I read this last night, but didn't have time to respond, and didn't have a chance to before boards shut-down this morning.
This part makes me both happy
and sad
. Happy that Lois is now willing to give Clark a chance and HE KNOWS IT! Sad that your story has now run its course.
His floor, marked with swirling constellations of pain, crimson and rust, galaxies of torment and grief--but it was red, and it proved he could bleed, and for now, with Clark so newly restored to him, released from his tiny, claustrophobic cage, he let himself believe that the blood only proved how very human he was.
Vulnerable and destructible, yes, and therefore *human*.
*Not* alien. Not completely isolated. Just…different.
Clark. What you see is what you get, and that meant red blood poured from a dangerous wound was nothing more than what happened to anyone and everyone when they were stabbed.
I love Clark's thought process on this. Here he is, dressed as Superman, scrubbing the floor like Clark, amazed that it took him being stabbed to realize how similar he was to everyone else. Beautifully written. You always astound me on the little details you find of Clark and Lois's personalities.
“Clark,” she said, almost in surprise, her eyes locked on his. No, not on him--on his *glasses*. The glasses he’d never thought he’d get to wear again. She stared, and then she gave him a small smile--not nervous, not a mask over tension--but so shy and sweet that Clark felt his heart squeezed into a pliant, hopeful thing inside his chest, all hopeful eagerness and reserved wariness.
I'm guessing she's wondering more why he's wearing his glasses when he doesn't need to, (i.e. since she knows his secret now) instead of being thrilled that he's wearing them at all.
As soon as she reached the bottom of the stairs, Lois spun to face him, holding up the large paper bag. “I brought breakfast. Or dinner, whichever it is. I mean, it’s the middle of the night, so I guess the proper definition would be midnight snack, but we’ve missed meals and I’m not really even sure what day it is right now so this would be…” She trailed off, then, as if even she had gotten lost on that one. “Anyway,” she said with a false brightness, shaking her head, “I know this twenty-four hour place and they’re pretty good--not great, but good--so I stopped by and picked us up something.”
I didn't realize it was the middle of the night. For some reason, I thought when Lois left Superman at Clark's apartment (post surgery) it was the morning after Lex had stabbed him, which is why she said that she'd return later with dinner.
But she kept talking, jumbles of words and sentences and questions tumbling from her mouth, a veritable storm of syllables that didn’t really mean anything but managed to clumsily, haphazardly weave a sort of cocoon around the two of them, scanty and pocked with holes but just enough to remind them of what they’d once been--partners and friends.
He wasn’t actually very hungry--Kryptonite made him sick and *lesser* and vulnerable, hungry only for sunlight--but Lois set the food out before him so earnestly, all the same kinds of Chinese dishes he’d brought her that first all-nighter they’d pulled at the Planet, when everything had seemed open and full of promise. When he’d looked at her and realized he had a chance…until she saw him looking and then shot him down.
Interesting that he's associating her bringing Chinese food with that first meal that they shared and her rejection of him, and then assuming it was subtle hint that she's trying to impart to him now. "Don't fall for me, farm boy."
She’d warned him. She’d warned him, and if he weren’t so used to wearing a mask himself, if he hadn’t so fully convinced himself that her warning was a mask too and he only needed time and patience to earn her trust so she could remove it around him, then he’d have listened to her. Listened to her and cautioned his heart to tread lightly, to act wisely, to not go giving itself out to the best investigative reporter in the world who’d expressly *told* him not to fall for her.
/scoffing/ Yeah. Right. Doubting that would have worked.
But Lois still wasn’t looking at him, and so she didn’t seem to notice the smile. Her fork made tiny, repetitive clinking noises as she nudged it against her plate once, again, again. “We…we *are* still friends, Clark. Aren’t we?” she asked, her voice so small, so shrunken, so timid.
Before he could think better of it or second-guess himself, he reached out his hand and placed it over hers, silencing the fork and his own misgivings and hopefully her doubts. “Of course, Lois,” he promised. “I’ll always be your friend.”
Awwwww. That Lois wasn't sure. And Awwwww.
Clark's answer.
“Lois,” Clark said, his heart reclaimed inside him and skipping about in his chest like a precocious child, uncontainable, finding playmates in his lungs, inflating them with air so light it was like cotton candy or spun sugar rather than oxygen. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Aw, Lois. You had him when you returned bearing food. Add gifts and he'll never let you leave his heart, now.
Not that he paid much attention to them when he pulled the paper away to reveal a VHS copy of ‘Beauty And The Beast.’
This one, I assume: (There's supposed to be a picture of Disney's animated B&tB but for some reason it's not showing up. I'm guessing too many quotes.
)
![[Linked Image]](http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMTc0MzM1Njk1OV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNjQxMTkwNw@@._V1_SX214_AL_.jpg)
Released 1991.
His puzzlement at this gift matched mine.
“Lois…” He studied the two items laid out on the table before him. He tried for light-hearted, reaching for a smile and pretending he’d reached it despite the lengths by which it failed. “Do you think I’m going to have a lot of downtime? I know the wound looked bad, but I heal fast. And I know the Planet isn’t up and running right now, but with Luthor out of the picture, surely we can find a way to rebuild. Start over again.”
Also, once he gets his powers back, he'll be able to read the book in less than a minute.
Clark regarded her for a long moment, then he nodded and ripped open the last of her gifts, splitting a line down the double columns of one of Eduardo’s articles. This was the most puzzling of all--a comic book, blaringly bright and graphic against the muted colors of Clark Kent’s surroundings. “Spider-Man?” he asked. This time he did catch a smile to send her way along with a sidelong glance. “I didn’t know you were into comics.”
I love that Clark's seeing these gifts just as gifts, not as metaphors.
But he hadn’t been right about anything she’d said for so long. Hadn’t been able to guess her actions or thoughts even from the beginning, when she’d constantly surprised him by switching between entrancing strength and compelling vulnerability, and he didn’t know if he could stand to be disappointed again.
Yea! Clark's finally not jumping to conclusions.
“Look,” Lois said suddenly, straightening and nudging her hand a bit closer to his on the table, palm-up. “I know it’s stupid, but they were all I could find on short notice, and obviously the analogies don’t really work at *all*--I mean, Beauty and the Beast…well, I guess I’d be the Beast in that one--and that’s not very flattering, is it. And the Hunchback…that’s even worse, and the ending is awful, and they don’t end up together, which is…” Her breaths came short and quick, as if she were terrified, but she was still so resolute, so *fierce*, so beautiful, and Clark could only gape at her.
Good signs. Lois just called him beautiful and that she wants them to end up together.
he told me that everyone in Spider-Man’s city thinks he’s the bad guy. Thinks he’s a monster. But…” She looked up, met Clark’s gaze, caught him so that he felt like a deer in the headlights, like a moth in the instant before it crashed and burned against the lantern. “But he’s actually the hero.”
Awwwww. Lois still thinks Clark is her hero.
But he’d already said them. Once, again, again, *again*, and he’d dreamed that she could return them, maybe even that she *wanted* to give them back to him. Dreams, though, that was all they had been. They felt real, rang loud and resplendent in his memory, side by side with pictures of days gone by when they’d posed each other friendly bets and laughed at the same movies and perched on each other’s desks. They all felt real, but he was deaf and powerless and mute, and if he said these three words--spoke them into existence again, let them enter the harshness of reality--and she *didn’t* say them back…then he’d be wounded, too. Crippled and felled and destroyed so utterly that he didn’t think there’d be a recovery.
*I love you.* The most beautiful, and the most damaging three words of any language he knew.
Yes, I can understand why he'd be scared to say them now. And also why he loves her more than ever.
Clark tried to clench his jaw to keep back the words, but he couldn’t. His mouth was fixed in the softest, most wistful of smiles, tiny and wan but there and *hopeful*, and so he couldn’t tense up, couldn’t hold himself aloof or draw back behind a shroud of numbness. “Try me,” he dared her in little more than a whisper. “What do you want me to believe?”
He's going to make her say it.
“I love *you*, Clark. The reason I told Lex I couldn’t give him my answer right away was because all I could think of was *you*. I didn’t know if you would still be my friend if I told him yes. I didn’t know if you would still look at me the same way--and I *want* you to look at me that way. I want--”
“Then look at me now,” Clark interrupted, and he stopped fighting himself. Stopped holding himself back. Stopped caging himself in the deadening numbness that made him feel more alien, more cut off, more isolated, than his powers ever had. Stopped denying who he was. Stopped compressing his heart into the tiniest, darkest of boxes to try to pretend it wasn’t the property of Lois Lane.
Awwwww. /sigh/ You make me remember why I like our Clark best. Better than those Superman who only use Clark as a disguise.
And then, with his name on her lips, with her smile in his eyes, she kissed him. And there were no words--no capital letters, no periods, no beginnings or ends, not even names--just her and him.
Together.
And it was perfect.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Exactly. It was perfect.
From beginning to end. Thank you for popping in and letting us walk in Clark's shoes for a while. And though you may have tortured us, quite a bit actually, you have let us end with a smile.
EDIT: Okay, I think I got everything that was messed up during the upgrade back to the way it was beforehand. Sorry about that, Anti-K. Great story!
