[Rating: R - For occasional mild profanity, for suggestive language and dialogue, for sensuality, and for sexuality.]
CHAPTER 7
Hearing her quiet capitulation, he slides his hand up to cup her cheek, and tilts her head up and back toward him. Then, slowly, he leans down, closing the distance between her mouth and his. His warm breath against her lips sends a tremble through her body. Holding her closer to him, he brushes his lips across hers and then surrounds her upper lip, applying just enough pressure to elicit a soft whimper of approval. She tightens her hold on the back of his collar as he presses firmer against her, while still denying her the contact that she most wants.
He pushes his hand back into her hair, still carefully attending her lips. Growing restless, she tries to turn around to face him, but he pulls her tighter against him, keeping her where she is. His arm wrapped around her torso, and his other wrapped under her arm and around her chest limit her access to him. Resorting to the only options she has available, she releases his collar and threads her fingers into his hair. As she rubs a coaxing hand across his scalp, she lightly nips his lower lip, before sweeping her tongue across it to soothe the imaginary ache.
Granting her unspoken request, he widens his lips, easing her mouth open. She presses her hand against his head, pulling him farther down toward her. At the initial sensation of his tongue against hers, she whimpers again, and he feels the muscles in her stomach flutter. He swallows her plaintive exhale, then pulls back far enough to capture her lower lip. Spurred by her hushed, needful sounds, he increases the pressure of his mouth on hers.
"Mmm…" she gently moans.
Surrounded by his strength, enticed by his insistence, she feels her skin flushing with warmth and a familiar tension building at her core. Reflexively, she arches her back as she squeezes his hair and his forearm. He groans, deep in his throat, at the curve of her backside pressing against him. The slight tremor in his lips only encourages her further, and she strokes her tongue forward against his and begins slowly rolling her hips.
The languid pressure of her moving against him ignites his own arousal, and he feels himself begin to grow and harden against her. "Unh…" he quietly shudders, gripping the fabric of her shirt.
His response to her strikes a familiar cord, and she opens her eyes to murmur against his lips, "Is this okay?"
He meets her gaze, his mind balking as he hears the echoes of each time over the past couple months when she's asked him similar questions, giving him the option to change their course or to wholly withdraw from it before things reach a point with which he's uncomfortable. Heartened by her concern, but wary of her self-denial, he pushes back against their trepidations, and replies, "Yes."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure," he tells her, reaching for her lips.
Assuaged by his assurance, she accepts his kiss with more urgency than before. Matching her tenor, he insinuates his tongue past her lips and lets her massage it with hers. As she rasps her pleasure against his mouth, her dissatisfaction with her restrictive position becomes all the more pronounced.
As the rises and falls of his chest pushing into her back grow deeper, she takes advantage of his distraction with her mouth and releases his hair. Gradually, she moves her hand up along his wrist and then threads her fingers into his. He doesn't resist as she pulls his hand from her tresses and down her neck. But when his palm traverses the generous curve of her breast, his mind stirs to her appeal.
Their hands reach her stomach, and he loosens his hold on her torso and pulls away from their kiss. She turns in his embrace, exhaling a quick and aimless, "Thank you." Then, quickly, she wraps her hands around the back of his neck and stretches up onto her toes.
Seeing her hooded eyes and hearing her husky voice, he begins to offer a reflexive, "You're welcome." But her lips cut short his utterance before he can complete it.
Though the force of her pull nearly throws off his unfailing sense of balance, he still manages to remain upright. Welcoming the eagerness of her kiss, he wraps his arms around her back and angles his head farther to one side.
"Mmh," she whimpers, stroking her tongue past his lips.
As she drinks him in, he glides his hands down her hips and thighs to the bottom hem of her shirt. After reaching underneath the abundant fabric, he moves back up her sides, only to find her skin still concealed from him by what he supposes to be the tank top that he hasn't seen since earlier in the day. Before he can think twice about it, he grasps the billowy white cotton of her immediate layer and lifts it upward. Without hesitation, she slips out of their kiss and raises her arms, letting him peel the material off of her. He drops the shirt onto the floor, and before it reaches the tiled surface, his lips find hers once more.
She rests her hands on the sides of his face, and he reaches underneath her tank top to spread his fingers against her lower back and waist. As his hands make contact with her skin, her thumb crosses the barely healed line of a cut high on his cheek.
Startled by the sensation, she pulls away from his lips, and worriedly asks, "Are you alright?"
"What?" he breathlessly replies, confused as to her meaning.
Holding his face, she runs her eyes over his skin.
"What is it?" he tries once more.
Finding the surface of his cheek unbroken by any wound, she blinks once, and then again. "Nothing," she tells him, unable to rationalize away the certainty of what she felt, but content to set it aside.
He accepts her reply and the firmness of her kiss. His smooth hands running up and around her back push her undershirt higher, and the air in the room meets her skin, sending a shiver through her body. She faintly gasps at the contrasting temperatures, and feels the first flush of her arousal slicking her core. Seeking some kind of pressure to ease her increasing ache, she leans her body forward and into the slight swell between his hips. At the feel of her subtle movement, he slides his hands to her waist and holds her closer.
As she subtly rocks against him, she notices the skin of his cheeks warming against her palms. And against the backs of her hands and along her arms and shoulders, she senses the radiating heat of something else - something fainter and more diffuse. Recognizing the feel and then the scent of burning oil and melting wax, she opens her eyes to study her surroundings. Finding only the fluorescent glow of the kitchen's overhead lights, she dismisses her mistake and kisses him deeper.
The muscles in her calves begin to tremble at the strain of her standing only on her toes, and he notices the quivers of exhaustion in her lower body. She sinks back onto the floor, and he tilts his head down farther, refusing to abandon the taste of her mouth. Discontented by the angle her shorter stature gives her, she steps forward onto the tops of his feet. He smirks, recognizing the gesture she typically only makes when she wants to see the world from above. Obliging her, he bends down far enough to reach an arm underneath her thighs, and lifts her up. As she wraps her legs around his back, he murmurs against her lips, "You could've just asked -"
"- Stop talking," she insists, pushing one hand back into his hair and sliding the other underneath his collar and around his neck.
Sitting comfortably in his large, tireless arm, she arches forward into him. Even with the layers between them, she can feel the broad, defined musculature of his abdomen between her thighs. She swivels against him and sighs into his mouth, grateful for the alleviating contact.
He trails his hand resting on her waist up along her side and back down her spine. Reaching the sensitive part of her lower back, he kneads his fingertips into and around it.
"Mmm…" she softly moans.
The low, heady sound of her arousal drifts into his ears and spreads through his body. His temperature rises. His chest heaves. And the pressure against the line of his zipper becomes all the more keen.
Eager for more of her, he runs his hand across the upper edge of her pants and tries to slip his fingers underneath the thin fabric, but the cinching of a drawstring impedes him. Groaning his displeasure, he slides his hand down over the plaid pattern covering her hip. As he nears the top of her thigh, she raises her legs higher on his back, easing them farther open. Unsure of how to respond, he slows his progress, lingering in the lowest area of her waist.
Sensing his hesitation, she pulls her hands away from his hair and neck, and breaks their kiss. At the loss of contact, he groans again and opens his eyes to find her gazing back at him.
"What?" he worries, discomfited by her apparent reaction to his indecision.
Gently, she asks, "Can you help me?"
Her appeal to his accommodating nature overcomes his moment of diffidence, and he studies her face, wordlessly asking for direction. When she doesn't answer him, he follows the length of her arms down between them, and sees her pulling at the cords of the large bow keeping his pajama pants on her. Understanding, he quickly glances around to reacquaint himself with the surroundings that he all but forgot. As her shaky hands struggle with the overcomplicated knots that she now regrets, he carries her the few steps to the kitchen table and sets her down on the cool surface.
Giving up on the tangled mess, she reaches for his hands, telling him, "I think I made it worse."
He glances down her body as she guides his fingertips to the knot. "You did," he observes, relieved for the brief diversion, as she leaves his hands with the problem and presses hers onto the edge of the table.
She licks and then bites her lower lip, watching him quickly determine where she went wrong. For a moment, she wonders at his hair, unsure of whether it should be as short as it seems. But she abandons her doubt as his fingertips and knuckles brush the skin just above her pants, and her stomach tightens. He pulls at and unties the various loops, and she sighs in relief when the cord around her slackens. Feeling his hands pause, she lifts her lower body off of the perch, granting him her approval. He follows her prompt, slipping his fingers underneath the top hem of the pants, and then pulling them down her legs and onto the floor.
She watches his eyes drift up her skin and hover over the smooth material of her navy boyshorts. Lifting her hands, she rests them on the sides of his face and tilts his head up. The chill left by the table on her palms and fingertips meets his cheeks, and his lips, flushed and full, tremble.
Taken aback by his reaction, she asks, "Did you just shiver?"
"Hmm?" he absently responds, sliding his hands around her back and leaning down to her.
"You shivered," she discerns, moving out of the reach of his mouth. "You can't shiver."
"I just did."
"But you can't."
"But I did."
"Is that bad?"
"No. It's just new."
"Well, maybe we should -"
"- We shouldn't," he interrupts, pressing his lips to hers and silencing her protest.
She whimpers at the firm contact and allows his easy dismissal of his odd reflex. Reciprocating his kiss, she runs her teeth across his lips and swirls her tongue into his mouth. He leans further into her, and lets her go long enough to push away the napkins, placemats, and condiment holders behind her.
Wrapping her arms and legs around him and shifting further down underneath him, she lets him recline her back onto the surface of the table. Hugging him close, she immerses herself in the summery sweetness of his taste, in the imposing dimensions of his figure, and in the heightened warmth flowing past his shirt and filling the air around them. He wraps an arm under her, lacing his fingers into her hair and holding himself up on his elbow, while he runs his other hand along her side and down the skin of her thigh.
Reflexively, she rolls her hips up against the rigidity pushing out against his pants, and he moans into their kiss. Massaging his tongue with hers and arching her back, she entices him further down onto her. Secured by her embrace, he leans his chest into the suppleness of her breasts. She mewls against his lips, and he runs his hand back up her leg. Spreading his fingers against her hip, he gently rocks down between her thighs.
Suddenly, she feels the inexplicable pressure of him pushing into her, and she gasps and shudders at the abrupt sensation. His hearing triggers as her heart takes on a staccato rhythm, and he quickly breaks their kiss, lets her go, and starts leaning away from her.
"Are you okay?" he asks, studying her face.
The alarm in his voice pushes away her fleeting recollection, and she meets his gaze and holds him tight enough to stop him from getting away. "I'm fine," she assures him through labored breaths.
"Did I -"
Hanging onto him as he stands straight up, she reaches for his lips, telling him, "- Of course you didn't."
Still unconvinced, he presses, "Then what just happened?"
She stops short of his mouth, unsure of how to explain the whispers and echoes that have been encroaching upon what she's beginning to sense is her memory. But, more concerned for his fear than for her odd sense of remembrance, she releases him from her embrace, slides off of the table, and replies, "Nothing. I just got overwhelmed or something."
"By what?" he asks, stepping back.
"By nothing that we need to talk about right now."
Keeping him close to her, she grasps his shirt and steers him around the side of the table. His legs meet the seat of the chair that she previously neglected to return to its proper place, and she guides him down onto it.
"Lois…" he tries again.
"I'm fine."
He watches her continue advancing on him until she's lowered herself onto his lap, with her bare legs draped over either side of him. Licking his lips as she scoots forward along his thighs, he makes one last attempt at maintaining his resolve: "You'd tell me, right? If I ever -"
"- You wouldn't, Clark," she whispers, titling her head down and gently pressing her lips to his.
As he sighs away his anxiety and relaxes into her kiss, she reaches for his hands and then circles his arms around her. Welcoming her nearness, he spreads his hands against her back and whimpers as she nips at his lower lip. But when the skin of her knuckles brushes his chest, he pulls away from her enough to glance down. Seeing her fingers slipping the buttons of his shirt out of their corresponding holes, he clenches his jaw and swallows, realizing that they've reached a point that he didn't look beyond when he first pressed his lips to her neck.
Peering back up at her, he quietly asks, "Lois, what are we doing?"
Understanding his hesitance, she recaptures his lips, and murmurs, "We're taking off your shirt."
Her simple reply, meant to keep him from worrying about the things she knows he hasn't considered, achieves its purpose. And he closes his eyes and refocuses on her.
As her hands drift down between them, undoing the last of his buttons, he sits up straighter in his seat and takes his hands away from her back. She pushes the shirt down his arms, then pulls it from behind him and sets it on the table next to them. He buries his fingers in her hair, and she runs her hands along his arms, across his shoulders, and down his sides. Relishing his dips and curves and sinews, and the rippling underneath his increasingly heated skin whenever he moves even the slightest bit, she leans further into him, drawn in by the command of his presence.
The depth of their kiss and her palms, fingertips, and nails running over him send his blood rushing into his groin, and his skin dilates with moisture. Sensing his need, she presses her tongue deeper into his mouth and sweeps her hands around his waist and down his stomach. When she makes her way over the top of his pants and his belt, though, she feels him tense and slightly draw back into the chair. The uneasiness he demonstrated that morning in making a similar retreat resounds in her mind. Careful of pushing him too far past his line of comfort, she slides her hands back up his torso and around his neck, noting his soft gasp as she skims the points of his chest. Pressing forward, she eases him the short distance into the back of the chair and shifts all the way up his thighs. His breath catches at the pressure of her against him, and he trails his hands down her back. Opening her eyes to watch his face, she stretches her arms over his shoulders, bites down on his lower lip, and rolls her hips.
"Unh…" he groans, as a wave of pleasure spreads out from his core to the rest of his body.
She presses into him again, and he takes his mouth from hers and tries to even out his ragged breaths. Pursuing his lips, she closes her eyes and continues rocking into him in long, deliberate strokes.
"Mmh…" he moans, returning her kiss as best he can.
With excruciating persistence, she glides her tongue against his, whimpering and sighing into his mouth as the effects of her slow grind take hold of her too. He brings his hands around to her waist, allowing her the full range of her motions, and luxuriates in the fluidity, the mesmerism of her movements against him.
Altering her rhythm, she swivels her hips down into his lap. Unable to maintain their kiss any longer, he pulls away and gasps. She threads a hand into his hair and runs the other down his arm, and he lolls his head back into her palm.
Feeling her warm mouth brushing against his cheek, he licks his lips, and shakily utters, "Lois?"
"Hmm?" she replies, nuzzling the side of his face, rotating against him with more purpose.
"I'm not sure that, uh…that we should, um…"
Reaching back toward his ear, she purrs, "We're not in public."
"I know. But… I still don't think that I should -"
"- Just tell me when you want me to stop," she whispers, her voice tender and beguiling.
As she ends her sentiment by pressing against him harder than before, he moans, "Mmm…"
Over and over, again and again, she moves along his length and breadth. The heat from his body hits the moisture on his skin, making the air around them humid, thick with his desire. Easing her mouth open, she circles her tongue down his throat, leaving moist kisses along the way. Aimlessly, he runs his hands up and around her sides, vaguely considering lifting her thin top off of her, but too lost in his haze to manage it.
She scrapes her teeth across the curve of his throat, and, in response, he rasps upon feeling a luscious ache that he's not certain he's ever experienced before. "Lois… God, Lois…"
The tone of his voice, laden with want, but markedly free of the strains of exhaustion or deprivation, strikes her too clearly for her to disregard. And for a moment, her mind wanders to when she's heard her name drift past his lips in a similar manner.
Behind her hooded eyes flashes an image of his weathered face, his long, unkempt hair, and his gloomy eyes. Through her body sparks the touch of his cracked lips pressed to her neck, his desperate hands running along her legs, his calloused fingers dragging down her back. And into her mind floods the gravity of his desolation diminishing to the point of nonexistence as he pushed into her again and again.
She squeezes her eyes shut, and then blinks away what she can't help knowing to be memories - elusive and disjointed, but memories all the same. Forcing aside the increasing focus of her revelation, she tightens her hold on his hair and alters her rhythm once more, rocking up and then back down along him.
He shudders at the variation, inching closer to his limit with every roll of her hips, and moans, "Mmh… Lois…"
Missing the feel of her skin, he slips his hands under her shirt. Gliding up her sides, his fingertips reach the smooth band of her bra. He traces around the bottom of the garment, but stops when his thumb meets the raised surface of a scar. Having encountered what's left of the wound that nearly took her life, the wound that she only sustained as a result of his duplicity, he slides his hands back down her waist and rests them on the dark fabric covering her hips.
The damp heat radiating from between her thighs hits the back of his fingers. Without thinking, he starts to gravitate down towards its source, and she whimpers her enticement against his throat. Fraught with the need to touch her - to learn the texture and taste of her desire - but beset by the reminder of her vulnerability, he halts his progress, and his hands begin to shake from the conflicting impulses coursing through him.
His heart pounds harder and faster. And his skin stings and prickles as the pressures of her hand running down his arm and her mouth running back up his neck become acute and very nearly intolerable. Blinking his eyes open, he tries to fight his escalating frenzy, but the lights in the room hit his fully dilated pupils with garish brutality. He lowers his lids, and then winces as her breath and tongue sear across his ear. His mind dizzies and swims, and he tries to find something to rein in his instability. Turning his head toward her, he seeks out her lips, and sighs in relief when she presses her mouth to his.
He clutches at her hips, focusing on her rhythm, struggling to endure the impossibly stifling waves flowing off of her body and burning down into his. But the torrent of pressure building at his core and the flutterings spreading through his thighs warn him that he's hurtling toward the brink. Inundated by the sensations of her tongue stroking into his mouth and her body rocking back and forth into his lap, his chest constricts and his temperature reaches a blistering height. The fabric of her shirt chafes his torso as she moves against him, and her hand cradling his head depresses into his scalp. Still, in spite of his fear of continuing to do so, he only holds her tighter and kisses her more soundly.
Sensing how close he's getting, she tries to pull away from his mouth to ask how much further he's willing to go, but he groans his discontent and pursues her. Indulging him for the moment, she runs the tip of her tongue along his lower lip, and then scrapes her teeth back across it.
Confronted with a pain too severe and too penetrating for him to ignore, his body racks with violent tremblings, and he gasps, "Ahh…"
Her stomach knots at the sound of his anguish, and she opens her eyes and pulls away from him. "Oh, my god!" she exclaims, seeing the fresh bruises covering his throat and arm, and the patches of abrasions spread across his chest and stomach.
She quickly scoots back down his thighs and starts to shuffle off of his lap, but he holds onto her, and brokenly pants, "No. Please, stay."
Despite her reluctance, his desperate entreaty stops her. Studying his clenched jaw, his furrowed brow, and the erratic rises and falls of his chest, she nervously tucks her hair behind her ears and covers her mouth with her hands, uncertain of what else to do. His head hanging, his eyes squeezed shut, he attempts to concentrate on her nearness - to use it as an anchor. But in his mind's eye, he can see her staring at him with both dread and guilt. Grimacing at the thought that he's letting her down, he silently curses his inadequacies and the situation in which he's putting her.
Watching his agitation fail to subside, she intuitively reaches out and gently rests her hands on his chest, almost as if to will its stillness. Upon first feeling the tenderness conveyed in her touch, his mind clears, his tremors cease, and he takes his first even breath.
Almost as quickly as the other signs of his overly heightened state manifested, they diminish and then disappear. His heartbeat returns to a metronomic rhythm. His temperature falls to a balmy degree. His contusions fade and the skin around his abrasions regenerates, leaving him unblemished and robust.
She takes a deep breath, relieved at least to see his balance restored, then slides her hands to his cheeks and tilts his head up. Slowly, he opens his eyes to meet hers.
"Are you okay?" she asks, running her thumbs across the sides of his face.
He nods, the grips of humiliation and defeat keeping him from speaking.
Though recognizing his discomfort, she presses, "That was way worse than the last time."
Sighing, he can only nod again. What he initially hoped to be an isolated incident has lamentably reoccurred, and in a far more unsettling and far more pronounced manner. And that he himself is presenting so substantial an impediment, that he himself is what's keeping them apart distresses him to no end.
Seeing his discouragement in every aspect of his bearing, she hesitates to pursue the matter any further for the time being. But, loath to put off something of such significance, she persists, "I don't understand this, Clark. One second, you're fine. The next second, you're falling apart." When he averts his gaze from hers and doesn't respond, she pulls her hands away from his face, and asks, "Are you allergic to me?"
"No, Lois," he quietly responds, wishing there was a way of tabling their discussion until he's in a less somber mood.
"Then what is it?"
He drops his head and sharply exhales, regretting her investigative instincts. Still reluctant to pursue so sensitive a subject, he shrugs, "I don't know."
She takes a breath, sympathizing with his dejection, but nonetheless put off by his reticence. Shifting around on his legs, she thinks for a moment and considers the possibilities. "Well, it has to be psychological, right?" she offers. "Because your body is so closely tied to your mind?"
Resigning himself to her persistence, he leans forward and hides his face from the scrutiny of her gaze. "Yeah, I guess," he answers, pressing his forehead into her chest.
"Well then, what's going on in your head that's triggering this?" Lifting her hands from between them, she pushes her fingers into his hair. "Am I…?" she trails off, taking a moment to ensure that her tone comes across as receptively as possible. Softly, she begins again, "Am I doing something that makes you uncomfortable?"
"Of course not, Lois," he replies, his chest deflating at the sound of her question. That things have gotten to the point where she has to ask him something like that brings into harsh focus how much his reactions are confounding her.
Even if only for her sake, he replays their three recent interludes in his head, trying to think of the points at which things shifted into too high a gear. As he begins to identify the common thread, he sighs, "It's just that…" Stopping short, he licks his lips and inhales, both disappointed and flustered by the words he's preparing to speak. Focusing on the caress of her fingertips running across his scalp, he tentatively explains, "You make me… It's just that it gets to a point where I can't help needing to…respond… But I'm not sure that I can."
After hearing his last few words, uttered slowly and barely above a whisper, she presses a kiss onto the top of his head, and assures him, "Of course you can. I'm not stopping you."
"That's not what I mean."
"Well, are you just nervous?" she asks, confused as to what he's implying. "Do you want me to…? Can I do something to help?"
At a loss as to how to respond, his throat tightens with his compounding frustrations. He cannot help worrying that they're approaching the limit of what even she can endure, and of what he can, in good conscience, allow her to endure. To be kept at such a critical and palpable distance from someone she cares for so deeply, to someday be asked a lifetime of herself by someone who may never manage to articulate his devotion in so fundamental a way is not something that he wants for her. And for the first time since she returned to him six days after his reveal, he finds himself contemplating the possibility of losing her again.
Knowing his silence to signify that he's losing himself to his self-loathing, she begins to grasp which particular reservation has taken such a physical hold on him. More importantly, she begins to understand how far beyond just a single act that which gives him the most pause extends.
Sliding her hands from his hair and back to his face, she leans away from his head and peers down at him. He takes her cue and grudgingly lifts his eyelids. When his gaze finds hers, she waits several moments, and then says, "Clark, I am going to keep telling you this until you don't need to hear it anymore: You wouldn't hurt me."
She feels the muscles of his jaw clench underneath her palms, and watches his chin shudder. Part of him wants to believe her, but the rest of him balks at the prospect. His ambivalence casts a shadow over his eyes, and she recognizes that he has no way of reassuring her this time.
Unraveling, she slides her hands from his face, and stands up and out of his lap. His stomach sinks at the loss of her nearness and warmth. Knowing better than to pursue her, he remains seated as she begins pacing around in front of the counters on the opposite side of the kitchen.
As she wanders back and forth across the floor, she considers the varying details of their day, and even those of the past several weeks. His descriptions of what he's been experiencing for the last three months, his account of what he felt in her bed that morning and in his dressing room that afternoon, the nuances of his touch when he approaches the more suggestive parts of her - she processes it all.
After a few minutes, she stops midstride and turns to him. Bracing for whatever it is that she has to say, he sits up straighter and takes a breath. She presses the palms of her hands together in a dogmatic fashion, and begins, "I think… I think you're having panic attacks. -"
At the sound of what he didn't expect to be a diagnosis, he leans his elbows onto his thighs and buries his head in his hands, groaning, "Lois…"
"- And I think you've been having them for the last few months," she goes on, speaking over him. "Mild ones, I guess, when we've been at work or wherever else. But still, the frantic feelings, the shakiness, the weird time perception - it all fits. And now, it's like the closer we get, the more severe your reactions are getting."
From behind his hands, he muffles, "Lois, please…"
"Okay. How do you explain it?"
"I don't."
"Well, I do."
"Lois -"
"- Do not 'Lois' me right now, Clark," she warns, the edge to her voice growing sharper with every word. "These panic attacks - or overreactions, or whatever-the-hell you want to call them - have everything to do with you fighting that totally pointless mind-body war that we talked about this morning. And in case you haven't noticed, your body is kicking your mind's ass. Your hearing activates, your skin gets super-sensitive, your body overheats even by your standards, and you pretty much go into a kind of hyperdrive that even the Millennium Falcon never achieved."
Resisting the urge to feed her frustrations by giving into his own, he drops his hands from his face, and asks, "What do you want me to say, Lois?"
The sight and sound of his refusal to fully engage their predicament only exasperates her, trumping her concern with niceties. "You know," she scoffs, narrowing her eyes at him, "you are the suckiest Jedi this side of Tatooine."
"Excuse me?"
She stalks toward the dining table and snatches his pajama pants off of the floor just underneath it, grousing, "The biggest key to being a Jedi is letting go and trusting your feelings."
"What?"
Glaring at him, she shouts, "You have to use the force!"
"Why does your mind turn everything into a metaphor?" he complains, growing weary of her incoherence. "Why can't a thing just be a thing?"
As she wrenches the large bottoms up her legs and over her hips, she retorts, "Because a thing is never just a thing. And the only way you're ever going to defeat the Galactic Empire is if you embrace the force."
"Embrace the force?" he replies, his tone snide.
"Yes, Skywalker!"
"Alright, could you lay off the name-calling until -"
"- Could you pay attention?"
"I am. But you're not making any sense," he insists. "Which, I guess, makes you Yoda."
"Actually, smart-ass, I would be Obi-Wan Kenobi, the guy who's trying to get you to the Dagobah system." Glaring at him as she tugs the drawstrings of the pants into a workable knot, she goes on, "But you don't wanna complete your training. So, just like Luke, you're gonna lose a limb and never realize your full potential."
"What are you talking about?" he yells, shooting up from the chair, his anger finally brimming over.
She lets out a long, aggravated groan, and turns on her heel. He rolls his eyes and shakes his head, watching her grab his white tee off of the floor on her way out of the kitchen, and listening to her grumble all the way.
"Where are you going?" he calls after her, following in her wake.
He catches up to her in the living room as she rounds the back of the sofa and passes between it and the oversized armchair. Too big to fit through the small space and wary of being caught midflight, he takes the long way around the chair, and comes upon her again as they cross in front of the longer side of the coffee table. He starts to say something to interrupt her mutterings, but she spins around, stopping him in his tracks.
"Do you plan on dumping me?" she demands, pushing the shirt into his chest.
He stumbles back, thrown as much by her shove as by her question. Taking the shirt from her, he asks, "What?"
"If this continues to be an issue, will you break up with me?"
Having part of the notion he only just began to consider so brazenly set before him, his anger takes on an entirely different complexion. "I'm not even gonna dignify that with a response," he seethes, yanking the top over his head and arms, and down his torso.
"Why not?"
"Because you are impossible when you get like this."
"But I'm not wrong, am I?" she prods, tempering her tenor long enough to make herself perfectly clear. "If you ever manage to convince yourself that I'm better off not dealing with this, if you ever get to the point where you can't imagine us getting through this, you'd break up with me, wouldn't you?"
He bites his teeth and shifts his stance. Wishing there were something around that he could squeeze without ruining it, he runs his hands over his face and through his hair. After clenching his locks hard enough to channel out some of his aggravation, he flatly tells her, "I'm not going to do this with you, Lois," and starts to leave the room.
Affronted, she unleashes, "Don't you dare play the mild-mannered martyr with me! I asked you a question!"
"Where?" he shouts, matching her volume and turning back around to square his shoulders to her. "Where in your pile of metaphors was there a question that made even the least bit of sense?"
"Oh, my god! You are the most stubborn son of a -"
"- Name-calling, Lois!" he barks.
"Until you answer me, I will call you whatever I damn well please!"
"Do you hear yourself?"
"Yes! What I don't hear is you telling me that I'm wrong!"
"About what?"
"About you pushing me away!"
"Are you questioning how I feel about you?" he fumes, taking a step into the charged space between them. "Are you seriously asking me that of all things?"
Crossing her arms, she glowers, "This isn't about that, Clark! I'm asking what's at stake here! If we keep hitting this particular wall, are you going to put an end to us?"
"Oh, for the love of -" he huffs, throwing his hands up and turning away from her. He steps to one side and back to the other, too agitated to remain in one place. Mumbling to himself, he pinches the bridge of his nose and briefly considers answering her question by reminding her that she's the only person to ever give him an actual headache. But, knowing that matters would only deteriorate further from there, he turns back toward her, and grinds out through his gritted teeth, "Lois, I couldn't get away from you if I tried."
"Really?" she dryly asks, unmoved.
"Yes! Really!"
"And what makes you so damn sure?"
"Oh, I don't know!" he bitterly retorts. Rubbing his temples, he begins pacing around near his end of the coffee table, trying to overcome the throbbing in his head long enough to make sure that he qualifies his shouting in a manner that her neighbors won't suspect. "Maybe because no matter the reality, no matter the future, no matter the when, where, or how, I collide with you! Maybe because my own personal Yoda, who does not do anything without a reason, and who cannot see the future, sent me to you!"
Planting her hands on her hips and cocking an eyebrow at him, she scoffs, "What language are you speaking?"
At his wits' end, he stops his pacing and glares at her. Her posture, her tone, her attitude - every little thing about her galvanizes and ignites every little thing about him. She knows what he's talking about, he's certain. But why she's pretending otherwise, he cannot imagine.
Working through the strain in his throat, struggling to not yell his re-explanation, he grates, "My father could've sent me anywhere in the world after he suppressed my humanity. But he couldn't risk me exposing myself to the wrong person or ending up in the wrong hands. So in the process of retooling me, he probed my psyche for something powerful enough to get through to me, to interest and persuade me, regardless of what version of myself I was. And whatever he found, whatever keys to my universe, amounted to you - to the most infuriating woman on the face of the planet!"
He takes a long, cathartic breath, feeling the pain in his head wane. Approaching her, his body having expelled its rage in the process of delivering the thunderous end to his account, he clears his throat, and finishes, "So, Lois, I hope I'm speaking your language when I tell you this: My fate has you written all over it. I finally got my head around that twenty-two seconds into this relationship, and not once in the time since have I ever doubted or denied it. Because for all my abilities, I will never have it in me to leave you."
His final words resound into and off of the walls, ceiling, and floor. She doesn't move, and she doesn't say a word, letting him hear for himself that of which she never needed to be reminded.
Studying him, she looks down and back up his towering stature, positioned just an arm's length away from her. Satisfied that he's unloaded enough of his grief, she holds his gaze, and asks the question that's bound to unearth the root of whatever he's been agonizing over: "But…?"
In a less emotional, less exposed state, he may never have accepted - much less vocalized - his response. But as he's still feeling the residual candor of his indignation, the truth spills out: "But I… But I can't ask you to stay. Not with all of the complications that I bring to this relationship. Not when there are things that I don't know that I can give you… Regardless of - No. Because of how much you mean to me, I won't ask that."
She chews her lip and re-crosses her arms, contemplating. Three months prior, his teary reveal made clear, amongst other things, that he knew himself to have forfeited the right to any expectation of a future with her by virtue of his eleven months of deception. And after she returned from her escape, the looks on the faces of their friends just before she asked them where he was, and the image of him fast asleep, clinging to his favorite of her pillows as she came upon him in her bed, spoke to how desolated he'd been in the intervening six days - not knowing where or how she was, subsisting on uncertainties, regrets, and the bittersweet taste of what, to him, was their last kiss.
But she realizes that the hope her forgiveness restored is being worn away by an obstacle of an entirely different sort - that he fears the matter before them could very well cost him the life that he wants with her.
With a better grasp on his mindset than she had before, she considers his last few words, and then gently asks, "Not yet, you mean?"
"…It's not that I don't want to."
Their tacit understanding imbues the air between and around them as they silently regard one another. She uncrosses her arms and he relaxes his shoulders, both of them acknowledging in their own ways that their exchange has reached its end.
Having reaffirmed to himself how inextricably bound to her he is and having exorcized the burgeoning dread that had begun to poison his mind, he finds himself utterly hollowed out.
Exhausted, he breaks their gaze and withdraws. She watches him head for the armchair and consider sitting down. But, reluctant to give her the satisfaction of such an obvious display, he walks around behind it. As he rests his hands on the back of the seat and leans forward into it, she hums a sympathetic sound and follows after him.
His eyes closed, he listens to her soft footfalls and to the legs of his too-long pajama pants brushing across the carpet as she nears him. Making her way alongside him, she slides one hand onto the nape of his neck, and runs the other down his arm. He stiffens a bit and grasps the plush chair back a little harder, determined to not yield to her touch just yet, for no real reason other than to prove to himself that he can.
Amused by his silliness, she starts to smile, but manages to refrain from doing so. After letting him stand on his pride for a short while, she quietly asks, "Do you feel better?"
"What?"
Ignoring his obvious attempt at avoiding the truth, she tries again, "Do you feel better? Now that you've gotten all that out of your system?"
He sighs, and shakes his head, wondering at her talent for both provoking him and coddling him. "I meant what I said," he grumbles, opening his eyes to glance sidelong at her.
Unable to help herself, she smirks, "About you colliding with me?"
"I don't even know why I bother," he mutters, peering up and addressing the ceiling.
"About me being the best babysitter you've ever had?"
"I hate you."
"About your keys?"
"Give it a rest, Lane."
"About your fate?"
"I'm not talking to you anymore."
She lightly laughs and finally relents. "About me being infuriating?"
"Yes."
Still giggling, she trails her hand back up his arm and into the collar of his t-shirt. Tracing her fingers along his collarbone and chest, she teases, "Well, if you didn't like me so much, I wouldn't make you so mad."
"You'll be the death of me. You do know that?"
Stretching up onto her toes and reaching over his shoulder, she presses her lips to his cheek, and softly echoes his remark from that afternoon: "You'll die happy."
Finally, he chuckles a bit and gives in to her persuasion. She slides her hands away from his neck and out of his shirt, and grasps his upper arms, standing him upright and turning him toward her. As she wraps her arms around his back, he rests his hands on her shoulders, waiting for her final word.
She clears her throat in an officious and exaggerated manner, and then tells him, "If for no other reasons than that you couldn't get away from me if you tried, and that I'd never be able to find a super-powered alien hero who cooks and cleans as well as you do, we are going to figure this out."
Holding fast to her assurance, even if he hasn't yet gained her degree of confidence about the matter, he offers her a slight nod and a gentle smile, and runs his hands up to the sides of her face.
As his eyes fall to her lips and he starts to lean down, she interjects, "One more thing, Smallville."
Finding her gaze, he asks, "Yes?"
"You don't have to ask me anything. I'm here now."
The embrace of her sentiment surrounds him, and his eyes brighten. Beaming, he leans down and wraps her up in his arms, letting go of his worries with eventualities and possibilities, and holding his present as closely as possible. With her chin on his shoulder, she smiles, enjoying his huge hug and glad to have struck the right note. He squeezes her tighter and rocks her back and forth, considering picking her up. But, if only to maintain the upper hand that he gained a short while ago on that ongoing point of non-dispute, he decides against it.
After long minutes immersed in the scent of her body and hair, he breathes her in one last time. Then, pulling an arm away from her back, he rests his hand on one of her cheeks, and kisses the other. Feeling the corners of her mouth stretch as she smiles wider, he presses his lips to her cheek several more times, drawing a warm and ticklish laugh from her. She readjusts the position of her hands on his lower back, and sighs, basking in his affection. Taking her hint to continue, he lightly dots his kisses back to her jaw, and then makes his way down her neck. When he reaches a sensitive spot on the front curve of her throat, she tenses and giggles, and he smirks against her skin.
Rubbing her back, he traces his lips over the lines where the thin straps of her bra and camisole end and her skin begins, and insincerely whispers, "I should get back in the kitchen."
"You should," she agrees, much to his disappointment.
"Or, maybe we should make your dinner for two, and I should skip the restaurant."
"You're going."
Pressing a final kiss to her shoulder, he pouts, "I'd rather stay here with you."
"I know," she smiles, her tone indulgent. "But you've still got me for another couple hours or so."
He lifts his head, and runs his eyes over the lines and curves of her face, missing her already.
Recognizing his expression and anticipating his thoughts, she reminds, "Two whole hours, Smallville."
"…I wish we had more time."
All at once, a piercing throb tears through her head, and she cries out, squeezing shut her eyes. Her knees give way and her body collapses. His words hammer against her subconscious in three merciless blows. And on the third strike, they break through.
"Are you okay?"
Into a dark void shines a glaring blitz of sight upon sight, smell upon smell, and sound upon sound. Missing slats in dilapidated walls and sheer sheets covering broken windows. Kerosene burning in oil lamps and staleness filling the air. The scrapes of hesitant steps moving across a dirty floor and the silence of an ominous night weighing down a wrecked room.
"It reminded me of you…"
The hair in his eyes. The cut on his cheek. The stubble of an imperfect shave. His voice, cracked and dim, flooding into her ears, tearing her apart, drawing her closer to him.
"…I've made some mistakes."
Her eyes searching his, asking for answers, desperate to know the misery that has befallen emptiness, his despair overcoming her uncertainty of how her loss could have affected him so deeply.
"I died when you left."
Him reaching for her lips, pulling open her shirt, and pressing her into a mattress. His bruised, battered body devouring, taking from hers. Every clutch, every grasp, every stroke. His pounding chest. His desperate breaths. His tears streaming down her fingers as he sees the first glimmers of dawn.
"I wish we had more time."
The echo of a single, shattering sentiment as the red sky fades before her eyes and her world goes black.
"Lois…"
"Lois?"
"Lois!"
...