Chapter Text
Wind brushed through my hair as I sped down the hall, late for work for the first time in three years of reporting and photographing for the New York Times. As I finally turn the corner to get into the meeting room, I catch an offer that nobody seems to want to step up and take. “Alright, who wants to go out and see if they can catch an interview with a supe today?”
The same offer is given every morning—and every morning, nobody takes it. Some poor schmuck, like Carl or Jane, usually gets stuck with it. However, due to my apparently low and distracting later arrival…
“Perfect timing, why don’t you go out and hunt down a story, Y/N?”
Great. Just what I needed this morning… a torturous, incredibly boring punishment for being late. I nod with a strained smile, obviously, and head back out of the meeting room to set my things at my desk before heading out to the media van with Carter and Lindsay, who were unfortunate enough to be chosen to accompany me in sitting in a hot van for hours. There was no way we’d be able to catch the heroes, not when their days were fully packed with private engagements and work days that somehow still had room to save the world.
At least… that’s what we believed.
Turns out, it doesn’t take long when the heroes are looking for some publicity. Within the first hour of being out, we’d gotten footage of The Deep, Starlight, Queen Maeve, and A-Train out and about, doing little things for the camera. I think we even saw Translucent at one point, but you can’t be too sure with him… All that we were missing were Firecracker and Homelander himself, who rarely appears when we are out. Something about the cameras gets him a little too eager to publicize himself, and yet, we never seem to catch him on them.
Until today.
“There he is! Oh my gosh, it’s a fuckin’ miracle! God is on our sides today, people, Y/N/N, get your camera!” Carter exclaims from the back door of the truck, which was opened while we were stationary, already following a blur of red, white, and blue with the point of his finger. I hurriedly grab my camera and sit at the back of the bus beside Carter, pointing it up towards where the flash of blonde was patrolling from above. “Mr. K is gonna be real excited about this one,” I mutter to Carter as Lindsay hops up on top of the bus to try and wave him over. Idiot, he’s not gonna come over here if he’s-
My thoughts are cut off, and I freeze as my camera starts to zoom in. No… not zooming in… He’s getting closer. “Morning, newsies. You all got your cameras out early, huh? That’s certainly some… dedication,” he calls, floating down to land a few feet from where we were. Lindsay squeals—she always had a bit of a crush on the hero—and amidst her excited bouncing around on the truck, she slips. Without even thinking about it, I wave my hand and activate my abilities to catch her before she could hit the ground, only to find Homelander had thought the exact same and dashed over to catch her. We both pause, and I look back down at my camera quickly, my face heating slightly in embarrassment as Lindsay is lowered to the ground carefully. She giggles and smiles at the charismatic hero, who mutters something to her about planting her feet better before turning to me and gesturing to him with a smug grin.
I roll my eyes and adjust my camera settings to get better footage of Homelander up close. As I redirect the lens to point at him, I find he’s already looking at the camera curiously, his brows furrowed slightly as he stares with his usual smirk. Or… past the camera at the one holding it.
I hold up the camera a bit better, taking a few pictures, which he fixes his expression for, before he moves closer and pushes my camera down from my face to look me over. Carter has to hold Lindsay back from saying something stupid and whoreish, like usual, as I freeze up and stare back up at him.
“Make sure you get my good angle, sweetheart,” he grins, and my face burns slightly. Before I could respond, Lindsay, that bitch, cuts in with a giggle and places her hand on his arm. “When it’s you, every angle is a good one, isn’t it?”
…
What the fuck?
I have to hold back a snort of laughter as he barely even tears his gaze from me, his hand brushing hers off his arm. “Well, sure, but some are better than others.” He shrugs before grabbing my camera from my hands and sitting beside me, looking at the photos I’d gotten. He seems to appreciate how good he looks from how his grin widens, his blue eyes flicking over each photo analytically.
I can feel a soothing heat radiating off him from how close he is, my eyes involuntarily wandering over his suit before they flick back up to his expression, which shows his admiration of my photography. I’m sure he can hear the way my heart is racing as I try to calm myself down, my anxiety through the roof at all the eyes on Homelander and, consequently, me. As he looked through my camera, my heart got a bit faster. He was getting close to the end of the file, meaning he could very quickly be breaching some… embarrassing material, to say the least.
He definitely hears my heart now, especially how it spikes when he gets to the first three photos I took this morning. Any further and he’ll see…
Luckily enough, he huffs out a laugh and pauses on one specific photo of Queen Maeve. “Man, this camera really shows it how it is. Me, the perfect American hero, and Maeve… well, she certainly has been spending late nights doing her hero work.” I take back my camera, looking over the photo with a small frown. “Oh, man, she looks exhausted in this lighting… Are all of them this bad?” I mutter to myself, looking through the other photos of Maeve.
He laughs and stands from the bus, stretching in an attempt to catch my gaze, which fails as I keep it strictly on my camera. “Oh, please. It’s just the truth revealed through your excellent photography, Ms…”
“Y/N,” I state back firmly, not sparing him another glance as I go through a few of the photos of A-Train and Starlight. I barely even notice that a faint ringing fills the air as Lindsay giggles and steps up again. “And I’m Lindsay! Great to properly meet the most attractive, greatest hero ever,” she says with her bright, annoying voice. I almost miss the flash of red in his eyes as they tear away from me to finally look over the other blonde. He gives a strained grin and nods.
“Yea, alright, I should get back to my hero work,” he explains before turning to me again. “If you’re lucky, you might get some more amazing photography of America’s greatest.” And with that, he shoots up into the sky, leaving Carter and me to put up with Lindsay—whose eyes have turned to hearts. Carter scoffs, and I roll my eyes, adjusting my camera again as the bleached bitch drapes herself across my lap and lets out a dreamy sigh. “Isn’t he amazing? Did you see how he looked at me, oh my gosh… Y’know, Y/N, if you had more to offer, he might’ve paid that kinda attention to you… Though you really need a personality to make up for those looks, anyway-”
I scoff and tune her out, ignoring every other lovesick babble that escapes her plastic lips. Carter finally cuts in with an overdramatic sigh when she starts getting into more lewd territory. Lindsay was always good at running her mouth. With a head that chemically burned by the cheap products she uses on her hair, I’m surprised she can even handle a job as mentally demanding for her as an assistant photographer.
Eventually, we head home with a job well done, my camera full of videos, pictures, and a short clip of A-Train saving some people downtown. And yet, despite how pleased our boss was with us, my brain couldn’t be a worse static mess. Sure, Lindsay was annoying, but she was gorgeous. Normal guys wouldn’t blow her off as easily as Homelander did, especially not for a mediocre photographer with a blurry camera lens. That entire interaction was just… odd. Why was he out there anyways? Didn’t he have a packed day? After all, it’s almost a holiday—and if anyone gets busy for the holidays, it’s The Seven.
“Y/N/N, these photos look great,” Carter says, falling into step beside me as I make my way to the break room for lunch. The broken clock on the wall read 4:56, meaning it was almost noon in reality. As we step into the room, I let out a sigh of relief at the emptiness and move over to the fridge, but not before muttering back a thank you to Carter. The tall brunette had lured me in three years ago with his hazel puppy dog eyes that seemed to light up any time I was around, though I never really understood why.
As I stand with my lunch in hand, he smiles at me and sets my camera down on the counter that he’s leaning on. Giving a small smile back and placing my lunch into the microwave, I can hear his heart speed up a bit. “So… You, uh… doing anything after work?” He asks sweetly, stepping a bit closer to me with that same puppy dog look in his eyes. I nod, explaining that I was going to meet up with a friend later for dinner, not sparing him a second glance.
Carter seems to deflate slightly at the news, but nods and steps back to lean against the counter again. The microwave eventually beeps, and I’m able to grab my food and sit down with my camera to go over the photos again. “Do you think Mr. K is gonna send us back out?” I ask, glancing over a photo that I’d gotten of Homelander. Huh… he’s looking right at the lens even from that far away…
“Maybe. I hope not, I’d rather stay here where it’s safer…” I hum in agreement, zooming into the photo a bit more. “Hey, isn’t it odd that Homelander is looking directly at the camera in all of these? Like, even before he’d come over to us, like he was deciding whether or not he’d bother us…” I wonder aloud, showing him the photos. Carter raises a brow and shakes his head, “It’s probably nothing, luv, don’t fixate on it.”
I huff and pull my camera back, turn it off, and go back to the fried rice container in front of me.
I didn’t see anyone else the rest of the day, and eventually I clocked out and went back to my apartment to find yet another orange slip on the door. It read the same words it has for the past week.
EVICTION NOTICE
Working as a photographer for the New York Times may have good pay, but lately the landlord has been upping the rent by a hundred dollars per month. So… there’s that. Not to mention, my roommate has a fluctuating pay range due to her… clientele. Once I’m inside, I hear, very clearly, that her shift was not yet over, and I know to avoid her bedroom until whatever guy she’s letting plow her is knocked out. Ignoring the sounds slipping through her doorframe, I move to the couch and turn on the TV—the channel automatically switching to the news channel—where a few clips of the supes were being shown from this morning. I recognized a couple from my submissions before lunch, a few edits made through Vought to make their heroes look a bit better, but overall few things had changed.
I don’t remember when exactly I’d fallen asleep until Robin woke me as her weight settled onto the couch beside me… and on me. I let out a soft breath, my arm wrapping loosely around the brunette’s shoulders, only to pause. “... Is that my robe you’re wearing?”
“Nnnnnoo…?” She looks up at me and I hum back quietly, raising a brow as I look back up at the TV where Homelander was answering a few fan questions. It’s not like I cared much that she’d taken my robe, it’s not rare that she takes my clothes… However, “you’re washing it, then.” She nods, and within a few minutes, she’s asleep, and I‘m focused on the blonde on screen.
“Am I seeing anyone? Well, not yet… but there is a certain someone I’ve been keeping my eye on,” he answers, looking into the camera with a sly grin and a wink. His response had earned quite a reaction, which made his expression brighten and his chest puff out slightly with his inflated ego. Lindsay was totally going to talk about this tomorrow and make it about herself. I could already sense the headache I’d be getting from having to hear her backhanded compliments and comments as she brags about catching the eye of the greatest hero in the world or whatever.
Based on who he his, there’s no way Lindsay would even know whoever he’s into, let alone be her. The thought that Lindsay would be so devastated to find out she wasn’t ever going to be the hero’s “one true love”, or some sappy shit like that, was calming enough to send me back to sleep.