This is what happens when I drink a glass of wine before finishing the part.
The Newlywed Game: 3/definitely 4
by Nan Smith
The actual beach, it turned out, wasn't on the Big Island at all, but on Maui. It was a small, isolated cove that was, Clark said, private property, but he wasn't actually trespassing. He'd rescued the owner a few months ago when his boat had conked out at sea, and the man had given Superman permission to use his beach whenever he wished. At the time, Clark hadn't expected to avail himself of the permission, but that had been before these latest events in his life.
"Will he come down here to see what's going on?" Lois asked, a little nervously.
"No. He's only here from January through April," Clark told her. "There's nobody here but the caretaker, and Superman put in a call, while you were buying that swimsuit, to be sure that no one disturbs us."
Lois bit her lip. "Do you know how overwhelming all this is?"
"I think so." He set the ice chest and their picnic basket down on the sand and spread out their picnic blanket with a minimum of fuss. Lois put chunks of rock down on each corner of the blanket to hold it in place and Clark laid their folded towels on one corner of the blanket. Finished with the simple arrangements, he dropped beside them. "It's pretty overwhelming, all right. Especially since I'm afraid that if I do the wrong thing I could ruin everything." He patted the blanket. "Let’s sit down for a minute and watch the sunset. Then --" he gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile, "you can ask me anything you want."
"There’s a lot I want to know," she said.
"I know. And I owe it to you to tell you as much as I can."
Slowly, she sank down on the blanket beside him. Clark reached out, giving her plenty of room to refuse, and took her hand. "Do you hold hands on a first date?"
She laughed a bit nervously, but didn’t pull her hand away. "I’ve been known to."
"Good." He interlaced his fingers with hers. "It’s a beautiful sunset."
She nodded without replying, but he could feel her body relaxing as the sun sank slowly into the Pacific Ocean. The air was warm and scented with the exotic flora blooming in profusion on the island.
"What’s your name?" Lois asked suddenly.
"Huh?"
"Your name. It isn’t Superman. I named you that, and since you’re from another planet -- Krypton, you said -- it sure isn’t Clark Kent."
"Actually, it is," he said. He paused, and then took a deep breath. This was it. "Do you want the whole story?"
Lois nodded.
"Okay." He lifted their joined hands, examining the rings that he barely remembered slipping onto her finger in a Las Vegas chapel. "For most of my life I didn’t know where I came from or why I have these strange powers," he began. "I guess the story begins the night Mom and Dad -- my Earth parents -- were driving past Shuster’s Field on May 17th, 1966 ..."
He continued to talk, relating to Lois the story his parents had told him. She listened without speaking until he had finished.
"So you had no idea where you came from?" she asked, finally.
"No. Mom and Dad thought I might be a Russian experiment or something. When I came to Metropolis, I knew that I’d finally found the place where I wanted to stay. It was a few weeks later that I found out what little more I know."
"How?" she demanded.
"Do you remember the warehouse on Bessolo Boulevard?"
"What does that have to do with it?"
"Everything. Remember all the stuff that Bureau 39 had there? One of those UFOs was my ship. They'd somehow found it."
"How could you tell it was your ship?"
"It had the 'S' crest on it. That must have been how they connected it to me. Anyhow, that’s where I found the globe."
"Globe?"
"I’ll show it to you when we get back. I took it off the ship, and something in my head said ‘Krypton’. It communicated with me somehow, and that’s when I learned the name of my home world. I’m not human. That’s why I have these strange powers -- but that’s all I know. I may never learn why I was abandoned here on Earth. So --" He shrugged. "So when I tell you that my name is Clark Jerome Kent, it’s because that was what my mom and dad named me. If I ever had another name, I don’t know what it was."
He felt her squeeze his hand. "'It's the not knowing that kills you.'"
"Yeah."
"Me and my big mouth."
"You couldn't have known," Clark said. "Who knows. Maybe I'll find out more, someday -- if I ever find my ship again."
She lifted her free hand to her mouth. "That's right! Bureau 39 still has it!"
"I know."
"When we get home," Lois said in no uncertain terms, "we're going to start investigating. If we can track them down, maybe we can get it back for you."
"I don't know how likely it is that we'll even find a trace of them -- after what happened in Smallville," Clark said. "Trask died, and the rest just seemed to vanish."
"We'll find out," Lois said. "But, what about Trask? Was he right? You were awfully quiet about that whole episode. I didn't think about it at the time, but that was because I didn't know what I know now."
"I know." He looked out over the water, where only the faintest trace of the sun's disk was still visible above the horizon. "Yes, he was right. The 'rock' -- the Kryptonite -- was there, in Smallville. Wayne Irig had given it to my dad, and Dad hid it in the barn. That first night, he showed it to me."
"And?"
"It knocked me out and took away my powers, so yes, Kryptonite exists and it can hurt me. I destroyed that piece when Trask tried to use it against me but there's still the one that Wayne sent to the lab."
"The one that disappeared."
"That's right."
"So someone out there has something that can hurt or kill you," Lois said. "And you have no idea who it is."
"No."
"We'll find out," Lois said. "And when we do, whoever took it will wish he'd never gotten involved with you or Kryptonite, or anything else about you."
He found that he was smiling at her. "You are incredible; did you know that?"
She looked up at him in the dusk that was descending with the setting of the sun. "Clark, why on Earth did you become Superman? It's made you a target for every criminal, xenophobe and general lunatic on the planet."
"I know," he said. "But I was given these powers for some reason. I can't stand by and do nothing when someone is in trouble and I have the means to help. That was why I moved around so much after college. I'd be somewhere, and sooner or later I'd do something that made people suspicious -- and so I'd move on. When I got to Metropolis, I knew I had to find a way to stay. I'd always dreamed of working at the Daily Planet, and I'd read your work, of course -- but then I met you. That morning when a workman was caught in an explosion and trapped down a manhole in front of the Planet, I helped get him out. You noticed how dirty my clothes were, and told me to bring a change of clothes to work. And that was the beginning of Superman. It was a way to use what I've been given to help, and not give away to the world that Clark Kent is different."
"You mean *I* helped you create Superman?"
"Yes. You've helped me so many times, I've lost count." He smiled down at her. "Now that you know all my deepest secrets, how would you like to go swimming?"
She nodded. "That sounds like fun."
He got to his feet and lifted her to hers. He heard her catch her breath at the exhibition of strength. "Do I scare you when I do things like that?"
"What do you mean?"
"When I -- well -- use Superman's strength? I'm completely in control of it, you know. I'd never hurt you."
"I know that," Lois said, softly. "You're the gentlest person I know -- both of you are. But will you answer one question for me?"
"Sure."
"I want you to promise to tell me the exact truth," she said, very seriously. "Don't fib to save my feelings or anything. Promise?"
"All right," he said, a little warily. "I promise. I don't like to lie, dual identity or not."
"I know," she said. "But I want to know if you really wanted to marry me. Did you -- or was it just the perfume?"
Clark had not released her hand when he lifted her to her feet. He was still clasping it, and at her question he turned to face her. He could feel her pulse pounding fast and hard. He swallowed. "You want the whole truth?"
He could feel her stiffen slightly, bracing herself, but she nodded.
"All right then -- the whole truth." He raised their joined hands and put his left hand with its wedding ring over them. "I wasn’t affected by the perfume the first time, as you know, but I guess the stronger dose was too much even for Superman." He tightened his grip slightly. "The truth is that I’ve been in love with you since about two minutes after we met." Only he could have heard the soft intake of her breath. "One minute I was interviewing with Perry, and the next this whirlwind burst through the door. I can't even describe what I felt then. As I've gotten to know you better, it's only become stronger. I love your fire, your passion, your take-no-prisoners attitude. You take on a challenge with everything you've got. No half measures for Lois Lane. The pheromone lowered my inhibitions, but it didn't change the way I feel about you." He paused to take a breath. "If either of us had been a little more sober, this probably wouldn't have happened -- but we weren't. I didn’t care what the sensible thing was to do -- I only knew what I wanted. If it hadn’t been for the pheromone, I wouldn’t have married you -- yet. I would have tried to get to know you better -- but that would have been my ultimate goal, pheromone or not. So yes; I really wanted to marry you." He took a deep breath. It was time, he thought, to make his position clear beyond the possibility of doubt. "And unless *you* don't want to," he said slowly and clearly, "I want to *stay* married to you -- for as long as we both live."
**********
As Clark spoke, Lois almost couldn't believe what she was hearing. Clark Kent, who was also Superman, loved her. The sincerity in every word was unmistakable. This wasn't a man who lied easily, and, in his role of Superman, he stood for truth. Her doubts began to melt and she felt her eyes filling with tears as she began to understand that his earlier statements of how he felt toward her had been the exact truth, and not a kind lie to save her feelings. When he finished, she was looking up at him through a swimming blur of unshed tears and her breath caught on a sob. Quite suddenly, she was in his arms, and found herself hugging him back.
"Don't cry, Lois," he murmured in her ear. "It doesn't matter what I want. What you want is what's important. If you don't think you can handle it --"
"Just shut up!" she said fiercely, her voice breaking on the word. "Damn it, Clark! Just for once, will you stop trying to please everybody else and just please yourself? You're married to me, for better or worse, and I'm not letting you out of it! I --"
Quite suddenly, she found her words cut off as his mouth closed on hers, and then she was kissing him as if her life depended on it. She wasn't aware of it when her feet left the ground, or that they were lying on the picnic blanket, but she noticed it when her bikini seemed to disappear. She reached out to pull at the cloth of the Hawaiian shirt that he had been wearing, and her fingers encountered smooth skin.
"I love you," Clark's voice whispered roughly in her ear.
"Shut up," she said. "You talk too much."
**********
tbc
