Stirred Feelings, Mixed Emotions 2
The second of a three part series
----
A wise man once told him, “When faced with a truth that you are unprepared for, you have two options. Either you grab the boar by the tusks and step face first into your destiny, or you hide behind a false sense of security.”
Unfortunately, at the point when this situation confronted Clark, he was unable to think objectively. In fact, he wasn’t able to think at all. Instead of using the old seer’s words to propel him bravely into the unknown, he clung to his instinct.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he uttered weakly after a long hesitation.
Lois turned quickly on the couch, putting her back to him so he would not be able to see her reaction to his denial. Tears sprang to her eyes for yet another time that night and she began to tremble with anger. She’d had enough.
“Um… Superman, could you please leave?”
A red penalty flag flew up in his mind. This wasn’t going right. Maybe he should have just given in.
“L…Lois?” he asked tentatively, trying to tiptoe around the frozen tone she’d responded with.
“No. You’re absolutely right. I was mistaken. I don’t know what I was thinking. How could I have thought that you and Clark were the same person? That’s absurd!” she exclaimed into her hands.
Clark mentally wished for her to turn around so he could see her face. Part of him was relieved that she realized she was wrong about his mixed identity, but another part was yelling at him to come clean.
“Lois, are you crying? I didn’t mean to upset you…”
He marveled at his own change of heart. When he’d first flown to her window, he was angry and hurt. Now, his mood was more subdued, largely due to the speech Lois had given just a few moments before. She had claimed to be in love with some kind of hybrid personality of himself and Superman. Or, of himself and Clark, he silently amended glancing down at his suit. Could she really love both of ‘him’? This was getting confusing. He straightened his posture, noticing that he’d started to relax into his Clark demeanor.
“I’m just embarrassed,” Lois replied softly. Evenly.
Superman tilted his head slightly. She didn’t sound embarrassed. In fact, she almost sounded angry, but Lois didn’t ever hide her anger, so he couldn’t be sure. He moved to step toward the couch.
Lois heard the movement and turned to face him. The wild look in her eyes made him stop short. Wow, he thought. He had his answer. She was excessively angry.
“It’s late,” she remarked stiffly. “I would like to go to bed. Please leave. Now.”
She rose from the couch and took an intimidating step toward him. An irrational fear flashed through his mind that she was going to push him out of the open window behind him, and he stepped backwards. Instead of coming near him, she headed to the phone and picked up the handset.
“Um… Who are you calling?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I owe Lex an answer.”
The mention of that name caused all of the pain of the evening to resurface. She’d given that whole speech about her love for Clark and Superman, and now, when she found out that she couldn’t have them both, she decided to go for Luthor. Without another word, he flew out of the apartment as fast as he could without causing the windows to burst from the change in air pressure.
~~
For the second time that night, Clark found himself breaching Earth’s atmosphere. His mind whirled as he battled his annoying inner voice. She was ready to go jump in the bed with a man she didn’t love after claiming to love two other men!
<Not two other men. One- you.>
And she was putting herself in danger that even he wouldn’t be able to protect her from. He couldn’t realistically interfere with a marriage could he?
<She doesn’t know he’s dangerous. You haven’t told her what you know.>
With that thought, he made a midflight 180-degree turn and flew back in the direction of her apartment. She’d confronted him with the secret he’d been keeping all of his life. Her mindset had been that if she pushed him into a corner he’d have to confess. She’d pushed, and he’d turned yellow. She’d told him that she was in love with the ordinary man with the extraordinary powers, and he’d lied to her and said he wasn’t that man.
<Idiot.>
And now she was calling the world’s biggest crook to accept his marriage proposal, and it was all his fault. He had been keeping the truth about Luthor to himself because he didn’t have any proof as Clark. But as his true self, the man that was both Clark *and* Superman, he could tell her what he knew and she would believe it… Hopefully. He’d had the chance to reveal all and had blown it.
<If she marries him, it’s your fault for not telling her the truth.>
The light wasn’t on in her window, and for the first time in forever, it was closed and locked. As he scanned her apartment with his x-ray vision, he saw that she was no longer there. His heart fell as he realized she was probably on her way to see Luthor.
Spinning around violently, he searched for her Jeep, and found it still parked in its usual spot on the street. Would Luthor have already picked her up in his Limo? No, he mused. He hadn’t been gone long enough for that. He figured she must still be in the building and on her way down to the ground level. He scanned the interior of the building hastily, dodging the insides of the various apartments to preserve privacy. He felt nauseous when he didn’t find her anywhere inside of the walls.
Just as he thought he would lose his mind, he tuned into a familiar low thudding sound and felt warmth fill his body as he listened to her heartbeat. He followed the noise to a lone silhouette walking slowly along the sidewalk of the neighboring block.
The only coherent thought that he had was to stop her from going to see Luthor. She may have talked to him on the phone, but a proposal was only verified when face-to-face… Right?
He swooped and picked her up, immediately flying away from the city.
~~
“Put me down!” Lois squealed, reeling from the shock of being suddenly grabbed.
“Sorry, can’t do that.”
Glancing down, she found herself reaching to hold onto him, wrapping her arms around his neck in reaction to their height. “This is kidnapping,” she shot at him through clenched teeth.
Lois was silent throughout the flight, refusing to answer him when he tried pointing out a few of the landmarks they passed. Shortly, they set down on a mesa somewhere in the Southwest.
“What do you want?” she asked, refusing to meet his eyes.
“I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
“And you couldn’t do that on the street? In Metropolis?”
“I needed to talk to you… without you running away.”
“Ergo you come and snatch me away from my comfort zone so you can have the upper hand. What a man,” she muttered sarcastically. “Well, the ball’s in your court.”
Superman sighed and rubbed his chin. “You can’t marry Luthor,” he stated blandly.
Lois didn’t respond. She just stood watching him silently.
“I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry.”
She grunted and turned away from him, studying the expanse of color that streaked the sky before her. He’d said that already.
“You were right,” he tried again.
“About what?”
“About me.”
“What about you?”
“That I’m Superman!” he exclaimed getting frustrated with her lack of interest.
Lois glanced over her shoulder. “I can see that,” she said pointedly.
He groaned, realizing that he’d forgotten about the suit. He scrubbed a hand through his hair roughly. He was beginning to confuse himself with which identity he was supposed to be. “I meant to say that I’m Clark. Clark is Superman, and Superman is Clark.”
“I know.”
His stomach lurched. He knew he had been fooling himself when he thought she had changed her mind earlier. There was no doubt in his mind that she was furious with him. He knew that he was just now entering the eye of the storm - a quiet similar to that of a tornado that gets calm right before the worst part hits.
Lois turned to face him, determined not to cry. It was ridiculous really. He stood there in front of her with his hair all mussed up like Clark, but decorated in primary colors and a cape.
“Can you change please?” she asked, gesturing to his outfit.
In a rapid blur of colors and wind, he spun into his civvies. Her jaw dropped as her partner Clark appeared before her, dressed in faded jeans and a black t-shirt. She forced her mouth shut and steeled her emotions again. She would not allow awe to be one of the things she felt toward him right now.
Coming out of the spin, he held his glasses in his right hand. They were a physical symbol of the secret he’d held all of his life. As much as putting on a suit so that he could fly, donning the spectacles allowed him to be the ordinary man who couldn’t. But as Lois had pointed out, he was both of those people. Hoping that she would understand the action as an attempt to show his willingness to be completely honest, he tucked the glasses into his shirt pocket.
The gesture was not lost on Lois, and she took a moment to study his bare face. The clothes and hair were definitely Clark, but without the glasses she saw his face clearly as if for the first time. The entire look put together was the true view of both men wrapped into one. What struck her as most important, though, was the fact that she was the only one who would ever get to see this side of him.
Clark watched as she studied him, hoping that somehow, magically, she would give him her patented smile, and everything would be right in his world again. Her brow furrowed and reality swarmed in.
“You lied to me.”
“Lois, I swear to you, I never lied. I just didn’t… tell you everything.” At her pained look he remembered his earlier denial and mentally kicked himself. “Okay, but I promise, that was the only time. I panicked. I was an idiot. No one has ever cornered me like that and I didn’t know how to respond.”
“You’ve lied to me every day that I’ve known you… and you were the only one I had left to trust…”
“No, no. I didn’t lie,” he started.
Lois was incensed. Even when he was claiming to be honest he still lied! Talk about adding insult to injury. “Cheese of the Month club?!” she demanded.
“I donate the cheese- I really don’t eat that much…”
“Ha! Library books? Returning videos? I’m supposed to believe that you really did those things?”
Clark shrugged sheepishly and looked at his hands. “There were times when I would have to check them out and then turn them in at the same time…”
The edge dissipated from her anger. He’d done those things to protect his integrity to her- even though she hadn’t known about his secret, and probably never would have.
“You can’t marry Luthor.”
She rolled her eyes. For the prolific journalist that she knew him to be, he was relying on repeated material far too much in this conversation. “You said that already.”
“Listen, I know that we have some things to work out, but I just can’t let you go into this thing blindly. Luthor’s a dangerous man.”
“I’m tired of having this argument with you, Clark. There is nothing to support your distrust of Lex,” she sighed.
Tempting fate, he stepped close to her and placed his hands on her arms, making her focus her attention on him.
“Not me. Superman has enough to support it.”
Lois cringed. “You’re doing it again! We already established that you are him… I mean, that he is you.”
“Okay, okay,” he replied calming her. “I’ll tell you what I know.”
He shared with her the confrontations he’d had with Luthor as Superman. He told her of his suspicions of Luthor being behind the heat waves, and the feeling that the billionaire was trying to test the super hero’s powers. He told her of the conversations he’d had with Luthor, and how he only lacked the physical evidence- not the motivation- to put him behind bars for the rest of his life.
Lois listened wide-eyed as she silently tried to come to terms with the information Clark was relating. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him. That was actually the problem. She believed him and that fact was what was causing an inner meltdown that she was unprepared for.
As he talked, little snippets of memories started to slide into place like pieces of a puzzle. During the time she’d spent with Lex, she hadn’t seen anything in his behavior to make her suspicious of his true intentions. Now, confronted with the story from a different perspective, red flags flew up in a number of different instances.
The night she had secured her exclusive interview with Lex- the night of the Wild Orchid Ball and his announcement about the space station- he had shown them the view from his terrace. ‘I must confess a certain pleasure in knowing that everyone in the city has to look up to see me.’
That comment had seemed harmless at the time. Arrogant maybe, but someone in his position was deserving of such a healthy self-image, right?
Then, on the night of the interview, she’d backed away from his subtle advances, even claiming to not eat dessert in an attempt to keep him focused on business. It was flattering to have someone like Lex want to spend time with her. This man, who could have anything or anyone he wanted in the world at the snap of his fingers had chosen to pursue Lois Lane, a woman some people thought was incapable of emotion.
It wasn’t just dating. Lex had wooed her, complete with roses, expensive gifts, and dinners in exotic places. Lois would have never admitted to being the type of woman who would respond to those things, but she had secretly delighted in the feeling of being desired.
Suddenly chilled in spite of the warm desert night, she rubbed her arms and began to pace. Lex Luthor’s true character was another example of her blindness when it came to those closest to her. Despite all of the walls that she’d put up after being hurt by the men in her life, yet another one had slipped under her radar. Claude had used her and taken an award-winning story but now the stakes were higher. She had been on the verge of giving her life to Lex.
“Lois, are you okay?” Clark asked.
She opened her mouth to respond, but felt her throat contract causing her words to become a sob.
“Oh, Lois,” Clark sighed, and immediately his arms were around her. There was no easy way to break this news to her. He’d tried before, but she had refused to listen, saying that he had no proof and was just speaking out of jealousy. Yes, he was jealous of her affection for Luthor, but he was also genuinely afraid for her safety.
Still crying, she pulled herself out of his embrace. His heart wrenched with the loss, and he couldn’t help but to find a satirical irony in the fact that before tonight, before knowing that he was Superman, she would always allow him to comfort her. Her reaction to the truth about Luthor was disconcerting. He’d suspected that Lois’ relationship with the man was mainly based in flattery. Earlier that day, she’d admitted to not knowing if she loved Luthor, but now her tears made him uncertain.
What did that mean about her feelings for him? Before his cowardice, she had claimed to love both of his identities as a whole. After his immediate denial she hadn’t approached the topic again, and he was sure that she was going to turn to Luthor.
“You can’t blame yourself for not knowing…” he offered. “He’s pulled the wool over everyone’s eyes.”
So have you, Lois thought bitterly. “Why did he choose me?”
“You are the most wonderful, beautiful, caring…” he faltered at her look. That wasn’t the answer she was looking for. “I think he sees you as a challenge. Someone who he has to break to have under his control.”
Lois nodded. “I think I figured that,” she sniffed. “But then again, I think I’ve known that for a while now.” She wiped her eyes and turned her back to him.
“I could feel that Lex was attracted to the fact that he couldn’t control me… That eventually I’d get tired of fighting and give in.”
“Lois, you would have never…”
“No Clark, it’s okay. See, now that I’m faced with it, I think somewhere deep down I was looking forward to it. I have been in control of every feeling, every emotion and every action that I have had my entire life. Do you know what it’s like to hold yourself in reins all of the time? To fear that letting yourself go for just a minute would kill you, but that holding it in any longer would make you explode…”
“I think I do,” he replied softly.
Lois turned and locked eyes with his for a moment before continuing. “I was going to tell him no.”
“What?” he asked, confused.
“Tonight. When you came by and ‘swooped’ me up. I was on my way to see Luthor do I could turn down his proposal.”
Relief flooded Clark and he fought the temptation to smile. Lois had decided herself to say no, even without knowing the truth about the man. He stepped closer. “That’s great! I mean, I’m glad… But, why go to his house? This late?” His concern was immediately on Luthor’s reaction and what he might do in anger.
She smiled wryly. “If it were you, would you want that type of news over the phone?”
Clark dropped his eyes. Her point was well served. “What changed your mind? I mean, after we talked, I thought you were…”
“Angry with you? Yes. But that’s not a reason to run and jump into another man’s arms, is it?” She let out a sharp laugh, obviously on the brink of tears again. “Clark, you were right. How could I have any clue about love?”
He stepped forward and placed a hand on the side of her face, using his thumb to wipe away the single tear that had fallen with her last statement.
“Lois, no… I love you. I love you and you love me. That’s more than I could have ever hoped for. I was wrong. I was wrong to ever doubt that you knew how you felt. I shouldn’t have lied. I’m so sorry,” Clark murmured, trying to reassure her. “I panicked, and ran from the best thing that could have ever happened to me.”
Lois’ arms were still crossed tightly in front of her chest, but her gaze softened as she listened to him. “Clark you are so sweet and wonderful. I don’t know why it took me so long to see that. At the park, you asked me if I loved Lex. I said I didn’t know, but that I had feelings for him. I do… I did.” She sighed. “But even after our talk, I knew that I couldn’t marry someone that I didn’t love. When I imagined my wedding, it wasn’t Lex Luthor that I saw at the end of the aisle.”
Clark could feel her withdrawing from him but felt helpless to stop it.
“Now I find out that he’s a criminal, a master crime boss, and I don’t know how to trust my feelings about anything. It’s my job to see beyond the exterior and I failed to do that twice.”
“You figured it out with me, though. Just a little longer and you would have figured out Luthor too.”
“I’m not so sure anymore. I’m losing my edge.”
“What can I do?”
“I’d like to go home, please.”
Clark nodded and bent to pick her up. She wrapped her arms loosely around his neck as she settled into his embrace. With a slight squeeze, he lifted into the night sky. Flying with Lois was not a new experience but her earlier declaration of love had catapulted him into a new level of awareness. It took every ounce of willpower he had to not turn his head and touch his lips against her neck.
Lois closed her eyes against the wind as they flew. Any other time, she would have been thrilled with the flight, gazing at the terrain they flew over and being fascinated with the experience. On this night, though, her thoughts were preoccupied. Clark had forgotten to do the ‘spin thingy’ to change into his suit before they left, so she was actually flying with Clark Kent, not the superhero. Somehow that fact made it even more special. The trip was conducted in silence and they softly landed on the roof of her building.
As she opened the door to her apartment, Clark put a hand on her shoulder. Lois turned to face him, avoiding eye contact.
“Where do we go from here?” he questioned.
“Well, someone has to dethrone Luthor. Looks like Lane and Kent are back in business,” she replied, trying to voice an enthusiasm she didn’t feel.
“No, Lois. I mean us. You and me. What happens now?”
Lois dropped her head. “I don’t know, Clark. I don’t know if I can trust my feelings anymore.”
“I trust your feelings, Lois. You will too. It’s just going to take some time.”
“Maybe.”
“It is,” he told her, firmly. He lifted her chin so that she was looking at him. “I’ll give you all the time you need, but I’m not going anywhere. I have already run too many times in my life, and I will not run from you. I love you. I will tell you that every time I get the chance. I’ll keep saying it until you can trust it enough to be the foundation for your feelings for me. I couldn’t change the way I feel about you even if I tried to. Let me show you?”
Without waiting for her answer, he tilted his head and leaned closer, bracing himself with a hand against the wall behind her. He was centimeters away from her lips when she blinked, spilling unshed tears.
“Clark,” she cried.
“Shh. Don’t think, don’t talk, just feel. We’ll figure this out together.”
He leaned closer and pressed his lips lightly to hers, feeling them soften as she returned the kiss. He pulled back seconds later, unwilling to move her too quickly into this new realm of relationship. She needed to trust herself first, and he couldn’t rush it.
She reached up and touched his lips with her fingertips as she stepped backwards through the doors of her apartment.
“Good night,” she whispered.
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said.
She nodded and gave him a tentative smile. Encouraged, his face lit up with a grin. “And the day after that. And the one after that…”
Laughing softly, she slowly closed the door. He took a moment to lay a hand against it before moving toward the stairwell. This day had certainly been one of the longest ones of his life, and while he couldn’t be physically affected like other people, he was emotionally exhausted from the range of sensations he’d experienced.
From the sidewalk, he looked up to the window of Lois’ apartment, pleased to see her watching him at the same time. Of all the feelings he’d gone through that day, from the nervousness, the pain of rejection, the confusion, the elation, the relief… there was one that was more powerful than them all. It was what he felt staring up at the woman whose heart he was determined to mend.
Love.
...
End
