silly goose inc

“You don’t want our room?” Ma asked. “Lord knows you’ve been too big to sleep on this old couch since you were about fourteen.”

Clark laughed. “The couch is fine, Ma. Besides, where would the two of you sleep?”

There was no question of him using his own bedroom; that would stick Lois with the couch, and what kind of hospitality would that be? No kind he was raised with. Before he even opens his eyes, Clark listens, but he can’t hear her up yet. He takes another deep breath and smiles, picturing her asleep in his childhood bedroom. Lois. In what he still considers the safest place in the world.

A few years after Clark grew up and went off to—as Ma said at the time—seek broader horizons, some friends of his parents sold their farm and moved up to Topeka. The loss of proximity worried Clark, especially early on, with him far from home. His parents have since proved that worry pointless, staying in touch with their friends, and going up for a visit a few times a year. It’s where they are this morning, where they’ve been since lunchtime yesterday.

“You don’t mind?” Pa checked for the hundredth time, standing with the door of the truck open while Ma tsked over the heat getting out. “Clark, I’m so glad you and Lois came, and I want you to have just the nicest Christmas…”

“We did, Pa,” Clark assured him. “Christmas was great. I know you and Ma have your own routine now.”

“Don’t you leave before we get back.”

“I promise. Flight’s not until the twenty-ninth.”

“Ok then, Clark,” Pa said, climbing up and closing the truck’s door with a hollow bang.

Eventually, Clark sits up and puts on socks, then wanders over to the window. He twitches the curtain aside and beams. He can’t recall many white Christmases from his childhood, but the weather’s trying its best this week. Today, the frosted grass sparkles, and the gloomy sky says snow’s not impossible. The sun’ll probably burn off the frost first; Clark squints at the horizon, where it’s already starting to rise. Just for a minute, he cracks open the window, inhaling air so crisp it almost hurts, even as the early light greets him like a loved one, its heat another familiar blanket.

He’s pouring Lois a glass of orange juice when he hears the shower start running. Of course, it’s crossed his mind that, with Ma and Pa in Topeka, he and Lois are alone in the house. He’s sure it crossed Ma’s mind too, same as it did when he confirmed Lois would be coming to Kansas with him and Ma said, “I’ll hunt up some bedding for the couch.” There are rules the years can’t touch. It doesn’t matter how old he is; unless he and Lois are married, there’s no sleeping in the same bed under this roof. Never mind what happens in Metropolis. Metropolis is not Smallville. But there’s an unspoken suspension of the rules in his parents’ absence. A Clark, we trust your choices implication that has always held true.

Clark pads into his bedroom, settling the orange juice on the nightstand next to his battered paperback copy of Huckleberry Finn. There’s a pen between the pages that wasn’t there before. He grins over Lois’s bookmark, flips the softened pages under his thumb without losing her place.

It’s only a minute or two before Lois is back from her shower. Like the brisk winter air, the sight of her renders him breathless. She piled her hair atop her head to keep it out of the spray, but a few dark strands hang down, wet, kissing her neck. Below that, she’s already swapped a bath towel for one of his old button-ups, cotton worn soft, likely plucked from a dresser drawer. (For all Ma’s unfussy practicality, she has a sentimental streak a country-mile wide where he’s concerned, preserving his old things.) The shirt hangs long on Lois, but not so long Clark doesn’t stare.

He stubs his toes on the nightstand as he’s turning to face her, forcing him to hop for a moment as he rubs his foot, smiling sheepishly.

Lois laughs at him and says, “Good morning.”

“Morning. I, uh, brought you—” he starts, gesturing towards the glass on the nightstand.

“You know, you’re cute when you’re flustered,” Lois interrupts, tossing a toiletry bag into her open suitcase on the floor and coming forward to cradle his cheek as he straightens up.

“Cute, huh?” Clark asks wryly. His lips are on hers before he’s finished talking, the question blurring into a kiss.

They kiss for a minute, easy, unpresumptuous, even as Clark’s hands settle on Lois’s hips, finding the shape of her through his shirt. She smells a little like it already, shower-heated skin taking on the scent of lavender—Ma always tucks some in the drawers—and like whatever body wash she brought from her apartment. The combination turns Lois into something cool and sweet, sun-blown and arrested by frost. She smells like a meadow in deep shade.

“How’s the couch treating you?” she asks when they break apart, her wrists looped over his shoulders.

“I think you know where I’d rather be sleeping,” Clark responds, half-bewitched.

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmm.”

And because they’re alone, and because he likes the way she smells, and because, gosh darnit, today might be the first day of their visit that snow falls on Smallville, Kansas, Clark takes a seat on the edge of his mattress, swivelling Lois to face him with a light touch on her hip.

“It’s like 8am,” she points out.

Clark shrugs, unbuttoning her from the top down.

Lois laughs, half-exasperated, but he carries on, smirking up at her. Naturally, he has a great deal of self-discipline. There’s a lot he can endure. It certainly won’t kill him not to touch Lois for another couple of days, but resisting for no reason? That’s just masochistic, which is one thing Clark’s not. He loves her. He wants to be close to her.

He shifts on the bed, thankful for the roominess of his pajama bottoms as the shirt Lois wears hangs open. She wears nothing beneath it. He returns his hands to her hips, over the shirt but rubbing circles through the fabric.

“You ever have girls in here?” Lois wonders, crowding close as she plants a knee next to him on the mattress.

“Girls?” Clark repeats. He brushes the fabric aside to stroke his palm up the front of her thigh. In his lap, he’s already straining for her, and he wants to pull her down with both hands. But that wouldn’t be polite.

“Yeah, Clark, girls,” she insists. “And not, like, because one was tutoring you in algebra.”

He grins because Lois is funny. He’s not sure whether this is a joke, a well-meaning tease while she’s got him right where she wants him—classic Lois.

“Never,” he says, ducking to kiss the soft skin of her thigh. “In fact, our first time was actually my first time.”

Lois has been running her fingers lightly through his hair and down his neck, but they freeze with the rest of her.

“What?” she asks hollowly.

“Yeah. I guess I should’ve asked sooner, but, did I do ok for a virgin?”

Clark tries to look as innocent as the version of himself he’s describing, but either something in his face gives him away or it was only the shock of the supposed confession that made Lois pause. She scoffs and shakes her head at him. Her fingers flinch into a tight grip on his hair that only lasts a second, but makes him harder all the same.

“You’re unbelievable,” she informs him, trying not to smile.

Clark grins back.

“I’m a little believable. The proof is all around you.” He looks away from her to glance quickly at the teenage memorabilia decorating this room.

“I should’ve known better than to underestimate the charisma of the athletic darling of Smallville High.” Lois gazes at the prominent trophies, then raises an eyebrow at him. “Baseball, huh?”

“I rounded a base or two in my time,” he confesses humbly.

“It’s just that your dorky music taste threw me off. Who’s tutoring that kid?”

This time, he’s sure he’s being provoked. Instead of responding in words, Clark reaches for the back of Lois’s head and urges her into another kiss. She’s quick to plant her other knee on the bed, to sway forward into him, his head tipping way back to kiss her. He slides his hands up the back of her thighs, under the skirt, over her ass. He can feel how heavily Lois is breathing, but she doesn’t drop down onto his lap yet. Soon, he leaves her mouth alone, kissing the center of her chest where her heart pounds, biting her collarbone, cupping and hefting her breasts. Lois sweeps a fingertip around the shape of his ear, pinches her nails into the lobe.

“This tutoring thing…” Clark starts, giving her breast a squeeze before beginning to place wet kisses around her nipple. “That’s an interesting assumption. You think I struggled?”

Distracted, it takes Lois a moment to respond.

“More that you’re the type of person to actually ask for help when you need it.”

Clark knows, by the way Lois is shifting, that she’s eager for him to bite, to suck. He’s careful just to tease.

“Unlike you?”

“Yeah,” she says, panting out a laugh. “Unlike me.”

“What about now?” he asks leadingly, fingers tugging lightly at her other nipple while his mouth continues to avoid this one. “Anything you need, Lois? Anything you want to ask for?”

Instead of replying verbally, Lois cheats, pulling his hand off her breast and thrusting it between her thighs. He cups her; it’s just enough to feel that she’s aroused.

“I said ask,” he jokes.

“Well, you can’t change a person just like that,” Lois argues. Her fingers ring the neck of his shirt, back and forth, scratching through his chest hair. “How’d you learn to ask for what you want?”

Clark grins at her.

“Self-taught.”

With that, he curls his fingers inside her, two of them, which makes Lois gasp. He can’t help it when his own mouth falls open, mirroring her pleasure as he massages her firmly. By the ease of it, by the speed at which she has his fingers slick to the knuckle, Clark has suspicions that his eyes close to imagine.

“Lois… were you touching yourself in the shower?” He whispers it without opening his eyes, shudders at Lois’s quiet groan.

“Were you listening?”

“No, I respect your privacy. How about answering my question?”

The encouragement is gentle, like the way he introduces a third finger. He hears Lois’s choked exhalation. The sound of her is enhanced with his eyes shut. The crushed-petal smell of her.

“Yes,” she admits, a breath.

Clark opens his eyes to find hers closed. He withdraws his trio of fingers partway, stroking her shallowly while grinding her clit under his palm. Lois’s hips roll with his touch.

“Will you tell me what you were thinkin’ about?” he requests.

“You,” she says. “This.”

His darn mouth seems to be running away with him this morning, because he says, “This? My fingers inside you, touching right where you like? Maybe… this?”

Clark puts his mouth around her nipple and sucks, scraping his teeth over it as he pulls back—as he tries to pull back; Lois’s swift hand on the back of his head is her way of asking for more. He can do more. He licks her, then closes his mouth over her again, sliding his fingers slowly from her cunt to smear over her clit. The pressure makes her hips buck, so he wraps an arm tightly around her waist to keep her movement contained enough for his mouth and fingers. When he draws away from her breast, Lois tugs his face up into a furious kiss that nearly knocks him onto his back.

“Is it fucked up—” she demands between kisses. “—that I did that—in your parents’ shower?"

He barely has the breath to laugh.

“No. I’m just jealous. I’m kind of dying on that couch, Lois.”

“Oh, you wanted to touch me too, huh?”

Clark knows it’s no revelation, but his girl still gloats, hand falling to his lap. Cotton PJ bottoms aren’t much of a barrier. The heat of her palm, the confidence of her stroke… combined with what her touch does to his head, the memories it triggers, he’s helpless. But he doesn’t want help.

His hands go to her shoulders, pushing his shirt away to fall down her arms when she straightens them.

“You’re a work of art,” he tells her, gaze on her body, her body on his. Her hips are hitching as she grinds against his wet fingers.

“Stop it.”

“If you want.”

Clark goes back to kissing her, but after a minute, Lois breaks it off to say, “But more… other compliments.”

“I’m afraid I don’t—” he begins, fingers stalling.

“Clark,” Lois says sharply. “Talk…” A shift in her expression tells him she’s fighting not to lose her nerve. She tries again: “Talk dirty to me.”

He holds her eyes with his own for a long moment. He can feel himself blushing, but he doesn’t squirm, doesn’t say no. He’s done much harder things than tell his girlfriend how badly he wants her. All she really needs him to do is say aloud all the unarticulated thoughts in his head.

“I’d love to,” Clark says.

“Really?” Lois blurts.

“Are you taking it back?”

“Definitely not. I’m just… pleasantly surprised.”

“You explicitly requested it,” he points out.

“And,” Lois says, leaning close until their lips almost touch and their noses do, “I am requesting explicit.”

Her mouth is smiling when it meets his, and he holds her face to keep it near. He holds her body too, arms around her, and now Lois comes to him, sinking down to sit on his thighs. He’s panting as he lets her tug his shirt off, get rid of it on the floor somewhere. Doesn’t matter where. Clark’s preoccupied with the space they occupy and no other. He hugs her to his chest, skin against skin. When he thinks of it, he reaches up and carefully works the elastic out of her hair, letting it spill down.

They’re still kissing as she shifts her hips towards his. For a moment, Clark puts both hands on her ass, pressing her against him. Lois gasps when his cock jerks, nestled against the heat between her legs. He wonders how long it would take to feel the wetness as well as the warmth, how quickly she might be soaking through his pajamas. It pains him to ease her hips back instead of urging her forward, but Clark makes enough of a space to slip his hand down, cup her again, pass his fingers lightly through her arousal.

“You better lie down,” he pants.

Kissing his neck, Lois makes a questioning sound.

“I haven’t had breakfast yet,” he explains. He touches her, not penetrating in imitation of his cock, but undulating across her clit in imitation of his tongue.

“Jesus,” she breathes.

Lois scrambles from his lap. She never made the bed when she got up this morning—typical Lois, but a rare event in this house—so it’s not much work to get between the ready sheets. Lois has her head on the pillows while Clark hunches between her raised knees, bedding tented over him.

“You look really good,” he says simply, and Lois might not like simple any more than she likes cliché, but the low tone of voice in which he delivers this compliment does something to her. Her eyes turn sultry. When he kisses the inside of her knee, she reaches out to scrape her fingers through his hair.

“That’s good, sweetheart,” Clark praises softly, moving into her touch. “Don’t be scared to grip a little tighter when you need to. I know you know how.” He winks at her, hooking the end of two fingers into her cunt, barely penetrating, just enough to make his point.

“When I need to?” Lois challenges, despite being pink-faced in the clear morning light.

“You know,” he says, watching her as he drops down nice and close with his arms around her parted thighs and his face between them, “around the same time you’ll start riding my tongue. We’ll start slow.”

They can’t start that slow, not with the both of them wound up from her on his lap, but Clark tries. Tenderly, he opens her up. He laps widely, generally, before narrowing his focus towards her clit. Still, he’s coy for a while; he doesn’t go for what will provoke the most intense reaction from her, even if she wants it now. (Every fireworks show saves the biggest, most blinding bang for the finale.) And Lois lets him know that she does.

“Clark,” she says. “Clark, oh.”

And she swears, and breathes audibly, and lifts her hips, trying to move him around in a way that just makes him laugh against her.

“It’ll be worth it,” he mumbles with her arousal on his mouth, on his fingers again as he slips them back inside her. Clark almost folds at the sound Lois gives as she receives them, forcing her hips against him in response, body clutching his fingers.

He crooks them rhythmically, dependably; they’re just the secondary thing he wants her to feel.

“Loud for me, Lois,” he requests, then licks hard over her clit repeatedly.

She grabs his hair.

In the time they’ve been together, he’s learned what works for her—taken the time to learn it, put in the practical hours. He knows what’ll get her there whimpering. He knows what’ll make her neighbour pound angrily on the wall at the noise.

The trick with Lois is both speed and pressure. Clark keeps the motion of his fingers just as steady, but does it faster. The pressure is for her clit. Sure enough, Lois starts riding his tongue, but he would never stop to say he told her so. Soon, she’s doing more of the work than he is, holding his head in place and rocking her hips against his face. Her cries fill his bedroom, the house. They probably steal through any tiny crack and melt the frost in the yard.

“God, Clark. Fuck, fuck! Fuck, I’m fucking close,” she informs him.

Not that she has to; her thighs are trembling in his hands. Has he ever been more hard?

When Lois comes, Clark’s a little dazed. He thinks it’s incredible his mouth can do that to her, for her, no matter how many times he does it. Her body twists in his grip, her back arching away from these soft old sheets, a broken sound leaving her mouth.

It’s tight, withdrawing his fingers, but he does it with care. Lois’s muscles hold on like they don’t want to let go. He wipes his fingers and face on the sheet. It’s not like he’s leaving these sheets on this bed. He’ll do the laundry later.

Slowly, Clark crawls up the bed, and Lois falls open to let him, limbs splayed until she can twine him into place. He rests some of his weight on her, propped up to see her face properly. Her hair’s all dishevelled, the look in her eyes lazy yet urgent. Lightly, he kisses her mouth.

“You were wonderful,” he tells her.

“I should be saying that to you,” she counters, smile slipping sideways up her mouth.

But Clark shakes his head and smiles back.

“It was all you. The feel of you,” he says. “The sound.” He lowers his head to kiss her neck. How quickly will a hickey heal? Maybe someplace different.

“Yeah? That do somethin’ for ya, Kent?”

“You know it does,” he insists into her skin, pushing his cock between her thighs, pajamas still on.

“Take your pants off,” she says next. Her fingers comb calmly through his hair. The contrast to her previous grip is part of the reason Clark’s smiling when he raises his head.

“Are you sure? I’m happy to wait. I could never get tired of touching you.”

“Exhibit A…” Apparently, his pajamas not coming off right away isn’t a big issue for Lois; she sneaks her hand under his waistband and cups him in her palm.

Clark’s breath catches before he gets it out, “Exactly. Getting you off gets me so hard.”

“Which is really fucking hot,” Lois whispers up to him giddily. “But I want…”

“You want me to do something with this,” he guesses, working his hips against hers. “You wanna feel me,” he says as he brushes hair away from her ear so he can whisper into it. “Not my fingers. Or my mouth.”

Her eyes close, breathing hitches into something uneven.

“Say it,” she mutters. “Shit, Clark, say it.”

“You want my cock, Lois?”

She nods rapidly against the pillow.

“Alright. It’s ok, honey, I’m going to give you what you want.”

He kisses her and, instead of shifting to remove his pajamas, removes her hand, then keeps thrusting between her legs, grinding until she moans. Cradling the back of her neck, Clark plunges his tongue into her mouth, stroking hers, sucking at it. He can feel her arousal now, as Lois’s legs wind over his hips. The front of his pajamas is damp with it.

He grinds it back into her, lining them up so she gasps or moans or cries out each time he rocks forward. Lois’s nails bite into his shoulder blades. His hips pin hers until she’s saying, “Please, please.” He wants to come himself, but he needs to get her there.

“I have you, Lois,” Clark murmurs. He insinuates a hand between them to cover her breast, rubbing roughly over it, feeling the nipple hard under his palm. “I can feel you shaking. Show me all of it.” He struggles to keep himself together. “Gosh, I was wrong. I can’t wait to be inside you. Will you come then too? Will you let me take you there again?”

It feels like his voice is leaving another person’s mouth when he hears himself say, “Can’t wait to feel you squeeze around my cock.”

Lois’s hands pinch his waist, confused between drawing him close and pushing him away as her body reacts to his words and she climaxes, choppily gasping his name. He didn’t realize it could be that many syllables. Instinctually, Clark goes to adjust his glasses to steady himself, but of course they aren’t there. He never wears them at home—in this house, with Lois.

The way he strips is methodical. He can’t think too hard about it—too hard about being hard—or he might actually not last until penetration. The teenage boy who slept and studied and occasionally made out with a girl in this room is still part of Clark. He’s overeager for Lois. That’s just Lois. The day they met at the Planet, he got so nervous he could hardly get a sentence out. She thought he was an intern. She asked him to make three hundred photocopies of something, so he stood in that little room, watching the machine spit out warm sheets of paper, one after another, all lining up perfectly in the tray.

She knew the truth before long, of course. The next day, Lois bought him a coffee to apologize for what she viewed as accidentally hazing him.

“I’m not gonna treat you like that again,” she told him, straightforward and sincere. She jabbed a finger at him. “And don’t let anybody else treat you like that either.”

Which had pretty much been it, as far as falling in love with her.

Clark doesn’t just push inside her once he’s naked. They lie side by side in bed, his hand on her back and the pale morning light on his.

“Are you ok?” he asks.

Lois’s eyebrows climb her forehead.

“I’m fucking fantastic. Why do you ask?”

“It wasn’t too much? What I said?”

“The thing you said that got me off?” she checks, the hard edge in her tone suggesting she can’t believe he’s asking.

“You know,” Clark begins as he tries to explain, “I care that you think of me a certain way. Maybe that’s naïve, or selfish—”

“‘In a certain way’?” Lois echoes. She puts a hand on his chest as she stares him down with kind eyes. “I’m not going to slut-shame you for saying the word ‘cock.’”

He laughs, but insists, “I want you to know that, just because the way I spoke to you was different, it wasn’t insincere. It was still me. Both versions are me. I mean, there aren’t versions…”

Clark trails off, stuck for how else to explain this to her, but Lois is smiling in gentle, if amused, understanding. She drums her fingers over his heart.

“First of all, thank you. You gave me something I asked for, and I really, really enjoyed it. I didn’t mean to inspire an existential crisis. If you ask me, there’s a huge difference between doing something out of the ordinary and being insincere,” she insists, gesturing. “I never worried you were being insincere. I can’t even imagine an insincere Clark Kent.”

“That’s good to hear,” he says, sincerely relieved.

“As for versions…. If I can understand that you and Superman are the same person, I can understand dirty talk doesn’t trigger some sort of Jekyll/Hyde thing either, as funny as it is to picture an evil version of you that can only be identified by the fact that he’ll say ‘cock’ and normal you won’t.”

“I never said evil.”

“Yeah, but you’re you. Insincere and evil are basically the same thing.”

They smile at each other for a minute, and Lois starts tracing her fingertips around his chest, just firm enough not to tickle. He loves mornings with her—any morning, but especially those when they don’t have to work. He loves the rarity of Lois unhurried. He loves to find them both in the present, her mind not leaping and shoving and dodging into the future. He loves arriving with her, from moment to moment.

“Did you like it?” she asks after a while.

Clark shifts, not farther from her.

“I always have to be very careful,” he says, leaving her to interpret. “My whole life has been defined by what I can’t tell people. It’s nice… not to hold back. I can just say what I feel. That’s not about dirty talk, it’s about you.”

Lois draws him to her by his shoulder, the nape of his neck. When they kiss, it’s slower than before. They take their time deepening it. She edges close and groans, though the fact that he’s hard can be no surprise. Unhurried, Clark runs a hand over her hip and down her thigh, finally tucking his fingers behind her knee to hoist her leg around his hip. Lois exhales shakily, and together they shift and align. There are still spots on this bed that creak when you put pressure on them. Clark forgot. He holds Lois’s hip, sighing out as he presses in.

“Good?” he checks.

Lois’s eyes flicker closed for a moment as she assesses. She grants him a gradual grin.

“Yeah.”

They have to work together more in this position than they do in others, giving one another enough room to move, finding a rhythm that works on its side. The sheets shush as they shuffle against them, Lois sinking, Clark rising. He clasps her to him hungrily.

“I love you,” he says, an insistent rush of words.

“Hardly dirty talk,” Lois notes wryly.

“I fucking love you.”

She blinks at him, startled, then hooks her thigh higher on his hip, moans on his next thrust up. Moans his name: “Clark.”

“Don’t get too used to it,” he warns. He grasps her thigh as he snaps his hips forward repeatedly. “It’s only,” Clark pants, “for emphasis. Generally, I find cursing disrespectful and unimaginative, but since I know you won’t think those things of me when I use words like that, I can make an exception. Call it a special occasion.”

“Happy birthday to me.”

He manages a grin. “It’s not your birthday.”

“Better start thinking of ways to outdo yourself when it gets here,” Lois advises. “It won’t be easy.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

With snow clouds in the sky, it can only get so bright in the room before the amount of light plateaus. That makes it hard to judge time. It feels to Clark as though they’ve captured it, inhabited some space between seconds. Conceptually, it’s a little like Lex’s pocket dimension—existence, undisturbed, on another plane—but essentially, it’s nothing like that. This isn’t hurting anyone. Certainly not Lois, whose eyes close and mouth parts in pleasure as his hands rove, kneading her breasts, tapping her clit, pressing low on her lower back to feel the motion of her, coming and going.

“Fuuuck,” he groans, when she burrows her fingers into his hair and yanks it back.

It’s as she’s kissing his throat that he recalls his earlier thought. He has to pull out to bow his head enough, but he replaces his cock with his fingers while he works at her breast, sucking just below her nipple. Lois cries out, tightening around his fingers. He knows she’s almost there. Quickly, he gets back in position, back inside her, stealing half-dark glances at the red splotch on her skin.

“What was that about?” Practically breathless, Lois can still demand.

“It’ll darken, maybe turn purple.”

“Uh, yeah, I know what a hickey is. Is this another teenage throwback?”

“It’ll be tender,” he continues, ignoring the question, driving into her so that her eyes unfocus, as badly as she wants to stare him down. “Maybe even through your clothes. A little pressure and you’ll be right back in this moment. I’ll just have to come up behind you and squeeze softly—slip my hand inside your coat during one last country walk—and you’ll get wet.”

Lois’s breath shudders out of her. Clark’s thumb sweeps lightly over the mark. Instantly, she grips his wrist, digs her nails in.

“It’ll be a souvenir,” he says, hips pumping swiftly, slickly. Arousal and heat and friction. “A memento.”

“Please, Clark.”

He grazes his lips across her mouth without quite kissing her. Below her jaw, he revisits the scent of her skin.

“Of this fuck.”

When Lois gasps approvingly, Clark doesn’t stop to think before rolling his body into hers, pushing her onto her back. He crowds her into the mattress, breathing the same air with their faces too close, struggling to slot his hand between their franticly hitching bodies to try to get fingers on her clit and help her over the threshold of pleasure. Doesn’t matter; they’re both so close. He grinds down on her to make up the difference. On either side of her head, Lois stuffs her arms under the pillow it rests on—body open and offered, giving off heat—and his chase, interlocking their fingers in the only place left where the sheets are still cool to the touch.

Lois’s cry leaves her and cracks apart in stages, like Clark’s breaking it by hand. Crushing a pop can. Walking across the icy skim on a puddle. Her hands hold his more desperately as her hips buck with his, and he returns the grip, head hanging, jaw clenched until his own sounds of release pry it open. He thrusts hard, then shallower and shallower. Stops. Lois gives a deep groan of pleasure aging into contentment. Their fingers flex reflexively, and they clumsily disentangle them.

“You know,” Lois says, voice a little rough but smile easy as pie, “I really think we’ve got something, Kent.” She loops her wrists around the back of his neck.

“You’re rarely wrong, Lane.”

He hates to break her hold, but he has to pull out of her, dropping carelessly on to his side. The bed gives a familiar creak, taking his weight. They won’t lie here long—maybe another shower to clean up?—but he just has to look at her for a minute.

“It’s probably blizzarding in Metropolis right now,” she comments idly, lifting her head when he slips his arm beneath it.

“Did you check the weather?”

“No, I want to ignore it as long as possible. We’ll find out soon enough.”

“You don’t miss it then?” Clark checks. “I know Kansas in December isn’t quite the same.”

“Maybe a little snow would be nice.”

“Could still happen. Clouds looked right today.”

Lois laughs and places a hand on his chest. “‘Clouds looked right,’” she repeats, lowering her voice to be funny. “Who are you? You come home and turn into the Farmers’ Almanac.”

“I’m a man of many skills.”

“I’ll say.”

They trade secret smiles, then Lois’s softens.

“I’m really glad you brought me back here,” she says. “It’s nice with you, you know, not horribly injured.”

“I was fine.”

His version of events makes her frown.

“I carried you off that ship. The dog was no help.”

“You supported me,” Clark corrects. “I was still on my feet.”

Lois rolls her eyes.

“The last time you were lying in this bed, you looked like shit,” she informs him.

“And now?”

Her eyes move over him. Beneath the bedding, he feels her foot nudge his.

“You could just sleep in here tonight,” she says. “With me. No more couch.”

“I don’t know,” Clark says thoughtfully. “Old habits die hard.”