He smiled. And suddenly, more than anything else, he wanted to touch her. He couldn't bring himself to do it. He couldn't force himself to lift his hand and reach for her arm. But he could remind her about the hair washing. "You said your offer is always open," he said.
She chuckled. "I'll get the water."
"Are you sure about this?" he asked.
"Absolutely," she said firmly.
"Is your ankle hurting?"
"No. It's fine."
"OK," Clark said, feeling dazed that this was actually going to happen. "You ... ah, get the water, and I'll move the mattress away from the wall."
Part 11
Lois stepped into Clark's room carrying the bowl of hot water.
He saw her and hurried over to take the bowl. His steps jarred. His eyes skimmed across her face without pausing to connect.
He was nervous.
"Wh...what do you want me to do?" he asked.
The little stumble in his words caught at her heart. He had qualms about this, but he was trying so hard to overcome them.
She wished he were more confident.
No, she didn't.
If he were more confident, more sure, less hesitant, he wouldn't be Clark.
His confidence would return slowly. And she intended to celebrate every tiny step forward.
"You could roll up the sleeping bag and put it in the bag, and we'll use it as support for your shoulders to raise your head off the ground," she said, trying to sound as if this was something she did every day.
Clark moved towards the Winnie the Pooh sleeping bag, and Lois slipped into the bathroom to collect a bundle of dry towels.
They met back at the mattress - him on one side, her on the other.
Uncertainty draped him like a heavy cape.
"Clark?" Lois said.
His eyes lifted to meet hers.
"There's so much about you that I respect," she said. "Right now, I'm in awe of your willingness to do this. If it were me, I don't think I'd ever let anyone touch me again."
His throat leapt, and his eyes dropped. She'd embarrassed him. But pleased him, too. "Thanks," he mumbled. "I'll lie on the concrete. You sit on the mattress."
"There's room for both of us," Lois insisted. She took the sleeping bag from him and placed it on the mattress.
Clark didn't move. If anything, he looked even more uncomfortable. "Do you want me to take off the shirt?" he asked falteringly.
"It's up to you," Lois said. "It might get a bit damp if you leave it on, but that's OK if you don't mind." She turned and walked away to gather the shampoo and conditioner, conscious that it would give him the chance to settle on the mattress without her hovering over him.
At the door, she bent low to pick up the bottles and peeked back to Clark.
He looked like he was being stretched between indecision and uncertainty. Perhaps she shouldn't have offered him a choice about his shirt. But it wasn't as if she hadn't seen him topless. Until yesterday, she hadn't seen him in a shirt.
Suddenly, she realised something. If he could heat a meal, he could dry a shirt.
Lois hastened to the mattress to rescue him. "A few splashes of water aren't going to matter," she said easily. "Leave your shirt on."
He sat down, looking about as awkward as it was possible to look.
Lois knelt behind him and wrapped the towel around his shoulders. She grasped the ends while she freed his hair and then positioned the rolled-up sleeping bag behind him. "Lie back," she directed.
"Lois," Clark said as he reclined. "If my hair is totally disgusting, you don't have to do this."
"It's fine now," Lois assured him. "And by the time I've finished with it, it will be totally cool."
He didn't smile. His fingers clutched at the towel.
"How about we set some guidelines?" she said in a chatty voice. She hurried on before he had the chance to answer. "You can stop this whenever you want to. We can stop and keep going later. Or we can stop, and I can go into the staffroom while you finish it."
His long hair hung over the sleeping bag like a bushy rug.
"If you want to, you can close your eyes," Lois said. "You don't have to talk. Just try to relax."
As Lois pushed the bowl towards his flowing hair, Clark suddenly lurched to a sitting position. "Lois ..." he grated. "I'm making such a mess of this."
She draped her hands on the edge of the bowl, and her fingers dangled in the water. "Are you worried about something specific?" she asked. "Or everything?"
Self-consciousness suppressed his attempt to smile. "Specifically, I'm worried that if I relax, I'll lift off the mattress and freak you out completely."
Lois nodded slowly as if considering that scenario. "Does it hurt you to ..." She raised one dripping hand from the water.
"No."
"Do it now," she suggested. "Let's both get over being freaked out, and then we can wash your hair."
He slowly lifted from the mattress and hovered about a foot in the air. He gazed at her, awaiting her verdict.
Lois pinned her jaw together and nodded. "OK," she said casually. "We both survived." She grinned at him. "Now, Clark, will you *please* just lie on that mattress, and let me get started?"
One clenched fist opened, and his hand covered his mouth - thumb on one cheek, fingers on the other - as he slowly dropped back to the mattress. Above his beard, his eyes shimmered with amused relief.
"I can see that you're smiling," Lois told him. "You can't hide as easily as that."
He removed his hand, and they grinned at each other.
"We should get started," Lois said. "Lie down - or I am going to push you down."
Her threat widened Clark's smile, but he obediently turned around and settled into position on the sleeping bag.
Lois lifted the hanging sheet of his hair and slid the bowl under it. She plunged her hands into the warm water, wet the washcloth, and wrung it out loosely.
"OK," she said. "I'm going to wet your hair."
She put the washcloth on his forehead. A rivulet of water broke free and trickled between his eyebrows and down his nose into his eye. Lois snatched the towel and used the corner of it to dab at his eye. "Ooops," she said. "Sorry."
He looked up at her. "It's OK."
"Here," she said, pushing the towel into his hand. "It might be better if you were armed in case of more leaks."
"Thanks," he said.
She used the side of her hand to sweep the water back from his forehead.
She'd touched him. Skin on skin contact. He seemed OK. That was one obstacle cleared.
Once his hair was thoroughly wet, Lois squirted the shampoo into her palm and applied it in creamy streaks. With feathery touches, she used her fingertips to disperse it and then scooped up some water from the bowl and tipped it on his hair to increase the lather.
Her fingers dived into his foaming hair, and she began a leisurely massage of his scalp.
Clark's eyes had closed. The towel was threaded loosely though his sprawled fingers. Lois doubted he was asleep, but he *seemed* to have quit obsessing and become relaxed enough that he could enjoy this.
She felt a little spurt of satisfaction. This had been a risk ... but, so far, it appeared to be working.
Her eyes coasted the length of his body. His feet were quite large, and his ankles sharply defined. His lower legs were covered in a thin sprinkling of dark hair.
Lois cupped her hands and scooped up some water. When she released it, a stream of bubbles flowed into the bowl. She reloaded with a second dose of shampoo and continued her slow dance through his hair.
Clark's hands lay across his chest. They were large ... definitively masculine ... with long fingers. Her eyes fixed on the thumb of his right hand.
The thumb that had caressed her ankle.
Her *ankle*.
It had been one of the most sensual acts she had ever experienced.
The memory had taken up residence in the forefront of her mind. She could still see his thumb gliding over her skin. She could still feel his touch.
It was so soft ... so ...
She gulped.
So loving.
Her fingers froze. Lois forced them to regain their tempo and glanced to Clark's face to see if he had noticed.
His eyes were still closed - his face still impassive.
Lois stared ahead at the wall and concentrated on keeping the momentous nature of her thoughts from playing out in her fingers.
This man.
Clark.
It was completely inappropriate, but she was attracted to him.
Really, really attracted to him.
It was wrong on so many levels.
He was way too old for her.
He was a prisoner.
Her job was to guard him.
He was damaged. Hurt. Broken.
He was strong.
And kind.
And gentle.
And steadfast.
And trustworthy.
An array of paths rolled out before her, all enticing her forward into places she shouldn't go - even in the privacy of her mind.
If ... and that was the biggest 'if' of her life ... if anything like that were to happen, it couldn't happen until they were out of this cell.
She was the guard; he was the prisoner. While that situation continued, she couldn't even contemplate the slightest hint of anything like that between them.
And that was a good thing.
That was the boundary she needed to curb her impetuosity.
For all his immense strength, he was the vulnerable one here. He was the one most likely to get hurt.
He was the one whose future was shrouded in dark uncertainty.
Getting him out of the cell was not going to be the end but the beginning. Once he was on the outside, he would face the enormous task of readjustment. How much of his old life was redeemable?
There were still so many questions about his parents.
Did he have other family?
Friends?
Or had being an alien meant that he'd lived a life set apart?
Did he have a career?
Would it be possible to return to that career?
Was there anything in his old life that he could pick up again?
Or would he have to start everything anew?
All of those questions were immaterial if the price of freedom was a life of being hunted and hated.
Aww, Clark, she thought.
At least in the cell, the future had been certain. Horrible, but certain. Once he was out, it all became horribly uncertain.
And once he was out, would he want to be with her?
If he could ever re-establish any sort of life, would she just be a terrible reminder of things that he would want to forget?
Lois scooped up the water again and allowed it to drizzle slowly into his hair.
She couldn't stop what she had started. She had to keep going. She had pushed him into this. She had insisted. She couldn't let her silliness adversely affect him.
And it *was* silliness.
Mentally, she stepped away, searching for perspective.
She was vulnerable, too.
She was broken, and grieving, and insecure.
And then she'd met Clark. It was so obvious that she should have expected it.
And guarded against it.
But who would have expected that an alien could be so understanding? Supportive? Comforting?
Who would have thought that a man who had been imprisoned for seven years could have anything left to give to someone else?
Lois put a generous amount of the conditioner on her palm, lifted it to her nose, and inhaled. It had a lovely fresh scent of apples. She smeared it through the long strands of his hair and began to gently finger-comb his tangles.
She looked at him and discovered that his eyes were open. She leant forward and smiled calmly, fervently hoping that nothing of the passage of her thoughts had leaked onto her face. "Are you OK?"
"Yeah," he said.
She began to massage the conditioner into his scalp, and his eyes closed again.
After the tragedy of Linda's death, it was to be expected that she would gravitate towards the first person who made her feel needed.
Appreciated.
Linda's passing had left such a huge hole in Lois's life.
She had to be careful.
But she couldn't back away.
With any other man, she would back away. Make a few lame excuses and disentangle herself from the web before it closed around her too tightly.
But she couldn't do that to Clark.
She just couldn't.
She was the one who had initiated contact.
She was the one who had tried to gain his trust.
Her long finger-sweeps gradually restored order where there had been chaos. When she'd worked through every section, Lois wrung out his hair. "OK, Clark," she said, hoping her voice didn't betray the disconcerting ramblings of her mind. "Can you sit up, please?"
As he rose, she bundled his hair into the towel.
"I'll be back in a minute," she said. She stood and lifted the bowl of water.
"I can carry that to the door," Clark said.
"No," she said firmly. "You sit there. I'll do it."
He didn't argue.
As she refilled the bowl at the sink, Lois took a steadying breath.
If - however this ended - her heart got shattered, so be it. But she couldn't risk that happening to Clark.
She had to protect him.
She had to give him a chance at the best life possible. And if that didn't include being with her, she would accept that.
For now, she wouldn't even think about how much that was going to hurt.
When the bowl was full, Lois returned to the cell. She unwrapped his hair and replaced the damp towel with a dry one. He lay back again, and she doused his hair as it squeaked under her fingers.
She was done.
His hair was clean. All traces of the shampoo and conditioner had been rinsed away.
And yet ...
Lois put her hand on his forehead and gently slid her palm over his pulled-back hair.
With her fingers, she traced the path from his sideburns, around the top of his ears, and down towards his neck.
His eyes were open, and he was staring up at the ceiling.
Had he sensed anything of her thoughts?
Has he felt anything in her touch? Anything beyond the practicalities of washing his hair?
With a smothered sigh, Lois folded the towel across his forehead. "OK, Clark," she said brightly. "You can get up now."
He rose and turned to her with a hesitant smile. "That was ... good," he said shyly.
Maybe he had felt it, too.
This bond between them.
Or maybe he was just trying to come to terms with simple human contact.
Either way, now was not their time.
Perhaps it would never be their time.
"I'll get the chairs," Lois said.
Clark came with her to the doorway, but as always, he was careful not to cross into the staffroom. Lois checked her watch. It was just after half past seven. They still had plenty of time before Longford was due to arrive.
"It's OK," Clark said. "I'm listening."
"Can you hear really well?" she said. "Better than the rest of us?"
He nodded.
"That's good to know."
They moved two chairs into the cell, and Lois pushed a third into the doorway. Clark sat on the front chair, and Lois sat behind him. As she unrolled the towel from his shoulders, she realised that he probably hadn't sat on a chair in a long time.
It was another little step back to normalcy.
She squirted the de-tangling lotion into his hair and heard a slight murmur.
"What's up?" she asked.
Clark chuckled. "I wasn't expecting it to be so cold."
Lois hesitated, again fighting her impetuosity.
She lost.
She leant over his shoulder and held the bottle in front of him. "Warm it then," she challenged lightly.
He paused just long enough to incite panic within her, but then Lois felt warmth spread from the bottle and into her palm.
She laughed. "That would be very useful on a cold day." She squirted some more and began carefully combing through the thick dark hair. It was *thick*. Did aliens go bald? Clark certainly had a full head of hair.
"Lois?"
"Uhhmm?"
"Do you want to know how I heat things?"
"I'd love to know," she said. "But only if you want to tell me."
"I do it with my eyes."
She chuckled, and his shoulders pulled square.
"What's funny?" Clark asked quickly.
"Well, sometimes in romantic novels, the hero is said to have 'smouldering eyes'. I guess you really do."
His tension ebbed away, but he didn't comment.
"Do you use it to dry your clothes after you've washed them?"
"Yeah. When I can."
She kept working through strand after strand, releasing knot after knot.
"Lois?"
"Uhhmm?"
"I have a question that is definitely none of my business."
"OK."
"You don't mind me asking?"
No, Lois realised. Clark would never demand answers. "No," she said. "I don't mind."
He chuckled, but it sounded a little forced. "I figure that as you're holding huge clumps of my hair, you could just yank it hard, and that would tell me I'd crossed the line."
Lois smiled. There was something wonderfully encouraging in Clark using humour to ease them through difficult patches. "Ahh," she said. "But even if I yanked really hard, would that hurt you?"
"Not physically, no."
He'd said it in a quiet way that made her wish she could see his face - to know for sure that there *had* been underlying meaning to his words. There was, she decided. She was sure of it even without seeing his expression. He was acknowledging that she could hurt him.
Hurt him where he was truly vulnerable ... his emotions. His feelings. His heart.
She pushed away her ever-deepening feeling of connection with him. "Ask away," she said lightly.
"Whose hair did you wash?" Clark asked. "Who was it that you wanted to connect with?"
"My father."
"When you were a child?"
"No. Just a few days ago."
Clark didn't ask any more questions.
"He had a stroke," Lois continued. "He's in a nursing home now."
Clark spun his head to look at her. There it was again - such profound sympathy. "Aw, Lois," he said. "I'm so sorry."
"It happened a couple of months ago."
"Is it bad?"
"Paralysis on one side of his body. No speech. For a long time, I wasn't sure my dad was still actually there."
"It that why you took this job?"
She nodded. "I need to be near my dad for a while."
Clark gave her a little smile - fuelled not with humour, but with compassion. "He's lucky to have you."
"Thanks."
He paused, not saying anything, just waiting. He was so good at that - waiting, waiting without any pressure, willing to listen if she decided that she wanted to speak.
Lois reached for his hair again, and Clark turned around.
He'd pushed the door ajar with his question. Lois decided to prise it open a little further. "How did your parents explain suddenly having a child?"
"They said there had been a death in the family, and I was an orphan."
"So no one in Smallville knows the truth about you?"
"No," he said. "We were worried that ... you know."
Yes, she knew. And what *had* happened was probably all of their worst fears rolled into one appalling nightmare. "So as far as anyone knew, the Kents adopted you?"
"Yeah."
She wanted to ask if that meant everyone had assumed he was human, but that sounded too blunt, so she rephrased. "If you were just a baby when you arrived, how do you know so much about your planet? How do you know it was going to be destroyed? Did your biological parents leave notes with you?"
"Not notes. They put a globe in my spaceship. It gave me information."
"A globe?"
"Like a little model of a planet."
"Did Trask find it?"
"I don't think so," Clark said. "My father hid it in the loft of the barn."
"But Trask found your spaceship?"
"Yeah. Dad and Mom figured that if they found a spaceship on our farm it was going to be hard to explain. A globe - that most of the time did nothing extraordinary at all - was easier."
"How did the globe give you information?"
"It spoke to me. It was a recording of my parents telling me why they were sending me to a faraway planet."
"Did the globe translate? Or are you bilingual?"
He chuckled. "I can't speak Kryptonian."
"Was that the name of your planet? Krypton?"
"Yeah. And, yes, the globe translated my parents' messages into English."
That was *some* globe. "Was that hard? Discovering you hadn't come from this planet?"
Clark sighed. "Not really," he said. "By then, I already knew that I was very, very different. I knew that I didn't fit in here, and it was a relief to know why."
Yeah, it would have been.
And as for being different ... he was right. Clark Kent was very different. Different in ways that just kept sneaking into her heart. And each one drew her closer to him.
A few minutes later, Clark's hair lay in a long, smooth sheet down his back. Lois unhooked the towel from his shoulders and slipped it from under his hair. She rounded the chair and faced him.
"You look great," she said with a smile.
"It feels great," he said. "Thank you."
"I'll leave the comb and everything here for you to use."
"Thanks."
"Your shirt's a bit damp at the back." Lois crouched low to pick up the bowl, but movement from Clark caused her to look up.
He'd turned away and peeled the shirt over his head. His back was a broad expanse of pearly skin. Had it always been that muscular? She'd scrutinised it ... checking for wounds. Now that there were no injuries to distract her ...
Lois swallowed down the rough lump in her throat.
Clark spun around and caught her looking at him. "Leave that," he said with a nod to the bowl. "I'll carry it to the door."
"Thanks."
Clark pushed his hair off his shoulders, held up his shirt, and focussed his eyes. Seconds later, a little cloud of steam rose from it. Then, he turned it around for her to see.
It was dry.
Lois grinned.
Clark shrugged.
Lois's eyes felt like they had a weight pulling them downwards - down to his chest. She trained them on his hair, his face, but they slipped anyway.
Then she saw something.
There was a small protrusion just above his right collarbone - about half an inch across.
As he positioned the tee shirt to pull it over his head, Lois checked his other shoulder and saw that his left collarbone had no corresponding bulge.
Was it an old injury?
Or was it a physical difference between Kryptonians and humans?
Clark's head squeezed through the neck of the shirt, and he released his beard and hair from under the material. He smoothed down his hair at the back and smiled at her. "That feels fantastic. Thanks."
Inexplicitly, the tide of awkwardness flowed back now that the task of washing his hair no longer provided a distraction.
Lois pointed to the door. "We should get these chairs out of here," she said. "Longford will arrive soon."
Clark picked up both chairs and took them to the door. Once all three chairs were back in the staffroom, they faced each other across the doorway. She handed him the bowl filled with hot clean water.
"I won't go up to my office," she said. "Knock on the door when you're finished, and I'll collect the bowl."
Clark paused, looking at her with those brown eyes that had the power to melt every sinew in her body. "Thank you," he said. "For everything."
His words were soft, but their power was dynamic.
Lois managed a wobbly smile. She had to get out from under the warmth of his eyes. If she didn't, she was going to capitulate and reach up to hug him. She *couldn't* do that. That crossed just about every line of propriety that existed. And - more importantly - it would freak him out completely. "Good night, Clark," she said. "See you tomorrow."
He took the bowl and walked away.
Lois closed the door and locked it.
She sank into the nearest chair.
She had suggested that she wash his hair because she wanted to give him something he would enjoy. She wanted to find a non-threatening way to ease him back to being comfortable with human contact. In that, she figured she had succeeded. He had seemed relaxed. He seemed pleased that his hair was smooth and untangled.
But what she hadn't reckoned on was how much she would enjoy it. How much she would enjoy touching him. How much she would enjoy the physical contact.
How much it would bind them together.
How right it would feel to be with him.
She missed him.
He was on the other side of the door, and she'd spent most of the day with him, yet she already missed him.
When the time came for him to be free ... to begin the rest of his life ... she wanted to be with him.
More than anything, she wanted to be with Clark.
||_||
Clark emptied the bowl of water and knocked on the cell door. He heard her approaching footsteps, and the door opened.
He held the bowl towards her, knowing that he was never going to be able to express his appreciation for what she had done for him tonight. If he tried, it might sound as if he was only referring to her washing his hair.
But it was so much more than that.
Lois took the bowl.
She didn't seem to know what to say either.
"Goodnight, Lois," he said.
"Goodnight, Clark."
He turned and walked away from her.
Freeing her to return to her world.
Her world - where he would never be welcome.
