Table of Contents
From Part 22:“Can’t you let us charge him first?” Henderson said sardonically. “Okay, it’s no secret that we’ll be charging him with attempted murder and conspiracy to murder. Probably Murder One as well, if we can tie him to Baines’ death. And I’ll probably manage to slip in something about threatening and attempted abduction of a police officer too.”
Lois remembered just in time that she wasn’t supposed to know anything about that. “Oh?”
“Look, if the two of you come to see me this evening, I’ll fill you in on the details, okay?” Henderson said. “Right now, I have to take these... *gentlemen* down to the precinct. You’ve got your scoop anyway - it’ll make the Planet’s evening edition, right? And I’ll save you some exclusive material, so you don’t have to worry that LNN will get the jump on you,” he finished, his voice laced heavily with irony.
“I can’t wait to see how LNN reports this,” Lois commented with a grin at Clark. “What’s the betting that they make it the filler before the last commercial break?”
“I won’t even touch that one!”
**********
Now read on:The day staff were just arriving in the newsroom when Lois and Clark had finished writing up the arrest of Lex Luthor. Clark had noticed Lois stifling several yawns as she insisted on reading over their story for the third time, and so as soon as she hit send, he tapped her shoulder.
“Come on. I’m taking you home.”
She smothered another yawn. “You are?” Excitement gleamed in her eyes and she made a strange gesture with her hand, which he guessed that he was supposed to interpret as a flying movement.
“Yeah.” He winked. “It’ll be quicker than calling you a cab, anyway. If you’re happy about letting me... uh, take you.”
“Happy?” She raised her eyebrows, and then ended up yawning again. “I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said I’d be continually bugging you, Clark!”
And he finally acknowledged that she meant it. She really did see his abilities as a positive thing, and not something to be alarmed about. Okay, she’d done her best to convince him of that earlier, and he’d even begun to believe it then, but almost an hour spent at the Planet working on their latest report had given him time to think. And, he admitted, to obsess. To decide that maybe she’d just been polite, not wanting to be unkind to him.
But then, he should know by now that being nice just for the sake of it wasn’t really Lois Lane’s way of doing things, shouldn’t he? She didn’t believe in polite fictions. If she said something, she generally meant it.
He smiled. “Okay. Let’s hit the stairs; we can take off from the roof.” At her weary look, he grinned. “Don’t worry - once we’re in the stairwell, I’ll carry you!”
She’d fallen asleep in his arms even before he’d got them above cloud cover. Flying slowly so as not to wake her, Clark gazed fondly at the woman he was carrying.
Lois Lane had entered his life like a whirlwind, and she’d set all his expectations, all his plans, on their ears. He’d never expected to find anyone who would accept him just as he was, difference and all - and yet she had. He’d never expected that he would ever find a way to use his abilities openly to help people; that he’d have to go through his life continually tortured by knowing that there were people in trouble and that he couldn’t help them without risking everything that he cared about. And yet Lois had come up with what looked like being the perfect solution.
He’d never expected to fall headlong in love. Not after Lana. And yet he was falling headlong in love with Lois Lane.
No; he was already headlong in love with Lois Lane.
He tested that feeling, expecting it to terrify him. Expecting to feel the fear coursing through him, the dread that she would never feel the same way about him, that she could never want to date a man as... as
not-human as he was.
And yet all he felt was calm. Calm and a submerged sense of excitement.
Lois was not indifferent to him. He knew that. Okay, he could easily write off her statement that she was attracted to him, and their first heady kisses, as simply the product of what had seemed to her to be impending death. With the second kisses, there’d been no danger to her. And she’d known about him, about everything which made him different, about everything he simply didn’t know about himself.
Maybe, just maybe...
She stirred slightly in his arms, giving a little whimper, and then settled her head back into the crook of his shoulder. He was tempted to stop flying altogether and simply float up in the clouds with her in his embrace. But he couldn’t do that, he told himself. Lois was exhausted. She needed to be in her bed, asleep where she could be comfortable.
Dragging his thoughts away from the woman he loved, he thought again about her idea of a disguise. It would be fantastic if it worked. He’d never again have to ignore someone’s plea for help purely on the basis that he was afraid of disclosing his identity and putting himself and his family at risk.
But would it work? What sort of disguise was Lois thinking of? What she’d said about him looking very different without his glasses had been extremely interesting; but would that be enough? Even with his hair styled differently?
She was right about uniforms. People never did notice the faces of the uniformed officials they dealt with. But what sort of uniform? Was she suggesting that he don the uniform of a police officer? Or a soldier? But, apart from the fact that impersonating an official of that type was a criminal offence and definitely something he didn’t want to do, that could send the wrong message. Not all of the sort of people in danger that he could be called upon to help saw officialdom as something they could trust.
So he’d need a unique uniform. One he could make his own, and by which he’d be instantly recognisable - but wouldn’t that make him stand out
more? Surely people would notice his face if he was the only one wearing the uniform? He’d get photographed. His image would be plastered on every newspaper’s front page and on every TV news show. He’d be IDed as soon as anyone who knew Clark Kent saw it, surely?
But... maybe not. If he ensured that his behaviour, his posture, even his tone of voice were all different when he wore his uniform - when he was... well, Superman, if that was what Lois was insisting on calling him, though he was still far from happy with the name. Then maybe, just maybe, it could work...
As he approached Lois’s apartment building, he realised that he was going to have to wake her. He’d need to land in that alley just behind her building and get her to find her keys; there was no way that he was going to search through her clothes to find where she’d stashed them.
Clark realised then that he should probably have flown them to the Apollo Hotel - he
really needed to find an apartment! - and picked up her Jeep; he could have driven it for her. She'd need it at home, not outside her colleague’s hotel. But then, he could find a way of returning it for her later, he guessed.
Then his eye was caught by a window which was slightly ajar; flying closer, he identified it as Lois’s living-room window. He didn’t need to wake her. He could just fly in through the window and carry her to her bed.
He could carry Lois into her bedroom... His breath caught at the thought, and he found himself visualising laying Lois down on the bedspread, taking off her shoes, probably taking off her coat...
No. That was a very bad idea.
But he couldn’t just leave her dressed as she was, and he certainly couldn’t lay her down on one of her sofas. From what he’d seen earlier, they weren’t long enough for her to lie flat, and he had no intention of letting her risk getting a stiff neck.
He’d just have to do what he needed to do and then get out of her apartment and go and take a cold shower somewhere. Preferably in the Arctic Sea.
“ ‘lark?” The lithe body in his arms stirred, and Clark looked down. Lois was gazing sleepily up at him. “Where are we?”
“In your apartment.” He smiled affectionately at her.
“I fell asleep?” She sounded horrified, her eyes now open wide, and she tried to slide out of his arms.
“You know that you weigh less than a feather, to me,” Clark reminded her. “Carrying you isn’t a problem.”
“Yeah, but I missed a flight with you!” She sounded chagrined.
Clark laughed aloud. “If that’s the only problem, consider it remedied! I’ll take you flying whenever you want to go. And anyway, you’ve already promised to come with me to get this ‘uniform’ sorted out - that’ll mean a flight to Kansas.”
“Kansas?” Lois blinked as he allowed her to slide to her feet. “Isn’t that where you come from?”
“Yeah.” He smiled at her. “I’m going to ask my mom to make something for me. She’s great with a sewing machine!”
Lois looked taken aback. “You want me to come with you to your mother’s house?”
“My parents’ place - the farm,” he explained. “And sure! I’d love you to!”
She smiled shyly at him, then followed it with a yawn. “Okay, I really have to get some sleep,” she told him.
“Sure. I’ll just...” He gestured towards the window.
“Wait.” She caught his arm.
Clark paused, giving her a quizzical look.
“You can’t just... I mean, after all that’s happened...” Now she was looking awkward, even a little embarrassed. She dropped her hand and backed away from him just a little.
He wasn’t sure what was on her mind - whether it was their story, or the fact that he’d saved her life, or his abilities - but what he was sure of was that she should be in bed, asleep. “It’ll keep, Lois,” he assured her.
“No, it won’t.” She sounded surprisingly resolute, despite her tiredness. “Clark... it’s been... uh, a pretty eventful night.”
“Yeah, it has,” he agreed. “But, hey, look what we got out of it! The exclusive story on Lex Luthor’s arrest! Okay, it won’t appear until the afternoon edition, and it may get onto one of the TV news shows before then, but we have the inside track. They’ll all be following the Planet’s lead.” He grinned at her.
“Sure, but that wasn’t what I was talking about.” Somewhat shyly, he thought, she placed a hand on his arm again.
“What were you talking about?” he asked softly.
“Us... I mean, you and me.
Is there a you and me?” Her words were hesitant, and Clark had a flashback to those moments inside the shed at EPRAD when he’d seen another glimpse of a Lois who lacked confidence in her own attractiveness. She scared men off, she’d thought. He wasn’t attracted to her, she’d imagined.
She couldn’t still think that, could she?
“Lois...” he began, feeling very unsure about what was the right thing to say. Of course he was attracted to her. Of course he wanted there to be a “you and me”, as she’d phrased it. But what if this was all the product of euphoria and too little sleep on Lois’s part?
On the other hand, he’d never be able to forgive himself if his caution brought back that terrible hurt look to her eyes.
“If it was up to me, there’d definitely be a you and me,” he told her without any further hesitation.
“What do you mean, if it was up to you?” she questioned.
“Lois, you’ve had two nights with next to no sleep. You’re dead on your feet. Plus it’s been a heck of a traumatic night. I can’t hold you to anything you might say or do in this state! You need to get some sleep. We can talk later, okay?” he suggested.
“Clark!” Lois exclaimed. “Are you trying to give me the brush-off for my own good here?”
“Uh...” He floundered a little as he realised that her interpretation could be seen as valid. “Not really. It’s just that... oh, heck, Lois! You must know that I’m attracted to you! But I can’t let you make any sort of commitment now, when you’re almost asleep on your feet -”
“Clark!”
“What?”
“Shut up!”
And suddenly he had an armful of soft, yielding woman in his arms again, her lips on his, her arms around his neck. And he wasn’t going to argue with that!
**********
Lois almost floated into her bedroom after Clark left; she wasn’t sure whether it was her state of beyond-exhaustion or the sensations his kiss induced in her.
His kiss. He’d insisted on keeping it to one, despite all her powers of persuasion. He’d been right, of course; she desperately needed her sleep, and in fact he’d been pretty much holding her upright as he’d returned her kiss. But she couldn’t have let him leave without that kiss - for her own sake as much as his.
She knew that if she’d waited until the next time she saw him, she’d never have had the nerve to take the initiative. And it was clear that Clark wouldn’t have.
But it still hadn’t been easy. She’d almost let him go. He’d clearly been reluctant to touch her beyond what had been necessary to get her home and, if necessary, into her bedroom. But, despite all her reservations about men, and especially about men she worked with, Lois had known that she couldn’t let
this man just turn tail and fly - literally - out of her life.
She wanted him. As a friend... and as more than a friend.
His kisses had stirred her more than any other man’s, ever. And what she knew of him told her that he was nothing like Paul, nothing like Claude. He was a good guy, and he could be trusted.
What was more, she already knew inside, in a way she couldn’t explain, that she trusted him implicitly. Not only not to betray her professionally - she’d accepted the day before that Clark wouldn’t behave like that - but she also trusted him not to betray her personally. He wouldn’t walk out on her, or use her and discard her. In fact, she’d thought while contemplating her action, he was probably more afraid that
she would hurt him.
He’d given her the very strong impression that what he expected from people - from women in particular - was rejection. He’d expected her to be afraid of him, or of what he could do. Or maybe fear wasn’t the right emotion; maybe prejudice was what he’d expected.
He hadn’t said so, but she had a sneaking suspicion that he’d been rejected at some point by a woman, and very probably for something to do with his differences. So he had simply expected her to do the same.
Hadn’t he?
That, she thought, was what was really behind his reluctance to kiss her before he’d left. He’d persuaded himself that, once she’d caught up on some sleep and seen the night’s events in the perspective which came with distance, she’d ‘realise’ that she really wasn’t interested in the enigma that was Clark Kent: the man who might not be human.
And she had no intention of letting him believe that. Or of letting him try to convince her of it. So, when he hadn’t taken her up on her very blatant offer - which she’d barely been able to believe that she’d made - she’d had to kiss him herself.
It had been worth it. His lips had softened under hers, despite his attempt at resistance, and his arms had tightened around her. He’d been hers in that moment.
But only for that moment. He’d pulled back shortly afterwards, reluctance clear in his expression, and set her from him.
He had to leave, he’d insisted. She had to get some sleep. They could talk later... maybe? if she wanted to? he’d asked.
Try to stop her! she’d insisted.
They’d arranged to meet up later that day, before Clark had insisted that she go to bed. He’d hesitated, looking concerned, just as he’d turned to walk back to the window.
“Are you sure you can make it there on your own? You don’t need me to carry you?”
“To my bedroom?” She’d laughed at him, smothering a yawn at the same time. “I think I can make it that far.”
She’d sensed that he wanted to leave, anyway - and something told her that it was more a case of
not wanting to leave, but getting out of her apartment while he still could. And that was good news.
Yes, she was falling in love with Clark Kent. As she climbed into bed, Lois admitted that to herself at last.
The good news was that, unless her instincts were completely askew - which wouldn’t be unheard of where personal relationships were concerned - Clark was far from being indifferent to her.
If her guess was right, he just needed to be persuaded that she wouldn’t reject him. And that was just too ironic for words - Lois Lane, the woman who’d been rejected by just about every man she’d cared about. But then, her experience did mean that she understood how he might feel.
Later... they’d talk later...
*********
...tbc
