---- Chapter 13

Laughing, Lois grabbed a pillow and tossed it at Clark, who promptly caught it. "It is not scary behind my walls, it's complicated! I should know, I built them and put 'em in place!"

"Right, right. I think you just lack objectivity when it comes to the walls around your heart."

"Oh that's cold, Clarkie."

"I call it 'em like I see 'em, Sailor."

Her eyes widened a little and she bit back a retort that Jordan didn't need to hear before the age of twenty, maybe twenty five. She eyed Clark a second before speaking to Jordan without looking away.

"Jordan, you ok to color on your own for a little while?"

Jordan didn't look away from her artistic endeavor. "Yes."

Lois stood up and walked to the bedroom she shared with Clark and had woken up in the previous day. She stayed turned away from the door and heard him enter the room, closing the door as he did so. She spun on her heel, her eyes glaring but her mouth smiling.

"So Smallville, that's the way you want to play it? I recall a certain nightlight that had a presence in your life, and am not averse to bringing his existence into others knowledge." She knew it was old ammunition, but it was what she had.

"Don't worry about me, Lo. I can give as good as I get these days. I have more stories about you than you could possibly imagine. I recall one that starts with you going skinny dipping in Spain..."

She didn't break eye contact but couldn't decide what to do. He was being more infuriating than he'd ever been before. Stupid calm demeanor, stupid confidence seeping out every pore, stupid amazing smile, stupid eyes that you lose yourself in...

Lois launched herself at Clark and attacked his lips with her own. Pulling his head down so she didn't have to stand on her tip-toes, she started nipping at his lower lip. He quickly acquiesced to her silent but screaming request, and their tongues locked in an extremely pleasurable battle for dominance. 'God,' she thought, 'even his tongue is amazing.'

His tongue?

Lois' eyes shot open and she observed their actions for a second as best she could before it really hit her and she pushed herself away from him, taking deep breaths that seemed rather necessary after their altercation. "Woah," she mumbled, touching her lips.

She looked up at Clark and it suddenly clicked in her head: she was making out with Smallville. "Woah woah woah! What the hell was that? Why did I... why did that... woah."

Lois moved over to the bed and sat down on the edge, hardly able to blink or think. "That was amazing... but you're you! Smallville, farm boy, Captain Plaid! I mean, I know we have a daughter together and another well on its way, but the process of how they came to exist... I hadn't thought about it."

Lois unconsciously rested a hand on her stomach while the other was over her heart, which was refusing her requests to slow down to a pace not seen in a sprint. She felt the bed dip as Clark sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. His other hand rested on hers over her stomach.

"I shouldn't have let that happen. I never quite think straight when you call me Clarkie and it usually ends up in us, well, you know. It's kind of your go to move when you really feel like taking advantage of me." She wanted to glare at him, but all she could do was laugh at the way he'd put it. "I hope you don't think I ..."

Lois looked at him like he'd gone mad. "Smallville, all you did was react to my advances, which is entirely logical since we're married and I'm sure have amazing sex."

Clark smiled softly. "Amazing is certainly a good word for it, yes."

"I figured, if that short make out session was any indication. That was... well, I don't remember a fair bit, but for what it's worth that was the most intense kiss I've ever had. My reaction to it, though, was just me being surprised. I do remember being able to control myself; I think somebody would have mentioned had I lost that very important ability."

"Yes, you can still control yourself. Otherwise you'd have jumped me as soon as I walked in the door yesterday morning." He smiled at her, and she cocked an eyebrow in response, prompting him to continue. "I'm thinking, though, that it may be pregnancy related. Hormones and all that. When you were pregnant with Jordan and got a little farther along you tended to be... aroused... often. You were, to put it mildly, aggressive about it at times.

"It was a very odd experience to have you lose your memory and three weeks later have you jumping me like I was fresh meat in a lion's cage. Not that I'm complaining; your pregnancy might have been as eventful as our first five months as newlyweds, and that's saying a lot." He paused and scratched at his chin a second. "I'm probably telling you a lot of things that you find mildly disturbing."

Lois let her face fall into her hands. She'd heard about it before, some women in pregnancy being insatiable, and she figured it ridiculously obvious she'd be one of those women. The way Clark was now, with his confidence making him look amazing... no, that was a bad road to go down. "So, I was pregnant and horny, eh?"

"Pretty much until the day before Jordan was born. On the upside, though, you had a very short labor. Well, kind of..."

"Well, at least there's that. I'm sure all those thirty hour labor horror stories you hear are worth it when they first hold their child, but it's not something one wishes for."

"No, I would think not," Clark responded

"But seriously, I spent almost my entire pregnancy with Jordan turned on? That's not a comforting thing to hear, Smallville, not when you look all calm and confident like you do now."

Clark rolled his eyes and stood up. "I'm very sorry. I'll do my best to look frazzled and broody for the next 25 weeks or so."

Lois returned his eye roll. "That's all I ask. So, short labor you say? How short we talking here? Couple hours?"

"Well, the part you noticed was about five to ten intense minutes."

Lois thought about what he'd said but was thoroughly confused. "The part that I noticed? What the hell are you talking about? I know that I can be a little dense sometimes and ignore obvious things others, but how the hell did I not notice labor?"

Clark ran a hand through his hair, remembering the time leading up to the birth. "You had fairly frequent backaches for the last month of your pregnancy. Really, you had a sore back for the entire last trimester, but the last month was the worst. Hot baths and back massages usually helped a lot, the massages generally leading to the turned on we spoke about. You liked the effect my hands had on you.

"Anyway, you were having a really strong backache the day Jordan was born. You were also having Braxton-Hicks contractions all day, or at least that was how you interpreted them. You never stopped saying that there was no regularity to their timing for months after she was born. As for the backache, there was no come and go one relates to labor, just consistent ouch with an occasional tightening across your stomach, which you misinterpreted or really did just have a very short labor. You didn't feel like navigating sex that day, so you decided to take a hot bath instead of getting a massage."

---

"Clark!"

Clark looked up from his laptop, wiping a hand across his face. Lois hadn't been able to get comfortable the night before so he'd stayed up with her while she was in and out of slumber. He'd also had a bank robbery and a car chase to stop, so he wasn't exactly energetic. He knew he wasn't going to get much rest for a while when the baby was born, so he was trying to get used to it. The experience left something to be desired, he determined.

He stood and walked to the bathroom, expecting to be used as an aide to get up and out of the tub as he often had been recently. He found Lois with her legs splayed apart and grunting, though, and was immediately snapped into a much more alert state.

Clark dropped to his knees and placed a hand on her leg. "Lois, breathe. Can I move you so we can get to the hospital?" God he hoped that he sounded calm because he felt like panic was sidling up to him and introducing itself.

She shook her head as her face relaxed and she started taking deep breaths. "Nope, baby's almost here Clark. Sat in the tub for a few minutes, felt the baby drop and wham, had to push. I tried the breathing but my body had other plans and now I'm having the baby here." She paused and winced. "Here it comes again..."

"Ok, Lo. We can do this; trust what your body tells you and push when you feel the urge." That sounded smart and helpful. He heard her start making strained grunting sounds again and looked down to be greeted by the top of the head before it receded a little. Leave it to Lois to skip straight to the last part of labor.

He super sped some hand sanitizing gel on his hands, hoping that was sufficient sterilizer, and placed them in the water as Lois pushed again and the baby crowned. "Ok Lois, breathe through if you can. You don't want to tear." He mentally thanked their birthing teacher for getting tearing stuck in his head as something one hopes to avoid. Not in his wildest dreams had he imagined he would need that info for this kind of incident, though.

At a load moan, Clark refocused on the task at hand and supported the emerging head as it delivered. He felt the head turn in his hands and heard Lois give a strong yell as the shoulders delivered into his hands, the rest of their baby delivering easily. Reminding himself to breathe, he slowly lifted his daughter up out of the water and laid her down on her mother's chest. He quickly cleared her mouth out with his pinky.

"She's here, Lo," he said through tears. "Our little girl's here." As soon as he'd made the statement the little girl let out a loud wail and they both laughed through their joyful tears. "And apparently she's got your lungs."

---

"After that, we called the paramedics and they got there a few minutes after you delivered the placenta. You and Jordan were out of the hospital and back home the next day."

Lois sighed angrily. What was probably one of the happiest and most important days of her life and she was having to listen to it from somebody else's perspective. Shouldn't a woman get to remember the birth of her child?

Looking up, she spotted Clark still smiling at the memory and swipe at one of his eyes, she presumed to get rid of a tear before it fell. She'd give anything to feel that happiness. They sat in silence for a moment before Lois decided it had gotten uncomfortable. "So, the moral of the story is let more people than just you know if I have a backache that won't go away."

"The doctor at Metropolis General said that back labor is common, of course, and it's not the first nor the last time he'd seen a woman have an unintended home birth because of it. You'll have your hospital room this time, unless you want to do it here."

Lois looked at him, eyes wide. "We'll jump off the bridge and all the other pregnancy related decisions when we get to it, Smallville. First off, I think I'll get used to pregnant."

"Right, sorry. Getting ahead of myself. We could wait until you're showing before making any decisions, if you're more comfortable with that."

"Sounds like a plan. How soon do you think that'll be?"

"Like I said earlier, I don't think it will be long. If you don't have an obvious bump in two weeks I'll be surprised."

Lois sighed, feeling the time she had hoped for to make a better adjustment disappear. "Better than nothing, I guess."