Clark shoved slightly, and the door opened with a slight cracking sound. He pushed the door open, and Lois crinkled her nose at the slight smell of mustiness inside. It was apparent that no one had been inside in ages.
Putting one hand on Lois’s arm, Clark said, “Wait here for a moment.”
He plunged into the darkness, and a moment later there was a great gust of wind coming from the doorway. Lois coughed slightly, but noticed that in the space of an instant darkness became light as a fire erupted, seemingly on its own in the fireplace.
Lois coughed again, and Clark smiled at her sheepishly. Lois stepped in the room, noting that the smell of must was gone, replaced by a faint scent of lemon and salty sea air.
The cabin was all in one room, with the exception of a small doorway leading to a separate bath. Half the room was raised, and in the corner was a large bed that seemed to dominate that space. Lois blinked when she realized that the gauzy lace covering the canopy bed was some sort of insect netting. That didn’t bode well.
The fireplace was in the center of the room, sunken in a pit and surrounded by brass. The back of the room was covered by a heavy mahogany bar, with glasses and bottles stacked against the back of the wall. Low couches surrounded the fireplace. The carpet was a garish green, and the couches were a vivid shade of red. The velvet paintings covering the walls were black and red and gold, pictures of dogs, gambling, and dogs gambling. Even the forgiving, soft light of the fireplace didn’t diffuse the garish clash of colors and styles.
Lois blinked. “Did we just time travel back to the sixties?”
Clark flushed again. “I think Spenser Spenser was trying to channel Hugh Hefner.”
Lois noticed that Clark was standing carefully in front of one table. She noticed that other tables around the room were oddly bare, as though decorative pieces had been hastily removed.
“What do you have back there?” Lois asked, craning her head.
“Nothing to worry about.” Clark said hastily. “I forgot about Spenser’s tastes or I would have tried somewhere else.”
He turned to gather something up. Lois caught a glimpse of a collection of statuettes, some of which were...
Lois found herself blushing.
Clark gathered them up hastily. There was a another gust of wind, and the fire flicked and dimmed. Clark disappeared, but was back a moment later.
“So why’d you pick this place?” If this was Clark’s idea of style, maybe he was more of an alien than she’d thought.
“It’s about as far away from people as you can get and still be warm and in the same time zone.” Clark grinned slightly. “And it’s got a really great shower. This is Spenser’s VIP cabin. I stayed here when I was doing a story on him.”
“I could use a shower,” Lois admitted. “And a bite to eat. I don’t have anything clean to wear, but...”
Clark grinned and disappeared. Before Lois could take a second breath, he was back with one of her suitcases. Smoke rose from the edges, and Clark grinned again.
“The service is pretty good here, too, if I say so myself.”
Lois frowned at him. “I notice you didn’t get anything for yourself.”
Waving vaguely in the direction of the door, Clark said, “Oh, my luggage is outside. I had to make two trips.”
“That’s...impressive,” Lois said.
“I’m showing off a little,” Clark admitted. “I haven’t really been my best back in Smallville.”
******************
The food was delicious. Kondoru was nothing if dependable, even if his food stand was just barely opening. Tandoori Chicken, Prawn Curry, Chicken, Dahi Bara...he’d gotten a wide selection hoping to find something Lois liked.
“It must have been lonely growing up like that.” Lois sat on the floor in front of one of the couches, the food spread on the small, low table Clark had found in the main compound. Her back was to the fire, which left her face in shadow, her whole figure a partial silhouette.
Telling her the truth about his past hadn’t been as difficult as he’d expected. Not looking at her made it easier; seeing pity in her eyes was the last thing Clark wanted to see.
“You forget sometimes what it’s like not to be lonely.” Clark picked at his food. “You feel numb, until something or someone reminds you that it wasn’t always like that.”
“That’s what Lilah was for you.”
Clark hesitated. “I couldn’t trust anyone for a long time after I left Smallville. It wasn’t just what happened to her. It was before that. She used me, and I couldn’t see it at all for a long time. I couldn‘t trust my own judgment.”
“You’ve dated since then,” Lois said. “How long did it take you to trust people after that?”
Clark didn’t respond, staring gloomily at the remains of dinner.
“You never told any of them what you were?” Lois’s voice was incredulous. “Not even the Nigerian Princess?”
“I thought about it a few times...there were one or two who I thought about telling.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I kept imagining the look in their eyes when they found out what I was...the revulsion. I couldn’t even tell them about what happened in Smallville, much less that I was a tentacled alien from outer space.”
“You have tentacles?” Lois asked. “Wouldn’t some of your girlfriends have noticed a little detail like that?”
Clark chuckled. “I’m fully human, from the outside at least. When I was a kid, I kept having this dream where I’d wake up with tentacles, or green skin or scales. Things were changing for me so fast, and I never knew what was going to happen.”
“You had trouble with your abilities?”
“It’s part of the reason I was bounced around so often, at least at first. I’d start setting fires with my eyes, and then I wouldn’t have any good explanation. Or I’d hear things I wasn’t supposed to, and they’d assume I was eavesdropping. There were a few times that other kids got hurt, when I was first learning my own strength.”
Lois reached across the table and touched his hand. “ I’m sorry you had to go through all that.”
“It was a valuable lesson. There’s not a lot of point in trusting anyone, because it won’t be long before they leave.” Clark glanced at Lois’s silhouette. “I don’t know why it’s different with you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Lois said. “I know who you are, and what you are, and I’m here for you.”
That wasn’t true, of course. Clark had come all too close to losing her this evening already. Yet he wasn’t pulling away as he always had. Maybe his time to run had already passed.
Clark cleared his throat, then said, “I’ll clear the table.”
He allowed the world to slip into motionlessness once again. He was showing off, but it also gave him time; time to think about what he was doing.
Trusting this woman was foolish. He had no reason not to believe that she wouldn’t use everything he said against him. Even if she was trustworthy, she was fragile. Opening his heart to someone who was as reckless and prone to leap in the face of danger as she was just asking to let himself get hurt.
Yet she finally knew more about him than anyone else in the world- and she hadn’t pulled away.
The dishes were easy to clean; most of the cardboard packages burned up in his hands as he made his way back to the main compound. He left the other dishes in the sink and returned before Lois could blink. To her, it would look as though the dishes had simply disappeared.
He had to get a little distance before it was too late. This was dangerous, scary, against everything he’d learned throughout his life.
She believed in him. She knew the worst of what he’d done, and she still looked at him like he was a man, and not a monster.
He sat down and allowed time to resume its normal flow. He said “Lois, I think-”
She smiled, delighted at his simple trick. In that moment, time seemed to stop again, this time of its own volition. Clark felt as though his world tilted on it’s axis. He felt his breath catch in his chest even as the sound of his own pulse thundered in his ears.
It wasn’t just her beauty, or her quick wit, or her mind. It wasn’t even the acceptance that radiated from her, even though she knew about the worst that he was. It was all of this and more. It felt natural and easy and somehow preordained.
It was too late. There was no way he’d ever be able to make her go away now.
He felt overwhelmed, overshadowed, awed. He’d though what he’d had with Lilah was love, but it was a pale shadow of what he was feeling now.
This was the real thing, and it scared the hell out of him.
**************
Clark was staring at her, and Lois wondered if she had some leftover sauce on her lip. She fought the urge to grab for the mirror in her purse; it was inside her luggage. She had no doubt that she looked like a mess.
Between crawling through garbage, running in an outfit that wasn’t a jogging suit, and dropping a little Tandoori Chicken on her lap while Clark wasn’t looking, she was sure she looked like a mess.
“You said something about this place having a great shower?” Lois asked quietly.
Clark grinned, but there was something to his smile that hadn’t been there before, a kind of sadness almost. He rose gracefully to his feet and held a hand out to her.
She took it, and she ignored the slight tingle that she’d come to associate with him. Just because she reacted to him on a visceral level, that didn’t mean she couldn’t treat him like any other person.
It must be the second bottle of wine that was causing her to flush and sway slightly. Clark smiled again, and he pulled her slightly towards the dim recesses of the back of the cabin.
He glanced inside the dark portal leading into the bathroom, and there was an explosion of light.
The bathroom inside was small, with a toilet, a small shower, and a mirror completely lining one wall. Candles were set on the back of the single washstand rising on a pillar from the floor. There was also a door in the back wall.
“You must be really popular at kids birthday parties.” Lois murmured. There was only so many special things that he could do before she became numb to it all.
She frowned. “I thought you said this place had a really great shower.” She was disappointed. She’d hoped for something large enough for two...not that she had any intention of sharing. She glanced at Clark, and he was grinning now.
He gestured toward the back door, the stepped forward and opened it.
The moon had finally come out from behind the clouds, and in the moonlight, Lois could see a deck stretching out behind the cabin. Directly before her, there was a large, steaming pond. The pond sat at the base of a large outcropping of dark rock, from which a wide pool of water fell.
“The whole island is built on a volcano” Clark said. “This started out as a natural hot spring, but Spenser made a few improvements.”
Clark grabbed a plastic rod from a metal table to the right of the entrance. He shook it, and when it began to glow gently with green light, he tossed it into the pool.
“What would you say to a swim?”
***********
