This moment is so interesting to me because it shows the extent to which Clark hides his feelings for Lois from her because of his sense of responsibility and fears about juggling a relationship with his responsibilities as the Blur and not because he doesn’t want to pursue a relationship with her. Because when he believes he is just a normal person he is both much more easy-going and much less guarded about his obvious crush on her: he wants to share the fact that he framed her rules of reporting, he’s proud of it. He wants her to know. Yet he has been hiding it all this time, and wants to pretend it doesn’t exist by the end of the episode.
I’ve been developing a theory rewatching Smallville that Clark and Lois had feelings for each other from the beginning and were not just unaware of it but consciously choosing not to act on it. Lois asks in “Crusade” whether Clark and Chloe ever dated, and in “Gone” she meets Lana. I think that Lois decided to hold Clark at arm’s length when she realised how complicated his love life was because she would never want to step on Chloe’s toes (especially after “Devoted”), and because (as revealed by her pep talk to Chloe in “Spirit”) she would never pursue someone who was still in love with someone else. That’s why her talk with Oliver in “Bride” is so revealing. And in Clark’s case he had to go through it with Lana, who was in some ways safe because he had been emotionally attached to the idea of ending up with her since he was fourteen and letting go of that is frightening; and because unlike everyone else Lois held him at arm’s length romantically and I really don’t think he realised until “Apocalypse” (after AU Lois asked him out straight away, and then his Lois hit him in the arm — which he frowns at, as if he’s just recognising that this is a distancing tactic — and asked if he wanted to get a drink) that maybe Lois had been a romantic option this whole time.
