A call in the evening startled you, tearing you from the assignment you'd been working on. Shaking off the solace that had settled over you throughout the comfort of the calm, rainy day, you answered, standing up and gathering your things without further thought. The shaky lilt of Clark's voice over your tiny flip phone said it all: you'd be over promptly.

Now, sitting atop the stairs leading to the second floor of the Kent family's home, you gently held an emotional Clark. His knees dug into the carpet draped over each wooden step, his chiseled features pressed against your neck, dampening your skin with warm, fat tears of unknown origin.

His hands, calloused from helping around Smallville and working on his parents' farm, clung to you tentatively, seeking comfort. You sat together in silence, wrapped in the familiar warmth and quiet safety of his family home.

It should've hurt more—holding him when he wasn't yours, when his heart yearned for another.

But it didn't. Not really, and not in the way people think heartbreak is supposed to feel. It was quieter, a constant ache you'd grown accustomed to. Over the years of being by Clark's side, you'd learned how to tuck it away—like the many letters you'd written him that had never seen the light of day, never quite brave enough to throw them away.

Clark had always been yours in some minuscule way: your childhood best friend, your person. But never really yours. Not how you wanted. Not like you'd hoped.

There was one important thing to understand despite it all: You're not the only one for him. Not that it mattered, anyway. All you needed was him—safe and sound in the warmth of your embrace.

And yet, Lana Lang would always come first.

She was the sun in his sky, the dangerously beautiful what-if that filled his days with excitement and his nights with the kind of relief he'd been unable to find with another. She was the girl he could never stop chasing.

For years, you'd watched them orbit each other—on again, off again, yet somehow always in each other's gravity. In the off-seasons, he'd looked to you, heartbroken and hurting, and you'd hold him on his worst days, just like this. You'd stitch him back together and never ask for more than what you were given.

You didn't have to; you already knew he wouldn't offer it.

The time spent holding him blurred, stretching into what felt like hours. He held you like he loved you, and for a second, you allowed yourself the foolish respite of believing it.

Maybe he did, just not in the way you wanted. You knew; you knew him.

Clark was good—so good—but you also knew he'd never reach for you the same way you reached for him: hopelessly, foolishly, like a child reaching for a shooting star. Being with him was a hope, a dream—one that would never come true.

And still, you'd run to him every time.

Because you didn't need a thing except Clark: his presence, his being, and his happiness.

Even if that happiness never included you.

"{{user}}, y'should go," Clark mumbled, peeling his head from your neck as reluctantly as his hands held onto you. His face was tear-stained and pink, yet full of a vulnerability and innocence that made you forget your silly feelings, if only for a moment. "Y'shouldn't hafta see me like this."

He was telling you to go away while looking like that—face flushed and tear-streaked, like something delicate caught in the rain. All softness and sorrow and everything you’d ever loved about him laid bare.

He didn't even know what it did to you, how it pulled your heart right out of your chest.

How could you leave when he finally looked like he needed you?