Okay. So I finally know how many parts there will be. This is Part 7 and Part 8 is still to come. I thought I was going to be able to fit what I wanted to do within one part (Part 7) but no... Lois and Clark demanded more waffiness for themselves (and for you!). So here it is... One part that is one big scene of waffiness. Yay...?
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It was the middle of the night when something woke Clark. At first he wasn’t entirely sure what it was, but his questions were soon answered when he noticed Lois tossing and turning in her bed and mumbling something. She sounded agitated.
“Lois?” He stood and walked to the edge of her bed. “Lois, can you hear me?”
In response, Lois moaned, “Clark…”
“I’m here, Lois. I’m right here.” Clark laid his hand on hers. He was sure that she was still asleep – she seemed to be having a nightmare. He just wasn’t sure whether it was better to wake her or to let her finish out the dream. Weren’t you supposed to avoid waking people in this situation…or was that for sleepwalkers?
Just then, Lois gripped his hand tightly. Somewhat startled, Clark nonetheless gripped right back, being careful not to exert his full strength or anything even close to it upon the woman lying in the bed. He did however apply a gentle pressure, letting her know that he was there through touch.
Lois appeared to relax at a little at this contact, but her hand still held his with a grip that rivalled Superman himself. Clark was just glad he was able to comfort her a little as she dreamed whatever it was she was dreaming.
“Clark… I don’t know how, Clark!” Lois was crying out in her sleep once more. “I want to…” The rest of her sentence was lost in the low muttering she’d now begun.
Clark leaned over Lois. “Lois,” he whispered, “I’m right here. You need to wake up. You’re…you’re having a nightmare.” It was tough to see her like this. If she didn’t wake up soon on her own, he was going to do it for her, dangerous or not… He was still a little confused on that matter anyway.
“Clark…” Lois whimpered. “No, I can’t lose you!”
“Lois, I’m here. You’re not going to lose me.” Clark set his jaw in a determined manner. ‘That’s it,’ he thought. ‘Enough. I’m waking her up.’
He shook Lois gently with his free hand. “Lois, wake up. You’re dreaming. It’s just a dream. Wake up.”
At first he wasn’t sure that she’d heard him. But slowly, she woke up though her pressure on his hand did not lessen.
“Clark…” she breathed, her eyes wide as she stared at him. There was something in those eyes that worried him; a deep-seated fear that definitely hadn’t been there before, mixed with a look of disorientation and confusion that unsettled him. “I-I was dreaming.”
“More of a nightmare, I’d say,” Clark responded. He reached out his hand to caress her cheek, a concerned expression upon his face. “Are you feeling okay?”
Lois still looked confused. One hand rose as if to touch him, but quickly dropped to her side once more. “I… I think so. Clark, I was back there. In my dream I was back there.”
Now it was Clark’s turned to look puzzled. “Back where, Lois?” he asked.
It was then that Lois realised she hadn’t yet told him about the strange experiences she’d had when near death. As she carefully explained what had happened to her, Clark’s confused expression turned to astonishment, which became increasingly pronounced as her story progressed.
“And you actually heard me calling you?” he questioned. “You heard my voice?”
Lois nodded slowly, still holding on to his hand tightly. “It was your voice that reminded me of who I was.”
Clark digested this piece of information. He had so many thoughts rushing around inside his head that it was hard to piece them together into a coherent response. The knowledge that he had the ability to call her back from the brink… There were obviously forces at work in their lives that he didn’t understand and wasn’t sure that he ever would. The universe really was a weird and wonderful place; so wonderful that it had given Lois back to him.
Clark slowly realised that Lois was observing him closely. Her appearance was still worrying him, though the disorientation and confusion seemed gone. The fear however, seemed to have merely retreated to the background in favour of something else, something a little more visceral.
“Clark…” she said slowly, none of the whimper left in her voice. Her tongue flicked out to lick her lips slowly. “I was thinking…when I was in that box…”
“Sarcophagus,” Clark corrected without thinking. “It was a sarcophagus.”
“Really?” Lois wrinkled her nose and frowned. “You mean they put me in a fancy decorated box where a dead guy once was? A dead guy who probably had his brains pulled out through his nose?”
“Ah…yeah.” Clark closed his eyes momentarily, cursing himself for having interrupted. He knew instinctively that whatever Lois had been about to say would have been interesting – for the both of them.
But it seemed even thoughts of dead men whose brains had been pulled out through their noses couldn’t dissuade her from saying what she’d been about to say. “Clark…” she began again.
“Yes, Lois?” He waited patiently this time.
“As I was saying…when I was in that box, I was thinking about you and me and this past week…” Lois paused, chewing on her bottom lip before continuing. “And I came to the conclusion that we’d wasted a lot of time; that *I’d* wasted that time. And so I decided when you woke me that I-I didn’t want to waste anymore of our lives. Who knows how long we really have left? Another stupid villain could succeed in murdering me tomorrow – they certainly got close yesterday. And so many of them know about Kryptonite now…you’re going to keep encountering it again and again.” Lois sighed. “I guess what I’m trying to say is this: yes, Clark. I should have said it before but I was an idiot. So, yes.”
“Yes?” Clark’s mind whirled back over the past week or two, suddenly stopping dead upon one incident – one night – in particular. His eyes grew wide, tears of hope nearly overflowing from his eyes. He reached up a hand to cup her cheek. “You… Yes?” A complete sentence did not appear to be possible at this point in time.
Lois just nodded, her eyes brimmed with teardrops of her own. She smiled warmly up at him. “With all my heart.”
It was all that Clark could do to stop himself from leaping to his feet and jumping up and down in complete glee-filled abandon. Better yet, zooming around the room and yelling at the top of his voice, “She said yes! She said yes!” He only just managed to restrain himself, settling instead for pulling Lois into a enthusiastic embrace and whispering in her ear, “You just made me the happiest man on earth.”
Lois sighed happily, holding him tight. “I’m glad.”
Just then, without warning, Clark pulled back and looked at her. He studied her face carefully and then took her hand once more, holding her body at a slight distance from his own. “Are you sure about this, Lois? I mean…” He trailed off, looking at her anxiously.
Lois almost groaned in frustration. Why did Clark always have to be so cautious? Why did he always assume that she might not be sure about her decision? She was Lois Lane; she might not look before she leapt usually, but this was one aspect of her life where she didn’t feel as though she were jumping in without checking the water level. She knew where she stood with Clark; she knew he loved her, she knew she loved him. Somehow it all felt so…right. It was as if the time she’d spent thinking she might never see him again – never touch him and talk to him again – had cleared her mind. It was no longer at odds with her heart. They were both yelling the same thing: kiss him!
So she did.
At first it was a very one-sided kiss as Clark’s shock-addled brain hurried to catch up. But as it did he responded enthusiastically, matching her kiss for kiss, passion for passion. She teased his lips open with her own, eliciting a moan from deep within. As tongues met and lips pressed against each other Lois felt like she finally knew what it meant to love unconditionally, unreservedly, and completely. She slid her hand into Clark’s hair, threading her fingers through his dark locks. His reaction was to draw her closer; as lips and hands moved in time with each other she felt as though they were almost one body.
‘One body…’ her mind mused dazedly as Clark moved his way down her neck leaving tiny, soft kisses as he went. It was Lois’ turn to groan in response to his ministrations. ‘Oh, please don’t let this stop…’
Clark’s hands moved to the bottom of her shirt, and a breath hitched in her throat as his hands touched skin. “Clark…” she murmured, the name turning into an encouraging purr as his hands moved further north, pushing the bottom of her top up to expose her stomach. Lois decided to repay the favour by lifting Clark’s T-shirt at the back and sliding her hands underneath; she just wanted to touch him, to get closer and then closer still.
Clark’s own breathing became shallow as Lois’ hands continued their exploration. She silently requested his help to remove the shirt and he kissed her in reply, his lips brushing hers lightly. At the same time his arms rose and she slid the shirt up and over his head.
Lois could hardly believe that this was happening. She pulled back a little to gaze in worshipful adoration at Clark’s sculpted upper body and then reached out a hand that was shaking slightly and ran it down the centre of his very impressive torso. She watched him shiver and a corresponding shiver ran through her as he gathered her back into his arms almost fiercely. The kissing started once more, and through the fog that had ensnared her mind, Lois realised that Clark was now lying on the bed with her.
‘How did we end up here?’ she wondered vaguely. She mentally shrugged. ‘Hmm… No matter. I *like* where here is…’
Lois couldn’t seem to help it; a small, mischievous smile played across her features at this thought. Clark, sensing something was going on, forced himself to pause in the attention he was paying to her now bare shoulder and look up. “Lois?” he inquired in a low throaty voice. His breath was coming hard and fast.
“Hmm?” was all she could manage as an answer, impatient as she was for his actions to continue.
“What’re you smiling for?” Clark’s own face had split into a grin at the sight of hers.
Lois soon realised he wasn’t going to continue without an explanation. “I’m happy,” she replied.
“That was not an ‘I’m happy’ smile,” Clark countered as he lifted a hand and ran one finger down her neck behind her ear. Lois shivered once more.
‘Keep on doing what you were doing, Clark…please!’ she thought. Out loud she argued her case: “It was partially an ‘I’m happy’ smile.”
“Partially?” Clark leaned up and allowed his lips to touch hers for the briefest of moments. “Tell me.” He drew back, and it was evident that he was not going to continue until he had an answer from her.
‘Ugh…why does this man have to have super willpower as well as super everything else?’ Lois questioned internally. She sighed and grabbed his hands, entwining the fingers with her own. “It was also a smile that was calculating how to keep you here…on my bed,” she admitted with a slight blush staining her cheeks. “Okay?” She was all ready to pull him back down to meet her lips, but Clark seemed to have other ideas.
“Hmm, a calculating smile?” he said. “You don’t say…”
“Yes, I do, Clark.” Lois’ impatience was growing. ‘Please, please continue…’
Clark was feeling impatient also, but his mind was warring with his body over the idea of doing this *now*. His mind said ‘no’, but his body screamed a resounding ‘yes’. Which one did he listen to? Idly he thought to himself, ‘Why can’t the two of you agree?’
But whilst the experience of having Lois beside him was absolutely amazing, Clark wasn’t exactly sure that the timing was right for… Well, for what this was leading to.
“Lois, I…” Clark knew that to deliver his words with any degree of conviction, he was going to have to move his body further from Lois’. He did so now, instantly missing the feel of her in his arms. To compensate, he made sure he still held her hands in his.
Lois felt chilled as soon as she was robbed of Clark’s body heat. Somehow she knew that the wait was now going to be a lot longer than she’d initially expected. She heaved a sigh. “Go ahead, Clark.”
Clark sighed also. “Lois, I… I’ve never… I mean, I haven’t…” A deep blush was flooding his cheeks with colour as he stumbled over the words.
Lois grinned at him, amused and a little confused. Whatever it was he was trying to say was obviously causing him a lot of trouble; he was finding it difficult to articulate clearly. “Clark, just say it,” she insisted. “It can’t be that bad.”
“It’s not…uh, bad,” Clark replied. “I just…um… I’m not quite sure how to…tell you.”
“Like I said, just spit it out.” Lois leaned in, listening intently. She squeezed his hands tighter.
“Okay.” Clark took a deep breath and launched into his explanation. “Lois…I’ve never done this before. What…we were about to do.”
Lois sat back a little. Her brain seemed abnormally slow just then. It looked at each word closely and then at the sentence strung together before everything suddenly fell into place. “You mean you’re a…”
Clark nodded, his blush intensifying. He forced himself to look her in the eye. “Yes.”
“A…”
“Mm hmm.”
“Whoa.” Lois settled down to think. All the assumptions she’d had about him, all the suspicions she’d once carried around about him and Cat… She’d been wrong: completely and utterly wrong. It was his confidence, she realised. He always appeared so secure in himself around her. Their banter, even when it inadvertently turned to topics that could be considered ‘sex related’, was usually embarrassment free. So naturally she’d supposed that he’d been there, done that, just like every other man she’d ever known. But Clark was different: he wasn’t one of them. That was something it had taken her a while to discover – to accept. Way back when, she’d kept expecting him to slip up in his ‘act’ and behave like Claude, Paul or the other guys her friends from college had often talked about – those men who made it seem as if they were innocence personified, before something happened and out came the horns, forked tail and pitchfork!
Lois studied her partner, her best friend – her fiancé. The redness still marked his cheeks and he sat there, holding her hands and waiting on an answer. She thought carefully before replying, looking directly into Clark’s face and projecting the truthfulness of her words through her own coffee-coloured eyes.
“Clark, while I didn’t expect you to be a…” she still hesitated before saying the word, “virgin, it doesn’t make any difference to how I feel about you. Or to how I think of you. In my mind, I wish I’d waited for you; I wish I’d known I was going to find you someday. I guess I just lost hope and somewhere back there I gave up – I gave in to the social pressures and to the hormonal pressures.” Lois found herself blushing also. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it makes me feel incredibly special…and loved, to know that you waited all this time…for me. I just wish I could say I’ve done the same for you.”
One of Clark’s hands dropped hers and came up to cup her cheek again. “Lois, whether you waited or not is irrelevant to me. All I care about is you and the fact that you love me and want to marry me.”
“Oh, so you believe me about that now?” Lois teased instantly.
Clark’s eyebrow rose and he smiled. “Of course.” As he gazed into her eyes his expression changed and he said solemnly, “Never doubt that I love you, okay? And please, never ever wish you were anyone other than who you are. Even if this fictitious ‘other Lois’ were perfect as the world judges perfection, she wouldn’t come close to who you are now. Lois, everything you’ve gone through, from Paul to Claude to dealing with the ups and downs in our relationship, it’s what makes you, *you*. I wouldn’t have you any other way.” Clark paused briefly before continuing. “And as for why I waited, there were several reasons.”
“Oh, do tell,” Lois interrupted, though the challenge implied in her words was without its usual intensity as she strived to contain her feelings over what Clark had just declared. He seemed to notice her struggle and pulled her into a hug. Somehow just his arms around her helped immensely.
“Well,” Clark whispered into Lois’ ear, “the first reason I waited was because despite my hormones as a teenager, I knew then that something was different about me. I had girlfriends, but didn’t love anyone enough to bare my soul and share my secret with them. I knew that there was no way I could even think of sleeping with someone unless they knew the real me; the Clark Kent I didn’t show anyone else. Growing up, no one ever got that close.”
Lois snuggled into his embrace. “So you didn’t even think about it?”
“Lo-is,” Clark drew a breath in and let it out in the form of a shaky laugh. “I was a teenage boy – what do you think?”
Lois giggled. “So, you were a teenage boy, however I know you didn’t ‘go all the way’,” Lois persisted, feeling safe, protected and loved in his arms. “Did you ever get close?”
“A couple of times,” Clark admitted. “But as I said, the whole ‘secret’ thing stopped me, dead in my tracks.”
“So, that’s where you got your self control from!” Lois exclaimed with a sly grin. “Practice.”
“Yep. Practice,” Clark agreed, his growing smile a fluttering against her forehead. “I guess the times I thought it might be love, I found out it wasn’t. The complete and utter lifelong do-anything-for-the-person type of love was what I was waiting for, before telling anyone. And I’ve finally found it.”
Lois rested secure in the knowledge that it was *her* Clark was talking about. It was still hard to believe this; still so difficult to trust in his love for her, even though her own love for him was now so ingrained in her soul. But her heart had put itself on the line some time ago – she’d made that decision to trust, and Clark was showing her day after day that her faith was well placed.
“So…where do we go from here?” Lois asked, realising that both of them had been quiet for a number of minutes. She raised her head from where it rested against Clark’s chest and looked at him. ‘Your call’ her eyes told him.
“Lois, I want you right here and now,” Clark confessed. “But I’ve also been thinking…” He trailed off, watching her.
“Thinking?” Lois prompted. “Tell me, Clark.”
“Well, I was thinking it might be kind of romantic to be old-fashioned and wait until our wedding night. I want our first time to be right… I want us to have time to appreciate and enjoy one another. Most of all, I want *you*.” He stared at her, savouring the curve of her cheek and her well kissed, cherry-coloured lips. “What do you think?”
“I think that you’re right,” Lois said after a short pause to think. “I want to wait too.”
“So it’s settled, huh?” Clark bent his head to kiss her lips once more. “We’re… waiting.”
“Ooh, you intend to make it hard for me I see…” Lois giggled. “Very devious, Mr. Kent.”
“Or it could be that I just can’t resist you, Ms. Lane,” Clark replied, his smile back after the bout of seriousness. “You are, after all, irresistible.”
“I am, aren’t I?” Lois returned playfully. She lifted her face to his for another kiss, this one just as brief and gentle as the previous. “I love you, Clark Kent.”
“I love you, Lois Lane.” Clark sighed, glancing at the clock and then at her. “Would you mind… Could I just…hold you? For the rest of the night?”
“Do you really need to ask?” Lois burrowed into him again, nuzzling his neck. She grinned. “I like cuddling just as much as the next girl.”
Clark lowered his head to hers. “Um…we might be more comfortable lying down,” he suggested, a little breathlessly. “Hold on.” And he suited the action to his words, moving their bodies so they were lying horizontal on her bed. He turned Lois to face away from him, melding their bodies together in the most innocent way.
Innocent or not, Lois could feel Clark’s heartbeat racing against her own. His warm breath on her neck would have made her weak in the knees had she been standing.
“Clark, can we get married *soon*?” she quipped.
Her fiancé chuckled. “As soon as you want.”
After a moment, Lois had a thought. “What was the other reason?” she asked.
“Mmm…reason?” Clark murmured sleepily.
“You said there were a couple of reasons why you never got *that* close to another woman. You only named one – what was the other reason?”
Clark tucked his face into her back and mumbled his answer. “I hadn’t met you yet.”
Lois felt her insides melt. How could this man affect her so with just a few simple words?
“Clark?” she began, her own voice starting to sound drowsy.
“Hmm?” was the only reply she got.
Lois yawned. “If you’re the happiest man on earth, I’m the happiest woman.”
The memory of his smile against her shoulder scared away any more nightmares.
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To be continued (and finished) in Part 8...
~Anna.
