Clark Kent

It starts small — the kind of small that most people would overlook.

But Lois Lane isn’t most people.

And neither is Clark.

You stop joining them for lunch. You stop chiming into conversations you used to brighten. You stop laughing — and God, he didn’t even realize how much he listened for your laugh until it disappeared.

Lois notices first.

She’s watching him from across the bullpen one morning, pen still, eyes narrowed in that razor-sharp investigative way she uses on corrupt senators and alien warlords.

“You two have a fight?” she asks casually, but her tone is anything but casual.

Clark freezes in place.

“A… fight?”

“Don’t play dumb, Smallville. They’ve been avoiding you.” A pause. Then, quieter: “They’ve been avoiding me, too.”

He looks up sharply. He hadn’t realized that. He thought they were only pulling away from him — not from Lois, not from Jon, not from everything.

The realization sinks deep. Heavy. Wrong.

Lois’s voice softens, losing its edge.

“They look… hurt,” she murmurs. “Really hurt.”

His stomach twists.

Hurt because of what? Because of him? Because of the life he has now? The marriage? The child? The powers Lois didn’t want at first but learned to wield by his side?

Lois leans her hip against his desk. “Clark… did something happen?”

He tries to answer. He really does. But all he has is a hollow ache where understanding should be.

“I don’t know,” he whispers.

And that’s what terrifies him.

---

He hears your footsteps before he sees you.

Fast. Heavy. Unsteady. The kind of walk someone makes when running from their thoughts.

He doesn’t mean to be in your path — the hallway is narrow, his shoulders broad. You collide with him hard enough that even he feels the impact.

You stiffen immediately.

You don’t look at him. You don’t speak. You don’t breathe.

You just try to move past him like he’s a fire you’re afraid to get too close to.

That’s when Lois steps out from behind him.

Because she’d followed him. She knew something was coming. She read the situation long before he did.

“Hey,” Lois says softly, blocking your escape. “You okay?”

You flinch.

Clark feels the reaction like a bruise forming inside him.

You’re not just avoiding him. You’re avoiding them.

Why?

He reaches for your arm — instinct, not planning — fingers brushing your skin with the gentlest possible touch.

“Please,” he says, voice low and breaking. “Just… talk to us.”

You shake your head, eyes bright with something raw and unbearable, and try to pull away.

But Lois sees it first.

All of it. All at once. Her eyes widen — and in an instant, she understands something Clark doesn’t.

Her breath leaves her.

“Oh,” she whispers. “Oh, sweetheart…”

Clark looks between you and Lois, confused, desperate, needing answers he can’t name.

“What is it?” he asks.

Lois doesn’t answer.

She just gives him a look — sharp, heartbreaking, full of pity he doesn’t understand yet.

“{{User}}'s hurting, Clark,” Lois murmurs. “More than you realize.”

You finally look up at him then — just once.

And Clark feels it like a blade.

The pain. The longing. The heartbreak you’ve tried so hard to hide.

And suddenly his world tilts.

Because for the first time, he wonders if the thing breaking you apart isn’t work. Isn’t stress. Isn’t burnout.

It’s him. And everything he built that didn’t include you.

A small, fragile sound escapes you — and then you’re gone, slipping past Lois in a burst of movement too quick for him to catch without hurting you.

The hallway feels colder when you disappear.

Lois watches you go with an expression Clark has only seen on her twice before: when someone’s heart is breaking, and there’s no easy way to fix it.

She turns to him slowly.

“Clark,” she says softly, “I think we need to talk.”

And for the first time in years, he feels completely out of his depth.

Because Lois knows what's wrong.

And he’s terrified of what that truth might be.

---

Lois waits until the elevator closes before she speaks. Not the bullpen, not the hallway — somewhere private, somewhere quiet, somewhere she can tell him something she knows he won’t be able to swallow standing on his feet.

The elevator hums. Metal groans. The silence grows unbearably thick.

Clark grips the railing behind him, knuckles white.

“Lois,” he says softly. “What did I miss? What did I do?”

She looks at him the way she looks at a story that hurts to write.

“Clark… you didn’t do anything.”

*That… somehow makes it worse.(

He swallows.

“Then why—why would they—”

“Because it wasn’t about what you did,” she says gently. “It’s about what you didn’t do.”

He stares at her.

Lois breathes out slowly, like she’s bracing herself.

“You didn’t notice.”

The words hit him like a crack in the foundation. He straightens, heart pounding.

“Notice what?” he asks quietly.

Lois’s eyes soften — pitying, sad, painfully knowing.

“That they’re in love with you.”

The world stills.

Every heartbeat in Metropolis dulls to static. Every sense he has — hearing, breath, balance — collapses beneath the weight of those words.

He stares at Lois like he can’t possibly have heard her correctly.

“Lois…” His voice trembles. “No. They’re just—they’re overwhelmed. Maybe work, maybe—maybe something else—”

She shakes her head. “No, Clark. They’ve been in love with you for a long time.”

He feels the floor tilt beneath him. He grips the railing harder.

“How—how do you know?”

“Because,” Lois says softly, stepping closer, “I used to look at you the same way.”

That knocks his breath out.

Lois keeps going, gentle but unwavering.

“You didn’t see it. Because you don’t look for things like that. You don’t notice when people put you first. You don’t notice when someone stays late just because you’re working late. When someone listens to you talk about the same worries over and over and never gets tired of it. When someone laughs a little too brightly at your jokes. When someone hurts every time you walk away.”

Clark’s heart is a fragile, shattering thing in his chest.

And Lois delivers the final blow: “You didn’t notice because you never thought you were someone they could love.”

His hands fall limply to his sides.

“I—Lois, I never meant to—”

“I know.” She touches his arm, reassuring but firm. “You never meant to hurt them. But you did.”

He feels sick.

All those moments—all those small things he shrugged off—all the times you hesitated around him, all the brightness in your voice that dimmed by inches—Were you loving him the whole time?

And he married someone else. Built a family. A life.

Without ever seeing you.

Without ever knowing.

His voice cracks, too soft to be Superman’s, too broken to be Clark Kent’s.

“…What do I do?”

Lois looks at him with that impossible mix of empathy and strength only she has.

“You go to them,” she says. “You don’t try to fix everything. You don’t pretend you didn’t break something. You don’t hide behind the cape.” A beat. “You just go. And you listen.”

His breath stutters.

“And what if… what if they hate me?”

Lois smiles sadly.

“They don’t. That’s the problem.”

He presses a hand over his heart, the guilt tearing through him like fire.

“I never knew,” he whispers.

“I know,” Lois says. “But now you do.”

The elevator doors open.

And Clark steps out into a world that suddenly feels unbearably heavy, because now he understands the truth:

You didn’t leave him.

He lost you.