Work Text:
It starts, as all things Clark is afraid of, with an email in his inbox. He’s between stories at the moment because an hour before lunch he had gotten the latest to the editor. It’s nothing but an announcement of the latest hires at the Daily Planet. Clark is one of the few to actually read them so he takes a scroll. New promotion for the technical parts of the digital copies, this intern actually got a job while that one didn’t, James Doakes taking over crime after the old cover retired in part, but not entirely because of the city splitting in half.
Then the city needs Superman so Clark takes five to take care of that. Cat in a tree, minor fire, the good solid stuff. He’s back in the office in enough time that he just had to refill his coffee cup and not use the restroom. With a fresh cup of coffee in hand Clark makes it back to his desk in the bullpen. Technically it’s the worst seat in the room because the sun shines right on it, making screens difficult to read for about half the day, but it doesn’t bother Clark much and he likes the sun anyways.
“Kent, there you are,” Perry is making one of his rounds around the bullpen and there is another man with him. “This is James Doakes, you read the staff emails, he’s taking over for Cruz. Doakes, Clark Kent, no official beat but we throw him at the heroes pretty often, but he’ll write whatever I need him to without complaint.”
Clark reaches out to shake James’s hand. He gives his farmer perfected firm, but not too firm handshake. Pa really helped him learn how to be firm, but not actually hurt anyone and back when Clark was on the debate circuit back in high school no one had anything but praise to say about his business handshake. James is the type to squeeze slightly, Clark will not assign it a play for dominance because that’s reading way too much into someone he’s talking to for the first time but that is why Lois does it.
“Nice to meet you James,” Clark wonders where Lois is right now. Three blocks west in a coffee shop writing a very angry email. Nice.
“Go by Doakes mostly,” Doakes lets go of the handshake but keeps going with eye contact. He’s always struggled a bit with eye contact, that’s part of the whole glasses thing. Clark bobs his head at Doakes before going to sit back at his desk.
Clark mostly checks his email from then until noon. It’s a slow day in Metropolis and while Clark does get several messages from the Justice Gang, it’s mostly Mr. Terrific telling him that they’ve got whatever situation has popped up with an exception for Rex confirming that Clark is willing to watch Joey this weekend. Clark takes lunch as close to noon as he can get it and actually eats it in the staff breakroom for once instead of taking it someplace outside so he can do Superman stuff.
“Hey Clark buddy,” which is why Jimmy’s able to grab him during his lunch break, making the usual sounds he does when he needs a favor.
“Yeah, Jimmy?” Clark shoves the rest of his sandwich in his mouth as quickly as he can. Always good to be ready for whatever comes.
“It’s not a big deal, but I was trying to print some pictures directly from a flashdrive and kind of dropped the flashdrive behind the printer and I can’t reach…”
“Oh sure, no problem. Which printer?” The bullpen has about three printers on its own and if Jimmy was down in graphics there were about five there.
“Uh, big boy,” Big boy was the nickname for the main printer in the bullpen, called as such because it was about twice the size of the other two and about ten years older, but it was also everyone’s favorite because it never lost items in the queue and never broke down.
So Clark went back into the bullpen to check it out. He used his x-ray vision to give it a check over before he started poking around. Yup, stuck in a place hands can’t reach. He gives it an appearance of shoving his hand around for it, before going to move it. Clark takes a few deep breaths and reminds himself to go slow and gently puff as he does it. Make it look realistic.
“And there you go,” Clark shoves his glasses back up his nose. No matter what he does they always slide around, it’s such a pain.
“You’re a life saver Clark,” Jimmy immediately snatches the flashdrive from him and goes to one of the other printers, one that doesn’t have its usb port in a very difficult place to reach.
Clark gives the printer another look, like he’s hesitating about moving it back before actually doing it. Once again Clark makes it look like it takes an effort.
“Hell you bench Kent?” Clark definitely jumps, he didn’t realize that anyone was paying attention. Doakes was standing right behind him, watching.
“Oh, uh, I’m not sure?” Clark scratches the back of his head. He doesn’t actually know the maximum amount he can lift weight wise, typically with things that get closer to pushing the limits of what he can hold or move is typically just more in its shape and size rather than weight.
“You can move that fucking thing but you don’t know how much you bench?”
“Just farm boy strong,” Clark does his goofiest flex.
Doakes continues looking at him as Clark goes back to his desk. Clark probably came off as too awkward there. It’s hard to judge the right mix of performatively goofy and any authentic quirkiness. There’s a reason he had two and a half friends in high school.
Clark follows on leads he’s had saved up in the past but didn’t have time to fully investigate into yet. There’s his next story. It’ll be back to the usual tomorrow, hopefully.
Lois is back in the office the next day. Clark’s stories are once again in a waiting phase, but this time it’s the story of how long it takes for municipal governments to respond to emails. Clark takes a moment to refill the coffee pot in the break room, to stretch his legs and see how many donuts are left over. It’s just one so he’ll leave it for someone else.
“Morning Smallville,” Lois gives his butt a swat with the morning newspaper, “Oh, shit, fresh coffee too.”
“And a doughnut, if there isn’t enough sugar in your coffee for you,” They haven’t gone truly official with their relationship, but they aren’t making the same efforts to hide it anymore. It’s mostly done with the thought that if they get caught now, they get caught.
“Oh, eugh, it’s the baked ones, no. Eat up big boy,” Lois empties about five sugars into her coffee before stirring. She must be pretty busy if that’s all the sugar she’s putting in. They steal a brief kiss before heading back to their respective desks and Clark does take the last doughnut, he’s been given permission after all.
Lois is flying miles high as soon as she’s back at her desk and is hunt-and-peck typing with vigorous speed and a loud aggression. The story must be juicy. Clark tries to not make it look like he’s watching her so much and goes back to his own work. Anything critical of LexCorp right now is selling like hotcakes and due to a mixture of his activities as Superman and an Agricultural Sciences minor Clark has a lot write about on the pollution front that typically wouldn’t get the okay from Perry because it was too boring to get numbers unless it was a slow news day.
Doakes is watching him. Uh oh, he probably gave off a bad first impression didn’t he? Too awkward perhaps? Lois told him he came off as very fake at first until he kept acting like he did and showed that that genuinely was what he was like. Jimmy’s on assignment today so Clark can’t bother him about anything so best bet is to focus on his writing and figure out how to get fertilizer chemistry understandable but not over simplified in layman's terms.
His phone is ringing, well, one of his phones. The one for Justice Gang activities. It’s not abnormal to take calls on the job, in fact it is rather expected, so Clark immediately takes the call and heads up to the roof, pretending to nearly slip and fall on the wet floor sign on his way up the stairs.
“Situation in Reno, you in?” Clark can hear Mr.Terrific all the way in Reno, Nevada well enough to know the exact block he’s needed in, but they have a rule of call in advance to be polite.
“Yeah, be there as fast as I can,” Clark is stretching out a little bit, to switch the body language from Clark Kent to Superman and get the perpetual slouch out of his system.
“Who are you calling Kent?” Doakes had followed him up to the rooftop. It’s not uncommon for others to also take calls on the roof, sources can be hesitant to leave paper trails so he knows he will have to ‘take the elevator’ down and exit through the front door. It’s routine, or at least routine enough.
“Sources, don’t want anyone poaching after all,” it’s normal journalism things, please let him go.
“You can share with me about your environmental shit Kent, I’ll stick to my crime,” Doakes is blocking the way back down the stairs and the elevator doesn’t go to the roof itself.
“Just a friend who knows more about chemistry than I do has some time to explain a formula for me,” Almost the truth, and Mr. Terrific does know more about chemistry than Clark, but this is too bio-chemical to really be in his wheel house. He’ll still bother him about it, though it’ll have to go to an ‘anonymous source’ because explaining how Clark Kent, nobody journalist, knows Micheal Holt, who isn’t even local to the city would be too much.
“Right then, I guess I’ll let you go,” Doakes looks confused for a moment, but then stops blocking the stairwell. Maybe he was expecting Clark to shove through because of the sense of urgency, but that would have been impolite and Clark hated to shove.
“Thanks!” Clark takes the stairs two at a time, until he knows he’s out of sight, then he genuinely takes the stairs as fast as he can.
It doesn’t take long to get to Reno, maybe five seconds but the hold up with Doakes makes Clark feel bad. It’s not an emergent situation, but it takes multiple people to be in multiple places at once and Clark is good enough to fill in the gaps where the others can’t. Guy does make a comment about him showing up late, but Superman does make his heartfelt apologies to the team when he lands.
Then there’s a bit of a smile and wave at the end, because the Justice Gang takes time for photo-ops afterwards and it would be rude to leave before everyone else without a good reason. Clark also doesn’t mind this and he knows he makes kids days when they get picked up by Superman. It feels really good and Clark totally sees the appeal afterwards. And well, with the situation with Doakes he can take his time, he had told someone he would be gone for a while, so it’s fine to take his time and not make it look like he was simply taking a call on the roof or an overly long bathroom break.
He goes back to base with them and he does double check his understanding of possible carcinogens with Michael. It gives a better cover story if he does genuinely do what he was lying about during the time frame he was absent during. Learned that back in Smallville trying to pass off his earliest Superman activities under ambiguous farm chores. He even has time to call his folks, though Ma only sticks around for a few moments before her show is on and she ends the call.
Clark walks back in through the front doors of the building the Daily Planet is in, with the feeling that he’s pulled it off perfectly. It’s honestly really routine for him and at this point, three years into his job at the Planet, people have accepted his shenanigans as ‘just Clark things’. Whatever was up with Doakes earlier was just an adjustment from a new person in the space. Clark isn’t all that paranoid about people noticing these days, the glasses work after all. The glasses work beyond his wildest dreams.
He responds to emails in the elevator to put his productivity up for taking time off of the job to do Superman stuff. He hates writing on his phone, but doing editing isn’t the worst. He tries to make his phone emails as professional as it can be, to make up for doing it on his phone, which Ma and Pa told him was bad manners but in Metropolis, or maybe just in this office, was at least just a fact of life.
“Smallville, got time?” Lois grabs him as soon as he enters the bullpen floor, by his tie to be specific, and drags him over to her desk.
“Not giving me a choice,” he could resist, but also, why would he want to? He loves when she does this. He really loves when his girlfriend pulls his tie and drags him to whatever she wants.
He gets to be her first round editor, once again. Lois knows her spelling is questionable at best and incomprehensible at worst, to the degree that the editing team has been known to flat out reject her drafts until she edits it herself, but why would she want to do that when she could bully Clark into it.
It’s a pretty typical bit they do in the office, him standing over her shoulder as she shows off how she’s utterly beaten the spellcheck into submission, from doubled letters to ‘what were you trying to say there’. Clark prepares to spend the next hour and a half or so bent nearly in half so he can read off of Lois’s screen.
They spend the time, going over everything, with a “one A here”, “two Ns there” and “Lois, what on earth is that meant to be?” coming out every few moments. Doakes is watching, but Clark is fine with it, their unusual usual bit would probably get some eyes at every other bullpen, at least at every place he visited while working freelance in college. Clark gets a funny idea in his head, a little prank.
“Sugar, right there? That’s -er,” Clark tries to keep his face straight as he says it.
“Sugar, sugar…” Lois mumbles as she gets closer to the word. She then corrects it and watches that squigly red line appear under the ‘suger’. “Asshole!”
Lois slaps his arm before going to change it back. Clark giggles the entire time and if he wasn’t already doubled over to read her screen he would be doubled over laughing. Lois still gently slaps him, not enough to hurt, but enough to bother, even though he encourages her to slap as hard as she can because it won’t hurt him. She says he’s giving her bad habits with his openness to her really making it sting. It’s not like it actually could.
She kicks him off of editing after that so he makes his way right back to his spot. The evening sun is hitting just right and he feels like he’s just had a full, relaxing meal. It’s so relaxing, especially right after that fight. He remembers to copy down Mr. Terrific’s explanation into the current version of his article on LexCorp related pesticides in a subsidiary company, which was honestly going to be more of a pain to prove that it was related than it being harmful for humans and that it damages the environment.
“How’d that meeting with your friend go?” Doakes is having his lunch at his desk. It doesn’t smell bad, but like it’s lacking. Clark won’t offer to make lunches for him, at least not yet. That would be weird.
“Oh, it went great!” Mr. Terrific was one of the smartest guys Clark knew and Clark knew he was one of the few people he knew that could keep up with him, so he could really get a good explanation from him, especially when he could agree to a chess game to make up for it later, or that one weekend they learned shogi together.
“And does Lane know it went great?” Clark takes a moment to realize what Doakes is implying by that. He guesses that he’s already picked up that it isn’t platonic between Lois and him, which he doesn’t care too much about people realizing, but it takes a moment for him to grab the implication that Clark might have been meeting up with someone behind her back.
“What do you mean?” Clark falls back on an old reliable, the oldest reliable in Clark’s playbook actually. Play dumb, play innocent. Too dumb and innocent to ever pick up on any implications in anything, ever. He makes eye contact for this, holds it too, despite not liking it. Eye contact was always weird.
Doakes breaks eye contact first, which Clark thinks means he’s won or at least been convincing enough. Clark can focus on his work once again. If he could stop getting messages from his friends. Michael has sent a request for a round of bullet chess and Lois has informed him that he has been sentenced to cooking dinner for her for the rest of the month. With a clarification that Joey can come over while he cooks, Clark goes back to work for a pretty normal day in the life of Superman.
James Doakes has better instincts than most. Better instincts than the average reporter, better instincts than the average cop, better instincts than the average soldier. He trusts his gut to a degree most don’t and it rarely runs him wrong. So when he shook Clark Kent’s hand that morning, his first in the bullpen, he realized one thing. There is something seriously off about the guy.
It’s not just one thing, it’s everything. It’s the same way that fucking lab rat made ever hair on his arms stand up, even if he never could prove it. Oh he will one day, he will. Leaving the force in Miami wasn’t pleasant, especially under those circumstances, but the connections he still has in the force and in the military had got him in the door for reporting, and that had got him in the door here.
Doakes’s main goal in Metropolis is establishing contact with Superman. It feels almost too good of a plan to actually work out, but it also feels like his only option. Those vigilantes in the spandex and the fucking capes don’t have to follow due process. If he could just explain it to someone like Superman, then something could finally be done about Dexter Morgan and all of the people he had killed.
So he had looked into who knew the alien first, and that had gotten him Clark Kent and the open position at the Daily Planet. There’s a particular image of Kent painted by half of his records and a very different image painted by the other half. In Kent’s reputation and in his writing he’s passive, agreeable and an all around good guy. In his criminal records there’s a long tail of something ambiguous and never tried or charged, a lot of boys will be boys in relation to suspicious arson incidents in fields and a lot of records of fights for a boy who still had posts about dodging the high school football team because he was scared on his social media.
When he meets Kent himself he tries to see which side is true. It’s difficult to get the measure of a man solely from their records. He’s not explicitly picking out what makes the man appeal to Superman like other journalists, but he also wouldn’t mind being the one to figure out the trick. So he meets the man himself, all six feet of him. He’s bulky in a way Doakes knows several soldiers would be envious of and while he doubts it's all muscle by the way that jacket is about a size and a half too big it’s still impressive.
So he shakes Clark Kent’s hand and stares up at the man. Something feels wrong about all of this. About him. It’s not like Dexter and being able to see the lack of a soul in him. It’s not even something that Doakes can name. There is something wrong with Clark Kent. Something so utterly wrong about him, he knows it.
Farm boy can’t be his main concern here. He still has his job to do. He still has to keep his eye on the Bay Harbour Butcher despite the fact the case is closed, because he knows they got the wrong guy. He can’t pick a fight on every front, but what he can do is keep an eye on Kent. Bust his balls from time to time and see exactly how and when he falls for it.
He only hears about Kent moving the printer second hand. How convenient it is to have a man who can move something like that and never complain about it. You would think it was Cat, the gossip columnist who talked about that, but Doakes knows that a woman who trades in gossip wants gossip back so he avoids her. Men who gossip don’t know they do it, so all they want in return is a bit of a stroked ego to tell them how much you liked their story. Men like Steve, the sports columnist.
The first chance he gets to genuinely test Clark is when he goes to the roof to take a call. It could be work or it could be personal, either way, going up with him would be a major annoyance. It might also get him personal information on Clark if it’s a personal call, but the main goal is to see how he reacts to pressure. To someone pushing his buttons a little bit. If he can’t get a reaction, then he just needs to start building up the pressure until he does, like he did with Dexter.
It’s a short and boring call, which can mean anything in the word. A booty call saying come here and fuck me, an urgent sorce breaking a story. Anything in the fucking world. So he makes himself a nuisance. He honestly expects Kent to shove him out of the way. At least a gentle one to go on his way.
Instead Kent lies his ass off about where he’s going, with who and why. And by the tilt of the farm boy’s head, he doesn’t even think he was considering it. Not considering shoving, pushing or even nudging. Which doesn’t make sense to Doakes considering the number of fights he knows Kent got into in high school. Even if he’s reformed genuinely into this soft boy act he would at least seem aware of the possibility, but Kent never even seemed to have the idea cross his head.
When Kent comes back, hours later, Lane immediately steals his attention. It could be because of her seniority in the office, because in Doakes time in the military he became very aware of who her father is, that Doakes doesn’t dare interrupt, but it’s mostly because Lane scares the shit out of him in a totally normal way. The bitch is fucking crazy, with all the complements that he can possibly mean that with. It’s a rule he’s established with himself, when he heard the two of them bantering in the office kitchen earlier, that when Lane and Kent are together, which according to Steve and several bylines, is often, Clark Kent is off limits.
The wonderful thing about the crime beat is that about half of his job is taking statements from the local police department and the other half is actually journalism work. It reminds him how good LaGuerta actually was at her job after she started on the political tract, given how shit these briefings are most of the time. He is currently waiting on a statement so he is free to snoop wherever the hell he feels like.
He can’t track missing persons in Miami during this time, because he has enough alerts set up for anything related to the topic that there wouldn’t be anything new for him to find. So Kent is once again the issue. There is one bit of gossip that he hasn’t followed up on and it’s not from Steve. Between both Jimmy and Cat, Kent has a cousin. A cousin his background check couldn’t find. He remembers the description of her, blonde, blue eyed and drunk like a skunk from Cat’s tale of the time she visited Kent at work. A woman who a normal social media based search couldn’t find and his much more in depth search he was capable of doing didn’t turn up anything about.
So this once again leaves Doakes with nothing on Kent but his gut, which he’s trusting more now than ever. He looks over to Lane and Kent again and sees the way he’s letting himself be led around by his tie like a leash and collar. The way they seem more comfortable in each other's personal spaces than the average co-workers.
It produces a theory that is normal, far too normal for what he would have pegged Kent for. Then again, Dexter had a woman on the side when he was fucking married and he’s not sure that freak ever gave a damn about either of them. When Lane is done with Kent he decides to poke this theory in the face. Even if there is no grounds for him to reasonably suspect something, not a single piece of evidence, if you throw out something at the guilty party they flinch. Then Kent doesn’t. He looks confused by what the suggestion even was. It’s almost enough to make him wonder if he’s been barking up the wrong tree, that Kent was just the wrong end of socially awkward to make him feel off about the man.
But Doakes’s gut is never wrong. There is something up about Kent. He needs to keep an eye on him still.
Many would ask Doakes what he was doing getting shot at in the middle of a dark alley, a little past midnight. You might even wonder who the people shooting at him were and how Doakes had become enemies with them. Perhaps even question if this is related to his time in the military, his time with the Miami Police or perhaps some new enemies he had made as a reporter now.
Doakes would tell you to mind your own fucking business.
Though, yes, he is getting shot at, and yes this alley seems to not to be all the way through. Doakes has gotten himself out of sticky situations before. Stickier than this even. He still is licensed to carry despite the rough terms he left the police and despite the much stricter gun laws in Metropolis. It’s times like these he wonders where the fuck Superman is. This is his city, isn’t it?
He’ll have to take one shot somewhere healable to provide cover fire and this garbage bin won’t be much in the way of bulletproofing. The guy on the left has shit aim, leans to the left far too hard, so Mr. Right will be the deadman. A deep breath. Then it’s show time.
Oh.
There’s Superman. In this dark, borderline lightless alley, there is the alien. Right between Doakes and the two gunmen. It takes Doakes maybe half a second to realize that as much as the man is standing in front of him to protect him, he’s equally protecting the two gunmen from any chance Doakes had at returning fire. He holsters his gun. It’s fucking Superman, it’s not like he could get a shot off anyways.
The gunmen aren’t that clever and Doakes gets to watch the bullets literally bounce off of the hero. It’s eerie in a way Doakes can’t name. He’s seen plenty of men shot, shot plenty of men himself and seen the aftermath of it all all too many times. He’s seen it all. Except bullets bouncing off of what despite Doakes knows appears to be an all too human man. It’s cartoonish in a way that feels like it isn’t real, in a way that could almost make Doakes question reality if he didn’t already know.
“I’ll be taking these,” Superman yanks the guns out of the men’s hands. He watches Superman’s head tilt back and forth, once, twice. Then he starts eating the guns. Yes, he eats them, doesn’t leave a single scrap of metal behind.
“Sorry about that, I missed lunch,” Superman smiles at the two men like that wasn’t fucking horrifying and abnormal.
Finally the two gunmen, now lacking their guns, get a clue and start to run out the other side of the alley. It’s not like they could out run goddamn Superman, but it turns out they don’t need to. At the front of the alley, a place he wasn’t really paying attention to before, the cops are lying in wait. Would have been real fucking cool if they could have let him know they were on the way before Doakes was considering taking a bullet in the shoulder to survive.
“Are you alright Doakes?” Superman turns around to face Doakes. It’s a lot to look up to him. He’s familiar enough with looking up to people, he’s not the tallest man in the world, hell, Clark’s about a similar height, maybe an inch shorter, but looking up to Superman? It’s different. Words fail him, he’s a journalist, not a poet, but there’s something different.
“You fucking know my name?” It’s Superman, Doakes is at no risk, but it still feels uncomfortable, so he starts with that question. Say it’s his growing journalistic instinct.
“I mean yeah…I think I know everyone at the Daily Planet?” It’s strange hearing such a human tone, uncertainty coming from something so inhuman.
“Because Kent’s your boy.” Doakes isn’t sure which way he means it. He knows that Kent is the only person who’s on the record for having gotten an interview with Superman, though there are rumors that Superman and Lane have spoken. He also knows there are rumors that it’s a lot more quid-pro-quo than that. Honestly if Kent was getting that, good for him, but also that would mean he’s on a three faced cheating scandal from Doakes’s understanding of events.
“Yeah! I also kind of hear everything,” Superman hears everything in the city, everybody knows that, but it’s still strange to hear it from the man himself.
“Guess I can’t keep you from knowing my leads then,” all journalists get possessive of their sources and tips, it’s just a fact of life. It also feels easy to just keep the conversation going, see as much as he can of the alien. It’s not like he’s a fan or anything, but he at least appreciates the work the alien does.
“No, sorry, though I am interested in the article you’re working on about what happened on 12th street. ‘No Humans Involved’ never sat right with me and it often feels like a cruel dismissal of vulnerable people. I’m glad you’re bringing light to it and trying to get justice. I’m sorry I can’t do more,” It’s almost eerie how much Superman knows about his articles. He hears everything, but Doakes thought that would be very different from him paying attention to everything. He knows Superman can’t be everywhere, that’s how guys like Dexter go under the radar, but hell, if the hero has the ability to pay attention to Doakes’s article, why can’t it be placed somewhere more important.
“I’m fucking flattered,” Doakes isn’t sure if he actually is or not. On one had, Doakes isn’t fucking stupid and he understands Superman is a genuine stand up guy. Truth, justice and the fucking American way, or was it a better tomorrow now? On the other hand, Superman is uncontrolled, unprincipled and by the change of the motto, he doesn’t have a specific worldview in mind when he does shit, he just does it.
“Do you need me to help you get home?” Doakes thinks about it for a moment. He thinks about being bridal carried by Superman as his first thought, which immediately leads into Doakes’s second thought.
“You should stop carrying people like that.”
“What?”
“The scoop carry you do, it’s not good. Have you ever had any training at all?”
“Not really, how is it bad?”
“It’s inefficient. Have you ever seen how a fireman carries someone? Mostly across the back? Do it like that, it spreads the weight more evenly,” Doakes is gesturing as he explains it to Superman. It must be quite a fucking sight to see him making these weird fucking gestures to the fucking fridge of a man in spandex in the middle of a dark alley.
“I mean, I don’t really have to worry about that,” Superman says with a slight tilt of his head. Doakes takes a moment to figure out why, before he remembers. Super strength beyond anything Doakes could imagine, he doesn’t have to worry about spreading weight evenly to avoid exhaustion because this all would weigh like a stuffed animal to him.
“Right, right. I don’t need to be fucking carried home,” this feels awkward all of a sudden and talking to fucking Superman now feels weird. Doakes will just take his ass home and try to sleep on it.
Superman nods his head and then flies off into the night.
“I don’t think Doakes likes me very much,” Clark is flipping pancakes in Lois’s apartment because this has become his Friday routine.
“You finally catching on, Smallville?” Lois is very comfortable on the couch, enjoying watching her boyfriend cook. He takes a glance back at her.
“Remember to support his head.”
“I know how to fucking hold a baby Clark,” it’s finally the Friday that Clark agreed to watch Joey on and Lois had accepted watching the baby with him.
“Don’t swear around him, he’s a baby,” Clark finally finishes cooking and brings it over to the living room for a cozy dinner. Things that would make his ma ask what barn he was raised in and he would reply ‘this one’. He should call her.
“I’m just not sure what I did to make him not like me,” Clark takes Joey from Lois so she can change positions and eat sitting up. He was raised in a barn, but even that was beyond his manors.
“Clark, you’re just genuinely off putting sometimes,” Lois says while she’s chewing “You are too nice to be real and it freaks people out at first. Especially military folks like us, just give him time.”
Clark isn’t unfamiliar with being disliked. He was bullied in high school after all, but it’s a bit different here. It might be adulthood making it feel overly childish, both that this was going on and that he was still feeling this upset about it all these years later. He spares a few small bites of his dinner for Joey because even though Rex said he wasn’t eating solids yet he seemed really interested in it and as long as he doesn’t tell them it should be fine to give him a little. Joey had eaten all of his baby food but Sapphire was saying that he was a good eater now.
It’s a really nice night. Rex and Sapphire come back a little later than they and Clark discussed but it’s fine really. Clark liked having Joey around and he wasn’t exactly surprised. Those two hardly got a date night in anymore so he knew that they would try to make the most of it. He had even tried to drop questionably subtle hints about being willing to keep him overnight in case anything superhero related happened.
The weekend’s just as good. He spends maybe seventy percent of it with Lois before she goes back on the hunt for leads. Lois’s work load is why he and most other Daily Planet employees are salaried after all. It works great for how questionable his schedule is due to Superman stuff. He manages to swing by the farm and bother the cows and help Pa with putting in some new fencing. Apparently Ma got a good deal on a goat that may or may not be pregnant so he guesses his parents have goats now. He missed some of the barn cats, but his apartment had a pretty strict no pet policy and he was only going to risk it for Krypto and Kara because he had no other choice really.
So when Clark goes into the office on Monday he thinks things will be pretty fine. Maybe not the best, but fine. Maybe something will happen with one of his articles he won’t like, the trail on proving this subsidiary is somehow owned by either LexCorp or Lex specifically could technically run into a brick wall. Maybe things will continue to be bad between him and Doakes, but he has hope that they will get better, Lois warmed up to him eventually after all.
It is a normal morning after all. All of the routines in the world make it feel relaxing. Lois takes him out that morning for an interview in a rather shady place because his size can make him a bit intimidating and Perry has officially told her that waving the gun she has a concealed carry permit for at uncooperative criminal contacts is bad and highly ethically questionable. So Clark gets to be her questionable muscle. Well, Superman is the best security one could get, but everyone in the office probably just thinks it’s about size.
When he gets back from the interview with Lois where thankfully nothing happened he takes lunch on the roof. There aren't any chairs up there, but he’s fine standing while he eats. It’s a warm summer day and he wants to feel the sun. He can’t exactly sun bathe up there, especially not at work, but it’s still nice. It’s about as fueling as eating for him, though he does need both.
“So you’re a player Clark?” Doakes is joining him. This is fine. Things will get better eventually.
“What do you mean?” It is a bit overcast so Clark shifts a bit to chase a light. It might give the appearance he’s inviting Doakes to stand next to him, but that would be fine right? Doakes doesn’t join him, which is just as fine.
“By my count that’s three people you’re seeing, all behind each other's backs,” now Clark is familiar with accusations like that, believe it or not. Some people, namely Jimmy and Cat, have noticed that Clark and Lois aren’t completely platonic. Some other people, who Clark won’t name because he is his boss, think there might be something between Clark and Superman. Lois finds both rumors funny, so she never helps. Three, though, is something that catches Clark off guard. It’s typically two, and he has no clue who the third person could be.
“I…no. Three?” Lois, Superman and who? Jeez this is bugging him.
“Three motherfucker. Lois, the boy scout and your “cousin Kara”,” Doakes does the finger quotes around ‘cousin Kara’. There’s the misunderstanding. Okay.
“Kara is my cousin. First cousin, on my dad’s side.” Kara has raked him over the coals on learning how Kryptonian names worked, which was useful in moments like this.
“Bullshit, I’ve looked it up, Jonathan Kent doesn’t have any siblings, let alone a brother. Neither does Martha.”
“Oh, duh, she’s my biological cousin.”
“What?”
“What?”
“I was adopted as a baby,” is this where this confusion finally wraps up? “I didn’t really have any info on my biological family growing up, but I managed to get into contact with her when I was like, fifteen.”
“You’re adopted?”
“Yeah, guess Smallville being such a small town that everyone already knew it never really taught me how to tell people about it for the first time.” Though most people didn’t question this much. The glasses worked after all.
“That doesn’t explain Lois and Superman then.”
“There’s nothing going on there that everyone doesn’t know,” Clark phrases it like that because the plausible deniability will eventually allow him to get out of something one day, if it hasn’t already. Also Lois finds it very funny and begs him to not shoot it down too hard.
Clark’s lunch break is over so he heads back down into the bullpen. A slow week for Superman makes it a slow week in journalism.
Doakes takes a break, for now at least. The miss-step with Clark yesterday exposed a weakness he wasn’t expecting. It’s not that he was wrong, or at least misguided, he knew that when you're theorizing your liable to make mistakes, but the thing was Kent was un-fucking flappable. Even if he was truthful about his cousin, he should have reacted more than vaguely confused about all of this.
But the world doesn’t have time for him to pick his wounds and monitor some fucking farm boy. Even all the way in Metropolis he can keep an eye on Miami. He knows that something has happened, another person of interest has mysteriously disappeared in a case not worth the attention of pursuing it.
He sends an email to LaGureta detailing his thoughts. She sends him one back talking about how she’s happy he's doing well and also carefully avoiding bringing up anything he has sent. At least he had kept a lid on things and hadn't directly accused Dexter. Even if he can't convince her he's the Butcher, if she can be persuaded to reopen the case that's something. The only progress he would have made in years.
There's still the possibility of Superman. He had almost forgotten, but there was a man flying in the sky. It was part of the culture in Metropolis, almost. It made it difficult to think about it as anything abnormal. He knows for sure now that Kent is a way in, but he’s not exactly willing to make that jump. He still reminds him too much of Dexter, still just doesn’t seem right.
There’s something unfortunate about being able to draw another comparison between the two men. It shouldn’t be something weaponizable, but it’s still recognizable. Both men were adopted. There’s lots of bunk science about it, but in detective work there's a lot of bunk science about everything. Some of it is useful, something of it just proves him right.
Kent still seems more normal than Dexter, for all the fucking lot that means. Dexter was obviously abnormal in ways that made Doakes want to knock out his fucking eyes. Kent is too gentle to believe so he doesn't. There is the option that he's just a liar with a fake face at work and maybe Doakes believes that. At least enough that Kent stops being a priority.
The priority instead becomes his article. For all he loved being an officer in the field, and hated playing the game of politics, this article is one of the most useful things he can think of. He starts writing about pseudoscience in the police. Specifically raising questions about the accuracy of blood splatter analysis.
Is it petty? Yes. Is it him turning his back on his fellow officer? Yes. It also is the most effective way he's found to get at Dexter. Not only is it a specific attack at Dexter's position, if his theory about Dexter specifically fucking up cases to give him targets is true, then Dexter, as a blood splatter analysis who’s shit at his job he would be one of the first to go.
So that's how things go, for a few months at least. He writes. He does research. His pet project sits behind everything else Perry requests. Hell, he gets comfortable. Comfortable with the jon, comfortable with the city, comfortable with his routine. Comfortable with Kent even. When Kent brings in his once a week attempt at his mother's pie he eats it, says thanks and genuinely means it.
He can’t solve every injustice in the world, hell, not even Superman can do that. There isn't much he can do but sit and wait and write. The article gets longer and longer. Goes through a first round of editing. A second. Meets cousin Kara for the first time and is finally convinced she's actually Kent’s cousin. It’s the eyes.
There was a slight nervousness to how Kent interacted with him before, but that’s gone now. The good news is that Doakes can officially dodge another conversation about a hostile workplace. The good news is that now that Kent is relaxed he fights back and feels like a real fucking person. The good news is that everything is running well.
The bad news is that everything is running too well. The bad news is that there is no real progress on anything. Not on Dexter, not on Clark, hell, there hasn’t even been anything interesting to write an article on in weeks. His article is still slow going. The bad news is Clark is genuinely a good guy and is plenty helpful when he asks for advice on it, as much as he fucking hates to ask for help.
The bad news is, Clark Kent is fucking Superman.
Well, he had assumed that Kent was fucking Superman, not that he fucking was Superman. Here they are now, both uncomfortable and surprised on the rooftop as Kent’s trying to tuck his cape back into his suit pants. That’s why he’s always on the roof. Of course, of fucking course.
They both stare for a bit. Neither one really wants to be the one to open this can of worms. Figure out where they stand with each other with this now out there. At least this puts some of Doakes’s fears down. For all of the flaws Doakes can find in Superman, at least he knows he’s not a fucking serial killer. Like nothing else, this proves that Kent isn’t like Morgan. They both aren’t human, but at least with Kent it’s more or less fine.
“That explains a few fucking things,” Doakes starts the conversation because he knows Kent won’t. It’s strange to watch the body language shift in front of him, as Superman seems to shrink into himself to be Kent. Fuck, he slouches so bad he looses an inch or two. How could he have missed this?
“You’re not going to tell anyone?”
“Fuck no,” Lois would kill him. Plus who would fucking believe him. If he couldn’t convince people he trusted with everything that weird fucker Dexter was a serial killer than who would believe that the most shrinking violet man he’s ever met was a goddamn superhero.
“I…thank you Doakes,” Kent is throwing his shirt and jacket back on and if he didn’t see it fifteen fucking seconds ago then honestly Doakes wouldn’t believe himself either. The glasses slide back into place and once again he’s met with the most timid investigator on the Daily Planet’s payroll.
“At least it explains a few things. That’s your trick for the all-exclusives after all.”
“Lois and I are trying to work something out where she takes over more of those. Journalistic integrity and all,” Doakes was wondering what Lois might know about all of this with the amount she could be implicated. It at least told him she was in on it. Goddamn it, there were implications to ‘nothing going on that we aren’t all aware of’. Clark was a fucking punk when he knew he could get away with it.
“You really do get away with it all.”
“Oh yeah, it’s kind of easy once people just accept my weirdness,” Kent has this stupid perfect white smile that, like almost everything else about him, is too perfect. Which makes more sense with the whole Superman shit, goddamn.
Doakes is almost ready to get back down stairs and let bygones be bygones. There’s nothing else to really say or do here. There’s a bit of fun knowledge about Kent itself, and he's probably one of a very few people who knows this. Then the opportunist part of his brain clicks back on. He and Kent were never friends, if he let this moment go he might not get a chance to ask about this. Any questions he has about or for Superman himself, well, he’ll probably never get another chance to ask.
“Actually, I’ve got two questions before you go.”
“Yeah?”
“Is the led shit related?” It was how Kent originally made a name for himself, he had made public works interesting, scandalous even with the large findings of un-updated lead pipes in places there absolutely shouldn’t be. One of the first articles he had done for the Daily Planet and yes Doakes had read it as part of his research. He did not do things in half measures.
Kent laughs a bit.
“Yeah, I’ve got X-ray vision, lead’s one of the few things that can block it. I think the only thing, but we’d have to test out Kryptonite a bit more to really figure it out. Not many samples of the stuff anymore,” right, the alien shit. To be honest Doakes never cared about that shit all that much. He much rather focus on the human enemies.
“Then there’s one more thing I’d like to talk to you about…”
Tonight's the night. It will happen tonight. Then again and again. His Dark Passenger is wide awake tonight. It needs to happen tonight. Keep it fed, keep his world turning.
He already has his kill room prepared. He already has an exact target in mind. He’s been restricted for a while. Cases had been difficult. Work had been a lot. His family, as much as he loved them, loved his three kids, loved his wife and loved his sister, they had taken up just about all of his free time. Plus the bowling league and Angel trying to get his groove back had left Dexter with no time for himself and his hobbies.
He’d been planning it out much longer than he knew there would be enjoyment of the act. The gentle calmness, the feeling like a real person after a kill maybe lasted for a week, two if it was all nice and good. It had been nearly a month and he could feel the Dark Passenger trying to make him rash. That would break Harry’s rules. Dexter’s rules now. He’s chosen to live by them for the rest of his life, they’re his rules now. Don’t get caught, don’t kill anyone who doesn’t deserve it.
So tonight is the night. The motor of his car is especially quiet, he does the fine tuning himself. He can stalk through the streets of Miami perfectly quietly while still in his car. He leaves his phone on for emergencies but it’s a bit past one in the morning. There won’t be an emergency. There is however, a message.
It’s Doakes’s number. Dexter kept it saved even after Doakes was let go, which he doesn’t think Deb did despite the closer relationship. It’s been a while since Doakes had messaged like this. It used to be a regular thing. Doakes trying to get him to turn himself in, regular messages ‘I know what you did' and many reminders that it’s not too late if he wanted to turn himself in. Occasionally a link to a missing person report that Doakes found him suspicious of committing. More often right than wrong.
Doakes was a good cop. Probably a good man too, though Dexter knows he isn’t a good judge of things like that. He’s glad he figured out how to get rid of him in a way that didn’t kill him. Though maybe that’s still for his own stake and his own code than any sort of respect for Doakes. Doakes seemed to have landed on his feet well enough, if the move to Metropolis was anything to go bye. God Metropolis, such a busy city. Dexter can barely handle the energy of Miami, but the people mean murders and the murders keep him busy.
Dexter pulls into an alley and checks his phone. It is Doakes, so it’s more important to see to it now than to be pretending to sleep. It’s kind of nice, almost, that he doesn’t have to pretend with Doakes. If he’s back in Miami that could be a problem, but that’s unlikely. So he reads it.
“Caught you.”
It really doesn’t mean anything to Dexter. Doesn’t take the parts of him that are instinctually human and wake them up in fear. He doesn’t even feel on edge. He knows Doakes has caught him. He also knows that there isn’t really something like hard evidence on him, he sent his slides down to the bottom of the bay a while ago and has been more careful about trophies since. Dexter could be as caught as caught could be and walk into work tomorrow as fresh as a daisy, at least as long as Doakes doesn’t try to shoot him.
Turning his car back on is the loudest part of the operation, but he’s tucked away neatly enough that he shouldn’t alert anyone. There is also the entirety of Miami nightlife to compete with that makes him about as quiet as a mouse. Lights on and low, engine going, Dexter is good to go back on the hunt again. Just has to follow the bar hoppers until the target is alone or drunk enough to find an opportunity
There’s a bird in the sky, maybe a plane. No, it's a man. Maybe a metahuman or whatever. Dexter has been asked his thoughts on the subject many times, both in his personal life and professionally. Metahumans don’t make blood splatter analysis any more difficult than any other person, so mostly it doesn’t bother him. Sometimes there’s a trick to figuring out how to kill a target, but isn’t that true for them all. So, whatever metahuman is in the sky over Miami at one in the morning, it doesn’t bother him.
It doesn’t bother him until he can hear the soft sound of something landing right behind his car. Dexter doesn’t have a moment to hit the brakes before something that looks almost like a man is holding onto the frame of his car and holding it still. There’s a slight creaking as the metal frame slightly buckles under his hand.
“Hi there, can we talk?” Says Superman.