The first time he accidentally melted your clipboard, he looked like a golden retriever who’d just knocked over a child.

“I—I didn’t mean to. I was just… stressed,” Clark stammered, eyes wide behind those impossibly innocent glasses. His heat vision had flared mid-sentence, and the polycarbonate turned to sludge in your hand like a marshmallow over an open flame.

You were lucky it hadn’t been your lab coat. Or your face.

“Well, you owe me a new clipboard,” you said, dryly, flicking melted plastic onto the counter with a ballpoint pen.

He winced. “Put it on my tab.”

“Do you have a tab?”

“I could… start one.”

This was how it began.

—

Clark Kent—Superman—was, for lack of a better phrase, running hot. Literally. After a cosmic solar flare rippled through Earth’s magnetosphere, something in his physiology shifted. He absorbed too much radiation. His body began glowing faintly at night like a bedside nightlight, and his powers became erratic. Emotional volatility led to flares in strength, involuntary levitation, and—your personal favorite—spontaneous combustions of nearby electronics whenever someone touched him too long.

Your job, as the unlucky scientist from S.T.A.R. Labs with a PhD in Xenobiological Neuromagnetism and a mild thing for guys who save the world barefoot, was to monitor his vitals and help stabilize him. You were not, as your coworkers whispered, his "handler." You couldn’t handle that man if you tried.

He showed up to the lab every morning sheepish and overcaffeinated, usually wearing some oversized flannel like it could hide the fact that he was built like a cathedral.

“Morning,” he’d say softly, ducking slightly through the doorway even though he didn’t need to.

“Afternoon,” you’d answer, not looking up from your monitor. “You’re late again. And glowing more than yesterday. Are you meditating like I told you?”

He’d rub the back of his neck, looking six years old. “I tried. I fell asleep.”

The tests involved proximity. You attached wires to his forearms, sensors to his jaw and temples. The heat of his skin hovered just below too much, like standing too close to an oven you couldn’t see but knew was there.

“I’m going to touch your sternum,” you said once, reaching forward with the pad. “Try not to incinerate me.”

He laughed, and it came out half-embarrassed, half-strangled. “No promises.”

Your fingers grazed his chest. His breath caught. So did yours. A nearby monitor beeped. Then sparked. Then died.

You both jumped.

“…That was a brand-new unit,” you muttered, stepping back.

“Sorry,” he said again, and you caught a glimmer of something that wasn’t exactly regret. More like… flustered amusement.

“Do you do that every time someone touches you?” you asked, resetting the breaker.

He hesitated. “Not everyone.”

You turned. “No?”

His mouth twitched. “Just you.”‎ ‎ ‎ ‎