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Clark is confused.
Well, maybe confused is the wrong word choice.
He understands, intellectually, what’s happened. Not that he didn’t before; Chloe’s discovery of the Legion Ring amongst Lois’s possessions in the hospital had gone a long way towards explaining how she’d just disappeared into thin air for three weeks, and why no matter how hard he looked, Clark hadn’t been able to hear the one sound he’d needed to the most: her heartbeat.
Because Lois had been in the future. This is a fact that hasn’t really been up for debate.
But now Clark knows what happened and he thinks, as he stares at row after row of flowers, that it really just figures. This is the kind of thing that happens in his life - weird, confusing events that end up hurting everyone around him. And now he knows that while he thought creating distance between himself and Lois Lane would protect her, insulate her from the oddness that his presence seems to attract, he was wrong.
He chuckles to himself and studies a display of daisies, then frowns almost immediately, because while his discovery of precisely what Lois did in a future that no longer exists fills him with an almost excruciating optimism, he can’t help but regret the fact that those memories now only exist in his mind. Even Lois doesn’t remember, and maybe it’s for the best, but God, it just makes things so much more complicated.
On the one hand, he thinks he should be glad. He was not privy to the entirety of what happened to her, no, he’d arrived a little too late and had missed the start of the show, and his jaw clenches tightly as he thinks of Tess, and her cavalier treatment of his partner. Clark is someone who has grown used to the regrets that haunt him almost constantly, but he doesn’t regret the force he greeted her with, anger flaring anew as he pictures Lois again in his mind, unconscious and helpless to Tess’s seemingly endless machinations.
No, he doesn’t know how things started, but he knows how they ended well enough, and he knows Lois. If she’d remembered, even through the dreams that had been plaguing her, it would only have been a matter of time before she pieced together the truth, and he knows he’s a coward for it, but a part of him isn’t quite ready for that, not yet.
But there are other things, things he’ll never tell Oliver or Chloe, things that had transpired between himself and Lois. His cheeks heat and he shuffles nervously on his feet, eyeing a bouquet of lilies with forced interest as he desperately tries and fails not to think about Lois.
Naked. Lois had been very naked, and he, Clark Joseph Kent, had made her that way.
He had also been naked, extremely naked, which wasn’t exactly a first in front of Lois, but it sure had seemed that way.
And boy, oh boy, they had done some naked things. Very amazing, very naked things.
The thing is that, now that he knows they’ve done those things, he doesn’t think he’s going to really be happy until they do them again. Preferably under circumstances where they aren’t about to possibly die, and they both remember. He has a lot of ideas, on that front, because it’s all he’s been able to think about since waking up at her side to find Emil and Chloe swarming them both.
Clark clears his throat and makes his way to what seems to be a veritable wall of roses, so many shades and varieties that he decides it’s enough to distract him from the sounds he now knows Lois makes when she’s–
“Excuse me?” An older woman appears at his side and Clark nearly jumps out of his skin. “Can I help you?”
“Huh? Oh, yes, I, uh,” he stammers for a moment, then points blindly to the nearest bouquet, a dozen salmon-colored roses. “How much are those?”
The woman blinks at him owlishly from behind her glasses, then to the roses, lips pursing in amusement. “$24.99,” she says, and jabs her thumb at the very clearly displayed price. “Just like the tag says.” Then she leans closer, peering at him. “You feel okay, Honey? You look a little peaked.”
Clark shakes his head, managing a smile. “Long day,” he breathes out, which is the truth. Long month, long year, there are plenty of descriptors he could use.
He wonders if Lois is okay, despite Emil’s numerous promises to oversee her care once transferring her to Met Gen. It makes him feel antsy, not being around her, but he finds that if he focuses really hard, he can hear her. He can hear Lois’s heartbeat, and it’s strong and steady, and he lets out a slow, heavy breath as he feels the weight of the woman’s stare.
With a sympathetic cluck, she turns, salt and pepper hair flying over her shoulder as she tugs at Clark’s sleeve and moves to another cooler, filled with larger arrangements. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for, and I’ll help you pick something out for your,” she peeks over her shoulder, the corner of her mouth tipped up as she gives him another thoughtful look, “Sweetheart?”
He parts his lips to argue, a reflex, but stops himself. He doesn’t know exactly what Lois is, now, but he knows Chloe was right. Lois does mean something to him, something more, and maybe she always has. He’s tried to push it away, the way he feels about her, because…well, there are a lot of reasons.
There’s the fact that, until fairly recently, he’s always just assumed Lois was way out of his league. He’s also, until fairly recently, assumed she felt that way as well.
There’s the fact that his secret, his big, monumental secret, does nothing but hurt everyone he cares about. And even though he knows she could handle it, knows she would accept this unavoidable truth about him easily and with a grace that he remembers shocking him, on a day that never existed, he just doesn’t know if he can live with himself if something happens to her because of him.
Bullshit , his mind whispers. You aren’t afraid for her. You’re afraid for YOU.
He doesn’t quite know what to do with the fact that the voice in his head sounds like Lois.
Clark realizes he’s been thinking when he should have been talking, and licks his dry lips quickly, nodding towards the dozen yellow roses flecked with sprays of tiny white flowers. “I wouldn’t say ‘sweetheart’ exactly. Not yet. Maybe? Soon? I don’t know.” The clerk starts grinning at his nervous reply. “What about those?”
They seem perfectly nice, bright and cheerful and buttery, but the clerk (Maggie, he noted to himself, her name tag read ‘Maggie’) wrinkles her nose. “No,” she says with a scoff, “No way. Not for a ‘maybe, potentially a sweetheart’ situation. Yellow is for friendship.”
“Well,” Clark starts, shoving his hands in the pockets of his trousers and rocking back on his heels, “She is my best friend.”
But Maggie isn’t having any of it. “Well, if you want to keep her firmly in the friend-zone, then sure, buy the yellow.” She raises her brows as Clark kisses his teeth and shakes his head.
“No, no, I definitely want to move out of ‘just friends’ territory, I just,” he pauses and he knows he’s about to overshare, but everything is so confusing and complicated and at the end of the day, he really needs some guidance with this. “I don’t know how she’s going to react, I guess.”
He doesn’t know. Not really. Because he already kissed her, a great and perfect and amazing kiss right there in the middle of the newsroom, and then she’d skipped town. Sure, she’d come back, and sure, she’d kissed him in the copy room and that had been even better than when he’d kissed her, because it had to be said: Lois Lane sure knew how to kiss.
She sure knows how to do other things, too, and he avoids his own reflection in the display glass because he knows he’s probably as red as a tomato. He forces the images away, the ones his mind has seized upon with a ferocity that worries him just a little.
It’s like he’s addicted; He can’t seem to let go of how perfect she is, each swell and curve of her bare, tanned skin, of the irresistible memory of how she’d looked under him and over him and wrapped around him so closely that Clark knew, he just knew, there hadn’t been a spare inch of space between his body and hers.
“Hmmmm.” Maggie frowns a little, narrowing her eyes and tapping the tip of her index finger against her lips as she examines her inventory. “Ah! What about these?” She’s a full foot shorter than Clark, at least, but she grabs his elbow and tugs him along like it’s nothing, until they’re standing in front of a new bouquet. “Blue. It’s perfect.”
His lips quirk in a small smile. “What does blue mean?”
“Mystery, uniqueness, unattainable love,” Maggie responds easily, then winks at him. “Plus, they smell great.”
His smile grows. Maggie doesn’t need to know of his own particular attachment to the color, and his eyes widen as he sees another arrangement three vases over, in a brilliant scarlet red. “I’ll take a dozen of the blue. And, uh,” he shifts on his feet again, “a dozen of the red, too.”
Maggie’s face turns absolutely gleeful. “Love and passion. Classic choice, kiddo, but then,” she tilts her head, “you look like a nice, old-fashioned sort of guy.”
Clark looks down at himself, then back at the clerk. “Thanks, I think.” She’s not wrong, he supposes, but he isn’t sure what it is she sees that’s giving him away. Then he’s distracted completely as he spies another color and stops short. “Hang on, what about those?”
He points, and Maggie’s eyes follow until she spies the flowers he means. “Lavender roses mean wonder and enchantment.” Then she waggles her brows at him meaningfully and nudges him with her shoulder.
Clark doesn’t need convincing, though, because all he can picture is how the pale purple would look against her skin, and he reigns in his errant thoughts before he can go down that extremely inappropriate road once more. “A dozen of those, too.”
Maggie whistles under her breath. “You must have it ba-a-a-ad, honey. Three dozen roses?”
He winces and sucks in a breath, his nerves returning with a vengeance. “Too much?” He doesn’t really know the etiquette, can count the times he’s actually gone to a florist and purchased flowers on one hand, and suddenly he wonders if he’s going way too far, too fast.
“Ha!” She claps a surprisingly strong hand on his shoulder. “No such thing!”
His eyes keep returning to the yellow, because, okay, he doesn’t want to just be friends with her, he’s sure of that, but he can’t help but think that she’s his best friend, and that ought to count for something, too. “In that case, let’s throw in the yellow, too.”
Maggie seems delighted, and it isn’t hard to understand why; Clark’s pretty sure most guys don’t show up and buy roses by the multiple dozen every day, but her excitement is oddly contagious. “Smart boy, hedging your bets.” She waves him forward, to the counter in the back, and steps behind the register. “Must be a real special girl.”
“She is,” he answers, automatically, because it’s another true, factual statement. There’s always been something special about Lois, and he’s been willfully ignorant to the full scope of her impact on his life, but he means to rectify that situation immediately. With the flowers. Assuming she doesn’t freak out. “You don’t think it’s too many, right?”
Maggie hums under her breath. “Depends. How long have you known her?”
Clark thinks about it. “About five years, I guess. Maybe a little more.”
“Tell you what, kiddo,” she says, her eyes never leaving the keys as she punches up his order on the register, “Buy four and I’ll throw in a fifth for free. A dozen for each year. Go pick while I ring this up, yeah?” Maggie nods towards the cooler cases before he can protest, and he’s spent enough time in arguments he knows he’ll never win that he just sighs and shrugs and walks back towards the endless vases of flowers.
“Five really seems like too many,” he mutters under his breath, but there’s another voice inside his head that whispers it’s nowhere near enough, because he sees her, again, the fear on her face, the desperation, the love in her eyes just before he’d sent her back.
‘What if I never see you again?’
It’s stupid to be jealous of himself, but he is. He is insanely jealous of a Clark Kent who doesn’t exist anymore, a man who’d gone so long without her that his fears had fled when he’d seen her again, a man who had, for once, taken exactly what he wanted.
He wants Lois to look at him like that, and he hopes, with everything that he is, that it’s not too late.
Clark studies the arrangements carefully, his eyes repeatedly returning to one in particular. “Hey, Maggie?” He looks over as her head flies up, her gaze locking on to him curiously. “What about the white ones? What do they mean?”
“White, or ivory?”
Clark’s brows furrow. “Is there a difference?”
“Ugh.” Her loud noise of disgust is tempered by a knowing smirk as she jogs to his side, her sneakers squeaking on the tile floor. “A huge difference. White is for purity, innocence. Not what you’re going for, I’m guessing.”
Clark grimaces slightly. “No.”
Maggie’s finger taps on the glass smartly. “Well, good news, then, because those are ivory. Grace and charm,” she intones, then checks her gaze back to gauge his expression. “Yeah,” she says with a nod, “I bet that’s more like it.”
“She does have a very particular sort of charm,” Clark says, and chuckles. “Okay, let’s do those.”
Lois does, in fact, have many charms, but he’s divulged more than enough to Maggie the florist, he thinks. He sternly instructs himself not to dwell on those charms, ample as they are, as he follows the older woman back to the counter and completes the delivery slip, stopping to text Chloe briefly to confirm Lois’s room number at Met Gen.
Clark doesn’t even blink when Maggie tells him that rushing the order will cost another fifty bucks, because he’s committed now, he’s doing this, and to hell with the cost. Lois is worth everything he has, and more, and all he can think of as he signs the credit card receipt is how happy she’d been to see him the day he’d returned to the newsroom, unable to leave humanity behind completely now that she’d rejoined its ranks.
More than anything, he just wants to make her happy, craves the way she smiles with her whole mouth and throws back her head to laugh like he craves the sunlight on his skin.
He’s got a foot out the door when Maggie’s voice rings out.
“Good luck, Clark Kent.” She flashes him a wide grin and a thumb’s up and he returns her smile, giving her a wave before stepping out into the bright afternoon, letting the bustling crowds guide him down the concrete sidewalk as he realizes what he should do next.
He hears Lois’s voice again in his mind (‘ a girl’s gotta eat, Smallville! ’) and spins around, heading the opposite direction as quickly as he’ll allow himself, the siren song of a maple donut too much to resist, because flowers are well and good but he knows Lois.
Sixty roses might be the best unintentional way to say ‘Hey, Lois, thanks for that crazy-hot future sex that I would very, very much like to experience in full technicolor surround-sound at your earliest convenience ’, or at least he’s hoping. She might actually think he’s crazy, and he knows he can’t really tell her why he’s doing this, but he’ll take his chances.
If there’s one thing he’s sure of, it’s this: The quickest path to her heart (or at least, maybe, a date - a real one this time) is definitely through her stomach.
Maybe he’ll get two donuts - better safe than sorry.