XYK
Chapter 7- "Spoons"
"We go for counselling" Clark said placing some Alka seltzer in front of his wife. "...emergency counselling. I think we need this..." Clark straightened his tie. " I know you don't really want to go, but now we have to. If we want to get back to normal then we have to be willing to do anything."
"Sure. Anything."Lois said, barely making eye contact. Her head was pounding and she felt ready to vomit,she rested her throbbing forehead on her knees.
"Doctor Swann said he could recommend a few psychologists within VERITAS who would be discreet. What do you think?" He put on his glasses.
Lois tucked her feet underneath her "Whatever you think."
Clark smiled and kissed her on the forehead before he left for work.
A week later Clark turned up for their first official counselling session. They'd been sleeping in the same bed, carried on going through the motions of normal life, found a counsellor and made an appointment. He sat there,in the waiting room for almost an hour before he realised Lois lane was most certainly not coming. He paid the counsellor for her time and rang Lois but got no reply. Not at the apartment, not at work and not on her mobile phone. He was scared, as he rushed home, that she'd been hurt. After all she was in a weird head space right now, drinking more and growing more despondent by the day.
He was right to be scared. She was hurt,or hurting..which had become one and the same these days.
She was lying on the sofa when he got in.
Her slender form was stretched out, her eyes half closed, staring at the direction of the TV but probably taking very little in. He shook his head but reached down to kiss her and paused as the whiff of alcohol hit him.
Clark dropped a kiss on her forehead and she smiled a languid, dreamy smile "Hey Superman."She said. Her voice was drowsy with alcohol and sleep. But as per usual Clark decided to put more emphasis on the sleep, he so wanted to believe that she'd forgotten about their appointment or she'd simply fallen asleep waiting for him . "I thought you were never coming home."Lois said still stretched out, eyes still closed.
"Where else would I go?"he asked. There was a time when his answer to that question would have been "There's nowhere else I'd rather be." That wasn't true anymore. He sighed. Recently he'd found himself patrolling more, flying further and further afield, even spending hours sitting in the fortress of solitude.
In the kitchen,he hated himself for doing this,but he automatically went to the large garbage can and using his laser vision took inventory.2 bottles of cheap wine had been demolished , and a can of unfinished beer sat on the table. He was prepared to ignore the fact that it was only 4 in the afternoon, yet Lois was zonked out in a drunken stupor and he was going to ignore the fact that there was hardly any alcohol left in the house, which was probably a good thing anyway. He was in no rush to replace it,so instead he picked Lois up and took her to bed.
Later that evening in bed, they lay on opposite sides. He wasn't sure when it started to happen but they'd stopped sleeping spooned together, getting comfort from the warmth of each other's bodies. Now they were like strangers,well.. friendly strangers who knew each other well enough to share a bed but not well enough to actually touch . Now there was nothing but distance. They hadn't made love in months, not since before they'd lost the baby.
Clark lay in the dark listening to Lois lightly snoring, thinking around the problem .In the dark he slowly retraced the steps of his getting to know Lois. It hadn't been easy to woo her, she wasn't the easiest person to get to know, he could remember being enchanted by this tough talking, seemingly fearless reporter who had so little time for sentimentality. He'd wanted to knock all her psychological walls down,all the walls that had stopped him getting to know her,but here in the dark he couldn't help but feel that those walls had never truly been demolished.
Clark closed his eyes, tomorrow would be better he reassured himself. He'd come home early and relax. Take time off like Perry had offered and talk to Lois, really talk to her. Force her to share her feelings about the miscarriage.
Hopefully they'd do something about her problem. Their problem. Because he was in it as well. It was their problem. For better or worse,he'd promised . And whilst things could be a exponentially worse, they had been residing in the 'nowhere near good' area for too long. But could things change? "It'll work itself out" he told himself."It will be alright."
TBC
