Part 4:Lois rapped once at his door and then turned the knob, and she was halfway inside by the time he made it up the stairs to the landing to greet her.
“Hi,” he said, feeling suddenly tongue-tied. He’d spent the day building so many fantasies around this evening, but in his fantasies he’d always been suave and self-assured, words of flirtation and seduction flowing between them like warm honey. Now he was stuck with the reality of Clark Kent, and all those imagined words felt false on his tongue.
“Hi,” she said, sounding as shy as he did.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he told her. “I missed you.”
“You saw me two hours ago,” she teased.
“Yeah, but two hours ago, I couldn’t do this.” He settled his hands on her shoulders, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin sweater she wore. Her tiny frame felt so fragile against his strength. He remembered once, when he was a child, holding a baby bird for the first time; it had been so new and beautiful, so impossibly delicate, and he’d felt almost breathless with the responsibility of it – that small life resting in his clumsy, childish hands.
She stepped into him trustingly, her arms sliding up his chest and around his neck as she smiled up at him – a bewitching smile that was innocent and inviting all at once. The awkwardness of their greeting fell away, and he felt like the man in his daydreams as he lowered his mouth to hers for a sweet, lingering kiss. When they finally drew apart, Lois sighed contentedly. “You sure know how to make a girl feel welcome, Kent.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” he promised, and suddenly the joy bubbled up and wouldn’t be contained. He laughed out loud and lifted her off her feet, spinning her around while she laughed with him and demanded that he put her down.
“Nope,” he told her, carrying her carefully down the few steps to his living room. “I promised you dancing.” And with that, he began to waltz her around the room, her feet still several inches from the floor.
“You’ve gone crazy,” she said, through her laughter. “Why is it that after two dates with me, men just go completely crazy?”
He stopped then – he was laughing too hard to dance gracefully – and let her slide back to the ground, still keeping her in the circle of his arms. “I guess you just have that effect on us,” he told her. “They’ll be adding it to the psychology books any day now. Acute Lois-Lane-itis. Very serious. No cure.” He kissed her again, kissed her while the laughter still spilled from her lips, and he realized in that moment that he had never been happier. There in his apartment, surrounded by love and laughter and Lois, he was having the single happiest moment of his life – a moment against which all future moments would be measured.
“I love you,” he whispered, as the kiss ended, because it was true and because his heart was so full that the words simply couldn’t be contained.
Her eyes went wide, and she stilled in his arms. He was again reminded of that tiny bird, so vulnerable and afraid, its small heart racing fiercely against the palm of his hand. “Clark....” she said softly, and he put a finger against her lips.
“You don’t have to say anything,” he assured her. “That’s not why I said that. I just wanted you to know. There are so many things in life that are uncertain, that we can’t control, but that one thing... my love... it’s yours, Lois. It always has been and always will be.”
“Wow,” she whispered. “Clark, I....”
“Not now,” he said, shaking his head and putting his finger against her lips again. He wanted to hear those words from her – of course he did – but he had a feeling she wasn’t really ready to say them. And he wanted his own love to be a gift freely given, not one that came with expectations. For now it was enough to have her there, in his apartment and in his arms, with his love for her out in the open between them at last.
She pressed a tiny kiss to the finger that covered her lips, and his heart ached at the sweetness of the gesture.
“I promised you wine,” he said softly.
“Well, we’ve done kissing and dancing already.” Her voice sounded a little unsteady.
“Oh, we’re not finished with those things.” He kissed the tip of her nose – such a silly thing to do, but at that moment it felt exactly right – and stepped away from her for practically the first time since she’d come through the door. “Is Pinot Noir all right?” he asked. “I thought I’d just grill steaks for dinner.”
“Do men know how to cook anything else?”
“And just how many things do
you know how to cook?” he asked, reaching for the wine.
“Touché.” She giggled. “And the Pinot Noir sounds wonderful.”
He rummaged in a drawer for a corkscrew, but it took longer to find it than it should have, mostly because his eyes were on Lois, watching her as she moved restlessly around his small kitchen as if she’d never been there before. She flitted from one thing to another, her hands lighting as quickly and gracefully as butterflies on the things she saw, the bits and pieces of his everyday life. What was she thinking, he wondered, as her fingers ghosted over the smooth enamel of the kettle on his stove or trailed through the fringe of the towel hanging from a drawer? Was she imagining a life there with him? Or was it just Lois being Lois – too full of energy and curiosity to be still?
His fingers finally located the corkscrew, and he turned his attention to the wine, opening the bottle and then reaching for the stemware he’d set out ahead of time. He poured two glasses and then offered her one of them, admiring her natural, unstudied elegance as she lifted the glass and breathed in the bouquet of the wine.
“What should we drink to?” she asked, and the question seemed more charged than it should have been.
But he knew the answer. Knew the one thing he wanted for them above all else. “The future,” he said softly. “
Our future.”
Her lips curved in a smile, and he knew he’d said the right thing. “Our future,” she repeated, as if she were tasting the words, trying them out. They touched their glasses lightly, and his eyes held hers, full of things he couldn’t say, and then the wine was rich and warm on their tongues. It was a simple thing, the two of them standing there in the middle of his kitchen exchanging a toast, yet to Clark, it felt like a sacrament.
“It’s wonderful,” Lois said, and he knew she was talking about the wine, but to him the words meant so much more.
“It will be,” he said, and watching her face, he knew she understood what he was saying, what he was promising her.
She lowered her eyes to her glass, hiding from the intensity of the moment, and then she took another quick sip of her wine. “So... steak, huh?”
He knew she needed to lighten the mood, to step back from the precipice they were hovering on, and he played along. “And salad and bread. With work, I didn’t have time for much else.”
“It sounds great. Is there anything I can help with?”
“Nope. But you can keep me company outside while I grill the steaks.” He handed her his wine and reached into the refrigerator to pull out the steaks, which he’d already seasoned. He’d wanted every moment of this evening to be perfect, had planned each detail as well as he possibly could. It had been nothing like he’d planned or expected so far; it had been better. So many emotions in such a short time, as if they couldn’t wait to experience them all; the evening seemed to be a microcosm of their entire relationship, with laughter and teasing, love and desire, promises and hope. Cooking dinner, which normally was such a mundane, everyday activity, seemed to take on a dreamlike quality as he ushered her through his bedroom and out onto his small balcony.
There wasn’t much to see from his balcony, just the dirty alley and the solid brick wall of the building beside his, which was blank, except for a few scrawls of graffiti. But there was a sliver of sky above them, and it was streaked with pink and orange as the day softened into dusk.
“I didn’t know you had a grill out here,” she said, eyeing the small gas grill he’d lit before she arrived.
“Dad bought it a few months ago. Remember? He was doing all the cooking, and practically all he knows how to do is grill things.”
“Told ya,” she said smugly.
“I said that’s all
he knows how to do. But I’ve been on my own a lot longer than he ever was. I’ve had to learn to cook if I wanted to eat.” He dropped the steaks on the grill and then, when the flames hissed and leaped up to engulf them, he quickly reached to adjust the gas.
“I’ve been on my own, too, but I’ve managed to avoid learning to cook.” She leaned against the railing, watching him.
“Ah, now I get it. You’re just going out with me because you’re tired of microwave dinners.”
“Maybe.” She smiled and took a sip of her wine.
“You weren’t supposed to agree with me,” he scolded her.
Her eyes twinkled at him. “Sorry. Someone forgot to send me the script.”
“Darn! I knew I forgot something!”
“Well, I’m trying to follow along as best I can. But... you’re different tonight.”
“Good different or bad different?”
“Good, I think. Just...unexpected.”
“Well, I’ve always wanted to be a man of mystery,” he teased.
A smile touched her lips but was quickly replaced by a thoughtful look. “You know, once I would have said that you were the least mysterious man I’d ever met. But I have a feeling I was wrong about that.”
He stared at her, groping for the right response. He was probably reading way too much into her words, he assured himself; it was surely just her way of telling him that she found him interesting now, whereas they both knew she’d overlooked him before. She was not trying to tease out confessions.
But he had the same feeling he’d had during his conversation with his mother the previous night – a feeling that if he were going to tell her the truth, any part of it, this was the exact moment he should do it. She’d just provided him with the perfect opening, and all he had to do was to step into it... and fill it with words that had the power to destroy everything that he’d hoped and dreamed of for the last two years.
Their understanding was too new, he thought desperately – too tender and fragile to withstand that kind of storm. Later. When things between them were more certain. When the roots went deeper, were stronger, then he could tell her. When they’d become so secure in their love for one another that living without it was unthinkable. That was when he would tell her. And it would be awful – he didn’t deceive himself about that – but they would get through it, and then there would be no more lies, no more secrets.
He forced a smile. “What you see is what you get, Lois,” he said lightly, and that was true as far as it went. As long as he was with her, he was nothing more or less than Clark Kent, investigative reporter for the
Daily Planet and lover of Lois Lane. And in little more than a day now, that’s all he would ever be. “Need some more wine?”
“No, thanks,” she said, glancing down at her glass, which was still half-full. “I’m fine.”
And then he turned back to the steaks, poking at them unnecessarily, afraid of what his face might give away. She was so smart, and her attention was on him fully for the first time since he’d known her. Dread settled in the pit of his stomach like a stone.
It’s easier to get forgiveness than permission, his dad had said to him more than once. Usually the words were accompanied by a wink and a smile, and the infraction was no more serious than snitching a slice of his mother’s freshly-made pie. But Clark felt the truth of those words and had seen them in action more than once. Lois might forgive him for exiling Superman if presented with a
fait accompli, but she would never, ever give him permission. Nor should she have to, he thought, stabbing at the steaks again. Superman was his burden, either to carry or not, as he chose.
“Clark? Are you all right?”
At the soft, inquiring sound of her voice, Clark realized that his shoulders were rigid with tension. He forced himself to relax, to answer her normally. “I’m fine,” he said, flashing her a smile. “You like your steak medium, right?”
“Right.”
He turned the steaks and then extended one arm, inviting her to join him, needing that physical connection between them. She came to him willingly, slipping one arm around his waist as he pulled her close to his side.
“It’s a beautiful night,” she said, sighing contentedly as she rested her head on his shoulder. “I love spring.”
“Me, too. But if you like this, you should come home with me in the next month or so - see spring on the farm.”
“Is there a festival?” she asked suspiciously. “Am I going to have to worship the seeds or the dirt or dance around your father’s John Deere tractor?”
He laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t mind seeing that last, but no, there are no festivals in the spring. The farmers are too busy with spring planting.”
“Okay, then, I’ll go. I love your folks.”
“They love you, too,” he assured her, remembering his conversation with his mother. His parents had already accepted Lois into their hearts and family. He knew that without question.
“Is that where you would have gone?” she asked softly, looking up and searching his face. “If you’d left here, would you have gone back to Kansas?”
“No. I guess I might have for a little while, while I decided what I was going to do next, but, no. I doubt I’ll ever live in Kansas again. Why?”
“I don’t know. I was just curious.”
Something about the way she said it made him touch her cheek in a gentle gesture of reassurance. “Are you sure that’s all?”
“It scared me, seeing all those boxes,” she admitted, gesturing toward the inside of his apartment. “Realizing that you could just pick up and leave like that. What if we have a fight? Are you just going to disappear in the middle of the night?”
“No!” he exclaimed. “God, no. But Lois, I thought you were in love with Scardino....”
“But why?” she asked. “I only went out with Dan a couple of times. Why would you think that?”
You told me you were in love with someone else! He nearly said the words, nearly made that potentially fatal mistake, and then he caught them just in time. Because she hadn’t told
him she was in love with someone else; she’d told Superman, and he’d been so crazy with jealousy that he’d forgotten that, to her, Superman and Clark Kent weren’t one and the same.
“I was just jealous,” he said, “of all the time you’d been spending with Scardino. I guess it made me a little crazy.”
“Crazy enough to leave without saying goodbye?” She looked at him, and for a moment, she let him see her vulnerability. It was as if he could see her entire history behind her beautiful, wounded eyes: A little girl, too young to understand, left by her father to be raised by an alcoholic mother. A college student left for her roommate by her boyfriend. A young reporter left by her lover, and all so he could steal her story. No wonder Clark's disappearances had made her doubt him. No wonder the sight of those boxes had terrified her.
“Lois...” He folded her into his arms, felt her shudder a little against his shirtfront. “I promised you yesterday that I would never run away from you again. I swear to you, I will keep that promise. I’m here. I’m yours. I’m not going anywhere. And I’m going to prove that to you every day for as long as you let me.”
“You’d better.” She tried to sound threatening, but he heard the plea through her attempt at bravado.
“I will.” He hugged her close. “You know what, I think these are almost done. Are you hungry?”
“Starving,” she said. She drew away from him and picked up her wineglass, empty now. “And I think this must be going to my head.”
He waggled his eyebrows at her. “All part of my master plan,” he told her, relieved at the sound of her giggle. “Now let’s go eat.”
___________________________________
They ate by candlelight and talked of normal, everyday things during dinner, avoiding by unspoken mutual agreement the more charged, emotional subjects that lay between them. They laughed together as they remembered Perry’s reaction to their kissing in the newsroom, and Clark told her a little about the features he’d been assigned. It wasn’t quite the dinner of his fantasies, but it was even more satisfying, in a way, because he could imagine them sharing a lifetime of dinners like this, filled with laughter and quiet conversation. This was what his parents had, he realized, and what he’d wanted his entire life: a relationship built on a solid foundation of friendship. Suddenly, the two years he’d spent waiting for her seemed well spent. It had been frustrating and downright painful at times, but it had led to this wonderful, comfortable rapport between them.
The thing he’d most dreaded didn’t happen until dessert, until they were eating the brownies his mom had left for him.
“Oh my gosh,” she said, her mouth full of chocolate and her eyes closed with utter delight. “I adore your mother. I want you to tell her that, too. Don’t just say, ‘Lois liked the brownies,’ ‘cause that’s not even
close to what I’m saying here. Tell her I
adore her. Tell her I think they ought to make a statue of her holding a pan of brownies and put it right in the middle of Centennial Park.” She grinned at him, and two of her teeth were black with chocolate. He was about to tease her about it when he heard the sound of sirens – lots of them - screaming toward the South side of town. He tensed, his hands tightening on the edge of the table, instinctively pushing him away from her and toward the sound of the sirens.
She didn’t miss it, and he saw the bright smile fade from her face as she braced herself for another hasty departure, another stupid excuse. He was already extending his hearing, automatically searching for a nearby radio or television that would tell him what kind of crisis he’d be dealing with, when he saw her face and remembered his promise.
“I’m going to get another brownie,” he said, taking care to speak softly, even though his ears were ringing with the sound of the sirens. “Want one?”
She relaxed, then, but gave him a slightly quizzical look. “No, I’d better not,” she said. “I’ll have to spend an extra half-hour at the gym tomorrow as it is.”
He stepped toward the counter and pulled open the tin. He reached into the little zipper bag and tried to think about the brownie, about the fact that his mom had used walnuts when he really preferred pecans. He wondered where she’d found the tin, which was a Christmas one he couldn’t remember seeing before with reindeer and lollipops on the cover, though what reindeer had to do with lollipops he couldn’t imagine. But nuts and reindeer and lollipops weren’t doing it; the sirens were still piercing in his head, and he felt as though his nerves were being plucked like harp strings.
“Clark?” Lois said, and he could hear the concern in her voice. He reminded himself that she was the reason he was doing this, that she deserved to eat her dessert without being abandoned by her date. He reminded himself of the way her eyes had looked on his balcony, of all the men who had run away from her.
“I changed my mind,” he said, closing the tin and crossing over to her, sweeping her into his arms like a bridegroom about to cross the threshold. “I’m hungry for something else.” He pressed his mouth to hers, swallowing her surprised giggles and training his sensitive hearing on the sound of her heartbeat accelerating as their kiss grew more passionate. She tasted of wine and chocolate, and the sound of the sirens began to fade away as he stood in the middle of his kitchen, holding her in his arms and losing himself in her kiss.
“Wow…” she whispered, when he turned his attention to the graceful column of her neck, to the spot where her pulse fluttered beneath his lips. He heard her breath catch and smiled against her soft skin. He looked up just long enough to chart the path to the sofa and then strode purposefully in that direction.
“Where are we going?” she asked, sounding a little dazed.
“More comfortable here.” He sat on the sofa with Lois still cradled in his arms and let out a hiss of breath when she shifted so that she was straddling him, pressing against him in all sorts of interesting places. “Lois...” he whispered. Desire shot through him, and at that moment she was all he knew, all that existed. And then she was kissing him, her mouth hungry for his, and he let himself get lost in the taste and feel of her, soft and warm and willing in his arms.
Somewhere across town, the sirens still screamed, but Clark Kent no longer heard them.
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Acknowledgments: Thanks again to Sara for the beta on this part! 
And thanks so much to those of you who have commented and let me know that you're reading. 
