Wattpad: pay me monthly 🤩 and we will remove ads for you. also free offline stories I guess as long as you keep paying me. but we have censorship so keep your kinks to yourself. what we don’t have is tagging systems, so good luck trying to find what you want or avoiding what you don’t want to read lol
meanwhile AO3: so everything is free in our house. read whatever you want offline. also no ads. no capitalism. no censorship. be as wild as you want with your fics. also we have tagging systems so you can search or avoid any specific tags, pairings, relationships or characters. whatever you want.
I’m sorry but if you’re still complaining, you don’t realize how good you have it with AO3, one of the last platforms on the internet that is free of capitalism and censorship. just artists and writers creating and sharing their works with the community for free and for fun. just authentic love between artists, their works, characters, stories and audiences.
agree to this. if you still want to experience wattpad without the ads, try downloading an older version. i dont remember what version i have but i know its mid-2016's. you can find older versions in apkstores. download at your own risk tho.
LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK!! Get AI OUT of fandom spaces, they thrive off of creativity and real emotions, not robotic plagiarism that steals peoples jobs and passions, and harms our environment in the process!
Yep, AI destroys our planet. How? Uses water to power the computers on which platforms like OpenAI and c.ai run on. Water eventually runs out, especially with the current climate issues. Thus, no drinking water for humans and animals. No water for food to grow. Therefore, no food for humans and animals to eat. We already live in a world where many countries do not have clean water to drink, can’t afford water or do not have water at all. We do not need another thing polluting our waters when we cannot even prevent or even address the current problems we have, such as rubbish in water ways and toxic chemicals/parasites polluting water.
Not to mention you’re literally giving your writing—which prompt these c.ai conversations—to AI to train them…“Oh but I can’t write”, no I think you can you’re just severely undermining yourself. I don’t think y’all realise, but as you’re using these bots you are also writing. And you often have to be very descriptive in order for it to understand or get a desirable response. You are already writing! Instead of wasting your time and energy on trying to get AI to understand you, go read a fanfiction, or write one yourself if you cannot find one for the specific character you want. “But it’s not as fun to write it.” I fear this may just be a you problem or—and I say this in the nicest way possible—you might just be stupid. Because you’re willing to spend hours on end putting up with AI and its mistakes, but you don’t wanna spend a single second doing the same thing you do with AI? With the freedom of writing the storyline to your own desire and not have it be some shit generated slop that messes up the whole story you’re aiming for? Yeah righttt….
This is why no one is hiring artists and their degrees are going to waste. Just because their employer would rather use a machine for labour than pay a human being. It’s also why people are growing incompetent, a lot of people cannot write a single email without asking AI for help. It’s why the vast majority of students cannot write a single essay in school. I say this as someone who has graduated in 2025, and has seen their classmates first hand, using AI to write their CREATIVE pieces, about their PERSONAL lives. What does AI know about your life that you don’t? How can AI convey the raw emotional experiences of your life? Simple. It can’t.
Also not cool to promote, normalise and subject yourself to a platform that is prevalent in cases of children developing psychosis, and even committing suicide.
Summary: Clark likes his editor, even if she's a little mean to him.
Word Count: 12.1k
Content: 18+, smut, clark is a disaster and a yearner, reader is a little mean but clark is into it, piv sex, oral (f!receiving), clark whimpers, light angst, reader is described as having hair
To Read on AO3
Daily Planet, Metropolis - 9:47 AM
The hustle and bustle of the newsroom is already well underway by the time Clark Kent makes an appearance. The way-too-big gray suit that he wore at least once a week is crumpled, the coat nearly hanging off his shoulder as he tries to make sure he hasn’t lost any of the papers that are haphazardly hanging from his open bag while balancing a cup holder with four cups of coffee from the nice coffee shop down the road.
Other employees step around the frazzled man as he makes a beeline for his desk, flashing smiles and good mornings to everyone along the way. He’s stopped just shy of his destination as Lois Lane pops out in front of him, eyes heavy with exhaustion, as she eyes the paper cups before plucking the one with the most sugar listed on the order sticker. “Thanks,” she mumbles as she turns around, making her way back to her desk, muttering some stuff under her breath about having to rewrite the byline for her article again.
Clark barely has time to stutter out a ‘you’re welcome’ before he realizes the missing coffee cup has caused the cup holder to begin to tip sideways, the other three coffees teetering dangerously close to disaster. Clark can already see the next two seconds flashing before his eyes: spilled coffee and the exasperated look from everyone around him.
That is, until a perfectly manicured hand shoots out from behind him, deftly swiping the cup holder from him before all of the cups spill over. He follows the hand to its source, landing on your face… your very stern, eyebrow cocked in disbelief, face. “Seriously, Kent?” you ask with a scoff as you set down the holder onto his desk.
He feels the burn up the sides of his neck to his ears as he stammers, clamoring to put his bag down and straighten out his suit. You look nice today, he notes. You look nice every day, even as you stand before him, scowling. All he can think about is how pretty you look and how mesmerizing the red of your lipstick is.
“Y-yeah, sorry,” he finally apologizes, snapping to as he realizes you were waiting for him to respond. “The fight with Superman this morning ended up shutting down the A-Line, so I had to walk.”
You don’t even try to disguise the way your eyes roll at his excuse. “Superman, of course,” you mutter under your breath before raising the manila folder you were holding. “Here are the edits for the article you gave me yesterday, and remember, you still owe me the draft for the Crane case.”
“Geez, let the guy breathe for a second before jumping down his throat as soon as he gets in,” Jimmy Olsen comments with a grin as he saunters over, grabbing another cup from the holder on Clark’s desk. He pats Clark on the shoulder with a faint ‘thanks, man’ all the while pretending you’re not glaring daggers at him as he falls into his chair, sipping happily on his coffee.
You point the folder at Clark, who stands there awkwardly as you turn your fury to Jimmy. “He wouldn’t need a chance to breathe if he got here on time like the rest of us,” you fume. Jimmy holds his hands up in surrender, sending a sympathetic smile to Clark before ducking his head and turning back around to face his monitor. As much as Jimmy loves Clark, he was not going to put himself in front of your wrath for him.
When you turn back to Clark, he at least has the decency to look apologetic, hunched in a way to make himself appear smaller, and the corners of his lips pulled into a remorseful smile. You curse his dimples silently in your mind. “I was hoping getting you a coffee might soften the blow of me being late… again.”
You look down at the two remaining cups and see your name written in Clark’s chicken scratch handwriting with a wobbly smiley face drawn next to it. The sticker with the order on it displaying that he’d gotten you your favorite from the shop down the road that you loved to go to whenever you managed to pull yourself away from your desk for longer than ten minutes. That is to say that it is a luxury around here.
Your eyes narrow and lips purse for just a moment before you shove the folder into his chest, and he scrambles to catch it before it hits the ground. “I’m serious, you better have it to me by six P.M., Perry has been on my ass about it,” you assert before plucking your coffee from his desk and turning to walk back to the editor block, the click of your heels like a siren song that has his eyes following after you trailing up your form before settling on your plush backside before he realizes what he’s doing and looks away quickly, suddenly very interested in the broken ceiling tile above his desk.
He hears a snort of laughter and glances back over at Jimmy, who is not even attempting to hide his shit-eating grin. “What?” Clark asks.
Jimmy shakes his head in disbelief. “Dude, you have it so bad.” Clark dares to look confused as to what Jimmy is referring to. He motions to you and Clark can’t help but to sneak another peek at you as you’re stopped in the middle of the bullpen talking to one of the summer interns, the stern brow you’d had with him has softened as you’re inevitably explaining something you have already gone over at least twice with her before with far more patience than you ever afforded Clark.
Clark doesn’t even realize the dopey smile that works its way onto his face as he stares until Jimmy snaps his fingers. “Yeah, see! That!” He points at Clark’s face, which has now settled into what could only be described as a pout.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clark insists.
Jimmy groans as he spins in his chair. “Just ask her out already, the worst thing she could say is ‘no’.”
Clark’s brows furrow. “Actually, the worst thing she could say is ‘you’ll be hearing from HR’.”
Lois rolls out from behind her desk, looking a bit more chipper than five minutes prior, cup of coffee still securely in her hand. “Fired for sexual misconduct would look really bad with future employers,” she teases.
Clark gives her an exasperated look, and Jimmy waves his hand at both of them dismissively. “I’m telling you, there’s no way she’d say no or report you to HR.”
“Jimmy, I hate to break it to you, but she cannot stand Clark,” Lois informs.
“Yeah, she can’t—” He whirls around to look at Lois, a distraught look on his face. “What do you mean she can’t stand me?”
“Clark, you’re always submitting drafts to her late —” “Yeah, because I get really nervous and end up re-writing it like five times before I give it to her.” “— You’re also always showing up late for work—” “I can’t help if the city is attacked and an entire subway line gets shut down!”
Lois gives him a sharp look, and he swallows, something unspoken between them that Jimmy at least doesn’t pick up on.
“Listen, some women just aren’t impressed with the whole… naïve farm boy vibe you got going on,” Lois finishes with a shrug. “Don’t take it so personally.”
Clark looks to Jimmy for some backup, and luckily, the redhead takes pity on poor Clark, coming to his friend’s rescue. “Lois, I respect your opinion on this matter as a woman, but trust me, she may seem like she’s not impressed, but—”
“Oh, don’t even give me that she’s playing hard to get spiel,” Lois rolls her eyes with a disbelieving smile on her face.
“—But, I think she’s playing hard to get.”
“Oh my god, you’re both HR violations waiting to happen,” she chides before taking another sip of her coffee.
“Aw, c’mon, look, you made him sad.” Jimmy gestures to a very downtrodden Clark, who is simply staring in the general direction where you had disappeared back into the editor block with a visible frown on his face.
Guilt creeps up Lois’s spine, and she sighs. “Listen, if you really like her, then just ask her out already and spare us having to endure the puppy dog looks.”
“There ya have it,” Jimmy nods. “Lois Lane approved office romance.”
Lois lets out a bark of laughter as she and Jimmy dive into their own conversation, leaving Clark to his thoughts. He drops into his seat, starting to look over the edits you’d handed him. The amount of markups on the page doesn’t even surprise him. Bright blue ink scratches out entire segments of sentences, circling others, neat handwriting tucked into the margins explaining each cut and need for clarification.
The first article you edited for him had been even worse. There was more blue penned onto the page than black printed ink. You had torn his article into shreds, the one he had shyly placed into the tray on your desk after he had tried to email it to you, only to be told you only accepted printed copies of drafts, something none of the other editors requested.
(Lois would later tell him that you preferred having something physical in your hands when you edited, and she’d made the same mistake in her first week)
He had been so proud of that article when he’d handed it over. Less so when you’d given the folder back to him with nothing more than a raised eyebrow before walking back to your desk, it took all of five minutes before he’d shown up in front of you, the marked-up draft crinkled nervously between his hands, clearly upset by the sheer amount of edits.
You had stared at him, unblinking, as he stammered all over himself, waiting until he talked himself into an awkward silence before saying anything. Dealing with uppity journalists who took personal offense to edits was nothing new to you. “If you don’t make the edits, then I won’t approve it and it won’t go to print,” you’d said simply. “Unless you’d like to make an argument for the run-on sentences?”
There wasn’t any malice in your voice, and that was the moment Clark realized it wasn’t personal, it was just your job, and you were not just good, but great at your job. He must have been as red as a tomato by the time he turned and fled back to his desk with his tail tucked between his legs.
He made the edits, and when Perry walked by his desk the next day, he was complimented on the pacing and tone of the piece. It didn’t make the front page… not even second or third, but it was his first article in the Daily Planet.
You had even smiled at him and congratulated him on his first article when you were making your rounds that morning.
That was where this inconceivably tiny, bite-sized crush started.
Because even when you shredded his article into pieces, his heart sang at the tiny compliments left in the margins.
‘Good pacing here.’
‘This passage really shines.’
‘Beautiful.’
And of course, it doesn’t help that you are pretty. Walking around the office with your face done up and hair perfectly styled in outfits he doesn’t think he has seen a repeat of since starting here almost three years ago. He always feels like a mess in front of you, especially when he comes in late (which is often) and sees you standing there, arms crossed, looking like you want to go up one side of him and down the other (which you have before).
There is also the fact that you hate Superman.
Well, maybe hate isn’t the right word.
Strongly disapprove of?
He remembers the first time a clip of Superman played while you all had gathered in the newsroom. When everyone else was oohing and ahhing at Superman’s heroics (which Clark may or may not have been preening a bit at), you stood there, sipping at your overly expensive coffee with such an unimpressed look.
“Just what we need, another jackass in tights wandering around.”
Clark deflated at that.
While you never explicitly said you disliked his caped alter ego, you definitely never had anything kind to say either. The articles he submitted to you about Superman? If he had gotten those edits when he was a freshman in high school writing for the Smallville High newspaper, he would’ve never written another article again.
Entire paragraphs marked for deletion or simply ‘TONE’ in all caps next to specific passages. The worst had been when you crossed out a sentence and just put ‘No’ next to it in the margins.
“It’s a feature, not an op-ed, Kent.”
It was brutal. Even Lois couldn’t help the grimace whenever she happened to catch sight of those drafts, her and Jimmy saluting Clark when they knew he was walking over to the editor block to submit a Superman article to you.
Despite that, he looked forward to seeing you every day. You had become the person he looks for the moment he enters a room, without him even realizing it.
So much about you and the way you move through the world has been noted and categorized by Clark.
He loved the moments when he caught you while editing, two or three pens stuck in your up-do because you kept forgetting you’d placed them there and grabbed a new one each time, chewing on your bottom lip as you carefully marked up whatever draft you were working on.
He loved how you took care of the people around you in your own, sometimes standoffish, way.
“Have you eaten?” You’d asked him one day, his second year of working at the Planet. It was late, and it was just you two and a handful of others in the office working towards deadlines that were creeping far too close for comfort. He’d been having the hardest time with the beat Perry had assigned him and had worked through his lunch and any subsequent breaks.
“O-oh, I don’t really have money to order out right now,” he said, almost embarrassed. He’d just paid rent, which meant he would be living off of cup noodles and breakroom coffee until next week when his next paycheck hit.
You glanced up at him from your phone that you were tapping on. “I didn’t ask if you had money, I asked if you’d eaten,” you replied pointedly before returning your attention to your phone. “Beef and broccoli, yeah?” You confirmed, and he was a bit stunned but managed to nod in response. Warmth rolling through his chest that you remembered his food order. “I’ll get those eggrolls you like, too.”
“I can pay you back next week,” Clark offered, and you just waved your hand at him, not looking up from your phone.
“I’m not worried about it, Kent.” You walked off, calling out to the others in the office that you were ordering food, leaving Clark’s heart to simmer in your wake.
He loved how unafraid you were. How confident you were in your convictions. There weren’t many people at the Planet who would go to bat against Perry, but you did constantly. So many times, he’d walk into the newsroom to see you two having a screaming match about whether or not an article should go to print.
“We are not printing this!”
“Oh, come off it, Perry, if you want to play it safe, go work for Newstime Magazine!”
The article almost always went to print. Not without a lot of griping from Perry, and you never were smug about it. Satisfied, yes. But it was about journalistic integrity. It was about publishing articles that no other company would touch with a ten-foot pole due to the fear of backlash because no one else would do it. There were many other employees at the Planet who shared the sentiment, but you were consistently the one who fought for it, loudly.
So yeah, Clark Kent had a crush on you because why wouldn’t he? And maybe Jimmy was right, and he should ask you out.
(Or maybe he was wrong and Clark would be looking for a new job by Friday)
By the end of the day, he decides he will ask you out to dinner. Hyping himself up in the moment as he starts to finish the article that he has already rewritten twice now.
Except he doesn’t end up asking you out at all. Instead, it is five P.M., and he stands in front of your desk, freshly printed draft clutched in his hands as he watches you type away at something on your monitor.
You don’t even look up at him, and he knows that you know he is standing there.
Time stretches on for what he could only imagine to be an eternity, and he can feel his heartbeat in his throat as he waits until, finally, you push back from your desk, turning to face him. “Is there something you need, Clark?” The eye contact you make sends his heart sputtering, but the way his name rolls off your lips has his knees so weak he almost falls against your desk in a heap. Your gaze flickers down to the papers in his hand. “Is that the Crane case draft?”
“O-oh! Yeah!” He says dumbly, and when he doesn’t do anything but continue to stand there, you blink, briefly wondering if he’d suffered some head injury in the last few hours.
“Can I… have it?” you question, brows furrowed in confusion as you stare up at him.
You watch a flush creep up his cheeks, and he practically slams the folder onto your desk. “Y-yeah, of course! I’m sorry it took so long to get to you, I was having some trouble with one of the sources and…”
“I’ll have the edits to you tomorrow morning,” you confirm. “Try to get here on time, Perry wants this to run for the evening issue.”
He nods, pushing up his glasses as they slide down his nose, and pretends not to notice as you follow the movement. “Don’t worry, I’ll be on time, I promise.” You stare at him for a pause before turning back to your computer, muttering something akin to ‘I’ve heard that one before,’ and Clark is struck by the way the setting sun backlights you, wisps of gold brushing against your profile. His heart his hammering in his chest as he tries to will himself to say something, anything else to you.
“Okay, bye.”
Not that.
“Have a good night,” you call out, not looking up from the screen.
Clark shuffles away, already mentally beating himself up as Jimmy appears behind him, bag swung over his shoulder. “That was rough to watch, buddy.”
“Shut up,” Clark groans as he grabs his things from his desk. “I don’t know why there’s such a disconnect between my brain and my mouth when I’m around her.”
“Hey, I get it, man,” Jimmy nods. “She is scary, but in a really hot way—” Clark’s head snaps up, and he gives Jimmy a sharp look because he knows Jimmy’s reputation. “Relax, relax. She’s all yours, I can assure you. I think she’d eat me alive.”
As Clark follows Jimmy to the elevator, he glances back over his shoulder, seeing you still sitting at your desk as everyone else has begun to pack up for the night. You give a smile and bid another editor goodnight as she tells you not to stay too late.
He knows you will anyway.
As they step into the elevator with a handful of their coworkers, all conversing about their plans for the rest of the night, Clark decides that tomorrow he will definitely ask you out.
He does not end up asking you out tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after, as a matter of fact. Every single time he resolved himself to doing so, he felt the words turn to mush in his mouth the moment he saw you.
Once, because you had been standing with Lois in the breakroom, laughing in a way he’d never seen before, the snort of laughter so uncharacteristic and unexpected, he had walked straight into the mail cart, sending envelopes and parcels flying all over the place.
The second time, he had gone into the archives to grab some old records to reference for a story he’d been working on, and turned the corner to see you up on a stool, half bent as you tried to wrestle with a box buried on the shelf. Clark could only focus on the swell of your backside in the tight slacks you were wearing and didn’t even register that you had turned to him.
“Clark? Help, please?”
Whatever words that came out of his mouth were unintelligible as his body went into autopilot, grabbing the box you’d been battling with ease, nodding like an idiot as you thanked him before turning on his heel and walking out, completely forgetting about the entire reason he’d gone in there to begin with.
The third and final time, you weren’t even doing anything special, just sitting at your desk, humming along to the desk radio you had quietly going, sorting through papers. Clark was determined this time. He’d spent the entirety of last night rehearsing what he was going to say, all the while fighting an interdimensional creature that was terrorizing downtown.
He had approached you with confidence, and then you’d turn to face him, lips wrapped around a cherry lollipop that one of the secretaries had given out as extras from her daughter’s birthday party over the weekend.
Whatever confidence he had rapidly warped into panic as words fell out of his mouth in a jumble. Indiscernible and certainly not a sentence asking you to go to dinner with him. He stood there as you stared up at him, and he could see the stain of the lollipop on your lips and tongue.
“Clark, what?”
And then he made some sort of noise and, with haste, fled the vicinity, leaving you there blinking, wondering what just happened.
It is that afternoon that he hears you in a quiet conversation with Lois as he is once again unjamming Printer 4. You perch on her desk, leaning close to whisper to her, completely unaware that Clark can hear every single word you say.
“I think Clark has a concussion,” you inform with a solemn look on your face.
Lois almost laughs at that, but keeps her face trained in faux concern. “Why do you think that?”
“I don’t think that man has said a coherent sentence to me this entire week,” you explain. “He’s basically resorted to communicating with me in grunts like a caveman.”
That has Lois snorting with laughter, trying to hide the smile with her coffee cup as she takes a sip of the lukewarm liquid that’s been sitting on her desk for the better part of the morning. “I can assure you he does not have a concussion.”
You give her a pursed look, clearly not believing her. “Then what is his deal?”
It is at this moment that Lois makes eye contact with Clark from across the newsroom. He feels the dread build up in him as a smirk tilts its way onto Lois’s face, and he can almost see the exact moment the thought formulates in her head.
And then the building shakes, lights flickering as a deafening ‘boom’ echoes from somewhere outside. Silence settles in place of panic, as everyone listens with bated breath, hoping it was nothing to be concerned about, perhaps just some construction down the road. Until the second explosion rocks the building, and then chaos erupts.
People are scrambling all over. Clark sees you grab Lois and push her towards the stairwell, yelling at the gaggle of people who are trying to file into the elevator. “Are you idiots? Use the stairs!” That gets them moving, and Clark is moving with everyone else.
As you all get to the ground floor, you can see the source of the explosions, Green Lantern, Mr. Terrific, and Hawkgirl are fighting some idiot on a hoverboard who keeps tossing explosives around like he’s giving out candy on Halloween. Another one detonates, and a building down the street crumbles from the explosion. Debris and dust are scattering through the streets as people run from the epicenter of the fight. Cops are trying to divert traffic away, and the wail of ambulances approaches.
It’s pandemonium.
“C’mon, Kent, move it!” There’s a hand on his arm, and he looks down to find you pulling him along. The crowd around you is a shifting sea, but you’re firm and steady beside him despite the chaos. He realizes he’s going away from where he needs to be, but he lets you pull him anyway.
And then an explosion hits from somewhere above, and suddenly the air is filled with dirt and smoke, and the crowds push forward even as people sputter and try to regain their bearings. You lose your grip on Clark after getting knocked around by the surge of people, and that’s when panic sets in for you as you stop amidst the mass of people, shouting for him. “Clark?” You don’t see his massive form in the crowd of people, and your throat constricts. “Clark?!”
Someone behind you pushes, and you keep moving because it’s either that or be crushed by the swath of people. There’s a barricade another block down, and by the time you make it there, the crowd has begun to disperse, and there’s still no sign of Clark Kent. You feel nauseous as you think of the plethora of things that could’ve happened to him, though the thought of him lying dead in the street with people rushing over him is at the forefront of your mind.
You ask people as they rush by you.
“Excuse me, have you seen a guy, about this tall?”
“A man, curly hair, and glasses?”
A sonic boom cuts through the chaos, and people cheer as Superman flies onto the scene. You don’t, though. Your phone is in your hand as you search for Clark’s number, which has been unused until now in your contact list. It rings once, twice, all the way until the voicemail picks up.
“Hey, you’ve reached Clark. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
You hang up and try again, ignoring the tightness in your throat when it goes to voicemail once more.
“Hey, you’ve reached Clark. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message and I’ll get—”
You feel your lip wobble. And again.
“Hey, you’ve reached Clark. I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message—”
With Superman coming to their aid, the heroes make quick work of the lone villain. You barely notice that the crowd has waned as the heroics come to an end. Instead, you’re pacing under the awning of a building, being met with Clark Kent’s voicemail message again and again each time you call him.
You had already called Jimmy and Lois, both of whom hadn’t seen their friend, though Lois tried to convince you that he was fine. You couldn’t help the worry that nagged at you.
“Are you okay, ma’am?” Someone asks from behind you.
You whirl around, pulling the phone from your ear, and you can’t even help the wide-eyed look that appears on your face. Superman himself stands before you, bathed in the light of the setting sun that creeps through the skyline of Metropolis behind him. He’s bigger in person, you realize. Broader than you thought he’d be.
“Ma’am?” There’s concern on his face when you don’t answer.
“Yes,” you reply quickly. “Yes, I’m sorry, I’m fine.”
“Hey, you’ve reached Clark. I can’t come to the phone right now, but—.”
You look back down at your phone and press the ‘end call’ button, biting your lip.
“I’m looking for Clark,” you tell him. “Clark Kent. You know him, he’s interviewed you before. He was beside me, and then an explosion hit above us, and I lost him in the chaos, and I can’t find him, and he’s not answering his phone—” Your voice cracks, and you don’t even notice the way Superman’s face crumples with it.
“Hey,” he calls out softly as he steps closer. You feel a warm hand on your shoulder, and you look up, your eyes meeting an earthshattering shade of blue. “It’s alright,” he assures. “I’ll find him. Why don’t you go home and rest? I’ll make sure he’s okay.”
You shake your head. “No, if something happened to him, I—”
“Nothing happened to him,” he promises. “I’ll find him, and when I do, I’ll make sure he calls you, how about that?”
You want to be stubborn. You want to tell Superman to shove off. But you’re tired, and there’s a burn in your lungs from all of the dust and smoke. Gripping your phone harder, you shove the edge of it into his chest, and he looks a bit surprised, if not a little amused by the action. “You make sure he calls me,” you order, and there’s a fragility in your voice that Clark doesn’t think he’s heard before, despite the way your jaw is set. You’re putting on a brave face.
A soft smile spreads on Superman’s face. “Yes, ma’am.”
An hour and a half later, just as you fit your key into the deadbolt of your door, your phone rings. The name ‘Clark Kent’ flashes across the screen, and pure relief floods you as you pick up on the second ring. “Clark?”
“H-hey,” his soft voice comes through the other end, and you never thought you would be so happy to hear that Kansan accent. “I’m so sorry, I left my phone at the office and I finally just went back to get it.”
“Are you okay?” you ask as you close your door behind you.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m okay,” he replies.
There’s a pregnant pause between you two. You think you should say ‘okay’ and hang up, not draw out the conversation any longer than it needs to be. But you don’t. The bizarre want to hear his voice some more, tugging at you in a way you’ve never experienced before. “Don’t think you get to be late to work tomorrow just because a couple of buildings on our street exploded,” you tease, breaking through the tension of the quiet.
He laughs, and even though you’re silent, he can tell you’re smiling too. “Wouldn't dream of it,” he says.
“Goodnight, Clark.”
“Yeah, goodnight.”
Clark surprises you the next morning by not only arriving on time, but arriving early. He’s so early that it is just you two in the newsroom. The shock is written on your face as you spot him walking from the elevator while standing at the copier, eyes wide and mouth agape.
He gives a shy wave, cheeks dimpling as he smiles at you. “Good morning,” he calls out.
What he does not expect is for you to grab the stack of papers off the copier and march towards him, smacking him repeatedly with the pile of papers. “You can’t just disappear like that during a crisis!” He doesn’t flinch as he is hit. You don’t even notice how gently he’s looking down at you, too busy giving him a piece of your mind like you always do. “Like, what the hell, Clark? I thought something happened to you!”
You run out of steam surprisingly quickly and meet his gaze. “I really am sorry,” he whispers, and you take a moment to study his face and the blue of his eyes, and you’re struck by a thought that leaves your mouth dry.
Clark is handsome.
“Don’t do it again,” you warn, giving him one final half-hearted swat to the chest that has him giving you a laugh that leaves you lightheaded. “You’re sure you’re okay?”
He smiles and nods, and when you go to leave, he can feel the end of the moment between you two rapidly approaching. He doesn’t want it to end. “Would you wanna go out to dinner with me?” he asks before he can even think long enough to get nervous about it.
You blink once, then twice as though you’re not quite sure you heard him correctly. “Dinner?”
He nods, swallowing the lump in his throat.
“Is this a date?”
He nods again and can feel his palms begin to sweat.
“Yes,” you say after a beat. He grins, dimples and all, and warmth spreads through your chest, a feeling you’re hesitant to embrace.
“Friday? Seven P.M.?” He asks.
“Gino’s?” You suggest, a lilt to your voice that isn’t normally there, and he’s mesmerized by the look in your eye as you do, by the way you’re trying to disguise the smile that itches at your face. He nods, leaning in a bit. The papers in your hand are a shield between you two, and you step back. “Don’t be late.”
“I won’t be.” He wouldn’t be.
Gino’s Italian Restaurant, Metropolis - 7:43 PM
He was late.
You didn’t miss the sympathetic looks the hostess and waiters sent you every time they passed by your table for two, which was occupied by one. Your glass of wine was nearly empty, and the bread basket was alarmingly full despite the hunger that gnawed at your insides.
You had been trying not to glance down at your phone for the last half hour, knowing that if you had gotten a text, the screen would light up. However, it had remained dark since you sent Clark your last message, asking where he was.
With one final swig, you empty the glass, catching the eye of the waiter, waving him over. “Can I have the check, please?” you ask.
After paying for your singular glass of wine, once you were out in the cool breeze of the summer night, you finally recheck your phone. The absence of any new message sent a trill of fury through you, only amplified by the news report notification about Superman fighting some gigantic monster in midtown.
“Great,” you grumble. “Let’s hope they don’t knock out the T-Line this time.”
The trek home takes far too long with people getting diverted away from the kaiju battle, and the pleasant buzz you had from the glass of wine had long since worn off as you shove through your apartment door, flinging it closed behind you as you kick off your pumps, breathing in the relief for your aching feet.
You’re desperate to get out of the dress you’d squeezed into (after spending far too long debating what dress Clark would like better on you), but the desire to get absolutely shitfaced after being stood up by your coworker was overwhelming. And that’s how you found yourself lounging on your balcony, watching Big Blue himself battle an enormous alien creature from across the city with nothing but a bottle of chardonnay to keep you company.
You stay there until long after the light show ends, just taking sips from the bottle every so often, sitting in your sorrow. Honestly, you don’t even know why you’re so upset. It’s not as though you even liked Clark all that much; you were just looking forward to a free meal.
Like, yes, he was objectively good-looking, and yes, he always remembered your coffee order. And, yes, maybe you prodded him just a little more than you did others because you liked watching him get flustered.
But you didn’t like him.
(You could have, though)
A loud knock at your door startles you from your thoughts. Your bare feet pad against the floor of your apartment as you softly step to your door, peeking through the peephole, finding none other than Clark Kent himself standing outside of your apartment.
If you were any other person, you might have just ignored the knocking, letting him stew in the silence, but you were not any other person, and with half a bottle of chardonnay in your system, you want nothing more than to give him a piece of your mind.
When you rip the door open, Clark looks at you wide-eyed and sputtering. “I’m so—”
“Oh, absolutely not,” you interrupt, shoving your finger into his (startlingly firm) chest. “You have a lot of nerve, Clark Kent.”
“I know, I know, please just let me—”
“Let you what? Explain? Explain how you left me waiting at Gino’s for forty-five minutes for you? Explain how now at—” You lean back to glance at the microwave clock in your kitchen. “—9:57 PM, nearly 3 hours after we were supposed to meet for our date, you show up at my door expecting to grovel at my feet for me to what? To forgive you?”
“No, that’s not it, please just let me explain,” he begs.
You don’t, though. “You made me look like an idiot.” Your voice is soft, and there’s vulnerability, the bite you had seconds prior, leaving your body rapidly. You can feel the way your throat tightens, and the pit in your stomach feels like it could swallow you whole. You hate feeling like this, feeling this small. Clark looks at your eyes and realizes they’re tinged red and clouded with unshed tears. He wants to throw up. “You made me feel like an idiot.”
“I’m really sorry.” His voice cracks, and it looks like he wants to reach out to touch you, but he doesn’t.
“Me too,” you say back, tone empty and despondent.
“I got you these.” He holds out a lightly crumpled bouquet that’s been hanging limply at his side this entire time. You stare at it. It wasn’t one of those grocery store bouquets, no, this one is full of your favorite flowers, clearly and explicitly curated for you.
You blink back tears and grab the bouquet, holding it close to your chest. “Thank you.”
“You look really pretty.”
“I know,” you whisper. “Goodnight, Clark.”
He doesn’t say anything as you shut the door, your gaze catching your reflection in the hallway mirror. It’s almost pathetic, you all dolled up with a bouquet of all your favorite flowers, looking like you were a moment away from the dam breaking.
And then there’s a burn at the back of your throat that you can’t ignore, and you can’t help as the tears finally fall from your eyes, you suck in a deep breath on instinct, feeling the sob try to wretch out from you. You don’t know that Clark is standing on the other side, jaw clenched, nostrils flaring as he blinks away his own tears.
The weekend passes by horridly fast. As much as you had wanted to waste away and lament about the date that never was (that you would definitely not admit you had gotten your hopes up for), you would not let being stood up consume your entire weekend; they were a precious commodity after all.
So, after spending Friday night ugly crying into your pillow, you pulled yourself together by Saturday morning. You went out to a boozy brunch with some of your college friends, took yourself on a walk around the park to enjoy the sunshine, and spent some time in your favorite bookstore buying books that you promised yourself you would read and not let sit untouched on your bookshelf like the entire neglected pile of others.
By Sunday, you were feeling better. That is, until you were getting ready for bed Sunday night and the dread hit you.
You spent the night tossing and turning, feeling like you wanted to crawl out of your skin at just the thought of having to see Clark again. By morning, it took a generous application of concealer to hide the bags under your eyes and a heavy pep talk in the mirror to even think about stepping out your door.
As with most Monday mornings, as soon as you walked into the bullpen, it was a cacophony of chaos, but at least it was chaos you were familiar with. You make your way to your desk, offering halfhearted greetings, and feel slight relief as you settle into your seat, hoping that work will keep your brain busy enough not to let the anxiety ruin your day.
Then your gaze fixes on the paper coffee cup placed in front of your keyboard. Your name is written in a familiar chicken scratch handwriting. Swallowing the lump in your throat, you swivel in your seat, looking back at the writer block to see that Clark Kent is already sitting at his desk. Hunched and fidgeting with a stack of Post-it notes as he catches your eye. His mouth tilts up into an uncertain smile.
You purse your lips, a scowl forming on your face as you grab the coffee cup, maintaining unblinking eye contact as you proceed to drop it directly into the garbage can next to your desk, and then you spin back around.
Clark grimaces. “Yeah, I deserve that,” he mutters as he looks back at the blank Word document that’s been taunting him since he got in this morning.
It wasn’t any surprise how quickly word got around about Clark’s spectacular failure. Steve had walked by his desk after the morning meeting, giving a ‘womp womp’ that made Clark nearly snap the pencil he was writing with.
“So, let me get this straight,” Jimmy slides over, munching on some yogurt and granola. “You finally ask out the woman you’ve been pining after for who knows how long, then proceed to miss the date entirely without texting her that you wouldn’t be able to make it, and then show up at her apartment with flowers, thinking that would make up for the complete lack of communication?”
Clark sighs. “Yeah, that about covers it.” His voice is muffled as he buries his face in his hands.
“Buddy,” Jimmy starts. “You really fucked up.”
Clark groans, leaning back in his seat. “Yeah, Jimmy, I know.”
He didn’t even want to look over at Lois because all she kept doing was sending him looks of disappointment the whole morning. She had stopped by your desk this morning with a grin on her face that quickly morphed into a look of horror as you recounted Friday night’s events.
Even Cat, who was usually all honeyed words with Clark, had been giving him the stink eye.
Honestly, though, no one else could make Clark feel as bad as he made himself feel about the whole thing. He had spent the weekend agonizing over how badly he had messed up with you. The sound of you crying on the other side of the door replaying in his head like his own personal version of hell.
He even called his parents.
“Oh, Clark, honey,” Martha soothed. “You wounded that woman’s pride, you just gotta give her some time to cool off.”
“I don’t know, Ma, I think I really messed this one up,” he said, pinching at the bridge of his nose as he felt the telltale pressure of tears building up.
“Now, Clark, no problem worth fixin’ is ever easy.” He couldn’t see them, but he knew Pa was nodding along. “If this girl is everything you’ve made her out to be, she’ll come around.”
The week passes by, and you coming around is nowhere in sight. Every cup of coffee he left on your desk went directly into the trash, the bouquets of your favorite flowers were pawned off to the secretaries, and the lunches were donated to the breakroom on a first-come, first-served basis.
When he went to drop off drafts for you to edit, you pointedly ignored him. To your credit, the edits you made were not as harsh as he’d thought they’d be in light of everything, though there was an apparent lack of any compliments in the margins that he always found himself looking forward to reading (and re-reading).
“Why don’t you come out tonight?” Lois asks on Friday morning. You give her a look, knowing the standing invite for Friday night drinks includes everyone in the office. “C’mon, he won’t be there, he never shows up.”
You pause, chewing at the inside of your lip, internally hemming and hawing. “I’ll think about it,” you finally concede, which is enough to get Lois to grin, a little pep in her step as she makes her way back to the writer block.
Friday afternoon, Jimmy comes sauntering over to you like a cat that got into the cream. He plants himself on your desk, ignoring your look of indignation when he crumples a few drafts you were working on with his ass. “Check out these photos I just finished developing,” he says as he spreads a handful of photos of Superman in front of you. They’re remarkably clear, some of the best pictures you have ever seen of Big Blue. “I was testing out that new lens I just got.” They were from a fight earlier this week in uptown.
Despite your frequently voiced objections to Metropolis’s favorite hero, you give Jimmy a hum of approval, picking one up to closer inspect it. “These are pretty good, how’d you get such a good shot of him in the air?” you ask.
“Climbed up a light pole,” he informs nonchalantly, grabbing some M&Ms from the candy bowl on your desk.
Your neck snaps to look at him. “James!”
“What?” He shrugs his shoulders. “Gotta do what it takes to get the shot.”
You let out a huff. “Unbelievable, you’re gonna break your neck one of these days.” You continue to sort through the photos, setting aside the ones you know Perry will submit for the front page.
“Haven’t yet,” he says, cheekily popping a few M&Ms in his mouth with a wink.
The final photo is a zoomed-in shot of Superman’s face. He’s smiling down at a few children who have gathered around him in the aftermath of the battle, a familiar softness to his face. You straighten up a bit, holding the photo closer to examine it.
“What’s up?” Jimmy asks when he sees your shift in posture.
You feel like you’ve seen it before, the blue of his eyes, the gentle tilt of his lips hinting at dimples, but the rest of the face is… wrong.
Maybe you’re losing it.
“Nothing,” you reply. “Really great work, Jimmy. Perry is definitely going to run this on the front page.”
Jimmy gives a grin.
You end up at the bar, thinking it might be good for you to let your hair down, literally and figuratively, for the night. Lois lights up when she sees you making your way through the Friday night crowd, and Jimmy has a drink in your hand before you even get a chance to sit down.
You’re listening to Cat go on and on about the guy she’s seeing, and given the debacle of the last week, it should annoy you to hear someone gush about their dating life, but the giddiness on Cat’s face is infectious so instead you sit there resting your chin on your hand with a smile on your face as you nod along asking all the appropriate questions.
It’s loud in the bar between all the people and the music playing, so you barely register the bell above the door ringing. You do, however, clock Jimmy turning to Lois and saying, “He never comes out.”
Instinctively, you turn in your seat, immediately locking eyes with Clark. He looks like he just left the office, suit coat slung over his arm and tie loosened. He’s moving through the crowd towards you, not breaking eye contact as though he’s scared you’ll disappear if you do, only to be intercepted by Lois. “Hey, Clark,” she greets, a tight fake smile plastered on her face. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Uh, yeah, well, not a lot going on tonight, so I figured I’d come… socialize,” he says lamely. You don’t see the flat look that Lois gives him.
Both of them look back at you. You catch Lois’s eyes and give her a little nod of your head, calling off your (very effective) guard dog. However, she narrows her eyes at Clark in a silent warning before returning to her conversation with Jimmy, who had been watching the entire exchange while taking a very long sip of his fruity cocktail.
Clark takes the empty seat next to you. “Can I buy you a drink?” he asks, fidgeting with his tie.
You stare at him as you play with the straw of your nearly empty cup, unabashedly tracing the slopes and contours of his face. He shifts nervously under your gaze, and you can’t tell if the flush creeping up his neck is due to you or the stuffiness of the bar. You still don’t say anything as you lean forward, and he’s too stunned to move away as your hand reaches out, fingers pressing through the curls hanging on his forehead, brushing them back into a tidier position, spending maybe a bit too long smoothing back the sides. The caress of your nails against his scalp sends a tingle down his spine, and his breath gets caught in his throat.
You don’t say anything for too long, just maintaining eye contact with him, like you’re searching his eyes for something.
“Vodka cran,” you say, resting back into your seat, and Clark wonders if you found what you were looking for.
His ears are red, and he quickly turns to the bartender to wave them down and grab you another drink, getting a soda for himself. Conversation flows between the two of you in a surprisingly easy manner, given the events of the past week. Work-related mostly. Clark is doing a better job of not stumbling all over himself, something he’s silently patting himself on the back for.
“You’ve been on time all week,” you note. Clark tries not to focus on how your lips wrap around the straw or how your gloss has stained the plastic.
“Yes, ma’am,” he confirms, the gentle lilt of his Kansan accent slipping through.
You fall silent for a moment, looking at him with such clarity in your eyes that it’s almost startling, and Clark can’t help but feel like he ground your entire conversation to a halt with just two words. “I’m gonna head out.” And then you’re grabbing your purse, tossing a few crinkled bills onto the bar as a tip before standing up.
“O-oh, okay,” Clark stammers, disappointment creeping up in him.
You’re about to step away until you glance back over your shoulder at him. “Are you going to walk me home?” You ask as though that had been the plan all along and he had just forgotten.
He blinks owlishly at your question like he’s not sure he quite heard you right. “Y-yeah!” He scrambles up, nearly knocking over his barstool, and you both head out after bidding your coworkers a goodnight. Lois cocks an eyebrow at you, but you just wiggle your fingers in goodbye.
Jimmy is giving Clark some waggling eyebrows with an enormous grin on his face that Clark is pointedly trying to ignore.
The walk home is quiet. The cool summer air is refreshing on your skin after sitting in the humidity of the bar, and the couple of drinks you had have left you a little light in the head, though it’s not an unwelcome feeling; you figure you’re going to need some liquid courage tonight anyway.
When you arrive at your apartment building, Clark walks you up to your apartment. You still don’t say anything as you take out your keys to unlock your door, and Clark swallows the lump in his throat, already preparing to say goodbye. “You coming in?” You question as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world, as you step into your apartment, leaving room for him to follow in after you.
“I—” He looks like a deer in the headlights. “You sure?”
You give a nod, and he steps in, albeit hesitantly, closing the door behind him. As soon as it clicks shut, you’re on him, hand pulling at the tie loosely around his neck, jerking him forward despite the other hand firmly on his chest pushing him back until he hits the door with a thud.
He looks shocked, face flushed and pupils blown wide as he doesn’t know what to do with his hands that hover at your waist but do not touch. You’re leaning up and he’s leaning down, gaze darting back and forth between your eyes and your lips. He thinks the strawberry smell is your lip gloss, and his heart won’t stop beating symphonies into his ribcage.
He doesn’t cross it, though, the invisible boundary that’s between you, even when he feels your breath fan against his lips. “I’m giving you the chance to be honest with me,” you whisper like it’s a warning, your voice husky in a way that has his insides twisting and turning.
“Okay,” he says softly.
You don’t move away as though you’re afraid he might try to run if you do. He can hear your own heart hammering in your chest. You’re nervous, he realizes. “You’re Superman.” Your tone doesn’t suggest it’s a question. It’s a statement. You know he’s Superman, and you’re allowing him the opportunity to be honest with you about it.
“Yes.”
Your heart rate speeds up. “That’s why you missed our date.”
“Yes,” he breathes like it’s painful to remember.
You finally blink, breaking eye contact to look down, lashes fluttering against your cheeks. “You really like me?” This one is a question. This one you’re unsure about.
Clark’s hands finally find purchase at your waist. The boundary between the two of you is barely hanging on by a thread. “Immensely.” Your grip on his tie loosens, and both hands are pressed gently against his chest. It wouldn’t take much; he would just have to lean down another inch or two to bring the whole thing crumbling down, but he doesn’t. “How’d you figure it out?” he asks.
“Your eyes,” you murmur like it was an evident thing, “—and your little… Midwestern-isms.”
He can’t help the smile that spreads across his face. Oh, he was in so deep. “My Midwestern-isms?”
“’Yes, ma’am,’” you mock with a bad accent, not at all what he sounds like, and you bite your lip to hide your grin. “How does it work? Your face is… different than Superman’s.”
“The glasses,” he informs, tilting his head. “They’re hypno-glasses, make me look a little bit different, just enough.”
Your hands surge upward before you even know what they’re doing, stopping just shy as you look to Clark for permission, and he nods. As you take off the glasses, it’s like his face comes into focus when you never even realized it had been blurry before. Edges sharpen and define, his nose a little straighter, lips a little fuller, jaw a little squarer.
Moreover, he stands differently when the glasses come off. His shoulders rearrange, and he’s taller now, more confident… broader.
Superman.
“You know everything is starting to make sense,” you ponder as you set the glasses on your entrance table, fingers playing with the collar of his shirt. You’re still standing close, his hands on your hips, not allowing you to wander too far from his orbit.
“Yeah?” Even his voice seems crisper, deeper now.
“Mhm,” you hum, “—you’re constantly being late, disappearing whenever some crisis pops up…” You laugh a bit. “I’m actually kind of mad at myself for not realizing it sooner.”
“I thought you might’ve thrown a shoe at me or something,” he admits.
You pull back, giving him an incredulous look. “What?”
“With you not liking Superman and all,” he elaborates. “Figured you would read me the riot act, at least.”
You scoff, rolling your eyes. “It’s not that I don’t like Superman.”
“Oh?” Eyebrows raise on his forehead. “First time I’m hearing this.”
You shove him, lightly, though he doesn’t move, solid under your touch. “It’s this… dependency we have on him—you,” you correct. “Superman—you—you’re not our savior, and we shouldn’t rely on you to fix every problem or to always show up. We should be able to stand on our own two feet.”
“But I want to help,” he insists, and you see it in his eyes, the earnestness in them. It’s so… Clark. “When things get hard and the world needs someone to lean on, I can carry that weight.”
“And what happens when you need someone to lean on? You may have super strength and can fly and shoot lasers out of your eyes, but you’re still—”
Human.
He doesn’t pretend the implication doesn’t crash around him like tidal waves.
You pull away a bit, not out of reach, not with his hands still wrapped around your waist. “Who’s going to carry the weight for you?” There’s sincerity in your question, and he doesn’t know how to respond because he doesn’t have an answer.
“I—”
You bite your lip as if you’re uncertain whether you should say the next part aloud, nervous to speak those feelings into the universe. “I can,” you say softly.
“I couldn’t ask that of you.”
“But I want to help.” You throw his words back at him, and he’s at a loss for what to say. “You don’t have to carry it alone.”
He opens his mouth to say something, but nothing comes out, and he’s looking at you like you hung the moon. He wants to kiss you so bad, but he’s afraid of being the one to cross that line.
“Clark.”
He doesn’t know if there’s a sweeter sound than his name on your lips.
“Just kiss me already.”
Except maybe that.
He’s surging forward in the next moment, mouth hot against yours. The barrier is dust between you. He tastes like the remnants of the sugary soda he’d ordered at the bar, and a quick swipe of his tongue against your lips confirms that your lip gloss is strawberry flavored.
You walk backwards, unsteady but confident, hands firmly tugging him along by his shirt, all the while not breaking the kiss that has your brain in a dizzy fog. You can’t help the giggle that escapes as you bump into your destination, the couch, causing your teeth to clatter together.
Clark smiles against your lips as his hands lower, gripping at your thighs as he lifts you off the ground so effortlessly that it has you letting out a quiet ‘oh’. His deep laugh goes straight to your core, and he settles onto the couch with you on top of him, your hands running through his hair, gripping it in a way that has him giving a low groan.
“Is this okay?” he asks in between kisses as though you’re not actively grinding down onto him.
A whimper escapes you as his hard-on catches the seam of your pants just right. “I will actually kill you if you stop.” The normal bite of your tone has given way to desperation. Clark’s entire body warms at that.
“Yes, ma’am,” he murmurs into your mouth, hands wandering to your ass, pressing you harder down onto him while bucking up into you. He leans back for a moment, placing another peck on your lips as his fingers start making work of the buttons on your blouse. When your cleavage comes into view, accentuated by your bra, something plain and practical, you hear Clark let out a shaky breath followed by an ‘oh, golly’ that has you a giggling mess on top of him. He grins, grabbing hold of the side of your neck as he pulls you back into a kiss. “You’re so pretty.”
You nip at his bottom lip. “I could tell by the ‘oh, golly,’” you tease, though your smugness doesn’t last for long as Clark has you on your back against the couch pillows a second later.
You watch reverently as he unbuttons his shirt, shrugging it off before pulling off his undershirt. He’s like a peacock, the way he fluffs up as your mouth goes slack, seeing what he was hiding underneath oversized button-ups and baggy suits for the last three years.
“Jesus Christ,” you breathe. “What the fuck were they feeding you in Kansas?”
He shakes with laughter as he leans back down, slotting himself in between your legs so he can reconnect your mouths, hand sliding up your side to palm your breast, not waiting long to slide underneath the cup of your bra. You arch up into him as his thumb brushes against your nipple, moaning quietly into his mouth, a sound he eagerly swallows down.
He trails kisses to your cheek, down your neck, spending a bit more time nipping and biting there when you give a shaky gasp. He continues down, pressing kisses to the top of your breasts, before trailing down to your ribs to your stomach until settling right above the waist of your pants.
You barely register him unbuttoning your pants until he drags them and your underwear down in one fell swoop. You cant your hips, letting him take them the rest of the way off, trying not to giggle as he throws the heap across your living room. A problem for tomorrow you.
Self-consciousness pricks at your brain as he spreads your legs, fingertips biting into your thighs, and in the glow of the moonlight streaming in through your apartment windows, you watch him lick his lips as he stares down at you, suddenly, any self-doubt fizzles away. One hand trails up your inner thigh to your core, spreading you so he can take in more of the sight. “You’re so wet,” he murmurs before he bends down.
A breathy moan escapes you as he licks a stripe up your center. “Fuck, Clark.” That eggs him on, and he swirls his tongue around your clit in a way that has you reaching down and gripping his hair. There’s a finger prodding at your entrance and then two that are curling into you at just the right spot.
Your chest heaves as you sink further into the couch, eyes fluttering to the back of your head as your apartment is filled with the obscene noises of Clark eating you out, groaning as he mutters about how good you taste. The feeling of his spit mixed with your own liquids trailing down your ass is overwhelming, and then he sucks at your clit in a way that has your toes curling.
“Clark, please,” you beg. You can feel the band at your core tightening with each swipe of his tongue and thrust of his fingers.
He pulls back slightly, now three fingers deep, hitting a spot inside you that has you seeing stars. “C’mon, sweetheart,” he coaches. “Cum on my fingers.”
Your breath hitches at mild-mannered Clark Kent telling you to cum on his fingers. He dives back in with enthusiasm, which is all it takes as your hips buck up into his face, and he gladly lets you grind against his mouth, especially with the sounds you’re making as you tighten around his fingers. His fingers continue pumping in and out of you as you ride out your orgasm, his name on your lips like a prayer as his lips greedily drink up all you give him.
He leans back, cheek resting against your inner thigh as he watches you catch your breath and give a little whine when his fingers don’t relent, tugging on his hair. A grin works its way onto his face, and he takes pity on your overstimulated self, pulling his fingers out as he presses a kiss to your thigh before crawling back up to kiss you. You can taste yourself on his tongue as he licks at your bottom lip.
Your hands find purchase on his shoulders, drawing him deeper into the kiss, and you can feel the heavy weight of him against your thigh.
“Good?” he asks as he draws back from you, breathless.
“I think I blacked out at one point,” you respond, still feeling a little lightheaded, which is only exacerbated when he grinds his hips against yours and nips at your neck. “Now take your pants off.” You order as you push him back, propping yourself up on your elbows.
“Bossy,” he teases as he stands, unbuttoning his slacks, letting them drop to the floor. You don’t even have time to register anything else when he pulls down his briefs, and you can only stare with your mouth wide open and brows raised high on your forehead at the size of him. Clark looks a bit uncertain. “Is this okay?”
You surge to your feet and pull him down into a kiss. “It’s always the quiet ones,” you murmur more to yourself as you push him back onto the couch with no resistance and climb up onto his lap. He practically whimpers when you grind onto him. “Seriously, what the fuck were they feeding you?” You question against his lips as you slot yourself against his cock. Naked against him, you really take in how large Clark is in every capacity.
His hands have settled on the globes of your ass, letting you take the reins as you move your hips against his, the wet friction has him moaning into your mouth. “You feel so good,” he breathes. “Thought about this so much.”
“Yeah?” You ask. “Thought about me on top of you a lot, huh?” He nods and tilts his head back as you jut your hips against just at the right spot. You kiss down his jawline, whispering into his ear. “What else have you thought about? Stuffing me full of your cock?”
He stammers a bit, his brain short-circuiting at your dirty talk, and heat spreads up to his ears. “Y-yeah, thought about how good you’d look with me inside you,” he admits.
You reach down between you, grabbing hold of him, and his hips stutter up against your hand, moaning at the feel of your soft skin against his cock. The next thing he knows, you’re sinking onto him and he’s committing the hot, wet heat of your pussy to memory. The burn is expected given his size, and you whine with each inch of him you take.
Clark is a whimpering mess beneath you, brows furrowed in concentration as he tries not to move, letting you set your own pace, though the iron grip he has on your waist is going to leave bruises tomorrow. “So good, so good,” he repeats as he presses kisses into your shoulder. “Gosh, you’re so tight.”
You let the ‘gosh’ slide, given how full of him you are right now. It’s almost overwhelming the size of him, and just when you’re sure you’ve taken him all, you feel yourself slide down another inch. “Christ, you’re so big,” you whine, and you can feel his cock twitch inside of you at that.
“You can’t just say that,” he practically begs, voice cracking slightly, and he’s so tense, you can feel how taut all of his muscles are beneath you.
It’s sweet relief when you feel him bottom out in you and you stay there for a moment, letting yourself adjust, the stinging pain of the stretch not unpleasant, and when you feel more confident you’ve adjusted, you give an experimental thrust of your hips that has you both gasping.
You give another, and you can practically hear Clark grinding his teeth together, and then you raise yourself up, thighs shaking, before slamming back down. Your hands find purchase on his shoulders as you set a rhythm, a little sloppy at first as you lean forward to mash your mouths together, Clark whispering praises against your lips.
Every now and then, he leans back to take in the sight of you bouncing on his cock, completely hypnotized by the sight of your pussy swallowing him and the noises you make each time he bottoms out in you.
The rubber band begins to pull tight in your belly, and your thighs wobble, the rhythm faltering. “Clark.” It comes out as a plea. “Fuck me.”
Whatever restraint Clark has snaps at your words. One hand reaches up, grabbing hold of you by the back of your neck as the other digs into your waist, and then he’s forcing you up and down on his cock, hips jutting up to meet yours halfway, setting a bruising pace that has you keening, “Fuck—” you gasp out. “Oh god, I’m gonna—”
Your orgasm rips through you before you can even finish your sentence, and you feel like you’re drowning in the sensation as the world turns to white noise around you. “That’s it, sweetheart, you’re so good for me.”
Clark doesn’t even give you time to come down from your high as he manhandles you off of his lap, the sudden emptiness is jarring, but it doesn’t stay that way long as he bends you over the couch, hefting your ass into the air and sliding back in.
“Such a good girl,” he groans as he resumes the hard thrusts that have you gripping the back of your couch for dear life. The only thing you can focus on is the delicious slide of his cock into you, and you think you feel tears gathering at the corners of your eyes.
You’re whining, overstimulated as all hell, already feeling another orgasm beginning to bubble to the surface. “Clark, oh God, fuck—” You’re arching your back, and he hits it just right. “Ohmygod.”
A loud ‘smack’ echoes through the apartment, and you barely even register the sting on your ass cheek. “Gonna give me another one, baby?”
“Mhm,” you whine pathetically into the couch cushion. Body shaking, just trying to keep yourself up, though Clark is doing most of the heavy lifting. He reaches down, fingers circling your clit once, twice, and that’s all it takes as you buck back into him, a long, breathy moan escaping you as you cum again. It feels like every nerve in your body is on fire, and you think you’ve forgotten how to breathe.
You barely register him asking, “Where do you want it?”
Your mouth automatically babbling out, “Inside—fuck—cum inside me.”
That has his hips stuttering before he buries himself to the hilt, groaning lowly, and you can feel the warmth spread inside you. You’re both frozen like that, breathing heavily, and then Clark pulls out with a low hiss, gathering you up in his arms before collapsing back onto the couch, you cradled on top of him, pressing a kiss to the crown of your head.
“Jesus Christ, farm boy,” you finally breathe after a moment of silence, and you can feel his chest shake with laughter. You tilt your head up to look at him, and he captures your lips with his before pulling away, reaching up to caress the side of your face, tracing the contours of your cheekbones with his thumb.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathes, and you feel your heart stutter in your chest—a feeling you welcome with open arms.
“So, if I agree to let you take me out to dinner again, think you’ll show up this time?”
He grins. “Yes.”
The weekend passes in a blur of tangled limbs and soft confessions. You tease Clark about all it took was you on top of him to get him to talk to you in full sentences, finally. He stammers and blames you for being so pretty.
On Monday, when Clark comes in late, he does so with a cup of your favorite coffee, and you give him a hard time, despite the smile on your face, with no real bite to your words. Clark is on the receiving end of some light teasing from Lois and Jimmy, who, quite frankly, are relieved they won’t have to deal with a pining Clark any longer.
(They quickly realize, though, that even being together, he still stares after you as you flit about the newsroom, possibly looking even more lovestruck)
And when he submits his next Superman article to you, you still tear it to shreds. The peck on the cheek you give him as you hand him back the draft makes him feel a lot better, though.
Summary: After countless dates with a boy, you know that next time you’re going to sleep with him. But you’re way too inexperienced. So what better way is there than showing up at Joel Miller’s door with cherry pie in hand, and asking if he’s willing to help you out?
Warnings: 18+, MDNI, smut, oldman!joel, dom!joel, both reader and Joel are kinda unhinged, slight pervy!joel, tiny bit of mean!joel but he is a softie, cheating (also not? bc reader is not together with that boy), inexperienced!reader, girthy age gap! (61 and 24), praise kink, slight degradation, breeding kink (?), oral m!receiving, pinv, unprotected sex, multiple orgasms, creampie, fingering, riding, size kink, outbreak, tiny bit of thigh riding
A/N: oh my gosh that old, dirty man is back at it again. I missed him, I hope yall did too😌
Your fingers tapped nervously on the plate beneath the cherry pie. The sweet scent was almost unbearable, but giving up wasn’t an option—not after that time you spent searching for ingredients outside of Jackson.
The sun dipped low behind the trees and it was nearly evening. The timing was perfect for some pie, and you were sure Joel would love it.
His house sat on the quieter edge of Jackson, marked by a ‘Miller’ mailbox, a wooden porch, and a dried-out garden. (You couldn’t blame him though, he was working way too hard to keep up with his garden.)
Three knocks.
“Hi.” You greeted him, a smile tugging on your lips. His eyebrows quickly furrowed—just as you know him. Joel looked exhausted. His green flannel dirty, hair messy and dirt stained boots. He just came back from work.
“Whatcha doin’, girl?” His voice hoarse, deep. Sending shivers down your spine.
And you knew this was a bad idea. Heck, asking Joel—your mentor, your teacher and someone who took care of you countless times—to show you how to give someone a blowjob was embarrassing.
But you didn’t know how else to learn. You were way too inexperienced—no enough friends to ask, no porn, no education in this town.
And after your last time, having to interrupt a heavy make out session with that one boy who works at the day care, you needed desperate help for next time.
“Bought you cherry pie.”
His eyes lingered over the pie for a moment, then landed on your body—following the curve of your skin up and down, lingering far too long on the red crop top you were wearing.
“Made me pie, eh? It’s cold outside. Come on in.” He opened his door wide, a hand coming to the small of your back and letting you in—lingering a bit longer than usual.
From the inside, his house was cosier—the last bits of sunlight spilling from the windows, painting everything into a golden haze. His furniture, old and rugged like him, was scattered with soft pillows and a few photos here and there. And of course, his beloved wooden carved animals, carefully crafted, sat in every corner, quietly collecting dust.
You carefully place the pie on his kitchen counter, nervously biting the inside of your cheek.
Joel already pulls out two forks, one for you and one for him. “Now what do we have here.”
You knew he adored your pies. Sometimes you’d bake him two or even three, and he’d devour every last bite—but only after he’d done something in return. Whether it was fixing something around your apartment or bringing you something from patrol, there was always a little exchange involved.
“What’s the matter with you? Why the face?” he asks, and your heart leaps, suddenly remembering why you came. He already took a generous bite of cherry pie, a smear of filling resting messily at the corner of his mouth.
“Just—uhm. Can you do me a little favor?”
“A favor? Should’ve known. Y’never bring that old man pie without wanting any favors.”
You giggle quietly, also taking a bite of pie.
“What is it this time, sweetheart?”
Sweetheart.
The first time he called you that was when you were together on patrol. He taught you how to use a sniper, his hand landing gently on your shoulder, squeezing softly when you did well. Or when you helped him fix your light—tools in your hand, his voice calling you a good girl when you handed him the right ones.
Or when he had you creaming around his fingers. After giving him his pie, quietly, on your couch. Leaving small kisses on your neck, the other hand rubbing your nipples through your shirt, telling you how good you are for him.
And a ‘this can’t happen again.’ leaving you with wanting more.
So, you weren’t sure if you were here because of that boy or because of Joel. Because, admittedly, you have been aching for his touch since then.
“Cat got ya tongue?” He interrupts your thoughts with a quick snap of fingers. “My back is fuckin’ killing me. Let’s sit down on the couch, then you can tell me about that little favour of yours.”
Before you can answer him, he pulls out two plates, carefully puts one slice for you and two slices for himself, and then walks to his living room with them.
You take a deep breath.
Walking into the living room, you see him sitting there—already one of the slices gone—as he starts on the other. You gently make your way to him, sitting down next to him. He takes his fork with pie and brings it to your mouth, making you giggle and take it, a coo leaving his lips.
“C’mon, say it,” he urges, nudging you. Your mind spins with all the ways this could end.
Either he’ll react well—just as you know him—and help you, or he’ll make you leave his house and never contact him again.
You start, “So there is a boy.” And you can see him clenching his jaw tight, fork leaving his hand as his eyebrows furrow.
“That so?”
“Mhm. And I—I don’t know how to ask you this but—“
You look down, your fingers fidgeting with each other, heart thudding in your chest like it’s about to break out.
“Spit it out, kid.” He sighs, sets the plate down, and turns his body toward you—making it now impossibly more difficult for you.
“I—I want to do things with him. But i’m kinda too inexperienced.” Your cheek heat up while you’re talking, your gaze falls down not wanting to look into his disturbed face. The air in the room now feeling impossibly thick.
After an awkward silence you peak up to Joel, who is just looking at you. You can’t tell if it’s disbelief or disgust. Or maybe something in between.
“Jesus christ, girl.” He mutters out. “And what do you want me to do? Hold your hand while you’re getting dicked down?”
Your eyes widen, a gasp leaving your lips at his wording.
“Oh my god—no, no. That’s not what I meant.” Well, what you meant might be just a little bit worse than what he interpreted it as.
“Just—ya know…maybe show me how to give a blo—“
“Nah.” He interrupts you swiftly, shaking his head. “Not happenin’”
You sigh, defeated. Not only did you feel embarrassed, but you probably just ruined your almost perfect relationship with him. Joel took a pillow, mumbling something under his breath, and placed it over his lap. Your eyes perked up at that—he was hard. And he was trying to hide it.
“B-but, you also showed me something else the other time. Wouldn’t be that the same?”
He sighs. “Baby, you ain’t comin’ here dressed like that, bringing me cherry pie and asking me to give you sex ed.”
“Y’know I ain’t got anyone else.” You pout—maybe that’ll help. “And besides, you told me to come to you whenever I needed something right?”
“Christ,” he groans, rubbing his forehead. “Just can tell you how it’s done, yea? Nothin’ more.”
You hesitate. Hearing it out loud would be more awkward than him simply showing you. His eyes leave no room for choice, so you give a small nod.
“Comin’ here asking me how to blow someone.” He shakes his head, in disbelief.
“Heyyy, Joel—I don’t know how else to learn okey? I don’t want to embarrass myself.” You whine.
“S’fine.” He grumbles under his breath, sitting up straight. “Y’start by teasing.”
His eyes land on your tits.
“Show ‘em. Every boy will appreciate it.”
Your cheeks flush red.
“Then you get on those pretty knees. Take it out, give it some love.”
You ask, curious. “How do I give it some love?”
“Can’t serve everything on a silver spoon can I?” Grumpy, annoyed—making you amused. The pout from earlier starts to form again, you give him a pleading look.
He sighs once again. “Give kisses first. From top to bottom. Stroke gently.” And you notice how the tip of his ears are red.
“And the rest is pretty much self explanatory, ain’t it sweetheart?”
You look at him, the curiosity not letting up. As if you had no clue of the world, wanting him to explain it to you in every single detail. And you were so amused at how flushed and annoyed he was getting.
“God damn, girl. Open them lips, wrap them around and go up and down.”
“How fast?”
“Just how fast that person likes.” He shruggs.
“How do I know how fast that person likes it?” And it’s laughable at how dumb you were making yourself seem, but seeing him grip the pillow over his crotch tighter, his cheeks flushed and sweat dripping from his forehead—it was worth every single second.
“I let my girls know when I gather their hair in my palm and push them faster down.”
Your breath hitches, his girls.
“Then I buck my hips into their mouth,” he continues.
All this time, you thought Joel was a miserable, lonely man with no relationships whatsoever. Embarrassment washes over you as you think about how you believed you were the only one he liked—and that when he fingered you, you were special. You came here to get educated—no, you came here to seduce him. And that was the plain truth.
“Got that in your pretty little head?” He asks you, suddenly pinching your chin between his fingers and making you look at him.
You wanted him to push your head down and buck his hips against you.
“Not really.”
“You’re getting on my last nerves.” He grumbles before putting the pillow away and revealing his bulge. Your eyes land on it, as he zips down his pants, looking at you. His eyes darkening.
“C’mon. That brain of yours had to take some sort of information, right?”
His eyes land on your tits.
You quickly nod, pushing your crop top up quicky, revealing your breasts to him. You hear a groan leaving his chest, then a chuckle.
“Good, that’s what I like to see.” His hand finds your chest, fingers squeezing, then pinching your nipple. “Now what do we do?”
“Get on my knees.”
“Atta girl. Get on those knees.”
He doesn’t need to tell you twice when you slide down the couch and kneel in front of his bulge. Nodding, he gently pulls his hard one out of his boxers.
You almost start to drool at the sight.
He was so big. And he was pulsing. Red mushroom head, precum dribbling from the slit and decorated with veins from bottom to top.
“Now, what did we say?” He asks, his hand gently pumping himself up and down, while your eyes follow.
“Give it some love.”
Your hands shakily grab his cock, looking small compared to his length. Stroking up and down, looking up to him with doe eyes and placing kisses on every inch while you listen to Joels groans.
“That’s it.” He gathers your hair into his palm, forming a loose ponytail to keep it from falling in your face. “A man should always do this, yea? Not let you do all the work.”
Your cheeks heat up again, his eyes lock into yours as you nod. There was a warmth spreading inside your panties. You had already difficulties taking his fingers last time, you wonder how it’ll be if you took his cock.
“Wanna take him into my mouth.” You mumble.
He coos. “‘course ya do. C’mon then. Show me how good you listened.”
“Up and down.” You nod. “Hm, up and down, that’s right.” He answers.
You open your lips, hand gently stroking up and down his dick. Slowly, you wrap your mouth around his tip, hearing him shudder in response.
You try different things out. Swirling around, getting deeper, pulling out and giving small kitten licks. All the while Joel groans your name, and without noticing, your ponytail wrapped in his fist, he moves your head—slow, deliberate—up and down his length.
“Just like that. Y’learning fast.”
The pleasure in your abdomen getting unbearable. You feel yourself soaking through your panties as you start grinding your hips against the heel of your foot.
“Would ya look at that.” He chuckles, his hand going faster.
And as Joel’s movements get messier, he dives your head down until a gag rises sharp in your throat. You cough, and he pulls out quickly, watching your face closely.
“Deep breaths, deep breaths, baby.” He carefully tries to calm you down, and while you try to breath normal again, he starts apologising: “I’m sorry, sweetheart. That should’ve not happen. Got too lost in the pleasure.”
“S’okey.” You smile lazily to him, drool hanging from the sides of your face, lips swollen red. You looked too beautiful for your own damn good right now. And Joel wants nothing more to take you right then and there.
“I think that’s enough for today. You already learned how to use your mouth. I’m sure you’ll do good.”
Disappointment washes down your face. You sit there looking up to him with pleading eyes. The throbbing in your cunt unbearable and the urge to take care of him way too big.
He slips the edge of his shirt over his thumb and brushes the drool from your mouth, slow and careful.
“Pretty girl. You let that boy treat you well, yea? Or else.” He mumbles, but your eyes are only on his wet, aching cock.
The boy was forgotten, and Joel could see it in your hazy, fucked-out eyes. You were needy—needy to be touched—and he wished he could just take you, right on his couch. But he made that mistake once. He couldn’t let it happen again.
You move before you even realize it, climbing onto his lap and settling on one of his thighs. His hard cock grazes your skin, and he takes his time looking at you—your lips, your tits.
“Oh angel, we can’t.” A breath leaves his mouth.
You lean in and start kissing him—his cheek, his neck—fingers stroking through his hair as you suckle on his collarbones. His hands find your waist, gripping tight. One hand cups your breast, pinching your nipple. And before you even realize it, your hips are grinding against his thigh.
“Why?” You ask, laying your head against his chest, moving your hips in a slow rhythm.
“I would ruin you.” He answers, “And people in this town would kill us.”
“But you’re just teachin’ me something. Nobody has to know.”
A groan leaves his lips when your hands wrap around his cock, gently stroking up and down.
“That so?”
“Hm”, you nod. “Y’still need to teach me how to take cock.”
“Jesus christ, sweetheart. When did ya get so bold, huh?”
And you want to say ‘when you left me with aching for more’ but you don’t. Instead, you focus on the pleasures building in your tummy. Grinding harder against the rough fabric of his jeans, and a whimper slipping from your lips.
Suddenly, Joel mumbles a “fuck it,” then follows with, “Pull your pants and panties down. Now.” He demands it—and you do just that, standing up and tugging everything down.
“But you ain’t gonna complain if it hurts.” His hands pull you back into his lap, making you sit down again. “All this begging and then complaining about it hurting would be pathetic, girl.”
“C’mere. You’re wet enough.” One hand touches your folds, the other holding his cock. You buckle up, his tip gliding over your folds as you release a breath.
You gently and slowly, sink down.
“Easy, easy, babygirl.” He helps you. Squeezing your hips and guiding you through. A cry leaving your lips when you fully sit down. His length stretching you, touching places you’ve never even felt before.
“S’big, yea? That’s a mans cock, baby. Not gonna gave that much satisfaction when you ride that boy.”
Your head falls to his shoulder, biting down, clenching on his cock. “So big.” A whimper falling from your lips.
“Oh I know, I know.” He whispers. “But you’ll take it, baby. Still need to teach you, don’t I?” He says it playfully. Joel knows the boy is long gone from your mind—and that you came here for one thing: to get fucked by him. There’s no denying it.
He shifts underneath you, gripping you by your thighs and thrusts two times up, leaving you breathless.
“Good?”
“Mhm. More.” And he doesn’t need to hear that twice. He starts giving you quick thrusts, altering between deep and slow, while your moans fill the room.
Your hands grip his shirt, looking at him, his eyebrows furrowed, concentrating, rough breaths leaving his mouth. Tits start to bounce up and down, while he pumps in and out of your squelching cunt.
“Ain’t the one I used to be, girl—help that old man, will you? Start moving your hips.” He groans.
Your body almost limb from the pleasure, starts moving at his request. Going up and down, circling. His hands guiding you, helping you. Biting your lips, whines filling the quiet room and as Joels body suddenly shudders, you feel it.
His cum pumping you. Spurt after spurt, filling you to the brim.
You whimper, looking down, seeing drops of cum escaping your pussy.
“Oh, that’s a good girl.” He coos. “Tightest fuckin’ cunt i’ve ever had. Made me cum in no time.”
And you’re still aching for more.
“Could’ve just go to him.” You shrug. “He would’ve at least lasted longer.”
Joel looks at you with widen eyes. The relief after his orgasm completely gone, his cheeks and the tip of his ears flushing red. Not with shame or embarrassment.
But anger.
Without a word, he grabs your hips and forces you down onto the couch beside him. Your eyes widen, hands clutching his neck as he looms over you.
“Joel, what are you doing?” You ask, with no answer. Instead, he spreads your legs and grabs his cock.
He glances down, noticing he’s still soft. After a few frustrated strokes, he mutters, “God dammit.”
You giggle.
“Find that funny, huh?” He asks and you can’t even answer before he fills you with two of his fingers, a yelp leaving your lips. “Still got my fingers, baby.”
“Joel..” You squeeze your eyes shut when he curls them, his thick fingers going in and out of you.
“M’right here, angel. Y’think that boy of yours can reach those spots huh?”
And the spots he reaches are indescribable. Your mouth falls open when he hits your g-spot over and over again. Your legs start to shake, as you feel yourself getting close.
“Look at that, y’let me cum in you so well.” He whispers, looking at the ring of sperm build around his fingers whenever he pulls them out of your cunt.
“Joeljoeljoel.” With that you clench down his fingers, hips bucking, tummy clenching, you come around his fingers with a big cry.
Before you can even come down, he’s filling you again—his cock sliding in. The stretch feels good this time, and you clutch his shoulders as he murmurs your name. Your sensitive walls tighten around him, his length still a bit soft but just firm enough to push deep.
“Takin’ it so so good, baby.” He gently whispers in your ear. His lips latch into your neck, kissing and biting. Your moans start to fill the room again, as his thrusts begin in a quick rhythm.
“Feels good, feels so good.” You whimper, and squirm around. “I know it does, I know. That boy may last longer, but he won’t give you a reason for your pussy to be swollen red.” He looks down at your cunt while saying, a thumb landing on your clit.
You can’t even listen to him as the pleasure grows in your tummy once again. “M’gonna cum, please.”
“Good, c’mon then.”
His thumb speeds up at your clit, your leg falls from the couch because of the hard thrusts. Your hands grip impossibly tight to his shoulders.
“Gonna fill you up again, show this whole town who you belong to, yea?” Your eyes get wide at that, making him chuckle. His thrusts growing sloppier and sloppier.
“Joel, please.”
“Shh, s’okey. Cum with me, baby.” And you do.
You let go. This time, it’s harder than any orgasm you’ve ever had. Your mouth falls open, silent, as Joel gives you two more hard thrusts before spilling inside you—filling you up again, his release dripping onto the couch beneath you.
He kisses your temple, your nose, your forehead while you come down. His breathing is still hard and deep just like yours, softly coming down from the hard orgasms you two just had.
He pulls out, sits up slightly and watches as his cum oozes out of you.
“Christ, all filled up aren’t you?” His fingers wander to your slit, then he gathers the cum that drips out of your hole and pushes it in with two of his fingers.
With all the exhaustion, you can only whimper.
He thrusts them in and out, thumb gently landing on your clit, just slightly grazing it and making you shudder because of the sensitivity.
“No boy, yea? You’re mine. And if that takes, that’ll prove it.” He looks at you, furrowed eyebrows. And you nod your head softly, limbs to weak to function as you lay on his couch filled to the brim while his fingers are still working inside of you.
The next orgasm rolls in quietly, soft and fleeting—just enough to leave you relaxed and sleepy. Joel lets out a quiet chuckle, then pulls you close by the waist and shoulder. You nestle your head against his shoulder, and he kisses your forehead with quiet affection.
“God damn, y’need to bring me more often pie, sweetheart.”
Summary: Over your four years working for Reed Richards, you'd given yourself one job: you can be his friend, but don't fall for Johnny Storm's charms. Too bad you had already failed that mission before it could even begin.
Warnings: 18+ ONLY MDNI, SMUT (making out, unprotected sex, p in v, nipple play, oral f. receiving, temperature play, creampie, aftercare), porn with a LOT of plot, slight hint of some angst, fluff, friends to lovers, Johnny is a massive flirt, mutual pining, SPOILERS! for The Fantastic Four: First Steps, female reader but no characteristics described, mentions of parental loss, maybe some incorrect stuff regarding the 60s and how it worked but it's a fantasy world, lightly edited so apologies for any mistakes
“We need to adjust the parameters for this. There’s a few more levels that I want to adjust, to ensure that we’ve scanned the baby for all possible anomalies,”
Years ago, when you had miraculously been offered the position as Dr. Reed Richards assistant, it was a dream come true. The smartest man alive, holding 18 Doctorate degrees himself, choosing you out of the thousands of applicants to be his assistant was a ‘pinch me’ moment. Of course, he didn’t want an assistant, it was thrust upon him by his wife, but you liked to think after all this time you’d wormed your way into his heart.
Working with Reed…was something else entirely. It was a learning curve, understanding just how the man’s brain worked. Even to this day, you weren’t sure you understood it. Even when things went perfectly, when test runs on prototypes worked out better than you could’ve ever imagined, Reed was never satisfied. Something could always be better, be improved, as if his brain was factoring in the hundreds of thousands of possibilities that could occur and alter your data. You made it work, though–with patience and understanding–you managed to find the best way to work around Reed’s faults and work with him, to support him.
What was supposed to be just a job in the Baxter Building became so much more. Through it, you gained a family you never thought quite possible.
Reed’s wife, Susan Storm, was another one of the brightest minds that you had ever encountered. Kind, compassionate, but fiercely loyal and unafraid to step up to the plate when a challenge arrived, when the people she loved were threatened. You admired her and everything she stood for, the way she carried herself day in and day out. And since the day you had arrived at the Baxter Building, she welcomed you with open arms, as if you had always been part of the family.
Ben Grimm was the most talented pilot you’d ever had the pleasure of meeting. The perfect counter to Reed and his panicky mind at times, having known the man long enough to understand his quirks in a way you could only hope to. Ben was always kind, always open, always ready to lend a hand or be a shoulder for anyone that needed to listen.
Johnny Storm…was the bane of your existence, in the best way.
“Wrong address, sweetheart. The modeling agency is two blocks down. I could escort you over there, if you’d like?”
Those were the first words the hot-headed younger brother of Sue Storm had said to you, passing by you in the lobby of the building on your first day, a wink thrown in for good measure when he’d spoken.
Having followed Dr. Richards' work long enough, which meant knowing bits about his personal life, you were well aware of the reputation that Johnny Storm carried. The papers and magazines, talk shows and gossip blogs, all called him a playboy simply because he’d never been in a long-term relationship but was still a ladies man. You never saw him like that, though. All you saw was a brilliant guy, a lover of space, even if that passion of his was sometimes overlooked because of his ‘love for women’.
And, oh, how you wished his empty, blatant flirting with you didn’t bring a blush to your cheeks every time, or make your heart skip a beat, but it did. Every single time, it did. You weren’t blind: Johnny Storm was objectively handsome and much too charming for his own good, and you decided right then and there that you would use every ounce of your willpower to ignore his empty flirts. You didn’t need to become another girl hopelessly in love with the heartthrob of the Fantastic Four, even if your heart ached when you saw him with anyone else.
Those four had become important to you in ways that you would never be able to describe, but Sue always described it best: a family.
That’s why when four of the closest people to you in life went up into space for Reed’s exploration mission, and came back cosmically changed forever, you never left their sides. They were your family, and family stuck together, no matter what.
“Reed,” your comment was cautious, hands stilling at your work station in the lab of the Baxter Building. Glancing over your shoulder, Reed was hunched over the machine he’d built in just a day, specifically to monitor the health of the baby growing inside of Sue’s stomach, as Herbie rocked back and forth beside him. “You’ve scanned Sue a thousand times at this point-”
“That’s an exaggeration. I’ve scanned her 123 times-”
“That’s not the point,” he glanced over at you then, looking away the second he saw the pointed look you were throwing at him. With a sigh, you abandoned your work, leaning back against the table behind you to watch him fret over the device. “We have run every test possible, scanned for every data point that links back to the fluctuations in your DNA from the cosmic rays we noted years ago, and we’ve gotten nothing. Your baby is okay.”
“There are still more tests to run,”
Another sigh escaped past your lips, and you allowed yourself to hang your head with a shake.
Since the moment Sue had announced her pregnancy, he’d been like this: even more on edge than usual. Baby-proofing the kitchen, smoke detectors in every single room and hallway, baby gates around every corner, it was getting insufferable. A sweet gesture, overall, and a testament to how much he loved and adored Sue, but exhausting to everyone else that had to be in his presence.
“Fine, but I’m not breaking the news to Sue that you want to scan her…again,”
“I already told her to meet me down here before dinner for another scan. We can adjust the parameters tomorrow. I want another data set from today’s scan at the current parameters to compare the changes with,” Reed never looked in your direction, still fiddling with the machine in front of him. “You’re staying for dinner, yes?”
“I’m making it,” was the response you shot back to him, powering down your workstation in the lab and rising from your chair, crossing the room to stand in front of him. “Apparently Sue has been craving spaghetti, and requested my family recipe.”
“You can’t argue with a pregnant woman,” Reed muttered, just loud enough for you to hear, but he still never looked up. “I’ll see you up there for dinner, then. There’s a few more tests that I want to run.”
“You also have a meeting at 5:45 and one at 6:15,” you shot back to him as you turned to leave the lab, checking the desk calendar lying beside your work station. There was a hum from the man, the smallest acknowledgement you were going to get, so you set your sights on Herbie and waved him forward. “Come on, Herb. An extra hand in the kitchen is always nice.”
As much as you thought of the Fantastic Four as your family, you never stayed for dinner often. You always tried your hardest to uphold the lines between your work life and personal life, not wanting to blur them completely (though, you were sure you had already blurred them enough for it to be too late). There had been plenty of times over the years where you’d stayed for dinner, usually once a month at this rate.
Sue always invited you, and you never wanted to disappoint her, and you gave in often. Ben had a way of wrangling you into saying yes before you were ever given the chance to speak at all. Reed had only asked once, asking you to stay back for the dinner months ago in which they announced to you that Sue was pregnant.
Johnny asked every day. You said no, most of the time, but when you did stay for dinner it was usually because those captivating, bright blue eyes were staring into your soul and pleading with you to stay.
Speak of the devil: there he sat at the dining room table. Clad in a white t-shirt with their logo resting over the pocket and the blue pants of his suit, a weird sight given that you had been in the lab with Reed all day and didn’t think any of them had left to attend to any ‘hero’ work.
You didn’t say a word as you strolled past him into the kitchen with Herbie on your heels, simply plucking the box of Lucky Charms from his hands as you swooped past. It was impossible not to smile to yourself at the scoff of indignation he let out at your actions.
“Hey-!”
“You’re going to spoil your appetite,” you shot back at him, throwing him a smirk over your shoulder before slotting the now closed cereal box into the cupboard where it usually sat.
Herbie beeped out a set of beeps that, over the years, you had come to understand. This time, he was agreeing with you, pointing out some facts about how eating out of the box lacked moderation, and would in turn actually spoil his appetite. You gave the little robot a fist bump for that, something that Johnny shot the little helper a glare for.
“Come on, Herbert, you’re supposed to take my side on these things!” There was no real malice in his words as he got up from the dining room table, rounding into the kitchen as you took the pots and pans that Herbie had gathered for you, setting them out along the counter where you needed them. “Baby, you didn’t tell me you were staying for dinner.”
When you told yourself that you weren’t going to fall into the trap that was the charming and charismatic Johnny Storm, you weren’t prepared for two things.
One: when he got comfortable around someone, he could be an even bigger flirt. Pet names were constant. Baby, sweetheart, honey, doll, love…you name it, Johnny called you it. Constantly. So constantly you were sure the blush on your cheeks was a permanent staple. He’d even once called you his little flame–that had been met with the tip of your heel being dug into his foot.
The second thing you weren’t prepared for: touch. Johnny Storm didn’t understand personal space, not when he was comfortable around you. If you were in the room with him, he was standing less than a foot from you, and you always knew because you could feel the warmth that radiated off his unusually hot skin. His hands would always rest on your arm, your elbow, right at the bottom of your lower back.
Moments like this in the kitchen were normal, and yet they still fried your brain. That simply little pet name, and Johnny’s warm hand ghosting over your lower back, before coming to rest on your hip. Clearing your throat, you gently pried his hand from your body, shooting him a look as you moved around to get the ingredients for dinner, hoping your flushed cheeks didn’t give you away.
“When your pregnant sister has cravings for my personal family recipe spaghetti, I’m required to oblige her,”
“I asked you to make this for me two weeks ago and you refused,”
Johnny followed close behind you, like a little puppy following its owner. You tried, and failed, to contain your smile at his actions. The media might paint him as some sex god (you weren’t going to lie…if he wanted to be, he could be) but you saw him for what he was: the epitome of a little golden retriever at times.
“Well you aren’t a hormonal pregnant woman with super powers,” you shot back at him, taking the opened jar of spaghetti sauce from Herbie’s hand and dumping it into the pot on the stove top, turning up the heat on the boiling pot of water for the noodles Herbie had laid out for you.
“No, but Johnny is a hormonal guy with super powers, who adores your cooking,” bumping his hip with yours, Johnny stole the wooden spoon from your hand with ease, dipping it into the simmering sauce to stir. With that same ease, he leaned down just slightly, leaving a kiss to your bare shoulder that felt as if it had left a brand into your skin. “Johnny also happens to just adore you, and loves when you stay for dinner.”
You had given up on the blush by now. He’d surely seen it enough over the years with his incessant flirting, there was no use in hiding it. Bumping your hip back with him, biting into your bottom lip in a failed attempt to conceal the smile spreading across your lips, you stole the wooden spoon back from him.
“Johnny also talks in the third person too much, and is an insufferable flirt half the time,” he dipped his hand into the sauce, coating his fingers in red as you whacked lightly at his hand, forcing him to withdraw as quickly as he’d dipped in. “What have I told you about doing that!”
He’d laughed, one of your favorite sounds, as you glanced over at him with a bright smile, unable to truly stay mad at him…ever.
That was, until he dipped his sauce-covered ring finger and middle finger into his mouth to lick the sauce clean off, eyes never leaving yours and a smirk curling up on his lips. It forced you to swallow the lump that had formed in your throat and look away as quickly as you could, feeling a different kind of heat swelling in your body: yeah, Johnny knew exactly what he was doing.
“Not sure, baby, that look you’re giving me right now doesn’t scream that I’m insufferable-”
“Oh, that’s exactly what it’s screaming,” you shot back, even with the ghost of a smile pulling at your lips as Herbie readied the garlic bread on the counter behind you. “If you’re not going to help, you can leave this kitchen. I don’t care if you live here.”
Johnny rolled his eyes in response, hopping up onto the counter next to the stove where you worked. You caught the box of noodles he knocked over before they could fall to the ground, shooting him a look as he held his hands up innocently, dumping them into the boiling water pot.
“You basically live here, too,”
“I don’t-”
“Yeah, because you keep refusing the room that Sue prepared for you,”
He…wasn’t wrong. Two years ago, Sue had transformed what was previously the guest room into a room that looked like it had been built just for you. Your favorite color on the walls, a matching quilt set on the bed, and she’d offered it to you. A place to stay, to live, given that Reed sometimes had you in the Baxter Building until the oddest hours of the morning.
You declined, still desperate to keep that line between your work life and your personal life separate, as tempting of an offer as it was. Sue wasn’t slighted by your decision at all, instead offering it to you to use whenever you needed to. There had been times in which you had taken up that offer, a few changes of clothes tucked away in the room on the odd chance that you’d need them.
“This place is your home, not mine,” you didn’t look at Johnny as you spoke, simply shaking your head as you stirred both the sauce and the noodles in their respective pots. “I’m Reed’s assistant, I’m not family-”
“Stop it,”
Even with the heat that rolled off Johnny Storm, every time his bare skin touched your own it sent a shiver straight down the length of your spine. His hand curled around your jawline, thumb and index finger pinching at your chin to force you to look up at him, to gaze into those intense blue eyes and the look on his face that had morphed so quickly from playful to serious.
“Johnny-”
“You are family, whether you like it or not,” the statement didn’t surprise you, it wasn’t the first time in your four years of knowing him that Johnny had said something like this to you, or anyone on the team for that matter. It always made you feel warm inside, though, to hear him say it, to see that loyalty and love for the people he cared about shine through in his words, such a stark contrast to the way the media sometimes portrayed him. “There’s not a thing I wouldn’t do for you.”
That was new. He hadn’t made a declaration like that to you before.
It was something about the look in his eyes as he said it–so genuine, so soft–that had you melting into his touch. His hand curled back up to your cheek, thumb just barely caressing the apple of your cheek, leaving a trail of heat with every swipe of his finger against your skin. Your heart betrayed you, fluttering in that moment like it always did.
These moments used to be few and far between. You didn’t know how else to describe them besides just calling them moments. Over the first few years of knowing Johnny Storm, there were small moments where that empty flirts verged on the edge of something different, something raw and real. But in the last year, they happened more often than they didn’t. Johnny wasn’t pictured out with as many women anymore, wasn’t brazenly caught flirting with anyone with legs and a pulse at events. And in moments like this, even in front of his family, he’d touch you, caress you, speak to you in a way that felt so genuine, that felt like it was real. Like the flirting was no longer just empty, meaningless fun.
That line between your work and personal life might have been a muddled mess, but the line between being Johnny Storm’s friend and something entirely more was practically non-existent now.
“You say that to all your women?” you quipped back, trying to hold your own, even as you were melting inside and your voice came out as a whisper. The playful look on Johnny’s face returned in a second, his fingers instead pinching the cheek he’d just been so softly caressing.
“Never, honey. Those words are reserved for my brother-in-law’s pretty little assistant,”
In typical Johnny fashion, he was able to dissolve and ruin whatever the moment was in an instant with his usual ‘charm’. Swatting his hand away, you returned your attention to the food on the stove in front of you, smiling to yourself as Herbie beeped out a popular song you’d heard on the radio behind you.
“You always have a line, don’t you?”
“Hey, you know what you signed up for, being friends with all this,” he jokingly motioned to his body, and you caught sight of the smile lighting up his face again as you laughed incredulously at his actions. “As part of the package deal, being friends with me, you are legally required to attend movie night in the living room with me after dinner.”
You hummed in response, even if you were smiling the entire time just from listening to him talk.
“This sounds like an impromptu movie night-”
“All of our movie nights are impromptu, babe-”
“I saw earlier that channel 2 is playing The Sound of Music tonight,” you shot back at him, finally looking up at him with an expectant look on your face. “That’s what I want to watch.”
Johnny groaned, throwing his head back and knocking it against the cupboards with a wince on his face. You couldn’t help but chuckle at his overdramatic antics, as usual.
“But channel 3 is showing Psycho!”
“And you dipped your hand–which, god knows where that thing might have been–into my sauce for dinner,”
Johnny opened his mouth to speak, before mulling over your words, and effectively shutting it with a nod.
“You know what, if it gets you to have a movie night with me, then I’ll take it,”
God, you adored this man, more than you should. More than you wanted to. In his presence, especially now, you were pretty sure the smile on your face was a constant, that it would never leave, as you laughed at him once more.
Finishing off the special blend of additions to your sauce, giving it another swirl with the wooden spoon, you brought it up to your lips for a quick taste. Satisfied, you held one hand under the spoon to keep it from dripping, holding it up toward Johnny.
“Alright, give it a taste,”
His eyes stayed locked on yours, that familiar intensity and warmth in them keeping you locked in place, holding your breath, as he took a quick slurp from the spoon. Smacking his lips together, running his tongue out along his lips, he gave a definitive nod.
“As always…perfection. Though, I expect nothing less from you,”
Before you could retort to his cheesy comment, his hand reached out, eyes still locked on yours, as he cupped your chin once more and ran his finger over your lips. With the slightest of glances down, you saw the small spot of red on his finger, the remnants of the sauce he’d so gently just wiped from your lips.
Glancing back up to those blue eyes you loved more than you cared to admit, you caught the way they finally glanced down at your lips, before looking away as if to not get caught.
“...am I interrupting something?”
As if Johnny had burst into flames and burned you, you jumped away from him immediately the second you heard the voice of Sue Storm across the room. You never even looked back up at Johnny, or turned around to look at the woman by the dining room table, just stared down into the sauce pot as you continued to stir it and the noodles.
“Actually, sis, you very much are interrupting something here,” Johnny called out across the room, and you could see him gesturing with his hands between you both from the corners of your vision.
“Johnny,” you rolled your eyes, glancing over at him with flushed red cheeks from what had just transpired. “Sue isn’t interrupting anything.”
“She kind of is. We were kind of having a moment here-”
“Johnny, we were not having a moment,”
You very much were having a moment, but you weren’t admitting that to him. His ego burned hot enough, no need to stroke the fire.
Sue laughed, rounding into the kitchen as she stopped by Herbie, thanking him and taking the garlic bread tray from him to pop into the oven he had preheated.
“Johnny, why don’t you go get cleaned up for dinner and stop bothering the poor girl. Bad enough I’m making her cook for me, she doesn’t need you hovering,”
The man let out a sigh, muttering something mocking toward his sister, as he threw himself off the counter with dramatic flair. He wasn’t done making your heart race, though, his hand curling around the back of your head as he planted a kiss directly to your hairline, before he disappeared from the kitchen with a pat to Herbie’s head.
The pots on the stove were forgotten as you turned around, simply watching him disappear with an incredulous look on your face. Quickly, your eyes shot to Sue, who was watching you with a smirk as she leaned against the island counter.
“There was nothing happening there,”
“I didn’t say there was,”
“But you’re giving me that look,”
“I’m not giving you any kind of look,” the blonde laughed, stepping up beside you to take the wooden spoon from your hand, tasting the sauce herself with a happy little sigh. “Just…enjoying watching the show from the sidelines, waiting for one of you to make a move.”
“Sue, there’s no move to make. He’s just…he’s Johnny,”
“And Johnny is my brother,” she shot back with a grin. “And Johnny has never been like that with someone, just with you.”
You didn’t get to respond, before Herbie cut in with another series of beeps. Your eyes shot wide as you listened to what he was saying, cheeks flaring an even brighter shade of red as Sue choked on air, laughing to herself at your side.
“HERBIE! THAT’S SO INAPPROPRIATE!”
❤︎
It had been two weeks, and Reed had somehow managed to scan Sue a total of 142 times, now. Sometimes, you wondered how she was able to put up with his hovering, the hovering that had gotten exponentially worse since she announced she was pregnant.
“I’m not getting clear imaging,” Reed called out from the other side of the lab, the only sound in the room being the incessant beeping of the machine he’d built to monitor the baby, and the solder iron in your hand as it worked away on the small device in front of you. You shook your head at his comments once more, adjusting the eye protectors resting on the bridge of your nose as little sparks jumped up as the last piece of the triangular device was finally attached. “I’m going to have Herbie recalibrate this, I don’t like the data output I’m getting, I want a clear image on the next scan. Is the second bridge device ready?”
“Just finished fixing the soldering on the stand, so it should be good to go,” you shot back, tossing your eye protectors down at your workstation, lifting the device carefully and carrying it over to Reed’s station, setting it down with the matching device. “And, once again, you really don’t need to scan the baby again.”
You were met with silence, unsurprisingly. Until, the workstation down the room set off its alarm bell, a familiar tone that had you stand up straighter where you stood.
“New deep space transmission,” there was a hint of elation in Reed’s tone as he said it, quickening his pace across the room with Herbie hot on his trail. “Let’s identify the origin, then record it for further analysis.”
Quickly walking back over to your workstation, your eyes drifted to that desk calendar sitting next to you, and to today’s date: a poorly drawn flame, and the time “2:15” scribbled in a barely legible handwriting that you recognized instantly. Even if you hadn’t, the terribly drawn heart with your initials in it scribbled in the corner would’ve given it away.
“Your analysis is going to have to wait, Reed,” you called out with a sigh, knowing you weren’t the one who put this meeting on the calendar, but you sure knew who had. “You have a 2:15 incoming.”
“2:15? What 2:15?” Reed never even looked in your direction, focused on the new transmission. “You didn’t tell me there was anything on my calendar.”
“Well, I didn’t put this one on the calendar myself, but you must have cleared it at some point…”
Just then, the elevator doors to the lab popped open with a familiar ding sound.
“Ah–Reed!”
Good god, Johnny Storm was trying to kill you. You weren’t even sure if that was an exaggeration at this point, because you wouldn’t put it past him.
Blue looked good on him, it always had, but the navy blue button up he was wearing was doing nothing for your mind that was screaming at you to “keep it professional.” It didn’t help that the first few buttons were already undone, giving a slight peak to his chest. The white chinos–those were the nail in your metaphorical coffin. They had no right to be that tight, and he had no right to look so damn good in them.
“Ah…that 2:15,” you tried your best to conceal your laugh at Reed’s comment across the lab. “Johnny, do we have to today?”
“Johnny, do we have to today? As if I didn’t ask to put it on the schedule,” the blonde man in question mumbled mockingly to himself as he slid up to your side at your workstation as you laughed at his antics. One of his hands grabbed the back of your neck, tugging you closer before you could even think about it, pressing another kiss to your hairline. Suddenly, you felt like you were back in the kitchen weeks ago. “Darling, have I ever told you how breathtaking you look in your lab coat?”
“It’s a white coat, Johnny, it’s nothing special,” you deflected, taking just a short glance up at him before you had to look away, already knowing you were as red as the table beneath your hands.
“But the girl wearing it is-”
“Johnny, do you want to have this meeting or do you want to flirt with my assistant?”
You hung your head with a groan, even as Johnny laughed at the comment from his brother-in-law. His arm slung around your waist, hand settling on your hip as the heat that rolled off his body enveloped you for a moment, letting yourself lean into the side hug he gave you and the squeeze to your hip, before he was gone.
“There’s enough time in the day to do both! No, I had some thoughts about the new suit designs,”
“There are no new space suit designs-”
You glanced over at the pair as they met face-to-face in the middle of the lab, Johnny holding up the sheet he was concealing behind his back.
“You finished them years ago…they have dust on them,” Johnny deadpanned, letting out a sigh as Reed took the design sheet from him. “Look, I get it. You’re going to be a father soon, you’re scared-”
“I’m not-I’m not scared,” Reed cut in immediately, and you could hear the anxious undertone that overtook him immediately at Johnny’s words. Without even having to be summoned, knowing how his brain worked after all this time, you simply shrugged off your lab coat and stalked over to the pair, taking the design sheet from Reed’s hands without a word and placing it on his chalkboard full of equations. “I’m-I’m busy, Johnny. I’m busy. I’m busy, there’s a difference.”
“He means busy on his pace to scan Sue at least 200 times before she gives birth,” you shot back, sending Reed a bright smile that he frowned at, clearly seeing that you were siding with Johnny here. “Not terrified of becoming a father at all, those two things definitely don’t correlate.”
Johnny laughed, smile bright, and it only brightened the one on your face, a tug somewhere deep in your chest pulling on you when he locked eyes with you. Reed snapped your attention back to him in an instant, running a hand down his face as he gestured in Herbie’s direction.
“Just handle the new deep space transmission, please, instead of ganging up on me with Johnny,”
You laughed, heels clicking against the floors of the lab as you joined Herbie’s side as he waited for the transmission to be scratched into the record. There was a woosh of air, the air beside you heating up instantly as a hand found its way to rest on your lower back.
“Have you listened to it yet?”
The smile on your face softened as you glanced over at Johnny, who was staring down at the record in front of you both with pure excitement in his eyes. Beyond the physical moments, his flirtatious moments, these were the moments that had your plan to not fall for Johnny Storm splitting at the seams, if it hadn’t already.
“Seems to be a lot more of the same, just another complex signal,” Johnny left your side, the heat going with him, as he leaned against the blue table behind him. Herbie took the record from its place, rolling over to Johnny to hand it directly to him. “You’re more than welcome to take it with you, give it a listen.”
He twirled the record in his hands with a grin, absentmindedly reaching out to scratch the top of Herbie’s head. That simple little action elicited a giggle, hand coming up to cover your mouth as Johnny glanced up at you with a smirk.
“What’s so funny?”
“Herbie isn’t a dog, and yet you treat him like one,” you explained, stepping up just in front of him and grabbing his hand lightly, stopping the twirling of the record in his hands. “Also, you do know you aren’t supposed to get your fingerprints all over these, right?”
It was Johnny’s turn to laugh as he spun his hand, catching it in his palm and bringing it up to his lips, leaving a scorching hot, but gentle, kiss to your knuckles, sending a shiver straight through your bones. He didn’t even have a retort to your comment, just simply held your hand in his, thumb stroking along your skin, while your entire body flushed with a feeling you wanted to ignore.
“Johnny, what have I told you about flirting in my lab? I need my assistant, we’re trying to run a test,”
The moment was gone in seconds, your hand dropped from Johnny’s as he raced to the other side of the lab, following closely behind Reed and tossing the record onto the closest table.
You could only shake your head with a laugh, walking beside Herbie to join them, knowing Reed would be mumbling to himself the rest of the week about this moment and how much Johnny liked pissing him off.
“Cool! I got time,”
Reed didn’t roll his eyes as you and Herbie joined them back at your workstations, but you could see how much he wanted to. Holding the device you’d just finished off in his hand, you watched in the same awe you had for four years as his arm stretched across the length of the lab, placing it right back beside your own workstation.
“Bridge teleportation test one,” grabbing the notebook lying beside the device that contained your notes on the project, you flipped to a new page, prepared to note down any disparities that occurred during the test, as Reed placed an egg on the newly soldered stand. “Movement of organic matter six meters.”
Johnny grabbed the protective glasses beside the work desk, about to slip them on, before Reed took them with no hesitation and slipped them on himself. The blonde turned to you with an incredulous look that simply drew a laugh from you.
“Those are his pair, you can’t touch his pair,” you teased the man, who simply shot you a wink in return, as you both took the pairs that Herbie was holding out to you both. Johnny gave the little robot a quick fist bump.
Such a simple action that still had you grinning in childlike adoration at the side of his face.
Reed gave you a simple look, confirming you were ready. You gave him a nod, as he took hold of the switch to activate the device.
“Let’s run it,”
The whirring of the machine sounded, three silver beams of energy emitting from the device and encasing the egg within a sphere of energy. There was a shift in the room as that energy grew, as the hum of the machine filled the air, before there was a simple POP–and the egg was gone.
One glance from each of you over your shoulders was enough to confirm that the egg was, in fact, sitting on the opposite platform. Completely untouched and intact.
“It worked!” Johnny exclaimed, gesturing toward the egg.
That’s when the power to the building cut out.
It wasn’t surprising, given the notes you both had taken. The amount of energy that needed to be funneled through the device in order to channel enough energy to actually move organic matter without hurting it was sure to be beyond the energy limits of the Baxter Building. A full power outage…not what you were expecting. Not that you could write that note down in the pitch black of the room.
“Johnny,” Reed’s voice called out in the dark, steady with no hint of any emotion you could decipher in it. The man in question came to life beside you, body engulfed in flames, the flame resistant fabric of his specially tailored clothing working overtime to keep him from being stark naked. He stood with his hands on his hips, and even from the side you could see the smirk curling up on his lips. “Could you reset the breaker?”
You’d known Johnny long enough now, been his friend for enough years, to know him. Know him better than a colleague should. The instant dip in his smirk to a frown was clear, the tension in his broad shoulders, as he tossed his glasses down onto the table. He didn’t spare either of you another look, crossing the room to grab the record.
“Other way-”
“I know,” Johnny snapped, beside his flame engulfed body was on the other side of the lab, flipping the breaker as the electricity of the building roared to life again. The second it did, he was in the elevator, doors shutting without another word.
Neither you nor Reed spoke for a moment, simply looking down at the bridge teleportation device on the table in front of him.
“I’ve upset him,”
Reed didn’t phrase it like a question, he said it like a statement. Both were true, though. Reed always knew when he had upset Johnny, but never how he had really upset him.
You took a deep breath, nodding, as you scribbled a note in your notebook before turning on your heels, stalking back to your own workstation.
“Well, he went out of his way to put time on your calendar just to talk to you about the suits, and you did dismiss him…” you trailed off as you reached your station, eyes flickering back down to that desk calendar beside you. You couldn’t help it, letting your fingers lightly trail over that little heart with your initials, smiling to yourself, wishing it meant more than what it did mean: nothing. “Johnny loves space, he only got to go up once before…this all happened. You can’t blame him for wanting to go back.”
It was quiet for another moment in the lab, before Reed spoke up again.
“You know him well…better than I think I do,”
The flush in your cheeks was inevitable at that, embarrassment flooding you as it was easy for you to read between the lines of what Reed was trying to insinuate.
“I-I just listen to him. I always listen,”
It was quiet again.
“Go check on him,” was all Reed said. “If there’s anyone he’d want to talk to right now, it’s you.”
You wanted to argue, to save the crumbling bits of that wall between work and personal, but even you knew it was too late for that.
Johnny’s bedroom door was just two down from the guest room Sue had offered you years ago, a bathroom being the only thing that separated them. Ben’s room was at the other end of the hallway, along with the nursery where the soon to be baby Richards would sleep.
You may not have stayed in that guest room often, but you’d been in these hallways enough to know it like the back of your hand. To know it like it was your own home.
There were countless nights, before you’d make the short walk back to your apartment, where Johnny had coerced you into movie nights in his room. He’d never try anything, never push you into something, always leaving the door open to make sure you knew he wasn’t bringing you upstairs for some alternative reason. His room was just quieter, and felt more private. It gave you the chance to see the side of Johnny that the world didn’t get to see.
The space lover, who spent his life dreaming of being an astronaut, of going into space and seeing the stars. He was a thrill-seeker, always wanting to live his life on the edge, to find joy in those rushes of adrenaline. But beyond it all, just a good man. A man who had an entire collection of records lining one wall of his room, organized from his favorite records to his least favorite, even though he claimed there wasn’t really a least favorite. The world got to know the Human Torch, but in the confines of those four walls, you got to know Johnny Storm. The second you did, you knew your heart was fucked.
You found him in a spot you’d found him in before: leaning against the floor to ceiling windows of his room, staring out at the spaceship he hadn’t stepped foot in for four years. Your heart broke slightly from where you stood in the doorway, able to see the longing that was woven into his frown, that shone through his eyes that never strayed far from the Excelsior.
“You know,” with a few steps into the room, standing beside the record player, you lifted the needle to stop the replay of the foreign language from the deep space transmission that played on a loop. Johnny looked over, a soft smile overtaking his frown at the sight of you, as you kept your own voice soft and light. “I don’t think deep space transmissions are the right background music if you’re going to stare longingly out your window.”
Johnny laughed in a huff, turning on his heel to flick through his record collection.
“And suggestions then for a melancholic moment such as this?”
“Elvis typically has some hits that can set that mood,”
You watched him, the slight shake in his body that hinted he was laughing again, before he plucked a record from the shelves and rose back to his feed. Standing beside the record player with you, he slid it into your hands without another word and plopped into the chair just across from the player.
With care, like you’d done it a hundred times before (you had, right here in this room), you slipped the record onto the player, dropping the needle down as it coasted along the grooves etched into the record.
When no-one else can understand me, when everything I do is wrong…you give me hope and consolation. You give me strength to carry on.
The lyrics settled in you heavily, but it made your body feel lighter. It was impossible not to read into them, to not think too hard about the deliberate music choice that Johnny had made. You couldn’t help that, somewhere deep in your heart where you had buried your feelings for the flaming man years ago, you were hoping these lyrics were a personal message to you.
“Reed send you to check on me?” Johnny asked after a moment, leaning back in his chair, arms folded over his chest as he watched you. Composing yourself for a moment, shoving the flurry of butterflies beating against your chest down, you turned to face him and his blue eyes with a shrug.
“Technically, but I would’ve come on my own,” Johnny hummed, the ghost of a smile on his lips, as his gaze found its way back to the spaceship taunting him just beyond the window. “Come on, matchstick, talk to me.”
He huffed out another laugh, stretching his arms above his head as you tried your best to keep your eyes trained on his face and not drift down his torso. Eventually, his arms settled back across his chest, his gaze still stuck out the window.
“I don’t know…it’s stupid. Last time we went up, we came back with superpowers, trust me, I get that. Now, he’s got a kid on the way. But I know–I know–that he knows how much space means to me. So, when he just dismisses me like that-”
“It makes you feel inadequate? Like you’re a child?” Johnny’s gaze found you again as you shrugged with a light smile. “I’ve worked in an enclosed space with him almost every day for four years, Johnny. He used to make me feel that way all the time, until I realized that Reed’s never trying to make me feel like that.”
“I know he’s not doing it on purpose…doesn’t mean I’m not going to shit talk him in the confines of these walls,” he gestured around the room as you laughed, coming to stand beside his chair, looking down on him as he sighed once more. His hands fell, gripping his knees, as he rubbed them back and forth against the fabric of his pants. “I love space. Simple as that.”
You hummed, bending down beside the chair Johnny sat in so that you were essentially squatting before him, having to look up at him. Hesitation caught you for just a second, your brain actively fighting a war with your heart as you raised your hands, but you ultimately took his hands in yours.
All it took was a second for your eyes to drift over to the table beside him. One lamp, a stack of books, and the flash of a polaroid photo leaning against those books: a photo of you. Taken at some point in the lab, laughter written across your face, your hand almost blocking a portion of the lens as you tried to stop him from taking the photo. You didn’t even remember it being taken in the first place.
Good god, he was really going to be the death of you.
Eyes quickly back on him, with a little squeeze to his hands, you gave Johnny the most comforting smile you could, even as your heart did somersaults in your chest.
“I know you do. You’ll go back to space, Johnny, I promise,”
His eyes watched your hands, and you could see it on his face: that hint of adoration, that hint of something genuine that suggested it wasn’t all just a game, that you weren’t imaging moments for more than they were.
“What if I don’t?”
“You’re Johnny Storm, I’ve never seen you not get something you wanted before. Especially not something you want this bad,”
His mouth parted just slightly as he hesitated. You watched as his tongue darted out, just barely grazing over the edge of his bottom lip, before you flicked your eyes back to his.
“You’re wrong…I think there’s something I want more. Been trying to get it for awhile, but…she just keeps slipping through my fingers somehow,”
That tug on your heart was back. Your heart was surely beating so fast that it could be heard, hammering against your ribcage, as his thumbs glided back and forth across your skin. You could barely think of a response, too stuck on his words: the closest thing to a confession of any kind you’d heard in four years. Raw, real, genuine.
Johnny stood quickly, barely giving you a chance to potentially think of a response as he tugged you back to your feet. His arm enveloped your waist, your hand falling to his bicep as he still held your other hand in the air beside you both. You weren’t sure now if the flush crawling up your neck into your cheeks was from the moment, or from the heat radiating off of him.
“W-What are you doing?”
“We’re dancing,” he said it as if it was the most casual thing in the world, that usual smirk of his back on his face. Whatever had happened moments before, whatever confession may or may not have been said, was brushed away in an instant, that charming, flirty personality of his back in full force. “Can’t turn on Elvis and not dance, I think that’s a literal crime.”
“I didn’t know you even knew how to dance,”
“Oh, I don’t, Sue’s been telling me for years that I have two left feet,” Johnny shot back, shooting a wink down at you as his hand readjusted its grip along your waist. “Can’t be that hard with the prettiest girl in the building in my arms, right?”
Swaying back and forth, wrapped up in the heat of his body, in the faint smell of the cologne that coated his clothing, you were very certain that Johnny Storm was going to be the death of you.
And when you smile the world is brighter. You touch my hand and I'm a king. Your kiss to me is worth a fortune, your love for me is everything.
Johnny tilted his head back from you by just a hair, and you followed suit. Deep blue eyes, as captivating to you as they were the first time you ever saw them, shone with an emotion you couldn’t quite decipher. If you could, you weren’t sure you would survive knowing.
Faces just an inch away, the closest and most intimate moment you’d ever shared with the man you knew in your heart was never going to be just your friend, your colleague, you were verging on the edge of making a terrible choice. Of opening the floodgates, of unlocking the feelings you’d buried away so long ago and letting them flow.
“This is an interesting little relationship you and I have, you know,”
Johnny always found a way to ruin these moments, and this was just another example. Lips tugged up into a smirk, mischief swarming his eyes as he teased you, that fleeting moment of raw vulnerability was gone.
Hand slipped from his, body pulled back from his and a roll of your eyes, you turned on your heel within seconds.
“So typical of you, Storm,”
“What-? What did I do!”
You huffed out a laugh, a smile creeping onto your lips even as you tried to keep it at bay, as you threw your comment over your shoulder as you walked toward the door.
“You went and killed the moment, Johnny, as per usual,”
“...so you admit it, we WERE having a moment!”
You barked out a laugh, shaking your head as you crossed through the doorframe. You could never stay mad at him, not when your heart yearned for him in a way you wish it didn’t.
“Come on! At least let me make it up to you. Will you stay for dinner?”
With a final glance cast over your shoulder toward him, you shot him a bright smile.
“If you’re lucky, flame boy!”
❤︎
Yeah, you really couldn’t say no to Johnny Storm.
Not when he’d spoken so sweetly to you, held you so tenderly, and all around just invaded every part of your brain and your heart. To be fair, he barely had to try honestly to do that.
It wasn’t shocking to see Ben in the kitchen, it seemed to be one of his happy places. You weren’t complaining: on the nights you did stay for dinner, and Ben was cooking, you knew you were going home with the best leftovers the city of New York had ever seen.
“Decided to stay for dinner again?” Sue called out toward you with a smile, giving Herbie a pat on the head as he worked away at carving a pumpkin. You shot her a smile in return, pouring yourself a quick glass of water before making your way toward Ben.
“Johnny asked…and I decided to be nice and oblige him,” you didn’t miss the teasing hum that Ben let out, lightly whacking him on his rocky shoulder. Not that it did you any good, hurting your hand more than it would ever hurt him. His laughter was ignored as your eyes lit up, catching sight of the familiar black and white cookies he was dumping onto a plate. “Oh my god, did you go grab these from Maisie’s?”
“Yes,” Ben waved your hand away when you went to reach for the cookies, producing another paper bag and sliding it your way. “These ones are yours.”
The smell that wafted from the bag was enough to have you almost moaning in the middle of the kitchen, eagerly digging one of the cookies out. Maisie’s famous snickerdoodle cookies, the perfect blend of cinnamon and sugar that you had adored since you were a little girl. One bite of the cookie had you in absolute heaven.
“Oh my god, I haven’t had these in ages!” Ben and Sue both laughed at your excitement as you took another bite of the warm cookie in your hand. “How did you know these were my favorites?”
Ben’s smirk wasn’t hard to miss at all.
“Oh, I didn’t. Johnny asked me to pick those up for you,”
It was probably time to accept that blushing around this family was the only thing you were capable of.
Sue’s laughter rang loudest as she rounded the island counter, high fiving Ben as she shot you a pointed look.
“You really have my brother wrapped around your finger without even trying, huh? You know, before I went to get scanned–again–in the lab, I stopped by the nursery to check out the crib progress. Heard a little The Wonder of You from down the hall, thought I’d peek in…”
The groan you emitted could probably be heard from the other side of the country, leaning down to barely bang your head against the countertop. Ben and Sue’s laughter rang through the air again as you looked up, desperately waving your hands.
“I swear, it wasn’t what it looked like-”
“What wasn’t what it looked like?”
Of course, Johnny chose to make his grand entrance at that moment. Thankfully for you, he’d changed out of that ridiculously hot button up. Unfortunately for you, he was still wearing those god forsaken white chinos.
“Your little dance Sue was telling me about earlier,” Ben teased, easily catching your hand as it came up to whack him again in his rough, oversized one. “What’s with the long face?”
“Oh that dance was exactly what it looked like. Thanks for coming to dinner though, sweetheart, glad you like the cookies,” Johnny tacked on a wink in your direction, one you affectionately rolled your eyes over, before his smile was back to a frown. “And what of it, Ben?”
“Sounds like your 2:15 with Reed didn’t go well. I’m sorry, pal,”
From across the room, you could see Johnny’s shoulders move in a huff of laughter as he clapped, bringing down the cabinet shelf that held the same box of cereal you had taken from him two weeks ago. You moved around the island counter, filming your cup with more water before standing opposite of Ben while Johnny made his way back over.
“Hey, I’m fine,” he spoke, though the edge in his words was clear as he did, coming to stand directly at your side. “I don’t mind or anything, it’s just, uh-”
“I hear you, pal. We’ll go to space again,”
“That’s what I was trying to tell him earlier,” you tacked on, bumping your hip with Johnny’s, who quickly did the same back to you.
That smile you adored was back in moments, though, as he dug his hand into the box and produced the action figure waiting inside: a miniature Johnny Storm. His bright grin was turned in your direction as he waved the toy toward you, his signature catchphrase from the cartoon–flame on–ringing through the air as Reed entered the room, greeting his wife by the dining room table.
“They captured my likeness so perfectly, don’t you think?” he quipped, activating the catchphrase once again as you rolled your eyes. “Do you still have the one I gave you a few months ago?”
“Yeah, buried in the junk drawer of my kitchen,”
Johnny feigned shock, pinching your side quickly as you squirmed away with a laugh.
“At least upgrade me to your bedside table so I can be with you while you sleep,” that stupid line was accented with another wink before Johnny thrust the toy in Ben’s face. “Come on, admit it’s cool.”
That catchphrase just kept repeating.
I’m Johnny Storm! Flame On!
Flame On!
Flame On!
Ben grabbed the toy from Johnny’s hand in seconds, crushing it to nothing but dust and blowing it back in Johnny’s face with a smirk. You tried everything to conceal your laughter, but it was inevitable.
“Flame off!”
Sirens rang outside the balcony of the building’s living room. The flying cars of the police force raced past, bathing the room in red and blue lights. The second they disappeared, another squadron flew past in the other direction, the sirens all intermixing in the air.
These were the moments you never got to see often, when the team sprung into action. It was clear in Johnny and Ben alone, how their silly little moment was forgotten as they thrust into action, prepared to go running out of the building into danger. Reed simply held up a hand, shaking his head at the group.
“No, no, it’s alright. This is me,”
Ben and Sue followed Reed out onto the balcony, but Johnny hung back, his gaze stuck on you as you hadn’t moved from the kitchen. He simply tilted his head toward his family, holding his hand out for you. Such a simple move that shouldn’t have kickstarted your heart into what was surely an irregular rhythm, but it did.
The second you were at his side, Johnny’s hand rested at the small of your back, fingers curling into the fabric of your shirt just so to tug you slightly closer to his side. Together, you stepped out onto the balcony of the Baxter Building beside Ben, overlooking New York as it was bathed in every corner in red and blue.
“For the past few months, I’ve been tracking a small number of criminal organizations throughout the city,”
You shot a look down at your boss, eyebrow raised.
“That’s what you’ve been doing in that notebook by your desk?” Reed simply waved your comment off, pointing just down the block, fairly close to the area in which your apartment resided.
“47 of them, to be exact. Including the Puppet Master in the Bowery, the Wizard in Gramercy Park, and Diablo in Washington Heights,”
Everyone on the balcony went quiet for a moment.
“You…baby-proofed the world,” Ben finally spoke. Sue’s sigh could be heard from the other end of the balcony as she tried to defend her husband.
“It’s a sweet gesture,”
“It’s a little insane,” you mumbled to yourself, just loud enough for you and Johnny to hear. The blonde at your side simply shrugged, glancing down at you and catching your gaze.
“It’s not totally crazy. He’s trying to protect the things he loves, what’s most precious to him…” Johnny’s lips quirked up just slightly. “I’d do it too…I’d do it for you.”
He said it so…so earnestly. With so much conviction in his tone, as if this was a certainty to him. That protecting not just his family, but you, was something he needed to do. That if it came down to it, he’d do it without a second thought.
“You…you have to stop saying things like that to me, Johnny,” you hated how breathless your voice came out, how wrecked you sounded as you whispered your response back to him, the conversation still droning on in the background between the other three.
The smile on Johnny’s face only widened, his hand slipping around from your lower back to your waist, as he gave you a light squeeze.
“Stop saying what, the truth?”
No, you need to stop saying things that are making me fall in love with you.
Love. That was a word that had only crossed your mind once when it came to Johnny Storm.
It was two years ago, a week to the day that you had lost your mother, your biggest supporter in life. You stood at that funeral, surrounded by estranged family members you hadn’t spoken to in years, and family friends who wept for your loss. Reed, Sue, Ben and Johnny had come, offered their condolences, paid their respects.
When the others left, Johnny stayed. He stood by your side through the first viewing, never left it during the second viewing, and stood with you in the pouring rain an hour after they’d put her in the ground. You had cried, he held you, and he’d simply never left you alone that day. The colleague that had quickly become a friend, who flirted with you every chance he got, never uttered a single flirtatious comment that day. He’d simply been there, been the shoulder you needed.
That was the day you realized you may have fallen in love with the one man you told yourself not to fall in love with, and you buried those feelings in your heart for what you thought would be forever.
“Stuck in your head over there? Come on, it’s dinner time,”
Ben’s voice broke you from your stupor. The team had all started to make their way inside while you were left at the balcony railing, hands white knuckled on top of the rail.
Johnny’s hand was held out toward you, and you ignored every part of your brain that told you not to and slipped your hand into his, letting him pull you back in toward the living room.
That’s what their watches all went off, alerts blaring in sync with one another.
It was like a firework went off, a boom shattering the night air of the city. The clouds, the sky, were painted in gold, streaks of meteors and debris crossing the sky as they fell to the earth. The sound that emitted from the golden cloud that stretched across the sky, bathing the city in its light, felt…otherwordly. Like a scream, like a warning.
A warm hand enveloped your face, turning your wide eyes away from the scene.
There were very few times you saw Johnny as serious as he was now. Jaw locked, eyes narrowed but still soft as they looked at you, the cascades of gold shone over his face, highlighting his features as another boom sounded off in the distance.
“Go inside, don’t come out,”
Words were caught in your throat. All you could manage was a nod, his thumb doing a single swipe over your cheek, before he patted Reed on the shoulder and launched himself over the railing and into the air, igniting himself as he went.
If not for the moment, you would have stopped to admire him as he flew, bathed in the reds and oranges of his fire. You were awestruck every time you got to witness those cosmic powers firsthand.
Reed, Sue, and Ben had followed not long after, as you could hear the familiar whirled of their car through the air, chasing after Johnny through the city, following whatever had just appeared from the sky.
You? You sat on the living room couch, wringing your hands together to keep them from shaking. You’d been there as they had dealt with Red Ghost, or even Moleman, but this?
This was different. This was otherworldly. This was terrifying. And when Herbie flipped the switch of the television, rolling to your side, you were greeted with the sight of the silver alien woman hovering in Times Square for the first time.
“Your planet is now marked for death. Your world will be consumed by the devourer,”
Her voice sent a single chill down the column of your spine. Herbie’s robotic hand reached out for yours, ceasing the endless wringing of your hands together. You took it without hesitation, though you wished in your heart it was someone else’s hand holding yours in this moment.
“Hold your loved ones close, and speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak. Use this time to rejoice, and celebrate, for your time is short. I herald his beginning…I herald your end…I herald, Galactus.”
And thus began the longest night of your life since the day your colleagues went into space and came back forever changed.
Sending the team into space was the only option, to confront this mystery at its source. Reed had given you the basics in passing: the threat was real, there was documentation of plants across the universe disappearing entirely, the chrome woman’s signature left on each of them. He’d tasked you to the launch team, to prepare Excelsior for launch in T-16 hours.
Hold your loved ones close, and speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak.
Those words rattled around your brain the entire night, into the wee hours of the morning. Even as you helped Lynn set up the press conference, as you conferred with the launch team to ensure that the Excelsior was prepared in every conceivable way, as you checked and double-checked every data point throughout the entire ship, her words never left you.
Hold your loved ones close, and speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak.
The anxiety was clawing at you, even as you threw yourself into work. The notion of what her words meant, of what could happen, of how close the end could be.
The clock read sometime around 2 a.m. when you had finally stepped foot in that guest room made for you. There was no way you were walking home tonight. Besides, come morning, there would still be too much to do, too many data points that needed to be checked, too many scenarios that would need to be run through to make sure your team came back to you.
You knew sleep wasn’t coming to you, though, not when that metallic voice was rattling around your head. Not when an alien threat was upending your life. Not when, two doors away, there was a man that you did, in fact, want to hold close…in case you never got the chance to again.
You loved him. All it took was the end of the world to admit it.
Clad in nothing but an old t-shirt with the 4 logo on the front, one you were sure was Johnny’s, and a pair of shorts, you didn’t care what you looked like as you tore out of the room and into the hallway. Not now, not when your world was being threatened, not when your entire life could be ripped from you in a matter of seconds.
Johnny was awake, just as you knew he would be. White shirt, plaid blue pants you’d seen him sleep in so many times, he stood in his dark room by the windows once more, watching the crews rush around on the ground as they prepared the ship for launch in just a few hours. That same record from earlier in the day was still playing.
I guess I'll never know the reason why you love me as you do. That's the wonder, the wonder of you.
With a step into the room, shutting the door behind you and flicking on the lamp just beside the door, Johnny finally met your eyes.
“I couldn’t sleep,” was the only thing you could manage to say. Johnny tilted his head, studying you silently, before he held out his hand just as he had done hours before.
“Come here,”
Crossing the room in a matter of moments, you all but fell into his arms. His outstretched hand ignored, he was frozen in place for just a moment as you curled your arms around his neck, throwing yourself into his arms. The faint smell of his cologne lingered, as did his bodywash, and the sigh you let out the second the smell hit you was in comfort.
It didn’t take Johnny long to unfreeze, his arms finding their place around your waist. One hand rested on your upper back, one pressing into your lower back. A faint kiss was placed to the side of your head, heat lingering for a second. Heat lingered in your entire body, radiating off of him in waves.
“You have to talk to me, baby,”
Talk? The truth was, you didn’t know where to start. How were you supposed to explain that, since the moment you had met Johnny Storm, your heart was already his. That in all your moments over the years, you’d fallen for the man you told yourself not to fall for. And as the threat from the metallic woman loomed over the world, as he prepared to try and save life as you knew it, the only thing you wanted was to be held by him. To know he was here, that he was okay, that he was with you.
“I-I’m scared,”
Those were the only words you could settle on. Johnny pulled back, his hands sliding gently around the fabric of the shirt hanging loosely from your body until they reached your face. He cradled you, so softly and gently in his hands, it was almost involuntary the way you closed your eyes and leaned into his touch, his warmth, chasing the feeling of security it brought you.
“It’s okay to be,” the gentle tone in his voice washed over you, covering you like a blanket. It’s exactly how he had spoken to you that day, standing in the rain when you refused to leave your mother’s side, reassuring you he was there. “I don’t care what the herald said, I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You know that, right?”
Of course you knew that. If there was anything you knew for certain in this world, it was that when Johnny Storm said he’d protect you, he meant it. He’d spent long enough proving that to you.
There was no hesitation on your part when you laid your own hands overtop of his. Fingers curling around them, tugging his right hand just barely from your cheek, you turned and pressed the lightest of kisses to the palm of his hand.
Johnny froze. You could feel it. The slight tilt of his head, the questioning look that flickered across his face in the moonlight that shone through the windows. It was all fair. You were never the one to cross the boundary like this, to make a move such as this.
“I can’t stop thinking about what she said,” was how you tried to explain yourself, stopping and starting your sentence over and over as you tried to find the right way to explain yourself, the walls crumbling and the floodgates bursting wide open. “Hold your loved ones close, and speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak…it’s why I came to you.”
A single emotion crossed Johnny’s face in seconds: understanding.
That signature smirk of his was back in moments, even if it was twinged with a softness reserved only for you. The heat left your cheeks, but found your hands as Johnny’s fingers intertwined with yours, hanging your joined hands down between you both. There was a bright light that passed over the window for just a moment, bathing the two of you in bright light, before you were plunged back into the darkness of his room yet again.
“You did come to me…why’s that?”
“You know why-”
“I do,” he said it so matter-of-factly, that smirk growing just a tad as he leaned into your personal bubble by just a hair. “This push and pull, four years of ‘will they’ or ‘won’t they.’ I want to hear you say it, baby.”
“It’s not that easy,” you immediately shook your head, teeth gnawing at your bottom lip as Johnny simply watched you. “Saying it…makes it real.”
He scoffed, the sound mixed with laughter, as his head cocked slightly more to the side.
“You came into my bedroom at 2 in the morning–wearing my shirt, might I add–is that not real enough?”
“When you’ve spent years trying to ignore how you feel and refusing to say it, it’s not that easy to say,” you desperately tried to explain. “If I say it…then everything changes.”
Johnny took barely another step forward, and you almost wanted to step back, to bring back the space between you and preserve the small, crumbling wall that still stood between you both.
“A sexy, naked alien woman came to earth and basically prophesied our demise, darling. If there was ever a time to ‘change everything’ and lay it all on the line, I think it’s now,”
Your heart wanted to hang onto the word darling, but your brain was too stuck on the ‘sexy, naked alien woman’ part of his sentence. The sigh that escaped you was instantaneous, as well as the frown, as you shot the blonde man a pointed look.
“Sexy, naked alien woman, Johnny? Seriously?”
“Come on! She was–objectively–attractive. You can’t deny that!”
It was your turn to scoff, tearing your hands from his in a heartbeat, before spinning on your heel. You felt like an idiot–on the precipice of finally confessing your deepest, darkest secret you’d kept locked away for years, and this is what you got.
“I try to be serious with you, Johnny, and you turn it into a joke once again-”
You didn’t get far from him. A hand enveloped your upper arm mid sentence, tugging and spinning your back around. A gasp fell from your lips as you collided with the chest of the man before you.
Whatever you were going to say never saw the light of day. Not when Johnny Storm gripped at your hips, tugged you as impossibly close as he could, and finally–finally–kissed you.
The kiss you’d dreamed about for four years, finally yours.
Johnny’s lips were soft as they slanted against your own, enveloping you in his warmth. They moved against you in a steady rhythm, passionate but still gentle, still testing the waters of the line you had never crossed before.
His hands curled into the fabric of the t-shirt clinging to your body, pushing it up just enough so that his hands could dip underneath. Your breath caught, even as his lips continued to move against yours, as his heated skin made contact with yours, and any part of your brain begging you to stop this was silenced as you melted into him.
Hands landed on his broad chest, gripping the fabric as you let him mold your body to his, the scent of his bodywash enveloping you as your body almost became one with him. In the pits of your stomach, as those heated hands trailed up your waist and ghosted over your ribcage, another flurry of butterflies erupted as a moan slipped past your lips, swallowed by his mouth.
A moan left Johnny’s lips at the sound of your own, one hand leaving your waist to curl around the back of your neck. Those slender fingers buried themselves into your hair, gripping just enough to have another groan of pleasure tumbling from your lips, as he guided your mouth against his own.
“You can’t keep making little noises like that,” his mouth barely left yours as he spoke, lips moving against yours, as he dove back in for another kiss the second he was done speaking.
“Your fault,” was all you could manage out, trying to back away just enough to speak, but Johnny never let your lips go far. Your hands glided up his chest, his neck, curling into his short hair as your thumb crested the ridge of his ear. “I’m trying to be mad at you.”
“Be mad at me later,” was his immediate response, his lips leaving yours just to find their place along your jawline and slide down into the hollow of your neck. His tongue danced its way across your skin, leaving tingles of electricity everywhere he touched you, his words murmured into your neck as he buried himself there. “I’m trying to kiss you.”
There was some part of you that wanted to protest him–over what, you weren’t even sure at this point–but you couldn’t. Not when his teeth dug just so into the side of your neck, leaving his mark on your skin as if he was claiming you as his.
You were always his.
“You c-called–oh god–you called the alien sexy while I was trying to confess,” you just barely managed to get the words out through your moans. Johnny was slowly walking you backward, straight in the direction of his bed while his lips never left the side of your neck, leaving his mark on every inch of skin he could see.
Your foot caught on the raised edge of the platform his seating area sat on, your feet stumbling backward. Johnny was there–he was always there–and tugged you back into him. And god, if you loved those blue eyes before, you loved them even more now: pupils blown wide, Johnny Storm looked about as wrecked as you felt.
“Your confession was four years late, and I’m impatient,” he stole another kiss from you, his teeth sinking just barely into your bottom lip, tugging gently. He let go, pressing a messy kiss to your lips to soothe the pain of his bite, words fanning out over your lips. “I’ve been trying to tell you I’m in love with you for four years now, so please just shut up and let me show you instead. Now–jump.”
At this point, you’d do just about anything he asked of you.
Johnny caught you with ease, both of his hands splayed out across the bare skin of your thighs, locking your legs around his hips. A choked moan fell from your lips the second your core was dragged against the painfully hard length bulging against his own pants, hands curling into his hair as you, this time, desperately pulled him into a kiss.
I’m in love with you. Those words repeated like a mantra in your head. Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, the world’s fire boy and hero that they painted like a sex symbol. The ‘playboy’ with a new girl all the time, never able to hold down a girl…was in love with you.
Your back hit the bed, body bouncing just slightly before settling. His eyes never left you as you crawled back just slightly, propping yourself up on your elbows to look up at him in the dark of the room, lit only by sky and the lamp by the door. The music played faintly in the background, but at this moment, it meant nothing to you.
Johnny’s hands gently touched your knees from where they dangled off the edge of the bed, parting them just so in order to step between them. You watched, entranced by every move he made, body flushed from the heat that coursed through your bare skin at the slightest of touches from him. With a practiced ease, his hand took hold of the back of his shirt, yanking it over his head without hesitation. It found a place to lay somewhere across the room, discarded until the following morning.
It was impossible not to stare. His broad chest, those biceps that always threatened to bulge out of every shirt he wore. His toned abdomen and the trail of hair that led straight to the waistband of his pants, the outline of him still prevalent and straining against the fabric.
“I need to know that you’re sure…about this,” you weren’t used to it, the vulnerability in Johnny’s tone. He leaned over you now, hands splayed across the bed on either side of you, barely a few inches from your face. Those blue eyes flickered down to your lips time and time again. “Because if I kiss you again, I’m not stopping until you’re mine.”
There was no hesitation on your part. Just a single movement of your arms, tossing the old shirt hanging from your upper body across the room to join his. As simple as that, you sat bare before him, chest heaving with every deep breath you took in.
“I was already yours. I always have been,” there was only certainty in your tone as you held his gaze. “Speak the words you’ve been afraid to speak…that’s why I came to you. Because if this is the end of the world, I needed you to know that I love-”
He didn’t let you finish your words. His next kiss was anything but gentle.
Messy, spit coating your lips as Johnny’s tongue seemed to invade your mouth and every one of your senses, his lips devoured yours as if you were his first meal in decades. He kissed with the hunger of a starved man, his hands grasping at every part of your skin they could–your waist, your hip, before finally your ass. The squeeze he gave to your skin, the uptick in heat you felt as if he was burning himself just slightly hotter on purpose, had another moan tumbling from your lips and into his mouth.
The hand still gripping your ass tugged you upward on the bed until your head fell against the silk pillows at the headboard. Your hands never left Johnny’s hair, carding through the strands as you frantically kissed him back, addicted to the feeling, as his hips ground into yours. That bulge in his pants pressed heavenly into your core, the friction rolling your eyes into the back of your head as you let your head fall to the pillows with a moan.
Johnny’s lips were everywhere. From your jawline, to your neck, until they finally reached your collarbone. He lavished you with his lips, tongue running over your skin as his hands trailed up the sides of your lower abdomen, stopping just as they reached the swell of your breasts.
“Since the day you walked in, I’ve thought about this,” his voice was raspy, the words barely understood as they were spoken against your skin. “Since the moment Reed introduced you to us.”
“I-I was wearing a lab coat,” you choked on your words as Johnny’s lips reached your sternum, trailing kissing down your chest, but never where you wanted him. “Hardly sexy, I’d argue.”
“It is when I’m picturing you in that coat and your heels, and nothing else,” he tacked on, before his lips wrapped around your nipple without warning.
You mewled at the sudden contact, one hand returning to his hair on instinct as your back arched off the bed and into him. Johnny’s hand on your abdomen was quick to push you back down, holding you down against the bedding beneath you.
God, with the fire that felt like it was burning through your body, you could’ve sworn that Johnny had caught you on fire. His teeth just barely grazed the sensitive bud in his mouth, a sharp intake of breath leaving your lips on instinct. He was quick to soothe you, tongue swirling around the erect and sensitive bud with rapt attention. A moan slipped through him, felt through your entire body, as your other hand tore into the bedding. Desperate for something to hold onto. Something to ground you in your pleasure.
“I’ve dreamed about you under me. Kissing you, tasting you, loving you,” his practically purred out every single word, tongue flicking back and forth over your sensitive nipple. He moved to the other one easily, delivering the same rapt attention to it.
“I’ve thought about you, too,” you relented, divulging every secret you held dear to the man who lavished every inch of you in love and adoration. “In the kitchen, the lab, in that stupid button up from earlier-”
“I knew you liked that shirt. Wore it just for you,” his husky tone sent another shot of pleasure through you, heat curling through every inch of your body.
The tips of his fingers trailed lightly down your stomach. When Johnny’s head lifted for just a moment to lock his eyes with yours, that familiar smirk on his face, you weren’t given a second to react before heat poured through his touch.
Gasps mixed with moans of pleasure fell from your lips on instinct, that unnatural heat of his pouring through his touch and into your skin. Every movement of his fingers over your ribcage and down your abdomen felt as if it was leaving your skin on fire, branding his touch into your skin so that you would never forget the feeling. Burning him into your memory so that you would always feel the phantom sensations of his touch on your skin.
“You’re absolute perfection, you always have been,” Johnny moaned into your skin, lips trailing over the mounds of your breasts with another series of a thousand kisses. Those heated fingers dipped past the waistband of your shorts, pressing directly against your clothed clit without a warning. The moan you let escape mixed in the air with the moan that tumbled from Johnny’s lips against your skin. “Jesus Christ, baby, you’re so soaked.”
The heat was still there in his fingers, setting off every little nerve ending in you even through the soaked fabric of your panties that you desperately wanted gone. Your hips ground up into his hand, whimpers falling from your lips as you chased after the feeling of him, desperate for friction.
“All for you,” even this hint of pleasure had you stumbling toward the edge, babbling almost incoherently. With a tug to his hair, you were quick to bring Johnny’s lips back to yours, arms wound around his neck. He gave into your needs immediately, devouring you in a kiss as heated as his touch was, fingers rubbing slow circles over where you needed him so desperately. “Please–Johnny, please! Please, I need you. Need you–need you so bad.”
“I got you, baby. I got you. Keep moaning my name like that, and I’ll give you the world”
Those whispered words stayed on your lips, lingering, as Johnny left you. His touch wasn’t gone long. Fingers curling into your shorts, they were discarded across the room in a flash, panties gone with them as well.
For the first time, you laid completely bare in front of the man you loved–the man you denied loving for so long. And Johnny Storm was a mess. His hair stuck up in multiple directions, skin flushed, but he was still beautiful. The most beautiful man you’d ever met, inside and out.
Johnny didn’t give you a second to truly breathe once he was done admiring you. He sprawled out along the end of the bed, head dipping between your thighs, as he licked a single stripe with his flattened tongue directly up your center.
“Fucking beautiful, and all mine,” his words were growled into your core, two fingers lazily moving between your folds and spreading every ounce of wetness around, holding you open so he could see every inch of you. “Sweeter than I ever dreamed you could be.”
He dove into you like you were the only thing that mattered. Fingers spreading you open, giving him access to every square inch, his mouth devoured you. A cool drink of water for a starving man in the middle of the desert. Johnny moved his tongue with precise expertise, as if he knew exactly what your body craved.
Delving into you, flicking back and forth as he drank in every secretion of arousal that dripped from you. That same tongue dragged its way up to your clit, swirling around in figure eights, flicking back and forth.
Cries fell from your lips wantonly, hands digging into his hair. Eyes fluttered shut, head tilted back to the ceiling, there was only one word you could repeat over and over again: Johnny, Johnny, Johnny.
His name was all you knew anymore, too lost in your own bliss and pleasure.
In one fell swoop, your thighs were settled over his shoulders, before his head was back where you wanted it more than anything. His lips and tongue focused on your clit, still swirling back and forth, as his fingers dipped slightly lower, dancing right across your opening.
It started with one long, slender finger sliding into you. One of your hands was forced to leave Johnny’s hair, falling over your own mouth to try and conceal the cry that threatened to burst from you, afraid that the others would hear you.
“Let me hear you, baby,” he laughed against your core, his finger curling just perfectly against your walls as they clenched around him every time he dragged his finger back and forth. “Want to hear you.”
“Don’t want to–fucking hell, Johnny–let the others hear,”
“Let them. Let them hear me love you,”
Fuck Johnny Storm and his stupid lines. His stupid dirty talk that had your walls clenching around him again and again.
Another finger joined the first, followed by another, before you were stretched as wide as you could be around Johnny. The squelch of your juices rung through the air with every move of his fingers–dragging so deliciously into you, curling up, before dragging out just to the edge of your opening. His mouth–god, his mouth–never let up, lapping away at your core like it was his job, what he was meant to do.
That coil of pleasure deep within your lower body came out of nowhere, sneaking up on you just like your love for this man had.
“Johnny–baby–I can’t. I can’t–I’m gonna-”
“Let go, darling,” came that growl in his voice again, the speed of his fingers increasing. “I got you baby, let go.”
That coil snapped in seconds after he spoke. The precipice of your orgasm was earth-shattering, like you’d never felt before. Like trails of fire through your veins, the pleasure coursing through you had your head buried into the pillow behind your head, desperately trying to conceal the wails of pleasure that tumbled from your lips. Your thighs snapped shut around Johnny’s head, but his ministrations never let up as he eagerly drank up every bit of your arousal that leaked from you.
The come down was slow, like waking up. Your breath was uneven, heart beating erratically when you finally pulled your head from the pillow. Eyes bleary, it took a moment to blink them back to life.
Johnny stood at the edge of the bed, discarding his pants and boxers to the pile of clothing littering the other side of the room. And even in your fucked-out, blissful state, one look at him for the first time had that burning desire coursing back through your veins.
He was big. There was no way around it, no denying it, no other way to put it. Flushed, hanging with that beautiful reddened tip, one large and prominent vein throbbing along the edge of it. Beads of precum collected at the tip, his hand smearing it down along his length as he gave himself one single pump before he was crawling back onto the bed.
Johnny knelt between your legs again. Even with limbs that felt like Jell-O, you met him halfway, dragging yourself into a seated position. It was the smile on his face right now, the one erupting those butterflies once more, that you decided was your favorite: soft, adoring, loving.
It was your hands that cupped his cheeks, bringing him into a soft kiss. The taste of you lingered on his lips, sweet just like he said. You poured every ounce of emotion into your kiss, trying to convey to him the years you’d spent loving him so quietly that you couldn’t admit it.
“I might be addicted to you, Johnny Storm,” your words were mumbled into his lips. He laughed so gently, stealing another peck.
“Glad you finally caught up with me, princess, I’ve been addicted since day one,”
Pressed to him, his lips stealing a thousand pecks from yours, the lust in your bones was back in full force. All you could do was hum in response, one of your hands trailing down his chest, nails dragging slowly over his abdomen, before you finally took his throbbing cock in your hand.
He felt even bigger than he looked, which didn’t even make sense in your mind. But he was hot, the skin searing into your hand in the best way. You gave him one squeeze, one tug, and you smiled at the hitch in his breath. The twitch of his cock in your hold.
Johnny’s hand quickly grabbed yours, though, unlatching it from him. All you could do was shake your head, practically whining as you tried to take your hand back.
“Johnny-”
“God, it’s so hot how eager you are to touch me,” he laughed again, tilting his head to leave a single kiss to the column of your throat. “This is about you, doll. Save that for next time. It can be a ‘welcome home from space’ gift for me. A ‘thanks for saving the world’ gift, if you will.”
Space.
That word was enough to have your next words caught in your throat as the weight of everything came crashing back down on you. The threat, the herald, the space launch commencing in a matter of hours now, the events that brought you here in the first place.
You weren’t sure when you started crying, when a single tear slipped down your cheek, but Johnny caught it. Eyes full of concern, but understanding, he simply wiped the tears from your cheek, laying a kiss to the wet splotch of your skin.
“No crying, none of that. Just lay back, baby,”
You listened, letting his hands guide you gently to rest back against the pillows once more. Parting your legs, Johnny placed himself between them, holding himself up over your body on his forearms. Right where he belonged.
Your hands rested on his chest, sliding up so gently to his neck. His eyes never left yours, his length sitting right against your soaked and sensitive core, gliding back and forth with each gentle twitch of his hips.
“You didn’t let me say it earlier. So let me say it, for the first time outloud,” you gave him a watery smile, lips quivering as you looked up at him. “I love you, Johnny Storm. I’ve loved you for so long. I’m sorry it took the world maybe ending for this, that I didn’t let myself be yours sooner.
He smiled, that same charming smile he always did, as he rolled his hips once more. His cock caught just along the edge of your opening as Johnny dipped down, breath fanning over your lips.
“Like you said: you’ve always been mine,”
The first press of his length into your core stung. As wet as you were, as prepared as you were for him, it had been so long. He stretched your walls little by little, taking his time as your body adjusted to him. Then, inch by inch, he sunk within your walls that clung to him tightly.
His cock bottomed out, sunk fully within you, bare hips pressed to bare hips as you both let out shaky breaths. Your nails dug into the hair at the nape of his neck while his hands trailed up your ribcage, squeezing every moment or so as choked out moans fell from his lips.
“God–so tight for me, baby–you feel like heaven,”
His name was the only thing you could manage to choke out between your moans as he dragged himself back to the tip, before burying himself again to the hilt. Your moans, your cries and the way your hands threaded into his hair only spurred him on more, Johnny’s hips snapping into yours again and again and again.
His lips found yours amidst every snap of his hips, every drag of his cock against your walls. Every moan that slipped through your lips was drowned out by him, by the feverish movements of his lips against yours. They trailed away, back to your neck, leaving a trail of saliva connecting you together as he bit another love bite into the side of your neck. It didn’t matter to you how this would look to others, how scandalous you might look in the light of day to others.
All that mattered was Johnny Storm.
“Oh god, Johnny!” your head fell to his shoulder, teeth sinking into his skin as his hips snapped against yours over and over, driving him deeper with every thrust into you. “Holy fuck, w-why weren’t we doing this for years?”
“Because you’ve been a stubborn–fuck–little tease all these years,” his tongue dragged up the column of your throat, peppering kissing up and down your skin as his cock dragged against your walls. “Bent over your workstation in the lab–oh god–you don’t know how many times I’ve thought about it. Thought about walking in and taking you right there, making a mess right at your desk.”
“R-Reed would walk in and you’d scar him for life,”
“Sounds like a win-win to me,” there was shared laughter, punctuated with a shared moan as his cock dragged right against that spot nestled within you. “And try not to talk about my brother-in-law when I’m fucking you.”
There was no time to reply as Johnny scooped up your wrists in his hand in a single motion, pinning them down above your head. He adjusted your waist, suddenly driving into you at a new angle that had you mewling his name all over again.
Johnny whispered your name into your skin with every kiss, timed just so with every snap of his hips against yours. That coil of heat was burning, wounding itself tighter and tighter for the second time that night. All you could feel was him, was Johnny.
His warmth, the heat that burned off of him. It warmed your skin, it had beads of sweat dripping down your forehead. It was uncomfortable in the best way. His one hand still trailed up and down your ribcage, every so often tweaking your sensitive nipple between his thumb and index finger and coaxing another moan of pleasure from you.
He worshiped you, every inch of you, like you were the greatest thing to ever grace the earth. To him, you might have been
“Fucking perfect, baby. Fucking made for me,” his lips found yours again, slick with spit as his tongue dipped into your mouth to taste every inch of you possible.
His stroke faltered, the rhythm uneven, and you knew he was close. That coil of heat in your stomach was threatening to snap any second every time his cock pulsed and throbbed within your walls. His grip on your wrists was tight, even as you struggled against him, desperate to just hold him.
“Johnny–baby–please I-I’m so close-”
You choked on your words once more, the hand still trailing across your stomach heating up again, leaving a burning trail of heat in your skin. Those heated fingers found your clit like it was second nature, a cry of pure pleasure leaving your lips as they circle that bundle of a thousand nerves over and over again, hips still snapping into you as quickly and desperately as they can.
“Let go,” his voice was husky, eyes blown wide as he looked down at you. Your wrists were finally let go, your hands immediately finding their place in the strands of his hair again as his free hand cups the back of your neck, smashing your lips into his in a flurry of moans. “Let go, baby, let go.”
Your second climax burned hotter than the first.
The pleasure burned so hot, so bright, you were practically sobbing, every cry and moan of pure bliss muffled by his kiss. Your legs locked around Johnny’s waist–tightly–so tight he could barely move away from you. It was overwhelming, the shockwaves of bliss that ran through your veins, the shaking of your thighs as you held onto his hair like it’s a lifeline.
He ground himself into you over and over, rhythm so far gone he was struggling. But all it took was your lips lazily finding his neck, teeth sinking in to leave your matching mark to his, for his hips to still as he spilt into you.
Johnny breathed out every moan into the side of your head, your name tumbling from his lips along with a flurry of swears. The grip he had on your hip was bruising, so tight you think he could snap the damn bone if he held any tighter. And his cock? Seated so deeply inside of you it’s as if you are one, heat pooled within your lower abdomen with every wave of cum that filled you to the brim.
On the other side of the room, the record was still playing softly. Bright lights still flashed by the windows every so often, crews still at work on the spaceship set for launch by mid-morning.
None of it mattered in the silence of the bed.
You aren’t sure how long either of you laid there. Your heartbeat, eventually, returned to normal, even as your chest still heaved to take in every breath that it could. Johnny still laid half on top of you, pressing repeated kisses to the side of your head, but said nothing. Your hand stayed in his hair, carding through it, as your core pulsed. It would ache come morning–hell, it already did–but it was worth it. It was so worth it.
Neither of you were quite sure when he pulled out of you, or how long you simply laid there and basked in the afterglow of a moment that should’ve happened years ago.
Eventually, Johnny shifted down. His lips trailed down your body in worship, like they’d done already that night. From your cheek, to your neck, your collarbone, the swell of your breasts, and down your lower abdomen.
“Careful…not sure I’d survive a round three,” your voice was hoarse, mouth dry. Johnny laughed against your skin, still kissing every inch he could see.
“I don’t think I would, either,”
His hands were heated once more, but not for the same purpose as moments before. Now, his touch was gentle, massaging every piece of you that he could get his hands on. His thumbs rubbed into your wrists, your waist, and your hips, digging into the muscles. A sigh escaped you at the comforting feeling, taut muscles loosening at the feeling of the heat and the movement of his hands.
With every kiss pressed to your skin, you could feel it: Johnny was humming. It didn’t take long to know which song he was humming, which lyrics: that same song once again.
I guess I'll never know the reason why, you love me as you do. That's the wonder, the wonder of you.
“Is that our song now?” you laughed, even if your heart was clenching at the mere thought. The mere idea of that song belonging to the two of you–the idea that Johnny Storm belonged to you.
You could feel his smile against your abdomen as he spoke. “It should be. It’s accurate. Because I don’t ever think I’ll get over the miracle that is you…loving me.”
It’s not a miracle. What you really want to tell him is that falling in love with him was so easy, you barely realized you had done it. It might be the easiest thing you’ve ever done.
Johnny crawled back up your body, slotting himself onto the bed beside you, before tugging you in. There’s no hesitation on your part, simply curling into his side with your head over his chest and arm slung around his waist. Words aren’t needed in the silence, not when you’ve both clearly laid everything out on the table now. Instead, you just listened to the beat of his heart, the natural rhythm that lulls you into a state of peacefulness.
He’s yours. Johnny Storm is yours. He’s always been yours, you just didn’t know it.
He pressed a kiss to your forehead, hand cradling the back of your head as he said his next words confidently.
“We’re going to go up there tomorrow, and we’re going to stop this guy. We’re going to protect this Earth, like we’ve sworn to do. But me? I’m going to do it so I can come home to you, and love you for the rest of my life. I promise,”
He can’t promise that, you knew he couldn’t. There was no telling what might happen when that ship took off tomorrow, what they might encounter, or who this Galactus really was.
But Johnny Storm loved you. For now, in the quiet of the night, just between the two of you, that’s enough.
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