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

A/N: Just a reminder * indicates continuation of the same scene as before, but that the POV has changed to another character. *** indicates a scene break. Italics can indicate inner thoughts, foreign language, or emphasis in dialogue.

Where we left Wrong Clark in Part 209…

For as long as he could remember, Clark had dreamed of a future where he was a father. Not just because he was the last son of Krypton, but because he had always wanted to have a brother or sister in whom he could confide and with whom he could share his life. While he loved his folks, growing up an only child had been lonely. After they were gone, he had no one.

“I never thought I’d have kids,” Lois continued. “My parents were no great example and I hated being a kid. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want one. They’re dirty, smelly, money sucking, noise making, time hogging, sleep-depriving, career-killing creatures. Anyway, I was sure I’d be a train wreck as a mom.” She held up her hand to stop the reassuring words on the tip of his tongue from emerging. “Then, last year, something changed and becoming a mother didn’t seem so scary anymore.”

“What changed?” he asked.

“You.” She smiled.

“You mean, you met Superman?” he wondered. She hadn’t known his secret until this year.

Lois stopped. “No, Clark. Even after I met Superman, kids weren’t on the radar.” She took both his hands in hers. “I fell in love with you. Never had anyone ever loved me so unconditionally before.” She reached up and caressed his cheek. “Never had I realized that I had the capacity to love so much.”

This time, the floating feeling was literal and he had to stop himself from taking Lois into the clouds. Instead, he pressed his lips to hers.

“I love you, too, minha.”

“I know,” Lois said with a chuckle, patting his cheek. “There’s just something about you, Clark Kent, that makes me imagine having a babe in my arms, whom I love more than life itself.” She drew her hand down from his cheek with a sigh as she continued to gaze into his eyes. “Now, there’s something nobody would have believed a year ago.”

Clark grinned. “I would’ve.”

“In your dreams!” Her laugh became contagious.

“And what good dreams they were, Lois,” he replied with a wink.

She nudged him and he wrapped his arm about her shoulders as they continued down the street.

Lois loved him. Lois wanted to have his baby.

Thank goodness ‘not right now’. It would give him time to figure out exactly what to do about that.

Another strange thought crossed his mind. If Cat made one, and Jimmy made two, which one of his friends would be the third to fall in love at first sight, get married, and begin starting a family… not necessarily in that order?

Lois’s loving gaze brushed that conundrum away. Perhaps it was merely a coincidence, after all.

***

Part 210

******************
Breaching the Fortress
*******************

Lois checked how she looked in Clark’s bathroom mirror one last time. Glancing down at her plaid knee-length Superman nightshirt, she was beginning to feel as if she had chosen the wrong pajamas for the occasion. She took a deep breath and exhaled.

She could do this.

Opening the door, Lois headed out to the main room of Clark’s apartment where she could hear him preparing tea.

“I want to thank you again for letting me stay the night,” she said. “Since you told me that Kyle Griffin was up for parole, I just haven’t felt like being alone.”

It was bad enough when one psychopath had it in for her, but add in a second…

Clark smiled reassuringly as he brought two mugs of tea to the coffee table. “When you mentioned him during our hostage crisis at the Planet last spring, I decided I should check up on him and see how old Kyle Griffin was doing.”

“The last thing we need right now is for Griffin to be released from prison without my knowledge and come after me. His threats against me when he was arrested, during his trial, and after his conviction, were quite adamant,” Lois said, nudging her thick ‘G’ file of angry letters and death threats aside as she picked up her mug of tea. Because of Griffin, the letter ‘G’ had received a file all of its own. “I can imagine through what lengths he’d go just to torture me.” She patted Clark’s knee. “Showing up to his parole hearing – and I still cannot believe that I wasn’t alerted – is just what I need to put those demons in their proper place.” Behind bars.

Clark picked up her file and moved it aside, revealing a notepad. “I spoke to a Mick Barrows, who shared a cell with Griffin while they were at San Quentin. When I asked him if Griffin seemed mentally stable or was ready to be a productive member of society, Barrows launched into a long tale of Griffin’s obsession with one Ms. Lois Lane and what he planned to do with you and the Daily Planet once they let him out. All this was without me even mentioning your name.”

Lois gave an involuntary shudder and covered it up by taking a sip of her tea.

“Then he said to make sure that his name was kept off the record, because Griffin was the type to retaliate against him.” Clark picked up his notepad and tapped his pencil against it as he leaned back upon a pile of pillows and blankets he had brought out for his guest.

That only goaded Lois into recalling her real reason for asking to spend the night at Clark’s apartment.

“I spoke to the parole board. Guess who was in charge of Kyle Griffin’s pysch evaluation this past summer,” he went on.

“Who?” Lois asked.

“Arianna Carlin.”

“No!” she gasped. Then, she shook her head in disbelief. “Is that just a coincidence or do all investigations lead back to Luthor?”

“Well, she did pass Griffin with flying colors,” Clark replied with a knowing look.

Lois couldn’t stop herself from grinning into her tea. “And here I thought only you did that.”

His tea hardly paused on its way to his lips. “I do it best.”

She set down her mug and snuggled up against his chest. “That you do,” she agreed and tilted her head to give him a kiss.

“Ms. Lane, are you trying to distract me?” he asked.

“Depends,” she murmured between kisses, “on whether or not I’m successful.”

His hand, holding the notepad, wrapped tightly around her waist as he leaned forward far enough to set down his mug of tea. The notepad and pencil he dropped to the floor. “You, minha, are highly distracting.”

She grinned against his lips. “I try my best.”

“There is no try with you, Lois, only do,” he replied.

This phrase sounded vaguely familiar, but as Clark’s lips pressed onto hers, these thoughts were brushed out of her mind. She ran her fingers down the sides of his chest as he shifted her position so that she was lying down on his couch with him on top.

Lois’s fingers played with the hem of his T-shirt, brushing his skin.

“Mmmmm,” he murmured in appreciation. “Are you trying to seduce me, Ms. Lane?”

Depends, Lois thought, on whether I’m successful.

“Do you know what seeing you with my family’s crest on your chest does to me?” he continued when she hadn’t vocally responded.

She had forgotten that the ‘S’ symbol was also his family’s crest. Not actually forgotten forgotten, more let it slip her mind.

A bolt of panic spread through her. Was he merely flirting or did her wearing it mean something more to him? On Krypton, would wearing Clark’s crest betroth them in some way as wearing an engagement ring did on Earth? It would explain why he felt so uncomfortable about his crest becoming Superman’s logo when he first arrived. How disconcerting it must have been for him to see the young and the old alike, not to mention both women and men, wearing his family’s crest.

Lois scooted out from under Clark, landing with a thud on the floor. She pulled his notepad and pencil out from underneath her and set them back on his coffee table. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” she said, grabbing the hem of her nightshirt. “I’ll just…”

“No!”

“It’s okay,” she reassured him, pulling it over her head.

*

Clark heard the nightshirt fall to the ground.

“No, it’s not,” he replied from where he was standing in his kitchen. He had placed both hands over his eyes.

Clark knew that he was showing his gentlemanly hick side, but he also knew what his resistance level would be should he actually see – live and in person – a naked Lois Lane in his apartment. He tried fruitlessly to push that image of how she would look from his mind. He was ever so glad that he chose the sweatpants to sleep in tonight, instead of his usual sleep shorts.

Therefore, he wasn’t surprised when he heard her cross her arms in annoyance. “Chuck, put down your hands.”

How could she be standing so calmly and nakedly in his living room?

“Lois, I… I… can’t.”

“You can.”

Hesitantly, he dropped his hands, but his eyes remained firmly shut.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he heard Lois murmur under her breath. “Clark, raise your eyelids.”

“Lois, please put your shirt on first,” he pleaded.

“I did.”

“I didn’t hear anything,” he countered.

“Clark, trust me.”

Grudgingly, he forced the muscles around his eyes to relax and open. “You’re… you’re…” His jaw fell open.

“Wearing a tank top and shorts? Yes,” she replied.

The low cut black tank top was as tight on her as his uniform was on him. It hugged her curves in all the right places, leaving little to his imagination. And those bottoms were to shorts as a necklace was to a shirt. Not even close.

“I thought that you weren’t… um…” he sputtered, unable to concentrate properly.

“Wearing anything under my nightshirt? I got that memo. Thanks,” Lois said wryly. “I became used to sleeping like this on the space station. It’s quite comfortable. However, for tonight, I decided that it might be a tad revealing, so I foolishly brought along my Superman nightshirt as a robe of sorts.”

Clark swallowed. “It wasn’t foolish. You looked good.”

“So good that you bolted to the safety of your kitchen?” Lois replied. She sat down on the couch and patted the cushion next to her. “Let’s talk about this.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, returning to the couch.

“I know, but since we’ve gone further than a little under the shirt action, don’t you think your reaction was a tad extreme?”

“Why don’t you put your nightshirt back on?” he suggested, hoping she didn’t hear his voice crack.

“Just because I’m wearing your symbol doesn’t mean we’re engaged…” Lois teased, winking at him. She bent over and picked up her nightshirt from the floor, giving him a peek-a-boo glance at the area above the top of her thighs from under her boxer shorts.

Clark sucked in a deep breath and shifted his gaze upwards towards the ceiling, placing his hands on his knees to stop himself from doing something they both might regret.

“I wouldn’t want you to think I’m pressuring you,” she went on.

“No pressure,” he stated, trying to keep his voice even as he exhaled. “You do realize that I do want you… er… love you, Lois.”

He caught a glimpse of her ‘gotcha’ smile. When her face re-emerged from the neck hole of her Superman nightshirt, the smile was gone. “Let’s talk about that,” she said.

“Our love?” he asked with little hope.

Lois leaned back on the couch next to him and took hold of his hand. “You wanting me.”

His spine stiffened and his ears automatically searched the city for rescue calls.

“Anything?”

Clark’s gaze returned to Lois and he realized that she had read his body language. He smiled apologetically. “Nothing.” Darn.

“Good.” Her thumb started massaging the back of his hand. “I’d hate for us to be interrupted.”

“Me, too.” That was the truth. He preferred it when people weren’t hurt, especially Lois by his sudden disappearances.

“I’m not going anywhere,” she said softly.

In other words, there was nowhere he could run or fly off to. They were having this conversation before Superman was needed or after. He couldn’t postpone it any longer. Dread, fear, panic all started to bubble in his stomach.

“Neither am I,” he said. He decided to get on the offensive and start the ball rolling. “Have I ever given you reason to doubt my affections?”

“No, not until recently,” she replied.

His brow furrowed. How recently? Hadn’t they just been making out on his couch?

She moved slightly towards him as she continued, “Since you were Lex’s prisoner.”

“Oh.”

*

“Can you tell me how he captured you?” Lois asked, inwardly wincing at her word choice. “Surprised you?”

Clark glanced down at a small spot on his couch. “You,” he whispered. “Your voice, actually.” Clark let go of her hand and rubbed the stain with his thumb. “Luthor recorded your voice. I thought you were in trouble, arguing with him. I rushed in to stop him when he slapped you across the face and…” His voice faded. “Not you. Mrs. Cox, in fact, wearing some sort of mask of your face. By the time I realized the truth, it was too late. She had on…” He waved his hand towards his chest, still unable to look Lois in the eye. “— a Kryptonite pendant.”

Lois set her hand on his to stop him from wearing the fabric thin where he was rubbing the spot on his couch.

“So, he knows about us?” she asked.

“Clearly. Well, everyone knows about us, now,” Clark said, bringing a momentary smile to his lips. “But he knows about Superman’s obsession with you.”

Lois raised an eyebrow. “Oh, obsessed with me, are you?”

Clark leaned back. “Me? Nah. Superman, on the other hand, can’t resist you.”

“Must be because Superman almost killed him after he shot me,” she theorized.

He grimaced. “All those times I told you that it wasn’t safe for you and Superman to have a relationship, and I make a stupid knee-jerk mistake like that.” He shook his head. “I wish planning was my strong suit, instead of one of my weaknesses.”

Lois patted his knee. “Well, now that I know, we can work together at showing the world how uninterested Superman is in Lois Lane,” she said.

“I don’t know if I’m that good of an actor,” Clark admitted.

“Most everyone you know thinks that you’re two people, Clark. Give yourself some credit.”

He looked deeply into her eyes, lifting his hand to caress her cheek. If he had harbored any doubts on Carlos’s identity as Lois’s born-again soul mate, those doubts would now be gone. However hard she tried to repress it, a part of her saw the good in people as Padre Carlos did. It was one of the things that he loved most about her. She had always seen the good in him, even when Clark couldn’t see it himself.

“Then what happened?” she asked.

For a split second, he had no idea to what she was referring. Then he realized that she was still determined to find out what happened at Luthor’s. His hand dropped from her cheek and he tried to cover his shock by moving it to pick up his mug of tea again.

“I’m not sure, really,” he admitted, pretending to blow on his tea. It was no longer hot, but he didn’t feel comfortable looking Lois in the eye while answering these questions. “He kicked me, I believe. No, Mrs. Cox did, knocking me to the floor. I awoke shortly thereafter to hear them talking. Mrs. Cox said something about Luthor hitting me in the head with the hilt of his sword.” Clark shrugged. “The pain was so intense I must have blacked out.”

Lois rested her hand on his arm. “Better the hilt than the sharp end.”

“He didn’t want Superman dead,” Clark went on, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“Oh, Clark,” she murmured, but not for his sarcastic tone.

He turned to look at her more directly just in time to see her wince in pain. Conflict seeped into her expression and he could tell that weight of his experience had made her speechless.

“I’m fine,” he reassured her, taking hold of her hand.

She moved closer to him and leaned her head against his shoulder, resting her hand on his chest. “No, you’re not.”

“I mean I’m alive.”

He heard her take a shuddering breath. “You could’ve been killed.”

Clark kissed her forehead. “Weren’t you the one who told me to stop living in the past, stop fearing what could’ve happened?”

“Can I have a minute to appreciate the fact that you survived that monster?” she asked.

He rested his head against hers. “You can have two.”

She tilted her chin upwards and kissed him tenderly. “I love you, Clark.”

His echoed response was drowned out by her passionate continuation of their kiss. Before he knew it, she had slipped onto his lap and pushed the bedding piled behind him to the floor as she shifted her position so that their chests pressed against one another. After a while, her hands danced down his back and started tugging on the hem of his t-shirt. Clark set his hands on hers, halting this action.

“I’m… uh… not comfortable with that, Lois,” he said.

“Why? I don’t see how you having your shirt off would break your abstinence vow,” Lois replied.

Clark could. First, his shirt. Then hers. It would just progress from there, until they reached the point of no return. It was especially hard for him to stop, because the mere thought of Lois’s hands and lips against his bare skin made him shudder with anticipation. So, it was best if it never started.

“You want this,” she said, almost as if reading his thoughts.

“That has never been at issue, minha.”

It wasn’t that he couldn’t stop himself, especially if she said ‘no’ at any point. It was the fact that he knew she never would. He wanted too much to feel that connection with Lois that he was sure intimacy would bring them. Now, that she had given him reasons to doubt Herb’s theory regarding whether the curse would affect them, he didn’t know if he could stop himself if they ever got to that point of no return and Lois was urging him onwards. Therefore, he couldn’t allow them ever to reach any of the points prior to that point.

Actually, that wasn’t the truth either. No matter how much he desperately wanted to be intimate with Lois someday, he knew it would never happen. Not tonight, at least. Not only because of the vow that he had made. Nor was it because he knew that their discussion of what had happened in the cage had brought those demons to the surface again and he was afraid of an inadvertent adverse reaction. Clark would make sure nothing happened until he warned Lois of the possible dire consequences that decision could take. It wasn’t a choice he wanted her to make during the heat of the moment. He would insist that Lois take a fair amount of time to consider the ramifications, risks, weighing the pro verses con, before making any decision. Days. Weeks, even. He was willing to wait forever.

Clark recalled Trask implying that Superman could have given Lois, had they been intimate back during that first meeting, some kind of alien sexually transmitted disease. Ironic how close to the truth Trask had been.

Lois Lane, sex with Superman could be fatal for you.

Clark couldn’t say that. What could he say? A reliable source informed me that because we love each other so much, if we go there one of us would die.

Lois was a rational person. She didn’t believe in curses. She certainly wouldn’t believe him if he told her that his “reliable source” was H.G. Wells, the famous and long dead sci-fi writer, himself. She would think that Clark was the biggest slimeball in this and any other universe and that he had only been yanking her chain for kicks. She would think that he didn’t really love her. Worst of all, she would think that he had broken his pact not to lie to her any longer.

The sad part was that Clark didn’t have a way to convince her that he was telling the truth. He had no proof that he had traveled through time. He had no proof that he came from an alternate dimension. She would have to continue to take Clark’s word on faith. Unfortunately, for Lois, that gulf was too large.

Clark closed his eyes. God, he hated himself.

“All right,” she conceded, slipping from his lap and back onto the couch next to him.

It felt as if all of Clark’s cells screamed out for the loss and willed his muscles to pull her back into his arms. Thankfully, his determination was stronger than his body’s desires at that moment.

Lois picked up her tea, took a sip, and then grimaced. Holding out her mug towards him, she asked, “Could you?”

A couple of heat blasts later, Lois lifted her steaming mug back to her lips with satisfaction. “What happened next?”

His brow furrowed again. “Excuse me?”

“After you blacked out. What happened?” she asked, peering at him over her mug of tea.

“Oh… um…” Clark thought for a moment. “I awoke some time later, I don’t know how much, on the floor of his wine cellar.”

“Wine cellar?” Lois sputtered in what appeared to be surprise. “Are you sure?”

“The cold concrete floor, huge barrels of wine, and racks of bottles kind of gave it away,” he replied, trying not to sound bitter at her disbelief. He didn’t know if he succeeded. He exhaled slowly a long deep breath, reminding himself that Lois was hearing all of this for the first time and that she was merely verifying facts. “Luthor had locked me in a cage. My head and shoulder ached, my wrists were raw from rope burns, I believe, and I was wet. He threw a bucket of water on me to wake me.”

“Oh, Clark,” she murmured, reaching for his hand. Horror on his behalf shined in her eyes. “Do you think…?” She shook her head. “No. Never mind. I don’t…”

“What?” He had never seen Lois unable to ask a question before.

She bit her lips and then plunged forward, “What did Luthor do to you while you were unconscious?”

Clark’s eyes widened at this thought. He honestly hadn’t thought about it. Hesitantly, he answered, “Dragged me down from his office. My injuries could have come from a fall from the rock stairs leading down into the cellar.”

Lois sighed with relief. She clearly had thought Luthor capable of worse actions than Clark had surmised. Actually, they both knew that to be true. What tortures had she imagined? Before these fears could overtake his mind, Clark pushed them away. He didn’t want his mind to think of the worst Luthor could do. That man had done plenty to Superman and to Clark, enough to last him a lifetime.

“Had you recovered from the Kryptonite exposure?” she asked.

“In some respects,” he admitted. “I mean, my injuries still hurt, so my super healing hadn’t kicked in, but the intense pain of Mrs. Cox’s Kryptonite pendant was gone.”

“So, the only reason you couldn’t break out of this cage was because you didn’t have your strength back yet to bend the bars?”

“Yes, and no…”

Lois stared at him, apparently waiting for him to clarify this answer.

Suddenly, Clark didn’t feel able to talk about that day any longer. They were getting too close to the uncomfortable truth. “You hungry? I feel like eating some pizza. Do you feel like some pizza?” He stood up. “I could get us some pizza. I know a great pizza joint.”

She touched his arm, and he realized he must have been rambling. She must’ve known that he didn’t want to go on with his story.

However, he couldn’t stop himself. “What kind of pizza do you like?”

“You know what kind of pizza I like, Clark,” she finally said, letting go of his arm. “Or should I call you Signore Carlo?”

Just the thought of their secret pizza dates calmed Clark and brought an unbidden smile to his lips. “Of course. Would you like some cannoli?” he asked.

She raised her brow.

“With crema or cioccolato?” he asked.

Lois merely shook her head in disbelief that he had to ask.

“Some of each then,” Clark said with a nod. Bending down, he placed a soft kiss on her lips before racing off through his patio door at super speed and leaping into the sky.

The night air would help cool his fears.

***End of Part 210***

Part 211

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