Author: Wendy Richards
Email: wendy@lcfanfic.com
Rated: PG
**********
Clark threw down the newspaper he’d been scanning and threw Lois a glance filled with disgust. “You know what really annoys me more than anything else about this stuff? It’s the particular moral stand some of the writers have taken about it.”
“You mean, Superman shouldn’t have an affair with his best friend’s wife?” Lois enquired with a rueful smile. It hadn’t been easy explaining their way out of that one, and she was aware that Clark was still a little uncomfortable about the half-truth he had told at the press conference.
But her husband shook his head. “No – it’s the assumption they make that Superman shouldn’t be having sex at all!”
“He shouldn’t?” Lois frowned, leaning across to see if she could find the particular article which had aroused Clark’s ire. “Why – because he would corrupt the human race, or something stupid like that?”
“No – because it would corrupt *him*!” Clark exclaimed in disgust. “They seem to have some weird idea that Superman’s ethics should put him above such mundane, *dirty* activities as having sex. As if there’s anything dirty about making love with my wife!”
“Really?” Lois was incredulous now. “Who’s had the… the *nerve* to say anything like that?”
Clark shrugged. “Oh, there’ve been a couple of ‘moral majority’ crusaders, talking about how the very thought of it would corrupt the kids, destroy the image of Superman as a hero everyone can look up to. Some of them are still criticising Superman for not making it absolutely clear at that press conference that he had never had sex with anyone.”
Lois had been flicking through the paper; suddenly she exclaimed as she spotted the article which had aroused Clark’s ire. “I see what you mean! ‘Superman should be the world’s most famous eunuch’,” she quoted. “My God, Clark, I see what you mean! Not only can you not have sex, but they don’t want you to have normal body parts either!”
She grinned at him suddenly. “You know I don’t agree with that, I hope, sweetheart?”
He smiled back at her, then returned his attention to the topic at hand. “You know, it would be different if we’d gone to bed together as soon as we started dating, or just moved in together instead of getting engaged. But we did everything the traditional way – we dated, we got engaged, and we got *married.* And we didn’t make love until after we were married. No-one can accuse us of setting a bad example to anyone. So why is the thought of Superman having sex within a loving relationship so upsetting to these people?”
Lois brushed her hand across the back of her husband’s cheek. “Because they don’t understand you like I do. They think you’re some sort of hero on a pedestal – well, of course you are a hero, but you’re a person too. A loving, caring man who is a wonderful husband. And who’ll be a great dad too one of these days.”
Clark grinned at Lois’s last words. “I suppose it’d be a bit difficult to do that while behaving the way some of these people expect me to! Unless they’d expect me to, um, do the necessary in a laboratory somewhere.”
Lois bundled up the newspaper and carried it through to the kitchen, shoving it into the trash. Clark, who had followed her, leaned against the island and watched her thoughtfully.
“Of course, these idiots don’t realise Superman’s married – that might make a difference to their attitudes,” Lois said as she turned back to face Clark.
He shook his head. “Nope – the attitude seems to be that any sort of normal human relationship should be out of bounds to Superman. He really should be ‘above all that.’ They expect him – me – to be like some sort of mediaeval ‘parfait gentil knight’ who only understands courtly love.”
“Courtly love?” Lois enquired, smiling as she always did when her husband surprised her with some nugget of knowledge from his eclectic mind.
“Yeah.” He paused and smiled at her. “Like the Knights of the Round Table – they wrote love-poems and letters to Queen Guinevere, but there was never anything sexual or romantic in it. They were paying court to her.”
“Sounds nice,” Lois grinned. “But not what I want from my husband.”
He reached for her, pulling her gently back against him, wrapping his arms around her waist and nuzzling her ear. “That’s just as well, honey, because I don’t think I could settle for that. Not any more. In the days when we were just friends, I had to, but there were times when it nearly killed me.”
She twisted in his arms and demonstrated very thoroughly just how little she wanted mere ‘courtly love’ from her adored husband. Breaking away then, her lips curved in a sudden grin. “You know, though, all this stuff about how Superman shouldn’t be interested in women or sex could be pretty useful.”
“It could?” Clark had no idea where Lois was coming from on this one.
“Sure! We could let them promote it – you could even hint it might be true. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about women throwing themselves at you any more.”
Clark raised an eyebrow. “I’m not sure I believe that, you know, honey. There are the type of women who would see that as a challenge….”
“True,” she agreed with him. “But anyway, honey, there’s nothing we can do if these people want to peddle their idiotic theories about what Superman should be. We know the truth, and that’s good enough for us. We know we love each other, and that means we want to show each other what it means to love each other.”
“Sure,” Clark agreed, a soft smile curving about his lips. “Umm… feel like showing me now, by any chance?”
– The End –