toomuchplor (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
toomuchplor) wrote2005-10-26 09:55 pm
toomuchplor) wrote2005-10-26 09:55 pm
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Three Balls and a Baby, Part 14
I'm back!
And I might get finished yet tonight! Hope some of you are still around for the voting.
Mindful of Lex’s wrath if Clark showed up hungry on top of having stolen Lex’s toy earlier in the day, Clark stopped at a favorite Thai take-out restaurant in Seattle before heading back to Metropolis. Catching his reflection in a pane of glass as he placed his order, Clark resolved that Superman should take a leave of absence posthaste, because, it appeared, spandex was not a forgiving material when it came to pregnant bellies.
Pregnant. Clark dove into his pad thai noodles, turning the word over in his mind. It had ceased to be a word that his mind automatically blanked out, so that had to be progress. But the fact of it was still astonishing, difficult to encompass beyond the stretching of spandex and an explanation for the constant hunger that had seized him the past few weeks.
Take, for example, the simple conclusion that came of the fact – that Clark would, in thirty weeks, bear a child.
Clark swallowed hard, blinking back white shock.
The lies required to cover that development alone were monumental. What would he tell Lois and Perry and Jimmy? What would Superman tell the world? And how would he explain it, when suddenly he had a newborn baby girl with no mother in sight, nor any reasonable candidate for one?
“Superman, can you sign my backpack?” lisped a small child, and Clark set down the take-out container, pasting on an automatic smile. The petitioner was about six, with glossy nut-brown curls and blue eyes, and Clark felt himself go a bit weak in the stomach as he looked at her.
He knew nothing about girls.
Oh, god, he knew *nothing* about girls!
How, for example, was the little girl’s hair suspended up in the air like that? Clark couldn’t make out any elastic bands or barrettes, nothing obviously maintaining the little buoyant explosion of curls. Clark sought out the mother as he scrawled ‘Love from Superman’, and asked. “How did you do that with her hair?”
She seemed understandably surprised, but replied nonetheless. “Oh, we just use bobby pins.”
Pins? For a child’s head?
“Could you show me?” Clark asked, and now the mother was looking genuinely worried. But Clark added a hearty Super-smile to the mix, and his publicity won out over maternal suspicion. She reached down to her daughter’s hair and plucked out a dark piece of metal, bent into a taut U.
Clark squinted at the thing, growing ever more dismayed with his appalling ignorance. “Thank you,” he said.
The kid would just have to have a buzz cut until she was old enough to do it herself, Clark decided, or maybe they could fly to the farm every morning and enlist the help of –
But although he was getting to the point of contemplating maternity leave with relative ease, it was still far beyond Clark to imagine what on earth he was going to tell his parents. Clark hastily thanked the girl and her mother, took the bobby pin thing as a souvenir, and wolfed down the rest of his lunch.
***
“Hey, are you home?” Clark asked, as casually as though they hadn’t conspired to arrest a murderer that very morning, because once this had been normal for them, and it was surprisingly easy to fall back into long-lost habit.
“Yeah, just got back from the office,” Lex answered, still sounding a bit frayed around the edges. “Are you coming over?”
“Thought I might,” Clark answered, forcing himself to remember Lex was off-limits.
“Come and have dinner,” Lex said, and Clark could hear him opening and closing the liquor cabinet. “We should talk.”
“I’ll be there in –” Clark checked his watch – “twenty?”
“Sounds good,” Lex agreed. “You ate lunch.” Not a question.
“Pad Thai in Seattle.”
“Good. See you soon.”
Clark stopped himself from automatically closing with ‘love you’ and hung up in a slight panic, leaning his forehead against the cool metal of the bathroom stall.
The Planet bathroom was the only place where Lois wouldn’t follow him, of course.
***
Lex was a deceitful, twisted, cruel, and insensitive son of a bitch.
There was no other reason why Clark should have walked into the penthouse and found, for the second time, that Lex had invited Clark’s parents to dinner without telling him.
Martha and Jonathan were beaming like Clark had just invented cold fission, each holding a drink, not uncomfortable this time because they thought they knew the steps to this particular dance. Clark blinked against the sight, turned to kill Lex dead with a flash of heat vision, and discovered that their host had done a disappearing act.
Lex was a deceitful, twisted, cruel, insensitive and *cowardly* son of a bitch.
“Clark!” exclaimed Martha, standing up so Clark could greet her properly. “We were so surprised to get Lex’s call this afternoon, but – oh, Clark.” This last in a tone that Clark hadn’t heard from his mother since before he and Lex had split up. “Oh, *Clark*, we’re just – is this what all the fuss was about, yesterday?”
“Sort of,” Clark hedged, embracing his mother and his father in turn. “So, what did Lex say?”
“Just that he would like us to come up for dinner,” Jonathan answered, all too pleased. “That the two of you had news to share.”
“Does that have anything to do with it?” Martha asked, and for a long moment, Clark didn’t know what she meant. Then he followed the direction of her nod and realized she was referring to the DVD case he held in one hand.
“Oh, this?” Clark asked, tossing it on an end table. “Nah, that was just for – later. You know, a movie after dinner.”
Lex came back into the room holding a plate of crostini and antipasto. “Clark, do you want me to stay while you tell them the news?” he asked pointedly.
“You should stay, Lex,” Martha said, “if it involves both of you.”
“Lex, can I talk to you for a second?” Clark asked, because this was *not* a decision Lex got to make unilaterally, not this time.
Lex was about to say no, but he must have observed the gathering determination of Clark’s features, and guessed that Clark was far more difficult to manipulate than he had been ten years ago. “Excuse us,” he said graciously to the Kents, laying the tray on the coffee table.
The minute they were in Lex’s office with the door closed, Clark began to speak. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he exploded.
“They need to know, Clark!” Lex answered hotly, a sure sign that he knew Clark was right.
“But we need to *discuss* it first, Lex! This isn’t like last time! We haven’t been keeping them in the dark about something that’s settled between us – shit, Lex, we don’t even know which one of us is going to take her, what I’m going to *tell* people, how we’re going to deal with the next thirty weeks and the thirty years after that! This isn’t time to tell my parents!”
“Her?” Lex repeated, very quietly.
Clark was about to light into Lex again, but the sight of Lex’s expression stopped him. “You were afraid I would cut you out of it,” Clark breathed, his anger fading. “You thought I’d actually keep her from you?”
“It wasn’t an unreasonable suspicion, given our recent past,” Lex said, defensively.
“So you brought them, thought you’d force me to tell them in front of you so that they would know that she was yours, too?” Clark continued, torn between laughter and annoyance.
“You know,” Lex said, almost fiercely. “You *know*, Clark – this is my only chance, I won’t get to have this any other time, any other way.”
“I know that,” Clark agreed, forcing his voice to be calm. “And I wouldn’t keep her from you, Lex. You think I would do that?”
Lex looked down at his shoes, blinking fast. He seemed to collect himself in a moment, looking up. “You did say ‘her’, didn’t you?”
Clark nodded, and Lex looked away again. “Her.”
They were both silent, and at length, Clark sighed. “Okay, we’ll tell them. But – Lex, whatever happens, this is your daughter too.”
The Kents were stirring with unease when they returned to the living room, no doubt having heard Clark and Lex’s raised voices.
“Clark, what is going on? You’re worrying both of us here,” Jonathan demanded, as Lex sat down in an armchair.
Clark hovered uncertainly for a moment, sat, then stood again. “Maybe I’ll show you,” Clark said, and for an insane moment, thought he might just pull up his shirt and show off the elastic on his jeans button. But he thought better of it and retrieved the DVD provided by the AI.
Lex had to come over to help Clark battle the entertainment system, and he kept shooting Clark inquisitive looks over the DVD. “Just wait,” Clark murmured. “You’ll see.”
They sat, Lex on one side of the room, Clark on the other, and the Kents began to shift a little nervously, because by now they would have noticed that the body language between Clark and Lex was not at all romantic. Lex picked up an enormous remote, pressed a button, and –
The room filled with a soft watery whooshing, a fetal heartbeat in surround sound, and Clark found himself watching not his parents, but Lex, wanting to measure his reaction when he saw –
The way the knuckle bones gleamed through pink skin like pearls. The way red and purple vessels snaked across the surface of the tiny arm, the narrow shoulders. The way the baby jumped abruptly, and Lex jumped too, face gone quiet and focused with fascination.
“I don’t understand,” Martha said first, breaking the silence.
Clark stood again and did what his mind had first suggested – he pulled up the front of his blue shirt and turned so that they could see. “It’s a girl,” Clark said. “And it’s ours.”
***
[Poll #599161]
And I might get finished yet tonight! Hope some of you are still around for the voting.
Mindful of Lex’s wrath if Clark showed up hungry on top of having stolen Lex’s toy earlier in the day, Clark stopped at a favorite Thai take-out restaurant in Seattle before heading back to Metropolis. Catching his reflection in a pane of glass as he placed his order, Clark resolved that Superman should take a leave of absence posthaste, because, it appeared, spandex was not a forgiving material when it came to pregnant bellies.
Pregnant. Clark dove into his pad thai noodles, turning the word over in his mind. It had ceased to be a word that his mind automatically blanked out, so that had to be progress. But the fact of it was still astonishing, difficult to encompass beyond the stretching of spandex and an explanation for the constant hunger that had seized him the past few weeks.
Take, for example, the simple conclusion that came of the fact – that Clark would, in thirty weeks, bear a child.
Clark swallowed hard, blinking back white shock.
The lies required to cover that development alone were monumental. What would he tell Lois and Perry and Jimmy? What would Superman tell the world? And how would he explain it, when suddenly he had a newborn baby girl with no mother in sight, nor any reasonable candidate for one?
“Superman, can you sign my backpack?” lisped a small child, and Clark set down the take-out container, pasting on an automatic smile. The petitioner was about six, with glossy nut-brown curls and blue eyes, and Clark felt himself go a bit weak in the stomach as he looked at her.
He knew nothing about girls.
Oh, god, he knew *nothing* about girls!
How, for example, was the little girl’s hair suspended up in the air like that? Clark couldn’t make out any elastic bands or barrettes, nothing obviously maintaining the little buoyant explosion of curls. Clark sought out the mother as he scrawled ‘Love from Superman’, and asked. “How did you do that with her hair?”
She seemed understandably surprised, but replied nonetheless. “Oh, we just use bobby pins.”
Pins? For a child’s head?
“Could you show me?” Clark asked, and now the mother was looking genuinely worried. But Clark added a hearty Super-smile to the mix, and his publicity won out over maternal suspicion. She reached down to her daughter’s hair and plucked out a dark piece of metal, bent into a taut U.
Clark squinted at the thing, growing ever more dismayed with his appalling ignorance. “Thank you,” he said.
The kid would just have to have a buzz cut until she was old enough to do it herself, Clark decided, or maybe they could fly to the farm every morning and enlist the help of –
But although he was getting to the point of contemplating maternity leave with relative ease, it was still far beyond Clark to imagine what on earth he was going to tell his parents. Clark hastily thanked the girl and her mother, took the bobby pin thing as a souvenir, and wolfed down the rest of his lunch.
***
“Hey, are you home?” Clark asked, as casually as though they hadn’t conspired to arrest a murderer that very morning, because once this had been normal for them, and it was surprisingly easy to fall back into long-lost habit.
“Yeah, just got back from the office,” Lex answered, still sounding a bit frayed around the edges. “Are you coming over?”
“Thought I might,” Clark answered, forcing himself to remember Lex was off-limits.
“Come and have dinner,” Lex said, and Clark could hear him opening and closing the liquor cabinet. “We should talk.”
“I’ll be there in –” Clark checked his watch – “twenty?”
“Sounds good,” Lex agreed. “You ate lunch.” Not a question.
“Pad Thai in Seattle.”
“Good. See you soon.”
Clark stopped himself from automatically closing with ‘love you’ and hung up in a slight panic, leaning his forehead against the cool metal of the bathroom stall.
The Planet bathroom was the only place where Lois wouldn’t follow him, of course.
***
Lex was a deceitful, twisted, cruel, and insensitive son of a bitch.
There was no other reason why Clark should have walked into the penthouse and found, for the second time, that Lex had invited Clark’s parents to dinner without telling him.
Martha and Jonathan were beaming like Clark had just invented cold fission, each holding a drink, not uncomfortable this time because they thought they knew the steps to this particular dance. Clark blinked against the sight, turned to kill Lex dead with a flash of heat vision, and discovered that their host had done a disappearing act.
Lex was a deceitful, twisted, cruel, insensitive and *cowardly* son of a bitch.
“Clark!” exclaimed Martha, standing up so Clark could greet her properly. “We were so surprised to get Lex’s call this afternoon, but – oh, Clark.” This last in a tone that Clark hadn’t heard from his mother since before he and Lex had split up. “Oh, *Clark*, we’re just – is this what all the fuss was about, yesterday?”
“Sort of,” Clark hedged, embracing his mother and his father in turn. “So, what did Lex say?”
“Just that he would like us to come up for dinner,” Jonathan answered, all too pleased. “That the two of you had news to share.”
“Does that have anything to do with it?” Martha asked, and for a long moment, Clark didn’t know what she meant. Then he followed the direction of her nod and realized she was referring to the DVD case he held in one hand.
“Oh, this?” Clark asked, tossing it on an end table. “Nah, that was just for – later. You know, a movie after dinner.”
Lex came back into the room holding a plate of crostini and antipasto. “Clark, do you want me to stay while you tell them the news?” he asked pointedly.
“You should stay, Lex,” Martha said, “if it involves both of you.”
“Lex, can I talk to you for a second?” Clark asked, because this was *not* a decision Lex got to make unilaterally, not this time.
Lex was about to say no, but he must have observed the gathering determination of Clark’s features, and guessed that Clark was far more difficult to manipulate than he had been ten years ago. “Excuse us,” he said graciously to the Kents, laying the tray on the coffee table.
The minute they were in Lex’s office with the door closed, Clark began to speak. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he exploded.
“They need to know, Clark!” Lex answered hotly, a sure sign that he knew Clark was right.
“But we need to *discuss* it first, Lex! This isn’t like last time! We haven’t been keeping them in the dark about something that’s settled between us – shit, Lex, we don’t even know which one of us is going to take her, what I’m going to *tell* people, how we’re going to deal with the next thirty weeks and the thirty years after that! This isn’t time to tell my parents!”
“Her?” Lex repeated, very quietly.
Clark was about to light into Lex again, but the sight of Lex’s expression stopped him. “You were afraid I would cut you out of it,” Clark breathed, his anger fading. “You thought I’d actually keep her from you?”
“It wasn’t an unreasonable suspicion, given our recent past,” Lex said, defensively.
“So you brought them, thought you’d force me to tell them in front of you so that they would know that she was yours, too?” Clark continued, torn between laughter and annoyance.
“You know,” Lex said, almost fiercely. “You *know*, Clark – this is my only chance, I won’t get to have this any other time, any other way.”
“I know that,” Clark agreed, forcing his voice to be calm. “And I wouldn’t keep her from you, Lex. You think I would do that?”
Lex looked down at his shoes, blinking fast. He seemed to collect himself in a moment, looking up. “You did say ‘her’, didn’t you?”
Clark nodded, and Lex looked away again. “Her.”
They were both silent, and at length, Clark sighed. “Okay, we’ll tell them. But – Lex, whatever happens, this is your daughter too.”
The Kents were stirring with unease when they returned to the living room, no doubt having heard Clark and Lex’s raised voices.
“Clark, what is going on? You’re worrying both of us here,” Jonathan demanded, as Lex sat down in an armchair.
Clark hovered uncertainly for a moment, sat, then stood again. “Maybe I’ll show you,” Clark said, and for an insane moment, thought he might just pull up his shirt and show off the elastic on his jeans button. But he thought better of it and retrieved the DVD provided by the AI.
Lex had to come over to help Clark battle the entertainment system, and he kept shooting Clark inquisitive looks over the DVD. “Just wait,” Clark murmured. “You’ll see.”
They sat, Lex on one side of the room, Clark on the other, and the Kents began to shift a little nervously, because by now they would have noticed that the body language between Clark and Lex was not at all romantic. Lex picked up an enormous remote, pressed a button, and –
The room filled with a soft watery whooshing, a fetal heartbeat in surround sound, and Clark found himself watching not his parents, but Lex, wanting to measure his reaction when he saw –
The way the knuckle bones gleamed through pink skin like pearls. The way red and purple vessels snaked across the surface of the tiny arm, the narrow shoulders. The way the baby jumped abruptly, and Lex jumped too, face gone quiet and focused with fascination.
“I don’t understand,” Martha said first, breaking the silence.
Clark stood again and did what his mind had first suggested – he pulled up the front of his blue shirt and turned so that they could see. “It’s a girl,” Clark said. “And it’s ours.”
***
[Poll #599161]