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The first time she wakes up next to him, in her actual bed (this is a luxury), Clark is already awake. As if her cracking her eyes open were permission, he pulls her closer. She murmurs a “Hey” that is not really an objection, and she feels him smile on her neck.
The sun isn’t up yet. It never is when she wakes up.
“Are you even sleepy right now?” she asks him, tilting his face toward hers by the jaw, to examine his face. “Is this a human act?”
Who looks like a toothpaste ad when they smile in the mornings? Superman does, his eyes still half-closed. “No,” he says.
Lois Lane has a vested interest in Krypton biology. “Do you get eye-gunk when you wake up?” she asks.
“Absolutely,” he says. “Would you like to take care of it for me?”
He lets her push him away.
*
Clark is the only man Lois has ever known who wakes up earlier than she does. That’s true even when she includes her father.
She turns on the coffee pot; it sputters like it needs to be replaced. It’s done that for maybe two years now. Lois doesn’t give things up easy.
“You can make coffee too, you know,” she says, looking over at him. When she wakes up, when he’s there, he’s always sitting at the table in her kitchen with yesterday’s Daily Planet. When he’s not there, he doesn’t wake her up, but she gets apologetic calls or, more disastrously, texts (no one would ever want to read texts from Clark) and promises for briefings over lunch or dinner. Whenever both their schedules work.
“I can,” he acknowledges, unmoving except for his smile.
She leans with her hand flattening on the counter. “Do I need to show you how?”
He looks up at her then, a brow raising. “I can,” he repeats.
In the costume, he looks like something larger than life, something Grecian. In the mornings, he looks like Clark. Only sometimes does that mean a toothpaste ad.
As Lois pulls open the cupboard, she asks, “You want a cup?” When he nods, his eyes on the paper, she goes through the trouble of setting a mug down in front of him for whenever he feels like getting his own. (If she did make it, she wouldn’t have to ask how he takes it.)
“Thank you,” he says, not looking up.
Lois lingers at the table. “Like it says on the front page, the rest of my article’s on A-6.”
“I read it yesterday,” he says, sparing her a glance. “I was looking for the crossword.”
“Is that mine?” She was already going back for the coffee. “I did the crossword.”
“Isn’t that cheating?”
“What?”
There’s the soft shuffle of Clark putting down the paper. “You work there. No one tells you the answers?”
“Clark -” She has to look back at him to realize he was kidding, and waiting for her to realize it, in the way that he does. Lois shakes her head as she pours her coffee.
“So, I ruled out the military,” he says, leaning back in his seat. “And the government.”
That is the only necessary transition for the endless cover career conversation. Lois pours in her half-and-half, and he waits for her to sit down.
“Of course you did,” she says. “Since those are both almost unbelievably bad ideas.”
“Not if I got myself into the right place. I could get information without anyone catching on. But there’s no way for me to do that without...” He hesitates. “Securing credentials. In an unorthodox manner.”
Lois rolls her eyes. His life before meeting her, which he has told her about even though she had pieced enough of it together to run her story before they’d even met for a second time, sounds like a bad 90s movie.
“Is there any job you can get without securing credentials? Do you even have a credit score?”
Clark clears his throat. “That’s what I’ve been thinking about,” he says.
“Your credit score?”
His mouth flattens, but not without humor. She smiles, sipping coffee.
“No,” he says. “I’ve been thinking about how it’s very useful to have friends in high places. In your chosen field.”
Lois looks at him for a minute; it takes her that minute to realize he might be saying what she thinks he’s saying. She sets her cup down. “Clark,” she says.
His face stays impossibly serious even as hers is alight. “Now, the college I went to was perfectly decent, but I understand that doesn’t get you far in journalism,” he says.
“You won’t have to use me for information,” she says.
“I won’t have to use you for information,” he agrees. He’s finally smiling like they’re sharing a secret, which they are.
“Mr. Kent, are you telling me you’ve been sleeping your way to the top?”
He considers that. “I don’t know,” he says. “I could try harder.”
*
The folder he puts back on the bed are full of the references that she had scared up for him, and also a resume that definitely has the name Clark Kent on it. He’s been promising he’ll go over them on the cab ride to the interview. Under no circumstances is he to ride his bike.
“Perry hates the Monarchs,” she tells him, fixing his tie. “Find a way to say you hate the Monarchs.”
Clark frowns, only just. “I’ve loved the Monarchs since I was five.”
She knows. She’s worn his METROPOLIS MONARCHS sweatshirt to bed. “Fake it ‘til you make it, kid,” Lois says, pulling him by the tie to kiss him on the cheek.
When she pulls back, he’s smiling. “I already did,” he says.
*
A few weeks after that, he takes his bike, and he has to pretend like he’s meeting Lois Lane in person for the first time.
“Welcome to the Planet,” she says, like she might kiss him hello.
He does not have to pretend to be awed.