You wake up to the smell of coffee.

For a moment, you forget where you are or who you’re with. The sheets are warm, the early sunlight slipping across your bare shoulders like a gentle hand.

Then you feel the shift of the mattress beside you. A large hand brushes lightly over your waist, warm and careful, like it belongs there, even though it shouldn’t.

Clark.

You squeeze your eyes shut. Maybe if you stay still, you can pretend last night didn’t happen. Pretend you didn’t drag him through your door under the cover of night, tasting loneliness and cheap liquor on each other’s lips. Pretend you didn’t cling to him like he was the last safe thing in the world, even after all those rules you both promised to keep.

You told him from the start. You both agreed.

Just fun. No strings. We can handle this.

You remember the way he paused that first night, glasses slipping down his nose, blue eyes soft and a slight furrow between his brow. The way he nodded after a moment, like he didn’t really understand it, but agreed anyway for you.

Now he’s here, again.

“Morning,” he says, voice low and rough with sleep, but still gentle. Always gentle.

You don’t answer right away. You feel him pause behind you, his hand hovering above your skin like he wants to stay but doesn’t dare.

Then he pulls back. You hear him stand, moving around your room with that quiet steadiness that somehow feels heavier than any slammed door. You listen to the soft clink of a mug, the sputter of your battered coffee maker, the faint sound of him exhaling, as if he’s bracing himself for the moment you tell him to leave.

You open your eyes. He’s there in your kitchen, bathed in the pale morning light, broad shoulders relaxed but weighed down with everything neither of you can say. His hair is a mess from sleep and your restless fingers, soft curls catching the light. There are faint red marks on his back where your nails dug in, proof of the way you keep trying to push him away and pull him closer in the same breath.

“Clark,” you call out, voice tighter than you’d meant it.

He turns, that shy, careful smile finding his lips. His eyes soften immediately, lighting up just to see you awake and that alone makes your heart twist painfully.

“I made you some coffee,” he says, as if it’s the most ordinary thing in the world. As if this is just another quiet morning in a life you both pretend you don’t want.

“You don’t have to do that,” you say, tightening your grip on the sheet as guilt snapped its jaws at you. “You don’t have to… stay.”

His smile falters, but he nods. “I know,” he says quietly. His voice is so steady it almost sounds like forgiveness. “I just thought… you might want some. Before I go.”

Your throat closes around a thousand words- words you told yourself you’d never say. You’re the one who wanted this simple. Detached. Easy. But there he is, moving around your kitchen like he’s done it a hundred times, slipping into the spaces you swore you’d keep empty.

It was complicated enough that you both worked at the daily planet. You were a fool to ever think this could be simple. As if Clark, with his dorky lopsided smiles and patient hands, with his nerdy jokes and that bright-eyed warmth and open heart, could ever keep it strictly physical. Every time you tell him to go, it feels like kicking a dog who keeps returning, tail wagging, just happy to be near you.

You told him no strings. You both agreed. But Clark doesn’t know how to love in pieces. He doesn’t know how to touch without meaning it. Every gentle act, every soft look, every quiet morning is another thread you can’t untangle, another promise he never had to say out loud.

And now… he hasn’t left yet.

He’s still there. In your room. In your morning light. Watching you, waiting for you to reach for him, to push him away, to finally say something true.