Description: Lois and Clark bond as they fix a colorful mistake.
Title: What a Gentleman Desires: The Continuation
By: Susan Young (groobie@verizon.net)
Rating: PG-13. Please note that this has been modified from the original n-fic version, where I originally placed it due to sexual situations. It has been appropriately toned down, but if sexual themes have the potential to offend you, please choose a different story to read. Thank you.
Author’s Note: This story is a continuation of VirginiaR’s
What A Gentleman Desires . In the feedback for her conclusion, I wondered what they’d be doing in Lois’ apartment for the rest of the night and she responded that I should feel free to explore what I think might have happened next. So, voila!
Thank you, Virginia, for beta reading this story and for letting me play in your universe.
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“We can fix this,” Clark says confidently, nodding at the computer screen.
I bury my face in my hands. “Sure, with a razor and a buzz cut.” And the loss of my last remaining shreds of dignity, I mentally add.
Clark rolls his eyes over-dramatically, then taps the computer screen, indicating the web page he has found. “More like neutral brown dye, peroxide for removing any spillovers, and the patience to work through the process a section of hair at a time.” He bites his lip as if he’s nervous to continue, but then says, “And it usually works better if you have a partner to help you.”
Partner. Yes, he’s certainly that. But the word seems too small to define what he means to me. Since he’s been working at the Planet, he has supported my work, helped with my investigations, shared my byline. Mine became ours – “By Lois Lane” transitioned into “By Lois Lane and Clark Kent” – and I’m not sure I can pinpoint when that shared byline ceased to be a curiosity and morphed into the default. When what was once a source of irritation had turned into a permanent status, so much so that now irritation grates at me when it’s not there: when he’s working a separate story, when the byline is alone.
“Will you let me help you?” Clark asks with uncertainty. He pushes himself away from the computer desk and gets out of the chair, crossing over to me. And I freeze – not with fear, but with anticipation. Because he’s not just my partner anymore. I think he’s my partner – a more fully realized version of the word. And it happened when I kissed him ten minutes ago, or he kissed me, or we kissed each other – the memory flows together as if it’s been an infinite embrace without beginning, middle, or end. But it was both an end and a beginning, and yet really just the continuation of our partnership, the undercurrent of our partnership. The part of our partnership that was the foundation of our partnership. How could I have failed to realize that “Lane and Kent” worked because of Lois and Clark? That part of me merged with him the first time I edited his copy?
But he’s not sure I’ll let him help me because this is new. It’s old, but it’s new. His helping me is old – I see now that he’s been doing it since the beginning. Little things like getting me coffee without my having to ask. Opening doors and guiding me through them with a hand placed gently at the small of my back. Little acts of kindness that were always there, patiently waiting to be recognized.
And I finally had. Sure, the recognition had been subsumed under a fit of jealousy and an irrational rage against a perfectly normal hair color, but it was there. And I had acted on it; I kissed him, and old became new. Partners became partners.
I finger my tragically blonde hair. “Well, my attempt at helping myself was an utter failure. I doubt you could do much worse.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” His tone is sarcastic, but the sparkle in his eye fails to mask his delight. “I’ll run out to the store and get the supplies.” He takes a step towards the door, then shifts his weight towards me, then hesitates. And I can see the debate he’s having with himself, questioning the protocols of partnership.
I end the debate by leaning my face fractionally closer to his – a small signal, but one he instinctively understands. He slides his right hand through my hair and pulls me gently towards him. And our lips meet.
Twice in ten minutes, but undefined by time, because that kiss has always existed and would always exist. It had just been held in stasis, an idealized form waiting to be made real. And here, in reality, as his soft warm lips slide against mine, as my heart races and my breathing stops, I find the piece of me that’s been missing, or that he has stolen, or that I have given away – how he has come to possess it, I don’t quite know, but it clearly belongs to him. And he’ll have it forever.
The kiss ends and he mumbles against my lips, “I’ll be right back.” He runs his fingers through my hair hesitantly, reluctantly, as if he can’t tear himself away.
“I’ll be right here,” I say. And something in his eyes shines. I recognize it, but am reluctant to label it, even to myself. Because it comes and goes, it has left me too many times in the past, and something deep inside me rebels against it even as I’m desperate to believe it exists. But it begins with an L and it is definitely a four letter word.
He opens my apartment door and closes it behind him, and I don’t want to draw the parallel, but can’t stop my brain from registering the pattern. He comes and he goes. He always has, he always does – it’s in his nature. He leaves, usually at the most inconvenient times, but he always comes back. And it’s irritating. As irritating as Kent’s name in Lane’s byline used to be, because the mere fact that I noticed the pattern meant that I noticed him, and I hadn’t wanted to notice him. Because men come and go, because I shouldn’t expect him to be there when I need him, because Lane works alone.
I can’t pinpoint when that irritation had ceased to be an annoyance and had morphed into a curiosity. Probably when I realized that even when he’s gone, he’s still there. That his presence fills my world, even when he’s not present. That he’s in my heart and my soul – he always has been and he always will. When I kiss him and find my missing piece, I can’t take it back because its space is filled with the part of Clark that I’ve stolen from him.
And I know I stole it. He didn’t give it away – I took it along with his breath the first day we met. I doubt he knows that I saw the look that shocked his face when he first laid eyes on me because I made sure he knew I wasn’t interested in it. But I had lifted the hack from Nowheresville’s heart like a pickpocket – easily and confidently.
I catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror and grimace at my lack of confidence. That I could convince myself he preferred blondes, or strangers on the street, or lawyers in a courtroom. Because I know that he prefers me. I know that he always has. I know that he always will. But it’s easier to deny that knowledge – push it away forcefully with drama and tests. Push him away before he pulls.
The front door opens and I’m startled. How long have I been daydreaming? It seems as if he only left a minute ago. I recognize the feeling – I’ve lost time thinking about him before. Still, I can’t help but draw attention to it. “That was fast.”
He glances nervously at his bag of supplies before saying, “I just got it from the bodega on the corner.”
“Really?” It doesn’t take long for me to picture the hole in the wall that sells me nothing more than tubs of ice cream and Double Fudge Crunch Bars. “There must be aisles of shelves I’ve never seen.”
He’s about to say something, but instead flips the bag onto my sofa and takes me in his arms. His pheromones surround me, soothing my doubts and refocusing my attention onto his mouth. The protocols of partnership demand a greeting, so I tilt my chin upward in invitation and he says hello with his moist lips and swirling tongue. Infinity returns: goodbye and hello merge with our kiss.
He backs away slightly with a lopsided grin. “Are you ready to get dirty?” he says with rakish charm, and I laugh because the thought of him as a lecherous pervert is too funny to be believed.
“Definitely not,” I counter before shimmying seductively in my silver evening gown. “I’m seriously overdressed.” I slowly turn, swaying my hips to draw attention to my hourglass figure. I present my spine to him, then use my hands to push my hair away from my neck. “Help me with the zipper.”
I hear him suck in a breath and the sound shivers its way into my core. I’ve never felt sexy, but he makes me feel like I am. I’ve never felt desirable, but that indrawn breath makes me feel like I am to him. His hands fumble at the hook and eye that latch the collar. The accidental brushing of his fingertips against the base of my neck sends jolts of forbidden pleasure down my spine. It’s a feeling I’ve forbidden for myself – locked it away after the men who came and went made me believe that the key to breaking that pattern belonged to a chastity belt. I threw away that key long ago, but somehow Clark had found it as easily as I had found his house key under his doormat. The zipper of my slinky gown knows no resistance as Clark’s fingers deftly lower it, exposing my skin an inch at a time. I stand perfectly still, and am only able to guess at the look on his face. He seems to be holding his breath; I don’t think I’ve heard him exhale since my zipper started travelling south. I wish he would breathe, or pant, or moan, or make some subtle noise that would clue me in to his reaction. But he is silent; all I can hear is the rapid pounding of my heart.
I imagine what he is seeing as I feel the zipper open past my shoulder blades, my bra strap, the base of my spine, ending its journey at the edge of my lace thong. And that’s when I hear him – a strangled, “Oh, God!” before his fingers stop touching my skin and I feel him back away from me. I smile inwardly, amused by his typically male response. Thongs are uncomfortable and impractical, and yet I had transitioned into wearing them sometime around when “By Lois Lane” had morphed into “By Lois Lane and Clark Kent.” They’ve always been there, waiting for him to notice the absence of visible panty line when he stares at my rear. Waiting for him to catch a glance of them as I cross and uncross my legs in his direct line of sight from across the newsroom bullpen. Waiting for him to marvel at the way I bend over to reach for something, knowing that it causes the waistband of my pants to dip slightly lower than the edge of my underwear.
I twist my torso and feel the fabric of my dress bunch and gap, exposing more skin to Clark if he dares to look. But I find him gripping the back of my sofa with white-knuckled fists and staring at the ceiling as if heaven could help him. I dip my left shoulder and feel the fabric start to slide, knowing full well that he can see me from the corner of his eye.
He can’t resist – I know the moment he checks me out because he squeezes his eyes shut and tucks his head down as he slightly hunches over in pain. And though I’ve had little experience with the opposite sex, it’s obvious even to me why Clark seems to have so much trouble standing up straight.
I decide to help him out by removing temptation, though I can’t resist the tease. “I’ll just go take this off so we can get started.”
He nods as if it has taken an extraordinary effort to do so. And as I walk away from him and cross the threshold of my bedroom, I swear I hear him finally exhale.
I stride over to my closet and let my dress fall to the floor. I step out of the pooled sparkles of sequins, then pick up the material so I can place it on a hanger, saving it for another night. I move on to my dresser, intent on finding something I wouldn’t mind throwing away if Clark’s efforts at hair dying prove to be as inept as my own. I settle on a white spaghetti strap camisole and grey running shorts. I check the look in my mirror, unsurprised that the stretch cotton-poly blend does a terrible job of hiding my black lace bra. It almost looks accidental, but Clark will know I’ve done it on purpose.
I saunter out into the living room and see Clark pulling his bodega buys out of the bag, lining them up neatly on my table. “Where do you want to do it?” I ask with an arched eyebrow and poorly disguised double entendre.
He looks over at me, waggles his eyebrows, and knocks on the wood. “This table doesn’t seem quite sturdy enough. Better use your bathroom.” His joke and relaxed posture signal the return of his control. I can temporarily retire my playful banter and focus on the task at hand.
Clark shrugs off his tuxedo jacket and hangs it on the back of a chair. I watch him pull the knot out of his bowtie and my fingers tingle, eager to help him, aching to loosen his collar. He rolls up his crisp white sleeves methodically, baring his forearms, then picks up the supplies. He follows me as I lead him to my bathroom.
But the route necessitates traversing my bedroom, an inner sanctuary few men have ever breached. I glance at my unkempt, unmade bed. I’ve never understood the point of making my bed in the morning when I’m just going to sleep in it again at night. Tucking in sheets and pulling up the comforter is like perpetrating a lie – pretending that life is neat and orderly when reality is usually rumpled sheets and skewed pillows.
And that piece of furniture is messy - it makes life messy. It’s too easy to imagine my body in that bed, rolling in the sheets, arching my spine in ecstasy. It’s even easier to imagine Clark in that bed rolling in those sheets with me. But we only turned our partnership into a more fully realized partnership ten minutes ago and the fallout from that will probably be messy enough as it is.
I catch his studious avoidance of my bed; his eyes pointedly look anywhere else. He must be able to sense temptation, because after we kissed and confessed and turned partners into partners, we leaned against each other and it seemed like we were about to fall into the soft sheets. But he resisted temptation and left my bedroom, determined to find the solution to my platinum disaster – giving his brain a task to focus on, because letting it wander could lead too easily to messy furniture.
I flip on the bathroom light switch and bathe the tile in harsh fluorescent lighting. My tragically blonde hair reflects in the mirror and I think it looks even worse than it did in the soft ambient lighting of the other room. It’s brassy and uneven and unflattering set against my dark eyebrows and light skin. “Ugh,” I say in disgust. I grab a wastebasket and swipe away the used remnants of my embarrassing attempt to prove a point to Clark that never needed proving.
Clark reaches around me and sets his supplies down on the counter, replacing old with new, clearing away the memory of failure and promising a hopeful future. He stands behind me and pushes his hands into my hair, slowly pulling on sections as he examines the damage I’ve done. I watch his progress in the mirror as he fingers the strands and works out a strategy. And then his eyes shift and meet mine in the reflection.
“We can fix this,” he says for the second time in ten minutes and I believe him – I want to believe him. He’s supremely confident, or well-practiced in projecting supreme confidence, almost as if he’s used to succeeding in whatever he sets out to do. It’s an odd contrast to the modesty he usually displays, the ingrained polite deference to others, the downplaying of his own abilities. He’s incapable of vanity, content to follow rather than lead – at least that’s what he’d have people believe. But he’s always shown me a layer beneath his mild manners. Cocky smiles, cheeky remarks – constantly directed at me but carefully hidden from everyone else.
And it makes me feel special, worthy of being teased and taunted, mocked and rebuked. That for me, he lowers his shield and reveals the less polite, less deferent, less perfect man he really is. He’s done it since we became partners, and now that we’re more fully realized partners, maybe he’ll do it more. Maybe he’ll be worthy of me by matching me flaw for flaw.
Then his eyes narrow playfully and he says, “Maybe you don’t want to fix it after all.” He lingers behind me and toys with a strand of my hair, tucking it behind my ear, exposing the right side of my neck. I watch him in the mirror and his eyes are locked with mine as he rests his chin on my shoulder. His arms wrap around me possessively; he locks his fingers together and hugs them against my belly. My hands cover his, seemingly of their own volition, and I smile at how natural it feels to place them there.
He glances at the platinum reflection in the mirror. “I think it’s growing on me. You were right, Lois. I have a thing for blondes.”
His tone lacks all sincerity, but he should know better than to joke about a sensitive subject. I bring my arm back sharply and elbow him in the ribs and he laughs like I tickled him instead of taking a jab. “I will kill you in your sleep.”
His eyes widen and his hands hug slightly harder against the flat plane of my stomach. And the tease reappears. “Oh, so you’re inviting me to stay over?”
My jaw falls slightly open because I’m shocked by the answer I hear in my head. I close my lips firmly, carefully protecting the secret.
The answer should be no, because it’s always no, or at least it has been since the comers and goers caused me to remove the other choice from the realm of possibility. The answer is always no because my couch is uncomfortable and he’s too much of a gentleman to assume I’d imply a more comfortable solution. The answer is no because we’re never in this apartment when the suggestion is made – we’re always in the opposite apartment, with the comfortable couch, where the default answer is the other choice.
But the protocols of partnership demand an answer. And I use my mistake as an excuse to make another. “I’m sure every blonde bimbo you’ve ever laid your hands on has said yes.”
The corner of his lip pulls upward and he scoffs as he runs his fingers through my hair once again and looks back into my reflected eyes. “Yeah, every one of them.”
And I selfishly hate them, every one of his comers and goers, because they’ve had what is mine, what should be mine, what has always been mine. I’m jealous of the untold number of partners who have shared his byline. Because “Lois Lane and Clark Kent” is the default, and it always has been – an idealized form held in stasis, waiting to be brought into reality.
I grab the neutral brown hair dye, twist away from his loose embrace, and shove the box into his chest. “You need a stronger challenge.”
He catches the box, then leaves the bathroom, and his playful voice floats behind him. “Lois Lane, determined to prove that brunettes have less fun.”
And I smile wickedly at his retreating form. Because I know how to have fun.
He returns with a chair and drapes a rag over the fabric seat. He bows dramatically, flaring his hand through the air. “Sil vous plait, mademoiselle.”
I roll my eyes at his French, dismissing his mastery of languages as if it were unimpressive. He doesn’t need me to stroke his ego. I sit and watch him read the directions on the box. He mixes the dye, carefully following every instruction, silently determined to make this work. And I believe that it will, because Clark can make anything happen.
He turns his head and smiles as he finishes his preparation. “You ready?” he asks with amusement, as if this weren’t a life or death situation.
I grin and stand up. “Yeah, I am. But you’re not.” I skim my fingers over the collar of his formal dress shirt. “This is going to be a mess. You should take off your shirt.”
He tugs at the collar as if the garment is too tight. “It’ll be fine,” he lies.
I move my fingers to the delicate button at his throat. “Look at the mess I made the first time.” I nod my head towards my dirty sink basin and heaping trash can. “Trust me, you won’t do any better.” And I unbutton the collar, because I know how to have fun.
I watch his throat swallow air. “Okay.” The word is said casually, as if Clark needs to pretend that standing half-naked in front of me is a casual thing. As if he’s done it hundreds of times before. But we both know it’s only happened once. His fingers unbutton the second fastening and exposes an inch of golden tan skin. My fingers respond by slipping the next button out of place and my mind follows the memory of one wet drop of water sliding over that smooth skin in the Apollo Hotel. Then his fingers find the last button, releasing his sculpted chest from the crisp white cotton.
I know he’s looking down at me as he rolls his shoulders and slips the material off his arms, catching the shirt before it falls to the floor. But I’m looking at his manly chest, at his perfectly defined abs, at his solidly built arms, and I think he should put his shirt back on because I don’t know how to have fun, because it’s been too long since I’ve had fun. Because I’m doomed to have platinum blonde hair for the foreseeable future if I act on the primal response my body is urging me towards.
So instead, I take the shirt from him and leave to find a hanger for it, needing the space and time it takes to care for the garment in order to regain a measure of control.
To be continued...
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