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She’d have to keep an eye on him, surreptitiously, of course.
Lois flicked a glance at Jimmy, who was looking relaxed until he caught the glint in her eye.
She wouldn’t torture Clark tonight, she decided, thinking ahead to the long run.
Because there was always tomorrow.
*****
“Lois, do you have the second half of the mayor’s donor list?”
Lois looked up to see her partner smiling at her and valiantly fought back the most obvious tells of her irritation. Today might just be business usual for him. But for her, it was a shifted reality where her partner was a man she didn’t know as well as she thought she did, who could apparently fabricate falsehoods as easily as flying. And the unsteadiness resulting from that fracture made her furious.
“I’m using it,” she replied tersely.
His eyes flicked down to her desk, where the corner of the folder he was looking for peeked out, buried under a cascade of other folders and loose papers.
“You’re using it?” he asked, clearly seeing that she wasn’t.
“Yes, I am,” she insisted, feeling ridiculous but angry enough that she was set on blindly inconveniencing him.
“Right now?” he asked.
“I’m planning on using it,” she snapped.
“Ok, I’ll just come back for it later then,” he conceded, turning back to his desk.
She’d succeeded.
He was inconvenienced.
It wasn’t enough.
She wanted him as unsteady as she felt.
“You have a stain on your shirt,” she said lightly, executing her premeditated plan before he was out of earshot.
Not that he was ever out of earshot, she reminded herself.
He paused and turned back just as she hid her eyes in pages of mind-numbingly tiny numbers in her copy of the campaign account ledger.
“What?”
“That red stain,” she said, not looking up.
“Where?” he asked, still hunting for the imaginary stain.
“It’s right there,” she said, gesturing to the center of his chest where the red ’S’ crest usually sat.
They both looked, and she tilted her head as if examining him. “Oh,” she said, feigning surprise. “I thought I saw a red patch there. I guess I just imagined it.”
She would have missed the flash of panic across his eyes if she hadn’t been looking for it.
It looked like the Man of Steel didn’t have nerves of steel.
He nervously smoothed down his tie, holding it to his chest, and stuttered, “No—No problem.”
Clark moved back to his desk, and she watched him with lidded eyes. When he arrived, he tripped over his own chair and she had to hold back a snide snort, wondering whether she’d actually thrown him or if it was just for her benefit, to reinforce his Clark-Kentness after she’d gotten so close to a subconscious Superman connection.
She smirked and decided to make it a full barrage of unsettling him, instead of drawing it out the way she’d planned.
“Clark?”
His eyes flicked up to meet hers.
“Do you remember our first all-nighter here? When we were trying to stop the space shuttle from being sabotaged? And we were the only two left in the office?”
His eyes softened as she spoke.
“Sure,” he said easily. But from the look on his face he clearly did remember, and it clearly meant something to him.
She didn’t let it affect her.
“Where was that Chinese place you picked food up from?”
“Wh-What?”
She held her facial muscles brutally in place so that she didn’t grin and give herself away as he stuttered.
“I was going to order Chinese for lunch,” she said. “What was that restaurant’s name?”
“I think it was in Mandarin,” Clark said.
“I’m sure it was.” She was certain it was in one of the Chinese languages, since she had a pretty strong hunch that the restaurant was actually in China. “Don’t you speak Mandarin?” she asked pointedly.
“Yes. But you don’t,” he countered.
“Right,” she said, switching tactics. “Anyway, where was it? I’ll just go walk over.”
“Uh…”
“Well?” she pushed, waiting like a cat about to pounce.
“Why don’t I go pick it up?” he asked quickly.
“I could use the walk,” she said firmly.
“No, really, I don’t mind,” he said with more urgency.
“I don’t either,” she shot back, standing.
He was on his feet just a little faster than he should have been.
“No, really, let me, Lois. I—uh, have to mail my gas bill anyway,” he said, walking toward her.
It was getting easier to see the lies.
“Do you have it?” she asked.
“Huh?” he asked, stopping just before he could pass her by.
“Do you have it with you? Your gas bill?” she spelled out.
“Oh, yeah, right here,” he replied, patting his jacket’s breast pocket, which she was sure was empty.
He moved past her hurriedly.
“Clark?”
He stopped near the ramp up to the elevator and turned back to her, but she could see his rush to get out the door before she forced him to answer more questions about the restaurant written in every muscle of his body.
“You don’t even know what I want,” she said, trying to hold back a laugh.
“I know what you like,” he said, practically running up the ramp before disappearing through the stairwell door.
Run away, little boy, she thought triumphantly.
She sat at her desk again, feeling awfully satisfied.
Oh, this was going to be fun.
That look on his face when she’d said she saw red across his chest was going to get her through at least the next hour of reading the teeny, tiny font on the account reconciliations she was parsing.
She felt a presence in her space and looked up to find Jimmy, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, looking at her with a concerned expression on his face.
“Here to tell me where Jimmy Hoffa’s body is?” she asked blithely.
Confusion spread across his face. “Huh?”
“Or maybe that you’ve found the Lindbergh baby?”
The confusion fell away. “No.”
“Or maybe that Bruce Wayne is actually the Batman and you’ve tracked him to his super-secret Gotham lair?”
“Uh, no.”
She rolled her eyes and dropped her head back down to her paperwork.
“Hey, wait a minute, why are you mad at me?” Jimmy asked, his voice nearly squeaking.
“I’m not mad.”
Unfortunately, he knew her a lot better than that.
“Is it because I figured it out about Clark’s, er— the pizza deliveries?”
She looked up at him with narrowed eyes.
“Of course not,” she said condescendingly.
“Aw, c’mon Lois, I couldn’t help that!”
“I’m not mad.”
“You’d have figured it out soon!” he said desperately.
It hadn’t come out confident enough to suit her, so she gave him a dry look.
“You’re Lois Lane!” he said encouragingly. “Of course you would have figured it out! I even thought you already knew, remember?”
“Oh, I remember alright,” she shot back, choosing to start ignoring him again.
“Third base?” he asked with a weak grin.
“That’s not going to work a second time,” she said without looking up.
“That worked the first time?!” he teased.
She chose to keep her attention focused on the account reconciliations in front of her.
Jimmy sighed. “I guess if you’re still mad at me, you’re still going to be mad at him.”
She still didn’t look up.
“Okay, well, just maybe think about going a little easier on him?"
That got her attention.
“Well, it’s just that right now it kinda looks like you’re trying to make him crazy.”
She forced down the grin. She wasn’t trying. She was succeeding. And she was about to get the best shrimp shumai she’d ever had out of it, to boot.
“Is that why you came over here?”
Jimmy shrugged.
“He doesn’t need your help, Jimmy.” It came out like a warning.
Jimmy held up his hands, as if in surrender. “I just thought I’d ask is all.”
But he was killing the good mood she’s worked so hard for, and now she was irked all over again. So she turned it around on him. “Why are you taking his side anyway? He’s lying to you, too, playing you for a fool the same as he is me.”
“I guess,” Jimmy said, his brow dipping.
“So why aren’t you upset?”
“Because he’s him,” Jimmy said simply.
“Oh, sure, just put on a spandex su”—she blanched and caught herself—“a, a pizza delivery uniform and he’s allowed to just lie to us?”
“No, because when he goes out on a pizza run, I know he’s doing it for a good reason. A really good reason. Something more important than what I’m doing, or what you’re doi”—at her sharp glare, he redirected his sentence—“something no one else can do.”
“So the ends justify the means?” she lobbed back at him.
“I dunno. I just know he’s helping people.”
“Lex helped people,” she shot back. “He gave millions to charity. No one else in Metropolis could have done that. Did that justify all of his lies?”
“You’re comparing what Clark does with what Luthor did?” Jimmy asked incredulously, voice low and eyes wide.
She felt a blush rise to her cheek, but drove through it to make her point.
“I’m just saying that they’re both liars. They’re both saying they’re out there helping people but then you ask them about it and they lie to you.”
“But CK really is helping people,” Jimmy pointed out.
“And lying about it,” she pushed back.
Jimmy shook his head but didn't rebut didn’t her.
She dropped her focus back down to the page of rows and rows of numbers, all lined up like they were in front of a firing squad.
“Boy, you are mad,” Jimmy finally said, eyebrows raised.
“Weren’t you pulling some research for me tracking that slush fund we found?” she asked, unable to keep her latent ire from becoming blatant.
“Uh, yeah,” Jimmy said, backing up. “I was. I guess I’ll head back over to research and finish that for ya.”
“Great,” she replied without enthusiasm.
And she went back to her endless account pages, not letting herself think about anything but the tiny rows of tiny numbers.
Fifteen minutes later, Clark proved that he was as good as his word about lunch, and he dropped off two little circular baskets at her desk before sitting down with his own to keep reviewing documents.
Pulling open the top basket, she was thrilled to see the shrimp shumai she’d loved the first time. She eagerly dug into it, popping the steaming dumpling into her mouth.
But it didn’t taste the same.
She swallowed and snagged a second of the little dumplings to be sure.
Sullenly, she realized that it wasn’t as good as she remembered.
Or maybe it just wasn’t what she’d really wanted.
Still chewing, she couldn’t help that her gaze redirected itself over to her partner.
She’d planned to continue her barrage after her well-won lunch.
But somehow, she recognized now, the joy had gone out of the idea.
She opened the second basket in front of her and absentmindedly tried whatever was in it.
It was some kind of garlic-infused, shredded pork and a thick noodle, all smothered in a lush and spicy, almost too spicy, chili oil. It was savory and heavenly, and her mouth actually watered as she ate it.
Clark had said he’d known what she’d liked. She wasn’t sure she could have ordered whatever this was, and it was exactly what she’d wanted.
Her eyes lingered on her partner.
She didn’t need to keep to tormenting him today if she didn’t feel like it, she decided reasonably.
Instead, she helped herself to another mouthful of noodles.
She'd come up with a new game plan for tomorrow.
*****