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A few hours later after their happy, but diabolically spicy shared lunch, Clark appeared beside her desk again, and she smiled widely in greeting, really glad to see him for the first time in what felt like years.
Grinning cheerfully, he pressed a white paper bag into her hands. “I picked up something for you on my way back.”
The carefree, buoyant feeling that she’d been experiencing all afternoon dissipated.
On his way back? Something twisted in her gut as she tamped down the impulse to ask where he’d been, forcing her eyes not to flick toward the bank of televisions that would no doubt be broadcasting the latest Superman rescue.
She hadn’t even noticed that he’d gone out.
Then, again, she remembered, feeling something in her chest harden, if he’d used super-speed, it would have been easy for him to sneak away without her noticing.
She blinked, looking at the little white bag he’d handed her and trying to recalibrate. But the bag in her hand hadn’t been part of her carefully crafted pizza stratagem.
“I didn’t ask for this,” she said bluntly.
He shrugged, an easy smile lighting his face with a hopeful look. “No, but you’ll like it.”
It was hard to keep the disappointment from showing on her face.
Her brain immediately went down familiar paths of annoyance and frustration. This wasn’t how this was supposed to be working, not according to her plan. She was supposed to be manipulating him into taking punishments for his crime, unknowingly paying off his debt of deceit in coffee and spicy chinese food and anything but pizza. He wasn’t supposed to be taking initiative.
“But I didn’t ask for this,” she repeated, her brain in an emotional paralysis between what she wanted to say and what she was supposed to say.
“You’re usually hungry around this time,” he explained. “I’ve been meaning for you to try this. And I thought that after you suffered through kaeng tai pla, you deserved a dessert that wouldn’t burn when you ate it.” In spite of her lukewarm reaction, he still seemed excited for her to try his latest offering, gesturing to the bag in her unmoving hands. “Take a look.”
Opening the bag, she found a little pastry box, tied with a red and white spiral-striped string.
As she pulled it out, she lifted it high enough so that she could see the bottom. The manufacturing mark imprinted on the box wasn’t in english. She smothered the sigh that began to build in her lungs.
“Where did this come from?”
She managed to keep the accusation out of her voice, but she could have kicked herself for asking.
Because she was practically asking him to lie to her.
Clark’s eyes slid away, and he pushed his glasses further up his nose.
She knew the signs of a Clark Kent lie well enough by now to know that his reaction confirmed a lie was exactly what she was about to get. Instead of thinking about it, she busied herself with the knotted baker’s twine holding the box closed, trying to hold onto the easy feeling of their shared lunch instead.
“Oh, just this little bakery I know. It’s not far.”
But it was, she knew.
It was far.
It just wasn’t far for him.
Only she wasn’t supposed to know that.
She had just had a conversation with him about not being afraid of things that came from faraway places, of proving that she could handle whatever came with him, the man from the farthest of all the places she’d ever even heard of. They’d just spent the afternoon bonding over sharing far-away things that no one else could stomach. But, in spite of all the thickly-laden subtext, it must not have meant what she’d thought it did to him because they were still stuck back at square one—with a fresh falsehood and a friendship in dire disrepair.
The wall between them built itself a few bricks higher.
The twine fell away and she popped the little box open.
“It’s a black forest cake,” he said excitedly.
‘Black forest’ meant chocolate.
“That’s German, isn’t it?” she asked, regretting the question as soon as she looked at him.
“Uh, yeah,” he said, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose again.
The glasses nudge meant he was hiding something.
Probably the trip to Germany, she tried to reason with herself pragmatically, but feeling the sense of loss take hold anyway.
“It looks great,” she sighed, faking a smile with all her might.
“You’ll love it,” he replied with a happy grin, before heading over to his own desk.
“Thanks, Clark,” she said glumly.
Grabbing the plastic fork that was inside the little bag, she petulantly speared a piece of the cake and ate it.
The rich taste of deep, dark chocolate coated her tongue, and she instantly felt the tension in her shoulders drop an inch. There was a sweeter, almost tangy, flavor fighting for balance in the creamy, velvety layers, and the chocolate was perfectly complemented by the lighter than air creme. It was an overwhelmingly luxurious taste.
She took another bite and bit back tears, but not for the same reason that she’d shed them at lunch.
The cake’s flavor profile might be perfectly balanced, but a week into her ‘pizza strategy,’ she and Clark still weren’t.
This plan wasn’t working.
And it had come so close.
Instead, she felt worse than ever.
Her eyes roved over to her partner, sitting at his desk, looking lighter than he had during the last week when she’d so obviously been running hot and cold on him.
She missed him.
Badly.
This afternoon had been a rare respite from the shadow of Superman’s crest that had fallen over them.
But it hadn’t been real. Because he was still living a double life. And he still didn’t trust her enough to tell her.
She didn’t want to miss someone that couldn’t be honest with her.
About to dolefully stab her chocolate cake again, she saw her partner’s head twist sharply to the side.
She followed his eyes to the research desk, recognized Jimmy’s ‘don’t-notice-me’ posture and interpreted what all that meant.
The police scanner was going off again.
And if Clark was that focused on it…
Ducking her head in a subconscious mimicry of Jimmy, she hoped that she looked rapt enough in whatever the top folder on her desk was that Clark would try to sneak out without catching her attention.
She counted to ten and Clark still hadn’t interrupted her.
So she counted to ten again.
And again.
And, holding her breath to stop from crying for a third time today, again.
And then she kept counting.
When she hit one-hundred, she finally looked up.
Clark wasn’t at his desk, or anywhere else in the newsroom, she deduced, craning her neck around.
“He went out on a pizza run,” said a quiet voice to her right.
She snapped her head around to see Jimmy lingering a few steps away, fidgeting with a stack of photos in one hand, as if he wasn’t sure whether he was welcome.
“I figured,” she said non-committally.
“That looks good!” Jimmy said, his eyes lighting on the cake. “From one of Clark’s favorite places?” His voice pitched a little lower and she cringed at the reminder that this was a cake from a place only Clark could get to and back during the work day.
“You want it?” she offered dejectedly.
“You didn’t like it?” Jimmy asked, surprise written across his features.
Lois sighed, packing up the rest of the cake in its little box.
Jimmy watched her, his brows dipping. “But you like all of his favorite foods. Did he really bring you something that you don’t like?”
She criss-crossed the baker’s string back and forth over and around the little box, tying it back together so tightly that the glossy cardboard squeaked in protest.
“I liked it fine,” she grumbled. “I just don’t want it.”
Jimmy barely managed to catch hold of the corseted little box as she shoved it into his hands.
He looked down at it for a moment, then swallowed nervously.
“What happened?” he ventured gently.
“Nothing,” she said flippantly.
“It looked like things were better today. At lunch you guys were laughing for the first time in—“
“Just take the cake and go,” she snapped, a sharp pain catching in her chest at the memory of actually talking to her best friend without remembering the mess he’d landed them in.
“You know, Lois, just friend to friend, you could try talking to the guy.”
She focused her attention on her nails.
“Instead of, you know, icing him out.” He chuckled then, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw him lift the cake box, gesturing to it. “No pun intended.’
She turned her attention back to the file folder in front of her, still not bothering to read it.
“Or instead of sending him off to every part of the globe for a round-the-world tour of snacks.”
Feeling flustered, she moved her hand to her mouse and clicked her computer monitor off the screen saver.
“I have work to do, Jimmy,” she said, pushing him away.
“Yeah, sure,” he agreed in a lackluster way. “Just, um, just… don’t let it be like this forever.”
She didn’t look up again but she felt him leave.
Felt his tepid chastisement leave a layer of blame on her skin.
Felt worse than she had before he’d stopped by.
It was a shame she’d given him the cake because she could really use some chocolate right about now.
She could also use a break: from the story she wasn’t really working on, from Jimmy’s simultaneously accusatory and hangdog looks, from the noise of the newsroom, and from all the swirling noise in her own head.
Grabbing an ever-reliable Double Fudge Crunch Bar from the bottom drawer of her desk, she headed toward the elevator bank, intending on a walk through the park a couple blocks down. At the last minute, she pivoted toward the stairs and headed up instead of down.
One motivated hike up several flights of stairs led her to the roof, and she shoved the door open to breathe in the fresh air. Her eyes adjusted to the sunlight, brighter here than in the newsroom, and she walked herself over to the edge, looking out toward the horizon as the city opened around her.
This was better.
Calmer.
The rush of traffic below blended with the chatter of pedestrians and gusts of wind over the buildings’ rooftops, all blurring into a mild and comforting roar. A soothing familiarity surrounded her as the white noise of her childhood eased her frayed nerves, blotting out the chaos of her own mind, and she felt the city pulse reassuringly around her.
She opened the chocolate bar and broke off a piece, chewing it slowly, letting the smaller pieces melt on her tongue as her brain released serotonin in response, lightening her mood to a level where she could think again.
Looking down at the crowds below, she wondered how many of them had been lied to by someone they trusted. How had they gotten through it? Did they ever find their way back to the friendship they’d had before the lie?
She popped another piece of chocolate into her mouth, not seeing a positive answer to any of the hypothetical questions her brain was spinning.
“Good afternoon, Ms. Lane.”
Her eyes slid upward and crashed into his, jolting her all the way to her core as it always did.
“Superman!”
She nearly dropped her chocolate bar.
Feeling the butterflies rise in her stomach, she forcibly ground them down.
This was Clark.
Her partner.
Her lying, sneaking, untrusting, heartbreaking, forked-tongued partner.
“What— what are you doing here?” she asked, trying to regain her composure.
“Lois Lane and a roof…” His smile peeked out. “I just assumed a call for help would come next. I thought I’d head it off.”
Even though it was just Clark—she knew it was just Clark, for heaven’s sakes!—the flying and the spandex were still pretty impressive and she was having a tough time not being affected.
“Right,” she said with a nervous chuckle, catching up to the conversation. “Tall buildings and I don’t always mix.”
“So… is everything alright?”
Was everything alright? No. Not really. But she certainly couldn’t tell him that!
“I just came up here to find a quiet place to think,” she dodged, hoping he’d take the hint that their conversation was making ‘quiet’ an impossibility.
“Is there anything I can help with?”
She nearly snorted out loud.
He couldn’t very well help when he was the whole problem!
Although… it was Clark that was the problem. She wasn’t sure, exactly, that she was equally angry at Superman, as ludicrous as that sounded. Superman kept her at arm’s length, which was frustrating, but it meant that he had also lied to her a lot less.
And he was always willing to help her…
She hadn’t considered before that liveried in his Superman guise, he wouldn’t be able to converse with her like Clark, to tease her like Clark, to admit to knowing things that Clark would.
Maybe this was an opportunity.
After all, Jimmy had said she should talk to him…
Maybe this was the one way that she could confide in him.
“I’m having trouble with a friend,” she started, intent on keeping it vague.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said seriously.
“I— Well, I think, I mean, I’m pretty sure that this friend lied to me.”
His eyebrows rose. “But you don’t know for certain?”
“Oh, I’m sure,” she said dryly, forcing a neutral expression.
“Have you tried to talk to them about it?”
“Uh, not yet,” she hedged.
“It might help to get things out in the open,” he suggested.
“The thing is… I’m not sure this friend would even want me to know the truth. And if they did, I’m not sure that I want them to know that I know. I feel like I need to make up my mind about how I feel about what I know, before I confront them about it.”
She saw the spark of teasing light his eye as her babbling took hold, but he didn’t follow the impulse, where she knew Clark would have. Maybe Jimmy’s plan would work here, even after all of hers had failed. He asked.
“What’s getting in your way?”
She took in the man in front of her, floating above the metropolis skyline, earnest look on his face, kindness in his eyes, as he tried to help her solve her problem. And her heart broke a little bit all over again.
“It’s complicated,” she said thickly.
His brow furrowed and she told herself to pull it together.
“Why is it complicated?” he asked softly.
“Because it is,” she said, unable to keep the hopeless note in her voice fully subdued.
“No specifics?” he asked, a light frown pulling at his features.
She shook her head, biting her lip and not trusting her voice.
Clark would have tried to cajole it out of her, but Superman nodded, accepting her terms.
She’d been right. It was easier to talk to him like this, when politeness restricted him from pushing her to say too much.
“Well, sometimes it helps to understand why someone lies. Do you know why your friend didn’t tell you the truth?”
There had to be a million reasons.
She was a reporter, for a start, and not the most scrupulous one, either, when she thought that the ends justified her means.
If Clark told someone that he was Superman, it was irreversible: that secret would be kept between them for a lifetime. It was an irrevocable bond. That was a big deal, a real burden, and one that she was feeling keenly these days.
Plus, if someone knew and then blabbed, that would probably be it for Clark working at the Planet. Or watching movies on Friday nights. Or running out for pizzas or coffees or the half-dozen other take-out foods he’d brought her this week. Or any kind of normal life at all, even if he moved back to Smallville.
If he even could move back to Smallville. Superman already had a lot of enemies. She knew he’d never endanger his parents by bringing the fight to them. But even if he stayed away from his family, which she knew would be just awful for the Kents and Clark alike, that didn’t mean that every bad guy out there would agree that they were off limits. Actually, most wouldn’t, she knew, having dealt with enough underhanded low-lifes over the years.
But while she didn’t overly mind getting threatened every other week by some schmuck with delusions of grandeur and a weapon, she didn’t think that the Kents would appreciate it very much. Plus, Clark would be a wreck. Which meant Superman would be a wreck. And that sounded like a situation that could easily spiral out of control.
“I would guess that he’s protecting someone,” she finally said.
“He?” he asked, a little too quickly.
“They,” she corrected firmly.
He gave her an implacable look, and she hurried on.
“But it’s not that they’re protecting someone else that bothers me. It’s that they thought that they couldn’t trust me.”
“Well, are they protecting someone else from you?” Her mouth pursed in protest, and he apologetically said, “As a reporter, you might be investigating—“
“No, no,” she interrupted, shaking her head, “It’s not like that."
He nodded, considering her answer.
“Well, without specifics, all I can say is that if your friend is protecting someone, that means there’s a fear built in there about the person they’re protecting. And that fear probably doesn’t have anything to do with you, or how trustworthy you are, or how valuable your friendship is to them. Sometimes, when there’s fear, people don’t always see the world around them clearly.”
She tilted her head at his compassionate response, trying to align it with Clark’s own behavior.
Was he giving her an opening?
“It sounds like you have a lot of experience with this,” she said, trying to draw him out.
“I see a lot of people lie to protect themselves,” he replied with a light shrug.
“Do you ever lie?” she asked, before she could stop herself.
“I try not to,” he said.
“So you do,” she pressed.
His eyes dropped away from hers.
“Have you ever lied to me?” she asked, heart in her throat, even though she already knew the answer.
“Superman doesn’t lie,” he said, shaking his head.
The moment stretched between them.
And like a punch to the gut, the realization hit her—the suit was a trap.
Because all people lied. To protect themselves. To investigate covertly. To keep up with social niceties. To gift someone a surprise. Not every lie was innately bad. She’d lied to her sister just this week, agreeing to not make a fuss over her birthday when a carefully chosen gift was already in the mail. She lied for work constantly, knowing that the whatever fib she told would be exponentially outweighed by the crimes committed if she couldn’t stop whoever she was lying to. And she’d essentially lied for Clark these past couple of weeks, keeping his secret every time someone brought up Superman in the newsroom.
But Superman didn’t have that kind of shield.
Clark Kent had to lie because Superman couldn’t.
Even to her.
Maybe even because of her, she realized, remembering that she been the one to define him as a beacon of truth in their first interview,
“Superman doesn’t lie,” she finally echoed.
His eyes met hers again and something in them was sadder than they had been a moment ago.
“What do you do when people lie to you?” she asked, putting the shoe on the other foot.
“I try to forgive them,” he said.
She couldn’t help the smirk that pulled at the side of her mouth.
“Of course you do. You’re a better person than me,” she conceded.
His expression changed again.
“I don’t know about that,” he said, considering her. “Don’t sell yourself short, Lois.”
She snorted. “Are you saying you think I should forgive my friend?”
“I’m saying… That I think you’ll know if it’s the right thing to do.”
It hit her harder than she expected.
Partly because of his faith in her, something she thought had been long lost since she’d found out he was hiding all this from her.
And partly because of course it was the right thing to do.
Clark was her best friend. He was a good person. And he was doing this amazing thing with his powers. And it had to be a hard thing to do, even if the act of it was certainly easier for him than any other man on earth. But watching him more carefully over the past couple of weeks, she could see that it was difficult and lonely and that it weighed on him.
She swallowed over the lump in her throat.
She should tell him now that she forgave him.
That she knew who he really was.
That she wanted to help him, even if he didn’t know how to ask for help, with this colossal and unparalleled burden he’d taken on.
That they would never have to have anything come between them again.
And in the same instant that she opened her mouth to call her closest friend by his name, she saw his eyes gloss over.
His head tilted.
He looked away.
Her shoulders dropped, knowing that their moment had passed.
“I’m sorry, Lois,” he said, turning back to her. “Someone needs my help.”
She nodded, voice still stuck in her throat, unable to say what she’d so desperately wanted to for the umpteenth time today.
“Good luck,” she got out.
And then he was gone.
“Good luck, Clark,” she said into the wind, really meaning it.
After a moment of staring toward the horizon line he’d disappeared into, she folded the wrapper over the rest of her candy bar. Chocolate wasn’t going to help her with this one.
And then she made her way back down to the newsroom, wondering what was going to happen next.
For the first time in weeks, she didn’t feel the pressing need to come up with a plan.
Because how could you plan what to do for this?
*****