Table of Contents
From Part 2:Pretence. There was already far too much of that in their relationship.
And suddenly he couldn’t bear to have any more of it.
She stirred, and he loosened his hold on her, letting her step back just a little. “Clark?” She stared up at him, a question as well as an apology in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” he said quietly. “We’ll be okay.”
“Really?” She sounded cynical. “I wish I could believe that...”
Clark sighed. She wasn’t the only one. But maybe... oh, maybe this time they had to get some of the stuff they usually avoided out into the open. Maybe that was the only way they could be okay.
“What have they got that I haven’t, Lois?” he asked, more in despair than bitterness. “Those guys you date... I know you’re not in love with any of them. If you’re in love with anyone, I’d have thought it was Superman, anyway. You don’t spend time with them the way you spend time with me. I don’t think you even like some of them. What’s wrong with me, Lois? What don’t I have that you want?”
********
Now read on...Oh, why hadn’t she followed her first inclination and just left when Clark had gone into the kitchen? It would have been the cowardly way out, she’d told herself. She had to sort this out now, to tell him that she was sorry, that she’d never wanted to hurt him. If she’d left, then she probably wouldn’t have slept all night, and in work the following day Clark would have been pleasant, cooperative - but distant. It would have taken them weeks, she knew, to regain their easy, comfortable friendship.
That wasn’t what she wanted. And that was why she’d come to him, to try to make amends. But now she was faced with a question she didn’t want to answer - because the answer was something she’d only just admitted to herself, and she wasn’t ready to share it with anyone. Least of all Clark.
But he deserved the truth. And somehow she had the feeling that, without truth between them now, their friendship was doomed anyway.
She took a deep breath to steady her nerves, then met his hurt gaze.
“Clark, it’s not anything they have that you don’t. Don’t you know? You’re worth a hundred of any of them!”
He continued looking at her, his expression telling her that he thought she was patronising him. It wasn’t enough. She’d have to tell him more - she’d have to tell him all of it.
“I date them because of what they’re not, Clark. Because I don’t care about them. Because I don’t love them. Because I don’t need them in my life so much that if I lost them I’d go crazy. Because... they don’t have the power to hurt me. That’s why. It’s what you have that they don’t - that’s why it’s always them and not you. Why it can’t be you...”
As she trailed off, the lump in her throat making it impossible for her to continue, he stared at her with incredulity.
“You... feel all that about me? Lois -” His arms closed around her again, his embrace offering the same security as it always had. Reminding her once again of why she couldn’t take the risk of losing him.
Letting her head rest against his chest once more, she mumbled, “So you see why I can’t let us be anything more than friends?”
She felt him inhale deeply, and his arms tightened around her. “I think we already are, Lois. Aren’t we?”
She froze in his arms. “No. I can’t risk...”
Clark’s hands moved to her shoulders, and then one hand tipped up her chin. “Risk what, Lois?” His voice gentle, he continued, “Tell me. I want to understand. You care about me, if I’m reading what you said right. So why can’t you risk us?”
She shook her head, frustrated because he really didn’t understand. “Because that’s exactly what it would be, Clark. Risking us.”
********
No, it didn’t make sense to him. But that was probably because he was still trying to recover from the shock of what she’d implied about her feelings for him.
Had she really meant that if she lost him she’d go crazy? That she
loved him?
She loved him as a friend, of course; he knew that... but yet she’d seemed to imply that it was more. That it was because he meant so much to her that she refused to see him as a boyfriend. Yet it was obvious from what she’d said that they were already much more than friends. He loved her - and she didn’t think of him just as a friend either, however much she tried to pretend that she did.
He needed her to explain but, as he looked down at her, it was obvious that she wasn’t in any state to give him a calm explanation. Tear-streaks still glistened on her face, and she was too pale.
Coming to a decision, he steered her to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair and pushing her gently into it. “I need you to explain that to me, Lois. But let me get you a drink first, okay? How about some more hot chocolate?” he offered cheerfully.
She nodded. “I’d like that.”
He busied himself with making their drinks, all the time keeping up a steady stream of undemanding, light conversation. By the time he returned to the table and put the mugs down, Lois looked much more her normal self. “Thanks, Clark,” she said, reaching out to touch his hand.
He closed his fingers around hers as he took the seat opposite her. “No problem. Want to tell me just what you meant, Lois? What risk is there for us?”
“Oh, Clark.” She gave him a sad smile. “You have to know - I just can’t do relationships. They never work out.”
“Yeah, but you will keep choosing guys you know you don’t want to be with,” he pointed out.
“Of course! Because that way I can stay in control.”
Clark stroked the back of her hand with his thumb as he reflected on that one. Lois was something of a control-freak; he knew that. So it probably wasn’t too surprising that she’d want to have control in relationships too. But still... that didn’t really explain her choice of men.
“Love’s not a battlefield, Lois,” he pointed out softly.
She shrugged. “Sometimes it is. But anyway, I’m not talking about love here.”
“I am,” he said, catching and holding her gaze. “I love you, Lois. And from what you said, I think you love me too.”
He half-expected her to deny it. And, when she shook her head, he was sure that she was about to. Instead, though, she said, “And that’s why we can’t have a relationship, Clark. That’s why I can’t take the risk of losing you.”
He stroked her hand with his thumb again. Control. Risk. Loss. He still couldn’t see the connection between them, nor what it had to do with Lois refusing to take a chance on love with him. “I’m still not following here, Lois. Mind explaining for me? Slowly?”
“I can’t make relationships work,” she repeated. “Whenever I’ve tried... it’s all gone wrong. I don’t know if I do something to make men treat me badly, or if I just can’t pick the right ones to begin with, but it’s always been a disaster. And, Clark, I don’t want that to happen with you!” She shrugged, and he could see a tear shimmering in her eye again. “I date those guys because I don’t care if it doesn’t work out. If we dated and it went wrong... You’re the one man I can’t bear to lose, Clark. So I just can’t take the risk!”
Her words sank in, and Clark remembered something she’d once told him. About a man, another reporter, whom she’d slept with and who’d stolen her story. In hindsight now, he could see that the other man had also stolen her trust. And probably more - given what he knew of Lois, he was very sure that she didn’t give her body lightly. Whatever he’d thought earlier, he was now confident that she never slept with any of her dates.
So the unknown reporter - wait a minute; she’d said his name was Claude - so
Claude had wormed his way into Lois’s confidence, and probably into her heart. He’d claimed to love her, no doubt, and she, believing herself loved, had given him a precious gift - not just her body, but her trust. And he’d used her, rejected her and left her doubting herself. Not trusting her own instincts, her own attractiveness, and believing that men were deceivers.
Over just one man?
But then he remembered her relationship with her father - another betrayal, he thought. And hadn’t Lucy Lane once hinted at a man Lois had known in college? Another broken relationship, and which had also left scars - although Lucy hadn’t been explicit in her aside to him, he had a feeling that she’d intended that message to get across.
He reached across with his other hand, trapping hers between his two. “Lois, there’s nothing about you which makes men treat you badly! Blame them, not yourself. If they were stupid enough not to realise what they had...” He shook his head, then added, “I can’t promise that I’ll never hurt you. No-one can promise that. No-one knows what’s around the next corner. But I can promise you that I’ll never deliberately use you, or betray you, or abandon you, or cause you pain.”
“You can’t promise that,” she objected, although he knew he’d seen a momentary flash of hope in her eyes. “Like you said, no-one knows what’s around the next corner.”
“You think something’s going to happen to make me
wantto hurt you?” he challenged her. “I love you, Lois. I could never want to do that. But I can’t convince you of that,” he pointed out gently. “You have to trust me.”
And that was the big stumbling-block - trust. Was it him she couldn’t trust, or was it herself and her own judgement?
She was more honest than he’d expected - but that was Lois all over. “I don’t trust love. You say you love me now, but how can I be sure you still will in two months’ time? Six months’ time?”
He gave her a wry smile. “I’ve loved you for eight months already, Lois. How’s that for constancy?”
“But we weren’t together,” she pointed out. “How do you know that you’ll still want to be with me if we start dating?”
“Because I trust my feelings for you.” He shrugged. “That’s what it comes down to, you know. Trusting how you feel. And I’m not pretending that it’s easy, especially if you think you got it wrong before - but, see, I’ve always believed that making mistakes helps you to be stronger and learn to avoid making the same mistake next time - not to run away.”
“I’m not running away!” she protested, but he could tell that she knew he was right.
“Yes, you are, Lois,” he said softly, and she nodded.
“Maybe I am. But it’s safer that way. And I get to keep you in my life, Clark. I told you,” she added, sounding more agitated. “I can’t risk losing you.”
“So we stay friends?” he queried. At her nod, he continued. “And one day, Lois, I’ll meet someone else. Maybe fall in love with her. Maybe marry her. And you’ll lose me anyway - at least, you’ll lose what we have now.”
He was by no means convinced that was true; right now he couldn’t imagine himself ever loving anyone but Lois, but he was also honest enough to acknowledge that it could happen. He couldn’t wait around for ever, hoping that she’d change her mind - and one of his dreams was, as he’d told his father months earlier, marriage and a family. He loved Lois now, but did love endure in the long term if it wasn’t returned? Of that he wasn’t sure.
She flinched. “You play dirty, Clark Kent.” And her voice was shaking.
“I’m sorry. But you have to know it’s true.” He squeezed her hand again. “I love you, Lois Lane. I want to say that I’ll always love you. I know that I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. But I can’t settle for best friends forever, and love, if it’s not returned... is hard to sustain. And anyway, I want more out of life than being the best friend of the woman I love - I want you, but if you don’t want me, or won’t have me, then...” Deliberately trailing off, he held her gaze to ensure that she got the message.
“Then you’ll find someone who will,” she finished for him. “So I have a choice - I either take the risk of losing you now, or I will lose you later.”
“Life’s about taking risks,” he told her. “You know that. You take risks all the time - every day of the week you scare me rigid thinking that you’re going to get yourself killed! And you can’t tell me that you’re not scared of dying.”
“You’re right. I do. And -” She shrugged. “When I let myself think about it, yeah, I’m terrified. Even though Superman’s somehow managed to get there for me most of the time - and you have a few times too. I’ve been pretty lucky.”
“You have. And, Lois, I’m not kidding - it
terrifies me when you do things like that! But have I ever seriously tried to stop you?”
“Just try it, Kent!” she challenged.
“I wouldn’t. Because that’s the way you are,” he pointed out, developing his argument. “So why won’t you take risks in your personal life?” Then he answered his own question. “Because experience has always shown you that it doesn’t work?” At her nod, he added, “Lois, I’m not Claude. You must know that by now. Do you really think that I’d walk away from you?”
“Something about me makes men walk away,” she mumbled, so quietly Clark knew he wouldn’t have heard it without his special abilities.
“Wouldn’t you say I know you pretty well by now? I’ve worked with you, spent time with you, even shared a honeymoon suite with you - I’ve seen the worst Lois Lane can offer, and it hasn’t scared me away yet.” He threw her a smile. “Look, here’s another promise - and I mean it. Go out with me. Give it a try. You might even like it. Heck, you could even find that you love it. And if it doesn’t work out, we can go back to being friends.”
“What, even if we break up because we have a fight?”
“Lois, how many times have we had a fight and still made up afterwards?” he said incredulously.
“I guess so.” After a moment, she added, “You’ve had to put up with a lot from me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I love you. Goes with the territory. Besides, you’ve put up with a lot from me too. Remember the Godzilla doll?”
That got a grin. “Though I deserved that.”
“Yeah, you did.” He winked at her. “Come on, Lois - wouldn’t you rather go out with me than yet another whatshisname?”
She hesitated again, avoiding his gaze, and suddenly another thought struck him. His heart sank. What if he was wrong? What if what she was saying was that, while she loved him, she loved someone else more?
“Unless...” he said slowly, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice, “you really are in love with Superman.”
“What?” At that her head shot up. “Superman? Clark, you must have worked out what that was all about - you seem to have figured out everything else.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Superman. He’s safe,” she explained. “Of course I can love him - he’s never going to love me back! He’s never going to buy that house with the white picket fence and ask me to come and live there with him. I don’t *have* to take any emotional risks to love him. He’s just... there. And, yeah, I do hope that maybe once in a while I can have a few minutes alone with him, and that maybe he’ll even kiss me again the way he did once. But I know that’s all it ever will be. No risk, Clark. Not like there’s a risk with you. Because you do love me back.”
Superman was
safe? Because he didn’t love her back?
Clark took a deep breath, then picked up his mug, drinking deeply to give himself some moments’ breathing space. He’d won, he was sure of it. She was still afraid of losing him, but he thought he’d done enough to reassure her. If he asked her out now, he thought she’d accept. If he went over to her and kissed her, he mused, remembering their previous kisses, he’d bet she’d kiss him back. And over time he’d show her that she could trust him - and her own feelings for him.
All he had to do was ask her.
But what she’d said about Superman bothered him. Not because he was jealous of her feelings for his own creation - what she’d said had put paid to that. It worried him that she was using Superman as an excuse not to experience real feelings with a real person. He was her crutch, he suspected - her hero on a pedestal whose apparent perfection gave her the opportunity to believe that no ordinary man could ever measure up. Over time, he suspected, unless he managed to get through to her and persuade her that she really could take the risk of letting herself love him, her Superman crush could kill any chance of a lasting relationship between them.
In which case, he needed to put a stop to that - right now.
He set down his mug and caught her gaze again.
“But what if Superman did love you back, Lois? What if he was sitting opposite you right now, holding your hand, telling you that he loves you and asking you to take a risk on love with him?”
Lois stared at him. “That’s ridiculous, Clark!”
“Is it?”
“Of course it is! Superman’s not here - and there’s no way he would ever be.”
“Are you sure about that, Lois?”
********
What was Clark talking about? He wasn’t making any sense at all.
“What? Clark, are you crazy? Of course he’s not here!”
Maybe he was crazy. None of this made any sense. Lois had, she knew, been on the verge of giving in, of admitting that he was right. She was being a coward in refusing to go out with him. That taking the risk of being in love with him, and maybe even being happy as a result, was better, much better, than the certain knowledge that she would lose him eventually otherwise.
And now he was going on about Superman? Claiming that he was here?
But Clark looked at her and smiled; a very odd smile, hinting at something she couldn’t begin to imagine. “He’s here, Lois. And he loves you back.”
“What? Where?” Pretending to humour him, she made exaggerated motions of looking around the apartment. “Clark, he’s not - ”
And then she broke off abruptly, because her partner was, with his free hand, unbuttoning the shirt he wore... and underneath it she could see some very familiar-looking blue fabric.
Blue Spandex.
And, as Clark opened one more button, she saw a flash of red, and yellow just below it.
Superman really was sitting opposite her, holding her hand. And Superman really had told her that he loved her.
“Lois?” Clark spoke again, still giving her that odd smile. “Do you love me? Will you go out with me?”
He’d released her hand and was getting up from his seat. Then, suddenly, he was crouching in front of her, catching both her hands in his and looking up at her with so much love in his gaze that she couldn’t even speak.
“Will you, Lois?” he asked again.
She freed one hand and reached out to touch the blue Spandex revealed beneath his shirt. “If I had a plate of boeuf bourguignon here, you’d be wearing it, Kent!” she told him, her voice shaky.
His laughter in response was rich, warm and entirely Clark. “But you do have half a cup of hot chocolate...” he pointed out.
“That’s too good to waste,” she objected.
He grinned, then pulled her to her feet and into his arms, lowering his head to hers, his intent unmistakeable. “You said a few minutes ago that you wished I’d kiss you again the way I did once,” he murmured, watching her all the time.
He was giving her time to pull away, if that was what she wanted, Lois realised. But, despite all her fears about taking emotional risks, that was the last thing she wanted. Even if Superman was turning out to be every bit as real as Clark, and every bit as much of a risk, she wanted him to kiss her again. No - she wanted
Clark to kiss her again.
“That was you!” she exclaimed, realising too late that she’d forestalled the kiss she longed for so much.
He drew his head back, to her disappointment. “Yes. And I guess I should confess that I was never affected by the pheromone.”
“Then why did you...?”
“Kiss you? Lois, you’d been driving me crazy for the previous twenty-four hours or so! Remember, you were affected, and the object of your desire was... me,” he reminded her with a crooked smile which hinted at the conflict he’d clearly suffered over it. “It was torture keeping my hands off you, especially when I loved you so much and so badly wanted to kiss you and hold you. Pretending to be affected as Superman... well, it just gave me the perfect excuse.”
She pulled her hands from his, reaching up to cup his face. “Do you need an excuse now?”
A smile on his lips, his mouth claimed hers. Clark’s kiss was passionate, demanding, every bit as overwhelming as it had been that day at the airfield, and she clung to him, needing to give as good as she got. Then his lips gentled, seducing her with loving caresses and whispered murmurs against her mouth.
She was lost. She loved him - Clark, Superman, whoever he was. She’d been hovering on the edge all evening, and now he’d finally persuaded her to jump over the precipice. But now she knew that he was there to catch her. He would never let her fall.
Love was dangerous. Love could hurt. But love was also the most blissful thing Lois had ever experienced. Held in Clark’s arms, she felt safe. Secure. Protected.
Clark was right. Love didn’t have to be a battlefield, and sometimes ceding control was exactly the right thing to do.
He broke the kiss, reaching up to smooth her hair. “I love you, Lois. And do you want to know why you should trust me?”
She shouldn’t trust Clark Kent one inch, Lois reflected briefly, smiling sardonically. He’d lied to her for as long as he’d known her about who he was - had lied as Clark and as Superman. Yet why should he have done anything else? Especially considering the way she’d chased around Metropolis after Superman when he’d first appeared - and the tricks she’d used to try to find him. No, it would have been the stupidest thing imaginable for Clark to have told her who Superman really was.
She wasn’t mad at him for hiding his disguise from her. After all, if she had to confess to everything she’d kept secret from him, they’d be still talking come dawn!
They’d both stripped away each other’s disguises tonight. Lois had finally allowed Clark to see the real woman beneath the brash, confident exterior she showed to the world. She’d bared her insecure, lonely, frightened self to him, and he’d offered her security, love and protection. And he’d trusted her enough in return to show her what really lay underneath Clark Kent’s country-boy facade.
No, she wasn’t mad. And she did trust him.
Smiling up at him, she stole a quick kiss. “And why’s that?”
He shrugged; she felt the movement of his body against hers. Then he took her hand and pressed it against the S on his chest; she could feel his warmth and the steady beat of his heart under her palm. “You do know that no-one other than my parents knows about this? That you’re the only person I’ve told voluntarily - and the only person I’ve ever wanted to tell? I decided to trust you with this secret, Lois - that should tell you that I have no intention of ever walking out on you.”
“That’s just as well, Kent,” Lois said, and she smiled broadly, knowing that she meant what she was about to say with all her heart. “Because I have no intention of ever letting you.”
“Sounds good to me!” He was about to kiss her again, but Lois forestalled him.
“I’m not going to pretend that it’s going to be easy, Clark. It might still take me a while to get over all those trust issues. And being afraid that something’s going to happen to drive us apart. But I’m going to try. I promise.”
“I know that. And remember, I haven’t let you fall yet,” he pointed out, echoing her own metaphor. Somehow, Lois wasn’t surprised; she’d become used, over the past eight months or so, to finding Clark’s thoughts amazingly well attuned to her own. It was no wonder they worked together so well.
It was no wonder that they’d fallen in love.
“I love you, Clark Kent,” she told him. “And you’re worth taking any risk for.”
His kiss told her exactly how he felt about that.
~ The End ~
(c) Wendy Richards 2004
