Happy Ficlet Friday!
This week’s ficlet is dedicated to Darth_Michael, who has indicated several times that he would like to see those crazed teenage hormones come into play for Lois and Clark in my "Try Not to Change Anything" series. Here you go. Kerth Challenge #5: What song was #1 the year you turned 5? Look at the music charts and find whatever song was at the top that year. Somehow you need to build your fic around this song. It can be by theme, use the lyrics, or even include the song in the story. Good luck!
Ugh… this one was tough. I turned 5 in 1993 – the same year L&C first aired. The #1 song that year was “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston. Gotta admit, I don’t really like this song. How many times can she drag out the same exact phrase in a row? And the verses are… meh. It’s not even a song about romantic love. It was originally written and recorded by Dolly Parton in 1974 about a professional break-up. So how do I work this into my series – especially since I don’t want to set this one after 1993?
I ended up working it into a scene I had already planned out a bit, set in 1985. I Will Always Love YouBy AmandaK
The ceremony had been over for many hours. Sam Lane had taken off shortly after it ended, citing a big project he needed to get back to. Ellen had treated them to lunch at Lois’ favorite restaurant before being called in to pick up an extra shift at the hospital. Lucy had rushed upstairs soon after they got home, saying something about doing her nails and calling Stacy.
The radio on the mantle was on and Dolly Parton was crooning about love. A black graduation robe had been tossed, carelessly, over the back of a chair. The gold Valedictorian stole had slid to the floor where it lied crumpled and forgotten. The cap… might have gotten knocked under the couch.
But neither occupant of the living room really cared to investigate where, exactly, it had gone. They were far too preoccupied with investigating each other.
Lois moaned as Clark pressed another kiss just below her earlobe. His right hand had, at some point, work its way up under her blouse and his fingers felt hot against her ribcage. His left hand was threaded into her hair, tilting her head gently to give him better access to her neck.
Lois’ hands were equally busy. Having managed to untuck his shirt, she traced the lines of the muscles in his abs and back, mesmerized by how sensitive to her touch the Man of Steel seemed to be.
Clark bit back a groan and found her mouth once more as her hands found purchase on his hips drawing him closer. Oh, how he wanted to give in to desire and see just how far this rendezvous could go. She was so warm and inviting and he knew from past conversations that she wouldn’t tell him no. In fact, he was always the one to stop things before they got too far.
How far was too far anyway?
He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t think straight when she touched him like that, when she nibbled on his lower lip and gave him access to her mouth.
Still, that old, reliable voice of reason niggled at the back of his mind, distracting him just enough that he couldn’t focus solely on the beautiful young woman in his arms.
He kissed her one last time and then rested his forehead against hers. “We should stop,” he whispered, his voice still thick with passion.
Lois pouted. He always did this – just when things were starting to really heat up, he put on the breaks. Well not this time. She reached for him again, capturing his lips, determined to make him forget whatever silly reason he had for not letting this continue.
For a moment, she thought she might have succeeded. Then Clark pulled away farther and drew in a ragged breath. “Lois…”
“Ugh! Why?” Lois voiced her frustration as she threw herself back against the arm of the couch.
“Because if we don’t stop now, I won’t be able to stop,” Clark admitted, choosing to fix his eyes on the pattern of the oriental rug instead of her heaving chest.
Lois sat up and stared at him. He was unbelievable. “Maybe I don’t want to stop.”
“We need to.” He still refused to look at her.
Lois sighed and sat next to him, placing her hand on his shoulder. “Clark, I’m eighteen. I’m a legal adult now. I’ve even graduated high school. We’ve waited eight years to consummate our marriage. What are we still waiting for?”
“I don’t want just one night or just whenever I can visit. Once we do… consummate our marriage, I want to be able to hold you in my arms every night, regardless of whether or not we make love. We’re not… technically married here.”
“That is a technicality that can be easily remedied.” Lois smiled, imagining the picture he painted – waking up every morning wrapped in his strong arms, having him all to herself every night before she had to share him with the world as Superman. She snuggled close to him and wrapped her arms around her neck, ready for him to pick her up and fly them somewhere with no waiting period for a wedding license. “Come on, Fly-boy. I hear Vegas is nice this time of year.”
Clark finally looked at her and shook his head with a soft smile. “Lo-is. We can’t elope. How would we even explain to your parents how we got to Vegas? And besides…” He sighed heavily. “It would change too much.”
Lois rolled her eyes. “Clark, do you realize how much we’ve changed in the past eight years? If we haven’t destroyed the timeline yet, I don’t think getting married…” she paused to do some quick mental math and winced. “Twelve years early will make much of a difference.” Did they really have twelve more years to go to catch up to where they’d left off?
“It would make a huge difference, Lois.” Clark gently removed her arms and stood up, stretching his arms over his head.
Lois bit her lip as she admired the pull of his abs peeking out from under his shirt. What were they talking about again? Oh, right. Convincing the boy scout to stop being so cautious.
“How? Name one difference it would make?”
Clark walked over to the mantle and wiggled a nob on the radio, turning the volume down. “Well, for one thing, where would we live? I’m taking classes at Midwestern and you’re set to start at Met U in the Fall.”
Lois looked down and fiddled with the hem of her skirt. “Actually, I hadn’t completely decided on going back to Met U.”
Clark turned back to her; his eyes wide with surprise. “What? Why wouldn’t you go back to Met U?”
“Well, I’ve already done the Met U thing. I took all the journalism classes there. I figure I might as well see what other colleges have to offer.”
Clark frowned slightly, but nodded. “I guess I can understand that. But where will you go? New Troy State has a Metropolis campus, right?”
Lois nodded but refused to meet his eyes. “They do. But I was actually considering… Midwestern.”
Clark was back by her side in an instant. She wasn’t sure if he’d used superspeed or not. He took her hand and looked at her seriously. “Lois, you can’t go to Midwestern.”
She frowned and pulled her hand back. “Why not? I got accepted. With my GPA and test scores, I got accepted everywhere I applied,” she pointed out matter-of-factly.
“I don’t doubt that you did. But Lois, the Daily Planet doesn’t offer internships to students from Midwestern.”
“So? I can get an internship anywhere and still start at the Planet after I graduate.”
Clark shook his head. “No. No. You are talking major changes here, Lois. You can’t risk turning your entire career on its head. And for what?”
Lois stood up, needing the upper ground on this one. “To be with you, Clark! We’ve been forced to stay apart while we were teens, but we are both adults now and we can be together. I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to get married and spend the summer travelling the world, Superman Express, and then go to Midwestern with you.”
“And then what? Where would we live?” he returned to his question from before. “Midwestern doesn’t offer housing for married couples. We’d have to get an apartment, which means one or both of us would have to get a job. We’d have to divide our time between work and studying and somehow fit in time for each other. We’d be spread thin from the start. How would that affect our grades? Our careers? Even if we managed to keep our grades up, what then? Would we both start at the Daily Planet at the same time? Lane and Kent from day one? Is that really what you want?”
Lois looked down, considering his words. “I don’t know.”
He stood and grasped her shoulders. “You are Lois Lane.” He said slowly. “You are the best investigative reporter the Daily Planet has ever seen… or will see. And you didn’t need my help to get there. You did that on your own.”
“But that was before I knew you.” Lois replied quietly. “You’re the best thing that ever happened to me. You broke down all my walls. You saw who I was underneath Mad Dog Lane. And you loved me.”
“And I will always, always love you.” Clark looked deep into her eyes, letting her know that he meant ever word. Then he gestured to the couch and they both sat, knees touching and hands clasped together.
Clark sighed. “Lois… I can’t help but feel that I am in your way. If I stay… if I keep visiting, or if you move to Kansas, or I move here… I’m only going to hold you back.”
Lois shook her head. “No, Clark. You could never hold me back. You’re the reason – you’re why I do what I do.”
“And what will you do, Lois? How is what you do this time different from what you did last time? Why did you do what do what you did then, before you knew me? How did you become Lois Lane, the vibrant tornado who took my breath away when she burst into my interview and demanded that she be allowed to investigate the Messenger sabotage?”
Lois grinned, remember the look on his face when she first met him. Nevertheless, she decided to tease him a little. “Are you saying I no longer take your breath away?”
Clark pressed his lips to hers in a brief kiss. “You always take my breath away.” He smiled and then sobered. “But you are different. Not in a bad way just… time changes people. Everything we went through when we were partners at the Planet, everything we’ve had to deal with in the last eight years… I mean, reliving our childhoods but with the hindsight of having already grown up once before – I know I’m not the same person I was when I was nineteen the first time around.”
“You haven’t changed.” Lois argued. “You’re still just… Clark. You’re my best friend, the man I love. You’re Superman – or you will be one day, anyway.”
“That’s just it though. Knowing that I will one day wear the cape and be a… super hero, has given me so much more confidence in my abilities as they emerged than I ever had when I was a teen before. And having you in my life – a best friend whom I could actually talk to about what was going on…” he sighed and ran a hand sheepishly through his hair before continuing. “I forgot to tell my parents about my heat vision.”
“What?”
“I mean, when it kicked in, I didn’t freak out about it like I did the first time. I knew what it was and what I needed to do. Once I got it under control, I called you. You were the first person I thought of, not my folks. And I guess, I sort of forgot they didn’t already know – because they did know, before. So, when I used my heat vision to light the grill a few weeks ago, my dad just about had a heart attack.”
“You’ve had your heat vision for years. How have they not caught you using it before?”
Clark shrugged. “Guess I just haven’t used it much around them.” He smiled sadly. “I’m not as close to them as I was before. I turn to you when I have a problem or something to celebrate or just want to chat and I think you do the same.”
Lois nodded. “It’s been nice having someone to turn to. I didn’t have that growing up before. I had to learn to stand on my own pretty early.”
“And I’m glad you had me this time,” Clark replied, reaching out to stroke her cheek. “But we’re talking now about making some major life changes – changes that might let us be closer together but might also hold us back from becoming who we were meant to be. There is so much at risk here. If we change something – get married early, switch schools, change our career paths – how is that going effect things in the long run? If we continue to lean on each other during these formative years, will we be able to stand on our own when we need to?”
Lois frowned, not really sure where he was going with this. “Clark, what are you saying?”
He drew in a slow breath and met her gaze steadily. “I’m saying… I think we need to consider taking a break.”
“A break? As in break-up?”
Clark shook his head. “Not a break-up. Not exactly. Just… some time apart. Time to rediscover who we are, find our place in the world again.”
“No, No.” Lois shook her head frantically and blinked back the tears that were threatening. “Don’t do this to me again, Clark Kent. Don’t you dare break up with me because of some misconceived idea in your head of it being for my own good.”
“Lois, no. I’m not. I won’t. I won’t stay away unless we both agree.”
“Well, I don’t agree, so let’s just drop it.”
“Lois.” He caught her hand in his own. “Please, just think about what I’ve said.”
He sounded so earnest and he had promised not to make this decision on his own. Lois sighed and nodded. Several things he had said made a lot of sense and left her questioning just what she wanted in life right now. She wanted to be with him. But she also wanted to work her way back to the top of her chosen field. She loved working with him but she also missed the thrill of cracking a big story on her own, of striding into the bullpen knowing that her sheer presence commanded respect from her colleagues, of being the woman who didn’t need a man to be the best at what she did.
She’d almost forgotten what it was like to work on something without bouncing ideas off Clark. Throughout middle and high school, they had helped each other with every project, proof-read each other’s papers, and grumbled about annoying teachers and juvenile peers and having to do this all over again. She loved their phone calls and occasional visits during school breaks. Those visits had become far more frequent since he had re-learned how to fly. Her parents, of course, had no idea that her “long-distance” boyfriend spent far more time in her room than they would ever approve of.
‘Not that it never went anywhere,’ a small voice in the back of her mind grumbled.
She pushed the thought aside and tried to focus on considering Clark’s suggestion. A break. Time apart. But not a ‘break-up’ as it were. It’s not like they would be dating anyone else. They were married after all – sort of. But taking time to re-establish her place in the world didn’t sound too bad. She could do that.
Or could she?
A sudden fear gripped her heart. Had she lost her touch? Did she still know how to become the independent career woman she had once been? Or had all this time with Clark by her side softened her too much? Was she seriously considering going to Midwestern instead of Met U? Of not fighting tooth and nail for the coveted Daily Planet internship? Did she honestly think she could get married at eighteen, start her career already partnered with Clark, and still go on to have people see her as
the Lois Lane and not just the other half of Kent and Lane?
She shook her head and shut her eyes against her tears. He was right. She had changed. She wasn’t thinking straight. She was seriously considering options that could destroy her career before it ever got started. She didn’t even know who she was anymore. But she didn’t know what was more terrifying – realizing that she had lost herself or knowing that she could only find herself again if they did what Clark was suggesting.
“I don’t know if I can do this without you,” she whispered.
Clark stroked cheek and she opened her eyes, allowing the tears to flow freely down her cheeks. The sorrowful look in his eyes told her that he knew she had come to the same conclusion he had. Nevertheless, he met her gaze firmly.
“You are Lois Lane. You are the strongest person I know. You can do anything that you set your mind to doing. Don’t you let anyone stand in your way. Not even me. We both know I’m not what you need right now.”
She sobbed and buried her head against his chest. He held her close and stroked her hair. “Please don’t cry,” he whispered. “It won’t be forever. I promise I’ll come back to you.” He placed a kiss on the top of her head. “I love you, Lois.”
She sniffled a bit and leaned back to meet his eyes. “And I will always love you.”
I Will Always Love You By Whitney Houston
If I should stay
I would only be in your way
So I'll go, but I know
I'll think of you every step of the way
And I will always love you
I will always love you
You
My darling, you, mm, mm
Bittersweet memories
That is all I'm taking with me
So goodbye, please don't cry
We both know I'm not what you, you need
And I will always love you
I will always love you…You
I hope life treats you kind
And I hope you have all you've dreamed of
And I wish you joy and happiness
But above all this, I wish you love
And I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I will always love you
I, I will always love you
You
Darling, I love you
I'll always, I'll always love you
