from Part Seven
I could barely keep up with Mrs. Kent... or Martha as I was supposed to call her. There was something about her that reminded me of myself, or at least my old self, except that unlike me she didn’t seem to hold a grudge and seemed like a really nice person, but there was still something there.
“Just lazing around my apartment watching movies,” I gestured to my preparations.
“That’s good then, we can spend the day together. How about a bit of retail therapy, you look like you could do with cheering up.”
Before I knew what was happening, I was visiting the mall with Martha happily chatting away to me, mostly about her son. She was very careful to not call him by name; he was always referred to as ‘her son’. I actually had a pleasant afternoon with her and was quite grateful for her dragging me out to accompany her. It was better than moping about in my apartment like I had planned to do.
*.*.*.
Part Eight
*.*.*.
I almost had a panic attack as I heard a door open followed by the sound of happy male voices chattering to each other. It was like an extremely vivid and terrifying nightmare; I was standing in the Kents’ kitchen surrounded by bubbling saucepans and other really complicated looking cooking utensils and Clark was about to walk in and find me standing there, rooted to the spot in fear, unable to move to defend myself. I would have pinched myself to try and wake myself up if Martha wasn’t busy trying to reassure me. Or maybe I would have put my head in the oven and breath in deeply to end it all, whichever technique would work best.
I still wasn’t quite sure how she had managed to talk me into coming back with her for dinner; in fact I don’t think she had left me much choice in the matter. I distinctly remember her telling me that I was going back for dinner as she pushed me into her car with our purchases. Maybe I could get her arrested for kidnapping, which was a slightly happy thought in the midst of my torture, but it didn’t change anything. I was still there, stood frozen in the Kents’ kitchen as she left my side to speak to her family. Some part of my brain told me that if I was going to make my escape, or take my life, then now was the time to do it but the information didn’t morph into movement.
From the next room I could just about make out the words of their conversation. There were the typical greetings one would expect from a loving family, and it felt strange to me to hear Clark speaking normally, happily.
“Mom, why have you set four places for dinner,” he asked and I heard the suspicion back in his voice, like it was a tone reserved only for conversations held with and about me.
“I’ve invited a guest round for dinner,” Martha replied simply, no hint of any fear or trepidation in her voice, she said it as if I was an old school friend she had bumped into one day and invited around for a catch-up.
“Who?” Clark’s caution was mirrored by the voice I assumed belonged to his father, Jonathan.
“A new friend of mine. Be nice, she’s helping in the kitchen.” So she wasn’t going to give my name, was she? Just as well because I was certain that as soon as she did I’d be chased out of their home by an extremely angry Superman. She was also going to lie to them about what I was doing; my presence in the kitchen had been more of a hindrance to her preparations.
“A new friend? Martha, how long have you known this person?”
“I met her this morning.”
“This morning!” Clark exclaimed rather loudly, I would most definitely have heard that extremely clearly even if I hadn’t been eavesdropping. “And you invited her back here just like that? What do you know about this woman? What does she do for a living?”
“She’s a reporter, like you.”
“A reporter--” I could hear Clark splutter on those words and imagined that under his anger his fear was probably close to that of half of my own, which was probably the most scared he had ever been in his life.
“Martha,” Jonathan scolded her deeply. “What on earth were you thinking?”
She laughed. “Don’t worry. I’m sure she won’t print a thing. And she’s *my* guest so I want you both on your best behaviour, is that understood?” With that, Martha appeared back in the kitchen, humming to herself as she began to dish up the food I’d been neglecting to keep an eye on.
I suddenly found myself able to move again and I shuffled over to her so that I could whisper into her ear, trying to minimise the risk of him hearing my voice and hoping that Clark wouldn’t be listening in. I was certain he would be able to recognise my voice if he heard me. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea. I should just go home. Now.”
“Don’t be silly, dear. Dinner’s ready, you might as well stay to eat it.”
She carried on loading four plates with some really delicious looking food that I could never hope to make myself, but I persevered, certain that this home-made feast would not be compensation enough for my impending death. “Your son is likely to kill me if he discovers me here and from what I just heard, your husband won’t try to stop him.”
“No, but I will. I’ll box his ears if he’s anything less than civil to you and the same goes for my husband.” She smiled at me. “Clark might be Superman, but I’m the one in charge in this family. Now, bring the other two plates in with you. The boys are probably already sitting waiting at the table.”
Somehow, I found myself unable to argue with her and slunk after Martha as she left the kitchen for the dining room. I paused, hidden in the shadows of the doorway as I watched Martha put down hers and Jonathan’s meals on the table. Great, maybe her whole ‘I’m nice and have forgiven you’ act was used just to lure me into the dragon’s den, and she was expecting me to serve her son dinner as he killed me.
“Come on,” she urged, and somehow I managed to enter the room instead of fleeing in the opposite direction as fast as I could.
I saw Clark’s eyes widen in horror as he recognised me. “Mo-m!” was all he could say on the matter.
“Clark,” she snapped at him. “Remember to be nice.”
“Nice?!”
I put our plates down and sat uncomfortably in my seat, next to Clark, although I leaned closer to Martha for protection.
Jonathan looked from me to Clark before turning his attention to his wife. “What am I missing here?”
“Clark, perhaps you’d like to introduce our guest to your father?” Martha offered, with a sharp twinkle in her eye.
He shook his head at her. “She’s *your* guest, that makes her *your* responsibility.”
Martha glared at her son, then smiled at her husband. “Jonathan, this is Lois Lane. Lois, this is my husband, Jonathan.”
I watched Jonathan’s reaction. Yep, as I had suspected, he was just as happy to see me as his son was. “I’ll just go, I didn’t mean--”
“Sit down,” Martha commanded, grabbing a hold of my arm to stop me rushing off. I did as she bid but placed my face in my hands and tried not to burst into tears. Honestly, how had I let her bully me into this? Why didn’t I just get up and leave? I knew the only person in that room who could stop me was Clark and he wouldn’t because he wanted me to leave as much as I wanted to go, that much was a given.
“If she wants to leave, Martha, you should let her. Look at the state of her, what did you do, kidnap the poor girl?”
“Lois?” She rubbed my back in a comforting manner. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine,” I replied, lifting my head, hoping that I didn’t look like I was on the verge of crying.
“Good. Then let’s eat.”
Jonathan gave me one last evil look, then started tucking into his food. I was about to do the same when I saw Martha’s hand snatch out and pull Clark’s food away from him.
“Mom!”
“You are *not* going to eat at superspeed to get out of this dinner, Clark,” she told him, “and don’t tell me you weren’t planning to.”
I heard him sigh but I didn’t dare look at anything except my plate, I didn’t want to see what expression he had on his face. “What if someone needs me?”
Martha leant out and switched on a radio that had been sat on the small shelf behind her. “If there’s an emergency, it’ll be announced and you can go. Otherwise you are going to stay here and be polite.”
I looked at Martha in awe. Despite how terrible this situation was, she was handling it extremely well. I took my first mouthful of food. And she was a brilliant cook. I was consumed with jealousy but decided to just bottle away all of my feelings and get through this dinner. Survival was my main concern.
*.*.*.
It wasn’t so hard. Martha was the only one who spoke to me throughout the entire meal and I replied with the fewest words I could manage in the smallest voice I could find. The whole atmosphere was strained and I hated it, but I survived. I sighed in relief as we finished desert. At last I could escape, finally I could go home and leave this hell far behind me!
“Police are outside again,” Jonathan muttered as he peered through the heavy curtains at the street outside.
Martha rapped his hand and he let the curtain fall back into place. I hadn’t been surprised at the location of Clark’s home, it was on the edge of the upmarket area of Metropolis, where most of the city’s rich and famous lived. It had the benefit of extra security, both from the police force and personal security guards and it was normally more trouble than it was worth to break into one of the houses. I knew that from personal experience. The commotion outside could have been caused by anything.
“Looks like you might have to stay the night, Lois,” Martha smiled as if she was happy with this turn of events. “Jonathan, Clark, I believe as we did the cooking, you two are doing the washing up.”
I gawped at the audacity of the woman as the men exchanged a look before trudging into the kitchen. Martha took my arm and led us in after them, whispering that there was no point in bossing your family around if you weren’t able to enjoy the view.
I felt guilty as I watched the men at work. “I didn’t really do any of the cooking, which is obvious as no-one’s died of food poisoning. Maybe I should help with the washing up.”
“Don’t be silly, you’re a guest,” Martha insisted.
“You can dry,” Jonathan overrode his wife as he handed me a tea towel and led Martha out of the room, presumably to have a word with her about my presence in the house. Leaving me alone with Clark. Great plan Lois, try and be helpful and be left to die.
Trying to appear nonchalant, I took up a position by the draining board. Clark paused in his plate-washing duties for a moment then continued, vigorously attacking them. “I’m sorry about my mother. She probably organised the crowds outside, too.”
His voice was still grating and a few shades away from friendly but he did seem to be trying to pretend to have forgiven me as promised. “I’m still not entirely sure how she convinced me this was a good idea, but you don’t need to apologise for her. I like her.”
He looked at me for a second, then returned to the dishes.
“You would,” he complained moodily as he handed me a plate to dry.
*.*.*.
The click of the closing door echoed around the silent room as the Kent’s left to return to their own rooms, which were practically a separate apartment within Clark’s home. I hadn’t realised when Martha dragged me to the house that she didn’t really inhabit the whole building, the place was littered with photos of the three of them and felt so much like a family home that it was strange to think that essentially one man lived there alone.
As predicted, I wouldn’t be able to leave the area without being noticed and apparently Martha and Jonathan didn’t have enough room to put me up in their apartment. Although I never quite understood why I had to stay; I was convinced that Martha was right about the matter. So I was going to have to spend the night with Clark. Again. Although it was all going to be completely platonic. OK, it wasn’t even going to be platonic, it would have to involve some form of affection to be platonic and it was barely going to be civil. But we weren’t going to be sleeping together, Clark didn’t want that anymore.
He didn’t speak or look at me after seeing his parents out, just walked past me to finish clearing everything up. I watched him for a few moments, until I realised that the only reason I was watching him was because I was enjoying looking at him out and then I forcibly tore my eyes away from his appealing physique. I hated him, I actively hated him for being so gorgeous and so out of my reach. I also hated Martha for putting me in this situation. Sure, in the few hours I’d known her I’d come to respect her, admire her and yes, like her, but I still wanted to murder her the next time I got her alone. Preferably when Clark was busy saving lives on the other side of the world. I was under no delusion as to what he’d do to anyone who tried to harm either of his parents in any way, the love the three of them obviously shared was stronger than any bond I’d ever experienced.
I looked at the couch and ran my hands along the back mostly in an effort to stop me from running them along anything else. “I take it this is where I’ll be sleeping, unless you have a spare bed or--” I was silenced by the look on his face as he turned to regard me.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Lois, we both know where you’re going to be sleeping.”
“Oh,” I swallowed nervously and crossed my arms in front of my chest as if to form a barrier over my heart. “I just... you said... we don’t do that anymore. That was your decision, to act like nothing has happened--”
“I know, Lois,” he said softly, no longer looking at me, “but I can’t see us spending the night together without--”
“Spending the night together,” I said with a small smile and a smaller laugh.
He continued his speech without reacting to my failed attempt at humour. “But I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to, you know that. I don’t have guests over for many obvious reasons, but you can take my bed and I’ll sleep out here.”
“I can’t kick you out of your own bed,” I told him. “I’ll take the couch.”
Clark looked at me and opened his mouth to speak but the intensity of his gaze made me instantly want to take back my words. Something of what I was feeling must have reached my eyes because he never spoke. I moved so that I was in his arms, then his mouth came crashing down on mine and I found myself being swept towards his bedroom in a sudden fit of passion.
*.*.*.
“So what’s this?” I asked him in the aftermath, which was the only time when the tension between us dissolved enough to have anything close to resembling a normal conversation.
“What’s what?” He asked, tilting his head to look at me.
“This.” I indicated our naked bodies, still lying entwined with each other on his rumpled bed. “Tonight. If our arrangement is null and void, what do I file this under in the mess that is my mind?”
“Oh.” He appeared to think for a moment, then raised his eyebrows as he answered. “I guess it’s a one night stand. Strange, I never thought I’d ever have a one night stand.”
For a moment it sounded almost like he’d forgotten I was there. His last musing was almost certainly not for my benefit. Still, it was nice to know that I was the anomaly and Superman wasn’t out bedding lots of women. Or at least, if he was, he slept with them more than once. I furrowed my brow as I tried to work out if that was actually better or worse than him having one night stands. Clark must have been watching my expressions, as he then asked me what I was thinking about.
“You,” I told him honestly. “I was just wondering about you. This man I’ve been sleeping with is almost nothing like the one I used to work with. I know you weren’t at the Planet long and I know that’s all my fault, but--”
He sighed, the sound cutting through my words like a knife and I immediately wished I could take them back. I had promised myself never to bring the past up, that it couldn’t help either of us to be reminded of it, of what I’d done to him, but it was too late and I had to deal with the consequences of my thoughtless mouth.
He raked a hand through his hair as he turned slightly away from me, although not completely, but enough so that I was no longer in his direct line of sight. “You want to know why I act so differently around you?”
“I... I don’t know,” I admitted, scared about what truth he was about to reveal and not trusting my ability to cope with the information. “I guess I do, it’s just that I never meant to bring all that up. It’s easier not to and safer. Much safer.”
“Are you scared of me?”
I shook my head. “That’s not what I meant. I don’t believe you could ever really hurt anyone, not even me. Just forget I said anything. It won’t make any difference.”
I rested my head against the pillow but the mounting tension in the room wasn’t going away. “It’s you,” Clark said after a while.
“What’s me?”
“Why I act so differently, it’s because of you.”
“I figured that out, Clark.”
“You make me so angry, Lois. I’m angry at you, I’m angry at the article you wrote but mostly I’m angry at myself.”
I raised myself up onto my elbows so that I could see him, surprised at his answer. “You? Why are you angry at you?”
“Because no matter what you do to me, I still love you. You ruined my life in the worst possible way and I loved you anyway.”
I blinked, not quite believing what I was hearing. “You *love* me?”
“Yes, Lois, I love you, but I still hate you. I can’t hate you fully while I love you and I can’t be completely in love with you while I hate you. That makes me angry and I can’t sort it out in my head. I spent a year trying to hate you but I couldn’t and I’ve spent the last few months trying to love you but I couldn’t do that either. Those conflicting emotions just mix together and result in anger, frustration and...”
“Lust?” I offered, not really taking in the fact that Clark loved me. It was impossible, there was no way that the most wonderful man in the world, the man whose life I destroyed, was in love with me. It would be funny if it weren’t so tragic and completely unbelievable.
“And lust,” he admitted, saying it like the sin it was. “Does it make you feel better knowing that?”
I thought for a moment, “I don’t know, but at least it makes more sense. Or it will do when it sinks in. If it ever does.”
“I just wish that I could let go of one of those feelings.”
“Which one?”
“Either of them.”
I snorted at him. “Way to make a girl feel special.”
“What do you expect, Lois?” he yelled at me. Obviously he was clinging to the hatred at that moment. “Me to tell you that I *want* to be in love with you? I want nothing to do with you, but I can’t help it. You draw me to you like a moth to a flame, I know it’s wrong and you’re bad for me and it’s all going to end in tears but I can’t keep away.”
He paused for a second, obviously contemplating something, then he blurted out, “You know it’s your fault that I never got to Mayson in time, don’t you?”
“My fault!” I exclaimed, feeling a little of that hatred myself at his accusation. “Now wait a moment! I *know* that she died *after* you broke up with me. You can’t blame me for that!”
“Do you know what I did after I left you that night? I flew off and sulked. I should have been patrolling, helping people, saving one of the few true friends that I have but instead I was hurting because I knew that I had to stop seeing you and I’d finally decided to do something about it.”
I stood up and starting hunting around his bedroom for the final resting places of the various articles of my clothing that Clark had torn off my body earlier. “You know what, it’s not your decision to make. You hate me, because if you loved me you couldn’t possibly blame me for things I haven’t done. I’m sorry I wrote that article, Clark, I really am and I’m sorry Drake died but that wasn’t my fault. I wasn’t the one who put a bomb in her car. If you must hate me, hate me for what I’ve done, not for things that have nothing to do with me!”
“What are you doing?” His voice was familiarly harsh. Yep, this was the twisted man I had turned into my lover, back right on time. This time, though, I wasn’t about to melt into his bed. His change in personae only served to make me dress myself faster.
“Going home. I can’t stay here with you.”
For a moment he looked apologetic but it faded in an instant. “But the police and press--”
“I *am* the press, Superman and you know what, I don’t care! So what if I get caught leaving, they don’t know *you* live here, do they? And I won’t tell anyone. You were right. We need a clean slate, to never see each other again. God, Dan was right wasn’t he? I’ve felt so bad over what I did that I’ve let you *use* me! No more, Kent, that’s it. I’m leaving and I never want to see you again!”
“Lois!”
I ignored him and the fact that half my clothes were still lying somewhere in his house. I was decently covered and that was currently all I cared about. He didn’t attempt to stop me in any way as I picked up my bag and coat and ran out of the house.
I was crying by this point. I wasn’t sure when I had started but there was no way I could stop it. I couldn’t see a thing through my thickly flowing tears.
I ran across a road in a desperate attempt to put as much distance behind me and Clark as I possibly could. I heard the squeal of a braking car and was bathed in the cold glow of a car’s headlight as I felt a sudden pain in my leg. I fell onto the hard road and heard something crack as my whole world went black.
To Be Continued...
