you don't have to talk. / for lois!
telling lois lane she doesn't have to talk is something akin to telling the sky ' oh, you don't have to be blue today. ' it goes against her very nature. all she does is talk. she's not comfortable with empty spaces, pregnant pauses, and lulls in conversation. she fills them all with endless chatter so that she doesn't run the risk of finding herself alone with her thoughts.
if it were anyone else who said such a thing to her, they'd be on the receiving end of an absolute earful, even if they were well intentioned. but he isn't just anyone. and he isn't telling her to stop talking just for the sake of it.
in this circumstance her instinct is to give him an earful. she really should. he's been gone for months and gotham's spat him back out bleach blonde and barely recognizable. but not to her. she's not so easily fooled. she would know him anywhere. it's how she pieced it together, catching a glimpse at the end of a dark, dingy alleyway. he can hide away all the things that make him bruce wayne, but not the things that make her soul recognize his.
it's why she followed him again tonight. it's why he let her. and now, as she's looking at the face she's been searching for for far too long now, she finds herself at a lost for words. she should yell, cry, scream, do anything. but she's frozen. at least, until he gives her permission not to talk. she needed it. she really needed it.
instead, she crashes into him in an instant, arms wrapped tightly around him like she's worried he'll turn into smoke and slip away from her grasp once more, her head buried in his chest to ground her in something solid and real.
@loneheir