Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhere we left Lois and Clark in Part 207…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?***
Part 208***********
Celebrations
***********“You evil, evil man,” Lois murmured from against Clark’s chest.
He smiled, knowing exactly where this conversation would head next.
“How dare you introduce me to another delicious Italian dessert,” she went on. “Now, when I pass that Italian bakery over on Third…”
“
Pasticceria,” he corrected.
“What?”
“In Italian, a shop that sells baked goods is
pasticceria, unless its bread, then it’s
panetteria,” Clark explained, as they landed in a deserted alley a couple of blocks down from her apartment. He set Lois on her feet and spun back into his business suit. “If they bake bread and pastries and sell them with coffee, it could be called a
panificio-pasticceria-panetteria-caffetteria or a
panificio-pasticceria-panetteria-ristorante.”
“Anyway… Now, I won’t know if I should order cannolis or tiramisu. I mean, I’ve tried tiramisu before…
every restaurant in Metropolis was serving it after ‘Sleepless in Seattle’ came out last year… but it didn’t taste like
that.” Lois nudged his shoulder. “How do you know about these wonderful desserts if you don’t like sweets?”
He shrugged. “I have good hearing.”
“I still think you should have tried at least a bite,” she said, adjusting the shawl around her shoulders.
Oh, please. Clark tried to hide his scoff with a cough. “You didn’t look as if you wanted to share,” he said with more diplomacy than his thoughts.
“I offered. I mean, come on, Clark, you were eating fruitcake for heaven’s sake!”
“I happen to like fruitcake,” he replied, draping his arm over her shoulders to warm her up. He hoped she hadn’t gotten cold on their flight.
She returned his scoffing expression. “Nobody likes fruitcake, Clark.”
“Then why did they have it on the menu?”
“My tiramisu was to-die-for better,” she said, not acknowledging his point. “You should have tried it.”
“Okay, you win!” he said, pulling her to his chest. He started by nibbling on her top lip before gradually deepening the kiss. He could taste a hint of her Pinot Grigio, a nuance of chocolate, a dollop of cream, and a whisper of espresso. “Mmmm,” he murmured. “You’re right. That does taste good.”
He expected Lois to slap his chest and storm off for that remark. Instead her hand, which had been sitting on his chest for their kiss, danced under his jacket and around to his back. Her lips returned to his, opening wider to invite him in. Clark could feel a familiar tingling in his toes that seemed to develop whenever they kissed.
Lois sighed, moving back only a fraction of an inch to look him in the eye. “You’re distracted.”
“You do have that effect on me,” he admitted.
Her brow furrowed. “No, I meant from the kiss.”
“Oh.” He could feel the heat rising in his cheeks as he moved his mouth to her ear, where he said softly, “I have to consciously remember to not rise out of my shoes when you do that.”
Clark caught her triumphant grin as her arm around his waist tightened and propelled him forward. “Then, we should explore that development further in a more private locale.”
He couldn’t agree more.
“Anyway, you still haven’t given me my gift.”
“Oh, right. Well, it’s just a little something I saw and thought you might like,” he said. Perry’s warning echoed in his thoughts.
“I’m sure I’ll love it,” she said.
Clark wasn’t as sure.
“Can I wear it?” she probed.
“What is this? Twenty questions? You’ll have to wait,” he said. He focused his gaze on the traffic light and the blinking red person on the pedestrian sign, slowing their gait.
Lois pouted. “Spoilsport.”
What kind of wearable item was she thinking of, he wondered. Clothing? He swallowed as his mind automatically moved to underclothing. She had mentioned that box in her underwear drawer, implying that it was something sexy to wear. Had she bought
him lingerie for his birthday? He shook his head. No, he couldn’t picture that. She must have meant that she bought herself lingerie to wear for him.
A thousand possibilities swirled at lightning fast speed through his mind before he shoved them away.
Was
that what she was expecting? After he specifically told her the previous day that he wasn’t ready to move their relationship in that direction and that he would be waiting until marriage? Her tone certainly hadn’t suggested ‘dress’ or ‘shirt’. No, no. Clothing wasn’t an appropriate gift – it was either too boring or too exciting. Anyway, sexy lingerie for her birthday wasn’t as much of a gift for her as it would be for him.
On the other hand, was she implying jewelry? Earrings? A necklace? He gulped. A ring? An engagement ring? No, she couldn’t be anticipating that.
He glanced at Lois, but her gaze wasn’t on him as she snuggled against his chest.
Anyway, if…
when he proposed to Lois again, he would make it special.
Lana had once griped about a friend of hers whose boyfriend had proposed on Valentine’s Day. She had said it was tacky and just showed the man was a cheapskate, because he didn’t want to buy her a gift for Valentine’s Day as well. Clark had never forgotten that. While he hadn’t liked Lana’s analysis of the man’s intentions, which Clark was certain hadn’t even broached on saving himself a purchase of a gift for his intended, her reasoning was sound. A proposal should be special in and of itself. It shouldn’t be on top of another holiday, such as a birthday or Christmas. A proposal of marriage should be all about a man showing how important the woman was to him.
Clark’s eyes widened.
Why am I thinking about this?He swallowed.
I am NOT thinking about this, he reminded himself with a nod.
It’s too soon.Lois knew this. She had even said so herself the previous day. They needed distance from her faux Luthor wedding. Additionally, it needed to be special, especially after the fiasco that was his first proposal. However, none of this was worth thinking at the moment because he was nowhere near ready to make that step.
Clark glanced up to Lois’s corner apartment across the street.
Underwear drawer…He pulled his gaze away and tapped his glasses, making sure they were securely in place.
No peeking was better, right?
Not knowing what he was missing was better, right?
Right.
Then, how come he still wanted to know what was in the box?
***
Lois pulled her keys out of her purse and handed them to Clark, for no better reason than with his speed they could enter her apartment more quickly. Sure enough, ten seconds later, they were stepping into her apartment.
Thankfully, no one jumped out from behind her couch to yell ‘surprise!’
There were much more important things to do than celebrate her birthday. With one leap into the air, Lois pushed her apartment door closed, kicked off her shoes, and landed in Clark’s arms, knocking them both onto her couch.
“Whoa there, Lois. What are…?” Clark began with a chuckle. She didn’t let him finish.
Trying to recall how exactly she had kissed him outside, Lois wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed her lips to his. First, she licked his top lip, then they went ten rounds tongue wrestling, and finally she pulled his bottom lip into her mouth and sucked.
Nothing seemed to work. They were still firmly planted on her couch.
She sat up and ripped off her purse and shawl, tossing them onto her coffee table. As Clark attempted to sit up as well, she pushed him back down. Before she was able to lock her lips to his again, he formed a T with his hands between them.
“Time out!” he called.
Lois froze. “What?”
“Time out,” he repeated, scooting out from under her and sitting up. “I need to catch my breath.”
“Liar.”
To spite her, he took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“Are you done?” she asked.
His hands formed a T again. “What’s going on?”
How dense was this guy? “I’m kissing you… or I
was before you interrupted me.”
“Lois, you seem a bit… distracted.”
Her brow furrowed with annoyance. “That’s because you’re distracting me.”
“Let me rephrase that.” He paused to take another slow breath. “You're acting a bit… methodical.”
“Meth…
Methodical?” she echoed, before her arms crossed and she grumbled, “Wow. You really know how to knock the romance out of an evening.”
“That’s not… Lois, it wasn’t as if I didn’t…”
“You like methodical, then?” Lois asked.
Clark held up his hands. “No, Lois. I mean I did…”
“
But?” she practically growled.
“You seemed very intense… as if you were on some sort of mission.”
He didn’t just say that, did he?
“It just didn’t seem natural,” he continued. “It wasn’t you. It seemed forced. Is everything okay?”
“No,” she said, rising to her feet. “My boyfriend just accused me of forcing myself on him.”
Clark groaned. “No, Lois, I didn’t. That’s not what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Never mind. Forget it. How about I go get your gift?”
Lois crossed her arms again, saying flatly, “Whatever.” How could he accuse her of manipulating their kisses? Her brow furrowed. “Did you just say go
get my gift? You didn’t bring it with you?”
Clark glanced down at his shoes before straightening up to look her in the eye. “Yes,
minha, I did.”
She tilted her head and stared quizzically at him. “You did bring it with you?”
“No,” he said, wincing. “I meant ‘yes,’ I did say that ‘no’ I didn’t bring the gift with me. I didn’t want to carry it all night.”
“Normally, I would guess that it weighs a lot but that’s not really a factor here, is it?” she said, her voice still terse.
Methodical? Her fat fanny! Her kisses weren’t methodical.
“Lois, I’m not telling you what it is,” Clark replied, moving towards the windows.
She groaned. Why couldn’t he give her one little hint, such as a description of the thing?
“I’ll be right back,” he promised, spinning into his uniform and opening the window.
“Yeah. Like I haven’t heard that one before,” she grumbled.
Clark paused, his hand on the edge of the window. “I don’t have to leave. I can just give you the gift tomorrow at the office, if you’d rather.”
She waved him off, allowing him to go retrieve her gift. He shot her a beaming smile before disappearing through the window.
He did not just win! How dare he think that.
Lois paced her living room.
Methodical. Ha! She had just been trying to see what it took to make him float off the ground. How was that being methodical? Apparently, he had been lying about being diverted by her kisses enough to leave his shoes on the sidewalk earlier. She harrumphed.
Her brow furrowed as another thought came to her. Did Clark need to concentrate to keep his feet on the ground? Was his natural inclination to float in the air, so he needed to focus a part of his brain on mimicking gravity in order to blend in better?
Before she could come up with another plan to test this theory, Clark had returned holding a silver wrapped package.
It was smaller than a breadbox, but definitely bigger than a gift box containing jewelry of any sort. It was too square cube in shape to be clothing or another lava lamp. In fact, it was roughly the size of a small kitchen appliance, which is probably why he hadn’t wanted to carry it around all evening.
“Happy birthday, Lois,” Superman said, handing her the gift before spinning back into his Clark clothes. “I hope you like it.”
Lois sat down on her sofa and proceeded to tear off the bow and wrapping paper until she uncovered a box set of the three Lethal Weapon movies. “I… I ….Don’t know what to say,” she stammered.
Clark sat down next to her. “I know it isn’t the most romantic of gifts, but…”
“How did you know I like Mel Gibson?” she asked.
He shrugged. “You must have mentioned him once or twice.”
“I did?” Lois couldn’t think of one conversation where she would have brought up the action film star in the past year.
“I’m sure you did.” Clark was looking darn right sheepish now.
She gave him her best ‘I know when you’re lying so you better spit out the truth’ expression that she had honed from years of reporting in hopes he might elaborate.
“Okay, okay,” he said, caving. His shoulders slumped. “I cheated.”
“You
what?”
“Cheated,” he repeated. “I suspected you liked these movies because I saw them in your video collection in the future. I’m sorry. That was wrong of me. You’re not her; you’re you. I’ll return them and get you something else.”
He reached for the box set, but she moved it away from his grasp. “Oh, no, you won’t. These are mine!”
“You
like the gift?” he said with surprised skepticism.
“I just didn’t know how you knew that I’d like it,” Lois said, setting her hand down on his and giving it a squeeze.
He smiled tentatively. “I was hoping this was something we could share.”
“You want to spend the evening cuddled up on the couch watching action movies?” She returned his smile and laced his fingers with hers. “That sounds pretty romantic to me.”
“Yeah,” he said, cupping her jaw with his hand and brushing her cheek with his thumb.
“Thank you, Clark,” she whispered, leaning towards him to brush his lips with hers.
The soft kiss turned to two. Two doubled to four. Four grew in intensity until Lois found herself lying on Clark’s chest breathless, wanting nothing more than to spend the evening in his arms, movies or no. She gazed into Clark’s eyes and ran her fingers through his hair.
“I love you,” they said simultaneously and then softly laughed because they had both been thinking the same thing at the same time.
She returned her lips to his, breathing deeply but not touching him. Her eyes closed and before she could move forward that millimeter or two to join them back together, Clark’s impatience folded first. He extended his lips out to whisper a kiss across hers.
A tingling sensation tickled down her spine and out to her limbs, causing her to smile. Each following kiss felt as if Clark were saying he loved her, imprinting his love upon her soul. She opened her mouth and claimed him for herself. A whimpered moan of desire escaped instead. An echo returned it in his deeper tone.
Clark drew back and rested his forehead against hers. He certainly seemed to be breathing as rapidly as she. He swallowed. Then, it felt as if the world tilted, and suddenly Lois found the floor beneath her feet once more. Clark still held her tightly against his chest, his arms encircled around her torso, but they definitely were standing.
“Shall we start with the first one?” he suggested, taking a step back.
Lois swooned as her legs still felt like gelatin.
Clark caught her, returning his arms around her waist. “Whoa, there.”
She raised a hand to her head to counter her slight vertigo. “How… how did we end up on our feet? I don’t recall standing up.”
“I set us on our feet,” he explained.
“But we were lying on the sofa,” she said with a flick of her wrist to said piece of furniture.
He nodded. “Yes.”
She stared at him quizzically.
“And since we had started to float, I turned us and…”
“We were floating?” she asked, immediately feeling stupid for not realizing it. When had that happened?
Clark smiled sheepishly. “I got lost in your kisses,
minha. I’m sorry; I’ll try to…”
“Don’t apologize!” Lois said. “Show me.”
“Huh?”
“Again!”
“What?” He seemed genuinely perplexed.
Lois tugged on her wrists already resting at the base of his neck, drawing him back against her chest. “Float kiss me again. Only this time, I want to feel it.”
“Feel…
what exactly?” Clark asked cautiously.
“Weightless in your arms.”
The sunburst smile radiated throughout his face, especially his eyes, which had never seemed as warm. Lois returned his smile, wishing she could reflect an eighth of its brightness.
“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met,” he murmured.
“Strange. I was thinking the same about you… only about how handsome you are… not as a woman… as a man… because you’re very manly… the manliest man there ever…”
Clark thankfully cut her off by pressing his lips to hers. “We’re floating,” he whispered a moment later.
“Really?” she asked, glancing around. Sure enough, they were hovering a good foot above the floor.
“Lois, we’ve kissed while flying before,” he reminded her.
“This is different,” she said, returning her lips to his.
“How?”
Lois shrugged, unable to find the words to explain it properly. “We have no place to go.”
He chuckled.
“I love that I make you lose touch with gravity.”
“So, this doesn’t make you nervous?”
“No.”
He shifted the angle, so that he was essentially lying on her despite them not being horizontal. She couldn’t feel any difference. It was as if, while in his arms, gravity lost its hold on her.
“You could make love to me five feet above the bed, and I bet I would be thoroughly distracted enough to not even notice,” she dared.
A wicked grin flashed across his face. “That can be…” The grin slipped, and he ran his fingers through her hair. “Don’t tempt me,” he murmured.
Challenge accepted.Lois placed her lips to his. After a minute, she bumped his hips with hers, flipping them over. She wrapped her legs around him, hooking her ankles beneath his butt as she set her hands on his chest. “But I do prefer to be on top.”
“Noted, Ms. Lane,” Clark said, his voice cracking slightly. With a slow pivot, he set his feet on the floor, grasping her underneath her bottom to keep her in the same position. “Shall we watch a movie?”
Lois set down one leg, but leisurely slid the other one down his body until it reached the floor. She saw his eyes darken as they stared into hers.
Point to her.
“That sounds great!” she said, turning abruptly away from him to sit on the couch. She picked up the box set of videos and started to remove the shrink-wrap.
Clark cleared his throat and then came to sit down next to her, after slipping the video into the VCR. Lois set her hand on his thigh as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
She was soooo going to win.
***
“Forgive me, Father, for I’ve sinned.”
“Clark?” returned Padre Carlos’s surprised voice. “Have you converted since we last spoke and given another priest the commission?” Clark could hear the humor in his voice.
Clark set his head against the screen separating them. “I’m been having lustful thoughts about Lois…
all the time,” he went on. “Help me.”
“Marry her and have many babies,” Carlos replied, opening the door of his confessional. “It will make all three of us happy.” When Clark exited his side of the booth, the priest continued, “From your absence, I guess that Lois has returned?” He gestured to the nearest row of pews in the empty church.
Clark sat down, giving enough room for Carlos to join him. Carlos’s hand griped the cane in his hand tightly as he used it to steady his step into the row.
“I’m sorry that…”
Padre Carlos waved away Clark’s excuses and smiled. “A man in love is often distracted.”
“I cannot marry her,” Clark said softly, bowing his head. “You know that.”
“I know that you believe this,” Carlos replied, slipping back into Portuguese. “Is this because of what happened in the cage?”
Clark shrugged. He knew it wasn’t Lois on the videotape that Luthor had shown him, but he was still nervous about moving their intimacy past kissing. He didn’t want an image of what Luthor had done to that poor double to pop into his head while he was with Lois.
How far is too far? Lois’s question had been echoing in his brain for the past few days.
“I heard back from the Vatican, regarding your inquiry,” Carlos said. “They told me to reassure you that reincarnation doesn’t exist; therefore, an eternal curse upon your love is impossible.”
Clark’s expression soured as he raised his eyebrow skeptically.
Despite his slow gait and newly re-grown beard to cover his scars, Carlos was still Clark’s doppelganger. If it had only been the physical resemblance to him, Clark doubted he would have been convinced of Herb’s soul mate theory. Carlos was the Jaguar, a mystical figure who donned a disguise to assist those who would otherwise go without help. His soul was Clark’s soul, once removed.
Carlos wasn’t Clark Kent and he wasn’t from Krypton, yet Clark sensed a kindred with this man that he hadn’t felt since meeting that Clark from the other dimension. He knew they shared something more, something indescribable, something otherworldly… even if the man denied any interest in Lois.
“Pardon me, if I’m still a skeptic,” Clark said.
“As am I,” Carlos replied, referring to his disbelief of Clark’s curse theory. On the other hand, he could’ve been referring possibly Clark’s reincarnation theory. Or both.
“Could you give me some advice on resisting temptation?” Clark asked.
“Avoid women,” Carlos said with a joking smile, as they both knew this to be an impossibility.
“May I ask?” Clark paused. “Other than prayer, what has helped you?”
“Each man must find his own means to stay true to his vow,” Carlos said. “I recommend that you don’t let fear lead you.”
Since his folks had died, fear had always been Clark’s guiding light. Fear of being alone. Fear of being seen. Fear of the unknown. Fear of being discovered. Fear of hurting anyone. Fear of rejection. Fear of loving and being loved. Fear of not having anyone to love. Fear of losing love. Fear of standing on his own two feet. Fear of killing the one person who truly loved him and being alone once more.
“Has something changed within your relationship with Lois to increase these thoughts?” Carlos’s voice brought Clark back to the present.
Clark thought about this. Since Lois had returned from the Space Station, they had not only been working together but also spending their free time with one another. However, Clark knew it had been his conversation with Lois over the past weekend that had begun the latest bout of indecision. He cleared his throat, unsure how to broach such a subject with Padre Carlos. Despite the man having no memories of the life that should have been his, Carlos was still Lois’s true soul mate. Clark stared down at his folded hands, trying to find the words to express what Lois said had transpired between them while he was in the hospital.
He felt Carlos’s hand on his shoulder and glanced up. “What is wrong, Clark?” the priest asked.
“I told Lois that I thought it best if we…um… You know, with our history and everything that I wanted to wait until marriage,” Clark admitted.
“Uh-huh.” Carlos nodded. “And what did Lois think about your curse theory?”
Clark sucked his lips into his mouth. “I thought it best to… well, to keep things simple… so…” He rubbed his forehead.
“Ahhh.” Carlos leaned back. “You didn’t tell her.”
“I made that vow to God and I think I should keep it,” Clark said. Even now, saying this to Carlos, while the words were true, they felt like a lie.
“A good, wise choice for which you should be commended. In this day and age, that is a difficult path for any man to follow,” Carlos said. “However, as I said previously, this vow is easier to keep when one knows it is the right choice. Perhaps you are having difficulties because you went down this path in order to avoid other unpleasant truths.”
“Lois and I may have been… um… intimate,” Clark blurted out in low hiss.
“Pardon?” Carlos’s voice sounded strained.
“It was when I had amnesia, during Nightfall. I… I… I wasn’t myself, incapacitated, and I don’t rightly know,” Clark rushed on, wishing he could stop himself, wishing he hadn’t started down this path. He glanced up from his folded hands to see Padre Carlos staring at him. Clark couldn’t let the man think badly about his soul mate. “I had believed it had all been a dream, a good dream.”
A really, really, really good dream. “But now Lois is saying that it actually happened.”
Carlos still didn’t say anything, but the grip on his cane tightened.
“If it’s true, then the curse may not apply to us,” Clark finally admitted aloud. After months of believing he was cursed, this announcement still sounded like a fantasy.
“God has given you an answer to your prayers,” Carlos said.
“If it is a sign, what does it mean? I feel as if I am being tricked into compliance… as if someone – I don’t mean Lois – will pull the rug out from under my feet at the last second and take this future away from me, again. I don’t know if I could survive that.” Clark closed his eyes and tried to rub the stress from his forehead.
“God’s meaning is for you to interpret,” Carlos replied. “I can guide you, Clark, but the final decision must rest with you.”
Clark’s shoulders sagged. “The universe is testing me. Good things don’t happen to me.”
“No?” Carlos returned. “I disagree.”
Clark raised his gaze.
“You grew into a decent and kind man, despite what life and the universe has thrown at you. You have found a woman to love, who loves you. You have a job, or two, at which you excel and that you enjoy. You have friends who would risk their lives to save yours. Yes, you have struggles, we all do.” Carlos nodded towards his cane. “But many, many good things have happened to you. You, Clark, are truly blessed.”
Clark felt it difficult to see his life in this light, yet despite this, a weight rose off his heart, making it easier to breathe. “Are you always this optimistic?”
Carlos chuckled as if he had heard that critique before. “God has also blessed you with my friendship, or should I say ‘cursed’?” He winked.
Clark returned his smile. They might not be brothers in any sense, but he felt a kinship with this man. “Definitely blessed.”
***End of Part 208*** Part 209 Click
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