It has been a long time since I wrote something, and this mostly was witten last year. This story is the follow up of
Misty Revelation .
Many thanks to my beta readers Elle (until her RL came in the way) and Caroline Mckenna for her suggestions and comments, and her corrections of the mistakes
.
I want to thank another person that nagged me to get this out. When I was traslating The Parent Trap to Spanish she was my beta for that story. She asked why I had stopped writing. I made two mistakes, first; send her this story that was lost in the hard disk since last year. The second was sending certain file... but that's another story, don't you thinks so, Cris?
I'd like to thank her all the comments, suggestions and support, specially the last draft of comments, that remided me of a preparation for certain project...
I don't own any of the characters here, they are property of DC comics and Warner Bros. I'm just borrowing them for fun.
Behind the Mist By Jose Antonio Chamorro
PG-13
Lois watched the man who had become her partner, friend and possibly more walk to the
kitchen. She followed him, questioning why she had never before noticed that he was
Superman. Lois examined the facts.
'Ok, until today, he had been careful enough not to let her see his face without glasses.'
She pointed out to herself. But she had seen Clark -or rather ogled him- wearing only a
towel when they were investigating the Messenger incident. And Superman's outfit
didn't leave anything to the imagination. Her wonderings made the apartment feel
warmer than usual. She focused on throwing the vision of Clark wearing only a towel out
of her mind.
The two reporters remained quiet as they reached Lois' kitchen. Suddenly he started to
move at superspeed. When Lois's eyes could follow him, she saw Clark heating the tea
with his heat vision.
"Wow."
He looked at her. He wasn't wearing his glasses, she realized. Lois still had them; she had
forgotten to give them back.
"You don't look bad with glasses," Clark commented as he came to her with two cups of
tea. "We'll be better on the couch."
"Yeah," Lois answered. They made their way back to the living room and sat down. An
awkward silence grew between them. Though there were plenty of things to be said, it
seemed neither of them knew how to begin.
"Well..."
"Well..." Clark repeated. He looked at her. Something was strange. This wasn't going
how he had thought at all. "You're taking this very well. In fact, when you took the
glasses off before, I expected you to start yelling and screaming at me."
Lois placed a hand on his arm and explained, "Clark, I'm not mad at you. If there is
someone to be mad at, it's myself." Lois made a pause when she saw the stunned face of
her partner. He was about to reply when she continued, "Clark, I think I'm the person
who knows you the best, with the exception of your parents, and I didn't have a clue. And
it's not like you didn't leave me a few. Your lame excuses, things happening with no
proper explanation. But the worst is that I was having fantasies," said Lois flushing,
"about Superman but all along he had your body. Or you had his body. All I know is I
was falling at Superman's feet, when deep down it was you I wanted to be with. Only
that I wouldn't dare to admit it to myself."
"What?!" Clark replied stunned again. Was she saying she was attracted to him? As
Clark?
"I'm not talking about the pheromone compound," she pointed out to him, "but we
discovered that it only lowered inhibitions, it didn't create feelings. Remember that
Chinese takeout," she stopped suddenly, thought, and then she continued, "which now
I'm sure it was from China, that we shared your first week at the Planet? I realized at the
moment you were dangerous. That's why I told you that you shouldn't fall for me. But
Fate has its own ways of working. And then the next morning made everything worse
because you answered the door wearing only a towel. I still don't know how I could
restrain from throwing myself at you... maybe that the bed was too small. Fortunately the
towel didn't do anything by itself, if you know what I mean. So, the physical attraction
added to the emotional attraction."
"But..." Clark tried to stop Lois's babble mode.
"Don't interrupt me, Clark; I haven't finished, and I'm on a roll here. Of course, there are
the other women, like Cat or Toni Taylor. Although I denied it, I was jealous. Especially
of Toni. When you kissed her, I thought I was going to explode. Why? That reminds me,
the kiss we shared to distract Trask and his goons in the plane. That was the original plan.
What I hadn't expected was that I would have wanted to kiss you again. The other two
kisses were different. When you kissed me during the heat wave? That kiss made me
realize about your feelings for me and mine for you. Clark, I wanted to be with you! I
wanted to forget everything and go to Smallville, just so I wouldn't have to deal with the
possibility of losing you." Lois paused when she saw Clark raising an eyebrow.
"Lois, I can't imagine you quitting at the Planet and going with me to Smallville," Clark
said.
"Would you have told me the secret if that had happened?" Lois inquired, curious.
"Probably. We'd have had to travel to Smallville by plane." He stopped to think and
spoke again, "Under the circumstances, I wasn't in the mood for being stuck in a plane
for hours."
Lois smiled lightly, stood up and sat again, this time on Clark's lap, surrounding him
with her arms around his neck. She began to kiss him and she soon felt Clark answering
to her kiss. The kiss was deepening in intensity when she suddenly broke it. "Clark, I
hope you don't think I'm doing this because you're Superman," Lois said as she observed
the reaction on his face. "I love you for the qualities you have as Superman, not the
powers," she added before he could reply. "And I love you for the qualities you have as
Clark. And that is something that I realized pretty soon. You have a pretty strong sense of
morals. I teased you about it when I admired it in Superman. That wasn't fair, and I'm
sorry for it."
"You don't need to apologize Lois," Clark cut in.
"Yes, I have to. As Superman you're somehow distant, but you bend it a little towards
me. And I didn't help throwing myself at one part of you, and at claiming to be annoyed
by the other. I'm not going to deny that I like the powers. They're awesome and
sometimes handy, but you'd be the same person without them."
"Thanks, Lois, for being so understanding."
"It's nothing. Actually I'm far from completely comprehending everything you've gone
through, though I'm trying. But you have lived keeping so much to yourself (with so
many secrets) for so long. It must have been pretty difficult for a child growing up so
differently from the rest. And having to control your strength, your speed... all of the
time. It must have been quite tempting." She paused and with an innocent smile added, "
I mean, what kid wouldn't want to be the best in everything?" Her comment earned her a
chuckle. "Clark, how old were you when you began realizing just how special you
were?" Lois asked.
Clark thought a bit and spoke; "I think I was ten or so when I began to hear more than I
should..."
"Like?"
"Well, the walls at my folk's house aren't too wide but..." he began to blush.
Watching his discomfort, Lois laughed saying, "Ok, ok, I got it. I had a similar
experience once too."
"At first I thought my imagination had been playing a trick on me, so I pretty much
dismissed it. But I knew something wasn't normal when days later I bounced one of my
Mom's knifes..."
"Oh," Lois blurted out, "Martha's face must have been priceless!"
"Yep, after that my parents began to tell me what they knew about me."
"That you were adopted," Lois muttered, "And how they found you. That must have been
hard."
"I always wondered what I was." Clark said.
"Wait a minute, you didn't know you were an alien!!" Lois said surprised, "But you told
me that you are from Krypton."
"Well," Clark began, a little bit uncomfortable because Lois wouldn't like the fact he had
hidden her information, "I didn't know until I found the globe in the Bessolo Boulevard
warehouse."
"And you didn't tell me?"
"Lois you barely tolerated me back then!" Clark replied, trying to defend himself from
her accusation. Slowly, he moved his hand until it met her chin, "I wanted to tell you
almost after meeting you. Don't ever doubt that. I fell in love with you the moment you
barged into Perry's office during my work interview. It was when I realized you were the
only woman I want to be with the rest of my life."
Touched by his love declaration, Lois couldn't hold back the single tear that rolled down
her cheek, "That's beautiful, Clark."
"After I spent some time with you I realized that you had been hurt in the past, and things
wouldn't be as easy as I'd hoped. So I assured myself that first I would be your friend.
And when you felt comfortable around me and knew me, Clark Kent, the farmboy from
Kansas, I'd have tried to ask you out." Clark explained.
"But instead, I treated you badly as Clark and mooned after Superman," she paused and
then blushed, "I can believe I told you Greek God at your face! And that you were the
before and he the way, way after! You must have really been laughing at me a lot."
"Ok, at first, I can't deny it was fun for a bit to see that the best reporter in town was
fooled by a pair of glasses and some hair gel." Clark chuckled, "But later..." Clark
frowned.
"Superman took the light and Clark Kent faded into the background." She remained
thoughtful for a moment. "I remember you whispering something about that there being
such a thing as an invisible man."
"You heard that?" Clark asked.
"Yes. At the moment I dismissed it because I thought you were being stubborn about the
case of the invisible man, but now I understand what you meant." Lois then asked, "What
made you create Superman?"
"I have to help when I can, and I can't do it as Clark Kent."
"I can see that. People would try to control you by threatening your parents or... hold on
a second! I saw you make a big deal because of a paper cut. You said you never had
experienced that! That means... Kryptonite exists?"
"Yes."
"Wow! I hope any madman, like the one that was testing Superman soon after you
created him, doesn't find it." Lois stated.
"Especially that madman."
Lois irked her eyebrow, and asked, "Did you know who was behind those tests?"