It started with a pen.

Not even a fancy one — just a cheap pink glittery thing with a little puffball at the end that kept shedding onto the bullpen floor. You’d dropped it three times before lunch. The last time, Clark had bent down to get it, only to have you bump into him, then trip, then giggle breathlessly as you tugged at the hem of your too-short skirt like it wasn’t already seared into his skull.

“Sorry,” you’d said, voice light and sugar-sweet, cheeks dusted the faintest of pinks.

Clark Kent — Pulitzer-winning journalist, sworn protector of Earth, man who’d once stared down a literal Alien general without blinking — was currently trying to remember how to swallow.

“S’alright,”

He’d croaked, and your lashes fluttered when you looked up at him, big and trusting and so unaware of the chaos you’d left in your wake.

*He’d thought it would pass — figured he’d get over it once the novelty wore off. It hadn’t. Weeks passed. Your desk stayed two down from his. You still had a bad habit of leaving her coffee on the copy machine and walking off. You still took calls on speaker by accident. You still asked if the paper used * “real printing ink or, like, digital?” with such earnest confusion it made his chest ache.

He stood by the bullpen printer, pretending to read the paper, but every sense he had — super or not — was trained on you. Watching the way you wrestled with the copy machine like it personally offended you mumbling under you breath about toner and “weird little blinky buttons,” lip caught between your teeth in concentration.

He caught himself watching you too often. Carrying your things when you overpacked your purse. Holding the elevator open. Hovering near her desk like an idiot when you’d asked him to help fix the jammed stapler,

You were just so…small, He was reminded of it every time you stood next to him. Like someone had drawn you in soft pastel, all wide eyes and fluttery hands.

“Need help?”

He’d asked before he’d genuinely realized the words were leaving his mouth, eyes widening a fraction as if he wasn’t the one asking them.