Yes, it's another birthday story for Kae! And this one is being posted early too, because I'm away from early tomorrow until Saturday evening. I'll post part 2 on Sunday.
Many thanks to Elena and Yvonne for swift and terrific BRing! 
~~~~~~~~~~~~
You don't ever notice how I stare when we're alone
Or wonder why I keep you on the phone
I've made it obvious
Done everything but sing it
(I've crushed on you so long but on and on you get me wrong)
I'm not so good with words
And since you never notice
The way that we belong
I'll say it in a love song
~ from Obvious, by Westlife~ The Way That We Belong ~“This is wrong. I wanted the doors off the master side balcony to be sliders. French doors make the room look smaller.”
“Hmm?”
“Lois.” Lex’s voice was patient but long-suffering. “We’re discussing our future bedroom here, darling. Don’t you want it to be perfect?”
Concentrate, Lois, she told herself. What was wrong with her today? She’d managed fine for the last few weeks, hadn’t she? What was the problem? Pasting a smile on her face, she returned her attention to the blueprints Lex was holding under her nose, forcing herself to examine them. Taking in the details, she stared up at her fiancé in disbelief.
“Lex, the master bedroom is three thousand square feet. That's more than twice the size of my apartment!”
“Of course it is, Lois,” Lex replied, sounding as if he was addressing a small child who was slow at understanding. “Your apartment is... well, I’m sure it was perfectly acceptable when you were just Lois Lane, reporter. But you’re going to be Mrs Lex Luthor, and we want a home suited to our standing in the community, as well as somewhere which will give us the privacy we need when we’re away from the city. You wouldn’t want the servants in hearing distance when we’re alone together in our bedroom, would you?”
Alone. Together. In their bedroom.
Alone in a bedroom with her husband.
She had to stifle the gasp which instinctively came to her at that. In a matter of weeks, she would be sharing a bedroom - and a bed with Lex. But she’d known that, surely. Why was she only now feeling this sudden sense of shocked realisation?
She had agreed to marry Lex. She was wearing his ring. The church was booked. She had already had several fittings for her dress. The invitations had been sent out.
Wake up and smell the coffee, Lois! she told herself sardonically.
You’re getting married. What did you expect would happen after the wedding - that he’d kiss your cheek, thank you for everything and then just walk away? That your life would get back to normal?If only her life could get back to normal...
Lex was speaking again, and she forced herself to focus. “What about the exercise area?” he was asking. “Should we put it back on the ground floor?”
Exercise area, Lois mentally repeated. She could say something sensible about that, at least. And that was one part of Lex’s grand plan for a huge ranch outside the city which she did like. “No, I think this is right,” she countered, pointing at the space set aside for the gym equipment. “It'll be great to get out of bed and have that stair climber staring me right in the face saying 'Now, Lois. Now’.” She made herself smile at her fiancé.
“But, darling, that'll be my line,” Lex said smoothly.
Oh, god, how corny...Before she had time to change the subject, Lex’s mouth covered hers.
He’d kissed her before, of course, many times. His kisses were... pleasant, enjoyable. They didn’t strike any real sparks in her, but then she didn’t think that hers did for him either. She had decided some time ago that Lex’s interest in her arose more from a shared sense of beliefs and principles, a feeling that they had compatible interests, a conviction that she would be a suitable wife for him. If they weren’t entirely compatible sexually, that didn’t matter so much, she thought. They could manage, and anyway it wasn’t as if either of them was going into this expecting passion or excitement.
But suddenly this kiss was sending alarm-bells ringing.
He was much more demanding than usual. His lips pressed hard against hers, and his tongue was forcibly demanding entry to her mouth. His arms, fastened tightly around her, were pulling her close to his lean, strong body - he was a lot more muscular under that corporate-suited exterior than he appeared, she realised - and it was very clear from his actions and incoherent mutterings that he was fast losing the calm control she always associated with Lex.
Maybe... Lex didn’t share her vision of their future sex life after all?
Oh, she really didn’t like what he was doing to her... But he was her fiancé, after all. She’d said that she would marry him. She couldn’t just knee him in the... well, whatever, as she would with any other guy who dared to manhandle her like that. She’d said she’d marry him... Had she been out of her mind?
His wandering hands suggested that he wasn’t intending to stop at a kiss either. Lois tore herself out of his grasp and sat back, grabbing hold of the plans in a deliberate attempt to put some distance between them. But, with a decided glint in his eye, Lex was moving towards her again, reaching for the plans.
Okay, she had to play hardball here. Smiling widely at him, she said pointedly, “Thank you, Lex, for understanding about my wanting to wait... for our wedding night. I just want it to be special.”
The smile he gave her in return was almost feral, and held a veiled warning. “It will be,” he promised.
Rescue arrived then in the shape of Lex’s assistant; Lois had never been so pleased to see the woman. Having knocked at the door, Mrs Cox hovered in the doorway, her usual supercilious smile on her lips. “Lex, could we run through your schedule for tomorrow?”
Lex looked torn; he was clearly anxious to speak to his assistant, but he glanced at Lois with an expression which told her that he considered they had unfinished business. Well, as far as she was concerned, they’d finished their business for the moment.
Scrambling to her feet, Lois said lightly, “In that case, I’ll leave you to it, Lex. I have to get to work anyway, and I know how busy you are...”
His hand automatically came to cup her elbow. “But, Lois, we haven’t finished looking at the plans yet. Did we decide on the twelve-car garage, or the fifteen?”
“I’m sure that whatever you choose is fine, Lex,” she told him, edging away and towards the door. “We’ll talk later, okay?”
“Yes, we will. And you know you don’t need to work. As far as your employer is concerned, you can stop any time. After all, you do have a wedding to prepare for.” He leaned towards her, planting a brief kiss on her cheek; his expression as he drew away told Lois that Lex wasn’t fooled at all by her excuse. He knew that she was acting strangely, and he was determined to get to the bottom of it.
The trouble was that, as far as Lois was concerned, she wasn’t acting strangely at all. After almost two months, she was finally coming to her senses.
********
Lois drove to the LNN studios in a daze, assaulted on all sides by thoughts. A country ranch - a
mansion - of almost one hundred thousand square feet! For just two people?
Well, of course, knowing Lex, there would be servants. And he’d have to accommodate his personal office staff, whom he would insist on having to hand at all times. So Nigel would need his own suite, and no doubt that irritating, omnipresent Mrs Cox too.
And Lex had said that he wanted children, so they would need extra bedrooms. But...
ten bedrooms? Six reception rooms? An entire office suite? Servants’ quarters occupying at least ten thousand square feet? Seven bathrooms, not including the his and hers ensuite bathrooms as part of the master suite?
And a
fifteen-car garage? Even if Lex chose the twelve-car version... who on earth could possibly need that many cars?
Was this really how the rich lived? And how could she ever get used to it? Did she even want to get used to it?
Lex’s kisses. Why hadn’t she known how repulsive they were? How could she ever have got close to a man who aroused no feelings at all within her other than revulsion? What on earth had made her think that she could ever share her body with him? And yet Lex oozed suave sophistication. How could she possibly have known that he would turn into an... an animal?
But maybe it wasn’t Lex’s fault. After all, she’d never really felt anything very much when intimate with a man. Claude had been... okay. Nothing to make her want to repeat the experience, even if he hadn’t stolen her story. And as for her first time... well, if she never had to remember how that had gone again, it would be too soon!
And yet it wasn’t true to say that she’d never felt anything in a man’s embrace. She’d been kissed by Superman, after all! And that had been... just... wow. It had been just a kiss, but all that stuff in those romance novels about the earth moving and stars exploding... well, it had happened. Superman could have swept her off her feet and flown her back to his... well, his lair or wherever it was that he lived and had his way with her and she would have been with him every step of the way.
It wasn’t just Superman who could make her feel like that, either. Lois felt herself flush as she remembered another very heated - and completely unexpected kiss.
A kiss she had shared with Clark.
She remembered it very clearly. They’d been on a plane, and Jason Trask had outlined his insane idea: to push her out and see if Superman would somehow realise that she was in danger and come to rescue her. And then they would kill Superman. Terrified, but thinking on her feet, she’d demanded to be allowed to say goodbye to Clark. The idea had been that she would kiss him briefly, then whisper her plan to him.
Only it hadn’t quite worked out like that...
She’d seized his face between her palms and kissed him. He’d been startled for a moment, but had then kissed her back... and a conflagration had erupted. Passion had flared between them which had left her stunned.
She’d only just managed to drag herself away and give him his instructions.
That hadn’t been the only time. There’d been the occasion when they’d been undercover in the honeymoon suite - he’d kissed her to distract the maid’s attention from their surveillance equipment. And again she’d been caught up in a blaze of desire. Despite the protest which had risen automatically to her lips once he’d released her, she’d been disappointed to discover that the kiss had only been a ruse.
Yes, both Clark and Superman could manage to make her
feel when they kissed her. Yet the sweetest kiss of all had been the brief touch of his lips to hers Clark had given her that awful time when he’d quit his job - last winter, during the heatwave, that was when it had happened.
She was attracted to both Superman and Clark. And yet she’d chosen Lex Luthor - a man she was neither in love with nor attracted to.
Well, she’d thought that she was attracted to him, hadn’t she? Otherwise she would never have accepted dates with him. But that kiss had made things very clear. She wasn’t attracted to Lex at all. And she couldn’t even begin to imagine being married to him.
So why on earth was she planning to marry him in just two weeks’ time?
But she wasn’t really. That was the problem! It was never supposed to have gone this far.
She hadn’t actually planned on marrying Lex when she’d accepted his proposal!
Then why the heck did you accept him, Lois?The voice in her head was so clear; Clark could have been sitting right beside her in the soft-top Mercedes. Oh, great. Now she was channelling her former partner.
And best friend, Lois. Or did you stop thinking of me as your best friend when you turned me down?Of course her conscience would have to sound like Clark. After all, he’d assumed the right to act as her conscience during the year they’d worked together.
He was right, though: she had stopped thinking of him as her friend. But then, he’d stopped acting as her friend, hadn’t he? He’d stepped out of the role himself the moment he’d told her that he was in love with her. With a few words, he’d changed everything. How could he expect her to act as if nothing had happened?
It wasn’t as if he’d behaved as if nothing had happened. He’d changed too, right from the moment where she’d had to tell him that she didn’t feel the same way about him. And yet she’d had to say it, hadn’t she? She
didn’t feel the same way. She had been, after all, in love with someone else.
Was in love with someone else.
Though, thinking back, Clark had seemed okay that afternoon - well, as okay as he could possibly have been, given that she’d just rejected his declaration of love. It hadn’t been until the following day that he’d turned bitter and unpleasant. He’d probably slept on it and then decided that he had the right to be upset and angry, she thought. Even though she’d never given him any reason to believe that she returned his feelings... even though she’d made it obvious time and again that she was in love with Superman.
Yeah, you were in love with Superman - and yet you’re marrying Lex Luthor!Lois parked the car in a vacant space in the LNN lot, climbing out and walking wearily towards the main news building. She was
engaged to Lex Luthor, she told her conscience firmly. There was a difference!
The difference being?“I never intended to marry him!” she exclaimed, causing a passer-by to give her a puzzled, then wary, look.
Put like that, she supposed she did sound like nothing more than a flake. Oh, it was a mess! But she didn’t have time to think about it now. She had work to do.
*********
Later that evening, Lois finally left her office and headed down to the car park. Work had kept her so busy that she hadn’t had a moment to work out what she was going to do, and she had no doubt that Lex was expecting to see her for what was left of the evening.
Well, he could want. But he wasn’t going to get. She was going home.
She had a lot of thinking to do, primarily - but not exclusively - about how she was going to extract herself from this mess. It wasn’t just a matter of telling Lex that she wasn’t going to marry him, though she already knew that ending her engagement was not going to be simple. She’d come to know Lex fairly well over the past month or so of their engagement - not as well as she should, she was beginning to realise, but still well enough to understand that he could be very territorial when it came to something he thought of as his possession. And, she was beginning to realise, in Lex’s eyes she was very much his possession.
What had she been thinking?
She hadn’t, that was the problem.
She had a lot of not-thinking to make up for - and she intended to start with a phone call she should have made a long time ago.
But, back in her apartment, Lois simply sat and stared at the telephone. It had been weeks since they’d spoken, she reminded herself. The last time they’d seen each other, at Perry’s retirement party, they’d parted on a very bitter note. What if he didn’t want to speak to her? What if he hung up when he heard her voice?
On the other hand, if she didn’t make the effort, she would never know...
Fingers shaking, Lois dialled the number she knew by heart, and waited, barely breathing, for him to answer.
“Hello?” His voice sounded just the same as ever, and she immediately felt warm inside.
“Hi. It’s me,” she ventured, only after she’d spoken wondering if she should have given her name. It had been a month, after all. Supposing he didn’t remember her voice?
Silence. Maybe he didn’t remember after all, she thought, a lump gathering in her throat. Or maybe he did, and didn’t want to speak to her...
“Hi. How are you?” Okay. He did remember her. But was he pleased to hear from her? She couldn’t tell. His voice was giving nothing away.
Lois forced herself to swallow. Okay, so far no clues as to what her reception was going to be. She would have to play this carefully. “Terrific,” she lied. “You?”
“Great.”
His tone was enthusiastic, but... Lois wasn’t sure. Was he feigning it, just as she was? Maybe he was being every bit as careful to keep up the act of sounding fine, when... he wasn’t fine.
She decided to take a chance. After all, that was why she’d called him, wasn’t it? “Clark?”
“Yes?” He sounded wary.
“I miss you.”
There was another pause. Then, his voice soft, he said, “I miss you too, Lois.”
He missed her! Then maybe this wasn’t a mistake after all. She was about to speak again, but Clark got in before her. “Well, it's kind of late. I guess I should go to bed.”
He was going to hang up! “No! Wait!” she exclaimed.
“Yes?” Now he was definitely cautious.
“Clark... can we talk?”
She heard him sigh. “Lois, it’s late.”
“It’s not too late for us, is it?” She knew he’d only been referring to the lateness of the hour, but still...
He understood her meaning. “Lois, haven’t we said everything there is to say? I don’t think...”
“Please, Clark!” she exclaimed, interrupting him. This would be her last chance, she was sure. She could feel her one-time best friend slipping away from her by the second. If she couldn’t get through to him now, she knew she would have lost him, perhaps permanently. “Please. I need to talk to you. Can I come over? Now?”
“Lois...” He sounded weary, and not, she thought, from tiredness.
“Please, Clark! This is important.”
“It’s always important with you, Lois.” But she thought his tone had changed; the weary frustration had been replaced by resignation. With maybe even a faint hint of wry amusement.
“I need you, Clark,” she said softly. “Without you, this past month... I just don’t know how I’ve managed.”
“Oh, you don’t need me.” Now his tone was sardonic. “What with your brand-new important job at LNN and your brand-new fiancé, soon to be husband, and your shiny open-top Mercedes... what on earth do you need a washed-up, unemployed farmboy reporter like me for?”
“That’s not fair, Clark,” she protested, but a tiny voice inside her was telling her that it was only too fair. “Please,” she added. “I really do need you. Things... aren’t what they seem.”
He hesitated; she could almost hear him thinking, debating with himself. Then, just as she thought he was going to end the conversation without another word, he said quietly, resignedly, “I’ll be over there in ten minutes.”
**********
Clark dropped down in the alley just behind Lois’s apartment block, still asking himself what he was doing there. He’d told Lois on the phone that he didn’t think they had anything left to talk about, and he’d meant it. But she had always been able to get under his defences. All she had to do was use that particular tone of voice and he was putty in her hands.
Even now, when part of him wanted to hate her.
She was marrying Lex Luthor in barely a couple of weeks’ time. Luthor - a man he despised, and whom he believed to be a criminal.
And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, she’d torn his heart to shreds when she’d rejected his heartfelt declaration of love and then thrown herself at Superman’s feet, making insincere claims that she’d love him even without his powers.
Yeah, right.
So why was he here now? Why wasn’t he just taking flight again, getting the heck out of anywhere in Lois’s proximity?
Because she’d asked him to come. Because she’d said please. Because she’d said she needed him.
Anger and frustration welled up inside him as he marched up the steps into Lois’s apartment building. He didn’t know who he despised most right at that moment: Lois for her duplicity and shallowness, or himself for his inability to walk away from her. His weakness.
How had he come to let her wrap her tentacles around his heart? Just what had she done to him to make him need her so much? She was eating away at him from the inside, slowly destroying his heart. She was like some sort of poison, a virus which had worked its way into his system and which refused to let go of him. And it seemed that there was no cure.
So here he was once again, voluntarily walking into her den, offering himself once more as a sacrifice on the altar of Lois Lane’s vanity.
He was a fool. An idiot without the self-discipline to carry through his resolve never to see her again.
Grimacing, he tapped on her door.
The first thing he noticed about Lois when she opened the door was that she seemed very nervous. And unsettled.
For an engaged woman, preparing to be married in just two weeks’ time, she certainly didn’t look happy.
“Thanks for coming, Clark,” she said, stepping back to let him enter. He glanced at her briefly as he passed; she still looked the same Lois whom he’d worked alongside for almost a year. Funny; he’d expected her to look different, somehow. More like Lex Luthor’s fiancée than Lois Lane, reporter. And yet there she was, dressed in the same jeans and sweatshirt he’d seen her wear on several casual occasions in the past. It was very disconcerting.
“How did you get over here so quickly?”
Oh. The one thing he hadn’t thought of when he’d told her he’d be there in ten minutes. He didn’t drive, and it was at least an hour’s walk from his place to hers. Time for another of the little lies he’d used with her throughout the past year. “I was lucky - I got a cab right outside my building.”
She accepted it, much to his relief, nodding distractedly. “Can I get you some coffee?” At his quick shake of the head, she offered instead, “Tea? I think I have some of that stuff you like... oolong? Or I have milk - at least, I hope it’s still fresh. I haven’t exactly done a lot of shopping lately. There’s probably soda...”
“Lois.” He cut across her, knowing that he was being brusque but not caring. “I don’t want anything to drink. I just want to know what you want.”
His tone, plus his formal, closed-off stance and the fact that he was keeping his distance from her, clearly got through to her. Good. She realised that he wasn’t exactly thrilled to be in her company.
“Oh.” Her expression was crestfallen. “I... I hoped we could talk. I didn’t realise you really hated me this much,” she added in a low voice, turning away from him. He heard the little choke as she continued, “It’s okay, Clark. I - just go, okay?”
Damn. She was crying.
With two strides, he was behind her. He cupped her shoulders in his hands, tugging her back against him; his defences crumbled even further now that he was holding her against him. But then, he’d never been immune to her tears.
“I don’t hate you, Lois,” he admitted. “I don’t think I ever could. I don’t like you very much right now, but... well, that’s just the way it is.”
“That’s okay,” she said, in little more than a whisper. “I don’t like myself very much either, so why should I expect you to?”
Okay, this was bizarre. None of what she was saying made any sense. But what was clear was that his one-time best friend was miserable.
He’d wanted her to be miserable. He’d lain awake at night dreaming up scenarios in which she’d realise what a mistake she’d made and would come to him begging him to forgive her, and he’d laugh in her face. He’d imagined her finding out the truth about her fiancé before the wedding and being horrified, then coming to him to tell him that he was right all along.
Now, faced with Lois in a highly upset state, he realised that he didn’t want her to suffer after all. He was too soft-hearted for his own good, he supposed. But still... he loved her.
“Lois, tell me what’s going on,” he said, turning her so that she was facing him. “Come on - let’s sit down.”
She wiped her eyes roughly before joining him on the couch. “Sorry. I don’t know what came over me there. I guess it was just a bit of a shock to realise... but then, I should have known. We haven’t exactly been close lately.”
“No, we haven’t,” he agreed. “It’s... difficult, Lois.”
She sighed. “Yes.”
Then, suddenly, her expression changed and he saw the old Lois, the fighter, return. “Yes, it’s difficult,” she said bitingly. “You can’t accept that I chose someone else. That I was honest with you and didn’t lead you on - that I told you as nicely as I could that I didn’t love you the way you said you love me. Clark, I’m *sorry* that I had to reject you. You really think I wanted to hurt you? You think you don’t mean anything to me? That I wanted to lose your friendship over this?”
Clark was about to protest that it wasn’t as simple as that. That it wasn’t the fact that she’d turned him down, but that she’d offered herself to Superman and claimed that she’d love him as an ordinary man not hours after rejecting the ordinary man. But, he realised, he couldn’t tell her that.
There was still more to it, and he could give that to her with both barrels. “I can accept you not returning my feelings, Lois. I can even live with you being in love with Superman. What’s kind of hard to accept is when you go off and agree to marry a rich guy you barely know and who I know you’re not in love with,” he said, knowing that he was sounding sarcastic but not caring. “You accept his proposal knowing that I’ve told you he’s a crook. And you think I should just ignore all that and carry on being your friend?”
*********
Was that what she’d thought? Had she really been as selfish as Clark was making out?
Actually, the truth was that she probably hadn’t thought at all. Hadn’t thought that Clark was entitled to be hurt that she’d rejected him, and even more entitled to feel that way after she’d accepted Lex’s proposal.
She could tell him that he’d had no right to expect that she would return his feelings. She could also remind him that she’d been as tactful and caring as she’d been capable of - but then, he’d said he accepted her rejection. It was the rest which left him angry and bitter.
And, of course, he had a point. She had gone off and said she’d marry a man she didn’t love.
Biting her lip, she turned to him again. “I am sorry, Clark. I never meant to hurt you. And I guess I did think that you’d still be my friend, which was pretty naive of me, I admit.”
His anger seemed to be spent; he gave her a weary smile, though there still wasn’t much evidence of friendship or affection in it. “I could probably have coped with that, Lois. Even after that day... But you went off and got engaged to Luthor! How was I supposed to feel about that?”
Frustrated, she exclaimed, “But I never actually meant to marry him!”
*********
...tbc
