Author's Note: Again, this part has no beta. Absolutely none. So forgive what may be numerous errors. I'm a bit unsure about posting this part anyway- I don't know if it did what I wanted it to do, so we'll see. If anybody would like to beta this story before I send it off to archive, it would be much appreciated.
Also, thanks for the wonderful feedback I've been receiving. This is the first time I've completed a story, or indeed attempted one, in roughly three years. And I think I owe a big part of that to the people here. So thanks.
Anyway, on with the show.
After Midnight 3/3
When the wave of tears and accompanying sobs subsided, Lois laid back into the sofa, trying desperately to catch her breath. This could not be happening. Only hours ago, she had been sitting at his apartment, eating Chinese food, and making fun of Dick Clark. And now she was lying on her couch bawling like a six year old who had just sent her favorite goldfish to the big toilet bowl in the sky.
Stupid Clark. He was the only person who could do this to her. Anybody else could have told her that he was Superman, and she wouldn’t have cared. She’d have been surprised, sure, but it wouldn’t have affected her quite like this.
A timid knock caught her by surprise, and she sprung up immediately to look at her door. It was Clark. Of course it was Clark. Who else would be knocking on her door at 1 AM after they had fought? Well, she mused, they hadn’t exactly fought. It was more along the lines of her storming out after she had seen the red and blue spandex under his shirt.
He knocked again, a little louder, more urgent. She didn’t want to answer the door; didn’t want to deal with him, with everything. She knew that the minute she opened the door and let him inside, she’d be helpless. She would see his kicked puppy dog face and melt. He would apologize and she would forgive him. He would explain his reasoning and she would understand. She would see him and have no choice but to love him.
“Lois?” he called. “Lois, I know you’re in there. Please, please let me in.”
She sighed. He sounded really pathetic.
“We need to talk.” She didn’t respond. Maybe he’d go away once he realized that she didn’t want to talk to him. Maybe he’d disappear. Maybe a volcano would erupt in Hawaii and he’d have to fly off to save people. She could only hope.
“Lois, open the door. You know I can open it myself if I have to.”
She winced. He could take the door off of it’s hinges if he wanted to. He could push the door in, and it sounded like he would if she didn’t let him in soon. She could picture the Clark shaped hole in the door that he would leave, and she smiled a little. As he knocked again, her smile disappeared and she sighed, standing up and walking to the door.
It was inevitable, she realized, as she threw back the dead bolt and unlocked the door. She’d have to face him eventually- they worked together. And there was no way that Perry would give her another partner. Just last week that had turned in a story that he proclaimed “Kerth-worthy” with an uncharacteristic enthusiasm. He wouldn’t split up his best team. And, really, she didn’t want him too.
With a resigned sigh, she turned the knob and let him in. He looked at her pleadingly and stepped inside, making his way to her living room while she shut and locked the door behind him.
“Lois, I’m-”
“Forget it, Clark,” she interrupted, crossing her arms in an attempt at defiance. “There is no excuse for this. You lied to me. Every day. For two years. Don’t even try to apologize.”
He stared at her blankly, obviously unsure of himself. She could see the emotions warring in his eyes- sadness, regret, anger, and a determination she had never seen from him. “Look, I know you’re angry-”
“I’m not angry.” Again she interrupted him, needing for him to hear her. “I’m hurt. I trusted you, Clark. I trusted you with everything. I told you about Claude, about my parents, about everything. You know what kind of ice cream I like, you know I like Scrabble, you know I hide chocolate bars in my desk in case of an emergency. You know everything about me, Clark, and I know nothing about you. And that hurts.”
She sat down on the edge of her sofa, unwilling to look at him. The tears pooled in her eyes as she did her best to blink them back.
“But you do know me, Lois,” he protested quietly. “I’m still Clark. That hasn’t changed. I’m still the hack reporter from Kansas that you first met. I just have some… extra abilities.”
Lois huffed, and he turned to kneel down next to her. “Lois, you have to believe me when I tell you that I never meant to hurt you. And you do know me, you know me better than anyone. That’s why this is so hard-”
“Hard?” she questioned, her voice edgy and rough with too much emotion, “You think this is hard for you? I just found out that my best friend is a space alien! And you say it’s hard for *you*?” She almost scoffed, feeling the anger build within her. How dare he? What right did he have to say that it was hard?
She stood up in front of him, staring at him defiantly. “Well it couldn’t have been that hard, Clark.” Her voice had risen from the near-whisper it had been only moments before, and was now bordering on a yell. “You didn’t seem to sweat about it at all until I unbuttoned your shirt and found you out. Every day up until now wasn’t hard. And now you’re struggling a little, huh? Think I’m going to tell everybody that Clark Kent is Superman?”
She saw him wince a little and realized how elevated her volume had been. For a moment she worried that the Sitkowitz’s might have heard her proclamation, but she immediately disregarded the notion. They were, no doubt, playing kissy face in front of their cutesy little fireplace.
“Well relax. I won’t,” she said, taking the volume down a notch. “There. Not so hard anymore, right Clark?”
She walked around the couch towards the window. She didn’t want to look at him, see the apology in his face.
“Wrong, Lois. It was hard. It’s still hard. Do you have any idea how difficult it was for me to keep this from you?” He stood and walked towards her, capturing her eyes with his, almost pleading for her to believe him. “I wanted to tell you so badly.”
“Then why didn’t you? I mean, I can see why you can’t tell the world- it’ll endanger your parents, me, Perry, you’ll have no private life, blah, blah, blah. But why didn’t you tell *me*? You had to know by now that I’d never print something like this. Why didn’t you tell me when we became partners? Friends?”
He hesitated a moment before responding, his hands shoved deeply in his pockets, his eyes hunting the ground for the answer to her question. He looked up at her and spoke. “I was afraid.”
“Of what?” Her voice softened. She had expected an explanation, a technical account of the past two years. She had anticipated excuses- the time wasn’t right, she would have published what she knew, she would have told Luthor- but she didn’t expect fear.
“Of losing you,” he said quietly, his voice earnest and insistent. “Lois, it was hard enough losing you to Lex Luthor. I couldn’t bear to lose you to myself.”
Lois knit her brow, confused. At her look, Clark elaborated. “’ If you were just an ordinary man, leading an ordinary life, I’d love you just the same.’ Remember, Lois?”
She gasped as she heard her words and realized their impact. She had said them to Superman only hours after rejecting Clark’s heart-felt declaration of love. Her superhero was an ordinary man, leading an ordinary life, and she hadn’t loved him. “Oh, God…”
“Lois, I couldn’t tell you then, not while you still loved Superman? Can you understand that? I wanted you to want to be with me, with Clark, before I told you. I couldn’t kiss you and wonder who you wanted me to be: Would you be kissing Clark or Superman? I didn’t want that kind of doubt.”
She nodded, understanding. Her anger quelled, she unfolded her arms, and let them hang at her sides. Yes, he had hurt her, but she had hurt him too.
“And then,” he continued, “when Superman wasn’t an issue anymore, I was scared for a different reason. Lois, what I feel for you is stronger than anything I’ve ever experienced, and the more I felt it, the more afraid I was of telling you. Because if I told you, you’d hate me, and I’d lose you. I couldn’t let that happen, so I kept putting it off. Until now.”
Taking in his words, she moved back to the couch and sat down. He followed her, sitting far enough away where she wouldn’t feel pressured, but close enough where she could still touch him if she wanted to. She looked at him, and gasped quietly.
“You were going to tell me tonight,” she said, recalling his earlier speech. He had promised to tell her something, something important. “Your New Years Resolution.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I was.”
“But why?” she questioned, “Why now? Why tonight?”
He smiled at her wryly. “I made two resolutions this year. The first one was to tell you that I am Superman. The second was to convince you to go out with me, and to hopefully move our relationship past friendship. I knew that I couldn’t keep the second resolution without acting on the first.”
“So then why did you kiss me?” she asked, surprising herself. “If you knew you had to tell me about Superman before we started a romantic relationship, why did you kiss me?”
Clark blushed a little and Lois smiled. Even if he was from outer space, he was still her Farmboy. “It was midnight?” he responded feebly.
Lois laughed good-naturedly. “No, really Clark- why?”
He reached over and tentatively took her hand in his, glancing up at her to watch for a sign that his touch wasn’t wanted. She squeezed his hand, urging him to continue. Her anger had subsided, and now she just wanted answers, wanted to learn about the man that she had come to love so desperately.
“I wanted to kiss you before I told you everything. I wanted to feel your lips on mine in case I never could again, in case I ruined everything by telling you. It gave me the courage to tell you the truth. Because I knew that if I wanted to kiss you, to keep kissing you for the rest of my life, I had to be completely honest.” He turned his body to her, completely facing her. He stroked her hand with his thumb and she found herself drawn to him, much like she had been on Christmas Eve. He held her captivated with his eyes.
“So here I am, Lois. You know everything that I’ve been keeping from you for the past two years. Number one, I am Superman. Number two, I love you.”
Her eyes widened at his words, and she smiled, both excited and relieved. He loved her, and though his love couldn’t erase the fact that he had hurt her, that he had lied to her, it certainly helped to dull the pain. What had happened in their past no longer seemed as important as what would happen in their future.
“You have to know that I never meant to hurt you, Lois. I never meant for you to find out the way you did. If I could go back and change it all, I would-”
She took her hand from his and put a finger to his lips, silencing him. “I wouldn’t.”
“What?”
“I wouldn’t change a thing. I mean, granted, the timing wasn’t perfect and the actual finding out part was like a big slap in the face, but I’m glad I know. I can’t make any guarantees about anything, Clark, because this is all pretty new, the Superman thing, the ‘us’ thing, the being open with our feelings thing, but I want to try.” She removed her finger from his lips, running it down his chin before moving to cup his cheek.
Clark grinned. “You don’t hate me,” he breathed, as though afraid to believe it.
She chuckled. “God knows I tried. I really tried to hate you Clark, but I couldn’t. I guess I love you too damn much.”
An expression of further disbelief crossed his face. “What did you say?”
“Kind of surprised me too, partner.” She scooted closer to him, reaching for his hand to hold in hers. “And it pissed me off. Do you know how hard it is to be mad at somebody when you can’t stop loving them? When you want to wring their neck and kiss them at the same time? Not fun, Clark. I am a woman who knows how to be angry. But with you, I don’t. With you, everything’s different. When I realized I loved you- some time between midnight and 12:01- my world collapsed, like somebody turned it upside down. I don’t even know.”
He slipped an arm around he shoulders and pulled her close to him. She cuddled into his side and felt him kiss the top of her head.
“Everything with you is heightened, Clark. When I’m with you, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. And sadder sometimes. Maybe that’s why tonight hurt so much- because I love you. Because, whether you knew it or not, you have more power over me than anybody ever has. Because you could break my heart into a million little pieces and I’d still love you. Your betrayal hurt more, because you mean more. The more I love you, I think, the more you can hurt me.”
She stroked his hand with her thumb as she watched his reaction. God, she loved him. Part of her resented it, that he had so much power over her emotional well-being, but the majority of her relished in it. She could see the love in his eyes, and she knew that they would be okay.
“Maybe,” he murmured, “that’s what love is about- giving you my heart, knowing you might stomp on it, but trusting you not to. I think that’s where I went wrong. I didn’t tell you about Superman because I didn’t trust you to not break my heart.”
She looked up at him. “Do you trust me now?”
He stood, pulling her up with him and walked them towards the window. “Completely.”
They stood, looking out at the snow that had begun to fall, her head resting on his shoulder. She remembered Christmas Eve when they had stood like this, watching as the white flakes blanketed Metropolis for the first time that year. It was only a week ago, but it seemed like a lifetime. She glanced at the little tree sitting next to her and smiled. They had made the scrawny thing beautiful. The multi-colored lights twinkled and the few ornaments that the branches had been able to support stood out proudly, almost defiantly, as they reflected the light from the room.
“Oh, Clark,” she gasped as she recalled the one thing that their tree was missing, “I did a terrible thing. Our poor little tree-”
He pulled the crystal star from his pocket and shrugged. “I, uh… I was flying around and I saw you throw it out the window. I couldn’t let it break, so I caught it.”
Gently, he placed it atop the small pine and grinned. She echoed his smile and turned to face him.
“If that tree can make it, Clark, so can we,” she stated confidently.
“Lois, that tree is going to turn brown next week and all the needles will fall off and it will eventually shrivel up and die. Are you sure it’s wise to use it as a metaphor for our love life?” he chuckled.
“Well, we’ll just have to try harder then, won’t we?” She moved closer to him, wrapping her arms around his waist and feeling his come up to pull her into him, encircling her. It felt good to be held by him; it felt right.
Their moment of peace was interrupted by the chiming of Lois’ kitchen clock. It struck three and she grinned up at him mischievously.
“Cla-ark…”
“Lo-is…”
“It just turned midnight on the west coast. They’re ringing in the New Year.” She rose on her tiptoes, bringing herself eye to eye with him.
“Yeah, so…?” His eyes sparkled and he brought his lips only inches from hers.
“You know what’s customary when ringing in the New Year?” she breathed.
“Mayyy-be,” he stalled playfully.
“Damnit, Clark, just kiss me.”
And he did.
----- El Fin -----
