Thanks, as always, to Alisha, Beth and Nancy.
Last time:
Lois
He didn't say anything as he shifted to lie next to me and he ran his hand over my abdomen again before he lightly grasped the back of my thigh and turned me towards him.
I pushed him over onto his back and – being mindful of my stomach – began running my hand over his chest as I kissed *my* way down *his* neck, nibbling on his ear before moving towards his shoulder.
"That feels so good, baby," he practically groaned.
I slowed my hands for a minute. He'd never called me 'baby' but he'd called Lana that all the time.
"What?" I finally whispered, my lips still mere millimeters from his skin.
"I said that feels so good, Lana."
I stilled completely and the arm he wrapped around me pulled me closer. "What's the matter, baby?"
I pushed against him with all the strength I could muster. "Get the hell out of my bed."
*~*58*~*
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
"Get the hell out of my bed," she hissed at me.
"What?"
She pushed against me again, this time so hard that I actually had the wind knocked out of me.
She was a bit ungainly as she rolled over and stood up, but that was to be expected.
"What?" I asked again.
"Get out." She grabbed the robe off the chair in the corner and pulled it on.
"Are you sure that's a good idea? I mean, given that Navance is in town and all."
"What the *hell* were you doing?" She flipped on the light and with her arms crossed in front of her she looked as menacing as anyone I'd ever seen.
I gestured towards her. "I *thought* I was kissing my wife."
"No, you weren't."
"Excuse me?" I asked as I stood up on my side of the large, dark wood, four poster, bed.
"You weren’t kissing your *wife*. You were kissing your *girlfriend*," she shouted at me.
I looked her up and down with a raised brow. "I don't have a girlfriend, but if you mean Lana, you sure don't look like her."
"Of course, I don't, but you called me Lana."
I closed my eyes and tried to think. "I did not."
"You did."
"I did not."
"You really think I'd stop whatever that was if you *didn't* call me Lana?" She looked incredulous.
I shrugged.
"Get out," she repeated.
"No." Regardless of what my rationale for starting what she'd stopped, at no point did I think I was with Lana.
Did I?
I couldn't allow myself to delve into that too deeply at the moment.
"You've barely talked to me for months and suddenly, because it's my birthday and I figured I should probably go with the whole quasi-sexy nightgown thing we talked about before we moved on the first night in our new room, you think that I'm suddenly ready for you to jump me? Or was this just supposed to be some sort of 'thank you' for a first edition of your favorite book?"
I sighed. "No. Neither of those."
"So what was it?"
I shrugged. "You looked good?" I couldn't help the question mark in my voice.
"You sound so convincing," she said sardonically. "And since when can't you keep your hands off me?"
"I thought it would be a good thing if I couldn't keep my hands off you," I shot back.
"You've said about fourteen words to me since we left Smallville and you think that, without resolving whatever it is that's bothering you, that's making you avoid me, you can suddenly have sex with me?"
"You haven't said anything to me either," I pointed out.
"You haven't been home."
She had a point, but that wasn't the point. "I told you something I've never told anyone else, and you've never even mentioned it. Do I repulse you that much? Does the fact that I'm an alien really revolt you?" I didn't really think that was the problem, but it made as much sense as anything else because I had no clue what else it could be.
Except for the whole her husband is still in love with his ex-girlfriend thing. But I didn't want to think about that.
She gaped at me. "I *literally* could not care less about whether you were born in Kansas or Katmandu or on Krypton. And you never actually mentioned Krypton, by the way; your mom did. I even understand why you didn't get us out of Latislan when you could have. Of course, if you had, you wouldn't be here now. You'd be planning your wedding to Lana. I'd either be engaged to or married to Joe because he loves me enough to volunteer to raise this baby with no strings attached."
"I didn't attach any strings," I pointed out, my hands on my hips.
She didn't say anything to me for a long minute. "Can you tell me this: the day after what big occasion are we filing for divorce?"
"The day after the baby's fifth birthday or Navance dies, whichever comes first." I didn't see her point.
"Joe wouldn't know the answer to that, because there wouldn’t *be* an answer to that question."
"What's your point? I married you because I needed to protect you and the baby. Just like Chris did. Just like *my* dad did."
Tears started flowing down her cheeks. "Did Chris plan to leave your mom the night they got married?"
"No, of course not."
"At what point is your dad planning on leaving your mom?"
"He's not."
"The title of your paper was 'He Didn't Have To Be' and you talked about the kind of dad Chris was in those few hours and the kind of dad your dad was, never flinching when he found out about your origins. Marrying your mom, loving you no matter what."
"Yeah. So?"
"So at what point does being the kind of dad your dad's always been mean that you leave your child on the day after his fifth birthday?"
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
That's what had been bugging me.
I couldn't have defined it to myself until that very instant.
"What?" he asked, puzzled.
I took a deep breath to calm myself down. Since I'd managed to get myself off the bed, we'd been yelling at each other. "You said you want to be the kind of dad that Chris was and Jonathan is, right?"
"Of course. They both took me in when they didn't have to. They protected me and kept me safe from any prying government eyes. I couldn’t let him get his hands on you or the baby, just like neither one of my dads could let the government get to me."
"And that's commendable," I told him. "But at what point did either one of them put an expiration date on being your father?"
"They didn't. And I didn't. I'll be a father to the baby as long as you'll let me."
I swiped at my cheeks, hating that I couldn't control the tears. "Okay, then. At what point did they put an expiration date on their marriages to your mom?"
"They didn't, but those were completely different circumstances," he pointed out.
"How would you feel if Jonathan had married your mom when you were five and the day after your tenth birthday, he'd moved out? He still saw you on weekends and came to a few football games and then married his high school sweetheart and started a new family with her. And if that didn't hurt enough, because kids always blame themselves anyway and you missed him and it wasn't the same as it had been the first few years, then when you're getting ready to marry Lana, you ask him why it didn't work out between him and your mom so that you know what to avoid, he tells you it was because after you turned ten, the government wouldn't come after you anymore so the marriage was moot? How would that feel?"
He sighed and sat in one of the chairs. "I don't know," he finally said.
"But you're willing to do that to this baby, who will, for all intents and purposes, believe that you're his or her biological father?"
"We'll explain it."
I sat in one of the other chairs. "I'm not telling a five-year-old that his dad is moving out because a bully dictator wanted to kidnap him and take him away for the rest of his life but because some arbitrary deadline set by a psychopath has passed, it's now safe for you to move on with your life as planned before he came along." I pulled a blanket over me even though I really wasn't cold; I simply wasn't comfortable wearing this in front of him.
"Okay, so maybe not right away, but eventually..."
"The damage will be done by then, Clark. All a five-year-old will see is that her Daddy who she loves more than anything has left her and her mom and by the time she's old enough to understand why you did what you did and appreciate you for it, she'll have already spent ten or fifteen years blaming herself or me or you for breaking up her family."
He stared at the fireplace. "I guess I never thought of it that way," he finally said.
"Well, that's how this baby will see it," I told him. "You did a good thing doing what was necessary to save me, but..." My voice trailed off.
He didn't say anything else and neither did I for a long time.
Finally, though, I spoke again.
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
"So what exactly was it that happened over there?"
I was still immersed in thoughts of what hell I was going to put the baby through when I left and whether or not I should talk to Joe and the State Department and try to pull a switcheroo without Navance finding out about it and knowing the whole time that it was a very bad plan.
"What?" I finally asked her.
"What exactly was that and don’t patronize me by saying that I was irresistible or some other nonsense like that."
I shrugged. "It's your birthday, I didn't get you a present, you gave me a late present so..." Those thoughts had gone through my head as part of the rationalization process, but those weren't the real reasons. I couldn’t let Lois know that though.
"So you thought that *you* could get laid since you didn't get me a present?" she asked with a raised brow.
I didn't look at her. "I hoped it might be a bit more than just that." That was the truth. I thought.
She pulled the blanket around her a little tighter. "I meant it when I said the whole alien thing doesn't bother me at all, but what does bother me is that you're wanting to be a dad like your dad was, but you already know the day you're leaving. I get why that is, but it still bothers me. But what bothers me even more is that you'd decide that you'd get some sort of physical release with me while you're still in love with someone else and actually *say* *her* *name* while we're doing whatever it was that we were doing." She stood up and headed for the veranda. Before she went out the door, she turned to look at me. "If you ever try that with me again, it damn well better be because you want to make love to *me* not because you want to imagine what your wedding night would have been like with Lana."
And she left.
My head flopped back onto the chair. I ignored the whole 'kind of dad my dad was' thing because I wasn't sure what to do with it. Instead I moved on to the other conflict of the night. I hadn't gone to bed planning on kissing Lois, much less anything else.
But then she'd been wearing a very nice, very flattering nightgown, lying on my side of the bed. I didn't know if it was a maternity thing or what, but I was sure it was much more low cut than she'd probably hoped for.
And she was lying there and in the back of my head all I could see was Lana and Tim in Chemistry, when they'd been partners and they'd always seemed to get along so well. I'd even been a bit jealous until Lana assured me I had no reason to be.
I'd pushed the thought of the two of them to the back of my mind and thought of other rationalizations for what I suddenly wanted to do.
It *was* Lois' birthday.
And I hadn't gotten her anything.
And she had given me a very nice, if late, birthday present.
And I *had* told everyone that her present was upstairs – then I wouldn't have to feel guilty about lying.
And we *were* spending the first night in our new room.
In our new bed.
Surely we should give it some sort of initiation or something.
Everyone else thought we were going to.
I sighed as I glanced through the door to see Lois huddled under a blanket on the veranda. I could hear her tears without half trying.
Had I really called her Lana? I thought back over the few minutes that we'd kissed and started touching each other and I couldn't really remember what either one of us had said, but I couldn’t imagine Lois stopping what she seemed to be enjoying very much if I hadn't.
I sighed and stood up, heading out the door. I lowered myself into a chair near Lois.
"Lana's having sex," I said without preamble after I sat there for a few minutes.
"So?"
"The email she sent me in Smallville said that she and an old friend of ours had gotten together."
"I repeat. So?" She didn't look at me.
"She said that she hadn't believed me when I said we weren't having sex, that I wasn't planning on making love with you while we were married, but I never told her how long or why. And when she and I had that fight in Illinois, I insinuated that not only had we had sex the first night, but that we had at least two other times, too. She decided that if I didn't think she was worth waiting for, then I wasn't worth waiting for either."
"Your point?" She sounded cold, almost heartless.
"She actually thought that I would sleep with both of you regularly. That I was having sex with you as much as I wanted and that I wanted to have sex with her, too. She said that she doesn't care anymore."
She sighed. "I really don't care what your ex-girlfriend thinks about our sex life, but none of that gives you *any* justification for using me as a stand-in for her."
"I wasn't." Was I? "I don't think I was. I don't remember saying her name at all. I wasn't thinking it." Not technically anyway.
"You want to get back at her, find another way. Don't use me."
Use her? Was I using her?
She stood up and headed towards the door. "You want to get back at Lana, insinuate to her all you want, but don't touch me. You want to scratch an itch and that's it? Take a cold shower or fly to the North Atlantic and swim laps with the whales or whatever the Kryptonian version of a cold shower is. You want to make love to me someday? To *me* because your feelings have changed, that's a possibility, but don't ever try to use me as a substitute for your ex-girlfriend again. If you think you can keep your hands to yourself, you can come back in. If not, find another place to sleep."
She went inside and I heard her climb back in bed.
Had I been using her to replace Lana?
I sighed. It was possible.
Was that the only thing I was doing?
I didn't think so.
Did I just want to satisfy some urge?
Maybe.
Did I want to make love to Lois because my feelings for her had changed?
Part of me was sad that the immediate answer was 'no, definitely not'.
I knew keeping my hands to myself wouldn't be a problem, so, after staring at the stars for a long while, I went and climbed back into the new bed.
Suddenly, I was even more glad that we could pretend we weren't sleeping in the same bed in this thing.
I had no desire to accidentally touch her in the middle of the night and, if the extra pillow separating the two sides of the bed was any indication, I was sure she had no desire to be that close to me either.
*****
TBC
