He took a wavering breath. "I need you to do something for me, too, though."
I nodded.
"I need you to take care of that grandson of mine for me. He was about all I could think about there for a few minutes."
You write Sam's fear very well, leaving off the "just in case anything happens" that they both know he is thinking.
Now, if I decided it was a good time to break down and cry, he'd just ignore me or sigh or something.
I sighed.
I'd wait till he was asleep to break down.
Throughout the day we repeatedly see Lois failing to give Clark the benefit of the doubt or underestimating what he does do. She thanks him when he bakes her a cake, but since it's not in her love language she immediately forgets it. He hugs her, but since it wasn't all day long she discounts it as too little or forced. She assumes that if she cries he will hold her, but only for show. She assumes that if something were to happen to her he would move on, untouched. She blows off all of his requests for conversation and sleeps with her back to him, even though he makes himself available to her.
In other words, if he doesn't express love to her in the way she expects it to be expressed, it's nothing to her. I'm not sure that this will blow up in their faces, because even though their marriage is not on stable ground he is expressing love to her when she needs it in a way that she feels loved. In other words, to her it isn't just sex.
Elisabeth
