A/N: So, in the opening author's note for this series, I wrote that I'd try not to let too long go between chapters...
Yeah. So, anyway, here I am, after a year and a half with the next pulled-apart moment from an episode! I've been watching the show with my sister, and she has finally made it to the episode where I'd left off, and since I've been meaning to be more active on here anyway, I sat down and tried my hand at it. Apologies if I am rusty -- the nice thing about these Quotables is that it helps me figure out the characters again! Hope you all enjoy!
As always, quotes and characters are taken from episodes written by others. No copyright infringement is intended.
***
The Phoenix: Clark Kent
***
It’s for the best, he tells himself. Of course it is (and why had he ever let himself think different?). All the work of gearing up his courage, screwing up his suicidal tendencies, just to ask her out on one date (and not to backpedal or equivocate during even one of the many opportunities she gave him), and for what? So she could scramble awkwardly in her search for the way to let him down (
again) without hurting him? So he could listen to her tell him that he was her
best friend and she didn’t want anything to risk that (especially not a date she’s never given him any reason to think she
wants)?
So he can have his heart broken all over again?
No, best just to let this go. Just cut his losses, appreciate the close relationship he already does have with her, and give up all the dreams he’s been carrying around for far too long.
Besides, better for
him to do it than to have to listen to whatever pitying, rambling speech she has halfway prepared. (Better to be able to tell himself it was just timing, and coincidence, and an ill-timed assignment than that he’s just not someone she feels ‘that way’ about.)
But she doesn’t take it, this golden opportunity he has given her to back out of the date she didn’t want and only agreed to after he all but cornered her on it. Her eyes cloud over and her lips purse in what he could almost swear is a pout.
As if she doesn’t want the out.
As if…she wants the date?
He can hardly dare to believe it. Sure, he’s tried his best to keep his calm, to make her think this is as casual as she wants it (to not do anything at all to let her see the weight of his all-encompassing, apparently immortal love for her, because the last time he let it out into the open, it was too much). He’s waited until she looked at him with a shining look in her eyes that rivaled the expression she wears around Superman (or used to wear, because lately, she’s seemed to see Superman more as an equal than a superior). Waited until she looked absolutely broken when Clark walked back to life and health after his run-in with those cloned gangsters, and she refused to let him out of her sight for days afterward. Waited until she realized Superman isn’t perfect and admitted she’ll do anything for Clark.
Waited until he didn’t think the time could ever be any more right.
But she’d paused. Hesitated. Backtracked.
But then, doesn’t Lois always do that when she’s scared but hopeful? She’s so unafraid of risking her life, but so cautious with her heart (and he’s the opposite, isn’t he, so maybe that’s why it’s taken them almost two years to get to this point).
“Well,” she says, slowly, hesitantly, “what if we say this is our
almost first date?”
And he smiles. Smiles, and breathes, and thinks that maybe, finally, this is his time.
Their time.
Maybe she can finally love him.
***
