Lois hated the whole rehearsal-dinner idea, and Clark was miserable, still trying to write the speech in his head for explaining the not-exactly-born-on-this-planet thing. Lucy Lane and Lana Lang, on the other hand, were having the time of their lives, flirting and giggling and scolding and in general acting like princesses at a court. Lex was sitting against the wall with a frozen smile on his face and a powerful encrypted transmitter in his pocket. Chloe was on the other end, alternating between calling Lex names and yelling at the lieutenant who kept asking her which network she was talking to and had she cleared her communications with SecDef.
The speeches bored Lex into a stupor, and the food -- (Clark had refused to let Lex hire a caterer, probably because Lois had threatened him at gunpoint against having anything to do with a Luthor, Lex thought, and it would have been worth it to have her pull the trigger, because even the rolls were barely edible by raccoon standards) would make page one of section D the next day as totally unacceptable for an award-winning journalist and her husband-to-be, no matter how dorky he was. Lex listened idly to Chloe threatening to take over the military just to get some adult leadership installed. Until Pete stood up and tapped his glass.
"Here it comes," Lex hissed into the transceiver.
"Shut up and point it to where I can hear. Why didn't you get me one with video?"
"Chloe, you're burning up a whole satellite as it is. Deal with it."
"This from Lex Luthor. Shut up."
"Clark-bar here once had to write a best-man speech for old Luthor over there," Pete began, with a nod in Lex's direction, which earned him a smirk in return, "So we figured turnabout is fair play. How can I make Clark turn red? Let me count the ways." He went on in a light politician's patter for a few minutes, drawing increasing snickers from the small audience, except for Jonathan and Martha, who were nearly in hysterics at the double entendres. ("Lois, do you believe a man with Clark's feet can make it across the threshold without tripping?") Martha shoved her hand into her mouth to keep from busting a gut laughing. Jonathan crammed his napkin into his mouth.
"And so, to ensure a happy ending to an evening intended to begin the rest of their lives, we have a special present for the soon-to-be couple. In strict propriety," Pete winked broadly, "this should be opened in private, but you're among friends here."
He held out a box with a bow and a flourish, and Lois took it automatically. And nearly dropped it. "Jeez, Ross, what is this, lead? You almost broke my fingers. Okay, I give, how do I open it?"
In fact, Clark saw, with mounting unease, lead is exactly what it was. What on this planet would Pete put in a lead box? Besides the obvious. No. Surely he wouldn't have done that. At least, not here, in front of all these people. Yeah, Pete was mad at him, and with good reason, but please, even if he was that angry, not here and now....
"Aha. That's a clever lid-catch. Where'd you find this, Ross? And what...." Lois trailed off.
A bright green light glowed up from the box.
Martha Kent gasped. Jonathan nearly swallowed his napkin.
Lois shrieked. "ROSS! You @#$%^! I'll KILL you! You think I'm ever going to wear -- you -- you are SO dead! I will print a story about you having intimate relations with corn husks! Your career is over! Kaput! Zapped! You!"
She threw the garment at Pete, who was folded double laughing. Since the bright green piece of paste-on open-weave satin weighed less than five grams, it fluttered around in the air awhile before actually landing anywhere, if something about the density of dandelion fuzz could be considered "landing."
"I don't even @#$%^! LIKE green!"
"Me neither, much," Clark said faintly.
"And what the @#$%^! is this?" Lois snatched up the glowing battery-powered neon tube arrangement and held it up suspiciously. "Looks like a damn lawn dart. At least it isn't a pink flamingo. You! Lex Luthor! You put him up to this. Pete wouldn't know a krypton light tube sculpture from a hole in the ground. You better go comb your one hair, pretty boy, because you are on tomorrow's front page."
Martha was pounding Jonathan on the back in between attempts to catch her breath herself. Lana and Lucy were exchanging puzzled looks and trying desperately not to snicker. "Um, sis, it's neon, not krypton. Krypton light bulbs are for, like, bright lights."
"Shut up. Just because you got an A in science. Clark, I swear, if you were in on this, I am going to make YOU wear that thing."
"Not ... not me." Clark looked every bit as alarmed as he should have been, though maybe not for the same reason. "They're," he gestured generally at Lex and Pete, "We weren't into the bachelor party thing, and they must have...."
Lois' eyes were deadly. "Oh, they weren't, were they? They'll live to regret that. Maybe." She put on her coolest and smoothest cover, the reporter unfazed by nuclear bombs. "Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kent, thank you for coming tonight. I apologize for the food. I'd apologize for Pete and Lex, too, but that's their problem. If they pull a stunt like this at the wedding, Clark can have what's left over after I get through with them. Say good night to your parents, hon. I'll bring the car around."
Clark obeyed, pink to the tips of his ears. Lex and Pete were collapsed in laughter on each other in a way that would have been quite compromising if Lex hadn't already set the doorways so that no film or magnetic storage media would make it through unscathed. (Clark had wondered about the sudden magnetic and radiation bath when he walked in.) Chloe was yelling into the transceiver. "You had better have a recording! You had better have TEN recordings! From every angle! Including overhead! I'll plant a military bug on you, Lex Luthor, see if I don't...."
Clark got into Lois' car with a reluctance that made her glance at him curiously. Clark could be quiet and shy sometimes to the point of exasperating her, but this was reticent even for him. "What's wrong, hon?"
"Tonight...." Clark's voice choked off, trepidation cold and dark inside him, like the dark of space in the few times he had ventured out there. Knowing that he would do so again, knowing that he got stronger every time, every day. More alien, more different, every day.
Knowing that this might be the last time he could talk to her as the man she thought he was.
He cursed himself for his cowardice. He was the one who had let it get to this point, content in the warmth and joy of Lois' company. Never letting himself consider the consequences. "I'm sorry."
Lois chuckled, the deep and low and seductive sound that was natural to her, that she had to suppress to be the hard-nosed reporter in public. A dual identity, Clark thought. Like him.
He loved her. He couldn't do this to her.
"Actually, I thought it was classic. Bad food, award-winning-for-tacky speeches, company that you usually couldn't put together at gunpoint, the worst of all possible gag gifts. The only possible capper would have been for my dad to get rip-roaring drunk and start a fistfight with your dad. Though come to think of it, Jon might have been able to take Sam, farmer against old war horse. They match in stubborn, at least. What I wouldn't pay to see that. Lex would have been pointing that transceiver of his at CNN."
Clark gave her an uncomprehending look. "How did you -- I mean, what are you talking about?"
Lois sighed. "Come on, Clark, don't tell me you didn't notice his comm rig when he came in. My bet is that it was linked to Chloe. She really wanted to be here tonight, but you know, duty calls."
No kidding. As it did for him. As it always would, for him. "Chloe is ... a remarkable person."
Lois flashed him a grin. "Ever wished you'd ended up with her?"
"No." At Lois' snort, he amended, "Well, sometimes. A little. Maybe. But we'd always be more friends than lovers. You're ... different."
Lois stared at the road ahead. "Because we didn't grow up together?"
"Well, there's that too. But there's also ... what you are, who you are, inside. Chloe is like a counterpart. You're more like a missing part of me. There's just that little bit of difference, and that much of one." He took a slow breath, let it out. "That's what makes this so hard."
"What's so hard, Smallville?" Softly.
Breathe. You have total control over every muscle in your body. You can talk with a meteorite around your neck. Breathe. Get it over with.
"Lois ... I can't marry you."
Lois drove on for nearly a minute without responding, checking the signs along the highway, checking the traffic, as if he hadn't spoken at all. Then she braked, gradually, carefully, under control, and pulled off the shoulder on a wide spot. "What the hell did you just say?"
Clark tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He failed. "I said," he forced out, "that the -- being -- who proposed to you is a lie. I -- he -- it -- did not have the right. I -- it -- was living a fantasy. Pete forced me to face that today. He -- that's what that speech, that box, that gag gift, was about tonight. A warning. An ultimatum." Breathe. Ignore the meteor rock. It isn't really there. "I wish -- I wish I had had the courage to tell you sooner. Before things got this far." He unlocked the door and started to get out. "I'm sorry, Lois. For all of it. For everything."
I'll clean out my desk tomorrow. No, tonight. No, to hell with it, I'll leave it. Mail in my resignation. Clark Kent can go back to the farm. Surely Superman can pick up some living expenses here and there.
I never should have tried to play at being a human being. Dad tried to warn me. No, that was Jor-El. I don't belong here. I'm not someone named Clark. I'm a bug-eyed monster in disguise. Trying to love a human woman, marry a human woman? If the fundamentalists found out, the military would level the block. Maybe the city.
"I just ... Lois, please, believe that it was just me. Just stupid Clark. Not some master plan. Not some alien plot. Just an idiot who forgot who and what he was and got in over his head and fell in love and was too dumb to know better. What I did to you ... unforgivable. I didn't mean to. I just ... I wanted ... I'm sorry."
He tried to stand, putting him off-balance, which is why (he told himself) the female human hand on his collar could wrench him clear off his feet and flat on his back, head in Lois' lap, staring up into the angriest face he'd ever seen.
"Clark Kent, you will start making sense right now, or I will feed this engagement ring to you through whichever orifice happens to be handiest. I know men are from Mars, and that all you he-men would rather be shot at than made fun of, but this is ridiculous."
Okay, an opening line. "Not Mars," he said. More like choked. Not daring to move. "Krypton."
Clark was from Krypton. "Oh." Lois let go of him, the muscles in her fingers, like the lines in her face, going slack in sudden dawning realization. "Oohhhh. So that's what the green trash in the lead box was all about. Pete Ross is deader than dead. Was Lex actually in on this? Lex knows you're Superman? And never said anything? I'll bury both of them in the same grave. No, I'll cremate them and mix their ashes. I may have to hit you a few times too. Or make you wear that porno outfit. Why didn't you just f%^&**^%ing tell me when we first started getting it on that you liked to run around in your underwear, Smallville? I mean, I have a few hobbies myself that I -- never mind. So that's what Chloe was so mad at me about. Or maybe she was mad at you. Yeah, that explains it. Wait'll I -- never mind. Get the hell off my lap. You weigh a ton. I thought you could fly."
Clark lifted, carefully, using some of the levitation to keep from putting too much weight on her frail human bones. Though thinking "frail" and "Lois" in the same sentence was pushing thirteen-dimensional math. "You're not...?"
"Mad? You bet I'm mad. You stupid I-don't-know-what. First you make me think you're a clueless clumsy moron that I've been saddled with as punishment for sins in a past life, then you turn up in the nick of time a couple of dozen times over, then I fall in love with a dork in a bodysuit and cape, then I take pity on my junior partner, and then they turn out to be one and the same, and I should have had a LOT more to drink tonight, except I kept thinking we were going to have The Conversation. Only not THIS conversation. I am going to kill Chloe and mix her ashes with Lex's. She's known about this all along too, right?"
"Well, for a couple of years now. I'm not sure exactly when she figured it out."
"Probably when she tried to take a knife to your gut for missing a deadline. Dammit, Clark! I've been thrown out of an airplane without a parachute twice now, but this is... This is...."
Clark ran an x-ray over her lower legs and winced. "That knee didn't heal right. And with all the breaks in your ankles, you need to take more calcium and magnesium supplements."
"Keep your freaking eyes to yourself. I have a doctor, I don't need a super-worrywart." Lois leaned back and closed her eyes. "Clark...."
Wait a second. "You said ... you fell in love with...? Lois, Superman isn't ... I'm not ... even human."
"Shut up. I am going to hit you. Where's that stupid lawn-dart light sculpture? Since you didn't pass out cold in the middle of our award-winning dinner, I'm assuming that it wasn't really kryptonite. Remind me to send Lex a pink flamingo. No wonder you cracked the table when I mixed up the noble gases."
Lois sat up sharply, eyes almost literally snapping with the emotions pouring through her. "Human! Clark, dammit, I don't care if you have six arms. What's human mean? Maybe you haven't read your history. Earth's history. There were times and places where non-caucasians weren't considered human. Where women weren't treated as human. Still are, for that matter. That's bigotry, and if there's one thing I won't tolerate, it's intolerance."
Lois paused for air, and Clark interjected meekly "I cracked the table?"
"Shut up. I am going to throw Perry out a window for saddling me with such an unobservant partner. Though I suspect he didn't hire you just because you're a fast typist. Super-speed cheat. Does he know how you got the exclusive interview? I'll kill him if he does. I'll kill him if he doesn't, if he gave it to you because he thought you did a better job than I did. I'll kill him for inflicting you on me if I find out he did it for my protection. Is the whole world in on this joke except me?"
"Uh, I met Perry back when I was in high school. I was -- a little careless. He might have -- seen some things. He was drinking pretty heavily. I didn't think he'd remember."
"Perry White remembers being BORN. And he criticizes Sherlock Holmes for missing things. Dammit." Lois got out of the car and ran a hand through her hair, disintegrating the careful style that had taken hours to create for public presentation. To Clark, she looked more beautiful than ever. "You realize I am going to be really pissed off at you for probably the rest of your natural life."
Clark looked away. It was an effort to put sound in his voice. "Yes. I know."
"You realize you are going to PAY for being such a sneak, every day for the rest of your natural life."
Clark's head snapped up. "You still want to....?"
"Do I still want to be with you for the rest of our lives?" She came around the car, moving slowly but deliberately, until she was touching him. "Do I look stupid, Smallville? I've known since the day we met that you were hiding something. I was just waiting for you to tell me what. Nothing you could have said would make me love you any less, unless maybe you were a terrorist double agent or something. But that the two men I care about most, of everyone who's ever been a pain in my ass, turn out to be the same person -- well, it saves me a lot of hassle about having to choose between the two of you, you know? You could have saved me a lot of sleepless nights."
Clark forced himself to hold his breath again. Then he exerted every ounce of strength and will to look up into Lois' eyes, and saw something he would have bet the farm and every dollar in Lex's portfolio against: the sparkle of tears.
"I never dared to love anyone else before," she whispered. "You -- both of you, all of you -- are the only one I ever could."
It surged through Clark like the intoxication of a solar storm. He hadn't pushed her away by being other-than-human. Instead, he had found his closest tie to Earth. Pete was right, he had been only thinking of himself. He hadn't understood just why Lois would be attracted to Clark, or to Superman, how her own drive and force of personality made it impossible for her to settle for anything less than the extraordinary, either.
(Thrown out of an airplane without a parachute TWICE? One more and she'd beat the world record.)
She moved closer, and he laughed a little, weakly, holding onto her as lightly as desperation would allow. "What's so funny, Smallville?"
"Just," more than slightly breathlessly, "That it took such a graphic threat from Pete and Lex -- and Chloe too, probably -- to get me to tell you what I wanted so much to, and was so afraid of, and what it turned out that you actually wanted to hear."
"Threat...? Oh, right, the green stuff. Don't worry, I've already written tomorrow's column about the two embarrassing drunks polluting the otherwise very dignified evening celebrating the union of Metropolis' best journalist and her junior partner. That should serve as fair warning about messing with what's mine."
Clark blinked at her. "Lois, that sounded an awful lot like staking out a claim. I thought you disapproved of chauvinism."
"They don't have mother bears protecting their cubs where you come from? No, probably not. Clark, I turned you down the first time because you were just another one of," she waved her hand, "Them. Someone who wanted to be associated with my name, my contacts, my ability to get you something. Someone who wanted a trophy to display instead of a whole person to share your life with. Is it chauvinism to want to be accepted for who you are, for everything you are, instead of what you've done? To have those you let get close to you understand that you can't let some things go? Stupid question. You'd know that better than anyone. That's probably why I first fell in love with," she traced the costume symbol on his chest, "you."
"And with Clark?" He tried to make it sound teasing, but the lump in his throat was still made of fear. It shouldn't have been; she had accepted the proposal from Clark, after all, not Superman. Would she ever be able to think of him as one person instead of two halves? That was the problem Bruce had with relationships, he knew -- the Bat was all he was. Bruce was just a mask. No one who didn't understand that would ever be able to get close to him. But Clark was equal parts of both -- he could not be the superman in the cape without also being the farmboy from Kansas who wanted to write a novel.
Lois smiled and removed all apprehensions by hauling his face to hers for a long and deeply explorative kiss. "Would it help convince you," she murmured against his lips, "if I let you wear those stupid glasses to bed?"
Clark's breath caught in such paralysis that it was a good thing breathing wasn't normally an issue for him. His thoughts, normally so fast and mathematically precise, seemed to sit on each other like layers of frozen syrup. Lois was making a JOKE of it. She was engaged to a man who had lied to her, who was not a human being, and she was making a JOKE of it.
He chuckled, finally, low and happy. "Love of my life and bane of my existence, you are the most incredible woman who ever lived, you know that? I was terrified tonight. You turned it into the happiest night I could ever wish for."
"Mmm." Lois slid into his lap, a warm and comforting presence that made it seem like anything was possible. "You're still going to pay for being such a jerk, you know."
"I know. In spades and diamonds. And gladly. For every day for the rest of our lives. Um, Lois, one of us is going to have to drive here."
"Heh. Screw it, I'll call Luthor to pick us up in his limo. He's probably bugged the car anyway. Chloe would kill him cold if she missed The Conversation. Mmmm. I'm not too heavy, am I? Heh. Stupid question. I always wondered what it would be like to ask that."
"To Clark, or Superman?" Clark nuzzled her hair.
"Both, believe it or not. See, you saved me the trouble of repeating myself. Mmmm. Shut up for a minute."
Clark obeyed. When Lois had to come up for air, he offered huskily, "We could always fly home, you know."
"Uhm-hm. You sure you could pass the FAA sobriety test right now?"
"....maybe not."
Sure enough,Lex Luthor's limo rolled up beside them before Lois was forced to try to see if she could disengage herself from an amorous Kryptonian's besotted hold. Lex got out and stood with his hands in his pockets, coolly amused. "Your cousin sends her regards, Mrs. soon-to-be Lane-Kent. She also said to let you know that Moroccan cuisine is not all it's cracked up to be."
"Could have told her that. And if I'm going to be Lane-Kent, then bigfoot here is going to be Kent-Lane. You here to gloat, or to keep one of us from repeating your stunt on the bridge and losing our driver's license?"
"Lois, how did you know about...?"
Lex laughed. "She's a REPORTER, Clark. Take notes. You might learn something." He gestured grandly. "Please, the back seat is all yours. Julie, would you please drive their pitiful excuse for a car back to the mansion? I think our near-newlyweds here need a private room."
Clark turned red enough to glow in the dark. "Lex...!"
"Oh, get over it, Smallville." Lois slid her hands into his pockets as suggestively as possible, pulling him close. "You know what I love most about you?" she whispered, loudly enough for Lex to hear, moving against Clark in a way that guaranteed that he would not be fit for either driving or flying in the near future.
"Uh ... um ... I...."
"You don't like green either."
Lex shoved them both tangled together into the back of the limo with a snort. For good measure, he slammed the door on Clark's foot.
The speeches bored Lex into a stupor, and the food -- (Clark had refused to let Lex hire a caterer, probably because Lois had threatened him at gunpoint against having anything to do with a Luthor, Lex thought, and it would have been worth it to have her pull the trigger, because even the rolls were barely edible by raccoon standards) would make page one of section D the next day as totally unacceptable for an award-winning journalist and her husband-to-be, no matter how dorky he was. Lex listened idly to Chloe threatening to take over the military just to get some adult leadership installed. Until Pete stood up and tapped his glass.
"Here it comes," Lex hissed into the transceiver.
"Shut up and point it to where I can hear. Why didn't you get me one with video?"
"Chloe, you're burning up a whole satellite as it is. Deal with it."
"This from Lex Luthor. Shut up."
"Clark-bar here once had to write a best-man speech for old Luthor over there," Pete began, with a nod in Lex's direction, which earned him a smirk in return, "So we figured turnabout is fair play. How can I make Clark turn red? Let me count the ways." He went on in a light politician's patter for a few minutes, drawing increasing snickers from the small audience, except for Jonathan and Martha, who were nearly in hysterics at the double entendres. ("Lois, do you believe a man with Clark's feet can make it across the threshold without tripping?") Martha shoved her hand into her mouth to keep from busting a gut laughing. Jonathan crammed his napkin into his mouth.
"And so, to ensure a happy ending to an evening intended to begin the rest of their lives, we have a special present for the soon-to-be couple. In strict propriety," Pete winked broadly, "this should be opened in private, but you're among friends here."
He held out a box with a bow and a flourish, and Lois took it automatically. And nearly dropped it. "Jeez, Ross, what is this, lead? You almost broke my fingers. Okay, I give, how do I open it?"
In fact, Clark saw, with mounting unease, lead is exactly what it was. What on this planet would Pete put in a lead box? Besides the obvious. No. Surely he wouldn't have done that. At least, not here, in front of all these people. Yeah, Pete was mad at him, and with good reason, but please, even if he was that angry, not here and now....
"Aha. That's a clever lid-catch. Where'd you find this, Ross? And what...." Lois trailed off.
A bright green light glowed up from the box.
Martha Kent gasped. Jonathan nearly swallowed his napkin.
Lois shrieked. "ROSS! You @#$%^! I'll KILL you! You think I'm ever going to wear -- you -- you are SO dead! I will print a story about you having intimate relations with corn husks! Your career is over! Kaput! Zapped! You!"
She threw the garment at Pete, who was folded double laughing. Since the bright green piece of paste-on open-weave satin weighed less than five grams, it fluttered around in the air awhile before actually landing anywhere, if something about the density of dandelion fuzz could be considered "landing."
"I don't even @#$%^! LIKE green!"
"Me neither, much," Clark said faintly.
"And what the @#$%^! is this?" Lois snatched up the glowing battery-powered neon tube arrangement and held it up suspiciously. "Looks like a damn lawn dart. At least it isn't a pink flamingo. You! Lex Luthor! You put him up to this. Pete wouldn't know a krypton light tube sculpture from a hole in the ground. You better go comb your one hair, pretty boy, because you are on tomorrow's front page."
Martha was pounding Jonathan on the back in between attempts to catch her breath herself. Lana and Lucy were exchanging puzzled looks and trying desperately not to snicker. "Um, sis, it's neon, not krypton. Krypton light bulbs are for, like, bright lights."
"Shut up. Just because you got an A in science. Clark, I swear, if you were in on this, I am going to make YOU wear that thing."
"Not ... not me." Clark looked every bit as alarmed as he should have been, though maybe not for the same reason. "They're," he gestured generally at Lex and Pete, "We weren't into the bachelor party thing, and they must have...."
Lois' eyes were deadly. "Oh, they weren't, were they? They'll live to regret that. Maybe." She put on her coolest and smoothest cover, the reporter unfazed by nuclear bombs. "Mr. Kent, Mrs. Kent, thank you for coming tonight. I apologize for the food. I'd apologize for Pete and Lex, too, but that's their problem. If they pull a stunt like this at the wedding, Clark can have what's left over after I get through with them. Say good night to your parents, hon. I'll bring the car around."
Clark obeyed, pink to the tips of his ears. Lex and Pete were collapsed in laughter on each other in a way that would have been quite compromising if Lex hadn't already set the doorways so that no film or magnetic storage media would make it through unscathed. (Clark had wondered about the sudden magnetic and radiation bath when he walked in.) Chloe was yelling into the transceiver. "You had better have a recording! You had better have TEN recordings! From every angle! Including overhead! I'll plant a military bug on you, Lex Luthor, see if I don't...."
Clark got into Lois' car with a reluctance that made her glance at him curiously. Clark could be quiet and shy sometimes to the point of exasperating her, but this was reticent even for him. "What's wrong, hon?"
"Tonight...." Clark's voice choked off, trepidation cold and dark inside him, like the dark of space in the few times he had ventured out there. Knowing that he would do so again, knowing that he got stronger every time, every day. More alien, more different, every day.
Knowing that this might be the last time he could talk to her as the man she thought he was.
He cursed himself for his cowardice. He was the one who had let it get to this point, content in the warmth and joy of Lois' company. Never letting himself consider the consequences. "I'm sorry."
Lois chuckled, the deep and low and seductive sound that was natural to her, that she had to suppress to be the hard-nosed reporter in public. A dual identity, Clark thought. Like him.
He loved her. He couldn't do this to her.
"Actually, I thought it was classic. Bad food, award-winning-for-tacky speeches, company that you usually couldn't put together at gunpoint, the worst of all possible gag gifts. The only possible capper would have been for my dad to get rip-roaring drunk and start a fistfight with your dad. Though come to think of it, Jon might have been able to take Sam, farmer against old war horse. They match in stubborn, at least. What I wouldn't pay to see that. Lex would have been pointing that transceiver of his at CNN."
Clark gave her an uncomprehending look. "How did you -- I mean, what are you talking about?"
Lois sighed. "Come on, Clark, don't tell me you didn't notice his comm rig when he came in. My bet is that it was linked to Chloe. She really wanted to be here tonight, but you know, duty calls."
No kidding. As it did for him. As it always would, for him. "Chloe is ... a remarkable person."
Lois flashed him a grin. "Ever wished you'd ended up with her?"
"No." At Lois' snort, he amended, "Well, sometimes. A little. Maybe. But we'd always be more friends than lovers. You're ... different."
Lois stared at the road ahead. "Because we didn't grow up together?"
"Well, there's that too. But there's also ... what you are, who you are, inside. Chloe is like a counterpart. You're more like a missing part of me. There's just that little bit of difference, and that much of one." He took a slow breath, let it out. "That's what makes this so hard."
"What's so hard, Smallville?" Softly.
Breathe. You have total control over every muscle in your body. You can talk with a meteorite around your neck. Breathe. Get it over with.
"Lois ... I can't marry you."
Lois drove on for nearly a minute without responding, checking the signs along the highway, checking the traffic, as if he hadn't spoken at all. Then she braked, gradually, carefully, under control, and pulled off the shoulder on a wide spot. "What the hell did you just say?"
Clark tried to swallow the lump in his throat. He failed. "I said," he forced out, "that the -- being -- who proposed to you is a lie. I -- he -- it -- did not have the right. I -- it -- was living a fantasy. Pete forced me to face that today. He -- that's what that speech, that box, that gag gift, was about tonight. A warning. An ultimatum." Breathe. Ignore the meteor rock. It isn't really there. "I wish -- I wish I had had the courage to tell you sooner. Before things got this far." He unlocked the door and started to get out. "I'm sorry, Lois. For all of it. For everything."
I'll clean out my desk tomorrow. No, tonight. No, to hell with it, I'll leave it. Mail in my resignation. Clark Kent can go back to the farm. Surely Superman can pick up some living expenses here and there.
I never should have tried to play at being a human being. Dad tried to warn me. No, that was Jor-El. I don't belong here. I'm not someone named Clark. I'm a bug-eyed monster in disguise. Trying to love a human woman, marry a human woman? If the fundamentalists found out, the military would level the block. Maybe the city.
"I just ... Lois, please, believe that it was just me. Just stupid Clark. Not some master plan. Not some alien plot. Just an idiot who forgot who and what he was and got in over his head and fell in love and was too dumb to know better. What I did to you ... unforgivable. I didn't mean to. I just ... I wanted ... I'm sorry."
He tried to stand, putting him off-balance, which is why (he told himself) the female human hand on his collar could wrench him clear off his feet and flat on his back, head in Lois' lap, staring up into the angriest face he'd ever seen.
"Clark Kent, you will start making sense right now, or I will feed this engagement ring to you through whichever orifice happens to be handiest. I know men are from Mars, and that all you he-men would rather be shot at than made fun of, but this is ridiculous."
Okay, an opening line. "Not Mars," he said. More like choked. Not daring to move. "Krypton."
Clark was from Krypton. "Oh." Lois let go of him, the muscles in her fingers, like the lines in her face, going slack in sudden dawning realization. "Oohhhh. So that's what the green trash in the lead box was all about. Pete Ross is deader than dead. Was Lex actually in on this? Lex knows you're Superman? And never said anything? I'll bury both of them in the same grave. No, I'll cremate them and mix their ashes. I may have to hit you a few times too. Or make you wear that porno outfit. Why didn't you just f%^&**^%ing tell me when we first started getting it on that you liked to run around in your underwear, Smallville? I mean, I have a few hobbies myself that I -- never mind. So that's what Chloe was so mad at me about. Or maybe she was mad at you. Yeah, that explains it. Wait'll I -- never mind. Get the hell off my lap. You weigh a ton. I thought you could fly."
Clark lifted, carefully, using some of the levitation to keep from putting too much weight on her frail human bones. Though thinking "frail" and "Lois" in the same sentence was pushing thirteen-dimensional math. "You're not...?"
"Mad? You bet I'm mad. You stupid I-don't-know-what. First you make me think you're a clueless clumsy moron that I've been saddled with as punishment for sins in a past life, then you turn up in the nick of time a couple of dozen times over, then I fall in love with a dork in a bodysuit and cape, then I take pity on my junior partner, and then they turn out to be one and the same, and I should have had a LOT more to drink tonight, except I kept thinking we were going to have The Conversation. Only not THIS conversation. I am going to kill Chloe and mix her ashes with Lex's. She's known about this all along too, right?"
"Well, for a couple of years now. I'm not sure exactly when she figured it out."
"Probably when she tried to take a knife to your gut for missing a deadline. Dammit, Clark! I've been thrown out of an airplane without a parachute twice now, but this is... This is...."
Clark ran an x-ray over her lower legs and winced. "That knee didn't heal right. And with all the breaks in your ankles, you need to take more calcium and magnesium supplements."
"Keep your freaking eyes to yourself. I have a doctor, I don't need a super-worrywart." Lois leaned back and closed her eyes. "Clark...."
Wait a second. "You said ... you fell in love with...? Lois, Superman isn't ... I'm not ... even human."
"Shut up. I am going to hit you. Where's that stupid lawn-dart light sculpture? Since you didn't pass out cold in the middle of our award-winning dinner, I'm assuming that it wasn't really kryptonite. Remind me to send Lex a pink flamingo. No wonder you cracked the table when I mixed up the noble gases."
Lois sat up sharply, eyes almost literally snapping with the emotions pouring through her. "Human! Clark, dammit, I don't care if you have six arms. What's human mean? Maybe you haven't read your history. Earth's history. There were times and places where non-caucasians weren't considered human. Where women weren't treated as human. Still are, for that matter. That's bigotry, and if there's one thing I won't tolerate, it's intolerance."
Lois paused for air, and Clark interjected meekly "I cracked the table?"
"Shut up. I am going to throw Perry out a window for saddling me with such an unobservant partner. Though I suspect he didn't hire you just because you're a fast typist. Super-speed cheat. Does he know how you got the exclusive interview? I'll kill him if he does. I'll kill him if he doesn't, if he gave it to you because he thought you did a better job than I did. I'll kill him for inflicting you on me if I find out he did it for my protection. Is the whole world in on this joke except me?"
"Uh, I met Perry back when I was in high school. I was -- a little careless. He might have -- seen some things. He was drinking pretty heavily. I didn't think he'd remember."
"Perry White remembers being BORN. And he criticizes Sherlock Holmes for missing things. Dammit." Lois got out of the car and ran a hand through her hair, disintegrating the careful style that had taken hours to create for public presentation. To Clark, she looked more beautiful than ever. "You realize I am going to be really pissed off at you for probably the rest of your natural life."
Clark looked away. It was an effort to put sound in his voice. "Yes. I know."
"You realize you are going to PAY for being such a sneak, every day for the rest of your natural life."
Clark's head snapped up. "You still want to....?"
"Do I still want to be with you for the rest of our lives?" She came around the car, moving slowly but deliberately, until she was touching him. "Do I look stupid, Smallville? I've known since the day we met that you were hiding something. I was just waiting for you to tell me what. Nothing you could have said would make me love you any less, unless maybe you were a terrorist double agent or something. But that the two men I care about most, of everyone who's ever been a pain in my ass, turn out to be the same person -- well, it saves me a lot of hassle about having to choose between the two of you, you know? You could have saved me a lot of sleepless nights."
Clark forced himself to hold his breath again. Then he exerted every ounce of strength and will to look up into Lois' eyes, and saw something he would have bet the farm and every dollar in Lex's portfolio against: the sparkle of tears.
"I never dared to love anyone else before," she whispered. "You -- both of you, all of you -- are the only one I ever could."
It surged through Clark like the intoxication of a solar storm. He hadn't pushed her away by being other-than-human. Instead, he had found his closest tie to Earth. Pete was right, he had been only thinking of himself. He hadn't understood just why Lois would be attracted to Clark, or to Superman, how her own drive and force of personality made it impossible for her to settle for anything less than the extraordinary, either.
(Thrown out of an airplane without a parachute TWICE? One more and she'd beat the world record.)
She moved closer, and he laughed a little, weakly, holding onto her as lightly as desperation would allow. "What's so funny, Smallville?"
"Just," more than slightly breathlessly, "That it took such a graphic threat from Pete and Lex -- and Chloe too, probably -- to get me to tell you what I wanted so much to, and was so afraid of, and what it turned out that you actually wanted to hear."
"Threat...? Oh, right, the green stuff. Don't worry, I've already written tomorrow's column about the two embarrassing drunks polluting the otherwise very dignified evening celebrating the union of Metropolis' best journalist and her junior partner. That should serve as fair warning about messing with what's mine."
Clark blinked at her. "Lois, that sounded an awful lot like staking out a claim. I thought you disapproved of chauvinism."
"They don't have mother bears protecting their cubs where you come from? No, probably not. Clark, I turned you down the first time because you were just another one of," she waved her hand, "Them. Someone who wanted to be associated with my name, my contacts, my ability to get you something. Someone who wanted a trophy to display instead of a whole person to share your life with. Is it chauvinism to want to be accepted for who you are, for everything you are, instead of what you've done? To have those you let get close to you understand that you can't let some things go? Stupid question. You'd know that better than anyone. That's probably why I first fell in love with," she traced the costume symbol on his chest, "you."
"And with Clark?" He tried to make it sound teasing, but the lump in his throat was still made of fear. It shouldn't have been; she had accepted the proposal from Clark, after all, not Superman. Would she ever be able to think of him as one person instead of two halves? That was the problem Bruce had with relationships, he knew -- the Bat was all he was. Bruce was just a mask. No one who didn't understand that would ever be able to get close to him. But Clark was equal parts of both -- he could not be the superman in the cape without also being the farmboy from Kansas who wanted to write a novel.
Lois smiled and removed all apprehensions by hauling his face to hers for a long and deeply explorative kiss. "Would it help convince you," she murmured against his lips, "if I let you wear those stupid glasses to bed?"
Clark's breath caught in such paralysis that it was a good thing breathing wasn't normally an issue for him. His thoughts, normally so fast and mathematically precise, seemed to sit on each other like layers of frozen syrup. Lois was making a JOKE of it. She was engaged to a man who had lied to her, who was not a human being, and she was making a JOKE of it.
He chuckled, finally, low and happy. "Love of my life and bane of my existence, you are the most incredible woman who ever lived, you know that? I was terrified tonight. You turned it into the happiest night I could ever wish for."
"Mmm." Lois slid into his lap, a warm and comforting presence that made it seem like anything was possible. "You're still going to pay for being such a jerk, you know."
"I know. In spades and diamonds. And gladly. For every day for the rest of our lives. Um, Lois, one of us is going to have to drive here."
"Heh. Screw it, I'll call Luthor to pick us up in his limo. He's probably bugged the car anyway. Chloe would kill him cold if she missed The Conversation. Mmmm. I'm not too heavy, am I? Heh. Stupid question. I always wondered what it would be like to ask that."
"To Clark, or Superman?" Clark nuzzled her hair.
"Both, believe it or not. See, you saved me the trouble of repeating myself. Mmmm. Shut up for a minute."
Clark obeyed. When Lois had to come up for air, he offered huskily, "We could always fly home, you know."
"Uhm-hm. You sure you could pass the FAA sobriety test right now?"
"....maybe not."
Sure enough,Lex Luthor's limo rolled up beside them before Lois was forced to try to see if she could disengage herself from an amorous Kryptonian's besotted hold. Lex got out and stood with his hands in his pockets, coolly amused. "Your cousin sends her regards, Mrs. soon-to-be Lane-Kent. She also said to let you know that Moroccan cuisine is not all it's cracked up to be."
"Could have told her that. And if I'm going to be Lane-Kent, then bigfoot here is going to be Kent-Lane. You here to gloat, or to keep one of us from repeating your stunt on the bridge and losing our driver's license?"
"Lois, how did you know about...?"
Lex laughed. "She's a REPORTER, Clark. Take notes. You might learn something." He gestured grandly. "Please, the back seat is all yours. Julie, would you please drive their pitiful excuse for a car back to the mansion? I think our near-newlyweds here need a private room."
Clark turned red enough to glow in the dark. "Lex...!"
"Oh, get over it, Smallville." Lois slid her hands into his pockets as suggestively as possible, pulling him close. "You know what I love most about you?" she whispered, loudly enough for Lex to hear, moving against Clark in a way that guaranteed that he would not be fit for either driving or flying in the near future.
"Uh ... um ... I...."
"You don't like green either."
Lex shoved them both tangled together into the back of the limo with a snort. For good measure, he slammed the door on Clark's foot.