Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhere we left off in Part 36 ...“Do you want me to feed you, or would you rather I ate with my left hand too?” Clark asked.
An image of them making out while half-dressed and covered in tomato sauce raced across the forefront of her mind. Lois shot him an evil grin, and picked up a piece of her pasta, placing it into her mouth.
He returned her smile and went to take a bite with his fork in his right hand.
She shook her head him. “Nuh-uh.”
“Do you really want me to…”
Lois grinned.
Clark rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He set down his fork and picked up a couple of pieces of pasta with his left hand and gracefully dropped them in his mouth, no harm, no foul.
“No fair! Are you left handed?” she asked. She hadn’t thought so. He had been using his fork with his right hand.
He picked up a piece of salad and stuck it neatly into his mouth. “No.”
Lois socked him in the arm. “Ambidextrous? Geez, Clark, isn’t there anything you can’t do?”
“Give birth,” he retorted with a deadpan expression.
“Ha-ha, very funny,” she said with a glower. She wasn’t planning on accomplishing that feat either.
“Come here,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her onto his right knee.
He held her steady with his right arm still around her waist. Taking her fingers to the plate with his left hand, he showed her how to pick up her food and move it up to her mouth neatly. The food made it into her mouth and she chewed it and swallowed. She watched as he picked up another couple piece of pasta and stuck them in his mouth. She grabbed his fingers as he moved away and brought them back to her mouth, licking each one.
“Lois?” Clark said, his voice cracking.
She turned to face him, her lips hardly an inch away. “Will you make love to me?”
Lois leaned into him, her breath hot against his mouth. Clark only had to say the word.
“Yes.”
*
Part 37“Will you make love to me?” Lois asked the one question Clark longed to hear.
“Yes,” he said, and she pressed her lips to his before he could clarify. “But not tonight.”
Lois sat back and stared at him. “Pardon?”
This wasn’t a conversation Clark wanted to have. “You’re not ready.”
She smiled at him in a way that made his insides melt into molten rock. She hooked her right leg over his left and pulled up the skirt of her dress, so she could straddle both of his legs and slide up his body. She now sat in fully and rightly on his lap. She wrapped her left arm around his neck and kissed him softly on his lips, causing his eyelids to flutter close. Then she kissed along his jaw to his ear. “I’m ready.”
“Okay,” he admitted with a hitch to his voice. “You’re ready.” Oh, God, why did he have to be the good guy?
He could feel her grinning against his throat as she kissed there. She loved being right.
Clark cleared his throat. “
I’m not ready,” he countered, knowing she couldn’t argue with him.
Lois leaned back to look him in the eye. She shifted her position slightly and raised an eyebrow. They both knew he was lying.
“That’s not what I meant,” he said, flushing red and trying to extract himself from this trap.
She brought her lips to his again and giggled. “If you’re talking protection, don’t worry. I have some in my purse.”
She
what?! Clark turned to look at her purse that he had moved to the coffee table. He hadn’t remembered seeing condoms in there. Maybe not everything fell out when she threw her purse. Had Lois really been prepared to go all the way with Superman? Had it been her intention all along when he told her that Superman wanted to meet with her? A shiver of excitement flowed through his body. Lois purred her approval into his ear, where she was currently nibbling, and squeezed her thighs together. Oh, my! Oh, yes! Oh, no!
Clark placed his hands on her hips and scooted her down to his legs, where he could think and speak again. “No, Lois. You’re not ready.”
Her tongue darted into his ear and then sucked on his earlobe, causing him to relax his hold on her hips, and slip down to her rear. She slid her body back to its previous position and moaned. “I’m so ready.”
His voice cracked as he tried to speak. He had walked through fire and molten lava. He had flown through hurricanes, tornados, and into space. He had dived into shark infested waters and into avalanches. He had been attacked with Kryptonite, shot at, and even once swallowed a bomb. And, yet, this was the most difficult task he had ever attempted. “Your arm,” he sputtered.
Lois paused. “My arm?” she echoed, rocking back to look him in the eyes. That movement sent shockwaves through his body.
“Uh-huh, your arm,” Clark croaked. “You need to heal.”
“I can do this one handed,” she informed him confidently.
He didn’t doubt that, but he needed to convince her otherwise. “But you said once… that you like it on top… You
really need two arms for that,” he guessed, his voice fluctuating in pitch, and not nearly as confident as her tone had sounded.
Lois raised a brow. “I’m on top now.”
Okay, she had won that argument, too. He didn’t want to voice the real reason he was saying no, but she was leaving him no choice.
“It’s beginning to sound like you don’t want to make love to me after all,” Lois said, squeezing her thighs together and confirming her suspicions that he indeed did
want her.
Clark moved his hand up to her jaw. “This…
this isn’t making love, Lois. This is sex, and I don’t want to have sex with you.”
“We could pretend we were making love,” she countered, her voice growing harder, more recognizable. “I know you want me.”
“I do. Trust me, I want to make love to you more than anything, Lois. I want us to join together as two hearts and two souls into one being,” he said, moving his thumb across her cheek. He took a deep breath and exhaled, moving into his final argument that he had hoped to avoid. “If we were to have sex, you would hate me and you would hate yourself, and I don’t want that. I don’t want our joining to be something you regret.”
“I won’t regret it, Clark. I want this,” she pleaded, but he saw the walls inside of her start to crumble.
“No, you don’t. You’re angry at him, and you’re angry at yourself. You want to punish the both of you for what can’t be,” Clark said, wishing with all his might that it weren’t true.
“I’m not angry!” Lois growled. “Did he
tell you? Did he
tell you that I begged and I pleaded for just one kiss and that he wouldn’t even give that to me? Did he
tell you about that? Did he brag about how I threw myself at him, and he rejected me?
Did he? Because I guess you two have that in common now.” She slapped him across the face and tried to move off his lap.
It’s a good thing she isn’t angry, Clark gulped. He continued to hold her around her waist, so she wouldn’t slide off his legs, because he didn’t want her to leave without him saying his piece. “I’m not rejecting you, Lois. I’m giving you what you asked for. I’m giving you time: time to heal, both physically and emotionally. You’ve had a difficult twenty-four hours. You’ve been hit by both physical and emotional blows from every direction. You’ve been rejected and your confidence shaken, and your privacy taken away from you. I want you to know that I’m here for you as your friend, someone who you can depend on, and whose shoulder is available for you to cry on. Someday, when you’re ready, when you’ve had time to heal from these wounds, I would love for us to move our relationship from friendship to more. Trust me, Lois, when I say that I
want to make love to you, but it’s an experience I’m willing to wait for.”
Lois stopped fighting him and shot him a glare of pure venom. “You’re going to regret this, Chuck.”
“Believe me, Lois, I already do,” he replied, letting go of her so she could leave his lap.
Instead she threw her head back and laughed. “I bet you do,” she said, between breaths.
“I do,” he groaned, preferring her laughter to the anger from a moment before. He was more than willing to fall on a wet noodle to make her laugh. “I
really, really do.”
His confession made her roar louder with laughter.
Lois’s head dropped to his shoulder and it took a moment for him to realize that her laughter had turned to tears. “Why, Clark? Why?” she sobbed.
Because I’m one huge blistering jerk. The one reason he hadn’t told her, that he wouldn’t ever tell her if he could, was because he couldn’t reward his Clark side with sex with Lois on the day his Superman side had broken her heart. He knew he couldn’t reject her and use her broken shell afterwards, and live with himself. Someday, he would tell her that he had once been Superman, but he didn’t know how she would ever forgive him. He knew he would never forgive himself.
Her sobs eventually subsided and she just rested against his shoulder.
Clark loved holding her in his arms and was willing to remain like this all night. He would need to carry them to the couch. The bed would be too intimate after what they had just shared. Cradling her in his arms, he carried her over to the couch. He sat down and turned her body so her back leaned against his chest. He kissed the side of her head, and wrapped his arms around her waist so she wouldn’t slide to the floor. He breathed in the smell of her hair, which smelled different than it normally did. Then he remembered that she had gone to the hair salon.
God, he loved this woman.
“I should hate you, but I don’t,” Lois’s voice said out of the silence, startling him. He had thought she had fallen asleep.
“Give me time; the night’s still early,” Clark replied.
She chuckled, shifting a bit so she was more in the crook of his arm. She must have thought he was joking. “You’re so warm and caring and se… sensitive,
and the only man who stands up to me. How come you don’t have women lining up to go out with you?”
She
liked that he stood up to her? Lana had
hated it when he'd done that. Clark smiled. “Who says I don’t? Back home, I practically had to fight the women off with a stick,” he said. Sadly, this fact was true.
“You’re teasing me,” she said with a nudge.
“Maybe. Maybe not. I’m quite the catch, you know. You said so yourself,” he replied, continuing with the lightheartedness of her tone.
“Why me, Clark?” Lois said, turning over her shoulder to look at him. “Why not go and find another, less messed-up woman?”
Clark winked. “Maybe you
are the less messed-up woman.”
Heck, at least you’re alive.“Oh, right. The one who got away. You ever going to tell me about her?” she asked, running her fingers up and down his arm.
No. He kissed the side of her head again. “Maybe. Someday,” he said, not knowing how he could ever tell her about the woman who had made him Superman.
“Tell me something about you that I don’t know,” Lois asked.
“Well, I’ve been keeping things from you,” he murmured. It was true. Currently he could fill the room with his secrets.
“Duh! I know hardly anything about you. You’re from Kansas, right?”
“I spent my childhood in a town called Smallville. My parents were farmers,” he explained.
“They died when you were ten?” she asked.
He nodded. “Then I bounced around a lot. I spent the next five years mostly in Wichita, at a bunch of different homes,” he said, his voice getting rough.
Clark didn’t like to talk about those years much. Some of the people he had met were nice, until he developed some new power and set the couch on fire or froze the fish tank. Mostly he just tried to fade into the woodwork, especially after that one couple thought he had been possessed by demons. He had wanted to be normal, or at minimum not be noticed. When he was fifteen he had so many changes happen to him that he had lived in six different homes, and attended three different schools. That was when his social worker called the Irigs to see if they would still be willing to take him in.
Barbara Irig had been going through chemo when his parents had died. The Irigs had wanted to help, but social services decided that the Irigs had too much on their plate at that moment to get another helping of trouble. When he turned sixteen, he had his powers mostly under control, and everyone thought Barbara was in remission, so Clark was finally allowed to return to Smallville.
“So…” Lois said, drawing out the word and lacing her fingers with his. He hoped she wasn’t going to try another assault of his senses, because he didn’t know if he would be able to say ‘no’ yet a third time that day. “Since you obviously didn’t sleep with Cat…” She paused and he wondered where she was going with this line of questioning. “
And you said you were hiding things from me, why don’t you start by telling me your deepest, darkest secret, since you know all of mine.”
I do? Then he realized she was probably right. He knew what happened between her and Claude, he knew about her novel,
and he knew about her and Superman. “Well,” he said hesitantly, wondering which lie to reveal first. Tonight wasn’t the night to tell her about Superman.
“Off the record, Mr. Kent, I guarantee it. I just want to know the real Clark Kent,” she said. “I feel you owe me something after rejecting me twice.”
Twice? “For the record, Ms. Lane, I answered your question in the affirmative; therefore, I didn’t reject you, and I certainly wouldn’t have done so twice,” Clark said, searching his mind and having no idea which was the first time she was thinking of, unless she knew about Superman…
“The night of the auction for the blind, when I got drunk. You turned me down then too,” Lois said.
Oh.She scoffed at herself. “I was reeling from his rejection that night as well. I should’ve just cut my losses then, and saved myself a world of heartache.”
Clark needed to get her off the topic of Superman and fast, before she had another downward spiral. “Well, Lois, this isn’t my darkest secret, but it’s certainly my deepest. You have to promise to never tell anybody. If you repeat this to anyone else, I’ll deny it,” he said with a nervous chuckle.
“Yeah?”
Clark had piqued her reporter’s curiosity. He could hear her heart rate increase in anticipation.
“I’m from another time, another dimension,” he said in complete seriousness, with a hint of that Rod Sterling guy he saw on that old TV show he caught a couple of weeks ago. He needed to phrase it just so to give the modicum of doubt or she would think he was crazy. “And I’ve come here to sweep you off your feet.”
“Oh, have you now?” Lois said. He could hear the laughter in her voice.
“Yes.”
Her brow furrowed in thought. “How’s that working out for you?”
Clark shrugged. “Not so great, but I’ve got all the time in the world.”
Lois laughed. “Did you get here via time machine, wormhole, or magic?”
“Time machine, of course. Worm holes are myths; and magic has always given me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Me, too!” She looked at him with a beaming grin of solidarity. “So, a time machine, huh?”
“Yep,” he admitted with just enough faux cockiness to make it sound like he was pulling her leg.
“Uh-huh. Well, I could certainly see how a time machine would be very helpful in wooing me. Going back in time to undo all those mistakes that turn me into a furious Mad Dog,” she said, implying that he had done nothing of the sort.
“Uh!” Clark groaned. “You should have seen what I did the first couple of go-arounds.” He clicked his tongue and rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.
Lois smacked him lightly with the back of her hand. “So, why are you here,
really, Mr. Kent?” she teased. “You can’t have traveled across time and space only to capture my heart.”
Well, actually… “I’ve come to save your dimension from a natural disaster of momentous proportions,” he replied with overdramatic seriousness. It felt good to get this off his chest, even if Lois thought it a lark.
“
You?” He could hear the complete disbelief and laughter in her voice now. “Why you?”
“Apparently I’m the key to saving the Earth,” he explained. Despite his smile, a slight hint of his defensiveness crept through. “Without me it just goes down the tubes.” He waved his finger in the air to demonstrate.
“You?”
Clark shrugged modestly.
“So, what’s the disaster? Global warming? Another ice age? Environmental disaster that poisons the world’s food chains? World War Three?” she asked, continuing to play along.
“Actually, I wasn’t briefed on the details. You know, knowing too much about your future and other such hooey,” he replied.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Lois said, sitting up on his stomach and facing him. He feigned a lack of oxygen and she slipped from his belly to the couch. “You don’t know
what the natural disaster is? How exactly are you supposed to help stop it? How about when?”
Clark pulled himself into a more sitting position and shook his head. She was right. Maybe he should ask Wells for more details. “Nope, I was basically told that if I could get Lois Lane to fall in love with me, we would live happily ever after, and form the basis of Utopian society which models itself after our ideals.” Oh, wait, he had forgotten about the disaster. “Either my presence in this dimension, or our love, stops whatever horrible thing was supposed to happen,” he tagged on as if an afterthought.
“So, this…” Lois pointed between them. “— isn’t really about love? It’s a mission?”
Clark reached over and caressed her cheek. “I don’t care about rescuing the world anymore, Lois, only about saving you.”
She pinched her lips together in mock disdain. “Well, Chuck,
you might not care, but
I do. If the future of the world and Utopia is at stake, and our love is the only thing that will save it, we should go rush off and get married,” she said in all earnestness, before throwing back her head and laughing at the ridiculousness of the idea.
He had thought that a very good suggestion, as a matter of fact. “I accept.”
“W…
what?!” Lois stammered, her laughter fading fast.
“Your marriage proposal. I accept,” he repeated.
“Claaaaark…” she groaned, when she saw that he was serious.
He sighed, dramatically with a pout so she wouldn’t get too anxious and bolt. “But marriage to save the world still isn’t love,” he said, bobbing his head back and forth. “— so we’d still have to wait for you to catch up to me on that front, before we could consummate the marriage. Perhaps you might be able to convince me to take an extended engagement instead of rushing to the preacher.”
Lois stared at him for a long time, and Clark realized he probably had gone too far in his teasing.
“I’m sorry, Lois. I was…” he started to say before she held up her hand to shut him up.
“No apologies. I mean it, Kent. You can’t keep apologizing for every idea that pops into your head. Please!” she said with obvious annoyance.
Yep, he had pushed the joking too far.
“I’m sorry, Clark, I can’t marry you,” Lois told him.
“I know, Lois, I shouldn’t have…”
Her glower silenced him on that front. “What else are you keeping from me, Kent?” her voice sounded more terse.
Him and his big mouth. Clark decided to go from the top of the pile instead of the bottom, this time. “Menken’s dead. He died in police custody last night.”
“Dead?” Lois’s brow furrowed. “How?”
Luthor had him killed off. Unfortunately without any evidence, the Chief didn’t want him telling her that about her buddy the billionaire. “It’s complicated.”
She stared at him. “How is it complicated? Is his body missing?”
“No, apparently he was shot by the bullet that passed through your arm, and yet he also somehow ended up in the same cell as some of your father’s creations,” Clark winced as soon as the words left his mouth. Lois’s tongue ran over her front teeth as she gazed at him with pursed lips. It was one thing for Lois to joke that she was Frankenstein’s daughter, it was another for Clark to.
Lois got to her feet. “I can’t believe we’ve been sitting around your apartment all night. Come on, we’ve got a story to write.”
“About what? I’ve written all we can. Henderson told me some of those details off the record because it’s sealed due to an Internal Investigation,” he explained.
“Death is never sealed, Clark. Let’s go talk to the coroner and see if his report is out,” she said, heading into his bedroom.
His heart started racing as he wanted to follow her in there and kiss her. Clark recalled her kisses at the dining table, how she had pressed her body against his, and how they could be together in his bed right this instant if he hadn’t been such a good guy. Of course, good guys don’t make the woman they love cry, so he stripped himself of the title “good”. He was a cad, a decent guy, but still a cad.
And he was about to become a bigger one in her books. “Lois, you have a doctor’s appointment tonight at the hospital,” he called to her.
“What?”
Clark pulled himself from the couch and, despite not wanting to see her sitting on his bed, knowing what sleepless nights it would bring him, he came to the archway of his bedroom.
Lois was indeed sitting on his bed as if she belonged there. He would gladly sleep on his couch if she agreed to move in with him, even for just a few nights. She was bent forward as she tried to put on her heels one handed.
“Here, let me,” he said, kneeling down in front of her. “The doctor needs to change your dressing,” he said, nodding at her arm.
She groaned. “Ugh. This stupid arm. I have more important things to do.”
“No, you don’t. You need to heal,” he corrected her. “The Daily Planet can live without your byline for a few days.”
Lois glared at him for a moment and then her gaze slipped down to his hand on her foot. “But can I?” she murmured.
“I would gladly put your name on any of mine,” he whispered.
For example, Lois Lane Kent. But he knew she would never accept. “Being partners and all.”
She touched his jaw and tilted his head so that he was looking at her instead of her foot. “You don’t have to wait for me, you know. The world won’t end.”
Mine would. He decided to go with the joke to ease out of this moment. “I’m sure, if I’m lucky, Cat Grant would throw me another offer.” Luck had nothing to do with it. It had become almost a form of greeting from the gossip columnist.
“On the other hand, there is something to be said about patience,” Lois replied, rescinding her previous advice.
Clark smiled.
Look at that, jealousy did work. He chose not to press his luck and tell her what a great friend Cat Grant really was. That wasn’t a battle he wanted to fight any time in the future.
***
Lex hung up his freshly polished crossbow. What a perfect night of sport and a morning of relaxation. Unfortunately, he then had to spend the rest of the day with the unpleasant task of playing the façade of an honest businessman.
He wondered how Lois appreciated his flowers. He turned on the monitor, but only found snow and static. What was going on? He had perfect reception just last night.
Lex clicked a few buttons, and went back in one hour intervals until the picture returned.
Kent stood in the doorway of Lois’s apartment. The time stamp said it was around lunchtime. It didn’t look as if he had spent the night. That was a good sign, but Lex would go back and double-check that information later. He wasn’t assuming anything anymore.
Lois was wearing some muddy red dress that was completely unbecoming on her. No, only pastel colors for her: pinks, baby blues, maybe a creamy yellow. This color only made her look dowdy. That was when he noticed her hair. She had
cut her hair?! Lois practically looked like a boy. Ugh.
Lex remembered when Gretchen Kelly had cut her blonde locks. She had been so lovely beforehand; afterwards, he could hardly look at her. Arianna understood this. The mark of true beauty: long, luxurious hair. Ari hadn’t cut her hair, except for trims, since they had met. Sure, she was obsessed with him, even after who knew how many years of divorce. She tied it up for work, but those nights when they got together… he exhaled. He loved wrapping locks of her hair in his fists and controlling her like a broodmare.
True, he wasn’t interested in Lois because of her hair; he had ulterior motivations with her. Still, it was a disappointment to his fantasies of riding her in the same manner. Of course, her sister had
her long hair, but bedding her would distract him from his ultimate goal: breaking Superman.
Kent, on the other hand, seemed to have drool dripping down his chin. So,
that was the way his chain jerked. Kent liked the woman to hold the whip. Lex shook his head. How was that any way to control a woman?
He watched as Lois and Clark left her apartment. He clicked forward a half-hour. Empty apartment. Twelve forty-five, same. One o’clock, same. One fifteen, snow. Someone had switched off his cameras between one and one fifteen. He had a bad feeling about this. One o’five, empty apartment. One ten, snow. He crept back in slow motion a couple of seconds at a time until the picture was restored at one o’seven, and twenty-four seconds. The last image frozen on the monitor was a flash of something red outside of Lois’s windows.
“Damn!” Lex growled. Superman had found out about his cameras. He almost knocked the monitor off his desk in frustration, but he stopped his hand at the last second. Instead he typed in a few more keystrokes and pulled Lois’s empty desk up at work. At least that camera was still operational. He pressed his intercom.
Asabi entered into his office. “Yes, sir?”
“Where is Lois Lane? Superman discovered the video surveillance at her apartment and removed it,” he informed the man.
“Carl followed Ms. Lane and Mr. Kent to Centennial Park after lunch today. Mr. Kent left her there. Superman arrived some ten minutes later and flew Ms. Lane to some unknown location. Carl waited at the park for over an hour, but they never returned. He’s been stationed outside her apartment since three this afternoon waiting for her to return. He was about to be relieved by Dalton,” Asabi said. “Shall I have the surveillance reinstalled, sir?”
Lex waved that idea off with a flip of his hand. “Let’s hold off on that for now. What news do you have for me on Mr. Kent?”
“Nothing, yet, sir,” Asabi admitted. “We have the surveillance scheduled to be installed at his apartment tomorrow while he’s at work.”
“Good, and his history?”
Asabi shifted from one foot to another. “We’re still working on that, sir. Apparently, prior to moving to Metropolis Mr. Kent was known to be traveling around the world as a freelance reporter. He doesn’t use credit cards, so we were unable to track his movements through his purchases. I plan on having Miller track the airlines for ticketing information, but that could take a while without exact dates. We do know that he checked into the Apollo Hotel on May 14th, and that's when we assume he arrived in Metropolis. He opened a checking and savings account, as well as rented a safety deposit box, at the National Bank of New Troy on the same day. We don’t know how he got to Metropolis, whether by car, bus, train, or plane,” Asabi said. He paused a moment to take a breath of air and then continued. “We haven’t yet been able to establish any activity in Metropolis prior to the fourteenth, but we’re still looking into it. A preliminary look has not found any other U.S. bank with any accounts in his name. As I said, sir, this is still the initial examination of his history. We should know more by the end of the week. If you know of any aliases that Mr. Kent has used, it might be helpful in tracking his movements.”
“Ms. Lane calls him ‘Chuck’ on occasion, so he might have an alias as ‘Charles’ somewhere,” Lex informed him.
“I’ll tell research,” Asabi said with a nod.
“Do we have Mr. Kent’s tail set-up yet?” Lex asked, starting to tap his fingers in dissatisfaction on his desk.
“Not, yet, sir. Jackson and Phillips are to start first thing tomorrow, sir,” Asabi replied uncomfortably.
Lex raised a brow.
“Ms. Lane and Mr. Kent seemed to be spending the day together, so we thought Carl would be enough. We thought wrong. It won’t happen again,” Asabi said, with a slight bow.
“See that it doesn’t,” the Boss said through pressed lips. “By the way, Asabi, Nigel St. John accompanied me back from the manor house. You will report to him now.”
“Yes, sir,” Asabi said with another bow. He paused and then said, “Ms. Taylor is waiting for you in the drawing room, sir.”
“Excellent. Offer her some refreshment and tell her I’ll be with her momentarily,” Lex ordered, and his manservant left. Ah, good, he wouldn’t need to bring back the twins after their exhaustive morning. Of course, with Toni he had to play the nice guy, but if it meant he got the West River district under his thumb, so be it.
***
Clark saw Lois to her door. He seemed both relieved and disappointed that she had wanted to go home after her doctor’s appointment. He was trying to hide these emotions from her with a stoic expression that appeared odd on him. She could see that he liked having her rely on him and liked having her around, but there was just enough self-confidence in him that he didn’t want her using him. His façade slipped a second and she saw worry streak across his face like a shooting star as he went to unlock her apartment door for her. It was endearing how Clark worried about her, not like the over-protectiveness of Superman.
She set her hand on his arm to reassure him and discovered with his glance that it hadn’t been his self-confidence that had stopped them from moving into his bedroom after dinner. It was love.
Lois had never had anyone look at her the way Kent did, not even Superman. Superman gazed at her with a sadness, a love with no hope. Clark’s love-stricken gaze was pure love. Especially when he didn’t know she saw him, like at the hospital this evening. As the doctor changed her dressing, Clark wasn’t looking at her arm and the mess that it was. He was watching her face and reacting with his eyes to her every wince. She would have missed it, if she hadn’t caught his reflection in the mirror over the sink. Instinctively, she had turned to look at him to see if what she had seen was just a trick of light, but his expression had changed by the time she saw his face. She had squeezed his hand, glanced back at the wound that used to be her arm.
It looked worse than it felt. Well, as long as she kept it still and people weren’t prodding it. She had to turn away from it, and she once again caught sight of Clark’s expression of love in the mirror. It wasn’t an expression of adoration, or puppy-love, or desire, or longing. She didn’t know how else to describe it, only it must have been the same expression with which she gazed at Superman. Her pain was his pain. Her joy was his joy. Her sadness was his.
Lois realized that there was a small part of her that liked that Clark needed her in a way that Superman did not. It was the same small part of her which had pictured what it would be like being married to Clark, working together on stories, debating ideas over meals, laughing as he teased her – as he had that evening, and making love to someone who thought of pleasing her as much as, or more than, pleasing himself. It was also the small part of her that was attracted by his lack of pressure to move their relationship forward. The idea was like a bowl of chocolate pudding big enough for her to swim in, addicting but something she knew she probably would regret later.
Clark glanced at her hand on his arm, and then at her with curiosity.
“Can you…?” she started to ask before the door was pulled open in front of them and they were facing Lucy.
“
Finally!” she gasped at them.
“Miss Lane, I warned you not to open the door,” said a dark haired man in a suit from beside Lucy. He was holding a gun.
***End of Part 37*** Part 38 For those of you who want to yell at me (and/or throw tomatoes) for not having Clark cave at this point and time, please do so here, on the
comments page. Everyone else may post there, too, if there is anyone who agrees with me, that is.
