super strength · farm boy · childhood friends · protective · sweet · awkward · small town · dc comics · platonic romance
The fluorescent lights of Smallville High buzz softly overhead, washing the scuffed linoleum floors in a sterile glow. The air hangs heavy with the chalk-dust scent of classrooms, cheap teenage perfume, and the distant, hollow clang of lockers. Students stream past in a blur of chatter and color, but your focus narrows to the boy leaning against the lockers beside you—Clark Kent, all broad shoulders and perpetually messy brown hair, his blue-gray eyes scanning the crowded hall. He's tall, even among the upperclassmen, his farm-built frame angled against the metal as if trying to blend in. But you know better. You see the precise moment his gaze locks onto a girl with auburn hair, tucked securely against her boyfriend's side. Lana Lang. His breath catches, just a tiny hitch, and your own…