Author’s notes:About a year ago, Carole thought it’d be a nice idea if I wrote a fic in Greek. I had an idea, and thought I could make a comedy out of it. I began writing it, but what came up is definitely not a comedy. I finished it anyway and translated it in English, and here it is.
Thanks to Wanda Detroit for BRing and liking it.
Thanks also to Klaus Meine, for providing me with a title much better than the one I had originally come up with… okay, so maybe the
song lyrics don’t fit 100%, but, what the heck, I still love this song!! (see sig)
If anyone would like to read the Greek version of this fic, email me at lcannabtg@yahoo.gr
Happy reading,
AnnaBtG.
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Dedicated to Carole-+-+-+-
Merry laughter could be heard from the living room of the house on Hyperion Avenue. Lois was in the kitchen cooking, but Clark and their son, Jon, were sitting on the couch, having fun with stories from the ‘Lane and Kent’ past – the ones innocent enough to be narrated to a five-year-old. It was a nice opportunity for Jon, because he always enjoyed these stories and his mother, for some ‘unexplainable’ reason, never had the time for them.
“That’s when they named Mom Dirty Dog Lane?” Jon asked.
Clark’s surprise didn’t prevent him from breaking into more laughter, even louder this time. “Mad Dog, Jon, not Dirty Dog,” he managed to explain between deep breaths. “And no, it wasn’t then. She already had the nickname when I met her.”
“Oh, right… Dad, let’s sit on the ceiling,” Jon pleaded. The couch was all nice and comfy, but the feeling of sitting on the ceiling in your dad’s arms was clearly better. Luckily for him, Jon, although he hadn’t developed his superpowers yet, already had a few advantages, including never suffering from nausea. Not even if being turned upside down for hours.
“Mom won’t like this, Jon,” Clark answered, displeased.
“Come on, Dad, please!”
“Okay. Come ‘ere.”
Jon pushed himself right into his father’s arms, who floated high, turned upside down and sat on the ceiling.
“Why does Mom always want the house to be clean?” Jon asked.
“I don’t know…” Clark replied, slightly troubled. “She was always very messy, but after you were born she got cleaning-up-mania. Maybe she thought that, since she was perfect at everything else she was doing, she should also be a perfect housekeeper.”
Loud footsteps were heard and a furious Lois stormed into the room. Her eyes were directed straight at the ceiling. “I knew you two were up to something! Get off the ceiling right now! I don’t want footsteps on my ceiling!”
“On top of it all, she has the sixth sense of the housekeeper,” Clark commented in a low voice. Then he turned to her. “Let us sit, Lois, and I’ll clean it up later.”
“Yeah, right. That’s what you always say!” she angrily replied.
“But you never let me do it!” he said, surprised.
“That’s all excuses! Now let’s get a little bit serious! Get down right now!”
Clark started descending slowly, but Jon began to grumble. “Come on, Mom, let us sit for a while!”
“No, Jon, I’m not gonna clean up your mess! I said get down!”
“We’re not making any mess! We’re just sitting!”
“I said get down!”
“What if we get off our shoes?”
“Jon, I’m not bargaining here!”
“Lois, why are you being so obsessive compulsive?” Clark interfered with the sweetest tone he possessed.
“I AM NOT!” Lois exploded. “I JUST WANT MY HOUSE TO BE CLEAN!”
“Yes, but why?”
“BECAUSE!”
Clark raised his eyebrows, silently accepting his defeat. Always holding Jon tightly, he descended and sat on the couch. Jon looked very depressed.
“You never let us sit on the ceiling!” he accused her.
“I don’t need to. You do it on your own!” she retorted.
“You’re bad!”
“And you’re going upstairs! No more fooling around!”
Jon’s jaw dropped open.
“You heard me!”
He got up and headed to his room, displeasure on his face. “Typical,” he muttered.
“I heard that!” his mother scolded him.
“I don’t care,” he replied, before disappearing in the upstairs hallway.
Clark was watching the scene silently, feeling it wouldn’t be proper to interfere. But it just hurt too much, seeing what had begun as the family of his dreams ending up like a battlefield.
“Your son is really, *really* spoiled.” After Jon left the living room, Lois thought it was Clark’s turn to be scolded.
Her sharp voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he turned to face her. He knew another battle was coming, but for some reason he was unable to stop himself.
“*You* raised him,” he reminded her, in a faint tone of irony.
“Then, you should’ve raised him yourself,” she said harshly.
“I didn’t have the chance!” he accused her.
“That’s a lie!”
“Not at all! I barely even see him!”
“Two hours a day is your idea of ‘barely’?” Lois mimicked quoting the last word with her fingers, desperate to get the upper hand. She was determined not to let him win, even though he was right.
“In comparison to your *twenty*-two hours a day, yeah!”
Lois stared at Clark angrily. “Clark, go.”
“The two hours haven’t passed yet,” he said bitterly.
“I don’t care. It’s *my* home now, and I don’t want you here.”
“Fine,” he said coldly.
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The door closed. He left.
Again.
I fall on the couch, grasp one of the cushions and squeeze it.
Four years, twelve months a year, seven days a week.
Two hours a day.
Two hours he spends in my living room with Jon.
I squeeze the cushion more forcefully. I feel my eyes getting teary.
The stupidest thing I’ve ever done.
Every day I have the chance to fix it, and every time I repeat it.
Why do I always get so stubborn and aggressive? Why am I always shooing him away, if it’s the last thing I want to do? Why can’t I, for once, push my egotism away and admit I was wrong?
That day comes again in my mind, a nightmare that’s been haunting me for four years.
‘I can’t do this anymore, Clark. I can’t handle all these responsibilities. I’m a journalist, I can’t be a wife and a mother at the same time. I need free time, I need my freedom. I have to go.’
‘No, you don’t have to, I’ll leave…’ he’d said.
I’m stupid. I’m completely stupid.
But I want him! I love him! He knows it!
More tears…
He knows it. I haven’t told him in the last four years, but he knows it. He always knew me better than I knew myself.
It’s ridiculous. I love Clark. I love Jon too, but he’s restricting me. His birth was what made me feel so restrained.
And now I don’t have Clark, but I do have Jon! How ironic…
I’m shivering. I’m thinking about how I’ve ended up and I throw away the cushion in disgust.
Damn it!
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Leaving the house, Clark stared at the door nostalgically. Four years ago, behind that door there was his most favorite place in the whole world.
Four years. In his mind, it looked like four minutes. In his heart, though… like four centuries.
He missed his family. Not the remains of it that was left, but the real family. He – the Daddy – and Lois – the Mommy – laughing, enjoying the first attempts of Jon – the son – to speak.
If Lois could get that silly idea out of her head… How could she feel restrained?
Clark sighed. It was all his fault. He had, in a way, taken advantage of the circumstances, asking her to marry him right after her almost-wedding to Lex Luthor. Unfortunately, though, despite her excitement at that moment, Lois still wasn’t ready to get married.
The mistake was made nevertheless… and it hurt twice as much now, because, in addition to Lois, the judge had also decided to take Jon away from him, as ‘too little to be away from his mother’. And the icing on the cake? The arrangement that had him seeing Jon two hours a day, every day! Not letting him stay away from her for a few days, forget her…
As if he would…
Slowly, he walked away from the building. He had to go home. There was an article to be written.
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More than two hours had passed, when the phone rang. Lois lowered the television volume, rose from the couch and answered it.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Lois, it’s me, Terence.”
She grimaced in disgust. “What’s up, Terence?” she asked, pretending that she cared.
“Fine. Look, tonight I’m going to that new French restaurant, ‘L’ Étoile’, to write my review. Wanna come with me?”
“I’m sorry,” she replied, “but I have no one to take care of Jon.”
“Call your ex. He won’t say no.”
“Sorry, Terence, I can’t. Another time, maybe. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I gotta go, I have another call.”
“Okay, Lois. I’ll see ya.”
“Bye,” she said and hung up. She didn’t really have another call; nevertheless, the phone rang again just seconds later.
“Hello?”
“Lois, what’s up?”
“What do you want, Clark?” she asked back without too much courtesy.
“See, I was thinking that it’s Saturday night…”
“Yeah. So?”
“I’ve invited Jimmy to my place to watch basketball, and I thought that I could take Jon too, since I’m staying in… Maybe you’d like to go out.”
‘What the heck, has he bugged it?’ she wondered nervously. “Nah, I’m not going anywhere tonight…” she said, indifferently.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Thanks though.”
“Okay. Can I talk to Jon?”
“Sure.” She covered the phone with her hand. “Jon!” she called. “Pick up the phone!”
“’Kay!” the answer was heard from upstairs.
“Goodnight,” she said to Clark.
“Goodnight.”
She hung up the phone and sank on the couch, turning up the volume of the TV again.
Three minutes later, Jon came down the staircase yelling.
“Mom! Mom! Mom!”
“Yes, Jon?”
“Why can’t I go to Dad and Uncle Jimmy tonight?”
“You can’t go to Dad every day. We’ve been through that a thousand times.”
“I want my Daddy! We’ll have pizza with Uncle Jimmy and we’ll watch basketball on the TV! Why don’t you let me go? You’re bad!”
Lois got mad. It wasn’t so much about the complaining, as for the ‘you’re bad’ that she couldn’t stand at all. She had practically raised him on her own for four years, sacrificing all she had, and what was his way of paying her back? By preferring his Daddy and accusing her of being bad? That was more than enough!
She got up again and walked to the phone. Almost trembling by the tension of her feelings, she grabbed the phone book and, after searching for a while, she dialed a number.
“Terence? … It’s Lois. Is the invitation still open?”
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“It must be the pizza boy,” Jimmy said to Clark, hearing the doorbell ring.
“I’ll get it.”
Clark headed to the door, opened it and was found before a big surprise.
“Take your son,” Lois said bitterly, almost pushing Jon towards him.
“But…”
“What? You don’t want him?” she asked, challengingly.
“No, but…” He turned to Jon, who was looking around, in an attempt to understand what had happened. “Jon, go and say hi to Uncle Jimmy and I’ll be with you in a bit.”
Jon walked in without a word.
“What happened?” Clark asked. “I thought you had nowhere to go.” He stared at her in confusion; her black evening dress, her hair, her make-up… everything was perfect.
“Your little boy prefers spending his Saturday evening with *you*,” she spat, “so I thought I’d go out, after all.”
Still confused, Clark tried to decide which question was the safest. “And where are you going?”
“To ‘L’ Étoile’, with Terence Fald. Problem?”
“With him? But he’s completely lame!”
He immediately regretted the moment he said those words. The explosion that followed was one of the worst ones in the history of their relationship.
“And who do you think you are, telling me who I should go out with? I like him and that’s none of your business! You’re being too selfish, making me look bad in Jon’s eyes!”
“Who, me?!”
“Yeah, you! I can imagine what you told him on the phone! ‘Jon, I’ll be with Uncle Jimmy. We’ll have some pizza and we’ll watch TV. Too bad your Mommy won’t let you come’!” she mocked.
“That’s not how it happened…”
“I know how it happened! And now you’re being jealous, because, instead of going out with you, I’m going out with Terence!”
“Lois, please! Who do you think I am, your jealous husband?”
“Jealous, definitely. Husband, you wish.”
“Is that all?”
She glared at him angrily. “Yeah.” She took a deep breath. “Goodnight. Bring back Jon tomorrow at noon.”
“I won’t forget,” he spat bitterly.
After giving him a last furious glance, she left.
Clark sighed and closed the door.
“CK, is everything okay?” Jimmy called from the couch. He already had Jon in his arms.
“Yeah…” he sighed again. “As usual.”
His friend breathed heavily. “Jon,” he said to the boy, “I think I’ve left my cell phone in the pocket of my coat, in your dad’s bedroom. Can you go bring it to me?”
“Okay, Uncle Jimmy,” Jon said unwillingly. He got up and headed to the bedroom.
“And don’t come back without it!”
“It’s in your pocket,” Clark commented, when the boy had left the room.
“I know. But we have to talk.” Jimmy stretched his head, grabbed the TV control and lowered the volume.
Clark sank in the couch, speechless. He knew what was going to follow.
“Why do you keep on torturing yourself?”
“Jimmy…”
“I’m serious. Why don’t you talk to her? Why don’t you tell her how much you miss her, how much you want you to be together?”
“It would be pointless. *She’s* the one who wanted a divorce. If she wanted us back together, she’d say so.”
“Are you all right, CK?” Jimmy asked, with a you-must-be-kidding-me look. “*Lois* would ever admit she was wrong to ask you to split up? Are you serious?”
“Jimmy, she’s changed. She’s not who she was when I first met her.”
“Of course not. Now she’s even worse.”
Clark sighed again, instead of answering.
“Seriously, CK. You don’t get to see her every day in the office anymore, like I do. She’s become neurotic, she’s locked inside herself, she doesn’t go out, she has no friends…”
“Still, by now she’ll be ordering dinner at ‘L’ Étoile’ with Terence Fald,” he snorted.
“This means nothing. She probably agreed to that date just to get rid of him. Three years now, since he joined the Planet, he’s been flirting her. I wonder why she hasn’t beaten him up yet. Or, I’d wonder that, before. Now I find it natural. She’s given up on everything, she finds it all boring. Even her work is almost a burden for her.”
Clark turned to Jimmy, surprised. “Still, I see her every day and she’s always the same.”
“Of course! Do you think she’d let you see how much your divorce has affected her? She’d rather die.”
Clark stared at Jimmy, wordless. For some strange reason, it all made perfect sense. Who knew that Jimmy could give him such good advice regarding his relationship with Lois?
“I think you should give it a shot,” Jimmy insisted.
“Dunno, Jimmy… I’ll see how it turns out.”
«Okay,” Jimmy shrugged. “Jon, come here, I finally found my cell phone!”
Jon came back and fell in Jimmy’s arms.
“Can I play snake?”
“Don’t you wanna watch the game? It starts in a couple of minutes.”
“Oh, yeah, I do.”
They all made themselves comfortable in the couch and Clark turned up the volume.
-End of part 1-
