You were still at your desk—hair pulled up with a pen, sleeves rolled to your elbows, a half-drunk coffee cooling beside your notes. You didn’t notice the soft gust of wind at first, just the flicker of movement in your periphery. Then came the voice. Familiar, sheepish, and somehow deeper when cloaked in uncertainty.

“I owe you the truth.”

You didn’t turn right away. You kept typing, one more beat than you needed to. “I figured,” you said.

He stepped into the spill of your desk lamp. Not flying. Just... walking. Standing. Like he wasn’t the most powerful being on Earth but some quiet man in slacks and worn boots who brought you daffodils last Thursday. Except now, he wasn’t wearing the glasses. Just the suit. The real one—red and cobalt, scuffed near the ribs from whatever last mission he’d just wrapped. The cape trailed like velvet smoke behind him, and the S on his chest gleamed, not just with light, but with history, with meaning.

You stared at him. Harder than he probably expected. “Jesus, Clark.”

“I didn’t lie. I just... left some things out.”

“You think?” you deadpanned, gesturing vaguely to the cape, the boots, the whole planetary iconography of him. And yet—your voice betrayed something else. Not anger. Not betrayal. Something knotted and aching between affection and disbelief. You stood slowly, every inch closer to him feeling stranger now, as if you were brushing against something sacred.

“I thought I was dating a mild-mannered reporter with a weird obsession with flannel and jelly donuts,” you said, stepping into his gravity. “Turns out I’ve been kissing a myth.”

Clark—Superman—smiled, but it was that quiet smile he reserved for photographs of Kansas wheat fields and first responders on the front page. Gentle. Human.

“I still like jelly donuts,” he said softly.

There was a silence that filled the space between you, thick as velvet. You noticed a strand of your hair had slipped loose; he reached for it instinctively, then paused, hand hovering near your cheek.

“May I?” he asked.

You nodded.

His fingers brushed your face—gentle, careful, like you were something breakable, despite all the things he could break. And it hit you then, not the spectacle of it, not the power or the danger or the absurdity of having kissed Clark Kent while Superman saved the world, but the sheer loneliness he must’ve carried. Hiding everything. Wanting to be known. Wanting to be loved, not for the cape, but for the man beneath it.

“Why now?” you whispered.

“Because you already knew,” he said. “You just didn’t ask. And I kept waiting for you to run.”

“I don’t run,” you said, blinking once, sharp and sure. “I write. And I remember. The way your hand always trembled just before touching mine. The way you vanish when the city screams. I thought maybe you were broken. Or scared.”

“I am.”

You stepped even closer. Now you could feel his warmth. Not metaphorical. Actual. His body heat radiated like sunlight, comforting and uncanny. “Clark Kent,” you murmured, “you’re the worst liar I’ve ever dated. And I’ve dated journalists.”

That got a real laugh out of him—quiet, rough-edged, unsuperheroic. “You’re not mad?”

“I’m furious. You let me plan your birthday dinner while you were off fighting a lava monster, or whatever it was. And you told me you were ‘in line at the DMV.’” You poked his chest, right above the S. “The DMV, Kent.”

He winced, sheepish. “There was a volcano. In Iceland.”

“Unbelievable.”

“Want to see the footage?” he offered, and before you could answer, he reached behind his back and pulled something out—a tiny silver device, alien in shape, with a blinking crystal interface. A hologram bloomed into the air between you. Magma. Ice fields. Supergirl soaring in the background, flipping the bird.

You blinked. “Was that—?”

"Kara. My cousin. You’ll like her.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Already taken,” he said, deadpan.

You shoved his arm and laughed, unable to help yourself. Then, quieter: “Why now, really?”

His expression softened. “Because I didn’t want to love you with only half my heart.”