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For the 12 days of Lois
“Kent!”
The screech came from the hallway outside his apartment door and made Clark wince. One of the downsides of super-hearing. He’d been focusing on the clean-up at the fire Superman had put out half an hour before. He had concerns that some of the firefighters would ignore his warning that the pillars holding up the bottom floor had been weakened more than they should have been. Luckily the fire chief had taken his warning to heart and was keeping his people out of the building until inspectors could arrive.
Of course it did help that the sky had opened up just as he was finished cooling the fire into nothingness and doused everything in a torrent.
“Smallville, open this door! Or…”
Clark hurriedly straightened his glasses and threw the door open. “Lois…” He stopped and stared at the sight in front of him. Lois was soaked to the skin and dripping water on the hallway carpet. To say she was mad as a wet hen was an understatement. A wet cat, maybe, but he’d seen wet hens, and cats, before and they had nothing on a sopping wet Lois Lane.
She stalked into his apartment, kicking off her ruined shoes.
She padded over to him. “Where have you been?” she spat, poking him in the chest. “I looked around and you were gone. Again.”
“Lois, did you walk here? Why didn’t you drive, or call, or…”
“I did call you. Have you even bothered to check?”
He felt his face grow warm and he ducked his head. He had forgotten to check his cell phone for messages. But then he’d only gotten back to his apartment a few minutes before Lois arrived at his door. Just long enough to type up the story on the fire and email it to the office.
“… and my purse is locked in the car and you have the freakin’ keys!” she went on.
His gut clenched. In his rush to get away from her so he could deal with the fire, he had completely forgotten that he had her car keys, or that she had put her purse in the trunk of the car, taking only her recorder with her as they went to meet her source.
“Lois, I can explain…” he began, hands out in supplication.
“Don’t even try,” she snarled. “I am going up to your bathroom. I am going to take a shower. When I get done with my shower, we are going to have a talk about your habit of running out on me while we’re supposed to be working together. And so help me, if you’re not here, I will hunt you down and not even Superman will be able to save you.”
Clark had the sense not to say anything as Lois climbed the stairs to the bedroom-loft and his bathroom.
It wasn’t the first time she’d co-opted his bathroom, and the sweats he kept for her, but it might be the last time He couldn’t remember the last time she was this angry with him.
I have to tell her. She is so going to kill me.
He listened to the water in the shower, listened as her heart rate slowed to something more normal.
The water stopped and her cell phone rang. “Yes, Jimmy,” she said, answering it.
“Is Clark with you?”
She sighed loudly. “Yes, Jimmy.”
“Would you tell him to check his email? Eduardo has some questions about the fire story he just sent in and Clark isn’t answering his cell again.”
“Fire story?”
“Yeah.” Jimmy sounded surprised. “Superman saved three firemen not more than forty minutes ago. Weren’t you there too?”
“No, I was meeting a source,” Lois stated in a saccharinely sweet tone.
Uh oh.
“I’ll tell him,” Lois promised and flipped her phone shut. A few minutes later she was coming down the steps, barefoot, hair in a ponytail, wearing the royal blue sweat set with the Superman logo emblazoned across the chest that he’d bought her as a joke last Christmas.
It seemed so long ago now, even though it was only a few months. The sweats had been the final straw for Lois’s long term engagement to Richard White.
“We’d been on the rocks for a while,” Lois confessed to Clark following another all-nighter not long after the Daily Planet Christmas party. Richard had abruptly accepted a post in Japan. “I tried to fool myself that it could still work, that I was over him. Richard knew better and he’s never been one to accept being second best.”
“I guess any guy would feel, I don’t know, second best when compared to Superman,” Clark managed to stammer out.
“Do you feel second best against Superman?” Lois asked. There was something in her voice that sent warnings shooting through him.
Tell her you idiot.
“Yeah, sometimes,” Clark admitted. “But then, I can’t imagine Superman sitting down in an all-night diner having pie and coffee.”
“Do you think he gets lonely?”
“Superman? Maybe, I guess so.”
“Do you think he has someone to talk to when things get bad?”
“Maybe. Why don’t you ask him?”
She snorted. “He’s not… He visits Jason, not me.”
Clark didn’t have anything to say to that. He hadn’t exactly been avoiding her as Superman, but he hadn’t been going out of his way to meet her for interviews either.
Clark busied himself unpacking the care package his mom had sent him. On top were two packages of foil wrapped cookies, one for him and one for Jason. Underneath he found his two Kerth awards, his Meriweather plaque, his school awards and his old high school football jersey.
“You really need to check your messages,” Lois stated, arms akimbo as she glared at him. “Eduardo wants to ask you about that fire. The one you turned the story in on while you were supposed to be with me?”
He already had his phone in his hand and held it up to show it was plugged into its charger. “It was dead.”
“Clark, you are a reporter. That phone is your life line. Check your messages.” She enunciated each word slowly and clearly, as if speaking to an idiot.
He flipped open the phone and checked his messages – three from Lois, two from Eduardo at the Planet, one from Jimmy. He listened to the messages from Eduardo and Jimmy then stepped away from Lois to call Eduardo back. As the new assistant editor, replacing Richard White, Eduardo Juarez was taking his responsibilities painfully seriously. Clark wasn't sure why, but he was keeping especially close tabs on Clark.
“MFD confirms it was arson?” Eduardo demanded.
“Superman confirmed it was arson,” Clark corrected. The building had stunk of diesel and multiple point ignitions were rarely accidents. “The fire marshal still needs to investigate it, of course. And I haven’t had time to look into the background of the building or the owners.”
Lois was going through the box behind him. He tried to focus on what Eduardo was saying on the phone. He was being assigned the follow-ups to the fire. Finally Eduardo hung up.
Clark turned to see Lois holding up the red and black jersey. The back was to him, with his name emblazoned across it. “I never knew you played football, Smallville.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Lois,” he said, trying to keep his voice low and even.
“Were you any good?”
“Yeah. I played quarterback and wide receiver,” Clark admitted. What has she getting at? “I threw the Hail Mary pass for the touchdown that won us the state championship our senior year. Won MVP.”
Her forehead creased as she regarded him. He knew that expression. She was puzzling over something, a contradiction, or missing pieces. Tell her. You love her. Just tell her.
“Quarterbacks aren’t generally klutzes. So why do you want everybody to think you are?”
“I don’t know what you…” Tell her. You love her. Just tell her. It can’t be worse than this.
“Clark, I know when you’re lying,” she stated. “I know that little muscle in your cheek that twitches, the way your eyes shift. So why do you want everybody to think you trip over your own feet?”
“Gee, Lois, the newsroom is kind of crowded, and I’m not exactly a dainty person,” Clark managed to get out.
“Grizzly Lombard weighs more than you do and he hasn’t dented a trashcan yet. Monica wears thicker glasses and she manages to stay on her feet.”
“Lois, what are you getting at? You’re not… you’re not back on that kick of me being Superman are you? You remember what happened the last time. You nearly killed yourself.”
Tell her. You love her. Just tell her who you are. It can’t be worse than this.
“I remember.”
He gave her a questioning look.
“I do remember. I remember jumping out of Perry’s office window, and I lived. I shouldn’t have.” She gave him another of her appraising looks – the look that said I’ll know it if you lie to me. A ‘mom’ look. “Where did you go?”
“I heard the sirens…”
A frustrated sigh.
“When you left for six years. Where did you go?”
“Didn’t you read the postcards?”
“You’re very good at avoiding direct answers,” she commented. She stepped closer, still holding the jersey. She draped the shirt over his shoulders then stepped back to look at it critically. The number ‘eight’ was emblazoned across the front, right where Superman’s emblem would be if he…
Tell her.
“All the gossips say you still have it bad for me and the reason I’m so mean to you is that I still haven’t forgiven you for leaving me pregnant with Jason,” she said. “It would be almost funny if it weren’t so close to being true.”
What does she remember?
“You were mean to me before I left,” he reminded her, folding up the jersey and dropping it on the coffee table. “And I thought Superman was…”
“I don’t remember sleeping with Superman. I do remember sleeping with you.”
“You do?” He couldn’t quite keep the squeak out of his voice.
“Yes. I can’t quite place where, or how, but I do remember that very clearly. You loved me then. You were in love with me then.”
“I still am. I love you, Lois. I think I always have.”
There, he’d said it.
He heard her heart rate jump at his admission. She studied his face then reached up and pulled off his glasses. Under normal circumstances he would have grabbed her hand to stop her. He didn’t this time.
Tell her.
“Where did you go, Clark?”
Tell her.
“Krypton.”
For kassandrajones
Clark is struggling to tell Lois both that he loves her and his secret
Preferred Genre(s): Romance.
Preferred Category(ies): Smallville or Superman Returns.
A specific you want: Clark's Jersey. Story from Clark's point of view.
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Confessions on a Football Jersey (Read 1771 times)
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