He tips himself over your further, more cuddling, warm as a blanket with a comforting weight to it as his arm curls around you and bunches you up, encouraging your weight further across the bed to accommodate him. “Okay,” he says, sounding very happy to be spoken to in such a way. “I’m doing laundry, and you’re watching TV. Good talk.”

You’d laugh, but you’re distracted by the smell of him on top of you. Clark relaxes so heartily that he’s basically pushing you off of the bed, now, draped over you. He’s squishing you. You stick your head out of his embrace and turn enough to force his eye. 

“Clark, baby,” you say, offering your softest look, “you’re squishing me.”

“Oh, gosh, sorry,” he says, shuffling back. 

You take the opportunity to turn in toward him, your leg going over his thigh, arm over his side. Clark grasps your hip as though you need help to get comfortable, unnecessary and achingly nice of him. Worse when you lift yourself up some to move your arm and he slides his own beneath you to take your weight. 

“Thank you,” you say. 

“There’s really nothing else I’d rather be doing,” Clark says, his eyes a stormier shade of blue than usual in the dim lighting of your curtained bedroom. The February sun tries its hardest to find you between the cracks, little stripes of gold breaking through to kiss across Clark’s pale chest and arms. 

You rub at his bicep, feeling the skin warmed beneath each sluggish ray of sun. 

“We can’t do nothing today,” you reproach softly. “If we don’t keep up this weekend, we won’t get any time to ourselves next weekend.” 

“I can keep up. You know I’m fast.”

“You can’t super speed your way through the laundry.”

“Baby,” he says, reaching to hold you by the neck, his thumb brushing along your jaw, “I promise that anything we would have done today, when we’re together, I will get done tomorrow. Okay? I just want it to be about us, just me and you. Just one day for us. Do you believe me?”

“That you’ll do everything?”

“Yeah.”

When Clark promises, he doesn’t tend to break them. You tilt your face down to chase his touch, letting him caress the plush of your lips with his thumb, the breadth of it, and finding you’d rather not speak and make him stop. You nod twice. 

“Yeah?” he asks, framing your face in his hand. 

“Yeah,” you murmur, “okay. Today’s for being with you.”

He beams and gathers you even tighter to his chest, twisting around until you’re lying right on top of him. 

“What the hell is going on?” you mumble. 

Clark kisses your cheek, your nose, and the corner of your eye before hooking his chin above your head. You press your own kiss to the mildly scratchy side of his neck. “What’s wrong?” he asks, his cadence so soft it borders inaudible, as though your minor annoyance at being moved around is the worst of all ailments. 

“Did you call me earlier?”

“Yeah, I was thinking about you. It’s alright, I didn’t have anything important to say, I was just stealing a break.”

“Oh, okay, good. I’m at the mall. King’s Arcade. Just… clothes shopping.” 

“Great, can I come meet you?”

You squeeze the phone, turning away from the lingerie you’d been eyeing in a rush as though Clark will catch you immediately. “Sure,” you say, slightly breathless, “how far are you? I can come meet you at the front?”

“No, don’t worry about that, I’ll come find you, I’m like five minutes out. What store are you in?”

You turn back to the polka dot panties with the lettuce hem and the tiny black bow and its matching bra decisively. There’s a Bath and Body Works right next door. “By the candle shop,” you say, snagging the panties in your size. Baby steps. 

You pay for the panties and shove them with the receipt in your bag as Clark turns the corner. 

He squeezes your hand in hello. Asks if you’re thirsty and buys you a drink. Then you sort of follow one another around for a bit until Clark spies your lack of clothes and encourages you into a store with your style in the front window. 

Could he get any more perfect? (Yes! He pays for the two things you picked up, swiping his card before you can get yours out of your purse like he’d been waiting with it between his fingers.) You flush all over thinking he’s seen the panties in your rush to get your purse out and ruin his plans, which doesn’t help. 

“I’m sorry if I undermined your independence, but you have to let me pay for you sometimes. It’s more for me than it is for you,” he says, having noticed your displeasure, your joined hands swinging gently. 

“You didn’t undermine my independence, Clark.”

“Is that sass? Are you sassing me?”

You recognise his teasing as something that could spiral out of your control and try to duck away, but Clark pulls you right back in. 

“You’re being mean to me,” he says into your cheek. 

“You’re mean to me!”

“I’m not trying to be!”

Giggly and content, you make your way out of the mall, the short walk to his apartment becoming dawdlingly long. You’re tired as you shuck out of your shoes. Clark palms briefly at your back before throwing himself ahead. “I’ll make dinner,” he says.

So he does. You eat dinner with your heel pressed to the top of his foot, and share an ice cream for dessert from the same bowl with two spoons. 

You shower first. Clark kisses your cheek when you return to the bedroom wrapped in a towel, eager for his own, and leaves you with pajamas he’s laid out including a simple pair of pink panties and a soft bralette for sleeping. Just a suggestion, never expected, which is good. You swap the panties out for your new polka dot ones and get dressed, fix your hair, laid up at the top of the bed scrolling down your phone by the time Clark comes in dripping wet. He sits down on the end of the bed, taking the towel from around his shoulders to scrub at his curls. 

Even his back is rippled with muscle, the skin tight as he leans forwards. 

Okay. So. Your seduction was mainly panties-based and you’re not sure how to show Clark that they’re new without initiating. The point was that he’d see your new panties and the effort you’re making and start salivating in a more casual situation. You should’ve waited to get dressed until he was in the room, but it’s too late now. 

Clark tips backwards, his hair hanging in wet, dark coils behind him. “What’s wrong?”

“Huh?”

“I had a funny feeling about you.” 

Or he’s using his super senses for personal gain. “I’m fine, just thinking.”

“Yeah?” he asks. 

You shuffle down the bed to be closer. “I had this idea…”

Clark spots your timidity a mile out. Usually he’d reach to comfort you, but perhaps there’s more in what you’re not saying, because he bites down a smile that’s surprisingly amorous. Maybe he’s just wires-crossed, what with his lack of pants. “What was your idea?” he asks quietly. 

What to tell him? You nibble the inside of your lip. 

“It’s okay, you can tell me,” he says. 

“It’s not working out how I imagined.”

Clark’s eyes go wide. “What’s not working out? Me and you?”

“No.” You smile at him, then shrug diffidently. “I was trying to be cute, I guess, but I didn’t–”

“Sweetheart, you are adorable,” Clark says, twisting so you can see the defined ridge of every abdominal muscle, better to see you, and better to look at him. 

Your mouth goes dry. All you can think of is how you want him to see your new panties, and instead you’ve trapped him in reassurances. 

“You’re perfect,” he says, grabbing your knee. “You don’t have to try to be cute, you’re already the cutest girl I know.” 

Well, cute was a cop out. Saying sexy out loud felt silly in the moment. This is the messiest of messes. 

You let your head hang, defeated. Morose. “Thank you, Clark.”

You are kissed and cuddled, left dampened by his wet hair. 

You aren’t brave enough to ask Clark to watch you strip, nor are you eager to stand in the middle of the room and do it. The panties feel soft but too warm all night, every shift a pull of elastic against your skin. You’re a little wet and a lot warm, wanting Clark but not knowing how to ask, and he’s so worried about your self esteem that he doesn’t try to kiss you long enough to let you respond and prompt any action. 

It gets to the point where you’re thinking a white lie is in order. You let your heart calm down, and then you get out of bed pretending that you’re gonna turn up his AC. “If that’s okay?”

Your asking helps trick poor Clark. “Obviously you can,” he says, frowning at you where you linger by the door. “You don’t have to ask stuff like that, baby, just go ahead and do it. This is your place too.”

It’s really not, but you like how he says it like he believes it, offering him a bright smile. You practically skip to his thermostat and mess with things, then shuffle back far more calmly, stopping again in the door. 

Clark lays against two plush pillows, sheets down, t-shirt ridden up to show his abs again, like he’s trying to drive you crazy. He turns his head against the pillow, brow nearly quizzical at your hesitation. 

“What?”

“It’s so hot, do you– am I weird if I strip down?” 

Clark sighs, pained again. “What did I just say? This is your place, as good as. Treat it like your own home.” 

You take your shirt off first, meandering toward the bed, then pause to shuck it on the bed. Clark picks it up and folds it, but you can see him slowing in your peripherals as you hook your thumbs in the waistband of your pants and bring them down your thighs. You bend to grab them, but then you have nothing to hide behind, dropping them on the bed and climbing back where you’d been, legs up and knees pressed together. 

This is when Clark shrieks. 

It’s like– quite girly. You imagine he’d make a similar noise when winning the lottery. Multiple lotteries. 

“Baby, what are you wearing?” he asks. “Oh my gosh!” 

He sounds so, so happy, you are immediately hot from top to toe. “What?” you ask, failing to maintain even a semblance of calm. 

“Can I see?” he asks, gentling. “Please?”

You let your legs fall flat without rush nor reluctance. 

Clark peers down at you like this is deathly important. 

“They are so– you’re so sweet, look at those, you’re so pretty,” he breathes. “When did you get these? I’ve never seen them.”

“Uh. Today, actually.”

“Yeah?” Clark goes to touch you, then hesitates. “Can I?” he asks. 

“Of course you can, Clark,” you say, trying not to fall into whispers, “this is your place.”

He grasps the curve of your hip and the silky fabric of your new panties, pressing it down to see the front of you, the bump of your cunt hugged by softness, better displaying the polka dot pattern and the lettuce edged hemming that kisses your inner thighs and tummy. 

“I’d say something about your joke if there was enough blood left in my brain,” he says, then blanches, “I mean– darn, you’re so pretty, I’m being too much, I’m sorry.”

“I got them for you. Wore them for you. It’s okay if you like them.”

Clark Kent looks close to tears. 

“I love them,” he says, “you are the most beautiful thing, and this is–” He swallows. Shakes his head. Maybe Clark’s laying it on thick, but if he is, you like it. “This is the hottest thing that’s ever happened to me. You really got them for me?”

You turn toward him slowly, letting your leg fall onto the other, and covering his hand with yours to press slowly to the apex of your thighs. “I got them for you,” you confirm. Your heart races, but your voice doesn’t tremble. You’ve wanted him to touch you for hours. “Something fun.”

Clark feels the warmth there under his fingers and closes his eyes, groaning quietly, right from the depths of his chest. “You’re gonna kill me,” he says. 

You move very gently against his hand. “Please don’t die right now.”

His eyes flutter open, pupils like dimes and a pretty pink flush spotting up his neck. “I almost don’t wanna take you out of them.”

“You could pull them to the side?” you whisper. “I mean– if that’s– you know, if that’s not weird.”

The cat purrs like a nurse shark and lays herself down at your neck, her golden fur shoved in your mouth unnecessarily. It tickles. You fight back a sneeze. 

“Dude,” Steve says. He has appeared from the stairway like a beautiful apparition, all tan skin and freckles ready to save your life. “Get the cat out of her face.”

“She’s sensing that she’s sick, Steve, she’s gonna cheer her up.”

“She’ll be happier without fleas.”

“Tews is clean!” 

Steve puts your promised mug of hot chocolate on the beside table and rests his hand, still warm, on your forehead. “Is she bothering you?” 

“Bother me?”

Steve scrunches his face up in annoyance. “Bother. Annoy. Make you mad.”

“Um, no. She is… soft.”

“She is.”

“She is eat me.”

“She’s not gonna bite you,” he says with a laugh, taking your hand from the blankets and curving it around. “Look, you pet her like this,” —he drags your hand down the cat's back, pulls it back up, drags it down again— “gentle, because cats get kind of sensitive.”

“Not eat me,” you whisper to the cat. 

She makes her noise again, far louder than before. 

“What sound?” you ask. 

“She’s meowing. It’s a ‘meow’. They do it when they’re happy, or if she wants something.”

You make your own meow. Dustin shrieks with laughter. “Dude, that’s so lifelike!” 

Steve pulls the cat into one of his arms with a care that makes him even hotter than he’d been before. He gets the other around you, helps you into a seated position, and places the cat in your lap. “Okay?” he asks, taking your hot chocolate from the bedside table to encourage into your hand. 

Tews rubs her face in your tummy and purrs as you attempt to pet her like Steve showed you. 

“Oh. She is nice,” you say approvingly. 

“Are you ready for your lesson now?” Dustin asks. “Today I think we should learn about radio waves.”

“Dude. English. You’re teaching her English.”

“Yeah, and she needs to know what stuff does so she can have the words in context, dude, it’s in Robin’s lesson plan.” 

Your English lesson about radio waves and communication is very confusing, but it probably doesn’t help that your head’s pounding, the cat keeps bumping your hand with her head when you stop stroking her fuzzy back, and Steve sits in because he’s worried you’re going to ‘overheat’, which means you’re too busy leaning your face in his arm and thinking about cuddling to really care how you pronounce ‘radiation’. 

“Steve?” you mumble, ignoring Dustin as he packs up the whiteboard pens into a case, and his attention-seeking cat where she noses your wrist. 

“What?”

“Have cat?”

“You like her?”

She’s good company, this little creature. “Soft.”

“Maybe some day. For now, we can just borrow Dustin’s.”

You pillow your head on his shoulder, letting your eyes flutter shut, wiped after all the English practice and sitting up. You desire very much to be in your sea without all these human ailments, but leaving Steve sounds about as fun as getting your tailfin trapped in a clam’s mouth. 

He rests his head atop yours. “Proud of you,” he says. 

You’d ask him what ‘proud’ meant if you weren’t distracted by the warm breath of the creature on your wrist, and then a horrible scagging sensation like whetstone. You jump hard. Steve shouts before you can register the pain at the back of your head. “Oh, ow!” you say, flinching away from the cat trying to eat you and Steve’s mean nose. 

“Sorry!” he says, groaning. “Jesus. Fuck. What was that, baby?” 

“Cat eat me try!” you say, watching Tews in fear as she curls herself into a ball at the end of the bed, away from your fuss. 

Dustin pokes his head up from his place on the floor. “She licked you, huh? That means she likes you.”

“Have ow mouth!” you protest.

“Her tongue is scratchy,” Dustin says. “It’s to help her stay clean.”

“She was eating you,” Steve says, rubbing at the bridge of his perfect nose, that has now gone a strange red. You haven’t said anything to make him blush yet. 

“Mean cat,” you say. “Scratch. Ow.”

Steve squints through his pain and takes your wrist to inspect for injury. “Oh, no,” he laments, rubbing at your pulse gently, apologetically. 

It is not so bad, actually, but Steve’s sympathy makes you a worse attention seeker than the cat. “Eugh,” you say. 

You sink deeper into yourself as Eddie plays. Your brow is screwed up from what might be your first ever headache, but your lips are twitchy, smiling despite the pain. Steve knew asking Eddie to come cheer you up would work, because you haven’t laughed all day and you love music more than his shit jokes. He would’ve preferred to have managed it alone, but Eddie would’ve come snooping sooner or later. He’s been pretty obvious about how cool he finds the actual real-life mermaids having doubled their numbers. Steve would find it pretty cool if he could forget his fear —how amazing it is that there’s more to the world than just humans and the Upside Down’s freakshow of evil. How he can’t enjoy the thought, because your homecoming has been on his mind since the moment Dariyay wrangled you out of the mall. 

Your symptoms are all signs of a cold. Steve looked it up. A cold does not usually get worse than a runny nose and a headache. He’s sweat himself awake twice since you came down with it worried he’d have to take you to the hospital and that they’d find something they couldn’t explain. It’s a nightmare. He can see you strapped to a metal table having skin scraped from the inside of your mouth, blood drawn from a tender crook. 

He theorises that it’s actually an easy cold, but you don’t know how to cope, never having been anything except healthy. 

This isn’t an injury, it’s just annoying. Being unable to breathe from your nose freaked you out, and teaching you to blow it had been reminiscent of Robin’s little cousin. 

“I want the one with the Start Me Up,” Dariyay says, taking one of Eddie’s dark curls between her fingertips and twisting. “Sing again.”

“That was for a private audience,” Eddie says, rolling his eyes. 

“Do it, Eddie Munson.”

“As you wish.”

You aren’t as pleased with The Rolling Stones or Eddie’s wild singing. Your eyes go pleading, arms held out, and Steve gets the memo. His hand slides behind your back and he drags you into a sitting position, where you stand, slumping into his side. 

“Gonna take her up to bed for a bit,” Steve tells the room. 

“Feel better, seababy,” Eddie says, offering a genuine, genial smile. 

“Sing, Eddie,” Darius says, though she does deign to lift her head from the cushions and give you a look. Steve only has Dustin, but he recognises his own dispassionate defeat in her eyes as she adds, “Sleep, if you can. It won’t last forever. The first cold is always the worst.”

The sounds of plinking guitar fade as Steve helps you up the stairs. You’re in the hump of if, with phlegmy coughs and snot and fatigue to the bone, but it isn’t so bad, this cold. It’ll be over soon. 

“You’ll be better tomorrow,” Steve says, nudging the ajar bedroom door open to lead you to your usual spot on the left side of the bed, closest to the window and furthest from the landing. “I promise. Colds don’t last.”

“Head hurts,” you say, letting Steve mountain the blankets back as you sit in the sheets.

Your pajamas are damp with sweat. Steve changes his mind about tucking you in and makes for the dresser for your clean clothes. He likes, very much, opening the top drawer and seeing your things smushed in with his, smelling of his laundry detergent, things he picked out for you and paid for. The smallest shells on the tie of his bracelet brush the wood of the dresser as he grabs the first pajamas he sees, your softer ones, leaving the cutesy babydoll alone at the bottom of the drawer. He closes it quickly. 

“Come on, let’s get you changed. Yeah? You sweat through your shirt.” 

You slouch back into the pillows. “Dariyay say… tell me… Steve and humans not–” You gesture at your damp shirt. “Sorry, not know how to say.”

“It’s okay. When has it mattered before? It doesn’t– not bother me if you don’t know, right? Say it how you can and I will try to understand what you know.”

“Not help clothes and– help a lot. You help me lots, and Dariyay says that… this not okay.”

“Is that what she said, ‘okay’?” 

“No. She said different word.”

Dariyay knows English, and she knows Mer, where nobody who’s tried to teach you English here had known both. Your connective words are growing in like teeth. Dariyay corrects you constantly, which is annoying for you but especially helpful when it comes to the words you were struggling with most, ‘and’ and ‘to’ and ‘the’. Not perfect. Doesn’t need to be. 

“Did she say it wasn’t normal? Like, it’s not how humans do it all of the time.”

“Yes.” 

“Well, that’s not true. I mean, when we didn’t know each other, when we were strangers and you were first in the pool, sure, it wouldn’t have been normal for me to help you get changed or to make you dinner, but it was because you needed help. Does that make sense? You needed help. I looked after you because you couldn’t look after yourself. And now we know each other, it’s normal.” He taps you under the chin. “Can I help you get changed?”

“I need help.”

“Yeah, a little. ‘Cos you’re sick. Tired, head hurts, that’s a good time to have help, but I would help you if you were not tired either.”

“Why?”

“Why?” Steve begins dragging your shirt up your back gently. “I care about you.”

The shirt comes off of your head. Steve takes his hand and puts it at the top of your breast, just over your heart. “Inside of… love,” he says quietly. “You told Hopper I’m your boyfriend, right? And Dariyay.”

“Yes, my boyfriend. My boy, look after me. Courting.”

Funny word. Steve doesn’t know its definition. It’s not a basketball term. 

“Look after you, exactly. Plus, I like helping.”

It’s honestly one of his favourite parts about being a boyfriend. He hasn’t let himself think on it seriously since you said it —it’s why he took you to the mall, because if he wants to be your boyfriend you deserve the dates that come before that— but he supposes that he is the equivalent of a boyfriend to you, so. 

He grabs your face in both hands, the shock of joy at the idea of being your boyfriend like a current through each capillary to the very tips of his fingers, nevermind the pajama top screwed up in one hand. “I love helping you,” he says, grinning. 

“Nice smile.”

“Yeah?” Steve ducks down and presses it into your mouth. “Nice everything, honey. You’re perfect.”

“Perfect,” you say, laughing softly as he trails kisses away from your lips to the lobe of your ear. 

“This is okay, yeah?”

“What okay? Kiss? Yes. You know I– I like kiss a lot, you give me.” 

“Yeah?” He pulls away, catching the sweetness in your tired eyes like a shock of sugar on the tongue. 

Steve gets you into your new shirt. Drags your pants down and doesn’t blush as much as he could when the band of your panties comes with it. His fingers don’t falter as he slips it back up to just below your hips, or when he has to bring your new pants up against them. He shouldn’t have picked cute panties, it was a mistake, these baby pink ones with the champagne polka dots kill him every time. Not that granny panties could’ve deterred the stirring he feels in his stomach and decidedly lower places when he catches even a millisecond view of the soft valley between your legs. 

You hold your own wants. Just last night he’d offered you some kisses that guaranteed he’d catch your cold, open-mouthed with wet heat, your hand pressed to his stomach until it had basically heaved into your touch. He’d been hard enough that every movement felt stiff with it, sensitive, but he had not been awake enough to know what to do about it. After your hand had wandered down and stopped just shy of uncharted territory, you’d caught his eye with a smile, like you’d known what he wanted, and you’d kissed under his ear, murmuring into the shell of it, “Warm skin, baby. So warm.”

See, maybe you hadn’t needed these extra words, because that ‘so’? Steve’s never stripped himself like that in the shower before. It was borderline painful. 

All the while you’d snoozed and snored in his bed. Poor congested angel. Evil girl. 

“You gonna have more of the medicine?” Steve asks, perched on the edge of the bed with his hands on your back, thumbs in your soft front. Your tired chest heaves all sluggishly and makes him sad. 

“I not like it.”

“You don’t like it. I know, that decongestant is pretty sour, but it’ll help you sleep.”

“Don’t want it,” you say. 

“Please? For me?”

You like this phrase. He can see the cogs turning, like you know where you have him. And you do have him. Palm of your hand, wrapped around your pinky finger, right where you want him. 

“What I get?” you ask.

“What do you get?” he murmurs back, thinking that two can play at this game. He has far more practice. His voice sinks like velvet and his thumb strokes a quarter circle into your shirt, pushing it up, letting the pad of it stroke your skin. “What do you want, beautiful?” he asks slowly, plain demure. “What can I give you?”

You laugh, ‘cos you know him well. It’s a weak thing, half-cough, and Steve knows he’ll sweeten any deal if it gets you to drink that spoonful of bitter char. 

“You can hold me?” you ask, not shy but not fanciful, either, a real suggestion. Like you’d be okay with him saying no, even though you know he won’t. “Hold me, rub my head? Please. Feel better when you do.”

So Steve mixes you some decongestant into a glass of cranberry juice and watches you drink it. Climbs into bed with you and gathers you in his arms, on his chest, your face warm and every contiguity between you both already beading with sweat. 

He doesn’t know how much longer you’ll be sick for, or when you’ll next need to change. Doesn’t know what you were running from or when you’ll tell him why. 

What he does know is that your face lies like it was shaped for the slight curve of his pec, and that your eyelashes tickle when you blink. He knows that you’re tired, and he’s a safe place for you to land. 

“How’s that?” he asks, rubbing your forehead with his two fingers.