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Nightfall Honeymoon TOC

To Read Part 1G

Author’s Note: I have changed Nightfall’s position from the solar side of Earth to the dark side; therefore, making it impossible for it to have been visualized as a “solar eclipse”. I do not know the exact location of Jupiter to Earth back in 1994 and whether this eclipse of Jupiter would have been able to happen as I have described. I apologize to those of you with superior scientific and astronomical knowledge and welcome any feedback regarding my fuzzy science.

Part 2

Saturday Morning

The sounds of a press conference woke Lois. She glanced up to find herself cuddling against her husband’s chest, only now he was dressed in a navy blue athletic jogging suit.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you,” he murmured, kissing the top of her head.

“Morning,” she mumbled with a yawn, stretch, and a rub of her eyes. “Do you always disappear at dawn?”

“I went for a jog,” Clark replied, nodding towards the TV. “To Metropolis.”

Lois’s fingers slipped under his shirt and felt the familiar Superman suit underneath, then turned her focus towards the television. “Something happen?”

“Press conference about the Toasters’ arraignment,” he answered, removing her fingers and kissing them. “With a little wedding gift thrown in for you.”

Realizing he wanted her to watch the conference, Lois turned to the television as Superman thanked the fire and police departments. “And, on a personal note, I would like to offer my congratulations to my friends Clark Kent and Lois Lane on their engagement. May their marriage be joyous and fertile.”

Lois swatted his arm. “Fertile?”

Clark grinned, faux innocently. “Tempus did say something about children, didn’t he?”

Yippee! A baby!

Lois shook off that left-field thought. She didn’t want kids yet; she hadn’t even been married twenty-four hours. All she wanted was this man.

Okay. Fine. Make passionate love to your husband. I won’t stop you. Hey, can you try that floating thing again? You seemed to like that.

“Yes, he did mention Superman’s descendents,” Lois replied, referring to that crazy man from another future dimension – Tempus – who had tried to convince her not to marry that super fast, super strong, flying alien Superman, of whom she had never heard. By the time she had finally discovered him, she had already been half in love with Clark.

She crawled onto her husband’s lap, straddling him, and started unzipping his athletic jacket. “But I didn’t marry Superman. I married Clark Kent. So, unless Superman shows up in this bed…” She pulled off his shirt revealing the top of his blue suit. “Looky there, I did marry him. Ooops. And here I was trying to defy destiny. Oh, well.” She shrugged. “But if I just take this off.” She reached behind him to unzip the suit.

“Mrs. Kent, are you trying to seduce me?” Clark asked, his lips brushing hers as he shrugged out of the top of his suit. He rolled them over, so that he was on top and Lois had a full view of the television.

The LNN anchor was now talking to the reporter at the scene. “Well, it looks like Superman is denying rumors that he and Lois Lane are an item. Any information on this Clark Kent fellow she’s apparently marrying?”

Lois hit mute on the remote as LNN’s talking heads started in on her love life again. The image of Superman from the press conference was reduced to a small box. She watched a man approach Superman as he stepped away from the microphone and hand him a note. Superman then glanced at the note and nodded to the man.

“What was that about?” Lois asked, patting Clark’s shoulder and pointing to the television.

Clark dragged his lips off her shoulder, where he had just nudged the strap of her negligee off with his nose, to glance at the screen for a moment. He shrugged. “What?”

“The note.”

Her husband pulled out a note from his pocket and handed it to her before starting to kiss down her neck again. Without looking, he picked up the remote and clicked off the TV.

“Professor Daitch from the EPRAD Center wants to meet with you tonight?” Lois asked as Clark reached her collarbone with his lips. She was finding it very hard to concentrate when he did that.

Then toss away the note and return his kisses, Lois. Hello, honeymoon calling.

“Why?” she asked instead. “Is he a big fan or is something wrong?”

Clark kissed her nose and sighed. “The reporters at the press conference were all talking about some eclipse that happened this morning.”

“An eclipse? In Metropolis? Don’t they announce those in advance?”

“Usually, but this eclipse happened when an asteroid passed between Earth and Jupiter last night, blocking the sun rays and, thereby, making the other planet seem to disappear from view.”

“And now EPRAD Control wants to meet secretly with Superman?” She rolled them back over, so that she was on top and Clark grinned. Then she slid off of him.

“Hey! Where are you going?” he asked, sitting up.

Lois padded across the room to her carry-on bag and pulled out an envelope. “We need to call Perry. This might be something.”

“Lo-is! We’re on our honeymoon. Let’s… honeymoon. What happened to hours upon hours of making love? Perry doesn’t want us to call him now,” Clark informed her as he was suddenly by her side, draping a hotel robe over her shoulders. “Why would you want to call the Chief anyway?”

“I’ve got some bad news for you, Clark,” Lois said, leaning back against his bare chest. “You aren’t going back to work delivering packages with MDS next week.”

“What?” he replied, confused. “Why not?”

“Your new work schedule is going to conflict with your old one.” Lois held up the envelope. “When you went out this morning, I opened this.”

His brow furrowed. She grabbed his hand and took him over to the dresser where they could see themselves in the mirror. “You’re looking at the newest and hottest reporting couple in Metropolis.”

Actually you look like a couple of half-naked honeymooners in need of a shower, a massage, and about a thousand winks… speaking of which, how about you return to bed?

A lock of Lois’s hair actually stuck straight up. She felt it and it was sticky. Whipped cream? Was that hot fudge sauce on her cheek? Clark was half-dressed with his athletic pants still on and the top of his Superman suit dangling from his hips. They looked awful. And as far from sexy and hot as they could be.

Lois gasped in dismay. “Who are those people?”

Clark turned her away from the mirror and swooped her up into his arms. “You are still the fieriest, most desirable woman I’ve ever met,” he said, carrying her back to bed. He paused as he set a knee on the silky sheets. “What did you say was in Perry’s letter?”

“We have been cordially invited to be full-time reporters for Metropolis Star’s newest competition,” Lois replied casually, watching him. “Thanks to Perry White and Franklin Stern, the Daily Planet is back in business. The doors open Monday. First paper hopefully will hit stands sometime this week.”

Clark swallowed. Then his eyes blinked. And then again. A smile tried to appear at the corner of his mouth. “You mean you are the hottest new reporter for the Daily Planet?”

Lois’s smile broadened as she shook her head. “We are. The writing team of Lane and Kent.”

He dropped her on the bed and took the envelope out of her hand. “You must have misread that. You’re a reporter and I’m a security guard, right?”

Lois shook her head, standing up on the bed and leaning over his shoulder. “I’m a reporter and you’re a reporter.”

“But… But… What do I know about reporting? Why would he hire me? I don’t have any experience. I never even went to college. I have no idea what I’m doing!” Clark told her, unfolding the papers from inside the envelope and sitting down on the bed.

She gazed at him skeptically and then licked her lips. “Do you really believe that?”

“Of course I…” Clark seemed to froze as he stared at the paper. “He wants to pay us how much? Each? I shouldn’t be earning this much, Lois. I can understand you earning the big bucks, you nabbed the Superman story of the century, but I don’t have any experience, except those few stories I wrote for the weekly Planet. I don’t know what I’m…”

“You are a fantastic writer, Clark. Plus,” she whispered, starting to kiss down his neck. “Perry knows I never would have gotten that Superman exclusive without you.”

“I don’t know…” he said, still staring at the letter.

“Clark, would Perry have offered you the job if he didn’t think you could do it?” Lois asked, nibbling on his ear. Then she shrugged. “If you don’t want it…”

“Not want the job! Are you crazy, wife? This is my dream job.” He tossed the letter up in the air and turned to pull her into his arms. “Of course you’re crazy. You’ve got voices in your head telling you to make love to me.”

Voices? Who said anything about voices? There’s just me! And after last night, crazy would be any woman who wouldn’t want to make love to you.

***

Saturday Evening

Superman walked into the EPRAD Command Center in Metropolis. Professor Stephen Daitch was looking through a large telescope into the night’s sky.

“I understand you’ve been looking for me,” said Superman, when the Professor stepped away from the telescope to make notes on his clipboard.

“Yes. Thank you for coming, Superman,” replied Daitch, awe in his voice revealing his opinion of Superman.

“Mind if I take a look?” Superman asked, indicating the telescope.

“Ah…” Daitch held out his arm to the telescope, but then remembered something. “I thought you had enhanced visual abilities?” he asked Superman, a slight falter in his voice.

“Yes. But I also have my limits.”

Daitch nodded and stepped away from the telescope to give Superman a glimpse at the approaching Nightfall Asteroid.

Clark looked at the bumpy rock hurling – apparently slowly, but in actuality very quickly – through space towards Earth and knew this wasn’t a case of something passing them by. Why couldn’t Lois have been wrong this one time? There was more to the story here. “Fascinating what kind of surprises the universe can turn up, isn’t it?”

“Hmmm,” Daitch nodded in agreement as Superman walked away from the telescope. “Nightfall is approximately seventeen miles across, traveling at close to thirty thousand miles per hour.”

“You told the reporters that much at the news conference. Why am I here?” Clark said, crossing his arms. He didn’t want to assume why Daitch had requested Superman’s presence at the EPRAD Center, despite having a pretty good idea already formulated in his mind.

Daitch showed Superman a computer screen with an animation of the asteroid. “If my calculations are correct, in little more than four days it’s going to hit the Earth.” He typed some keystrokes and the animation came alive showing the asteroid’s clear path towards Earth. Exasperated, he exhaled. “The sky – literally – is falling.”

“What kind of damage could this cause?” Clark asked, knowing that it wouldn’t be minimal. But, as his mother told him more than once, there are no stupid questions.

“Superman, it could knock the Earth off of its axis. It could knock us off of our current solar orbit. You see, this one is larger than the meteor that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs. The crater it creates itself will toss enough dust into the air to cause a new ice age.”

As Daitch spoke, Clark heard something outside. With a quick glimpse of his x-ray vision, he noticed two men – one in a business suit, one in a military uniform – eavesdropping outside the door. Superman pressed his lips together. “We’re not alone.” Daitch didn’t appear surprised by this announcement, so Superman continued, “You might as well come out, gentlemen; I know you’re there.”

The two men entered the room. The man in the military uniform spoke first. “My apologies, Superman. But we felt that you should hear the news from Professor Daitch first, before we introduced ourselves. I’m General Robert Zeitlin,” he said, reaching out to shake Superman’s hand. “This is Secretary John Cosgrove.” The older gentleman in the business suit stepped forward.

“You can’t keep this a secret,” Superman told the men.

“The President will tell the people, but he needs to avoid a panic,” Cosgrove told Superman. “Put simply, he needs to have you on board before he makes an announcement. The country needs your help, Superman. So does the world.”

Superman nodded his agreement. “But you’re asking me to fly a million miles into space to stop a piece of rock the size of Metropolis.” Lois would not be happy about this.

“You’re our only hope, Superman,” the General informed him.

“I guess we’re about to find out what my limits really are,” Superman said, more to himself than to the others. A part of him was not looking forward to flying back to Niagara Falls to tell his new wife that he was cutting their honeymoon short.

***

Saturday Night

“No!” Lois shouted, her hands on her hips.

Clark loved it when she let her fire show. And yet, he was still surprised, “Excuse me?”

“No. Absolutely not!”

He hadn’t thought she could be more emphatic, but she was demonstrating once again new depths of her anger. “There’s got to be another way.”

“They’re the experts, Honey. They’ve been studying this thing for months,” he explained, wrapping his arms around his new wife.

“I want a second opinion,” she said, resting her head on his shoulder, calming at his touch. “To them you’re just a superhero, expendable.”

“Gee, thanks,” Clark mumbled into her hair.

“But to me, you’re the man I just pledged my life to…” Lois held him tighter. “The man I love, my husband.”

Those words would never grow old to his ears.

“I just found you,” she continued. “… and they want to send you into space like some kind of all-natural, environmentally-friendly bomb.”

“If I don’t go, they’ll send up a nuclear missile to break it up.” He cupped her jaw in his palm, placing a kiss on her lips. “I love this planet too much to risk nuclear fallout.”

“I know,” she murmured, making the kiss deeper.

“I can do this,” Clark reassured her. “I’ll always come back to you.”

“I know,” Lois whispered softly, but it didn’t sound like it to his ears that she believed the words. He didn’t know if she said them for him or to try to convince herself. “I know.”

Clark lifted her into his arms and carried her to the bed. There was an urgency behind his desire, as if he only had a limited time to make love to his wife, even though he wasn’t expected back at EPRAD Control until the morning of the next day.

“Don’t forget the precautions,” Lois said, as both she nibbled his ear and dug her nails into his back.

Clark didn’t want to stop, but he paused long enough to look her in the eye. “Are you sure?”

Lois focused on something deep inside him. Whenever she gazed at him like that it felt like they were communicating soul to soul. “You’ll be back, Clark. We’ll float again.”

Stopping was more difficult when she demonstrated so much faith in him. But he settled her back down on the bed and zipped away for the condoms.

“You’re slowing down,” she teased, when he started kissing her neck again. “I almost noticed you were gone that time.”

“Saving my resources for tomorrow,” Clark said between kisses.

“No fair,” Lois murmured as they lifted into the air again. “It’s my honeymoon. I’m supposed to drain all of your resources.”

***


“Clark,” Lois whispered against his chest.

“Hmmm,” he replied, lacing her fingers with his.

“Can we get a second opinion?” she asked again. She had asked him before they had made love, but she doubted he had taken her seriously. Maybe now she could get him to listen.

“Nightfall will be here in less than four days, Lois. There’s not much time,” he replied. “This is the plan EPRAD came up with and they’re the experts.”

Lois rolled over so that her chest was against his side and she could look him in the eye. “How long have you been around, Clark?”

He raised a brow. “On Earth, just over twenty-eight years.”

She shook her head. “No, Superman you. How long have they known about you?”

Clark shrugged. “Couple of weeks, I guess.”

“Right. A couple of weeks. And how long do you think they’ve known about this collision course with Nightfall?”

He shrugged again.

“A week? Two? A month? Six months?” Lois shot out lengths of time. “I’m guessing that they’ve known about this for a while now. Because there really isn’t anything the general public could do, I’m betting they weren’t planning on telling any of us. You know, the old ‘avoid the panic’ line.”

“Sounds familiar,” he admitted, reaching up and running a hand over her hair.

“I’m betting they were planning on nuking the thing when it got close enough and then this flying strong man showed up,” she explained.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “Go on.”

“So, instead of working with your strengths and abilities, they continue with their bomb-the-hell-out-of-it plan only now using you as their quite inexpensive missile,” she went on. “My bet is they are still gearing up the nuclear option in case you fail.”

“Makes sense,” he replied, kissing her nose. “Who knew I was marrying a genius?”

Lois’s lips pressed together as she slowly raised her hand and he chuckled.

“Love you,” he continued, obviously trying to make up points lost for that statement about her intelligence. “What are you suggesting?”

“What if instead of using your speed to blast it to bits, what if you used your strength to push it off its current course? Then at least, I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering if my husband would be coming back in pieces,” she said this last part softly.

Clark tightened his arm around her. “I will always come back to you, wife.” He grinned. “Remember, magnetic?” He pointed between them with a wink. “Wherever you are, I’m probably not far behind.”

Lois smiled faintly at the new twist of her old line. “Could you think about it please? Discuss it with the scientific teams you’re meeting with tomorrow?”

He pulled her in for a kiss.

“I don’t like the idea of you being used as a bomb, Clark,” she murmured between kisses, trying to hold back the tears so he didn’t know how worried she really was. “I don’t really like this test of your invulnerability.”

“Okay, I’ll ask the experts. If you can promise me something,” he asked, stroking her bare back, sending new shivers of delight coursing through her body, and causing her press snugly against him.

“Mmmm,” she murmured, running her fingers through his hair and pulling his face closer to hers.

“Can you stop being so irresistible so I can get some sleep? I have a big day ahead of me tomorrow,” he whispered as she kissed down his throat, causing his voice to break.

“Nope. Sorry. No can do.” She shrugged, cuddling closer. “It’s who I am. It’s one of the drawbacks to being married to me. You’re just going to have to deal.”

“Well, if you insist,” Clark replied, shifting her on top of him. “I’ll sleep when I get back.”

“It is my honeymoon that the big giant rock is interrupting,” she said, wrapping her legs around him as they started floating above the bed.

“Yeah.” Clark chuckled. “Now, it’s personal!”

“Oh, that’s bad.” Lois giggled. “You sound like a bad promo for a TV show.”

“Sorry.” His chuckles turned into laughter. “Can’t you just see that tagline on LNN? ‘Superman vs. Nightfall: Now, it’s personal’.”

“Clark,” Lois groaned as she rolled her eyes. “Shhhh!”

“Shutting up,” he murmured, his laughter relaxing back into chuckles as her hands moved lower on his body.

“You always have to have the last word,” she responded.

“Do not!” he retorted, flipping them over a moment before they hit the ceiling.

“Do so!”

“Do not!”

Lois stretched out her body so that she pinned him to the ceiling. “Do so!”

“Lois!” Clark moaned as his eyes flew open and stared into hers. “Lois! Oh, God, Lois!”

She grinned, shifting her body just a bit more. “Do so, Claaaaaaaaaaaark!”

***

Sunday – Noon

Lois sat alone on the bed in their honeymoon suite, her arms wrapped around a pillow and her eyes glued to the LNN coverage at the EPRAD Center. Clark had woke her up just briefly at dawn to kiss her goodbye before he went out on his morning “jog”. No, not goodbye, she corrected herself. He would be back.

He better be back.

Clark had left that early so he could have an extra hour of bathing in sunlight before heading off to the EPRAD Center in Metropolis. He hadn’t been kidding when he said that the sunlight recharged his batteries.

Maybe you should have made love without precautions, just in case.

No, Clark would be back, she told her wayward thoughts.

You could be pregnant with his child now, if you had.

There was plenty of time for that, Lois reminded herself. Clark would be back and they would make love again. Their honeymoon wasn’t over. Actually, she hated that she would spend their last full day of the honeymoon alone in the hotel room. Clark said that Nightfall was still far enough away that it would take him hours to fly to it and back. And that she shouldn’t expect him back to the hotel until after dark. But that he would definitely be coming back to her, no matter what. She was tempted to call the main desk and extend their stay another day or two to make up for the time lost. Perry would understand if they took a day or two extra, wouldn’t he?

Oh, God! What if this is the one thing that he’s vulnerable to? What if the asteroid is the one thing – out of this world thing – that could kill him? What if he didn’t come back and you had to live with the guilt that you refused to make love with him without precautions, because you are scared about becoming a mother?

He was coming back! Lois wanted to scream at these thoughts. Yes, she wasn’t anywhere near ready to become a mother. True. She had just gotten married. She wanted to finish her first honeymoon year before even starting to think about kids. There was still much she and Clark needed to learn about each other.

You hadn’t wanted to get married either, if I recall. But you changed your mind when you found out that Clark was your soul mate… your destiny.

That was different, Lois told herself. Getting married, choosing to spend her life with Clark, was not the same as deciding to create another being. That was not something to rush into.

Unlike marriage.

Marrying Clark was not a mistake!

It wasn’t. Marrying Clark was the right thing to do. Just like having his baby is the right thing to do. It would have let him know that he’s not leaving you alone… that he would still live on… should something happen to him.

If Lois had agreed to make love with him without precautions, then she would have been telling him that she didn’t believe that he could do it. That she didn’t believe he would make it back. Or that he could save the Earth from Nightfall. She would have broken his confidence in himself that he needed to get the job done, Lois argued with her inner voice.

But if he doesn’t come back, you won’t even have that little bit solace… that little bit of Clark… to always remind you of him. To leave his mark on Earth. To carry on the house of El. You should have given him that! It would have given him peace in those last few moments of life.

Lois buried her head into her knees and cried.

If he doesn’t make it, it will be your fault.

Her fault? What had she done? Besides love Clark?

Exactly. You had continued to make love to him after he asked you to let him rest. If Clark fails… if he doesn’t return, it will be because you were greedy, wanting to make love to him one last time. He would have been more rested, relaxed, refreshed, and ready for the job, if it wasn’t for you.

“Clark! Oh, Clark!” Tears streamed down her face. “Come back to me.”

Glancing up at the televsion screen in front of her, Lois saw Superman walk through a crowd of reporters. She fumbled for the TV remote and turned up the sound.

“Superman has just arrived to the final staging area…” the LNN announcer Frank Madison said.

Linda King was standing just inside the ropes, waiting to talk to Superman.

How had Linda gotten inside the ropes? Why isn’t she standing with the rest of the reporters?

Lois sat up with a sneer on her face. She should have gone. She should be the reporter interviewing Clark… Superman before he flew up on his mission. Her! Not Linda King! Lois was a full-time reporter now for the Daily Planet. She should have been there. What the in hell was she still doing in Niagara Falls?

Right, like you being there wouldn’t have been a big huge distraction to Clark. Like you coming back early from your honeymoon with CLARK to interview SUPERMAN wouldn’t have raised a few eyebrows, like Leo Nunk’s or Randy Goode’s, especially since you didn’t bring your husband / reporting partner with you. Like you wouldn’t have been tempted to kiss Superman before he flew off. No, it’s best that you aren’t there.

“How do you feel?” Linda asked Superman.

“This will work,” Superman responded, his hands relaxed on his hips. Good, he didn’t have his arms crossed. He wasn’t anxious.

“That’s a relief,” Linda said with a sigh of relief. “Why are you so sure?”

“Because it has to,” Superman replied, with a slight nod.

Oh, that was just like Clark. A smile came to his wife’s lips. “I love you, Clark,” she whispered, setting her hand on his face on the TV screen.

“The power of positive thinking, huh?” Linda stated more than asked.

Superman nodded again, and Lois could see the tension in his face as he asked Linda, “How are you feeling, Linda?”

Walk away from the tramp, Clark!

“Scared enough for the both of us,” Linda replied, gazing deeply into Lois’s husband’s eyes.

What in the hell? That’s your man, not hers!

“I’ll be back,” Superman told her with another nod. “We’ll talk again then.”

“I hope so,” Linda said, reaching out to touch his arm. “We’ll go flying.”

BITCH!

“I have to go,” Superman said, turning away.

About time! Well, at least he didn’t promise to take her flying.

Of course he wouldn’t! He loved Lois. He was her husband. Superman would never take Linda flying again. He promised.

“Good luck,” Linda told him. As Superman glanced back at her to acknowledge that he had heard her, Linda grabbed his shoulders and pressed a kiss on his lips.

“What the hell!” Lois screamed, standing up on her bed, ready to throw her pillow at the TV. “Those lips don’t belong to you!”

Superman moved away from Linda with a look of shock and dismay clearly visible on his face.

Good! He hadn’t liked it.

He turned more sharply away from Linda this time and gave a glance over at the TV cameras. Lois placed a hand on his apologetic face, knowing he was feeling guilty for allowing that troll to kiss him.

“I know it wasn’t your fault,” Lois whispered, touching his TV face. “She ambushed you. I know you love me.”

He looked like he wanted to say something to the camera, to her, but wisely instead turned away and walked over to the EPRAD science team.

Lois watched as the science team outfitted Superman with a communication link to ground control and some oxygen tanks. Clark had told Lois he could hold his breath for twenty minutes. Wow! Then he had admitted that when Lois kissed him that the number dwindled down to twenty seconds. Lois smiled. She had the ability to – literally – steal Superman’s breath away.

“Superman, I would like to offer you our tactical nuclear option once again,” the General said to him.

Lois couldn’t believe that the television microphone was able to pick up this private conversation. Of course, this was LNN, Lex Luthor’s news station, and it would not surprise her if they used less than honest methods.

“The EPRAD science team has given me clear indication of the asteroid’s size and mass. If I hit it at maximum strength, it’s their opinion that I’ll be able to achieve a fifty megaton explosive force to slow it down and then move it off its current path towards Earth. I think we should try that first and not risk nuclear fallout.”

Lois’s heart thudded in her chest. Her idea! Clark had used her idea for solving Nightfall! Never had she loved him more that at that very moment. He had listened to her.

And if it doesn’t work and Clark never returns, it will be your fault.

Superman, his red cape flowing gently in the wind, walked away from the General and the EPRAD science team to an open area. He took once last look towards Linda and the other reporters, bent his knees, and then took off into the air.

“Good luck, Clark. I know you can do it,” Lois said as her husband’s image disappeared from view on the TV screen.

*** End of Part 2 ***

Part 3G

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