Table of Contents
From Part 24:She turned her hand so that she was touching him, palm to palm. “No, Clark. It’s not important any more. I just needed to tell you, that’s all.”
“So that I’d understand the way things were - the way you reacted - when you found out who I was,” he said. “Yes, I understand. And it’s really not important.”
“It is important,” she said, contradicting him. “But that’s not the only reason why I needed to tell you. I think you have something you need to tell me too. About the reason why you can’t let yourself trust me when I say that I’m attracted to you. The reason you assume that because you’re different no woman could ever want to be with you. Don’t you?”
Clark stared at her, dumbfounded at the way she’d managed to turn the conversation around to him in a matter of seconds. And at the fact that she was right. But then, he should have expected that of Lois Lane.
“Who was she, Clark? What did she do to you?”
**********
Now read on...She’d struck paydirt. His expression told her that much, loud and clear.
It had only been a guess on her part to assume that it was a woman. Though the clues had been there, she thought: if he was assuming that no woman could possibly be interested in Clark Kent, freak and quite possibly alien, then that was very probably because some woman in his past had led him to believe precisely that.
He expected any woman he might be interested in to reject him, because he wasn’t normal - so his strategy was to get in first. And that, of course, was a strategy she was very familiar with, since it was precisely what she’d done ever since Claude.
Her sister Lucy had told her exactly what she was doing, and why it was a crazy move. No man, Lucy argued, would stick around with Lois sending out so many ‘keep off’ signals. But then, Lois had thought, if they didn’t stick around, if they didn’t try to find out what was underneath the exterior, then they weren’t worth the effort.
Not that many men, in her experience, had been worth the effort...
Except Clark.
She was very sure that Clark was different. Not just because he was an outsider himself, although the fact that he’d experienced rejection meant that he could understand and empathise with her own experiences. Not just because he might be an alien. But because she’d seen a streak of decency and goodness which ran deep within him, which told her that he could be trusted.
In her case, of course, she knew that he was different, so he didn’t have to avoid getting too close in case she worked it out; but because she knew, she guessed, he was expecting her to reject him.
He had, she remembered now, told her last night that if it was up to him there would definitely be a ‘you and me’. She’d been half-asleep at the time, so it probably wasn’t too surprising that she hadn’t remembered that earlier.
So he did want a relationship with her. Just as she did with him.
But, like her, he had insecurities to overcome.
Maybe he thought that her interest in him was because he was a novelty? That she was just indulging herself, finding out what the freak - which was, she was sure, how he thought of himself at least some of the time - was really like, and taking advantage of his flying skills?
Or, if he didn’t think she was that self-centred, maybe he really did think that she’d want to walk away from him once she’d had time to think about the consequences of being with him. And he wanted to stop things now before he got hurt.
She met his gaze again. He’d been silent ever since she’d asked that last question.
He pulled a face. “Sorry, Lois. I was just...” He seemed to falter.
“Too personal?” she asked quietly, feeling disappointed; after all, she’d just told him about things she’d told nobody else, ever. And she’d done it in order to make him feel comfortable about confiding in her. The least he could do was return the compliment!
“No, it’s not that.” He smiled then, ruefully. “I guess I was just wondering how you got to be so perceptive.”
“Comes with the territory, Clark,” she teased. “I am a reporter, after all.”
“Yeah, I
think I knew that,” he replied with a grin. “Anyway,” he added more soberly, “you’re right. Something did happen - a woman. Well, a girl, really. It was a long time ago.”
“But obviously left scars,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
Again, he was silent for a while. Then, slowly, he said, “It shouldn't. That’s why I guess I feel foolish about talking about it. I mean, your experience with Claude was at least recent - you have every right to be wary. But me... this was ten years ago!”
A little longer ago than she’d expected, but still... “Clark, you were a teenager then! Of course it hurt, whatever she did to you.”
“Teenage angst, huh?” he murmured wryly. His gaze fell to their now-ignored and cold pizza, before he raised his head to look at her again.
“Her name was Lana. I’d known her more or less all my life - well, when you grow up somewhere like Smallville, there aren’t a lot of strangers. And her folks went to the same church in town, so even though the family lived in town I did run into her from time to time. And then we ended up in the same high school - there’s a small elementary school the kids at the outlying farms go to, and there’s a couple of junior highs in the town. But just one high school.”
He spoke in level tones, but for Lois his story - and his voice - was none the less mesmerising for all that. She already knew that she hated Lana. How could any woman be cruel to this man?
“We started dating not long after we began high school,” he continued. “And it was great - I mean, Lana was one of the prettiest girls in the school, but that wasn’t my main attraction to her: I just liked her. She was fun to be with. But because she was attractive, the other guys were envious, and I kind of enjoyed that at the time. And after a while we went steady - I gave her my class ring and told her that I loved her. She said she loved me too.”
Typical teenage romance, of course. Lois had been there herself. It all felt so real and vital at the time, but of course the feelings were usually immature and as such ephemeral. Very few teenage romances lasted, but it could be very painful, for one if not for both, when they ended, as they inevitably did.
“At the time, my life seemed great in so many ways. I mean, I had a gorgeous girlfriend who loved me and I loved her. I’d made reserve on the school football team with a great chance of being promoted onto the team itself. I had a lot of friends. But at the same time everything was changing for me.” He paused, a faraway expression on his face.
“The thing that was so important about being with Lana is that she made me feel normal,” Clark continued, and now his voice was showing signs of strain. “I was fifteen when we started dating, and I felt at the time as if I was the biggest freak around. For the previous couple of years just nothing had been normal about me - it felt as if I was discovering more and more weird things every other week. Moving so fast it felt as if I was teleporting, seeing through walls, hearing things I should never have been able to hear - I even set some straw alight just by looking at it! And the scariest of all was waking up in the middle of the night and falling several feet down to the bed when I realised I was floating.”
Definitely scary stuff for a teenager, Lois agreed silently, just giving Clark a sympathetic nod. He didn’t seem to need or want her to speak.
Dating Lana, being in love with Lana and having her love him back, had made him feel normal. It had made him feel as if he did belong - that he was just a normal kid, exactly like everyone else.
“You know the way your body changes during puberty?” Clark said, directing a question at her for the first time. She nodded.
“I guess it’s pretty scary for girls as well as guys. Anyway, I was suddenly finding out all these freakish things at the same time as my body was... developing. And I was terrified that these weird difference about me would soon start to manifest in... well, in my appearance. That I’d suddenly grow a second head, or shoot up to about ten feet tall - I had a huge growth spurt when I was fifteen, which didn’t help. Or something else equally weird - I’d seen Close Encounters and ET, and the aliens there *looked* alien. But there was V too - you know, the TV series? That started when I was fifteen. And there the aliens looked so
human. Until later, when you discovered that they weren’t after all - and then they didn’t even look human any more. I started wondering if that was what I was going to end up looking like.”
“And Lana made you feel normal?” Lois prompted.
“Being with her did, yeah,” he agreed. “Don’t get me wrong - my parents were terrific through all of this. They hated it when I called myself a freak, and I stopped doing it around them because I didn’t want to hurt them - though it didn’t stop me thinking it. They told me over and over that they loved me and they’d still love me no matter what we discovered about me. Whether I was from a laboratory or from Mars, they didn’t care - I was their son and that was that. But to them I was different. They were understanding about the things I did, especially when accidents happened - I mean, one day I was coming downstairs and the banister shattered just because I put my hand on it. Dad said it didn’t matter, and that I’d have to learn to understand my strength so I could control it. He rebuilt the banister that evening and got me to help him - he even let me hammer in nails so that I could get used to adjusting my strength to what was needed. They’re the very best parents I could possibly have had,” he finished emphatically.
“So what happened?” Lois asked, feeling that he needed prompting to continue again.
“I started feeling that I wanted Lana to know the truth about me. I needed to know that she could accept me as I really was - not the average kid, but a freak who might be from another planet.”
Lois winced again at Clark’s repeated use of ‘freak’ to describe himself. But she remained silent, allowing him to continue.
“I needed to know that. I mean, I loved her - or I thought I did. I guess now that it was just first love. She’s married to someone else now, and I wasn’t even the tiniest bit jealous when they announced their engagement. But, you see, I believed that because I loved her, I couldn’t carry on deceiving her, not telling her everything about me. And I thought that because she loved me she’d accept it.” He shrugged. “The naïve certainty of a teenager!”
“And she rejected you?” Lois said; she was absolutely certain of that. And she wanted to tear Lana limb from limb for what she’d done to the hopeful teenager Clark Kent had been.
“I didn’t tell her,” he said, and she could hear the relief in his voice.
“You changed your mind?” That didn’t make sense. From the way he’d been behaving - and the way he’d reacted to her initial question - it had seemed obvious that this Lana must have rejected him.
“Sort of. Do you remember Starman? The movie?”
“Jeff Bridges and what’s her name? About this alien who inhabits a human body and the wife of the man whose body he has who tries to shelter him from the police and FBI?” Things were starting to fall into place for Lois. There weren’t exactly a lot of parallels between Clark’s situation and that of the Starman, but there were a few superficial similarities.
“Yeah. I took Lana to see it. I thought it might be a good way of starting the conversation - you know, asking her what she would’ve done in Karen Allen’s position. I guess I expected her to take the romantic line and say that she’d have fallen in love with him right from the start. Stupid, huh?” Clark said, shaking his head.
“No; actually, it sounds like a very good way of broaching it,” Lois said immediately. “So... she didn’t say what you were expecting?”
He shook his head again. “Made it clear she’d want to turn him in as soon as possible. And then get the heck out of Dodge.”
“Ah.” That explained it all, then. Okay, teenagers could be thoughtless, but still... “How old was she?”
“Sixteen,” he answered. “And before you say it, I know that she was just a kid still. Teenagers think they know it all, and it’s only when we get older that we realise how little we know, and we lose a lot of our prejudices. I don’t feel angry at Lana now for saying what she said. It just... taught me a valuable lesson.”
“Don’t expect a woman to accept you as you are. Don’t believe that you can have a real relationship with a woman. Don’t ever believe that a woman could love you if she knows the full truth about you,” Lois said. “Is that it?”
His expression gave her the answer she was expecting.
“Including me?” she asked.
He stood, walking away from the table. She should have felt shut out, but somehow his expression told her that it wasn’t her he was distancing himself from. His thoughts? His desires? She wasn’t sure.
Gazing out the window, he said quietly, a note of longing in his voice, “Lois, there is nothing I want more than to have you in my life - to love you and to have you love me back. I want to believe that it’s possible - that you can look past my weirdness and accept me for the person I am - ”
“Clark, I can! I do!” Lois exclaimed, getting to her feet and coming towards him.
He turned to look at her, and pain blazed from his expression. “I want to believe that, Lois. But... it terrifies me. I’m afraid that I’ll let you into my heart and then you’ll realise that you can’t live with the way I am, and you’ll dump me.” He gestured helplessly with his hands. “I know I’m probably sounding like a stupid, insecure neurotic... but it’s kind of hard to overcome ten years of conditioning.” He gave her a weak smile.
“Do you think I don’t know that?” Lois told him. “I told you about Claude, but I never mentioned the guy at college who slept with me and then dumped me for my best friend, or the way my father always made it clear - still does! - that I don’t live up to his expectations of me. I find it pretty hard to trust men not to abandon me or treat me badly. And yet... I’m willing to try trusting you,” she finished, then held her breath.
“I’m being an idiot, aren’t I?” he said with a wry smile, then took a step towards her, reaching for her hands and holding them tightly in his. “Lois, I love you. And I want to try trusting you too,” he said softly.
Lois stifled a gasp. She’d hoped that being more honest still with him might make him rethink, but she hadn’t expected this sort of progress so soon. “Clark... I love you too. And I know it sounds crazy - it feels crazy to me too, seeing as we’ve only known each other less than two weeks, but that’s the way I feel about you. And I want us to give it a chance.”
“Then we’ll make each other a promise,” he said, his voice little louder than a murmur. “We will trust each other. We won’t just make assumptions about each other and act on them. If we get scared or insecure, we’ll talk to each other about it. And we’ll remember first and foremost that we love each other. Okay?”
“Sounds good to me,” Lois said shakily, moved to the core by the sincerity in Clark’s voice and the emotion in his eyes.
He bent his head, and their lips met in another soul-stirring kiss.
********
Yes, he’d been an idiot, and because of it he’d almost thrown away a chance of happiness with the most wonderful woman he’d ever met.
Lois loved him.
Loved him. And he’d almost walked away from her.
Almost. Until she’d talked sense into him and reminded him that he shouldn’t let past experience prejudice him - and that she would be taking a risk with him too.
And when it came to a kiss, there was no other possible choice. How could he walk away from this? How could he miss the opportunity to hold Lois in his arms and kiss her until they were both breathless?
He couldn’t. It was as simple as that. To walk away from Lois now would be like walking away from life.
Her kisses tasted faintly of pizza, as, he was sure, did his. Her arms were around his neck, fingers playing with his hair. And he held her pressed against him, her soft, slender body moulding itself against him as if nature had intended it to be there.
Nature probably had.
Clark didn’t believe in pre-destiny, or soulmates, or anything of that nature. And yet... and yet...
How could he
not believe that he and Lois were meant to be together?
He should have known from the moment of their first kiss.
He’d kissed other women since Lana, of course. Mostly in circumstances where the woman had seemed to expect it and to refuse would have seemed impolite. The kisses had never aroused any reaction in him; at most, a kind of mild pleasure, but very transient and never enough to make him want to repeat the experience.
No, he’d never been at all tempted to go back on his pledge, after Lana, to avoid a deeper relationship with a woman. Actually, adhering to his vow hadn’t been a sacrifice at all, he now accepted. Until Lois, he’d never met a woman who’d made him
want to try again.
Until Lois.
And with Lois he wanted everything.
********
...tbc
