Fic: Vers: V: Time's a Crooked Bow
Parts: I | II | III | IV | V | VI | VII
V
Time's a Crooked Bow
Oliver's apartment in Star City smells like clean linen and fresh coffee, and a vague sense of shouldn't-be-here. Like his apartment in Metropolis, and the one in London, it is impersonal: minimalist. My own apartment is Spartan, but I have never considered it sterile. Even so, there is a photograph of me on the desk - I don't think he has been up here himself for a while.
It would be so easy to slide back into things with Oliver. My hips slip between his hands like they are an old pair of jeans now. I could slip back into them, and he would peel the layers of me; I would strip the layers of him, my bit-down fingernails dug into his flesh. There would be no more Green Arrow, no more Oliver Queen. There would be no more Lois Lane, cub reporter. We would be Ollie and Lois again. It would be easy.
It would be easy.
That's how I know I don't love him anymore.
I don't want fingers to strip me now; I don't want to be pried apart. I want to bloom suddenly, violently, time-lapsed, coaxed. Oliver cannot coax.
He isn't here, anyway. He is wherever the Green Arrow is. I came for a story.
- - -
I came for a break.
- - -
I came to be free of Clark's gentle coaxing.
- - -
Martha told me that she heard I was still travelling a lot. I didn't need to wonder who told her.
"And I think that's great," she said, while I waited for the inexorable 'but' -
"But I think you could do with putting down some roots."
And what she meant by that is that I have already. I wanted to tell her, though, that I do not have roots: I am impermanent. Like dried flowers, I am blown by the wind. I am not an ocean; not an oak tree. But I didn't, because I am starting to wonder if - to wonder if maybe I am not as impermanent as I think.
- - -
I think that Clark's voicemail messages are always so short because he is afraid that I will pick up, or afraid that I won't. They are perfunctory. I don't answer because they are perfunctory. But when I call him - when I call him we fight. We fight, and it's like the sky has been cracked in half and an ocean poured out; I send my bolts of lightning rustling down the telephone line, and he answers with a clap of thunder. There are anemones in Clark's ocean.
But when I hang up - I hang up, and I feel better.
And half an hour later, he leaves a message on my machine. Soft. Perfunctory. "Lois, I'm sorry".
And then I miss him.
- - -
There is a photograph of Clark in the desk in my apartment. It's a photograph I took without thinking, having happened to borrow Jimmy's camera. I had found Clark in the barn, fixing the tractor, and lifted the camera to my eye almost without noticing. I took the picture just as he turned to face me, and afterwards liked to think I had captured something of his unguarded self as he realised I was there.
- - -
He picks me up at the airport this time. I think we have done something a little like this before. This time the weather is perfectly dry.
I think that if this had happened three years ago, we might have hugged. I feel like we have lost something in all the not-so-accidental touches, those brushes of finger tips, those bumps and knocks; somehow that we no longer touch each other deliberately. I think too that if Clark had hugged me then, I would gently have unfurled every petal of myself for him.
I notice too that I let him chauffeur me around a lot lately.
- - -
He drops me at my apartment, and we are in this moment again. We are to part, and he is to go to work, and we are not going to act like friends and hug each other but pretend that we are too stand-offish for that. I can't - I can't stand it. I can't stand his gentle eyes in the hall like that; I can't stand them when they turn to leave.
"Clark," I say, and he turns back then. I step forward, then, to hug him, throwing my arms around his shoulders, and his hands somehow are on my back, fingers laid back against my spine. As I pull away, he turns his head softly and - I think without thinking - kisses my cheek a goodbye.
I turn my face to his then in half-surprise, and we regard each other, and an oak tree bursts through the cage of my ribs. Then his mouth is on mine - not gentle, but pressed hard into me - and we collapse back against the wall. I feel his fingers twisted up in the fabric of my shirt, digging painfully into my back, in between my shoulder blades. Hands fumble, brush against my stomach: he is mine. His coal black hair; his long fingers; his ocean. His every breath is the frame of a time-lapsed photograph, warm and tickling against my throat. I kiss his cheekbone, his eyelid, his mouth. He kisses mine.
His arm is curled around my waist, like a bird's wing jutted against the cold. His neck is against my cheek, my mouth pressed against his collarbone, my hand resting against his shoulder blade. I don't know how we are going to brush this off.
But it's me, in the end, who pushes gently against his shoulder. He gives way, and we regard each other again for a moment. There is nothing I want more than to rock up on the balls of my feet and kiss him again - but I am filled up with the sudden pressing need to understand that he is not mine.
"I - don't know why you did that, Smallville," and, crucially, he kissed me.
His mouth parts, and he frowns. "Lois -" but I hold up a hand.
"I know that you've missed me, and I suppose I missed you, and it's only natural that, you know, that that will come out in - in certain ways. But I think that, maybe, we should just - just not." My voice breaks more than I would have liked. And his eyes: the look in his eyes. I don't know what I expected: maybe that just this once he wouldn't take the out I offered him. And for a moment there, it seemed like -
"OK," he says, after a long moment. He presses his lips together and adds, more to himself, "OK." Then he looks back at me: "I'll see you later, Lois," as if it is me who has decided this; as if - almost as if it mattered. I almost want to grab his hand then, and pull him back, grow roots around him. But I don't. Instead I close in on myself, tight, and (so) he leaves. And I wonder if I really will see him later.
V
Time's a Crooked Bow
Oliver's apartment in Star City smells like clean linen and fresh coffee, and a vague sense of shouldn't-be-here. Like his apartment in Metropolis, and the one in London, it is impersonal: minimalist. My own apartment is Spartan, but I have never considered it sterile. Even so, there is a photograph of me on the desk - I don't think he has been up here himself for a while.
It would be so easy to slide back into things with Oliver. My hips slip between his hands like they are an old pair of jeans now. I could slip back into them, and he would peel the layers of me; I would strip the layers of him, my bit-down fingernails dug into his flesh. There would be no more Green Arrow, no more Oliver Queen. There would be no more Lois Lane, cub reporter. We would be Ollie and Lois again. It would be easy.
It would be easy.
That's how I know I don't love him anymore.
I don't want fingers to strip me now; I don't want to be pried apart. I want to bloom suddenly, violently, time-lapsed, coaxed. Oliver cannot coax.
He isn't here, anyway. He is wherever the Green Arrow is. I came for a story.
- - -
I came for a break.
- - -
I came to be free of Clark's gentle coaxing.
- - -
Martha told me that she heard I was still travelling a lot. I didn't need to wonder who told her.
"And I think that's great," she said, while I waited for the inexorable 'but' -
"But I think you could do with putting down some roots."
And what she meant by that is that I have already. I wanted to tell her, though, that I do not have roots: I am impermanent. Like dried flowers, I am blown by the wind. I am not an ocean; not an oak tree. But I didn't, because I am starting to wonder if - to wonder if maybe I am not as impermanent as I think.
- - -
I think that Clark's voicemail messages are always so short because he is afraid that I will pick up, or afraid that I won't. They are perfunctory. I don't answer because they are perfunctory. But when I call him - when I call him we fight. We fight, and it's like the sky has been cracked in half and an ocean poured out; I send my bolts of lightning rustling down the telephone line, and he answers with a clap of thunder. There are anemones in Clark's ocean.
But when I hang up - I hang up, and I feel better.
And half an hour later, he leaves a message on my machine. Soft. Perfunctory. "Lois, I'm sorry".
And then I miss him.
- - -
There is a photograph of Clark in the desk in my apartment. It's a photograph I took without thinking, having happened to borrow Jimmy's camera. I had found Clark in the barn, fixing the tractor, and lifted the camera to my eye almost without noticing. I took the picture just as he turned to face me, and afterwards liked to think I had captured something of his unguarded self as he realised I was there.
- - -
He picks me up at the airport this time. I think we have done something a little like this before. This time the weather is perfectly dry.
I think that if this had happened three years ago, we might have hugged. I feel like we have lost something in all the not-so-accidental touches, those brushes of finger tips, those bumps and knocks; somehow that we no longer touch each other deliberately. I think too that if Clark had hugged me then, I would gently have unfurled every petal of myself for him.
I notice too that I let him chauffeur me around a lot lately.
- - -
He drops me at my apartment, and we are in this moment again. We are to part, and he is to go to work, and we are not going to act like friends and hug each other but pretend that we are too stand-offish for that. I can't - I can't stand it. I can't stand his gentle eyes in the hall like that; I can't stand them when they turn to leave.
"Clark," I say, and he turns back then. I step forward, then, to hug him, throwing my arms around his shoulders, and his hands somehow are on my back, fingers laid back against my spine. As I pull away, he turns his head softly and - I think without thinking - kisses my cheek a goodbye.
I turn my face to his then in half-surprise, and we regard each other, and an oak tree bursts through the cage of my ribs. Then his mouth is on mine - not gentle, but pressed hard into me - and we collapse back against the wall. I feel his fingers twisted up in the fabric of my shirt, digging painfully into my back, in between my shoulder blades. Hands fumble, brush against my stomach: he is mine. His coal black hair; his long fingers; his ocean. His every breath is the frame of a time-lapsed photograph, warm and tickling against my throat. I kiss his cheekbone, his eyelid, his mouth. He kisses mine.
His arm is curled around my waist, like a bird's wing jutted against the cold. His neck is against my cheek, my mouth pressed against his collarbone, my hand resting against his shoulder blade. I don't know how we are going to brush this off.
But it's me, in the end, who pushes gently against his shoulder. He gives way, and we regard each other again for a moment. There is nothing I want more than to rock up on the balls of my feet and kiss him again - but I am filled up with the sudden pressing need to understand that he is not mine.
"I - don't know why you did that, Smallville," and, crucially, he kissed me.
His mouth parts, and he frowns. "Lois -" but I hold up a hand.
"I know that you've missed me, and I suppose I missed you, and it's only natural that, you know, that that will come out in - in certain ways. But I think that, maybe, we should just - just not." My voice breaks more than I would have liked. And his eyes: the look in his eyes. I don't know what I expected: maybe that just this once he wouldn't take the out I offered him. And for a moment there, it seemed like -
"OK," he says, after a long moment. He presses his lips together and adds, more to himself, "OK." Then he looks back at me: "I'll see you later, Lois," as if it is me who has decided this; as if - almost as if it mattered. I almost want to grab his hand then, and pull him back, grow roots around him. But I don't. Instead I close in on myself, tight, and (so) he leaves. And I wonder if I really will see him later.