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The Anniversary

Summary:

It's Lois and Clark's nineteenth anniversary and Lois feels a little insecure, but before she can talk to Clark about it, Superman gets called away. Instead, she opens the gift he left with the boys, and finds her husband gave her exactly what she needed.

Notes:

I love how S&L makes it so clear that Lois fell in love with Clark first, and sort of accepts Superman as part of him. I am also obsessed with how the first confession of love happened.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Lois adjusted the waist of her dress, letting it fall straighter over her hips. Nineteen years. Nineteen years of marriage with the best man she’d ever known, a man who loved her and treasured her as much as she did him. She looked in the mirror, appraising herself with the slightest bit of vulnerability.

Nineteen years changed people a lot. Marriage had changed them, brought a security to their love, and world-ending catastrophes prevented it from morphing into complacency. Kids had changed them, shifting their priorities. As they gained more and more responsibilities at work and at home, date nights became fewer, and alone time more precious. Without working together at the paper, she and Clark spent less and less time together. The last couple of years, with so many people learning the truth, Jordan developing powers and Jonathan struggling, Kryptonians torturing Clark’s images of Krypton and alternate worlds torturing both their images of themselves, their family, and what might have been… It changed them, too, in ways they still didn’t know.

They hadn’t drifted apart, she knew. But sometimes she had trouble seeing the people they’d been in the people they were now. Nineteen years. Would their past selves have accepted this reality? Had what they’d been through in the last twenty years changed them too much?

A knock on the door disrupted her reverie, and she shook her head. It was their anniversary. She shouldn’t let her worries get in the way of their night. She opened the door to Clark, watching his eyes widen and his mouth fall open, his gaze ranging up and down her. She smirked. At least some things never changed. Her eyes carved a journey over her suit-clad husband—he did cut quite a figure—but then she caught sight of his body language.

Body in profile, ready to walk away.

He had to go.

She closed her eyes.

She waited for his promise that he’d be quick, but he stayed silent. He wouldn’t come home tonight. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes.

“OK,” she said.

His eyes did that scrunched puppy dog thing. He didn’t believe her. Smart man. Missing this anniversary would hurt her, he knew, and he wanted to shield her from any and all pain.

She could ask him to stay. He probably would. But people would get hurt, and he’d never forgive himself. She shook her head with a fond smile, reaching out to cup his jaw. He didn’t have a monopoly on protecting people. This was how she protected him.

He pulled her into a kiss, too short for her liking, probably too long for whatever danger he needed to stop. His hand fumbled in his pocket. “I have a whole speech to go with this,” he said, pulling out a small, wrapped gift. His head jerked and his eyes unfocused from her. He didn’t have time for this, she knew, but he made time anyway. She wanted to wrap him in her arms and be wrapped tight in his and never let each other go.

Instead she pulled back, took the box, and said, “Go save the day, Superman. And then come home to me.”

“Always,” he promised.

 

She sat at the kitchen table, staring at the box, ignoring the boys’ whispered argument around her.

“If I go, maybe Dad’ll be home for his anniversary,” Jordan said.

“You don’t even know where he went,” Jonathan said. “If Dad wanted you to go, he would’ve said so.”

“No, he wouldn’t have. You know he wouldn’t.”

“Your father can handle it,” Lois interrupted. “And you have school tomorrow.”

“It’s just… it’s your anniversary,” Jordan said.

Nineteen years. “It’s not the first anniversary one of us has missed,” Lois said. She’d known how that would feel going in. Her father had left at odd hours all her childhood. Clark at least always told her where he went and why, if not before he left then when he got back. And he always made it up to her.

She played with the box in her hands. Too thin for jewelry, too small for most other things, it almost appeared to be a CD case. Nineteen years. Would her younger self expect them to still be missing dinners all these years later?

“What’s that?” Jonathan asked.

“My anniversary gift from your father,” Lois said. She hesitated, then made a decision. “What say we open it?”

They both agreed, Jonathan with more uncertainty. Lois pulled off the wrapping paper, revealing—

“A DVD?” Jordan asked.

Lois turned the case over in her hands. Homemade and unmarked, it didn’t seem like a normal anniversary gift, but then, they’d never gone in on tradition much. A small piece of paper folded beneath the case lid read, Clark, you absolute softy. -Janet.

“Janet?” Jon asked. “Like, Daily Planet Janet?”

“Looks like,” Lois said, judging by the handwriting. She weighed the odds. Janet probably wouldn’t have given Clark anything R-rated with the note you absolute softy. “Want to watch?”

Jon hesitated. “It’s not like…”

“What?”

“A sex tape or anything?” Jordan finished for him.

“No!” she exclaimed. “No.” Why they thought her old producer and friend had a sex tape of her and Clark, she didn’t want to ask. She walked to the living room, turning on the equipment and inserting the DVD, the boys trailing behind her. “Come on,” she said, pulling them onto the couch, smiling as they grumbled but stayed close. She pressed play.

The old Daily Planet Today logo greeted them, as well as her own voice welcoming the viewer to the first on-camera interview of Superman.

“Wait, isn’t this all over YouTube?” Jon asked.

Yes and no. YouTube held the aired version, but this… The mic couldn’t have caught it, could it? She’d taken it off. They watched.

“Dad knows every language?” Jordan asked.

“Mhm,” Lois hummed, leaning back. She watched their past selves dance around each other, Clark’s love of the world coming through with every word.

“Cut!” Past Janet called off-screen. “Can someone please look at Lois’ mic?”

“This is the unedited version?” Jordan asked. “Did something happen?”

The camera focused on Superman and her empty chair as Janet’s voice came in loud and clear. “I think Superman is into you.” One of the boom mics must have picked her up, Lois mused.

You absolute softy, she thought, shaking her head with a smile.

The boys watched, rapt, as Past Janet continued, “You need to bring your A-game if you want to go out with the world’s most eligible bachelor!”

“I am not interested, OK?” Past Lois said. “I’m in love with someone else!”

On her couch, over 20 years later, surrounded by their children and their home, Lois Lane watched her then-boyfriend’s reaction when he heard she loved him. She watched his eyes shoot towards her, watched his shock, watched him try to school his expression and look away, pretending he wasn’t listening when Janet asked about his super-hearing. She watched him raise his eyebrows when she looked back at him, his pleased scrambling when he told her Clark was a lucky man, and the way they fell into an easy banter.

She paused the recording and closed her eyes. “That was the first time we used the word ‘love’,” she said, “and I didn’t know it was him hearing it. Your father met me outside the studio with flowers.” She glanced toward the kitchen where a similar bouquet sat. “I must’ve ranted about Superman for half an hour.”

“What? Why?” Jon asked.

“Superman kept giving me the runaround, and I couldn’t catch him off guard. But then, in hindsight the man who’d helped me prep was the man I was interviewing.” She smiled, making a note to give him a little grief for that.

The smile faded, though, as she stared at their frozen faces onscreen. So much had changed since that day. He’d been so new to Superman, still finding his footing. She’d been so hungry to get the truth from the Man of Steel. Now he could defeat the enemies who would’ve floored him without skipping a beat and yet still came home overworked and she hid the truths she’d learned.

How did it feel like life kept getting harder?

“You turned down Superman for the dorkiest man ever,” Jon said, slight disbelief in his voice.

She looked at them both, Jorden openly curious and Jonathan cautiously so, and realized that she and Clark had never talked about this. Realized how important it was that they understand why she and Clark had made the choices they did.

“Do you know one of the first things your father ever said to me?” she asked.

They shook their heads. “You met at the paper,” Jon offered.

She nodded. “I’d been following a story for months—a white supremacist targeting minority business owners—and every time it came to print, I got drowned out by Superman stories. A dozen other reporters just told me to get on the bandwagon and write a Superman story, but then there’s your dad, his first day, fumbling over his introduction and staring at me with surprise, saying he’d had no idea that was happening. And then he said the most Clark Kent thing I’ve ever heard him say. You know what it was?”

The boys shook their heads.

“‘How can I help?’” She quoted, smiling.

“So, did Superman take that guy down?” Jordan asked.

She laughed. “Technically, Superman got thrown through a window. I tazed the bastard.” She watched the twins’ shock fade, into confusion for Jordan and hope for Jonathan. “It was the first time I met Superman, though. He did save me from burning alive.”

She looked at her sons, who’d only ever lived in a world with Superman, and who’d likely never asked themselves why he existed.

“You know how excited your dad gets over the Harvest Festival? Especially about how everyone comes together to help each other? As I pointed out to him all those years ago, there are systemic problems in this world that need protracted, delicate solutions—problems a rescue can’t fix. People that need an ear or a voice. Your dad, he sees that they’re struggling, and he asks how he can help. That’s who he is. He makes people smile, picks them up when they’re down, bolsters them with his own faith when they run dry. Superman is just an extension of that, another way of helping people.” She shook her head. “Superman saves people’s lives, but Clark Kent saves their hearts. I know we talk about them as separate a lot, but it’s just a different light. They’re not different people. Superman is just a uniform your dad puts on to save people in a different way.”

Her boys still looked confused, so she tried again. “Superman isn’t a person; he’s a symbol. You can’t date a symbol. Your father, on the other hand, is nerdy and earnest and wants to help, and because of that, he’s someone you can’t help but love.”

They sat with that for a moment.

“Why the video?” Jordan asked.

I have a whole speech to go with this, he’d said before he left. Lois grinned, feeling warm and safe. She knew her husband well enough to know the speech, and he knew her enough to know she needed to hear it today, of all days. “Because I fell in love with who he is, not what he can do or what he represents. Because he feels so lucky every day that I love him for everything he is, the dorky man who flusters easily, the earnest reporter who wants to help, and the superhero who misses anniversaries.” Yes, they’d changed, but that never would.

She glanced at the clock. “Now bed, both of you. It’s a school night.”

“We can wait up,” Jon offered.

“Not on a school night,” she repeated. “He’ll be late tonight.”

Jordan assented, climbing up the stairs and out of sight, but Jonathan lingered. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it and hugged her tightly instead. She squeezed him back, about to ask what was wrong when he released her, muttered a good night and ran up the stairs.

She sighed. She could look up what Superman was doing on her phone, but not tonight. He’d tell her when he got home. Instead, she poured herself a glass of wine, and walked out onto the porch to wait.

 

Lois woke in bed, her head pillowed on something firm and warm. She nuzzled closer, inhaling the scent of fresh air and hay.

“Morning,” Clark said.

“Mnhh,” she said. She felt one hand rub up and down her back.

“You didn’t have to wait up,” he said.

“Yes I did.” She let her hands run over him, squinting one eye open to feel and look for injuries. She saw he wore the new flannel pajama bottoms she’d bought him as his anniversary gift. “How did it go?”

“All taken care of.”

“Anything I need to report on?”

He shook his head. “Later. I’ll give you the exclusive.”

She grinned. “Mm, I do love an exclusive.”

“I know.” His lips curled into a grin.

“I opened my gift,” she said. She pulled back a little to look in his eyes. “Janet was right; you’re an absolute softy.”

“I want you to know that I feel it, every day,” he said. “How lucky I am to have you in my life.”

She looked into his eyes, full of love and admiration. She watched his face, the hard lines relaxing when he held her in his arms. She ran her hand up and down his chest to his leg, feeling the hard muscle fade to soft fabric. And she let go of her worry.

They had changed, no doubt about that. No one stays stagnant. But the important parts, the vital parts, their love and passion and convictions, had only grown in strength in the past two decades. Every day, they thanked the universe and each other that they had this to come home to, that they had each other, and the life they’d spent their marriage building, that they’d found someone who cares as passionately as themselves, who looks at the world and sees how it could be instead of how it is, and fights to make that happen.

“I feel the same,” she said. They had grown, yes. But they’d grown together, and that was worth it all. “I’m so lucky to be able to love you like this,” she kept rubbing her hand against him, “my knight in shining flannel.”

He smiled. “I love them. They’re very comfortable.”

She stretched, feeling the heat of him, warm and steady, across her body. “They were a gift for me, too.”

His arm pulled her flush, heat in his eyes. “I love that, too.” He leaned forward for a kiss. “Happy anniversary.”

“Happy anniversary.”

Notes:

I almost had Jon talk to Lois about his feels with his dad given what went down in S2, but then had him decide not to open up about it on their anniversary. Hence the hug. (If you want Jon & Clark working through some of that, check out my work Throwing the Wrench (shameless self-insert)). But I wanted to keep this mostly Clois, although Clark's ironically barely in it.