(~(~)~)
maleusiophobia: (n) a fear of childbirth
~
By Chloe's count, Clark's x-rayed the baby four times. And those are the times she's caught him at it. The thought of Superman counting little fingers and toesies makes her laugh, a laugh that dwindles to an unconvincing cough when Pete looks at her with raised eyebrows and a questioning half-smile that she can't answer. She wonders if Lana senses it; if someone looking through your skin and scanning your insides is something you can feel.
Chloe should be offended that Clark didn’t volunteer who he is and what he can do. Their senior year of high school, there was an explosion at Plant 3, and Chloe arrived with pencil and notepad and journalistic tenacity in time to see Clark emerge from the building, rescuing Lex Luthor (he was always rescuing Lex back then) in a manner that required him to be flame-retardant, or faster than the average mortal, or both. She confronted him the next day, and he confessed, tired of lying (he told her later) and glad to have someone other than his parents he could talk with. About a year after that he confessed that Pete had been in on the secret since their sophomore year of high school, which earned the back of both men’s heads intimate experience with her hand. So she should be offended, but, well, it’s Clark.
Nell descends on the three-season room. Since Lana announced her pregnancy, Nell has been an unassailable mother-hen, and no one is safe – not even Pete. Lana and Pete moved in with Nell for convenience’s sake when they returned to Smallville a year ago, but Nell is a godsend for panicking expectant parents. “It’s high time you were in bed, young lady!”
Lana rolls her eyes. “Yes, Aunt Nell.” She holds out her hand to Pete, who helps her to her feet. She is seven months pregnant and radiant. In the same position, Chloe’s sure she would look like a beached satellite. “Thanks for stopping by, you guys.”
“Are you kidding?” Chloe kisses Lana’s cheek. “You guys are living the life, you know? No way we’re gonna miss that – right, Clark?”
Chloe can never tell what Clark is thinking when it comes to Lana. He got over his crush long ago, and he’s happy for Lana and Pete. But sometimes he looks at Lana, and the look on his face is so wistful that Chloe wants to smack him and slink into a corner and feel as invisible as she did in high school.
“Absolutely.”
Lana snorts. “‘Living the life.’ So says Chloe Sullivan, the Planet’s rising star. Where did you spend Christmas?”
Chloe sighs. Not this again. “Covering the President of France’s visit to the White House.”
“And the summer?”
“Investigating an ag. scandal in the Mississippi Delta.”
Lana crosses her arms over the baby. “Then not another word.”
Chloe rolls her eyes at Pete, who gives the “don’t look at me” shrug. “See you Wednesday?”
“Absolutely.” Lana’s frowning, but Pete blocks this out. He gives Chloe a hug, and one for Clark, too – the manly, back-slapping hug Pete can’t help retreating to with Clark. The safe hug. “See ya, Clark.”
“Bye, Pete.” Clark kisses Lana’s cheek, too, and it doesn’t seem awkward to Chloe, and she rethinks the situation again. “Lana.”
“G’night, Clark,” she whispers. Lana’s lost most of her ambient hopelessness, but she always seems sad when talking to Clark. Chloe can’t decide if she regrets never taking her chance with him, or if the damsel in distress routine is just ingrained where he’s concerned.
Clark stretches his back as they walk into the summer evening. The chairs were low to the ground, not made for men with long legs. “Lana looks good, don’t you think? Happy.”
Chloe nods. “But Pete’s the one I can’t get over. He was beaming.”
“Fatherhood’s going to be great for him.”
Clark smiles when he says this, but Chloe hears it anyway. “It bothers you,” she says. “That you can’t have kids.”
Clark shrugs and looks into the night sky so she won’t see his too-bright eyes. It’s kind of sweet that he tries so hard to hide from her, though it’s been years since he could pull it off. “Sure. But I figure, that’s why there’s adoption, right?”
“Right.”
“What about you? Does it bother you?”
Chloe wishes her infertility were genetic, or the result of some lingering illness suffered in childhood. It’s been three years since the tests, and she can’t forgive herself for the discovery that she’s done this to herself. It was another Smallville meteor mutant attack, a month before graduation, and Chloe Sullivan was first on the scene. If she’d had any idea that exposure to whatever Tory Becker was mixing with meteorite dust was going to prevent her having children — she banishes the thought. “Yeah. But I see us in ten years, sitting around your living room in Metropolis, telling huge broods of adopted kids to play nice and don’t break Grandma Kent’s antique rocking chair.”
Clark chuckles. “And you’re complaining that your husband can’t stop rushing off to catch the next big story, and I’m wondering when my wife will stop thinking that running a multi-national corporation means she has to be in every nation but this one.”
“And Lana and Pete will show up with their 2.36 perfect children and make us look bad-“
“And Lex will try to take over the world again-“
“And you’ll develop a huge psychological complex when you discover that your youngest daughter has a crush on Superman!”
He makes a face. “That’s disgusting.”
“I know.” She smiles. “That’s what makes it great.”
He starts to say something, but they’re at Chloe’s father’s house, so instead he says, “I’ll see you on Saturday?”
“Eight o’clock.”
He makes a face. “Why do we do this so early?”
“Fish aren’t morning people. You get up early and catch ‘em before they’ve had their coffee.”
He laughs. “Chloe Sullivan: the only woman on the planet who approaches fishing the same way she approaches interviews.”
Chloe shrugs and climbs out of the car. “It’s never failed me before.”
She’s halfway up the driveway when Clark (who will wait until she’s inside before driving away, despite the fact that he’s x-rayed the house to make sure it contains nothing mutanty, monstery, or otherwise unsavory) calls to her. “I had a good time tonight.”
She pauses and looks back. He never says this. He hasn’t said he had a bad time, so it’s sort of implied that he had a good one. She smiles over her confusion. “Me, too.”
But something feels off, and she worries about it all week.
(~(~)~)
Clark enjoys his annual fishing trip with Chloe, and he feels guilty about this. She sees it in his eyes. He hated fishing with his father – she remembers a fight between them, a fight involving football tickets, Lex, and the tension that hovered around them the way it does around three males of any species vying for dominance in a small pack.
She smiles, and he catches it and smiles back, but there’s something...something more about that look, something that makes Chloe shiver the way she used to when Clark and Lex were in the same room. “What are you smiling at?” he asks.
She’s never been able to lie to Clark – not well, and not about important things – and at some point she gave up trying. “I was remembering the year Lex arranged for Whitney to play with the Sharks, and you and your dad had the fight about the fishing trip.”
Clark’s smile vanishes. That was a bad year – Clark discovered his mind-blowing abilities, often at hugely inappropriate times; Whitney’s father died; Lex crashed into their lives. “Dad was always so serious about it. We were out at the crack of dawn, and we just sat in the boat and didn’t talk, because he didn’t want to scare the fish. You don’t give a damn if we catch anything.”
She leans back on the pier. “I wouldn’t know what to do if I did catch anything!” They’ve been here five hours and haven’t gotten so much as a nibble. Thank God.
Clark laughs and flicks his line over the water. “Dad would’ve hated this. He’d call us a disgrace to a noble art.” Chloe says nothing – Clark doesn’t want an answer. “But I’d give anything if he were alive to say it.”
That was a far worse year, the year after they graduated from college. First Whitney, fighting a war half a world away; then Jonathan Kent, right here in Smallville. Chloe got arrested for the first time and Clark had to come to Tijuana and bribe the officials. They had the biggest fight of their lives that day, as Clark hauled her out of town, and she kept trying to go back – she hadn’t gotten her story, damn it. That was the first time she experienced Clark’s ability to fly first-hand.
“Next time,” he growled as he set her down outside her apartment in Metropolis, “say ‘Thank you.’”
Clark looks at her and sighs. “What are you thinking about now?”
She grins, abashed. “Tijuana.”
He stares at the water. “We’re only supposed to talk about frivolous things out here.”
“I know. Sorry.” She reaches into the cooler and pulls out two Cokes. “This’ll cheer you up.”
He casually knocks the caps off the bottles and hands one back to Chloe. Being the Man of Steel has advantages that most of Superman’s adoring fans would consider far beneath him. Most of them, for instance, would never dream that he often uses his laser-vision to melt the car door when he locks his keys in the ignition.
“I was so worried about you,” he says quietly. “When you called from a Mexican jail...” He shudders slightly. “I foolishly allowed myself to believe that that would be the last time I’d have to worry that much.”
If Chloe hadn’t seen Clark’s adoption records, she would swear that “Worry” was his middle name, but there’s something else to that statement. It’s like a confession, and it feels tied to the look he gave her earlier, and she feels a ghostly breeze breathe across her skin.
Only, there’s no breeze.
She takes a drink and holds it until it is sweetly warm against her tongue and cheeks. Swallowing carefully, she gives her line a lazy tug, for form’s sake, and asks, “How’s Lois?”
He rolls his eyes and rolls his bottle between his hands. “You saw her yesterday at the office – how did she seem to you?”
“I meant—“ Chloe pushes a few strands of blond hair off her forehead. What would their co-workers think if they saw the two of them now – Chloe in a mint-green bikini top and frayed denim cut-offs; Clark in a thin white t-shirt and khaki shorts, their shoes abandoned at the shore? Clark dangles his feet in the water; Chloe has her legs crossed under her; and there’s no way they could look less like reporters.
“You meant, ‘How’s Lois in bed?’ or, ‘How’s the great plan to seduce Lois?’”
Chloe grins in spite of herself. “You said it, not me.”
Clark shakes his head impatiently and pushes up the glasses he doesn’t need. “No, Chloe, you said it. You were the one who started spinning the epic saga of Lois and Clark, charting unexplored territories or whatever the hell it was you said.”
“Admit it: it has the ring of inevitability to it,” she says. “I could never carry it as far as I wanted, though – couldn’t bring myself to call her ‘Meriwether.’”
“Inevitability.” Clark snorts, and silence returns for a moment. “I never had a plan to seduce Lois.”
“Okay.”
“I didn’t.”
“I believe you, Clark. Jeez.” Clark’s starting to scare her. He’s never been this darkly intense and earnest around her; it’s never been important that she believe what he says, or the nobility of his intentions, or...what? That he’s not trying to get into Lois Lane’s pants? Why should she care?
Other than the reason she’s cared since they were freshmen in high school? She’s over that. She is.
The sun and the gentle rocking of the pier lull Chloe into a light sleep, and Clark shakes her gently an hour later. “Don’t want you turning into a lobster,” he says. “The summer after sophomore year was not pretty.”
She grimaces and sits up. “Don’t remind me. I couldn’t sit down for a week, and my, um...” Clark’s taken off his shirt. Sun-bronzed skin and lickable rivulets of sweat running down his broad chest and back. “My yearbook photo. Ugh.”
He doesn’t notice her momentary absence from her head. “Nobody’s yearbook photo looked good. It was a rule.”
“Lana’s always looked good.”
“Yeah, well.” Clark frowns. “Lana never lived enough to get mussed up the way the rest of us did.”
“You weren’t exactly getting ‘mussed up’ the way the rest of us were, Clark.”
He blushes. “Well, Lex was-“
“Christ, Clark, that is not what I meant.” She rubs the bridge of her nose. “I meant the running around battling meteor mutants and saving our sorry asses.” She shakes her head. “When I think of everything you could’ve done then, if you could’ve gotten away from all of us.”
“No way!” She’s pissed him off. “Don’t ever say that, Chloe. I wouldn’t change a thing I did for any of you. None of it. My only regret is that I didn’t do more.”
Whitney. Jonathan Kent. In Clark’s mind, his greatest failures. Chloe’s told him, so often her head spins thinking of it, that these are things he could not have changed, but he doesn’t listen.
She knocks her shoulder against his. “Hey. I know. I’m sorry.”
Before she can lean away again, Clark’s arm shoots out – faster than a speeding bullet, right? – and wraps around her shoulder. It’s weird. It’s weirder than the average weird things that happen in Smallville. But it’s nice. So she leans into Clark and lets him do whatever he’s doing.
They sit like this for nearly an hour. It doesn’t stop being nice. And at some point, it almost stops being weird.
(~(~)~)
“Hello, Chloe.”
Chloe tries not to gawk. Martha did a lot of aging when her husband died, and Chloe has trouble remembering that this woman is a few years younger than Gabe. Gray is heavy in her hair, her crow’s feet and worry lines are deep, and her shoulders slump. But the air of defeat she carried with her that first year is fading, and Chloe’s glad of that. “Hi, Mrs Kent.”
“Chloe, will you ever call me Martha?”
Chloe pretends to consider this. “Doesn’t seem likely.” It’s “Martha” in her head, but her mouth can never form the syllables.
“Okay.” Martha chuckles and links her arm with Chloe’s. “Clark and Pete are parking the car.”
There they are, loping across the lawn. Clark laughs at something Pete’s saying, big dork grin on his face – and trips over a tree root, catching himself at the last instant from sprawling face-first in the grass. “More powerful than a locomotive,” Chloe murmurs, and Martha snorts.
Pete snickers and helps steady his friend, and Chloe shouldn’t be so proud of him for keeping his hand on Clark’s elbow until he’s sure Clark’s stable, but it’s Smallville, and she’ll take progress in whatever increments it’s offered in.
“Hey, Chloe,” Pete says.
Clark leans over, and Chloe has no idea what he’s going to do until his lips connect with her cheek. “Hi,” he whispers in her ear, and there’s that damned breeze again.
“Uh, hey, Clark.” She exchanges bewildered glances with Martha, but when she looks back at Clark she can’t stop smiling.
“No Lana?” It’s sweet, Chloe thinks, that Martha asks this every year.
Pete shakes his head. “I tried, Mrs Kent. She just won’t come anymore.”
Martha smiles sadly. “I hope she’ll change her mind someday. It would be good for her.”
Pete nods his agreement, then turns to Clark. “Ready?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
Chloe’s college boyfriend taught her about the white rocks, and she carries a small handful every year to leave wherever they stop. Lewis Lang. Laura Potter Lang. Lillian Luthor. Julian Luthor. Jackson Fordman. Whitney Fordman. Jonathan Kent.
And the mutants. The ones who couldn’t survive what Smallville made them. Too many to count, almost, too many to remember the names of. Such a crowded cemetery for so small a town. So many white rocks for someone so young.
The picnic was new, last year. Clark was appalled, but Martha insisted. Chloe believes Jonathan would get a kick out of it. They spread the blanket in front of his headstone and pass around egg-salad sandwiches and strawberry pie and plastic cups of cold lemonade. Chloe misses this, in Metropolis. The feeling that the things around her are real, that the food has connections to the Earth and the people have connections to each other.
Martha lifts her cup, and they follow suit. “To old friends and loved ones – the ones who are gone, and the ones who are still with us.” She has said this every year – even before they had glasses to toast with.
Chloe is about to drink when Clark adds, “And to the journeys we make with old friends – the ones that are over and the ones yet to start.” Chloe’s eyes widen, because Clark is staring at her almost defiantly. And blushing. Chloe tries to swallow too much, too fast, and starts choking. Clark’s hand is there, soothing, on her back, and it stays there long after she’s regained her breath, not exactly soothing now, and she looks to Pete and Martha to save her, but they seem not to see. They seem to be trying very hard not to see.
“Well, I think it’s time to clean up and head out, don’t you, Pete?” Martha asks, pointedly not looking at Clark and Chloe.
“Sure thing, Mrs Kent; let me give you a hand with that.” And before Chloe quite knows what’s going on, Pete and Martha have gathered up the plates and cups and leftover pie. Everything’s tucked in the picnic basket, and they’re heading towards the cars.
When Chloe tries to follow, she finds Clark’s hand on her arm, holding her in place. “What’s going on, Clark?”
“I wanted—“ He looks at his shoes and blushes, then brings his eyes up to meet hers. They’re always bluer than she remembers, bluer than the sky. “I asked them if we could get a minute alone today.”
“Um. Okay.” Although, it’s the Smallville cemetery, which is not so okay.
“Listen, Chloe,” Clark says, and at least he’s walking them towards a towering maple at the edge of Jonathan’s section, so whatever this is, it isn’t going to happen in the middle of the tombstones. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that conversation we had the other day about us and our adopted kids.”
She laughs. “Clark, we have that conversation all the time. If it bothers you – I don’t mean anything by it.”
“No, I like it. It’s just that – have you ever noticed that when we talk about it, it’s always just us? We always imagine our spouses being somewhere else.”
“We can’t picture them.” She shrugs. “Picturing our kids are easy; we assume they’re going to look like us, even though intellectually we know that’s not right. But putting a face to the people we’re going to marry, when we’re working under the assumption that we haven’t met them yet – or – Clark, is that what this is about? You and Lois—“
“Would you please, for the love of God, stop talking about Lois?” He jams his glasses up almost violently on his nose and takes both of Chloe’s hands. “This is about – this is about us, Chloe. You and me.”
“Us?” she echoes weakly, and if her legs continue to support her throughout the rest of this conversation, she’ll be amazed.
“And...cutting out the middle man.”
“Cutting out—“ A giggle starts somewhere deep in Chloe’s diaphragm, and she can’t stop it from wriggling its way into her lungs, up her trachea, and out her mouth as a much bigger laugh than she expects. Clark looks extremely hurt and drops her hands. “Clark Kent, that is the least romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.” She waves her hand around. “And in a cemetery, no less.”
He starts to turn away. “Well, I’m sorry it’s not the tower room at Vittorio’s and a string quartet.”
“Hey. Hey!” She catches his hand and turns him back towards her. “I’m not – it’s weird, you know. This. Now.” Chloe waves her hand again. “Here. But it’s...for you, for us, it’s perfect.” She smiles up at him. “It’s perfect.”
“So—“ Clark licks his lower lip. “Are you saying yes?”
She laughs and can’t remember when she’s felt this light. “Of course I’m saying yes. Although, if you think I need more convincing – say, the tower room at Vittorio’s and a string quartet...”
He laughs, too, relieved. “Maybe for our first anniversary.”
Chloe has to grip Clark’s hands extra-hard, and she’s glad he’s strong enough to support her, because everything she thought she knew about the world has tilted forty-five degrees. Clark wants her. He wants her long enough to have anniversaries. Hell, he may want her long enough to have adopted children. So she’ll never have a baby for Clark to x-ray. She’ll have Clark.
He stares at her, his eyes so blue they hurt, and then he leans down, slowly, and kisses her. It’s so right, kissing Clark in the Smallville cemetery, surrounded by friends. Chloe thinks they’d approve. He pulls away and beams at her.
“What took you so long?” she whispers.
His grin turns sheepish. “The middle man?”
Chloe laughs and tugs him down to kiss her again. Clark can fly. And as long as he keeps kissing her like that, so can she.
END