From Part 6:
“Do you love me?” she demanded.
“You know I do.”
“Then even if all you can offer is a few nights like this, Superman, I’ll take it,” she said immediately. “I’ll take you.” Lois bit her lip. “I never took what I could have had with one man I loved, and I’ll regret that for the rest of my life. I can’t risk losing out on love a second time.”
“Then, if you’re sure...” He trailed off, watching her. She nodded, reassuring him once more. And he gathered her closer, kissing her deeply and letting her know through his caresses, his soft whispers and his tender kisses, how much he wanted her.
And this time, when they made love, she had no regrets at all.
*********
Part 7
Clark lay on Lois’s bed, staring up at the ceiling as the woman he loved slept in his arms.
He should be feeling as if all of his dreams had come true. Lois loved him. Him, Clark. And him, Superman. She’d made love to him as if he were the most precious thing in her life. She’d matched him touch for touch, kiss for kiss, caress for caress... and echoed all his words of love. She was his.
But he couldn’t be hers. Not the way he longed to be. Not the way she needed him to be. Now, he could only give her a tiny part of himself, the part which wasn’t real - the part which could only be her secret lover and never her boyfriend. Never her husband.
He wanted to be in her life in every way. Working beside her at the Planet. Going out on dates with her. Spending evenings with her snuggled up on his sofa eating pizza and watching videos. Telling the whole world that he was in love with Lois Lane and she with him. Declaring that love in front of the people they cared about in by becoming her husband in a marriage ceremony which would be the best day of their lives. Yes, he wanted it all. And, because of a gangster’s bullet, he couldn’t have any of it.
If he could only go back, relieve those few seconds in the club all over again, he would... he would...
No, he admitted after several minutes’ frustration. He would do none of it differently. If he could relive that evening and they again got to the point where Dillinger started pawing Lois, he would do exactly the same thing again. He would protect her, even knowing what he would be giving up in order to do so.
Okay. So Clark Kent was gone, and instead of wallowing in self-pity over the death of his alter ego it was time that he got on with living the half-life he had left to him. So he was Superman full-time; well, in some ways that would make things much easier. After all, there would be no more need for barely-plausible excuses, no more need to live a lie in front of the people he cared about.
Except the lie that he’d never been anyone other than Superman... but that was a past he needed to bury if he were going to be able to move on.
“Superman?”
Lois’s voice, thick with sleep, came at just the right moment. Yes, he was Superman now.
He turned his head towards her, noting that her eyes remained closed and she was still pressed against him under the covers. “Yes, sweetheart?”
“What’s your name?” Her eyes flickered open briefly.
<Clark>
The name almost escaped his lips, but he stopped himself just in time. Hadn’t he just agreed that he wasn’t Clark any more? Clark was dead. Long live Superman.
“What do you mean, Lois?” he asked instead.
“Well, I know your name’s not Superman,” she said, sounding more awake now, and her hand began to trace paths over his chest. “I christened you that, remember? So you must have another name.”
Of course he did. “Kal-El,” he told her. “I’m Kal-El, son of Jor-El and Lara of Krypton.”
“Kal...el,” she repeated slowly. “Can I call you Kal? Is El some sort of last name?”
Was it? Clark didn’t know. But then he remembered what his father had actually said in the hologram. “El is our house, so I guess it is kind of like a last name. So, yes, I’d like it if you called me Kal.”
And there was his new identity, now that Clark was gone forever. To the woman he loved, he could be Kal of Krypton. It was far from being everything he wanted, but it was something.
“Kal?”
“Yes, Lois?”
“Love me,” she whispered, pressing herself close to him again.
The request was a soft murmur against his throat. He pressed his hand to her cheek, amazed with the adoration in her eyes as she looked up at him. She’d always looked at Superman with awe, but this was different. This was real. She truly loved him, the real person. There were no more doubts to have. No more questions about Lois preferring the man in the Suit to her work partner. The work partner was no more. The real man always wore the Suit now.
“Your wish is my command,” he promised her, and kissed her deeply.
He was not Clark any more. He was finished pretending that his human identity prevailed. He was finished faking the need for another job. What did it matter that Superman was the real person anyway? He was a real person, and right now he was nothing more than Superman. Clark was not part of this relationship. He had been, briefly, on that very first night when Lois had been looking for comfort and he had desperately needed her to love him and reassure him that he was still alive. She had made love to Clark that night, even if she had been with Superman. In any case, it was Clark who had made love to her.
He deliberately pushed Clark aside. Tonight, and for the rest of their lives, Superman - Kal would be the man holding her in his arms. Kal would be the one she whispered sweet words of love to. Kal would not hide his abilities from her...
He floated with her several feet off the bed and revelled in her gasp of surprise. She wasn’t scared. Lois had never been afraid of what he could do; she’d always taken his powers as something positive.
She kissed him again; it was all the encouragement he needed, and he proceeded to show her how a super-powered man could make love.
*********
There was nothing but warmth around her. Nothing but love. There was no sense of loneliness, of insecurity. Just the knowledge that she was loved by one of the most wonderful men she’d ever met. She hadn’t felt this good in... years.
She was alive.
She was happy.
Deliriously happy.
Stirring into wakefulness, Lois propped herself onto her elbow and reached for K...
He was gone!
Within a second, she was on her feet and fighting to wrap the sheet around her naked body while running to the living-room to turn on the TV. She had to know what had happened. She had to know what had dragged him out of her bed. Why he’d left her. Whether it had been an emergency, or... Or if he’d just changed his mind. If he’d decided he didn’t want her after all.
She had to know if he was okay.
LNN’s live footage was showing a fire raging on the East Side; the commentator was mentioning Superman’s presence on site and the hard work he’d accomplished over the past hour, getting people out of the furnace and fighting the flames alongside the Metropolis fire department.
He hadn’t run out on her.
Chastising herself for her lack of faith in Kal’s love, Lois quashed the unwelcome thought and sank onto the couch, her eyes not wavering from the screen.
Kal was zipping in and out of focus. Most of the time he was just a blur, slowing down only to bring the building’s inhabitants back to safe ground. Despite her knowledge that he was invulnerable, she winced every time she saw him run through the flames. Here was the man she loved, fighting a raging fire with, she was sure, only one thing on his mind: to save as many people as possible.
He was the most unselfish person she knew.
Her thoughts immediately returned to Clark. Clark would have been just the same as Superman. Maybe not on the same scale, but he had always put others before himself, sometimes at the risk of his own safety.
Like on the night he’d died.
He had been killed protecting her, and she was pretty sure that, if given a second chance, he would do just the same. He hadn’t known, though, that by saving her life he would also kill a part of her, that he would break her heart...
If only he’d known how much he meant to her, maybe he wouldn’t have taken so many risks and -
No.
She took a deep breath and bravely swallowed back her tears. She would not cry again. Most of all, she didn’t want Kal to find her crying over Clark again. It was already embarrassing enough that he knew so much about her feelings for her dead partner. Clark haunted her thoughts constantly, but it was unfair to let Kal see that any more. After last night, talking about Clark as anything more than a friend was off-limits. She wouldn’t put their relationship at risk. She loved Kal too much to lose him.
He was being interviewed now. Lois turned up the sound and listened to the firmness of his voice. She admired the self-confidence he displayed in front of cameras. After seeing him cry for the woman he hadn’t saved the previous night, she knew that he was a lot more insecure and vulnerable than he appeared to the public eye. He’d let her see that secret part of him. He’d shown her that he had weaknesses, too. And she loved him all the more for his imperfections.
And yet being in love with Kal felt like a betrayal of Clark. She couldn’t forget Clark. She couldn’t put out of her mind the way he’d smiled at her every morning when she walked down the ramp and into the bullpen, the way he’d brought her coffee without her having to even say she needed her caffeine fix...
She growled and threw her head back against the cushions. She had spent the entire night making shameless, passionate love to an amazing, super-powered man. Superman - Kal - was her lover now. Not just a man she felt uncontrollable desire for, not just a man who filled her daydreams and midnight fantasies, not just an unreachable idea of perfection. He was real. He was there.
And he was hers.
Well, mostly.
She still had to share him with the world. There would be many mornings when she’d wake up to an empty spot beside her, with only the faint scent of his hair on the pillow to confirm it wasn’t all a dream. But it was about time she let go of her little girl’s fantasies. She had to share Kal with the world. After all, he had warned her that he could not be a normal boyfriend to her. He hadn’t mentioned the rescues, but she had known that he could run out at any moment’s notice.
And since he could come back just as quickly, it was about time she did something productive. She rose to her feet and looked down at the sheet barely covering her. For the first time in her life, she wished she could wear her lover’s shirt. She’d always considered that a useless mark of possession from men to the woman in their life, but now...
She walked back to her bedroom and the chest of drawers at the back. She reached down to retrieve the piece of light blue clothing... a shirt.
His shirt.
He’d been clumsy at times, and coffee stains became a problem if not washed immediately. And so she’d insisted on washing his shirt, and then forgotten to give it back to him once it was dry and ironed. It was still there. Her hands brushed over the soft material, and she had to fight the desire to put it on. Her lover’s shirt.
Clark wasn’t her lover.
He’d never been, and he would never be. Not now.
And yet it was his shirt she wanted to wear.
It was large and loose on her, enveloping her in its warmth and comfort. She could almost imagine that she had his arms around her, holding her close, instead of just being wrapped in his shirt.
Clark. Always Clark. Why couldn’t she get him out of her mind? Why couldn’t she accept that he was dead and move on? She had a wonderful man in her life now. And, even though she knew that Kal had loved Clark too, she didn’t want to hurt him by letting him see that she couldn’t forget her partner. Kal was vulnerable, and he needed her. She couldn’t let him think that he came second in her heart, a poor substitute for the man she’d really loved.
It was time she took a shower anyway. Walking into the bathroom, Lois let the shirt slide to the floor and she stepped into the cubicle, turning the jets up to full and hot. It was what she needed to wake herself up properly and make herself focus on what was important.
Moving on. Working out with Kal exactly what kind of a relationship they could have. And putting Clark away where he belonged: in a mental drawer labelled ‘precious memories’.
The past was gone, she told herself. And - though she despised the cliché even as she silently uttered it - today was the first day of the rest of her life.
***********
The fire had been long and brutal. He’d heard the alarms a little late, having had his first decent night’s sleep since being shot, and so by the time he’d arrived on the scene the flames had engulfed the building. Firefighters had been working hard to try to control the blaze, and the order had just gone out to vacate the roof - he’d plucked to safety a couple of smoke-eaters who’d been slow to obey instructions.
Finally, working together, they’d managed to extinguish the inferno, and he’d stayed for a few minutes to help check the building’s interior - always a distressing task as it involved looking for people who hadn’t managed to escape. Bodies.
This time, there hadn’t been anyone trapped inside, for which Clark was very relieved. But he was tired, and he reeked of smoke. And he longed for companionship.
He longed for Lois. After the emotion of the late night and early morning, he was anxious to see if she still felt the same way. If she was prepared to put up with a relationship with a man who was half what he’d once been - a man she could never have openly as her boyfriend.
Kal. He was Kal. Not Clark.
He knew that he should go back to his Fortress, the cabin in the woods. But, regardless, he headed for Lois’s apartment. It felt far more like home than his new accommodation ever could.
The window was standing open, even though it was a cold November day. Kal flew inside and looked around for Lois. She was in her bedroom, he could see using his vision abilities, sitting at the dressing-table styling her hair.
She’d heard him; she was getting to her feet and hurrying out of the bedroom. “Kal?”
“I’m here, Lois.”
“Was everything okay? No-one hurt?”
She knew where he’d been? His surprise must have shown, for she added, “When I realised you were gone, I turned on the TV. LNN had the story.”
Unaccountably pleased, Kal smiled. “It was fine. No-one hurt, thankfully. It was a pretty dangerous fire, all the same.”
“I guess people could’ve been hurt if you hadn’t been there,” she suggested, a hint of shyness in her tone.
“Maybe. I’m just glad I can help.”
She came towards him, reaching up to hold him by the shoulders and tug him down to her for a kiss. He came willingly, claiming her lips as if he’d been starved for her. Perhaps, he thought, he had been.
As she began to stroke her hands over his Suit, however, sanity returned. He was stinking, and she had to be tired after last night. They’d made love in more ways than he’d ever thought possible, after all.
He disengaged gently, taking her hands in his to show her that he wasn’t rejecting her. “I need a shower, Lois. I’m all smoky and I must be covered in ash and dust. Do you mind if I use your bathroom?”
“Oh, sure!” she exclaimed. “Go right ahead - you know where it is.”
He dropped a kiss on the top of her head. “Thanks. And after... we’ll talk? I want to be sure that you know what you’re getting into here.”
“Kal.” Lois stood in front of him, blocking his path. “I know that I love you. And I want to be with you. I never thought I’d get a second chance at love and I don’t want to waste this one, okay?” she told him softly.
Feeling a lump come to his throat, Kal nodded. Then he moved past her and went on into the bathroom.
The shower was hot; just what he needed. He stood under the jets, face raised to the water, and let it stream down his body until he felt clean. It took a long time; smoke, he’d discovered, permeated every pore and every scrap of fabric.
His Suit would need to be washed too. Which was a problem - he didn’t have a change of clothes with him. And putting back on a stained, stinking Suit really didn’t appeal. He wondered idly, as he turned off the water, whether Lois had a robe he could borrow.
Stepping out of the shower, he reached for a towel and began to rub himself vigorously. As he did so, his gaze fell on some blue cotton fabric lying on the floor. Picking it up, he realised that it was a shirt. Without stopping to think, he pulled it on, doing up the buttons quickly. Anything was better than that Suit he’d arrived in...
Although he needed some underwear. He wrapped the towel around his waist, wondering whether he should just fly back to his cabin and get a change of clothes. Did he dare wear something other than a Suit? Although Superman was now his life, he longed for the feel of fabric other than Spandex.
Not wanting to leave without telling Lois, he stuck his head around the bathroom door, intending to call to her and tell her that he’d be back in a couple of minutes.
She was in the bedroom, which he hadn’t expected. The door opening attracted her attention, and she turned around.
Then her face went white.
“Clark!” she whispered.
*********
tbc...
