Smallville Fic: The Story of Us #1 - Six Years
September 25, 2010
Six years is a long time to know someone.
Not just as an acquaintance, but as a part of your life pretty much every day.
Six years since the day she’d wrapped his naked body in a red blanket and taken him to the hospital after finding him naked in a cornfield. After she’d, fittingly, crashed into his life.
He’d had so many relationships in his life that had ended too soon. If you had asked him six years ago, he’d have told you that there wasn’t any way they’d last six days knowing each other, let alone six years.
But they had.
Six years of teasing. Busting his chops. Kicking him in the ass when needed (and there were times over the past six years he’d definitely needed it and she’d been only too happy to oblige).
Six years of listening in the way only she could. Of being there for him even when she didn’t know the entire reason why he needed her shoulder to lean on or to hear her unfailingly spot - on advice gleaned from years of having to depend only on herself.
Six years of watching her let her defenses down around him, watching her realize that just as she was his support, he could be hers. She just had to let him.
The dynamics had changed over the years, from wary investigative partners to secret friends to confidantes to best friends to work partners, and finally, to opening their respective eyes to the truth that had been in front of them all along, only they’d been too blind or stubborn to see it.
The last year of the six had been filled with longing glances, secret smiles, surprise kisses and not so surprise kisses. Feeling the warmth of her hand in his, the softness of her hair as his fingers idly lost themselves in it as they had one of their movie nights. It had been filled with the bumps, the adjustments of moving from friendship to love, knowing that this? This was the one.
Six years. Two thousand one hundred ninety one days. A long time to know someone, to have her in your life.
But in that moment, standing in his loft, watching her retreating form fade from his view, struggling to force breaths through his constricted throat, the realization that he’d just watched her leave him for the last time because the next time someone left, it would be him, leaving this Earth with his fellow Kandorians forever, it felt like the six years she’d been in his life had been sucked into the vacuum of time and reduced to mere seconds.
Six years is a long time to know someone.
Not just as an acquaintance, but as a part of your life pretty much every day.
Six years since the day she’d wrapped his naked body in a red blanket and taken him to the hospital after finding him naked in a cornfield. After she’d, fittingly, crashed into his life.
He’d had so many relationships in his life that had ended too soon. If you had asked him six years ago, he’d have told you that there wasn’t any way they’d last six days knowing each other, let alone six years.
But they had.
Six years of teasing. Busting his chops. Kicking him in the ass when needed (and there were times over the past six years he’d definitely needed it and she’d been only too happy to oblige).
Six years of listening in the way only she could. Of being there for him even when she didn’t know the entire reason why he needed her shoulder to lean on or to hear her unfailingly spot - on advice gleaned from years of having to depend only on herself.
Six years of watching her let her defenses down around him, watching her realize that just as she was his support, he could be hers. She just had to let him.
The dynamics had changed over the years, from wary investigative partners to secret friends to confidantes to best friends to work partners, and finally, to opening their respective eyes to the truth that had been in front of them all along, only they’d been too blind or stubborn to see it.
The last year of the six had been filled with longing glances, secret smiles, surprise kisses and not so surprise kisses. Feeling the warmth of her hand in his, the softness of her hair as his fingers idly lost themselves in it as they had one of their movie nights. It had been filled with the bumps, the adjustments of moving from friendship to love, knowing that this? This was the one.
Six years. Two thousand one hundred ninety one days. A long time to know someone, to have her in your life.
But in that moment, standing in his loft, watching her retreating form fade from his view, struggling to force breaths through his constricted throat, the realization that he’d just watched her leave him for the last time because the next time someone left, it would be him, leaving this Earth with his fellow Kandorians forever, it felt like the six years she’d been in his life had been sucked into the vacuum of time and reduced to mere seconds.