✶

Leon's always been sweet, kind, caring, and giving in every way possible. He rarely takes any of that love back, especially when you compliment him. But then he's going from rolling his eyes and looking away to blushing in under a minute.

Even for someone who doesn't talk a lot, you had him speechless when he was flustered.

He knows if he meets your eye when you look so pretty telling him so he could probably believe you with how your eyes sparkle.

He's your entire world, why wouldn't you?

Especially when you'd been eyeing him in the kitchen cooking dinner while you were on the couch reading… wondering if you've ever made him moan as loud as he's made you.

When it occurred that you hadn't… a new idea was put into your head.

"Leon…"

You're beckoning from behind him while he's stood at the sink.

He doesn't say anything, just lets you wrap your arms around his waist and hug his back.

"Hey, baby."

His low voice cuts through the quiet and drives you crazy, watching his biceps bulge with each movement. It's the kiss you plant on his shoulder that makes him melt even more than your arms brushing his waist, a place you've deemed his favorite with the way he shudders.

His compression shirt sits nicely over his torso, accentuating every ridge of his toned chest and pecs. Your lips plant another soft kiss against his neck, and he knows you're not leaving his side. He also knows your hands are prone to wander when they're not pinned down.

Leon's aware of what's coming.

"What're you up to?"

"So pretty, baby…"

Leon chuckles under his breath, praying you don't feel the heat threatening to pool in his cheeks.

Your hands rake up his chest, nails scratching over the material of his shirt so lightly, and when you hear the sigh he lets out, it's a sign you're successful in turning him on.

"Yeah?" he huffs out.

"Mhm…" you mutter into his shirt.

Leon's focus falters a bit when your hands move back down over the hem of his shirt, feeling you toy with it before slipping your fingers underneath. A little more when they push his shirt up to reveal the soft skin of his stomach.

Goosebumps cover his skin with how light your touches are, completely thrown off task with your teasing.

He doesn't know how it escalates so fast… you were turning him on all too quickly and then when you mutter let me suck you off… his mind goes blank. He's blinked and you're peppering his skin with kisses, pleading.

Leon could never resist you.

Just when you thought he couldn't get prettier, his sharp eyes glance down at you on your knees for him.

"Fuck…" he's muttering, breathing deeply as he tries to commit this- commit you to memory on the backs of his eyelids.

Your pretty lips open, tongue sticking out as you kitten licks over the tip of his swollen cock dripping with pre, a hand holding him at the base.

Leon's cock is so pretty- par for the course with the rest of him. No wonder he shudders when you kiss him along the underside, running a hand through your hair. He's blushing as you swallow him down inch by inch.

The perfect size for your mouth, traveling every ridge and vein with your tongue. Your warm mouth is heaven to him, and you can't help but hum against him, listening intently to each of his whimpers. The friction sends his head falling back, eyes squeezed shut in pleasure.

"Shit- don't stop… please don't stop."

You've never heard Leon be so shameless in his moaning. He's stuttering and cursing every other word, trying to string together praises and sweet words about how well you're sucking his cock, how good you're making him feel- but he turns up blank.

Not having even uttered the words don't hold back to him, you're certain the warmth flooding your head has everything to do with how he sings above you.

Your soft palm rests on one of his thighs, moving softly against his skin though he's only tense because of how you pinned him down. His tip hits the back of your throat just the slightest and he gasps, enveloped in warmth and greedy for more and more with every movement you make.

Leon's shirt is pushed up above his navel and that pretty little trail of hair that leads to his base, his stomach flexing every so often with the urge to rut up into your mouth.

"So pretty, Leon…" you mutter, pulling off him with swollen lips and a hoarse voice.

Your words and voice have him twitching again, warmth of your mouth lost before you're swirling your tongue around his tip again.

"Fuck-"

"…And so noisy, good boy."

"Ca-can't stay quiet when you're this good at…"

His words fall out breathily before he moans again, almost like he's trying to keep his composure and not let himself go before he's ready to. Leon savors every time you touch him, especially when you get him whining and blushing and so fucking flustered that he feels himself start to sweat.

"Ohhmygod…"

He groans when you go down on him again, struggling to maintain the strength to stay standing.

"Hah- mmm.. fuck…"

This is the loudest Leon's ever been when you've got his cock in your mouth, and it's not looking like he's stopping anytime soon. His chest rises and falls with each breath that leaves him, always followed with a whimper or an expletive to complement.

When you push him to the back of your throat and gag, that's when he's shuddering and looking back down, moving your hair out of the way so he could see the way your lips're wrapped around him.

He doesn't care if it makes him cum on the spot with the warmth of your mouth around him and the wet sounds that follow. You're on your knees for him, doing all of this for him just because. Leon never asked, but maybe he should more often if this was going to be the outcome.

Though he'd much rather have you splayed open for him, thighs pinned down with his strength and your arousal all over his face.

"Baby, baby…" he pants, a plea for more- and he's so far gone already.

Leon's breath shakes and pretty little sounds keep leaving his lips, telltale signs he's getting close.

You want to taunt him, to take him in your hand and go as slow as possibly to delay his release but a part of you feels that's too cruel. You'd rather he just spill himself across your tongue without care. Tears prick up in the corner of your eyes when you pull back from having him deeper in your mouth, but the way Leon immediately looks down to make sure you're alright is too desperate to ignore.

He's on the brink- not able to last much longer and yet he's more concerned about if you're okay.

"You okay?" he pants.

"Mhm… close already, huh?"

"Uh huh," he replies, sheepish smile on his face.

You're licking your lips, swollen that they are and kitten lick at his tip before his palm comes up to cup your cheek.

"Where-"

"I'll swallow… just let go, baby…"

Leon huffs a breath before you're going down on him again.

"Fuck…"

It doesn't take long before he's whining again, holding your hair with his hand and bucking his hips up.

"Oh g-god, baby, I'm gonna-"

But he doesn't even get to finish his sentence before he's spilling over in your mouth, taking sickening pride in your soft lips wrapped around him. The salty taste of him spreads across your tongue before you swallow, slowing your movements before eventually coming up off him.

"You're too good at that…"

you were about to leave when he grabbed you by the waist again, hiding his face in your neck. "leon?" you whispered, but he shushed you. "hold on, i missed you…"

you are not gonna leave for a while.

then he suddenly carried you, his arms under your knees. you yelped at the sudden loss of gravity and placed your arms around his neck. "leon, where are we going?!" but he brushed your question off. "don’t worry about it."

he settles himself on the couch. he tried to look innocent looking at you, but you knew him enough to know there was more to it. "leon, i don’t like that look on your face." you laughed and cupped his cheek. he was looking at you with so much love. his eyes soften and look at you half lidded, and it speaks volumes. "ha, what look?" he asked, playing dumb. he was leaning in closer until his nose reached your neck again.

"you smell good." he commented. "thank you. i bought it yesterday, i thought you’d like it." you smiled and placed your hand on the back of his head, stroking his dirty blond hair. he sighed and held you even tighter, arms snaking your waist until it’s impossible for you to escape. "mm, you should think about me more often…" he said, nipping your skin. "i do think about you all the time." you told him, cupping his cheek with your other hand. he looks up at you as soon as the contact happens, eyes uncharacteristically wide with limerence. "good. i should be the one occupying your thoughts." he smirked.

then it was silent. leon begged for more of your touch by bunting against your shoulder like a stupid cat. you chuckled at his behaviour. "you’re cute." you said, and kissed his temple. he got up from your shoulder and looked at you.

you can tell he wanted to kiss you. his eyes, though half lidded and tired, are pleading for permission.

"it’s cute that you always ask." you smiled and cupped both his cheeks, kissing him softly. his eyes fluttered close, trying to relish the feeling of your lips.

leon loved to drown in your soft love and touches. he was always so touch deprived, but he would never admit such a thing. he never felt so happy being alive to experience love with you.

leon deepened the kiss, his tongue gently prodding your lips open, and you obliged. his hand reached the back of your head and pushed it, and you instinctively placed one of your hands on his neck, feeling every mole, every soft ripple, his adam’s apple, anything to ground you. he groaned at the feeling and kissed you even faster.

you could feel him smiling in the kiss. it was a cute habit he did.

you’re the first to pull away, feeling a bit out of breath. he huffed in disappointment, he was trying hard to fight back a pout. you smiled and kissed his nose. "missed me that much?" you teased. "of course i did." he admitted with a smirk. his hands were wandering all over your body, resting on your thigh, squeezing it to feel the soft flesh. his thumb crossed dangerously on your inner thigh.

he laid on your chest again, wanting to hear your heartbeat. "you want to do a lot of things at once. calm down." you told him, but he chuckled at your scolding. "i’ve been gone for days. there is so much i want to do with you." there’s a suggestive tone under all that yearning.

you sighed and placed your hands under his compression shirt, feeling his scarred skin. his breath hitched, but he’s looking at you with so much trust, waiting to be loved.

04.02.26 , 20:24

taglist : @aerisellesuchi

albert wesker (any rendition)

Giving you his lap:

Doesn't typically invite you to lie on his lap; you are usually the one to just...wiggle your way onto him.

Once he notices you like lying on him, though, he'd probably offer himself up when he notices you in a poor mood.

&

The dude has got rock-hard thighs because of his genetic mutations.

It starts to get uncomfy pretty quick, so you gotta grab a pillow for yourself to place under your head (never back down, never WHAT?!).

Sometimes he grabs the pillow for you absent-mindedly because he knows you're going to ask/get up for it.

& NSFW

Usually never leads to anything nsfw, especially if he's working while you're on his lap.

I really only ever see it leading to nsfw stuff in the event that you approach him with the intention of seducing him (in which case it'll be you servicing him -- only sometimes it'll lead to full-on sex, as long as you're forward about wanting it).

Using your lap:

He doesn't automatically lie on your lap -- you're the one who offers it to him (and he usually turns it down...).

It's not that he doesn't like it; he just isn't too big on physical touch.

He also feels embarrassed lying in such a position.

&

When he does lie on your lap, it's usually because you put him there against his will (like when he's in a bad mood...you're actually responsible for stopping, like, 83 different uroboros outbreaks because of this).

He secretly likes it.

You like to stare into his eyes since they're such a unique color. He claims to hate it (he doesn't, he's just prideful and won't admit you're his weakness).

Gets mad at you if you mess up his hair (doesn't physically stop you, though, just grumbles and complains about it half-heartedly).

Can't fall asleep no matter how comfortable your legs are. He's just very particular in the way he falls asleep (and everything else, too).

If he doesn't have other things to do, he'll usually just lie there and wait for you to fall asleep. If you do drift off, he'll get up and carry you to the bedroom, covering you up before going back to work.

& NSFW

Doesn't usually lead to anything nsfw in this scenario, either.

You gotta lay it on thick if you want him. He's a smart man, and he can pick up on social cues -- he just isn't the type to have a high enough sex drive that causes him to jump at every opportunity available.

carlos oliveira (re3r)

Giving you his lap:

Will both offer and/or just randomly place you on his lap. 24/7.

If you get on his lap first, without him saying anything, he gets really excited. The "my-cat-fell-asleep-on-me" kind of excited.

&

He's got substantially thick thighs. Can be pretty comfortable to lie on when his legs are relaxed. However, he will sometimes unconsciously tense them. You will occasionally have to ask him to unflex them.

Has a little bit of trouble staying still for a prolonged period of time. He'll start out pretty still, but if you're having a conversation or he gets too into it, he'll make a lot of movements with his arms and/or upper body.

Constantly in awe of you. Trying to look at your face, trying to pet your hair, or rub your legs, etc. Just can't get enough of you.

He likes talking to you as you lie on him, too. Not very silent unless you fall asleep on him, in which case, he often glances down to look at your face. Will take pictures of you if you're okay with it, too.

& NSFW

Leads to nsfw things pretty often. In this scenario, you're the one to initiate it most of the time since you're the one near his...package.

Gets an almost immediate boner every time. Dude's got a high sex drive, and it doesn't take much from you to work him up

If you do end up playing with him in some way, he'll either want to pay you back or have full-on intercourse.

Using your lap:

Literally just throws himself down on you. Most of the time, you don't even have to ask if he wants to use your lap. He just goes for it.

&

Makes you pet his hair. Rub his facial scruff. Touch his arms. Dude is needy af.

If you're eating something while he's on your lap, he'll just let you feed him. Seriously, you just stick stuff in his mouth, and he eats it without saying anything.

If your legs start to fall asleep and you ask him to get off, he'll just swap positions with you and put you on his lap instead.

Will make you take selfies together while he's on your lap. Then he'll proceed to send them to his friends (usually Tyrell) as a way to brag about how he has a cool partner.

Falls asleep on you really, really easily and snores loud as FUCK.

& NSFW

Will start to get extra touchy if he wants to initiate sex. He'll reach up and cup your face, wrap his arms around your midriff, snuggle his head into you, etc.

Starts by giving you oral, and it's usually the gentle, slow, loving kind.

If it leads to intercourse, it's probably going to take place on the same surface where he was lying on your lap (i.e., couch, bed, floor, etc.).

chris redfield (re: death island)

Giving you his lap:

Occasionally offers his lap to you. Doesn't do it too much because he's not always thinking about it.

Most of the time, his offers are either because you're sad or because you're watching something together.

&

His thighs are a mix of hard and soft. He's pretty muscular, so at first you'd be expecting more of a solid feeling, but it's not as bad as you'd have guessed. It's a just-right type of deal. (could be due to the fact that he's getting older...).

Isn't super touchy. He'll rest his arm along your body, maybe, but other than that, he doesn't do anything too extra. The two of you kinda just enjoy the idle comfort from one another.

Very chill kind of lover. Wouldn't get mad if you started getting a bit squirmy or tried readjusting your head's position every 3 seconds.

If you have a bowl of popcorn, he's reaching in and grabbing handfuls for himself -- he doesn't notice he's eating most of your snack, either. (he'll apologize and get up to make another bowl for both of you, though. Which is nice. Until he eats the second "I'm sorry" bowl, too).

& NSFW

I don't see him initiating anything, even if he's turned on. I do think, though, that if he got a boner, he'd kinda just awkwardly wait for it to go down. In that case, you'd be the initiator, offering to help him out.

Would be fine to stop after reaching his orgasm. Might offer to play with you using his hands. He'd be open to sex if you suggested it.

Using your lap:

Never lies in your lap on his own. Often turns you down when you offer it to him.

I feel like he likes being in more dominant positions, if that makes sense? He likes being the big spoon, while you're the little spoon.

&

In the rare occurrence that you do get him on your lap, it's just kinda awkward. He just lies there with his arms crossed.

Attempts to get comfortable, but just can't. He's a big guy, so it's a little tricky for him.

Tries his best to stay on your lap if that's what you want, but eventually gives up. Offers for you to either lie on his lap or lie against his chest instead

& NSFW

Not much, if any nsfw things result from this scenario.

Maybe if you started running your hands along his arms or touching up on his chest, then something would happen. He'd probably make a flirty joke about you feeling him up, and then things would go on from there.

ethan winters (re7, re8)

Giving you his lap:

Offers his lap whenever he's trying to be romantic or considerate of you. Really only offers because he thinks you like it.

Not to say that he doesn't like it, because he'll take any kind of touch from you -- he just doesn't have any kind of preference. Touch is touch.

&

He's got soft thighs. He's not built, but he's not in bad shape either -- he's got a very average build, so his legs are pretty comfortable to lie on.

A lot of the time, he plans to ask you if you want to lie on his lap beforehand. He'll make snacks and lay them out on the coffee table, or he'll light some candles in the bedroom -- it all feels very loving and soft.

He likes to place his arm under yours and hold your hand while you watch something (He does the circular thumb movement thing, too).

If you have a baby together, and it starts to cry, he'll grab a pillow and put it underneath your head before going to check on the child.

& NSFW

Honestly, you're the one jumping him most of the time, and it's not because he doesn't take initiative -- it's because the way he cares for you turns you on.

Usually starts once you lean up to kiss him...and keep kissing him.

If you're in the living room, he takes you to the bedroom to have sex. It's the kind that's very gentle, slow, and passionate.

He gives great aftercare, too. Cleans you both up and carries you to the shower if you want to take one.

Using your lap:

He'll lay in your lap if you suggest it to him, although he doesn't do it on his own very much.

Thinks it's cute when you ask him, and he cracks jokes as he goes to lie down.

&

Makes sure to be very still. Tries not to readjust his head too much, thinking he might annoy you with it.

Usually keeps his arms crossed when his head's on your lap. Again, tries not to move too frequently.

If you have a kid, they'll try to take your other leg, and Ethan thinks it's funny that you've got two people on your lap.

Your kid will request that you pet their head, and Ethan will follow along teasingly. You end up running your hands through both of their hair.

& NSFW

If he starts rubbing your knee or the area above it, you know he's trying to start something up.

You often say something along the lines of, "I know what you're trying to do," and he laughs about it before admitting to it.

He'll lean up and kiss you, and then the two of you will take things to the bedroom. Again, you have very gentle, slow sex (plus good aftercare)!

leon s. kennedy (re2r)

Giving you his lap:

Will offer you his lap sometimes -- he can be a little absent-minded, so it's pretty much an occasional thing unless he notices you frequently putting yourself in his lap.

He's a little shy about you lying on his legs, but he likes it a lot.

&

He's got really comfortable thighs to lay on. They've got a slight bit of muscle to them, but not too much.

He's a little awkward when it comes to knowing what to do with his hands. He'll pet your head, but he does so with a strange rhythm -- or he'll accidentally yank a little bit of your hair. He then apologizes profusely and pulls his hand away. If you want him to keep touching you in some way, you have to guide his arm/hand down and place it where you want it.

The first few times you lie on his lap, he's pretty stiff. As your relationship continues, however, he gets used to it.

Will quietly fall asleep after a while, and you won't even know it until you try saying something, noticing that he isn't responding.

Occasionally mumbles stupid stuff in his sleep. Sometimes you can hold a conversation with him, and he won't even remember it.

& NSFW

You're the one who initiates things most of the time. He'll get a boner, and you'll tease him -- he'll flirtatiously tease back, and you'll end up servicing him where you're sitting.

If you're in the living room, he worries about staining the couch, but will let you continue if you tell him not to worry about it.

Passionate, fairly vanilla sex. He doesn't really like being too rough with you because he worries he might be hurting you.

Decent aftercare -- he cleans you up first, and once you're both cleaned up, he asks if you want to go back to lying on his lap.

Using your lap:

Only occasionally will he put himself on your lap of his own volition. Usually, you're the one to ask him if he wants to use your legs as a pillow, and agree.

Very rarely turns you down, if at all. It makes him really happy when you offer your lap to him.

&

Tells you almost every time how comfortable your thighs feel.

He likes it a lot when you touch him. Leon likes you petting his hair, rubbing his arm, but his favorite out of every option is when you take his hand and hold it. It feels like a very tender moment to him

Likes to talk to you while he's on you. Whether it be about the show you're watching, his day, your day -- he's talking.

Sometimes he will spell things out on your leg using his finger and make you guess what it says. It's usually something random like "cactus," or "pizza."

& NSFW

The two of you will tease and flirt with one another, and that's what leads to things heating up. He'll sit up and start to kiss you, and that's typically the cue that the two of you will be having sex.

Sometimes he starts with oral in this kind of scenario, sometimes it just leads straight to a little bit of foreplay, then sex.

Again, very vanilla, but loving and caring sex. He gives good aftercare here, too.

leon s. kennedy (re4r)

Giving you his lap:

Knows when you could use his lap and offers it accordingly. He has a good sense of what you need, and when -- even when you're not upset.

Feels very comforted when you accept, and he likes the feeling of your weight on him.

&

He has really nice legs, and they're fairly soft. They aren't as cushion-y as when he was younger (re2r), but they're still comfortable to lie on.

No longer awkward with his hands, he knows exactly what to do with them. He's got very smooth, rhythmic movements, as well.

Doesn't fall asleep with you in his lap as much as he used to, but it'll happen occasionally. He tries his best to stay awake, wanting to spend time with you (even though it's hard for him because he doesn't get as much sleep anymore, and he gets really relaxed with you around him).

If you feel him up, he'll laugh and tease you about it. He thinks it's funny when you poke into the fatty-muscled part of his arms and legs.

& NSFW

Using his thighs as a lap pillow leads to nsfw things quite often. Sometimes it starts from you touching him up, sometimes it starts from back-and-forth teasing, sometimes it starts from him asking for a kiss.

The sex has gotten a little less vanilla over time -- nothing too crazy, but the two of you have definitely explored many more positions, kinks, etc., as time went on.

He's got a routine down for aftercare, as well. The two of you know what the other likes, meaning that you're both left feeling pretty satisfied after the deed is done.

Using your lap:

Doesn't really put himself on your lap randomly anymore. Over time, he's realized he prefers having you on his legs instead -- but he's not against lying on your thighs.

If he does put himself on you, it's usually for good times' sake.

&

He still compliments you on how soft your legs are.

Leon falls asleep much more on your lap than when you're on his. (Sometimes it knocks him out right away -- he just can't help it).

Loves when you move his bangs out of his eyes, especially if the two of you are watching something.

He now automatically takes your hand in his, holding it. He doesn't let it go, either, even if he falls asleep in your lap. There's no getting it back until the two of you separate.

Doesn't make conversation as much as he used to. As he grew more comfortable over time, he eventually no longer felt the need to fill in the silent gaps. He does make quite a few quippy one-liners if you're watching something, though.

Leon still plays the word-drawing game with his finger on your body, except now he chooses harder words like "potassium," or "armadillo" (though, sometimes, he misspells them and the two of you laugh about it).

& NSFW

His new cue for initiating sex is by squeezing and playing with your leg -- although flirting and teasing still lead to sex between the two of you a lot, also.

The sex ranges from slow and gentle to fast and passionate. It just depends on what kind of mood the two of you are in.

Again, the two of you have a pretty good aftercare routine going, and you're usually very cuddly with one another once you've both finished.

leon s. kennedy (re6, re9)

Giving you his lap:

Even years later, he's still really good at predicting when you want to use his lap. He offers it at all the right times (and he's thankfully mostly shied away from his tugging phase...mostly).

Thinks it's cute that the two of you have this years-long tradition going on. He jokes that someday, you'll be in the retirement home together, trying to get onto his lap haphazardly.

&

His legs got a lot more hard as time went on. You joke around, telling him that he's hard as a brick now -- but you secretly still enjoy resting on his lap as much as you used to when his thighs were softer.

Falls asleep a lot like he did in the beginning -- he's getting old and more tired as time goes on. However, he is good at staying awake if the two of you are watching something.

If you like to watch reality TV, he shits all over it/the people in it (He secretly likes it though; his favorite is The Bachelor).

You've started joking around with him, telling him to take his shirt off when you're in his lap -- you tell him that you don't know how many years left you'll have to look at his abs, and that you need to enjoy them thoroughly before they're gone (he only laughs and tells you he'll have them forever, 'till the day he dies).

& NSFW

Still leads to nsfw things, although not as much as when the two of you were younger.

You're not as wild, doing crazy positions -- but you do try different, smaller things to spice it up in the bedroom occasionally.

Aftercare is still the same, although sometimes you're the one cleaning him up now -- for some reason, despite his job, sex seems to take the life out of him.

Using your lap:

Started putting his head back onto your lap more. He does it in a joking manner, but it became special to him over time due to your guys' history of doing it.

If you have a kid, and they like putting their head on your lap, he uses them as an excuse. He'll make some silly joke, telling you that he needs attention, too.

&

Instead of complimenting your legs, he now presses kisses to them randomly. He knows that over time you became a little more conscious of your body, so he started doing this to ensure you that he still thinks you're beautiful.

Both he and your kid will fall asleep on your lap. Sometimes one of them will snore really loud and wake the other up -- you try to stifle a laugh every time it happens.

Lets you or your kid tie his bangs up so that he can see the TV without them getting in his eyes. He thinks it's funny.

Still makes you put your arm around him, holding onto his hand. Over time, he's started kissing it every once in a while, as well. He's very affectionate with you.

The finger word-drawing game has reached a new height. He has started googling impossibly long and difficult words. You can't even beat him anymore -- and you can never tell if he's actually spelling the words right.

& NSFW

Leon still squeezes your leg to signal that he wants you -- although he's a little less playful with it, as he's conscious that you're a little more sensitive about your body nowadays.

Again, pretty normal sex-life for your ages -- if not a little more frequent than others like your peers.

Your aftercare is still the same as well. You and Leon have no complaints, and the two of you will likely continue your routine until you can't anymore.

quick links:

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╰┈➤ ao3 // c.ai // j.ai

...or my old re account !

╰┈➤ @bitbugbites-re

“hey,” he says, voice gravelly.

you leap from the couch, sighing in relief, “leon,”

you cross the room before he can take another step.

“oh honey, what a mess,” you chuckle in a whisper, hands hovering his arms like you’re afraid to break him.

he lets out a slow breath through his nose, breathing out a weak and sarcastic “thanks”, but his thoughts are louder than his voice.

'god, i missed you. i’m so damn tired.'

you reach up carefully, fingers brushing the side of his face. he leans into it without thinking. just a fraction. just enough that you notice.

“what hurts? besides everything,” you murmur.

“i'm fine. i've had it worse,” he says automatically. he always says that. you give him a look.

he huffs, “nothing serious. i promise.” but despite his words, he’s swaying a little, and he smells like smoke and metal and cold. just cold.

“i'll run you a bath,” you say softly. “come on.”

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

the bathroom is warm, heat curling in steam against the ceiling. you added epsom salts and a little bit of the oil he likes—it smells clean, woodsy, grounding. the kind of scent that makes leon feel safe. he sits on the edge of the tub, already peeling his shirt off while you help him out of the gear strapped onto his legs.

his movements have slowed down, the adrenaline nearly gone his system. it started to dwell the second you touched him. as you help him take his shirt off, his hands find your hips. you see the bruising blooming along his ribs, a shallow cut near his shoulder, scrapes along his arms, and a nasty, drying deep slice on his neck.

you wince, terrified by the sight, but you hide it, keeping your hands gentle. his thoughts, however, are not.

'she shouldn’t have to see this. i should’ve been more careful.'

but when your fingers brush the angry bruise along his side, you don’t flinch. you don’t even look scared. you just look focused.

“you did good,” you tell him quietly, like you can hear the guilt creeping in.

he looks up at you slowly. “you don’t even know what happened.”

“no, but...” you pause, “you came back.”

that shuts him up.

you help him ease into the bath, and the second the hot water reaches his shoulders, he exhales, long and trembling, like he’s been holding in his breath for days.

“feels good?” you tease softly.

“hey,” he mutters, eyes closed. “i'm trying to relax here.”

you kneel beside the tub and start washing the grime from his skin. the water darkens, but leon's heart and mind lighten immensely.

you move deliberately, careful around the cuts. he opens his eyes to watch you for a little. he sees the way your brows pinch when you see a deeper scrape, and guilt runs through his chest.

“i can do the rest myself,” he murmurs, but doesn't move.

“just shut up and let me.” you smile, reaching up and tilting his chin so you can clean the dirt along his jaw. “i want to.”

his body tenses in a way that has nothing to do with bruises.

when you reach for the shaving cream, he raises his brows in amusement. “seriously?”

“you’re scratchy.”

“it's 5 o'clock. at most.”

“right, well, you’re itchy.”

he scoffs, but he lets you.

you work slowly, one careful stroke at a time. you hardly ever do this for him, but he trusts you, keeping very still, eyes on your face instead of where you're putting the blade. when you’re done, you wipe the last of the foam away and smooth your thumb over his jaw.

“there,” you whisper. “much better.”

he catches your wrist gently before you pull away, pressing a soft kiss to your palm.

“thank you,” he says simply.

you grin, pushing his hair back and pressing a kiss atop his eyebrow.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

after you dry him off and bandage what needs bandaging, you walk him to the kitchen. (well, you walk to the kitchen and he follows you like a clingy puppy).

he begins to protest weakly. “can i—”

“you can sit,” you interrupt, pointing him into a chair.

he doesn’t bother arguing. by now, he realizes he's not in charge tonight.

he doesn't really mind though. watching you cook is one of his favourite things. the way you move around the kitchen like it’s a choreography only you know. the warmth of the candles you light to hide the smell. the normalcy of it. it feels unreal after where he’s been.

you make him a hearty and filling meal, his favourite, breakfast for dinner. you pile his plate high with pancakes and eggs and sausages, sneaking in a few slices of tomato and cucumber.

he gives you a look.

“what?” you say.

“you feeding a small army?”

“you are a small army.”

that makes him laugh, low and warm. “thank you, honey.”

he eats like he hasn’t in days, because he probably hasn’t. you sit across from him, chin in your hand. every so often your knee “accidentally” brushes his under the table, just to remind him he’s here. he tells you about the mission, about grace, but he purposefully leaves out the scariest details. all the times he nearly didn't make it. he always does that—tries his best not to worry you.

by the end of the conversation, he finished everything.

“feel better?” you ask.

he leans back in his chair, studying you, a small satisfied smile painting his cheeks.

“yeah,” he admits. “i do.”

but it’s not just the food.

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁˖ . ݁

later, in the bedroom, the lights are dimmed low. clean sheets, like you might've been anticipating his return.

leon lies on his stomach, shirtless, head to the side, while you straddle his hips gently—careful of his tender ribs—and start working your hands into his shoulders.

he groans before he can stop himself.

“that bad?” you murmur.

“you have no idea.”

your thumbs press into the tight knots near his spine, and he feels himself unraveling, inch by inch.

'so worth it if this is what i come home to,' he thinks.

but he doesn't just mean massages, he means you. everything you are, everything you do, your love. he feels so spoiled.

“i missed you a lot, leon,” you whisper.

that does something to him. he opens his eyes slightly, staring at the dark wall ahead.

“you too.”

your fingers slow, turning into gentle strokes instead of deep pressure. you trace along his spine, and his eyes grow heavier under your touch.

“so much.” he adds in a murmur, already half-asleep.

you shift beside him, letting him roll carefully onto his side. he pulls you in close, one big arm wrapping around you like it’s instinct. eyes still shut, his face tucks into your hair.

he smells more like himself now. soapy and something uniquely leon.

his breathing evens out within minutes, but just before sleep fully claims him, he mumbles, voice thick and soft and unguarded:

“what would i... do without you...”

you kiss his chest, right over his heart.

He sniffles, flips a pancake, and says, “You’re heartless. Have you heard the lyrics? That’s poetry, thank you.”

“You cried during a commercial for arthritis cat food last week.”

“Because I have empathy,” he shoots back, mock-offended.

And yeah—he’s Superman, sure. But you’ve never met anyone softer than Clark Kent listening to a Don McLean song at 8 a.m. in his kitchen.

જ⁀➴ You hadn’t quite gotten used to it—being with Clark, knowing he truly, unshakably loved everything about you. Not just your laugh or your thoughts or the way you held his hand when you were nervous. But you, completely. You used to think Clark’s love for humanity ended with the soul—compassion, hope, bravery. But it’s more than that. He sees the human body as something sacred, something resilient. Even if his is nearly identical, he knows he’s not really one of you. Maybe that’s why he’s so in awe.

Your past—boys who picked apart what you wore, what you looked like, how you looked when you didn’t smile—left marks. And so did your own words, the ones you whispered to the mirror in quiet moments.

But Clark? He traces those same parts like they’re written in gold.

“You know,” he says one night, running a hand gently along your arm, “I don’t think people realize how incredible they are. Everything your body’s been through, and it’s still yours. Still strong. Still beautiful.”

You try to brush it off with a laugh, but he stops you, eyes soft.

“No, I mean it. You’re a miracle. Every inch.”

જ⁀➴ Clark may not get sick like humans do, but he knows how fragile the human body can be—and he reveres it. He reads medical journals like most people scroll social media. Every new study, every breakthrough—he’s on it. If researchers say something might cause long-term damage? It vanishes from your home without a word. One day it’s in the pantry, the next it’s gone. You’ve learned not to ask what happened to the non-stick pans.

He’s quick to scold too, in that soft but stern Clark Kent way.

“You drank that energy drink again, didn’t you?” he says, arms crossed.

You wince. “It was one time. I was exhausted.”

“Caffeine, synthetic taurine, seventeen grams of sugar, and no actual nutrition,” he lists off instantly. “You may as well drink battery acid.”

“Okay, Dad.”

“Oh, but I will call your mom if you keep this up.”

But underneath the scolding is love—a deep, anxious kind of love. Because he’s seen how delicate humans are. How easily hurt. And the idea of losing you to something preventable makes his heart ache in ways even he can’t explain.

“You only get one body,” he murmurs once, wrapping his arms around you. “I don’t get to fix that if anything were to happen to you."

And even though he says that—calm and grounded—he knows the truth. If anything ever happened to you, if you ever got sick and couldn’t be treated here, he’d tear through the galaxy without hesitation. He’d fly straight through the heart of Andromeda if it meant finding a planet, a cure, a fragment of something that could save you. Nothing on Earth or beyond would keep him from trying.

જ⁀➴ Clark was never exactly tech-savvy. He still types with one finger and once called the Wi-Fi “the internet signal.” But he does have an Instagram account—with exactly 15 followers (two of which are your parents) and follows mostly rescue shelters, NASA, and you.

And he lives for Reels.

You can hear them echoing through the apartment when you’re in the shower—dog videos, inspirational quotes in cursive fonts, and Flowers by Miley Cyrus for the fiftieth time in ten minutes, all blasting at full volume like your boyfriend’s a suburban mom on her iPad.

He sends you a steady stream of dog memes, tiny cat posts with a follow-up message saying “you,” and medical infographics with captions like “new study suggests drinking cold water too fast is bad for your esophagus,” followed by no context. Just the link and sometimes “pls read.”

But the best part? When you post a selfie.

He replies three, four, sometimes five times to the same Story. Once with “Sweet Jesus,” then again with “That's my girl!!” and “Good grief.” And maybe five minutes later: “Lord have mercy I need to sit down.”

જ⁀➴ Clark has terrible dad jokes. Like, the kind that make you roll your eyes so hard you’re afraid they’ll get stuck. But he tells them anyway, with that earnest smile that makes you laugh even when you’re trying not to.

He loves puns—the cheesier, the better. One minute you’re having a serious conversation, and the next he drops something like, “Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything.”

You groan. “Clark, please.”

But then he just grins wider, proud as can be. “I’m here all week.”

He saves them for moments when you need a little lift, or when you both are just lounging on the couch. You swear his joke book is infinite—and honestly, a little bit endearing.

જ⁀➴ Clark tries so hard to keep up with your slang, but it doesn’t always land. One afternoon, you’re scrolling through your phone, laughing at a TikTok, and he peers over your shoulder.

“That’s so… cunty?” he repeats carefully, raising an eyebrow like he’s testing the word for balance.

You blink, surprised. “Uh, yeah. Like, unapologetic, powerful, feminine. Kind of fierce energy.”

Clark nods slowly, considering. “So if someone does something bold and… that way, you’d say, ‘That’s so cunty’?”

You grin, amused. “Exactly.”

The next day, you catch him using it in the newsroom, totally deadpan: “Lois was being so cunty about the lead on that story.”

Lois gives him a look that could freeze a volcano. Clark just shrugs, smiling like he nailed it.

You laugh, shaking your head. “You’re never getting rid of that one now.”

જ⁀➴ Clark doesn’t curse. Ever. You’ve known him through world-ending crises, explosive arguments at Daily Planet, and even a dropped pie on Thanksgiving—not once have you heard anything harsher than a “heck” leave his mouth. So naturally, when you stub your toe on the coffee table and let out a very colorful string of expletives, he gasps like you’ve just kicked a nun.

“Language,” he says, pausing mid-fold with a pair of your socks in hand, brows raised in gentle disapproval.

You shoot him a look through the pain. “Clark. I’m in agony. You want me to say ‘gosh darn’ and call it a day?”

“I’m just saying there are... alternatives,” he says, calmly, like this is a productive conversation and not a moral intervention. “You could say, like, ‘shoot’ or ‘fudge.’ Or ‘crumbs.’ People say ‘crumbs,’ right?”

You stare at him. “Clark, no one under the age of 97 says ‘crumbs.’”

He crosses the room and kisses your forehead like he’s trying to cleanse your aura. “You kiss me with that mouth?”

You grin. “You love this mouth.”

He stammers, caught. “W-Well. That’s not the point.”

જ⁀➴In your household, killing bugs is absolutely forbidden—not by you, but by Clark.

You learned this the hard way the first time you spotted a spider on the wall and casually asked, “Can you kill that?” He turned to you like you’d just asked him to burn down an orphanage. “Kill it?” he repeated, hand to his chest in genuine sympathy for the spider.

“It’s more scared of you than you are of it.” You rolled your eyes, but he wasn’t done. “What if it has a little spider family to go back to?” he added softly, already retrieving a cup and a piece of paper to gently relocate the poor thing.

his other hand settles low at your waist, fingers resting just above the dip of your back. he draws you in without force, just a steady pull, soft and sure. he likes to keep you close enough to feel your heart beat against his.

he likes to hold you with one hand, cupping the side of your neck, fingers splayed across the back of it, gentle touch at the nape, his thumb caressing your jaw lovingly. his other hand rests at your waist, nearing the small of your lower back so he can pull you close and closer if he wants.

and then his lips, gosh, those soft, full, plush lips, moulding with yours. he tilts his head just a little to kiss you, those curls shifting with his movements.

clark only pulls away to look at you, it’s like he can’t help himself. his gaze lingers on your lips before it climbs back to your eyes, all soft and starry. he leans in again just enough for his nose to brush against yours. it’s a small, playful nudge. he does it again, just to see your smile start to pull at the corners of your mouth. you try to stay still, to meet his gaze with mock sternness, but it’s useless. he always gets it out of you—that shy, quiet laugh, the one that bubbles up before you even realize it.

you shake your head, barely, and murmur something like “you’re ridiculous,” but your hands are already reaching for him, fingers curling into the fabric of his shirt like they’ve done this a thousand times.

you tug, gently but with purpose, pulling him in, and he follows your touch like gravity. his body leans into yours again, his hand at your waist tightening, fingers pressing into the dip of your back until there’s no space left between you.

he exhales through his nose just before your mouths meet again, a sigh caught halfway between a laugh and a moan, like he’s been holding his breath waiting for this.

when his lips find yours again, it’s slower this time. deeper. needier. his mouth parts beneath yours enough to invite you closer; an open door you’re already halfway through.

he sighs into your lips, letting his breath mix with yours, letting his hand at your waist tug you even closer if that's possible. his lips part open just enough to invite you in and deepen the kiss, which you do without hesitation, of course.

your tongue presses past the soft seam of his lips, slipping through the smallest space between his teeth. he squirms.

just the slightest shift of his shoulders, a barely-there gasp caught in his throat, like he wasn’t ready for it, even though you do this every time. you always find his tongue with yours in that same way. and he always acts like it’s brand new, like it takes him by surprise.

you huff out a laugh against his mouth, and his fingers twitch at your waist in response. he pretends he’s not just as flustered as you are.

you press your tongue between the gap of his teeth, huffing out a laugh when he squrims, every single time, the moment your tongue finds his between the press of your lips.

clark doesn’t just kiss with his mouth, by the way. he kisses with his entire body. he loves to press into you with every inch of himself: with the curve of his shoulders as they dip into yours, the line of his chest as it meets the rise of your own, his hands, his breath, the subtle tremble that runs down the length of his spine

he presses into you like he’s trying to become something smaller, something moldable, something soft enough to be held, and not feared. every inch of him seems to lean forward, like he’s being drawn to you without choice, like your touch rewrites gravity, like he wants to crawl into your chest and make a home in between your ribs, beside your beating heart.

he makes these quiet, barely-there sounds as he kisses you—little hums low in the back of his throat, hushed and breathy and almost shy, like they’re slipping out against his will. they’re the kinds of sounds that feel secret, just for you, tender things that fall apart in the space between your mouths.

and he likes to talk sometimes, actually, he really likes to talk, especially when he’s kissing you. not before. not after. no, right in the middle of it. lips still lazily slotted against yours, breath catching in that soft space between moan and mumble, words tumbling out all muffled into your mouth like his brain can’t help but share whatever’s swirling in it, even if it’s completely useless.

and half the time, it is.

you’ll be midway to melting into him, half a second from sighing his name into his mouth, hands moving to run through his hair, and there he goes—muttering about laundry or whispering a quick “can y’remind me to call ma back later?” in the same breath he’s using to kiss your bottom lip.

sometimes, it’s sweet. so sweet you want to cry a little—the way he’ll suddenly whisper a soft, breathless “you’re so beautiful,” right into your mouth. other times, you’re trying to decipher something about how he finally remembered to pick up that weird milk you like with your coffee after work, the one he’s forgotten to grab three days in a row. you try not to laugh into the kiss, but you do, every single time.

but god forbid you ever try to say something mid-kiss.

maybe it’s something stupid, like a joke you forgot to tell him earlier or something silly jimmy and lois got into at work today. maybe you just want to say “i missed you,” or remind him that the oven’s still on—but he doesn’t care. not in that moment.

he’ll nod, pretend to listen, let out these soft hums of encouragement like he’s totally invested. “mhm,” he’ll say, eyes fixed on your lips, watching the way they move. catching every flick of your tongue. every flash of your teeth.

he tries. he really does. but his patience is paper-thin, and the moment you pause to breathe, he’s already leaning in again.

“baby,” he’ll whisper, voice low and warm and soaked in affection, “can we talk later?”

his hand comes up to your cheek again, thumb brushing the corner of your mouth, gaze drifting from your eyes back to your lips and then back again.

and listen, he does that thing where he looks right into you. eyes soft and pleading, blue as a spring sky just before rain, his lashes heavy, his smile barely there. it’s not fair.

You weren’t surprised, though. After all, you never missed a chance to criticize the one man he always seemed to have exclusive interviews with: Superman.

Listen. You didn't hate the man with the red cape and underwear. 

Sure, your articles read like you had a personal vendetta—judging by the never-ending flood of emails defending Superman—but hate wasn't the right word. You were just skeptical of him. He seemed too perfect. Too polished. Too kind. There had to be a catch, something that the Metropolitans were overlooking.

Did you have major trust issues? Yes, but anyone from Gotham did. 

You had been mugged, held at gunpoint, and stabbed. The streets of Gotham were grimy and infested with crime, and the city’s superhero was more myth than man.

So, yeah, Superman was too good to be true. (And you were overdue for some therapy.)

You exhaled and zipped up your bag. 

Clark looked down, noticed the pencil on the floor between you, and then glanced up at your still-tense posture. “Oh, sorry,” he said gently. “Did I scare you?”

“No.”

You didn’t elaborate. He didn’t press.

There was a brief silence as the elevator started moving, humming softly around you. You bent to retrieve your pencil, brushing it off against your coat. Clark stayed quiet, hands clasped in front of him like he was holding back a dozen things he could say.

It wasn’t until the elevator dinged for the newsroom floor that he finally spoke again: “I read your latest column.”

“I’d be worried if you didn’t,” you deadpanned.

As you stepped out into the buzz of ringing phones and clacking keys, you extended your hand without looking.

Like clockwork, Clark pulled the folded Daily Planet from his worn leather satchel and placed it in your palm.

You tucked your crossword book under your arm and flipped straight to your piece. There, you saw his signature red markings. Circles. Question marks. Underlines. A scribbled “hmm” in the margin next to a line you were particularly proud of. A familiar irritation prickled in your chest.

“You think he’s performative?” 

“That’s what I wrote.”

He hummed. “Interesting.”

“Has anyone ever told you your handwriting sucks?”

“Uh, no? Not that I recall.”

You glanced at him. “It sucks.”

He faltered in his steps as your words landed like a punch. “Jeez.”

You kept walking, but he trailed close behind. He followed you past copy editors and coffee-stained desks until you reached your own. Jimmy sat at his desk across from you, typing one-handed while eating a donut with the other.

Clark leaned a hip against the low divider, still watching you. You tried to ignore the way his eyes tracked every movement—how you set down your bag, tossed the crossword onto the desk, then folded the newspaper neatly despite yourself.

“I think he’s genuine,” Clark said, a little quieter now. “From… the many times I’ve interviewed him.”

“Morning, Jimmy,” he added without missing a beat.

“Morning, man,” Jimmy mumbled, barely glancing up from his monitor. 

You let out a small breath through your nose. “Doesn’t that make you a little biased?”

Clark hesitated. “I guess it does.”

You gave him a tight-lipped smile and tapped the folded paper against the edge of your desk. “Well, there you go. Your opinion’s been compromised since the beginning.”

You thought that would be the end of it.

The hum of fluorescent lights buzzed faintly above you, mixing with the constant clack of keyboards and the ring of desk phones. Somewhere across the bullpen, someone shouted for a fact-checker. Cat gossiped to an uninterested Lois. Jimmy snorted at whatever was on his screen. 

Still, Clark hadn’t left. 

You glanced up and saw his brows drawn together in that vaguely concerned way that made you want to disappear under your desk. His gaze was soft and unreadable, almost like he could see through you. Every part of you hated it. You weren’t some puzzle that needed to be solved. 

“But what if you’re wrong?” he said, his voice lower now, almost hesitant. “Not everything good is fake.”

You stared at him, blinking once. “Remind me—you’re from…?”

A flash of confusion crossed his features. “Smallville. Kansas.”

“Right.” You nodded, eyes narrowing. “Of course you are.”

There was no heat behind your words. Just resignation. But his frown tugged deeper, like he couldn’t quite decide if you were teasing him or not.

“As you know, I’m from Gotham,” you added, your tone dry. “And the politicians there pose for charity galas and cut deals with mobsters in the same evening.”

He didn’t argue. He just pressed his lips into a thin line and pushed up his glasses.

You toyed with the corner of the folded newspaper. “We’re just... different people, Clark.”

He remained for a moment more. You could tell he wanted to say something else, the words on the tip of his tongue, but he didn’t. Instead, he gave you a nod and walked to his desk, just a few steps behind Jimmy’s. Too close for comfort.

And for the first time in months, you missed the Gotham Gazette. 

Not the mold in the break room or the rats on the fire escape, but the cynicism. The unfiltered grumbling. The way no one took things too personally. Lois, at least, reminded you of your old co-workers.

You dropped the newspaper on top of your clutter of papers and sticky notes and powered on your monitor. Over the divider, you stared at Jimmy and the donut he held, half-eaten and perfectly golden. Your stomach growled. 

Impulsively, you leaned over and swiped it from him.

“Hey!” Jimmy’s head snapped up, staring in betrayal at his now-empty hand.

You took a generous bite. It was still warm, the bread soft and just the right amount of sweet. You felt better already.

“I deserve it,” you said through your mouthful. “And you owe me for the pizza, anyway.”

He opened his mouth to argue, his pointer finger held up, before reluctantly agreeing with a grumble.

You shrugged, plopping down on your chair, and it squeaked under the sudden weight. The computer finally booted up and showed the lock screen. You should start working. The deadlines were closing in, but you were too busy chewing and wondering if Clark had a point—maybe not everything good was fake.

That thought stuck with you longer than it should’ve.

It lingered through the rest of the workday, through the buzz of conversations and the ringing phones and even Perry shouting across the bullpen about someone misfiling the morning briefs.

You didn’t bring it up again with Clark. You didn’t have to. He had already left his response.

Later that night, back in your apartment, you found the newspaper still folded in your bag. You had brought it home out of habit, planning to recycle it or maybe tear it up for notes. Instead, you unfolded it and smoothed it flat on your desk:

EXCERPT FROM: The Daily Planet, Opinion Section A City Can’t Rely on a Cape | By YN LN

Superman is a symbol. That much is undeniable. But lately, I’ve been wondering what kind of symbol he really is. Metropolis has grown too comfortable with the idea of being saved. When buildings collapse, when chaos strikes, we don’t duck. We look up.

[Underlined: "We look up."] Hmm. Is that really so bad?

There’s a fine line between hope and dependency. What happens if Superman doesn’t show up next time?

[Clark's note crammed beneath this line. Barely legible:] What happens if anyone doesn’t show up? That’s not unique to him. Isn’t community also about trust?

We have civic systems for a reason. Emergency services. Leadership. But those things fade into the background when there’s a god in the sky.

[Underlined twice: "god"] Hyperbole? (Also, Superman is Superman, not a God. He would agree with me.)

And maybe that’s the problem. We stopped trusting people to save each other. We started trusting one man.

[Clark put question marks next to this line.] Or maybe he inspires people to act. I’ve seen it.

Superman does the work, yes. But it’s hard not to notice how much of it is done while cameras are rolling. He shows up just in time. He leaves just as fast. It’s heroic, sure. But is it honest?

[Underlined: “while cameras are rolling.”] You're saying he's performative?

He saves the day, then disappears. It feels like theatre. Good theatre. But still.

He’s not acting for applause. He’s acting because people are in danger.

I’m not questioning his intent—well, maybe I am. Not his goodness, necessarily. Just the way he performs it. The practiced smiles. The press conferences. The perfectly timed pauses. It feels curated.

[Underlined: “practiced smiles” and "perfectly timed pauses"] You’re seriously overestimating how much prep time he has.

I’m not saying we don’t need Superman. I’m just saying we shouldn’t need him. There's a difference.

Because hope isn’t supposed to descend from the sky, it’s supposed to grow from the ground up.

[Circled: "hope." Underlined: "grow from the ground up."] Beautiful.

Beautiful.

You stared at the last annotation longer than you meant to. The ink was a little heavier here, like he had gone over the words twice before moving on. You wondered if Clark circled hope because it mattered to him, or because he wanted it to matter to you.

A soft breeze shifted the page, making it crackle under your fingertips. You pressed it flat again.

You muttered, barely audible, "Still think your handwriting's shit."

The months in Metropolis were a blur. 

You supposed that had to do with the weekly alien and supervillain attacks. There had been an explosion on the edge of the city, an unexplained blackout, cars flung several stories into the air, only for it all to be resolved by the time you finished your second cup of coffee. 

Fortunately, you’d never been caught up in the chaos. Just close enough to hear the sonic booms or see the red-and-blue blur zip by through the windows of the Daily Planet newsroom. The rest, you usually caught on the nightly news or in the reports you fact-checked for your colleagues.

And as much as you hated to admit it, you had become… less skeptical of the heroes. 

Not adoring. Not idolizing. But respecting in the same way you respected Batman. (Which wasn't much.)

Still, you wrote your critiques. They weren’t always about Superman, though. No, you weren’t obsessed like Lex Luthor. In fact, your most recent draft was on LuthorCorp’s ridiculous rebrand campaign and why it should fool no one. 

See? You had range.

The stale bite of toner lingered in the newsroom air, mingling with the sweet hint of someone’s cinnamon oatmeal heating in the microwave. You weaved around desks with practiced ease, dodging a flustered intern carrying two precariously stacked boxes of back issues. He didn’t even look up when he muttered an apology.

At your desk, the latest issue of The Daily Planet sat neatly beside your keyboard—undoubtedly Clark’s doing. Beside it, a folded scrap of newsprint lay tucked under your nameplate, inked in Perry White’s unmistakable scrawl:

CONGRATS ON A YEAR, GOTHAM. I’M SURPRISED YOU’RE STILL HERE. – P.W.

You smiled despite yourself. Coming from Perry, it might as well have been a handwritten letter of recommendation sealed with wax.

Your chair let out its usual groan as you sank into it, dropping your bag to the floor. Lois passed by mid-argument on the phone, flashing you a quick grin. Across the bullpen, standing next to the copy machine, Clark caught your eye and offered a small wave. He always did.

That was the oddest part of moving to Metropolis: how nice everyone was. Or at least, trying to be. Especially Clark. He’d long since stopped trying to sell you on Superman’s nobility, but he still marked up your articles with his red-inked annotations. He brought you coffee on rough days. And for reasons you couldn’t explain, he had a habit of watching you when he thought you weren’t paying attention.

You weren’t sure what to make of any of it. Or him.

Jimmy once joked that it was Clark’s version of flirting. You had hit him with a rolled-up editorial for that. 

After typing three whole sentences about Lex Luthor’s rumored temper tantrums, you figured you deserved a break. You stood by the coffee machine as it sputtered and hissed, your chipped Gotham Gazette mug waiting to be filled. It wasn’t pretty, but it had survived two moves and a fall from your kitchen counter.

“Rough morning?” Clark’s voice came beside you, smooth like honey.

You jumped a little. He hadn’t startled you, exactly, but you hadn’t heard him approach. A man of his stature had no business moving that quietly. You turned to find him in his usual slate-gray suit, his tie slightly askew. 

“Same as any other,” you said, shrugging. “I got a note from Perry, though.”

“Oh, right.” He grinned, dimples and all. “Your one-year mark. Congrats.”

“Thanks.” 

The coffee finally filled your mug with a last, sad burble. You grabbed your mug and took a sip, wincing. It was burnt and bitter. You decided to add creamer and a buttload of sugar to improve the taste. 

Suddenly, he asked, “Do you like hot dogs?”

That earned him a side-eye. “Sure. Why?”

“There’s a stand a few blocks from here,” he explained, clearing his throat like he was trying too hard to sound casual. “Lunch break’s soon. I was thinking of walking over.”

“Go for it." You turned to walk away, mug in hand. "Weather’s nice.”

You didn’t get far. Clark stepped into your path three steps in, palms raised like you might walk through him. When he didn’t say anything right away, you raised your brows.

“Uh, I’m trying to ask,” he began with a sheepish tilt of his head, “if you wanted to have lunch with me. Just the two of us.”

Your heart gave a strange, inconvenient thud against your ribs. “Just us?” 

He nodded, a little too quickly. “Only if you want to.”

You considered him for a moment and took a long sip of your doctor’d coffee. It tasted less terrible. 

“Okay,” you said at last. “Hot dogs sound good.”

His smile widened. It was infectious.

“Did someone say hot dogs?” a voice cut in. You turned and saw Steve rolled up in his chair like a man possessed. “Hot dog stand on 52nd?”

Clark visibly deflated. “Yeah, that one.”

“Oh, I love that cart. Count me in!”

You sighed into your mug. 

And by the time the lunch break finally rolled around, seven people walked out of the Daily Planet for hot dogs instead of two.

Lois claimed some fresh air wouldn’t hurt. Jimmy said he needed candid shots for a fluff piece and brought his camera. Cat tagged along after overhearing the word “truffle ketchup.” Steve and Ron argued over who owed who lunch, then both came just to spite the other. 

You and Clark stood near the curb, each holding a paper-wrapped hot dog. You were only a few bites in when you noticed something yellow on his nose.

“You’ve got mustard,” you said, amused.

He reached up. “Where?”

You pointed, lips twitching. “Left side. No—your other left.”

Clark dabbed at his nose with a napkin, entirely missing the spot.

“Still there.”

He frowned, trying again. Still missed.

You gave him a blank stare. “You’re killing me.”

You reached up, wiped the smudge away with your thumb, and held it up like proof. His eyes followed your hand, then met yours.

And for a second, it felt like the city stopped moving. The sound of honking cars faded. The glint of sunlight off nearby windows seemed to dim. All you could see were his eyes behind those glasses, warm and too much. It made your chest tighten.

But then the street shook beneath you. A sound like thunder cracked overhead, sharp and unnatural. A flock of pigeons exploded into the air.

You spun toward the sound just in time to see something falling—no, slamming—into the pavement a block away. The impact launched a wave of debris into the sky. Screams erupted. Glass shattered. Sirens somewhere started wailing.

“What the hell—?” Jimmy began.

Another crash. This one was closer. The ground vibrated with heavy, rhythmic thuds, like a giant’s footsteps. People ran. Cars swerved.

Out of the dust emerged something not of this Earth. Easily four stories tall, its skin shimmered like obsidian glass, covered in chitinous armor and thrumming with some kind of gold-lit circuitry pulsing along its limbs. Its mouth split vertically, releasing a screech that sounded like metal twisting underwater. It batted away a taxi like a toy.

Cat let out a blood-curdling scream and bolted.

You were already backing up when another shadow passed overhead—a second one. Smaller. Winged. Its talons dug into a fire escape and peeled it from the building like paper. Fire burst from a transformer nearby. The whole block lit up in strobing chaos.

Happy work anniversary to you.

"Clark?"

You turned. He wasn't next to you.

“Fuck!” you swore, not wanting to leave him behind but not having much of a choice. 

Steve shouted at you to run as debris rained down and dragged Ron with him.

Hot dog abandoned, you stumbled with the crowd, your breath catching in your throat as a parked car exploded to your left, sending you flying sideways with the concussive force. You landed hard on the concrete, the air ripping from your lungs, ears ringing.

Pain pulsed through your palms. You tried to scramble up, but your leg didn’t want to cooperate. Something in your hip screamed every time you moved. You looked up and froze.

The winged one was descending. Its glowing eyes zeroed in on you.

Your heart stopped. You could smell ozone and burning rubber. Its claws dug into the asphalt as it crept closer, clicking and seething. You dragged yourself backward, heartbeat thudding against your ribs. No one else was near. It was just you and this thing and the brutal knowledge that you weren't going to outrun it.

You clenched your fists and tried to stand, to run. “Come on,” you muttered to yourself, refusing to go out like this.

Then a sonic boom split the sky.

The creature reared back just as something crashed into it from above—a red-and-blue blur that slammed it into a nearby building with the force of a missile. Concrete exploded. You gasped, shielding your face from the dust.

When you looked up, he was there.

Superman.

Hovering just above the wreckage, red cape rippling, eyes glowing faintly as he hovered between you and the monster. His jaw was clenched, arms squared, chest rising like he hadn’t just plowed through solid brick. For a moment, he turned toward you, and the sheer force of his gaze made your skin prickle.

He was looking at you like he knew you.

But that was impossible.

The monster lunged. He met it midair, dragging it higher into the sky with a blur of motion and another concussive boom.

You collapsed back onto the sidewalk, heart in your throat, unable to move. Jimmy rushed over seconds later, breathless.

“Are you okay?!”

You nodded numbly.

Above, the two figures fought like gods between skyscrapers. Yeah, this place was nothing like Gotham.

Lois crouched next to you, voice shaking. “He got to you just in time.”

You didn’t answer.

Your fingers curled against the concrete, still feeling where you had touched Clark's face. Still tasting mustard and ash in the back of your throat.

“Clark,” you breathed out. “Where’s Clark?”

Jimmy turned in a panicked circle. “I thought he was with you!”

Lois’s voice was tight with urgency. “I’m sure he’s fine.” Her hand closed around your arm. “C’mon, we gotta get out of here!”

They hauled you upright—Lois on one side, Jimmy on the other—and for a moment, your legs didn’t feel like they belonged to you. The pain in your hip flared with each step, but the adrenaline surged higher. Around you, Metropolis cracked open like a fault line.

A power line swung loose overhead, arcing sparks against a blackened sky. Sirens howled in every direction. Cars had been abandoned in the street, doors flung open, alarms still wailing uselessly. Shattered glass crunched underfoot. Somewhere behind you, another building groaned and folded inward, sending a plume of smoke into the air like a scream.

Lois was muttering about getting back to the Planet, regrouping, getting the story out, but it all came through like static. You could barely focus. The edges of your vision blurred. Your legs moved because they had to.

And above it all, Superman moved like a comet. Arcing through the chaos, streaks of red and blue against the wreckage. His blows shook the air. He was everywhere. Fighting for everyone. Always in motion.

He had saved your life.

A man you didn't trust. A symbol too polished, too heroic, too perfect to ever be real.

Another explosion shook the pavement. A car alarm wailed beside you as a storefront collapsed across the street. Jimmy tugged your sleeve. “We gotta go, Gotham!”

Lois kept a hand on your back as the Daily Planet’s globe peeked into view over the rooftops, still spinning—still standing.

You all picked up your pace.

The Daily Planet was buzzing when you got back.

Phones rang without pause. The overhead lights flickered. Reporters shouted over one another. Someone swore near the printer. Someone else cried into a headset. Screens flickered with stills from the attack—grainy shots of the winged thing crashing into the side of the Baxter Building, shaky footage of Superman streaking across the skyline in a blur of red and blue.

The front page layout was still blank, the headline space blinking like a warning.

METROPOLIS ATTACKED. SUPERMAN SAVES CITY—AGAIN? UNKNOWN ALIEN CREATURES BREACH CITY SKYLINE. THE SKY FELL. THEN SUPERMAN CAUGHT IT.

All three were contenders. Perry hated all of them.

You moved through it all like a ghost, eyes scanning the bullpen again and again. Your blouse was torn at the hem. There was dried blood on your palm from the fall. Someone had wrapped a blanket around your shoulders on the way in, but you couldn’t remember who.

You were barely listening as Lois barked something at Steve. You barely noticed Jimmy setting his camera down with shaking hands. He looked pale, but alive. Everyone was accounted for.

Everyone but him.

No sign of Clark.

And the longer that remained true, the more something inside you twisted.

The noise faded to a low hum, the newsroom working on autopilot now—pushing copy, checking layouts, arguing about punctuation. You sat at your desk. You didn’t type. You didn’t move. You just kept glancing at the elevator.

But he never stepped out.

Not when Perry shouted to finalize the headline.

Not when the print went to press.

Not when the first stack of evening editions hit the metal carts with a heavy thud.

It had been hours, and there was still no sign of him.

The newsroom fell into low murmurs, the soft clack of keyboards, a cough, a yawn. TV screens overhead flickered between footage of destruction: charred rooftops, cracked pavement, Superman pulling wreckage off a city bus. A still frame showed the red of his cape mid-whip, frozen like a flag in a storm.

“Hey! Clark!”

Your head snapped toward the voice.

Clark stepped out of the elevator like he had simply taken a walk. There was a scrape on his cheek, barely scabbed. Glasses perched low on his nose. Dust on his slacks. His collar was wrinkled, and his tie was missing altogether. But he was upright. He was there.

The tightness in your chest faded into something smaller. Ache. Relief. 

“Clark!” Jimmy rushed him first, gripping his shoulders with both hands. “Dude, where were you? We thought—”

“I’m fine,” Clark interjected, apologetic and breathless, holding up his hands. “When I was running, I got all turned around.”

Jimmy nodded, seemingly too relieved to question it.

You didn’t move. Not yet. You just stared as he stepped further into the bullpen, murmuring reassurances and quiet hellos. Then he looked around and saw you.

He stopped moving.

Your hands curled into fists at your sides. You didn’t think. You just walked.

When you finally reached him, you shoved him in the chest. Not hard enough to hurt—just enough to feel something solid under your palms. He was real.

“Idiot.”

He stumbled a step back, more startled than hurt. “Hi?”

“You don’t run off by yourself in the middle of an alien invasion!” you snapped, louder than you meant to. “Seriously, what were you thinking?”

He looked at you with something like regret etched across his face. Quiet. Heavy. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Your voice cracked. “Something could’ve happened to you.”

The words slipped out without warning. It was too honest, too fast. You clamped your arms across your chest like they might hold in the rest.

“I mean—who else is going to annoy me every morning?”

Clark stepped a little closer, careful. Measured.

His voice was soft. “Are you okay?”

You nodded. Then shook your head. “I’m fine,” you said. “I’ve been beaten up worse in Gotham.”

Somewhat a lie.

Your head still rang from the chaos. Your shoulder ached from where you had hit the pavement. Your hip was bruised. But that wasn’t what stuck. What lingered, what burned, was the image of him not coming back. The space he could’ve left behind. And how hollow everything would’ve sounded without him in it.

In the silence, Clark’s hand found yours, tentative but warm. You didn’t pull away.

Then, he leaned in.

You froze as his forehead brushed yours first, light and careful, like asking permission. And then his lips pressed against your hairline. It was barely anything. A press of lips to skin. The kind of kiss that said, I’m here. The kind that felt like it could hold the pieces of you together, if only for a moment.

Your eyes fluttered shut.

His lips lingered for just a second longer than necessary, and when he pulled back, your skin still burned with the ghost of the contact.

You didn’t speak right away. Didn’t trust yourself to.

But when you finally did, your voice was a whisper. “I’m still mad at you.”

A quiet smile touched his mouth. “I know.”

You turned before you could see how he looked at you.

But you felt it.

Like sunlight on your back.

sunnie speaks! this is the longest fic i have ever written omg. but i'm so glad it's finally done!! gothamite!reader and clark kent are both idiots in love, your honor! let's chat about clark kent!

if you like my work, consider following @sunniefics to stay up to date on all my future fics!

notifying  @aphropanacea @zyafics @qardasngan @missmontiopath @florallyarranged @callme-secret @hoforfictionalmen-andwomen @ye-olde-trash-panda @charlyrmv @vlassk @after8hore @ohnaurshayla @readingwiththedevil @otakusimp1 @nemesyaaa @dahling-dahlia

Clark Kent was searching for the courage to ask you out.

       He'd been interested in you ever since Perry White introduced you as the newest addition to the Daily Planet. He read everything you wrote, listened to everything you proposed, smiled every time you struggled with the printer, and thought of you whenever he should've been focusing on something else.

       You were the most precious thought that had ever inhabited his mind.

       Lois had been encouraging him for weeks, but he could've sworn that every time he got close, you'd put an invisible wall between you. He honestly didn't understand. You'd never been rude, but he could see how you placed a subtle boundary every time he tried to get to know you.

       And he would have taken it as a clear rejection and walked away immediately if it weren't for the way your heart raced and your face flushed when he was close.

       On Monday, as always, he arrived at work rehearsing in his head how he'd approach you. He wasn’t arrogant, but he wasn’t a complete fool either, not enough to screw it up just by asking the girl he liked out. But you made him nervous. Your smile made him nervous. And your unreadable attitude made him even more nervous.

       But on Monday, you didn't show up.

       Not five minutes later. Not fifteen. Not thirty. Not an hour or two later. Not even when he sadly glanced at the door, hoping you'd be the one walking in. And never—since you'd arrived months ago as the new reporter at the Daily Planet—had he regretted not asking for your number as much as he did then.

       He knew he wasn't the only one who noticed your absence, or who worried when Perry explained you were sick and had taken the day off. But he truly felt like a lost and abandoned puppy.

       Was this a sign from the universe that he shouldn't ask you out?

       Still, his mind wandered elsewhere: how sick did you have to be to miss work? You hadn't missed a single day since you arrived. In that moment, he wished he'd approached you sooner, maybe then, he could've helped.

       He was distracted all day, and no one missed it.

       After all, it wasn't like it was a secret to anyone in that office that Clark Kent looked at you like you'd painted every sunset in the sky. Everyone knew it.

       Except you, of course. Obviously.

ꫂ❁

On Wednesday, against all odds, you arrived at work 15 minutes late, with a scolding from your boss and a huge thermos that took Clark no more than 5 seconds to figure out had coffee in it, not water, as usual.

      His happiness at finally seeing you was overshadowed by concern when you gave him a soft "Hi" an attempt at a smile that looked more like a grimace, and then walked straight to your desk.

       Your hair was a little—maybe more than a little—disheveled, as if you'd rushed to get there, but also like you hadn't even tried to style it in the first place. You had dark circles under your eyes that your concealer did little to hide, your nose was still red, and you wore the dullest, saddest look he'd ever seen on you, or any human.

       He hesitated, but after exactly seven minutes of staring at his desk, he sighed, stood slowly, and walked over with a thin cardboard box you'd recognize anywhere.

       "Hey," his soft, low voice filled your ears, making you look away from your phone.

       The familiar object in his large hands made you immediately raise your head to stare at him in disbelief. Your heart practically leapt out of your chest when you saw his tender smile and shy gaze.

       "You always say the cookies from that coffee shop are your favorite," he explained, slowly bringing the box closer to you. "I thought you might feel better." He shrugged a little, as if he hadn't just forced you to blink multiple times to keep from crying.

       "Clark..." you whispered, your surprised gaze still fixed on him as you took the box of cookies, almost flinching when his hand brushed against yours. "Clark, I don't know what to say. Thank you so much, I really, really appreciate it."

       Normally, you wouldn't have been so sentimental about it, but your cat, whom you had rescued three years ago, was missing. You'd been searching high and low for him, without success. You still hadn't recovered from your cold. Your emotions were terribly unraveled. And the fact that the small gift came from the charming man you were silently pining for... Yes, you were justified.

       "It's nothing, really. I knew you were sick, and it was the least I could do," he assured you, still with that smile but with a more serious expression.

       Clark leaned forward a little, resting one hand lightly on your desk without invading your personal space, as if he were going to tell you a secret—which was partly true, but it was more so you wouldn't have to crane your head to look at him and end up with a sore neck.

       "I know we're not very close," he began again, and you could almost hear the disappointment in his voice as he said those words, but you chalked it all up to your imagination. "But... Are you really okay?" he asked, genuinely concerned, staring at you with those beautiful blue eyes of his that nearly made you break down.

       It took you a few seconds to answer.

       "Yes..." your voice came out barely above a whisper. "I'm fine, Clark, thank you. I'm not that sick anymore." You tried to smile amused, but he didn't notice a hint of amusement in you.

       "That's not what I meant..." he replied, not sounding insistent, just... kind, genuine.

       You had to hold your breath and blink quickly again so you wouldn't cry right there. You really needed to vent to someone about the nightmare your last few days had been. Clark inspired confidence, and just as you were about to speak-

       "Clark, don't you think she already has enough work to do for you to distract her with desserts and 'love serenades'?" Perry's voice, a few feet away, froze you both for a moment. You felt your face heat up, and the dark-haired man in front of you opened his eyes as if he'd been caught red-handed.

       "I-I..." He shook his head, letting out a nervous chuckle and adjusting his glasses, but he didn't find the strength to deny with his own words what the older man had just said, so he avoided the mocking glances of his coworkers and looked back at you, ashamed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cause you troubles."

       "It's okay, Clark, really." You looked at him with a smile that, while meant to be reassuring, didn't reach your eyes. "Thanks."

       "I should go, but..." He straightened and gestured his thumb behind him. "If you need anything, anything. I'll be right there." He pointed at his desk, which was a few feet from yours and that you definitely saw every day.

       Then he walked away, leaving you alone with your sadness, your thoughts, your cookies, and the memory of his smile.

       And it was just that Clark Kent struck you as the most attractive man you'd seen in a long time.

       And no, obviously it wasn't just his gorgeous face, his height, and his strong body. It was everything: from his passion for his work to his kindness and kind heart. His entire personality made you believe you'd met a damn unicorn.

       But you did nothing for your little crush. You smiled at him and were as friendly as you could be with a man you didn't really want to get to know for fear of discovering he was more perfect than you thought, and that would turn your little crush into a real crush.

       And how would you allow yourself that in your new job, where you weren't indispensable and still had to prove your worth?

       You didn't try to get his number, a date, or a conversation beyond whether or not the coffee pot at the Planet should be replaced.

       But now he was really making it difficult for you.

       Clark spent the rest of the time wondering if he should approach you again. He couldn't help but notice how you dropped everything to check your phone—which you never let go of—every time it buzzed.

       He wasn't trying to be weird, but since he couldn't see you because of that, he focused on listening to make sure you weren't crying or just still breathing because you hadn't spoken to anyone.

When he strained his ears, the only sounds he heard coming out of you were a quiet "Shit" every time you unlocked your phone and the way you sniffled occasionally because of your cold.

       And although he was a little confused and curious, he was more concerned.

       But he did not approach again.

       No matter how much he wanted to comfort you about whatever was bothering you. You didn't seem to want company, and he would never push you.

ꫂ❁

It had just started raining when you left work.

       The sky had been cloudy all day, like it had been all week, but the downpour with brutal force arrived in seconds just as you were getting ready to leave.

      "No, no, no..." you muttered under your breath as you stepped out of the elevator and headed for the building's entrance.

       You pressed your palm to your forehead, letting out a heavy sigh as the icy wind leaking through the door sent shivers down your spine. Your long-sleeved shirt wasn't thick enough to keep out the cold, or the stares once it got soaked and turned see-through.

       And there was no way you were asking the receptionist for help, he was the same one who always acted like paying attention to you was a personal favor.

       You didn't need this. You definitely didn't need it pouring. Not when your whole week had already been a mess.

       You shook your head and hugged your arms around yourself. It was already getting dark, so you didn't think it was a big deal. You had just stepped away from the glass walls and were heading for the door when someone called your name.

       You didn't even have to turn around to recognize the tall, cute guy behind you. It was Clark Kent. Clark with his messy black hair. Clark with an umbrella in one hand and his briefcase in the other. Clark without a smile, but still with that face full of kindness. You'd recognize him anywhere.

       You'd both stayed late that day. You did because you were buried under a backlog of work. He... you weren't sure why. It didn't really make sense.

       He approached you with a slight frown, clearly confused by what you were about to do.

       "Are you going out like that?" he asked, not rude, just... concerned. And even a little shy.

       "I have to get home somehow," you said with a shrug, your lips curling into a faint smile.

      "But you're still sick. Don't you have a coat? A sweater? Something...?" He glanced over you, clearly noting you had none of those things, though he still seemed to hope you'd magically pull one out of your bag. You didn't even have an umbrella.

       You looked down, a little embarrassed. "No... I forgot. I had to rush to get here."

       But Clark didn't judge. He set his briefcase down and started taking off his blazer, then held it out to you.

       "You don't have to-" you began, but he just shook his head and gave you that charming smile only he could pull off, nudging the blazer forward.

       "Please."

       You couldn't help a weak smile as you slipped your bag off your shoulder to take it. How could you resist? You didn't have the energy to argue. You were exhausted, stressed, and sad. And Clark saw it all.

       His blazer was far too big on you; it swallowed your hands completely. But the moment you slipped it on, the scent of his cologne surrounded you, warm and comforting. Heavenly. He heard your heart race, just like his, but that didn't stop the worry in his eyes.

       Then he said your name softly, making you look at him. He was close, but not invading your personal space, and when his blue eyes met yours, you had to remind yourself to breathe.

       "What's wrong?" he asked, gentle, but full of concern, and your heart skipped a beat. He tilted his head slightly, like a puppy trying to understand commands. You secretly cursed him for making you feel so much.

       You sighed, struggling to find the words. "I didn't... miss work because I was sick. I mean, I am a little sick, but... I was looking for my cat. Lucifer. He... went missing."

       Clark felt his heart sink when he heard the sadness in your voice. Of course it was about Lucifer: your cat, your baby. Your little pet with oddly perfect fur and, in your words, a receding hairline so dramatic it made him look funny. And those huge, cartoonish eyes that always looked like they were judging everyone. You talked about him constantly. You even had him as your wallpaper on your work computer.

       You looked away and rushed to explain, not wanting him to think you were careless with your cat.

       "S-Sometimes I leave the window open 'cause he likes the air. Sometimes he goes out, but he always comes back. Always. He's been doing this for three years. He always comes back. He has a collar, and his tags have all my info in case this ever happens, but..."

       You took a shaky breath. His free hand gently touched your shoulder as he leaned closer.

       "Hey, hey. You don't owe me any explanations," he said calmly.

       "I spent the whole weekend looking for him. Monday, Tuesday too. I put up signs everywhere, whistled for him every night, left some windows open in case he came back, and... he hasn't."

       You finally let out a sob, and that was all Clark needed to pull you into his arms.

       You covered your face with your hands and leaned against his chest as the tears came. The warmth of his body was like a shield made just for you.

You didn't know how long you cried wrapped in his arms, you only knew that you let out what you had kept inside for a whole week, and that you did it with the right person.

       "I don't know what else to do. I've run out of ideas. And now it's raining, and he's probably out there, soaked and cold." You sobbed once more, trying to breathe. "I really miss him."

       Normally you wouldn't allow yourself to be so vulnerable, even if you weren't surrounded by people. But there was something about Clark Kent that made you feel safe and trust him blindly, and for the first time in days, you felt a little calm, only in his arms.

       It felt like your tears were burning his soul and breaking his heart as he felt you tremble. In that moment, he knew one thing for certain: he never wanted to see you sad again.

       "I know. I will help you." His low and warm voice filled your heart with comfort. You tried to calm yourself, shaking your head as tears still ran down your cheeks.

       You thought you looked like a mess. Clark thought you probably made the stars feel insecure.

       "You already helped me today," you said with difficulty, pulling away while wiping your tears. Your breathing was uneven, and you sighed, trying to stop sobbing. His hands moved gently to your arms, not wanting to pull away or distract you. Before he could answer, you added, "I'm sorry... I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable or..."

       "You didn't." He smiled softly despite the slight disappointment at losing your touch. You felt a little self-conscious under his tender gaze but forced yourself to wipe your tears once more.

       "I know it must seem stupid to cry like this over a cat, but..." You sniffed, biting your cheek to keep from breaking down again, this time unable to hold back. But he was already shaking his head.

       "No. It's not stupid." He lowered his head slightly, looking at you fully so you'd know he was genuine. When he saw your expression soften and your attempt at a smile, he glanced up at the sky, noticing the rain still hadn't stopped.

       He slung his briefcase over his shoulder and picked up his umbrella from the floor. "You should take this." He held it out to you, looking shyly at you.

       "No, Clark... You'll get wet, and you could be the one to get sick now." Even though you immediately felt cold where his hands had been, you found the strength to refuse.

       He let out a barely audible nasal chuckle, not mockery, but tenderness—which showed in his flushed cheeks and lowered gaze—. He wouldn't get sick, he knew that, but you didn't, and he imagined what you were thinking.

       So he seized another chance.

       "Will you let me walk you back to your apartment, then?" His hopeful eyes met yours, glistening with both tears and surprise.

       And who were you to deny Clark Kent anything when he looked at you as if you were the meaning of his existence?

       The walk home felt peaceful—for you. He had to keep asking you questions, just to focus on your voice and not the racing heartbeat—which he wasn't sure was yours, his, or both—that thundered in his ears every time you leaned too close to stay under the umbrella or avoid bumping into strangers.

       You told him how you'd rescued Lucifer a few years ago; how tiny he was, how unruly his fur used to be before turning into the exact opposite. How you'd fed him milk with a syringe, or the baby food you made just for him. Clark already understood why you missed your cat, but the more you talked, the more he understood you.

       Even if it twisted his stomach to see you so heartbroken, talking about how much you missed your kitten, Clark had never been more certain of his feelings for you, that he truly liked you. After all, he once let himself be arrested just to save Krypto—and Krypto wasn't even his. Why wouldn't he help you find your cat?

       Once you reached your building, still under the shelter of his umbrella, you looked at him with a weak but genuine smile and sighed.

       "Thank you, Clark."

       He smiled softly.

       "You don't need to thank me... but, if you'll let me... Can I ask you something?"

       His question caught you off guard, but you nodded, eyes curious.

       "Don't go looking for Lucifer. At least... not tonight. It's late. Let me help you," he said soft, pleading, yet with a firmness that made your breath hitch.

       "Clark... you're very sweet, but... I don't know. You probably have better things to do than help me find my cat." Your voice trembled, uncertain, because deep down, you wanted his help more than anything. But you'd already done everything you could think of. What else could he possibly do?

       "I don't have any, and even if I did... I wouldn't want to. I wouldn't offer if I didn't think I could actually help," he assured, though he hesitated, knowing he couldn't explain how. So he spoke again, not with arrogance, just clumsily: "Besides... I've got some friends."

       There was something tender in his attitude, but it was his quiet determination to be there for you that truly moved you.

       Still, you couldn't help but joke, "What? Cop buddies or something?"

       He chuckled and shook his head. And of course you thought about it; after all, Clark Kent had interviewed Superman more times than anyone else at the Daily Planet... —not that there were many— but you dismissed the thought just as quickly. There was no way he'd even think of asking Superman to find your cat.

       "No... but sometimes he wears a red cape and flies, if that helps"

       Okay. He thought about it.

       "Superman?" you asked, incredulous, genuinely surprised. "You’re going to ask Superman to help you find my cat?"

       He'd do anything for you.

       "He will," Clark said, firm and confident in a way you’d never seen before. So confident, it almost felt suspicious. "He... he’d never say no to something like this. He saves squirrels, after all, doesn’t he?" he added with a nervous, amused smile.

       Of course you were surprised. Superman surely had far more important things to do than help you find a lost cat. So did Clark. But the absolute certainty in his voice almost sounded like a promise.

       Without thinking, you wrapped your arms around his waist and hugged him tight, careful not to knock yourself with the umbrella.

       Now Clark was surprised too, and more than surprised, he was completely smitten. In that moment, he wasn’t a man who could bring down buildings with a flick of his wrist. He was just a man melting under your scent, knees weak from your body pressed to his, heart racing as your thanks vibrated through his chest and turned his cheeks a soft shade of pink.

       But before he could react—before he could properly wrap his arms around you—you pulled away.

       "Thank you, Clark. Really... thank you so much. If... if he agrees, I have thousands of pictures of my baby," you said, fumbling through your bag for your phone.

       "I—I don’t really know how his powers work, but… maybe he could hear him? He’s really loud. Or maybe he has a super sense of smell. I could give him one of Lucifer’s sweaters..."

       You unlocked your phone, and then froze, realizing what you had just said. "Not like he's a sniffer dog or anything, I mean..."

       Clark's chuckle silenced you instantly. Your cheeks burned even more when you realized he wasn't laughing at you. He was touched. His smile, his gaze, were filled with something you hadn't seen before... something that made you forget how to breathe. And when he reached out again to place a hand on your arm, it was your heart that forgot how to beat.

       You wondered if he had always looked at you like that or if you had just never noticed.

       "Don't worry about that... He will. I'm sure he'll bring Lucifer back to you." He dared to stroke your arm with his thumb, and his reassuring smile widened when your lips curved upward and you let out a soft sigh.

       You held yourself back from throwing your arms around him again; you didn't want to be reckless anymore.

       But it was almost physically painful not to properly thank the man who looked at you as if he was waiting for you to tell him to fly around the world just to ask "When?"

       And while, to you, it was simply his way of offering peace and hope, Clark was making a promise.

       After all, Clark Kent was Superman. And he wouldn't let you suffer one more day.

ꫂ❁

After finally exchanging numbers with Clark you walked into your lonely apartment, for the first time in days, feeling hope.

       Hope that this time, your cat would actually come back to you.

       You also allowed yourself to believe a man, because he wasn't just any man. He was Clark Kent, and that's why you trusted him when he assured you that Lucifer would be found, and kindly asked you not to go out looking for him at night.

       Clark wouldn't admit it to you at the time, but even for someone like him, it was incredibly difficult to find an animal as small and elusive as a cat in a city like Metropolis.

       But he always knew that teamwork went a long way, and that there was a group of other superheroes perfect for helping him.

       Back in your apartment, when the rain stopped, you set out your cat's food and left it by the window, just as you had been doing for the past few days.

       The television was playing a crime series that didn't interest you, but you kept your eyes on it anyway, trying not to stare out the window.

       You'd made dinner, but you'd devoured the pasta dish out of anxiety, not hunger, because you didn't have any.

       The hours passed slowly and torturously. At that point, you couldn't remember a single moment when your leg wasn't bouncing up and down and your fingernail wasn't scratching the armrest of the sofa.

       You wanted to go out, to find Lucifer on your own and try your luck, but Clark was right. Even though Metropolis wasn't nearly as dangerous as Gotham, it still had its own dangers.

       So you channeled your nerves into cooking. You made cookies. You'd had enough cookies for the day, but you knew you didn't have to eat them, so you baked as many as your kitchen's ingredients allowed.

       You were listening to pop songs, the kind where the singer never shuts up, to help you avoid overthinking and just sing along quietly.

       Then, a noise from outside stopped you just as you were taking the cookies off the tray.

       You practically threw it onto the counter next to the spatula and rushed into your living room.

       You gasped when you saw the balcony of the emergency stairs, and two figures you knew like the back of your hand.

       There he was: Superman, in red and blue, with a little dirt on his face and a small smile as he gently placed your cat on the window sill, right where his food bowl was.

      And there was your kitten.

       Superman's smile grew enough to crinkle his eyes when he noticed you, but even so, you could see the shyness in him. And it was so familiar it made your chest swell with affection.

       But before you could even try to remember who else had made you feel that way, he simply raised his hand, waved goodbye, and flew away.

       You were stunned for a few seconds before you heard Lucifer's chewing grow louder, and you didn't hesitate to run to him with a smile and watery eyes.

       "My baby," you whispered with tenderness and a joy that you couldn't describe in words upon finally seeing your kitten. "I missed you so much." you picked him up and separated him from his food for the first time without any guilt.

You placed several kisses on his head while repeating "I love you" over and over again. The cat snuggled up to you as always, and you leaned closer to him, sniffing. "Don't ever do that to me again. That was stupid. What's wrong with you? You scared me so much." You pulled away slightly to look at him, already prepared to lecture him, until you saw a strange piece of paper stuck between his neck and his blue collar.

       You held Lucifer steady with one hand as you took the paper and unfolded it.

"The Justice Gang (temporary name) also helped save Lucifer.

If it happens again, don't put yourself at risk. You can always ask me for help :)

- Superman."

       You hugged your cat tighter as you put the paper back in your pants pocket with a smile. Lucifer finally had enough of all the affection, and you left him to eat again.

       "I had to ask the same superheroes who saved the city from being cut in half to find you. You're grounded, Lucifer." You pointed your finger at him, speaking firmly, causing the cat to look at you for about two seconds before going back to eating.

       You sighed, moving closer to the window and and stuck your head out a little, hoping to catch a glimpse of your hero flying by, but you saw nothing but a beautiful sky full of stars.

       "Thank you, Superman..." you whispered, petting your Lucifer and smiling into space, unsure if anyone would hear you. You just needed to say it.

       And he heard you, of course he did.

       That night, you slept with your cat on your pillow again, and for the first time in a week, you truly rested.

ꫂ❁

The next day, Clark arrived fifteen minutes early. So did you.

       You'd both been on each other's minds that day, much more than usual.

       He had just finished giving directions to an intern downstairs when he saw you walk in, wearing a radiant smile that made his heart swell.

       Your eyes landed on him, and your smile widened. He forced himself to say goodbye to the intern, though his voice was shaky and he was suddenly out of breath. You were glad to see him.

       You ran—really ran—toward him, not just smiling, but laughing. You had his umbrella and blazer in your hands, your purse hanging from your shoulder, but none of it mattered when you grabbed his wrist and let out the most excited "Come!" he'd ever heard.

       He was never happier to follow someone.

       You quickly led him to a slightly more secluded spot on the ground floor: the hallway leading to the storage rooms and basements. Anyone paying attention might still see you, but at least you wouldn't be in plain view.

       And before he could make a sound, you launched yourself at him with a force that should have knocked you both off your feet.

       But Clark didn't flinch even a bit. This time, he immediately wrapped you in his strong arms as you threw yours around his neck.

       "Thank you, thank you, thank you! Clark, thank you!" you exclaimed, your eyes closed as hard as your heart was beating, because thanking him through a message did not come close to showing your true feelings. The happiness in your voice lit up his soul and he couldn't help the silly smile that formed on his lips.

       It almost hurt to pull away from him, but you needed to see him. So you leaned back just a little, your hands resting on his biceps, silently lamenting that you couldn't see them without those elegant shirts and blazers.

How was he so strong?

       His hands rested above your waist, not wanting to overstep, but not letting go either, because you hadn't. And that alone made his brain short-circuit.

       He was completely stunned when your eyes finally fell on his. You took in his cheeks, now tinged with red, his slightly parted lips, and the furrow in his brow, like he couldn't believe he had you in his arms like that.

       You forced yourself to speak, before you gave in to the urge to throw your arms around his neck again and kiss him until you both lost your minds.

       "You have no idea all the crazy things I've done. I put his litter box outside because someone said he'd come back if he could smell it. Left his food on the window sill. Looked through every trash can of the streets. I talked to every cat I came across and asked them to look for him because an old lady told me to and..." You took a deep breath, thinking of how much you'd missed your cat, then forced yourself to stop and look at him.

       Big mistake. Your knees faltered for a second at the sight of his affectionate smile, the kind that made his eyes crinkle, while his grip on you waist tightened ever so slightly.

       "I think they're the cutest things I've ever heard anyone do."

       And it was as if the world around you slowly faded away, just to appreciate this one moment between the two of you.

       After seconds of silence and staring at each other as if you'd designed summers at the beach and he'd designed winters in front of the fireplace, the only thing that came out of your mouth was your slightly high-pitched voice saying, "I brought you cookies."

       His eyebrows lifted and his eyes lit up, as if you'd just offered him the whole world instead of just some homemade cookies.

       Though he forced himself to find the willpower to let go of you, that his hands now hanging at his sides, felt strangely out of place, like once they'd been where they belonged they had no longer a purpose.

       First, you handed him his blazer and umbrella, which he took with a soft "thank you" and that familiar kind smile of his.

       Then you held out a small—well, small for him—red container with a clear lid that revealed the neatly stacked cookies inside.

       He took them gently, his eyes flicking up to yours with a mix of surprise and tenderness.

       "You didn't have to, really," he said with a shy smile, his voice low. "Thank you. I really appreciate it."

       You forced yourself not to be inhibited by his sweet attitude and continued. "I wanted to get something for Superman and the... Justice Gang too, but it was like leaving cookies and milk for Santa, so... If you ever see them, tell them that when I'm not at work, I can make decent desserts," you shrugged, and you both giggled.

       "I'll see what I can do," he assured you, amused, still staring at the cookies in his hands as if they were the eighth wonder of the world.

       "I'm no expert baker, but... I needed to thank you with more than a hug," you sighed. "And even then, cookies don't seem enough."

       Clark shook his head, looking into your eyes with a reassuring smile. His gaze suddenly changed, scanning your face as if trying to read something in your expression, and you felt your cheeks warm.

       He opened his mouth slightly, but before he said anything, he took a deep breath, looking for courage.

       His smile faltered a little nervously, as he looked away for a moment before returning his gaze to you and finally spoke.

       "So what about a date?" His voice came out barely above a whisper, filled with shyness and longing.

       But your silence didn't help, and this time he kept talking. "Only if you want to... I mean, anything: dinner, breakfast, lunch, coffee, tea... Or nothing, obviously you don't have to..." he stammered, his face burning all the way to his ears.

       And now you interrupted him.  You had no idea, you couldn't imagine how long I'd waited for this.

       "When?" you asked with a bright smile.

       And Clark Kent had never been more grateful to an animal.

       But don't tell Krypto.

He must find a tell in your expression, going quiet and smiley. “What?” he asks. 

“You don’t have to answer.” 

“I doubt I’ll mind. I’d tell you anything.” 

You let your thumb stray toward the inside of his thigh. Feel the muscles there twitching. “I know I’m not your first girlfriend, but you told me you aren’t… totally experienced.”

“Right. What, do you want to know what I meant?” he asks. 

You know Clark’s fucked girls. Has gone down on girls, just not many. Clark has fucked and gone down on you, and he did it beautifully, but he’s never let you blow him: you’ve never asked. And it isn’t because you don’t want to, only, Clark seems to have a want to do things in his order and you’d been happy to follow his lead this whole time. 

“Has anyone ever gone down on you?” you ask quietly. 

Clark goes slightly stiff, despite best intentions. “No,” he answers, scratching at the nape of your neck. “No one’s ever gone down on me.” 

“You don’t want to try?” 

“No one’s ever offered, and I guess I’ve never wanted to ask.”

“How come?” you ask, to gauge where he is with it. 

“It’s different, to ask. Girls– women are expected to do certain things, but I’ve never expected anything of you. I still don’t. I figure if you want to, you’ll ask me, and if you don’t want to, it’ll never hurt anyone that you don’t.” 

He’s so, so sweet. The thought of him being too shy or too unwilling to be that guy makes you want to do it more. There is an expectation in contemporary culture, but it doesn’t mean the act itself between you and Clark has to have that connotation. 

“Can I blow you?” 

Clark huffs a quiet laugh. “You don’t have to, honey.” 

“Please?” 

Clark can’t hide the heat of his skin under your hands, but he’s putting up a convincing front otherwise. His hair has fallen into his eyes again, sweet knocked curls kissing a pale forehead. “I don’t wanna hurt you,” he says.

“It doesn’t have to hurt anyone,” you say. You’ve both fallen into the quiet voices you use before you fuck, and he’s wearing an expression you’d find mirrored if you could see your own face, like he’s waiting for the next move, and then the next. “Okay? It’s not rough. Not unless you want it that way.” 

“Uh– I–” And while you’d like to say there’s something in him turned on at the notion, you genuinely believe that Clark Kent is astonished at the idea of hurting you on purpose. 

“You can tell me exactly what to do, or I could,” —you let your hand rest at his belt buckle— “do what I think you’d like. I can make you feel good, Clark.” 

Clark’s eyes fill with knowing. You’re seducing him and he’s being pulled in, but going willingly doesn’t mean he’s unaware. “Is that what you want? You wanna make me feel good?” he asks, teasing and testing. 

“Will you return the favour?” 

“I can lay you out right here,” he promises simply. Which is why getting on your knees in front of him is easy work. The eagerness on his face turns to worry, “Hey, you don’t have to kneel down there, we can move.” 

“It’s easier like this. Can see everything.” 

“Oh.” His mouth tightens.

“Not so easy, being seen up close,” you murmur. “But I know you’re pretty, Clark.” 

He’s hardening in his jeans. You readjust your position and use your weight to spread his thighs some, which helps to send a little more blood to his cock. You watch the fabric tighten a touch, watch Clark’s cheek dimple as he bites the inside of his mouth. 

“You okay?” you ask. 

“Hey,” he says, taking your elbows into his hands, “I’m fine, just trying to act like a gentleman.” 

Straightforward when he isn’t telling the flimsiest lies ever. You rally at his eagerness, holding his arms in tandem, fingers spread over curved biceps. 

“You really are something,” you mumble, letting your fingers trail down his arms. 

“Should I– can I take my belt off?” 

“Yeah, honey, open it up. Or I can?” 

He nods tightly. 

You slip the leather of his belt from the buckle, heat pooling in your abdomen at the clink it makes, and the quiet shush as you free it from a belt loop on either side. Your fingers are steady as you unbutton him, as you take the zipper between your fingers and pull it down. His legs widen to let you in, and you slide into the space as well as you can. His thighs are muscled, solid around you, squeezing you gently as you push his shirt up his stomach. 

“Lay back a li’l,” you murmur. 

Clark lays back. 

The erotica of his open jeans and his trimmed, dark tummy hair makes your eyes warm. Standing, you could rap your knuckles against his waist and hear it like stone, but there’s a new softness to his stomach when he slouches. 

You work your hand up to his bulge. 

“Are we done?” Clark asks, tipping his head back with a groan. There’s redness climbing his neck. “Fuck, let’s– let me take you to bed.” 

He’s mostly kidding. Careful, you slip your hand up his cock and back down again, marvelling the rigidity of it already, saliva pooling right behind your teeth. “Can I move these outta the way?” 

“Honey, don’t,” he says. Which means Honey, don’t tease.

“Baby,” you say, he’d felt it coming, but he still drags his head up to stare at you like you’re a dream, “do you want this?”

“Yes,” he says. 

“Can I kiss you?” 

He’s not so pale in the face now. “Yeah,” he says, “please.” 

You take the length of his cock into a tentative hand and lean downwards. Clark makes a noise before you’ve so much as breathed on it, the red head of his cock dry but so full of blood it looks bruised as your fingers close at the shaft. You look up at him, and you feel his weight in your hand, angling yourself down to touch his cock to your cheek. Then you turn your face to brush it over your lips, and any cool Clark held swiftly dissipates. 

It’s slow to begin with, just kissing a mouthing at the length of his cock, feeling it twitch on your tongue, the heat of his blood in your palm as you drag it up and down. With enough kissing the skin is slick, and stripping it makes a sound that’s almost as lewd as his shudder when you take the head against your tongue for the first time. He smells so fucking good, he smells clean, and he smells like his skin and that sweat scent before it has time to sour, like he’s overheating under your hands, and he smells like precum as it begins to dribble from his slit. You press your nose to his cock, drinking up the gasp he makes, his thighs tensing under your touch. And it’s perfect, but he needs to relax.

“Baby, take your pants off,” you say, drawing back from his cock, spit wet on your bottom lip. 

“What?” 

“I can’t kiss all of you–”

“I don’t think–”

“Clark, I’m not going to break your trust, baby,” you say, giggling lightly, not gonna kiss anywhere he doesn’t what, “just– just get undressed. I can– I can be naked, too.” 

He’s better convinced. Clark shimmies his jeans off, then his shirt when you laugh. You strip out of your shirt and reach back for your bra, but Clark clasps your wrist and insists that the jeans be the first thing to go. 

“Idiot,” you murmur without heat, standing off your achy knees to unbutton your jeans. You roll them down your hips. 

Clark’s once over isn’t half as salacious as it could be. “Beautiful,” he says. 

“Thank you. You like the set?” you ask, turning to the side to show him your blue underwear. The panties have see-through lace squares at the sides and the bra’s slightly too tight at the band, but his gaze doesn’t linger anyplace. He finds your face. 

His eyes flicker to your panties and then back again. “Beautiful,” he says again. “Come and sit up here with me, sweet girl. Can’t do that to your knees anymore.” 

“It’s easier–”

“I can move, but you can’t sit down there anymore.” 

You love when Clark uses his voice like that. It’s like it’s not him anymore. It’s not, totally. Threads of his other half wrap you up, have you crawling onto the couch next to him to set yourself down across his thighs, left arm and shoulder leaning on his legs, right arm guiding the head of his cock back into your mouth. 

“Guide my head,” you murmur around him. 

He gives his sharpest pant yet. “What?”

You grab his hand and press it to your neck. “Move me onto it.” 

“I don’t want to choke you.” 

“Then be gentle,” you advise softly. “I won’t let you choke me, babe, I just need help finding a rhythm.” 

For some reason, that’s what gets him most. Clark dissolves back into the cushions with his hand grasping your neck, guiding your head as you take his cock into your mouth. It’s all hot and humid and his crotch is quickly wetted, spit under your nose and on your chin, eyes misty as he brushes the back of your mouth with his cock. You refuse to choke and scare him off, so whenever he guides you down too close, you pull away. 

You hold the swell of him rather sweetly, rubbing a thumb over them each time you pull off his cock. He’s eager to fuck against your warm tongue, just a little too much, and you’re staring up at him with your mouth full and your nose wet when his eyes go silver. 

“That’s perfect,” he says, his pelvis flexing, “just like that– just– you’re perfect, I swear–”

“Love you,” you say, sniffing the heat that’s gathered in your nose away gently. 

“I love you.” He grabs your cheek in his hand. “I love you more, honey, you look insane like this, I didn’t realise…” 

“This is why people like it so much.” 

He adores the hint of shyness he hears in your voice, you can see it in his smile. You can almost see his teeth. But behind his smile there’s a need there, something anxious, so you lean your face against his hip and begin pumping his cock in a slick hand. “Let me make you cum,” you say softly. 

Clark doesn’t answer. He gives you this besotted leap-of-faith kiss pressed to top of your head and nudges your mouth back toward his cock. “Kiss, please,” he begs. 

You press tens of little kisses into his cock, letting precum bead up and drip onto the tip of your tongue. 

“Clark,” you say, licking the salt from your lips as his breath starts to stagger, “you can cum, honey, do you want to? You can cum in my mouth.” 

He shakes his head vehemently and covers your hand where it’d been pumping his cock. For a second, things are stopped, but then he drops his head back against the cushions and uses your hand under his to jerk his full length, sticky heat pressed into each finger, the pressure of each strip like a lick until he’s suddenly over the edge. He brings your hand up and tugs at the tip of his cock, cum dripping down your knuckles in fat rivulets. 

You give an experimental pull.

“Fucking–” He moans your name like an afterthought. “Ah, baby, baby–”

“Sorry,” you say. 

Clark catches his breath for so long you worry you’ve permanently maimed him. He’s still holding your sticky hand to his cock, letting it drip down his front and his hip the longer he leaves it alone, but who are you to judge? You force him to free your hand in search of a discarded t-shirt. 

When you’ve managed to clean off your hands and Clark’s abdomen, he lifts his head from the couch to deliver a suspicious glare. “What the hell, babe?” 

You startle. “What?” 

“How’m I ever supposed to get off by myself now? I think you just ruined me forever.” 

“I’m sure you’ll be okay. Idiot.” 

He wipes his hands again and before he takes your face into both hands. “Kiss, okay?” he asks, pulling you forward. 

“Mm,” you affirm against his lips. A kiss is sorely needed. 

It’s an unashamed kiss that spans a half-second too long, like he’s forgotten you need to breathe to survive, but he says sorry with a chaste peck pressed to the very corner of your eye and one of his great groaning sighs as he gets an arm around you and manhandles you into his lap. 

“Watch your dick, baby,” you mumble, ready for the quiet, dizzy afterparty that comes whenever you both fuck. 

Clark just laughs under his breath. “It’ll be fine. Now let me see these,” he says, tipping you back enough to bring his free hand to your thighs. His thumb brushes the bump of your cunt. “I don’t think you can take these off. That’s, like, not even federal at that point. It’s international.” 

“Crime to undress me?” you ask, not bothering to click into the conversation fully. Clark’s barely any better, all mumbly and sluggish as he brushes a hair off of your cheek.

“Mm, no, I don’t think so. That wouldn’t bode well for me, would it, beautiful?” 

You wrap your arms around his neck to nuzzle under his jaw. 

And Clark? He lets his head fall back again, sighing with the same dizzying pleasure he’d shown with his cock pressed to the roof of your mouth, as though he finds your affection just as heavenly.

“I owe you a debt,” he says to the ceiling. 

You kiss his Adam’s apple, unhurried. As far as you’re concerned, he’s paid it forward greatly, 

The photos of him online don’t do him justice. 

“It’s not bad. I know it hurts, but,” —his hand finds your shoulder, squeezes lightly— “it’s because it’s so high up, alright? They always bleed more. It doesn’t mean this is anything to worry about beyond fixing you up and getting you some pain relief.” 

“You– you’re real help.” 

He holds your gaze. “Yeah?” 

You wonder if he can feel the heat of your blush. It’s all over. He’s lucky your head wound doesn’t start spurting. “Yeah– yeah, I– Superman.” 

His smile is everything. “What?” he asks patiently. 

“I’m a big fan of– of yours.” 

“You are?” 

“You’re so brave,” you breathe out in a rush, though it hurts your head. “So brave. And– and…” 

“Sorry,” he murmurs, putting a little more pressure on your temple. “Thank you for being a fan. All I want is to keep everyone safe.” 

“You’re so gentle with everyone, even the aliens, and– you’re pretty…” 

“Pretty?” he asks, pure surprise in his voice, his hand falling off of your arm. 

You wince. “Yeah. Yes. Handsome. Sorry, you must get told that so much.” 

“It’s okay. I won’t hold you to anything you say. You’re injured, after all.” 

His teasing tone pretty much flies over your head. “No, I’m not lying. I mean it. You’re really lovely, and what you do, it makes you lovelier, it does–” You nearly choke on your enthusiasm. He has to know.

“Don’t get wound up, I’m sorry. I believe you. Let’s try to stay calm.” 

Your head is aching in a new way, now. Less the sting of a wide cut, more beating, like a whirl in your own brain twisting and shaking, dizziness alive behind your eyes and threatening to knock you over. You clutch at Superman’s arm and he knows what you need, slipping his free arm behind your back before you can collapse. 

“I don’t usually get crushes on people,” you inform him. “But it was hard not to get one with you. You’re even nicer than I thought you’d be.” 

“It’s easy to be nice to you. Easy as breathing.” 

Superman hugs you. You swear he does. But when the concussion begins to clear up and your confusion wanes in a hospital bed outside of the battle zone, you realise that he was holding you upright. Superman doesn’t know you, he never will, and you’re okay with it in the grand scheme of things. If you had to meet him, you’re glad it was while he was keeping you safe. He really is a good guy. 

—

A week later, Clark Kent is waiting for you at the doors to the Daily Planet. 

“Are you sure you don’t need more rest?” he asks, forcibly removing your handbag from your shoulder to carry himself.

“I’m sure.”

“It’s okay if you need more time to recover. You’re still wearing a dressing.” 

“It’s a bandaid, Clark, and it’s to hide the scar for now, it’s–”

“It’s still a wound.” 

“It’s fine! You saw it, you know it’s fine.” 

Your overbearing best friend had surprise-visited you the day after your injury despite a text to tell him to stay home. You’re fine. It was a cut and the mildest concussion you could’ve had. You didn’t throw up, or collapse, you’d simply gotten confused and bled all over Metropolis’ finest super hero until his hands were more red than white.

“It looked awful, it still does.” 

“It looks fine. Even the nurse said it was a small cut, in an unfortunate place.”

“Very unfortunate.” 

You follow him to the elevator bank with a frown. “Clark, you don’t have to sulk.” 

“I’m not sulking! I just don’t see what’s wrong with staying in bed for now.” 

“I have stuff to do, babe. I have to work. I have to move forward, it barely hurts anymore.” 

He likes being called babe, simpering accordingly. “Well, you’re sitting down all day. Doctor’s orders.” 

“Show me your oath and I’ll consider it.” 

“Please?” 

He looks like he could cry. Not that he will, but like he could if you keep saying no to him. And despite all your grievances with being treated like you’re fragile now, you decide to take it easy, if only to give Clark the peace of mind. “Okay, sure. You can wait on me all day.” 

“Yes. Thank you.” 

Clark’s your best friend because —no matter how much it might confuse you— he seems to really love you, maybe from the moment he met you. You started at the Daily Planet and he took to you like a duck takes to water. Everything you said made him laugh, every recipe you wrote was one he had to try. And you figured it was something boys tend to do, right? Pretend you‘re interesting until they get what they want from you, but Clark’s never asked for anything else, loving you wholly and expecting nothing in return. 

You let him swing an arm around your shoulders, a mirror of himself those few nights ago where he’d come shaky and sorry to see you. He apologised for not being there when you got hurt, as if he could’ve stopped it. 

“I’m sick of working already,” you say. 

“Then let’s go home.” 

“Clark. I’m being conversational.” 

“Don’t tease me,” he pleads, sounding all sudden and whiney. You squirm out of his arms to poke his side. Gets more solid by the day. Idiot boy. 

“Have you been working out?” 

“Can you stop?” 

“Can I stop? You’re a nightmare.”

Clark threatens to superglue you to your deskchair, but he titters around you hopelessly all day. 

— 

You’re laying on the gravel roof of your apartment on top of a sun lounger, trying to decide if getting some sun is worth all the noise. Beeping, birds, cars, doors, the wind, this high up and occasionally curving through buildings to kiss your skin —noise, noise, noise. Your phone is ringing while you ignore it, desperate to get through the last chapter of your book without interruption. You have thus far been foiled, and figured nobody’d be able to find you up here. 

The quick, awful zip of a high impact sounds somewhere close. You nearly topple from your lounger, a hand pressed to your chest, your heart racing near painfully at the surprise. You whip your head to the horizon looking for smoke, but there’s nothing. For a few minutes, you can’t hear anything at all. 

The shape of him descends before your mind can catch up. Then, he’s there in one piece. A touchable dream, Carol Ann Duffy at work and torturing you in passing. You’ve seen a ton of photos of him, hundreds, videos of girls recording to ask him sweet questions, and you’ve never seen him smile so shyly. You shiver violently down your arms, but Superman isn’t here to hurt you. 

“I’ve been looking for you.” 

“You were?” you ask.

“I wanted to make sure you were doing okay.” 

You sit up properly. The book in your lap makes a crunching noise that you happily ignore. “I’m fine. I’m fine, did you– You’re here to see if I’m okay?” 

His smile strengthens. “Is that okay?” 

You stammer, “Of course it’s okay!” A flush rises from your chest to your cheeks as he stays there. He’s not leaving until you answer. Holy fuck. “I’m great, Superman. All healed up.” 

“Are you sure? You still have–” He gestures to your bandaid. 

“It’s to keep it clean in the daytime. I take it off before bed.” 

“Does it hurt?” 

“No, of course not.” 

“Why of course not?” 

Your heart makes a funny pulse. Handsome isn’t the right word for him. There’s something special about it, otherworldly, literally, the cut of his jaw somehow sharp and soft at once, his pert nose, his eyes gone light in the sunshine and framed by dark lashes that beg to be touched. You imagine running a fingertip along them, gently brushing them up for no reason at all, and he narrows his gaze at you in your silence. The shorts you’re wearing have you worrying you’re underdressed in his eyes. They’re pajamas, pink with black polka dots and edgings. You’d had the forethought to wear a short-sleeve rather than a vest lest one of your neighbours find themselves up here with the same quiet idea. Superman’s fully clothed in comparison. 

His boots look formidable next to your puppy dog socks. 

“It doesn’t hurt,” you promise, half-lying and uncaring. Superman saved you. He’s perfect, so your head doesn’t hurt. 

“You seem a little flustered, is all.” 

“Oh. Oh, well, it’s hot out, and I’m not like, super used to being in your company. Or any company, um, like yours.” 

“You’ve never met a metahuman?” 

“No, never.” 

“We’re just like everybody else.” 

You laugh. 

“No, really,” he says, idling toward you, red boots treading the gravel down flat. “I’m just like you, you don’t have to be nervous.” 

“Sorry.” 

“Now what do you have to be sorry for?” 

You laugh again, a giggle you’d never admit to. He’s strangely intimidating; a presence, but not an imposing one.

“What are you reading?” he asks, nodding to your lap. 

“Oh, uh. Uh, it’s called The Ocean?” You straighten up the book to show him the cover. “It’s good, uh, the main character is a young boy who wants to find his father, I think it’s supposed to be a take on The Odyssey,” 

“Why is he looking for his father?” 

“He’s missing after a terrible war. It’s one of those ones that hurts the entire time but the ending has wrapped it up so nicely, it was worth it.”

“Maybe I’ll read it, too. You look like someone who has great taste.” 

“You can borrow my copy.” 

Superman’s gaze narrows again. “You’re finished?” 

“Yeah, I finished it before you got here.” 

He waits in the quiet. You’re sure he’s going to call you out for your lie. It's not as though a Kryptonian truth-radar would be outside of the realm of possibility. 

Superman finally smiles. “I promise to bring it back,” he says simply. 

“Sure. Well, take your time.” 

—

How long can it possibly take a superhero to read one book?

You shouldn't be thinking about it again. Poor Clark is sitting in the corner of the couch with your feet stuck under his thighs, telling you about the grocery store widow who asks him for help to take her groceries out to her car whenever she sees him. She’d spotted him at the produce section today and dibsed him, and Clark doesn’t mind (though she leaves her car at the back of the parking lot no matter the weather). In fact, Clark doesn’t bring it up to complain. He’s sympathising with her, how lonely she must be. 

You try to shake Superman from your head while Clark is talking, but the thoughts of him won’t budge. 

You’d made a fool of yourself on the roof. Superman had taken your book to be polite. He probably won’t come back. 

“Hey.” 

You lift your head. 

Clark’s looking at you. Big blue eyes in a classic face, the line of his glasses dark and heavy against his brow. They trace your expression, searching for the misery you’ve failed to hide, until he finds it in the creases of your eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” he asks. His voice is weak with worry. 

“Nothing.”

“It’s something.”

“It’s really not.” 

“It definitely is. You can tell me about anything, you know. Or you don’t have to tell me, but I’ll be here for you no matter what. Some food for thought.” 

“Food for thought. Eat this, Kent,” you say, jabbing him at the top of the thigh with your heel. 

Clark grabs your foot. “Come on. I know something’s wrong, and I don’t understand why you wouldn’t tell me, but…” He lets your foot smack down into the top of his thigh to grab his tea instead.

“Isn’t that cold?” you ask. 

“It’s tepid,” he allows after a sip.

You laugh, so he laughs. It’s a lovely sound.

“Again. Again, you don’t have to tell me what’s wrong, but I’d listen if you wanted me to.”

“Don’t try and make out like you’re not keeping secrets.” 

Clark goes slack-jawed. “Sorry?” 

“You don’t tell me everything. I know exactly where you disappear to all the time.” 

“You do?” 

You climb up on your knees and settle in front of him. You’re wearing those pink polka dot shorts like you were on the roof with Superman, in hopes they’ll summon him to you like a talisman. Clark presses his lips together, watching you closely as you take his face into your hands. 

“You’re dating Lois Lane,” you say. 

His fingers dust your elbow. “What?” 

“You’re sweet on her, aren’t you? Plus, you’re busy all the time. You’ve cancelled movie night three times this month, did you know?” 

“I’m sorry–”

“I’m not. I’m happy for you.” 

Clark shakes his head. “But Lois and I… I mean, not for months. We were almost something, I think, but no. Not for a while.” 

You let your hands fall off of his cheeks. “Oh. Sorry, Clark.” 

“Don’t be. I should’ve told you, but it was new and then it was over.” 

“You should’ve told me,” you agree, “but I sort of get why you didn’t. I’m your girl best friend. That’s a thing.”

“You’re my best friend,” he promises, no ‘girl’ prefix necessary. “That’s not why it ended, Lois isn’t like that. It was… we disagreed on so many things. Looking back, I think she was right about most of it.”

“Well, she’s a girl.”

“That she is. You’re all the same, aren’t you? All dazzling.” 

He says it with an earnestness that reminds you of the other half of your friendship-equation. Clark’s your best friend because he loves your work and your jokes and your company, and you’re his best friend because he’s good as gold, inside out, just awfully lovable.

“You’re ’dazzling’ too,” you say. “You are.”

Clark offers you his mug of tea. You take a sip for something to do. 

“Not that cold,” you murmur. 

“I never realised you were such a liar.” 

“I don’t really lie to you, Clark.” 

He leans up to kiss your head, chaste against your purpling scar. “I know.”

—

“So, this book–”

You jump hard enough to send your groceries five different ways, oranges and kiwis for Clark flying up in the air. They never hit the ground —Superman catches them in two hands. 

Your loaf of bread lays cradled in his arm like a baby. 

“Fuck,” you complain. 

“I’m sorry.” Superman laughs at you. Laughs. “Sorry. But this book, is there a sequel?” 

“What?” you ask. Superman tips your groceries into your waiting paper bag. 

“I think I need a sequel.” He pulls The Ocean from a pocket and squeezes it unkindly. “I think it ruined my life.” 

“There’s no sequel. But–” don’t spoil the ending for me, you almost say. “Did you enjoy it at all?” 

“It was good. Do you read a lot, or are you down to the real heart-achers?” 

“Uh, I guess. Well, no, I used to read more, but I didn’t have time for a while ‘n now I’m usually too stirred up to settle down.” 

“You cook.” 

You blink. “You googled me?” 

“No, how could I? But I did see you on the third page of the Daily Planet. You have a little author’s window. You made pumpkin pie.”

“For Thanksgiving weekend, yeah. They only ever put me near the front or on the main page of the website if it’s the holidays.” 

“Is that true?” 

You shake your head. Not to say no, to say, let’s not talk about it. Silly insecurities are unnecessary conversation. At least, they are with him. 

Someone gasps from behind you. With one comes a few. The people near the crosswalk are starting to notice Superman’s tall figure standing in the sun, and though you’d wish he’d managed to hide in the shadows, you admit to yourself that there’s nowhere else he could ever be. He looks right in the sun. 

“Do you want to come with me?” he asks. 

Do you want to go with him? What the fuck does he think? said in your head ecstatically, not a lick of derision against him. Your excitement nearly blinds you. 

“Yeah,” you say, practically mumbling, wanting to come off nonchalant and instead sounding painfully shy, even to your own ears. 

“Yeah?” He offers an arm. “Come here.”

Your charmed little laugh makes him grin. “Alright?” he asks, locking an arm around you vice-tight. 

“Where are we–”

The air leaves your lungs in one fell swoop. There and gone, breathless and weightless in tandem.

The sky is more than blue when you’re in it. 

There’s nothing you can say about it. You’re terrified Superman is going to drop you, you can hardly breathe from the sudden speed at which you’d been taken up with him, but beyond that, there’s nothing to say. Wordless, endless sky. Blue, blue—

“It’s not as scary as you think, right?” he asks, his head angled down to yours. 

“I expected you to have to shout. I don’t know why.” 

“It’s windier in the air, but we’re close. I don’t need to yell.” 

“You’re lucky I didn’t get many groceries.” 

“You aren’t heavy.” 

You’re delighted. “This is a paper bag, you realise! I’m surprised it didn’t explode the second you got me up here!” 

“I’ll be careful. You’re precious cargo, and you deserve a better experience now than the one you got when you first came up here with me.”

“I don’t remember much of it.” 

“That’s okay. I do.” 

You should feel ridiculous, but strong arms hold you steady. Blue eyes like someone familiar pour over your face, as though they need to see you clearly, with all this perfect light. Your few groceries are squeezed between your chests as you squeeze him by the neck, desperate for the extra security, that he won’t simply let you go, and have you fall. 

“This is amazing,” you breathe, your eyes sweeping down to take in beautiful Metropolis beating away beneath you. The cars look like ants. The buildings cast shadows you’d never noticed from the ground. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s something.” 

You glance up to find him still staring at you. 

The girls on SuperClub would never, ever believe you if you tried to tell them what passes between you, then. (Not that you frequent SuperClub. Often. You see it while scrolling, and you tend to scroll past it with a fond eye roll.) They wouldn’t believe that Superman brings his hand to your head to touch your temple, as though your small scar is a personal affront to him. They wouldn’t believe the way that he pauses when you shudder. Wouldn’t believe how he lets his fingertip tumble down your cheek, or the soft incline of his head. The slightest kiss of his eyelashes meeting in the very corners of his eyes as they almost close. 

“Don’t feel guilty, please,” you say. 

“What?” He sounds as though he’s woken up from a nap. 

“About what happened. It wasn’t your fault that I got hurt. I wanted you to know that. You saved me.” 

Superman lets the distance between your two faces grow. “I…”

“If this is what that is, if you feel like you owe me something, well. You don’t… I don’t know you, Superman, but sometimes I think I do. It’s like… someone I've met before? I can see your bleeding heart.” You offer a brash smile. “But I’m just fine. You promised me that I would be, and I am.” 

“You’re not making this any easier for me.” 

You shift in his grasp, his hair tickling you and the little hairs on your arms. 

“I’m not a very easy person,” you say. 

Superman presses his nose to your cheek. 

“I think you’re giving me tachycardia,” you whisper.

He hears it. Doesn’t answer for a while, and when he does, it’s to neither of the things you said before.

“Let me take you somewhere new,” he says.

—

A day later, Clark asks if he can bring you dinner. Like and unlike himself, to care enough to ask but to forgo his usual boisterous lack of respect when it comes to taking care of you. Clark recognises that you like to be cared for aggressively. That you want someone to care so much that they won’t stop at the first hurdle. You want someone to take it at a sprint, and Clark’s a show off loser-dork who likes taking care of you. 

He meets you at the door, where you show him your small picnic basket kitted with two plates, knives, forks, and a hidden dessert. “Too hot in my apartment,” you say. 

“What’s wrong with the AC?” 

“It’s leaking.” 

“I’ll take a look at it. What happened to that fan I got you?” he asks, his fingers at your wrist trying to steal the basket. 

“Oh, Clark, can’t you just leave me alone?” you plead. 

He laughs like a kid. “I love when you do that.”

“What?” 

“I don’t know, is it sarcasm? I don’t think that’s apt. Whatever it is, when you act like that? You’re really convincing. It’s funny.”

“I can be funny.”

“I know, that’s what I’m saying. You’re really funny. Can you do it some more?”

“Now it’s not natural, though.” 

“Please?”

“Leave it alone, Clark. You’re such a beg.” 

He laughs again. It peters off to a quiet you’d like to live in. His takeout bag rustles, your picnic basket rattles, his fingers brushing the back of your arm as he follows you down the street to the wooded path. 

There’s a small park not far from your apartment that’s been divided into two halves. The playground for the neighbourhood kids, and the picnic tables made of strangely shaped wood. They’re all rounded. One table is shaped like an ‘S’. Another like a filled in ‘8’. 

You sit at the one furthest from the playground, coincidentally shaped like a ‘C’. “For Clark,” you say, pleased. 

“Adorable.” 

You set up your plates, dividing up the food squarely. Clark had the wherewithal to bring two cans of soda and a big bottle of water. He asks which one you want, cracking it open accordingly. “Gonna pour it into my mouth, too?” you tease. 

“Do you not want me to be nice to you?” 

And the night slips away. You eat your takeout at the picnic table and linger until your legs are numb. The grass around the park is damp, but you sit, and you shoot the breeze until the sun starts to go down. It must be hours out there together. 

Clark takes his jacket off and spreads it over your shoulders. “This is your only bad trait,” he says happily. “You never tell me when you’re cold.”

“I’m not that cold.”

“Sure you’re not. Look, come here,” —he pulls you bodily into his side, his voice turning silky as angora— “you act like you’re such a plague, like– I don’t know, like I wouldn’t wanna know that you’re cold.”

“I don’t act like that.” 

“You do. You could rely on me for more, you know? I want you to lean on me.” 

You lean on him.

Clark presses his nose to your temple, his glasses digging into your skin.

And you think, I know you. 

But you don’t know why. 

—

Clark can't believe this is happening again. 

He woke up this morning with a scary yet firm plan: he’s going to get himself together, pluck up what he has in the way of courage, and be honest with you about Superman. If only so he can stop lying to you. He should’ve told you months ago that he was Superman. Hell, he might’ve told you from the moment he met you, that’s how sure he was that he’d love you. As a friend —his best friend, half of his life. There’s this ease, like he’s known you for far longer than he truly has, like he could know you for the rest of his life. 

And lately. 

Oh, lately. Clark can’t get a handle on things. He hadn’t realised he was falling in love with you, isn’t even sure that’s the way to describe it; far from a sharp plummet downward into love, this has felt like a slow and steady ascent, but now suddenly he’s at the mountain top and the air is thin, and he’s looking for you, aching for relief, and you’re sitting in the snow with your book and your shy smile, cross-legged, just waiting for him to get there and open his cowardly mouth. 

Or that’s what he’d like to think. 

Fact of the matter is, Clark would like to kiss you. Hold your hand, have your head rest on his shoulder. He’d like to pull you into his lap and squeeze. Clark could die happy if he got just one shot at it, no matter the outcome. 

He knows he won’t lose you, but he’s worried you don’t want what he wants. He’s gotten so close to having you, he’s not sure he can take being any further apart than this. 

Clark takes the tramline to the rich part of the city with the best florist. There are buckets and buckets of flowers; orange tiger lilies and white orchids turned green in the sun; roses as big as his fist, unfurling; sweet peas kissing pinkest camellias all tangled up with baby’s breath. He chooses the sweet peas. They really are sweet, their hemmed edge petals curling in and nearly blue. They’re beautiful. He can see them in a glass on your nightstand by tonight if he’s lucky.

It’s on the walk to your apartment (tramline too busy to risk, lest your flowers get hurt) that the trouble begins. 

The light goes out. 

It doesn’t make logical sense. He’s outdoors. It’s the early morning, the sun should be shining for hours to come. 

He looks up and finds a singular dark rectangle over Earth. 

It blots out everything, disapears the clouds, turns the blue sweetpeas in his hand a tired shade of grey. 

Clark wonders if he should’ve told you how he felt when he had the chance. Then, he leaves his glasses, his jacket, and his sweetpeas in the hedgerow at the park with alphabet picnic tables and throws himself upwards into the sky.

—

What emerges from the spaceship (and it is a spaceship, made of an element humans aren’t want to touch) are creatures shaped like spinning asterisks, wisps of their angel-white bodies bending the shadows they’ve cast down onto Metropolis. It’s like smoke. 

The dark makes it hard to breathe. 

You sit huddled in your bedroom looking out through the window, despite a desperate urge to hide somewhere further inward. Sirens echo throughout otherwise quiet streets, discordant wailing that wavers for long, sharp minutes. There had been screaming and crying and the splintering sounds of glass. It’s not —not unseeable, out there, but anyone with poor vision will find themselves stranded.

You open your phone. Your theory is that the aliens have been able to dampen sound as well as sun, leaving the battlefield dangerously quiet. Clark’s not answering your texts because he never has his phone, but you’re sure he’s out there somewhere. He told you he was coming. The last message he sent this morning blinks at you from the bottom of your screen: Coming by soon if you’re not busy, do you want me to bring breakfast? 

You’d said, just some eggs please if you want eggs 

You’d said, hey, are you safe? What’s with the dark? 

You’d said, clark please text me back right now, I’m freaking out, do you need me to come get you? 

He won’t answer the phone. Outside, up in the sky where it’s darker still and the white shadows have begun to ripple, the occasional red beam of heat slices into whiteness, turning it to shadows again. There are two sets of red if you watch carefully. Green light flickers at the ground. 

And Clark Kent is out there all alone. 

You crawl to your shoes under the bed and put them on, pajamas and all. Clark’s blue hoodie lays on the back of your deskchair. You shrug it on. 

He’s gonna lose his entire mind if you do find him out there. Can friends ground you? Because Clark’s going to ground you. But you’d rather be grounded than all alone. 

—

Superman groans into the floor, his tongue coated in dust. 

He has far better vision than a person feasibly needs. He wore a pair of glasses once that are supposed to approximate what it’s like to have legal blindness, and he’d felt suddenly, achingly sorry for the human race. But then he’d found the glasses stand beside it with all their different prescriptions and shrugged it off. Humans are brilliant. He’s in awe of their persistence, their resilience, and their strength. He knows he can find it in himself to go on because they can, too. 

He has better vision, and still he finds himself batted away from the entities like a bothersome fruit fly. 

“Krypto?” he asks into the smog. 

His borrowed dog flies at him with impressive speed, pressing his snout straight into a bruise. 

“Ow!” 

Krypto snuffles and hits at his arms with both paws. 

“Krypto, stop! Jeez, stop. You’re such a pai– Ow! Get off.” 

Krypto nibbles his shoulder. 

Clark forces himself to sit up. At least he hasn’t killed the dog. Kara would probably eviscerate the planet country by country if something happened to her dog, not mentioning the aliens that started this whole thing. And he is good at bringing the suit when Clark needs it. 

He rubs at his eyes and drags himself to his feet, back aching, eyes like sand. Nothing is healing because he can’t feel the sun, but he’s not too hurt. He can take a bad landing. He can take twenty of them. 

“Krypto, stay.” 

Krypto tilts his white blurry head. 

“You’re not helping.” 

Arf! Clark rolls his shoulders and shoots back into the air. 

Krypto stays down, for now. 

Clark takes a lap through the air, searching for signs of life with his ears. The eery quiet is beginning to fill with catastrophe.

“Clark?” 

He stops dead in the sky. 

“Clark?” you call, ten miles below him, shouting all clipped and scared. “Clark Kent! Are you out here? If you can hear me, call back to me!”

He says your name.

“Clark? I’m here!” 

Clark looks up into melted-sugar shadows as they begin to curdle and makes a choice. Damn the aliens, they can have the sky, so long as Clark gets to keep you safe. 

He has to keep you safe. 

—

You’re watching a shadow plummet toward you when the sky opens up into shards of Technicolor. Concentrated around a single point of red and blue and moving so fast it turns puce.

—

There’s a scene in The Ocean where the main character realises his father has been dead before the beginning of the book. Dead for years. He goes searching for him because he’s scared to be alone, brave enough to realise it, and young enough to misunderstand the danger of the world. He treks sandbanks, ferries favour, turns in promises and follows the footsteps of a man long dead across the world. Clark told you once, privately, quietly, in a moment that immediately panicked him, that his parents had adopted him, and that his birth parents had left him with a letter after they both died.

What did it say? you’d asked. 

To be good. 

You find your copy of The Ocean cradled in familiar hands. You recognise its secondhand cover, the bends in the front where a previous owner had tented it for a long period of time. The spine is loose and lax with age. The pages are yellow with time. 

Clark is sleeping quietly in the plastic-wrapped chair beside your bed. He doesn’t have a bruise or cut. He doesn’t look anything like Superman had as he’d flung himself at you, two seconds too late, his body a shield against an explosion that lit your body with fire and colour alike. The whole world had been red, and then yellow, and suitably blue. There was pain. 

Not a darkness as people often say. Just hurting and now this. 

You take a scary breath. Hitching and pained, you search for comfort and find none of it. There’s a needle in the back of your hand secured with a teddy bear wrapping. The sheets have been drawn to your chin and choke you as you try to sit. 

After a moment of struggling, you sink back and try for another breath. Deep, aching breaths. You do it until your lungs burn, these awful, stringing breaths, eyes to the ceiling and fighting the spots of nothingness that cloud your vision. 

“Hey,” a soft voice says, softer hand pressed to the curve of your neck. “Oh, hey, sweet girl, hey… it’s okay. The pain won’t last, they gave you a little more morphine a few minutes ago, it’ll kick in.” 

“Uh–”

Clark makes a sound. “Oh.” 

You let your eyes slide to him. He’s checking his wrist where it’s resting on you. 

“I was sleeping for a long time, I… Honey, I’ll get a nurse.” 

“No,” you breathe. 

“Yeah, honey, I’ll get a nurse,” he repeats, stroking your neck with his thumb. His eyes are their usual calm blue, bearing down into your own with an emotion that’s somehow palpable and implacable. “It’s no good, you being in pain like this. I’ll come right back.” 

“Clark, don’t go,” you whine. 

It’s like the world has been placed heavy on your head. 

Clark offers you relief. “I won’t go if you don’t want me to. Tell me what’s hurting, and I’ll fix it.” 

You shake your head at him. Fuck, nothing hurts. It’s not pain you’re being smothered in. 

“Okay,” he murmurs.

For a while, you don’t talk. Clark stays stooped over you, too tall and careful anyhow to stay out of your light. He holds your cheek, rubbing at skin with his thumb until it’s tickled into numbness, your body begging you to move away from his touch and your brain knowing you can’t. You’ll never duck away from his fingertips ever again. 

Where he’d been unhurt, he isn’t unharried. His hair is in a complete disarray, curls in places pulled straight and greasy behind his ears. His face is pale. His eyes flicker obsessively between you and your monitor, as though he can decipher the information it displays. He must see something there that he trusts, sitting down again in the chair dragged quick and easy to the side of your bed. His hand stays at your face. He’s long. It’s simple work. 

“You read The Ocean,” you whisper. 

“I read all your annotations, too,” he tells you, turning his hand to run it down your cheek, his fingernails especially silky against the line of your jaw. 

You turn your face toward his touch. Your eyes flutter closed as he indulges your deepest fantasy. 

“I didn’t–” Oh, you can’t say it. You hadn’t meant to want him like this. You hadn’t known he was Superman, and isn’t that awful? Something cruel. Your best friend kept a worst secret. 

He doesn’t rush you. 

You’re ready to try again a few minutes later. His fingertips have started to draw a flower into your neck. 

“I’m embarrassed that Clark knows what I said to Superman,” you say plainly. 

“Superman didn’t tell Clark anything,” Clark says. His voice is light in contrast to your hesitancy. 

“But you know it all.” 

“I know you,” he agrees. 

“I’m really… sorry. I’m sorry, I–” You search for his touch and he immediately cups your cheek again. “Clark, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come out looking for you. I didn’t realise you could look after yourself and I made things worse.” 

“Do you even remember?” he asks. 

Mildly. You’d woken once before and found a less fixed Clark covered in blood above you. A part of you had understood that it was Clark, even without his glasses, and a different part knew it was Superman. Then things had blurred, half-replaced by a memory of his hand behind your back in the middle of a meadow halfway across the world, that beautiful quiet valley where the water had been ice and the grass emerald velveteen under your legs. 

In the dream, Superman (and this had been real until it wasn’t), turned to you, and said, with Clark’s dorky intonation, “That’s seriously beautiful, huh?”  

“You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“But–”

“You don’t. I won’t argue about it with you. You have no apologies to make, you did everything right and nothing wrong, and I lied to you, and I got you hurt, and…” He has the gall to pink in the cheeks, like you’ve taken the skin between your knuckles and pinched. “I wasn’t honest with you about my feelings. I almost kissed you as Superman, and that wasn’t fair.” 

“You really are… him?” you ask weakly. 

“Yeah, I am.” 

Clark sits up as a doctor opens your room’s door. 

“Everything okay?” she asks. When she sees you awake, she smiles broadly. “Hey, you’re up! Can we get you some dinner now?” 

“You skipped breakfast,” Clark tells you. 

“I was awake for breakfast?” 

“Barely. We had you on some pretty gnarly painkillers,” the doctor says. She adjusts her white coat. “I just wanted to check in with your nurses and your lovely partner here that you hadn’t thrown up again.” 

You flush. “I’m fine.” 

Clark simply rubs your chest like a wave of his hand against your heart. 

“I’m worried you haven’t gotten enough sustenance this past day, but we try not to hook you up with too many things,” the doctor explains, “much better for you to settle and then eat. And to drink some water!” 

“I don’t feel very hungry.” 

“The painkillers you’re on can make some people feel quite sick. But try your best, okay? I’ll come back after dinner to see what we can do about those broken fingers.” 

You follow your arm down to your hand. Your pinky and ring finger on the non-dominant hand have been splinted but not casted. 

“Oh.” 

The doctor takes her leave, abandoning Clark to your questions. 

“What’s wrong with me?” you ask. 

“You got concussed again. It made you sick, and your hand is very nearly broken, but they think it’s just your fingers from the look of your x-rays. And you have a long cut.” He puts his hand on your stomach gently. “Here. Almost as long as your arm, but it’s a surface cut. You landed on debris. I’m sorry, my– honey. Sorry.” 

You can’t fight the chills or your bewilderment. “What for?”

“I didn’t get to you fast enough.” 

“Clark.” Your mouth is dry. He’s pretty. Your head goes round and round and aching and then with a dash of clarity, the world snaps back into place. Your hospital room is empty and bright, with a vase filled to bursting with sweetpeas in pride of place on your nightstand. There are voices drifting in from the hallway, and Clark is handsome even as he tears himself apart. The silver lining his bottom lashes doesn’t go unnoticed. “I’m okay, babe.” 

He laughs wetly. 

“I’m fine,” you promise, quieter now. “How couldn’t I be? You’re so gentle.” 

Clark finds your hand, pulling it to his forehead, his body bending forward like a marionette on loosening strings. He shakes his head vehemently, his grip on your wrist tight but far from cruel. 

“You’re gentle,” you promise under your breath, “I told you that before, didn’t I? You’re kind, and brave, and– it’s not your fault I went looking for you.” 

“I should be comforting you. I should be helping you,” he whispers. 

“You won’t catch me crying on your shoulder twice, Superman.” 

His head flinches up, like he’s realising for the first time that you know who he is. 

Whatever he sees in your face helps him to settle down. He curls long, thick fingers around your hand. You can’t help noting how adversely tender they feel while he holds your hand. 

“What did you think of the book?” you ask finally. 

“I didn’t know you liked to read,” he says. 

You shrug. Let your head fall back into a thin pillow, wondering how you might go about getting a better one, and beginning to feel the effects of the painkillers they’d been talking about. “It’s not like it’s the most alarming secret, between us.” 

He lets out a wounded whine. “Why do you hate me?” he asks. 

“You’re due some hazing.” 

“Can’t you take pity on me?” he asks. 

You curl your fingers around his where they’d otherwise been limp. “I’m not really half as cool as I’m trying to act, Clark.” 

He sulks beautifully. “I think you’re lying to make me feel better.” 

Only a little. 

—

Being cool around Clark Kent lasts about as long as the morphine does. The reality is this: Clark Kent —best friend extraordinaire, sweetheart farm boy who’s vetted all your worst ideas, held your hair back in the smallest toilet in Metropolis bar history after a too-happy happy hour, knows all your holey socks and questionable medical queries— is Superman. 

And Superman? 

He’d been courting you. 

The word is antiquated and accurate. Superman had been cautiously courting you with his sparse visits, shy and brave at once, brash but remarkably put together. It is after you know the truth that you realise Clark had been not so secretly courting you simultaneously. 

“Is that why you were bringing me dinner and stuff?” you ask, lured into the conversation by accident, now deeply curious. 

“No. I did that stuff before I wanted you. It was hard to sort the feelings into boxes, like– platonically, I’ve loved you since you came into the office with your miserable laptop and– and romantically, I don’t know. I guess I didn’t realise until I tried to kiss you and you wouldn’t let me.” 

“Sorry?” 

“I tried to kiss you, and you thought it was a pity kiss.” 

You hold him by the shoulder. “That was real?” 

“Do you dream about it?” he asks knowingly. 

“It was really going to be a kiss?” 

He softens. Clark, big on your smaller couch, in his pajamas with his hair finally washed again and your hand in his lap, rests his shoulder into yours with a long-suffering sigh. “Best kiss of your life,” he promises. 

“Prove it.” 

“What?” 

It’s been four days since the hospital and Clark is horrifically chaste. “Do you not want to kiss me?” 

“You know I do.” 

“So kiss me.” 

He pinches your chin. “If you wanted a kiss, you could’ve just taken one,” he tells you, looking you straight in the eyes. 

“From Superman?” you ask with a little scoff. 

He moves his head from left to right. “From me,” he says. 

There has been so much to tell him. So little space to hide from him. Lines of books you’d underlined for him, lines for Superman, for both of them. The guilty way you’d watched Clark Kent take off his shirt at the public pool in summer heat and the loop of Superman under your thumb as you’d fallen asleep scrolling SuperClub. You’ve been more honest with him than you’ve dared to be previously. 

Clark has repaid you in kind. 

Did you know, he’d confessed, when you were still grody from the hospital and he’d demanded you let him stay, that night, that everything I’m good at is because of the sun? I can function without it. I can store up the energy in my cells and I don’t need much to stretch it far, but without the yellow sun, I’m just like you? 

How could I know that? you’d thought. Why are you telling me this? you’d asked instead.

I want you to know. 

Clark loves the sun, you realise now. He turns his face up to it often, soaking it in silently. He gets this look whenever he stops to take it in. Perfect contentment. Trust, that it will make him feel better. 

Clark tilts his chin against yours, nudging your face gently inward, giving you the shortest glimpse of that content stretched across a smile as it presses into yours.

You hyperventilate your way into an open-mouthed, gasping sort of thing, and find Clark a fiercer kisser than you could’ve imagined. All those daydreams about Superman saving you from another day copyediting your own messes, you’d never thought to picture the boy sitting at the desk across from you, how his hand might slide behind your neck like water. How he’d take the breath from your lips and offer his own in a shaky, wanting gasp. 

Superman, breathless under your touch. No one would ever believe you. 

“Did you want me to tell you how it ends?” 

You break away from him, panting, vaguely confused. “Sorry?” 

“The Ocean? You never finished it.”

“Oh. Maybe you can read it to me. You know, afterwards.” 

Clark grins. “After,” he promises, leaning down for another kiss. 

˚‧꒰ა ❤︎ ໒꒱‧˚

His lips curved. “Maybe.” He hesitated, then leaned forward, resting his forearms on his desk. His voice dropped to that low, warm rumble that made your skin tingle. “Can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” you replied.

He exhaled slowly, looking momentarily conflicted before speaking again. “I’ve been wondering what it would be like to really let go with you.”

The words hit you like a soft blow, heat curling in your stomach. “Let go?” you echoed.

His gaze didn’t waver. “You know I… hold back. All the time, with everything.”

Of course you knew. He was Superman — he had to hold back, or the world could crumble under his strength. But this — the way he was looking at you now — wasn’t about lifting cars or outrunning bullets. It was about you. “What exactly are you saying, Kent?”

His voice was huskier now. “I’m saying I’ve been curious about just how much stamina I really have. And, what it would be like to find out with you.”

The air between you seemed to hum. You forced yourself to speak even as your pulse quickened. “And you think I’d survive this little experiment?”

He smiled faintly, though it wasn’t entirely innocent. “I think you’d more than survive it.”

The ride back to your apartment was silent but thick with unspoken words. Clark’s hand brushed yours on the subway platform — an accidental graze that sent a jolt through you. By the time you reached your door, your heart was pounding like you’d run a marathon. You unlocked it, stepped inside, and Clark followed, closing the door behind him. He didn’t waste time — his hand came to your cheek, warm and steady, guiding you into a kiss that was soft at first but quickly deepened. His other hand slid to your waist, drawing you closer until you could feel the solid strength of him against you.

You broke away just long enough to whisper, “Clark…”

He pressed his forehead to yours. “I don’t want to scare you. But I need you to tell me if this is something you want.”

“I wouldn’t have let you in if I didn’t,” you murmured. That was all he needed. The next kiss was heat, then fire. You could feel his restraint — the same way you always could — but now it was fraying at the edges. His fingers threaded into your hair, his mouth trailing along your jaw to your throat. Your hands found his shoulders, solid as stone beneath the cotton of his shirt, and he smelled faintly of rain and clean air, as if he’d flown through a storm just to get to you.

“Still holding back?” you teased against his ear.

He chuckled low in his chest. “You have no idea.”

Your laugh caught in your throat as he lifted you effortlessly, your feet leaving the floor. You wrapped your legs around his waist instinctively, gripping the broad line of his back. “Clark—”

“Shh,” he murmured, kissing you again as he carried you toward the couch. When he set you down, his eyes searched yours. “I’ve imagined this, but I don’t think imagination does it justice.”

You touched his jaw. “Then stop imagining.”

From there, everything blurred into heat and sensation — mouth was insistent, his hands sure but careful, every brush of his fingertips sent sparks down your spine. He moved over you, but you never once felt overpowered — only cherished, as if he was savoring every second. Yet underneath it, there was something restless, something powerful, that famous Kryptonian stamina he was just barely letting leak through. You kissed until your lips ached, until breathing was secondary to the feel of him. His shirt hit the floor, revealing skin and muscle carved like something out of myth. You traced the lines of him with your fingers, marveling at the way he tensed under your touch.

His voice was a low growl now. “If I really let go…”

“Show me,” you whispered.

The look in his eyes shifted into something dangerous, but beautiful. He kissed you hard, hands gripping your hips, pulling you against him with a strength that made your head spin. You could feel it then — the difference. The way his body moved without the constant leash of control, the heat of him, the sheer endurance simmering beneath the surface. It was overwhelming, addictive.

Time stopped meaning anything. You didn’t know how long you stayed like that — tangled together, moving from couch to wall, from wall to bedroom. Every time you thought you’d reached the peak, he’d find a new way to make you shiver, to coax another breathless sound from you. Clark’s stamina wasn’t just physical — it was in the way he looked at you, as if there was nothing else in the world worth seeing, in the way he kept finding ways to touch you even when you thought you couldn’t take any more.

Hours seemed to pass in waves. You lost track of how many times you’d collapsed against him, breathless and laughing between kisses; you lost track of how many times he whispered your name like a prayer. The only constant was him, always there, always steady — but now, finally, unrestrained.

By the time the first streaks of dawn filtered through your curtains, you were sprawled in the sheets, head resting on his chest. Clark’s arm was around you, his thumb tracing idle circles against your skin. “You okay?” he murmured, voice still husky.

You laughed weakly. “I think I forgot how to walk.”

He chuckled, pressing a kiss to your hair. “Guess that answers my question.”

Tilting your head, you look up at him. “About stamina?”

That smile of his was slow and satisfied. “About whether I could let go with you.”

“And?” you asked softly.

“And…” he brushed your cheek with his fingers, “I’m never going back to holding back with you again.”

You woke to the faint golden light of morning spilling through the curtains, painting the walls in soft amber. The air was warm, the world still wrapped in that perfect quiet that only came before the city truly woke.

But, the best part wasn’t the sunshine, or the stillness.

It was him.

Clark was beside you, his broad frame stretched out along the length of your bed, one arm draped loosely across your waist. The weight of it was reassuring, protective — as if even in sleep, he was shielding you from the world. His breathing was slow and even, each exhale ruffling your hair ever so slightly. His skin was warm — impossibly so — and the heat radiating off him had kept you comfortably cocooned all night without even needing the blankets.

For a long, luxurious moment, you didn’t move. You just lay there, letting yourself sink into the comfort of it, the feel of him, the scent of him — that faint, clean, rain-kissed smell that you swore no cologne could imitate — the subtle weight of his hand where it rested at your hip, fingertips just grazing the bare skin above the sheets.

But, when you finally shifted, trying to stretch your legs… you immediately regretted it.

A dull, aching throb pulled at your muscles in a way that was both humiliating and far, far too telling. You froze, eyes closing in defeat. “Ow,” you whispered under your breath, wincing.

The sound was soft, but not soft enough.

Clark stirred instantly. His head turned toward you, lashes fluttering as those ridiculous blue eyes blinked open. They focused on you slowly, hazy with sleep but already warm. And then, the corners of his mouth lifted in the kind of slow, easy smile that could stop your heart.

“Morning,” he murmured, his voice low and still rough with sleep.

You tried to match his casual tone, but your voice came out a little too careful. “Morning.”

His arm tightened slightly around your waist, fingertips brushing your side in a lazy, unhurried stroke. “Sleep okay?”

You gave him a look. “You’re asking me that after last night?”

That smile of his deepened — a little too smug to be entirely innocent — though he made a valiant effort at keeping his expression neutral. “What? I’m just making sure you’re alright.”

You rolled onto your back, groaning dramatically and draping an arm over your face. “Clark Kent, I can’t move without thinking about you. My legs are still shaking.”

His grin widened in a way that told you he was not even pretending to hide his satisfaction anymore. “Guess we answered the stamina question, huh?”

You swatted weakly at his chest — though even at your strongest, you doubted it would have made much difference against someone like him. “Oh, you think you’re so funny.”

“I don’t think,” he said, leaning down to press a kiss to your temple. “I know.”

You lowered your arm enough to glare at him half-heartedly. “You’re insufferable.”

“And yet,” he teased, brushing his lips feather-light along the shell of your ear, “you don’t seem to mind.”

Your mouth twitched, the beginnings of a smile threatening to betray you. “If I’d known that ‘letting go’ meant you’d keep going until sunrise, I might’ve reconsidered.”

His brow quirked in mock offense. “Might’ve?”

“Might’ve,” you repeated stubbornly, even though your lips were already curling into a smile you couldn’t quite suppress.

He shifted onto his side, propping himself on one elbow so he could look down at you properly. The sight of him in the morning light was unfair — hair slightly mussed, eyes warm but glinting with mischief, the strong lines of his shoulders cutting against the golden glow. His other hand settled at your waist again, thumb tracing slow circles against your skin.

“So,” he drawled, “what you’re saying is, I should’ve gone longer.”

You stared at him in disbelief, a laugh bursting out of you. “Longer? Clark, if you’d gone any longer, I’d be a permanent part of this mattress.”

He chuckled low in his chest, clearly pleased with himself. “Noted.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And you,” he murmured, leaning in to press a kiss to the corner of your mouth, “are still blushing.”

“I am not,” you shot back instantly — which was a mistake, because you could feel your cheeks heating in direct betrayal.

“Sure you’re not,” he said with a soft, knowing laugh. “You were making those same faces last night.”

Your mouth dropped open in mock horror. “You did not just say that.”

“I did,” he confirmed, looking entirely unrepentant. “And you know what? I think I could make you make them again right now.”

You shoved lightly at his shoulder, laughing despite yourself. “No. Absolutely not. I’m calling a moratorium. A… cooldown period. My body can’t handle you twice in twelve hours.”

Clark tilted his head in faux thoughtfulness. “That sounds like a challenge.”

“It’s not a challenge,” you insisted quickly, though the way your voice cracked mid-laugh completely undermined your authority.

“Mhm,” he hummed, the sound rich and skeptical. He leaned in, lips ghosting along your jaw in the lightest, most maddeningly slow kiss. “Because I could swear I’m hearing ‘prove me wrong.’”

You groaned, a mix of embarrassment and reluctant temptation. “You’re ridiculous.”

“And you,” he murmured against your skin, “are very, very easy to read.”

You buried your face in the pillow to hide the smile threatening to break free. “Fine. But, if I can’t walk tomorrow, you’re carrying me to work.”

His hand smoothed slowly up your side, palm warm against your bare skin. “Deal. But only if we get to test just how far that stamina question goes.”

You lifted your head just enough to glare at him. “Clark Kent, I swear—”

But, he was already leaning down again, kissing you softly this time, without the teasing edge. The kind of kiss that stole your breath not because it was hungry, but because it was careful, reverent, like he was reminding you that last night wasn’t just about proving a point — it was about you.

When he pulled back, his thumb brushed lightly along your cheekbone, his expression softened but still carrying that telltale spark of trouble. “You really okay?”

You nodded, even though you still felt like every muscle in your legs had gone on strike. “Yeah. I’m… more than okay.”

“Good,” he said, settling back down beside you and tugging you gently into his chest. “Because I wasn’t kidding about testing my stamina again.”

You groaned into his shoulder, but your laughter betrayed you. “I hate you.”

“You don’t,” he said easily, his voice already dipping toward that low, lazy tone that told you he was perfectly comfortable staying here for as long as you’d let him.

And truthfully? You didn’t. Not even a little.

You just knew you were never going to live this morning down.

By the time you finally made it into the Daily Planet building, coffee in hand and your bag slung over one shoulder, regret was already crawling its way up your spine like an unwelcome chill. The bitter aroma of the coffee was a small comfort, but every step you took across the polished lobby floor reminded you sharply of the exact reason you’d hit the snooze button an extra twenty minutes this morning — and the infuriatingly smug Kryptonian who’d been the catalyst for your current state. The cool, glass doors slid open before you, revealing the familiar hustle of reporters and editors weaving through the morning chaos, and you took a deep breath, hoping to steel yourself for the day ahead.

The elevator doors dinged open, and you slipped inside, thankful for the brief moment of quiet as the metal walls reflected your tired expression back at you. You rested your forehead against the cool surface for a second, trying to block out the dull ache settling in your muscles. When the doors slid open, the bustle of the newsroom hit you full force. Phones rang, keyboards clicked, and the low murmur of conversations filled the air — all under the giant globe that had seen a hundred stories break over the decades.

You took a tentative step forward and almost immediately caught the sharp, teasing voice you’d come to recognize and simultaneously dread: “Morning, sunshine. You look… sore.”

You froze mid-stride, the coffee cup hovering precariously as you turned toward Lois Lane’s amused grin. She was perched in her usual spot behind the desk, clipboard resting casually in one hand, eyes sharp and playful. The smirk on her face was the kind that spelled trouble.

“Excuse me?” you said, trying to keep your tone neutral, but failing to mask the flush creeping up your neck.

Lois leaned back in her chair with the unmistakable air of someone who’d just caught an exclusive scoop. “Don’t ‘excuse me’ me. I can spot a limp from a mile away. What happened? Run a marathon last night?”

You coughed lightly into your coffee, cheeks burning. “Something like that,” you mumbled, avoiding her gaze.

Out of the corner of your eye, you spotted Clark at his desk, slipping off his jacket and pretending to be absorbed in his computer screen, but the twitch at the corner of his mouth betrayed him instantly — he was listening. He was definitely listening. And, enjoying every second.

Lois wasn’t done. “Well, whatever it was, you’re walking like you fought a war. Or—” She paused, the slow, gleeful grin spreading across her face almost painful in its smugness. “Oh my God.”

You pivoted on your heel, desperate to escape the teasing barrage. “Nope. No. Don’t ‘oh my God’ me.”

Lois’s gaze flickered between you and Clark, who had just settled back in his chair, arms crossed, the very picture of innocent amusement. “You and Smallville, huh?”

Clark raised an eyebrow in mock confusion. “Me?”

“Don’t play innocent, Kent,” Lois snapped, pointing a finger at him. “I’ve been a reporter for fifteen years — I can read body language like an open book.”

Clark’s lips twitched into a sly smile. “Can you?”

You shot him a warning look, silently pleading: Don’t say anything. Not one word.

Lois folded her arms, narrowing her eyes at you with unmistakable amusement. “Well, I don’t know what farm-boy cardio routine you two have going on, but it’s clearly intense. And, frequent.”

You opened your mouth to protest, but before you could get a word out, Jimmy Olsen appeared at your side, file in hand, looking concerned. “Hey, you okay? You’re moving like you… uh… pulled something.”

Lois let out a loud, unapologetic laugh. “Oh, she pulled something all right.”

“Lois!” you hissed, cheeks flaming with embarrassment.

Clark leaned back in his chair, folding his arms, his smile widening just enough to let you know he was basking in your discomfort. “I think she’s fine,” he said smoothly. “Just… maybe a little tired.”

Your glare could have melted steel. “Tired?” you mouthed, shooting him a pointed look.

He just smiled — slow, knowing, and way too pleased with himself.

Lois tilted her head, eyes narrowed in mock pity. “Honey, if you ever need to borrow my heating pad, you know where my desk is.”

You didn’t hesitate. Grabbing your notebook, you made a beeline toward the archives, muttering under your breath about your “impending doom” and how you were going to kill them all if the teasing didn’t stop. As you passed Clark’s desk, you caught the soft, low chuckle only you could hear.

“You’re enjoying this way too much,” you said, without looking at him.

“I’m not enjoying it,” he murmured, leaning close so his voice was just for your ears. “I’m remembering exactly why you’re sore.”

You bit back a gasp, heat rushing to your cheeks as you hurried down the aisle, determined to get away before Lois could zero in on your flushed face. Behind you, Clark’s laughter lingered, soft and smug — a private promise that this was far from over.

You settled into the quiet of the archives, flipping through old files and trying to focus, but every movement brought a fresh reminder of last night’s events. Your legs betrayed you with a small, stubborn ache that refused to fade, and you adjusted your position several times, trying to find a way to sit that didn’t send jolts of discomfort up your spine. You could almost hear Clark’s teasing voice echoing in your head.

A buzz in your pocket pulled you from your thoughts — a text from Clark.

Need a rescue on your next bathroom trip?

You smiled, fingers flying over the screen as you typed back: Only if you’re carrying me.

The response was almost immediate.

Deal. But I’m billing for overtime.

You couldn’t help the grin that spread across your face as you tucked your phone away, cheeks warm with a mix of embarrassment and something else — something tender, something intimate.

Back in the bullpen, the day rolled on. You moved cautiously, determined not to let your discomfort slow you down, but it was obvious to everyone who watched you closely. Your strides were shorter, more deliberate, and your usual confident posture was replaced with something a little more guarded.

It wasn’t long before Lois caught up with you again, this time in the middle of a busy conference room just as the morning briefing was winding down.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked casually, but the twinkle in her eye told you she was far from fooled.

You bit your lip and gave her a tight smile. “Just a little out of sorts.”

Clark was nearby, pretending to be engrossed in his notes, but you could feel his gaze burning right through you. He didn’t say anything, but the barely suppressed grin on his face was impossible to miss.

As the meeting broke up, you found yourself walking slower than usual back to your desk. Each step was an effort, and you silently cursed Clark for turning what should have been a simple morning into a marathon of sore muscles and wobbly knees.

He caught up with you halfway there, falling into step beside you. “I’m thinking you might need a standing ovation. Or, at least a massage,” he said, voice low and teasing.

“I’m going to kill you,” you muttered, though the smile tugging at your lips betrayed you.

Clark’s eyes gleamed with affection. “Maybe. But you survived — and, that’s what counts.”

By the time you left the office that evening, your legs felt like jelly, but beneath the exhaustion was a warm glow — a quiet reminder that last night wasn’t just some reckless fling. It was something you both wanted, something real and worth every ache and playful jab.

You met Clark outside under the golden wash of the city’s evening light, the streets glowing amber in the sunset. His hand found yours easily, fingers curling around yours like they belonged there.

“So,” he murmured, voice low and intimate, “ready for round two?”

You laughed breathlessly, leaning into him despite the lingering soreness. “Maybe after I walk again.”

It started out as a throwaway line, one of those things you kind of just say when you’re half-awake and fully-annoyed because he’s hogging the sunny spot in the kitchen again like a smug, six-foot-four housecat with insane shoulders and even more insane bedhead.

But the first time you said it—like, actually really said it—he was standing by the window, shirtless, holding his coffee in that chipped blue mug that says "My Son's a Smallville Elementary Grad!" and somehow survived a farm, a college dorm, three apartments, and a move cross-country. 

The light was doing that thing it loves to do in the morning, all golden and warm and syrupy, catching on his collarbones and the slope of his neck like he was painted by fucking Michelangelo. He had one hip braced against the counter, the other leg crooked, like someone told him to look as unintentionally hot as possible while waiting for the kettle filled with your guys' tea to boil.

You blinked at him, still clutching your own mug and not yet caffeinated enough to regulate your mouth, and said, “Do you ever feel like… like a plant?”

He raised an eyebrow. Blew on his coffee. You can see the way his breath fogs up slightly, that super breath of his doing just enough to cool down his coffee to the perfect temperature. “That a dig?”

“No. It’s just. You—" You waved vaguely in his direction. "Well, you just kinda look like you’re charging.”

That got a huff of a laugh. “What, like a phone?”

“No,” you said, and grinned into your mug. “Like I said, a plant. Like you're photosynthesizing.”

After that, it became a thing.

He always smiled when you said it. Looked down at himself, half-amused, half-embarrassed. “I mean,” he’d say, “you’re not wrong.” Or: “Someone’s gotta keep the plants company, y'know?"

But he never corrects you. Never laughs it off like it’s ridiculous.

Because it isn’t.

You’ve seen the truth of it, slow and subtle and layered in all the small things. The way he’s just a smidge lighter on his feet after a sunny day, how he runs warmer, more golden, like someone turned the saturation up to a hundred. The way his voice softens, deeper, when he’s been in the sun too long. The way the shadows under his eyes seem less sharp after just an afternoon spent lying on the roof, pretending he’s napping when you both know he’s just... breathing.

And the bruises. That’s the part he thinks you don’t see.

You do.

They heal so much faster when he’s been drenched in the sun. You’ve watched the inky blackish-purple fade to this sickly yellow in the span of a couple hours and tried really, really hard not to stare. 

You’ve said nothing when he limped into bed one night after a particularly difficult battle and rolled out of it the next morning like absolutely nothing had even happened. Sometimes he winces and pretends it’s nothing. Sometimes he… forgets to pretend.

And still, you never say that’s not normal out loud, even though it’s not. Because he isn’t. Not in the way that matters. Not in the ways that make you love him.

You love him like a long exhale. Like a secret that’s safe with you. Like the song you play on repeat in the car, the one you never get sick of, even though it makes your throat tighten every time.

Sometimes it’s peaceful, like when your ribs finally uncages and let someone else in for the first time in your life. But sometimes, sometimes it's just so fucking devastating. 

Because he’s Clark. And Superman. And most importantly, he's yours.

And it feels too big. Too fragile. Like trying to hold water in your hands. You want to keep him safe, but you also want to keep him. The real him. The him that leaves you sticky notes that say “eat something, please” and walks around humming old Mighty Crabjoys songs and insists you don’t have to fold my socks, seriously, who folds socks?

But you lie awake sometimes watching him breathe, thinking to yourself, How do I love someone that belongs to the world?

And the answer is: you just do. One day at a time. One morning at a time. One sunlit moment in the kitchen at a time.

That Monday morning, it’s the same as always.

You pad into the living room half-asleep, dragging your feet and wearing one of his T-shirts that hits you mid-thigh. He’s already up, standing barefoot by the window, coffee in hand, arms folded loosely across his chest like he’s holding himself together in case he gets pulled apart again later.

Pause in the doorway. Watch him for a second. The light pooling around his ankles. His shoulders lift, just barely, when he hears your steps.

He doesn’t turn.

“Guess what,” you say.

He smiles, small and crooked. “Hmm?”

You cross the room. Slide your arms around his waist from behind and press your face between his shoulder blades, where the sun’s been warming him for at least half an hour.

“You’re glowing again,” you murmur. “Must be that high-potency sunlight. You hogging the sun again?”

He laughs, the sound low and warm. “You caught me.”

“You’re a danger to local crops,” you whisper. Feel the goosebumps rising underneath his skin. “The corn’s jealous.”

“Oh no. Not the corn.” He turns a little, just enough to look down at you. His eyes are so fucking blue at that moment. “Should I apologize to the corn?”

“Absolutely. It’s your fault they can’t compete. You're literally the reason why Iowa's GDP is going down.”

He leans in. Brushes a kiss to your temple. “I’ll draft a formal statement for them later.”

You stay like that for a minute. Him holding you. You pressing your nose into the slope of his back, breathing him in—sunshine and laundry and that faint green note that’s uniquely Clark. Like basil, or clean leaves. Like something still growing.

And you think: This is the part he doesn’t say out loud.

This is how he tells you.

Not with words. Not yet.

Your boyfriend photosynthesizes. And maybe it’s not the kind of love you can pin down, or explain, or protect. But it’s real. It’s alive.

And you love him.

And he, quietly, completely, loves you back.

(He hasn’t said it yet. But you don’t really need the words to know.)

.

Clark shows you he loves you in ways so small, they’d be easy to miss if you didn’t know how to look for them. 

But you do. You catch them in those quiet little corners of the day. 

How he folds down the corner of your book before you can reach for a receipt or a pen. How he touches your wrist, not yanking, just there, when you step into the street without looking. How he makes a soft sound of protest—ahem, maybe more like politely exasperated—when you try to carry six grocery bags at once like you, too, are invincible.

And then there’s the orange.

You’re curled into the couch, one of his sweatshirts swallowed over your knees, watching—but not really, to be honest—some long-winded documentary about volcanoes or Icelandic horses or some other quietly majestic subject that definitely feels at odds with your mood. The narrator has this super calm, soothing British lilt and the lighting is very National Geographic: all muted blues and wide drone shots and crashing waves. You haven’t really spoken in close to at least half an hour.

Clark doesn’t push. Never does. 

He just lets you sit in it, whatever it is, as long as you need to. 

But eventually, he nudges your ankle with his socked foot, like a hello, and when you glance up, he’s setting something on the coffee table with a kind of shy precision.

An orange.

Already peeled.

Not just peeled. Sectioned. Arranged.

It’s kind of ridiculous, how careful it is. No torn rind, no mangled wedges. The peel’s just laid out like a ribbon, one continuous spiral that speaks of time and gentleness and someone who took this seriously. Each segment is placed on a napkin, still glistening with juice, like a little offering.

You blink at it.

Then at him.

He’s pretending to watch the TV, but his body betrays him. His shoulders just slightly angled toward you, eyes flicking sideways like he’s checking the weather.

“I didn’t know if you were hungry,” he says after a beat. Like he’s not sure he’s allowed to say more. “But it’s one of the sweet ones.”

Your throat does something stupid. You reach for a slice and hold it for a second, too long, then pop it into your mouth.

It’s still cold from the fridge. Bright, juicy, perfect. Like summer broke through the haze in your chest.

You make a noise you don’t mean to. Something between surprise and relief.

Clark shifts, trying to look casual, but you catch that familiar smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

“I was gonna ask if you wanted one,” he says, still mostly facing the TV, his face painted in blue. “But you looked kind of… I don’t know. Stuck. So I figured I’d just do it.”

“You peeled it for me?”

He finally looks over at you, eyebrows lifted. “Well, yeah.”

And somehow that—that—is what catches in your chest. Not the orange, not the care. He says it like it’s obvious. Like of course he did. Like there’s a whole world of things he would do just for you without even needing to be asked.

You swallow. “You didn’t have to.”

“I know,” he says, shrugging a little. “But that's kind of the point.”

You don’t say anything for a minute. Just reach for another slice.

When you bite into it, something in you loosens. Maybe it’s the juice. Maybe it’s the tenderness.

Clark, watching out of the corner of his eye, shifts a little closer and says, voice low, “When I was a kid, my ma used to 'em for me.”

You glance over. He’s staring at the documentary again, but his tone when he says it, it’s not for the Icelandic horses on the screen.

“She knew I hated the sticky part,” he goes on. “Didn’t like having all that juice on my fingers. So she’d do it before school. Wrap ‘em up in plastic, tuck ‘em in the corner of my lunchbox next to whatever sandwich she made that day. Tuna on Fridays. Always with too much mayo.”

You smile, just a little. “You were a picky eater?”

“Not picky,” he says defensively. “Just—just particular. I didn’t like when my food touched.”

“Mhm.”

“I was seven!”

You laugh, and he finally looks at you, sheepish and warm.

“She used to write little notes sometimes too,” he adds. “On the napkin. Stuff like ‘remember your science quiz’ or ‘you’re stronger than you think.’” He scratches the back of his neck. “Sometimes just a heart. Sometimes that was enough.”

You watch him as he says it, and you think, Of course. Of course you grew up like that. With kindness taught into you like table manners. With love folded into your lunchboxes.

“And now,” you say, voice subtle, “you’re the one peeling oranges for someone else.”

He shrugs again. “Only for you.”

You raise an eyebrow.

“I mean it,” he says. “Everyone else can deal with the sticky fingers. You get the napkin and everything.”

You press a slice into his hand before you can talk yourself out of it.

He pauses, then leans forward and bites it from your fingers, playful but gentle. A little juice escapes down the corner of his mouth. He licks it away without breaking eye contact.

It shouldn’t make your heart ache. But it does.

“Thank you,” you say quietly.

“For the orange?”

“For the orange. And the napkin. And, you know. The general care and keeping of me.”

He smiles at that. Tilts his head toward you until your shoulders brush.“Well,” he says, “you’re pretty high-maintenance. Comes with the territory.”

You scoff, gently ebow him. “I am not.”

He raises his brows. “Okay. Yesterday, you made me reheat the tea because it was two degrees below your ideal sipping temperature.”

“That’s not high-maintenance. That’s just me having standards.”

“Sure,” he murmurs, bumping your knee with his. “And your standards include expertly peeled fruit on Tuesdays, apparently.”

You roll your eyes, but your smile gives you away. “I just mean…” You trail off, unsure how to say it without sounding too serious, too much. You chew your lip, watching the light hit his profile. “I hope,” you say softly, almost to yourself, “you never stop doing that.”

He leans his head against the back of the couch, close enough that his shoulder brushes yours. “What, feeding you citrus?”

You huff out a laugh. “You know what I mean.”

He doesn’t answer for a long moment. Then he says, simple and sure, like the truth it is:

“I won’t.”

.

You don’t even really remember texting him. You think you might’ve. Maybe. Who knows. 

In the middle of your 2 a.m. sick delirium, burning up and freezing at the same time, with every single cell in your body screaming and staging some sort of mutiny, you vaguely remember opening your phone with bleary eyes and typing something half-coherent. 

A string of emojis. A sad face, a skull, a wilted flower. Vomit emoji. You might’ve hit send. You might’ve just passed out mid-thought.

Either way, Clark’s there when you come to.

He’s on the floor beside your bed, cross-legged, slouched a little in that way he always is when he’s trying to make himself smaller than he actually is. He’s doing this thing he does similar to when he's reading out his first drafts—voice low and even, a little scratchy like he hasn’t used it much today, or maybe just because it’s the middle of the night and the Metropolis is quiet for once and so is he.

You blink, once, twice, groggily, and he doesn’t even look up as he says:

“…and then I told Jimmy that if he was going to hide in the cafeteria instead of facing Eve, he should at least clean up after his brooding, because no one wants to sit next to a scone that’s been glared at for thirty minutes."

That's when you make a sound—half a groan, half a breath—and he glances up.

“Oh,” he says, smiling. “Hey. You’re awake.”

God, you swear your head's a pressure cooker. Your throat feels like someone lined it with sandpaper and regret. You’re pretty sure you’re covered in sweat, and not in a sexy, cinematic way, but more in a swampy, bedraggled, my skin might never be clean again kind of way. 

And yet here he is, reading from what you now realize is his work notebook. 

Not even a novel. Just… Clark, narrating his week.

“God,” you croak. “I think I’m dying.”

Clark shifts immediately, one knee bent, his hand brushing against your arm like he’s checking for tremors. “You’re not dying,” he says gently. “You’re just sick. Classic human stuff. I Googled it to make sure.”

“You Googled my flu?”

“Yeah. Also called my dad.”

Your lips twitch. “Of course you did.”

“He said tea, soup, and don't try to touch your toes.”

You blink at him. “I wasn’t gonna—”

“I didn’t think you would. But he insisted.”

He presses a glass of water into your hand. Holds it there, actually, like you might forget what to do with it. You sip slowly, mostly because he’s watching you with the intensity of someone monitoring the nuclear launch codes. His hand stays curved behind your back the whole time, steady and warm, his thumb sweeping once over your shoulderblade.

“Still tastes like shit,” you mutter, grimacing.

“That’s just your fever lying to you,” he says. “Give it time. I brought supplies.”

Which is how, ten minutes later, you’re propped up like a limp marionette with three pillows, wearing one of his hoodies, while Clark, bless him, is rumbling around in your kitchen making the world’s most dramatic instant ramen.

He hums while he works, something mellow and vaguely twangy—something that sounds like wide-open spaces and Sunday mornings and the kind of radio stations that only exist halfway between here and Kansas.

When he brings the bowl back, he sits on the edge of the bed and feeds you, spoon by spoon, blowing on each bite first like he thinks you might scald your tongue.

You watch him through a fever-glazed blur. “You’re really committing to the bit.”

He raises an eyebrow. “What bit?”

“The Florence Nightingale… Florence Kent thing.”

He grins, bashful. “It’s not a bit. I just… I didn’t want you to be alone.”

Your stomach flips. It has nothing to do with the soup.

“And also,” he adds, “I brought a book, thought you might like something to listen to in the background.”

You blink at him.

“I figured I’d read to you once the soup’s done. Unless you’d rather I make more toast. I could do toast. Or try. I mean, it’s technically one of the few things I can’t mess up.”

You take the spoon from his hand. “Baby.”

“Yeah?”

“Sit down before you vibrate out of your flannel.”

He obeys instantly, because Clark is nothing if not obedient when you sound just a tiny bit bossy and ill. You laugh a little. Then cough a lot.

When you stop hacking, there’s a glass of water in your hand again, and he's looking at you like he’s trying to mentally calculate your temperature based soely off your pupil dilation. You wave him off until he settles down again, until his work stories blur into white noise and you feel yourself drifting.

Later, when the room is dark except for the glow of the bedside lamp, and your fever’s burning lower, no longer trying to boil you alive but still leaving your limbs really heavy and wrung-out—you stir, blink groggily, and find him exactly where he’s been all day: back on the floor, this time leaning against the bed frame like he’s trying to become one with the carpet.

There's a book in his hands.

You squint. “Is that… Star Wars?”

He doesn’t look up right away. Just flips a page, calm and unbothered, like this is a completely normal Wednesday night activity. “Yeah. From a Certain Point of View.  It’s like… like—little side stories. People on the edges of the main stuff. Background characters getting the spotlight. I thought you might like it.”

“You’re reading me Star Wars fanfiction.”

Clark glances up, grinning. “Not fanfiction. It’s licensed content.”

“Clark.”

“It’s from Jimmy.”

“Clark.”

He holds his hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, it’s kind of sanctioned fanfic. But it’s good. There's one from the point of view of Obi-Wan’s ghost and it made me emotional.”

You try to snort, but it comes out more like a croak. “You’re such a nerd.”

“Says the person who cried over an R2-D2 Lego set last Christmas.”

“That was a very moving gift and you know it.”

Clark reaches over to adjust your blanket, tucking it up under your chin with careful fingers. “I just thought it might be nice. Something familiar. It’s kind of like comfort food, but for your brain.”

You look at him—really look at him—glasses askew, hair flattened on one side from the couch pillow, sweatshirt stretched over his broad chest like it was never meant to fit a man built like a brick wall—and feel that weird, awful feeling twist in your chest again. 

The one that always comes when he’s like this. Sweet and earnest and just slightly off-center in a way that makes your whole life feel gentler.

“Thank you,” you rasp, voice hoarse but sincere.

He shrugs, like it’s nothing. “Don’t mention it.”

Then, after a beat:

“I was gonna read the one about the cantina bartender next. He has some very strong feelings about the music.”

“. . . Okay yeah, you're weird.”

“Exactly.”

He closes the book for a moment and reaches for your hand under the blanket. His fingers wrap around yours, warm and firm and callused at the knuckles. He squeezes gently.

“I know I’m not good at this,” he says, so quietly you almost miss it. “The taking-care-of-people thing. Not like my dad was. He used to bring orange Jell-O and put those cold cloths on my head when I got sick. He'd sit with me and hum old country songs like that could fix it. And sometimes, it kinda did.”

You squeeze his fingers back. He looks at your joined hands like they’re something fragile.

“I don’t really even know all the right things,” he continues. “But I’m gonna stay right here until you feel good again.”

You swallow. Your throat aches. Your heart does, too, but in a different way.

“Clark,” you whisper. “You’re doing perfect.”

He gives you this look—hazy and overwhelmed, like maybe he needed to hear that more than he thought. He leans in and presses a kiss to your forehead, cool and steady and grounding.

“I got you,” he murmurs. “Always.”

He reads until your breathing evens out again, then switches to humming—barely there, just a thread of melody tracing the shape of the room. He doesn’t move from his place beside your bed. 

You don’t think he even blinks when you stir, reaching a hand out for his. He’s just there. 

So you dream of a cantina bartender with strong feelings about the music. Of a man with dark hair and horrendous posture and the kindest eyes in the galaxy, carrying soup and picture books and the whole weight of your heart like it’s not heavy at all.

.

It was supposed to be a date.

Like, a real date. One with proper shoes and napkins that aren’t made of recycled drive-thru material. A night where neither of you had to sprint, lie, cover for the other, or show up late with leaves in your hair because someone, cough, got caught helping rescue a tour boat from sinking off the coast of Maine.

Just dinner. Just one Thursday evening. A normal, honest-to-god, pre-planned, mildly fancy dinner. 

You’d even made a reservation at that Italian place ou guys have been meaning to try.

Clark had combed his curls with what looked like actual intent and buttoned his shirt all the way to the top, then unbuttoned one (just one) like he’d read about the concept of casual in a book. You caught him practicing his posture in the hallway mirror before you left.

“Do I look like I own a belt?” he’d asked.

“You do own a belt.”

“Right, but do I look like I believe in it?”

You had rolled your eyes. He’d kissed your forehead. You’d both agreed, silently and aloud and silently again: This time, it’s gonna stick.

Just dinner.

Just you and him.

Just—

The sky, it turns out, had other ideas.

You’re only two blocks from the restaurant, your heels clicking rhythmically against the sidewalk. He’s saying something about dessert—about how he’s never actually had crème brûlée and how suspicious he is of any food that requires a blowtorch—and you’re about to tell him that he’s a coward and has terrible, horrible opinions when he—

Flinches.

Just slightly. A twitch, more than anything. Like someone tugged on the collar of his shirt from behind.

You stop. Narrow your eyes.

“Kent.”

He stills, then winces, and it’s over. The wind picks up just enough to ruffle his jacket and toss a strand of your hair across your lip.

“Baby,” you say, dragging out the vowels like you’re preparing to scold a dog who’s eyeing the Thanksgiving turkey.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I know. I know. I just—there’s something happening in Hob’s Bay. I think it’s Parasite again.”

“Parasite?” you repeat, like that somehow makes it better. “The guy who eats energy and punches holes through cement walls like graham crackers?”

Clark winces again, guilt washing across his face like rain.

“I can take you home first,” he says quickly. “I’ll be fast. Twenty minutes. Tops.”

“You said that last time,” you remind him.

“Yes, but this time I mean it with—” he pauses, trying to sell it, “—I mean it. I've got improved time management skills. I’ve been working on it, I swear. I downloaded a calendar app.”

“Oh my god, Clark.”

“I even color-coded it!”

You cross your arms. “Clark.”

“I swear on my mom’s ceramic cow collection.”

“…The one on the microwave?”

“She dusts them twice a week.”

You sigh, but you’re already unhooking your arm from his. He’s practically vibrating now, trying to stand still. There’s a flash of green in the far-off clouds.

“I liked this dress,” you say.

“I love that dress,” he says, almost in awe. “I’m gonna come back and ruin it for you in much better ways.”

A beat. He realizes how that sounded. “I mean, like—because of pasta sauce. And maybe dancing? gosh, I’m terrible at this—”

You laugh despite yourself. Even as the first drops of rain start to hit your shoulders. “Go, Kansas.”

He kisses your cheek. Then the other. His hands linger against your face a half-second too long, his thumbs warm even through the chill.

“I’ll make it up to you,” he says, quiet now. “Promise.”

Then he’s gone.

“I know,” you reply to no one in particular, because you do.

You spend the next hour curled on the couch in the dress you never got to wear properly, the hem slightly damp from the rain and your eyeliner gently betraying you. The news cycles through static, then footage of Clark shielding a crowd with a dented bus stop sign like it’s a riot shield, eyes glowing faintly, shoulders squared. Calm. Measured. Still gentle, even in a fight. You eat a sleeve of saltines out of spite.

He texts you twice:

CLARKY <3: STILL FIGHTING THE SLIME GUY. HE’S YELLING ABOUT “THE SYSTEM” SO I THINK THIS IS POLITICALLY MOTIVATED. CLARKY <3: ALMOST DONE. PLEASE DON’T FALL ASLEEP. I OWE YOU SO MUCH CREME BRUILALAE 🍨

You don’t reply. He needs to focus. But you do leave the kitchen light on.

It's past ten when he gets back. He lands with a whisper on your fire escape—so quiet it takes you a second to realize he’s there. You’re already in pajamas at this point.

He taps gently on the window.

When you slide it open, he’s dripping. Suit ripped at the collar. A graze on his temple that’s already healing. Mud on his boots. Eyes wide and sheepish and a little desperate.

“You’re late,” you say.

“The Italian place was closed,” he says, holding up a crumpled brown paper bag like an offering. "But I brought dumplings?"

Your stomach betrays you with a loud growl. Fucking saltines. He smiles, relieved.

“They’re from that place you like,” he adds quickly. “The one with the crab rangoon that makes you make weird noises.”

You cross your arms. “You think you can just bribe me with steamed buns and flattery?”

“Yes?” he tries.

“…You’re not wrong.”

You step back to let him in. He shrugs off the cape, moving slower than usual. His shoulders dip lower. His steps drag a little. The exhaustion sits in him like weight.

“Sit down,” you say.

“I can—”

“Clark. Couch. Now.”

He obeys without question, settling into the cushions like a man unraveling. You grab a towel and a hoodie from your room—one of his—and toss both at him. Then you disappear into the kitchen.

After a beat, he calls after you: “I missed you.”

You don’t answer right away. Just finish plating the takeout, dividing the dumplings and the sticky rice and the rangoon with practiced ease. Your apartment smells like warm ginger and garlic. Familiar. Safe.

When you bring the food over, you find him curled sideways on the couch, legs too long, towel around his shoulders like a cape. He grins when he sees the plates.

“You forgive me?” he asks, hopeful.

You hand him a rangoon. “Chew before you talk.”

He does. Then says, with a mouthful of crab: “I really did want it to be a normal night.”

You look at him. At the tired, good man who flew across the city to keep someone else’s world from breaking. At the one who brought you dumplings and rainwater and apologies on the roof of his tongue.

“I know,” you say.

He finishes chewing, then leans forward, chin on your shoulder, voice curling around the edges. “You look beautiful, by the way.”

You snort. “You say that now that I’m in fleece pants with soup stains.”

“I stand by it,” he murmurs. “Always.”

You let him curl around you then, dinner plates on the coffee table, reruns of I Love Lucy playing low in the background. He eats with one arm around your waist. You steal his dumplings when he’s not looking.

Later, when you’re both too full and too warm and too tired to move, he says it again.

“I’ll make it up to you.”

You nudge his leg with your foot. “You already are.”

He hums, pleased but tired, and lets his head fall back against the cushions. “Still wish I hadn’t missed dinner. Not the food. Just—being there. With you.”

There’s a smear of sauce near his mouth when you glance over him. He’s so unbelievably warm around the edges like this—like the fight’s finally bled out of him and he’s just Clark again. Your Clark.

“You always say that,” you murmur.

“Because I always mean it.”

You reach up, thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. He goes quiet. Doesn’t blink. Just watches you like he’s trying to memorize the moment.

There’s a beat where neither of you speak. The kind that hums with the weight of something unspoken, blooming slow between you. Then, without moving your hand, you ask, “You gonna let me kiss you now, or are you still trying to be polite?”

That gets a smile. A real one. A little crooked, a little shy.

“You can do whatever you want,” he says. “You always could.”

So you lean in.

The kiss starts off like a warning.

Your mouth brushes his—brief, firm, no room for questions, not really—and then again, slower this time. He makes a noise, deep in his chest, something caught between relief and surrender.

When your fingers slide into his hair, he tilts into it instinctively. His hands stay right where they are, just one at your waist, one braced uselessly on the couch cushion like he’s reminding himself not to move unless you ask him to.

He huffs something like a laugh when you pull back for a breath. “You’re terrifying, you know that?”

You smile. “Flatterer.”

His hand on your waist shifts slightly, pulling you in closer. Not rough. Not needy. Just—anchoring. Your knees bracket his hips and you kiss him again, open-mouthed this time, licking into his mouth like you’re starved and this is your first taste of real food.

And Clark lets you. 

He lets you kiss him with all the frustration of the ruined date and the tension of waiting and the affection that’s been building in your chest for weeks, maybe months. He meets you where you are—mouth pliant, eyes closed, his breathing unraveling under your hands.

“You always come back like this,” you whisper, teeth grazing his jaw. “All apologies and those puppy dog blue eyes and your make-up take-out. Like I wouldn’t crawl across glass to have you.”

He exhales, sharp and shaky, like your words hit a nerve. His hands tense slightly at your thighs, just for a second, then relax again. He doesn’t try to flip you, doesn’t shift to take control. Just looks at you.

“I mean it,” you murmur, kissing just under his ear. “You come in, wrecked and kind and too damn good, and I’m supposed to what? Sit next to you like my skin isn’t trying to crawl off my bones just to get to yours?”

Clark swallows. “You—” His voice is rough, halting. “You can have me.”

He says it so quietly you almost miss it.

“You already do,” he adds. “You don’t have to prove anything. You—”

Your mouth is on his before he can finish. You kiss him like you’re trying to breathe him in, to memorize the way his ribs rise under your hands. His lips part on a gasp, and you take it as invitation. He lets you tilt his head back even further, lets you set the rhythm—his hands gripping the couch cushions like they’re the only things that can possibly ground him.

You pull back, just enough to see his face. His hair’s still damp, starting to curl at the edges, his cheeks flushed. His glasses are askew, so you reach up and slide them off. Set them gently on the side table. His eyes don’t leave yours for a second.

"Stand up," you say, and he does, wordless, chest rising fast under the hoodie. He's got the towel instead of the cape draped around his shoulders, like he's still half in hero mode. You take that off.

Your fingers go to the hem of the hoodie next, lifting it. He raises his arms obediently, eyes half-lidded, focused. He’s still in the bottom half of the suit, and your breath catches—because even now, even like this, he wears it like a second skin.

But you want the man. Not the symbol.

“Off,” you say, fingers brushing the slick, faintly scorched fabric of the suit’s torso. “I want you, not him.”

He nods. It’s so damn slight, like he’s not so sure his voice will work. His hands go to the hidden seams and he peels the suit down, exposing inch after inch of bare skin beneath—toned and marked from the night, faint purple bruises already turning gold where his healing has started. You trail your fingers and follow him down, down, down his sternum, then lower, across his ribs.

The suit hits the floor in a gentle whisper. Boots, too. The cape’s already been discarded—somewhere between the fire escape and your front door—and now he’s just standing there in front of you, bare and breathless and completely yours.

“Come closer,” you say. "It's my turn."

He goes to help you, but you stop him. Eyebrows raised. "Eyes up here. I'll do it myself."

Clark watches you the whole time, not rushing, not leading. His expression open, undone. His bottom lip's caught between his teeth, eyes trained on every single one of your painstaking actions. Peeling your shirt off, your ratty fleece pants, your bra, all of it. He's enjoying this way more than he should, those eyes of his glinting in the light, but that's the intoxicating part of it. 

When you're done, he finally speaks up, voice reduced to a hush. Wills himself to look away from your body and just look into your eyes. "How do you want me?"

You hum, turning on your feet, pretending to think it over. Really, it's just an excuse to have him look at your bare body. Tempt him a little bit. It drives him insane. Still, he doesn't break eye contact. 

"I think," you purse your lips. "I want you underneath me tonight."

He nods. Serious. "Of course."

You lead him back to the bedroom. Not because he needs help walking, but because there’s something in you that just wants to savor the walk. He lets you guide him backward, his legs bumping against the edge of the bed.

He sits.

Then waits.

Clark just looks so… perfect like this. 

Hard, aching, weeping, cheeks pink and pupils dilated. Hands, those goddamn hands, politely by his sides. Does nothing but lay down on the mattress, just waiting for whatever you feel like doing to him. The knowing—the seeing, does more to you than you'd like to admit.

You crawl, slowly, over his body. Fingers skirting over the freckles of his body, the light dusting of hair across his torso, the goosebumps that rise there. Anything but pay attention to his cock that's begging for you, until you're close to straddling his face, hovering there.

A pause. Those baby blue eyes, the cause of so many of your little deaths. His lips, pink and wet as his tongue swipes over them. A hint of a smile. You brush a curl away from his forehead, fingers methodical and thoughtful.

"Okay."

Once you give him the go-ahead, he's all instinct, steady hands pulling your thighs more snug over his shoulders with all of the skill and quiet confidence of a man who's been breaking you down and laying you out for a long time. 

It's so easy—so easy to lose yourself in it. So easy when you're on top of the world.

Clark knows. You've genuinely never met a guy who enjoys eating someone out more than him. He knows all the ways to make your legs shake and your head vibrate out of its skull, all the little skills and patterns and consistencies to get you to cum within minutes, but from the way he takes his time, mouth roaming everywhere—your thighs, your legs, the back of your knees—

He means to torture you. Make you eat your words. But you're gonna have the last say tonight.

You squeeze your legs around his face, bringing his attention to you, all blue-eyed innocence glancing up to you. Little shit. "Hey," you will your voice into something vaguely commanding. "How many times do you think you can make me cum tonight?"

All you get is a lopsided smile. "As many times 's you want."

"Ball park?"

He strums his fingers along your thigh. Pretends to think about it. Looking up at the corner of his eyes like he's doing mental math. "How about we start with five or six and go from there?"

"Perfect. Delightful, Kent. Alright, procee—"

His arms tighten around your thighs, and that's all the warning you get before he dives right in, parting your lips with his tongue and tasting all that you've got to offer, and god, if that doesn't make the slick accumulate even more in between your thighs, gushing, eyes falling closed. 

A trooper always, Clark's mouth is warm, forming into a smile. "Baby, you taste so good. Needed this."

There's desperation in it, the way he sucks on your clit, two fingers finding themselves rocking against your cunt so that you feel nothing but full, boundless pleasure. You're so wet that his digits are sliding effortlessly, even more so as he licks you through it.

All you can do is whimper and whine, hands coming to rest up against the headboard. "Clark, Clark, so good. Don't stop. Please."

The mattress shakes around you as he grinds up into the air, barely concealed want and need and everything he hasn't said before, teeth gently scraping at your cunt. You can hear it too, his mouth working against you, his moans rising above it all. And god, the tension—the fucking strength of this man—the fact that he's letting you ride his face like there's no tomorrow.

Then his tongue sweeps hot across your clit, his two fingers curling inside you at the exact moment you squeeze. And fuck, you pulse hard and come until you've got nothing left to give, just a mantra of his name—"Clark, Clark, baby—"

He licks and sucks you through the aftershocks, shuddering through it all, and then it's back down to earth.

You fall down on the bed next to him, legs unable to hold you up. The only way to describe how you feel now is just—pure, fucking, boneless glee. And then you look over, and god, if that's not the best view in the world—Clark. The bottom of his face glistening, smiling in that stupid, boyish way of his, curls in his eyes and a twinkle there like he just won the lottery. 

"What are you smiling about?"

Clark shakes his head, shrugging and looking up at the ceiling like it has the answers. "Oh, nothin'. Just happy."

This hunger, this love for him—you don't think it'll ever go away. You don't think you could ever get sick of it, you don't think you can ever get your fill of him.  You're going to want him this badly for the rest of your life. 

But before you could spiral down that terrifying staircase of thoughts, you're brought out your stupor with one large hand trailing up your thigh. Clark's shifted so that you're beneath him, world turned upside down. He's going back down for more.

"We've got at least four more to go, sweet girl. Made you a promise, remember?"

.

It’s honestly the quiet that gets you, at first. 

That slow, rolling kind that doesn’t sit heavy so much as drape itself across everything like an old quilt. The kind of quiet that has its own rhythm. Space between sounds. 

Not silence, never that, but it's more akin to a hush. A pause you didn’t know your life had been missing.

There are birds, sure. A lot of them, actually. There’s the wind, too, rattling through those wheat-colored fields, whistling past the house's warped slats like it’s trying to remember a song it used to know. But underneath it all is stillness. 

A kind of breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding, now slowly, slowly letting out.

Smallville wasn’t supposed to feel like this.

You’d pictured something more… stylized. Romanticized. 

A little more soap opera meets Hallmark original—maybe some mysterious family feuds and charming small-town antics. Some lingering drama about a pie contest. You fully expected someone with an old-timey name to pour you coffee at the local diner you guys stopped at and mention she “hasn’t seen Clark Kent around these parts in a while.”

Instead, you got: rooster at 5:30. Floorboard in the kitchen that creaks like it’s about to file a complaint against you just for exisiting. A guest room that smells faintly like wood polish and wheat. You got Clark, elbow-deep in chicken feed at seven a.m., wearing a white t-shirt that’s hanging on by a thread but you're not complaining.

You’re house-sitting for the Kents while Jonathan and Martha are on a cruise—a cruise, of all things. Clark’s voice had been thick with disbelief when he told you. 

“Can you believe my dad packed four Hawaiian shirts?” Then later, when they called from the boat to say they’d already made friends with a retired couple from Branson and signed up for salsa dancing classes, Clark had stared at the phone like it had personally betrayed him.

“They deserve it,” he says eventually, a little quiet. “They’ve never done anything like this. I hope they stay gone the full two weeks.”

You’d kissed his shoulder and said, “Selfishly, me too.”

Because being here, just the two of you, it’s not glamorous. But it feels like something. Something good.

One morning, early on, you found yourself squinting into the haze of a Kansas dawn, clutching a cup of coffee that tasted like burnt hope, and whispering, half to yourself, “Do… do the cows have names?”

Clark, already in his work boots and wrist-deep in a feed bag, turns like you’d just offered to marry him.

“Of course they do!" he says, smug. “That’s Millie.” He points at a big black-and-white cow with the expression of someone who’d once gone on Twitter and got traumatized. “She’s real skittish when it rains but loves, absolutely loves cantaloupe rinds. That one’s Donnie—he’s dramatic. Moooos like he’s dying if you’re even five minutes late.”

You blink at him. “You’re serious.”

“Deadly,” he says, patting Millie with the same affection he uses on your lower back when you cook dinner barefoot. It makes you snort. “Also, we don’t call it breakfast here. It’s ‘morning feed.’”

You stare. “This is so not the rural romance novel I signed up for.”

He grins, boyish and crooked. “Let me guess. Thought it’d be Days of Our Lives  but make it cornfed?”

“Exactly. Where’s the murder mystery? The barn dance? The family rival who wears all linen and says ominous things like, ‘You’ll never take the south pasture from me, you bastard.’”

"You forget. It's the Midwest. We're not in the South," He scratches behind Donnie’s ear. “But there is a someone with drama kinda like that here. Name's Barb, I think,” he says. “She runs the Dairy Queen and once hit a deer with her truck and cried about it for a week.”

You pause. “…Okay. That’s actually kind of sad. But wholesome."

“See?”

The days fall into a rhythm, eventually. 

You weed the garden (poorly). He fixes the gate (obscenely well). You help collect eggs and try not to let on that the chickens genuinely unsettle you. Clark, that menace, just laughs every single time one flaps in your general direction and you flinch like it’s going to demand your wallet and keys and job.

One Friday afternoon, you find yourself washing strawberries at the sink while Clark scrubs paint off the porch railing—some old project Jonathan started and never finished. 

You glance up and he’s standing there in the sun, t-shirt stained, face flushed, humming some old country song under his breath, and your chest physically hurts from how much you love him.

“You wanna do something dumb?” you ask, voice louder than it needs to be, just to get his attention.

Clark looks up, squints against the light. “Always.”

It’s not fancy. 

Twenty minutes later, you’re both in the back pasture, far enough from the house that it’s just you and the cows and the sound of summer in every direction. 

There’s a plastic grocery bag between you full of things neither of you should technically call lunch. Two kinds of chips (barbecue for you, cheddar for him). A Diet Dr. Pepper, sweating in the heat. One sad gas station brownie. And a couple of oranges, wrapped carefully in plastic wrap.

You lift an eyebrow as you start to unpack. “You know we have actual food, right?”

He shrugs, pulling the chips open. “The grocery store’s like forty minutes away,” he says, like that explains everything. “Didn’t wanna leave you.”

Your mouth opens, ready to toss something casual back—something about sandwiches, or homemade pasta salad, or literally anything with protein—but then you see how gently he’d wrapped the oranges. How he packed napkins, remembered your favorite chips, brought two plastic forks for the brownie like it was a birthday cake.

So instead, you say, “...I like barbecue,” and your voice is quieter than you mean it to be.

He glances over, chin on his shoulder, smiling like it’s the easiest thing in the world. “I know.”

You eat like kids. Cross-legged on the blanket, crumbs everywhere, licking orange juice off your thumbs. You wipe your hands on your pants. He stretches out on his side, elbow propped, watching the clouds like they’re moving too slow. His knee brushes yours and doesn’t move away. 

You think you feel a mosquito bite. You don’t really care anymore.

“I forgot what this feels like,” you say at one point, picking salt from the corners of your lips. “Just… doing nothing. On purpose.”

He hums. “It’s good for you. Stillness.”

“You sound like your mom.”

“She’s smarter than I am.”

“You said that last night when I told you to take a nap.”

“See? Pattern holds.”

You lean back on your elbows and look at him, really look. Light getting caught in his lashes. He’s watching you, too, like there’s nowhere else he’d rather be. Like the world could ask for him and he’d still choose to stay here, sweaty and dumb and mosquito-bitten and happy beside you.

He peels another orange with a practiced hand, splitting it down the middle and handing you the sweeter half.

“Thanks,” you murmur.

“Sometimes I miss this, y'know?” he says, around a bite of an orange.

You glance over.

“Not the chicken poop or the mosquito bites,” he adds, “but the...quiet. The not-having-to-be-everything-all-the-time. Out here, you’re just...you. You fix the fence. You make a mess. You listen to cicadas and complain about the humidity and your ma yells at you for tracking dirt inside.”

You tilt your head. “You ever think about staying? Settling down here?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Just plucks a blade of grass and spins it between his fingers.

“Sometimes,” he admits. “But then I think—this is what shaped me. But it’s not all I am. The world’s loud, and it’s messy, and it needs things. But this…” He looks at you. “This is what I miss when I’m out there.”

You nod. Reduced to speechlessness, because it's so tender and perfect and so him that it hurts.

Clark finishes the orange. Wipes his fingers on a napkin, then on his jeans when that doesn’t do the trick. You lie back on the blanket with a quiet sigh, letting the sun press into your skin, the breeze lift the sweat at your temples.

It could’ve ended there. Could’ve been just a quiet kind of golden. But then you nudge his ankle with yours.

“Bet I could outrun you,” you say lazily, like you’re not poking a bear.

Clark huffs. Turns his head toward you, amused. “That so?”

“Mmhm,” you say, stretching. “You’ve been slacking. Porch paint and chicken duty’s got you soft.”

He squints at you. “You really wanna start this?”

“You said yourself, Kansas. Nothing to do out here but complain about the heat and cause a little trouble.”

He smiles slowly. The kind of smile that curls at the corners. Dangerous only someone so gentle and kind can be.

“Alright then,” he says, sitting up. “You get a ten-second head start.”

Your eyes go wide. “Wait, really—”

“Nine,” he says, already grinning, already counting.

You scramble to your feet. “Oh my god, you are not serious—”

“Eight.”

You bolt.

The grass is taller in some spots and it catches at your ankles, slows you down. The air is thick with sun and the hum of everything living. You turn left, laughing, hair sticking to the back of your neck, and glance behind you just in time to see him loping after you, easy and unhurried, like he’s letting you win.

Which is worse. Infuriating. Fucking ass.

“KENT!” you shout over your shoulder. “I swear if you let me win I’m gonna trip myself just to spite you—”

“Then you better run faster!” he calls back, but he’s laughing too, bright and open and young in a way he doesn’t always let himself be in the city.

You make it halfway to the barn before he catches you, just a hand on your waist, barely a tug. You spin with the momentum and half-collapse against him, breathless, wheezing from the run and the heat and the sheer absurdity of it all.

“You cheated,” you gasp.

“I didn’t even use my powers.”

“That’s worse.”

He leans in, resting his forehead against yours, both of you flushed and sweating and smiling like idiots.

“You’re fast,” he murmurs, voice low. “But I know how you move.”

You roll your eyes, still catching your breath. “Don’t say stuff like that unless you wanna get kissed.”

“Maybe I do,” he says, quiet now.

Oh, if that doesn't make you wanna ruin him. When you lean in, he tastes like oranges and sweat and something warm you can’t name.

“You’re always holding back,” you murmur against his mouth. “Let me have you.”

Clark’s breathing stutters.

“You have me,” he says, like it’s a promise. Like it’s been true since the first day you met.

Your teeth graze his lip, just enough to make him gasp. “Then act like it.”

Now that—that—does something to him.

His hands slip quickly under your sundress, palms mapping the curve of your back, hungry and greedy all at once. Your head tips back when his mouth finds your neck again, hot and open and just a little bit wild. His teeth scrape the spot just beneath your ear and your fingers clench in his curls, hard.

The bark digs into your shoulder blades. You can faintly feel the ground disappearing from under you. Grass sticks to the backs of your calves. The sky overhead is lazy and blue, clouds like pulled cotton, and none of it, absolutely none of it, matters. 

Not the cows, not the heat, not the fact that you're pressed up against a pecan tree in the middle of a Kansas pasture—just this. Just him.

It doesn't take long for it to escalate. 

You're not normally a fan of this—quickies, anyway, you'd rather take your time, break him down methodically, piece by piece, but you think you'd actually combust if you don't have him right there, right at that second. And damn it, you will. 

You will. 

Your hands scramble to wrench his shirt off, a mad dash to get as close to his skin as possible. He helps you, your pretty boy, your sweetheart, your sunshine—chuckling when the fabric inevitably gets caught between his head and shoulders. 

"Clark—" you glare at him, not really annoyed with him but his stupid, stupid shirt. "Get it—please, get it off—"

"So impatient," He grins. He helps you anyway, giving you that final push to get the shirt off his head. And then ou're like a moth drawn to a flame, nipping at his skin, sucking little love bites that you know he adores into his chest. "Baby, sweetheart—"

"Sweetheart, baby—" You kiss his collarbone, hands going to undo his belt, the metal clinking from your actions. "Need you now."

Clark nods vigorously at that. "Yeah, yeah—okay."

He readjusts, free now from his belt, jeans dropping low, and he's scooping your thighs up so you're flush against the tree for leverage. The bark of the tree's rough and it'll leave some truly horrendous marks later, but he's pushing your dress up around your waist, cock situated and ready at your entrance. 

A breath. A look between you. And then he sinks you down, no prep, no foreplay, just him and the burn of taking all of him bare.

You make an embarrassing noise when he bottoms out, yelping and wrapping your arms around his neck. Clark slows down, pressing kisses on your forehead and muttering small little praises. "You're doing so good. You feel amazing, baby, you just let me know when, I'll wait—"

Fuck, that turns you on more than it should've. You clench around him, mouth parting in a quiet moan. "Now, I'm ready now. Move, Kent."

His hand hitches your leg up higher for a better angle, and—yeah, if that's not the hottest thing in the world. The tenderness mixed with the way you know he's about to utterly destroy you. He rolls his hips, once, twice, until he sets a punishing rhythm.

He moves, hard and deep inside of you, always a stretch widthwise. Always feels like a rearrangement. Every single vein, every twitch, every agonizing inch as he gets to work fucking you like your life depends on it.

And the tree shakes—it fucking shakes, leaves falling all around you—when his pace gets punishing and relentless. All you can do is take it, legs shivering and hands scrambling to hold on to something, anything.

The strap of your dress has fallen down your shoulder at this point, and Clark takes the opportunity to wrap his hot mouth around your exposed nipple, eyes falling closed. "Tastes like heaven."

"Clark—" You shudder, his ruts turning more and more shallow. "Need more, I need—need help, please—"

He nods against your skin, letting go of your nipple with one wet pop. A hand skirts down between you, wordless, and rubs hard circles against your clit, never twisting, just a constant, almost vibrating pressure that wrenches more desperate gasps out of you.

You love him.

It hits you the hardest at that moment, when he grins and you can feel those tell-tale signs of your orgasm shuddering closer, so impossibly close that it makes your knees weak. Like your body can’t hold the thought anymore. 

Months of this, this agonizing need to tell him, to show him. And suddenly it’s all you can feel—this pressure behind your teeth, this wild, unspooling thing clawing to get out. You didn’t plan on it. You don't meant to. But it’s already there, clawing its way up your throat with a kind of ferocity that feels unstoppable.

You pull back a breath. Just enough to get the words free. Try to get lucid fast.

“I—”

But then his hand’s on your cheek.

Soft. Certain.

“Wait,” he says, and it’s gentle, but firm enough to stop you.

You freeze, stunned. Like someone hit pause on your entire brain.

“W–W–What?” you whisper, barely breathing. His pace doesn't break. Still pounding into you like he doesn't see right through you. His eyes flicker between yours—quiet, careful, like he sees exactly where you were going. Like he caught the words mid-flight.

“Not yet,” he murmurs. “Not like this, baby. Not while I'm—not against a tree.”

“I don't—I don't mind,” you whine. 

He laughs under his breath. "No.”

You must've pouted, must've frowned, or… or something, because Clark's expression goes soft. He tugs you closer, hips going deeper this time until your head falls back, like an apology. 

You're so close, so goddamn close, and fuck, if he's not determined to make it up to you. Focus redirected to the sole goal of making you finish harder than you ever have before. Another broken moan slips out of you.

And you're still overtaken by this need to say something, something to encapsulate this feeling inside of you. So instead, you say the next best thing, “You’re mine,” you say, fierce and true and sure.

Clark nods. “Yours,” he echoes, like it’s gospel.

You come around him like that, muscles wound up tight, him working himself into you faster—faster, until he pulses inside you. It's all warmth, his shoulders shaking like a leaf, you holding onto him like the old tire swing on a tree. Chests heaving. Sweat pooling underneath your knees. But he doesn't let go.

He pulls back just a tad, just enough to rest his head against the crook of your neck. His curls tickle your skin, just slightly. "Hold me tighter?"

You're still quivering, traitorous legs twitching, but you do. You wrap your arms around him and squeeze until he sighs, relaxed and spent and all the things that you let go unsaid. 

The cows, thankfully, have the decency not to interrupt.

.

He’s on the fire escape again.

You don’t see him at first—just the corner of his shirt sleeve through the window screen, fluttering gently in the breeze like a flag someone planted in a place they want to stay.

You step closer.

And there he is.

Sitting on the metal grate, knees drawn up, socked feet tucked against the warm steel, one arm draped loosely over the railing like he forgot the rest of the world exists. His head's tilted back against the sun, eyes closed, face subdued in that way it only gets when no one’s watching. 

Or maybe just when you are.

His shirt—some washed-out old thing from Central Kansas A&M—is rumpled and crooked on his frame like he pulled it out of the laundry basket and shrugged it on without thinking. One sleeve's shoved all the way to his elbow, exposing the freckles on his forearm.

You’re barefoot, cradling a sweating glass of lemonade in your palm, still in sleep shorts and one of his too-big sweaters again. You hadn’t meant to come looking for him. You just woke up and felt the space beside you was empty, not in a sad way, just… hollow. Cool. 

You followed the pull of it until it led you here.

He doesn’t move when you open the window. Doesn’t speak. But his eyes blink open, lashes catching the light. He looks at you, and that alone does something to your insides.

It’s the kind of look that hits low and blooms slow.

Not a spark, but a sunrise.

His smile when he sees you is small. A little crooked, like maybe he’s not so sure it’s okay to be this happy about something so simple. 

Like you just standing there, sleepy and squinting and probably still with pillow creases and hints of drool on your cheek, is his favorite part of this whole Saturday.

He lifts a hand and stretches it toward you.

Palm up.

Fingertips flexing.

“C’mere,” he says, voice warm from disuse. “It’s nice.”

You don’t hesitate. 

You climb carefully, your lemonade forgotten on the windowsill, and ease down between his legs. The fire escape creaks beneath you but holds. Of course it does. He shifts to make room for you like he already knew exactly how this would fit—your back against his chest, his knees bracketing yours, arms folding around you like second nature.

And you just sit like that, folded into him.

His chin hooks over your shoulder. His breath brushes your neck. One of his hands rests against your stomach, just above the hem of your sweater, warm through the fabric. The other finds your thigh, fingers drumming lazily against the denim there.

And you breathe. In and out. Slowly. Like maybe you forgot how before this.

“You been out here long?” you murmur.

He shrugs behind you. “I dunno. Long enough, maybe.”

You lean back into him, let your head fall onto his shoulder. “Get what you needed?”

There’s a long pause. Not like he’s unsure, just like he’s letting the quiet fill in some blanks first.

“Yeah,” he says finally. “I think I did.”

You let the silence stretch after that. It’s not awkward. It’s just… Clark. 

Which is to say: it’s safe.

The sunlight spills golden across the alley, catching in the curls at his temple. Today, he smells like clean cotton and cedar and whatever fancy soap he borrowed from your shower. His skin's warm. 

You rest your hand over his where it sits on your stomach. His thumb traces a lazy circle just under your ribs, like he’s mapping out the shape of you in his mind.

“I used to sit like this back home,” he says after a while, voice soft. “Not on a fire escape, obviously. We had a roof. And a swing. My dad always left it out a little too long, so in the summer it was warm to the touch by the time I got to it.”

You hum, eyes slipping closed.

“He used to say it was good for me. Sunlight. Said I always looked like a weed after a storm when I stayed inside too long. Pale and strung out and grumpy.”

“Grumpy?” you smile, turning your face a little to glance at him. “You?”

“Oh yeah,” he grins. “Pouty little farm boy, hair sticking up, refusing to eat my vegetables unless they were corn.”

“Let me guess,” you say. “Martha snuck green beans into casseroles when you weren’t looking.”

He makes a pleased noise. “Bingo. Said it was her secret weapon for keeping me out of trouble.”

“That and the swing?”

“That and the swing.”

You settle again, your cheek to his shoulder, the metal warm beneath your thighs. You wonder if this is what he felt like, back then—sitting outside in the golden quiet, the weight of the sky pressing gentle on his shoulders, like a blanket he didn’t know he needed.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” he says suddenly, like it just occurred to him.

And it is.

But it would’ve been, anyway.

You twist slightly, enough to catch the line of his jaw, the slope of his nose. He’s not glowing. Not exactly. But something in him is bright. 

And you—you love him so goddamn fiercely in that moment it feels like your ribs might crack from the inside. Like your heart is blooming against them, stubborn and wild and wholly his.

You lace your fingers with his where they’re still resting against your chest. His grip tightens. Not possessive. Just… sure.

He’s quiet a long time.

Then, like he’s been trying to time it right: “I love you.”

Just that.

Just the words, tucked into your collarbone. No fanfare. No build. Just truth. It roots into you like sunlight in soil. You don’t speak for a long moment, trying to get your lungs to work again. Your body. Everything else. Because it’s a simple sentence, but it feels like something tectonic and holy.

Eventually, you turn, content and sure.

“I love you too.”

His head drops forward until his forehead presses to yours. You feel him exhale, shaky but smiling.

“I kept trying to find the right time,” he says. “I didn’t want it to feel like… I don’t know. A checkpoint. Like I had to say it because it was next on the list.”

You smile, thumb still brushing his skin. “So you went with the middle of the fire escape, during golden hour, while I’m in your hoodie and haven’t showered since last night?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. Felt right.”

You sit like that for a while, sun on your skin, his breath on your neck. The world feels quieter with him this close. Still.

Eventually, when the light starts to dip low, painting the fire escape in rust and gold, you shift to get up.

He doesn’t let go. Not immediately. His hands stay at your waist, his fingers patient where they rest at your sides. Anchoring you.

“You look good in this light,” you murmur. “Like—too good. It’s kind of rude, honestly.”

He huffs a laugh. “Yeah?”

You nod. “Like you belong in it.”

He looks at you for a long moment, something intimate and private in his eyes.

Then, “You’re not wrong.”

You tilt your head. “What, that you photosynthesize?”

But he just shakes his head, slow.

“No. Just… I think it’s you,” he says, almost like he’s surprising himself. “You make everything brighter.”

And it’s stupid, and it’s a little embarrassing, and you kiss him anyway. Because he’s warm and real and saying the kind of thing that would make anyone else roll their eyes—but with him, it just lands.