From Part 19 ...
Kal smiled - full of his love and support. “I understand that you’re shaken, Lois, but the important things have not changed.”
Lois tried to return his smile. “What’s important?” She knew, but she needed the reassurance of hearing him say it.
“There are only three things that are important,” Kal said.
“And they are?”
“You ... me ... and us being together. Nothing else matters.”
“Thank you.”
Kal leant across the bed and picked up her letter. He handed it to her. “You said you would read this.”
Lois took it, but her lingering tears blurred the words. It didn’t matter. She had no intention of reading it to him.
Not yet, anyway.
“Dear Kal,” she said, pretending to read from her letter. “Would you please ask me to marry you again? Because my answer has changed.”
Part 20
Lois glanced up from her letter.
Kal stared at her, eyes alight, mouth curved into the most seductive grin she had ever seen – its power enhanced immeasurably by his complete ignorance of its potency. His chin sat in the cleft of his hand, thumb along one tantalising jaw-line, fingers clustered around the other.
He showed no inclination to move any time soon.
“Did ... did you understand what I said?” Lois asked hesitantly.
His grin widened. “I understood,” he confirmed.
“Are you going to ask?”
“Absolutely,” he said with rolling emphasis. “I’m just taking a few moments to enjoy what is inside me. I have never felt this good. Never.”
Again, Lois felt the tug of sadness at all he had missed.
Kal dropped his hand from his face and straightened against the bed-head. “Lois, I understand why you wouldn’t agree to marry me ... and I know we have to work out many things ... but please know that even if you say ‘yes’ to my question, I will never force you into anything you aren’t comfortable with.”
“I know that.”
“Is asking someone to marry you done a particular way on Earth?”
“Sometimes ... but I’d like you to do it just the way you want to.”
Kal let out a big, delighted breath. He took her hand. He examined it for a moment. He slid his fingers along the sensitive skin on the back of her hand. He raised her hand to his mouth and dropped a petal of a kiss on it.
“Lois ...” He stopped, gulped, crashed into her eyes and broke into a nervous grin. “This is the eighth time I’ve done this,” he said. “I should know what to do by now.”
“Just do what is in your heart.”
He looked down to her hand. Then he carefully folded it into a fist and lifted it level with her chest. His right fist clenched and aligned with hers. “I want us to do the greeting sign,” he said. “One clenched fist signifies the superior person, but a clenched fist from both sides signifies absolute equality, mutual respect and everlasting good will.”
Lois felt a tear escape and stipple down her cheek.
“Ready?” Kal asked.
She nodded.
He nodded.
Their fists thudded into their chests with soft harmony. In Kal’s unwavering eyes, Lois could see the gravity and the significance of this action. “Have you ever done that before?” she asked. “With clenched fists from both people?”
“No.” His hand then reached forward, palm up and she put her hand in the ampleness of his. “The notion of superiority sits uncomfortably with me,” Kal said. “I believe that if one person is superior to another, it should be because of choices and deeds, not because of the accident of birth. But, from the first moment I can remember, I was told that I am superior to all other Kryptonians. They accept it ... they *expect* it ... and I was too occupied with everything else to challenge it ... so I went along with it.”
“Until?”
“Until I met you.”
“My culture touts the ideal that all people are born equal.”
“That is a very good ideal,” Kal said. “But it is not the Kryptonian way.” He continued caressing her hand. “With you it is different ... *you* are different.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“That is a wonderful thing. The best thing.” Kal smiled. “Lois, I love you,” he said. “Without you, I wouldn’t even know of love. With you, my heart is full of love. I know there will never be a single moment that I will not love you.” He smiled, a little hesitantly. “Will you marry me?”
Lois’s smile was carried on a tremulous breath. “Yes, Kal,” she said. “I will marry you.”
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The jubilation surging through Kal was more than anything he could have imagined. He had allowed himself to dream of Lois promising to marry him, but he had not been able to conjure anything close to the whirlwind of excitement erupting inside him. He leant forward and kissed her mouth. He wondered if he should thank her. He didn’t - it seemed too hopelessly inadequate. “What happens now?” he asked.
“What would you like to do?”
“I would like you to read the rest of your letter to me.”
She grinned. “It didn’t actually say the bit about you asking me to marry you again.”
“It didn’t?”
“No.”
“Was that a joke?”
“Not a joke exactly,” Lois said. “More an impulsive moment.”
“If I were an Earth man, would I understand why you changed your mind about marrying me?”
“Probably not.”
Kal grinned. “That’s good, then.”
With a smile that splashed further fuel onto the fire raging inside him, Lois dropped her eyes to the paper and began to read. “Dear Kal, I love you. I love you so much, I cannot imagine living without you.”
“I could not live without you,” Kal declared with certainty.
She smiled, even as her eyes again sought her written words. “Right now, I should be bursting with joy. I should be so excited, so elated ... because, this morning, the man I love asked me to marry him.”
“Do young Earth women think about the time when someone asks to marry them?”
Lois thought for a moment. “Most do.”
“Did you?”
“Yes,” Lois said very quietly.
“I’m sorry if my asking disappointed you ... I didn’t know what you expected.” Kal could see the shimmer of her tears and knew he would never tire of watching her feelings float across her face. He realised these were good tears – they told him she hadn’t been disappointed at all.
“I never imagined a more beautiful proposal,” Lois said as her hand grazed down his cheek. Her attention again swung to her letter. “This morning, the man I love asked me to marry him ... the man I trust totally because I have seen the incorruptible honesty of his heart.”
A new feeling was added to the flurry inside Kal - a steadying stream of staunch satisfaction that Lois believed him. Believed *in* him. He’d felt like this only once before – when the globe had conveyed the words of his father on the morning of his Investiture.
Lois looked at him. “The next bit of the letter is sad.”
“I want to hear it,” Kal said eagerly. “I want to know everything you feel – even when it isn’t good.”
Her eyes dropped to the paper again. “Yet, instead of joy, I feel only pain and misery. I wish things were different for us, Kal. I wish I could say ‘yes’ to your proposal. I imagine how it would feel to agree to marry you and see your smile burst with happiness.”
“I thought you didn’t want to marry me,” Kal said. “It felt like you would never want to marry me.”
Her hand dallied across his face. “I *wanted* to marry you, Kal,” she said. “I just couldn’t get past you already being married.”
Kal didn’t understand. “But ... I’m *still* married to Za,” he said. “What has changed?”
“Now I know about your past ... about the childhood you didn’t have ... now I understand so much more about you ... about your life and all the things that were taken from you. And I felt so strongly that I wanted to make up for some of those things ... and then I realised I could.”
Kal stared at her, as the whirlpool inside him spiralled faster and faster, stealing his breath. Lois – alien woman from another planet – understood him. He had never had that feeling before.
But it was more than that. Having understood him, she still loved him. She understood his emptiness and wanted to fill him. She understood his lostness and wanted to find him.
She had already done both.
But she wanted to keep on giving to him. “I ... you ... I never ...” Kal gave up trying to find the words that could do any sort of justice to what he was feeling. He lifted her hand and tenderly kissed it, hoping Lois would understand.
She did. She smiled.
“We need to talk through exactly what our marriage will entail,” Lois said. “By saying yes to you, I am saying that I want to see what our marriage can be.”
“It can be wonderful.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “But it won’t be like an Earth marriage.”
“Why not?”
“Because you are already married to Za.”
“What will happen if we can’t work out something we both want?”
“Remember what you said after I told you I’d seen through the door?” Lois asked. “About how only three things mattered?”
“Yes – you, me and being together.”
“They’re still the only three things that matter,” she said. “Together we will work out a way for us to married.”
Her certainty calmed his inner commotion – leaving a residue of wonderful contentment. “Is there more of your letter?”
Lois nodded. “I imagine how it would feel to agree to marry you and see your smile burst with happiness.” She stopped, although continued staring at the paper. When she looked up, her face was tinged the most delightful pink. “I wrote the next bit thinking you would never read it.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
She smiled – a smile that felt like a hug. “But you want me to, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
She laughed and resumed reading. “I guess no one has ever told you that your smile is spectacular ... it is Kal ... it never fails to touch me inside.”
That was a new concept – but so obvious, Kal wasn’t sure why he had not thought of it before. “You like my smile?”
“Very much.”
“I like your smile," he said. "The first time you did it, it was so new ... so amazing … and all I wanted was for you to do it again.”
“How many people have you seen smile, Kal?” Lois asked.
“One.”
“Then you’re going to have to bow to my greater knowledge and believe me when I tell you that I have seen a million smiles and there isn’t one that comes anywhere near yours.”
Kal didn’t know what to say. So he did the only thing possible – smiled for her – for the amazing woman who had brought light to his dark world.
She smiled back ... with her mouth and her lovely brown eyes ... and he could see her happiness.
And that was the best feeling he’d ever had – better even than his own happiness.
Again, Lois looked at the paper in her hand. “I promised you I won’t leave you and I know I won’t. I know, that in the unlikely event of there ever being a way for me to return home, I would not take it. I would not leave you, Kal. I *could* not leave you.”
Kal felt the moisture push against his eye lids. He needed to touch her. His hand found its way to her face and brushed back her hair, simply for the pleasure of skimming across her skin. “I was so afraid your people would come,” he said. “I was so afraid they would come and take you away from me.”
Lois copied his movement – her fingers trailing down his face. “I doubt they will ever come, Kal – as far as I know, Earth scientists don’t even know about Planet New Krypton. But even if they do – it won’t change that I want to be with you.”
His moisture erupted and he felt it carve a trail down his face. Lois smiled and brushed her hand through his dampness. “Do Earth men have tears?” Kal asked.
“The best ones do,” Lois said. “The ones who are strong enough to allow their emotions to show.”
“I can’t imagine a world where everyone laughs and smiles and has tears.”
“I couldn’t have imagined a world where they don’t.”
“You will never have to,” Kal said. “Wherever you are, there will be smiles and laughter … because of you.”
Now her tears had overflowed too. He pulled her close against his chest, loving her warm body against his. She backed away, smiling, although her cheeks were still damp. “Do you want to hear the rest of the letter?”
“Yes.”
“I could not leave you … because you are the man I have been looking for my whole life. For so long, I thought I was hopelessly inept at the whole relationship thing. Only now do I realise that I was looking on the wrong planet.”
Kal felt something stirring inside him. Something vibrant and demanding. Something that wanted release. But he didn’t know how to grant that release. “Was that a joke?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“But not everyone knows it is true.”
“It was a joke because it is ridiculous to think that a woman would need to look on another planet to find the man she loves.”
He would think about that. “Keep reading,” Kal asked. “Please?”
Again, her eyes lowered. “I love your heart. I love your openness and the beautiful simplicity you bring to everything you do. I trust you. I wish I could say ‘yes’ to you, Kal.”
“I was wishing that too,” he said ruefully.
Her hand was on his face again. Her touch was so incredible. Every time, he was surprised by how good it felt when her skin touched his. “I’m sorry, Kal,” Lois said. “I could see you were upset, but I couldn’t commit to something as big as marriage without taking the time to think about it.”
“I understand now that it was unthinking to ask you then … and to keep on asking you. I understand now that asking you to marry me wasn’t the right thing to do because I am married to Za. But when you explained about love and marriage - for the first time, I could see exactly what I wanted. It was as if there had been a big cloud around me and it suddenly lifted just like the sunny days in Ard’s pictures and I could see clearly and I knew I wanted to marry you, so I just asked without even thinking about you.” He stopped. “I’m sorry, Lois.”
“I understand why you asked,” she said. “I even understand why you asked seven times.” She grinned and lightly punched his arm. “Seven proposals in ten minutes … wow!”
He knew Lois wasn’t being serious. Maybe this was another sort of joke.
Still smiling, she glanced down at her letter and her smile faded. She didn’t continue.
“Is this another bit you thought would be private?” Kal asked.
“Yes.”
“You don’t have to read it to me,” he told her. “I’m very glad for what you have read to me.”
She still hesitated. Then, with a small smile, she said, “I’ll read it to you, Kal. I don’t want any secrets between us.”
“Thank you.”
She took a big breath. “I wish I could hold you. I wish I could hold you so tightly and assure you we will find a way out of this and tell you that together, we are more than enough.”
Her words ricocheted around his mind.
Together, we are more than enough.
“I like how you said that, Lois,” Kal said. “I like it so much. Together, we are more than enough.” He felt the tug of an impossible choice inside him – he wanted to kiss her … but he so wanted to continue talking with her.
“We will find a way for us to be married,” Lois said. “I’m not sure how, but we will find a way that makes both of us happy.”
“Because, together, we are more than enough.”
She smiled and her eyes returned to her paper and again, she paused. “But if I hold you, Kal … everything is going to get so much more complicated. Please don’t think I don’t want to hold you, my love. I ache to hold you … but for both of us … I can’t.”
She finished reading and slowly looked up and into his eyes, waiting for him to respond.
He couldn’t – he had too many half-formed thoughts struggling to find comprehension. She *had* wanted to hold him. But she felt she couldn’t. Instinctively, he’d known that. What he hadn’t known ... still didn’t know ... was why.
Although, from somewhere deep in his subconsciousness came the thought that it had something to do with the diagram he had seen in the Law.
Did it? Could it? Could it be that Lois felt that if she held him, they would do that together? But if that was true … that had to mean she didn’t want to do that with him.
He had to know.
He had to ask.
But how?
“I don’t understand why … you couldn’t hold me … even though you wanted to.”
Now he’d made her uncomfortable.
He smiled, trying to ease her discomfort. “Remember, Lois, together, we are more than enough.”
She took his hand with a small smile. “The physical contact you read about? The physical contact between a man and a woman?”
“Yes.”
“Holding, hugging, kissing … that is the beginning … the physical contact … that is the finishing.”
All Kal’s good feelings were washed away with a sickening wave of dismay. “You thought that if you held me, I would force you to do something you didn’t want to do? Is that why you felt you couldn’t hold me?”
“No!” Lois shook her head vigorously. “No, Kal. I know you would never force me to do that.”
“Then why?”
“I wasn’t sure *I* would be able to stop.”
Kal felt his mouth drop open. Somewhere in Lois’s words was the suggestion that she *wanted* the physical contact with him. But didn’t want it. That thought snapped shut his mouth. “Have you thought about doing that with me?” he asked ... because he just had to know.
“Yes.”
Thought about it and dreaded it … or thought about it and hoped for it? How could he ask *that* question?
“I am very attracted to you, Kal,” Lois said. “As I've said, I love your heart, but it is more than that. I am attracted to your body. I want to get closer to you.”
Kal’s throat had parched. “You … w…” His voice trailed away, lost in the desert of his mouth. He swallowed desperately. “You want to do that with me?”
She nodded. “Too much.”
“Too much?” he said, because copying her words didn’t require a functioning brain.
“Yes. But I don’t know if it is a good idea.”
“Why?”
“Because a relationship changes when you do that,” Lois said. “It’s like it moves into a new phase and there can be no going back.”
“I wouldn’t want to go back,” Kal said with certainty.
Her smile surfaced for a second.
“Is it something married people do?” Kal asked.
“Yes.”
“So, once we are married …”
She smiled. “Once we are married, we will do that,” she said.
Kal had wanted Lois to marry him. He’d wanted it so desperately, he had asked her seven times.
He had wanted it so much, he had wondered how he could survive if Lois wouldn’t marry him.
But he hadn’t even understood the fullness of what he’d been asking.
But now … he did.
And his mind was blown to tiny, little pieces.
*Now* he was wondering how he was going to survive waiting.
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Lois watched the array of emotions cross Kal’s face. She could see them so clearly – wonderment, shock, desire, and yet more wonderment.
She cleared her throat and deliberately turned her mind away from the path it wanted to explore and forced it back to her letter. “But if I hold you, Kal, everything is going to get so much more complicated. Please don’t think I don’t want to hold you, my love. I ache to hold you – but for both of us – I can’t.”
She met Kal’s eyes. “I understand why,” he said quietly. “*Now* I understand why.”
“I will love you always, Kal,” Lois finished. She put down the paper.
“Thank you, Lois,” Kal said. “That is such a beautiful letter. I will want to read it again and again. Would you mind if I keep it? So that one day I can read it for myself?”
She offered it to him and Kal folded it with the utmost care and placed it in the pocket of his jacket.
He hesitated. “Lois? About the physical contact?”
“Uhm.”
“I’d still like to hug you and kiss you ... and I know you said that hugging and kissing is just the beginning ... but I want you to know that if hugging and kissing is all right with you ... I won’t ever let it go any further than that ... not until we are married.”
Apparently ... they were *waiting*.
“And even after we are married,” Kal continued. “I would never do it unless you wanted me to.”
Lois smiled. “I know that, Kal.”
He took her hand in his. “Thank you for letting me see inside you – letting me see what you are thinking. I feel so honoured that you would do that.”
“You were very open with me too, Kal,” Lois said. “I appreciate that you told me something you had never told anyone else.”
“There has never been anyone like you in my life.”
Lois smiled. That was true for both of them.
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Kal leant back against the bed-head, supremely content to enjoy the silence and the feel of Lois’s body pressed into his side.
He could have stayed just like this the entire night.
But it was late. Very late. “Lois?” he said quietly.
“Yes.”
“I should take you back to your room now. It is past when the evening usually ends.”
“I don’t want to move,” she said.
“I don’t want to either,” Kal agreed. He kissed the top of her head and unravelled from her. Standing, he offered her his hand.
She stood and grinned at him. “Do your plans stop now I’ve agreed to marry you?”
He grinned back. “Not at all. This is just the beginning.”
“I’m looking forward to your plans.”
“My next plan was for a morning walk tomorrow, but it is so late now, I think we should postpone it for a day.”
“Where had you planned to take me?”
“I thought I’d show you the cliffs to the east of New Krypton.”
“I’d like that.” Lois rested her hand on his chest. Kal loved the familiarity of her touch – it accentuated the bond between them. “What do you have to do tomorrow?” she asked.
“We have another Water Committee meeting,” Kal replied. “The interruption tonight was to inform me that one of the drills is not working. We need to reconsider our decision to continue drilling.”
“Has Nor opposed the drilling?”
“No, he has been supportive.” Kal took her hand. “Would you like me to kiss you goodnight here? Or at your room?”
“Both,” she said with a grin.
Kal felt the beginnings of his answering smile – but it didn’t have the time to develop before his mouth became fully occupied with a lingering, moving kiss.
As he kissed her, Kal understood – fully understood – why Lois had wanted to hold him, but felt she couldn’t. Kissing her, kissing her knowing it was the beginning of so much more, was like standing very close to a raging fire. It warmed you ... wonderfully ... but you knew that eventually, you had to move away, or you would get burned.
Kal didn’t want to move away.
He wanted to be burned.
But he couldn’t do that until he knew exactly what he could offer Lois in marriage. In his heart, he was sure she would always be the only woman he would love. But she deserved more than that ... so much more than that.
Kal brought their kiss to completion and looked down into Lois’s eyes – seeing his reluctance mirrored in her lovely brown eyes. “I have free time tomorrow afternoon,” he said. “Could we meet and begin to plan our marriage?”
“Yes. I would like that.”
“I want to marry you quickly,” he said. “Within days.”
She seemed a little surprised by that, but then smiled. “Good idea.”
“Once we are married, I won’t have to take you back to your room every night.”
She grinned – and it warmed him, as her smile always did. But this one brought more than warmth, it heated him – hot and fiery – and erupted the longing within him.
Resolutely, Kal took her hand and led her to the door of his room. “We *really* need to go.”
Her smile said she understood completely. “I know.”
At her door, Kal took Lois into his arms. “I don’t want to leave you,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
He kissed her, but drew back before it had deepened. "Good night, my Lois,” he said. “I want the night to hurry, because tomorrow I can be with you again.”
“Good night, my Kal,” she replied.
With a final kiss, Kal walked away from the Concubine Quarters, his anguish at leaving her mixing with his joy that very soon, this would no longer be required of him.
