Chapter Text
The first thing that you noticed when you moved to Metropolis was the buzz. Unlike any you’ve ever known before. Incessant, never resolving. The murmuring of a hive that refused to rest, always working, always producing. And ever evolving.
You could stand in a crowd of dozens, hundreds, and not a single person would stray from their own task of obedience to their inner narrative. Caught in the profundity of their own existence, failing to see the value of another’s.
Before so many, yet utterly unseen. But you could feel them all.
With unsure eyes, you searched. Not only looking, but dissecting. A man responds a bit too sharply at the shrinking woman by his side as he cuts off her unnecessary apology, before laughing it off with his buddy. He hates her. He hates women. A child tugging at her mother’s skirt, hoping to call her attention while she tended to her son’s endless demands. Picking favorites.
You saw it all. And it stuck. It stung. Always.
But you can’t move through life with a bleeding heart. So you shut it off. Shoved it down. Every incident, every observation, catalogued away in a far recess of your mind. What’s stepping in worth anyways? You’d likely never see them again.
A city with a population in the millions. This was a lonely city.
It was unnatural, the natural current of self-importance that pushed the souls in this sprawling throng.
You thought things would improve when you finally left the doom and gloom of Gotham City behind. Working at a diner on the outskirts of the city with one of the highest crime rates in the world didn’t exactly nurture your nervous system.
But Metropolis was an entirely different playing field. In Gotham, you had the security in familiarity. This city possessed a lack of certainty that made it difficult to drop your guard. At least back home, you knew to always expect some, for lack of better terms, fuck-shit. But here in Metropolis, just when you’d begin to settle, to take a pause and stop to smell the roses, some gargantuan creature would appear and rampage the square of central plaza.
And you’d still have to show up at work as if nothing at all was wrong. Such is the beauty of late-stage capitalism.
It wasn’t the worst job in the world though. You had been lucky enough to snag a position as a mail clerk for the Daily Planet only days after your move. The pay was no better, equally as abysmal, but that didn’t matter to you. It was simple, quiet. Stable. You couldn’t ask for more.
And yet you did. This ache, this pull, it was relentless. No matter how hard you tried to put an end to it, to strike it down in its tracks whenever that promise of consumption threatened to drag you down with clawing hands, stained with ink of the deepest void, dagger-like nails digging into your crawling skin for securement of your devotion. See me instead, it cried. Acknowledge me, this shadow aspect you’d prefer to maintain cloaked in its darkness.
It was a craving so dark and deep, on a base level. Making it impossible to fully deny. A hunger for reciprocity.
For another to see you. To not be looked upon with just a blind glance, faceless in another’s memory. But instead, to be felt back. To be heard in return.
But no one ever did.
Metropolis. The loneliest city in the world.
It was an unusually quiet day the first day you began working at the Planet. The kind that made you wonder if there truly was a higher-power, who had finally decided to smile down on you with its favor. No alien invasions or covert villainous conspiracy to reported on.
But a quiet day at the Daily Planet was still one teeming with a sense of urgency, as you came to find out.
An overwhelming workload—always subject to change. By the time an article was ready to reach print, public interest had already been lost. The sense of urgency was a necessity, not a consequence. Deadlines, deadlines, lines going dead. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Busy bees. Beautiful, controlled chaos. You could almost see the method to the madness.
“You’ll be responsible for managing incoming and outgoing mail, including sorting, processing, and distributing it within the publication…” The young lady in charge of guiding you through the agonizing task of getting the hang of a new job was doing what might be someone’s best. But not hers.
Her ‘training’ consisted of pointing and describing. All the energy she could spare being directed into condescension she didn’t bother to hide.
“This is the newsroom, where our reporters work. Do not bother them. Do you understand?” You force yourself to nod, almost playing into her projection.
She thinks I’m an idiot. And nothing you could do would change the narrative about you in her mind that she had already assigned you.
You doubted it was envy, because what did she have to envy of you? The thought is absurd, impossible to believe. And you don't entertain it. You can see the distaste playing across her beautiful features now. A souring in her expression as her long, wispy lashes flutter, her plump lips curling down at the edges against her knowing.
Maybe it was the way you held yourself. Eyes that flitted around, struggling to maintain eye contact. Until they kept it too long, bringing forth discomfort. The smile you didn’t let slip, frozen in perpetual politeness, hoping to ease that same discomfort. It was habit, instinctual at this point.
Maybe it was just that they saw a weakness in those things that attracted their forceful personalities. Because they knew you’d never say a word. They could push, push, push. And you would keep smiling, wondering if you had done something to lose the chance at being friendly.
“For Mr. White, Ms. Lane, Mr. Lombard, Mr. Kent…” She continued to name off those who would be in your rounds for mail division, her voice slowing unnaturally as she pointedly enunciates each name. You absorbed her words, listening intently as to not let them slip from your mind. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand,” You nod, before taking a deep breath.
“Good. Mr. White is waiting for you,” She tells you, her cherry-stained lips lifting into a smirk. Mr- who? White? Where??
You hate to, but you must ask. She doesn’t linger, however. Leaving you standing without a damn clue. Your shoulders drop. Maybe you were as dumb as she thought after all. Your heart sinks.
“Excuse me,” A voice cuts through, strong yet… soft.
You turn, eyes expecting to meet another’s but only finding a chest. A pattern of tiny little brown squirrels are embroidered into the forest green silk backdrop of a loosened tie. You look up through your lashes to meet the man’s eyes behind the thick lenses that veiled them. His dreamy, oceanic eyes. That seem to swim with a strange look that you don’t recognize. Can’t put a name to what it means. It unnerves you. Why are you looking at me like that?
The chaos of the newsroom suddenly wasn’t so loud in your ears, static dulling to an inaudible murmur.
“H-hi, hey. Hello. I haven’t seen you around here before. Are you new here, uh, to the Planet?” He stumbles over his words, but only for a moment. As if he hadn’t planned what he was going to say before he approached you.
“Oh, yes. Today is my first day,” You say with a charged nod. The nerves practically radiate from you until you manually reel it in. Goodness, he’s tall.
You step back instinctively with an unconscious shift on your feet, placing even more space between the two of you. He already stands at a respectful distance. Your averted eyes miss the way he shrinks at the action, hunching his posture further as he senses discomfort.
“First day. Wow! I remember my first day… I spilled my coffee all over my shirt and had to go home and change. Perry really chewed me out for that one. Well then, consider me a part of your welcoming committee! It’s so nice to meet you,” He beams, and his smile is so bright. He smiles like the sun. All you can do is stare up at him as the glare blinds you, like he’s something alien. Not of this planet. Did Earth make anyone so… jolly? “I’m Clark. Clark Kent.”
“Clark. It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Kent,” You say politely. You tell him your name, and he repeats it under his breath with a determined softness. Determined to commit it to memory. But you know it will probably slip away from him the moment you do.
“Mr. Kent? Oh, just Clark is, uh, a-okay,” Clark shakes his head, dipping his chin in a poor attempt to hide the way his skin heats at the formality. It’s cute in a way he knows he probably shouldn’t like, coming from a nice, respectful girl. But he’s just Clark. “So… need help with anything-? Finding anything, that is.”
“Oh. they said Mr. White was expecting me, and I don’t know where exactly to find him,” You say, taking a deep breath. The way your features shift gives the sense that it almost pains you to ask. But Clark only smiles, and it never faltered once as he leads you right to Perry’s office with all the chivalry of a true gentleman.
"And here we are, Ms. Y/N..."
That was when it began. The pull towards him.
Unavoidable. Utterly inevitable. Because he had been… so kind.
You knew you were worthy of love. You were a human being and that alone was apparently a qualifying factor. Or so said the tarot cards readers on your TikTok feed.
But it was hard to feel. No palpable thing it was, a fruit you could reach out and take a bite of, fill your cup with ultimate fulfillment in the form of some love so unconditional, there’s no room for further yearning.
They make it sound so easy. But it was not.
So this… thing. This crush. Whatever this thing was with Clark, could not, in no possible future, be pursued. Not encouraged, nor entertained. To completion—whatever that may be. Let it remain as some silly schoolgirl infatuation that passes with time. It’s just a phase.
You shudder to even name it. To classify it means to have studied it, and admitting to yourself that it existed in the first place.
Nothing. That’s what it was. That’s what you were to him. Nothing. Just the girl who slings mail. He existed in his own world, a star in the center of endless abyss. Sunshine of the Daily Planet, clocking in each day to ever so diligently type up the next front-page hit. Some thoughtful and moving piece, to be sure.
And you existed in your own. Looking right into the sun even when the glare is blinding. Idiot.
You couldn’t help how your gaze always gravitated towards him. A nervous flicker to that familiar desk from the moment you step on the floor, body tense with a skin-crawling awareness of how wrongly you held yourself. You tried your best to make it look natural, but nothing ever came naturally to you. Except maybe… fading into the background.
With a pitiful firing of ‘excuse me’s that never fail to go unheard, each lap around the office resembles more a digging-in of the metaphorical knife. Here in Metropolis, people don’t even have the care to dislike, writing you off as a simple waste of space and never batting another eye at you.
You don’t know which stings more.
So it’s no surprise that you gravitated towards Clark.
Clark was good and Clark was pure and Clark was every little thing that you were not.
And you would not infect him with this virus. This clinging stick that you could not get off no matter how harsh you scrubbed.
With all the Lois Lane’s and Cat Grant’s of the world, Clark had his fair share of wonderful, accomplished, stunning choices. Choices he deserves. Who were better suited for him then you would ever be.
You, with your blush a bit too intense, a shade too saturated for the tone of your skin perhaps. But that’s what you liked. And maybe your eye shadow wasn’t perfectly blended. You had still tried. You had shown up for yourself, despite it all.
Maybe you should take better care of the beat-up Mary Janes you wore to work because the leather was already cracking when you first thrifted them, and maybe you should take more care with your surroundings because your thigh was still tender to the touch where you had bruised it days before running into the edge of your bed-frame. But that’s what made you the person you were.
And maybe your idea of bravery was sitting alone in the park by yourself. Because that took a kind of courage most people wouldn’t understand. To get over that voice in your mind that never quieted, constantly spewing exactly what others must be thinking. So to ignore it, that was brave. At least in your book.
You weren’t Lois Lane and you weren’t Cat Grant and that was okay. You were your own kind of person. And that meant you fit into your own kind of world, not theirs.
So keep your head down you will, and fly too close to the sun you will not.
If only he hadn't remembered your stupid name...