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The world sees the emblem first. The cape, the colors, the jawline. A man who can catch falling towers and stop bullets with his chest. They call him invincible, unshakable, inevitable. They don’t see the man who slips into my apartment after holding up two skyscrapers and starts cooking dinner like it’s just another Tuesday night.
“You know most men would just order takeout after that,” I said from the couch, watching him tie on an apron.
Clark glanced back at me with that sheepish grin. “Most men don’t know Ma’s chicken and rice recipe.”
“That’s not exactly helping your case, Smallville.”
He laughed, shook his head, and went back to the pan, then paused at the fridge, holding up a single clove of garlic like it was priceless.
“I wanted to use this garlic,” he muttered, frowning. “There’s only one clove left, and I was saving it for the spaghetti tomorrow.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You can’t just go get another one? How much is one clove of garlic anyway? Ten dollars?”
Clark’s eyes went wide, and he held it closer. “You’ve never actually stepped foot in a supermarket, have you?”
“Clearly not. I’m sure the spaghetti will survive without the garlic if it’s that important.”
He smiled softly, setting the clove down, and leaned over to kiss me on the head. “Guess I can make do… for now.”
He says cooking calms him. I think it’s the farm boy in him. Personally, I don’t care if it’s Ma Kent’s recipe or something involving rare plants from the Pacific Rim—I’d eat cardboard if it meant I didn’t have to cook. Lucky for me, he relishes it. Housework, too. Clark Kent, Pulitzer-winning dish-doer.
He doesn’t need much sleep, but he stays anyway. Every night. His arms around me until dawn, his heartbeat steady and impossible against my ear. I think it grounds him. I know it does me.
“You don’t have to stay up with me, you know,” I whispered once, half-asleep.
“I want to,” he said simply, brushing his thumb over my arm. “There’s no place I’d rather be.”
And then there’s the way he says it. Every morning without fail: I love you, Lois Lane. Every night before sleep: I’m so lucky I found you. The words should lose their shine from overuse, but somehow they don’t. Somehow they still undo me.
“I’m serious,” he murmured one night, eyes heavy, voice so soft I almost missed it. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Lois Joanne Lane. But I’ll never stop being grateful.”
I didn’t answer. Not out loud. I just tucked closer against him, hoping he understood.
Before him, I thought I was only ever competing—outsmarting rivals in the newsroom, outtalking men who thought they had me figured out. I mistook attention for intimacy and power plays for love. Then Clark came along. Earnest, open, maddeningly sincere. He never tried to beat me at my own game—he just played his, and for once I didn’t feel like I had to win. I just had to be.
Biology suggests I’ll die long before he does, and in his quietest moments, he admits this chills him to the marrow. Occasionally, when I’m stressed or eating too much junk, I think I feel the mild tingle of his x-ray as he scans my arteries or checks my cholesterol, although I know better.
When I was lying in bed with the flu once, I couldn’t deny how lucky I am. Clark hovers over me like a slightly frantic, perfectly domestic angel, holding a bowl of soup in one hand and a damp washcloth in the other.
“You need more water,” he says gently, brushing damp hair from my forehead.
“I think I’ll survive… maybe,” I rasp, trying for my usual sass.
He doesn’t reply with words, just presses the cloth to my skin and smooths my hair back. “Lois, you’re burning up. You’re not surviving anything until you rest.”
And I think, not for the first time, that he’d probably do this for anyone—but somehow, it feels like it’s only ever me he fusses over this way. My chest tightens with something I can’t quite name, and I let him take care of me, because with Clark, I don’t have to be invincible.
I don’t buy into the armchair psychology about how my military-brat upbringing means I was secretly searching for a protector. Clark isn’t some replacement father figure. He’s not a shield for my problems.
Once, after I rattled off three leads at once for a breaking story, he just smiled and said, “You’re incredible, Lois. I’ll grab the statements while you draft.” No jockeying for the byline, no pretending he had to one-up me. Just… partnership.
Another night, when I teased him for being too slow typing up his notes, he grinned and said, “Guess that means I’ll have to keep chasing after you until I catch up.”
And somehow, he always did.
All the little curiosities he keeps locked up inside indicate to me that here is someone who has never lost his enthusiasm for life. He combines the best thing about being a child with the essential qualities of a man and this, in my opinion, are the ingredients of a Superman.
Sometimes I wish the people who doubt him, who write him off as some stainless, untouchable icon, could just see him the way I do. Not the cape. Not the symbol. Just the man who will argue with me over which pie filling is superior—
“Apple, Lois. It’s apple, hands down.”
“Wrong. Blueberry. You’re supposed to be the man of truth, remember?”
“I’m telling the truth Lois!”
Or the man who laughs so hard at a dumb pun on the morning cartoons that I can’t help laughing too, even while pretending to be annoyed. He’ll nudge me with that boyish grin and say, “Come on, you thought it was funny.” And I’ll roll my eyes, “Smallville, if you think I’m admitting that, you’re out of your mind.” But the truth is, I’m already laughing harder than he is.
The fact that a tough, Pulitzer-winning reporter with a pushy, volatile personality actually irons his suits? I’d never do that for anyone else. And honestly, Clark doesn’t even need me to—he’s already overdressed for the Daily Planet, showing up in those full, way-too-big suits like he’s about to testify before Congress instead of chasing down leads.
The first time he caught me with the iron in hand, he said softly, “Lois, you don’t have to do that.”
And I shot back, “Yeah, well, you don’t have to be sloppy if you’re going to dress up for work, Smallville.”
He just smiled that lopsided smile, the one that says he knows I won without saying a word. He’s always too busy thinking about the rest of us to care what people are saying about him. But me? I care. He taught me how.