The sheets crinkled as she enfolded the paper and smoothed the crease lovingly with her hand, smiling at the smear of ink it left on her fingertips. Sure, having every resource available at your fingertips with the stroke of a key was great but she couldn't remember the last time she had sat in her favorite coffee shop with a newspaper. A cup of joe and some hard news, this was what she used to live for. It was nice to get back to the basics.

She hadn't spoken to Oliver in a few days. Their arrangement was confusing, they were never on the same page. As hot as it was, she knew it was something that wouldn't, couldn't be allowed to last. Not to say she wasn't enjoying it while it lasted. Oliver was definitely high up there on the list of the most…skillful.

Reaching for a cup without looking, she was surprised to come up with air and scanned the table for her wayward cup only to find Clark sitting right across from her.

"This is embarrassing. How long have you been there with me being completely oblivious?"

"About five minutes, you really should be more careful." He admonished her without a trace of a teasing smile.

Chloe barely managed to stop her eye role at his high horse he was perched on every time she saw him.

"So, should I be asking for a to go cup for my coffee?"

"I'm serious Chlo, you have to be more vigilante."

"Okay," she let out a frustrated huff and reminded herself that no matter what she threw at him, she couldn't actually hurt him, "I sincerely doubt you came here to lecture me, so what's the latest crisis?"

Clark hesitated, not wanting to let the subject of her carelessness go, but he was pretty sure she got the message.

"No crisis, just checking up on you." He handed her the coffee cup and waited expectantly.

"Um…I'm fine, is the checkup complete now?" Where the hell was he going with this?

He sat quietly for a long time, contemplating the worn vinyl tabletop. A year ago, Chloe would have known exactly what to do or say to help him figure out what he was going on in his head. But that time had long past, as well as caring enough on her part to help him.

She turned back to the headline she had been reading, figuring he would either tell her what he wanted or he would just leave.

"Doesn't it ever bother you Chloe?" He asked out of the blue.

Come up to meet you, tell you I'm sorry

You don't know how lovely you are

I had to find you, tell you I need you

Tell you I set you apart

"Does what bother me?" She responded absently, her nose still buried between the newsprint. He reached up and pulled the newspaper out of her grasp and slowly crumpled up the paper to the size of a bottle cap and placed it on the table.

Chloe picked up the dense little packet, figuring the chances of her unpacking it was slim to none. She should be mad, ordinarily she'd be livid and be giving the perpetrator a dressing down, but she didn't have it in her to get worked up over him, not anymore.

"Does it bother you, that we are not friends?" He clarified finally.

Tell me your secrets and ask me your questions

Oh, let's go back to the start

Running in circles, coming up tails

Heads on a science apart

Genuine surprise etched across her face before flying away to be replaced by that face. The only face he'd seen for awhile, the mask she wore only for him.

"No."

Clark clenched his jaw and a tiny tic came to life along his jawbone.

"So you're happy with the way things are?"

"What does it matter Clark? Things are the way they are, there's no getting around reality."

Reaching up, he caught her hands mid flight as they flitted in the air while she emphasized her point. She tugged away, but he maintained his hold as he toyed with her fingers.

She tensed, wondering if he was on Red K and was about to break her fingers or something. He felt her body freeze up as he stroked her hands. He used to be so familiar with her hands. They always communicated with their hands, touching each other constantly, they hadn't done that in a very long time.

Nobody said it was easy

It's such a shame for us to part

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be this hard

Oh, take me back to the start

"I'd never hurt you Chlo." He reluctantly let go of her, knowing she was a bit freaked out.

"Why don't you just tell me whatever has gotten you into this funk and then we can move on." Chloe relented, thinking Clark would sit there all day if he didn't get it off his chest.

"I don't want to move on." He pierced her with an intense gaze that used to crumble her defenses.

I was guessing at numbers and figures

Pulling the puzzles apart

Questions of science, science and progress

Do not speak as loud as my heart

She didn't really understand what he was trying to say but she responded anyway, "We can't live in the past."

"Why? Why are you so determined to charge ahead?" He demanded of her, she was moving on without him.

"Are you serious right now? Clark, the world has been coming down around us for the past year. We are all trying to move ahead, to get ahead of the curve."

He wasn't saying this right, she wasn't understanding.

"I never meant for this to happen."

"For what to happen? There's been a lot going on lately, you need to be more specific."

"For us…to become strangers."

A short burst of laughter came from her lips unexpectedly.

"You have a funny way of remembering things Clark. Our last real heart to heart we had made it pretty damn clear that this was exactly what you wanted."

"Now you're just being deliberately obtuse, you know what that was about."

"Yea, yea. You need to be a hero, well you got what you wanted, so I don't know why you're pretending with all this regret." She shouted back at him.

He erupted from the booth and leaned his face inches from hers.

"You have no idea what you're talking about." He ground out through clenched teeth. The clatter of a wayward spoon startled both of them out of their glaring contest. Throwing a five on the table for the coffee, Chloe strode out, thoroughly confused and in no mood to waste time trying to analyze Clark Kent.

Catching her elbow, he pulled her into an empty alleyway. Before she could even formulate and indignant response, he picked her up and blurred his way to the Watchtower.

"This new manhandling trait of yours is less than to be desired." Throwing her purse onto the sofa she whipped around to face him.

"You know what I'm trying to tell you Chlo, why are you making this so hard?"

Throwing her hands up in the air in confusion she asked, "No Clark, I have no idea what you're trying to tell me. I have no idea why you are saying you regret something that you wanted to do. I'm utterly confused as to why you've spent more than five minutes in my company which you haven't done since Jimmy died. What the hell do you want?"

"I miss us!!" He yelled, resisting the urge to strangle some sense in to her.

"Us? Us! There is no us Clark, there has never been and us. There's been you and your latest paramour and me, the doormat. Let's not confuse history as we are rehashing it."

"I'm not the one confusing history. You may want to write off that what we had wasn't something more but I won't."

Throwing the nearest object at him, she watched in satisfaction as it shattered against his chest.

"I never wrote anything off, you were the one to walk away."

"You married Jimmy!"

"What the hell does Jimmy have to do with this?" She reached for another unsuspecting knick-knack to throw at him but he sped over to her and pinned her hands against the wall.

"You walked away from us first, when you married him." He reminded her softly.

"Let go of me!" She hissed at him.

"No."

"Clark, I wasn't walking away from our friendship, I was just getting married."

"Just? No, it wasn't just, it was everything and you had the nerve to ask me to give you away!"

All the fight went out of her and she stopped struggling futilely against his unyielding arms. Why was he bringing this stuff up now?

"It's not fair Chlo. Do you realize how not fair it is? I can't ever have you, I haven't ever had you, and you ask me to give you away? And now with him?"

"What do you want Clark? I don't know what you're saying." He blinked his eyes clear, losing the crazy intensity that had been blazing, and let go of her. She slid weakly to the floor, a little dazed and just wanting the dumb guy to go back to ignoring her.

"God Chloe, you see? You see what you do to me? I can't handle this. I'm going out of my mind. I dream about it every night. Ripping his stupid lips off his face for ever daring to kiss you, pulling off every finger he's ever touched you with. I want to hurt him and I want to lock you away somewhere safe, where no one can ever get to you except me. You make me crazy!"

"He's dead Clark, Jimmy is dead." She looked at him sadly, his misplaced sense of guilt must have been twisting inside him causing him to think these crazy things.

"No, not Jimmy. Oliver."

"It burns me up inside," he whispered hoarsely, kneeling down to her and pulling her against him, "the one thing I love most in this world, I can never have. Because if I ever lost you, if anyone took you away from this world. I would really lose it. I would burn down the earth for existing without you.

"Clark, you don't know what you are saying."

"Jimmy died because of Davis' obsession with you, and that obsession was orchestrated by Brainiac. All because of me. It could have been you Chlo, if Brainiac had known me better, he would have targeted you for destruction. He would have taken everything that is good about me with you. With you gone, I would have taken the world down while seeking my own destruction. And I thought I was okay, trying to remove you far from the personal so no one would ever think I cared about you. But when Oliver told me he wasn't sure how to take the next step with you, I almost killed him. I had to run a few states away to prevent myself from hurting him." Clark visibly shook with clenched fists as he recalled the moment that Oliver had confided about the very physical relationship he had with his Chloe.

"I'm saying, I love you and I can't handle doing so quietly anymore."

But tell me you love me, come back and haunt me

Oh and I rush to the start

Running in circles, chasing our tails

Coming back as we are