So I watched Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice last night and absolutely loved it to pieces (no naysayers to rain on my parade, please, because I LOVED it so much, I cannot even tell you!) and it made me come running back here to get more of Superman/Clark and Lois -- and I found out that Newsworthy had been nominated for the Kerth Awards! I'm so grateful for all the support everyone on here gives my forays into writing, and I wanted to do something to thank you for the nominations. Unfortunately, I don't have a finished story to post, but I do have the beginnings of two that I've started and am now trying to get back into writing. As a thank you for the love shown me and Newsworthy, I wanted to give you the opening chapter -- the rest will be coming soon, I hope. I've already pulled out my L&C dvds for some research! smile Hope you all enjoy!

Ghost Of A Chance
AntiKryptonite
Rated: PG
Summary: Uh...well, it's set during the last few episodes of season 1, but I hope it's a new spin on this oft-visited (for me) time period!

***

“Lois?” She’s been hammering at his door loudly enough to pull him from his abstracted musing (his perusal of his apartment as he wonders if he’ll be able to last here much longer and how long it will take him to pack everything up as if he'd never been here at all), but that’s not surprising because she’s not the sort to knock quietly and wait patiently. She’s at his door, on his doorstep, and that shouldn’t be surprising either because she used to come all the time, barreling in past him, never waiting for an invitation, always so sure of herself, talking faster than he can move, waving her hands in the air to illustrate whatever her point happens to be, finally turning to face him with an expectant look on her face, impatiently waiting for him to agree with her.

It shouldn’t be surprising. But it is.

Because it’s Clark’s door she’s knocking on. Clark’s doorstep she’s standing on.

But maybe, he thinks, she is here to demand he once more retrieve Superman for her so she can plead her case again (twist the daggers she’s left in him, pour salt in open wounds, make sure he knows exactly who and what it is she loves and who and what she doesn’t).

Only that doesn’t seem quite right either. Because even if she wants something (and she does, wants him to be her friend and her sidekick and her backup-confidant-encouraging-friend-like-a-brother partner; wants him to pretend he isn’t completely horrified and terrified by the very thought of her marrying Luthor), she hasn’t come over in days. Hasn’t talked to him like she used to, true partners and maybe-but-can’t-admit-it friends. Hasn’t looked at him with that endearing expectant impatience. Hasn’t looked at him with anything other than frustration, or kind sympathy, or absentminded pity, and the only thing she’s waited for him to do is accept her dismissal and run fetch Superman for her. And when he did it (because she asked him and even though he knew it was a bad idea, he couldn’t quite make himself deny her), well, then she’d looked at him with awe, with admiration, with shock, with disappointment (with everything but understanding, recognition, realization).

Less than twenty-four hours ago, Superman flew away to the sound of her tears, and Clark has not seen her for even longer, since the morning before.

So why is she here? Giving him a watered down smile, looking pale and unsure, almost nervous, but here. Not barreling in but rather standing there, as if he has frozen her with his gaze alone.

“Hey,” she says, in a shadow of her normal voice. “Can I come in?”

She’s never asked him that before (never asked him if she could tear her way into his heart and take up permanent residence there).

“Y-yeah,” he stammers. And swallowing hard, trying to disguise everything he knows she doesn’t want to see in him, he steps aside and gestures her in. (As if there was ever any doubt, he thinks resignedly.)

She enters, but slowly, as if she’s never come in before. As if this is all new and different and exotic. She looks around and examines everything closely, her eyes never quite landing in one place for more than a second or two before moving on.

Clark steps up behind her--but not too close, because more than anything, he does not want to make her uncomfortable after his confession. “Are you okay, Lois?”

She spins to face him so fast that he’s brought up short, taking a half-step back and staring at her, trying to discern what lies behind vibrant, dark eyes (not that he expects to succeed; he’s been trying and failing for six months now and she still manages to surprise him on an almost hourly basis).

Her heart stutters in her chest in an odd, uneven pattern, and her eyes are locked on him--as if she wants to understand him as much he does her (but only one side of him, the side she doesn’t know is his), and Clark expects anything (has already braced himself to deny her when she asks for Superman), anything but what she actually says.

“You said you loved me.”

It feels like a punch to the stomach. Not that he has a lot of experience with it, but Trask gave him quite the education in taking a beating during those hours he was affected by Kryptonite and it’s not exactly something he can forget. So he knows, without question, that her words feel exactly like a blow straight to the core of his being. Like she reached out with a chunk of radioactive Krypton and slammed it into him.

But what makes it worse (worse than the blow she’d landed when telling him of Luthor’s proposal; worse than the beating inflicted by her gentle, open statement that she doesn’t love him; worse, even, than the knife to his heart caused by her affirmation to Superman that she’d love him as an ordinary man) is that he cannot tell why she is bringing it up. He cannot interpret whether it is meant to be hurled as an accusation or asked like a question or simply stated. And the uncertainty (the dangling hope, blatantly placed in front of him like bait he is not wise enough to refuse) makes him feel as if he is wavering precariously between a narrow stretch of solid ground and open air with gravity strong enough to claim even him.

But the statement (question; accusation) hangs in the air, and now, finally, after all these days, Lois is looking at him expectantly, as if he is exasperatingly slow and she must do everything herself, as if she wants something of him. And he is so tired, so very tired, of denying this most basic fact of existence. So he nods and says, “Yes.”

Her smile is almost bitter. Her eyes skitter away from him. She wraps her arms around herself (as if uncomfortable to be alone with him).

Heavy, sluggish disappointment (not surprising and fully expected, but painful nonetheless) trickles over him like raindrops in a storm, profiling his form, outlining him in damp grief he can’t escape no matter how fast he runs or far he flies.

“Yeah, well,” Lois says, “Superman doesn’t.”

If he thought she couldn’t hurt him more than she already has, then he was wrong, because this hurts. Because he hurts, and he starts to wonder if maybe it was a mistake to ever come to Metropolis, to dare to apply at such a prestigious newspaper, to not take off running the moment he realized he’d fallen in love with a woman who’s never seen him as anything worthy of a second look.

But she is sad and disconsolate, and that is partly his fault (result of his lack of self-control when he wears the Suit his mom made him, of his own mistakes and his own insecurities), so he summons up the best comforting tone he can manage and says, “Lois, I’m sure he--”

“No, it’s okay.” She cuts him off with a careless wave of her hand (and at least she is unfolding, is letting down her guard just a bit, even if it is only because she is more upset with Superman than with him). “I mean, why should I have expected any differently?”

Now it is guilt’s turn to take a bite-sized chunk out of him.

He starts to reach out to her (not quite sure what he can do but needing to do something to assuage the wounds he’s given her), but she smoothly evades him by beginning to pace, taking up room, forcing him back another couple of steps.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” she says quickly, the words coming so fast they fall to lay in her wake only to be trampled underfoot when she turns to pace back the way she came. “I told Lex I couldn’t marry him.”

His apartment seems to shrink around them. The city disappears from his senses, the world vanishing so that it is only him and Lois alone, in this small amount of space, that exists. The Earth itself seems to stop where it is, right in the middle of its orbit of the sun. All so he can assimilate this one fact--that Lois has turned Luthor down. So he can ease the soul-crushing weight that has been breaking him beneath its burden ever since Lois told him the crimelord-in-philanthropic-armor proposed to her. So he can breathe again, for the first time in weeks.

Clark can’t move, can only stand there, afraid to so much as blink lest he jolt the Earth back into movement and cold reality back into place (and yet, he breathes, and it is still real; he can still hear the fading echoes of Lois telling him she has not bound herself to a monster).

And finally he can’t help but let out a deep and sincere sigh of relief, his eyes fluttering shut in a futile attempt to disguise the hope creeping back into his eyes, the smile trying to free itself at the corners of his mouth. “Thank you,” he says, with all of his heart.

“I didn’t do it for you,” Lois snaps, jerking him and the Earth alike from the moment of relieved realization. She doesn’t seem to notice, well on her way to working herself up to a full-fledged rant. “Truthfully, I’m kind of frustrated with all of you--Lex with his grand gestures, and Superman with his disparaging comments, and you--” She whirls on him, and despite himself, Clark flinches away.

He shuts his eyes, hopes she will stop herself there, will take pity on him and decide not to finish her sentence. He doesn’t need all of his failings spelled out for him again, not now.

But he is never that lucky.

“You’re supposed to be my friend,” she says furiously, her voice low, crackling with intensity that usually compels him ever closer but now only lashes out at him, driving him back and away. “You’re my friend, and you threw…that…at me anyway!”

He swallows back his immediate retort (you are my friend, and yet you didn’t even give me a chance), his pleading explanation (Luthor is so dangerous, so deadly, and I couldn’t make you see it), his careful justification (I have been holding it back for so long that I decided to finally be brave and for once in my life fight instead of run), and says nothing at all. The truth is that he knows he shouldn’t have told her (knows she doesn’t love him), but he convinced himself that maybe she did feel more for him (she trusted him, after all, more than anyone else in her life, and that had to count for something), that maybe hearing he loved her would make her stop and see things differently. He’d told himself he was doing the brave thing, the right thing, and that even if it didn’t turn out the way he so desperately wanted, at least she’d know.

And even now, even after all the pain the last thirty-six hours have brought him, he can’t bring himself to apologize for letting her know she is loved. If she is waiting for an apology, or for him to take it back, then she will be waiting a long time.

“But,” she says, and her voice turns slow and musing, catching his immediate attention, “you meant it…didn’t you?”

The world is moving again, but Clark isn’t, not yet, not when every new word is bringing a new shock to his system, a new mystery to throw him for a loop. But if she is doubting him (if she is actually considering what he said, thinking about it enough to come to his apartment and talk at him and look at him as if he can do something for her), then he can keep quiet no longer.

Gathering his courage, hoping she will not run from him, he meets her gaze. “Yes, Lois,” he tells her. “I meant it.”

She doesn’t blink, doesn’t look away, but she looks…immeasurably sad. “I’m sorry, Clark,” she says quietly, “but…I don’t feel that way about you.”

Another sucker-punch with that glowing green rock. Another burst of pain so much bigger than it seems someone of Lois’s small, slender size should be able to inflict. But this type of pain, this type of searing reminder that he isn’t someone she can ever love, is something he’s grown quite used to.

“I know,” he says, with a small nod and a pitiful attempt at a smile.

“That doesn’t mean I can’t.”

That bombshell is dropped softly, purposely, and yet, before he can do more than gape at her (his super-speed deserting him), she is pacing again, her hands twisting in front of her. “Do you want to know why I was dating Lex?” she asks abruptly.

Clark shakes his head, looks away, tries to convince himself he did not hear what he thought he did (because at this moment, hope is almost more cruel than reality). “Probably not,” he mutters under his breath, sickeningly sure that he about to be handed his heart on a silver platter with a Lois-shaped hole carved out of it yet again.

She throws him a look, all narrowed eyes and pursed-lip warning, but keeps talking anyway. “The reason I dated him--the reason I considered his marriage proposal--is because he can’t hurt me.”

It probably isn’t wise, not when she’s actually here, actually talking to him (actually not engaged to Luthor), but Clark sighs anyway. “Lois, I keep telling you, he’s more dangerous--”

“I’m not talking about that.” She waves his familiar suspicions aside, like cobwebs she’s grown used to cleaning up and parting in order for her to walk a well-worn path. “I meant…well, I like Lex. He’s good company and he certainly knows how to make an impression and he’s there when I need him to be. But his main allure was that he couldn’t break my heart, because I never gave him that power. I never let him near my heart at all, and he didn’t seem to really mind that.” She shrugs, smooths out her small frown. “And loving Superman--”

“Lois,” Clark interrupts hastily, shifting his weight in an effort to keep himself from disappearing before this can get any worse. “You don’t have to--”

“Loving Superman is easy too,” she continues over him, almost vindictively. She is, Clark realizes, watching him closely out of the corner of her eyes, as if she is gauging his reaction, so Clark carefully conceals his terror and his guilt and his anguish. Tucks his hands in his pockets. Rocks his weight back and forth on the balls of his feet. And feels each of her words hit him like stones cast at a condemned man.

“He’s certainly not going to break my heart, right?” she says, sarcasm and disillusionment and something more (something darker and heavier; something he can’t quite figure out) sharpening her voice. “I mean, he’s Superman. He’s always honest, always noble, and sure, maybe he’ll always be leaving me to go save the world, but he’ll always come back, and in the meantime, it gives me plenty of time to win a closet-full of Kerths. Plus, whenever he does get a free moment, I’d have the added bonus of flying through the skies with him. So you see, loving him is a safe dream, a fantasy just like knights in shining armor--doesn’t hurt to wish for them even if you know it’ll never happen.”

“Lois,” Clark says when she pauses to take a breath. “I don’t understand. I’m sorry if Superman said something that hurt you, but--”

She comes to a halt right in front of him. Stares up at him, something unreadable in her eyes, sharp and penetrating and silencing him in an instant, almost without effort at all. “And you,” she says softly. As if she’s memorized this speech and is determined not to let anything stop her from getting it all out between them--a wall, a barrier, a ring of fire to burn all the bridges he’s worked so hard to build between them. “It’s easy being friends with you. Well, actually, you’re great at being my friend, and I think I’m learning how to be a better friend.”

“You’re a great friend,” he murmurs past the lump in his throat.

She throws him a distracted smile for that, but doesn’t stop wringing her hands. Doesn’t stop pacing. Doesn’t stop dropping these words (that sound so disturbingly like the precursor to a farewell, a final goodbye) to lay at their feet, like all his hopes, shattering on the point of impact. “So you see, Clark, they were all safe choices--Superman as the fantasy, Lex as the reality, you as the constant, the loyal friend. I didn’t risk anything that way, because I made sure you were all safe.”

There’s something very tragic about that, Clark thinks, something terribly sad about her desire for safety over love, and he aches for her. Wishes he could love her well enough and thoroughly enough to fill all the missing holes inside her. Wishes that, even if she doesn’t love him, she would really, truly know that he does love her, so that she’ll never again think she’s someone to be left behind or overlooked or ignored.

Oblivious to his thoughts, Lois slows her steps, and says contemplatively, more to herself than to him, “But…when have I ever chosen the safe options?”

And even though he feels like she is slipping away from him, he can’t help but smile and nod to that, because she’s right. She lives life to the fullest and always on the edge, attacking life full-on and demanding that it give way to her. He isn’t sure (there are so many other things he loves about her too), but he thinks that trait might be what he loves most about her. It’s certainly what first captured his attention.

“So,” Lois concludes decisively, “I want to try.”

He’s lost. He feels as if he’s missed part of this wild, incomprehensible conversation. As if she has skipped the most important part and is only relaying the highlights to him. So he frowns, tries to piece it together, and ventures, “Try…the safe option?”

“No!” she exclaims impatiently. And inexplicably, startlingly, she looks almost…afraid. She swallows hard, and her heart rate doubles as she takes a careful step nearer him. “I want to try…to love you.”

“Wh-what?” It isn’t an intelligent reaction, isn’t eloquent or coherent (isn’t the desperate approval he wants to give this idea, or the frantic demand that she explain why she is doing this to him), but it is all he can manage. He can’t decide if this is a dream he’ll soon wake from, or a nightmare he can’t free himself from.

“Lex doesn’t love me,” she says quietly, stepping even closer (her heart rattling like dice in a cup), tilting her head to look straight up at him. “Not really. And Superman obviously doesn’t either--I mean, he’s never even told me his real name! But…but you love me, Clark. And I want to try to give that back to you.”

He wants it too. Wants it more than anything. Wants to sweep her into his arms and kiss her without excuse or disguise or farewell to mask his reasons for doing so. Wants to wrap himself around her and tell her she won’t regret it and spend the rest of his life loving her until she can never again be insecure about her worth.

But.

But this is all wrong. The timing, her reasons for doing this, the speech she’s so determinedly recited, the awkwardness permeating every line of her slender, quivering body. The way her hands tremble, and the sheen to her eyes, and the rapid-fire rhythm of her heartbeat.

And in the end, this isn’t a dream at all, just another nightmare.

“Lois,” he says. Softly. Regretfully. Mournfully. He feels as if he will fall over if he tries to move away from her (to give her the distance she so obviously wants but, so characteristically, will not allow herself to seek), so instead he brings up his hands to cover his eyes beneath the glasses (cover the longing he can’t hide behind crumbling, disintegrating walls) and scrubs them over his face in a surreptitious attempt to wake himself before this nightmare degenerates any further. “You don’t have to do this, Lois. You’re right--I’m your friend, and I…” He swallows heavily, forces the words out, “I shouldn’t have said anything. Shouldn’t have put you in this position. I never wanted you to feel pressured into--”

“I don’t,” she insists, reaching out (with hands that shake) and grabbing his hands, tugging them down off his face (and still her heartbeat drums in his ears, frightened and frantic). “I want to do this.”

Clark shakes his head, stares at her hands on his, wills himself not to break down in front of her and make her pity him on top of everything else. “This isn’t what you want, Lois. You said it yourself--you don’t love me!”

She steps even closer, crowding him, making it hard for him to think past the roaring of his own heartbeat (quick and desperate and wounded) and her own (steadying, slowing, calming). He almost deludes himself into thinking that her breaths are longer and deeper, that her hands aren’t shaking anymore. “For years,” she tells him, “there was no one romantically in my life. And then, suddenly, there were three men. Two of them don’t love me, not the way I want them to, but I gave them both a chance. And yet, the one who does love me, who’s there for me all the time…well, I didn’t even listen to you. And that doesn’t seem fair, does it? So I want to give us a chance. I want to see if I can’t love you.” She takes a deep breath. “In other words, I guess what I’m saying is…will you go on a date with me?”

A date, he thinks. A date doesn’t seem so bad, does it? It’s just a chance. A dinner. An evening for her to see if she can’t move him out of the ‘friend’ category. He doesn’t have to feel guilty about saying yes (taking this last wild grab at his fading dreams), not when she’s only asking for a chance. Asking to see what they could be.

But then…if there’s nothing wrong with it, why is he having to stand here and rationalize it?

“Lois,” he says with the very last of his willpower. “I don’t think…”

But she is starting to look nervous, starting to drop his hand, starting to back away (and her heartbeat intensifies to a rat-a-tat-tatting that makes his own stutter and shake), and he can see his every chance, his last hopes, going up in flame, in smoke, in ashes that crumble at his touch.

“Yes!” he blurts out before she can walk away. He knows it is wrong, know it is foolish, but he says it anyway and almost does not even care. “Yes, I…oh, Lois, you have no idea how much I want to go on a date with you. But,” he feels compelled to add (because she is still nervous, still quivering ever so slightly, just enough to disturb the air currents around him), “maybe this is too much too soon. Please believe me, Lois, you don’t have to do this to…to, I don’t know--I’m still your friend, you know that, right? No matter what, I’ll always be there for you. You don’t have to go out with me just to keep--”

“Really, Clark,” she interrupts him, and he almost thanks her for that (he doesn’t babble nearly as well or as comfortably as she does). “I want to do this.” She takes the final step to bring herself up against him, less than an inch between them. Her hands are cold on his. Her heartbeat sounds like hail against a sheet of glass. “I want to try. I mean…how hard can it be? We already eat dinner together most of the time, and we’ve watched movies together before. Putting a label on it can’t be that much harder, right?”

They are words he’s wanted (so badly) to hear, words he’s thought of saying to her countless times. But there is something suspiciously like tears glimmering in her eyes, and there’s a tremor to her voice, and Clark feels uncomfortably guilty. As if he’s coerced her into doing this. As if he’s forcing her into something she doesn’t want just because he was too selfish to keep quiet and just be her friend.

“Lois,” he whispers. “Please, listen to me. You don’t have--”

“No, Clark,” she says firmly, her nervousness vanishing in the blink of an eye. “Listen to me. You’re the best man I’ve ever known. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had. You’re kind and considerate and you know how I take my coffee and when to back off or when to push me. You make me laugh and you hold me when I cry and you help me write better than I ever have before--not that I’d ever admit that to anyone else, so don’t even think about trying to spread that around. So…how hard can it be to love you? Sure,” she lets out a laugh--watery, but definitely amused, “you’re not exactly the snappiest dresser, and your sense of humor leaves something to be desired, and you can be irritatingly overprotective--”

“Wow, Lois, don’t knock yourself out,” he says dryly, to cover just how affected he is by her open, sincere words. (And her heartbeat sounds steady in his ears, proof that she is not lying.)

She smiles at him. A warm, genuine smile that makes him wonder if maybe this isn’t a dream after all. “I want to do this, Clark. Please…don’t give up on me yet.”

“Oh, Lois,” he murmurs, and he pulls her gently into his arms, gratified (and reassured and vindicated and astonished) when she comes willingly, even eagerly. “I could never give up on you. As a partner, or a friend, or whatever you want--I’m here for you.”

She burrows into him, wrapping her arms around him tightly enough that he feels as if she could hold him to the ground—--and this is something he can do. Something he knows. Ever since their first hug, celebratory and excited, he’s known that if he can’t have anything else, he can survive so long as she occasionally lets him hug her. And he knows that she likes being hugged by him (sometimes, he knows, she even makes up excuses to hug him), so he doesn’t have to feel guilty for this, doesn’t have to feel like he is pressuring her for more than she can give. He can hold her close and feel himself relax, a fraction of his confusion leaking away, fleeing in the face of the coherency and peace Lois’s embrace brings him.

Except…except it’s not the same. Not all right. Because even though it is muffled by clothing and distance and her own self-control, he can hear a catch to her breathing. A tiny, stifled sob. And he can feel the warmth of her tears against his neck. Catch the rapid, uneven flutter of her heart. And so very quietly, inaudible to anyone but Superman, he hears her whisper, “I’m sorry, Clark.”

There’s a pit in his stomach, a green, glowing pit that radiates outward and fills him with a sense of foreboding heavy enough to tie him to gravity’s demands.

He draws back, pulls away just enough to look down at her (but cannot quite release her entirely because maybe this is the last time he will ever get to touch her). But when she looks up, meets his gaze, he begins to doubt his own senses. Because she is smiling up at him, and her eyes are bright but not with discernible tears, and her voice is strong and not at all affected by a sob when she says, “So, tomorrow? Dinner at seven?”

“Yeah,” he says automatically, without thinking. He cannot look away from her, cannot step away. Cannot stop hoping he is imagining all of this (except not really, because he wants her to give him a chance, just…not this way). “That sounds perfect.”

“Good.” She smiles up at him, bites her lip. “It’s a date.”

His smile is immediate, a natural reaction to her saying that to him (to Clark) that he can’t even begin to try to quell it. But…but this is still not right, and even though he doesn’t want to say it, doesn’t want to bring up the possibility (doesn’t want to say his name and conjure his presence between them), he knows this all, taken at face value, is far too good to possibly be true. So he asks, “Lois, how did Luthor take you turning him down?”

The brightness to her eyes dims, and she steps away from him with a shrug, leaving him wishing he hadn’t said anything. “Not well,” she says, but with not even a flicker to her heartbeat to hint that she is afraid of Luthor or only here because he forced her to be for some convoluted, vengeful scheme. “But life’s full of disappointments. Anyway, seven, right?”

He tries not to, tries not to read too much into it (he’s the one who brought up Luthor’s name, after all), but he suddenly feels very much like a consolation prize. And maybe that’s why Lois might have apologized to him (if she really said what he thinks she did, and maybe he’s wrong; he can hope anyway), why she is so awkward. Why she looks as if she might cry every time she glances at him.

He supposes he should feel ashamed of taking this chance anyway. Maybe he should pretend to some pride, pretend that she can love him on his own rather than just because the men she really wanted have disappointed her. But…truthfully, he doesn’t care (he does, actually, but not enough to turn away from her). He already knows that she doesn’t love him on his own, that he isn’t her first (or even second) choice. And he already knows that he will take whatever crumbs she’ll throw at him. And anyway, what good is pride if it leaves him alone, apart from Lois, no longer even her friend or partner?

No, maybe this is wrong, and maybe it isn’t the best option, but he is going to take it anyway. Going to seize it and make the most of it and hope (with all his being, with everything he is) that he can make it become more.

“Seven,” he says with a forced smile. “I’ll pick you up.”

She rolls her eyes as her heartbeat slowly steadies. “Of the two of us, I’m the one who owns a vehicle, Clark.”

“I know, but…” He shrugs, feeling almost shy. “But I’ll come to your place.”

“Oh, I see. The old-fashioned route, huh?”

He’s suddenly unsure, wondering if he’s messed this up already. If he’s blown his chance before he can even manage to convince himself he has one. “Is…is that okay?”

Her smile is slow and contemplative, sparking a bolt of hope that makes his every nerve ending feel like it’s on fire. “Yeah. It’s great.”

And then, with a last smile and hesitant pause, she’s gone, up the stairs and out his door before he can do more than blink. He’s left behind, alone, pinching himself, wondering if this really did just happen.

The only thing that brings him back to Earth, with a painful thud, is the smell of salty tears emanating from the collar of his shirt.

***