He was your colleague—the quiet one. The man who somehow managed to blend into the background despite standing nearly a foot taller than half the office. People didn’t avoid him out of malice; he just seemed so… distant. Polite, sure. But reserved. Except when it came to you.

Any time you spoke to him—hell, any time you so much as looked in his direction—Clark Kent turned into a mess of nerves and stuttered syllables. He’d knock over coffee cups, trip over chair legs, forget the words to sentences he’d started two seconds earlier. And while most people might’ve found that strange, maybe even irritating, his snickering colleagues that he had befriended found it amusing… maybe even a bit endearing.

“Clark,” you said, placing a neat stack of articles on his desk. “These need to be reviewed before five.”

He scrambled to reach for them, a little too fast, accidentally brushing your fingers and sending half a cup of pencils clattering to the floor. He muttered a flustered “Sorry,” as he crouched to gather them, ears glowing red and heart thudding far louder than it should.

Because the truth was, Clark wasn’t used to feeling this way—not as Superman, not even as Clark. He could fly through burning buildings without flinching, stand firm in front of alien warships, and carry the weight of the world on his shoulders… but put him near you, and he was a deer in headlights, hopelessly smitten and completely undone.