Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Wrong Clark (207/???)

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

Where we left Lois and Clark in Part 206…

Lois remembered saying something of the sort after the Metro Club investigation. Unfortunately, her motivation was all tangled together with the discovery that Clark didn’t have a past. She knew his past now, and that was no longer an obstacle.

“I love you,” Clark repeated. “— but I would like us to take it slow.”

Lois tossed her coffee cup into the trashcan and put her hands on her hips. “And I would like you to say that you love me without adding a ‘but’ in afterwards.”

Clark winced. “You’re right. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

“About time you admitted it,” Lois replied with a grin to let him know she was teasing.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her cheek. Into her ear, he whispered, “What if I said, ‘I love your butt’?” he asked, snaking his hands down to her bottom and giving her a squeeze.

She pushed out of his arms with a yelping laugh. “You were saying something about ‘taking it slow’,” she reminded him, and he blushed. She bit her bottom lip in thought, and stepped back into his embrace. “Tell me, Clark…” She kissed his lips. “— how slow…” Her lips trailed down his neck to where it met his clavicle. “— is ‘slow’?” Her hands moved down his back to his bottom where she gave him a little squeeze.

“You’re killing me!” he groaned.

She grinned in triumph. “I knew you wanted me,” she crowed, taking his hand in hers and continuing down the path.

He gazed at her with exasperation. “That has never been in doubt, minha.”

Lois loved all the different ways he told her she was right.

“How slow is slow?” Clark repeated her question.

She glanced over at him.

“I made a vow that I’d be abstinent until marriage,” he confessed softly.


Part 207

Lois stopped. What? Clark did what? She pointed at him. “Isn’t that making decisions about our relationship without consulting me?” she asked. “You promised not to do that anymore.”

“No. It’s making decisions about my life, and what’s right for me,” Clark said, and then glancing around, he lowered his voice. “And what’s right for Superman.”

“No, no, no, no!” Lois demanded, waving her finger. “He doesn’t exist. He has no part in this conversation. This is between you and me, bub. What’s right for me and you!”

“Lois, he’s a part of who I am,” Clark reminded her.

“I know.”

“If we have…” He lowered his voice again. “Pre-marital relations… and then, if somehow my cover is blown, it will be discovered that so did Superman. He’s a role model for millions of people. He needs to live to a higher standard.”

Lois’s lips pinched into a knot. “And I’m not a high enough standard for Superman?”

He took a deep breath. “You know that’s not what I meant.”

“So,” she said, holding up her hand to keep him from interrupting. “What you’re saying is that you’ve made this decision about your life, because of Superman, in the off-chance that your cover is ever blown?” Skepticism dripped from her tone.

Clark looked down at his feet. “It could happen.”

From his expression, Lois realized he wasn’t speaking hypothetically. He was speaking about what he said had occurred in the future. “You said that coming into the past changed our future. That future doesn’t exist anymore. That won’t happen.”

He nodded. “I did say that,” he admitted. “But it doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen again. I don’t want it to. It ruined my old life. It’s why I left there and came here to start anew.”

“And because I was dead,” she probed, because it almost sounded as if he was saying that wasn’t what really happened in the future. “Earth’s civilization was dead.”

“Yes,” he murmured. “But it started with me being exposed.”

“Oh,” she whispered. That made sense. “Your secret was revealed and then we were separated?”

“Yes.”

She took his hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. “It won’t happen again. I won’t let it.”

He gave her a weak smile as if he wished he could believe her, but he couldn’t. The fear that history might repeat itself was too strong.

“I won’t,” she reiterated.

Clark kissed her knuckles. They continued walking, her mind swirling with everything that they had discussed.

She stopped a few yards down the path and took both his hands in hers. “Did we…” She glanced away, not knowing why this was so embarrassing. They had spoken about the possibility of moving towards physical intimacy on several occasions, but always in such vague terms. The closest they had come to stating it baldly was their conversation about what had happened at the hospital. “How far… did we… in the future…?” This was pathetic. She was a top-notch journalist and she couldn’t even spit these words out to the man she loved. Lois forced herself to continue. “So, you’re saying that in the future, we never…” She gave him a meaningful look. It was still unclear, she berated herself, but it was a start.

“Gosh, Lois, no!” he gasped. “We’d only been together a few days.”

“We knew each other just a few days, but we were in love?” she scoffed. Who wasn’t being believable now?

“I had just realized I loved you and you had confessed that you felt the same way about me,” he explained. “Everything fell apart just as it should have been beginning.” He swallowed and glanced away.

Clark hadn’t actually said that they had only known each other a few days, but had been together for that amount of time. She must have known him longer, because they had worked together long enough to become friends. That was what her messed-up psychic feelings had implied. Actually, what he was saying now was almost completely contradictory to what he had told her before. How could she have known about Superman, made him Superman if they had only been in love for a few days, yet been co-workers for months, possibly years prior? It didn’t make any sense.

Maybe that wasn’t what he had meant when he said that she had made him Superman. Clark was notorious for saying one thing and meaning another. In all likelihood, he hadn’t meant literally. In fact, she recalled him saying something to the effect of ‘for the purpose of this conversation, let’s say you did’. So, maybe she had known Clark Kent, or however he called himself in this now-lost future, but it was only after he confessed that he had these abilities with her that she suggested the whole disguise for going out and helping people. Yes, that did make sense.

Lois drew herself from her thoughts to see Clark staring into the trees with his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched. She could tell that whatever had happened in the future still scarred him. Losing her on top of all the other losses in his life had been too much; it had broken him permanently. The wound might heal, but a mark would always remain. That must have been why he had felt the insane need to come back in time to save her. He must have wanted to gain back that feeling of control he had lost upon her future death.

Not that she disagreed with his decision. She was glad that in following his heart, Clark had come to her.

She needed to distract him from these negative thoughts, though. “How familiar are you with bases, Clark?” she asked, looping her hand through the bend of his elbow and propelling him forward down the path.

“Interesting segue,” he murmured, before saying, “You mean as in baseball?” She nodded. “It’s a great game. Too bad the Monarchs won’t make it into the Series this year.”

She looked into the grey sky and hoped he wasn’t going to make her spell it out. “Not baseball, Chuck. Just the bases.”

He looked completely lost.

Lois shook her head. “Never mind. Yeah, it’s a shame about the World Series,” she grumbled with a roll of her eyes. “At least, Gotham City won’t make it either.”

“It wasn’t quite the same in Metropolis this summer once Jimmy left for Vegas. One of the families of a Lucky prisoner is some bigwig with the Monarchs team. Apparently, he had been estranged from his son for years before his disappearance and after Nightfall wanted to reconnect, but couldn’t find him. He recognized their son from one of Jimmy’s photos from the day they opened the ark, so they gave Jimmy season tickets on the third base line as thanks. We went almost every week while you were in space.” Clark frowned. “Jimmy sold his tickets to fund his airfare west.”

“So…” Lois drew out the word. This diversion was going nowhere. It was time to try again. “Can you define ‘abstinent’?”

Tripping over a dust particle, he hissed, “Lois!”

“I’m just curious… No, I have a right to know in advance how far you’re willing to take this relationship, Clark,” Lois said.

He stopped and set his hands on her shoulders, looking her straight into the eyes. “When I’m ready, all the way.”

Lois refused to accept that as a proposal, although it sure sounded like one to her.

“And before then?” she asked.

“Before then, I won’t be ready,” he stated flatly.

Uh-huh.

“How will you ever get better enough to be ready, if you… we don’t work on it?” she inquired.

“I’m sure it’s like riding a bicycle…”

“It’s nothing like riding a bicycle,” she interrupted.

He looked at her sourly and continued, “As in, you never forget how.”

“And unlike a car, you don’t get to test drive it first,” she mumbled, and then recalled that she already had. “Clark, how will anyone know that he… that you, Clark Kent, are being intimate with your girlfriend? I wasn’t planning on bragging… or talking about it with anyone.” Okay, maybe Lucy. “We’re a young couple, living in the most modern city in America, and most modern couples don’t wait for marriage anymore. Everyone will assume… scratch that. Everyone already suspects that we’re…” She waved her hand and gave him a knowing look. “You know.”

“Well, they’d be wrong.”

“Technically not, but even though we wouldn’t be active…” she countered.

“If my identity becomes known and someone asks about our relationship, I would tell them the truth, which is that we’re waiting until marriage,” Clark replied.

“And why would they believe you?” Lois asked.

“Because Superman doesn’t lie.”

Lois raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

Clark cleared his throat and straightened his tie. “While Clark may be known by some to stretch the truth on occasion, Superman does not lie.”

She rested her cheek on her palm and looked at him. Except for the lie of omission, she thought. “Couldn’t you just say instead, that you refuse to discuss your relationship as it’s private?” she asked.

He frowned. “Try as we might, Lois, you know as well as I do that the media doesn’t allow celebrities a fully private life.”

“But it’s not as if they would know what we do in the privacy of our homes. Only Superman has x-ray vision.”

This time, Clark was one who appeared skeptical. “I’d be followed as would you. How much time we spent together in the privacy of each other’s homes would be timed and debated, especially if either of us stayed late or overnight. I wouldn’t even put it past some tabloid reporters from breaking in to see what they could discover.”

Lois thought about Clark’s apartment. He had replaced the glass-paneled front doors shortly after he had moved in with heavy solid wood doors and installed a top-of-the-line dead bolt lock. She set her hand on his arm. “They broke into your apartment.”

He nodded.

“How often?”

Clark shrugged dismissively in that way he did when she touched on a sore subject. “Enough. Eventually, I moved into the Foundation offices, but it never felt like home.”

“Oh, Clark,” she said, pulling him into her embrace. “I’m so sorry that I left you.”

He tightened his hold of her for a moment as if accepting her apology. “It was the right thing to do, Lois,” he murmured before patting her back and stepping back. He took hold of her hand. “But let’s not dwell on my past. That is no longer our future.”

“Okay, let’s talk about our future. How slow is ‘slow’? How far is ‘too far’?”

Clark groaned. “I would fall in love with a woman with unquenchable curiosity.”

Lois tossed him a teasing grin. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

He returned her smile. “I never said it was.” He cupped her jaw and placed a light kiss on her lips. “But I could do with a little less pressure.”

“Pressure?” she echoed. Suddenly, she relived the mortification she had felt when she realized she had unwittingly taken advantage of the man she loved. If she were the one asking for more time, any sort of pressure from Clark would irritate her. “Right. Sorry. It’s dropped. I can do that. Easy going. That’s me. Live one day at a time. Light as a feather. No pressure whatsoever.” They walked on in silence for a whole six point two seconds. “Why exactly did you make this oath again?”

“I promised God that I’d behave until marriage if the life of a friend of mine could be spared,” he replied.

She raised an eyebrow at him. Seriously?

He smiled sheepishly, but didn’t appear regretful.

“I take it your friend recovered.”

Clark nodded.

“Fine. No pressure. Weightless. I can do that,” Lois said, stuffing her hands into her pockets and leaning into the wind as she stomped off down the path.

It’s not like I wanted to rush our relationship into fast lane, she thought. It’s not as if I had been stuck on a space station for eight weeks with nothing better to do than twiddle my thumbs and use my imagination daydreaming of what we could be doing if I were on Earth… “Promised God.” Oh, great. How am I supposed to compete with that without looking like the devil incarnate? Do they even have a god on Krypton? Apparently so. I should have known something like this would happen. He did take over the persona of small town Kansan farmboy, after all. If he had taken over the life of a surfer dude from California, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? Then again, if he had, we wouldn’t have met or fallen in love or…

“Lois! Could you slow down?” Clark called from beside her, taking hold of her elbow.

Looking down, she saw that their leisurely stroll had become her usual sprint to work gait. She came to a complete stop and covered her face with her hands. “I don’t know if I…”

She felt his hands cover hers. “Sure you can. Lois Lane can do anything she sets her heart to.”

“That’s true,” she conceded grudgingly.

Clark kissed her forehead and drew her hands down, so that they looked each other in the eye. “There’s more to our relationship than physical attraction, isn’t there?”

“Of course!”

He smiled briefly before his expression became more determined. “Truthfully, Lois, even if I hadn’t made this vow, I doubt I’d be ready,” he admitted. “Luthor really messed with my head.”

A thousand questions rushed to the forefront of her mind, but she didn’t let them out. “I’m here if you ever want to talk about that,” she said.

Clark ran a hand over her hair. “I know. Thank you.” With a slow tilt of his head, he brushed her lips with his.

Lois leaned into him, allowing him to enfold her into his embrace. It felt so good to have him hold her like this again, to know that his love for her was stronger than even Superman. Being in space, she had acutely felt his absence. She had missed him holding her, touching her, kissing her. She hated to admit it to herself, but she felt stronger the closer she was to Clark as if some of his strength became her strength. “This isn’t how I pictured spending my birthday,” she murmured.

She felt him wince as he drew back. “Sorry…” he started to say before she interrupted.

“I didn’t mean…” Okay, maybe she had.

“Technically, your birthday is tomorrow,” he said lightly.

Lois stepped back into his embrace and shrugged against his chest. “I had been thinking about giving you that other gift I had bought for your birthday,” she said.

“Gift?”

“Uh-huh,” Lois said innocently, wrapping her arms around his waist. “Didn’t you notice the box tucked in my underwear drawer?”

He swallowed. “I would never…”

Of course, he wouldn’t have. She licked her lips and smiled mischievously. “Probably it’s for the best as things are. I guess I could hold on to it all the way until Christmas or your next birthday.”

“But – but you gave me the pen,” he said feebly.

“Yes, I did,” she conceded. “But it wasn’t your real gift. I still haven’t given that to you yet.”

“No?” he breathed.

She shook her head deliberately slow as she drew a zigzag pattern from his waist to his shoulder.

“But –” He cleared his throat. “You said that you weren’t ready to marry me back then.”

Lois slid her hand down his arm and into his, squeezing it. “Who said anything about marriage?” she asked, continuing down the path.

Clark might say that he wanted to wait. He might not be wrong about the trauma from being Lex’s prisoner.

However, Lois knew that she was twice as stubborn as any man was and that Clark had promised her that they would make love someday. On this one point, she refused to concede, refused to let Luthor win, refused to let Clark change his mind, refused to let their hospital test drive count, and refused to let him coerce her into marriage before she was ready.

She would come out on top, or die trying.

***

Clark watched Lois pour herself another cup of office coffee and return to her desk. He tried to force his gaze and thoughts away from her and back to his computer screen and story, but he couldn’t get her announcement from the previous day out of his mind.

They had made love in the hospital.

He had tried not believing her but she had sounded so sincere. Why would she admit to “taking advantage” – her words, not his – of him while he had amnesia, if it weren’t true? It wasn’t as if she knew about the curse or his belief that she would die if they made love. She would have no need to make up evidence to counter his fears, unless she thought it would help him overcome that sexual dysfunction she assumed he had back when they had stayed at the Lexor.

No, not even then could he imagine that Lois would make up such a story.

A part of his conscience reminded him that she had told him previously that ‘nothing had happened’.

Lois glanced up, saw him staring at her and smiled.

Clark could feel a pull in the pit of his stomach, telling him to go to her and kiss her. Instead, he merely returned her smile and used all of his strength to shift his gaze back to his computer screen. Unfortunately, he still couldn’t concentrate on work.

Had Herb Wells been wrong about the curse?

Clark couldn’t fathom how he could’ve been. Wells had gone into the future, seen that Lois had died from the curse, and come back to warn Clark.

Hadn’t he?

Clark scratched the back of his head. He had always thought that was what had happened, but now he wasn’t sure.

Maybe Herb hadn’t done that. Clark knew that the time traveler had come from the future, a future where Clark and Lois had gotten married…

He gulped.

Clark and Lois had pretended to be married to check into the Lexor suite less than two weeks later. Was that what Herb had seen? Or had Lois and Clark actually gotten married? What if Herb hadn’t interrupted their romantic, Revenge-addled tryst – and Lois hadn’t died – would she have agreed in earnest to marry Clark less than two weeks later?

His heart pounded.

No. Lois would never have forgiven Clark had he taken advantage of her in that way. Then again, if Lois’s newest hospital adventure tale was indeed the truth, Clark certainly forgave her instantly. However, Clark wasn’t Lois.

No. Clark could never picture Lois forgiving him for making love to her while a love drug inebriated her. Anyway, she had told him that when he proposed in April it had been too early in their relationship to think marriage. Therefore, in February it would have been even earlier.

Clark ran his hand through his hair.

So, what had Herb actually seen or thought he had seen? Had Herb Wells been wrong? Clark wished he knew definitively. Did the curse not affect them, because he and Lois hadn’t come from the same dimension?

Oh, God.

Could they have been blissfully making love all these months, if Herb hadn’t come back to warn him?

Clark bumped up his glasses and rubbed his eyes, trying to rid himself of a growing headache.

On the other hand, could the curse just not have affected Lois because Clark had amnesia at the time and didn’t know to whom he was making love? Would the results be different if he made love to her now, with all his facilities and powers intact?

Was he willing to take that chance? Could he risk making love to Lois without ever knowing for sure?

He squeezed his eyes shut.

No. No, he couldn’t.

It didn’t really matter anyway, because he had made his vow to remain celibate until marriage, even though Padre Carlos had given him the green light to break said vow. Well, technically, Carlos still wanted Clark to keep the vow, but to keep it because it was the correct thing to do, not because Clark had promised God to spare Carlos’s life. But Clark had broken too many promises over the last year. He was determined he would keep this one. If for no other reason than to make sure that his passion didn’t end up killing the woman he loved.

Why hadn’t Herb Wells returned already? What was he waiting for? What if Herb never returned? How long could Clark live in limbo? Would Lois remain with him if he were never ready to get married and therefore become physically intimate? Could Clark live with himself or with this fear? Was there any way for Clark to know the truth without risking Lois’s life or waiting for Herb to magically reappear and give his blessing?

How slow is ‘slow’? Lois had asked him. How far is ‘too far’?

Both good questions for which Clark had no answers.

If the curse was indeed real, then he had no idea what could and couldn’t set it off. It was magic and enacted a thousand years ago. Magic shouldn’t affect him, being that he was from another planet, but it did. Like him, magic defied logic and physics.

But what if the curse wasn’t real? Or didn’t work on them since they weren’t true soul mates? Lois certainly felt like his soul mate. Both this Lois and the one from that other Clark’s dimension had affected him in a similar manner. He couldn’t imagine loving any other woman – even the Lois from his own dimension – more.

He turned and allowed himself to caress Lois with his gaze once more. He loved this woman. This woman.

That hazy part of his memory from that night at the hospital slipped to the forefront of his mind. He could feel the softness of her skin. He could hear her moaning in desire as she rubbed his chest, slowly shifting her naked body over his. He could taste her. He could…

Clark’s eyes widened and he turned away from Lois.

Oh, God.

He could taste her.

Clark swallowed, his entire body tensing.

Not just the hint of mustard and pastrami, but her. Salty sweat. Her perfume. Her…

“Kent!” Perry’s voice intruded at the worst possible moment, causing Clark to wince.

“Yes, sir?” he tried to respond without a quiver to his voice, but he doubted he succeeded.

“My office! Pronto!”

“Yes, sir,” Clark responded, standing up. He stole a quick glance at his blinking cursor and saw that his report on the City Council’s latest recommendations to thwart corruption hadn’t yet been written. He swore under his breath using words that wouldn’t make a Girl Scout blush. Running his hand through his hair once more, he walked into the Chief’s office.

“Shut the door, Kent,” Perry said from where he sat at his desk.

Clark closed the door and approached his boss’s desk.

“Are you feeling okay?” his boss asked, indicating with a nod of his head that Clark should sit down.

Clark blanched. “Fine,” he mumbled.

Perry raised an eyebrow that clearly told Clark that his boss didn’t believe him. “Want to try that one again, Kent?”

Clark gulped, dropping into a chair. Could he plead illness and take a rare sick day? Glancing at his boss, he knew the answer.

“Physically, yes, sir, I’m healthy,” he replied honestly.

“Mentally? Emotionally?” Perry responded. Clark opened his mouth to respond, but before he did so, Perry continued, “I’ve been watching you, Kent. You’ve sat at your desk for the last hour doing nothing more than stare at Miss Lane and tug at your hair.”

Clark looked down at his hands in his lap, embarrassed that anyone – let alone his boss – had noticed. “I didn’t sleep well,” he admitted. At all would be more accurate. In fact, Clark hadn’t been able to string together a coherent thought since he had kissed Lois goodnight the previous evening and he finally had the freedom to think about the ramifications of her announcement. He glanced up and saw that Perry was staring at him. Had his boss responded to his feeble excuse? Clark cleared his throat. “It’s Lois’s birthday, sir,” he finally spit out as if that had anything to do with his current internal struggle.

Perry stood up and walked around the desk as he spoke, “And you’ve put off getting her a gift until the last minute? Kent, that’s unlike you.”

Clark could think of nothing to do but smile guiltily, despite the Chief’s guess being wildly off base.

“You finish that City Council story?”

“I was just working on it,” Clark lied… well, more like exaggerated. He had meant to be working on it. His notes were sitting open on his desk near his computer. That counted as working on it, right?

“Why don’t you finish that up, and take the rest of the afternoon off to shop for her gift?” his boss suggested, uncharacteristically generous.

Clark eyed him warily.

“It’s not as if you’re accomplishing anything else, anyway,” Perry went on.

The junior reporter blushed, hanging his head in shame, because the words were spot-on accurate.

“I can recall what new love is like, Kent. It wasn’t that long ago when I was wooing Alice,” Perry said with a wistful lilt to his voice. “Nothing feels worse than ending up in the doghouse because of a poorly chosen gift.”

Clark’s eyes widened. Had he gotten Lois a good gift? He remembered all too well Lois’s giddiness in telling Cat about his purchase of a lamp for her birthday the previously year. A lamp that Lois had erroneously thought Clark had wanted to use as mood lighting for their first time together. Okay, it hadn’t been a completely erroneous theory. Was that why she had been giddy?

Oh, God. Why had his mind gone there? He knew the answer before the question had fully formed.

Quickly, he swept that thought from his mind before Perry could see it written on his face.

Clark rose to his feet. “Thank you, sir.”

Perry gave him a good luck pat on his arm and sent him on his merry way.

Lucky him.

Lois smiled at Clark again when he returned to the bullpen.

Yes, lucky him.

“What did Perry want?” she asked.

Clark cleared his throat. “My story,” he said, and hurried to his desk.

“Where shall we have lunch?”

He sat down. “Café Americana? Didn’t your uncle say something about making you a special cake?”

The joy fell from Lois’s face. “You better not have planned a surprise party.”

“Do I look stupid to you?” he asked, and then went on before she could answer. “You hate surprises.”

“That I do, Chuck. That I do,” she said, leaning back in her chair. “Sooooo, what’d ya get me?” She grinned.

“Tonight,” he replied, and turned back to his computer screen.

He heard her click her tongue in that way she did when she rolled her eyes in annoyance. “I hate waiting,” she grumbled.

“It’ll be here sooner than you think,” he said.

“I can’t wait,” she said in a sing-songy flirtatious manner that made him think that they weren’t discussing the same thing.

Clark glanced up from his screen to confirm this theory, but she was no longer looking at him.

Herb Wells, when are you?

***End of Part 207***

Part 208

Both Comments and tomatoes accepted.