When I first had a crazy thought, that maybe I could try my hand at writing fanfic, I set three rules for myself. 1. No TOGOM rewrites, they are so many and so well done. 2. No kissing between characters. I know! I love to read it, I just can’t write it. And 3. Clark would never say the words, “Lois, I’m Superman…”
Well, if you’re still interested, read on, and you’ll find that I, like Lois, have broken all three.
This is the third and last part (honest) of the Un-series, starting with Lois Unbuttoned and continued with Superman Undone. That isn’t to say they are must reads, but they couldn’t hurt!
With heartfelt thanks to Labrat, who is long on patience, enormously encouraging, and probably very tired of all the questions.
Clark Uncaged
By CC Aiken
He could just take off the glasses. Say that all the reading was giving him eye strain, announce that in an off-hand way, and then just sit back and wait for Lois to look up from her own reading, for the comprehension to spread slowly over her face. That could work.
Then maybe this could be The Night, the one that they would eventually tell their children about, their grandchildren too. The Night that Daddy finally told Mommy. It would be like an anniversary date, they would mark it on the calendar, celebrate it with expensive dinners, fine wine…
Clark rolled his eyes at his own fantasy. Even to him, it sounded more than a little crazy. But, nonetheless, here they were, he and Lois, alone. There was nothing stopping him, none of the usual things anyway; no Jimmy, no hot breaking story, no multi-car pile ups.
<no witnesses, no innocents to be cut down in the cross-fire, no one to hear the screams…>
So, really, now was just as good a time as any. Better than most. He shouldn’t let a golden opportunity like this slip by. Heaven knew, they were few and far between.
With a barely suppressed sigh, Clark pulled his eyes off Lois, gave himself a mental shake, and tried to bring his mind back to the real subject at hand: the story. Or rather, the pre-story; all the research necessary to see if there even was a story to pursue. Obviously, Lois thought so. He could tell by her intent concentration, her slow, rhythmic heartbeat, her even breathing…
He could stand up right now. Dump the files from his lap, unknot the tie, rip open his shirt, and just say, “Lois, I’m…” Only he wouldn’t have to even complete the sentence. Lois would look up and see the blue, the S, and she would know.
Lois would know. At last.
There was absolutely nothing stopping him from telling Lois. And nothing in the world he wanted more than for her to know. Ok, well, he wanted other things, too, but not without this one thing first. Lois’ knowing would not be a problem. In fact it was her not knowing that was killing him, slowly- hour by hour, day by day, so much of which they spent in each other’s company. He definitely wanted her to know. So why wouldn’t he tell her?
Clark shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. He ran agitated fingers along the papers he was shredding.
Sometimes he liked to pretend he didn’t know the answer to that question. As if his not telling Lois was a source of sincere puzzlement to him. A mystery he couldn’t fathom. He certainly had a thousand reasons to rationalize it. Some of them even made sense. Lately, he’d taken to proclaiming that the timing was never right. He couldn’t get her alone for long enough, couldn’t catch her attention completely enough. Couldn’t count out Jimmy bursting in and shouting something about “those numbers” everybody always wanted.
But Clark knew why he didn’t tell. He knew exactly why he’d never take off the glasses, never reveal the man hidden underneath. He knew and he hated himself for it. On a night long since passed into their memories, he had held Lois as Superman and been the sole witness to her anguish over Clark Kent’s “death.” That had been a lie unlike any other. He and Superman and Lois were locked into it. Try as he might, he just couldn’t see any way out.
That night was months behind them now. Since then, he and Lois had settled into something a little friendlier than friendship, and a little less romantic than romance. Their relationship remained undefined, despite all that he had learned that evening, when, in the most glorious form of torture, Superman had heard things not meant for Clark Kent’s ears. And in hearing had understood, for the first time, the true depths of Lois Lane’s feelings for him. Torn between elation and despair, Superman had rashly promised to “save Clark.”
Clark half-heartedly shuffled the folders in his lap and tried once again to suppress his ridiculous resentment of Superman’s heroic rescue of a well-loved, mild mannered reporter. He knew it didn’t make sense, but he was tired. So tired of the endless loop his brain seemed to run on, and so tired of remembering…
It had been an amazing reunion. In the dark hours of that same night, Superman had brought Clark Kent back to Lois.
Clark pinched the bridge of his nose just under his glasses, squirmed, tried to blot the images that played like a fuzzy movie in his mind’s eye.
Her out-flung arms. His feeling of utter rightness and homecoming. The tears neither of them could hide. Urgent kisses. Indescribable murmurs warming the other’s ear. Finally, exhausted, they had fallen asleep in a tangle of arms, legs, and emotions.
“Oh, Lois,” Clark sighed now, startling himself with the unexpected sound of his voice, and cringing at the longing within it.
“Hmm?”
“Um…nothing,” Clark groaned softly. “It’s really…nothing.”
“It looks pretty hopeless, doesn’t it?” Lois’ voice was distant, yet sympathetic. She never looked up from her reading.
“You have no idea, Lois.”
That night had ended. Morning had come, bringing the blazing sun into Lois’ apartment, intruding on their closeness, creating an awkwardness between them. And fully illuminating, for him, what exactly he had done.
He had lied to Lois. Not by omission. Not with a little fib to get him to a rescue. Not using one of a series of “white lies”, the kind he had long since accepted as completely necessary. No. This was a different kind of lie. A back-breaking lie. A lie from which there was no escape. Trapped in it, as he was, not one day had gone by that he hadn’t suffered for it, cursed himself for it. And yet, done nothing about it. Take off the glasses? Right. And in so doing, tear the heart out of the woman he loved? He couldn’t do it. He just couldn’t.
“You’re pretty useless tonight, you know?”
At Lois’ words, Clark pulled himself out of his spinning head.
“Yeah.” He smiled sadly. “I’m sorry, Lois. So sorry.” He barely choked out that last word.
“Hey…” She rose from her spot by the coffee table, moving towards him. “Hey, no big deal. You look tired. I’m tired. And this,” Lois gestured to the mess of their work, “is going nowhere.”
Lois moved next to him, clearing the sofa with an unceremonious swipe which sent papers floating everywhere. She plopped down and took his hand, studying him for a minute.
“Something is bothering you, Clark.”
Clark could barely meet her eyes. He’d been having trouble with that lately. He floundered for a distraction, a new subject, something, anything.
“So, are you going to spit it out, or what?”
Lois leaned forward and deliberately ruffled the hair his unconscious hand had just smoothed.
“Or are you just going to sit there like a zombie while I do all the work? Not that you aren’t contributing anything. I mean, somebody in this partnership has to have the unglamorous job of staring blankly into space for minutes at a time, don’t they? And since you’ve proven so good at it…”
Clark hid a grin. Apparently Lois had met her quota for silence this evening. She was now going to fill the room with words. Her words. He loved this. Not that his mom couldn’t more than hold up her end of a conversation, but the Kents, for the most part, were quiet people. They spoke when they had something to say. Lois, though, spoke because…because.
Clark closed his eyes, leaned his head back on the sofa, let the goofy grin spread over his face, and listened.
“…and are you even listening?” Lois demanded irritably.
“Yes, Lois. Go on,” he prompted, relieved that, once more, she had thrown a cog into the mental hamster-wheel his thoughts were forever turning on, and stopped it cold. Soothed by her nearness and her voice, Clark at last let himself relax.
He had no idea how long he slept, or how far into her barrage of words Lois had gotten before she, too, had drifted off. He woke to find her stretched out on the sofa, using his lap for a pillow. Clark didn’t move for the rest of the night, instead he watched Lois sleep, once again deeply touched by the trust she had in him.
“Blinded by love,” his mom had suggested once, when he had voiced his disbelief that Lois, the one person who knew both his guises so well, had never put them together.
“We see what we want, what we expect to,” his father had offered, when his mom’s theory had been met with a scornful snort and a muttered “wishful thinking.”
Clark knew it was neither of those, and much less complicated. It simply boiled down to trust. Only he was allowed to see Lois Lane as she was now, so unguarded and vulnerable. She trusted him enough to fall asleep his lap. She trusted Clark Kent with her friendship, a true gift he knew not many enjoyed. She trusted Superman with her life, taking crazy chances in complete faith that he would be there. Lois trusted him not to lie. Not to be a lie. Even when he stammered his flimsy excuses and ran off, she merely rolled her eyes at him and huffed something about his weirdness. But she never turned her investigative skills on him. Never put her calculating, brilliantly suspicious mind to work on Clark Kent or Superman.
He knew he’d fold like a house of cards if she did. In the end, it was her trust that kept his secret safe, even in the most preposterous of circumstances. And if he wanted a life with her, something real, he’d have to confess to the lie and tear that trust asunder.
Clark ran his knuckles gently along Lois’ sleeping profile, opening himself up like a sponge, so he could absorb each sensation fully, every small detail. Her face, her soft breathing, her warmth. Clark soaked it all into himself, so that it could be stored away and called up later. A habit he had perfected over the last two years. An antidote for all the times he was with her, yet distant from her, unable to touch her, to love her, to be known by her…fully. If this could be enough, he knew he would never have to tell her. But it wasn’t enough.
Lois stirred, frowned slightly, as if the heavy sadness of his thoughts had reached her, too. She burrowed deeper into the sofa, into him, a small sound of distress escaping her.
“You’re ok, honey,” he assured her. “I’ve got you.” And then, very softly, “I’m going to make some changes, Lois. I don’t know how, but I’ll make this right, for both of us.”
Clark held his breath as Lois relaxed back into full sleep, not wanting this to end, dreading the inevitable sunrise.
If only this could be enough. But it wasn’t. As wonderful as this was, there had to more. He had to get moving on that.
***********
A strategy. That’s what was called for here. A strategy and a bit of honesty. Well, ok, more than a bit. For starters, Clark had to be honest with himself. Not really his strong point; something his mom was always pointing out in not so subtle ways. But for this to work, for this thing with Lois to work, he needed to face some hard facts.
He had made a fool of Lois. And he had gone to great lengths to do so. For Clark Kent to have a life, the world needed to be fooled, but Lois couldn’t be, not any longer. In making a fool of Lois, as bad as that was, he had done more damage to himself. He had made himself a liar, unworthy of the trust she so generously placed in him. So this had to end. More time wasn’t going to make Lois feel better once she knew. It wasn’t going to make him any less ashamed of himself. And apparently, and not for lack of wishing, there was no magical fix in the offing. Nothing that was going to grant Lois full knowledge, minus the hard feelings, shouted recriminations….but instead…soft kisses, pledges of eternal love…
Clark brought himself back sharply. Right. Well, a strategy, then.
“Get with the program, Kent,” he growled to his reflection in the mirror as he shaved.
If he was Lois Lane, he’d probably be making a list right about now. Clark knew she often employed this method to create an order from the whirlwind of thoughts, ideas, and possible criminal activities that seemed to take hold of her from time to time. He had stopped teasing her when, more than once, her list-making had broken a story wide open.
Something methodical. Carefully plotted. Delicately executed. This is what was needed. A campaign, slyly waged. So well crafted, as to make the unseen seen, the invisible visible, the unthinkable…um…thinkable. A way to slowly, gently turn Lois from the lie to the truth. A way to show her how…kind of super…Clark Kent really was.
“So, first up,” Clark pronounced while knotting his tie, “mannerisms.” He could have called them mild-mannerisms. He had a lifetime’s worth of adopted gestures, postures, and expressions, all fashioned to convey but one thing: ordinary.
For Lois, the mannerisms would go. Clark would shed his slouch. The one designed to make him shorter than his other self. He would cut out the nervous tics. The ones meant to telegraph his uncertainty in his own skin. Not that this would cut out the actual uncertainty. How could a guy so completely non-ordinary feel anything but uncertain much of the time?
But Lois never saw Superman less than certain, or slumping, or shredding his cape with nervous fingers. Drawing his shoulders in on the elevator to make room. Tripping at the company softball game on an easy run to first.
Ok, that had been funny for all involved, and he hadn’t minded it. Things like that further endeared him to his colleagues. Further buried any lingering doubts brought about by the whole Diana Stride near-miss. But for Lois, there would be no more performances. From now on, when it was just the two of them, there would be no more hesitancy. No more stammering. What he could help, anyway. He, Clark, would start to take up room. He was, after all, a big guy who played himself small. He would stop playing all together, and just be…himself. The real person, who wasn’t just super and who wasn’t only mild-mannered, the one who was in-between.
Lois was sharp, razor sharp. Her intuitive leaps between observation and conclusion were legendary. So, maybe if he helped her along, she would make that leap, and see what, or rather who, had been staring her in the face all this time. And, in fact, wanting nothing more than to kiss that face for so long. When she started to make that connection, when the very idea that there might be a connection to be made began to blossom, then he would step in, pull her aside. And if he’d worked it right, maybe the sky wouldn’t fall, the sun wouldn’t turn to blood, the apocalypse wouldn’t be upon them all. Or him, really. Maybe.
Thus decided, though not exactly brimming over with confidence, Clark left for work.
***********
Another week’s end found Lois and Clark in their customary places, surrounded by cups of cooling coffee and empty take-out containers, folders and files strewn all about them. The hottest team in town had taken point on a Daily Planet investigation into yet another suspect holding company. This one was proving rather difficult to pin down.
Elusive, thought Clark inwardly. Elusive, and oh, so boring. He studied the top of Lois’ head, now bent over a file he had just discarded, and once again, envied her focus.
“See anything?” he prodded. Not because he felt there was anything to see, but in vain hopes of starting a conversation.
“Mmmm?” was all he got back.
Clark’s reshuffled his papers, tried to make the words in the page make sense, before once more allowing his restless eyes to roam the familiar room. His jacket and tie lay just where he had tossed them when they’d walked in. Silent reminders of this week’s unsuccessful attempt to show his true self to Lois.
He had taken to shedding the boxy jackets that camouflaged his build, and the distracting ties that were, well, distracting. Clark was practically doing a daily striptease in front of Lois, if you tallied all the things he had taken off. The stammering, the fidgeting, the hesitancy, the apologetic posture. All now tossed aside as soon as they were alone. Discarded as surely as the jacket and tie.
Look at me, Lois. He thought for the hundreth time that evening. Really look at me.
This was new too.
It took all of Clark’s courage at times just to be looked at, up close, by anyone. Even before he had a super identity to hide, Clark had been acutely aware of and shy of any person’s close study of him. The whole “dissected frog” thing, he guessed. If nobody looked too closely then there was no reason to fear discovery.
For much of his life, just being looked at felt so dangerous.
His hand came up of its own volition to his forehead, checking to see that his “unruly” lock of hair was still in place, still covering his scar. How long had he obsessed over it? How close had he come, in his earliest days as Superman, when his fear of exposure was its greatest, to desperation over it? Something so ordinary. So completely normal. Shared by millions of people his age, and therefore so entirely recognizable.
It was ironic. At the tender age of six, still not really knowing for certain, but suspecting he wasn’t quite the same as his friends, he had been thrilled to catch the chicken pox, when it had moved through Smallville’s young population. Just like Lana. Just like Rachel. Just like Pete. Just like every normal kid. Granted, his illness had lasted a fraction of the time his friends’ had. And, yes, he hadn’t really itched. And, too, while the girls had bemoaned their scars, and the guys had compared theirs competitively, he had just had the one. But the one meant the world to him. Meant that maybe the differences he’d imagined between himself and everyone else where just that, imagined. The chicken pox scar was his badge of normalcy. So dearly treasured for so long, and a symbol of the time before. Before he knew how spectacularly not normal Clark Kent really was. Before he was super anything, when he was just a kid from Kansas.
But after he had donned the cape, the scar had stopped being a comfort and had become something else entirely. An identifying mark. One which couldn’t be explained away, disguised, or refuted. One which held alarming repercussions should anyone see it, and in seeing it conclude that Superman had a chicken pox scar, that chicken pox was overwhelmingly a childhood illness. An earth child’s illness. That Superman may had been on earth as a child.
In his anxiety he had nearly agreed to the headband his mom had suggested in their first attempts to create a super suit, until the physics of keeping it in place during flight had won out.
“It is so faint. Barely there,” his mom had assured him, when they’d decided they had to go without it. “No one will notice.”
So, in fear and trembling, Superman had taken his mom’s advice. The scar went uncovered, his hair slicked back concealing nothing. And as in most things, Martha had been proven right. No one had noticed. Not the talking heads on LNN. Not various victims whose rescues had put them in close proximity to him. And not the best investigative reporter on the planet.
They really don’t look at my face, he concluded, once more made a little uncomfortable by the thought.
Clark Kent hadn’t taken the same risk as Superman, of course. It would be one thing, an entirely bad thing, for anyone to speculate over Superman’s scar. And another, altogether more horrendous thing, for anyone to notice that Clark Kent had the very same one.
Hence the well-trained lock of hair, which to the casual eye looked like it just wouldn’t stay in place. Still, whenever the wind blew, whenever he was bent over Lois’ shoulder reading off her computer, he couldn’t help but feel echoes of vulnerability. He was, after all, almost human.
“Earth to Clark,” came Lois’ voice from far away.
“I’m doing it again, aren’t I?” He smiled sheepishly.
“Let’s just say you’ve been noticeably absent from the partnership lately.”
There wasn’t any anger in Lois’ observation, though Clark knew he was deserving of it.
“You have definitely been carrying my weight on this,” he apologized. “I can’t argue.”
“Where were you, anyway?”
Lois had put down her notes and was eyeing him in such a way that might have made him nervous, if he hadn’t just been wishing for her to do that very thing. And she was waiting.
Clark knew full well she was employing the Lois Lane Interview Tactic which had made her famous. Ask the question, fix the subject under microscopic stare, wait, wait, wait.
Well, Clark had been the witness of, and party to, this very thing countless times, and if anyone was immune to it…
“Chickenpox,” he blurted, inexplicably, before he could finish that thought. Flustered, <how had she done that?> he rushed on. “Smallville had such a small little league team, no one to ride the bench, so when we all got it, we practically forfeited the whole spring away.”
If Lois thought the topic was strange, she didn’t let on.
“Lucy and I were miserable with it. We practically lived in an oatmeal bath trying to out-complain each other. I honestly don’t know how my mother stood us.”
Shrugging aside her sweater and pushing up the sleeve of her t-shirt, Lois bared her shoulder. “See? I itched like fire for days.”
Clark leaned in, drawn like a magnet to her skin. Even with x-ray vision it would have been hard to spot the faint pattern of scars sprinkled over it.
He ran a quick inventory of all the sleeveless and strapless ensembles he had seen her in. All the various functions he’d had occasion to hold her close, dance with her, fly with her. So, if he’d never noticed hers…
“What about you?” Lois prompted.
Suddenly wary, Clark sputtered into the coffee mug he had just picked up. “Me? What about me?”
“Your scars,” she taunted. “I showed you mine. Let’s have a fair trade. You’re not…shy…are you, Kent?”
Lois’ tone had gotten somewhat dangerous. Someone with less Lane experience might have missed the casual sweetness in her voice. Might have actually thought it denoted sweetness.
<I’m an idiot> was all Clark could currently come up with.
<<But you want her to know. You want her to know… Remember, no jacket, no tie, no put-on mild manneredness. You’re sitting mooning at Lois to ‘just look’ at you, and here she is doing just that…and you’re what? Balking?>>
<Balking, yes, exactly that.>
Though Clark’s mind was working at super speed, he kept his eyes locked on hers.
<Don’t look away.> He reminded himself. <She can smell fear.
Where is ‘HELP, Superman!’ when you really need it? And am I sweating? I don’t sweat! Well, unless I’m lifting something really heavy. Really, really heavy, galactically heavy…>
“You were the one who got us started on this subject. Otherwise I’d be perfectly happy sitting here doing all the work, while you mourn the lost baseball season of your youth…”
<Oh, good. There she goes. Crisis averted.>
“I mean, who knows? Had things gone differently, you might have had a major league career, and Ralph and I would be the ones sitting here, well, not here, since this is your place…”
<<But you want her to know, hence the whole subtle strategy thing, right?>>
<Ok, maybe it was a bit too subtle, but things like this, done right, take time.>
<<You want her to know you. To really know you.>>
<She does know me, she does. She just…doesn’t.>
“…but still, we’d be sitting, and actually, maybe working, though with Ralph, you never know. And I probably would have killed him by now, and be on trial for something completely justifiable…”
<<You are perfectly ok with her knowing. It’s her not knowing that is killing you. If you’re serious about this, about being truly Clark, no hiding, then why not?>>
<Oh dear God, am I really thinking this?
No! She is an investigative reporter. Let her investigate! I’m not just going to hand it over to her. Just say… ‘here, Lois..’>
“Here,” he said softly. And trembling from a place deep inside him, he lifted his hair and pointed.
***********tbc-
