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Your washing machine breaks, and Clark Kentâperfect, helpful, devastatingly kind Clark Kentâimmediately offers his. The same Clark you've been pathetically avoiding because being around him hurts too much when you're this gone for him. But it's late, it's raining, and he's being so characteristically sweet about it that you can't say no. What could go wrong?
Your washing machine is dead. Not 'making a funny noise' dead, but utterly, stone-cold silent. Youâd pressed the power button three times, a desperate little prayer on your lips, before accepting your fate. A mountain of laundry sat mockingly in its basket.
Youâre staring into the abyss of your empty detergent bottle (another problem) when your phone buzzes on the counter.
Clark: Heard a suspicious amount of cursing coming from your apartment. Everything good?
Your fingers hover over the screen. Itâs mortifying. You should just not answer. All your efforts to distance yourself from him, to slowly ease his warmth out of your life, will be for naught if he gets even the slightest sense of you needing help. Clark Kent doesnât ignore cries for help. Clark Kent swoops in, with his gentle smile and strong, broad shoulders.
Clark Kent makes it hard for girls like you to get over him.
But if you don't answer, heâll probably show up at your door to investigate, which would be much, much worse.
You: My washing machine has passed on to the great appliance store in the sky.
His reply is almost instantaneous. A small bubble with three dots appears and disappears before the message lands, and you hold your breath.
Clark: Oh no! Problem solved. My machine is your machine. Come on over whenever.
Shit.
You: Thanks, but itâs OK! Iâll just hit the laundromat. Itâs late and I donât want to bother you.
Youâve already put on your jacket and are hunting for your keys, a grim determination setting in. The walk will be cold. It will be annoying. But it will be blessedly, wonderfully Clark-free, so itâs a small sacrifice in the long run. Your thumb hesitates over the power switch on the machine. Might as well give it another shot. You jab the button with your index finger.
The phone screen in your hand lights up with his name.
He's speaking before you've finished getting the phone to your ear. "You don't honestly think I'm letting you go out at 11pm in the freezing rain to sit at some laundromat by yourself, do you?"
"I..." What were you going to say again? He's turning the concerned voice on and your stomach is flipping. "Itâs not raining that much." It is. You can hear the distinct tink-tink-tink of water hitting your windowpane.
"Okay. Itâs not freezing rain. But itâs still late. And that laundromat is⌠not the best. Lois was just telling me about an article sheâs editing about how many streetlights are out on that block."
Lois.
The name lands like a small, smooth stone dropped into your stomach. Of course. Lois. Beautiful, brilliant Lois who makes Clark laugh in ways that light up his entire face, who writes the front-page articles and has the world at her fingertips. Who Clark is undoubtedly, irrefutably in love with, if you had to guess. Maybe theyâre even together now. You've been so busy avoiding him that you wouldn't even know.
"Iâm not gonna be able to focus on my work if Iâm worried about you," he continues, blissfully unaware of the small, quiet devastation he just caused. Heâs weaponized his own kindness, and itâs ruthlessly effective. "Please?"
You lean your forehead against the cool surface of your dead washing machine. He could convince the moon to come crashing down into Earth with just one well-placed "please", you think.
"You working on something?" you've moved on to stalling for time.
"Don't change the subject. Grab your laundry and get over here before I come drag you myself."
You're a goner. "Clark."
His laugh is bright and warm and reminds you of a lot of what you miss about him. "Come on," he coaxes, and the gentle, cajoling tone is going to make your heart leap straight out of your throat and into his hands. "Iâll order us some pizza. Or have you eaten already?"
"Don't get me pizza," you protest. "You need to work."
"I need to take a break anyway. Iâve been staring at this screen too long. Iâll be braindead if I donât take a break soon."
"Then have a break. You donât have to share it with me. I don't want to impose."
"Alright," he says, and you hear the telltale squeak of his desk chair as he gets to his feet. "Then I'm coming over and dragging you and your laundry across the hall."
"Clark!"
"Y/N!"
You laugh despite yourself, despite the way your stomach hurts. He's too good, too much, too kind. You can't keep up. "Okay, okay," you say, your shoulders slumping in defeat. "I'm on my way."
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"Come in," he calls before you can knock. Of course he heard you coming.
You push the door open to find him tidying up the living room, shoving papers into neat stacks and fluffing couch cushions. He looks up when you enter, hair falling across his forehead in that way that makes your fingers itch to brush it back.
"Sorry about the mess," he says, though his apartment is immaculate as always. "I wasn't expecting company."
He's wearing his flannel pajama pants and a soft t-shirt, glasses on. You'd have a hard time figuring out whether this or the suit is worse on your heart.Â
"You don't have to clean for me, Clark. It's just laundry."
"I know, but..." He trails off, running a hand through his hair. "I guess I wanted things to be nice. It's been a while since you've been over."
You feel a stab of guilt at that. You can't explain why you haven't been over in so long. You can't say, I have a ridiculous crush on you and need to save whatever is left of my dignity by keeping some distance between us.
So, you say, "Oh... yeah." Like an idiot.
"I missed seeing your face around."
"Did you?"
It's out before you can take it back. Clark freezes, then turns to look at you.
"Of course I did." Thereâs something like hurt behind his glasses. "Why would you say that?"
"No... I didn't mean..." you stammer. You want to go hide in a closet somewhere. "That sounded weird. I'm sorry. Just forget it."
Clark is still studying you with that puzzled, concerned look, but he eventually lets out a little huff of a laugh. "Iâll never understand how you donât realize how much people like you around."
"Maybe I'm just fishing for compliments," you say in an attempt to play it off.
"Mm," he hums, taking your laundry basket with such ease one would think it was full of cotton balls instead of two weeksâ worth of dirty clothes. "Well, you're welcome to fish here anytime."
You follow him to the tiny (immaculately clean) laundry nook. It's not a room so much as a closet off the kitchen, with much less space than you need for a successful Clark Kent avoidance technique. If he stays to chat, you'll be standing no more than an arms' length apart at best, and you're not sure how thatâs going to work for the duration of a full cycle.
"Have you eaten?" Clark asks again. He's leaning against the doorframe of the laundry nook, watching you with an easy sort of patience as you start to load the machine. The space feels impossibly small; you have to keep reminding your lungs how to do their job.
"Yeah," you lie, your voice tight as you untangle one of your t-shirts from a pair of jeans and pray that you didn't throw anything too embarrassing into this basket. "I ate."
"Liar. I can hear your stomach from here."
You freeze, utterly mortified. Heâs just joking. Probably. "You cannot."
"I can," he insists, a grin spreading across his face that makes your stomach do a nervous little flip. "Itâs telling me very sad stories about an empty fridge." He pushes off the doorframe, taking a single, deliberate step into the nook. The fluorescent bulb above flickers once, as if startled. He fills the space completely, blocking the light from the kitchen.
Your hands are suddenly clumsy. You become hyper-aware of the contents of your basketâthe worn-out state of your favorite pajamas and, god forbid, your underwear. You try to discreetly bury a pair of frankly embarrassing floral underwear beneath a towel while he leans over your shoulder.
Heâs reaching up, his body twisting around you to open a small cupboard above your head. The soft cotton of his t-shirt presses against your shoulder blade as he stretches, and a warm cloud of something cleanâlaundry soap and fresh air and just himâenvelops you. You hold your breath, your universe shrinking to the inches between you, the faint scent of his shampoo, and the solid wall of his chest at your back.
He pulls back just as you think you might pass out, holding out a bottle of detergent. Heâs completely, devastatingly oblivious to the five-alarm fire he just started in your nervous system, it seems. His expression is open, friendly, his gaze searching your face. You'd like to curl up inside the washing machine with your laundry and go on a spin cycle right now.
"Laundry detergent for your thoughts?" he asks, offering you the bottle like he hasnât just driven every rational thought from your head.
You look down at the bottle, trying to remember how words work. "My thoughts are boring."
"Thatâs impossible." He unscrews the cap for you before passing it into your hands.
You take it, but he doesn't move back. You can see the flecks of green in his blue eyes behind his glasses.
You turn back to the washer, desperate for something to do with your hands and a way to escape his gaze, but your mind has gone completely, utterly blank. What comes after adding detergent? Cold wash? Warm wash? What exactly are you supposed to do with your arms, your legs, your shoulders? How do people even stand normally?
"Let me get that," he says, gently, quietly. His hand brushes yours as he takes the bottle, and heâs pouring the soap in, setting the bottle aside, twisting a dial. The washer rumbles to life, filling with water, and it feels like the air in the tiny nook is being sucked out through the pipes. He closes the lid and turns to look at you. He's so tall you have to tilt your head up to see his face properly.
"There," he says softly, like he's accomplished something monumental instead of just starting a load of laundry. "All set."
You nod, acutely aware that you should probably leave the nook now, give him space to escape back to his work. But your feet seem rooted to the spot, and Clark doesn't seem to be in any hurry to move either.
"So," he says, leaning back against the dryer, arms crossed. The position makes his t-shirt pull slightly across his chest, but at least now he's a full arms' length away from you. "What's really going on with you lately?"
Your heart stutters. "What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean. The avoiding me thing. The way you practically sprint in the opposite direction when you see me in the hallway."
"I don't sprint."
"You do a very fast walk," he says with a small smile. "It's actually pretty impressive. I didn't know you could move that quickly."
Despite everything, you find yourself fighting back a laugh. "You're ridiculous."
"Maybe. But I'm also right." He tilts his head and looks at you for a long moment, like if he focuses hard enough, he can figure out what's going on inside your head without you having to say it out loud. It's an unsettling feeling, as if he might somehow peel back all the layers of your walls and see your pathetic little crush sitting at the core.
"Did I do something wrong?" he asks.
Your heart sinks. "No, Clark, you haven't done anything wrong. Jesus." You run a hand over your face, letting out a sigh. "That's notâyou're justâ"
He's just perfect. He's kind and patient, he helps an elderly woman carry groceries back to her apartment every Thursday night. How do you tell someone like that that it feels like dying every time he mentions the coworker he's clearly in love with?
"We're good," you finish weakly. "You don't have anything to worry about."
He gives you a look that says he doesn't believe you for a second. "You just hate being around me?"
"Oh, yes. I hate you. Absolutely despise you," you joke.
"Hmm."
"Repulsed," you're holding back a laugh now. "Completely repulsed by your veryâ"
Clark takes another step forward, and whatever words were in your mouth evaporate. The laughter fizzles, turns less playful and more nervous as he invades your personal space like he's been doing your thoughts, 24/7, for maybe a solid year.
Playful Clark is almost worse than kind Clark. Kind Clark can fill your stomach with butterflies, sure. Kind Clark will stay on your mind, will fuel daydreams of late mornings and gentle hands, but you've built up a tolerance. Playful Clarkâbold Clarkâmight actually shatter the very carefully maintained equilibrium you've worked so hard to create around your relationship with him.
"...face," you manage to squeak. He's much too close and much too comfortable, taller than you've ever really allowed yourself to consider.
What a terrifyingly wonderful feeling. If he leaned down, if you got on tiptoes...
"Clark," you say. The word is a weak warning.
He doesn't move, but his eyes flicker down to your lips and back up. You can feel the blush creeping over your cheeks. "What?"
"Clark."
He's smiling. "Y/N."
You can barely hear your own voice over the roar of your blood in your ears. "Are you just... gonna stand here?"
A small, breathy laugh escapes him. "I don't know. I'm enjoying the view."
"Clark."
His smile widens. "It's not my fault. You're cute when you're flustered."
"Stop. I'm not flustered."
He leans in a fraction closer. "So, I could get closer?"
He knows. He absolutely knows. And you know that he knows, and he's playing chicken. "Clark," you whisper, a final warning. If he gets any closer...
"Y/N." He mimics the tone of your voice. He's trying to tease, but he can't keep the soft, warm edges from creeping into it, the gentle affection he can never hide.
Clark Kent wants to kiss you, you think, distantly, as his nose brushes yours. As a big hand reaches up and cradles the back of your head.
"Is this okay?" he asks, breath fanning over your lips. And god, if that isn't just about the death of you.
The air has solidified, turned to glass, and it's lodged in your chest. "Clark."
"Can I?" His fingertips are warm against the base of your neck. The contact sends electricity racing up and down your spine. "I'm tired of waiting for you to catch on."
"Me catch on?! My biggest problem is that you, Clark Kent, you are the mostâ"
He's kissing you. He's laughing against your lips as he's kissing you, and your mind has been reduced to a collection of sparks going off in a vast expanse of darkness.
"You're so oblivious," he's saying, his lips moving against yours. "You're the most oblivious person on the planet. I swear."
"I'm oblivious? You'reâ"
But he's kissing you againâthis time more insistent, less patient, a little bit needy and a whole lot of something you can't name, but you want to drown in. Any argument you might have made melts under his touch, vanishes like dew on a sunny morning and leaves nothing but this in its wake.
"I hope your machine is dead for good," he murmurs against your lips.
Your answer gets lost somewhere in the shape of his mouth and the warmth of his hands.
â âthinking about⌠flashing clark ur tits to get ur way (smut, titty worship, 18+ mdni) | bun!reader
"No."Â
Youâre not sure you heard him right, have to blink slowly a couple times like itâll kickstart your memory and prove that you heard âyesâ wrong.Â
"You mean⌠yes?" you say tentatively.Â
Normallyânormally, being the key word hereâyou wouldnât mind being told no. Being rejected and turned down is part of life, this you know. But itâs seldom that Clark ever says no (early in your relationship, you didnât even know that was a word in his vocabulary with how rarely he said it). Clark especially never says no especially when it comes to sex. Itâd been a long day for the both of youâClark had been stuck in meeting after meeting at work and youâd gotten into another fight with your mother that had soured your mood since the morning.Â
It's not too much to ask for just a bit of his time, right?Â
Still, you worry that you might come off as unreasonable, too demanding and overbearing. So you take half a step back, putting distance between you, just in case his answer is no again.
"I mean no, bun," Clark correctsâstern, but not unkind. Heâs got one hand resting on his lap, the other guiding the mouse absentmindedly as he scrolls through a half-empty Word document on his laptop. Heâs paying attention to you, youâll give him thatâbut not really. Itâs like heâs got one ear attuned to you while his brain blocks out whatever youâre saying. The act is avoidant in a way, so unlike Clark that the sight of it makes your stomach churn.Â
The pout on your lips is immediate, the only appropriate response you can think of to your boyfriend denying you for the first time in⌠well. Ever. With your bottom lip stuck out and your arms crossed over your chest, youâre sure you look childish.Â
"Yes."Â
"No."Â
"Yes."Â
"No."Â
"No."Â
"Yeâhey!" Clark jerks up and you huff, taking another step back. "Come on, thatâs not fair!"Â
His expression softens immediately, apologetic. He reaches out, cupping your cheek in one big hand as he presses a kiss to the soft skin on the other side of your face. His thumb presses against the crease in your brows, as if trying to smooth away the tension there.
"Bun⌠Iâm sorry, baby. Okay? I really am. but Perryâs been on top of me about meeting my deadlines and Lois has been hounding me every time Iâm late to work and I justânot tonight, okay?"Â
Clark's voice is low, cajoling in a way that makes you feel more like a petulant child rather than a grown woman. You breathe in through your nose as you try to quell the angerâand the hurtâsimmering deep in your stomach. Itâs a reasonable enough excuse. Mature. Appropriate.Â
Itâd be selfish to keep asking for his attention, though youâre half tempted to drop to your knees regardless and just takewhat you want. Climb onto his lap, heâll become too distracted to stop you.Â
But youâre not like that. You donât want to be like that. So you just purse your lips and turn away, even as irritation nips at your skin, ugly and unbidden.Â
"Fine," you mutter.
Thatâs when the thought hits you, forming in your mind like a budding flower. You bite your bottom lip to hold back your smile, and stop right in front of the door of his home office.
Clark sighs your name when he hears your sullen tone.
Instinctively, he stands up, as if to try to reach out and stop you. The tips of his fingers brush against your wrist, just shy of holding you tight before he hesitates. He looks back at his laptop, and, with another deep sigh, sits down and shifts his focus to it again. "Weâll talk later, okay?"Â
You donât respond.Â
"Sweetheartâ?"
Fisting the fabric of your shirt, you bunch up the hem before bringing it up and over your chest.Â
"Bun, what're youâ?"
You turn.
"Oh, gollyâ" Clark groans, voice breaking off at the end as his eyes rove over the exposed skin of your tits. "BabyâŚ"
No bra.Â
Immediately, all trance-like, he slams the lid of his laptop down and opens his arms. "Come here," he beckons, and when you pauseâpunishment for earlierâhe gives you those eyes, the kind you could never resist. "Please?"
You're already moving, climbing onto his lap. Your knees bracket his thighs and his hands support your ass as you kneel over him. Your fingertips are stained with paint that you didnât get a chance to wash off earlier, but Clark doesnât seem to mind as you cup his face in your hands.
He presses a chaste kiss to your lips, once then twice, before pulling away to rest his forehead against yours.
Clark raises the material of your teeâhis tee, he realises, a little too late for his likingâonly for you to stop him by gripping his wrist.
"Uh-uh. You gonna apologise?"
"Apologise?" he repeats, incredulous.
"For saying 'no' earlier."
He frowns. "Oh, bun⌠I'm so sorry. Believe me, please?"
Those stupid eyes again, you curse at yourself internally.
"I believe you," you agree, albeit begrudgingly, but any trace of annoyance in your bloodstream is replaced by something hot and fudgy the moment Clark lifts your shirt up.
"Look how pretty these are," he coos, palming one of your tits. His thumb swipes over a nipple, painfully sweet in greeting, and it sends a chill down your spine. It stiffens under his touch, making Clark grin at the sight. "My favourite girls."
"Wouldn't have seen them if you kept workiâ" you bite back just his mouth closes over your nipple, "ohâoh, shit."
"HoneyâŚ" he groans. He's exactly where he wants to be.
"Yeah?" you whine, arching your chest to push your tit further into his mouth.
He responds eagerly, suckling harder now. His tongue laves at your nipple, flicking over the tightened bud in the way he knows you love. But Clark, your sweet and thoughtful and charitable Clark, can't bear the idea of leaving his other girl unattended. His hand is massive compared to your breast, fingers pressing into the meat of it.
Then he switches. Gives the same treatment to your spit-slick nipple as he ravishes the other, licking and biting down and sucking until you're writhing in his lap.
You whimper in responseâit's the only sound you can muster, too dazed to think properly. Clark's free hand cups your cheek, and you turn your face into it, kissing his palm.
"Gosh, I love these tits," he whispers. "Love 'em so much, bun."
Despite yourself, you look down at your chest. The sight you're met with is obscene. The skin's stung and irritated, but pretty when it's all kiss-bitten. At the swell of your right breast, there's a dark, angry bruise forming, courtesy of Clark's hungry touch. On your left tit is the distinct imprint of his fingers from squeezing too tight, and you can't help but whine at the knowledge of itâjust your tits, and he's already wrecked you like this, turned you all pink and pretty just for him.
His lips stray away from your chest and travel up your neck. He leaves a blazing trail of red in his wake, pressing open-mouthed kisses all the way up to your jaw.
"'S gonna bruise," you complain breathily. "Already bruised it."
Relenting, Clark pulls away, reaching up to swipe his thumb over the reddened marks on the column of your neck, as if to soothe the sting. "Better now?"
Your only response is a little grumble as you slump forward and press your face against his shoulder.
"Hey, don't pout," Clark murmurs, moving back so he can see your face properly. He pokes his finger into your cheek to coax your mouth into a smile. Tugging your shirt down and patting your tummy contentedly, Clark's hands move to your hips. "I promise, no more ignoring you, no more neglecting you. None of that."
"No more saying 'no'," you add. "Or else I'm gonna have to find a way to force you to say yes."
"Like just now?"
You nod.
Clark pauses as a sly grin splits his face. "I'm gonna have to start saying 'no' more often."
thank you @pinksplace for beta reading this for me ily so very much
@nightwingblvd @webmvie @ladylokilaufeyson5 @dreamlesssleepsaga @a-very-fictional-girl @serendippindots @justatinybud @normalspencerfan @thelastgoldfish @ghostxrose @turkwazz @jeanournal @cyd0129 @onlyfeng @pinksplace â feel free to let me know if you'd like to be added to my taglist!
my requests are open for clark kent, damian wayne, dick grayson, jason todd and bruce wayne <3
The start of my weekend marathon sex at the Fortress of Solitude fic. There was plenty more, but it kinda went off the rails. If I'm ever brave enough to look at the draft again, I'll post a nicer version!
Forgive me Father Jud for sharing on a Sunday!
18+, MDNI, oral (f + m receiving), overstimulation, p in v (unprotected), creampie-ish? Not edited bc I'm not ovulating so none of this makes sense to meeee
Mrs. Kent Diaries Masterlist
You were already naked. Already gone. Already shaking with the kind of high that made your calves cramp, your throat seize, your lashes wet from tears.
The sheets beneath your back were ruined. Soaked, fever-hot and sticking to your spine, damp with sweat, drool, and slick and everything else Clark already coaxed out of you.
Above and around you was nothing but sunlight, coating your glistening skin in alternating blues and golds. It mightâve been noon. Mightâve been later. Midnight sun already scrambled your sense of time, just not as bad as Clark had scrambled your brain.
You couldnât think past your last orgasm. Or the one before it. Or the one before that.
It was so stupid, he'd been doing it with just his mouth. Just his fingers. Just his voice in your ear, pleading you to give him another.
Clark had your thighs shoved wide open around the breadth of his shoulders for how long now? His arms were locked under your sweaty, trembling knees like he was welded there, and his mouth was on you. Deep, rhythmic, maddening.
And Clark's fingers. God, his fingers were in you, thick and pumping slow, so deep and deliberate you swore you could feel it right behind your navel. Every time he dragged them out, then pushed back in, deeper than deep, you clenched and fluttered and lost another piece of your sanity. His tongue flattened against your sensitive clit again and again and again, then curled and licked and sucked, wet and loud.
Your mouth was dry from moaning. From gasping. Every inhale hitched sharply through your teeth. Your jaw had slackened sometime long ago, spit dripping down your chin, your moans slurred and high-pitched and barely human.
You had come again, your cries echoing off cold crystal walls that gave nothing back but reflection and airless silence. Your toes curled and your heels dug into the curve of his back, hips twitching, cunt pulsing helplessly as you sobbed through your high. Clark groaned, low and guttural rumbles like thunder that vibrated straight into your clit as he continued to
He licking through your ecstasy like he could wring another one out with just the tip of his tongue and the curl of his thick fingers.
You werenât even sure what you were waiting for. You werenât sure when youâd stopped breathing. You were so far gone, your arms trembled and your fingertips felt numb reaching down to tangle into his riot of damp curls to anchor yourself to him and survive.
He didnât let up. Didnât even flinch.
"Shit, shit, ohmyfucking God!"
âThatâs it, sweetheart,â he rasped into you, breath hitching, lips dragging over your soaked skin in sloppy, open-mouth kisses between strokes, between pulses, between everything. âDon't hold back here, I wanna hear it all. Wanna feel it. Make a mess on my face, sweetheart.â
You could hear the obscene slick noises of his fingers fucking in and out of you, curling against your front wall, dragging out another filthy flutter from your overstimulated pussy even as his tongue licked through it, chasing and hungry for more. His jaw was soaked, his mouth red and swollen and shining, and he buried himself deeper, like your pussy was oxygen, as if he needed it to breathe.
âYouâve got no idea how much I missed this,â he slurred, dazed and drunk on your mewls. âLoud and messy. You're so darn beautiful when you're needy like this.â
You could barely hear him over the pounding in your ears. Every pulse of your heart lived between your legs now.
He pulled his fingers out just long enough to spit on them, and sank them back in, two again, maybe three now, you couldnât tell, couldnât think. But you could feel that delicious stretch, and that was enough. You choked on a cry, whole body convulsing when his other hand slid up to your belly, palm hot and firm, thumb catching your clit with hard and insistent pressure at just the right angle, and it sent a brutal full-body tremor through you.
âClark,â you sobbed in frustration and love, and it didn't even sound like you, âI needâ please, I need youâ fuck me, why won't you fucking fuck me?â
âI'm sorry, I know, I know,â he lamented, voice cracking as he tried to soothe you, like he could barely stand this torture either. âSoon. Just a lil more. You can take it, I know. Always sayin' you're strong, brave. Just one more, be good for me.â
You were already too good for him. And that only made it worse.
Your body had gone nuclear. Every nerve was buzzed, tingling, burning. You could barely breathe, barely speak, and still you felt the rock-solid flex of his biceps under your knees, the grip of his free hand around your thigh, the rhythm of his other wrist as he twisted his fingers slowly back in so fucking deep, his tongue lapping up the mess he made of you obediently.
You saw stars when you clenched again, the aftershocks looping you straight back into another one.Â
And Clark still hadnât touched himself.
Not once. Not since you got here. Not even after heâd heard you moaning his name in your sleep during the week, hips involuntarily grinding into the sheets next to him.
But he was hard. God, he had to be, right?!
Yes, he had to be. You were certain of it. You could hear it in the broken cadence of his breath, the way his moans cracked apart when your pussy clenched down on his fingers again, in the way he grunted when your heels scraped along his back, desperate and greedy for more friction, more pressure, more Clark.
He'd been panting into you like he'd been coming. Like he couldnât take another second longer without breaking. Like he was desperate to be inside you but was still holding back, choosing this frustrating, pleasurable limbo, because the only thing that mattered to him was his wife coming again. And again. And again. And a-fucking-gain.
âYou're everything,â he whispered against your thigh, pressing his lips to a bite mark heâd left behind minutes ago, tongue flicking soft against the bruise. âStill so tight for me. So wet. Iâm gonnaâgonna have you in a soon, hon, fill you up until next week.â
âYes! Yes! Oh, fucking finally!â
Your hips bucked at the anticipation of Clark's cock pushing into you, your body caught in the current of another rising peak, climbing higher and higher. Your hands pawed and scrambled against the sheets, needing something, anything to bring you back down.
âThat's it,â he murmured, licking between your folds and over your clit again, gentle, slow, obscenely precise, dragging out the aftershocks as your pussy fluttered tight around nothing, aching for everything. âIâve got you, sweetheart. Just breathe. Last one...."
And then Clark looked up at you, found your eyes in the haze, and held them.
His Summer-sky blues were blown black, pupils devouring color, and you saw the hunger, the pride, the fucking possession of being his wife. His lips were shiny with you, tongue still flicking out to greedily have just "one more taste", and a memory flashed: hard, bright, blinding.
It ripped through your scrambled mind like a white-hot solar flare, pulling you straight up and out of your body.
Because six nights ago, you came across that damn research article:
âModerate solar exposure increases romantic passion in long-term couplesâŚâ
You texted the file during the middle of the workday with a winky-face emoji and a quirky "sunbathe with me?" follow-up.
It was meant to be taken as just a laugh, a joke, a tease, but you knew it was never just anything with Clark. Never when it came to you.
Now, pinned beneath the Midnight sun, your body flushed and twitching and limp to the bone, you realized youâd made a mistake thinking anything youâd imagined could come close to this.
This moment wasnât just better than a fantasy. It obliterated the fantasy. Exceeded your hopes. Outpaced your mind. Plunged beyond your limits.
And Clark still hadnât fucked you yet.
-
âModerate solar exposure increases romantic passion in long-term couplesâŚâ
The line sat in the center of your phone screen, crisp and clinical beneath a bolded headline, while the ER's usual noise surrounded you.
You scrolled with your thumb, eyes skimming phrases about vitamin D, mood regulation, relationship satisfaction. All neutral language trying very hard not to acknowledge the obvious.
That it made you think of Clarkâs strong hands. His soft mouth. The way heâd been looking at you lately when you both came home too tired, too late, settling on kisses on the cheek and apologies.
You downloaded the article before you could secondâguess yourself, opening Clarkâs messages and typed quickly.
Sunbathe with me?Â
You hovered over the winking emoji, then attached it to your message, hitting send.
Heat climbed your neck immediately. Not because it felt scandalous, but because the truth underneath it felt heavier than you wanted to unpack at this time.
You didnât write I miss you, Clark.
Didnât write Iâm lonely even when youâre home, Clark.
Didnât write Itâs been too long since we made time for each other, Clark.
You just sent the link.
Someone called for you. You slid your phone into your pocket and went back to work with your pulse running a little fast, like youâd taken a risk even though it was only a headline and a wink.
.
At the Daily Planet, Clarkâs phone buzzed against the edge of his keyboard while he was halfway through reading a paragraph that heâd already rewritten twice.
He glanced down out of habit, expecting a news alert, but the second he saw your name his shoulders loosened instantly.
He read the document attached in your message. Then read it again. One more time. His ears warmed and his mouth parted like he was about to answer out loud.
Clark didnât text you back, because he kept re-reading, still absorbing the words like they were a set of instructions he could follow to fix a problem he hadnât wanted to name out loud, and when he finally looked up his eyes were a little unfocused.Â
Your message was small, playful on the surfacel, but urge to give you what you wanted was immediate and all consuming. It was the same instinctive pull that guided him through rescues.Â
A plan already started to form.
.
During dinner that night, you clocked it instantly, because you knew him too well to miss the signs.
He smiled at your jokes, he asked about your shift, he listened, but his attention kept drifting, his gaze going distant for half a second as if he was rehearsing a speech.
âOkay, baby,â you sighed, setting your fork down, head tilting. âSomethingâs going on. Whatâs happening in that handsome, thick skull of yours?â
Clarkâs eyes widened at the sudden turn in conversation, then smiled sheepishly, hesitantly reaching for your hand across the table, thumb rubbing the inside of your wrist.
âIâve just been thinking,â he admitted quietly as if salvaging privacy, even though you were alone. âAbout what you sent me earlier.â
Your cheeks warmed, partly from embarrassment and partly from relief that heâd read it, that it mattered a discussion.
âIt was a joke,â you swatted your hand in the air as if trying to break the awkward fog forming between you.
âMaybe,â he shrugged, his thumb following the delicate line of your vein inside of your wrist, steady and tender, âBut it didnât feel like only a joke.â
You didnât answer right away. Your throat tightened with all the things you didnât want to turn into guiltâfor the city, for your schedules, for the way youâd both been surviving instead of living.
Clark leaned forward slightly, blue eyes soft and compassionate.
âI want time with you,â he confessed, without fluroush or motive. âReal time. Not falling asleep on the couch. Not a rushed morning. Just⌠us.â
âThat's be nice,â you agreed, because the answer was easy even when life wasnât.Â
Later in bed, he kissed you goodnight, slow and lingering, surrounded by plush pillows and bedsheets. He pressed his forehead to yours afterward, pressing light pecks across your cheeks, the bridge of your nose, your fingertips.
âI have an idea, hon,â he murmured, thumb circling your wedding band.
You blinked, trying to find his shape in the dark, playing with the fine hairs on the nape of his neck. âUh-oh. That tone usually means youâve already decided.â
His mouth curved against your knuckle, and he huffed a light laugh. âWill you come with me this weekend?â he asked, words warm against your skin.âTo the Fortress.â
You stilled, because you knew what that meant, because it was private and safe and uninterrupted in a way your lives rarely were.
âDuring this time of year, the sun doesnât set fully,â he explained. âItâll be⌠quiet. Just sunlight and ice and space for us to breathe. No obligations. No calls, no alarms, no deadlines. I promise.â
You eyes started adjusting in the dark and you stared at him, giddy and stunned, and your body reacted before your brain did.
âTwenty-four hours under the sun? The same one that gives you strength, power, stamina?â you rambled, trying to keep your voice light, and failing because your excitement slipped through anyway.
âOnly if you want it,â he smiled, ducking slightly like he always did when you teased him.Â
âYes, absolutely, Clark,â you answered immediately. âI want it!â
.
Clark abstained the entire week, his own silent decision, driven by something tender and obsessive in equal measure.
Each morning, he kissed you longer than he needed to, hugged you like it might be the last time, then let you go with visible effort, fingers flexing at his sides as if he didnât quite trust himself to pull away.
At night, he lay beside you rigid with restraint, joints locked, breath held shallow, and it only got worse when you whimpered his name in your sleepâsoft and unknowingâhips shifting instinctively under the blankets, your body chasing something it hadnât had in too long.
On Thursday, you came home earlier than usual, your shift ending just before the sky fully darkened, and you found him in the bathroom after a shower, towel around his hips, one hand braced on the sink as if heâd been breathing through a tempting decision.Â
He looked up, startled, and you saw it in the set of his mouth, in the flicker of guilt behind his eyes that heâd almost caved.
âHey, everything okay?â you asked, stepping closer.Â
Clark exhaled loudly, nodded, and fixed a wide smile on his face. âYep. Just⌠thinking!â
You hummed, brow quirked with amusement, and let your eyes drop, slow and obvious. Your gaze dragged from the slope of his shoulders down the wet shine of his chest, lingering at the sharp cut of his hip. You liked watching him try to stay polite with you. You were his wife. You didnât make it easy on purpose.
He cleared his throat, and the blush spread fast across his cheeks, pinkening the tips of his ears. âHow was work, hon? You, uh⌠you look tired.â
âA shit-show, as usual. So, I am tried,â you admitted, crinkling your nose.
Then you stepped close without warning, pulling him down by the back of his neck into a kiss You lingered long enough for your mouth to part and his breath to hitch, long enough to feel the heat roll off him in waves, trapped and aching beneath his towel.Â
You pulled back just enough to look up at him with half-lidded eyes.
âSpeaking of excited,â you whispered, ghosting a finger along his sternum, âIâm training.â
He tilted his head, confused. âTraining for what?â
You grinned, stepped back, and raised your fists in a faux boxerâs stance, then opened and closed your jaw in slow, deliberate stretches. A warm-up youâd only ever do for him.Â
Clark froze. Eyes wide and dilating. Ears instantly bright red. He made a strangled sound and glanced away. You kept going, jaw working, watching him with mirth in your eyes.
âYouâre notââ his voice cracked and he stopped, clearing his throat, because he couldnât decide whether to be scandalized or turned on. His gaze flicked down, then back up, then down again, and his hand tightened on the edge of the sink hard enough that the porcelain creaked.
âSeriously?â he finally managed, but it came out weak, breathy, defeated.
âAs a heart attack,â you answered with a wicked grin. âI want to give a proper welcome, baby.â
The towel slipped, just slightly. The countertop groaned as his fingers flexed tight against the edge. You bit your lip when you glanced down briefly, the outline of his cock already thickening beneath the cotton.
His jaw clenched, eyes shut tight. You were sure he was counting. Probably to ten. Maybe to a hundred.Â
But again, you were his wife. You did not make it easy on purpse.
You leaned in close again, lips brushing his collarbone as you whispered it. âCâmon, babe. Donât be shy. Weâve known this since forever. Youâreââ
ââso big, Clark.â
The words lingered, half memory, half invocation, as your lashes fluttered and the world reassembled itself in fractured gold and blue.
You drifted back slowly, chest heaving, limbs slack, your spine molded to the sun-soaked blankets. Your throat was dry. Your lips were parted, spit-slick and swollen, jaw aching deep from how wide youâd stretched.
Clark was above you now, kneeling astride your heaving chest, his body flushed and trembling, his cock heavy, hard, and glistening in his fist.
âEasy, beautiful,â he breathed, hand cradling the back of your head as he leaned forward, the other guiding his length to your waiting mouth. âThatâs it, sweetheartâjust relax. Just like you trained for.â
You opened without hesitation, tongue flattening beneath the thick, pulsing weight of him. Clark groanedâchoked, reallyâeye fluttering shut as he eased the head between your lips, hips jerking as he fed inch after inch into the wet heat of your mouth.
Your throat, already sore from the cries heâd wrung out of you, protested at the stretch, but you didnât stop. You couldnât. You swallowed around the burn, welcomed the fullness, breathed through your nose as he set a slow, long, controlled rhythm that dragged his cock across your tongue.Â
The pressure of his intrusion climbed each time he bottomed out near the back of your throat, making your eyes water, your ears ring, your body arch just slightly despite how boneless you still were.
âGosh, look at youâŚâ he whispered, his other hand cupping your jaw instinctively. âMouthâs so warmâso soft, so pretty.â
You whimpered around him, drool spilling from the corners of your mouth, sliding down your cheeks and pooling in the hollow of your throat. His cock twitched against your tongue and you swallowed around him, breathing hard, stretching your jaw, dragging your tongue along the underside of the shaft like youâd practiced.
Clark tipped his head back and cursed under his breath. Well, not a really a swear, but something desperate, adoring, lost. His hips snapped forward too hard to control. You gagged sharply around the sudden depth, and his whole body shuddered like he felt it in his soul.
âNot yet!â he gasped sharply as if reminding himself. âI wantâwanna finish inside you. First time.â
He eased you off his cock tenderly, dragging the swollen head across your bottom lip before pulling back entirely. Spit and precum strung between you in a glistening arc that snapped when he sat back. His cock twitched, flushed dark with need, visibly pulsing with every beat of his heart.
âWas thatâŚâ you rasped, swallowed, breath hitching, âa good welcome, babe?â
Your lips were swollen, tongue flicking faintly against the edge of your teeth like you were still searching for the taste of him. Your chin was wet, your throat felt hollowed out and humming, stretched wide in the best kind of ache. Tears clung to your lashes. Your skin burned everywhere heâd touched, licked, fucked with nothing but his mouth and the slow push of his cock between your lips.
Clark looked like heâd been struck.
âY-yes, of course, sweeheart,â he managed, tracing a trembling thumb along your cheek to swipe away spit and slick. âA damn incredible one.â
You gave a tiny nod, relief blooming in your chest, satisfaction curling deep and warm in your chest. His hand cradled your jaw, fingers brushing lightly along the hinge, his touch feather-soft as he leaned down to kiss you.
It started as a polite press, but you pushed into it with a desperate little whine, lips parting for him, tongue sliding against his with the last of your strength. He groaned into your mouth, helpless, cupping the back of your skull like he couldnât believe you still wanted him like this, filthy and breathless.
âAre you okay?â he asked, softer now, forehead pressed to yours, the hand in your hair smoothing gently against your temple.
You nodded, dazed, whining. âCan weâcan youâplease fuck me now?!â
Clark gave a soft, incredulous laugh, as if he couldnât believe how much he adored you. âC'mere, my wife,â he whispered, kissing your cheek. âYouâve waited long enough.â
The sun had shifted. Pale gold now, casting long beams across the crystal, the light warm on your skin like the last hour of a perfect summer. It touched everything. His shoulders. Your parted thighs. The bedsheets where your sweat cooled.
Clark moved over your boneless body slowly. Kiss after kiss: your jaw, your throat, the corner of your mouth, the flushed center of your chest. He mouthed at the dip between your breast, and you sighed, giddy beneath him, thighs falling open again without hesitation. Your cunt fluttered in the open air, begging to be filled.
And then his hips dropped. The head of his cock slid through your slick folds, hot and heavy, teasing you in long strokes that made your back arch, your hips twitch. You whimpered. He inhaled sharply, guiding himself to your entrance with slow, practiced control.
Then he pushed in inch by inch, never looking away.
The stretch was unbearable, a sweet, raw kind of pressure that stole your breath. You were still soaked, still trembling from the ecstasy he already worked out of you, but it didnât matter. He was thick, unrelenting, your body clenching reflexively around him, slow to adjust, to accept it.
"F-fuck!" you stammered, tipping your head back and gripping his forearms to relish the feeling of being split apart so slowly.
"Easy, sweetheart," he soothed, voice warm against the column of your neck. "Breathe. Let me take my time with you."
You couldnât answer. You could barely think. Your hands scrambled for something solid and found his shoulders, nails dragging through muscle as he pushed deeper with every slow rock of his hips. His mouth covered yours, swallowing your soft cries, his tongue lazy as it slid against yours.
By the time he bottomed out, cock seated so deep it felt like he'd fill your whole torso, you were trembling beneath him, thighs shaking, your chest heaving under the weight of his body.
One strong hand stayed cupped at the back of your head. The other curled around your thigh and lifted it, settling it around his waist. You adjusted, trying to breathe, but it wasnât enough. Your other leg moved up and Clark caught it, guiding it over his shoulder with a sharp breath.
The change in angle hit something deep. Your mouth dropped open on a cry. "Holy shit! Oh, yes!"
"Right there?" Clark grounded out, jaw went tight as he pushed forward again, his rhythm deliberate, grinding into you. The friction, the depth, the slow press of him inside your body sent immediate tremors down your spine.
You nodded quickly, eyes glassy, mouth falling open. âRight thereâoh god, yesâjust like that, babeââ
"You feel incredible," he murmured, leaning in to kiss the corner of your mouth.
You tilted your hips up to meet him, catching his next stroke just right. He groaned as your cunt fluttered, as your breath came faster with each pass. His thrusts stayed deep, slow, unhurried, dragging over every sensitive spot inside you. He kissed you between breaths. Kissed your temple, your jaw, the soft skin under your ear.
Your moan broke the silence, high and sweet. Your fingers fisted in his damp hair.
âSound so pretty when you moan for me,â he whispered, mouth brushing your ear. âLet me hear you, hon. There's no one else, just you an' me.â
You wanted to tell him no, to keep his voice down. That someone might hear. But this wasnât your apartment. There were no neighbors. No walls too thin. You remembered that as his hips rolled into you again, deeper and faster than before.
Your hands clawed at his back, nails hooking into his skin. Your hips tipped upward, chasing each stroke, welcoming every inch he gave you each thrust.
The sounds you made came from somewhere low and wild. The wet slide of his cock was obscene, each thrust drawing out a high cry from your overused throat. Your body burned. You pulsed around him, tighter, soaked, open.
"Clarkâ" you gasped, voice shrill and cracking. "Iâm gonnaâoh GodâI love you I love youâIâmâ"
He groaned into your skin, mouth hot on your shoulder.
"I love you, too, sweetheat. I love everything about this. About you."
The sunlight lit every ripple of his body as he moved above you, painting his skin in gold. The muscles in his back flexed with each thrust, sweat sliding down the curve of his spine, and when he kissed you again, his mouth was hungry, his breath catching as he gave you more, deeper, harder, without speeding up. Just control. Just weight. Just fullness.
You moaned into his mouth. He swallowed it greedily. His hands cupped your thighs, holding you open, holding you steady, as your body jolted and fluttered and climbed.
Then your orgasm hit.
It slammed through you, sudden and scorching. Your legs locked, your arms trembled, and your body clutched around him in spasms, milking every inch as he kept moving through it, groaning your name, trying to keep himself from falling hard.
"Youâre so tight," he panted. "So wet. I canâtâIâm gonnaâ"
"Yeah?" you gasped, voice ragged and slurred, "C'mon, baby. I want it. Inside. Give it to me. I want all of it. Please, please please!"
He snapped forward. Hard. Against and againâdeep, hard, finalâand came with a guttural cry, spilling inside you in thick, pulsing waves. You felt all of it. The heat. The stretch. The slippery fullness. The way your cunt gripped around him like it never wanted to let go.
Clark stayed inside you, hips twitching, his mouth pressed to your neck, hands still tight on your thighs. His breath shuddered. His body trembled over yours.
Your hips rolled against his, milking him, your hands stroking his jaw, his chest, holding him close as he fell apart in your arms.
"I love you," he whispered, each word pushed out between exhausted breaths.
"I love you," you answered back, hands in his hair now, brushing sweat from his temples. âThatâs it, baby. Just like that.â
He kissed you, slow and tender, tongue curling against yours, and you tasted your own arousal on his lips. When he pulled back just enough to see your face, you grinned up at him, flushed and dazed.
âWeâre not done, right?â you asked, eyes innocent and hopeful.
Clark grinned, cheeks dimpling and flushed, still breathless.
âNo, not even close,â he swallowed, one hand searching yours to circle your wedding ring. âIâm not stopping until we're both more than satisfied.â
You laughed, kissed him again, and felt the warmth of the golden sun glowing on your skin. His cock was still inside you, thick and twitching. Your body ached for more.
Summary: Armed with dimples and a hero complex, Clark Kent has taken it upon himself to drive you insane. Heâs always there, on the radio, in the breakroom, and in your mind. Despite your very sound reasoning for not dating him, he refuses to take no for an answer. Will a close call change everything or will your fears get the better of both of you?
PSA (Pink Service Announcement): this is the first installment in my blush pink anthology, an interactive series where you chose your date! this fic is a direct result of this poll, where EMT! Clark beat SingleDad! Clark by just .7%!
Warnings: I got my degree at greys anatomy university so excuse any medical inaccuracies, mild violence, description of a car crash, blood, talk of death, figs scrubs mentioned (not sponsored), reader is described as being shorter than Clark, some angst but there is comfort, heavy(ish) makeout
dt: the 436 people who voted! also my friends who listened to me rant about this endlessly, @houseofhyde for actually making me excited to write this, @tw1sters for hyping me up no matter what, @54nboo for being sat, @wildflowersandvibranium for loving Clark as much as me, @opheliabbarnes for promising me it doesnât suck and always making me giggle đŠˇIâd lost without every single one of you.
Word Count: 5.4k
You're pretty sure you hate him.Â
"Metropolis General, this is Unit Twelve-Krypto. How do you copy?â Clark's voice crackles through the radio, enough to make your frustration already start to simmer.
Looking around, everyone else has their hands full, leaving you to pick up the receiver.
"Twelve-Krypto, General is receiving. We copy you loud and clear, go ahead." You answer.
Static pops as you wait for his answer, knuckles white around the speaker as you prepare yourself for-
"Is that my girl?" Clark asks.
You can hear his smile through the line, stupid and cocky. It makes your teeth clench.
"Twelve-Krypto, we copy you loud and clear. Go Ahead." You repeat, a little sharper this time.
One of the other nurses floats by the station, pausing for a just a moment as she passes you. Her eyebrows raise in a silent question, Big Trauma?
You shake your head, ignoring her relief as you mouth Clark, sighing as if it's worse.Â
For you, it is.
"Oh okay, right, Miss. Professional." He cracks. You can hear his laughter jumping through the frequency, broken by pops of static and the occasional catch of the rig's siren. His voice cuts in again, obviously teasing as he pushes it deeper. âCopy, we are inbound with one pediatric patient. Female, age seven, approximately fifty five pounds. Chief complaint is mild abdominal pain and nausea."
You mark the information down, "Copy, is the patient alert?" You ask.
"Patient is alert, calm, talking comfortably. No vomiting or fever. Pain started about an hour ago after eating some snacks â parents list popcorn, cotton candy, and a âmega swirl churro.â No known allergies or medical history of note."
"Copy, vitals are stable?"
"Vitals are stable, BP one-oh-two over sixty four. Heart rate is ninety eight. Abdomen is soft with mild tenderness." Clark reports, in between he mutters something about funnel cake and not having enough time. You only catch every other word, "She's resting comfortably and drinking water. Parents are accompanying. No interventions required en route."Â
"Copy, no intervention required, no red flags noted, parents with you- understood." You're already motioning to someone else, checking that the pediatric room is clear. "What's your ETA?"
"ETA is six minutes, anything you need on our end?"Â
"Negative, Twelve-Krypto. No special requests. Go to Bay three and I'll be waiting to receive."
"Copy,â His voice returns to its normal cadence, smile evident as he adds âCanât wait to see you." It's playful, biting in the way a nibble is. Not breaking the skin, just teasing it.Â
"Metro Receiving out." Is all he gets as a reply.
They arrive in four minutes, Clark waltzing though the trauma bay with a mop of curls in his arms and two tired parents behind him.
He goes straight to pediatric room without even stopping to check, dimpled smiles given out like candy to every person he passes.Â
You watch them melt under his gaze, a mess of weak knees and distracted patients left in his wake.
Why doesn't anyone else see it? You wonder, see him the way you do?
The constant flirting, the heroics and risky saves that have left him needing stitches more times than you can count. The way he moves through your ER like he knows it better than any one else. How he steals coffee from your break room and doesn't bother to start a fresh pot because the just happened to 'get a call!' as soon as he finished pouring himself a cup.
The last one only happened once, but the point still stands.Â
That's why you don't fall for it when he greets you with a warm "There she is!"Â
"Clark." You give him a tight nod, "You can go we've got it from here."
The patient- Gracie, is snuggled under the thin blanket on the bed. Her entire upper body is still clinging to Clark. Both arms wrapped around his bicep and her face mushed against his shoulder.Â
"No!" She panics, pulling him even tighter to herself, hard enough to make Clark sway on his feet just a little. "He can't go!" She insists.
Jesus fucking Christ.Â
You pull a chair over, throwing Gracie's parents an assuring smile and sitting on the side of the bed opposite to Clark.
"Hi Gracie, I'm sorry I should have introduced myself." You start, setting your chart down on the far end of the bed where her feet catch reach. "I'm gonna be your nurse today, okay?"
She nods, curls bouncing.
You smile again, as warm as you can muster. "My friend, Clark-â you almost choke on it "-told me you have a pretty bad tummy ache."
Her parents take over from there, launching into the full extent of her Carnival food binge. It sounds like too much sugar and mild dehydration, but for the sake of their worries and peace of mind, you suggest a blood test and some iv fluids. Also an antacid.Â
By the time the orders are written, and you're clear to get started Gracie has finally released Clark's arm, settling for holding onto his thumb instead.
You choose to ignore just how big his hand looks compared to hers.
Much to your dismay, Clark is a great help. He keeps her distracted with photos of his dog and stories of carnivals back in Kansas. How he got lost in the corn maze one year and almost became a scarecrow. Her little mind is occupied through every needle.
By the time you get the antacid and fluids rolling, she's fast asleep.Â
As you make you exit, ready to face a the ten other patients who are probably looking for you, Clark follows.
In the privacy of the hallway, he gives you a mega-watt smile.Â
"We make a good team." He says, smile smug and dimpled. "We should go out, get dinner to celebrate."Â
"Celebrate?" You deadpan.
"Yeah!" Clark shrugs, "For saving little Gracie."Â
"I would hardly consider giving her a tums life saving." You deflect.Â
It's quiet out here, the closest thing you can find to it. The pediatric section is careful about that, a little secluded area away from the rest of the Metro ER insanity. No beeping monitors, no screaming patients, just pastel wallpaper and lollipops in every cabinet.
"Then let's call it a date." Clark suggests.
You lied earlier, when talking about all the reasons you hate Clark Kent. This is the reason.Â
He won't take no for an answer.
You huff a sigh, beginning to walk with him hot at your heels, not answering until you make it to the breakroom. "I told you Clark I'm not going out with you again."
You hear him try to protest behind you, a halfhearted, almost genuinely disappointed "Still?" falling from his lips.
"Are you still doing that whole hero thing?" You bite, ignoring his gaze as you pour yourself a lukewarm coffee.
Clark sputters behind you, "The whole what?"Â
You check the fridge for cream, only to find none. "I told you-" You take a sip, black and bitter and perfectly fitting for how you feel about this conversation. "I can't do this if you're constantly throwing yourself into dangerous situations."Â
The hero thing.
Clark sighs, "You know I can't promise that."Â
You do know, you know better than anyone. Except it's not that he can't promise it, it's that he won't even try.
"I'm not asking you to give up your job Clark." You tell him through gritted teeth. "I just want you to promise you won't run into a falling building when everyone is telling you not to."Â
"It was one time-" He tries to defend.
"I don't care!" You bite, "Do you know what it was like to see you come in here on a gurney?"Â
He falters, hands dropping to his sides and his eyes dropping to the floor.Â
"I know you can't promise you'll be safe, I'm not naive." You swallow around the lump in your throat, washing it down with another sip. "But you won't even try, Clark."
Clark stands there stunned, and dejected, like you just sucked the wind out of sails. "I was fine." He insists, like the stubborn, stupid, self-assured man he is. "They said I set the record for fastest PT-"
"You almost died!" You interrupt. "I can't be with someone who doesn't understand how serious that is."
Silence, he knows you're right, you know you're right, hell, the janitor eavesdropping outside the door knows you're right.
You down the last of your coffee, the taste almost as bitter as the ache in your chest. "I have to get back to work." You leave him there, alone on the hill he's chosen to die on.
You're pretty sure you hate your job.
Or at least hate today.
A pile up the length of five city blocks. Thirty cars, two buses, and a trolley all tangled together. One bad swerve and now half of Metropolis is stuck in gridlock.
You're the first to raise your hand for triage. You can hear the sirens from the ambulance bay, the chaos unfolding just a few streets over. You're close though to walk.Â
The ER splits in half, part of your team staying back to wait in the ambulance bay for when things finally loosen up, while the rest of you make tracks.Â
You're armed with a supply pack on your shoulder and a walkie-talkie clipped to your vest. The smell of burnt rubber stings your nose as you walk head first into hell.
"Triage this is Kent from Krypto-Twelve, where do you need me?" His voice knocks the wind out of you.
Since when were EMTs allowed on this channel?
You haven't spoken in almost two weeks.
One of you changed your shifts (Clark), the other one tried to apologize and chickened out (you).
They must have called in off-duty units, desperate for any hands with medical training.Â
You keep busy, ignoring the way his voice cuts through the static as you work.Â
You're barely sticking out from beneath a flipped SUV, your bag abandoned on the asphalt while you climb underneath get a better angle on a head lac.Â
Suddenly, it all shifts. The weight changes, someone's wheel turns or a steel beam finally gives way, who knows. One second your gasping, throwing your hands up in panic and the next you're moving.Â
Two large hands grab your ankles, using them to pull you out from the wreckage just as it shifts again, landing with a metal groan where you just were.Â
"What the hell are you doing?" Clark bites.
You're not sure what he is, buts it's something you've never seen before. Wild eyes tracing over every line of your face, holding your arms out and flipping them over as he checks you for injuries.Â
When he meets your eyes, something else has melted in his gaze, fear eclipsed by worry.Â
His hand swallows one side of your face as he cups in his palm, thumb brushing over your cheek bone as he looks you over once more. "Are you okay?" He asks it, but it doesn't sound like a question, more like a plea. As if he's begging the answer to be yes.
The car shifts again behind you, another snap of metal knocking you back to reality.Â
You swat his hand away with a dismissive "I'm fine."Â
"Why are you here?" He lets his hand fall, but it twitches at his side.Â
You bend down to reach in your bag, eager to lose his stare. "Triage certified." is all you say. Fresh gauze in hands you try to move back to the car.Â
You were able to reach the driver through the moon roof before, a thready pulse and steady blood flow enough for you confidently mark them as yellow. Unconscious but breathing.Â
You'll have to go in through the passenger window now, it's tight, but should be doable as long as you can get the right angle-
You hardly make it two steps before Clark's arms wrap around your waist. He lifts you with ease, ignoring your protests as spins you around, placing himself between the car and you.
"Are you insane?" He asks, voice breathy and rougher than you've ever heard it. He sounds nervous, you realize, shaken. Something Clark Kent is notorious for not being. "You're not going back in that car, it's too unstable."
You try to walk past him, pushing against his chest only to met with solid muscle. He doesn't even sway. "The driver is still inside," you explain. You hold up the supplies in your hands as if to prove your point.
Clark nods, but instead of moving aside, he takes the gauze from your hands and before you can protest, climbs in the window himself.
It's almost incredible, watching such large man squeeze into such a tight space, his shoulders folding in on themselves as he slides into the window.
"What are you doing?" You ask.Â
Clark doesn't even give you a smile, none of his usual tease as he replies, "Triage certified."
He disappears into the car, his legs still visible from the outside as he maneuvers himself.
You wait to hear the sound of tape or gauze pulling over skin, instead it's just Clark's voice again.Â
"Pass me a back tag." He says, and his voice is even heavier than before.Â
You falter, your hand that had already been reaching for morphine stills.Â
"What?" You ask. "They had a pulse three minutes ago! Clark it should be yellow-"
It's his turn to interrupt, a hard bang from the inside of the car as he answers. "Blown pupils and no pulse." He says. You hear him sigh from inside, his voice softening as he adds, "Not your fault, just shit luck." His hand reaches back through the window for the tag.
You pass it to him without saying anything else, forcing yourself to take a few deeps breaths as he shuffles back out of the window.
Before you can protest he's hoisting your supply pack onto his shoulder, and walking toward the next victim in your path.Â
Begrudgingly, you follow.
It's quiet work, short instructions and the occasional question. Clark is uncharacteristically focused, each task getting his full attention.Â
He hands you supplies before the first syllable even hits your tongue, hauls debris out of your path as if it weighs nothing and insists on checking the stability of every car before letting you near them. If they so much as list in a direction he doesn't like then he's climbing through the rubble instead.
If he can, he holds it steady himself, a strong arm braced as he twists himself into human scaffolding so you can work. Those are the most unnerving moments, your spine tingling with his gaze and the way he watches you work.
You wonder if it's the same way you're watching him, worry, respect, all tinged with a sense of awe.
Like cold water, the realization hits you. Youâve never actually seen him in the field.
Blue eyes gone cold with determination and a promise to help. He only softens when the patient needs it. A single mother still clinging to her steering wheel warms his voice. A man asking for a phone to call his wife has Clark ready to empty his pockets.Â
A little boy whose parents were on the trolley has him misty and forcing a smile.Â
Your chest aches with it, his overwhelming goodness.Â
You can see him throwing himself in danger for the sake of any one of them, suddenly itâs a lot harder to blame him for it.Â
You're there for hours, patching wounds and placing tags until you run out of gauze, and eventually out of everything else. Clark stays at your side the whole time, ignoring calls of his name over the radio with a simple "Busy." Murmured into the receiver.Â
By the time you make it back to the meetup spot, you're both dragging. Covered in dirt and grime as your feet drum heavy footsteps.Â
It's started to clear, a handful of ambulances on scene and a tow-truck beginning to clear the rubble. Traffic will probably be back within two hours, and the city will move on. It always does, long after the carnage still burns the back of your eyes.
Clark passes you your empty bag with a word, just a tight smile on his lips and a nod.Â
Then he turns and starts to walk away, back toward his rig.
"Clark!" You call after him, voice shaping around his name on its own accord.Â
Clark stops, long legs having already carried him almost ten feet away. He looks over his shoulder to you, distant and sad, as if it hurts him not to run back to you. His eyebrows raise, silent surprise as if he expected you just let him go.Â
Does he really think youâre that cold? The question sits on your tongue, right at the edge like a dare.
"Thank you." Is what you muster instead. best you can muster. It's genuine, you wouldn't have been able to help half of the people you did today if it weren't for Clark.Â
Clark just nods, and for the first time all day he gives you a smile. Not the fake, flirty one he usually flashes you. No, this one is softer, a gentle curve with no teeth. It's almost sheepish in its subtlety, just enough for his dimple to carve out its place on his cheek.Â
You spend the entire ride back to hospital trying to quiet your racing mind, and worse, your racing heart.
You're pretty sure you hate the new girl.
Okay that's not fair. She hasn't technically done anything wrong, she just had the misfortune of being the one to take the call.
A sleepy shift, hardly any traumas, hardly any patients, just a nap in the on call room and the snow falling outside.
You should've known better than to think it would stay that way.Â
The radio went off with a shrill cry, snapping every head in its direction.Â
New girl was closest, tripping over herself to pick up the receiver.
"Twelve-Krypto, General is receiving. We copy" Her voice is shaky with nerves, hands reaching for a pad to write down the patient information.
Her face goes pale, her hand pausing over the notepad before resuming its scribbles in ten fold. She smushes the receiver between her ear and and shoulder, brows furrowing as she tries to keep up.
"Must be a bad one." You whisper, you start to move on autopilot, walking towards the supply pantry. You're already halfway through your mental checklist, forming a plan of attack when she says-
"You said you have a medic down?" She asks, looking around for reassurance. "How much blood has he lost?"
The hair on the back of your neck stands up. Despite the fact that he's still on nights and the shift change doesn't happen for a another few hours, you thoughts immediately shift to one person.
Clark.
A pit settles in your stomach, sure and heavy, like a stone sinking into a lake.Â
One of the other nurses has taken over the receiver, motioning to get a trauma room ready and whispering something about paging upstairs.Â
They try to placate whoever is on the line, voice even and calm, but their eyes betray them. A quick glance at to you with the briefest flash of panic, just as they say the words that confirm your worst fears.
"Jimmy, slow down." It's said to into the radio but it might as well have been whispered in your ear with the way it sends a shiver up your spine.
Jimmy is Clark's partner.
They never work a shift without the eachother.
Jimmy hates talking on the radio, that's why Clark always does it.Â
Suddenly you're underwater, ice rushing through your veins as you realize it's happening again.
Except there's no anger like you thought there would be.Â
There's no instinct to fight, or urge to slap him silly. All that you can think about is how sorry you are.
Sorry for ever fighting, for being so stubborn. Your legs swell with your regrets and keep you planted in the middle of the floor, everyone moving around you as if the world hasn't tilted on its axis.Â
A doctor taps you on the shoulder, a gentle voice suggesting that "Maybe you should sit this one out."
That does it, he's dying.Â
He's dying, he's going to come through those doors with the grim reaper at his heels and you won't ever be able to tell him you were wrong.
It burns the back of your throat, emotion rising like bile as you nod in agreement.Â
Everyone else is in aprons, ready to whisk him away to a trauma bay. Gloves are on, blood bags are hanging, an operating room is being cleared upstairs.Â
Then there's you, sitting at the nurses station like a statue in Figs. You watch the door like a gargoyle, unblinking as the siren gets closer and closer.
You hear the chaos from inside, tires screeching and metal slamming as everyone jumps into action. When the doors open it's like floodgates, a sudden burst of noise as a gurney is wheeled across the linoleum floors.
Jimmy's on top of it doing chest compressions, counting under his breath as he fights to keep time. You can't see Clark's face through the crowd, craning your neck and lifting onto your tippy toes to try and get a glance. All you can see are tatters of his uniform and bloodied skin.Â
You hear yourself asking questions, How long have you been doing compressions? Did anyone push epi? What the fuck happened? But your voice ignored, lost among barked instructions.
Then, as quickly as the noise came, it disappears. You're not sure when you stood again, but you're left in the middle of the all, arms useless at your sides as you stare at the doors they took him through.Â
You have half a mind to follow, the instinct to push your way in and hold his hand, even if he is already gone. You need him to know you were there. You need him to know you weren't angry.Â
Tears well faster than you can stop them, threatening to spill over your lash line as you try your best to think-Â
"How is he?"Â
A voice interrupts from behind you.Â
You turn, wiping frantically at your cheeks are you try to take a deep breath, "I don't know, but I can come find you as soon asâŚ" The words are lost, disappearing from your lips.
It's Clark, all six feet, four inches of him. His uniform is a wrinkled and stained mess, but the exception of a cut on his forehead, he's untouched.
"Clark?" You choke, throat tight as you rub at your eyes again. "I thought-" you cut yourself off, head snapping to the trauma room doors and then back to Clark.Â
You're not sure if it's because of your tears or obvious confusion, but Clark closes the distance. He walks until you're almost toe-to-toe, hardly even noting how close he is. His hands are on your cheeks and despite the grime and dirt you don't flinch away when he wipes your tears, melting into his touch.
"Are you okay?" Clark worries, "Are you hurt what happened?"Â
You're too busy staring at him, it's as if you're seeing him for the first time. Thereâs no bright and shiny gloss or distraction of things youâve projected onto him. Just the man.Â
"I thought it was you." You manage to whisper. You hands reach up to rest over his, making sure he's really there.
Clark goes still, pretty blue eyes popping wide. You admission hangs in the air, dragging it down and filling it with unexpected emotion.
"You cried for me?" He asks, the question is genuine, no teasing or forced professionalism, just the raw vulnerability of the moment.
Another tear escapes rolling down your cheek, and giving him his answer.
"I'm sorry." He says, earnest and real. He has nothing to apologize for, but it soothes your souls anyway and heals something deep inside of your fragile heart.
"You're okay." It's hardly more than a whisper, "That's all that matters."Â
The distance between you gets smaller, your chest brushes his with every breath. You can feel his exhales, his gaze dancing between your eye and your lips as he begins to dip his neck towards you.Â
You look closer, eyeing the dirt on his cheeks and the way blood has trickled from his forehead down to eyebrow. You plant your hands on his chest, stopping him from leaning in the rest of the way.
The room erupts, a flurry of noise as the EMT they brought in is wheeled to the elevator.Â
You and Clark jump apart, caught like children.Â
"C'mon." You tell him, grabbing his hand and guiding him away from growing chaos as everyone goes back to their original tasks. "Let me get you cleaned up."
Shockingly, Clark goes without protest, his fingers curling around yours as he follows you into an empty on-call room. He doesn't argue when you turn the lock, or unclip your pager. Not a peep when push at jacket of his uniform, peeling it down his arms to check for any other scrapes.Â
He doesn't speak until you open the wipes you'd snagged off a supply cart on the way in. The soft tear of plastic breaking the silence.Â
"What are you doing?" He asks.Â
You look everywhere but his eyes, hand shaking as you pull out a wipe and lift it to his face. You focus on his cheeks, gently tracing his jaw and the swiping the cloth across it, over and over again until the only dark spots left are his freckles. Then you move to the other side, cleaning up to where his eyes crinkle.Â
"I'm cleaning you up." You tell him, purposely obtuse, "You're covered in dirt or soot or whatever this is."Â
"Yes I know, but why?"Â
You start on his nose with a fresh wipe, the other tossed somewhere on the floor. You ride the curve of it, fingers sweeping down until you brush against the crest of his upper lip. You feel him hold his breath, still as a statue while he waits for your answer.Â
"So your face is clean when I kiss you." You admit. You feel naked in the confession, wearing your busy hands like a shield.Â
Clark captures your wrist, pulling the wipe from between your fingers and tossing it onto the floor the first one.Â
He takes the package of wipes from you and finishes his face, clearing the blood from his forehead and even wiping down his neck. He makes faster work of it then you, harsh drags of microfiber until his skin is pink and irritated.
"But you saidâŚ" he struggles to find the words, mouth opening and closing as he works the wipe over his collar bone.
He finishes with his hands, carefully going over every finger and across the divots of his palm while he stares at you.Â
You nod "I know what I said." You assure him.Â
Finally ready, you start to close the distance.Â
"I care about you." You tell him, voice steady as you take the wipe from his hands and toss it to the floor. "I'm going to worry about you whether we are together or not.â You give him a soft smile as you continue, âI was wrong, pushing you away didn't make it hurt any less."
"I get it though." Clark's lips twitch, like he's torn between a smile and a grimace. "The day at the crash, when I saw you under that car. It was like my whole life flashed before my eyes." His hand lifts to your cheek, cradling your entire face in his palm. "I never want to make you feel like that again."
You keep smiling, soft and happy as you take another step. You're closer than you were in the hallway now, your feet between his as you tilt your head up to look at him.Â
"You will," You promise, "And I'll do the same to you." You turn your face to kiss his palm, gentle and sure. "That's what love is."
Clark doesn't answer, not with words at least. Instead, faster than you can blink, he leans down and kisses you.Â
It's bruising in its force, his other hand cupping your neck as he tries to bring you even closer, pulling until your chest is flush with his, keeping contact even as he curls himself over you.
The kiss is everything you havenât said since that first date, since the day you told him ânoâ the first time. In the months that have passed since with banter and teases. It s a kiss that tries to make up for lost time.
You can feel his smile against your lips, your own threatening to break through, until eventually it does. You smile into eachothers mouths until the kiss devolves, becoming a messy clash of teeth and giggles as you enjoy the euphoria of just touching one another.
Slowly he walks you back, short steps until your knees hit the edge of the cot.Â
You pull away from him with a gasp, your smile still so wide it makes your cheeks ache.Â
"I'm really glad you're not dead." You whisper, bringing your hand up to his collar, fidgeting with the button at the top until you finally undo it.
Clark beams, eyes shining as he presses another kiss to your lips. "Me too." He murmurs against them.
Then your feet are off the ground, but only for a moment as he lifts you to sit on the bed, pushing your shoulder so you lie back. It's barely a twin, hardly big enough for one person, but as Clark slides his body over yours, you don't mind the tight quarters.Â
Your hands go back to his buttons, this time with purpose.Â
"I still think I should make it up to you." He says, teasing and cocky. The same tone that used to make your blood boil on the radio.Â
You hum in agreement, jutting your chin just enough to chase his mouth. When you capture it, you pull his bottom lip between your teeth, punishing it with a gentle bite. "Can't argue with that."Â
Clark groans deep in the back of his throat, somewhere between tortured and happy as your tongue soothes over the indentations of your teeth in his skin
"No arguing." He agrees, bending his neck to press a wet kiss to your neck. "From now on, I do whatever you say."
Your hands finally finish his shirt, palms sliding underneath the opened fabric and tracing his skin through the ribbing of his tank top. "Mm-mm." You agree, arching your back into his chest as you smile. "I like the sound of that."Â
Clark works down to your collarbone, his tongue dragging a wet line over it's valley until he finds the neck of your scrubs.
Clark's touches start to wander too, one arm keeping him hovering above you while the other reaches down to the hem of your scrub top.Â
"No more burning buildings?" You ask, it's meant to be a tease, but it's broken by a gasp as his hand slides underneath the fabric. Rough fingers drag up your stomach, finding the curve of your ribs and splaying over them.Â
"Nope." Clark assures you, placing another kiss to your lips as he lays his hips even firmer against you.Â
"What about de-railed trains?" You suggest. Your voice is breathless, your back arching into his touch.Â
You feel Clark shake his head against you.Â
"I'm retiring from the hero thing." He promises, and despite the way he peppers your cheeks with kisses, you can tell he's serious. "Not worth the risk." He says.Â
"Yeah?" You ask, small and hopeful. Your heard pounds under his palm, pulse thrumming as his shifts to look you in the eye.
"Yeah." He says, "As long as you promise to be waiting for me, I promise to do everything I can to I come home to you."Â
It's not perfect, and you know Clark, you know that there will be a cat in a tree or an old lady who needs him, but heâll try, and thatâs all you ever needed.
Pairing: David! Clark Kent x Metahuman Female!Reader
Summary: Clark loves you. He doesnât love Lois. Saying it is easy; living it is work. While you keep your distanceâcopy edits, closed doors, strict boundariesâClark spirals into the sky. He needs to learn the difference between being good and being forgiven. If thereâs a future, it wonât be because you waited. Waiting has terms.
Tags: Clark Centric. PTSD, Superman/Clark Kent x Reader, Metahuman!Reader, Hurt/Comfort (yet), Established Relationship, Jimmy Knows Clark Is Superman, Lois Knows Clark Is Superman, Healing/Regeneration, Body Horror (Injury Transference), Self Harm, Jealousy / Love Triangle (Clark x Lois), Emotional Trauma, Protective!Clark, Jimmy is A Good Friend, Miscommunication, Therapy
Playing: Trouble - Cage The Elephant
WC 20k (it's a beast) | PART 2
main masterlist | ao3
Oh Clark, it was nice to treat you like a little bug under a microscope. things don't end here for you. I have the next part all written, just needs more polishing
(tags at the end, truly sorry if I missed anyone!)
Clark didnât make it far.
Your apartment door clicked shut behind himâa small, routine sound, but it cut straight through his chest like shrapnel.
For a long moment, he just stood there in the hallway, hand still on the handle, forehead almost touching the cool painted wood. On the other side, you were breaking, and he heard every second of it.
Your sobs came in uneven bursts, like theyâd been waiting in your ribs for weeks and finally tore free. Each one snagged, cracked, gasped its way out of you. It gutted him. Every sound, every hitch in your breathing, every time you tried to pull yourself together and couldnât.
His body knew exactly what it wanted to do: turn the knob, cross the distance, gather you up, beg until sorry became currency again.
He didnât move.
Your last words hit him in a loop, each one paralyzing him:
Youâre looking at her like sheâs still yours.
You sounded tired. Bone-deep tired. Like this wasnât just about one look, one line, one night. Like it was about every moment he hadnât interrogated his own loyalties, every time heâd let inertia carry him instead of intention.
Every day is like Iâm dying all over again.
The three weeks after the gala taught him what living with a fresh injury felt like when the body insisted on moving anyway. He kept finding evidence he didnât know how to live with. A pale crescent of dried pink on the inside cuff of his shirt from that nightâhe washed it, it stained. The hospital bracelet youâd tossed, plastic curled inward like it was trying to make itself small. The marble floor still in his head every time he stepped on tile.
He worked. He patrolled. He made lists he didnât finish. He practiced saying your name without apology and failed. And every time your breath hitched at nothing, every time your smile arrived late, every time your hand pressed unconsciously to the place where a bullet had been and his body remembered the heat of it, he felt the same helpless burn.
I saw you love her. Do you know what that felt like? When youâre supposed to love me?
He dug his fingers into the doorknob. It groaned softly under the pressure. He forced himself to relax before he dented it further.
He did love you. That was the worst part. There was no universe, no branch, no timeline where he didnât. He loved you in the quiet way he made your coffee exactly the way you liked it. In the way he memorized the pattern of your steps approaching his desk. In the way his whole body settled when you leaned against him on the couch. In the way the absence of your laugh made the room feel vacuum-sealed.
He loved Lois once. A past tense carved into his bones, formative and real. He had told himself heâd put that love in the right placeârespected, acknowledged, boxed up, labeled.Â
But the gala had proved there were parts of himself he had not examined closely enough. Reflexes he hadnât re-trained. Scripts he still read from when caught off-guard.
I canât live in a world where your history dictates my safety, my trust, my life.
Heâd always known his history carried weight. Krypton. Kansas. The cape. Every decision he made as Superman rippled outward. He hadn't accounted that his romantic history could be just as dangerousâthat who he had loved, and how, and what he hadnât let go ofâcould break open the life he was trying to build with you.
âPlease, honey,â he whispered before he could stop himself. The endearment you'd just forbid him from using. âPlease⌠donât cry anymore.â
You sobbed harder, like your body rejected the idea that you owed him any neatness in your grief.
It would be so easy. One twist, a nudge, and the lock would give. Three strides and heâd be inside: cupping your face, touching your wrists, smoothing your hair back from your wet cheeks. He could press his mouth to your temple and chant Iâm sorry into your skin until he believed heâd earned the right to hold you again.
But bursting back in would only do what youâd just accused him ofâput his guilt above your boundaries.Â
He leaned his forehead against the wood instead, muscles shaking with the effort it took to stay still. The paint was cool under his skin. He could feel the faint vibration of your sobs through it, your pain turning the door into a conduit.
He replayed the gala again. Over and over, as relentlessly as any news reel.
Then the bullpen. Loisâs laugh, bright and sharp. The flash of her hand swatting his arm, the familiar pull of an old rhythmâreporter and source, past tense lovers, present tense professionals who had never quite untangled their history.
âYou love me anyway,â sheâd teased carelessly. Confident in the way you only could be when you had once been the center of someoneâs orbit.
She hadnât meant it as a challenge. For her, it was a joke. An old line between old friends.
And heâstupid, unthinking, habitual â smiled and said, âYeah, I do.â
He hadnât thought about what it would feel like from the outside of that old orbit, looking in, until now. He heard it the way you must have heard it. Not as a fond nod to a bygone era. Not as a harmless scrap of shared history. Heard it as a verdict. A choice, not you.Â
âIâm so sorry,â he breathed. This time he didnât say it to be heard. He said it because it was the only thing left that felt true.
Time stretched.
The hallway smell shifted from someoneâs dinner to someoneâs cigarette. His knees started to ache. None of it registered properly. Grief ignored clocks.
Your sobs finally thinned into jagged breaths. A hiccup. A curse that dissolved halfway through. Then, for a terrifying heartbeat too long, nothing.
His head snapped up, worried. Instinct narrowed his world down to one thing: your body on the other side of the door, silent.
He stripped away the buildingâs noise with a thought. TVs, plumbing, arguing neighborsâthey all fell back. He listened for you.
There. Your heartbeat. Off-center, like always. Too fast, but steady.
He forced himself to stay still as he tracked you. The soft shuffle of your feet against the flooring. The uneven drag of your steps, as if your legs were as shaky as your breathing.
He counted the footsteps from the other side of the door.
One. Two. Three. You were crossing the living room carpet.
Four. Five. Six. Seven. The subtle change in resonance told him youâd hit tile. The bathroom.
He heard the faucet turn on, the rush of waterâtoo loud in the small spaceâsomething dropped into the sink, the clink of a cabinet door. Maybe you were washing your face. Maybe you were rinsing away the tracks his choices had carved into your skin.
He imagined you gripping the edge of the sink, head bowed, water dripping from your chin and eyelashes. He wondered if you were looking at your own reflection like you didnât recognize the person who trusted him enough with a future heâd fumble like a rookie.
He remembered the way your face lit up on that word âfutureâ and the way you tucked your head into his chest like you were tucking the words between you. And then he remembered the way your expression had folded in on itself at the gala, when you saw him cradling Lois and demandedâ
I can't lose her
He swallowed hard, throat burning.
The water shut off. More footsteps. Slower this time. Back across the living room.
He counted again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
Then the muffled sound of your bedroom door, closing with a soft, final snick.
He stayed where he was, palm sliding off the doorknob, fingers curling uselessly at his side. The small domestic sounds on the other sideâbedsprings creaking, blanket rustling, a broken sigh forced through clenched teethâfiltered through the wood like a life he no longer had access to.
He knew your nighttime soundscape better than his own: the way you shifted when you were cold, the little hum when a dream turned good, the choked-off snort when allergies stuffed up your nose. Heâd spent so many nights cataloguing those tiny shifts.
He would not be there for any of it tonight.
The thought landed with heavy finality. Not just youâre alone in there. But you chose to be alone rather than be with him like this.
He could live in a world that hated Superman. Heâd spent years being misread, misunderstood, misused. He could bear that. But the idea of you choosing anything over himânot because you didnât love him, but because loving him felt like stepping on glassâmade his chest seize.
He stepped back from the door.
Every part of him protested, muscles clenching like he was walking against hurricane wind. He forced himself to move anyway. One step. Then another. He didnât look back. He didnât measure the distance from your threshold. If he did, heâd turn around and ruin the last thing youâd asked of him: listen to me when it matters.
He took the stairs instead of the elevator; the idea of another set of doors closing in his face made his lungs tighten. At the ground floor, the exit banged open, and cold night air slapped him across the face.
He stopped on the sidewalk outside your building and looked up.
Your window was just another dark rectangle against the brick. He could hear you still, faintlyâyour heartbeat slowing, your breath catching now and then on leftover tears, the rustle of fabric as you shifted, trying to fold yourself into a shape that hurt less.
You had drawn a line to save yourself.
Heâd crossed enough lines in one night.
Clark tipped his head back, staring into the washed-out city sky. He could feel the distant pull of the sun below the horizon, waiting to rise and fill him with the same power it always did, no matter what heâd done the night before.
A blessing to keep going, keep lifting, keep bearing what needed to be borne, keep hoping.
He didnât feel like he deserved any of that.
But there were two things he could do right now, while you were on the other side of that wall trying to breathe without him.
He would honor the boundary youâd drawn, even if it tore him apart. He would think of a wayâsomehowâto become a man whose history didnât threaten your future.
He held that promise in his chest like something breakable, then stepped off the curb and let the wind catch him, leaving your window small and still behind him.
.
Clark didnât remember deciding to go home. One moment, he was feeling the sun warm his skin undeservingly and leave the rest of him cold, then the next, he was outside his own building.
He unlocked his apartment door, and the silence that greeted him on the other side was a different kind of loud than the one outside your place.Â
Like a room after the party guests have gone home, and all thatâs left is confetti ground into the floor, sticky counters, and the muffled echo of music that had just stopped
He stood there for a second, letting his eyes adjust.
The coat rack still leaned a little to the left, weighed down by his jacket and your old denim one youâd âborrowedâ for a chilly night and forgotten to bring back. The bookshelf still sagged under the combined weight of his journalism texts and your battered paperbacks. The couch still slouched in the middle of the living room, one corner of the blanket thrown over the back where youâd last kicked it in your sleep.
He took his shoes off, landing them softly with a thud. He moved automatically toward the kitchen for a cup of water. The coffee maker sat on the counter, glass pot clean and empty. Beside it, by the sink, was your mug.
He recognized it instantly. White ceramic, chipped at the lip where youâd once dropped it in a rush to answer a Justice Gang call. A faded cartoon crab on the front and the words WORLDâS MOST MEDIOCRE MORNING PERSON in peeling letters.
Youâd stolen it from the Planet breakroom and brought it here the first time you stayed the night. âIf I have to drink coffee at your place,â youâd teased, rinsing it out, âIâm not doing it from one of those sad freebie mugs with the bank logos.â
Now it sat where youâd left it, upside down on a dish towel. A coffee ring stained the counter in the exact circle of its base, like a little ghost of your morning routine.
Next to the dish rack, your favorite plateâblue and gold rim, a peacock painted in the centerârested alone. Youâd claimed it with all the ferocity you brought to editing his work, using the rather expensive plate for everything from midnight grilled cheese to leftover takeout. Seeing it clean and abandoned made his chest pinch.
He turned away before even getting a glass, heading for the bedroom, shedding his tie as he went.
He pulled off his shirt, tossed it toward the hamper, and stopped halfway through the motion when he saw it.
Your hair tie on his nightstand. Just a thin pink band, stretched a little out of shape, half buried under the edge of a Steinbeck paperback and his glasses case. He remembered the way youâd tugged it off your hair one night, snapping it around your wrist before climbing into his lap, your hair falling around his face like a curtain as you kissed him good-night. Youâd fumbled for it later, half-asleep, to twist your hair up again, and clearly never found it.
He picked it up with his thumb and forefinger, the elastic tiny and light and heavier than anything heâd lifted all week. For a second, he hovered on the edge of putting it somewhere âsafeââa drawer, a box, a place where he wouldnât have to see it, and remember the exact sound you made when he slid his hands under the hem of shirt andâ
He set it back down.
If his apartment was going to be haunted, it might as well be honest about it.
In the bathroom, the illusion of âjust my placeâ fell apart completely.
Your shampoo sat next to his on the shower shelf, the label peeling from steam, the bottle dented near the base where youâd dropped it once and sworn the floor was out to get you. Beside it, your conditioner, your face wash, that ridiculous citrus body scrub youâd made him smell until he agreed it did, in fact, smell like summer, but not Kansas summer.
Your razor balanced crookedly on the corner of the tub. A tiny bit of your hair clung stubbornly to the drain.
On the sink, your electric toothbrush rested next to his, bristles slightly frayed from you brushing too hard when you were stressed. A smudge of your toothpaste streaked the porcelain, dried in a little arc.
He gripped the edge of the sink and stared at the two toothbrushes for a long time.
He didnât move yours. He didnât trust himself not to.
He splashed cold water on his face, more to shock his thoughts out of their spiral than to wake up, and caught sight of himself in the mirror. Eyes red-rimmed, jaw shadowed with stubble he hadnât bothered to shave yet.
He showered quickly, the hot water scalding away the chill but not the heaviness riding under his bones. When he stepped back into the bedroom, towel slung around his hips, he almost slipped over the flannel.
It lay half on, half off the bedâhis old blue-and-grey one, the one youâd stolen early on and declared âyours now.â It had always ended up like this; youâd wear it to bed, drowning in it, and at some point in the night, heâd push it off your shoulders, hands sliding under it to find your soft skin, his eager mouth following.
His body remembered before his brain did, a little flash of heat under his sternum that made him feel like a traitor to his own remorse.
He bent and picked it up. The fabric was soft, worn thin at the elbows, faintly carrying your perfume. He pressed his face into it for half a second, then exhaled and folded it, placing it carefully on the back of the chair in the corner.
The chair, of course, was piled with your things.
Hoodies, leggings, a pair of pajama shorts with tiny lightning bolts on them. The novel youâd been half-reading, spine cracked in the middleâLittle Women.
Underneath that, another book: a battered trade paperback about healing ethics in metahuman communities, dog-eared and bristling with your sticky notes. He could see your handwriting peeking outâshort, jagged comments like this is bullshit and ask Kendra if this happened on her first mission.
His chest ached.
On his dresser, scattered among spare change, were your little notes. Tiny squares of paper stuck on surfaces, scribbled reminders to yourself in your hurried handwriting. Some were practical:
DONâT FORGET PERRY WANTS FEATURE FINAL DRAFT BY THURS.
ASK MRS. KENT ABOUT PIE RECIPE?
LORDTECH BRIEFING 8AM â DONâT LET BOWLCUT TALK OVER YOU.
Others were more mundane, meant for him:
CHECK ON PLANT @ MY PLACE!!!
RUN LAUNDRY BEFORE WE BOTH HAVE TO GO COMMANDO.
Heâd rolled his eyes fondly when youâd first started plastering his apartment with them. Now he walked through each room like he was following a breadcrumb trail youâd forgotten to finish.
On his desk, half tucked under his laptop, was a note he hadnât seen before.
It was on a torn piece of printer paper, the ripped edge jagged where it had been yanked in a hurry. Your handwriting slanted more messily than usual, like youâd been writing fast between other tasks.
When Iâm with Clark, I feelâ
The sentence ended there. No period, no scribbled-out word, no arrow leading to a backside. Just the dash trailing into white space.
The breath went out of him.
He sank down onto the edge of his bed, note held carefully between his fingers as if it might crumble. The room seemed to tilt around the unfinished line.
He could imagine a dozen endings.
âsafe.Â
âseen.Â
âterrified.
âlike Iâm finally allowed to breathe.
âlike dying.
He didnât know what youâd meant to write. He didnât know if youâd stopped because youâd been interrupted, or because you couldnât decide, or because the word had scared you too much to put down in ink.
When had you written this? Before the gala? After? Was this the beginning of a letter youâd planned to give him and never did? A journal entry that had migrated to his side of the world by accident?
His vision blurred for a second. He set the note down gently on the nightstand, next to your hair tie, as if they belonged together.
âWhen Iâm with Clark I feelââ He read aloud, but could hear your voice filling in the blank in a dozen different tones. Laughing. Frustrated. Soft. Shaking.
He thought of your face last night, tear tracks shining under your apartment light as youâd said, Every day is like Iâm dying all over again.
He thought of you on the marble floor, blood soaking your gown and the tile, still trying to sooth with him between gasps.
He thought of how youâd looked at him before he walked out. Not like you didnât love him. Like you wished you didnât.
He got dressed on autopilot: suit, cape, hair.
On his way out, he paused by the fridge, hand hovering over one of your notesâthis one stuck crookedly above a magnet shaped like the Daily Planet globe.
DONâT FORGET: YOUâRE ALLOWED TO BE HAPPY, DUMMY.
Youâd written that one after a particularly bad patrol, when heâd come home vibrating with adrenaline and guilt over the three people he just barely managed to saveânever mind the dozens he successfully had. Youâd kissed his knuckles where they were clenched on the counter and then scribbled the note and stuck it up before he could argue.
Now, the words felt cruel.
As he slid the balcony door behind him closed, he did a final sweep of his apartment. Evidence of a life that had threaded itself through his without ever fully moving in.Â
When Iâm with Clark I feelâ
He carried that blank space with him out on the balcony, in the skies.
Whatever the end of that sentence had been, he knew one thing with excruciating clarity: he hoped the word that finally landed there was not terrified. Not dying.
.
He told himself heâd circle the block, clear his head, and then⌠something. A siren flared in the distanceâambulance, two boroughs overâand his body latched onto it like a lifeline.
By the time the sun edged over the buildings, heâd already pulled three people out of a car pileup on the freeway, rerouted a train, and stopped a mugging that wouldâve ended badly for the kid with shaking hands and a cheap knife.
It set the tone for the weekend. One emergency bleeding into the next, no edges between them.
An apartment fire in Metropolis. A collapsing crane in Coast City. A flash flood three states away. A gas leak, a hostage situation, a missing child at a crowded festival.
Clark reasoned if he lifted enough, if he flew fast enough, if he stayed busy enough, maybe the echo of your sobs through your apartment door wouldnât creep back in.
He still felt them.
They threaded under everythingâunder the crunch of steel, the roar of fire, the sobs of people he actually managed to save. At one point, holding up a collapsing balcony with one arm while guiding panicked civilians down with the other, he heard a woman scream, Donât let go, please, I canât lose him, and his hands shook hard enough that concrete dust rained down in a fresh shower.
âSuperman?â she gasped.
âIâve got you,â he said hoarsely, and wasnât sure who he meant.
He didnât eat much. Didnât sleep at all. When his body complained, he flew closer to the sun for an hour and let it burn the exhaustion out of his muscles, even as it left the hollow in his chest untouched.
More than once, he caught himself a fraction of a second lateâmoving through an explosionâs shockwave instead of around it, misjudging the angle of a fall and slamming into asphalt hard enough to crack it. Nothing he couldnât walk off. Nothing anyone else noticed.
It still scared him, that sliver of imprecision. He filed it away with everything else: you crying alone; your voice saying you still love him, but didnât know if there was a way back.
By Sunday night, he hovered over Metropolis and realized heâd spent the entire weekend everywhere but the one place where he wanted to be.
He didnât go to your door.
He went to his apartment long enough to change, to stand in the doorway and refuse to really look at the flannel on the chair or the note on the nightstand. Then he lay on top of the covers, staring at the ceiling instead of the empty space beside him, and counted the hours until Monday morning.Â
.
Normally, walking into the bullpen felt like slipping into a familiar suit. Today, it felt like walking into a life heâd already ruined.
He took three steps out of the elevators, the overhead fluorescents hitting him harder than they had any right to, and then he saw you.
You were just stepping away from your chair, having clearly arrived a few minutes earlier, shrugging your bag off one shoulder. Your hair was pulled back in a way that told him youâd done it in a hurry. There were shadows under your eyes, dark and bruised, faint puffiness of your eyelids like the weekend hadnât given you anything back. Your lips were chapped from where youâd chewed them. The skin around your nose was raw, the way it always got when youâd gone through a box of tissues on your own. Â
Despite it all, Clark thought you were so beautiful.
But what stopped him, though, was the potted plant in your hands close to your chest. It was the same little leafy thing heâd brought to your apartment when you first met, when he introduced himself as both Clark Kent and Superman.Â
He remembers you spending twenty minutes proudly finding the perfect spot for it by your kitchen window. He knew for a fact it had never left that sill. Youâd once scolded him for moving it three inches to the left.
Now it was here. In the bullpen. In your arms.
He slowed without meaning to, heart snagging on the sight.
The plant wasnât in terrible shape, but it wasnât thriving either. A few leaves curled brown at the edges, one stem listing a little too far to one side. You, knowing how serious you got when things depended on you, propped that stem up with a bent paperclip.
You set the pot down on your desk with a caution that made his throat tighten, fingers brushing one of the drooping leaves with pity and apology. For a moment, your shoulders dipped, just slightly, as if placing something from home on your work surface took more energy than it should.
Then you straightened. You reached for your keyboard, logged in, and adjusted your monitor.Â
He took a step toward you.
Perryâs office door flew open with a bang. Clark froze, reflexively bracing to be called in, but Perry just shouted something down the line at the photo desk and slammed it again.
Clark exhaled, took another step.
He was two desks away now. Close enough to see the exact shade of pink at the tip of your nose. Close enough that, if he wanted, he could say your name and youâd hear him.
He opened his mouth.
âMorning, Smallville!â
Lois's voice sliced cleanly through the clatter of the bullpen.
Clark flinched before he could stop himself. Lois breezed past him, her elbow clipping his arm as she went. She shifted a paper cup tray in her handsâthree coffees, one balanced precariouslyâand gave him a quick grin.
âYouâre on time today,â she sing-songed, not unkindly. "That'll earn brownie points with Perry, if he notices. â
âYeah,â he coughed. His eyes were still locked on you.
Lois followed his line of sight.
âOh, yes! You're here!â she called, angling herself toward your desk and beelining. âI brought you the least crime against caffeine I could find.â
You turned at the sound of her voice.
Clark watched the transformation in real time.
For a split second, you were unguarded, eyes dull with exhaustion, mouth slack from the concentration it took just to exist. Then your expression smoothed itself out with almost mechanical precision. Your spine straightened. Your mouth lifted into something that aspired to be a smile and landed closer to a sour grimace.
âMorning, Lois,â you greeted, tonguing the word into shape like it tasted strange today.
Heâd seen you post-Justice Gang patch ups, face pale and hands shaking from pain, and still manage to radiate more genuine warmth. This was not that.
Lois, for her part, was oblivious, or least acted it.
âMy favorite copy editor!â she announced, setting one of the cups on your desk with a flourish. âI need your magic eyes on this city hall piece eventually. They tried to sneak three different numbers past me, and I already burned all my patience on bureaucracy this morning.â
âYou do have a gift for getting into a lot of messes, honestly,â you mumbled with a huff, reaching for the coffee. Your voice was scratchy, slightly pitched high around the edges.
Lois grinned, unswayed by your tone.
âHey, donât act like you donât enjoy cleaning up after me,â she shot back, leaning a hip against your desk. âWhat would you even do with all that free time if I turned in clean copy?â
âIâd probably sleep,â you retorted dryly, taking a careful sip. âOr remember what weekends feel like.â
âLies,â Lois said. âYouâd just take on more work because youâre pathologically helpful.â She bumped your shoulder lightly with her own. âBut you love me anyway.â
The room didnât go quiet. Phones were still ringing. Printers still whirred. Someone laughed over by sports. Somewhere, Perry cursed mightily at his computer.
And yet Clark heard that line like someone had cut a hole in the noise just for it.
But you love me anyway.
The words hit him like a thrown knife.
Friday. The bullpen lights, Loisâs laugh, the easy smile heâd given her as he straightened papers on her desk, the way it must have looked from across the room. The way it must have sounded, hearing him say âYeah, I doâ and feeling something in your chest go out like a light.
The way your face had looked when you repeated it back to him that night in your apartment, eyes glassy, mouth trembling: âWhat did you mean when you said you loved Lois?â
âExplain what it meant. Because Iâm here trying to hold it together, trying not to fall apart every time I see her, and youâreââ
Now, Lois had tossed the same phrase into the air like a joke, unaware of its weight, and it was circling back around to see who it could cut this time.
From where he stood, he saw your hand falter.
Youâd been reaching absentmindedly to adjust the plant, thumb brushing one of its browning leaves. At Loisâs words, your fingers stilled on the curl of dead green. Your shoulders lifted a fraction of an inch. A breath caught in your throatânot loud, not dramatic, just a tiny stutter in the rhythm that his ears snatched up and refused to let go.
You kept your gaze on Lois, lashes lowering for a heartbeat longer than necessary, as if you were choosing between two realities and decided to stay in the one that hurt less.
When you spoke, your voice was softer than he expected. Not brittle. Not sharp. AlmostâGosh, it killed himâtender.
âYeah, I do, Lois,â you said, and you even smiled. A small, rueful tilt of your mouth, pulling at only one corner, like you were in on some joke at your own expense.
Clarkâs lungs forgot how to work.
It felt wrong, somehow, that the words could leave your mouth so gently when theyâd left his the day before like an accident. It felt worse that you were using them now on the woman who had unknowingly lit the fuse.
Lois, still oblivious, squeezed your arm.
âSee?â she crowed. âValidation. I should get that in writing for when I blow a deadline.â
You set the stack of papers down with exaggerated care, fingers lingering on the manila folder to keep them from shaking.
âIââ you started, then stopped. Your eyes flicked to your monitor, to the stack of proofs on your in-tray, to anywhere but him. âI just remembered I⌠have something I need to get started. Perry will have my head if I donât turn this around before lunch.â
Clark watched you slide the strap over your shoulder, movements too brisk to be casual. Your perfumeâfamiliar, faintly coconut and something warm under itâreached him across the space between desks. He wanted to say something â your name, an apology, anything â but his voice caught in his throat.
When you finally looked up, your gaze skimmed over him, and your face crumpled slightly.Â
âIâll be back later,â you whispered harshly, already edging past Lois. âJust⌠need a head start.â
âOh, okay,â Lois replied casually, still unaware of the way the air had thinned around you. âDonât work too hard, Saint Copy.â
You huffed out something that mightâve been meant as a laugh and then you were movingâout from behind your desk, down the aisle between cubicles, toward the far hallway. Your steps were quick, not quite a run, but faster than someone who had all the time in the world.
For a moment, he could almost hear your heartbeat the way he had the night beforeâtoo fast, stuttering around its own hurt. This time it was paired with the rhythmic click of your shoes on the floor, growing fainter with each stride.
He couldnât seem to do anything but stand there, fingers curling uselessly at his sides, watching the space youâd just vacated.
You plant sat in the middle of your desk like a stand-in. Its leaves caught the light from the bullpen windows, a few of them glossy and green, a few browned at the tips. The elevator doors at the end of the bullpen slid shut behind you with a soft ding he felt more than heard.
âYikes,â Lois said, watching the doors close. She let out a low whistle and swung around to face him, her expression shifting to something more assessing. âNot even a kiss goodbye, Smallville? Thatâs brutal. Whatâd you do?â
Clarkâs jaw clenched. He realized belatedly that he was still standing half-turned toward your desk, body leaning forward like some part of him hadnât accepted that you were gone yet.
He couldnât answer.
His throat had closed up, words swelling there and refusing to form. I told you I loved you. I told her I loved her. I wasnât thinking. I wasnât careful. None of that would make sense to Lois anyway.
So he did what heâd done too often lately: nothing.
He stared at the empty path your body had carved through the newsroom, then back at the plant on your desk, and felt the hum of the bullpen swell around himâphones, printers, gossipâlike a tide rising over his head.
From across the room, he watched a tiny, translucent drop of water slide off one of the plantâs leaves and darken the soil below. He didnât know if it was from a rushed watering youâd given it that morning or from the edge of a tear you hadnât managed to wipe away in time.
Either way, the message was the same: something living had been uprooted from where it was safe, and brought here to survive on less than it deserved.
He stood there, a few desks away, muscles taut, watching the past and what heâd thought was his future share the same small space and realizing, too late, how little room heâd left for you to grow.
.
Metropolis moved like it always did over the next two weeksâphones ringing, printers whining, Perry calling âKent, whereâs that feature? Final draft is tomorrow!â across the bullpenâbut for Clark, everything felt a half step to the left. Like reality had been nudged and no one told him.
Technically, you were still there.
He saw you the way people saw ghosts: in reflections and edges and almosts. A flash of your reflection in the glass wall of the conference room as you crossed behind him. The back of your head as you ducked into archives. The curve of your shoulder warped in the chrome trim of the elevator doors.
Every time he tried to catch up, you were already veering away. Already turning down another aisle of desks, already folding yourself into another task you âjust had to take.â
And stillâhis drafts came back from Copy with your fingerprints. The literal, track-changes kind. Headlines tightened by two words. His soft verbs swapped for verbs that did work. A margin note in your brisk shorthandâck names vs. police blotterâinitialed with the same neat two letters of your initial. When Perry insisted the Kent feature stay on the A1 slate, the workflow didnât change; you were the line between his sentences and the morning edition. No rule broken. No whispers to HRâthere was nothing to whisper about. Your notes were professional, impersonal, and correct.
He stopped lingering at the copy desk when he filed. He stopped standing over your shoulder to talk ledes the way he always had. He emailed clean and waited for the ping. Reply: tighten nut graf; source 3 needs time stamp; verify quote punctuation. No greeting. No sign-off. Not unkindâjust airless. A corridor with the lights turned off.
Youâd always been good at moving quietly. The healer who threaded herself through Justice Gang chaos, touching a shoulder here, a wrist there, taking pain into your own body before anyone could register what theyâd handed you. The copy editor who ghosted in at the eleventh hour, smoothing out commas and numbers so the paper looked like it had always been that clean.
Now that stealth was turned against him. Weaponized absence.
He deserved it. Knowing that didnât make it sit any easier.
He saw you tucked into corners with Jimmyâbehind the photo desk, leaning against the stair rail by the loading bay, huddled at the vending machines. Heads bent together, your voice low, Jimmyâs hands flying in sharp, furious gestures. Once, just once, Clark saw your shoulders shake with laughter before you swallowed it down and said something that made Jimmy snort despite himself.
He wasnât stupid. He knew exactly what it looked like from the outside.
Man screws up. Girlfriend retreats to the one person who saw the restroom, the blood, the way she almost didnât come back. The one whoâd yelled at Superman to move, to get you out before you bled out on marble.
He told himself this was good. Healthy. Jimmy was his buddy, he trusted him. You needed someone who wasnât him. Someone who could be angry on your behalf without choking on the word sorry.
The part of him that twisted, watching you bump your shoulder against Jimmyâs on your way out the lobby doors one afternoon, did not feel healthy at all.
His phone pinged. Your note on the feature, clinical as a chart: ledeâs right; cut para 6 and fold stat into graf 4; headlineâs longâtrim to 8 words. He made the changes. He always did. When the proofs came back, the piece sang. It sounded like himâonly better, the way it always had when you were on his pages.
The byline hit A1 the next morning. Perry slapped his shoulder. The newsroom cheered in that distracted way newsrooms cheer. And from the copy desk, your hand reached out into his peripheryânot toward him, simply to move the page along to Layout.
Professional. Distant. Airtight. Nothing for HR to see. Everything for him to feel.
And when Clark felt too much, as impossible as that sounds, he went up. Which was often these days.
Heâd make some excuse about a source or an errand, taking the stairs instead of the elevator so he didnât have to brush past you or see another door close. Then heâd step into the sky as soon as he was out of sight of the windows.
Metropolis from above was a map of distraction: sirens, smoke, a thousand small disasters begging to be triaged. He let his hearing stretch until it snagged on something actionable.
A bus fishtailing on a rain-slick bridge. A scaffolding collapse two blocks from a school. A gas main rumbling beneath a corner deli.
He dropped into each problem like a man trying to drown out a song stuck in his head.
âSuperman, weâve got a situation onââ
âIâm on it,â he assured whoever was briefing him âEMS, fighterighters, police, it didnât matterâ more sharply than he meant to.
âClark, you sure you donât want backup?â Kendra crackled once, suspicion under the casual tone. âYouâve been hogging all the fun lately.â
âIâve got it,â he repeated, already banking toward the plume of smoke.
He did have it. He always did. That wasnât the point.
He moved through emergencies like a man working down a list he could never finish. Catch, brace, shield, lift, fly, repeat. A girl sobbing into his shoulder as he carried her out of a burning building. A construction worker clutching his arm, saying thank you, thank you, over and over as if gratitude alone could anchor them both.
Every time someone cried, âI thought Iâd lost them,â his gut clenched.
He never forgot you were somewhere in the city.
Even as he listened for sirens, some background part of his awareness was tuned to your heartbeatâsteady, located like a pin on a map: at the Hall, in the bullpen, in your apartment. Sometimes, hovering above the city at three in the morning, he caught it faint and fast and knew you were awake too, staring at a ceiling that wasnât his.
He almost flew to your window more than once. Heâd end up hanging in the air a few blocks away instead, knuckles white on his own fists, forcing himself to pivot to a police scanner instead of your fire escape.
At the Hall, he gave you space the way youâd asked. Too much, maybe.
If a call came in that needed medical support, and someone said your name on comms, he veer the other angle if possible: the perimeter, the evac, the grunt work. Anything that meant he didnât have to watch your hands work.
He still heard you.
Your voice over their line, clipped and professional: âMed bay prepping. Status check Terrificâwhatâs it going to be today? Type of injuries?â A beat. âCopy: Gardner, blunt trauma; Rex, chemical exposure. ETA?â Another beat. âUnderstood.â
He could picture you naming the injuries before you saw them, prepping for pain youâd take into your own body and carry alone.
Once, Rex, from the way the sarcasm swungâsaid, âYou know Supesâs been burning the candle at both ends, right? Somebody tell him he doesnât have to white-knuckle the whole city while weâre getting stitched.â
You didnât answer. At least not out loud. Clark imagined the look on your face and felt about two inches tall.
At home, when he did go there, he lay on his back on top of the covers, fully dressed, boots unlaced. Eyes on the ceiling. Listening to your heartbeat across town.
On the rare nights he actually slept, he dreamed in snippets:
Your hand on his chest, warm and solid.
Your hand slipping away.
Your voice at his ear saying, âIâm still waiting,â and then, âbut why should I?â
Loisâs laugh from across the bullpen, overlapping with yours, until the sound turned into the echo of a gunshot in the gallery.
He would wake up startled with the taste of smoke in his mouth and went back to the sky.
Two weeks of that and the lines under his eyes deepened, his stubble grew in more often than he remembered to shave, pointed out by an amused Steve, and the edges of his control started to fray.
He overshot a landing and cratered a parking lot. He misjudged the force needed to stop a truck and twisted the frame like a soda can. Nobody died. No civilians got hurt. By Metropolis, it was still a good fortnight.
It just didnât feel like it.
Every rescue ended with the same hollow thud in his chest: they were alive, they were grateful, they went home. And you were still on the other side of a line heâd drawn in his own blood and then stepped over.
He could keep a city from collapsing. He could not make his hands forget the one door he wouldnât open, or the window he wouldnât fly to, or the single thing he wanted mostânot to use saving as proof that he was still good, but to be good where it counted: in the quiet, with you.
.
On this particular morning, he just meant to go to his desk.
The bullpen was in full swing when he stepped off the elevator. You werenât at your desk; your monitor was dark, your chair pushed in, your plant sitting in its new spot in a little closer to the window than yesterday, leaves turned toward the light like they were relearning how to reach. The pot was new, a pale blue you wouldâve called âeggshellâ and he wouldâve called âblue.â
He was halfway to his desk when he heard your name in passing.
ââŚIâm saying she doesnât have to cover for him,â Jimmy murmured. âWhat happened was messed up.â
Clarkâs steps faltered.
He knew better than to listen. Heâd crossed enough lines for a lifetime. But his body recognized Jimmyâs quick cadence and Loisâs low reply before his brain did, and he stopped just shy of the doorway.
âYeah, well, itâs not like he did it on purpose,â Lois saidâraw, not defensive. âI know how it sounded. How it looked. I was in his arms and Iââ She exhaled hard. âI didnât realize things were that bad between them. They always looked⌠solid.â
âRock solid,â Jimmy said. âLike, âsickeningly in loveâ solid. âPlease get a roomâ and âIâm genuinely happy for youâ solid.â
âI canât believe they broke up. Over two weeks!?â Loisâs voice became shrill. âNeither said anything!â
âWell⌠can you blame her?â Jimmy inquired, âHas Clark been around your radar lately?â
âNo. Not at all,â she admitted. âNeither of them. Clarkâs⌠heâs been in the cape a lot lately, now that you mention it.â
Then: âShe and I already talked, cried about that night. She saidâŚI have nothing to be sorry for,â she added, voice tightening. âBut sometimes when I close my eyes, I see her hovering above me, with this blank look on her face. Clarkâs next to her. Her hands and her dressââ
âThere was a lot of blood,â Jimmy said quietly.
Clark pressed the back of his head against the wall and shut his eyes.
He could see it too: marble floors, tile walls, your knees slipping, your hand clamped over a wound that had never been meant for your body. The way your fingers shook. The way your voice had trembled when youâd said You said save her. I did.
Lois cleared her throat. When she spoke again, the guilt underneath every syllable was thick enough to touch.
âI keep thinking, if I hadnât stepped in front of that couple, if Iâd kept my mouth shut, if I hadnât pushed just that one timeââ
âLois,â Jimmy cut in, sharper. âThe guy was shoving an old lady with a gun. You did what anyone with half a spine would do.â
âWell it was fucking stupid!â she shot back, then winced. âSorry. That wasââ
Silence stretched.
âI feel sickâŚâ Lois started again, softer now. âI vaguly heard what Clark said to her. How he held me when I came back, and I feel⌠so sick. Iâd be so angry if I were in her shoes,â Her voice cracked. âBut you saw how he was with her after. How he⌠hovered. I thought they were okay. I thought they figured it out, and we all went back to normal. And then one day, she can barely look at him, and he looks like someone stole his dog. â
âYeah,â it sounded as if Jimmy winced. âThat tracks.â
Lois sucked in a breath. âI mean⌠we do have history,â she said, quieter now. âOld⌠stuff. And Iâm not blind. I saw how he looked at me that night, and I thought, okay, thatâs⌠complicated. But whatever it used to be? I donâtââ She broke off, then forced it out. âIf I talk to herâIf I said aloud what she thinks she has to worry about, would it help?â
Another long beat. Sneakers scuffed tile. âMaybe,â Jimmy said, and the reluctance in his voice was a weight, âbut not much.â
âWhy not?
Clarkâs stomach dropped.
âI donâtâŚâ Jimmy shifted his weight, sneakers scuffing tile. âItâs not really my place to say what she told me. She was pretty wrecked when I asked what was going on between them. I donât think she meant to talk as much as she did. It just kind of⌠spilled. A lot of crying. And, like⌠thatâs not for me to spread around.â
âShe cried?â Lois asked, stricken. âWhile I was ribbing Clark that she forgot to kiss him, sheâs going home and falling apart. Great. Thatâs not going to haunt me at all.â
âShe said she didnât have anyone else she felt safe going to,â Jimmy muttered, then immediately looked like he regretted saying it. âLook, itâs not that simple, and I already regret talking about it this much. Letâs just say it was a lot of little things stacked on top of a big thing and then someone jostled the table.â
Lois made an irritated grumble under her breath.
âLook,â Jimmy sighed, trying again, scrubbing a hand over his face. âShe doesnât blame you. She told me that. For the bullet, at least.â
âAt least,â Lois echoed, bitter. âWhat about the rest?â
âSheâŚâHe let out a long exhale. âShe blames herself for a lot of it. Because of course she does. But honestly, what do I think? Thatâs onââ
âOn me?â Lois finished, voice dull.
âNo,â Jimmy sighed, disappointment hanging on the end. âOnââ
Clark stepped forward before he could stop himself, the word ripping out of him. âMe.â
Two heads whipped toward him.
Jimmy straightened so fast he squeaked. Loisâs eyes went wide, then narrowed with a mix of alarm and recognition; she knew that look on his face from a hundred stakeouts and argumentsâthe one that meant heâd heard more than he should have and hated every second of it.
âClark! Shit! How long have you been standing there?â Lois demanded.
âLong enough,â he said roughly, gravel catching on the edges. âI just couldnât⌠I couldnât stand by and hear you two talk about it anymore.â
Jimmyâs face drained, then flushed. âDude, IâI didnât meanâ I wasnât trying to gossip. Lois wasâshe asked and I panicked and now Iâmâ.â He ran a hand roughly through his hair. âIâm sorry. I shouldnât have said anything. To anyone. I shouldâve justââ
Clark shook his head once. âJimmy.â
Jimmy forced himself to meet his eyes. âI shouldnât have spilled anything she told me. I made it worse. For you. Forâ for her. Iâm sorry, I was just worried.â
âIâI know you care about both of us, Jimmy, but youâre right. Whatever she wants shared should come from her,â he said. He forced himself to meet Loisâs eyes. âWhateverâs happening between us, though, is no oneâs fault but mine.âÂ
âClarkââ she started.
He shook his head. âYou didnât ask for any of this,â he went on, not letting her interrupt. âYou didnât know what her power really looks like. I did, or should have. And IâIâm the one who held you when I shouldnât have. Iâm the one who said careless, awful things,â The words clogged for a second. He forced them out anyway. âIâm the one who broke her trust. This is on meâ
The word broke hung there, solid and ugly.
Lois flinched. Jimmyâs gaze flicked past Clarkâs shoulder, toward the hall.
Clark didnât need to follow it to know why his heart suddenly slammed harder. He could feel you thereâcould feel the stutter in your pulse, the way your footsteps had gone from brisk to stopped-dead just around the corner.
He turned.
You stood at the edge of the hall eyes wide and shock-bright. For a second, the entire bullpen seemed to blur around youâthe movement, the noise, the swirl of reporters and copy runnersâuntil it was just the four of you in this narrow slice of space and the words heâd just thrown into it.
âHey,â Lois greeted weakly, lifting a hand.
You acknowledged her with the smallest of nods, eyes flicking over her face, then to Jimmy, then landing on Clark with an anguished expression.
He opened his mouth. âIââ
You pivoted sharply on your heel.
âWait!â Clark called, already moving. âPleaseââÂ
You didnât. Your heels rang on the tile in quick, clipped beats as you vanished around the bend toward the stairwell. His body moved before his brain caught up, casting a helpless look at Jimmy and Loisâdonât follow, donât interveneâand jogged after you, catching the door with his palm before it swung shut.
.
He caught up to you on the landing between floors.
The stairwell was one of those Planet afterthoughtsâbad fluorescent buzzing overhead, paint peeling in a few corners, the hum of ancient pipes rattling behind the walls. You stood halfway down the next flight, one hand gripping the rail, the other clutched around a folder pressed to your chest.
âHoneyââ Clark tskâd, unable to drop the habit of your pet name, and tried again, saying your name carefully, âCan we talk? Please?â
You didnât turn right away. Your shoulders rose on a breath and stayed there for a beat too long.
âYouâre following me into stairwells, Clark,â you said. Your voice was steady, but he could hear the strain underneath. âItâs starting to feel like a pattern.â
âIâll stay here,â he said quickly, stopping a few steps above you. âYou donât have to come any closer than you want to. I justââ He swallowed. âI heard what Lois and Jimmy were saying, and I couldnât let it keep going.â
You were quiet for a moment. Then you turned. The light above you flickered, washing your face in a harsh, flat glow that did nothing to soften how tired you looked. Not just end-of-shift tired. Bone-deep tired. Hurt-tired.
âI heard them too,â you said, fingers tightening on the rail.
His throat tightened. âYou keep reassuring everyone else. I needed to make sure you werenât carrying blame you donât deserve. If somebody is going to wear this, it should be me.âÂ
âI heard that, too. I heard you say you broke my trust. Thatâs⌠the bare minimum of true.â
Your expression shiftedâsomething like reluctant respect flickering through the exhaustion.Â
âDo you remember what I told you that night?â you asked.
He did. Every syllable was etched into him. Youâre looking at her like sheâs still yours. Every day is like Iâm dying all over again. I canât live in a world where your history dictates my safety, my trust, my life.
âYou told me a lot of things,â he said hoarsely.
âNot just the hurt parts, Clark,â you said quickly. âI told you something else.â
You stepped up one stair, closing the distance just enough that he could see the fine tremor in your hands.
âThat I love you,â your voice wobbled. âYou were never a second choice for me, even if you made me yours.â
He flinched.
âI know,â he blurted. âI know that now. And I hate that it took you bleeding out and then watching me be an idiot in the bullpen to get it through my head.â His throat worked. âYou were always it. I just⌠let old ghosts talk louder than you in the worst possible moment. Thatâs on me. Not you. Not Lois. Me.â
Your mouth twisted, not quite a smile. âYouâre getting very good at owning the headline.â
âItâs more than a line,â he said, desperate. âIf I could rip that night out of both our bodies, I would. If I could stand in front of every person we know and say Iâm the one who failed you, I would. None of it changes that I hurt you. I know that. I just⌠I donât want that to be the end of usâ
âYou also ask me to wait for you, on that night,â you started, quieter. âLike Iâm a pause button you can hit while you sort yourself out.â
âThatâs notâGosh,â He swallowed. âI didnât mean it like that. I justâ I donât want this to be the end of us. I want a chance, time, to fix it, to fix me.â
You let out a breath that sounded like it hurt coming out.
âWhat have you done so far,â you asked, âto fix you?â
He blinked. âIâwhat?â
âYou said you needed time to figure out how to be better,â you pondered. âItâs been a couple weeks, Clark. What have you actually done with it?â
His mouth opened, then closed. He looked down at his hands, at the way theyâd started to shake.
âIâve been thinking about it,â he whispered. âEvery day. Iâve replayed the gala, and the bullpen, and your apartment, and the way you looked at me when Iââ
âThinking,â you cut in gently, âis not doing.â
âIâll figure it out,â he blurted, frustration prickling at his own lack of language. âIâll look at why I said what I said that night. Iâll rip that whole night apart andââ
âBabyââ you said automatically, the endearment slipping out before you caught it. You flinched, corrected yourself. âClark.â
His heart stuttered on the ghost of the word.
âI know youâve already been doing that,â you said, shaking your head. âIâve heard from Guy, from Rex. Youâre out there all the time in the cape when youâre not here. Youâre punishing yourself. But beating yourself up is not a plan, Clark. Itâs just pain with extra steps.â
He swallowed, throat burning. âThen what do you want me to say?â he pleaded, too raw. âThat Iâll cut Lois out of my life? Quit the Planet? Iâll do it. Any of it. HonâJust tell me, Iâll do it.â
âI donât want a list of sacrifices, baby,â you flinched again. âClark, I donât want you to burn everything down around you and call it growth. I want you to know why you did what you did. I want you to stop treating your reflexes with Lois like weather you canât control.â
He stared at you like you were asking him to reroute gravity.
âYouâre the one who asked me to wait,â you went on softer but heavier, like you were trying to thread the words into his ribs. âIâm not pretending I didnât hear you. But waiting only matters if youâre moving toward something real. So Iâm asking you, Clark Kent: what are you going to actually do? Not feel. Do.â
Heâd never wished harder for a good, clean answer.
He didnât have one.
All he had was the ache, the guilt, the terror of losing you, and the bone-deep desire not to be this version of himself anymore.
âI⌠donât know,â he said at last. The admission scraped its way out of him. âNot yet.â He forced himself not to look away. âI know thatâs not good enough. I know it isnât what you deserve. But I donât want to lie to you and pretend Iâve got some grand plan when I donât. I justââ His voice broke. âI want to be someone youâre safe with. I want to be worthy of you even thinking about waiting for me. And right now I only know that Iâm not. Yet.â
You closed your eyes briefly, as if the honesty and the lack of an answer hurt in equal measure.
âThat,â you said when you opened them, âis the first thing youâve said that doesnât sound like a performance. I believe you.â Your mouth twisted. âThe problem is, I donât know if believing you is enough for me anymore.â
His breath snagged. âYou said you stillââ
âI do,â you said helplessly. âI love you.â You confessed as if it were also a curse. âI wish I didnât, sometimes. It would be so much easier. To write you off and be done. But I canât. I love you, Clark. I probably will for a very long time.â
He stared at you, every instinct screaming to reach out, to pull you into his chest and say then letâs fix it now, letâs just go home, please, my love, I miss you.Â
Hope flared in his chest, wild and immediate. âThenââ
âYou asked me to wait,â you cut in, and it landed like a guillotine. âI donât know if I can say yes to something with no shape,â you went on more quietly. âTo promise Iâll still be here on the other side of work you havenât started yet. And thatâs⌠thatâs not fair to me.âÂ
A tear slipped free; Clark flexed his fingers to reach out, but you swiped it away quickly.Â
âI donât even know who youâll be when you get there.â
When Iâm with Clark, I feelâ
The silence after that felt thicker than concrete.
âIâm tired,â you admitted, voice cracking. âIâm tired of building my life around other peopleâs âmaybes.â LordTech, the Gang, always waiting for the next mission, the next crisis. I did it with my own body, waiting to feel like it wasnât a fix-it-all. I canât⌠put myself on a shelf and label it âClarkâ Kentâs Future, Do Not Open Until He Figures It Out.ââ
He flinched like youâd hit him, but he didnât argue. He couldnât. âSo⌠is this it?â he asked, barely audible.
âItâs an âI donât know,ââ you said. âI know I love you. I know Iâm hurt. You want to change, and I know I canât do that for you. I donât know if I want to keep my heart tethered to a version of you that only exists in theory.â
You took one step up, until you were close enough that he could feel the warmth of you, even if you werenât touching him.
âIâm not giving you an answer today,â you said. âNot the one you want, and not the one that would be easier to live with either. Iâm not promising to wait, and Iâm not promising that I wonât. Iâm allowed to decide that later, when I have more than your guilt to go on.â
His eyes burned. âHonâwhat do you⌠need from me to change that?â he asked, desperate.Â
âI need you to stop trying to make me your coach,â you wearily said. âStop bringing me apologies and hoping Iâll tell you when youâve done enough. Iâm not a progress report, Clark. Iâm the person who got caught in the blast radius.â
You let that sit for a second.
âIf youâre going to figure this out,â you added, âplease do it because you donât want to be that man again. Not because youâre trying to win me back like a prize.â
He nodded, shoulders sagging. âOkay,â he whispered. âI⌠I can try. I donât know how yet, but Iâllââ
âThatâs the thing,â you said softly. âYouâre telling me what youâll do, someday. âIâll figure it out. Iâll be better. Iâll change.â I donât need future tense from you anymore, Clark. I need⌠something I can actually see. Something that isnât just you tearing yourself apart over and over. Here and up in the skies.â
You stepped back down a stair, putting a sliver of space between you again, matching the emotional distance youâd just carved.
âI have to get back,â you murmured, lifting the folder. âPerry will start yelling, and if someone has to swoop in to rescue me from that, I might actually throw them out a window.â
He let out a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. âYeah,â he said weakly. âHe, uh⌠he already yelled once today.â
You moved down the last few stairs and pushed the door open. Newsroom noise spilled inâphones, voices, the distant clatter of someone dropping a stack of files.
You paused in the doorway and glanced back.
âClark?â
âYeah?â he answered, hope and dread tangled in the single syllable.
âDonât ask me if Iâm waiting for you again,â Clark watched you unconsciously played with the fabric of your shirt, where the scar lied underneath. âNot until you can tell me what youâve actually done with the time youâre asking me to give up. Not for me. For you, too.â
His chest squeezed. âOkay.â
You nodded once, almost formally, like you were sealing a deal with yourself rather than with him.
Then you stepped through the door and were gone, swallowed by the swell of the newsroom, leaving him alone on the landing with the echo of your footsteps and the dull, relentless thud of his own heart under the place your hand hadnât quite touched.
Deep down, he had wanted a promiseâ Iâll wait.
Youâd given him something far more terrifying and honest: uncertainty. I love you. I might not stay. What you do next is on you.
.
Clark didnât really sleep anymore. He drifted.
On, off, in fits and starts that never made it to rest. He lay on his side, facing the empty half of the mattress, and watched the alarm clock chew through the night. 11:19. 12:03. 1:47.
Every time his eyes slipped shut, his brain hit play on the same reel: the stairwell, the hum of the bad fluorescent light, your hand clutching that folder like a shield. Your voice saying I love you and, in the same breath, I donât know if I want to keep my heart tethered to a version of you that only exists in theory.
He reached out more than once, half-asleep.
In his bodyâs memory, you were always thereâlimbs everywhere, hogging the blanket, hair in his face. His hand would slide across the sheets, searching for the familiar dip of your waist, the warmth of your thigh pressed against his.
His fingers found only cold cotton and the faint ghost of your citrus shampoo.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling, counting cracks in the paint.
Across the city, you were awake too. He could hear your heartbeat if he let his senses stretch that farâtoo fast for sleep, too slow for panic. Just⌠hovering, the way it always did when you were overtired and trapped in your own head.
He could fix a gas main from six blocks away, hear a mug shatter three streets over, pick out the whine of a faulty engine in rush hour trafficâbut he couldnât figure out what to do with the space beside him.
By two a.m., he gave up.
He swung his legs over the side of the bed. His elbow brushed the blue-and-gray flannel still folded on the chairâhis shirt you kept âforgettingâ to return. His toes knocked into something small and soft on the floor: your socks, mismatched, one bunched half under the frame.
Every corner of the apartment held some echo of you he couldnât escape. Your favorite mug upside down by the sink. Your shampoo in the shower. The unfinished note on his nightstand: When Iâm with Clark I feelâ
He couldnât read it again. Not tonight.
He dragged on sweatpants and a t-shirt, grabbed his glasses out of habit, then left them on the dresser. Outside, Metropolisâ sky was a hazy smear, city glow swallowing all but the bravest stars.
He opened the window and stepped into the air.
Smallvilleâs night was the opposite of Metropolisââdeep and quiet, full of crickets and the rustle of corn instead of sirens and traffic. The Kent farmhouse sat in its pool of darkness like a ship at anchor. The porch light was off. One upstairs window glowed faintly for a second, then blinked out as his parents finished whatever book or show theyâd been pretending not to fall asleep to.
He landed on the back porch as gently as he could.
The screen door still squeaked. It always did, no matter how often Jonathan muttered about oiling the hinges. Clark slipped inside on bare feet, into the familiar sigh of the old house. The kitchen smelled like coffee and apple pie cooling under a tea towel. The fridge hummed. The clock over the stove ticked louder than it needed to.
He braced both hands on the counter and let his head hang.
He hadnât meant to wake anybody. He just needed⌠here. A place where, once, all his problems could be solved with a talk on the porch and Maâs pancakes in the morning.
âClark?â
Marthaâs voice floated down the hallway, soft but instantly awake.
He straightened. âSorry, Ma. I didnât mean toââ
âBaby, you crossing a county line wakes me up,â she drawled, padding into the kitchen in her robe and slippers. She took one look at his face and her expression softened and tightened all at once. âOh, my baby.â
She crossed the room and wrapped him up. He folded into the hug, bending to rest his chin on the top of her head. She smelled like flour and laundry detergent and something warm that had always meant home.
âSit,â she ordered, pulling back to squeeze his arms. âIâll get you a blanket. You look like youâre about to fall over sideways.â
âMa, Iâm okay,â he lied.
âMmhmm,â she hummed, completely unconvinced, and raised her voice. âJonathan? Heâs doing the thing again.â
From down the hall: âWhat thing?â
âThe âIâm okayâ thing,â she called back. âWith the face.â
A beat, then Jonathanâs muffled sigh. âAh, jeez. Iâll get the mugs out.â
A few minutes later, Clark stood on the back porch with his Jonathan, a mug of hot chocolate warming his hands. The sky was crowded with stars; the air smelled like damp earth and old wood and the faint metallic tang of the windmill.
They were quiet for a bit. One of the porch boards creaked under Jonathanâs weight as he leaned on the railing.
âSo,â Jonathan said eventually. âWhat brings you home at this hour? And donât say âjust passing through.â Youâre a lousy liar, son.â
Clark stared out over the fields, the horizon a darker line against dark.
âI messed up,â he said. âWith her.â
Jonathan didnât ask who her was. He didnât need to. Clark had been talking about you for months the way other people talked about the weatherâconstant, inevitable, occasionally awe-struck. The metahuman copy editor. The healer in the Gangâs orbit. The person whose laugh could drown out the background noise of a city if he let it.
âWhat kind of messed up?â Jonathan asked, voice mild. âLeave the toilet seat up, or âwe should start lobbying for apologizing as an Olympic sportâ?â
A crooked huff escaped him. âSomewhere in the new-event category.â
âStart from the part where you feel like you canât breathe when you think about it,â Jonathan said gently. âThatâs usually the root.â
Clark drew in a slow breath. Let it out.
âThere was the gala,â he began. âLordTech thing. Lois and I were covering it. She was chasing the story, I was trying to keep an eye on⌠everything. And then some idiot thought it was a great place to pull a gun.â
He walked Jonathan through it. Not the gore, but the structure. Lois stepping in front of a couple because of course she didâalways three steps toward danger if it meant the truth or someone elseâs safety. The shot. The blur as Supermanâfear, not thoughtâcrashed through marble and guests to get to her.
How heâd grabbed you, desperate, dragged you into that bathroom and said the words that wouldnât stop looping in his head now: I donât care, just fix her. I canât lose her.
His throat closed around the memory.
âYou did what youâve always done,â Jonathan said quietly. âYou picked the person bleeding in front of you and forgot the cost to the person you handed the knife to.â
âI thought I knew her power,â Clark said, eyes stinging. âI do know it. I just⌠chose to see the part that looks like a miracle and not the part that looks like it might kill her. I didnât see her. Not really. Just the solution she could be.â
Jonathanâs jaw tightened, but he didnât say I told you so. He just let the words hang.
âShe warned me,â Clark went on. âTold me it could kill her. Told me it wasnât that simple. And she still did it. Took the wound. Jimmy found her nearly dead because of a choice I pushed her into.â His voice dropped. âAnd afterward, she was the one telling me not to blame myself.â
He stared into the darkness, at a field that had never held a gala or a gun.
âAnd then?â Jonathan prompted.
âAnd then,â Clark said hollowly, âI went back to work like an idiot and pretended we were fine. She tried to, too. Thatâs⌠what she does. She patches people up and keeps moving forward.â
He rubbed the back of his neck.
âA few weeks later,â he continued, âLois and I were in the bullpen. Just⌠joking, like we used to. It felt familiar. Easy. She said something about me always cleaning up after her. And then she said, âYou love me anyway.â Teasing. It was an old line. Weâve tossed it around before.â
Jonathan glanced sideways. âAnd?â
âAnd I said, âYeah, I do,ââ Clark whispered. âAutomatic. I didnât mean it like⌠that. Iâm not in love with her. I donât want her back. It was justâŚâ He grimaced. âHabit. Old script. And sheââ His voice caught. âShe heard me. My girl. She was right there.â
âDidnât realize until later,â he added. âBy then, sheâd already cried at work and told Jimmy it was an intern thing. Then at home she told me exactly what it felt like. Watching me tell my ex I loved her. After Iâd already put her on the floor for Lois once.â
He swallowed.
âShe said every day felt like dying,â he murmured. âThat my history with Lois kept dictating whether she could feel safe. That she couldnât live in a world where she was always second to a story I hadnât finished telling myself.â
Jonathan let the crickets fill the silence for a while.
âSon,â he said at last, âyou know I like Lois. Always have. Girlâs got grit. But you and Lois⌠you broke long before this mess started.â
Clarkâs mouth twisted. âI know, Pa.â
âWhyâd you two break up?â Jonathan asked, not unkind. âNot the polite version. The real one.â
Clark stared down into his mug, watching the surface shiver with his pulse.
âWe wanted different things,â he said slowly. âLois⌠she was always chasing the story. The next lead, the next corruption case, the next big headline. Thatâs part of what I admired about her. Still do. But she was more in love with Superman than she ever really was with Clark. With me.â
He took a breath.
âShe liked the danger,â he admitted. âThe rush. Standing too close to the edge because thatâs where the truth usually hides. And IâŚâ His shoulders sagged. âIâve spent my whole life trying to pull people back from the edge. I donât want the people I love walking toward gunfire, even for the right reasons.â
âAnd now?âÂ
âNow I love someone whoâs made of the edge,â he admitted, the words low and rough. âShe literally takes peopleâs wounds into her body. Broken bones, lacerations, burns, now gaping,bleeding woundsâ her cells will take it and repair itself. And somehow it feels⌠safer with her than it ever did with Lois, because she and I share the dangerous parts.â
He let that sit for a moment, tasting the truth of it.
âShe knows what itâs like to be looked at asâŚnot normal,â he said quietly. âLike a tool, something useful before something human. And for the first time I wasnât pretending I was.â His throat tightened. âWith Lois, I was always trying to be more human than I am or more Superman than I should be, depending on the day. With her,â he nodded toward the vague direction of Metropolis, âI got to be both. She saw all of it.â
âAnd this breakup feels different,â Jonathan finished for him.
Clark huffed a humorless breath and sipped. âLois and I were⌠we ended things,â he said. âIt hurt for a bit. It mattered. But it was⌠we both knew it wasnât going to work forever. Different lines we wouldnât cross. She wanted the story no matter what, and Iââ He shook his head. âI canât live there.â
He swallowed hard.
âWith her,â he said, softer, âit feels like Iâve torn something out of the middle of the life I was supposed to have. Like⌠losing my chance at a version of myself that finally made sense.â
Jonathan was quiet. Then: âSo this isnât you trying to decide between Lois and this girl?âÂ
Clark opened his mouth to say no on instinctâŚand the word jammed in his throat.
It should have been that simple. He wanted it to be that simple. Instead, his thoughts snagged on the bathroom againâLois bleeding out, your power burning, his own voice cracking as he shouted I canât lose her like it was the only truth in the world that mattered.
He stared out over the fields, jaw working.
âI⌠donât know,â he admitted, the words tasting like rust. âI thought it wasnât a choice. I thought I knew exactly what I felt. But then I hear myself, Pa. I think about what I said at the gala, what I sounded like in the bullpen, and IâŚâ He made a frustrated sound. âWhat kind of man says that in front of the person he claims is his future if there isnât some part of him still hung up on the past?â
Jonathan didnât rush to answer. He just let the question sit there between them.
âDo you want her back?â he asked eventually, plain as anything. âLois.â
Clarkâs stomach lurched. Every possible answer felt wrong.
âI donât⌠lie awake wanting that life again,â he let out a shaky breath. âBut when I thought she was dying, everything in me went straight back to twenty-something me in a cheap suit, thinking the world would end if she walked away.â
He shook his head, helpless.
âI donât know if thatâs love or just⌠fear,â he said. âOr guilt. Or habit. Or all three.â
Jonathan grunted softly. âPretty big difference between those, son,â he said. âLoveâs âI want to walk forward with you.â Fearâs âI canât imagine my life if you disappear.â Guiltâs just you trying to rewrite the past with feelings you think you shouldâve had.â
Clark swallowed hard. The distinctions made his chest ache.
âI keep thinking,â he confessed, âif I really loved her the way I loveââ he said your name with a pained exhale, ââthen why does it feel so different? Why does the thought of losing Lois feel like⌠history snapping shut, and the thought of losing her feel like⌠someone taking the air out of my lungs?â
Jonathan watched him, gaze steady.
âSounds to me like you already know theyâre not the same,â he said. âYouâre just scared that admitting you donât love Lois like that anymore makes you a worse man for ever having said you did. And scared that admitting you do still care about her in some way makes you a worse man now.â
Clark stared into his mug, fingers tightening around the ceramic.
âI care about Lois,â he said, voice low. âI always will. I donât want her dead. I donât want her hurt. Part of me will probably always flinch if sheâs in danger. But when I picture⌠home?â His throat worked, and his fingers tightened around the mug. âItâs not her face that shows up.â
Jonathan nodded, as if that was the answer heâd been waiting forânot clean, not neat, but honest.
âI never wanted to hurt her,â Clark pressed on. âI keep thinking, if I can just explain, if I can just show I didnât mean it⌠if I can just do enough, bring coffee, flowers, fix every problem before it touches herââ
âYou screwed up, son,â Jonathan cut in, gentle but firm. âThat partâs not in question. Now, are you trying to make things right, or are you trying to make sure nobody writes you down as the bad guy?â
The question hit like a punch.
âI donât want to be the bad guy,â Clark admitted, small. âNot to her. Not to anyone. Not after everything Iâve spent my life trying not to be.â
âThatâs understandable,â Jonathan said. âItâs also not the same as not wanting to hurt people.â
He took a sip of his own drink, then continued.
âYou canât fix this by convincing everyone you meant well,â Jonathan said. âYou fix it by changing what you do when it matters. By not defaulting to whatever habit feels familiar when an old love bats her eyes and throws you a line.â
Clark stared out over the fields, jaw tight.
âShe told me she still loves me,â he said softly. âBut she doesnât know if she can wait for me to âfigure myself out.â That sheâs tired of being somebodyâs maybe. I donât want to crowd her, Pa. I donât want to chase her around with grand gestures and âIâm sorryâ until she either caves or runs. But if I donât do anything, it feels like Iâm just watching her slip away.â
He looked at his father, desperation raw and plain. âHow do I⌠be better? Actually better. Not just sitting around thinking about how awful I feel. Not just⌠hovering over her life like a storm cloud with a bouquet.â
Jonathan exhaled slowly through his nose.
âYou remember when you first started lifting things you shouldnât?â he asked. âTractors. Trucks. That old combine.â
Despite himself, Clark snorted. âYou mean when I almost flipped the tractor onto Pete Rossâs dad?â
âExactly,â Jonathan said. âYou didnât learn control by standing in a field feeling bad about it. You learned by letting people help you. By practicing. By failing where it was safe and listening when folks told you how it looked from the outside.â
âThis feels different,â Clark muttered. âMessier.â
âIt is,â Jonathan agreed. âBecause a truck doesnât feel scared when you drop it. She does.â
That landed hard.
âYouâve got a lot of power, son,â Jonathan went on. âNot just the flying and lifting. The way you look at people. The way your words land. The way you put folks in an order in your headâwho gets saved first, whose feelings you prioritize. Thatâs power, too. Youâve never had to pick that apart with somebody who knows how to help you do it. Maybe itâs time you did.â
Clark stared into his mug, the chocolate gone lukewarm.
âI think about it all the time,â he said. âThe gala, the bathroom, the bullpen, the stairwell. I tear it apart every night. It doesnât⌠change anything. It just hurts.â
âThinking isnât the same as working,â Jonathan said. âStewing in guilt is like running the tractor in placeâyou burn fuel, you churn up dirt, but the field doesnât get plowed. You want to be better? Youâre going to have to let somebody else under the hood. Someone who can say, âHereâs why that engine does that when you panic.ââ
Clark was quiet for a long moment.
âYou mean⌠talk to someone,â he said slowly. âReally talk. Not just⌠vent at Ma, or dump on Jimmy, orââ
âSomeone whose job,â Jonathan said, he bumped Clarkâs shoulder lightly with his own, âis to help stubborn, overpowered knuckleheads figure out why they keep crashing into the same wall.â
Despite himself, Clark laughed, the sound rough.
âYouâve got friends,â he reminded him. âThat Terrific fella with the⌠floaty circle thingsââ
âSpheres,â Clark muttered.
âSure, what about him?â Jonathan inquired. âYou telling me that man doesnât know somebody who talks supers and metas down off ledges for a living?â
The image of Michaelâcool, precise, constantly three steps aheadâflashed through his mind.
âIf I ask him,â Clark said slowly, âthatâs⌠doing something. Not just⌠thinking about doing something, right?â
âRight. Tomorrow,â Jonathan said. âNot âsometime.â You want this girl to have any reason at all to keep the door cracked? Give her something besides âIâm sorryâ and âIâve been thinking about itâ to hang her hope on like she asked. And if, God forbid, she decides she canât wait, youâll still be a better man for the next person who loves you.â
The word tomorrow settled into Clarkâs bones with the weight of an assignment, not a wish.
He looked back toward the dark line of the horizon, toward the direction of Metropolis, where your heartbeat was still moving, still there, still undecided.
âI donât know if sheâs going to stay, Pa,â he said quietly.
âI know itâs hard,â Jonathan sighed and rubbed Clarkâs back. âYou donât get to decide for her. What you do get to decide is whether this is the moment you finally stop trying to carry everything alone.â
Clark tightened his grip on the mug, nodded once, and let the decision take shape.
Tomorrow, heâd call Michael. He wouldnât tell you. Not yet. Not until it was more than a promise and a theory.
For the first time since the stairwell, the idea of doing something that wasnât just bleeding in place felt like the tiniest bit of air in his lungs.
.
By the time Clark reached the twelfth floor, most of the hard part had already happened.
A week ago, heâd flown to Smallville in the middle of the night, sat on the back porch with his father while the crickets screamed, and said out loud, I donât know how to be better without hurting her more.
Six days ago, he stood in Michaelâs lab doorway the following afternoon, throat dry, asking for help.
âI need a recommendation,â Clark said. The words felt too big in his mouth; he forced them out anyway. âFor a therapist. Someone who knows metahuman stuff. Secret identity stuff. And⌠relationship stuff.â
Both of Michaelâs brows went up. âAll of the above,â he said. âAmbitious.â
âIâm serious.â
âI know.â Michaelâs voice softened by half a degree. âFor the record, I was waiting for you to get here.â
Clark blinked. âYou were?â
âYouâve been walking around like you swallowed a live grenade,â Michael said matter-of-factly. âI figured either youâd do something catastrophically stupid, or youâd ask for help. Iâm glad weâre on door number two.â
He opened a drawer, flipped through a neat stack of cards, and pulled one free.
âClaire Foster,â he said, handing it over. âPsychologist. Civilian background. Specializes in capes, metas, and people who can bend steel and still think feeling bad is a personality.â
âShe knows about⌠us?â he asked.
âShe knows enough,â Michael said. âIâve sent people to her. She doesnât answer to LordTech, the Gang, or me. Her whole thing is confidentiality.â He held Clarkâs gaze. âYou tell her the truth, she can help you untangle this. More importantly, she keeps other people from having to.â
Now, the card was warm in Clarkâs palm, edges soft from where heâd turned it over and over on the way here.
DR. CLAIRE FOSTER â PSYCHOLOGY.
The building was nothing specialâbusted intercom in the lobby, a ficus on life support, elevator that rattled on the way up
Clark stared at the little brass plaqueâDR. C. FOSTERâthen down at his hand. For one stupid second, he almost turned around. He could still hear you in the stairwell: Thinking is not doing, Clark.
His knuckles tapped the door before he could talk himself out of it.
âCome in,â a womanâs voice called.
He drew a breath, closed his fingers tighter around the card like it was ballast, and stepped inside.
.
Claire sat across from him, notebook open but not immediately in use. Her hair was pulled back, sleeves rolled to her elbows, expression steady in a way that made him want to both bolt and sink into the chair forever.
âFirst session is mostly logistics,â she said. âWhat this is, what this isnât. We can go as slow or as fast as you wantâwithin reason. Youâre in charge of what you share.â
Clark nodded, throat tight.
âYou mentioned you have⌠two jobs,â she went on. âOne with a certain newspaper, and another thatâs a bit more public. You donât have to confirm anything you donât want to, but broad strokes help.â
He let out a breath.
âIâm Superman.â There. Out loud. To a stranger.
âOkay,â Claire said, one of her eyebrows ticked up, but that was it. âThank you for trusting me with that.â
âYouâre not surprised?â he blurted, a little thrown.
âI have a client list,â she said. âIt has patterns. Also, you sit like you expect the ceiling to fall in and know you can catch it.â
Despite himself, Clark huffed a small, embarrassed laugh.
âYou also mentioned,â she added, âthat lately youâve been⌠off your axis. That something happened that shook you.â
He stared down at his hands, flexed and unflexed them.
âThere was a gala,âhe began, voice graveling as he avoided Claireâs eyes. âJournalist work assignment. Gunmen slipped through. Someone I care about got shot. Someone else I love almost died saving her. And then⌠I said something stupid at work that made everything worse.â
âOkay,â Claire nodded once, pen already moving. âLetâs start with the gala. More specifics. What happened, and what did you do that you canât stop replaying?â
He told her.
Lois stepping in front of the couple. The gun. The shot. Marble and screaming. Dragging you into the bathroom, your hands already shaking as you warned him what your power might cost.
âI yelled at her,â he admitted, disgust curling the words. âShe warned me, tried to tell me pieces of the true nature of her powers. I ignored herâ I told her I didnât care. That I just needed Lois alive.â
Clark swallowed, tipping his head back. âI said I couldnât lose her.â
The words felt poisonous coming back out.
Claireâs pen stilled. âYou said that out loud?â
âYeah, I did,â he muttered.
âSay it the way you said it then,â she suggested, quiet but firm âNot for me. For you. Letâs see how it feels in your mouth.â
Clark sat up and almost refused. Then one look from Claire, and he closed his eyes, hauling himself back thereâLois on the floor, blood pooling around her, your voice shaking next to him.
âI donât care!â he dragged out, hearing his own echo over phantom screaming. âJust fix her! Please, please, I canâtâ I canât lose her.â
Silence dropped like a stone.
He opened his eyes. He braced for disgust, condemnation, something.
Claire just watched him, steady. âWho is âherâ in that sentence?â she asked.
âLois,â he breathed. âLois Lane.â
âAnd when you said âlose,ââ she continued, âwhat did that mean in that moment? Lose her how?â
âDead,â he forced out. âOn the floor. Gone.â
âJust that?â she pressed. âOr more?â
He hesitated.
âIf sheâd died that night,â he admitted, âit wouldâve felt like⌠losing everything weâd ever been. Friend, partner, ex, colleague. All those threads. Cut.â He swallowed. âAnd it wouldâve said I failed her. Again. That I wasnât fast enough, strong enough, smart enough. That I was exactly what everyoneâs afraid I could beâsomeone who couldâve stopped it and didnât.â
Claire nodded, like sheâd been expecting that.
âSo when you yelled, âI canât lose her,ââ she pondered, âit wasnât just about Lois as Lois. It was Lois as⌠proof.â
âProof?â he echoed, wary.
âProof youâre still the man who keeps people alive,â she said. âProof the story of you and Lois doesnât end with you standing over her body. Proof breaking up didnât mean abandoning her. If she dies, you lose her and you lose your chance to ever make it right.â
He grimaced. âThat sounds⌠selfish.â
âIt sounds human,â Claire replied. âItâs both. Terror isnât neutral. It chooses priorities. Thatâs what weâre looking at.â
He flinched. âI said that withââ his voice hitchedââwith my partnerâŚat the timeâŚright there. Begging her to help without listening to her.â
âAnd she did it,â Claire said. âShe took the wound.â
âYes,â he whispered. âAnd nearly died.â
âAnd afterward?â
âShe disappeared. Our friend found her bleeding out in the restroom. She told me to stop looking sad. Told me she was fine. Then just⌠went on with her days.â
âAnd you let her,â Claire observed, not unkind.
Shame burned under his skin. âI tried toâ I donât know. Pretend we were okay. That if I stayed steady, it meant we were.â
She nodded once. âOkay. And the stupid thing at work?â
He swallowed.
âWeeks later, we were in the bullpen,â Clark wet his lips. âMe and Lois. Joking like we used to. She said, âYou love me anyway,â teasing. And I said, âYeah, I do.â Autopilot. I didnât mean it⌠romantically. I justââ
âYou wanted her to know she still mattered,â Claire finished. âThat you hadnât written her off. That youâre still the guy who cares she almost died.â
His jaw clenched. âYeah. Habit. I didnât even think about it. UntilâŚâ
âUntil your partner heard you?â Claire supplied.
He nodded, staring at the rug.
âAnd she told you what it felt like,â Claire continued. âTo hear that. After the bathroom. After the bullet. After paying the cost.â
âShe said every day felt like dying,â he murmured. âThat my history with Lois dictated whether she could feel safe with me. That she couldnât live in a world where she was always second to a story I hadnât finished telling myself.â
âAnd she asked you tot figure out what you wanted,â Claire said. âWho you wanted.â
âI told her I wanted to be better,â he said. âI asked her to wait while I figured out how.â His mouth twisted. âShe said she didnât know if she could wait for a version of me that only existed in theory.â
Claire was quiet a moment, then: âGood. Sheâs drawing a boundary. Now we need to figure out what youâre waiting for.â
He let out a shaky breath. âI donât even know if I⌠still love Lois,â he confessed. âMy dad asked and I said no, I donât want to go back there. But then I hear myself in that restroom, hear myself in the bullpen, and Iââ his hands spread, helpless ââI donât know what to call that.â
âOkay,â Claire said. âWeâll test it. Not with words. With your body. Close your eyes.â
He frowned, but did.
âPicture Lois,â she instructed. âNot memory-Lois ten years ago. Present Lois. As you saw her last week. Now imagine reaching for her. Kissing her. Not CPR, not panic. Just⌠choosing her as your person again. How does your body respond?â
Even conjuring it, Clarkâs shoulders went tight. His stomach twisted with wrongness, not longing.
âNo,â he grimacing. âI donât want that. It feels⌠like trying to step back into a photograph.â
âGood,â she said calmly. âNotice where you feel that âno.ââ
âChest. Gut,â he answered. âLike the lock doesnât fit the key anymore.â
âNow,â Claire went on, âsame exercise. Picture the woman you were with. Imagine itâs a day where everything is healed, for the sake of this. Youâre home. You put your hands on her face. You kiss her. What happens in your body?â
Heat washed through him so fast it almost made him dizzy. Ache, sharp and familiar. His eyes stung behind his lids.
âI want that,â he said hoarsely. âI want⌠her.â
âWhere?â
âEverywhere,â he admitted, wrecked. âChest, stomach, hands. Like tension leaving and coming back all at once.â
âOkay,â Claire said. âOpen your eyes.â
The room came back: plant on the sill, ugly mug with a cartoon brain, Claireâs level gaze.
âSeems you are not in love with Lois,â she said plainly. âYour body just answered that for you. Loudly.â
He blew out a breath he hadnât realized he was holding.
âThen why did I say it like that?â he demanded. âWhy did it sound like I couldnât live without her?â
âBecause love isnât the only kind of attachment,â Claire replied. âYou can be done with a romance and still be tangled in guilt, obligation, unfinished stories. You and Lois ended. A part of you never believed you deserved to have hurt her. So youâve tried to be the good ex. Over-available. Extra kind. The man who would never let her down again.â
He winced. The truth landed too cleanly.
âSo when you saw her bleeding,â she went on, âyour nervous system screamed, Not again. I cannot be the man who let Lois Lane die. It grabbed the nearest leverâwhich happened to be your partner at the timeâand pulled.â
âAnd I made her pay for that,â he whispered. âI put that terror on her. I made her carry it. Literally.â
âYes,â Claire said. âOn multiple levels. You asked her to take the physical wound. You also asked her, without words, to protect you from ever having to feel what itâs like to lose Lois and what that would mean about you.â
A wave of nausea hit Clark, âI didnât want toââ
âI know,â Claire cut in gently. âYou werenât scheming. Intention matters. It does not erase impact. What matters here is pattern. You turned one woman you love into a shield against your unresolved fear about another.â
He closed his eyes briefly.
âSay this out loud,â Claire prompted. âSo your nervous system hears it: âI care about Lois. I donât want her dead. But Iâm not in love with her.ââ
His throat worked. âI care about Lois,â he forced out. âI donât want her dead. But Iâm not in love with her.â
His chest loosened, just a fraction.
âAnd now the other truth,â she said. âThe one youâve been circling.â
He thought of you. Of your hand hovering over his heart in the stairwell. Of you saying I love you and I donât know if I can wait in the same breath.
âI am in love with her,â he said, voice rough. âWith the woman I asked to wait for me.â
Claire nodded once. âGood. Now we have our baselines. You care about Lois, but youâre not in love with her. You are in love with the woman who you asked to wait. And the person youâre in love with is living with the aftermath of you confusing those things in the worst possible way.â
He stared at his hands. âSo what do I do with that?â he asked. âCut Lois out of my life? Apologize forever? How do I fix this without making it all about proving Iâm not the bad guy?â
âIâll tell you what Iâm not going to do,â Claire said. âIâm not going to declare you secretly a monster or secretly a saint. Youâre a man whose patterns hurt someone he loves. Some of those patterns come from habits you learned early. Some from fear. Some from a story you tell yourself about what keeps you good.â
He swallowed. âWhat story?â
âThat you are only worthy if you are saving someone,â she added. âThat your value is measured in disasters prevented. That if you fail even once, you have to work twice as hard to prove youâre not the worst-case scenario.â
The words hit like an exposed nerve.
âYou pick people who throw themselves at danger,â Claire continued. âReporters who chase bullets. Metahuman medics who take wounds into their own bodies. Teammates who bleed for others. You stand between them and the worst of it. In doing so, you feel like youâre earning your place in the world.â
He thought of Lois with her notebook in the line of fire. He thought of you, hands pressed to someoneâs chest, pain crawling up your arms.
âI donât want that to be why I love them,â he said, hushed, exhausted.
âGood,â she said. âIt isnât that simple. But your patterns donât care about poetry, they care about outcomes. When you hurt someone, your first instinct is to patch it with proof that you meant well. I didnât mean to. I was trying to help. I love you anyway.â
He flinched at the echo.
âWhat sheâs asking you for,â Claire said, âis not a better speech. Sheâs asking you to change the reflex. To become someone who can stand in a room with his past and his present and not default to the script that makes the past feel safer.â
âHow?â he asked. It came out almost like a plea.
âBy doing exactly what youâre doing right now,â she said. âSitting here. Naming it. And then, over time, practicing something different.â
âPracticing what?â
âPausing,â she said. âNoticing whose comfort youâre prioritizing. Loisâs? Yours? The cityâs? Hers? Asking, Am I trying to be good, or am I trying to be forgiven? Learning how to hear âyou hurt meâ without sprinting to âbut I didnât mean to.ââ
He stared at the weave of the rug.
âShe asked you what youâre going to do,â Claire reminded him. âNot what youâre going to feel. Youâve already got guilt handled. Thatâs not the work.â
She leaned forward slightly. âSo weâre going to make a list. Not of grand gestures. Of small, concrete things. For you.â
âFor me?â he blinked.
âYes,â she said. âBecause if you only do this for her, youâll resent it, or youâll make her responsible for measuring your progress. This has to be something you are doing because you do not want to be this version of yourself anymore. Whether or not she takes you back.â
The idea landed in his chest like a new kind of weightâheavy, but solid.
âOkay,â Clark adjusted with his seat, spine straightening with conviction. âWhatâs first?â
âFirst,â Claire said, âyou keep coming here. You commit to this. Second, you start tracking when that urge to fix, to reassure, to say âI love you anywayâ kicks inâespecially with people who are not the woman youâre building a life with. Third, you start practicing one sentence in your head when you think about her.â
He looked up. âWhat sentence?â
âI wonât use you to fix my past,â Claire said. âSay it to her in here, for now. Make it a promise to yourself.â
He rolled it over silently. I wonât use you to fix my past. Awful. True. Right.
âAnd Lois?â he asked, smaller. âWhat happens with her?â
âWeâll get to boundaries later,â Claire said. âFor now, hold both truths: you care about Lois and donât want her dead. Youâre not in love with her. The person you are in love with is bleeding from the way you confused those truths under pressure. Thatâs the mess weâre cleaning.â
He let out a long breath.
âSheâs waiting,â he said, voice rough. âShe said she loves me. That thereâs still a chance. But sheâs not promising to wait forever.â
âGood,â Claire said. âHer love isnât a prize at the finish line. Your job now is not to obsess over whether she forgives you. Your job is to become a man who, even if she doesnât, can look at himself and say, I did the work. I changed.â
He thought of the unfinished note on his nightstand. When Iâm with Clark I feelâ
He thought of you in the stairwell, saying you wouldnât stand still forever for a version of him that might never arrive.
âI donât know if I can ever make up for what I did,â he admitted.
âThatâs not the assignment,â Claire said. âYouâre not erasing. Youâre building from here. Youâre learning how to make sure that the next time someone says âyou love me anyway,â you know exactly what kind of love you mean, and who youâre saying it for.â
He swallowed, then nodded.
âOkay,â he said again, more solid this time.
âGood,â Claire said, uncapping her pen. âNow, tell me about the first time you felt like your powers made you dangerous to someone you cared about. Weâll trace the line from there.â
He thought of Kansas. A field. A tractor flipped too easily. A boy with a broken arm and terror in his eyes.
He started talking, and it felt like something was actually movingânot fast, not magically, but in the right direction.
.
Clark didnât realize how loud the world had been until he started trying to listen to himself.
He stepped out of Dr. Fosterâs office with his shoulders knotted and his brain buzzing, not with sirens or heartbeats or the usual city symphonyâbut with a handful of sentences that wouldnât stop circling.
I care about Lois. I donât want her dead. But Iâm not in love with her.
I wonât use you to fix my past.
Am I trying to be goodâor am I trying to be forgiven?
The elevator ride down felt longer than a cross-country flight. By the time the doors opened on the ground floor, heâd thumbed his way through half a dozen drafts of a text to you and deleted every one of them.
You werenât his progress report.
He texted Michael instead.
Clark: Got in. Thanks.
Michael: Proud of you. Now go again next week. And the week after.
That night, Metropolis tried very hard to give him excuses not to think.
There was a scaffolding collapse in Suicide Slum. Instinct screamed youâre the only one who can fix this, but Kendra was already in the air, helmet shimmering. He caught the edge of the panicâhis and theirsâclosed his eyes for half a second and remembered Claireâs voice.
Are you trying to save themâor are you trying to save yourself from feeling useless?
He landed beside the rubble anyway, but instead of lifting everything alone until his bones hummed, he stepped back as Kendra barked orders.
âYou take that beam, Iâve got the top section,â she told him. âNice of you to join us, Boy Scout.â
âJust tell me where you want me,â he said.
He pushed. He lifted. He did the work. But when the last person was clear and the EMTs waved them off, he didnât go looking for another crisis like a man trying to earn the right to breathe. He went home.
He walked past your side of the bed without reaching for it.
He glanced at the unfinished note on his nightstand.
When Iâm with Clark I feelââ
He forced himself not to pick it up and make it about whether he still deserved the words that never got written.
This is for you too, Claire had said. Even if she never finishes that sentence.
He slept. Badly, but on purpose.
.
The bullpen had that late-morning buzzâphones, printers, Perry shouting faintly from his officeâbut it all felt a few decibels removed from Clark.
You were at your desk, head bent over proofs, pen moving in short, precise strokes. The plant sat beside your monitor, leaves turned toward the window. Five new shoots, greener than last week were waiting to unfurl. Youâd shifted the pot closer to the light, the bent-paperclip splint still bracing the weakest stem.
He wantedâGosh, he wantedâto walk over, ask about your weekend, offer a stupid comment about the plantâs comeback arc. Instead, he took his seat, set his bag down, and focused on his keyboard.
I wonât use you to fix my past, he reminded himself. Or my guilt.
You were allowed to have a normal morning without him crashing through it, bleeding apologies all over your in-tray.
âHey, Smallville,â Lois said as she breezed by, dropping a manila folder onto his keyboard. âGot numbers from City Hall. They tried to bury a ten percent discrepancy in a footnote; I need you to tell me Iâm not hallucinating.â
He managed a small, polite smile. âMorning.â
She paused, frowning slightly. âThatâs it? No complaint about my timing? No joke about how I only bring you numbers when theyâre a crime?â
âIâm still waking up,â he said, because it was easier than âmy therapist said I have to relearn how to talk to you.â
She leaned a hip on his desk, easy and familiar. Too familiar.
âRough night?â she asked. âOr just deep in thought about how very lucky you are to have me?â
It was almost nothingâa line, a posture, a rhythm theyâd traced a hundred times.
Old Clark wouldâve fallen into it automatically, let the banter smooth over the jagged edges inside him. Let the comfort of weâre still us muffle the image of you in the staircase saying I donât know if I can wait for a man who only exists in theory.
He felt the reflex riseâYou know I always have your back, Lois, You know Iâd never let anything happen to youâand forced himself to stop.
Pause.
Whose comfort are you prioritizing? Claire asked in his head. Hers? Yours? The woman youâre in love with?
âLois Lane,â he said instead. Something in his tone made her straighten.
âUh-oh,â she pinched her brows. âWhenever you use my full name like that, I either get a lecture or a hug. Please let it not be the second one; I donât have the emotional bandwidth yet.â
He huffed a breath. âI need to talk to you about⌠that.â
She blinked. âAbout hugging? Did HR make a policy memo I missed?â
âAbout⌠us,â he clarified. âAbout how we are at work.â
Her expression flickeredâsurprise, guilt, a flash of defensive humor she bit back halfway.
âO-oh,â she stuttered. âThen this is about⌠that.â
âItâs some of it,â he said.
Clark glanced past herâto your desk, your plant, your empty chairâand made himself keep his eyes on Lois.
She jerked her head toward the side hall. âStairs?â
âStairs,â he agreed, and they both moved.
.
The fluorescent light buzzed faintly overhead, casting everything in that same ugly, humming glow that had lit your face the day you told him you didnât know if you could wait.Â
Lois dropped down to the first landing and leaned against the rail, cradling her coffee in both hands. Clark stayed one step above her, more out of habit than intention.
âOkay,â she said. âSo. Whatâs going on?â
âIâm not⌠mad at you,â Clark started, firmly. âI need you to know that first.â
âGreat,â she said, too brisk. âBecause Iâve been feeling like human collateral for days, andâsorry, it really fucking sucks,â She ran a hand through her hair.Â
He swallowed.
âAt the gala,â he said, âwhen you got shot. And in the bullpen afterwards. I said and did things that hurt her. Thatâs on me. Not you.â
Lois stared at him, face carefully neutral.
âI forced her to into an impossible choice, one she warned me about,â he went on. âI told her I didnât care what it did to her body. I yelled that I couldnât lose you. And weeks later, I joked back when you said I loved you anyway. I didnât think about how that sounded.â His throat tightened. âThatâs all mine. Thatâs not yours to carry.â
She looked away, jaw ticking.
âI figured as much,â she said quietly. âDoesnât mean I didnât⌠help light the match.â
âYou stepped in front of a gun,â Clark said. âThat was about the couple behind you.â
âAnd still,â Lois said. âIf I hadnâtââ
âLois.â He let a little steel into it. âYou didnât make me say any of that to her. You didnât make me ignore what it would cost her. I have patterns I didnât see clearly until they hurt her. And Iâve been⌠sorting through thatâŚwith someone who actually knows how to help me untangle it, instead of just feeling awful and calling it progress.â
Her brows shot up. âYouâre in therapy,â she gaped, like sheâd just solved a puzzle. âThat explains the sentences.â
He huffed a humorless little breath. âYeah. I am. A few weeks now.â
She let that sit for a second, then nodded. âGood. Honestly? Good.â
He shifted his weight, the step creaking under him. He took a breath.
âI care about you,â he said, and felt how true it was. âYouâre my friend. My colleague. You matter to me. But Iâm not in love with you. I havenât been for a long time.â
Lois blinked. Something in her shoulders droppedânot hurt. More like a tension she hadnât noticed letting go.
âOkay,â she said slowly. âThatâs⌠good, actually. Okay. I⌠I knew that. Just nice to hear it out loud without everything else collapsing around us.â
âI havenât acted like it, though,â he admitted. âIâve let us slip into old patterns. Banter, touching, half-flirty half-nostalgic⌠stuff. For me, it was habit. For her, it looked like I was still half in that story.â
Lois flinched. âYeah,â she said. âYeah, if I were her, Iâdâactually, Iâd murder you. Sheâs being much more mature about this than I would be.â
He gave a humorless half-smile. âShe went for the heart instead.â
âShe loves you,â Lois said. It wasnât a question.
âShe told me,â he nodded. âShe also told me she doesnât know if she can keep her heart tethered to a version of me that only exists in theory.â He exhaled, the memory slicing through his chest. âI asked her to wait while I figured out how to be better. She⌠hasnât promised she will.â
Lois winced. âOuch,â she muttered. âGood for her, though.â
âIâm not asking you to convince her to stay,â Clark said quickly. âOr to⌠talk me up, or anything like that. Thatâs not fair to you, and itâs not fair to her. What I am asking is that we stop feeding the script that hurt her in the first place.â
âMeaning?â she asked finally.
âI need us to have clearer⌠lines,â he said. âI canât be the guy who lets you hang off my arm then goes home to her pretending that doesnât mean anything. I canât joke about loving you like weâre in some nostalgic rom-com. Itâs not fair to her. And honestly⌠itâs not fair to you either. It keeps us both stuck.â
Lois let out a breath between her teeth. âYouâre asking me to be less⌠Lois,â she asked lightly, but there was no real sting in it.
âIâm asking you,â he said carefully, âto be my friend and colleague, not my unfinished business. I havenât been fair to either of you the way Iâve let things stay muddy.â
Her eyes flashed, then softened into something he wasnât used to seeing from her: sympathy.
âClark, for what itâs worth,â she said, voice quieter, âI never wanted to be that. The ghost in your new thing. Or a⌠measuring stick. Iâve been carrying around my own guiltâabout the bullet, about ribbing you in the bullpen, about watching her smile at me while she was probably⌠breaking inside.â She swallowed. âI like her a lot. Sheâs so good for you. Scary good.â
âShe is,â he agreed, thinking about you entirely, voice turning tender.
Lois nodded to herself, then met his eyes again.
âOkay,â she nodded with conviction. âBoundaries. Fewer limbs. Less nostalgia. No more âyou love me anywayâ unless weâre both ninety and drunk, or at least I am, at bingo hall.â
âThat seems reasonable,â he said with a small chuckle.
She huffed a laugh. âAnd if I slide back into old banter?â
âIâll⌠catch it,â his brows furrowed. âAnd tell you no.â
She nodded, picking at her shirtsleeve just to do so.
âAnd her?â she asked carefully. âWhat are you doing⌠for her?â
He thought of Claire. Of the sentence heâd promised to practice. Of your face in the stairwell, eyes wet but steady as you said, Beating yourself up is not a plan, Clark.
âIâm trying,â he exhaled slowly, âto become someone who doesnât ask her to bleed for my unresolved mistakes. Someone who can stand in a room with you and not default to the script that makes the past feel safer. Which is what weâre starting here,â He gave a small smile. âIâm trying to do that whether she takes me back or not.â
Lois stared at him for a long second, eyes suspiciously bright despite the strained smile on his face.
âSheâs lucky,â she said softly. âIf you get there.â
âIâm the lucky one,â he stated firmly. It came out before he could stop it. âIf she decides I have.â
Lois sucked in a breath, then let it out in a half-laugh. âGod, you two are disgusting,â she muttered, swiping at one eye with the back of her hand. âIn a good way. Iâm rooting for you. Just⌠donât quote me on that. I have a reputation to maintain.â
He let the corner of his mouth lift. âYeah,â he said. âThat I can do.â
âGood,â she said, straightening. âAll right, Clark. I think weâve sufficiently emotionally matured for one day. If we do any more growing, weâre going to out-evolve this stairwell.â
She started up the steps toward the door back to the bullpen, and pushed through the door with a hollow thunk.Â
Suddenly, the stairwell felt really quiet. Clark exhaled, tension unfurling from between his shoulder blades. It wasnât perfect. It didnât erase anything. But it was⌠something. A line drawn where there hadnât been one before.
He turned to go, something above catching his eyeâ
âand froze.
You were standing on the landing above them,Â
One hand on the rail, your body angled just enough around the bend that you couldâve stayed hidden if youâd wanted to. Your eyes wide, lips parted like youâd forgotten to finish an inhale. You looked like you just saw a miracle that rivaled your gifts.
His heart stumbled. He had no idea how long youâd been there.Â
âIââ he started to say your name, then stopped. All the old reflexes crowded inâItâs not what it sounded like, I was justââand he shoved them down.
Claireâs voice slid in, steady as ever: Am I trying to be good, or forgiven?
Clark swallowed and tried again. âWhat you heardâŚâ he began quietly, âwas true. All of it. I should have had that talk with Lois a long time ago. Iâm sorry it took hurting you for me to see I needed to.â
You didnât say anything at first. The fluorescent light buzzed overhead; somewhere below, a pipe clicked. He forced himself not to move up the stairs, not to reach for you. Claireâs voice was clear in his head: She is not responsible for proving youâre good.
âIâm not telling you to change your mind,â he added, pulse loud in his ears. âOr to⌠wait, or not wait anymore. You hold that power. I justââ He exhaled, rubbing the back of his neck. âIâm trying to do the things I told you I would. Even when youâre not watching.â
That, at least, was something he could say without choking on it.
For a long second, you just looked at him. Then, slowly, your grip on the folder loosened. Your shoulders dropped with the tiniest release of tension, but he caught it like it was seismic.
The expression that crossed your face wasnât the raw, wounded anger from that night at your apartment. It wasnât the numb, stunned hurt from the first stairwell. It was⌠something in between.Â
Softened. Guarded. Familiar in a way that made his chest burn.Â
It looked, for a heartbeat, like the way you used to look at him across the bullpen when he brought you coffee before a brutal editâtired, amused, fond despite yourself. Love. You looked so beautiful to him
âYeah, I know, Clark,â you said, voice calm and steady. âI heard.â
His mouth went dry. âOkay,â he said, because he didnât know what else to offer that wouldnât tip into begging.
You tilted your head, studying him like you were seeing a new angle.
âThat wasâŚâ You searched for a word, lips twisting. âDifferent, from you.â
He almost laughed. âTrying to make that a habit,â he managed.
A corner of your mouth tugged upâsmall, rueful, so achingly familiar it felt like someone had put his heart back in his chest for half a second.
âI should get back,â you said, fingers tightening on the folder again.
âYeah,â he said. âOf course.â
You turned, took a step up, then hesitated and glanced back down. âClark?â
âYeah?â he asked, his heartbeat racing .His name in your mouth still did something to him.
âYou donât owe me a play-by-play of⌠all this,â you gestured vaguely between him and the door Lois had gone through. âBut⌠if you keep doing things like that? Iâll notice.â
The words were simple. Noncommittal. Completely, absolutely devastating.
His throat tightened. âOkay,â he said softly. âI⌠okay.â
Something unspoken moved between youâregret and history and the faintest outline of something that might, one day, be hope.
You gave him one last look, that almost-old look, then turned and climbed the rest of the stairs. The door opened, letting in a burst of newsroom noise, then shut behind you.
For a long moment, Clark stayed where he was on the lower landing, heart pounding, hand braced on the rail.
Heâd set a boundary with Lois, and youâd heard. For the first time since everything broke, instead of feeling like the walls of the stairwell were closing in, it felt like maybe heâd taken one step in your direction that you were willing to count.
That night, he sat on his couch with his journal openâClaireâs homeworkâand stared at a blank page.
At the top, he wrote weeks ago:
Moments I chose differently (for me)
Underneath, slowly adding a couple more bullet points:
Let Kendra take charge. Helped. Didnât overstay.
Went home after. Didnât patrol until I dropped.
Told Lois Iâm not in love with her. Set clearer lines.
Didnât say âI love you anyway.â
Didnât follow her (you) into the stairwell. Didnât ask if youâre waiting.
He stared at the list, shame and something like fragile pride tangled together.
This wasnât a grand gesture. It wasnât a plea. It was a record. Proof to himself that the version of Clark you were waiting onâif you still wereâwas starting to exist in more than theory.
Across town, your heartbeat moved through your eveningâwork, the Hall, home. There was a space between you and that felt, for the first time, less like punishment and more like necessary distance.
When Iâm with Clark, I feelâ-
He closed the notebook and set it on the table. Tomorrow, heâd go back to Claire. Tomorrow, heâd probably find a dozen more ways heâd failed without noticing. But tonight, heâd at least given himself something to bring into that room other than Iâm sorry and I donât know.
He thought of the plant on your desk, leaves turned stubbornly toward the light, still holding on despite brown edges and a cramped pot.
âKeep going,â he murmured, to it, to you, to himself.
Then he turned off the lamp and let the dark be quiet for once.
