Someone in the last FDK said something about Clark's comment below insulting Friends or something like that... Ross had been in love with Rachel since he met her in early high school, 10 years by that point. There was nothing inherently wrong with Julie - she was a lovely person, but she wasn't Rachel. That's what Clark means here - there's nothing 'wrong' with Lois, but she's not Lana and he hasn't made a conscious decision yet - or come to the realization, or whatever - that 'not Lana' doesn't matter anymore. Or something...
Last time:
Clark
"I love you," Lois said quietly. "I know everything she didn't and I still love you, but that's not enough and I understand why, but why was it enough then?"
"It wasn't. It was everything. The physical attraction..."
"Which we've proven we have in spades – or we did a year ago anyway before pregnancy and childbirth destroyed what was left of my figure."
I ignored that. She was right, but I ignored it. "Her kindness..."
Lois snorted.
"Around everyone but you," I pointed out. "You two were like oil and water from the moment you met. Her generosity. Her."
"So what is it about me that's lacking? I like to think that I have at least some of each of those qualities."
"You do." I sighed. "You equate just about everything to one of your shows right?"
She shrugged. "Sometimes."
"It's like Friends. When Ross was dating Julie and was making a pro/con list between her and Rachel, what was on Julie's con list?"
"She wasn't Rachel," Lois said quietly. "So that's what makes me inherently unlovable? I'm not Lana?"
I gave a muffled scream. "No. That's not it at all. You're *not* inherently unlovable; you're just not Lana."
*~*116*~*
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
Of course.
I wasn't Lana.
That had always been my biggest fault as far as Clark loving me was concerned.
I wasn't Lana.
I rolled off the bed.
I knew I'd asked him to hold me until I fell asleep, but I decided that I didn't want to be anywhere near him. I headed towards the closet and dug around in one of my drawers until I found a swimsuit.
"Lo-is," I heard Clark call after me.
"What?"
"You wanted the truth, right?"
Yeah. I had wanted the truth, but that didn't mean I liked it.
And that didn't mean I had to stay in bed with the guy who would prefer I was someone else.
I threw my maternity suit to the side and found another one. It wasn't exactly a micro-bikini or anything remotely like that, but as I tugged on first the bottoms and then the tankini top, I knew it had fit better before Nate was born.
"What are you doing?" Clark called from the other room.
"Going for a swim," I told him, as I exited the closet and headed towards the bathroom to grab a towel.
"It's freezing outside."
I glared at him. "We have a lap pool in the basement, remember?"
I turned and headed towards the main door only to find Clark standing in my way.
"What?"
"Don't go like this," he said quietly. "Not tonight. Not with everything..."
"I want to do something where I don't have to think," I told him, arms crossed defiantly in front of me. "Swimming a bunch of mindless laps fits the bill. So unless you have something else in mind to take my mind off my infant son having surgery, get out of my way."
"Is that what you want?" He wasn't looking at me.
"For you to take my mind off of it like you took my mind off Daddy?"
Was that what I wanted? Kind of. I wanted him to want me, to love me, to want to be with me. I wanted him to make love to me, but because he loved me not because it was something to pass the time.
"Yeah," he said quietly.
"No," I told him as I tried to brush by him. "I don't want you to make love to me, have sex with me, consummate like bunnies with me or whatever you want to call it. I don’t want you to make me forget for a while. I want you to let me by," I said as he blocked me again.
"I don't believe you," he said quietly.
I looked at his eyes. I could see in them, for a brief instance, the desire I'd seen nearly a year before. "Are you in love with me?" I didn't give him a chance to answer. "You're not. And I told you before that if you decided you wanted a long term commitment, a relationship with *me*, it could happen again, but not until then. You kissed me like four seconds later and all that went out the window. I know you didn't mean that as some kind of commitment, but it's not going to happen again. Don't expect me to share my body when you're not willing to share your heart."
I shoved my way past him and out the door.
"Don't wait up," I called over my shoulder.
I waited impatiently for the security door to release before practically running down the stairs towards the indoor lap pool. It was too shallow to dive in, so I walked in slowly and started swimming. I didn't know how long I swam, but it was a long time. Up and down the pool, from one end to the other, over and over again.
I finally stopped and climbed out of the pool.
"I don't want to break your heart and I don't want to hurt the boys, but what am I supposed to do?"
I turned to see Clark sitting in one of the chair on the end of the pool.
I pushed my wet hair back. "Leave," I said after a long moment of silence. "Leave now before any of us get hurt any worse than we're already going to. If you leave, I can move on. Christopher and Nate won't spend two and a half years thinking they live in a fifties sitcom. Daddy'll protect me and Christopher – even if he goes with you. And I won't keep you from Nate even if he can't live with you right now because he's nursing and all that."
"I leave and his claim doesn't go away," he said.
"And in another two and a half years, he'll find a way to change the law or something. Hell, I'm surprised he didn't try to claim Nate under some old, obscene law that says since I already had one of his kids I'm his concubine or something and so any other children I bear are his, too. If you don't want to hurt me anymore than necessary, leave now."
I headed back up to our room, took a shower and changed back into my pajamas. I glanced at the bed where he'd been holding me not too long earlier, but he wasn't anywhere to be seen.
A minute later he walked in the door from the veranda as I took my pillow off the bed and headed towards the door.
"Where are you going?"
"My old room," I told him.
"Why?"
"Because I refuse to sleep on a couch after spending the last eight days on a cot that was more uncomfortable than the floor in the cabin and there is no way in hell I'm sleeping in a bed with you tonight."
"I'll go," he said. "You need to be here in case Nate needs you. Or I'll sleep on the couch – whichever."
"Right." The sarcasm oozed out of every word. "Wouldn't want Mommy dearest to know that Clark Jerome Davis Kent is anything less than perfect and that even though we're nearing our three year anniversary, he's not any more in love with his wife than the day he married her. And even if he's not sure he's still in love with his ex, he knows what day he's leaving his family."
"What do you want from me?" he practically yelled, before lowering his voice. "You want me to lie to you and tell you I love you and I want to be with you and make love to you and then one day, years from now, tell you I've been lying the whole time? I leave and you and my son are both in danger. I stay until the danger's over and I hurt all of you. What's the answer?"
"I'll leave," I said quietly, pain shooting through my heart. "We've talked for nearly three years about you leaving, in large part because we didn't think you were Christopher's father. Now that we know almost for sure that you are, there's no reason for you to leave. I'll leave. I'll go. We can make it normal for our kids. You live with Mom and Dad until you're two and a half and then you live with Dad. Or in Nate's case, until you wean. He'll never know any different and Christopher won't remember life with both of us for long. It'll be his new normal and he'll adapt. He's a kid. They adapt easily."
"Is that what you want?"
"Is that what I want?" I gave a short bark of laughter. "Of course that's not what I want. That's not what I *ever* wanted. None of this is what I wanted."
It was only because there was only a few feet separating us that I could hear him.
"Then what do you want? What's the answer?"
I took a couple of steps until I was right in front of him. "What do I want?" My hand rested on his chest. "*This* is what I want."
And I kissed him.
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
She was kissing me and my arms were wrapping around her, kissing her back, my hands finding their way to her shoulders and then my fingers tangled in her hair.
Her lips unexpectedly released mine and she pushed on me.
"That's what I want," she whispered. "But I want you to want it to. Not on some purely physical level, but because you love me, because you want me and you don't. If you think I need to stay in here, then you need to go somewhere else."
She pulled away from me and headed towards the bed.
"I thought you wanted me to hold you tonight because you sleep better when I hold you."
"I changed my mind. If we're not around someone else, there's no reason for you to touch me ever again."
She crawled into the bed and pulled the covers over her.
I didn't even hear tears.
I sighed and headed out to the veranda, still clad only in my pajama pants and a pair of socks. I sat in one of the chairs and stared out over the forest in the distance, one foot propped up on the railing in front of me.
One of the doors opened behind me. "I thought I heard someone out here." It was Mom.
"I couldn’t sleep," I told her.
"More like you were fighting with your wife. I couldn’t hear what you were saying but that part was pretty unmistakable."
I shrugged. "You got me. Lois and I were fighting."
"Are you going to make up with her?"
"She's already in bed and said she didn't want me anywhere near her."
"Do you *really* think she meant that?"
I sighed and ran a hand – the one with that damn band on it – through my hair. "Yeah, she meant it."
"You know," Mom said with a smirk, "making up is a lot more fun than fighting."
I didn't really remember her and Dad ever fighting, but somehow I knew she knew this from personal experience.
"Trust me. She meant it. She doesn't want to see, hear or touch me right now. She was even planning on sleeping in her old room except that she needs to be near Nate, just in case."
"Want to talk about it?" she asked quietly.
I shook my head. "I can't. It's between me and Lois and I can't talk to anyone else about it – at least not right now. Maybe eventually, if it doesn't resolve itself, but not anytime soon."
She caught me off-guard with her next question. "Are you still in love with Lana?"
"I haven't talked to her since I told her I got Lois pregnant – and that was the anniversary of when she lost her baby. I've seen her from a distance a few times, but I haven't talked to her. How could I still be in love with her?"
"Are you still thinking about what might have been?"
Was I?
I wasn’t even sure I was still in love with Lana but I couldn't tell her all of that.
"I wonder sometimes, but I don't dwell on it. Don't you ever wonder what life would have been like if Chris had lived? If I hadn't landed in Shuster's field?"
"From time to time. Not as often as I did before I re-met your dad. Maybe once or twice a year – on his birthday or our anniversary, but that's about it. But you know what? As much as I loved Chris, I wouldn't trade my life with Jonathan. I can't imagine life without your dad."
"How long did it take you?"
"It was different for me. I had five years between Chris' *death* and the time I went on a *date* with Jonathan. You were still officially dating Lana when you married Lois."
I didn't respond to that.
"If you want to think about what life with Lana would be like... What if you hadn't ended up in Latislan with Lois, would you even know that Christopher was your son? Would Lois? Would she have made it out of Latislan at all? Would she think she'd been drugged at a party or something and didn’t remember it? And if you did know, you'd be a part-time father at best. I know you loved Lana and she loves kids, but she never liked Lois. How would she deal with a child you had with another woman while you were supposedly saving yourself for her, no matter what the circumstances were? And Nate... Nate wouldn't exist. Is that really the life you thought it would be?"
She sighed before continuing. "And if that's not the life you thought it would be, if you've put that mostly behind you, what about now? What about Lois? Have you fully committed yourself to her, to your marriage, to your life together?"
I put both feet on the ground and leaned forward, my elbows on my knees. "There's stuff about my life I can't tell you, Mom. I wish I could, but I can't. I promised Lois I wouldn't talk about certain parts of our lives, our marriage, our problems with anyone. I already said too much to Sam once and can't bring myself to tell her that - and he said he'd prefer she not even know we'd had the conversation. And maybe we should talk to someone, maybe we need to, but we can't. There's too much risk with Navance and everything else. And now Nate on top of it all..." I sighed. "I promise. If I can ever talk about it, you guys will be the first ones I talk to."
"Do you love her?"
"Yeah, I love her," I said without hesitation.
"You know," she said contemplatively, almost as though she forgot I was there, "I loved Chris with all my heart and I love your dad with all my heart, but they've always been different kinds of love. I think what I had with Chris could have turned into something like what I have with Dad, but it never had the chance. There's all different kinds of love, even between a husband and wife. I love Dad because he's my best friend, my confidant, my lover, my other half. It's not all heart fluttering and floating. It's deep, it's abiding, it's timeless."
She moved to stand behind me, wrapping her arms around me and resting her chin on my head. "I love you, Clarkie."
"I love you, too, Mom."
They were good words of advice, but she had no idea what a mess my life was.
Would Lois really leave?
Would I let her?
Now?
Later?
All of those questions had to go on the back burner. First, we had to deal with our son needing surgery.
I sighed and decided that sleeping on the veranda might not be such a bad plan.
*****
TBC
