He was consumed with dread. The explosion had rattled him from clear across town. As he rocketed through the sky, he could only hope that it had sounded worse than it was. Approaching the source of the explosion, his stomach sank like a stone.
St. Vincent’s Children’s Hospital.
Clark immediately spotted the cause of the explosion – a transformer that had caught fire. Doctors, nurses, and orderlies were already at work evacuating the patients, but many couldn’t be moved easily and rescue crews had yet to arrive. If they were using oxygen tanks anywhere near the explosion, it was likely to get a whole lot worse very quickly. He put out the fire immediately and turned his attention to the injured. The cries for help were quickly undoing his composure. They were just little kids. And they wouldn’t have been in St. Vincent’s unless there was something terribly wrong with them to begin with.
Taking directions from the doctors, he helped move the children away from the damaged wing of the hospital. Firefighters arrived and began cordoning off the blast zone. He wasn’t sure how it was possible, but no one had been killed in the blast. But that miracle didn’t make it easy to carry badly burned children from their rooms.
********
Her hands trembled with…anger, shock, disbelief, she didn’t know which. She put her clothes back on, swearing silently under her breath with every garment she collected from the bedroom floor. In the living room, she grabbed her purse. She couldn’t go home, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to stay there. It didn’t matter. She could check into a hotel. Hopefully he’d have the sense to stay away from her. She slipped on one heel and then the other and stormed toward the stairs to the door. She rolled her ankle, a sharp pain shooting up her leg.
“Dammit!” she cursed angrily.
Damn him.
Bastard.
But she paused, thinking about the absolutely haunted look on his face. She’d been so stunned by the incomprehensible revelation that Clark and Superman were the same person that she’d paid no attention to anything he said. But the look on his face was seared into her memory. Whatever it was that had pulled him away had to have been something terrible.
‘Don’t do it, Lane,’ she warned herself mentally. ‘You’re mad at him, remember? And you have every damn right to be.’ Against her own better judgment, she turned around, hobbling painfully on her turned ankle, and picked up the remote control from the coffee table. She turned on the local news channel.
“Superman and firefighters have responded to the blast at St. Vincent’s Children’s Hospital on Metropolis’s Upper East Side,” the anchorman said somberly as the screen cut away to terrifying overhead camera shot of the hospital. In the moonlight, the dark smoke could be seen rising from the gaping hole in one wing of the hospital. “No reports yet on whether anyone was hurt or killed in the explosion, but we remind our viewers that St. Vincent’s specializes in the treatment of childhood cancers and other serious, chronic conditions. These are very sick little kids in this hospital.”
She closed her eyes, willing herself to stay mad at him. He’d lied to her. For months, he’d lied to her. God, he must have laughed at her, too. She’d made a fool of herself over Superman, not realizing he was none other than her farmboy of a partner. What sort of sick game was he playing at?
And then she imagined him at that fire. She imagined him answering prayers and cries for help.
‘Damn him,’ she thought again, with less conviction.
********
“We can handle most of the injuries here, but we’re not a trauma center, or a burn center, Superman,” Dr. Pickens explained. The middle aged doctor looked shell shocked, and with good reason, Clark thought grimly.
“How can I be of the most help?” he asked.
“The nearest burn center is across town at MetroGen. The most critical cases should go there,” the other man said. “New Troy Burn Clinic in Eastchester is next. You won’t be able to just fly them there, not with these burns.”
Clark nodded grimly. The exposure for the burn victims during even a short flight was life threatening. “I’ll get ambulances, medivac helicopters, whatever I can, and get them there.”
He found evac choppers and physically carried them to the hospital much faster than they could have flown there under their own power. Clark then grabbed an ambulance and began transporting doctors and their patients to the other hospitals. He ferried children to every burn center that could help. Even though he helped complete the task much faster than it would have been done without him, it was still maddeningly slow.
Weary and reeking of smoke, he flew home, his thoughts so deeply troubled by the sight of the small and frightened victims of the blast that he couldn’t even bring himself to think about Lois. But he knew that angry wouldn’t begin to describe the mood she’d be in.
Incandescent was probably more like it.
He scanned the apartment while he was still flying over it, relieved to find that she was still inside. The stormy expression on her face made him dread what was about to happen. Clark landed on his balcony and walked into the bedroom. Without bothering to change out of the suit, he walked into the living room. She turned away from the television to look at him.
“Did everyone survive?” she asked quietly.
He nodded. She closed her eyes and exhaled deeply. The silence dragged out until he couldn’t take it anymore. “I’m sorry…” he began.
“Don’t,” she snapped. “Just don’t.”
“Look, I didn’t mean for things to happen this way…” he said somewhat helplessly.
“Whatever you’re going to say is only going to make me madder,” she retorted. “And it isn’t fair because I can’t be mad at you because you were off rescuing children and only cold hearted, selfish people could possibly be mad at someone who saves children, but you lied to me and right now I can’t make myself think about anything besides that.” She started for the front door.
“Wait,” he called out. “It isn’t safe.” It was true. And the fact that someone out there was trying to kill Lois was the one thought that blotted out all the others. But he did also hope that if she stayed, maybe he could start making this right.
“I know that,” she said flatly. “But I can take care of myself.” He watched dumbly as she left and wanted nothing more than to follow her. Instead, he just stared at the door that had just slammed behind her. God, how had he gotten himself into this mess?
********
“Henderson, I’m not accusing anyone on the bomb squad of anything,” she snapped irritably, cradling the phone against her shoulder as she sat at the small desk in her room at the Luxor. “I’m just trying to figure out if there is anyone you should be looking at.”
Lois listened as Henderson explained something she already understood full well: cops didn’t go around investigating other cops unless they had good reason to believe the target had done something wrong. Luckily for her, in a perverse sort of way, the bomber had twice targeted her in public places, where his bombs could easily have killed innocent bystanders. The growing public panic and uproar meant the police were under a lot of pressure to find the perpetrator before he actually did kill someone. She was under a lot of pressure, too, from ordinary citizens calling and writing to the Planet to complain that her presence was making the whole city less safe. Hiding out at the Luxor and staying clear of the Planet was a temporary fix, but no more.
She’d realized when she’d checked in the night before that Lex had apparently planned for this contingency. The hotel manager approached her as soon as she’d shown the woman at the check in desk her identification. Discreetly, he’d checked her in under a false name and told her to contact him directly if there was anything she needed. In truth, she found it a bit creepy; she had no doubt that the manager’s next stop would be to call Lex and let him know she was there. And yet…she needed the anonymity. With her name off the hotel’s register, it would be that much easier to hide from the crazed killer who knew where she lived, where she worked, and what her car looked like.
Making Henderson promise he would call if he had any new information, she hung up the phone and turned back to her meager file. The police had been able to track down the LexExpress where the package had been mailed from the barcode. The clerk who’d been working that evening vaguely remembered the sender because she’d recognized Lois’s name from the paper. She’d described him as a white man in his mid thirties, average height, average build, brown hair, thus describing about half of the members of the 50,000 strong Metropolis PD. Not to mention countless other citizens of the city.
Jimmy had begun cross referencing every story in the Planet’s archives from the last twenty years that dealt with the bomb squad, gleaning names and events that might help her figure out if it really was one of the City’s Finest who was out to get her. She’d begun digging into his results, trying to match names to other stories she’d worked on. The motive may well have been revenge, she surmised, for something that had happened to someone else – perhaps she’d put a family member or loved one of the bomber in prison.
She worked well into the night, not just because her own life was at stake, but because it kept her mind off Clark Kent. Every time she thought about him—which was more often than she’d wanted to admit—it made her skin burn with anger. How could he have claimed to love her while at the same time, lying through his teeth about damn near everything?
Clark Kent, who bumped into things and spilled coffee on himself, who couldn’t open a pickle jar, who hid behind glasses he didn’t need and a country hick, aw shucks demeanor, was in reality a god in a cape. She couldn’t imagine why he did it. Why did he bother to hide, pretending he was something he wasn’t? Was it really just to prove that he could? That he could fool the whole world into thinking he was just an ordinary man, living an ordinary life?
She shook her head. This endless loop of questions wasn’t getting her anywhere. It certainly wasn’t helping her put the creep trying to kill her behind bars.
********
Clark stared at Lois’s empty desk. Granted, the entire bullpen was empty late on Sunday nights, but he’d been stealing glances at her desk all day, wishing she was there. She wasn’t answering her cell phone, but Perry had told him that she’d called earlier to explain that she’d be keeping her distance for the time being. The night before, he’d followed her cab to the Lexor—just to make sure she got there safely. The old editor asked if something had happened between them, but Clark had been noncommittal. What could he have possibly said as an explanation?
He’d already run through all of the active members of the bomb squad and had crossed them all off his list. Many of them he knew as Superman, but that didn’t stop him from investigating them. But he couldn’t put a motive to a single member of the unit. So he turned to those who’d retired, resigned, or left due to disability. Without cooperation from the police department, though, it was hard to put together a complete list of people to investigate.
Sighing, he leaned back in his chair. He desperately hoped that as soon as this jerk was behind bars, he’d have a chance to put things right with Lois. She couldn’t stay mad at him forever, could she?
Actually, knowing Lois, she probably could. The hurt and angry look on her face when he’d run out on her the night before still pained him. He’d been so confident, arrogant even, when he’d assured her that she could trust him. It had been downright idiotic of him to let things go as far as they had without giving a moment’s thought as to whether it was time to tell her the truth about him. He might have been different from the other men she’d known, but apparently not that different. He wondered if she’d ever trust him again.
‘Why should she?’ his conscience demanded of him. ‘She trusted you. When you told her you loved her, she believed you.’ Clark groaned. He wasn’t going to win a war with the better angels of his nature. No, he’d thrown his lot in with his libido and now everything was catastrophically fouled up. But it wasn’t raging hormones and lust that had led him to sleep with Lois, he countered. Dear god, he loved this woman so much he couldn’t see straight. He’d never believed that he could love anyone as deeply as he loved her. Almost losing her three times in little more than a week had made it that much harder for him to control his emotions when it came to her. So why hadn’t he just been honest with her? Because he’d needed her so badly. Telling her he loved her had nearly driven her away. Adding a far more shocking revelation on top of that while she was being hunted by a merciless assassin would have been a terrible idea. Which is exactly why he should have been decent enough to ignore what he needed and resisted the overwhelming urge to take their relationship forward. Yeah, right. Like he could have possibly exercised that sort of willpower when it came to Lois.
He wanted to call her. Just to make sure she was okay. It was abundantly clear, however, that she wouldn’t appreciate the gesture. He was starting to get a headache, which didn’t make any sense because he didn’t get headaches. Clark reached into his desk drawer and pulled out the CD he’d borrowed from the paper’s music editor. He put the disk into his computer’s CD Rom drive and turned on the speakers, hoping Ellington could do for him what aspirin couldn’t. He sighed and leaned back in his chair, searching rather naively for a connection to her through something that she loved so much. Something that belonged to her.
It didn’t take him long to figure out why she’d fallen in love with this particular piece of music. Why she spoke about it so reverently. It was complex and ephemeral. The theme kept changing, subtle variation on subtle variation, so that just when he thought he knew what was coming next, it changed on him, and he had to stop guessing and just let the music take him where it wanted to go. And he found himself following it willingly, eagerly, just in hopes of hearing a few more beautiful strains. Clark couldn’t help but close his eyes as he listened to it. Delicate and haunting, each note seemed to stay with him long after it faded away. He was filled with a sense of wonder. And sadness.
********
“’lo?” came the muffled voice on the other end.
“Where’s David Parker?” she demanded.
“What? Lois, is that you?” Jimmy asked.
“David Parker was on the list in the press release seven months ago of officers who’d passed the exam and were selected for promotion to sergeant. Three months later, he’s not on the promotion list. Where’d he go?”
“You sure he was bomb squad?”
“It says right here,” jabbing at the press release as though Jimmy could see it on the other end of the phone line. “Explosives Disposal Unit.”
“He wasn’t on the lists CK and I went through today, so he isn’t with the bomb squad now. Maybe he transferred.”
“Meet me at the Planet in fifteen minutes,” she said.
“Now? It’s five in the morning…”
“And when someone’s trying to kill you, I’ll return the favor, Jimmy,” she replied dryly. She found her shoes and grabbed her jacket before rushing out of the hotel room.
********
“Thank you very much, sir, you’ve been a big help.” He hung up the cell phone and turned the key in the ignition of his car. It hadn’t been hard to do. After Superman had busted into Lane’s place, he knew there was no way she’d keep staying at home. Initially, he’d thought she’d skip town, but she just kept showing up at work like nothing had happened. It had pissed him off a little, he realized. He’d made a list of the nicer hotels in town, not too far from her apartment or office –the sort of places where a paper like the Planet would put its employees up. Pulling out his old uniform, he’d visited the hotels and asked the managers to please give him a call if Ms. Lane checked in. It was a matter of some urgency, he’d assured them.
He frowned as he pulled away from the curb outside the Daily Planet. He hadn’t seen her enter and he’d been out there since seven in the morning. It didn’t matter. He had a lot to do today. Never in his life had he ever imagined that he would turn into the sort of person he hated. The sort of person he’d spent his career trying to stop. It almost shocked him how quickly he’d made the transformation, like stepping across an invisible line. But what else could he have done?
It was all her fault. Mike was a good kid. He’d just gotten caught up in something way bigger than he could have understood. He’d tried to get Mike out of it, but Lane had broken up the car theft ring before he’d had a chance. Once the story was out there, there was no way the prosecutor was going to take it easy on Mikey; why would she need to? The evidence was all there.
It had torn him apart to see his little brother hauled off to juvie like some thug. Mike had pleaded with him to get him out of there. Already skinny, the kid had lost weight. When he visited him, he couldn’t ignore the fact that the look in his little brother’s eyes was hollow and haunted. He couldn’t imagine what they were doing to him in there and Mikey wouldn’t tell him.
He spent months doing nothing but trying to get his brother out of juvenile detention. It had cost him his job. But he didn’t care about that.
Last week, he’d gotten the worst phone call of his life. Some low level functionary had called him to tell him Mike had been killed in a fight. That was it. Nothing more. His brother was dead. Killed in a cesspool masquerading as a correctional facility. Put there by Lois Lane.
********
Lois had apparently come and gone before he’d gotten into the office that morning; a rather nasty traffic accident had forced him to detour on his way in. He wondered idly how long they could work for the same section of the same paper and keep avoiding each other. Sighing, he pushed his chair away from his desk. He wasn’t getting anything done here. A patrol would give him a chance to collect his thoughts and perhaps see if Henderson had anything new to report.
“Hey Superman!” Flying high over Centennial Park, Clark heard the voice. The man didn’t sound like he was in any danger, but Clark zeroed in on the source anyway. He flew back down, landing just in front of the African American police officer. Clark didn’t know him personally, but he recognized him from the city’s SWAT team.
“What can I do for you, officer?” Superman asked.
The cop rubbed at the back of his neck. “Look, I don’t want to say anything about another cop, especially since I don’t know anything for sure, but I think there’s someone you should look into about these bombings.”
********
David Parker was exactly who Lois was looking for. She knew it. Now, if she could only find him. A month ago, he’d just disappeared from the face of the earth. He had no family left in Metropolis and no one knew where he might have gone. She regretted what had happened to him. There was no way she couldn’t. Parker hadn’t started as a homicidal maniac. He’d been driven there. And he blamed her for it. There would be time later to figure out just how much of the blame she needed to shoulder for this, she told herself.
She kicked off her heels and sat down on the bed. This was getting her nowhere. At least Henderson now had a suspect. Her room phone rang. She stared at it for a moment, wondering who would be calling her. No one knew she was here. It was probably just the Concierge’s desk, she mused between rings. Or perhaps it was Lex. She didn’t know why that possibility filled her with dread. Whoever it was, they apparently weren’t planning on hanging up. After the sixth ring, she picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Lois Lane?”
“Who is this?” she asked, frowning.
“My name is Peter Loss,” the voice on the other end began. “My badge number is D8726359…”
Lois fumbled for a pen to write down what he was saying. “What can I do for you, Officer Loss?” she asked cautiously. She recognized the name and confirmed the badge number against her list of the officers assigned to the explosives disposal unit.
“You’re in danger, Ms. Lane,” he continued.
“I think anyone who reads the news knows that,” she replied.
“I know who’s trying to kill you. I need to talk to you tonight.”
Lois took down the information and promised to meet him before hanging up. She grabbed her cell phone and dialed a familiar number.
“Lois?”
“Someone calling himself Peter Loss just called me and asked me to meet him at the diner on East End Drive and 105th Street,” she said flatly.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Clark replied. “Superman talked to Loss a couple of days ago, he didn’t know anything.
“And Peter Loss has no reason to have a grudge against me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to meet him,” she responded.
“Lois, you know this is a trap,” Clark retorted.
“Which is why I called you,” she said matter of factly. “I figured you’d want to know. I’ll call Henderson on my way there, but I don’t want Parker to bolt.”
“How’d you know it was him?” He sounded surprised.
“Later,” she said, rushing for the door once again.
********
He hung up the phone and rushed to the stairwell off the bullpen, tugging at his tie as he went. At least she’d thought to call him, he mused. That had to count for something. He took off in a colorful blur, darting across the night sky to the diner where Lois had agreed to meet ‘Peter Loss.’
Worry ate away at his gut and he could taste the bile in his throat. Why hadn’t he stopped her? ‘Quit kidding yourself, Kent,’ his brain retorted; he wasn’t exactly in much of a position to stop Lois Lane from doing anything she intended to do. He just had to trust that he’d be fast enough. Given what he now knew about David Parker, he had every reason to believe that the man intended to kill Lois the first chance he got. Clark had to make sure he never got that chance.
He hovered overhead, waiting for both Lois and Parker to show up. A dark, non-descript sedan pulled up first. Not long afterward, a cab dropped Lois off. Clark zeroed in on the sound of her heartbeat, thundering in her chest. He recognized the man stepping out of the sedan as David Parker from the photographs. Clark tuned out everything else to listen to their conversation.
“You’re not Peter Loss,” Lois said flatly.
“You’re not the crusading good guy you claim to be,” Parker retorted.
“I’m sorry about what happened to your brother,” she replied.
Clark watched as Parker balled up his fists. “No you’re not! Mike is dead because of you! Because you wouldn’t just let the police do their job. I couldn’t save him, but at least I can make you pay.”
Parker reached into his jacket and Superman dove toward him. Before he could disarm Parker, Lois did the job for him. She’d kicked the gun out of Parker’s hand just as he’d pulled it from his coat. It clattered against the pavement in the darkness. Clark grabbed Parker before he could lunge at Lois.
“Thanks, Superman,” she said evenly, with none of the typical hero worship or awe in her tone.
Clark nodded, tight lipped, before rising up into the air with Parker securely in his grip. Taking out a handkerchief, he quickly found the gun and picked it up. He intended to drop the would-be assassin off at the nearest police station and get back to Lois as quickly as possible.
He returned mere moments later to find her trying to flag down a cab. “Can I give you a lift somewhere?” he asked softly.
“I can hail a cab, thanks,” she replied, her tone clipped.
“Can we please talk about this?” he insisted.
“Honestly? I’d rather not,” she replied. A cab pulled up to the curb and she got in. He watched dumbly as it drove away.
********
The following day, Lois left the police station around noon, having given her statement and easily picked Parker out of a lineup. She flagged down a cab and headed back to the Planet. In truth, all she’d wanted to do was go home, but while she couldn’t write the story, it couldn’t exactly be written without her, either.
With no small degree of trepidation, she stepped out into the newsroom. It was so strange to feel so uncomfortable in place she’d come to consider her home. She hadn’t taken more than two steps before she caught Clark’s eyes. He gave her the faintest of smiles, but it died quickly when it wasn’t returned.
“Let’s get this done,” she said simply as she dropped her purse on her desk.
She went through the details with Clark, working through it like it was just another story. There was a tension between them – they hesitated before finishing each other’s sentences. They awkwardly spoke over one another with apologies and false starts. He seemed pained by the sudden and dramatic change in their relationship, but there wasn’t much she could do about that. He was the one who’d lied through his teeth every damned day since she’d met him. Just the thought was enough to make her as mad as she’d been the moment she’d found out. But the article was written anyway and Clark sent it to Perry.
Lois started pulling together notes for her next story, happy to be able to focus on her computer and block out the rest of the newsroom. “Lois, Clark, excellent work,” Perry bellowed from his office about twenty minutes after getting their copy. “Now git out of my newsroom. Take the rest of the week off. That’s an order.”
In the background, she could hear Clark gathering up his stuff and shutting down his computer, but she kept ignoring him. She could feel him standing behind her and it raised her hackles. “Reform in the juvenile corrections system,” he read aloud. She hated it when people read over her shoulder.
Lois didn’t turn around or otherwise acknowledge him. “I’m doing this for Michael Parker, not David Parker,” she said, her tone even harsher than she’d intended.
“I know,” he replied. “You couldn’t have known what was going to happen. You did the best you could. That’s all you can ask of yourself.”
She’d said something similar to him once. It was so odd to think about having said that to Clark, while talking about Superman, oblivious to the fact that they were one and the same.
“You heading out soon?” he asked. She finally looked over her shoulder at him. He seemed to be holding his breath, hanging on to some invisible hope of setting things right.
“I’m going to keep working,” she replied, turning back to the monitor.
“Good night, Lois,” he said. She watched him walk away, looking for all intents like a defeated man. He waited for the elevator, his hands stuffed in his pockets.
“Goodbye, Clark,” she whispered once the doors had closed behind him. She didn’t know exactly how good his hearing was, but she imagined he’d heard her. Dammit, he had no idea how much he’d hurt her. Despite a lifetime of experience, she had completely bought into the idea that she could trust him. What a farce that had been. So why on Earth did she care about the wounded look in his eyes?
She needed to work. That was all. She could plunge into her work and go back to ignoring the cape wearing fraud who had so badly thrown her off balance. It was almost an hour before Perry came out of his office and loudly chased her out of the newsroom. Unhappily, she shut down her computer and headed for the elevators, not really sure where she was going to go.
********
“Little girl, you are a sight for sore eyes! Come give your ol’ Uncle Charlie a hug!” Charlie was most definitely not her actual uncle, but he never failed to make her smile.
“How have you been, Charlie?” she asked, letting the older African American man pull her into a one armed hug as he laid down his saxophone. The bartender and the waitress were occupied clearing tables. With the evening’s music set over, the bar’s patrons had mostly filtered out. Charlie had lingered longer than the rest of his band; he always stuck around to chat about jazz with whomever wanted to. She couldn’t imagine anyone would try to rush Charlie out just to close the place for the night. This was practically his bar.
“I can’t complain,” he said with a slow nod. “You all right? I’ve been hearing the wildest things in the news about you.”
Lois shrugged. “Don’t believe everything you hear,” she said.
“You look like you got the blues, honey. You want to sit a while?”
“Yeah,” she admitted. She pulled the piano bench forward and sat down. It had been years since she’d seen Charlie. He seemed older than she remembered. The laugh lines around his eyes were deeper. He moved a little slower, too. But ever since she’d been that rebellious teenager, he’d watched out for her.
********
Superman flew high over the city; not because there were any crimes to stop or emergencies to respond to. Because he had nothing better to do. He knew better than to go home. He would just sit on his couch, flip through the channels pointlessly and wonder why he’d been such an idiot. There were a million things he should have done differently. Had he actually thought about what he was doing instead of falling headfirst into bed with Lois, he might have had a real chance to build a relationship with her. Instead, he was flying around, spending way too much time in his own head.
He’d already flown over her apartment twice. And her gym. He’d checked out the Planet three times. He just seemed to drift in the direction of the places he associated with her. As he flew over the southern edge of the park, he drifted westward toward Devil’s Den. A haunting and familiar sound was drawing him in.
********
He’d listened to the piece so many times in the last two days that he knew it by its first few bars. Just like he would have known its player anywhere. In the darkened lounge, he watched her thin, graceful form and the languid movement of her body as she played. The way she stretched to play the shimmering arpeggios. The powerful, commanding movements of deft hands as they played each chord. How was it that she’d sprained her wrist barely more than a week ago? Her shoulders swayed slightly as she reached across the keyboard for the notes. Her fingers seemed to soothe and charm the piano with a delicate touch, gently encouraging it to ring out each perfect note at precisely the perfect moment. He watched, enchanted by the way she moved, the way the music seemed to spill over, whirling around as it enveloped the entire room. She played with her eyes closed, knowing the keys by memory and feel.
An odd anticipation grew inside him as he watched, never able to predict the rhythm of her movements, never knowing just how far she’d have to reach in her sinuous stretch for a distant chord, amazed at how her fingers fluttered over the keys in those spine tingling ripples of notes. Clark felt a bit dumb. The piano was a mystery to him. Low notes on the left, high on the right, but he never would have been able to produce anything other than disjointed, jarring sounds. Lois was the instrument’s breath; she gave it life and made it sing. She made it whisper something in his ear so beautiful it made him ache. The high notes fell softly from her fingers like rain, the embellishments cascading over her and him as well as he stood, unnoticed and likely unwelcome, in the far corner of the lifeless bar.
She played the familiar variations of the lines and he listened for the changes, the way the music teased you as it drew you in and surrounded you, the sudden swells and soft sighs of the notes and chords. He listened to the coda he knew so well as it drifted toward the ending, flirting with a resolution it would never give him.
“Bar’s closed, son,” the older gentleman sitting near Lois called out as soon as she’d finished playing. The man seemed to have noticed Clark several minutes earlier, but hadn’t said a word, probably out of respect for the piano player. Lois turned to look at him. He thought he saw a flash of anger in her expression, but it was gone just as quickly as it had formed.
“What are you doing here, Clark?” she asked abruptly, her posture suddenly stiff.
“I…” he hesitated. “Please, just give me a chance to explain…”
The old man frowned severely at him. “You want me to get rid of him?” he asked Lois, in a protective, almost fatherly tone. The man was at least thirty years his senior, but Clark didn’t doubt that he would try to use physical force to remove him from the bar.
“It’s all right, Charlie,” Lois replied, her tone much softer. She closed the cover over the piano keys and stood up. She gave the old man a hug. “Thanks for everything.”
“You’re always welcome here, sweetheart,” he replied. “Especially now that you don’t need a fake ID to get into the bar.” The old man laughed and Clark watched wistfully as Lois smiled at him.
********
Lois followed Clark out of the bar, crossing her arms over her chest as she did so. He hadn’t worn a topcoat, but then again, it wasn’t like he’d needed it, she mused to herself. “Can we go somewhere and talk?” he asked, his tone soft.
“My apartment,” she replied simply. She raised her hand to flag down a cab, catching a look of disappointment in his eyes. He’d probably wanted to fly her there. Maybe he thought that he could impress her. Maybe he figured that distracting her with the flight would make her more agreeable to whatever his ridiculous explanation was. She shivered slightly in the cold wind, but waited silently until a cab finally approached. Lois gave the cabbie the address, but otherwise, they rode the entire way without saying a word to each other.
Once inside her apartment, she finally felt free to unleash all the angry, half formed feelings that had been building up for days. “How dare you?” she demanded. “How dare you tell me I could trust you while lying about something like this?” She watched as he winced slightly. Good, she thought to herself. He deserved it. “All this time, pretending you were an ordinary man. Pretending you were just some…”
“Hack from nowheresville?” he supplied.
“Cute,” she snapped irritably. She dropped her coat, purse, and keys in one heap on the kitchen counter before stalking back into the living room. Tears sprung to her eyes. “Why did you do it?” she asked, her voice threatening to give out on her. “What were you trying to prove?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Lois, I wasn’t trying to prove anything. I didn’t do this to hurt you and I’m sorry. I know it’s not enough, but…”
“You’ve been lying to me every day since I met you, why should I believe you now?”
He shook his head sadly. “I’ve only ever lied to you about one thing. And believe me, I didn’t want to.”
“Then why did you?” she demanded.
Clark sighed, his shoulders sagging. “It’s not like I could have told you when we first met. I don’t go around telling people, ‘Hi, I’m Clark Kent, and by the way, I can fly.’” Lois could feel her expression settling into a scowl. She didn’t exactly appreciate his sense of humor at the moment. “But the more we worked together, the more time we spent together, the harder it got.”
“And you didn’t think that maybe before claiming you loved me and sleeping with me would be a good time to let me in on it? What did you expect to happen? Did you expect me to go on believing you were two different people?”
“I didn’t plan this. It’s not like I had some sort of road map all laid out. Yeah, I know I screwed up, but before I met you, I’d never told anyone about myself. My parents are the only ones who know.”
She’d almost forgotten about his parents. “Are they really your parents? I mean, I know you’re adopted…”
He looked almost wounded by the question. “They found me in a field when I was a baby. They raised me. They’re the only family I know,” he said. “I really am Clark Kent. Superman was just something I invented when I moved here so I could help out and still have something of a life.”
He sounded so lonely and she suddenly found herself imagining what it must have been like for him growing up, being so different from everyone else. She wondered how he’d come to the decision to never tell anyone about himself. What a burden that must have been. No wonder he hadn’t told her….Dammit, now she was defending him.
“I’m sorry I got this completely wrong. But I wasn’t just claiming to love you. I do love you. I hope you believe me.”
She did. She didn’t want to admit it, but she did believe him. Lois sat down on the couch, unsure how to answer him. “Were you ever planning on telling me?”
“Of course,” he replied. He sat down on the opposite couch, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “But I didn’t think it was fair to burden you with this until you knew how you felt about us.”
“Clark, don’t patronize me…” she began, but he cut her off.
“For as long as we work together—probably longer—I’m going to have to ask you to lie and cover for me. I’m going to ask you to leave newsworthy things out of stories, even when it violates your sense of journalistic ethics, just so I can keep doing my job as Superman. Besides, this isn’t just my secret,” he explained. “My parents’ lives would be ruined if anyone found out. You didn’t know I was Superman and people still tried to use you to get to me. Have you thought about how much harder it’s going to be now that you know? You know something that people would kill to find out and they might try to make you tell them. If someone gets the slightest hint that you might know something about Superman, then I’ve put your life in danger. If you were me, who would you burden with that kind of information?”
She shook her head. “You still had no right to tell me I could trust you—to sleep with me—without ever telling me…”
“I know,” he admitted. “I don’t regret what happened between us. I can’t. But I regret how it happened. Believe me, I never expected things to move so quickly. Lois, this is all new to me. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved…”
She leapt to her feet. “You sonofa…Clark Kent, how can you keep lying like this?” she demanded, her blood suddenly boiling.
He blinked for a moment, seemingly in a stupor. “What? Lois, what are you talking about?” he stammered.
“You told me you’d never slept with a woman you weren’t in love with. Now you’re telling me you’ve never been in love before. You do the math. It doesn’t add up.”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, pushing his glasses up out of place. “Yes it does,” he said, his eyes still shut.
She found herself in the unusual position of not knowing what to say. Clark looked down at his hands for a long moment. “Ever since I was a kid, I never let myself get too close to other people. I was always afraid someone would find out and then I’d get taken away from my parents and dissected like a frog. It’s a tough habit to break.”
She sat back down wordlessly. It was strange to hear him admit to being afraid of anything, especially the idea of being held against his will and cut apart. She wondered if his parents had had to teach him to hide, or if he’d been so afraid of what made him different that it came naturally to him. “I’m sorry I yelled at you…” she began, unsure how exactly to say what she wanted to say.
“It’s okay,” he replied. “I mean, it’s not like it’s a normal thing for a guy my age to be admitting to. I can see why you thought I was lying.”
But he wasn’t a normal guy. Otherwise, she would have found his confession to be unbelievable. Normal guys who were as attractive as Clark had, at best, the personalities of pet rocks. They certainly weren’t as kind, intelligent, and interesting as her partner. And she would have had to have been blind not to notice the women throwing themselves at Clark since the moment she’d met him. It certainly wasn’t a lack of opportunity that was responsible for his…inexperience.
“This is so embarrassing,” he muttered softly and she realized how long they’d been sitting in silence.
“No,” she began. “I am surprised...I mean, you certainly seemed to know what you were doing when we…uh…” she felt a blush creep over her complexion. “But I think I understand why you waited. I just don’t know if I understand why you stopped waiting…I mean…with me.” The awkward sentence tripped from her tongue as she struggled to make sense.
“I’ve thought about you…I’ve thought about making love to you since pretty much the day I met you,” he admitted. Her cheeks burned, flushed with the thought of how badly he’d wanted her. If he noticed her blush, he did nothing to acknowledge it. “When it happened, when you told me you wanted it to happen…I couldn’t have said no to you if I’d wanted to.”
He finally looked up at her, his gaze intense. She remembered the last time he’d looked at her with that kind of intensity. Desire spooled tightly deep inside the pit of her stomach. He’d just dragged her across the entire emotional spectrum inside of ten minutes and all she could think about was how his hands and his lips had felt against her skin. She shivered as the memory became an almost physical sensation. Dammit, she’d sworn that she wasn’t going to let him talk his way out of this. So why was she about to forgive him for everything?
“I was so afraid of losing you. The first attack…I wasn’t there when you needed me. At your apartment and the Planet, I barely made in time. I know it doesn’t excuse what I did, but I needed you so badly. And I wanted to be what you needed me to be. I want to make things right between us,” he said quietly, but his tone was insistent. “I want to tell you everything. I want you to trust me again.”
Her resolve crumbled even further. “You’d tell me anything I wanted to know, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah,” he replied, his voice a bare whisper.
“What if I needed time—time to figure all of this out?” she ventured.
“I’d wait as long as you needed,” he said without a moment’s hesitation. He was giving her control. Over their relationship. Over what it turned into.
She nodded but said nothing. “It’s getting late,” he began. “I should go.”
“I’ll call you. Soon,” she promised.
He smiled faintly in response. Clark stood up to leave, suddenly spinning into the suit. She couldn’t help but admit that it was impressive. She stood and followed him to the window. He turned to look at her before departing. “Goodnight, Lois,” he said as he reached out to touch her cheek gently.
“Goodnight, Clark,” she replied softly. He lifted off and flew out the window, traveling too fast for her to watch him as he crossed the night’s sky.
********
He landed on his balcony and made his way inside, trying not to track mud all across the apartment. Another suit completely ruined. He peeled it off and stepped under the stream of hot water. Not long after he’d left Lois, torrential rains in Mexico had triggered a series of devastating mudslides. He’d spent the last two days rescuing the stranded and diverting rivers of mud away from vulnerable homes and vital roads.
He’d been too late to save some people. He’d tried to keep his composure as he completed the task of finding the victims under the horrible blanket of earth and mud. But every body he uncovered was someone’s mother or son or husband or wife. They had family members searching frantically for them. And in just one horrible moment, they would tumble out of panic and anxiety into an earth shattering despair. He would see them, in that split second before their world was about to be torn apart, and he knew the words he was about to say were going to destroy whatever hope they had and strangle them with grief.
It never got any easier. He’d been doing this for long months now and getting there too late, having to begin a sentence with ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ watching the horrible realization of death settle onto someone’s face, still destroyed him, little by little. He’d done everything he could, he reminded himself. The mudslides had struck without warning. Even if he’d been just floating over the storms, waiting in case something might happen, he still wouldn’t have been able to save everyone.
Grateful to be clean again at last, he stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. He noticed the little light on his answering machine blinking and padded across the apartment, still wet, to check the message.
<<Clark, it’s me. I’ve been watching the news and I’m worried. Please come over when you get this.>>
He spun into a clean suit and flew back out the window into the night’s sky. Bare moments later, he landed in Lois’s living room. She startled him by throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him fiercely.
“Are you okay?” he asked, hugging her back.
“I’m fine,” she insisted. “I was worried about you. I saw you on the news. You looked like you could use a friend.”
“You have no idea,” he admitted, his voice gruff. Clark closed his eyes and relished the feeling of holding her in his arms. The MetU sweatshirt she wore practically engulfed her, making her look tiny. Yet somehow, she could wrap her arms around him and protect him from the things in this world that were too big for him to face. He breathed deeply the smell of her skin, trying to will the images of the last few days out of his mind.
********
Lois sat down beside him on the couch, her leg touching his. Neither said a word. Hesitantly, he reached for her hand. Just a few days earlier, this wouldn’t have been an act of courage. She slipped her hand into his much larger one. They sat in silence for a long while. She meant what she’d said about him looking like he could use a friend. The circle of people he could turn to at times like this was so very small and she’d wondered if he would call his parents in the middle of the night to burden them with something like this. It suddenly didn’t matter that she was still angry with him. He’d been there for her at her lowest point; the least she could do was keep being his friend. Lois closed her eyes, feeling the way his body moved ever so slightly with each deep breath. Finally, she looked up at him to find him watching her, his dark eyes unreadable.
“I love you,” he whispered. “I’m sorry for how everything turned out…” he began. Lois shook her head and pressed a finger against his lips.
“You don’t need to explain,” she replied. “I think I understand now what you meant. About this being a burden.”
“Most days, being Superman is pretty much the greatest thing in the world,” he said, his tone almost wistful. But not on days like today, she thought silently. It didn’t matter how many people he’d saved. How many people were alive because he had been there to help. All he thought about were the people he hadn’t saved. She could tell, just by the anguished look in his eyes.
“It was awful,” he said, almost too softly for her to hear. She squeezed his hand gently.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked nervously.
“Not yet,” he replied with a sad shake of his head. “If it’s okay, I just want to sit here with you for a while.”
She nodded, not trusting her own voice. Lois closed her eyes and let her head fall against his shoulder. He rested his head against hers, still holding her hand. His thumb traced absent patterns on her skin and she wondered at how such a feather light touch could feel so intense.
Uncertainty still roiled inside her. How was it that she couldn’t walk away from him? He had lied to her. He had told her to trust him and she had. She’d trusted him so completely. All of her experiences should have been warning enough, but no, her stupid heart had decided to take a flying leap with him.
Except he could fly and she couldn’t. So guess who’d ended up dashed on the rocks below, shattered into a million little bits? But as she turned to look at him, she could tell that tonight, he was the one holding together all the countless shards and fragments of himself. Here he was, as wounded and vulnerable as a man could be.
And yet he chose to be with her.
That was, in essence, what trust was, wasn’t it? The knowledge that there was someone you could be around without the walls and the façades. He usually wore the suit like it was armor. With his stern expressions and arms folded across his chest, he created even more distance between himself and the world. But that was all gone now. He wasn’t using the suit to keep her away.
“When I became Superman, I had no idea what I was doing,” he said, his voice practically shaking. “I’d make mistakes, or I’d get to a rescue too late. I thought it would get easier, but so far, it hasn’t. Sometimes, even when I don’t do anything wrong, there’s just nothing I can do. Choosing which cries for help to answer, whom to help first…”
She wondered how he could stand it. “I hate that it was so hard for you.”
Lois felt him shrug beside her. “What choice did I have?” he asked rhetorically. “I have these powers and I spent so long hiding them, even though I could have helped so many people. Every day I wasn’t Superman, people died. People who didn’t have to.”
“You hid to protect your family. You help because it’s who you are. You just needed time to reconcile the two,” she said, as much explaining it to herself as she was to him.
“Thank you,” he said, raising her hand to his lips. “For always making me feel good about Superman. I couldn’t have figured out how to be him without you.”
She shook her head, taken aback, really, at how much credit he was laying at her feet. “Everything good about Superman is there because of who you are. How much you care.”
It hadn’t been that long ago—mere weeks, really—that Lois Lane had secretly dreamed of being the person who took care of Superman. Who comforted him when the burdens of being a hero were too much. How naïve she had been. How completely wrapped up in hero-worship. It wasn’t possible to be the person he relied on without sharing in the weight of his pain. She hadn’t understood that then. She did now.
********
She awoke, surprised to find herself in bed. The last thing she could remember was sitting beside Clark in her darkened living room. After a long while, he’d begun to doze off. She must have fallen asleep, too. So how had she ended up in bed? Was he still there? She turned onto her side. A single red rose and a folded piece of paper lay on the other pillow. Lois sat up, taking the note in her hands. She unfolded the paper.
Thank you. For everything.
CK
A faint smile tugged at the corners of her lips. He had penmanship that would make a sixth grade teacher proud. As she gently lifted the rose from the pillow, she wondered—not for the first time—how they’d gotten here. If only he’d told her the truth before. But even though she couldn’t dissect his actions without coming to the conclusion that he’d been a complete dolt, she could no longer deny the simple fact that he had wanted to tell her his secret, even if he had waited too long.
He’d spent twenty eight years keeping people away. And in one incredible moment, he’d broken all of his own rules. He’d shared with her something he’d never allowed himself to experience. Not because he lacked self control. And not because he was like other men, with only one thing on his mind. He’d made love with her because he wanted her to be part of his life in a way no one else had been before.
She owed him a phone call. It seemed like forever ago when she’d promised she would call him and they would talk about where they might go from here.
********
He knocked on her front door, trying to swallow around the boulder lodged in his throat. He’d been anticipating and yet dreading this conversation all day. Desperately, he prayed she hadn’t asked him over to break his heart. After the previous night, he didn’t doubt that he could trust her with his secret, no matter what happened. His fears were much more selfish than that – he wasn’t afraid that she’d expose him and put his parents in danger, he was afraid she’d tell him she didn’t want a relationship with him. Or worse, that she’d tell him that he’d betrayed her trust too badly for her to want a relationship with him.
“Hi Clark,” she said softly as she opened the door. She was dressed casually in a black t shirt and these old, worn out jeans that hugged her body in all of the right places and… dear god, he needed to pull himself together. Her heart was beating out a rapid rhythm. She was nervous. Or uncomfortable.
He was doomed.
“Hi Lois,” he managed.
“Come in.” She stepped to the side, allowing him to enter. She walked slowly toward the living room and he followed, trying not to look too glum.
“I’ve been thinking. About us,” she began. “I’m not sure you can understand how mad I was at you.”
Yep, utterly and hopelessly doomed.
He hung his head, glad that she was facing the other way. Suddenly, she spun around, crashing into him. Reflexively, he caught her, his hands on her arms, keeping her from losing her balance. Her eyes met his and for some reason, he couldn’t seem to let go of her. After a long, sheepish moment, he finally dropped his hands and she took a hesitant step backward, looking like she was trying to find her footing.
“But I don’t think you meant to hurt me,” she finished her previous thought.
“I swear I didn’t,” he agreed earnestly, wondering if there was anything he could do at this point to help his own cause.
“Just don’t do it again,” she whispered, her voice unsteady.
His arms were around her in an instant, enfolding her in his embrace. He felt her hug him back and he let out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding in. With one hand, he cradled the back of her head against his shoulder. He kissed the crown of her hair and closed his eyes.
********
Being in his arms felt so inexplicably right to her. She did the only thing that felt natural. She kissed him. Gently, hesitantly. He kissed her back, but drew away before she could deepen the kiss. He touched his forehead against hers and she delicately removed his glasses, placing them on the coffee table. He reached up with one hand to caress her cheek and she looped her arms around his neck, pulling him closer so she could kiss him again. Her lips parted under his and she buried her hands in his thick, dark hair. His tongue met hers and she sucked gently on his lower lip. He groaned against her mouth as he tore himself away. “Do you want to take things slowly?” he asked, panting for breath.
Perhaps she should have said yes. But in truth, she didn’t want to. Besides, it wasn’t like they could unwind the last two weeks and undo all of the startling revelations. She’d already taken the crazy, giant leap of faith with him once and she’d firmly decided to do it again. At the moment, all this talking meant that they weren’t kissing and that seemed…wrong. She closed her eyes and kissed him once more. “We can…do this…slowly…” she murmured against his skin as she trailed soft, open mouthed kisses along his neck.
“Oh god, Lois,” he whispered. She stood on her toes and heard him inhale sharply as she captured the soft lobe of his ear between her lips. His entire body seemed to tremble and she shivered in response, amazed that she could have that sort of effect on the Man of Steel. He swallowed roughly. “You’re sure you don’t want to slow things down?” he asked, his voice thick with desire.
“That depends. Are you keeping any other major secrets from me?” she whispered teasingly in his ear.
“I get my Chinese food from a place in Hunan and my croissants from a bakery in Aix en Provence,” he murmured.
“The Egyptian cotton sheets?”
“Egypt.”
“Anything else?” she asked, her lips inches from his.
“I buy your roses in Quito.” He inhaled sharply, his muscles tightening under her fingers as she trailed her hands along his sides.
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” he confirmed.
“Good. Then I’m sure,” she whispered. She felt his hand thread itself in her hair as he pressed the length of his body against hers. His lips brushed softly against her temple. “I’m going to make you take me to all those places,” she said dreamily.
“Any time you like,” he promised. “I want to show you the world, the way I see it,” he whispered in her ear.
She closed her eyes. She’d daydreamed about flying with Superman to all the places only he could go. “Sounds wonderful,” she murmured.
“I want to fly with you along the Great Wall,” he whispered as he kissed her cheek. “I want to walk through the ruins of Ephesus with you.” He kissed her neck. “I want to kiss you on the top of the Eiffel Tower.” He captured her lips in a fierce kiss. “And make love to you on a black sand beach in Costa Rica.” He sucked gently on the lobe of her ear before pulling back to look at her with passion darkened eyes. “And I want to watch the sunrise with you on this little island in the South Pacific that no other human being has ever set foot on before.” A ripple of pleasant tingles cascaded down her spine as she imagined the warm sand, his soft skin, his hands, his lips…
She shook her head in wonder. “Is that all?” she asked, her voice unsteady.
He looked at her with a straight face but a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Well, it’s a lot for one night, but if there’s something else you wanted to do, I’m sure we could work it in.”
Abruptly, he stepped away and opened the large window, allowing a sharp breeze to enter the apartment. Her jaw fell slack as she watched him spin in a colorful blur until finally Superman was standing in front of her. “Now?” she asked, flabbergasted.
“Right now,” he agreed, reaching out his hand to her. She took his outstretched hand. He pulled her into his arms, holding her tightly. Clark flashed her the sort of smile that made her heart beat just a little bit faster and then lifted her up in his arms. She closed her eyes and breathed in the clean scent of his skin as he floated them off the ground and flew through the window and into the night’s sky.
********
“Sun’s coming up,” he whispered to his lover, sleeping in his arms. Her lips curved into a slow smile before her eyes opened.
“Good morning,” she murmured.
He kissed her forehead. “Good morning,” he whispered in response. He pulled her into his lap as he sat up, adjusting the cape to keep them wrapped up in it. A soft breeze whispered through the trees and the sky slowly began to lighten. On the distant horizon, the first sliver of sunlight could be seen. They watched in silence as the sky turned from violet to orange and finally to a deep, azure blue. The clear water lapped the edge of the bay and the sand grew warm under the fine morning sun. Lois started to doze in his arms and he couldn’t help but smile. It had been an amazing night. Even better than he’d imagined it would be. He kissed her temple and let his head rest against hers.
True to his word, he’d answered her every question, describing how each power developed and when, telling her the little he knew about his birth parents and how they’d sent him to Earth to save him from a dying planet. It was easier than he’d imagined. Having her know these things about him just seemed *right.*
God, how he loved this woman. In less than two weeks, their relationship had gone through every upheaval imaginable. It was almost too much for him to keep up with. But now, he hoped they could build something real—something permanent—together. It was, of course, much too soon to talk about such things, but he didn’t doubt that Lois was the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with. He was thankful for the fact that he no longer had to lie to her. Or pretend to be something he wasn’t.
It was probably time for him to fly them home, he mused, sad that the night had to end. It was afternoon in Metropolis, and their enforced vacation was coming to a close.
********
“I can’t believe I slept through the entire flight,” she murmured as he set her gently on her feet. “I love flying with you.”
“I love flying with you,” he replied simply.
She stood on her toes to kiss him. “This was amazing,” she said.
“We’ll do it again whenever you like,” he promised.
She kissed him again. A long, slow, wonderful kiss that made him wrap his arms around her and float them off the ground. “I’m going to hold you to that,” she whispered against his lips.
“You’d better.” He set her back down again, a little reluctantly. “Sleep well,” he said softly as he kissed her forehead. “I love you.”
“Goodnight, Clark,” she whispered back.
********
Even before she was awake, she reached for him. The cool pillow beside her was still indented as a reminder that he’d lain there during the night. But he was most definitely not there now. She opened her eyes, scanning the still dark room for him. A strange sense of loneliness settled over her. She had only been aware of his absence for a few moments and she was already wondering how she was going to get back to sleep without him. Their relationship was still so raw and young, so how was it that she slept so much better when he was there? And it wasn’t that she didn’t like sleeping alone. Frankly, she’d always preferred having her own space. Except when it came to Clark.
They’d only been back at the Planet a few days, but they’d fallen back into the comfortable routine of their partnership, much to Perry’s relief. And even though they spent all day together, they were working their way toward an unstated understanding that their evenings would be spent together too, Superman’s work notwithstanding.
She hated waking up like this, but this was going to be only the first in a long series of mornings when she’d wake up alone. Being with Clark guaranteed that. Lois didn’t even notice that she was thinking about their relationship as a permanent thing. That simple but monumental assumption had crept up on her, catching her unawares. There was no big epiphany moment. Nothing earth shattering to demarcate the radical change in the way that “their future” and “her future” had melded and merged into a singular concept. She just knew that she was happier with him than she was without him. And the longer she knew him, the stronger that feeling of happiness was.
Closing her eyes, she fell back against the pillow. Dawn was still a ways away and she could have used the sleep. So why was it that all she could think about was the empty space beside her, where her lover had lain?
********
He stepped off the elevators and began looking for her immediately. An emergency had called him away in the early hours of the morning. By the time he was done helping with the chemical spill, she’d already left for work. It had taken him three showers to get the smell of sulfur out of his hair and skin, but at least he could use the story as an excuse for his tardiness.
Clark walked to his desk, frowning slightly in puzzlement. A large bouquet of yellow roses with red tips sat in a vase on his desk. He found the small envelope half hidden among the flowers and opened it.
I think you know what these are for.
LL
He chewed his lip. Yellow roses with red tips were for friendship that grew into love.
Did she mean that…
Clark suddenly realized that he could hear her heartbeat. He turned around to find her standing behind him. She nodded and gave him a tremulous smile. Clark pulled her into his arms. “I love you,” she whispered. He responded by kissing her as though the whole newsroom wasn’t watching.
“Way to go, CK!” he could hear Jimmy yell.
“Oh good lord,” Cat muttered under her breath.
A dozen other cheers and whistles blended together to drown out the newsroom’s usually din. Reluctantly, Clark pulled away from her. He smiled at the somewhat stunned look in her eyes.
“Hey, hey, hey! Is this a newsroom or Studio 54?!” Perry demanded from the doorway to his office. But as the old editor retired back into his office, Clark could hear him laugh and mutter, “it’s about damn time, son.”
He smiled at Lois and reached out to touch her cheek. “I love you, too,” he said softly. She pulled him closer and he savored the feeling of holding her, totally oblivious to the eyes focused on them and the sounds in the background of ringing phones and news reports on television monitors. His world shrunk down until there was nothing in it except the woman in his arms.
