Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Wrong Clark (196/???)

Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found Here

Where we left Lois in Part 195…

“No more going behind my back, Lois. No more making promises for Superman to keep without discussing it with me first. You’re not dating him; you’re dating me.”

“So you’ve told me since day one!” she roared. “I was going to tell you about my investigation, but your stupid proposal distracted me.”

“Oh, so now it’s my fault that you broke my heart?” Clark said, wishing he couldn’t believe her nerve, but she was right on track for Lois excuses. “And for your information, Lois, it wasn’t stupid. It was heartfelt.”

“It was stupid because the only reason you proposed at that moment was to protect me from Luthor,” she retorted, her finger back in his face. “Ergo, stupid.”

“That wasn’t the only reason,” he mumbled.

“It was the main one and you know it,” she said.

Clark didn’t know it, but he didn’t want to rehash her criticism of the stupid way he had proposed. Instead, he sighed. “You should have told me you were going undercover.”

He refused to back down on this one point. Thinking that Lois had chosen Luthor over him, even after he had warned her about what sort of man the billionaire was, had felt worse than thirty-six hours locked in Luthor’s Kryptonite cage, sex tape and all.

“Yes, maybe I should’ve,” she admitted reluctantly. “But I was ticked off because you never told me who you really are.”

How did he know this argument would come back around to this? He shook his head. How many more times would he have to say this before she understood? “I am this man standing in front of you, Lois,” he said, tapping his chest. He flung his hand into the air to represent Superman. “He’s just a disguise so that I can have a real life… with you.”

Suddenly, Lois was back in his arms with her mouth pressed to his. He stumbled backwards from the shock of the kiss until he hit the tree behind him.

Clark didn’t know if he had won the argument or not, but it sure felt as if he had.

*

Part 196

Clark was really too good at saying romantic things at the drop of a hat. Lois wondered, as she brushed his lips with her tongue, if he even realized that he did it. All she knew was that it was extremely difficult for her to resist that side of him. With his gorgeous bod, his killer smile, his intelligence, his goodness, and the fact that he could, and usually would, literally move heaven and Earth for her, he was irresistibly unreal. It only made sense that such a man could only hail from off the planet. Why hadn’t she seen he was Superman from the first moment?

Lois tightened her grip around his neck, pulling him closer, and he shifted his position just so that he essentially was holding her and removing the burden of gravity from her aching muscles and joints.

His romantic side especially had always been attractive. She liked the way he seemed to know just the right thing to say or do to make her feel supported, cherished, loved, or respected. It wasn’t as if he was saying and doing these things to charm his way under her radar and into her heart, but it seemed to come naturally. It had been what had tempted her away from Superman. Clark Kent had romanced her away from Superman, of all people. It was what had made her fall for him instead of the big faker Lex Luthor. Thank goodness.

“I am this man standing in front of you, Lois. He’s just a disguise so that I can have a real life… with you.”

Why hadn’t Clark just told her the truth way back at the beginning? If he had said that when she told him that she wanted to date Clark for show but love Superman in reality, she would have understood. Hell, she would have been thrilled. Men! They made things so complicated.

He might say that Superman was the disguise, but she knew the truth. He had only been Clark Kent for little over a year. He had been Superman his whole life. However, if he had recently discovered that he was a born romantic due to her influence, who was she to correct him?

Lois eased back on the passion of their kiss, running her hand down his cheek. She didn’t want to push him over the edge as she had when he returned from Las Vegas. He seemed calmer, healthier, and more stable than he had then, but it was best not to jump in without first testing the waters. She remembered how quickly he had run off because he had tasted chocolate on her fingers when she had fed him raspberries on their first date.

Anyway, she was still mad at him for refusing to bring her home from the Space Station weeks ago, and she didn’t want him to think she had completely forgiven him. If he ever wanted anything more than kisses from her, he needed to apologize first.

“I meant,” she murmured, resting her head against his chest as he held her in his arms. “What was your name on Krypton?”

“Oh,” he murmured. “Kal-El.”

Kal-El? She expected it to sound foreign or strange, instead it tickled a part of her brain with familiarity. This wasn’t the first time she had heard that name. “Kal-El,” she repeated.

“Please don’t call me that, though,” he said. “That’s not me anymore. I don’t know if it ever was. This…” He squeezed her gently. “— is the real me.”

“Okay,” Lois replied, admitting to herself that his chosen human name did fit him and this romantic personality better. She grinned. “Chuck.”

He laughed softly. “Minha.”

“Mio,” she agreed.

“Wrong language,” he corrected.

“Oh, shut up,” Lois said, nudging him.

Clark tilted down his head and joined their lips together once more.

If this was the best way to keep the smart-aleck quiet, so be it, Lois decided.

***

The flight to the Kent farm outside of Smallville didn’t last more than five minutes. Over five states away and it took them less than five minutes. The breeze had been minimal. The dizzying pace was hardly noticeable when she kept her gaze on Superman’s face. Would it have been so hard for him to have picked her up from the Space Station and taken her home? Really!

Clark slowed down and circled over the farm before landing by the front door, explaining as he did so that he had been checking to make sure the Kents didn’t have any other visitors. After their lunch in the park, Lois had said to Clark that they should come straight here. He had agreed. She was happy not to have to explain why she wasn’t ready to go home yet. Anyway, the Kent farm was less likely to have hidden cameras and electronic bugs crawling all over it than anywhere else they might go.

As she walked up to the front porch, she heard the sound of a whirlwind behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Clark jogging the few steps to catch up, now dressed once more in jeans and a t-shirt and still carrying her duffle bag.

Oh, yes. She sighed and briefly set her hand on his chest. Superman might win the sexiest man in the universe contest, but Clark Kent was still sexier. Lois wasn’t sure exactly why that was. Perhaps it was because she knew that Clark belonged to her, whereas Superman belonged to the world. Then again, it might have something to do with Clark being romantic, whereas Superman had never been.

The Kent farmhouse with this nice couple would be the perfect locale for them to spend the night… in separate rooms. Anywhere else and the temptation would be too strong to allow him to share her room. She swallowed down these thoughts as he raised his knuckles to knock on the front door.

“You never did tell me how exactly the Kents and you became friends,” Lois said.

“Didn’t I?” Clark returned as the door opened.

Jonathan beamed at them from the other side. “Jerome! Welcome!” he said, holding out his hand. “And you, too, Ms. Lane.”

“Lois,” she corrected. They had been on a first-name basis when they were out last October.

“Lois, of course,” he repeated, shaking her hand. He rolled his wheelchair backwards to allow them space to enter. “Please come in. Martha is out in the fields.”

“Does she need any help?” Clark asked.

“Claaaark,” Lois warned under her breath. They hadn’t come out to Kansas to spend a romantic weekend, only to have him disappear five minutes after arriving.

“It’s the polite thing to do,” he reminded her. “We are guests after all.”

“Family,” Jonathan corrected. “And Martha is fine. She went to check that a sprinkler is in the right spot and should be back soon. We won’t be harvesting the next crop until Monday, especially after Jerome called to say you were coming.”

Lois glanced over at Clark as she sat down on the living room sofa. When did he take the time, she wondered. She was more than ready to get off her aching feet. That walk in the park had almost done her in. However, informing Clark of that fact was up there with telling him she needed his protection. She could take care of herself.

“Jerome said that you just arrived back from the Space Station,” Jonathan said, rolling his chair up opposite to where she had sat down. He turned and set a hand on Clark’s arm before the younger man could join them. “I laid out some chips and some of Martha’s fresh tomato salsa on the table in the kitchen with a pitcher of iced tea. Could you fetch them, please?”

“Of course,” Clark said with a smile.

“Oh, thank you, Jonathan, but we just had lunch,” Lois said politely. Her stomach had gotten used to eating smaller portions and she was stuffed.

“You’re only saying that because you haven’t tried Martha’s salsa,” Clark called from the kitchen with what sounded like a full mouth. He came back into the living room and sure enough, he was sticking another tortilla chip into his mouth. “Heaven on Earth.”

Lois covered her mouth as she chuckled. Did Clark know that he looked like a ten year-old boy when his eyes lit up like that? That was another reason why she chose the Kent farmhouse as the secure location for them to talk. She figured because the Kents apparently knew the truth of who Clark was, he could be himself. She had gleaned that much from overhearing and misinterpreting that conversation about people ‘after’ him the last time they were in town, almost a year before. Moreover, the couple would be a good buffer between Lois and her hormones, which seemed to go into overdrive whenever Clark was nearby.

“It has to do with the combination of fresh cilantro and tomatoes,” Jonathan explained. “Both of which we have plenty of thanks to Jerome here.”

Clark grinned.

“Oh?” Lois glanced over at him.

Her boyfriend shrugged. “It’s the least I could do to help out.”

“What was?” she inquired, expecting details. Clark was adept at never supplying them. If this relationship was ever going to work, and she really wanted it to, he would have to start.

“The garden,” Clark replied.

She looked between Clark and Jonathan with a quizzical expression. “Isn’t this a farm?”

Jonathan chuckled. “The farm is wheat and corn to sell, and hay and alfalfa for the animals,” he explained. “The kitchen garden is where we get the food for our table. Jerome surprised Martha by planting one a year ago May and then again this year.” He beamed at the proud looking man rocking back and forth on his heels.

“Uh-huh.” Lois wasn’t sure about their relationship, but they acted as if they were father and son… pre-teen son. She picked up the glass of iced tea Clark had set in front of her and took a sip, considering her words carefully. “How exactly did you meet again?”

“Jerome!” Martha breezed into the room that moment and gave Clark a hug, and then turned towards Lois. “Lois! So terrific to see you both again.”

No one knew how to embrace quite like Martha Kent.

Except maybe Clark.

Looking at them, he seemed happier than she had ever seen him.

There was definitely something else missing from this puzzle. What hadn’t he told her?

“Hi, Martha,” Lois said, taking another sip of tea and setting her glass down on the coffee table. “The boys were about to tell me how you met.” She folded her hands and waited, her eyes fixed on Clark.

Martha’s eyes brightened. “He’s our guardian angel.”

Lois raised a brow in disbelief.

Clark looked sheepish. “Well, I don’t know about…”

“You planted my kitchen garden and gave us gifts from your travels,” Martha explained. “Baskets of berries would suddenly appear on our back porch out of nowhere.” She took hold of Clark’s hand. “Flowers wrapped in out-of-state newspapers.”

“Well, I…” Clark was darn right blushing now.

“Tulips after that horrible ferry accident, I remember. We never did figure out where the trout came from, though,” Martha went on.

Clark cleared his throat. “The Clark Fork River,” he murmured.

“I always wanted to go fishing there,” Jonathan said wistfully.

Martha let go of Clark’s hand and took Jonathan’s. “You still might.”

“We could go,” Clark suggested, getting that little boy blue expression on his face again. “The two of us. Do you tie flies?”

Lois raised her hand to stop this detour. “Clark! How did you meet the Kents?”

They were quiet for a few seconds with an air of embarrassment.

“Thomas brought him over one day,” Jonathan brought the story back on track. “Back last August.”

“Bearing peaches,” Martha continued with a nod.

“That was nice of him,” Lois said, leaning forward. Now, they were getting somewhere.

“They weren’t from Thomas. Jerome brought them,” Martha clarified. “Sugar, too.”

“I know how much you like to can for the winter,” Clark said.

“How?” Lois asked.

Clark gazed at her with puzzlement as he popped another tortilla chip laden with salsa into his mouth.

“How did you know that Martha likes to can?”

He coughed. Lois didn’t stop staring at him as she waited for her answer. He glanced over at the Kents.

Why was this so difficult?

“Their basement was full of canned goods from previous years and canning supplies,” he finally said.

“Why did you look into their basement?” Lois inquired.

Martha and Jonathan exchanged a look and then turned to Clark. He was getting that expression on his face as if he wanted to bolt.

He cleared his throat. “Not on purpose, Lois, just inadvertently when I scanned to see if anyone was home. I knew with all the extra medical bills and work around the farm, Martha wouldn’t have time to get some of the things done herself that she liked to do.”

Lois nodded. That made sense. It still didn’t explain why he had chosen to be this couple’s guardian angel.

“I recognized him right off the bat when Thomas introduced us,” Martha said, filling the awkward silence.

“You did?” Clark gasped.

“Well, sure, honey. It was clear as day, despite that Monarchs cap on your head you used to try to keep us from seeing your face,” Martha said, and Lois could hear the love in the woman’s voice.

Still… Lois pressed her lips together and glanced down at her hands in her lap. Martha knew at first glance. Lois had chased after Superman for months while berating Clark, and she had never known. Not until he had kissed her as Superman and she had recognized Clark’s lips, had she known. She felt a first class fool.

“You knew?” Clark sputtered, taking the words stuck in Lois’s throat.

“Honey, who else could you be?” Martha said, patting his arm.

He knelt down next to Martha’s chair and Lois felt bereft over on the sofa. The Kents on one side of the room, her on the other. She hadn’t wanted this to be her against them, but they were making it difficult to feel included.

“I… I… could have just been some drifter…” Clark mumbled.

“A drifter who kept fixing our broken fences, who repaired the roof on the barn, and who weeded an entire field in a night?” Martha scoffed. “Did you think that we wouldn’t notice?”

Clark looked humiliated that he hadn’t been able to fool this couple and that he had given himself away so easily.

Good! Lois thought. He deserved to feel bad. What he had done was wrong! Trying to deceive this nice couple.

“We saw you, Jerome,” Martha said with tenderness.

Clark’s eyes opened with dismay.

“She means she saw Superman,” Jonathan translated.

“Oh,” Clark said softly.

“Superman rescued you?” Lois asked. Was that how Clark had discovered the grave of their son?

“Oh, no!” Martha said with an adamant shake of her head. “He was just standing on top of the barn watching the sunset. Suddenly, everything made sense.”

Of course, it would, Lois thought wryly, closing her eyes in agony. Who else could Jerome be? No, Superman couldn’t possibly be that nice sweet man who had sweet-talked Perry White into a job at the Daily Planet and looked at Lois as if he could see directly into her soul. Why in the world would she think that? She scoffed at herself.

“Yeah, I guess it would,” Clark murmured.

Lois lifted her head. She still needed to know one last thing. “So, how did you tie Jerome to Clark Kent?” she asked.

Clark looked at the Kents, but she couldn’t see the expression on his face this time. She bet it was expectant.

Martha and Jonathan exchanged another silent conversation.

How long did a couple have to be together before they could communicate telepathically like that? Lois wondered. Would it ever be possible for her and Clark to reach that level of couplehood? They had been dating off-and-on for almost a year and they couldn’t even communicate using words, either written or vocal. They were beyond pathetic as a couple, weren’t they? Dare she even use the word ‘hopeless’?

“Well,” Jonathan said slowly, after clearing his throat and looking over at Clark. “We noticed while reading the Daily Planet one day that one of the reporters who covered Superman often happened to be named Clark Kent.”

“At first, it seemed a wild coincidence, that name,” Martha added without actually saying it. Clark Kent was her dead son buried in that pioneer graveyard Lois had literally stumbled upon. Everyone in the room knew this was why the Kents would never call Clark anything but Jerome. It was one of those unspoken truths. “However, the more Jerome helped us out around the farm, the more we realized… well, that you had to be him.”

That made absolutely no sense whatsoever. “How?” Lois pushed.

“The Monarchs hat,” Martha replied, taking a sip of her iced tea. “No self-respecting Kansan would wear that hat. This is Royals territory. I knew Jerome must live out east.”

Clark threw back his head and laughed.

Baseball? The Kents had known that their handyman went by Clark Kent because he liked the Metropolis Monarchs? Lois shook her head. Sports fans were just plain illogical.

“And you were right,” Clark said.

Of course, they were right. Apparently, the Kents had never done anything wrong in their life. They knew from day one that Jerome was Clark Kent and Superman. Lois, not so much.

Lois stood up. “I need to…” get out of this house. “— to finally see that garden you’re all bragging about,” she said instead.

Clark jumped to his feet. “Here, I can show…”

Lois held up her hand to stop him. “No, stay. I’ve just been feeling a bit claustrophobic lately,” she said. She couldn’t get back to Metropolis without Clark’s help, but she couldn’t be around him right now, either. “I’m fine,” she lied, hoping the fresh air would do her some good.

“Are you…?”

“I’m sure,” she insisted, setting her hand briefly on his arm. “Why don’t you go set up the bedrooms?”

If he was surprised about her use of the plural, he didn’t react, but then again he was Superman. She had never known a man who could hide his emotions faster.

“Okay,” he said slowly as she headed for the kitchen and the door to the back porch.

***

Martha pulled the sheets out of the upstairs linen closet and then turned to Clark without handing them to him. “She’s not fine.”

“What?” Clark sputtered.

“You need to tell her the truth,” Martha went on. “I’ll make up the bedrooms. You go speak with Lois.”

“Mom,” Clark said, the endearment slipping out as it did when he felt stressed. “What do you mean she’s not fine?”

Martha rolled her eyes. “A woman is never ‘fine’ when she says she is, dear. Go talk to her.”

“Never?” he asked, stunned. This was information he could have used fifteen years ago. Lana had forever been telling him that she was ‘fine’ with this and ‘fine’ with that. Now that Martha had said this, he wondered exactly how blind he had been. So much for using someone’s heart rate for judging whether she was lying to him.

Martha shrugged. “Okay, maybe once out of a hundred times, she’s actually just fine.”

He exhaled. At least his whole world hadn’t turned upside-down, just three-quarters of the way. “What am I going to say to her, Martha? Guess what? I’m not only from another planet. I traveled from another dimension because I needed to find you because the you from my dimension and the me from your dimension are supposed to be our soul mates and they died. Therefore, I had to find you, because you’re as close as I’m going to get to that.”

“It’s a start.”

“It’s an ending,” he corrected. “Especially when our love is…” He gulped.

“Your love is what?”

He swallowed. “Cursed.”

“Poppycock! There’s no such thing,” Martha said, heading into the smaller bedroom.

“Actually, there is,” he said, following her.

“You’ve had some difficulties to be sure,” Martha said, setting the sheets on the dresser. “As soon as you two start being completely truthful with one another, they’ll sort themselves out. You love her. She loves you. Everything else is irrelevant.” She picked up a pillowcase and pillow.

If only his life were so easy. “But we can’t…” He froze. Had he really been just about to tell Martha… his mom, how they were cursed? He blushed and made up the bed in the whirlwind, sitting down on the end when he was done.

“Can’t what?”

“Nothing,” he murmured, gazing down at his hands clasping his knees.

“‘You can’t nothing’? Isn’t that a double negative? And double negatives cancel each other out, right? Therefore, you can everything.” Martha said, pulling the case over the pillow as Clark stared at her. “Don’t look at me like that, Jerome. Your Nana Clark didn’t raise a fool.”

“I know that,” he said. His mom had told him the same thing… about fools, not double negatives. “It’s just… There’s more to it than that.”

“Fine!” Martha said, throwing the pillow to him in aggravation. “Be that way. Don’t tell her outright where you’re from and what you’re doing here, but you owe it to that woman to tell her everything she wants to know. Let her ask you whatever questions she wants.”

“As if I could stop her,” Clark mumbled, rubbing a hand down his face.

“You better answer them, every single one, especially the tough questions,” Martha said, giving him a sharp look. “And no more answers like ‘I knew Martha likes to can because I looked in her basement.’”

Clark raised his finger to interject, but Martha steamrolled over him.

“I don’t care if it’s technically the truth, Jerome. It’s not the whole truth and you know it,” she said, shaking her finger at him. “If you can’t be honest with the woman you love, then you have no right to claim that you stand for Truth.”

He exhaled as if she had sucker punched him in the solar plexus. “You’re right.”

“And don’t you forget it!” Martha said, picking up the sheets for the other bedroom and slapping them against his chest. “You can make up the other bedroom yourself.” She marched out of the room.

Clark deserved that. Martha was only trying to be helpful. He walked into the old master bedroom, quickly made the bed, and then went to the window to gaze outside. Lois wasn’t in the kitchen garden, even though she had gone outside less than ten minutes earlier. He could see her slowly making her way down towards the barn.

“Sometimes that boy drives me crazy!” Martha exclaimed.

Jonathan shushed her. “He can hear you.”

“So what. I don’t keep secrets from the man I love,” she retorted. “Anyway, it would be just desserts for eavesdropping on us.”

“Martha,” Jonathan said calmly.

She lowered her voice. “Do you know that they haven’t…?”

Clark didn’t know if she mouthed the word or just gave Jonathan a look.

“I figured when Lois said what she did.”

“He’s scared. Afraid that he’ll hurt her or something,” grumbled Martha.

“Not really any of our business, Martha,” Jonathan reminded her. Clark could hear him shaking a newspaper open.

“No, probably not,” Martha reluctantly agreed. “But he should talk to Lois about it.”

“Granted. There’s nothing wrong in waiting, though. You and I waited,” Jonathan said.

“It’s a different time…”

“That doesn’t make a whit of difference and you know it.”

“Waiting was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done,” Martha admitted softly.

“Oh?” Jonathan said, and Clark could almost hear his smile. “Is that why you turned me down so many times?”

“Is that why you proposed so many times?” she retorted.

Jonathan laughed. “Darn right! And I haven’t regretted it once. Not once.”

Clark concentrated on listening to the air surrounding him so as not to eavesdrop any longer.

Lois had wanted them to go somewhere where they could talk in private and they still hadn’t had that opportunity. He watched her as she stopped and leaned against one of the trees by the barn. He focused on her face and saw that her lashes were full of dampness. She groaned with a muffled sob as she sat down on the ground under the tree.

Before realizing what he was doing, Clark had raised the sash and flown down to her side.

***End of Part 196***

What do you think? Will Clark take Martha's advice or will he continue to be lunkhead? Comments always welcome.

Part 197