Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhere we left off in Part 24 …“I wish…” Superman murmured more to himself than to her. “No, I can’t…”
“You can,” Lois said, kissing his cheek. Once. Twice. Moving slightly closer to his lips each time.
“No,” he said, stepping away, back towards the windows. His longing gaze never left hers as he stepped onto the window frame. “If I allow…”
Allow? There was that word again, just like in her dream. Lois rushed up to the window to watch him go. “You better not send Clark Kent back to kiss me instead,” she murmured under her breath as he zipped into the sky.
A moment later, Superman returned. Confusion, but not jealousy, covered his face as he hovered once more at her window. “Excuse me?”
Lois waved off her words, wishing she hadn’t said them. “Just a dream I had.” She had forgotten about his super hearing.
“Tell me,” he asked with more than just passing interest.
Perhaps she could get him to change his mind about kissing her out of his overabundance of protectiveness.
“You wanted to kiss me, but ‘it wasn’t allowed’,” she said impersonating his deep timbre. “So, you sent Clark to kiss me in your place.”
Superman stared at her as his eyes widened. “You
dreamed about kissing Clark?” A smile burst across his face as he laughed.
“It isn’t that funny. Clark happens to be quite the kisser,” Lois scolded, a part of her still hoping to make him jealous enough to kiss her to prove himself the superior kisser, but her defense of Clark only made him laugh harder. She pressed her lips together in annoyance as she leaned against the window frame. “I may not have lots of experience, but I do dream of men. There was Clark, you, Lex…”
His laughter gone, Superman stepped closer to her. “You dreamed about kissing Lex Luthor?”
“Pshaw!” Lois waved that idea out of range of possibility. “No, he just pulled me away from kissing you.” A naughty thought crossed her mind. “Of course, we
were interrupted.”
A flash of horror crossed Superman’s face so quickly, Lois almost didn’t believe it had happened, when he schooled his features back to normal. “If you ever feel the need to kiss Lex Luthor, Lois, call me instead.”
Uh-huh. Lois shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. Either you’re a part of my life, or you let me live my life as I choose. You don’t get to change the rules, just because you don’t like who’s playing.”
Superman glanced over his shoulder as if he heard something, perhaps someone calling for ‘help’. Convenient. Lois crossed her arms and waited. He caressed her face before placing a light kiss upon her cheek. “Let me get back to you on that,” he replied with a twitch of his head over his shoulder. “I’ve got to go.”
“Go!” she told him, pushing him out the window and watching him blur into the darkness. So, Superman didn’t want her dating Lex Luthor. She could work with that.
***
Part 25*******************
The Non-Relationship*******************
Superman set Lois down on the roof of her apartment building, thankful that the darkness of the evening shadowed them from anyone else’s notice.
“Are you all right?” he asked at the same time she yelled, “What do you think you’re doing?”
He looked at her startled. This wasn’t the appreciation he was expecting. “Rescuing you?” he stated, feeling it had been obvious.
Lois put her hands on her hips. “Well, who asked you to?”
Superman crossed his arms self-consciously, at a loss to her meaning. “Excuse me?”
“I was on the trellis, because I got interrupted while searching the plant manager’s office. I wasn’t in any danger,” she said, pushing on his chest. “As soon as he left I was planning on going back inside. Instead, Superman ‘rescued me’, alerting security to my location. Anything else I would’ve found in the office will be long gone... if I would be able to get back into the office now. Let’s just hope I have something in the documents I had time to scan so that I’ll still be able to salvage an article out of all my work.”
“You could have fallen,” Superman replied. Even to him the words seemed weak.
She pressed her lips together, not accepting his reasoning. “I don’t need to be saved at every moment of every day,” Lois said, putting a finger in his face. “And I didn’t agree to leave a message with Clark every time I was going off on my own so that you could interrupt my work, out of some irrational fear for my mortality.”
“Lois, I…” he started with his apology, or his rationalization, he wasn’t sure which because she interrupted him before he had made up his mind.
“Believe me, Superman, I love that you care so much about my well being, really I do,” she said, setting her hand down on his chest. “But you need to get it through your thick skull that I live a dangerous life. My career isn’t for the faint of heart. I talk to bad guys, seedy characters, politicians, and unsavory types; they are the ones with the information. I go down dark alleys, dig through abandoned warehouses, attend cocktail parties, and break-in to peoples’ offices because that’s where the stories are.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Superman replied, probably better than she realized.
“Do you?” Lois asked. It sounded like she didn’t believe him.
“I do,” he said, setting his hand over hers still resting against his “S” crest. He stepped closer to her. “And you have to understand that sometimes your actions send me into a blind panic over your safety. If anything were to happen to you…”
“Kiss me,” she demanded.
Clark repressed the desire to groan in frustration. He would like nothing better than to kiss her, as himself, but not as this tights-wearing superhero. “Lois, we’ve been over this. I cannot kiss you without starting a series of events that I would rather avoid. Trust me, it’s better this way,” he said.
Lois nodded, not in agreement, but because she had expect him to say this. “And you still won’t tell me what horrible thing will occur if we kiss. Maybe it would help me understand your reticence better.”
“Not horrible, Lois, but preferably avoidable,” he corrected. “Please, just give me some more time.”
“It’s just a kiss,” Lois said.
“It wouldn’t be for me.”
“Would civilization end as we know it?” she asked wryly.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Superman replied, a slight smile brushing his lips.
“Neither one of us would explode or disappear or die should we kiss, would we?”
“I hope not,” he said, and then because she mentioned dying, which reminded him of the Lois from
his dimension who did die, he pulled her into his arms. “If one of us were to die, I would want it to be me.”
“How about we just avoid the whole death scenario entirely?” she suggested into his shoulder, wrapping her arms around him.
“That’s what I’m trying to do, but you keep crawling out windows and hanging off drainpipes,” Superman reminded her.
Lois stiffened and pulled herself out of his arms. “It was a trellis, Superman, and I was perfectly safe.” She started pacing back and forth in front of him on the roof. “How about a new rule? You are no longer allowed to ‘rescue’ me unless my life is in mortal peril, or I call to you specifically to help me, or if I use the code word…” She thought for a moment. “— ‘octopus’.”
Clark crossed his arms and raised a brow. She couldn’t be serious. Did she really expect him to abide by such a rule when her life was in balance? “Lois, if we have to make a rule about rescuing you when your life is in ‘mortal peril’ then it is happening much too often.”
Lois put her hands on her hips and retorted, “This is who I am. Either love me for it, or despite it, or let me be, because I’m not changing for any man, and I refuse to be with any man who requests me to.”
He did love her despite her penchant for getting into trouble, but he knew he could never love her openly as Superman. “And this is who I am, Lois,” he replied. “I cannot look the other way while your life could be in danger.” He took a deep breath. “We are once more at a stalemate. You deserve a man who is able to love all of you, all the time, out in public and in private, no matter what you are doing, and I’m afraid that this one time, this isn’t a job for Superman, even though I wish with all my heart that it could be. You must move on.” Because deep in his heart Clark knew he never would be able to.
Lois threw her arms around him. “And what about you? That doesn’t seem fair to you, to give up your chance at love and happiness because of what others might think or do.”
“It is the life I have chosen as a public hero, Lois, fair or not,” he replied, running his hand over her hair. “Personal sacrifices are part of the job description; I just refuse to let one of them be you.”
“I’ll wait. I’ll be patient. We’ll find a way to work it out. I love you too much,” Lois told him, breaking his heart with each word. He wished he could shake her and get it through
her thick skull that she needed to concentrate on Clark Kent, not Superman, to get what she wanted.
He kissed her hair and whispered, “Goodnight, Lois. Try to be more careful.”
She stepped back and looked at him in the faint moonlight. “Goodnight, Superman.” Then she pointed at him. “Remember, the code word is ‘octopus’.”
*
Lois watched as Superman rose into the air and disappeared into the night as he had done on many an occasion since she had first asked him to kiss her six weeks earlier. No matter how many times they had this argument, it never became easier to say goodbye. Her fear was that one of these times, it would be real.
With a heavy sigh, she finally decided that this wouldn’t be the one time he would fly back and kiss her anyway, despite all his protestations that he would never do so. Sometimes she wanted him to be a tad bit less honorable. She wished he would just tell her what it was that scared him about if they were to be together, really together, instead of this
whatever they had. She turned towards the door of her roof and walked down to her apartment.
Now that Superman had flown off, her anger at him for swooping in and plucking her from the side of a building returned. Had he been hovering above her, watching her with his x-ray vision? Did he normally follow her around town, watching to make sure she didn’t fall into an open unmarked manhole or trip over a crack in the sidewalk or burn her lip on coffee that was too hot? Was that what he did when he wasn’t off saving someone else? Superman was starting to give a new meaning to the word ‘hovering’. Out of all the flaws a man could have, one who was overly cautious was a bit annoying in an endearing sort of way. At least, she never had to worry that he didn’t care. She rolled her eyes as she dug into her bag to pull out her keys. He cared too much possibly, but never too little.
Lois wished a little of that caring would rub off on being concerned whether or not she was happy, because at the moment… okay, since she had met him, they had stood at the precipice of euphoria as it spread out in front of them like a sea. She could almost taste it. But each time she wanted to dive into its waters, Superman would hold her back, telling her, “Not yet.”
Ooooh, sometimes Lois wanted to clobber the man out of aggravation!
She pushed open her front door, finally having unlocked all twenty thousand of her apartment locks. At least, Superman never complained about her lack of security at her apartment. Not yet, in any case. She only had the door open a crack when she heard Lucy’s laughter.
Oh, God, no. Not tonight, she groaned.
There, sitting at her dining room table, was Lucy holding hands with her boyfriend Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Olsen. It looked like they had just finished eating some kind of dessert. They better not have polished off the last of her chocolate ice cream.
“Hi, Lois. Burning the midnight oil again?” Jimmy asked, tossing her one of eager smiles. How could he always be happy? It was unnatural. No wonder Lucy enjoyed hanging out with him so much.
Lois liked Jimbo, really she did, but she wanted to keep her work and home relationships separate, and he was a big conflict in that goal. “Another day, another story,” she responded vaguely, not wanting to go into detail about her failure at the chemical plant. She turned to go down the hallway to her bedroom. She paused at the other entrance into the kitchen to ask if they had eaten her ice cream.
“Lois is always burning the midnight oil, Jimmy,” Lucy said and then nudged him, whispering under her breath, yet still loud enough for Lois to hear. “I wish she’d give Clark another shot. The man is clearly smitten with her, and when they were working together and dating, I had thought she had finally met her match. She came home one night gushing about how happy she was. She even called him ‘the one’.”
Lois winced, tears dampening her eyes as she leaned her head against the wall. She hadn’t been talking about Clark.
“Really? CK? Wow!” Jimmy whispered back. “What happened? Scuttlebutt around the office varies by whom you ask. General consensus is consistent on the how: that Lois dumped him, publicly, on the newsroom floor, but then took the coffee he had brought her.”
“Oh, Lois,” murmured Lucy with a shake of her head.
What? Lois shrugged. Should she have dumped it out or let it go to waste? Please!
“It’s the why that has the tongues still wagging. There’s the group that thinks CK was withholding information from her on a story. Another group believes that he didn’t tell her something about himself that came to blow up in his face. Let me tell you, the guesses on that one are running rampant: sexual dysfunction, marriage, children, sexual orientation, drug use – although, CK is such a straight arrow no one really believes that one – alcoholism…”
“Oh, yeah, Lois would definitely hightail it away because of that,” Lucy agreed with a nod. “Both of us would.”
“And then there’s a group who thinks that Cat Grant was somehow involved; even
she won’t speak about it, which I’m told is completely out of character for her.”
Lois raised a surprised brow over that morsel of information.
“Lois never said a word,” Lucy said with an exasperated sigh. “Just one day she went from being on the top of the world to personifying misery. Whatever he did must have been atrocious for Lois give up true love over it.”
“The one person who might know, my cousin James, is mum on the whole subject, refuses to discuss it. I don’t know if he knows the truth or not, but he and CK have become the best of buds. I can’t tell you how many ball games, car shows, movies, and just hanging out they’ve done together this summer. I feel kind of guilty, moving in with the dude for the summer and then…” Jimmy coughed.
Stealing the woman James was crushing on out from under him, Lois finished his thought.
“—Abandoning him to spend all my free time with the most beautiful woman in Metropolis,” Jimmy said, leaning forward to give her sister a kiss.
Lois stuck out her tongue in disgust. She couldn’t continue to hear any more of this tripe or she would slit her throat before the hour was up just to get away from it. Not that she would succeed of course, because Superman would surely swoop in from the ether and take the knife away from her.
With energy she didn’t have, Lois pushed her way off the wall and returned to the front door.
“Lois!” Lucy gasped. “Where are you going? You just got home.”
“Office. I figure I better get my notes typed up tonight. Don’t wait up for me,” she added as she headed out the door, not wanting to know if Jimmy ever spent the night. Oh, great. Now she had
those images swimming around in her head with all the other malicious Clark gossip Jimmy had supplied.
It was too late to stop at the Fudge Castle; they were already closed. So, Lois went in to her corner mom and pop grocery and bought herself a quart of chocolate chocolate chunk ice cream to eat on the cab ride over to the office. Then, because she felt the need to work off the ice cream, she climbed the stairs to the newsroom floor.
Despite the lateness of the hour, the first and only person Lois saw upon walking into the bullpen was Clark. She hadn’t expected to see him; she had expected to be alone. He looked up, saw her, and instantly moved towards her, his arms extended as if instinctively knowing she needed some human contact and comfort. Had her anguish over her fight with Superman been written so plainly upon her face? She couldn’t resist, especially since Clark was the only person who knew what she was going through with Superman. He had been her only option when she needed to talk to someone.
“He doesn’t want to hurt you, Lois,” Clark whispered as she buried her head into his shoulder.
“But he does,” she replied, trying to stop the trickles of salt water dripping down her cheeks.
“I’m so sorry,” he murmured into her hair, placing a gentle kiss there.
Lois should be the sorry one; because of her, Clark had endured weeks of office gossip and disparaging remarks about his character, yet he never once had he spoken up with the truth. “Me, too.”
“You could dump him and date me instead.” He said the words playfully, but she knew he meant them.
For a moment, she remembered what it had been like between her and Clark before Superman had come on the scene. They had just clicked. She
had been attracted to him back then, too attracted. It would be easy to be tempted by him again. “I can’t, Clark.”
“But you can have all the physical relationship you want with me, and I promise to let him come in and do all the rescuing,” Clark continued still using the teasing tone.
“Oh, like he would want to save me after I dumped him for the likes of you, a mild mannered reporter,” she scoffed, actually allowing a bubble of laughter to escape at that thought.
“Of course he would, Lois; he loves you. Anyway, if he let anything happen to my girlfriend, I’d punch him in the nose.”
The laughter came out in full force then. Damn him! Clark always made her feel better. “That would do more damage to your fist than his nose,” she replied.
“Fine. A stern talking to or scolding then,” Clark said, tightening his embrace around her. “Nobody hurts my Lois and gets away with it.”
Being there in Clark’s arms made that suggestion alluring. Lois knew she didn’t
need a man in her life. Heaven knew she never planned on having one. She had thought her life was complete without one, but then she had looked into Superman’s eyes and
knew what it was to be in love and to be loved, to be somebody’s entire world. It was a new feeling, one that she had never experienced before, and one she never wanted to live without again, which was why she was fighting so hard for it. It was one of the reasons her current non-relationship with Superman did more to frustrate her than anything else. Being with Superman had given her a taste of what it would be like to be happy… only Superman in his stubborn obsession with her safety wasn’t letting her get there.
Then there was Clark. Clark liked her. Clark wanted to be with her, in public and in private. He stood up to her bad moods and had the guts to tease her in a manner no man had ever done. When she blew up, he would give her space, but he would always come back. No matter how much she might deny it to herself and others, she enjoyed Clark’s company, and he seemed to bask in hers. While he cared about her safety, he was more likely to volunteer to accompany her one of her harebrained ideas than try to talk her out of it – not that she had ever put that theory to the test. She doubted Clark wouldn’t stand in her way on a story, and would probably jump at working with her again if she gave the word. Lois liked that she couldn’t scare Clark away; it was an endearing trait. Plus, not only was Clark one hell of a kisser, she doubted he’d shy away from kissing her again, unlike another tights-wearing man. Okay, there had only technically really only been that one kiss on Trask’s plane, but what a kiss it had been.
Clark did have one flaw though. Okay, he had more than one, actually. Lois decided not to call it a flaw, more of a hurdle, and it wasn’t a minor one. He was not only one of Cat Grant’s exes, they were still on friendly terms. Once, when Lex’s towncar was driving her back to the Planet, she had caught sight of Clark and Cat eating lunch together at a café a few blocks away. They seemed to be enjoying each other’s company. It didn’t look romantic, but it was certainly friendly.
There were times when Lois looked into Clark’s eyes and felt that same coming home blissful rush she got when looking in Superman’s eyes, and that scared her. Clark would give her everything she wanted in her relationship with Superman, that the latter couldn’t… wouldn’t. Unfortunately, Clark wasn’t her true love, her soulmate, and Superman was. One had to live with the hand one had been dealt. She couldn’t “dump” Superman merely because the man was honorable.
In fact, if Lois were to take Superman out of the equation, she would be very tempted by Clark’s offer, more so than if he had been Lex. Lex had also hinted about making their relationship more intimate, but the intimacy that Clark was offering wasn’t sexual… or at least, not overtly sexual as Lex’s offer had been that had accompanied his kiss in his limo after the musical performance the week before. Both of Lex’s offers had felt like a bucket of icy, slimy water dumped over her head. In fact, when she got home she had taken a long hot shower and scrubbed her skin until it was practically raw. The thought of being with Lex repulsed her so, but he was the only person Superman seemed to be jealous of – so endure him, she must.
If Lois started dating Clark for real, she could give up Lex completely; a consequence that made Clark’s teasing offer even more attractive. Being in Clark’s arms felt safe, whereas being with Lex… she shivered, not knowing exactly what it was about the man that caused this feeling. Lex was all charms, smiles, and politeness – nothing untoward, except that one offer to take her back to his place instead of hers that night.
“Are you cold?” Clark asked. Glancing down at what she had in her hands, he laughed. “Ice cream? No wonder you’re cold, Lois.” He took the quart of ice cream out of her hand and set it down on her desk.
Lois’ eye followed the path of her ice cream to her desk. She could hear the chocolaty goodness call to her. She picked up the carton again and took another bite, letting the flavors dance on her tongue as she moaned, almost with desire. There was something about eating chocolate ice cream that echoed the feeling of being with Clark, without all the unpleasant guilt that being in another man’s arms gave her. “Would you like a bite, Clark?” Lois asked, holding out her spoon.
“No, thanks, Lois. I don’t really like sweets,” he replied with a shake of his head.
Suddenly, over the lure of Clark’s relationship offer, washed the wrongness of it. Clark was supposed to love sweets. He was supposed to have a bigger sweet tooth than even her. She
knew this to be true. Why was he turning it down?
“Come on, Clark, just one bite,” she coaxed playfully, waving the spoonful of chocolaty goodness.
Clark blanched as he took a step away from her, his face a picture of disgust. “Lois, I told you that I don’t eat sweets. Respect that, please. I wouldn’t ask you to change for me, please don’t ask this of me.”
Distrustful much, there, Kent?
“Why don’t you eat sweets, Clark?” Lois asked, sticking the spoon inside her mouth. No point in letting the ice cream go to waste.
“Plenty of people don’t like sweets, Lois,” he countered, returning to his desk.
“Is it diet? Do you have diabetes? A sugar allergy? Lactose intolerance? Is it against your fitness regime?” she rattled off before sticking another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth as she followed him to his desk. “What is it? Why do you hate sweets so?”
“I have my reasons,” he said softly, straightening the papers on his desk. His defensively straight body posture told her that she hit a sore spot with him.
“I love chocolate.
Love it! I can’t picture myself being with a man who won’t eat it. I’d feel like a pig being the only one eating sweets all the time,” she said with a shrug. “When I eat chocolate, I feel like I do when…”
When she was in Clark’s arms.Her eyes guiltily flashed to Clark’s dispirited face. Chocolate didn’t give her unconditional love, but it made her think of Clark, of how he made her feel when she was around him, of how happy he could make her. Every time she and Superman got into a fight over their non-relationship, she either dove into a carton of chocolate ice cream or she went to Clark. Chocolate ice cream was her Clark substitute, not her Superman therapy. She shook her head. “No, no, no.”
Had she been seriously thinking of giving up Superman for Clark? Had she already subconsciously done so? Was that why she and Superman couldn’t move their relationship forward, because of her? Because of her feelings for Clark? Because Superman could see that a part of her wanted to be with Clark?
Clark stared at Lois with a haunted expression. “I just can’t, Lois, and if you care even a little bit for me, you won’t bring it up again.”
What? What was he talking about? What had she said? She couldn’t remember. All she could think about was this man in front of her, and how good it felt to be near him. Lois set down her ice cream and stepped closer to him. She didn’t like this expression on Clark’s face. It was as if she could feel the pain he was feeling, and it made her chest ache. She caressed his cheek, turning it towards her. “Tell me, Clark,” she requested softly.
The pain etched across his face ran deep. It made him seem younger, more childlike. “I’m sorry if this is a deal breaker on our friendship, Lois, but I just can’t,” he said, staring at her. She could see years of pain in his expression. Deal breaker? What was he talking about?
“Sure you can, Clark. Just tell me,” she said, moving closer to him, her chest leaning against his. “I’ve told you all my secrets. You can trust me with yours.”
Clark cupped her jaw with the palm of his hand and set his lips upon hers in a kiss that she felt down to her toes. It wasn’t like the passionate kiss they had shared on Trask’s plane. This one was unassuming, loving, perfect.
Oh, God! Why did he do that? Didn’t he know he was melting her resolve with that tender, non-demanding kiss? Now, all she wanted to do was wrap her arms around him and to beg him never to let her go.
“Goodbye, Lois,” he whispered, letting go of her and heading for the stairwell.
“What are you talking about, Clark? This isn’t goodbye?” she retorted. “Clark!
Clark!”
Lois watched him walk out of the newsroom without looking back, as her jaw hung open. Where was he going? Why was he leaving? He would be back. He hadn’t even turned off his computer. Had he even finished writing up whatever story he had been working on?
She continued to stare at the stairwell as she had stared at the dark cloudless sky earlier that evening, waiting for Superman to return. Neither of them did.
What in the hell was the matter with her? What had she done? In the process of one night she had chased away the two men that she loved. No! Love? She didn’t love Clark. She loved Superman. She couldn’t love Clark; she didn’t even know Clark. He wasn’t the man who she had initially thought he was. She didn’t know who he was.
Anyway, who would give up a friendship over a bite of ice cream? She dumped the rest of her ice cream into the trash, unable to look it anymore.
There was more to his aversion to sweets that he wasn’t telling her, that was for sure. If he didn’t come back to the newsroom that evening, she would go to his apartment and beg him to tell her the truth. Well, beg was the wrong word. Demand, yes, demand to have him tell her the truth. She was a reporter after all; if she couldn’t persuade Chuck to give up his secret, she might as well turn in her press pass.
Lois walked up to Clark’s computer, wondering what he was working on. She scrolled to the top of the page.
The article was on some fires over in the West River district that Superman had fought earlier in that day. Apparently there had been a string of suspicious fires over in the West River area recently. There had? Superman hadn’t said a word to her about it. How had Clark known? Had he been there? Had Superman been feeding his best friend stories? Actually, now that she thought about it, Clark did get an unusually large percentage of the Superman stories out there. He had since Perry opened Superman stories up to the entire staff just because of the sheer volume of them.
Was that how Clark knew that she would need his comfort tonight? Had Superman left her and then gone to tell Clark that they had gotten into their same old, same old argument? No, that was ridiculous. She couldn’t see either of those men gossiping about her behind her back. Men didn’t talk about their relationships with their friends, did they? She had thought Clark had read her pain on her face, but maybe he hadn’t needed to read it. It was almost like Clark and Superman could read each other’s thoughts. She scoffed at that idea, saving Clark’s article, so that it wouldn’t be lost. Then with another click, even though it wasn’t completed, she sent the draft off to Perry.
Her eyes widened as she stepped away from Clark’s desk. Had Superman implanted some Kryptonian device into Clark? Something that would allow him to access Clark’s mind? Read his thoughts? Communicate with him? Was
that why he kept pushing Lois towards Clark? Because having a relationship with Clark would be tantamount to having a relationship with him… at least from his point of view?
That whole idea reeked of creepy alien and a bit more sci-fi than she could ever picture Superman being. He was essentially human after all, with a few extra abilities that set him apart from others here on Earth.
Lois laughed at her wild imagination. She sat down at her desk and pulled out her scanner to download the documents she had copied from the chemical plant manager’s office.
Ridiculous idea, there, Lane!Of course, it would explain how Superman and Clark communicated with each other without anyone ever seeing them together. It would also explain why neither Superman nor Clark would ever tell her
how they communicated. Maybe Superman could only tag one such person, and he had chosen Clark because he, at the time, was her partner and could keep an eye on her. Plus, Clark also worked in the news business – giving Superman access to breaking stories, emergencies, and news. Maybe
this was why Clark gave her a weird vibe. Had the chip altered Clark’s personality? Was that it?
Maybe she had been giving Clark too hard a time over something that he himself could not control. She should give him a break and maybe take him up on some of those offers to have lunch or do stuff outside of work.
Lois’ eyes closed as she thought of that kiss he had given her tonight. Then her eyes flashed open.
Oh, God! If Superman could read Clark’s mind, he would know about that kiss and know that she had cheated on him. She jumped to her feet, planning on running to the roof of the Daily Planet and yelling for Superman so that she could explain what happened. Then, she froze at the ramp to the elevator. Only she wasn’t quite sure what happened. They had been arguing about his dislike of sweets, then he had kissed her and walked off. And what if she was wrong? What if Superman couldn’t read Clark’s mind? If she ran up to the roof and called for Superman to tell him that the kiss didn’t mean anything, she could essentially be telling him about the kiss herself.
Lois turned and walked back down to her computer. No, she wouldn’t tell Superman that Clark had kissed her again and made her toes curl… Oh, no. This wasn’t good.
She
wanted Clark. She couldn’t just be friends with Clark and pretend that nothing had happened, could she? Could she look at him every day and not think about him holding her in his arms? Brushing his fingers in a meeting? Have his hand dance lightly across her shoulders as he looked over her shoulder to review something? Could she be friends with Clark and still stay loyal and true and faithful to Superman? She didn’t think so. She was strong, but she doubted even with Super strength she could be that strong. She would need to break off her relationship with Clark completely.
That very idea caused shooting pains to radiate throughout her body, telling her she was on the right track and that it may already be too late. She had kissed Clark twice. She already had dreams about Clark. She had allowed their friendship to become much too close, while she was working on making her and Superman’s relationship get off the ground. If she was ever going to have a serious lifelong committed relationship with Superman, she could no longer spend any more time with Clark.
Clark was just too much of a temptation for her.
***
Clark awoke to the birds chirping around him and the sun on his face, telling him it would be a beautiful day. Only it felt like anything but beautiful, knowing that Lois had essentially told him that they would never be together.
He pulled himself up to a sitting position and looked around. He must have fallen asleep in his little enclave of trees he liked to visit at the Kent farm.
He had flown here the night before, after Lois had confronted him about the ice cream. Why had it bothered her so about him not liking sweets? Why couldn’t she just accept him for who he was, flaws and all? How could what he didn’t eat reflect positively or negatively upon her? But she had told him flat out that she could never have a relationship with any man who couldn’t eat sweets, and he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.
Clark grasped his knees, pulling them to his chest and squeezed his eyes shut as the images of the burning truck that had killed his folks flashed once more before him. He had heard the screech of tires, and glanced up in time to see their truck veer off the road in one direction against the big oak tree as a doe with her fawn ran off in the other. He ran as fast as he could, but he didn’t make in time before the cabin of the truck exploded, killing both of his folks. Scattered in front of him on the road were the groceries that they had gone into town to buy: potato chips, ice cream, premade pastries, chocolate chips, and soda. They had known that he liked those things and had gone into town to buy them for him. He knew it was a crazy theory, but maybe if he hadn’t liked to eat such sweets, his folks would still be alive today. Either way, he hadn’t been able to touch sweets from that day onwards.
***End of Part 25*** Part 26 So, whatcha think of Clark's big reveal? And Lois' big realization? Let me know:
here .
