I do not own Superman. There.

I don't quite remember when I first started crushing on Clark Kent. It was certainly soon after the first time I saw him, but exactly when the feelings first became present, I'm not entirely sure.

I was new at the Daily Planet, had only been there for a month. The total underdog of the newspaper. I wasn't a reporter; I was the office girl, who did everyone's bidding.

Printing out articles and making coffee was my main task. Not that I didn't want to be a report though, I was actually very busy becoming one. I worked every day at the paper, to learn the daily lives of a reporter, and most nights, if I wasn't feeling too tired or lazy or if I had anything I needed to do, I went to an evening school-thing where I was slowly working my way through an education as a reporter.

Then one day he just was there, carrying around luggage, which bumped into everyone, and apologizing left and right, because of said luggage.

"Who's that?" I'd asked Jimmy, the photographer and, so far, my only friend at the Daily Planet. He'd looked at me like I had just sprouted another head and said; "Why, that's CK!"

Crinkling my nose, I had asked, "What's a CK?"

Of course he had jumped into a long (and very worshipping) story about how 'CK' was one of the best reporters ever, and his personal friend, but had been away for five years, on some sort of personal business.

I remember thinking something along the lines of 'I'd tap that', after Jimmy had introduced me to Clark Kent and I had gotten a good look at him. He really was an amazingly good looking man, with his incredible height, good building, blue eyes and dark hair. And I guess the crush just progressed from then on, until I was too deep in to ever turn back again.

That was our first encounter, how brief it may have been. I don't even remember if we had said 'hi' to each other. Jimmy did most of the talking, as he always seemed to do.

I do, however, remember quite clearly when the thought of him being Superman first showed up. And it wasn't even my idea to start with, embarrassingly enough.

Lois Lane, the queen of the Newspaper, had asked me to stay late and help her, Richard White and Clark with some research for their articles. I had accepted, not that I could actually say no to her. She was, as formerly mentioned, the queen of this place. That didn't mean she always got everything her way, though. Nobody got their way, not with our boss. The man was a sadist. I was used to staying behind and helping reports who were behind, mainly calling their sources or searching for facts on the subject, on the internet.

Lois was working on an article about the newly returned Superman, and Clark had been given the article Lois really wanted, which was about a mysterious power cut in the city. She was very unhappy with this, because she really wanted to avoid anything Superman-esque and I felt sort of bad for her. She was right in what she had said earlier that day; Mr. White was practically forcing Superman into her life again. Everyone knew that Superman and Lois had been an 'item' back in the day, so to force him into her life, while she was engaged, to his nephew of all people, was just cruel.

Still, it shouldn't really have been that much of a problem. Everybody had to believe that she was truly over Superman, if they had to go by that article she wrote about him.

What was its name again? Something long, something not true.. Something stupid and cliché.

Ah! Why the world doesn't need Superman.

Wonderful name, really, very imaginative. Sounded like those stupid, 'How to' or 'guidelines to' books middle-aged women liked to read because their marriage was failing or their life sucked.

I must've been the only person who didn't like the article, because she won a Pulitzer for it.

Anyway, I was working late, helping Lois arrange several older articles about Superman, wishing that I was home in bed instead. I had had to skip an evening lecture, just to stay and help.

Lois and Richard were standing together, brooding over pictures of Superman. I was two desks away, typing away at a computer and Clark was standing ten-fifteen feet away, fumbling about with some papers. Clark hadn't asked for my help, to my disappointment. In fact, he didn't even seem to properly register my presence. There wasn't anyone else here, except for Lois and Richard's son, Jason. Jimmy was in the other room, tinkering with his camera.

I could hear Lois and Richard discuss Superman physique and couldn't help but scoff slightly: the woman always talked about how she was 'over' Superman, but she sat right there, every single detail about him memorized and she was actually able answer all of Richards questions right off the bat. I know I said I felt sorry for her, but at that specific time, she wasn't my favorite person. She was the reason I wasn't home in bed yet. While they might've been able to stay late and then go to work later than usual the next day, I certainly couldn't. As the office-girl, I didn't have many privileges and as the star reporters of the paper, they did.

Then Richard suddenly turned the conversation toward Clark's physique and how he and Superman looked very much alike.

And because I was sitting where I was, I could easily hear what they said, but I could also see Clark's face better than them. Lois seemed like she was actually considering the possibility of them being the same person too. And this was where my suspicion formed. Perhaps I just wanted Clark to be Superman, because that really would prove that he was the perfect guy.

I liked studying people, so naturally I was watching Clark, whom I liked studying the most, for, well, obvious reasons.

.. Hot!

When they started comparing Clark and Superman, his eyes widened, like those of a kid who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His otherwise constant leafing through papers stilled and then he stared straight ahead instead of on the paper.

For a second, he froze completely and then he turned around, pushed up his glasses, which, by the way, I always found extremely adorable, and smiled and waved at Lois and Richard in the least Superman-ly way possible. Even I could probably look more like Superman than he did at that moment, and I'm a head shorter than him, not to mention a girl.

After that, they laughed off the idea of him being Superman, but I saw the way he puffed out his cheeks and released a breath in what I could only describe as relief.

I realized that the idea mightn't have been as laughable as Lois and Richard thought it was. And I started seeing the parallels between Clark Kent and Superman. Besides, later that night, I saw him drop his glasses, when he bent down to help Lois pick up some things she had dropped from her purse. Once again, I was sitting in precisely the right place and got a good look at his face, without the glasses.

I'd almost forgotten Richards comment but after seeing him without his glasses, I couldn't help but mentally go through that scene again and how relieved he had looked.

He really did look like Superman, with the hair, eyes and physique. And he wouldn't have been able to hear their conversation, unless he had super-hearing. And he clearly had heard their conversation.

He returned the exact same day as Superman did and they had both been gone for five years!

Superman was, if the rumors were true, in love with Lois, and Clark clearly had feelings for her too.

And if he weren't Superman, that would mean that Richard, Superman, and Clark were in love with her. Which I found unlikely. She wasn't really that great a person, so having three individual men love her just seemed improbable. But the probability increased if it was only two men. So Clark and Superman had to be the same guy. Period.

I knew that all of those examples weren't much proof individually, but when combined, they really served as strong evidence.

I started watching him more closely and came upon other clues.

No, I am not a stalker.

Once, I'd seen him accidentally snap a pen in two, with one hand, just because he was frustrated with an article.

And I'm not talking about any cheap wooden pencils or those plastic pens, I'm talking expensive, metal pens! One of those that you can drop a television on and they still work like a charm. He was twirling it between his fingers, when some part of his half-finished article didn't add up, so he frowned in irritation, his grip on the pen tightening.

And then it just.. snapped in half.

He didn't even look like he put any effort into it at all, but after he broke it, he didn't look surprised either.

He just glanced around to see if anyone had seen. This was when I quickly looked away, only to see him throw the pen in the trashcan a second after.

Another time, he dropped a paper under his table. After he'd picked it up, he knocked his head against the bottom of the table and it almost flipped over. A lot of people got a good fright out of that one, it made a huge racket. He stopped it though, with really fast reflexes, but afterwards, there was a decent sized dent in the table, which hadn't been there before. Once again, not a cheap wooden table, but an expensive steel table.

When half a year had gone by, I was almost a hundred percent sure that he really was Superman. No, I hadn't caught him in the act, but everything fit so well it was ridiculous. I know that he was clumsy and insecure and awkward, but those could easily be brushed off as part of a fake personality he adopted to remove any suspicion of his other identity, just like the way he had waved at Lois and Richard and they immediately discarded the idea.

He really was very smart.

I had a picture of Clark Kent and a picture of Superman lying around, somewhere in my apartment. I had made sure to acquire a picture where they both looked in the same direction, with the same angle and everything.

So, whenever I started doubting my Clark-Superman theory, I whipped out the pictures and placed them against each other, before holding them up against the sun.

The only differences between the two pictures were the glasses and the hair-do. Their faces were identical.

And it really had to be him.

I was quite please with those pictures. They'd been hard to find. Rather, two pictures that matched had been hard to find. But they helped me in convincing myself of my theory, so the two hours of searching the web was worth it. He was Superman. He had to be.

That thought both excited and annoyed me. Knowing who Superman really was would be wicked cool, but it would mean that I had feelings for Superman's secret identity.

Which meant I had feelings for Superman. And being infatuated with Superman was such a cliché.

I had considered telling Jimmy a couple of times, but always decided against it. Clark had obvious reasons for keep his secret identity, well, continuously secret. That was the whole point.

It wasn't really my secret to tell, anyway. If he wanted Jimmy to know, he would tell him himself.

Also, there was no reason to add fuel to Jimmy's 'I love Clark Kent' fire.

Then I'd thought about just straight out telling Clark that I knew about his other life.

But that was a pretty shitty idea too. If it wasn't him after all, I'd just have to die from embarrassment.

And if it really was him, what then? I couldn't exactly just walk up to him, practically a stranger and say "Hey, nice weather we're having, eh? Also, I totally know about you leading a double life where you dress up in tights and a red cape to fight crime-doers in the evening. No biggie. Oh, and don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

Yeah, not a great plan.

Still, I felt like he deserved to know that I knew. So I waited. I kept his secret to myself and waited for the opportune moment.

That opportune moment never came, but he did end up finding out that I knew. But I'll get to that later.

I plan to make the chapters longer. Think of this as a prologue.

I'll be trying to update this story every weekend, but I honestly can't promise anything. I already have, like, 50 pages written, so in the beginning I'll probably be on time with uploading, but I can't promise I'll be able to keep up from the beginning 'til the end.