PART THREE
Lois unlocked her front door and pushed indoors, her unwanted visitor following behind her like a stray puppy. She’d had a frustrating afternoon trying unsuccessfully to track down the elusive Dr Klein and was in no mood to act the welcoming hostess.
Dumping her briefcase and throwing her keys on the coffee table, she glanced back at him. “Do you want take-out? We’ve got a few places on speed dial if you want to order something.”
“Uh...sure,” he said, hovering awkwardly between her and the front door like he didn’t know where to put himself. “What about you?”
She shrugged off her raincoat and walked past him to the hangers in the corner. “I’m not hungry.”
“You didn’t eat lunch either,” he observed. “You’re missing him, aren’t you?”
Dumb-*** question. Of course she was missing her husband.
She bit back the angry retort and made her way over to the TV. “Yeah,” she said, switching it on. “Just like you’re missing your wife, I imagine.”
It was a cheap jibe, but it pretty much summed up her feelings about him. She slumped down onto one of the sofas to watch the news. As she’d expected, they led with the Star Labs demonstration. Once again, a smiling Dr Schulz did his party trick with the wooden block.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” said a coldly angry voice from behind her, “but you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, really?” she drawled, keeping her eye on the scientists gathered behind Dr Schulz. “Don’t they call it adultery in your universe, then, when a man cheats on his wife? Must be more different over there than I imagined.”
“No, we call it adultery, too,” he said. “And I’m not proud of what I’m doing, you know.”
“Oh, then that makes it all right,” she retorted. “You’ve got a conscience.”
Was it her imagination, or did one of the other scientists on the back row flinch when Dr Schulz activated the machine? She leant forward and grabbed the phone on the coffee table. Dialled.
“Hello?”
“Jimmy, turn on the news,” she barked. “LNN. Right now.”
“I’m kind of in the middle of something-“
“Now, Jimmy!”
“Jeez...okay, I’m watching. Now what?”
“See that guy third from the end on the back row?” she said.
“The one with the moustache?”
“Yeah, him. I want everything there is to know about the guy on my desk by ten am tomorrow morning, okay?”
“Believe it or not, I do have a private life, you know-“
“Hey, I gave you a whole hour in the morning. More if you get up early.”
“I was planning on going out tonight, actually,” he protested with just a hint of a whine. “On a date. You remember dates, Lois – they’re what normal people do-“
“She’ll understand if you tell her it’s for an important news story,” said Lois crisply. “I would. See you tomorrow.”
She rang off before he had a chance to protest any more, certain in the knowledge that, for all his complaining, he’d deliver the research on time. And it was definitely important: her sixth sense was telling her that she needed to find out what was happening behind the scenes at Star Labs. Maybe she was being fanciful, but she had a strong hunch that Dr Klein’s nail-biting performance this morning and the impostor filling Clark’s shoes behind her were somehow connected.
“You don’t give people much of a chance, do you?” He’d sat down opposite her while she’d been talking to Jimmy and was now regarding her with an unreadable expression. Respect or dislike? She wasn’t sure which.
“What do you mean?”
“Jimmy is expected to drop everything at your convenience. I’m judged guilty before you’ve even heard my defence,” he said. “That poor receptionist at Star Labs got an earful from you this afternoon. Tell me, does everyone in your world have to dance to Lois Lane’s tune?”
“And are you always this rude to people you’ve only just met?” she retorted. Ungrateful idiot. Didn’t he realise she was doing this for his benefit as much as her own?
“Only the ones who treat me like something the cat dragged in,” he said heatedly. “Look, I know you’re missing your husband, but I didn’t ask to be switched into his body, you know. It’s not my fault we’re in this mess.”
“I know, but I look at you and I see Clark, except you’re not Clark and you’re nothing like him.” She bit her lip as it threatened to wobble. Damn lip. Traitorous lip. “You’re even wearing his clothes, dammit. I bought that tie for him just last month.”
His hand drifted up to the object in question. “I’m sorry. Do you want me to take it off?”
She shook her head. Stupid tie. Stupid suggestion.
He dropped his hand into his lap. “It’s going to take more than a tie to fix this, huh?” he murmured ruefully. “Okay. I think we got off to a bad start here. You’re missing your husband and I’m still trying to adjust to living inside someone else’s body – and in the wrong universe. So why don’t we try again? I’ll apologise for being rude to you, and you can...well...”
“Apologise for treating you like something the cat dragged in?” she suggested, allowing a faint smile to lift the corners of her mouth. “Okay. Where do we go from here?”
“Well, how about I order that take-out for us? I’m starving.”
She let her smile grow a little. “If you order a pepperoni pizza, I might even eat a corner of it.”
He grinned. “Pizza it is.”
After he’d ordered the pizza, they spent a few minutes discussing their options for reversing the switch between universes. Lois explained how and why Tempus had made it happen previously, but mused that, based on past experience, she would have expected him to have shown up by now if he were responsible. Tempus could never resist the chance to crow to his victims.
“What if it were accidental?” suggested Clark. “A...a rip in the space-time continuum, or some kind of...I don’t know...black hole? A...a door between the universes that one of us accidentally opened somehow.” He grimaced. “I have no idea what I’m talking about here.”
“Which is why we need Dr Klein,” said Lois in frustration. “He’s normally easy to track down, too, which is making me even more suspicious.”
“Suspicious?”
“I think something is going on at Star Labs, and Dr Klein knows all about it,” she said. “We need to find him.”
“Yes.” He sighed. “Maybe if that Dr Schulz has something to hide, we should speak to him. Get him talking about the project and then try to trip him up.”
“Good idea. And if Jimmy comes through on that research about the other guy, we can speak to him, too,” she said.
He nodded. “Sounds like we have a plan,” he said. “Now all we need is that pizza.”
She smiled, letting herself relax a little now that they’d figured out what to do next. “You really are hungry, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Must be what universe-hopping does to you.”
“Maybe.” And maybe he wasn’t such an idiot after all. At least he wasn’t as surly as he’d been earlier.
She flicked her gaze over him. She’d been lying a little when she’d said he looked exactly like Clark – he didn’t. He wore Clark’s body differently to her husband. Less...comfortably. Less confidently. Was that just because he felt awkward in a body which wasn’t his, or was it how he normally carried himself? “So...what makes you think you deserve a chance?”
His face crinkled in puzzlement. “Huh?”
“Earlier,” she said. “When we were...disagreeing...you said I should give you a chance to explain yourself.”
She might have expected an angry retort for raising the subject again, but instead he sagged forward, his arms resting on his thighs. “Maybe I can’t,” he muttered to the carpet. “I mean, it’s not like I understand it myself.”
“This morning, you said you’d learnt that things aren’t always what they seem,” she prompted. “What things?”
“Not things. People,” he said. “One person, to be exact.”
“Who?” she prompted, although she was pretty certain she already knew the answer.
He looked up, his mouth twisting bitterly. “I’ll give you one guess.”
“Lana...your wife?”
“Yeah. I found out she...doesn’t feel about me the way I thought she did.” He snorted. “And that’s the understatement of the century.”
“She was cheating on you?” she asked.
“No. I might have coped with that.”
“What, then?”
He shook his head and pushed up from the sofa to pace restlessly towards the mantelpiece again. Lifted the picture of Clark and his parents down and gazed at it. “Are they still alive?”
“Yes, that picture was taken just last year,” she answered. “They still run the farm in Smallville.”
He nodded. “He’s very lucky to have them,” he said huskily.
“Yes, we both are,” she agreed. “So...you miss them, I guess? It must be hard losing your parents as a kid.”
“Yeah,” he murmured reflectively, his eyes still on the picture. “If it hadn’t been for Lana’s parents, not to mention Lana herself...” She watched him drift away into old memories, his expression softening for a few moments.
Then he moved abruptly, replacing the picture back on the mantelpiece. “To answer your question,” he continued, his voice acquiring a hard edge, “Yes, just lately, I have been missing them.”
Okay, whatever Lana had done had clearly hurt him very deeply, so... “Why haven’t you just left Lana?”
“I...don’t know. I mean, I do, but... Lois wants me to, of course, but I just...I can’t.” He brought his hand up to the back of his head to worry at his hair. “She was there for me when Mom and Dad died, and she helped me when weird things began happening to me...she knows all about me. I can’t just leave her...”
“But she’s obviously done something that really hurt you,” she said. “Why would you want to stay with someone like that?”
He sighed heavily and came back to the sofa. Lois settled back against the cushions, realising this was going to be a long explanation. “I found a piece of paper...”
**************
He hadn’t believed it at first. Standing in the middle of the living room, the vacuum cleaner still shrieking impotently beside him while he stared down at the scrap of paper it had sucked up from beneath the sofa, he’d decided there must be some mistake. Either this wasn’t Lana’s handwriting, or he’d misunderstood the words she’d written - it wouldn't be the first time he'd misinterpreted his wife, after all. Still...
“...floated in its sleep again last night. Woke him up immediately and instructed him to stop. Will remain vigilant to further occurrences and will wake and stop as needed. No evidence at this time that the behaviour is anything other than involuntary. Sleep disruption and emotional conditioning should ensure this latest alien aberration is soon suppressed.
“Other alien behaviour: none. Marriage and the move to Metropolis seem to have settled him for now.”
He’d read it again. And again. And yet again, but the same two words had sprung out at him each time.
Its sleep.
Its.
The thing was, he remembered. How she’d repeatedly shaken him awake and caused him to crash back down to the bed. Told him, so apologetically, that he was keeping her awake with his floating. Please, honey, she’d said. I can’t sleep when there’s this big black thing looming over me.
He’d been understanding. Apologised that he was being freaky again. Over the following couple of weeks, he’d developed a sixth sense that had kicked in whenever he was starting to float in his sleep - had trained himself to sink back into the bed without even having to come fully awake.
Its.
He’d searched frantically through the house, looking for pictures of her, of him and her together. Stared down at her face. Tried to read her eyes, to find the real Lana behind the pretty smile, the oh-so-straight teeth and the gleaming blond hair. Where was the person that called her husband a thing? Who wrote so clinically and coldly about the man she shared a bed with?
Its sleep.
He’d begun to shake like a man with a high fever. The walls had closed in on him. The house they’d bought together had suddenly become a prison. A laboratory.
He’d burst out of the front door into the fresh air, gasping for breath and fighting nausea that had threatened to turn his guts inside out. Momentum had carried him into the street and set him running to her, to the one person he could confide in.
The pull towards Lois Lane had been there from day one. When she’d walked into the newsroom, brimming full of energy and with an attitude that could slice through cold steel, he’d felt a tug deep in his belly. All of his senses had locked on to her, making him acutely aware of her wherever she went. She’d been a magnet for all the feelings and emotions he’d long forgotten he even possessed.
And then they’d been made partners. The pull had become stronger, and worse still, had been reciprocated. Together, though, they’d resisted it. They’d buried themselves in their work and become good friends instead. More than once, he’d considered telling Perry he couldn’t work with her any more, but he’d never been able to come up with a good enough reason. Instead, they’d become even closer. She even knew who he really was.
And now, God help him, he was running to her.
By the time he’d reached her apartment, he’d reigned in his emotions. He was just a work colleague dropping by for some friendly conversation. If she’d noticed his hands were trembling or that he was still gulping back the nausea, she didn’t say anything. Not at first, anyway.
He’d been standing at her kitchen counter, stirring sugar into his coffee, when she’d come up beside him and placed the flat of her hand on his back. Right between his shoulder blades. Even now, if he closed his eyes, he could recall the exact sensation, the exact spot where her hand had lain. “Clark, what’s wrong?”
“Is this coffee new?” he’d asked. “It smells different. Smokier.”
“It’s a new blend I’m trying.”
He’d taken a sip. “Nice.”
“I thought you’d like it.” Her hand had begun rubbing small circles between his shoulder blades. Soothing him. Making him ache to confide in her. “Tell me what’s happened.”
He’d shaken his head. “I can’t.”
“Then why did you come here?” she’d asked softly.
“I don’t know. I made a mistake.” He’d placed his mug on the counter. “I should go. I shouldn’t be here.”
He’d made to go, turned away from her, but she’d caught his arm. “I want to help.”
“I...I’m not sure you can.” Lana’s words danced before him, taunting him. Its sleep. Alien aberration. Emotional conditioning.
“You’re shaking.” She turned to face him. Grasped his other arm and gazed up into his face, a concerned frown creasing her brow. “You look awful,” she said in a hushed whisper. “What’s happened to you?”
“I...got a glimpse of reality,” he said. “How things really are.”
“What do you mean?”
“Lana. She...” He tore away from her. “It can’t be true. I should go.”
“No, stay,” she’d said, moulding herself to his back, her soft body pressed close against his, her face resting on his shoulder, her arms around his waist. Gentle citrus perfume filling his senses. “Talk to me,” she murmured. “Tell me what’s wrong.”
He’d closed his eyes, unable to stop himself from revelling in her forbidden closeness.
They’d been avoiding contact like this - known instinctively that it was dangerous, that once they broke through the safety barrier they’d erected between them, there’d be no going back.
The warmth of her body seeped through his back and melted into his soul.
“Tell me what’s hurting you,” she prompted again.
Her liquid voice, so understanding and easy to respond to. He couldn’t resist her any longer. “Lana,” he said. “She wrote something.”
“What?”
But he hadn’t been able to repeat the words he’d read. He’d reached into his jacket pocket, where he’d stuffed the sheet before his flight from their house. Drew out the crumpled paper and handed it back to Lois.
Waited while she read. Cringed with shame while she read the words his wife – the woman he had entrusted with his entire life - had written about him.
“My God,” she’d muttered in a hushed, appalled whisper. “What is she? Who is she?”
“My wife,” he said harshly. “My darling, beloved wife. The only family I’ve known since I was a kid.”
“Clark...” She’d turned him around on the spot and drawn him into her arms. He’d gone willingly, finally allowing himself to draw the comfort he’d sought from the moment he’d decided to come here. He’d held her tight against his chest, clinging on to her, burrowing deep inside her protective circle.
“I don’t know what’s real any more,” he’d confessed, his voice cracking.
“This is real,” she’d replied firmly. “And you...you are the most human person I know, Clark Kent. Don’t you dare believe what’s on that piece of paper.”
*************
Night had fallen while Clark had been telling his story. The room was dark except for the moonlight streaming in through the patio windows. It glanced off one side of his face, sending the rest of his huddled body into deep shadow.
He’d fallen quiet a few moments ago. His voice had faltered, and, rather than attempt to continue, he’d simply stopped. Now, the half of his face that Lois could see was bleak, the eye hooded as he stared blindly into the darkness.
Lois had been transfixed – horrified, even – by his tale. From the sound of it, Lana had been studying him for years while she played out the role of good friend and then loving wife. There was even a hint that she’d been exerting some kind of control over him.
No wonder he was so bitter.
And no wonder he’d gone running into the arms of Lois Lane.
But still... “I can understand how upset you must have been, but I still don’t understand why you haven’t left her,” she said softly.
“Well, in the beginning, it was all so new...”
***************
Nothing more had happened between him and Lois that night. He’d returned home to Lana, still unable to completely believe what he’d read on that scrap of paper.
But, after that night, he began setting small tests for her. One day he activated his extremely rusty heat vision to reheat her cold coffee. She immediately scolded him and told him they had a microwave oven for that sort of thing. The newly hot coffee remained untouched. Contaminated?
Another time he let himself float in his sleep and was unceremoniously pulled back down to the bed.
At dinner, he chilled their wine with his freezing breath. Fortunately, he did it while facing away from the table, because his lack of skill caused him to also hit a nearby pot plant and freeze it, quite literally, to death. Lana was horrified and immediately assaulted him with a barrage of questions about why he’d done it and what was wrong with him. Couldn’t he control himself any longer? Had he forgotten how dangerous it was to give himself away like that?
None of these tests, however, proved anything more than he already knew: Lana cared deeply that he repress any abnormalities. No big deal: he’d known that from an early age, and had willingly gone along with it as the only way to survive in a hostile world that distrusted anything alien. God, he’d even been grateful when she’d helped him train himself out of each new deviation from the norm.
So he also searched the house for more evidence of her note-taking. Furtively, whenever he was alone in the house, he looked in drawers and cupboards, underneath furniture and on the tops of closets. He searched the kitchen. Turned the den inside out.
And while he did that, he also tried to test her love for him. How often did she touch him, he asked himself? Kiss him? When did she last inconvenience herself on his behalf? Do something on impulse just because she loved him?
On the last two questions, he came up with a cold, empty blank. They did things together, sure, but they were small, habitual things like a meal out after the weekly shop. An evening at the opening of a new art gallery – tickets courtesy of her job at the Metropolis Museum of Art.
Their marriage, he began to realise, was held in a straitjacket. Everything, from sharing the domestic chores to their minimal social life, was kept within strict parameters. Nothing too adventurous, nothing that wasn’t routine, and definitely nothing unusual.
One night, he watched her during their lovemaking. Monitored her, just as that scrap of paper had implied she monitored him. Were her responses genuine or faked?
“Look at me, sweetheart,” he’d murmured.
She’d opened her eyes and turned her head to face him. Wide open eyes, gazing steadily up at him with a slight cloudiness behind them. Was that haze borne of love or a need to be somewhere else, far away from this bed? He’d never bothered to analyse her reactions before – had never questioned her love for him before – and now found that he couldn’t read her at all.
Wasn’t a husband supposed to be able to sense his wife’s emotions?
An overwhelming sense of disgust, mostly directed at himself for watching her so clinically, had swept over him. Sickened, he’d muttered a weak excuse and stepped into the shower to try and cleanse himself of the ugliness which now infected all his thoughts about Lana.
The experience didn’t stop his search for proof that she was studying him like a lab rat, however. The grain of doubt had been sown and he couldn’t ignore it. He widened his search to include unlikely hiding places such as the laundry cupboard and the under-stairs cupboard. The spare bedroom and the linen basket in the bathroom. The umbrella stand in the hall. Searching became his obsession.
And he began to spend more time with Lois. Not by any conscious means, but by stealth. The working day extended: they began earlier and finished later, their rationalisation being that the quieter hours at either end of the day allowed them to get more done. The fact that it also gave them more time alone together was merely coincidental. Late stakeouts and evening meetings with interviewees became more commonplace. Meals out together became a necessity – what else could you do between finishing work late and waiting for that mid-evening interview with the mayor, after all?
He and Lois laughed together. They played intellectual games of wit and quick-fire banter. Ideas for stories bounced between them like juggling balls. Lois was easy to talk to, and she didn’t always follow convention. She brought bright, brash light into his life where Lana would have changed the bulb for a duller, easier on the eye model.
Finally, one wet Tuesday night when Lana was out at her weekly art class, he found it. A single notebook, buried under a pile of old school textbooks in the loft. Page upon page of clinical observations, written in Lana’s neat handwriting. He guessed, from a familiarity with her style borne from hours spent studying together through high school, that the book dated from their late teens to early twenties. Most of it was incredibly mundane, a simple chronicle of absolutely everything he did during the day while in her presence.
But what sent him rushing into the bathroom to lose the contents of his stomach was the pronoun she used throughout the entire book.
It.
It got on the bus and sat next to me.
It ate a hamburger and fries for lunch.
I let it kiss me on the cheek today.
He’d fled through the rain-drenched streets to sanctuary, to the place he always turned to these days. Turned up on her doorstep soaked to the skin and half out of his mind. She’d taken him in and held him while he shook in her arms and babbled about how he’d found the book, how he hadn’t been able to believe that first scrap of evidence, how he wished more than anything that he hadn’t found the book. She’d soothed him and told him again and again how incredibly human and loveable he was.
“Come on, let’s get you out of those wet clothes,” she’d said after a bit, reaching up to the first sodden button on his shirt.
“No, Lana will be home soon from her class,” he’d protested, covering her hands with his own. “I should go.”
“Clark, you can’t confront her like this,” she’d said. “At least get yourself dry and have a cup of coffee before you leave.”
He stood, undecided and still holding Lois’s hand against his wet shirt. It would be so easy to stay just a little longer. Delay the confrontation with Lana for as long as possible.
“You’re in no shape to confront a limp lettuce leaf, let alone Lana,” she’d pressed, a faint smile dancing around her mouth. “Here...”
And she’d begun to unfasten his buttons. One by one, her fingers deft and nimble, unlike his own trembling, clumsy hands now hanging loosely by his sides. Such a simple, innocent little task, he’d told himself: one adult helping another, like a nurse might help a shell-shock victim.
She’d reached his belt and tugged the shirt out to finish the job. Spread the edges of his shirt and splayed her hands flat against his bare chest. The warmth of her hands seeped through his skin. “I don’t understand how anyone could write such ugly words about you,” she’d murmured, pushing the soggy material off his shoulders to land with a faint plop on the carpet.
She’d stood so close to him he could hear almost feel her quickened breathing. “Lois, we can’t...”
“Can’t what?” she’d asked, sliding her arms around him, the soft, feminine fabric of her blouse brushing over his torso. “Can’t do this?” Her lips had closed over his, as full and luscious as he’d imagined through all the long, aching hours working by her side.
He’d responded instinctively, his sluggish, shell-shocked brain lagging far behind his desire to hold her and kiss her, to wrap his arms around her lithe frame and lose himself in her.
“Let me show you how loveable you are,” she murmured around their kiss.
Hands had worked quickly at his belt and his zipper. Yeah, removing his wet clothes. His focus had been their kiss - her intensely sensuous lips, her sweet taste, her warm curves as she moved under his hands.
Still he’d kissed her, lost in his need for comfort, for solace from the cruel world outside where the rain lashed down and his very existence had been turned inside out. Here was Lois, here was understanding. Here, he could prove that he wasn’t a thing, but that he was a sensuous, living being.
Here was love.
So it had begun: he had entered the tortuous, secretive world of the adulterer.
At first, of course, he’d fully intended to confront Lana and tell her he was leaving her. He’d agreed that much with Lois the very first night. In fact, Lois had needed to calm the seething anger that had threatened to strangle his heart once the shock of his discovery had worn off. He’d been ready to storm home and tell Lana to pack her bags that very night.
But, returning home, he’d discovered that the monstrous, evil woman of the notebook was none other than Lana, his companion and confidante since childhood. Surrounded by his old, familiar things and a house full of their memories together, he’d found that he couldn’t yell at her. Couldn’t even be sure that he’d got things right – where was the cold woman who’d written ‘it’ so many times? She’d smiled as she’d asked him about work and told him about the still life she’d begun at her art class. She’d made coffee for them and they’d sat watching the late news on the TV together. The scene had been excruciatingly normal, but for his conscience screaming that he’d cheated on his wife.
And yet, he’d kept snatching glances at her. Her face, so serene as she gazed at the TV, had taken on an evil, malicious cast. Those blue eyes, which only this morning had seemed familiar and friendly, now looked cold and scheming. That mouth, so small and neat, was now pinched and sour. Her forehead, so smooth it could only belong to someone with a clear conscience, now hid a callous brain that had called him a thing.
Anger had bubbled up inside him again. His fists had clenched. The mug in his hand had acquired a hairline crack and he’d put it down with painstaking care lest he crush it to dust.
Then, sitting isolated on their rarely-used armchair because he couldn't any longer bring himself to cuddle up to her on the settee, his mind had travelled ahead to a chilling scenario: would she play her trump card if he told her he was leaving her? Snippets of past conversations had floated through his head.
"So I'm the only person who knows you're...you know...not really human?" A young, ten year old Lana, strolling by his side on the walk home from school, the late afternoon sun lighting up her face and her blonde pony tail, which swung lightly from side to side. She'd slipped her hand into his and avowed with all the earnest gravity that only youthful innocence could provide, "I promise I'll never, ever tell another living soul, so long as I live. Cross my heart and hope to die."
Then their first, shy kiss, taken in his foster parents' living room while the adults had driven into town for groceries. Afterwards, her finger had pressed against his lips. "I'm never going to let them take you away from me. You're all mine, Clark Kent."
And always, always, "No-one must ever find out what you really are." Repeated so many times that it had become her mantra from early teens to the present day.
Finally: "As long as we're together, I'll keep your secret safe, my love." First murmured when he'd proposed to her, and repeated endlessly since. A reminder of her loving care and protection of him, he'd thought.
As long as we're together.
The words had taken on a new, sinister meaning as he'd sat there blindly watching TV. If he left her, she'd tell everyone. That was his new interpretation, and he could all too easily imagine it: a jealous and betrayed Lana wreaking revenge on her traitorous husband. He'd seen her possessive side more than once in their marriage, and he knew she had a fiery temper.
His gut had twisted and the room had tilted sickeningly. Bile had crawled up his throat. A world where everyone knew that he was an alien. He'd be hounded by the media and stalked by the government. They'd find a way to capture him and strap him to a table, probe him and inject him and take samples from him...
He couldn't bear...couldn't risk that.
So he'd let things drift a little while he figured out how to deal with the situation. The notebook went to work with him and lay in the bottom drawer of his desk, a dark, evil presence constantly stalking his thoughts. Lois asked him repeatedly if he’d spoken to Lana yet; he brushed her off. One day, she even dragged him into the conference room where he flew off the handle and told her she didn’t understand what she was asking him to do.
She wanted him to risk everything. He might as well write the headline himself right this minute: "Alien Found Living In Suburban Metropolis." Didn't she realise what Lana was capable of?
Lois had yelled back that he was being a doormat. Why would anyone even believe Lana? The idea that a farmer's son from Kansas was really an alien was preposterous.
He'd pointed out that Lois herself had believed it when he'd told her.
And so the argument had raged on throughout the day and continued to simmer under the surface for several days afterwards, colouring everything they did together.
A week had passed and bruised feelings had gradually healed. Then, working late one night with Lois after a trying day during which she’d seemed unusually irritable, they’d ended up making love right there at her desk.
He’d begun by comforting her, having discovered that the source of her bad mood wasn’t, for once, his own lack of progress with Lana, but a particularly nasty encounter with her mother. He already knew that Lois didn’t get on with either of her parents, but this time, it appeared, her mother had exceeded herself in her bid to make her daughter aware of how little she thought of her chosen career, her lack of a good husband, and even her inability to dress herself appropriately. Clark had seethed internally at the faceless Mrs Lane and automatically drawn Lois into his arms.
It hadn’t been until they were locked together in a tight embrace that he’d realised how little control he now had over his feelings and responses to her. What had begun as innocent comforting had quickly escalated to needful kissing and heavy fondling, and thence to exciting and illicit lovemaking in the darkened newsroom.
“So...when are you going to tell her?” she’d murmured afterwards, planting a small kiss on his neck.
Unwilling to disrupt the languorous moment with guilt and recriminations, he’d replied with a distracted, “Soon.”
“We can’t keep doing this,” she’d pressed.
“No...”
“She called you a thing, Clark,” she’d reminded him. “Your own wife.”
“I know...”
“I don’t understand why you can’t just leave her.”
“You know why,” he’d replied. “I need time...to figure things out.”
Abruptly, she stood up. “I can’t do this,” she said. “I can’t be the other woman.”
“I...I’m not asking you to do that,” he replied.
"No, you're not," she conceded, buttoning up her blouse. "It's my fault. I shouldn't have let this happen."
Grimacing, he began to neaten up his own clothing. "Takes two to tango," he observed. "I'm just as much at fault as you are."
She finished dressing herself with a final tug on the sleeves of her jacket and a swift finger-comb through her hair. "Yes, you are." Leaning on the edge of her desk, watching him as he stuffed his shirt into his pants and fastened the buttons, she continued, "Clark, I understand how difficult this is for you, really I do. Coming on top of the Skywatch investigation, this thing with Lana must be the last straw for you. But sooner or later, you'll have to make a choice.
“Either you forget Lana's notebook and go back to playing happy families, or you accept it for what it really is and do something about it. Sure, there's a risk she'll tell the world about you, but which would you prefer? A stifling, miserable life handcuffed to a woman who calls you a thing, or a life with a woman who...who really cares about you. Who probably loves you, but is too scared to admit it to herself until she's sure she actually comes first in your life."
And with that, she'd snatched up her purse and fled from the darkened newsroom, leaving him alone and feeling more wretched than ever.
********
"Hold on," interrupted Lois. "What's the Skywatch investigation? You never mentioned that."
In the dimly-lit living room, he was a dark, brooding figure hunched over with his elbows resting on his knees. He'd been relating his story in a husky, strained voice, sometimes stopping altogether for long, emotionally-charged silences. When even the light from the moon had been lost to cloud, she'd turned on only a small table-top lamp, sensing his need for the cover of darkness to tell his tale.
"No, I guess I haven't," he replied, burying his face in his hands. "Look," he said, his voice muffled by his fingers, "I don't think I've got the stomach for this any longer. Do you mind if we call it a night?"
She blinked, frustrated by his abrupt full stop. Skywatch sounded important - he’d drawn her into a compelling tale of deceit and wrecked dreams and now she was ready for the next chapter. Besides, listening to his story saved her from dwelling on her missing husband.
She was already dreading the long, lonely night in their empty bed. Funny how quickly you could get used to sharing your bed with someone, even if you’d been single for years...
However, he did have a point about the lateness of the hour. "Sure. Um...I'll bring you down some blankets and pillows, okay? The sofa's pretty comfortable as a bed."
