Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Buying coffee on a weekday, specifically coffee that wasn’t from a corporate machine making slop, was a luxury you couldn’t afford. But after being jostled awake at five in the morning and left in a cold bed sans a boyfriend, an overpriced latte was beyond necessary.

The barista waved her hand in front of your face to snap you out of your sleep deprivation. “Miss? Just the two iced mochas?”

You held in your yawn to not irritate her further. “Yes.”

“Would you like to try the Cosmic Latte?”

She gestured in a choreographed flourish to the ad by the cash register, designed in the cartoonish outline of an emerald and silver superhero. The drink in question was the most ridiculous sugar-filled sludge, topped with a mound of whipped cream and chocolate syrup to make the cup look like it had a neat coif of dark hair.

The sugar made you salivate on instinct, but this was a cringeworthy amount of hero worship beyond anything you’d encountered before. However, you had to admit it was kind of cute, which meant he’d one hundred percent find it cute.

And getting one would lend you a helping hand for a few not-obvious reasons, though the bored barista didn’t give two shits about you. CosmicMan wouldn’t exactly be out and about drinking a CosmicMan coffee, would he?

Maybe he would.

He definitely would. But only you knew that.

“I’ll take one, thanks.” You handed over your card and tried to be polite, “Love the outfit.”

This whole Cosmic Coffee thing must’ve been their promotion of the month, because even her uniform was embroidered with the intertwined Cs that adorned the most iconic suit in Neopolis. Not to mention the flying superhero cutouts that dangled from the ceiling and the big, see-through mural that covered the windows.

“Yours, too.” She half-smiled at your black vest and matching pleated khakis, yet you could feel the derision dripping off of her words.

Why’d she have to lie? She could’ve just said nothing—

You shook your head to banish that strange thought from ruining your mood.

It ultimately didn’t matter if she was lying or not, she was a random barista you'd never meet again. You'd assumed your journalistic need to see the truth in everyone would've quickly died out after quitting the newspaper, but nope! It’d gotten much, much worse over the past year and you hadn’t taken a single step towards improving yourself… which was a problem for another day.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket, a normal vibration that was nothing of note. You put all three coffees in one hand to check what non-emergency awaited you.

@superASS: hey @CosMicDrop any thots on CM being a bball player? no way is he that BEEFY without it

You held in your egregious eye roll since being in public meant anonymous @superASS might see you do so. Why did a majority of your weekly livestream viewers have the most horrendous takes? There was not an ounce of critical thinking that went on in their brains. And why did you take it upon yourself to still answer every single one of their questions?

Balancing the coffees in one hand and balancing your answer between nuance and revelatory took most of your brain capacity.

@CosMicDrop: @superASS Don’t you think CosmicMan being in a different state every day for a game would make it hard for him to save people here in Neopolis?

As you stretched to press send, your other hand faltered around the coffees and you almost spilled them over the floor. You saved yourself in time by grabbing the lid of the top latte with your teeth and rebalancing the stack against your rib. Not a superpower, just a reflex borne out of years of coffee shuffling as a journalism intern at the Neopolis Daily News.

It would be much appreciated if someone came here to rescue you, though. Wink wink.

The door of the coffee shop opened as you were about to reach for it and nearly would’ve split your face in two if you hadn’t dodged it. You were surprised to see a young, thin woman on the other side because that was a serious burst of power from someone that small.

“My greatest apologies!” she fussed over you, much nicer than the average Neopolis citizen was.

“All good.” As long as the coffees were intact, you weren’t going to make a scene.

You waved her off from an attempt to hug you in apology, which crossed into the too nice territory that pissed you off. After making your way out of the coffee shop as fast as possible, you tried to get into the crosswalk before the light turned (no jaywalking charges on your record!) but somehow had the instinct to dig in your heels and come to a screeching halt at the edge of the curb.

A motorcycle, crammed to bursting with scream-laughing people, sped by no less than a fraction of an inch away.

The whiplashing winds left your hair a fright and your heart racing with adrenaline-laced fury. You glanced down, expecting to see a puddle of destroyed coffees on the ground, but they were still in a neat, crumpled stack in your hand.

A surprised giggle erupted from your mouth, it was so ridiculous that you managed to hold on to them. Maybe being in such close proximity to superpowers every day was finally rubbing off.

Another motorcycle revved its engine and the sound physically detonated in the center of your chest when it raced by where you were just standing. You felt yourself collapsing back to the sidewalk before anything else registered in your brain; they would’ve ran you clean over if you hadn’t.

Even through strands of disorientation, your instinct to collect information kicked in. There were four of them stacked onto one bike that you couldn’t tell the brand of, wearing some kind of flesh-colored hat and all-black garments. You couldn’t hear what they were saying, but picked up on the same loud cackling as they peeled down Main Street.

The dull sting in your palms gave way to gross stickiness, courtesy of the now-destroyed coffees. Great, CosmicMan’s coif was all over the new thrifted pants that you were trying to make last a long time.

You checked down the crosswalk to make sure there wasn’t a third motorcycle to follow and only spotted a little old lady, clutching a destroyed grocery bag, crying her eyes out, and… covered head to toe in dark, oozing, crimson blood.

She met eyes with you and shrieked, “Help me!”

Your hand reached out for her and you saw nothing but matching red stained into your skin.

You screamed at the top of your lungs.

Your brain knew from context clues that it wasn’t blood, because it was far too sticky and the smell was gross and artificial, not metallic. However, your fingers quaked in your line of sight, you couldn’t shake the feeling that you were bleeding from the inside out. You let the ruined coffee cups spill from your hand in order to push yourself into a sitting position and your gaze trailed to the streak of red on your thigh—

The oxygen was knocked right out of you then promptly pushed right back in when you were swept into the air.

Thank god.

An arm around your chest had you locked into a grip so tight that you could barely move. Your gaze craned enough to give you a glimpse at the pavement speeding by, as you flew across the crosswalk to pick up that old lady.

You glanced the other direction, to the elbow you were sandwiched in, and looping Cs stitched into the fabric sent relief spiraling down your spine.

The old lady was gently sat down by the empty bus stop on the other side of the street, where there was a small park and no street traffic. You stayed dangled in the air, unable to comfort her even if you tried, but her face lit up when she recognized who exactly had saved her.

“Stay safe, ma’am!” A deep voice called from above you, the grip around your shoulders not letting up once.

“Thank you, CosmicMan!” she warbled and blew him a kiss.

The girlish gratitude that glowed on her face was a universal reaction that did not discriminate with age, gender, race, anything.

Then, you were in the air again without warning.

Now that it was just you, you wrapped your arms around your savior’s waist and tucked into him as far as you could go. You sucked in a deep breath, then buried your face in his chest to avoid the blistering leaves, excess smog, and stark change in elevation.

Out of nowhere, you plummeted towards the ground to be able to fly through two buildings that were only separated by an alleyway space. Your lungs and vocal cords burst with the need to scream, but with no viable air to borrow you just clung onto him for dear life and screwed your eyes shut. You got severe motion sickness while flying in a regular plane, imagine what it felt like for you to do this.

The world spun in your self-induced darkness as he pivoted a new direction and accelerated to a pace that had your skin blistering. You could vaguely sense the sky was above you because your cheeks started to grow hot; the sun was the eternal power engine assisting his speed.

“Don’t go too fast,” you murmured.

You barely caught his funny laugh before he squeezed your waist and sped up a tiny bit.

Your yelp echoed into the stratosphere as he swept you into a bridal hold, then slowed down with enough finesse that you both landed on top of the newly rebuilt Neopolis Daily News Building without fanfare or chaos. He put you down and your wobbly knees gave out right away. Your scraped-up hands grappling at the railing saved you from falling off the most famous downtown landmark.

He was a vision of pure perfection in the sun, though.

His brown hair glistened and hadn’t fallen a strand out of place even with all that flying, his matching eyes sparkled the same… though you couldn’t be sure if that was due to his satisfaction or what he was looking at. Ha. With the silver suit curved around his strong muscles as it was made to do, he was truly something to behold.

And your reflection in the glass was also something to behold: windswept, blood-stained, and shaky, like the puny little anchovy you were—

“Are you alright, miss?” He sounded so serious while inquiring, even though you were on the roof of a thirty-story skyscraper with not a single soul or bird around.

“I’m alright, CosmicMan,” you answered with a boatload of cheek. “I’m sure it was just kids playing a prank.”

Motorcycle terrorists aside, Neopolis was the quietest and safest it'd ever been because of his presence the past few years. Getting a personal rescue was a perk of being a superhuman’s girlfriend.

Kai Kim, all him and not his alter ego, stared at you with a tiny smile done up on his lips and fond wrinkles creased against his eyes. A smitten blush tickled your neck and dissipated, all it ever seemed to do even when he was being the most romantic boyfriend. He wasn’t mooning over you like he did in the privacy of your home, but the way his eyes kept darting across your face gave his secret desires away.

You put your hands on your hips and huffed, “Are you gonna kiss me hello or am I looking that bad?”

“I always want to kiss you,” Kai giggled.

You could sense that he’d utilized a little white lie, wanting to hold off from a direct kiss until he figured out if you were okay and if this red stuff was dangerous.

But Kai ended up holding his arms out when he realized he’d get pouty without his reward and you walked straight into the embrace. He’d already carried you all this way without a fuss, one kiss wasn’t going to tilt the scale towards a uncontrollable, precarious situation. His mouth met yours with gentle intention, so that nothing but your lips touched and he got no paint on his suit.

“Thank you, by the way,” you giggled softly. “Wasn’t sure if you heard me.”

You shouldn’t’ve expected him to come, rewarded him for it, or taken advantage of his need to be at your beck and call. That was not how this relationship worked.

“It’s all part of my boyfriend responsibility,” Kai conceded as he wiped a bit of red nonsense off your cheek. “As is getting to help you clean off when we get home?”

You rolled your eyes hard.

“I didn’t even know you left,” you ignored him to call attention to him deciding to go out saving people this morning with no heads up. “I thought I’d get you a coffee before streaming.”

Still pretty funny that you ended up dating the CosmicMan like this, but it was the kind of ridiculousness your life was destined for, apparently.

Kai stared at you with his kind, kind eyes, his eyes, and just melted, “I love you.”

Your lips curved into a sweet smile and you answered him with a second kiss.

You’d only been together for ten months, hadn’t met each others’ families, hadn’t made that many serious promises beyond the lease you'd signed a few weeks ago. You never said I love you this early to someone, but you were putting your best foot forward in working towards it. He never complained or made you feel hurried, that was the kind of guy he was.

He struck up casual conversation, as if this was your arranged place for a date, “Yeji mentioned she’d be coming in from Mars soon and wants to see the new place. Is that cool with you?”

Yeji was a rare survivor of their home planet Zōnon's destruction that Kai had managed to make contact with. You hadn’t met her yet (same with his human family back in Wyoming, but that was a different story) and were endlessly anxious about interacting with the other special people in his life. But what could a harmless old auntie do to you?

As your lips were poised to steal another kiss, the thin air pierced with an echoing scream from below.

Duty called.

You couldn’t care less that Kai dropped you like a hot potato and prepared to rescue whoever needed his help. He was good beyond belief, with a strong, unwavering sense of responsibility and selflessness. That was what you admired about him the most... because you shared none of those traits.

Only, he froze for a moment when he got to the ledge.

Your hand reached for your phone in your pocket; years of being a journalist had trained you to have it recording before you ran over to meet him. Even though anyone on the sidewalk could look up and see, you gripped Kai’s hand to feel his skin instead of the webbing of his suit as you glanced over the perilous edge.

There was paint splattered across the busiest road in the Business District, the same shade as the paint all over your body. It covered both lanes of traffic and every car in the vicinity with a pattern of strange randomness that you couldn’t compute. You were prepared to write it off before Kai went still beside you, an impossible feat for a ball of energy like him. His gorgeous eyes sharpened with concentration as he kept tracing the streaks over and over, trying to make sense of them.

Feeling violent vertigo creep into the outlines of your consciousness, you retraced to where you were standing in the crosswalk. You followed the paint around the u-turn curve the motorcycles had to have taken and pieced together where those belligerent teens would’ve come from. Wait, you couldn’t assume they were teens, because this seemed to go beyond a simple prank.

Okay, they had to have come around the u-turn, which was how they managed to splatter both you and the old lady on opposite sides of the road. Then they went up the straight section of Main Street which had no turnoffs that weren’t into a parking garage or building valet. Your eyes followed that path once, twice, and on the third time, it clicked.

“Is that a J?” you gasped.

You let go of Kai’s hand to grip the railing for dear life, a paradox considering his arms were the safest place to be in the city. And though you couldn’t spot anxiety in CosmicMan’s eyes, you could easily see it in Kai’s, just like he could see it in yours.

He kissed the side of your head, then wasted no time launching off the roof to go help the latest victims of the nefarious paint splatterers. He left you there standing alone, not unlike the way he'd found you ten months before.

The next breath you took stutter-started into uncontrollable hyperventilation.

For a moment, you could remember it way too clearly, as if the memories lived in the building underneath you. The fifth floor bulletin board shattered on the floor, the flyer for the red panda zoo trip disintegrated in flames. The door to the overnight room crushing a panel full of glass, the chandeliers falling to pieces around you, the broadcast desk destroyed into a million unfixable shards.

The grim acceptance you weren't going to make it out alive while running as hard as you could to any still-standing exit. The shattered window by your corner desk reflecting your terrified outline against two different faces, two sides of a coin you hadn’t asked to flip.

Kai’s face when he came to rescue you was pure, good, everything you’d ever wanted.

The other's was a demonstration of unmistakeable evil, set under a shaved head and the cruelest dark eyes.

You waited for the rebounding nausea to pass, then ran for the emergency exit.

—

[9:54 am] Theee best sis in the worldddddd: um??
[9:54 am] Theee best sis in the worldddddd: hello??
[9:54 am] Theee best sis in the worldddddd: girl chat FT
[9:55 am] Theee best sis in the worldddddd: needed ASAP

You muted the thread without opening a single message, including the millions more that were delivered during that time. Your sister didn’t need to send a lifetime’s worth of texts to convey something that simple and you knew exactly who in your family she’d learned that from. (It wasn’t you and it rhymed with pother and pather.)

Anxious to get back to the safety of your apartment, you almost ran into someone entering the building at the same time. Barely managing to dodge their huge frame, you muttered a quick apology while pushing past them, “Whoa, sorry,” but didn’t bother to stop…

“Hey, what am I? Chopped liver?”

Your boyfriend was jogging into the entryway behind you, now in his inside out and backwards sleep tee-sweatpants combo. He must’ve changed at home as soon as the early morning emergency hit.

Of course you both made it back at the same time. Even though he had a dozen or more people to save, he had the perk of being able to fly back while you had to run… on a detoured route that went away from the river, so you didn’t get bombarded by paint again.

He held the door open for you, perfect gentleman, and you patted his ass in thanks before you ran ahead.

“What time’s the stream?” Kai asked as you sprinted up the stairs together. The first rule you made upon moving in together was that he couldn’t fly you anywhere indoors, otherwise one of your bum ass neighbors might see.

“Five minutes, but we could skip it if you wanted.” It wasn’t hard to miss that he was exhausted, sweat had coated through his shirt and there was a streak of red paint concealing a bruise on his neck. He obviously needed some time out in the sunshine—

“No, we can’t skip. People will get weird about it when they see the story on the news!”

He wasn’t wrong about that.

You made it up to the third floor and burst into your apartment with your vest already halfway off, taking care not to get any dried paint on your floors. Though they were pretty torn up and scuffed, you did not want to be violating your lease agreement within weeks of moving in.

Then again, your landlords had no idea who they’d given this space to.

After going to the kitchen for a rag to wet, you held it out for Kai and turned to stare out the window so that your vision stayed intact. The controlled lasers that beamed from his eyes were just strong enough to sizzle the fabric with warmth, leaving it supple enough to wipe your neck and face off with. The rag stained like you actually were bleeding but you stopped as soon as your neck had no visible marks, the rest of your body had to wait for after.

“It’s definitely going to end up on the news,” Kai doubled down as he stripped off his suit bottoms, hidden under the pajamas he wore every night. “There was another J on the highway turnoff, I rescued eleven people who were splattered the same way. That’s why I took so long.”

Your stiff, anxious lungs almost didn’t want to ask the question, but your mouth forced it out anyway, “Do you think it’s him?”

There was a mutual moment of silence where no answer came; you kept wiping your neck and he ruffled his hair out of the coif since Kai wouldn’t be caught dead with one. The question felt silly to ask when the paint was burning your skin like an obvious beacon.

“I’m not sure who else would paint a large J across Neopolis,” Kai joked lightheartedly as he buttoned his shirt to the top button. “Just surprised it wasn’t actual blood.”

This was the epitome of who your boyfriend was, he never expressed anger or fear in an outward manner that might affect your mood. Sometimes you were convinced that he never truly felt it, sometimes you were convinced it was the strongest defense mechanism he'd developed as a response to his powers.

All of a sudden, Kai stopped you from wiping. You realized you were scrubbing your chest raw to get the anxiety to subside.

He had a twinkle in his eye that lacked apprehension and held the love he felt for you. “Are you okay?”

You nodded, no reason to make him worried. “Are you?”

Kai nodded in return and brought his mouth to yours to seal it in with a kiss, but your chest twinged with the discomforting sense that he wasn’t telling the complete truth. Instead, he was leaning into romance to cover up a screaming misdirection compared to the little white lie from before. You weren’t going to make him confront that trepidation for your sake, not this close to a stream starting.

And it’s not like you enjoyed reliving what happened last year either.

“Ready?” he asked with a grin.

Kai was so enthusiastic about the job he’d created to protect his secret identity (which was also a job he was enthusiastic about). It was one of the reasons why you’d ended up liking him; being passionate about your work was what you had most in common.

“Ready.”

Despite agreeing, something seemed off and you couldn’t pinpoint what. You were mostly clear of the paint besides what was dripped on your clothes but would be out of camera view. You double-checked for Kai and he’d remembered to take every piece of his suit off, his perfect face wasn’t covered in any paint that you could see…

“Your glasses!” you hissed. “Don’t forget your glasses!”

He yelped so loud the windows creaked under superhuman force and he dove for the pocket of his backpack. His glasses sat on his nose and blurred the outline of his handsome facial features into generic ambiguity. The reliable wire rims were an insane invention, effective to a degree you couldn’t quite believe, yet you always knew it was Kai wearing them. Even from the first time you saw him wearing them half-dangled off an ear, any glimpse of his blurry face prickled like a lie to you.

He grinned at you as dots of fiery blush bloomed high on his cheeks. See? How could you not recognize that face?

“Where’d CosmicMan go?!” you teased, looking around your apartment in a flair of drama.

Kai kissed you right on the lips, his favorite way to prove it.

You clicked your phone into the filming stand and opened your computer to the Neopolis Daily News front page in case you needed it. You and Kai sat side by side at your desk like always, knees brushing under the drawers and poised with you in the camera’s main focus. He pressed LIVE without taking a centering breath, because you never needed to for other streams, because this wasn’t a day out of the ordinary. Though there were already fifty thousand people on your livestream, twice as many as usual.

“Top of the morning or bottom of the afternoon, and welcome to CosMicDrop!” Kai greeted the viewers warmly before he turned to you. “This is episode… What is it now?”

Kai had been doing this livestream for years on his own as a way to cover up his identity. You’d been together for ten months plus nine days and he’d roped you into streaming the first week you were official… which coincidentally happened to be the week after he'd rescued you from the Neopolis Daily News Building collapse. 

Are you alright, miss? was one hell of a pickup line.

You’d run into Kai (not CosmicMan, Kai) on the street and his half-blurred face behind the askew glasses told you his claim he wasn’t the most famous man in the city was a lie. You called him out on it, You look just like CosmicMan, though, and he was so shocked to be recognized for the first time in his life that he had no response prepared. After that, you felt a strange sense of responsibility to help him keep his double life under wraps and… your professional life coincidentally became free enough to co-host.

You used your best broadcasting tone despite this being a silly TikTok livestream, “This should be episode one hundred and twenty-seven.”

For those ten months and nine days, many, many, many thoughts about returning to real journalism squatted in the recesses of your brain. You were a front page reporter for the Neopolis Daily News ever since graduating from Pearltown University, back when you had to commute in from the suburb across the Neopolis River. A few big, breaking stories and you were on track for a promotion to the nightly news broadcast desk.

You were never actually fired from your position. You wanted that on the record.

But you got seriously unwell thinking of working inside the rebuilt headquarters, walking on the floors that'd collapsed, using the filming sets and cameras replacing the destroyed ones. The need to go out and scoop an event before anyone else was a permanent itch under your skin, but doing these streams was the easiest choice you could make to stay safe. You had a superhuman as your deskmate, after all.

You’d prepared specific material for this episode, diversion-level nonsense about how CosmicMan was seen going into the flashy townhouses up north. The northern edge of the city was nowhere close to the crappy apartment complex you lived in by the Business District.

But all your brain could focus on was the red paint seeping through your skin into the very cells that made you.

The ditty that indicated a new comment became a obnoxious cacophony as your viewers’ thoughts flooded in. A dozen of them exploded on screen before Kai could adjust his glasses and start talking again.

@cosmicmanSTAN: did u guys hear abt the paint?

@user324724127: Talk about the paint, the paint!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

@zaynmalikwhereru: My dad was out 4 a jog said that he saw CosmicMan save 2 kids coverd in red paint!!

@herb: somebody tell me WTF ur talking abt?

Your eyes glued to a cracked corner of your computer screen. You couldn’t look at each other because you were going to give it away.

There wasn’t much detail on the Neopolis Daily News front page, only a brief breaking blurb describing a paint bomb downtown. There was no significant chatter about the pattern being shaped like a J, but it was only a matter of time before the helicopters took off and put it together.

You responded to it all in a casual tone, “Yeah, I saw the paint when I went out to get coffee this morning. Kai, what did you think it was?”

“Just paint?” Kai let out a honking laugh to match the shrug of his dumb little performance. “How would I know? I was sleeping right before this.”

This bumbling persona was necessary to conceal his superior, superhuman intellect. He couldn’t be anything like he was in real life…

@XOXKaiXOX: KAI I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!

He had a cult following anyway.

“I’m pretty sure it was just teens being teens—” Your statement earned a bunch of thumbs down reacts from the teens in your stream, but you couldn’t care less, “Anyways, I will dive into this on my own and see if there’s more here. Especially if CosmicMan was going around saving people.”

Kai flew out every day to keep things tidy in the city, but his actions here were a double-edged sword. Him taking drastic measures to save people from an act of simple vandalism was definitely notable.

*Someone in the #CosBigDicks chat requested to join via voice:* sheMinsonmyHyungtiliLee

sheMinsonmyHyungtiliLee, despite their bizarre username, had been a regular viewer since you’d joined and always had interesting things to contribute. Despite some of their thoughts veering into alien conspiracy, they gave you good ammo to cover yourselves with you never would’ve thought of. Like using the fake moon landing bullshit as a coverup for how Kai really made it onto Earth.

Kai added them in and acknowledged their presence, “Hello! You’re on with us now!”

The user’s voice was grainy and chattery, that of a teen who was doing this without their parents knowing, “I was out with my skate crew and we saw someone get splashed with paint on Moore and Main Street… by guys with buzz cuts.”

Kai’s knee knocked into yours so hard that you knew you’d have a massive bruise in a few hours. Sometimes (many times) he lacked control over his heightened level of strength.

And you had to pretend like you weren’t freaking out.

Despite the distance between you, the computer screen, the crappy connection, your chest didn’t prick with nefarious hints of a lie from sheMinsonmyHyungtiliLee. You also picked up on the detail that the people crammed on those motorcycles appeared to be wearing flesh-colored hats, but that was from your zoomed-out view.

Anyone could have a buzz cut, but not just anyone had a buzz cut.

The chat exploded.

@futtbucka77: i knewwwwww he’d be back omfg

@big_baller: swore a buncha homies with them cuts were out when i cut thru the shadow dist yday

@ilovetigbitties: omfg homeboi couldn’t last a year in the shadows. had to come back just to troll CM

“Alright, alright,” you calmed the chat down as Kai’s knee kept hitting yours again and again. “I know we love a good conspiracy, but a guy with a buzz cut isn’t actually proof.”

That was your true journalistic self holding strong, not whatever scared little girl was desperate to creep out.

“I used to have a buzz,” Kai added on to quell the speculation, yet you could hear the slight quiver at the end of his sentence.

@KaiKimIsMYBF: omg u prob looked totally fuckable

A held-in sigh rattled around your chest.

“Maybe my sources will have heard something more concrete.” Your source was sitting right next to you and Kai had no information beyond what you’d witnessed this morning. “Even though we didn’t do much sleuthing into who CosmicMan is, thank you for joining CosMicDrop today! We will see you next Thursday!”

You turned the stream off, double checked it, triple checked it. Then you let out that held-in sigh, which burned your lungs with unleaded stress.

It didn’t go unnoticed that Kai had gone quiet after sheMinsonmyHyungtiliLee brought up the buzz cuts and you knew why. He wasn’t afraid, per se, but wouldn’t anyone be wary of a person who'd pushed them to the brink so many times?

Kai stared out the cracked side window of your little apartment. It was adorned with a clay vase filled with touch-me-nots, your favorite plant, dug up and transplanted from home after the ones in your office were destroyed. As the sun streamed into the space, he watched the family in the house across the street laugh over cartoons without a care or thought in the world. You knew a specific craving of his was to raise a family in the middle of nowhere, where nothing bad could happen to any of them.

It wasn’t a dream you necessarily shared.

The city grind had been your ideal life since you were old enough to live on your own. But you also had matured enough to support your partner’s hopes for the future.

“Do you think he’s really back?” you asked in a quiet voice.

You reached over to run a hand through Kai’s dark brown hair and the stress poured off of him right into your palms.

Though you hadn't known him personally before last year, CosmicMan had been around for a few. You covered enough of their earth-shattering fights to recognize how much Kai was affected by his nemesis’s lingering presence in the city. However, he never let himself show it, and often acted like your fear of the man haunted him more than his own.

Kai shrugged. “I haven’t heard a peep from him since last year.”

More than a few of his morning flight patrols to ‘ensure traffic stopped for school buses’ and to ‘save old ladies’ cats from trees’ were to confirm that man’s thugs weren't committing the crimes.

“You should’ve killed him when you had the chance. He almost destroyed the city.” The suburban fantasy transformed into a stomach-churning loss of gravity, accompanied by the shattering rattle of your bones as you fell through the collapsed floor.

Kai went still under your hands.

His voice toiled through a taxing effort to become as gentle as he always wanted it to be, “He’s a human who can’t defend himself.”

Kai made the moral choice not to kill any humans, even those who retaliated against him or threatened his existence. Though there were moments where that choice strained against his instincts and he had the powers to unleash at any moment, he refused to.

Unfortunately, his greatest arch nemesis fell into this category, despite being more than able to defend himself…. just not with superpowers.

“Who cares,” you huffed.

Kai peeked over his shoulder, eyes rounded with emotion, and the stark guilt had you feeling unworthy of being his girlfriend.

But that disintegrated.

The man in question almost killed both of you that day, not to mention his numerous attempts at killing Kai in the years before that; it wasn't a sin to hold no sympathy for someone that evil. Though Kai stopped the man's brutally violent attempt at taking over Neopolis and forced him into a truce to never do so again, you couldn’t say you agreed with that peaceful solution.

Kai took his glasses off and his magnificent glow filled your tiny, rundown apartment. He reached to hold your face in his hands, hoping to make you feel the safest you could be, and murmured, “I’m never gonna let anything happen to you.”

It wasn’t a statement you could class as a lie, but it lacked any and all realism.

There was a stark difference between not letting anything happen to you and having the ability to stop anything from happening to you. Kai might’ve been the most well-known superhuman on Earth, but you couldn’t say with certainty he had enough power to stop every shred of evil that could befall you.

But you told yourself you had to trust Kai with everything in you. What other choice did you have?

—

The sun shining in through your lace-trimmed curtains was your steadfast ally this early in the morning.

An eternal night owl, you hated being awake at the crack of dawn, yet you’d woken up with Kai’s hands under your tee somehow. He must’ve reached from where he was splayed on the opposite side of the bed, still asleep. It took you no effort to shift and straddle his hips, you wanted to steal a good morning kiss, hoping it’d get him to fully rouse and see you with your sleep tee half off your shoulders.

His fingers gripped into the softness of your thighs and told you that his subconscious knew what was going on.

Something about his strong hands always got you. He’d saved so many people yet they were totally perfect, not a marking or scar left on them. In fact, the majority of his body was unblemished, courtesy of the gorgeous sunlight you paid a premium for at this crappy apartment with huge windows. The only scar you’d been able to find was a jagged, off-center diamond shape branded right above his sternum.

You brushed your hips against his and Kai was awake in an instant… no, he was awake the whole time and was cheekily waiting for you to make the move. Your neck ached with delicious tenderness from the masterful work he’d done on you the night before, but you leaned in to kiss his mouth anyway and whispered against it, “Good morning.”

As your hands spread against his strong chest to tickle him, Kai’s gorgeous smile lit up and shone straight into his words, “Every morning is good.”

He was the kind of silly person to have a good day every day, though the lavish sweet nothings weren’t what you particularly cared about.

“Just good?” You turned the flirting on and leaned forward so he could see down your shirt, see the lavender marks that made you his. A satisfied sigh rippled through his muscled torso and ended with his hips brushing against yours to egg you on towards what he wanted.

“Cosmic-level fantastic!” His exclamation was over-the-top and perfect, before he pulled you down on the bed beside him.

Well, he almost threw you right through the bed.

The flimsy bedframe cracked and the springs ended up poking right into your back, but you were used to all the ways he couldn’t corral his strength.

Your eyelashes brushed against his when Kai got as close as possible for a kiss. You never had to question if he wanted you when he acted this enamored whenever you were together. Honestly, when he floated back to Earth after rescuing you from the crumbling Neopolis Daily News building and your mouths caught in a kiss before your bodies wrapped in the more appropriate hug… that should’ve been a sign.

“I wanna marry you,” Kai sighed against your lips.

A super alien with a passionate belief in the concept of marriage wasn’t ever your thing before this. Marriage in general wasn’t your thing.

Which meant you really had to be crazy about him to respond, “Let’s get married, then,” right?

Kai stared down at the sight of you, hair mussed, lips swollen, your clothes nearly off, and laughed out loud, “Right now?”

Before he could slip inside you like he craved, your ear prickled with a sudden, incessant beep coming from somewhere in your apartment. Not the ominous kind of beeping, but the kind that was just annoying enough to steal your attention away. You almost knocked noses while sitting up because Kai tried to kiss you through every second of it.

“Wait, what’s that sound?”

“Baby, pay attention,” Kai whined into your collarbone before running his lips over the curve of your shoulder, the most undeniable temptation. Note to self, one way to dampen his superhuman hearing was to get him pliant and sleepy with lust.

The beeping increased in frequency until it was whirring at a constant hum, then you knew exactly what it was.

“It’s the CosmicPhone,” you gasped, then hit him hard in the shoulder to get it together.

Kai had a specific phone that individuals in Neopolis could call for CosmicMan’s help and it would fly him right to them if they were hidden. Its vibrations were loud and annoying in comparison to a regular phone to ensure it was always heard.

But a harmony of unrelated beeping joined in, which made it quite clear quite fast that it wasn’t only the CosmicPhone going off. It was his regular phone, it was your phone, it was your TV, it was both your laptops, as if you were getting thousands of messages at the same time. The ringing echoed through your apartment with such force it had to be coming from other apartments, too.

There was only one person who had the power to do that and it wasn’t even a power. A feat like this was sheer technical…. irritation.

Kai retrieved the CosmicPhone, the safest device to for this bullshit, then opened the closet where his suit was neatly hung up. Just in case, not jumping the gun or anything. He clambered back on the bed so you could watch it together, not wanting to leave your side for this.

Awaiting you on the screen was a notoriously familiar Neopolis logo: two blood red Js, stuck back-to-back and drawn with dagger corners instead of curves, appearing like the fatal tip of an arrowhead. Much more refined than the painted counterpart adorning the city streets.

Kai didn’t move a single inch.

He sat there in the middle of the pillows with no glasses, no shirt, no reaction, just his sleep shorts and an impassive expression you couldn’t decipher.

Fear burned straight through your veins, so you tucked your chin against his shoulder and attempted to curl in close to him. Kai didn’t exactly push you away, but he didn’t sweep you into his arms and reassure your safety like he made numerous promises to do. You weren’t expecting him to; this was his duty, you were not.

“Greetings, citizens of Neopolis.”

It wasn’t just a message, it was a video.

He had no need to introduce himself, everyone in Neopolis knew who he was. The name Jaehyun Jeong was as burned into people’s minds here as the name CosmicMan was.

His fresh blonde buzz cut also burned into your mind. He looked exactly the same as he did a year ago, when you saw him up close for the very first time… right before he tried to kill you. To this day, you had no idea how your boyfriend managed to fly through your office wall in time to save you from getting crushed.

With an immaculate onyx suit that sharpened him into perfection, a tie studded in blood rubies shaped like his logo, and eyes so colorlessly dark and menacing, Jeong was frightening to a level you’d never seen in a human before.

His voice touched a level of incredible deepness, that made the words crawl into your brain and rip out your sensory neurons, “I will keep this simple. CosmicMan, meet me in city center at twelve noon tomorrow. Do not dare be unpunctual. Anyone in Neopolis is welcome to come watch, I know you love an audience.”

The screen went black as soon as he’d finished speaking, his severe stare dissipated as fast as you could take a breath.

Kai’s fingers flew across the screen, but there was no getting the video back. However, there was no question the message had been imparted, loud, clear, and…. confusing.

His exhale was thin enough to get lost in the now-rancid air of your room, “He wants to meet me.” He glanced down at his casual state of undress, more your boyfriend than he was CosmicMan, and his forehead crinkled with confusion. He was unable to understand why he was being called out with no warning.

“Do you think he wants to fight you?” That was the most logical conclusion for even the most unobservant listener.

Since CosmicMan’s first appearance in Neopolis during the bad coastal hurricane two years ago, every front page you’d been involved in had a story of the two of them. You covered it all, another land-destroying, violent fistfight, a new invention Jeong created to expel the most famous alien out of your human city, neon green zōnonite levels spiking as he harnessed the natural resource to weaken his superhuman opponent. He wanted to fight.

“He’d lose,” Kai said honestly.

Last year, they’d fought over the remains of your old office building as you watched from below. Though Kai had ultimately won and sent Jeong into hiding for these past ten months, the other man had dealt him so much bodily damage that he’d slept in the sun for five days straight afterwards. After almost a year of not hearing from the scariest person ever, you couldn’t be sure of the ways he’d leveled up to impart his retaliation.

He was the one who liked an audience.

“He almost destroyed the city last year,” you reminded him.

The Neopolis Daily News Building was almost rebuilt, there were ribbon-cutting ceremonies and celebrations galore planned for the end of the year. But last time you'd walked down that street, there were still tufts of old rubble and debris scattered around the fresh foundation.

“He’d be a sitting duck if he gathered the entire city and tried to kill me in front of them. There would be rioting the second he tried anything,” Kai ran through the logic, which you had to admit was right.

“But what does he want to do, have a fucking picnic in the park?”

“Maybe he just wants to talk.”

Kai was too well-meaning and goodhearted for his own sake. This wasn’t the time, he needed to be as suspicious as you were and you couldn’t comprehend why he wasn’t.

Jaehyun Jeong did not deserve the benefit of the doubt here.

You grasped Kai’s chin in your hand to make sure he was staring straight at you when you said, “I want you to remember that he looked me in the eye while my office building fell down around me and did nothing.”

Your boyfriend’s hands were perfect but yours had jagged scar streaks permanently etched into the palms. Paramedics spent over an hour picking out glass shards embedded deep into your skin as you blankly stared at the smoking rubble you were almost crushed in. You’d fought with desperation to break the window next to your desk, fists pounding into any cracked corner they could reach… with Jeong on the other side, watching you struggle for your life.

“I’m not trying to have a beer with the man again,” he reassured you in a soft, placating tone. “But it is my duty as CosmicMan to—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. You have to put the city first.”

Kai was faultlessly perfect and you should strive to be more like him.

That was damn near an impossible task.

Kai finally reached over and wrapped you up in the hug you’d been wanting since the CosmicPhone went off. You felt tiny and protected in his arms, the way you did when he dove through that impenetrable window and snatched you away. You buried your face into Kai’s bare shoulder, wishing you could latch onto him so that Jaehyun Jeong would have to face you together—

Bingo, that was it.

“I’ll go with you,” you blurted.

His hands squeezed you so hard you were prepared for more superhuman bruises. And if that wasn’t enough of an answer, he shook his head over and over again, refusing to accept the idea. “No! Absolutely not.”

Sure, Kai would be freaking out the whole time, having to keep an eye on you while dealing with his archnemesis at the same time. But so many nosy people would show up that you’d easily blend into the crowd and it wasn’t like you'd run into the man. Besides, what kind of TikTok reporter would you be if you didn’t go get the scoop on what was happening with CosmicMan and Jaehyun Jeong?

“He said anyone can go. And I’m dating Kai Kim, not CosmicMan.”

Jaehyun Jeong couldn’t go after you even if he wanted to, because he had no idea who you were.

—

If one more person stepped on your foot, you were going to start pouring your sugar-free slop coffee on every head you walked by.

“Get out of my fucking way,” you growled, pushing by yet another group of teen girls dolled up in #CosmicCunty baby tees.

They needed to get a life.

But to be honest, the rest of the goddamn city deserved an even bigger bitch fit. You’d never been so claustrophobic in your life, thanks to the sheer number of people packed into every sidewalk square that led up to Neopolis’s city center. You were pretty surprised they hadn’t built a CosmicMan statue in the middle of the park yet, what with all this hero worship floating around.

Dr. Suh and Neopolis General Hospital were going to have to open another ER for the aches and pains this nosy rubbernecking was going to inspire.

“CosmicMan is going to absolutely rock his shit,” a random guy gossiped to his girlfriend as they bought popcorn from a street vendor.

See, a fight wasn’t that ridiculous to suggest.

A stranger next to them chimed in, “Nah, JJ is scary underrated. Did you see how fucked up CosmicMan got last year? By a human?”

You saw.

You watched from afar as Kai was hit by a metal glove adorned in zōnonite rings that perfectly melded to the angles of his cheekbones. Half the skin on his face melted off and there was nothing you could do.

This morning, Kai had left the apartment before you’d woken up and the space suffocated with tense silence the longer you were in there by yourself. This wasn’t like you were sending your boyfriend off to play in an NFL game, a comforting goodbye beforehand meant the threat was real.

You pushed towards the front of the crowd, intending to position yourself where you wouldn’t be in the line of danger but he could still derive comfort from your presence. But there were so many god damn people everywhere that each step you took ended with you shifted backwards fifteen feet. After a few minutes of futile struggling, you gave up on barreling through the crowd and chose to sneak around the edges….

Only, your quick and nervous feet caught on a bit of free pavement, sending you stumbling right into the media corner. Of course there was a media corner, any channel, paper, or website that didn’t send a crew out to cover this would be bankrupt in a week.

“Yo, Hardo!”

You froze like you were facing down a legion of Jeong’s bald henchmen.

But it was just your bum ass old coworkers calling you a hardass. Same thing.

It pained you to call them that, since they were once people that you saw every day and were fond of beyond the boundaries of the office. The events of last year had truly changed too many parts of you to replace.

Kun, Winter, and Taemin were sipping coffees out of refurbished replacement mugs while waiting around at the Neopolis Daily News tent. You pretended not to notice their side eyes of disdain at your Buffalo Sabres cap and nondescript black polo-slacks combo, that didn’t match their stiff, business casual reporter outfits.

“Hey,” you greeted them casually. “What a scene this is turning out to be, eh?”

“Classic Jeong.” Taemin shook his head in mild, bro-ish amusement. “But I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a flop compared to what these fools are expecting.”

“You just want to get to Fiji with the bride,” Kun scolded him.

Taemin and his fiancée got married and you weren’t invited? From the way he was waving his ring-adorned hand to get the other man to shut up, it was obvious they were trying to hide your exclusion. They had all moved on, were living their lives and seemed to be fine; you hadn’t managed to do any of that.

Winter had gone from your friendly desk-mate to someone who sniffed at you with subtle judgement. “Are you here for your little show? Where’s the BF?”

She mimicked the way Kai always fumbled with his glasses to make sure they stayed on and your former coworkers started cracking up. None harder than Kun, who had to add on, “That nerd is prob front row with one of those I love CosmicMan shirts! He’s obsessed!”

When you shot a cold, unnerving stare their way and wouldn’t even crack a smile, they had the semi-decency to shut up out of fear. But it didn’t do anything for you.

You were well aware they looked down on your new job doing livestreams with your boyfriend. You were well aware they called him loser instead of nerd in private, as if Kai wasn’t huge and didn’t work out like a jock in your living room. You were well aware they had no idea who he really was for all their attempts at searching for CosmicMan’s real identity.

And you were never going to tell them.

You itched to argue back and shut them up, but when you opened your mouth and all that came out was, “It’s just me here,” they involuntarily giggled again. This time, they didn’t stop no matter how frigid your glare got, demonstrating how weak and pathetic they found you for quitting the way that you did.

“What is this bullshit!” J.Y. Park, your old boss at the newspaper, interrupted the shenanigans before they could laugh at you again. “Get back to work before I sacrifice you to those two freaks!”

You had to get out of there.

You’d never have a goddamn chance of getting hired back (in some alternate reality future) if your old guard boss heard you being such a pushover. You'D already resigned via email, the most cowardly way possible.

Your coworkers didn’t notice you making your escape, so you could hear them gossiping amongst themselves, Why is she so weird now? Thank god she didn’t come back. But they weren’t on the reporting floor when it burst into flames, they didn’t feel the foundation sway and have their reality go lopsided as the building fell, they couldn’t fathom watching the Neopolis Daily News logos on the walls disintegrate into ash.

The sun was good for him in many ways but it overwhelmed you with a sizzle, even at the beginning of this June summer. You glanced around, lightheaded, for an escape route that J.Y. wouldn’t follow you through and luckily spotted a nondescript office building that you could slip into for a moment of peace.

You kept your head down to get through the crowd more efficiently, so when you bumped into a man on the way to grab the door handle, you didn’t apologize. You only sidestepped his bulk to try and go for it a second time.

“No entry!” The man’s gruff, deep voice grated your ears, before he blocked your path for what you realized was the second purposeful time. The first encounter wasn’t an accident.

“Fuck off!” you grunted.

You weren’t going to let some random man stop you from doing what you wanted and never had in your life, so you reached around him for the handle. When he went to grab you, and you were ready for him to grab you, you jammed your elbow right into his crotch by ‘accident’ when you reached for the door a third time.

Winded, he let you go and you hurried to grab the handle before you lost the chance…

Only, you snatched your hand away and cradled it to your chest as your neurons fired into dreadful, short-circuiting panic. Because you were standing face-to-face with Jaehyun Jeong for the second time in your life.

He stared at you from the other side of the glass as the overzealous air conditioning made the pleated ends of his suit billow. He had the same raven-hued eyes Kai did, maybe a shade or two or three darker, but the slow, unblinking way his gaze settled on you had your anxiety stirring. His black-masked henchman stretched past your hunched frame to open the door and removed the last barrier between the two of you. Jeong’s blonde buzz cut reflected through the glass as it moved and you swore you were trapped in this dream again.

You listed the facts in your head so you could stay objective and not freak out to the point of incapacitation.

Last year, Jeong attempted to use an unknown type of radio wave to brainwash every citizen he could into letting him control Neopolis.

It was unknowingly sent out across the whole city from the Neopolis Daily News broadcast antenna. You discovered this when you woke up in the overnight room - isolated, muffled, and perhaps the only place in the city that could’ve kept the waves from affecting you - and found you couldn’t log into the wifi because of a Jeong-powered firewall.

According to footage on social media, he was destroying residential buildings downtown one by one with some sort of holographic tablet. The corporate offices and storefronts sitting untouched were a particular brand of cruelty. You knew you had to stop him before he razed the whole city to the ground… just to rebuild it in exact way he wanted.

You put your headphones in, took a deep breath, then went out to the reporting floor and threw your heavy Journalist of the Year plaque against the antenna. You shattered it, which broke the seamless flow of the brainwashing waves, and those sparks of electricity started the fire.

He was so enraged he stopped what he was doing to destroy the Neopolis Daily News Building with you still in it.

The window ledge was five stories up but Jeong had managed to get up there by the time you crashed into the glass. You were in such a daze you stupidly assumed he was there to help you, until you glanced into the emotionless eyes of the city’s most notorious, filthy rich villain and realized he wanted to be there to witness the end of you.

You still didn’t know how long you and Jeong stared at each other before you started pounding on the window and sobbing your eyes out, before Kai broke through the glass staircase to the west. He stole you away and dropped you on the sidewalk with just enough time to kiss you, then flew back and caught the building in his arms from collapsing. He set it back, lopsided but upright, where it was supposed to be.

After your heroic rescue, CosmicMan and Jeong fought in the muggy summer air as you tallied your wounds. You were left with friction burns across your back from sliding down the reporting floor, bruised and battered shins from colliding against concrete, plus a window’s worth of glass in your palms.

And an utter, debilitating, particular visceral fear.

You lost control when Jeong’s onyx, piercing gaze didn’t move away from your face, “What do you want?!”

“You are disturbing my peace.” His voice was deeper than you’d remembered it to be, than his video could convey the unpleasantries of. It left a perilous alarm ringing in your ears.

“Do you think I give a fuck, Jeong?” You had no idea where this attitude was coming from or why you were saying this to the most dangerous man in the city. Having your boyfriend lying in wait to protect you now only fueled it further.

At least this freak didn’t seem to know or recognize who you were. He'd terrorized the entire city that day, you weren’t some sort of professional, targeted victim.

“Considering you do not seem to care much about anything, not appearances nor manners…” Jeong bit back his disgust after his eyes neatly scanned you up and down and came back unimpressed. “Decidedly not.”

Your brain was frozen to its core but your mouth moved anyway, “At least I don’t have a weird ass haircut.”

Oof.

You were hoping for better than that.

He eyed your no-nonsense bob, tickling the back of your neck in an unfamiliar way after wearing your hair long for so many years. His nose wrinkled every time you fidgeted with your new bangs peeking out from your Sabres hat… and you could predict the response before Jeong said it, “The sentiment is returned, miss.”

It was strange to hear anyone but Kai call you that, especially knowing their decorum and morals derived from completely separate sources. You failed to detect that Jeong was lying about his distaste and were hit with the strange urge to have long hair again.

Jeong took a step in and you almost fell out of the doorway trying to back away from him. When your legs didn’t carry you to safety, he gave you a third full-body glance and wondered, “Are you a reporter?”

Your throat clogged with an anxious, sticky gulp. You immediately began to talk yourself off the ledge that he’d somehow recognized you from last year; he had eyes, he must’ve seen you walk over from the media pen.

“Yes.” Part-lie, part-truth, but you did not want him finding the stream by any means.

“For what station?” Jeong pressed.

“None of your business.” You went off on him, adrenaline frying your nerves with every extra word that came out, “I don’t recall needing press identification as being part of your open invitation to the city.”

He was a naive idiot if he'd assumed there wouldn’t be attendees willing to paint him in a bad light. He made it all too easy sometimes.

Jeong glanced down at you with placid, plastic politeness pulled over his features, then ordered, “Do not get in my way again.”

The insincerity of his mannerisms made your airway close up to the point where you couldn’t take a full breath. When he took the opportunity to exit the building, you purposefully stood in his way and braced yourself for retaliation. But Jeong just kept walking like nothing was in his way, his shoulder hit yours with a measure of brute force that his elegant body was secretly holding.

Despite being manhandled and thrown into the brick building by a member of his goon squad, being able to inconvenience him for a second was well worth it.

Now that the building was well and truly empty, you scrambled to stand in the air conditioning for an elevated view of the city center park. Jeong walked out in front of a line of his similarly buzz-cut henchmen, who had their faces covered in dark fabric that matched their suits. The assembled crowd, what appeared to be most of the city, broke into cheers before realizing it was him and awkwardly cutting out.

Half of them pivoted to nonsense booing, treating him as they would an away opponent here to play against the Neopolis Panthers. But the other half shut their mouths and kept them shut, knowing what he was capable of when he was mad.

Before Jeong could make it to the center of the plaza, his girl gang was blown over like evil little bowling pins by a massive rush of atmospheric pressure.

Emotional chaos erupted from the crowd, the lovestruck, fangirl screams came from men, women, and children alike. Their reaction was the closest thing to actual damage that could be dealt towards someone like Jaehyun Jeong; his stride faltered for half a step, though it was so refined you weren’t even sure how you'd picked up on it.

You were sure it was eating Jeong up that CosmicMan was equally as beloved in Neopolis as he was reviled.

Kai landed neatly on the raised concrete platform at the center of the plaza and the whole city went nuts for him. The sun gently coaxed his silver and emerald suit into a dazzling spectacle and his friendly smile matched it when he attempted to comfort everyone with one look.

Jeong cut through the moment with words sharper than any weapon, “I told you not to be unpunctual.”

You didn’t have to check your watch to know Kai had shown up late on purpose.

“Well, it’s not like you have much to do with your time,” Kai’s retort was snappy as hell, but the smile did not slide off his face.

“I have plenty to do, it is not my fault you cannot comprehend doing anything subtly.”

Jeong was way too good at this.

Kai flicked the ridiculous ruby pin on his compatriot’s tie and laughed in his face, “Wasn’t sure you even knew what subtle means.”

The microphones echoed their entire exchange across crowd, which was silent and eating it up like it was the world’s strangest music festival. You were seriously convinced that you were the biggest coward in the city, because why were you the only one who was afraid of what could happen?

“I believe we have something to discuss?” Good, Kai was leading with that neutral statement instead of seeking out a fight.

Jeong straightened out into his princely posture, held to show off how much he thought he was better than everyone else, and announced in a loud voice, “I would like to offer a truce.”

Silence surrounded the space, punctuated by one ridiculous gasp from a faceless person in the audience.

A truce?

Surprise was written all over Kai’s face.

Neither he nor CosmicMan could keep control of their emotions as well as Jeong could, but you didn’t blame him. Never in a million years did you think a truce would be the reason for this irritating little gathering.

Kai let out a small town boy laugh, before he blurted, “The truce happened last year when I stopped you from taking over the city.”

That was the first time you saw Jeong actually crack and show emotion, the corner of his jaw flexed with anger at the passing mention of his failure. A millionaire genius mastermind who'd built his empire selling off his most complex inventions, Jeong had enough power on his own. But he must’ve been starved with the desire to anoint himself king and control these spineless, stupid masses.

He hadn’t made any sort of statement that day, just lurked in silence as the city fell apart around him. You could only imagine what his internal monologue had been composed of, Citizens of Neopolis, submit to me or accept your fate in eternal destruction.

The news even made it out to the middle of nowhere upstate New York where your family lived. Your sister sent no less than two hundred and twelve text messages after the story aired, but what was crazier was that your parents called from their vacation in Tunisia to see if you were okay. They asked how you’d survived and you just said headphones, failing to add on any important details that would’ve had them on the next plane to you.

Why did he want to know if you were a journalist?

No, no, you had to focus.

As soon as you turned your attention back to the scene, Jeong snatched Kai’s arm out of nowhere in his iron grip. The entire crowed screamed and you found yourself ducked halfway onto the floor before you realized it wasn’t a sudden attack. Jeong did so to turn the two of them away from the crowd, so their conversation wouldn’t obvious.

Jeong spoke in such a low voice that the mics didn’t pick up on anything tangible. However, your positioning at this particular angle, plus years and years of lip reading (necessary to snag quotes from an unwilling story subject) had you at the biggest advantage here. He moved his pristine lips with the barest hint of anything, but you could form his words quite clearly.

Someone intends to destroy us.

Jeong repeated the last word a bit louder and with more force than the rest of them. The screeching speaker feedback crawled into your chest with an unsettling clarity.

Us.

Nobody seemed to grasp the gravity of it. Through the open window, you could hear a group of girls giggling over how the two men looked like they were about to make out.

Jeong and Kai were no more an us than you and Jeong were. What did that mean—

“A truce sounds pretty awesome to me!” Kai exclaimed, with rushed enthusiasm.

What in the fuck?!

You could tell from afar that Kai had been convinced by whatever that ambiguous statement was. He'd raced to agree in order to give Jeong no chance to take it back.

CosmicMan grabbed his counterpart’s hand and shook it strongly, smiling as the crowd cheered in support of this truce that meant everything and nothing without a clarification. Jeong held his own against the super strength and didn’t let himself get thrown around. His cool expression gave away nothing but his ever-present superiority, because he’d been able to pull off what he wanted in less than ten minutes…. You were unable to decide if that was a grandiose red flag or underscored the grave seriousness of his message. Maybe both.

The media crews scrambled to get shots of the peaceful gesture, unprepared for the sudden pivot. You snapped one on your phone to convince yourself later that this had actually happened.

Jaehyun Jeong and CosmicMan agreed to a truce.

What was next? Red pandas were going to fly?

tbc.

hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

i haven't been back this soon with a new fic in so freaking long lol. but this has been ready for a few months and i wanted to have something to pass the time as we wait for a ~certain event~ in may, so here you go. the new superman has been living in my head rent-free and after i had so much fun writing the batman fic, i felt like i had to!!!!!!!!

once again, here are some ahead of time FAQs:

q: how accurate will this fic be to superman lore?
a: not at all LOL

i've only seen the recent movies, i haven't read any of the comics or watched any DC shows. there are some obvious powers and story arcs that i've borrowed, but there are also a lot i changed around just for the sake of this plot. if you read something and go 'hmm, that's not how it was in xyz comic' i am here to tell you sorry, but i cannot change that lol. if you've read my batman story, you have an idea of how it'll be.

q: do i need to know anything about superman to enjoy this?
a: no! again, it's just loosely based on him. if you want to look up his origin story and stuff, that's cool, but i think i explain it well enough.

q: this writing style is a bit different, very straightforward and detail-oriented, what's up with that?
a: we're seeing the story through the brain of a journalist, expect more of it!

q: where the fck is neopolis?
a: it's supposed to be manhattan/new york city. pearltown is across the river to the west like new jersey but with a walking bridge. it might get to a point where i have to draw a map lol (iykyk) 

q: why is jh not the superhero character?!?!?!
a: because he's not....... for reasons.......

q: but aliens don't exist???
a: how do you know that???

ta-ta for now!!! thank you for reading! xo