ೃ༄ SOME PROTECTOR — clark kent
it had months since you and clark had broken up. months of mutual heartbreak and turmoil, whether either of you knew or not. little did you know, clark had been watching you for months now, even in your distance wanting to make sure you've been okay. miraculously, superman's there when you experience a little run-in with the wrong person at the wrong time. 2.7k
“are you still picking up the pieces? am i still worried 'bout you? why, yes, i am and i always will…be some protector.”
tags: holy angst, obviously pre-established relationship, clark yearns, miscommunication whoops, brief mention of reader having a sick relative, angsty argument flashback among other flashbacks, based on my fave role model song that i listened to on loop while writing
˚୨୧⋆｡ navi masterlist latest work
The pull was slow but steady. Unlike the rough of your relationship. It was perfect until it wasn’t; towards the end, both of you were just looking to keep your heads above water while holding onto each other at the same time. You slowly deteriorated together, tangled in a mess of lies and unbreakable tension. Until there was nothing left.
You feel it again, shuffling through your little shoebox of trinkets you’d collected in the timeline of your relationship.
Your framed photo of your name written in the clouds, courtesy of Clark. The fluffy ivory lettering adorned the blue of the skyline so prettily.
There was something so intimate about it just as much as it was broadcasted for the world to see. Like he was letting all of Metropolis know that he chose you. You remembered it all.
“Can we just stay like this?” You asked, resting your head on his shoulder, cozied up together, admiring his framed work.
“Always,” he said without hesitation, stroking and kissing your hair without anything but your closeness on his mind.
It had meant everything in the world to you at the time. Time and time again, Clark reminded you why you were drawn so strongly towards him. He was utterly magnetic and he was passionate in his love as he was gentle.
Even in your breakup he never showed you any kind of resentment. No matter how much of you he lost in the end he treated you like you were still whole, still together.
“I wish you weren’t him sometimes. You know, I signed up to be with Clark when we started dating. Just to find out there was a package deal I didn’t even know you were a part of,” You laughed humorlessly. It broke you to say as much as it broke him to hear it. It was just a jumble of nonsense you spewed following the ringing silence of his absence again.
It became more than just rescheduled dates and tables for two that only you occupied, watching the clock and awaiting his arrival while the orange hues of the evening sky turned pitch black. You’d gotten a call earlier that night from the hospital about your mother being kept overnight for in-patient care. You called Clark in tears, frantic and alone, needing him there with you while you cradled your sick mother’s hands in your own until you were ushered out by insistent nurses. Only to find he had other business to attend to.
You felt like you were in a poorly prioritized queue, at the back of the line behind the rest of the world. He was Superman before he was Clark and it caused an ache of resentment within you that you couldn’t learn to bite down.
“I’m so sorry, honey,” he pleaded tearfully. He was on his knees before you while you sat at the edge of your shared bed, that these days only you ever seemed to warm. “There are times I wish I didn’t have to be him either. I just want to be here, with you. Please, I’m not asking you to forgive me, but I need you to understand.”
“I can’t tell you to stop being Superman, Clark,” you say after thoughtfully gazing at him in silence. “And I won’t. I know people need you and that’s what hurts. Because I need you too, in a different way. And I can’t have one or the other. These days it’s getting hard to love both knowing that one of your identities is the reason why the other is failing me.” You regretted it as soon as you said it but you didn’t know how else you could.
You did love him, all of him. He was the same Clark, just with his kindness made to be his civic duty when he put the suit on. “But what I can do is leave. I can’t stop you from being who you are.” In an instant, you’re on your feet with only your bag slung over your shoulder.
“Sweetheart, please,” He begged, following after you with an exceeding stride.
He followed you out into the street, frantically looking everywhere around you when you disappeared into the abyss of the rain and the bustle of the city.
No matter how badly your words stung at him, he could never hurt you back in the same way. The sting of his constant tardiness spoke for itself, anyways.
You shuddered the sorrow of the memory away. Flipping through the mementos of the box, that long ago, meant something to you. Of them being a blue jay feather.
“Clark, let me down!” You screeched at him. Your grip on him was sturdy iron on his husky bicep, clinging onto him for dear life.
“You sure, sweetie? We just got up!” He’s grinning at you idiotically like your saucer-wide eyes aren’t pleading with him for level ground. “Please,” he softly said into your ear, prying your hands away from your eyes squeezed shut to clasp them into his.
“I promise I would never let you fall. I’ll never let you go.” You know he means it when he says it. You reluctantly nod and with that you’re soaring off, shrieking into his ear.
“Look,” he whispered, afloat next to a tree after zooming around the Metropolis skyline. “Clark,” you hissed worriedly. Three infant blue jays cozied up in nest perched firmly on a branch of the tree. A singular feather was left inside, likely left from their mama bird. Carefully, Clark inched a few of his large fingers into the nest, pinching the feather in between them and cooing at the younglings so as to not disturb them.
“A little memento of our first flight,” Clark hummed, handing it over to you.
You kissed him like this, this time sharing his dumb grin. Looking at each other like you were the only two people in the whole big city, some way above the entire skyline, floating higher and higher the deeper you kissed him.
You rummaged the box once more. Past the bandages and gauze you kept for him after an especially strenuous night, patching him back up although you knew he’d be right and anew in the morning. He came to you knowing this, just because you needed you. Need you more than the sun, he said. You weren’t his kryptonite, his ailing weakness. You were the glowing sun that healed him, that put him back together overnight. You rummaged further.
This time it was a soda tab. You were taken back to that quiet movie night in, tangled in your share of blankets that you’d later discard, choosing to get lost in each other’s warmth instead. Clark had a habit of completely removing the tabs every time he cracked open a fresh drink can. Something about the tabs bothering him when he drank.
“Clark,” you giggled, taking his discarded tab into your hands. “You know what this means?”
“It’s just a soda tab, no?” He scratched his head, wondering what he was missing.
You shook your head, scooting even closer to him, “This one has a little hole at where you pulled the tab,” you pointed, holding it up for you to see. “It means you get a kiss.”
You’re pulling him in before he can process or ask anything more, leaving the movie long-forgotten. It became your thing, for him to give you his tab sheepishly after opening his cans, expecting a kiss in return.
All it really took was reminiscing over those three trinkets to send you back to a time you wanted only to leave behind, to prompt you to shut away the box by the lid, and with it all the memories you once held dear to your heart.
“Babe,” a husky male voiced called over from the next room. “You ready?”
“Yeah, in a sec,” you hesitantly called back.
You’d been dating someone new for months past your breakup with Clark now. He was sure, stable, and he was just what you needed. Though you couldn’t relieve the better sense within you that l felt that something was missing.
You felt guilty sometimes, like you only needed him to fill the empty chasm Clark left within you. Like you were using him so as to not feel alone, the way you sometimes did when you were dating Clark.
He wasn’t unfazed the way you assumed he’d be in your breakup. You’d convinced yourself that because he seemed to turned a blind eye when you were in need of help to prioritize the whole rest of the city, that he’d do just fine on his own without you.
But his days seemed both restless and endless, consumed by the painful need for you back, like he was trying to trek his way out from tar he couldn’t stop from sinking into. He’d often called Ma just to fill the ache and drone of his days, and sought her advice knowing deep down there wasn’t much to do that could help him now.
“You’ve gotta get your sweet girl back, Clark. She needs you and you need her, too. Gotta tell her how ya feel,” she advised him sternly.
“She wants nothing to do with me, Ma. And she’s right for it. I messed up. It was too hard to be there for her when I was off doing heck knows what in the city. And I know the people need me, Ma. But she needed me, too. But I couldn’t.” He rubbed at his temples thoughtfully.
“She loves you, Clark. I know it. She’ll understand. It’s not too late,” She pressed. Hopeful. Certain. He almost wanted to lie to her, to reassure her that he’d go looking for someone new. Find another. Just to convince her that he wouldn’t let this darkness eat away at him. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
And thus began Clark’s nightly patrols over your apartment. He watched you from afar, sat atop that place parallel to your own apartment allowing him a perfect view from its height of your whereabouts, each time you’d enter and exit.
At first he’d wanted to tell you exactly how he felt, his call with Ma only a few weeks following your breakup. But the courage couldn’t be mustered from deep within him.
He couldn’t forget your last conversation, and he feared that the resentment you felt was still fresh in your mind, that you wouldn’t give him so much as a moment’s explanation before you walked away from him again.
So his first cowardly attempt to approach you turned to watching your ins and outs, to and fro your apartment building, observing that you made it in safely. That was enough for him.
And surely enough, after a couple of months you were running into the lobby in a fit of giggles, swinging in by the hands of another man, hands that weren’t his. His heart sank in his broad chest. But he couldn’t bring himself to stop coming. There was some sense of incompletion from knowing he couldn’t be there to protect you if he stopped coming.
This night was like any other. You arrived half past the hour you clocked out from your shift at work. You checked your phone absentmindedly while entering the lobby, something Clark always warned you not to do. You disappeared for a short while before emerging again in more relaxed clothing, out to go pick up something to eat, he thought. This time with that man whose hands you seemed to lace yours into more and more frequently. Clark sighed to himself from his ledge on the building. Thinking, regretfully, about how it could’ve been him, on one of your nightly excursions, his hands you’d be swinging by in and out of the building.
Only, when you came back, you were alone. Must’ve left back to his place, Clark figured.
“Hey!” a clamorous voice called out to you, taking long strides in your direction.
You stopped in your tracks, turning around to see if there’d been someone you missed standing your way.
“You, miss,” he shouted, making you jump out of your skin. “What’re you doing out here all alone at night?”
“Just visiting a friend,” you lied sheepishly, unsure how to dodge his unprecedented company.
“How ‘bout you come down to my place instead?” He smiled a crooked, toothy grin that made your skin crawl. He advanced closer towards you menacingly. “I can pour you a drank and—,”
“Hey, buddy!” another voice roared over his, commanding. Familiar. “Do we have a problem?” A broad figure emerged from the shadows bordering the building’s dim side. Clark. Superman, blue suit, red trunks at all. But just your Clark, underneath it all.
“No, sir,” the stranger meekly replied, frozen in place.
“Then can you be on your way before we do have a problem?” Clark demanded, not missing a beat.
“No problem, sir,” he practically whispered them strode in the opposite direction before taking off into a run. Pathetic.
You watched the exchange in awe, then glanced each way around you to ensure you were alone.
“Clark,” you whispered, more like hissed hastily—“What’re you doing here?”
“I was…in the neighborhood,” he hesitated shyly.
“Clark, your apartment is halfway across town. It’s been quiet all night. Nothing for you to fight off,” you said, pointedly.
He stepped closer to you. His pupils were blown, his lips were parted with want, ajar with all the words he wanted to say hanging from his lips, unsure which he’d choose. He knew it was upon him to finally be honest.
“I’ve been watching you,” he scratched the back of his head, “Not like that. Just wanted to make sure you were okay. I still feel I’ve gotta protect you, you know.”
“Clark,” you said, fidgeting with your fingers. One of them gleaming with a sizable diamond hanging fit around it. Oh. “You don’t need to do that. It’s too late for all that. I’m sorry,” you said under your breath. Your last words hung in the air.
Even Clark, with all his brawn, couldn’t brace the weight of them. The confirmation that he wasn’t needed anymore—coupled with the sorry sight of your finger embellished so beautifully with that glittering ring of yours that shone so magically under the light of the setting sun.
I’m sorry, you wanted to repeat. More meaningfully this time. The first time you said it you meant it so as to say I’m sorry I never told you I forgive you. You began to really understand that it was his duty—more like his promise to the world—to come to the aid and rescue of humans in need. It wasn’t his responsibility, but the pure will of his heart to want to, to have to help them because he could. Because he was good.
That was the beauty of Clark, the beauty of Superman, that you had failed to see in the hurt of his constant unavailability. But you understood now, and there was a time after you’d already called it quits that you were willing to put it all aside. You’d wished you’d reached out. That’s what you were truly sorry for.
“Well, um. I hope you’re alright,” he said, gesturing to your ring and smiling timidly.
“I am.” You smiled a somber smile. Seeing him again seemed to open wounds you thought you’d long-closed. A pain you thought you retired. A familiar ache.
“I’d better get going,” you said after awhile, looking at your feet.
“I understand,” his voice cracked. He watched as you went.
You looked back, somber smile still intact. “Be well, Clark,” you called out in your steps. “Take care of yourself. The world needs you.”
I need you, he wanted to say. He only nodded and returned your smile with a sheepish one, watching you disappear, winding up and away to your apartment. Ignoring the croak of his throat when he opened up to say something, and the hurt that found its way back to his chest, watching you leave for a second time, heavy with the odes and apologies he’d wished he’d said to you.
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