The old Ford pickup, a relic from a time when things were built to last, chose the most spectacularly inconvenient moment to give up the ghost. One minute, you were humming along K-4, the Kansas sun a heavy, golden blanket on the fields of corn, the next, a sound like a bag of wrenches being thrown down a staircase erupted from under the hood. A plume of steam, theatrical and foul-smelling, hissed from the edges of the hood. The truck shuddered to a definitive, pathetic halt halfway onto the narrow gravel shoulder.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” you muttered, slapping the steering wheel. The plastic was hot under your palms. You had a list in your pocket—milk, bread, your dad’s specific heart medication, the one the pharmacy in Wichita had to special-order—and a low-grade, constant thrum of anxiety about getting back before the afternoon thunderheads rolled in. Your parents, their movements becoming slower, more deliberate with each passing season, would worry.

You popped the hood, the heat from the engine hitting you in a wave that smelled of oil and cooked metal. You stared into the tangled, greasy intestines of the machine with a profound sense of betrayal. You were no mechanic. Your expertise began and ended with knowing where the windshield washer fluid went.

The sound of another vehicle, a low, steady purr unlike your truck’s geriatric rattle, pulled you from your despair. It slowed, tires crunching on the loose gravel. You didn’t even have to turn fully to know who it was. There was only one person in Smallville who drove a truck that clean, and whose very presence seemed to shift the atmospheric pressure.

Clark rolled down the passenger window, his face a study in cautious neutrality. “Trouble?” he asked, his voice that infuriatingly calm baritone.

No, I’m just communing with the engine spirits, you thought, the sarcasm a well-honed defense mechanism. You wiped a greasy hand on your jeans, leaving a dark smear. “It’s a hobby of mine. Breaking down in the middle of nowhere on urgent errands. Very relaxing.”

One corner of his mouth twitched. It wasn’t quite a smile, more like a fault line where one might occasionally appear. “Can I take a look?”

This was the man you’d been quietly, resolutely avoiding since you’d moved into the old Henderson place next to the Kents. He was too… much. Too handsome in a way that felt like a personal affront, all strong jaw and stupidly earnest blue eyes. Too capable, always seen hauling hay bales like they were pillows or fixing a fence post with effortless grace while your father struggled to get his own tomato stakes straight. He was a living, breathing reminder of everything you’d left behind in the city—the chaos, the anonymity—and everything you were failing to be here: competent, settled, calm.

“I’m sure you have… corn to talk to or something,” you said, gesturing vaguely at the endless green stalks.

“They’re not great conversationalists,” he deadpanned, already opening his door. He moved with an unnerving quietness for a man his size. He came to stand beside you, his shoulder a solid, warm presence near your arm. He didn’t even flinch at the steam. He just peered into the engine bay, his gaze focused and intent.

The silence stretched, filled with the buzz of cicadas and the distant cry of a red-tailed hawk. You watched him. His eyes, you noticed for the first time, weren’t just blue. They were the color of the sky just after a storm has passed, clear and impossibly deep. A small scar bisected his left eyebrow. You had the absurd, fleeting thought of what it would feel like to trace it with your fingertip.

“Your radiator hose blew,” he said finally, pulling you from your dangerously poetic thoughts. He pointed to a ruptured piece of black rubber. “It’s an easy fix. I’ve got a spare in my truck.”

Of course he did. Clark Kent, Boy Scout Emeritus, probably carried a spare everything: engine parts, surgical tools, hope for humanity.