felt like part of this was his fault too.

and yet he didn't mean to drop your sketchbook for the entire family to see.

he didn't mean to be a part of the spiral of events leading to dick's breakdown.

it was his sworn duty, an unspoken promise, to keep things of yours all for himself. the entirety of his early training inside the batcave was just a distraction for him to extricate any thoughts he had of you. he'd hidden your sketchbooks in corners of the cave, in cabinets where he's guaranteed nobody, not even tim, would open, let alone access.

then he tried to train with his sword as intended while waiting for the rest to arrive at bruce's announcement.

yet even if his slashes against the training dummies were harsher, even if he had to remind himself that you shouldn't be infecting his thoughts as much as you did for others— like dick, he couldn't erase any memories he had of you. he couldn't erase the gruesome illustrations you drew, your aggressive reaction from the last time you've talked to him, even that one memory you had together that had been pestering him long before you even left the manor...

in the end, he found himself in the middle of the open space, fingers running across the spine of your thickest sketchbook; one figured he hadn't opened before. with papers stuck in between pages, and pages ready to fall off if he even dared open the book.

the one he held was different from the others. it had no front cover title like it typically does. not even a name etched on any side. your other sketchbooks always had old and peeling stickers embedded into its covers. some were nonsensical, others were what he speculated to be your favorite characters from shows he also watched — he never realized just how similar you two were. if it were him in the past, he'd reject the notion, spit on the shoes of anyone who'd dare point it out — you'd use a white acrylic markers on some textured pages, draw stars, zigzags, swirls; anything that gave it personality.

anything that screams the fact it's yours.

but this one was fancier, a more expensive sketchbook. left blank and barren, like you didn't want any trace of it linked back to you.

everything about it was bizarre.

damian knew that although your voice was the one everyone heard the least, the things you owed had marks, titles, names that were unique only to you.

if anyone else had taken your possessions, even if you were a stranger to most, they'd know it'd be yours.

damian knew how desperate you were to be known.

to be seen.

that's why everything of yours had to be yours. it needed to have pieces of you stuck on every corner, it needed to scream you.

the fact that he knew all this, the fact that he knew information, unknown to others, about you at all, despite his inherent refusal to acknowledge your existence within the manor—

he wouldn't explain.

but he knew either way, and that was all that needed to be said.

... hence why it was strange how this sketchbook of yours has no identity traced back to you.

but to damian, it also meant something special. something sacred if you were keen in hiding something. damian believed it's special if only he had the access to whatever knowledge you'd hidden in your sketchbooks—

except when he'd open through the middle pages, he was greeted not by the more intimate journal entries you typically opt to write in blank pages, not by the graphic drawings he'd expected to see— but by an array of faded blueprints of the cave he stands in now, sketchbook spreads of their costumes: front, middle, and back; all drawn so accurately, it sends shivers across damian's spines to imagine just how intimately close you were to the suits to even know the patterns up close.

even speculations about the items they carry inside their utility belts, backed by newspaper clippings that show candid photographs of the vigilantes takings candies, ropes, and of the like out of their belts.

you weren't hiding something from them.

if you did, you'd have taken this sketchbook to your grave, you wouldn't have left it alongside your other belongings, things you thought would carry dust, be discarded by alfred. but you've known more about them far longer than they did you, you've compiled entries about what you've learned, little notes; passive aggressive remarks. you knew about their hero identities—

damian wasn't horrified about you knowing about them, even if your compiled proofs were shoved right in his face, even if he felt the hairs on his body prick up— he'd drawn a sword right to your neck at the first meeting; you were bound to be curious either way. about your half-brother. about the life he had prior to gotham. alfred had given you a quick rundown about the young boy before you'd greet him by the door.

the sweat running down his forehead, his legs feeling like jelly, his pupils dilating wasn't attributed to your discovery of their secret identities.

damian wasn't that afraid of that fact, even if there was a lingering ounce of astonishment.

no.

he was shaken by the thought that you knew so early.

that you were aware of the different life they led outside of yours. that you were almost purposely kept out of the picture and that you knew—

you knew so well that your largest sketchbook yet, and it was by far one of the oldest too, spanning from inexperienced sketches of batman's costume from the very start, to the whiter, more untouched pages by the very back.

— his fingers had not shaken just carrying the sheer, behemoth-like weight of the book, but the weight of your knowledge, the regret that had suddenly invaded all his thoughts; it had him slip both his book and his sword right out of his hold like butter, just right before he could remember to tighten his grip.

the crash was deafening like the wringing in his ears. he'd stick to his spot for a second, frozen in place whilst the others had begun to notice the contents of the paper.

then the rest became a blur to damian, the young boy looking down at his hands, his scarred fingers, his calloused palms. he's sworn to use them for good as robin, as a protector of this city alongside batman.

it wasn't easy.

the change was not sudden for damian. you can't just undo the years of battle and gruesome training he'd went into being an assassin. but there was still  an undeniable change. becoming robin by force, being treated like an outsider at first, dealing with judgemental stares, working with his father's disappointment, meeting steph and finally being treated like a kid by her, getting closer to dick— having to prove his way into being a worthy holder of the mantle he had now.

damian asks himself:

was he worthy of redemption after all these years? was he worthy of atonement for all the blood he shed? when even in the path to proving himself— he'd never been good to you?

would forgiveness come naturally after he'd told you you were better off gone in the first place?

he'd taken a step back, sensations unwelcome but not unknown had invaded his every being: the warmth he felt when he first saw you, followed by the burning rage, the unworthiness, the envy.

your once unafraid eyes staring right at him, your welcoming nature, holding that damned tray of sweets staring back at him in mockery, all the traits he saw in himself in you if he wasn't raised to be like who he was—

you knew about their nightly endeavors, you knew of how often you've been left behind and excluded from everything, and yet you remained kind.

kind, but also afraid to take another step in his direction.

you've learned to shake under his gaze, learned to turn the opposite way when you've crossed paths, not only in the manor but in school, in public where anyone could see that these two half-siblings never acted like they were.

you changed your seating arrangement so you'd sit off at the far corner of the already long and winding dining table; only for the distance between you and your family to turn wider; eating with utensils barely clanking the ceramics, turning away from everybody, excusing yourself too early.

sometimes, you wouldn't even come down at all.

you shrink in your position every time he'd enter the library, leave without a word, watch him and dick become closer brothers than you ever had the chance of even spending a second with the eldest.

you both were the outsiders, and yet only one remained the victor.

you'd done everything to avoid more pain into your already miserable life. you'd done nothing wrong and damian had purposely inflicted more and more until your cup of patience was drained and you'd almost exploded at him. if he wanted to prove himself to be the rightful vigilante of the city, then why'd he act like villain to you...?

what was it about you that had him feeling so deliberately jealous?

... before his questions could be answered, he had already been counted into the family.

they were kinder to him now, less cautious—

he'd learn to speak less formally, gained friends at school, joined a football team, earned crushes, got teased; he had been counted in invitations before it was even considered.

he learned that it was alright to not act older than his age. he'd been treated like the boy he is, a young child still cluelessly navigating a world full of mysteries.

life was faring well, as well as it could get in gotham, and yet...

he was constantly reminded of how you were the only one in the family who was the first to treat him with compassion.

you were the one who'd open the door on him first before everybody else, despite alfred's cautious warnings, despite knowing the boy younger than you would be acknowledged far easier than you who had lived in the manor for the entirety of your life.

you were everything damian was not. you were everything damian wished to be.

he'd read your entries, learned about your bitterness, and you never took it out on him despite all your venomous words cutting through paper. you held yourself back from lashing out. you never reciprocated the same damning words he'd spew right at you. never fought back except for the very end; where you'd learn to avoid him if it meant a day of peace.

when he'd learn to miss you after.

where shortly after, the manor had become quieter.

he looks at his palms again.

these were meant to protect, meant to shield his older sibling from harm, to serve common people like you who had no power against the crimes of this city. you were the only non-vigilante in the family, the only person vulnerable enough to walk on the city's streets with the risk of danger with every footstep, and he was your baby brother— but he should've been far beyond that.

he should've been your protector too.

... and yet all these hands had ever done for him was hurt you.

no one else was there to protect you from his harm.

damian doesn't understand why. he remains lost in thought, lost for words.

lost in the regrets that'd pile up in his chest until all he could feel was the same sting, like an open wound poured with alcohol, when you'd glare back at him after another round of verbal assault, when you'd run away from the boy, when he stalked you all the way to your room and found you piercing through fragile, already scarred skin with yet another razor— that he swore he'd thrown out before, that meant you'd went and bought another, unable to live a day without constant physical torment—

your head was tilted down, eyes drawn wide open, blankly gazing at the crimson droplets beading and dripping from your thighs. this had turned into a habit. just another coping mechanism.

this became routine.

numbing down every bitter emotion beating out of your chest by hurting yourself with something worse.

and damian could only watch you fall deeper into a hole he helped dig.

what kind of hero was he if he couldn't even save his older sibling?

he recalls you, peeking through your doors, how you hit back loud sobs, head buried on your quivering, bleeding thighs, still afraid of being heard, blood seeping out of lips from all the times your teeth would pierce through wounds meant to heal, your nail beds had been bitten raw, fingertips stained with red, too, as you run your hands, ripping, tearing at matted hair; even if you were located in the far, abandoned corners of the manor, you'd learn to regulate your sobs in fear of it echoing through the halls.

to him, you were like a wounded animal, a terrified dog who'd learn that noise meant another inflicted bruise, another horrific slash across your body. being heard never meant being seen, being judged for acting the way you do. you'd shrink in the far corners, until you could be mistaken for a faint silhouette, and it was far better than knowing you were only acknowledged, but you were never offered a helping hand.

whilst damian had all the help he could get into becoming better, you'd disappear into the sidelines, only to become worse.

even if damian himself had tried every means of delaying your hurt without you ever knowing, you'd always find another way. you'd always be one step ahead of him, and you'd be back to picking scabs, back to scratching your neck, biting your knuckles, running off to find alfred, to every corner of the room only to find nothing—

because the butler had been busier in the batcave, day by day, caring for damian, losing his attention to you as a consequence.

back then, he found that a bragging right. another reason to shove in your face, another 'why' on why he's better than you. why your presence is a stain against the growing family. because the butler you love, who you thought would always be by your side had began catering and offering his own familial love towards the youngest— the youngest who'd done everything to remind you you were nothing and nobody.

he thought, at the sight of you falling on your knees after hours of searching for alfred through winding hallways, empty rooms, dizzying stairways until you'd land inside the library, begging, whispering under your breath, to any god, to any deity willing to hear you, while tears had begun cascading down your swollen eyes and hollow cheeks— he thought he'd laugh, thought he'd feel relief, like a heavy weight would be lifted from his chest just being witness to you falling into despair at the lack of alfred's presence.

he thought the pathetic sight would only make the pride heighten in his heart.

instead, all that came to him was his limp arms laying still on his sides, not a sound unable to escape his tightening throat. wide, terrified eyes had settled on your heaving body.

crumpling down on the carpeted floors, you were unable to breathe.

unable to release anymore of your pathetic sobs, you'd resort to clawing on furniture, the sharp edges of the coffee table violently hit your sides, you wince, you release a sharp cry, but still, you continue stumbling far deeper into the nook of the library, afraid of being heard.

the sight before him was a wretched show.

'but i've seen people suffer far worse.' his thoughts try to convince him, but his fingers tightly clenching the hems of his shirt tells another story.

'i've beheaded assassins before, i've seen guts mangling out of hanging bodies, stacks of corpses piled on top of another. the stench of rotten decay is as familiar as the polluted air in gotham—'

... and yet you crumbling into a ball in the corner dealt a far worse nausea residing in his thoughts, a lump forming on his chest the same way it always does when he notices another round of makeshift gauzes had been carelessly slapped on your heavily clothed body.

damian was terrified at the way you carelessly threw yourself into more danger.

damian was terrified of what your carelessness might entail.

... your little brother imagines your dangling body suspended in the air, neck embraced by a rope. and nobody would've known you were gone, nobody would've been there by the time the last exhale has escaped your purplish lips.

you'd be dead, and you'd be mourned for far too late.

and suddenly his vision spins, a wave of bile clung stubbornly up his throat.

damian doesn't want to imagine anymore, then he feels a draw, a magnetic pull, like he'd want to come out of his hiding spot, reveal himself to you— not to insult you, shame you for being weak. but your younger brother watching you hide behind bookshelves, gazing blankly, paired with the horrifying imagery of your deceased body—

one he couldn't just erase from his thoughts...

he doesn't like admitting it: but all he wanted to do was to comfort you the same way alfred had always stuck by his side, the same way stephanie had brought him to that bounce house and treated him like a young boy— damian wanted to, he needed to sit by your side. he doesn't want to see you cower in fear anymore, for your pupils to shrink, for your first instinct to turn the other way and away from him.

all he wanted was to lean his head against your shoulders, pretend like he had never once drawn a sword on you, like he had never committed any of his past mistakes— all he wanted to be your younger brother.

maybe it was a way to comfort himself too.

maybe he just doesn't want to be ridden with nightmares of your limp, decaying body for every second he'd shut his eyes.

but he wasn't brave enough, not yet. he regrets not being enough. he regrets simply resorting to watching you over in the shadows instead. watching you curl over, nails blunt from being bitten raw digging deep in your knees. he watches you try your best to steady your lungs, to contain the nasty bile tethering over the edge of your lips. the longer you sat there, accompanied only by the dust motes floating under the dim, warm lights in the library, the more the shame, the regret, the undulating hatred in himself curled bigger and bigger until it became mocking voices, violent imagery of what could, what would happen to you if he doesn't come save you right now.

... yet despite it all, he never once came out of the obscurity of the shadows. he never had with you. he never did until it was too late.

he remained stationary, engulfed in nothing but guilty conscience.

and really, it was ironic: two siblings suspended in the dark night, and yet only one had truly seen the light.

and damian notices, he always notices, no matter how much he pretends to never care,

that the longer you cried all by yourself...

the more it seemed to never end.

reblogs and interactions are encouraged and appreciated.

PLEASE READ: oh my god, i poured all my heart and soul into this, cried a bit bec i was afraid of losing progress again, and then cheered some more when i finished. so i'm begging for comments, interactions, any of ur fave lines please. there's a lot of parallels between dick and the mc. and then between damian and mc too. and u guys don't know it, but your comments and submissions were so much help in making me finish this early 😭🙏 also, thank u guys for ur patience! i appreciate all the kind comments, all the encouraging words in my inbox. honestly, i never expected a&a to be as much of a passion project as it is now. it used to be an outlet for my emotions, and it still is, but i never realized how many people actually loved the reader as much as much. that's it, love y'all !!!

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Good sex was what you expected from anybody decent enough to make it that far with you. It was the kind people talked about casually with their friends, the kind that came up over drinks after someone asked, “So, was he good?” Good sex happened on Tuesdays after work with the guy from Hinge who insisted on taking you out somewhere too expensive for a second date. You split a basket of fries, drank half a beer because you still had work in the morning, drove home with exhaustion sitting heavy behind your eyes, then let him fuck you well enough to sleep for four uninterrupted hours. 

Good sex was practical and predictable. It convinced your body you were living a normal life.

Great sex was different. Great sex happened after work parties when your mascara was already smudged and your heels were in your hand by midnight. It happened on weekends with nowhere to be the next morning. You never talked about great sex because it sounded exaggerated the second you said it out loud, like you were overselling a man nobody else would understand. Great sex made you cum or at least brought you close enough that your stomach tightened every time you remembered it afterward. You thought about great sex while driving long stretches of empty highway, your hands steady on the wheel while your mind wandered somewhere warmer. 

Great sex stayed in your body for days. You caught yourself replaying parts of it absentmindedly while standing in line for coffee or brushing your teeth before bed.

Then there was getting fucked…

There was no cleaner way to define it. It lived somewhere between fantasy and urban legend, passed around between women in half-serious conversations that always dissolved into laughter. Everybody claimed to know someone who’d experienced it but nobody could explain it properly. Getting fucked was the kind of sex that distracted you in the middle of the day badly enough to make you stop what you were doing and change your underwear. It sat dangerously close to the limits of what sex could actually be before the whole thing collapsed under its own weight. 

If a guy treated you too much like an object, it fell apart immediately. 

If you didn’t orgasm, it didn’t count. 

If you weren’t still thinking about him six months later at red lights and in grocery store aisles and during lonely hotel nights, then it wasn’t that either. 

Getting fucked sat at the very top of the scale, lit up like something obvious and somehow most men still missed it completely.

Being made love to was worse and more dangerous, honestly.

For somebody like you, it could become embarrassing fast. Storm season kept you on the road for months at a time, bouncing between states, sleeping in motels with stiff sheets and weak air conditioning. Off-season meant office buildings, weather models glowing across multiple monitors, long meetings about funding, new equipment and data collection. Your life moved constantly and men liked that at first. A woman who was smart, busy, gone half the year, financially stable and difficult to pin down. 

Men loved the idea of you because it excused the fact they never had to give very much. Most of them thought they were in love but really, they just liked access to somebody they found impressive.

Before all of that, you used to think being made love to meant passion…intimacy. That it was slow sex with somebody who knew your body so well they could pull an orgasm out of you patiently and confidently, like it mattered to them as much as breathing did. You imagined hands lingering at your waist, sleepy conversation afterward, somebody brushing your hair away from your face before kissing you again.

Instead, you ended up underneath men who mistook enthusiasm for intimacy. You stared at ceilings while they grunted above you, listened to them breathe your name like they were performing something instead of feeling it. Sometimes you felt your stomach turn from the boredom alone, your body rocking mechanically with theirs while your mind drifted somewhere else entirely to storm reports, grocery lists and whether you needed to change your oil before the next drive west.

You never let them finish once you realized you hated it, that was the one thing you refused to fake. You pushed them off, sat up and reached for your clothes while they blinked at you in confusion. You told them it wasn’t going to work, sometimes you said it gently and other times you just didn’t bother. Either way, you watched realization settle over them while they sat there flushed and humiliated, their ego bruised worse than their feelings ever were but somehow your harsh words still made them cum…

Needless to say, after a while, you stopped having sex altogether.

You were in your rental house after a long day spent staring at storm data and listening to Javi ramble about whatever breakthrough he thought he’d made this time. It was late, the entire house felt heavy and warm, every light dimmer than usual and lately, you weren’t alone nearly as often as you used to be.

Scott sat at your dining table with your laptop open, shoulders slightly hunched, completely absorbed in columns of numbers and radar models. You’d known him for two years and he’d been your partner for one of them. 

People were right about him. He was direct to the point of rudeness, arrogant enough to make most people defensive within five minutes and mean when he thought someone deserved it but unlike most men in your field, Scott had learned how to admit when he was wrong, far from gracefully or happily but still, he did it.

The two of you were impossibly stubborn in almost identical ways, so sharing space with him sometimes felt like being trapped in a room with a sharper version of yourself. Separately, you were both good at what you did but together, you were nearly impossible to beat.

You couldn’t pinpoint when “coworkers” had turned into Scott walking into your house without knocking, helping himself to your fridge and sitting at your table like he paid rent.

“Best orgasm you’ve had during sex?” His voice came from across the room, casual and flat, like he’d asked you about rainfall percentages. He didn’t even look away from the laptop while he said it.

You’d forgotten he was meeting you there before the two of you drove to the bar together, which was why you were still walking around in sleep shorts and a bra, trying to find something decent enough to wear without looking like you’d spent an hour trying.

You took a sip from the beer he’d already pulled out of your fridge and nearly snorted into the bottle. “You think men do that?” you asked as you disappeared into your bedroom.

“To you?” Scott finally looked up. His eyes tracked your movement automatically while he reached for the beer the two of you were apparently sharing now. “I hope so.”

He took a drink as his eyes followed your movement.

You walked back into view holding two dresses on mismatched hangers. “You’re a fucking idiot,” you said plainly. “And maybe a pervert.”

Scott pointed at you immediately. “You’re changing in front of me. I could probably keep count of your bras at this point and I don’t. That actually makes me less of a pervert.”

You disappeared back into your room. He could hear hangers scraping against the closet rod while you searched through clothes with growing irritation.

“Just because it doesn’t make you hard doesn’t make you not a pervert,” you called back, your voice muffled through the wall.

“How do you know I’m not?” he shot back instantly, sounding almost offended by the assumption.

Silence followed but about a minute later, you walked back out wearing a dress he’d never seen before. It was simple, fitted enough to make his eyes stop for a second before continuing downward automatically. You crossed the room toward him, letting your heels drop onto the hardwood before slipping them on one at a time.

“You’re not attracted to me, Scott,” you said flatly.

He looked up slowly then, his eyes dragging over the length of the dress with enough attention to make most people nervous. On you, it just made you impatient.

“You seem awfully confident about that.”

“I am.” You adjusted the strap on your shoulder before glancing toward his laptop screen. “So don’t say shit that makes me sound stupid.”

Scott looked back at the laptop fast enough to make the movement obvious. He pretended to scroll through data he’d stopped reading the second you started undressing in the next room.

“I’m ready,” you said. “Good to go?”

“Need five minutes,” he muttered.

You walked behind him toward the front door, tapping his shoulder as you passed. “The data will still be there tomorrow. C’mon, Scotty.”

The teasing grin in your voice made something in his jaw tighten. You disappeared outside before he could even think of an answer.

Scott closed the laptop harder than necessary and stood, quietly adjusting himself through his jeans with the irritation of a man betrayed by his own body. He shut off the lights one by one and grabbed your keys from the counter before locking the door behind him.

The porch light was off so you couldn’t see the tent in his jeans. Thank fuck for that.

“Scotty was an eight-year-old with chubby cheeks,” he muttered while locking the deadbolt. He glanced over at you waiting by the passenger side of his truck. “It’s Scott.”

“It’s whatever I decide it is,” you replied easily.

He rolled his eyes and walked down the porch steps, unlocking the truck with a sharp click.

“Come open my door.”

“Since when do you need me to do that?” he complained, already circling the hood anyway.

“Since you got comfortable commenting on my bras.”

Scott stopped in front of you to stare before reaching around your waist to pull the handle open. The movement brought him close enough to smell your perfume underneath detergent and beer.

You smiled to yourself while climbing into the passenger seat because for once, Scott didn’t have anything smart to say.

Talking about sex with your coworkers was probably the least professional habit you could develop but professionalism stopped mattering after twelve-hour drives, shared motel rooms, gas station dinners at midnight and enough close calls together to make normal boundaries feel unnecessary. There were barely any women in the field to begin with, which meant the few of you that existed clung together fast and Scott, despite being deeply irritating most of the time, was easier to talk to than most people. 

Brutally honest people usually were.

At some point, conversations that started as jokes during long drives turned into real discussions about relationships, sex, exes and every disappointing person either of you had ever slept with. It happened slowly enough neither of you noticed the line moving until it was already somewhere far behind you.

HR would’ve had a heart attack.

That night, you learned Scott Miller did not do good sex. If good sex existed to him at all, it involved two people fully clothed and standing on opposite ends of a room.

The bar was more crowded than you expected, packed wall to wall with storm chasers, meteorologists, researchers and people who somehow always smelled faintly like dust and gasoline no matter how clean they looked. Whenever women in the field found each other, there was an unspoken tendency to group together immediately, so you spent most of the night at the bar talking with another researcher from Oklahoma while music pounded so loud you felt it vibrate through the floor beneath your heels.

Eventually Javi appeared beside you carrying drinks you absolutely weren’t going to refuse. He handed one over before leaning closer, lowering his voice.

“What’s wrong with Scott?”

You blinked at him. The question caught you off guard enough to make your brows pull together immediately because nobody ever asked about Scott. People either tolerated him, argued with him or avoided him entirely. Whatever problem Scott had, he usually fixed it himself before anyone could notice it existed.

Your eyes scanned the crowd automatically until you found him near the back corner of the bar with a soda in his hand. Of course he wasn’t drinking, he stood half-shadowed against the wall looking deeply unimpressed by the concept of social interaction…and staring directly at you.

Your eyes narrowed slightly until Scott finally got the message and looked away first.

You turned back to Javi. “Do you mean tonight or in general?” you asked dryly. “Because I’m pretty sure he was dropped as a child, but you’d have to ask his mother for confirmation.”

Javi frowned harder. “I mean tonight. He looks tense and it’s making me uneasy.”

“It’s Scott. He always looks tense.”

“More than usual.” Javi glanced over his shoulder carefully. “Tell him to relax for once…and to make some friends. That’s literally why we came here.”

You pointed at yourself immediately. “Why am I responsible for that?”

Javi shrugged like the answer was obvious. “Because you speak ‘Scott’ fluently. Translate what I just said into something he’ll actually understand.”

Your gaze dropped to the drink in your hand. “You’re bribing me.”

“And that drink cost me twenty-five dollars,” he replied. “So yes. Go.”

You snorted into the rim of your glass. “Pretty sure stress is what’s making you bald, by the way…not Scott’s burning gaze.”

Javi adjusted his baseball cap defensively. “Just go talk to him.”

You shook your head, already grinning despite yourself and pushed through the crowd toward the back of the bar, which Scott noticed immediately. 

The music got louder the closer you got to him, voices bleeding together into useless noise, so instead of trying to shout over it, you reached forward and hooked one finger through the belt loop of his jeans.

“Outside,” you said simply, tugging once as you moved toward the exit.

Scott followed without argument, that alone should’ve concerned you more than it did.

The plan was for him to ask what you wanted once you got outside. Instead, somewhere between the crowded bar and the exit door, he got distracted watching you walk ahead of him. Your dress moved against your hips every few steps, exposing flashes of leg skin under the low bar lights and the muscles in your bare back moved subtly every time you pushed through another cluster of people.

Inevitably, Scott’s eyes dropped lower before he caught himself.

By the time the two of you stepped outside into the cooler night air, he still hadn’t said a word.

You finally let go of his belt loop once the two of you were far enough from the entrance that the music had dulled into muffled bass behind you. You turned to face him properly, folding your arms across your chest as you looked up at him.

“What’s your current issue?” you asked.

“Current?” Scott repeated, brows pulling together.

You nodded once like the question made perfect sense.

“When’s the last time you had sex?”

A startled laugh escaped you before you could stop it. “Excuse me?”

He shrugged carelessly, shoving one hand into the pocket of his jeans. “What? Are you the only one allowed to ask those questions?”

You laughed again, this time shaking your head as you pointed at him. “Yes. Obviously.”

Scott snorted.

“And those are long-drive questions,” you continued, motioning vaguely toward his truck behind you before pointing back toward the crowded bar. “Not ‘parking lot outside a packed bar’ questions.”

“You still need to answer.” He shrugged again. “Those are the rules.”

“Have I ever told you how stupid those rules are?”

“First time I’m hearing complaints since you’re the one who made them,” he replied with a grin.

“You’re insufferable,” you muttered under your breath before taking another sip of your drink.

Scott stayed quiet as he just watched you over the rim of his own soda, patient and expectant in a way that immediately irritated you because he clearly thought he was getting an answer eventually.

“Are you seriously gonna make me answer?”

“I can’t make you do anything,” he said calmly. “But I can wait. I still have to drive you home.”

You looked up toward the entrance of the bar. Through the windows you could still see people packed together under neon lights, laughing too loud, talking over each other about work, storm patterns and equipment failures. You’d already reached the point of the night where conversations started blending together into white noise.

“Can we leave now?” you asked.

Scott didn’t answer verbally. He just pulled his keys from his pocket, unlocked the truck with a click, then held his hand out toward your drink.

“Get in and lock the doors,” he said as he took the glass from you and turned back toward the bar to return it.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” you called after him while walking directly to the passenger side and doing exactly that.

Honestly, you didn’t mind answering the question. The problem was that once you actually thought about it, you realized you weren’t entirely sure how long it had been. It had been long enough that you had to start considering technicalities and long enough that the answer became embarrassing and unfortunately, thinking about sex while sitting alone in Scott’s truck immediately led your brain somewhere unhelpful…

Scott eventually climbed back into the truck and shut the door behind him. He didn’t start driving right away, he just sat there in the dark, one hand resting on the wheel while the dashboard lights cut sharp shadows across his face…waiting, because the thing about car questions was that silence usually came first.

“A year and a half,” you blurted out finally. “Give or take.”

Scott’s head turned toward you so fast it almost looked painful. “No,” he said immediately. “I don’t believe that.”

You laughed in disbelief and looked toward him. “Believe whatever you want, Scott. I answered the fucking question. That’s the game.”

“A year and a half?” he repeated, staring at you like you’d confessed to murder. “What the hell do you even do on weekends?”

“Currently?” you replied dryly. “Sit in your truck while you annoy me.”

“No,” he said, already turning the key in the ignition. “You’re irritated because you’re sexually frustrated.”

You barked out another incredulous laugh. 

“And you’ve been sexually frustrated since I met you,” he continued as he shifted the truck into reverse. “Which explains why you piss me off every single fucking day.”

“Excuse you?” You turned toward him fully now, half laughing from sheer disbelief. “First the bra comments and now this? What’s next? Are you gonna set me up with one of your friends so he can fix me?”

“Put your seatbelt on.” The command came out flat and automatic.

You narrowed your eyes at him. “Don’t fucking tell me what to do, Scott. I’m not drunk enough to–”

The words died in your throat the second he reached across you.

His arm slid in front of your chest while the truck reversed smoothly with his other hand still turning the wheel. His forearm brushed against the underside of your breasts accidentally…or maybe not so accidentally and your breath caught hard at the sudden closeness. Scott grabbed the seatbelt beside your shoulder, pulled it across your body in one sharp movement, then clicked it into place at your hip without looking away from the rear window once.

You drove home in complete silence.

No radio or conversation, just the steady sound of tires against asphalt and the occasional flick of the blinker while Scott kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead. You’d heard every version of his voice over the last two years, sarcastic, irritated or sharp enough to make grown men defensive in meetings but hearing him tell you to put your seatbelt on while his arm pressed across your breasts had done something deeply unfortunate to your brain.

This was entirely your fault. You were the one who made sex an acceptable topic between the two of you, you were the one who turned it into a game, into background conversation during long drives and late nights. Somewhere along the way home, your definition of good sex had rewritten itself around that precise moment. 

For most people, that probably counted as foreplay, but for you? It counted as a serious fucking problem.

By the time Scott parked outside your house, your thoughts had spiraled so badly that you barely registered the truck stopping. You stayed seated even after he cut the engine, staring forward blankly while the silence settled heavier around you.

Scott got out first without saying anything and walked around the front of the truck toward your side.

The passenger door opened. You looked up just in time to feel him lean in and reach across you again, fingers brushing lightly against the fabric stretched over your waist as he unclipped the seatbelt. The contact lasted maybe a second but that was already too long.

Only then did you finally move. You climbed out quickly, making an effort to keep close to the truck instead of brushing against him, then headed straight for your front door while digging through your purse for your keys even if it was practically empty and somehow that made it worse. You found lip balm…receipts…some loose cash, everything except what you actually needed.

Scott followed behind you quietly.

You still hadn’t found the keys when his arm appeared beside you, reaching around your body with frustrating familiarity. He’d had your keys the entire night, he usually did whenever the two of you went out together because you constantly lost track of them.

The metal clicked softly as he unlocked the door for you.

Your breath stalled as Scott stood so close behind you that you could feel the heat coming off him through the thin fabric of your dress. His chest nearly touched your back, one arm still braced near your shoulder while he turned the lock. It boxed you in completely, your body caught between the door and him and the worst part was that it felt good.

The sharp heat low in your stomach made that painfully obvious.

Good sex, apparently, was standing fully clothed on your own porch while your coworker unlocked your front door…all while standing right behind you.

The lock finally clicked open. You pushed the door open and stepped inside fast to put distance between you before turning back toward him. 

Determination sat stiffly in your chest now…You were staying dressed. Whatever this weird tension was had to be alcohol-fueled, temporary, deeply stupid or preferably all three and gone by morning.

Unfortunately, Scott looked unfairly good standing on your porch under weak yellow light.

At some point he’d taken off his cap, you didn’t know when and hadn’t realized until now. Why did he look dreamy!? His hair was messy from running his hands through it all night and the expression on his face had settled back into that unreadable calm that somehow made things worse.

“Night, Scott,” you said quickly, then shut the door directly in his face…very determined to remain dressed.

“Are you gonna set me up with one of your friends so he can fix me?” That sentence replayed in your head later for one humiliating reason: Scott Miller had never been the kind of man to hand off work he could do himself.

You’d been wrong earlier, completely wrong.

Great sex didn’t happen on weekends or after parties or during long-awaited moments with somebody you trusted. Sometimes it happened five minutes after you slammed your front door in a man’s face and tried convincing yourself you still had common sense.

You stayed standing by the door after closing it, palms warm against the wood, waiting to hear his truck start. You expected the familiar sound of the driver’s side door opening, shutting and the low rumble of the engine before he pulled away but nothing happened.

At first you told yourself you were imagining the silence because you were still too aware of him…then a full minute passed…followed by another and then three more.

Five long, miserable minutes where your brain refused to focus on anything except the fact Scott was still outside your house.

You opened the door expecting embarrassment or maybe annoyance, maybe him realizing he forgot something. Instead, he was still standing there in the same position with that same unreadable expression, hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans like you hadn’t just shut the door on him…five minutes ago.

You stared at each other for a second too long.

You never figured out what exactly snapped first. Pride, self-control or curiosity…maybe all of it at once again.

One second he was standing on your porch and the next you were grabbing a fistful of his shirt and pulling him forward hard enough to make him stumble into you as your mouth crashed against his.

The moment the door clicked shut behind you, the fragile determination to stay dressed shattered. You didn't just invite Scott in, you practically hauled him across the threshold, pulling him into a kiss that tasted of alcohol and months of suppressed frustration. It was messy and desperate, a collision of teeth and tongues that left you both breathless.

You stumbled backward, the friction of your bodies fueling a fire that had been simmering for far too long. As you navigated the space, your heels clicked erratically against the floor until you kicked them off with frantic movements, one flying toward the wall and the other sliding away as you backed into the dining area.

You hit the edge of the heavy wooden table and Scott didn't miss a beat. He gripped your waist with bruising force and hoisted you up, the sudden elevation making you gasp into his mouth. He didn't stop kissing you but his path shifted, lips sliding down your jawline to your neck, sucking hard enough to leave a mark. His hands were everywhere, frantic and demanding, sliding up the fabric of your dress and bunching it up around your waist until your thighs were bare and shivering against the cool wood.

You felt his fingers hook into the elastic of your panties, tugging them down with a sharp, decisive motion until you could kick them off, exposing you to the air. As he lowered himself, his mouth found the swell of your breasts through your dress, biting lightly against the fabric on his way down between your legs.

"You don't need to do that," you managed to moan, your voice trembling as he moved your weight, sliding you toward the edge of the table until you were perched precariously, your legs naturally falling open.

"Shut up," Scott muttered against your skin, his voice a low, arrogant growl that sent a jolt of electricity straight to your clit as he finally settled himself firmly between your thighs, the heat of his body radiating against your wetness. 

Then, he dipped his head. The first touch of his tongue was a shock of heat, it was wet and precise. He dove right in, tongue licking upward from your perineum to your clit in one long, sweeping stroke. You arched your back as a loud moan escaped you since it had been so long since you’d felt anything this raw, this focused. You were starving for it and Scott was feeding off of you with a primal intensity that blurred everything else out.

He used his hands to grip your hips, pulling you closer to the edge so he could bury his face in you as he kneeled. He began to lap at you with a rhythmic, punishing speed, his tongue flattening out to cover as much surface area as possible before narrowing into a sharp point to flick relentlessly against your clit.

The sensation was overwhelming. You began to squirm, hips jerking instinctively against his mouth as your fingernails clawed at the tabletop. You weren't just enjoying it, you were unraveling.

"Fuck…Scott...please," you whimpered, though you didn't know what you were asking for.

He responded by changing your position. He pushed you flat onto your back on the table, the hard wood pressing into your spine and hauled your legs up, draping them over his broad shoulders. The position left you completely exposed, your pussy flared open and glistening in the dark room.

He didn't stop the oral but added more by sliding two fingers deep inside you, stretching you open while his tongue continued to hammer away at your clit. The combination of the internal pressure and the external friction was too much. You were shaking, breath coming in short, jagged gasps as your feet drummed against his back.

He could tell you were close, encouraging him to increase the pressure, fingers curling inside you to hit your G-spot while his tongue sucked your clit into his mouth, creating a vacuum of pleasure that felt like it was pulling your entire soul out through your cunt.

“Holy s-shit!” Your head thrashed from side to side, a loud, unrestrained scream tearing from your throat as the orgasm hit you like a freight train. It was violent and all-consuming, your internal muscles clamping down hard on his fingers as waves of intense pleasure crashed over you, leaving you whimpering and twitching on the table.

As the peak slowly subsided, Scott didn't pull away immediately. He stayed there, his breath hot against your sensitive skin, slowly lapping the remaining juices from your pussy. He cleaned you thoroughly, his tongue lingering on every inch of your swollen cunt until you were completely spent, lying limp and shivering on the table, finally satisfied.

He straightened slowly from between your legs, chest rising hard with uneven breaths that matched your own. His mouth was swollen and wet when he licked across his lips absentmindedly, eyes fixed on you with an intensity that made heat crawl back under your skin even while your body still twitched from the orgasm.

From your place sprawled across the dining table, you stared up at him in stunned silence. Your thighs were still trembling now against his sides and you were almost certain your expression looked ridiculous, wide-eyed and dazed in a way you hadn’t allowed yourself to look around another person in years.

Scott held a hand out toward you and you took it automatically.

He helped you sit up first before guiding you carefully off the table, one hand steady on your waist while your legs struggled to cooperate beneath you. The second your feet touched the floor, your knees nearly gave out entirely.

Scott wiped his mouth with his palm. “Goodnight,” he said and the gentleness of it caught you off guard more than anything else that night had.

His hand slipped away from your waist and the two of you just stood there for a second, staring at each other while trying and failing to breathe normally again.

Then Scott turned and walked toward the front door.

You stayed frozen in place while he opened it and left your house without another word. A few seconds later you finally heard the sounds you’d been waiting for earlier, the truck door opening, shutting and the engine starting before he drove off into the night.

You tried walking toward your bedroom afterward and immediately realized your legs barely worked. You ended up half stumbling down the hallway, one hand dragging along the wall for balance because your entire lower body still felt weak and oversensitive.

Great sex…that had been unbelievably, painfully great sex.

You thought about it constantly afterward. In the shower, during calls and meetings, while sitting in traffic or lying awake at night staring at the ceiling with your thighs pressed together. You didn’t mention it to your friends or talked to Scott about it, even during the long stretches of silence that filled the truck during drives. The two of you understood what happened without discussing it directly, you’d crossed a line and both of you seemed aware that talking about it too much would probably drag you over it again.

The following mornings, you waited for him outside on your porch instead of letting him walk into your house like usual. Mostly because you’d spent the entire week masturbating to the memory of him between your legs on your dining table before getting ready for the day and you didn’t trust yourself to survive seeing him inside your kitchen before sunrise.

For one solid week, you slept perfectly. No insomnia or late-night work spirals, no pacing around rooms or answering emails at one in the morning just to keep your brain occupied. Whatever tension usually sat under your skin had disappeared completely and now it sat between you both instead.

Every drive felt heavier, the silence stretched longer and every sharp inhale from him made your stomach tighten unexpectedly until eventually you got sick of pretending neither of you noticed it.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” you interrupted suddenly.

Scott glanced toward you briefly, eyes leaving the road for barely a second before returning forward. “Do you want to?” he asked.

“I don’t,” you admitted. “I feel like you do though.”

“You’re right.”

You snorted quietly and looked back down at the laptop balanced across your knees. 

“I thought you liked being right.” Scott added.

“Fucking love it,” you replied automatically before grimacing. “Usually.”

Silence settled again until you broke it. “Okay,” you sighed eventually. “Maybe one thing.” You turned to him properly this time. “I wasn’t that drunk that night. Actually, I wasn’t drunk at all. I had that one beer before we left my place and the rest were mocktails.”

Scott turned his head enough to study your face for a second. “I wouldn’t have touched you if you were drunk,” he said flatly. “I’m an asshole, not fucking stupid.”

You leaned back against the seat slowly. “Even that’s changed.”

His brows furrowed. “What does that mean?”

“The coffee for starters,” you said. “The lunches, too. You stopped buying disgusting gas station sandwiches and now we actually eat dinner out like normal people.” You gestured vaguely toward him. “You used to hand me coffee with five sugar packets on the side because you couldn’t remember how I took it. Now it’s magically perfect every fucking morning.”

Scott adjusted his grip on the steering wheel.

“I thought eating around other people would make this less weird,” he admitted. “And I got tired of sugar packets all over my truck.”

“Our truck,” you corrected automatically before pointing at him accusingly. “And nothing about this is normal, Scott! You ate me out on my dining table!”

“Stop yelling at me.” His tone stayed frustratingly calm.

“Why?” you shot back. “Is it making you hard?”

Scott shifted in his seat hard enough that you noticed instantly. Both his hands locked tighter around the steering wheel while he stared straight ahead at the road. The tension in his jaw became visible because unfortunately for him, you weren’t wrong.

The last week had changed things. You looked less exhausted and less tightly wound. You hadn’t snapped at him once during work and he hadn’t gotten a single unhinged one a.m. email from you all week because for the first time since he’d met you, you were actually sleeping.

“So when are we doing it again?” he asked finally, against every ounce of common sense he had left.

NEVER…that should’ve been the answer. It was the logical answer, the responsible one, the answer two coworkers with already questionable boundaries should’ve landed on immediately.

It just wasn’t the truth.

You had always maintained that getting fucked couldn’t happen in motel rooms. It didn't matter how good the sex was, the second cheap carpet, bad lighting and a rattling air conditioner got involved, the whole thing dropped several levels automatically. 

Motel sex could be great, sometimes even memorable but it couldn’t be that, so the next time it happened definitely wasn’t in a motel room.

The weather that day had turned bad enough to keep everyone grounded but not dangerous enough to send your team chasing storms through three different counties. There was heavy rain, low visibility and too much lightning for comfort but not enough rotation to justify going out.

At some point, without either of you actually saying it outright, waiting the storm out in Scott’s apartment became the plan instead of sitting cramped inside the truck for hours pretending the tension between you didn’t exist.

You still couldn’t pinpoint who made the first move once the elevator doors closed behind you.

One second you were standing beside him soaked at the edges from the rain, listening to distant thunder through the concrete parking garage and the next, Scott’s hand was inside your pants like it belonged there.

You gasped hard into his mouth as his fingers slid against you immediately, already somewhat familiar with exactly what made your hips jerk forward. The kiss that came after barely counted as one, it was messy and distracted, interrupted constantly by your breathing and the quiet sounds you kept failing to swallow down.

The elevator ride lasted less than a minute but by the time the doors opened onto his floor, your orgasm was already hitting you in sharp waves around his fingers while your forehead pressed against his shoulder to keep yourself standing.

If you weren’t already fucked, you were about to be.

You’d been inside Scott’s apartment before. A handful of times after late nights working or when weather reports needed reviewing somewhere quieter than a crowded diner. You remembered the big windows first, stretching across the living room area with a full view of the skyline in the distance. Tonight they framed heavy gray clouds and rain pouring so hard that it blurred the city lights into smears of white and yellow.

Scott barely gave you time to look around because the second the apartment door shut behind you, his hands were on you again. He walked you toward the living room with rough impatience, pulling your pants down from behind while you stumbled against the edge of an armchair. Your underwear followed immediately after, dragged down together in one quick motion before pooling around your ankles.

The air in Scott’s apartment was heavy, charged with the static of the storm raging outside. The gray light of the overcast sky filtered through the windows but the atmosphere inside was scorching.

"Kneel," he commanded as he pointed toward the armchair, his voice a low, authoritative rumble.

You didn't hesitate. The tension that had been building between you for weeks, the unspoken glances and lingering touches, had finally snapped. You sank to your knees on the plush seat, your heart hammering against your ribs. You leaned forward, gripping the headrest with both hands, body already trembling in anticipation. You were completely exposed to him, your ass tilted back and waiting.

Scott disappeared for a moment, leaving you in a silence broken only by the distant roll of thunder. When he returned, the sound of a foil packet tearing echoed in the room. You heard the metallic click of his belt unbuckling and the slide of a zipper.

The anticipation was agonizing. You heard him roll the condom on, followed by the wet sound of him spitting on the head of his cock to make the entry smoother.

He stepped up behind you, heat radiating against your backside. He lined himself up and then, with one powerful, decisive surge, he thrust deep inside you.

You let out a sharp, strangled whine, your fingers digging into the fabric of the headrest. It had been so long since you’d felt a man inside you and Scott was massive. The initial stretch was borderline painful, a blunt force that filled every millimeter of your tight, starving pussy. You blinked rapidly, tears pricking your eyes as your body struggled to accommodate his size, your breath hitching in your throat.

Scott didn't give you time to adjust. He reached forward, his large hands clamping onto your hips with bruising force and yanked you backward, pulling you deeper onto his cock until there was no space left between you.

"I wanna see you," you moaned, your voice broken and desperate, trying to twist your torso around to look at him.

He didn't let you. Instead, he leaned in and sank his teeth into the skin of your shoulder, a sharp bite that made you moan despite your best efforts. His hand moved from your hip to your jaw, gripping it firmly to keep your head pinned forward.

"Just focus," he rasped calmly against your skin, the contrast of his steady voice and his firm grip sending a shiver of submission down your spine.

He let go of your jaw and began to thrust. He didn't start slowly, he hit you with a rhythmic, punishing intensity. The apartment was suddenly filled with the sound of your sudden, loud moans and frantic curses. You collapsed forward, your chest pressed against the headrest, your body jarring with every hit.

As he hammered into you, Scott reached around, his hands finding your breasts. He didn't bother undressing you further, he grabbed your boobs firmly over your clothes, squeezing and kneading them with a rough, possessive grip that matched the violence of his hips.

"I'm gonna fuck you on every surface of this apartment," he growled. "You'll be seeing a lot of me."

The sex quickly became raw and primal and so, so fucking good. The sound of skin slapping against skin, mixed with the wet, rhythmic thud of his pelvis hitting your ass filled the room, competing with the roar of the thunder outside. Every thrust shook your entire frame, quaking your body from your head to your toes. You were whimpering loudly now, the pain of the initial stretch having completely melted into an overwhelming, white-hot pleasure you never thought you could feel.

Your eyes watered, staring out into the distance of the room, the world blurring as the friction built. It was fast, harsh and so perfect that you found yourself wanting to bite the armchair, your teeth sinking into the fabric as your back arched violently. You were unraveling, the long period of abstinence making you hypersensitive to every inch of him.

"I'm right there, keep going! Scott, please! Don’t fuckin’ stop." you whined, voice echoing through the apartment.

He didn't, he instead increased the pace, his thrusts becoming shorter and more frantic, drilling into you with an obsession that felt like he wanted to merge his body with yours. The thunder peaked with a deafening crash that seemed to trigger something inside you.

Suddenly, your internal muscles spasmed. A wave of heat exploded from your core and you felt a sudden, uncontrollable gush of fluid. You were squirting, something that had never happened to you before, the hot spray soaking the armchair and your own thighs. You began to shake uncontrollably, your legs giving out as you sobbed out of pure pleasure into the headrest.

Scott let out a guttural groan, the feeling of you flooding around him driving him over the edge. He loved it, hell, he was obsessed with the way you were falling apart under him. He kept going, ignoring your tremors, continuously driving himself into you as you peaked into a mind-blowing, screaming orgasm that left you completely breathless.

With a final, deep thrust, he groaned loudly, coming hard into the condom.

The momentum stopped abruptly. He stayed buried inside you for a long moment, both of you frozen, chests heaving in unison.

Slowly, he withdrew, the wet sound of his exit punctuating the silence with an obscene pop.

You both watch the rain lash against the glass, the gray light illuminating the wreckage of your passion. You took a long, shuddering breath, body still twitching from the aftershocks as your pussy twitched around nothing, back arching further needily, earning a smack from him.

"Holy fuck," you both breathed simultaneously, the weight of the encounter settling over you in the heavy, humid air.

There was no going back after that day. Not to abstinence, not to disappointing hookups or to pretending sex was something casual and forgettable that fit neatly between work schedules and storm reports.

Once Scott got his hands on you, everything else lost appeal embarrassingly fast.

What started as isolated incidents quickly turned into a pattern neither of you seriously attempted to stop. It was a terrible idea professionally, obviously, but somehow the two of you functioned better afterward. Meetings became easier, long drives felt lighter and you argued less viciously because the tension always had somewhere to go now instead of festering under your skin for weeks.

You started going home together most nights under the excuse of saving gas money. Then showering together afterward became another practical decision because apparently water bills mattered too now. Somewhere between shared coffee in the mornings and him keeping spare clothes for you at his apartment, things moved quietly into something neither of you had planned for and the worst part was that it worked.

The sex stayed incredible. Sometimes rough enough to leave hickeys along your skin and fingerprints fading across your thighs and hips by morning, or other times slow enough that you ended up tangled together for hours afterward while thunderstorms rolled outside the windows. Every now and then he fucked you hard enough to leave you shaking afterward, staring blankly at the ceiling while he stood in the kitchen making you food like that was a normal sequence of events but eventually you realized it wasn’t just about that anymore.

You started having actual dates without calling them dates, it was dinner after work that lasted until restaurants closed around you. You went grocery shopping together because both of you were too exhausted to go separately and you began falling asleep on opposite ends of his couch while weather models played quietly on television screens neither of you were really watching.

Off-season made it worse.

Without constant travel, motel rooms and adrenaline keeping you both distracted, there was finally time to explore whatever this thing between you had become. You drifted naturally between your house and his apartment depending on whose place seemed closer to the office that day. Half your belongings somehow ended up at his place and vice versa. You texted each other constantly during meetings despite sitting twenty feet apart, phones hidden beneath desks while coworkers talked around you.

Scott started bringing your coffee to your desk already made exactly how you liked it before you even decided you needed one. You started buying his preferred cereal without asking if he wanted any. He slept better with you in his bed and you stopped grinding your teeth in your sleep when he stayed over.

So naturally, being made love to finally happened exactly the way you once thought it would and it wasn’t some exaggerated version of romance men convinced themselves they were capable of after two drinks and mediocre conversation.

It sort of snuck up on you. It was Scott pulling you into his lap while both of you were exhausted after work, kissing your shoulder absentmindedly while you read through data on his laptop. It was him waking you up slowly on Sunday mornings with his hand sliding under your shirt and nowhere either of you needed to be. It was sex that lasted forever because he knew your body well enough to take his time with it, knew exactly what made you gasp, what made your legs tense and what made you hide your face against his neck when the pleasure became too much.

He paid attention and it made all of the difference. Scott learned your body like he learned storm patterns, thoroughly and obsessively, until touching you became instinct to him and it showed…

The morning light filtered through the curtains of your bedroom in soft, golden slats, painting the sheets in hues of amber and cream. The house was silent, save for the rhythmic sound of your shared breathing and the distant chirp of birds welcoming the dawn. You were tangled together, skin on skin, the warmth of the duvet trapping the heat of your bodies in a private, humid cocoon.

There was no rush, no storm to outrun and no urgency born of desperation. There was only the heavy, sweet weight of Scott pressing you into the mattress. You were both fully naked, your limbs entwined in a lazy, possessive knot.

Scott began slowly, his lips tracing a path of fire across your collarbone. He wasn't just kissing you, he was tasting you, tongue swirling against your skin in slow circles that made you shiver. He moved lower, mouth finding the sensitive curve of your breast as you let out a soft, airy moan. He took your nipple into his mouth, sucking firmly while his thumb and forefinger pinched the other peak, twisting it just enough to send a jolt of electricity straight to your core.

You arched your back, your fingers sliding into the thick hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him closer. The friction of his chest against your breasts was intoxicating, the rough hair of his torso grazing your sensitive skin.

He shifted, sliding his body up so he could look into your eyes. His gaze was dark, filled with an intensity that felt more overwhelming than any of the rougher encounters you'd had. He didn't move to flip you or push you into a different position, instead, he settled between your thighs in a classic missionary stance and pushed inside. There was no latex barrier this time, no clinical snap of a condom. It was raw, wet and absolute. 

The sensation of his bare skin sliding against yours was a revelation. You gasped, your eyes fluttering shut as you felt the full, throbbing heat of him filling you completely. It felt different, more intimate and permanent. The lack of a barrier made every ridge of his cock feel amplified, every pulse of his blood echoing against your own internal walls.

He didn't start with the punishing pace of the past. Instead, he began to rock, his movements slow and agonizingly deep. He pressed his palm flat against your stomach, pushing down firmly to tilt your pelvis, ensuring that every thrust hit the deepest part of you.

"Gripping me like a fucking vise…so perfect." he groaned, his voice a gravelly morning rumble that vibrated through your chest.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, locking your ankles to pull him even deeper. You were lost in the rhythm, the slow, sliding friction creating a build-up of tension that felt like a tightening coil in your belly. You ran your hands through his hair, your nails lightly scratching his scalp as you moaned into the first rays of the morning sun.

The intimacy was suffocating in the best way possible. As he continued to rock, his movements grew slightly more urgent, the slow glide turning into a passionate, driving force. He leaned down, his lips brushing against yours, tasting the salt and sweetness of your skin while he continued to pinch and tease your nipples, hand roaming your curves with a familiarity that spoke of a deep, obsessive knowledge of your body.

It didn’t take long for your breath to become shallow, chest heaving as the pleasure began to peak. You could feel the walls of your pussy clenching around him, milking him with every deep stroke. Your body tensed, toes curling into the sheets as a wave of heat crashed over you. You cried out, a long, melodic sound of surrender, as your orgasm ripped through you in slow, pulsing waves that left you shaking beneath him.

Scott didn’t slow his pace as his forehead rested against yours, both of you breathing heavily. He continued moving, the intimacy of the connection almost too much to bear.

"Want to be done?" he whispered, his voice strained, muscles trembling with the effort of holding back.

You looked up at him, eyes hazy with pleasure and affection. The thought of him pulling away felt wrong because you wanted everything. You wanted the weight, the heat and the mark of him.

You shook your head with an escaped whimper, pulling his face down to yours. "Don’t you dare pull out…’want you to come inside." You breathed.

The request broke the last of his restraint. Scott let out a guttural sound, a mix of a groan and a sob and began to drive into you with a renewed, primal intensity. It was a desperate, loving hunger. He hammered into you, movements strong and deep, each thrust a claim and a promise.

As he reached his limit, his grip on your hip tightened, fingers digging into your skin. He thrust one last time, burying himself as deep as physically possible and you felt the hot, thick bursts of his cum flooding into you. The sensation of him filling you from the inside out was the most intense feeling you had ever experienced, a physical manifestation of the bond that had grown between you.

In the height of his release, as his body shuddered violently against yours, he gasped out the words he had been holding back.

"I love you," he choked out, the confession raw and unplanned.

The world seemed to stop for a heartbeat. You felt a surge of emotion that rivaled the intensity of the orgasm, a warmth that started in your chest and radiated to your fingertips. You tightened your hold on him, pulling him down for a deep, searing kiss.

"I love you too," you whispered against his lips.

He collapsed onto you, heart drumming a frantic rhythm against your own, both of you spent and glowing in the morning light, finally and completely entwined.

A few years ago, you would’ve hated the idea that Scott Miller of all people would end up teaching you everything worth knowing about sex. It would’ve bruised your ego badly, especially considering how seriously you once took those stupid categories and scales in your head before Scott showed up and ruined all of them completely.

Good sex stopped mattering. 

Great sex became expected.

Getting fucked became routine enough that you lost count somewhere along the line, usually around the third orgasm of the day and definitely before he started dragging you into his lap halfway through work calls just because he felt like bothering you…with his hands and dick.

But somehow, even after all the rough sex and ruined schedules, Scott still managed to make love to you exactly the way you once imagined it should feel.

So if somebody offered you the chance to go back and do it all over again, you would without hesitation.

You were an absolute HR nightmare now and what a fucking delight that was!

A/N: If you enjoyed this story, feel free to explore the archive for more! Liking and reblogging helps others discover my writing and comments always make my day, they’re a huge encouragement for me to keep creating. Thank you so much for reading!

Look at him just chewing the FAWK out of that gum 😭 (wait chew me next)

...

"hey dick! any updates so far??? :(( my bday's just passed, but it's alright! i wasn't expecting too much from you since i know you've got responsibilities and such hehe."

"... so you might be busy—"

"but i understand!!! :)) just text me once you're online and if you read this! you don't have to accept my invites, i just gotta know so i wouldn't waste any reservations. so please, please, please answer me!"

"... please."

...

"dick!!! i heard it's your birthday through alfred! so happy birthday, dick! may many blessings come your way because you're the bestest ever! i've got a gift all wrapped up for you, though i know you're in bludhaven right now, alfred helped me arrange it to be delivered to you soon! just text me when you want me to send it over. love you!!!"

...

"am i blocked? :( sorry to assume, but i think my messages aren't coming through your phone. oh, and i still have your gift, by the way! even though it's been a few weeks, there's nothing wrong with a belated happy birthday gift, right?!"

...

"hello???"

...

"i miss you."

...

"please just answer me for once..."

...

"... i'm starting to think you hate me, dick."

unsent.

...

"alfred told me about what happened. i didn't know you had a fight with bruce back when it was your birthday. i'm sorry that happened, dick."

...

"hey... if you need anyone to talk to, you do know i'm here, right? you don't have to run off to another city at all and ignore everybody in the house when things get bad. we could talk it out, spend some time together, talk nasty things about bruce behind his back, do anything, just anything. it doesn't even have to be dinner dates— we're siblings, you told me we are."

unsent.

...

"... we're still siblings, aren't we? do you consider me as your sibling, dick?"

unsent.

...

"i miss you. even if it's been quite some time — some years — since we even had an actual conversation. you're still an older brother to me. i hope you know that. even if you and tim and all the others act like i'm not here. i still love you all. it hurts to admit it, but i do."

unsent.

...

"is it because i'm not one of you guys? is that why everyone pretends i don't exist? because i'm not some hero like you? or is it a secret third thing? do i even exist in your minds? just tell me—"

"please just fucking tell me. so i stop hoping for something, dick."

unsent.

...

"that was insensitive of me, i'm sorry, dick."

"i wish you could just reply to me. just once."

"... i'll see you after a few months again, i guess."

...

"i saw how you were with tim and damian and the others."

"i saw you all at the theatre, with them. with your friends, the titans, and all your siblings. even bruce had the gall, he found the fucking time to visit you guys over there."

"wow, just wow."

"i saw the posts, the selfies, everything. you were having so much fun weren't you? i wish that was me. i wish i had that kind of bond. i wish i was part of something. i wish i could afford to take my friends to the theatre, have some fun, take great selfies, laugh and pretend like nothing in the world bothers us. but they've been taken away from me, they all started to avoid me because they saw the way you and the others ignore me too in public. they think there's something wrong with me because of the way you treat me out in public— they think that if they copied your actions, it'd be enough to warrant your attention in public too."

"haha. that hurts a lot, being ignored by even the people you call your friends. can't you see just how much you're also indirectly hurting me?"

"i wish you had the decency to at least invite me. you could've just placed me on the sidelines, i could stay quiet if you wanted me to. i don't mind being the fucking wallflower."

"because at least that meant i was invited—"

"because at least that meant you thought of me for even one fucking second. that i mattered more than just your flimsy promises of "next time.""

"it would've stung less if you had just confronted me and told me you and all the others never cared all along."

"i mean it's obvious you never did. i just wish you said it to my face. i just wish you'd come to my room for once and tell me i never mattered. but even that's too much of a favor, huh? i'm just so irrelevant to you. i should've known how it'd all turn out for us— and yet..."

"i didn't know you were capable of giving so much love."

"i didn't know that the dick grayson i knew in my eyes, who used to be my light before, who used to give me so much hope right after mom left the world; who also ignored me, who always turned the other way around or shooed me off when i asked for his time— i didn't know he could smile so much with other people around him. i never knew there was that side of you that could make everybody feel better, safe, loved."

"whenever i think of you, i think of your stupid back and your wandering eyes. that's all i ever see: you turning away from me like the sight of me repulses you."

"at this point, that just makes me the problem, huh?"

"bruce acts that way too. between me and tim. you two welcomed him easier than you did me. i should've known from the start that i didn't even matter at all. i should've known that a child like me before wasn't pitiful enough to be even noticed. i don't even know why i expect so much when it comes to me. i shouldn't even act so entitled when i don't even exist in this hellhole."

"... i hate you dick, i hate you so much."

unsent.

...

"i wish you knew how much i fucking hate you. but you don't even read my messages."

unsent.

...

"it's always the same with you people. i don't even know why i even try in the first place."

unsent.

...

"i'm sick of pretending like i'm happy every time i greet you here and in person. you make me sick."

"but if i saw you that way, then you probably see me as something worse then. i'm a disgusting, selfish, attention-seeking leech to you, aren't i?"

"that's probably why you could never look me straight in the eyes."

"you hate me more than i claim to hate you."

unsent.

...

"i hope you remember how you were supposed to take me out for dinner. i hope you remember how you promised to take me around the manor. i hope you remember how much i think of you and the others everyday whilst i couldn't even be a passing glance to any one of you. i hope you remember at least even a semblance of me before i leave for college."

"but you won't."

"i know you won't. even if i paraded all over the halls of this stupid house and announced i'd be killing myself, none of you wouldn't even bat an eye."

"if you couldn't even fulfill a promise you made to me years ago, a promise you made to me months ago— then you sure as hell wouldn't care if i left this place. there's nothing worth staying here for anymore."

unsent.

...

"it's just so unfair, dick."

"everyone here is so unfair."

"what did i even do to deserve this?"

"did i do something wrong? did i say something wrong? did i hurt anybody? did i kill anybody? what did i do to make you ignore me so suddenly before?"

"i want to know the answer so bad, but it's too quiet when you're all not around for the night."

"it's just too quiet."

"like i'm not even deserving enough to be considered noise around you."

unsent.

...

"sorry for being too much."

"i didn't realize how annoying i sounded in every message of mine."

"i won't be long in this manor anyways... so for all it's worth—"

"i won't bother you anymore."

...

home sweet home.

a resounding click! echoed throughout your apartment as you kick your door closed. you brace yourself for the pain subsiding in your sides, kneeling down — and keeping your crutches as support for your weight — to place the cardboard box you held to your right, it was a flimsy thing punched with holes to allow air to enter and right atop of it was a container of your favorite meal jason had insisted you keep.

afterwards, you pulled yourself up as slowly as you could, wincing and taking in deep breaths in the middle of standing up.

finally, safe and sound.

a relieved sigh escaped your parched throat. leaning back, your eyes had shut closed, embracing the wriggling darkness. there, you remain standing, brain detangling every thought and notion you'd forcefully put aside to stay sane throughout your entire hours long journey to at least reach the safety of your apartment.

a moment. you just needed a moment to take it all in.

the air was crisp, a cold and unforgivable reminder that winter had started to take a toll on the temperature.

yet it wasn't enough to cool your torrid thoughts.

yesterday, or two days ago- you couldn't fathom the time you were spent drunk: the flirting, the buzzing noise, your lightheaded words, your night ending in near death. when you were unconscious from the bloodied hits of that awful, pungent man and his lackeys. jason, his worries, your confessions, your life.

you need to recall everything. you need time to think—

alone.

it was hypocritical of you to desire seclusion — when you had spent your entire life mourning for another human presence beside you — but you needed to be alone right now, no matter how suffocating and prickly the silence of your apartment was; something bigger was swallowing you whole.

you opted to have mary leave you be after a long day despite her insistence to at least accompany you all the way to your apartment, or just stay with you for the night up until morning where she'll get her roommate to pick her up by car. but you really couldn't handle the offer, even if tempting, since you couldn't deal with another human presence right in your space or else you'll break.

as much as she felt like a guiding light directing you away from the darkness that was jason's suffocating obsession to keep you safe — like you suddenly mattered in his life, like he didn't spew all that bullshit about being your older brother when he never acted that way with you before — you just couldn't afford hearing out her valid defenses, wanting to drown more in your emotions more than pretend like you're stronger than you are.

it didn't take much to convince her to go her way.

your sad, pleading eyes begging her for an ounce of space, to give you time to rest was enough to have her frown. despite her valid defenses about safety in the night, your mind was set on being left alone.

and she did after some back and forth, leaving the lobby with a grim sigh, calling her roommate to come pick her up. after you had watched her back slowly fade into the distance, you went your merry way up the elevators, down the winding halls, ignoring the aching in your sides, the sour mildew clinging in the air, the almost alive, pulsing and breathing of the walls; up until you reach the very room you stand in now— trying your best not to be reminded of the ghostly silence that had always followed you.

so now, it was only you, yourself, and a mass of anxiety and paranoia that had started to dig its way into your heart and had sat beside you in all your isolation.

you wanted nothing more than to rid these new sensations: the unbidden comfort you felt when you finally felt jason's embrace, the smoke and ash still clinging in the fabrics of your jacket bringing you nostalgia to when you first met him under the moonlit night in that kitchen, the gratitude you disallowed yourself to feel when jason had remembered your favorite dish and went as far as buy it for you, all warm and toasty on the bedside cabinet from when you woke up—

you wanted nothing more than to sit in the middle of your room and stare into nothingness, spend hours passing time if it meant leaving your thoughts and worries buried deep somewhere before it could ultimately devour you whole again.

you don't want to want anymore.

you need to make yourself not need anymore.

because if you fall into that madness named desire, you're afraid you'll only end up unfulfilled and alone once more.

"ngh!" it didn't take long before your crutches slipped away from your sore shoulders, legs sliding against the floor. when your bottom hit the ground, the striking pain of the collision crashed like violent waves in a storm, rolling all the way to the wounds on your hips, and—

"shit! fucking hell, it hurts." you cry out curses, the tears you try to desperately contain had started to roll down your sunken cheeks. your throat, parched and devoid of hydration, sounded like the young kid who'd cried out to the sight of their deceased mother.

stupid, stupid, just stupid.

your entire life is just one cruel, endless joke.

right beside you, your crutches thud against the hard floors, metal beating down like strikes of thunder. you wince at the volume, eyes shutting once more. and just like thunder, your bitten lips couldn't clamp down faster than the racing shrieks aching to be released.

"just...! when will everything just end?" your question hangs in the air as your head lulls against the hard doors, palms clenched around your waist to satiate the violent throbbing. you knew nobody would answer you, you knew that the alfred you'd always imagine comforting you couldn't always give you answers — because he's just a figment of your imagination, because he's who you always run to when the questions become too heavy and convoluted, when the silence was too loud and nagging — you knew that, even if you'd beg to the gods you cursed, even if you'd unblock dick and told him to give you answers, abided in your friends, found counseling—

you knew that there is no end to this curse you call life.

you knew that running away from problems meant you'd tire sooner, that it'll begin to catch up to you and lock you up once more.

you hated being alone, you wished you had someone to lie to you and tell you it'll all be better in the end; you wished your mom was right beside you like she was in the damned dream, you wish to still remember the sensation of her gentle fingers running across your matted hair, hear her voice consoling you until your tears had ceased to roll down your cheeks

like a child dreamed of reliving their happiest birthday everyday, you wish she was alive still.

you wish your life had ceased at five years old. you wish you'd lay right beside her decaying corpse instead of laying on the floor of your dingy apartment; alone, and barely alive, but never living the life you dreamed of living from when you were that stupidly naive child.

but you're here, an unwilling victim to your misfortune, and you have no choice but to live through it all. killing yourself is a choice you never wanted to touch upon, a choice you never wish to entertain anymore.

if you did, what would your mother think of you in the afterlife?

if you did, what measures would someone like jason make just to bring you back alive?

shaking your head, a chuckle, sardonic and bitter and loud, cuts you off from your tears, remembering how nobody but alfred even knew you'd left the fucking manor. nobody but him checked up on you, nobody acknowledged you from when you were there, so what of it when you're not?

only your small circle of friends threw you a small welcome party to a new life, spoiled you to the pleasures of alcohol and sleazy bars. they'd announce a toast to independence, to freedom, to a life away from them.

but were you truly away if they were never that close to begin with?

if jason hadn't been coincidentally in the same area as you from behind that bar, then would you still be alive to tell the story? would you just be another news article buried under the countless masses of headlines?

no, you're good as dead. no world-altering event, no pit, no magician could save your soul from being shattered and ripped from within your body.

would they even care? would your so-called family even mourn someone they never truly knew?

"no, god, as if they cared about me at all."

as excruciating as it is to admit, the thought made your wobbling lips quirk upwards, head bury deep within your palms. then, your fingers trace across lingering scars and lumps across your scalp, a reminder of all the times you'd pick at skin until it bled.

it's absurd to think about the answers to the questions you'll never escape from. but the answers were as clear as the day you were born with no father by your mother's side:

you don't matter in their world:

you wish they didn't matter to yours too, but you've been too attached to the concept of someone else caring about you for even the slightest. feelings like those are hard to detach from, especially if the love you yearned for was a love once reciprocated by your mother—

but whatever, life and time, trials and tribulations, they never cease for just a single person.

no matter how pathetic and miserable you were, you had to keep going on. if not for your mother, then out of spite from jason's insistence that you couldn't survive alone when it had always been the opposite— when you've pretty much lived your life without his company anyways.

you're fine without him, without them.

no, no.

you're not fine. there was no world where you've been fine for more than a second, but you've been better off without them at the same time. that's what makes a difference, you convince yourself.

at least here, in your sullen, little apartment, there was nobody else allowed to consume your space and your thoughts.

at least here, the only danger you have against yourself is you.

and yet, the silence only grows bigger and hungrier.

reblogs and interactions are encouraged and appreciated.

PLEASE READ: 3.4K+ words. special post, it's supposed to be longer. but you know what happened? my phone restarted, i opened my notes app and huzzah! the first part i was editing got half of it deleted! the other parts are safe except for this one. this was supposed to be four scenes in total, amounting to 7k+ or more. i didn't even get a single grasp on its final word count. it fucking sucks, i despise the world for doing this to me. but as promised, here's the chapter, no matter how short it is. i apologize if it's not on par to your expectations, honestly, it gets better in the (supposed) second half of this part. but again, life happens. things happen no matter how much it sucks. i'll be rewriting the second half of this tomorrow and hopefully i can post it by the next night. if there are any delays, please spare me, i'm trying my best to not cry over my stuff getting deleted.

taglist: , @ghostdoodlen , @prince-nikko , @rockin-robyn , @strawberryglass , @h0neybun-was-here , @confused-they , @dvlboy , @mystyque234 , @marssthings , @favoritefucs , @lilyalone , @luffyadolover , @lazyemmy , @questionthegrapevine , @oh-nowo-i-got-uwu , @winter-world , @budijojo , @altruisticbeauty , @dopepursebasketballplaid , @the-holy-pigeon , @em-draws14 , @thypplover , @cens0r3d-blog , @yl90 , @sadeem575, @couldeatthatgirlforlunch , @mishkradetsa , @kiiyooo , @flyingpansaurus , @farmerboywakatoshikun-blog , @rogueofbullshit , @earlqurl , @dotomuses , @sheep-from-rad , @tsuniio , @thesm1l3yface , @nosochek-3o , @radiantharry , @kdjhubby , @ashstwin , @notwhoy0uthink , @thecloudsaremyhome

You walked.

That was apparently your great talent now…walking. Walking away from bars, from conversations and from Clark standing on sidewalks looking at you as though he could still fix things if he just chose the right sentence. 

Your eyes stayed unfocused on the crowd ahead of you while every muscle in your body held tension from the night before, your shoulders were stiff and your jaw sore from clenching it for hours without noticing. Metropolis moved around you at its usual merciless pace with horns blaring, women in pencil skirts marching to offices with coffee cups clutched like weapons and businessmen smoking outside newspaper stands and you drifted through all of it with the vague sensation that you had forgotten how to occupy your own body correctly.

Your steps finally slowed several blocks later when your attention snagged on a storefront window and there she was.

The dress stood on a mannequin beneath soft yellow lighting, navy blue with a full flowing skirt that dipped perfectly at the waist before spilling outward in expensive, dramatic folds. Pink details lined the collar, delicate enough to feel intentional instead of childish. Beside it sat the matching handbag and a hat perched at a jaunty angle that immediately summoned Ricky’s voice in your head.

‘Thank fuck someone convinced you not to wear those fucking hats of yours.’

You stared harder at the shoes…Now those were necessary, absolutely necessary.

You looked down at your own heels, the former Prada casualties of emotional devastation and sewer grates and narrowed your eyes thoughtfully. A woman could survive heartbreak, she could survive public intoxication, temporary imprisonment and accidental topless comedy but surviving ugly shoes? That was where dignity truly died.

You turned sharply, giving the storefront your back before your brain could start writing checks your bank account would mail back wrapped in funeral black. You had forty-five dollars and sticky coins. The phrase alone should’ve been enough to drag you toward financial responsibility because nothing about that outfit whispered good decision, it screamed future problem. So you forced yourself to keep walking, merging into the current of pedestrians and focusing on the back of whoever walked ahead of you.

Left foot, right foot…left foot…Don’t turn around.

So how, exactly, did you end up back in front of the same store twenty minutes later?

You stood there breathing hard, offended with yourself. “Predatory,” you muttered at the mannequin. “This is entrapment.”

Two hours later, after a quick shower in the boutique’s absurdly luxurious private dressing quarters, a fresh face of makeup and an entirely new outfit wrapped around your body with sinful perfection, you stepped back onto the street with your skirt flowing around your legs and your confidence artificially reconstructed by tailoring and lipstick.

Your eyes dropped toward the receipt in your hand. It read eight hundred fifty-one dollars and thirty-three cents. The amount was circled…Underlined, even.

You had needed to provide your address, your ID and what felt spiritually equivalent to a kidney before they finally allowed you to leave with it on. The saleswoman had smiled at you the entire time too, which made it worse. People should not look that elegant while financially ruining strangers.

Still, you looked incredible and if there was one thing your mother had accidentally taught you well, it was that devastation became significantly more manageable in a good outfit.

You folded the receipt and shoved it deep into your purse where numbers couldn’t hurt you anymore. You’d figure it out, you always did.

The taxi downtown cost another twenty dollars, which almost made you ask the driver to hit you with the cab instead but at least you remembered the name of the club.

The Talon looked completely different sober.

During daylight, the place lost most of its mystery. The neon sign appeared smaller, the stairs even steeper, the hallway narrower and considerably less glamorous than your drunken memory had painted it. You marched downstairs anyway, your new heels clicking sharply against the concrete, crossed through the hallway and stopped at the tiny window where the cigarette-smoking guy had been stationed the night before.

It was closed so you didn’t bother knocking. You just walked inside, oddly relieved you weren’t ten dollars poorer for the privilege.

“Hello?” you called out as your heels echoed through the empty club.

The smell hit first, it was a mix of stale alcohol, old smoke and industrial cleaner losing a long battle against decades of bad decisions. Then came the floor itself, tacky beneath your heels as you moved toward the stage, which looked smaller now and less magical. Without the crowd, without the laughter and lights blinding you into bravery, the stage barely reached your waist.

Strange how a platform could feel enormous one night and pathetic the next.

“What’s with the hat?”

You yelped, body whipping around so fast your purse smacked against your hip as you found the bartender from last night standing behind you carrying a large tub of glasses. Her eyes traveled slowly over your outfit, her expression caught somewhere between suspicion and slight disgust.

Your hand flew immediately to the top of your hat before you slowly removed it.

Satisfied, she walked past you toward the bar without another word and after one awkward second of standing there alone, you hurried after her. “Hi, uh…I’m–”

“Mrs. Kent,” she guessed immediately. The tub landed on the bartop with a loud clatter of glass against glass, before she pulled one out and started drying it casually while you approached.

“I took a cut of your earnings last night,” she informed you, motioning vaguely toward the stage with the towel. “Considering I coached you into getting a slot for that performance of yours.”

You laughed nervously and adjusted your grip on your purse. “I had low expectations anyway, so…” You shrugged weakly.

“Did you get enough to get home?”

“I assume not.” Your mouth flattened into a tight line. “Considering I woke up in a holding cell.”

You watched as she burst into laughter so suddenly she had to brace herself against the counter, shoulders shaking violently while she pointed at you with the glass still in hand. “You thought those cops were strippers, it was fucking hilarious.”

Your entire face drained. “I didn’t…” Your eyes widened in horror as you pointed urgently toward the stage. “I didn’t get naked up there, did I?”

She followed your finger thoughtfully. “Depends,” she answered carefully. “How well do you take lies?”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” you breathed, collapsing dramatically onto a bar stool. “When…exactly was that?”

While she talked, you slowly folded inward until your forehead rested on top of your crossed arms against the bartop. If you couldn’t see reality, perhaps reality would lose interest and leave.

“Uh…” She looked toward the ceiling as though replaying events chronologically required divine intervention. “Somewhere between seducing a drunk grandfather at the bar and talking about Mr. Kent for the third time.”

You groaned loudly from your position.

“Nobody could get you off that stage,” she continued cheerfully. “You had to be carried out–”

Your head snapped upward instantly. “Tits out?” you asked, horrified.

“Unfortunately,” she confirmed with a firm nod, studying you carefully afterward, probably checking if you were about to faint. “You could’ve mentioned you were a comic when I asked.”

“I’m sure I could’ve said lots of things,” you muttered, forcing yourself upright again with whatever remained of your dignity. Your hands crossed protectively over your new purse. “And I’m not.”

Her brows furrowed as she gestured toward the stage again. “Then what was that?”

You snorted tiredly. “Heartbreak? I don’t fucking know. I was drunk.”

She shook her head immediately. “You don’t hold a room like that by accident.”

“I exposed myself,” you reminded her, pointing directly at your chest. “There’s nothing accidental about that.”

“You don’t get it.” She tossed the towel over her shoulder and leaned against the bar properly now, watching you with the patience of someone preparing to explain gravity to a particularly stubborn child.

“What’s there to get?” you asked, almost laughing at how serious she suddenly looked standing behind that sticky bar with rolled sleeves, as though she were about to deliver life-altering wisdom instead of liquor recommendations.

She planted both palms on the bartop. “Last night doesn’t happen anymore, definitely not unannounced in shitty bars.”

You blinked at her.

“The business changed,” she continued, now waving the towel vaguely toward the empty stage behind you. “The comics changed. Everybody’s either angry, smug, too politically shallow or trying so hard to sound detached they forget to actually be funny. Nobody gets up there and bleeds anymore.” Her eyes narrowed on you. “Last night you had people crying laughing while simultaneously wanting to fistfight whoever broke your heart. That room defended your stage time like union workers protecting pensions. Last night was special.”

“It was special, alright,” you replied dryly, fiddling absently with the clasp of your purse. “I probably lost one of the most important people in my life and also my phone, which I’d really love to get back considering I cannot financially survive replacing it.”

She pointed suddenly toward your dress. You frowned and looked down…at the still attached tag, hanging there in plain sight beneath the sleeve like a little paper flag announcing financial instability dressed as elegance.

“What’s that then?” She asked, folding her arms.

“Half the reason I can’t afford said new phone,” you muttered, yanking the tag free with enough aggression to qualify as vengeance. “Six hundred and thirty dollars out of my eight hundred fifty-one dollars and thirty-three cents purchase…with tax.” You held the tag up between two fingers. “Which I need to pay back in two weeks or my next fun evening will end with a judge asking if I understand the charges.”

She stared at you for a long second. “Don’t you live in Midtown?”

You nodded cautiously.

“Can you afford that?”

You genuinely considered lying. Your pride stepped up confidently, took one look at your bank account and quietly sat back down. So after half a second, you slowly shook your head.

Her face tightened with fascinated concern, the same expression people wore while approaching raccoons. “What do you do?” she asked.

You frowned. “What do I do?”

“Yeah,” she said impatiently. “When you’re not flashing my customers for cab fare. Work.... employment…taxes? Human suffering under capitalism. Ringing any bells?”

You shrugged one shoulder. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Her voice jumped an octave. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-five. I’ve never–”

Her jaw dropped open, actually dropped like in old cartoons. “You’re twenty-five and you’ve never worked?!” The disbelief ricocheted around the club. “How do you live?”

You sighed heavily and rubbed your forehead. “A trust fund.” Then immediately pointed at her. “Could I please get my phone back before this conversation becomes legally humiliating?”

It wasn’t exactly a lie, it just lacked detail…massive detail…catastrophic detail but usually “trust fund” ended conversations nicely because people either got judgmental or jealous and both outcomes usually involved them shutting up eventually.

Apparently the woman before you preferred follow-up questions.

“How much money is in this trust fund?” she muttered while crouching behind the bar to rummage through boxes, her voice muffled beneath the sounds of shifting cardboard and clinking glass. “Because from where I’m standing, it seems to be doing a terrible job at funding your lifestyle.”

“Nobody asked it to perform miracles,” you replied under your breath.

“What’s the point of having a trust fund if you still end up shaking your tits onstage?” she called out.

“Nobody forced me to–”

“You were out of cab money!” she shouted back, emerging from beneath the counter carrying a box overflowing with phones. “Trying to get back to your amazing fucking Midtown apartment–”

“You’re making me sound awful.” You said flatly.

“Great! Because I’m jealous of you!” she shot back immediately, dropping the box onto the counter between you. “You wear stupid hats and six-hundred-dollar dresses and don’t have a job!”

You immediately started digging through the phones. The sooner you found yours, the sooner you could leave. “Why am I digging this deep?” you complained. “I was literally here yesterday.”

“Jackie likes to mix them up,” She answered with a dismissive wave before resuming her rant. “So what, you just tap a card and walk around buying hats all day?”

“Where is my phone?!” you snapped, holding up three identical black flip phones like evidence in a murder trial.

“What date’s on the box?”

“What?”

“There should be a date written somewhere on the side.”

You twisted the box around awkwardly until you found faded marker along the cardboard. “Uh…” Your eyes narrowed. “November…2005?” You looked up slowly. “You had me digging in a graveyard, what the fuck?”

“Oh.” She winced. “Wrong box. Give me that.”

She made a grabby motion with her fingers until you handed it over. Then she crouched again, muttering to herself while digging around under the counter like a woman searching through archaeological ruins instead of club property.

“This place is a fire hazard,” you informed the room.

“No argument here.” A second box appeared above the counter. “Try this one.”

And there it was. Your phone sat right on top of a small mountain of abandoned devices, looking strangely accusatory for an object that had spent the night in storage. You snatched it up immediately and turned it on. It had twenty percent battery and many, many missed calls, texts from Jimmy, Cat…Clark.

Your thumb hesitated before tapping into the thread and the deeper you scrolled, the worse your stomach felt.

Where are you?

Please answer.

Jimmy said you left alone.

I’m looking for you.

Sweetheart please just text me back.

Your throat tightened. You could practically hear him in every message, they were careful at first, then increasingly worried, probably typing faster than he usually did, sentences getting shorter as the night dragged on.

Your brain started spiraling immediately. You pictured him searching every street in Metropolis while you were somewhere yelling about dentistry and accidentally exposing yourself to strangers.

“How does it feel to be rich?” The woman behind the counter asked suddenly.

You startled so hard you nearly dropped the phone. With unnecessary speed, you shut it off and shoved it into your purse before looking back at her. “What’s your name again?”

She blinked. “Susie.”

You nodded once, hopped off the stool and offered her a smile so tight it barely qualified as one.

“Susie,” you said carefully, “when you find that out, you let me know.”

Her face softened a little at that…Well, she still looked abrasive enough to fight a parking meter but the sharpness around her eyes loosened.

You held her gaze another second before turning and heading toward the exit, chasing the fresh air waiting outside before your thoughts could start eating each other alive again.

Then you stopped halfway to the door, spun around and marched back in.

Suzie looked up immediately as you stormed towards her, snatched the forgotten hat off another stool and jammed it back onto your head with wounded dignity.

“I forgot my stupid hat,” you muttered before turning sharply and walking back out again, heels clicking furiously all the way up the stairs.

You made your way home for the first time in what felt like centuries instead of hours, exhaustion sitting deep in your bones beneath the adrenaline and leftover alcohol. The city had sobered around you while you still felt slightly untethered from reality, your new heels clicking sharply against cracked sidewalks as if they belonged to a woman significantly more composed than you currently were. 

By the time you reached your apartment building, your feet hurt, your makeup felt too tight on your skin and your stupid expensive hat kept threatening to slide off every time the wind picked up.

The front door to the building was broken again, hanging permanently ajar with the exhausted resignation of something that had given up begging for maintenance months ago. You stepped inside and immediately caught the familiar scent of old pipes, radiator heat, cigarettes and somebody cooking onions three floors too early in the morning.

The elevator, naturally, still didn’t work. You stared at the rusted metal doors for a long second anyway, just in case the building had chosen today to surprise you with progress but nothing happened.

“Fantastic,” you muttered. “Wonderful. Love doing cardio after devastation.”

Then you started climbing six flights of stairs in heels because suffering had become a hobby.

The higher you climbed, the stranger the building felt. Every floor looked crowded, cluttered with half-packed boxes and old furniture pushed carelessly against hallway walls. Lamps, chairs, rolled rugs and framed photos leaning against peeling wallpaper. You greeted neighbors as you passed them, smiling automatically while realizing with increasing concern that you had never actually seen most of these people before.

That alone felt embarrassing.

You had lived in this building for a year and somehow remained the woman who smiled politely in hallways while learning absolutely nothing about anybody around her. Meanwhile these people apparently had children, cats, bad marriages and dining tables they were currently dragging toward stairwells.

Every floor looked the same with boxes stacked outside apartment doors, belongings spilling into hallways and entire lives being condensed into cardboard…and worse, you started recognizing some of it.

The floral chair from apartment 3B. The old record player from downstairs. Mrs. Hernandez’s ceramic rooster collection sitting beside a pile of winter coats.

Your pace slowed, then quickened again the moment you reached the fifth floor and heard muffled struggling followed by a loud thump and a frustrated curse echoing down the hallway.

You started moving faster and that’s when you saw her.

“Imogene,” you blurted, eyes widening at the absolute disaster spread across the hallway between your apartments. Boxes towered everywhere, her front door propped open by furniture and overstuffed bags while she struggled to drag another cardboard box across the floor using all the strength of a woman built primarily from enthusiasm and caffeine.

She looked up immediately and gasped. “New outfit?” she asked brightly, brushing hair from her face before smiling at you with genuine delight. “I liked what you wore last night.”

Your eyes dropped briefly toward the dress.

“The store’s technically holding it hostage until I pay this off,” you admitted distractedly before shaking yourself back into focus. “Wait, where the hell are you going?” You gestured wildly around the hallway. “What’s all this?”

You leaned slightly past her and peeked into the apartment.

Everything was wrapped. The couch, the dishes…even her lamps were covered in newspaper and half the bookshelves were already empty. The place looked gutted, stripped of its warmth.

Imogene let out a tired laugh and disappeared back inside before emerging with another box balanced awkwardly against her chest.

“Should I start with the part where I can’t afford the apartment anymore,” she asked, breathless, “or the part where I can’t afford movers either?”

Your stomach dropped. “What?”

“A bunch of us terminated our leases.” Her voice lost some of its usual brightness as she nudged the box higher in her arms. “The conditions aren’t getting better and rent’s gone up three times this year alone.”

She stopped beside you and motioned with her chin toward a folded letter sitting on top of the box. You grabbed it automatically and unfolded the paper before reading it once.

Then again…and then a third time because surely your eyes were malfunctioning. Your attention kept snagging on the number printed near the bottom.

“Were you paying that?” you asked quietly, angling the paper toward her as if maybe she’d deny it. “Were you all paying that?” Your voice thinned near the end.

Imogene blinked at you then slowly tilted her head. “Are you not?”

You looked back down at the paper, then at her, then back at the paper again. “Will you take a ten-minute break?” you asked suddenly, already backing toward the stairs before she could answer. “I’ll come back down and help!”

“You don’t have to beg!” she called after you while dragging herself back into the apartment before collapsing dramatically onto her couch.

“What a way to spend a Sunday morning,” she groaned to herself.

You were already running upstairs.

Your hat nearly flew off twice as you climbed, purse smacking violently against your hip while the lease agreement crinkled angrily in your fist. By the time you reached the eighth and final floor, your chest burned and your temper had escalated into something holy.

The eighth floor belonged entirely to one person. The landlord’s son occupied the whole damn level while everyone else downstairs rationed square footage and shared plumbing trauma.

You started pounding on his door hard enough to rattle the frame, your knuckles stinging immediately beneath the force of it. When it finally swung open, you nearly punched him by accident because your body had fully committed to violence before your brain caught up.

He stood there holding a phone to his ear, startled enough that he instinctively stepped backward and opened the door wider.

You marched straight inside without invitation, heels striking the hardwood furiously while your chest still heaved from the stairs.

He laughed awkwardly into the phone. “No, man, the Metropolis Sentinels had that game. I won fair and square. If you’re too much of a pussy to pay the–”

You grabbed the phone directly out of his hand and launched it back into the hallway before kicking the door shut.

“What the fuck is your issue?” he demanded, voice pitching upward from shock.

“What’s my issue?” you repeated incredulously, waving the lease agreement directly in his face. “You misogynistic, green-bill-sucking prick, this is my issue.” You shoved the paper closer. “I want my lease and proof of payment for the last year. All of it. Now.”

“I’m busy,” he muttered weakly, motioning vaguely toward the front door and presumably, his phone lying somewhere beyond it.

“You were busy,” you corrected. “I solved that problem for you.”

You pointed toward the couch and he stared at you for one long second before finally moving toward his laptop with the exhausted posture of a man realizing this confrontation was no longer optional.

Meanwhile, you started pacing around the apartment…and noticing things.

“Oh, I see you don’t have a shower in your kitchen,” you called out loudly while wandering farther inside. “How lovely!”

You entered the hallway and froze dramatically.

“A hallway!” you exclaimed. “Wow. Incredible concept.” You started counting doors out loud. “One…two…three…four…five?”

Your voice echoed through the apartment while he hunched miserably over his laptop.

“And the paint isn’t peeling!” You dragged your fingers across a perfectly smooth wall. “Do you know my walls sweat when it rains?” You walked back toward the living room slowly, taking in the massive couch, the expensive rug and polished shelves. “It’s incredible being able to fit a couch in your home, isn’t it?” you asked sweetly, stopping beside him just as he turned the laptop around.

“Here’s your–”

“Give me that.” You snatched the laptop straight out of his hands before he finished speaking and immediately started walking while reading, forcing him to trail after you through his own apartment like a chastised assistant.

Two thousand eight hundred and sixty dollars…monthly.

2,860$.

You stared at the number so long it almost stopped looking real, your eyes tracing over it again and again while your brain desperately searched for the punchline. There had to be one, maybe an extra digit or a decimal point in the wrong place. Maybe Garrett was running some deeply illegal side business involving money laundering and emotionally devastating tenants because there was absolutely no universe where you had been paying nearly three thousand dollars a month to live in two hundred square feet with a shower positioned three feet away from your stove.

You looked up slowly.

“There’s…there has to be a mistake.” You pointed stiffly at the screen before turning the laptop toward him. “I haven’t been paying that.”

Garrett frowned at the screen, then nodded casually. “Uh…yes, you have.” He sat and leaned back into his couch, completely relaxed while your internal organs attempted mutiny. “Every fifth of the month, without fail. You even send it before invoices go out.”

Your brows furrowed hard enough to hurt. “I don’t get mail here.”

“Not from me.” He shrugged. “You always pay before I need to send anything over. No point wasting paper.”

“No, you don’t understand.” You shook your head, stepping closer with the laptop. “That money’s not–.”

“Lady, I don’t care if you have a sugar daddy,” he interrupted, looking you up and down with irritating confidence. “Honestly, considering I’ve never seen you repeat an outfit, I figured–”

“I don’t have a sugar daddy,” you snapped immediately, your voice cutting straight through his sentence. “And this fucking money isn’t mine.” You shoved the laptop back toward him hard enough to nearly drop it. “Is there a way to see who sends it to you?”

Garrett hesitated before taking back the laptop and clicking around through several tabs, muttering to himself while opening payment histories and digital copies of checks. You sat next to him impatiently, your heel tapping rapidly against the hardwood floor while your pulse climbed higher with every passing second before he stopped.

Your stomach tightened instantly as he slowly turned the laptop toward you…and there they were. Two names signed neatly at the bottom of every payment.

Your parents.

Your blood went cold so fast you swore you could feel it. For one dizzy second, your knees nearly buckled beneath you. You probably would’ve fainted too if you hadn’t been absolutely certain Garrett cleaned his belongings with expired milk and bad intentions.

You stared at the names while your thoughts crashed into each other violently.

Every argument and ignored phone call.

Every smug “How are you managing out there?” from your mother and every time your father asked if you were “done proving your point yet.”

Oh, they must’ve loved this. Funding your rebellion from a distance while waiting for you to crawl back home exhausted and grateful.

Garrett grinned from the couch, entirely too pleased with himself. “Looks like my mommy and daddy aren’t the only ones with money.”

You slowly lifted your eyes toward him, held his gaze then snapped the laptop shut directly on his fingers making him yelp loudly. 

“Get fucked, Garrett.” You stood and immediately marched toward the front door while he clutched his fingers dramatically behind you. “I’ll be gone by the end of the week!”

The door closed gently behind you despite your fury. Your mother had spent too much money on etiquette lessons for you to start slamming doors now. You stomped toward the stairs, muttering furiously under your breath while your mind spiraled around the realization that your entire independence had apparently been curated by your parents the same way museums handled fragile artifacts.

Then you spotted Garrett’s phone lying abandoned in the hallway. You stopped and noticed the screen was still lit.

“…Hello? Garrett?” a muffled voice called from the speaker.

Slowly, you bent down and picked it up. 

“Garrett?”

“Hey,” you replied sweetly. “Garrett’s a little busy right now, but he told me to place a bet on his behalf.”

There was a pause. “Uh…sure.”

You leaned your weight on one heel, smiling to yourself. “So tell me…what team’s guaranteed to lose?”

The man on the other end chuckled confidently. “Next game? Gotham Ravens for sure.”

“Great.” Your smile widened. “Garrett’s feeling brave today, so put ten grand on the Ravens winning.”

The silence between you stretched. “Are you sure?”

You looked toward Garrett’s apartment door then smiled wider. “Certain.” Your tone turned syrupy. “Have the day you deserve.”

You hung up immediately afterward, calmly dropped the phone onto the floor…and stomped on it with your heel. Once, twice…and one more for clarity and good measure.

You never listened much to those etiquette lessons anyway…

The screen cracked beneath your shoe with a satisfying crunch before you continued downstairs carrying the kind of peace usually associated with meditation retreats.

The rest of the day disappeared into cardboard boxes and staircases.

You helped Imogene carry half her apartment down six flights while she alternated between apologizing profusely and threatening to leave her mattress on the sidewalk for society to deal with. You watched her spend what little money she had left on taxis to a storage unit across town while you packed more dishes in newspaper and taped up boxes labeled things such as BOOKS?? and KITCHEN BUT NOT KNIVES.

At one point she cried over a lamp…at another point you nearly died carrying a small bookshelf downstairs in heels because apparently neither of you possessed practical footwear?

By the time you finally dragged yourself back upstairs late that evening, your entire body ached. Getting into your apartment required turning sideways through the front door because of the clothing racks between your bed and the window and far from the sweaty walls.

Your apartment looked less like a home and more like a glamorous hostage situation sponsored by fabric but at least the toilet had its own room.

You dropped your purse onto the bed and stood there quietly for a moment, looking around at the life you had spent the past year constructing piece by piece. You had rented dresses out and sold others. You even auctioned off pieces you genuinely loved, all so you could afford what you believed was the cheapest independence available to you and the entire time, your parents had been secretly footing the bill.

You sat heavily onto the bed and let yourself fall backward until you were staring at the ceiling.

The mattress pressed tightly between the drafty window and the first rack of light-colored clothes because light fabrics faded slower in sunlight. Your darker dresses and delicate fabrics hung farther away, protected carefully from the afternoon sun that leaked through the cheap glass.

You stared upward long enough that the cracks in the ceiling started looking organized and almost readable. They read:

Option A: Go home.

Thank your parents for secretly financing your apartment and gracefully allow yourself to be married off to some rich, intelligent man whose hobbies probably included polo and disappointing women emotionally.

You groaned immediately and rolled onto your side toward the window.

Option B: Go running back to Clark.

Ask to move in with him. He’d say yes before you finished asking because…well, he’s Clark. Then you’d spend every morning pretending not to flinch every time Lois’s name entered a conversation while slowly dying inside over his delicious pancakes.

Horrifying.

You rolled again, now facing the rows of clothing hanging beside your bed.

Option C: Since selling your remaining valuable pieces wasn’t an option anymore, you could always dig your trust fund card out of wherever you’d hidden it, carefully tape it back together after cutting it up a year ago and finally use the obscene amount of money sitting untouched in your account…Untouched being a technicality. 

You hadn’t spent a single cent from it.

Your eyes narrowed thoughtfully…all that money, more than enough to solve every problem currently suffocating you, just sitting there and waiting for you to…

“Nope,” you announced firmly to the room before temptation could settle in properly.

You exhaled hard and faced the ceiling again, flopping back against the mattress dramatically. “I need a job,” you informed with grave seriousness.

The room remained silent. Though honestly, one of the coats looked judgmental.

It had taken an unreasonable amount of restraint not to run after you right there on the sidewalk Saturday morning, not to ignore the way your voice cracked around sincerity and grab your wrist before you disappeared into the crowd entirely. Every instinct in Clark had screamed to follow, to insist you stayed long enough for the two of you to talk properly before whatever this was stretched and soured over the following days.

It took even more effort not to show up at your apartment Sunday morning carrying flowers and enough baked goods to feed half your building. Clark knew you too well for that or at least, he thought he did.

He could usually read you with terrifying accuracy. You wore your emotions everywhere despite believing the opposite. They sat in the way you walked, in how loudly you closed doors, in whether your jewelry matched your mood or fought against it entirely. Half the time Clark swore he knew what you were thinking before you did and what had screamed at him Saturday morning, while you stood there barefoot and furious in smudged makeup and scraped-up Prada heels smelling faintly of smoke, alcohol, expensive perfume and the exact same shampoo you used in college, was painfully simple.

Stay away from me.

Clark hated it but loving you had always required patience and trust too, so he stayed away…at least physically.

The rest of the weekend disappeared into replaying every second of Friday night with painful precision. Clark sat alone in his apartment for hours letting the memories run through his head over and over until they practically sharpened into film reels. Every expression and laugh, every strange pause that suddenly seemed important now.

He’d picked you up Friday evening.

You made him wait on the third floor landing because, according to you, “it’s the cleanest one,” though Clark privately suspected that wasn’t the real reason. You had never invited him all the way to your apartment door, not once. He respected it without question because whatever embarrassment sat underneath that boundary clearly mattered to you.

You had nothing to be ashamed of. He knew your upbringing, knew the kind of wealth you came from so he understood what this life probably looked like through your own eyes. You had grown up surrounded by polished floors, a maid and a doorman and now you lived in a building where the walls groaned all year round and somebody permanently smelled faintly of burnt toast.

He also knew you, knew how stubbornly independent you could be once your mind latched onto something. You planted your feet and suffered through things long after anybody reasonable would’ve accepted help…except where fashion was concerned.

Fashion apparently existed outside the laws of human survival.

Clark could still hear your footsteps descending the stairs toward him that night. He counted them absentmindedly because listening to you had become second nature years ago. Forty-two steps total, interrupted briefly by the six softer ones across the landing between floors.

Then came the stumble between the fifth and fourth floor followed immediately by your irritated muttering.

“For fuck’s sake,” you had hissed somewhere above him, voice echoing down the stairwell. “If your relationship requires this much screaming maybe just break up and save us all the acoustic trauma.”

Clark smiled despite himself just remembering it.

Then you appeared and honestly, the sight of you nearly stopped his heart.

You wore a vintage cocktail dress he’d never seen before, fitted perfectly through your curves before flaring softly at the hips whenever you moved. Your heels matched the dress precisely because they always did, you treated color coordination with the seriousness of military strategy. Tiny clip-on earrings glittered beneath the hallway light and one of those miniature purses dangled from your wrist, the kind barely large enough to hold lipstick and emotional instability.

You looked beautiful…hopelessly, devastatingly beautiful and Clark, despite all his abilities, had never once developed immunity to you.

“Hey, you,” you greeted brightly once you spotted him waiting below.

Clark nearly missed the words entirely over the sound of his own heartbeat. He blinked hard, forcing himself out of the trance long enough to step toward you and offer a hand over the final few stairs. Officially it was to help you descend safely in those heels…

Unofficially, he just wanted you closer faster.

“You look–”

You immediately looked down at yourself before he could finish, smoothing your hands nervously over the skirt.

“Is it too much for a bar?” you asked with sudden concern. “Because if somebody spills alcohol on this dress, I will have a heart attack and I haven’t kept up properly with the whole writing-a-will thing.”

Clark opened his mouth to reassure you but you kept going, suddenly resting one solemn hand against his forearm as if discussing state matters.

“My dresses go to you,” you informed him seriously. “But only to stare at. I don’t want you stretching them with your…” You motioned vaguely at his chest. “You know. Outerworldly physique. So…strictly visual appreciation.”

He bit back a laugh.

“My shoes go to Mrs. Alston,” you continued, counting carefully on your fingers. “That way I can continue supporting her business posthumously if she decides to sell them.” You paused thoughtfully. “Though honestly she might just keep them, and good for her because I’d take them to the grave myself if there were enough room in a coffin for both me and my footwear collection.”

Clark’s mouth twitched immediately.

“But I also need enough space to roll over laughing every time my parents get proven wrong,” you added with complete sincerity, adjusting your purse higher onto your wrist. “Priorities.” Then you sighed dramatically. “Besides, the woman has arches older than some countries and still walks better than me in heels. She’s earned them…And any money you find in my pockets or purses goes to Ricky,” you added firmly. “But distribute it slowly. I don’t want him thinking I became a better customer after death. That feels emotionally manipulative.”

Clark laughed softly then, warm and helplessly fond. “You’re never too much,” he told you, voice gentler now. “And you’re not dying.”

You looked unconvinced, then his eyes lifted toward the top of your head and he frowned immediately. “No hat?”

You straightened proudly. “No hat tonight. I’m exploring my horizons.”

Gosh. Clark genuinely thought he could melt straight through the staircase. His brows lifted as he fought a smile. “Does this bold new era mean we can eat at the bar instead of going to an actual restaurant first?”

You gasped in genuine offense. “No. I’m not a savage.”

You brushed past him dramatically, heels clicking down toward the next landing while Clark stayed frozen for one disastrous second trying to recover from how pretty you looked when pretending to be outraged.

Then your voice floated back up the stairwell. “Wait,” you called, turning halfway toward him. “You’re taking me to dinner?”

Clark finally started moving again, following after you while trying not to think too hard about how domestic that sounded coming from your mouth. “You handle martinis better on a full stomach,” he answered carefully.

He heard your smile before he saw it.

“You know me so well…it’s infuriating.”

Now it was Monday and Clark sat at his desk with his office phone pressed to his ear, listening to hold music that had looped so many times since nine in the morning that it had stopped sounding musical altogether and evolved into psychological warfare. The same tinny instrumental melody dragged through the receiver while he stared blankly at his computer screen, one elbow planted on the desk and the other hand rubbing slowly at his jaw hard enough to leave it pink.

“Hello?” the voice on the line finally asked.

Clark straightened immediately, blinking himself back into the present so fast his chair squeaked beneath him. “Yes. Yes, hello, I’m still here.”

“You said the heels were brown Strada?” the man repeated, his accent thick enough that Clark could practically hear the shrug accompanying it.

Clark closed his eyes for half a second. He looked down at the legal pad covered in increasingly desperate notes written in his own cramped handwriting. 

“Prada,” he corrected carefully for what had to be the tenth time. “They were Prada. Black leather.” He glanced at the translation open on his phone beside the keyboard before attempting the French again with disastrous pronunciation. “Uh le…le cuir. Cuir,” he repeated slowly, sounding deeply unconvinced in himself as he rolled his chair even closer to the monitor. “Your website says they’re still available. I can give you the product number.”

On the other end came a long thoughtful hum delivered with devastating Frenchness, which somehow worried Clark more than outright rejection.

“I can pick them up today,” Clark continued quickly, lowering his voice despite nobody paying attention to him anyway. “Paris, right? I can make it.” His eyes flicked toward the watch on his wrist automatically while calculations started running through his head. “Twenty minutes. Thirty tops and I can tip you…thirty percent?” He hesitated. “Do you guys do that kind of thing?”

Another pause. Then, “Désolé, monsieur. The website has not been…” Papers shuffled somewhere near the receiver. “…comment on dit…updated. Voilà, we are very sorry. Bonne soirée.”

The line went dead before Clark could answer. He sat there another second staring at the phone before slowly pulling it away from his ear. “H-Hello?”

Nothing.

Clark exhaled heavily through his nose and leaned back into his chair with the sort of careful restraint usually associated with men trying not to punch drywall. His eyes drifted toward the bright green word still glowing mockingly on the website listing.

“Disponible.” Even he knew that meant ‘available’.

“Apparently not,” he muttered darkly.

He dragged both hands through his curls before letting them fall over his face for a moment while he thought. There had to be another solution. He could offer to pay for the repairs he had very accidentally noticed while he stood opposite you on the sidewalk that morning but you’d reject his money before he even finished the sentence. He could sneak into your apartment while you were gone, find the damaged heels and take them to be repaired himself.

That idea lasted approximately four seconds before he discarded it.

First of all, you would notice immediately if somebody touched your things. Clark genuinely believed you could detect disturbances in your apartment the way bloodhounds tracked scent trails. Secondly, you owned enough nearly identical shoes to turn the entire operation into a nightmare and he would absolutely bring back the wrong pair by mistake. Third…and this felt most dangerous, he could never take them to your regular shoe repair woman because eventually, months later, she would absolutely mention in passing that a six-foot-four broad-shouldered man had arrived looking deeply guilty while swearing her to secrecy over your shoes.

And finally, Clark valued his life.

He was almost certain you possessed the capability to kill him with your bare hands if you discovered he had interfered with your closet.

“Any luck?” Lois stopped beside his desk holding a coffee in one hand and a stack of papers in the other, eyeing him with growing suspicion while Clark sat there looking one inconvenience away from spontaneous combustion.

Clark sighed and rubbed both palms down his face. “No. The heels aren’t available anymore.” His shoulders sagged. “I don’t know what else to do.”

Lois frowned immediately. “I meant with tracking down the witness for my piece. You said you’d help.”

Clark went completely still.

Right…work. His job at the Daily Planet and his very human responsibilities. Keeping this job meant ‘money’, the thing required to buy replacement apology Prada heels.

“Right,” he said quickly, standing so abruptly his knee hit the desk. “Right, I’m on it.”

He started rifling through the disaster zone of papers scattered across his desk searching for the Post-it note he swore he’d written her information on sometime earlier that morning before becoming emotionally consumed by luxury footwear.

Lois watched him carefully while he searched. Her eyes drifted slowly toward his computer screen just in time to catch the fifteen open tabs displaying identical Prada heels before Clark panicked and started closing windows at superhuman speed disguised very poorly as normal typing.

“I could’ve sworn she already owns those shoes,” Lois noted casually.

Clark nodded once, distracted. “They got damaged the other night.” He swallowed. “I’m trying to…fix things.”

Lois leaned lightly against the edge of his desk, coffee still in hand and glanced toward the empty chair beside it. Your chair.

The one you occupied almost every morning when you burst into the newsroom overdressed and overcaffeinated, carrying gossip, complaints or existential crises while talking everybody’s ears off for an hour straight before wandering back out again. The bullpen always felt louder when you were there…easier too and now the chair sat untouched.

Lois checked the time on her watch before her gaze drifted toward Jimmy across the room. He had apparently been listening because the second their eyes met, he slowly widened his own and shook his head with deep seriousness.

“Don’t you dare ask,” Jimmy mouthed silently from across the bullpen, his expression grim enough to suggest national consequences if ignored.

So…naturally, Lois ignored him.

“Where is she, Clark?” she asked, setting her coffee down on Clark’s desk without bothering to ask permission first. “It’s almost ten. She’s never here after you.” Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Honestly, you’d think she got paid to arrive on time with how committed she is to barging in exactly three minutes before you sit down.”

Clark barely seemed to hear her. He was still searching through the same pile of papers he had already searched at least twenty times that morning, lifting folders only to stare blankly at whatever was underneath them before putting them back in entirely different places. There were sticky notes stuck to his sleeve, three pens uncapped beside the keyboard and an entire legal pad covered in names of luxury consignment stores across Europe.

He looked exhausted. Clark could survive weeks without sleep if necessary but this somehow looked worse…and emotional, which Lois didn’t do.

Finally, after another few useless seconds pretending to search for something that clearly wasn’t there, he exhaled heavily through his nose and looked up at Lois. “Couldn’t make it,” he admitted quietly before gesturing vaguely toward her. “Would you mind writing down again what you needed?”

Lois blinked. She had known Clark for years now, she had seen him walk calmly into interviews with dangerous politicians, survive impossible editorial deadlines and handle newsroom disasters with less visible defeat than whatever this was.

Her expression softened almost immediately.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said carefully. “I’ll figure it out. You just…” Her eyes flicked toward the ghost of the fifteen rapidly minimized browser tabs on his computer screen. “…keep doing whatever this is.”

Before Clark could answer, Cat entered the bullpen carrying her bag over one shoulder and immediately locked onto him the same way surgeons spotted active emergencies.

Clark straightened so fast hope practically radiated off him. “Cat, please tell me you found them–”

His voice died halfway through the sentence the second she shook her head. If he dropped back into his chair any harder, the darn thing was going to collapse before lunch.

“I’m sorry, Clark.” Cat grimaced sympathetically while setting her things down. “You know she’s terrifyingly good at finding rare pieces. I called everyone I know.” She crossed her arms. “Can’t you just get her something else?”

“Maybe a dress,” Jimmy offered carefully from his desk nearby, trying to sound useful. “Or a hat.” He nodded to himself, gaining confidence too quickly. “A fedora maybe…A very nice one. That ought to cheer her up.”

The silence afterward was immediate and devastating. Clark and Cat both looked at him with identical expressions usually reserved for witnessing small animals get hit by traffic.

Jimmy froze beneath the weight of their horror while Clark genuinely looked offended on your behalf.

Cat slowly lowered her empty coffee mug. “A fedora?” she repeated faintly.

Jimmy swallowed hard. “Isn’t that…” He looked between them nervously. “A style of hat?”

The look Cat gave him could’ve stripped paint off walls as Clark dragged one hand down his face.

Lois glanced between all of them now, her concern deepening rapidly as the atmosphere around Clark’s desk continued resembling hostage negotiations instead of workplace conversation.

“What is going on?” she demanded.

“They broke up.”

Steve appeared seemingly out of thin air directly behind Lois while sipping casually from his coffee mug, startling her hard enough that she physically lurched sideways.

“What are you talking about?” Lois snapped. “Broke up?”

Steve nodded solemnly. “Broke up,” he repeated. “Like the Beatles.” He took another sip. “Only worse because this affects me personally.”

“They didn’t break up,” Cat corrected immediately, refusing to allow terminology inaccuracies into the situation. “To break up they would’ve needed to actually be together first.”

Steve pointed dramatically toward the empty chair beside Clark’s desk and everybody looked at it…Clark specifically and the sight clearly hurt him spiritually.

“That feels like a breakup,” Steve insisted.

“It was more of an argument,” Jimmy corrected quickly, trying desperately to regain control of the narrative before Clark collapsed entirely. “A disagreement. That’s all.” He nodded too many times. “Right? We’re fixing it.” He looked toward Clark expectantly. “When she replies to our texts. Right, Clark?”

Clark did not answer. He stared down at his desk instead, jaw tense while everybody waited for him to reassure them and himself simultaneously.

The silence stretched long enough that even Lois stopped looking skeptical and started looking worried.

Steve cleared his throat awkwardly and stepped closer. “So…” he began cautiously, “am I still allowed to text her?” He pointed at himself. “I have a date tonight and I need fashion advice.”

Clark’s desk phone rang then and he practically attacked it. The receiver barely completed half a ring before Clark snatched it up so fast the cord nearly whipped off the desk.

“Yes, hello?” he answered immediately, voice carrying so much hope it made Jimmy wince sympathetically as everybody watched that hope die in real time.

Clark’s shoulders dropped inch by inch as whoever spoke on the other end continued talking.

“…Wrong desk,” he said eventually, quieter this time and hung up gently. The bullpen remained silent for another beat while Clark stared blankly at the receiver still in his hand before slowly placing it back down.

“She might not have found her phone yet,” he reasoned aloud, though the sentence sounded more directed toward himself than anybody else. “We don’t know.”

He had been trying not to overwhelm you. That was the problem. Every instinct in him screamed to go to your apartment, knock on your door and stay there until you opened it but the memory of your face outside the precinct kept stopping him cold. The exhaustion, the anger and the very clear don’t follow me written all over you.

So instead he had settled for restraint…and a handful of texts but no calls, or showing up uninvited with groceries and emotional support pancakes.

Clark was suffering immensely.

Lois stared at him with growing disbelief. “She doesn’t have her phone?” she repeated. “She checks auction sites more than I check the news.”

“She’ll answer eventually,” Jimmy offered weakly, though he sounded unconvinced now too.

Lois pointed directly at Clark. “Whatever you did, fix it.”

Clark looked vaguely stricken by the implication he had done something.

“Steve needs help,” Lois continued firmly, gesturing toward the man currently nodding solemnly into his coffee mug. “And we cannot all be single.”

Steve raised his mug slightly. “Morale’s already low.”

Lois inhaled deeply, visibly collecting herself and straightening. “Back to work. All of us.” except nobody moved. She narrowed her eyes then. “Now.”

Papers shuffled immediately across the bullpen while people reluctantly returned to pretending they were functioning professionals and not heavily invested in Clark Kent’s emotional crisis.

Clark stared at his computer another moment before quietly reopening the Prada tab.

You wore flats on Monday.

Not because they matched the outfit better, though they obviously did and not because your feet still hurt from the weekend, though they absolutely did. You wore flats because job hunting required stamina, resilience and occasionally the ability to flee with dignity from establishments pretending they’d “keep your résumé on file.”

You expected the day to go terribly…you had prepared for ‘terrible’. Still, you wore a cute dress and carried a structured little purse because unemployment was already humiliating enough without looking defeated on top of it.

By eleven in the morning, your optimism had died outside a bakery in Midtown.

You had walked up and down avenues for hours handing out résumés with the frantic determination of a suburban parent distributing Halloween candy nobody wanted. Except apparently the candy you were offering was sugar-free, joyless and made entirely from recycled fruit peels because nobody looked excited to receive it.

Most people barely glanced at the page before setting it aside politely. Some accepted it with the expression of someone being handed religious pamphlets in a parking lot and others skimmed the top line, saw your nonexistent work experience and immediately developed urgent tasks elsewhere.

At one point you realized you had been recycling the exact same copy of your résumé all afternoon because every employer kept handing it right back after pretending to read it. The edges had bent slightly by now and the paper no longer looked white to you and you had printed fifty copies.

Fifty.

There were currently forty-seven in your hands reminding you that apparently not even thrift stores wanted to hire a twenty-five-year-old woman whose primary qualifications included “good posture” and “knows the difference between ivory and cream.”

By lunchtime, desperation had started guiding your decisions.

You sat in a tiny coffee shop downtown and tried convincing yourself the refill they gave you tasted burnt because the beans were artisanal and not because the universe hated you. When they messed it up a second time, you briefly considered using your résumé to wipe the wet bottom of the mug out of spite and you actually did it too.

Then came the restaurant incident.

You had attempted to trick your way into speaking with the manager by pretending to ask detailed questions about wine pairings before casually pivoting into employment. Unfortunately, the manager had apparently been “on his way” for nearly an hour while you sat there slowly consuming a thirty-dollar pasta dish you absolutely could not afford anymore.

By the time he finally emerged from the kitchen only to say they “weren’t currently hiring,” you left with enough rage in your body to power small machinery.

You did not leave a tip…but you did leave a terrible Google review accusing the establishment of emotional negligence and overcooked linguine…which you deleted five minutes later while standing outside because guilt attacked quickly and viciously.

The afternoon continued in much the same fashion until eventually you discovered an awful truth…All roads in Metropolis somehow led back to the Daily Planet.

You stood across the street from the building staring up at it while taxis rushed past and your reflection floated faintly in the glass doors.

You could still turn around. Actually, you could sprint away if necessary because you were wearing flats, which made escape significantly more realistic than usual but if tomorrow resembled today even remotely, you were never going to find a job on your own. You needed help…advice and possibly divine intervention.

Unfortunately, all three of those things lived inside that building.

As you crossed the street, you prayed for several highly specific scenarios simultaneously.

Maybe Clark had left after lunch the way he usually did.

Maybe he’d called out sick, though the likelihood of Clark Kent oversleeping and simply deciding not to go to work ranked somewhere beside spontaneous meteor showers and pigs obtaining pilot licenses.

Maybe he was out saving someone.

Or maybe, and this possibility sat at the absolute bottom of the list, rancid and unwelcome, he had finally taken a personal day because Lois Lane had looked particularly good that morning and post-lunch temptation had apparently overpowered his fragile Kryptonian morals.

Yeah. Right…You nearly turned around again. You could run this time! And you had prepared.

Oh, you had prepared for Clark…Ever since the weekend, you had been operating under the assumption that he might appear at your apartment at any moment armed with concern and devastating eye contact, so you adapted accordingly.

You wore perfume he’d never smelled before. You wore dresses that hadn’t gone near your usual dry cleaner, mostly because you could no longer afford his services but also because Clark associated scents frighteningly well. The man could probably identify your emotional state by detergent alone. You also slathered yourself in heavily scented lotion in what felt less like skincare and more like predator evasion…and finally, and this part genuinely wounded your spirit…you wore a baseball cap.

A. baseball. cap.

You looked like a woman actively avoiding the media after committing tax fraud. Every time you accidentally caught your reflection in a window, nausea hit immediately. The cap alone felt criminal on your head, so you kept your eyes forward and pretended the sunglasses obscuring half your face also impaired your own vision.

You eventually slipped into the building or at least convinced yourself you had.

In reality, you probably looked deeply suspicious.

You knew the Daily Planet well enough to navigate it blindfolded, which only made your bizarre sneaking behavior worse. You kept your head down, walked quickly and avoided eye contact with such aggressive commitment that one intern physically stepped aside for you in alarm.

You made yourself smaller somehow despite the outfit, despite the purse and the fact that nobody in human history had ever described you as subtle.

The elevator ride nearly killed you. You stood in the corner clutching your purse and résumés while staring hard at the floor numbers, praying nobody from the bullpen stepped inside. The second the doors opened on Clark’s floor, you moved immediately but not toward the bullpen…absolutely not.

You took the long route to Perry’s office, which involved weaving through quieter hallways, ducking around corners and once crouching beneath a glass office window because you swore you heard Jimmy laughing nearby.

At one point you flattened yourself dramatically against a wall while an accountant walked past carrying folders but finally, after what felt like a hostage extraction mission, you spotted Perry entering his office muttering to himself while carrying a stack of papers beneath one arm.

Before he could fully close the door, you slipped into the office behind him with the speed of somebody avoiding both the IRS and confrontation. Your hand caught the edge of the door before it clicked shut and you gently but insistently pushed Perry farther inside while closing it carefully behind you, already twisting back toward the small glass panel to make sure nobody had seen.

“What the f–” Perry started around the cigar hanging from his mouth.

You shushed him immediately, one hand raised sharply while the other cracked the door back open two inches so you could peek through it. Reporters moved through the bullpen outside carrying folders and coffee cups and absolutely none of them seemed aware that you were currently conducting a deeply underfunded espionage operation in Perry White’s office.

Satisfied for the moment, you shut the door again and turned toward him dramatically.

“Perry,” you announced in a voice so unnaturally deep it scraped painfully against your throat. Dear fuck, you sounded like a detective from a radio drama who smoked tires recreationally.

His brows furrowed instantly, face twisting in confusion bordering on concern. You could see the exact moment recognition hit him and before he could say your name, you cut him off again with another aggressive shush.

“I’m here on official, very important business,” you informed him gravely. “I’d appreciate my identity being protected.”

Perry stared at you for a long second before slowly removing the cigar from his mouth. “Why are you talking like that?”

You cleared your throat hard enough to nearly cough up a lung and forced the voice lower again despite your vocal cords begging for mercy. “Secretive business,” you explained. “I have reason to believe figures associated with your current workplace are plotting against my client’s future success, emotional stability and potentially her very livelihood.”

You shoved the stack of résumés toward him with excessive seriousness.

“Furthermore,” you continued, “it appears my client is destined for greater things but is currently struggling to communicate that potential to the…” Your voice cracked midway through the sentence and collapsed fully back into your normal tone. “…working world.”

You winced, cleared your throat again and lowered your voice with renewed determination. “You, as a letter and…word professional, are uniquely qualified to tell me what’s wrong with that.”

Perry looked down at the résumés, then back up at you with absolutely no belief in anything currently happening.

You rolled your eyes and slid your sunglasses down just enough for him to see your face. “It’s me, Y/n.”

“I know it’s you,” he deadpanned immediately. “The only people dressing like that daily either live in Gotham penthouses or stand in front of cameras reciting lines approved by fourteen sober writers and one man named Leonard.”

He took another slow drag from his cigar while you sighed and dropped the ridiculous voice entirely before permanent damage occurred. “Can you just tell me what’s wrong with my résumé?”

Perry glanced back down at the pages in his hand. “You mean besides your name?” he asked honestly. “Because otherwise this is mostly decorative whitespace.”

Your frustration hit immediately. “No, it isn’t,” you argued, stepping closer to snatch one of the résumés back from him. “It has my education, I speak French and Russian, I’m excellent with textiles, I can cook…” Your words started picking up speed the more defensive you became. “I can identify archival runway pieces by touch alone and apparently none of that matters because I’ve walked half the city today handing these out and nobody wants them.”

You held the paper up accusingly. “I spent thirteen ninety-five printing these,” you informed him bitterly. “I’ve essentially been robbed in broad daylight by a copy shop.”

Perry shrugged without sympathy. “Why didn’t you print them here?”

You blinked. “What?”

“You can print things here for free.” He gestured vaguely around the office. “Long as I don’t catch you.”

Your jaw almost dropped. “Do you think I’d be dressed like this,” you hissed, motioning at the thrifted sunglasses and baseball cap currently destroying your style, “if I wanted to be seen entering this building?”

Perry narrowed his eyes slowly. “Right. Because my employees are apparently hunting you for sport.”

“Well…let’s keep all allegations hypothetical,” you muttered quickly. “I can’t afford a defamation lawsuit right now.”

“I was wondering why everyone turned their morning deadlines in on time,” he mused casually while taking a copy, handing the rest back to you and moving toward his desk.

You snatched them from his hand, removed the sunglasses fully and stared at him in disbelief. “So?”

Perry sat down heavily in his chair and looked over the résumé one more time with surprising attentiveness. “Visually? They’re fine,” he admitted. “You clearly know presentation but experience matters and right now you don’t have much of it.”

Your shoulders dropped slightly despite yourself.

“At your age, you’re missing about three years of practical work history,” he continued. “Nobody knows what to do with somebody whose qualifications are expensive taste and multilingualism.”

“That feels reductive.”

“It’s accurate.” He pointed at the paper. “Still, somebody’ll eventually take a chance on you. So keep trying.”

You nodded slowly even though the advice felt deeply unsatisfying considering you had hoped for a magical answer involving immediate employment and maybe free soup. “Great,” you muttered flatly. “Fantastic. Thank you for your wisdom, chief.”

You gathered that copy back into your stack and turned toward the door but paused before opening it, pointing sharply at him. “I was never here.”

Perry shrugged.

“And open a damn window or light a candle,” you added while wrinkling your nose. “This office smells like cigar ash and expired ambition and it’s seeping into your cashmere blend vest.”

You opened the door. Behind you, Perry looked down at his vest suspiciously before pinching the fabric between two fingers and lifting it to his nose. He frowned immediately.

“You’re not the boss of me,” he called out defensively.

“Clearly not,” you replied over your shoulder. “Since I lack experience.”

Then you shut the door behind you and immediately inhaled deeply once you hit the hallway again, the comparatively fresh air feeling heavenly against your lungs.

“Fuck,” you muttered under your breath while adjusting your cap lower over your face. “I need a cigarette.” And with that, you started toward the elevators again using the long route, peeking carefully around corners and avoiding the bullpen as if you were escaping federal surveillance.

Once you reached the elevator, you jabbed the button for your floor with enough force to suggest betrayal. Then you waited, very impatiently. Your leg bounced violently beneath your dress while you stared at the glowing numbers overhead as if hatred alone might drag the elevator upward faster. It sat one floor below yours for several agonizing seconds before finally groaning into motion and honestly, if modern technology had emotions, this elevator absolutely resented you personally.

When the doors finally slid open, the cab stood empty before you and relief hit immediately…clean, beautiful relief.

You stepped inside at once, pressed the button for the lobby and turned toward the doors while exhaling slowly through your nose. Your mission was almost over, you had survived the bullpen, Perry’s office, several near heart attacks and prolonged exposure to this baseball cap, which still felt spiritually offensive every time you remembered it was in contact with your scalp. Honestly, the possibility of lice had started sounding less upsetting than seeing your own reflection in it again.

The doors started closing and victory sat right there, just inches away…when a broad hand shot between the narrowing gap and stopped both metal panels with terrifying precision before they could meet fully in the center, the alignment so exact your mathematician father would’ve probably wet his pants at the mere sight of it.

Clark…of course.

He stepped inside calmly, pressed the button beside yours and took his place next to you while the doors résuméd closing before you both with a soft mechanical sigh that sounded suspiciously smug.

You were failing, catastrophically.

Your skin still felt sticky from the heavily scented lotion you’d practically bathed in before leaving your apartment, your dress scratched faintly against your waist because it hadn’t gone through your usual cleaner and your scalp had started itching beneath the cap approximately three minutes after putting it on. Your heart beat hard enough to qualify as a public announcement and the worst part, truly the very worst part, was that Clark could hear every single humiliating thud of it.

You adjusted your posture immediately and hugged the stack of résumés tighter against your chest.

“Hi,” Clark said softly. He kept his eyes ahead, which somehow made everything worse. He wasn’t looking at you because he clearly suspected direct eye contact might make you combust.

“‘Wassup,” you answered. The word felt disgusting leaving your mouth. Hell, you heard it yourself and apparently Clark did too because his head turned toward you almost instantly, confusion flashing across his face before he managed to hide it.

Clark looked you over as discreetly as possible. You smelled different, that itself was unfamiliar. Your perfume usually arrived before you did, expensive, soft and undeniably you. Now you smelled aggressively floral, like somebody had panicked inside a department store cosmetics aisle. Your dress looked less polished too, the fabric sitting differently across your body and…

“You’re wearing flats,” he noted carefully. Then his eyes lifted. “And a cap.”

His tone carried the same cautious concern people used while approaching injured deer beside highways.

“I’m aware,” you replied quickly and moved the résumés behind your back at once.

Clark’s brows lifted for half a second. “Has the vintage hat factory exploded?”

Your chest rose briefly. Fuck! There it was, that awful almost-laugh. Any other day, you would’ve laughed immediately and very loudly too. You knew it…Clark knew it and he also knew that you knew he knew it and suddenly the elevator felt approximately the size of a coffin.

“Funny,” you muttered flatly.

“What are you hiding?” he asked as he angled slightly, trying to look around you without making it obvious. He could’ve asked why you were acting suspicious. Why you were dressed like a woman evading both the media and tax fraud allegations and why you smelled so differently and looked exhausted and had avoided him for days but Clark knew you.

If you were hiding something, pressing too hard would only make you dig your heels in deeper…well, metaphorically speaking today since you lacked them. 

“Nothing,” you answered immediately. “Can you be normal for two seconds?” You turned and stabbed the elevator button again, once, twice and three times. “Why isn’t it moving?”

Despite every instinct warning him not to pry, Clark’s eyes dropped toward the stack behind your back anyway and widened almost immediately once he caught sight of the papers by using his annoyingly accurate x-ray vision.

“Are those résumés?”

You groaned and whipped toward him so fast the cap nearly slipped off your head again. “What the hell did you do to the elevator?” you demanded.

“Nothing.” Clark shrugged far too innocently.

You pointed aggressively toward him. “Clark Jonathan Kent, I swear to God if you’re making yourself heavier again to keep me trapped in here, I will scream so loud this entire building’s going to think we’re–”

“Are you looking for a job?” he interrupted and tried very hard not to sound stunned.

Unfortunately for you, Clark was absolutely making himself heavier, carefully enough so the elevator wouldn’t immediately fail but enough to stall the mechanism between floors. If he admitted that out loud, however, he’d also have to acknowledge the fact you had just used his full name and that alone threatened to turn his face pink and this was not the time to blush.

You stared at him, momentarily thrown by the question despite the fact you should’ve expected him to figure it out eventually. He could probably locate hidden government files by accident so hiding a stack of résumés behind your back inside a four-foot elevator never stood a chance.

“Can you not say it like that?”

He frowned. “Like what?”

“Like that,” you said immediately, motioning vaguely between the two of you. “With that weird inflection between the O and the B. It’s a job…Jobs are normal. I’m twenty-five, I should have a job. Jobs are good.”

The word started sounding less convincing every time you repeated it. You ripped the baseball cap off your head and crushed it in your hand with visible resentment.

Clark looked genuinely concerned now. “Why are you saying job so many times?”

You scoffed instantly. “Why are you saying it so many times?” Then you folded your arms tightly over the résumés before turning away from him altogether. “You already have one,” you muttered. “Respect the rest of us suffering through unemployment.”

He went quiet for a moment and you could practically hear him thinking, carefully choosing words the same way bomb squads approached suspicious wires.

“Why do you need a job?” he asked gently.

“Stop saying it like that,” you mumbled firmly.

He nodded once, considering again. Honestly, if preserving your dignity required him accepting responsibility for the weird tone, he would gladly take the fall.

“Okay,” he agreed softly. “Why do you need a J-O-B…question mark.”

You took a deep breath, mostly to buy yourself time, jaw tightening as the word landed anyway, spelled out and unavoidable. Smartass.

A believable lie required structure, confidence too and preferably less panic than whatever currently ricocheted through your nervous system every time Clark looked at you for longer than three consecutive seconds.

“Well…” you began carefully. “In an effort to become less like my mother, despite apparently inheriting her relationship with fashion at a genetic level, I’ve decided I won’t be financially supported by a man or a trust fund.” You nodded once, firmly and professionally. “So in order to fund my lifestyle, broaden my horizons and meet new people I can eventually classify as friends, I’m pursuing employment.”

There. Short, controlled and surface-level enough to survive scrutiny.

Clark nodded slowly, though his expression didn’t relax. He repeated your explanation silently in his head while watching you. You looked exhausted beneath the sarcasm and defensive posture, your heart still hammered unevenly against your ribs, fast enough he noticed immediately because he had spent years memorizing the ordinary sounds of you without really meaning to. Usually your heartbeat steadied around him but right now it stumbled all over itself.

So he chose his next words carefully. “What do you need from me?”

“Nothing.” You shook your head immediately. “Besides making yourself lighter and letting me off this elevator.”

Clark’s eyes stayed on you anyway because unsurprisingly, he needed more. More honesty, more explanation and more than the polished little speech you had clearly assembled out of panic and stubbornness five seconds earlier. Unfortunately, you didn’t know what you could give him without everything else spilling out afterward.

“I’m an independent woman, Clark.”

“Asking for help doesn’t mean you aren’t.”

You ignored that entirely. “I’m figuring things out,” you continued quickly. “I’m making mistakes and that’s okay. You don’t need to constantly save me like you do everyone else.”

Clark’s face softened almost immediately. “You’ve never needed me for that.”

“Exactly.” You nodded at once, relieved to finally grab onto one sentence that didn’t emotionally threaten you. “Great. Wonderful…we agree on something.” You turned and pointed sharply toward the elevator doors. “Can we also agree this thing needs to move?”

Clark didn’t even glance toward them. “Did you get your phone back?”

“Nope,” you answered, popping the P with excessive innocence…about three seconds before your phone rang loudly inside your purse.

The silence afterward turned catastrophic. Clark’s eyes dropped instantly toward the sound and you watched the exact moment suspicion crossed his face. Knowing him, he was probably already using x-ray vision in the name of friendship, concern and gross violations of personal privacy disguised as emotional support.

You swallowed. “It’s borrowed.”

The elevator lurched suddenly back into motion and your stomach dropped with it. You stared ahead while the floor numbers flickered downward one by one and tried very hard not to think too deeply about anything currently happening in your life. You didn’t know what you were doing anymore. You just knew you wanted your existence to belong to you fully, not to your parents or Clark, or to the humiliating orbit of longing and avoidance and pretending everything felt simpler than it actually did.

Beside you, Clark stood painfully still. He was trying hard to be gentle with you, careful and patient while every instinct in him wanted to push harder, ask better questions, solve the problem immediately and carry half your life upstairs himself if necessary but he kept forcing those instincts down because you clearly needed room to stand on your own feet.

Even if those feet currently wore flats.

The ride down passed in silence.

Once the elevator reached the lobby, you stepped out immediately and Clark followed close behind. The building entrance stood only a few feet away now, late afternoon sunlight bleeding faintly through the glass doors while people crossed outside along the sidewalk.

Clark stayed behind you with both hands shoved into his pockets, head lowered slightly as he watched his shoes move across the lobby floor.

You turned toward him before you could lose your nerve and tried not to be dramatic about it either. Your dress barely moved with you. Good, this moment did not deserve cinematic elegance.

He looked up immediately and straightened. God, he looked so hopeful…your sweet, terrible Clark.

You inhaled deeply and forced the words out fast before your survival instincts convinced you to flee. “I found out my parents have been paying for my apartment.” Your throat tightened immediately but you kept going. “Which means they’ve known where I’ve been living this entire time.”

Clark opened his mouth but you cut him off before he could speak.

“Not only that,” you continued quickly, “they’ve been doing so while I spent the past year struggling to make rent every month.” You laughed once, dry and humorless. “Rent I wouldn’t have been able to afford anyway, apparently.” Your grip tightened around the résumés. “So I have to move.”

He couldn’t keep quiet anymore and reacted instantly. “I’ll go get my things,” he said without hesitation, already motioning back toward the elevators. “We can have you packed and moved into my place tonight.”

You shook your head before he even finished. “No. Absolutely not.” Your voice stayed calm, which honestly made the refusal feel worse somehow. “This is the part where you tell me ‘good luck’ and I go deal with my own issues by myself.”

Clark’s expression tightened slowly, every word visibly hurting him. “This doesn’t have to be me saving you,” he said carefully. “Just think about it as a storage unit and a spare bed.”

You almost laughed at that. Almost. “Like I said, Clark, I’m not turning into my mother.” Your voice softened slightly. “I’ll figure it out.” Then you pointed toward him. “I’m only telling you because eventually you would’ve kicked down the door to my apartment after I moved out and traumatized the next tenant while he showered beside his turkey bacon.”

Clark blinked hard, face scrunching in confusion. “What?”

“My shower is placed three feet from the stove,” you explained flatly. “I never let you inside because you physically do not fit in that apartment.” You gestured vaguely with one hand now that the confession had started rolling downhill against your will. “I have so many clothes in there that I'm forced to sleep between the window and my fur coats.”

Clark stared at you silently. You pointed at him again before he could say anything compassionate and devastating. “I found that place without help and I’ll find the next one without help too. Financial or otherwise.” You paused briefly, fingers tightening around the crushed baseball cap still hanging from your hand. “I’ll text you the new address when it’s done…”

“From your…borrowed phone,” He guessed carefully, except the phone wasn’t borrowed. 

He had already seen the case while snooping in your purse, the half a photograph tucked beneath the plastic casing. The two of you crammed together inside some photo booth months ago, your face angled toward his while he looked hopelessly distracted by you instead of the camera.

Clark owned the other half. It sat beneath a magnet on his fridge beside grocery lists, takeout menus and a new postcard from his Ma that he still hadn’t answered.

You nodded anyway. “And it’s not an invitation,” you clarified quickly, backing up another small step across the lobby floor. “No showing up at my door with baked goods or brisket or emotionally supportive side dishes.” Your mouth twitched faintly despite everything. “It’s literally just a ‘don’t panic, I’m alive’ situation.”

He watched your face carefully, eyes following your movement.

“You deserve that much.” Your eyes had started watering and you clearly didn’t realize it yet. You kept retreating slowly toward the glass doors while speaking, like your body had already committed to leaving several minutes before the rest of you emotionally caught up. “You actually deserve a lot better than me not having the balls to text you back,” you admitted quietly.

The sniffle afterward nearly stopped Clark’s heart outright. He followed instinctively when you stepped backward again, brows pulling together while he tried to understand where exactly the conversation had collapsed into this. Five minutes ago you were arguing about jobs and elevators and now you looked like somebody standing too close to the edge of a cliff pretending not to notice the drop beneath them.

“And I’ve been really mean to you,” you continued quickly before he could interrupt. “Which honestly feels unfair in retrospect because the elevator weight thing was uncalled for but it also was at the playground when you did it on the seesaw and forced me to experience genuine frustration for the first time in my life.”

Clark blinked once as he nodded at your words because he simply did not know what else to do.

You pointed accusingly through glossy eyes. “I’m serious. I hated that…both times.” Your voice wavered harder now. “And I’m experiencing it again currently so maybe raise your standards for me a little and get angry already, so it’s easier for me to ignore you.” You sniffed hard and motioned vaguely back toward the elevators. “Go back upstairs, go to work and be emotionally responsible while I figure my life out.” 

Then you pointed directly at yourself. “Me. By myself.”

Oh. Clark saw it immediately then, it sat all over your face beneath the mascara and stubbornness and trembling composure you were trying desperately to maintain and the realization hit him so hard his stomach turned violently. 

You were preparing to disappear.

You had already done this once before with your parents. You ran when things became unbearable, untangled yourself quietly and figured everything out afterward from somewhere nobody could reach you, except this time the emotion underneath wasn’t anger, it was grief, deep enough Clark couldn’t even locate the bottom of it.

His hand lifted instinctively toward you before stopping midway because suddenly he didn’t know what would happen if he touched you right now. Whether you’d stay or break apart completely or apologize for crying while doing both simultaneously, so he hesitated and that hesitation cost him.

You turned before the tears could fully fall and walked toward the doors with your chin lifted stubbornly high despite the shine gathering in your eyes. Sunlight hit briefly across your face once the glass doors opened and Clark stood rooted in place watching you leave while every instinct inside him screamed to follow.

But you had asked for space and Clark Kent loved you enough to let that request wound him.

The doors closed behind you as Clark stared at them another second before dragging one hand over his face slowly, breathing hard through the pressure building in his chest.

He needed to find a replacement for those shoes…and he needed to do it fast.

You honestly didn’t know how you ended up back at the Talon.

Somewhere between forcing unwilling business owners to accept your résumé and deciding flats technically transformed walking into a financially responsible decision, your body had apparently chosen the destination for you. Cabs cost money and money had become an abstract luxury reserved for people with employment, stable emotional conditions and refrigerators containing more than expired yogurt and half a lemon you kept pretending still had purpose.

By the time you reached the Talon, the sky had darkened fully and your feet hurt in that dull, persistent manner reserved for long days and bad weeks. The baseball cap remained shoved bitterly into your purse where it belonged and the stack of résumés beneath your arm had started curling at the corners from overhandling. Honestly, the pages looked exhausted too.

The guy working the tiny booth in the hallway barely glanced up before holding out his hand automatically. “Phone and ten bucks.”

You ignored both requests completely.

“I’m not staying,” you assured him while flashing the stack of résumés at chest level like legal documentation. “I just need to leave one at the bar and then I’m gone.”

The poor man looked at you, looked at the papers and then made the deeply reasonable decision not to get involved in whatever emotional catastrophe this clearly was.

The second you stepped inside, the atmosphere hit you all over again.

The Talon wasn’t large but it clearly didn’t need to be. Noise packed the room tighter than furniture ever could. People crowded around tiny tables balancing cheap drinks and louder conversations while cigarette smoke clung stubbornly to the ceiling despite several very obvious fire regulations being violated simultaneously. Somebody laughed too hard near the back wall and glass clinked somewhere beside the stage. The room carried that warm, restless energy unique to bars filled with people trying not to go home yet.

As you moved toward the mostly abandoned bar, Susie’s voice cut sharply through the crowd.

“We don’t want your godawful impressions out there tonight,” she snapped.

You glanced toward the stage area just in time to see her physically withholding the microphone from a lanky man arguing passionately about his time slot. “You said I had ten minutes!”

“I’ll respect your ten minutes when the place is empty and I stop paying electrical bills,” Susie shot back while shoving past him. “Next time bring a guitar or a visible talent.”

The man continued protesting behind her while Susie marched toward the bar muttering to herself under her breath with the exhausted fury of somebody one inconvenience away from arson.

You slipped onto a stool near the end of the counter and quickly lowered your stack of résumés onto the bartop, trying to hide them beneath your arm before she noticed…too late.

“If you’re here to ask for the secret behind my financial success, we’re gonna need to reschedule,” Susie said while stepping behind the bar, then her eyes landed on the papers. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah.” You exhaled heavily and rested your forehead briefly against your hand. “I’d ask for a drink but unfortunately I’m currently participating in poverty.”

Somebody beside you elbowed your arm while reaching for peanuts and you moved farther down the stool with visible annoyance.

Susie looked down at the résumés again, then toward the stage…and then back at you.

Her scheduled act had apparently vanished, the crowd noise had started thinning near the entrance and Susie possessed the survival instincts of a raccoon guarding trash behind a casino. She recognized a crisis immediately.

“Get up there.”

You blinked. “What?”

She grabbed the microphone from beneath the counter and dropped it directly in front of you. 

“I thought I made myself very clear when I said I’m not a comic.”

“Yeah, I remember that part.” Susie nodded. “I also remember the part where you said you don’t have a job.” She lifted your stack of résumés in one hand like a police officer displaying evidence to a jury. “And from the looks of this little tragedy,” she continued, shaking the papers once, “you need one. Or at least money.”

Her eyes widened pointedly at you, aggressively fishing for common sense. “So get your ass onstage. You save my ass tonight and I won't take a cut of your earnings.”

You looked toward the stage.

A few people sat scattered around the tiny tables beneath the dim lights. Somebody near the front laughed drunkenly at absolutely nothing. One woman smoked with the exhausted posture of somebody midway through a divorce and the microphone stand looked deeply judgmental under the spotlight.

Then you looked back at Susie and shook your head immediately. “I can’t go up there.”

“Why?” Susie frowned. “Because you’re emotionally stable?”

“No,” you answered honestly. “Because I’m sober and a coward.”

Susie stared at you for one second before turning away and returned with a shot glass. “Not water,” she informed you while setting it down firmly in front of you. “And it’s on the house if you get your tits up there.” Then she pointed vaguely toward your chest. “Without showing them this time, preferably.”

You blinked hard, almost insulted because…well, your tits were great. “Preferably?”

“Unless you want to.” Susie shrugged. “Modern times.”

You looked down at the vodka shot. Honestly, your entire life had already collapsed enough today that adding alcohol and public humiliation into the equation barely registered anymore. The worst thing that could happen was bombing in front of strangers and currently strangers already rejected you professionally across half of Metropolis.

You grabbed the glass and threw it back immediately.

The vodka burned straight down your throat and settled violently in your stomach like a threat from the gods themselves.

Liquid courage…or mild poisoning. It really depended on perspective.

You swallowed hard, grabbed the microphone and pointed at Susie with it. “Do I still get paid if nobody laughs?”

Susie shook her head and shrugged at the exact same time. “Bold of you to assume there’ll be money either way.”

You exhaled once before leaving the bar, walking onto the stage and immediately regretted possessing legs.

The platform barely lifted you two feet above the room but somehow that tiny elevation transformed every person in the club into a potential witness against you. Most people didn’t even look up right away. A couple near the back kept arguing over cigarettes, somebody laughed too loudly at the bar and one man sat fully sideways in his chair.

You stood there gripping the microphone with both hands and looked at them all. To the tired eyes, cheap drinks, wrinkled collars, women fixing lipstick in reflective spoons and the men pretending they weren’t staring at those women while staring hard enough to develop migraines. 

Nobody in the room looked carefree and nobody looked untouched by life either and suddenly your own humiliation stopped feeling that special.

Tonight, you weren’t jealous, you weren’t even angry…you were just another failure.

“I’m twenty-five and I’ve never had a job.” The microphone carried your voice farther than expected and slowly, conversation around the room began thinning. Heads turned toward you one by one, curiosity spreading unevenly through the crowd.

You nodded once as the silence settled heavier. “I’m twenty-five,” you repeated carefully. “And I’ll probably be homeless by the end of the week whether or not I find one.”

A few people laughed instinctively before realizing you weren’t technically joking yet, the silence afterward felt enormous.

You looked briefly toward the back wall instead of directly at anybody because if you made eye contact too early, you might actually die onstage and honestly that would create paperwork for everyone involved.

“Any of you ever run away from home?” 

A voice answered immediately somewhere near the back. “Yeah!”

You pointed toward them. “See? Thank you.” You paced once across the tiny stage, warming into the movement. “Whether your family was rich, poor, loving, terrible, emotionally constipated or weirdly obsessed with matching Christmas pajamas, running still means the same thing.” You shrugged lightly. “It just comes with different branded luggage.”

A few chuckles rippled through the room.

“I found out recently my parents have secretly been paying for my apartment.” You paused. “An apartment I have personally been struggling to pay for over a year.”

That statement got attention. “Oh yeah,” you nodded. “No, I was suffering. I sold shoes…purses and dresses I genuinely loved.” Your hand flew dramatically to your chest. “Do you understand the psychological warfare involved in selling a vintage Dior piece to make rent and then seeing some woman named Brenda wear it with orthopedic sandals?” The crowd burst into laughter.

“I struggled every month trying to pay twelve hundred dollars for what I genuinely believed was the most decent two-hundred-square-foot shoebox in Midtown Metropolis.” You held your fingers out narrowly. “And by shoebox, I mean if I inhale too deeply near the window, I get a whiff from the sewers down the street and the smell clings to the walls and develops over time like Eau de Parfum…It’s French…but the smell isn’t.” Laughter spread louder now. “The front door to the building stays broken eleven months out of the year. Not consecutively either….It’s better when it’s random…It keeps you humble.” You nodded seriously. “And the elevator worked once.”

People laughed already, sensing the rhythm now. “One time. One singular glorious morning after Friendsgiving.” You lifted one finger. “I got inside carrying leftovers and suddenly the machine discovered ambition.” You pointed toward the ceiling. “That elevator moved with purpose. It had dreams of grandeur…Also French.”

The room erupted.

“And then it died forever.” You spread your arms. “Gone. It never moved again and honestly? Looking back I should’ve taken more mashed potatoes because if I’d gotten trapped in there longer I could’ve sued the building and financially recovered.”

People barked laughter around the room now, shoulders shaking into drinks and tables.

“Instead,” you continued, leaning lightly against the mic stand, “my landlord Garrett keeps raising rent while smelling aggressively like blue cheese and unpaid child support.” The laughter exploded harder. “Oh, Garrett…” You sighed deeply. “Have I mentioned I got sent to etiquette classes growing up?”

A few groans of recognition came from women around the room. “Oh, you know.” You pointed immediately. “See? Survivors…all in the same place.” You straightened your posture instantly into stiff perfection. “They teach young girls how to sit upright.” You demonstrated elegantly. “How to crouch while wearing dresses if you drop something.” You bent carefully at the knees with mechanical precision while people laughed. “And of course they teach you how to keep your legs closed before marriage.”

You paused. “Curiously, they never teach boys this skill despite the fact every man on earth sits like his balls contain classified government documents requiring airflow.”

The room detonated and half the men immediately corrected their posture while women laughed loud enough to rattle glasses.

“They also teach us how to politely request services.” You smiled tightly. “‘Pretty please, may I see proof you’re robbing me blind?’” More laughter rolled through the room while you paced farther from the microphone stand now, confidence slowly overtaking panic.

“Because half the tenants are moving out after Garrett raised rent from like…” You tilted your head thoughtfully. “Two thousand dollars to almost three.” The crowd groaned. “Exactly.” You pointed. “And the place is falling apart. I mean, I shower three feet from my stove.”

People laughed already. “No, no, no. I’m serious.” You held up your hand solemnly. “One time I dropped conditioner into boiling pasta and genuinely considered whether a bay leaf might save it.” The room burst apart again. “Because it adds that…you know…and if you don’t, trust that the bay leaf does know.”

You paused, soaking in the laughter. “Only take that risk when inviting terrible people over obviously…” You nodded thoughtfully. “Like parents.”

People laughed and applauded simultaneously. “Not that mine ever visited,” you continued quickly. “The window for reconciliation closed somewhere around the fifth hidden rent payment.”

You could feel the room wasn’t just listening but also leaning in, even the people near the bar had stopped talking over you entirely. “Meanwhile Garrett lives beautifully.” You sighed dramatically. “Whole building’s collapsing but this man owns leather furniture and places sports bets like he’s funding organized crime.” 

You looked out over the room. “Who’s losing next week?”

“Gotham Ravens!” several people shouted immediately.

“Oh really?” Your face lit up maliciously. “That actually improves my evening because I placed ten grand on Garrett’s behalf that they’d win.”

The room exploded into screaming laughter and you lifted both hands immediately in surrender. “What? I had to get my money’s worth somehow!” You defended yourself through laughter. “And before anybody judges me, understand this happened during an emotionally charged moment involving his laptop, some crushed fingers…my heel, his phone…also crushed, by the way and the power of feminine rage.”

Somebody near the front almost choked laughing. “We’ll find out the results soon enough.” You nodded seriously. “Either he comes downstairs demanding money or he collapses so hard onto his floor that I hear the echo of empty pockets from my apartment.”

By now people were clapping between laughs. You breathed it in, actually and almost stupidly so, breathed it in. The fear had started melting somewhere around the pasta joke and now every reaction from the crowd hit your chest like oxygen after days underwater.

“I don’t know if any of you were here the other night when I accidentally publicly spiraled about Mr. Kent.”

Several people cheered loudly. Your eyes widened. “Oh my God.” You pointed accusingly. “So you’re all alcoholics, ‘cause that was barely seventy-two hours ago and you’re still wearing the same shirt.”

The room roared and people turned fully toward the stage now, even bartenders paused to listen. “I tried ignoring him.” You nodded seriously. “Very maturely too…I avoided texts and calls…I changed detergent and perfumes like I was fleeing the mafia...Yeah, very mature.”

Laughter crashed immediately. “But unfortunately I ended up at his workplace today after a long sequence of humiliations involving résumés and a baseball cap that made me look like I sold counterfeit cigarettes behind gas stations.” You mimed the cap and the room erupted again. “And somehow we got trapped in an elevator together.”

Whistles shot through the room instantly.

“Not like that.” You pointed sharply. “Although honestly if I die in a confined space, I’d prefer it happen beside a six-foot-four farm boy built like God lost restraint halfway through.”

The laughter turned almost violent and you bent slightly over the microphone, laughing too now.

“No because this man looked at my résumés like I’d confessed to crimes against humanity.” You shook your head. “He’s seen me wear dresses and heels to a farm…while sitting on hay bales like a deeply impractical Disney princess.” People clapped laughing. “He knows I don’t work!” you continued. “And somehow him finding out I needed a job made me more worried...and him even more handsome too.”

You widened your eyes dramatically.

“This man offered to house me, immediately. Practically offered financial sponsorship because apparently he believes Superman can save humanity but not society after I repeat an outfit publicly.” The room exploded. “And the worst part?” You laughed breathlessly. “I should’ve been offended…I wanted to be offended.”

You paused. “But then he looked at me with those stupid puppy-dog eyes and suddenly I started considering becoming a housewife…”

Groans and screams erupted everywhere, you laughed so hard you had to step away from the mic briefly.

“By choice! Which makes all the difference but still…It was humiliating.” You pressed your hand against your chest. “I practically collapsed right there near his perfectly polished shoes.”

Then you pointed firmly. “Which I will not be shining.”

The crowd cheered. “Guys, please.” You lifted your hands innocently. “I couldn’t even afford the vodka shot that got me up here. I need this manicure to survive the recession.”

You held your hands up while laughter rolled again and again through the room, then your expression softened slightly. “In that moment…” You exhaled carefully. “Him and my parents suddenly sounded the exact same to me.”

The room quieted instinctively.

“Not morally,” you added quickly. “Fuck no. My parents say it with old-money misogyny. Like true modern-day monsters.” You widened your eyes. “He says it like a golden retriever who accidentally gained muscles on his way to fetch the ball.” The room erupted again. 

“But still.” Your voice lowered slightly. “What happens when the monster loves you?”

A few murmurs drifted through the room now.

“No, seriously.” You paced slowly. “Whether it’s parents forcing a future onto you or a gorgeous farm boy asking you to move next door…” You shrugged lightly. “What are you supposed to do? Keep running? Stay close and hope love magically stops hurting?”

The room stayed quiet enough to hear glasses clink. You eventually sighed.

“Although honestly when the farm boy has broad shoulders and arms the size of civil engineering projects, your pulse starts relocating south and critical thinking becomes difficult.” 

The room lost its collective mind. People shouted, whistled and hit tables while laughing and you stood there grinning helplessly while the noise swallowed the room whole.

“That’s my issue!” you defended yourself through laughter. “Every time I almost develop emotional maturity, the gods send me a man shaped like good decisions and even better sex.”

The applause came immediately. You shook your head dramatically.

“If I had a nickel for every time that thought process improved my life financially–” You looked around the room slowly. “Well, obviously I wouldn’t be here begging strangers for rent money!”

The laughter rolled through the Talon one final time while somebody passed around the tip basket near the front. “Unlike Garrett,” you added quickly, pointing at it, “please contribute willingly.”

People applauded while dropping bills inside.

You looked out over the room then, properly this time. You stared at the smiling faces, at the people wiping tears from laughing so hard and at the way bodies turned fully toward you and for the first time in weeks, maybe months, you didn’t feel invisible.

“Thank you,” you said softly, still smiling through the adrenaline. “Seriously…and goodnight!”

The roll of applause hit all at once, it was loud and immediate. Truly genuine as it swallowed the room so completely you almost forgot to breathe while standing there beneath the lights, soaking it in with stunned eyes before finally glancing toward the bar.

Susie stood there applauding too as she gave you one sharp nod.

You smiled at her and returned it. 

You’d worry about your living situation once your ears stopped ringing from the applause. You’d maybe think about texting Clark back eventually too, though you were certain that loaded task required hydration, sleep and at least one controlled nervous breakdown beforehand. 

But if this was what happened after spending months begging to be seen, then maybe you should seriously consider investing in better hats…bigger ones preferably. Because if you kept talking like this, there was a very real possibility the entire city might start looking back at you…instead of up.

A/N: If you enjoyed this story, feel free to explore the archive for more! Liking and reblogging helps others discover my writing and comments always make my day, they’re a huge encouragement for me to keep creating. Thank you so much for reading!