Chapter Text
Prologue
She watched him from across the street, partially concealed behind a dark green lamp post, as he walked out of the building wearing his normal sport coat and tie beneath a dark trench coat. He pivoted at the foot of the stairs and started down the sparsely populated city sidewalk, head slightly bowed, presumably heading to wherever he was living. It was late in the afternoon, the sun was halfway below the horizon, and the light was fading but it was unmistakably Clark.
Fall had arrived but it felt like winter, and the air was cooler than she had expected. The sidewalks were damp although it had not rained for hours. It was wetter in Star City than it was in Metropolis, and the damp cool air made even chillier by the constant Pacific breeze, cut through the light jacket and thin sweater she was wearing. She hated damp, cold air, and here it was pushed by an unrelenting breeze that blew from seemingly every direction.
She matched his pace from across the street but remained about ten paces behind. The few people on the sidewalk gave her little cover should he decide to turn around, so she hung back in the event that he did for some reason.
The very sight of Clark had ignited an array of feelings. They were so strong that she breathlessly gasped and had to consciously suppress the urge to call out and run to him the moment he emerged from the office building where he had been reassigned. She had not seen him in almost three months, and her heart ached watching him. He seemed so different. It was like watching an animatronic character at a theme park imitating a human, mechanically going through the motions a human would make moving down the sidewalk – apathetic to his surroundings, expressionless, silent, numb.
How did their relationship come to this when it held so much promise, she asked herself. Was it his fault? Was it hers? Had she pushed him away or did he run away? The voice inside her head suggested an answer. It was the same voice she had heard before and it sounded like her cousin.
Upon reaching an intersection he slowed before proceeding on. She thought he had looked back, and she sidestepped behind a large woman with a hoodie to avoid his gaze. When she peeked over the woman’s left shoulder, she saw Clark now plodding across the street at which he had paused. She commenced walking again, matching his pace but shielding herself as best as she could behind the woman.
Her eyes grew watery. Even more than before, I need him in my life, she thought to herself. How is that even possible, she wondered but her heart knew the answer.
In the five months leading up to the wedding of Chloe Sullivan and James Olsen, Clark and Lois had grown closer. Although they had circled each other for years, their relationship began to change in earnest when Clark unexpectedly received a break-up DVD from Lana. For the first time in her life, Lois saw Clark totally defeated. He never had seemed so lost and alone with no one to turn to. He was crushed by Lana’s rejection, and her own heart broke at the sight of him. She ran to him, hugging him without speaking a word.
Comforting Clark while he was overcome by that soul-cleaving message was an unexpected act of compassion at the exact moment he needed someone. Her soft, genuine concern radiated her empathy and concern for his pain. It began lifting the veil through which Clark had viewed Lois for years. As that veil lifted, it revealed the true beauty within the spunky woman in front of him, the one who offered him unconditional support that he never realized he needed until she held him in that moment.
Two months after that, Clark was hired at the Daily Planet as the publication’s newest stringer. Lois was assigned as his Daily Planet mentor, to train him on the routines, rules, policies, and practices of journalism. It was a task that she publicly carped about but secretly accepted enthusiastically. “As long as I can boss him around,” she begrudged when Tess Mercer first made the assignment.
For years, Lois saw Clark as handsome and brawny, and she had always felt an awkward physical attraction to him. But to Lois, Clark existed in her heart somewhere between an annoying brother and a hopelessly naïve boy scout who broke her cousin’s heart. He was only interested in Lana, who never quite figured him out for some reason which was puzzling to her. After all, Lois had Clark figured out within hours of first knowing him. Or so she believed.
Since the day she found Clark grieving his breakup, Lois’s impression of him had evolved. That evolution accelerated once she became his coworker and worked with him every day. Clark was not naïve as she originally thought. She quickly learned that his boyish optimism was not born of naivety, but of an iron determination to see the best in people. It was not a weakness to overcome as Lois once thought. She began to see that Clark’s optimism came from an incredible inner strength and resolve that very few people possessed. And she quickly came to learn that Clark was far from the simple farm boy she once thought that she could dominate. He matched her wit and subtle jabs with his own. The quips and jabs between them help cement their understanding of one another. And without realizing it at the time, she was falling in love with him. That realization manifested a nervous anticipation of a more physically intimate and clearly defined relationship with him.
So, with Clark under her wing to show him the ropes, those months had been exhilarating for both of them. She found new pet names and then began playfully teasing him. But rather than simply taking it, Clark engaged in his own teasing, and the teasing gradually became flirtatious, and the flirting became long stares and unspoken words and the beginnings of a growing sexual tension between them.
They had become roommates at the Kent farmhouse five weeks before the wedding when Lois abruptly moved out of the apartment she shared with her cousin after Jimmy had moved in with Chloe the previous weekend. Lois declared that it was just temporary and only because she had nowhere else to go but that being awakened to the sound of the two of them having sex until the early morning hours left her exhausted after four days of it.
Clark suppressed a smile and cautiously welcomed Lois living at the farm with him. After work and on weekends, they began going out together, but not on dates both would say, because neither had admitted their true feelings for the other. Those nights out began with deciding that neither felt like cooking dinner. Then those occasions grew into sitting together and watching a DVD or playing a video game. Sometimes it was getting an ice cream cone in Smallville or taking in a demolition derby a couple of Friday nights at a nearby dirt track. They had not talked about dating, but both were secretly pleased with the way their relationship was evolving. In their minds, each began to think about starting a more serious relationship.
Two things were creating tension for Clark with Lois living with him. The first was his patrolling in Metropolis after dark as The Blur. Oliver fixed that problem saying that he would have one of the team cover for Clark until he let Lois in on the secret. The other issue was the number of Lois’s not-so-subtle advances. There was no doubt that he would have liked to take their relationship to the physical intimacy stage but until he told her his secret, he knew it would not be right to do that to her.
Clark found ways to sidestep her advances, but it sent the message to Lois that he was not fully in sync with the way she felt about him. Lois wondered and worried that perhaps he was still hoping to reconnect with Lana. So, Lois continued to play coy with him and not let on to her true feelings until she was absolutely certain that he felt the same way. It did not stop her from gradually but continually ratcheting up the sexual tension between them, but it kept her from forcing him to outright reject a direct offer.
Now, with the wedding ceremony complete and the celebratory reception in full swing, Lois knew that her role as Chloe's maid of honor was complete. The rest of the evening was on autopilot for her. Toasts had been made, speeches had been given, and all that was left to do was exhale from orchestrating a perfect wedding event.
She stood at the edge of the wooden dance floor, listening to the music and watching Clark from the corner of her eye. So many thoughts were running through her head about him and how her feelings had changed so rapidly.
He looked her way, and she nervously returned his gaze. Unable to decipher what he was thinking, she turned and proceeded to walk past him, mumbling about getting off her feet for a while when he reached out and grasped her wrist.
Lois smiled nervously and nodded her acceptance of his unspoken invitation. An instant later, she was casually dancing with the man she had fallen in love with. Couples crowded the dance floor when slow music began playing and they pushed Lois and Clark closer together. His warmth and the look in his eyes drew her into what she knew would be the kiss that she had been longing for. She felt certain that their first romantic kiss would open the door to the lovemaking that she had been so anxiously awaiting.
Clark gazed into Lois’s eyes, lost in them and thrilled by the primal longing he saw in them. They continued to slowly close the distance between them. For both of them, the music faded away. All Clark could hear, all he wanted to hear, was the sound of her heart beating. The thought of her soft lips set his own heart pounding in his chest. Closer he leaned and the fragrant scent of her hair and heated perfume made him fear his heat vision would become uncontrollable. In that moment, he decided that he would tell her his secret and if she accepted him for what he was, he would make love to her. He wanted her and was almost certain that she wanted him.
Clark was about to share his first kiss with the woman who had become far more than just a friend to him. Their friendship had blossomed into a romance, he thought, and the thought excited him. But he was not sure it was what Lois wanted, and the last thing he wanted was to push her away by overstepping. But she is leaning in for a kiss, too, he thought. Isn't she? She was always hard for him to read. It seemed that she really wanted him the way he wanted her but was it just the emotional feelings getting swept up seeing her younger cousin get married?
But they drew closer and just before their lips met, Chloe cried out, “No way!”, distracting them at the very moment their lips were about to shatter the invisible wall between friends and lovers. “I don’t believe it!” Chloe said and squealed with delight. Turning to look, Clark and Lois saw Lana arrive unexpectedly through the side door of the barn.
Clark was caught by surprise and a flood of feelings washed over him as he stood transfixed, staring at his former girlfriend. His reaction instantly left Lois reeling, feeling discarded, damaged, and foolish. She retreated from him and eventually found herself sitting on a back porch bench with a bottle of champagne and lamenting the incident with her own former boyfriend, Oliver Queen.
Lois decided that it would be a good time to take an extended leave from the area. She cornered Tess, who had been Oliver’s wedding date, and convinced Tess to give her at least a two-week assignment anywhere far away from Metropolis and Smallville. Tess paused but was moved by Lois’s emotional state and decided that allowing her to recover somewhere else would eventually help everyone involved. Tess said that she had just received a lead that she was going to assign to Ron Troupe but would instead assign to her. The lead would take her to Ecuador, and it involved a 21-day posting writing about the efforts South American countries were expending to reduce the amount of rainforest being denuded. To that three-week assignment, Lois requested a week of vacation time at the end of it to get her permanent living arrangements in order. Tess insisted that time was of the essence on the story and told Lois that she wanted her to fly out on Monday morning which was exactly what Lois had hoped to hear.
Upon getting the assignment, she quickly went inside, collected as much of her clothing and toiletries as she would need for three weeks away, stuffed it all into a suitcase and headed for her car without anyone being aware of her getaway. To emphasize her absence, she ignored all calls from anyone at the Planet except Tess, including those from Oliver and Chloe. She had blocked Clark’s number immediately after she left Smallville. When she arrived at the Metropolis airport the next day enroute to Ecuador and saw five missed calls from him, she erased the voicemails he left from his Daily Planet phone line without listening to them.
The three-week assignment took an unexpected turn that extended her time in Ecuador to six weeks. The extension occurred when her surveillance of timber workers led her to identify a previously unknown footpath through the jungles that cartels were using to secretly shift travel from highly monitored primary routes to secondary and tertiary routes when moving drugs northward.
Her discovery was immediately shared with Tess who called Oliver to ask for ideas on what her next step should be. In reply, Oliver called General Sam Lane at the Department of Domestic Security and set up an encrypted conference call with Tess for her to explain what Lois had discovered.
Upon hearing the information, the General called the DEA director and the Commanding General of the US Southern Command on another encrypted conference call to inform them of his daughter’s discovery and develop tactical orders for two joint drug interdiction teams from the DEA and US Southern Command. They would be deployed from Panama to meet with Lois and discuss her discovery. Once they arrived, for three additional weeks she was at the center of heightened interdiction operations as a trade-off for sharing her discovery. She was approved to accompany the strike teams to provide controlled press coverage back to the US Southern Command as well as to Tess.
Those three weeks embedded with the joint federal and military teams revived Lois’s self-confidence. It was a revisit to the familiar, reconnecting to her days as a military brat swapping stories with soldiers during breaks and drinking some under the table at night. It gave Lois the time and space she needed to regroup and restore her swagger after the wedding reception humiliation.
On her way back to the US, Lois began thinking about Clark and had promised herself that no matter how badly she wanted to grab him and climb into his arms, she would resist that urge. She had already convinced herself to forgive Clark’s faux pas at the wedding reception, chalking it up to their undefined relationship and him being blindsided by Lana’s appearance. But she resolved that she would never again let her heart be bruised the way it had been that night and would in no way let Clark know what it had done to her. She formed a plan to find an apartment she could move into immediately upon arriving in Metropolis. She would then travel to Smallville and collect the rest of her things and move to her new home while he was at work.
She had enjoyed her assignment, and it seemed that the time had helped her heal but, in her heart, she still desperately missed Clark. At a layover in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, Lois decided to reach out to Chloe and ask for her help to find a place advertising immediate occupancy near Metropolis so that she could lease and move into it as soon as possible once she got back into the city.
Chloe answered on the second ring. “Lois? Where in the hell have you been?” she demanded.
"Mom?" Lois replied jokingly but Chloe was not in the mood for levity.
“Are you okay? No one knew where you had gone or what had happened to you. It’s been over six weeks! I’ve been scared to death and worried sick. What in the hell are you doing?”
The ferocity of Chloe’s attack took Lois by surprise. “Slow down, Cuz,” she began. “I’ve been on an assignment.”
“Where, on another friggin’ planet? I quit calling you after about the millionth time I tried. Why didn’t you answer, for God’s sake. I’ve been literally sick from worrying.” Chloe paused but before Lois could utter a reply, she added, “You have a lot of explaining to do and I’m afraid you’re going to be shocked by a few developments when you get back. Where are you now?”
“I’m in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport,” she began. “I know I have a lot of things to apologize to you for but believe me, I needed to get away…”
“Yeah, you sure do, Lo,” Chloe interrupted angrily. “A lot of people have been just as worried about you as I have,” she said. “I climbed all over Oliver until he told me that you were safe but that he had promised you that he wouldn’t say anything about where you were or what you were up to.”
“Well,” Lois began but Chloe was not finished.
“Then,” she interrupted again, “Oliver became worried when he couldn’t get through to you. Do you know that he sent a tac team from Queen Industries to look for you, wherever that was? I doubt it because they couldn’t get through to wherever it was you were at. And that scared the hell out of Oliver.”
“Look, Chloe,” Lois barked, “I was in Ecuador, okay? I can’t say right now what I was doing there. But I was pretty safe the entire time.” She paused and Chloe did not say anything. Lois took the momentary silence to continue. “I was supposed to be incommunicado during part of it. The entire time, Tess knew where I was, that I was safe, and what I was doing.”
“Oh, well, that makes it all okay, then,” her cousin replied sarcastically. “Because Tess is so understanding when it comes to other peoples' concerns, right?”
“Okay!” Lois shouted into the phone. “I’m sorry you were scared, Chloe. That wasn’t my intention and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to be frightened or worried about me. I figured you and Jimmy would be busy getting busy and I just needed to get some space and time to regroup and start thinking more clearly. And now that it’s done, I’m ready to move on but I need your help to find a place to live, like immediately.”
Chloe chuckled but it was a sarcastic one. “Well, Cuz, if I’m not mistaken, you have a place to live, and you’ll have plenty of space now.”
“Chloe, I can’t go back there,” Lois said, voice quaking slightly and then paused. “Wait! What do you mean I’ll have plenty of space?” she asked and then meekly asked, “Don’t tell me that Clark and Lana disappeared to some secret love nest, or did they? Tell me now if that happened...please.”
“Oh, no,” she lightly but sarcastically. “The only person who ran off was you.”
Lois exhaled, exasperated. “Damn, Chloe; don't do that. You had me...”
“Jesus, Lois!” Chloe barked. “Clark didn’t run off with anyone and especially not Lana, okay? Lana left the day after the wedding and headed back to Paris or wherever she came from. Clark was left here wondering why you left, where you went, and why you blocked his calls. He was out of his mind for a week before Oliver finally calmed him down and told him what you’d asked Tess to do and the reason why.”
“And you’re mad at me?” Lois asked. “What about him and Lana? What about dumping me right in the middle of a kiss so that he could run back to Lana? What do you think I should have done? Hang around and watch the Clark-Lana undying love show resurrected?”
Choe remained silent for a moment, reflecting on what her cousin had said. “I wish you had at least waited around to the end to see it,” Chloe replied.
Lois frowned. “Why, so that I could stand around watching those two make ‘puppy eyes’ at each other all night?” she answered. "What happened at the end of the night? Hello? Chloe?”
Did she just hang up on me?