Notes: Those of you who picked 'get on with it already!' on the poll in my profile? This might kind of be what you were looking for. With some lingering angst.

"I'd give you a penny for your thoughts, but I left the purse home and I think I know. Now the question is, are you going to say what it is exactly?"

"I'm just thinking. You don't have to worry about it. It's nothing. Less than nothing."

"If it is something to you in something to me. In the interest of an open, honest relationship and our emotional health, I need to know. Then we'll clarify. So?"

"Lois was just reminiscing about Clark. He was--is a big part of you life."

She thinks of Jimmy holding up a pink crumpled piece of paper, telling her I can't live up to this. It had been the death knell of their relationship, maybe not just because of Clark, but because Jimmy didn't trust her.

And now, when Clark Kent had all but vanished from her life Lois had to resurrect the ghost to trample on everything again.

No. Davis is not doing this too. Davis is not like that.

"What are you saying?"

"She said that ever since you met me, I've supplanted Clark. Why?"

"It's not about anything you've done. With all these things going on I'm not exactly rolling in time."
"But you do go out of your way not to see him."

"Part of it is practical. He works at the planet and he doesn't leave anything alone. I don't want him sniffing around our situation and turning it into a disaster area. I thought Lois was bad for tailing me. Clark is a whole other level of…"

"But it isn't right for you. I shouldn't be making you give up things because of what's wrong with me. You deserve to live." (That sentence feels incomplete somehow and she doesn't try to figure out why anymore.)

All she cares to see there is the typical Davis logic. It's always his fault when it isn't.
It's noble and humble and it aggravates her to death. She doesn't try and lower her pitch before she speaks..
He matters. Can't he just see her as selfish for once?

"You didn't let me finish. Ever since, I lost my mind again, it doesn't feel right. There's this me and that me, and I don't know where he's supposed to fit."
With Clark, every time he smiles, she feels that weird disconnected affection that should be more, and realizes just how full of holes she is.

She digs her fingers into the hose on her free arm and tosses it onto the wind shield. (She's going to regret it later, when she has to cut up another pair.) But she needs to discard something, just wishfully.

"I didn't mean to push you, Chloe."

"It's not like you can help it, master-of-the-obvious. Now I'm thinking about what you're thinking, which I wish you weren't thinking…"

"I'm sorry."

"Stop saying that!"

"Sor…"

"The fact that I'm prone to freak outs is not your fault, either. Less Clark is my choice, and it is nothing for you to feel guilty about, or me to get angry at."

"So we're okay now?"

"No. I'm mad at Lois and I'm madder at you."

"Oh." That's it. Just oh.
She should wait a while until he finally sees it.

But he's half slumped over the steering wheel, facing her and not looking at her when he always does; probably running self-recriminations through his head.

"You know what makes me mad? It's not you, even though you always have to blame yourself, and it's not healthy, and I think you should stop it. But it is you and I get it, on a certain level.
No, what really bothers me is Lois said it and you believed her, somehow."

"What's that?"

"We're not something patched together."

He had been quite willing to be that, if that was what she needed to be whole. This is her life now, and she doesn't want him to be thinking of himself as her personal cover from the world.

"That girl Lois told you about is not me now. That used to be a problem. Now it's… more than debatable. I was a sociopath.

I know you're not Clark.
You don't play games that are odes to male masculinity, if you eat a whole pizza it takes you over a day and you save the crumbs, and you have never once told me that you can fix me."
She notices details too.

"If you had to room with him, I could sell all the home videos as VHS's of the Odd Couple."
He already knows the plot inside out, because she's told him.
(It's the first bit of Americana she intends to get him to watch after seven p.m. as his control improves. Anything more conflicted and she doubts the TV will survive.)

He's trying really hard not smile, but its there, in the lift of his left eyebrow. He can't keep in check, she thinks.
Just like she can't hemp the fact that his smile triggers her reflex for, 'Calm down, it's all good.'

"And what I feel for you is completely separate from what I thought I felt for Clark, or feel for him. You're not his replacement, but you are…" (What. Important? All there? Just like me? The one person who embodies why hanging on is worth it?)
She wishes he would push her, ask her what that is exactly so she can have an excuse to yell some more.

"I'm here, however long you need me. You don't have to try and explain. Just be."
"Why?"
"Because..." (Why? You're hurting and I want to be here. Because I want to be what you hold onto. Because I can't imagine a world where you're not.)

"Because it's you. You'll run yourself right into the ground if you have to. Even you need to take a step back. You don't have to be intrepid all the time."
That's actually as far from a question as he could get. It is close enough.

"Well, here I am telling you that I am taking a step back.
I'm trying to get my priorities straight. Before it was just my memories; like they would somehow be the miraculous fix it. And now, I know what I was. I'm thinking, maybe this is my chance to start over again. With us, whatever we're doing.
We've been making out okay, haven't we?"

He thinks of breathing slow as spikes try and make their way across his skin, opening his eyes to her face instead of some dark alleyway, coming home.
I feel like you were sent to me.
"Yes." he says.

Even a half smile lights him up and takes the tragedy out of his face. It's more than that that draws her in.
He's saying things without saying them again.

The way things are-safe, easy; it's the law of the unspoken. She wonders what it would be like if he would finish that, or if she would ever really be honest.

Just that morning, hiding in one of the empty bathroom stalls, she'd thought about how it was all grasping at straws, thinking old antiquated chants could fix them. She was a danger, he was. One slip and they could end up careening into a mess of nightmarish proportions.
It should be ridiculous how she's thinking, now, that it's almost clear cut.

Her mouth starts on running off the words before they stick at the back of her throat.

"Up until now I've been scared of everything. Remembering. Not remembering. Every time I've tried to shut myself off and it hasn't worked. Maybe the idea is to not wait around till everything's resolved. Maybe this is the way I want my life to be."

"You don't mean drinking tea, do you?"

"Back at the café, when I was hanging all over you, it wasn't a pretense. I can't act around Lois to save my life. I was scared and you were the one person who made me feel safe.
I feel connected to you. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't attracted to you."
When she mixes into a mish-mosh of words, it feels less daunting.

"And now that I'm being utterly reckless, I decided that I'm not going to give that up. The ball is in your court.
So, the question is, what do you want?"

It's one of those broad questions, maybe something that can never really be answered.

"Too many things. You know. Home. You. To be there. Before I thought I was human, I could give you something. Now…"

"I haven't been engaged for four days." She tells him conversationally. "You've got it."

"And you better know that, it won't be fair to you either. I'm messed up. I might have another weird mental break and wake up as someone you don't recognize anymore. And, I have mother issues the size of Texas."

He raises an eyebrow. "Funny you should say that..."
Well, maybe her mother didn't stab her.

"But it's sticking with me.
You want a family someday, a house maybe a dog, something like three kids. And I can't be a real girlfriend, in the girlfriend sense of the word. My mom had me as a child and I can't risk doing it to an children with the chance that I could be worse than she was.
Plus, there's the fact that I don't even know if anyone else can touch me without being sucked dry."

This should be the moment when he starts to to turn on that disappointed face. But no, his face is still completely lit up.

"We probably won't change all that much, right away. We'll just say things when we want to... and.. We have do have time to figure this out."
As soon as she says the words, they weigh on her.

It's easy, so easy to forget when there's hope like that on his face. He'll wait again as she tries to put words together, tries to find a definition.

"We can be us. The world is full of possibilities."
Just one moment where Its pushed so far from him that he can almost believe he's just a normal guy, that he can have this. No heaviness swimming in the back of his skull, no green rocks, no things tearing them apart.
He thinks his face will crack.

"So we surpass definition? Sounds pretty good."

He leans forward slowly, barely half a foot. It would only take a few more inches for him to lean over. A few.
Of course, he doesn't. He's always going to give her a way out.
I want you to be happy.

She's got no reason to hold herself back now.
As far as they surpass definition, its not like the first thing she wants them to do is hug or shake hands.
And she promised herself she would never, ever utter that line from Cactus Flower. I believe I'm going to kiss you.

After waiting like this, she would expect it to be a blur of rather frantic sensations, rather than the eternal two seconds as she considers how to do it.
There's the armrest in the way, a half-filled paper mug of tea to worry about. When her brain short circuits, she knows to throw caution to the wind.

It's messy, the way she anchors her fingers to his jacket and catches his mouth. He's going to be gentle, let her know how he feels, hold her up.
She hasn't said enough and she doesn't know that she can. It all could go away. She kisses him so hard that their teeth click together. She grabs onto the corporeal sensation. Surely that means she will have to remember this.

She's dizzy and she's not bothering to breathe. He wouldn't do this to her. He'd worry that he was hurting her somehow. (She doesn't want to hurt him, she just wants him to understand.)
His lips are still gentle despite the onslaught. It feels like he's drowning.
One of his fingers trails across her cheek, the other is keeping the steaming cup from soaking her jeans in semi-hot liquid..
An eskimo kiss, warmth, something feels like its breaking and it's fine. It's all fine.

There's a blare of the horn, a lumbering red truck the sounds of sheep.
'Do not block this driveway', the sign says.

She laughs because she's the one who's got them parked on the side of the road.

Endnotes: I don't think that turned out confusing.

What do you think about this development? It's not going to be easy, and they've got a long road ahead.

(Feel free to leave suggestions on the poll. :p)