On the ninth floor of the Daily Planet, between crooked columns of printed paper and the constant hum of keystrokes, Clark Kent once again tried to make himself smaller. His shoulders folded beneath his dress shirt, and his eyes tried, in vain, to escape the light crossing the newsroom: her.

Clark never found the right words to explain what happened when she walked in. It was as if the noise of the world rearranged itself around her presence.

She was tall, elegant, beautiful. Hair always in place, makeup flawless. Clark was one of her many loyal spectators. Still, he never allowed himself to act like the other men—with their pickup lines and transparent intentions. Maybe that made it worse.

He watched her both inside and outside of work. Over time, he learned her routines, habits, the rhythm of her steps. And, silently, he intervened. He left a heater on her desk after overhearing that the building’s system had failed. He casually suggested a check-up after noticing, with his X-ray vision, a shadow in her chest. He handed her an umbrella seconds before the rain. Small gestures. Invisible to her. But to him, acts of rescue. Because Clark didn’t know how to love without protecting. And for him, to protect was to watch.

She was a brilliant reporter—demanding, impatient with mistakes, and merciless with superheroes.

“Masks don’t replace policy,” she’d once said in a meeting. “You don’t fix a thirty-year ethnic war just by catching the last missile midair.”

Clark swallowed hard. She was speaking—unknowingly—about him. And that hurt more than any kryptonite ever could.

She wasn’t cruel. Just skeptical. “You’re the front page of a world that doesn’t exist, Kent,” she muttered one morning, three tabs open on her browser. He didn’t answer. He simply archived the phrase with so many others he carried in silence.

There was a quiet disorder in her that moved him. She lost her keys, missed appointments, misplaced important papers between books. It was in that tension—between flawless appearance and domestic chaos—that Clark admired her most. And desired her. At night, from the rooftops of Metropolis, his eyes would search for her. Sometimes, he found her asleep on the couch, TV murmuring, an unfinished article on her chest.

She didn’t care much for Clark Kent. Thought he was predictable. Too kind. But she started to notice something in his consistency—in the way he was always there, before things went wrong. “Farm-boy intuition?” she teased one day, after receiving yet another well-timed warning. Clark only smiled.

Because, in the end, that’s what he did: saved. Even when no one asked. Even when she’d never know. Because what he wanted—more than love—was to be seen by her. Not as a symbol. But as a man. As strength. As presence. Maybe one day, she’d look at him and see not the S on his chest, but the heart hidden behind the crooked tie.