you hide your injuries from him — Clark Kent
summary: you’ve been asking your boyfriend to take down a bookshelf for months, but every time he gets to it, something comes up and the world needs your boyfriend. you decide enough is enough, so you decide to do it yourself. it’s going well until you fall and get hurt, and you hide the injuries from him because you don’t want to worry him. he finds out anyway.
content warning: reader falls and gets crushed by a bookshelf and bruises her ribs, abuse of painkillers, crack treated seriously, humour turning into angst and hurt/comfort, Clark is an idiot, Superman is reliable but Clark Kent isn’t, established relationship, Clark Kent is hopelessly in love with you, he’s just dumb sometimes. suggestive content — oral, f!receiving; nothing explicit but still heavily implied, mdni. black cat reader + golden retriever (cat?) clark kent
word count: 6.8k words
note: this was supposed to be silly and shorter but oops! things got a bit out of hand. written in one day and absolutely not reread, don’t mind typos or inconsistencies! >.<
Dating a superhero is not for the faint of heart. Don’t get it wrong, you love Clark Kent, and you love dating him, even if sometimes the weight of the entire world plays third wheel between the two of you (sometimes it even felt like you were the third wheel). It’s okay, you knew what you were getting into.
You actually love that Clark Kent has such a bleeding heart, and that he’s so kind and so helpful.
But you also really wish he would stop disappearing every time he finally has to take down that bookshelf that was hovering dangerously..
It seemed like a cruel trick of fate, truly, how every time he finally agreed to do it, something in the other side of the world comes up, and he looks at you with a guilty and sheepish grin before he wears his suit and leaves you behind, you and that stupid bookshelf you couldn’t use anymore and only looked ugly.
You probably would have gotten this over with months ago if you’d done it on your own, but no, you were stupid and you decided to trust your boyfriend. It’s your fault, really, for believing him when he said he would do it. What kind of girlfriend did that? What kind of self-respecting, independant, strong and smart woman did that? Really, you only have yourself to blame.
“I’m really sorry, sweetheart,” he says, and he really looks apologetic and guilty when he apologizes, and you hate that it makes it so much harder to truly be mad at him.
“It’s fine, just go,” you reply. You’re waiting for him to leave so you can finally get rid of that monstrosity in the living room.
He smiles, thinking he got away with it. He doesn’t know it’s because you decided to do it yourself.
“I love you so much baby. I swear to you I’m doing anything you want me to do as soon as I come back,” he promises, eager and hopeful and genuine, and he cups your face gently between his too big hands and he kisses you on the forehead gently, as if you would shatter if he’d applied the tiniest bit of pressure.
You can’t help but snort. Not meanly, just… he always says that. And while it’s mostly true, it apparently doesn’t apply to that damn bookshelf. Why? Absolutely no idea. You remember one day when Clark had literally mowed the lawn instead of fixing the damn shelf. What was wrong with him? Was the shelf made of kryptonite or what?
You’re proud of yourself for not sounding petty or annoyed.
“Go save the world, big boy. The world needs you.”
So did you, but not anymore. You can do anything on your own. You don’t need stupid otherworldly powers for that.
“I love you, sweetheart,” he repeats.
“I love you too. Now go before the unthinkable happens.”
He’s gone in a flash, as if he was only waiting for your permission. There he goes, probably away for the rest of the day.
You push your sleeves back and get to work.
It starts easy enough. The shelf was already cleaned and ready to be thrown away. All it needed was a strong pair of arms, and a long ladder.
The ladder was probably older than Clark’s home planet and it stood shakily like it had a goddamn cold, but it was tall enough and it was sturdy enough for the job. Screwdriver in hand, you started unscrewing the screws (how many times were you going to say that word?), thinking to yourself that Clark was an idiot for putting this off for so long. There’s literally nothing difficult about this – or dangerous, if you didn’t count the ladder’s strange composition, and honestly, it doesn’t even count, because if it were him doing this, he wouldn’t even have needed it in the first place.
Everything was going perfectly well. You were halfway done with the screws and you were thinking of taking a small break (totally deserved, in your humble and completely unbiased opinion), when Superkitten decided that the ladder was a pair of legs, and he started rubbing himself all over it, making it even less stable than it already was.
“Superkitten, go away!” you try telling him, but of course, Superkitten answered to no one.
He’s sharpening his claws now against the splintering wood and you suddenly have the clearest vision of your demise. Dying because your stupid (God bless his stupid little heart) cat used your ladder as a scratching post.
Everything happens so fast you barely had time to think, only act, and you’re gripping onto the shelf for dear life and next thing you know, you’re on the floor. Superkitten had fled the crime scene the moment the ladder fell and you hung onto the bookshelf.
You’re not proud of it but your last thought before the wood quite literally crushes you into oblivion is: serves Clark right.
You’re not really sure how long you’ve been unconscious for, but when you come to your senses, the sun is barely starting to set and Superkitten is licking your face. He must have been going at it for a long while because your skin felt raw. At least someone was worried about you, though, if the low whining coming from your cat was anything to go by.
“I’m up, I’m up,” you tell him, trying to reassure him. You try to lift a hand to pet him but pure agony blocks you from moving.
Now that you think about it, your chest hurts and you have a hard time breathing with the broken pieces of wood littered your body like a blanket. A painful, not warm at all, not soft blanket. If you have to have a not soft blanket, you would rather have Clark draped all over you again.
Clark. Ugh. This is all his fault. If he’d fixed the shelf when you’d told him to, you wouldn’t be in this situation.
You hope you haven’t broken any ribs. You need your ribs for baking.
Superkitten’s whining has gotten louder now, probably scared because you’re awake but you’re not moving, and your heart breaks a little. You didn’t mean to worry him.
Summoning all of your strength, you push the wood off of you (you want to scream but you don’t because Clark would definitely hear that and you really, really don’t want him to see you in this situation).
“There,” you breathe out to no one but yourself, your arms falling limp to your side, weak from the strain. You can finally breathe again, at the cost of your arms.
It takes you a longer time to move again. Thankfully you don’t think your ribs are broken (you’re not a professional but you’re pretty sure the pain would be more unbearable than this) but they’re definitely bruised. You feel like a giant bruise, honestly. You guess there won’t be any sexy times with Clark any time soon. You scoff at the thought. Why are you thinking about that? Besides, Clark definitely doesn’t deserve any sexy time for being the world’s most unreliable boyfriend. Bruised ribs or not.
You want to throw everything away but you’re not sure you’d be able to bend down, so first you make your way, slowly and painstakingly, to the bathroom where you first swallow half of a pill of Clark’s heavy duty painkillers (probably a bad idea, but you have a very good reason for being stupid, and you’re not going to waste it — you love bad decisions, especially when you’re not responsible for them) and then check the reach of the damage.
Gingerly, you lift your shirt up.
One giant bruise. You literally became a Smurf.
Thirty minutes later, the painkiller has fully kicked in and you decide to get rid of the incriminating evidence. Honestly, you should be mad at Clark for gatekeeping these painkillers when you have period cramps. He’s had these all this time and he never even offered once? Rude. Cruel. Blatant abuse.
Is it normal that your heartbeat is so fast? And that you feel kind of delirious? Probably. You just got crushed half to death, so it would make sense that your body’s in a state of shock.
Superkitten hasn’t left your side ever since you woke up on the floor, and it tugs at your heartstrings. He’s obviously shaken.
“I’m so sorry baby,” you whisper to him, scratching his cheeks with both hands. “Mommy’s not gonna do that ever again, I promise. That was really stupid of her, wasn’t it? No, you’re right. Daddy’s the stupid one. This is all his fault.”
He meowed, which was all the confirmation you needed.
“Let’s go to sleep,” you whisper to him.
You change out of your clothes to put on your favorite sweater (Clark’s old college shirt) because even if you’re still a little pissed at him, you’re still hopelessly in love with him, even if he doesn’t deserve it (lie), and you curl up in his side of the bed, body wrapped around a purring Superkitten, wishing Clark was here right now.
“The shelf is gone,” Clark says, a little dumbly.
“What are you talking about?” you reply.
You know exactly what he’s talking about, but you don’t really want to talk about what happened (the bruises are agonising and you don’t dare take more of Clark’s painkillers after you spent the entire night with your knees on the bathroom floor, hugging the toilet bowl as you emptied your entire stomach — bile and intestines), and quite frankly, you just want to mess with him a little bit.
“You know, the bookshelf! The one in our living room?”
You look at him, feigning concern, and you touch his forehead with the back of your palm, hiding the wince as the movement pulls your muscles. “Are you sure you didn’t take a nasty hit to the head, baby?”
He huffs, looking adorably indignant, and he crosses his big arms over his chest.
He’d come back a couple of hours ago while you were still asleep, and he’d joined you in bed, gathering you in his arms like you were his favorite bouquet, holding you until you woke up. Then, he spent close to an hour just kissing every inch of your face and neck. When he tried to pull your shirt away, you stopped him with a hand to his face without a word, because you knew Clark would stop without a word. Even in your half asleep state and the numbing pain you’d remembered he couldn’t see you underneath your shirt.
And now you’re fully awake, and he hasn’t stopped following you, pestering you about the shelf. I’ll fix it now for you baby, he says, blissfully unaware and earnest in his desire to do things right by you.
But there’s no bookshelf anymore. It’s gone, and he seems to have a hard time understanding it, because his very core can’t compute the fact that you may be lying to him.
“Where’s the shelf, baby?” he asks, whining. “What happened to it?”
“There’s no shelf, Clark,” you say, as if you’re talking to a baby that’s prone to hysterics.
“Yeah, there’s no shelf now, but there was one! Remember? The shelf I was supposed to take down but then every time I tried to, something came up?”
That irked you. “Oh so now you remember,” you say, and it might have been a mistake because he wasn’t supposed to know you felt as strongly about it as you did. You were supposed to be cool and chill, and most importantly, self-reliant and independent.
His face switches almost instantly, from confused to kicked puppy. “I’m sorry baby, I really am. I was going to fix it, I swear, but then I heard—”
“I know, I know,” you reply, a little more irritated than you would normally be, and it’s partly due to the pain and partly due to the fact that he is right. You can’t get mad at him for wanting to make the world a better place. “That was a job for Superman, yadda yadda, I get it, I know, you can shut up about it now. Forget about the shelf. Forget I ever asked you to help me. I fixed it myself, so you don’t have to keep leading me on with it. Let’s just move on. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
Is it possible to get addicted from just taking one half of a pill? Your head is killing you, and your ribs feel like they’re closing in on your lungs and heart, and having Clark hover around you like this, with his stupid morals and values and too pure heart only made everything worse.
Scratch addiction — was it possible to get withdrawal from just one half dose?
You take three normal painkillers. Maybe the right decision would be to go to the ER but you’re too deep into this, and you really, really don’t want Clark to find out about your ribs and have to deal with his guilt again.
You love him, you really do. But you just wish you could take a normal breath again without almost passing out from pain alone.
If he’d fixed that damn shelf months ago like you’d asked him, you wouldn’t be in this situation. You know you could have done it yourself, but he’d made you promise you wouldn’t do that, and unlike some people, you actually kept your promises. If he’d kept his, you wouldn’t be mad at the love of your life, and you wouldn’t be thinking about swallowing all of Clark’s painkillers.
You make the mistake of looking at Clark’s face, and the misery and heartbreak you see on it almost brings you to your knees. If the physical pain didn’t do you in, then his pain so clearly etched onto his angelic features certainly would.
You love Clark but you hate his guilt. You hate the kicked puppy look on his face whenever he thinks you’re not watching. You hate how he gets quieter, more overbearing, as he tries to fix things by overcompensating.
Dinner is a matter of awkward silence and grating sounds from cutlery against plates. He made dinner. He really wanted to, even if it was usually your role to make dinner. You let him because frankly, you’re over this whole thing.
The dinner is good but it tastes like ashes to your tastebuds. You keep thinking about his painkillers in the bathroom. The ones you were never supposed to take because they weren’t made for humans. You wonder if he would ever notice half of one missing. You wonder how he would react.
When you go to sleep, he tries to hug you from behind but you flinch so hard (not at him, just at the expectation of the pain that was soon to follow) that he literally makes a noise. A small, wounded, noise at the back of his throat.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry.”
You can’t stay mad at Clark for too long. It’s against your nature.
So when he makes dinner for the third night in a row, and buys you all of the items on your whishlist, and does a million tiny other little things that make you feel like you’re the only girl in the world, and he gets down on his knees to sincerely ask for your forgiveness, and he tells you how much of an idiot he’s been, you give in. Because idiot or not, you still loved your boyfriend. So much that it sometimes hurt.
“I forgive you,” you tell him, and watching him smile is like seeing the first rays of sunshine break through dark stormy clouds after a dark season.
“I love you so much, sweetheart. More than you could ever know, even if I’m an idiot sometimes. I genuinely was going to do what you asked, I swear, but I guess I just didn’t see how important it was to you.”
He’s so sweet, and he’s so kind, and you don’t know how you’re going to keep hiding your ribs from him without breaking his heart. It’s obvious he already feels bad enough for not taking what you ask of him seriously; he already feels bad enough that you ended up doing something he was supposed to do.
Knowing you got hurt, indirectly because of him, would crush him.
“I love you, Clark. And I appreciate your words,” you reply, and you try to forget about the bruises under your shirt that seem to flare up, in sync with your guilt.
“I am the luckiest man on earth and the galaxy,” he whispers against your neck. “And I was too stupid to see it. Never again, sweetheart. Never again. I don’t even have a proper excuse, other than I was being an idiot.”
His hand trails beneath your shirt. He grazes your ribs and when you shiver, he thinks it’s from pleasure.
Yeah, because my skin is tender and sore and swollen, and even your softest touch feels like fire against my skin.
“Or… maybe I make you hot,” he says, in that distinctive way of his; both confident and boyish, both suave and sheepish, like he’s still not sure whether he’s allowed to be like this around you.
“Don’t flatter yourself. I’m still mad at you, remember?”
And he pouts. This oversized man, who can lift buildings, who can destroy civilisations with one vision ray, who is on his knees for you, is honest to God pouting, eyes looking at you through his eyelashes, eyes downturned like you’d just told him Krypto hated me. “But you forgave me,” he says— or rather, he whines.
“Did I?” you ask, smirking despite the tender ache beneath your breasts. He always did make everything better.
“You’re so cruel to me my love. And yet, something is wrong with me because I love it.”
You brush his messy curls over his forehead, and he all but melts against your touch, and you scratch at his scalp like you do to Superkitten.
It’s not the first time that you make the comparison. Superman and Superkitten. Both a little dumb, both full of love for you.
He rests his head on your thighs and you keep playing with his hair. It’s soft and silky and it always smells nice. He always denies it but you’re ninety-nine percent sure he steals your vanilla scented shampoo. You rasp your fingernails against his scalp, and he lets out a contented sigh.
“I love you, sweetheart. I don’t deserve you, but I’ll work hard on becoming a man worthy of you.”
And there’s something wrong with this sentence, because why would the man who saves the planet on a daily basis not be worthy of you? Who even are you? But still, his words break something tender inside your chest, and your heart spills like ink on paper.
“I love you too, Clark,” you tell him, because it’s all you’re able to say before your throat closes up and your eyes sting.
I should have waited for him, you thought to yourself. I shouldn’t have tried to do it on my own, and I shouldn’t have snapped at him the way I did.
Now you hurt him, and yourself.
Clark Kent is, by definition, a clingy man. No one would never know because on the surface, he almost looks put together — aside from his clumsiness and his fool act that stopped fooling you a long time ago.
Ever since he confessed to you and asked you out and you gave him permission, it’s like all his restraints came off. A kiss on the lips were just the tip of the iceberg. When you guys go grocery shopping, he refuses to let you hold anything, and he holds everything with one hand just so he can hold yours with his free hand.
He kisses you on your eyelids, on your nose, on your cheeks, on your forehead. Anytime, anywhere, for no reason other than he just felt like it.
He never once made you doubt his love because, as cynical as you are, even you can’t deny the love pouring off him in waves whenever he sees you.
Whenever he has to write an article, he always manages to sneak in something only you would understand. Each sentence would start with a letter that would then form a secret message for you.
Clark Kent is in love with you. You know that. The world knows that, because he has no issue with showing it to the world. In fact, he has issue if he can’t show you off.
It’s Saturday morning and neither of you has work. It’s a lazy morning, with sun rays draped over your bodies like nature’s own blanket. His arm is draped over your thigh— thigh that’s draped over his own hip. Mornings with him felt like a game of Twisters in the best way possible.
You can feel him, heavy and hot, right against your crotch. He’s big. Bigger than anything you’ve ever seen. He bucks his hips, and you’re not sure if he’s even aware that he’s doing it.
Clark Kent is a clingy man, but also a relentless one. He can never get enough. Awake, asleep, his mind’s always attuned to your presence. He always wants you.
It doesn’t take you too long for your body to adjust, to react. Your hips respond in kind, and you watch as a smile unfurls on his face. He looks like the world’s largest, and most satisfied, cat in the world.
“Good morning, my love,” he whispers, voice hoarse and thick from sleep. It’s so deep you feel like it could rumble against your chest. His hands are travellers, mapping each inch of your skin from touch alone. This, I love. This, I love too, he seems to say with his hands.
You shiver again. Pleasure and pain mingle together.
“Morning,” you reply. You’ve never been the early riser between the two of you, and mornings make you feel it.
Then, he disappears from your side, and he appears again between your legs, your thighs bracketing his head, draped over his shoulders like the world’s naughtiest cape. He’s looking at you expectantly, and heat exploses in your lower belly. He’s so big that your thighs are already stretched apart, just to accommodate him.
With one thumb, he slides your panties to the side.
Your head falls back on your pillow, and you twist and grasp the mess of his curls between your fingers.
His hands, large and safe and big and warm, are on each side of your hips, and his thumbs slide underneath your shirt. His face disappears between your legs, and your hips stutter involuntarily.
He tries to go further with his hands, but you stop him. You hold his hands in yours, and close your legs around his neck. You know he loves the feeling of you crushing him with your thighs, and you need to distract him from trying to take your shirt off, because you also know that he likes having you bare and naked, so he can play with your breasts freely. He doesn’t like being caged by your shirt.
But your bruises have gotten worse, and you can’t show him, not when he’s finally moved on and stopped feeling guilty every time your eyes meet his.
He bites the inside of your thigh when he feels that you’re not all there with him.
“Focus, sweetheart,” he demands, lips swollen and shiny. “Eyes on me.”
And what else can you do when he speaks to you like this except obey?
“What?” you ask, laughing in disbelief. “You just had your head between my legs and you think I hate you?”
He hasn’t even washed up yet. His lips are shiny and glossy and they smell of you.
“But you won’t let me wash you,” he explains. “You hate me, admit it, my love. You only use for my tongue and—”
You blush, and cover his — sticky — mouth with your hands. “Shut up!”
His mouth can’t move but his eyes smile for him.
“Let me shower with you, baby, please. I’m begging you,” he pleads, the moment you take your hands off his lips and you your hands against your shirt.
“Ouch,” he pouts. “Just no? I don’t even get a reason?”
“You’ve been a bad boy,” you lie. “Bad boys don’t get to shower with me.”
He gasps. “You’ll never let me live it down, will you?”
“Not for another four weeks, no.”
This time, he just laughs, taken by surprise by the specificity of your answer. “That’s so specific, baby. Why four weeks?”
You raise one shoulder. “I just felt like it.”
It’s a lie. You said four weeks because Google said bruised ribs took six weeks to recover, and it’d already been almost two weeks. But you can’t exactly tell him that, can you?
“Fine. I guess I deserve that. But you should know I’m going to miss you terribly while you’re showering in there, all alone, without me, without anyone to scrub your back for you because you’re all alone.”
You push his face away with your hand again. He loves being manhandled by you. “I think I’ll manage, lover boy. But thank you for the concern.”
He watches you close the bathroom door like a sad puppy being left behind.
They always say things get worse before they get better, and you hope that’s the case with your ribs. The longer you look at it, the more ashamed you felt. Falling from a stupid ladder. Trying to hold onto a broken shelf. It’s no one’s fault but yours. Clark didn’t make you grab that screwdriver and climb on that ladder. He didn’t make you fall. You did. You thought that an old and unstable ladder was good enough for the job, and you tried to hold onto the shelf you’d just spent twenty minutes unscrewing from the wall to not fall.
All of this is on you. The pain, the anger, the sadness, the shame.
You don’t know why but under the shower you break into tears. The instant the hot drops of water touch your skin, it’s like a faucet is turned on. Your ribs hurt with the weight of your sobs. Maybe it’s the pain, maybe it’s keeping it secret from him when all you want is to be cared for by him. You don’t know. You’re being stupid, and you’re so glad Clark is too much of a gentleman to use his superheating when you’re under the shower on your own, because you’re really not sure how you would have lied your way out of that.
Only a few more weeks. Your bruising is going to disappear soon, and you would no longer have to avoid Clark anymore.
By the time you’re out of the shower, Clark is cleaned up and dressed (well, he’s shirtless, but he did put pants on), and he’s busy sliding the last chocolate chip pancake he’d made onto a pile of steaming pancakes. It’s your favorite breakfast. The jar of Nutella is already out on the table, and he’s got hot chocolate ready for you as well.
He has a towel thrown over his shoulder, and you know he put it there on purpose, because you’d told him once that it made you go kind of crazy whenever he did that.
You slide on the barstool with barely a wince. You’re smiling so big your cheeks hurt.
“What’s this?” you ask him.
“Breakfast for my one and only.”
“What happened to you thinking I hated you?”
“Well, I figured if you really hated me, I had better start treating you like the princess you are.”
He preens under the praise, and the sight of the red dusting on his cheeks makes everything else a little easier to bear.
“I hope you like the pancakes. I tried my best.”
“They look fantastic,” you reply immediately. You’re not lying. And even if they looked ugly, you wouldn’t care, because he’d made them for you, because he knew they were your favorite.
He gets closer to you and kisses you on the forehead. “Anything for you, my princess. I mean it.”
You believe him. You’ve always believed him.
You don’t know what the hell you did to deserve a man like him.
“You okay?” he asks you a couple of days later, completely out of the blue.
“Uh, yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
Your stupid heartbeat’s going to expose you if you don’t calm it right now.
He notices. Of course he does. He’s attuned to you like he’s a radio and you’re his favorite channel.
“It’s just… I saw two sheets of painkillers in the trash. Empty. I’d never seen you use that many before. Are you sure you’re okay?”
He’s too kind to mention your heartbeat going crazy inside your ribcage, like it’s trying to escape. It’s a wonder, you think, that it doesn’t actually hurt your ribs.
He knows. He must know about the half dose of his painkillers that you took. Knowing him, he probably checked everything in the shelves behind the bathroom mirror.
You can’t think of a lie on the spot. “My- my headaches were getting worse,” you say. You hope he doesn’t think it too suspicious, because he already knows you’re prone to headaches. It’s why you have so many painkillers in the first place. “But I’m feeling better, now. I think they’re gone for good.”
It’s true, in a way. Your rib pain is almost gone. The bruises are mostly for show, at this point.
“Oh baby, why didn’t you tell me? I could have helped you,” he asks, gentle frown between his eyes, and it breaks your heart, to be the one to put that worry there on his beautiful face.
“Sorry… I’m sorry Clark. It wasn’t really a big deal. I’ll tell you next time, though. I promise.”
He stands up from the couch and walks over to you. “Thank you, sweetheart.” He bends down to kiss your forehead. “And I’m sorry you’ve been hurting this badly. Next time, don’t take that much painkillers, okay? I’m not telling you what to do, but they aren’t good for your health, and I’m worried about you. Come to me, and I’ll make you herbal teas and give you massages, okay?”
The guilt is going to eat you alive.
In a way, you’re almost glad when fate decides to take reigns over your life and exposes your lie to Clark.
It happens like this: it’s Sunday afternoon, you’re in the kitchen washing the dishes you’d used to make Clark his favorite cake while he’s in the backyard doing Clark Kent stuff, and then he comes back inside through the kitchen door, and he’s smiling at you and then standing right behind you. He puts his head above yours, because you’re the perfect size for that, and then, without warning, he wraps his arms around your ribs and lifts you up in the air.
It’s supposed to be cute, it’s supposed to be romantic. He’s happy to see you, and he loves you, and he loves to have you in his arms at all times.
You’re supposed to shriek in surprise to fake struggling while giggling and asking him to (not) put you back down.
What you’re not supposed to do, however, is gasp like he’d just crushed your ribcage, and double over in pain.
“What’s wrong, are you okay?! Did I hurt you?”
You’d never heard him this panicked, this horrified. His biggest fear had always been to accidentally hurt you, physically or mentally, and this must seem like his worst nightmare come true.
Clark puts you down immediately on the ground, and he’s turning you gently so he can look at you, eyes raking up your body up and down to check for injuries.
You try to hide your ribs with your arms but it’s useless against his x-ray vision.
You can tell just from the tightening of his jaw that he saw it. He saw what you’d been trying to hide for the past couple of weeks.
“What happened?” he asked. His voice is strangely cold and distant. It’s — terrifying. “I know it’s not me because it looks old. Weeks old. What happened?” he repeated.
You’re standing there, frozen with fear, hands still soapy and dripping water all over the floor. “It’s nothing,” you reply. It’s your first instinct. To lie and pretend nothing is wrong.
“Don’t lie to me,” he says. His voice is quiet but almost menacing. “I can see it clear as day. You’re hurt. Tell me when, why, who or what.”
He’s starting to connect the dots, you think. He’s scared of your answer as much as he’s scared of you lying.
“I’m sorry,” you say, even though you’re not quite sure what you’re apologizing for. For hiding it from him? For not hiding it good enough from him?
“Baby, please,” he begs. His voice sounds wrecked.
“When I was taking the shelf down, our cat used the ladder as a scratching post, and it fell. I tried to hold onto the shelf but it broke under my weight. And it fell on my chest.”
He rubs a hand over his face as he starts pacing around the kitchen. “You’ve been hurting for two weeks and I had no idea,” he says. He sounds completely wrecked. “And it’s all my fault. If I’d just— why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were already feeling so guilty, I didn’t want to add on top of that. And it’s not your fault I fell and bruised my ribs. I didn’t want to worry you.”
“My emotions are mine alone to manage, okay? It’s not— God.” He stops moving, and he turns to look at you. “You shouldn’t have had to hide your pain from me just to spare me my feelings. I’m a grown man, I can take it. I can take anything you throw at me. But don’t hide from me, especially not because you think you’re protecting me.”
“No, God, no, I’m sorry. Baby, I’m the one who should be apologizing to you. Did you… did you go see a doctor at least?”
“No. I just… I don’t know. I didn’t think about it but by the time I did, it was too late.”
“What if you’d broken a rib?” he asks.
“I didn’t. I checked myself. And it didn’t hurt as bad as it would if I’d broken a rib.”
His laugh is a mixture of disbelief and tears. “That doesn’t reassure me at all.”
“It wasn’t— it wasn’t meant to be reassuring. It’s just the truth.”
“No, I need to see you. I need to be able to touch you.”
You lift up your shirt from the bottom and lift it slowly, revealing the nebula of purple and blue across your ribs, and Clark’s breath catches in his throat as he falls to his knees.
His hand hovers your skin. He doesn’t need to touch you for your skin to erupt in goosebumps.
“I’m so sorry,” he repeats. “I should have known. The painkillers, refusing to let me see you change, refusing to let me undress you. The signs were all there and I was too stupid to see it.”
“It’s not your fault,” you say weakly.
“Perhaps I didn’t make you fall, but I’m the one who pushed you to do something I was supposed to do for you, on your own. I’m the one who made you feel like you had to hide it from me to spare my feelings. I’m the one who failed you.”
“I’m the one who made the decision to hide it from you.” Your voice is weak to your own ears. You can’t blink at all. You’re staring at him, on his knees for you again in two weeks. Him apologizing to you twice in two weeks.
“No— you listen to me. Not any of this is your fault. I’m the one who’s been negligent and irresponsible. I’m the one who kept breaking my promise to you. I’m the one who’s made you bear something that was never yours to handle to begin with. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I do now. Unconsciously, I made you feel like you couldn’t be honest with me. And that’s unforgivable.”
Clark refuses to let you lift a single finger. He’s helped you lay down in bed in a way that didn’t hurt your ribs and said,
“You can bully me and refuse to listen to me for the rest of our lives all you want but only after you’re okay. For now, just — please — humor me?”
He calls his parents, and you can hear sweet Martha’s voice right from his phone because she always speaks loudly into the phone, worried you wouldn’t be able to hear her over the distance.
“Ma, I messed up,” he says.
You tune everything out while he asks his mom what he should do. And then he’s handing the phone to you because she said she wanted to talk to you, but Clark’s reluctant because he’s worried making you talk will hurt you more but you just roll your eyes at him and snatch the phone from his hand. Nothing will stop you from talking to her. And besides, your ribs are a lot better than they were. And Martha’s not exactly going to come out of the phone just to squeeze her ribs.
Martha is lovely as always and she says five times that she’ll come on down to their place anytime you wanted, and that she could make your favorite cookies, and that she and Jonathan missed the both of you, and that she hoped you will be alright soon.
She ends the call with, “Come see us once you’re alright, darling. Smallville misses you.”
And it must be in their genes because you can’t say no to her either.
Clark had been standing there the entire time, probably using his superhearing to overhear the entire conversation. He’s worried, you can see it. There’s a crease between his eyebrows and he’s rubbing his thumb across his lower lip.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks you for the hundredth time since he found out about your ribs.
“Yes. Believe me when I say it, or I’ll never tell you about my injuries from now on.”
He gasps. “You plan on having more injuries?!”
God bless his poor sweet soul.
You roll your eyes so hard it hurts. “Just… make yourself useful and come spoon me.”
His body reacts instantly — so used to obeying you — before his mind catches up with him and he jerks. “But your ribs.”
“They’re fine. As long as you don’t plan on squeezing me again.”
He took off his shirt and pants before crawling into bed next to you. He’s sulking. “I told you I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t know about your ribs, otherwise I never would have tried to lift you that way. Promise me you’ll always tell me when you’re hurt. Or even when you’re not hurt. I just need to know how you’re doing at all times.”
“Right now, I’m feeling very, very lonely because my boyfriend refuses to cuddle me.”
Your words spur him into action and soon, his arms are ever so gently wrapping around you.
“I love you,” he whispers against your ear. “And I’m sorry for failing you. But I swear to you that I’ll make it up to you, and keep making it up to you till the day I die.”
“I love you too, even if you’re crazy dramatic sometimes.”
“Lucky me,” he whispers. The worst part is that he means it. He truly feels lucky because you love him. He’s an idiot, but he’s your idiot. “I’m the luckiest idiot in the entire world.”
It’s not even close to the end of the day and it’s too late for a nap, but your eyes start to flutter shut anyway. All you need is Clark by your side and his arms, light as feather, around you.
“And by the way, you’re banned from ever climbing on a ladder again,” he whispers into your ear, right as you’re about to fall asleep.
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