Hmmm, I'm feeling a bit annoyed after reading this, Smirky.
You told me in the previous fdk thread that you are 19. Okay, I'm 51. And I've been a Lois and Superman fan since early 1969, for 37 years, almost 38. And I've spent a good many of those 37 years wondering why the - *expletive* - Clark won't tell Lois about his double identity. I hate his secrecy. People keep telling me that this site is devoted to the ABC TV show, and the ABC TV show Clark had very good reasons to lie to Lois, and I have no business judging Clark by what another guy with the same name did in the comics or the movies. I'm sure they are right, but guess what? I keep judging Clark because of his comic book sins and movie sins anyway. So the long and short of it is... tell me a story where Clark feels unable to tell Lois the truth about himself, and try to make me feel sorry for the poor guy because he has to keep lying. Guess what? You'll fail at making me sympathize with him. I'll seethe and simmer and think to my self, that no-good, lying, deceiving, cowardly, spineless, abject, expletive-expletive excuse for an alien posing as a man,
why can't he be honest with Lois???? 
Okay, but... I love this, though:
Morning came and Lois slept on. Clark had awoken from his latest nightmare and had finally determined that he had no desire to go back to sleep again, for now. He wiped sweat from his brow and took a deep breath, turning on his side to look over at Lois beside him.
She was so beautiful.
Slightly curled up, her hair in slight disarray. The fire of her eyes hidden as she looked the picture of perfect innocence. Like a little angel.
But if he called her that to her face she’d likely turn into an angel of doom, he thought with a slight smile.
And I love this, too:
She still looked tired, despite the fact that since they got back they’d done nothing I]but[/I] rest. He wondered, now that he was awake and aware, how much Lois had slept while he was going in and out of consciousness during their imprisonment. It had seemed like she never slept at all—that she was always awake at his side, ready to help him. That she was always there for him.
Yes, she did everything she could to save your life, flyboy. How about thanking her by telling her the truth about yourself? (By the way, Smirky, you missed one of those pesky little right-angle parenthesis signs needed to make italics here. Gaaaah! I'm Swedish, and sometimes when I try to explain things I feel just how inadequate my English is.)
Her brow furrowed in sleep and she whimpered softly. Clark reached forward and brushed her hair from her brow gently.
“It’s all right, Lois,” he murmured. “It’s just a dream.”
She leaned unconsciously into his touch, then settled back down into her pillow and slept peacefully away.
I absolutely love the way Lois leans into Clark's touch here. It is purely instinctive on her part. She loves him and needs him every bit as much as he loves and needs her.
He reached the bedroom door. Three full steps from the bed.
A small step for mankind, a giant leap for Superman.
Poignant, funny, sad and adorable. Clark Neil Superman Armstrong Kent makes it all the way to the bedroom door. It could almost as well have been the moon.
This from the man for whom it was said, “Can leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
Can't resist showing off my Superman-savviness. Did you know, Smirky, that at the dawn of time - that is, in 1938, the year when Superman made his debut and not even I was born - Superman really couldn't fly, only jump? That's why they said about him that he was able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. These days, when he can fly - well,
normally he can fly, anyway - why
would he leap tall buildings in a single bound, rather than fly above them?
He hadn’t looked in the mirror yesterday, even during his brief time in the bathroom. His mind had been too fogged up, and if he had seen he hadn’t recognized what he was seeing.
He didn’t recognize himself.
He was pale as a ghost, his eyes slightly sunken. His hair looked like a shock of black against his white complexion, his eyes darker than ever—haunted, frightened.
He looked like a terrified kid. He looked like an old man. He looked like a surreal creature from a cheap Hollywood horror movie.
It would be really, really scary to see yourself like that. I find that part about looking both like a kid and like an old man particularly moving. Both are images of weakness, of frailty.
He was all right. He was here. No green, no terrible white. He was safe.
He needed to see Lois.
It was a much more hurried, painful journey back to the room.
Lois was still sleeping.
Clark let out a breath of relief.
He hung onto the doorframe, quivering like a fallen leaf in the wind.
I love the way you line up short sentences like that, charging each of them with an incredible emotional significance. I can feel Clark's terror and his relief. Love the comparison with the quivering leaf, clinging desperately to the doorframe.
There was a sudden curse from the bedroom, the sound of frantic shuffling, and Lois staggered into the room, sleep-disheveled, stopping only when she saw Superman laying there, his eyes pained as the flickering of the television danced across his pale face.
“Kal-El! What are you doing?”
Clark looked at her slowly. Her heart wrenched at the guilt in his expression. She walked forward, catching sight of the ruin from the earthquake in China.
She swore and stepped forward to turn it off.
“What’s the matter with you?” she grumbled, her voice rough from sleep and she rubbed her eyes. “You crawl in here, eager to soak up guilt? Sunlight not enough for you?”
You tell him, girl. Love that soaking up guilt and soaking up sunlight comparison, by the way.
“That’s what I thought,” she said as she helped him take a couple steps towards the bedroom. She noticed his faint quivering from the strain of standing erect. “Walking nothing. Hobbling is more like it. Don’t you want to get better? Now come here, sit in the sunlight like a good super hero while I go make some coffee. You’ve had coffee, right? How do you like it?”
Just keep dishing it out, Lois!
Lois grimaced. “Well, you can tell that it was Clark Kent that introduced you to Earth’s coffee. Let me tell you something, flyboy. Just toss everything he’s taught you out the window, because it’s not worth anything next to what I know.” She helped him sit at the couch and pulled up the plaid blanket from the gas station and handed it to him.
Clark couldn’t help it. “You don’t really think that, do you?” he asked, his voice serious.
Lois paused, looking back at him from the doorway through sleep-blurred eyes. “Why? Does it matter?” she grumped.
Clark just looked out the window. “I just thought you two were friends, that’s all. He…he speaks very highly of you.”
Lois is certainly irritating when she speaks of Clark Kent like that. But since the real Clark Kent has given her no reasonable explanation whatsoever for his weird behaviour, I'm not going to find fault with her for dismissing her partner from Kansas. If you want her to think differently about Clark, Clark,
now is the time to tell her.
And Superman was gone, for now. Maybe for good. But Lois still didn’t care for him—Clark Kent. And that was all that was left. That was all he was, except for an increasingly flimsy façade.
Oh yeah? Lois doesn't care for you, ex-flyboy? Is that why she worked her butt off and risked her life to save you? Is that why she still tries to do whatever she can to make you better?
She doesn't care for you. Yeah. Right. :rolleyes:
He woke up in a start, not remembering his dream but feeling a shadow of doom and terror clinging to his soul. Lois was not in the room.
Clark forced himself to keep calm. To breathe. To stand up slowly and limp out of the room at an unpanicked pace.
Calm. Just calm.
“Lois?” Why did his voice crack? He was all right. Lois was just right there. No need to shiver…
“Good morning, sleepy-head,” Lois called from the counter. She was dressed in casual jeans and a blouse, but to Clark she had never looked better. He felt his body relax, even down to his toes. “You really are walking, aren’t you?”
I love how he
totally needs her.
“Okay. We’ve got Chinese take-out, Italian take-out, or we can order pizza. What’s your choice?”
Clark lifted his injured arm onto the table and ran his hand over the cast. There was a faint tint of darkness to the underside where dark blood had long since dried. “Whatever you want, Lois.”
Lois glared at him. “I told you what I wanted. I want Chinese take-out, Italian take-out, or pizza. Goodness, Superman, if you weren’t the man of steel I’d tell you to grow a backbone!”
I'm glad she keeps telling him! He needs to hear it. And I'm glad he chose Italian, by the way.
The Boggle game was fun, but it didn't make me feel like quoting anything.
Okay! Now I'm waiting for that lunkhead to tell her the truth about himself. Hmmmmphh. Men, you know? The way they can find a thousand excuses for lying to you - for your own good, or because they feel so sorry for themselves! (Ann ducks and covers to protect herself from pillows thrown by Terry Leatherwood, Tank, Framework, Arawn and other guys frequenting this site.)
Ann
