Thanks as always to Alisha and now, thanks as well, to Beth for her very quick turn around on this. Alisha had promised me the logic worked, but having it confirmed helped
. Of course, Lois isn't actually being logical given what's happened to her earlier in the evening, but given her illogical, irrational state...
Note: One line from the last chapter has been changed slightly - Clark's words when he first broke down the door. They were supposed to be as remembered below and have been changed in the Ch. 16 post, but apparently I changed them at some point and didn't change them back. Somehow I don't think anyone would have noticed but...
Here, Lois and Clark begin to deal with the aftermath of 'the night that changed everything'.
~~~~~ Indicates a flashback
*****
Chapter 17
*****
Clark paced the living room. When that quickly became too confining, he started pacing the walls and the ceiling too.
"Clark, what happened?" Lucy asked. Her brother-in-law had landed on the balcony – meaning he'd been flying, something he rarely did for fear of detection - and carried her sister in to their apartment. As soon as he'd set her down, Lois had practically flown into the bathroom and the water started almost immediately. And Lucy had never seen Clark this agitated.
"That son of a..." Clark couldn't finish the sentence.
"Who?"
"Professor Paul."
"The newspaper guy?" Lucy asked, puzzled. "What'd he do?"
"He almost raped her. If I had been two minutes later..." Clark's fists clenched into balls. "As it was, she was basically naked when I got there. The first time..." He stopped, aware of what he'd almost said. "The first time I really wanted to see how strong I am," he amended.
"What?" Lucy gasped. "Professor Paul? Lois always speaks so highly of him."
"Not anymore." He stopped mid stride on the ceiling. "Listen, she's going to be in there a while, I'm sure. I'm going to fly west and get her a nice big, fluffy towel and some new pajamas and... stuff. I'm sure something new will be better than something old. I'll be back in a few minutes."
"Okay."
Clark strode purposefully towards the door to the balcony, and upon exiting through it, took off faster than the eye could see. He landed behind a Target store in Wichita. He'd been there before when he attended Midwest University and it was already dark in that part of the country so there was less chance he'd be seen flying in and out.
He found a large towel in her favorite deep purple – he was sure it was large enough to wrap around her twice. He hurried over to the women's lingerie department – if he'd had time to think about it he probably would have been embarrassed, but he didn't have the luxury of that kind of time. He quickly found some pajamas he knew she'd like – most of her others, as well as most of her undergarments, were well worn. There hadn't been much in the way of a clothing budget the last couple of years. He hated it, but that's the way it was. Layers. She'd want layers to protect and insulate herself. From the world in general and probably him specifically, though he posed no threat to her. He knew from a story he'd helped research on sexual abuse that women who were victims – no, not victims; survivors. Women who were survivors often felt threatened by other men in their lives, even when there was nothing but love and support from that corner.
He sighed and found some other things that looked nice, but not sexy – at least not overtly sexy, though he though she looked sexy in just about anything – and headed to check out. He sighed as he opened his wallet. This would take almost every penny of his spending money for the last few months but it would be more than worth it if it helped Lois feel even a little bit better. He'd been trying to save even more, because with graduation coming up, so was that first date, but this was more important.
Because of his ability to look through things and pick out what he needed rapidly, he was out of the store in just under five minutes and on his way back to Metropolis.
By the time he landed on the balcony, he knew the water in Lois' shower had to be getting cold. Maybe she'd let him heat it for her.
*****
Lois stood in the shower, the scalding hot water cascading over body, tears flowing down her cheeks. One arm braced against the wall, supporting her weight.
Far too soon, the water began to cool and she mentally cursed their small water heater. It wasn't nearly long enough to get the dirty feeling off of her.
There was a soft knock at the door. "Lois, I'm opening the door." Lucy stuck her head in the bathroom. "Listen, Lois, Clark doesn't want to intrude at all, but we know the hot water's going to run out soon. He offered to come in and keep heating it for you – as long as you want."
"Okay," Lois managed to squeak out.
She heard soft voices and movement and then the sound of the door closing again. She was grateful yet again that they'd put a shower curtain up over the doors. If there wasn't, there was no way she would have let him in.
She started as she noticed his hands on the curtain rod. He wasn't going to take it down was he? No, he just lowered it a bit so he could see the shower head better.
"Lois, honey, I'm gonna start heating the water back up, okay? I'm gonna go slow so you don't get burnt. Tell me when it's where you want it."
Lois felt the water begin to warm up again. "Right there," was all she managed when the water was as hot as she could stand it.
She stood there for what seemed like forever, letting the water stream over her. The first thing she'd done when she got in the shower was scrub herself down with the loofah and now she did so again. She scrubbed for another seemingly indeterminable amount of time before she heard Clark speak again.
"Honey, I meant it when I said I'd stay here as long as you needed me to, but I'm starting to worry about you."
She realized the water wasn't as hot as it had been before. Clark must have stopped heating it quite so much so that her skin wouldn't burn.
She reached out and turned the water off. She rested her head against the shower wall and then heard the door shut as Clark left. She grabbed the towel he'd left for her and realized that not only was it new – something they hadn't had in a very long time – but that it was warm. He must have flown somewhere further west where stores were still open and spent some of his meager spending money to buy it and then warmed it just right before he left.
She noticed that one of them had also brought in clothes – new clothes. He must have bought them at the same time. She knew how much money he had in his wallet and this must have just about emptied it and then some unless he'd been saving for a while for something special.
How well he knew her.
They'd passed their three year anniversary mark a few months earlier, but all they'd been able to manage was dinner at a glorified taco stand. Well, maybe a bit nicer than that, but their entire bill had come to under $20 and Jimmy and Lucy had splurged on that as a gift. Perry had offered to send them to the Daily Planet's New Year's Eve Ball a few days before, but Clark was covering a shindig for the Star and Lois the big New Year's bash on campus. Even though most of the students didn't stay on campus over the break, some did and many of the local students came to the bash and she'd been assigned to cover it. They'd been assigned the same stories two – or was it three – years in a row. Looking back, she wondered if Professor Smith had something to do with it and if the editor in charge of such things at the Star had been in collusion with him.
She sank to the floor still wrapped in the large towel. She stared at the clothes left on the hamper. He'd even gotten her a new bra and underwear. She needed them, that was for sure, and these were much nicer than the stuff she usually settled for. Had he picked them out? Had he taken Lucy with him? Surely not. He wouldn't have wanted to leave her here by herself, right? So he'd picked out a new matching pair of undergarments. Had he gotten the sizes right? Probably. He did most of the laundry and folded and put it away. Early on, he'd offered to do most household chores and since he could clean the apartment from top to bottom – and well enough to make the toughest drill sergeant proud – in literally 30 seconds, she hadn't argued.
He'd never mentioned that she'd lost weight in the last two years. Had he even noticed? She was slender to start with, but once she knew about him and Mayson, she'd dropped two more sizes before she'd stabilized again. She often thought she was too thin these days, but didn't care enough to try to do anything about it.
She pulled the clothes off the hamper and, once they'd fallen on the floor, she picked up the bra. Like the towel, it was a deep purple – her favorite. And soft satin. Nothing fancy – no lace to scratch, no underwires to poke or push-ups to worry about. But new and nice. The underwear was the same. The same cut she normally bought, but in the same purple satin.
Clark had seen her.
It hit her like a bolt of lightning. When he stormed into the room and rescued her from Paul, she'd been practically naked. And he'd put her clothes back on – even reclasping her bra, she remembered. He'd pulled up her underwear and her pants and buttoned and zipped them and refastened her belt.
And then he bought her nice, new underwear.
Was he just trying to do something nice for her or was he expecting to see her in it? Now that he'd seen her body and rescued her, surely he'd want to claim what was rightfully his anyway, wouldn’t he?
Unbidden, the words her mother had spoken in a drunken stupor one night came back to her.
"When you marry a man, Lois," she'd slurred, "he believes that gives him exclusive, unlimited rights to your body. Of course, he believes he can share his with whomever he wants, but you... you belong to him."At the time she'd written it off to the alcohol, but another conversation she'd overheard came rushing back.
~~~~~
"What the hell did you think you were doing, Ellen?" Sam Lane was speaking in quiet but insistent tones.
"I was talking to that nice Mr. Girabaldi who lives across the street. They just moved in and have a daughter Lucy's age." She was half-drunk, even then.
"You were flirting with him!"
"So what if I was?"
"So you're my wife."
"You're my husband. That never stopped you from flirting or flinging or f..."
"Don't even say it, Ellen."
"How many affairs has it been over the years, Sam? My God, did you think I didn't know?"
"That's different."
"How? How is it different? You can sleep with whoever you want, but the minute I said 'I do' I ceased to exist as my own person and live only for your pleasure?"
"That's not the case, Ellen and you know it. But no, I don't like the thought of you with another man. Your *my* wife, not his. And the father of one of our daughter's friends and right in front of Lois, too. What were you thinking? Or were you already drunk?" he hissed.
"She had no idea what was going on and it wasn't really flirting anyway. We were just talking about the neighborhood barbeque."
"Sure, Ellen."
"So it goes back to you're a man and I’m not and so there's double standards?"
"It's not double standards; it's the way it is. When you married me, you promised your fidelity."
"And you didn't?"
"No. We still have the paper with the vows written on them somewhere, Ellen, and mine said nothing about fidelity. You promised never to share your body with anyone but me, but I never said the same so don't even think about claiming I've broken my vows to you. I promised to take care of you and make sure you never wanted for anything financially – and I've done that."
"How very romantic of you, Sam."
"That doesn't change the fact that your fidelity, your body, belongs to me and me alone."
"And you can sleep with whoever you want?"~~~~~
Lois remembered running to her room, not wanting to hear her father's answer. She'd left the next morning for Journalism Camp and by the time she came home, her father was gone. After she had returned, she'd found her parents' wedding album in the back of her mother's closet and in there was the sheet of paper that held their wedding vows. She'd read them carefully and, there in yellowing black and white was proof of what her father had said. Her mother had promised to be faithful, but her father never had.
Lois huddled underneath the towel, water dripping from her hair onto her bare back, staring at the clothes, trying desperately to remember what vows she and Clark had taken. The whole day was a blur to her – until she was sitting on the bed with Aunt Louise and then every moment was seared into her mind: the nightgown Aunt Louise had given her to wear for Clark; Clark carrying her over the threshold; Clark staring at her when she came out of the bathroom in a robe; Clark being disappointed when she was wearing flannel pajamas; Clark calling her 'Mrs. Kent', staking his claim on her; Clark kissing her in her sleep even though she'd told him she wasn't ready for that, eventually his hand on her back trying to take her shirt off; holding her next to him in bed, telling her how well they fit together and her knowing she couldn't get away from him if she tried. Why, oh why, had she thought that felt safe and reassuring at the time?
What had Clark promised her in that chapel? To take care of her? To love her? To cherish her? To be faithful to her? She honestly had no idea, but her father's vows had seemed fairly standard when she read them, and there had been no mention of fidelity in them at all.
And now...
Now, Clark thought she'd been throwing herself at Professor Smith.
"Get your hands off *my* *wife*."*His* wife. Staking *his* claim. *His* territory. *His* body.
Her body was *his*.
Not 'Get your hands off her'.
'Get your hands off *my* wife.'
Not 'Let her go.'
'Get your hands of my *wife*.'
Not 'Get your hands off Lois.'
'Get your hands off *my* *wife*,' with the implications that went with that. The unspoken meaning was ringing in Lois' head: 'Get your hands off my wife because her body is mine, not yours, not anyone else's, not even her own. It's mine.'
He was right, of course. Her body was his and his alone. In a perfect world, *his* body would belong only to her, but this world was far from perfect and he was free to share with whoever he wanted. Had there been anyone besides Mayson? A late night fling or two at one of the papers? A waitress at the pizza restaurant? For all she knew, he flew to Albuquerque once a week to be with another pen pal he'd met at another camp when he was 13. Maybe he'd kissed her on a rock too.
She began to pick through the clothes. Under other circumstances, she probably would have loved them. Besides the bra and panties, there was a pair of soft, cotton pajama pants and a matching long sleeve shirt. There was a tank top and a T-shirt and a robe.
A long, thick terrycloth robe.
Just like the one from the hotel but without the Lexor symbol on it.
She hadn't been wearing anything under it that night because her suitcase had still been in the car when she'd climbed in the tub.
Was that what he was expecting tonight?
To finally stake his claim so that she would never look at another man?
Not that she'd ever looked at another man in the first place, but how would he know that when Professor Smith had intimated this wasn't the first time?
"Didn't you know she likes it rough, Kent?"How would he know how Lois 'liked it' unless they'd been together before?
Clark would want her tonight. Now that he knew she'd already been with someone else, there would be no reason for him to believe the excuses for them not being together still applied. It was okay for her to say that she wasn't ready for that when she hadn't slept with anyone else, but if she had there was nothing to keep him from her. Would Clark want it like Professor Smith had suggested? Was that why he'd never even tried to kiss her, much less sleep with her? Because he liked things a certain way and didn't think she'd go for it so he just went somewhere else? And now that he knew what he thought to be the truth...
Maybe – hopefully – he'd at least wait until Lucy was asleep or fly them somewhere so there was no chance of Lucy waking up catching them.
*****
Lois put on everything Clark had left in there for her, including the thick new socks, but left off the robe. She sat back down on the floor and pulled it around her as an extra layer of protection. She heard Lucy say something to Clark and heard the creak of the stairs and footsteps above her head.
There was a light rap on the door. "Lois?"
Time to face the music. She stood and wrapped the robe around her, cinching it tight. She opened the door.
Clark was standing there, just as she knew he would be. Maybe she could be preemptive. That was it. That was the only solution she'd come up with. If she could somehow get the upper hand, maybe it wouldn't hurt so badly.
"Clark, if we're going to do this, can we please go somewhere else?" she asked quietly.
"Um, sure, Lois. Whatever you're most comfortable with." He stepped back and she brushed by him and headed straight for the balcony door. "Where do you want to go?"
She shrugged.
"Do you want to go to Colorado?"
"That's fine."
Of course that's where he would want to go – the last place he was truly happy. The next thing she knew, she was in his arms high over Metropolis.
*****
Clark's lips were set in a tight line. He and Lucy had waited for Lois to come out of the bathroom for a long time. He'd tuned in with his hearing a time or two, and while her heart was still pounding, he couldn't hear any tears. Lucy had been up extra early that morning for a school meeting and had an all night Relay For Life walk the next night and needed to go to bed. She told Clark to wake her if she was needed.
Just as he'd figured, when she finally opened the door, she was wearing everything he'd bought. She'd surprised him when she said she wanted to go somewhere. He had no idea what 'this' was – talking about what happened that night, he guessed – but they'd always been close in Colorado. They'd been able to talk and connect there. It made sense that she would be comfortable there. And it was a wide open space; surely that would be good – she wouldn't feel closed in.
Clark set her down in the middle of the field and stepped back. He didn't want to push any of her new boundaries, but he had no idea what they were.
*****
Lois stood there, with her eyes closed, and wrapped her arms around herself. She could hear Clark digging up his ship, getting the blanket out and spreading it behind her. This was it. The night she'd dreaded for years. She'd managed to get away from a rapist, but tonight she'd give herself to her husband.
Give herself.
Before he could take her.
Surely that was the lesser of two evils.
She opened her eyes and saw him sitting on one side of the blanket, but not looking at her.
She sighed. She was going to have to steel herself for this. It was going to take everything she had not to quiver like a bowl of Jello. It had to be her. She couldn't let him hurt her; not this time.
The first thing she had to do was get rid of some of the clothes. She closed her eyes tightly and swiftly untied the belt at her waist and took off the robe and tossed it on the ground. The long sleeve pajama shirt quickly followed.
And then the fear gripped her again.
"It's a warm night out here. If I'd known we were coming here, I would have gotten something that wasn't quite so warm."
Of course he would. Less to take off. And it really wasn't that warm, especially not with her still damp hair. It was Colorado, in the mountains in April. She was surprised there wasn't snow patches on the ground.
"No," she heard herself say. "Not too warm, just too bulky to be comfortable. Could you build us a fire?"
"Sure."
He sounded surprised, but he complied.
While he was 'whooshing' to get the fire started, she yanked the T-shirt off.
In seconds a fire was blazing away and he stood in front of her.
She thought she could see questions in his eyes, but surely that couldn't be right. It was probably desire. She'd seen desire in his eyes a time or two – like when they got dressed up the night after their wedding and for prom. And when she'd come out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a robe on their wedding night. And other times since then when she thought she looked especially nice.
That must be what she was seeing, because this was what he wanted, right?
"Lois?"
"Hmm?" She looked at him, but couldn’t manage to look him straight in the eyes.
"Let me dry your hair and warm you up a bit?"
She hesitated, then nodded and turned her back to him for an instant, feeling the warm glow starting at her feet and working its way up until she heard her hair sizzle just a bit.
"Better?"
She nodded again.
"Do you want to talk?"
"No."
"No?"
"No and I didn't think you wanted to either."
"Whatever you want. Whatever you need, Lois."
That was her opening. She borrowed a phrase from Shakespeare and screwed her courage to the sticking post and took two steps until she was directly in front of him.
"I want you."
"What?"
"You, Clark. I want you." She rested one hand on his chest and let it slide down towards his stomach. "I thought you wanted me, too."
He just looked at her as though she was speaking his native Kryptonian.
She would have to take the initiative – make the first move – before he came to his senses.
She reached up behind his neck and pulled his face towards hers until it was so close she could feel his breath.
She squeezed her eyes as tightly shut as she could and then she kissed him.
*****
TBC
