Summary : You invite Dex to your birthday dinner at your sister's apartment. Unfortunately for Dex, your sister is Elektra.
Pairing : Benjamin Poindexter x reader (she/her) | Modern au
Warnings/tags : modern au (I’m aiming for neo noir vibes) assassin!Dex, stunt choreographer!reader, Weapons/art collector! Elektra x Law Professor! Matt. Reader is Elektra’s little sister by a few years but whether she’s a biological sister or adopted is open to interpretation, murder and assassination, discussions of witness intimidation and coercion, blood and minor injury, morally grey characters, legal allegations, reader knowingly dating an assassin, implied sex and sexual content, alcohol, family conflict, happy ending if you ignore the moral implications lol.
Word Count : 8.9k
Requested by : Ko-fi request <3
Notes : Hey ya’ll! If you wanna be tagged, please send me a message! Comments get buried sometimes. Enjoy!
You met Dex in a hotel bar in Los Angeles on the night Daniel Shaw died, though you wouldn’t know until much later that he was the reason he was dead.
At the time, he was only a man at the end of the bar with a beautifully scarred face and a glass he barely touched. You noticed him because everyone else in the room was making a performance out of grieving. Several producers stood in tense little clusters with phones pressed to their ears, actresses dabbed at dry eyes beneath perfect mascara, personal assistants went back and forth like frightened birds between tables, and every agent in the building seemed to be calculating whether a dead studio head meant opportunity or unemployment.
You were not crying either, but at least you had the decency not to pretend.
Daniel Shaw had owned the movie studio currently paying your invoices, which made his sudden death inconvenient more than tragic. He had been found in his suite less than an hour ago. Someone said it was a heart attack. Another person said it was suicide after someone found a bullet in his head. It was so sudden! Your coworker kept repeating, as if the situation might become less alarming if she repeated it enough. You had worked under his studio for three months and met him properly only twice. He was charming, rich, and distant. Powerful men often were, which meant he remembered nobody’s name unless they could make him money.
You were a stunt choreographer. That put you somewhere below the director, below the producers, below the lead actress’ wellness coach, and slightly above the poor intern sent to buy twelve green juices at six in the morning. Shaw dying wasn’t personal to you, but it was close enough to your paycheck to keep you at the bar instead of going upstairs to sleep.
You took a sip of your whiskey and watched the room in the mirror behind the bottles.
That was where you found him watching you.
He didn’t look away when your eyes met, and it made you smile. Most men glanced down when caught, then looked back later with some lazy excuse written across their face. This man didn’t bother. He simply held your gaze in the mirror, almost amused, like he had known you were going to notice him and had been waiting for you to decide what to do about it.
You turned slightly on your stool. “You’re staring.”
His mouth curled up, barely. “You finally noticed.”
“I’m trained,” you shrugged, trying to keep things vague. “I notice when someone is watching me.”
He simply raised his cup to his lips. “Good to know.”
“Is it?”
“It explains the bruises.”
You looked down at your knee, where the hem of your dress had ridden up enough to show the dark bloom of a rehearsal bruise above your shin. It wasn’t your worst one this week, but it wasn’t the prettiest, either. Still, the way his eyes touched it and moved on made your skin warm, because he didn’t leer. He assessed.
You picked up your drink and carried it down the bar to him because the night was already strange, your contract might be cancelled by morning, and you had never been especially good at leaving interesting things alone.
“Since you’re apparently studying me,” you said as you sat beside him, “what else have you learned?”
He turned his glass once against the bar top, eyes moving over your face with infuriating patience. “You’re not drunk, but you’re trying to decide if you want to be. You’re not sad, but you know you should look sadder. You’ve checked the exits twice since I sat down, and you keep favouring your left side, which means either your hip hurts or your knee does.”
“My knee,” you confirmed, hating how impressed you sounded. “And I checked the exits because this room is full of dickheads. That’s just good sense.”
He managed a small, performative frown. “They’re just film executives.”
“Eh,” you shrugged, “same difference."
This time, he smiled properly. “Fair.”
You angled your body toward him, letting your shoulder rest against the bar. “Your turn.”
“My turn?”
“What have I learned about you?”
His eyes stayed on yours. “Go ahead.”
You let yourself look, because he had started it, though that pretence felt childish and paper-thin now. He had a dark jacket on and an expensive watch worn like he didn’t care whether anyone noticed it. His posture was relaxed, but not loose. His hands were still on the bar and had no wedding ring, no visible nerves, no grief, no curiosity for anyone in the room except you.
Your sister had taught you to read people pretty well.
“You’re too quiet to be an actor,” you said. “You’re not a producer either, because you haven’t checked your phone every six seconds and you don’t look like you’re about to ruin someone’s career over a schedule change. You could be security, but you’re not standing like you’re being paid to watch the door.”
“Maybe I’m off duty.”
“Maybe,” you allowed. “But if you were off duty, I think you’d still know exactly who in this room was carrying, who was lying, and who would scream first if the lights went out.”
The amusement in his face was evident. “And who would scream first?”
You glanced around the bar and nodded toward a red-faced producer loudly saying Shaw had been like a father to him. “Him. But only after checking whether TMZ is watching.”
The man beside you laughed under his breath. You liked the sound too much immediately, which was annoying because you didn’t even know his name yet.
You held out your hand. “I’m not calling you stranger all night.”
His hand closed around yours. “Dex.”
“Just Dex?”
“For now.”
“That’s weird.”
“Do you like weird?”
You should have denied it. Instead, your smile gave you away. “I like interesting. Weird is reviewed on a case by case basis”
Dex didn’t release your hand immediately. He brushed his thumb over your knuckles, where tape residue still clung from that afternoon’s rehearsal. When he let go, you had to remind yourself not to stare.
“So,” he said, “stunt performer of some kind.”
You narrowed your eyes as if you were surprised that the handshake had given it away. Still, it was fun to play along, right? “Were you at the dinner?”
“Briefly.”
“And did you know Shaw?”
He considered his answer this time “Briefly.”
You chuckled, and Dex watched as if he wanted to understand the mechanics of it. It was unsettling, but it didn’t make you want to leave. If anything, it made you lean closer, because he was giving you so little that every small reaction felt like a gold star. You worked with performers all day, people trained to externalise every emotion so the camera could catch it. Dex did the opposite. He made you want to get your hands on him just to see what he was like underneath.
“What do you do, Dex-for-now?” you asked.
“Private security advising.”
You tilted your head. “That is the most fake Hollywood job I’ve ever heard.”
“It pays well.”
“I bet it does.” You smiled, “Do you consult on security, or do you just stand around looking intimidating?”
His eyes dropped to your mouth again, and this time he wasn’t quick enough to hide it. “Depends on who’s paying.”
You shifted on the stool, crossing one leg over the other, and watched his eyes flick down for the briefest second before returning to your face.
Controlled, you thought again. He was controlled enough that making him look felt like winning.
“You know,” you said, “for a security advisor, you’re not very reassuring.”
Dex leaned slightly closer, his voice dipping beneath the noise of the bar. “And yet you came over.”
“I was bored.”
“You’re not bored now.”
You hated that he was right. You hated it more because of how certain he seemed, as if your interest was another fact he had collected. The room around you blurred into a swirl of candlelight, glass, perfume, and expensive panic. Upstairs, a billionaire was dead. Down here, this stranger watched you like you were the only interesting target.
You took another sip of your drink. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“With some things.”
“And with others?”
Dex’s gaze held yours. “I like to be certain before I touch.”
It was absurd how quickly a fucking line got to you. Nothing in his tone was crude, and he barely even moved. But suddenly you were thinking about his hand around yours, his thumb over your knuckles, his mouth close to your ear.
You looked away first, which made him smile.
You didn’t answer right away. Instead, you set your glass down and let the silence stretch. Dex didn’t rush to fill it. He only watched you while the whole room kept mourning a man neither of you seemed able to miss.
Finally, you said, “My job might be gone tomorrow,” you sighed as if that didn’t affect you. It probably didn’t. Your family had enough money that you could just jet to the Bahamas tomorrow and not look back, but you actually liked the project you were working on. “That should bother me more.”
“Doesn’t it?”
“It does,” you said, then shrugged. “Just not enough to make me behave.”
Dex’s eyes moved over your face, and he shifted a little. “How badly do you want not to behave?”
Fuck.
It was so direct. It was certainly too much, maybe, from a man you had met fifteen minutes ago in a bar full of vultures dressed as mourners. But you had spent your whole life around danger. Dex was not pretending hard enough to be safe, and the reckless part of you respected that.
You leaned close enough that your knee brushed his. “That depends.”
His breath changed.
There. You had him.
Dex stood and offered his hand.
You looked at his hand, then at his face. “You always pick girls up in weird hotels?”
“No.” He managed a dry laugh, “you’re special.”
You laughed despite yourself and placed your hand in his.
The elevator ride up was a lesson in restraint. He stood beside you without touching you again, which made every inch of space between your bodies feel like you were pulling teeth. The mirrored walls showed you too many versions of him: his profile, his hands, the line of his throat where his shirt opened. You could feel him watching your reflection instead of your body directly, which shouldn’t have been hotter, but was.
The elevator doors opened before you could say anything.
His room was high up, expensive, and nearly untouched. There was no mess or scattered clothes. No sign that anyone had lived there longer than necessary. Los Angeles glittered beyond the windows, silver streets and distant headlights, while the door clicked shut behind you.
You turned to face him. “You’re not really a security advisor, are you?”
Dex looked at you for a long moment. “Not tonight.”
You should have asked what that meant. You should have cared. Instead, you stepped closer and reached for the open collar of his shirt, letting your fingers slide beneath the edge of the fabric.
“Good,” you said. “I’m off the clock too.”
When he kissed you, the control didn’t vanish all at once. That would have been too easy. It was slow, first with his hand at your waist, firm enough to make you gasp against his mouth. Then his other hand at the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair as he angled you exactly how he wanted you. He kissed like a man who had thought about doing it before he allowed himself to move, like every second of restraint in the bar was hell on earth.
You pushed his jacket off his shoulders. He let it fall without looking away from you. When you started on the buttons of his shirt, Dex caught your wrists, not to stop you, but to slow you down, his thumbs pressing lightly to your pulse points like he wanted to feel exactly what he was doing to you.
“You’re impatient,” he murmured, and for a second, you realized, holy shit. He really didn’t do these one night flings often.
Still, the only thing you managed to say was: “You’re overdressed.”
His mouth found your neck, and your answer dissolved into a breathless laugh. He smiled against your skin. You felt it more than saw that private satisfaction, and then his hands moved again with a precision that made your knees feel unreliable. He never grabbed thoughtlessly. He touched with the same focus he had watched you with downstairs, learning what made you arch, what made your fingers dig into his shoulders.
By the time he walked you backward toward the bed, you were hot and irritated by how badly you wanted him. Dex seemed worse off for trying to hide it. His shirt was open, his hair no longer perfect because your hands had been in it, and his breathing had gone rough, making you smile against his mouth.
You pulled him down with you.
After that, the night turned feverish. It became his mouth on your skin, your dress pushed away, his hands gentle until you guided them, and suddenly they were not. He was careful in ways that made you ache and rough only when you dragged it out of him, and the first time you felt his composure slip, you laughed breathlessly because you could not help it.
Dex lifted his head, eyes narrowed.
“You’re not as controlled as you look.”
“No,” he said, his mouth brushing yours. “Not like this.”
You believed him, though you had no reason to. Maybe that was the point. All you knew was that this was just a bad day with bad timing and a dead man upstairs whose absence had left the door to the evening just open enough for a stranger to step through.
Later, when the room was dark and your body fell beside his, you lay with your cheek against his chest and traced one of the old scars near his ribs. He was quiet under your hand, but not asleep. You knew the difference.
His fingers moved slowly along your spine, almost absent. “Dex?”
“Mm.”
“Were you really there for Shaw?”
His hand paused for less than a second before it continued.
“Briefly,” he said again.
You smiled into the dark because you knew he was giving you nothing, and for tonight, only tonight, you decided to let him.
You should have gone back to your own room. You should have asked better questions. You should have treated this as a stupid one night stand and pretended this never happened.
Instead, you closed your eyes and stayed exactly where you were.
—
Six months after that night, you moved to New York.
Officially, it was for work. A Broadway production had brought you on to choreograph the stage combat for a lavish, over-funded revival with sword fights, balcony falls, and a dramatic death scene that had to happen eight times a week without sending the lead actor to hospital.
It was a good job. You even put it on exclamation points and sent it to your agent like you had made a responsible career decision.
It had absolutely nothing to do with Dex being based in New York.
Mostly.
Fine, maybe a little.
Your sister was there too, which made the decision feel less incriminating. Elektra had an apartment in Manhattan, three passports in names you were not supposed to know, and an art studio collecting ancient weapons, because technically, that was her job.
You knew better than to ask where the acquisitions came from, and Elektra knew better than to ask why you had suddenly accepted a Broadway job in the same city as a man who called himself a security advisor and looked at you like he would happily ruin his life if you asked sweetly enough.
You and Dex had been officially dating for three months.
It was a good three months of late-night dinners, hotel room mornings, flowers delivered to rehearsal with no card because he knew you would know. It was three months of you pretending not to notice when the news mentioned a man connected to Shaw’s circle dying strangely overseas. Three months of Dex pretending his work calls were about security logistics and not whatever thing he did for people rich enough to afford him.
You knew what he was. Dex carried violence too naturally for it to be a hobby, and sometimes, when he came to you after work, the calm around him was too emptied out. He would shower before touching you, scrub himself raw, come out with damp hair and bare feet.
Your moral compass had raised one weak little hand in protest, but then Dex had kissed you against your kitchen counter, murmured sweetheart like a prayer, and made your entire sense of right and wrong pack a bag and leave the state.
Maybe that made you terrible. Maybe it made you Elektra’s sister after all.
Or maybe Dex was just so unfairly, stupidly, devastatingly hot that you just kept getting distracted.
And Dex knew that you knew after the first month or so, when you jokingly called him Hot John Wick.
Dex had always expected you to figure it out sooner or later. He knew you were a smart girl. He just didn’t realise you’d figure out this soon.
Instead of being shocked though, he just raised his eyebrows and said, “John Wick is already hot.”
You chuckled and pulled him close. “Shut up and take it as a compliment that I find you even hotter.”
“Yes ma’am.”
And that was that.
—
Earlier today, you had texted Dex and asked if he could come over and cuddle.
Ha.
You were already on the couch when he got in, cozy in sleep shorts and an oversized hoodie, one fuzzy sock half-off your foot, your body tired from rehearsal and your brain still muddled with stage falls, sword cues, and actors who didn’t understand that “again from the top” didn’t mean “try to improvise a stabbing.”
Dex took off his coat and looked at you like he had been waiting all day to come home to you.
“You’re late,” you said.
“‘M sorry.”
He came closer, and you let him pull you up just so you could immediately drag him down with you again. Dex caught himself over you with one hand braced beside your head, his knee sinking into the couch, his body warm and heavy enough above yours to make your whole chest loosen.
He kissed you, mouth moving over yours like he wanted to settle there. Like he needed a minute to remember what it felt like to be wanted without being useful. You went pliant underneath him almost immediately, because apparently that was what you did now. You let murderers kiss you tenderly on your couch and call it romance.
His hand slid beneath your hoodie and you hummed against his mouth.
Dex’s palm dragged up your ribs, then paused over your breast, cupping you through the thin fabric beneath like he was not even trying to pretend the cuddling was innocent anymore. His thumb moved once, and your breath caught hard enough for him to smile into the kiss.
“Dex,” you murmured.
“Mm.”
“That is not cuddling.”
“It’s close.”
His mouth dipped to your throat, and the laugh you tried to give him turned embarrassingly quiet halfway out. He knew exactly what he was doing.
His hand slid down again over your waist, then your hip, then lower.
He pushed his body down yours, mouth tracing heat along your neck while his fingers found the waistband of your shorts. He tucked himself there, resting under the elastic, knuckles brushing warm skin.
Dex loved having his finger between your legs, knowing he can’t seem to miss the sweet spot, ever. Which meant you knew exactly how to make him suffer.
His fingers started to slip lower, and you caught his wrist.
Dex stopped.
Slowly, he lifted his head, looking offended, as if you had interrupted him mid-prayer.
“Sweetheart,” he said carefully.
You smiled. “My birthday is coming up.”
For a second, he just stared.
His wrist flexed under your fingers as you held it still. “I know.”
His thumb slipped under the edge by half an inch, expecting you to give in, but your hand only tightened, keeping him out of your shorts still.
Then his eyes lifted to yours, already suspicious. “Baby.”
You smiled. “Ah-ah.”
His gaze narrowed. “What are you doing?”
“Negotiating.”
“With my hand?”
“With your access,” you corrected
His desire didn’t disappear. It only got interrupted by confusion. “You’re blackmailing me.”
“I’m making a birthday request.”
His eyes flicked down to where you were holding his wrist. “With leverage.”
You held back a chuckle, trying your best to look innocent. “Smart girls use leverage.”
Dex opened his mouth, then closed it again.
You smiled sweetly. “That’s what I thought.”
For a second, he looked like he wanted to argue. Unfortunately for him, he also wanted control of his hand back very, very badly. “What do you want, pretty girl?” he asked.
You knew he meant presents, like actual presents. He was prepared to buy his way out of this. Hitman money in New York apparently paid well enough that Dex looked genuinely prepared for you to name something like a weekend in Paris.
You tightened your grip on his wrist. You looked up at him, very pleased with yourself. “I want you to meet my sister.”
Dex went still, much more still than when you had called him a hitman for the first time, actually, which told you a lot about his priorities.
“Your sister,” he said.
“Yes.”
“For your birthday.”
“Yes.”
“That’s what you want?”
“That’s what I want.”
He looked at you like you were a puzzle he hadn’t been hired to solve. Dex looked down at his trapped hand, then back at your face. “You’re really withholding this until I say yes.”
“Yes.”
“Fuck.”
His teeth clenched as your thumb stroked idly over the inside of his wrist. You were not even trying to be seductive with it, but Dex watched the movement like it was actively shortening his lifespan.
“Baby,” he said.
“Mm?”
“Let go of my hand.”
“Say yes.”
“You don’t play fair.”
He made a sound that was half a laugh and half suffering. “You know I adore you, right?”
“Then say yes.”
Dex lowered his head until his forehead rested against yours. His eyes closed briefly, like he was gathering strength. It was ridiculous. He could probably walk into a guarded room and come out alive without messing up his hair, but you asking him to attend one birthday dinner had him acting like you had handed him a bomb with a pink bow on it.
“You haven’t told me anything about her,” he said.
“She’s my sister.”
“That’s not information.”
“She’s important to me.”
It managed to shut him up.
You sighed, just a little, though you still didn’t let go of his wrist. “I want her to meet you. Isn’t that enough information?”
Dex opened his eyes, and he looked almost undone by it.
You kissed him lightly. “Please.”
His breath caught.
You knew that would get him.
“Don’t,” he murmured.
“Please, Dex.”
“Sweetheart.”
“For my birthday.”
He stared at you with the exhaustion of a man who had never stood a chance. “Fine,” he sighed. “I’ll meet your sister.”
Your smile bloomed. “You’ll be nice?”
“I’ll be polite.” Dex looked pointedly at his wrist. “Can I have my hand back now?”
You hummed like you were thinking about it.
His eyes darkened. “Baby.” His mouth brushed yours.
Eventually, you released his wrist.
Dex didn’t move immediately, even though he had been desperate two seconds ago.
Dex kissed you first, like he was still thanking you for wanting him at dinner. His hand slipped lower and you gasped against his mouth, laughing breathlessly when you felt his smile.
“Now,” he hummed, “where were we?”
—
You and Dex stood outside Elektra’s apartment door with his hand at the small of your back and enough tension in his shoulders to make you bite back a smile.
For a man who had once admitted, very calmly, that he preferred entering buildings through service corridors because front doors made people too expectant, he had spent an absurd amount of time preparing for your birthday.
He had brought you flowers first, an arrangement of red ranunculus, white anemones, dark tulips, and little sprigs of jasmine tucked between them because he remembered you once saying jasmine smelled like nights in expensive hotels.
You had stared at it for so long that Dex had asked, “Too much?”
“No,” you said, already smiling like an idiot. “It’s beautiful.”
Only then had he relaxed.
The second gift was smaller, slim black leather notebook with your initials pressed into the bottom corner in gold, the pages thick enough for blocking notes, sketches, injury reports, and all the frantic choreography scribbles you usually left on call sheets and napkins. Inside the front cover was a thin metal bookmark shaped like a tiny sword.
You had smiled, and he looked painfully pleased with himself.
Then, because he was Dex, he had stopped in a supermarket on the way there and very pragmatically asked, “What kind of wine does your sister like?”
“Expensive.”
He only nodded.
Now he stood beside you holding a bottle that probably cost more than your weekly food shop, his jaw tight, his scarred face composed, his coat immaculate. He looked less like a boyfriend arriving for dinner and more like a man approaching a guarded border with falsified papers and a personal stake in crossing.
“You know she’s not going to fucking kill you.” You nudged him gently. “She made dinner. That’s basically a peace offering.”
“She made dinner for you,” Dex said flatly. “I’m the complication.”
Right.
Dex didn’t care about charming people for the sake of being liked. He didn’t need Elektra’s approval because he wanted a pleasant evening or a normal story to tell later. He needed it because Elektra mattered to you, and she was the one person whose opinion could matter. Because, in Dex’s mind, your sister was not an enemy. She was a hurdle to get to you more permanently. That’s all.
You turned toward him and straightened his collar, even though it was already perfect. “Be nice.”
Then the door opened.
Elektra stood there in silk trousers and bare feet, beautiful in the effortless way she had always been beautiful. Her eyes moved from you to Dex, then to the flowers in your arm and the wine in his hand.
“Well,” she said, “at least he brings tribute.”
You managed to chuckle. “Elektra.”
Dex offered the bottle and said, very flatly, “Thank you for having me.”
Elektra took it, glanced at the label, and lifted one eyebrow.
You could practically see Dex winning one microscopic point in a war he had invented entirely inside his own head.
“Come in,” Elektra said.
Dex’s hand found your back again as you stepped inside.
He was here. He was trying.
From somewhere deeper in the apartment, a familiar voice called, “Are they here?”
Dex stopped, and not enough for Elektra to notice, maybe.
Then Matt Murdock appeared at the edge of the dining room, one hand against the wall, his red glasses reflecting apartment light.
Dex’s voice changed.
“Oh.” he said, “Murdock.”
Matt seemed to recognize the voice immediately because his head tilted in recognition.
Wait.
Wait.
What?
“You two know each other?” Your voice cut through the apartment before anyone else could decide what kind of lie to tell.
Elektra, of course, looked delighted. “Oh,” she raised an eyebrow. “Interesting.”
You turned on her. “Don’t start.”
Matt’s mouth twitched, but the almost-smile disappeared quickly.
Dex’s hand hovered over your back, not quite touching you now, which irritated you more than it should have.
You looked at Matt again, your confusion finally catching up with the rest of the room. “I didn’t even know you were coming.”
Matt’s mouth softened when he turned toward you. “Happy birthday.”
You blinked at him. “I didn’t even know you and Ellie were back together.”
Beside you, Elektra took a thoughtful sip of her wine like this was all very normal and not at all insane.
“We are,” she said.
You stared at her.
Matt’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Apparently.”
Despite everything, despite Dex standing beside you like a wire pulled too tight, you felt a laugh threaten the back of your throat, because this was them. This had always been them.
You had known Matt since high school, back when Elektra was in college for art history. Your sister brought him home during holidays with the same indifference she used for all things she secretly cared about. You remembered him at your family table, too stubborn and too principled for his own good, arguing with Elektra about morality while she stole food off his plate. You remembered being younger and thinking their breakups sounded serious until Matt appeared again two months later with flowers.
So no, Matt being here was not strange. Matt being here with Elektra again wasn’t even that strange.
Matt recognizing your boyfriend was the problem.
You looked between them. “How do you know each other?”
Dex went quiet.
“Our paths crossed professionally,” Matt said.
You stared. “How vague.”
“That’s all you need to know,” Dex said.
Elektra’s smile widened behind her glass.
Matt looked worried, but it wasn’t really dramatic. Matt never looked dramatically anything unless Elektra was bleeding or lying to his face. But you knew him. You knew the slight tension in his mouth, the way he seemed to listen to more than what people were saying.
“You look worried,” you said.
Matt paused. “I’m not worried.”
“Matthew.”
Dex’s eyes twitched at the familiarity in your voice.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
You glanced back at him and found him standing there with perfect manners, trying very hard not to strangle a blind man from across the table for no apparent reason.
Elektra noticed too, and naturally, this pleased her.
“Well,” she said, stepping aside to let everyone further into the apartment. “This is already a much better birthday dinner than I expected.”
“It is my birthday dinner,” you said. “Not an interrogation.”
“That depends entirely on your boyfriend.”
Dex looked at Elektra then.
For the first time since the door opened, his attention moved to your sister, realising the human hurdle had a knife in its hand.
You sighed and clutched your flowers a little tighter.
Matt stepped closer. “It really is good to see you.”
Your irritation waned, because he sounded sincere, so you hugged him.
Matt hugged you back, one hand warm between your shoulders, gentle in the way he had always been somewhat of a big brother to you. “Happy birthday, kid.” he said again, quieter this time.
“Thank you,” you muttered. “Even though all of you are being weird.”
“We’ve barely started,” Elektra said.
“That is exactly what I’m afraid of.”
When you pulled away from Matt, Dex was still watching him.
You looked at the three of them and pointed toward the dining room. “Everyone sit down,” you said. “And someone is going to explain what professionally means before dessert.”
—
Dinner began with Elektra leading you to the table, Matt followed by memory, and Dex stayed close enough behind you you could feel him breathing on your neck. The food was already laid out, far more elaborate than she had admitted over the phone, with candles burning between the plates and your cake waiting beneath a glass cover on the counter.
You sat beside Dex. Matt took the chair opposite him, and Elektra sat beside Matt with the calm of someone who had accidentally arranged the most interesting seating plan possible.
For the first few minutes, the conversation stayed on you. Your birthday, your Broadway production, the lead actor who kept trying to make the sword fights faster, the balcony rig that had failed inspection twice. Matt asked intelligent questions and Elektra asked whether anyone deserved to be pushed from the balcony for real. Dex was deathly silent, and you assumed it was for fear of saying the wrong thing and losing Elektra’s favour, which in turn meant losing your favour, too.
Then, Matt mentioned teaching now, and your eyes went as wide as dinner plates.
“Holy shit,” you managed. “Professor Murdock?”
Matt had laughed under his breath. “That surprised you?”
“A little. Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
Then you had turned to Dex, trying to make it casual, trying to move the night away from whatever ugly thing was coiling beneath the table. See? this is fine, you tried to say with your eyes
Well. It was until Matt decided to say, “And Poindexter, you’re still in security?”
Dex’s eyes had flicked to Matt for half a second.
“Yeah,” he said, with his hand warm on your knee, “She knows my work.”
Matt had gone still.
Dex hadn’t smiled, but you felt the satisfaction in him anyway.
You could feel him think, Matt cannot use that against me.
Except Matt kept going.
Matt didn’t sound like he wanted to humiliate him. He sounded worried, and maybe that was what made Dex more anxious. Accusation, he could meet. Concern made him look like an animal.
And because you had no idea what the fuck to do, you blurted out the one thing you probably shouldn’t have.
“Um,” you choked out. “Would you like to tell us how you met?”
Oh fuck.
Mistake, you could tell from the way Dex was looking at you now. Big mistake.
“It was years ago,” Matt said finally. “During my work on a civil suit. Nelson, Murdock, and Page represented several former employees of a private security firm.”
Dex’s thumb stopped moving on your knee.
Matt continued. “We found evidence of illegal surveillance, witness intimidation, and coercion.”
Elektra leaned back slightly, actively thinking of Dex’s bad influence on you now.
Dex’s face didn’t change.
“He worked for them?” Elektra asked.
Matt’s head angled toward Dex. “Ask him.”
Dex’s teeth shifted once.
You felt the violent urge in him before you saw it. His body didn’t lunge and his hand didn't move. But you could tell he was thinking of hurling a fork in Matt’s direction.
You put your hand over his and squeezed hard.
Dex’s eyes snapped to you.
You didn’t say anything. You only dug your fingers into the back of his hand, right where the skin was thin over bone. It was a warning, a plea not to escalate things. Your nails pressed in harder when his eyes moved back toward Matt.
Dex. You warned with your eyes.
His nostrils flared.
Please don’t.
Matt kept speaking, unaware or too aware. “His name came up in access logs and reports.”
Dex’s hand flexed under yours.
You pressed harder, until your nails broke skin. A tiny crescent of blood welled beneath your thumb, bright against him.
Dex looked down, and that’s what did it. All the focus in him fractured around the sight of your hand gripping his hard enough to hurt him, your fingers trembling. This was your silent refusal to let him become the thing Matt was describing right in front of you.
Though the haze in his mind didn’t disappear, he turned his face away from Matt. It came back to you and the fact that you were frightened enough of what he might do to stop him with pain.
Dex swallowed. Under the table, he turned his hand over and caught your fingers carefully, like he was afraid you might pull away.
Matt was still talking, though. “One witness was hospitalised the night before deposition. Another vanished for three days and came back with a different story.”
Elektra looked at Dex. You looked at Matt. Dex looked at nobody but you.
“And nothing stuck,” Dex said.
His voice was too controlled.
Matt paused. “No.”
Dex’s fingers tightened around yours once, not enough to hurt, enough to ask whether you were still there.
You were.
You hated that you were.
Dex’s eyes finally lifted to Matt again, and there it was: you knew he wanted to fucking hurt him, and not because Matt was lying. Because Matt was telling the truth in front of you. Because Matt had dragged a past version of him into your sister’s dining room and set it between the candles.
Your grip tightened again.
Dex breathed in slowly, then he looked at you.
You shook your head once. Please.
The fight went out of his shoulders by force, not surrender. He leaned back a fraction, still holding your hand under the table, your bloodied little nail marks hidden between his fingers like a secret.
Elektra set her wine down. “Dex,” she said. Her voice was smooth. “Can I speak with you?”
You looked at her immediately. “Ellie.”
“Privately.”
Dex didn’t answer right away.
His thumb moved over your fingers once. There was blood on his skin because of you, and somehow that made his touch gentler.
“It’s fine,” he said.
It was absolutely not fine. He stood anyway.
Before he followed Elektra, he bent close enough that his mouth brushed your temple. It was not quite a kiss and more like proof of control.
Then he left with your sister as the balcony doors shut behind them.
For a second, you only stared at the glass, watching Elektra turn on him with folded arms while Dex stood very still in front of her, hands visible, every inch of him pretending he had not almost lost himself at your birthday dinner.
Matt was still across from you when you turned back to him slowly.
He looked… worried.
You wiped your thumb against your napkin, and tried to breathe like your heart was not still stuck somewhere in your throat.
“Ummmm,” you said, because if you started with Dex, you might cry. If you started with the lawsuit, you might scream.
Matt turned his face toward you.
“So,” you said, voice smaller than you wanted it to be. “Are you sticking around this time?”
Matt didn’t answer right away.
That was very Matt of him.
He sat across from you at Elektra’s dining table with one hand curled near his wine glass, head angled faintly toward the balcony doors. Outside, your sister had Dex backed into a conversation you could not hear properly through the glass. Elektra’s arms were folded. Dex’s hands were visible at his sides.
That alone told you he was trying very, very hard.
You watched them for another second, then looked back at Matt.
“So,” you said, because there was no clean way to ask it. “Are you sticking around this time?”
Matt swirled a bit of his wine. Awkward.
“I… think so,” he said.
You stared at him. “You think so?”
The smile he gave you was small. “I’m trying.”
“Mmm. Very convincing.”
He huffed, almost a laugh, and it tugged at an old memory in your chest.
Because before he was Professor Murdock, he was Elektra’s on-again-off-again disaster boyfriend, and that made him your on-again-off-again big brother. He had been the person who helped you with homework at the kitchen table because Elektra said she was too busy and then corrected every other answer from across the room anyway. He had been the person who let you complain about school and teachers and boys without making you feel stupid for being young. He had been the one who said, very seriously, that no, you probably could not sue your PE teacher for being annoying, but he admired your commitment to the argument.
And then he would leave.
“She was awful last time you guys broke up,” you said.
Matt lowered his head.
You picked at the edge of your napkin. “Not in the fun way. She was actually awful.”
“What do you want me to say?” He sighed.
The candles on the table flickered between you. Elektra had made too much food, of course. Your flowers sat in a vase near the counter, lush and ridiculous and beautiful, and you could still feel the small dent of Dex’s hand where he had held yours under the table.
“She missed you,” you said. “She pretended she didn’t, obviously, but she did.”
His mouth fell.
“And I missed you,” you added, staring very hard at the napkin. “Who else do I get to complain about her to? Mom and Dad don’t give a shit anymore.”
Matt’s laugh was tiny and helpless. “I missed you too.”
That almost made you forgive him.
You looked back at him. “Then stay. Or don’t. But don’t drift in and out like we’re all supposed to just reset every time you and Ellie get bored again.”
He nodded once, accepting the hit. For a second, it felt like being sixteen again. Like he was still family, sitting at your family table.
Then his head shifted slightly.
Toward the balcony. Towards Dex.
And you felt the whole conversation distort.
Matt didn’t pounce. He was much worse than that. He eased into it, like he was only following the evidence where it naturally led.
“You know why I’m worried about your boyfriend,” he said.
You sat back and sighed. “There it is.”
“I’m not trying to start a fight.”
“No,” you shook your head. “You’re building a case.”
He didn’t deny it.
“I know you care about me,” you said. “I do. But please don’t do that... That lawyer thing with your wording. You're making me feel like I’m supposed to realise I’ve accidentally admitted something.”
“I’m not cross-examining you.”
“You are.”
“I’m asking questions.” Matt exhaled.
You hated how much you still wanted his approval, because he was one of those people who had seen you grow up and therefore they had earned the right to worry.
He leaned forward a little.
“How did he tell you about… what he does?”
You looked at him and took a sip of wine to buy yourself time. “I’m not thick.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“No,” you said. “But he didn’t have to tell me shit for me to realise his job was more than sit around looking pretty with a gun.”
Matt’s jaw clenched slightly.
Outside, Elektra said something to Dex that made his shoulders go tense.
“He gave you a version,” Matt said.
You laughed once, without much humour. “Everyone gives a version.”
“Some versions are omissions.”
“God, you are so irritating.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t,” you cocked your head. “You think irritating is fine when you’re right.”
Matt tried again.
“There are patterns,” he said. “That’s all I’m saying.”
“Patterns.”
“Yes.”
“With Dex.”
“With men like him.”
You looked sharply at him. “Men like him.”
Matt’s mouth tightened. “Men who know exactly how much truth to give you.”
Your throat tightened despite yourself.
He heard it, because damn that freakish hearing of his was apparently still going.
His voice flattened a bit. “I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“Always very generous.”
“I mean it. I think you’re smart. I think you know more than most people would.”
You looked down at your hands.
There was still the faintest mark beneath one nail where you had dug into Dex’s skin hard enough to pull him back. You could still feel the moment he snapped back into himself. The way his fury turned, not gone, just redirected because you had asked without words.
Matt said your name, like he used to when you were younger and trying not to cry.
“I think you’re too close to the facts,” he said. You almost smiled because only Matt Murdock would say something like that at a birthday dinner.
You set the fork down. “You mean I’m biased.”
“I mean you’re involved.”
“I’m allowed to be involved in my own life.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
Matt went silent.
You looked at him now, studying his posture “Because it sounds like you think if you arrange the argument properly, I’ll reach your conclusion.”
“I think you’re making a dangerous choice.”
“There we go.”
His face soured. “He is dangerous.”
“So is Ellie.”
“She’s different now.”
“And?” You leaned forward. “And?”
Matt didn’t answer fast enough.
You lowered your voice. “We both know what she’s done. We both know what half of that collection cost before she started using invoices and whatever else she claims is legitimate now.”
“She got out.”
“Good for her.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I,” you groaned. “But she still deserves love, doesn’t she?”
Matt looked pained, and you hated hurting him.
“You love her with a whole archive of exceptions,” you said. “But I’m supposed to treat Dex like one bad document is the entire record?”
“It’s not just one bad document—“
“It’s close enough.”
“No,” Matt said, and there was that courtroom firmness in him now. “I’m saying you probably know what the record looks like. You're just ignoring the parts you don’t want to read.”
You swallowed.
“I know what it costs,” he said. “To love someone and start making room for things you would have condemned.”
You looked toward the balcony.
Dex had turned his head slightly, like he could feel you looking.
Matt kept going, though kinder now. “You start with mitigation. Then you start giving out exceptions. I’m just asking you to consider—”
“No.” Your voice cracked a little. “No, you’re asking me to accept your ruling.”
Matt stopped.
Ruling.
Huh. You really have changed over the two years he was gone.
You breathed in shakily. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about him. Maybe you’re not. Maybe there are things I don’t know yet. Maybe I’ll regret this so badly I’ll hear your voice in my fucking head for the rest of my life.”
Matt’s shoulders lowered.
“But my mistakes are mine to make,” you said.
Oh.
You saw the tiny break in his knuckles. The big-brother part of him, the one who never really had anyone but himself, the part that still remembered you as a teenager at the kitchen table with bruised knees and far too much attitude for your own good, wanting to protect you from yourself because he had loved a more bloody Elektra the way you loved Dex.
“I don’t want to watch you get hurt,” was all he managed to say,
You looked down. “You might have to.”
He looked down.
You reached across the table first and found his hand, because touch had always been a sensory experience he reacted to.
“I’m not blind,” you said, then immediately groaned. “Sorry.”
Matt’s mouth twitched. “It’s fine.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
“I know he’s not safe.”
Matt’s thumb brushed once over your knuckles.
“But he listens to me,” you said. “And maybe that’s not enough for you. But it matters to me.”
Matt didn’t agree, but he didn’t argue either.
For once, it felt like mercy.
Outside, you heard a scrape against the balcony table.
Matt’s head tilted. “What’s happening?”
You looked past him through the glass.
Elektra and Dex were no longer standing in their neat little interrogation positions. They looked like they were seated across from each other at the tiny balcony table, elbows planted, hands clasped, Dex’s shoulders covering half the scene.
You blinked.
Then, despite the ache in your chest, you laughed. “I think they’re arm wrestling.”
Matt closed his eyes.
The look on his face was so exhausting that it only made you laugh harder.
—
The rest of dinner went by quickly after Elektra and Dex came back in from the balcony with no visible injuries, which you counted as a birthday miracle.
Elektra looked smug and Dex looked composed, but there was a tightness around his lips that made you narrow your eyes. When you glanced between them and asked who won the arm wrestle, Elektra only smiled into her wine. Dex said nothing. Which, unfortunately for him, was an answer.
After that, everyone behaved, mostly. Matt stopped trying to lawyer you out of your own relationship. Dex stopped looking like he wanted to fling Matt through one of Elektra’s very expensive windows. Elektra told a horrible story about you at seventeen trying to jump from the garage roof into the pool and missing by an amount she called “humiliating but educational.” Matt laughed, Dex looked absolutely fascinated, like your teenage stupidity was precious. He asked one follow-up question, and you kicked him under the table.
By the time you left, she kissed both your cheeks, held your face for one second longer than usual, and said happy birthday one more time and told you to call her tomorrow.
Matt hugged you too, while Dex and Matt shook hands, proving to God and each other that they could survive physical contact without committing a felony.
Then Dex took you home.
You were sleepy in the car, full from dinner, cake, and emotional warfare.
At your apartment, you kicked off your shoes by the door and padded into the kitchen for water. Dex followed, taking off his coat, watching you with that careful quiet he got when he was not sure whether he was allowed to touch you yet.
You leaned against the counter and looked at him over the rim of your glass.
“So,” you said. “Who really won?”
Dex’s expression went flat. “No.”
You smiled. “No?”
Dex flexed his hand once, as if remembering. “She’s irritating.”
You laughed. “Mmm.”
“But you love her,” he said.
Your laugh faded.
Dex leaned back against the counter opposite you, arms crossed. “And she loves you. And she’s capable of protecting you.” He said, as if it was the only metric that mattered. “So I guess I’ll try.”
You stared at him. “That is the nicest thing you’ve ever said about anyone.”
Dex rolled his eyes, but there was no bite in it. He looked tired now. Not physically, more like tired from pretending to be a decent person.
You walked across the kitchen and took his hand.
The little marks from your nails looked worse up close. There were tiny, red, broken crescents on the back of his hand.
“I’m sorry,” you said, trailing small kisses on them
Dex looked down at your lips touching the wounds. He shrugged as if you did what you had to do to get the result you wanted, and Dex had always been pragmatic like that.
That night, Dex fell asleep with his arm locked around your waist.
He slept heavy, going slack against your back, his breath warm at the nape of your neck, his hand spread beneath your sleep shirt like he had reached for bare skin even in his sleep.
Your phone pinged just after two.
Then again. Then again.
You reached for it carefully, lifting Dex’s arm just enough to drag the screen close without waking him.
It was a text…. From Elektra.
I’m glad he’s on your side.
Then the next text.
That’s still not the same thing as him being safe.
Another message came through before you could answer her.
Make an informed decision. That’s all I’m asking.
Then, she sent a link.
You stared at it for a long time in the dark.
Dex shifted behind you, his arm tightening automatically around your middle, his face pressing closer to your shoulder, still asleep.
You opened it… and there it was. The lawsuit Dex was allegedly involved in.
The text was dense and written in bloodless language detailing private security and consultants. It detailed alleged intimidation and coercion, resulting in witnesses withdrawing statements and misplaced evidence.
Dex’s name was there.
You read until the words blurred, until the apartment turned orange in the early morning. Dex slept against you while a colder version of him lived through depositions and sealed complaints and things nobody had ever proved.
But you knew your boyfriend. You knew he was capable of this.
You waited for the feeling to change.
Maybe, you expected to be disgusted. Fear, more likely.
It didn’t come.
You felt the same about him as you did before.
And of course it wasn’t fine. Matt was not wrong and Elektra wasn’t worried for no reason.
But you had always looked at the world through rose-tinted glasses.
By dawn, you closed the file.
Dex stirred when you set your phone down, as if even the sound of it against the nightstand was enough to pull some half-asleep part of him back to you.
His arm tightened around your waist first. Then he dragged you closer, face pressing blindly between your shoulder and neck, making it impossible to move even if you had wanted to.
“Sweetheart?” he mumbled, barely awake.
You hummed and covered his hand with yours.
For a second, you lay there with the lawsuit still burning behind your eyes. All those careful words and sealed statements. All those allegations circling the man in your bed like vultures.
And maybe Matt was right.
Maybe Elektra was right.
Maybe Dex was dangerous.
But Matt had loved your sister through her murderous years, hadn’t he? So who were they to look at you like you were insane for dating an assassin?
You were now thoroughly informed, now, weren’t you?
You turned carefully in Dex’s arms until you were facing him. His eyes stayed closed, his brow furrowing faintly at the movement, but his hand slid up your back on instinct, keeping you close.
“Go back to sleep,” you whispered, kissing him softly.
Dex exhaled against your mouth, already sinking again. You tucked yourself beneath his chin, his arm heavy over your waist.
Informed decision made.
—end.
NOTE : I genuinely love seeing all your requests in my asks, but I do get a lot and I physically can’t write every single one. I usually write the ones that catch my eye, and it’s probably every 1 in 5.
That’s why I have Ko-fi! If you request there, it’s pretty much guaranteed I’ll write it within a month of responding as a token of appreciation (keep this post in mind for July and August 2026). If I’m uncomfortable with the request or don’t think I can do it justice, I’ll let you know and we can brainstorm something else.
Please remember I run this blog for free, so any support means a lot, only if you’re able to give it! Love y’all and thank you for reading!!! <3
Hi! I loved your last angst story, so I wanted to request a Smallville Clark Kent x Wife!Reader story.
In the story, Clark and the reader are married and have a young daughter. Lately, because of his Superman duties, he’s been coming home late. His wife understands why, but she’s still hurt and frustrated. The final straw is when he misses their daughter’s kindergarten performance, which leads to an argument when he gets home.
Clark has been under a lot of stress and is completely exhausted, so he ends up snapping back during the fight. I’d love for the story to have plenty of emotional angst but also a happy ending.
Clark Kent - smallville
note: my angst writing is still something im working on, hence why this took a while to get out.
Plot: wife!reader, superman!clark
Note: a couple uses of y/n
The first time Clark missed dinner, you told yourself it was okay, The second time, you reheated his plate, By the fifth time, you stopped making one. You understood, You had always understood.
Being married to Clark Kent meant understanding that sometimes he had to leave in the middle of a conversation, that sometimes he came home with a split lip and a torn shirt. That sometimes his eyes were exhausted, even though he insisted he was fine.
You knew who he was. You loved who he was. But lately, it felt like Clark had forgotten who you were. And worse—He was forgetting who his daughter was.
Daddy’s coming tonight, right?” You paused in the doorway of your daughter’s bedroom. She was sitting on the floor in her little pink dress, carefully fixing the bow in her hair.
“Of course he is, sweetheart.”
She looked up at you. “Promise?”
Your heart ached. You smiled anyway. “I promise.”
You had called Clark three times. no answer. You texted him “she keeps asking when you're coming home.” and still nothing. You tried not to worry, tried not to think about it, tried not to feel disappointed before he had even failed to show up. But when the auditorium filled with people, there was still an empty seat next to you.
Your daughter was seated on the stage, she kept looking back at you, waiting. The lights dimmed and the music started, she kept looking back at that empty chair. She smiled at you, but to wasn't the same smile she and when Clark was around, it was more sadder and dimmed.
————
“Was daddy busy?” she asked in the car ride home,
“Yeah, baby.” you said, gripping the steering wheel harder.
“Saving people again?”
“Probably.”you swallowed.
She was quiet for a moment then she looked out the window. “Did he forget?”
You couldn't answer because you the truth was that you didn't know anymore.
“He wouldn’t forget about you, baby, not ever.” You replied, trying to keep your voice steady.
————
Clark came home at 1:17 in the morning, You were sitting in the dark living room, waiting. He stopped the moment he saw you.
“Hey.”
You stared at him. “Hey?”
He looked exhausted, His shirt was torn at the collar, There was dirt across his face. Normally, you would’ve rushed to him, but Tonight, you didn’t move.
Clark slowly closed the door. “She’s asleep?”
“Yes.”
“How was the performance?”
You laughed and It wasn’t a happy laugh “You’re asking me that now?”
His expression changed. “Y/n—”
“She waited for you.”
He looked away. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.” you snapped at him.
“I said I know.”
“You weren’t there, Clark.”
“I was trying to get there.”
“But you didn’t.”
His jaw tightened. “I couldn’t exactly stop in the middle of—”
“Of what?”
He stopped.
You stood up. “Of saving someone? Of course. I know, Clark. I know.” His face fell. “I know what you do.”
“Then why are we having this conversation?”
Your eyes burned. “Because you’re missing everything else.” He stared at you. “You’re missing dinner. You’re missing bedtime. You’re missing mornings.”
“Y/n—”
“She asked me if you forgot.” That stopped him, Completely. “She asked me if you forgot about her.”
Clark’s face crumpled slightly. “I didn’t.”
“But that’s what she thinks.”
“I would never—”
“Then stop giving her reasons to think it!” Your voice cracked on the last words.
The room went silent. Clark looked at you like you’d slapped him. You wiped at your eyes angrily.
“She kept looking at the door tonight.” He said nothing. “She kept looking for you.”
“I know.”
“No you don’t.”
“I said I know!” His voice suddenly exploded through the room. You froze. Clark froze too. He had never shouted at you like that. Not once.
“I am trying!” he said, breathing heavily. “Do you think I want to miss her performance? Do you think I want to come home every night and find out what I missed?”
“Then why do you keep doing it?”
“Because people are dying!” The words echoed between you, Clark’s chest rose and fell, You stared at him. He immediately regretted it, But you were already crying.
“I know.” Your voice was quiet now. “I know people need you.”
“Y/n—”
“I know you have to save them.”
“Please—”
“But I’m your wife.” He went completely still. “And she’s your daughter.”
His eyes started to fill with tears too. “Do you think I don’t know that?”
“Then act like it!”
You covered your mouth, trying to hold yourself together. “I am so tired, Clark.” His expression broke. “I am so tired of telling her you’ll be home when I don’t know if you will be.”
“I know, i’m sorry.”
“I am tired of sitting beside an empty chair, I am tired of being understanding.”
Clark looked at you. And for the first time, he realised how much you had been carrying. Not because you expected him to stop being Superman. But because you had been quietly trying to be strong enough for both of you. “You think I don’t want to be there?” he asked quietly.
“I think you want to be everywhere.”
He looked away. “That’s not possible.”
“No.” You shook your head. “It isn’t.”
The silence that followed was worse than the shouting.
Finally, Clark whispered, “I thought if I could save enough people, then maybe I could keep you both safe.”
Your heart broke. “Clark…”
“I keep thinking that if I miss one emergency, something happens. And then I come home and I’ve missed another thing here.” He laughed bitterly. “I don’t know how to be both.”
You softened. “Neither do I.” He looked at you. “I don’t know how to be the wife of Superman.”
You both stood there, exhausted and heartbroken.
Then Clark stepped closer. “I shouldn’t have shouted at you.”
“No, You shouldn’t have.”
“I was scared.”
“I know.”
“I am terrified that one day I’ll choose wrong.”
You looked at him. “Then stop trying to choose between us and the world.” He frowned. “You can’t save everyone.”
“I have to try.”
“I know.” You took a shaky breath. “But you have to let us be part of your life too.”
His eyes filled with unshed tears. “I don’t know how.”
“Then learn. Not for the world, but for me and you daughter.” The words were gentle, But firm.“You don’t have to stop being Superman.” Clark nodded slowly. “But you do have to stop acting like being Clark Kent is something you can do whenever you have time.”
that broke him, He looked down Because you were right. You had never asked him to stop saving people, You had only asked him to come home.
————
The next morning, your daughter woke up before sunrise. She padded into the living room in her pyjamas. “Daddy?”
Clark was sitting on the couch, He hadn’t slept, He turned around immediately. “Hey, sweetheart.”
She ran into his arms and He caught her tightly.“Did you miss my performance?”
Clark closed his eyes. “Yeah.”
She pulled back. “Why?”
He swallowed. “Because I was helping someone.”
She thought about this. “Did you save them?”
“Yes.”
She nodded. “Good.” Then she frowned. “But you still missed me.”
Clark’s face crumpled. “Yeah.”
She climbed into his lap. “Next time, can you try harder?”
A broken laugh escaped him. “I can do that.”
“Promise?”
He kissed her forehead, “pinky promise.”
⸻
Things didn’t change overnight.
Clark still had emergencies, He still had to leave sometimes, But now, he communicated.
He called when he could, He stopped making promises he couldn’t keep, He began protecting time for his family with the same determination he used to protect the city.
And three months later, he sat in the front row of your daughter’s next kindergarten performance.
She spotted him immediately and Her entire face lit up. “Daddy!”
The teacher tried to quiet her while Clark laughed softly, You reached for his hand and He squeezed it back.
When the music started, your daughter stood on stage, searching the audience.
And this time she didn’t have to search for him Because he was right there. Present.
Afterward, she ran into his arms. “Did you see me?”
Clark held her tightly. “I saw everything.”
You watched them, smiling through tears.
Clark looked over at you. “I’m sorry,” he whispered.
Plot: You and your best friend indulge in your inner child and buy some toys at the toy store, you caved and bought a Superman figurine. You never expected it to actually come to life. [WC: 8K]
Warnings: Nothing much. Inaccurate portrayal of your parents. Reader is mid-20s and very inexperienced romantically. Jealous, logical, and cynical MC I’m sorry. Also holy cow this plot is so stupid.
Disclaimers: The only Superman media the author has consumed is the 2025 movie so important lore might be missing. This fic was written 1 year before Man of Tomorrow comes out, so if Man of Tomorrow is actually really bad I had no idea.
It’s 7:35, which means you’re officially unloveable.
Michael from Hinge was supposed to meet you at 7 PM for dinner, but he hasn’t sent a message since yesterday’s “See you tomorrow :)” .
You’ve called three extra times and sent a couple of ‘Are you comings' to no response.
You sigh and grab your phone, fingers ready to type the dreaded words.
You: I’m pretty sure he’s not coming.
A loud “THAT BASTARD!” can be heard from across the restaurant as your best friend, Elora, approaches from her secret hiding spot.
Because, of course your best friend wanted to make sure you were safe in the creepiest way possible.
She huffily sits down in the empty chair in front of you and silently hands you a tissue.
“It’s okay, babe, I thought he was ugly anyways.” She says, patting your hand with an extra cheerful tone.
You thank her for the tissue but shake your head. “Relax, Elora, I’m not gonna cry over a guy from Hinge… I just wish I could go on a normal date like a normal person for once.”
Elora senses the tremble in your voice and immediately calls over a waiter and orders two servings of ice cream, her treat.
You sulk until your order arrives, complaining about all the red flags you should’ve spotted, and previous pick-up lines you’ve received that you never responded to.
“Who needs guys like Michael anyways? Fictional men are where it’s at!” She declares, stuffing her mouth with vanilla ice cream. “We need to find you a man like Ryland Grace.”
You scoff, rolling your eyes at the girl. “Men who actually wanna save the world only exist in comic books, they’re not real.”
Elora gives you a sad smile, patting your hand mournfully.
Suddenly, her eyes widened, a thought popping into her head. “Speaking of men who wanna save the world, I know what will make you feel better.”
You immediately know what she’s talking about. You’d always liked Superman, but the spark that really ignited your passion for him was the movie that came out two years ago.
You haven’t had a fictional crush since you were a teenager watching Spider-man: Homecoming for the first time, but something about that movie really made me realise how great of a character he truly was.
It wasn’t just the laser eyes and flying powers that got to you (though admittedly they were pretty cool), you genuinely loved his personality and the way he was able to inspire people to be a little bit kinder. You always wished you could find a guy who had that sense of heroic justice that he had.
You even shook Elora every time he came on screen during Supergirl last year, which is how she realised just how bad the obsession had gotten.
You had scheduled your date with Michael on the first day Man of Tomorrow was supposed to come out. Maybe you were secretly hoping that he’d read your mind and ask if you wanted to watch the movie after you two ate dinner.
You’re lost in thought when Elora pays the bill. She grabs your hand and runs to the cinema on the top floor of the mall with you.
You realised you didn’t need a man to see the movie with you, you needed a friend.
You felt a lot better. Seeing Superman really just lifts your spirits and makes you a bit happier. Okay, a lot happier.
“Let’s go to Toys ‘R Us!” Elora screams as she drags you to the store. She’s surprisingly strong for a 5’4 Filipino girl.
As you two enter the colourful room, she immediately spots a rack of cheap plastic toys.
“OOO! Look at this!”
She points to a small man in a plastic case with a tiny glitter bottle next to him.
Grow-A-Boyfriend!
Leave him in water overnight, sprinkle the growing dust, and watch how he grows!
“Oh, so it’s like one of those cheap capsule dinosaurs?” You ask, mildly unimpressed.
Elora’s enthusiasm doesn’t waver. “He’s a pure soul, uncorrupted by the evils of the patriarchy, and he’s made to love me!” She nearly swoons as she holds the tiny toy, unaware of the judgy cashier behind her.
You nod slowly, not judging her at all, but you definitely wouldn’t say a tiny plastic man is your ideal type.
You wander towards the boys section of the store, looking for those cute ugly dolls your friends have gotten obsessed with. You aimlessly roam, stopping at every cute Funko-Pop or Spider-man Lego set, but you come to a halt when something catches your eye.
A Superman figurine. It’s the one based on David Corenswet, but his face is slightly different. His stance is confident, like he’s ready to fight some plastic Lex Luthor.
You feel instinctually drawn to it, gently grabbing the box and observing the price. It’s just short of $30, but for some reason you feel the urge to buy it.
You haven’t spent money on something that wasn’t necessary for a while, and your date bounced on you, which means you didn’t have to pay for dinner. You had a couple dollars to spend on yourself, why not spend it on something that makes you happy?
“Growing a boyfriend~!” Elora sings as she unpacks the tiny man from his plastic prison. You turn on the bathtub faucet and wait for the water to start filling the space. You and Elora got very emotional in the car and decided to have a sleepover in your tiny apartment. And yes, maybe you did try to kiss your action figure a couple of times, it was to make Elora laugh, you swear!
You childishly hug your action figure tightly with one hand, filming Elora with the other. Girly laughs echo throughout the tiny bathroom.
“Why aren’t we just doing this in a bowl again?” You ask, rubbing your eyes, getting slightly tired. You place the Superman figure down on the side of the tub, and he watches as you and your best friend playing with toys.
She pouts at you. “Because we don’t know how big he’ll grow!”
“That’s what she said.” You laugh, groggily. You point at the Superman figure and in your sleepy daze, you swear he smiles back at you.
Elora smacks you lightly and drops the tiny man into the water. She opens the bottle of ‘magic glitter’ and spreads it into the water. You hope you don’t have to clean up all of that later.
“Alright, let’s sleeeeeeeep!!!” Elora drags you once again, this time out of the bathroom and into your bed, slamming the bathroom door hard.
You don’t even realise you left Superman in there, and you don’t even hear when he falls into the bathtub.
You wake up to the smell of pancakes and bacon. You wipe the sleep from your eyes and inhale the scent. Your best friend never cooks, so this is an insanely pleasant surprise.
“Elora, you didn’t have too…” you laugh, tiredly, getting up from bed, pushing the blanket off you and putting on your house slippers.
“Have to what?” She mumbles.
Your heart fell to your feet when you realised Elora was right next to you, still mostly asleep in your bed. She tugs the blanket tighter and rolls away to face the window.
Who the fuck is in your kitchen?
You cautiously grab a baseball bat from under your bed, warning Elora to stay where she is as you crawl out of your room.
You hear the faint sound of somebody whistling as the kitchen comes into view. You hear your heartbeat in your head as you draw your bat, and the minute you see a man in blue and red, you swing the bat as hard as you can.
And it breaks.
“Hi, hone- OW!” A deep voice says. The man in your kitchen clutches his arm lightly as you stare at the broken wood in your hand.
“Shit!” You scream in panic, stumbling into the ground, trying to back away as you start to get a clear view of the man’s face.
He tries to calm you down, putting his hands up. “Woah, there, I know you’re scared-”
“Get out of my house!” You yell, throwing the end of your broken bat at him.
Why the hell is this intruder in a Superman costume? You look up as you back into your wall. Why does he look vaguely like David Corenswet?
The man turns back to the stove and turns off the fire. You take deep breaths when he places the cooking bacon onto a plate with eggs on it.
“Who are you?” You sigh out, voice trembling slightly.
You can see the side of his lips curl into a smile as he grabs a spoon and fork.
“I think you know.” He says, placing the utensils next to the eggs.
Elora slowly walks in, you see her in the corner of your eye and start to scoot near her while the intruder isn’t looking.
“Who is that?” She whispers. You shake your head in response.
The strange man places two plates on the table, both filled with eggs and bacon. He looks up at you two, with a look that feels oddly kind.
“Eat up, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
You look around, almost as if I’m searching for cameras when you notice the bathroom door is open, and there’s a wet glittery trail leading from the bathroom to the kitchen.
Actually, the man himself is covered in the same glitter Elora used last night. You immediately get up and sprint to the bathroom, the Superman cosplayer tilting his head as you do.
In the bathroom there’s the boyfriend toy, about ten times bigger than he was last night, but not at all big enough to fill the entire bathtub. You left your Superman figurine in here last night, but he’s missing.
You scratch your head at this, your mind trying to create theories that die in seconds. You peek out the bathroom door and see Elora sitting down on the table, somehow not looking scared at all, and sitting in front of the man.
You slowly enter the kitchen-dining room again, hands clenching. Elora’s eyes catch you and she mouths ‘What are you doing?’.
“I’m not gonna hurt him…” You mutter. You grab the end of his red cape and pull it up. It’s still slightly wet.
‘McFarlane Toys™
Made In China’
There it is, printed on the back of his suit.
You drop the cape and it hits the ground.
“Whad’ya see there?” He asks.
Your action figure asks.
You stare at him, frowning, your thoughts going wild.
“How did you get here?” You interrogate, taking a seat next to Elora.
He smiles again, it’s an encouraging smile. “I hate to say this again, but I think you know.”
Elora inhales her plate, eyes switching back and forth between you and the man in front of her.
You take a deep breath and pinch the bridge of your nose. “You’re a… toy?”
Superman nods eagerly, crossing his arms. “I’m Superman. You bought me.”
You put your face in your hands, pure disbelief runs through you. “This is not real, this is not real, this is not real.”
“May I touch you?” He asks. It shocks you slightly, but you give a hesitant nod. “Uh… sure.”
Superman places a hand on yours, squeezing tightly. “I’m here.”
Elora jumps up. “Does that mean that my Grow-A-Boyfriend is real?!” She sprints to the bathroom. Superman and you watch as she enters, only to be quickly followed by a disappointed “Awww…”
Your eyes turn back to Superman. “What do you remember?”
He gave a short laugh and scratched the back of his neck. “Woof, that’s a hard one…”
He taps on the table with his fingers before he looks back at me. “My clearest memories… I remember waking up in the tub, wet and covered in glitter. I got out and opened the bathroom door to see the sun rising as you two were still fast asleep.”
“How do you know I was the one that bought you?” You ask, still confused.
He explains. “I have vaguer memories, more distant ones, and some that feel almost as if I was built with them. I have this blurry recollection of people walking around the store I was in, passing me by, and I remember the moment you saw me and picked me up for the first time.”
“What are the memories you feel built in with?” You ask again, Elora has now returned and sits back down with you, holding her boyfriend toy in her hands.
Superman looks into the distance. “Memories of Metropolis, the Daily Planet, Ma and Pa’s farm, Krypto, Lois, Kara, Jimmy… I remember them but the memories don’t feel the same as the memories I have of you. Not as real, like they were programmed into me.”
You nod, starting to process all of this. You look the man up and down, he looks like a real human. Well, not exactly. His skin has texture, but it’s still almost uncannily smooth, he doesn’t have a single hair out of place, and his suit looks nearly fused to his body. It’s almost scary.
You know magic isn’t real, but what else could explain what’s happening in front of you?
You dust off the glitter from his cape, to which he gives an appreciative “Thank you.”
Elora shakes you slightly, also suddenly processing all of this. “Did we just make Superman real?”
You tracked the time, it’s been more than 3 hours, and he hasn’t disappeared. You haven’t woken up, or died from carbon monoxide poisoning yet. He’s even gone to use the bathroom a couple of times.
He seems oddly attached to you as well, constantly trying to sit next to you and see what you’re doing. The only time he’s put space between you two was when noon hit and he decided to make you three some lunch. You never realised how cramped this apartment feels with 3 grown adults in it.
Elora is still around, trying to help you deal with the situation.
“We can’t just keep him locked up in here, it feels wrong… but we can’t really let him go out looking like that.” She gestures to his brightly coloured attire, and you nod in agreement.
You tap your feet against the carpeted floor nervously, picking at the skin on your fingers.
“I’d like some new clothes, if it isn’t too much trouble.” He politely inputs as he cooks up some luncheon meat.
You feel bad rejecting the ask, so you think about it for a few seconds before you sigh and agree, there’s a shopping mall connected to your apartment building anyways.
You can’t let what’s essentially a living breathing human being stay trapped in your apartment.
“It’s fine, people might just assume he’s cosplaying since Man of Tomorrow is still on its opening weekend.” You rationalise. “We go after lunch.”
“Dude, nice cosplay!”
“Dad, it’s Superman!”
“I’m sorry to bother, are you David Corenswet?”
“Oh no, he’s just our friend in a costume, sorry!” You quickly mutter, trying to escape the situation.
“Can I at least have a photo?” A woman asks.
Superman nods, you and Elora get handed three different phones, taking pictures of at least five different people.
Once everyone has dispersed, you and Elora push Superman into the first store you see, which luckily was the Mall’s department store. People still stare and whisper, but you try to pay no mind.
You hand Superman your credit card. “Elora and I will just be around, don’t spend more than $70.”
He happily accepts with a big thank you, as he grabs a basket and starts to fill it with pants, jackets, and flannels. He picks out outfits you swear you’ve seen him wear in Smallville, it’s comically fitting, the red and blue fabrics fit him perfectly.
A child approaches Superman, screaming “Mom, Mama, it’s Supaman!!!”
Superman greets the kid, looking at the two women for permission before carrying the child and spinning around.
He whispers something you can’t hear that makes the kid giggle, and you can’t help but smile despite the fact you want him to keep a low profile.
Elora catches you staring and nudges you. “Hey, you’re blushing.”
You glare at her. “What the hell? No, I’m not! That’s a walking action figure.”
Elora shrugs and rolls her eyes, playfully, at you. “Whatever you say…”
After a few minutes, you get distracted on your phone, but Superman finds you again at the entrance of the store, and he gently pokes your shoulder.
“Could you, uh, follow me to the changing room? I need some help… taking the suit off.” He whispers in your ear, with a slight blush on his face that reminds you he’s also Clark Kent.
You awkwardly nod, refusing to look at your best friend who you know is wiggling her eyebrows at you right now.
You guide him to the changing room and make sure no employees are watching as you enter with Superman.
The tiny room is cramped, with the big man in front of you taking most of the space. He turns around to face the mirror and you take a few seconds to examine his body, trying to figure out how to do this. You remember at breakfast his suit seemed attached to his skin, but now it looks like it’s just skin tight.
He notices you staring and chuckles lightly. “It’s behind my…”
“Got it.” You assure him as you slowly lift up his cape, finding a zipper.
“I’m kinda surprised the suit isn’t just fused into your body, it wasn’t removable when you were a toy.” You observe.
He shrugs, shivering slightly as you pull the zipper down and the air hits his back for the first time.
“Thanks, uh, I can-”
You understand what he’s trying to say and you exit the changing room, finding a seat to sit on. How fucking weird is this situation?
After a few minutes, he comes out, dressed in slacks and a dress shirt, he apparently already has socks, but no shoes, you shake your head and hope that’s a problem for later.
You’re sort of in awe, he looks like he’s just come home from the office, the clothes look like they always belonged to him. You give him a thumbs up to which he smiles.
“That’s it?” He asks playfully.
You scoff. “It looks good, Superman.”
“Clark.” He corrects, with his index finger pointing up. “You can call me Clark.”
Your cheeks heat up slightly for no reason. “You look good, Clark. You look really… human.”
For some reason, this compliment gets him embarrassed, and he scratches the back of his neck. He nods and mutters a small ‘Thank you’, before getting back into the changing room.
After he undresses, his hand peeks out from behind the curtain, with all the clothes he tried on in a basket.
His head peeks out too and he sheepishly tries to talk to you. “Go pay for the items, then hand them to me here so I can change immediately.”
You smile at his thoughtfulness, realising he’s willing to sit there in the cold changing room just so you don’t have to deal with people asking for photos again.
You pay for the clothes, which ends up costing $65, and head back to the changing room to give Clark the black slacks and white dress shirt he had shown you along with some cheap-but-nice shoes they were selling.
He comes out of the room, and gives you a little spin.
“Feel a bit more like yourself?” You ask, unable to stop a smile from growing on your face.
Clark nods boyishly, interlocking your arms and getting ready to exit the department store.
As you get ready to meet Elora at the entrance, you hear a cashier from behind you gasp as he sees Clark’s face. You groan.
“That’s it.” You grab some aviator glasses off a rack and quickly head back to the shocked cashier to pay for it.
The cashier can’t even finish his “Have a great day-” before you’re speed walking back to Clark.
“Put these on, please.” You hand them to Clark, stopping yourself from practically shoving them onto his face. He carefully puts them on and blinks a few times.
“This feels familiar.” He giggles and you two finally exit the store with Elora.
Elora had to leave for a date halfway through the day, but not until you reassured her you could take care of a grown man-doll.
As much as you wanted Clark to keep hidden as much as he can, he couldn’t help but help everyone in sight. Picking up kids when they fell down, asking for money to buy someone an ice cream after they had dropped theirs, he even greets the people that pass him by and tells them they look great.
“What about me?” You tease, in response to him telling a woman her hair looked fantastic.
He loses eye contact with you and his face turns comically red. “Well, I mean- I always think you look good.’
You couldn’t help but wonder if the ‘magic’ glitter altered how Clark felt about you. You guide Clark into an Italian restaurant you and Elora frequented. Not too fancy or expensive, but still had a nice atmosphere.
You and Clark sit down at a candle-lit table opposite each other, to which he smiles at you.
“Is this a dinner date?” He asks politely. “Cause, I don’t really eat…”
You raise your eyebrows at him, before realising you didn’t explain to him you were just trying to take advantage of being at a mall for once.
“Oh! Well, I… it’s just supposed to be dinner for me.” You explain quickly. Why are you acting so nervous suddenly? You hand him a menu but you can’t help but notice he looks slightly disappointed.
“Why? Did you want it to be a date?” You ask carefully. His eyes move up from the menu to look at you. “It’s just… you haven’t really been acting the same since I turned human.”
When he refers to himself as human, it does feel like a bit of a shock. Well, he has preferences, he can talk, he has empathy it seems, but he’s not really made of flesh and bone? In your head he’s still a doll that turned big.
You shake those thoughts from your head and focus on the rest of what he said.
“What do you mean by acting differently?”
He blushes again, scratching the back of his neck. “Well, you were really… affectionate, the night you brought me home, but when I came to life you just… I-I just feel like it would make you more comfortable if I wasn’t here.”
You feel a pang in your heart. You didn’t realise your stress and confusion had been affecting him as well. It’s not like he asked to come to life, but he is, and he can’t help the emotions he’s feeling. You don’t want him to feel like you don’t want him there, because if you don’t want him, then who will? He’s got no one else but you right now.
And after the pang you suddenly feel a wave of embarrassment, realising the ‘affection’ he was talking about was you kissing a children’s toy. You shrink in your seat.
“Oh, Clark…” You hold both of his hands, causing him to drop the menu in shock. “Look, I may not have expected you here, but I don’t want you to feel like you’re not wanted. It’s just taking me some time to get used to having another person around, especially since that person is… you, and you’re different.”
He gives a sad smile at the word ‘different’, but he nods understandingly.
“What are we then? I feel this… natural urge to care for you and love you, but if you don’t want it, I won’t force anything.” He looks into your eyes, seeking some kind of answer.
You purse your lips, not knowing what to say. “That’s a complicated question, Clark… but I’m glad you’re asking it.”
“I thought I wanted a boyfriend, but I don’t know how I feel about literally creating one. I don’t even know if that’s even, like, ethical.” You give an awkward laugh. “I always said I wanted to date Superman, but I only said that because it wasn’t a real possibility for me at the time. I think it would be best for us both if we didn’t think about romance just yet, and just figured out how to make life comfortable for you and I right now.”
Clark takes in all your words, like he’s trying to fully understand your thought process, and he lets go of one of your hands to run it through his hair. “That makes perfect sense to me, I’ll refrain from acting like we’re a couple, I’ll get a job so I can afford my own things, and I’ll wait for you to figure out how you feel about me. But, I just want you to be aware that I do have feelings for you.”
You blush at that last sentence, covering your face with your free hand sheepishly. “No one’s ever said that to me before.”
Clark tilts his head and lifts your chin up. “That’s a shame.”
You open the door and Clark walks back into your apartment.
You open the pull out couch and place your unused blankets on it as Clark takes a shower. You laugh to yourself at the thought that he might turn back into a tiny figurine.
You change into your sleeping clothes, sitting on the couch with your legs resting on the extended area. You rest your head on the back rest and slowly fall asleep with your phone open on a voice note to Elora.
“Elora, he says he has feelings for me…” You mutter into the speaker. “Gee, that says a lot about me, huh? The first guy who ever liked me is a toy. I guess guys who want to save me really aren’t real...”
Your words turn to snores as you drift away to dreamland.
The bathroom door creaks open as Clark uses a spare towel to wipe his hair, droplets of shower water falling onto his new pajamas.
He spots you on the couch and smiles, imagining you two falling asleep side-by-side. But he knows you’d only freak out when you eventually woke up, so he gently carries you onto your bed by the windowsill, patting your head.
He tucks himself on the couch, embracing the smell of your apartment, and he dreams of Metropolis.
“Clark, you seriously don’t have to do all the cooking.” You almost feel guilty stuffing your face with the fresh and warm pancakes Clark’s made for you.
He shakes his head like you’re being ridiculous. “Nonsense, you’re doing more than you need to to take care of me, this is the least I can do to pay you back.”
Clark sits down in front of you but you notice his gaze moves past you and stays on the window by your bed. You swallow a mouthful of toasted bread before you say “Clark, you can sit on my bed if you want.”
“Oh no, it’s…” He instinctually declines your politeness before looking back at the bright sky. “Can I open the window?”
You nod once again, and he gets up with his breakfast plate, placing a hand on your shoulder as he walks past you.
You get up as well and you two find your spots on your windowsill mattress. He looks beautiful with the morning sun shining on his face, you don’t even feel guilty staring, because anyone would.
The wind blows on his face, and his eyes shut, taking it all in. “Is there a rooftop on this building?” He asks.
You nod. “Can we go? Later?” He asks.
“Yeah, sure. Why do you ask?”
Clark presses his hand on the edge of the window sill, a small sliver of sunshine hitting his fingers.
“I miss the yellow sun.”
“So, can you like… fly?” You ask, squinting your eyes at Clark. You haven’t been up here in so long.
Clark puts his fist up in flying position and jumps, only for his feet to quickly fall back onto the ground.
He shakes his head, cracking his knuckles. “I feel… I don’t feel my powers like I think I should. I don’t feel… extraordinary like I imagine I should.”
“You broke my bat, though. You can’t fly but you still have super strength?” You point out.
He chuckles and shrugs. “Might be the life-sized toy effect, I’m not exactly sure what you’d find if you cut me open right now, but I doubt it’d be organs.”
You wince at the graphic description but accept his explanation. He pats his chest and encourages you to throw a hit. You laugh and throw a lazy punch.
“C’mon you can do better, you can’t hurt me.” He encourages, his hands doing a ‘come on’ gesture.
“Oh, you’re gonna get it now.” You warn with a grin, you hit him as hard as you can.
He didn’t move, but his eyebrows raised. “Oh, wait…”
“What happened?” Your smile slowly fades as you retract your hand. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head. “No, it’s just… I felt it.”
“What?”
“It didn’t hurt, but I actually felt an impact, not just a touch, the feeling of contact, like when your bat hit me.”
“Wow, way to call my swinging skills lame…” You tease, bumping his shoulder with your own.
“See! There, I felt it again!” He points at you eagerly. “I feel you.”
Your cheeks feel like they’re on fire as you turn away, sitting on the edge of the building, trying to soak in the sun. “Does that mean something is changing?”
Clark sits down next to you, breathing in the warmth of the sun.
“I love this. I wanna stay here forever.” He breathily admits.
He rests his hand on your waist, to make sure you don’t accidentally fall over.
You know he’s just a toy but he really looks like he’s warming up in the sun, like some deep part of him is being healed. You’d go up here with him anytime he asked.
“I insist you sit down.” You say sternly.
“I insist you relax.” Clark jokes and lifts you up without any effort.
You two are fighting over who gets to cook dinner tonight, Clark, being the angel that he is, insists that he do it.
You cross your arms and huff as Clark gets his way, he smirks and ruffles your hair, and you swear, he nearly kisses your cheek, but instead he pulls away and goes to make ‘breakfast for dinner’.
Knock, knock, knock
You and Clark’s heads immediately snap towards the door. You weren’t expecting any company, so you slowly got up and approached the door.
“Baby! How have you been?” Your mom hugged you as soon as you unlocked the door.
“Ah, how is my darling?” Your dad joins in, hugging you as soon as your mom lets go.
“Oh, uhm, I’m good, dad-” You try to make small talk but you hear your mom shriek from behind you.
You instantly turn around and see Clark waving at her slowly, with the silliest smile on as your mom’s hands are clasped on her face.
“Who is this?” Your mother demands. “You have a boyfriend?”
“Mama, it’s not what it looks like-” You try to settle the situation down, but your parents are immediately all over him.
Your father smacks him on the back, it’s supposed to be friendly, but even indestructible Clark has a reaction to it. “You’re a big guy, huh? How did you and my child meet?”
Clark straightens up his glasses. “Hello, sir! Uh, we met at the toy store-”
“Like a few months ago! He’s just sleeping over for the night.” You quickly interrupt, your brain running wild, trying to come up with a fake story to tell your parents.
“Sleeping over with your boyfriend…” Your mom says, scandalised. “Well, I suppose you’re grown up now…”
Clark blushes at the word boyfriend, going back to keep cooking dinner.
You guide your parents to the dining table so they can continue to interview you.
“What’s his work?” Your dad asks.
“He’s a journalist.” You respond quickly, a bead of sweat falling down. “But writes under a pseudonym and he’s currently looking for another job.”
“How long have you two been together?” Your mother queries.
“Maybe six months now, but we’ve known each other for years.”
“Why haven’t we heard about him?” They ask at the same time.
You nearly start shaking, but Clark turns around and gives you a nod of reassurance. You take a deep breath. “I’ve been posting about him on Instagram, mama. Don’t you follow me?”
Your mother and father take a sigh and shake their heads in disbelief. “Darling, you know we use facebook more.” Your father says.
“Oh, sorry, pa! I’ve just posted so much about him, I would’ve thought you’d heard about him by now.” You give a fake laugh, but you know your parents can’t tell the difference.
“Ah, I’m sorry I forgot to ask.” Your mother places a hand on yours. “What’s his name?”
You stutter as you stare at her, trying to come up with a fake name.
“Clark.” He says before you can. “Clark Kent.”
There's silence in the room.
Before your dad bellows out a laugh.
“Clark Kent? Your parents named you after Superman?” He stands up to give Clark another pat on the back. Clark gives a faux-guilty nod and an abashed smile. You know your dad doesn’t recognise faces, so you’re not surprised he doesn’t realise Clark’s striking resemblance to the super hero.
“It’s quite silly, I know, but I think it fits me.” Clark smiles, he’s suddenly carrying four bowls of mac n’ cheese. You get up from your seat to help him set the bowls and spoons down, to which he gives you a small ‘Thanks, honey’ and kisses your cheek.
You blush as you fall back into your seat and let Clark charm your parents.
“Now, you have to call us once a month and update us. I don’t want you getting engaged without telling us first.” Your mom scolds as you essentially push her and your father into their car.
“Yes, yes, mama, I love you!” Is the last thing your parents hear before the car doors shut and they drive away.
Clark places a hand on your shoulder, but you get the feeling he wishes he could do more, so you turn around and envelope him in a hug, right there, at night, in the parking lot of your apartment building.
“How are you?” You two say at the same time. Too tired for a big reaction, you two just let out an exhale and head back up the elevator.
“How are you?” You ask again, staring at him through the elevator mirror.
His eyes smile back. “I like your parents.”
“You don’t have to lie.” You nudge him, as the elevator dings and opens on your floor.
He follows you and places a hand on your shoulder to let you know he’s being serious. “No, no, I really like them. They care about you a lot.”
You roll your eyes, opening the apartment door. “They’re tired of me. I know they wish I was doing better at this point in life. They’re mad when I’m not married, they’re mad when I have a boyfriend. I can’t win with them. I’m never up to their standards of what a normal person my age should be doing.”
Clark makes a sad expression as he takes off his shoes. “I think they just worried for you, and they can’t help but be worried no matter what’s happening because they want the best for you.”
You groan, huffing as you sit on your couch like a kid. “Ugh, Clark, why do you have to be so perfect? I wish you’d just get irrationally mad with me sometimes.”
Clark carefully sits down with you, with one arm around your shoulder, and the other rubbing your arm comfortingly. “I just want you to see the world through someone else’s eyes.” He says as he rests his head on your shoulder. It’s a nice feeling, that you’re giving the nicest person, or, well, toy, on Earth some comfort.
“Do you feel bad that I have to keep you a secret?” You ask genuinely concerned.
He gives a sad smile. Clark Kent gives you a sad smile. “I’m used to keeping secrets.”
“Like a real-life Superman, this 6’3 man saves a kitten from a tree!” The semi-viral news clip on your Twitter feed replays for the 30th time. 20,000 people are obsessed with the kind and hot man who looks a lot like Superman.
You admit, you’ve watched it multiple times just to see that clip of Clark smiling with the cat in his arms. He just… he looks really good. But there’s this jealous part of you that doesn’t want this many people to be perceiving him. It’s a bit… a lot selfish, but you wish he was all yours.
It’s been around two weeks now, you and Clark have been growing closer, and Clark’s been loving the real world. Seriously, you don’t understand how he can just find something to love about every person. It makes you hate yourself a little bit, that you can’t be like him. Maybe this is why Lex Luthor is the way he is. But you try. Whenever you’re off to work, you try to spare change for the homeless, or compliment the person whose shoes you were staring at. It makes you feel a little better to see someone smile because of you. You tell Clark all about this at the end of the day, and he always smiles and tells you he’s proud of you.
Clark found a part-time office job that requires no experience. You don’t exactly understand what it is, but you support him nonetheless. The more Clark leaves the house, the more you miss him, and you’ve been missing him a lot recently. You two even slept on the couch together after you had a nightmare, and you may have caught some-
No, that’s ridiculous. He’s a toy at the end of the day. He’s a toy that magically came to life with magical grow-a-boyfriend glitter, can he even consent? You can’t seriously be so desperate that you go for a fucking plastic doll based on a fictional character.
Be a goddamn normal person for once.
You hear a muffled but enthusiastic “I’m home!” through the door, and shut your phone off immediately, running to meet him.
“Hi, Clark.” You greet.
Clark gives you a quick hug before taking off his shoes and entering the apartment.
“Do anything fun today?” You ask, wondering if he’d brag about the kitten he saved.
Of course he doesn’t. “I got another job today! It doesn’t pay too much, but the man running the shelter really needs a lot of help, so I volunteered and I also found a couple more people who are willing to help out. We’re doing it for free until we get more donations.” He rambles on, unpacking his bag (your highschool messenger bag) on the dinner table, and you just sit in disbelief of how a single living creature could be so kind.
As much as you want to bask in his incredibleness all day, the cynical part of your brain kicks in. “I saw you, uh, saved a cat today on the news.”
He turns around with a smile. “His name was Skimbleshanks, yeah. What about it?”
You rub at your elbows, not even understanding why you’re getting upset. Clark notices immediately and drops what he’s doing to grab ahold of your shoulders.
“Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” He asks. God, why do his eyes shine? Why is his skin so textured? Why does he breathe in and out like his body is trying to convince you he’s a real human being? It just hurts.
“I… I guess I’m just worried about people questioning you? Or maybe I’m worried about you running out of clothes for the office- Shit I… Fuck, Clark, I’m worried about everything and nothing, don’t mind me.” You hit your temple with the heel of your hand, like you’re physically trying to shake the thoughts out of your head.
Clark tuts, you know he wants to correct your language but he holds back as he pulls your wrist away from your head. “Hey, let’s talk about this. Let’s figure out what’s going on in your head.”
You look at him for a second and, fuck, your heart tugs, like it’s begging to get closer to him. You pull away, heading to your bedroom.
“Don’t you worry that if you keep getting yourself into dangerous situations that people will start investigating things about you?”
“Then I’ll dawn the Superman persona and I’ll do it in disguise.”
“That won’t work, life isn’t like cartoons, Clark, you don’t have hypno glasses or a population that isn’t crazy enough to dox you.”
“I doubt anyone would want to target you or I for random acts of kindness.”
“That’s not the problem, Clark.”
“Then what is the problem?”
“I don’t know!” You finally assert, raising your voice in a way you never did in front of Clark. Or anyone for that matter.
Clark doesn’t flinch, but his face does fall. His fist clenches, not out of anger, but frustration.
“Do you need some space?” He asks, so gentle it hurts.
You look down at your feet, so ashamed of the fact you’re acting like an actual toddler right now. So confused by their feelings that they throw a tantrum and hurt the one person who’s trying to care for them. Clark takes your lack of an answer as a yes and puts on his shoes to exit the apartment.
“I’m not mad at you.” You whisper.
You’re lucky he heard it. “I know.” He turns the doorknob. “I’m not mad at you either.” Click.
Jesus fucking christ, what did you just do?
Why are you even acting this way, he’s just a fucking toy! You’ve never felt this way about a stupid plastic object before.
You do what you always do when you have a problem, and you call Elora.
The phone rings for barely a second before her face shows up on your phone screen.
“Oh my gosh, angel!!! You will not guess what happened. I got another one of those grow-a-boyfriend packets and one of those Ryan Gosling Ken dolls, and now I have my very own RYAN GOSLI-” her rant freezes when she finally looks at your face.
“Oh… honey, why did you call?” She wonders. “Where’s Clarkie?”
Your nose scrunches at the nickname. “Don’t call him that…”
You roll your eyes. “He’s a goddamn toy, Elora, can you actually be serious for once?”
Elora frowns at you, but she’s known you long enough to know you’re just being mean cause you’re upset.
“Honey, why did you call me?”
“I…” You pout. “Fuck, I actually like him. Am I a freak for that?”
Elora smiles. “No, honey! Why would you even say that?”
You scratch your head. “He’s not human.”
“How is he not human? What do you think a human is?”
“A living breathing creature with four limbs-”
“Bap, bap, bap! Watch it, not all humans have four limbs.”
“Oh… well a living breathing creature that speaks-”
“Not all humans speak.”
“That cries-”
“I’ve never cried.”
“Fine! A living breathing creature that can handle and practice the concept of empathy?”
She tilts her head with a smirk at that answer. “Clark does all that and more.”
“Fine, fine. But- I just… he’s different.”
“Everyone’s different, idiot! Some humans speak different languages, and some don’t speak at all. Some people look a little or a lot different. Some people were born from wombs, and others from test tubes. Clark was born from the mind of two men, and came alive in your bathtub.” She says, like it’s the most normal thing.
“Look, what matters is that Clark has a working brain and a moral compass that teaches him what’s right and wrong. He’s an adult, who breathes, who lives, who helps. It’s not wrong to love him just because he’s different.”
You pout, taking in Elora’s words. “Why do I feel so guilty about it then?”
Elora shrugs. “That’s for you to figure out, lovie. Anyways, I have to go, Ken is taking me out to the beach!”
You blow a kiss to Elora and she hangs up.
You look at the sunset, wondering about Clark’s whereabouts.
Then you realise you know where he is.
You close the door to the rooftop as quietly as possible, but of course, he hears you.
He sits on the tall edge of the building and pats the seat next to him, inviting you to join him.
You instead stay standing and place your arms where he patted.
“Do you wanna talk about what happened?” He asks, looking directly at you.
You nod, resting your head on your folded arms. “I know why I was mad now.”
“And what was it?” He cocks an eyebrow, but his tone is genuine.
“Myself. I was mad at myself for not being normal and I was projecting it onto you.”
Clark doesn’t try to reassure you that you’re normal, or explain that everyone is a bit abnormal, it’s like he knows you don’t need to be babied, so he just nods.
“I like you, Clark. And I guess I was telling myself you weren’t perfect enough for me, but the truth is you’re the only perfect person I know.” You admit, and it’s like poison falling off your tongue. It’s painful but necessary.
Clark smiles at you, and turns away from the sunset so his body faces you.
“I’m not perfect by any means, but I do want to be with you.”
“You make me a better person, Clark. I’ve never known I had the power to take care of anyone, I’ve never had someone to show me the other side of the story, or encourage me to be kinder. You do all that for me. I was so scared of feeling, but I realise now what I was feeling was for you.”
Clark takes a hold of both of your hands, and suddenly you notice it. They’re scraped, a tiny bit of blood seeps out.
“Clark, you’re bleeding!” You exclaim.
Wait.
What?
“You’re… bleeding?” You question, you look up at him to see that stupid smile you love so much.
He laughs instead of nodding, wiping the blood away. “It just happened today, I guess I’m changing. Is it okay if I’m not the indestructible Superman you love?”
You shake your head. “You’re the only Superman I love.”
Clark bends down, cups the side of your face and leans in.
“Can I kiss you?” He asks, with a genuinely nervous look on his face.
You smile and pull him in by the blue collar he keeps hidden under his work clothes.
And for once, you don’t need to feel normal, because you feel human.
A few months later you’d probably ask Clark what it means to be human.
Elora jumps up. “Does that mean that my Grow-A-Boyfriend is real?!” She sprints to the bathroom. Superman and you watch as she enters, only to be quickly followed by a disappointed “Awww…”
corenswet!clark kent x fem!reader
𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: a situation in Gotham kept Clark away from you for days and your teasing isn't helping him in his hard situation...
𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐬: 18+ mdni; smut smut!!; p in v sex; unprotected sex; mild dry humping; some fingering; clark's oral fixation; clit stimulation; lemme know if I missed any!
𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬: 2.1k
𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐫𝐲: left this in the drafts for months. . .whoops🤭! i also got tired of beta reading so grammatical errors are to be expected. . .enjoy and tell me what you think tho!
The steam blows into your face as you pushed open the bathroom door, unable to see your figure in the clouded mirror. Sighing at the strain on your whole body and relief at the silhouette inside the shower.
Clark leans his head back when he feels your arms wrap around him, the feeling of your bare body behind him making him sigh. You hiss at the water’s temperature.
Kryptonians and their heat resistance, you rolled your eyes. And, as if reading your mind, he turns the knob, the boiling water slowly losing its heat.
When he turned to face you, his hands immediately trail down your body before taking the your loofa and soap in his hands. He lathered soap across the familiar curves of your body but did so as if it’s the first time he’s ever done so.
But behind his soft caresses, you could feel him kneading your flesh with desperation and realize that he wanted more when you’ve stepped out of the shower with your warm bodies wrapped in robes.
He practically glued himself to your back and you felt him.
He followed every step you took until your hips hit the counter, and groaned when you teasingly swayed your hips making you giggle.
“What?” You chuckled breathlessly at his gentle but firm grip on your waist, always mindful of his strength.
“You sweet, sweet minx.”
Clark noses at the crook of your neck but inhaling your scent only made him harden further.
“Love,” Clark chuckles when you feigned ignorance, humming questioningly at him when you reached for your toothbrush. Only for it to clatter on the counter when he spun you around. Your body grew warm at the smile stretching across his face as his head tilted, looking at you through squinted eyes.
You bit your lip, trying to contain the thrill that ran down your spine. The look on his face may have been pure sweetness on the outside, but the need to feel you have consumed his entire being.
The recent attack in Gotham had forced Bruce to ask for help and kept Clark away from you for days—he’s had his fill of the gloominess that never seemed to fade from that city’s atmosphere so your teasing after days of painful longing for just a glimpse of you had him the tiniest bit frustrated.
You might argue it’s only been four days, but for him it’s four days too long. Four gruesome days of not having you in his arms, separated even in your sleep.
You spin around and toy with the wet curls on the back of his head before cupping it, angling your face to close the gap between you. Finally giving in before you’ve provoked him further—before he ignores the already pooling arousal between your legs.
But Clark didn’t give you the pleasure of feeling his soft lips against yours. Making you gasp as he spun you back around, the motion causing your robe to slowly slide down your shoulders, his lips following the cloth down and up your shoulders. Hooded eyes looking at you through the mirror as his breath grazes your ear, causing you to whine.
“Please…”
His large hand gropes your breast, thumb playing with your pert nipple through your robe. Playfully nipping at your eat before softly pecking the sensitive skin of your neck.
“Hmm, I thought you didn’t want to?” His voice was breathy, lightheaded just from your closeness.
“Clar-k—ah.”
He continued squeezing your breast lovingly—thumbing your nipple through the fabric of your robe when your fingers desperately pulled the strands of his hair.
Clark couldn’t get enough of your scent, even with his face buried in the sensitive skin of your neck, the scent of your arousal pooling between your thighs had a trembling sigh escaping his lips.
You released your bruising grip from his hair, slowly guiding him past the slit of your soft robe to the heat between your thighs. “Oh, honey…” your heat welcomed his thick fingers immediately, clenching around him, afraid he’d pull away—tease you further.
But in Clark’s eyes, you were the tease.
Your reflection rivals the moon that he’s seen up close—your heaving breaths made your robe slip down your shoulders with only his thick hand keeping the fabric from revealing you.
The scent of your arousal had his already ragged breath stuttering in his chest—it didn’t help that he could feel the sweet stickiness between his fingers drip down his wrist and the need to drop to his knees to devour you consumed him.
Yet, he didn’t listen.
Instead, he scissored his digits as he thrusted his fingers making you mewl at the stretch.
“Nggh—Clark….” You throw your head back and Clark took the opportunity to softly kiss your temple. The softness in his touch a contrast to the deep push and pull of his digits.
“I know, honey. I know.”
You braved a look at your reflection and already saw him watching every twitch of pleasure on your face. Watching you was enough for him, and while you share the same sentiment when he’s the one falling apart in your hands, you couldn’t go on feeling empty when you could feel his arousal leak through your robes.
“Need—Clar—please.”
And ever your good boy, his hand bunched up your rode around your waist, smoothly parting your legs with his foot to make room for his throbbing length to nudge its way in between your weeping slit, with the help of his fingers still flush against your clit.
You were about to open your mouth and complain again but the feeling of his fat throbbing tip prodding your hole only forced a groan from your throat. “Good— Cla-rk!”
“Gosh-honey—I-you-golly.” His forehead sought out the warmth of your neck, struggling to keep his brain from melting as he pushed further into you. He failed. Your warm walls squeezed him as he pushed in, gripping and pulling him in like it always does, and he couldn’t help the pathetic sounds that left his throat.
He felt your hand on his waist, thumb rubbing circles on the skin of his hip—as if drawing him out of his brain before he could melt further into it.
Which he did when he felt your fingers flex and his ringing ears cleared up enough to hear your honeyed voice, “Move, honey.”
His hips started moving before he even registered it, slowly, at first, letting out small hiccups of breath against your shoulder before he squeezed the flesh at your hip reverently, pulling far enough back until he missed the warmth of you back and pushing back in.
The groan that left him came from the depths of his chest, the sound causing your needy pussy to clench and leak around his cock further.
His breaths came out in uneven puffs against the sensitive skin of your neck, and with his jaw growing slacker came his mewls in even louder volume. “Mmm- mghh!” You could feel his cock throbbing, “Clark….”
“Hmm?” He asked deliriously, propping his chin on your shoulder and looking at your reflection through lust-lidded eyes. “Need you to go faster, hun..” You pressed your forehead to his temple and saw his gaze fixed on the bounce of your breast—growing more frequent as his thrusts grow deeper and faster.
He felt himself throb at the sight of your scrunched up face against his, “So good f’me, Clarkie…”
His jaw slacks at the feeling of your sloppy kisses from his jaw to the corner of his mouth, almost instinctive when turning his head in your direction—but you don’t let him, not yet. Instead, your fingers dug into his cheeks as you dragged your tongue flat across his cheek to his ear. His hips stuttered, once, twice before a gush of warmth flooded your insides and your wrist is dripping from his squished lips.
You place a tender kiss on his temple and hum when you feel his hips—still twitching and quivering—start to move again. Deeper. Hitting that gummy spot inside you with one particular harsh thrust.
“Go—d! I wanna…have you like this all the time.” He all but slurred out as his hand gripped your hips as he kept pistoning into you from behind, it left your chest stuttering and your hands searching for purchase on the marble against your hips.
His whole face was flushed as you looked at him through the massive bathroom mirror, watching his robe start to slip off his shoulders, the flush on his face spreading down his freckled chest.
Clark nestled his chin in the crook of your neck before wrapping his thick arms around your waist, hips somehow moving faster than before.
He looked at your reflection through hooded lids and his mouth agape, convincing you to shove two fingers, which he immediately started sucking.
“All—ah—th-time?” Your eyes roll to the back of your head when you feel one of his hands squeeze your breast, tweaking your nipples between his fingers.
The globes of your ass pressed flush against his pelvis as he dug himself deeper into you, the sticky mess where your bodies connected squelching obscenely with every pump of his hips.
It didn’t take long before he took his fingers to your neglected clit. He pinched the throbbing bud, causing your fingers to press further into his throat, making him gag and drool further on your hand.
“Alf—da-ffffrickim t’me.” Punctuating his muffled words with each thrust.
And, oh, you wished he would. You wished he’d just take you whenever he felt like it—wished that he’d be just as needy as he was now. Because even as his hands tremble with trepidation—instinct most like—his mind has melted enough that he’d only care for the bruising of your hips against the counter later.
Now, all his usual apprehension vanished into thin air and it’s addictive.
“You can take me whenever you like…” your words came out in broken breaths, feeling drool slip through the corners of your mouth and doing nothing about it. His repeated abuse on your walls pushes out your arousal, creating a white ring at the base of his cock.
The force of his hips against yours shook your fingers out of his mouth, digits trembling against the marble counter as you try to ground yourself. Your drenched fingers making it harder to do so.
He let out an animalistic groan at your words, brain already clouded with visions of him fucking you—waking you from your slumber with his harsh thrusts and wandering touches, maybe even bury his cock in you during your reading time, just warming you from the inside. Clark’s knees almost buckled at the thought.
“Fuck, I will…Thank you, honey—I will,” his sweet voice breathed. “I promise. I—I’ll even spread your legs an—mhng—jus’…suckle on your clit while you nap. You’ll lemme do that—will you? Please?”
Clark’s voice tilted to a needy pitch, temple pressed against yours as his eyes never waver from yours in the mirror. He was tipping from the height of his pleasure, you could tell, and he was taking you with him with every brush of his tip against that sensitive, spongy spot in your cunt.
You look up at the mirror and watch as his form cages you in, back hunching over your bent form while his fingers continue to happily palm your breast and tease your clit between his fingers.
His fingers freeze in time with his hips, sweaty skin molding into your back as he groaned out—the pinch on your clit was what broke you. Your back arched against his chest, nipple grazing the cold marble, and as the white hot pleasure consumed you, traveling from your head down to your fingertips, you felt his thick hot arousal splash in your walls.
He was everywhere in that moment. The cold marble was a stark contrast to the warmth that engulfed you—from the heat that his body exudes across the expanse of your back and his arousal that now traveled down your thighs.
You try to blink the heaviness off your eyes, lashes fluttering rapidly against your wet cheeks, and you were met with the sight of Clark’s eyes already on you. There were still dark, the blues of his eyes a mere rim around his pupils, still bleary but, oh, did they hold so much love.
After everything, he had the gall to look sheepish, to smile shyly—pushing in his dimples—before kissing your flushed cheek. “Thank you…” he breathed, and it only made you laugh harder.
“No need to thank me, honey.” you say, leaning further into his touch.
“Still.”
Ever your stubborn boyfriend, he still thinks that you and your touch was a gift he was oh so lucky to be blessed with—to be surrounded with—like he was a mere man and you were a goddess.
One that he cannot handle being separated from—even if it was only for a few days.
💌 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐥𝐨𝐫𝐞:
that black cat(antihero)!reader and clark story? yeah it might not see the light of day...
A/N: here's pt 2 finally, sorry!! :) (@iadoreyourdiioorr wanted to be tagged, Sorry this is like 2 months late)
PT 1: Office Crush!
╰────-·-ˋˏ-༻༺-ˎˊ·-────╯
It was Friday night, the day after your cute co-worker had spilled coffee all over your shirt. He had kindly asked you on a date, and you couldn’t help but except while trying to hold back a huge grin.
A quick knock to your front door and you rushed to open it, your make-up perfect, your casual evening dress and heels that clicked—all for Clark. You swung the door open and there he stood, flowers in hand and a grin on his face that could charm anyone's socks off. “Hi!” you exclaim, stepping aside to let him in, the door clicked shut behind him.
He turned to look at you, holding the flowers out. “Hi… you look beautiful,” Clark said, red climbing up his ears. He wore a suit, per usual. It sat on his broad shoulders, a little baggy, like he was ashamed of his size. You took the flowers, a smile lighting up your face. You stuck your nose between the petals, inhaling slowly, looking up at him. “Thank you, how’d you know these were my favorites?”
Clark shoved his hands deep into his pockets, his eyes roaming over you. No hunger was behind it, just curiosity and admiration for you. “Cat told me,” he said. You stifled a laugh thinking about him timidly asking Cat, and knowing Cat, she took him under her wing happily.
“Well, where are we going for dinner?” you ask, thinking maybe he picked a casual pizza place, or maybe burgers. But no. “That new Italian restaurant down the street? That's okay?” Clark reassured holding his arm out, which you clung to. That restaurant was really nice, and people had been raving about how good it was, but you avoided it because it was on the pricey side.
You gave a nod and he smiled, starting to guide you. Clark may be shy but he was no stranger to conversation, he was good at bringing up topics, asking you questions, adding his own two-bits in. He was a very smart, talented writer, and he was well traveled. Making him all the more interesting.
The restaurant was packed, but he pushed through, people naturally parted for him considering he was huge. “Reservation for two under Clark Kent,” he said casually, the woman smiled in acknowledgment and guided you through full tables to an empty one just for you two. Clark pulled the chair out for you before sitting on the opposite side.
What a gentleman.
Dinner was a breeze, you shared dishes and laughter. When it was a serious conversation, his eyes looked into yours with rare attentive intent. You watched his small movements, the way he pushed his glasses up after they’d fallen down his nose, how his fingers fidgeted with a fork or straw. It was different from work, he allowed his eyes to linger and his smiles were warmer.
You dug through your purse when the check was set down, but he snatched it up before you could even see the price. “Clark! I don’t expect you to pay for it all, this place is expensive,” you said, your voice fading off as he got out his own credit card. “I want to, I ruined your shirt!” he insists.
“It’s just a shirt!” Clark shook his head, handing the check off to the server. “A pretty shirt! One with little ruffles, that I can tell makes you feel very pretty. As it should,” he rebutted. It had been your favorite work shirt, but so what?!
“Thank you.” Your cheeks heat at his attention, he’d noticed? That every time you wear it you feel just a bit more confident? You reach a hand across the table and put it over her, he grabs yours, giving it a squeeze. A dorky smile spreads on his face, one that makes his eyes crinkle and his dimples poke out of his cheeks.
Upon walking home, you debated the idea that winter was better than summer, as the Metropolis streets were dark but still too hot to be on. Clark agreed to disagree, that he preferred the winter because it reminded him of home. You believed that summer felt like freedom.
At your door, you felt reluctant to let him go. He lingered too, shifting on his feet like he was just as reluctant to leave. He adjusted his glasses, swallowed hard, making his adams apple bob.
You grin upon realizing he was waiting for permission. You step forward, wrapping your arms around his neck and rising onto your tip toes for a kiss. He meets you halfway, months of silent yearning is packed into this kiss as he presses his lips to yours.
Usually you didn’t let guys in on the first date, but those pathetic puppy eyes were hard to resist.
And you did a lot more than let him in.
On Monday morning, you dropped a coffee off on his desk, your fingers brushing as he passed it on. You smirked while he flushed red.
The memory of him panting and whining underneath you, his beefy shoulders and calloused hands, sticky with sweat, tensing with each roll of your hips was enough to make him shiver thinking about it.
↳ Warnings/Themes: None unless you count that it's my first time writing Clark!
↳ Pairing: Clark Kent x Reader
↳ Words: 1725
↳ Summary: 4 times you almost found out that Clark Kent was Superman (and the 1 time you did).
☁️: first ck fic and it's only right it's inspired by two shows sosooo dear to my heart; Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Superman & Lois. Inbox is always open to talk all things superman ❤︎
General Masterlist here. Clark Kent Masterlist here.
I. The Crush
"I’m just saying," Lois muttered, leaning over your desk and rewinding the video on your laptop for the third time, “the man was practically drooling. And look at his body language.”
You sighed, rubbing your temples as the video feed played back Superman answering your final question. “Lois, for the hundredth time, it’s part of his whole routine to be all suave and charming. He was just playing it up for the cameras.”
“He was the same off camera,” she countered, a knowing smirk playing on her lips. She paused the video and crossed her arms, leaning against the divider of your cubicle. “You shouldn’t question my journalist abilities. I’m telling you; Superman likes you.”
While you had no doubt about Lois’ abilities, this sounded a bit too far-fetched, even for Lois. You couldn’t help the laugh that bubbled up, shaking your heard as you glanced away from her and looked across the busy Daily Planet Bullpen. “Well, I’d hate to be the gal that broke Superman’s heart but I’m not interested in him.”
Lois raised an eyebrow, picking up the hint in your voice. “Oh? But you are interested in somebody.”
“Yup, a certain dorky reporter from Kansas,” you murmured, a genuine smile on your face as you spotted him.
Right on cue, Clark came shuffling out of Perry’s office, a stack of papers balanced precariously in his arms.
“Clark!?” Lois squeaked as quietly as she could. “You like Clark?”
“I do,” you replied.
Across the room, Clark’s head snapped towards your direction so fast that his thick glasses slipped down his nose. He stared right at you, wide-eyed and breathless, as if you’d just called his name.
You tilted your head slightly, there was no way he heard that conversation, right? You kept watching to see what he’d do next and the effect was instantaneous. He turned too quickly, attempting to make his escape but ending up crashing, and subsequently falling over, the rubbish bin. The stacks of paper in his hands went flying in all directions. The handful of pens he’d had in his breast pocket slipped free, clattering to the floor beside him.
Lois winced at the sight. “Seriously? You’d choose the guy currently apologising to a piece of office furniture over the guy who could fly you across the world?”
“I would,” you laughed, already standing up to go and help him gather his papers.
II. The Close-Up
You chewed thoughtfully on the bottom of your pencil as you stared at Clark’s side profile, having completely given up being subtle.
Clark was focused on the screen in front of him, typing furiously to meet Perry’s deadline.
“Are you staring at me, or just zoning out in my direction?”
His voice broke the silence, thick with amusement. He didn’t take his eyes off of his monitor, but a soft, dimpled, smile was on his face.
"I'm staring," you admitted honestly, not even trying to deny it.
“O-Okayyy.” He turned to look at you then, and you took the opportunity to lean forward, resting your chin on your hand.
It was as if your brain was hitting a brick wall. It infuriated you to no end, every time you looked at him, you could swear you’ve seen his face somewhere before. But every time you were right on the precipice of figuring out exactly who he reminded you of, a strange mental fog would roll in, making your mind go black just as the pieces were about to connect.
Looking at him now, beneath the obviously oversized clothes and his hunched posture, he was undeniably handsome. You traced the sharp line of his jaw and his deep dimples all the way up to the way his soft, dark, curls fell perfectly across his forehead. and his eyes, even behind the thick, slightly smudged lenses of his glasses, were an impossibly bright blue.
A sudden wave of déjà vu hit you, causing your breath to hitch. You were flashing back to three nights ago, when you were high above the Metropolis skyline, pressed against a chest that was as broad as Clark’s looked, looking up into those exact shade of eyes.
“You just really remind me of someone," you murmured, the pencil dropping from your fingers. "I can’t remember who but it’s right at the tip of my tongue..."
Clark snorted a little too loudly before turning back to his computer monitor.
Awkwardly clearing his throat, his hands came to frantically adjust his glasses, pushing them higher up the bridge of his nose. He slumped a little lower in his chair.
"Uh, probably just some guy from your local store," he stammered, offering a sheepish, crooked grin as he swivelled his monitor toward you. "Hey, do you... what do you think, is this headline too wordy? I’ve rewritten it four times and Perry is going to be so angry if I don't turn it in."
You blinked, the fog settling back over your thoughts as you looked at the screen, the mystery slipping through your fingers once again.
III. The Delivery
It was one of those days where the weight of the deadlines and the grey skies outside brought the mood of the entire bullpen down. You were slumped at your desk, resting your forehead against the cool wood as you let out a dramatic groan.
“If I don’t get out of this office soon, I’m going to lose my mind,” you muttered into the desk.
Clark, who was sat beside you as always, chuckled. “Hungry?”
If there was anybody who could decipher your moods, it was Clark. You hadn’t even realised you were hungry until he had said it.
“Starving,” you whined, turning your head so your cheek was pressed against the wood. “I would honestly give my left leg for a that pastry we had from the little bakery we found.”
Clark paused, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. An incredibly tender look crossed his face, his eyes softening behind his lenses. "Paris, huh? That’s a bit of a trek for a Tuesday lunch break."
"I know, I know," you sighed, sitting up and rubbing your face. "A girl can dream. I'm going to go stare at the vending machine and pray it has something better than stale food.”
"Actually," Clark said, suddenly standing up and smoothing down his shirt. "I need to go grab a coffee from the breakroom anyway. And I think I left some notes in the archive downstairs. Give me fifteen minutes?"
"Take your time," you mumbled, already turning your attention back to your screen.
Exactly fourteen minutes later, a delicious scent hit your nose as Clark placed something down beside you. You looked up from your screen and blinked.
Sitting on a clean napkin was a pastry. Not just any pastry, it was perfectly golden, flaky to the point of shattering, and dusted with a light layer of powdered sugar. The only time you’d seen a pastry that perfect was on the trip you and Clark took to Paris last year.
You stared at it. Then you looked up at Clark, who was calmly sipping a cup coffee.
"Clark," you whispered, your voice trembling. "What is this?"
"Oh, that?" He rubbed the back of his neck, his cheeks flushing slightly as he looked anywhere but at you. "Uh, funny story. There's this... new bakery just down the road. They import... stuff. I ran down there to get a coffee and they just happened to have a fresh batch from Europe. Crazy coincidence, right?"
You picked it up. It was warm. How could it have been imported and warm? It was like it had been pulled out of an oven twenty minutes ago. Paris was a seven-hour flight away.
“A new bakery,” you repeated slowly as the corner of your lips tugged into a bright smile
“Yeah,” he responded, smiling back at you so wide his dimples appeared.
You shook your head, slightly confused but not wanting to question as you tucked into your pastry. You let out a soft moan as the food touched your tongue. Behind his coffee mug, Clark took a slow breath, hiding the slight breathlessness in his chest from flying across the Ocean and back just to make you happy.
IV. The Rescue
You were crossing an intersection together, arguing over who was writing the front-page headline, when a driver blew past a red light. Tensing as you braced for impact, you squeezed your eyes shut, knowing there was no way you could move in time.
You barely had time to scream before the world blurred. There was no impact, just a sudden gush of wind that slapped your face and a bizarre sensation of floating.
When your eyes blinked open, you were standing safely on the far curb, tucked securely against Clark’s chest.
Across the intersection, the car sped past, completely oblivious to the fact that they almost flattened the two of you but, somehow, didn’t.
"Wow," Clark stammered instantly, his voice high and nervous as he quickly stepped back, adjusting his glasses with trembling hands. "We... wow... we must have jumped fast. Adrenaline is a crazy thing, huh? Good reflexes."
You didn't answer. You just stared at the empty intersection, then back at Clark, your heart hammering against your ribs. There was no physical way two humans could have leaped that far, that fast.
V. The One Time You Did
It happened late at night on your apartment balcony. Superman had just flown you back to safety after a close call downtown. The adrenaline from the danger was finally fading, leaving you with a weird emptiness as he set you down.
You stepped closer to thank him, reaching out to gently touch his arms, then his hands.
“I’m running out of ways to thank you, Superman.”
“You never have to thank me; I’ll always be there for you.” Superman reached out, his hand gently cupping your face.
And then, everything stopped.
The warmth of his palm felt identical to ones you’d felt before. It was a feeling you’d recognise anywhere. It was like the fog that was clouding your mind for months suddenly disappeared, leaving an overwhelming sense of clarity. Your hand moved up, covering his over your cheek.
Looking up into his eyes, the realisation washed over you. as his breath hitched, you softly whispered, “Clark...”
If you enjoyed, please consider leaving a comment, ask, reblog etc. it means a lot x
Scott decides Storm Par should join the rest of the storm chasers for a day at the beach. Of course, he has to bring along his wife and their 10-month-old daughter Ruthie Jean.
(reader has no physical description other than being shorter than scott. it is also mentioned that reader breastfeeds. no y/n. this is mostly about scott and ruthie but reader is beloved by all. this is my first reader insert so go easy on me <3 why are the storm chasers at the beach? idk. baby's named ruthie jean because scott is southern. it also kind of just... ends? sorry!)
Word Count: 1.9k
It was rare for the Storm Par crew to have days like this. The nature of their profession meant they were often landlocked, miles away from idyllic lounging spots on the shore of salty water. That was what made Scott Miller’s suggestion for the team to hit the beach not seem totally anomalous. Just because Scott was stoic and curt didn’t mean he wasn’t human. The Wranglers were there already, so it was only fair to join them. Human nature was what brought Storm Par to the beach on a day off; it was also why Scott insisted on meeting the team there after he stopped to get somethin’. Only Javi knew what he meant, but he didn’t answer any questioning looks from the rest of the team. So, when Scott Miller’s truck pulled up to where they had set up for the day, no one batted an eye. The moment he got out of the truck and made a beeline for the passenger seat and flung it open, that’s when the shock set in.
Climbing out of the passenger seat with the help of Scott’s steady extended hand was a woman. You were such a tiny thing standing beside Scott once he got your feet onto the floor, looking up at him with a sweet smile. Scott gave you a quick kiss before handing you a bag from the passenger seat. As you adjusted the bag on your shoulder, Scott moved onto the back seat. Right as the back door opened, a tiny voice squealed from the backseat. A smile that Scott Miller never wore on the clock spread across his hardened features as he leaned forward into the back for a short moment before he hauled a small infant out of the truck and onto his hip. The little one was narrowly about to age out of infancy and was especially tiny in Scott’s hold as he planted a smacking kiss on the baby’s chubby cheek while she babbled away.
“Is that my favorite Miller?” Javi called out from the sand, setting his drink down on the lid of a cooler before jogging over. “Scotty finally brought the only reasons I still keep him around!”
“Ha ha,” Scott deadpanned as he adjusted the little bucket hat on his daughter’s head. “I wasn’t gonna leave them at the hotel while you jokers spent the day on the beach.”
“I wasn’t going to let you,” you chimed in with a pleased grin.
It was true, the beach had been your idea anyway. You were the one who had suggested it to Javi the night before when he joined the Millers for dinner. Then, he mentioned it to Kate the next morning when they got breakfast and she had been the one to put the plan into motion. When she then messaged you saying you had to be there, you have Scott a look that told him the beach wasn’t up for a debate. It wasn’t a suggestion. It wasn’t a request. It was happening.
From there, the folks of Storm Par got to watch Scott Miller be a doting husband and father at the beach behind looks of pure disbelief. Their dark sunglasses would typically hide their obvious observation if not for their unmistakable shock. First, the man ensured his wife was comfortable and sufficiently lathered in sunblock before insisting you join Kate and a few Wranglers in the water instead of fretting over him or the baby. Javi hung back with Scott and chatted about baseball of all things, Javi drinking a beer while Scott opted to share a water bottle with the baby.
The whole point of this was for you to get some time to just be a person and enjoy a day at the beach. Scott always sought to do that. It had always been a priority that you got to still be your own person, not just his wife or your daughter’s mother. So, when we saw you unwinding in the shallow waves with some Tornado Wranglers, he lounged with your chunky baby girl in his lap under the shade of an umbrella with Javi not too far off to the side, watching the waves from a beach chair.
He took his time, carefully covering his daughter with infant sunscreen, being mindful to get in between the adorable rolls of fat on her limbs and under her chin. After seeing a baby with bright red toes at the park, Scott always made sure the baby’s feet and toes were protected from the sun too. Scott couldn’t help but coo over her, showering her with little kisses on her giggling face and sweet words reminding her how beautiful she is. Most of the storm chasers watched him, absolutely dumbfounded.
“I know, pretty girl,” Scott hummed when his little Ruthie Jean whined at the feeling of the cool cream on her warm face, taking her little foot to kiss the sole. “But we have to make sure you protected. No sunburns on Daddy’s watch. Your Mama and my Mama would have my head.”
“Dada!” Ruthie whined again, kicking her chunky legs restlessly. “Ow!”
“Ow?” Scott frowned, immediately ripping his hands away and scanning her from head to toe with vigilant eyes. “Am I hurtin’ you, princess? ‘Ow,’ where?”
“Ew!” the little one sputtered out with a sob and a scrunched button nose, but Scott noted there were no tears in her big blue eyes, only frustration as she weakly kicked at his hands.
“Then say ‘Ew,’ please,” he sighed and continued massaging the cream on his daughter’s soft skin. “You scared me. Daddy thought he was hurtin’ you.”
“Ow!” Ruthie giggled through her phony pouts, laughing and kicking her legs again when Scott gasped animatedly with his hands ripped away.
“No!” Scott groaned playfully, leaning forward to kiss Ruthie Jean’s chubby cheek. “No ‘ow’s. Daddy would never hurt you, baby bug.”
Javi was the only one who didn’t blink an eye. He was the only one who got to see Scott over Zoom meetings from home with a babbling Ruthie Jean in his lap. Out of all the storm chasers, Javi was the only one currently invited to Ruthie’s first birthday party coming up. However, Scott knew that the more time his wife spent with the other storm chasers, the more likely that would change. There were already rumblings of the upcoming event Scott overheard from his wife when she trotted off with Kate and Boone. It was a massive deal, in all fairness; their baby girl was celebrating a year of being the best thing to happen to her parents. Scott had always dreamed of being a dad and you had given him the most perfect child. Ruthie Jean was a healthy baby girl, the apple of her Daddy’s eye, and always got strangers cooing at her. As the person on the field closest to Scott, Javi was more than familiar with the soft dad side of him. The cute babblings and exaggerated smooches he overheard were nothing new to him, but were like looking into another dimension for everyone else.
Scott, to their disbelief, was the most affectionate and loving father and husband. His dedication to his wife was equally as evident in how often he sought the sight of you out in the water, only content to return his attention to Ruthie when he confirmed Mrs. Miller was happy and safe. They all knew about you, though. He wore his wedding band every day without fail and most of them had seen the small photo he kept tucked in his phone’s clear case. It was of you and Ruthie sporting the brightest smiles the two of you could muster and it always put Scott at ease. The case and photo had been something you had given him at the beginning of the chase season, just a few months ago, and he never went anywhere without it. But that was your Scott, not many people got to see your Scott the way you and Ruthie Jean did.
He stretched out on his back with the little one sitting up on his ribs. With his eyes closed, Scott went between giving Ruthie some teething toys to play with and gnaw on and running his fingers through the dark curls trailing down toward the nape of her neck once she ripped her bucket hat off. She was so adorable in her frilly little pink swimsuit and half of her dark curls tied into two of the sweetest teeny pigtails. Her dimples were deep in her chubby cheeks, and an obvious Miller birthright, so easily attributed to the tall, grumpy MIT graduate.
“M’mma,” Ruthie babbled after a short while of smacking her drooly little hands on her Daddy’s broad chest. “M’mma. M’mma.”
“Momma’s swimmin’, bug,” Scott hummed with his hand rubbing the baby’s back soothingly. “She’ll come back in a little bit. Just sit with me for a minute.”
“M’mma!” Ruthie whined and reached for Scott’s chin, who then readjusted her to be flat on her tummy on his chest so he could cradle her comfortingly.
“Momma’s having fun right now,” he murmured against her dark curls before kissing her head. “You can relax with Daddy to let her do that. We’re okay here, just us. Right?”
“Dada.” Ruthie hummed, her chubby little hand reaching for Scott’s mouth this time, causing him to grab her tiny wrist to press kisses to her palm.
“See?” Scott chuckled and tucked the baby’s face under his chin when her long, dark eyelashes fluttered with sleepiness. “Just take a nap with me, sugar. Momma will be back by the time you wake up.”
“She’s gorgeous!” A voice yanked Scott out of his peaceful nest of love for his baby girl, peeking out of one eye to see Tyler Owens approach, with Kate following close behind.
“I’m aware,” Scott replied shortly with his eyes closed again and his hand rubbing Ruthie’s back when he felt her sit back up to coo at Tyler.
“Hey there, darlin’!” Tyler greeted the baby once he crouched down to be closer to her eye level. “My, you are even prettier than your Mama!”
“Momma!” Ruthie Jean cheered with excited claps that picked up when she saw you approach from behind Kate, bouncing her diapered butt up and down on Scott’s chest. “Momma! Momma!”
“She gets all her pretty from her Mama,” Scott added with a grunt as he sat up, hauling Ruthie up with him to greet his wife. “Hey, baby. Fun swim?”
“The water’s beautiful, Scotty!” you cried and took the baby from your husband without a word when the little one reached for you. “You should go for a swim! I think your daughter’s hungry, so she’s keeping me here for a bit.”
“I can wait.” Scott shook his head, helping you sit on an unoccupied beach chair with a hand hovering around you as you held Ruthie against your chest. “We can all go swimming once she’s full. Maybe even after she naps.”
“She won’t get a second of sleep out here, babe.”
“Maybe,” he hummed, rubbing your bare shoulders before draping your thin swimsuit cover-up over your shoulder to give you and Ruthie privacy. “Then, we can take her to dip her toes in the water. She’ll love that. I can wait for my girls.”
While Ruthie got to nurse, Scott fed you some fresh fruit the two of you had brought and made sure you stayed plenty hydrated. He was always looking after both of you, not just Ruthie. It was obvious that his role as a husband was just as important to him as his role as a father, and that made his recent interest in possibly making Ruthie Jean a big sister not sound all too crazy.
The next time Jason saw you, you were in his apartment and he was without his mask. He saw you and quickly aimed his gun at you. 'Easy, hood. It's just me,' you said with a smirk.
'Fucking hell...'
'You guys make it really easy to find your real identities,' you said. He rolled his eyes and turned the lights on.
'Easy for someone like you. So, you want to tell me what exactly you are? You move between shadows like you're apart of them, you can vanish into thin air and your face doesn't show up on security footage,' Jason said as he walked closer.
'That's exactly why I'm here. If we're going to be working together you should at least know the truth about me,' you said as you placed a file on the table of a deceased girl. He took it and looked at it in confusion.
'She looks just like you... Was she your sister?'
'No, she's me,' you said.
'Y/N, huh...? So, why are you legally dead?' he asked.
'Because I am dead, Jason.'
'I'm not following, princess.'
'We're a lot more similar than you realise. The Lazarus pit brought me back...in a way.'
'You were in the pit?' Jason whispered in shock.
'Pieces of me at least,' you muttered. 'Bastard who killed me wanted a cover up, so he called in some...help. The help happened to be some of Ra's al Ghul's men. They threw my butchered pieces into the pit, they didn't really think anything would happen. Somehow I was brought back despite it just being bits and pieces of my body. The rest is just made up of whatever the hell the Lazarus pit is and...death,' you tried to explain without sounding completely insane. 'I don't fully know the story myself. All I know is that I was brutally murdered, shoved in the pit and I came back and murdered a bunch of people before recovering my past and remembering who I was.'
'Sure, of course you get cool powers from the pit. I just get trauma,' Jason teased as you laughed softly. 'So... Who killed you?'
'A friend... Someone I thought was a friend,' you whispered as you looked away. 'What he did to me is...something that no one should ever have to go through. After I remembered everything I vowed to rid the world of those people.'
'He...raped you before killing you?' Jason whispered sadly.
'Yeah... Then chopped my body up and tossed it in a bag,' you whispered as you turned away from Jason. He stepped closer and gently placed his hand on your hip. Your body felt odd, a way he couldn't quite explain. Like he was touching a thousand little electrical molecules.
'I can't imagine what you've had to go through,' he whispered.
'But you can... You went through a similar thing. Beaten to death and left like you're nothing,' you said as his grip tightened. 'You understand my anger...my madness. I'm guessing you also get those terrifying fucking Lazarus pit nightmares?'
'Nearly every fucking night, princess. Is that why you feel so familar? Because we were in the pit?' he whispered. You slowly turned around and looked up at him.
'Probably... There's always been some kind of link between people brought back by the pit. You think the bat family are going to be an issue?' you asked as he smiled and pulled you against him. The way he touched you was gentle and reassuring, it was nice considering you'd had no one touch you for three years.
'We won't let them be an issue... I want you to stop killing. Maime, dismember, torture whatever you want, but we aren't killing. That's my only rule,' Jason said as you looked at him.
'Why don't you want to kill them?'
'Death would be mercy to them,' he said as you moved closer. You had thought he would say something about justice, but knowing he wanted them to suffer only made you more sure of him. You smirked and glanced at his lips. 'If I didn't know any better I would think you want to kiss me.'
'Maybe I do. So what?' you said before he held your face in his hand and kissed you. You held onto his arm and melted into the kiss. You hadn't had any kind of affection or intimacy in so long, let alone with someone that understood your pain.
--
You woke up the next morning in Jason's bed with your head on his chest. You hadn't felt human in a long time, Jason made you feel like that. You stood up and started grabbing your clothes. 'Running off already?' Jason asked. You looked back and looked at him.
'I shouldn't have done this,' you whispered. Jason could see you were panicking and stood up.
'Y/N, you can go if you want but I don't regret any of this. What are you scared of?' he asked. You sighed and sat on the edge of the bed.
'I don't know... I've lived for so long just hunting people and surviving. It's been a long time since I just let myself live or...be touched,' you whispered. Jason looked at you sadly, he knew all too well what it was like to be in your position.
'I understand what it's like, Y/N. It's hard to remember how to be human after being dead for so long. Are you feeling guilty?' he asked as you glanced at him.
'Yes... How did you know?'
'Cause that's how I felt. I felt guilty for being alive, anytime I did something I enjoyed I felt extreme guilty. I wish I could explain why, but it's just something that seems to happen with trauma. Or with being brought back from the dead,' he said as you chuckled softly.
'This is going to sound weird and pathetic...but you're the only thing that's felt real in a long time and I'm scared I'll become obsessed with that feeling and you'll leave,' you whispered.
'Well, how about we just keep each other in check? If you start fawning over my amazing body and face I'll bring you back to reality,' he said as you laughed and shoved him a little. 'And if I start being a cheesy dickhead from a rom com movie you can stab me.'
'Oh, I'll keep you to that. You really think the two of us can actually...exist together without tearing each other apart?'
'Oh we'll definitely tear each other apart, may as well enjoy it while it lasts right?' he said with a smirk. You chuckled and looked at him, you wanted this to last, you really did.
pairing: bucky barnes x reader | 10.2k words | modern soulmate au
warnings: explicit sexual content (18+), soulmate bond/past life memories, multiple lifetimes, memory flashes, discussions of war, brief references to trauma/recovery, love at first sight across lifetimes, wedding night smut, destiny vs choice, happy ending
summary: when you and bucky reach for the same bag of lemons at the farmer’s market, the touch triggers flashes of the many lifetimes you’ve spent loving each other. as those memories keep surfacing, the two of you have to figure out what it means to fall in love again in the life you’re living now.
authors note: this is very loosely inspired by everything is romantic by charli xcx, and by “loosely” i mean i took several lyrics, made them devastating, and then built an entire soulmate reincarnation love story around them. many many thank you's for this fic! thank you to @/iamthatonefangirl and @/barnesonly for organizing our bwat summer collab; go check out everyone else's work! thank you to my baby, @/pinksplace for giving this idea and listening to me continuously crash out about it🫶 and a very special thank you to @/buckybsdoll for not only beta reading it, but for also encouraging this fic is indeed NOT buns, and i can do hard things. love you all🩷
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Saturday mornings belong to James Buchanan Barnes.
That is what Bucky tells himself, anyway—what he has been telling himself for the better part of three years, ever since recovery stopped feeling like a cliff edge and started, slowly, cautiously, feeling like a road. Not an easy road, not a straight one, but a road all the same. Something he can wake up and keep walking.
Saturday means the same coffee stand on the corner where the barista with the chipped purple nail polish starts making his drink the second she sees him coming. It means the farmer’s market under the green-striped awnings in the square, where he buys a loaf of crusty sourdough from the old Polish couple in stall fourteen and fresh eggs from the woman who always insists the yolks are brighter in spring. It means peaches if they’re in season, because one summer in Wakanda he had bitten into one so ripe it had run down his wrist and made him laugh out loud in the middle of a field, and ever since then peaches have felt like proof of life. It means flowers some3times, too, if the apartment feels especially bare. Something cheap and cheerful in a mason jar on the kitchen counter. Something that says a man can make a home even if he was taught for years he did not deserve one.
It is a good routine. A hard-won one. Bucky likes the honesty of it, the way these small rituals ask nothing of him except that he show up.
This morning, June sun already warming the pavement, his paper cup of coffee hot in his hand, he feels almost light. The market is crowded enough to buzz but not so packed he gets hemmed in. A violinist near the fountain is playing something bright and quick. Someone’s kid is trying to pet every dog within reach. The air smells like basil and strawberries and the faint yeasty sweetness of fresh bread.
Bucky buys his loaf first. Then tomatoes. Then a bunch of green onions. He pauses at the peach stand, testing one for give with his thumb, and decides they need another week.
By the time he reaches the citrus table, the vendor is rearranging pyramids of lemons in rough wooden crates, their skins bright and dimpled in the morning light. Bucky reaches automatically, already picturing chicken piccata for dinner, and another hand reaches at the same exact moment.
Your fingers brush his.
The world splits open.
One second he is standing in the farmer’s market with coffee on his breath and sunlight on the back of his neck, and the next—
Neon. Laughter. Chapel bells tinny through cheap speakers. Your mouth, painted the color of a ripe cherry, open on a breathless laugh. White satin clinging to your hips. A fake Elvis in a rhinestone jumpsuit grinning around too-big teeth beneath a plastic crucifix bolted crooked over the altar.
Bucky gasps.
The bag of lemons slips from both your hands and tumbles to the pavement, yellow fruit rolling in wild directions as if they’ve been startled too.
The vision doesn’t stop there. Visions of different lifetimes flash through his eyes like he’s watching the life of ten different couples all at once.
A steering wheel under his palms, worn smooth with use. Summer wind through open windows. You in cutoff shorts, feet on the dashboard, singing badly and loudly while the road curls ahead of you like a dare.
White sheets. Lace curtains breathing in a warm midnight breeze. Gold band on your finger catching moonlight where your hand presses against his chest. Your mouth moving against his throat with a broken little sound that is half laughter, half prayer.
A rough cabin wall. Splintered pine under his palm. You in a wool shift with your hair braided down your back, cheeks wind-burned, smiling over your shoulder as foxes cry somewhere out in the dark and a baby sleeps in a cradle by the fire.
Smoke and jazz and blackout curtains. East London. Silk black as sin against your skin. Your hand catching his by the wrist before he can disappear back into the war.
A beach. Bright afternoon. Children shrieking at the tide. Orange drinks sweating in glass pitchers while he kneels in the sand with his sleeves rolled up, helping a little girl press shell fragments into the turret of a sandcastle, and you walk toward him laughing, sunlight at your back so fierce it turns you to gold.
Then all of it is gone.
The market snaps back into focus so suddenly it hurts. Sound crashes in—vendors shouting prices, stroller wheels rattling, the violinist sawing away by the fountain. Bucky stumbles backward a step. Across from him, you catch yourself on the edge of the citrus crate, looking exactly as wrecked as he feels.
Your eyes lock on his.
“Oh my God,” you whisper.
Bucky’s heart is pounding hard enough to bruise. “You saw that too.”
It isn’t a question.
In this world, everybody knows about soulmarks and first-flashes. Knows that when you meet the person your soul is tied to, memory can strike like lightning. Some people get a single image. A porch swing. A train platform. A hand in a hospital room. Some get a rush of several lives at once, enough to leave them reeling for days. Most people dream of it when they’re young. Spend adolescence looking at every stranger a little too long. Wondering when it will happen, if it will happen, whether the person on the other end of them is alive or halfway across the planet or just around the corner.
Bucky stopped wondering a long time ago.
HYDRA did not leave much room for destiny.
You swallow. “That was not normal.”
“No,” he says, voice rough. “No, that was… not.”
The lemon vendor is gathering the fallen fruit with admirable indifference, the kind that says he has seen stranger things at this market and will see stranger still. “You two need a minute?” he asks.
You make a sound that could be a laugh or a near-sob. “Maybe five.”
Bucky buys the entire bag of lemons because it feels like the least insane thing he can do, then follows you blindly toward the edge of the square where there’s a row of benches under a sycamore tree. The shade dapples your face when you sit, and for one unmoored second he knows the pattern of it. Not from now. From somewhere else.
He stays standing until you glance up at him and pat the spot beside you with a shaky hand.
“You’re real?” you ask once he sits.
He almost laughs. “I was about to ask you that.”
You rub your palms over your knees as if trying to ground yourself. You’re wearing denim shorts and a white tank top and sunglasses pushed up into your hair, and you look like someone who belongs to summer. Not delicate exactly, but bright. Alive in a way that makes Bucky’s ribs ache. “I know this is a weird question,” you say, “but are you going to tell me your name, or am I just supposed to keep calling you fake-Elvis-groom in my head?”
“Bucky,” he says automatically. Then, because he has spent years relearning how to offer the softer pieces of himself without flinching, he adds, “James. But people call me Bucky.”
Your mouth curves, the first real smile since the vision hit. “I’m glad to know at least one of us looked better in Vegas.”
He huffs out a breath that is almost a laugh. “I looked good.”
“You looked reckless.”
“That too.”
You tell him your name, and the moment it lands between you something in his chest settles with a frightening kind of certainty. Not because fate says so. Not because the universe stamped your names together in some cosmic ledger. Because the sound of it moves through him like recognition. Like stepping into a room he did not realize he had been trying to get back to his whole life.
For a while neither of you says anything. The market hums on around you. Somewhere nearby, a dog sneezes. Someone drops a crate. Bucky stares at the paper sleeve around his cooling coffee and tries to swallow around the strange thickness in his throat.
“I’ve heard of people getting strong first-flashes,” you say at last, quieter now. “But not like that. That was… a lot.”
“A lot,” he agrees.
You tilt your head toward him. “How many do you remember already?”
He thinks of the chapel. The truck. The bed with the lace curtains. The cabin. The club in London. The beach. “Six,” he says. “You?”
“Same.”
A breeze stirs the leaves overhead. It smells like sun-warmed bark and citrus oil.
“I don’t know what to do now,” you admit.
That, strangely, is what steadies him.
Because Bucky knows that feeling. Knows what it is to be handed something overwhelming and not know where to put it. Knows that survival sometimes looks like doing the next smallest thing instead of solving the whole impossible shape at once.
He glances toward the coffee stand, then back at you. “You want to start with coffee?”
You look at him for one long beat, then laugh softly, incredulously, like maybe you can’t believe that is the question that just saved you from bolting. “Yeah,” you say. “I think I do.”
So that is how it begins.
Not with thunder. Not with immediate declarations. Not with some cinematic collision that resolves every loneliness in a heartbeat.
With coffee. With your hand wrapped around a paper cup. With the two of you sitting at the edge of the market, dizzy on each other’s borrowed memories, learning the outlines of the present slowly enough to survive it.
He learns that you come to the farmer’s market most Saturdays too, though usually later. That you always buy flowers you don’t strictly need. That you live twenty minutes away in an apartment with bad plumbing and excellent light. That you work in graphic design and keep odd hours and have a weakness for peaches even when they’re underripe. You learn that he is in therapy. That he likes routine because sometimes routine is the difference between drifting and staying. That his apartment in Brooklyn is small but his windows face west and the light there in the evening is good. That he cooks. That he bakes bread when the weather turns cold because kneading something until it rises feels like a miracle he can participate in.
He does not tell you everything that morning. Not about HYDRA, not about the winter that lasted decades, not about the names he no longer answers to. But you do not push. Maybe because you can feel, in the strange echoing chambers of whatever ties the two of you together, that he has already been dragged open too many times to count.
When you part, it is almost noon.
You both hover awkwardly by the fountain, neither one wanting to be the first to say goodbye.
“So,” you say, shifting the bouquet of daisies and feverfew you bought somewhere along the way into one hand. “Do soulmate rules say we’re supposed to immediately move in together now, or is there like a grace period?”
Bucky smiles before he can stop himself. “I think there’s paperwork.”
“Tragic.”
He glances at the lemons peeking out of your canvas bag. “You still owe me half of these.”
You grin then, bright and quick and devastating. “That sounds fake.”
“Maybe,” he says. “But it’s a reason to see you again.”
Something softens in your expression. “Okay,” you say. “Then I’ll take the fake reason.”
He gives you his number. You type your own into his phone and hand it back, your fingers brushing his again. No flash this time. Just warmth. Just the sharp, impossible awareness of skin.
“All right, Bucky Barnes,” you say. “Text me when you want to split custody of the lemons.”
He watches you walk away.
At the corner, you turn and look back.
The city seems to hold its breath.
Then you smile at him one more time and disappear into the crowd.
Jesus Christ on a plastic sign
The Vegas lifetime comes back first.
Not all at once. In drips. In flashes that catch Bucky at strange moments over the next few days, as if the memory has been jarred loose and is still deciding how much of itself to reveal.
He is washing dishes on Tuesday night when he looks down at a ring of soap suds circling the drain and suddenly he is twenty-six—or thirty, or some other age in some other body—and the air smells like desert heat trapped in asphalt. He can hear slot machines from the lobby below the motel balcony and your laugh from inside the room, where the air conditioner is fighting a losing battle and you are standing in front of the cracked mirror pinning your hair up with bobby pins you bought from the gift shop downstairs.
“Tell me again,” you say, smiling at him through the mirror, “why exactly we’re doing this.”
Because you had met forty-eight hours earlier in line for dollar margaritas and spent the night talking until sunrise on the motel roof. Because you had missed your flight on purpose. Because he had looked at you over watery eggs in a diner the next morning and known, with the same bone-deep certainty he feels now on a Brooklyn Tuesday in a kitchen lit by one warm overhead bulb, that life was sometimes simplest when it was ridiculous.
Because you had asked if he wanted to get married as a joke and then kept grinning at him after he said yes.
“Tax benefits,” he answers solemnly, sitting on the end of the bed in his borrowed suit jacket.
You laugh. “Romantic.”
“Practical.”
“Liar.”
You cross the room barefoot, white dress swishing around your thighs. It is not really a wedding dress. It is a satin slip from a resale shop with a tiny champagne stain at the hem and thin straps that make him forget his own name every time he looks at you. You stop between his knees and hook your fingers in the lapels of his jacket.
“Tell me not to do it,” you whisper. There is laughter in your voice but something trembling under it too, a softness that asks to be taken seriously. “Tell me we’re being insane and I’ll call it off.”
He looks up at you and feels his whole impossible life narrow into one clean, brilliant line. “I think,” he says, resting his hands on your hips, “that if we don’t do this, I’m gonna spend the rest of my life wondering why I let the best idea I ever had walk out of a motel in Vegas.”
Your expression cracks open into something so nakedly happy it almost undoes him.
The chapel is tiny and tacky and perfect. The plastic crucifix is screwed above a velvet curtain backdrop. The fake Elvis officiant keeps winking like he personally invented love. You say your vows through laughter because your bouquet is made of silk roses that smell faintly like dust and the minister’s sideburn is half detached. Bucky can barely get the ring onto your finger because his hands won’t stop shaking.
Afterward, you run into the sun with your shoes in one hand, your new husband’s name in your mouth as if you were born to say it.
On the sidewalk outside the chapel, there’s a sign for a twenty-four-hour wedding package with JESUS CHRIST LOVES YOU printed above a blinking arrow in red bulbs, and the whole thing is so absurd that you double over laughing. Bucky catches you around the waist before you can fall.
“Mrs. Barnes,” he says into your hair, tasting the words.
You lift your face to his, eyes wet from laughing. “That sounds made up.”
“Probably is.”
You kiss him anyway.
In the present, water runs cold over Bucky’s hands in the sink. He blinks hard and finds himself staring at a plate gone slippery in his grip.
He dries his hands, sits on the edge of the counter, and texts you before he can think better of it.
Got another one. Vegas.
The reply comes so fast it is almost a breath.
me too
Then, after a beat:
did we really get married because the line for margaritas was too long and we needed something else to do?
Bucky smiles helplessly at his phone.
we were committed to the bit
You start texting every day after that.
At first it is practical. Did you remember this detail? Did the chapel carpet have stars on it or was that just me? Do you think the fake Elvis was secretly judging us?
But the practical gives way to easy almost before either of you notices. He sends you a picture of a dog in a raincoat outside the bodega. You send him a photo of the flowers you bought even though your rational brain said you didn’t need them. He tells you when therapy goes badly. You tell him when work is making your eyes cross. By Friday, your name on his screen feels less like a surprise and more like the continuation of something that was already in motion long before lemons hit pavement.
The next Saturday, he finds you at the market before he reaches the citrus stand.
You are standing at the peach table, frowning at a fruit in your hand with the seriousness of someone evaluating a gemstone.
“You know those need another week,” he says.
You glance up and smile in a way that makes his whole body wake up. “I know. I’m being optimistic.”
“Reckless.”
“Wow. You meet one man in Vegas and suddenly he thinks he knows you.”
He laughs, and there is no fear in it this time.
You spend the morning together again. Coffee, bread, flowers. At the tomato stall your shoulder brushes his and warmth skates down his spine, but no memory comes. At the herb table he tucks a stray basil stem behind your ear and your breath catches, but still nothing.
It hits later, when the two of you are leaving the market and pass an old pickup truck parked crooked by the curb, windows down, classic rock spilling tinny from the speakers. You stop dead. So does he.
Your head turns toward him.
His chest caves in around a heartbeat that is no longer entirely his own.
Winding roads, doing manual drive
In that life, you are eighteen and everything feels enormous.
Summer stretches in front of you like a dare. The town is small enough to suffocate if you stay still too long, so you never do. Bucky has a beat-up blue truck with a sticky clutch and a radio that only works when you slap the dashboard in exactly the right place. He teaches you how to drive manual in the abandoned church parking lot at the edge of town, laughing every time the engine stalls because you keep popping the clutch too fast.
“You’re mean,” you tell him, gripping the steering wheel.
“I’m helpful.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Because you cuss like my grandpa.”
You cut him a glare so ineffective it makes him grin wider. He reaches across the bench seat to guide your hand to the gearshift, his palm warm over your knuckles.
“Slow,” he says. “Feel it catch. Don’t force it.”
Outside, cicadas scream in the heat. The sun is dropping behind the trees, turning the windshield gold.
You try again. This time the truck lurches, shudders, then rolls forward smooth as breath.
“Oh my God,” you say, startled into laughter. “I did it.”
Bucky looks at you the way boys in movies are always supposed to look but almost never do in real life—like the sight of you happy is enough to rearrange his whole future. “Yeah,” he says softly. “You did.”
Once you know how, you drive everywhere with no destination at all. Back roads. County lines. Winding stretches of blacktop between soybean fields and creeks and gas stations with flickering signs. You drive because gas is cheap and the cab of the truck is a world no one else can enter. You drive because Bucky’s knee pressed against yours feels better than anything either of you have a name for yet. You drive because being young and in love can make movement feel holy.
Sometimes you pull over on the shoulder just to watch the sky bruise purple over the fields. Sometimes you kiss at red lights until the truck behind you honks. Sometimes you park at the overlook above the quarry and share a bag of gas station peanuts while Bucky tells you all the places he wants to see one day, voice gone soft with wanting.
“Anywhere specific?” you ask.
He shrugs one shoulder. “As long as you’re there.”
You laugh because you think he is teasing. Then you look at him and realize he is not.
The air changes.
He reaches up, pushes a strand of hair behind your ear with trembling fingers. “I know we’re eighteen,” he says, trying for casual and failing spectacularly. “I know people say that means we don’t know anything. But I know this.”
Your breath catches.
Behind you, the truck ticks and cools in the dusk.
“I know,” he says again, “that I could drive with you forever and never get tired of the road.”
Then he kisses you, and the whole wide summer tilts.
The memory drops away while a bus sighs to the curb and someone nearby curses over a jammed stroller wheel.
You are breathing hard. So is Bucky.
“That one hurt,” you say quietly.
He knows what you mean. Not because it was bad. Because it was good in the simple devastating way only youth can be. Because watching some other version of yourself love with that much unguarded certainty feels like pressing a bruise you didn’t know you had.
“You drove stick,” he says.
“I was bad at it.”
“You were terrible.”
You laugh then, startled and watery, and he thinks he would do almost anything to keep hearing that sound.
There is a diner half a block away with cracked vinyl booths and a waitress who calls everyone honey. He nods toward it. “Come on.”
“Is this where we process our cosmic psychic episodes now?”
“Pancakes seem medically necessary.”
So you sit across from each other in a booth smelling faintly of syrup and coffee grounds while the waitress tops off your mugs and pretends not to notice that the two of you keep staring. The market bag rests by Bucky’s boots. Your flowers lie across the seat beside you like a witness.
“You ever think about what it means?” you ask after a while.
He traces a thumb over the seam of his coffee cup. “The past lives?”
“The soulmate thing. Any of it.” Your gaze is steady on his. “Like… are we supposed to just trust that because we loved each other before, we automatically will now?”
Bucky is quiet for so long, the waitress comes by to ask if he wants more bacon.
When she leaves, he exhales. “I don’t know,” he says honestly. “I think maybe it’d scare me if it worked like that.”
You nod once. “Me too.”
Because obligation is not love. Because destiny without choice starts to look too much like a cage.
Bucky leans forward, forearms on the table. “I don’t want this to be automatic,” he says, surprising himself with the urgency in his own voice. “I don’t want you because of… cosmic paperwork.” Your mouth twitches at that. He presses on. “I want to know you. Now. Here. I want whatever this is to be because we choose it.”
Something in your face softens so completely it leaves him winded.
“Okay,” you say.
“Okay?”
“Okay,” you repeat. “Then we do it the hard way.”
His mouth curves. “Dating?”
“Scandalous, I know.”
He looks at you across the table, sunlight striping the booth through the blinds, and feels a piece of his life click gently into place.
“Yeah,” he says. “Dating.”
The smile you give him then follows him home and waits with him through the week and sits with him at the edge of sleep. It is still there when he picks you up for your first actual date on Thursday, when you buzz him into your apartment building wearing jeans and a green top that makes your eyes look unfair, when he spends ten whole seconds forgetting why he came.
You cook together in his kitchen because restaurants feel like too much too soon. Lemon chicken. Roasted potatoes. Salad with too much parmesan because you insist there is no such thing.
It is simple. It is easy in the kind of way Bucky once would have distrusted on principle. You move around his kitchen as if you’ve already learned its shape. You lean against the counter and steal bites from the pan. You laugh when he pretends to guard the sauce from you and do not look startled when he laughs back.
After dinner, you help him wash dishes. After dishes, you stand by the open window drinking wine while the city breathes warm and loud below.
“I had a nice time,” you say, glancing at him over the rim of your glass.
His pulse kicks. “Good.”
“I’m serious. For a man who hoards lemons as a manipulation tactic, you clean up pretty well.”
He snorts. “I’ll put that on my dating profile.”
“You should. Honest branding.”
He smiles, and you smile back, and the air between you changes.
It is not sudden. Not violent. Just the slow, unmistakable tightening of a thread.
He sets his glass down first.
You do the same.
When he steps closer, you do not move away.
“Can I kiss you?” he asks, because in every life he has ever loved you there has been want in it, but in this one he wants the shape of your yes more than he wants air.
Your eyes go soft. “Please.”
He kisses you carefully at first, because he is not eighteen in a truck anymore and he is not some reckless fool in Vegas with rings in his pocket and a grin too wide for his face. He is a man who has taken years to learn how to touch gently. Who knows what damage carelessness can do.
But then your hand lifts to his cheek and your mouth opens beneath his and the careful part of him turns molten.
The flash hits so hard he breaks the kiss with a gasp.
You are hit by it too. He sees it in the way your pupils blow wide, the way your hand clutches the front of his shirt.
“Oh,” you breathe.
The apartment falls away.
Early nights in white sheets with lace curtains
The room is small and gold with lamplight.
In that life, you have been married for six hours.
Your shoes are by the door. Your veil lies in a pearly heap over the chair back. Somewhere downstairs the last of the wedding guests are still laughing over cake and champagne, but up here the inn is quiet except for the tick of rain against the lace-curtained window and your own uneven breathing.
You stand with your back to Bucky near the bed, fingers trembling where they rest at your throat. The silk of your nightdress skims the backs of your knees. Your wedding band glints like a promise.
He has never seen anything more beautiful.
You are not delicate. Nor candlelight that makes you look like something painted. You are real in all the ways that matter most—nervous and wanting and trying to be brave.
You glance at him over your shoulder, and the vulnerability in your face brings him to his knees faster than reverence ever could.
“We don’t have to,” he says softly.
Your brows draw together. “I want to.”
“I know.” He steps closer, slow enough to stop if you need it. “But I want you to know we don’t have to do anything tonight except be married.”
Something in you loosens. Relief. Love. A tenderness so intense it almost aches to look at.
“I want to be married,” you whisper.
He smiles, cupping your jaw. “You already are.”
“No,” you say, eyes luminous. “I mean like this. Here. With you.” Your breath shakes. “I want tonight.”
He kisses you then, gentle enough to ask, deep enough to answer.
The nightdress slips from your shoulders a little at a time. He learns your skin by lamplight and fingertips, by the soft sounds you make when he touches somewhere that matters, by the way you cling to him when pleasure finally starts to outrun nerves. The white sheets twist around your legs. The lace curtains stir in the open window. Rain cools the room, but your bodies are all heat.
You are not shy for long.
He kisses his way down the column of your throat, your collarbones, the slope of your breast. Your fingers knot in his hair when his mouth finds your nipple and he sucks gently, then harder at the sound that tears from you. By the time he lowers you onto the bed your hair is loose around your shoulders and your face is flushed and he is so hard it hurts.
“Bucky,” you whisper, reaching for him.
“Tell me what you need.”
You laugh softly, dazed with wanting. “You. Obviously.”
He smiles against your mouth, then works two fingers between your thighs and nearly loses his mind at how wet you are for him already. Your hips jerk. Your eyes flutter shut.
“That’s it,” he murmurs. “There you go.”
He takes his time because he can. Because there is no war waiting outside this room, no clock to race. Because after the vows and the music and the endless hands grabbing at you all day, he wants this moment to belong only to the two of you. He strokes you until your body learns the shape of pleasure under his hands. He brings you apart once with his fingers, your back arching off the bed, then again with his mouth until you are clutching the sheets and crying his name into the rain-soft dark.
When he finally settles between your thighs, braced on one forearm, your gaze on his is wrecked and certain all at once.
“You still sure?” he asks, voice gone rough as gravel.
You wrap a hand around the back of his neck and pull him down until your foreheads touch. “I have never been more sure of anything.”
He pushes into you slowly, giving you every inch with a care that feels like worship. The stretch of you around him steals the breath from his lungs. Your mouth opens on a gasp. He stills.
“Okay?” he whispers.
You nod, biting your lip. “Move.”
So he does.
Slow at first. Then deeper when your nails dig into his shoulders and you lift to meet him. The bed creaks softly. Rain taps the window. He kisses you whenever your face crumples with feeling, every thrust turning more desperate as your body opens for him. You cling to him, legs wrapped around his hips, whispering his name like a secret you intend to keep forever.
When you come, it is with your mouth against his throat and tears bright at the corners of your eyes.
He follows with his forehead pressed to yours, his whole body shaking with it.
Afterward, you lie tangled in white sheets gone warm and wrinkled around you, the lace curtains stirring like breath. He draws lazy circles over your stomach while you trace the line of his mouth with one sleepy fingertip.
“This counts as a successful wedding night,” you murmur.
He laughs softly. “Good. I was hoping.”
You turn into him, already half asleep. “Anywhere is home,” you whisper, the words blurred at the edges with exhaustion, “if you’re in the bed.”
He never forgets them.
When the memory releases you both, Bucky is still standing in his apartment with his chest heaving and your hands fisted in his shirt.
The kitchen light is too bright. The city outside the window too loud. He can taste you without ever having had you in this life.
Your face is flushed all the way down your neck.
“Well,” you say after a stunned second, voice frayed. “That was wildly inconvenient timing.”
He laughs once, brokenly, because if he does not laugh he might combust.
“You okay?” he asks.
Your gaze lifts to his, honest and heated. “Ask me in five minutes.”
He brushes his knuckles over your cheek, a touch so careful it is almost absurd after what you both just saw. “I mean it.”
“I know.” Your hand slides down to cover his where it rests against your face. “Yeah. I’m okay. A little overwhelmed. A lot turned on. But okay.”
Heat hits him hard and immediate. He closes his eyes for a second.
You laugh softly. “Right. Sorry. That was—”
“Don’t apologize.”
When he opens his eyes again, your expression has gentled. “Bucky.”
He knows what you are asking. Not just whether he wants you. That is almost insultingly obvious. You are asking whether he can separate memory from present. Whether he can stand in this kitchen and want what is in front of him without letting the weight of every before crush what could be now.
He answers by leaning down and resting his forehead against yours.
“I want this,” he says quietly. “But I want our first time in this life to be ours.”
Your breath leaves you in a rush. So does some tightness in his chest he hadn’t fully realized he was carrying.
“Okay,” you whisper.
He kisses you once more, soft and lingering. Then he walks you home because if you stay the night he is not sure either of you will survive your own restraint, and because there is something holy in wanting badly and still choosing patience.
At your door, you touch his wrist before he can step back.
“For the record,” you murmur, eyes warm, “that other us had very good taste.”
He grins helplessly. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. I get it now.”
Then you kiss him quick and disappear inside with a smile that haunts him for days.
The weeks that follow feel like being built from the inside out.
The flashbacks do not stop, but they become less like ambushes and more like weather—still sudden, still powerful, but no longer catastrophic. A scent, a sound, a patch of light can call one up. Sometimes you text each other in the middle of the workday with fragments: did you remember the red truck in the mountain life had one broken taillight? or I think Bucharest-you stole that robe from the hotel. Sometimes a memory arrives whole when you are together and leaves both of you laughing or aching or red-faced in its wake.
In between, you date.
Real dates. Present-tense ones.
You go to a bookstore in Cobble Hill and accidentally spend two hours arguing about whether people who dog-ear paperbacks can be trusted. You sit in the park eating takeout and watch a wedding party take photos under the arch. You make pasta in your kitchen and burn the garlic because you are too busy kissing against the fridge. You let him meet your friends, who like him immediately and try not to look too smug about it. He tells Sam about you over beers and gets stared at for a full ten seconds before Sam breaks into the kind of grin that means Bucky will never hear the end of this.
And slowly, because slowness is another name for mercy, you get used to the fact of each other.
One night in late July, you fall asleep on Bucky’s couch halfway through a movie. Your head ends up in his lap, your bare feet tucked under his thigh, the credits rolling blue light over the room. He does not move for an hour because the weight of you there feels too precious to disturb.
When you wake, drowsy and disoriented, you blink up at him and smile.
“There you are,” he says before he can stop himself.
The words do something strange to the air.
You sit up slowly, blanket slipping down your shoulders. “What?”
He swallows. “Nothing. I just—”
But then the memory comes, not violent this time. Gentle as smoke.
You see it in each other’s faces as it arrives.
Sleepyhead ’cause all the fucking foxes kept me awake last night
The cabin is barely more than one room and a stubborn prayer.
In that life, winter has a vendetta against you. The land is raw and half-finished around you—trees felled and stacked, fields only partly cleared, the nearest neighbors hours away by horse. Everything aches. Your hands, your backs, your hope.
And still, you build.
By day Bucky swings an axe until his shoulders burn and your tiny patch of earth starts, slowly, to look like something that might feed you come spring. By day you mend, cook, scrub, carry water, keep accounts in a little ledger with cramped neat writing, and somehow still find the energy to laugh when the hen gets loose again and wreaks havoc under the table.
By night you sit by the fire mending his shirts while he carves handles for tools and the baby—your daughter, round-cheeked and solemn—sleeps in a cradle made from wood Bucky planed himself.
It is not easy. God, it is not easy. There are weeks when the roof leaks and the wind gets through the chinks in the walls and your flour goes sour and the loneliness of so much open land makes your chest feel flayed raw. There are days Bucky comes in from the field looking so worn you have to bite the inside of your cheek not to cry.
But there is you. There is him. There is the little sleeping weight of your child and the fire and the bed you built with your own hands.
Sometimes that is enough to make hardship look almost like devotion.
One night in early autumn, the foxes scream outside the cabin so long and loud that neither of you gets any real sleep. By dawn you are cross and bleary-eyed, hair half falling from its braid as you stand over the hearth trying to stir cornmeal mush that refuses to thicken.
“Sleepyhead,” Bucky says softly when he comes up behind you.
You elbow him weakly. “I’ll kill you.”
He laughs into your hair and wraps his arms around your waist anyway, his chin settling on your shoulder. Outside, the new fence leans and the world is still cold and demanding. Inside, his body is warm all along your back.
“We’re doing it,” he murmurs after a while.
You blink at the pot. “Doing what?”
“Building it.” He turns his face into your temple. “A life.”
The words are simple. They hit with the force of revelation.
You tip your head back against his shoulder and close your eyes. In the other room your daughter stirs. The foxes have gone quiet. Morning light pushes pale and stubborn through the little window above the table.
“We are,” you whisper.
He kisses your cheek. “Told you I’d build you something.”
You smile, tired and full to aching. “You built me everything.”
The memory fades with the warm dim glow of Bucky’s living room around you.
You are still on his couch, the television a muted wash of menu screens no one bothered to turn off. For a while neither of you says anything.
Then you reach out and lace your fingers through his.
“That one felt different,” you say.
He nods. “Yeah.”
Not youthful. Not fevered. Not all heat and spark and want. That life had been built plank by plank. Through work. Through weather. Through choosing each other when the choosing was made of practical things—fences, soup, babies, roofs, morning fires.
It lands in him heavier than some of the others. Maybe because recovery has taught him what it means to build anything worth having by hand.
“I liked them,” you say quietly. “That version of us.”
He rubs his thumb over your knuckles. “Me too.”
You glance around his apartment then, at the bookshelf he assembled crooked and fixed himself, at the herb pot on the windowsill, at the loaf of bread cooling under a dish towel on the counter.
“You’re doing it too, you know,” you murmur.
He looks at you. “Doing what?”
“Building a life.”
The thing in his chest, scarred and careful and too often braced for loss, goes very still.
You squeeze his hand. “It’s a good one.”
He kisses you then because there is no other answer big enough.
By August, you keep a toothbrush at his place.
By September, there is a sweater of yours folded over the back of one of his dining chairs, two hair ties on his bathroom sink, a half-used bottle of your fancy conditioner in his shower that he is under strict orders not to touch. None of it is dramatic. None of it is announced. The shape of your presence simply grows until it feels absurd to remember the apartment before it.
The flash that takes you next comes in early October, on a rainy Thursday when you duck with him into a jazz bar in the West Village to escape a downpour.
The room is all amber light and low ceilings and cigarette-scarred booths preserved from another era. A singer in a black dress stands by the piano, crooning into a microphone. Bucky goes still before you even make it to the bar.
You know before the memory hits what it will be.
The note hangs in the air.
Then London rushes in.
late nights in black silk in east london
The war has made everything look dimmer around the edges.
Bucky is young in the way only war can make a man young—old enough to be exhausted by it, young enough to still be surprised by beauty. He is stationed overseas for too long in a city stitched with blackout curtains and ration books and the bruise-colored exhaustion of people trying very hard to act as if life is still ordinary.
Then one wet December night, a fellow soldier drags him down a narrow stairwell off an alley in East London and the whole world changes shape.
The club is hidden beneath a tailor’s shop with no sign out front. Music seeps through the floorboards before the door even opens. Inside, the room glows low and gold around the edges, tables crowded close, voices pitched just above the band. Women in silk and men in uniform and civilians with danger in their smiles. Someone is laughing at the bar like the war has never existed. Someone else is dancing with one shoe off.
And there you are.
You should not stick out. You’re not center stage or demanding attention. You’re leaning one hip against the bar in black silk gloves and a slip dress that gleams when you move, listening to the pianist with your head tilted slightly as if you know a secret about the song.
Bucky sees you and forgets how war works.
Maybe he forgets how breathing works too.
“Careful,” his friend mutters, following his line of sight. “That one looks expensive.”
Bucky barely hears him.
When you look over and catch him staring, you smile. Not coy. Curious, amused, entirely too direct. Then you lift your glass in a tiny salute.
He is doomed.
Later, after he has found enough courage or foolishness to cross the room, you tell him your brother runs supplies out of the docks and your mother thinks this place is scandalous and your favorite thing in the world is men who look like they’d fall apart if a woman in black silk talked to them too long.
“I am not falling apart,” he says, already half gone.
You laugh, low and delighted. “No? That’s a shame. You’d be awfully handsome doing it.”
You dance with him before midnight. Then again after. The band slows, the room blurs, and you fit against him so easily it feels less like meeting and more like remembering a step he somehow learned before birth.
Outside, the rain has stopped. The alley smells like wet brick and smoke.
“Are you always this easy?” you ask when he walks you to the corner.
“Only in London.”
“Convenient.”
You stop beneath a streetlamp draped in wartime dimming paint. Your lipstick has worn soft at the edges. His gloves are damp. Somewhere far off, a siren starts and then dies.
“I don’t know how long I’m here,” he says, because war steals the illusion of endless time from a man pretty quick.
You look at him with that same level, fearless steadiness you will carry in every life. “Then don’t waste the nights you’ve got.”
So he doesn’t.
He spends every free hour he can find with you in that black silk East London life. Dancing in hidden clubs. Eating chips from newspaper parcels by the river. Kissing in doorways while the city holds its breath between bombings. Falling in love so fast it would look irresponsible to anyone not living under the same shadow.
On his last night before shipping out again, this time to Bucharest, he finds you in the club after closing, curled barefoot on the stage in your black dress with your knees drawn up, humming to yourself while the pianist smokes by the door.
He sits beside you. The stage creaks.
You do not ask him if he is leaving. You already know.
For a long moment you just lean into him shoulder to shoulder, breathing in the dark.
Then you take his hand and lace your fingers with his as if you have always had the right.
“I hate war,” you say flatly.
“Yeah.”
“I hate that it teaches people to love in a hurry.”
He turns to look at you, but your face is tipped toward the empty room. “Maybe,” he says after a while, “it just teaches people not to waste time pretending they don’t.”
That makes you smile a little, though your eyes shine.
When you finally kiss him, it feels like grief and promise all tangled together.
“I’d have found you anyway,” you whisper against his mouth.
He believes you.
Presently, the jazz bar swims back around you in amber and brass.
Your hand is flat over your heart. Bucky is gripping the edge of the bar hard enough his knuckles ache.
“You were terrifying in that one,” he murmurs.
You blink at him. “Terrifying?”
“You had me done in about twelve seconds.”
Your laugh spills out warm and bright enough to make nearby heads turn. “Good.”
He stares at you, at the woman in front of him and the woman in black silk and the impossible thread between them, and something old in him loosens. That London memory is the first one that brushes directly up against the era he remembers in his bones. The first one that lets him feel, without the cold hand of history around its throat, that he once had youth. Flirtation. A version of himself that existed before damage became the loudest fact in the room.
Later, walking you home under a shared umbrella, he tells you more.
Not everything. Not all at once. But more.
About Brooklyn in the forties. About enlisted men and too much bravado and the way the world sharpened at the edges when war started circling. About the years after, in pieces, with pauses long enough to breathe in between. You listen without interrupting except to ask where it hurts. Not where it happened. Where it hurts. The difference matters so much he nearly stops in the middle of the sidewalk.
At your building, rain dripping from the umbrella’s edges, you cup his face and kiss him like he is something to return to, not something to be rescued.
That night he sleeps six straight hours for the first time in weeks.
The last of the big memories comes in November.
By then, the market has become yours together. Saturday mornings are no longer Bucky’s alone. They are yours in the plural, so natural now he sometimes forgets to be startled by it. Coffee for two. Bread for two. Peaches finally back in season for a heartbeat before the weather turns. Your fingers hooked through one of the canvas bag straps while he carries the heavier side.
At the stall with the glass-bottled lemonades and orange sodas, you reach for a bright neon-orange drink at the same time he does.
The glass knocks against his ring finger.
Sunlight slams through him.
Neon orange drinks on the beach
Salt lives in the walls of that house.
Here, you and Bucky live in a little coastal town where everyone knows everybody’s business and no one minds much as long as you bring enough food to the potluck. The house is white clapboard with a porch swing and chipped blue shutters. Sand collects in the doorway no matter how often you sweep. Wind rattles the windows in winter and smells like sunscreen in summer.
You have children in that life. Three of them.
A girl with your laugh and Bucky’s serious eyes. A boy who climbs everything he’s told not to. A baby still soft at the wrists who rides your hip with one fist full of your shirt.
The beach is five minutes from your front door. On hot afternoons you walk there loaded like pack animals—blankets, towels, snacks, toys, a cooler that bumps against Bucky’s leg every other step, the toddler already whining for the ocean before you’ve even crossed the dune grass.
It is a beautiful chaos. Your favorite kind.
The day memory gives you is bright enough to ache.
The sky is clear blue from edge to edge. Your youngest is asleep under the shade tent with one plump foot sticking free of the blanket. Your son is digging a moat around a sandcastle with all the focus of a man handling explosives. Your daughter, solemn with purpose, is handing Bucky shell fragments one by one so he can decorate the towers properly.
“No, Daddy,” she says with immense patience. “That one goes there.”
Bucky, thirty-something and sun-browned and already half buried in sand because the children have no respect for rank, nods gravely. “My mistake.”
You come down from the boardwalk carrying a tray of neon-orange lemonades in plastic cups, ice clinking. Condensation slicks your fingers. The sun catches on the rims of the cups until they glow like tiny lanterns.
Bucky looks up when your shadow falls across the sand.
Even after years, even with sunscreen on your nose and beach hair whipping your cheeks, he looks at you like there has never been anyone else worth the trouble of sight.
“You’re my favorite person,” he says as you hand him a drink.
You arch a brow. “Even over the tiny tyrants?”
“Depends. Are they giving me lemonade?”
Your daughter takes her cup in both hands and squints up at you. “Mama, Daddy made the castle wrong.”
You laugh. “I’m shocked.”
“It was sabotage,” Bucky says.
The children shout over each other. The baby wakes and starts fussing. A gull swoops dangerously low near the pretzel bag. The tide inches closer. Everything is loud and sandy and sticky and imperfect.
It is paradise.
Later, when the children are collapsing in a sugar crash on towels striped green and white, Bucky stretches out beside you and tugs you down until your head rests on his chest. The ocean hisses and folds itself a few yards away.
“You think,” he says after a while, fingers combing absently through your damp hair, “we’ll ever get tired of this?”
You tip your face up. “The beach?”
“This.”
The life. The family. The ordinary miracle of it.
You can feel the answer in him before he says it. In the steady beat under your ear. In the salt-warmed skin of him. In the children making sleepy, disgruntled sounds nearby because even paradise requires snacks and naps and somebody always getting sunscreen in their eye.
“No,” you say softly. “I don’t think so.”
His mouth brushes your forehead. “Good.”
Because in every lifetime, it turns out, what the two of you build is not grandeur.
It is a table. A bed. A road. A cabin. A dance floor. A beach towel in the sun. A thousand tiny places where love gets to put its shoes by the door and stay awhile.
When the memory loosens its grip, you are back at the market with cold glass sweating in your hand.
You are crying.
So is Bucky, though he only realizes it when you reach up and wipe at his cheek with your thumb.
“That one was rude,” you say thickly.
He laughs through the ache in his throat. “Yeah.”
It isn’t the children, not really. Though that got him. It’s the ordinariness of it. The ease. The way love in that life had settled into the bones of things so thoroughly that joy looked almost plain. A beach day. Lemonade. Sand. A family.
A future.
You look at him with tears still bright in your eyes. “Do you ever think maybe that’s why it keeps happening?”
“What?”
“Us.” You glance down at the bottle in your hand, the impossible orange brightness of it. “Not because we’re destined in some giant dramatic way. Maybe just because every time the universe throws us somewhere new, we keep making the same choice.”
The market blurs around the edges.
Bucky takes the bottle from your hand and sets both your drinks down on the stall so he can hold your face in both palms.
“I think,” he says, voice low and unsteady, “that no matter where I find you, you keep teaching me that a life doesn’t have to be extraordinary to matter.”
You inhale sharply.
He goes on because he has spent too much of his existence losing time, losing names, losing chances to say what needed saying. Because he will not waste this one.
“I loved you in a chapel with a plastic sign. In a truck on back roads. In a bed with lace curtains. In a cabin when we had almost nothing. In London when the whole world was on fire. On a beach with kids climbing all over me and sand in places there should never be sand.” Your mouth trembles around a laugh. His thumbs catch the tears on your cheeks. “And every time, it wasn’t because things were perfect. It was because it was you.”
Your hand covers one of his. “Bucky—”
“In this life,” he says, holding your gaze, “I don’t care what fate says. I don’t care what we were before unless it helps me be better to you now. I just…” He exhales, helpless in it. “I just know I am more myself when you’re in the room. And I want to keep choosing that. For however long I get.”
Something breaks open in your face.
Then you are kissing him in the middle of the farmer’s market, November wind cold around your ears and strangers surely staring and lemons probably within a three-yard radius somehow, and Bucky does not care about any of it.
When you finally pull back, you rest your forehead to his and laugh wetly.
“You took forever to say that,” you whisper.
He blinks. “I did?”
“Yes.” You kiss him once, quick and smiling. “It’s okay. I was going to let you.”
That night you come home with him.
Home, because that is what it is now no matter how recently he learned to say it.
The apartment smells like the rosemary chicken you cooked together and the bread he baked that morning and the cold air that followed you in when he opened the door. Your overnight bag sits by the couch. Your laughter is still in the walls from where you nearly dropped the oranges while making cocktails because he kissed your neck and ruined your concentration on purpose.
There are no visions this time.
No past lives pouring through the cracks.
Just the two of you in the warm gold hush of his bedroom, lamplight soft on the sheets, your sweater slipping from one shoulder as you sit on the edge of the mattress and look up at him.
“This is ours,” you say quietly.
He nods. “Yeah.”
You reach for him.
The first time you make love in this life is not a reenactment of any before. There are echoes, maybe. The same reverence. The same hunger braided with tenderness. But this is its own living thing, shaped by who you are now—older in different ways, scarred in different places, more careful and more certain all at once.
He undresses you slowly, like unwrapping something he intends to keep. You do the same for him, kissing each mark on his body as if introducing yourself to every chapter. When your fingers brush the long scars at his shoulder and side, you do not hesitate. You just look at him for permission and then kiss them too.
His throat goes tight.
On the bed, he takes his time. He is afraid this time, rather he wants to feel every second of being chosen with full knowledge. Your skin under his mouth. Your breath hitching when he drags his thumb over your clit. The way you smile against his lips when he says your name like a marvel. He works you open with his hands first, then his mouth, until you are clutching the sheets and half laughing, half sobbing because pleasure in this body, in this life, feels new and familiar all at once.
“Bucky,” you whisper when he comes back up over you, eyes dark and wrecked.
“I’ve got you.”
You nod, hands framing his face. “I know.”
When he pushes into you, slow and careful, your mouths are open against each other. He feels your body welcome him in inch by inch, feels your legs tighten around his hips, feels the tremor that runs through you when he finally settles deep. It is overwhelming in the simplest way. Not because of memory. Because of presence. Because you are here. Because he is too.
He moves. You move with him.
Outside, the city keeps being itself. A siren in the distance. Somebody laughing on the street. Heat clanking faintly through old pipes. Inside, his bedroom narrows to breath and skin and the soft wreck of your voice. You scratch lightly through his hair and murmur yes against his mouth and he nearly comes from the sound alone. He holds himself back long enough to watch the exact moment pleasure overtakes you, the way your eyes go bright and your body arches up into his with a cry he feels all the way to his ribs.
He follows soon after, buried deep, forehead pressed to yours, your names tangled together in the dark.
Afterward you lie under the sheets while the room cools around you. Your head rests on his chest. His hand drifts up and down your bare spine. The curtains are plain cotton, not lace. The sheets are soft gray, not white. The city outside is Brooklyn and not some inn in another century. It does not matter.
You draw lazy circles over his sternum.
“You know,” you murmur sleepily, “I think I liked every version of you.”
His fingers still for a second. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” You tilt your chin to look at him. “But this one might be my favorite.”
Emotion catches him so hard it almost hurts.
He bends and kisses your forehead because if he tries to speak right then, he will probably embarrass himself beyond repair.
Months later, when winter gives way to spring and then, at last, to summer again, Saturday morning finds the two of you at the farmer’s market under the same green-striped awnings where everything began.
Bucky has two coffees in a cardboard carrier. You have a bouquet of sunflowers tucked under one arm. The bread guy waves. The peach stand is finally, gloriously in season. The lemon vendor clocks you both and grins like he has been expecting to see how this turns out.
“Need a bag today?” he asks.
You glance at Bucky. Bucky glances at you.
Then, smiling, you both reach for the same lemon on purpose.
No flash comes.
There is no need.
Your fingers lace together instead, easy as breath.
The square is bright with morning. The violinist by the fountain is playing something warm and sweet. Coffee steams between you. Peaches perfume the air. Beside you, your soulmate—your chosen person, your present-tense miracle—squeezes your hand.
And because love, in the end, is often this simple, you walk the market together like you have done it all your life.
Maybe you have.
Maybe you will again.
Either way, the peaches are ripe, the bread is warm, and Bucky Barnes is laughing at something you said with his whole face open to the sun.
It is not a dramatic ending.
It is better.
It is a life.
And every ordinary second of it feels, impossibly, like falling in love again and again.
Jason grumbled after being confronted with his own marriage certificate. You hit him in the chest with a glare and said,
“Now isn't the time to be funny, bird brain!”
Jason rubbed his chest almost absentmindedly. He immediately went onto damage control. His headache was killing him and he barely registered the pain when his eyes noticed that he had married you, his best friend and now spouse. Jason took your hands in his and admired the ring. It fits you perfectly and he was impressed he picked it out after drinking himself into oblivion with you matching his every drink. He said,
“Calm down! We can get divorced if you want!”
You looked momentarily startled by his callused hand tenderly holding yours to look at the ring that he put on your finger last night. The surprise faded into anger. You scowled and retorted with a low hiss,
“Or I could kill you and collect your life insurance.”
Jason snorted as if the idea of you killing him was hilarious and not a serious threat. He rolled his eyes when he noticed how frantic your breathing was becoming and squeezed your hands in reassurance. His sarcastic response almost made you laugh,
“You know that I don’t stay dead, babe.”
You looked helplessly at the piece of paper, at Bruce, and then at the rest of the heroes at the party. You blinked at the gathered heroes who were all staring at you and finally turned your eyes to Jason.
Jason. Your husband, best friend, and the only one who could make you laugh when you wanted to punt him into the sun and maybe make Bizzarro play fetch with his corpse.
You shook your head in disbelief as you stared at Jason. Was there seriously anyone else you would rather marry? You decided not really. Maybe this marriage was for the best, and he specified that he’d get divorced because of your emotions and smiled like it didn’t break his heart.
“We don’t have to get divorced…”
You murmured as your eyes darted away. You were scared to look at Jason’s expression, but you felt him go completely still. After what felt like forever, Jason breathed a slow sigh of relief before he dragged you into an embrace. You both ignored the drunk wolf whistles and instead wrapped your arms tightly around your husband. His face buried you into your neck and he placed smooth kisses along your neck.
“I will propose to you properly someday, but we are going to date and I’m going to make you fall in love with me first.”
Jason tried to sound confident, but you heard the nervousness under his normally cocky and confident voice. His eyes stared at you like you meant the world to him. You caressed his cheek and gave him a smile that calmed his anxiety. You gently pulled him into a kiss and cuddled into Jason.
You kissed Jason like you already loved him and you were just waiting for him to catch up.
Jason’s heavy arms wrapped around your waist almost timidly. You both felt all of the eyes on you, but neither of you cared any more. All that mattered was your lips dancing with his own. His arms drew you flush against him for the first time. Your arms wrapped smoothly around his neck and your hands began to play with the hair that you could reach. You cuddled into Jason and smiled fondly.
“I love you.”
Jason whispered in your ear in a hoarse voice. The kiss left him breathless. It shattered him and remade him simultaneously. A smile crept onto your face and he quickly mirrored the expression. His hands moved up to cup your jaw and dragged you into another kiss like he couldn’t get enough now that he’s had a taste.
There were more drunk wolf whistles and someone took a photo with the flash on while you leaned into his slightly shaking hands.
You screamed against his lips when he lifted you up. The angle of the kiss was hurting his neck, so he sat you on the nearest table and stepped in the space between your slightly spread open legs. His body hid you from the eyes of everybody staring.
Jason finally pulled away and sighed softly. You hooked your ankles around the back of his thighs peacefully while his hands massaged your hips slowly. His hands were warm and comforting on your hips, heavy and rough but perfect and familiar.
You pulled away from his kiss and whispered so quiet that only he could hear,
“I wouldn’t want to marry anyone else, bird brain.”
Jason almost cried. His hands squeezed your hips before they relaxed. You meant every word, and he knew it. He responded just as quietly,
“I don’t even remember my vows to you, but I will spend the rest of my life proving to you that this wasn’t a mistake.”
You gave Jason a lovesick smile until Roy stumbled up to you, swung an arm around you loosely, and slurred,
“I recorded the vows, you sappy bastards. I thought you were going to puke on him and wanted to put it on Instagram if you did.”
You snickered immediately while Jason punched his shoulder. Jason tried to look upset, but Roy had already sent the shaky video and Jason couldn’t find it in him to feel angry. While the intentions were awful, it felt like a gift and almost like fate that he brought Roy along to act as the witness. Roy was only slightly less drunk yet it made all the difference.
“I hate you so much.”
Jason grumbled at Roy when he made fake kissing noises. You only laughed louder and leaned onto Jason’s shoulder. Roy left after that like he didn’t unleash chaos and ruin the gathering while you wheezed against Jason’s chest.
Dick looked like he was going to be sick, Tim looked like he would rather be anywhere else, Cass was watching with an unnatural stillness, and Damian fake gagged with a deadpan expression while Bruce looked down at the marriage certificate that he found when hacking into a government website (don’t ask, he won’t answer). You gave Jason a quick kiss and said,
“You’ve gone soft, Hood.”
Jason’s head dropped onto your shoulder and groaned when you shook with laughter. You loved Jason and he loved you more than he could have ever thought possible.
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