i don't even know what to say with sokka - would there even by any angst? he's the actual sweetest. the only angst is that it'd be katara attempting to matchmake sokka with various women (because sokka obviously wants to settle down and get married), and your best friend is in love with him / you who had a crush on sokka for the longest time have to fold in your feelings to help this "selection" process / blind dates work out for your friend, and sokka's completely oblivious because you're so shy.
but then obviously somehow you become intertwined with the gaang and sokka begins to notice you, and begins to think you're cute (but are you his type? he denies it but then his eyes always drift to yours, and he tries to protect you in missions, and his heart melts a little when toph takes a liking to you, and when katara feels safe with you)
like ugh he'd be so soft in a touchy way, too, without even realizing it. brushing your hair back, pressing his hand on your head to tell you you did a good job, etc. all under the "friendzone" because he thinks you're like his little sister and it kills you inside but it's not until you almost die / go out of your way to saving your friend or toph or someone that he snaps.
it's so hard bc ifl you'd feel extremely safe with sokka - safe enough to make fun of him and tease him all the time, and to let him lighten your mood and to even bicker with him.
if you didn’t love kataang when they were two young traumatized genocide survivors learning how to navigate their grief by creating childhood together in the midst of a war that relentlessly tried to steal it from them you don’t deserve them now that they’re hot
erm yes i indeed am in the process of drabbling/dreaming about another unrequited love series this time reader x aang because this new movie combined with rewatching the avatar series has me hooked.
like literally give me sacrificial reader x "i'm in love with katara" aang where they realize too late they've loved one another; reader is a non-bender but aang literally treats her like a convenience or a sounding board bc he's in love with katara, and it hurts her too much so she leaves the group quietly because she realizes she's not enough.
only after reader disappears but are now reunited to defeat the new villain (the awkwardness? the second chance romance? hello?) and aang is in realization that he's loved her all this time; that with her he doesn't need to be the avatar but completely himself and omg just let this fic exist like yearning hero who admires and comes home to someone they love pls.
fighting the urge to write a fanfic about arranged marriage reader x zuko, but zuko is getting over loving katara or mai / is uninterested in reader while reader is in the unrequited love phase, happens until one day after years of self-sacrificing she gets caught and he realizes how much he needs her.
i love the unrequited love trope. bring back yearning and angst.
girl falls in love with guy, but guy has eyes set on another person, and so she self-sacrifices herself and helps him get the girl while he falls in love with her instead.
i 100% believe every single adaptation of superman should be judged for accuracy based on how well they understand just how completely unhinged lois lane is as a person. because if you think THE lois lane wouldn’t do [fill in the blank], you’re wrong. she absolutely would do that and she will not be apologizing for it. superman being in love with her only succeeded in making her more comfortable and willing to do insanely dangerous things than she already was. because yes, she will 100% launch her body off a skyscraper just to prove a point. and guess what, idiot? she was right, so it was completely worth it and she will be doing it again. i’ve said it before and i’ll say it again, lois lane is absolutely bat-shit crazy. clark just happens to be really REALLY into her particular brand of crazy. like there is nothing lois won’t do with the right motivation. she is an absolute force of nature and that should scare the shit out of you.
jimmy olsen and the mystery of two idiots who are definitely not in love / 6.8k
tags. coworkers with history + the junleb trinity of stolen glances/pretend apathy/nosy friends. daily planet silliness
— i've been wanting to write a fic like this and david's sweet kind face said yes…. kisses 2 oomfs irl for beta <33
Jimmy watches as Lois throws her hands up, exhausted. “I'm killing someone after this.”
“Please don't,” Clark pipes up from the coffee machine. Darkness has set in over Metropolis, decorated with the year-round Christmas lights of traffic and skyscraper displays. It’s late enough that the graveyard janitors are starting their shift.
Clark scoots back over, gingerly balancing three steaming Styrofoam cups, sure to join the hundred others stacked up in the corner Lois’ desk. Jeez, she’s a great writer, but Jimmy’s kind of worried about her coffee addiction.
“You know who we need?” Lois asks, accepting the cup. She leans back in her chair, takes a sip and peers over the rim with her eyes narrowed down. Then she jerks her finger toward a desk, empty, but piled high with camera bags.
Oh. You.
Clark must be tuned into the same wavelength that Jimmy’s on, because they’re both sharing a look and adamantly shaking their heads.
It’s not that Jimmy hates you. In fact, you’re admirable, even though he doesn’t get the chance to talk with you much. He doesn’t know about Clark, but since you transferred from the Gotham Gazette, the office has been...weird.
You make a point to move if Clark sits a chair too close during meetings. And yeah, Clark can be clumsy, but accidentally hip-checking your desk on the daily is too suspicious.
Hell, when Cat Grant is making theories, it’s serious—I bet the lore is deep, she said at Mr. White’s surprise, in-office birthday party, like, plagiarism and CIA assassination deep.
Even if you and Clark weren’t mortal co-worker nemeses, the two of you are on opposite—no, completely different spectrums. For Superman’s sake, you’re a World Press nominee, one of the highest recognitions in photography. And Clark is...well.
Clark is just himself with all his slouched, ‘I’ve got a really weird intuition thing’ glory.
And he’s also Jimmy's best work friend, minus the fact that he’s MIA for what seems like half the work day.
“You know we need her,” Lois mutters bitterly, taking another slow sip. Clark looks anywhere but at her, shifty. “Come on, just for one photo. It’ll really help the exposé.”
She says it in that hint-hint, nudge-nudge way, the subtle singsong tone she takes when she knows no one would ever think about disagreeing with her. It’d be great ifs and could you help withs, that’s Lois Lane. She’s used it plenty of times, mostly during interviews to get a quote she wanted.
Jimmy, an unwilling victim, has learned that Lois is very persuasive when she wants to be.
Eyes crinkled with mirth, she smiles at the two of them, close-mouthed. Jimmy doesn’t know how she does it, spending days hammering away at an article and still having the energy to throw her weight around.
“Just this once?”
He looks at Clark, who looks back at him. A kind of silent pact forges in their sidelong eye contact, trying to see how long they can go resisting Lois. Her smile widens by a fraction, knowing that it’s just a matter of time.
Clark breaks first, running a hand through his dark, unruly hair.
“Okay,” he sighs out, collapsing in the nearest chair. It creaks under his weight, threatening. Speaking of which, Jimmy doesn’t really get how the biggest guy on the block can still be a loser dork (affectionate). A mystery for the greats, he supposes.
“But,” Clark says, scanning Lois over the rims of his thick glasses. He tugs his collar by a smidge, faintly displeased, or uneasy, “I’m doing it tomorrow.”
“Fine by me,” she grins, reaching over to shut down her monitor. It goes dark, sapping the blue glow that Jimmy’s gotten so used to. He blinks a few times to get rid of the spots that dance in his vision, then stretches. “Take Jimmy with you. Some people just need a face like his for some convincing.”
Jimmy perks up at the mention of his name, arms still raised up. The idea of him being attractive to you is slightly scary. Even more so than the unanswered girls in his DMs, because you're like, the greatest of the greats.
...Okay, subjectively speaking. But he’s been subscribed to your photo collection for years when you were still with the Gazette. You’re the camera Superman of the modern generation to him.
So excuse him when he jumps for the chance, eager.
“Yeah, Clark,” he blurts. “I’ll help!”
Lois grins, smug. Aw, shit. Jimmy’s fallen into the trap for Clark—hook, line and sinker.
—
“So, what's the deal with him and…”
Hint-hint, nudge-nudge.
Jimmy doesn’t want to say your name too loud, lest Clark’s weird hearing picks it up. Even though said man is halfway down the street in the opposite direction, he’s heard stranger things from farther and louder places before.
A little bird told me, and all that.
On late nights like this, it’s customary for Lois to walk Jimmy to the station downtown since she lives there. It’s the nearest part of the central city to Bakerline, where the island and mainland are connected by bridge and underground train.
They worked out this routine months ago, and it’s well-oiled enough for Clark—the Midtown Man—to know that Jimmy is in safe-ish hands, if he doesn’t get baited into an impromptu investigation.
Lois exhales through her nose, amused. “You really haven’t seen it?”
“I mean,” Jimmy stutters, dragging the scuffed soles of his sneakers along the downhill sidewalk. A loose pebble of concrete skitters away, landing in a patch of weeds sprouting from between the pavement cracks. “I know they’ve got some weird thing. Cat thinks it’s gotta do with the CIA.”
She laughs, fuller and louder. Jimmy checks over his shoulder—safe. Clark, silhouette now smaller, is still walking straight on, probably whistling a tune to himself.
“Kind of. Not really. Cat thinks a lot of things,” Lois decides. Objectively correct: Cat drinks rumors for breakfast. Not enough for the front page, but enough that Steve has a crazy long browser history trail because he actually believes her.
She squints and tilts her head to the side, thinking. “Clark never really said much about it, but I did find a polaroid of them in his wallet. Captioned cider and cowboy, whatever that means.”
Ah, the perks of being an award-winning journalist. Clark probably forgot that ratty leather thing on his chair again, leaving Lois to stake her claim on the prime real estate of other people’s business. Jimmy wouldn’t be surprised if his own wallet had been in her hands. She probably knows more about him than even Clark does.
Jimmy whistles, “So, bitter exes?”
“Maybe from a long time ago,” she agrees, nodding lightly. “They looked pretty young, like high school.”
“Oh, bitter sweethearts.” That’s a hundred times worse. No wonder you both act like you’ll catch the plague being around each other.
Weirdly, he can imagine it. Clark, skinnier and in the threadbare red flannel from Smallville that Jimmy spotted one winter, layered under Clark’s suit jacket for warmth. You, probably with your arms around each other, in the same Midwest, buttfuck nowhere fashion.
“Mhm, that’s what I was thinking.”
Jimmy’s still trudging forward when he notices the weird silence. He glances back to see that Lois stopped ten feet away, a curious glimmer in her eyes, jaw shifting. She looks at Jimmy, that mastermind smirk already blooming on her face. Jimmy stares, questioning, and kind of worried.
She catches up with a full-blown grin and her hands in her pockets, posture too wound up to be casual.
“Why are you—oh no, don’t look at me like that. I’m not good bait!”
“How do you feel about a little case on the side?”
—
When Clark Kent enters the office, it isn’t without a wall of apologies as he squeezes between his coworkers. Almost six and a half feet, so he sticks out painfully, like Superman in a sea of civilians—except there’s no way he’s Superman, of course.
(It’s kind of ironic once you think about it, how big Clark is. You don’t really realize it until you’re turning away from a conversation and bumping those thick glasses right off his nose. How long has he been standing there? No one knows.)
Jimmy chases him into the revolving door, the lemonade he picked up from the bodega across the intersection sloshing around in its waxed, paper-plastic cup. Skidding to a stop, he catches his breath as Clark apologizes in a low voice for taking up space in the doorway.
They scoot forward, shoes squeaking against the marble tiles of the entryway. Foot traffic is slower than usual today, aggravated by the door. Jimmy thinks to tell the Chief that the rotator mechanism needs oiling, but he knows it’ll only get done six months after he brings it up.
“You’re not late this time,” Jimmy quips, inching along. The wings of the door finally open, washing a fresh wave of air over him. Thank god, he was about to start sweating through his shirt.
Clark lets out a breathy little laugh, not quite believing it himself. “Yeah.”
He looks kind of…excited? Kiddish, if that’s the right word. Posture finally having an effort put into it and head held high, like he’s searching for something.
Oh.
Did Clark get up extra early—or rush through his morning routine, or run instead of walk to work, et cetera et cetera—just ‘cause he finally has an excuse to talk to you? Jimmy can’t quite believe it either.
Clark Kent, the supposed bitter high school ex of yours doesn’t seem so bitter anymore, grinning wider than he has this entire week.
They squeeze into the elevator together, pushed against the back wall where the speakers croon corporate, scrubbed jazz into Jimmy’s ears. He grimaces at the artificial saxophone riff, too clean without the surrounding chaotic raff that he loves in improvised jazz.
“It’s just for five minutes,” Clark mutters, craned weirdly with his satchel clutched to his chest, shoulders titled at an absurd angle as to make sure Jimmy can hear. “Small talk, right?”
“Exactly. Nothing to worry about,” Jimmy replies, sloshing his lemonade around to see how much he has left. Half a cup, which will last him thirty minutes before he needs to run for the nearest vending machine. Maybe he could ask an intern instead—they like him a lot.
The mental plan to get hopped up on soft drinks for the whole day doesn’t deter Jimmy’s pondering about your and Clark’s relationship for long, though.
“...Do you hate her?”
Clark goes silent for a moment, pondering as a plucked bass melody joins into the sax’s fray. Quiet, “I don’t hate her. We just…haven’t spoken in a while.”
“Bitter breakup or something?” Jimmy tests.
Clark doesn’t scowl or push his hand up under his glasses for an eye rub. He just sighs, a heavy and burdened kind of exhale. Forlorn, gaze unfocused and directed at something on another plane entirely.
“Not really. I don’t know, maybe?” A defeated sigh. “I guess you could say that.”
The elevator lets out a pleasant ding when they get to their floor, and Jimmy dogs behind a slumped Clark.
Just a minute ago, he was all sunshine and smiles about you. Flipped the script and shot the plot, and now he’s moping his way into the office at the slightest suggestion of feeling hatred. Fuck, this guy’s a total sap.
“Come on,” Jimmy says. He slaps a hand onto Clark’s back, urging him along toward your desk. “Just think about it this way: if you start talking again, maybe you’ll be on better terms.”
Clark picks up speed, just a little. Still hiding the pep he wants to put in his step, but Jimmy can tell all the same.
Your desk hasn’t changed in the ten or so hours since he left last night. Still a whirlwind of organized chaos, every corner still stuffed with camera equipment.
Except, you’re there now, computer screen painting your face in bright blue light instead of the empty chair Lois had pointed at earlier. And the stupid thing is, Clark starts lagging behind Jimmy, suddenly enthused to stay the reserved man everyone thinks he is.
He stutters in his gait, runs his fingers through messy hair once, then twice, and then gingerly—so slow and delicate—unwinds his arms from around that old satchel. The leather bag peels off the front of Clark’s chest comically, like a poster slowly falling off a wall.
Jimmy almost snorts.
Lois is right. Once you start looking, you can’t unsee it.
(“I’m just saying,” she said last night, boots clicking against the pavement. Hands stuffed in her pockets, too restrained to really be casual conversation. Jimmy knows that look on her—she’s hooked on a story, and trying to sell it at the same time. “They look at each other like they’re still in love.”
He scoffed. “No way.”
“Just see for yourself,” Lois shrugged, pulling ahead. Then, like nothing had ever happened, like the notion of you and Clark together despite it all had never existed, “Come on, you’re gonna miss the last train.”)
Jimmy is pulled out of his flashback by a cough. Back to present.
You’re turned around in your chair, monitor displaying a default login screen. Vaguely, he remembers you tapping the lock button on your keyboard the moment he stepped within five feet of your desk.
Jesus, insanely private people these Gazetteers are. Jimmy’s heard stories of coworkers sniping each other's scoops in Gotham, but he didn’t think it’d translate into borderline supersenses. Good thing you’ve moved to Metropolis, where the only journalists you’ll be afraid of are Lois or Cat trying to worm a confession out of you.
“Hi, Olsen. Need something?” You give him a mild, porcelain-polite smile—typical Gothamite manners. Doesn’t quite reach your eyes, which are low lidded in the daylight and rimmed with a faint red.
You look exhausted. As if you haven’t really gotten used to the light in Metropolis, squinting because not being in the dark of Gotham is hurting your eyes and circadian rhythm.
He lets out an embarrassing ‘uhhh’ before his thoughts can catch up. Then, he does as Lois does, and jerks Clark forward by the elbow. The man’s body protests more than Jimmy thought it would, shoes super-glued to the floor.
What the hell is this guy made of?
Jimmy tugs again, and Clark finally snaps into it, stumbling forward like a thrown ragdoll. His glasses sit lopsided on his face as he stares.
You give him a look, one that seems almost telepathic, and the words just start pouring out.
It’s like Jimmy never existed. He watches as Clark mumbles out his words, little fragments of ‘Lois wanted’ and ‘sent me’ and ‘it would be…appreciated,’ said in the way questions are reluctantly asked.
You look at Clark, and only Clark. Head tilted, elbow propped on the edge of your desk and temple cradled by your fingers. Eyes never leaving, like his voice is the only sound in the world. Like you’re trying to cling onto every single one of his words so you can commit them to paper later.
And Clark doesn’t even look at Jimmy for help, eyes naturally attracted to yours. He can’t pull away, it almost seems like.
Launching into a soft-spoken spiel about the background of Lois’ exposé, he details sources and photo-ops and how he ‘really shouldn’t be telling you this because it might be dangerous, but I wanted you to know that—’
Now Jimmy’s sold on Lois’ side-quest, or whatever she called it.
If there are any other explanations in the entire universe for two people looking at each other like it’s the last time, speak now. No? Going once, going twice? Alright: it’s love.
Let's put aside the mysterious estrangement and the tense incidents that have everyone convinced of your mutual hatred. Despite it all, you’re still looking at Clark with the sweetest face Jimmy has ever seen on you, and Clark is standing up taller, chest almost puffed out.
"We’re talking about it over dinner on Saturday, if you wanna come,” Clark says, a soft sort of grin lighting up his face. It’s not the awkward, left side of the face scrunched smile that usually comes when someone cracks a bad joke. This one is kinder, shredded wide-open.
Yearning.
“You sure?”
“Lois won’t mind,” he shrugs, and holy shit—Jimmy did not know Clark’s pupils could dilate like that. Like dinner-plate wide, leaving only a thin ring of blue around an uncanny pool of tar. Kind of alien, if he really had to put a word to it. “It’ll be like the old days.”
Your hand falls slowly to rest on your desk. You sit up straight, posture conditioned. Just like that, you’ve hardened back up again, porcelain-polite mask sitting over your face. Cracked over the mouth, just a little, clay falling apart in the way your lips curve sadly down.
“I just saw Lois,” you breathe out with a half-hearted head tilt. Jimmy follows it, and sure enough, a familiar dark-haired troublemaker is squeezing out of the elevator. “I’ll talk to her about it.”
“Great,” Clark says, morphing back to his usual posture. “That’s great.”
You swallow, giving him a single, curt nod. “See you.”
Copying you, he draws his mouth into a terse line. Softly, with a sick gleam in his eyes that could make Jimmy almost throw up at, “Yeah.”
Clark moves faster than he can say ‘Daily Planet.’ Jimmy looks back, incredulous, at how fast the man skitters back to his own desk without bumping into a single person.
He has half the mind to ask what the hell is going on.
Instead, he scoots on over to Cat’s desk, weaving through a group of interns who smile and wave and offer him a coffee. The gossip writer is already staring at him, eyes wide behind her huge cat-eye glasses as she fiddles with her golden earrings—a habit when she knows she has a story.
“I rescind my CIA theory,” she whispers, twirling a strand of hair around her painted finger. Cat nods as if she’s trying to convince herself of it. “They’re definitely dating.”
“Nah,” Jimmy says, leaning an elbow on the wall of her cubicle. “Hear this: bitter exes.”
She gasps. Actually looking concerned, she hides her mouth behind the back of her hand. “No.”
“Yeah.”
“Really?”
He nods, glancing back for a moment. Clark is trying to hide it, but he’s never been the subtle type—answering a phone call, he leans back in his seat, and Jimmy can trace his gaze right back to you talking with Lois.
Jimmy kind of wants to hit the two of you over the head for being so stupid.
Cat hums, clearly seeing it too. Grimacing, she taps her index finger against her chin. “Oh, yeah, definitely.”
—
This must be karma with a side of cosmic comedy.
Jimmy supposes that while it’s one thing to speculate that his co-workers are in love with each other, it’s an entirely different thing to spy on them. But it isn’t his fault. Scout’s Honor!
If anyone should receive fury from the gods, it’s Cat. She made him do it.
…And he complied. Just one picture, though. Nothing more, nothing less, but it was enough to capture evidence of you and Clark, frozen in surprise on the six-inch display of Jimmy’s phone.
(“Take it!” Cat hisses, nudging him below the ribs. Ouch—sharp elbows.
“I don’t have my camera!” Jimmy panics, patting himself down like a swarm of ants are crawling all over his body. Where is that damn phone?
The photo-op before them: Clark, hunched over his keyboard, picking out the words in his article one by one; you, giving him a hard sidelong stare over the lip of your coffee cup. This has happened multiple times in one way or the other.
Clark looks at you, and you look at him—never at the same time, though. It’s always with some wounded, twisted kind of longing in both of your eyes, one that reminds him of an animal trapped in the bushes. Scared of stepping out but needing it so badly at the same time.
“Hurry,” Cat urges, gesturing her arms in your direction. She's like an animated Italian grandpa, Jimmy thinks, fingers finally wrapped around his phone. He can see Clark shaking his head to himself, not quite happy with his article, and you smother a smug grin into your coffee. “She’s looking!”
Clark spins around immediately—as if he heard the gossip columnist’s urgently whispered cries from across the damn newsroom and needed to see it for himself—and freezes when he makes eye contact with you. You nearly choke, eyes wide, brows furrowed.
Jimmy’s thumb finds the shutter button.
End of story.)
What he doesn’t get is why the hell it isn’t his phone, but his cameras that are cursed. He almost cried handing over his two beloved Nikons to the repairman and sobbed for real into his pillow when he found out both their mirrors were jammed and needed to stay in the shop for a business week.
“But it only took a few hours last time!” he protested. The repairman just shook his head sadly and stuck his thumb over his shoulder to the rack of repairs, nearly buckling under the weight of fifty-something cameras.
Now, back at the office with zero equipment and a hundred photo-ops, Jimmy feels peeved, and kind of crazy.
Lois frowns, leaning back in her rolling chair. Clark is out of the office for lunch again, an occurrence that’s become too common. He’ll probably be back in ten minutes, saying that the foot traffic was terrible because Superman was doing loops in the sky.
“I did say that mirrorless cameras were better,” she says, giving him that I told you so look. “Less moving parts and a better sensor.”
Jimmy sulks with a soda in hand, sucking air through the straw and making the wheezing, burbling sound a finished drink always makes. He mutters, mostly to himself, "A mirrorless isn't as romantic as a DSLR.”
Lois’ face pulls in on itself—definitely judging. “You’re gonna say some shit like ‘a camera is like a woman,’ aren’t you?”
He nods, solemnly clutching his fist tight and placing it over his heart. “A camera is like a woman.”
“I have to say that I agree.”
Jimmy nearly shrieks and jumps in his chair, a shiver ripping along his spine.
You’re leaning your right elbow on the short, thick wall on the side of his desk with a small smile cracking over your lips. An old-looking camera bag is slung across your body, the dark strap stark against the washed-out maroon of the crew neck sweater you’re wearing.
(Smallville Giants?)
In the background, Lois chuckles and crosses one leg over the other, ankle on knee.
Embarrassment burns through him.
“Exactly,” he huffs out, flashing a full grin. His leg starts bouncing out of control, and he digs his fingers into the orange plush of his chair’s armrest. “God, I—you kind of scared me.”
You’ve warmed up since the day he and Clark stumbled around your desk like fools. Cracking a smile here and there, telling jokes steeped in dry Gothamite humor. Sometimes, Jimmy swears he can hear a tiny Midwestern twang fighting the polished city accent you have.
“Sorry,” you say, head tilting as your grin widens. “Heard you don’t have a camera.”
Jimmy nods, not trusting his mouth to say anything else. Lifting the strap over your head, you place the bag on his desk. By the sound, it’s heavier than it looks.
He gazes at you with stars in his eyes. “Seriously?”
“D5. You can borrow it for now,” you tell him. Casual, like you aren’t handing over a precious relic. He almost feels a prick of jealousy in his heart. Back in school, the wealthier kids were too stingy to even let him near theirs.
He still loves the D500 he managed to scrounge up the money for as a broke college kid. But this...he might start salivating and floating like a Looney Tunes character.
“For real?” Jimmy can’t believe it. Maybe this curse has a silver lining that’s too good to be true.
“I’m trialing a Sony mirrorless right now.” And then you lean a little closer as if this is just a secret shared between the two of you, blocking the side of your mouth with a palm, “Personally, not as sexy as a DSLR.”
The Kansas accent that he’s only ever heard from Clark bleeds into your words, just slightly.
Bingo!
Jimmy slaps his thigh with a wide grin and points at Lois, victorious. “Told you so!”
You laugh as you slip away.
—
The sands of time run quicker when he has a stellar camera in his hands.
He spent the entire day wandering around the city until his feet went sore, the camera strap tight to keep it as close to his chest as possible. There is no way in the entire universe that something is going to happen to the D5. He’d die before that happened.
Even from the tiny display window, which is smeared with permanent fingerprints—believe him, Jimmy already tried everything to wipe them off—he can tell the difference between your and his equipment. Especially for Superman photos, he notes.
Now, alone in his room, parents already put down to bed, Jimmy longingly runs a finger down the worn leather grip of the Nikon you passed to him. It’s a good model, one of the best. He’s yearned for something as good as this since high school.
Fighting sleep, he springs the hatch in the side of the camera’s body and pops out the memory card.
Wait. Blink three times. It isn’t his, and it’s older than the ones he uses by a lot. Hell, this is ancient.
Jimmy is rocketed out of his grogginess, back going ramrod straight.
If this is your SD, and it’s this old...what photos do you have?
It’s a natural thing for journalists to speculate, he justifies, knowing full well that he’s been infected with the investigative virus.
Invasion of privacy—invasion of—invasion—
His hesitance is interrupted by the faces of his two nosier co-workers. Cat, ever the devil on his shoulder, telling him that a peek doesn’t hurt. Lois, hands on her hips and head shaking left to right, saying, “Journalists dig deep.”
He boots up his computer, vision seared with the annoying flash of white that always precedes the login screen. Jimmy follows the motions: insert the card, scroll to find his files, select the—almost two-hundred shots—he took and move them to a local folder.
Meanwhile...
He almost sprains his wrist with how fast he scrolls back into the card’s history.
The first one he finds is approximately dated to when you and Clark were in high school. Far too early for a kid to own a D5, and the quality proves it, grainy enough to be from an amateur camera.
Clark is without his signature glasses in this one, the edges of his body burnished in white-gold. He’s still pretty big, but he leans more to the gangly side with the way his clothes aren’t as filled in. His hair is longer, not as curly, but his dimples are the same. Smile kind, bright blue eyes turned to crescents.
Handsome, in a way Jimmy never expected him to be.
He’s lying on his side in bed, surrounded by a gingham-flannel duvet and a striped pillowcase. Pale light streams in from a blurry window, thin beige curtains fluttering in the corner. His hand is buried in the long hair of a border collie as he looks up at the camera with a glint of tender fondness in his eyes.
Jimmy can tell you’re the one who took this, even though the composition is kind of clumsy. Explaining it is hard, but it’s just a feeling. You always take pictures that make people feel romantic about the world.
Next.
This one is around fifteen years from today, and it’s Clark who’s taking this one—he's talented with his words, but it seems that photography has never been his strongest suit.
Your face is rounder, younger, nose crinkled in displeasure about being half-buried in a pile of loose hay. Still, the corners of your mouth are angled up as if you’re happy to see Clark on the other side.
Dirt is smeared on the front of your shirt, and the rest of the details are hard to make out, but Jimmy thinks you’re on the floor of a barn. Someone else’s cut-off leg stretches from the side. The angle of the shot is tilted, like Clark had fumbled with the shutter and almost dropped the camera.
All the way to the bottom now.
Jimmy feels a strange wave of nostalgia wash over him. Spending his entire life as a born-and-raised Metropolitan sounded so perfect, but now he isn’t so sure. He’s almost envious of what you and Clark had.
The colors of everything are faded together, except for the sky, which is exceptionally blue and clear. You’re both about four, or five—kindergarten age, completely oblivious about your futures. Standing in a field of brown-green grass and dirt, you wear matching white Little League jerseys.
Smallville 1 and 2, emblazoned across your backs in red. A glove and bat are laid to the side. Clark’s neck-length curls spill out of his cap, and you’re just an inch taller than him. Your small hands are clasped together as you both watch the field, like if either of you let go, the other would disappear.
He ejects the memory card and wipes his eyes.
Fuck. What went wrong?
—
Apparently, further intruding on your and Clark’s personal life means rigging the Saturday work dinner, if hanging out at a bar could be considered that.
“It’s the perfect excuse,” Lois mutters to herself, hands stuffed into her pockets. She has that scheming expression on her face again; narrowed eyes, tongue caught in the pocket of her cheek. “They have to sit next to each other, so make sure you’re not late.”
She was ecstatic to hear about the pictures harbored in your SD. The ever-changing theory has now gone from co-workers with deep hatred to bitter exes to sad, estranged childhood friends who never had the time to fall in love.
Good thing he didn’t tell Cat, because she would have gone running to the nearest movie studio to pitch a romcom idea.
“Are you sure this’ll work?” Jimmy asks, falling in step next to her. Just to be safe, he checks over his shoulder. As per usual, Clark is already nowhere to be seen, having already turned the corner.
Briefly, he wonders how long it takes for Clark to get home, if you live in Midtown too, and if you ever pass by each other on the way to the store or something. That would be awkward.
Lois hums, a hesitant sound. She tilts her head, suddenly interested in studying the non-existent stars. “Like, seventy...five percent sure.”
“Seventy-five?”
“Alright, eighty,” she decides. For real this time! is what goes unsaid.
Jimmy sighs and kicks a pebble down the smooth sidewalk.
—
“Sorry, am I late?” you ask, rushing over from the door.
Wow. The sunshine in Metropolis can really change a person. A time where you would sit straight-backed and stone-faced at your desk has been long forgotten. You look brighter now. The exhausted weight you used to carry around the office has disappeared, and you walk over with a pep in your step.
The heavy slab of glass and wood swings close behind you, dimming the light available in the bar. Jimmy notices that your shoes are more casual than the ones you take to work, and you’re wearing the same Smallville Giants sweater.
You weave past a group of college kids playing pool, the sound of your steps masked by the loud clack of an eight-ball being sunk and the cheers that follow.
“No, no, you’re great,” Lois says, sliding out of the booth. You wrap an arm around her shoulders for a quick hug without an ounce of hesitance.
Jimmy, stuck next to the wall, politely waves at you from behind Lois, to which you respond with a small grin. Placing your bag on the bench opposite from them, you slide into the booth and take in the warm light of the bar, how the air smells like alcohol and salt.
“How was the camera?”
“Amazing,” he blurts, palms glued to the tabletop, a little damp from the last wipe-down. The nerd in him is so psyched out right now. “Like, wow. I’m not betraying my D500s, but that’s a dream camera right there.”
There’s no indication that you know anything about the childhood photos you accidentally left in his hands. You laugh, a soft sound that comes whispering under the rock song playing from the old jukebox in the corner. “This your regular spot?”
Lois flags down a waiter, nodding with a grin that matches yours. “Yeah, this is an official invitation to join our long-running tab.”
“If this were Gotham, we’d be jumped in an alley two weeks ago,” you say, looking around the bar with a sort of wonder in your eyes. Jimmy supposes things aren’t like this in Jersey, but then again, the rent is cheap, the architecture is gorgeous, and the jazz is sexy.
Besides, it isn’t like Metropolis doesn’t have her own handful of nutjobs. They’re a lot more partial to obliterating Superman and ruling the world than gassing an entire city, but tomayto-tomahto.
Lois orders the sweet wine she always does—ever the sugar addict—and Jimmy gets himself a beer, much to your and the waiter’s surprise. He has to flash his ID to prove that he is indeed older than twenty-one.
“Is it mean if I thought you were a cub until last week?” you ask. Then you turn to the waiter. “Sparkling cider, but water if you don’t.”
The server nods and turns back to the main bar.
Jimmy gets the hint-hint, nudge-nudge look from Lois, her brows raising as she looks at him from the corner of her eye. She serves it with a sharp jab of her elbow into his side. Ouch—once a victim, always a victim. Good thing he has a thicker jacket on to soften the blow.
“Apple cider?” Lois frowns, inquisitive—extra verbal emphasis on cider. Jimmy runs back his mental film reel, trying to remember why the hell the association of you and the drink is so familiar. “I don’t suppose you’re abstaining.”
You rest your chin on your right hand, elbow propped on the tabletop. The moisture that Jimmy felt earlier has long dried up. You get a wistful glimmer about your face, eyes flicking up to the corner of the room where a baseball game is airing.
“I’m not,” you explain, tearing your attention off the screen like it’s hard. “I just like it. Reminds me of home, you know?”
“Right. Perry told me about your file,” Lois says, ever the confession-puller even though she acts like she isn’t doing anything. “The Planet has Smallville One and Two now.”
A frown pulls at your face, not quite sure if you heard her right, “Sorry?”
“You know, like Thing One and Two.”
“Oh. Yeah.” You smile, but it’s a little shakier. Miffed, Jimmy seriously considers bumping Lois’ foot with his own.
Luckily, she doesn’t press any further, letting the conversation flow naturally from your mysterious origins to current world events—the drinks come now, numb to the touch and beading on the glass, and your eyes are sparkling just like the cider before you—to the exposé.
The reason why the three of you are here in the first place, sharing anecdotes related to the scandal about to be thrust upon the world. It has something to do with widespread corruption in the precinct that patrols the ports, and in the three times Lois has almost gotten herself killed, she’s connected it to a Gotham cartel.
Jimmy tells a wild, borderline tall tale about being chased down Main Street by a gang of cops. He had to hide in the alley behind his favorite bodega for an hour before slinking back to the office. Mr. White wasn’t very happy about that.
(“Great Caesar’s ghost!” he exclaimed, acrid cigar smoke puffing everywhere.)
You pull up pictures on your phone of suspicious activity you’ve captured in the area, from police loitering for too long in corners to pristine vans driving through the city across the bay.
Perks of being connected, you say, keeping your voice low, Gotham isn’t as bad as most people think. Sources are basically endless.
The bell at the door rings, though it’s barely heard over the din and racket of pool-playing jocks and the jukebox, now playing some Beatles song that Jimmy can’t remember the name of. Lois slouches in her seat, slowly peeking out from the booth to check who just came in. It’s Clark.
He stumbles over in a pair of slacks that don’t look tailored enough and the knit sweater Lois called ‘sick of the laundry machine’ the last time she saw it on him. She gives him a curt once-over, disapproving.
“Sorry,” he breathes out, finding the floor exceedingly interesting. His glasses are askew, sliding down the bridge of his nose like he’d just shoved them on and his curly hair is whirlwind-messy. “Foot traffic. Superman.”
“It’s always him,” Jimmy drawls, knocking back a sip of his beer.
You look up at Clark. Eyes shining like it’s the first time you’ve ever seen him, you pinch your mouth into a tight line.
Clark, still in his typical daze, wonders out loud, “Cider?”
He says it in a feather-soft tone, quietly poking. As if he’s a kid again, Little League glove resting in the dry grass, tugging at your arm when a teammate steals a base and making sure you saw that too.
Your drink is half-finished on the table. There’s a ring of room-temp water around the base, sure to join the hundred others etched into the wood. A pearl of condensation rolls down the side, chasing the bubbles still fizzling in the ice.
The puzzle pieces in Jimmy’s head finally click together—the polaroid Clark allegedly keeps in his wallet. Cider and cowboy. You and your childhood best friend.
It could be considered a miracle in itself how fast you react. Jimmy notes the heavy way you swallow, throat bobbing as you reach for your bag, draw it toward you, and—
You let Clark in.
Apprehension hangs in his body as he slides into the booth. Clark sits board-stiff, unsure of his standing with you. You elbow him, harder than Lois would do to anybody, and the man doesn’t budge.
His face just keeps getting ruddier by the second. If this were a cartoon, his glasses would for sure be misted with the same steam pouring from his ears.
Lois coughs. “Right. Could we get to fact-checking the piece?”
“Yeah,” Clark squeaks. The leather of the booth’s cushion makes the same sound when he scoots a little closer to your side.
Your elbows end up bumping somewhere between the second round of drinks—Clark and the weird looks he gets for drinking fucking milk are hilarious—and Lois going on a tangent about how Central City is a great place at this time of year.
Clark stills, watching your reaction, but you don’t need words. You don’t jump back like you’ve been burned. You just settle into some kind of semi-normal truce area.
Relaxation finally melts into Clark’s bones, and he stumbles into the conversation with a banging opener about meeting a brilliant college kid there.
“I think his name was Allen?”
Lois laughs, fingers wrapped around the stem of her glass. “We should all cover the science fair they hold next year, then. Just to confirm your source.”
“Yeah,” you say, eyes darting to the space where your elbow meets Clark’s. “We should. It’s close to home too.”
Jimmy catches Lois' eye. Can you believe this?
He realizes that his investment isn’t so much about the mystery anymore. That’s something you two could keep to yourselves, because there’s no way in hell Jimmy would willingly learn the painful lore.
It’s more about the way you glance at each other. Held-back, ready to run full-tilt without hesitation if someone gave the green light. You’re clearly in love, and everyone can see it.
Now, the real mystery is how long it’ll take for you both to admit it.
—
notes. please lmk if u enjoyed my sweet childhood best friends who fold despite being estranged... if i do write a second part it'll prob be in his or reader's pov ⭐⭐
cw: insecurities, overthinking, innuendo, brief mentions of erections, prelude of physical intimacy, pet names
synopsis: clark kent is painfully, secretly, one-sidedly in love with his childhood best friend.
wc. 5k
SERIES MASTERLIST
<< READ PART ONE
NOTE: THIS IS A REUPLOAD DUE TO ENGAGEMENT ISSUES.
kinktober | dc masterlist | navigation | masterlist
clark is seated at his desk, the soft hum of his old laptop filling the silence usually found in his apartment. the sound is a steady companion to the thoughts that won't leave his mind.
as he stares at the screen, he finds the text blurring, paragraphs weaving into each other as his mind continues circling the memory of your weekend visits almost obsessively. he can't help himself, to be fair. that's because everything you do - your laugh, your presence, the way you touch him and speak to him - linger far longer than normal.
even though you're not here with him right now, he feels your presence within his body like you've carved your way into his skin.
this can't be healthy.
clark leans back in his chair, closing his eyes to try and reset his brain and stop having thoughts about you. his best friend. he taps his pen idly against the notebook in front of him, though he knows he isn't taking notes.
it's been years since you first toddled into his life, clinging to him like some shadow he couldn't shake, and yet somehow, the kid feeling he gets with you never goes away. he feels so warm and full around you that he swears the feeling is deeper than love. maybe you're his soulmate. he may not be yours, but he's almost entirely sure you're his. the only thing that could truly make him happy is to be with you, and he's trying to find peace with the fact that it'll never happen.
he re-opens his eyes with a deep sigh, eyes drifting to the small stack of photos on the corner of his desk, one's you'd taken with your camera last weekend and printed out for him. he studies your expressions and the way you're draped over him in every picture, hugging him, kissing his cheek, getting lifted up by him... you treat him like this while having no real clue how utterly you consume him. even a little glance from you leaves him scrambling to stay composed.
he forces himself to look away, running a hand through his curls with frustration. "keep it together, clark." he says after letting out a deep breath. "keep it together. go on a date. meet a nice girl. just get over her. she's not yours."
he uses his mantra to try and focus on other things. he has deadlines, work to do, papers to write. he has so many things to focus on, and not enough to dwell on you like this. but his mind keeps returning to fixate on everything about you, your little mannerisms and the way you behave, from the way your lips purse when you're thinking, how you leave shiny lipgloss on all his straws since you always end up taking his drinks, how you hang off his arm like his girlfriend when you walk.
it's a cycle clark knows well: he builds walls, puts himself in a safe place, convinces himself he can handle it… and then he sees you and everything he's constructed falls away.
clark is painfully aware that no matter how much he tries to keep you at arm's length, you keep weaving yourself into his mind and occupying every crevice. for now, he allows himself the dangerous luxury of thinking of the next time he'll see you, anticipating the way your energy will fill the room the moment you arrive.
clark closes his eyes briefly, trying to still his racing heart and calm the rush of everything he doesn't let anyone see. he can't tell you yet how much he's always felt for you, how every moment spent with you has been torture for him. he opens his eyes and stares at the empty apartment again, wondering how long he can keep pretending his feelings aren't all consuming. that you're just… his friend.
it's times like this where clark is grateful for the distance between the two of you. he gets to work part time at the daily planet while he finishes up his masters in graduate school, while you're all the way in another city at your own school. he can't imagine what it would be like if things remained the same as they did in high school, where you had all the same classes and electives as him, sat together with him in all of them, walked home together - holding hands of course - the works.
but lately, it's starting to feel cruel. the way those same gestures have carried on into adulthood. you call him your best friend, and sometimes it feels worse than an insult. it's a title that holds such innocence, spoken with so much trust and adoration, yet it draws a boundary that he keeps running into headfirst. you think the bond between you is unshakable. and it is. just not in the way you mean.
he rubs at his eyes, holding the sides of his face in his hands as he blinks hard at the light from his laptop. he can't bring himself to do any work. meanwhile, his phone sits to the side, screen-down, but his attention keeps flicking to it like he's expecting it to come alive any second. he tells himself it's habit. he's just waiting for a work email or a text from perry or one of his professors, but he knows exactly who he's waiting for.
-
you have a bad habit of calling late and at the wrong time. always when he's trying to convince himself that he can go an entire night without hearing your voice. and every time, the moment the ringtone fills the room, he's already giving in before he even answers.
the phone vibrates once. twice.
his heart trips in his chest. the sound seems too loud in the quiet. when he flips it over and sees your name flashing across the screen, his stomach lurches. "oh no," he mutters under his breath, dragging a hand down his face. "what now?"
he watches it ring blankly for a second, eyes fixed on your contact picture smiling at him tauntingly. he takes a deep breath, willing himself not to sound like an eager puppy the second he answers it.
he clears his throat, forces his voice steady, and answers.
"hey."
"clark!"
your voice bursts through the speaker, bright and breathless, already halfway to laughter. it's the kind of tone that instantly rearranges the air in his chest. the kind that makes his ribs ache.
"hey, you." he says again, because it's all he can manage when you sound like that. "what's going on?"
"i'm on my way over right now! i'm in my car, but i parked it just to give you a heads up. i'm not calling and driving 'cause you get fussy when i do that," you chuckle, the whizz of cars passing by you on the busy road echoing through the receiver.
he straightens in his chair, pulse spiking. "...you're what?"
"coming over! i just- oh my gosh, i have to tell you in person. i'll be there in, like, fifteen minutes. don't move!"
the line goes dead before he can say anything else. he stares at his phone, half a laugh caught in his throat, half panic building behind his ribs.
fifteen minutes.
clark's apartment is a mess. he's a mess. he doesn't even know why you're coming, what could possibly warrant this level of excitement, but the sound of it in your voice makes him dizzy.
he gets up so fast his chair rolls back into the wall.
"okay," he mutters to himself, pacing the tight confines of his bedroom. "okay. calm down. it's fine. it's just a visit. she's visited tons of times... it's just her."
right, just you. the person who's been running laps around his heart for years. he can already feel the faint panic stir inside him knowing he'll crumble pitifully the moment he sees you in those fifteen minutes.
clark glances down at himself and immediately regrets it. the grey t-shirt he's wearing is soft from one too many washes, and his sweats have ink smudged on them. he looks like someone who's been hiding from the world for three days straight - which, technically, he has. "great," he mutters. "real impressive, kent."
he runs a hand through his curls, trying to coax them into something that doesn't scream i've been neglecting myself and thinking about you for hours. it doesn't help. his curls just spring back in defiance, framing his face awkwardly.
once he exits his room, he starts to quickly gather stray mugs, stack papers, and tidy up the area in an effort to distract himself from overthinking everything. he realizes his emotions have reflected his environment, because his whole space is one big mess. and now he has to clean it all up, both his mind and his apartment, before you get here.
his stomach twists hard.
he knows he should be happy. you're his best friend, and you're excited about something, and that's supposed to be enough. but his body doesn't seem to care about supposed to. it's already reacting like it always does when you're near: nervous, hopeful, a little bit desperate. leaning against the counter for a moment, he stares at the clock. twelve minutes now.
this isn't the first time you've shown up unannounced. you've done it hundreds of times, flinging the door open like you own the place, collapsing onto his couch, talking too fast, touching everything. it's normal. it's fine. he can handle this.
except lately, every time you're here, clark feels like he's standing on a fault line. everything inside him is so tightly wound that the smallest thing - your hand on his arm, your voice saying his name - could split him open. he presses the heel of his palm to his chest like he's trying to physically hold himself together. this is ridiculous, he thinks.
he's acting like this and you don't even know what you do to him, how easily you unravel all the careful work he puts into pretending to be normal around you. every time you're near, he starts to imagine things he shouldn't. you on his couch, leaning too close; your laughter mixing with his. his hand on your jaw, tilting your face up so he can press his lips to yours... he shakes his head, cutting the thought off before it can go anywhere. "get a grip," he tells himself quietly.
nine minutes left.
clark returns to his desk, sitting down. his gaze flits to his laptop once more, the screen still open on the same blank document, cursor blinking. mocking him. he tries to focus on the words he needs to write. an article, something about city policy, but the letters dissolve into meaningless patterns. his mind drifts back to you like it's tethered.
what are you going to tell him? what could make you sound so excited? maybe it's something about school, or someone new you've met, or maybe a boyfriend. he shakes his head quickly. "no, she doesn't have a boyfriend. she would've told me she was talking to someone. it's not a boyfriend, its not..."
he doesn't want to imagine you telling him about anyone else. he rubs at his temple, frustrated with himself, but it's useless. you fill the empty spaces in his life too easily. you always have.
he wonders if you know how transparent he is. if you ever notice the way his breath catches when you lean too close, or the way he looks at your mouth when you talk. probably not. you've never been self-conscious about affection. you give it so freely it feels unthinking, natural. to you, it's just how you are. to him, it's everything he can't have.
seven minutes.
he glances toward the door, then away again, then back.
he should probably change his shirt. he should definitely do something with his hair. but he knows it won't matter. the moment you walk in, he'll forget every bit of composure he's rehearsed.
clark leans forward and puts his hands on the keyboard of his laptop, trying to will himself to come up with something and to get at least one paragraph done before you arrive. his head keeps reeling back though, fixating on your arrival. there's a part of him that honestly believes this visit might mean something more. that maybe you've realized what's been sitting between you for years. but hope, for clark, is dangerous. it makes his mind wander to dangerous places, which isn't good when it's now only five minutes until you arrive.
he gets up and starts pacing again, stopping in front of the mirror inside the bathroom connected to his room. his reflection looks back at him - curls slightly frizzy, wrinkly shirt, that stupid line of tension around his mouth he always gets when he's trying too hard not to look nervous. he looks like he's been caught doing something wrong. and he has, hasn't he? thinking about you like this. wanting you like this.
he rubs at his jaw, checks the clock inside his room again. two minutes now.
the image of you floods in again, where you always burst in like sunlight. you'll walk in, drop your bag on the couch, kick your shoes off, and immediately gravitate toward him. you always do. his space becomes yours without even trying. clark shouldn't let you, and he's told himself multiple times that the next time he sees you, he'd set boundaries, stop letting you blur every line he's tried to draw. but then you smile, and it all goes. he'd let you take anything from him if it meant you'd stay.
one minute.
clark reckons he could be sick right now. there's no reason to be this nervous. "you've done this a thousand times, just relax," he says to himself - but something about the way you sounded on the phone has him on edge. too happy, too bright. something's coming, and he's the last one to know.
clark stares at the door, his heart hammering. you're going to walk through it. you're going to look at him with those eyes that undo him every single time. you're going to make yourself at home in the space he's been trying to keep sterile, safe, untouched by you. and then you'll laugh, and lean into him, and all that distance will collapse like it always does.
he hates that he's already imagining how you'll smell - sweet and clean, like the perfumes and lotion you use - and how your hair will brush against his shoulder when you hug him. he wonders what you're wearing. if you dressed up. if you thought about him when you picked it out.
the faint creak of the elevator doors sliding open sounds down the hall, snapping him out of his thoughts. he can hear the little rush of footsteps, meaning you're jogging up to see him. his heart gives a loud thud thud thud in his chest the closer you get, until you stop in front of his door and rap at the wood eagerly.
he accidentally opens it too early out of nervousness, and you squeak the second you see him, rushing into his brawny arms to give him a hug. in your excitement, you nearly drop the plastic tin you brought, which covers a stack of cupcakes.
he allows you to smother your face in his chest while you giggle, looking up at him with a mirthful expression. to say you're excited would be an understatement. your body feels like a shaken up soda can, with the way you're buzzing. you squeeze him tighter, relishing in the way his arms wrap around you a little firmer in response.
"hi," he breathes, unable to come up with much else. all of his trepidation has washed away now, and he feels safe and right with you - soft, warm, and alive - in his arms. "what's going on with you, hm?"
your arms wind up around his neck, your weight pushing up onto your toes, cupcakes teetering precariously in one hand. he has that familiar, grounding scent that's always followed him. "i missed you," you blurt, drawing back just far enough to see his face. your eyes are bright, your grin wide, and your fingers are already pushing into his curls, tugging one absentmindedly the way you always do when you're happy.
he feels the softness of your fingers against his scalp, the press of your chest against his, the syrupy sweetness of your perfume.
"i saw you only a little while ago, hon." he manages, slowly lowering himself down to your level so you don't have to hold yourself up on your tiptoes to hug him. he adapts himself to match your needs. you smile appreciatively at the gesture, giving him a squeeze even as he stoops uncomfortably low to be at your level.
"yeah, and it was awful!" you say dramatically, making a displeased face. "do you know how boring my week was without you? i almost started talking to my classmates just to fill the void."
he laughs softly, some of the pressure in his body escaping as the breathy chuckles escape him. he's calm for only a few more seconds until you whisper conspiratorially, reminding him you have a huge secret over his head - a bomb you're about to drop on him that might be too much for him to bear. "guess what? i brought you something."
you pull back enough to thrust the container of cupcakes between you before he can ask, and he steadies it with both hands, blinking down at the swirl of frosting through the plastic lid. "you baked."
he says it as more of a statement than a question. he knows the cupcakes are more than a gift to him, it signifies you have something you want to celebrate with him. you did it when you got your first job, when your cousin got engaged, when you passed your exams. he's seen that look on your face before; the glowing i have a secret expression. it makes him wary and curious simultaneously.
"mhm!" you hum, bouncing a little on your feet. "but you have to sit down before i tell you why. c'mon!"
"wait, baby hold on a sec-"
you disregard his hesitation, wrapping your hand around his thick wrist before tugging him towards his living room. clark barely manages to set the cupcakes down on the coffee table before you push him toward the couch, your hands firm against his chest.
"sit," you command, grinning.
he obliges, mostly because he doesn't trust his knees to hold him up right now, and then you're climbing right onto his lap in a straddling position, just like that. your arms drape around his shoulders, knees bracketing his hips. he goes completely still for a moment, blinking up at you dumbly.
his cheeks warm up, the flush creeping along his face. "w-whoa... hey," he says weakly, hands frozen midair, unsure where to put them.
you tilt your head, feigning innocence. "what?"
"you can't just-"
"yes, I can," you cut in, laughing softly. "you always make me tell my stories from so far away, and this is way better."
his pulse is a roar in his ears and his pupils have dilated so much that the blue has been shrouded by black. you don't seem to notice. your hands have found his curls again, playing absently with them while you talk, your words tumbling out in a rush.
"you're never gonna believe it. i've been keeping this a secret for weeks, and it's been killing me, and i was gonna wait until this weekend but i couldn't. i just had to come tell you."
clark's trying to listen. really, he is. but all he can focus on is the feel of your weight on his thighs, the warmth radiating through the thin fabric of his sweats, and the feeling of your hands carding gently through his curls. he goes quiet and pliant, breathing heavier than he means to, eyes fluttering. his hair's soft, a little overgrown at the nape, and each pass of your fingers earns this quiet, shaky exhale.
you shift a little to get comfortable, one of your hands sliding down from his hair to rest against his shoulder. "did you miss me?"
he swallows. "i t-think you already asked me..."
"no, i told you i missed you. did you miss me?"
you're watching him expectantly with a little smile curling at your mouth, and he knows you're waiting for an answer. he tries to play it cool long enough to answer, and to give you the version of himself that doesn't fall apart just because you're near.
his hands hover uncertainly at your waist, fingers twitching. they're desperate to touch but terrified to move. "of course i missed you," he finally says quietly. "you're...you know i always do."
you're satisfied by his answer, and as a result, you flop forward, wrapping your arms around him in another hug. your face presses into the curve of his neck this time, your breath warm against his skin.
you're still talking, oblivious to what's happening to him right now. "so anyway," you say, pulling back just enough to meet his gaze again, "i'm celebrating! and you're the first person i wanted to tell. you should be honored."
his heart gives a strange, unsteady kick. "tell me what?" he swears for a second that the world narrows down to just that look on your face, the one that always ruins him.
"guess," you whisper, and he knows he's in trouble.
he could guess a thousand things. some that would destroy him, some that would save him, but in this moment, with you in his lap, your fingers still tangled in his hair and your breath brushing against his lips, he can't think at all.
you giggle and rock forward playfully, unintentionally rolling your hips against his. he jolts slightly, eyes widening as his brain kicks back into gear. he needs you to sit still and not do that again, or something very bad will happen to him.
"c'mon, clark," you say, voice sweet and teasing. "guess."
he looks at you helplessly, his muscles locked. "i can't think of anything right now." he says softly. "tell me."
"okay, okay," you say breathlessly, grinning like you're about to burst, "fine, i'll tell you! but you have to promise you won't freak out."
he huffs. "that depends on what it is."
"you'll love it!" you insist, leaning in until your nose nearly bumps his. "you're gonna be so happy."
he's already not breathing properly. "uh-huh."
"okay," you say, practically vibrating now, "so you know how i've been complaining forever about how far away my school is and how i never get to see you anymore?"
"yeah…" he's starting to sweat in anticipation, preparing for the worst. he knows you said your news would make him happy too, but because you're unaware of his feelings for you, you could think telling him you're engaged would be good news. because who wouldn't want to celebrate their best friend's marriage?
"and you know how i always say i wish we could study together like old times?"
"mm... mhm, yeah."
"well… problem solved!"
he blinks. "what?"
you bounce again. he rushes to grab your hips to steady you, his fingers flexing automatically against the curve of your waist. you don't seem to notice, which somehow makes it worse. he tries to will away the inevitable issue your presence on his lap will create in his pants, but he can feel it's already starting.
"i transferred!" you blurt out. "i'm coming here! to your school!"
he freezes.
you laugh, grabbing his face in your hands and squeezing. "isn't that crazy? i got in! i literally just found out an hour ago. i couldn't even wait, i just grabbed my keys and came straight here!"
"you... y-you what?"
"i transferred," you repeat as if he didn't hear you the first time. "i'm starting next semester! we can go to classes together again, and we'll be on the same campus, and... oh, oh, wait, wait there's more-"
"more?" his voice cracks.
you nod eagerly, "yup! i've already been looking at apartments near yours, but then i thought, like, why not just stay with you for a while? just until i find a place. or maybe longer, if it works out! we can share groceries again, and you can wake me up when i oversleep, and i'll cook for you but only if we get takeout on friday and have a movie night. isn't that so fun?"
"wait, wait, wait," he says, trying to catch up, but you're steamrolling right over him.
"and it'll be so perfect, clark! we'll get to hang out all the time again, instead of the weekends. like, every day! all the time, actually, since i'll be living with you."
you lean closer as you talk, your enthusiasm pulling you in even closer to him. "isn't that amazing?"
clark swears the world tilts. you smell so good, he can't stop thinking about how wonderful you smell, and the warmth coming off your body is wrecking his ability to think. he can feel all the subtle movements you make. "yeah," he says, trying to sound normal, his voice an octave lower than usual. "yeah, that's… that's really, really..."
"great, right?" you finish for him, beaming.
he nods unconvincingly. inside, his mind is a frantic blur. you, here, every day, in his apartment, in his space. you'll take up his mornings, his nights, his kitchen, his bathroom. your laughter in the next room. your belongings on his floor. your head on his shoulder when you get sleepy. the smell of your shampoo on his pillow in the days you decide to sleep on his bed.
"clark," you laugh softly, tapping his nose with your fingers, "you look like you just saw a ghost."
he forces a smile. "no, no, i'm... i'm just surprised. it's a lot to take in."
you tilt your head, eyes searching his face. "a good lot?"
he hesitates. one heartbeat, another. he nods again. "yeah. good lot."
"i knew you'd be happy," you say, leaning forward impulsively to hug him again with your arms tight around his neck, your cheek pressing into his jaw. he swallows hard, hands hovering awkwardly in the air before they settle lightly at your back.
you're still talking against his skin, but the words are tumbling out of your mouth breathlessly. you're getting caught up in all of it, in him. "this is gonna be so perfect, clark. i won't have to miss you anymore. we can do everything together again. it'll be just like before."
clark wants to tell you to stop, that this is too much for him. he wants to beg you to slow down, but he can't get his brain to focus on anything. not the movement of you getting comfortable on his lap, or your hands on him, tilting his face toward yours with a careless insistence that causes his pulse to begin jackhammering beneath his flesh.
he closes his eyes, and for a second, he can't tell if the shiver that runs down his spine is from happiness or dread. probably both. "yeah. i'm really pr-proud of you for getting in. i'm happy you're here with me again."
glad he expressed his feelings bout the situation to you, your hands continue to roam freely, tangling in his curls, brushing his jaw, gripping his shoulders. "me too. i'm happy. i'm so happy, clark. i hate being away from you, do you know that? i-i know that it's kind of annoying - how i'm always climbing all over you, but it's because i wanna be close to you all the time. this is where i feel most comfortable. and myself."
his heart aches.
you keep talking. of course you do. it's what you do when you're so happy. words spill out of you like a faucet that doesn't shut off, bright and earnest and overflowing, and clark can't get a word in edgewise because all the words that come out of your mouth are about him. about how much you love being with him. about how happy you are when you're near him. about how safe he makes you feel, how you never get tired of him, how even when you're not with him, he's all you think about.
and you do it all while your lips press against his face.
yes, you've kissed his cheeks and forehead and nose and practically everywhere that still keeps the boundary between the two of you at platonic, but now, especially now, he can't handle it.
and he's trying -god help him - to breathe through it, to stay steady under the weight of your voice and your body and your hands in his hair, but his head is going hot and fuzzy. it's not even just the things you're saying, it's how you're saying them. all soft and unguarded, like you're whispering secrets straight into his skin instead of his ears. your lips trail along his jaw softly.
"hey," he finally manages, his voice cracking under the strain of keeping it quiet. "maybe you should..."
you shake your head, eyes closed now. "you don't even know how much i adore you, clark," and his whole body just locks up. his breath catches so hard it almost hurts. your lips move up to his chin...
he whispers, "baby..." in warning.
you hum absentmindedly before cupping his face between your palms. your thumbs sweep his cheekbones, keeping his head tilted to yours. your eyes are still closed, but you trail your lips along the small space of his chin diagonally upwards to the corner of his mouth, pressing repeated soft, sensual kisses there. so close to his lips. "you're so good to me," you say quietly. "no one makes me feel like you do. i swear, i get near you and i just…feel like myself again," you finish, soft and fond. "like home."
his hands flex uselessly at your waist. "you should... you should stop saying things like that," he breathes, voice rough. he whimpers a little, leaning back in the couch as his hands clutch at your body, unable to do anything else. you're right there, at his mouth, you could just...
just...
...
caught in the apex of your excitement and the pleasure you get from being so close to him again, you move your lips to align them with his fully. unmistakably, a kiss.
Clois in the movie is so beautiful cos we literally have this girl who has always thought she isn't worthy of good relationships who struggles with making connections fall hopelessly and crazily in love with a man who is even larger than life itself. Imagine struggling with human connections and you are able to make the most human connection ever but it's with a literal alien who can lift a building with one hand.
English is not my first language, so I apologize if I made any (grammar) mistakes. Feedback, requests, talks, vents, recommendations or just simple questions are always welcome.
Happy reading xxx
I do NOT give permission for my work to be translated or reposted on here or any other site.
“Honey?”
Clark woke up with a bad feeling.
And he didn’t like it at all.
It sat heavy in his chest, like a storm cloud pressing down from the inside out. He tried to breathe through it, tried to reason with it, but the unease didn’t move. It throbbed.
It was the first time he’d felt fear like that — not the kind that came before a fight, but the kind that whispered you can’t fix this one, Clark.
Which was nonsense, of course. People could recover from anything with a little hope. He was wearing that very idea on his chest every day. The world needed him to believe that.
But this morning, he couldn’t.
He stared up at the ceiling, listening to the sounds outside the apartment. Every sound came to him sharper than usual — a heartbeat here, a car horn miles away. But one sound grounded him, one voice that tethered him to something real.
“Helloooo? Honeyyyyyy? Krypton to Clark — do you even hear me?”
Your voice.
He blinked, startled, then softened. Your tone was teasing, but there was warmth threaded through every syllable — like sunlight after a thunderstorm.
That voice always cut through the noise in his head. Always found him.
He turned toward you, tousled hair falling over his forehead, and tried to smile. “Sorry, baby… did you say something?”
You gave him a look — that look — the one that saw straight through every mask he’d ever worn.
“Yeah, I’ve been talking to you for like, five minutes.” You cocked your head, brushing a strand of hair behind your ear. “You okay? You’re… awfully quiet this morning.”
Clark propped himself up on an elbow, his large hand finding yours automatically. He rubbed slow circles on the back of it with his thumb — a comfort more for him than you.
“All good, sweetheart,” he said softly. “Just thinking.”
“Thinking?” you echoed, arching a brow. “About what? How many squirrels you’re going to save today?”
Your attempt at lightening the mood earned a small, real chuckle out of him. “Maybe two. Three, if they promise to stop running into traffic.”
But his laugh faded too soon, leaving silence hanging between you. You studied him, eyes searching his face the way someone studies a storm on the horizon — quiet, cautious, ready to run if it breaks.
“Clark,” you said gently, “talk to me.”
He closed his eyes.
He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to bring you into whatever this feeling was — this invisible weight pressing down on his chest. It wasn’t fair. He was Superman. He was supposed to carry it all. But right now, all he wanted to do was collapse into your arms and let you hold him until the ache went away.
He sighed, voice low and cracked. “It’s… nothing, really. Just woke up feeling—” He hesitated, searching for a word big enough. “Off. Like something’s coming, and I can’t see it yet.”
You shifted closer, resting your hand on his chest. “You mean like a bad dream?”
“No,” he whispered. “Worse. Like a warning I can’t read.”
Your fingers traced the edge of the blanket, grounding him. “Clark, not every bad feeling means the sky’s falling.”
He smiled faintly, eyes still closed. “You’d be surprised how often it does.”
You laughed under your breath, shaking your head, but the sound was soft — almost fragile. “You can save the world a thousand times, you know that? But you still don’t know how to save yourself from worrying about it.”
That made him open his eyes. They were tired, heavy with the kind of vulnerability he rarely showed anyone.
“I don’t want to lose anyone, baby,” he said quietly. “Especially you.”
Your heart clenched. You slid your hand up, cupping his cheek. His stubble rasped against your palm as he leaned into it, like he’d been waiting for that touch all morning.
“You won’t,” you said, with a conviction that made him believe it — even if just for a second. “You hear me? You won’t.”
He took your hand and pressed a kiss to your palm. “You always know what to say.”
“That’s because I know you,” you whispered. “Better than anyone.”
And when he finally pulled you into his arms, he felt the peace he was craving for.
He breathed in your scent, the faint traces of your shampoo and flowers, and something distinctly home.
“Still think it’s just a feeling?” you murmured against his chest.
He smiled — this time, it reached his eyes. “Maybe. But if it’s not… I know I’ll have you to come back to.”
“Always.”
You glanced at the clock on the nightstand and let out a quiet gasp. “Crap, I’ve got to get to work or my boss is going to start sending me those passive-aggressive emails again.”
You threw off the blanket, your bare feet hitting the cool wood floor as you hurried around the room — tugging your sweater over your head, your pants, hunting for your keys, your bag, your coffee cup. Clark watched you from the bed, a faint, fond smile curving at the corner of his mouth. There was something so ordinary and yet extraordinary about watching you do all that — the way your hair caught the morning light, the way you hummed softly to yourself without even realizing it.
He could have stayed there all day, just memorizing the sound of you.
You turned toward him, finally ready to go, a rushed smile on your face. “Okay, I’ll see you later, alright?”
You leaned down and pressed a quick kiss to his lips — soft, fleeting, almost absent-minded — but before you could pull away, Clark’s hand came up, strong and steady, cupping the back of your neck.
“Wait,” he murmured.
And then his mouth was on yours again — firmer this time, slower, lingering. It wasn’t desperate, but it was weighted. Like he was trying to tell you something through it — don’t go, not yet, stay safe, please stay safe.
When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against yours. His breath trembled slightly against your lips.
“Please be careful today,” he whispered.
You blinked, taken aback by the intensity in his voice. “Clark…”
“I mean it,” he said, his arms sliding around your waist, pulling you into a tight hug. You could feel the strength in his embrace, how he held you like the world might take you away if he let go. His heart was beating fast — too fast for someone who could calm a hurricane.
You smiled softly against his shoulder, trying to lighten the moment. “Baby, when am I not careful?”
He huffed out a quiet, shaky laugh. “I know, I know, it’s just—”
“I’m literally the careful one in this relationship, babe,” you teased, tracing your finger along the edge of the S on his shirt that you bought him. “You’re the one who flies into burning buildings. I’m the one who won’t even cross the street until I’ve looked both ways twice. You’ve seen me. No phone in my hand when I’m driving, always checking every corner before stepping off a curb, sometimes even dragging you back when you forget to look.”
That earned the faintest smile from him — small, reluctant, but real.
“I know,” he murmured. “That’s… that’s part of what I love about you.”
You tilted your head, giving him a playful look. “That I’m neurotically cautious?”
“That you take care of yourself,” he said quietly. “That you make it easy for me to breathe when I’m not around.”
The words hit you deeper than you expected. His eyes held that fragile sincerity that made your heart ache — the kind of fear that came from loving too much, from having too much to lose.
You reached up, cupping his face. “Hey. I’ll be fine. I promise. Nothing’s going to happen to me, okay?”
He nodded, but his hand stayed on your back, thumb tracing idle circles through the fabric of your sweater like he was trying to memorize the shape of you.
“You’ve got to stop worrying so much, Smallville.”
He smiled, faint but fond. “I’ll try.”
You turned to go, and as you grabbed your keys, you glanced back at him over your shoulder. “I’m careful, remember?”
“I know,” he said. “That’s what scares me. You’re careful… but the world isn’t.”
You froze for half a second at the heaviness in his tone, then gave him a soft, reassuring smile — the kind that always made him believe again, even if just for a moment.
“I’ll text you when I get there, alright?”
“Promise?”
“Promise,” you said. “Now stop looking at me like that, you’re going to make me cry and then I’ll really be late.”
He chuckled softly. “You look beautiful,” he said simply.
You smiled, eyes glinting with affection. “You’re just saying that because you’re in love with me.”
He grinned, that perfect boyish grin that made your heart ache. “Guilty.”
You couldn't help yourself and went to kiss him once more — a soft, deliberate press of lips this time, not rushed — and then turned toward the door.
Clark watched you go, standing in the doorway, his hand lifting in a small wave as you backed down the steps. He could hear your heartbeat, steady and strong, fading with distance.
And when you were finally gone, the apartment felt too quiet again.
That feeling — the bad one — was still there.
Only now, it had a name.
Fear.
And it wasn’t for himself.
The Daily Planet was going strong with the morning chaos, once again.
It was the kind of noise that usually soothed Clark; it meant the world was still turning. But today, even the comfort of routine couldn’t quiet that uneasy pulse in his chest.
He stepped out of the elevator, adjusting his tie. To everyone else, he looked like the same old Clark — calm, polite, a touch clumsy when he nearly dropped the stack of files under his arm. But inside, something was wrong.
That bad feeling hadn’t gone away.
Not even when his phone buzzed in his pocket. He fished it out and saw your name light up the screen.
Made it to work honey. Love you.
Love you more. Like so much more.
Relief washed through him like a breath of fresh air — but it didn’t last. The heaviness lingered, a quiet echo he couldn’t explain.
He read the message again. Then again. Then tucked the phone back into his jacket pocket and tried to steady himself.
“Morning, Smallville!” Lois called across the bullpen, balancing her coffee in one hand and typing with the other. “You’re late. You stop to interview the traffic lights again?”
Clark managed a faint grin as he reached his desk. “Morning, Lois. I, uh… might’ve missed my train.”
“You? Miss a train?” she said, squinting at him. “That’s new.”
Jimmy leaned over from his nearby desk, camera strap slung around his neck. “You okay, CK? You look like you just saw a ghost or something.”
He gave a small laugh. “Nothing like that, Jimmy. Just… didn’t sleep well, I guess.”
“Nightmares?” Lois asked, raising an eyebrow as she took a sip of coffee.
“Not exactly,” Clark said. “Just a… feeling. You ever wake up and know something’s off, but you can’t figure out why?”
Lois leaned back in her chair, eyes narrowing with that mix of curiosity and concern she hid behind her sarcasm. “Yeah, every time Perry’s in a good mood. It’s unnerving.”
Clark chuckled softly, shaking his head.
Cat breezed by, heels clicking, her perfume trailing in her wake. “If Kent’s losing sleep, it’s probably because of his sexy girlfriend,” she teased, shooting him a knowing grin. “Tell her to stop keeping you up so late.”
Jimmy choked on his coffee. “Cat!”
Clark’s ears went pink. “It’s not that,” he said quickly.
Lois smirked. “No? Because you do look like a man who checked his phone five times before nine a.m.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “She texted that she made it to work. I just…” He hesitated, searching for the right words. “I just needed to know she was okay.”
That softened Lois’s expression a little. “She’s a grown woman, Clark. She can handle herself.”
“I know,” he said quietly. “She’s careful. Always has been.”
“Then stop worrying like a fifty-year-old dad and help me chase this city council lead,” Lois said, spinning back to her computer.
“Right,” Clark murmured, though the reassurance didn’t quite stick.
He tried to focus — he really did. He read over notes, edited copy, even helped Jimmy reformat photos for a feature spread. But the fear lingered like background static, impossible to ignore. Every so often, his eyes drifted to his phone, waiting for another text from you — something normal, something to tell him the day was just fine.
By the time the clock hit noon, Clark had already made up his mind. He’d stop by your office during lunch. Just a quick visit. Just to see you.
He stood from his desk, adjusting his glasses and straightening his tie. Lois caught the motion instantly.
“Where you off to, Kent? It’s barely lunchtime.”
He smiled, awkward but earnest. “Just thought I’d grab something to eat. Maybe… get some air.”
Before Lois could reply, a booming voice cut through the newsroom.
“KENT!”
Clark froze mid-step. Perry White stood outside his office, papers in hand and his reading glasses perched on the edge of his nose. “Get in here, son.”
Lois smirked. “There’s your ‘air,’ Smallville. Good luck.”
Clark exhaled softly and turned toward Perry’s office, stepping inside.
“What’s up, Chief?”
Perry shut the door behind him and thrust a file into Clark’s hands. “City Council zoning story. Half these crooks are greasing palms again, and I need someone who can make sense of the paper trail without turning it into a conspiracy theory.”
“Of course,” Clark said, flipping through the documents. But his eyes flicked once — just once — to the clock.
Perry noticed immediately. “You in a hurry, Kent?”
Clark blinked, looking up quickly. “What? No, sir. Just—uh—was planning to grab a quick bite before diving in.”
Perry waved a hand. “Eat while you work. The world doesn’t stop for lunch breaks, son. Especially not this city.”
Clark’s jaw tightened. “Right. Understood.”
“Good. I want the first draft by three.” Perry turned back toward his desk. “Oh, and Kent? Try not to make me edit out any of your ‘heartwarming moral reflections’ this time. We’re writing news, not Sunday sermons.”
Clark forced a polite smile. “Yes, sir.”
Back at his desk, he sat down, but the words on the page swam before his eyes. His stomach felt knotted, his pulse steady but heavy.
He looked at his phone again. Still no new messages.
He sighed, the worry pressing down harder than before.
But that little voice — the one that had woken him before dawn — wouldn’t quiet.
He tried typing a line, but the cursor blinked accusingly on the empty screen.
He was already planning. The moment Perry looked away, the second Lois got busy — he’d go. Just a quick visit. Just to see your face, hear your voice.
Then his phone buzzed.
His heart jumped. He didn’t even need to check the caller ID — he knew it was you. The sound alone filled him with relief so sharp it almost hurt. He smiled, the tension in his shoulders easing for the first time all day as he answered.
“Don’t tell me you came to visit me before I could come see y—”
He stopped mid-sentence.
Because the voice on the other end wasn’t yours.
“Are you… are you Mr. Kent?” a man asked, his tone trembling.
Clark froze, the smile dying instantly on his lips. Something inside him went cold, like all the air had been sucked out of the room. “Yes, this is Clark Kent,” he said slowly, his pulse already hammering in his throat. “Who is this? Why do you have this phone?”
The newsroom noise — phones, chatter, printers — all of it vanished under a high, hollow ringing in his ears. He could see Lois talking to Jimmy across the bullpen, but the words didn’t reach him. Everything blurred except the sound of that stranger’s voice.
The man hesitated. Just half a second. But it was enough. Clark’s whole body went still.
“Sir,” the man said finally, voice shaking, “there’s… there’s been an accident.”
The words hit him like a punch. His grip on the phone tightened, his knuckles white. “What kind of accident?” he managed, his voice low, almost pleading.
“There was a car — it didn’t stop at a red light. It hit her vehicle in the intersection.”
Clark stopped breathing.
For a heartbeat, his mind refused to understand. The world narrowed to a pinpoint. The fluorescent lights overhead seemed to hum louder, harsher. He could hear everything — every heartbeat in the room, every ticking watch, every whisper of a turning page — and yet none of it mattered.
It was all drowned out by those words.
It hit her vehicle.
The man kept speaking — something about paramedics, about the hospital, about how they’re doing everything they can— but the words came from miles away.
Clark stood so suddenly his chair crashed backward, papers scattering across the floor. People turned. Lois looked up sharply.
“Clark?” she said, her voice muffled by the blood roaring in his ears.
He couldn’t answer. His throat wouldn’t work.
“They took her to Metropolis General,” the man said, his voice faint through the ringing. “She’s in critical condition, sir. I’m sorry.”
Critical condition.
Those two words cracked something deep inside him.
He didn’t remember ending the call, but suddenly the line went dead, and the phone was still in his hand, the screen black, reflecting a warped, pale version of his own face.
He stared at it — blank, disbelieving — until Lois’s voice reached him again, distant and sharp.
“Clark? What happened?”
He blinked. His mouth opened, but all that came out was a broken whisper. “Y/N.”
Jimmy stood up, alarmed. “What about her?”
Clark’s chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven gasps. His hands were shaking. He couldn’t seem to stop them. “There’s been… there’s been an accident,” he said hoarsely. “A car—she—” He couldn’t finish. The words wouldn’t form.
Lois’s expression softened instantly, her usual wit gone. “Oh my God. Is she okay?”
He swallowed hard, the taste of iron in his mouth. “They said… critical condition.”
The sound of his own voice made him sick. The words didn’t sound real. Nothing did.
He grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair, his fingers fumbling like he didn’t even know how to move anymore. The phone nearly slipped from his grip.
But he was already gone, crossing the bullpen in long, frantic strides. His vision tunneled; the edges of the room blurred. He barely heard Perry shout something after him, barely felt the elevator button under his thumb.
All he could hear was his heartbeat — too fast, too loud, thundering in his chest like it was trying to break free.
He pressed his back to the elevator wall as the doors slid shut, his hand shaking around his phone. He wanted to fly — God, every instinct screamed at him to tear the sky open and get to you — but he couldn’t. Not here. Not in front of them.
So he waited. Trapped in a metal box while the seconds dragged like hours.
And in that stillness, the guilt came crashing down.
He’d known something was wrong. He’d felt it all morning — that ache in his chest, that heaviness that wouldn’t go away — and he’d ignored it. He’d told himself it was nothing. He’d told himself you were safe.
He could have gone to you at lunch. He could have seen you. He could have stopped it.
But he didn’t.
And now the world was breaking around him.
His hands clenched into fists, knuckles white, breath ragged. The thought looped through his mind, over and over, each repetition heavier than the last.
I should have gone. I should have gone. I should have gone.
When the elevator finally opened, he didn’t wait for anyone to step aside. He moved fast — too fast for anyone to question — pushing through the revolving doors and into the blinding daylight.
The city noise hit him in a wave — horns, sirens, voices — but all of it sounded far away. He barely felt his feet hit the ground as he ran.
He had only one thought left, sharp and desperate and echoing in every cell of his body.
Please let her live.
By the time Clark reached Metropolis General, he was drenched in sweat, his hands trembling so badly he could barely hold his phone. The automatic doors slid open, releasing a sterile rush of air that smelled like antiseptic and coffee.
He went straight to the reception desk. “Hi—hi, excuse me,” he said, voice breaking. “There was a car accident. Y/N L/N. Please—she was brought here.”
The woman behind the counter looked up, startled by the raw panic in his tone. “Sir, if you could just—”
“I need to see her.” He leaned forward, breath unsteady. His tie was crooked, his glasses fogged, his heart in his throat. “Please. Tell me where she is.”
She tapped at her keyboard, then frowned at the screen. “She’s in trauma unit three. They’re stabilizing her right now—”
“Can I see her?” he interrupted, his voice barely human.
“Not yet, sir. They’re still working. Her attending will come talk to you in a moment.”
He nodded, but his whole body wouldn’t stop shaking. He backed away from the desk, sinking into the nearest plastic chair. His elbows rested on his knees, hands clasped, breathing shallow. The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed faintly. Every sound — a rolling gurney, a nurse’s shoes squeaking on tile — made him flinch.
He should’ve been there. He should’ve gone.
A door opened down the hall. A doctor stepped out, removing his gloves, his expression grim but gentle. “Clark Kent?”
Clark stood immediately, almost stumbling forward. “That’s me.”
“I’m Dr. Patel. I was with Y/N when she arrived.”
“How is she?” The question came out as a whisper, his throat tight.
Dr. Patel hesitated, choosing his words with care. “It was a serious collision. Another car ran a red light and hit her side at high speed. She was careful to wear her seat belt — that probably saved her life.”
At that word — careful — something inside Clark twisted. He shut his eyes, jaw tightening, because of course you had been careful. You always were. He was the one who hadn’t listened to his instincts.
“She’s stable for now,” Dr. Patel said, “but she suffered significant injuries. A concussion, some internal bruising, a fractured rib…”
Clark’s breath hitched. It was as if the air had been punched out of his lungs. The word rib made his chest ache, a deep, phantom pain blooming behind his heart.
“She also has a hairline fracture in her arm,” the doctor continued, “and a mild spinal strain from the impact. The seatbelt likely prevented worse damage.”
Clark’s jaw clenched. His hand pressed to his side unconsciously — right where he imagined the belt had caught you, right where your body had been jolted against the seat. He could almost feel it: the snap of the restraint, the burn of the fabric, the way your breath must’ve hitched in panic.
Each word from the doctor was another hit, another bruise. A concussion — and suddenly his own head throbbed, a dull, nauseating ache behind his eyes. Bruising — and his ribs seemed to tighten, sore, as if he’d taken the impact himself. His shoulders curled inward. His pulse thundered in his ears.
“She’s in a coma,” the doctor said finally. “We don’t know when — or if — she’ll wake.”
Clark closed his eyes. For a heartbeat, the room tilted. His body swayed slightly where he stood. It felt like the crash had reached him belatedly, invisible but no less real — as if his heart had been thrown through glass.
He swallowed hard, voice breaking. “She… she must have been so scared.”
The doctor looked at him with quiet sympathy. “She fought to stay conscious at the scene. She kept asking if anyone else was hurt.”
That undid him. His stomach turned, his throat closing with something sharp and wet. You’d been bleeding, broken, terrified — and still your first thought had been someone else.
Of course it had.
He felt a hot tear slip down his cheek. He didn’t even wipe it away. His entire body was trembling now, like it couldn’t contain the grief trying to claw its way out.
Dr. Patel’s voice softened. “She’s alive, Mr. Kent. She’s fighting.”
Clark let out a shaky breath, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “Yeah,” he whispered, his eyes fixed on the sterile floor. “She always does.”
“Would you like to sit with her?”
He nodded. “Please.”
The doctor led him down a hallway that smelled faintly of disinfectant and quiet dread. Machines beeped behind closed doors, and each sound cut through him like glass. When they reached your room, the doctor paused.
“She can’t hear you,” he said gently, “but talking to her might help.”
Clark nodded again, unable to speak. He pushed the door open.
When Clark stepped into the room, it felt like the world stopped moving.
The air was too quiet — the kind of quiet that suffocates, heavy with the sound of machines and the faint rhythm of a heart monitor.
You lay there so still. Too still.
For a second, his body refused to move. He stood frozen in the doorway, staring, as if his brain couldn’t process that the person in front of him — the person who laughed in the kitchen every morning, who teased him about his messy hair, who kissed him before running out the door — was the same one lying beneath those sterile white sheets.
His throat tightened.
There were faint scrapes on your cheek, the kind that would normally fade in days — but right now, they looked impossibly deep to him. He saw the small bandage near your hairline, the IV line taped to your wrist, the bruises peeking out from under the hospital gown.
And suddenly, it was like the crash was happening all over again — inside him.
His ribs ached, his lungs seized. He could feel the pain you must’ve felt: the jolt, the confusion, the fear. His fingers twitched like he wanted to reach back through time and take it from you, to shoulder it himself.
He took a step forward — then another — until he was right beside your bed. His hand hovered over yours before finally, gently, curling around it.
It was warm. Faintly. Barely.
“Hey,” he breathed, the word catching on a sob. “Hey, sweetheart. I’m here.”
No answer. Only the beep-beep of the monitor.
His lip trembled. “You—you look so small,” he whispered, a tear slipping down his cheek. “You’re never small. You fill up every room you walk into. You—” His voice broke. He pressed a shaking hand to his face, exhaling through a strangled sob. “You can’t… you can’t do this to me.”
He sank into the chair, shoulders hunched, his other hand gripping yours tighter — as if he could anchor you here, as if that alone would be enough.
“I should’ve come,” he whispered hoarsely. “I knew something was wrong. I felt it. And I stayed. I stayed, and you…” His voice cracked completely, dissolving into silence. “You got hurt because I didn’t listen.”
Tears fell freely now, dripping onto the hospital sheet. He didn’t even bother to wipe them away. His chest heaved, breath shaking as if his body couldn’t decide whether to cry or scream.
“I’m sorry,” he said again and again, the words breaking apart. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t leave me.”
He leaned forward until his forehead rested against the back of your hand. The skin there was soft, almost weightless against his lips.
“You’re the careful one,” he murmured, his voice cracking around the words. “You’re always careful. You check the locks twice, you text me when you get home, you stop at every yellow light. And I…” He swallowed hard, tears blurring his vision. “I still couldn’t keep you safe.”
His thumb brushed over a faint bruise on your arm, and his heart clenched so violently he thought it might split in two. The idea that you had felt pain — even for a second — was unbearable. He’d faced bullets, fire, explosions, monsters, gods… and none of it had ever left him feeling this helpless.
He brought your hand to his lips and kissed your knuckles softly, whispering against them. “Please come back to me. Please. You’re my home, and I don’t— I can’t do this without you.”
The words tumbled out, desperate and raw. “You’re supposed to grow old with me. You’re supposed to keep laughing at my bad coffee and complain about my ties and roll your eyes when I forget to take off my glasses before bed. You can’t just…” He broke off, breath hitching. “You can’t just stop.”
He leaned closer, brushing a tear from your cheek with trembling fingers. “Baby, please. Just one sign. One twitch. Anything.”
But there was nothing. Only the steady, cruel rhythm of the machines — constant, indifferent.
The symbol on his chest had always meant hope — but right now, all he could do was beg for it.
Clark didn’t remember how long he’d sat by your bed.
Minutes. Hours. Time had no meaning anymore — just the sound of the monitor, the faint whoosh of the machines keeping rhythm with his heartbeat.
At some point, a nurse came in to check your vitals and gently told him he should get some air. He nodded numbly, even though every instinct screamed to stay. He kissed your hand once more, whispered a promise he wasn’t sure he could keep, and forced himself to walk out the door.
The hallway lights were too bright. The air felt too thin.
He rubbed at his face with shaking hands — but nothing could hide the redness in his eyes, the rawness of his expression.
And then he saw them.
Lois, Jimmy, and Cat stood at the end of the corridor. None of them said anything at first. Lois’s eyes were glossy, Jimmy’s hands were shoved deep in his pockets, and Cat — who was usually never without a sharp comment — just looked at him with quiet concern.
The sight of them — people who knew him as Clark Kent, the reporter, the man who always smiled and had a joke ready — hit him harder than he expected. It broke whatever fragile control he’d been clinging to.
Lois stepped forward carefully, like she was approaching something fragile. “Hey,” she said softly.
Clark tried to nod, to say something, but his throat locked up. He opened his mouth, and instead of words, a quiet, broken sound escaped — part sob, part gasp. His shoulders shook.
Lois didn’t hesitate. She closed the distance and pulled him into her arms. For a second, he went rigid — and then all at once, he collapsed. His arms wrapped around her, clinging like he was drowning.
“I’m scared, Lois,” he choked out. His voice was rough and small, muffled against her shoulder. “I’m so scared.”
She tightened her hold. “I know.”
“I—” His voice cracked again. “I don’t know what I’d do without her. I can’t even—” His breath hitched violently. “I can’t picture it.”
But Clark just shook his head, still clinging to Lois like the world might end if he let go. “She’s lying in there, and I can’t do anything. I can’t fix it. I can’t—” His voice broke entirely. “I should’ve been there. I should’ve protected her.”
Cat, who rarely let emotion show, stepped closer and put a hand on his arm. “You can’t carry that, honey. You can’t. You love her — that’s what matters. Be there for her when she wakes up.”
“When,” Lois echoed quietly, her voice firm, deliberate. “When she wakes up. You hear me?”
Clark nodded weakly, but the tears kept coming. His glasses were fogged, his breathing uneven. He looked like someone trying to hold together a dam that had already cracked.
Lois brushed his sleeve gently. “Come on. Let’s get you some water.”
He shook his head. “I can’t leave her for long. What if she wakes up and I’m not there?”
“You won’t be far,” Jimmy said. “We’ll sit with you. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
That word — alone — hit something deep in him. His lip trembled again. “I don’t want to lose her,” he whispered, voice fraying at the edges. “She’s my home. She’s everything.”
Lois swallowed hard. “Then keep holding on to that.”
Clark nodded, eyes glassy, barely able to stand under the weight of it. But with their hands steadying him — one on his shoulder, another at his back — he took a step forward. Then another.
For the first time since the call, he let himself breathe.
Not because he believed everything would be okay — but because they were there to hold him up while he waited for the world to start again.
Months passed.
Seasons shifted outside the hospital windows, and Clark barely noticed.
He went to work. He showed up as Superman when the world needed saving. He smiled when people expected him to. But the light in him — the one that used to make everything feel alive — was gone.
He wasn’t the same man anymore.
It was as if life had drained the color out of him the day you didn’t open your eyes.
Every morning he still brewed two cups of coffee.
Every night he still left the porch light on.
And every weekend, without fail, he came to you.
The hospital staff had grown used to him — the quiet man in the rumpled suit who brought flowers every Sunday, who sat for hours beside the woman in room 306, reading aloud in a voice that cracked around the edges.
He always greeted you the same way.
Hey, sweetheart. It’s me.
“Good morning, Clark,” Nurse Ramirez said cheerfully as she entered the room, clipboard in hand, checking the monitors. “How are you today?”
Clark looked up from brushing a stray strand of hair from your forehead and managed a small smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Morning, Ramirez,” he said softly, voice still heavy with exhaustion. “I’m… hanging in there. How about you?”
She chuckled lightly, giving him a sympathetic glance. “Same as always. You know, just trying to keep everyone alive and sane.”
He nodded, watching her check your vitals with gentle, practiced movements. “I don’t know how you do it,” he murmured. “I don’t think I could ever manage without you all.”
Ramirez glanced at him, her expression softening. “Well, you’ve got practice. You’ve been here so long, you’re practically part of the furniture. But you need to take care of yourself too, Clark.”
“I will,” he said quietly, though he knew he wouldn’t really leave your side. “I just… I need to be here.”
“You always do,” she said, smiling. “And she knows it. You know, even if she can’t say it right now.”
Clark let out a shaky breath and nodded. “I know. I just… I miss her so much. Sometimes it feels like I can’t breathe without her in the room.”
Ramirez gave him a gentle squeeze on the shoulder. “You’re doing everything you can. That’s all anyone can ask. Now, let’s make sure she’s comfy, okay?”
He nodded again, returning his focus to you. His thumb brushed lightly over your hand, and he whispered, “See? They’ve got me in check. But I’m still yours.”
For a few moments, it was quiet except for the soft beep of the monitors. Clark leaned closer to your ear, brushing hair from your forehead, and murmured softly, “It’s me. I’m here, baby. Just like always.”
Then he’d open a book — sometimes one of your favorites, sometimes the newspaper, sometimes a novel he thought you’d tease him for picking. He’d clear his throat softly and begin to read aloud, his voice steady, careful, like he was trying to remind you of the sound of home.
“‘She laughed so hard she almost cried,’” he read one afternoon, pausing to glance at you, voice catching a little. “I remember you laughing like that over the silliest things… God, I miss that.”
When he wasn’t reading, he talked. He told you about work, about Lois’s latest headline. “Lois is stubborn as ever,” he murmured one morning, brushing a loose strand of hair from your face. “She thinks the city needs a story on a cat stuck in a tree instead of the mayor’s new budget… can you believe that?” He smiled faintly, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “And Jimmy—he’s been trying to photograph every pigeon in the city, I swear. You’d make fun of him for it.”
Some days, he told you about the neighbors, carefully noting every small, mundane event as if documenting a world that couldn’t exist without you. “Mrs. Wallace waved to me today,” he said, brushing his thumb lightly over your hand. “She asked how you were. I said, ‘Still asleep, but still perfect.’ She smiled, but I could tell she knows how much I miss you.”
And some days, when the world felt unbearably silent, he’d bring your favorite records and play them quietly on a small speaker. He’d hum along softly, careful not to wake you from your beauty sleep (that's what Clark called it), letting the familiar melodies fill the room. “I know you’d roll your eyes at me for humming,” he whispered one evening, resting his forehead against your hand. “But I needed to hear you in some way. Even if it’s just me pretending I’m singing along with you.”
He’d pause between songs, leaning back in the chair beside you. “The city’s still here,” he said quietly, “even if it doesn’t feel like it. People are still moving, still living, still laughing… but it’s empty without you, baby. I just… I just wish you could see it. I wish you could be here with me.”
As the next song started, he’d brush a stray strand of hair from your forehead, press a kiss to your temple, and murmur, “I’m here, baby. I’m still here.”
And when the sun dipped low and the nurses came to check the monitors, he’d brush your hair carefully, the way you always did. He’d whisper, “You’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
The doctors told him your body was healing. That your heart was strong. That there was no medical reason you shouldn’t wake up — only time.
And that word — time — had never felt so cruel.
Because to Clark, every day without you felt like eternity. Every sunrise was a reminder that you weren’t there to see it. Every laugh he heard in the newsroom twisted like a knife, because it wasn’t yours.
He missed everything.
Your humming when you cooked.
The way your laugh filled every corner of the apartment.
The quiet warmth of your hand finding his when words weren’t needed.
He missed you.
Some nights, when Metropolis slept and the world was safe for a few hours, he would fly to your window. He’d stand there, cape brushing the window, watching the steady rhythm of your breathing.
“You’d tell me to stop worrying,” he’d whisper, eyes glistening. “You’d tell me to have faith. You always had more of it than I did. I’m still here, sweetheart. Still waiting for you to call me honey. I promised you I’d be patient. I just… I just didn’t know patience could hurt this much.”
He’d stay until the first light of dawn, watching you closely, to see if there was any change.
And when he visited you before work — tie straightened, smile practiced, glasses on — he’d whisper the same three words he always did before walking out the door.
“I love you.”
Because that was what kept him breathing.
That single truth.
That single hope.
When.
Not if.
When you wake up.
The months had stretched into what felt like years. Clark had been at your side through countless sunrises and sunsets, through the soft sound of hospital machines and the endless white corridors. He had become part of the hospital scenery.
But even he — Superman, protector of worlds — had limits.
One night, after another long day at the office and hours by your bedside, Clark leaned forward until his forehead rested against yours. The fluorescent light above flickered faintly, cold and unfeeling, like the world itself mocking him.
“I can’t…” he whispered, voice breaking, trembling. “I can’t do this. I can’t live like this, baby. I can’t go through a single day without you.”
His hand clutched yours so tightly that the skin flushed under his fingers. “I’ve tried, I’ve tried to keep going… to be the man you believe I am, to be the man you need. I go to work. I smile. I save people. But none of it… None of it matters. Not without you.”
Tears slid down his face freely now, unchecked. He pressed his face into your hair, inhaling the faint scent of the hairspray he’d used on you before brushing it, just like you always did, a small, cruel reminder of the routines he missed so much and of a life that felt impossibly distant.
“I’ve missed you,” he continued, sobbing quietly. “I’ve missed your laugh, your voice, the little things I didn’t even realize I couldn’t live without. Every day I spend here, watching you sleep, I feel it — the part of me that’s gone with you. You’re… my everything, baby. My life is nothing without you.”
He closed his eyes tightly, trembling, his chest tight as if it had been crushed by the weight of months of worry and guilt. “I shouldn’t have left you alone, not for a second. I should’ve gone to you at lunch that day. I should’ve been there… I should’ve been there.”
A sob tore itself from his chest, raw and ragged. “I’m scared. I’m so scared. If you don’t wake up… I don’t know how I’ll keep going. I can’t… I can’t live without you.”
He rested his forehead on your hand, clinging, as if holding on physically could pull you back from whatever darkness had taken you. “Please… baby. I need you. I’m begging you. Come back. Please.”
The monitor beeped steadily, a cruel rhythm against the storm inside him. For the first time, the walls of control Clark had built, the polite smiles, the routine, the Superman facade, crumbled completely. He was just a man, small and broken, consumed by love and fear and the aching absence of you.
“I’ll stay,” he whispered, voice raw and trembling. “I’ll stay here forever if I have to. I don’t care about the rest of the world. I just need you to come back to me.”
The minutes stretched. The night pressed against him. The silence enveloped him. And yet he didn’t move. He couldn’t. Because the second he let go, even for a moment, the fear that you wouldn’t be there would swallow him whole.
Clark had waited for months. He would wait for eternity if that’s what it took.
But in that moment, sitting beside your silent form, he let himself break.
Completely.
And he whispered again, between sobs, almost pleading to the empty room. “I love you, baby. I love you more than anything. Please… just come back."
Clark walked into the newsroom that day like a ghost wearing his own face.
His tie hung crooked, the knot loose and uneven, a small, almost imperceptible symbol of the chaos inside him. His glasses were smudged, fingerprints smeared across the lenses from countless nights of rubbing his eyes in frustration and exhaustion. Hair fell in careless strands across his forehead, as if he hadn’t bothered to tame it in weeks — months, maybe — and he didn’t care anymore. The small, polite smile he carried was a performance, a shield for the world, but it didn’t reach his eyes. Those deep, haunted eyes were shadowed with sleepless nights, etched with lines carved by the weight of quiet despair and months spent watching someone he loved lie silent and unresponsive. He looked like a man hollowed out from the inside, a body moving through life without a soul, a semblance of Clark Kent who had survived but no longer lived.
The clatter of keyboards and murmur of conversations surrounded him, but he felt detached from it all, as if moving through someone else’s reality. He moved mechanically, a ghost among the living — sorting through reports, scanning headlines, filing stories with a precision born of habit rather than care. He could hear Lois laughing at something across the room, Jimmy joking about a story he had chased, Cat muttering about deadlines, but none of it reached him. The world went on, alive and vibrant, and yet he felt entirely disconnected, untethered from it all.
Not because he wanted to be here, not because he found joy in it — he didn’t. Not a flicker of it. He went through the motions because he knew it was what you would have wanted. You had always hated seeing him fall apart. You would have hated knowing that despair had taken root in him so completely. You would have expected him to keep moving, to keep fighting, to carry on, and he couldn’t dishonor that.
So he forced himself to exist. To move. To smile at people who didn’t know the half of it. To be something resembling the man he had been — even if it was only a shadow, a hollow echo of the life he had lived before the accident, before the world became unbearably quiet without you.
Even breathing felt heavy. Every step toward his desk was like dragging himself through thick water, each motion a reminder that the world was still spinning, even though his own universe had stopped the day you didn’t wake.
And yet, he kept going. Because even hollow, even broken, even exhausted, he refused to let despair claim him completely. He could only survive by holding onto that one, fragile thread: the hope that someday, somehow, you would come back.
When he finally sank into his chair, the familiar creak of the old desk echoed louder than it should have. His space was exactly as he’d left it: stacks of half-finished reports, a mug of cold coffee, a worn-out notepad with your handwriting scrawled in the corner — a grocery list you’d made months ago that he couldn’t bring himself to throw away. And there, just beside his monitor, sat a small, framed photo of you. The picture had been taken on a Sunday morning — sunlight catching in your hair, that half-smile on your lips that had always made him forget to breathe.
He brushed his thumb across the glass absently, as though he could feel you through it, before turning back to the screen that had long stopped meaning anything to him.
That’s when Jimmy appeared, grinning like always, full of energy and warmth the way only someone untouched by heartbreak could be. “Hey, man, we’re heading out to O’Malley’s tonight,” he said, resting his hands on the edge of Clark’s desk. “You should come with us. A few drinks, some laughs — it’ll be good for you.”
Clark’s fingers stilled on the keyboard. He didn’t look up. “Not tonight, Jimmy. Thanks,” he murmured, voice thin and tired.
Jimmy frowned, leaning in, refusing to take no for an answer. “C’mon, man. It’s been months. You can’t sit here staring at a screen forever. You need a night off. You need to breathe a little.”
Clark’s jaw flexed. He wanted to say I don’t know how to breathe without her, but the words caught in his throat. His fingers drummed against the edge of the desk — rhythmic, aimless. His gaze drifted toward the picture again, lingering there. “I can’t,” he said quietly. “Not yet.”
Jimmy opened his mouth to argue again, but stopped when Lois appeared beside them. She was softer than usual today, concern dimming her sharp edges. “Clark,” she said gently, “are you okay? Maybe Jimmy’s right. A night out could be good for you. Just a few hours — get out of your head for a bit.”
He turned toward her, really looked at her, and for a moment all the strength he had been faking cracked apart. The weight of the months — the endless days spent waiting for something, someone, that might never come — hit him all at once. Around him, the newsroom buzzed: phones ringing, printers whirring, people laughing and living and breathing. The sounds felt distant, muffled, like he was underwater.
He blinked hard, eyes burning. His chest felt tight, his throat raw from holding everything in. “No thanks,” he said softly, voice shaking despite his best effort. Then, after a pause, barely above a whisper, he added, “I will be okay… when she wakes up.”
Lois’s expression softened. She nodded once, understanding. Jimmy looked away, guilt flickering in his eyes. They exchanged a silent glance — one of quiet sympathy — before stepping back, leaving him alone in his little corner of grief.
Clark leaned back in his chair, exhaling shakily. The air in the office suddenly felt heavier, pressing down on him from all sides. He stared at the blank screen in front of him, words blurring into nothing. He typed, deleted, typed again, but it all felt hollow. Meaningless.
He glanced once more at your photo. The smile he’d always loved stared back at him, frozen in time, unknowing of the months that had followed. His thumb brushed the edge of the frame again.
“I’m trying,” he whispered under his breath, so softly no one could hear. “I’m still trying. For you.”
And then he bent his head over the keyboard, forcing himself to work — not because it mattered, but because it was the only way to keep from falling apart.
Hours passed in this quiet torment; it gnawed him slowly, quietly, from the inside out. The ticking of the clock became a cruel metronome, each second stretching too long, reminding him that time still moved even when his heart hadn’t in months. The noise around him was an endless drone in a world that felt gray.
Then, suddenly, the phone on his desk buzzed sharply, breaking through the haze.
He flinched.
The vibration echoed unnaturally loud against the wood. His heart jolted in his chest. He looked down and saw a number he didn’t recognize flash on the screen.
Clark froze.
The air seemed to thicken around him. Every sound in the office warped — distorted, distant — as if he’d been plunged underwater. The chatter, the laughter, the steady whir of printers all faded into a dull hum. He could hear his own breathing, shallow and uneven, too loud in the sudden silence pressing on his ears. His pulse thundered in his head.
The phone kept ringing.
He didn’t move. Couldn’t.
The light on the screen blinked, reflecting off his glasses like a pulse. Each vibration rattled through the desk, through his bones, through every fragile piece of him that was still holding together. His hand twitched, reaching out before stopping short, as if the very act of answering might unravel him completely.
He swallowed hard, throat dry as sandpaper. The taste of metal sat heavy on his tongue. His chest felt like it was caving in.
He knew. He didn’t know how, but he knew.
That terrible, coiled fear that had lived in his chest for months finally came alive. Unspooling with brutal, unrelenting force. This was the call. The one he never wanted to get. Dreading. The one that would end everything.
His voice broke before he even realized he was speaking.
“No… no, it can’t be… no…”
He pressed the heel of his hand against his eyes, his breath coming fast, uneven. The phone vibrated again, and his other hand — trembling — lifted, thumb hovering over the green icon. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bear to hear the words that would shatter him.
“Not yet… please, not like this,” he whispered, the plea torn from somewhere deep in his chest.
Every instinct screamed at him to run. To leave the desk, the office — the world. To fly until there was nothing left but the wind and the sky and silence. His whole body trembled violently, muscles locked, every nerve screaming with the knowledge that answering this call could destroy him.
He felt it all at once, every memory, every night sitting by your bedside, the sound of your steady breathing that had become the only proof you were still there. The scent of the hospital room, the antiseptic and lavender from the flowers he always brought. The mornings alone in the apartment where your mug still sat untouched beside his. The hollow ache of absence twisting and twisting until he thought it might tear something inside him apart.
He couldn’t breathe.
His mind raced, spinning through every horrific possibility: the nurse calling to tell him you were gone, the doctor saying the words he had forced himself never to imagine. He could almost hear it — “I’m sorry, Mr. Kent.”
His hands shook so hard the phone nearly slipped from his grasp. He pressed it to his chest, clinging to it as though he could stop time itself. His heart hammered mercilessly, every beat a countdown.
“No…” he whispered again. “Please, no…”
He didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to exist in a world where you weren’t breathing.
But he couldn’t stay frozen forever.
So he did the only thing he could. He took one breath, a sharp, shuddering thing that burned all the way down, and pressed the green icon.
"Hello?"
The word cracked as it left his throat, so fragile it barely sounded human. His voice trembled under the weight of months of grief and exhaustion, of hope that had long since turned into pain. He could barely hear himself over the pounding of his own heartbeat.
For a moment, there was nothing but static — a low, broken hiss.
Then… a sound.
A breath. A pause.
He heard a word.
One word. Soft. Trembling. Real.
He froze. His lungs stopped working. His knees nearly gave out beneath him.
The word shattered him.
Everything he had lost, every ounce of hope he had buried under the rubble of grief, came rushing back all at once. It hit him like sunlight after a lifetime of darkness — searing, blinding, alive. His breath broke into a sob before he could stop it. His hand came up to cover his mouth, but the tears were already falling, hot and relentless, slipping down his cheeks faster than he could wipe them away.
People in the newsroom turned to stare, but he didn’t see them. Couldn’t. The entire world had narrowed to that single word.
His chest, once hollow, filled again — painfully, beautifully, overwhelmingly. The room spun around him, the fluorescent lights blurring into streaks of gold through the tears in his eyes. His heart pounded so violently it hurt, but it was the best pain he had ever felt.
summary: you're used to your co-worker doing everything and anything for you. until one day he decides to take advice from jimmy olsen and discovers willpower you didn't know he had.
pairing: female reader x clark kent
notes: clark is the leader of simp nation and you can't tell me otherwise. thanks again ms carpenter for the fic inspoooo, I've had this whole album on repeat nonstop. also this ended up being so much longer than I originally planned oops... enjoy!
likes, reblogs, comments are very much appreciated!
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masterlist
Clark had three main rules when it came to his professional life.
Always remain objective.
Maintain friendly but strictly professional (and definitely not romantic!) working relationships with his colleagues.
Never take advice from Jimmy Olsen (again).
Although Clark liked to think he approached each of his stories with a level head and neutral position, he knew that the first rule had been broken the second he started interviewing himself as Superman.
The second rule had lasted for about a week until he'd ended up letting an extremely drunk Jimmy Olsen crash on his sofa after Friday night knock off drinks. Upon getting wind of Clark's inability to say no, each of Clark's colleagues - including Cat, Lois and even Perry once - had all had a drunken sleepover at Clark's.
Despite this, there'd been absolutely no romance involved, so he'd given himself a pat on the back for that one. He was comforted by the fact that maybe there was an argument that he'd only kinda broken rule two.
That was until you happened, you’d walked right into the Daily Planet on your first day and spun Clark’s world right off its axis and suddenly there was no argument about rule two.
The only thing that Clark could hang his hat on was that the sanctity of rule three had remained very much intact.
Rule three was mandated after Jimmy had convinced Clark that the only way to get a girl was to walk around drenched in Lynx Africa. After that Clark had sworn he would never ever take advice from Jimmy Olsen on any subject matter ever again.
“You’re doing it again.”
Clark jumped in his chair, his glasses knocked askew at the action. He swivelled around to find Jimmy peering down at him, his chin resting on his forearms that were leant against the divider of Clark’s work cubicle.
“What?”
“You’re doing the thing again.” Jimmy repeated.
"What thing?"
Jimmy smirked. “The thing where you count how many sips of coffee she's had so you can perfectly time your trip to the coffee machine and casually offer to get her a refill."
Clark dared a glance over to your desk. Brow furrowed, face pinched, a ballpoint pen clenched between your teeth. Breathtakingly beautiful as always, and most importantly, blissfully unaware of the two sets of eyes currently on you.
“If you weren’t you it might be considered creepy.”
“I’m just trying to be a friendly work colleague.” Clark defended.
“You don’t do that for me.” Jimmy shot back. “You also don’t stare at me longingly across the bullpen like I’ve hung the moon and stars.”
Clark’s face flushed. Subtly had never been in his wheelhouse, but he thought he’d at least being doing an ok job at hiding his infatuation.
Truth be told, he was in much deeper than Jimmy realised.
Jimmy didn’t know that he’d memorised your coffee and sandwich order within a week of you starting so that he could make sure you ate lunch when you handcuffed yourself to your desk and inevitably forgot to eat.
Jimmy didn’t know that he always kept an extra raincoat and umbrella under his desk just in case you forgot yours when the clouds of Metropolis inevitably split open and caught you by surprise.
Jimmy didn’t know that he’d started taking the bus of all things to get home because it meant he had an excuse to walk an extra ten minutes with you before your commute paths diverted, despite it adding an additional 40 minutes to his trip home.
Jimmy didn’t know that whenever he wasn’t thinking about saving the planet as Superman, he was entirely consumed by thoughts of you.
“You don’t bring in freshly baked goods for me every week.” To further emphasise his point, Clark held up a plate in front of him containing only the remnants of a chocolate chip cookie, which may or may not have been one of the best things he’s eaten in his entire life.
You’d recently picked up baking on the weekends, having told Clark that you needed something to distract you from your work. This meant the entire office was now spoilt with a new baked good every Friday, so much so that Cat had started complaining about her waistline.
Jimmy’s eyes glimmered with amusement. “Whatever you say buddy.” He rapped his knuckles on the divider before sauntering back to his desk.
Clark slumped in his chair, which felt like a vortex - slowly pulling him down further into an all familiar spiral. He would have preferred Jimmy to stand there and argue with him. He knew Jimmy was probably trying to be nice, but that made it so much worse because that meant Jimmy pitied him, like he was a puppy abandoned on the side of the road waiting for someone to show him a shred of kindness.
Maybe it was finally time for him to pluck up the courage and ask you out. He'd been dancing around it since you'd first started at the Planet all those months ago. He could do it. He was Superman gosh darn it. He'd tackled world eating monsters, asking you out to dinner should be a cake walk.
"Any feedback on this week's batch for me?"
Your sweet voice cut through Clark's internal dialogue, acting like a shining light that guided him back to reality.
He looked up at you through his glasses. You were standing in the spot where Jimmy had been only moments ago. Your eyes darted to the plate still lying on his desk before you looked at him expectantly.
"Oh-" Clark started, straightening up in his seat as he adjusted his glasses. "They're um- yeah they're really good. Did you do something a little different with the batter this time?"
Your smile widened. "Yeah I tried using brown sugar, I think it adds a nice twist to it."
"That's what it is. The brown sugar." Clark nodded. "Really delicious."
"Very glad to hear it." You smiled down at him, tilting your head ever so slightly. "You coming tonight by the way?"
"Tonight...." Clark trailed off. You rested your chin on the palm of your hand as you shook your head and tisked.
"Don't tell me you forgot." You teased.
Clark felt his cheeks redden under your stare as he desperately racked his brain. He was hopeless. One look from you and all thoughts flew out of his head like they were fleeing an approaching storm.
"Uh-" Then it hit him. "Oh right. End of financial year party, how could I forget."
"Duh, and it's at good old Duke's. Going to be the party of the year."
Your eyes narrowed when you noticed his expression falter. "You're not thinking of ditching are you Kent?"
"Well-" Clark stammered as he stole a glance at his computer screen. "It's just there's this story that Perry really wants to get out and-"
"-No no no." You cut him off. "I'm up to my ears in this never ending corruption scandal and even I'm finding the time to come. Besides, you work your ass off and deserve some fun. If Perry has a problem with that he can go through me."
In Clark's eyes, you might as well be classified as an angel on earth. You seemed to have a permanent glow, radiating your perfect features. And when you got fired up, that glow burned even brighter.
You could see that he was still wavering. "Please." You pursed your lips. "It won't be the same without you there."
Clark couldn't believe it. You were pouting. Literally pouting those perfect lips and batting those long eyelashes at him. How was he supposed to say anything other than yes? You were his kryptonite, more so than actual kryptonite.
"Ok." He nodded. "I'll be there."
You shot him a radiant smile, enough to make the possibility of pissing Perry off worth it a thousand times over.
"Good." You pushed yourself off the cubicle divider, "hope you're ready for me to drink you under the table Kent."
A bemused smirk twitched up on his lips. "We'll see about that."
Who was he kidding, there was no way he was ever going to get up the courage to ask you out.
You smiled to yourself as you turned away and felt Clark's eyes following you all the way back to your desk.
You knew Clark had a crush on you. It was so obvious even the cleaning lady could probably tell. It made coming to work just that little bit more exciting. Whether it was wearing a new slightly too short for work skirt or brushing your hand seemingly innocently against his when you went to hand him a pen, knowing it would make the apples of his cheeks go red and the sentence he was uttering fall apart on his tongue.
If you were being honest, the feelings were definitely not one sided. How could it be when Clark was well, Clark. But that's all it was. A harmless, fun, not debilitating in the slightest, crush.
You finally let yourself glance up at the clock. Half an hour until drinks. The day had been dragging on excruciatingly slow, like time had fallen asleep at the wheel.
It seemed that everyone else felt the same way. The usual thriving hum of the newsroom had quietened to a dull roar, unenthusiastic keyboard taps and monosyllabic exchanges. Motivated by the optimistic idea that making a coffee might kill time, you forced yourself up and onto your feet.
You shoved a mug under the spout and pressed the button that grumbled the machine to life. You tapped your foot as you waited for the life giving elixir that was espresso to pour out. It seemed even the coffee machine had taken an early mark.
"You're going to give that boy a heart attack one day."
Cat appeared beside you, reaching up in her stiletos to grab a mug.
"You're going to have to be more specific."
Cat looked at you deadpan. “Really?”
You shrugged.
She pouted out her bottom lip and dramatically batted her eyelashes.
"It won't be the same without you."
You couldn’t hide the grin that spreads across your lips as you roll your eyes playfully.
“It’s true.”
“Uh huh.” Cat smirked as you moved over to let her use the machine. “You have that poor boy wrapped around your finger and you know it.”
You stole a glance over your shoulder to make sure Clark was no where to be seen before taking a sip of your coffee. Your nose involuntarily wrinkled as the burnt roast singed your nose hairs.
“So I may like to get him a little flustered… what’s the big deal?”
“Oh, I like nothing better than making a man squirm believe me.” Cat wriggled her eyebrows. “But there is the slight complication that he’s completely in love with you. And he's your coworker."
You felt a pang of guilt course through you. You couldn’t lie, half the fun was the way Clark doted on you. He was always noticing when you got your hair done or bought a new dress. He was the first to compliment you on your articles, but he'd also give you honest feedback if you asked for it. If you were ever off sick he'd call and check in on you, always offering to bring you soup or medicine.
He’d even trusted you with the biggest secret a person could harbour. His secret identity.
It was selfish, but you liked the fact that you could get the self esteem boost without the commitment. You flirted but never took it too far, never let him in through the solid walls you’d built up around yourself. Because if you kept him at arms length, there was no risk of him dismantling them.
Was that leading him on? You supposed it was. You winced at the thought of his adoring smile as he offered his shoes when you wore painfully high stilettos that you hadn’t broken in yet, or his umbrella when he didn't have a spare, leaving him standing out in the rain.
“Am I terrible person?”
“Oh god honey no.” Cat shook her head. “That’s not what I meant to imply I’m sorry.”
You frowned, deep in thought as you took a sip of your coffee. Your lips curled in disgust. Why did you think it would be better on the second sip?
“Forget I said anything ok?” She said hastily. “I more just meant… well...what are you going to do if he finally finds the courage to ask you out?”
You froze. You’d never thought about it, never even imagined the possibility that sweet, nervous Clark would actually take the next step.
Cat patted your arm sympathetically when she noticed the frazzled look on your face. “Aren’t you glad we’ve got drinks tonight?”
The Duke was a hive of activity. Corporate suits all suddenly brought to life by the promise of the weekend. It was packed wall to wall with patrons eagerly downing their drinks, excited to celebrate the work week coming to a close.
You were two white wines in and feeling much more relaxed, your corruption investigation now only a gentle hum in the forefront of your subconscious.
You were crammed into a booth, strategically sandwiching Clark between you and the wall. Your skirt had ridden up so the flesh of your thigh was pressed against Clark's under the table. The warmth of his body radiated into yours and the music pulsed through you as you fought to be heard over the din of the bar.
"You've finished your drink."
You looked over at Clark amusingly, "very observant of you Mr Kent."
His brow pinched, his lips pursed ever so slightly in response to your teasing. But the way his eyes brightened gave away his true emotions.
He leant in ever so slightly, his mouth angling towards your ear as he spoke. "Careful, I might have to rescind my offer to buy you your next round." You fought off a shiver as his voice reverberated up through your spine.
You tilted your chin up slightly so you could look up at him through your lashes. "Well luckily I would have rejected your offer anyway. You bought my last two drinks."
His brows jerked up, a casual smile hanging from his lips. "Here I was thinking you appreciated my generosity."
You laughed, leaning in closer just a fraction. "Of course I do, I just think it's time I repay that generosity by buying the next round."
With that you twisted around to sidle out of the booth. This was where the strategy came into play. You'd learnt from previous nights out that if you were against the wall, Clark would never let you past to buy yourself a drink.
You felt a large hand gently envelope your wrist. You turned around on the seat to see him frowning at you.
"You don't need to buy me a drink."
You giggled at the seriousness on his features. "I don't need to, but I want to." You tapped his forearm teasingly. "And I'n not taking no for an answer." Your tone was stern, but lacked any real bite.
He studied you and for a brief moment, the roar of the bar and the chatter of your friends faded into the background, making it feel like it was only the two of you in the room. Your skin encircled by his grip felt like it was on fire.
"You're not going to let this go, are you?"
"Nope." You smacked your lips obnoxiously. He tried to maintain a serious expression but failed, his mouth twisted up into a smirk as he shook his head in defeat.
"Fine. But I'm coming with you."
You felt triumphant in your defeat. "Your company is welcome."
You slid out of the booth towards the bar, Clark hot on your heels. You couldn't control your giddy smile as you felt his hand gently brush over your lower back. It wasn't in a controlling way, it never was, but more of a quiet reassurance that he was there with you.
You loved when he got like this. Slightly more relaxed and touchy, even more clingy.
“What can I get you?” The bartender asked.
“Can I get two lychee martinis please.”
You felt Clark shift to stand beside you, his fingertips grazing across your back as he moved.
“Lychee martini’s huh?”
You looked up at him, your features twisting in bemusement. “You act like you love beer in front of Jimmy, but I’ve seen your eyes light up when us girls order our fruity cocktails.”
“Master of deduction all of a sudden are we?”
“No.” You looked up at him innocently. “I just know what you like.”
Even in the dingy lighting you could see the apples of his cheeks grow pink. “Really?” His voice faltered ever so slightly, revealing his nerves.
“What else do I like then?”
He was looking at you so intently, like he was waiting with bated breath to hear your response. This time it was you turn for your cheeks to flush. You suddenly became very aware that his hand was still on your lower back.
Shit. Maybe your liquid courage had made you overshoot this. You were wading on the edge of uncharted waters here, tiptoeing the line between harmless office flirting and something much more real.
What scared you the most was that a part of you wanted to dive in head first.
“There you are!”
Lois’ voice was like cold water over a hot flame, pulling the two of you apart and extinguishing any moment that might have been.
“Do you know what time it is?” Lois’ eyes were wide as she glared at you, it was like Clark didn’t even exist. You forgot how scary she was when she was mad.
“Uh…” You hastily check the time on your phone. “8:37?”
“Oh my god.” Lois muttered. “You don’t remember what I organised for you tonight, do you?”
You stared at her helplessly, desperately racking your brain for a hint of what she might be talking about.
“Oh.” It hit you like a train. “Oh fuck.”
“Oh fuck is right.”
“What is happening right now?” Clark asked, his eyes darting between the two of you.
“Lois organised a blind date for me and I completely forgot.” You inwardly cursed yourself as you fished your lipgloss out of your bag.
She was never going to forgive you for this.
“A date?”
“The restaurant is just on the next block over isn’t it?” Clark’s query got drowned out by you and Lois.
“Yes. He’s been sitting there for like 40 minutes you know.”
“I’m going, I’m going.” You hastily reapplied your gloss before throwing it back into your bag.
You finally turned your attention to Clark. “I’m so sorry, I promise I’ll be back.” You looked over sheepishly at Lois. “On the bright side, you now get a free lychee martini.”
You were so frazzled that you missed the clench of his jaw and the grimace set on his features. Unfortunately for Clark, Lois did not.
“Ok bye!” Not wanting to have to see Lois’ judgmental glare again, you turned on your heel and made a beeline for the door.
Lois shook her head and mumbled something under her breath as she pulled out her phone. "I better go call him to make sure he doesn't leave before she gets there."
She looked up at Clark. "You ok?"
Clark flinched at the way her tone softened, it was as gentle as Lois got, like she was worried he might break. "Why wouldn't I be?" The question came out harsher than he'd intended.
Lois raised a brow but didn't say another word as she pressed her phone to her ear and moved to find a quieter pocket of the bar.
His shoulders slumped as he felt his good mood deflate like a popped balloon.
"Here you go." The bartender plonked the two lychee martinis in front of him. He stared down at them. It felt like they were mocking him, reminding him that the cloud nine he had been floating on had been snatched from him so quickly.
"Yo, did you order these? Wait let me guess, they're for Y/N." Just to dig the knife in further, the universe had sent him a tipsy Jimmy Olsen.
"She ordered them for us but she left."
Jimmy's brow knitted together. "Where'd she go?"
"On a blind date that Lois organised for her."
"Oh."
"Yeah." Clark didn't care to mellow the bitterness on his tongue as he picked up one of the glasses and took a deep sip.
"I'm sorry man."
There it was again - the pity. Jimmy Olsen didn't do pity, which could mean only one thing. Clark was well and truly screwed.
He glanced over at Jimmy to see him surveying the bar, his eyes glassy and his balance slightly off kilter. Jimmy never had any problems with women. In fact, he seemed to have problems with getting them to stay away from him.
He felt himself waver. Rule three was the only one of his rules still unbroken and that was for a reason. Was he really about to stoop this low? Destroy whatever dignity he had left?
The memory of the heat of your leg against his and your wine flushed cheeks invaded his thoughts, compromising his senses. He could never think logically when it came to you.
"Jimmy I-" He stopped himself. The words were thick and heavy on his tongue, like they were desperately trying to claw their way back down his throat. He was going to have to force them out.
"Yeah?"
"I need your help."
Jimmy looked like he'd hit the powerball in that moment, but was quick to throw on a mask of indifference as he leant casually against the bar.
"With?" Jimmy knew what. He just wanted to hear him say it.
Clark sighed in defeat, "with Y/N. I don't know what to do."
"Buddy, I have been waiting for you to ask me for Jimmy's help." His grin was almost impish as he clapped a hand onto Clark's shoulders. "And luckily for you, I have already thought of a solution."
"Which is?"
"Simple." Jimmy shrugged. "Just act like you're not interested." Before Clark could protest he lurched forward and snatched the second martini off the bar.
"Act like I'm not.... interested?" Clark watched as Jimmy downed half the liquid in one gulp.
"Yeah."
Clark blinked, "uh-" He cocked his head slightly. "What does that mean, exactly?"
"It means no more planned coffee refills or lunch deliveries or detoured commutes which yes-" He held up a hand to stop Clark from interrupting. "- I know all about, because I know everything about everyone. The point is, you can still be your nice Smallville self but strictly no boyfriend activities."
"But I'm not her boyfriend."
Jimmy nodding enthusiastically. "Exactly. She doesn't get to redeem boyfriend privileges on a friendship membership."
Clark just felt more and more confused the longer Jimmy kept talking. "Right, ok." He nodded, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he tried to decipher Jimmy Olsen code.
"How will I know if it's working?"
"Trust me. You'll know."
"I just-"
Images of you invaded his thoughts again. Heat coursed through him at the thought of the look you gave him as he slid his hand down the small of your back or when he complimented your baking or writing.
"I don't know if I can."
"Clark." Jimmy clasped onto his shoulder dramatically. "You have the drive to break some of the biggest stories in Metropolis, you have the discipline to ask the right questions at the right time and the patience to wait out a witness or a source, the dedication to craft a story so it practically jumps off the page."
Clark was mesmerised, tipsy Jimmy was never usually this prophetic.
"Take a dose of self-restraint and harness the willpower I know you've got in you."
He nodded, totally absorbed by Jimmy's emphatic display. "Ok, I will."
"That's my boy." Jimmy clapped his back. "Oh and-" He hiccuped. "Best we don't mention this conversation to the others, Cat and Lois will run straight to her. Girl code and all that."
"Good point."
"Hey jackass! Did you drink my martini? Y/N promised it to me." Lois appeared between them, her arms crossed as she glared at the empty glass in Jimmy's hand.
Clark tuned out as they began to argue, the cogs of his mind spinning at how he was somehow going to muster up the strength to resist being at your beck and call for everything and anything. He was Superman, surely this couldn't be too hard - could it?
"Clark Kent on willpower.... got it." He muttered to himself.
You'd woken up on Saturday with a dull pounding in between your ears and sharp sleep in your eyes. Monday had rolled around way too soon after a weekend of bed rotting, but at least you were feeling back to your usual self.
You strolled into the chaos of the bullpen that always greeted you, coffee in hand and handbag jolting against your hip. Cat and Lois were already at their desks. Surprisingly, so was Clark.
"Morning."
"Morning sunshine." Lois greeted, not looking up from her computer.
"How was your hot date on Friday night?" Cat wiggled her eyebrows as she twisted around in her desk chair to face you.
"Not so hot." You answered, dumping your bag underneath your desk. "He was lovely but it was just..." You trailed off as you tried to find the right word.
"Boring?" Cat suggested as you sat down in your chair.
"He's Lois' friend, impossible for him to be boring."
Lois' mouth quirking up slightly was the only sign that she was indeed listening, and agreed.
"No it was just, I don't know, more of a friend vibe. I don't think he really felt the connection either."
"Oh no he was into you." Lois chimed in. You swirled around to look at her in disbelief. "Was never going to admit it when you ended the date with 'so.... friends?' though."
"Ouch." Cat laughed.
"Why'd you have to tell me that?" You whined.
"Just keeping it real."
You groaned as you turned around to face your computer, deciding that it was better to do some work then continue on this conversation any longer.
Cat tutted from her desk, "you should know better than that honey, girls that look like you don't get friendzoned."
You couldn't help but steal a glance over at Clark. He was staring intently at his computer screen, barely even blinking, like he was trying too hard to act like he wasn't hanging on to every single word.
You didn't notice it at first, the subtle shift in the Daily Planet continuum.
You were so caught up in your work that you didn't clock that it had gotten to mid morning and your coffee cup hadn't been refilled, or that after lunch a sandwich hadn't magically appeared on your desk.
In the mid-afternoon you finally got a chance to talk to Clark when the pair of you reached the coffee machine at the same time. The two of you were so busy it wasn't unusual that you'd barely speak some days.
"I didn't see you at Duke's when I came back." You opened the cupboard and reached up on your tippy toes to grab one of your favourite mugs.
"Oh yeah I decided to head home, needed to do some things early on Saturday morning." Clark reached up and grabbed the mug for you with ease.
You went to take the mug from him, but he placed it on the counter before you could.
"Thanks." You smiled. "Well you made the right decision, I should have gone home about four hours before I actually did."
Clark let out a short, polite laugh before picking up his mug and heading back to his desk. You didn't think anything of it, sometimes when Clark got deep into a story he ventured into nonverbal territory.
At the end of the day you habitually looked over at Clark's desk to see if he was ready to leave so the two of you could walk part of your commute together, but he was already gone.
By Wednesday, you were starting to notice something was off.
You realised that Clark had started taking a different route to the kitchen, bypassing your desk entirely. It was the shorter route, so you initially figured that maybe he was trying to be more time efficient. But on the flip side this was the same man who was consistently late and would disappear for hours at a time in the middle of the day to go superhero-ing.
When your stomach growled you looked up from your article to see him sitting and eating lunch at his desk. It was from the same place he always went to, except this time he hadn't brought back a sandwich for you.
You also realised that Clark hadn't called you on the weekend to check on your hangover, or sent you any perfectly curated instagram reels.
At the end of the day you made sure to pack up at the same time as him, so you could casually wonder over to his desk and ask, "you ready to head off?"
"Oh you shouldn’t wait for me, I've started taking a different route home. Saves me like forty minutes each way."
“Ok no problem, see you tomorrow then."
You'd tried to ignore the wave of disappointment that washed over you as you made your way towards the elevator. You really enjoyed your walks home together, catching up on everything you hadn't had time to say during the day. Talking about movies or books or office gossip. Now you just had your airpods as company.
And now that you'd noticed it, you couldn't stop noticing it.
It was like a loose thread, and now that you'd tugged on it the whole thing had begun to unravel - splitting the rift wide open.
At first you thought you were going crazy, reading too much into things.
He was still pleasant and kind, of course. But there was something missing. It was like someone had filled your connection up with cement and sealed it over. There was no depth anymore, every smile and conversation was clipped and surface level. No more inside jokes or shared glances. No more hovering at your desk for the off chance you might want to have a break and have a chat.
When you brought in a freshly baked batch of cookies on Friday you made sure to make his favourite, but all you got was a polite thank you and a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
He also never handed you anything anymore. He just put it down on whatever flat surface was between you two, almost as if he was ensured that there was no chance of the two of you even slightly brushing fingers.
When you took a few days off sick all you got was a polite, some might even describe as courteous, text message checking in to make sure you were ok. No random drop by to bring you soup or daily check ins to see if you needed anything from the pharmacy.
He also hadn't touched you since the night at Duke's when his hand had brushed along your lower back. And now it was all you could think about.
You felt like waving at him and saying 'very funny Clark! The joke can be over now!'. But what could you actually say without sounding insane?
'Hi Clark, I noticed you've stopped brushing your fingers against mine when you hand me a pencil or conveniently walking past my desk when I need a refill, everything ok?'. You might as well just say ‘so, why aren't you obsessed with me anymore?'
But saying all of those things would mean that you'd have to first admit that there was something between the two of you, and then secondly that you missed whatever had been between the two of you.
You sighed and flopped down on your couch. It was a Friday and you had no plans except for a date with a glass or two of wine and chinese takeout. That was when an idea popped into your head. Maybe he was just so busy that he'd forgotten you had existed. And if that was the case, you could very much remind him.
You pulled out your phone and opened up your contacts. Clark's name stared back at you, illuminating your face in the dark of your apartment. This was such a stupid idea, but the wine had already gone to your head and before you could overthink further your thumb had pressed onto his number.
You chewed the inside of your cheek as you pressed your phone to your ear. The ringing dragged on for so long that you were convinced he wasn't going to pick up. You had just moved your phone away from your ear to hang up when the ringing abruptly stopped.
"Hello?"
"Clark, hey - it's me." You internally cringed. Of course he knew it was you idiot. "Is there any chance you're still at the office?"
"Unfortunately for me, yes."
"Yeah I kind of figured you might be... hence why you were the first call." That loosened a short chuckle from him.
"The reason I was calling is because I accidentally left some reports on my desk that I was hoping to look through tonight... any chance you could drop them over? I appreciate it's a really big ask so totally fine if not."
You could practically hear him having a struggle with himself about what to say through the silence on the phone.
"Sure, I'll head over now."
You beamed, "thanks Clark. I'll pay for your taxi over."
His breathless chuckle crackled through the speaker, "you really don't have to do that. I'll be there soon."
"Ok see you soon."
The second the call disconnected you sprung up and practically sprinted into your bedroom. You rifled through your dresser until you located your cutest pyjama set in the bottom draw. A cream cami set hemmed in pink frills with matching pink hearts dotted all over it.
The second it was on you hurried into the bathroom. You ran your brush through your hair and dabbed on some blush and clear lip gloss. Just enough so you could say 'why yes Clark, I do just naturally look this rosy cheeked and glowy when I'm laying around at home.'
The doorbell ringing seemed to snap you out of your psychosis. What on earth were you thinking? This whole plan was insane. But it was too late now, he was here and you were dressed like this. Might as well make the most of it.
You ran your fingers through your hair and puckered your lips one last time before opening the door.
"Hey I wasn't sure which ones you wanted so I just brought-" Clark's eyes practically bulged out of his head when he looked up from the stack of papers in his hands.
"I- He swallowed as his eyes involuntarily darted down over your figure. "Golly sorry I just- it's been a long day."
You shot him your signature smile as you leant against the door, jutting your hip out. It was working.
"That's ok, thank you so much for bringing them over."
"Don't mention it." He muttered, his cheeks growing red as he hastily shoved the papers into your awaiting arms.
"You want to come in? I feel like I’ve barely seen you recently.”
"Sorry I can't I uh - I've got this urgent deadline." He jerked his thumb haphazardly over his shoulder as he took a step back from the doorway.
You frowned. This was not part of the plan. You thought you had him hook, line and sinker.
"Are you sure?"
"Yeah it's um... urgent." You watched as he began to back away from the door towards the elevator. The chances of you reeling him in were rapidly dwindling.
“I’ve got leftover cookies and wine. My way of saying thanks.”
“No sorry it’s just- yeah I’ve really got to go.”
"Ok well, I'll see you Monday." You tried to hide the disappointment in your tone. "Thanks again."
"Anytime. Have a good weekend."
Clark waited until he was outside before he pressed his back against the brick of your apartment building and let out a shaky breath. He pressed his phone to his ear and glanced down at his feet.
"Gosh darn it." He cursed, bringing his satchel over the front of his groin to hide his growing excitement.
"Buddy, what's up?" He ground his teeth at the jovial tone of his best friend.
"Jimmy, I don't know how much longer I can keep doing this."
"Woah wait, what happened?"
"I'm going crazy." He snapped. "She just rang me asking if I could bring some documents over to her place that she forgot and of course I couldn't say no and when I answered the door she was standing there in these-" He pressed his bag firmer into his groin as memories of your pyjamas taunted him.
"-these lacy pyjamas and I nearly combusted right then and there." He hissed, glancing around to make sure no one else was in earshot.
"Lacy pyjamas?" Jimmy let out a low whistle. "Geez I didn't think she had it in her."
"Jimmy." Clark bit out.
"Sorry, but I don't know why you're freaking out. This is great."
"How is this great?"
"Because... it means our strategy is working. Think about it. Have you ever known her to just 'forget' something important that is work related?"
The receiver crackled slightly as Clark processed Jimmy's words. He had a point, you forgot a lot of things, but never anything in relation to your work. You were a gun.
"The point is she doesn't. So, she either intentionally forgot them or didn't actually need them."
"But why would she do that?"
Jimmy sighed. "Honestly Clark, your naivety is endearing but also so concerning at the same time. She wanted you to come over and see her in those pyjamas."
Clark glanced up at your apartment building, "you really think so?"
"I know so. This is her trying to remind you that she exists. To tempt you."
"Oh golly... I definitely know she exists." You were literally all he thought about.
"Yes but she doesn't know that. Trust me, it's working. Just keep doing what you're doing."
Clark sighed, "How long do I have to keep doing this?"
"Until she cracks."
"And when will I know when she cracks?"
"Oh, you'll know."
"I don't understand, he used to be literally obsessed with me."
"I'm pretty sure he still is."
You glumly look up from your coffee at Lois. "Something's changed. This is a version of Clark I don't even recognise." You pause as you lift your coffee to your lips. "I want a refund." You muttered into the liquid.
"Maybe he's playing hard to get." Cat suggested.
"This is Smallville we're talking about. Playing hard to get would be physically impossible for him." Lois remarked.
"True. Maybe he's just... going through some stuff."
You sighed and slumped into your chair. "I don't know what I did, but he hates me."
"He definitely does not hate you."
"How do you know?"
"Because, I see the way he looks at you from his desk when you're not looking." Lois raised her brows. "Trust me. It's sickening."
"Then what do I do?"
"Well." Lois leant forward over the table. "Firstly I think we need an answer as to why this is bothering you so much."
You crossed your arms over your chest. "Because Clark is my friend and he's acting weird."
Lois' eyes narrowed, her face sharpening into that interrogative look she often got when she was about to blow a story wide open.
"You're a terrible liar."
"Let's just cut to the chase. We both know you like him." Cat interjected.
Your eyes darted between them nervously. "Why do I feel like this is an interrogation?"
"It's not an interrogation if we already have the answers." Lois said smugly.
"Ok let's just say hypothetically I did have some...feelings for him." You began. "It takes me back to my initial question which is, what do I do?"
Thankfully they were both kind enough not to shout 'I told you so' in your face, but you knew they both desperately wanted to.
"Well the logical answer is to tell him how you feel but obviously you don't want to do that because that would mean you would have to admit your feelings and lower those walls you've built around yourself."
You glowered at Lois. "I don't remember asking to be psychoanalysed."
"Yeah ease up Sherlock." Cat rolled her eyes. "Although she has a point, I agree it's a big jump to outright say anything. I think he just needs a nudge, a reminder that you exist."
You winced. "What if I've already tried that?"
There was a pause as Cat and Lois blinked insync before leaning forward. "What do you mean?"
Your cheeks flushed as you recounted the pyjama incident. Even Lois' infamous poker face faltered at points. Silence enveloped the three of you once you finished as the girls digested what they'd just heard.
"Shit. This is worse than I thought." Lois finally spoke.
"See why I'm stressing! My slutty pyjamas aren't even tempting him."
"You're down bad." Cat tutted and shook her head.
You shot her a glare, "not helpful."
"There's no need to stress yet. Clark's a gentlemen and as innocent as a lamb, he might have not picked up on anything or was too flustered to react."
Cat nodded in agreement. "Clark is hopeless. It needs to be something that gives you guys a chance to spend more time together, like working on an article or going to a work event."
"There is the gala that's coming up, the one Perry invited us all too." You suggested meekly.
"Yes that's perfect."
Lois nodded at Cat's answer in agreement.
"Ask him to go with you, you don't need to suggest it as a date or anything, but even Clark's not that clueless. And if for some reason it went pear-shaped, you can just say something like 'oh I meant like a group of us all go together'."
You looked at them intently, "you two are geniuses."
"Tell us something we don't know." Cat winked.
"Oh and be confident. One smile and bat of your lashes and he's putty in your hands. You're the prize, remember that." You smiled as a rare glimpse of affection crossed Lois' face.
She was right, you had him wrapped around your finger. You could dissolve his willpower in a matter of seconds if you wanted to.
"I can do that."
You finally got your opportunity the day before the gala when you wandered into the break room and realised it was just you and Clark in the tiny space.
"Hey." You smiled.
"Hey." He muffled out as he awkwardly tried to shove the mouthful of egg salad sandwich that was currently glued between his teeth down his throat.
You tried to control your nerves as you confidently crossed the room.
"I can't believe Perry's dragging us to one of those galas again." You commented casually as you grabbed your lunch out of the fridge.
"Yeah I know. Hopefully the food's better than the last one." He'd just confirmed that he was planning to go. Off to a good start.
"Surprised we didn't get food poisoning." You remarked as you shut the fridge door with your heel.
Clark chuckled in agreement before taking another bite of his sandwich.
"So I was thinking..." You trailed off as you perched on the table, swivelling your torso around so you were looking down at him. You swallowed as you caught a whiff of his cologne. This was the closest you two had been in weeks.
"You and I should go to this thing together, you know as a preventative measure to try and mitigate the inevitable boring conversations." You made sure your face was the perfect image of calm, with the addition of a soft smile and a flutter of your lashes.
Clark spluttered at your words causing his food to get caught in his throat and for a second you thought he might actually be at risk of choking.
"Clark are you ok-" You leant forward to touch his arm gently.
He jerked his arm back so quickly you were surprised he didn't get whiplash. The movement was so violent you felt the table shake underneath you.
"Sorry I-I can't."
You recoiled like you'd just been slapped. You felt nausea pool in your stomach. Could he really not bear for you to even touch him? It was like you were a leper and even your presence repulsed him.
You forced a tight lipped smile onto your face. "Got better plans huh?" You were aiming for a teasing tone, but instead it just came out pained. You prayed that he didn't catch the way your voice wavered at the end.
"I um- I'm already bringing someone."
Suddenly it all made sense. The complete shift in attitude, the lack of interest. He'd met someone else. You supposed you couldn't really be mad, you'd gone on a date yourself not that long ago. And yet, you were. You felt the rage bubble in the pit of your stomach, seeping into your bones.
You both had still been friends. Good friends in fact. Or at least you'd thought so. Was that all it ever was? He was attracted to you and then when he found someone better, you were just discarded? That didn't seem like the Clark you knew, your Clark.
Then again, you supposed he wasn't ever really yours.
"I see." You nodded. "I'm looking forward to meeting them." You shot him a smile that you knew didn't reach your eyes.
You pushed yourself off the desk and hastily made your way to the door, desperately trying to keep the tears at bay.
Your hand hovered over the handle, your heart rooting your feet into the ground. Something inexplicable forced you to twist around to face him. He was still staring at you.
"You know... I actually hate baking."
You laughed bitterly as you thought about the hours you'd spent cursing the kitchen as you measured the ingredients and rolled dough.
"But you mentioned once that you hadn't had a good cookie since you'd left Smallville and I thought what the hell, I can give it a go. And then after your reaction.... I just kept going."
You forced your voice to stay steady as you kept your eyes locked with his.
"Now that I think about it, maybe it was my way of giving you a piece of me without realising it."
The silence between you was taught but Clark's jaw was slack as he tried to make sense of what you'd just unleashed.
"I'll see you tomorrow night."
Without another word you shut the door, giving you the much needed separation. You exhaled a shaky breath as you forced yourself to keep walking back to your desk.
You hadn't realised how much you would miss him. Yes, you still technically saw him everyday, but having him be present and having his presence were two very different things.
He'd always been so reliant. He was like a steady current, always keeping you afloat even when you felt your confidence waiver.
Now you felt like you were a ship lost at sea, floating aimlessly in the still water, your walls well and truly under siege.
The gala was exactly as Clark had predicted. Packed with boring donors who all walked around with stiff upper lips and perfect postures. The waiters were carrying around plates of food that looked like they'd be more suited to be served on Krypton than Earth.
But according to his heart rate, this was the equivalent of taking on an intergalactic threat. He fiddled with his bowtie as he scanned the room. He still hadn't spotted the reason for his rapid pulse.
He'd barely slept last night. Your conversation in the break room playing on a loop as he picked through it, sifting through the inflection of your speech and the micro expressions on your face.
The second he'd said he was bringing someone else, he wanted to take it back, to collect those words up and stuff them back down his throat. He had no idea why he said it. But the look on your face when you’d tried to make a joke of the situation had made him so close to blurting out everything that he'd just said the first excuse that had popped into his head.
He'd wanted to run after you, to drop onto his hands and knees and explain that he'd meant none of it. But when you'd turned and looked back at him, he froze with his mouth open, like a pathetic clown at one of those fair stalls.
He noted the beautiful chandelier and the antique paintings and décor peppered throughout the ballroom. You would love it. He wanted to point it out to you, to tell you how the shimmering chandelier reminded him of you. How it was nearly as effervescent as you - but not quite, because that would be impossible.
"There you are Kent!" Cat and Lois approached him. No sign of you.
"Where's Y/N?"
Clark frowned, "she's not with you?"
Lois and Cat exchanged a look. "She didn't ask you to come with her?"
Clark's cheeks reddened. "How do you know about that?"
Another look was exchanged. Clark got the feeling they were having a conversation right in front of him.
"So you said...no?" Cat folded her arms in front of her chest.
"I-" Clark glanced between them, swallowing nervously at their piercing gazes.
"I told her I was bringing someone."
"And did you? 'cause I sure as hell don't see anyone."
"No." He admitted quietly, shoving his hands into his pockets.
"Explain. Now."
Clark felt himself beginning to unravel. "Well Jimmy told me that I should-"
"Well well well, don't we all scrub up nicely!"
The three of them turned to see Jimmy sauntering towards them. He froze when he saw Cat and Lois' murderous expressions. He gulped at the sight of Clark's terrified one.
"You know I kind of feel like I'm interrupting something so I'm just going to-"
"No." Lois' voice cut through the tension like a blade. "I really think you should stay."
"Clark was just about to tell us why he told Y/N he couldn't come with her tonight and that he was bringing a date."
"Wait what-" Jimmy balked.
Lois held up a hand, "continue Clark."
Clark's eyes darted to Jimmy nervously before looking back at her. "Well Jimmy suggested that I act less interested, to stop acting like I was her 'boyfriend'."
"You what-"
"It was just so she could realise how much she would miss him fawning over her." Jimmy protested. "I didn't tell him to turn her down if she asked him out."
Clark winced under Jimmy's glare. "I just panicked, but after everything she said in the break room yesterday, I've decided that I'm going to tell her how I really feel."
There was a pause as everyone processed his words.
"Clark." Lois said slowly, her voice eerily calm. "What did she tell you yesterday in the break room?"
"She told me that she actually didn't really like baking but saw how much I liked it and that... that it was a way for her to give me a piece of her without realising it."
They all looked at him in disbelief. Clark thought Lois might actually punch him.
"Jesus Clark." Jimmy pinched the bridge of his nose. "Remember when I told you that you'd know when she cracked?"
There was a pause as Clark swallowed nervously, "that was her cracking, wasn't it?"
Clark swivelled around and felt his heart nearly burst out his chest at the sight of you. The polished floors reflected the shimmer of your floor length pale yellow gown. You turned to grab a champagne flute from a passing waiter, revealing the low cut of the dress at the back.
You met his eyes from across the room. An unreadable look crossed your features as you took a sip of your drink. Clark blinked and you were gone, lost in the sea of attendees.
Clark turned back to see Lois' eyes fixed on him. If looks could kill, he'd be a dead man. He gulped.
"Fix it. Or else the Planet's headline tomorrow is going to read 'Journalist brutally murdered by co-worker over his inexplicable stupidity'."
You had no idea why you were here. It must be some sick and twisted new form of self-flagellation that your brain had concocted. The second you saw Clark standing there in his tux you had felt what little resolve you'd patched up over the last twenty four hours crumble. The only saving grace was that you were yet to see his date. That might just be your last straw.
You should have brought someone as revenge. You’d thought about it. But you didn’t have the energy to pretend anymore.
You watched a server walk past you, your face scrunching in disgust. If you were speaking to Clark, you would have asked him if he'd flown to Krypton to supply the food at this thing.
Within ten minutes of walking in the door, you'd been cornered by an older man who was claiming to be incredibly interested in your line of work. You watched as his eyes moved down your body. More like the line of your underwear.
"I don't understand how someone like you could be here alone." He purred. "You have to let me take you out onto the dance floor. I won't take no for an answer."
And there it was.
"I'm not-"
"She's not alone."
You didn't need to turn to know who it was. The way his voice crept up your spine was enough to give away his identity. You stole a glance up at him. He towered over you, even in your heels. The heat that radiated from him was enough to make you weak in your knees.
You were close enough that you could see the tick of his jaw as he clenched it. His blue eyes piercing holes through the man in front of you.
"Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realise." He stammered, cowering under Clark's glare.
He glanced at you and muttered, "Have a lovely evening."
"You too." You answered, shooting him a sarcastic smile as he scurried away.
"Creep." You grumbled under your breath.
His eyes were already fixed on you when you looked up at him this time, like he was trying to mesmerise every detail of your face.
"You look beautiful."
You tried to unscramble your brain as you studied him. The proximity that you had been craving for weeks was clouding your judgement, sending your senses completely off kilter.
"Would you... like to dance?"
The yes that you wanted to say was desperately trying to leap off your tongue. He studied your face like it was a work of art. You could sense his hand hovering over your skin, threatening to touch you. The yes was on the precipice now.
"I'm bringing someone else."
His words echoed in your brain, shoving you back into reality. He'd turned you down and now he had the audacity to do all of this without an explanation?
You took a step back, his outstretched hand falling limp at his side immediately. Your face hardened as you stared at him.
"Actually, I think I need some air."
His lips began to form your name but you turned and made a beeline for an exit before they could reach your ears. The satin fabric of your dress clung to you as you weaved through the crowd, which all suddenly felt much too suffocating.
You went through the closest door you could find, spilling out onto a small balcony overlooking the city. The room that the gala was being held in was so soundproof it was easy to forget that you were right in the heart of it. The combination of the harsh sounds of a humming Metropolis below you and the crisp night air hitting your exposed skin was a shock to the system.
You gripped onto the rail, exhaling a shaky breath as you tried to make sense of what had just happened.
You squeezed your eyes shut at the sound of the door opening and closing behind you. You didn't need to turn around to know who stood behind you. You could feel his presence, sense the way that the energy slightly shifted. Like time stilled around you just for a brief moment.
The sound of your name coming from his lips made you ache. He said it softly, just loud enough that the wind could carry it to you.
"Please just let me-"
"Enough mind games Clark." It was supposed to come out as a demand, but it came out more like a plea as you turned to him.
His glasses were in his suit pocket, leaving his face raw and exposed. The face that you knew only a select few got to see. The one that carried the weight of the world on its shoulders. The one that had thrown your life into disarray.
"For weeks you wouldn't touch me with a twenty foot pole and now you're looking at me like you never want to let me go." Your voice was painfully wobbly as your grip tightened on the rail, like it might somehow steady you in the storm of emotions.
"I know.” He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his palm. “I've really screwed up. But I can explain." His expression was desperate, his eyes shining with a mixture of emotions.
He took your silence as permission to continue. "I didn't have a date for tonight. I made it up because I was so close to telling you the truth and it was the first excuse that popped into my head."
"The truth?"
He inhaled a deep breath. "After the night at Duke's when you left to go to your date I kind of... spiralled. I broke one of my golden work rules and I..." He looked like he was physically in pain from what he was about to admit, "I took advice from Jimmy."
You blinked in surprise. "You took advice from Jimmy?"
He nodded.
"Clark." You spoke slowly as you tried to process what he’d just said. "what advice did Jimmy give you?"
"He told me to pretend I wasn't interested in you and to stop doting on you, something about 'no boyfriend privileges on a friendship membership'."
Despite everything, you let out a snort of laughter. "Oh my god."
"I know, it's stupid. I'm a jerk. I'm so sorry."
You shook your head in disbelief, "no, you're not. I'm the jerk. Or I guess- maybe we’ve both been jerks.”
You let out a defeated sigh at his confused expression. If he was going to be honest with you, it was about time you returned the favour.
"I knew you had a crush on me. I knew for a while. And I enjoyed it. I liked the attention but not having to commit because that meant-" You felt a breath catch in your throat. "-that meant it wasn't ever going to be anything real. That I couldn't get hurt."
He took a step towards you as you felt your voice waiver again. "But then all of a sudden you weren't there anymore and I- I couldn't handle it. And it wasn't about the five refills of coffee a day I used to get without leaving my desk-"
His lips twitched up in amusement at that.
"It was about the fact that I missed our walks home together, the calls on the weekend after a new episode of our show came out, the way our hands would brush when you'd hand me a coffee cup. I just missed you."
You couldn't believe the words that were flowing out of your mouth, but now you'd started spilling your confessions to him, you couldn't stop, like you could feel yourself getting lighter as you unburdened yourself.
"I've missed you too. So much.” He breathed out. "It's why I was acting so strange. I couldn't risk you touching me...because I knew that if I felt your touch I wouldn't be able to hold myself back.” He let out a humourless chuckle.
“Heck, I couldn’t even bear to even really look at you properly. This has been- this has been torture for me. I’ve been on the edge the entire time.”
Your breathing hitched as he took another step towards you. "And don't get me started on that night I dropped those documents to your place."
You swore his eyes darkened for a split second as he looked down at you. You felt the energy crackle and pop as it shifted between you. You knew then. You weren’t on the edge of uncharted waters anymore, you were up to your neck in it.
"I thought I had you dead to rights there." Your tone was light, the side of your mouth quirking up.
He caught his lip between his teeth as he moved forward again. You were almost chest to chest now, so close that you could feel his body heat desperately reaching out to engulf you.
"Believe me, I had to use every last bit of my self control."
"Luckily for you, they're still in my drawer."
His face bloomed red at that. "Don't tease me."
"Who said I was teasing?"
You let out an audible gasp as he finally closed the gap between you, snaking his broad arms around your waist to bring you flush against his chest. You felt warmth bloom across your lower back as his fingers gently brushed your exposed flesh, leaving goosebumps in their wake.
He let out a shaky breath as he admired you. "Now that I've touched you again, I don't want to ever stop."
"Then don't." You murmured. Pleaded.
His breath fanned your face as he leant up to cradle your jaw. He tilted your head up so he could press his forehead against yours.
"I love you." He said it reverently, like he was swearing an oath at the alter of you. You squeezed your eyes shut as you processed his words. "I have since the first day you walked into the Planet. I'm sorry I didn't say it sooner.” When you opened them again, his eyes were glassy. You swore you could see the ocean in them.
"I love you too. I'm sorry it took me so long to admit it to myself, even when I've known it deep down this whole time."
Then his lips were finally on yours. If he hadn’t been holding you so tightly your knees might have buckled. The kiss was much like him, warm and steady, safe.
You knew it then. Your walls were well and truly down.
But you'd found your safe harbour.
The two of you only broke apart when you needed air, your chests ragged, Clark's bowtie askew.
"What?" Clark asked when he noticed the amused smile playing on your lips as you curled your fingers into the hairs on the nape of his neck.
"Nothing, I just can't believe Jimmy's advice actually worked."
"Me neither." He breathlessly chuckled.
"He can never find out." You both said simultaneously. You both broke into a fit of giggles, your noses bumping against each other as you clung to one another.
"Do you think we should go back inside? The others might be wondering where we are." You murmured against his lips.
Clark shook his head.
“I’ve used up all my willpower when it comes to you, I’m not spending another minute in there when I can have you out here all to myself."
“Good.” You grinned. "Because I’ve realised that I like my Clark Kent with absolutely zero willpower."
As always always always, feedback is always appreciated because I thrive off praise. Please give it back here and consider tipping me! 🤍
your childhood best friend is synonymous with ‘the guy you call when something (inevitably) goes sour.’ clark is dependable, steady, safe. and maybe—well, more than maybe—the grass is greener in his bed.
or: two times your love life needs a little clark kent tlc. third time’s gotta be the charm, you swear.
wc. 18k+
tags. 18+ explicit nsfw, unprotected piv/mating press, size kink, slightly (?) jealous sex, first time cunnilingus, fingering n squirting, multiple orgasms, edging, creampie, light hair tugging, pathetic clark who whimpers, anecdotes and yearning, talk of past toxic relationships, hurt/comfort if u squint (!!!)
— basically what ciderclark could have been if they werent pussies LMAO. title from the cure's just like heaven aka the most romantic song forever ^u^
Clark lives through every day like the ice cream store’s about to close.
In other words, he’s an avid believer in carpe diem, and he is never too busy.
It’s admirable, really. How he’s always bustling in tandem with Metropolis, zipping in and out of the Daily Planet with a Jitters Coffee in hand and two suits on his shoulders. Flying up and down town to open doors for grandmas, kick lost balls back over the fence, zoom past Stryker’s Island to let Lex Luthor get a real good look before he starts another day in prison.
‘Superman doesn’t have time for selfies’ is bullshit.
He always makes time for one more thing. One last squeeze in his itinerary, whether it be volunteering to take pictures for someone else’s article or being the one in the picture himself—posing straight and strong, beaming that friendly grin before he takes off to seize the day!
Which is why he's the first one you text when you finally dump the guy you've been seeing.
It started with that dream. The one that's been recurring for about a week, enough that you remember the details down to where the specks of dust will end up as they float through the air.
The one where you find him sitting at the front of the school bus, saving a seat with that beat-up backpack decorated with Mighty Crabjoys pins and patches. Sun already high up, and it’s balmy inside, the smell of old vinyl upholstery and seat cleaner already soaking your clothes while the driver skips to the next song on his Johnny Cash CD.
Clark is wearing a bright, dorky grin on his face. Says something over the loud rumble of the engine like: ‘Gosh, we have a test—I know, why on Monday—but you will knock it outta the water. Here comes the sun!’
Or, if you’re going by last night: ‘Seize the day!’
And last Friday: ‘Strike while the iron’s hot,’ which might’ve come from one of those Shakespeare playbooks on his shelf. Probably the one with the deepest stress lines on the spine, because that’s just how he is.
Not like you know, though. Shakespeare has always been Clark’s specialty.
Your heart flutters.
You laugh and ruffle your hands in his downy black hair, and he doesn't do anything to fix it (even when you aren't looking) and you get off a stop before school so he can break his lunch sandwich in half.
Then, you spend the last twenty-odd minutes scuffing sneakers against the dusty sidewalks, sun warming your backs, talking about the latest music and baseball games, the who likes who and the I like—
The bed creaks when you prop yourself up on your elbows.
Your head spins, still stirring and cottony with the last of deep sleep, and your phone alarm is trilling incessantly on your nightstand.
It’s weird how these things have been happening more frequently. Especially considering you’re fresh out of a breakup, if being ghosted and then dumping the guy a week later over voicemail could be considered one.
You thought of it as more of a casual fling, really. A talking stage, as some would call it—a date here and there, just getting to know each other.
Been seeing might be a misleading way to put it. That implies a certain threshold of intimacy, one you hadn’t passed.
He’d fallen silent once you started talking about Smallville. About your best friend, who’s six-four and raised on Kansan corn, a gentle giant you followed to the city and kind of planned to keep in your life.
(He ghosted you the next day. But just to one-up him, you think you might’ve started thinking about canceling the next date when he asked just how important Clark was over anybody else.)
Eyes dry and bleary, your lips are chapped because you somehow started drooling at midnight. Air conditioning’s still on—you always forget despite the nightly reminder text Clark sends you—and you’re shivering under your blankets, hair a mess and plastered to your forehead.
Your Queensland Park apartment is dark and blue with the morning haze, save for the tiny sliver of light shining through your bedroom door. It’s from the lamp you leave on in the sitting room. Ma Kent lent it to you—something to have from home, as if you didn't take her overgrown son with you.
The shade is stained glass, like those ones you find at an old library. Simple and cerulean and rimmed with tarnished brass, and the slightly greenish tinge from the glass color superimposing on the warm lightbulb greets you every day without fail.
So does Clark, with his good morning motivational texts—exactly at seven-thirty, even on weekends.
It’s clockwork. Expected. The same exact time those bus doors would open and wash you in a wave of exhaust and vinyl.
Once, it was ‘Sun’s up, guns out!’ with a photo attachment.
It was him on the front page, framed in a way you know for a fact that Jimmy Olsen got the photo credit in the byline.
He was in his suit, all blue like your lampshade and red like the color of the flannels he left in his wardrobe drawers in Smallville, and he was holding a semi-truck over his head. Biceps straining against the seams of his costume, dark hair windswept in the way his Internet fangirls go crazy over.
You snorted at it. Alright, you...giggled, and maybe you had a pep in your usual morning slouch, but that’s all there was to it. Seriously.
It’s just so endearing that in the lifetime you’ve spent with him, Clark has never run out of cheesy things to say.
You reach across your tangled blankets and wrinkled pillows, grasping clumsily for your phone on the nightstand. You swipe up on the screen, shut off your alarm, and immediately pull into the last message he sent you.
Two minutes ago: ‘Hit a home run like Clark.’
He’s added that stupid bobblehead of Chicago's eponymous cub mascot you got him as a gag gift one Christmas, way back in grade school. The one with the left ear chipped off and a poorly painted Meteors logo over the red and blue C.
A small, fond grin blooms on your face, uncontrollable.
You weren’t aware that he kept it. Hell, you didn’t even know that he brought it to Metropolis.
But that’s just how Clark is. Thoughtful at his core. Kind and sentimental. Actions speak louder than words and the whole works.
He’s tucked himself neatly into your breast pocket. The edges of you line up like the stars, and you house every little thing he’s done in the space between your heart and lungs.
And it’s the steadiness of that which grounds you here.
When things inevitably go wrong, you call him first. CLARK KENT, branded in big letters on your phone screen.
He’s down for anything. Picking you up after a bad day at work, killing (sorry, escorting out) the cockroach that mysteriously found itself in your apartment, helping fold your fitted sheets because you can never do it quite like he and his Ma do.
That’s the kind of man your childhood best friend is, in all his messy-curl, soft-sighed glory. Crooked glasses that he didn’t start wearing until high school, suits by the day and flannel pajamas by night. Blushes if you stare at him for too long, earnest in everything he does.
Consistent. Cerulean sea glass patiently shaped by the test of time.
You like his message and swing your legs onto the floor. The hardwood is cold beneath your feet, and you pad over to the thermostat, turning down the AC and wandering into the bathroom while you think up some witty response.
A pun is too cringy to send. You could just prattle off the date of the next Cubs v. Meteors series, but Clark probably already has a season ticket, so there’s no point.
Your phone buzzes, twice.
Daily Planet newsletter | Friday, April 27
REMINDER: 4th date, Matthew
You grimace at the second pop-up banner.
You still haven’t cleared your calendar of pre-planned dates.
In your sleep-smudged state, you had forgotten. You were lucky enough to score a job that lets you leave early on Fridays, so you just set the afternoon as your go-to day for completing your miscellaneous tasks before the weekend.
Chores, laundry, dates.
You worry the inside of your cheek between your molars.
You decide to blame it on the dream, and the fact that you were immediately greeted by Clark’s text.
Over-optimistic, typed out in that cheery voice you know he intended to send it with even though you can’t possibly hear it. You can hear it in your head though—how it squeaks slightly, pitches up in the way it does when he’s excited.
You really haven’t spent much time with Clark recently, you realize. Seeing him doesn't count, because technically, everyone in Metropolis sees him, even if it’s a red blur rocketing around the stone corner of an Art Deco high-rise.
You’ve just...been busy. With work, and your broken electric kettle (right, you have to fix that before you do something rash at work), and your unlucky streak in relationship business.
He’s definitely busy with balancing Superman and his articles too, but...
That’s a silly thing to worry about, isn’t it?
Making time is practically enshrined in his philosophy, his raison d'être. And if not today, then tomorrow, or some other day. You know Clark Kent well and long enough to understand that he’s superb at making up for things.
Maybe you should take a page out of his book.
TO: clark kent
u busy tonight?
we should bring back friday dinner for good lol
but at ur place, mines messy
Delivered with a whoosh.
You put your phone face down onto the bathroom counter and wrench the sink on, cupping your hands beneath the rapid stream. Frigid water splashes onto your face.
Pressing your wet fingers against your eyelids, stars bloom in your vision. Two breaths, in-out. Long inhale, short exhale.
Like this is just an exercise. Like your heart didn’t stammer for several beats after you punched the send button.
He’s probably on his way to work right now. Gets up early like he’s still in the heartland. Like he has cows and crops to tend to instead of interviews and articles.
All things considered though, Mr. Kent wouldn’t be happy if his son was always tardy or MIA to farm work like he is in the city.
A quiet laugh bubbles in your stomach. You wonder how he even gets in and out of the Planet in that ridiculously bright suit.
You swipe your hands on the soft fibers of a hand towel and pick your phone up again.
He’s in the middle of formulating a message, three dots dancing after each other in the text bubble.
You press the first letter of what you want to say on the keyboard. There’s no going back now.
TO: clark kent
my boyfriend said so btw
Nice to let him know, right?
(You hope he remembers the joke.)
Clark’s dots disappear for a moment. You imagine him pondering in the way you know so well: cheek sucked in and caught between his teeth, eyes wandering to zone out at the ceiling.
Then they start again, bopping along in consecutive order.
Three buzzes, muted against the cradle of your palms.
FROM: clark kent
Haha, ok.
I’m not flying tho
and I don't have melon pops.
A snort finds its way out of your nose. You feel warm despite the cold water still beading on your face.
He remembers.
Which is sweet on its own, referencing those two times he’s come to your rescue in times of love-life crisis.
Which goes back to how making time (be there in a jiffy) and giving thoughtful gifts (thought you might like these flowers) and comforting you when you need it most (oh, sunshine, if you wanted someone to dote on you, you could’ve just asked me) practically runs in his blood.
And he’s right. It’s pretty doting—and dare you suggest—boyfriend-like already.
…Oh. You freeze.
It dawns on you then that a sappy, sickly smile that’s strikingly close to a lovesick one has been creeping onto your face.
Oh, no.
—
Your first heartbreak comes during your eighteenth summer in Smallville.
Well, it’s less heartbreak and more embarrassment.
Turned to face the popcorned wall of the general store, you wait for the line to connect. The retro payphone handset is cold in your hand, just like how it’s cool in here, the barest respite from the hell on earth outside.
Of all days to fall for something stupid, you chose Senior Ditch morning. You should have just lazed around at the Kents’ like Clark asked you to.
The fan in the far corner rattles in the way it has since before you were even born, paper streamers dancing on the metal grate. The dial tone finally starts droning—ouurrrrr.
You worry your bottom lip between your teeth, index finger tangled in the cord. Please don’t be mad.
He picks up on the first ring—click! Waits in silence for another second before finally addressing the elephant in the cornfield with his usual cheery voice, “So. Nate's a jerk, isn’t he?”
Sighing, you rub your thumb over your eyelid, press the speaker closer against the shell of your ear. “Yeah. Sorry.”
“’S fine.” You can see him in your mind, flattening his mouth into that weirdly reassuring upside-down smile. “We all learn some way, right?”
“Mhm,” you swallow and do a quick check of your surroundings.
Eddie the clerk is wiping down the counter—milkshakes sold out today—and Mr. Stone is getting ready to set up today’s round of rummy in the back.
No sign of that asshole Nate.
No sign of anyone, really. Kind of stupid now that you think about it, setting a ditch day during the peak of a heat wave.
“Just say it.” You lean your shoulder against the wall and look out the windows. The white backside of the painted GENERAL STORE letters glare back at you. You pitch your voice down, “Told you so, sunshine.”
Clicking his tongue, “I don’t sound like that.”
“Your Ma would disagree.”
“Well, I didn’t tell you so, sunshine,” he sighs. You can hear the small smile bleeding into his voice. “I just said that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.”
“Right.” You draw out the word, honey-slow on the ‘i’.
“Right?” Clark laughs, a windchime sound. Your tone has completely passed over his head. “I only meant you might enjoy your day off more if we were polishing off a pint of Neapolitan and binging Star Wars instead of going on a date.”
You stay silent for a heartbeat. Wheels spin in your head—why the hell are you calling him anyways?
Clark should be mad. That you brushed off his advice, that you woke up early to walk to town instead of his house. That you ditched him for some boy who couldn’t even care for you like he does.
But he isn’t. He’s so water-under-the-bridge forgiving and sweet and—
Fuck, if you aren’t sorry for being stupid. It might be the embarrassment or the sting of slapping yourself mentally or even the heat, but you’re half-desperate when you say:
“Please pick me up.” You blurt it so fast that you think the words muddled into one. Silence. Static over the line. “Clark? Hey, you know I’m sorry for—”
You hear a faint jingle over the staticky line, then a far-off yell, “Pa! I’m going out!”
“Drive safe!” Another beat. “Darn boy left the phone hangin’ again. That you, sunny?”
You bring your hand up to your mouth and stifle an amused exhale against the back of it. “Yeah, it’s me, Mr. Kent.”
He clicks his tongue, a mannerism that’s almost identical to the way Clark does it. “Mm, way he was lookin' all concentrated, I knew it had to be you. What’re you doin’ out in this heat anyway?”
You set your mouth into a flat line. “...Things.”
The bell to the store rings, and Eddie choruses a ‘hey, Mr. Morris’ without even looking up from the counter.
Mr. Morris nods to Eddie, waves to you and then tilts his head with a frown. He’s been coming here long enough to know where you take your usual perch with Clark, so it must be strange to see you without the Kents’ awkwardly big son.
You point to the phone, and his frown relaxes with an oh.
“Things, you say,” rumbles Mr. Kent. You could probably see his greying beard fluffing up if you squint hard enough. “Does this have something to do with Clark bein’ all mopey this mornin’?”
“Um,” you stammer, swallowing. You wince. “Maybe. I...well, a guy asked me to meet him.”
“Oh. See, I’d say if a boy doesn’t show up to take you himself, he in’t worth chasing, but I think you heard enough of that from Clark,” Mr. Kent drawls. Your nose furrows, deepening your grimace. “Well, I hope that works out for you someday. If you need to find me—prob’ly in twenty minutes if my boy is abiding the speed limit—I'll be in the barn.”
He lets out a hearty laugh. You echo him, albeit weaker and half-awkward.
“Yeah, Mr. Kent, I—I'll see you ‘round.”
You hang your head and hook the handset back onto the payphone.
Main Street is distorted by heat waves. The cracked asphalt wobbles along with the fading white paint dividing the lanes, and you think about Clark.
Tearing down the roads at a speed of exactly 30 mph, hands tapping at nine and three on the sunwarmed wheel. Skipping to the next Rascal Flatts song on the CD that never leaves the truck, like it’s just another day.
Mr. Kent said that Clark was looking all concentrated on the phone. You know that look like the back of your hand: lashes resting against his cheeks, eyes trained down and glasses sliding to the tip of his nose. Tongue caught in the pocket of his cheek, dimple pressing in as he mulls over whatever is playing out in his head.
And then you wonder when was the last time he cut his hair—it's gotten quite long, enough that when he tugs a cap on, his curls stick out of the back—and if he managed to get the magnitude of his laser vision right this morning because last week, he burned himself shaving.
You lean your head against the pane, graciously cold on your cheek.
The heat must be playing tricks, you think, with a superimposition of Clark swimming on the glass.
(Or it might just be that you kind of, maybe, really miss him and whatever weird thing he’d randomly blurt out if he was here.)
Smallville Giants cap snug over his head, downy hair curling out of the snapback in the way you imagined it to be. The brim is low over his forehead, shadow making the blue of his eyes shine out in that somewhat off-putting way they do in the dark.
He grins in that lopsided, downturned way that reminds you of the Kents’ border collie, Shelby, thumping her tail against the ground. A laugh escapes you in a small exhale through your nose, and you brush your fingertips against the window.
And then he taps the glass.
Real. Solid. Smile widening to show teeth with a double-exposure in the reflection.
Your heart leaps into your throat as you spin around. It really is him, arms firmly crossed over a white-shirted chest and charming dimples shining at full force.
“What—Clark!”
You must look like a fool right now, limbs all frozen up in surprise and eyes wider than the fine china saucers Mrs. Kent likes to display in her dining room. Eddie laughs from behind you, slapping a rag onto the metal counter.
“Hi!” Your best friend’s broad hand is a blur as he waves, voice muted by the glass. “I think you ordered a chauffeur?”
You quickly stride over to the door, pushing it open. The bell rings with a clear, windchime sound; a blast of searing, humid hellfire presses down on you. Sweat begins to bead at your neck.
“Very funny.” Still, you’re helpless to the fond smile that tugs at your face. Clark strides over, freckled cheeks slightly pinkened, thumb pressing into the palm of his other hand.
The left side of his mouth quirks up at the same time he shrugs his shoulders. “I came, you called.”
Letting the door shut, you step out into the Kansan summer and stand under the shade of your abnormally tall friend. You’re earnest, from the bottom of your heart, when you say, “Thank you, Clark.”
A nervous scoff skips out of his mouth, and he palms the back of his neck. “It’s nothing. Come on.”
He urges you to a nearby alley—strange.
You don’t remember hearing the truck, and there’s no sign of it on the street either. Getting from the farm to town in the time between Mr. Kent picking up the phone and you hanging up would be impossible unless he was breaking the sound barrier.
You let him walk ahead of you, lengthening the gap between your and his strides.
“Wait,” you start, steps stalling, “how did you...?”
Clark freezes and slowly pivots to face you, mouth twisted in a way that screams guilty. “Okay, don’t be mad.”
“Dude—”
“—I flew here because I didn’t want you getting heatstroke—”
“—I’ve been waiting for you to fly me since forever.”
He pauses, mouth mid-word and his index finger in the air, like this is a debate rebuttal and not a page out of your wildest dreams.
Clark didn’t take the truck. He’s going to fly you back home.
Like they do in the fucking Titanic, but in the air. Where the birds fly. Where you can look down and see the rippling fields and the cows that look like brown and white clouds in the grass.
Pinching his lips till they turn white, he wipes his hands on his blue-jean thighs and stares at you in that absent, froggish way. “Sure, I guess that works out.”
You bound over to him, stomach bubbling with a schoolgirl-giddiness you only remember feeling when he does something so thoughtful and sweet. Which is every day.
So maybe that’s not normal. You should probably seek medical attention.
You circle around him and reach to grip his shoulders—they're firm beneath your hands, conditioned by years of helping out on the farm (and also a little bit of alien genetics).
Clark obliges, almost mindless, bending his knees by a fraction to let you jump onto his back.
He smells like hay and sunshine and a long day at the lake. Fresh, clean linen, a faint tang of salt next to a braid of sweet corn silk.
Like the same citrus soap he's used since forever, and the old books at the library. Like a thread of oak wood—same as the tree in his backyard and the walls of his bedroom.
It’s more comforting than any cologne or Mrs. Kent’s stew.
You know it now. Clark Kent will always be someone you can run home to.
You dig your chin into the crook of his neck and shoulder, sighing. “Have I ever told you how much I love you?”
Clark cranes his head back, trying to get a glimpse because of course he does. He’s always a stickler for eye contact when talking—it's inscribed into his heartland manners.
The tips of your noses brush, two compasses crossing.
“Hmm,” he hums, weak, “I don’t know. Maybe last week, when I let you copy my physics homework.”
“Helped me, you mean.”
“Yeah…”
You flick the tip of his ear, already red and warm like someone tried to tear it off.
“You’re mean.”
“I love you too, by the way,” he quips, pushing off the floor gently.
Then he starts floating, legs unfurling as he drifts up. Your laugh is light as you tighten your arms around his neck, him holding you close to his warm back.
That shouldn’t make you feel the way it does. Like he believes in it, a hundred percent. Like he isn’t just saying it because he loves you like he loves everyone else.
“C’mon.” You tap his collarbone. He hooks his acquiescing arms under your knees. Squeezes your calves once with his broad palm, reassuring.
You push down the odd feeling swelling in your chest as the wind starts to comb its fingers through your clothes.
It’s okay like this.
Comfortable, steady. Held by your best friend. Soaring above the little town that Clark makes feel like the whole world has been singled to this hundred-thousand-acre plot.
“Just this once, okay?” Clark says, though the way he says it with a wobbly face makes you think that he wouldn’t mind a round two. “Because we’re already skipping school.”
“Right,” you nod, grin widening, “and we should totally be back in time to finish up Porter’s final essay.”
He pinches his mouth. “What do you mean you haven’t finished?”
“Okay, I only need my thesis.” You press your ear to his shoulder and look down at the quickly shrinking Smallville. “...And everything else after that.”
The wind, mercifully cooler, whistles around you. Oh, there’s the windmill, and the winding road, and the golden, rippling fields for as far as the eye can see. A soft sigh leaves you.
You’re going to miss the cornfields and the lightning bugs. The way the air smells slightly heavy when a storm’s approaching. How everyone is so well-knit with each other, how things are easy and unthinking.
Automatic, the most natural thing in the world.
“Sunshine, you—” he sputters, breaking you from your spiral. You’ve stopped just beneath the clouds, moisture wetting his curls till they’re pitch dark and plastered to his forehead.
He cranes his head down to rest his chin on your forearm. Sighs, resigned.
“That’s barely the introduction.”
—
By some stroke of luck, you bitterly break up with your first long-term boyfriend at the same time Clark gets his first apartment.
It’s small in here, still bare and honest. Ceiling popcorned and a little warmer than eggshell white like a small-town general store. The carpet is light brown, and you’re sure there’s a strange stain in some dark corner.
And if you had to be honest, you think Clark chose this place specifically because it was ugly. He always puts his highest hopes in even the smallest and most shriveled of things. Even in Lex Luthor, that miserable eggshell of a CEO.
(But it’s all in typical Downtown fashion. At least he isn’t settling in the snazzy, gentrified Upper East Side.
This is temporary, he said, ‘till I can find a place in Midtown. But that’s for when the rent there miraculously dips, which is likely never unless metahumans start shooting lasers out of their eyes in front of the Daily Planet.
Wait...)
The temperature doesn’t work, either.
Well, it does. Kind of.
But it’s confined to just a small unit attached to the wall, so you can’t even feel it if you’re more than five feet away.
His bedframe sits in the corner disassembled, futon rolled out over a full-sized mattress that’s been plopped in the middle of the room. He could’ve fixed that, given his super speed and strength and whatever else he has. Even could’ve done his entire studio in a day, but he didn’t.
Because he was ‘waiting for you’. For two weeks. To come over to help him set up and have a little housewarming party after, just like the movies. Junk food and sodas and all.
You think back to how you got here.
Soaked to the bone. Shivering. Clothes vacuum sealed to your body and umbrella inverted in your clenched hand.
What a day for your boyfriend to be an asshole and give you an ultimatum: break up, or cut your last root from Smallville.
Ergo, you did what any best friend would do.
You chose Clark, because it has always been that way.
Clark doesn’t give ultimatums. Doesn’t get insanely, obsessively overbearing when you talk to other guys and absolve himself of any wrongdoing if you catch him staring at a girl.
He’s forgiving. Concerned, yeah, but not authoritative.
For god’s sake, he exclaimed ‘what in tarnation’ when he cracked open the weathered door and saw you dripping all over the hallway.
“My boyfriend sent me here,” you told him, gaze downturned in guilt, and his face softened from surprise to wordless understanding.
That’s how things have always been between you. Wordless. A language of eyes and gestures you’ve been fluent in since your formative years.
You squelched inside like your feet had cephalopod suction cups on the bottom of them. Clark helped with shucking off your heavy jacket while you mumbled through the long story (not so) short.
The ultimatum.
How you realized in the moment that your now-ex was trying to isolate you from your friends.
How that jerk—you refrained from asshole or motherfucking egotistical dickwad because a certain someone would cough—was so gung-ho about being the guy for you.
The first one you had to call.
As in, expected you to overhaul your pre-established laundry list of speed dials. Like he wanted to be the one you called at midnight to hide a body (Lana and Pete) or the one you relied on if you were, god forbid, stranded in Blüdhaven (Clark).
As if, when you did call him, he actually came to your rescue instead of smacking his lips and saying, ‘Um, sorry babe, I’m a little busy.’
And maybe as you kept going on, it started to dawn that you weren’t really bitter about breaking up.
You were more bitter about being stupid enough to stay with him for so long. For just pushing the little icks to the side, all ‘cause he might’ve been a little pretty and he made you feel okay every three or four days.
Clark had been sifting through a box while you explained. Rain still pattered outside, racing down the window, but it was lighter than the absolute storm that had slammed into you on the way here.
He paused, turned a little pink at the ears, and handed over a haphazardly folded towel like he was consciously controlling his actions.
Which was weird. Because he’s always meticulous about his laundry.
“Wait, sunshine,” he stuttered before you disappeared into the bathroom. “The plumbing’s opposite. Cold is hot and hot is cold.”
“Thanks, Clark.”
And then you unfolded the towel, and there lay a neatly creased pair of your underwear. Clean. Clothesline scented.
You remembered this one.
Late night, big calculus test the next morning. Cramming in his dorm, and you brought an extra change of clothes that you ended up using. You probably dumped your stuff into his hamper by mistake.
You laughed, a little too loud. Clark heard you, and you heard him plead don’t say anything in a low, defeated tone through the thin wall.
You didn’t push. Didn’t pry. Because Clark’s just like that.
Sentimental. Plan A to Z. Keeps your stuff in case you need it ten years down the line.
And besides, you’re here now. That’s better than spiraling into a self-beatdown or throwing darts at a picture of your ex’s face.
You stop at the doorway of the bathroom with your eyes still itching and red-rimmed, a towel wrapped around your body.
The apartment is eerily still, frozen in a moment.
Everything in this 400 square foot place is raw.
Exposed. Naked. White painted brick on the windowed side, stucco boxing the rest in.
Like all of Clark’s life has been dwindled down to a couple boxes and furniture bought off Craigslist. A couple white-painted nails sticking out of the wall and a broken outlet, as if that’s fine.
It is, for a fresh graduate who’s paying rent off savings and an entry-level salary from the Daily Planet.
(Thank god for that full-ride scholarship he managed to snag four years ago.)
Plus, you trust that Clark has his priorities straight, because according to the to-do list endearingly taped to the mirror, the fridge is installed and working, and he’s already deep cleaned every surface.
Dust specks float past you, and there’s a breeze—slightly clammy from the aftermath of a storm—circulating from an open window.
Widening patches of sky peek out from the clearing clouds. The air smells wet, in that good, after the rain way. A tad salty from the bay, too, with a hint of chill.
The rays of a New Troy golden hour paint the room in faint, honeyed gold, and the ceiling fan in the main room is spinning in languid circles, droning on with a rusted noise that’s starting to grate on your nerves.
You can hear the metro rattle by below, the foundation of the complex shivering slightly as it rumbles on the tracks. There’s a tune playing from another door down, jazzy and vague.
You take two steps out of the bathroom, bare feet padding from old tile to worn carpet fibers. You peek around like some cartoon character, searching for a telltale sign of Clark.
Empty. His gingham beige-brown curtains, same as the ones from Smallville, flutter with a gentle breeze.
But laid on top of his futon-mattress combo is one of his old shirts—you stifle a laugh, it’s the Crabjoys one that shrunk in the dryer—and the pair of shorts you left with your underwear.
Small miracles.
You pull the shirt over your head. Smells like Clark, all citrus shampoo and line-dried cotton. Comforting, in the way he’s so familiar that he feels like home.
The tide of self-deprecation in you subsides.
You dig into the freezer next—because ice cream makes everything better, obviously—kitchen tiles warm against your soles as a geyser of cold air billows up. Not frigid. Just cold, like it’s barely working.
There’s a pint of Neapolitan, which has maybe a single, pathetic, half-scoop left in it.
You move on.
The frozen custard that you vividly remember him buying and sending you a picture of two days ago is in the same state as the pint. And—even worse—there's a frustratingly empty box of ice cream sandwiches.
Prodding further, pushing aside frozen food and ready-to-microwaves...
Oh, a box of honeydew cream popsicles!
And there’s one left. It’s semi-melted in your hand, barely holding onto its shape.
You get that he’s all corn-fed and trying to bulk, but how much sugar does Clark need to consume in a day?
A flutter of movement catches your eye just as you’re ripping and crumbling the cold, plastic wrapping into your fist.
Right. Old building like this—there's a fire escape.
You find Clark slumped against the raw brick on the rusted landing, bones loose under the tangerine sky and curls ruffled by the evening breeze. Well, less slumped and more crumpled.
Legs pretzeled at an awkward angle to fit on the escape landing. Shoulders hunched so he can fit. New glasses folded up and tucked into the collar of his pajama shirt—Crabjoys again, this time the right size.
(You don’t want to know how many of those shirts he has.)
An open book is flattened against his stomach, browning page corners dog-eared and well loved.
Tom Sawyer. Of course.
An old bedtime story turned favorite book. Vaguely, you remember that Mrs. Johnson in third grade chastised him for writing multiple book reports on it, even if they were completely different and lent a new perspective each time.
(She eventually gave up. Clark Kent continued to write his weekly reports on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer until his Pa caught on and introduced him to Huckleberry Finn.)
Chipped paint rasps at your bare shins, and your shorts hitch up as you duck out the open window. The grate is hard beneath you when you drop next to him with the iced treat in hand; it's already half-slush, coating your fingers with sticky, melon-flavored cream.
"Didn't get one for me?" he croaks, rolling his head to face you. The shadow of a passing flock of geese dances over his face; a shift in the wind, and his eyes are clear and soaked in golden hour light.
"Last one in the freezer, cowboy," you tell him, offering the popsicle. He presses the flat of his tongue against the syrup rivulets on the back of your hand—you wrinkle your nose. "You're gross."
"And you're the one who's stealing my last melon pop.”
He sinks his teeth into the soft cream, and you bite after him.
“How’d you dry the rain off the grate?” you ask, fingers curling around a rough bar. It’s weirdly warm against your skin.
Doesn’t feel gritty like the fire escape in your apartment does. Your hand comes away without a smudge.
Wow. He really meant it when he crossed off deep clean on that to-do list.
“Heat breath.”
Perks of being superpowered. “Huh.”
You take turns like this, switching bites until only the wooden stick remains. You leave it between your teeth, leeching the last of the cold into your mouth and letting your sticky hand dry in the wind.
Below is a street you don’t remember the name of, jam packed with the post-workday rush. Taxis, trucks, and bikes splash through shallow puddles.
A cat yowls across the street, and the middle-aged guy busking beneath the awning on the corner is ripping a riff on his trumpet.
The traffic song wraps around you, rhythmed in a syncopated hymn that drowns out the rush of blood that comes to your ears.
"I've been reading up on the area," Clark starts. "There's this bodega, right down the block. Oh, and the bakery on 38th and Scott, we could try their brownies if we line up at six."
"Big city plans for a small-town guy," you say, droll, chewing absently on the wooden stick. The back of your head lazes against the auburn rough of the bricks, and a gentle breeze sifts between the buildings.
Clark scoots closer, shoulder to shoulder with you. He's a furnace like always, skin pinkened and glowing in the way it does when he’s in the sun.
He puts his chin on your shoulder, looks at you real closely—eyelids at half-mast, mouth pressed into the shape of mischief. You give him a sidelong stare, holding the blue of his pupils.
In them—cloud swirls, the shadow pattern of the birds above soaring by with a breeze that trails its fingers down your spine.
You feel a little warm under his stare, blood rushing to your head. "What?"
"We're gonna have so much fun here," he finally says, smile breaking out on his face. "Smallville One and Two, reporting for duty!"
You let out a wheezing laugh, looking up at the clouds. There's one shaped like a flying man, puffy marshmallow limbs stretched in a starfish. "And let me guess, you're One, and I'm Two."
"Fine, Smallville Half and Half."
"But which Half comes first?"
"Doesn't matter," Clark grins. Knocks his knee against yours, reassuring in that way you know so well. "They come in pairs. Do not separate."
You shove his shoulder—doesn’t budge. His deltoid is hot beneath your hand, though you aren’t sure if it’s really him or you that’s warmer.
“Cheeseball,” you mutter. Eyes rolling, even with the grin tugging incessantly at your mouth.
He laughs with the odd, boyish charm he’s never really grown out of. It tickles something in your brain, how he starts off with a quick scoff that devolves into full-bodied hiccups.
You want to hear it forever.
You want to stay here forever with your legs cramped together side by side on the hard fire escape. Skyscrapers and stone for as far as the eye can see, cut by the grid of streets that beat with the heart of Metropolis.
“Oh!” Clark straightens like he’s been struck. Reaches into his pocket, draws out his phone. He taps around the screen and then shows you a video. “Look, Pa sent me this.”
It’s home in the Kents’ backyard. Rippling gold fields and heavy panicles of grain, a soft static that used to lull you right to sleep. Old, metal-wood fences and the cry of cicadas.
You squint at the screen.
Cows graze like little brown and white clouds in the sea of green. It might be Linus yonder by the leftmost fence, and Franklin flicking his tail next to Patty. Or is that Shermy and Lucy?
You can’t tell them apart like Clark can.
There’s an irregular shape shadowed by Franklin’s back leg. He zooms in for you without asking and oh—it’s a calf.
Fluttering ears. Big, softhearted eyes. Fluffy brown coat. Reminds you of Clark, in a way. All earnest and new to everything.
The bottom barrier of their fence is still broken, you notice. It’s just a small tear, probably from the time his powers started developing.
He had torpedoed—yes, like a missile—out of the back door and banged his head into the base of the fence before the screen door could rattle back into place.
Guess that crack there serves as a reminder: no flying on the farm.
“Cute,” you say. “We should go back sometime soon.”
He smiles in agreement and reaches back to place his phone on the windowsill. His arm flexes in front of your eyes—hard lines and veins rising beneath tan skin—and you suddenly get why the freezer is so empty.
You clench your jaw and duck your head.
“Anyways” —he cuts himself off, tucking his lips between his teeth as he thinks. “Uh, I got my suit in the mail, too. Been hiding it in the closet, ‘cause I haven’t set up my bedframe yet.”
You keep your eyes trained on your knees but let a smile pull at the corners of your mouth. He was waiting for you. “Can I be the first to see?”
He scoffs in amusement, dimples sinking in easily. It never fails to amaze you, how they’re so ready to just appear even when he’s only talking.
“Don’t be silly, I know you were peeking when Ma was making it.”
“Thank you for the astute observation,” you mumble. Unneeded heat gathers in your cheeks.
“A-S-T-U-T-E.” Clark is unfazed as you stare at him blankly. He shrugs, corners of his mouth pulling down like it’s no big deal. “It was in the crossword this morning.”
Eyes flicking up, you plant your palm on the side of his face and hold him away. “Okay, third place winner of Smallville Middle’s spelling bee.”
“Well—! Most sixth graders would stutter on perspicacious too,” he stammers, words smushed by your hand to his cheek.
You mumble, “Apparently not Loretta and Marcie.”
“I’ll have you know that I could spell the first-place word.” Swatting your hand off with a flippant wave, Clark plucks Tom Sawyer off his chest and sits up properly, letting it flop onto the grate. “Bouillon: B-O-U-I-double L-O-N. Because Ma always uses it in her stew.”
You know. You were there, waiting for him by the steps with a rented movie you don’t remember anymore and chips in case he was hungry. So sure he would win.
And if you still call Marcie ‘Marcie-Farcie’ in your head? Well, Clark doesn’t have to know that.
Reaching around him (and ignoring how solid and furnace-hot his chest is in your arms), you lean into him with a fake-coy smile. “Hey, could you spell loquacious for me right now?”
“Lo...?” Clark’s brows furrow with that faint wrinkle between them. You kind of want to smooth it out with your thumb. “Oh, don’t be mean. And—hey is for horses.”
You blow a short raspberry. “You’re no fun.”
“I’m very fun,” he stammers, voice pitched high. “I wear trunks on the outside. I—I like Neapolitan ‘cause I get to eat all of my favorite flavors.”
“Right,” you say, nodding politely. You press your mouth tight, trying not to laugh as Clark returns the hug and holds you tight. “Right.”
“And I can fit a hundred lollipops in my cape, isn’t that great? Oh—and I can recite all of Romeo and Juliet.”
He clears his throat. Steadies himself, posture straightening. Slips into that tone he's been practicing, dubbed the Superman Voice. “Two households, both alike in dignity. In fair Verona—”
A short laugh leaves you, uncontrollable. Joy sloshes around in your chest. “Alright, alright, you’re fun.”
“I knew it,” Clark says, giving you a pointed look. Eyebrows raised and clear blue eyes shining with something you can’t name.
The breath in your lungs unravels to the quick.
You still haven’t pulled away, arms tight around his chest. He’s warm, alive, grounding.
Safe, in the way he’s always been.
And on a more bitter note, in the way your ex hated. With a capital H.
In that what’s so great about him way. In that maybe you should stop seeing him way.
It never made any sense.
Clark’s nothing but honest. Soft. A sweet, heartland, golden retriever to the core who names his parents’ cows after Peanuts characters.
The thought of liking someone while they were in a relationship wouldn’t cross his mind. Hell, the thought of even liking you, single or not, wouldn’t either.
…Would it?
Clark coughs, untangling himself with a long inhale. “We—should start. Um, on my furniture. Like I said, we’re gonna have so much fun once we settle in.”
“Dude, you make it sound like we’re gonna live together.” You ignore how that idea makes your chest feel odd.
Like your heart’s about to leap out and crack your sternum. Like waking up to the sight of your sleep-soft best friend making breakfast is a perfectly fine thing to think of.
“I mean…” He shrugs, lips pinching and angling downward as if he’s truly considering it. “You honestly slept at my parents’ house more than your own.”
Your throat runs dry, caught. “Your—well, your bed’s just comfier.”
“Yeah, it’s ‘cause Shelby farted on it.”
“Ew.”
—
The thing about lightbulbs is: they aren’t the same as before.
Older lightbulbs take some time to light up. Flip the switch, open the circuit. Gentle buzz, and the filaments catch with a current, every second stretching into the next before the brightness flickers and then peaks.
Those were the bulbs in Smallville and Clark’s old apartment.
Newer lightbulbs are instantaneous. Snap of the finger—flick and light, like a Zippo. And that’s you right now, standing in the shadow of a pent-up tsunami of realizations that’s about to hit you full force.
This is familiar.
Standing in front of the door to Clark’s apartment, bag heavy on your shoulder and shifting on your feet as you wait for him to answer your knocks. 3-D glares back at you on the golden plate, bright against the dark, polished wood.
Familiar, but not the same.
For one, his old apartment was chipped white paint and Downtown charm. This one’s Midtown class, all dark marble and crisp navy blue.
And for another, you’re nervous beyond reason, and you’re seriously considering just finding a hole to wither in.
Your heart is stuttering. Knocking around between your lungs, tapping at the underside of your sternum in a way Clark’s super-hearing is sure to pick up on.
Long inhale, short exhale. This is just dinner, just like the million others you’ve had.
Except, you’re kind of dolled up—as in, a smidge more makeup than you’d usually wear around him (which is close to none, because he’s seen you in middle school with acne and that terrible haircut). As in, you fixed your sweater for glaring wrinkles in the elevator and made sure your jeans didn’t have lint on them.
Except, over the course of the very short workday you spent mulling over your bad decisions, it started to wash over you that blaming everything on that dream would technically be blaming your own subconscious.
“One sec,” you hear, muffled by the door. The latch clicks, and there’s Clark, warm smile on his face, dimples like gentle craters in his cheeks. “Hi.”
Your stomach somersaults and lands with a pathetic hop.
Which is bad. You think you need an icepack, or medical attention, or frankly, anything to peel your mind off the sight of Clark in his white button-up, undershirt visible beneath the fabric. First two buttons undone, sleeves rolled up to reveal the veins nestled in the crook of his elbow, glasses half-buried in his combed-down curls and slacks sinfully tailored to his thighs.
The smell of bagel crumbs floats around him, weirdly. Toasted, fresh, with a hint of…vanilla bean, which isn’t his usual vanilla. Not that you mind; you briefly consider just pulling him in by the lapels of his shirt and—no.
You think of him agonizing over two bottles—extract or bean syrup—in the grocery store before your mind scrubs itself blanks. Whiteboard clean. Nothing rattling around if you shook your head.
Like when the tide pulls all the way back from the beach. Like when you’re staring down at the plain of barren, sandy dunes below your feet, look up, and stare into the face of a hundred-foot-wave question of oh, when did he suddenly become attractive to you?
Sure, you might have realized that what you’ve been missing in other guys has been lurking in your golden retriever of a best friend for eternity. That no other guy would treat you so sweetly like he did.
But that’s different.
That’s pining and idealistic stuff.
This is insane. Mentally. Physically. Hormonally. Gripping the table’s edge-y.
It’s one thing to want someone emotionally, but physicality is a completely different thing. And now, two seconds deep into a miles-long stare, you’re suddenly aware of just how badly you'd want Clark if he wasn’t your best friend.
In the same way he was in that picture of him lifting a semi-truck like a fucking paperweight. Damn Jimmy Olsen for always getting Superman’s best angle, so much that you’ve developed a peeve for when the random people in your feed start gushing paragraphs about taking off their pants or whatever.
(Of course, if someone caught wind of that, they didn’t hear it from you…)
Or the same way he was in the aftermath of that first real heartbreak of yours. When you dripped all over his welcome mat looking like a sad paper-maché of a freshly broken-up and bitter barely-graduate, and then helped him move into his apartment and totally didn’t stare when he did all the grunt work for the heavy furniture.
Or—you dread to think—Smallville.
When he was still sort of skinny and awkward and a fish out of water. Still being fed corn from sunrise to sundown, winning the runner-up to half his contests, and accidentally melting a hole through a lab table in chemistry and giving you that sheepish, smile-wince look of endearing guilty apology.
Oh.
The wave crashes over you. Burning cold. Startling. Dreadful. Heart entering freefall.
You maybe. Might. Probably. Definitely. Have harbored a secret, heavily denied and-or repressed crush on Clark Kent.
Corn-fed and six foot four Clark Kent. Academic whiz and full-ride merit scholarship recipient Clark Kent. Who unironically finds it beautiful to say things like ‘what the hay’ and ‘oh, sakes alive.’
The Clark Kent who waited two weeks for you to help him move in when he could’ve done it himself in two minutes. The same guy who dropped everything to pick you up after you were stupidly pranked.
Your childhood best friend. Whose name is synonymous with ‘no.1 most dependable and would die for you.’ Whose toddler pictures you’ve had a guest-starring role in.
You barely register Clark tilting his head, brows furrowing in mild confusion. “Sunshine?”
“Hi,” you blurt, a little flat. “Clark.”
You’re sure your mouth is at an awkward, slightly sour angle, because he studies you before slowly stepping back to let you in. You’re half-ready to run to his bathroom and bang your head against the mirror.
He just. Looks at you. Lips set in that slight pout of consideration and his right-hand dimple shifting.
You avoid his eyes, feigning interest in his doorframe. Dark wood, solid, and ridiculously small when Clark is filling out the space inside.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” you breathe, shifting on your feet. “Never better.”
“Okay,” he says. Simple, short. Like he’s not going to think deeper into it—at least you hope he won’t. He flashes a small smile, “I’m making bagels.”
You shove down the urge to snort at how in character that is for him.
Here you are, freaking out over the newfound discovery that you were none the wiser to secretly yearning for Clark since high school. And he’s unconcerned, shifting his mouth to and fro in the expressive way you know so well and making fucking bagels for dinner.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.” Clark lets an easy grin rise on his face, and he reaches to grab the strap of your bag, reeling you into his apartment. You echo him, a light laugh escaping as you kick off your shoes and let him take your things.
He nudges the door shut with his heel and peers into your bag, surprise etching into the line of his brow.
“Woah.” Reaches in, pulls out a bottle of wine by the neck. It’s ridiculous how your stomach starts simmering with want when you see how big his hand is compared to the glass. “So, I’m guessing you bought this to make up for my lack of ice cream?”
You blink, twice. Takes a moment for you to eke out a squeaky, “Uh, sure.”
Too casual to be innocent, you dig your hands into your pockets and stroll into the kitchen with uptight leisure. You exchange stiff pleasantries while you avoid his eyes—how’s work and you won’t believe what the media’s saying about you right now.
Orange-yellow light spills out from inside the oven. Clark’s bagels, slightly more malformed than the ones you’d find at a coffee shop, have just started baking, still pale and lumpy.
His apartment has changed slightly since the last time you saw it; the sitting room is still straight ahead, tall glass and blinking city lights; hallway to the right, the faint outline of doorways visible despite the lights being off.
But there’s frames on the wall now, glass panes glared by the amber light coming from the lamp next to the TV. The couch is different—more sunken in, like it’s seen its fair share of nights crashing onto the cushions in exhaustion.
And there’s stuff pinned to the fridge door. Mismatched magnets from Jitters Coffee and some touristy store in Gotham (though you didn’t know they even existed), and random sticky notes taped to the metal.
CALL MA and Crabjoys reunion ticketing: Apr20 are the ones that really get you. Remind you that some things never change.
You zero in on a photo strip painstakingly centered in a magnetic frame, long sandalwood beams squared around four snapshots of you and Clark.
Together. Pinching each other’s cheeks with one of those dumb filters from the photobooth in Metropolis Uni’s gift shop. You remember this one.
Spring semester of junior year, wide smiles full with the relief of surviving midterms week. The booth had been so small that you had to sit in his lap. He was warm when he wrapped his arms around your waist to keep you steady.
Your core stirs. Unintentionally, of course. But still enough to send a violent wave of rapid-firing neurons into a massive short-circuit.
It doesn't help that Clark is radiating that same heat when he comes up behind you. Sidles up next to your arm, setting his hand on the blue cabinet above and kneading his cheek between his teeth.
“Uh,” he starts, quiet like the subtle hum of the oven’s fan, “are you hungry?”
It’s barely five. You’re still lingering on the photo strip, studying the way Clark’s watching you in that long-ago moment. Eyes soft, smile angled downward in a manner you’d call adoring. Like he’s in love.
Not that love you usually practice. The one where you kid with each other and battle in footsie under the dinner table. The one you’ve been swimming in since childhood, when he slept with a Meteors poster under his pillow to manifest their next win. When you made eyes at other boys and he had to remind you to pay attention in class.
But one where he looks like he wants to take you by the collar of your shirt too. Lean into you, full tilt and without hesitation, like he’s yearning to become one under your skin and carve his name into the underside of your ribs. Like he’s got a spark of desire flickering in his chest.
Or not. You could be delusional.
You remind yourself to inhale. “No, I—I’m good.”
“Okay,” he says, voice rumbling low. Your knee twitches—the barest, involuntary spasm of a muscle in reaction to the sparks setting off behind your ribs. “Because I think we need to talk.”
You go ramrod-stiff so quickly that you swear one of your joints cracks. A thrill runs through your heart—fuck, he definitely caught on. If there’s one thing about his policy of making time, it’s that establishing clear communication is included.
Pitched in a somewhat sheepish tone, “What?”
“I mean,” he ducks his head down, shoulders tight as he gestures between the two of you with a finger. Looks back up at you with earnest eyes, blue so clear you can see yourself in the glassy reflection. “You’re acting weird. Did I do something?”
You shake your head, immediate. Relief courses through you, but it’s quickly replaced with a wave of guilty heartache. Here is a man who only wants to be sweet and care about you, and you’re thinking you might want more. Want him to kiss and touch and say, I’m in—
“No, it’s not you—I’m just…” you fish for an excuse “…a little stressed.”
“Well.” Clark does a short, dorky side-to-side, shoulders more relaxed. “Talk to me.”
Your throat feels full when you swallow. Pulse thundering, you tap the picture with your finger. “You kept it.”
He looks a little stunned, head listing to the side owlishly. “Why not?”
You shrug. Stupidly, “Dunno.”
A smile breaks on his face, tender as a rising sun. Certain, too, like he needs to remind you that duh, “It’s my favorite picture.”
Oh.
You didn’t know that. He keeps the most romantic (arguably) picture of you and him on his fridge, where it’s impossible to not pass by on the daily. That’s fine.
Your stomach clenches in a way that makes you feel stricken and stupidly, ridiculously heartsick.
“You’re kidding.”
“Not,” he huffs, shifting to lean against the fridge. He’s almost the same width—god—and you’re a little too distracted with the solid shape of his bicep tightening under his sleeve and the barest dip of muscle before his elbow. “You still haven’t answered the question.”
Frowning, “What question?”
“What you’re so stressed about,” Clark says.
Pinching his mouth to the side, his dimple winks as he studies you. He’s been doing that a lot—new nervous habit, you suppose. “Does it have something to do with your text this morning?”
Your jaw clenches, caught. “Maybe...”
He knows you too well.
Clark does that thing again—tilts his head, going from one side to another. Like he’s trying to gauge you from every angle. You fiddle with a loose string in your sleeve.
He blurts, “I didn’t like Matthew, by the way.”
Which—okay. Valid. Clark is honest as always, and he’s entitled to his own opinions, which you agree with, because looking back, Matthew was pretty unlikeable.
He insisted on splitting the bill—not that you’re salty about needing to pay, for god’s sake, you have a job and a fair amount of disposable income, but because he was just cheap. Like he needed someone to pick up his slack and excused it with, ‘well, everyone’s all about equality these days, right?’
And he only wore a faint, sneerish smile as if he was embarrassed to appear more than nonchalant. Chewed cinnamon gum like it was his second job, rolled his eyes at the slightest thing.
Never laughed, unless it was in derision when a kid tripped over their own feet, or something. And he was addicted to wired headphones. And pretended to be an avid reader—you know he was acting, because he couldn’t tell you who narrated The Great Gatsby despite it being opened to the last chapter in front of him.
You might’ve overlooked a lot of things about Matthew because he was cute. Baritone and solemn dimples and curly black hair and eyes that curved into crescents at the slightest twitch of his mouth.
And, alright. Just for the sake of adding it to the pile of late revelations that have dawned upon you during this hour:
You probably swiped right on him because he resembled Clark.
Not a little. A lot. In an almost eerie way.
Like he was his evil twin from Park Ridge or something, but skinnier and vampirish, and lacking freckles and that eclectic, heartland music taste.
But enough about that. You never told Clark you were shooting your nth shot with another guy and hoping he’d be the one. He shouldn’t know who Matthew is.
There are probably a hundred thousand Matthews in Delaware, but only one Matthew the Clark Clone.
(How long has he been listening in on you?)
You blink at Clark for a few seconds. His ears start flushing pink the longer you stare, you notice.
“Yeah, I didn’t either,” you mumble through the words, pausing between syllables like it needs some effort to force out.
“I know it’s not my place to say,” he sighs, looking down at the cool tile beneath your socked feet. “But...maybe you haven’t gone the best way around finding love.”
“Why, you jealous?” You mean it as a joke. A flippant, throwaway line to tease.
But Clark looks at you hard. Plucks his glasses off his head and sets them down on the counter, serious.
Faint frown lines surface on his face, eyes suddenly sharp. Then he blinks, and he’s back to normal, pretending the wall is so interesting. “…No.”
You poke his cheek. It’s warm; a current of sparks runs up your arm and into your heart. “Admit it. You already know you could do better than half the guys I’ve cried to you about.”
His eyes flick to the ceiling momentarily before meeting yours again. Stammers over his own breath and squeaks as he asks, “Just half?”
Oh, he’s jealous.
You can see it, clear as day. Clearer than Clark’s pretty eyes. That maybe you aren’t alone in this. That just like always, you’re on the same page as your best friend.
“Okay,” you say, leaning closer to him in challenge. “So, what’s your advice, Mr. Kent?”
He allows himself an inhale—one he doesn’t really need, being superpowered and all—and purses his lips.
He’s blushing in the way you know so well, the way he does when you look at him for too long. Like some shy bastard. Like he isn’t aware of what’s starting to brew between you.
The thing about Clark is that he wears his heart on his sleeve. Sometimes literally, like when a kid slapped a heart sticker onto his supersuit.
But he’s so open about his desires that it’s sometimes hard for him to hide them. Like now—standing with his shoulders bunched up and tense, practically holding his breath as his pretty ocean eyes drift around and eventually land on your lips.
His lashes flutter. Exhales stutters a little, let out slowly.
Says under his breath, “Well, sunshine, I think more organic relationships have better benefits in the long run.”
“Uh-huh.” You’re helpless to the slow, amused grin bubbling onto your face. “Elaborate.”
Clark keeps on rambling, eyebrows shooting up as he explains, “Like, you hardly know anyone on a dating app, right?”
“Right.”
“And—you know, romantic feelings can develop elsewhere.”
“Really?”
“Yes!” he exclaims, gesturing wild nonsense with his hands. “For example, Cat’s really into this whole friends to lovers thing, and honestly, I think she’s got a point.”
You fold your lips inward, holding them between your teeth as you try not to laugh.
“See, she says that people benefit from already knowing their partner,” Clark says, gaze trailing down without a thought. “That ultimately, friends sometimes feel the most fulfilling love. And it’s easy for them, to communicate their desires” —he finally catches himself, eyes wide and blinking quickly— “and stuff.”
You open your mouth, running dry from nerves. Quiet and sheepish, still unsure despite seeing all the signs, “Wanna put that to the test?”
The way his inhale quivers should be illegal. “I—don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean,” you say slowly, surprising yourself with how steady you feel despite the uproar rioting in your chest, “maybe—you know, Cat’s theory. Maybe I do need someone who knows me.”
Clark’s eyelids flicker, and then finally squeeze shut. His voice is tight when he murmurs, “Yeah, yeah.”
You say his name. Soft. Quiet. Like a Friday night in Smallville at the Kents’. Like the aftermath of a dinner get-together, when you used to sit on his bed and cover your face with a comic instead of talking with the neighbors in the living room.
He makes a small noise of response, a gentle hymn that comes with the smallest up-tilt of his head. A couple curls fall loose over his forehead and without thinking, you brush them to the side with a trembling finger.
Some things between you don’t need words. Like when you’re hungry and find an orange already peeled. Or when you glance at each other during a movie and find that the other is also trying not to laugh.
But this needs words. Need the confirmation that yes, Clark Kent can make time, but he can also make a different space in his already big heart for you, too.
“Sunshine?” His whisper is vulnerable, cracked wide in the middle. “I can hear your heartbeat, y’know? It’s the one where you’re planning something.”
Fuck. You can’t take it anymore.
“I like you.” It spills out without a second thought, but you steamroll on, fingers dragging from his hairline and down to cup his cheek.
You sound like a damn teenager professing her undying love when you say it again. “I like you. Since Nate, when your Pa said you dropped everything to get me. And I just—
I realized nobody loved me like you,” you choke out. And it feels so free to say that, as if some vice you didn’t know was clenched around your heart has released itself. “And I took that for granted when I should’ve—”
“Sunshine,” Clark cuts in, breaking your laundry list of guilt. Says it with that heartland twang you’ve been missing from his voice because he changes it slightly to fit in with Metropolis.
He doesn’t say more. Just leans in. Places a peck to the corner of your mouth.
And you stare at each other for seconds. Eyes wide. Something you can’t name shooting through your heart and oh.
Oh, it feels like you’re finally on the right side of heaven to wrinkle his stiff workshirt in your fists and pull him in for a real, dizzying kiss.
One you know you can’t turn back from. One that makes your body feel so viscerally alive, like livewire has been activated under your skin.
You’re going to feel this for days, you think.
Clark moves his lips over yours like he has all the time in the world. Like he’s really going to savor the seven-odd years you spent oblivious to your own feelings.
Your chest is vibrating with anticipation, core growing warmer and warmer until you realize that there’s a hot wetness growing between your legs. And of course Clark decides that now is the perfect fucking time to wrap his arms around you and lift.
You think he was made for this. To hold you like you’re made of foam. To be so strong and tender at the same time, cradling you closer like he’s trying to fuse into your skin.
Wouldn’t mind, a thought smears by in your mind.
He sets you down on the counter, which is cold and hard beneath you. Breaks away for a split-second to angle his head differently, catching you with your mouth still parted. Sweeps his tongue leisurely along your bottom lip, nips and sucks as he plants a large, burning palm on your knee and shifts it to the side with a light but firm push.
You swear a star sparks in your skull and starts bouncing around the cavity of your chest.
He kisses you deeper. Hungrier, like you’re the most precious thing he’s ever held. Corralling you between the wall and himself, hands coming up to graze from your waist around to your back, thumbs caressing in circles over the bare sliver of skin beneath your sweater, which you didn’t know until now had ridden up.
“Should’ve” —a soft sigh unfurls in you as he peels himself off, only to attach himself to your jaw, taking his time as he blazes a shallow line of kisses to your ear— “done this sooner.”
“Well,” his voice is rough, mouth forming a simper against the underside of your jaw’s hinge—kisses there, and then closer and closer to your throat. You bare your neck to him, easy and unthinking; the ceiling spins above you. “Better late—” sucks at the sensitive, tender spot just beneath your chin, fuck “—than never.”
You register that he’s sliding his hand under the back of your sweater, pressing hot skin along your back. Fingers skating over the divots in your spine, he drags himself back up and waits there with his nose beside yours like he’s asking for permission.
His eyes are closed, the corners of his mouth barely lifted up, a smile about to unfurl. You plant a chaste kiss on his lips, and as you pull away, he lurches forward, as if he’s trying to chase another hit.
“Wait,” he mumbles, some dreamy look surfacing on his relaxed face—brows floating up slightly, seam of his pink and swollen lips parting. “Come back.”
“I’m gonna pass out if you keep kissing me like that,” you say, tone whispered.
Even then, you might be understating yourself. You feel like you’re teetering on the knife’s edge of sanity.
You run your hand down his chest and pinch the fabric just above his belt, untucking it absently and looking down at him through your lashes. You don’t even know why you lament honestly, “And then I can’t take this off. And then we can’t fuck.”
Clark frowns, opening his eyes to look at you in that upturned, tragically kicked-puppy way that makes you ache. In your chest, at the crux of your thighs.
Too fast? You avert your eyes in shame.
“I prefer the term making love.” His lashes flit in a way that would make some of the women at your workplace envious, and he’s holding your eyes in his pretty blue ones. Reminds you of the sky in the countryside, just after the last raincloud has cleared up, the scent of petrichor still heavy in the air.
You nudge yourself forward and brush your mouth over his upper lip. Salt and sugar blooms on your tongue. “Oh, I forgot that you talk like a geriatric. We should stop before your knees crack.”
“Ah, we can’t have that,” he hums, genuine concern blooming on his face, just beneath that stupid, bright tipsy-flush on his cheeks that make you feel something weird.
Slips his hand out from under your shirt, gently takes your chin in his grip and rubs his thumb over your spit-slick bottom lip, all while brushing his mouth over his ministrations. Pouts like he’s the one being subject to the hormonal mutiny that’s making you feel so violently alive.
You want, want, want.
Tugging at his shirt, abandoning your restraint to push your hips forward and against his solid stomach and fuck, a sound escapes you that sound suspiciously like please? and he breaks into a breath-stealing smile like a coy cat that just got the cream.
It’s no surprise that you barely blink before you find yourself lying supine and sinking into his mattress. Smells like that damn vanilla, and sandalwood, and the wind of Smallville. As if he flies back just to dry his laundry on the porch clothesline.
The blankets are peeled back neatly. Fitted sheet soft to the touch—you curl your fingers in the cotton for something to ground yourself with, because apparently Clark isn’t enough.
Pillows plush and considerately placed beneath your head, the mattress dips for the weight of Clark settling on his knees between your legs.
He sort of hangs there for a second as you catch your breath and reel in the uncountable minutes of insanity that have just passed. Scrutinizes you with gentle, earnest eyes, cupping the back of your clothed knees with broad, kind hands.
He presses his thumb into the outside of your knee, right in the faint divot where the cap sits over bone, tendon, and muscle. You swallow, watching him as he traces his eyes up and down your body—collected, steady.
Safe in the way he has always been. Clark squeezes the top of your calf once before letting his hands slide up—a line of flinty sparks follows him—to cup your hips.
“Sunshine,” he rumbles, soft eyes meeting yours. Tilts his head, loose waves of inky hair falling over his forehead. Adam’s apple bobbing, he lets go of your hips and holds your hands instead, all earnest and somewhat guilty. “Do you mean it?”
You blink up at him, confused. “Huh?”
“That you like me.” He turns over your hands so he can press his thumbs into your palms. “That you want this.”
A small, almost disbelieving laugh scuffs out of your mouth. Of course he’s double and triple checking.
“Silly,” you say, curling your right-hand fingers around his thumb. “I can’t lie to you.”
“Can you say it again? Just to be sure.”
“Clark.” You lift his hand toward your face. Kiss the back of it softly, and smile at how comforting the feel of his skin is. You’re all innocuous and doe-eyed when you say, “I want you to fuck me. I want you to fuck me and make me feel it for days.”
His breath stammers in a way that makes you flush. All barely-held restraint and trembling like you’re doing something to make him weak.
He gives you a tight, downturned smile once he settles himself, the same one that would flash across his face to reassure you.
Except, it’s a little different now. Except, there’s something terrifyingly raw swimming in his—you've just noticed—unnaturally dilated pupils, and you’d be wrong not to call him lovesick or fond.
Maybe he’s always looked at you like that, all benign and wanting, and you didn’t realize until now. The thought of beating yourself up over wasting so, so much time when Clark was right in front of you flickers through your head, but it’s quickly wiped away when he gently lets go of your hands and starts undoing his button-up.
You’re fixated on the way his fingers work the buttons—nimble, with just the right application of pressure to pop it open. You follow them all the way down to the last, where the hem you untucked earlier hangs over the tent rising in his slacks.
He’s big, the crotch of his pants tight. The outline of his cock is visible through the dark fabric. Holy shit.
Your chest tightens for a breath.
Unconsciously, your thighs squeeze tighter in search of friction.
Futile. Clark nudges his knees wider to stop you as he shrugs away his shirt and then strips off his undershirt.
You hope your eyes aren’t bugging out.
He’s sculpted like a goddamn Greek statue—solid muscle, defined pecs and shoulders—yet soft at the same time. A thin layer of fat hugs his abdomen in true farmer fashion, mellows out his broad frame and you suddenly want to wrap your arms and legs around him and maybe just let him fuck you animalistically like that.
“C’mere,” he says, syllables muddled together with his eyes all fluttering and mouth loose like that, like he’s drunk off desire. Like he’s also noting how heavy the air has gotten, hazy with lust. Takes your fingers in his again, draws it toward the center of his bare chest.
His skin is blistering under your palm. A furnace almost; your neck prickles with heat as another wave of arousal tides over you.
And then you feel it. Pounding hard enough to pulse like it’s right under the first layer of impenetrable skin and not buried beneath layers of fat, muscle, and bone. A strange, not-quite-human thrum that kisses your fingertips.
Clark takes a steadying breath, pitches himself down to kiss you all while holding your touch firmly over his heart.
His lips slide over yours—longing, like the short minute that’s passed since he last kissed you was an eternity.
And his heartbeat jumps.
Actually. Speeds up to thunder at what seems like a hundred miles an hour, strong and loud and trying to leap into your palm. Stays like that for the honey-slow seconds that your mouths lazily dance, and for another ten after he ducks his flushed face into the right side of your neck.
He smells like an underlayer of woodsy cologne and flour. Like the faint, diluted scent of corn ripening in the wind. Like home.
“You make me so nervous,” Clark finally says, voice lilting into borderline self-amusement. “God, sweetheart, you have no idea.”
His lips press over your jugular, feeling the pulse there. Eyelashes flutter on your skin as he nips your skin, not hard enough to hurt but enough to know that your blood will darken the surface later.
Somehow, in the smudged haze of craving and teeth, he finds his way to the button of your jeans. Pauses there, forefinger picking at the overlap of denim.
Your breath freezes in the same moment as his.
“Please?” he asks so sweetly. You cant your hips up in response.
His exhale hisses out all at once, almost a gasp. Cheek searing where it lays on your neck, deft touch working the button out of its nest and zipper rasping as he opens it.
The sound of it is so loud in his otherwise still bedroom.
Your breath shudders when he slips your jeans down, over the curve of your ass and down your legs. Cold air hits your clothed cunt, cooling the wetness that’s gathered in your panties.
Your jeans get stuck around your left ankle, to which he giggles boyishly to himself between breaths, and oh, your heart swells so much that you feel too small for the mush of endearing-lovey-sweet churning in your chest.
You tug at your sweater, pulling your arms out of the sleeves and wrestling the lump of fabric over your head. Takes a minute, because you’re a little shaky and practically bursting at the seams with anticipation.
Then you’re laying there and letting Clark take you in, all vulnerable with your undergarments mismatched (gosh, maybe you really should have picked underwear that matched your bra) and clothes discarded out of sight.
And it’s stupid, really. How your inhale hitches. A little stall, if you will, at the dawn of an aching expression on his face, looking at you. Really looking at you.
Like he wouldn’t have this any other way. Like he’s trying to find the best way to get under your skin, just like how he inspects a chessboard to make his next move. Like he already knows what’s going to make you twitch, or clench, or come so hard that you see the pearly gates.
Fast and unprepared and in his own bed, fitted sheet already wrinkled while you try not to squirm because you’re a little embarrassed that your bra is black and your panties are white with navy polka dots.
“Don’t stare,” you whisper, though it comes out as more of a mortified squeak.
“Why not?” Clark just smiles. Easy. The most natural thing in the world, when he grazes his fingertips over the waistband of your panties. “I'm just admiring the most beautiful woman.”
You scoff, crossing your arms over your bare stomach. “Yeah. My eyes’re up here, you know.”
“Really,” he protests. Dips his fingers beneath the elastic of your panties. “Or as Ma would say, I’m happy as a clam.”
Draws the smallest tension and lets the band snap back against your hip, because he just has to be cheeky and tease.
“Oh,” he gasps in revelation, heartland twang starting to bleed back into his low, baritone words, “or that’s a sight.”
Your skin burns, feverish from your soaked cunt to your head.
Then Clark shifts himself down to nuzzle the damp gusset, applying the barest feather of pressure over your clothed clit. He shudders. Wraps his arms around your thighs so he can hold you closer as he starts laving over the thin fabric.
A soft sigh spills out of your mouth, helpless. Nakedly sweet and honest in a way you didn’t expect yourself to be.
Uncontrollable, your fingers thread into his downy hair and tug lightly.
He groans quietly but doesn’t listen, mouth instead moving back up to your stomach.
Clark buries his nose just under your navel. Breathes you in, solid biceps tightening slightly around your thighs. Exhales with a muffled, broken sound that echoes your own and your heart flips.
“Baby, you’re so soft,” he mumbles, head angling down to start blazing a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses back down your stomach, up the delicate inside of your right thigh. Presses himself close to your skin, licks over where your pulse thrums between your legs and sucks.
You inhale sharply, shifting your hips, now aware of just how empty you are.
He hums in response, teasing the same spot on the other side of your cunt. You wriggle a little more, trying to get his mouth where you want it.
Impatience burns behind your ribs. You want it, you want it so fucking bad that the need cuts you open and raw, like barbed wire drawn taut over your sternum.
“Please,” you breathe. Can’t even recognize your own voice now, all breathy and desperate. Looking down at him through your lashes, you dart your tongue over your bottom lip. Tastes like salt, and him. “Clark, please.”
Eyes flicking up to yours, he hums in low question. Tilts his head, so his curls tickle your inner thigh. “Patience is a virtue, y’know.”
You swallow, going still for a fractured moment. You come up blank, like a reel left out so long that all the fish of your thoughts know it’s bait. “I...”
A gentle smile rises to his face. “’S alright,” he says, all saccharine and forgivingly merciful. Water under the bridge, you think to yourself. “I’ll remind you.”
Slips his fingers under the elastic of your waistband again, pulls down your panties as a flare of sudden, sharp need rips through you. Curves his smile a little sharper when the gusset sticks to your cunt for a moment, tacky with your arousal.
The flimsy little piece of fabric lands somewhere out of sight, too, and Clark lets a nearly disbelieving sigh puff out from his mouth as he stares at your naked sex.
You watch, mesmerized and head floating in a near-dream state, as he lowers himself flat onto the mattress—you don’t miss the subtle way he grinds his hips down—and lays his head against your thigh.
“Should—should I tell you now that I’ve never done this before?”
Curse your stupid, big mouth.
Clark stiffens. Stares at you with eyes unblinking and wide. “What?”
Your stomach drops in panicked freefall. “No—fuck. Not like that.”
“I’m gonna need some clarification,” he says, propping himself up on his elbows.
“I’m not a virgin,” you blurt. “If that’s what you think. I just...”
He blinks at you, finally. Questions in that earnest, pleading voice, “No, that’s—sunshine, are we going too fast? We can stop right now.”
A wave of heavy embarrassment crashes down on you.
Your palms slap onto your face, eyes squeezing shut at the mortifying, humiliating fact that— “I’ve never had a guy go down on me!”
“And” —you have to fight yourself to be honest about this— “half the time, I don’t come anyway.”
Clark just sort of twists his mouth, looking at you with those melancholic eyes, dimples shifting as he processes.
Just zones out a bit. As if he isn’t laying stomach-down on the bed, extremely eager to eat you out two seconds ago. Okay, maybe he is still a little eager, just toned down.
But you can see it. In the way he blinks, up at your eyes and down to your navel. In the way his hand is still resting on your thigh, ready.
He wets his bottom lip. Says, in a hoarse, choked voice like he really can’t believe it, “But you’re okay?”
“Yeah,” you breathe, peeling your fingers off your face, “more than okay. So you better ruin it for everyone else.”
He smiles, dorky and charming, face all ruddy. You lament—oh, you feel like a fucking travesty with the way his dimples make your heart somersault like that.
“So,” he starts, pitching his head down to study your sex. Trailing his fingers from your thigh to your folds, he wets himself with the slick arousal already there. “What even happens after you have sex with other guys? When you aren’t satisfied?”
You try not to worm around as Clark gently strokes the tip of his middle finger up your seam. You shiver, though, when he pauses just below your clit and drags back down.
“Just…I take care of myself after. Obviously,” you mumble, restraining the urge to lift your hips just so and let his thick fingers fill your aching cunt. But patience is a virtue, and you’ll be damned if you don’t find out what Clark’s whole reminder is about. “Lots of sore wrists and stuff.”
An easy grin blooms on his face again. Start pumping the tip of his finger into you, slowly working you open.
“Like this?” he asks, once the second knuckle of his finger has been swallowed by your cunt. Thicker than you thought it would be. Which makes you wonder about and crave the stretch of two.
“Yeah,” you try to keep your voice from squeaking, but it does anyway. You cover your mouth with the back of your left hand and card the right into his silken, messy waves. “I just—god, you’re thick.”
“Easy, honey,” he shushes. Kisses the top of your mound, to which you respond with a soft, open sound. Takes his mouth lower, minuscule centimeter by minuscule centimeter, until he’s pulling out his one finger and stretching you out with two, just as he latches his scorching mouth around your clit and sucks.
You moan. Loud, embarrassing, pitched up at the end.
The feeling of being so full aches in you. Feels like he’s penetrating your entire body. Like he’s going to live in the cavity of your chest forever, and right now you’re more than willing to keep him warm.
He laps at you all while rocking his fingers, getting your parted folds all sticky and slick with saliva and arousal. Detached himself with a tacky string of viscous liquid, eyes rolling up before they shut, forehead nuzzling into your stomach.
“Did you do it like this?” He crooks his fingers, thick and hot in your cunt, presses into a spongy spot that makes you tug at his hair for more. You whine a little. “Or that?”
Slides impossibly deeper into you, bypassing that first spot and nudging his fingers into a place that shoots white-hot pleasure ripping up your spine, and his tongue swipes searing over your clit and you think you fucking gush a little down to his wrist.
“God,” you choke out, and Clark just keeps teasing that spot, moaning softly into your cunt and stroking and rocking his touch until your stomach starts to tighten, all raw and urging. “There, there, shit.”
It’s like a switch has flipped in you.
You’re fucking ruined for life. Hips rutting up to chase the next thrust of his fingers, the next flick or swipe of his tongue as your neurons go into overdrive. Sobbing: “Oh, Clark—baby, fuck, that’s—good, so good, Clark, please—”
He rolls his tongue hard over your sensitive clit, upping the intensity at which his digits are fucking into you—a filthy push-pull that you can hear, lewd noises of your cunt spasming in as he bullies that bundle of nerves inside you.
“C’mon,” he groans, a desperate sound vibrating into you. Kisses your clit again, and you feel another surge of wetness coat your inner thighs when he shoves his fingers in deep to keep stimulating your g-spot. Sounds all wrecked and wanton when he rumbles, open-mouthed over you, “That’s it, honey. Keep doing that. Make you feel better than all those jerks, yeah?”
You keen, high-pitched. Hips rutting up into his face, unabashed, muscles gradually tightening until you’re all wound up.
It’s getting to be too much, like you’re being filled to the brim and then some. Like you’re about to spill out of your own skin, all ‘cause of your best friend’s ministrations. His tongue. The way he stuffs a shallow, wanting moan into the crook of your inner thigh and cunt. How he’s shifting his hips into the mattress, how the bedframe is creaking slightly from the movement.
Your pulse is pounding. Like you’re trying to mimic the way his heart was when he let you feel it, and your head is spinning with it, too.
And then Clark dips the tip of his tongue low, tasting you from the top of the opening of your sex—fucking gasps with a sound that almost cries and drags the flat of his tongue hot up to your clit. Wraps his plush, sweltering lips around it and starts laving with abandon, grinding his fingertips into your g-spot.
It’s not the way he’s lapping at you that makes you break. It’s not even his thick, full fingers stretching you out in a way that burns so sweetly in you.
It’s just Clark.
He reaches for the hand you have buried in his hair.
Wraps his warm, gentle palm around your wrist. Squeezes you once, firm enough to ground you by a thread-thin tether. Kneads his thumb over your pulse point and looks up at you through his lashes, eyes out of focus and so honest.
Starbursts pop in your vision.
You swear you black out for a second as you come, moans shaky against the back of your hand.
Your orgasm hits you hard and soft at the same time. Crests and crashes with a tidal wave of wetness that dribbles out of your cunt, soothes over your head as bliss fills your body. Your ears are ringing, hearing smudged and cottony like you’ve been dunked in the pool and someone’s trying to talk to you from above the surface.
You quiver, helpless as you chase the aftershocks against Clark’s eager mouth.
There’s a trembling sincerity when he slowly pulls his fingers from you, like he’s reluctant. He’s still guiding you down from the last ripples of ecstasy, tongue undulating over the still-twitching seam of your cunt, whispering pleasant nothings between each lick like he’s found an altar between your thighs.
But he doesn’t bring you down. Doesn’t let you stray far from that high-up edge, nose now pressed into your clit as he wraps his thick, solid arms under your legs, then over your stomach to lock you in place.
“Clark,” you sigh, squirming from the stimulation. You can hardly recognize your voice, all tender and soft and pitched. “Clark.”
His lips make a wet, lewd sound when he reluctantly draws himself away from your cunt. Leaves a web-thin, almost star-spun string of slick connecting you to him, panting so feverishly that he pushes your legs closer to your chest.
He hums, looking a little dazed. Eyes unfocused, tongue darting out to taste that string of fluid, which breaks and dribbles down his chin in a way that makes your stomach riot with butterflies.
"Going somewhere?” he rasps, and god, if that doesn’t make your heart leap for the chance to give him another and then some.
“No,” you mumble, heat prickling under your skin.
Clark blinks at you, cheek squished to your inner thigh. Lets his eyes roll closed when you stroke your fingers through his hair, exhale balmy on your bare skin.
“Okay,” he says, quiet.
This time, he’s slow with it. Takes his time, languid and sensual flicks and laves meant to wriggle between your seams and pick you apart from the inside.
Tides you through your refractory period, sighs when you start to tighten your thighs around his head again. Lights that spark in you once more, using his drenched, arousal-shiny fingers only to play with your clit while his tongue slips into your throbbing cunt instead.
You don’t know how much time has passed. You only know this: back arching and hips twitching as Clark guides you toward another orgasm, skillfully fucking you with his tongue like this is his last meal and he needs to savor it.
You feel a telltale tingle in your core again. Coils up tighter, raw, wrings you dry until you’re rocking your hips and pushing at his head to go deeper, faster, harder.
Faintly, you register his bedframe creaking. Clark moans—loud, honest, fervent, broken in a way you’ve never heard—right into your folds and—
Your inhale catches. Stammers as your high starts to crest, and you whine, pliant and helpless, fuck—
Clark stops. Retracts himself, tongue sweeping over his swollen bottom lip to gather your wetness. Swallows, and your eyes follow the motion of his Adam’s apple.
He looks more wrecked than you feel. Looks like he’s the one dangling on the precipice of coming, like he’s the one who’s been licked within an inch of his life.
He sits up, kneeling between your legs and shit, he’s blushing all the way down to his chest. Pink from head to pec, hair plastered to his forehead from what you assume is the humidity between your thighs.
“Gosh,” he pants. Long inhale, short exhale. He closes his eyes like he’s tasting the last of you lingering on his tongue. “Gosh, I’m so sorry, sunshine.”
You prop yourself up on your elbows, panic spiking in your chest. “What’s wrong?”
He groans. Folds himself back down by the waist and buries his burning face into your sternum. Kisses the skin there, and drags his fingers up your spine to dawdle on the clasp of your bra.
“Not you,” comes his muffled murmur, still pressing sincere, reverent kisses on your chest. “Just—you taste too good.”
You pause. Process the fact that Clark had to take a second because he was enjoying himself too much. And a laugh spills out of your mouth.
You comb your hands through his hair, making him shiver when your nails scrape on his scalp. “I was about to come again, you know.”
He groans, mortified, and presses his forehead harder against your sternum.
“Gosh,” he stutters, and you’re pretty sure that’s his word of the day, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t take it.”
“Take what?” You cup your hand to his warm, flushed cheek, tilt his head up to look at him.
He stares back at you, mouth glistening and parted, eyes flicking down to your lips. He swallows.
“I think—well, I almost,” he squeezes his eyes shut, “I didn’t want to come yet. And uh, I don’t have a condom.”
You guess he’s your best friend for a reason.
Here you are, looking each other up and down and realizing that you’ve both unwittingly edged yourselves. Get a load of this fucking comedy.
You huff, amused. Squeeze his cheeks in your palms, and your heart flutters when he smiles, bashful. “You’re funny.”
“Sure, sunshine. I'll make that up to you,” he says, shifting his fingers on your back and undoing your bra. “So just to be sure—”
“Yes, Clark,” you grumble, tangling your fingers in his curls and tugging. Hard. You swear his eyes roll into his skull a little. “We can fuck without a condom.”
“You’re so crass,” he chides, and cool air hits your breasts.
Your bra lands somewhere soft, cushioned, and when you look, you find that he’s thrown it and the rest of your clothes—with terrifying accuracy—into his hamper.
That cracks something wide open in you. It blooms in your chest, unfurls like the first thaw of spring.
He’s so sweet. There isn’t another word for how he makes you feel. It’s just a something, somehow, stitched together with a lifetime of bandaids and inside jokes.
And you mourn. Even though the space between your bodies is so tight that your skin is sticky with humidity, even though his belt is clicking and he’s asking again, because he’s got that devastating habit of being a quintuple-checker:
“Will you let me have you?”
Not can I. Will you.
You snap out of your daze, heart still sighing dreamily as you practically leap to help tear his belt out of the loops.
“Is that a yes?” he wonders out loud, laying his forehead on yours. He squeezes his eyes tight when you unzip his fly and relieve a little more pressure from his hard cock. Chokes out, “For the record—oh, god—I’m a yes. Please.”
Clark kisses you with undisguised desire when you palm him over his underwear. He’s scorching in your palm, weighty when you try to grind the heel of your hand on it.
He whimpers. Honest to god whimpers, a ruined sound that whistles in the miniscule space between your open mouths, and your arm jerks, startled by how sudden and unexpected and hot that is.
Clark does it again, louder this time. Your core throbs.
“Baby,” he groans, furrowing his brows in concentration, “as much as I like that—”
“Yeah,” you breathe, steadier than you expected yourself to be, with your throat running dry and heart pounding in your throat. “Yeah, I want—”
“I know,” he says. Gently nudges your hand off his clothed erection, crowds you up against the headboard. Then he takes you by the knee, hand blistering up your thigh, and delicately guides you to lay on your back.
Your head lolls to the side, nose pressing into one of his pillows. Smells like home in a way you can’t really explain beyond the faint scent of sleep and lemon detergent. Smells like him, in the purest sense possible; all wool-soft and mellow, like the kindest comfort during a winter storm in Smallville.
He shimmies out of his pants. His cock bobs up, all eight inches and girth standing at attention, the head deeply flushed and pearled with pre. It slaps lightly against his navel, leaving behind a thread of slick that breaks quickly, and you burn white-hot and raw with lust.
Clark slides a plush pillow under your hips. Gazes down at you through his lashes, eyes shining with a light that makes your chest ache. Whispers, almost to himself, “You’re so pretty. My pretty girl.”
You don’t remember how you respond to that.
Because Clark is taking his cock in his hand, and that has the audacity to make his size look normal, and he strokes himself slowly as he guides himself toward your soaked cunt. You think you lose your breath.
He breaches you with a single, slow thrust, with an open-mouthed stammer of breath, and there’s so much of him sliding forward that you don’t even try arching your back to let him go deeper. And he just waits there, to the hilt, girthy and heavy and pulsing in time with your dripping, stretched cunt, and you’re so fucking full of him that you think you won’t be able to get up tomorrow.
Good thing it’s Friday, is the last thing that runs through your mind before he bends over and takes you with him, folding your legs against your chest like you’re one of those fucking origami cranes he makes in his free time.
(Yes, you’ve seen the box under his bed. No, not the one with his suit.
The one with a thousand colorful, paper cranes he folds at his desk when anonymous tips are slow and takes the time between work and alien invaders to painstakingly link them all up onto a thread of fishing line. The one he brings to a thrift shop every time he finishes a string, just so a lucky someone passing by could have a little goodness in their day.)
And Clark fucks like this means more than the world to him. Slow, sensual, with purpose. Grinds the searing head of his cock into the spot that made you see starbursts on his tongue earlier, cloistering his chest against your shins like he needs—not wants, but needs, desperately, more than air or sun—to live in your skin.
He moans in time with you, breathes out in a voice that sets you ablaze, “God, you’re so tight—sunshine, you’re perfect.”
He’s everywhere. Whimpering with his mouth over yours. Slipping his thumb expertly over your twitching clit over and over until you’re trying to arch into him, but you can’t, because he’s fucking you with his entire weight behind each world-stopping thrust and oh—
You get why he says ‘making love’ like an old-fashioned loverboy.
Because he is. Because he’s pushing and pulling into your cunt like he’s promising, like he’s revering. Heavy and softhearted and caressing the outside of your hip with a warm, soothing hand, and you understand.
“I love you,” you gasp. Just feels like the right thing to say, head spinning and mouth wet with his and your spit. Tastes like salt, and yourself. “Clark, please.”
“I can hear you,” he chokes out in the middle of an aborted whine. Ducks his nose behind your ear, breathes in the scent of your skin, all flushed with heat and thinly veiled with sweat. “Your heartbeat, it’s—so fast.”
He jerks up into your walls with a calamitous, devastating grind. Makes that same gush of wetness drool out of your spasming cunt, and when he plunges in you again, his pelvis slaps into the fat of your ass with a sound so tacky your ears burn, all shameful and alive.
“You liked that,” Clark gasps, taking your bottom lip in his mouth and sucking. Lets go after a moment when he’s satisfied with how swollen and pliant you are and rolls that bundle of sparking nerves between your thighs. You clench around him, uncontrollable, legs bucking up to no avail. “Holy—I love you, too. Gosh, I love you so much for so long, you’ve no idea—”
You can’t recall when your orgasm started cresting. It had just built slowly like one of those soda bottles that used to explode in Clark’s face randomly, creeping up on you like all this.
The realization that you are deeply, raptly in love with your best friend. That you want with him what all the people in the movies have—being late for your train because you get coffee together in the mornings; finding sweet, handwritten notes on his fridge, right next to your photobooth strip; passing each other in the hallway like two familiar ships, exchanging an earnest kiss before he runs off to fold the laundry and you to take inventory of the groceries.
And you want him forever. Yours to kiss. Yours to curl up to when the night gets too cold for even his thick, pillowy duvet, for him to hold you close and mumble his thoughts against your cheek.
A ruined whine rips through your lungs. You’re so close, teetering on the edge of the precipice.
He starts the hand holding your hip, dragging it up your side, over your ribcage. Traces the space between your bones, splays his hand wide for a moment between your breasts. Pushes down slightly, and you can feel your own heart leaping to try and touch him.
Oh. This is proving to be too much for you.
And then he reaches up to take one of your hands still tugging at his hair, threads his fingers between yours. Holds on tight, grounding.
Clark kisses your cheek. Chaste and sweet compared to the downright filthy way his cock is sparking the live wire under your skin.
Locks your eyes with his unfocused ones, and all you see in your smudged, pleasure-sick vision is the way he’s looking at you with something between disbelieving awe and endearment.
You come with his name already in your mouth and sugar-salt on your tongue.
He works you through the aftermath, rolling his hips with a gentle, powerful grace as you shiver and sigh brokenly against him. Makes love with a trembling, earnest sincerity, until you’re melting and he’s approaching his orgasm.
Clark doesn’t slow when he lowers your legs. Your thighs are a little sore, and you’re still rushing with your own high when he holds you tight in his solid, secure arms until your breasts are flattening against his chest.
It isn’t long until his rhythm is stammering like your poor heart, until he’s following you close over the edge, stuffing a low, warm, quivering moan close to your ear and spilling hot ropes deep into you like this has been his life’s mission all along.
—
You wake with the moon kissing your back and the AC kicking on.
Mouth dry, because it somehow found itself open, and there’s a spot of drool crusting on your cheek. You’re hungry, and it’s late by the analog display blinking from the top of the nightstand.
The clock sits just under a lamp. Familiar, like a second home. Blue-glass shade, tarnished brass.
And then you remember that this isn’t your apartment. You’re waking up in Clark’s bed, soft sheets pooling around your hips, and he’s done the favor of cleaning you up and putting out an old, threadbare shirt and a pair of shorts at the foot of the bed.
Crabjoys and college shorts. Of course.
The door creaks, letting a rectangle of golden-warm light stretch across the floor.
He’s standing there, in pajamas patterned with little brown cows and glasses hanging off the collar of the worn-thin shirt tight on his biceps and chest, and he’s balancing a little plate with a sliced bagel and condiments you can’t see well.
His curls are egregiously messed up. The back of his hair sticks up at an odd angle, presumably from your incessant tugging in the throes of pleasure (your stomach warms at the reminder), and his ears are bright red in the dim light.
Your heart swells for a sigh. There he is. Your best friend.
“Hi,” he breathes, shuffling into the room. He’s wearing tattered bunny slippers that squeak a little. “Good thing I set a timer on the oven. Could’ve burned our breakfast for dinner.”
“You spoil me,” you say, sitting up to reach for the shirt. You pull it over your head and he’s there before you when you emerge from the worn cotton, pressing a grateful kiss to your temple.
“That’s because you're the best thing in the world,” Clark rolls his eyes, smoothing his thumbs over your cheeks.
He’s so gentle. Intimately familiar.
You’ve already loved him for a lifetime.
You wouldn’t mind one more.
— kisses to the lovely wonderful betas dee @kentbot and nini @dancing-inasnowglobe for prereading this crazy fic for me! please let me know if u enjoyed, reblogs and comments are greatly appreciated <33
summary: clark had never realized just how touch starved he was until you came into his life and started touching him like it was your god given right.
notes: disgustingly sweet. a thank you for 100<3 and also because this was the most voted fic, ty to everyone who voted!
word count: 5.5k words
content warning: size difference, a lot of physical affection, clark is down bad but also so stupid, weird girl! f reader (she is autism coded), clark is obsessed with you and how tiny you are compared to him. mention of reader having hair (bc i felt like her haircut made a lot of sense to who she was). i hope i didnt miss anything else</3 this is disgustingly fluffy, be warned, also this isn't betaread. i wrote it in like three hours straight, but still, i hope you enjoy!
Clark had never noticed just how much he’d missed human contact until you came into his life.
Sure, he’d had plenty of girlfriends, but somehow it had never felt enough. Kissing and having sex was nice, but he craved more. He had friends who enjoyed the occasional hug, but he needed more.
And then you’d entered his life in a whirlwind of sparkles and pink glitter. It only took you three days to put the entire office in your pocket, wrapped around your little finger, Clark first. There was something about you that just appealed to everyone’s basal protective instincts.
“Clark, right?” you had said to him the first time you both met properly. You’d offered him a hand, soft and small and nails freshly painted with a pearl pink hue. You were wearing clay rings. Each of them more colored than the last one. Your fingers were long and small, and when he’d held your hand with his to greet you, he was suddenly afraid of accidentally breaking you. You were just so — small, and his hands were so big and so used to destroying and punching and lifting, that he was worried he’d forgotten how to handle something small and precious.
Your hand was just as he’d imagined it. It was like his own hand had been molded with yours in mind, so that could slot together like two pieces of the same puzzles.
“Uh, yes, yes. I’m Clark Kent. It’s so nice to finally meet you, and, um, of course, welcome to the office.”
Everyone knows Superman’s greatest weakness is kryptonite. But Clark Kent’s greatest weakness had always been pretty girls. He’d wished he could be more suave, more charming, but all of his cognitive abilities seemed to fly right through the window whenever you spoke to him.
As luck would have it, you were given a desk right in front of his. It took you two hours to turn it into a pink haven. You’d brought your own keyboard and mouse — both pink, of course — and a wrist pad. Your pastel purple travel mug found itself sitting next to Clark’s own and boring black thermos.
You also had a lot of pencils, and suddenly, Clark, who’d never lost a pen before, found himself losing his every single day, just so he could ask you for once. He would feel guilty about it if you weren’t always so sweet about it.
One week into your job, you’d become sort of friends, bound together by missing pencils and neighbor mugs.
Every time you caught him staring at you, you just stuck your tongue out at him, making him flush so red you actually got worried for him.
The first time you’d touched him unexpectedly, Clark had thought his powers had left him and that he’d turned human, because his heart had suddenly stopped working.
It was during lunch, but he’d stayed behind, too into the text he was writing and he wasn’t willing to lose that state of flow just to go eat something he couldn’t even properly appreciate. You’d come backv into the office first, holding in your arms two sandwiches and a drink — you look like you need to eat a lot to keep up with that muscle, you’d explained, so it was just the two of you.
“Hey,” you said. “I saw that you didn’t take a lunch break so I brought you something to eat.” Your rings shone in the midday light.
Clark had looked up, entire body shifting to face you, article instantly forgotten. “Oh, um… that’s so sweet of you, thank you so much. You shouldn’t have, really, but I appreciate it immensely.”
His face had turned red once again. You put the food on his desk and approached him, slightly frowning. “Are you sick?” you’d asked. And before waiting for an answer, you gently touched his forehead with the back of your fingers.
His entire body had gone rigid, before slowly melting until he was entirely sure that he’d turned into a puddle. Subconsciously, mortifyingly, he’d realized that his head had leaned against your touch, like a sunflower always trying to reach for the sun. He couldn’t get enough. A simple touch, and he’d already gotten addicted.
Your hand was fresh like a summer breeze, and soft the way clouds felt when he slowly flew through one. Her touch was morning dew against his feverish skin.
“Oh gee,” you said. “You’re quite hot. Are you sure you’re okay to keep working?”
And you were so genuine. You had no idea that the only reason he was this hot was because you were talking to him, and now your hand was touching him, and the only moments he’d ever felt this good was when he flew close to the sun.
“It’s fine,” he croaked out. “I’m fine. It will pass, I promise. But thank you for your worry, and the food. Really– thank you, darling.”
The petname had come out unbidden and Clark was really close to just giving up and fleeing Metropolis altogether to go back to Smallville. Why did he even think that a farmboy like him could be made into a city boy?
But – you’d blushed, at the petname, and you’d let out the softest Oh he was only able to hear thanks to his superhearing, instead of slapping him and running away, and maybe he hadn’t messed everything up. Maybe he could still stay in Metropolis for one more day. Maybe he could still be your friend for one more day.
One month into your friendship, Clark Kent had hopelessly and pathetically fallen in love with you. He couldn’t help it. None of his Kryptonian biology had helped him prepare for the hurricane that was your existence. He had survived the destruction of his own home planet; he could survive an entire building falling down on him; he could hold his own against the universe’s strongest creatures. But all of that meant nothing in the face of your shy smile and your glitter.
As naturally as water inescapably found its way back to the ocean, Clark had found its way right to you. Falling in love with you was just the natural consequence of life and atoms and everything else Clark hadn’t listened to in class.
He hadn’t messed anything up yet, but he was messed up. Simply from seeing your smile first thing at the office, or smelling that kiss touch of vanilla that always floated around you.
“So…” Lois started, with a knowing glint in her eyes that meant that she’d found a good source to dig from. She was half sitting against Clark’s desk, one bent leg against his desk, the other stretched, while she cradled a cup of coffee — nine parts sugar, one part watery coffee — with both hands. “You and the office’s sunshine, huh?”
“What the what?” he yelped, sitting up straight in his chair. You’d gone to the break room, but it didn’t mean that you couldn’t accidentally overhear Lois from there, even if Clark knew that you were completely human (even if your otherworldly beauty begged otherwise). “What are you talking about, Lois? There’s… there’s nothing between her and me,” he whispered, his heart a spooked rabbit trying to outrun a wolf — Lois.
She rolled her eyes. “Oh please. I know you, Clark.”
And she did. They’d dated before. They gave it a shot, and they were good together. Nothing crazy, just good. And so, three months into the relationship, they’d both naturally came to the decision that they were better off as friends. But that also meant that Lois knew him better than any of his other friends, and nothing flies past her. It’s part of what made her so good as a reporter, and so bad as a friend.
“I hate you,” he’d muttered angrily. Well, as angrily as he could get.
“I love you too, big guy,” she replied mirthfully, taking a sip of her disgusting potion. He’d tried it once and almost spat it out. The only reason he didn’t actually spit it out was because his ma had raised him better than that, so he’d reluctantly swallowed everything with a wince-smile while Lois was busy making fun of him and Jimmy had taken pictures of the entire ordeal with his fancy camera. Very humbling experience. “So, why aren’t you asking her out?” she asked, bending forward to look him in the eyes. The sugary smell of her potion was potent and sickening.
“None of your business,” he’d replied, trying to sound stern, but failing almost adorably so.
“Clark,” she started. “You know I’m always right, right?”
He nodded, but reluctantly. She was right of course — as always — but that didn’t mean that he had to like, or even accept it.
“So trust me when I say this: she likes you too. Go for it. Stop being a pussy.”
His mouth opened before closing, realizing he’d almost manexplained to Lois Lane — the most woman to ever woman (and also accessorarily the world’s most feminist person he’d ever met) — how saying that word to insult someone was sexist and misogynist because it implied that people with a female reproductive organ were somehow less than people who didn’t.
She knew. She knew he’d almost done that, and she was looking evilly gleeful about it. He’s half convinced she only used that word around him to mess with him.
“Think about it. Sleep on it. Do whatever the hell you want with it, but for the love of God, talk to her and confess. I’m sick and tired of seeing the two of you pine over each other like the world’s pinkest reendition of Romeo and Juliet.”
Maybe she was right. But Clark Kent was a coward. Maybe Superman wasn’t, but Clark was, and that’s how it is. He was too afraid of losing you to ever risk it, even if the reward was high.
Heels clicked against the floorboard, approaching the two of them. Your crinkets were softly tinkering together, announcing your presence with your very own theme.
“Hi Lois,” you chirped at her with one of your dizzying smile. Even Lois wasn’t immune against it. Then, you turned to him. “Hi Clark, how are you?” you asked. And then you did the thing that you always did yet always took him in complete disarray — you brushed the messy curls on his forehead. He didn’t know why you did it, only that you did it whenever you saw his hair was messier than usual. And just like every single other time you did it, his shoulders dropped and his head leaned towards your touch, like a dog asking without asking for more pets.
Lois was watching the two of you with the focus of someone who’d just stumbled across the idea of their next top story. “Remember what I told you, lover boy,” she’d said to him as parting words.
Lover boy. He closed his eyes and used all of his strength not to blush again.
“Hey darling,” he said instead, ignoring Lois and her mocking vibes. She wasn’t even looking at him anymore but he could feel her judging and mocking him inwardly. “Um, I’m good thank you. How are you?”
“I’m good,” you replied, but you sounded distracted and unlike yourself. He opened his eyes to look at you, and found you slightly frowning, looking at Lois’ retreating figure. “Lover boy?” you asked, sounding so unsure and betrayed Clark’s heart broke. Gosh darn Lois. She’d probably done it on purpose, like the world’s most evil Cupid.
“She just calls me that sometimes to make fun of me,” he explained quickly, stumbling over his words. “She, uh… there’s nothing between her and me. I mean, we used to date, but really, we were better off as friend so we quickly broke up, and there are no lasting feelings.”
For a man who could face the sun directly in space without flinching, watching your face break into the world’s sunniest smile without looking away was his weakness.
“Okay. I like it,” you said. “Lover boy. It really suits you.”
I could be your lover boy if you just said the word, he thought so fervently he’d worried he’d accidentally sent it to you through telepathy — let alone that telepathy wasn’t one of the super powers he had.
Clark Kent stayed late at work the next day, not because he had an important deadline coming up, but because you’d stayed late, and he didn’t feel good at the thought of leaving you behind all alone — and worse, walking home all by yourself, with only your cat keychains and frog clay rings and your disarming smile as protection.
So he pretended he had to stay behind too, and used that time to actually be productive, but the majority of his time was spent gazing upon you. If Lois were here, she would tell him to stop the sickening yearning and act like a man, but she wasn’t here, so that meant Clark could be as disgustingly and as pathetically forlorn as he wanted to be.
He was lucky you were completely dead to the rest of the world when you were working, because it meant that he could drink his fill of you all he wanted.
Your hair was looking particularly soft and pretty that night. He had never seen it before, this type of haircut, but you’d said it was a jellyfish hair cut because you loved jellyfishes, and that if you could, you would become one.
It was shorter in the front and longer in the back. He wasn’t very good with everything that had to do with hair care and even skin care — when he dated Lois, she’d hated how he could just wash his face with handsoap and have a clearer skin than her, even though she had a ten-step skin care routine daily and nightly — but he was willing to make an effort for you, just so he could understand you and everything you did better.
The tips of your hair were pink too, and you had two front long strands of hair pink too. It made him go crazy. He’d probably lost ten hours of his life that he’ll never get back just staring at your hair and wishing he was woman enough to touch them just like you always touched his with ease, as if it was your birthright. (Clark would definitely not make you think otherwise.)
Lois was wrong, though. He wasn’t a lover boy. He was love sick.
When he offered you to walk you home and you’d said yes, he had to take a second to calm down enough to not combust.
Your hand kept brushing his as you walked, because you were the kind of person whose arms swung as they walked, and he tried so hard to not find that as devastatingly endearing as he did. And of course, he failed. Everything about you was a losing battle to him, only in the loveliest of ways.
You’d almost gotten to your place when you stopped him with a hand on his — his heart going thump. Thump. Thump. Thump. — and you asked him to wait for you while you stared at the rat the size of a shoe that was holding a honest to God piece of cheese in his ratty hands, eating it without a single care in the world.
You were a strange girl. The kind of girl who stopped traffic to help a lazy pigeon who refused to fly away from getting killed. The kind of girl who forgot to continue talking because you’d noticed a dog walking down the straight in a way that was particularly cute (you said the same thing about all types of dogs). And now the kind of girl who thought somehow that a rat eating cheese was the world’s most entertaining sight. Clark was sure that if Perry had allowed you to, you would write about it and fight to get it on the first page.
And Clark would fight with you.
The first time you held his hand and kept it in yours was the second time he’d walked you home. You were the one who actually asked him if he wanted to walk with you, and he said of course, anything for you. Well, he didn’t actually say it, but he thought it so strongly he felt it vibrate his bones.
You’d held his hand because you noticed a bakery you’d never seen before, and said that you must try it, or else the croissants and what have you will be sad, because they definitely called for you, and it would be rude to not answer their call.
So, you grabbed his hand and dragged him the other way of your way home, and didn’t let go of his hand. Not even while you ordered for the both of you, or when he’d fought you to pay for everything (he won, because of course he did).
You only let go of his hand when you realized that sitting and eating was impossible while holding hands. So you squeezed his hand softly before letting go, as if you were sad to do so, and sat down.
Clark’s heart threatened to flee from his mouth.
“This is good, right?” you said, before even biting into your cookie.
(Maybe you’d meant this as in, the two of you, sitting in a bakery, eating together. Like a date.)
“Y-yeah,” Clark said, before clearing his throat. “Really good.”
He didn’t even know what you’d picked for him. He hadn’t paid any attention to anything in the entire bakery but you and everything in your vicinity.
When you both left the bakery, you’d taken his hand in yours. Water, ocean, all that. (Bury Clark with that feeling.)
“What is this?” Clark asked, looking at you with a blend of helpless adoration and expectation. It was a few days after the unofficial official date, and instead of telling him good morning like a normal person, you’d branded a gift in his face like a threat.
“A gift,” you replied helpfully. “I saw it yesterday and it made me think of you. I hope you like it.”
You could offer him a brown leaf and he’ll encase it in resin so he could keep it forever.
He opened the gift wrapping gently, aware of how Jimmy and Lois had not so discreetly rolled their chairs to his desk, neck craning trying to spy and cursing him for taking so damn long.
It was a box of pencils. A pack of a dozen pencils, with Superman design. Did you know? No, that was impossible. But how..?
“You like it? Maybe I should have gotten you pencils like mine? I don’t know, I just thought since you always lost your pencils, this would help you. Not that I don’t like lending you mine, of course, that’s not what I’m saying, but I thought maybe that would be nice? Especially if I’m not here one day to lend you one, so you can always be prepared,” you said, both excited and nervous, slightly bouncing on your feet. “So, do you like it? Do you? Or should I change it?”
“No!” he said, before clearing his throat, aware of how insane he’d just sounded. “No, I mean, no, don’t do that, I love it, and I love that you thought of me like that. Thank you so much, darling.”
I won’t ever use them. I’ll just keep them in my shrine of you, he thought.
Your smile was blinding.
Lois coughed. “Lover boy,” she said, disgusted. Jimmy snorted. They both went back to their desk.
You’d used no strength but throwing yourself at him to hug him punched the air out of his lungs.
He’d almost forgotten how small you were, until you were pressed against him and his hands instinctively found their place on each side of your waist and he realized he could easily circle your waist with just two hands.
And then he was blushing for a completely different reason.
After that, he kept noticing it. How you barely came up to his chest, how his left hand could easily hide both of yours if he wanted to.
He didn’t think you were made for him. He thought he was born this way just for you.
He was invited to your place after almost four months of friendship. Simultaneously the best and worst four months of his entire life. Lois’ words haunted him every waking moment. Even when he was Superman and was fighting for his life, he kept thinking about it.
What if I just confess right here and then?
But no. Not yet. He didn’t want to rush anything.
Your apartment was exactly the way he’d envisioned it to be. Pastel pink and colorful and sparkly, and homey. You didn’t have a couch, and you said it was because you preferred sitting on the floor. You said it’s a family tradition, and you’d grown used to it.
So he sat down on your soft carpet (of course it was soft, you hated anything that wasn’t), knees to his chest, arms wrapped around his knees like a little kid, waiting for you as you prepared homemade strawberry lemonade.
“There you go,” you said, handing him a tall glass of pink lemonade. “Make yourself at home. I hope the carpet’s not too uncomfortable for you. If you want, we can move to my bedroom so you can sit on my bed.”
The simple thought of him being inside your bedroom was enough to make him flustered. “N-no, that’s alright, I don’t mind sitting like this.”
Especially not when you’d sat down cross legged right next to him, so close your knees touched. Clark’s entire focus was on that single point of contact. The rest of his body no longer existed. He could only feel his knee, and the rest of you.
He wished he could ask you to hold his hand again. Touch his hair, touch his thigh. Make the rest of his body come alive again.
But he was too scared. Too much of a coward.
But as if you’d heard him, your hand was on his thigh and you were suddenly on your knees, showing him something on your phone excitedly. You were showing him pictures of the time you’d decided to follow the color pink all over Metropolis and ended up in Gotham, but had to go back home because there wasn’t nothing pink in Gotham.
He took a huge sip of his lemonade, barely tasting it. He was sure it was delicious, but he just couldn’t handle just how close you were.
It became a regular occurence, Clark going to your place. At first, it was just after work, after he walks you home. But then, you invited him over during weekends as well, and then days off too. Until suddenly, he was at your place almost every single time.
That day, when he came over, you opened the door in your pajamas and quickly dragged him inside your living room without even bothering to say hi. Clark figured you’d forgotten how to be a human again.
But this time, instead of stopping at your living room, you took him to your bedroom. He’d never seen it before today, partly because he felt it was too intimate, even though you’d offered him plenty of time.
“We’re going to watch rom-coms until we fall asleep. I made cookies and bought chips and popcorns and drinks. You’re staying the night,” you’d declared, with the confidence of a general leading his army to battle.
“I– um, okay?” was all he could say. He couldn’t say no, even if he’d wanted to, which he didn’t. He hadn’t had a sleepover in eons, and while he’d never particularly cared for it, he found that he suddenly really wanted one. “I don’t have clothes, though.”
“It’s okay, you can just sleep in your boxers if none of my clothes fit you,” you said while you were sorting through actual DVDs, totally oblivious to Clark who was fighting for his life after swallowing wrong.
If it were anyone else, Clark would have thought you said it on purpose, and that you just wanted him to get naked, because there was no possible way on Earth that any of your clothes would fit him, but this was you. The girl who said hi to every single animal she crossed in the streets. The girl who hugged like she breathed. Who thought social cues were a myth and marched to the beat of her own drums.
You probably didn’t even think anything of it, which made it really embarrassing for him to be so hung up about it.
In the end though, he did find clothes that fit, because you were a lover of oversized clothing and you hoarded them like dragons hoarded gold. But Clark could smell the faint smell of men, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that they were from your old boyfriends.
He really despised the idea of wearing clothes that once belonged to men who were with you in a way he never would be, but he did it anyway, just because you were so happy you found him something to wear.
Dressed comfortably (it wasn’t as bad, all things considered, because he only smelt the other guys if he really focused, and your smell was the strongest one anyway), you made him get on the bed before bringing all of the snacks — holy moly, you’d even cooked — and climbing next to him. You pressed play on the first movie of your choice — The Princess Bride — and nestled comfortably against him, your head against his shoulder.
Clark may have stopped breathing for ten minutes because he was so worried he would somehow bother you, until you’d murmured sleepily about how weird it was that he didn’t seem to be breathing at all.
God, he loved you. He loved everything about you, and it was getting more difficult by the day to keep hiding how he felt.
But there was nothing he wouldn’t do for preserving his relationship with you.
He wasn’t really sure why you’d picked The Notebook as part of your rom-com marathon, but he didn’t question it. Especially not when it meant that you sobbed into his neck, crying about how it was so unfair and how sad it was.
He just held you through it, wrapping you with his arms, reminded once again of just how bigger he was. How easy it would be for him to protect you against anything and everything.
“There, there,” he cooed, gently holding you against him.
You sniffed one last time before untangling yourself from his arms. You wiped your snotty nose with the sleeve of your pajamas. “Okay, I’m done crying,” you said.
He chuckled, because this such a you thing to do — deciding that you’re done with something, and just stopping.
“Let’s watch Pride & Prejudice now,” you said.
You sighed dreamily. “Mr Darcy is the dream, isn’t he?”
Clark had nothing against men, or women. Only the fact that they weren’t you.
“He’s alright,” he said, trying not to sound jealous. He was here. Darcy wasn’t even real. And Clark was sure he could treat you better than a man who insulted Elizabeth in the same breath he confessed to her with.
“You don’t get it,” you huffed indignantly. “It’s the yearning, the desperation, the restraint. So dreamy,” you repeated.
Clark thought to himself that he did all of that on the daily, and you never noticed. Why didn’t he get that treatment too?
Today was finally the day, Clark thought. He was going to ask you out. No, scratch that, he was going to ask you if you would do him the honor of being his girlfriend.
Quite frankly, he wasn’t completely ready yet, but as Lois had told him the night before, he was only going to regret not asking you out now. She said she overheard you talking to coworkers abou a guy who asked her out, and Clark realized he had to act quick.
There was no way he could let someone else steal you from him.
So, he’d asked you to meet him at a fancy restaurant downtown. He told you to wear fancy, though he didn’t care if you came in sleepwear.
He came thirty minutes early, because he was a loser like that (Lois’ words, not his). He was just so worried that something would happen and he would lose you forever.
He almost tilted the chair back when he saw you, because he stood up so fast and so strongly.
You were absolutely stunning. Of course, he always thought you were stunning, but tonight even more so. You were radiant, and you reminded him of the moon. Not just the moon you can see with the naked eye. But the moon he sees when he’s in space, and it’s so bright and huge it was all he could think about.
You were breathtaking, and he was so glad for his Kryptonian biology for the nth time around you, because he wasn’t sure how he could have survived you without his in-built invincibility.
“You look absolutely mesmerizing,” he said. And he was so convinced that you were the prettiest sight the universes had to offer that he didn’t even sound flustered for him.
You blushed prettily, and he fought the urge to kiss you right then and there.
He pulled the chair back for you and helped you sit down.
You talked about everything and nothing. Conversation had always been so easy with you. You could talk to him about the life cycle of bugs, and he would be just as enthralled. And you did, by the way, you spoke of bugs to him one day for almost four hours. Another day, you talked about ducks for five. You weren’t even being smart or scientific about it. You were just talking about how cute and fluffy they were, and how you loved going to the parc to watch them all day long.
But he knew he was running out of time when their desserts came in (you picked his dessert because it was your second option, and you couldn’t make up your mind so you asked him to pick it so you could taste both, and he happily obliged).
It was now or never.
He cleared his throat. “I, uh… I have something I want to ask you,” he said nervously.
You barely looked up from cutting into your lava cake. “Yes, Clark? What is it? Did you lose a pencil again? I wish I could help but I didn’t think to bring any tonight. I didn’t think we would need any.”
That made him chuckle, and it eased some of his nerves. “No, uh, it’s not about that. It’s… listen, darling, I was wondering if…”
You finally looked up, and you put your fork and knife down. “Yeah?”
“If you would do me the honor of being my girlfriend,” he blurted out quickly before he lost his courage.
He’d imagined you reacting in a thousand ways, but frowning confusedly was not one of them. “What?” you said.
“I, um, I am asking you out. These past few months being your friend were perfect, but I’ve always wanted more. I realized being just your friend wasn’t enough, so…”
You still looked confused. “Friend?” you repeated, head tilted to the side. “Clark, I have been your girlfriend for the past five months. What are you talking about?”
“Uh…” It was his turn to be confused.
You started enumerating things off your fingers. “You walk me home every day, you sleep over, you have your toothbrush at my place, you let me talk to you about insect, we go on dates every day, we hold hands and hug and sleep together. Am I missing something? Isn’t this what people do when they’re together?”
Clark’s entire world just shifted on its axis.
“I, uh…”
You were right but…
“I just assumed you didn’t want to kiss because you were too shy,” you said. “And I’m completely fine with that too. I’m shy too, so I get it.”
Clark’s brain still couldn’t form a single thought. You guys were dating all this time?
“You okay?” you asked him, leaning over the table to check his temperature on his forehead with the back of your fingers.
“Ah, yes,” he said, before clearing his throat again. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. We have been dating all this time.”
