Chapter Text
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The day you met Clark Joseph Kent, you were six years old and bleeding from both knees.
You remembered the taste of dirt before you remembered his name. The playground was hot that afternoon—sunlight pooling in the gravel, heat shimmering off the metal slide, cicadas singing loud enough to drown your humiliation. You’d face-planted off the monkey bars after trying to show off for a group of kids who weren’t even watching. They’d been louder, faster, better at pretending they didn’t care.
Your fingers slipped on the last rung. The world tilted. For a second, you were flying—and then you weren’t.
Gravel bit your skin. The air left your lungs in a startled gasp that turned to a cough, then a small, stifled sob you refused to let out. The laughter stung worse than the scrape: sharp, bright, cruel. No one offered to help.
No one, except him.
Clark.
You felt his shadow first, like a pause in the sun, a stillness that made you look up.
Round face, freckles, black hair curling over his ears in a way that looked permanently windblown. He was holding a juice box in one hand, a pack of graham crackers in the other. His large blue eyes were wide with concern.
"Are you okay?" he'd asked. His voice was soft, not pitying, just....careful.
That was your undoing.
You hadn’t cried when you fell, or when the others laughed. But when he looked at you like like you were made of glass instead of mud and embarrassment, you started to sniffle.
He didn't say anything else. He sat beside you in the dirt, shorts staining with the same dust as yours. He tore open the packet of crackers, offering you the bigger half of his and a Scooby-Doo bandage from his backpack.
"You want a bigger piece?” he asked.
You sniffed, nodded, and took it without a word.
You didn’t know it yet, but that was Clark in a nutshell. Always kind. Always present. Even when no one else was.
Later, you’d remember the way he smiled when you finally smiled back—how the sunlight seemed to catch in his eyes like something eternal, something that wouldn’t fade.
At six years old, you didn’t have words for connection, or destiny, or the quiet gravity of certain souls. You only knew that when Clark Joseph Kent sat down beside you in the dirt, something in the world steadied.
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By third grade, he was your favorite person in the world.
It happened so gradually you couldn’t trace the line where friendship began. One day you were two kids on the same school bus, trading juice boxes and homework excuses; the next, your names felt like one breath.
You always saved him a seat by the window. He always offered you the last cookie from his lunchbox. He’d tap his pencil against your desk in little rhythms that only you could decode. You told him when his curls were acting up and laughed at jokes he hadn’t realized were funny. Sometimes he’d doodle tiny cows in the margins of your notebooks and tell you they were the ones from his parents’ field—each with a backstory, a name, a dream to escape Smallville for the big city. You’d laugh, not realizing he was planting the earliest seed of the journalist he’d one day become.
There was a stillness to Clark that you never grew tired of. When other kids fidgeted or bragged or shouted to be seen, he listened. Not the polite kind of listening adults pretended to do—but the real kind. His eyes didn’t wander. His mind didn’t drift. When you spoke, it felt like the world narrowed to a single point and he was there, unmoving, as if you mattered more than the noise.
Your parents were very busy people. Always working late, always promising to make it up to you. You’d grown used to empty bleachers at band recitals, to waving at nothing at the finish line on field day. But Clark's parents—Jonathan and Martha—were always there, cheering like you were theirs, snapping photos, saving seats beside them in the front row.
The Kent farm, their home, became a kind of second gravity.
You spent more nights than you could count, doing homework at their kitchen table beside Clark while Martha baked pies that filled the house with cinnamon and warmth, and Jonathan talked about the weather, the soil, and the way the land seemed to hum before a storm. The farm always smelled of hay, vanilla... smells you associated with safety.
You remember one night in particular—waking from a nightmare in the guest room, breath caught in your throat. Martha had come in quietly, hair mussed from sleep. She brushed your dark hair away from your damp cheek, whispering, “You’re safe here.”
You believed her.
Sometimes you caught Clark watching you from the hallway light, eyes soft, never pitying, protective in a way no eight-year-old should know how to be.
You fell asleep to the sound of crickets outside and the quiet hum of his breathing from down the hall.
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In sixth grade, the world began to tilt.
Not all at once. More like, a slow rotation of the Earth, and you didn't notice until the constellations looked different.
You started seeing things that didn't make sense. Clark ran faster, jumped higher. Beat high schoolers in tug-of-war, win arm-wrestling matches at the county fair with a grin so unassuming. He never seemed to get hurt or get sick.
Once, during recess, a baseball rocketed off a bat and should’ve broken his nose or his hand. He caught it instead—barehanded, without a twitch, like it was nothing. Everyone cheered. You just stared, your heart doing something you couldn’t yet name.
Later that summer, you sat together on the barn roof, your legs dangling over the edge, fireflies pulsing in the grass below. The wood was warm beneath you, carrying the day’s heat long into the evening. You could smell the fields, hay, the faint musk of cows, and the damp promise of a coming storm.
“Clark, you’re weird,” you told him, picking at a splinter on the edge of the roof.
He looked over, startled, then smiled, rubbing the back of his neck. “You’re just now figuring that out?”
You nudged his shoulder. He pretended it hurt. You pretended your stomach didn’t flip at the sound of his laugh.
Something was changing, and you both felt it.
It wasn’t the kind of crush other kids talked about, not the one that made you giggly or tongue-tied, no doodling hearts in the margins of your notebooks. It was heavier than that—rooted deep, living behind your ribs like a secret that you didn't care name.
You started noticing the way the light caught in his black hair, the way his long lashes fanned his cheeks when he looked down. The shape of his hands—strong, careful, always steady. The way he’d glance at you like he was memorizing your face for reasons he couldn’t explain. Like he was rare. Like he missed you already.
He never teased you when you got serious about things. When you talked about wanting to be a nurse, to help people, to do something that mattered—he just listened, really listened. And that was its own kind of love, though you didn’t know it yet.
One night, the summer before eighth grade, you ran through the cornfields together, chasing the last light of the day. You tripped, twisted your ankle, and went down hard. Before you could even gasp, he was there—lifting you off the ground, holding you against his chest like it was the easiest thing in the world.
He carried you half a mile back to his house, your cheek pressed against his shoulder. He never stumbled, never faltered.
You told yourself not to blush, not to stare, not to think about how safe it felt being in his arms.
He looked down at you once, eyes soft with worry. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” you lied, though something in you knew .you’d never be the same again. He just smiled back. You didn't know it then but you made him feel normal, human, and that—more than anything—was what he wanted
Later that night, lying in the guest room bed with your ankle propped up on pillows and ice, you could still feel where his arms had been. Your pulse hadn’t slowed for hours.
You didn’t know it then, but that was the beginning of the long ache. The one that would take years to name.
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High school changed everything.
Not all at once, but in gradual shifts you barely noticed until they'd already settled in your bones
You'd both grown taller, older, a little sharper around the edges. Clark's voice dropped; yours learned how to steady itself when your heart fluttered in your chest. He started wearing shirts that stretched tight across his shoulders, and you stopped being able to look at him too long without feeling like you were falling through the floor.
Clark's growth spurt left most of the boys in town scrambling to catch up.
Girls started noticing him. He started noticing girls noticing him. You started pretending it didn’t bother you.
But Clark was still Clark—kind, grounded, steady in ways no one else your age seemed to manage—but there were moments now that felt charged, trembling, dangerous. When he brushed past you in the hall, your breath caught. When he smiled too long, your stomach flipped. He’d lean over your shoulder to look at your notes, the warmth of him hovering just behind your ear, and your mind would empty completely.
You’d watch him from the bleachers during football games, heart pounding when he looked your way. He still saved you a seat at lunch. Still asked about your science tests while he made edits to your literature essays. Always walked you home, even if it was ten minutes out of his way.
There were more late-night talks under porch lights, more secrets traded between bookshelves in the town library, more quiet jokes and shared glances that didn’t need words.
You started wondering what it would feel like to hold his hand. If he’d kiss the same way he smiled—soft and patient and a little unsure.
But neither of you ever said anything.
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At the end of sophomore year, he saved you.
You’d gone to the edge of town after a fight with your parents, angry and stupid and sixteen, not realizing how quickly the dark roads could turn dangerous. The sky had opened up, rain pelting down in sheets, and the car had spun off the shoulder into a ditch. The airbag burned your arms, and you could barely breathe through the panic and the sound of thunder.
You didn’t even remember calling him. You were sure you didn't. But one moment you were sobbing into the steering wheel, and the next—he was there.
Soaked through, panting, eyes wide with terror and relief. He yanked open your door like it was paper, hands trembling as they cupped your face.
“Are you okay?” His voice broke around your name. “Gosh, I thought—”
You didn’t answer. You just fell against him, shaking and sobbing.
His arms wrapped around you instantly—warm, strong, trembling almost as much as you. His heart was hammering against your cheek.
When he finally pulled back, there was a look in his eyes you hadn’t seen before. Fear, yes. Relief. But also something else—something that made the air between you feel impossibly thin.
“You’re okay,” he kept repeating, inspecting every inch of your face. “You’re okay.”
“How did you—?” you whispered, it was the first time you questioned the oddness around him. "I...did I call you? I'm sorry, I shouldn't have."
He just held you, his larger frame with trembling hands.
“You always call me.”
That was it. That was the moment. The one that rewrote everything.
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After that night, things didn’t go back to normal.
They couldn’t.
You still laughed, still shared secrets, still met under the bleachers or on the porch steps after dark—but every glance lingered. Every brush of his fingers burned. You’d start to speak and forget what you meant to say. He’d look at you like he was memorizing something he didn’t think he was allowed to touch.
And though neither of you ever said the words, you both knew.
You were already in love. You just hadn’t learned how to admit it yet.
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It wasn’t until the fall of junior year that he finally let you in.
Months had passed since the storm, Kansas summerfolding into autumn's chill. It was late. You’d both been watching a meteor shower from the fields.
The fields smelled of damp grass and earth, the air crisp enough to make each breath visible in the fading light. You lay shoulder to shoulder on a blanket, tangled between you, staring up at the sky streaked with meteors that blinked and vanished before you could even name them. Your heart beat unevenly in the quiet.
“I’m not like other people,” he said carefully, blue eyes avoiding yours, fixed somewhere beyond the blanket, beyond the grass, maybe beyond the world entirely.
You turned your head to look at him, heart thumping against your ribs like a warning. “No kidding,” you murmured, half a joke, half awe.
He exhaled slowly, like he was steadying himself against something you couldn’t see. “I’m serious.”
He sat up, palms fidgeting, eyes darting toward the stars like they might give him courage. “I wasn’t born here. Not in Kansas. Not even on Earth.”
You laughed, breath caught somewhere between disbelief and wonder—until he lifted, floating effortlessly a few feet above the blanket.
You froze. Jaw slack. Eyes wide. Breath suspended in your throat.
“Holy shit!"
“Yeah,” he muttered, sheepish. “That was… kind of the reaction I was expecting.”
And then he told you. Everything. Krypton. The pod. His parents’ discovery, their love and fear folded into each small gesture that had made him who he was. The incomplete message from his birth parents, the language of stars and distance. The quiet torment of pretending every day to be normal when every inch of him wasn’t.
You listened. You didn’t step back. You didn’t panic. You didn’t scream.
You reached out, brushing your fingers through his, gripping his hand with a confidence you didn’t know you had. “You’re still Clark,” you whispered, and meant it. “That’s what matters.”
He turned to you, eyes meeting yours at last, and you saw relief, gratitude, and something soft you couldn’t name.
You both held that moment until the sky turned dark, until the stars felt too close to ignore.
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Senior year was perfect, and that made it worse.
There was the ache of knowing exactly what you had and also knowing it might slip away.
There were nights you drove with the windows down, music too loud, laughter too close to tears, headlights slicing through the empty roads. Secret lakes, the water cold enough to bite at your ankles, blankets shared, silent brush of fingertips that lingered too long. Bonfires in the fields, sparks rising into the night sky like tiny stars caught in the wind, conversations that ended in long looks and unspoken promises.
There were moments when you almost kissed. Behind the school gym, in the hayloft, once even under a barn roof dusted with sunlight that turned to gold. He looked at you then—like he could see everything you tried to hide, like your heart was his map, your soul bare for just for him.
And each time, you stopped. Because neither of you could risk saying it out loud, even when your chest screamed it.
You thought there would be time. After graduation. After you figured yourselves out.
But time has a funny way of running out.
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Mid-senior year, the letters came on the same day.
You tore open yours, fingers trembling despite yourself.
Star City University, gunning for its reputable nursing program. You dreamed of it, clawed toward it, planned every detail of it.
Clark's letter lay beside yours, Metropolis University, journalism.
You sat on the Kent porch that evening, glaring a hole through the letters, legs folded beneath you on the rough wood, trying not to cry. You rolled a picked apple between your palms, tasting its sweet skin as if it could anchor you. It was supposed to be good news. Supposed to be the kind of moment where everything aligned.
It was supposed to be good news.
"I want to help people, and this could be my chance,” you said, voice quiet, eyes flicking to him. “Not like… band-aids and lollipops. Real emergency care. Something…”
Clark watched you, heart heavy in his chest, jaw tight. “And you’re going to be an amazing nurse,” he said, voice rough around the edges. “You’ll help so many people. You’re going to save the world.”
“And then you’ll write about them,” you whispered, trying to swallow the lump in your throat. “The people that got better.”
“I’ll write about you," he said softly.
You smiled, bitter and wistful. “That’s not how this works.”
"Who says?" he asked, daring you to argue.
“Fine,” you said. “When you’re a hot-shot journalist, write about me, okay? Put me in your big city newspaper. ‘Local girl saves lives, no cape required.’ That kind of thing.”
He held your hand then, warm and firm, fingers threaded with yours as the last hour of sunlight burned low over the horizon. Words hung unspoken between you, fragile as fireflies, and neither of you had the courage to say them aloud.
You weren’t brave enough to ask him to come with you.
He wasn’t brave enough to ask you to wait.
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It was a hot August morning when it happened.
Your last morning in Smallville.
The moving truck sat in your driveway, doors open, waiting like a silent promise of distance. Your parents carried boxes, a mix of old keepsakes and new beginnings, their voices brisk as they readied themselves for Star City.
The Kents stopped by just before dawn broke.
Martha pulled you into a hug that lingered longer than it should, her arms warm and solid around you, the kind of embrace that made your chest ache. She pressed a kiss to your temple and whispered, “Don’t be a stranger,” and for a moment, you allowed yourself to believe that home could follow you anywhere.
Jonathan pressed a bagged lunch into your hand, the smell of fresh bread and farm-picked apples clinging to the paper, before pulling you into a hug. "Our girl," he said. You smiled through your tears, nodding. Your stomach churned with the weight of what was happening.
And then there was Clark. Standing by your front door after helping the last of your belongings into the truck. He stood with his arms loose at his sides, carrying himself steady, quiet, and impossible to read. You stepped toward him without thinking. He didn’t move. You didn’t think either of you would.
You wrapped your arms around him first, holding him as if memorizing every line, every plane of his back, the way his chest felt against your cheek. He stiffened at first, and then relaxed, hands brushing your shoulders, lingering there for one heartbeat too long.
He leaned down first. You tipped your head up.
You breathed in the faint scent his shampoo, the faint impossibility of ever being able to touch him again. He leaned just slightly forward, and you could feel it—the pull, the tension, the quiet, aching question hovering between you.
For a single, suspended heartbeat, it almost happened. Lips brushed, a whisper of warmth and confession. And then—he faltered. Pulled back by something you could see in his eyes: fear.
He was afraid.
Afraid that loving you openly would drag you into danger you didn’t deserve. Afraid that being with him meant becoming part of a world bigger, darker, more impossible than you could imagine.
You didn’t speak. Neither did he. Instead, you held the moment as tightly as you could, as though the world itself might collapse if either of you let go too soon.
When you finally pulled back, your arms fell reluctantly, hearts still beating too fast, eyes refusing to meet. You turned toward the moving truck, climbing in with your childhood stuffed bear clutched to your chest. You pressed your forehead against its fur, willing yourself to be brave.
You waved at him through the rear window.
He waved back, fingers trembling just slightly, eyes lingering on you as long as he dared.
The almost-kiss, the almost-confession, hung in the air like the heat of August itself—dense, pressing, and impossible to ignore.
And you knew, deep down, that part of you would always be standing there on those steps, watching him fade from sight.
No one said goodbye. Not really.
.
The first semester apart, you reached for Clark every day.
It began innocently enough—texts about your dorm room in Star City, the godawful cafeteria food, a selfie in a lab coat holding your biology book upside down, smiling as if your life were smaller than the ache of missing him. His replies came fast at first, full of emojis, little bursts of warmth, a “Miss you already” that made your chest flutter for hours.
He sent you a photo once, grinning from ear to ear, standing in line at a record store in Metropolis.
CLARK: Guess what I found
You opened it to see him holding a worn vinyl: The Clash – London Calling.
YOU: You’re such a grandpa
You teased back, letting the words carry a laugh you didn't feel.
CLARK: Hey! Good rebellion is TIMELESS
You could hear his mock hurt through text, and for a moment, the distance between you felt like nothing at all.
But as the leaves turned and fall deepened, your messages began to fray, thinning at the edges like worn paper.
You were swallowed by anatomy labs, long nights in fluorescent-lit classrooms, the smell of antiseptic and blood lingering under your skin. He was chasing stories for the campus paper, old-school darkrooms lit by the red glow of safelights, hours melting into the quiet press of deadlines.
You FaceTimed once from your dorm hallway, the Wi-Fi so choppy he looked like a watercolor painting. He smiled through the pixelation, and you could feel him.
“I wish I could be there,” you said, voice shaking with the small loneliness that had become constant.
He said, “Me too,” and you believed he meant it.
You thought he would come. Over fall break. You even left packets of hot chocolate on your study desk, a silent invitation.
But he didn’t.
.
By Thanksgiving, your fingers hovered over your phone more than they typed.
You sent him a picture of the homemade pie you tried, and failed, to bake in your dorm kitchenette.
No reply came.
You spent the holiday at your dorm, eating reheated stuffing and listening to Christmas music from your roommate’s Bluetooth speaker. Your parents were too busy to spend Across the state, you imagined the Kent farm bathed in that golden light. The smell of cinnamon rolls and the sound of Jonathan’s laugh drifting from the kitchen.
Your own parents, caught up in work and obligations, were too busy to celebrate properly this year. The small rituals you used to take for granted—the twinkling lights on the tree, the warm mugs of cocoa, the quiet chaos of wrapping paper scattered across the living room—had been replaced with emails, late-night calls, and promises to “make it up” later.
It wasn’t home. Not really.
But the Kent farm… that had felt like it. And this year, it wasn’t.
You didn’t hear from Clark until two days later. One-word text.
Sorry
.
By Spring, the calls turned to voicemails.
“Hey. I, uh… I saw a dog today that looked like the one we named Spoons in third grade. Remember that?”
“Hope school’s going okay. I’m proud of you.”
“I miss you.”
You listened to them alone in the dark after night clinicals at the campus hospital. He always sounded tired. Not sad, just stretched thin, like a quiet reminder of the life you both were building miles apart.
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You came home for summer break, hoping for a glimpse of him on the Kent farm.
Your second home was unchanged, stubborn.
Martha hugged you like you'd never left. Jonathan joked about how much taller you'd gotten. You snorted. Haven't grown an inch since the summer before freshman year. You were still five-two, still the same person, still waiting.
Clark wasn’t there.
“He’s still in Metropolis, sweetie,” Martha said carefully, with an unreadable expression.
“Interning. He's talking about this Daily Planet place. Says it's important."
You nodded. That was all you could do.
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By spring of sophomore year, the threads of conversation had unraveled completely. Not because you didn’t care, but because neither of you knew how to find the words to pull them back together.
You told yourself he was busy. He told himself the same.
Neither of you said the obvious: that love could still fade when no one stops it.
And the quiet truth haunted you: he never once used that impossible, unreal gift of his.
Never appeared at your dorm window after a grueling exam. Never brought you cocoa on a freezing birthday morning. Never crossed a state line to hold your hand when the nights were too long and too lonely.
Not once.
And that, somehow, hurt worse than all the silence combined.
Late at night, in the dorm’s dark, you drafted messages you would never send. The cursor blinked at you, each pulse a reminder of distance, of longing.
“Do you ever think about that meteor shower?”
"Did you hear? The Mighty Crabjoys broke up."
“Did you mean it? About writing about me?”
“I thought we were best friends. Why didn’t you fly to me?”
But you never hit send.
Instead, you saved his number in your phone under his middle name— Joseph —so it wouldn’t break your heart every time it lit up your screen. Not that it ever did.
You carried him like that—quiet, half-remembered, untouchable—through every lecture, every night shift, every lonely mile between Star City and Metropolis.
.
Years later, at twenty-five, an email landed in your inbox that made your pulse stutter: a work opportunity, west coast to east coast.
Star City had been home for three years now—Star City General, long hours, the hum of fluorescent lights, the quiet victories of saving lives, and the constant itch for something more, something different. Adventure, change, the subtle pull of a life that hadn’t been planned but whispered your name anyway.
It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision, signing up for job alerts in Smallville, Central City, Gotham… even Metropolis. You hesitated when the offer finally came through. Metropolis was big. Huge. Full of strangers.
The chances of running into him here—Clark Joseph Kent—seemed infinitesimal.
Tiny enough that you could almost believe it safe.
But life has a way of laughing at careful plans.
Because at that same time, at twenty-six, Clark had taken on a mantle, a name whispered in awe across the city. An alter-ego. And you saw him—your Clark—on your TV, the unmistakable face framed by soft blue eyes, jaw set with purpose, the suit of blue, red, and gold stretching over a body you had memorized in countless memories.
He introduced himself as Superman.
It clicked in your mind like a light turning on after years of dim uncertainty. Maybe this was why he had been so absent. Maybe this was why letters had gone unanswered, calls unreturned, voicemails that carried exhaustion and longing you had almost mistaken for neglect. He had been honing his powers, saving the world, shaping himself into something more than human… because it was the right thing to do.
Your chest tightened at the sound of his deep, confident voice, at the sight of those same soft blue eyes staring back at a city that didn’t know it was being watched. You had spent years wondering, imagining, dreaming… and now, in one heartbeat, he was real.
That was three years ago.
Since then, you had built a life in Metropolis that was yours alone. The city lights replaced the stars you had once counted from your Star City apartment. From Kent farm. Rooftop nights replaced blanket-strewn fields. The hum of traffic replaced the crickets and cicadas of Smallville. And yet, no matter how full your life had become, no matter the hours spent saving lives or the friends you’d made, you still thought about him.
Every small reminder pulled at you.
The latest issue of the Daily Planet, lying on your kitchen counter, the name Clark Joseph Kent in bold, unmistakable.
The upbeat drums and guitar riffs of a rock band you had loved together in middle school, echoing through your headphones, making your chest ache with nostalgia and something more.
The sonic boom that cut across the sky—an invisible thread, a reminder of what you had once known.
A news clip, the red cape streaking across the clouds, and your breath catching in your throat.
When you looked up.
Every time, there was a flicker of hope, the tiniest heartbeat of possibility. You had never crossed paths. Not once. Not since that long-ago farewell on the Kent porch. And yet, your heart still remembered him in ways your mind could barely name.
Most nights, alone in your apartment, you let yourself wonder. The kind of wondering that felt dangerous, reckless, beautiful:
Does he think of me? Does he remember the meteor shower, the hand-holding, the almost-kiss on a summer porch? Does he ever imagine what could have been, what might still be?
And for all the distance, the years, the choices that had pulled you apart… it was undeniable what you felt for him.
Fiercely. Quietly. Relentlessly.
Because some people leave marks on your life that time, or distance, or cities full of strangers, can never erase.
And Clark… he was one of those people.
.
TBC!
(rewritten 10/28/25)