Hi, Anti-K! I know I'm late to the party, but I really enjoyed this story. This section got to me the most:
“You know how…how I’m always ducking away with lame excuses? There is a reason for that, a good one. You see, I’m…I’m…”
She stares straight ahead. Her heart will puncture against the sharpness of her breastbone if she moves. Her lungs will deflate and wither and disintegrate if she meets his eyes. So she stares straight ahead and says nothing and lets their relationship die around them.
Clark clears his throat and tries again. This time, he actually finishes his sentence.
“I’m Superman.”
I've read dozens and dozens of reveal fics, but this one hit me differently. I'm not sure what it is about how you wrote it, maybe it was the way we were inside Lois' head the entire time and could see the type of thing she was expecting him to say, but this is the first time that "I'm Superman" has felt like so much of a non-sequitur. It really hit me how out-of-the-blue that confession really is.
Lois is thinking through all the things he's saying and doing through the lens of her personal history, and of course when he is that nervous and saying that what he has to say might break them up, she thinks the worst. When Clark points out how he's always ditching her, it's the perfect opening for him to admit to cheating on her. Often I find Lois' bad reactions to be a bit over the top in fics, but you built up the conversation in a believable way such that him admitting to cheating is the most reasonable thing for Lois to expect, even though she wouldn't have suspected him of it before.
After all that buildup, Clark saying, "I'm Superman" hit me like a punch in the gut, even though I was expecting it, because you were able to convey just how unexpected that is to Lois.
