Chapter Text
A five-hundred-ton steel girder rocketing towards your skull has a way of focusing your senses. It still worked a little on Clark, even though he knew he could survive it. Just a little bit of the Kansas farmboy left in his brain, from before he knew he couldn't die. Clark sometimes fretted, in contemplative moments, about what would happen when those last traces of fearful instinct washed out of his brain, diluted by too many experiences of solid steel splintering around his body. Every time he did this, he became less human.
The steel girder collided with his skull and broke. The calamity of noise and heat was perfectly familiar. There was another sound, too: Snap. Snap. Snap. Somebody was taking pictures.
Unperturbed, Superman glided up to the spandex-clad guy at the controls of the stolen construction crane. The guy looked a lot paler and more freaked out than he had a few seconds earlier.
"You know that I'm not Batman, right?"
The thief nodded dumbly. Geez, did he look scared.
"Okay. I figured you probably watch the news, but some people live under a rock, right? Because if it was 2009 and I was Batman, this would make a lot more sense. With the-" Clark sighed internally before continuing that sentence. "-the giraffe outfit, and the crane, and everything. It was nice of you to take this away from the street, but you caused a lot of property damage and you are definitely going to jail. You understand that, right?"
It looked like the number of giraffe spots on this guy's spandex suit was increasing by one. Superman tactfully refrained from investigating.
Snap. Another photo. It was some kid on the opposite side of the street, holding an expensive camera with an elongated lens. Hmm. Something tickled the back of Superman's brain. Was there something familiar about the kid with the camera?
"You're going to be on Instagram, by the way," Superman said, to the terrified thief. "I know this isn't your finest moment. I'm sorry about that."
The kid snapping the pictures looked to be about eighteen or nineteen, freckly with tousled orange hair and an impish grin. Superman made note of the kid's identity, reading his campus ID card through pocket and wallet. James Olsen, NYU student; and his ID photo checked out, minus the adorable grin. "If someone might be keeping an eye on you, keep an eye on them too." - that was what Lois always said. And she was smart about this public-figure stuff.
Sighing internally as he returned to the issue at hand, Superman hoisted the giraffe guy by the collar and dragged him to the closest police station without much resistance. Leaving a costumed guy tied up for a couple hours until the cops came by was asking for trouble - it would work fine for muggers, but a lot of these spandex villains were the types to sit around playing with locks and doing magic tricks all day. That was a useful bit of advice that Batman had given him.
("Bruce", he reminded himself. We know each other. Calling your actual friend by his superhero name internally is just stupid. Do you want him to think of you as "Superman"? Come on.)
The cops were happy to receive giraffe guy. What a ridiculous waste of time.
Later that night, Clark tried to focus on boiling spaghetti successfully without taking his ear off the police scanner, or his eye off of his twitter feed. A man needs to relax sometimes, right? Having muted everyone who worked for or quote-tweeted Gawker, twitter even sometimes managed not to elevate his superhuman blood pressure.
Lois banged on the door and, just for kicks, he zoomed over to unlock and open it, and back again, before his phone hit the floor. Sure, he could have set it down, but this was practice or something. Definitely something virtuous and not a silly show-off thing. She looked exasperated as she walked in and saw him in the kitchenette.
"You know it makes me nauseous when you do that, right?"
"What, the spaghetti? You don't have to take any," he said, with a dumb smile. He didn't like irritating Lois, but then she set him up for great lines like that.
"I would like some spaghetti, actually. And you should be thanking me right now, because I just figured out another anti-Superman blog is getting LexCorp grants. They're trying to make Superman look bad, digging up old newspapers and stuff. They might really figure something out! Like, your- something personal about you."
"Look, I really appreciate it, but you don't have to do this stuff. You know that, right? Lots of people like me on the internet and, you know, at actual newspapers and stuff. They're not going to take me out or figure out my human name or anything. I know Lex Luthor doesn't like me, but I think LexCorp has bigger priorities," he said.
"Clark, you're the biggest thing in the world right now - maybe even the biggest thing in New York. People are after you. We have to be careful."
He started draining the pasta, trying to be normal-person careful just in case.
"You said you wanted spaghetti, right? You can fill me in on your internet escapades, and I can tell you all about-" he hesitated for a second. There was no reason to bother Lois about the photographer, right? The kid was probably just a birdwatcher who got especially lucky about what construction site to snap goldfinches at. Or whatever. It's easy to fool yourself into thinking you recognize someone.
"-I can tell you all about this giraffe guy. It was the most ridiculous shit ever, he legitimately had a theme, like those guys Batman used to fuck up."
Lois smiled. There. They could have a regular, friendly conversation, as two old friends. There was no reason to let anything to get in the way of that.