Thanks - as always - to Alisha, Beth and Nancy. Thanks also to Queenie for her help last night
.
Last time:
Lois
"Is Clark Christopher's father?" he asked quietly.
"I think so," I told him honestly. "We didn't know it for a long time, though. When we first found out, we thought it was Halloween, but... It was foggy for years, it still is really, but the story we told everyone about the cabin... It's more or less true. We were trying to survive and got caught up in it or something and..."
"I understand."
"I would never have cheated on you," I promised him.
"I know."
The song ended and Clark appeared at my side.
"Take care of her," Joe said.
"For the rest of my life," Clark promised, kissing the side of my head. "For the rest of my life."
*~*16*~*
~~~~~
Clark
~~~~~
I promised Joe again that I'd take care of her and I meant it, like I'd never meant it before. I'd meant it before when he and I had had that same conversation, but this time I was in love with her and truly committed to making a life with her.
I pulled her into my arms and held her close to me as we danced.
I could see Bernie and Ashley dancing on the other side of the floor.
"They look happy, don't they?" Lois asked.
Bernie looked over at us and smiled. I'd never seen the two of them so close together and not flying at the same time.
<You don't have to stay, you know,> I told him.
<You guys have waited a long time for this. Go make love to your wife.>Bernie looked at me a bit shocked.
<What? Don't Kryptonians not believe in receptions and head straight to the wedding chamber?><Well, yeah,> he responded,
<but we're not on Krypton. We don't want to be rude by leaving early.> He seemed shocked that I'd suggest they might.
<So? Take your bride home and make her your wife in every sense.> I smiled to myself as he whispered something to her and she turned bright red.
"What did you say to him?" Lois whispered in my arms.
"That they should get out of here and he should make love to his wife," I whispered back.
"Are you going to take your own advice anytime soon?"
I nodded. "Before you know it." I leaned closer to whisper in her ear. "And we're *flying* to the cabin. None of this slow, driving nonsense."
She smiled up at me. "Good. I wouldn't want to wait a couple more hours. Why exactly did we have that pact anyway?"
He shrugged. "Beats me. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time."
"I've missed you," she told me. She'd slept in my arms every night, we'd kissed, but we'd put strict limits on ourselves for the last couple weeks. After months of making love often, it had been nearly torturous.
"Not nearly as much as I've missed you."
Bernie and Ashley walked over to us.
"We're leaving," he said without preamble.
"Good," Lois said. "Get out of here. Go be married." She smiled at them. "We won't be far behind you."
He turned to Ashley. "I don't have reservations anywhere or anything."
She smiled at him and kissed him. "That’s okay. I'm just happy I'm your wife. Finally. Take me back to your place – our place – and..." She stopped abruptly and looked at us. "Can we leave the car here?"
I laughed. "Sure. We're not driving tonight either."
She leaned in so only the four of us could hear her. "Believe me, if we didn't have such a fast mode of transportation, we'd be borrowing one of the rooms here for the night."
Bernie turned red as Lois and I laughed. "You're welcome to," she told them, "but I understand if you don't want to."
Bernie answered for her. "Thank you, Lois, but that won't be necessary. But we're going to be leaving momentarily."
"Good," Lois said again.
She and Ashley hugged tightly, as Bernie and I gave each other a quick hug. We traded and I gave Ashley a big hug. "Welcome to the family," I told her quietly. "We're a bit odd, but you'll love us."
She laughed. "You know I do."
They made their way towards the exit, saying good-bye to the people they ran into as they did. Lois and I were dancing again as we heard the 'whoosh' that indicated their departure.
"We need to do that pretty quick," she told me. "I want to get you out of that tux."
"Are you changing before we leave?"
She shook her head. "I hadn't planned on it. I thought you might want to help me out of my dress."
I looked it up and down. "Can I just rip it off?"
She looked at me sternly. "No. I do have something else special for later though."
I groaned. "Can we leave yet?"
She shrugged. "It's our wedding; we can do what we want."
"Then I think it's time for us to say our good-byes."
She laughed as I led her off the dance floor towards those who were still there.
Ten minutes later, we'd taken off. For the first time since the creation of Superman, I was flying as me. I was in my tux, carrying the most beautiful woman in the world in my arms and we were married – again.
Well, still.
But we'd had a real wedding with our family and friends and our sons there.
It wasn't that the first wedding hadn't been *real* but it had been rushed, forced by a dictator with a military chaplain officiating and a diplomat and a member of 'security' – who we found out later was Jimmy's dad – as our wedding party. And we'd thought it was only going to last a couple weeks and then I'd be groveling to Lana and Lois and Joe might be trying to make it work again – if he could have accepted the idea that she was pregnant with someone else's baby, an unknown someone's baby. And he would have. He'd offered to marry Lois when she told him – but, thankfully now, that hadn't been necessary.
Thank God for unanswered prayers.
I had loved Lana. I knew that.
But it was nothing - *nothing* - compared to what Lois and I shared now. Would it have eventually grown into something like what Lois and I had? There was no way to know, of course, but somehow, I doubted it.
"Penny for your thoughts," she whispered.
I stopped in mid-air and lowered her until she stood in front of me. "Just thinking how glad I am that you and I ended up together." I brushed the tendril of hair that had escaped back behind her ear. "How glad I am that the only thing I really prayed for in high school was answered with a resounding 'no' and that now I'm here with you. Forever."
"Forever? You're not getting rid of me that easily," she said, her arms wrapped securely around my neck. "Now, would you mind getting us to that cabin? I need someone to keep me warm."
I reached down and scooped her up again. It wasn't our usual way of flying but it seemed to work better with the poofy skirt of her dress.
Minutes later, we landed on the porch of the cabin. She opened the door and I carried her in, setting her down inside.
"Why am I nervous?" she whispered. "It's not like we've never done this before."
I smiled at her and rested my hand on the side of her face, my thumb rubbing over her cheekbone. "It feels a bit different, doesn't it? I mean it's not like we're any more married than we were two weeks ago." We hadn't slept much that night, having agreed to that no-sex pact for the remainder of our 'engagement'.
"I know," she said, fingering one of the buttons on my shirt. "I guess it still doesn’t seem really real. Or something. I feel like I'm waiting for a shoe to drop. Not *another* shoe, because I don't know what the first shoe would have been, but..."
~~~~~
Lois
~~~~~
I did. I had an uneasy feeling inside. I couldn't explain it, but it had been getting worse since we left the reception.
We'd finally had our real wedding, reception and all that. We should be happy – and I was. And if the way Clark had started kissing my neck was any indication, he was happy, too.
"What is it?" he asked, his face still in that curve between my neck and my shoulder. He kissed my shoulder lightly.
"I can't shake it, Clark, and it's starting to scare me."
He pulled back to look at me again. "What is it?"
"Nothing I can define," I told him honestly. "Just a sense of impending doom. Like there's an asteroid heading for earth – one of the global killers like from 'Armageddon' – but no one knows about it yet."
"No more Bruce Willis films for you then," he said with mock sternness.
"I'm serious, Clark. I don't think that's what it really is and if it was, I bet you and Bernie could take care of it, but..." I shook my head. "Please don't make fun of me."
He turned serious again. "Okay. What can I do to make it better?"
"Go check on the boys," I said quietly. "Maybe Mindy's come out of the black hole she disappeared into and is after them or something. I don't know, but please?" Where had that idea come from? I didn't know, but it had popped into my head.
He nodded. "I'll be right back."
He turned into a dark blur, lighting the fire he'd already had waiting before he went.
I crossed to stare out the big window.
Less than five minutes later, he was back, but the pit in my stomach hadn't gone away.
"Your dad put the house on lockdown for the night," he said. "Steve and Scott were still there and they agreed to stay for a couple days."
I grimaced. "I bet their wives weren't too happy about that."
"They understand."
I relaxed slightly.
"Hey," he said tipping my face up towards him. "It's okay. It's all going to be just fine."
"I know, but I'm still scared." How I'd gone from unexplainably nervous to scared in just a few minutes was beyond me.
"Do you want to go home?" he asked.
"Could we?" I asked with tears in my eyes.
"You really are scared, aren't you?"
I nodded, tears spilling silently down my cheeks. "I can't explain it but I'd rather be at home, near the boys tonight. We can shut the door and still have our own time together, but we'd be feet away from them instead of miles and miles."
He pulled me to him and kissed my forehead. "It's okay, honey. Really. I don't understand what's scaring you, but I know better than to question a woman's intuition – a *mom's* intuition."
"Thank you," I said quietly, my arms around him. We stood there for a long minute before I pulled back. "Call Daddy and let him know we're coming and let's go."
Clark pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and spoke briefly to Daddy before scooping me up in his arms. I tucked my head in close to his shoulder so he could fly faster and minutes later we landed near one of the side entrances to the house away from any eyes of staff still helping with clean-up and that kind of thing.
We ran into Vicki almost as soon as we got inside.
"Lois? Clark? What are you guys doing here?"
"We came back," I told her. "I've got a bad feeling I can't shake so we decided to turn around and come home."
"But it's your wedding night," she said a bit puzzled.
"Not really," I said quietly. "We've been married almost four years and have two kids so it's not like it's anything new. We'll go somewhere in a few days. We've got two weeks off."
"Well, that's true." She smiled at us. "Jessica put the boys to bed right after you left. Why don't you go check on them and then lock yourselves in your room?" She winked at both of us before giving me a big hug. "Trust your gut, though, honey. God gave it to you for a reason."
"I will," I whispered.
Clark took my hand and we headed up the stairs. We went through our room and into the boys' room. They were sound asleep and we spent long minutes just watching them.
"Better?" he asked, moving behind me and wrapping me in his arms.
I nodded. "A little." I shook my head. "I still can't shake it but I feel better knowing they're close by."
"Can we go back to our room then?" he murmured into my neck. "And lock ourselves in?"
I smiled. "Yeah, we can." I took him by the hand and led him back into our room.
He shut the door and I turned to him, a smile on my face. I reached for him, planning to pull him to me and kiss him senseless, but he held up a hand.
"Hold on." He disappeared and a minute later the room was filled with candle and firelight, with rose petals strewn about the room.
I laughed lightly. "So you're planning on seeing me naked?" I asked, remembering the night we'd spent at the cabin when we decided we wanted to try to make this work for real.
He leaned against one of the bedposts. "You betcha."
"Good," I whispered.
In a second he was in front of me, kissing me. Deciding that finesse wasn't want I wanted or needed at the moment, I began frantically tugging at his tie and fumbling with his buttons.
He pulled away from me after a minute. "What is it? I thought we were going to take this slow the first time."
I shook my head. "I changed my mind." I reached behind me and tugged on the ribbon laced up the back of my wedding dress. "I need you, Clark. Now."
"Are you sure?"
I didn't answer but kissed him instead. Following my frantic lead, Clark turned on the speed and seconds later we were on the bed together.
I couldn’t stop the tears as we frantically made love.
They continued to fall as I rested in Clark's arms afterwards.
"Oh, sweetie. I wish I knew what it was that was bothering you," he whispered into my hair. "I wish we could figure it out and make it go away."
"Me, too," I whispered.
He pulled me closer to him, and I fell asleep with my head on his chest, blankets pulled up over us, his fingers gently stroking the hair at my temple.
"I love you, Lois," I heard him whisper as I drifted off. "More than life itself."
*****
TBC
