Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Lois & Clark Fanfic Poisons that open your eyes (4/4)

Poisons that open your eyes
By cosmic
Rated: PG-13

Part 4





She’s changed four times by the time the clock strikes eight and the doorbell rings. Of course he’s not late.

She runs a brush through her hair as she yells, “Just a second!” and she throws the brush away and places her hand on the door handle. Her heart beats rapidly in her chest, and she berates herself for being so nervous. It’s Clark. Her best friend, her colleague, her—she’s not sure what he is beyond that, not yet, but from the fluttering in her stomach, she suspects that they could be much more.

When she opens the door, she finds him there in the charcoal suit she mentioned before, looking as gorgeous as ever before. She thinks of him as Superman and realizes that he might be even more attractive like this, when she can focus on his eyes and his smile instead of the blaring red, yellow and blue. And he looks adorably nervous, something Superman never is.

“Hi.”

He seems to be drinking her in. “Wow. I mean, hi.”

Her cheeks flush, pleased with his reaction. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”

He holds out a bouquet, because he’s a farm boy and a dork and she—god, she loves him already, doesn’t she? She pushes the thought away, because she can’t think that way before she’s even kissed him for the first time.

Well, they’ve kissed, but not for real. Love potions and life-or-death situations, yes, but not just them.

“Thank you, they’re beautiful.”

She invites him inside while she places the flowers into a vase. “So, how are you?”

Clark looks at her, standing in the middle of her living room, looking like he belongs there. He rubs his chest. “I feel—normal. At least, normal as far as I know. No powers. I even got one of those paper cuts again this afternoon. But nothing else. So that’s good. Mom and dad left this afternoon, so I guess they’re pretty convinced I’m okay, too.”

He’s babbling, and it’s a relief that he’s nervous too. It’s not only her.

“And you have me taking care of you.”

He smiles, brilliant and open. “I’m a lucky guy.”

She’s never seen Superman smile like that. His smiles are always controlled, not quite reaching his eyes. Clark’s smile is everything but controlled, lighting up the world in the best way. He’s real, in a way Superman has never been, even in her most elaborate day dreams.

“Well, I’m ready. Let’s go, big guy.”

And it’s everything she’s ever dreamed of a date. It’s a beautiful restaurant with stark white linens and shining plates filled with delicious food, with a dreamy chocolate desert which Clark shares with her without hesitation. Most of all, it’s Clark, and she’s having trouble remembering why she’s fought this so hard. Why she risked never experiencing this—he almost died, and if he had, she would never have truly understood how well they fit.

When he kisses her—or if it’s her, kissing him, she can’t say—it’s like coming home. His lips are warm against hers, soft and careful, asking for permission even as she pulls him closer. When he wraps his arms around her, and her hands find their way to his shoulders, to his neck, that’s when she realizes that this is where she belongs. It’s where she’s always belonged.

He pulls back, and he’s breathing fast, chest heaving.

She wonders if she did that, if she really stole Superman’s breath, for a few seconds before he suddenly releases her and starts coughing.

She sees panic in his eyes.

Sees the spray of blood coming from his mouth before he has time to cover it with his hand.

“Clark.” Blind terror rises within her.

He sinks to the ground as though his legs won’t hold him any longer, and she flashes back to when she found him in his apartment.

Oh god, no.

She sits down beside him, mumbling something she hopes is comfort as she, with shaking fingers, calls Doctor Klein.

He answers after the third signal, sounding distracted.

“It’s Superman. Please, help. He’s coughing up blood and—”

For once, he seems to focus immediately. “Give me your address.”

She does. They haven’t gotten far from the restaurant, because they walked and talked and laughed and they wound up kissing and now—

Now this.

He’s kneeling, hunched over, supporting himself on one arm and covering his mouth with the other as he coughs. His breath is labored, chest heaving, and when she places two fingers to his carotid, his pulse is racing, too fast for her to count.

“Help is on the way,” she whispers between his coughing attacks. There is blood all over his hand and smeared around his mouth. “I called Doctor Klein and there’s a team coming, the one he talked about, and they’re going to help you—”

“This wasn’t how—I imagined—this date ending…”

Her eyes burn with unshed tears. “I bet it wasn’t.”

Looking at Clark, she realizes that he is just that—Clark. She can’t send Clark when Dr. Klein’s people are expecting Superman! Glancing around, there is a thankful lack of people around them. She quickly pulls his glasses off, and combs his hair back with her fingers as he coughs again.

“Are you wearing the suit?”

He nods. “Thought it best if—something happened.”

She hates that he prepared for this, even though she’s glad he did. Looking around carefully to check that there aren’t any people or cameras around, she helps him discard the suit jacket—also bloodied—and shirt. His cape unfolds behind him, cascading over his back and onto the ground. The pants are trickier, but they get them off. In the end, he sits panting against the building wall. Lois hides the suit in the alley behind a dumpster and pockets his glasses in her purse.

They’re just in time; a minute later, a large van pulls up next to them. A man, a woman and Dr. Klein jump out of the back of it, and when Lois sees the inside, she realizes it’s an ambulance. They help Clark to his feet, and he struggles and sways before they help him onto a waiting stretcher in the van. Lois climbs in behind them and takes a seat by Clark’s head, hopefully out of the way for the people needing to work in the cramped space.

“Let’s go,” Dr. Klein says as soon as the doors are closed behind them, in a voice that doesn’t quite hide the pressure he’s feeling.

“What’s wrong with him? Is it the thingamabobs you injected him with?”

She holds Clark’s hand, because she can’t not hold his hand. She sees fear in his eyes, even if he won’t say it. The man and woman who helped Clark into the ambulance are checking his vitals and sticking needles into his arms. Lois looks at the TV-screen where Clark’s blood pressure and heart rate come up, and once again she wishes she knew how to interpret them.

“It could very well be,” Dr. Klein says. “Or it could be late effects of the poisoning. Can you tell me more about what happened?”

She tells him what she knows, which really isn’t much, and he turns to Clark. “Any chest pain?”

Clark looks briefly at Lois, as though he doesn’t want to admit it with her there, but nods. “Every time I—take a breath.”

She wonders how long he’s been in pain. Since the dinner? Since he picked her up in the apartment, despite saying he was fine? Longer than that?

“His saturation is eighty-two percent,” the woman says to Dr. Klein, and turns to Clark. “I’m going to place a mask over your face now. Oxygen to help you breathe.”

Clark nods and drags in deep breaths as soon as the mask is in place, closing his eyes and relaxing a fraction. He looks exhausted already, and Lois realizes that he even though he claimed to be all right, he hasn’t been. Frustration rises within her at his stubbornness—why didn’t he tell her?

They get to StarLabs, rather than the hospital. Through a back entrance, they wheel Clark into an elevator which takes them to one of the top floors. At the end of a corridor, there is a large room built specifically for Clark. StarLabs obviously spared no expenses after realizing that the Man of Steel is not as invulnerable as they’d first believed—the room looks like it has every kind of medical equipment they could come up with, and some they’ve probably invented themselves.

Clark is too heavy for them to lift from the gurney to the bed, so they support him as best they can as he stumbles over. Once there, he closes his eyes again and without protest; he lets the man and woman work on him, piercing his skin once more with needles.

“What are you going to do with him?” Lois hates the way her voice shakes.

Dr. Klein seems a million miles away when he answers. “Try to stabilize him. Normally, there would be a computer tomography to look for an embolus, but with him that’s impossible, so we’ll have to treat what we think is wrong and try to fix it.” He turns to the woman and gives her a bunch of medications to inject, and she nods as though she understands anything he just said. To Lois, it sounds like letters thrown haphazardly together.

The man pulls up a chair by Clark’s head. “You can sit here.”

Lois automatically sits down. She places a hand on Clark’s shoulder and startles when he lifts his hand to place it heavily on top of hers and turns his head to her. She’d almost forgotten that he’s still awake, not unconscious like last time. Not yet, anyway.

“Thanks for—staying.” His words muffled by the mask.

“Where else would I be? I’m not going anywhere.”

He closes his eyes, then opens them again. “Tell my parents—I love them.”

Her eyes burn again. “You can tell them yourself.”

“Please, Lois.”

“You’re not going to die.”

They have just started to figure things out; she has started to realize everything, and he can’t be taken from her, that’s not fair. It doesn’t matter that she knows life isn’t fair. This can’t be happening.

She loves him, and she hasn’t even told him yet. They’re supposed to have years and years together, not this.

“And I love—you.” Clark squeezes her hand, ever so gently; those same hands that have stopped bullets and thrown bombs into space.

His hand falls from hers.

“His BP and pulse are dropping,” the man says.

Clark closes his eyes, and they don’t open again.

“Push fluids and increase the oxygen. Prepare the defibrillator.”

“Are we sure—with his physiology—do we know—”

“If he goes into VF or VT, we don’t have a choice—”

“V-fib!”

There is a buzzing in Lois’ ears, the world disappearing farther and farther away. Everything around her turns into white noise. No, no! Clark is the important person here, not her, she can’t pass out, she’s not—but she sees everything as though she’s looking through a tunnel. She wants to stay with him, has to be there. She can’t leave him now.

There is a loud beeping noise and a lot of movement around her.

She tries, but she can’t hold on.





She wakes up with a gasp, Clark’s name on her lips.

Sunlight is streaming in through a window, skies blue beyond the glass. She’s on a bed in a room with white walls.

“Lie down, Lois, honey,” comes a familiar voice to the right. Not the voice she wants to hear, but Perry is welcome none the less.

“Where is he? Is he alive?”

“Who?”

“Cl—” She stops herself, a little too late. “Superman.”

There is a glint of something in Perry’s eyes, and she gets the same odd feeling that she had when she spoke to him on the phone. With crashing realization, she recognizes what it is:

Perry knows.

She wonders how long. Did Clark tell him? No, he would have told her, now that she knows. If Perry knows, he’s figured it out by himself.

But as long as he won’t say it outright, she won’t confirm it for him.

“He’s in the room right next to yours,” Perry says calmly. “They haven’t told me much, because I’m not his medical proxy like some others here apparently are these days, but he’s still alive. It’s been touch and go, but since the sun came up, he’s been getting better.”

“I need to see him.” She doesn’t ask, because it’s not a request.

“Just let them come and unhook you, Lois.”

She realizes she’s hooked up to some monitor, showing her heartbeat and other stuff in wavy lines. “This is ridiculous, I don’t need this. I’m not sick.”

Perry looks at her. “Apparently, you passed out when Superman had his cardiac arrest. They put you in here and couldn’t get a hold of your parents, so Doctor Klein thought it best to call me. Someone should keep watch of you, he said.”

Heat rises in her cheeks, because that means Perry must have sat by her bedside and watched her sleep for hours. Her boss! She loves him, but—he’s her boss.

Dr. Klein comes through the door. “Miss Lane.”

“How is he?” She doesn’t bother with niceties.

“Alive,” he says. “His heart stopped, but we got him going again. A couple of strong sun-imitating lamps seem to have helped, though of course it’s better with the real thing now that it’s come up. We suspect he had a lung embolus from the Kryptonite antibodies, but it’s impossible to know for sure. He’s still sleeping, but his vitals are improving. We’ve taken him up to the roof, to maximize the sun exposure.”

She tries to take it all in. His heart stopped. Lung embolus. Getting better.

Dr. Klein looks at the monitor. “You can come with us up there. I’ll have my assistant remove the heart monitoring. We thought it best to keep track of your vitals, your body wasn’t handling the situation well last night. But now it all looks fine.”

She is about to ask what he means, but decides that if she does, it’s only going to take longer before they can get to the roof to see Clark, so she presses her lips together and nods.

There is still heat in her cheeks when she says goodbye to Perry a few minutes later.

“Tell Superman to get better soon,” Perry says before he leaves. “Lots of people miss him.”

Lois stares after him for a few seconds, wondering if she’s imagining it all, before she shakes her head and follows Dr. Klein to the stairs. She gets unusually winded—perhaps the night has taken more of a toll on her than she wants to believe. Or it’s the entire ordeal, ever since Clark was poisoned.

Dr. Klein opens the door to the roof, and Lois breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of Clark. Then she blushes, because he’s nearly naked, wearing only underwear. She assumes it’s to ‘maximize sun exposure’ as Dr. Klein said earlier, but it’s still Clark. Nearly naked.

She remembers when she asked him what his secret was, back when they first met and she looked into his refrigerator and saw only candy. She knows his secret now. Alien metabolism. Nope, she can’t have it.

She jumps when he turns and his tired eyes meet hers. “Lois.”

“I thought you were asleep.”

“Just woke up. Heard your heartbeat.”

“Heard my—” She stops and stares at him, turning the information over in her head until it makes sense. “Is your super hearing back?”

He smiles and nods. “I don’t think the rest is back yet, because I still feel like I’ve been run over by an asteroid, but—yeah. Super hearing.”

In that moment, Lois knows that it will be all right. He’s going to live and not only that: he’s going to be everything he’s supposed to be.

She only barely keeps herself from throwing herself in his arms and kissing him. It wouldn’t be the best idea to do in front of Dr. Klein and his assistants.

“I’m glad.” She almost chokes on the words. She moves forward and places a hand on his shoulder. His skin is soft and warm to the touch.

He smiles, and it’s the only thing existing in her world. His smile, his warmth, his heart beating steadily inside his chest. It is everything to her. She wants to tell him, but can’t with other people around. But looking at him, she thinks he might already know.





This time, Clark stays at StarLabs until he’s well and truly cleared. He’s not happy about it, but Lois narrows her eyes and he decides not to argue. She’s not going to take it lightly if he leaves before Dr. Klein has signed off on it.

Staying out in the sun in only his underwear the entire day—thankfully a warm and entirely sunny day—works wonders for him, and after three days of the same treatment, the good doctor and his assistants conclude that he’s back to his usual self.

He hopes he never takes for granted again, what it is to be healthy, what it’s like to fly.

“You’re lucky the embolus—or whatever it was, I suppose—came so late,” Dr. Klein says. “Had it come earlier, your super healing wouldn’t have kicked back in yet, but it was already coming back and probably saved your life.”

“And you, Doctor,” Clark says. “Without you, there would’ve been no time for super healing to kick in.”

Dr. Klein looks uncomfortable. “Well, ah, it’s my job.”

“Thank you.” Clark means it with every fiber of his being.

“Of course, of course, you’re welcome.” Dr. Klein cleans his glasses with a handkerchief.

Lois is there with him. She says nothing, though she shares a smile with Clark at the nervousness of Dr. Klein. He seems utterly uncomfortable receiving praise.

This time, they don’t have to take a cab home. Clark easily lifts Lois into his arms and they soar out through the open window of Dr. Klein’s office. Clark breathes in deeply, enjoying being able to take a full breath without pain. Being unable to breathe was awful, right up there with Kryptonite poisoning. Dr. Klein said they’ll have to do tests later, to see if there are any long-term effects of the poisoning or treatment—they suspect his lung function might have been affected—but if that means he can only hold his breath for ten minutes instead of twenty, he’ll just have to make do.

He’s alive.

Lois leans her head against his shoulder.

“I wasn’t sure we’d ever get to do this again,” she breathes, but he hears every word.

“I wasn’t either. These have been some of the worst weeks of my life.”

Lois looks at him. “What other weeks could possibly compare to these?”

He hesitates. “The ones when you were going to marry Luthor were pretty awful.”

Her features soften. “Yeah, they were. But at least you were alive and well then. Even if I couldn’t see you.”

“I never told you about Luthor’s Kryptonite cage, did I?” Clark says ruefully.

She whips around sharply. “His what?”

Clark sighs, because talking about Lex Luthor is not what he wants to do. “Let’s just say that Diana Stride isn’t the first one with creative ideas of how to kill me. Luthor thought I deserved to suffer, so he made a Kryptonite cage right below where the two of you were getting married.” He pauses. “I got out, but that was why Superman couldn’t save him. I didn’t have my powers.”

“I had no idea,” Lois breathes. “I thought—Superman hated him and—”

“It took me a day or so for my powers to come back. I swear I would have caught him if I could’ve.”

“Always the hero.”

“No. But I wanted him to rot in jail, not take the easy way out like he did.”

Lois looks at him, thoughtful and intelligent eyes seeing right through him. “There’s a lot I don’t know about, isn’t there?”

“I thought you had me figured out.” Clark winks at her.

She smiles and his heart speeds at the sight. “There might be a little more to you than meets the eye.”

He stops them in mid-air and shifts his hold of her carefully so they face each other. The breeze sweeps through her hair, and there is color in her cheeks. She’s so beautiful he can’t even begin to describe it. The last two weeks since Diana Stride poisoned him have been awful, but now she knows everything, and she’s still there. Somehow, that’s worth all the pain and suffering in the world to have her look at him like that. As though he’s important to her.

“I wouldn’t have made it through this whole thing without you,” he says. “But I’m so sorry you had to go through it.”

“I didn’t do anything—”

“You were there.” He watches her blush.

“There was no other place for me."

He hesitantly bends in to kiss her, unable to resist. She melts against him, wrapping her arms around him like his are already around hers. It’s perfect and unbelievable and everything he ever dreamed of.

“I love you.” The most important words in the world and he’ll tell her every day until he dies.
She smiles shyly. “I love you, too.”

He stops, staring at her. “Really?”

She huffs out a laugh. “Yes, really, you big lunkhead. I—I didn’t know—but these two weeks—” She’s never this bad with words, this award-winning reporter he has in his arms. He finds it adorable. She shakes her head. “These two weeks have been horrible, and I had to imagine a life without you. And that life would suck.”

His smile reaches from ear to ear. “Then I think it was worth all the pain.”

“Don’t say that.” She swats his chest. “Don’t you ever do this to me again.”

“I can’t really promise that. The bad guys have great imagination with the whole ways-to-kill-Superman-thing.”

She looks irritated for a moment, that there are things she can’t control. “Well, then we’ll just have to face them together.”

He couldn’t stop smiling if he tried. “Together,” he says. “That sounds fantastic.”

And they’re kissing again.





Well, that's it, the Lois & Clark fanfic I've had in my head for so many years. Making Clark suffer a lot more than they did on the show, because the show's solution was stupid (to a stupid description of Kryptonite poisoning, because how on earth is it like a cancer - does Kryptonite start multiplying uncontrollably?). Also, Clark recovered way too quickly. And yeah, I like hurting my characters...

I hope you enjoyed the story. Comments are always greatly appreciated.