A/N: I'm sorry if I lay on the cheese a little thickly this chapter...
"Oh, thank you sweetie." Lois held the Coke bottle Jason gave her up to the light. The red sand sashayed against the glass as she twirled it round delicately as though it were a precious gem. "It's beautiful."
Jason gleaned proudly, "I made it myself." He curled up beside her on the hospital bed, his head resting on the pillow.
Lois laughed, tugging his shoulder gently and recalling a moment two months ago when he brought home from school a white ceramic handprint framed by a red heart. While single and kid-free, she failed to hide her contempt whenever called upon a colleague to comment on a child's artwork. Eventually she'd been left out of those conversations altogether. But when Jason brought home that heart, only lack of time prevented her from contacting the Guggenheim.
As Jason continued babbling, Lois slowly wondered which one of them had been hit over the head. For it certainly wasn't her son laying next to her, because he'd never spoken so many words in his short life, much less in one conversation. And yet here he was carrying on as though he'd been so all his life. Who would have known? Her son inherited her gift for the gab. His normally quiet demeanor exploded with enthusiasm as though a dam burst. His thoughts and sentences splattered all over her, seldom coherent and nearly impossible to follow. Dimly she wondered if this was how she sounded to Clark when hot on a story trail.
"Betcha can't guess from where!" The question jarred her, but before she could comprehend it Jason leaped over her into Clark's arms, ignoring belated pleas to be careful. The boy wrapped his arms around him and giggled as they glanced at each other and back at Lois conspiratorially.
A warm smile crept up her face, realizing that she'd slept through more than the hunt for Knightly. Something vital had changed between father and son. Her reporter instinct kicking in she said, "What's going on with you two?"
Jason giggled hysterically, which set her mind ablaze with possible scenarios. She'd used the same expression many times in the past when she thought she'd outsmarted Clark, especially in the early days of their friendship. Her mild irritation at seeing that expression on someone else's face, albeit her son's, was replaced with shock moments later. For as annoying as it was to see, she thought for sure she'd been the donator of that particular trait, but one look at Clark sent that certainty into doubt.
Leaning back, her long brown curls splayed wildly atop the white pillow. The stress her body had been put through these last few days left imprints in her limbs, and she tried not to wince as she shifted on the bed. With any luck, the doctor would allow her to go home today, and she wasn't about to give him reason to doubt her fitness to do so.
Since she awoke, she faced a barrage of questions from police about the incident and of Knightly. Never the most even-tempered woman, she despised being on the receiving end of an investigation. It reiterated her helplessness of the whole event, and Lois did not like feeling helpless.
And yet she remained calm and professional during the interview, plastering on a smile that felt more fake than one painted on a clown. She suspected though that the real reason for her impatience was that the lead investigator was Terrance Turnbull, a detective she'd butted heads with on many an investigation. Always evasive, he never revealed more than he intended her to know, but fortunately his subordinates were cut from a softer cloth. In their last encounter he retorted smartly about how she could come up with so many ways to ask the same question. Man, she hated his guts.
But now Turnbull and his inquisitors had moved on to other cases, and afterwards, in fleeting states of awareness, she'd spoken with Clark, mostly about inane subjects such as how she was feeling that day or what was happening at the Planet. She tactfully avoided any mention of the subjects he wanted to broach, and he'd grown increasingly frustrated with her deflections.
An hour later Lois received her walking papers, much to Clark's protest. She promised that she would rest and take it slow the next few days, a bald-faced lie she knew Clark deciphered completely before the sentence fully departed her mouth.
They returned home via the Superman Express, landing softly on Lois' balcony after the short, silent flight. She darted inside and made a beeline for the kitchen, and immediately pulled out a frying pan and placed it on the stove.
Clark followed her inside, still dressed in blue tights. He folded his arms across his chest and stared in mocked disbelief. "What are you doing?"
It's as though she expected the clangs and slams of pots and pans to speak for her, but, she surmised, even Superman couldn't translate such a language. "I'm making bacon and eggs."
He gave her a disappointed look.
"Look, Clark, I've eaten nothing but hospital food for the last week, and I'm being generous here, using the word food." She raised a hand and gestured quote marks around her last word. "I'm hungry."
He wanted to make a comment about how she was always hungry but held his tongue.
Lois pulled the egg carton out of the fridge. "And then, I'm going into the office to catch up on work."
"But don't you think you should rest?" Stupid question to ask Lois Lane, he knew. But she had no stories to work on, he made sure of it. It took much convincing but he got Perry to back him up, the Chief only relenting when Clark agreed to take the brunt of her wrath when she learned of their pact. He hoped she'd be kind and get it over with quickly.
She turned round and glared at him. "Clark, stop dawdling over me. I'm not going to break in half just because I had a minor setback. Next thing I know you're going to chain me to the bed."
He gestured absently to his nose before realizing he didn't have on his glasses. "Of course not. It's just that you're recovering. You know what the doctor said about putting too much strain..."
"Strain? I'm fine, Clark. The doctor said I'm fine." She cracked an egg on the side of the pan with too much force, shattering it and sending yellow yoke oozing down the side of the oven. "Shit!"
Six months ago, he'd have let her get away with it, would have let Hurricane Lois blow over. But he'd been learning about how to be in a relationship, to be an equal partner. An outsider all his life, he'd never been a part of anything before, and this role had a steep curve he was determined to learn. "Lois, what's wrong?"
She threw the mangled shell into the sink and wrung her hands in a towel, then turned to face him, silently counting to ten as she did so. "I'm sorry, Clark. I didn't mean to snap at you."
This whole relationship business was new to the both of them. And the sad part was, she was better at it than he was. She laughed at the thought as Clark's gaze peered at her curiously. How could she tell him what was on her mind? She chose her next words carefully, searching for a balance between speaking the truth and saying what needed to be said. "When Knightly attacked me, I called for you. And you didn't come. I thought for a moment you had left again."
Of all the things she could have said he'd never expected that. "I'm sorry, Lois. If there was any way I could have…"
"You don't need to apologize." She breathed deeply and said in an exhale, "It's just at that moment I realized I was still afraid."
"It's okay to be scared, Lois. Knightly was…"
"No, Clark. You don't understand. Those seconds after I called for you I don't even remember what Knightly did. All I could think about was how much I was still afraid that you would leave me again, or maybe that you already had done so." She paused a moment. "And I never felt so ashamed of myself."
Clark started to protest but she silenced him with a wave.
"I was ashamed because I know that that's not what you expect of me, or what I expect of myself. I'm stronger than that. You need to know that I can handle it. I love you, Clark. But what's kept me strong in this relationship is knowing that I can survive anything, even losing you."
Clark looked down at his feet, hating the sacrifices he had to make just to be himself, even more so those the people he loved had to make because of him.
"I know you're greatest fear is that being with me puts me and Jason in danger. But my greatest fear is that some day you'll fly out that window and not come back. And the worst part is, I'm more worried that you'll leave because of me than anything that might happen to you."
He inched towards her, her pain reflecting back at him as a mirror that caught a sun's ray, so powerful and blinding, it took all his strength not to turn away. "Nothing could ever tear me away from you again."
She looked up at him sadly. "I know you believe that, Clark. But we both know you can't give that kind of assurance, and I'm not asking for it. Because someday, somewhere, someone is going to learn about us, or about Jason. And it's not a question of if, it's a question of when. And you'll think leaving is the only way to protect us."
Clark stood up straight when he realized he'd been leaning on the countertop for support. "Lois, when I heard about what happened and saw you in the hospital, I've never been so frightened. I didn't want to think about what it'd be like if I'd lost you." He shifted his weight from foot to foot, startled by his own certainty. "But there's one thing that you haven't realized yet, and that is you are stronger than me. You can live without me, but I don't think I could live without you."
She looked at him strangely and grinned despite herself. She was the man of steel's weakness, and danger be damned, it felt so good. But this wasn't a time for sarcasm. "You're going to be a father again," she said softly.
Clark lit up and reciprocated her smile, then laughed nervously, nodding his head. "You know, Lois, growing up was very difficult for me. I was awkward and unsure of myself. All these powers were emerging and I had no idea why or how to control them. But as I got older and comprehended what I could do they only made me feel more isolated. You have given me the one thing in this universe that I dreamed of most and never believed I could attain." And it didn't matter that another child increased exponentially the risk of discovery. He had a family now, and nothing and no one was going to take that away from him.
"Are you nervous?"
He laughed again. "You have no idea."
Lois told him about Jason's earliest years, but hearing about them and living through them were two entirely different concepts. Suddenly an image of him lying on the couch with an infant fast asleep on his chest flashed in her mind. While she lay unconscious he'd won over Jason, she could only imagine what he'd be like without a five-year handicap. God help the kid if it was a girl.
She watched his eyes grow distant and knew the conversation must come to an end. "Go, and if you get back by lunchtime pick up some Chinese takeout."
He eyed her peculiarly. "What about the eggs?"
She looked at him slyly. "Lunch is over an hour away. I'll be hungry again by then."
Her appetite. But at least now she had an excuse. He sped off into the sky and moments later disarmed two perpetrators of a jewelry store heist. The shop owner thanked him profusely as he ranted on about a new shipment of rings and necklaces that had just arrived that morning, and Clark couldn't help but agree how beautiful they all were.
TO BE CONTINUED