Clark doesn’t even complain.

He never complains when he’s with you— even when his arms are stacked with ten glossy shopping bags on each side, handles digging into the thick muscle of his forearms, Even when his plans for a simple, quiet date, lunch and a walk in the park turn into becoming your personal cart mule while you’re wandering half a store ahead, holding up bikini tops with ruffles and pearls and fabric cuts he can’t pronounce up to your chest and turning to ask which looks “more you.”

(As if he ever thinks anything looks better than you.)

He trails behind you like a very large, very besotted golden retriever in glasses, smiling whenever you fuss over a dress or tug him closer so you can compare a lipstick shade against your wrist.

You’re twirling in front of another mirror, holding a dress under your chin, looking at yourself with that little smile that makes something in his chest squeeze too tight.

“Clark, be honest,” you say.

“I’m always honest,” he mumbles, except it comes out breathless because he’s busy trying not to stare. You don’t even have it on yet and he’s sweating like he just pulled a locomotive off the tracks.

He watches you flit around the racks, your hair bouncing, your voice bright, your energy infectious. And you keep turning back to him, smiling like you know exactly how ridiculous he looks with twelve shopping bags in each hand.

By the time he walks you home, he’s somehow holding even more bags, and you’re teasing him the whole way about how “Superman could’ve flown them.”

But he likes carrying things for you. Likes knowing that he can use his powers not only to save people—but to be a good boyfriend—your boyfriend. He also likes the physical implication—that he’s clearly yours and anyone with a brain would get that you two were a thing. A couple. Going steady. Was that childish? Golly, he hoped not.

He sets everything down in your bedroom with a soft exhale—bags filling the space like a department store exploded.

You look at him with that cute little twinkle.

“So…” you hum, fingers sliding under one of the ribbons on the handles, “do you wanna see?”

Clark blinks. “S-see…? M’lookin’ right at you, honey,”

“The clothes, silly,” you say sweetly, stepping closer, letting your manicure trail up his chest, “unless you’re too tired from carrying all my stuff, baby.”

He swallows so hard his glasses almost fog. Every once of fatigue leaves his body at the thought. He’d remembered a cute pj set you bought, a really pretty summer dress—those were the ones he was most excited for. Like it were a serious fashion show, and not just a couple doing couple things.

“Tired?” he repeats, voice cracking and hopeful, and so, so eager, like a dog with a bone. “no—no, I’m… I’m good. Perfect. Do you, um—need help changing? Or—I mean—not that you need help, I didn’t mean— I just—”

You kiss his cheek to shut him up.

“Sit on the bed,” you whisper, “and look pretty.”

Clark obeys so fast he practically trips.

He settles at the edge of the mattress, palms on his knees, pupils wide, breath already uneven. He looks like a man about to have a religious experience.

He’s Superman, for God’s sake. He can lift a passenger jet with one hand. He can outrun sound. He can see through solid steel.

And yet absolutely none of that compares to the physical, emotional, spiritual endurance required to sit and wait for you.

He can hear your zipper. Your soft humming. The slide of fabric against skin he’s personally come to memorize.

Heck, if he tilted his head just a little he could probably hear the exact thread count of whatever you were wearing, too.

By the time you step back into the room—He hasn’t moved an inch, elbows braced on his knees, pupils blown behind those thick black frames, lips parted in something like awe and something very much like devotion.

His breath leaves him all at once.

“Sweetheart…” he murmurs, voice low, reverent, already reaching for you before he can stop himself.

“That’s… wow. That’s— you’re—golly.”