Sorry about the delay
. Felt like blech yesterday and forgot all about posting. Still feel like blech but...
Here we go
.
Thanks - as always - to my wonderful betas!
*****
Chapter 13
*****
November 1989
*****
Lucy rolled over to look at Jimmy.
"What did the doctor say?" he asked sympathetically as he sat down on the edge of the bed.
"Bronchitis," she said hoarsely. "She gave me some medicine and said I should be feeling better in a couple days." Coughs wracked her body momentarily. She sipped from the glass of water Jimmy handed her. "She also gave me some really strong cough suppressants that should kick in here pretty quick."
He brushed the hair back off her face. "Maybe you'll be able to get some sleep tonight."
She smiled weakly. "You mean, maybe *you'll* be able to get some sleep tonight. I'm sorry I've been keeping you up."
"Hey, I'm just glad you're going to be feeling better soon."
"You're just mad because I haven't been up to having sex with you."
"Well, that too, but I hate seeing you not feeling well and the Christmas Kick-off party at the Shelter is in three days and I know you don't want to miss that. You're already going to be miserable for Thanksgiving." He kissed her forehead. "Get some sleep. I'll be in in a little bit."
She nodded and closed her eyes, pulling the blankets closer around her.
*****
"I can't believe she's still here," Lucy said as she held Danielle.
"I know," Santa said. "But for some reason, we're having a hard time getting her and Joel placed."
"Well, Perry said we could do another story. He said he got some good feedback on the one we did last summer," Lucy told him. She was glad she wasn't going to have to miss party. She wasn't feeling like herself, but her doctor had assured her that she wasn't contagious and that the kids would be safe from her germs if she went to the party.
Santa nodded. "We got a few donations from it, too."
"Can we use a picture of Danielle?" Jimmy asked.
Santa hesitated. "You can take some, but let me double check before you use them."
Jimmy nodded. "We can do that."
He snapped a couple of pictures a little while later as Lucy sat on the floor with the baby, 'helping' her open one of her Christmas presents.
They wrote the story the next day and Perry started it on the front page of one of the local sections, finishing it on one of the inside pages with a picture by each of them, including one of Lucy with Danielle and Joel.
*****
Lucy sighed. She'd been back at work for two days and was nearly back to normal. If only the exhaustion would go away so she wasn't practically dead on her feet by the time she got home from work or school.
She opened another drawer. Where were all her pens? She'd had several before lunch. She'd only been back a few minutes; where could they all have gone?
She leaned over to Jimmy's desk, but didn't find any there either.
And where had he run off to?
They'd eaten lunch together and then she'd visited the ladies' room but he was nowhere to be found. The door to Perry's office was closed. Maybe he was in there.
She sighed again and headed to the supply closet to get another box of pens.
She was caught only slightly off-guard when she felt arms grab her around the waist as soon as the door shut.
"Took you long enough," her husband growled in her ear.
"I was wondering where you were," she said, her head falling to one side allowing him greater access to her neck. "Do you know what happened to all my pens?"
"Not a clue."
"I don't believe you." She leaned back into him as one arm continued to hold her against him and the other hand slipped under her shirt to briefly caress her stomach before moving up to other – more interesting – places.
"Do you have any idea how much I've missed you?"
"I think so."
"It's been eight days," he murmured into her neck. "Four hours, six minutes and two seconds since we made love."
"You keep track like that?"
"No, but it's pretty close. Before work, eight days ago. Then you got too sick."
She turned in his arms, kissing him fiercely as he pushed her up against the door. "I'll make it up to you tonight. I promise," she whispered between kisses.
"Are we both off at four-thirty today?"
"I am."
"Good." He lost himself in the kiss for another minute. "Have I mentioned how glad I am you rarely wear shirts that tuck in anymore?" he managed to get out.
"Did you ever wonder why that was?"
"Not really. I don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
She kissed him again, hard, before pulling back. "We've got to get back to work."
"I know." He leaned his forehead against hers. "What did you come in here for again?"
"To make out with my husband?"
"Besides that."
"Pens. I need pens."
He straightened her shirt and she ran her fingers through his hair first and then her own before kissing him again lightly.
"Why do you think I stopped wearing lipstick to work anyway?" she asked with a wink as she grabbed a box of pens and headed out the door.
*****
December 1989
*****
A week later after their story on the Shelter Christmas party appeared in the paper, Lucy got a phone call that excited her.
"Who was that?" Jimmy asked as Lucy set the phone down.
"Santa," she said with a smile. "They found a foster home for Danielle and Joel upstate in Bremerton. He said they're looking to possibly adopt before long."
A grin split his face. "A home for Christmas. What more could they ask for?"
She nodded. "I'll miss her, but I'm glad she's going somewhere. He said it's a great family that has a boy Joel's age but they're unable to have any more kids so they've been talking about adoption for a while but when they saw the picture of me with the kids in the paper, they knew those were the kids they wanted. They'd already been approved as foster parents so that part was easy."
"That's great."
"They're picking them up this afternoon."
"OLSENS!"
Lucy rolled her eyes. "Duty bellows."
They entered the office to find Perry sitting behind his desk. "I just got a call from Alice. Lois and Clark are already here. What do you two have to finish up?"
They glanced at each other. "I think I’m done, Chief," Jimmy said. "I finished up that stuff that Eduardo wanted and there's nothing else that can't wait until tomorrow."
"Same here. Cat just dropped some stuff off for me, but she doesn't need it anytime soon," Lucy told him.
"Then why don't you two get on out of here and let them know that I'll be along as soon as I can."
They scurried out of the office before he could change his mind.
*****
"Why are you so nervous?" Jimmy asked from his spot on the couch.
"It's the first time they've been over since it became *our* apartment," Lucy told him as she plumped one of the pillows on the chair.
Jimmy grabbed her hand as she walked by, pulling him onto the couch with him. "They won't care if the place is trashed."
She glared at him.
"Okay, they might if it was *trashed*, but it's not and the plumping of one pillow or the slight rearranging of the apples in the bowl on the table isn't going to change the fact that they're going to be happy to see *us* not the apartment."
She sighed and settled in next to him. "I guess."
"Wanna recreate something?" he whispered into her ear, before kissing his way down her neck.
"What's that?" she sighed.
"Making out and hoping Clark didn't catch us."
She looked at the clock. "We don’t have enough time..."
"I didn't say anything about *that*. I said 'making out'."
She turned to look at him. "I guess there's worse things in the world than making out with you for a few minutes before they get here."
"I'm not so sure I'm interested if you're going to be like that," he pouted.
She shifted so she was facing him, one leg across his thighs. She leaned in and when she was millimeters from him, she whispered, "I could always go back to plumping pillows."
"Not a chance," he whispered back, claiming her lips with his own.
They were stretched out on the couch when there was a knock on the door.
Jimmy groaned as he rested his forehead on hers. "Couldn't they have called and said they weren't going to be here for an hour or so."
Lucy laughed as she sat up and handed him his shirt as she picked up hers. "You knew they were going to be here any minute. Why'd you take these off anyway?"
He kissed her quickly. "I like feeling your skin on mine, that's all. And I left your bra on," he pointed out as he pulled his shirt over his head. "You better head to the bathroom for a minute."
She nodded, pulling her sweater over her head as she walked to the bathroom to fix her hair and make-up.
She came back out a minute later to Jimmy grinning and Lois and Clark looking uncomfortable. "What'd I miss?"
Jimmy looked at her. "They were just asking if they were interrupting something because it took too long to answer the door."
Lucy shrugged. "Nothing that we didn't know was going to be interrupted any minute so get that look off your faces." She smiled at them. "Now I need big hugs from both of you."
Lois shook her head slightly. "We're going to have to get used to the two of you being all over each other, aren't we?"
"Only if you want to be around us," Lucy told her grinning as she wrapped her sister in a big hug.
"I may have to reevaluate how much we want to see you," her sister grumbled as she hugged her tight.
Lucy laughed and released her, turning to give Clark a big hug as well, before moving to sit next to Jimmy in their favorite chair. She squeezed his hand lightly as she noticed Clark putting his arm around Lois on the couch. He squeezed back – he'd noticed it, too.
The four chatted for a while, talking about Japan – where Lois and Clark were currently living while exploring parts of the Far East – and school for Lucy and Jimmy as well as their work at the Planet.
Clark glanced at the clock a while later. "We better get back. Perry said he'd be home in about half an hour and Alice said dinner would be ready when he got there so..."
Jimmy squeezed Lucy's hand tightly as he spoke. "We'll leave here in a few minutes. We're taking presents over tonight but we still have a couple more to wrap. We're heading straight over there after work tomorrow and that way we won't have to come back here."
Lucy squeezed back. "I may go ahead and pack our suitcase, too so we don't have to worry about it tomorrow either. We won't be far behind you guys."
Lois rolled her eyes. "Don’t get up. We'll let ourselves out," she said as they headed for the door.
"We'll see you guys in a bit," Clark said as they left.
Lucy turned to look at Jimmy. "What's that all about? The presents are all wrapped and the suitcase is packed and in the car already."
He kissed her. "I know we knew they were going to interrupt our make out session earlier but..."
She kissed him back. "We don't have long."
"That's okay."
*****
"Don't you two ever stop?" Lois whispered as the sisters carried Lucy and Jimmy's bags up the stairs.
"Not if we can help it," Lucy whispered back.
"Don't think we don't know what was going on when we got there and after we left."
"Before you got there, we were making out. That's it and that's all that was going to happen because we knew you were coming," Lucy informed her. "And after you left... we're *married*. We enjoy being together – a lot – and technically we're still honeymooners. You asked if you were going to have to get used to us being all over each other and I told you yes, but I promise we won't go too far in front of you guys. But when we're alone, it's our business and I don't really care if you know if I spent some time this evening making love with my husband. Besides, we're not even late for dinner."
"That's not the point..." Lois started.
"Fine. Next time, instead of making up something about needing to wrap presents or pack our suitcase, I'll just tell you I'm kicking you guys out so I can jump Jimmy. How's that?"
Lois sighed but didn't say anything else as she set a bag of gifts down in the room Jimmy and Lucy would now use together for Christmas Eve at the White's house.
Lucy set their suitcase on the bed. "I'll be down in a few minutes," she told her sister, turning her back to the door. She heard Lois close it as she left. She sank to the bed and swiped at the hot, angry, hurt tears that were coming down her cheeks. Why did she let Lois upset her so much about this?
She heard the door open and shut quietly behind her. "Lois said you might need me," her husband said quietly, moving to sit behind her. She leaned back against him as he wrapped his arms around her. "What is it?"
She shrugged. "She told me she knew what we were doing after they left and I felt like she was acting like we were teenagers sneaking around trying not to get caught. We're married adults. We're not late for dinner – or we weren't before she upset me – so what's the big deal if we spend a few quality minutes alone together?"
Jimmy didn't say anything as he just held her for a few minutes. "Maybe she's jealous or something?"
"Why would Lois be jealous of *me*? She's the one who graduated high school at 17 and college at 20 with a great job travelling the world. She's, literally, a millionaire and her first story for the Daily Planet was this huge investigation that brought down a professor, a university VP, a cop and her former boss at the Star. She's brilliant, successful and married to a fabulous guy who's hotter than just about anyone else on earth, except you, is incredibly nice and cooks and *flies* and loves her more than anything. What on earth do I have that she could be jealous of?"
"Well," he started slowly. "Dunno about the 'hot' part, but you have a husband who loves you and who shows you how much on an almost daily basis. You don't have the baggage that she does because she protected you from so much of what happened in your house growing up. You've had the luxury of teen years like she didn't. You didn't have to grow up nearly as fast as she did. You didn't think your husband was cheating on you for two years. You weren't attacked by one of your professors. You made love with your husband on your wedding night and never looked back. She doesn’t have that with Clark. Not yet."
She sighed as he hugged her a little tighter. "Maybe but does she have to try to make me feel guilty about it? Clark would fly them home in a nanosecond if she told him that she wanted to make love to him. And you are *hot*. So why should I feel bad about kicking them out of *our* apartment so that I can spend a little bit of time with you?"
"You shouldn't. Not unless it really does interfere with plans or something – and then only if it's on a regular basis or makes us miss a plane or something like that, but ten minutes late for dinner once in a blue moon, I wouldn't worry about."
"You know, I hadn't ruled out tomorrow night while we're here, but I hadn't really planned on it either. I know we hadn't talked about it, but now part of me says let's sleep about as much as we did on our wedding night just because she's next door."
He laughed lightly. "I don't know about that, but I wouldn't rule anything out tomorrow night. And once we get home tonight, if you want me to, I'll show you again just how much I love you."
"As soon as we fall inside the door?"
"We'll see, but I want more than that tonight. I want to show you exactly what Lois has to be jealous of."
"Thank you," she said softly. "How do you always know just what I need?"
He kissed her hair. "Because I love you and I know you better than anyone else does, even Lois." He held her for another minute. "You ready to go downstairs? Dinner was just about ready when I came up."
She inclined her head towards the attached bathroom. "Let me go splash some water on my face." She stood up and started towards the other room, when he stood behind her and pulled her to him, cradling her face in one hand. "What?"
He smiled tenderly at her. "I love you, Lucy Olsen. More than anything." He kissed her softly. "And in a couple hours I'll show you just how much. I promise."
"Thank you," she said again kissing him lightly. "I'll hold you to that."
"Get cleaned up and I'll meet you downstairs in a few minutes."
She nodded and headed to the bathroom.
She was quiet for the rest of the night, smiling and chatting a bit with Clark, Perry and Alice, but avoiding Lois who seemed to be avoiding her as well. Jimmy never strayed far from her side as they played a game of Scattergories before they headed home.
Once they got home, Jimmy kept his promise and took his time showing her just how much he loved her. As she rested in his arms, tears slid down her cheeks. "Thank you," she whispered.
"For what?"
"For loving me."
"I don't know how not to love you anymore, Babe. You're the other half of me. And don't ever let anyone make you feel guilty about showing each other how much we do."
*****
January 1990
*****
Lucy rested her head on the wall behind her. New Year's Day and this flu bug was wiping her out. Fortunately, Jimmy didn't seem to have caught it yet.
Finally deciding that she could get up, she went to collapse on the couch. She clicked the TV on and flipped through the channels finally settling on the Today Show when nothing else jumped out at her.
"And next," Bryant Gumbel told her, "Dr. Johnson on why antibiotics and birth control don't mix."
Her eyes widened. Had her doctor mentioned that when she had bronchitis? She'd been so miserable, she didn't remember much of what had been said except 'here's some drugs that will make you feel better'. She watched the next segment with great interest and knew that, if she felt better in a little bit, she'd be making a trip to the drug store.
After she ate a very light lunch, she went into the bathroom to anxiously await the results. She made herself wait a full five minutes before looking at the stick.
Two lines.
She went to sit on their bed staring at it. She'd have to tell Jimmy tonight and then decide when they were going to tell everyone else. And what they were going to do about work and school. She was on overload.
The ringing phone brought her out of it.
"Hello?" she said, a bit shaky.
"Hey, Babe. How're you feeling?"
She sighed. "A bit better."
"Listen, I only have a minute but Perry asked if I could play poker with him tonight. Is that okay?"
"Um..." She paused. "I'd rather not, if that's okay."
She'd never told him she'd rather he didn't do something if they didn't have anything specifically planned. "Okay," he said after a pause.
"I'm sorry, honey. Most days I wouldn't mind, but not tonight. Please," she added quietly.
"It's okay," he said quickly – a bit too quickly Lucy thought. "Really. I'll just tell Perry I can't come and I'll be home a little after five, okay?"
Tears filled Lucy's eyes. He sounded a bit sad or annoyed or something. "Okay. Maybe later this week? Or next?"
"I'll tell him and see you in a bit."
"Okay. I love you."
"Love you, too, Babe." She heard Perry shouting in the background. "I gotta go. Bye." And he hung up.
Lucy flopped back on the bed, tears streaking out of her eyes.
Stupid hormones must be getting to her already.
She knew that once she told him, he'd understand why she hadn't wanted him to go, but until then... He was annoyed with her and that hurt. He should know she wouldn't ask him for no reason at all. It wasn't like they never saw each other or anything like that.
She was asleep on the bed, when he got home.
She knew he was trying to be quiet, but he woke her up nonetheless.
"Hi," she said quietly, leaning against the brick of the archway.
"Hey. You didn't have to get up. I know you're not feeling well. I would have even stayed out of your hair all night."
She shook her head. "I know. It's not that."
He stopped at her serious tone. "What is it?"
She went to sit down on the couch. "I needed to talk to you. That's why I didn't want you to go to Perry's tonight."
He sat next to her, taking her hand in his. "What is, Babe?"
She wiped at her cheeks with her free hand. "I saw something on TV this morning and... It made me think. So I went to the store... and then after lunch..." The tears came faster.
"Hey." He pulled her to him, wrapping his arms around her. "Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."
She sniffled, trying to get herself under control. Finally, she just blurted it out. "I'm pregnant."
He was silent for a minute. "Could you say that again?"
She took a deep, shaky breath. "I'm pregnant. We're having a baby."
"Wow," he said, sinking back a bit further into the couch.
"Tell me about it. This morning, they were talking about antibiotics counteracting birth control. I think my doctor may have said something about it when I went to see her when I had bronchitis but I really don't remember. And then, between Thanksgiving and Christmas..."
"We were busy," he finished for her.
She nodded. "Busiest since our honeymoon, I think. Making up for when I was sick and then the whole Lois thing..."
"Yeah."
"And that's about when I'd have been ovulating so..."
He grinned suddenly. "We'll always have a souvenir of our first Christmas as a married couple."
"Are you okay with this?"
He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Well, it's a lot to take in and I'll freely admit to being caught more than a bit off guard."
"I know you were kind of annoyed that I didn't want you to go play poker and then I was sleeping when you got here... But I didn't want to put this off and I didn't want to wait until after you got home from Perry's because there's no way to know how late you'll be."
"I was a bit annoyed," he admitted. "I didn't see why I needed to sit here while you slept in the other room, but I also knew you wouldn't tell me you wanted me home just because you didn't want me to go out without you. And now that I know why..." He blew out another breath. "Wow."
"Yeah. 'Wow' is about the mildest of some of the stuff I've said today."
"So what does this mean for you? For school? Work?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I think I'll be due in the summer so hopefully I won't miss much school – maybe next fall, but we'll have to see about that. Maybe I can overload this spring to help with that. As for work..." She paused. "I think I'll be okay. It's not like I run around dangling over the jaws of death on a regular basis or anything."
"You have no idea how glad I am that you don't." He wasn't sure when, but at some point, one hand had found its way onto her still-flat stomach. He rubbed it gently. "There's a baby in there," he whispered in awe. "*My* baby. *Our* baby."
"You're okay with this?"
"Well, it's happening whether we're okay or not, so we might as well be okay. We've always said we wanted kids, this is just a bit earlier than planned."
"A bit?"
"Okay, a lot earlier than planned, but it's going to be just fine. We'll figure it out. Lois will give us some of the inheritance money to get some baby stuff – like a crib or whatever else we need. We don't have to buy new. We can send Alice garage sale hunting this spring. You know how much she loves that and you can go with her whenever you can."
"What about your parents?" she asked quietly.
He sighed. "I'll try to call Mom, but I have no idea how to get a hold of my dad except for that address, so I guess I'll send him a card."
"It's a good thing we kept that money then, huh?"
Jimmy laughed. "Yeah, I guess so. What about Perry? How soon do we want to tell him? You probably don't really have the flu," he pointed out.
"Probably not and today was better than yesterday." She sighed. "We probably need to tell them pretty quickly. I mean, I may need to run to the bathroom every once in a while and I need to find a good doctor. I know Alice loves hers so I can get a recommendation from her and hope that she's taking new patients. And we need to figure out how much our insurance will cover and all that so we can start planning for those expenses."
"What about Lois and Clark?"
Lucy glanced at the clock. "It's already tomorrow there. Do you want to call them first? Or do you want to wait until we've been to the doctor or what?"
Jimmy thought for a minute. "I'm not sure about right now. Their flight just got in not too long ago. Why don't we call them before work tomorrow? It'll be tomorrow evening there and they'll have had time to recover a bit. We can tell them, then see if Perry and Alice want to have dinner tomorrow night and tell them."
Lucy moved so that she was facing him head on. "Have I told you today how much I love you?"
He grinned. "Not since I got home."
"I love you. So much it hurts some times." She leaned in and kissed him softly. "And now we're going to have a baby."
His grin got even wider. "We're going to have a baby!"
She nodded. "We are."
He stood up and yelled at the top of his lungs. "*We're* *going* *to* *have* *a* *baby*!!!"
Lucy laughed. "We are."
He grabbed her hand and pulled her up into his arms. "You're going to have my baby." This was quieter.
"I am."
"I love you."
"I love you, too."
He looked concerned suddenly. "Can we still... do the things that got you this way in the first place?"
"That would be what you're the most concerned about," she said with a smile.
He shook his head emphatically. "That's not it at all. I'm most concerned about you, but..."
"But you really don't want to go nine or ten months without being together?"
He grimaced. "Not really."
"We went three and a half years," she reminded him.
"But I didn't know what I was missing then," he whined, before growing serious. "If you can't, you can't, but I'd really rather you could."
"I know. And I don't think it's a problem at all unless there's something wrong but I can't imagine that there is." She kissed him. "And I think a celebration might be in order."
"Are you sure you're feeling well enough for that."
She smiled at him, taking his hand and heading for the other room. "Oh, yeah."
*****
Lucy rolled over to pick the phone up, hoping to get to it before it rang again and woke Jimmy up. It wasn't like she was sleeping anyway.
"Hello?" she said quietly.
"Lucy?" came the voice over the phone line.
"Lois! We were going to call you in the morning to make sure you got in okay."
"Well, I only have a minute. I wanted to let you know our flight got really delayed. There was a medical emergency of some kind – a heart attack, I think – so we landed in Hawaii and then as we were getting ready to take off there some problem with the reverse thrusters or something I think Clark said. Anyway, we sat on the tarmac for ages and they finally got us off and we're getting ready to board the next flight. I know you're not feeling well, but I don't know that we'll be in before you'd have called tomorrow."
"Well, there's a reason I haven't been feeling well," Lucy told her, grateful for the opening.
"What's that?"
Lucy took a deep breath, grateful that Jimmy had woken up enough to put an arm around her for support. "I'm pregnant."
"What?" Lois asked after a second.
"We're having a baby." Lucy held her breath waiting for the reaction.
"Wow. I didn't know you guys were planning on..."
"We weren't," Lucy interjected. "The antibiotics from when I had bronchitis reacted with my birth control. At least that's what we think. I just took a test this afternoon. We haven't told anyone else yet, but I'm going to see if Alice can get me in with her doctor and we'll know more after I see someone."
"Are you happy about this?" Lois asked quietly.
"I am," Lucy answered in the same tone. "We didn't plan this, but we want this baby very much. He or she will never have any reason to believe otherwise, even if it is completely unexpected at this point." Lucy heard Clark telling Lois it was the last boarding call for their flight. "You better go. Let someone know when you get home – even if you just call Perry. I'll talk to you again soon, okay?"
"Okay. Let me know if there's anything we can do or anything."
"Well, we may need some of the money for baby stuff, but other than that... We're fine."
"Good. Love you, Luce. Congratulations. Tell Jimmy, too."
"Love you, too. Tell Clark."
"I will. Gotta run though."
"Bye."
Lucy hung up the phone gently.
"What'd she say?"
Lucy shrugged. "They got delayed and won't be home for a while but their plane was boarding. She just said she didn't know we were planning on getting pregnant and asked if I was happy about it and that's about it. Congratulations. She loves us, gotta go, bye."
"Well, we've had time for it to sink in and she hasn't. I'm sure she'll be more excited for us next time you talk to her. You caught her off guard, just like you did me last night. It took me a few minutes to catch up and she didn't have time," he reminded her with a yawn.
"You're right." She sighed. "I guess I was just hoping for a more immediately excited response."
"Well, you'll have a chance to try it out again tonight on Perry and Alice."
"If they're not busy," she reminded him. "We haven't even asked them yet."
"It's Wednesday. They're never busy on Wednesday." He pulled her closer to him. "You need to get some sleep, Babe. You're sleeping for two now you know."
Lucy laughed. "Maybe I won't be nauseous this morning so I can actually go to work."
"I hope you can. I missed you yesterday."
"I was too sick and then too shocked to miss you too much."
"Well, I *hope* you're going to be with me today. Perry can holler at you for a bit because you know that once he finds out he'll treat you with kid gloves and I'll have to do all the hard work."
"You wouldn't have it any other way."
Jimmy sighed. "No, I wouldn't. Get some sleep."
"Yes, sir." Lucy sighed as she settled in next to him but it would be a while before sleep finally came.
*****
TBC
