yakshxiao

[yakshxiao]

[yakshxiao]

Of Gods and Ghosts

Part 1: The Leash

Clark Kent x Reader Summary: You belong to Lex Luthor—by blood, by record, by threat. You’ve stayed alive by staying useful. Unseen. Controlled. But when Superman becomes your latest assignment and Clark Kent won’t stop looking at you like he sees something worth saving, you start to slip. A mission meant to destroy the Man of Steel ends in chaos, and the noose around your neck tightens. Lex suspects betrayal. Clark starts putting pieces together. And for the first time in years, you speak the truth out loud. Only… you don’t realize who’s been listening. Who’s been there all along. Word Count: 17k (longest part!) Part 2 | Series Masterlist Tags / Content Warnings: 18+ eventually, Enemies to lovers, slow burn, emotional angst & intimacy, protective Superman, dual identity tension, betrayal, hurt/comfort, mutual yearning, soft but dangerous Clark Kent, psychological abuse, childhood trauma, physical violence (non-sexual), coercion, manipulation, threat of death, emotional fallout, trauma recovery,

The rooftop gleams under the weight of excess. A glass runway stretches across the length of LuthorCorp’s SkyDeck, framed by obsidian columns and gold-trimmed railings. The sun is a smoldering coin behind the skyline, throwing everything in deep blue and burnished orange, like the city is holding its breath. And so is the crowd.

You stand to Lex’s left, a step behind, flanked by dignitaries and defense contractors. Every guest is tailored within an inch of their life. Even the security drones and Raptors orbiting above seem overdesigned, chrome-plated intimidation.

Lex is radiant. He feeds on attention like oxygen. The slick sweep of his gray suit reflects the dusk light just right, his posture dripping smugness as he raises his arms and speaks into the mic. 

“Ladies and gentlemen of Earth. Today we reclaim it.” A dramatic pause. Flashbulbs pop. “For too long we’ve lived under the threat of unchecked power. Aliens. Gods. Vigilantes. This,” He gestures toward the centerpiece: a black monolith of a machine, humming quietly.  “is the Metahuman Containment Array. Prototype Aegis.”

A murmur ripples through the press. You don’t flinch. You’ve memorized the speech. You wrote half of it. Behind your spine-straight stance and measured breathing is a mental checklist: you’ve leaked the basic specs anonymously, fed a few breadcrumbs to an anonymous whistleblower, and, if your timing is right, he should arrive any second.

The wind shifts. You hear it before anyone else. The low sonic warble, like air folding in on itself. You don’t turn. The crowd gasps. Cameras whirl toward the figure descending from the sky, cape billowing like a flag at war. His landing is weightless, but the impact is felt. Concrete doesn’t crack, but the energy does. The balance of power shifts the second his boots touch the rooftop.

Superman.

He stands tall, broad-shouldered and regal in deep blues and bloodred. His hair is slightly wind-tossed. Eyes shadowed under his brow. He doesn’t look at Lex.

He looks at you.

And for a moment, just a breath, you’re not standing on a rooftop in front of the world. You’re suspended in something sharp and electric. The noise dulls. The air thickens. His gaze drops once to your lips, then snaps back to your eyes, and you swear your pulse stutters.

“This is a mistake,” he says. Not to Lex. To you.

You arch an eyebrow. Your voice, when it comes, is measured steel. “You always make such an entrance. You ever consider calling ahead?”

The crowd titters, half-relieved that someone has the gall to tease him.

Lex steps forward, smiling thin. “Ah, the alien graces us with his concern. How... charming.”

Superman doesn’t take his eyes off you. “You know what that machine is capable of,” he says quietly.

“That’s the point,” you reply, equally soft. Meant only for him. “Deterrence.”

“Torture.”

You look away first. Only for a second. “There are laws now. You had your chance to play judge, jury, and savior. We’re simply adjusting the balance.”

His jaw tightens. “You don’t believe that.” The words land like a fingerprint on your sternum. Familiar, intimate, and accusatory. And worse, dangerous.

You force your gaze back to his. “You don’t know what I believe.”

He takes a single step forward. It’s small. Subtle. But the wind follows him like it can’t help it. His cape flares behind him, and your body reacts before your mind can catch up, heart skipping, lungs forgetting what to do.

Lex speaks again, voice coated in theatrical amusement. “You came here to do what? Lecture us? Tear it down?”

“I came here to stop a weapon,” Superman says, still facing you. “And to warn the people responsible.”

You fold your arms. “Are you threatening LuthorCorp?”

“Are you admitting guilt?”

The two of you speak over Lex now. Over the cameras. Over the carefully curated display of optics and power. It’s not a debate. It’s something else.

“You’re better than this,” he murmurs.

“Don’t confuse performance with loyalty.” For a beat, his expression falters. Just enough for you to feel the sting of guilt. You hate how good he is at looking at you like that. Like he sees you. Like he knows something.

“Security,” Lex cuts in, voice raised but carefully bored. It’s a signal. Just for show. You and Superman lock eyes a moment longer.

“This isn’t over,” he says.

“No,” you reply, voice steady. “It never is with you.”

He lifts off. Wind tears at your hair, but you don’t raise a hand to fix it. Your face stays perfectly still as the cameras swing back to you, microphones shoved near.

Lex smirks beside you, whispering behind his teeth, “You always did have a type.”

You don’t answer him. But when you finally blink, you swear you can still feel the warmth of Superman’s gaze on your skin.

And you hate that you miss it the second it’s gone.

-

The penthouse door seals behind you with a pneumatic hiss. For a moment, there’s silence. No assistants. No security detail. Just the low hum of the city below and the clink of ice dropping into a crystal glass.

Lex pours his bourbon like it’s a ritual. Precise. Intentional. You watch the amber liquid slide against the curve of the tumbler. He doesn’t look at you.

“You were brilliant,” he says at last, voice a shade too light. “Composed. Striking. Camera loved you.” He turns, holding the glass between two fingers like a threat disguised as a compliment. 

You don’t move. Don’t breathe too loudly. He likes it quiet before the storm. You let the silence stretch. Not from strength. From strategy. Lex walks slowly toward you, drink in hand. He circles, always circling. “He looked at you like he wanted to touch you.” He stops behind you. Close. Too close. “So tell me, darling. Are you fucking Superman?” The words are a gunshot in the quiet.

You don’t flinch. Not visibly. You’ve had years to master the art of showing nothing. “No.” Your voice is calm. Deadly quiet.

“Mm.” He takes a sip. “Shame. You’d be doing the world a favor keeping him busy.” He moves in front of you again, too slow, too smooth. For a moment you think about how you could remind him who pulled the strings to get him out of prison. Who hacked, threatened, and bribed half the global court system to cover his tracks after Boravia. You could. But that would be a mistake.

Instead, you smile. Just a little. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Lex.”

Lex watches you for a long moment. His eyes glitter with a kind of cruel admiration. Like a scientist who knows the bomb he’s built is about to detonate, but it’s his bomb.

“Good girl,” He straightens. The tension breaks. He picks up his drink again, turning his back. 

You don’t breathe again until he’s halfway across the room and even then, it’s only because you have to.

-

You remember the way the light hit his cuffs the most.  Harsh fluorescents buzzed above, cold and clinical, striping the room in sterile white and unforgiving shadow. The air was thin. Metallic, overly filtered, humming through vents that whispered like something breathing. The walls were concrete dressed in drywall, scrubbed clean of any identifying markers, the kind of place that existed in theory but not on paper.

There were no cameras. No guards. No mirrored observation window. Just Lex Luthor, barefoot, cuffed at the wrists and ankles, and somehow still radiating the kind of arrogance that made the air feel thinner when he breathed it.

He wore black. Not prison orange. No jumpsuit. A suit. Bespoke, wrinkled only at the knees from the shackles, the fine thread count at war with his surroundings. The collar of his shirt was open, no tie, the top two buttons undone like he was at a late-night club instead of awaiting extradition.

He looked like the world was still his.

You stepped through the door alone. No escort. No briefcase. No backup. The moment the lock hissed shut behind you, Lex smiled.

“You came.” His voice was smooth as bourbon, low and unbothered. He sat sprawled across the metal bench, spine lazy, one foot bare against the floor, the other shackled to a bolt. He looked like he was waiting for a drink to be poured, not judgment to be passed.

“No one else was stupid enough,” you replied, voice clean, crisp, like the air wasn’t catching in your throat. You tossed the folder onto the table. Paper. No electronics. You weren’t taking chances.

Lex didn’t reach for it. He didn’t need to. “Did you miss me?” He smirked.

You sat down slowly across from him. The chair scraped, sharp and surgical. You crossed your legs with mechanical precision, the sound of your heel clicking against the floor echoing once before being swallowed whole.

“You orchestrated an international conflict,” you said flatly. “You destabilized the only peace corridor in the region. The UN labeled you a war criminal. The Hague wants your blood.” You paused. Tipped your head. “Of course I missed you.”

His grin bloomed wide, dazzling, and unrepentant. All teeth and theatre. “And yet, here you are.”

You didn’t smile. But you didn’t walk out, either. Because it was already done. The calls you weren’t supposed to make. The messages you sent with no return address. A senator’s brother who got reassigned to a “quiet” intelligence post. A judge’s gambling debt that mysteriously disappeared overnight. A diplomatic scandal that exploded just far enough away to shift the headlines for three critical days.

Anonymous shell companies laundering favors instead of money. Lawyers that never met your eyes. A smuggled folder containing falsified evidence, delivered in the middle of a lightning storm. You had done it all.

You got him out.

And no one knew it was you. Except Lex himself.

“You owe me,” you said softly. Not a threat. Not a plea. Just the truth. One said under fluorescent lights, to the man whose name had been your ruin.

Lex leaned forward, the chains clinking softly as metal met motion. The sound was delicate. Almost musical. It made your skin crawl. “Darling,” he murmured, “I already gave you everything. You just used it.” His eyes glinted, green, gold, unknowable. The pupils dilated slightly, like he was amused. Or aroused. Or planning. “You always were good at playing house with monsters.”

The breath caught in your chest. Not fear. Not surprise. Just the slow realization that you had passed a threshold that didn’t offer a way back. 

You didn’t correct him because deep down, in some festering place you kept sealed behind steel and silence…You weren’t sure he was wrong at all.

-

Later, Lex stands by the floor-to-ceiling window with one hand in his pocket. The skyline behind him glows faintly blue. Everything inside the office is dim on purpose. He’s not looking at you yet. But you know better than to think that means he isn’t watching.

The door hisses shut behind you. You cross the marble quietly, heels echoing once before you mute your steps. It’s always quiet on this floor. No secretaries. No assistants. Just soundproof walls and Lex’s ever-growing silence.

He speaks before you reach the desk. “You remember the cuffs?”

Your breath stills.

Lex takes a slow sip, eyes fixed on the skyline, voice low and laced with nostalgia. “Cold metal. Single-point restraint. Tactical, elegant. I always appreciated the detail work.”

“What do you want, Lex?” You don’t stop moving until you’re across from him, arms loose at your sides, face unreadable.

“You looked... wistful today.” He turns slowly. His expression is placid. Too calm.nYou say nothing, knowing it’s bothering him deeply if he’s bringing this up again.

“When that freak landed,” he continues, “I just can’t shake the way you stared. You looked like someone remembering something.” He steps closer. “You looked like someone who forgot what side they’re on.”

You lift your chin. “I looked composed.”

“You looked like you wanted something,” Lex says, circling the desk now, like a shark. The lights above flicker slightly. You don’t flinch, and Lex notices. “You’re not stupid,” he murmurs. “And you’re not sloppy. But you are... softening.” 

He sets his glass down. Carefully. Gently. “And I don’t like that.”

“Then stop watching me.” You fold your arms. 

He grins. “Can’t. You’re my favorite investment.”

You’re about to reply, about to say something sharp and surgical, when he leans in close, voice low and dangerous.

“You may have pulled the strings to get me out of that hellhole, but don’t pretend it bought you freedom. You’re not here because I owe you. You’re here because I own you.” His breath is warm against your cheek. “Don’t make me remind you what I still have.”

You try your best to not react, but your heart skips once. He hears it.

And somewhere high above, perched silently just outside the invisible sonic barrier, Superman hears it too.

-

He doesn’t breathe or move. He just listens.

Suspended in the cold air above LuthorCorp’s glass building, Clark hovers like a ghost against the skyline, unseen, silent, and still. The wind cuts around him in high-altitude currents, threading through the edges of his cape, snapping it softly in the dark. His boots don’t touch the roof. His eyes don’t blink.

Every sound is sharp. The city below is a chorus of late traffic, night trains, neon buzz, and human breath, but he filters it all out. Focuses. Dials into the pocket of silence beneath his feet.

Lex’s office. Buried in reinforced concrete, layered in soundproofing and digital scrambling fields. Human ears wouldn’t hear anything but static. Even microphones would pick up nothing but white noise. But Clark doesn’t need equipment. He doesn’t need access.

He hears Lex’s voice, faint and thinned by insulation and shielding, like a whisper underwater. “You may have pulled the strings to get me out of that hellhole, but don’t pretend it bought you freedom…”

He closes his eyes. Hears the sentence finish not in words, but in pulse.

Yours.

For a moment, it skips. Just once. A flutter beneath your breastbone. A beat that betrays you.

He opens his eyes again, and they’re colder now. Sharper. His hands curl into fists at his sides, the knuckles creaking under pressure. Not enough to crack bone. Just enough to feel it. The strain. The tension. The fury he keeps bottled so tightly beneath the surface.

Because he knows what that skip means. It wasn’t surprise. It wasn’t performance.

It was fear.

You’re afraid of Lex, and yet you lie anyway. Lie about loyalty. About what you’re capable of. 

Clark tilts his head slightly, as if the angle might tell him more. He tunes in further. The blood in Lex’s body moves thicker, slower. Relaxed. Confident. Predatory. His tone is cruel and quiet, controlled as ever.

Yours is steady on the surface, but your breathing is tighter. Just barely. A half-second too short on every exhale. Your body is doing math behind your ribs. Calculating escape, endurance, sacrifice.

You didn’t crack, but you’re so close to doing it. And that scares Clark more than anything. Because he knows you’re not weak.

Which means whatever hold Lex has on you, it’s real.

The concrete beneath Clark’s boots trembles, just slightly, with the pressure building in his body. He pulls back and forces it down. He presses his eyes shut and breathes deeply. 

You lied to Lex. Again. But not for power. Not for him.

So why? That’s the question he can’t shake. That’s the reason he stays there in the dark, a god hovering above a man who thinks he owns the world, watching you twist inside the cage Lex built for you.

That’s the reason his fists stay clenched. Because if he moves now, he’ll be tempted to burn the whole building down. And even if he does, he still might lose you.

-

The room hums with low blue light and cold machinery. Everything inside it is deliberate.

The floors are polished obsidian tile, gleaming, immaculate, untouched by daylight. The walls are seamless slabs of dark paneling broken only by coded touchscreens and retinal scanners. Every surface reflects the cold LED glow that pulses in a slow, metronome rhythm overhead.

The air tastes like sterilized metal. Every breath feels a degree removed from real oxygen, scrubbed, filtered, and vacuum-sealed for maximum efficiency and minimum humanity. It smells like lightning. Like order.

Like Lex.

You don’t belong here but you’ve worn the costume well enough, long enough, that the system no longer questions you.

You swipe into the sublevel with a clipped badge and a flat affect. Your security clearance is one level below Lex’s. The code that got you through the third override wasn’t yours, but you made it yours. The permissions you used tonight technically belong to a LuthorCorp director who’s been “on sabbatical” since January. His log-ins still live. You keep them fed and quiet.

You are very, very good at survival.

Your heels click once before you adjust your gait to absorb the sound. You glide toward the main console, each step softened by muscle memory and instinct. The machines around you exhale low pulses of data, quiet and impersonal. Their glow pulses in sync with the power grid. A cathedral of control. You keep your eyes forward.

The main console accepts your biometric scan with a soft chirp. A confirmation window blooms across the center screen, curved glass catching the shimmer of your reflection. For a brief second, you see your own eyes.

You look like you belong. And that’s the most dangerous lie of all.

You enter the ghost code without hesitation, layers upon layers of falsified routing data and internal mimicry, a patchwork of real and manufactured signals. You run your hand across the interface, palm steady as the encrypted backdoor opens behind the official terminal. 

The list loads and your stomach lurches.

TARGET: UNREGISTERED METAHUMAN POPULATION — TIER B THROUGH S

Names. Aliases. Genetic IDs. Last-seen coordinates. School districts. Hospital admission records.

The photos are the worst.

Some of them are cropped from surveillance footage. Blurry. Unflattering. Distant. But others… others are too clear. School portraits. Family vacation shots. DMV captures. A little girl holding a lollipop and smiling wide, labeled Tier D, instability unknown. A teenage boy with his arms crossed in front of a school locker stating Tier C, suspected telekinetic event following assault by peer.

The threat rating pulses in the corner of each profile like a heartbeat. Red. Orange. Yellow. Green.

You hate that Lex made it a color system. You hate that someone had to design it. And you hate most that you didn’t stop it when you had the chance.

Your hand curls into a fist against the console. The edge of the glass bites into your palm. You hadn’t realized you were pressing that hard.

You breathe in, sharp and shallow. Pull it back. Reset. Your face stays blank. That’s muscle memory now too. Lex’s voice echoes in your head, too loud, too clear. “It’s time we did something useful with the rats who keep slipping through the cracks. Pull the list. Prioritize by threat level. We start this week.”

He hadn’t said eliminate. He hadn’t needed to. He said useful. And Lex Luthor only defines usefulness in terms of how fast something breaks under his control.

You should’ve left months ago, should have never gotten him back out. You could’ve disappeared. You know how. You’ve done it before. But every time you thought about running, you saw it: Your file. Buried, sealed, untraceable. Locked behind his private servers.

The one piece of leverage you haven’t been able to erase. The one thing that still makes him your goddamn warden. 

So you stayed. You put on your mask. You smiled at the right people. You whispered orders in Lex’s ear and made the world believe you were on his leash.

And now here you are. Burying another truth under another lie. Because survival is the only thing you’ve ever been able to count on.

You reach into your jacket and unclip the data stick from its secure inner pocket. The brushed metal is warm from your body heat, the texture smooth against your fingertips.

It used to belong to someone else. Someone better. The you who thought helping Lex once was just a means to an end. Who thought compromise was a bruise that would fade. Who thought the cost could be contained.

That version of you died quietly, in pieces. You never mourned her.

You plug the stick into the auxiliary port beneath the desk. Your fingers move fast, like they were made to betray people. You pull only the top quarter of the list. Enough to trigger an alert. Enough to warn him. Superman. Enough to feel like you’ve clawed back one inch of your own humanity. But not enough to protect them all.

Not enough to matter.

You re-encrypt the file under five layers of code, the key structure written in a rhythm only one person could recognize. You bounce the signal through global decoys: Oslo. Rio. A feed farm in Kansas. Then the final node, a corrupted comment thread buried inside a shuttered Metropolis gossip blog, long dead, except to one man. You’d learned by accident that Superman kept tabs on it after your first leak, months and months ago. And now, it was an unofficial channel for the two of you. You don’t even know if he’s aware that it’s you who uses it. 

You don’t label the leak. You don’t sign it. You don’t watermark it. You don’t even pretend this is justice. You just plant it. And then you step back from the altar, the machines breathing steady behind you, and stare at your reflection in the dark curve of the screen.

You’re still here. Still complicit. Still alive. And you hate Lex for what he’s turned you into. But you hate yourself more for the fact that, no matter how many people you save…You’re still only doing it to keep your own head above the water.

-

Clark blinks and the city sharpens. The visor overlay casts data across his field of vision in soft blue light, blinking symbols feeding him the city’s pulse in real time. Beneath him, the sprawl of Metropolis stretches and glows, neon arteries, amber windows, rhythmic movement. A thousand lives flicker below: sleeping, pacing, crying, laughing.

He hears everything. The city is a symphony of sensation. Sirens wail seven blocks west. A dog barks twice in the East End. A heartbeat hiccups behind an alley dumpster, slowed with fear. A baby lets out a dream-cry in a high-rise nursery, and Clark almost smiles.

Then the signal hits. A single pin, burried deep in a cluster of dead code. The drop impacts a signal fork he’s been monitoring for weeks, an anonymous whistleblower node hidden in the comment feed of an abandoned online tabloid. And now it’s active.

The signal routes through four shadow servers, bouncing across global relays. The trail is expertly masked, each layer coded with surgical precision, clean and clever, with just enough noise to make it look accidental. But not to him.

He follows it. Lands silently on the rooftop of a shuttered observatory, the cape brushing gravel and moonlight. He kneels beside a rusted antenna housing, sliding two fingers to his temple as the file expands in the air in front of him.

The list unfolds like a wound. Names. Coordinates. Classifications. Children.

His jaw locks. The tendons in his neck tighten. The locations are real. The threat markers are real. Several of these people he’s saved. He knows their faces. Their powers. Their fears.

A girl who stopped a mudslide in Boravia. A boy who turned invisible when his father raised a hand. A family that vanished off-grid after a neighborhood drone sweep two weeks ago.

Lex is hunting them. And someone inside LuthorCorp is trying to stop it. Someone is risking everything.

He inhales through his nose, slow and quiet, like the wrong exhale might shatter the moment. The encryption isn’t perfect. It wants to be traced, but only partway. He sees through the ghost layering, the structure of the file, the choice of servers. It’s not random. It’s deliberate. And it’s familiar.

Your hands did this.

The lines of code are wrapped tight like your thoughts, fast, efficient, careful. They loop in patterns he’s seen before: in footage of you running black-site simulations. In past leaks. In the way your fingers flicker across a screen when you think no one’s watching.

This is you.

It has to be. But if it is, why haven’t you run?

He stands slowly, the hologram dissolving beside him in a soft cascade of light. The air is cold this high up, cleaner. It cuts through the warmth in his chest and hardens into something more painful. More personal.

Because if you’re leaking these files…If you’re warning him, again and again…If you’re trying to save them, why are you still standing next to Lex Luthor like a loyal shadow? Why are you letting the man who weaponized fear and named it salvation claim you like a possession? Why are you letting him touch your wrist, whisper in your ear, breathe down your neck? Why are you letting him think he owns you?

Clark’s fists clench at his sides. The gravel beneath his boots shifts with the pressure. A thin crack snakes through the rooftop tile where his weight settles. He doesn’t notice. He’s too busy thinking about the way you looked at him last time.

You’re not just playing both sides. You’re surviving them. That realization burns in his chest, sharp and quiet. Worse than kryptonite.

He swallows hard as he blinks down at the city again. He knows what Lex is. He knows what men like that do to people like you. People who are smart, powerful, principled… and trapped.

But knowing it doesn’t make this any easier. It doesn’t stop the sick curl of guilt in his gut. Doesn’t erase the sound of your breath skipping when Lex stood too close. Doesn’t make the image of you working late, alone, exhausted, and wired into the heart of the machine you’re trying to break, any less haunting.

He presses two fingers against the comm bead in his ear and then stops. There’s nothing to say.

Not yet.

-

You finish wiping your fingerprints from the system. Digitally, at least. The code winds backward through the server logs, looping in on itself like a snake devouring its own tail. It’ll hold. Thirty hours, maybe. Twenty-six if Lex gets bored. Eighteen if he gets suspicious.

The console hums softly beneath your palms. You run one last pass, your hand still resting near the auxiliary port where the data stick was just minutes ago. The edge of the desk has left a faint indent in the soft underside of your wrist. You flex your fingers. Shake it off.

You don’t hear the door open. You feel it. A subtle shift in pressure, the faintest drop in air temperature. The scent of polished leather and citrus antiseptic. 

You don’t flinch. You’ve learned that tells are blood in the water with men like Lex. You keep your eyes on the console, posture relaxed, like you expected him. Like you’re glad.

“Working late?” he drawls, his voice echoing too smoothly in the room’s sterile quiet. Like a scalpel dipped in honey.

You swivel the chair just slightly. Not enough to appear alarmed. Just enough to face him. “Just running threat projections for the new tech,” you say, the lie fitting easily into the shape of your mouth. “Cross-referencing known metahuman outliers.” 

“Efficient,” he says, stepping beside you now. “That’s what I like about you.” He taps the back of your chair. Not hard. Not enough to startle. “Always two moves ahead.”

 His hand lingers for a second too long. The chair doesn't move, but you feel it in your spine anyway, like pressure settling into the hollow curve of your back.

You meet his gaze when he finally rounds the console. His eyes sweep across your face like a scanner. Looking for microexpressions. Any flicker of guilt or hesitation. Any fracture in the mask.

“You’ve been quiet lately,” he says. A gentle observation. A warning, dressed like concern.

You tilt your head, just slightly. “Maybe I’m just thinking.”

“Good,” he says. “Think faster.” His smile is slow, curling at the edges. Pleased. Predatory. He leans in, not enough to breach protocol, but enough to force you to inhale him: whiskey residue and white musk, expensive skin cream and whatever sterilizer they use in his private lab. Too clean. Unnatural. Like he’d kill the scent of blood if he could. 

There’s something behind his smile this time. Not amusement. Not even irritation. Anticipation. Like he knows something is coming. Like he’s looking forward to watching it unravel. And still he walks away. No more questions. No accusations. Just a slow turn, his footsteps fading back into the hum of machines and blue light. The door seals behind him with a hydraulic whisper.

You don’t relax. You just breathe slower. One measured inhale. One tight exhale. You press your palm flat against your thigh to keep it from twitching. You resist the urge to check the logs again. To wipe the stick. To look over your shoulder and make sure there’s not a camera behind the wall you missed.

You don't do any of those things. You just sit there. Alive.

But barely.

-

The sky is bruised lavender, fading into gray at the edges, the kind of early hour where time stretches thin and shadows blur the line between real and imagined. The wind has a sharpness to it this high up, tugging at your coat like it’s trying to pull you back from the ledge.

You stand still. Arms crossed. Chin lifted just slightly as if defying the wind itself. The hem of your coat whips around your calves, flicking against your boots in rhythmic snaps. 

He lands behind you without warning. No sonic boom. No gust of displaced air. No dramatic scrape of boots on concrete. Just… presence.

You feel him before you hear him. The heat of him. The soft gravitational wrongness of having something impossible standing behind you. The air bends around him like it makes space for him without question. Like it knows he doesn’t belong to gravity. 

“I got the file,” he says quietly. “The list.”

Your jaw tightens. You knew this moment would come. You’ve been rehearsing this conversation for days. Weeks, maybe. But the real thing doesn’t feel like a script. It feels like confession. Still, your voice is steady when it leaves your mouth. “Then you already know what you came here to ask, I assume.”

“I want to hear it from you.” There’s no judgment in his tone. No righteous fury. Not even disappointment. Only that maddening calm. Like he’s speaking to a wounded animal he doesn’t want to scare off. Or something already halfway broken.

You finally turn to face him. The light, what little there is here, catches the curve of his cheek, the set of his jaw. He looks more human like this. Less icon, more man. There's wear in his expression, like he's slept less than he should and worried more than anyone knows. His eyes are soft. Too soft. They’re the kind that beg answers you’re not ready to give.

You want to tell him everything. About the data. About the names. About the guilt that’s been rotting through your bones like rust through steel. You want to tell him that you’re scared. That you're tired. That you're angry in ways that have no direction anymore. But you don't. Because telling him would make it real.

“This conversation isn’t safe.”

“I know,” he says, stepping forward, voice low. “But you are.” That lands like a punch. A good one. The kind that finds its mark and doesn’t let you breathe through it.

Your brows knit, your throat tightening around something too hot to swallow. “Don’t do that,” you snap. “Don’t assume I’m some noble cause you can fix.”

The wind picks up, slicing between you like a knife, but he doesn’t even blink. His cape stirs behind him, catching the breeze like it has its own pulse.

“You’re not a cause,” he says softly. “You’re a person. One who’s risking a lot more than you’re letting on.”

“You don’t know anything about what I’m risking.” You scoff. 

“I know you’re still standing next to Lex Luthor,” he says. “And I know that’s killing you.”

Your breath stills. Because he’s right. And that’s what makes it unbearable. The words land like a knife sunk just deep enough to bleed, not deep enough to kill.

“I can help you,” he says. “But I need the truth.”

You lift your chin. Eyes narrowing, heart rattling like a bird in a cage. “You want the truth? Fine. I didn’t leak that file to help you. I leaked it to get ahead of a war I’m not interested in watching play out. I did it to survive.”

He watches you. His jaw flexes once, like he’s biting down on something he doesn’t want to say. “That’s not all of it.”

“It’s all you get.” Your voice doesn’t shake. But your hands, clenched at your sides, start to ache.

“You think I don’t see what this is doing to you?”

You move. Not far. But close enough that his boots shift slightly. His breath stills. You’re close, closer than you’ve ever stood to him. 

“You see what I let you see. And if you’re smart, you’ll stop looking.” Your voice drops to a near whisper.

He flinches. Just slightly. But it’s enough, and you hate that it is. Because it means part of him still believes you. Still hopes for something different.

You can’t give him that. Not without falling apart in front of him. And if you fall apart now, you won’t make it back.

So you turn before he can speak again. You walk back across the rooftop, the stairwell door heavy under your palm. The metal groans softly as it opens, and the air inside is colder somehow. Stiller.

You don’t look back.

-

The room is too quiet. Even the hum of the machines feels subdued, muffled beneath layers of tension and the electric press of recycled air. Blue-white LED strips run the edges of the ceiling, casting long shadows over the glass floor, designed to be dramatic. 

You stand near the main console, spine straight, hands behind your back, every breath measured to the second. The screens are still active, the footage looping in soft, clinical silence.

Prototype Array 02. Destroyed.

There’s no footage of the moment Superman arrived, only the aftermath. A crater where the unit had been. Energy signatures still clinging to the concrete like residue from a weapon no one could legally name.

You knew he’d make it in time. You made sure of it. 

The door seals shut behind you with a soft, hydraulic hiss. You don’t turn, but your heartbeat picks up anyway.

Lex’s footsteps echo sharp across the glass. The soles of his shoes tap a precise rhythm against the reflective tile, like he’s announcing his approach not to startle, but to warn.

You glance over your shoulder.

He’s wearing gloves. Black leather. Smooth. Surgical.

A bad sign.

“Someone leaked access-level intel last night,” he says, skipping pleasantries. His voice is low, velvet over steel. “Caused just enough interference to trigger Superman’s interference. Prototype Array 02 was destroyed before it could be field-tested.” He stops just behind you. Not close enough to touch, but close enough that the air between your spines feels thinner. Tighter. Like the oxygen itself knows to shrink away from him.

You say nothing. You can’t. There’s nothing you can say that wouldn’t be either too perfect or too slow.

“Almost like someone wanted him to find it,” he continues, conversational.

You finally turn and your eyes meet his.  Lex Luthor’s expression is unreadable. Pleasant, even. But there’s something new behind his eyes now. A sharpness. A calculation that isn’t theoretical anymore. He’s deciding. 

“You didn’t save me out of love or loyalty,” he murmurs. His voice is too soft now. Intimate. Dangerous. “You saved me to survive. Because you need me. So let's not rewrite our history, shall we?” 

Your heart stutters. One beat. Off tempo. Just enough. He hears it. You know he does. Lex tilts his head slightly. Smiles like he’s just confirmed something.

You meet his gaze anyway. “I’m not rewriting anything.” 

He takes a step closer. Not quite a threat. But his presence feels heavier now. 

“Then don’t make me start writing your obituary.” His voice is a scalpel. Precision-sharp. It grazes across your nerves like the edge of something that could cut, but hasn’t yet. “Because if I find out you’ve been playing both sides…”

You tilt your chin slightly. “You’ll kill me?” you ask. The words come even. Dry. Tired. “That’s always been the endgame, hasn’t it?”

He laughs. Quietly. A single exhale. There’s no real humor in it. Only inevitability.

“No, darling,” he says, almost gently. “Killing you would be a kindness.” He takes another step forward. The light from the screen reflects in his eyes now, cold and washed in blue. Artificial and unforgiving.

“I’ll make sure your name becomes a cautionary tale instead. Your legacy, your value, erased in real time. Systemically. Publicly. Intimately. I’ll make sure people pity you.” He leans closer, and for a second, you think he might touch you. But he doesn’t. He just smiles. “And I’ll enjoy it.”

You don’t move, save for the edges of your nails pressing into your palms hard enough to leave tiny crescents you’ll feel for the rest of the night.

Lex straightens slowly, brushing invisible dust from his cuff like he’s resetting a performance. “Well, then. Back to work, shall we?”

He turns and walks away. And just like that, he leaves. No confirmation of guilt. No evidence. Just a crack in the glass. 

The door seals shut behind him. 

And still you just stand there taking one breath at a time. Because the air around you feels tighter now. Like it knows you’re not going to survive this the way you survived before.

You’ll have to be smarter.

Colder.

Worse.

-

The video ends again.

Clark exhales through his nose, slow and steady. His glasses catch the pale glow of the paused frame, casting a faint reflection across the lenses.

It’s grainy rooftop security footage, exterior stairwell, 4:13 a.m., time-stamped in the bottom right corner.

You’re walking up the final flight of stairs to your apartment building’s rooftop access, your coat pulled tight against the wind. The city is sleeping. The sky is inked in pre-dawn purple. No one’s watching.

No one except him. He watches as you reach the top step. As you pause. As your shoulders, always held like armor, finally drop.

It’s barely noticeable but he sees it. The breath you let out. The brief sag of your posture. The way your head tilts toward the night, as if you’re about to ask it for something it can’t give. And then you walk out of frame.

Clark removes his glasses and rubs a hand over his jaw. His fingertips catch on a patch of stubble he forgot to shave. He lets the silence settle.

She’s not going to let me in, he thinks. Not like this.

Not while wearing the cape. Not while standing above you like a symbol of impossible morality. You don't trust capes.

You trust survival.

He leans back in his chair, exhaling again, longer this time. His apartment is warm. The radiator ticks softly near the window, punctuating the quiet. A forgotten cup half drank coffee goes cold on the table beside him. 

The cursor on the screen blinks beside your name. Still open.

He taps twice, expanding the embedded file beneath your ID header. Your LuthorCorp bio unfurls across the monitor. Clinical. Vague. Cleaned and redacted by the company's press team.

But he doesn’t see the bullet points. He sees the spaces between them.

Oversaw international contract negotiations. Coordinated advanced prototype development. Internal security consultant, Level 7. No photos of you smiling. No casual lines about favorite authors or childhood hobbies. Just sharp credentials and blank spaces. A résumé written like a firewall.

He closes the window. Then opens another.

Journalistic protocol be damned. He types a background request into the Daily Planet’s internal access portal, eyes narrowing as he fills in the subject line:

“Shadow Personnel at LuthorCorp – Feature Development Lead: Kent, C.”

He doesn’t wait for approval. By the time Perry White’s assistant flags it, Clark’s already received preliminary confirmation from Metropolis Business Affairs. Within the hour, the request is fully cleared by LuthorCorp.

By morning, Clark Kent is assigned to shadow LuthorCorp’s public projects.

Officially, it’s for a human interest exposé on the infrastructure behind modern tech innovation. Light reading. A puff piece. A way to showcase how LuthorCorp’s R&D is transforming the cityscape since his return to the public eye.

Unofficially, it’s an excuse. An opportunity. A way to stand beside you. To look at you without making you feel watched. To offer you something soft instead of something impossible.

Because he’s starting to understand: You don’t want to be saved. You want to be seen. And not as a threat. Not as a weapon. Not even as someone who needs help. Just… as you.

So that’s what he’ll do. He’ll walk into the lion’s den with a press badge instead of a cape. Smile instead of a warning.

-

The briefing file hits your inbox at 6:05 a.m. sharp.

You’re still halfway through your first cup of coffee, eyes bleary, the morning light still too bright despite the closed blinds. Your tablet screen casts a pale glow across the countertop as you scroll through Lex’s overnight activity, redlines, approvals, cryptic one-sentence commands that feel more like threats than direction.

Then you see it.

Subject: Departmental Clearance – Press Access (Temp) Name: Clark Kent – Daily Planet Assignment: Observational Journalism, Human Interest. Focus: Corporate Infrastructure & Leadership Culture.

You stare at it for a full ten seconds, the caffeine in your veins finally catching up to your brain just in time for the rage to simmer.

“No,” you mutter to your empty apartment. “Absolutely not.”

You read it again. Still there. Still real.

You click the sender credentials. Encrypted, high priority. Lex’s digital signature embedded beneath the message. He knew you’d see it. He wanted you to.

A test. A trap. A distraction.

You dump the rest of your coffee down the sink.

-

By the time you arrive on the upper executive floor, he’s already there. And he’s taller than you expected.

He’s standing just inside the glass atrium, a little too close to the twisted metal “sculpture” no one has ever successfully explained. The overhead lights catch in the lenses of his glasses, turning them opaque for half a second before he shifts.

He’s holding a notebook. An actual spiral-bound, probably college-ruled notebook and a pen he keeps losing between his fingers.

Everything about him looks slightly out of sync with the space around him. The atrium is sleek, clinical. Chrome, charcoal, and glass. A colorless shrine to corporate power. Lex likes everything to feel sterile and intimidating, like you're walking into the belly of a machine.

This man is warm tones and clumsy elbows. Floppy black hair that curls near his ears. Wrinkled button-down. Glasses slightly askew. He has the posture of someone who forgot he was in a high-rise and thinks he might’ve walked into the wrong classroom.

And that smile. That goddamn smile. Polite. Wide. Almost too bright. Like he means it. Like he hasn’t already filed you under “difficult subject” in that neat little reporter brain of his. Like he doesn’t already know what kind of person you are.

You hate him instantly. Which means you know exactly who he is.

The damn journalist.

Lex must have handpicked this media puppy, assigned to shadow you, just to piss you off further for your lack of loyalty.

You barely stop yourself from turning around and walking back into the elevator when the journalist spots you.

His expression shifts into that midwestern charm thing you’re sure he weaponizes without knowing it. His hand raises in a little wave, awkward and hopeful. You can practically hear him thinking do I wave again? No? Okay. Cool.

“Hi!” he says, like this is a grocery store meet-cute instead of a potential tactical infiltration. “I’m Clark. Clark Kent. From the Planet. I think I’m, um, yep, here to follow you around.” He gestures to his laminated press badge like that somehow explains the whole thing.

“You’re late.”

He winces slightly, like you physically swatted him with the words. “I know. Elevator decided I looked like a maintenance guy and stalled out on Level 12. Very humbling. I’m trying not to take it personally.” He grins.

You want to throw him out a window, but he looks like he’d apologize for breaking it on the way down.

Great. You think. A chatty one.

You inhale slowly. Then turn. 

“Don’t fall behind.”  You walk off without waiting to see if he does.

He does.

-

You don’t speak as you lead him down the corridor. The elevator dings closed behind you, sealing off the public floors with a quiet hiss of air pressure and security glass. The lighting down here is colder. Whiter. Industrial-grade and migraine-bright. You know every inch of this hallway. You know which floor panels groan when stepped on too hard. Which keypads glitch on the first try. Which cameras are motion only, recording nothing when you're perfectly still.

You don’t hear Clark’s footsteps, but you know he’s behind you. Too tall, too soft-footed, too quiet for someone who makes their living asking questions. Which means he’s doing it on purpose. Adjusting to you.

It’s worse than if he were loud.

You stop in front of the biometric doors. “This wing is secured,” you say, pressing your hand to the scanner. “Don’t touch anything.”

He holds up both hands like you’ve just caught him stealing snacks. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

The doors glide open, revealing the primary development floor of R&D: steel desks, suspended digital schematics, sleek touchscreen walls. Three researchers look up when you walk in, then promptly look back down.

No one talks to you unless invited. That’s how you like it. 

Clark, on the other hand, is clearly taking mental notes on everything. You can feel it. The way his eyes skim the layout. The silent, subtle tilt of his head when a blueprint auto-scrolls across the glass wall beside him. The faint twitch of his fingers near his notebook like he wants to scribble something but knows better than to pull it out again just yet.

You move toward your station. He follows, stopping just a pace behind you.

“So,” he says, with the voice of someone trying very hard not to sound like they’re prying, “have you worked here long?”

You don’t look up from the console you’re booting. “Long enough.”

“That’s…comforting,” he says, lightly. “You know, for a place with weaponized drones and facial tracking corridors.” You say nothing. He shifts his weight behind you. Not impatient. Just trying to read the temperature. 

You click through three internal clearance logs. Block a keystroke tracker that wasn’t there yesterday. Lex has started setting traps again. And now he’s added this.

You glance sideways at Clark just long enough to catalog him: relaxed shoulders, wide stance, reporter’s notebook peeking out of his bag like a talisman.

Lex assigned him to you on purpose. You’re even more sure of it now. Not because the Daily Planet is doing a fluff piece. Not because Clark Kent is harmless.

Because Lex is punishing you. For the leak. For the sabotage. For surviving him with too much silence and not enough fear. You’re a loyal dog with blood in your mouth, and this is Lex Luthor yanking your leash.

You feel your jaw tighten. Your fingers press harder into the console keys than necessary.

Clark senses the shift. “Sorry,” he says, voice gentler now. “That was a dumb question. I just meant, it’s a lot of space. Easy to get lost.”

You exhale slowly. Count to three. You don’t snap. You don’t warn him off. You don’t make it easy. “Don’t mistake access for familiarity, Mr. Kent.”

He nods once. No offense taken. It’s annoying. 

“Noted,” he says. Then, too casually, he asks, “Is it weird, working so closely with Lex Luthor?”

That stops you. Not entirely, but you still. Your fingers hover over the screen for half a second too long. You recover quickly, turn to face him.

“What are you asking?”

Clark shrugs. Friendly. Shrinking himself by inches. “I mean… the man has a reputation. Just wondering what it’s like day to day. I imagine ‘casual’ isn’t in his vocabulary.”

You study him. You know what he’s doing. 

“Lex doesn’t do casual,” you say carefully. “He does calculated.”

“And you?”

“I follow orders.”

“Is that all?” He asks softly, raising an eyebrow. 

You hate how that question lands. How it hits someplace old and sore, behind your ribs, just beneath the part of you that still thinks survival is something you’ve earned.

You turn away. Back to the console. Back to control. “I don’t give interviews,” you say.

“Wasn’t trying to get one,” Clark replies. “Just trying to talk.”

You pull up the security feed, your fingers moving fast now, deliberate. 

“Then find someone else to talk to.” You say, but your voice lacks the bite it should.

-

The moment your front door shuts behind you, the mask slips. Your bag hits the floor with a quiet thud. You don't bother turning on the lights. The apartment is all glass and chrome, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Metropolis’s glittering skyline, but tonight, it feels like a cage.

You shrug off your blazer, fingers stiff from tension you never got the chance to release. You toe off your heels, padding barefoot across the cool tile toward the kitchen.

The silence is brittle.

You pour yourself a drink and lean against the counter, eyes fixed on the city beyond the glass. You haven’t sat down. You don’t trust yourself to. You’re still trying to unwind your mind from the way he looked at you.

Clark Kent. Too polite. Too curious. Too easy to like. 

And too close.

You’re not stupid. You know how this goes. You’ve been handled before. You’ve been shadowed. Investigated. Interrogated with a smile. But none of them ever looked at you like that. None of them ever made you want to answer.

The phone buzzes on your counter. Not your personal. Not the work-issued burner. The red-line device. The one tied directly into LuthorCorp’s upper executive channel. Only three people have the clearance to call it.

You stare at the screen for half a beat before answering.

“Yes?”

“I saw him.” Lex’s voice crackles through the receiver, crisp and amused. 

Your jaw tightens. “Saw who?”

“Don’t be coy. It doesn’t suit you.”

You don't respond. You don’t need to. You already know what he's enjoying.

Lex makes a pleased little sound, like a man swirling vintage wine he already knows is poisoned. 

“Clark Kent,” he says, tasting the name. “From the Daily Planet. Very soft voice. Terrible shirts. Terrific jawline.”

You exhale slowly through your nose. “You approved his access.”

“Did I?” Lex hums. “I got a call from Perry White’s assistant. Something about a human interest feature. Infrastructure fluff. I figured—why not? Let the hounds sniff around. We’ve got nothing to hide, right?”

You can hear the grin in his voice. Feel it, even through the static.

“But then I saw you. And suddenly it was so worth it.” He’s delighted. Giddy, even. A rare tone from a man who usually reserves that level of joy for global economic collapses.

“You didn’t assign him,” you say quietly.

“No. But I kept him,” Lex replies. “Because I haven’t seen you that irritated in weeks.” He pauses, but not for breath. For pleasure. “I was starting to worry you’d gone numb.”

You take a slow sip of your drink. “I can handle him.”

“Oh, I know you can. That’s not what’s interesting.” His voice drops, silk over steel. Intimate now. Like a knife held gently against your throat. “What’s interesting is how fast he got under your skin.”

You don't react out loud, but he reads you anyway. In your silence. In your breath.

“I thought I broke that part of you a long time ago,” Lex says, almost dreamily. “But maybe I missed a piece.”

Your grip tightens around the glass.

He’s not done. “You’ve been awfully… twitchy since the Array was compromised. And now we’ve got a new face poking around, asking questions only you can answer. It’s a hell of a coincidence, sweetheart.”

You close your eyes. “Are you accusing me of something?”

“Not yet,” he replies. “But I do love a mystery.” He hums. Then, almost too softly he purrs, “Be careful with this one.” 

It sounds like concern. But it’s a threat.

“He seems charming. I’ve met charming before. They bleed like everyone else.”

The line clicks dead.

You set the phone down with careful precision. Your hands are shaking and you hate that more than anything.

You stand there, barefoot, glass in hand, staring through your own reflection into the glittering skyline beyond. Metropolis stretches wide and glowing, unaware. Unbothered. You can see the tower from here, LuthorCorp’s top floor lit up like a crown. You’ve spent years keeping it that way.

A controlled fire. That’s what Lex used to call you. “You’re beautiful when you burn,” he’d said once. “But you only scorch the things I tell you to.”

Tonight, you feel scorched. Not controlled.

Your fingers clench tighter around the whiskey glass, knuckles whitening. You set it down before it shatters. The silence presses in, too quiet now. Like the apartment knows something just shifted.

You walk toward the window. Press your palm to the glass. It’s cool against your skin.

“They bleed like everyone else.” The words echo. Curl like smoke behind your ears. Lex hadn’t meant it metaphorically. You know him too well for that. He wasn’t talking about threats. He was promising consequences. Personal ones. Surgical.

You close your eyes. You shouldn’t care. You’ve told yourself that a hundred times over a hundred different faces.

Clark Kent is no different from any of the others. He’s a distraction. A risk. An idiot, frankly. Wandering into LuthorCorp with his notebook and his manners and that ridiculous smile like it hasn’t even occurred to him that he could die here.

You don’t like him. You don’t even trust him. But he looked at you like he didn’t want anything from you. Not leverage. Not information. Not submission.

Just... you.

And Lex noticed.

You know how this goes. You’ve seen it a dozen times. The moment someone matters to you, really matters, they become a weakness. A liability. A target. Lex finds the soft thing and he puts a knife in it. Every time.

And if Clark gets too close, if he keeps following you, keeps smiling like he’s not afraid of what you’ve done, Lex will notice again. And next time? He won’t warn you.

Your throat tightens. You press your forehead to the glass. “This is your fault,” you whisper. Not to Clark. Not to Lex.

To yourself.

Because you should have told the Planet no the second Clark walked in today. You should have shut the door. Shut him out. Done what you’ve always done. Cut the wire before it burned down the whole house. 

Instead, you let him follow you through steel corridors and sterile labs and ask questions you didn’t shut down fast enough. You let him be kind. And now he’s marked for it.

Because of you. Because you haven’t run. Because a part of you still wants to win instead of just survive.

The thought sinks claws into your spine.

You turn from the window and head to the bathroom. Strip off your blouse, your slacks, your armor. Step under the too-hot spray of the shower and brace your hands against the tile.

You don’t cry. You just stand there until the water scalds red at your shoulders, burning you back into something solid. Something sharp.

You won’t break. But you’ll bleed.

Better you than him.

-

Clark sits cross-legged on his floor, laptop open, notebook discarded beside it. A half-eaten slice of pizza congeals on a napkin near his elbow. His glasses rest on the windowsill, abandoned the second he got home.

He rubs his eyes with the heel of one hand and exhales.

“LuthorCorp Day One,” he murmurs. “Observation log: twenty-three strange silences, six instances of non-verbal communication, four locked doors, and one subject who might actually hate me.” He leans his head back against the wall. Lets it thud there once.

You.

He should be writing a damn exposé, drafting lines about environmental violations or the underpaid biotech interns who work in a room next to military-grade containment arrays, but instead, all he can think about is you.

The way you move like a storm dressed in silk. The way you didn’t trust him, but didn’t push him away, either. There was something behind your eyes today. Something layered. Guarded. But not gone.

He closes the laptop. Outside, Metropolis pulses. Sirens rise. Tires screech. The heartbeat of a city that never slows. He listens with half his mind, an old habit by now, tracking the emergency frequencies, the rooftop whispers, the tremors in alleyways and arguments. But there’s one sound he keeps circling back to.

Yours.

Faint. Far away. But steady.

He finds it almost without trying, like his subconscious has mapped the rhythm of you without permission.

You're… home.

He can feel the subtle echo of your footsteps through your apartment’s floors. The clink of glass. The tension in your breathing. The way your pulse was low and even… until it wasn’t.

The change is sharp. He hears it spike, fast and sudden, like fear held too tightly in the chest. Then stillness.

Then Lex’s voice. Barely. Distorted by miles and miles and security barriers and reinforced concrete. He can’t make out the words. But he can feel the tone. Cold. Calculated. And something in your response twists like broken glass in his chest.

You’re quiet. Terrified, even. 

Clark’s hands curl into fists against the hardwood floor. What did he say to you?

You’re not weak. Not scared easily. You stood toe-to-toe with Superman and didn’t blink. But this? This sounds like something else entirely. Something that’s been trained into you.

The silence that follows feels louder than anything else. He stays tuned to you even after the call ends. Long after your footsteps fade down the hall, after the rush of water starts behind the walls of your apartment. 

His throat tightens. He doesn’t know what was said. He just knows something changed. And tomorrow, you’ll act like nothing happened. You’ll wear your armor. You’ll meet his questions with ice.

But he heard your fear again, and he can’t un-hear it. 

Clark leans forward again, elbows on knees, staring at nothing. He should let it go. He knows that. But still, when he closes his eyes, he hears your pulse.

And it doesn’t sound like a villain’s.

-

The executive floor is colder than usual. Or maybe it’s just you.

Your heels are silent today. Not by design. By intent. You’ve stopped making noise when you walk. Stopped reminding the halls that you exist.

Here, invisibility is power.

The lights overhead hum softly, casting harsh white over polished obsidian floors and brushed titanium railings. The LuthorCorp executive wing is a temple of modern brutality. Even the shadows here are symmetrical.

You arrive before 7 a.m. Earlier than necessary. Earlier than you’re expected. The security team doesn't even nod anymore. They know you. Or they think they do. You pass through clearance gates without slowing down, retinal scans accepting you on first pass, your ID badge not even clipped visibly to your coat.

They don’t need to see it. You are the ID. You step into the main hub and he’s already there.

Clark Kent.

Seated at the edge of the long glass conference table, laptop open, sleeves rolled to the elbows in that soft, Midwestern way that shouldn’t belong in a place like this. He’s surrounded by tablets and papers and handwritten notes on cheap spiral notebook pages. His pen clicks once, then twice, as he types with surprising speed for someone who looks like he’s never used a keyboard more advanced than a library terminal.

But he smiles when he sees you. And that’s what unravels something in your spine.

“Good morning,” he says. His voice is soft. Gentle in a way that doesn't fit here. Not like this. Not in this world built from weaponized ambition and surgical cruelty.

You nod once. No words. And you keep walking. 

-

You don’t speak to him the rest of the morning. You log into the master systems from the secondary interface, not the central terminal. You’ve learned to spread your access points, keep your digital footprint thin, fractured. You don’t touch anything directly. You reroute tasks through oblique authorization strings. Disguise orders beneath clearance echoes. Layer ghost commands three levels deep behind dummy entries.

You route two security protocols to loop out surveillance footage for select corridors between 9 and 10 a.m. 

You don’t look up while doing it.

Clark watches you. You can feel it. Not just the obvious glance, the journalistic gaze, but something deeper. Something steady. Constant. Not leering. Not predatory.

Observant. Like he’s cataloguing your grief in real time.

And you hate that it feels so obvious.

Because you’re composed. You’re precise. You didn’t flinch when Lex sent you into war rooms to sabotage peace talks. You didn’t cry when he forced you to scrub names off evacuation lists. You’ve lived in this armor for years.

But one look from Clark Kent and you’re suddenly aware of every dent in the steel.

-

The summons comes at 9:43 a.m. sharp. A muted ping. No header beyond the standard string:

LUTHOR / DIRECTIVE / IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED.

You route it to your private line, encrypt the trail, and slide your tablet into your case. Stand. Adjust the collar of your jacket. Not too crisp. Not too relaxed.

Then you make the walk alone. Down the eastern corridor, past the reinforced subwing where LuthorCorp keeps its less “public-facing” endeavors. 

You pass the junction near the containment sector. The light flickers overhead. Just once. It always does. An intentional glitch Lex keeps unfixed, a static pulse in an otherwise perfect loop. A reminder: everything wrong here is exactly as he wants it to be.

The hallway narrows. The floor tilts ever so slightly. Enough to make you feel off-balance if you’re not ready for it.

You don’t stumble.

-

His door opens the moment your footsteps still. A soft hiss, vacuum-sealed and seamless. You step into the lion’s den.

Lex Luthor is already standing. No tie. No jacket. Just black sleeves rolled up and a tablet glowing like a weapon in his hand. He’s perfectly still. His bald head is immaculate in its shine. His mouth is flat. No smile. No preamble.

Trouble.

“We have a problem,” he says, without looking up. The lights in his office are different. Not the cold fluorescents of the executive floor. These are warmer. Dimmer. Designed to lull, like you’re not in danger. Like you're safe.

It’s a trick.

He tosses the tablet onto the table between you. You don’t flinch when it hits.

A satellite image flares into view, grayscale terrain layered with perimeter heat signatures. One structure sits in the center. Low. Unassuming. Rural outskirts. Outside Keystone.

“Old prototype site,” Lex says. “We haven’t used it since Jarhanpur.”

You study the image. “That’s still an active site.”

“Not for long.” His tone is smooth. Almost conversational. “There’s sensitive material on-premises. Data. Gear. Genetic debris. I need it erased. Entire structure. Floor to foundation.” He doesn’t explain what the material is. He doesn’t offer reasoning. He looks at you now.

You glance up from the image. “There are still people on staff.”

“Then they’ll evacuate.”

“There’s no time on the schedule for—,”

“Then they’ll burn with it.” He cuts you off like he’s reading the weather report.

Your throat tightens. Lex doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t make threats. He simply sets conditions. Consequences are built in. Like gravity.

“Understood?” 

You hesitate. Not long. But long enough for him to look up from his interface. His eyes sharpen. Cold. Predatory. Not angry, but attentive. Calculating.

You make your face blank. Your voice even. 

“Understood.”

He nods once. Approval as casual as ordering tea. 

“Have it cleared by nightfall. We’ll say it was a breach. Containment failure. I’ll push a memo through government channels by morning.”

You say nothing. You’re already planning the workarounds. Trying to think two moves ahead. How to stage an equipment failure. How to send a misfiled maintenance flag. How many of the staff you can reroute without triggering suspicion.

Lex turns back to his own console, flipping through schematics like they’re stock reports.

Then, almost as an afterthought, he adds, “And do keep your new shadow occupied, won’t you?” He doesn't look at you, but you feel the tension shift. “He’s a sweet kid.” Your stomach twists. “I’d hate to lose him to an accident.”

The air in the room thins. Your spine locks, shoulders pulled tight against the rising chill under your skin. He doesn’t say Clark’s name. He doesn’t have to. And he’s not smiling. Which is worse. Because when Lex smiles, he’s already won. But this? This is Lex when he's curious. This is Lex waiting.

Testing.

You force your expression to stay neutral. You nod once, as if the conversation is finished. And then you turn. You walk out without speaking again. Because if you stay too long, he’ll see the fracture. The crack where the fear is starting to leak in.

And if he sees it? He’ll press harder.

Like always.

-

Back in the main wing, your steps slow. Every hallway here is lined with invisible wire, trip sensors, biometric readers, retinal logs you aren’t supposed to know exist. If you move too quickly, too nervously, you’ll trigger something. Not an alarm. Not anything obvious.

Just suspicion.

And in this building? Suspicion is fatal.

You pass Clark on your way to the private lab. He’s seated at the end of the long conference table again, scribbling something onto a legal pad like he’s the only person on Earth who still believes in pen and paper.

You don’t look at him.

You feel his gaze track you anyway. Quiet. Watchful. Orbiting.

-

The lab is dark when you enter. You keep it that way. Dim emergency lighting casts everything in a cool, sterile haze. 

You cross the room to sit at the primary console as you wake the terminal. The blue light of the screen spills upward across your face as the destruction sequence begins to compile. Line by line, the system renders the model: structural beams, insulated pipes, buried control wiring. The heat signature overlay pulses faint red. The projected fallout radius loads in concentric circles.

You scroll to the personnel roster.

Fifty-six names. More than you expected. Too many.

You scan for vulnerabilities. Weak links in protocol you can exploit. The maintenance log is outdated. Good. The environmental systems are overdue for calibration. Better. You flag it. Fake a hazardous materials report. Use the night shift rotation to issue a low-tier recall. Nothing that would raise flags.

But it’s not enough.

You route emergency response orders to a shell account, an old override key you were never supposed to keep.

Behind you, footsteps. Soft. Measured. He knocks once on the doorframe.

“Everything okay?” Clark asks gently. 

You don’t answer. Your fingers fly across the keys. Another directive. Another decoy. Every second counts. If you’re too slow, people die. If you’re too obvious, you die.

If you flinch? Lex wins.

The terminal beeps, destruction schematic finalized. You press your thumb to the secure strip. The system recognizes your biometrics. Green light.

“You’re moving fast this morning,” Clark says again, softer now.

“LuthorCorp doesn’t pay me to move slow.”

“You look tired.”

You pause for a fraction of a second. Your breath hitches in your chest, so quiet it’s practically a thought. You don’t mean to react. But his voice, the concern in it, rakes like glass down your spine.

“I’m fine.”

“You didn’t sleep.”

You turn. Too quickly. He’s closer than you expected. standing just inside the lab now, arms crossed loosely, gaze fixed on you. He looks at you like he’s trying to memorize the shape of your grief. Like if he studies you long enough, he’ll understand what you’re trying so hard not to say.

“Drop it, Kent.”

His brows pull slightly. The crease between them deepens. He doesn’t step back. “You don’t have to-,”

“Drop it.” Your voice cracks like a whip across the quiet, killing the words as they leave his mouth. And just like that, it’s done.

Clark looks at you, and you wish he hadn’t. Because it’s not disappointment in his face. It’s kindness. It’s care. And somehow, that’s worse than if he’d yelled. Worse than if he’d pressed. Worse than if he’d left.

Because now? Now you want to reach for him.

And you can’t.

-

By noon, the first batch of staff is en route home. You’ve done everything you can.

You staged the false recall. Rerouted the shuttle manifest. Flagged four personnel records for “essential review.” You scheduled an unplanned ventilation inspection. You even scrubbed the access logs and buried the order under three layers of Lex’s own directive templates, enough to delay retaliation by a few hours, if you’re lucky.

You bought time. Not salvation. But time.

Lex hasn’t called again. But you feel him pressing against your spine like a gun barrel to the back of your neck. One wrong word, one misstep, and he pulls the trigger.

You tell yourself you’re prepared. You tell yourself you’ve done enough. But when you glance at the terminal screen again, at the list of names you couldn’t evacuate, the ones still pending clearance, the blank space where the destruction sequence will activate…You feel it.

The fracture. The guilt. The part of you that still wants to believe there’s a version of this where you make it out whole.

And Clark? Clark won’t stop looking at you like he knows. Like he sees something inside you worth saving.

And god help you, you almost believe him.

-

You weren’t supposed to go. You told yourself that a dozen times between the lab and your office. While Clark followed at a careful distance, eyes too soft, mouth twitching with questions he didn’t ask. You brushed him off with clipped responses. Sent him a data packet to “review.” Told him you were behind on LuthorCorp's quarterly numbers.

And then you slipped away. Your badge rerouted access through an older sub-level elevator. One Lex had forgotten you still had clearance for. He wouldn’t notice, not with back-to-back boardroom meetings and a call with a senator on the docket. You checked. Twice.

You told yourself it was just to confirm that the staff had cleared out. To check. To be sure. But deep down, you knew.

You were spiraling. The weight of it had started back at your desk, fingers cramping from typing too fast, jaw locked, heartbeat a staccato drum against your ribs. You couldn’t breathe. You couldn’t sit still.

Because it wasn’t just a site. Wasn’t just names on a list. They were real. You’d seen their faces. Memorized their shift schedules. You’d ordered their coffee three days ago.

And you were about to be the reason they died.

You needed to see it. 

You needed to be sure.

-

The sky was the wrong color when you arrived. Gray. Flat. The kind of gray that sucked the blue out of your skin and made the trees look like cardboard cutouts. The access road to the facility was empty. The shuttle logs showed zero active transit.

You wore black. Civilian code. Unmarked jacket, untraceable watch. You’d hacked your own entry badge, dropped it from the mainframe before departure. No record. No signal.

Still, your footsteps felt loud. Too loud.

The ground crunched beneath your boots as you crossed the perimeter. Dry grass. Gravel. A snapped wire fence curling like a dying insect. The air smelled burnt already. Like the building was holding its breath.

Inside, the lighting flickered low. Generator power only. Emergency status engaged. Motion-activated overheads blinked on as you moved through the corridors. The halls were narrow, painted in shades of institutional beige and corporate denial. You passed an overturned chair. A half-empty coffee cup. A jacket slung over the back of a door.

A human life, paused.

You kept walking. And then you heard it. The hum. Low. Mechanical. Like the building was whispering to itself.

You turned toward the source: sublevel storage. You didn’t know why. Maybe instinct. Maybe guilt. Your hand grazed the door.

And that’s when it happened. The explosion hits like a god’s fist. You don’t hear it at first. You feel it deep in your bones, like a tuning fork shattering inside your ribs. A shockwave punches through the corridor, warping the air into molten glass. The heat flashes before the sound does, white-orange and angry, like the sun has split open at your feet.

Concrete shatters behind your eyes. Your shoulder slams into the wall. You lurch forward. Debris pelts your back, ripping fabric, dragging heat across your skin. The wind is sucked from your lungs. The blast curve lifts you like a ragdoll.

You think: I miscalculated.

You think: This is what dying feels like.

You don’t think anything else.

-

Darkness. And then, arms. Strong. Warm. Solid like steel beneath silk. A chest rising fast with breath. A voice calling your name, shaken, urgent, furious.

You're moving through the sky, half-conscious. Flames vanish behind you. The air burns your lungs. Your body slumps in his hold.

And even now, your first thought isn’t relief.

It’s Damn it.

He came for you.

“Put me down!” You shove at him before you even think.

“You’re hurt.”

“Put me down!” You twist in his grip, elbow jamming into his chest, legs kicking weakly. It’s clumsy. Desperate. Your body is bruised and screaming but none of that matters.

He lands hard, gravel cracking beneath his boots, and doesn’t let go until you fight him like you mean it.

You stagger back, breath ragged, blood trickling warm behind your ear. Smoke clings to you like a second skin. You’re covered in ash and guilt and fury and something else you don’t want to name.

Your knees almost buckle. But you don’t fall. “I had it under control,” you rasp. “I didn’t need you to interfere.” 

He’s still catching his breath, not because he needs to, but because you’re pushing him away and he doesn’t know how to stop you without hurting you worse.

“You almost died.”

“I was buying time.”

“You were buying yourself a funeral.” He steps forward. The firelight paints sharp lines across his face, angular, golden, too much. Always too much.

You shove him. Harder this time. He takes it. Lets it happen.

“You think you’re so noble, don’t you?” you snap. “So righteous. You think swooping in at the last second erases everything that came before. You don’t know what I’ve done.” 

He watches you like he’s afraid to break the moment. Or like it’s already broken, and he’s still reaching for the pieces.

“You should hate me,” you whisper, stepping back. “You should. Everyone else would.”

“I don’t care,” he says.

“You should.”

“I know enough.”

“You know nothing.” Your voice rises. “You don’t know what it’s like to be owned. To belong to something vile and powerful and impossible to escape. You don’t know what it’s like to trade pieces of yourself just to stay alive. To bury who you are just to make it to the next day. You don’t know what it’s like to be useful or dead.” You’re panting now, chest heaving. 

You feel every fracture. Every scar. Every piece of yourself you’ve cut down to fit inside Lex’s world. And Superman, this man with fire in his chest and stars in his veins, is looking at you like he sees all of you anyway. All the parts you thought you lost. 

“I know enough to bleed for you,” the words fall out of him softly, like they weren’t meant to be said aloud.

The fight drains from your fingers all at once, trembling and spent. And for a second you forget to be afraid.

You’re standing inches apart now. So close you can feel the heat off him, radiating like sunlight. His suit is scorched at the shoulder. Ash smudges the curve of his cheek. He smells like steel and fire. And something human. Like warm skin and wind.

He’s looking at you like he already knows what you taste like. Like he’s been dying to find out. But he doesn’t move. Not until you do.

You sway. Barely. You don’t even mean to. But his eyes dip to your mouth. You can feel it, his breath against your lower lip.

Your fingers twitch at your sides. You want to grab him. You want to punch him. You want to pull him in and not let go until the world stops burning around you.

You almost do.

You lean in. You can feel him and stop. Close enough to count eyelashes. 

Your voice breaks like glass. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” he whispers, barely audible.

You don’t open your eyes. “Because if you kiss me right now…” you take a breath. A quake beneath your ribs. “I won’t survive it.”

He stands there, still holding on, even though you’re not touching.

You expect him to fly away. After everything you just said, after the screaming, after the shoving, after nearly kissing him in the wake of a blast zone, you expect him to go. To take the hint. To give you space.

But he doesn’t. He stays.

The wind moves around you, tugging softly at the hem of your jacket. His cape flutters once and stills. The smoke’s started to thin, but the ruin behind you still spits embers, orange against the dull afternoon gray. Distant sirens wail. No closer. No further. 

Time has slowed to a crawl.

You shift your weight. Your knees still ache. Your temple is crusted with dried blood. Your entire left side throbs in a deep, bone-deep kind of way. You’re covered in ash and exhaustion. But you don’t move. Neither does he.

You glance up and he’s looking at you like you’ve asked him to stay without saying a word. He steps closer. Carefully. Not like a man with super strength, but like someone trying not to startle a wounded animal.

You don’t back away. 

His fingers brush your wrist. It’s the lightest touch. Just the pads of his fingers. A whisper against burned skin. A question without words.

You flinch. It’s not dramatic. Not harsh. But he feels it.

He lets go instantly. And your hand curls into a fist at your side because it hurts. Because for a second, it felt like someone was offering you something you forgot you could still have. Gentleness. Warmth.

“I’m sorry,” he says. The words are quiet. Too soft for a disaster zone. But they reach you.

You don’t know what he’s apologizing for. Saving you. Staying. Touching you. All of it, maybe.

You swallow. Your voice is barely there. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Probably not.” He doesn’t move. Doesn’t argue. He just stays. Like a wall you didn’t ask for, holding back everything that could still come.

You stare at him for a long time. Something inside your chest, old and rusted, tugs. 

Your throat tightens. “I didn’t do anything worth this,” you say, and it comes out too fast. Too cracked. “You shouldn’t of saved me. I made things worse for you more than anything when I pulled Lex out of jail.” 

You hesitate before you continue, “I didn’t do it because I cared. I did it because I was afraid.”

He nods once. Doesn’t ask of what. 

“I’m still afraid,” you whisper. “Of him. Of what I’ve become. Of what I’ll have to do to get out.”

“You don’t have to do it alone.” He looks at you with the kind of gentleness that doesn’t bend under pressure. 

You close your eyes. One breath. Two. Your body wants to collapse. Not from pain, but from the unbearable ache of someone seeing you. You almost say it. You almost ask.

Stay.

But you don’t. You don’t get the words out. Not before a security vehicle roars past the edge of the ruin, red lights strobing through the smoke. Backup has arrived. Lex’s cleanup team, most likely. Watching. Recording. Judging.

Superman sees it too.

He looks back at you. And you nod. Small. Controlled. Almost mechanical.

Go.

And for a second, you think he won’t. But he does. He rises into the smoke, cape snapping behind him, and vanishes above the treeline without a sound.

You stand there alone. Your wrist still tingles. Your lips still burn from the kiss you didn’t take. And when you finally breathe again, it’s not relief.

It’s grief.

-

LuthorCorp’s executive suite has always been cold. But tonight, it’s frigid. The lights are dimmed. The skyline burns gold beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. Below, the city crawls, small, insignificant. And Lex Luthor stands with his back to the glass, fingers steepled beneath his chin. There’s a screen beside him. Still playing the footage. 

Superman dragging himself from the wreckage.

Carrying something.

Someone.

The resolution is poor. Smoke-thick. But it doesn’t matter.

Lex rewinds it again. Frame by frame. Eyes narrowed. Lips curled.

“Son of a bitch.” His voice is low. Controlled. The way venom is controlled.

He turns as you enter, summoned twenty minutes after the blast, your injuries carefully hidden beneath a new blazer and a looped scarf that hides the blood still crusting at your hairline. You’ve scrubbed the ash from your skin. Your pulse isn’t steady, but you’ve locked it down.

“The Keystone site was compromised. Not from inside,” he adds, watching your face carefully. “But from above.” 

He touches the screen. The frame freezes. Superman. Holding something close. Cradling it. You. But the image is too smeared. Too distant.

He doesn’t know.

Lex doesn’t know it’s you.

You keep your mouth shut. Your breath shallow.

“He was there,” Lex continues, circling the room like a shark. “Before the detonation. Possibly during. That means he had intel. That means someone is leaking again.” He lets the words hang.

You hold still. 

“Three major tech recoveries lost. Eight months of data collection. The facility was meant to be off-grid, inaccessible. But he knew. He always knows.” He turns to you now. Full-on. Eyes bright with manic clarity. “So. We bait him.”

Your brows lift. “Again?”

“Again,” he says, almost grinning. “Because he can’t help himself. He’s addicted to tragedy. To heroics. We feed him one. A believable one. Something real enough to make him bleed for it.” He reaches for a file. Thin. Green-backed. Locked with biometric access.

Kryptonite.

He’s opening it before you can speak. “Prototype lure,” he says, laying out the specs like a conjurer with cards. “Laced with synthetic radiation and a signature beacon tuned to his rescue patterns. I’ve already planted the foundation at the new test site. All we need now is bait.”

He looks up. Smiles. “A city block. Maybe two. Minimal population, high-risk containment structure. Somewhere people will beg him to save them.”

You force yourself to exhale through your nose. Slow. Measured.

“What if it fails?” you ask, voice dry. “What if he doesn’t take the bait?”

“Then we try again,” Lex says simply. “Until he does. Because he will.” He folds the file shut. Taps it once with his knuckle. “He can’t help but bleed.” 

And then, so casually it might be mistaken for an afterthought, “Oh. And keep that reporter of yours on a tighter leash, won’t you?”

Your heart skips. “Kent?”

“Yes. Him. Soft boy. Too many questions today when you were in your meetings. We both know he doesn’t have the teeth to do real damage, but he’s curious. I don’t like curious.” 

He doesn’t wait for a reply. He just waves you out. Dismissed. Like he didn’t just say Superman was going to die. Like he didn’t almost kill you in the same breath.

You step into the hallway. The door hisses closed behind you with a sound like a final breath, sealing the room, and the orders, away. But it doesn’t stop the way your skin prickles under your blazer, nerves still lit like fuse wire.

The lights overhead hum too loud. The glass floors vibrate with the pulse of power two levels below. Everything here is too clean, too sharp. Like walking through a weapon.

Your mouth tastes like metal. Like fear swallowed and buried. Like fury chewed down to its root.

You’re still alive. By chance. By dumb, reckless luck. Because Superman showed up before the ceiling collapsed and saved you. Because the timing was just right and the camera too blurry. Because Lex didn’t see your hesitation. Because no one saw you go back.

You’re not sure what would’ve happened if he hadn’t pulled you out. If the fire had reached you first. If the blast had cracked your spine in the wrong direction. If Superman hadn’t…

You bite the thought off before it finishes. You can’t afford it. Not when Lex is setting the next fire. And you? You’ve been ordered to make it happen. To help design the trap. To plant the fuse and light it.

You press your knuckles to your mouth, trying to stop the shake in your hand. You should be running. You should be leaking every detail. You should be warning Superman before this becomes a massacre.

But the problem is Clark.

Clark Kent. Too kind. Too curious. Too earnest. 

Lex noticed the way you flinched around him, and he won’t hesitate. Lex would gut Clark just to make a point.

You close your eyes. Just for a second. Caught in the impossible math of survival.

You can’t protect both of them. Not for long. 

And if the wrong person dies it’ll be your fault.

-

The lobby is mostly empty by the time you reach it. You don’t notice the figure waiting by the revolving doors until you’re almost at them. Then you do and your pulse stutters.

“Rough day?” His voice is soft. Gentle in the way it always is when you need it least.

Clark Kent pushes his hands deeper into his pockets, shoulders hunched slightly against the wind bleeding in through the glass. His tie is askew. His collar rumpled. His eyes pin you in place before you can step past him.

You school your features into something blank. Professional. Unbothered. “Don’t you have somewhere else to be, Kent?”

“Nope.” He tilts his head. 

“Persistent,” you exhale through your nose. 

“Concerned,” he corrects, voice quieter now. “There’s a difference.”

You cross your arms. Your coat pulls tighter across your ribs, pressing into the bruises you haven’t tended to yet. The heat behind your eyes flares again. You clamp it down. “You’ve been following me.”

“I’ve been… watching,” he admits. “Not in a creepy way, at least, I hope not. But something’s wrong.”

Your jaw ticks. 

He steps closer. “You looked like you were going to throw up in the elevator this morning.”

“I had a bad breakfast.”

“And yesterday? When you didn’t show up to the lunch briefing?”

“I had work.”

“And at the facility-,” 

“Don’t.” Your voice is too sharp. Too fast.

He stops. Brows pulling together. Hurt flickers across his face for just a second before it’s gone. “I know I’m not… I’m not part of this,” he says, slower now. “But I saw the facility footage on social media. I know Luthor’s planning something dangerous. And I know you’re in the middle of it.”

Your stomach sinks. “You don’t know anything.”

“Then tell me.”

That almost breaks you. Because his voice isn’t angry. It isn’t righteous. It isn’t even suspicious. It’s pleading.

You look away. Down at your hands. At the scarred edge of your tablet case. At the floor. Anywhere but him.

“This job doesn’t come with backup, Kent.”

“It could,” he says. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

“You think I want to be alone?” you snap, sudden and vicious. “You think I wanted this? That I chose to be Lex’s attack dog?” You don’t mean to lose control. But you do. “I’ve bled for him. Lied for him. Erased people for him. I don’t get to come back from that.”

You shake your head. The words burn your throat as they leave it. “People like you… you shine, Kent. You walk into a room and everything tilts toward you because you’re good. People trust you. They believe you. You’re a bright light in a burning city and I can’t save…” You stop. Cut yourself off. Hard.

Silence crashes between you.

Clark swallows. “That’s not fair,” he says quietly. “You don’t know me.”

“No,” you agree. “And you don’t know me either. So stop trying to save someone who’s already dead.”

You push past him before he can answer. 

“Wait,” he catches your wrist. The touch is warm. Stupidly warm.

You freeze for just a breath. And your mind does something you can’t stop. It flashes. Not to this moment. Not to Clark Kent. But to the wreckage. The smoke. Superman touching your wrist the same way earlier today. That impossible heat, steady against your skin when everything else was falling apart.

It’s the same.

The pressure. The way he holds you. Gentle, careful, like you’re something breakable and worth saving.

Your stomach turns. Your pulse jumps.

No, you think, brushing it off. Blame it on adrenaline. On exhaustion. On the fact that you’re holding the weight of two bleeding-heart men in your chest, one in a press badge, one in a cape, and neither of them will stop looking at you like you matter.

It’s too much.

Clark’s eyes search yours, still soft. “If you ever decide to tell me…” His voice is low. Barely above a breath. “I’ll be here.” Then, without ceremony, he pulls a folded slip of paper from his inside pocket and slides it into your free hand.

You look down. A phone number. Handwritten. Slanted and neat. His number.

“Just in case,” he says.

You don’t respond. You can’t. Because if you do it’ll all come crashing down: the mask, the silence, the carefully calculated distance you’ve kept between who you were before and what Lex turned you into.

You pull your wrist free. Your fingers curl tight around the paper. You step into the revolving doors, glass catching your reflection in pieces.

And you don’t look back.

-

He doesn’t follow you. Not into the street. Not through the glass doors or the black car that’s probably waiting around the corner.

He stays stuck in the lobby of the world’s most dangerous skyscraper, with his hand still warm from your skin and his heart pounding like he just flew through a thunderstorm.

For a long time, Clark doesn’t move. Then he exhales. Slow. Heavy. Like he’s been holding something in for hours.

By the time he lifts off, the night has thickened. The clouds roll low above the skyline, stormless but bruised. 

He hovers above the city like a silent satellite, arms folded, cape dragged by wind he doesn’t feel. His eyes flicker gold as he scans the grid. His ears stretch into the patchwork of city noise, car horns, footsteps, someone yelling in the distance.

And then, there. Your heartbeat. Steady now. But elevated. Not like fear. Not like fury. Something else. It had jumped when he touched you. He’d felt it, a flutter beneath your skin, a stutter-step in the rhythm he’s learned by heart these last few weeks. You’d covered it well, masked it with that blade-sharp voice of yours, but he heard it.

He felt it.

And it’s messing with him now.

Clark presses a hand to the side of his neck, fingers brushing just beneath his jaw like he’s trying to take his own pulse. Like he can line it up next to yours and somehow make sense of what the hell just happened.

He’s supposed to be here to watch Lex. To unravel the trap being built brick by digital brick beneath LuthorCorp’s executive floor. He’s supposed to be calculating strategies. Intercepting payloads. Getting ahead. Not thinking about how your skin felt under his hand. Not aching at the way you wouldn’t look back.

Clark clenches his jaw. 

You’re still awake. He can hear it in the change to your breathing, slower now, but tense. Like you’re pacing. Like you’re muttering to yourself in the dark.

You haven’t called the number. He didn’t expect you to. He told himself it was just a lifeline. A symbol. But the part of him that still hopes you might. Because for all your precision, all your armor and barbed-wire edges, he sees something in you that keeps him from turning away.

The way you lied to Lex but told the truth with your eyes. The way you tried to save the workers before the blast. The way your voice broke when you told him not to kiss you. 

He can still feel the space between you. One breath, one inch, one unmade decision. If he’d moved forward…If you hadn’t stopped him… He wonders what would’ve happened. He wonders if he’s already too late.

Clark shifts midair, eyes narrowing as he scans the LuthorCorp tower again. A sharp spike in temperature registers from one of the lower labs. A flicker of static interference lingers on a secure server line.

Lex is building something. Planning something. And whatever it is? It’s for Superman.

But the real danger isn’t the weapon. It’s you caught between it. Held in place by secrets you won’t share and chains Clark can’t see yet.

“You’ll break,” he whispers to the wind. “If you keep carrying it alone, you’ll break.”

He doesn’t know if he’s talking about you or himself. 

-

Lex doesn’t summon you with a message this time. He sends someone. Not an intern. Not a system ping or digital command. A person. A security escort in matte-black tactical gear, polished boots silent against the tile, his face full covered by a mask and goggles, making his expression unreadable beneath the mirrored lenses.

He doesn’t speak. Just nods once, a quiet tilt of the head that says follow.

You do because not following would raise more alarms than anything else. 

Lex Luthor stands in the center of a darkened projection suite like a conductor at the podium, one hand tucked behind his back, the other holding a glass of something golden and self-congratulatory. The lights from the holowall dance across his cheekbones, casting his face in sharp geometry.

On the screen: you and Superman.

Frozen mid-motion. A single, high-resolution frame of the rooftop standoff after the Metahuman file was leaked. Your face caught in half-turn. His expression unreadable. The air between you nearly visible with tension.

Lex presses play.

The image jerks to life. The clip loops. Superman’s hands. Your eyes. 

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Lex murmurs, voice smooth and low. “He looks at you like you’re a person.”

The ice behind your ribs hardens. You don’t answer.

Lex sips his drink, eyes on the screen. The footage replays again. And again. “Most people flinch,” he adds. “Instinctive. Primitive. He registers as a predator, you know. Something in the silhouette. The cape, the speed. Yet you didn’t flinch.”

Still, you say nothing.

He finally turns to look at you. His gaze drags over you like an x-ray. Slow. Heavy. Searching for fractures.

You meet it, but only because not meeting it would be worse.

“You don’t like him,” Lex says. “But he likes you. That makes him… useful.” He pivots, walks toward a slim, reinforced metal case resting atop a backlit console.

You know what’s inside before he opens it. But you still feel your stomach turn.

Click.Hiss.

He unlatches it with surgical ease, revealing a poly-alloy containment pod no bigger than a lunchbox. Sleek and steel-gray with radiant green seams glowing like veins beneath the surface. It pulses. Faint, but alive.

Kryptonite.

Not the raw shards. This has been refined. Weaponized. The air smells different around it. Like rain before a lightning strike. Like the ghost of something poisonous.

“He trusts you,” Lex says softly, not looking at you. “That’s leverage.”

“You want me to lure him.” It isn’t a question. Your voice is quiet. Barely audible.

Lex turns. He’s smiling now, something sharp, crooked, familiar. “I want you to break him.” 

He steps closer. The case remains open between you. The light from the canister reflects in your eyes. In his.

“Why now?”

Lex’s gaze sharpens. “Because he’s getting close. Because he’s watching. Listening. Waiting. Circling something like a starving dog looking for the weakest link.”

His hands form fists at his sides.  “Because we have a window. One. To turn his obsession into a weakness.” He slides the case toward you with two fingers. “Give him a reason to back off. Or bleed trying.”

You stare at the canister. The thrum of it vibrates beneath your skin. Not loud. Just felt. Like a migraine beginning in your teeth.

You don’t touch it yet. “And if he dies?”

Lex lifts his drink to his mouth again. “Then he dies.” He says it like he’s ordering lunch. “But not before he learns what trusting you costs.”

The words land like a blow. You reach out slowly. Wrap your gloved fingers around the edges of the case. It’s heavier than it looks. Warm through the metal. It feels like guilt. Like failure. Like every choice you never wanted to make.

Lex watches you like a man observing a test subject.

You force yourself to meet his gaze again. “Understood.”

“Good,” he says. “Make it painful.”

-

You deploy the device just after midnight. 

The original coordinates would’ve lit up a police surveillance node and drawn in civilians like moths to a nuclear flame. So you move it. Just a block west. Just far enough off the grid to avoid notice. Just close enough that the signal still pulses strong through the concrete.

Just far enough to weaken him. Just far enough to hurt. But not kill.

You hope.

You plant the canister beneath an old HVAC shell, tucked behind grating, welded into place with enough makeshift rigging to look legit. The green core inside pulses like a heartbeat. Like a countdown.

You secure it and whisper an apology to no one.

And then you wait.

-

He comes fast. The sky bends around him, red cape streaked behind him like flame, boots dragging a current of heat through the cold night air as he descends. But before his feet hit the rooftop, he falters midair.

His body twists. Hitches. And then he drops. Hard. One boot lands, then the other. Then a knee. He lurches forward, hand scraping the edge of the rooftop, gravel scattering as his fingers dig for purchase. His other arm wraps around his ribs. His breath punches out of him in a sharp, wet sound.

You’re already standing ten paces away. Still. Frozen. Just watching him break.

“You,” he rasps. His voice is barely a voice. More pain than sound. “You brought me here.” He says it like it’s undeniable.

And it is.

Your throat locks. Your chest constricts.

He takes another step, staggers. The veins at his temple throb under sweat-slick skin. The Kryptonite’s working. Not instant, but fast enough. Strong enough.

“You knew.” His shoulders heave as he drags air into lungs that no longer feel godlike. 

You flinch.

The hurt in his eyes is worse than the heat bleeding off him. Worse than the way his knees buckle, the way his cape catches under him as he crumples. The green glow behind the vent brightens, just a flicker.

You hit the remote.

The containment seal shatters, not in an explosive burst, but a soft sonic shiver, the kind designed to scatter the fallout. The green glow bleeds into the air, thinner, wider. Less lethal. It buys him room. But not much.

You step back.

He’s still on his hands and knees, coughing now, teeth grit against the agony rolling through him like fire under his skin.

“You could’ve warned me,” he snarls.

“You could’ve stayed away.” Your voice barely breaks above the wind.

He looks up. Not furious. Not righteous. Betrayed.

“I can’t. Not with you.”  

Your heart wrenches, because you didn’t want this. You didn’t want him like this. But Lex was watching. 

You knew he would be. The moment you planted the device, his tech would’ve pinged the internal servers. Satellite drones. Thermal cameras. All trained on you. All expecting a kill.

You don’t wait to find out. You don’t move toward him. Don’t explain. Don’t beg. You just back away, each step slow, each breath tight in your ribs like a scream trying not to happen.

He tries to stand. Fails. Your name rasps out of him once, almost like a question. But you’re already gone. Down the service stairwell. Through the alley. Into the night.

You don’t look back. Not even when the air trembles with the sound of him trying to fly.

You tell yourself he’ll make it.

You have to.

Because if he doesn’t? You just killed one of the only two men who ever looked at you like you weren’t a weapon.

-

tags: @taraa-dactyl @thescarletfang @delulu4bucky @1980djotime @xoxovlayla @junggoku @heyitsmeghann @nighttowlss

[yakshxiao]

do fic readers know that their comments actually influence the course of the story sometimes? i don't mean in a "you need to write it this way because i say so 😡" type of comment, i mean when people are asking questions or really engaging with the plot and the themes in the comments they sometimes bring up things that i didn't even think of, or dig into parts of the story that i've overlooked, or get really interested/fixated on something i was going to just kind of glance over--and it has me going 'oh wait that's actually really interesting, that's a good point' and fully adding or tweaking or changing things about the story going forward. i'm literally adding an entire additional chapter to something right now because someone's comment had me like "oh i didn't dig into that as much as i could have." you have impact!

[yakshxiao]

[yakshxiao]

٠ ࣪⭑ suburban legends

‎pairing: clark kent x bombshell!reader (part two) (3.0K words)

summary: as one of the daily planet's most popular gossip column writers, clark is surprised to learn you're a genius when it comes to superman. he's also surprised to learn you aren't all heels and makeup..

so how do you react to finding out he's the superhero you're utterly obsessed with?

warnings & content: bombshell!reader, female reader, not technically bimbo reader but others assume so, clark is whipped from the start and somehow becomes more whipped, reader double majored in stats and journalism go smart girls go!

٠ ࣪⭑ this is a part two to mastermind! i hope you love this one as much as the first! // requests for clark are currently open!

If you would’ve asked anyone at the Daily Planet newsroom how long it would’ve taken for you and Clark Kent to get together, they would’ve said you already were. Of course Lois and Jimmy had made bets, too.

Lois was right. As usual.

It wasn’t that the two of you had been flirting exactly. Not in the obvious way. It was just the way Clark always found your favorite pen when it went missing. The way your desk was next to his, even though technically yours had been assigned across the room. The way you’d always pass him a post-it when he forgot his press badge, and he always brought you coffee without asking how you took it—because he already knew. He way he’d make a stupid joke and you’d laugh, or how his day visibly brightened when you gave him attention..

And now? Now that it was official? That you’d actually gone on a date and kissed him and fallen asleep on his shoulder during a movie you picked but didn’t finish? Well, nothing had really changed.

Except everything had.

“You two are disgusting,” Lois said, sipping her coffee without looking up. Seeing you two graze hands at the printer and blush several times a day was ingrained in her mind already. Not that she really minded.

“We’re not even touching,” you replied, flipping through your printouts.

“Exactly,” she deadpanned. “You’re radiating soft couple energy from opposite sides of the bullpen. It’s oppressive.”

Jimmy leaned over from his desk, whispering loudly, “Did you kiss him?”

You didn’t look up. “Jimmy.”

“I bet you kissed him.” You didn’t reply. “You totally kissed him.”

From across the room, Clark looked up from his monitor and smiled at you—that smile, the one that made your knees go funny even when you were sitting down. You tried very hard not to melt into your chair.

Lois sighed. “And that’s my cue to go find a real story.”

Jimmy leaned over again. “Was it good?” You picked up a rolled newspaper and bopped him on the head without breaking eye contact. “Worth it,” Jimmy grinned.

“Tell me,” Steve rolled over in his chair. “Is this the kind of story you’d post about in your column? About the date with the office nerd and how you out-nerd him on a day to day basis?”

You turned slowly toward Steve, eyebrow arched like you were deciding whether to laugh or end his entire career. But instead of firing back with something sharp, you just smiled. “No,” you said simply, voice calm. “Because it’s not gossip. It’s mine.”

Steve blinked, caught off guard by the sincerity. So was Jimmy, actually. Even Lois paused mid-step, glancing over her shoulder. Clark looked up from his desk, a soft crease forming between his brows. Like he wasn’t sure if he should step in or let you handle it. (Spoiler: you always handled it.)

You turned back to your laptop, fingers tapping at the keys. “Besides,” you added without looking up, “if I were going to write about someone in this office, it’d be the guy who still hasn’t figured out how to use the shared printer.”

Steve grumbled something under his breath and wheeled away.

“Real talk,” Cat interrupted. “What about that Superman article you were talking about posting?”

You perked up slightly, spinning your pen between your fingers as you leaned back in your chair. “It’s almost done. I just want to fine-tune some of the analysis. I added a new section on his flight patterns—based on the velocity shifts I tracked last week.”

Jimmy, now safely two desks away, visibly winced. “Please tell me you didn’t break into another security feed.”

You smiled innocently. “I prefer the term borrowed temporarily.”

Cat raised an eyebrow. “You’re seriously going to publish an article with that much math?”

“It’s not just math,” you said with a light shrug. “It’s data-backed storytelling. I’m not trying to make people fall asleep. I’m trying to show them the truth. That he’s not reckless. That there’s precision in what he does. There’s science to it. Intention.”

Clark’s pen slipped from his hand. You didn’t notice, but Cat did. And so did Lois, who appeared back in the room just in time to catch Clark doing the world’s worst job at pretending he wasn’t completely floored by you.

Cat smirked and turned back to you. “You’re something else.”

You glanced up, blinking. “Good something else or..?”

“Definitely good,” she said. Then, nodding toward Clark, “And clearly not going unnoticed.”

Clark, red-faced and trying to recover, coughed lightly. “I think it’s a great idea for a piece,” he said quickly. “The public could use more informed perspectives.”

“See? Clark gets it,” you folded your arms over your chest.

“Because he’s head over heels—” Jimmy was interrupted by Lois smacking him with a newspaper, making him swat her away like a fly.

You bit back a laugh, then glanced over at Clark. He was already watching you, a little dazed and dreamy, like someone who’d forgotten the rest of the world existed. The second your eyes met, he blinked and gave you a small wave, almost sheepish. And despite everything, despite the teasing and the headlines and the very real article on your desktop detailing Superman’s aerodynamics, you blushed.

Jimmy groaned. “Oh my god, you’re both twelve.”

But Lois just smiled quietly, sipping her coffee as she turned back toward her notes. Because for all the chaos and caffeine-fueled headlines, for all the alien invasions and metahuman drama, something in this newsroom had finally settled.

That night, you sat on Clark’s couch, laptop on your lap as your back rested comfortably against his side. His arm closest to you clung around your collarbones; the most gentle of headlocks. A loving one. Sure, you and Clark had only been on one date, but it didn’t feel like you needed more. 

Here you sat, Clark by your side in a sweatshirt and sweatpants. You, without makeup, hair undone, wearing one of his old shirts and your old sleep shorts, nothing else felt better.

Sure, getting dolled up every day was a true joy, and you wouldn’t have it any other way, but being so bare like this for Clark was something else.

It was a kind of quiet intimacy you hadn’t expected to come so easily. The kind that didn’t need fanfare or flowers or fancy dinners. Just shared space, shared warmth, and the soft brush of his thumb against your arm every few seconds—like he needed to remind himself you were really there.

Clark rested his chin lightly against your head, eyes half-lidded behind his glasses as the evening news murmured low from the TV. He wasn’t watching it. Neither were you. The screen of your laptop cast a soft glow over the both of you as your fingers idly tapped at the keyboard.

“You working?” he asked, his voice quiet, more vibration in his chest than sound in the air.

“Mhm,” you hummed. “Polishing the Superman piece. Just tweaking the structure a little.” You had paused, craning your neck to look back at Clark. “Do you think Perry will take this seriously?”

Being a gossip columnist was great until you wanted to post a story like this.

Clark tilted his head, looking down at you with that soft, thoughtful gaze he always seemed to wear when it came to you. His fingers gently brushed your arm in quiet reassurance.

“I think,” he said slowly, “Perry will read it twice. Once as your editor. And once as someone who knows you don’t write anything unless it matters.” You blinked at him. “And if he doesn’t,” Clark added, a small smile tugging at his lips, “I’ll talk to him.”

You let out a soft laugh, half-exasperated, half-grateful. “You don’t have to go full.. Superman on my editor.”

If you would’ve looked closer, you would’ve seen how Clark nearly flinched at the words. You were only joking. You didn’t know. Phew.

“I wouldn’t.” He shrugged, trying to play off the surprised look he was sure he just flashed. “Just full Clark Kent. Turns out he’s surprisingly persuasive.”

You rested your head against his chest again, the sound of his heartbeat calm and steady beneath your cheek. “I just want people to know what I see. That he’s—” You paused, smile curling at the edges of your mouth. “That he’s more than what they say. That all the things he does—how he calculates impact zones, how he measures air displacement to avoid hurting people—it’s all intentional. It’s all done with care.”

Clark’s hand found yours, fingers threading between yours. “Then write it,” he murmured. “Exactly like that. Exactly how you see it.”

You turned your hand over, palm to palm, your fingers curling softly around his. “You know, you’re the only story I never want to twist.”

He kissed your forehead gently. “And you’re the only reporter I’ve never tried to avoid.”

That was the night Clark decided he wanted to tell you the truth. About who he was, what he could do, where he came from. That he was Superman.

But how do you go about telling the woman you’re falling in love with that you have a double life? That you’re, to put it plainly, from another planet. That you’re the person she’s been fawning over for ages now. That’s not something to just admit over dinner.

It wasn’t the kind of thing you slipped in between bites of spaghetti or during commercial breaks on movie night. Not when you were sitting in his sweatshirt, warm and real and tucked into his side like you’d always been there. Not when you’d just told him—with so much gentleness and trust in your voice—that you didn’t want to twist his story.

Clark stared down at you that night as you drifted off, your fingers still lightly curled around his, laptop dimming to sleep on the coffee table. Your breath evened out. You sighed softly in your sleep. And he just watched. Heart full. Terrified.

Because the truth wasn’t just about who he was. It was about who you were becoming to him.

He’d had plenty of close calls. Plenty of maybe this is the moment conversations lined up, planned in the back of his head, rehearsed like a press briefing. But none of them had ever made it out. Because what if you looked at him differently? What if your voice changed when you said his name? What if you stopped smiling when you saw him flying overhead?

What if knowing he was Superman changed the way you saw Clark?

But that night—watching you there, curled up against him in a way that made his life feel smaller, sweeter, less lonely—he realized he wanted you to know him. All of him. The writer. The hero. The man who somehow, impossibly, was lucky enough to love you.

So no, it wouldn’t happen over dinner.

But it would happen.

Because if there was one person in the world he could trust with the truth, it was the one person who already saw him more clearly than anyone ever had.

Clark hadn’t meant to come straight to you. Not like this. Bloodied lip, bruised ribs, heat radiating off his skin like the fight was still clinging to him. He was supposed to be more careful. More invincible. He wasn’t supposed to scare you. He especially wasn’t supposed to tell you like this.

But the moment he stumbled onto your fire escape—barely hovering before collapsing onto the floor of your apartment—you didn’t panic. You didn’t scream. You didn’t even look surprised.

You looked concerned.

“Superman?” Your voice was soft, a whisper above the hum of the city below. You dropped to your knees beside him instantly, hands fluttering near his chest. “You’re hurt.” Your eyes scanned all over him worriedly, almost as if you had your own x-ray vision. 

He gave a weak smile. “Hi, angel.”

“How did— oh, Clark.” You said his name so softly, the realization hitting you. You were already reaching for the first aid kit you kept under the sink. 

“I’m okay,” he said. “It’s just—night. No yellow sun. Slows the healing down.”

You froze for a second, processing, then frowned. “So you can’t heal right now?”

He shook his head once.

You looked at him—really looked. His eyes were glassy but focused, his chest rising a little too fast, jaw tight. He was clearly in pain. His eyes scanned your face like it was his last ever sight. And still, somehow, your biggest concern was him.

“Okay,” you said, like it was the easiest decision in the world. You rolled up your sleeves, grabbed gauze, and pressed a towel gently against the gash on his cheekbone. “Then it’s my job to fix you up.”

Clark blinked. “You’re not.. surprised?”

“I mean, a little,” you admitted, biting your lip as you dabbed the blood away. “Of course I’m surprised. Never could have guessed that Superman would come to me for help.” Your brows creased and furrowed as you focused on gently wiping away any crimson from his face. “But mostly I’m just mad someone hurt you.”

His heart could’ve burst right then and there.

“I also think I figured it out two weeks ago. You being Superman.”

Clark blinked, then blinked again. “Wait—what?”

You didn’t look up right away. You were too focused on the scrape along his jaw, cleaning it with practiced, careful hands. “The flight patterns. The voice. The way you disappear from the bullpen every time Superman shows up. You’re not as subtle as you think, farm boy.”

“I—” he started, but you gently pressed a bandage to his cheek.

“And then there was every single time you stared at me like I hung the stars when I defended Superman or wrote about him...”

Clark groaned softly, dropping his head back against the wall. “I knew you’d eventually notice. Just.. not this soon.”

You smiled, finally meeting his eyes. “I was waiting for you to tell me. I figured it had to be something big if you hadn’t said anything.”

“It’s not that I didn’t want to,” he said quickly, eyes searching yours. “I was going to. I am going to. I just—didn’t know how. Or when. Or how you’d react, because you could’ve reacted really badly.”

“And now?”

“Now I’m.. bleeding on your rug and you’re still here.” His voice dipped, warm and quiet. “I think that tells me everything I need to know.”

You leaned in, gently brushing his hair off his forehead. “It does,” you murmured. “But I want to hear it from you anyway.”

Clark smiled. Soft, real, a little tired. “I’m Superman.”

You kissed his forehead. “You’re Clark Kent. Superman’s just your second night job.”

“What’s my first?” Clark curiously asked.

You brushed that soft curl away from his forehead. “Being my boyfriend.”

Clark’s breath caught in his throat, just for a second. That quiet, golden second where time didn’t quite move. Then, he smiled. Big this time. The kind of smile that made the corners of his eyes crinkle and his whole face light up like sunrise. “Best job I’ve ever had,” he whispered.

You leaned in closer, your forehead resting against his. “Even better than saving the world?”

He grinned. “Way better. The world doesn’t kiss me goodnight.”

You laughed, soft and warm, and kissed him again—this time on the lips, slow and steady, like you had all the time in the universe.

And for once, neither of you was rushing off to chase a headline or stop a satellite from falling out of orbit. No breaking news, no alarms, no distractions. Just the hush of nighttime and the steady beat of his heart under your palm.

You pulled back just enough to whisper, “You should really let me fix that cut now.”

Clark smiled, still dazed, still starry-eyed. “Only if I get another kiss after.”

You rolled your eyes fondly and reached for the first aid kit. “You drive a hard bargain, Kent.”

“You got an interview with Superman?” Steve’s face looked genuinely bamboozled. “Of all people? You?!”

You didn’t even flinch. Just kept sipping your iced coffee through a straw, glossy lips curving into the softest smile.

“Yeah,” you said easily. “He trusts me.”

Jimmy wheeled over like he was front row at a soap opera. “Wait, when did this happen?! You’ve been sitting at your desk all morning.”

You shrugged. “Scheduled it for last night. He came right after his fight. He’s a busy guy.”

Lois raised an eyebrow over the top of her coffee mug. “And let me guess—you met him somewhere discreet, middle of the night, barely any witnesses? Or maybe he flew you to some rooftop where no one could see or hear you for the maximum privacy?”

“Something like that,” you said lightly, clicking through your draft on screen.

Steve scoffed. “You? Interviewing Superman? No offense, but you write about celebrity scandals and hair products.”

You turned to face him, voice sweet as honey. “And yet, I still managed to land the most elusive interview since Clark interviewed him. Wild, huh?” Clark, from his desk across the bullpen, choked on his water. Jimmy looked over. Lois didn’t even try to hide her smirk.

Cat Grant passed behind you, gave your shoulder a light pat, and muttered just loud enough for Steve to hear, “Get used to it. She’s been leaving all of us in the dust since day one. But my fashion breakdowns will always be superior.”

You smiled, gaze flicking to Clark. “Guess some people just have the right sources.”

And Clark—bless him—was trying not to grin like an idiot. He failed. Spectacularly.

“This interview is going to be.. super.”

“Oh, no.”

“God, please, no.”

“I hate you.”

[yakshxiao]

FIVE MINUTES AT A TIME ; JACK ABBOT

wc; 9.3k synopsis; You and Jack only ever see each other for five minutes at a time — the tail end of day shift and the start of night shift. But those five minutes? They’ve become the best part of both of your days. Everyone else in the ER has noticed it. The way you both lean in just a little too close during handoff. The way both of you leave a drink and a protein bar next to the chart rack. The way neither of you ever miss a single shift — until one day, one of you doesn’t show up. And everything shifts.

contents; Jack Abbot/nurse!reader, gn!reader, medical inaccuracies, hospital setting, mentions of injury and death, slow burn, found family, mutual pinning, mild jealousy, age gap (like 10-15 years, reader is aged around late 20s/early 30s but you can do any age), can you tell this man is consuming my every thought? tempted to write a follow-up fic lemme know what u guys think.

You only see him at 7 p.m. — well, 6:55 p.m., if you’re being exact.

You’re already at the nurse’s station, chart pulled up, pen poised, pretending you’re more focused than you are — just waiting for that familiar figure to walk in. The ER is barely holding itself together, seams straining under the weight of another long, unsparing shift. 

You’ve witnessed Mckay go through two scrub changes — both stained, both discarded like paper towels. Dana’s been shouted at by too many angry patients to count, each new confrontation carving deeper lines into her already exhausted face. And if you see Gloria trailing behind Robby one more time, arms crossed, mouth already mid-complaint, you’re sure you’ll have front-row seats to the implosion of Robby’s self-restraint.

The end-of-shift exhaustion hangs in the air, thick enough to taste. It seeps into the walls, the floor, your bones. The scent of bleach, sweat, and cold coffee hangs over everything, a cocktail that clings to your skin long after you clock out. The vending machine’s been emptied of anything worth eating. Your stomach gave up asking hours ago. 

The sun is still trying to claw its way down, its last rays pressing uselessly against frosted windows, too far removed to touch. The ER isn’t made for soft light. It lives under fluorescents, bright and unfeeling, leeching color and kindness from the world, one hour at a time.

It’s then, right on time, he arrives.

Jack Abbot.

Always the same. Dark scrubs, military backpack slung over his shoulder, the strap worn and fraying. His stethoscope loops around his neck like it belongs there and his hair is a little unkempt, like the day’s already dragged its hands through him before the night even starts.

He walks the same unhurried pace every time — not slow, not fast — like a man who’s learned the ER’s tempo can’t be outrun or outpaced. It’ll still be here, bleeding and burning, whether he sprints or crawls. And every day, like clockwork, he arrives at your station at 6:55 p.m., eyes just sharp enough to remind you he hasn’t completely handed himself over to exhaustion.

The handoff always starts the same. Clean. Professional. Efficient. Vitals. Labs. Status updates on the regulars and the barely-holding-ons. Names are exchanged like currency, chart numbers folded into the cadence of clipped sentences, shorthand that both of you learned the hard way. The rhythm of it is steady, like the low, constant beep of monitors in the background.

But tonight, the silence stretches just a little longer before either of you speaks. His eyes skim the board, lingering for half a second too long on South 2. You catch it. You always do.

“She’s still here,” you say, tapping your pen against the chart. “Outlived the odds and half the staff’s patience.”

Jack huffs a quiet sound that’s almost — almost — a laugh. The sound is low and dry, like it hasn’t been used much lately, “Figures.”

His attention shifts, following the slow, inevitable exit of Gloria, her unmistakable white coat vanishing around the corner, Robby sagging against the wall in her wake like a man aging in real-time, “I leave for twelve hours and Gloria’s still haunting the halls. She got squatters’ rights yet?”

You smirk, shaking your head and turning to look in the same direction, “I think Robby’s about five minutes away from filing for witness protection.”

That earns you a real smile — small, fleeting, but it’s there. The kind that only shows up in this place during the quiet moments between shift changes, the ones too short to hold onto and too rare to take for granted. The kind that makes you wonder how often he uses it when he’s not here.

Jack glances at the clock, then back at you, his voice low and dry. “Guess I better go save what’s left of his sanity, huh?”

You shrug, sliding the last of your notes toward him, the pages worn thin at the corners from too many hands, too many days like this. “Too late for that. You’re just here to do damage control.”

His smile lingers a little longer, but his eyes settle on you, the weight of the shift pressing into the space between you both — familiar, constant, unspoken. The clock ticks forward, the moment folding neatly back into the rush of the ER, the five-minute bubble of quiet already closing like it always does.

And then — 7 p.m. — the night begins.

The next few weeks worth of handoffs play out the same way.

The same rhythm. The same quiet trade of names, numbers, and near-misses. The same half-conversations, broken by pagers, interrupted by overhead calls. The same looks, the same five minutes stretched thin between shifts, like the ER itself holds its breath for you both.

But today is different. 

This time, Jack arrives at 6:50 p.m. 

Five minutes earlier than usual — early even for him. 

You glance up from the nurse’s station when you catch the sound of his footsteps long before the clock gives you permission to expect him. Still the same dark scrubs, the military backpack and stethoscope around his neck. 

But it’s not just the arrival time that’s different.

It’s the tea. Balanced carefully in one hand, lid still steaming, sleeve creased from the walk in. Tea — not coffee. Jack Abbot doesn’t do tea. At least, not in all the months you’ve been on this rotation. He’s a coffee-or-nothing type. Strong, bitter, the kind of brew that tastes like the end of the world.

He sets it down in front of you without fanfare, as if it’s just another piece of the shift — like vitals, like the board, like the handoff that always waits for both of you. But the corner of his mouth lifts when he catches the confused tilt of your head.

“Either I’m hallucinating,” you say, “or you’re early and bringing offerings.”

“You sounded like hell on the scanner today,” he says, voice dry but easy. “Figured you’d be better off with tea when you leave.”

You blink at him, then at the cup. Your fingers curl around the warmth. The smell hits you before the sip does — honey, ginger, something gentler than the day you’ve had.

“Consider it hazard pay,” Jack’s mouth quirks, eyes flicking toward the whiteboard behind you. “The board looks worse than usual.”

You huff a dry laugh, glancing at the mess of names and numbers — half of them marked awaiting test results and the rest marked with waiting.

“Yeah,” you say. “One of those days.”

You huff a laugh, the sound pulling the sting from your throat even before the tea does. The day’s been a long one. Endless patient turnover, backlogged labs, and the kind of non-stop tension that winds itself into your muscles and stays there, even when you clock out.

Jack leans his hip against the edge of the counter, and lets the quiet settle there for a moment. No handoff yet. No rush. The world is still turning, but for a brief second it feels like the clock’s hands have stalled, stuck in that thin stretch of stillness before the next wave breaks.

“You trying to throw off the universe?” you ask, half teasing, lifting the cup in mock salute. “Next thing I know, Gloria will come in here smiling.”

Jack huffs, “Let’s not be that ambitious.”

The moment hangs between you, the conversation drifting comfortably into the kind of quiet that doesn’t demand filling. Just the weight of the day, and the knowledge that the night will be heavier.

But then, as always, duty calls. A sharp crackle from his pager splits the stillness like a stone through glass. He straightens, his expression shifting back to business without missing a beat.

You slide the last chart across the desk toward him, your hand brushing the edge of his as you let go. The handoff starts, the ritual resumes. Vitals. Labs. Critical patients flagged in red ink. Familiar, steady, practiced. A dance you both know too well.

But even as the conversation folds back into clinical shorthand, the tea sits between you, cooling slowly, marking the space where the ritual has quietly shifted into something else entirely.

And when the handoff’s done — when the last name leaves your mouth — the clock ticks past 7:05 p.m.

You linger. Just long enough for Jack to glance back your way.

“Same time tomorrow?” he asks. The question light, but not casual.

You nod once, the answer already written.

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

After that, the handoff’s change. Tea was only the beginning.

It’s always there first — sometimes waiting on the desk before you’ve even finished logging out. The cup’s always right, too. No questions asked, no orders repeated. Jack learns the little details: how you like it, when it's too hot or too cold. When the shift’s been particularly cruel and the hours stretch too thin, he starts adding the occasional muffin or protein bar to the offering, wordlessly placed on the desk beside your notes.

In return, you start doing the same. Only you give him coffee. Black, bitter — too bitter for you — but it's how he likes it and you’ve never had the heart to tell him there’s better tasting coffee out there. Sometimes you give him tea on the calmer nights. A granola bar and an apple join soon after so you know he has something to eat when the food he brings in becomes a ghost of a meal at the back of the staff fridge. A post-it with a doodle and the words “I once heard a joke about amnesia, but I forgot how it goes” gets stuck to his coffee after an especially tough day shift, knowing it’ll bleed into the night.

It’s quiet, easy. Half-finished conversations that start at one handoff and end in the next.

You talk about everything but yourselves.

About the regulars — which patient is faking, which one’s hanging on by more than sheer luck. About the shows you both pretend you don’t have time for but always end up watching, somehow. About staff gossip, bets on how long the new hire will last, debates over whose turn it is to replace the break room coffee filter (spoiler: no one ever volunteers).

But never about what you two have. Never about what any of it means.

You pretend the lines are clear. That it’s all part of the handoff. That it’s just routine.

But the team notices.

Mckay starts hanging around the station longer than necessary at 6:55 p.m., her eyes flicking between the clock and the doorway like she’s waiting for a cue. Dana starts asking loaded questions in passing — light, but pointed. “So, Jack’s shift starting soon?” she’ll say with a knowing tilt of her head.

The worst offenders, though, are Princess and Perlah.

They start a betting pool. Subtle at first — a folded scrap of paper passed around, tucked in their pockets like an afterthought. Before long, half the ER staff’s names are scribbled under columns like ‘Next week’, ‘Next Month’ or ‘Never happening’.

And then one day, you open your locker after a twelve-hour shift, hands still shaking slightly from too much caffeine and too little sleep, and there it is:

A post-it, bright yellow and impossible to miss.

“JUST KISS ALREADY.”

No name. No signature. Just the collective voice of the entire ER condensed into three impatient words.

You stand there longer than you should, staring at it, your chest tightening in that quiet, unfamiliar way that’s got nothing to do with the shift and everything to do with him.

When you finally peel the note off and stuff it deep into your pocket, you find Jack already waiting at the nurse’s station. 6:55 p.m. Early, as always. Tea in hand. Same dark scrubs. Same unhurried stride. Same steady presence.

And when you settle in beside him, brushing just close enough for your shoulder to graze his sleeve, he doesn’t say anything about the flush still warm in your cheeks.

You don’t say anything either.

The handoff begins like it always does. The names. The numbers. The rhythm. The world still spinning the same broken way it always has.

But the note is still in your pocket. And the weight of it lingers longer than it should.

Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. Maybe next month. Maybe never.

The handoff tonight starts like any other.

The same exchange of vitals, the same clipped sentences folding neatly into the rhythm both of you know by heart. The ER hums and flickers around you, always on the edge of chaos but never quite tipping over. Jack’s there, 6:55 p.m., tea in one hand, muffin in the other — that small tired look in place like a badge he never bothers to take off.

But tonight, the air feels heavier. The space between you, thinner.

There’s no reason for it — at least, none you could name. Just a quiet shift in gravity, subtle enough to pretend away, sharp enough to notice. A conversation that drifts lazily off course, no talk of patients, no staff gossip, no television shows. Just silence. Comfortable, but expectant.

And then his hand — reaching past you to grab a chart — brushes yours.

Not the accidental kind. Not the casual, workplace kind. The kind that lingers. Warm, steady, the weight of his palm light against the back of your fingers like the pause before a sentence you’re too scared to finish.

You don’t pull away. Neither does he.

His eyes meet yours, and for a moment, the world outside the nurse’s station slows. The monitors still beep, the overhead paging system still hums, the hallway still bustles — but you don’t hear any of it.

There’s just his hand. Your hand. The breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding.

And then the trauma alert hits.

“MVA — multiple injuries. Incoming ETA two minutes.”

The spell shatters. The moment folds back in on itself like it was never there at all. Jack pulls away first, but not fast. His hand brushes yours one last time as if reluctant, as if the shift might grant you one more second before it demands him back.

But the ER has no patience for almosts.

You both move — the way you always do when the alarms go off, efficient and wordless, sliding back into your roles like armor. He’s already at the doors, gloves snapped on, voice low and level as the gurneys rush in. You’re right behind him, notes ready, vitals called out before the paramedics finish their sentences.

The night swallows the moment whole. The weight of the job fills the space where it had lived.

And when the trauma bay finally quiets, when the adrenaline starts to bleed out of your system and the hallways return to their usual background hum, Jack passes by you at the station, slowing just long enough for your eyes to meet.

Nothing said. Nothing needed.

Almost.

Weeks after the same routine, over and over, the change starts like most things do in your world — quietly, without fanfare.

A new name slips into conversation one morning over burnt coffee and half-finished charting. Someone you met outside the ER walls, outside the endless loop of vitals and crash carts and lives balanced on the edge. A friend of a friend, the kind of person who looks good on paper: steady job, easy smile, around your age, the kind of life that doesn’t smell like antiseptic or ring with the static of trauma alerts.

You don’t even mean to mention them. The words just tumble out between patients, light and careless. Jack barely reacts — just a flicker of his eyes, the barest pause in the way his pen scratches across the chart. He hums, noncommittal, and says, “Good for you.”

But after that, the air between you shifts.

The ritual stays the same — the teas and coffees still show up, the handoffs still slide smooth and clean — but the conversations dull. They're shallower. You talk about patients, the weather. But the inside jokes dry up, and the silences stretch longer, thicker, like neither of you can find the right words to fix the growing space between you.

The new person tries. Dinners that never quite feel right. Movies that blur together. Conversations that stall out halfway through, where you find yourself thinking about Jack’s voice instead of the one across the table. It’s not their fault — they do everything right. They ask about your day, they remember how you take your tea, they show up when they say they will.

But they aren’t him. They never will be.

And the truth of that sits heavy in your chest long before you let it go.

When the end finally comes, it’s as quiet as the beginning. No fight. No grand scene. Just a conversation that runs out of steam and a mutual, tired understanding: this was never going to be enough.

You don’t tell Jack. Not directly. But he knows.

Maybe it’s the way your smile doesn’t quite reach your eyes that night, or the way your usual jokes come slower, dull around the edges. Or maybe it’s just that he knows you too well by now, the way you know him — a kind of understanding that doesn’t need translation.

He doesn’t push. He’s not the kind of man who asks questions he isn’t ready to hear the answers to, and you’ve never been the type to offer up more than what the job requires. But when you pass him the last of the handoff notes that night, his fingers brush yours, and for once, they linger. Just a second longer than they should. Long enough to say everything neither of you will.

When he finally speaks, his voice is soft. Neutral. Studied, “You get any sleep lately?”

It’s not the question he wants to ask. Not even close. But it’s the one he can ask, the one that fits inside the safe little script you’ve both written for yourselves.

You lie — both of you know it — but he doesn’t call you on it. He just nods, slow and thoughtful, and when he stands, he leaves his coffee behind on the counter. Still hot. Barely touched.

And that’s how you know.

Because Jack never leaves coffee unfinished.

The next handoff, he’s already at the nurse’s station when you arrive — ten minutes early, a tea waiting for you, exactly how you like it. There’s no note, no smile, no pointed comment. Just the small, familiar weight of the cup in your hand and the warmth that spreads through your chest, sharper than it should be.

You settle into the routine, pulling the chart toward you, the silence stretching long and comfortable for the first time in weeks. Jack doesn’t ask, and you don’t offer. But when your fingers brush his as you pass him the logbook, you don’t pull away as quickly as you used to.

And for a moment, that’s enough.

The world around you moves the same way it always does — busy, breathless, unrelenting. But somewhere in the quiet, something unspoken hums between you both. Something that’s been waiting.

They weren’t him. And you weren’t surprised.

Neither was he.

It’s the handoff on a cold Wednesday evening that brings a quiet kind of news — the kind that doesn’t explode, just settles. Like dust.

Jack mentions it in passing, the way people mention the weather or the fact that the coffee machine’s finally given up the ghost. Mid-handoff, eyes on the chart, voice level. 

“Admin gave me an offer.”

Your pen stills, barely a beat, then keeps moving. “Oh yeah?” you ask, as if you hadn’t heard the shift in his tone. As if your chest didn’t tighten the moment the words left his mouth.

The department’s newer, quieter. Fewer traumas. More order. Less of the endless night shift churn that has worn him down to the bone these last few years. It would suit him. You know it. Everyone knows it.

And so you do what you’re supposed to do. What any friend — any coworker — would do. You offer the words, gift-wrapped in all the right tones.

“You’d be great at it.”

The smile you give him is steady, practiced. It reaches your lips. But not your eyes. Never your eyes.

Fortunately, Jack knows you like the back of his hand.

He just nods, the kind of slow, quiet nod that feels more like a goodbye than anything else. The conversation moves on. The night moves on.

You go home, and for him, the patients come and go, machines beep, the usual rhythm swallows the moment whole. But the shift feels different. Like the floor’s shifted under his feet and the walls don’t sit right in his peripherals anymore.

The offer lingers in the air for days. No one mentions it. But he notices things — the way you're quieter, the way you seem almost distant during handoffs. Like the weight of the outcome of the decision’s sitting on your shoulders, heavy and personal.

And then, just as quietly, the tension shifts. No announcement. No conversation. The offer just evaporates. You hear it from Robby two days later, his voice offhand as he scrolls through the department’s scheduling board.

“Abbot passed on the job.”

That’s all he says. That’s all you need.

When your shift ends that day, you linger a little longer than usual. Five minutes past the clock, then ten. Just enough time to catch him walking in. Same dark scrubs, same tired eyes. But this time, no talk of transfers. No talk of moving on.

You slide the handoff notes toward him, and when his fingers brush yours, neither of you let go right away.

“Long night ahead.” you say, your eyes lock onto his.

“Same as always,” he answers, soft but sure.

And maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s everything.

But he stayed.

And so did you.

The holiday shift is a quiet one for once.

Not the kind of chaotic disaster you usually brace for — no code blues, no trauma alerts, no frantic scrambling. The ER hums at a lower frequency tonight, as if the whole department is holding its breath, waiting for the chaos to pass and the clock to turn over.

You’ve been working on autopilot for the last few hours. The patient load is manageable, the team is mostly intact, and the usual undercurrent of stress is more like a murmur than a shout. But there's something about the quiet, the softness of it, that makes you more aware of everything, every moment stretching a little longer than it should. It makes the weight of the day feel more pressing, more noticeable.

As the last patient leaves — nothing serious, just another sprain — you settle into your chair by the nurse’s station, the kind of exhausted calm that only comes when the worst is over. The clock inches toward the end of your shift — 6:50 p.m. — but you’re not in any hurry to leave, not yet.

As always, Jack walks in.

You look up just as he passes by the station. His usual tired look is softened tonight, the edges of his exhaustion blunted by something quieter, something a little more worn into his features. The shadows under his eyes are deeper, but there’s a kind of peace in him tonight — a rare thing for the man who’s always running on the edge of burnout.

He stops in front of you, and you can see the small, crumpled bag in his hand. It’s not much, just a bit of wrapping paper that’s a little too wrinkled, but something about it makes your heart give a funny, lopsided beat.

"Here," he says, low, voice a little rougher than usual.

You blink, surprised. “What’s this?”

He hesitates for half a second, like he wasn’t sure if he should say anything at all. “For you.”

You raise an eyebrow, half-laughing. "We don’t usually exchange gifts, Jack."

His smile is small, but it reaches his eyes. "Thought we might make an exception today."

You take the gift from him, feeling the weight of it, simple but somehow significant. You glance down at it, and for a moment, the world feels like it falls away. He doesn't ask you to open it right then, and for a second, you think maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll leave it unopened, just like so many things left unsaid between you two.

But the curiosity wins out.

You peel back the paper slowly. It’s a leather-bound notebook, simple and unassuming. The kind of thing that makes you wonder how he knew.

“I... didn’t know what to get you," Jack says, his voice soft, almost sheepish. "But I figured you'd use it."

The gesture is simple — almost too simple. But it’s not. It’s too personal for just coworkers. Too thoughtful, too quiet. The weight of it sits between the two of you, unspoken, thick in the air.

You look up at him, your chest tight in a way you don’t want to acknowledge. "Thank you," you manage, and you can’t quite shake the feeling that this — this little notebook — means more than just a gift. It’s something that says everything neither of you has been able to put into words.

Jack nods, his smile barely there but real. He takes a step back, as if pulling himself away from something he doesn’t know how to navigate. The silence stretches. But it’s different this time. It’s not awkward. It’s soft. It feels like a bridge between the two of you, built in the quiet spaces you’ve shared and the ones you haven’t.

“I got you something too,” you say before you can stop yourself. When you reach into your pocket, your fingers brush against the small, folded package you had tucked away. 

His brow furrows slightly in surprise, but he takes it from you, and when he unwraps it, it’s just a small, hand-carved keychain you had spotted at a market — simple, not much, but it reminded you of Jack.

He laughs, a short, quiet sound that vibrates in the space between you, and the tension between you two feels almost manageable. “Thank you,” he says, his fingers brushing over the little keychain.

For a long moment, neither of you speaks. The noise of the ER seems distant, muffled, as if it’s happening in another world altogether. The clock ticks, the final minutes of your shift inching by. But in that small, quiet space, it’s as if time has paused, holding its breath alongside the two of you.

“I guess it’s just... us then, huh?” he says finally, voice softer than before, quieter in a way that feels like more than just the end of a shift.

You nod, and for the first time in ages, the silence between you feels easy. Comfortable.

Just a few more minutes, and the shift will be over. But right now, this — this small, quiet exchange, these moments that don’t need words — is all that matters.

The day shift is winding down when Jack walks in, just before 7 p.m.

The usual rhythm of the ER is fading, the intensity of the day finally trailing off as the night shift prepares to take over. He arrives just as the last few nurses finish their rounds, their faces tired but steady as they begin to pass the baton.

But something feels off. The station is quieter than usual, the hum of conversation quieter, the buzz of the monitors almost unnaturally sharp in the sudden stillness. Jack glances around, noting the lack of a familiar face, the way the department feels a little emptier, more distant. He spots Dana and Robby at the nurse’s station, exchanging murmurs, and immediately knows something’s not right.

You’re not there.

He doesn’t immediately ask. Instead, he strides toward the counter, his mind racing to calculate the cause. A sick day? A last-minute emergency? Something’s happened, but he can’t quite place it. The thought that it’s anything serious doesn’t sit well in his chest, and yet, it presses down harder with every minute that passes.

It’s 6:55 p.m. now, and the clock keeps ticking forward.

By 7:00, Jack is halfway through his handoff, scanning the patient charts and mentally preparing for the usual chaos, but his focus keeps drifting.

Where are you?

He finally asks. Not loudly, not with urgency, but quietly enough that only Robby and Dana catch the edge in his voice. “Have they called in tonight?”

Before he even has a chance to follow up with your name, Dana looks up at him, a tired smirk on her face. “No. No word.”

Robby shakes his head, looking between Dana and Jack. “We haven’t heard anything. Thought you’d know.”

He nods, swallowing the sudden tightness in his throat. He tries not to show it — not to let it show in the way his shoulders stiffen or the slight furrow between his brows. He finishes up the handoff as usual, but his mind keeps returning to you, to the way the shift feels off without your presence, the absence weighing heavy on him.

By the time the rest of the night staff rolls in, Jack's focus is split. He’s still mentally running through the patient roster, but he’s half-waiting, half-hoping to see you come walking to the nurses station, just like always.

It doesn't happen.

And then, as if on cue, a message comes through — a notification from HR. You’d left for the day in a rush. Your parent had been hospitalised out of town, and you’d rushed off without a word. No call. No notice.

Jack stops in his tracks. The room feels suddenly too small, the quiet too loud. His fingers hover over the screen for a moment before he puts his phone back into his pocket, his eyes flicking over it again, like it will make more sense the second time.

His mind moves quickly, fast enough to keep up with the frantic pace of the ER around him, but his body is still, frozen for a heartbeat longer than it should be. He doesn’t know what to do with this — this sudden, heavy weight of worry and concern.

The team, in their usual way, rallies. They pull a care package together like clockwork — snacks, tissues, a soft blanket someone swears helps during long waits in hospital chairs. A card circulates, scrawled with signatures and the usual messages: thinking of you, hang in there, we’ve got you. It’s routine, something they’ve done for each other countless times in the past, a small gesture in the face of someone’s crisis.

But Jack doesn’t sign the card.

He sits quietly in the break room for a while, the weight of his concern simmering beneath the surface of his usual calm. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to feel — concern for you, for the situation, for how the ER feels without you there. The package is ready, and with it, so is a quiet, unsaid piece of himself.

When the others step away, he tucks something else inside, sliding it between the blanket and the box of cheap chocolates the team threw in at the last minute — an envelope, plain, unmarked, the handwriting inside careful but unsteady, like the words cost more than he expected.

Take care of them. The place isn’t the same without you.

Short. Simple. Honest in a way he rarely lets himself be. It isn’t signed. It doesn’t need to be. You’d know.

The team doesn’t notice. Or if they do, they make no comment on it. The ER continues to move, steady in its rhythm, even as Jack’s world feels like it’s been thrown off balance. The package is sent. The shift carries on. And Jack waits. He waits, in the quiet space between you and him, in the absence of your presence, in the weight of things he can’t say.

The clock ticks on. And with it, Jack misses you a little more that night.

Two weeks.

That’s how long the space at the nurse’s station stayed empty. That’s how long the chair at the nurse’s station sat empty — the one you always claimed without thinking. Nobody touched it. Nobody had to say why. It just sat there — a quiet, hollow thing that marked your absence more clearly than any words could’ve.

Two weeks of missing the familiar scrape of your pen against the chart. Two weeks of shift changes stripped down to bare-bones handoffs, clipped and clinical, no space for the soft edges of inside jokes or the quiet pauses where your voice used to fit. Two weeks of coffee going cold, of tasting far more bitter than it did before. Two weeks of the ER feeling off-kilter, like the clock’s gears had ground themselves down and no one could quite put the pieces back.

When you walk back through the automatic doors, it’s like the air catches on itself — that split-second stall before everything moves forward again. You don’t announce yourself. No one really does. The place just swallows you back up, the way it does to anyone who leaves and dares to return.

You clock in that morning. The shift goes on as normal, as normal as the ER can be. The others greet you like they’ve been told to act normal. Quick nods, small smiles. Robby pats your shoulder, light and brief. Dana leaves an extra coffee by the monitors without a word.

When the clock hands swing toward 6:50 p.m., you’re already at the nurses station. Sitting at the desk like you’d never left. Like nothing’s changed, like no time has passed at all. Like the last two weeks were some other life. Scrubs pressed, badge clipped at the same off-center tilt it always is. But your hands hover just slightly, resting on the chart without writing, pen poised like your mind hasn’t quite caught up to your body being back.

The air feels different — not heavy, not light, just suspended. Stalled.

And then you hear them. Footsteps.

Steady. Familiar. The cadence you’ve known for months. 

Jack.

He stops a few feet from you, hands stuffed deep into his pockets, the faintest crease between his brow like he hasn’t quite convinced himself this isn’t some kind of trick.

You don’t say anything. Neither does he.

No patient names. No vitals. No shorthand. The handoff script that’s lived on your tongues for months goes untouched. Instead, you stand there, surrounded by the soft beep of monitors and the shuffle of overworked staff, wrapped in the kind of silence that says everything words can’t.

It’s a strange sort of silence. Not awkward. Just full.

For a long moment, the chaos of the ER fades to the edges, the overhead pages and the low mechanical hums turning to static. You look at him, and it’s like seeing him for the first time all over again. The small lines around his eyes seem deeper. The tension at his shoulders, usually buried beneath practiced calm, sits plainly in view.

You wonder if it’s been there the whole time. You wonder if he noticed the same about you.

His eyes meet yours, steady, unguarded. The first thing that breaks the quiet isn’t a handoff or a patient update.

“I missed this.”

The corner of his mouth twitches into something that doesn’t quite make it to a smile. When he replies, it’s not rushed. It’s not easy. But it’s the truth.

“I missed you.”

Simple. Honest. No side steps. No softening the edges with humor. Just the truth. The words sit there between you, bare and uncomplicated. For a second, the world feels smaller — just the two of you, the hum of machines, and the weight of two weeks' worth of things unsaid.

His gaze shifts, softer now, searching your face for something, or maybe just memorizing it all over again.

“How are they?” he asks, voice low, careful. Not clinical, not casual — the way people ask when they mean it.

You swallow, the answer lingering behind your teeth. You hadn’t said much to anyone, not even now. But his question doesn’t pry, it just waits.

“They’re stable,” you say after a moment, the words simple but heavy. “Scared. Tired. I stayed until I couldn’t anymore.”

Jack nods once, slow and sure, as if that answer was all he needed. His hand flexes slightly at his side, like there’s more he wants to do, more he wants to say — but this is still the space between shifts, still the same ER where everything gets held back for later.

But his voice is steady when he replies.

“I’m glad you were with them.”

A pause. One of those long, silent stretches that says everything the words don’t.

“And I’m glad you came back.”

You don’t answer right away. You don’t have to.

And then, the clock ticks forward. The night shift begins. The world presses on, the monitors start beeping their endless song, and the next patient is already waiting. But the weight of those words lingers, tucked just beneath the surface.

And this time — neither of you pretend it didn’t happen.

But it’s still not quite the right time.

Jack’s walls aren’t the obvious kind. They don’t come with sharp edges or cold shoulders. His are quieter, built from small hesitations — the steady, practiced way he keeps his distance, the careful deflection tucked behind dry humor and midnight coffee refills. And at the center of it, two stubborn truths: he’s older, and he’s widowed.

Being widowed is a quiet shadow that doesn’t lift, not really. It taught him how easily a future can disappear, how love doesn’t stop the world from taking what it wants. He doesn’t talk about her, not much — not unless the shift runs long and the coffee’s gone cold — but the space she left is always there, shaping the way he looks at you, at himself, at the idea of starting over. Jack tells himself it wouldn’t be fair. Not to you. Not when you’ve still got years ahead to figure out what you want. Not when he’s already stood graveside, watching the world shrink down to a headstone and a handful of fading memories. 

You’re younger. Less worn down. Less jaded. He tells himself — on the long drives home, when sleep refuses to come — that you deserve more time than he can offer. More time to figure out your world without him quietly shaping the edges of it. It’s the sort of difference people pretend doesn’t matter, until it does. Until he’s standing beside you, catching himself in the reflection of the trauma room glass, wondering how the years settled heavier on him than on you. Until he’s half a sentence deep into asking what you’re doing after shift, and pulling back before the words can leave his mouth.

Because no matter how much space he tries to give, the part of him that’s still grieving would always leave its mark. And you deserve more than the half-mended heart of a man who’s already learned how to live without the things he loves.

And you?

You’ve got your own reasons.

Not the ones anyone could spot at a glance, not the kind that leave scars or stories behind. Just a quiet, low-grade fear. The kind that hums beneath your skin, born from years of learning that getting too comfortable with people — letting yourself want too much — always ends the same way: doors closing, phones going silent, people walking away before you even notice they’ve started.

So you anchor yourself to the things that don’t shift. Your routine. Your steadiness. The hours that stretch long and hard but never ask you to be anything more than reliable. Because when you’re needed, you can’t be left behind. When you’re useful, it hurts less when people don’t stay.

Jack’s careful, and you’re cautious, and the space between you both stays exactly where it’s always been: not quite close enough.

So you both settle for the in-between. The ritual. The routine. Shared drinks at handoff. Inside jokes sharp enough to leave bruises. Half-finished conversations, always interrupted by codes and pages and the sharp ring of phones.

The ER runs like clockwork, except the clock’s always broken, and in the background the rest of the team watches the same loop play out — two people orbiting closer, always just out of reach.

The bets from Princess and Perlah are at the heaviest they’ve ever been, and so are their pockets. There are no more ‘Never happening’ — everyone’s now in the ‘Next week’ or ‘Next Month’. The others have stopped pretending they don’t see what’s happening. In fact, they’re practically counting the days, biding their time like a clock ticking in reverse, waiting for that moment when everything finally clicks into place.

At first, it’s subtle. 

One less handoff cut short by timing. One more overlapping hour “by accident.”

You and Jack work together more and more now, whether it's trauma cases, code blue alerts, or the quieter moments between chaotic shifts when the floor clears enough to breathe. The careful choreography of your daily dance is starting to wear thin around the edges, like a well-loved sweater that’s a little too threadbare to keep pretending it’s still holding together.

The soft exchanges in the middle of emergency rooms — the handoffs that are always clean and professional — have started to bleed into something else. You don’t mean for it to happen. Neither of you do.

But you find yourselves walking the same hallways just a bit more often. You swap shifts with an ease you hadn’t before. Jack’s voice lingers a little longer when he says, “Good night, see you tomorrow,” and the weight of that goodbye has started to feel a little like an unspoken promise.

But it’s still not enough to break the silence.

The team watches, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, but neither of you says a word about it. You can’t, because the truth is, it’s easier to let things stay where they are. Safer, maybe. To just let the rhythm of the shifts carry you through without the sudden plunge of vulnerability that might shatter it all.

Still, they see it.

Dana, ever the romantic, gives you that knowing, almost conspiratorial look when she catches you making eye contact with Jack across the floor. “You two need a room,” she’ll joke, but it’s always followed by that soft exhale, like she’s waiting for the punchline you won’t give her.

Princess’ and Perlah’s bets are always louder, and always in a language neither of you understand. Every shift, they pass by the nurse’s station with sly grins, casting their predictions with the confidence of someone who knows exactly what they’re talking about.

“Next month, I’m telling you. It’s happening in the next month. Mark my words.”

Neither you or Jack respond to the teasing. But it’s not because you don’t hear it. It’s because, in the quietest corners of your mind, the thoughts are too sharp, too close, and there’s something terrifying about acknowledging them.

The room holds its breath for you both, watching the space between you become thinner with every passing minute. You can’t feel the ticking of time, but the team certainly can.

And so it goes. Days blend into each other. Hours pass in a blur of frantic beeps and calls, hands working together with that comfortable rhythm, but always keeping just a little distance — just a little bit too much space.

But it’s getting harder to ignore the truth of what everyone else already knows. You’re both circling something, something that neither of you is brave enough to catch yet. 

Almost.

Almost always. But never quite.

The shift is brutal.

The ER’s pulse is erratic, like a heart struggling to maintain rhythm. The trauma bays are full, the waiting room is overflowing, and the chaos — the relentless, grinding chaos — is a constant roar in your ears. Alarms bleed into each other. The phone rings off the hook. Machines chirp, beds squeak, someone shouts for help, and the scent of antiseptic is powerless against the metallic undertone of blood lingering in the air.

It’s the kind of shift that makes even seasoned hands tremble. The kind that swallows hours whole, leaves your back sore and your mind frayed, and still, the board never clears.

At some point, you’re not sure when, maybe after the fifth code blue or the eighth set of vitals skimming the edge of disaster, Robby mutters something sharp and low under his breath, peels his phone out of his pocket, and steps away from the desk.

“Calling Abbot,” he says, voice tight. “We’re underwater.”

Jack isn’t due for another two hours, but the call doesn’t surprise you. The ER doesn’t care about schedules. And Jack — he shows up twenty minutes later.

His eyes meet yours across the station, and there’s no need for words. Just a nod. Just the quiet understanding that this isn’t going to be easy, if such a thing even exists.

The clock ticks and skips, seconds folding into one another, meaningless, until finally, the worst of it comes.

Trauma alert.

A car accident. The usual chaos.

Rollover on the interstate, the kind that dispatch voices always sound too steady while reporting. The kind where the EMTs work in grim silence. Two patients this time. A married couple.

The usual chaos unfolds the second the gurneys crash through the double doors — shouting, gloves snapping on, IV lines threading, vitals barking out like a list of crimes.

But this time, it’s different.

You notice it before anyone says it aloud: the husband’s hand is tangled in his wife’s, their fingers blood-slick but still locked together, knuckles white with the sheer force of holding on. Their wedding rings glinted under the harsh fluorescents, a tiny, defiant flash of gold against the chaos.

Neither of them will let go. Even unconscious, the connection stays.

You’re already in motion. Jack too. The usual rhythm, muscle memory sharp as ever. But something in the air feels different. He glances once at the woman, blood matted in her hair, her left hand still clutching the man’s. The rings. The way their bodies lean toward each other even in a state of injury, as if muscle memory alone could keep them tethered

And for just a second, he falters.

You almost miss it, but you don’t.

Jack works the wife’s side, but her injuries speak for themselves. Her chart is a litany of injuries: internal bleeding, tension pneumothorax, skull fracture.

You watch Jack work the case like his hands are moving on instinct, but his face gives him away. It’s too quiet. Too closed off. You see it all in real-time — the silent war behind his eyes, the years catching up to him in the span of a heartbeat. The lines around his mouth tightening, the weight of something too personal rising behind the clinical routine.

You know who he’s thinking about. 

It’s her — it’s her face he sees.

Jack’s gloves are stained, jaw tight, voice steady but clipped as the monitor flatlines for the third time. You watch. You press hands to bleeding wounds that won’t stop. You call out numbers you barely register. But the inevitable creeps in anyway.

At 6:41 p.m., time of death is called.

No one speaks, not right away. The monitors fall silent, the room too. The husband, still unconscious, is wheeled away. His hand finally slips from hers, left empty on the gurney.

It’s Jack that calls it. He stands over the woman’s bed for a beat too long, the silence of it all thickening in the air. His shoulders sag ever so slightly, the weight of it settling in — the anger, the grief, the helplessness. There’s no denying it, the hours and hours of labor, of lives teetering between life and death, have begun to take their toll.

You watch him and know the exact moment it breaks him.

He doesn’t even need to say it. You can see it in the way he moves — stiff, distant, a bit lost. His hand hovers by his stethoscope, his fingers curling slightly before dropping. The tension in his face is the kind you’ve seen only when someone is holding themselves together by a thread.

He catches your eye briefly, and for a moment, neither of you says anything. There’s an unspoken understanding, a shared grief between the two of you that’s settled like an old wound, reopened. He turns away before you can even ask, stepping out of the trauma bay and heading toward the on-call room, his pace a little slower than usual, weighed down by more than just the fatigue.

The shift drags on, but the tension, the heaviness, only grows. Finally, when it seems like it might never end, you make the decision. You leave your post, quietly slipping away from the chaos, and find your way to the on-call room where Jack is already sitting.

It’s dark in there but you don’t need to see him to know what’s there. His chest rises and falls with a weary sigh. There’s nothing to say at first. Nothing that would make this any easier, and you both know it.

You sit beside him in silence, the space between you both filled with the weight of the night, of the patient lost, of the things neither of you can change. You don’t push. You don’t ask. You simply exist in the same room, the same quiet, like two people who are too exhausted, too worn, to speak but too connected to stay apart.

Minutes pass. Long ones.

It’s Jack who breaks the silence, his voice a little rough, like it’s been buried too long.

“I kept thinking we’d have more time,” he says. It’s not addressed to you, not really — more confession than conversation, the kind of truth that’s spent too long locked behind his ribs.

You don’t answer right away, because you know the ache that lives under those words. You’ve felt it too. So you sit there, listening, the silence making room for him to say the rest.

And then, softer, barely above a breath —

“She looked like her. For a second — I thought it was her.”

The words hang in the dark, heavier than any silence.

You reach over, placing a hand gently on his. Your fingers brush his skin, warm, steady. You just sit there, the two of you, in the dark — the only light seeping in from under the door, pale and distant, like the world outside is somewhere neither of you belong right now.

Minutes pass, slow and shapeless, the kind of time that doesn’t measure in hours or shifts or chart updates. Just quiet. Just presence. Just the shared, unspoken ache of people who’ve both lost too much to say the words out loud.

When he finally exhales — long, steady, but still weighted — you feel the faintest shift in the air. Not fixed. Not fine. But breathing. Alive. Here.

When his gaze lifts, meeting yours — searching, fragile, waiting for something he can’t name — you finally offer it, soft but certain.

“We don’t get forever,” you whisper. “But we’ve still got now.”

And it’s enough. Maybe not to fix anything. Maybe not to make the night any less heavy. But enough to pull Jack through to the other side.

He exhales, slow and quiet, the tension in his chest loosening like it’s finally allowed to. The moment is small — no grand revelations, no dramatic declarations.

Just two people, breathing in the same quiet, carrying the same scars.

When the next shift change arrives, the rhythm of the ER doesn’t quite return to normal.

The pulse of the place still beats steady — monitors chiming, phones ringing, stretchers wheeling in and out — but the handoff feels different. Like the pattern has shifted beneath your feet.

The familiar routine plays out — the smooth exchange of patient reports, the clipped shorthand you both know by heart, the easy banter that’s always filled the spaces between — but now it lingers. The words sit heavier. The pauses stretch longer. The politeness that once held everything in place has softened, frayed at the edges by the weight of what’s left unsaid.

You stay five minutes later. Then ten.

Neither of you points it out. Neither of you needs to.

The silence isn’t awkward — it’s intentional. It hangs easy between you, unhurried and unforced. The kind of silence built on understanding rather than distance. Like the quiet knows something you both haven’t said out loud yet.

The rest of the team doesn’t call you on it. But they see it. And you catch the glances. 

You catch Dana’s raised eyebrow as she clocks out, her expression all knowing, no judgment — just quiet observation, like she’s been waiting for this to finally click into place. Robby doesn’t even bother hiding his smirk behind his coffee cup this time, his glance flicking from you to Jack and back again, as if he’s already tallying another win in the betting pool.

And still, no one says a word.

The ER lights flicker, humming softly against the early morning haze as the next shift trickles in, tired and rumpled, faces scrubbed clean and coffee cups refilled. The world moves on — patients, pages, paperwork — but Jack doesn’t.

His glance finds you, steady and certain, like an anchor after too many months of pretending there wasn’t a current pulling you both closer all along. There’s no question in it. No hesitation. Just quiet agreement.

And this time, neither of you heads for the door alone.

You fall into step beside him, the silence still stretched soft between you, your shoulder brushing his just slightly as you cross through the automatic doors and into the cool, early light. The air is crisp against your scrubs, the hum of the hospital fading behind you, replaced by the quiet sprawl of the parking lot and the slow stretch of a sky trying to shake off the dark.

The weight you’ve both carried for so long — all the almosts, the what-ifs, the walls and the fear — feels lighter now. Still there, but not crushing. Not anymore.

It isn’t just a handoff anymore. It hasn’t been for a while, but now it’s undeniable.

You glance toward him as the quiet settles between you one last time before the day fully wakes up, and he meets your look with that same soft steadiness — the kind that doesn’t demand, doesn’t rush, just holds. Like the space between you has finally exhaled, like the moment has finally caught up to the both of you after all this time skirting around it.

His hand finds yours, slow and certain, like it was always supposed to be there. No grand gesture, no sharp intake of breath, just the gentle slide of skin against skin — warm, grounding, steady. His thumb brushes the back of your hand once, absentminded and careful, like he’s memorizing the feel of this — of you — as if to make sure it’s real.

The world beyond hums back to life, ready for another day beginning. But here, in this sliver of space, between what you’ve always been and whatever comes next — everything stays still.

You don’t speak. Neither does he.

You don’t need to.

It’s in the way his fingers curl just slightly tighter around yours, in the way the last of the shift’s exhaustion softens at the edges of his expression. In the way the air feels different now — less heavy, less waiting. Like the question that’s lived between you for months has finally answered itself.

The first thin blush of sunrise creeps over the parking lot, painting long soft shadows across the cracked pavement, and neither of you move. There’s no rush now, no clock chasing you forward, no unspoken rule pushing you apart. Just this. Just you and him, side by side, hand in hand, standing still while the world stumbles back into motion.

It’s the start of something else.

And you both know it. Without needing to say a thing.

©yakshxiao 2025.

[yakshxiao]

٠ ࣪⭑ mastermind

‎pairing: clark kent x bombshell!reader (3.0K words)

summary: as one of the daily planet's most popular gossip column writers, clark is surprised to learn you're a genius when it comes to superman. he's also surprised to learn you aren't all heels and makeup

warnings & content: bombshell!reader, female reader, not technically bimbo reader but others assume so, clark is whipped from the start and somehow becomes more whipped, reader double majored in stats and journalism go smart girls go!

If there were two people who talked the most at the Daily Planet, it would be Cat Grant and yourself.

The two main gossip columnists. You were both brutal. Once, Jimmy was assigned a story with you. He requested to never work with you in the gossip column again after just six hours. Perry agreed. He also never assigned you anything but gossip because the one time he did? You wrote a slam piece on both baseball teams you were assigned to write about. 

Perry realized very early on you were a gossip column writer only. And he was okay with that.

Cat and you were always stunning the offices and newsrooms. Hair, makeup, and pretty outfits every single day, even if you were sick or it was storming out. You always looked good. That was the fun part about the job, and you took it seriously. The fashion, the presence, the image. It wasn’t just for the sake of being seen. It was armor. Lipstick was war paint, heels were your battle cry, and your notes app was a finely-honed blade.

Between you and Cat, there wasn’t a single scandal that went unnoticed or unpublished. You had sources no one else could reach, contacts who owed you favors, and a sixth sense for when something was about to blow up. You weren’t just gossip columnists, you were watchdogs in stilettos.

And Clark? He wasn’t sure what to make of you at first. He’d never met someone who could talk circles around Cat Grant and casually bring up alien migration patterns over lunch. He also didn’t understand how someone could write a piece titled Lex Luthor: Lots of Money, but Hard to Appease? and still manage to interview senators by the end of the week.

You were loud. Smart. A little too clever. But no one could deny it. Every time you walked into the room, the story followed.

And eventually, so did Clark.

“Clark, you gotta hear this, man,” Jimmy’s chair wheeled over beside Clark’s desk. “She’s talking nonsense. Like.. smart nonsense.”

Clark glanced up, already a little wary. “What is it this time?”

Jimmy pointed, discreet but desperate, toward the far end of the bullpen where you and Cat Grant were deep in conversation. “She’s doing something really weird. I walked past her desk and heard numbers. Equations. Graphs. Clark, she’s talking about Superman like he’s a physics dissertation.”

Clark blinked, turning just slightly in his chair to get a better look. You were standing near the coffee station, one hand wrapped around a pink mug that read Panic Then Write, the other animatedly gesturing as you explained something to Cat, who, for her part, looked like she was either being converted into a new religion or trying really hard to figure out whatever you were saying to her.

“—and that’s exactly why his maximum velocity during vertical ascension contradicts the standard gravitational drag equation,” you said brightly. Your hands waved in the air, manicured nails glistening in the light. “Like, there’s no way his flight path over the city last Friday didn’t involve some level of gravitational lensing. Did you see the air pressure ripple? I mean, it wasn’t visible, obviously, but the birds dipped midair. I have a theory, I’m working on it.”

Cat blinked. “You’re telling me you can tell how fast Superman was going based on bird migration patterns?”

“Oh, totally. Well, that and minor wind displacement across a five-block radius. Also, the security cam footage from Ninth and Fulton glitched at the exact time he crossed into frame. It’s like an energy signature thing. I track it in my spreadsheets.” You said it like it was the most simple thing in the world, like anyone else could be doing it.

“Spreadsheets,” Cat repeated, like she wasn’t sure if she should be impressed or afraid.

Clark stared. So did Jimmy. 

“She has spreadsheets,” Jimmy whispered, horrified. It was like every assumption he had previously assumed about you was being thrown out the window.

Clark tried very, very hard not to smile. “About Superman.”

“She’s obsessed, man! She said his cape flutters at a different rate depending on the altitude! She compared it to solar panel kinetics! Who does that?” Jimmy’s exclamation nearly gathered your attention. Jimmy just gave you a small, hesitant nod, making you shrug and continue with your conversation.

“Apparently she does,” Clark murmured, voice a little too fond. He watched your face brighten again as you began explaining something else to Cat.

Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “Wait. You’re into this, aren’t you? You like that she’s a walking Super-statistics manual.”

“I admire her dedication to research,” Clark said simply. Sure, it was the dedication, but this was the first time Clark was actually seeing a whole new side to you.

You were always gorgeous. It was probably the first thing Clark noticed about you. But he knew you had passion, riveting storytelling abilities, incredible grammar and punctuation. Clark knew you were always on time and always listened to people intently whenever they spoke to you. He knew you loved every single color of the rainbow, always greeted everyone in the morning, and made time during your busy day to gossip with Cat. Clark learned a lot about you very quickly.

So, learning you were actually a genius was something he really liked. Really liked. More than your pretty eyes, bright smile, and endearing voice. Especially because you zeroed in on him. Superman. 

“She’s got a color-coded chart titled Flight Patterns vs. Rescue Probability Ratios,” Jimmy hissed, hands flailing around the air. “I saw it with my very own eyes!”

Clark smiled. “That’s actually.. not a bad idea.”

Jimmy groaned. “Oh my god. It’s worse than I thought. We’re gonna find you one day married and buried under pie charts.” No, Clark’s crush was not a secret.

Across the room, you caught Clark’s eye—mid-sentence, mid-rant, mid-explaining the temperature fluctuation when Superman breaks the sound barrier—and grinned at him like you knew he was listening.

Clark gave a small wave.

You waved back.

Clark had always been such a sweetie since day one. He brought you coffee, even if he just went over to the machine to get it for you. Sickeningly sweet, just the way you liked it. You weren’t stupid in any way, shape, or form, so you knew Clark was whipped. Just like how everyone else knew.

He held doors open without making a show of it, remembered how you liked your pens (gel, fine point, purple ink), and always pretended not to notice when you’d start your day with gossip but end it quoting Nietzsche over lunch. He complimented your writing like it was easy—like it was fact. He would even sometimes split his lunch with you if you even briefly commented on how his looked better than yours.

And yeah, sure, he looked like the kind of guy who should be on the cover of GQ: Farmer Edition, all broad shoulders and soft flannels. But he didn’t use that to his advantage. If anything, he blushed too easily and said excuse me even when you bumped into him.

Clark just always had your attention. You loved his silly little jokes, how he would ask you for help with his article even though he really just wanted your opinion, and you especially loved how he looked at you with his bright blue eyes.

And Clark was always there when some new intern or Steve insulted you. You were a total bombshell, yes, but that didn’t mean you were stupid. Clark knew you weren’t stupid, you knew you weren’t stupid, even Steve knew—but he just liked to push your buttons.

Once, Steve had muttered something under his breath about how your lipstick probably took more time than your research. You didn’t even flinch. You were used to it. But before you could reply with something scathing and Pulitzer-worthy, Clark looked up from his desk and said, calm as ever, “She’s written more front pages this quarter than you have in your career, Steve.” Just like that. No raised voice. No dramatics. Steve blinked. Went back to pretending he was important.

You had just smiled sweetly, twirled your pen between perfectly manicured fingers, and softly said, “Thanks, Clark,” like your heart wasn’t thudding in your chest.

He always had your back. When people underestimated you because of the heels or the tight skirts or the fact that you said like and wore rhinestone barrettes, he never did. Not once. And maybe that’s what made your heart twist a little, more than the compliments or the coffee or even the soft way he said your name. The fact that he saw you. No filters, no assumptions. Just you.

Maybe he was your soft spot.

Maybe.

This last fight had been rough for Clark. Millions worth of property damage and a lot of angry people. In his defense, he didn’t mean for the fight to get so out of hand, but to be fair, no one else was fighting that thing. So really, was he fully to blame? Where was The Justice Gang when you needed them?

Talk shows were already speculating if Superman had lost it. The morning news ran slow-motion clips of the destruction on a loop, conveniently skipping the part where he dragged a dozen civilians out of the blast zone with one arm. The word reckless was being thrown around like candy. The city was hard to please. Save them with minimal damage, they’re happy. Save them with anything more, they’re not so happy anymore.

The newsroom was all different conversations about whether Superman was in the right or not. Of course, most of the people Clark surrounded himself were mainly on his side, but they did have opinions.

“I’m just saying, did he need to take down a whole building?” Jimmy asked.

Lois sighed, flipping through her notes without looking up. “It was already empty. Evacuated ten minutes before the hit. Clark wrote that in his piece.”

“Yeah, I know, I read the piece,” Jimmy said, hands up. “I’m just playing devil’s advocate.”

Steve Lombard chimed in from a few desks down, clearly not playing devil’s advocate. “Maybe if he was smarter about it, we wouldn’t be looking at a six-block reconstruction. Just saying.”

“Maybe if you were smarter about it, we wouldn’t still be running that disastrous opinion column you call journalism.”

Clark looked up to see you walk in. Blue blouse, red skirt, red nails, blue headband. You were fully decked out in Superman’s—his—colors. Clark felt his brain glitch in real time. It felt like a system error and complete crash was actively happening as you walked up to the group, grabbing your chair to swivel up and join the conversation.

Lois looked up from her notepad, one perfectly arched brow raised. “What’s with the patriotism?”

You gave a dazzling smile as you sat, crossing your legs with practiced flair. “Just.. showing a little solidarity.”

“With Superman?” Steve asked, incredulous.

“Obviously with Superman,” you shot back. ��You think I’m wearing red and blue for the Meteors?” Clark’s brain continued its slow descent into chaos. You looked like every dream he’d never admitted having. Bright, bold, stunning and fiercely on his side. And you looked really good in blue.

Jimmy leaned in, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You do realize you're basically baiting everyone who’s mad about the damage, right?”

“Good,” you said sweetly, reaching for the coffee Lois had just set down for herself. You took a sip like it was yours. It was the sweetest, maybe even sweeter than yours with all the sugar she dumped into it. “They can be mad and wrong. Multitasking is real.”

Steve leaned back in his chair, unimpressed. “You all act like he’s flawless.”

You gave him a look. “Nobody’s flawless, Steve. But Superman was the only one fighting that thing. It’s easy to criticize from behind a keyboard when you’re not the one getting thrown into buildings.”

Clark’s chest warmed. You weren’t just defending him—you were wearing your defense like a battle flag. You turned slightly, catching Clark’s eye. “And for the record, he saved a lot more than he destroyed.” Clark tried to form a response, but his mouth had completely forgotten how to function.

Lois smirked, clearly clocking the interaction. “Alright, Wonder Woman 2.0, let’s hear it. What’s your angle today?”

You leaned back in your chair, legs still crossed, twirling a pen between your fingers. “Same angle as always, Lois. The truth. It’s not about perfection—it’s about intention. Superman cares. That’s more than I can say for some of the people complaining about the cleanup from their luxury apartments uptown.”

Clark looked down at his screen, a dopey grin tugging at his lips. He felt his heart beating a whole new pattern. It might as well have been spelling your name in morse code.

Then, you reached into your bag, pulled out your tablet, and tapped the screen a few times. “By the way,” you added casually, “I ran a breakdown of structural losses versus casualty prevention. Want to guess how many lives he saved by demolishing that building?”

Steve groaned. “Please don’t say spreadsheets.”

“Oh, I’m absolutely saying spreadsheets,” you grinned, flipping the screen around. “I cross-referenced city evacuation timelines, mapped the creature’s path, and ran predictive models based on its movement patterns. Taking out that building redirected the debris zone by a 42.7% margin. It shielded half the block.”

Lois raised her brows. “You’re telling me Superman used a ten-story office complex as a wall?”

“I’m saying,” you replied, “he thought fast, acted faster, and made the smartest call in an impossible situation. And anyone who can’t see that is probably mad he did more damage to their ego than their rent-controlled apartment.”

“Remind me again of how you know all of this?” Steve sighed like it was a chore to listen to your rambles.

You shrugged, “Double majored in Statistics and Journalism. Thought it may come into hand at some point in my career. Though, I did always hope I would just do gossip.”

“I actually did not know this,” Jimmy raised a hand as he interrupted. “I just thought you were some kind of natural genius.”

“Yeah, no. She has never brought this up,” Lois nodded in agreement, also quite perplexed.

Steve just stared at you like you’d grown a second head. “But you.. only write gossip? Why not do an actual column that people read?”

You ignored the comment. Cat punched his shoulder anyways. “Because gossip moves markets, sweetie. You think LuthorCorp’s stocks tanked last month because of their quarterly report? No. It was because I leaked that Luthor skipped the mayor’s fundraiser and was seen at an off-books dinner with a mystery guest. Which, for the record, was his own clone.”

Slowly, Jimmy leaned over to Clark, not taking his eyes off you. “Yeah, man. You were so right for getting a crush on her,” he whispered, slightly shaking his head in disbelief. 

“I—that doesn’t—”

“You’re wrapped around her finger. You’ve got dibs,” Jimmy whispered back, patting Clark’s shoulder, and swiveling back to his desk.

Clark opened and closed his mouth like a Windows error message. “I don’t—dibs isn’t—Jimmy, that’s not how—” He turned halfway in his chair, gesturing vaguely, but Jimmy had already slipped on his headphones and was pretending to work while very obviously still listening.

Clark sighed, dragging a hand over his face, just as you glanced over from your seat, your pen poised dramatically between your fingers. “Something wrong, Clark?” you asked, head tilted, expression effortlessly sweet and soft, the way you always looked at him.

“Oh, no, no,” Clark shook his head. “Just, uh.. amazed. At you..your calculations.”

You blinked, then smiled, soft and warm like sunlight through a window. “Really? You think they’re okay?”

Clark let out a short, almost breathless laugh. “Okay? They’re incredible. I mean, I didn’t even notice half the things you picked up on. The migration patterns? The glitch timing? That’s.. genius.”

You blushed, glancing down at your notes like you needed to double-check them now. “I just.. like looking closely at things, I guess. Patterns make me feel like the world makes more sense.”

He nodded slowly, watching you. You were a goddess walking among men. Which said a lot, coming from the man that was compared to gods. “You make things make more sense.”

You looked up again, surprised, and your smile grew just a little more shy. “Thank you, Clark. Really. That means a lot coming from you.” There was a quiet moment between you—just long enough for the newsroom to blur around the edges—and then you added, voice even softer, “You’ve always been kind to me. Even before I ever proved I was more than the gossip girl. I don’t think I’ve ever said thank you for that.”

Clark’s heart thudded. “You never needed to.”

“I still want to,” you said. “So.. thank you.”

And he swore, right then, that if he wasn’t already hopelessly gone for you, that would’ve been the exact moment he fell.

Lois turned to Jimmy. “Is she whipped for him too?”

“I think we just found her soft spot,” Jimmy muttered, in literal disbelief that, nerd, Clark Kent, somehow was pulling bombshell, you. The unobtainable girl in the newsroom. The one every guy had a secret, small crush on. He exhaled. “You know what? Good for them. I mean, it's confusing and a little terrifying, but good for them.”

Lois smiled knowingly. “Give it a week. One of them’s gonna crack.”

Watching them closely, Jimmy narrowed his eyes. “My money’s on Clark.”

“Please,” Lois scoffed, waving Jimmy off with her hand. “That girl’s gonna fold like a lawn chair the second he says something too soft with those stupid eyes.”

They both turned back to their work, though neither one stopped listening. Not when you giggled. Not when Clark looked at you like you hung the stars. And definitely not when the entire bullpen slowly started to realize:

The gossip columnist and the golden boy were both very off the market.

[yakshxiao]

to whom it may concern  

clark kent 𝐱 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫  𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬 / 𝐭𝐰 – 18+, MDNI, secret admirer au, slowburn romance, mutual pining, radical acceptance and love is the real punk rock, yearning, clark is a softie, smut, piv, oral sex (f!recieving), fingering, creampie, touch starved clark Kent  word count: 18k Summary:  You start getting anonymous love notes at the Daily Planet—soft, sincere, impossibly romantic. You fall for the words first, then realize they sound a lot like Clark Kent. And just when the truth begins to unravel, you start to suspect he might be more than just the writer… he might be Superman himself.  notes – not proofread and my first full Clark Kent fic!

— reblogs comments & likes are appreciated

The first thing you notice isn’t the coffee—it’s the smell.

Sharp espresso. The exact blend you order on days when the world feels like sandpaper. Dark, hot, and just a touch too strong. But when you reach your desk and set your bag down, the cup is already waiting for you, balanced on the corner of your keyboard like it belongs there.

A single post-it clings to the cardboard sleeve, the ink a little smudged from condensation:

“You looked like you had a long night.”

No name. No heart. Just that.

You stare at it for a second too long. The office hums around you—phones ringing, printers whining, the low buzz of voices—but your ears tune it all out as you reread the handwriting. Rounded letters. Slight right slant. You can’t place it.

And no one in this building knows your coffee order. You made sure of that.

Across the bullpen, Jimmy Olsen drops into his chair with a paper bag in his teeth and two cameras slung around his neck.

“Someone’s got a secret admirer,” he sings, catching sight of the note.

You glance up, but try to play it cool. “Could be a delivery mistake.”

He snorts. “Right. And I’m dating Wonder Woman.”

Lois, passing by with a stack of mock-ups under one arm, pauses just long enough to lift a perfectly sculpted brow. “Who’s dating Wonder Woman?”

“Jimmy,” you and Jimmy say in unison.

“Right,” she says, deadpan, and moves on.

You feel a little heat crawl up your neck. You pull the cup closer. The lid’s still warm.

You’re still turning the note over in your hand when Clark Kent rounds the corner. His hair is a little damp at the ends, like he didn’t have time to dry it properly, already curling from the late-summer humidity. His tie—striped, loud, undeniably Clark—is halfway undone, the knot drifting lower by the second. His glasses are slipping down his nose like they’re trying to abandon ship.

He’s juggling three manila folders, a spiral-bound notebook balanced on top, a half-eaten blueberry muffin in his teeth, and what you’re almost certain is the entire city council’s budget report from 2024 spilling out of the bottom folder. It’s absurd. Kind of impressive. Very him.

“Clark—careful,” you call out, mostly on instinct.

He startles at the sound of your voice and turns a little too fast. The top file slips. He manages to catch it, barely, with an awkward swipe of his forearm, the muffin top bouncing to the floor with a quiet thwup. He rights the stack again with both arms now locked tight around the paperwork, and when he looks at you, he’s already wearing one of those sheepish, winded smiles.

“Morning sweetheart,” he says breathlessly. His voice is warm. Rough around the edges like he hasn’t spoken yet today. “Sorry, I’m late—Perry wanted the zoning report and the express line was… not express.”

You don’t answer right away. Because his eyes flick toward your desk—specifically the coffee cup sitting at the edge of your keyboard. And the note stuck to its sleeve. He freezes. Just for a second. A micro-hesitation. One breath caught too long in his chest. It’s nothing.

Except… it’s not.

Then he clears his throat—loud and awkward, like he swallowed gravel—and shuffles the stack in his arms like it suddenly needs reorganizing. “New… uh, budget drafts,” he says quickly, eyes very intentionally not on the post-it. “I left the tag on that one by mistake—ignore the highlighter. I had a system. Kind of.”

You blink at him, watching his ears start to go red. “…You okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says, waving one hand too fast, almost drops everything again. “I’m fine, sweetheart. Just, you know. Monday.”

He flashes you the smile again—crooked, a little boyish, like he still isn’t sure if he belongs here even after all this time. That’s always been the thing about Clark. He doesn’t posture. Doesn’t strut. He’s got this open-face sincerity, like the world is still worth showing up for, even when it kicks you in the ribs.

And you’ve seen him work. He’s brilliant. Way too observant to be as clumsy as he pretends to be. But it’s charming. In that small-town, too-tall-for-his-own-good, mutters-puns-when-he’s-nervous kind of way.

You like him. That’s… not the problem. The problem is— He turns to walk past you, misjudges the distance, and thunks his thigh into the sharp edge of your desk with a grunt.

You flinch. “You good?”

“Yep.” He winces, but manages a thumbs-up. “Just, uh… recalibrating my ankles.”

Then he’s gone, retreating to the safe, familiar walls of his cubicle, still muttering to himself. Something about rechecking source notes and whether anyone notices when hyperlinks are one shade too blue.

You’re left staring at the cup. At the note.

You run your thumb over the y again, the way it loops low and curls back. There’s something oddly familiar about the penmanship. Not perfect. Neat, but casual. Like whoever wrote it didn’t plan to stop writing once they started. Like they meant it.

You don’t say it aloud—not even to yourself—but the truth is whispering at the edge of your brain.

It looks like his. It feels like his. But no. That would be— Clark Kent is thoughtful, sure. He’s the kind of guy who remembers how you like your takeout and always lets you borrow his chargers. He holds elevators and never interrupts, and he stays late when you need someone to double-check your interview transcript even though it’s technically not his beat.

He’s the kind of guy who brings you a jacket during late-night stakeouts without asking. He’s the kind of guy who makes you laugh without trying. But he couldn’t be the secret admirer.

…Could he?

You glance toward his cubicle. You can’t see him, but you can feel him there. The way his presence always lingers, somehow warmer than everyone else’s. Quieter.

You tuck the note into the back pocket of your notebook.

Just in case.

-

You forget about the note by lunch.

Mostly.

The newsroom doesn’t really give you space to linger in your thoughts—phones ringing, printers jamming, interns darting between desks like caffeinated ghosts. It’s chaos, always is, and you thrive in it. But even as you’re skimming through edits and fixing a headline Jimmy typo’d into a minor war crime, part of your brain keeps circling back to that one y.

By the time you head back from a sandwich run with mustard on your sleeve and a half-dozen emails on your phone, there’s another cup on your desk. Same order. No receipt. No name.

But this time, the note reads:

“The line you cut in paragraph six was my favorite. About hope not being the same thing as naivety.”

You freeze mid-step, bag still dangling from one hand. 

You hadn’t published that line. You wrote it. Typed it, then stared at it for twenty minutes before deleting it—thought it was too sentimental, too soft for the piece. You didn’t want to seem like you were editorializing. And yet… it had meant something. You’d loved that line.

And someone else had read it. Which means…

Your eyes flick up. Around.

The bullpen looks the same as always: fluorescent lights buzzing, keys clacking, the faint scent of stale coffee and fast food. Jimmy’s arguing with someone about lens filters. Lois is deep in a phone call, gesturing with a pen like she might stab whoever’s on the other end.

And then—Clark. Sitting at his desk, halfway behind the divider. Fiddling with his glasses like they won’t sit quite right on the bridge of his nose. He glances up at you and smiles. Soft. A little crooked. Familiar in a way that does something deeply unhelpful to your chest.

You stare for a second too long.

He blinks. Looks down quickly. Reaches for his pen, drops it, fumbles, curses under his breath. You see the top of his ears turning red.

Something inside you shifts. The notes are sweet, yes. But this is specific. This is someone who read your draft. Someone who noticed the cut line.

You never shared it outside your initial file. Not even with Lois. You almost didn’t send it to copy at all.  So… who the hell could’ve read it? How could they have seen it? 

You return to your chair slowly, like it might help the pieces click into place. Your eyes catch the handwriting again.

The loops. The slight leftward tilt.

Clark does have neat handwriting. You’ve seen his notebook, all tidy bullet points and overly polite margin notes.

You tuck this note into your drawer. Next to the other one.

You don’t say anything.

-

Later that afternoon, the newsroom’s background noise crescendos into something louder—Lois and Dan from editorial locked in another philosophical brawl about media framing. You’re not part of the fight, but apparently your latest piece is.

“It’s fluffy,” Dan says, waving the printed article like it personally offended him. “It doesn’t do anything. What’s the point of it, other than making people feel things?”

You open your mouth—just barely—ready to defend yourself even though it’s exhausting. You don’t get the chance. Clark beats you to it.

“I think it was insightful, actually,” he says from across the bullpen, voice louder than usual. “And emotionally resonant.”

The silence is sharp. Dan arches a brow. “Listen, Kent. No one asked you.”

Clark straightens his tie. “Well, maybe they should.”

Now everyone’s looking. Lois leans back in her chair, visibly suppressing a smile. Dan scoffs and mutters something about sentimentality being a plague.

You just stare at Clark. He meets your eyes, then seems to realize what he’s done and looks at his notebook like it’s suddenly the most fascinating object in the known universe.

Your heart does something inconvenient. Because now you’re wondering if it is him. Not just because he defended you, or because he could have somehow read the line that didn’t make it to print, but because of the way he did it. The way his voice shook just a little. The way he looked furious on your behalf.

Clark is soft, yes. Awkward, often. But there’s something sharp underneath it. A quiet kind of intensity that only shows up when it matters. Like someone who’s spent a long time listening, and even longer choosing his moments.

You make a show of checking your notes. Pretending like your stomach didn’t just flip. You don’t look at him again. But you feel him looking.

-

The office after midnight doesn’t feel like the same building. The lights buzz quieter. The chairs stop squeaking. There’s an eerie sort of calm that settles once the rush hour of deadlines has passed and only the ghosts and last-minute layout edits remain.

Clark is two desks away, sleeves rolled up, tie finally abandoned and flung haphazardly over the back of his chair. He’s squinting at the screen like he’s trying to will the copy into formatting itself.

You’re just as tired—though slightly less heroic-looking about it. Somewhere behind you, the printer groans. A rogue page slides off the tray and flutters to the floor like it’s giving up on life.

Clark gets up to grab it before you can.

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” you say as he crouches to retrieve it. “Or fall asleep with your face on the carpet and get stuck there forever.”

He offers a smile, crooked and half-asleep. “I’ve survived worse. Once fell asleep in a compost pile back in high school.”

You pause. “Why?”

“There was a dare,” he says, deadpan. “And a cow. The rest is classified, sweetheart.”

You snort before you can stop it.

It’s late. You’re punchy. The kind of tired that makes everything a little funnier, a little looser around the edges. He sits back down, stretching long limbs with a groan, and you let the quiet settle again.

“You know Clark, sometimes I feel invisible here.” You don’t mean to say it. It just slips out, quiet and rough from somewhere behind your ribcage. 

Clark looks up instantly.

You keep staring at your screen. “It’s all bylines and deadlines, and then the story prints and nobody remembers who wrote it. Doesn’t matter if it’s good or not. No one sees you.” You tap the corner of your spacebar absently. “Feels like yelling into a tunnel most days.”

You expect him to say something vague. Supportive. A standard “no, you’re great!” brush-off. But when you finally glance over, Clark is staring at you with his brow furrowed like someone just insulted his mom.

“That’s ridiculous,” he mutters. “You’re one of the most important voices in the room.”

The words are firm. Not flustered. Not dorky. Certain. It disarms you a little.

You blink. “Clark—”

“No. I mean it, sweetheart," he says, almost stubborn. “You make people care. Even when they don’t want to. That’s rare.”

He looks down at his coffee like maybe it betrayed him by going cold too fast. You don’t say anything. But that ache in your chest eases, just a little.

-

The next morning, you’re halfway through your walk to work when you find it.

Tucked into the side pocket of your coat—the one you only use for receipts and empty gum wrappers. Folded carefully. Familiar ink.

“Even whispers echo when they’re true.”

You stop walking. Stand there frozen on the corner outside a coffee shop as cars blur past and someone curses at a cab a few feet away. You read the note twice, then a third time.

It’s simple. No flourish. No name. Just words—quiet, certain, and meant for you.

You don’t know why it lands the way it does. Maybe because it doesn’t try to dismiss how you feel. It just… reframes it. You may feel invisible, small, unheard—but this person is saying: that doesn’t make your truth meaningless. You matter, even if it feels like no one’s listening.

You fold the note gently, like it might tear. You don’t tuck this one into your notebook. You keep it in your coat pocket. All day.

Like armor.

-

By midafternoon, the bullpen’s usual noise has shapeshifted into something louder—one of those half-serious, half-combative newsroom debates that always starts in one cubicle and ends up consuming half the floor.

This time, it’s the great Superman Property Damage Discourse, sparked—unsurprisingly—by Lois Lane slapping a freshly printed article onto her desk like it insulted her directly.

“He destroyed the entire north side of the building,” she says, exasperated, as if she’s already had this argument with the universe and lost.

You don’t look up right away. You’re knee-deep in notes for your community housing series and trying to keep your lunch from leaking onto your desk. But the words still hit.

“To stop a tanker explosion,” you point out without much heat, eyes still scanning your page. “There were twenty-seven people inside.”

“My point,” Lois says, crossing her arms, “is that someone has to pay for all that glass.”

“Pretty sure it’s the insurance companies,” you mutter.

Lois raises a brow at you, but doesn’t push it. She’s used to you playing devil’s advocate—usually it’s just for fun. She doesn’t know this one’s starting to feel a little personal.

And then Clark walks in. He’s balancing two coffee cups and what looks like a roll of blueprints tucked under one arm, sleeves rolled up and tie already loose like the day’s been longer than it should’ve been. His hair’s a mess, wind-tousled and curling near the back of his neck, and he’s got that familiar expression on—half-focused, half-apologetic, like he’s perpetually arriving a few seconds after he meant to.

He slows as he approaches, catches the tail end of Lois’s rant, and hesitates. Just a second. Just long enough for something behind his glasses to tighten. Then, without warning or warm-up, he steps in like a man walking into traffic.

“He’s doing his best, okay?” he blurts. “He can’t help the building fell—there was a fireball.”

The bullpen quiets a beat. Just enough for the words to settle and sting. Lois doesn’t even look up from her monitor. “You sound like a fanboy.”

“I just—” Clark huffs. “He’s trying to protect people. That’s not… easy.”

He lifts his hand to gesture, but his elbow clips the corner of his desk and sends his coffee tipping. The paper cup wobbles, then crashes onto the floor in a slosh of brown across your loose notes.

“Clark!” You shove back in your chair, startled.

“Sorry—sorry—hang on—” He lunges for a stack of printer paper, overcorrects, and knocks over another folder in the process. Its contents scatter like leaves in the wind. He flails to grab what he can, muttering apologies the whole time.

The tension breaks—not because of what he said, but because of the way he said it. Because he’s suddenly in a mess of his own making, trying to mop it up with a handful of flyers and an empty paper towel roll, red-faced and flustered. 

You can’t help it. You smile. Just a little.

Lois glances sideways at the scene, then turns to you, tone dry as dust. “Well. He’s… passionate.”

You arch a brow. “That’s one word for it.”

She doesn’t notice the way your eyes linger on him. She doesn’t see the shift in your chest when you watch him drop to one knee, scooping up wet files with shaking hands, his jaw tight—not from embarrassment, but from something quieter. Fiercer.

Because Clark hadn’t just jumped to Superman’s defense.

He’d meant it.

Like someone who knows what it feels like to try and still fall short. Like someone who’s carried the weight of people’s expectations. Like someone who’s watched something burn and had to live with the cost of saving it.

You know it’s ridiculous. You know it’s a stretch. But still… your breath catches.

He steadies the last folder against his desk, rubs the back of his neck, and looks up—right at you. Your eyes meet for a second too long.

You offer him a look that says it’s okay. He returns one that says thanks. And then the moment passes. You turn back to your screen, heart pounding for reasons you won’t name. And Clark returns to quietly drying his desk with a half-crumpled press release.

You don’t say anything. But you’re not watching him by accident anymore.

-

You’ve read the latest note a dozen times.

“Sometimes I wish I could just be honest with you. But I can’t—not yet.”

There’s no flourish. No compliment. Just rawness, stripped of any careful metaphor or charm. It’s still anonymous, but the voice… it feels closer now. Less like a mystery, more like someone standing just out of sight.

Someone with hands that tremble when they pass you a coffee. Someone who knows how your voice sounds when you’re frustrated. Someone who once told you, very softly, that your words matter.

You start thinking about Clark again. And once the thought roots, it’s impossible to pull it free.

-

You test him. It’s petty, maybe. Pointless, probably. But you do it anyway. That afternoon, you’re both holed up near the copy desk, reviewing your latest layout. Clark’s seated beside you, sleeves pushed up, his pen tapping lightly against the margin of your column draft. His knee keeps bumping yours under the desk, and every time, he apologizes with a shy smile that doesn’t quite meet your eyes.

You’re running on too little sleep and too many thoughts. So you try it. “You ever hear that phrase? ‘Even whispers echo when they’re true’?”

He looks up from the page. Blinks behind his smudged glasses. “Uh… sure. I mean, not in everyday conversation, but yeah. Sounds poetic.”

You tilt your head, eyes narrowing just slightly. “I read it recently,” you say, like you’re thinking aloud. “Can’t stop turning it over. I don’t know—it stuck with me.”

He stares at you for a beat too long. Then clears his throat and drops his gaze, pen suddenly very busy again. “Yeah. It’s… it’s a good line.”

“You don’t think it’s a little dramatic?”

“No,” he says too quickly. “I mean—it’s true. Sometimes the quietest things are the ones worth listening to.”

You nod, pretending to go back to your edits. But his pen taps a little faster. The corner of his mouth twitches. He’s trying to look neutral, maybe even confused. But Clark Kent couldn’t lie his way out of a grocery list.

And if he did write it, that means he knows you’re testing him.

You don’t call him on it.

Not yet.

-

Later that evening, he helps you file your story. Technically, Clark’s already done for the day—he could’ve clocked out an hour ago, could’ve gone home and slipped into his flannel pajamas and vanished into whatever quiet life he keeps outside these walls. But instead, he lingers.

His jacket is folded neatly over the back of your chair, sleeves still warm from his arms. His glasses sit low on his nose, catching the screen’s glow, one smudge blooming near the top corner where he’s pushed them up too many times with the side of his thumb.

He leans over the desk beside you, one palm braced flat against the surface, the other gently scrolling through your draft. His frame takes up too much space in that warm, grounding way—shoulder brushing yours occasionally, breath warm at your temple when he leans in to squint at a sentence.

You’re quiet, but not for lack of things to say. It’s the way he’s reading—carefully, like every word deserves to be held. There’s no red pen. No quick fixes. Just soft soundless reverence, like your work is already whole and he’s just lucky to witness it.

And his hands.

God, his hands.

You try not to look, but they’re impossible to ignore. Big and capable, yes, but gentle in the way he uses them—fingers skimming the edge of the printout like the paper might bruise, thumb stroking over the corner where the page curls, slow and absentminded. The pads of his fingers are slightly ink-stained, callused just at the tips. He smells faintly like cheap soap and newsroom toner and something you can’t name but have already begun to crave.

You wonder—just for a moment—what it would be like to feel those hands touch you with purpose instead of hesitation. Without the paper buffer. Without the quiet restraint.

He leans a little closer. You can feel the press of his shirt sleeve against your arm now, soft cotton against skin. “Looks perfect to me,” he murmurs.

It’s not the words. It’s the way he says them—like he’s not just talking about the story. You swallow, pulse jumping. You wonder if he hears it. You wonder if he feels it.

His eyes flick to yours for just a second. Something hangs in the air—fragile, charged. Then the phone rings down the hall, and the spell breaks like steam off hot glass. He steps back. You exhale like you’ve been holding your breath for three paragraphs.

You don’t look at him as he grabs his jacket. You just nod and whisper, “Thanks.”

And he just smiles—soft and private, like a secret passed from his mouth to your chest.

-

You don’t go home right away. You sit at your desk long after Clark and the rest of the bullpen has emptied out, coat draped over your shoulders like a blanket, fingers toying with the folded edge of the note in your lap.

“Sometimes I wish I could just be honest with you. But I can’t—not yet.”

You’ve read it enough times to have it memorized. Still, your eyes trace the handwriting again—careful lettering, no signature, just that quiet ache bleeding between the lines.

It’s the first one that feels more than just flirtation. This one hurts a little. So you do something you haven’t done before.

You pull a post-it from the stack beside your monitor, scribble down one sentence—no flourish, no punctuation.

“Then tell me in person.” 

You slide it beneath your stapler before you leave. A deliberate offering. You don’t know how he’s been getting the others to you—if it’s during your lunch break or when you’re in the print room or bent over in the archives. But somehow, he knows.

So this time, you let him find something waiting.

And when you finally shrug on your coat and step into the elevator, the empty quiet of the newsroom echoes behind you like a held breath.

-

The next morning, there’s no reply. Not on your desk. Not slipped into your coat pocket. Not scribbled in the margin of your planner or tucked beneath your coffee cup. Just silence.

You try not to feel disappointed. You try not to spiral. Maybe he’s waiting. Maybe he’s scared. Maybe you’re wrong and it’s not who you think. But your chest feels hollow all the same—like something almost happened and didn’t.

So that night, you write again. Your hands shake more than they should for something so simple. A sticky note. A few words. But this one names it.

“One chance. One sunset. Centennial Park. Bench by the lion statue. Tomorrow.”

You stare at the words a long time before setting it down. This one’s not a joke. Not a dare. Not a flirtation scribbled in passing. This is an invitation. A door left open.

You slide it under your stapler the same way you’ve received every one of his notes—unassuming, tucked in plain sight. If he wants to find it, he will. You’ve stopped questioning how he does it. Maybe it’s timing. Maybe it’s instinct. Maybe it’s something else entirely.

But you know he’ll see it.

You pack up slowly. Shoulders tight. Bag heavier than usual. The newsroom is quiet at this hour—just the low hum of the overhead fluorescents and the soft, endless churn of printers in the back. You turn off your monitor, loop your coat over your arm, and make your way to the elevator.

Halfway there, something makes you stop. You glance back. Clark is still at his desk.

You hadn’t heard him return. You hadn’t even noticed the light at his station flick back on. But there he is—elbows on the desk, hands folded in front of him, eyes already lifted.

Watching you.

His face is unreadable, but his gaze lingers longer than it should. Soft. Searching. Almost caught. You feel the air shift. Not a word is exchanged. Just that one look.

Then the elevator dings. You turn away before you can lose your nerve.

And Clark? He doesn’t look down. Not until the doors slide shut in front of your face.

-

You tell yourself it doesn’t matter. You tell yourself it was probably nothing. A game. A passing flirtation. Maybe Jimmy, playing an elaborate prank he’ll one day claim was performance art.

But still—you dress carefully.

You pull out that one sweater that always makes you feel like the best version of yourself, and you smooth your collar twice before you leave. You wear lip balm that smells faintly like vanilla and leave the office ten minutes early just in case traffic is worse than expected. Just in case he’s early.

You get there first. The bench is colder than you remember. Stone weathered and a little damp from last night’s rain. Your coffee steams in your hands, and for a while, that’s enough to keep you warm.

The sky begins to soften around the edges. First blush pink, then golden orange, then the faintest sweep of violet, like a bruise blooming across the clouds. You watch the city skyline fade into silhouettes. The sun drips lower behind the glass towers, catching the river in a moment of molten reflection. It’s beautiful.

It’s also empty.

You wait. A couple strolls past, fingers laced, talking softly like they’ve been in love for years. A jogger nods as they pass, earbuds in, a scruffy golden retriever trotting faithfully beside them. The dog looks up at you like it knows something—like it sees something.

The wind kicks up. You pull your coat tighter. You tell yourself to give it five more minutes. Then five more.

And then—

Nothing. No footsteps. No note. No him.

Your coffee goes cold between your palms. The stone starts to seep into your bones. And somewhere deep in your chest, something you hadn’t even dared name… wilts.

Eventually, you stand. Walk home with your coat buttoned all the way up, even though it’s not that cold. You don’t cry.

You just go quiet.

-

The next morning, the bullpen hums with the usual Monday static. Phones ringing. Keys clacking. Perry’s voice barking something about a missed quote from the sanitation board. Jimmy’s camera shutter clicking in staccato bursts behind you. The Daily Planet in full swing—ordinary chaos wrapped in coffee breath and fluorescent lighting.

You move through it on autopilot. Your smile is small, tight around the edges. You’ve become a master of folding disappointment into your posture—chin lifted, eyes clear, mouth curved just enough to seem fine.

“Guess the secret admirer thing was just a prank after all.” You drop your bag beside your desk, shuffle through the morning copy logs, and say it lightly. Offhand. Like a joke. “Should’ve known better.” You make sure your voice carries just far enough. Not loud, but not a whisper. Casual. A throwaway comment designed to sound unaffected. And then you laugh. It’s short. Hollow. It dies in your throat before it even fully escapes.

Lois glances up from her monitor, eyes narrowing faintly behind dark lashes. She doesn’t laugh with you. She doesn’t smile. She just watches you for a beat too long. Not with judgment. Not even pity. Just… knowing. But she says nothing. And neither do you.

What you don’t see is the hallway—just twenty feet away—where Clark Kent stands frozen in place. He’d just walked in—late, coat slung over one arm, takeout coffee in the other. He had stopped just inside the threshold to adjust his glasses. He’d meant to offer you a second coffee, the one he bought on impulse after circling the block too many times.

And then he heard it. Your voice. “Guess the secret admirer thing was just a prank after all.” And then your laugh. That awful, paper-thin laugh.

He goes still. Like someone pulled the oxygen from the room. His hand tightens around the coffee cup until the lid creaks. The other arm drops slack at his side, coat nearly slipping from his grasp. His jaw tenses. Shoulders stiffen beneath his white button-down, and for one awful second, he forgets how to breathe.

Because you sound like someone trying not to care. And it cuts deeper than he expects. Because he’d meant to come. Because he tried. Because he was so close.

But none of that matters now. All you know is that he didn’t show up. And now you think the whole thing was a joke. A stupid, secret game. His game. And he can’t even explain—not without tearing everything open.

He stares down the corridor, eyes fixed on the edge of your desk, on the shape of your shoulders turned slightly away. He watches as you pick up your coffee and blow gently across the lid like it might chase the bitterness from your chest.

You don’t turn around. You don’t see the way he stands there—gutted, unmoving, undone. The cup trembles in his hand. He turns away before it spills.

-

That night, you go back to the office. You tell yourself it’s for the deadline. A follow-up piece on the housing committee. Edits on the west-side zoning profile. Anything to fill the time between sunset and sleep—because if you sleep, you’ll just dream of that bench.

The newsroom is quiet now. All overhead lights dimmed except for the halo of your desk lamp and the soft thrum of a copy machine left cycling in the corner.

You drop your bag with a sigh. Stretch your shoulders. Slide your desk drawer open without thinking. And find it. A note. No envelope. No tape. No ceremony. Just a single sheet of cream stationery folded in thirds. Familiar handwriting. Neat loops. Unshaking.

You unfold it slowly.

“I’m sorry. I wanted to be there. I can’t explain why I couldn’t— But it wasn’t a joke. It was never a joke. Please believe that.”

The words hit like a breath you didn’t know you were holding. Then they blur.  You read it again. Then again. But the ache in your chest doesn’t settle. Because how do you believe someone who won’t show their face? How do you believe someone who keeps slipping between your fingers?

You hold the note to your chest. Close your eyes. You want to believe him. God, you want to. But you don’t know how anymore.

-

What you couldn’t know is this: Clark Kent was already running. He’d been on his way—coat flapping behind him, tie unspooling in the wind, breath fogging as he dashed through traffic, one hand wrapped tight around a note he planned to deliver in person for the first time. He’d rehearsed it. Practiced what he’d say. Built up to it with every beat of a terrified heart.

He saw the park lights up ahead. Saw the lion statue. Saw the shape of a figure sitting alone on that bench.

And then the air split open. The sky went green. A fifth-dimensional imp—not even from this universe—tore through Metropolis like a child flipping pages in a pop-up book. Reality folded. Buildings bent sideways. Streetlamps started singing jazz standards.

Clark barely had time to take a deep breath before he vanished into smoke and flame, spinning upward in a blur of red and blue. Somewhere across town, Superman joined Guy Gardner, Hawk Girl, Mr. Terrific, and Metamorpho in trying to contain the chaos before the city unmade itself entirely. 

He never got the chance to reach the bench. He never got the chance to say anything. The note stayed in his pocket until it was soaked with rain and streaked with ash. Until it was too late.

-

It’s supposed to be routine. You’re only there to cover a zoning dispute. A boring, mid-week council press event that’s been rescheduled three times already. The air is heavy with heat and bureaucracy. You and your photographer barely make it past the front barricades before the scene spirals into chaos.

First it’s the downed power lines—sparking in rapid bursts as something hits the utility pole two blocks down. Then a car screeches over the median. Then someone starts screaming.

You’re still trying to piece it together when the crowd surges—someone shouts about a gun. People scatter. A window shatters across the street. A chunk of concrete falls from the sky like a thrown brick.

Your feet move before your brain catches up. You hit the pavement just as something explodes behind you. A jolt rings through your bones, sharp and high and metallic. Dust clouds the air. There’s shouting, then screaming, and your ears go fuzzy for one split second.

And then he lands.

Superman.

Cape whipping behind him like it’s caught in its own storm, boots cracking against the sidewalk as he drops down between the wreckage and the people still trying to flee. He moves like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Not just fast—but impossible. His body a blur of motion, heat, and purpose. He rips a crumpled lamppost off a trapped woman like it weighs nothing. Hurls it aside and crouches low beside her, voice firm but gentle as he checks her pulse, her leg, her name.

You’re frozen where you crouch, half behind a parking meter, hand pressed to your chest like it can keep your heart from tearing loose.

And then be turns. Looks straight at you. His expression shifts. Just for a moment. Just for you. He steps forward, dust streaking his suit, eyes dark with something you don’t have time to name. He reaches you in three strides, body angled between you and the chaos, hand raised in warning before you can speak.

“Stay here, sweetheart. Please.”

Your stomach drops. Not at the danger. Not at the sound of buildings groaning in the distance or the flash of gunmetal tucked into a stranger’s hand.

It’s him. That word. That voice. The exact way of saying it—like it’s muscle memory. Like he’s said it a thousand times before.

Like Clark says it.

It stuns you more than the explosion did.

You blink up at him, speechless, heart stuttering behind your ribs as he holds your gaze just a second longer than he should. His brow furrows. Then he’s gone—into the fray, into the fire, into the part of the story where your pen can’t follow.

You don’t remember standing. You don’t remember how you get back to the press line, only that your legs shake and your palms burn and every time you try to replay what just happened, your brain gets stuck on one word.

Sweetheart.

You’ve heard it before—dozens of times. Always soft. Always accidental. Always from behind thick glasses and a crooked tie and a mouth still chewing the edge of a muffin while he scrolls through zoning reports.

Clark says it when he forgets you’re not his to claim. Clark says it when you’re both the last ones in the office and he thinks you’re asleep at your desk. Clark says it like a secret. Like a slip.

And Superman just said it exactly the same way. Same tone. Same warmth. Same quiet ache beneath it.

But that’s not possible. Because Superman is—Superman. Bold. Dazzling. Fire-forged. He walks like he owns the sky. He speaks like a storm made flesh. He radiates power and perfection.

And Clark? Clark is all flannel and stammering jokes and soft eyes behind big frames. He’s gentle. A little clumsy. His swagger is borrowed from farm porches and storybooks. He’s sweet in a way Superman couldn’t possibly be.

Couldn’t… Right? You chalk it up to coincidence. You have to.

…Sort of.

-

You don’t sleep well the night after the incident. You keep replaying it—frame by impossible frame. The gunshot, the smoke, the sky splitting in half. The crack of his landing, the rush of wind off his cape. The weight of his body between you and danger. And then that voice.

“Stay here, sweetheart. Please.”

You flinch every time it echoes in your head. Every time your brain folds it over the countless memories you have of Clark saying it in passing, like it was nothing. Like it meant nothing.

But it means something now.

You come into the office the next day wired and quiet, adrenaline still burning faintly at the edges of your skin. You aren’t sure what to say, or to whom, so you say nothing. You stare too long at your coffee. You snap at a printer jam. You forget your lunch in the breakroom fridge.

Clark notices. He hovers by your desk that morning, a second coffee in hand—one of those specialty orders from that corner place he knows you like but always pretends he doesn’t remember.

“Rough day?” he asks gently. His tone is careful. Soft. As if you’re a glass already rattling on the edge of the shelf.

You don’t look up. “It’s fine.”

He hesitates. Then sets the coffee down beside your elbow, just far enough that you have to choose whether or not to reach for it. “I heard about the power line thing,” he adds. “You okay?”

“I said I’m fine, Clark.”

A beat.

You hate the way his face flickers at that—hurt, barely masked. He pushes his glasses up and nods like he deserves it. Like he’s been expecting it. He doesn’t press. He just walks away.

-

You find yourself whispering to Lois over takeout later that afternoon—half a conversation muttered between bites of noodles and the hum of flickering overheads.

“He called me sweetheart.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Clark?”

“No. Superman.”

Her chewing slows.

You keep your eyes on the edge of your desk. “That’s… weird, right?”

Lois makes a sound—somewhere between a scoff and a laugh. “He’s a superhero. They charm every pretty girl they pull out of a burning building.”

You poke at your noodles. “Still. It felt…”

“Weird?” she teases again, nudging her knee against yours.

You shrug like it doesn’t matter. Like it hasn’t been clawing at the back of your brain for three days straight. Lois doesn’t press. Just watches you for a second longer than necessary. Then she moves on, launching into a tirade about Perry’s passive-aggressive post-it notes and the fact that someone keeps stealing her pens.

But the damage is already done. Because you start thinking maybe you’ve just been projecting. Maybe you want your secret admirer to be Clark so badly that your brain’s rewriting reality—latching onto any voice, any phrase, any fleeting resemblance and assigning it meaning.

Sweetheart.

It’s a common word. It doesn’t mean anything. Maybe Superman says it to everyone. Maybe he has a whole roster of soft pet names for dazed civilians. Maybe you’re the delusional one—sitting here wondering if your awkward, sweet, left-footed coworker moonlights as a god.

The idea is so absurd it actually makes you laugh. Quietly. Bitterly. Right into your carton of lo mein. You tell yourself to let it go. But you don’t.

You can’t. Because somewhere deep down, it doesn’t feel absurd at all. It feels… close. Like you’re brushing against the edge of something true. And if you get just a little closer—

You might fall right through it.

-

Clark pulls back after that. Subtly. Slowly. Like he’s dimming himself on purpose. He’s still there—still kind, still thoughtful, still Clark. But the rhythm changes.

The coffees stop appearing on your desk each morning. No more sticky notes with half-legible puns or awkward smiley faces. No more jokes under his breath during staff meetings. No more warm glances across the bullpen when you’re stuck late and your screen is giving you a headache.

His chair now sits just a little farther from yours in the layout room. Not enough to be obvious. Just enough to feel. You notice it the way you notice when the air shifts before a storm. Quiet. Inevitable.

Even his messages change. Once, his texts used to come with too many exclamation marks and a tendency to type out haha when he was nervous. Now they’re brief. Punctuated. Polite.

“Got your quote. Sending now.” “Perry said we’re cleared for page A3.” “Hope your meeting went okay.”

You reread them more than you should. Not because of what they say—but because of what they don’t. It feels like being ghosted by someone who still waves to you across the room.

You try to talk yourself down. Maybe he’s just busy. Maybe he’s stressed. Maybe you’ve been projecting. Maybe it’s not your admirer’s handwriting that matches his. Maybe it’s not his voice that slipped out of Superman’s mouth like a secret.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

But the space he used to fill next to you… feels like a light that’s been quietly turned off. And you are the one still blinking against the dark.

And yet, one afternoon, someone in the bullpen makes a snide remark about your latest piece. You don’t even catch the beginning—just the tail end of it, lazy and smug.

“—basically just fluff, right? She’s been coasting lately.”

You’re about to ignore it. You’re tired. Too tired. And what’s the point in arguing with someone who thinks nuance is a liability?

But then—Clark speaks. Not from beside you, but from across the room. You’re not even sure how he could have possibly heard the guy talking across all the hustle and bustle of the bullpen. But his voice cuts through the noise like someone snapping a ruler against a desk.

“I just think her work actually matters, okay?”

Silence follows. Not because of the volume—he wasn’t loud. Just certain. Unflinching. Like he’d been holding it in. The words hang in the air, charged and too real.

Clark looks immediately horrified with himself. He goes red. Not a faint flush—crimson. Mouth parting like he wants to take it back but doesn’t know how. He tries to recover, to smooth it over—but nothing comes. Just a flustered shake of his head and a noise that might’ve been his name.

The other reporter stares. “…Okay, man. Chill.”

Clark mumbles something about grabbing a file from archives and practically stumbles for the hallway, papers clenched awkwardly in one hand like a shield.

You don’t follow. You just… sit there. Staring at the space he left behind. Because that moment—those words—it wasn’t just instinct. It wasn’t just kindness. It was him.

The way he said it. The emotion in it. The rhythm of it. It felt like the notes. Like the quiet encouragements tucked into the margins of your day. Like someone watching, quietly, gently, hoping you’ll see yourself the way they do.

You think about the phrases he’s used before.

“The line you cut in paragraph six was my favorite. About hope not being the same thing as naivety.” “Even whispers echo when they’re true.”

And now:

“Her work actually matters.”

All said like they were true, not convenient. All said like they were about you.

You start to notice more after that. The way Clark compliments your writing—always specific. Never lazy. The way his eyes crinkle when he’s proud of something you said, even when he doesn’t speak up. The way he turns the thermostat up exactly two degrees every time you bring your sweater into work. The way he walks a half-step behind you when you both leave late at night.

It’s not a confession. Not yet. But it’s a pattern. And once you start seeing it—

You can’t stop.

-

It’s a quiet afternoon in the bullpen. The kind where the overhead lights hum just loud enough to notice and everything smells like stale coffee and highlighter ink.

Clark’s sprawled in front of his monitor, sleeves rolled to his elbows, brow furrowed with the kind of intensity he usually saves for city zoning laws and double-checked citations. You’re helping him sort through quotes—most of which came from a reluctant press secretary and one very talkative dog walker who may or may not be a credible witness.

“Can you check the time stamp on the third transcript?” he asks, not looking up from his notes. “I think I messed it up when I formatted.”

You nod, flipping through the stack of papers he passed you earlier.  That’s when you see it. Folded beneath the top printout, half-tucked into the margin of a city planning spreadsheet, is a different kind of note. A loose sheet, scribbled across in black ink. Not typed—written. Slanted lines. A few false starts crossed out.

At first, you think it’s a headline draft. A brainstorm. But the longer you stare, the more it reads like… something else.

“The city is loud today. Not just noise, but motion. Memory. The way people hum when they think no one’s listening.” “I can’t stop watching her move through it like she belongs to it. Like it belongs to her.”

You freeze. Your eyes track down the page slowly, like touching something sacred.

The letters are familiar. The lowercase y curls the same way as the one on your very first note—the one that came with your coffee. The ink is the same soft black, slightly smudged in the corners, like whoever wrote it holds the pen too tight when they’re thinking. The paper is the same notepad stock he’s used before. The same faint red line down the margin.

You don’t mean to do it, but your fingers curl around the page. Your chest goes tight. Because it’s not just similar.

It’s exact.

You hear him coming before you see him—those long, careful strides and the faint jangle of the lanyard he keeps forgetting to take off.

You tuck the paper into your notebook. Quick. Smooth. Automatic.

“Hey, sorry,” he says, rounding the corner with two mugs of tea and a slightly sheepish smile. “Printer’s jammed again. I may have made it worse.”

You nod. Too fast. You can’t quite make your voice work yet. Clark hands you your tea—just the way you like it, no comment—and sits across from you like nothing’s wrong. Like your whole world hasn’t tilted six degrees to the left.

He launches into a ramble about column widths and quote placement, about whether a serif font looks more “established” than sans serif.

You don’t hear a word of it. You just… watch him. The way he gestures too big with his hands. The way his glasses slip down his nose mid-sentence and he doesn’t bother to fix them until they’re practically falling off. The way his voice drops a little when he’s thinking hard—low and warm and utterly unselfconscious.

He has no idea you know. No idea what you just found.

You murmur something about needing to catch a meeting and excuse yourself early. He nods. Worries at his bottom lip like he’s debating whether to walk you out. Decides against it.

“Thanks for the help,” he says quietly, as you shoulder your bag. “Seriously. I couldn’t’ve done this draft without you.”

You give him a look you don’t quite know how to name. Something between thank you and I see you. 

Then you go.

-

That night, you sit on your bedroom floor with the drawer open. Every note. Every folded scrap. Every secret tucked under your stapler or slid into your sleeve or left beside your coffee cup. You line them up in rows. You flatten them with careful hands. And you compare. One by one.

The loops. The lines. The uneven spacing. The curl of the r. The hush in every sentence, like he was writing them with his heart too close to the surface. 

There’s no room for doubt anymore. It’s him. It’s been him this whole time.

Clark Kent.

And somehow—somehow—he’s still never said your name aloud when he writes about you. Not once. But every letter reads like a whisper of it. Like a promise waiting to be spoken.

-

The office is quiet by the time you find the nerve.

Desks are abandoned, chairs turned at angles, the windows dark with city glow. Outside, Metropolis hums in its usual low thrum—sirens and neon and distant jazz from a rooftop bar—but here, in the bullpen, it’s just the steady tick of the wall clock and the slow, careful steps you take toward his desk.

Clark doesn’t hear you at first. He’s bent over a red pen and a half-finished draft, glasses low on his nose, the curve of his back hunched the way it always is when he’s lost in edits. His tie is loosened. His sleeves are pushed up. There’s a smear of ink on his thumb. He looks soft in the way people do when they think no one’s watching. 

You speak before you lose your nerve. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

Clark startles. Not dramatically—just a sharp breath and a too-quick motion to sit upright, like a kid caught doodling in the margins. “I—what?”

You don’t let your voice shake. “That it was you. The notes. The park. All of it.”

He stares at you. Then down at his desk. Then back again. His mouth opens like it wants to offer a lie, but nothing comes out. Just silence. His fingers twitch toward the edge of the desk and stop there, curling into his palm.

“I—” he tries again, softer now, “—I didn’t think you knew.”

“I didn’t.” Your voice is gentle. But not easy. “Not at first. Not really. But then I saw that list on your desk and… I went home and checked the handwriting.”

He winces. “I knew I left that out somewhere.”

You cross your arms, not out of anger—more like self-protection. “You could’ve told me. At any point. I asked you.”

“I know.” He swallows hard. “I know. I wanted to. I… tried.”

You watch him. Wait. 

And then he says it. Not loud. Not dramatic. Just the truth, raw and shaky and so Clark it nearly breaks you. “Because if I told you it was me… you might look at me different. Or worse… The same.”

You don’t know what to say to that. Not right away. Your heart clenches. Because it’s so him—to assume your affection could only live in the mystery. That the truth of him—soft, clumsy, brilliant, real—would somehow undo the magic.

“Clark…” you start, but your voice slips.

He rubs the back of his neck. “I’m just the guy who spills coffee on his own notes and forgets to refill the paper tray. You’re… you. You write like you’re on fire. You walk into a room and it listens. I didn’t think someone like you would ever want someone like me.”

You stare at him. Really stare. At the flushed cheeks. The nervous hands. The boyish smile he’s trying to bury under self-deprecation. And then you say it. “I saved every note.”

He blinks.

You keep going. “I read them when I felt invisible. When I thought no one gave a damn what I was doing here. They mattered.”

Clark’s breath catches. He opens his mouth. Closes it again. He takes a slow step forward, tentative. Like he’s afraid to break the spell. His eyes search yours, and for a moment—for a second so still it might as well last an hour—he leans in. Not close enough to kiss you. But almost. His hand brushes yours. He stops. The air is heavy between you, buzzing with something fragile and enormous. But it isn’t enough. Not yet.

You draw in a breath, quiet but steady. “Why didn’t you meet me?”

Clark goes still. You can see it happen—the way the question lands. The way he folds in on himself just slightly, like the truth is too heavy to hold upright.

“I…” He tries, but the word doesn’t land. His jaw flexes. His eyes drop to the floor, then back up. He wants to tell you. He almost does. But he can’t. Not without unraveling everything. Not without unraveling himself.

“I wanted to,” he says finally, voice rough at the edges. “More than anything.”

“But?” you press, gently.

He just looks at you and says nothing. You nod, slowly. The silence says enough. Your chest aches—not in a sharp, bitter way. In the dull, familiar way of something you already suspected being confirmed.

You glance down at where your hand still brushes his, then look back at him—really look. “I wish you’d told me,” you whisper. “I sat there thinking it was a joke. That I made it all up. That I was stupid for believing in any of it.”

“I know,” he murmurs. “And I’m sorry.”

Your throat tightens. You swallow past it. “I just… I need time. To process. To think.”

Clark’s eyes flicker—hope and heartbreak, all tangled up in one look. “Of course,” he says immediately. “Take whatever you need. I mean it.”

A beat passes before you say the part that makes his breath catch. “I’m happy it was you.”

He freezes.

You offer the smallest smile. “I wanted it to be you.”

And for the first time in minutes, something in his shoulders unknots. There’s a shift. Gentle. Quiet. His hand lingers near yours again, knuckles brushing. He doesn’t lean in. Doesn’t push.

But God, he wants to. And maybe… maybe you do too. The moment stretches, unspoken and warm and not quite ready to be anything more.

You both stay like that—close, not touching. Breathing the same charged air. Then he laughs under his breath. Nervous. Boyish.

“I’m probably gonna trip over something the second you walk away.”

You smile back. “Just recalibrate your ankles.”

He huffs out a laugh, head ducking. “I deserved that.”

You start to turn away. Just a little. But his voice stops you again—quiet, sincere, something earnest catching in it. “I’m really glad it was me, too.”

And your heart flutters all over again.

-

Lois is perched on the edge of your desk, a paper takeout box balanced on her knee, chopsticks waving in lazy circles while you pick at your own dinner with a little too much focus.

You haven’t told her everything. Not the everything everything. Not the way your heart nearly cracked open when Clark looked at you like you were made of starlight and library books. Not how close he got before pulling back. Not how you pulled back too, even though your whole body ached to close the distance.

But you have told her about the notes. About the mystery. About the strange tenderness of it all, how it wrapped around your days like a string you didn’t know you were following until it tugged. And Lois—Lois has been unusually quiet about it. Until now. 

“I’m setting you up,” she says between bites, like she’s discussing filing taxes.

You blink. “What?”

“A date. Just one. Guy from the Features desk at the Tribune. You’ll like him. He’s taller than you, decent jawline, wears socks that match. He’s got strong opinions about punctuation, which I figure is basically foreplay for you.”

You stare at her. “You don’t even believe in setups.”

“I don’t,” she agrees. “But you’ve been spiraling in circles for weeks, and at this point, I either push you toward a date or stage an intervention with PowerPoint slides.”

You laugh despite yourself. “You have PowerPoint slides?”

“Of course not,” she scoffs. “I have a Google Doc.”

You roll your eyes. “Lois—”

“Listen,” she says, gentler now. “I know you’re in deep with whoever this guy is. And if it is Clark… well. I can see why.”

Your stomach flips.

“But maybe stepping outside of the Planet for two hours wouldn’t kill you. Let someone else flirt with you for once. Let yourself figure out what you actually want.”

You press your lips together. Look down at your barely-touched food.

“You don’t have to fall for him,” she adds, softly. “Just let yourself be seen.”

You exhale through your nose. “He better be cute.”

“Oh, he is. Total sweater vest energy.”

You snort. “So your type.”

“Exactly.” She lifts her takeout carton in a mock toast. “To emotionally compromised coworkers and their tragic love lives.”

You clink your chopsticks against hers like it’s the saddest champagne flute in the world. And later, when you’re getting ready, you still feel the weight of Clark’s almost-kiss behind your ribs. But you go anyway. Because Lois is right. You need to know what it is you’re choosing. Even if, deep down, you already do.

-

The date isn’t bad. That’s the most frustrating part. He’s nice. Polished in that media school kind of way—crisp shirt, clean shave, a practiced smile that belongs on a campaign poster. He compliments your bylines and talks about his dream of running an independent magazine one day. He orders the good whiskey and laughs at your jokes.

But it’s the wrong laugh. Off by a beat. The rhythm’s not right.

When he leans in, you don’t. When he talks, your thoughts drift—to mismatched socks and printer toner smudges. To how someone else always remembers your coffee order. To how someone else listens, not to respond, but to see.

You realize it halfway through the second drink. You’re thinking about Clark again.

The softness of him. The steadiness. The way he over-apologizes in texts but never hesitates when someone challenges your work. The way his voice tilts a little higher when he’s nervous. The way his laugh never lands in the right place, but somehow makes the whole room feel warmer.

You pull your coat tighter when you leave the restaurant, cheeks stinging from the wind and the slow unraveling of a night that should’ve meant something. It doesn’t. Not in the way that matters.

So you walk. You tell yourself you’re just passing by the Daily Planet. That maybe you left your notes there. That it’s just a habit, stopping in this late. But when you scan your ID badge and push through the heavy glass doors, you already know the truth. You’re hoping he’s still here.

And he is.

The bullpen is almost entirely dark, save for a single desk lamp casting gold across the layout section. He’s hunched over it—tie loosened, sleeves rolled up, shirt rumpled like he’s been pacing, thinking, rewriting. His glasses are folded beside him on the desk. His hair’s a mess—fingers clearly run through it too many times.

He rubs at his eyes with the heel of his palm, breathing out hard through his nose. You don’t say anything. You just… watch. It hits you in one perfect, unshakable moment. The slope of his shoulders. The cut of his jaw. The furrow in his brow when he’s thinking too hard.

He looks like Superman.

No glasses. No slouch. No excuses. But more than that—he looks like Clark. Like the man who learned your coffee order. Like the one who saves all his best edits for last so he can tell you in person how good your writing is. The one who panicked when you got too close to the truth, but couldn’t stop leaving notes anyway.

And when he finally lifts his head and sees you standing there—still in your coat, fingers tight around your notebook—you watch something shift in his expression. A flicker of surprise. Panic. Bare, open emotion. Because you’re seeing him without the glasses.

“Couldn’t sleep,” you murmur. “Thought I’d grab my notes.”

He smiles, slow and unsure. “You… left them by the scanner.”

You nod, like that matters. Like you came here for paper and not for him. Then you walk over, slow and deliberate, and retrieve your notes from the edge of the scanner beside him. He swallows hard, watching you.

Then clears his throat. “So… how was the date?”

You pause. “Fine,” you say. “He was nice. Funny. Smart.”

Clark nods, but you’re not finished.

“But when he laughed, it was the wrong rhythm. And when he spoke, I didn’t lean in.”

You meet his eyes—clear blue, unhidden now. “I made up my mind halfway through the second drink.” His lips part. Barely. You move to the edge of his desk and set your notebook down. Then—carefully, slowly—you pull out the chair beside his and sit. The air between you goes molten.

Clark leans in a little, eyes flicking to your mouth, then back to your eyes. One hand moves down, like he’s going to say something, but instead, he reaches for the leg of your chair—fingers curling around it. And pulls you toward him. The scrape of wood against tile echoes, loud and deliberate. Your thighs knock his. Your breath stutters.

He’s so close now you can feel the heat rolling off him. The weight of his gaze. Your heart hammers in your chest. And lower.

“Clark—” But you don’t finish because he meets you halfway. The kiss is fire and breath and years of want pressed between two mouths. His hands come up—one to your jaw, the other to the back of your head—and tilt your face just so. Fingers tangle in your hair, anchoring you to him like he’s afraid you might vanish.

You moan into his mouth. Soft. Surprised. He groans back. Rougher. You reach for his shirt blindly, fists curling in the cotton as he pulls you fully into his lap—into the chair with him, your legs straddling his thighs. His hands don’t know where to land. Your waist. Your thighs. Your face again.

“You’re it,” he whispers against your mouth. “You’ve always been it.”

You know he means it. Because you’ve seen it. In every note. Every glance. Every moment he looked at you like you were already his. And now, with your bodies tangled, mouths tasting each other, breathing the same heat—you finally believe it.

You don’t say it yet. But the way you kiss him again says it for you. You’re his. You always have been.

His hands roam, but never rush. Your fingers are tangled in his shirt, your knees pressing to either side of his hips, and you feel him—all of him—underneath you, solid and steady and shaking just slightly. The chair creaks with every breath you share. His mouth is still on yours, slow now, like he’s memorizing the shape of you. Like he’s afraid if he goes too fast, you’ll disappear again.

When he finally pulls back—just enough to breathe—it’s with a soft, reverent exhale. His nose brushes yours. “You’re really here,” he murmurs, voice hoarse. “God, you’re really here.”

You blink at him, your hands sliding to either side of his jaw, thumbs brushing the high flush of his cheeks. He looks so open. Like you’ve peeled back every layer of him with just a kiss. And maybe you have.

His lips find the edge of your jaw next, slow and aching. A kiss. Then another, just beneath your ear. Then one lower, along the soft skin of your neck. Each press of his mouth feels like a confession. Like something that was buried too long, finally given air.

“You don’t know,” he whispers. “You don’t know what it’s been like, watching you and not getting to—” Another kiss, right beneath your cheekbone.  “I used to rehearse things I’d say to you, and then I’d get to work and you’d smile and I’d forget how to talk.”

A laugh huffs out of you, but it melts fast when he leans in again, his breath fanning warm across your skin. “I didn’t think I’d ever get this close. I didn’t think I’d get to touch you like this.”

You shift in his lap, chest brushing his, and his hands squeeze your waist gently like he’s grounding himself. His mouth finds your temple. Your cheek. The corner of your mouth again.

“You’re so—” he breaks off. Tries again. “You’re everything.” Your pulse thrums in your throat. Clark’s hands stay respectful, but they wander—curving up your back, smoothing over your shoulders, settling at your ribs like he wants to hold you together.

“I used to write those notes late at night,” he admits against your collarbone. “Didn’t even think you’d read them at first. But you did. You kept them.”

“I kept every one,” you whisper.

His breath catches. You tilt his face back up to yours, studying him in the low, golden light. His hair’s a little messy now from your fingers. His lips pink and kiss-swollen. His chest rising and falling like he’s just run a marathon. And still, even now—he’s looking at you like he’s the one who’s lucky.

Clark kisses you again—soft, like a promise. Then a trail of them, across your cheek, your jaw, your throat. Slow enough to make your skin shiver and your hips shift instinctively against his lap. He groans quietly at that—barely audible—but doesn’t press for more. He just holds you tighter.

“I’d wait forever for you,” he murmurs into your skin. “I don’t need anything else. Just this. Just you.” You bury your face in his shoulder, overwhelmed, heart pounding like a war drum. You don’t say anything back. You just press another kiss to his throat, and feel him smile where your mouth lands.

-

The city is quieter at night—its edges softened under streetlamp glow, concrete warming beneath the fading breath of the day. There’s a breeze that tugs gently at your coat as you and Clark walk side by side, your fingers still loosely laced with his. His hand is big. Warm. Rough in the places that tell stories. Gentle in the ways that say everything else.

Neither of you speaks at first. The silence isn’t awkward. It’s thick with something tender. Like a string strung tight between your ribs and his, humming with each shared step.

When he glances down at you, his smile is small and almost shy. “I can’t believe I didn’t knock over the chair,” he says after a few blocks, voice pitched low with laughter.

You grin. “You were close. I think my thigh is bruised.”

He groans. “Don’t say that—I’ll lose sleep.”

You look at him sidelong. “You weren’t going to sleep anyway.” That earns you a pink flush down the side of his neck, and you tuck that image away for safekeeping. 

Your building looms closer, brick and ivy-wrapped and familiar in the soft hush of the hour. You slow as you reach the front step, turning to face him.

“Thank you,” you murmur. You don’t mean just for the walk.

He holds your hand a beat longer. Then, without a word, he lifts it—presses his lips to your knuckles. It’s soft. Reverent.

Your breath catches in your throat. And maybe that’s what breaks the spell—maybe that’s what makes it all too much and not enough at once—because the next second, you’re reaching. Or maybe he is. It doesn’t matter. He kisses you again—this time fuller, deeper—your back brushing against the door behind you, his other hand cradling your cheek like he’s afraid you’ll vanish if he doesn’t hold you just right.

It doesn’t last long. Just long enough to taste the weight of what’s shifting between you. To feel it crest again in your chest.

When he finally pulls back, his lips hover a breath away from yours. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says softly.

You nod. You can’t quite say anything back yet. He gives your hand one last squeeze, then turns and disappears down the street, hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders curved slightly inward like he’s holding in a smile he doesn’t know what to do with.

You unlock the door. Step inside. But you don’t go to bed right away. You walk to the front window instead—bare feet quiet on hardwood, heart still hammering. Through the glass, you spot him half a block away. He thinks you’re gone. Which is probably why, under the streetlight, Clark Kent jumps up and smacks the edge of a low-hanging banner like he’s testing his vertical. He catches it on the second try, swinging from it for all of two seconds before nearly tripping over his own feet.

You snort. Your hand presses against your mouth to muffle the sound. And then you smile. That kind of soft, aching smile that tugs at something deep in your chest. Because that’s him. That’s the man who writes you poems under the cover of anonymity and nearly breaks your chair kissing you in a newsroom.

That’s the one you wanted it to be. And now that it is—you don’t think your heart’s ever going to stop fluttering.

-

The bullpen is alive again. Phones ring. Keys clatter. Someone’s arguing over copy edits near the back printer, and Jimmy streaks past with a half-eaten bagel clamped between his teeth and a stack of photos fluttering behind him like confetti. It’s chaos.

But none of it touches you. The world moves at its usual speed, but everything inside you has slowed. Like someone turned the volume down on everything that isn’t him.

Your eyes find Clark without meaning to. He’s already at his desk—glasses on, shirt pressed, tie straighter than usual. He must’ve fixed it three times this morning. His sleeves are rolled to the elbow, a pen already tucked behind one ear. He’s doing that thing he does when he’s thinking—lip caught gently between his teeth, brows drawn, tapping the space bar like it owes him money.

But there’s a softness to him this morning, too. A looseness in his shoulders. A quiet sort of glow around the edges, like some part of him hasn’t fully come down from last night either. Like he’s still vibrating with the same electricity that’s still thrumming low behind your ribs.

And then he looks up. He finds you just as easily as you found him. You expect him to look away—bashful, flustered, maybe even embarrassed now that the newsroom lights are on and you’re both pretending not to be lit matches pretending not to burn.

But he doesn’t. He holds your gaze. And the quiet that opens up between you is louder than anything else in the building. The low hum of printers. The whirr of the HVAC. The hiss of steam from the office espresso machine.

You swallow hard. Then you look back at your screen like it matters. You try to focus. You really do.

Less than ten minutes later, he’s there. He approaches slow, like he’s afraid of breaking something delicate. His hand appears first, gently setting a familiar to-go cup on your desk.

“I figured you forgot yours,” he says, voice low.

You glance up at him. “I didn’t.”

A smile curls at the corner of his mouth. Soft. A little sheepish. “Oh. Well…” He shrugs. “Now you have two.”

You take the coffee anyway. Your fingers brush his as you do. He doesn’t pull away. Not this time. His hand lingers for half a second longer than it should—just enough to make your pulse jump in your wrist—and then slowly drops back to his side. The silence between you now isn’t awkward. It’s taut. Weightless. Like standing at the edge of something enormous, staring over the drop, and realizing he’s right there beside you—ready to jump too.

“Walk with me?” he asks, voice barely above the clatter around you. You nod. Because you’d follow him anywhere.

Downstairs, the building atrium hums with the low murmur of morning traffic and the soft shuffle of people cutting through the lobby on their way to bigger, faster things. But here—beneath the high, glass-paneled ceiling where sunlight pours in like gold through water—the city feels a little farther away. A little quieter. Just the two of you, caught in that hush between chaos and clarity.

Clark hands you a sugar packet without a word, and you take it, fingers brushing his again. He watches—not your hands, but your face—as you tear it open and shake it into your cup. Like memorizing the way you take your coffee might somehow tell him more than you’re ready to say aloud.

You glance at him, just in time to catch it—that look. Barely there, but soft. Full. He looks at you like he’s trying to learn you by heart.

You raise a brow. “What?”

He blinks, caught. “Nothing.”

But you’re smiling now, just a little. A private, corner-of-your-mouth kind of smile. “You look tired,” you murmur, stirring slowly.

His lips twitch. “Late night.”

“Editing from home?”

He hesitates. You watch the way his shoulders shift, the subtle catch in his breath. Then, finally, he shakes his head. “Not exactly.”

You hum. Say nothing more. The moment lingers, warm as the cup in your hand. He stands beside you, tall and still, but there’s something new in the way he holds himself—like gravity’s just a little lighter around him this morning. Like your presence pulls him into a softer orbit. There’s a beat of silence.

“You… seemed quiet last night,” he says, voice gentler now. “When you saw me.”

You glance at him from over the rim of your cup. Steam curls up between you, catching in the morning light like spun sugar. “I saw you,” you say.

He studies you. Carefully. “You sure?”

You lower your coffee. “Yeah. I’m sure.”

His brows pull together slightly, the line between them deepening. He’s trying to read you. Trying to solve an equation he’s too close to see clearly. There’s a question in his eyes—not just about last night, but about everything that came before it. The letters. The glances. The ache.

But you don’t give him the answer. Not out loud. Because what you don’t say hangs heavier than what you do. You don’t say: I’m pretty certain he’s you. You don’t say: I think my heart has known for a while now. You don’t say: I’m not afraid of what you’re hiding. Instead, you let the silence stretch between you—soft and silken, tethering you to something deeper than confession. You sip your coffee, heart steady now, eyes warm.

And when he opens his mouth again—when he leans forward like he might finally give himself away entirely—you smile. Just a soft curve of your lips. A quiet reassurance. “Don’t worry,” you say, voice low. “I liked what I saw.”

He freezes. Then flushes, color blooming high on his cheeks. His gaze drops to the floor like it’s safer there, like looking at you too long might unravel him completely—but when he glances back up, the smile on his face is small and helpless and utterly undone. A breath escapes him, barely audible—but you hear it. You feel it. Relief.

He walks you back upstairs without another word. The movement is easy. Comfortable. But his hand hovers near yours the whole time. Not quite touching. Just… there. Like gravity pulling two halves of the same secret closer.

And as you re-enter the hum of the bullpen, nothing looks different. But everything feels like it’s just about to change.

-

That night, after the city has quieted—after the neon pulse of Metropolis blurs into puddle reflections and distant sirens—the Daily Planet is almost reverent in its silence. No ringing phones. No newsroom chatter. Just the soft hum of a printer in standby mode and the creak of the elevator cables descending behind you.

You let yourself in with your keycard. The lock clicks louder than expected in the stillness. You don’t know why you’re here, really. You told yourself it was to grab the folder you forgot. To double-check something on your last draft. But the truth is quieter than that.

You were hoping he’d be here. He’s not. His desk lamp is off. His chair turned inward, as if he left in a hurry. No half-eaten sandwich or scribbled drafts left behind—just a tidied workspace and absence thick enough to feel.

You sigh, the sound swallowed whole by the vast emptiness of the bullpen. Then you see it. At your desk. Tucked half-under your keyboard like a secret trying not to be. One folded piece of paper.

No envelope this time. No clever line on the front. Just your name, handwritten in a looping scrawl you’ve come to know better than your own signature. A rhythm you’ve studied and traced in the quiet of your apartment, night after night.

You slide it free with careful fingers. Your heart stutters as you unfold it. The ink is darker this time—less tentative. The strokes more deliberate, like he knew, at last, he didn’t have to hide.

“For once I don’t have to imagine what it’s like to have your lips on mine. But I still think about it anyway.” —C.K.

You stare at the words until the paper goes soft in your hands. Until your chest feels too full and too fragile all at once. Until the noise of your own heartbeat drowns out everything else.

Then you press the note to your chest and close your eyes. His initials burn through the paper like a touch. Not a secret admirer anymore. Not a mystery in the margins. Just him.

Clark. Your friend. Your almost. Your maybe.

You don’t need the rest of the truth. Not tonight. Not if it costs this fragile thing blooming between you—this quiet, aching sweetness. This slow, deliberate unraveling of walls and fears and the long-held breath you didn’t realize you were holding.

Whatever you’re building together, it’s happening one heartbeat at a time. One almost-confession. One note left behind in the dark. And you’d rather have this—this steady climb into something real—than rush toward the edge of revelation and risk it all crumbling.

So you tuck the note gently into your bag, where the others wait. Every word he’s given you, kept safe like a promise. You don’t know what happens next. But for the first time in weeks, maybe months, you’re not afraid of finding out.

-

You’re not official.

Not in the way people expect it. There’s no label, no group announcement, no big display. But you’re definitely something now—something solid and golden and real in the space between words.

It’s not office gossip. Not yet. But it could be. Because you linger a little too long near his desk. Because he lights up when you enter a room like it’s instinct. Because when he passes you in the bullpen, his hand brushes yours—just barely—and you both pause like the air just changed. There’s no denying it.

And then comes the hallway kiss. It’s after hours. The building is quiet, the newsroom lights dimmed to half. You’re both walking toward the elevators, your footsteps echoing against the tile.

Clark fumbles for the call button, mumbling something about how slow the system is when it’s late, and how the elevator always seems to stall on the wrong floor. You don’t answer. You just reach for his tie. A gentle tug. A silent question. He exhales, soft and shaky. Then he leans in.

The kiss is slow. Unhurried. Like you’re both tasting something that’s been simmering between you for years. His hands find your waist, yours curl into his shirt, and the elevator dings somewhere in the distance, but neither of you move.

You part only when the second ding reminds you where you are. His forehead presses to yours, warm and close. You breathe the same air. And then the doors close behind you, and he walks you out with his hand ghosting the small of your back.

-

You start learning the rhythm of Clark Kent. He talks more when he’s nervous—little rambles about traffic patterns or article formatting, or how he’s still not entirely sure he installed his dishwasher correctly. Sometimes he trails off mid-thought, like he’s remembering something urgent but can’t explain it.

He always carries your groceries. All of them. No negotiation. He’ll take the heavier bags first, sling them both over one shoulder and pretend like it’s nothing. And somehow, he always forgets his own umbrella—but never forgets yours. You don’t know how many he owns, but one always appears when the clouds roll in. Like magic. Like preparation. Like he’s thought of you in every version of the day.

You don’t ask.

You just start to keep one in your own bag for him.

-

The third kiss happens on your couch.

You’ve been watching some old movie neither of you are paying attention to, his arm slung lazily across your shoulders. Your legs are tangled. His fingers are tracing idle shapes against your thigh through the fabric of your leggings.

He kisses you once—soft and slow—and then again. Longer. Like he’s memorizing the shape of your mouth. Like he might need it later.

Then his phone buzzes.

He stiffens.

You feel the change instantly—the way his body pulls back, the air between you tightens. He glances at the screen. You don’t catch the name. But you see the look in his eyes.

Regret. Apology. Something deeper.

“I—I’m so sorry,” he says, already moving. “I have to—something came up. It’s—”

You sit up, brushing your hand against his arm. “Go,” you say softly.

“But—”

“It’s okay. Just… be safe.”

And God, the way he looks at you. Like you’ve given him something priceless. Something he didn’t know he was allowed to want.

He kisses your temple like a promise and disappears into the night.

-

It happens again. And again.

Missed dinners. Sudden goodbyes. Rainy nights where he shows up soaked, out of breath, murmuring apologies and curling into you like he doesn’t know how to be held.

You never ask. You don’t need to.

Because he always comes back.

-

One night, you’re curled into each other on your couch, your legs thrown over his, your cheek resting against his chest. The movie’s playing, forgotten. Your fingers are idly brushing the hem of his shirt where it’s ridden up. He smells like rain and ink and whatever soap he always uses that lingers on your pillow now.

Then his voice, quiet in the dark, “I don’t always know how to be… enough.”

You blink. Look up. He’s staring at the ceiling. Not quite breathing evenly. Like the words cost him something.

You reach up and cradle his face in your hands.

His eyes finally meet yours.

“You are,” you whisper. “As you are.”

You don’t say: Even if you are who I think you are.

You don’t need to. You just kiss him again. Soft. Long. Steady. Because whatever he’s carrying, you’ve already started holding part of it too.

And he lets you.

-

The night starts quiet.

Takeout boxes sit half-forgotten on the coffee table—one still open, rice going cold, soy sauce packet untouched. Your legs are draped across Clark’s lap, one foot nudged against the curve of his thigh, and his hand rests there now. Not possessively. Not deliberately.

Just… there.

It’s late. The kind of late where the whole city softens. No sirens outside. No blinking inbox. Just the low hum of the lamp on the side table and the warmth of the man beside you.

Clark’s eyes are on you. They’ve been there most of the night.

He hasn’t said much since dinner—just little smiles, quiet sounds of agreement, the occasional brush of his thumb against your ankle like a thought he forgot to speak aloud. But it’s not a bad silence. It’s dense. Full.

You shift, angling toward him slightly, and his gaze flicks to your mouth. That’s all it takes.

He leans in.

The kiss is soft at first. Familiar. A shared breath. A quiet hello in a room where no one had spoken for minutes. But then his hand curls behind your knee, guiding your leg further over his lap, and his mouth opens against yours like he’s been holding back for hours.

He kisses you like he’s starving. Like he’s spent all day wanting this—aching for the shape of you, the weight of your body in his hands. And when you moan into it, just a little, he shudders.

His hands start to move. One tracing the line of your spine, the other resting against your hip like a question he doesn’t need to ask. You answer anyway—pressing in closer, threading your fingers through his hair, sighing into the heat of his mouth.

You don’t know who climbs into whose lap first, only that you end up straddling him on the couch. Your knees on either side of his thighs. His hands gripping your waist now, fingers curling in your shirt like he doesn’t trust himself not to break it.

And then something shifts.

Not emotional—physical.

Clark stands.

He lifts you with him, effortlessly, like you don’t weigh anything at all. Not a grunt. Not a stagger. Just—up. Smooth and sure. His mouth never leaves yours.

You gasp into the kiss as he walks you backwards, steps confident and fast despite the way your arms tighten around his shoulders. Your spine meets the wall in the next second. Not hard. Just sudden.

Your heart thunders.

“Clark—”

He doesn’t answer. Just breathes against your mouth like he needs the oxygen from your lungs. Like yours is the only air that keeps him grounded.

His hips press into yours, one thigh sliding between your legs, and your back arches instinctively. His hands span your ribs now, thumbs brushing just beneath your bra. You feel the tremble in them—not from fear. From restraint.

“Clark,” you whisper again, and his forehead drops to yours.

“You okay?” he asks, voice rough and close.

You nod, breath catching. “You?”

He hesitates. Not long. But long enough to count. “Yeah. Just… feel a little off tonight.”

You pull back just enough to look at him.

He’s flushed. Eyes darker than usual. But not winded. Not breathless. Not anything like you are. His chest doesn’t even rise fast beneath your hands. Still, he smiles—like he can will the oddness away—and kisses you again. Deeper this time. Like distraction.

Like he doesn’t want to stop.

You don’t want him to either.

Not yet.

His mouth finds yours again—slower this time, more purposeful. Like he’s savoring it. Like he’s waited for this exact moment, this exact pressure of your hips against his, for longer than he’s willing to admit.

You gasp when his hands slide under your shirt, palms broad and steady, dragging upward in a path that sets every nerve on fire. He doesn’t fumble. Doesn’t rush. Just explores—like he’s memorizing, not taking.

“Can I?” he murmurs against your mouth, fingers brushing the underside of your bra.

You nod, breathless. “Yes.”

He exhales, soft and reverent, and lifts your shirt over your head. It’s discarded without ceremony. Then his hands are on you again—warm, slow, mapping out the shape of you with open palms and patient awe.

“God, you’re beautiful,” he murmurs, more breath than voice. His mouth finds the edge of your jaw, trailing kisses down to the hollow beneath your ear. “I think about this… so much.”

You shudder.

His hands move again—down this time, gripping your thighs as he sinks to his knees in front of you. You barely have time to react before he’s tugging your pants down, slow and careful, mouth following the descent with lingering kisses along your hips, the dip of your pelvis, the inside of your thigh.

He looks up at you from the floor.

You nearly forget how to breathe.

“I’ve wanted to take my time with you,” he admits, voice rough and low. “Wanted to learn you slow. Learn how you taste. How you fall apart.”

And then he does.

He leans in and licks a long, deliberate stripe over the center of your underwear, still watching your face.

You whimper.

He smiles, just slightly, and does it again.

By the time he peels your underwear down and presses an open-mouthed kiss to your inner thigh, your knees are trembling.

Clark hooks one arm under your leg, lifting it over his shoulder like it’s nothing, and buries his mouth between your thighs with a groan that rattles through your whole body.

His tongue is warm and soft and maddeningly slow—circling, tasting, teasing. He doesn’t rush. Not even when your fingers knot in his hair and your hips rock forward with pure desperation.

“Clark—”

He hums against you, and the sound sends a full-body shiver up your spine.

“I’ve got you,” he whispers, lips brushing you as he speaks. “Let me.”

You do.

You let him wreck you.

He’s methodical about it—like he’s following a map only he can see. One hand holding you steady, the other splayed against your stomach, keeping you anchored while he works you open with mouth and tongue and quiet, praising murmurs.

“So sweet… that’s it, sweetheart… you taste like heaven.”

You’re already close when he slips a thick finger inside you. Then another. Slow, patient, curling exactly where you need him. His mouth never stops. His rhythm is steady. Focused. Unrelenting.

You come like that—panting, gripping his shoulders, thighs shaking around his ears as he groans and keeps going, riding it out with you until you’re trembling too hard to stand.

He rises slowly.

His lips are slick. His eyes are dark.

And you’ve never seen anyone look at you like this.

“Come here,” you whisper.

He kisses you then—deep and possessive and tasting like you. You’re the one tugging at his shirt now, unbuttoning in frantic clumsy swipes. You need him. Need him closer. Need him inside.

But when you reach for his belt, he stills your hands gently.

“Not yet,” he says, voice like thunder wrapped in velvet. “Let me take care of you first.”

You blink. “Clark, I—”

He kisses you again—soft, lingering.

“I’ve waited too long for this to rush it,” he murmurs, brushing hair from your face with the back of his knuckles. “You deserve slow.”

Then he lifts you again—like you weigh nothing—and carries you to the bed. He lays you down like you’re fragile—but the look in his eyes says he knows you’re anything but. That you’re something rare. Something he’s been aching for. His palms skim over your thighs again, slow and deliberate, before he spreads you open beneath him.

He doesn’t ask this time. Just settles between your legs like he belongs there, arms hooked under your thighs, holding you wide.

“Clark—”

“I know, sweetheart,” he murmurs, voice low and raw. “I’ve got you.”

And he does.

His mouth finds you again—warm, skilled, confident now. No hesitation, just long, wet strokes of his tongue that build on everything he already learned. And then—without warning—he slides two fingers back inside you.

You cry out, hips jolting.

He groans into you, fingers moving in tandem with his mouth—curling just right, matching every flick of his tongue, every wet press of his lips. He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t falter. He watches you the whole time, eyes dark and hungry and so in love with the way you fall apart for him.

You grip the sheets, gasping his name, over and over, until your voice breaks on a sob of pleasure.

“Clark—God, I—I can’t—”

“Yes, you can,” he breathes. “You’re almost there. Let go for me.”

You do. With a cry, with shaking thighs, with your fingers tangled in his hair and your back arching off the bed.

And he doesn’t stop.

He rides your orgasm out with slow, worshipful strokes, kissing your thighs, murmuring into your skin, “So good for me. You’re perfect. You’re everything.”

By the time he pulls back, you’re boneless—dazed and trembling, your chest heaving as he kisses his way up your stomach.

But the way he looks at you then—like he needs to be closer—tells you this isn’t over.

His hands brace on either side of your head as he leans over you. “Can I…?”

Your hips answer for you—tilting up, chasing the heat and weight of him already pressed between your thighs.

“Yes,” you whisper. “Please.”

Clark groans low in his throat as he pushes his boxers down just enough, lining himself up—his cock flushed and thick, already leaking, and you feel the weight of him between your thighs and gasp.

“God, Clark…”

“I know,” he murmurs, forehead resting against yours, hips rocking forward just barely, teasing you with the head of his cock, dragging it through the slick mess he made with his mouth and fingers. “I know, baby. Just—just let me…”

He nudges in slow.

The stretch is slow and steady, his breath catching as your body parts for him. He’s thick. Too thick, maybe, except your body wants him—takes him like it was made to.

You whimper, and his jaw clenches tight.

“You okay?”

“Y—yeah,” you breathe. “Don’t stop.”

He doesn’t. Not even for a second. Inch by inch, he sinks into you, whispering your name, kissing your temple, gripping the backs of your thighs as you wrap your legs around his waist.

“Fuck,” he hisses when he bottoms out, buried deep, balls pressed flush against you. “You feel—Jesus, you feel unbelievable.”

You’re too far gone to answer. You just cling to him, nails dragging lightly down his back, moaning into his mouth when he kisses you again.

The first few thrusts are slow. Deep. Measured. He pulls out just enough to feel you grip him on the way back in, then does it again—and again—and again.

And then something shifts.

Your body clenches around him in a way that makes his head drop to your shoulder with a groan.

“Oh my god, sweetheart—don’t do that—I’m gonna—fuck—”

He thrusts harder.

Not rough, not yet, but firmer. Hungrier. The control he started with begins to slip. You can feel it in his grip, in the sharp edge of his breath, in the tremble of the arm braced beside your head.

“Been thinkin’ about this,” he grits out, voice low and wrecked. “Every night—every goddamn night since the first note. You don’t even know what you do to me.”

You whine, rolling your hips up to meet him, and he snaps—hips slamming forward hard enough to punch the air from your lungs.

“Clark—”

“I’ve got you,” he gasps, fucking into you harder now, his voice filthy and tender all at once. “I’ve got you, baby—so fuckin’ tight—can’t stop—don’t wanna stop—”

You’re clinging to him now, crying out with every thrust. It’s not just the way he fills you—it’s the way he worships you while he does it. The way he moans when you clench. The way he growls your name like a prayer. The way he falls apart in real time, just from the feel of you.

He grabs one of your hands, laces your fingers with his, pins it beside your head.

“You’re mine,” he grits. “You have to be mine.”

“Yes,” you gasp. “Yes—Clark—don’t stop—”

“Never,” he groans. “Never stopping. Not when you feel like this—fuck—”

You can feel him getting close—the way his rhythm starts to stutter, the broken sounds escaping his throat, the way he buries his face against your neck and pants your name like he’s desperate to take you with him.

And you’re almost there too.

You don’t even realize your hand is slipping until he’s gripping it again—pinned tight to the pillow, your fingers laced in his and clenched so tight it aches. The bed frame is starting to shudder beneath you now, the headboard knocking a rhythm into the wall, and Clark is gasping like he’s in pain from how good it feels.

His hips snap forward again—harder this time. Deeper. More desperate.

“Fuck—fuck—I’m sorry,” he grits, voice ragged and thick, “I’m trying to—baby—I can’t—hold back—”

You moan so loud it makes him flinch.

And then he breaks.

One second he’s pulling your name from his lungs like it’s the only word he knows—and the next, he slams into you so hard the bed shifts a full inch. The lamp on the bedside table flickers. The candle flame bursts just slightly higher than before—flickering hot and fast, the wick blackening with a thin curl of smoke. It doesn’t go out. It just burns.

Clark’s back arches.

His cock drags over everything inside you in just the right way, hitting that spot again and again until you’re clutching at his shoulders, babbling nonsense against his skin.

“I can’t—I can’t—Clark!”

“You can,” he pants. “Please—please, baby, cum with me—I can feel you—I can feel it.”

Your body goes taut.

A white-hot snap of pleasure punches through your spine, and your vision blacks out at the edges. You tighten around him—clenching, pulsing, dragging him over the edge with you—and he loses it.

Clark curses—actually curses—and growls something between a moan and a sob as he slams into you one last time, spilling deep inside you. His body locks, every muscle trembling. His teeth scrape the soft skin of your throat—not biting, just grounding himself. Like if he lets go, he’ll come undone completely.

The lights flicker again.

The candle sputters once and steadies.

He breathes like a man starved. His chest heaves. But you can feel it—under your hand, against your skin. His heart’s not racing.

Not like it should be.

You’re gasping. Dazed. Boneless under him. But Clark… Clark’s barely even winded. And yet—his hands are trembling. Just slightly. Still laced in yours. Still holding on.

After, you lie there—chests pressed close, legs tangled, the sheets barely clinging to your hips.

Clark’s arm is slung across your waist, palm wide and warm over your belly like it belongs there. Like he doesn’t ever want to move. His nose is tucked against your temple, breath stirring your hair in soft little pulses. He keeps kissing you. Your cheek. Your jaw. The edge of your brow. He doesn’t stop, like he’s afraid this is a dream and kissing you might anchor it in place.

“Still with me?” he whispers into your skin.

You nod. Drowsy. Sated. Floating.

“Good.” His hand runs down your side in one long, reverent stroke. “Didn’t mean to… get so carried away.”

You hum. “You say that like I didn’t enjoy every second.”

He smiles against your neck. You feel the curve of it, his lips brushing the shell of your ear.

A moment passes.

Then another.

“I think you short-circuited my bedside lamp somehow.”

Clark freezes. “…Did I?”

You roll your head to look at him. “It flickered. Right as you—”

His ears turn bright red. “Maybe just… a power surge?”

You arch a brow. “Right. A romantic, orgasm-timed power surge.”

He mutters something into your shoulder that sounds vaguely like kill me now.

You grin. File it away.

Exhibit 7: Lightbulb went dim at the exact second he came. Candle flame doubled in height.

-

Later that night, long after you’ve both dozed off, you wake to find Clark still holding you. One of his hands is under your shirt, splayed low across your stomach. Protective. Possessive in the gentlest way. His body is still curled around yours like a question mark, like he’s checking for all your answers in how your breath rises and falls.

You shift just slightly—and his grip tightens instinctively, like even in sleep, he can’t let go.

Exhibit 8: He doesn’t sleep like a person. Sleeps like a sentry.

-

In the morning, you wake to the scent of coffee.

Your kitchen is suspiciously spotless for someone who swears he’s clumsy. The pot is full, the mugs pre-warmed, your favorite creamer already swirled in.

Clark is flipping pancakes.

Barefoot.

Wearing one of your sleep shirts. The tight one.

You lean against the doorframe, watching him. His back muscles flex when he flips the pan one-handed.

“Morning,” he says without turning.

You blink. “How’d you know I was standing here?”

“I, uh…” He falters, then gestures at the sizzling pan. “Heard footsteps. I assumed.”

You hum.

Exhibit 9: He heard me from across the apartment, over the sound of a frying pan.

-

You’re brushing your teeth later when you spot the mirror fogged from the shower.

You reach for a towel—and notice it’s already been run under warm water.

You glance at him, and he just shrugs. “Figured you’d want it not freezing.”

“Figured?” you repeat.

He leans against the doorframe, smiling. “Lucky guess.”

You don’t respond. Just kiss his cheek with toothpaste still in your mouth.

Exhibit 10: He always guesses exactly what I need. Down to the second.

-

That night, he falls asleep on your couch during movie night, head on your thigh, hand around your wrist like a lifeline.

You swear you see the movie reflected in his eyes—like the light isn’t just hitting them but moving inside them. You blink. It’s gone.

You look down at him. His lashes are impossibly long. His mouth is parted. His breathing is steady—but not quite… human. Too even. Too perfect.

Exhibit 11: His pupils did a thing. I don’t know how to describe it. But they did a thing.

-

The next day, a car splashes a wave of slush toward you both on the sidewalk.

You brace for impact.

But Clark steps in front of you, faster than you can blink. The water hits him. Not you.

You didn’t even see him move.

You narrow your eyes. He just smiles. “Reflexes.”

“Clark. Be honest. Do you secretly run marathons at night?”

He laughs. “Nope. Just really hate laundry.”

Exhibit 12: Literally teleported into the splash zone to shield me. Probably didn’t even get wet.

-

And still… you don’t say it.

You don’t ask.

Because he’s not just some blur of strength or spectacle.

He’s the man who folds your laundry while pretending it’s because he’s “bad at relaxing.” Who scribbles notes in the margins of your drafts, calling your metaphors “dangerously good.” Who kisses your forehead with a kind of reverence like you’re the one who’s unreal.

You know.

You know.

And he knows you know.

Because he’s hiding it from you. Not really.

When he stumbles over his own sentences, when his smile falters after a late return, when his jaw tenses at the sound of your name whispered too softly—you don’t see evasion. You see weight. You see care.

He’s protecting something.

And you’re trying to figure out how to tell him that you already know. That it’s okay. That you’re still here. That you love him anyway.

You haven’t said it yet—not the knowing, not the loving. But it lives just under your skin. A second heartbeat. A full body truth. You think maybe, if you just look him in the eye long enough next time, he’ll understand.

But still neither of you says it yet. Because the space between what’s said and unsaid—that’s where everything soft lives.

And you’re not ready to let it go.

-

The morning feels ordinary.

There’s a crack in the coffee pot. A printer jam. Perry yelling something about deadlines from his office. Jimmy’s camera bag spills open across your desk, and he swears he’ll fix it after his coffee, and Lois is pacing, muttering about sources.

And then the screens change.

It’s subtle at first—just a flicker. Then the feed cuts mid-commercial. Every monitor in the bullpen goes black, then red. Emergency alert. A shrill tone splits the air. Someone turns up the volume.

You look up.

And everything shifts.

The broadcast blares through the newsroom speakers, raw footage streaming in from a local news chopper.

Metropolis. Midtown. Chaos. A building half-collapsed. Smoke curling upward in a thick, unnatural spiral.

The camera jolts—and then there he is.

Superman.

Thrown through a brick wall.

You feel it in your bones before your brain catches up. That’s him. That’s Clark.

He’s on his knees in the wreckage, panting, bleeding—from his temple, from his ribs, from a gash you can’t see the end of. The suit is torn. His cape is shredded. He’s never looked so human.

He tries to stand. Wobbles. Collapses.

You stop breathing.

“Is Superman going to be ok?” someone behind you murmurs.

“Jesus,” Jimmy whispers.

“He’ll be fine,” Lois says, too casually. She leans back in her chair, sipping her coffee like it’s any other news cycle. “He always is.”

You want to scream. Because that’s not a story on a screen. That’s not some distant, untouchable god.

That’s your boyfriend.

That’s the man who brought you coffee this morning with one sugar and just the right amount of cream. The man who kissed your wrist in the elevator, whose hands trembled when he whispered I want to be enough. Who holds you like you’re something holy and bruises like he’s made of skin after all.

He’s not fine. He’s bleeding.

He’s not getting up.

You freeze.

The bullpen keeps moving around you—half-aware, half-horrified—but you can’t speak. Can’t blink. Can’t breathe.

Your hands start to shake.

You grip the edge of your desk like it might anchor you to the floor, like if you let go you’ll run straight out the door, out into the chaos, toward the wreckage and the fire and the thing trying to kill him.

A part of you already has.

A hit lands on the feed—something massive slamming him into the pavement—and your knees almost buckle from the force of it. Not physically. Not really. But somewhere deep. Something inside you fractures.

You don’t know what the enemy is.

Alien, maybe. Or worse.

But it’s not the shape of the thing that terrifies you—it’s him. It’s how slow he is to get up. How much his mouth is bleeding. How his eyes are unfocused. How you’ve never seen him look like this.

You want to run.

You want to be there.

But you’re not. You’re here. In your dress pants and button-up, in your neat little office chair, with your badge clipped to your hip and your heart breaking quietly.

Because no one else knows. No one else understands what’s really at stake. No one else sees the man behind the cape.

Not like you do.

Your vision blurs.

You wipe your eyes. Pretend it’s nothing. The bullpen is too loud to hear your breath catch.

But still—your hands tremble and your heart pounds so violently it hurts.

And you cry.

Quietly.

You cry like the city might if it could feel. You cry like the sky should. You cry like someone already grieving—like someone who knows what it means to lose him.

The footage won’t stop. Superman reels across the screen—his suit torn, the shoulder scorched through in a blackened, jagged arc. Blood smears the corner of his mouth. There’s a limp in his gait now, one he keeps trying to mask. The camera catches it anyway.

The newsroom is silent now save for the hiss of static and the low voice of the anchor describing the damage downtown.

You sit frozen at your desk, the plastic edge biting into your palms as you grip it like it might stop your body from unraveling. The taste of bile has settled at the back of your throat. Your coffee’s gone cold in its cup.

Across the bullpen, someone mutters, “Jesus. He took a hit.”

“Look at the suit,” Lois says flatly, standing by one of the screens. “He’s never looked that rough before.”

“Dude’s limping,” Jimmy adds, pushing his glasses up. “That alien thing—what even was that?”

Their words feel like background noise. Distant. Warped. You can’t seem to hear anything over the white-hot panic blistering in your chest.

You blink, your eyes burning, throat tight. You can’t just sit here and cry. Not in front of Lois and Perry and half the bullpen. But your body is trembling anyway. You clench your hands in your lap, nails digging crescent moons into your skin.

He’s hurt.

And he’s still out there.

Fighting.

Alone.

You can’t just sit here.

You shove your chair back hard enough that it scrapes against the floor. “I’m going.”

Lois turns toward you. “Going where?”

“I’m covering it. The attack. The fallout. Whatever’s left—I want to see it firsthand.”

Lois’s brow lifts. “Since when do you make reckless calls like this?”

“I don’t,” you snap, already grabbing your coat. “But I am now.”

Jimmy’s already halfway to the door. “If we’re going, I’m bringing the camera.”

Lois hesitates. Then sighs. “Hell. You two’ll get yourselves killed without me.”

You don’t wait for her to finish grabbing her phone. You’re already out the door.

-

Downtown is a war zone.

The smell of scorched concrete clings to the air. Smoke spirals in uneven plumes from the carcass of a building that must have been beautiful once. Sirens scream in every direction, red and blue lights flashing off every pane of shattered glass.

You arrive just as the dust begins to settle.

The battle is over but the wreckage tells you how bad it was.

The Justice Gang moves through the remains like figures out of a dream—tattered and bloodied, but upright.

Guy Gardner limps past, muttering curses. “Next time, I’m bringing a bigger damn ring.” Kendra Saunders—Hawkgirl—has one wing half-folded and streaked with blood. She ignores it as she checks on a paramedic’s bandages. Mr. Terrific is already coordinating with local emergency crews, directing flow with a hand to his ear. And Metamorpho—God, he looks like he’s melting and re-solidifying with every breath.

And then…

Him.

He descends from the smoke. Not in a blur. Not with a boom of sonic air. Slowly. Controlled.

But not untouched.

He lands in a crouch, shoulders tight, the line of his jaw drawn sharp with tension. His boots crunch against broken concrete. His cape is torn at one edge, flapping limply behind him.

He’s hurt.

He’s so clearly hurt.

And even through all of it—through the dirt and blood and pain—he sees you. His eyes lock onto yours in an instant. The rest of the world falls away. There’s no press. No chaos. No destruction.

Just him.

And you.

The corner of his mouth lifts—just a flicker. Not a smile. Just… recognition.

And something deeper behind it.

You know know. 

And he is letting you know.

But he straightens a second later, lifting his chin, slotting the mask back into place like a practiced motion. He squares his shoulders, winces barely perceptible, and turns to face the press.

Lois is already stepping forward, questions in hand. “Superman. What can you tell us about the enemy?”

His voice is steady, but you can hear it now—hear the strain. The breath that doesn’t quite come easy. The syllables that drag like they’re fighting his tongue. “It wasn’t local,” he says. “Some kind of dimensional breach. We had help closing it.”

Jimmy’s camera clicks. Kendra coughs into her hand.

You’re not writing.

You’re just watching.

Watching the soot along his cheekbone. The split in his lip. The way he shifts his weight to favor one side. The way the “s” in “justice” drags like it hurts to say.

He looks tired.

But more than that—he looks like Clark.

And it’s never been more obvious than right now, standing under broken sky, trying to pretend like nothing’s changed.

You want to run to him. You want to hold him up.

But you stay rooted.

When the questions start to slow and the press begins murmuring among themselves, he glances over. Just at you.

“Are you okay?” he asks, barely audible.

You nod. “Are you?”

He hesitates. Then says, “Getting there.”

It’s not a performance. Not for them. Just for you.

You nod again. The look you share says more than anything else could.

I know.

I’m not leaving.

You don’t have to say it.

When he flies away—slower this time, one hand brushing briefly against his ribs—it’s not dramatic. There’s no sonic boom. No heat trail. Just wind and distance.

Lois exhales. “He looked rough.”

Jimmy nods. “Still hot, though.”

You say nothing. You just stare up at the empty sky. And press your shaking hand over your heart.

-

You fake calm.

You smile when Jimmy slaps your shoulder and says something about getting the footage up by morning. You nod through Lois’s sharp-eyed stare and mutter something about your deadline, your byline, your blood sugar—anything to get her to stop watching you like she knows what you’re not saying.

But the second you’re alone?

You run. It’s not a sprint, not really. Just that jittery, full-body urgency—the kind that makes your hands shake and your legs move faster than your thoughts can follow. You don’t remember the trip home. Just the chaos of your own pulse, the way your chest won’t stop aching.

You replay the scene again and again in your mind: his landing, the blood on his lip, the flicker of pain when he looked at you. That not-quite smile. That nearly imperceptible tremble.

You’d never wanted to hold someone more in your life.

And when you reach your door, keys fumbling, heart still hammering? He’s already there.

You pause halfway through the doorway.

He’s standing in your living room, like he’s been waiting hours. He’s not in the suit. No cape. No crest. Just a plain black T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, his hair still damp like he just showered.

He looks like Clark. Except… tonight you know there’s no difference.

“Hi,” he says quietly. His voice is soft. Familiar. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

You blink. “Did you break through my patio door?”

He winces. “Yes. Sort of.”

You lift a brow. “You owe me a new lock.”

“It doesn’t work like that.” He says with a roll of his eyes. 

A silence stretches between you. It’s not tense. Not angry. Just full of everything neither of you said earlier.

He takes a step toward you, then stops. “How long have you known?”

You drop your keys in the bowl by the door and toe off your shoes before answering. “Since the lamp. And the candle,” you say. “But… mostly tonight.”

He nods like that hurts. Like he wishes he could’ve done better. Like he wishes he could’ve told you in some perfect, movie-moment way.

“I didn’t want you to find out like that,” he says quietly.

You walk to the couch and sit, your limbs finally catching up to the adrenaline crash still sweeping through you. “I’m glad I found out at all.”

That’s what makes him move. He sinks down beside you, hands on his knees. You can see it in his profile—the exhaustion, the regret, the weight he’s been carrying for so long. You’re not sure he’s ever looked more human.

“I’ve been hiding so long,” he says, voice barely above a whisper. “I forgot how to be seen. And with you… I didn’t want to lie. But I didn’t want to lose it either. I didn’t want to lose you.”

Your throat tightens. “You won’t,” you say. And you mean it.

His head turns then, slowly, eyes meeting yours like he’s trying to memorize your face from this distance. You don’t look away.

When he kisses you, it’s not careful. It’s not shy. It’s like something breaks open inside him—softly. The dam finally giving way.

His hands cradle your face like you’re something he’s terrified to shatter but needs to feel. His mouth is hot and open, reverent, desperate in the way it deepens. He kisses like he’s anchoring himself to the earth through your lips. Like everything in him is still shaking from battle and you’re the only thing that still feels real.

You reach for him. Thread your fingers into his hair. Pull him closer.

It builds like a slow swell—hands tangling, breathing harder, heat coiling low in your stomach. He pushes you back gently against the cushions, his body moving over yours with careful precision. Not to pin. Just to hold.

You feel it in every motion: the restraint. The effort. He could crush steel and he’s using that strength to cradle your ribs.

He undresses you with reverence. His fingers tremble when they touch your bare skin. Not from hesitation—but because he’s finally allowed to want. To have. To be seen.

You undress him too. That soft black T-shirt comes off first. Then the flannel. His chest is mottled with bruises, a dark one blooming across his side where that alien creature must’ve hit him. Your fingertips trace the edge of it.

He exhales, shaky. But he doesn’t stop you.

You’re straddling his lap before you realize it, chest to chest, foreheads pressed together.

“Are you scared?” he whispers.

Your thumb brushes his cheek. “Never of you.”

He kisses you again—slower this time. More control, but more depth too. His hands glide down your back and settle at your hips, thumbs pressing into your skin like he needs the reminder that you’re here. That you chose this.

The rest unfolds like prayer. The way he touches you—thorough, patient, hungry—it’s worship. Every gasp you make pulls a soft, broken sound from his throat. Every arch of your back makes his eyes flutter shut like he’s overwhelmed by the sight of you. The way he moves inside you is deep and aching and full of something larger than either of you.

Not rough. But desperate. Raw. True.

And even when he falters—when his hands grip too tight or the air warms just a little too fast—you hold his face and whisper, “I know. It’s okay. I want all of you.” And he gives it. All of him. Until the only thing either of you can do is fall apart. Together.

Later, when you’re curled up on the couch in a tangle of limbs and quiet breathing, he rests his forehead against your temple.

The city buzzes somewhere far away.

He whispers into your skin: “Next time… don’t let me fly off like that.”

Your smile is soft, tired. “Next time, come straight to me.”

He nods, eyes already fluttering shut.

And finally, for the first time since this began—you both sleep without secrets between you.

-

You wake to sunlight. Not loud, not harsh—just soft beams slipping through the blinds, spilling across the floor, warming the space where your bare shoulder meets the sheets. You blink slowly, the weight of sleep still thick behind your eyes, and shift just slightly in the tangle of limbs wrapped around you. He doesn’t stir. Not even a little.

Clark is still curled around you like the night never ended—his chest at your back, legs tangled with yours, one arm snug around your waist and the other folded up against your ribs, fingers resting over your heart like he’s guarding it in his sleep.

You don’t move. You can’t. Because it’s perfect. You let your cheek rest against his arm, warm and solid beneath you, and you just listen—to the steady rhythm of his heart, to the rise and fall of his breathing, to the way the silence doesn’t feel empty anymore. You don’t know if you’ve ever felt more grounded than you do right now, held like this. It isn’t the cape. It isn’t the flight. It isn’t the power that quiets the noise in your chest.

It’s him. Just Clark. And for once, you don’t need anything else.

He stumbles into the kitchen half an hour later in your robe. Your actual, honest-to-god, fuzzy gray robe. It’s oversized on you, which means it fits him like a second skin—belt tied loose at the hips, collar gaping just enough to make you lose your train of thought. His hair is a mess, sticking up in soft black tufts. His glasses are nowhere to be found. He scratches the back of his neck, blinking at the cabinets like he’s not entirely sure how kitchens work.

You lean against the counter with your arms folded, watching him with open amusement. “You own too much flannel.”

Clark glances over, eyes squinting against the light. “I’ll have you know, that robe is a Metropolis winter essential.”

“You’re bulletproof.”

“I get cold emotionally.”

You snort. “You’re such a menace in the morning.”

“And yet,” he says, opening the fridge and retrieving eggs with the careful precision of someone who’s clearly trying not to break them with super strength, “you let me stay.”

You grin. “You’re lucky you’re cute.”

He burns the first pancake. Which is honestly impressive, considering you weren’t even sure it was physically possible for someone with super speed and heat vision to ruin breakfast. But he flips it too fast—like way too fast—and the thing launches halfway across the skillet before folding in on itself and sizzling dramatically.

You raise an eyebrow. Clark stares down at the pancake like it betrayed him. “I didn’t account for surface tension.”

“Did you just say ‘surface tension’ while making pancakes?”

“I’m a complex man,” he says solemnly.

You lean over and pluck a piece of fruit from the cutting board he forgot he was slicing. “You’re a menace and a dork.”

He pouts. Full, actual pout. Then shuffles over and kisses your shoulder. “I’ll get better with practice.”

You roll your eyes. But your skin’s still buzzing where his lips brushed it.

Later, you sit on the counter while he stands between your knees, coffee in one hand, the other resting warm on your thigh. It’s quiet. Not awkward or forced—just soft. Full of little glances and sips and contented silence. There’s no fear in him now. No carefully placed pauses. No skirting around things. He just… is. Clark Kent. The boy who spilled coffee on your notes three times. The man who kept writing to you in secret even when you didn’t see him.

“You’re not what I expected,” you say, fingers brushing his arm.

He lifts an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“I don’t know. I guess I thought Superman would be… shinier. Less flannel. More invincible.”

“Are you saying I’m not shiny enough for you?”

“I’m saying you’re better.”

He blinks. And then—just like that—he smiles. Not the bashful one. Not the public one. The real one. Small and warm and honest. The kind of smile you only give someone when you feel safe. And maybe that’s what this is now. Safety. Not the absence of danger—but the presence of someone who will always come back.

His communicator buzzes from somewhere in the bedroom. Clark lets out the most exhausted groan you’ve ever heard and buries his face in your shoulder like it’ll make the world go away.

“You have to go?” you ask gently, threading your fingers through his hair.

“Soon.”

“You’ll come back?”

He lifts his head. Meets your eyes.  “Every time.”

You kiss him then—slow and deep and familiar now. The kind of kiss that tastes like mornings and memory and maybe something closer to forever. He kisses you back like he already misses you. And when he finally pulls away and disappears into the sky outside your window—less streak of light, more quiet parting—you just stand there for a moment. Barefoot. Wrapped in your robe. Heart full.

You’re about to start cleaning up the kitchen when you see it. A post-it note, stuck to the fridge. Just a small square of yellow. Written in the same handwriting you could spot anywhere now.

“You always look soft in the mornings. I like seeing you like this.” —C.K.

You read it three times. Then you smile. You walk to the cabinet above the sink, open the door—and stick it right next to all the others. The secret ones. The old ones. The ones that helped you feel seen before you even knew whose eyes were watching.

And now you know. Now you see him too.

All of him.

And you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

-

tags:  @eeveedream m @anxiousscribbling @pancake-05 @borhapparker @dreammiiee @benbarnesprettygurl @insidethegardenwall @butterflies-on-my-ashes s @maplesyrizzup @rockwoodchevy @jasontoddswhitestreak @loganficsonly @overwintering-soldier @hits-different-cause-its-you @eclipsedplanet @wordacadabra @itzmeme e @cecesilver @crisis-unaverted-recs @indigoyoons @chili4prez @thetruthisintheirdreams @ethanhoewke (<— it wouldn’t let me tag some blogs I’m so sorry!!)

[yakshxiao]

Hope

[yakshxiao]

Kansas (Remembers Me Now) | C.K. (i)

SUMMARY: You’d both grown, just in opposite directions. And maybe that was the quiet grace of it; you hadn’t stayed small, even if you’d stayed here. You’d built something steady, made yourself known in quieter ways. And seeing him now, still Clark but not quite the boy you remembered, you felt proud. Of him. Of yourself. Of the strange, winding ways you’d both come to carry your names.

PAIRING: David!Superman x f!reader (childhood friend)

WORD COUNT: 6.7K

WARNINGS: Canon-typical things, slow burn vibes, fluff/tension-filled old friends to lovers, honestly nothing too crazy, Clark in Kansas, church/religious elements (pastor, church picnic, comments on sermons, etc.) but not explicit take on religion, just using as a setting, ONE BED TROPE, Ma and Pa Kent, asshole guy from school (Clark being protective), movie magic timing/plot, cheesy, fluff, angst, might be a little repetative in the omg it's been so long/childhood besties mentioning, forgive me, midwestern-ness coming from someone who is from the south, etc.

A/N: First part out, wahooooo!! I wrote this in record time because this week is going to be brutal work-wise. Thank you for all the love on the prologue, think this is going to be a fun one! Comments HEAVILY encouraged, it makes writers' hearts full and encourages me to continue writing. Enjoy.

prologue

The sunlight had turned golden in that Kansas-only way; it was syrup-thick and leaning, casting long shadows that stretched across the grass like tired hands reaching for something protected. 

At the picnic’s edge, flies buzzed lazily over deviled eggs and family recipes passed down like folklore, while hymns floated from the chapel doors,  lost under the sound of children shrieking over water balloons. 

The church lawn thrummed with a familiar rhythm; the gossip was stirred into the homemade sweet tea, and the old stories were told without urgency, but always circling without aim to settle on a common target.  

And Clark—well, Clark was the main attraction.

He couldn’t so much as reach for a paper plate without someone grabbing his arm, leaning in too close, asking about the city, about the work, about if Kansas still tugged at him, about whether he still blushed at the mention of that girl from college, what was her name again?

Clark moved through the crowd slowly, genuine in the face of all the curiosity. Everyone wanted a word with him now—the boy who’d left and come back shining from the city. Funny, you thought, how quiet they'd been when he was just little Clark from down the road, always outgrowing his shoes and not much else.

You stood beneath a sycamore near the makeshift choir stand, a sweating cup of sweet tea resting against your collarbone like it might absolve you of something. All it really did was make your mouth pucker.

You watched as a woman from the school board touched his arm just a little too long, as a man from the co-op asked if he was hiring interns at the Planet, as a child asked him what skyscrapers looked like up close.

Clark answered every question like it mattered. Like he was still Clark, even now. You were just about to look away when a voice called out beside you. 

“Well, if it isn’t the girl who used to correct my sermons.”

You turned. Pastor Amos—he stood there in his sweat-dampened collar and gold-threaded tie, smile just wide enough to be friendly, just narrow enough to remind you it was still his church.

“I only ever corrected your grammar…” You gave a polite smile. “Not your theology.”

He chuckled. “My wife says they’re the same thing.”

His eyes drifted toward Clark, still caught in conversation by the potato salad.

“He’s the one who wrote that piece in the Planet, right? About Superman?”

“Yeah.” Your shoulders stiffened just a touch. “That was him.”

Amos nodded, arms crossed loosely over his chest. “Good piece. Thoughtful. Less sensational than the usual drivel. You could tell it came from someone who understood more than he let on.”

You glanced toward Clark. He was laughing at something now, head tipped back just slightly, and the sight of it made your throat tighten in a way you hadn’t planned for.

“He’s good at that.” You nodded.

The pastor hummed. “Makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it?”

You looked back at him. “What does?”

“If a man like that really exists.” Amos turned his full attention to you, voice softening like it always did when he accidentally drifted into a sermon. “If someone like Superman is real, walking the world, holding back destruction with his own two hands…”

You didn’t respond. Not at first. Because Clark had turned then, just slightly, like he’d heard it. And maybe he had. You watched his eyes flick your way, something unreadable behind them.

“...a man like that visiting a town like ours? Might do some real good.” Amos kept talking, unaware of what his words had stirred. “This town believes in second chances. Always has. But belief needs tending. Sometimes it needs a face to look toward.”

You took a slow sip of your sweet tea. It tasted like too much sugar and steeped nostalgia.

“I think if Superman ever did show up.” You spoke quietly. “He’d want to be just a man for a while. Not a miracle.”

“And you’d recognize the difference?”Amos raised an eyebrow. 

You gave him a long look.  “Of course.”

“Put in a good word for me, then.” He gave your arm a squeeze, and moved along—oblivious to the truth he brushed. “Clark always listened to you.” 

Clark hadn’t moved, still watching you across the lawn. A few more beats, started toward you, slow and steady, like he’d been waiting all day for an invitation. His shirt sleeves were rolled just past his elbows, forearms tanned and dusted with freckles you hadn’t remembered. 

You raised your cup in a half-salute. “You catch all that?”

“Hard not to.” There was a shadow of sweat darkening the collar of his shirt, and something easy in the way he moved, like he didn’t mind being seen, didn’t mind being back. “His voice is meant to carry.”

You glanced sideways at him, the last of the sun catching in his lashes, turning them gold. From this close, you could see the faint crease where his brow had furrowed too often, not from worry, exactly, but from holding everything in.

“So?” You asked. “Any of this picnic help your piece? Or is it just church gossip and lukewarm Jell-O salad?”

Clark pulled a face, mock-serious. “It’s been… enlightening.”

You both knew that was code for no, but you played along.

“Mmm.” You sipped your tea, grateful that the ice was mostly melted now. “Doesn’t sound Planet-worthy.”

“Well—” He started, reaching into his pocket with a little flourish, “—guess I’ll have to make do with a local source.”

Clark pulled out a small tape recorder. It was silver, scuffed, the kind with actual buttons, and a red light that still worked. He flicked it on and held it out like a microphone.

You squinted at it. “You’re joking.”

“I’m thorough.” He said solemnly with professionalism. “Clark Kent. Daily Planet. I’m here with—?”

“The girl who corrects pastors.” 

“Sounds dangerous.”

“Only if you split your infinitives.”

He cleared his throat. His posture shifted ever-so-slightly, shoulders straightening, tone deepening, slipping effortlessly into that journalistic cadence you hadn’t heard since he read the morning announcements sophomore year, voice cracking once in October and never again after that.

“Tell me…” Clark deadpanned. “How does it feel to return to your hometown picnic after years of solitude and scandal?”

You caught the twitch in the corner of his mouth and decided not to let him get away with it.

“You tell me.” You lifted a brow. “You’re the one who disappeared.”

He grinned, undeterred. “Sources say the deviled eggs are a peace offering. Can you confirm or deny?”

“They’re hush money.”

He stifled a laugh, holding the recorder closer. “And your thoughts on the man of the hour? Some say he’s aged well. Others say he peaked in ‘05.”

You gave him a long, theatrical once-over. “I think he’s still deciding.”

That earned a real laugh. It was low, warm, the kind that started in his chest and stayed there, vibrating between the two of you. His shoulders relaxed and yours did too.

Around you, a few heads turned, not overtly, but with that peripheral curiosity only small towns perfected. A mother with her hands full of Tupperware tilted her chin toward the two of you and whispered something to the man beside her. A group of retirees lingering near the dessert table gave sidelong glances over their sweet tea cups, as if this were the subplot they’d been hoping for.

You could feel it, that subtle ripple of attention, the hum of people watching without watching. It was a kind of pressure you hadn’t felt in years. Not since prom night. Not since that kiss behind the bleachers. Not since Clark had gone and you’d been left to answer for it, like you were the one who’d left the lights on too long waiting for him.

You looked at the recorder. “You seriously use that thing?”

“Sometimes it’s good to hear people in their own words.” He shrugged.

You weren’t sure if he meant you or himself. Maybe both.

The tape kept rolling for a few seconds longer, catching the shouts of kids playing tag and the faint clatter of aluminum pans being stacked nearby. The red light blinked gently between you, like it was waiting for a confession.

Then, Clark clicked it off and tucked it back inside his pocket like it was a envied secret. His fingers brushed his chest once, as if sealing it there.

He didn’t speak right away, just looked at you for a moment longer than he needed to, like the stillness between jokes had surprised him too, like he'd forgotten how quiet you could make a person feel.

Then, softly,  not quite a confession, not quite a joke—he said, “You always did have a way of answering the questions I wasn’t smart enough to ask.”

“That your headline?” 

He gave a small, almost sheepish smile. “Might need a second source.”

You let the quiet return, this time not awkward, not filled with anything heavy, just left to stretch  out comfortably, like something old and familiar that still fit, even if the sleeves were tighter now. 

However, there were those who lingered longer than others, pulling Clark from you eventually. You didn’t mind. Not really. He’d always belonged to too many people to stay in one place long.

Even as a kid, Clark had that way about him, like he was already halfway gone, even when he was right beside you. You watched him go, let the warmth fade where he’d been standing, and reminded yourself not to expect anything more than what he’d already given: a moment, a glance, a memory that still fit, even if it chafed a little now.

You didn’t envy Clark. Not like you might’ve once.

He’d carved his way out, and you’d rooted yourself in—different choices, not lesser ones. Watching him now, all bright smiles and easy conversation, you felt something settle in you, not envy but finally something akin to recognition. 

You’d both grown, just in opposite directions. And maybe that was the quiet grace of it; you hadn’t stayed small, even if you’d stayed here. You’d built something steady, made yourself known in quieter ways. And seeing him now, still Clark but not quite the boy you remembered, you felt proud. Of him. Of yourself. Of the strange, winding ways you’d both come to carry your names.

Later, you stood by the last table near the edge of the church lawn, your palms damp around a plastic tub of cutlery and crumpled napkins. The cicadas were winding down, or maybe just warming up for their next act. Either way, they sang like they had nothing left to prove.

Clark appeared at your side again, quiet as breath. No rustle, no footsteps. Just that gentle gravity of his, a presence you didn’t realize you were once again waiting on until he arrived. He didn’t say anything at first. Just reached out and took the bin from your hands before you could argue.

“You always this helpful?” 

“Trying to earn my keep.” His dimples popped as he spoke. 

The weight of the bin barely registered for him, but he still held it like something fragile. Always gentle. Always careful, like he didn’t trust his own strength or like he was afraid of breaking something that mattered. You wondered how often he moved through the world like that, soft hands wrapped around unimaginable power.

“I was aiming for low-profile.”

“You showed up with deviled eggs and got mobbed within five minutes.” You said.  “That’s not low-profile. That’s bait.”

“They’re my mom’s recipe.” He feigned innocence. “That buys me at least ten minutes of goodwill.”

“And after that?” You poked. 

“I improvise.”

You tilted your head. “With charm or chaos?”

“Depends who I’m trying to win over.”

That earned a small huff from you. 

“You know, Ma was talking about you coming over for dinner…” He caught it, smiled wider, then hesitated just long enough to sneak in what he truly found you for.  “Pa, too—said it’s been too long.”

“Has it?” You shifted your hands over the edge of the table. The metal was still warm from the sun. 

“Yeah. It has.”

You were about to make a joke when the air behind you shifted, something familiar and unwanted curling in from behind your shoulder.

“Well, damn—

Aaron.

That voice still made your stomach turn—not with fear, but with the weight of everything you never said to him. Everything he never heard even when you did.

Same smug tone. Same too-tight jeans. Same half-emptied beer bottle dangling from two fingers like he thought it made him dangerous.

“Didn’t expect to see both hometown legends back in one place.”

You didn’t turn around right away. 

Clark did. Not with aggression, but with presence.The tub of cutlery shifted in his hand, subtly bringing his body half a step forward—between you and Aaron—like it wasn’t even a decision.

 It was instinct.

“Hey, Aaron…” You said flatly. “Didn’t realize you still made rounds.”

“Guilty.” His smile was yellow with menace. “Bank merger kept me local. Not glamorous, but the checks clear. Divorce cleared too. Twice. You know, real adult résumé.” 

“Always with the charm, you.” You shifted your weight, careful with your expression.

“You haven’t aged a day.” His gaze swept over you, slow and appraising. “Listen, I always said if Clark didn’t wise up, someone else would—”

“Still got that line memorized, huh?”

He chuckled. “Worked back then.”

You opened your mouth, maybe to laugh, maybe to end it, but Aaron’s gaze darted to his next target. “Is that Clark Kent?”

“Good to see you too.” Clark’s smile was all Midwestern manners—warm, disarming, and perfectly practiced. 

“Still living out of suitcases and hotel rooms?” Aaron chuckled, already half-drunk on his own voice. “Must be nice, not having to stay anywhere long enough for the wallpaper to get boring.”

He always did this, where he slid in sideways, sounding like a joke, but there was always something cutting under the surface. Something you used to try and overlook when you were younger before you realized how little he liked to see other people grow.

“Wallpaper’s never been my biggest concern.” Clark shrugged, smile not quite reaching his eyes.

 “Still holding down the library like a Fort Knox, huh?” Aaron’s eyes pinged back to you. Mocking. “I figured you’d be long gone, probably in some city boring your poet boyfriend.”

“You throw a lot of words at people for someone who never says anything new.”  You remained neutral, tone bored.  

Aaron winced like the words stung, but laughed it off. “Still sharp.”

“You know—Aaron—some folks just know how to age well.” Clark looked to you, voice polite, light. “No shame in that. Someone’s gotta set the bar for early retirement.”

He placed the tub on the tailgate of someone’s truck with careful hands. Then turned, folding the last table with one motion. Aaron opened his mouth to respond, but Clark’s voice landed first.

 “Great seeing you, though. Really warms the heart.” 

 “Didn’t mean to get in the way of whatever this is.” Aaron took a step back, rocking on his heels, but eyes still looking for a proper fight. “But hey—”

Aaron turned to go, but tossed one last look over his shoulder, a smirk sliding into place like it had nowhere else to be.

“—if Kent forgets what to do with a girl like you… door’s always open.”

He sauntered off like he’d won something, same as always. Clark watched him go, lips pressed into a line. He was quiet for a long moment. Just when you thought it was over, he shook his head and muttered under his breath

“Man’s got the personality of a wet matchstick.” 

You blinked, surprised by the unexpected jab. Clark didn’t look at you right away, just kept folding down the last table as if he hadn’t said a thing.

“I try to be patient…” He added with a dry shrug. “...but some people really test the limits.”

There was a small, almost sheepish smile when he finally met your eyes, like a Midwesterner caught letting a little too much out.

“Don’t tell my ma.” He was joking, but there was real fear behind his eyes—the kind only a mother could put there “She still thinks I’m all manners and no edge.”

Whatever edge he thought he was hiding from his mother, it wasn’t sharp enough to draw blood. Not really. Not the way other people cut when they’re cruel just for sport. Clark never was. 

“Thanks, Clark.” 

“For what?”

You shrugged. “For being exactly how I remember.” You leaned against the folded table, the last bit of light pooling around you like spilt molasses. 

“Is that a good thing?” Clark cast you a sidelong glance, that familiar flicker of nerves betraying how much your opinion, especially when it came to him, still mattered.

You looked at him—really looked. Sure, his hair was still a little shorter than you liked,  the lines near his eyes a little deeper, but that same steadiness was still there

“Yeah.”  You answered. “It is.”

“So, about that dinner…” He bumped your shoulder lightly.

You hesitated, the warm air pressing in around your ribs. “I’ll think about it.”

Clark grinned like he already knew your answer. And for the first time in years, you didn’t mind the idea of being known.

—

You took the turn onto the gravel road slower than you meant to. Your hands gripped the wheel like they could still turn back, like this was just a drive, just a visit, not a return.

Bread sat on the passenger seat, wrapped in a clean checkered dish towel. Still warm. 

You’d spent all day trying to get it right. It took three ruined loaves in the trash before this one rose the way it was supposed to, just like Martha used to make it: braided, soft, with honey in the dough.  You remembered it from potlucks and snow days, from the time she gave you half a loaf and told you not to tell Clark because he’d already eaten his share.

You could’ve brought cookies. Store-bought, even. Yet, something about the invitation made you want to do it right, made you want to bring something that meant you remembered.

You barely made it past the fence line when the front door opened. No—swung open like someone had been waiting.

Clark stepped out barefoot, already halfway down the porch steps by the time you put the car in park. His shirt was rumpled, tucked only on one side like he’d been lounging around and didn’t expect to be seen. His hair stuck up in the back, probably from napping. Probably from the wind.

But his face lit up the second he saw you. He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t wave, didn’t wait. Just crossed the drive and pulled you into a hug before you could say anything. 

It wasn’t theatrical, just fast and full like muscle memory took over before his mind caught up; his arms locked around your shoulders. You felt the heat of him, the way he smelled like hay and mint soap and warm cotton. 

You didn’t hug him back, not right away. Too much. Too soon. Too stupid to think it wouldn’t knock the wind out of you. But then your chin bumped his shoulder, and he laughed a little—quiet and under his breath, like he knew.

“Sorry.” Clark answered, as if that explained everything. “Heard you a few miles out.”

You pulled back and held up the loaf of bread as a barrier. 

“Is that...?” Clark stared at it, then back at you.

“It’s supposed to be your mom’s recipe.” You said, expression uncertain like you were delivering bad news. “Took me all day. Three failed loaves in the trash. Pretty sure I burned through all my self-worth by noon, but this one passed the squish test.”

Clark’s mouth tugged into a grin, like he didn’t want to let it fully show. “You didn’t have to.”

The screen door creaked open behind him.

“Now it’s a party.” Jonathan appeared, leaning in the doorway. You could hear the warmth behind it. The fondness.

“Oh–! Is that who I think it is?” Martha’s voice rang out, and you turned just in time to see her wiping her hands on a dish towel, face already breaking into a smile. “I’d recognize that car anywhere.”

You held up the bread again like it was armor. “Thought I’d better not show up empty-handed.”

“You show up, that’s enough for me.” Martha waved that off like it was ridiculous. 

You didn’t say I see you every Wednesday. You didn’t say you saw me last week, when she checked out a quilting manual and asked, without asking, how you’ve been.

Because this was different. This was Clark’s house again. 

—

The kitchen glowed like it always had, soft yellow light over chipped counters and the humming warmth of something bubbling on the stove. 

You’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to be on the receiving end of Martha and Jonathan’s full attention. They shuffled around with the kind of ease only decades of marriage and Midwest routines could create—one stirring the pot, the other setting down plates without asking where they lived.

Clark’s knee bumped yours under the table.

It wasn’t hard or deliberate—just a soft knock of muscle against muscle as he leaned back, reaching for a second helping of potatoes. But it jolted something loose in you, a tiny flinch like your body still hadn’t caught up to the comfort your voice had settled into.

He must’ve felt it too. Because for the briefest second, he paused. Eyes flicked toward you, barely a glance, but one full of apology and quiet wonder.

You cleared your throat and sat back a little, turning toward Martha. “I hear you’ve recruited half the town for quilting club now.”

She gave a dramatic sigh, wiping her hands on her apron. “It’s a public service, truly. Without me, these women would be stitching crooked lines and reading those book of yours—

“It was one time!” You said, reading between the lines. “I was—”

“You mean that cold case from high school you were obsessed with?” Jonathan poked with kindness. “The one you swore you could crack?”

“It was educational.” You were humorously defensive. 

“You had charts.” Clark’s eyes gleamed. He turned to his parents as he added to the mess.  “You know, she made me listen to all her theories about the Riverside disappearance, over and over, during Christmas.”

“It was thematic.” You defended, lifting your glass. “Also—Clark volunteered.”

“I like your mayhem in moderation.”

“That’s new,” Jonathan said under his breath, not quite quiet enough.

There was a beat. 

Then, Martha added, like it had been waiting all night to come out, “Clark used to come home from school and talk about you nonstop. I should’ve kept a tally. Every other sentence was your name.”

Clark groaned, dragged a hand down his face. “Ma.”

“Even had that little notebook with your initials doodled on the back…” Jonathan added with mock innocence.

“Please stop—

“Well, someone had to tutor him through U.S. history.” You chuckled, but deflected like muscle memory. 

Clark shot you a look of relief. It was the same look he used to give when you’d covered for him in high school, or smoothed things over with teachers, or dodged any nosy church ladies’ questions about why Clark Kent never brought a date.

“I just like knowing I’m not the only one who still remembers…” Martha said, voice gentler now.

And you were about to say something, something easy, when Clark’s phone buzzed once against the table. 

Then again. 

And again.

The lightness in the room shifted like a candle snuffed out.

Clark checked it, his smile dimming. “Sorry, I—

“No need to explain.”  Jonathan shook his head, and Martha was already rising, smoothing her apron.

“Gimme a kiss on the cheek before you go.” She said softly, and Clark obeyed without hesitation.

She understood it was a choice made, and remade, each day. Against all odds, all indecisions. For good. 

“Take your time.” She murmured into his shoulder. “Be careful.”

He looked to you. Didn’t speak, just held your gaze.

 Something unspoken passed between you—habitual, heavy. That familiar feeling like he was always being pulled in two directions. And maybe one of them looked a little like you.

You gave the smallest nod.

And that was all it took.

The front door eased open. A gust of warm air pushed in, and then—

Crack—

The sound barrier snapped like a branch in a thunderstorm.

Martha didn’t flinch. She simply started gathering the dishes like nothing was out of place. You stared at the empty seat across from you a second longer.

You sat there a beat longer, staring at the spot where his knee had brushed yours. Wondering how something so small could still echo after he was gone.

Martha watched you with a tender, knowing smile. 

“Good he got out before the storm..” Jonathan piped up, hearing the early rumblings. “The news said it would roll in fast.”

You glanced out the kitchen window, where the sky churned with bruised purples and angry grays, a restless blur that felt like it was holding its breath. 

The air was thick, almost electric, and distant rumbles hinted at what was coming. You’d heard the tornado warnings on the radio earlier, but part of you still hoped they’d change their minds—that maybe it would just pass on by.

You started to gather your things, the quiet settling like a soft weight between you all.

Martha lingered nearby, her voice soft but firm. “You might want to wait it out here a bit.”

“Oh, I couldn’t—” You stared. “I’ll make it back before—”

“Not in that car of yours,” Jonathan teased with a grin. “How many times did Clark have to push you all the way home?”

The truth was, you still had the same car you'd driven in high school, its engine coughed more than it purred now, and you were pretty sure the left turn signal only worked when it felt like it. 

It was on its last legs, much like your excuses. You wracked your brain for a polite way to decline, something that sounded less like fear and more like practicality, but Martha was already ahead of you.

 “Clark never did like the storms.” Martha commented gently, glancing toward the window where the first drops began to drum. “Always got a little restless whenever the wind picked up.”

You nodded despite your reluctance. “…the roads will probably get slick, and the sky’s turning fast…”

Jonathan flipped on the old TV, the kind with bulky dials and a hum that hadn’t changed since the ’80s, just as Martha abandoned the dishes, drying her hands on a towel as she turned her attention to getting you settled. 

Across the screen, a red ticker scrolled with tornado warnings flashing bold and unmissable for the county, the kind of message that made the air feel even heavier.

“Well…” Jonathan said, quiet but certain. “That settles it. You’re stuck with us tonight.”

You gave a half-hearted laugh, glancing toward the window again as thunder grumbled low across the fields.  

Outside, the wind gathered strength, carrying the storm’s low, distant roar as it rolled toward you, and suddenly staying wasn’t just a choice—it was the only thing that made sense.

She gave your arm a warm squeeze. “We’ll get you settled in Clark’s room. It’s small, but cozy. Just like the old days.”

You swallowed, the gentle weight of their welcome pulling at something you hadn’t realized was still raw, the way home could feel like both a refuge and a reckoning.

—

The house creaked like it remembered you.

Wind pressed against the windows in low, guttural moans. Rain clattered across the roof in sweeping waves, but the storm hadn’t touched the room itself. It still felt sealed in time. 

The bedroom looked exactly as it had the last time you were here, back when your limbs were lankier and your heart lighter. A pale blue Kansas City Royals cap hung from the bedpost, soft with dust. The wooden dresser still wore the same warbled stickers from some science fair two decades ago. And the closet door still didn’t shut all the way, just tilted there, slightly ajar, like it was waiting for someone to come back and finish growing up.

You shifted on the twin bed, the frame letting out a familiar groan beneath your weight. 

The sheets were clean, sun-dried, with the faintest scent of cedar and detergent and something else, something warm and stubborn that hadn’t quite faded with time. You buried your face in the pillow for a moment, just to breathe it in. 

Not Clark, exactly. But home. 

The kind of comfort that couldn’t be faked. The kind that made your chest ache a little because it always meant you belonged once.

Lightning cracked outside, painting the room in a flash of bone-white, just long enough for you to catch the edge of the bedframe, where initials had been carved with a pocket knife long before either of you knew what permanence meant. 

The air smelled like wet earth and nostalgia. And under the breath of thunder and wind, the silence in this room felt almost holy. Like something waiting. Or someone.

You sat up, rubbing the sleep from your eyes, though sleep hadn’t even really come close. 

There was something about storms like this, too many memories caught in the static. You remembered the way Clark used to hate them, even when he’d pretend not to. You remembered crouching in the basement with flashlights and playing cards, Martha humming over the sound of sirens, Jonathan checking the radio with a furrow in his brow. 

You remembered the warmth of Clark’s shoulder pressed to yours and how he’d say, just loud enough for you to hear, “We’ll be alright. I promise.”

The wind rattled again, then paused.

Something shifted.

You thought it was thunder at first, the low groan of it rolling across the plains, but then came the sound of the window easing open. Not flung, not forced. Just coaxed, the way someone who’d done it a hundred times might.

You didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just watched.

Clark slipped through the window like muscle memory, broad frame folding itself through the gap with a kind of practiced quiet. His boots hit the floor soft, careful.

 The storm lit behind him, casting his silhouette sharp in the glow—wet shoulders, dirt on his forearms, the torn edge of something red trailing behind him like a wound. 

He exhaled, long and low, like the kind of breath you only let out when you’re finally off the clock.

Clark peeled off the top half of his suit in the dark, like it was just another shirt, and you, half-shielded under the blanket, turned your eyes to the ceiling. You weren’t sure why. Modesty? Maybe. Or because the sight of him like that, unmasked, unarmored, felt more intimate than it had any right to.

His hand brushed the dresser. He opened a drawer, still not seeing you, still assuming the bed was empty the way it always was when he came home like this—late, bruised, needing to rest before the world noticed he was missing.

And then he sat down.

Right on the edge of the mattress, right near your hip.

You felt the jolt in him as soon as the weight of you registered. Clark’s whole body stilled, posture tight with surprise. For a second, neither of you said anything. Only the storm spoke, low and alive beyond the walls.

“…you’re in my bed,” Clark said, voice rough, like gravel turned velvet.

The corners of your mouth tipped up. “It’s still your bed?”

“Didn’t know anyone was here.” His exhale turned into something quieter than a laugh.

“Figured.” Even in the dark, you saw how he looked tired in a way that went deeper than muscle. “The door not your style anymore?”

“I didn’t want to wake anyone.”  

 “Storm kept me up.” You shook your head, dispelling any worry. 

Something passed between you, like the hush between lightning and thunder. The years hadn’t gone anywhere.

Clark rubbed the back of his neck, the motion tugging at his damp suit—what was left of it. You could just barely make out the outline of a bruise blossoming along his ribs, and the edge of a singe mark that hadn’t fully healed. 

“I, uh…” He looked toward the closet, half-bashful. “Gimme a second.”

You rolled onto your side, watching him fumble around in the dark for something dry—half a uniform still clinging to him like it didn’t want to let go.

 Eventually, he pulled an old Smallville High t-shirt from the drawer, one of those faded souvenir ones they used to give out at homecoming, and a pair of boxers that probably hadn’t seen daylight since before the Daily Planet. 

He changed right there, unceremonious, back turned like modesty was optional when exhaustion won. 

“You know…” You murmured, voice warm with the beginnings of a tease. “If I remember the fairy tale right… I’m in your bed, which makes you Papa Bear. Or maybe Mama Bear, depending on the night—Baby Bear…”

“Don’t start.” He gave a low grunt of amusement as he tossed his cape into the corner.

“I’m just saying—” You buried a smile into the pillow. “—you’re lucky I didn’t eat your porridge, too.”

“Yeah, well…” He didn’t finish the sentence, ust sighed and pulled back the blanket, not even hesitating. “Scoot over.”

 “You’re serious?” Your eyebrows rose in the dark. 

“I’ve flown through a thunderstorm, disarmed two missiles, and got launched into a silo tonight.” He was already sliding in beside you like it was the most natural thing in the world. “I’m too tired to fight for the floor.”

“You’re also too big for this bed.”

“Tell that to my spine.” He rolled onto his side, back to you, exhaling like his bones had finally forgiven him. “You always hog the covers anyway.”

You paused a beat, heart knocking once against your ribs, soft and startled.

It struck you then, lying there beside him in the hush that he hadn’t even hesitated. No awkward shuffle, no sheepish “are you sure?” like there used to be. Just a quiet command and the weight of him settling beside you, as if sharing the bed was inevitable.

Years ago, it would’ve been different.

Back then, Clark would’ve taken the floor without blinking. 

No matter how cold the hardwood was, no matter how hard you tried to convince him otherwise. He’d give up his bed like it was the easiest thing in the world, but he’d never stray too far. He wouldn’t sleep on the couch downstairs, wouldn’t leave you alone in a house creaking with wind and nighttime sounds. He’d curl up right there on the rug beside the mattress, arms folded beneath his head, still close enough to talk in whispers until sleep took you both.

You remembered the slow evolution of it, how many visits it took to get him to climb up onto the mattress with you. The way he’d hover at the edge, legs dangling off the side like he might still change his mind. You had to nudge him, over and over, assure him it was fine, that he was too tall for the floor anyway. 

It took patience. Years of it. Quiet reassurances that there was room. And now? Now he didn’t even second-guess it.

Clark had always fallen asleep like he trusted the world would keep spinning without him—shoulder tucked in, spine curled ever so slightly, hands folded near his chest like he’d never outgrown being gentle.

The storm had quieted some, though a distant rumble still shivered through the house every now and then, like a memory refusing to settle. You lay beside him flat on your back, blinking slow at the ceiling.

You shifted slightly, the mattress dipping beneath the weight of you both. It was a twin bed, barely wide enough for one full-grown human being—let alone a man like Clark. Your knee bumped the back of his thigh, and there was no room to apologize. The space between you had already been whittled down to nothing. 

It was impossible not to notice how big he’d become. Not in the way headlines described, not in the way the world talked about Superman like a monument or a myth. 

No—this was something quieter. Something more human. The breadth of his back pressed against your arm. The slow rise and fall of it as he breathed. The impossible heat radiating from him, like he still carried the flight in his skin, like there was a sun buried in his chest that hadn’t quite dimmed.

You blinked up at the ceiling again, but all you could register was him. The gravity of him. Familiar and vast.

It hadn’t even been a week. Just days ago, he was halfway across the country, his life threaded into a different rhythm—different city, different morning coffee, different silence. 

And now? Now you were here, your shoulder tucked beneath your cheek because your body curled into the hollow of Clark Kent’s warmth like it was second nature.

You exhaled through your nose, slowly, quietly.

How strange, you thought. How sudden. To fall back into someone like this—not with force, but ease. Like a season changing. Like gravity doing what it always does.

You didn’t know what would happen when the storm passed. If this was temporary, or inevitable. It crawled up your throat, needing to be released. 

“Clark?” You called out, voice round with conviction. 

He hummed in response, consciousness slipping quickly. 

“...truth or dare?” 

Clark shifted slightly. You couldn’t see his face, but you could hear the small breath he pulled in—recognition, amusement, maybe a flicker of something else.

“You serious?” He asked, voice thick with sleep, lips barely moving.

“You always picked truth.” You continued, watching dark shadows play across the ceiling. “Even when we were twelve. You never once picked dare.”

There was a pause. You could feel him smile, faint and crooked, just from the shape of his back.

“That’s because your dares were insane.”

“They were creative.”

“They were dangerous.”

“You survived.”

The mattress creaked as he adjusted just enough to tilt his head over his shoulder, not all the way, just enough to glance back at you. The outline of his face caught in a slant of the storm, soft and open in the way Clark only ever was when he thought no one was looking.

“You always picked dare.” He added quietly. “Even when you were scared.”

 You hummed. “Especially then.”

He didn’t answer at first. Just looked at you for a breath longer than necessary, then turned back around, nestling deeper into the pillow You thought that might be the end of it—that he was too tired to entertain you, that the memory of it was enough.

Yet—

“…Truth.”

 It came low, muffled into the crook of his arm. You smiled, eyes still tracing the old water stain in the ceiling, shaped vaguely like an “S”.

“Okay.” You were thoughtful with it. “Truth…”

And for a moment, the question held on your tongue, quiet and dangerous and not quite ready to be named. Because some truths weren’t games anymore.

Not tonight. Not with him so close.

“All this time… was I just the one who missed you?”

[yakshxiao]

gold rush | c. kent

a/n: i LOVED Superman 2025 guys it was so good i saw it twice i have been. thinking a lot of thoughts and krypto is the best character in the film so. in a tag full of clark kent smut i knew i had to write some angst. warnings: cursing, clark being the best boyfriend, angst but also fluff so, head injuries, hospitals, autistic clark i mean what who said that, canon typical violence, torture (nothing too crazy), kidnapping, i do NOT know how photography, darkrooms or concussions work, pet names, nightmares, lots of kissing, established relationship, not proof read, probably some other stuff but oh well <3 wordcount: 6.4k summary: your boyfriend's dog gives you a concussion and it's not even the worst part of your week. now playing: gold rush - taylor swift "what must it be like to grow up that beautiful?/with your hair falling into place like dominoes/my mind turns your life into folklore/i can't dare to dream about you anymore."

MINOR SPOILERS FOR SUPERMAN (2025) AHEAD!

Sunday

The dream starts out like any other. The sun is shining—It’s always shining when Clark dreams. This dream is warm, it feels real.

He’s sitting next to you on a porch swing.

The dreams always start out like this.

Your hand is on his cheek, and he can’t help but lean into your touch.

And in an instant, your hand isn’t your hand anymore—Instead, your skin turns a robotic black and feels like sharp metal against his face. Nanites spread from the tips of your fingers into his nose, and into his mouth—

He’s panicking, using both hands to try and claw the nanites out of his mouth, but they’re like sand, he barely shovels a handful out when twice as many show up, now traveling down his throat to his lungs and up his face.

He can’t breathe. He looks to you for help, but you’re no longer there—The sun is no longer shining, and Superman is all alone. He can’t breathe.

The nanites take over his eyes next and he is plunged into darkness—Alone, scared and unable to breathe. He can’t think, he must be dying. He must be.

“Clark,” He hears a voice from far away. He knows that voice. It’s your voice. “Clark, baby, wake up,” And he can’t tell if he’s imagining it, but the darkness starts to shudder like someone’s shaking him. But he follows your voice, stumbling his way through the darkness, attempting to breath until—

He wakes up gasping for air, sitting up in bed, this panicked, frenzied look in his eyes. His hand comes up to his mouth to check for nanites but all he finds is saliva and tears. His heart is racing, but he needs to check if you’re okay. His head turns towards you, and there you are, hair messy from sleeping, in a Smallville Decathlon tee shirt that he outgrew a few months after he got it, and sleep shorts. 

His hands come up to rub his face as he attempts to refocus. Everything is fine, he reasons. But everything isn’t fine. Superman doesn’t have nightmares.

Your voice cuts through the sound of him trying to steady his breath as your hand rests on his back, rubbing gentle circles on it.

“It’s okay, baby, It was just a nightmare.” Your voice is sleepy and far away, but what little energy you can muster at—Clark checks the time—four thirty-two in the morning is focused on him. So much for sleeping in on a Sunday. And after a few minutes he hears you ask, “Wanna talk about it?”

He wonders how much you already know, if he was talking in his sleep. But he shakes his head.

“I’m sorry,” His throat feels dry, “I didn’t mean to wake you,”

“Don’t be silly, Clark,” You mumble, your hand traveling up now from his back to the ends of his hair, twisting your fingers between curls. You don’t bother saying that it’s fine to wake you if he’s having a nightmare, that he might be Superman, Krypton’s last son, destined to save humankind, but you’d travel to the ends of the earth to help him get a better night’s sleep. You don’t bother saying it because he already knows it.

He just nods before laying back down, trying to focus on deep, soothing breaths. Your brain searches for anything that could be comforting in this moment, but your brain only finds one thing you could do for him in your sleepy state.

“How about I make you some breakfast?” You wonder, because you know that no matter what he says or does, part of him is still in Kansas, always longing for his Pa’s cooking (and conveniently enough, you had been taught by Pa Kent himself how to make French toast just the way Clark likes it the last time you had visited).

Clark smiles just a little.

“Yeah, that would be great.” He says softly, and you move to get up, but he grabs your arm, “Wait, just..” He avoids your gaze as his thumb rubs your skin, “Just.. lay with me a while?”

You smile.

You don’t hesitate to melt back into bed, finding yourself wrapping your arms around him, and he pulls you close like you’re made of feathers. He pulls you up so your head is on his chest, listening to the sound of his now steady heartbeat. Something about the weight of you on top of him, so alive and real, soothes him.

You both fall asleep with a mumble of a promise to make breakfast in a few hours.

Monday

He had only left the room for a minute!

But, for Krypto, a minute was all he needed. He had only agreed to let Krypto visit his apartment after you begged him all day, having an extreme soft spot for his cousin’s awful dog (whom you couldn’t help but fawn over).

Really, Clark couldn’t find it in himself to deny you anything, especially when you asked with the manners of a lady (even though at lunch that day you had eaten tacos with your hands and gotten siracha all over your face).

But he really needed to go take a shower, so—

“Are you sure you’ll be okay with him while I shower?” He wonders, and you just laugh.

“Clark, I know he’s a handful,” He watches as Krypto tugs you around the room by a length of rope you had bought to play tug of war with him. You giggle and stumble around Clark’s living room, “But he’s just a dog, and he likes me! Watch,” You turn to Krypto and say, “Krypto, Sit!” And after raising his ear to listen to you, he sits easily, mouth still latched onto the rope. You grin and begin to pet him, “Good boy, Krypto, who’s my special man?” You coo, and Clark just rolls his eyes.

He looks to Krypto with a defeated sigh, and points to him.

“Hey, dude,” He starts, but Krypto doesn’t stop wagging his tail and staring at you. “Krypto,” He says, and his attention is finally turned to your boyfriend, “Be good, okay?”

Krypto just lets out a bark in response, before beginning to drag you around the living room, and Clark is comforted as he walks out of the room to the sound of your laughter.

Which lasted all of a minute, while he turned on the shower, took off his glasses and loosened his tie—

Bang!

Something had hit the wall next to the bathroom. Clark doesn’t even bother turning off the shower before running back to the living room, met with the sight of you settling onto the couch with Krypto whining by your feet, a fresh head shaped hole in Clark’s wall.  

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” You coo at the dog, barely noticing Clark, “I’m okay,” But your blinking is slow, and all Clark wants to do was panic. He knows Krypto’s strength, but Krypto hadn’t seemed to realize that you aren’t like him or Kara—your head can’t just take blunt force like theirs could.

“Krypto,” Clark’s voice is sharp in a way neither you nor Krypto are used to, and you just frown,

“It’s not his fault! He just didn’t know,” You start, “Please don’t be mad at him, baby,” You beg. Clark bites the inside of his cheek, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to deny you anything. If Kryptonite was Superman’s only weakness, you are Clark’s.

He goes towards you, looking down to Krypto with an unapproving stare, gently tapping the dog with his foot to get him out of the way. To his credit, Krypto does seem guilty, like he really wasn’t aware of his own strength. With Krypto settled next to your feet, Clark kneels down, his hands resting on your knees.

“Sweetheart,” he starts with his soft, Kansas farm boy voice, and you could melt,

“Hi, baby,” You hum, and he can’t help the slight smile he gives.

“Sweetheart,” he repeats, “We need to get you to the hospital.”

You look at him for a long moment.

“..Why?”

Clark sighs. This is going to be tougher than he thought.

“Because I think Krypto gave you a concussion.”

“…Krypto is here?” You wonder, and that’s when Krypto lets out an ‘arf!’ by your feet, causing you to giggle and go to lean down to him, but Clark’s hand gently comes up to your chin, tilting your head back to look at him.

“Can you focus on me for a second?” His voice is soft, but it demands your attention. “How about we go to the hospital?”

Your face falls into a frown.

“I.. I don’t like hospitals, Clark, you know that.” And he does. Needles frighten you, and it’s often bright and overstimulating in a way he doesn’t know how to fix.

“I know, honey,” He says, “But if you’re hurt, a doctor could help in a way I can’t,” and there’s really no ‘if’ about it, you have all the classic signs of a concussion.

“But you’re superman!” You whine, and Clark nods,

“I am, but Superman doesn’t have a medical license,” He reminds, and you huff. What’s even the point of dating Superman then?

“I’m not going to the hospital,” You grumble, and Clark doesn’t have the heart to tell you he will go put his suit on and fly you over to the hospital if it would make you go.

“C’mon, honey, what can I do that’ll make you go to the hospital?” He wonders, and your hands find his tie, your fingers curl around the silky fabric.

“..Anything?” You wonder, your eyes wandering up to his pretty face. And because Clark is head over heels in love with you, his answer is instantaneous,

“Anything.” Your hands play with his tie as you bite your lip, a mischievous smile on your face. For a second Clark wonders which of your many wild fantasies you’ll pull out, when you say,

“..Will you let me photograph you as Superman?”

Clark is grateful for your concussion because you don’t notice his momentary hesitation. Clark knows that everyone, including you, is jealous of how often Clark is able to ‘interview’ Superman, but it’s different for you than it is for Lois or Jimmy—you have been trying to get a good photo of Superman for years, you couldn’t give less of a fuck about interviewing Superman; but if you could get photos of Superman, you’d be one of a kind. It would do great things for your career.

But you had never asked Clark.  How could you? You didn’t want him to feel like you only started dating him because of his being Superman—It felt wrong. But to be fair, you weren’t exactly in your right mind.

But you hate hospitals.

“Sure.” He says, and it takes you by surprise.

“Really?” And when he nods, you grin and throw your arms around his neck with a giggle. He hugs you tightly, mumbling into your hair,

“I’m going to take you to the hospital now, okay?”

“Okay, baby.”

Tuesday

“Can you tilt your head to the left?”

“Like this?”

“No,” You shake your head with a sigh, stepping towards him and tilting his chin just right in the direction you wanted. He looks ethereal, but real. You snap a few more shots before saying, “Can I get a few shots of your hands?”

Clark’s eyebrows furrow, but he holds out his hands for you.

You had decided that the roof was the best place to take Superman’s picture and today was a bright and sunny day in Metropolis. The cool breeze of late spring moves his cape like he’s the main damn character and you can’t help but wonder if he is.

After a doctor had looked at you and your head yesterday, they also did a couple of scans which did in fact confirm that you had a concussion. But they advised your boyfriend that it wasn’t too bad and that with some rest and Tylenol, it would be good to go back to work on Wednesday.

Clark, being the loving and devoted, and a little overprotective, boyfriend he is, decided to spend the day tending to your every need.

Of course, when you woke up this morning all you wanted (after some Tylenol) was to take pictures of Superman (a deal Clark should’ve known you would remember, despite your concussion). He had managed to get you to relax in the morning, but you were persistent.

“Do our readers want pictures of my hands?” He asked, and you shake your head.

“No, but I really like them, and I am the photographer, so..” You shrugged. You had got plenty of good shots, but you knew you wanted to get the shot. In the rest of the photos that most newspapers, including the Daily Planet, published, Superman is a red and blue streak, barely visible. Which meant that you already had the best shots that anyone in your business had, but you were ambitious—

You wanted the shot of Superman, the one that would be used in years to come, the embodiment of the last son of Krypton.

But you must be staring at him, because he blushes and asks,

“What’s that look for?”

You snap a picture of his pink cheeks.

Then, you say,

“Do me a favor, uh, kind of.. float up a few feet?” You ask, and he does, just a couple of feet off the ground. His cape is still floating in the wind, so you curl your hands into fists and place them on your hips, arms slightly bent. “Okay, pose like this,” Your doting boyfriend obliges and mimics your pose. “Okay, and big smiles,” You direct. Clark attempts to smile, and suddenly you put the camera down, letting it hang around your neck. “Seriously?”

“What—What did I do wrong?” He asks, and you just look at him. His smile was, at best, awkward.

“Your smile, it looks very forced.” You tell him, causing him to sigh.

“It’s hard,” He defends, “I don’t really like getting my picture taken,” And you do know that to be true. When you first started working at the Daily Planet, one of your first assignments was to take updated profile photos for the Daily Planet website. It had made you roll your eyes at first, but in hindsight, you were grateful for it. It was a good way to introduce yourself to everybody.

Lois’ picture came out perfect the first time you took it, her skin practically glowing as you photographed her, asking about your career so far, politely answering questions about hers. You had become fast friends over the ten minutes it took you to capture how beautiful she is. Jimmy used his in his Tinder profile, that is how good you are.

And Clark.

You had immediately been smitten by handsome he was, but you wanted to focus on getting these portraits done. It took you ages to get him to smile in a way that didn’t make him look awkward. Finally, something you had said made him genuinely laugh—

“I guess being that pretty doesn’t mean much when you can’t smile for a picture,” Your voice wasn’t mean, it was actually very warm, and even a bit flirty, “I knew there had to be some kind of catch.”

 You two were fast friends, and then you were fast lovers. Why wait when you know something is good?

And after you started dating, you took plenty of pictures of him; Some with your actual camera, some with your phone, and a couple with your polaroid camera. Clark looked good on vintage film.

But he still hadn’t mastered the concept of smiling on command. Maybe it wasn’t really a thing on Krypton, not second nature like it is for you, but you know it’s a weak excuse. You’re pretty sure your handsome boyfriend is just that awkward and humble.

“But you’re so pretty,” You whine, and you see Clark’s lips tug up a bit. “C’mon, think about something you like. Something that makes you happy.” You request, and you watch as Clark’s eyes shut for a moment, as he takes a deep breath, and then opens his eyes.

When his eyes land on you, a natural, handsome smile falls onto his face. You act quickly then, kneeling next to him and taking a few shots of him where he looks.. heavenly. The sunshine of the photo highlights how super he really is, and you can just tell that you got it.

Clark can tell too, because you watch as he releases the pose he was in and rests his feet on the ground.

“Got what you need, Miss?” The Superman voice makes you smile, and you walk over to him.

“Need just one more thing,” You hum, your arms wrapping around his neck just as his wide hands rest on your sides. He is inhumanly warm. When you lean in to kiss him, he meets you halfway, and suddenly you’re kissing Superman, and he is so good at it—like he is with everything else he does. Except smiling for pictures.

You don’t even mind when you feel your feet being lifted off the ground, too caught up in the way he grips you tighter to distract you.

Wednesday

Not much had changed in the day that you and Clark were out.

Lois and Jimmy bicker, Steve makes fun of your boyfriend (you threaten to kill him), and Cat asks how your day off was. You don’t bother to try to hide your smile as you tell her you got some good pictures.

“I can’t believe on the day you’re supposed to be resting after a concussion; you decide to take pictures.” Lois says, and you shrug, leaning against her desk.

“They’re really good pictures.” You smile, “I got lucky.” And you had, in so many ways. Besides, Lois would do the same thing in your shoes. You glance over to Clark’s desk and see him absent, so you check your watch. He’s twenty minutes late.

There’s a shot he got caught up doing hero things, but there’s just as good of a shot that he got distracted or something, and you’re really not sure when he’ll be here.

“Where’s boy wonder?” Lois asks, following your longing gaze. You shrug with an adoring smile.

“Probably washing his cape, or something.” You say affectionately, and Lois shakes her head. Whipped, the both of you. “Anyways, I’m gonna go to the darkroom to get some good physical versions of these pictures. Need anything before I go?”

It’s a habit of yours to ask—Sometimes you feel like all you do is take and process pictures, like your job is easier than everyone else’s but your coworkers know that’s only because you love your job so much.

Lois shakes her head and tells you she’ll let Clark know where you are when she sees him. You thank her and take your leave, setting up camp in the darkroom, knowing you’d have to take your time to process each photo. Sure, you could just send Perry digital copies, but the presentation of these physical prints would be too good to miss out on.

You’d have people begging to buy these photos, and it thrilled you. You’d have to give Krypto a big treat next time you see him.

You weren’t sure how long you stayed in the darkroom, but you were about three quarters of the way through your process when there’s a gentle knock on the door. You don’t even look up, you know who it is, and it’s only confirmed when warm, strong arms wrap around your torso from behind as you hang a photo to dry.

“Hi,” he says, watching you as you work.

“Hey,” You hum, leaning against him with a soft smile. “Late again, huh?”

“Had to help a little kid repair his solar system project after he dropped it on the way to school.” Your heart melts.

“Well, no wonder you’re late.” You say softly, but before you can say anything else, he turns you around with his hands on your hips before his lips are on yours. He tastes like mints and coffee, and you think you could die and go to heaven right now. Your hands rest on the back of his neck, the tips of your fingers barely brush against his hair.

His hands lift you with ease and sit you on an empty space next to your equipment. He stands between your legs, his glasses pressed against your face, and in between kisses, you push his glasses up to rest in his hair, not wanting the teasing that would come with the mark that they would leave.

He deepens the kiss a bit, but before he can stop himself, he’s mumbling, “Gosh, you’re so pretty,” as he continues to kiss you, and you find yourself smiling against his lips. He’s a sweetheart, your boy.

Your hands travel up a bit, unable to stop yourself from tangling your fingers within his dark curls. He lets out a content sigh against your mouth and you take the opportunity to slip your tongue through his parted lips, and it seems to egg him on more.

After a moment, you realize you need to breathe, but that doesn’t seem to be a concern of Clark’s. Your hands squeeze his biceps, trying to get his attention, but his hands begin to travel up and down your sides, until you eventually pull away, but his mouth chases yours,

“Clark,” You say breathlessly, “Baby, I gotta breathe,” you say, and he just nods,

“Sorry,” he starts, pressing a kiss to your lips quickly, and then to your cheek, “I’m sorry,” and then a kiss to your forehead, “I’m sorry,” and he means it. He forgets that you can’t hold your breath for an hour like he can.

You just smile and lean your forehead against his as you try to catch your breath.

“I’m okay,” You promise, and Clark nods, his lips plump and pink. He looks pretty. After a moment, Clark’s eyebrows furrow when your stomach growls loudly.

“When was the last time you ate?” He wonders, and all you do is shrug. You have that bad habit of forgetting to eat when you get focused on work, and Clark has noticed. Oh, how Clark has noticed.

“Uh,” You shrug, “I had a cup of coffee this morning,”

“That doesn’t count,” He reminds, and then sighs. “Well, I’m starving. Thai or Chinese?” He wonders, and you shrug in response.

“Indian?”

Clark’s lips catch yours in a long, soft kiss. When he pulls away, he says, “Perfect.” But the way he looks at you, you’re not sure he’s talking about the suggestion.

Thursday

You can’t contain the grin on your face as you bounce from Perry’s office back to Clark’s desk. You hold today’s issue of the newspaper, and Clark’s article sits on the front page, with your photograph printed above it. His name and yours sit next to each other on the page and Clark is seriously considering getting it framed.

“It’s a great photo,” Lois compliments, looking at her own copy. You grin to her,

“Thanks,” And that’s when Jimmy sighs as he sits back in his chair. You lean against Clark’s desk, who cannot stop staring at you.

“Alright, I give up.” Jimmy sighs, “You’re the better photographer. I mean, you were able to get Superman to what? Pose for you? How’d you do it?” He wonders, and all you can do is shrug, the way you’re smiling has Clark whipped.

“I know a guy,” You grin, and you don’t even look at Clark. He’s so in love with you.

Lois and Jimmy go back to their work, and you finally turn your attention to your adoring boyfriend.

“We should celebrate.” He grins, “Dinner tonight?” He wonders. Admittedly, the two of you would have dinner either way, whether there was something to celebrate or not.

“Sure. What did you have in mind?” You ask, and he smiles.

“Sushi?”

“Sushi.”

Friday

Sushi does not wind up going as planned. In fact, you don’t make it to dinner at all—You get stuck at work after someone spilt coffee on half your prints, so you resign to the darkroom while Superman fights off some big alien robot—

Clark promises to make it up to you, and you just smile affectionately and tell him to go save lives.

It’s technically Friday when you make your way home, Superman is still fighting that robot, but you were spent. Your eyelids were heavy, and your bones ache. You daydream about a relaxing weekend with your boyfriend, not knowing that the next few hours would be some of the worst of your life.

You listen to the sounds of Superman punching robots while you walk home and you have this goofy smile on your face. You’ve never been so in love, and it makes it hard to focus on much else—

Including the sound of footsteps approaching.

Later, you would kick yourself for your stupidity, for your carelessness. How could you not hear the heavy footsteps of a man with ill intent?

But you’re knocked out by the butt of a gun before you can hear anything other than the sound of your boyfriend’s laser vision from almost a mile away, marking your second head injury of the week.

When you wake up, your head is killing you, and when you go to rub the sleep out of your eyes you find that your arms are tied to the chair you sit in. You blink away exhaustion and realize you have no idea where you are. This warehouse—You assume it’s a warehouse—is dark and smells like the sea. When you look down, you see dried blood on the floor.

Your heart rate begins to increase, pounding against your chest—but you’re comforted, if only briefly, by the fact that you know as soon as he can, Clark will be here to get you. Then, you remember the robot infestation, and his preoccupation. You might be here for a while, and you have no idea who’s taken you.

Your head hurts.

You begin to wiggle your hands and arms, trying to figure any weak spots in the binds, trying to get out of here before Clark even realizes what has happened.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A voice pierces through the darkness, and you freeze. You try to remember what Clark said to do in this situation, but your brain is fuzzy and full of fear.

“Whatever it is you think I have,” You force your voice to be stern, unshaken, “You’re wrong.” You say, and the voice laughs. From the darkness comes a small group of people, three or four of them, all dressed in black. On their necks, you see a tattoo—No, not a tattoo. A brand.. A large ‘L’ encased in a circle is branded on each of their necks.

“We’re going to make this very clear for you.” Another one of them talks, “Answer our questions, and we’ll let you go. Give us bullshit, and well..” She gestures to the biggest of them. He’s as tall as Clark, looks as big as him too. “Our friend here has an anger problem. Would be a shame if he had to take it out on you.”

A shiver runs down your spine.

Where is Clark?

“What do you want from me?” You ask, and one holds up Thursday’s Issue of The Daily Planet. The one with your picture of Superman, his heroic smile as bright as the sun behind him.

“You took this picture, right?”

“That’s my name under it, isn’t it?” You ask, your answer dripping with sarcasm—you can’t help it. Under your fear, you’re angry. What right do these assholes have to torture you? But your sarcasm is met with a sharp slap across your face by the big man you were threatened by. Your ears are starting to ring, and your vision unfocuses for a second, but then you nod, “Yes! Yes, I took that picture, Jesus—” You huff.

Of course this is about the picture. No one else in Metropolis has been able to get Superman to pose for pictures.

“How’d you get Superman to pose for you?” One asks, and you shake your head.

“I-I don’t..” Your throat is dry. How could you tell them that his dog gave you a concussion, so he owed you one, on top of the fact that he was the love of your life?

You don’t get the chance to finish, because the big man’s hand comes down in a powerful fist, and hits you in the stomach. You groan in pain, leaning over as you try to catch your breath. Someone grabs your shoulder and pulls you back up so he can land another punch to your stomach—and you’re gasping for air, trying to catch your breath after hearing a sharp crack! of your ribs.

This is bad.

Where is Clark?

“How’d you get him to pose for you?” They ask, because of your pain, your vision is blurred, so they all blend together as one—except for this big guy, who stands looming over you.

“He.. He saw me.. taking photos on the roof.. asked me.. if I was okay.” The lie comes out between panted, labored breathes, “I asked.. I swear that’s all..” You say, because you feel tears coming on, and you don’t want them to see you cry.

This goes on for a long time—or maybe it’s not long, you really can’t tell, not between the pain and the fear—the fear of dying, the fear of not being able to see Clark again, the fear of accidentally slipping up and telling them exactly what you know—time becomes a blur.

By the time they ask their last question, you feel like you really might die. You spit blood onto the floor, your vision is unfocused, and your entire body is shaking—from the pain or the fear, you do not know.

But the last question really fucking scares you.

“What’s Superman’s secret identity?” They ask, “Who is he?”

Your face is swollen, bruised, and bloody.

“His name… is Kal-El,” You say, because it’s true, it’s what everyone knows, “He comes from the planet Krypton—” You cry out in pain when you’re hit again, and all you can do is cry, because you just cannot help it. You have nothing left.

Where is Clark?

“He has to be someone in his day-to-day life! Who is he?” They ask again, and you shake your head even if it hurts.

“I don’t know!” You cry out, “I don’t fucking know!” And it’s a lie. Of course you know who he is. You know every detail you can possibly maintain about who Superman is when he’s not saving the world. You know how he loves mandarin oranges and how they look so small in his hands, you know how he ‘doesn’t care for’ pickles because he cannot bring himself to really hate anything, you know how one day, he wants to have two kids, a boy and a girl, you know how eye contact turns him on, and you know how gentle he is despite his size. But you can’t tell them any of that.  

You’re about to pass out. You can’t take much more of this, and they know it. Your chest is heaving, up and down with labored breaths. It hurts to breathe. You can barely make out the image of someone pulling out a gun, probably the same gun that had knocked you out earlier.

And then it all happens in an instant.

To your right, you hear the smashing of glass as something—no, someone, someone flies through the window, and before you can even turn your head, strong, warm arms wrap around you, snapping the ropes around your arms and flying off, out of this warehouse and into the sky, filled with the warm yellows and oranges of dawn.

There he is.

Wind whips through your hair, and you relish the idea that you’re alive. You know your injuries are not life threatening, you’ll be okay.

Through the sounds of the wind and the ringing in your ears, you can hear him talking, gently, as if he’s afraid that speaking louder might hurt you, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry,” and despite how badly you want to reassure him that you’re okay, all you can do is curl into him as your vision fades, and you’re plunged into darkness.

Clark pushes himself to fly faster when he feels you go limp in his arms.

When you wake up, you’re in a hospital.

You hate hospitals.

You’re not strapped down or anything, not hooked up to anything.. but your wounds are cared for, and instead of pain, you feel kind of.. floaty. Whatever they gave you for the pain is working wonders. Maybe hospitals aren’t as bad as you think—

Where is Clark?

As if he can read your thoughts, and in your high on pain killers state, you think maybe he can, he walks back in. He moves quickly to sit by your side, his hands clasping around yours. If he owed you one for Krypto giving you a concussion, he owes you a million for this. He’s sick to his stomach at the sight of you, and all you want to do is pull his stupid glasses off his face.

“Hey,” You smile, and somehow, Clark’s frown only deepens.

“Hi.. How are you feeling?” He asks, and you shrug.

“Mm.. Floaty.” You confess, and it seems to take him off guard.

“Floaty?”

“Yeah, whatever they gave me for the pain is really working.” You confess, and you see him smile just a bit. You think about his awkward forced smile when he’s asked to take a picture, and you begin to giggle, even if it hurts your ribs.

“What’s so funny?” He asks, his chin rests on his hands that encompass yours, and  his voice just a murmur, because nothing about this is funny to him.

You just shake your head, and ask,

“Can we go home?”  His blue eyes stare into yours, and he sighs,

“The doctors say—”

“Clark, I don’t care.” And the slight break in your voice makes him stop, “Please, just.. take me home. I want to shower, and eat something, and—” he nods.

“Okay, yeah. Let’s go home.” He says gently, helping you sit up. He can tell you’re exhausted and even though you’re feeling no pain right now, you’d be much more comfortable at home. Besides, Clark had taken every single word the doctor said to heart, so he knows how to take care of you from here, he could probably recite it in his sleep.

On the way home, Clark fills you in on everything—The people who took and tortured you were Luthorcorp Followers, devoted to find out everything they could about Superman in the name of their old boss. Having taken the only good photos of Superman currently in the press, you had become an immediate target for them. Clark had spent a long time feeling guilty about these facts as he waited for you to wake up.

If your head wasn’t cloudy, you’d notice the longing stare of your boyfriend, who’s fingers twitched to scoop you up and fly you home, keep you there forever, and never give the world the chance to hurt you again. You got hurt because he was Superman, and he’s not sure if he can forgive himself for the position he put you in.

What would have happened if you were more seriously hurt? …What would have happened if he got to you a moment too late?

It’s all Clark can think about as he watches you down the sandwich he made you, hungrier than you had been in ages. And you’re so tired. But you frown when you watch Clark across the table, looking.. sad. But he had saved you, what was there to be sad about?

Wordlessly, you push the plate in front of you with half a sandwich towards him. Immediately, he shakes his head and nudges it back towards you.

“You’re starving,” He reminds, “And besides, I’m not hungry.”

You give him a look.

“You’re always hungry, baby,” You remind, pushing the plate back to him. He shakes his head,

“Not tonight.” He says, and you sigh.

“Denying yourself food won’t change what happened. I’m fine, Clark—”

“But you aren’t.” He says, and his voice is tight like he’s terrified of the reality of it, “You got kidnapped, and.. and really hurt, because I’m Superman, and I can’t.. I couldn’t live with myself if you were hurt worse, or..” He trails off, because even saying it is too real for him. He’s looking at you, cut up and bruised, holding half a grilled cheese, and he wishes he could take this entire week back.

“But I’m okay.” You remind. “And I love you. I know what the risks are, okay? But I love you too much to stay away from you, and I love you too much to ask you to stop fulfilling your life’s purpose. This might have happened anyways.” You say, and nudge the plate towards him. “Here. Eat. For me, please?”

And because Clark can’t deny you anything, he reaches forward and takes the second half of the sandwich, and the two of you eat quietly, tears brimming both of your eyes, the day finally catching up to you.

Saturday

You wake up gasping for air. You can’t remember what your nightmare was about, but Clark’s arms are around you before you even turn your head to look at him.

He holds you close, petting your hair.

“It’s alright, I’ve got you.. It was just a nightmare, sweetheart. You’re alright.” He says gently, and he listens to the sound of your heartrate slow. Tears are running down your face, and you attempt to mumble out something—an apology or maybe an explanation—but he just shushes you softly. “It’s okay.” He assures, and it is.

Because Superman protects people—It’s what he does. And you’re his favorite person. He’ll always come to find you, to make sure you’re okay, that you’re safe.

The thought alone is enough to drag you both back to sleep, with a mumble of a promise to make breakfast in a few hours.

[yakshxiao]

"holy shit they finally confessed, what comes next--"

[yakshxiao]

be pro-aging but wear sun screen. sun protection is not beauty industry propaganda it will save you. wear it. or else.

[yakshxiao]

Link to thread

Link to news story

[yakshxiao]

Nanami Kento was not getting old. He wasn't. He was not. Forty-five wasn't old.

"Oi! Nanamin! I'll take the left!"

A grown man's voice that still somehow didn't suit Yuuji. A ghost of an image flickered across Kento's mind; a memory; a boy, superimposed over a man.

"Alright. Don't take any unnecessary risks. Meet me in the middle of the lower corridor. We've cut off its exit routes, now."

Kento watched Yuuji leap down a set of stairs that were no longer stairs; their crumbled wreckage structureless, as though the Curse that had befallen the building was akin to a landslide.

The raggedy old block had needed demolishing for years, anyway, such an eyesore, what was city planning doing with his taxes...but perhaps a nice restaurant? No, something else, but not a club, so noisy and there's enough racket from the kids around this city anyw--

Kento stood. He definitely didn't suppress a groan. He definitely didn't grumble at the blood-clot dust on his knees, and trousers that he only ironed that morning and the crease that was perfect and I haven't even had a chance to read my newspaper, ridiculous, senior management these days, should write a letter of complai--

Kento reached the lower corridor. His blood was acid in his lungs. He coughed, dry. He looked left, and right, and left again. He looked down. His shoelace was untied. He tutted. He knelt down. That was his first mistake.

ROAR! THUNDER THUNDER THUNDER

"Nanamin! Move!"

Kento stood on a dice roll; and broke. The pain was excruciating. He must have been stabbed by a thousand knives, Christ, can't move I can't move like an old man like--

"Oh my-- my god, my back--"

"NANAMIN!"

"My back, Yuuji-- my back--"

+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

All of the curtains in the house were drawn. Nanami Kento couldn't be seen like this. You crept closer to him, where he stewed on his back on the sofa like a wounded lion. His head turned away, sour and sulking; though, not for you, you knew.

"Hey. Brought you some tea. A little snack. I went to the store. They didn't have the pastries you liked, they said some guy got there just before I did, but I got--"

A scoff. "Why have they always run out? I go in there every day, half the time they haven't got them, and half the time they're stale, and the other half--"

"--that's three halves, my love--"

"--and another thing--"

"--oh my god, Kento, you're like an old man--"

"Don't say it." Silence, stewing again. You opened your mouth to bicker back, and Kento turned to you, so petulant that you had to bite back a laugh. "Don't."

Kento cleared his throat. He straightened his tie. You could not possibly laugh at his indignity, still dressed as if he would still be going back to work in his sorry state.

There was a knock at the door. As you shot Kento one more look of exasperated affection, and headed to the door, he called out in thinly-veiled panic.

"No visitors today, thank you!"

"What, you gonna get up and stop me? Or throw them out? Please."

Critical hit. Silence. Then: "That was uncalled for."

You laughed. You opened the door. Yuuji stood there, grinning.

"How's the old man holding up?"

A grumble from the sofa ("I'm not old!"). You bit your lip in mirth.

"He's as expected. They ran out of his pastries."

Yuuji held up a paper bag, and gave it a shake. "Yeah, they did. Wonder who bought them?"

A yell from the living room.

"Is it Yuuji? Tell him to come back another time."

"When?"

"Never."

"But he's brought you a hot water bottle. And a new newspaper. And some of your pastries."

"Oh. Oh, well then...send him in."

[yakshxiao]

When the Cult of Nikador conquers your city and sacks your temple, you are captured by the Crown Prince of Kremnos and taken as his war prize. (Or: The fall of Castrum Kremnos, as seen through the eyes of an oracle held captive by Prince Mydeimos.)

12.8k words of romance, enemies to lovers, and slow burn. Canon-adjacent (multiple timelines theory) with ancient Greek historical and mythological influences. Warnings for themes of war, slavery, and threats of sexual violence (none from Mydei). Mydei also seems quite terrible to you at first, but this is all unreliable narration; he is actually very kind to you for the entirety of the story. MDNI.

Author's note including discussion of themes, ancient Greek influences, canon lore (including the multiple timelines), and a list of characters and terminology for my non-hsr readers lol. dividers by @/strangergraphics!

They find you at the altar.

The Sons of Gorgo are a cruel people. Their hands are smeared with the blood of your fallen temple, staining the ivory silk of your chiton as they drag you outside. Chaos roars around you: the streets are strewn with corpses, the olive trees are devoured by flames, the sky is filled with ash. The city is screaming in its death throes. The Kremnoans jeer at you, at your humiliation. High priestess of a weak god, they say. Prophetess turned slave. They’ve heard that the hieria of your temple are required to be virgins. You won't be a holy maiden anymore, after they're done with you.

They argue over who gets to rape you.

You do not cower. You are sitting on the temple steps, surrounded by the corpses of acolytes and worshippers alike, but you remain impassive. You refuse to give the invaders the satisfaction of seeing your tears, and anyway, they are much too small to intimidate someone who speaks to the Titans. They bicker over who is more deserving of the valuable plunder of your body—who has killed more people, who has captured more slaves, who has burned down more homes—and you feel disgust, rather than fear. They're closer to animals than men.

The hoplites fall silent when their leader comes. His hair is fire and gold; his eyes gleam like the sun. He cuts a terrible figure—the shape of a man who feasts on strife and fear. Just like the rest of his army.

Just like Nikador himself.

“What’s happening here?” he says, harsh and oppressive. His gaze is sharp on you, but you do not tremble. “Who is this?”

A soldier speaks proudly: “She was the high priestess of this temple,” he says. “But now she’ll be a slave.”

The men laugh.

“We were fighting over who should get to keep her,” another says. “But I think it's clear as day who's most deserving, eh?”

“The fiercest among us should get the greatest prize,” someone else says. They cheer and bark like hyenas. Their general does not smile. He only looks at you, eyes burning. Outraged. How much the Kremnoans must hate your people, you think, for their leader to glare at you like this.

“Fine,” he says. “I'll take her, then.”

They grab you with their red hands. Push you toward an encampment, a tent. Laugh in delight and bloodthirst. About time our Crown Prince shows interest in a woman, they say. We were starting to think you were a eunuch, Your Highness! It wouldn't do if he were. In the wake of victory, Kremnoans are meant to take all the glories and treasures they can. That includes all the peoples they've conquered. Our mighty general needs to enjoy his spoils of war!

When they finally reach his tent, they throw you onto the ground, and the pain slams through your bones. You are left alone with the Kremnoan general, glaring up at him from your place on the floor. His eyes are less sharp now; rather than burning on you, they merely seem cold. He will kill me, you think, he will kill me like he has killed my city, but then he kneels down. A hand extends toward you, reaching, pilfering, violating—

You spit in his face.

“Don't fucking touch me,” you snarl, and the general jerks back, surprised. Your hand darts out as he falters, grabbing a dagger from his hip, swift and deadly.

The sharp metal of his gauntlet snaps around your wrist before you can slash open your throat.

“What are you doing?” he snaps. Your brow arches.

“Shouldn’t it be obvious?” you ask, scathing. “I'd rather die than let a Kremnoan touch me.”

His mouth twists. “I have no intention to do such a thing,” he says, and the bark of laughter you let out is so cruel that you hear in it the echo of the soldiers who dragged you to your doom.

“Do you take me for an idiot?” you hiss. “That’s what your people do when they win wars. What the Cult of Nikador does to the women they enslave.” The blade is pressed against your jugular, and you feel its edge when you swallow. “Or will you instead bleed me dry and drink my blood from your chalice? That's what your god demands of you, isn't it?”

His eyes narrow. “Foolish. I was going to help you up, but I suppose you prefer being on the ground.”

You watch him, wary, unconvinced, but he turns away. As if utterly disinterested in you, he crosses the threshold to rummage through his personal effects. You spot a golden winecup in his hands when he turns, and he snorts when he catches you looking at it suspiciously. “You have no need to worry,” he says dryly. “Kremnoans prefer pomegranate juice to blood.”

“If only they preferred to be humans rather than beasts,” you retort, and the general’s eyes harden as he pours himself a drink. You wonder, for a moment, if he will strike you, but he seems to temper himself as he takes his draught.

“I hope you prefer living to dying. If you should, then you won't leave this tent tonight. Doing so would mean throwing yourself to those beasts.”

“I'm already in the presence of one.”

His nostrils flare. You can sense his fury, but his voice is taut and restrained when he says, “Better to contend with one beast than twenty, don't you think?”

Your captor walks over, his boots heavy against the ground as he kneels before you. You expect to feel his hands on your neck, or the weight of his body crushing yours into the earth, but instead you are presented with his winecup, half empty.

“Take it,” he says. When you don't move, merely glaring at him, he frowns and sets the drink next to you before rising again. You're left staring at the nectar, and—unbidden—you see the rivers of blood on the temple steps, lacerations in your holy ground. Smell the copper stench of slain men, hear the sorrowful cries of your goddess through the Evernight Veil. Your captor misinterprets your grimace: “You just saw me drink from that yourself. It isn't poisoned.”

You glance at him, uncomprehending.

“...you mean for me to drink this?”

“Yes. Pour some on the sheets, then drink the rest.”

He turns away, as if to leave. You swallow, disbelieving.

“And then?”

“And then you may do whatever you wish, so long as you don't leave my tent. I have a war to wage, so you'll need to entertain yourself for the rest of the night.”

Entertain yourself. Your city is aflame, your temple is desecrated, and he wishes for you to drink pomegranate juice and amuse yourself until he has the time to rape you. As if you can't hear the screams and cries of your city. As if you can't smell the charcoal and death through the fabric of the tent. As if you will be content to lie back and wait for him to cleave you open once he returns.

How much the Kremnoans must hate your people, you think, for their prince to be so cruel to you.

You imagine rushing toward him. You envision grabbing his knife, lodging it into his back, in the soft space between his vertebrae, a path into his heart—but you hold yourself back, because you have no doubt he’ll easily overpower you now. No—if you wish to kill him, you will need to do it while he's unguarded. Likely when he's asleep, or perhaps even inside you, depending on how stupid or drunk he’ll be when he rapes you.

You will need to humour his whims until then.

“How much?” you ask when he is about to leave the tent. When he glances back at you, you add, uncomprehending, “How much do you want me to pour out?” And why?

He shrugs. “However much makes sense to you.” The general glances back, thoughtful, and says, “I’ll see to it that someone else cleans up in here tomorrow,” and then you understand.

You drink half of what remains in his cup, and then you pour out the rest.

Your goddess sends you visions that night, dreams of the past, present, future. You peer upon a child drowning in the sea, a poisoned woman with a golden dagger, a mad king cleaving a statue into fifths. You dream of burning villages, fallen idols, a father slain by his son. Aquila closes his eyes; Georios drowns in shadow; monsters roam the earth. A great fortress looms before you, dark and decrepit, and the young king seated upon its throne is covered in blood. He reeks of the corpses of a thousand temples, of your temple. You cannot see his face, but you recognise the shape of him, mighty and terrible—a man who feasts upon strife and fear. You are lying at his feet, wounded. Your chest is heavy, aching, and your heart bleeds in the hand of Nikador, scarlet dripping through his fingers.

You are crying when you wake up.

You do not need to look outside the tent to know that your city is gone. Aurelia is silent, bereft of life—its buildings gutted, its people slain, its treasures stolen. Death has settled over your home, and in its wake, the Kremnoan legion prepares to leave.

The soldiers sent to disassemble your captor’s tent all bear white caps. They must be helots, the children of slaves; you have met a few of them during your time as an acolyte, watching them trailing after the rare Kremnoan master who would sometimes seek supplication at your temple.

You used to pity them for their station; now, they pity you.

The helots give you sorrowful looks as they strip the bed of its red-stained sheets. They speak gently to you when they give you water to wash your face and thighs. They try to counsel you, tell you that Prince Mydeimos is the best person who could have stolen you. He is just for a Kremnoan warrior, they whisper, show the soldiers grace and you'll see, and then they put you in chains.

You do not show the Kremnoan army any grace. You glare at every hoplite who lays eyes on you, and you refuse to bow your head for any of them. On the long march back to Castrum Kremnos, they study you like you are an animal. Some of them look at you with wonder—for you are a divine oracle in the flesh—some with shameless curiosity—for it has spread like wildfire that you have been defiled by the Crown Prince Mydeimos, who has never taken a woman as his plunder—and some with unadulterated glee. They pester you and the other prisoners-of-war, and you recognize them as the animals who sacked your temple and burned your olive groves.

“Has Prince Mydeimos given you a Kremnoan welcome?” they ask in their dialect, mocking. Has he told you what your life will become? Do the men behind you know that their priestess has been ruined, or are they too stupid to understand the Kremnoan tongue?

“HKS,” you retort, and their faces fall. They look at one another, aghast.

“What did you say?” one grits out the Aurelian dialect, and you cast him a cool glance.

“HKS. I called you a hyena—or are you too stupid to understand the Kremnoan tongue?”

You do not expect to be struck. A hand cracks across your cheek; the pain is blinding. You are on the ground, knees in the dirt, reeling. The prisoners behind you are crying for their priestess; the memory-ghosts of the acolytes behind you are screaming for help; the olive trees behind you are turning to charcoal and dust; the city behind you is burning, burning, burning. Oronyx will never let you forget this, nor any other memory.

“What is this?” a voice snarls, and time freezes.

The procession has come to a halt. The hoplites are suddenly children, caught red-handed with a broken toy. The offending soldier swallows, and you feel some semblance of glee. The Cult of Nikador is famed for their obsession with order and with glory. It is taboo among their people to touch another’s spoils, and suicide to try it with one’s superiors. Killing the slave of the Crown Prince would be the same thing as stealing his belongings or breaking his sword—acts of impudence punishable by death.

He stutters: “She—the priestess… she was out of line, Your Highness, mocking us—”

“And you were not out of line for touching her?”

The offending soldier looks at the ground beneath him. Sweat beads his temple. “I… forgot myself. I apologize, Your Highness.”

Your captor is not placated. His gaze roams the bystanders, scalding. “Should any other man be foolish enough to strike the priestess,” he booms, “I will cut off his hand myself. I have claimed her as my war prize, and no one else shall touch her. Do you understand?”

The yessirs are immediate. Unanimous. The general is restless still. He turns to you, the edge of his voice now muted, but still present. “Can you stand?”

I will slit your throat someday, you think as you look up at him. “Yes, my lord,” you reply demurely. “He merely struck my face. The rest of my body is untouched.”

“Then you will ride upfront with me,” he declares. “I will not have my spoils within the reach of anyone else.”

You end up next to him in his chariot, which makes you want to claw off your skin—to be so far from your worshippers, and so close to your captor. You turn your cheek to him, throbbing and bruised, but he deigns to speak with you anyway.

“Tell me,” he asks brusquely, “do you have a death wish? Or are you just a fool? Though even fools usually know when to hold their tongue.”

“I know too many tongues to hold them all, I'm afraid,” you reply neatly in the Kremnoan dialect, and your captor gives you an incredulous stare. You pointedly look ahead, eyes unwavering on the winding road to the City of Strife. “I am the High Priestess of the Aurelian Cult of Oronyx. I will not be cowed by a gaggle of idiots.”

“You are very proud for someone currently wearing chains,” the general remarks.

“And you are very cruel for someone who will someday wear a crown.” You pause then, thinking of your dreams before gambling: “Though a man who plans to kill his father could only be cruel.”

Your captor falls silent. You glance at him, mouth curling in satisfaction as you catalogue his reaction. His features are stoic, and someone with a lesser eye for expressions—someone not practiced in the art of telling fortunes and giving counsel—might miss it, but it's clear as day to you: your captor is ungrounded.

Disturbed.

“I know not what you mean,” he says coolly, and you raise a brow.

“It’s no use lying to me, you know,” you bluff. “Have you somehow forgotten that your war prize is an oracle? That is why your men were so obsessed with staking their claim on me.”

The prince remains composed despite your goading. “...so the rumours of your visions are true.” He studies you. “There were almost children or elderly in your city when the walls fell. Nearly no women. And the Aurelian soldiers… it was as if they knew all our plans.” At your silence, he concludes, “It was you, wasn't it? You foretold our attack and warned them.”

“It seems that the future king of Kremnos is a clever one,” you say dryly.

“And the High Priestess in his hands is a fool.” His jaw clicks. “I am trying my best to keep the wolves away from you, but you seem determined to throw yourself at them.”

You bare your canines with a smile, and you try dangling your newfound leverage over his head. “If I were you,” you reply, “I would be more worried about the wolves who would hunt for you, Your Highness. I’ve heard that King Eurypon and his council threw you into the sea as a baby; I am quite sure they would do the same to you now—unless you kill them first, of course.”

A great deal of being an oracle is guesswork. Oronyx sends you dreams, visions, echoes; people give you hints, gossip, microexpressions. Together, you can get a fairly good grasp on a man’s circumstances. Your captor is no exception: from the way his brows knot, you know that you've guessed true.

His eyes narrow, and he glances back at the rest of the Kremnoan procession, who are too far behind to hear anything. “Keep quiet,” he commands. “Don't think I won't kill you if you are a liability. There are limits to my patience.”

You snort. “I won’t give you away”—not yet—“but it won't be out of fear of death. Kill me if you'd like; I will not cower.”

Your captor makes a noise of displeasure. “I have never met a person so eager to die.”

“Haven’t you?” You arch a brow at the perplexed look he gives you. “Valorous death before glorious return. That’s your way of life, isn't it? You’ve burned my city and destroyed my temple—I will never see a glorious return. By the laws of your own god, there is now only one path left for me.”

You turn your wrists, let the iron chains sing. It occurs to you that you had been dead in your visions—slain by King Mydeimos—but you had not been shackled.

Castrum Kremnos is a prison.

Never have you been anywhere so strange nor frightening. The walls of the fortress climb high enough to eclipse the sun; the streets are crawling with soldiers carrying spears and shields. Every man and woman carries a sword; every child play-fights with a wooden one. Each one of them cheers as their army returns from its campaign, and nearly all of them eye you curiously—the war prize chosen by their famed Crown Prince.

During your long procession into the inner city, all you can hear are the whispers and jeers of the crowd. It is the warriors who are the loudest—the ones who did not put Aurelia under siege and are disappointed to have missed out on the glory of its destruction. They speak about you, about what you must look like beneath your bloodied robes, about how they cannot blame General Mydeimos for capturing you. Any Kremnoan man would want to fuck the High Priestess of their long-time enemy, and that is only truer now that their leader has staked his claim on you. All of them want a turn with the war prize of the Crown Prince.

Your own face remains unmoving, but Prince Mydeimos’ eyes darken. “Hyenas,” he growls, and you have to stop yourself from snorting at the hypocrisy.

The king is said to be senile and half-mad, and his queen died some years back of illness, so the homecoming warriors are greeted by a high statesman, General Krateros. You have heard many tales of him: legendary strategos, shrewd politician, the right hand of King Eurypon. The Seaside States once launched an offensive on Castrum Kremnos and was met with Krateros’ Goldshield Brigade; every enemy soldier was either put to death or bound in chains.

Chains just like yours.

General Krateros gives you a thoughtful look when he meets you, eyes locked on your iron cuffs. “I had a great hand in raising you, Prince Mydeimos, so I know you well,” he says. You’ve heard tell that after Prince Mydeimos was thrown into the Sea of Souls, General Krateros spent years searching for him at the request of his mother, eventually finding him years later in some fishing village. Krateros has ever since served and counselled the Crown Prince—perhaps poorly, for he says, “I did not take you for the type of man to capture a woman as your bounty.”

“Nor did you raise me to be the type of man to throw an innocent to the wolves,” your captor replies evenly, and you stop yourself from rolling your eyes.

No, you think, you are only the type to put a holy maiden in chains.

Your face must give away your disdain, for General Krateros studies you carefully. “Innocent or not, you may do whatever you wish with her, Mydeimos,” the strategos says, his eyes keen on you. “A predator need not worry for his prey other than how to keep it for himself.”

The message is clearly for you—know your place—but your captor appears to take the words to heart. Keeping you for himself is exactly what he does: rather than sending you to the slave’s quarters or some courtesan house, Prince Mydeimos has you stay in his room and orders that no one—aside from his appointed servants—should be allowed an audience with you.

Thus begins your life as the war prize of the Crown Prince.

If you were a different sort of person, you might enjoy the position. The Aurelian soldiers who fought to protect you are likely chained in iron and performing hard labour; the older women who were accosted in your temple are likely being forced to do menial work; the younger ones may have been ushered into brothels. You are instead placed into a beautiful, private chamber, and you are given robes of silk. Your wrists are manacled like every other slave under Kremnoan law, but the chains are gold. You are told to bathe in fragrant water, and the scent of flowers is ever-present on your skin.

You don't mistake any of this as kindness toward you. It is clear that you are not meant to enjoy this opulence; you are part of the opulence. A thing for the Crown Prince to indulge in, a treasure stolen from Aurelia. The time will come when you are raped, and the time will come when he bores of you, and the time will come when you will be killed at the foot of his throne.

All you can do is face your fate with dignity.

An entire moon passes, and your fate does not befall you.

You are unsure why your captor does not hurt you. Perhaps he is busy with making war; the servants say that he stays at the barracks every night rather than coming home. He might be expected to fuck you anyway, but he visits you only once a day for half an hour, and he only ever stays long enough to ask you three questions: Are you eating? Are you sick? What did you do today, while you were alone?

For an entire month, your answers are single words: Yes. No. Nothing. You sit as far away as possible from him, though you do not give him the satisfaction of seeing your fear—you always meet his impassive gaze, your own hard-edged.

Sometimes he tries to speak with you: Are you comfortable? Are you bored? Do you want anything? But most days, he leaves as soon as he can, his jaw tight and his eyes filled with something that edges on discomfort. You start to wonder if he finds you too unattractive to touch, if he is debating whether he should kill you instead of fucking you. But regardless of his intentions toward you, it is clear that he does not care for you.

So it surprises you when your captor one day says, “You have not been eating.”

You give him a long look, wondering if you'd misheard.

“No,” you eventually reply. “I have not.”

“Why?”

Your brow arches. “Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

“Why?” His expression becomes puzzled—and it aggravates you. You point out, “You are a Kremnoan prince. It should not matter to you if a slave is starving. Or are you worried that I'll waste away before you can fuck me?”

His eyes narrow, and you think you see that hint of discomfort again. “I am worried you will starve to death in my care.”

Your nostrils flare. “I am not in your care. I am your prisoner.”

“I see to it that you are fed and clothed and bathed. Is that not care?”

You snort. “A man who took my home away from me cannot care for me. He can only torture me.”

His jaw tightens. Your captor’s voice measured, but his frustration is palpable: “He can also keep you alive—even though you seem determined to die.”

“Death is a mercy. I would much prefer it to being raped.”

“I thought it would be clear by now that I do not wish to touch you,” your captor says, frowning, and the bark you let out is so loud that he startles.

“Do you think I'd be stupid enough to believe that lie?”

“I think you'd be smart enough to see reality for what it is.”

“Yes,” you reply, voice bitter, “I am smart enough to see the reality of what you have done to my city. And I am smart enough to know the reality of what happens to women after they are captured by the enemy.”

Prince Mydeimos inhales sharply. His eyes flicker with—with something. Something you don't care to identify. Something you quickly decide is disdain.

“Believe whatever you want. Either way, I want to keep you alive.” His eyes narrow in suspicion. “Is it that you want to die? Is that why you aren't eating?”

You give him that fanged smile again. “No, Your Highness, I do not wish to die. I wish to stay alive so that I may someday slit your throat.”

Prince Mydeimos disappoints you when he does not react in kind. “Fine,” he writes off. “You are free to kill me as many times as you want, so long as you eat.” You give him a strange look; he ignores it. “Now, why haven't you? Surely you must want to, if your goal is to live long enough to kill me. Is the food not to your liking?”

A frown. “I don't understand why you care.”

He nods. “So it isn't. Very well.”

You open your mouth, countless questions on your tongue. What do you mean? Why does this matter? Why aren't you using me? Why aren't you hurting me? But Prince Mydeimos leaves, and you are alone again in your prison—untouched, unnerved, unbalanced.

Your conversation with Prince Mydeimos leaves you feeling strange. Perplexed. Nervous. The longer you think of it, the more you wonder why he is taking so long to torture you. You'd been dragged into his tent, fully expecting to be either mauled or violated; over a month later, the worst that has happened is that you have been served unappetizing meals, and that you have spent your days so idly that you have grown bored.

But even if you are idle, you are not unharmed. You still dream of the night of your abduction. You dream of the cries of your worshippers, of the stench of burning flesh, of your olive groves turning to ash. You dream of being pushed to the floor of your captor’s tent, of golden gauntlets cleaving open your legs, of pomegranate-red stains on silk sheets. Sometimes the dreams are so vivid that you wonder if they are actually visions from Oronyx—echoes of a future yet to be played out, or a past that you’ve somehow forgotten.

Whenever you wake from these dreams, you crawl under the bed and spend the rest of the night there, and you spend your day afterward untouched, unnerved, unbalanced.

You are in one of these tense moods the next time you speak at length with Prince Mydeimos, after his usual questions: Are you eating? Are you sick? What did you do yesterday, while you were alone?

“I am trapped in your room, so I did nothing but read your books,” you reply bluntly, picking idly at the chicken on your dinner plate. “Don't you have anything other than war histories, by the way? I should like a romance novel or two. I'd even take a philosophical dialogue over this. Kremnos must surely have a few thinkers who do not write solely about war.”

Your captor stares—perhaps surprised at your sudden chatter, though not displeased by it. Though he does seem perplexed.

“You are not ‘trapped’ here,” he points out, frowning. “I gave you leave some time ago to wander the grounds, so long as you are accompanied by one of the guards I have assigned you.”

“So you say, but not a single one of your guards has thus far dared to let me out.”

Prince Mydeimos frowns. “Why?”

You give him a strange look. “Do you not know the rules of your own land, Prince Mydeimos? Helots are given free movement, and even trusted slaves have some autonomy, but prisoners-of-war are not allowed to wander anywhere except in service of their given task. And my given task is…”

You gesture to the bed, and the prince’s mouth tightens.

“I see.”

You note the displeasure on his face—genuine, a sign of true oversight. “Why would you expect that I'd ever be allowed to roam around as I please?” you ask. “You paraded me around on your chariot as you returned home from war, and you announced me as your plunder to the entire city. Everyone knows I am your prisoner, and everyone treats me accordingly.”

“I have never kept a personal slave, let alone taken one for my spoils,” he says evenly. “I did not think these laws would supersede the orders of a Crown Prince.”

You snort at the sheer absurdity of his answer.

“The Crown Prince of Kremnos has never kept a slave? Your esteemed father has at least half a hundred of them in his personal service, I'd wager.”

“And my late mother did not allow any of them to serve me. She disliked the practice.” His voice is terse, belying something that turns your stomach. You look away, not wishing to think of it.

“Does that matter?” you deflect. “Your Highness, if you wish to ascend the throne and follow in your father’s footsteps, then you'd better get used to keeping slaves. Castrum Kremnos is built on them.”

Prince Mydeimos gives you a hard look. “I will not be the kind of king that my father is,” he says bluntly.

His words carry weight. Suppressed anger. You watch him keenly, interested—suddenly wondering if there is more to Prince Mydeimos’ plans to commit patricide other than self-preservation.

“And why would that be?” you ask.

He raises a brow. “You are an oracle. You haven't seen what he's done for yourself?”

“If I could see whatever I wanted at will, do you think I would be sitting here right now?” you ask dryly, and his brow twitches. His expression is otherwise impassive, but his eyes give away his alarm, and you exploit it immediately: “Worry not, Prince Mydeimos. Whatever secrets you've let slip are safe with me, so long as you do not touch me.”

“I thought it would be obvious by now that I have no wish to touch you.”

“And I thought it would be obvious by now that I am not stupid enough to trust you.” You laugh when he frowns. “No need to pout, Your Highness. You don't need my trust to keep me under control.” You shake your chains. "These are all you need."

He glances at your manacles, his eyes narrowing. “Controlling you is not my aim.”

“Then you are a fool and will make for an idiot king.”

“Surely no more of an idiot than the prisoner calling their captor a fool.” He contemplates you, his eyes suspicious. “...have you truly seen my future as a monarch?”

“No,” you lie. I hope you suffer every moment you sit on that throne, you think, remembering how Nikador will reach into your chest and close his hand around your heart, how you will bleed to death at the feet of King Mydeimos. You have no intention of giving him foreknowledge of his victory over you: you remain quiet, unyielding under his shrewd gaze.

The prince eventually relents, though clearly unconvinced. “I'll see to it that the guards and servants allow you some movement,” he says as he turns to leave. “I will… convince them to overlook the laws.”

His hand is on the door when he hesitates, glancing at the full dinner plate on the table.

“Do you still not like the food here? I had it changed after our conversation some time ago.”

You default to your usual answer: “Does it matter?”

He makes a noise—one that almost sounds displeased. “So it still isn’t to your taste.”

“No. I find the Kremnoan palate disagreeable.”

“Well, then, what should change to make you agree with it?”

You come very, very close to laughing in his face. “You could serve me a dish cooked by the Goddess of the Hearth herself, and it would taste like ash in my mouth because I am a prisoner.”

He sighs, closes his eyes, and you suspect he is silently counting to ten. “...I cannot blame you for your misery,” he finally says, “but you haven’t been eating, and I would prefer it if you didn't starve to death under my care.”

“Why?” Why does this matter? Why aren't you using me?

Why aren't you hurting me?

His voice grows quiet: “Because I do not wish to see any harm befall you.”

The words are so simple. So honest. There is no hint of deception in them, nor in his eyes—which flicker with something that looks so much like pain that even you, with your practised skill of reading expression, find yourself thinking that he feels sorrowful for you. That he feels guilty over you. That he wants to see you safe.

You marvel at what a good liar he is.

Because he must be lying. This must be some kind of manipulation. Perhaps he is afraid of your prescience, or perhaps he plans to use it for his own gain, and this is his way of appealing to you. Or perhaps he wants you to be willing when he fucks you. Some men do prefer that to outright rape; their egos demand it.

There is no other reason for him to come to your room every night and ask if you have been eating, ask if you are well, ask what have you been doing while alone. No other reason for him to say, “You barely touched your food yesterday, nor the day before that. Surely there is something that could be done to make you eat.”

You decide to play along for now. If you will die eventually, you may as well eat better in the meantime.

“More spices,” you say neatly, “and better olive oil. At minimum.”

“Of course,” he mutters. “The oil. I knew it.”

He leaves before you can ask him what he means.

The next day, you are served honey cakes with safflower, grilled fish salted to perfection, and wheat-bread with an olive oil so fresh and thick that you know it can only be an import from the south. The servants deliver to you five texts: three romance novels and two Socratic dialogues. Kremnos has no great storytellers nor philosophers, an unsigned note reads, so you will need to make do with these works from the Grove of Epiphany.

Prince Mydeimos does not visit you, and you find yourself in bed the whole night, three questions echoing in your head.

For whatever reason, Prince Mydeimos continues treating you well. The food is better—you’d even call it mouthwatering, at times—and new books are frequently delivered. He makes fewer stops by your room, possibly because he is busy or perhaps because he is growing disinterested with you. You don't care to ask why.

But as it turns out, he has been trying to find some way around the laws about your movements. He has been failing, too—quite miserably—and his way of compromise is driving you mad.

On the first day you are allowed outside your room, Prince Mydeimos is leading you, taking you for a walk on the palace roofs and parapets. For the first time since being abducted, you feel sunlight and wind on your skin—and you are too annoyed to enjoy it.

“This is your way of allowing me some freedom? Taking me out so you can walk me like a dog? I won't bark for you, you know.”

Prince Mydeimos clears his throat, pointedly avoiding your stare. If you didn't know better, you'd call him embarrassed.

“Because you are a prisoner,” he explains tersely, “I have been strongly advised against letting you wander the grounds unless it is to fulfill your assigned job as my companion.”

“You mean, as your whore?”

Prince Mydeimos looks so offended that you nearly laugh. “As a concubine.”

“Use whatever word you want—a slave you fuck can't be anything other than a whore,” you point out evenly. Your captor gives you a look of mild pain, but it is gone before you can unravel it.

“Well, then, it is a good thing that I will not be touching you,” he retorts. “Regardless, I cannot let you wander without drawing undue attention to myself”—a poor idea right before a regicide, you infer—“but I may eventually be able to let you move freely without me if we are able to convince people that you are serving me willingly. Not as my prisoner, but as my lover.” His mouth slants. “This would require you to give the impression of enjoying my company, however.”

“Then I suppose I will be trapped forever in your quarters,” you reply instantly. When his expression sours, you add, “Worry not, Your Highness. I do not much like the sights of Castrum Kremnos anyway.” Your eyes flick over the strange innards of the city—the high walls hiding open skies, the stone paths barren of any flowers or shrubs, the constant thunder of marching hoplites and proud salutes. The sword of Nikador hanging over the fortress gates, sharpened by the souls of countless slain Kremnoans.

This city runs on war. Hungers for it. It makes your heart pound, has you hearing the screams of your worshippers as the Kremnoans flood through the gates of Aurelia. Gone forever are the musicians who strung on their lyres every morning and night; gone are the streets of laughing children who would always ask you to fix their toys; gone are the olive groves full of birdsong and gossiping women.

Gone is everything that you love.

“You might like it better within the city,” your captor tries to reason, “or if I can someday take you beyond the walls and into the settlements—”

“—then it will still never be home.”

Prince Mydeimos has the grace to stay quiet, for which you are glad.

“...your home,” he says eventually, “what was it like?”

What was it like, before I took it away from you?

You shrug, feeling a dull ache in your chest that you'd rather die than show him.

“Peaceful. Kind. The people were nicer. The music was lovelier. The food was better.”

You remember the flavour of the dishes that the women in the neighbourhood always made for you, the figs and apples and olives that the farmers always brought to the temple, the simple but sweet breakfasts that you would have with the other acolytes—eat up, my love, the older ones would always laugh, eat your fill!—and then all you taste is ash in the sky and copper between your teeth and the acrid, nauseating stench of human flesh burning, burning, burning.

You close your eyes to the looming walls of Castrum Kremnos—a prison from which there is no escape.

“None of it should matter to you, of course,” you add lightly.

Because no matter how much Prince Mydeimos denies it and no matter how gently he treats you, you are just a bed-slave—and Castrum Kremnos does not care about its slaves. The burning of your home will become naught but ink in their war histories—a paragraph if you are lucky, a footnote if you are not. You are merely one massacre in a thousand years of them. Your death will be one casualty in hundreds of millions.

But you return to your quarters later that night, and you see another book delivered—an Aurelian play, wildly popular a few years back—and you notice a lyre on the nightstand, and your meal tastes just like the ones the grandmother next door always brought over to share. You realise that your captor must have sought out an Aurelian helot or slave to make it, that he must have gone out of his way for it. You ask silently: Why does this matter? Why aren't you using me? Why aren't you hurting me? And you answer for him: He is lying to me, he is manipulating me, he wants me willing when he rapes me.

But you eat your entire meal anyway, and then you crawl into bed and cry.

A fortnight later, Prince Mydeimos discovers that you sleep with a knife under your pillow.

It is a harmless thing, sharp only enough to cut the steak that you'd been fed. It brings you comfort nevertheless. After seven days of your mantra—he is lying to me, he is manipulating me, he wants me willing when he rapes me—you couldn't help but take it. If he is stupid enough to touch you, you will use it to make it as painful for him as possible.

The Crown Prince is sitting on a chair when you return from the bath. He is playing with your little knife, spinning it a hand. His expression betrays neither anger nor displeasure—though there might be a hint of disappointment. Why, you would not know.

“You are afraid of me,” he remarks.

“No,” you lie. “I do not fear you. I abhor you. All the books and Aurelian dishes in the world cannot change that.”

It is slight, but Prince Mydeimos nods. His shoulders bear a heavy weight suddenly, and you avert your gaze. You don't want to see him looking weak, looking human. He is your captor and nothing but your captor: the man who laid waste to your home. He is the heir to a millennia of Strife.

Fortunately for you, he soon returns to his usual, stoic countenance. “You really expect to hurt me with this?” he asks.

“I would try my best,” you say tersely, “if it came to it. I would hurt anyone who tried to touch me.”

You nearly shift under the weight of his gaze, but you manage to contain your discomfort. You return his stare coolly—you don't scare me, Son of Gorgo—until his hand drifts to his waist. He reaches for a sheathe dangling from his belt, and you recoil immediately, expecting the sharp kiss of his blade. But there is no blow, no knife across your neck nor lodged within your heart. He merely holds the weapon out to you, presenting its golden hilt.

“Take this,” he offers. At your hesitation, he adds, “This is not some trap. I am gifting this to you.”

Even as you snatch it, you ask, “Why?”

“Because I think it's wise for you to have some kind of weapon—a real one, not an eating utensil.” He glances at the door. “The palace is full of guards and soldiers, and now that I have begun taking you outside, some of them have seen you and grown… overly curious about the High Priestess of Aurelia.”

Anyone would want a turn with the war prize of the Crown Prince himself, you remember them saying.

“But I am yours,” you point out, and when Prince Mydeimos looks at you, startled—or disconcerted?—you add, “your slave, I mean. By law, I belong to you. They cannot touch me without facing the wrath of the crown.”

He scowls. “If only the men here were so easy for me to control. Then I would not need to keep you here and worry about…” The prince's brow knots as his voice drifts off, and then he shakes his head. “Nevermind.”

You don't want to know what he had been about to say. You don't want to hear him pretend to feel concern over you. You do not want to think that he may be keeping you here for any reason than to fuck you. He is lying to me, he is manipulating me, he wants me willing when he rapes me: this is your mantra as you study the blade. It gleams in the candlelight, gold like his hair in the fire of the invasion, and its weight is familiar—the weight of the dagger you tried to slit your own throat with, you realise.

It is light, you notice now. The blade sits easy in your fingers, moves for you too gracefully. You should not be able to hold the weapon of a grown man so easily. “This was made for a woman,” you realise. “And not a very strong one.”

“Not strong in terms of brute strength, no. But she was swift. Deadly.”

You are neither strong nor swift, but you can imagine waiting for the right moment to strike—when he's drunk or sleeping or inside you. You'd run this across his neck. Bleed him dry before he can bleed you.

“You're not worried about me attacking you with this?” you ask, and he snorts.

“Would I be afraid of a kitten with sharp claws?” At your sour look, he either mocks or consoles you—you cannot tell which—“Don’t feel too poorly. Most people in this world could not touch me; I am invulnerable.”

“Invulnerable?”

“Immortal,” he clarifies. “Any wound I take heals without a scar; any death I die reverses without fail.”

“Ah… because of the Sea of Souls, I presume.” You remember the child in the waters of the Styx, the way he cried and cried and cried—and you push away the memory. How many babies have wailed as the Kremnoans marched on their homes? Countless. Countless in Aurelia alone. Your goddess has shown you enough memories for you to know, and sometimes the images blend with the massacre of your worshippers.

A massacre that your captor led.

“So there is no way to kill you,” you remark, voice now subdued.

“You sound disappointed.”

“Why wouldn't I be?”

Something in your captor’s eyes flickers, something that makes you look away again. He is lying to me, he is manipulating me, he wants me willing when he rapes me. You cling onto all the visions that your goddess sent you: King Mydeimos is seated on his throne of blood; the claws of Nikador are cutting into your heart. Aurelia is still burning, burning, burning. As long as Oronyx is alive, it will never stop.

No olive oil, spice, nor book will ever change that.

Prince Mydeimos leaves for a time. Okhema—the greatest enemy of the Kremnos—has launched an assault on the city, and it is his duty to defend it. You can hear the distant cries of war from your room, the thunder of marching troops and the roar of terrible men. You hide in the sheets and try not to think of dying Aurelia. You pray for every Kremnoan soldier who invaded your home to perish, to receive the valorous death for which they long.

You play no songs. You receive no books. The food tastes like shit.

For a single night, you think you have been granted your wish. There is a breach into the city, and the bells toll in emergency. The guards tell you to stay in your room no matter what—any Okheman soldiers would desire you, would defile you, and there will be no hope for you if they steal you away, the prized concubine of their greatest foe—and then they leave to join the fighting.

You hide under the bed. You clutch the golden dagger that Prince Mydeimos gave you and you hold it to your breast. You think of all the hands on you as you were dragged from your altar from the Kremnoans, the way they jeered at you and threatened to violate you. If the Okheman soldiers do the same, Prince Mydeimos will not be here to save you—

Save you?

No, he didn't save you. Your captor merely stole you for himself. He is slaughtering the enemy soldiers right now, massacring them the way he did your people. He is taking prisoners of war. He will feed them nicely and send them beautiful novels and texts. He will lie to them, manipulate them, and wait until they're willing.

Or he could be dead.

Of course he's not dead, you idiot, you tell yourself, as soon as you have the thought. He will live long enough to kill you like in the visions, and anyway, he is immortal.

There is no use hoping he is dead—for that is your hope. That he will someday be gone from this world, and that he can never again take away someone's home. That you will have the chance to slit to his throat at least once before he kills you. That you will have the satisfaction of seeing him die before Nikador takes your heart.

There is nothing else you are allowed to hope for.

The fighting ends a few nights later, and your captor returns soon after the bells of victory toll.

Prince Mydeimos is invulnerable, but he looks worse for wear. His armour is scuffed, shattered in a few places. His hair is a mess, sweat and dirt matting it, dulling the gold. The whole of his body—from his legs to the bare expanse of his chest—is covered in a thin layer of soot.

His shoulders relax when he sees you, and you try your best to ignore it.

“You won, then?” you ask. You are in bed, seated in the far corner. The sheets are pulled up to your neck, hiding away your chest and bare arms. The handle of your knife is warm in your palms, comforting.

Prince Mydeimos does not miss the way you clutch it.

“Yes,” he says, voice heavy. There's a tinge of fatigue marring his stoicism when he replies, “Are you disappointed?”

“No.” His eyes flick to yours, belying a surprise that you decide to kill: “I am an oracle. I knew you would not perish in this battle.”

“...of course.” He closes his eyes, counting to ten again. You study him as he tempers himself, wondering why he has returned to you when neither of you enjoy each other’s company.

“Why are you here?” you ask. “Shouldn't you be taking a bath? Enjoying libations with the other soldiers? Toasting the king?”

“I will join the others later,” he says. “I came here first for the same reasons as always.”

Are you eating? Are you sick? What did you do today, while you were alone? The prince stands at the threshold as he asks his three questions, watching you carefully. It occurs to you that he must have just come from battle, that his first desire afterwards was to check on you, and you drop the sheets but you also look away.

“I am not ill, and I reread some of the books you sent me,” you reply, because you would rather die than tell him that you hid under the bed. “And as for the food…”

Prince Mydeimos glances at the untouched slop on your plate, then frowns.

“My apologies,” he says. “Now that I've returned, I will be sure to make you proper meals. I know the servants here do not make food to your liking, so—”

“What do you mean, you'll make them?” you interrupt. At his blank stare, you say, “Isn’t it the helots who cook all the meals here?”

“They cook for most of the palace. But for your meals, it has nearly always been me—ever since I noticed you were not eating.”

You stare, wondering if you've somehow misheard him. “But…” You swallow, and it feels painful. You don't want to look at him. “That can't be true. There have been Aurelian dishes—it must have been an Aurelian who made them. A slave, or maybe a helot…”

“I learned the recipes myself,” he says simply, “though I did ask an Aurelian to sample it first, an old woman who sells spices in the city. She made sure the flavour was right.”

You want to laugh—or cry? The thought of the Crown Prince of Kremnos bent over a cookbook, sweating at a stove, is so absurd that you don't know what to make of it. “Why would a master cook for his slave?

He shrugs, though you don't miss the way he clears his throat. “I enjoy cooking, and I prefer to make my own meals. It is simple enough to cook for two instead of one.”

“You enjoy cooking,” you repeat flatly, staring.

“Is that so strange?”

“Yes.” He’s not meant to be human. He's an animal who feasts on strife and blood. He lies to you, manipulates you, waits until you're willing. But now you are imagining him going out of his way to find southern olive oil, or thinking on which cut of meat to buy from the butcher’s, or squinting at an Aurelian recipe and wondering where to get cassia, and he isn't supposed to be human but monsters don’t enjoy such quaint things.

“Why would you even know how to cook?” you ask—weakly. “You were raised to be a soldier, a king.”

“I learned as a child, before I returned from the sea,” he explains. “A fisherman’s wife taught me how after I saved her husband from the Sea of Souls. Though they banished me from their home after they learned I was Kremnoan.”

You can't look at him anymore, after that.

A few days later, you are served milopita after dinner.

It is well-made. Prince Mydeimos was generous with the cinnamon, and the apples are fresh. The yogurt is thick. The olive oil is that expensive, southern variety, the one that the old Aurelian woman in the city likely picked out for him. It comes with a cup of pomegranate juice and a bottle of goat’s milk, which you don't touch—paired with the cake, it is too sweet.

You catch yourself thinking that Prince Mydeimos must have a sweet tooth, and then you kill the thought.

The prince comes to visit, which he does not often do nowadays. The Chrysos War has entangled Kremnos into so many battlefronts that he is now always in demand as a general, and all the meals have gone back to being untouchable. But the books keep coming, and now there is sheet music as well. You are slow to read the music and your fingers are even slower on the lyre strings—you have not played much since you were a child, when you were taught as part of your training as a hiereia—but it is enough to occupy you.

You'd been wondering if you would be left alone forever when you received the cake.

He comes to you at night. Steps inside as always, closes the door to block out any listening ears. Leans against the wall, as if trying to take up as little space as possible. This is a constant habit of his; you briefly wonder if he does it so as not to make you feel threatened, and then you kill the thought.

You try not to look at him.

“You ate the cake,” he says, in a calm but distinctly satisfied way.

“Yes. It was quite good.” Sweet on your tongue, nothing like bitter copper between your teeth. You can't believe how sugary the apples are. You can't imagine this cold prison of a city, this home of warmongers, having anything like an orchard—yet they must exist here, for Prince Mydeimos to have gotten fruit so fresh and ripe.

Are the orchards here as peaceful as the olive groves back home? The cake was certainly as good as what you had in Aurelia—something close to what the grandmother next door would make for you. She would serve hers with tea, though, and you'd sit outside her quaint home and watch the children run by, playing. Be careful, my loves, she would say to them as they ran up and down the street. Take care not to fall.

Your heart aches as you think of her.

“I have not had any sweets in a very long time,” you say, trying not to let your voice sound tight.

“Nor have I. It has been too busy for me to bake, and I generally avoid desserts—they are unhealthy—but I made them today.”

“Why?”

“Well”—Prince Mydeimos looks away, clears his throat—“I have not been by in quite a while. I could hardly come empty-handed.”

He is mannered, you think. He wants to show you hospitality. He is treating you as if you are an esteemed guest, as if he enjoys your company, and perhaps that is why he didn’t make you into his personal attendant or a labourer; it is because guests aren’t meant to work in the palace, and—

—and now you're killing the thought.

You must kill these thoughts. You are not his guest; you are his slave. He is not a human; he is your captor. The only reason he hasn’t assigned you any menial tasks is because he wants to make it clear to others that you only have one purpose here: to be a hole for him to fuck, and no one else.

He conquered your city. Sacked your temple. Ruined your home. He will ruin your body too.

“I am a slave,” you murmur. “You do not need to come with anything for me.” You should not be giving me things. You should be taking everything from me. “There is no need to treat me so graciously.”

“What, would you prefer that I torment you?”

“I would prefer you to be honest about your intentions.”

He raises a brow. “And what are my intentions supposed to be?”

You finally take a sip of your pomegranate juice—red and tart and sweet, it tastes like the night you were stolen from your temple—and then you rise from your seat.

Prince Mydeimos is startled when you make your way to him, slow but sure. You have never gone to him willingly before, it occurs: you have always been taken to him by force, dragged by Kremnoan men or compelled by chains. Perhaps he is taken aback by it, or startled by the look you give him—the one you use on worshippers who have incurred the wrath of the Titans—for he presses himself even further against the wall.

There is little space between the two of you when you stop. His face is impassive as ever, but you can hear his breath hitch.

“You like your women willing, don't you?”

His face creases. “What?”

“You like your women willing. The freedmen and the slaves alike, I'm sure. You think that if you ply me with gifts and treats, you will also be able to ply open my legs.”

Your captor watches you in alarm, in discomfort. Probably startled at being found out. “...that's not—”

“It won't work, you know. No matter how kind you are to me, you will always be the man who burned my city and sacked my temple. You will always be the beast who dragged me from my altar and into your bed. If I ever spread my legs for you, it will only be because they are held open by chains.”

His jaw tightens. “You've misunderstood my intentions.”

You laugh, light but cruel. “What, are you waiting for a better time to kill me instead? I know you Kremnoans like to hunt people for sport. Are you toying with your prey right now?”

You see it in his eyes when he snaps.

“Is it so hard to believe that I simply wish to treat you well?” he grits out. “That there is at least one person in Kremnos who finds senseless violence disagreeable? That a Kremnoan man could see an innocent woman about to be torn apart by hyenas and wish to save her? Or do you see us all as mindless animals?”

“I am sure there are some of you who behave like humans, but I don't think they would include the Crown Prince of all people. You lead a nation of warmongering beasts—you ride into battle at their helm.”

His nostrils flare. “My people depend on me. It is my duty to protect them from all those who want Kremnos fall.”

“And protecting your city means massacring cities? Sacking temples? Dragging holy maidens out from their temples to be raped?” Your captor falters, but you are too angry to take any joy in it. Too angry at the hypocrisy, at the golden chains, at the city that is forever burning behind you. “If you were really so kind, why would you even have come back to Castrum Kremnos in the first place? Even if you were a child, surely you knew you were going to be joining an army of monsters.”

“Because I wanted a home,” he snaps, and his voice is so harsh that you flinch. He breathes sharply as you step back, and you watch as he struggles to control his—rage? It must be rage. It can't be hurt.

It can't be grief.

“...a home,” you repeat.

“Yes, even a monster like me would desire a home. I spent my first seven years drowning in the Sea of Souls and the next several being cast away by countless families simply because of my heritage—do you think that was an existence I enjoyed?”

You don't know how to reply. You wish to recall the memories of your burning city, your visions of being slain, but all you can remember now is the baby you saw in your dreams—the one who was tossed into the sea, drowning, drowning, drowning. Is Prince Mydeimos forever being dragged into the tides, just as how you are forever being dragged from your altar?

Does Oronyx force him to remember, too?

Prince Mydeimos does not wait for your response. He walks back to the door, terse. Cold.

“If you are so aggrieved by my presence,” he snaps, “then I won't torture you with it any longer.”

He slams the door on the way out.

You and Prince Mydeimos do not see each other for a fortnight after that.

The moons behave strangely while he is gone. Night is always odd in Castrum Kremnos—too long and too inconsistent, as if Oronyx is struggling against something volatile, a presence that is not Aquila. Still, you can usually see at least one of her two moons—one gold and one red, one always waxing while the other wanes. But for an hour, they blink out of existence entirely, and your blood chills at the sight. At the omen.

Prince Mydeimos, you think immediately, is he dead?

Of course he isn't dead. He will live long enough for you to slit his throat as many times as you wish. He will live long enough to kill you afterward, to give you your valorous death without chains. He will live long enough to offer your heart to Nikador, who will devour it and drink your blood.

But every time you imagine it, all you can hear is his voice in your head, irritating and persistent every night—

Are you eating?

Are you sick?

Your home, what was it like?

I wanted a home.

I worry for you.

You tell yourself to kill the thought. You must kill all these thoughts. You must not believe that he worries for you, even though you are practised in the art of reading faces and all you can ever see in his is plain honesty. You are not allowed to hope that you are right, let alone hope that he is alive.

The only thing you are allowed to hope for is to someday slit his throat before he kills you.

The morning after the moons disappear, Prince Mydeimos returns to you. You are surprised when he walks in—he has never visited you so early in the day—and immediately, you want to say something to him.

But you don’t know what.

The both of you stare at each other, and he seems to struggle equally with his words. All you can think about is your last encounter, and he is likely doing the same.

“Why are you here?” you finally ask—not unkindly. Prince Mydeimos startles at your voice.

“I…”

He hesitates. His eyes, gleaming in the morning sun, are underlined by darkness. They're bloodshot, too. He has not slept, you realise.

“Did something happen last night?” you guess, remembering the two moons and how they flickered out like dying flames.

“Perhaps.”

Prince Mydeimos’ expression falters. You want to look away, but you know now the movements of his face well enough to understand what you should not believe—

I worry for you.

You think of the bells of victory tolling, how soon he came to see you thereafter. “Did you come to check that I was alive?” you ask softly.

His voice is quiet, too: “Perhaps.”

You stare at the stack of books on the table, which has grown so high over the past two months that you always wonder if the whole thing will collapse. The war histories are at the bottom of the pile, read so long ago, but you remember them well—the facts alongside the propaganda. The Kremnoans like to perpetuate the myth that they are incapable of fear, but you think that Prince Mydeimos is failing to maintain this illusion.

“Was what you encountered as frightening as the Okhemans?” you ask.

Were you worried that it would harm me?

“...perhaps.”

Your brow arches. “Is that the only word you know now, Your Highness?”

His uncertainty disappears, replaced by a usual annoyance, and the tension finally breaks. “There is only so much information I can share with a prisoner of war.”

“You have already given away your plans to commit patricide—I do not think any information could be more sensitive than that,” you say flatly. He frowns.

“Oronyx told you what I will do, not me.”

“You could have lied or played dumb about it, at least.”

“Why would I try to lie to an oracle? You said yourself it would be meaningless.”

“Plausible deniability in case anyone overheard. You simply could have written me off as mad had I tried to reveal your plans, you know, it's happened before to oracles who foretell tragedies…” Your mouth slants. “You are not very skilled in the art of manipulation, Your Highness. You won't survive the court for very long after you ascend the throne, at this rate.”

“I can survive it well enough,” he says curtly. “I'm alive right now, aren't I? Though I'm sure that disappoints you constantly.”

“No, I'm glad for it.” He blinks. “If I am going to slit your throat, you will need to live long enough for it to happen.”

He snorts. “Of course. I look forward to the day.” Prince Mydeimos looks at you then—scrutinizing. “You will need to stay alive too. Have you been eating? Have you been healthy? What have you been up to while I was gone?”

“I have been eating, and I am not ill. Terribly bored, but not ill.”

He frowns. “Bored? What could you possibly want for, with all that I have given you?”

You give him a long look, sensing an opportunity. “Well…”

He scrutinizes you. “What is it? Better food? More books? Another instrument, or a sharper weapon? I have an entire library at my disposal, plus the royal armory. Name whatever it is you want.” His voice is impatient, but his shoulders are relaxed, weightless. You can't it in yourself to deny the truth: he is relieved that you wish to demand something from him.

It makes you want to crawl under the bed.

“No,” you say, subdued. “I don't want any of that.”

“Then?”

Why do I matter to you?

Why aren't you using me?

Why aren't you hurting me?

“I want answers.”

There are no temples dedicated to Oronyx within Castrum Kremnos.

It is unsurprising. All citizens in Castrum Kremnos worship Nikador, and they war with other gods as often as the Strife Titan himself does. Nevertheless, the main palace has a few shrines dedicated to Oronyx. As much as the Kremnoans like to wreak havoc in the cities of other gods, all deities have their uses, especially Oronyx. It makes you bitter; the Goddess of Time sends enough visions for you to know that the use of her powers is painful for her, and you are certain that Kremnoans do not recompense her with any blood sacrifices.

You do, though. The Aurelian Cult of Oronyx has always honoured its goddess well. If Prince Mydeimos had brought you to a temple, you'd have also asked for a goat and sacrificed it. But as it is instead only a shrine, the only thing you can offer is your own blood.

At night, while the torches are burning low and the windows let through the dim light of the red moon, Prince Mydeimos takes you to the largest shrine of Oronyx. Her altar there is waiting for you—an alcove of cobalt and gold holding within it an azure light, its glow otherworldly. The Crown Prince is startled when you pull out a dagger and steady the blade over your hand; he reaches out and grabs your wrist, stopping you before you can wound yourself.

“What are you doing?” he says tersely. At his alarmed stare, you give him a blank look.

“I am about to appeal to Oronyx for her wisdom,” you explain, “and I will offer my blood in return.”

He gives you a dubious look. “Oronyx demands blood sacrifices?”

“No, but my temple provided them to honour her.” Your brow arches. “Don't tell me that this disturbs you. Your god not only gains strength from every Kremnoan death, he also demands blood sacrifices from other people. Don't think that the world has forgotten your tradition of drinking the blood of your slain enemies."

“We no longer engage in that practice,” Prince Mydeimos retorts immediately. “And in any case, what the Cult of Nikador does is entirely different.”

You squint at him. “What, so blood sacrifices are only acceptable when you do them?”

He sighs. “I only mean… if the god you follow does not demand violence outright, then I would not wish to see you inflict it upon yourself needlessly.”

You look at him, flabbergasted. “You cannot expect me to believe that a Kremnoan would be so averse to a little blood.”

“It isn't the blood that's the problem.” He sounds irritated. “It’s that it's your blood.”

You stare, watching his eyes for some tell of a lie—but you can find none. “You’re being serious,” you realise.

“Yes.”

“You really don't want to see me hurt.”

“Truly.”

“Not even a little bit.”

“Not even by a single hair.”

Part of you is aggravated—this is shameless hypocrisy from a man who led an army into your city—but mostly you’re bewildered. You shake your head, turning away.

“I can't believe I ever thought you'd drink my blood,” you mutter, wresting yourself from his grip. “Your Royal Highness’ delicate sensibilities will need to tolerate this. Prophecy isn't cheap, you know.”

Prince Mydeimos finally relents; he crosses his arms as he watches your ritual. Your blade—his blade—presses into your palm, sinks into the flesh and glides along your heart line until scarlet is welling around it. You bear the pain silently; it is nothing compared to what Oronyx must feel whenever her powers are used by force.

Your blood drips onto the altar, and its cyan light flares violently. It is brighter than the golden moon, maybe even brighter than Aquila’s sun, when you begin your incantation. Titan language sounds strange, beautiful but unnerving to human ears; you are unsurprised when Prince Mydeimos shifts in the corner of your eye, uneasy as he listens to you.

O Titan of Time and Night, you say aloud, tell me what my path to freedom is, and show me the true nature of the man who has taken it away from me.

It takes a few moments for the visions to come, but they flash like lightning when they do. You are in the darkness of a decrepit shrine in Castrum Kremnos, standing next to your captor, then—

Daytime. You are somewhere beautiful, with a warm sun above your head and limpid pools everywhere, bathers laughing in the sun. There's a woman with golden hair and sea-glass eyes; she smiles at you, all-seeing even though she is blind, and then—

Nighttime. There are no moons in the sky, and the stars are faded. The city is dying, and you listen to the screams as you watch an unnatural darkness fall upon it. Something is encroaching the palace walls—a dark plague that corrupts all that it touches, a black tide that has been sweeping across the lands. You wish to stay, to lose yourself to it, but the Crown Prince grabs your hand. You can make out his words, just barely: ████ with me to ██████, he says. ███ ██ save you. And then—

Daytime. It is painfully bright where you are now, idyllic. You are watching Mydei. An amicable looking dromas has lowered its head to his palm to eat the feed in his hands. You made Mydei try this—giving the docile beast a treat. You're laughing as you watch him; he looks so startled, out of his depth for royalty. A group of children are spectating as well, giggling uncontrollably at their Crown Prince. You hear yourself: ██ ██ cute… then—

Nighttime. The golden moon is out tonight. You are tired, so tired; you have buried someone, you don’t know who. Mydeimos looks haunted. Your palm is pressed against his cheek, cradling his face in your hands. Your wrists are bare, you notice. His voice is quiet: █ ██ remember ██ ███ ███████ touched ██ ████ this… now, finally—

The end. You are bleeding out at the feet of King Mydeimos. You cannot see his face, but he is malevolent, terrible, and strife runs thick in his ichor veins. Your chest hurts even though your heart is no longer in it, and you are crying, crying, crying—I will ████ you soon, ██ ██, you weep, and now—

It is nighttime, and the torches are burning low in Castrum Kremnos. You are on the floor of a shrine, gasping, your cheeks wet with your grief. Your captor is crouched next to you, his hand on your back—touching you gently, too gently for the man who sacked your city, too gently for the king who will kill you and drink your blood. You pull away from him, terrified, and your captor backs off immediately.

“Forgive me,” he says. “You were—you collapsed, and I only wanted to check what was wrong.”

“I'm fine,” you gasp. “I'm fine. It's just—what I saw, through the Evernight Veil, it was—” Your eyes squeeze shut.

“What? What was it?”

“My future. Your future. I wanted”—you don’t know why you're telling him this, you don't know why you were standing next to him in a beautiful city with a group of joyous children, laughing as he fed a dromas—“I wanted to know if I could trust you.”

“And?”

Your captor stares intently. His eyes burn in the light of the palace torches, in the light of the blazing olive groves, in the light of the golden moon.

It is easy to lose sight of time after peering into the Evernight Veil, for the past, present, and future to blend together. Easy for you to reach out to your captor in Castrum Kremnos, easy to instead see Mydeimos grieving after a burial. He stares at you as you touch his cheek, cradling it. Something is flickering in his eyes, something so painfully human that you cannot bring yourself to ignore it. You can hear him talking to you in the future.

“You can't remember the last time someone touched you like this,” you repeat. At his startled look, you add, “That's what you're thinking, right?”

He jerks back, as if your fingers are scalding. “How did you—”

“That's what you'll say to me,” you say simply, “eventually.”

Prince Mydeimos swallows.

“Does that mean you'll come to trust me, then?”

Now you're at the foot of his throne again, bleeding dry for him—bleeding more than you ever have for your goddess or your city or your people. Your heart pulses in the hand of the Strife Titan, and you close your eyes forever.

“No.”

End Part I

notes: oh my god when I tell you all the suffering I went through trying to write this shitass chapter slfjslfksdfjalsk. between navigating the nightmare of canon lore and a trope that is absolutely out of my wheelhouse, I truly suffered for this story. and I don't think the end product was even that good. regardless, please let me know if you liked it. LOL

as an aside, I'm not sure how obvious it is to people who are reading this blind (as opposed to my followers who've been witnessing my shitposting lol), but mydei is absolutely not into the sexual slavery stuff. he sees you in those golden bdsm chains and feels so uncomfortable that he leaves the room asap. my man is taking immense psychic damage from this situation rip he just wants to make sure you're safe but his palace is forcing him into this wattpad fic situation (i am forcing him into this wattpad fic situation)

[yakshxiao]

when someone asks what your type is but you don't want to say "40 year old+ men tasked with taking care of a child in the apocalypse" so you just say brunettes...