Wow, great chapter, Laura! I was too freaked out by Lois's situation to comment on the previous chapter, but this was just great!
The knife grazed the front of her shirt, tearing though the fabric before a roar filled the night air. The knife was gone, her skin miraculously unbroken. Lois forced her eyes open, but they felt glued shut. A dark shape, nearly snarling with anger had her assailant tackled on the ground. The man struggled, but he was obviously no match for his attacker and Lois' angel.
Clark saved her! I wasn't absolutely sure he would. I didn't think you would kill Lois, of course, but this Clark has seemed so in denial about Lois and about his own powers, so...
“Lois, please call the police with that phone right there. You'll be perfectly safe, I assure you. I won't take my eyes off you.”
The voice was calm and gentle, at odds with the fearsome picture he made in the dark. It was familiar. Soothing. Clark's.
“Clark?” she said a little timidly, not even realizing her lapse. Clark didn't seem to notice either.
He calls her Lois. Of course. He is her teacher, and although I myself had a French teacher way back when who insisted on calling us by or last names, you
really expect your teacher to use your first name when speaking to you.
So he calls her Lois. And she responds, calling him Clark. I just
love how natural and inevitable it sounds. And yet, in this story it is so forbidden.
Actually, he had been watching a basketball game in his apartment when he had heard her heartbeat. At first he thought his tortured musings were following him home and he nearly covered his ears with his hands, desperate to stop the mental images and dreams. The heartbeat refused to leave him however, and he paused. It was speeding up and then… another heartbeat? What? Though he had always had an active imagination he couldn't fathom what his subconscious was trying to tell him by throwing in another heartbeat into the mix. Finally he caught the breathless, near cry for help and he realized that it hadn't just been his emotions kicking into overdrive. Lois needed him!
Well, this is what I meant about Clark being in denial. Just consider that Clark
might have been sitting in his own apartment listening to Lois being
killed right below his window, and furiously telling himself that he must stop fantasizing about Lois.
Well, sigh. I tell you, Laura, this student/teacher relationship isn't a healthy thing for Lois and Clark.
Thankfully both Lois and her assailant were too busy to notice that he jumped out of his third story window in his haste to get to her.
I have to agree with Lisa that there is something delightfully funny about this image, though it is very satisfyingly dramatic, too. Like it had been taken out of a swashbuckling pirates movie... if pirates jump out of apartment windows? Or if it was from a swashbuckling old Tarzan movie... if Tarzan can be swashbuckling?
“I think you had better call your parents now, Lois,” he said softly. His gaze fell on the shallow slice across her throat. It was thin, no longer oozing blood, but it still glittered malevolently in the light as a constant reminder of what had nearly happened.
Wow. I, too, can see it and feel it.
Since his marriage to Lana, he had stifled the cries for help in his head. He helped when he could, oftentimes at night and dressed in black. The guilt never truly went away but he could function normally alongside it.
His guilt. Interesting. Since his marriage to Lana he has ignored many cries for help in his head. He still does, even though Lana has been dead for - I don't know, a year? Certainly for many months. And he still feels guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty of betraying Lana? Or guilty of betraying himself and his own natural instincts to help? Guilty of letting people die even though he could have saved them?
Interesting. You know, Laura, in the long run, I don't think Clark could have been happy living this way, ignoring cries for help for Lana's sake. He may have loved her, but she wasn't right for him. Because she didn't love him back. Not really. She loved him as the man she
wished he was, not as the man he was for real. And he had to pay for living up to her ideals by letting people die.
If Lois Lane had died because he had been too busy watching a basketball game to notice she was being mugged and threatened just outside his window, his world would have crashed around him.
I'm glad that he realizes what an utter catastrophe that would have been. And now I hope he will reconsider the wisdom of his decision not to use his powers to help others, at least not usually, and for Lana's sake.
He handed Lois his cell phone and watched as she dialed a number.
After a few minutes, Lois hung up, giving the phone back to him with a shrug. “Sorry, Mr. Kent. My parents aren't home, I guess.”
Clark wants Lois to go home to her parents. And I, too, wish that she would. I haven't forgotten that you had Claude wait for Lois in her apartment, and he most certainly wasn't up to anything good.
“Sorry about this.”
“Sorry about wh—AHHHH!” Lois squealed as the peroxide bubbled and burned her raw legs. “This stuff can't be legal,” she gritted out, squeezing her eyes shut as it stung.
“I'm afraid it is. And recommended too.”
Poor Lois. But you actually had me giggling.
Without seemingly caring that he was slowly burning her to death, Clark gently held her calf and bandaged the various scrapes on her legs. Through the stinging haze, Lois became aware of a different kind of heat. His large hands glided effortlessly over her legs, never pausing, never approaching anything remotely a caress.
But the whole thing was so damn intimate.
Wow, Laura. This was so unexpectedly, incredibly erotic. And at the same time, Clark was only doing what he could be expected to do as a responsible teacher, caring for his injured student.
The area wasn't the best and Lois was sure the stoned kid who sold them the supplies wouldn't be able to tell that a scream from the parking lot warranted investigation. But she was with Clark and she didn't feel the slightest sliver of fear. She felt a few other things, most of them things she wouldn't dwell on until later, but no fear.
Was it Lisa who gave you a smiley face for this? Okay, you'll get one from me, too.
Lois unconsciously ran her own fingers over her injuries and the spaces of unbroken skin between them. Clark's fingers had been deft and gentle and warm. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at him out the corner of her eye. In the dark his body was a mere shadow, but the light from the dashboard clearly threw his face in relief. He looked tense. Without thinking, Lois rubbed his shoulder.
In one way, I'm not absolutely sure that this Lois would touch this Clark that way in this situation. But in another way, I feel it is inevitable that she would.
The muscle underneath her gentle fingertips was steel, but it relaxed after a moment. A blissful smile crossed Clark's face and he looked at her. His eyes roved her face for a moment, horror dawning in his eyes. His shoulder suddenly became rigid muscle again and she let her hand drop, for her sanity as much as his.
Gaaaah. I tell you, Laura, they have to drop this teacher/student pretense.
“Hi, Mr. Kent, or should I call you Clark? No, you see, I can do that. I'm actually 23. Undercover. Yeah. So… why did I tell you? Oh um… I just thought we could go back to your place and I could jump your bones?”
The "jumping his bones" suggestion is a good one... but actually, Lois, you should tell him because the two of you ought to crack this case together. (And then you can jump his bones when the whole thing is wrapped up...
)
Lois jerked out of her musings and looked around. They were at her parent's house. Right. Clark thought she was a high school student and that she lived here.
He did drive her to her parents' house! Happy waiting for her, Claude!
“Clark, I…”
“—Don't. Don't Lois. Call me Mr. Kent. Please, for my sanity. It's time for you to go home. Be sure to tell your parents what happened to you tonight. Go to the doctor tomorrow.” Clark paused and his voice nearly cracked on the last bit. “Do your homework. I'll see you tomorrow.”
“But Cl—Mr. Kent, I have to tell you something.”
Clark stared stonily out the front window.
“Go on, then,” he said brusquely. “What is it?”
Lois took in his rigid form and sighed. “Nothing, Mr. Kent. Thanks for everything tonight.”
And they can't communicate. Now
that is something we've seen before. Where is the "deep sigh" emoticon?
“It was terrifying, Mom. I was almost too late. And when I tackled him, I wasn't myself.”
“What do you mean "you weren't yourself?' Who else would you be, Clark?”
“I was so… angry. Fearful, but angry. I wanted to kill him. I'm terrified of what I would have done if Lois hadn't been there. I've never felt such an all consuming rage. I can't feel like that, Mom! It's dangerous. I'm dangerous.”
“Clark Kent, if I was there right now I'd tan your hide for saying such things. You are not dangerous. You acted on fear and adrenaline and when someone you loved was threatened, it merely magnified the emotions. You didn't harm a hair on that man's head, did you?”
“I… I knocked him into the ground.”
“He deserved that.”
Wow. Great conversation. Clark confesses that he was afraid of himself and of the prospect that he might lose control of his fury and his terrifying powers. Is that Lana speaking to his mind? And then Martha tells him that he loves Lois.
Hmmm. I wonder. Would Martha be all right with the idea that Clark is in love with one of his students? Or has she guessed that there is more to Lois than meets the eye?
“I guess, but… wait, Mom, love? Are you serious? Are you feeling okay? I don't love Lois. That would be wrong.”
Martha bit her lip, though Clark, with all his powers, couldn't see her. He was right; it was wrong. But yet her mother's intuition was telling her she was spot on and she couldn't disregard it. It had never failed her before.
“Clark, matters of the heart are mysterious. And I can't solve this for you. All I can tell you is that when love taps you on the shoulder, you can't just shut the door in its face. That usually backfires.”
“Solve what? Mom, you're wrong. There's nothing to solve. I haven't been tapped on the shoulder.”
Wow! Oh yes, Clark, you have!!!!
His words sent a flash of bright fire behind his eyes and his shoulder burned where Lois had rubbed it. God, his mother hadn't been speaking in literal terms. He needed to get a grip.
Martha seems almost frighteningly knowledgeable!
The feelings in his heart weren't the same as they had been for Lana. With Lana, things had been so easy. He hadn't had to question falling in love. It had just happened. Now things were achingly similar and heartbreakingly different. Clark laid his head on his arm in exhaustion.
I'm so glad that his feelings for Lois aren't the same as the ones he had had for Lana. I need his love for Lois to be unique, unlike anything else. I like your remark that Clark had fallen in love with Lana because it had been such an easy thing to do. There was no guilt involved, no questions to answer, nothing to doubt. Well, not a lot of it, anyway.
“Goodnight stars… goodnight air…goodnight noises everywhere,” he quoted sleepily to himself, recalling years and years of falling asleep to the same story. “Goodnight moon.” Clark paused and got up from his seat. He tumbled into bed, pulling the covers tight around his chin in a mocking version of his childhood routine. “Goodnight Lois,” he whispered to the dark room.
So this is what American parents teach their children to say when they go to bed? How sweet.
And of course, I love the fact that there was only one person he said goodnight to. Lois.
Great chapter, Laura! I loved it.
Ann