Fic: Fluff and Doom | Superman Reeveverse | Clark Kent/Lois Lane | PG-13 | 3/3
Title: Fluff and Doom: Part 3/3
Fandom: Superman Reeveverse
Pairing: Clark Kent/Lois Lane
Rating: PG-13 (R for language)
Word Count: ~2,100 (this part); ~5,625 total for all 3 parts
Prompt: For dcu_freeforall: Atonement
Summary: In which Lois remembers everything, there are serious consequences to consider, and Clark has been spending his free time handing out kittens.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything, the schmucks.
Author's Notes: Once again for my lovely Lo. Warning for schmoop. See the title. :p
Fluff and Doom: Part 3
“Would you stop hovering?” Lois growled, settling down on her sofa and giving Clark a death glare. He hadn’t left her alone since she’d lost her lunch, and it was seriously starting to get on her nerves. Like she didn’t have enough to worry about.
Clark only offered her an apologetic half-smile as he draped a blanket over her legs. “You need to rest. I just want to make sure you’re okay, Lois.”
A heavy sigh escaped her, and she rolled her eyes hard. “You’re gonna be impossible, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
God, this was gonna hurt. Fixing her gaze on those damnable puppy eyes, Lois frowned. “Clark, sit down.”
When he perched on the other end of the sofa, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth, Lois took a deep breath.
“Remember how I said there were consequences to what you did?”
Clark nodded.
“I didn’t just mean what you did. I meant what we did.”
For a moment, his expression was blank, then his eyebrows knitted together. Dammit, for such a smarty pants, he could be dumb as a box of rocks, couldn’t he?
Lois sighed again. “Get with the program, Clark. I didn’t just go to the ice cream place to cool off. And I didn’t throw up because I’d been overheated.”
Still, Clark only blinked at her, looking utterly clueless.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. There are only two reasons I’d ever be caught dead in a place like that.” Holding up a hand, she ticked off her fingers. “One: cravings. And two: birthday parties. Better get used to both, bub.”
~*~*~
Clark’s mind ground to a halt. What did Lois mean, that he should get used to-
Oh. Oh God.
Consequences to what they did. Cravings. Birthday parties. Children’s birthday parties.
The past four months flashed across his memory in sudden stark clarity, the way Lois had avoided him since that fateful weekend, the way her moods had changed, up one moment and snarling the next, the way she tended to pick at little salads for lunch at her desk, then dump them in the garbage and send Loueen out to get her a double chocolate shake and a burger with three patties and loaded with cheese and bacon and mushrooms and onions and ranch dressing, the way-
The way she’d begun to look uncomfortable in her own clothes. In her own skin.
If Clark hadn’t been so busy avoiding her in turn, maybe he would’ve noticed.
“Lois?” he asked meekly, feeling a blush of sheer embarrassment work itself up his neck and his ears. “Are you … um … are you … pregnant?”
A strained smile on her lips, Lois rested her hands across her middle, and lifted an eyebrow. “That’s the general idea I was trying to convey, Clark. When I said ‘consequences’, I meant the only natural consequence of two people getting together in an ice palace with no clue that alien physiology doesn’t exactly preclude cross-species reproduction. You’re gonna be a daddy.”
The full weight of Lois’s revelation hit Clark square in the chest, and he had to gasp to get a full breath, his head starting to feel a little muzzy. He was going to be a father. And Lois was going to be a mother.
They were going to be parents.
“Don’t you flake out on me, Kent,” Lois bit out.
Clark finally managed to gather his senses and focus on Lois, on the steel in her eyes, the flush on her cheeks, the way her hair was curled around her shoulders since she’d pulled it down. She was beautiful. And terrifying. And the most perfect woman he’d ever seen.
“Tell me what to do,” he said at last, finding his voice. To his own surprise, it was the most steady he’d spoken or felt all day. “Whatever you need or want. Anything. Everything.”
Lois’s expression softened, and she blew out a long breath. “Just … be here. Stop running away from me like some scared little kid that got his hand caught in a cookie jar. I know damn well that the world needs you, but you’re just gonna have to find it in you to be here, too. It might be selfish of me, but I’m not the only one that needs you to step up right now.”
Swallowing hard, Clark nodded. “Okay. And it’s not selfish. I was selfish, for … everything before.”
A tiny half-smile flitted across Lois’s face. “Not exactly any point in rehashing it anymore. Now would you please get me some ginger ale? After a bout like that, it’s the only thing I seem to be able to keep down. And call Perry and tell him I’m done for the day. God, this nausea crap has got to let up soon.”
Nodding quickly, Clark got up to see if Lois had ginger ale in her fridge. It wasn’t much of a gesture, but after the disastrous afternoon they’d had, it had to be something, right? Of course, he was just glad that Lois had stopped trying to disembowel him. The vomiting probably had something to do with that, though. He’d have to make sure to keep her hydrated, and make sure she ate things that she could keep down, since-
Since Lois was carrying their child.
Glass of ginger ale half-poured, Clark paused, the reality of the situation hitting him once again. How many times he’d be caught out like this, utterly stunned, until it really sunk in, he didn’t know. Goodness, he was going to be a father.
There was just so much to consider, so much to plan for, so many decisions to be made.
But all that could wait. Shaking his head, Clark gathered himself up again, and took the glass back into the living room to Lois.
Only to find her curled up in a tight ball on the sofa and snoring lightly, her mouth hanging open and her hair splayed over her face, the blanket tugged up over her and gripped loosely in one hand.
His breath caught in his throat at the sight of her, completely out and finally resting. Peaceful.
A dozen thoughts occurred to him then, all the things that needed to be figured out suddenly decided, and after setting the glass on the coffee table, he bent to kiss Lois on the temple, smoothed her hair back, and whispered in her ear, “I’ll be right back,” before speeding off to take care of some very important things.
~*~*~
When Lois woke, her apartment was dim and gray with dusk. Good God, how long had she slept?
Wiping the sleep from her eyes-damn gunk-she sat up slowly, the blanket falling down from her shoulders. Her stomach felt eased, for the most part, but her head was pounding. Stupid post-hurling headaches. What on earth had happened today, that she’d lost her lunch so hard? And why was she home, anyway? She had articles to finish. Goddamn gymnastics crap. Oh God, Perry was gonna have fits! She had to-
Oh.
A long, slow breath to steady herself, and she settled back into the sofa.
Naturally, Clark was gone. Of course he was gone. Why should she have expected anything better? Son of a-
The doorknob rattled then, turned, a brief flare of terror and rage shooting up Lois’s spine at the possibility that someone was trying to break into her apartment, but then the door opened, and Clark halfway stumbled through, his arms laden with brown paper grocery bags and a suspicious-looking plastic crate dangling from one hand, Lois’s keys in the other.
“Hey, warn a woman, would ya’?” she bit out, more harshly than she really intended. A deep breath, and she reached over to turn on the lamp. “What is all that?”
Clark looked at her sheepishly, those glasses sitting askew on his face as he dropped the bags on the table in her dining room area and set the crate on the floor next to the sofa. “I, um, picked up a few things. Groceries, mostly. Got kind of delayed by a passenger train derailment in Oklahoma, so it took me a little while to finish up. Did you sleep okay?”
Giving Clark a brief side-eye as he sat down, Lois huffed, then shook her head. “I guess. Got a headache the size of Texas, so you’d better have an industrial size bottle of Tylenol in one of those bags.”
An eager nod, and Clark got up to rummage through one of the bags, coming back in a flash with two pills and a glass of water.
Lois blinked a few times before accepting both and swallowing the pills down in one gulp, only to pause when a high-pitched cry came from inside the crate on the floor.
Setting her glass on the coffee table, Lois gave Clark a long look. “Clark. What’s in that crate?” If it was what she suspected, then-
A long, plaintive cry came from the crate this time, and now there was no mistaking it.
“I know it’s kind of a Hail Mary, but I thought, maybe …” Trailing off, Clark bent to open the crate, and pulled out two of the fluffiest little furballs that Lois had ever seen, their twin sets of bright green eyes wide and searching.
Kittens. Clark had brought her a pair of long-haired kittens, one solid gray, one black and silver tabby.
She must’ve been staring, mouth agape, for a long moment, because when she registered Clark talking again, she realized the kitten were curled up in her lap, the gray one nuzzling her hand and the tabby blinking up at her slowly and purring like a little hot rod.
“-don’t have to do anything. I’ll take care of them. I just wanted you to have someone around when I can’t be here. They’re pretty self-sufficient, so they don’t need much. Just some lap time and love. And I figured … since I’d been handing out kittens … you know?”
After all that, the only thing Lois could do was laugh, little whiskers tickling her hand and Clark still looking at her like the proverbial puppy dog. It was completely absurd. Here she was, pregnant and miserable, and suddenly she had two kittens and a puppy doting on her.
“Lois? Um, this is okay … right?”
Reaching up with her free hand to swipe away tears, Lois allowed herself a genuine smile, and caught Clark’s concerned gaze. “Yes, Clark. It’s okay. It’s … better than okay. It’s perfect.”
To her own surprise, she found that it was. It really, really was. Half of her stress seemed to melt away in an instant, the craziness from the last four months gone, the insanity of the world, of the news, of her recent puff piece assignments, all simply evaporated. A spark that she hadn’t felt since that weekend in the spring seemed to reignite, the best kind of fire lighting her up. How on earth she’d gone from an angry ball of doom to the goddess of vomit to this all in one day she didn’t know, but frankly, she didn’t care. All that mattered was that the sense of impending doom that had been following her around was gone. In its place lay only fluff and certainty.
“So,” she went on once she managed to get herself together, “we’ve got a lot of ground to cover in the next five months, or however long it’ll take for our half-Kryptonian offspring to hatch-which, you’re gonna have to do some research and fill me in on the details, mister-and I’m gonna need a few reassurances. First off, I know you’re living in that crap little apartment up in Metropolis Heights, so you’re gonna move in here, and that’s final.”
Clark nodded, swallowing hard, even as a ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “Gladly.”
“Good,” Lois nodded in return. “And second, not that we have to, I’m really not usually that type of woman, and I know I said there was no ‘us’ before, but I was really pissed off, and now … are you gonna ask me to marry you, or what?”
For a long moment, Clark only blinked at her, his mouth dropping open, but then he laughed, a note of disbelief in his voice, and he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a tiny black velveteen box, flipping it open.
A sparkling diamond ring stared up at Lois from the box.
“Lois Lane, will you marry me?”
Lois grinned. “What do you think?”
~*~*~*~
Fandom: Superman Reeveverse
Pairing: Clark Kent/Lois Lane
Rating: PG-13 (R for language)
Word Count: ~2,100 (this part); ~5,625 total for all 3 parts
Prompt: For dcu_freeforall: Atonement
Summary: In which Lois remembers everything, there are serious consequences to consider, and Clark has been spending his free time handing out kittens.
Disclaimer: DC and WB own everything, the schmucks.
Author's Notes: Once again for my lovely Lo. Warning for schmoop. See the title. :p
Fluff and Doom: Part 3
“Would you stop hovering?” Lois growled, settling down on her sofa and giving Clark a death glare. He hadn’t left her alone since she’d lost her lunch, and it was seriously starting to get on her nerves. Like she didn’t have enough to worry about.
Clark only offered her an apologetic half-smile as he draped a blanket over her legs. “You need to rest. I just want to make sure you’re okay, Lois.”
A heavy sigh escaped her, and she rolled her eyes hard. “You’re gonna be impossible, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?”
God, this was gonna hurt. Fixing her gaze on those damnable puppy eyes, Lois frowned. “Clark, sit down.”
When he perched on the other end of the sofa, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth, Lois took a deep breath.
“Remember how I said there were consequences to what you did?”
Clark nodded.
“I didn’t just mean what you did. I meant what we did.”
For a moment, his expression was blank, then his eyebrows knitted together. Dammit, for such a smarty pants, he could be dumb as a box of rocks, couldn’t he?
Lois sighed again. “Get with the program, Clark. I didn’t just go to the ice cream place to cool off. And I didn’t throw up because I’d been overheated.”
Still, Clark only blinked at her, looking utterly clueless.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake. There are only two reasons I’d ever be caught dead in a place like that.” Holding up a hand, she ticked off her fingers. “One: cravings. And two: birthday parties. Better get used to both, bub.”
~*~*~
Clark’s mind ground to a halt. What did Lois mean, that he should get used to-
Oh. Oh God.
Consequences to what they did. Cravings. Birthday parties. Children’s birthday parties.
The past four months flashed across his memory in sudden stark clarity, the way Lois had avoided him since that fateful weekend, the way her moods had changed, up one moment and snarling the next, the way she tended to pick at little salads for lunch at her desk, then dump them in the garbage and send Loueen out to get her a double chocolate shake and a burger with three patties and loaded with cheese and bacon and mushrooms and onions and ranch dressing, the way-
The way she’d begun to look uncomfortable in her own clothes. In her own skin.
If Clark hadn’t been so busy avoiding her in turn, maybe he would’ve noticed.
“Lois?” he asked meekly, feeling a blush of sheer embarrassment work itself up his neck and his ears. “Are you … um … are you … pregnant?”
A strained smile on her lips, Lois rested her hands across her middle, and lifted an eyebrow. “That’s the general idea I was trying to convey, Clark. When I said ‘consequences’, I meant the only natural consequence of two people getting together in an ice palace with no clue that alien physiology doesn’t exactly preclude cross-species reproduction. You’re gonna be a daddy.”
The full weight of Lois’s revelation hit Clark square in the chest, and he had to gasp to get a full breath, his head starting to feel a little muzzy. He was going to be a father. And Lois was going to be a mother.
They were going to be parents.
“Don’t you flake out on me, Kent,” Lois bit out.
Clark finally managed to gather his senses and focus on Lois, on the steel in her eyes, the flush on her cheeks, the way her hair was curled around her shoulders since she’d pulled it down. She was beautiful. And terrifying. And the most perfect woman he’d ever seen.
“Tell me what to do,” he said at last, finding his voice. To his own surprise, it was the most steady he’d spoken or felt all day. “Whatever you need or want. Anything. Everything.”
Lois’s expression softened, and she blew out a long breath. “Just … be here. Stop running away from me like some scared little kid that got his hand caught in a cookie jar. I know damn well that the world needs you, but you’re just gonna have to find it in you to be here, too. It might be selfish of me, but I’m not the only one that needs you to step up right now.”
Swallowing hard, Clark nodded. “Okay. And it’s not selfish. I was selfish, for … everything before.”
A tiny half-smile flitted across Lois’s face. “Not exactly any point in rehashing it anymore. Now would you please get me some ginger ale? After a bout like that, it’s the only thing I seem to be able to keep down. And call Perry and tell him I’m done for the day. God, this nausea crap has got to let up soon.”
Nodding quickly, Clark got up to see if Lois had ginger ale in her fridge. It wasn’t much of a gesture, but after the disastrous afternoon they’d had, it had to be something, right? Of course, he was just glad that Lois had stopped trying to disembowel him. The vomiting probably had something to do with that, though. He’d have to make sure to keep her hydrated, and make sure she ate things that she could keep down, since-
Since Lois was carrying their child.
Glass of ginger ale half-poured, Clark paused, the reality of the situation hitting him once again. How many times he’d be caught out like this, utterly stunned, until it really sunk in, he didn’t know. Goodness, he was going to be a father.
There was just so much to consider, so much to plan for, so many decisions to be made.
But all that could wait. Shaking his head, Clark gathered himself up again, and took the glass back into the living room to Lois.
Only to find her curled up in a tight ball on the sofa and snoring lightly, her mouth hanging open and her hair splayed over her face, the blanket tugged up over her and gripped loosely in one hand.
His breath caught in his throat at the sight of her, completely out and finally resting. Peaceful.
A dozen thoughts occurred to him then, all the things that needed to be figured out suddenly decided, and after setting the glass on the coffee table, he bent to kiss Lois on the temple, smoothed her hair back, and whispered in her ear, “I’ll be right back,” before speeding off to take care of some very important things.
~*~*~
When Lois woke, her apartment was dim and gray with dusk. Good God, how long had she slept?
Wiping the sleep from her eyes-damn gunk-she sat up slowly, the blanket falling down from her shoulders. Her stomach felt eased, for the most part, but her head was pounding. Stupid post-hurling headaches. What on earth had happened today, that she’d lost her lunch so hard? And why was she home, anyway? She had articles to finish. Goddamn gymnastics crap. Oh God, Perry was gonna have fits! She had to-
Oh.
A long, slow breath to steady herself, and she settled back into the sofa.
Naturally, Clark was gone. Of course he was gone. Why should she have expected anything better? Son of a-
The doorknob rattled then, turned, a brief flare of terror and rage shooting up Lois’s spine at the possibility that someone was trying to break into her apartment, but then the door opened, and Clark halfway stumbled through, his arms laden with brown paper grocery bags and a suspicious-looking plastic crate dangling from one hand, Lois’s keys in the other.
“Hey, warn a woman, would ya’?” she bit out, more harshly than she really intended. A deep breath, and she reached over to turn on the lamp. “What is all that?”
Clark looked at her sheepishly, those glasses sitting askew on his face as he dropped the bags on the table in her dining room area and set the crate on the floor next to the sofa. “I, um, picked up a few things. Groceries, mostly. Got kind of delayed by a passenger train derailment in Oklahoma, so it took me a little while to finish up. Did you sleep okay?”
Giving Clark a brief side-eye as he sat down, Lois huffed, then shook her head. “I guess. Got a headache the size of Texas, so you’d better have an industrial size bottle of Tylenol in one of those bags.”
An eager nod, and Clark got up to rummage through one of the bags, coming back in a flash with two pills and a glass of water.
Lois blinked a few times before accepting both and swallowing the pills down in one gulp, only to pause when a high-pitched cry came from inside the crate on the floor.
Setting her glass on the coffee table, Lois gave Clark a long look. “Clark. What’s in that crate?” If it was what she suspected, then-
A long, plaintive cry came from the crate this time, and now there was no mistaking it.
“I know it’s kind of a Hail Mary, but I thought, maybe …” Trailing off, Clark bent to open the crate, and pulled out two of the fluffiest little furballs that Lois had ever seen, their twin sets of bright green eyes wide and searching.
Kittens. Clark had brought her a pair of long-haired kittens, one solid gray, one black and silver tabby.
She must’ve been staring, mouth agape, for a long moment, because when she registered Clark talking again, she realized the kitten were curled up in her lap, the gray one nuzzling her hand and the tabby blinking up at her slowly and purring like a little hot rod.
“-don’t have to do anything. I’ll take care of them. I just wanted you to have someone around when I can’t be here. They’re pretty self-sufficient, so they don’t need much. Just some lap time and love. And I figured … since I’d been handing out kittens … you know?”
After all that, the only thing Lois could do was laugh, little whiskers tickling her hand and Clark still looking at her like the proverbial puppy dog. It was completely absurd. Here she was, pregnant and miserable, and suddenly she had two kittens and a puppy doting on her.
“Lois? Um, this is okay … right?”
Reaching up with her free hand to swipe away tears, Lois allowed herself a genuine smile, and caught Clark’s concerned gaze. “Yes, Clark. It’s okay. It’s … better than okay. It’s perfect.”
To her own surprise, she found that it was. It really, really was. Half of her stress seemed to melt away in an instant, the craziness from the last four months gone, the insanity of the world, of the news, of her recent puff piece assignments, all simply evaporated. A spark that she hadn’t felt since that weekend in the spring seemed to reignite, the best kind of fire lighting her up. How on earth she’d gone from an angry ball of doom to the goddess of vomit to this all in one day she didn’t know, but frankly, she didn’t care. All that mattered was that the sense of impending doom that had been following her around was gone. In its place lay only fluff and certainty.
“So,” she went on once she managed to get herself together, “we’ve got a lot of ground to cover in the next five months, or however long it’ll take for our half-Kryptonian offspring to hatch-which, you’re gonna have to do some research and fill me in on the details, mister-and I’m gonna need a few reassurances. First off, I know you’re living in that crap little apartment up in Metropolis Heights, so you’re gonna move in here, and that’s final.”
Clark nodded, swallowing hard, even as a ghost of a smile tugged at his lips. “Gladly.”
“Good,” Lois nodded in return. “And second, not that we have to, I’m really not usually that type of woman, and I know I said there was no ‘us’ before, but I was really pissed off, and now … are you gonna ask me to marry you, or what?”
For a long moment, Clark only blinked at her, his mouth dropping open, but then he laughed, a note of disbelief in his voice, and he reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a tiny black velveteen box, flipping it open.
A sparkling diamond ring stared up at Lois from the box.
“Lois Lane, will you marry me?”
Lois grinned. “What do you think?”
~*~*~*~