Metanoia

When they were finally, eventually alone, the fear returned. The comforting ritual of the ceremony had passed. All the toasts had been toasted, the dances danced. They had left their families and friends to finish off the open bar and now it was only the two of them in a darkened room with the sharpened scent of the ocean blowing in off the balcony. She was as beautiful by starlight as she was in the sun. It was a honeymoon from a dream or a painting. It was everything and nothing he could have wished for. A gift, perfect beyond imagining. And he was afraid.

He touched her with trembling hands that had twisted steel and ground concrete to dust. He'd often been asked if his invulnerability caused him to be insensate to lighter pressures. In truth, his skin was even more sensitive than a human's, despite being harder than titanium. Every inch of her was a landscape of sensation sending a barrage of stimuli up his fingertips. When he closed his eyes and bent his head to hers, the taste of her exploded within him. Sensations he had felt before, but somehow a thousand times sweeter, more intense than they had ever been. Pleasure mingled with fear and he trembled more.

Her hands were in his hair, shaking with…what? Anticipation? Excitement? Terror? Did she fear it as he did? Certainly not for the same reasons. It had been a long time for both of them, he knew. They hadn't talked about it, but they both knew. He'd kept secrets from her, though. He'd given her everything else, but not this. He didn't know how. What was he supposed to say?

Clothing shed in the dark. Silk and fine cotton sliding from moonlit skin. Barriers removed. Others remaining. A new kind of panic roaring through him. Memories coming now, jumbling into a disjointed series of images and sensations. Faces from long ago, blurred by time and transience. Their names…he didn't even know their names. He didn't know a single name. There had been so many, a different taste every night, a different flavor to try at every club. Kal had sampled the twenty-somethings of Metropolis extensively in his short career and Clark had carried those memories through the years afterward as a constant reminder of the consequences of ever losing control.

Touching, tasting…bodies melding together, movements carefully orchestrated for maximum pleasure. Each encounter was a game and each experience was something new, something he hadn't tried before. To Kal, each girl was an object to be used and thrown away, each night an exercise in staving off boredom. For years, Clark had tried to fit this night - this far-off dream that was now a reality - into that paradigm and failed. He didn't know how it was supposed to be or how it was supposed to work and he was terrified to find out. What if nothing changed? What if Kal was everything he could give? What if there wasn't anything else?

Her mouth was champagne and fruity lipstick, her skin living marble, smooth and muscular beneath his hands. Minutes passed as he kissed her until she flooded into him and filled every hollow space within. And then the fear was gone and her hands were on his chest and then his back, spreading warmth from skin to muscle to bone to spirit. Her nipples were hard beneath his fingers, breasts firm and supple. And then he was inside her and sinking deeper and deeper and she didn't end and he wasn't he and she wasn't she and there was just fire everywhere and it rolled out from their room across the ocean to the sky and beyond the stars and everything was nothing and it was all the same and he had never flown before this night; he had never lived; and now he was dying and his entire life was this moment, just this moment…

When it was over, the fear was a memory and there were tears on his face. She wiped them away with gentle fingers and kissed the tracks they had made down his cheeks.

"Lois…"

The whisper of her name came almost involuntarily. She caught it with her mouth as she kissed him again and it started over. Only this time there was no fear – just the fire. Fire that went forever.