ToC Note: I know it's been absolutely forever since I posted Part 3 and I am so, so sorry! RL completely swamped me and ate my brain so it took me until now to finally finish this fic.
Rewriting the end of 'The Eyes Have It' because that ending always irritated me.
The I's Have It Part 4Clark took a deep breath, mentally bracing himself for what wasn’t going to be the easiest conversation of his life, before he knocked on Lois’s door.
Lois opened it immediately, smiling but looking distinctly ill-at-ease. “Clark, hi! You- you’re- uh- back sooner than I expected,” she said, stepping back to let him in.
He stepped inside. “I can fly faster when I don’t have a passenger,” he explained briefly.
“Oh, right. I wasn’t sure if you were going to come in through the window or not,” she said, going over to close the still-open window.
He sat down, amused almost in spite of himself at Lois’s clear skittishness. “I’m not actually that comfortable staying in the suit for extended periods of time when I’m not performing rescues,” he answered, falling in with her evident desire to avoid the real issues they needed to confront.
Lois opened her mouth, closed it, managed a rather uncertain smile, and then asked, “I-er- do you want some tea? Or- or anything?”
“Lois, calm down. I’m still just me, Clark, okay?”
She sat, coloring in some embarrassment. “Sorry, I- it just seems weird now. Before, I was just too preoccupied with your blindness to really take it all in and now that I’m finally managing to process it, it’s strange. I feel like I suddenly don’t know you anymore.”
“You know me, Lois, better than anyone.” He paused, hesitated and then finally just said, “I suppose you’re angry with me. I can understand that and I don’t blame you. If you want to yell at me or- or beat me up or something, you can.”
She blinked. “Beat you up? It’s not like I really could, could I?”
“Well, no,” he admitted rather sheepishly. “It wouldn’t hurt me and it would hurt you but, well, it’s more an expression than not.”
Lois laughed in spite of her nerves and sudden bout of uncertainty. He looked so, well, boyish with that rather embarrassed, self-conscious look on his face. She felt herself relax, her tension unwinding at the sight.
“Actually,” she began with more certainty, “I have one question that I want answered first.”
“Sure, what is it?” Clark waited with a slight frown in his eyes.
“Why did you agree to spend the weekend with Mayson Drake? Unless,” she hesitated and then finished, looking at the floor rather than at him, “you really wanted to go but didn’t because you were blinded. And if that’s the case, then that’s fine and I- I’m glad for you since it’s obvious what she feels but I think you should just go home in that case. You don’t need to explain yourself to me. I won’t tell anyone, you know…”
She stopped at the sound of Clark’s laughter. “What?”
Of all the questions Clark had been expecting Lois to want answered first, that had been the last one—or, more accurately, that question had never even occurred to him. Now, he listened to Lois babble and couldn’t hide his amusement. Oh, Lois, Lois! Only Lois would demand to know that first!
“Lois, only you would ask that question first! But to reassure you, I agreed to spend the weekend with Mayson by accident.”
“By accident?” she repeated. “How do you
accidentally agree to spend the weekend with someone?”
“She asked me right when you got that phone call from Dr. Leit telling you to come to the cemetery. I was- um- preoccupied because I was listening in on your call so I had tuned Mayson out and didn’t hear any of what she’d said. So when she stopped, I said yes, automatically, and I didn’t realize what I’d agreed to until Mayson told me what time she’d pick me up.”
“Well? Then why didn’t you tell her the truth once you did realize it?”
“I was going to but then you were leaving to meet Dr. Leit and I knew I had to follow you and Perry was there and I didn’t want to humiliate her like that in front of Perry so I just never got the chance, especially since I was distracted anyway. And then afterwards, I forgot because of everything that happened.” He paused and then added softly, “Believe me, Lois, the only woman I want to spend a weekend with is you.”
She felt herself color. “Really?”
He nodded, his eyes sober and sincere and warm as they held her gaze. “Really.”
The moment lengthened, stretched… Lois held her breath seeing the emotion in his eyes and suddenly realizing just how deeply Clark must care about her. The strength of the emotions she could see scared her and she was the first one to look away.
“Clark, I-” she began and then stopped, because Clark’s face had gotten that far-away look that he sometimes got before he looked at her, his hand automatically going up to his collar.
“Lois, I- I have to go. Siren,” he explained briefly before standing up and spinning back into his suit. He paused for the briefest instant. “I’ll be back, I promise.” He gave her a quick, slight smile and then he was gone.
Lois sat back with a sigh. So this was what life would be like, she supposed, what it would be like to be in a relationship with Superman. They’d be talking, having a romantic moment—and then he’d leave because someone, out there, needed him. He would never really belong to her, could never really belong to her. He belonged to the world, not to any one person.
How could she deal with it, she wondered. Could she deal with it? But even as she thought it, she knew the answer would be yes. If that was what it took to be with him, then he was worth it. Because the important thing wasn’t how often he had to leave or the times he was gone; what was important was how she felt when she was with him. And she’d never felt quite so safe, quite so comfortable as when she was with Clark. Never felt quite so loved…
And that was really it, wasn’t it?
She’d been in love with Superman for months now and, though she hadn’t been willing to admit it until very, very recently (okay, fine, she hadn’t been willing to admit it until these past few days), she’d fallen in love with Clark too. And it wasn’t some strange sort of problem, wasn’t because she was, as a person, incapable of being faithful to one person or anything like that; it was simply because Clark and Superman were one and the same and she’d fallen in love with only one man, in both guises.
Now she just had to tell him…
It was another few minutes before he returned, arriving through the window this time, which she’d left open for him, and then spinning back into his clothes.
He grinned slightly at the sight of her open-mouthed expression and going over to her, teasingly put his finger under her chin and closed her mouth. “You’re staring, Lois.”
“Oh, right,” she blushed. “I- just- this is going to take some getting used to, you know. So, uh, what was it this time?”
“Car accident,” he explained briefly. “I flew a little kid who was pretty badly hurt over to the hospital.”
Lois studied him for a moment, suddenly struck with something she’d never really thought to feel. “It’s hard for you, isn’t it?”
He blinked. “What is?”
“Being Superman. Having to see so many people in pain all the time.”
For the barest moment, he seemed to freeze and then he sighed and nodded. “Yeah. It’s hard. It’s draining. Some nights when it’s really bad, I just have to leave, you know. So I fly over to some deserted place far away or go up into outer space and just try to forget.” He paused. “And sometimes, I fly over here and check to make sure you’re all right.”
She smiled and blushed. “How does that help?”
He shrugged a little. “I’m not sure how to explain it, but it does. I- I just like to hear your heartbeat. It- soothes me, somehow.”
“Oh, Clark…” she breathed and, without stopping to think about what she was doing, she leaned over and kissed him.
It hadn’t been something she’d thought about or known she was going to do or she might have managed to talk herself out of it; instead she just kissed him.
And after a fleeting moment of surprise, he kissed her back, his lips softening and his hand sliding into her hair, holding her in place. His tongue slid into her mouth, stroking, caressing her tongue…
She wrapped her arms around his neck shifting even closer to him.
Good God but he could kiss…
He’d kissed her senseless before (as both Clark and Superman) but nothing could compare to this. Honesty clearly had an explosive effect on kisses.
He was the first one to break the kiss, dragging his lips from hers, though he softened her instinctive feeling of loss by brushing his lips against her cheeks and her nose and her forehead before pulling away even more.
She opened rather dazed eyes to stare at him, her breath coming in gasps, her entire body feeling heated.
“Lois, wait,” he managed to get out. “Much as I’d love to continue this, we really have to talk.”
Talk. Talk… Yes, talk, they needed to talk…
Lois valiantly tried to remember exactly what they needed to talk about but somehow couldn’t quite think of much. She knew he was Superman and had forgiven him for it, knew he didn’t like Mayson in that way—and she knew he could kiss like nothing else.
“I love you, Clark—and I love you, Superman,” she said simply.
His smile began deep in his eyes before spreading to his face. “Really?”
She returned his smile. “Yes, really. Clark, I think I’ve been in love with you for months; I just didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
“Oh, Lois… I love you too. I’ve loved you since the day we met.”
“Even when I treated you so badly?”
“Well, you did warn me not to fall for you but you were too late for that.”
Her eyes widened a little. “But I told you not to fall for me like the day after we met!”
His smile softened. “I fell for you the moment I saw you, bursting into Perry’s office like a whirlwind of energy and brilliance.”
“Flattery will get you everywhere, Kent,” she responded lightly but the look in her eyes showed her appreciation of his words.
She sobered and touched her fingertips to his face very lightly, not quite caressing it but not quite not either. “After all the terrible things I said and did to you… You’re quite something, Clark Kent.” She tried to smile but didn’t quite manage it.
“So are you, Lois Lane.”
And Lois decided that she’d had enough of talking and kissed him again, willingly losing herself in the warmth of his embrace, as his lips moved over hers in a way guaranteed to steal her breath, her mind, her heart, and her very soul…
~*~
Lois frowned slightly as she hurriedly typed up the last paragraph of her story on Leit and his device, with Perry and Jimmy leaning over her.
“Maybe it’s just as well the device was destroyed. Technology and human nature are a volatile mix, aren’t they?” Perry said behind her.
“Like Frankenstein?” Jimmy asked.
Lois ignored them for the moment as she finished typing with a small flourish and hit the key to send it over for print with her usual thrill of satisfaction at having another front page story done. She looked up at Jimmy and Perry. “Not to mention gene-splicing, and gender-selection, and atom-splitting,” she added.
And then looked up as she felt Clark’s arrival.
“Hi,” he greeted them generally but his eyes fell on her last and lingered there, his expression softening as he gave her a more private hello with his eyes.
“Hi,” she said, striving to sound normal but not succeeding as she couldn’t keep herself from being distracted by his mouth—that mouth that had kissed her long and thoroughly, with varying degrees of passion and tenderness. She felt herself flush at the thought.
In the next moment, though, all her pleasant memories were pushed from her mind as the elevator door dinged open and Mayson Drake stepped out. She stiffened automatically, even though she knew—she
knew—that Mayson wasn’t a rival, that Clark loved her, and she did trust him. It was more of an instinctive reaction, the automatic possessiveness of just knowing that any other woman was so obviously interested in her man. No doubt Mayson wanted some explanation for why Clark had stood her up.
Perry and Jimmy were staring with unabashed interest and Lois belatedly realized that they thought Clark had stood Mayson up too. Jimmy, for one, began to back away slowly, although his eyes never left Mayson and Clark in obvious curiosity. Perry clapped Clark on the shoulder and opened his mouth to say something, no doubt one of Perry’s occasional bits of fatherly advice that made varying amounts of sense, and Lois caught Clark’s quick glance at her and sensed his growing dismay.
And before she’d quite realized what she was going to do, she stepped forward, ignoring Mayson for the moment but speaking in a voice just a shade louder than normal to ensure that Mayson would hear every word. “Oh, Clark, I completely forgot to ask you. How is your…” she cast about in her mind frantically— “your mom’s cousin doing? You told me he’d had a stroke and was in the hospital. Is he doing better now?”
She sensed Mayson stopping short at these words and saw Perry and Jimmy stare at her in surprise. As for Clark, for a fleeting second he studied her as if wondering if she’d suddenly lost her mind.
Come on, Clark, help me out here. I just invented an excuse for why you were gone this weekend, she tried to communicate her impulsive words and her plan to him.
And then he blinked, his expression blanking, and she saw that he’d understood.
“Oh, yeah, thanks for asking. He’s- uh- he’s being released from the hospital today, actually.”
She managed a smile. “Oh, good. I’m sure your mom’s relieved to know that.”
“She is,” he said, although he spoke rather slowly, as if not quite sure of the fact.
Lois stifled a smile at the sudden thought that Clark really was not comfortable lying at all. And this was the man who had a secret identity which meant he had to lie on a daily basis? Really amazing.
“Your mom’s cousin? A stroke?” Mayson’s voice cut across the silence so Clark and Lois both turned to her.
“Er- yeah,” Clark said.
“That’s why Clark’s parents flew out here this weekend,” Lois put in now, seeing that Clark wasn’t comfortable enough with this lie to perpetuate it for any longer than necessary.
“Oh,” Mayson murmured, but Lois saw the acceptance in Mayson’s expression. She knew the Kents lived in Kansas and she’d probably been wondering what they were doing in Metropolis for a weekend with Clark nowhere to be seen and this rather explained it-- not perfectly of course (for one thing, the Kents hadn’t mentioned a thing and for another, why would they have been with Lois and Superman if Clark was, presumably, at the hospital with his mom’s cousin?)—but well enough that Mayson wouldn’t question it further.
For a moment, Mayson seemed to hesitate and then she stepped up closer to Clark, while Lois reluctantly stepped back, more out of automatic courtesy than willingness. “That explains it, then. I- I thought it didn’t seem like the kind of thing you would do.” She paused and then continued on, less smoothly, “I wish you’d called to let me know, to explain it. I- I don’t know if I’ll ask you out again but if
you want to ask
me, then I probably wouldn’t say no.” She drew back, hesitating again and that split second was enough for both Lois and Clark to sense her intention. Lois stiffened again and caught Clark’s fleeting pained expression and his glance at her, and then at the last second, he turned his head slightly so Mayson’s lips brushed his cheek instead of his lips. It was a small movement, small enough that an observer would be forgiven for not knowing whether it was completely intentional or not.
Mayson stepped back, her expression calm, but Lois just glimpsed the flicker of vulnerability in her eyes, and surprised herself with feeling a pang of sympathy for the other woman, for the first time in their acquaintance. She watched Mayson leave the office with more softness for the assistant DA than she’d ever dreamed she would feel. After all, if anyone could understand being attracted to Clark Kent, it was her—and Clark loved
her. She could afford to be magnanimous and pity Mayson for her unrequited feelings.
Clark moved closer to her. “My mom’s cousin had a stroke?” he asked, very quietly so no one else could hear, a thread of some amusement in his tone and in his eyes.
“It was all I could think of at the time.”
“Well, thank you for that.”
She shrugged it off, suddenly wondering just what had possessed her. Why had she helped Clark out—but even as she wondered it, she knew. She just hadn’t been able to resist the hint of entreaty in that quick glance Clark had thrown her when he’d seen Mayson, hadn’t been able to help responding to his dismay at this new complication his secret identity had created in Clark Kent’s life. After all, she supposed, this was also what it meant to love Clark—loving him meant lying for him, every day, to keep his identity secret.
God, what had she signed up for when she’d fallen in love with Clark Kent, a.k.a. Superman, anyway?
But then she saw the warmth in his eyes—all the love she’d ever wanted or hoped for—and she knew that in the end, it was all worth it. Loving Clark, being loved by him—that was more than worth any complications which his double life might cause.
So she smiled up at him. “You can pay me back later.”
“How about dinner in Paris, or any other city of your choice, tonight?”
Oh yeah, that would be a perk of dating Clark/Superman. She hadn’t thought of that part of it. She smiled into his eyes. “It’s a date.”
~The End~
