Fic: Fetish (1/2?)
After a round of-well, he hated to admit it, but it was what it was-lukewarm sex, Clark Kent lay beside Lois Lane in silence. Both of them were on their backs, sheets pulled up to their armpits, eyes fixed on the ceiling, a healthy couple of inches separating their bodies. There wasn't going to be any cuddling tonight.
The turning of the ceiling fan measured out the passing seconds. Clark didn’t think he’d felt this awkward since that time when his ninth grade English teacher had intercepted a love note he wrote to Lana Lang, then forced him to read it out loud to the class. Darn Mrs. Cottrell. He still hadn't gotten over that.
"So," Lois finally said, breaking into Clark's reminiscing. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Lois was speaking. That could be a good sign.
"So," Clark echoed.
"Is it just me, or was something … not clicking, not working … help me out here. What am I trying to say?"
"Um, were you thinking that maybe something might have been lacking? A little bit?" Clark supplied, hoping that he hadn't just insulted her.
Lois snapped her fingers. "Exactly. That was the dullest sex I have ever had. Ten minutes in, and I started writing that Irish Mob article in my head."
And here Clark had been worrying about being too blunt.
"Well, obviously not every time can be amazing," Clark pointed out, a touch defensively. "Everyone has their off days."
"Smallville, we've been having an off month."
"Oh," Clark swallowed and watched the fan blades whisk by. An off month? Okay, so that was true, but it still hurt to hear it said aloud.
"I don't mean to say that it's your fault," Lois hurried to clarify. "I'm not pointing fingers. We're a couple, we're a team, if something's wrong with our relationship then obviously we've both contributed to the problem, and we have to fix it together."
"Yes. You are completely right. I agree one hundred percent," Clark nodded, and turned to look at his fiancée for the first time since the end of this most recent lackluster lovemaking session. "So, I guess we should try to talk about this?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Okay," Clark racked his brains for a place to start. "Is it the foreplay? Because I can always-"
"No, no, no," Lois moved her head back and forth against the pillow. "That's … not an issue. I think we just need to try something drastically new. Spice things up a little."
"Well, I did let you tie-"
"Yeah, yeah, but bondage is no fun when your partner can break through the restraints with a flick of his wrist."
"Sorry," Clark mumbled, while Lois kept going with that train of thought.
"If I'm going to dominate someone, I really need it to be-" Lois made a low growling noise in the back of her throat, then seemed to become aware of herself again. "Anyway, that's beside the point. What I wanted to suggest was … how do I put it … Clark, what are your thoughts on kissing another guy?"
Clark's eyebrows shot up. "Do you mean … wait, what do you mean? Are you asking what I think of you … do you want to see other men?" Clark stammered. Strangely enough, the idea didn't spark any kind of jealousy within him. He decided that that was because he was in shock.
"No, silly," Lois gave him a playful shove. "I want to watch you make out with another man. Another hot man, preferably. Plain and simple."
::-::
The next morning, Lois slipped a folded scrap of paper into Clark's hand during the Daily Planet staff meeting. As Perry bellowed something about striving to reach a wider audience, Clark peeked at the paper, trying his best to look as though he was still listening to the Editor in Chief.
You still haven't answered my question, the note read in Lois's messy cursive. Clark made sure that Perry was focused on some poor kid from the A&E section before scribbling his reply.
Wouldn't I be cheating on you?
He nudged Lois with an elbow, then dropped the paper into her jacket pocket. A minute later, she tossed it back onto his notepad
Not if I want you to do it.
What if I don't want to do it? Clark wrote back. As an afterthought, he punctuated the question further by drawing a frowny face.
Clark, this relationship won't go anywhere if you're not willing to experiment sexually, was Lois's reply.
At this point, the little piece of paper was nearly filled front and back with the two reporters' chicken scratch. Clark had just managed to squeeze in "I DID let you tie me up!!!" at the bottom of the note, when a voice boomed over his shoulder.
"Kent!" Perry shouted. "What is this, high school?" Perry snatched the note out of Clark's hand before the reporter had even finished acting startled.
Oh no. Not again, Clark groaned mentally as Perry squinted at the note and a few people around the room snickered. He wondered if it would be too suspicious if the piece of paper were to spontaneously combust.
"Let's see what you and Lane are going on about,” Perry continued. “It better be the makings of a hot story, or you'll both be doing human interest pieces from here to retirement."
Eyes narrowing further as he read, Perry turned the note over to look at the back. One bushy eyebrow flew up, followed swiftly by the other, and the Chief dropped the scrap of paper into Clark's lap as if it really was about to burst into flames.
"Clark, Lois-do you two need some time off?"
::-::
"Superman," a voice rasped from behind Clark as the Kryptonian glowered at the screens laid out before him. He looked over his shoulder to find Batman sweeping into the monitor room, the metal floor zinging faintly as the Dark Knight's cape trailed across it.
"We need to talk," Batman growled before settling into a seat beside the Man of Steel.
"Let me guess: impending nuclear war? Asteroid? Bird flu?" Clark rattled off a few more disastrous possibilities in a surge of uncharacteristic dark humor. If Bruce found this strange, he didn't show it, and simply carried on with business.
"Actually, Clark, I wanted to talk about you," Bruce informed the other man.
"About me?" Clark repeated, pointing a finger at his chest.
"Clark, there is obviously something bothering you," Bruce stated. Clark opened his mouth to protest, but Bruce silenced him with a raised hand and a glare. "You haven't been obnoxiously chipper in weeks, you're distracted in meetings-meetings that, I might add, have become unnecessarily long and increasingly unproductive. You missed the League barbecue-"
"I had an article deadline," Clark cut in.
"-a barbecue which you organized."
"Oh yeah."
"A barbecue which resulted in me getting trapped in a half hour conversation with the Flash. Thirty. Whole. Minutes. Of my life. Down the drain," Bruce grumbled, more to himself than to Clark.
"Well … Wally's nice," Clark offered, unsure of how he was supposed to respond to that. Bruce shook his head as if clearing water from his ears, or an unpleasant memory from his mind. He then returned to his immediate agenda.
"Based on my observations, your performance during missions has remained satisfactory," Batman continued. "However, I’m concerned that whatever is having this negative affect on you could begin to interfere with your fieldwork as well.”
Clark sighed. “Don’t worry. I’ve been having a-“ How had Lois put it? “An off month, that’s all. I won’t let it get in the way of work anymore.”
“You don’t sound very sure,” Bruce observed.
“I could pinky swear,” Clark suggested. “Would that make you feel more confident about me getting it together?”
“Not really.”
A moment of silence passed between the two men.
“So I haven’t been obnoxiously chipper lately, huh?” Clark finally asked.
“Obnoxious, yes. Chipper, no.”
“Well, something’s better than nothing, right?”
Another pause.
“So. What’s new with you, B?”
::-::
Clark wasn’t sure how he and Bruce had ended up playing Scrabble. He hadn’t even known that the Watchtower had Scrabble, but apparently it did, along with Yahtzee, Superhero Monopoly, and the first four seasons of MacGyver on DVD. All of this was stashed in a cabinet in the monitor room, and when Clark had asked whom it belonged to, Bruce had simply grunted.
Clark was even less sure of how it was that he now found himself explaining his romantic troubles, in detail, to Bruce. To Batman, of all people. The Dark Knight must have manipulated him into opening up with some subtle interrogation technique. Come to think of it, the Scrabble was probably a part of said technique.
Yes, that was it-this was all an elaborate ploy to gather information on a teammate who wasn’t functioning optimally. Every word that Clark uttered would be entered into some encrypted file on the Batcave computers. Every emotion he expressed would be used to update Batman’s psychological profile on the Kryptonian.
For a bit longer than necessary, Clark lingered on the thought of Bruce keeping tabs on him. A shiver ran the length of his spine, which was odd, since he wasn’t susceptible to cold. Before he could wonder about it any more, though, he was brought back to reality by the need to challenge Bruce’s latest letter placement.
“Since when is ‘fa’ a word?” Clark demanded, gesturing at the board between them.
“It’s the fourth tone of the diatonic musical scale,” Bruce recited.
“What?”
“Don’t make me sing the song,” Bruce growled.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Clark lied. He did realize what Bruce was referring to now, but the chance to hear Batman sing “Do Re Mi” was too good to pass up.
“Do re mi fa so la ti do,” Bruce rasped in a perfect monotone. Clark frowned.
“I still don’t think it’s a word,” he insisted. “Wouldn’t it be considered a syllable or something?”
“Fine. I’ll look it up in a Scrabble dictionary for you,” Bruce grumbled, muttering something about stubborn hayseeds as he scooted his chair over to the nearest computer keyboard.
While Bruce opened up an internet browser, Clark watched the monitors, and without warning, he found himself rambling again about Lois’s newly revealed homoeroticism kink. Darn Bruce and his subtle interrogation tricks.
“You know, it’s not even that I’m against what she’s … proposing,” Clark mused. “It’s not like she wants to watch me have sex with another guy-“
“Would you?” Bruce interjected as he typed in a URL.
“What?”
“Have sex with another guy,” Bruce spoke without looking at Clark. After a pause, he coughed, and added, “For Lois, I mean. So that she can watch.”
“I-are you asking about the sex or the watching or both?” Clark asked.
“Never mind,” Bruce grunted, clicking on a link.
“Um, okay,” Clark shifted in his seat. “Anyway, as I was saying, all she wants is for me to kiss a guy. And, okay, so she did mention something about recording it, but … that’s not that bad. I’m sure people have done much stranger things in the bedroom.”
Bruce gave Clark a look, and the Man of Steel felt himself blush.
“I’m just guessing here,” Clark mumbled.
“Look,” Bruce gestured at the computer screen, and Clark leaned over to find himself faced with the official Scrabble website.
“Fa: a noun, the plural form of which is ‘fas.’ It is the fourth tone of the diatonic musical scale,” Bruce read off. His lips twitched into something of a smirk. “Told you so.”
“Fine,” Clark huffed. He scowled at his letters, trying to think of a way to get rid of his “Q.”
“I still don’t understand what the problem is,” Bruce suddenly said.
“Huh?” Clark glanced up to find his teammate staring at him.
“You say that your relationship with Lois has been strained lately, and you’ve implied that this is because she’s pressuring you to make out with another man for her enjoyment. However, you just admitted that you’re not opposed to this idea,” Bruce spoke as if he was giving a WayneCorp status report. “Clearly, something else is going on here.”
Clark sighed, and placed an “S” on the board to pluralize “fa.”
“I guess you’re right,” he finally admitted-not only to Bruce, but to himself. “Ever since we got engaged and I told her that I’m Superman, things have been, well, rather meh. There always used to be this-this fire between us. Before we started dating, there was the competition with work. And then once we got together … I thought it was passion-love-but now I’m beginning to think it was just the thrill of keeping secrets-“
“She did admit to knowing you were Superman even before you started dating,” Bruce noted.
“Exactly! And she never let on about it. Not once,” Clark exclaimed. “Okay, so I understand that she wanted me to be the one to tell her-that she wanted me to choose to trust her with my secret. But she obviously enjoyed the situation as a game to some extent,” Clark looked down at his hands, and added weakly, “And maybe I did, too.”
Bruce didn’t say anything, but when Clark looked at the board next, the words “hag” and “graph” had been transformed into “hagiography.” What the …? Clark just shook his head.
“I don’t know,” Clark reached into the letter sack for another tile. He pulled out an “L.” Okay, not bad. At least it wasn’t an “X” or something. “Maybe that’s not the problem. I hope it’s not the problem. I care about Lois, I really do. But I have no idea how to bring the life back into our relationship. She keeps trying to do it with these weird … sex things, and I guess I’m just following along at this point.”
“When’s the wedding again?” Bruce inquired.
“We haven’t set a date yet,” Clark said, shuffling his letters. “We were thinking next spring. She wants an outdoor wedding with the trees in bloom.” Clark smiled at the thought, and laughed. “It’s all about the flowers-and the dress-as she keeps reminding me.”
“Every relationship has its low spots. I’m sure you just need time to adjust to interacting with each other as two people instead of three.”
“Yeah,” Clark agreed without really thinking. He let his eyes un-focus, staring through the game board and the table and the floor and so on, until he was gazing into the depths of outer space.
“Next time we play anything, I’m bringing my chess timer along,” Bruce griped when Clark still hadn’t made a move after a few minutes.
“Patience is a virtue,” Clark quipped, before adding his “L” and another “S” to the beginning of the word “ash.”
“And will you look at that,” Clark gloated. “Triple word score for me!”
Bruce glowered. “I see you’re putting the chipper back into ‘obnoxiously chipper.’”
TBC
The turning of the ceiling fan measured out the passing seconds. Clark didn’t think he’d felt this awkward since that time when his ninth grade English teacher had intercepted a love note he wrote to Lana Lang, then forced him to read it out loud to the class. Darn Mrs. Cottrell. He still hadn't gotten over that.
"So," Lois finally said, breaking into Clark's reminiscing. He let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Lois was speaking. That could be a good sign.
"So," Clark echoed.
"Is it just me, or was something … not clicking, not working … help me out here. What am I trying to say?"
"Um, were you thinking that maybe something might have been lacking? A little bit?" Clark supplied, hoping that he hadn't just insulted her.
Lois snapped her fingers. "Exactly. That was the dullest sex I have ever had. Ten minutes in, and I started writing that Irish Mob article in my head."
And here Clark had been worrying about being too blunt.
"Well, obviously not every time can be amazing," Clark pointed out, a touch defensively. "Everyone has their off days."
"Smallville, we've been having an off month."
"Oh," Clark swallowed and watched the fan blades whisk by. An off month? Okay, so that was true, but it still hurt to hear it said aloud.
"I don't mean to say that it's your fault," Lois hurried to clarify. "I'm not pointing fingers. We're a couple, we're a team, if something's wrong with our relationship then obviously we've both contributed to the problem, and we have to fix it together."
"Yes. You are completely right. I agree one hundred percent," Clark nodded, and turned to look at his fiancée for the first time since the end of this most recent lackluster lovemaking session. "So, I guess we should try to talk about this?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Okay," Clark racked his brains for a place to start. "Is it the foreplay? Because I can always-"
"No, no, no," Lois moved her head back and forth against the pillow. "That's … not an issue. I think we just need to try something drastically new. Spice things up a little."
"Well, I did let you tie-"
"Yeah, yeah, but bondage is no fun when your partner can break through the restraints with a flick of his wrist."
"Sorry," Clark mumbled, while Lois kept going with that train of thought.
"If I'm going to dominate someone, I really need it to be-" Lois made a low growling noise in the back of her throat, then seemed to become aware of herself again. "Anyway, that's beside the point. What I wanted to suggest was … how do I put it … Clark, what are your thoughts on kissing another guy?"
Clark's eyebrows shot up. "Do you mean … wait, what do you mean? Are you asking what I think of you … do you want to see other men?" Clark stammered. Strangely enough, the idea didn't spark any kind of jealousy within him. He decided that that was because he was in shock.
"No, silly," Lois gave him a playful shove. "I want to watch you make out with another man. Another hot man, preferably. Plain and simple."
::-::
The next morning, Lois slipped a folded scrap of paper into Clark's hand during the Daily Planet staff meeting. As Perry bellowed something about striving to reach a wider audience, Clark peeked at the paper, trying his best to look as though he was still listening to the Editor in Chief.
You still haven't answered my question, the note read in Lois's messy cursive. Clark made sure that Perry was focused on some poor kid from the A&E section before scribbling his reply.
Wouldn't I be cheating on you?
He nudged Lois with an elbow, then dropped the paper into her jacket pocket. A minute later, she tossed it back onto his notepad
Not if I want you to do it.
What if I don't want to do it? Clark wrote back. As an afterthought, he punctuated the question further by drawing a frowny face.
Clark, this relationship won't go anywhere if you're not willing to experiment sexually, was Lois's reply.
At this point, the little piece of paper was nearly filled front and back with the two reporters' chicken scratch. Clark had just managed to squeeze in "I DID let you tie me up!!!" at the bottom of the note, when a voice boomed over his shoulder.
"Kent!" Perry shouted. "What is this, high school?" Perry snatched the note out of Clark's hand before the reporter had even finished acting startled.
Oh no. Not again, Clark groaned mentally as Perry squinted at the note and a few people around the room snickered. He wondered if it would be too suspicious if the piece of paper were to spontaneously combust.
"Let's see what you and Lane are going on about,” Perry continued. “It better be the makings of a hot story, or you'll both be doing human interest pieces from here to retirement."
Eyes narrowing further as he read, Perry turned the note over to look at the back. One bushy eyebrow flew up, followed swiftly by the other, and the Chief dropped the scrap of paper into Clark's lap as if it really was about to burst into flames.
"Clark, Lois-do you two need some time off?"
::-::
"Superman," a voice rasped from behind Clark as the Kryptonian glowered at the screens laid out before him. He looked over his shoulder to find Batman sweeping into the monitor room, the metal floor zinging faintly as the Dark Knight's cape trailed across it.
"We need to talk," Batman growled before settling into a seat beside the Man of Steel.
"Let me guess: impending nuclear war? Asteroid? Bird flu?" Clark rattled off a few more disastrous possibilities in a surge of uncharacteristic dark humor. If Bruce found this strange, he didn't show it, and simply carried on with business.
"Actually, Clark, I wanted to talk about you," Bruce informed the other man.
"About me?" Clark repeated, pointing a finger at his chest.
"Clark, there is obviously something bothering you," Bruce stated. Clark opened his mouth to protest, but Bruce silenced him with a raised hand and a glare. "You haven't been obnoxiously chipper in weeks, you're distracted in meetings-meetings that, I might add, have become unnecessarily long and increasingly unproductive. You missed the League barbecue-"
"I had an article deadline," Clark cut in.
"-a barbecue which you organized."
"Oh yeah."
"A barbecue which resulted in me getting trapped in a half hour conversation with the Flash. Thirty. Whole. Minutes. Of my life. Down the drain," Bruce grumbled, more to himself than to Clark.
"Well … Wally's nice," Clark offered, unsure of how he was supposed to respond to that. Bruce shook his head as if clearing water from his ears, or an unpleasant memory from his mind. He then returned to his immediate agenda.
"Based on my observations, your performance during missions has remained satisfactory," Batman continued. "However, I’m concerned that whatever is having this negative affect on you could begin to interfere with your fieldwork as well.”
Clark sighed. “Don’t worry. I’ve been having a-“ How had Lois put it? “An off month, that’s all. I won’t let it get in the way of work anymore.”
“You don’t sound very sure,” Bruce observed.
“I could pinky swear,” Clark suggested. “Would that make you feel more confident about me getting it together?”
“Not really.”
A moment of silence passed between the two men.
“So I haven’t been obnoxiously chipper lately, huh?” Clark finally asked.
“Obnoxious, yes. Chipper, no.”
“Well, something’s better than nothing, right?”
Another pause.
“So. What’s new with you, B?”
::-::
Clark wasn’t sure how he and Bruce had ended up playing Scrabble. He hadn’t even known that the Watchtower had Scrabble, but apparently it did, along with Yahtzee, Superhero Monopoly, and the first four seasons of MacGyver on DVD. All of this was stashed in a cabinet in the monitor room, and when Clark had asked whom it belonged to, Bruce had simply grunted.
Clark was even less sure of how it was that he now found himself explaining his romantic troubles, in detail, to Bruce. To Batman, of all people. The Dark Knight must have manipulated him into opening up with some subtle interrogation technique. Come to think of it, the Scrabble was probably a part of said technique.
Yes, that was it-this was all an elaborate ploy to gather information on a teammate who wasn’t functioning optimally. Every word that Clark uttered would be entered into some encrypted file on the Batcave computers. Every emotion he expressed would be used to update Batman’s psychological profile on the Kryptonian.
For a bit longer than necessary, Clark lingered on the thought of Bruce keeping tabs on him. A shiver ran the length of his spine, which was odd, since he wasn’t susceptible to cold. Before he could wonder about it any more, though, he was brought back to reality by the need to challenge Bruce’s latest letter placement.
“Since when is ‘fa’ a word?” Clark demanded, gesturing at the board between them.
“It’s the fourth tone of the diatonic musical scale,” Bruce recited.
“What?”
“Don’t make me sing the song,” Bruce growled.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Clark lied. He did realize what Bruce was referring to now, but the chance to hear Batman sing “Do Re Mi” was too good to pass up.
“Do re mi fa so la ti do,” Bruce rasped in a perfect monotone. Clark frowned.
“I still don’t think it’s a word,” he insisted. “Wouldn’t it be considered a syllable or something?”
“Fine. I’ll look it up in a Scrabble dictionary for you,” Bruce grumbled, muttering something about stubborn hayseeds as he scooted his chair over to the nearest computer keyboard.
While Bruce opened up an internet browser, Clark watched the monitors, and without warning, he found himself rambling again about Lois’s newly revealed homoeroticism kink. Darn Bruce and his subtle interrogation tricks.
“You know, it’s not even that I’m against what she’s … proposing,” Clark mused. “It’s not like she wants to watch me have sex with another guy-“
“Would you?” Bruce interjected as he typed in a URL.
“What?”
“Have sex with another guy,” Bruce spoke without looking at Clark. After a pause, he coughed, and added, “For Lois, I mean. So that she can watch.”
“I-are you asking about the sex or the watching or both?” Clark asked.
“Never mind,” Bruce grunted, clicking on a link.
“Um, okay,” Clark shifted in his seat. “Anyway, as I was saying, all she wants is for me to kiss a guy. And, okay, so she did mention something about recording it, but … that’s not that bad. I’m sure people have done much stranger things in the bedroom.”
Bruce gave Clark a look, and the Man of Steel felt himself blush.
“I’m just guessing here,” Clark mumbled.
“Look,” Bruce gestured at the computer screen, and Clark leaned over to find himself faced with the official Scrabble website.
“Fa: a noun, the plural form of which is ‘fas.’ It is the fourth tone of the diatonic musical scale,” Bruce read off. His lips twitched into something of a smirk. “Told you so.”
“Fine,” Clark huffed. He scowled at his letters, trying to think of a way to get rid of his “Q.”
“I still don’t understand what the problem is,” Bruce suddenly said.
“Huh?” Clark glanced up to find his teammate staring at him.
“You say that your relationship with Lois has been strained lately, and you’ve implied that this is because she’s pressuring you to make out with another man for her enjoyment. However, you just admitted that you’re not opposed to this idea,” Bruce spoke as if he was giving a WayneCorp status report. “Clearly, something else is going on here.”
Clark sighed, and placed an “S” on the board to pluralize “fa.”
“I guess you’re right,” he finally admitted-not only to Bruce, but to himself. “Ever since we got engaged and I told her that I’m Superman, things have been, well, rather meh. There always used to be this-this fire between us. Before we started dating, there was the competition with work. And then once we got together … I thought it was passion-love-but now I’m beginning to think it was just the thrill of keeping secrets-“
“She did admit to knowing you were Superman even before you started dating,” Bruce noted.
“Exactly! And she never let on about it. Not once,” Clark exclaimed. “Okay, so I understand that she wanted me to be the one to tell her-that she wanted me to choose to trust her with my secret. But she obviously enjoyed the situation as a game to some extent,” Clark looked down at his hands, and added weakly, “And maybe I did, too.”
Bruce didn’t say anything, but when Clark looked at the board next, the words “hag” and “graph” had been transformed into “hagiography.” What the …? Clark just shook his head.
“I don’t know,” Clark reached into the letter sack for another tile. He pulled out an “L.” Okay, not bad. At least it wasn’t an “X” or something. “Maybe that’s not the problem. I hope it’s not the problem. I care about Lois, I really do. But I have no idea how to bring the life back into our relationship. She keeps trying to do it with these weird … sex things, and I guess I’m just following along at this point.”
“When’s the wedding again?” Bruce inquired.
“We haven’t set a date yet,” Clark said, shuffling his letters. “We were thinking next spring. She wants an outdoor wedding with the trees in bloom.” Clark smiled at the thought, and laughed. “It’s all about the flowers-and the dress-as she keeps reminding me.”
“Every relationship has its low spots. I’m sure you just need time to adjust to interacting with each other as two people instead of three.”
“Yeah,” Clark agreed without really thinking. He let his eyes un-focus, staring through the game board and the table and the floor and so on, until he was gazing into the depths of outer space.
“Next time we play anything, I’m bringing my chess timer along,” Bruce griped when Clark still hadn’t made a move after a few minutes.
“Patience is a virtue,” Clark quipped, before adding his “L” and another “S” to the beginning of the word “ash.”
“And will you look at that,” Clark gloated. “Triple word score for me!”
Bruce glowered. “I see you’re putting the chipper back into ‘obnoxiously chipper.’”
TBC