[fic] The very thought of you (Kal/Kon, Clark/Lois, adult)
Title: The very thought of you
Series: Sentimental Education (#3)
Pairings: Kal-El/Kon-El, Clark/Lois
Rating: Adult
Summary: Clark's forgetting to do the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do.
Disclaimer: Siegel & Shuster, Kesel & Grummett. DC, WB, et al., not I.
Notes: Title & summary from Ray Noble. petronelle audienced and cheered when it was most necessary; I can't thank her enough. Beta of an early draft was by thenotoriousg, who really deserves some Selina-girlslash in return.
Proximity blurs the boundaries. Makes it difficult for Clark to gather his thoughts -- to even think clearly in the first place. In the past, he has foundered when trying to understand Bruce's territoriality, the vehemence of his claim on Gotham.
Clark will never understand that claim, not completely, but the past week has enabled him to...sympathize with it.
Metropolis is his city. Clean and bright, rebuilt by his own hands, a beacon and an inspiration. Superboy's presence here is no incursion. Clark *knows* that, yet the fact keeps effervescing in the face of emotion. Emotions, plural, which he is both loath and unable to name.
This isn't jealousy. He's glad that Superboy is here. He welcomes the boy's help; three days ago, when a rogue Kobra unit surfaced in the harbor, Kon-El was instrumental in evacuating schoolchildren to safety. Moreover, Superboy tends to keep to his own area -- "my 'hood," he calls it, chin jutting out, promising defiance -- and Lord knows that Suicide Slum can use all the help it can get.
Clark is glad that Superboy's here. Really, he is, and yet the proximity continues to disturb him.
If he admires Bruce as much as he believes he does, then Clark should welcome the presence of a young hero in his own city.
If, and yet.
*
Clark is at his desk, chin in hand, reviewing Missy-the-intern's first lifestyle feature. Her comma splices would make Lois weep and rage, but Clark is slightly more forgiving. He makes the corrections in light pencil and tries to find the pulse of the story.
Perry is yelling at a courier across the newsroom, interrupting Clark's already wavering concentration. (This morning, after the daily meeting: "What's with you, Kent? Separated from the brains of the operation for a *week* and you've gone to seed. Step up or ship out.") Missy's copy blurs slightly before his tired eyes.
If Lois was here, she'd punch his arm or launch a rubber band right to the center of his forehead and tell him to focus.
The Reuters and AP feeds scroll up his monitor. There's nothing of import going on anywhere. Congress is in recess, the Kyrgyz peace talks continue to see unexpected success; even the flood damage in southern Bangladesh is minimal.
It took Clark two showers this morning to get the malarial, *sour* stink of the Kirtan Khola's waters off. But, he reminds himself, at least he *has* a shower. Clean water, good health, wonderful parents, and a beautiful, brilliant wife.
Counting his blessings doesn't help him to focus.
Lois left Martinique yesterday, hot on the trail of the Maoist general Felix Cantante. Clark closes his eyes and listens southward. Down through steel drums and pounding surf, through the crackle of cooking fires and squish of children's feet in the mud, south, farther, into the jungle. Monkeys holler, a sudden cloudburst washes down wet bark and singing birds.
*There*. There's his girl. Lois's hoarse, throaty voice, speaking rapidly in a Spanish dialect Clark cannot follow.
Either she is urging a donkey into the breach or ordering a refreshing beverage.
She's safe, vibrant and noisy as ever, and Clark returns to work.
He doesn't want to crush Missy's spirit, so he leaves one participle dangling and praises her conclusion before stacking the sheets neatly together.
They fly apart when his phone rings. Startled, Clark reaches for the papers *and* the phone, succeeding in overturning his mug of pencils and barking his shin on the file cabinet before he retrieves the receiver.
"Hi! Can I speak to Clark Kent, please?" It's Superboy, sounding like a Girl Scout selling cookies.
Clark rubs his shin and winces. "Hello."
"That you?"
"Yes. How are you?"
"Wow, I figured you had a secretary. Why don't you have a secretary?"
"You'd have to talk to my boss," Clark says and hunches a little. "What can I do for you?"
"Oh. Um." Kon-El chews his lip. The sound is doubled, coming once through the phone, once across the city.
He has very soft lips. Sharp teeth, too.
Clark clears his throat.
"Just wondered how you're doing," Kon-El says in a rush. "Caught the CNN coverage this morning. That flood, *dude* --"
"Ahh," Clark says. "In Bangladesh? I heard Superman took care of that."
Kon-El laughs and Clark hears the jungle again, monkeys joyful and free. "He sure did, Mr. Kent. He sure did. Cool guy, that Superman."
"Yes." Clark is blushing. He rubs his hand over his cheeks and swallows.
"So, anyway --" Kon-El is scratching his chest now. The whick-whick of his nails over soft skin deepens Clark's blush, heats it higher. "You doing anything tonight?"
"I'm fairly busy --"
"*C'mon*. You're still living the life of the crazy bachelor, right? I got a microwave -- thank *you*, Rent-A-Center -- and some French-bread pizzas with your name on 'em." Kon chuckles, then adds, "Any name you choose."
The boy sounds excited. Clark shades his eyes with his free hand and steals a long-distance glimpse. Kon-El is grinning, walking around his bare apartment, gesturing widely.
"Seven o'clock all right?" Clark asks.
Before Clark looks away, he sees Kon punch the air. "Yes! Awesome. Seven it is. Be there or be --"
"Square?"
"A trapezoid, actually. Maybe a rhombus."
*
Proximity need not pose the problem it does. Like gravity, distance is no obstacle. If Kon-El were in Vladivostok, Clark could still be there for dinner.
That Superboy is only across town, then, should not disturb Clark quite as much as it has been. The boy could be anywhere and still be within reach, after all, if Clark wanted.
Wanted to reach, that is.
"Green pepper and onion for you," Kon-El says, punching the microwave's controls. He wears a bright, lemon-yellow apron over his costume; besides that, his only concession to being home is bare feet. "Sausage deluxe for me."
"Thank you," Clark says automatically.
Kon-El bobs his head. "No problemo. Mi pizza es su pizza. Except with better toppings."
They eat, Clark with a knife and fork, Kon-El with his hands. He talks with his mouth full, gestures a lot, smears sauce across his forehead at one point as he recounts a particularly exciting fight with Impulse. Clark only drops his fork twice, though he loses a good portion of cheese in the second mishap.
"Tried to get you some beer," Kon tells Clark as he refills his glass with boysenberry Soder. Clark suspects that if Kon-El were eating alone, he'd guzzle the pop from the two-liter bottle. "But they wouldn't sell it to me, can you believe that?"
Clark folds his paper napkin. "You are underage."
Waving off the objection, Kon-El tosses another pizza into the microwave. "Um, super*hero*? Who can you trust if you can't --"
"I don't drink alcohol," Clark puts in. "It's really no bother."
"It's the *principle*, Kal. The guy was all, let's see some ID and I'm like, exsqueeze me? Baking powder? This is all the ID you need --" He thumps his chest. "So he laughs at me and I ask -- politely, too, swear -- to see the manager. Turns out he *is* the manager."
"Ah," Clark says.
Kon slumps back in his chair. "Not like I was going to *drink* it. Beer tastes like feet, anyway."
Clark smiles at him. "I'm sure he was just doing his job."
"Yeah, yeah," Kon-El mutters. "Good on him."
A sudden curiosity strikes Clark. "*Do* you have ID?"
Kon-El reaches back and unties the apron, then thrusts out his chest. "Like I said --" He traces the edge of the S-shield with his thumb and looks up at Clark through his lashes. "All I need."
Superboy's costume comes from Cadmus. Its fabric is enhanced with various molecular agents to strengthen and focus his telekinesis. It only resembles Clark's own costume. It is not the same.
It's silkier, almost slippery, under Clark's hands. Kon-El smiles and unfolds, reaching for the touch, as Clark pulls him into his lap. His palms skate over the costume, testing the texture and resiliency of the fabric, as he lets his concentration wander and disperse.
The boy is so close, willing to go even closer.
"Hey," Kon-El says softly. He smiles slowly, planting his knee between Clark's legs and looping his arm around Clark's shoulders. "You still hungry?"
His slow smile sharpens into a teasing smirk. Clark cannot, will not, compare *this* -- Kon-El, clone and boy -- to Lois (wife and woman), yet the expression is identical. The comparison threatens.
"Hm," Clark says.
It does not matter what he's doing -- that he has a lapful of squirming, smirking boy, hot breath on his neck, his hands afire over snug fabric that whispers reproaches -- he cannot lie.
"Yes." His voice goes lower. "Kon-El, I --"
"*Damn* --" The sound goes into five syllables, hot damp breath, then dies inside Clark's mouth when Kon-El kisses him.
Hunger is a plague, a terrible abomination in this wonderful world, and Clark shakes, gripping Kon-El hard, drinking in sound and sensation, feasting on the kiss.
Between his slitted lids, he can see the boy's skin, painted pink and scarlet and gold. For a moment, he doesn't know if Kon-El is simply flushed with arousal or if his own vision has ascended, unconsciously, into the ultraviolet. Perhaps both; Clark forgets to care, peeling down Kon-El's leggings, pressing his hands into the firm flesh, kissing everywhere he can. Kon rises a little way into the air, then paws at Clark's shirt, deepening the kiss, *breathing* into Clark's throat, hovering warm and open and *there*.
There for the taking, all and everything within reach.
Kon-El slides back into his lap, straddling Clark's thighs and moaning "Kal" against his throat like an invocation. An invitation.
There are grottoes, darker than any Gotham alleyway, within Clark, depthless chasms that rustle and stir at that name, alive with shadowy things that Clark Kent could never name.
Clark Kent knows sunlight and open fields, threshing and tilling and harvesting: stewardship of the land and its fruits.
Superman knows horizons, the buxom curve of planets and glow of stars, the scream for help that sounds the same in every language: guardianship of the nations and their peoples.
But Kal-El shakes through shadows beneath red skies, rides the backs of beasts and studies incomprehensible secrets: ownership, of everything.
Kon-El clutches at the back of Kal's neck, bending backward and grinding into his groin. "Please, *fuck*, Kal, I want --" The boy -- his junior, imitator, ward -- drops to his knees. Distance and proximity, like gravity, recede to meaningless specks as Kal closes his hand in Kon's hair.
The words come without thinking. «Take you now, and feast well.» Old Kryptonese knows only the imperative voice when addressing minors, animals, and slaves.
Kon-El nods. He is ignorant but *willing*. He pants through open mouth while Kal shucks off the human garments. Kal wraps his fist around his cock, paying gratitude to Rao, his chest heaving. In his fist, into the boy's waiting mouth. Down his throat. The imperatives of legacy are this, slick yearning pressure around him, down to the root, and the boy's startled, wheeling blue eyes. Kal fucks into his throat, twists his hair and holds him still, staring down at him through fire.
The first Kon-El was a motherless bastard, too, adopted out of the grace and generosity of the house. This one shares some of Kal's blood, however, which makes this -- taken, swallowed, reverent *feast* -- all the sweeter.
That blood is kettle-drumming through the boy's half-human heart (just four chambers, weak as a shoelace), roasting his face red, driving Kal's hips to snap faster, deeper. Kon-El is here by *his* grace, named from *his* kindness, and he is both mirror and delicious hole. Kal fucks harder, nails in the boy's scalp, as the chair creaks, then splinters, beneath him.
He could have this all the time. Red-edged shadows across blue eyes and dark hair, these sweet, wet mouths: Robin, Bruce. Even Diana.
He stands over the obeisant, marveling at the sight of his cock distorting that face, disappearing deeper. He could *be* this, be himself, grab what is his. Everything within reach. He could cut the final cord of compassion just as easily as he does this, as he rears back, cock in hand, spattering and striping the boy's face.
This could be the safest route: keep the boy naked on his knees in the far reaches of the fortress. Lock away the impostor as tightly as Kal himself remains locked within the farmboy's hind brain.
The safest route, and certainly the most pleasurable.
The worst. The most wrong.
He sinks against the table, vertigo howling through him for a terrifying moment, crying out when the boy shuffles forward on his knees, following.
Kon-El presses his forehead against Clark's knee, gasping.
Clark pets Superboy's neck and hair with clumsy human hands.
"Fucking *A*," Kon-El says, his voice high and -- oh, *God* -- strangled. His eyes are rimmed with red, vibrant against the blue. He grins apologetically and wipes his mouth. He is...Clark shudders at the word, but Kon-El is *beautiful. Stumbling to his feet, adjusting himself, shaking his head. "You just -- you. Wow."
"Kon --"
"Jesus, you just get *better* --" Kon bounces on his toes, then jumps three feet into the air. "*Wow*, man."
Bending down, Clark fumbles around for his pants. His glasses. Kon dives down and hugs him from behind.
"Can Lois go on assignment every *month*?"
Clark's body stills. He stops breathing; his fists hit the floor. "No."
"Kidding, kidding --" Kon releases him and floats away. "Dude. Totally kidding."
Clark should apologize. He should grovel and beg and wail.
"Sorry," Kon whispers.
Clark nods. He dresses, keeping his eyes averted, and leaves as quickly as he can.
Pa always says, actions speak loudest.
*
Over the next few days, Clark works as hard as he can at both his jobs. He uncovers a nascent City Council graft ring, busts an illegal immigration scam, saves an Egyptian luxury liner from modern pirates, and digs several wells in Somalia.
As hard as he works, however, he can't stop listening. In the morning, at night, even a couple times over lunch, the *sounds* come to him. A distinct hitch in breathing, the squeak of bedsprings and long exhale, the damp staccato murmur of palm over flesh. Kon-El, touching himself, his free hand pinching a nipple like a gardener touching rose-buds, then the sharp bite of teeth into his wrists as he gets closer to orgasm. Lower groans then, imperfectly muffled, the slick slide of his tongue over his thumb, and by then, invariably, Clark has to excuse himself.
Rush for the restroom and pull himself off, rapidly, clinically, until all he can hear is his own respiration.
He hears other things, too. Just as disturbing, though far less *obviously* so.
From the Poconos headquarters, Superboy bragging to his teammates: "Yeah, I'm seeing somebody. You don't know them. It's pretty hush-hush."
Clark hears Impulse's excited squeak and volley of questions, Robin's derisive chuckle. Later, he hears Wonder Girl crying, the thumps of books she throws at the wall and the shivering fall of plaster.
"Do you go on dates?" Impulse has a thousand questions. "Take her out to dinner and bring her flowers and chocolate? Don't get Godiva, it's not as good as everyone thinks. Belgian's way better--"
"Mostly, we...stay in," Superboy says smugly. "If you get my drift."
Robin snickers. "Sure we do, Mr. Subtle."
"What drift? Whaddaya mean? Like, you rent videos and stuff? Why are you laughing? Stop laughing!"
"You'll understand," Superboy tells Impulse. "When--if--you ever grow up." There's a high squeal, a thud as they hit the floor, and then the odd scratchy noise that Clark has finally identified as a vigorous "noogie" applied to Impulse's hair.
Amid the noise, Clark works even harder. He sleeps alone in the center of the wide, cold bed, his face buried in Lois' pillow, inhaling her scent. He rises earlier and earlier, joins Pa for morning chores, Tibetan monks for dawn prayers, Guatemalan peasants for the rose harvest.
"Almost got him!" Lois shouts one evening into the satellite phone. "He can run, but he can't hide!"
"Not from you," Clark says and grins so widely his cheeks hurt.
"Exactly!" she shrieks over the static. "Jimmy says, and I quote, 'wazzup?'"
"I miss you," he says.
"What? Clark, speak up--"
"I miss you!" His shout rattles the doors on the kitchen cabinets. Glassware tinkles irritably.
"I miss you, too, jeez," Lois says and he can *see* the amusement tightening her features. "Think everyone in Siberia caught that?"
"Lois --"
"Gotta go, the troops're on the move. Love you miss you bye."
He loves Lois for more reasons, in more ways, than he can possibly count. She is brave and brash and so human he can barely *look* at her sometimes. She's the smartest person he's ever known, and her intelligence is caustic, precise, relentless.
In her absence, he visits the *other* genius in his life.
"Alfred left half a meat pie," Bruce says without looking up from his microscope. "He'll be sorry to have missed you."
"Oh?" Clark drifts through the cave. He isn't hungry, but the food will go to waste; Bruce is far too absorbed in his work to take care of trifles like hunger. "How's his rheumatism?"
"Tolerable, I believe is the party line." Bruce tugs off one gauntlet and adjusts the scope's focus. He won't ask Clark for assistance. "Were you worried?"
"Should I be?"
"No," Bruce says and inserts another slide. "Which leaves the question of your visit --"
"How's Robin?" Clark asks, and not *solely* because he finds himself floating next to Jason's memorial.
Bruce hums through his teeth.
"His birthday's coming up, isn't it?" Clark sets down the empty plate. The pie was, of course, delicious. Other than his own mother, Alfred is the only person who can make kidneys palatable. "And his girlfriend? Any word on her child?"
"Adopted and well-loved," Bruce replies.
Clark's inner reporter notes automatically that Bruce will answer questions about Alfred and Stephanie, but not Robin. "Bludhaven's treating Dick well, I hope?"
"I'm sure he'd be happy to see you." Bruce manages to inform that simple statement with several simultaneous meanings.
1. Ask Dick yourself.
2. Why *are* you here?
3. Don't think you can fool *me*.
Is that, Clark wonders, why he cleaves to both Lois and Bruce so readily, so absolutely? He cannot fool either of them.
He should not *want* to fool either.
He can fool Superboy. Clearly, he already has. "Seeing someone", indeed.
He coughs and Bruce, finally, spares him a glance.
Bruce looks tired; there are smudges under his eyes and tension, unusual even for him, around his mouth. Seventeen silver hairs on his head.
"Are you all right?" Clark asks and moves forward. "Bruce --"
"I'm fine." Bruce rubs the stubble on his jaw. "Are you?"
Clark's cheeks heat and he tries not to look away. Can't fool him. "Why do -- how do you --. What's it like? Having a...partner?"
"Batman needs a Robin," Bruce says, dryly as ever. "Better souls than I have impressed the truth of that on me."
The first few years that he knew Bruce, Clark feared him. Not his power, though for a human he was remarkably resourceful, but on account of his *anger*.
When Robin joined him, the anger did not lessen, nor recede; that would have been too much to hope for. It did, however, *shift*. Focus.
Clark hopes that *all* Robins understand how much they have helped. He wishes he could trust Bruce to tell them.
"The clone is --" Bruce moistens his lips. Clark winces at the clinical term, but does not wonder how Bruce knew what was on his mind. "A potential liability."
Clark spreads his hands. "He's a good kid. Maybe he needs some discipline, but --. His heart's --" In the right place. Human.
Mine. Clark shudders.
"Nevertheless." Bruce tilts his head fractionally. "He runs wild. His is a threat that you have yet to acknowledge fully."
"He's a good kid --"
"And you're not only repeating yourself, but curiously defensive."
"You *are* a robot, aren't you?" Clark grins to soften the jibe, though Bruce is back at work. "You can tell me."
"I imagine I'd be far more effective if I were," Bruce says.
"If," Clark echoes.
"He's bad material for a partner," Bruce continues. "As I can only surmise that the purpose of this visit was to elicit my opinion, there it is. The clone is far too...close to you."
Clark hears the stack of slides click together, their sounds mixing with the subsonic song of a bat to her brood.
"Now, if you'll excuse me--" Bruce says, but Clark has already left the cave, the manor, and entered the sky.
*
Two nights later, Clark wakes to a wet kiss on the back of his neck.
"Hey, honey, I'm *home*..." Lois licks his earlobe and squeezes his hip, urging him to roll over. "Miss me?" Lois straddles his belly and laughs into his mouth when she reaches back, fingertips grazing his erection. "I'll say. *Nice*."
Clark kisses her harder, craning his neck and wrapping his arms around her waist. A nudge here, a pinch there, and he succeeds in rolling her onto her back. Sleepiness vanishes in the face of her unexpected arrival, in the taste of her skin and heat of her body. He kisses down her throat, sucking clean the dirt of the road and stale air of however many planes she's taken. Lois shudders under him, guiding his hands to her breasts, and he relishes the familiar rub of her nipples in the center of his palms as he kisses the expanse of her breastbone.
When she starts pushing her hips against him, scratching his shoulders, Clark rests his mouth over her heart and stills until she cuffs his ear.
"Tease," she mutters, then sighs as he trails his tongue down her belly. "Okay, better. Much--*ah!*--better."
She lifts to meet him as Clark slides down the bed, wrapping one leg under his arm and pushing his head down.
"Good boy--" Lois breaks off, her breath whistling, when Clark presses his open mouth over her mound, sucking already. "Oh, *Christ*, Kent. Just like that --"
Her stomach flattens, going rigid, as she pushes against him and pulls his hair. This is the woman he loves, rangy and bossy and *gorgeous*. Slick already, she tastes like -- like *Lois*. Clark is no poet, but Lois makes him want to be one, makes him want to liken her to wine and opium, rich delicacies that wriggle on the tongue and drown his senses.
She sings over him, around him, her thighs clamping around his skull and holding him in place. She's telling him what to do, and though Clark *knows*, and knows well, he loves the fact that it turns on her to tell him.
She's taught him well, repeatedly, and Clark revels in the intimate, instantaneous signs of her pleasure: the pulse of skin against his lips, the quivering muscles in her legs, the hoarse, vulgar curses she lets loose when he holds her inner lips and clitoris in his mouth and breathes out.
She'd hit him if she knew he was praising her in these terms, thinking of orchids that tremble in the jungle canopy and tidepools at dawn, alive with motion. Her labia plump between his teeth and the smell of her is intoxicating, indescribable. He has enough self-control to resist grinding against the corner of the mattress, but only just.
She comes in torrents of curses and yanks on his hair, holding him down, coming again over his tongue until she falls back, limp and exhausted, chuckling.
"Get up here," she says in what's nearly a growl when Clark slides his hands down her legs. "On your back."
He complies, grinning up at her with a wet, smeared face. All trace of her exhaustion is gone as Lois straddles him again, fingernails raking his skin, and sinks down. He wants to shout and curse like she does at the sudden *accuracy* of her body around him, but he settles his hands on her hips and watches her move instead.
"Harder, Kent --"
Never *too* hard.
He pushes into her and her head falls back, her sharp chin jutting heavenward. She shakes around, over, him when he touches her breasts, thumbs flicking her nipples, in time with her jolting thrusts downward and the fast, easy rhythm of his own hips upward.
Lois falls forward, onto her knees, against his chest, changing the angle dramatically and *rubbing* herself against him. Clark pets her hair and rolls in and out, controlling his breathing, watching her carefully, drinking her in. She shoves her hand between them, and he's watched her often enough to know precisely the crooked angle of her index finger on her clitoris she's using to bring herself off.
"*Fuck*," she grits out as she comes again, ass rising in the air, leaving him. "You fucking --" She doesn't finish, just moves her wet hand to his penis and glares at him. Lois is always fierce, but never more so than *now*, flushed with orgasm and deadset on more pleasure.
She scrapes her nails down his shaft, over his testicles, and Clark bites his lip as red heat spills from his eyes, as he shoots and groans, and groans again when she licks her hand clean.
"And *that*," she breathes into his ear as she wraps herself around his side, "is why I came home."
*
Morning comes all too soon. Clark wants to go out, get something accomplished, but Lois murmurs in her sleep and clutches his hand before he can rise.
"How's the kid?" Lois accepts the coffee he hands her with a happy sigh and takes a noisy sip. "Thanks."
"Omelette?" Clark holds the egg carton in one hand, a green pepper in the other. "There's still some sausage, I think --"
"Chorizo?" She twists in her seat excitedly.
"Yes. Coming right up." He slices the cold sausage, adds pepper and onion, and breaks three eggs. When he first went off to college, he could pluck a chicken and milk a barnful of cows, but he didn't know how to cook. He's learned over the years, though Lois, like Ma, still scoffs at his dependence on recipes. He thinks of Kon-El's absurd, nearly-paternal pride in his microwave and the eggs splash messily into the pan. "Um. Huh. Scrambled okay instead?"
"Long as it's hot." Lois flips through the paper. "And Superboy?"
"Oh." Clark tilts the pan. "He's good. Settling in."
Lois' paper rustles.
"Batman says he's a liability. Potentially," he adds.
She snorts lightly. The eggs turn opaque.
"Because he's, quote-unquote, running wild."
"You two just noticed that, huh?" She looks for all the world like she's engrossed in the business section, while tapping out a draft on her PDA and drinking her coffee. Clark marvels. "Good take on the hedge fund."
"Thanks!" Clark drops the sausage and vegetables into the pan. "I had to get Troy to explain them to me, but I think I covered it fairly well. Perry wanted --"
"I told Martha the week he appeared that he needed parents," Lois says.
Reaching for the spatula he just dropped, Clark knocks his head against the oven door. The pan rattles, egg slopping over the side.
"Easy, tiger," she says lightly, reaching over to pat Clark's arm. "Just breakfast, not organic chem." He grins gratefully at her and she arches one eyebrow. "Let alone an obstacle course."
"Dropped --" He shows her the spatula. Lois smirks and squeezes his arm. He wants to sag against her. "Welcome home."
Her smirk softens as she tilts her cheek for a kiss. Her make-up is powdery and sweet against his mouth. "You're a disaster, Kent."
"I know," Clark says.
With a new spatula, he divides the contents of the pan between two plates. He gives Lois the larger portion, which she switches with his own when his back's turned, refilling her coffee. She eats without looking at her plate, gracefully scrolling through the headlines from Asia on her PDA. When she catches him watching, she just winks at him.
Lois can combine reading with *any* activity, whether eating, walking, driving (though Clark begs her not to do that), even writing. On a midnight flight last summer, she made him circle the southern U.S. three times so she could finish a chapter of Trollope.
Clark's own focus is much simpler. Far more basic. He's tried to multitask, but even having more than two windows open in his web browser makes him nervous.
When her plate is clean, her fourth coffee swallowed down, and her PDA clicked closed, Lois leans across the table and takes his hands.
"You're not thinking about hedge funds," she tells him.
"No."
"You're happy I'm home."
"Immensely." He kisses her right hand, then her left.
"Which leaves Superboy." Her wedding ring gleams at him as she withdraws her hands.
Clark laces his fingers together and twists his own wedding band. "He's living on his own. Having *parties*. He just got a 27-inch TV."
Tapping her nail against the lip of her mug, Lois says, "You're jealous."
"What? No."
She snickers softly. The sound makes him think of Robin; he has to squeeze shut his eyes, just for a moment.
"He's a good kid, Lois."
"Of course he is. He's you." She stands up, tugging straight her skirt and touching her hair. "We're going to be late. I've got a grand entrance to make."
Clark rinses off the dishes and puts them in the dishwasher that, over his objections, she insisted they get. "I don't do dishes and you break them. QED." He pauses, hand on the sink's edge, but hears only silence.
Then Lois calls from the front door and he hurries to meet her, pulling on his suit jacket with soapy hands, his glasses slipping down his nose.
"Call your mom," Lois says in the elevator as she dusts off his shoulder. "She'll know what to do."
"You don't?" he asks, honestly surprised.
Lois frowns. "Not a maternal bone in this body," she says and goes up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "You know that."
"I do," he says.
He does know that. Of Lois, he's certain.
[end]
Series: Sentimental Education (#3)
Pairings: Kal-El/Kon-El, Clark/Lois
Rating: Adult
Summary: Clark's forgetting to do the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do.
Disclaimer: Siegel & Shuster, Kesel & Grummett. DC, WB, et al., not I.
Notes: Title & summary from Ray Noble. petronelle audienced and cheered when it was most necessary; I can't thank her enough. Beta of an early draft was by thenotoriousg, who really deserves some Selina-girlslash in return.
Proximity blurs the boundaries. Makes it difficult for Clark to gather his thoughts -- to even think clearly in the first place. In the past, he has foundered when trying to understand Bruce's territoriality, the vehemence of his claim on Gotham.
Clark will never understand that claim, not completely, but the past week has enabled him to...sympathize with it.
Metropolis is his city. Clean and bright, rebuilt by his own hands, a beacon and an inspiration. Superboy's presence here is no incursion. Clark *knows* that, yet the fact keeps effervescing in the face of emotion. Emotions, plural, which he is both loath and unable to name.
This isn't jealousy. He's glad that Superboy is here. He welcomes the boy's help; three days ago, when a rogue Kobra unit surfaced in the harbor, Kon-El was instrumental in evacuating schoolchildren to safety. Moreover, Superboy tends to keep to his own area -- "my 'hood," he calls it, chin jutting out, promising defiance -- and Lord knows that Suicide Slum can use all the help it can get.
Clark is glad that Superboy's here. Really, he is, and yet the proximity continues to disturb him.
If he admires Bruce as much as he believes he does, then Clark should welcome the presence of a young hero in his own city.
If, and yet.
*
Clark is at his desk, chin in hand, reviewing Missy-the-intern's first lifestyle feature. Her comma splices would make Lois weep and rage, but Clark is slightly more forgiving. He makes the corrections in light pencil and tries to find the pulse of the story.
Perry is yelling at a courier across the newsroom, interrupting Clark's already wavering concentration. (This morning, after the daily meeting: "What's with you, Kent? Separated from the brains of the operation for a *week* and you've gone to seed. Step up or ship out.") Missy's copy blurs slightly before his tired eyes.
If Lois was here, she'd punch his arm or launch a rubber band right to the center of his forehead and tell him to focus.
The Reuters and AP feeds scroll up his monitor. There's nothing of import going on anywhere. Congress is in recess, the Kyrgyz peace talks continue to see unexpected success; even the flood damage in southern Bangladesh is minimal.
It took Clark two showers this morning to get the malarial, *sour* stink of the Kirtan Khola's waters off. But, he reminds himself, at least he *has* a shower. Clean water, good health, wonderful parents, and a beautiful, brilliant wife.
Counting his blessings doesn't help him to focus.
Lois left Martinique yesterday, hot on the trail of the Maoist general Felix Cantante. Clark closes his eyes and listens southward. Down through steel drums and pounding surf, through the crackle of cooking fires and squish of children's feet in the mud, south, farther, into the jungle. Monkeys holler, a sudden cloudburst washes down wet bark and singing birds.
*There*. There's his girl. Lois's hoarse, throaty voice, speaking rapidly in a Spanish dialect Clark cannot follow.
Either she is urging a donkey into the breach or ordering a refreshing beverage.
She's safe, vibrant and noisy as ever, and Clark returns to work.
He doesn't want to crush Missy's spirit, so he leaves one participle dangling and praises her conclusion before stacking the sheets neatly together.
They fly apart when his phone rings. Startled, Clark reaches for the papers *and* the phone, succeeding in overturning his mug of pencils and barking his shin on the file cabinet before he retrieves the receiver.
"Hi! Can I speak to Clark Kent, please?" It's Superboy, sounding like a Girl Scout selling cookies.
Clark rubs his shin and winces. "Hello."
"That you?"
"Yes. How are you?"
"Wow, I figured you had a secretary. Why don't you have a secretary?"
"You'd have to talk to my boss," Clark says and hunches a little. "What can I do for you?"
"Oh. Um." Kon-El chews his lip. The sound is doubled, coming once through the phone, once across the city.
He has very soft lips. Sharp teeth, too.
Clark clears his throat.
"Just wondered how you're doing," Kon-El says in a rush. "Caught the CNN coverage this morning. That flood, *dude* --"
"Ahh," Clark says. "In Bangladesh? I heard Superman took care of that."
Kon-El laughs and Clark hears the jungle again, monkeys joyful and free. "He sure did, Mr. Kent. He sure did. Cool guy, that Superman."
"Yes." Clark is blushing. He rubs his hand over his cheeks and swallows.
"So, anyway --" Kon-El is scratching his chest now. The whick-whick of his nails over soft skin deepens Clark's blush, heats it higher. "You doing anything tonight?"
"I'm fairly busy --"
"*C'mon*. You're still living the life of the crazy bachelor, right? I got a microwave -- thank *you*, Rent-A-Center -- and some French-bread pizzas with your name on 'em." Kon chuckles, then adds, "Any name you choose."
The boy sounds excited. Clark shades his eyes with his free hand and steals a long-distance glimpse. Kon-El is grinning, walking around his bare apartment, gesturing widely.
"Seven o'clock all right?" Clark asks.
Before Clark looks away, he sees Kon punch the air. "Yes! Awesome. Seven it is. Be there or be --"
"Square?"
"A trapezoid, actually. Maybe a rhombus."
*
Proximity need not pose the problem it does. Like gravity, distance is no obstacle. If Kon-El were in Vladivostok, Clark could still be there for dinner.
That Superboy is only across town, then, should not disturb Clark quite as much as it has been. The boy could be anywhere and still be within reach, after all, if Clark wanted.
Wanted to reach, that is.
"Green pepper and onion for you," Kon-El says, punching the microwave's controls. He wears a bright, lemon-yellow apron over his costume; besides that, his only concession to being home is bare feet. "Sausage deluxe for me."
"Thank you," Clark says automatically.
Kon-El bobs his head. "No problemo. Mi pizza es su pizza. Except with better toppings."
They eat, Clark with a knife and fork, Kon-El with his hands. He talks with his mouth full, gestures a lot, smears sauce across his forehead at one point as he recounts a particularly exciting fight with Impulse. Clark only drops his fork twice, though he loses a good portion of cheese in the second mishap.
"Tried to get you some beer," Kon tells Clark as he refills his glass with boysenberry Soder. Clark suspects that if Kon-El were eating alone, he'd guzzle the pop from the two-liter bottle. "But they wouldn't sell it to me, can you believe that?"
Clark folds his paper napkin. "You are underage."
Waving off the objection, Kon-El tosses another pizza into the microwave. "Um, super*hero*? Who can you trust if you can't --"
"I don't drink alcohol," Clark puts in. "It's really no bother."
"It's the *principle*, Kal. The guy was all, let's see some ID and I'm like, exsqueeze me? Baking powder? This is all the ID you need --" He thumps his chest. "So he laughs at me and I ask -- politely, too, swear -- to see the manager. Turns out he *is* the manager."
"Ah," Clark says.
Kon slumps back in his chair. "Not like I was going to *drink* it. Beer tastes like feet, anyway."
Clark smiles at him. "I'm sure he was just doing his job."
"Yeah, yeah," Kon-El mutters. "Good on him."
A sudden curiosity strikes Clark. "*Do* you have ID?"
Kon-El reaches back and unties the apron, then thrusts out his chest. "Like I said --" He traces the edge of the S-shield with his thumb and looks up at Clark through his lashes. "All I need."
Superboy's costume comes from Cadmus. Its fabric is enhanced with various molecular agents to strengthen and focus his telekinesis. It only resembles Clark's own costume. It is not the same.
It's silkier, almost slippery, under Clark's hands. Kon-El smiles and unfolds, reaching for the touch, as Clark pulls him into his lap. His palms skate over the costume, testing the texture and resiliency of the fabric, as he lets his concentration wander and disperse.
The boy is so close, willing to go even closer.
"Hey," Kon-El says softly. He smiles slowly, planting his knee between Clark's legs and looping his arm around Clark's shoulders. "You still hungry?"
His slow smile sharpens into a teasing smirk. Clark cannot, will not, compare *this* -- Kon-El, clone and boy -- to Lois (wife and woman), yet the expression is identical. The comparison threatens.
"Hm," Clark says.
It does not matter what he's doing -- that he has a lapful of squirming, smirking boy, hot breath on his neck, his hands afire over snug fabric that whispers reproaches -- he cannot lie.
"Yes." His voice goes lower. "Kon-El, I --"
"*Damn* --" The sound goes into five syllables, hot damp breath, then dies inside Clark's mouth when Kon-El kisses him.
Hunger is a plague, a terrible abomination in this wonderful world, and Clark shakes, gripping Kon-El hard, drinking in sound and sensation, feasting on the kiss.
Between his slitted lids, he can see the boy's skin, painted pink and scarlet and gold. For a moment, he doesn't know if Kon-El is simply flushed with arousal or if his own vision has ascended, unconsciously, into the ultraviolet. Perhaps both; Clark forgets to care, peeling down Kon-El's leggings, pressing his hands into the firm flesh, kissing everywhere he can. Kon rises a little way into the air, then paws at Clark's shirt, deepening the kiss, *breathing* into Clark's throat, hovering warm and open and *there*.
There for the taking, all and everything within reach.
Kon-El slides back into his lap, straddling Clark's thighs and moaning "Kal" against his throat like an invocation. An invitation.
There are grottoes, darker than any Gotham alleyway, within Clark, depthless chasms that rustle and stir at that name, alive with shadowy things that Clark Kent could never name.
Clark Kent knows sunlight and open fields, threshing and tilling and harvesting: stewardship of the land and its fruits.
Superman knows horizons, the buxom curve of planets and glow of stars, the scream for help that sounds the same in every language: guardianship of the nations and their peoples.
But Kal-El shakes through shadows beneath red skies, rides the backs of beasts and studies incomprehensible secrets: ownership, of everything.
Kon-El clutches at the back of Kal's neck, bending backward and grinding into his groin. "Please, *fuck*, Kal, I want --" The boy -- his junior, imitator, ward -- drops to his knees. Distance and proximity, like gravity, recede to meaningless specks as Kal closes his hand in Kon's hair.
The words come without thinking. «Take you now, and feast well.» Old Kryptonese knows only the imperative voice when addressing minors, animals, and slaves.
Kon-El nods. He is ignorant but *willing*. He pants through open mouth while Kal shucks off the human garments. Kal wraps his fist around his cock, paying gratitude to Rao, his chest heaving. In his fist, into the boy's waiting mouth. Down his throat. The imperatives of legacy are this, slick yearning pressure around him, down to the root, and the boy's startled, wheeling blue eyes. Kal fucks into his throat, twists his hair and holds him still, staring down at him through fire.
The first Kon-El was a motherless bastard, too, adopted out of the grace and generosity of the house. This one shares some of Kal's blood, however, which makes this -- taken, swallowed, reverent *feast* -- all the sweeter.
That blood is kettle-drumming through the boy's half-human heart (just four chambers, weak as a shoelace), roasting his face red, driving Kal's hips to snap faster, deeper. Kon-El is here by *his* grace, named from *his* kindness, and he is both mirror and delicious hole. Kal fucks harder, nails in the boy's scalp, as the chair creaks, then splinters, beneath him.
He could have this all the time. Red-edged shadows across blue eyes and dark hair, these sweet, wet mouths: Robin, Bruce. Even Diana.
He stands over the obeisant, marveling at the sight of his cock distorting that face, disappearing deeper. He could *be* this, be himself, grab what is his. Everything within reach. He could cut the final cord of compassion just as easily as he does this, as he rears back, cock in hand, spattering and striping the boy's face.
This could be the safest route: keep the boy naked on his knees in the far reaches of the fortress. Lock away the impostor as tightly as Kal himself remains locked within the farmboy's hind brain.
The safest route, and certainly the most pleasurable.
The worst. The most wrong.
He sinks against the table, vertigo howling through him for a terrifying moment, crying out when the boy shuffles forward on his knees, following.
Kon-El presses his forehead against Clark's knee, gasping.
Clark pets Superboy's neck and hair with clumsy human hands.
"Fucking *A*," Kon-El says, his voice high and -- oh, *God* -- strangled. His eyes are rimmed with red, vibrant against the blue. He grins apologetically and wipes his mouth. He is...Clark shudders at the word, but Kon-El is *beautiful. Stumbling to his feet, adjusting himself, shaking his head. "You just -- you. Wow."
"Kon --"
"Jesus, you just get *better* --" Kon bounces on his toes, then jumps three feet into the air. "*Wow*, man."
Bending down, Clark fumbles around for his pants. His glasses. Kon dives down and hugs him from behind.
"Can Lois go on assignment every *month*?"
Clark's body stills. He stops breathing; his fists hit the floor. "No."
"Kidding, kidding --" Kon releases him and floats away. "Dude. Totally kidding."
Clark should apologize. He should grovel and beg and wail.
"Sorry," Kon whispers.
Clark nods. He dresses, keeping his eyes averted, and leaves as quickly as he can.
Pa always says, actions speak loudest.
*
Over the next few days, Clark works as hard as he can at both his jobs. He uncovers a nascent City Council graft ring, busts an illegal immigration scam, saves an Egyptian luxury liner from modern pirates, and digs several wells in Somalia.
As hard as he works, however, he can't stop listening. In the morning, at night, even a couple times over lunch, the *sounds* come to him. A distinct hitch in breathing, the squeak of bedsprings and long exhale, the damp staccato murmur of palm over flesh. Kon-El, touching himself, his free hand pinching a nipple like a gardener touching rose-buds, then the sharp bite of teeth into his wrists as he gets closer to orgasm. Lower groans then, imperfectly muffled, the slick slide of his tongue over his thumb, and by then, invariably, Clark has to excuse himself.
Rush for the restroom and pull himself off, rapidly, clinically, until all he can hear is his own respiration.
He hears other things, too. Just as disturbing, though far less *obviously* so.
From the Poconos headquarters, Superboy bragging to his teammates: "Yeah, I'm seeing somebody. You don't know them. It's pretty hush-hush."
Clark hears Impulse's excited squeak and volley of questions, Robin's derisive chuckle. Later, he hears Wonder Girl crying, the thumps of books she throws at the wall and the shivering fall of plaster.
"Do you go on dates?" Impulse has a thousand questions. "Take her out to dinner and bring her flowers and chocolate? Don't get Godiva, it's not as good as everyone thinks. Belgian's way better--"
"Mostly, we...stay in," Superboy says smugly. "If you get my drift."
Robin snickers. "Sure we do, Mr. Subtle."
"What drift? Whaddaya mean? Like, you rent videos and stuff? Why are you laughing? Stop laughing!"
"You'll understand," Superboy tells Impulse. "When--if--you ever grow up." There's a high squeal, a thud as they hit the floor, and then the odd scratchy noise that Clark has finally identified as a vigorous "noogie" applied to Impulse's hair.
Amid the noise, Clark works even harder. He sleeps alone in the center of the wide, cold bed, his face buried in Lois' pillow, inhaling her scent. He rises earlier and earlier, joins Pa for morning chores, Tibetan monks for dawn prayers, Guatemalan peasants for the rose harvest.
"Almost got him!" Lois shouts one evening into the satellite phone. "He can run, but he can't hide!"
"Not from you," Clark says and grins so widely his cheeks hurt.
"Exactly!" she shrieks over the static. "Jimmy says, and I quote, 'wazzup?'"
"I miss you," he says.
"What? Clark, speak up--"
"I miss you!" His shout rattles the doors on the kitchen cabinets. Glassware tinkles irritably.
"I miss you, too, jeez," Lois says and he can *see* the amusement tightening her features. "Think everyone in Siberia caught that?"
"Lois --"
"Gotta go, the troops're on the move. Love you miss you bye."
He loves Lois for more reasons, in more ways, than he can possibly count. She is brave and brash and so human he can barely *look* at her sometimes. She's the smartest person he's ever known, and her intelligence is caustic, precise, relentless.
In her absence, he visits the *other* genius in his life.
"Alfred left half a meat pie," Bruce says without looking up from his microscope. "He'll be sorry to have missed you."
"Oh?" Clark drifts through the cave. He isn't hungry, but the food will go to waste; Bruce is far too absorbed in his work to take care of trifles like hunger. "How's his rheumatism?"
"Tolerable, I believe is the party line." Bruce tugs off one gauntlet and adjusts the scope's focus. He won't ask Clark for assistance. "Were you worried?"
"Should I be?"
"No," Bruce says and inserts another slide. "Which leaves the question of your visit --"
"How's Robin?" Clark asks, and not *solely* because he finds himself floating next to Jason's memorial.
Bruce hums through his teeth.
"His birthday's coming up, isn't it?" Clark sets down the empty plate. The pie was, of course, delicious. Other than his own mother, Alfred is the only person who can make kidneys palatable. "And his girlfriend? Any word on her child?"
"Adopted and well-loved," Bruce replies.
Clark's inner reporter notes automatically that Bruce will answer questions about Alfred and Stephanie, but not Robin. "Bludhaven's treating Dick well, I hope?"
"I'm sure he'd be happy to see you." Bruce manages to inform that simple statement with several simultaneous meanings.
1. Ask Dick yourself.
2. Why *are* you here?
3. Don't think you can fool *me*.
Is that, Clark wonders, why he cleaves to both Lois and Bruce so readily, so absolutely? He cannot fool either of them.
He should not *want* to fool either.
He can fool Superboy. Clearly, he already has. "Seeing someone", indeed.
He coughs and Bruce, finally, spares him a glance.
Bruce looks tired; there are smudges under his eyes and tension, unusual even for him, around his mouth. Seventeen silver hairs on his head.
"Are you all right?" Clark asks and moves forward. "Bruce --"
"I'm fine." Bruce rubs the stubble on his jaw. "Are you?"
Clark's cheeks heat and he tries not to look away. Can't fool him. "Why do -- how do you --. What's it like? Having a...partner?"
"Batman needs a Robin," Bruce says, dryly as ever. "Better souls than I have impressed the truth of that on me."
The first few years that he knew Bruce, Clark feared him. Not his power, though for a human he was remarkably resourceful, but on account of his *anger*.
When Robin joined him, the anger did not lessen, nor recede; that would have been too much to hope for. It did, however, *shift*. Focus.
Clark hopes that *all* Robins understand how much they have helped. He wishes he could trust Bruce to tell them.
"The clone is --" Bruce moistens his lips. Clark winces at the clinical term, but does not wonder how Bruce knew what was on his mind. "A potential liability."
Clark spreads his hands. "He's a good kid. Maybe he needs some discipline, but --. His heart's --" In the right place. Human.
Mine. Clark shudders.
"Nevertheless." Bruce tilts his head fractionally. "He runs wild. His is a threat that you have yet to acknowledge fully."
"He's a good kid --"
"And you're not only repeating yourself, but curiously defensive."
"You *are* a robot, aren't you?" Clark grins to soften the jibe, though Bruce is back at work. "You can tell me."
"I imagine I'd be far more effective if I were," Bruce says.
"If," Clark echoes.
"He's bad material for a partner," Bruce continues. "As I can only surmise that the purpose of this visit was to elicit my opinion, there it is. The clone is far too...close to you."
Clark hears the stack of slides click together, their sounds mixing with the subsonic song of a bat to her brood.
"Now, if you'll excuse me--" Bruce says, but Clark has already left the cave, the manor, and entered the sky.
*
Two nights later, Clark wakes to a wet kiss on the back of his neck.
"Hey, honey, I'm *home*..." Lois licks his earlobe and squeezes his hip, urging him to roll over. "Miss me?" Lois straddles his belly and laughs into his mouth when she reaches back, fingertips grazing his erection. "I'll say. *Nice*."
Clark kisses her harder, craning his neck and wrapping his arms around her waist. A nudge here, a pinch there, and he succeeds in rolling her onto her back. Sleepiness vanishes in the face of her unexpected arrival, in the taste of her skin and heat of her body. He kisses down her throat, sucking clean the dirt of the road and stale air of however many planes she's taken. Lois shudders under him, guiding his hands to her breasts, and he relishes the familiar rub of her nipples in the center of his palms as he kisses the expanse of her breastbone.
When she starts pushing her hips against him, scratching his shoulders, Clark rests his mouth over her heart and stills until she cuffs his ear.
"Tease," she mutters, then sighs as he trails his tongue down her belly. "Okay, better. Much--*ah!*--better."
She lifts to meet him as Clark slides down the bed, wrapping one leg under his arm and pushing his head down.
"Good boy--" Lois breaks off, her breath whistling, when Clark presses his open mouth over her mound, sucking already. "Oh, *Christ*, Kent. Just like that --"
Her stomach flattens, going rigid, as she pushes against him and pulls his hair. This is the woman he loves, rangy and bossy and *gorgeous*. Slick already, she tastes like -- like *Lois*. Clark is no poet, but Lois makes him want to be one, makes him want to liken her to wine and opium, rich delicacies that wriggle on the tongue and drown his senses.
She sings over him, around him, her thighs clamping around his skull and holding him in place. She's telling him what to do, and though Clark *knows*, and knows well, he loves the fact that it turns on her to tell him.
She's taught him well, repeatedly, and Clark revels in the intimate, instantaneous signs of her pleasure: the pulse of skin against his lips, the quivering muscles in her legs, the hoarse, vulgar curses she lets loose when he holds her inner lips and clitoris in his mouth and breathes out.
She'd hit him if she knew he was praising her in these terms, thinking of orchids that tremble in the jungle canopy and tidepools at dawn, alive with motion. Her labia plump between his teeth and the smell of her is intoxicating, indescribable. He has enough self-control to resist grinding against the corner of the mattress, but only just.
She comes in torrents of curses and yanks on his hair, holding him down, coming again over his tongue until she falls back, limp and exhausted, chuckling.
"Get up here," she says in what's nearly a growl when Clark slides his hands down her legs. "On your back."
He complies, grinning up at her with a wet, smeared face. All trace of her exhaustion is gone as Lois straddles him again, fingernails raking his skin, and sinks down. He wants to shout and curse like she does at the sudden *accuracy* of her body around him, but he settles his hands on her hips and watches her move instead.
"Harder, Kent --"
Never *too* hard.
He pushes into her and her head falls back, her sharp chin jutting heavenward. She shakes around, over, him when he touches her breasts, thumbs flicking her nipples, in time with her jolting thrusts downward and the fast, easy rhythm of his own hips upward.
Lois falls forward, onto her knees, against his chest, changing the angle dramatically and *rubbing* herself against him. Clark pets her hair and rolls in and out, controlling his breathing, watching her carefully, drinking her in. She shoves her hand between them, and he's watched her often enough to know precisely the crooked angle of her index finger on her clitoris she's using to bring herself off.
"*Fuck*," she grits out as she comes again, ass rising in the air, leaving him. "You fucking --" She doesn't finish, just moves her wet hand to his penis and glares at him. Lois is always fierce, but never more so than *now*, flushed with orgasm and deadset on more pleasure.
She scrapes her nails down his shaft, over his testicles, and Clark bites his lip as red heat spills from his eyes, as he shoots and groans, and groans again when she licks her hand clean.
"And *that*," she breathes into his ear as she wraps herself around his side, "is why I came home."
*
Morning comes all too soon. Clark wants to go out, get something accomplished, but Lois murmurs in her sleep and clutches his hand before he can rise.
"How's the kid?" Lois accepts the coffee he hands her with a happy sigh and takes a noisy sip. "Thanks."
"Omelette?" Clark holds the egg carton in one hand, a green pepper in the other. "There's still some sausage, I think --"
"Chorizo?" She twists in her seat excitedly.
"Yes. Coming right up." He slices the cold sausage, adds pepper and onion, and breaks three eggs. When he first went off to college, he could pluck a chicken and milk a barnful of cows, but he didn't know how to cook. He's learned over the years, though Lois, like Ma, still scoffs at his dependence on recipes. He thinks of Kon-El's absurd, nearly-paternal pride in his microwave and the eggs splash messily into the pan. "Um. Huh. Scrambled okay instead?"
"Long as it's hot." Lois flips through the paper. "And Superboy?"
"Oh." Clark tilts the pan. "He's good. Settling in."
Lois' paper rustles.
"Batman says he's a liability. Potentially," he adds.
She snorts lightly. The eggs turn opaque.
"Because he's, quote-unquote, running wild."
"You two just noticed that, huh?" She looks for all the world like she's engrossed in the business section, while tapping out a draft on her PDA and drinking her coffee. Clark marvels. "Good take on the hedge fund."
"Thanks!" Clark drops the sausage and vegetables into the pan. "I had to get Troy to explain them to me, but I think I covered it fairly well. Perry wanted --"
"I told Martha the week he appeared that he needed parents," Lois says.
Reaching for the spatula he just dropped, Clark knocks his head against the oven door. The pan rattles, egg slopping over the side.
"Easy, tiger," she says lightly, reaching over to pat Clark's arm. "Just breakfast, not organic chem." He grins gratefully at her and she arches one eyebrow. "Let alone an obstacle course."
"Dropped --" He shows her the spatula. Lois smirks and squeezes his arm. He wants to sag against her. "Welcome home."
Her smirk softens as she tilts her cheek for a kiss. Her make-up is powdery and sweet against his mouth. "You're a disaster, Kent."
"I know," Clark says.
With a new spatula, he divides the contents of the pan between two plates. He gives Lois the larger portion, which she switches with his own when his back's turned, refilling her coffee. She eats without looking at her plate, gracefully scrolling through the headlines from Asia on her PDA. When she catches him watching, she just winks at him.
Lois can combine reading with *any* activity, whether eating, walking, driving (though Clark begs her not to do that), even writing. On a midnight flight last summer, she made him circle the southern U.S. three times so she could finish a chapter of Trollope.
Clark's own focus is much simpler. Far more basic. He's tried to multitask, but even having more than two windows open in his web browser makes him nervous.
When her plate is clean, her fourth coffee swallowed down, and her PDA clicked closed, Lois leans across the table and takes his hands.
"You're not thinking about hedge funds," she tells him.
"No."
"You're happy I'm home."
"Immensely." He kisses her right hand, then her left.
"Which leaves Superboy." Her wedding ring gleams at him as she withdraws her hands.
Clark laces his fingers together and twists his own wedding band. "He's living on his own. Having *parties*. He just got a 27-inch TV."
Tapping her nail against the lip of her mug, Lois says, "You're jealous."
"What? No."
She snickers softly. The sound makes him think of Robin; he has to squeeze shut his eyes, just for a moment.
"He's a good kid, Lois."
"Of course he is. He's you." She stands up, tugging straight her skirt and touching her hair. "We're going to be late. I've got a grand entrance to make."
Clark rinses off the dishes and puts them in the dishwasher that, over his objections, she insisted they get. "I don't do dishes and you break them. QED." He pauses, hand on the sink's edge, but hears only silence.
Then Lois calls from the front door and he hurries to meet her, pulling on his suit jacket with soapy hands, his glasses slipping down his nose.
"Call your mom," Lois says in the elevator as she dusts off his shoulder. "She'll know what to do."
"You don't?" he asks, honestly surprised.
Lois frowns. "Not a maternal bone in this body," she says and goes up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek. "You know that."
"I do," he says.
He does know that. Of Lois, he's certain.
[end]