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Homelander Friends with Benefits-to-Lovers Headcanons
1. The denial phase.
At first, he absolutely refuses to admit it—even to himself. You’re just someone he sleeps with, that’s all. Totally casual. No big deal. Except he starts flying by your window just to “check in.” Just to make sure you’re home. Just to make sure no one else is there.
2. Jealousy in disguise.
If you so much as mention someone else, his smile falters. He might tease you (“Oh yeah? He can fly, too?”), but his eyes say something colder. He hates that he cares—hates it so much he overcompensates with cocky charm or a new nickname that only he gets to use.
3. Little domestic slips.
He starts doing oddly sweet things without realizing it: bringing you coffee after patrol, fixing something in your apartment, or letting you borrow his cape (“Don’t stretch it, sweetheart”). He wants to seem casual but he’s already nesting in your space.
4. Overprotective streak.
What used to be a fling turns into him showing up at your work because he “heard there was trouble.” He’s half trying to impress you, half trying to mark territory. And when you tell him it’s too much, he just laughs it off—but his jaw tightens first.
5. Flirtation with real emotion.
Jokes start turning soft around the edges. A sarcastic “You’d miss me if I was gone” becomes a quiet, uncertain “Would you?” He lingers longer after sex, less godlike and more boyish, asking small questions he pretends not to care about the answers to.
6. He tests the waters.
He’ll float something like, “What if we did this more often? Like… dinners. Together.” Then immediately backtracks with a laugh, “You know, for the optics.” But you can tell it’s not about optics. He’s terrified you’ll say no.
7. The possessive slip-up.
Eventually, it bursts out—maybe someone flirts with you, and he says something too sharp, too revealing. “You’re mine.” He tries to laugh it off, but his voice cracks a little. It’s the first time he’s said anything that real in a long, long time.
8. Soft confessions in the dark.
When he’s vulnerable—maybe after a mission, when he’s exhausted and quiet—he’ll murmur things he can’t say in daylight. “You make me feel . . . normal.” “Don’t go home yet.” He’ll act like he doesn’t remember later, but he does.
9. The slow shift.
He stops calling it “casual.” You stop pretending you believe him when he says he doesn’t care. One day, without any real announcement, he just stays the night. Then the next. And when someone calls it what it is—a relationship—he doesn’t correct them.
10. The softest version of Homelander you’ll ever see.
He’s still himself—arrogant, complicated, dangerous—but around you, he softens. He listens more, he jokes less cruelly. He starts to believe he can be loved, not just worshiped. And for him, that’s everything.