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The thought doesn’t hit Lois until they’re well into this sort of stable relationship they’ve built in the past few months.
She’s dating an alien.
Someone from another planet. Someone who could crush her with the flick of a finger if he wanted to—but uses those same fingers to cherish and protect her. And Lois knows it, she’s had this knowledge for years now and it’s never been much of a thought, even when she chastises him for listening to her heartbeat when she’s feeling stressed or sees him warming up her tea with his heat vision so that they don’t have to move from the couch.
But it strikes her when he makes love to her at night, his suit tossed over the back of the chair at the foot of the bed and the sound of their joined moans echoing in the room.
His body is still littered with bruises and healing cuts from the battle he came back from, something that would have put anyone else in the hospital—but instead, Clark came home to her, let himself be coaxed into taking a shower and snuggled into bed with Lois until she couldn’t resist the pull and opened her legs for him to slide into her, the warmth of his breath in her neck and the heaviness of his body atop hers.
He makes love to her like he always does, with adoration and a devotion Lois has rarely ever felt from anyone else. He learns her body time and time again, coaxes the smallest of tremors out of her, makes her feel like she is the most precious being on any planet. Clark pushes into her time and time again, never tired and never on the brick of pleasure before she is, and Lois closes her eyes and gasps as reality washes over her.
She is in love with a being from another planet, someone who doesn’t mind the way she scratches his back when he hits all of her right spots, even when there’s bruises still blooming on his skin. She is in love with the man who’s dedicating his life to helping humanity, a humanity she so often loses hopes for. She is in love with a man who will probably never truly fit in this cruel world, but decides to give it a chance over and over again by her side.
It’s a heavy responsibility, to bear the weight of Superman’s love.
To let herself be loved and cherished and know that throughout his long, absurdly strong life, Clark will always find his way to her. He stands by her side knowing how afraid she gets when things get real, how slowly they’ll have to move. He comes home to her messy, cluttered place every night knowing how familiar it is to her, never pushing for them to find a bigger place for them both. He carries kids on his hips after saving the city, knowing very well that neither of them know if they’ll ever have some of their own.
He towers over her in any aspect of her life—save for their bedroom. More often than not, he’s on his knees or between his legs pleasing her, and Lois looks up to the sky and lets pleasure wash over her. Outside those walls, he’s a good few inches taller than her, as both Clark and Superman. He reaches for cabinets in her kitchen she cannot, and he holds the door open for her at work. In the privacy of their own home, he wraps his body around hers and makes sure to shield her from the cold of the shower when they step under the spray together.
In their bed, though, Clark lets himself shrink.
It’s not a powerplay—not all the time, at least. Lois loves him taking the lead as much as she loves taking it from it at times. But Clark shrinks on himself in more metaphorical ways, too. He rarely gets to be so very human that it hits Lois on the face, because his entire existence is narrowed down to the control he exerts in every aspect of his life. She has often woken up to Clark allowing himself a semi-restful sleep, because he was pressed close to her and feared he might tighten his hold around her ribs a little too much if he let go entirely. She realises how much he controls himself in their day to day life when he types on his keyboards or pretends to struggle opening a plastic bottle of water.
But in her arms, unravelling within her body and in the apex of her thighs, Clark lets himself be human. He moans and cries and tightens his grip on the sheets or the bedframe until they sometimes give in, and he whispers sweet nothings that make Lois feel like the single most important person in the whole universe because she gets to make him feel this way. She looks at the sweat that coats his forehead as he thrust into her, his curls messy and eyes unfocused, and she thinks, how perfectly human.
Because Superman is everything she will never be: super strong, alien, out of this world. But here, in this bed and in her arms, Clark is nothing but the man she loves.
“Lois,” he whispers, her name like a prayer on his lips.
There’s a bruise on his shoulder that looks like a bird up close, one that Lois has been delicately tracing with her fingers as he moves inside of her. The slow drag of him is delicious, intense, and she is seconds away from unravelling in his arms. But for some reason, she cannot stop looking at him; the man she is seeing in her bed and the one that’s so different from the versions of himself he gives the world.
The one that’s just for her. The alien who becomes so human in her touch, the gentle giant that folds so easily under her kisses and the man she has grown to cherish so deeply it makes a little part of her clench at the very thought.
“I love you,” she whispers back, and it’s enough to have Clark tremble in her arms, the bulk of his hips feeling so fragile against the inside of her thighs as he comes, his head falling in the crook of her neck.
And Lois lets herself be rocked into her own pleasure, arms full of Clark and his name on her lips. Because out of all the versions of the man she loves, she’s never cared for any quite as much as this one.