A/N: Much thanks to KSaraSara for being my BR on this. You rock! 
Clark Kent Is A Dead Man “Does your wife know you’re still alive?”
Clark winced and avoided his mom’s gaze. His parents had never kept secret that they disapproved of his decision to keep Lois in the dark about exactly who and what she was marrying, and his mother had even once threatened to tell Lois herself. Of course, it was all more complicated than they realized: even though Lois had chosen him over Luthor that day in the park, it wasn’t as though she loved him. He was merely the lesser evil while her life was falling apart, and there was no doubt that once she’d recovered fully from Luthor’s manipulations and learned to stand on her own again, she’d leave him.
“Talk to her, Son,” his father chided. “If there was ever going to be a right time, it’s now. She’s spent three days thinking her husband was shot dead in front of her; don’t let this go any further than it’s already gone.”
“Three days, Clark!” his mom echoed.
He sighed, slumping in defeat. “Okay, fine.”
**********
She was sitting in their apartment, staring blankly at the wall, and his heart broke. His parents were right: it was time to come clean. With trepidation, he tapped on the window.
Her eyes widened as she opened it. “…You!”
“Uh, hi, Lois.” He racked his brain, trying to find the right way to approach this conversation. He started with “May I come in?”
For a while, she stared at him. Then, a smile slowly curved across her face. “Oh, please do. In fact…” She stepped forward. “I was hoping you’d drop by.”
Clark froze in the middle of the living room. “Uh, you were?”
“Mmhmm.” She was awfully close now; so close that she casually reached up and rested a hand on his red S. He couldn’t stop the shiver that ran through him at her touch. “I know you’ve been keeping your distance since Clark and I got married,” she said, her voice growing husky, “and believe me, I completely understand why. But, you know, ‘Til Death Do Us Part', and…well, here we are.”
His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “WHAT?”
Her fingers trailed over his chest. “I know why you’re here, what you want,” she purred, “what we both want.”
He caught her hands to still them. “Lois! Shouldn’t you be grieving?!”
“What for?” she asked, seeming completely mystified.
“B-because your husband was shot by resurrected gangsters!?!” he sputtered, struggling to process her reaction—or rather, lack thereof—to that fact.
“Hmph.” He still held her hands, and she maneuvered her body so that she was now leaning against him with her head just under his chin. “People get married for lots of reasons, Superman. What makes you think I miss him?”
Her words stung worse than Kryptonite, and he found himself getting angry. “Seriously, Lois?!” He pulled back from her, forcefully enough that she nearly lost her balance. “Okay, so maybe you didn’t marry for love, but are you really that callous about losing your best friend? Your partner?! What even happened to loving him like a brother?!”
She frowned. “Oh, are you calling Clark a sadist?”
The non-sequitur threw him. He shook his head. “What? I’m not—‘sadist’?! How on Earth do you figure that?”
She shrugged. “Well, if Clark really thought that I cared about him, even as just a friend, then who else but a sadist would leave me thinking he was dead, and that I’d gotten him killed, when all along he was really flying around in a red cape?!”
After a few moments, his mouth snapped shut. Crap. His parents were right. “Maybe just a colossal idiot,” he answered.
She turned away from him, her arms folded. “Did you come here to see if I was grieving? Because I was, Clark. I replayed that awful scene over and over in my mind for days, until finally it dawned on me that
there hadn’t been any blood!”
He winced. “I…didn’t come to see if you were grieving,” he said softly. “Believe it or not, I was going to tell you the truth.”
Her glare told him that his excuse, even if true, was still very poor.
“I let it go too long,” he admitted. “I should have told you earlier.”
She looked away. “Do you know why I married you?”
“Not…exactly,” he admitted, brushing his cape aside to sit on the couch. “I know you wanted an anchor since Luthor was ripping away everything you’d relied on up to that point. You needed somebody—or at least, you thought you did, and if nothing else, I knew you’d be safer with me than him. Maybe you chose me because you felt sorry for me?”
Her arms dropped to her sides and she came to sit on the opposite end of the couch. “I married you…because I didn’t want to lose you.”
Clark stared at her.
“I almost told you no,” she continued, looking at the floor. “I was afraid that if we got together, my usual luck with relationships would hold out and I’d end up losing the best friend I ever had.” She sighed. “But then, I realized that if I turned you down…well, there was no way we could possibly stay friends if I broke your heart. So, I picked the lesser evil, and here we are.”
Once again, it took him a minute to realize his jaw was hanging open. “I…I had no idea you felt that way,” he confessed. He reached over and, after a brief hesitation, took her hand. “Lois…I just want you to be happy. I promise, we can still be friends, even if…” He hesitated again, then forced the words past his lips. “…if you want out. I never wanted to hold you prisoner. In fact, I always assumed you’d leave anyway once you remembered how to be your old, independent self.”
Much to his surprise, she chuckled. “Clark, you are such a…a lunkhead!”
“Lunkhead?!” he echoed.
“Yeah.” She sighed. “But then, so am I. I lost you that night, and it took losing you for me to realize—” She stopped abruptly.
Clark dared to slide a little closer to her. “Realize what?”
At last, she turned to look at him. She said nothing, her eyes scanning over him as though searching for something. Before he could ask any questions, she suddenly brought her hands up to his face and captured his mouth in a fierce kiss. After a long while that somehow still wasn’t long enough, she pulled away again. “I love you, Clark Kent.”
He swallowed. “I love you too, Lois Lane.”
The kiss resumed for a while, and then she brought her lips close to his ear. “Don’t ever do that to me again.”
“Never,” he pledged.
“We’re going to find a way to bring you back,” she told him, “and from now on, no more secrets.”
“And no more lying,” he agreed.
“And Clark…” She looked into his eyes, her tone serious. “If you ever leave me like that again, you’re a dead man!”
FIN
