Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found Here
Where we left off in Part 201…Lois groaned and looked up into the sky for guidance. Not finding anything but light pollution hiding the evening sky, she said, “Because nobody likes to be a consolation prize.”
His smile appeared more confident. Clark really had become bolder over the summer. She hated that this newfound cockiness made him extra alluring and sexy. “You’ll forgive me,” he informed her.
“Oh, really? And why’s that, Chuck?” she asked, crossing her arms.
“Because with you I always win the grand prize,” he said. “I’m sorry to tell you, Lois, you’re the one who ended up with second best.”
“And this is supposed to make me forgive you?” she asked wryly.
“I promised you that I wouldn’t lie,” he said.
“So, telling me that I’m second best is supposed do what then? Make me worship you? Ain’t happening in any lifetime, bub.”
“No, Lois,” he said, holding up his hands. “
You’re the grand prize.
I’m second best.”
“Well, duh!” she scoffed, letting a sly smile escape. “I’ve known that since day one.”
He shot her his most adorable grin. “So have I.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You snake!” she growled and pointed back to his front door. How dare he be so loveable when she was angry with him? “I’m not ready to forgive you yet.”
“You will,” he said confidently.
“My, you think you’re all that and a cape too,” she retorted.
He chuckled. “No, trust me, I don’t. I just happen to know something.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?” she asked.
“You love me.”
She groaned, knowing that he was right, but not willing to admit it. After everything he
hadn’t told her, she decided she would let him squirm for a while. “I liked you better when you weren’t such an alpha dog.” She headed down the stairs.
“I love you, too, Lois,” she heard him call.
“Don’t you have some dishes to wash?” she shouted, continuing down the stairs.
***
Part 202
*********
Omissions
*********Clark had done it. He had faced his fears that Lois would reject him and told her about the other Lois… the Lois who made him Superman.
He was proud of himself.
Then he frowned. He could just picture Martha’s reaction if…
when he told her what he had said to Lois. She wouldn’t be quite as proud. In fact, he was sure that she would be quite the opposite of proud. She would be disappointed.
So, he had fudged on some of the details… okay, a lot of the details. However, he had communicated the basic essence of what had happened… from a certain point of view. Wasn’t that just as important?
Clark spun out of his uniform and into his sleep shorts. He hung his Suit on a hanger, checked it for spots, and then preceded to freeze-steam clean it. A glance to the alarm clock next to his bed informed him that his patrol had lasted into the night further than he had expected it to. His mind drifted back to what he had said to Lois, earlier that evening.
He had taken the opening that had presented itself to him during the course of their conversation and used it to inform her of something about himself that he hadn’t told her previously. That was all well and good.
Telling Lois that the future-her who had made him Superman wasn’t exactly her, because that her was from another dimension, he was sure would’ve been a recipe for disaster. As it was, Lois had still stormed out of his apartment fuming. He could just imagine the steam coming from Lois’s ears should she learn that the
other Lois was engaged to marry
another him and had kissed him – this him – by mistake, setting off some kind of instinctual bonding with her, which no other woman… including his then fiancée Lana… had ever done. Lois was his soul mate, but he was smart enough to know better than to bring up
that topic again.
What would her reaction be should he ever broach the subject of The Curse? He might as well kiss any chance with Lois goodbye. Once more, he wondered when or
if he would ever see Herb Wells again, or whether he would have to solve this dilemma on his own. With his luck, the point would end up being moot.
Clark loved Lois and he had no doubts that her ire was well deserved. He had lied, but then again, she had lied to him more recently. She hadn’t told Clark that she had discovered he was Superman. She had lied about her Luthor investigation. She had snuck behind Clark’s back, dated and became engaged to a scum of a human being without informing Clark that it was all for a story and to protect Superman or Clark, or both. She let Clark think that she was so angry with him for not telling her his secret that she had wanted him dead.
Okay, that last one was more his own fault, or Luthor’s, than hers, but that was beside the point.
Clark nudged the heavy wardrobe away from the wall and hung his uniform inside the secret hiding spot.
And then, he reminded himself, once she had cleaned up that whole investigation mess and Clark had thought that they were on the path of honesty with one another, she had the audacity
not to tell Clark about Luthor’s death, or lack thereof, and started telling lies concerning Superman.
On the other hand, Clark had omitted telling her about the Kryptonite cage and informing to her the full truth about his past.
Baby steps, he told himself. Getting mad at Lois for doing the same thing he did to her was pointless. He had done the right thing in telling her about why her psychic hunches were sometimes way off base, even if he hadn’t told her everything. It was still better than nothing, right?
Clark had explained that Lois, and many other people, would’ve died had he not intervened by coming earlier in time. All true. He hadn’t yet told her that he was from another dimension where the Lois there had died. However, he
had told her that he hadn’t saved that Lois and that decision still weighed on his conscience heavily. He heaved a sigh and moved the wardrobe back against the wall. It always would.
He had made his decision and it hadn’t been an easy one. His eyes closed and the shame of leaving that Lois dead in his dimension’s past washed over him again. What could he do? He loved this Lois now. He couldn’t abandon her to go back to his old dimension and save that Lois as well. He had made this bed. He couldn’t keep second-guessing himself or his choices, even if his decision had left a Lois dead.
Clark groaned and sat down on his bed, rubbing his hands through his hair. Maybe he should have told Lois that he did have a Lois’s blood on his hands. It often felt as if he did. No matter what decision he made, there would have been a dead Lois, either her or the Lois from his old dimension. Hashing out the exact details wouldn’t have erased them. He didn’t need this Lois to be appalled by or disappointed in him, because he had selfishly chosen the path where he would have more opportunities to win her love.
In this one act, he admitted freely that he had been self-serving. He wanted to be in a dimension where there was a living, breathing Lois and nobody knew he was Superman, so that they could have the possibility to live happily ever after in blissful love.
Clark felt miserable.
He hated that he was such a cad.
And a coward for not telling her the whole truth.
Lois was right to be mad at him. He didn’t deserve her love.
Clark was a cowardly, lying cad. Just because she had lied to him didn’t condone his behavior.
He should put his uniform back on and fly over to Lois’s apartment and…
And what? he asked himself.
Admit to her how much of jerk you really are? That was sure to win him brownie points in the ‘you just woke up your angry, soon-to-be ex-girlfriend in the middle of the night to tell her you kept something else from her’ category.
No, he told himself. He wouldn’t head over to Lois’s apartment to confess all his sins. If he actually thought that had a chance of working, he would only be deluding himself.
Although, since he was an admitted liar, it only made sense that he was less than honest to himself on occasion as well. He had already lied to himself by saying that not telling her the full truth wouldn’t come back to bite him.
No more lies. Clark decided that he would tell Lois his full life story, edited for graphic content.
Some day.He switched out the light, lay back in bed, and stared at the ceiling.
Clark hated himself.
Lois deserved better.
Sadly, he loved Lois more than he hated himself for lying to her. The guilt faded away as he closed his eyes and recalled her reaction to his spontaneous kiss.
***
Clark bolted upright in bed, breathing quickly, as his ears rung. A moment later, he realized the ringing was his telephone. He lifted up the bedside handset. “Hello?”
The person on the other end of the line didn’t respond, but Clark could hear breathing.
“Lois?”
There was a slight intake of breath as if he had guessed correctly.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I heard a sound,” she whispered.
“I’ll be right there,” he said, climbing out of bed. He had already started spinning in to his Suit before hanging up the receiver and the handset flew out of his grasp and across the room. Luckily, Clark caught it before it smashed into his wall. He double-checked that he had indeed disconnected the call before running out to his patio and jumping into the air.
Clark was over Lois’s apartment less than a second later. He scanned the entire apartment, but saw neither new surveillance nor any intruders. Landing in an alley a block away, he spun into jeans and a t-shirt and jogged over to Lois’s building. Deciding to play it safe, he went up her front stoop, removed his keys to her apartment building from his pocket, and went inside the normal way.
Knocking on Lois’s door, he called, “
Minha? It’s Clark.” He heard a soft whimper, but no movement. Still jingling her keys in his palm, he tilted down his glasses. Using a combination of his x-ray vision and her keys, he unlocked her door in a split second. “
Minha? Lois?” he said, warning her that he was coming inside. He spoke a little louder in case she hadn’t heard him the first time.
He held still, waiting for an answer. When he didn’t hear one, he listened for her breathing and followed it to her bedroom. He knocked on her open bedroom door before entering. “Lois?”
“Clark?” he heard almost silent reply, coming from her closet.
He slid open the closet door. She had buried herself under a winter coat. He knelt down and tugged the coat until he saw her entire face. He smiled. “Found you.”
“I’m not crazy,” she whispered.
“Well, you do love me, so let’s not cross that diagnosis off our list just yet,” Clark replied.
“Ha. Ha,” Lois said dryly, holding out her hand. “Did you see anything?”
“Just a beautiful and scared woman.”
“Can you take another look?” she asked, her eyes pleading for him to be serious.
He took her hand in his and pulled her to her feet and into his arms. He held her in his embrace for longer than was necessary as a greeting. “Let’s go together.”
She gave a slight nod of agreement as she removed her head from his shoulder. His hand automatically slipped into hers and they walked out to the living room, turning on lights as they went. He paused as he finished scanning this room. Nothing. He pushed his glasses back up the the bridge of his nose and gazed at her, waiting.
“I wasn’t imagining it,” she exclaimed.
“I believe you,” he said.
“I’m not crazy!”
“I know,” Clark reassured her again. He knew this time she said it more for her own benefit than for his.
“I didn’t just make this up,” Lois insisted.
“What did it sound like?” he asked.
She let go of his hand to run her fingers through her hair, and finally shook her head as she sat down on her sofa. “I don’t know. Like a squeak.”
“A floorboard squeak, a door hinge squeak, or a mouse?”
“Floorboard?” Lois said hesitantly as if she wasn’t quite sure what she heard. Clark started walking around her living room as she continued to ramble. “I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking ‘how can Lois be paranoid
now after Luthor watched her every move for months; she should be used to it’. ‘Lois has finally fallen off her rocker’ and ‘gone off the deep end’ because I’m jumping at every little sound and shadow, but…”
Clark stopped by her windows and held up his hand to silence her. “Lois, you’ve angered a very bad man, one who would kill you in an instant if given a chance. I don’t think you’re crazy. I believe that you’re very brave to have returned to the apartment where Luthor spied on you for months, while that killer is alive and very powerful. Of course, you’d be jumpy. If I had my way, you’d still be hiding out on the Space Station or surrounded by twenty-four hour police protection.” He glanced down at his feet, shifting his balance from one foot to the other. Her floor issued a squeak. “Like that?”
Her eyes opened wide and she nodded.
Clark turned to study the window next to him. The fire escape went down next to it. He tapped open the window merely by brushing it with his finger. It wasn’t even latched. He glanced back at Lois with a sour expression. He stuck his head out the open window, looking both up and down. Nobody was there. Closing the window, he locked it and closed the curtains.
“So, I’m not nuts?” she asked rhetorically.
“I never thought that you were,” he replied.
“Someone’s out to get me?”
“Always,” he said, and then bounced his eyebrows.
“I meant some bad man,” Lois sniped, but he noticed the glimmer in her eye. That someone could have been after her was something logical that she could wrap her mind around. Strangely enough, knowing someone might’ve come into her apartment actually seemed to relax her and take the edge off her anxiety. He wished his teasing could claim credit, but he knew it wasn’t the cause. Her pinched lips told him she didn’t appreciate his humor. Then, again, this was Lois Lane. She could be lying.
“Oh,” Clark said with some mock sadness, before leaning over the arm of the sofa towards her. “You
like bad men?”
She scoffed. “As if you could ever be ‘bad’.”
He leaned further towards her almost to the point of kissing her. “Do you
want me to behave badly?”
Lois held his gaze. “You mean besides keeping important details from your past from me?”
He lowered his voice to Superman’s timbre, “Yes.”
“Nope. Sorry. It can’t be done, Clark.
You can’t be bad. ‘Naughty’ on the other hand, you’ve got down,” she said, patting his cheek dismissively. It appeared as if she wasn’t affected one bit by his attempt to be seductive. He should’ve known better. Her heart still seemed to be racing, but he rejected that as being another aftereffect of her being frightened. She stood up and started to turn off lights.
Clark took the hint, heading towards the door.
“I called you when I got home, but you didn’t answer.”
“Patrol,” he explained, crossing his arms.
“Oh. Right.” She nodded in understanding. “What are you getting all in a huff about?” she asked. “You’re the fibber in this scenario, buster.”
“Is that so?” Clark replied, his cool control melting away. “I forgave you for cheating on me with him all the way until your wedding day. However, you refuse to forgive me for not telling you something that happened years ago.”
“I never cheated on you!” she retorted.
“So, what do you call it when you date, kiss, and agree to marry another man?” he asked, throwing out a hand to the absent villain.
“An investigation and you know it,” she countered.
“Yes, I do, which is why I forgave you
immediately upon your explanation,” Clark retorted before softening his voice. “Despite the fact that you hurt me every day for weeks. Then, you go and lie to me again. EPRAD didn’t ask Superman to take the shuttle to the Space Station.
You volunteered him to without asking me first. You didn’t tell me that Luthor was still alive and the corpse was his clone.”
“I told you, I was protecting you,” Lois said. “And I
have forgiven you for lying to me. I’m just still mad, okay?”
“It happened years ago,” he groaned.
“Not for me!” she snapped. “How am I supposed to feel knowing that I won’t survive if we’re not together in the future? I want to know that the decisions I make are because
I want them, not because it will save humanity.”
Clark squeezed his eyes shut.
Oh God! Is that what she thinks? “I’m sorry, Lois, for not making myself clear. That could’ve been your fate, had I not come back into the past... but I have. Your future is yours to do with as you please, either with me or without me. Regardless, Superman will always be here to save you. I can’t guarantee that he won’t be busy elsewhere when you get in trouble, but… I hope you choose a life with me in it, even…” He swallowed. “— even as just friends. However, I’ll understand if you don’t want me around.”
“And you wouldn’t leave?” she asked. “Uh… Metropolis, that is?”
He cupped her jaw with his palm. “Where else is there? You’re here.”
Lois stared at him, and he could see awe in her gaze. “It’s that cut and dried for you?”
“It is,” he said, matter of factly.
“So, I shouldn’t worry that you’re going to fly back to my college years and sweep co-ed me off my feet, should you screw up even more royally and I dump you?”
“I’m getting a little old for that scenario,” he said, smiling tenderly.
Her brow furrowed. “How old are you anyway?”
“According to my driver’s license…”
“Clark,” she warned.
He hadn’t thought about the numbers and dates in a while. “I had just celebrated my thirty-first birthday when I left the future. I’ve been here just over a year…”
“Thirty-two?” Lois confirmed. He nodded, and could see her doing the math in her head. That made their age difference closer to five years instead of eighteen months. “You don’t look a day over twenty-eight,” she went on.
Clark smiled. “Thank you. Apparently, I have good genes.”
“It’s just such an odd concept,” she said, turning away from him. “Not only, that you’re from the future, but that you would leave the future just for me.”
He shrugged. “You wouldn’t have been the only one who died, and it wasn’t that great of a future without you in it.”
She nodded as she leaned against the back of the couch. “Right, and you have no idea what the end-of-the-world scenario might be? How is that possible, if you came from the future?”
Clark shook his head. “I… I had been off-planet at the time of the disaster,” he explained, moving closer to her. “I was told that I…
we could start over if I arrived in May 1993, instead. I wouldn’t have to worry about my identity being blown and the disaster would no longer happen.”
“And yet you were never told what that disaster might be and you didn’t think to ask?” she said, nudging his arm. “What kind of reporter, are you, Kent?”
“In my defense, I was a tad rushed to meet you,” he said. “I missed you.”
“What kind of friend wouldn’t tell you?” Lois asked wryly. He knew a Lane probing question when he heard it. She wanted Clark to inadvertently reveal the name of his time-machine driver. Not in this lifetime. He had just gotten her to forgive him.
“An overly cautious one. He made a horrible mistake once during his time travels and has been working to undo it ever since,” Clark replied.
“What did he do?” Lois asked.
“You remember that man from the future that outed me on television?”
She stared at him. “The one who accidentally erased himself?”
Clark nodded. “My friend introduced him to time travel.”
Lois patted his arm. “You need to get smarter friends.”
He chuckled. Herb Wells was optimistically naïve, not stupid. Clark set his hand on top of Lois’s. “How about I just keep the smartest one I have?”
She smiled. “You aren’t losing me that easily, Chuck. You’re too handy to have around.”
Handy was good. Clark would take ‘handy’ for now. “Good night, Lois,” he said, kissing her cheek before giving her a knowing look. “No more unlocked windows, please.”
“But what if Superman needs me?” Lois asked innocently… far too innocently, in fact.
“He can use the door,” he reminded her, tossing his keys to her apartment into the air and catching them.
Lois set her hands on Clark’s chest, pushing him against her closed door. “So, what you’re saying is that if Superman gets the urge to see me, he could just drop by unannounced, come into my bedroom…” She moved her hands slowly up his chest to his shoulders. “— and strip for me?”
“
Urge?” Clark murmured, working hard to keep his voice from cracking as Lois moved her hands back down his chest. “
To strip?”
She bent her elbows, so that she leaned up against his chest. Her body stopped a mere centimeter in front of his, including her lips. “A woman can dream, can’t she?” she replied huskily. “Anyway, I was talking about a different kind of urge.” She licked her lips and pushed forcefully off his chest until she was vertical again. “Make sure you lock up on your way out,” she said, moving towards her hall.
Clark sank against the door. “Lois, thank you for not being evil,” he murmured. Then, with an naughty grin, he zipped in front of her and lowered his lips to hers before she had taken two steps.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and bent her knees, removing her weight from them. Automatically, he caught her, scooping her into his arms and holding her as Superman did. She tightened her hold around his neck, pulling him closer and mingling her tongue with his.
He tossed Lois gently down on her bed. “Lois, you’re a big girl. You don’t need me to carry you to bed,” he said. “Good night.”
Lois slipped her feet back under her covers, asking, “Going somewhere?”
He stopped at the door and stared at her. “I’m tired. I thought I’d go to bed.”
She ran her hands over the comforter covering her bent legs as she held his gaze.
“It is the middle of the night and I’d like to get a few minutes of sleep,” he went on, when she didn’t reply. “We’ve got to work in the morning.”
She batted her eyelashes demurely as if to cue him in that she was going to say something she would never say seriously, “And leave your smartest friend alone in her apartment unprotected?”
Clark didn’t buy the line for a second. He crossed his arms. “This same friend who just admitted that even though she has forgiven me, she’s still ticked off at me? Who’s to say I won’t wake up to find someone bashing my brains in with a Kryptonite studded baseball bat? No thanks!” he said lightly.
“I went through hell protecting your sorry butt, Chuck; I wouldn’t bash it in,” she returned.
He pointed to his head. “My brains are up here.”
She glared at him for a moment before a look of amazement crossed her face. “Huh.”
“What?”
“You know, I never realized it before,” she said, her expression turning contemplative. “Did you know, except for the glasses, that you look just like Superman?”
Maybe she had lost her mind.
“I never noticed because I’m always looking at your butt,” she went on, before sticking out her tongue at him.
Clark turned towards the door again so she wouldn’t see his grin. He dropped the keys on the floor. “Ooops!” Slowly, bending over at the waist, he picked them up. For good measure, he gave his butt a little shake. Then he walked out the bedroom door. “I better lock up before coming to bed, then. I wouldn’t want to make it easier for anyone to break in and hurt my smartest friend on my watch.”
He could have sworn her heard Lois Lane giggle. After he had locked her front door, he came back down the hall and entered her guest bedroom, calling, “Good night, Lois!”
Clark heard Lois collapse upon her pillows and harrumph, muttering, “You so totally don’t have a bad bone in your body, Kent.” Then she called out to him, snidely, “Good night, Clark.”
He put his hands under his head and grinned.
If she needed him, he had no problem being handy… just not
too handy.
Clark heard her tossing and turning next door for the next few minutes. “I’m beginning to think that his brains
are in his butt,” she finally grumbled.
And she thought I couldn't be bad. Clark chuckled to himself.
***
Lois woke at the same early time she did during the week, despite their late night and it being a Saturday. As she rubbed her eyes and stretched, she heard noises coming from her kitchen.
Was Clark up already? He had gotten less sleep than… no, cancel that. It was impossible that he got less sleep than she did. She had tossed and turned for hours after he went to bed in her guest room, blissfully unaware that she had invited him to share her bed. At least, she didn’t need to be humiliated that he had turned her down…
again.
What was the matter with that man? Did she really want to share her life with a man who was dense on more than just on a cellular level?
Lois decided that she would face this dilemma head on. No more dancing around the subject. An idea on how to do just that popped into her head, so she threw back the covers to put the plan into action.
The toaster dinged just as she reached the kitchen.
“Good morning, Lois,” Clark greeted her cheerfully. “Sleep well?” He cut off a chunk of butter and started spreading it over the toast. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and the butter spread easily. She wasn’t sure if it was the heat of the toast or his vision.
“Horribly,” she replied. “Do you want to move in together?”
***End of Part 202*** Part 203 
Um…
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