Work Text:
“Clark’s done it again,” Cat hissed as she took a seat on Lois’s desk. Lois sighed, saved her progress, and looked up from her computer.
Across the room, Clark wove through the early-morning coffee line and around the loitering gossip pools that were catching up after a weekend away, and all in all, Lois didn’t understand what the fuss was about. He looked normal. Frumpy, tie askew, wearing an unfortunate brown and beige plaid jacket, but normal. Then he stepped out of the crowd, and she saw the pants.
“Yikes,” Miko – the new photographer assigned to the society pages – muttered from behind a desk divider. Lois had already learned that ‘yikes’ was the highest level of sartorial disdain Miko was capable of, and she couldn’t disagree with the young woman’s assessment.
The slacks Clark was wearing were startlingly, violently, orange.
“Hey folks,” Clark waved happily as he stumbled his way over to his desk. “Have a good weekend?”
“Awesome,” Miko said.
“Just great!” Cat chirped. Then she flung herself off of Lois’s desk, heels clicking in a brisk trot. “Lots to catch up on, though. So much to write. Have a good day, Clark!”
“Yep,” Miko said, slowly sinking behind the desk divider as she took cover. “Yep, me too. Lots of photos to...colour correct!”
You fucking cowards, Lois thought. Clark was staring at his retreating colleagues with open befuddlement, which was common enough that Lois had learned how to spell it. He shook himself after a moment and turned to say something to her. Lois cut him off.
“Clark… sit down.”
He dropped his messenger bag onto his desk and took his seat, scooting his chair closer to her.
“You do know,” she began slowly, “that we have a visit from the new CEO today?”
Clark nodded like a puppy doing a trick.
“And you were aware of this before you got dressed this morning?”
Clark looked down at his outfit, brow furrowed, as if seeing the clothes for the first time. “Is it the shirt?”
“The… no, Smallville, the shirt is fine,” she lied. The shirt was a light blue button-up that should never have been paired with the brown jacket. Anyone else might have made it work as 70’s hipster blasé, but Clark was too achingly sincere to pull it off. It was, however, not the hill she would be dying on today. “It’s the –”
“Alright people!” Perry’s voice boomed across the room. Lois glanced at the clock and nearly groaned as she dropped her head into her hands. There was no saving Clark now. Lois looked up through her fingers to see Perry holding court in the centre of the room. A remarkably well-dressed Bruce Wayne stood beside him, casually glancing about the room with the type of staunch vapidity that Lois could only envy.
“My boss’s boss’s boss is here to tour the Daily Planet. You will be friendly. You will be professional. You will not be tapping him for society quotes,” Perry said with a meaningful look at Cat, “or grilling him on anything to do with Wayne Enterprises.” This time he glowered at Lois.
She threw up her hands. “I’m not even working a W.E. story!”
“Then no pointed questions about any story. In fact,” Perry pointed one slightly intimidating finger at her, “no questions at all. Now!” He clapped his hands together and turned his attention back to the room. Beside him, Wayne looked vaguely entertained. “Mister Wayne will be here for the duration of the day to learn what we do and how we operate. One of you will be donating your time to this important cause. I was going to pick names out of a hat, but you can all thank Lane for volunteering.”
Lois felt her heart sink as she tried to freeze a professional-ish smile onto her face. Oh fucker. Around the room, people were glancing at her with pity, and then turning away as their relief eradicated their compassion.
“Now, our new CEO is going to say a few words,” Perry said, and gestured to Wayne, who was... staring directly at Clark’s horrible orange pants.
Could she call for Superman? This felt like an emergency. Certainly, someone needed to save Clark from his own atrocious fashion sense before Wayne said something cruel and undeniably accurate about the outfit. And Clark, damn him, was not making it better by pouting at the new CEO. Obviously, he’d noticed Wayne’s baffled frown and, like an idiot, was taking it personally.
Something passed over Wayne’s face and was gone a moment later. Then the man tore his eyes away from the pants and plastered on a surprisingly sincere smile.
“Allow me to begin with an apology,” he said. “I know a change in leadership comes with anxiety. Please accept my sincerest regrets for the part I have played in that stress, and rest assured that I have no intentions of restructuring, downsizing, or otherwise hindering the Daily Planet. If anything, I believe the Planet needs more resources than the previous leadership was willing to offer.” That made some people visibly perk up, but Lois wasn’t sold yet. “Your work here is important. Journalism is important. After all, how do any of us know what to stand for in the absence of truth,” he asked, sounding like he was quoting someone.
Beside her, Clark let out the world’s tiniest sigh. She squinted at him, but Clark had dropped his eyes and was scuffing one – dear god – navy loafer against the floor tiles.
“I am quite excited for a chance to peek behind the curtain,” Wayne continued, “but I truly hope that my presence does not distract from your work. That goes for you, as well, Miss Lane,” he said, and Lois’s head jerked up as his smile became charmingly self-deprecating. “If I get too tiresome, don’t hesitate to toss me out a window,” he said with a casual flick of his hand toward the glass, “I’ve always wanted a chance to meet Superman.”
That got the well-timed laugh from the office that he’d intended, a muted tittering that was not quite at the expense of this nonthreatening, superficial man. Lois bared her teeth in a smile.
That seemed to be it for speeches, because Perry was leading Wayne over to her desk, which placed him in prime viewing range of Clark’s horrendous outfit and… Christ, she had to stop obsessing over this. It wasn’t like Clark was the one giving the billionaire the tour.
Wayne did seem to be particularly horrified by the pants, though. He couldn’t quite manage to pry his eyes away from them as Perry clapped him on the shoulder and waved towards Lois.
“This is Lois Lane, Pulitzer winner and general pain in the ass,” Perry said, and Wayne turned to offer his hand to shake.
“Pleasure, Miss Lane,” he said. The smile was genuine, even if his eyes were haunted around the corners by the afterimage of Clark’s outfit.
“Likewise,” Lois said. “Anywhere you’d like to start?”
“The break room? I had a wildly late night and I’m not sure my first cup of coffee has done its job.” Wayne’s smile was radiant. Lois didn’t trust it.
But fine – break room it was. She started walking and trusted the rich boy to follow, hearing his shoes tap on the linoleum as he caught up to her.
“Can’t vouch for the quality,” Lois said as Wayne fell into step beside her, “but the coffee is strong and the pot is bottomless.”
Wayne smiled at her again. “I’m sure your lovely company will make up for any deficit in the coffee,” he said, and Lois almost gagged.
“Dunno,” she said, flashing him an empty smile, “it’s pretty terrible.”
The break room regulars must have seen them coming and bailed, because she’d never seen it this empty on a Monday morning. The chairs had even been pushed into the tables, as if these people were suddenly civilized, and not the unfortunate husks of optimists who’d gotten into a head-on collision with student debt and the 24-hour news cycle.
She poured herself and Wayne a cup as he meandered around the break room, suit jacket open and hands shoved in his pockets, like a teenager at prom. And she was the chaperone. Great.
At least Wayne seemed enthralled by the break room’s cork board, full of ‘friendly’ reminders and homemade marketing flyers for the sundry bake sales, dog walking businesses, and charity drives that staff members had a stake in.
Lois poured the man a cup of coffee, grabbed herself a mug, and began scooping half of a sugar bowl into the thing to make it palatable. “Cream and sugar?”
“Please,” Wayne called back.
Lois gave him a liberal helping of sugar, poured in a hefty dash of cream, and hoped he wasn’t secretly diabetic. She kept stirring until she delivered the cup into his hands. He took a sip without looking and froze solid. “Interesting flavour,” he said after a moment.
“It’s shit, but it’s caffeinated,” Lois replied, and then grabbed her own cup from the counter.
“Do any of these actually work?”
When Lois looked back she saw he was gesturing to the cork board. “Wouldn’t know,” she said, “I don’t have time for extracurriculars. Bit of a workaholic, I guess.”
Wayne directed the full force of his attention back to her, which had not been the point. “I can increase your vacation days,” Wayne said.
“Wouldn’t use ‘em,” she replied coolly.
“Now, Miss Lane,” he said, slipping into something like media training, “I’ve read quite a bit about work-life balance, and it’s very important to take breaks. Good for the morale. I can suggest a few lovely places down south if you’re interested in travel.”
Lois couldn’t think of anything she’d hate more. “I’m fine, Mister Wayne.” He opened his mouth to say something else (and Lois was fairly certain that it would be on the wrong side of flirty) so she cut him off. “Now that you have the coffee, where would you like to start? The advertising team is fun – graphics, page layout priorities, the like.”
‘Lots of pretty shapes and colours,’ she did not say.
Wayne smiled warmly and swept out a hand toward the door. “Lead the way, Miss Lane.”
Advertising went well enough. So did the quick introduction to the editorial office, and he actually seemed interested in the page planning process, which was how Lois knew the coffee was probably kicking in. But then they headed back to the bullpen, with the chaos of the journalistic team and the threat of the walking fashion disaster.
The elevator doors opened and every fear Lois had was validated.
Clark was at the office printer, bent over at the waist as he fiddled with the internals, muttering as he either prayed to or swore at the infernal contraption. On any other day this might have been a normal occurrence. Today, it meant that his hot orange ass was in the air and in their direct line of sight as they exited the elevator. Lois felt herself cringe.
The only thing she could do was distract.
“The dummy pages are fun,” she said out of nowhere. Wayne’s eyes flicked to her for a moment, but his attention didn’t truly waver from Clark’s pants. “It looks easy, but that’s just because Tanisha is fantastic. Really, she’s… very good at making everything fit, you know? It’s an art and a science. She caught a cold for a week over the summer, and let me tell you, the team was struggling to-”
“Awful, isn’t he,” said Steve Lombard to her left.
“Pardon?” Wayne finally took his eyes off of Clark, vapid smile firmly in place.
“Steve,” Lois hissed.
“To be fair, Mister Wayne,” Steve said, sidling up to his elbow like they were in on a secret, “Clark’s always an eyesore, it’s just very bad today.”
Lois wanted to reach out and smack Steve. That would probably get her an HR complaint, but it might also feel very, very good. Unless Wayne took umbrage and asked to have her fired, which he very well could now that he nominally ran the place.
“Oh?” Wayne’s blankness was startling after the affable morning Lois had spent with him.
Steve leaned in as if to nudge Wayne in the side, and Lois’s hand shot out to pat her colleague on the shoulder. “How’s the Mariner retrospective going, Steve?”
Steve froze, and Lois saw him running through potential answers – he’d been pushing the deadline for weeks and had just about outworn Perry’s limited patience – before he simply turned and walked back to his desk. When she looked back at Wayne she was surprised to see a glint of amused approval.
Unfortunately, Clark was still hunched over the printer and Lois had no idea how to salvage his pride.
“Clark is…” she said softly, knowing how sound could travel in the open room, “…profoundly colourblind.” It wasn’t her worst work at spin. It was, in fact, her current theory about why his wardrobe was like that.
Wayne looked back towards Clark, a wry tilt to his lips. “That would explain quite a lot,” he muttered, but there was an undercurrent of agitation that Lois couldn’t understand. It was just a flash, just a moment of steel in his otherwise bubbly personality, but it was a crack that shouldn’t have been there. Bruce Wayne was a man with secrets.
And what was Lois Lane if not an investigative reporter?
“We could go down to the presses,” Lois offered. “The Planet still runs our own production, and that’s… fun. Noisy, but fun.”
“Ah, of course,” Wayne said, distracted by Clark moving away from the printer. She watched Wayne watch her friend slip down the hallway towards the bathrooms.
The orange really was jarring, but Lois was starting to wonder why Wayne was so fixated on it.
“Before we go,” Wayne said, “I might just pop to the restroom.”
She was pretty sure this was the first time Wayne was on this floor of the Planet, but Lois would bet money that he knew exactly where the washrooms were, and who had just walked into them. She briefly considered leading him to the bathrooms on a different floor instead. Which was stupid. What, was she going to make her new boss hold it in to save a friend’s pride?
(And miss the chance to find out why Wayne was so bothered by Clark? Never!)
“This way,” Lois said, and guided Wayne down the same hallway that Clark had taken. Wayne gave her an appreciative smile and went into the men’s washroom.
She shouldn’t eavesdrop. It was uncouth. It was unprofessional.
It was absolutely the only thing she wanted to do, and Lois wasn’t going to start denying herself now. Forty-two was too old to become a better person. She leaned, as nonchalant as she could manage, against the wall and angled her head to catch any conversation coming out of the tiny, echoing space.
The bone-deep sigh nearly rattled the bathroom door. It didn’t quite sound like the gregarious Wayne, but it certainly had not been Clark.
“Something wrong?” That was Clark’s voice, but the tone was… smug? When the hell had Smallville ever been smug?
“How much, Kent?” Oh, Wayne sounded pissed. Maybe she should step in, pretending to get the wrong bathroom just to interrupt them and save her friend.
“I don’t take your meaning, Mister Wayne.” Clark spat out the name like it offended him. From the quick intake of breath she heard, Lois could guess that Wayne also felt the sting.
“How much to get you out of those pants?”
Lois had one hand on the door before she’d thought about moving, and she was about to push it open to yell at the rich asshole when she heard Clark snort.
“Oh, really,” Clark laughed, sounding blatantly entertained, “I didn’t know you were that kind of guy.”
Wayne sighed. “You know what I mean. They’re awful, Clark.”
“I like them,” Clark shot back.
“I’m sure you do, but no human could possibly look at that colour and keep their retinas intact.”
“Have you been looking at my legs?”
“Clark.”
“Or have you been looking at…”
“Clark.”
Lois was frozen next to the bathroom door. She was starting to form a theory about what was going on, and she did not like it. Thank god the bathroom was in a secluded hallway, because the faces she was making must have been startling.
“Please,” Wayne said after a silent moment, “the colour is awful.”
“That doesn’t matter to me,” Clark said, “seeing as I am profoundly colourblind.”
Lois cringed. Yeah, of course Smallville’s weirdly good hearing had picked up on that. She felt terrible about it, honestly, even if it was completely true.
“Also,” Clark continued, “stop trying to flirt with Lois.”
“I am not!” Wayne snapped, sounding for all the world as if he was truly insulted. “I am being perfectly polite to Lois because she is your friend. I’m being friendly.”
“I know what friendly looks like on you, Bruce. You’ve been trying to impress her.”
“Fine. Fine! Yes, I’m trying to make her like me. She is your friend, and it is… important to me… that she does not hate me.”
Some soft, warm sensation – startlingly close to affection – sat uncomfortably in Lois’s chest. Was Bruce really looking for her approval? But also, why the fuck would Bruce Wayne put stock in her opinion of him?
“Then stop flirting with her,” Clark said with a strained chuckle. “You’re not going to win points by being… charming.”
“Really, Clark, you think that was me being charming?”
“I’m just saying. Honesty will get you further.”
“Truth, you mean.” Wayne’s voice was startlingly mournful. Then he sighed again, and some of his strained charm was back. “Seriously. Clark, I will pay you. I will get down on my knees, right here, and beg. What’s it going to take for the pants?”
“You already pay me. You’re my boss, Mister Wayne,” Clark’s voice had sharpened at the end, like the taste of his name was something unpleasant.
Wayne sighed. “Is that what this is about?”
“Is that… yes, Bruce. That is what this is about. Did you actually – ”
“Luthor was going to put in a viable bid,” Wayne snapped, “Would you rather – ”
“Of course not!” Clark snapped, frustration evident in every syllable. “Also, that is privileged information that neither of us should have.”
“I wasn’t going to let Luthor dictate the terms of your employment.”
“That’s not why you bought the Planet.”
“I…” Wayne stalled out. There was a long pause, full of some emotion that Lois couldn’t identify.
Clark huffed, and Lois heard his hideous loafers scuff against the bathroom tile. “I need to get back to work,” he muttered.
Lois threw herself away from the door and ripped her phone out of her pocket. By the time the bathroom door opened, she was doing a credible impression of someone bored at work, leaned up against the opposite wall. She took a measured two seconds before looking up.
“Hey Smallville,” she said, offhanded, nodding as he smiled at her. Then she studiously stared at her phone screen for three solid minutes until Wayne came out of the bathroom. He sauntered up towards her, smile wide, limbs loose, but Lois could tell his heart wasn’t in it. There was something strained at the corner of his mouth.
“Miss Lane,” he said, “how would you feel about getting some fresh air?”
Lois studied him for a long moment. The smile he was wearing was patently charming, but the tightness in his eyes, the tension along his shoulders, and the odd flicks of his gaze towards the bull pen, painted Bruce Wayne as a man off his stride.
“There’s a coffee shop,” she found herself offering, “just down the street. The java actually tastes good, instead of the petroleum sludge in the office.”
The relief on his face was so acute that Lois glimpsed, maybe for the first time, the shadow of the man behind the mask.
“Please,” Wayne said with a wave and genial tilt of his head, “lead the way.”
The coffee at Ginger’s was as good as ever. Wayne sat staring into his no-cream-no-sugar-triple-shot espresso as if it held the answers to all his problems.
Lois sat across the booth, openly staring at the richest man on the east coast, and sipped at her mocha. She needed information. They had been sitting in silence for over five minutes, which was just about her limit, and Wayne didn’t seem anywhere close to breaking.
“Okay, here’s what’s going to happen,” she said, pushing her drink to the side and leaning forward. Wayne’s eyes instantly snapped up to her, and whatever he saw in her expression made him wary. “My boss – my actual boss, no offence – says that I can’t ask you any questions. So, instead, I am going to lay out a series of facts, and you are encouraged to either correct me, or fill in the blanks. Understood?”
To Lois’s complete shock, Wayne snorted and went back to staring at his coffee. “Sounds fair,” he said.
“Alright then. First fact: you knew Clark before meeting him today.”
Wayne nodded his head, and then finally took a sip of his coffee. He didn’t even grimace at the bitterness. Lois tried not to be impressed.
“You also know we’re friends, which means you’ve spent time with Clark. He isn’t a passing acquaintance.”
Another nod.
“Second fact: Clark hasn’t talked about you.”
Instead of a flinch, or some other expression of hurt feelings, Wayne just nodded again, as if he’d fully expected that he was Clark’s dirty little secret.
“I have known him for… fuck, over a decade now, and he has never not talked about a person he’s dating. Which, all else being even, would mean he’s not dating you.”
Now, Wayne flinched – just a little, just enough for Lois to catch.
“Third fact: Clark’s outfit is absolutely horrible. Like, beyond his normal levels of horrible, which are bad enough. It feels intentionally horrible, and you obviously hate it, which you wouldn’t if he was just some stranger or a one-night stand.”
Wayne took another sip of his coffee. Lois was about to continue with her assessment when he finally spoke.
“I can survive anything but those fucking pants,” he said. The exhaustion in those words took Lois by surprise. Wayne sounded like Lois felt. Here was a man who had been fighting a losing battle against Clark’s nonexistent fashion sense for years.
The world swayed a little. Earthquake? No, Lois couldn’t see anyone else panicking or reaching for the table to steady themselves. She was wavering a little – reeling, she realized, from a thought that had stamped itself into the forefront of her mind and which would not be ignored.
She had no proof. Somehow, she was certain anyway.
“Fourth fact,” Lois found herself saying, voice hollow, “you’re in a long-term relationship with my best friend, and he didn’t tell me anything.”
Wayne’s head snapped up. “It’s not his fault,” he said quickly. “I asked that we keep it… quiet. Dating me is complicated for – fuck, for so many reasons. I didn’t want the spotlight to…” he passed a hand over his face, and Lois realized that she was seeing the realest version of Bruce Wayne. “I just…” he started again, “I wanted to figure out if we could work before I made him run the gauntlet. And it – it does work. It shouldn’t, but it does. It did. I…”
Lois planted her hands on the table and stared up at Wayne. Fuck Perry, fuck Clark, and fuck this stupid ‘no-questions’ rule. She had to know.
“How long?”
Wayne stopped talking and just stared at her. It was enough of an indication that she wasn’t going to like the answer. “Four years,” Wayne said, and had the decency to look abashed.
“No,” Lois said. “No, Clark’s been… he’s dated people over the last four years. He told me about… are you the one who took him surfing?”
Wayne’s expression was reassuringly contrite as he nodded.
“And the time with the escape room? Where Clark got stuck with his date for like… six hours?”
Lois was not pleased to see the flush that crept up Wayne’s cheeks.
“And that one awful Valentine’s Day when Clark was sick as a dog, and his date brought him pho and popsicles? You’re telling me that was all you? Every time, for the last four years, when Clark has talked about his dates, he meant… you.”
Wayne was blushing – an unfairly attractive pink – as he struggled to find the words to respond. “I hadn’t realized… I didn’t know he talked about me. But yes, that was… all me.”
“Christ,” Lois breathed, sitting back in the booth. “Four years. That’s… long, Wayne.”
They stared at each other for another minute. Lois felt like she was being sized up by the man, and she couldn’t fault him, because she was blatantly doing the same. Wayne was tall, notoriously handsome with his fine features and the flecks of silver at his temples, and his eyes were sharper than she’d ever seen them. He didn’t have the bearing of a military man, but there was something in the pointed confidence with which he held himself that made Lois think of a tactician. She was suddenly very sure that Wayne was used to people following his orders.
“Last question: are you stringing him along,” she asked.
Wayne’s eyes widened by a fraction, as if the question had actually surprised him. “No, miss Lane,” he said, “I’m in love with him.” He swallowed and glanced down at his coffee, and she could tell how much it cost him when he said, “and two weeks ago I fucked it all up. Maybe he told you.”
“He hasn’t,” Lois said. “What did you do?”
Wayne winced. “He was lamenting his lack of time – for hobbies, and visiting family, things like that. I might have suggested that he… didn’t need to be a reporter if he would just let me take care of him. Yeah,” he said as Lois hissed through her teeth, “that went as well as you assume.”
“I take back every nice thing I’ve thought about your intelligence,” Lois groaned, “you’re the stupidest person I’ve ever met.”
“And Clark says you meet a lot of stupid people.”
“You have no idea,” Lois replied.
“I’ve been trying to make it better,” Wayne said. “I’ve sent flowers, I’ve tried to call. It has been an… admittedly busy two weeks. I’ve been dealing with some family business that was urgent; it hasn’t left me with a lot of time to spend with Clark.”
Lois stared at him. Credit to the man, he did actually seem distraught. “So… just so I’m clear… to apologize for implying that you would pay him for his company, you bought the company that pays him?”
“I…” Wayne gaped at her, then let his head fall into his hands. “That’s not quite… I heard rumours that another offer would be made…”
Lois found a scrap of mercy for the man across the table. “I heard your spat in the bathroom. You’re right, that would have sucked for everyone at the Planet. Clark would have quit on the spot.”
Wayne sighed. “I swear, I didn’t want to be his boss. I might have a reputation as a philandering moron, but I’m not that kind of creep. The Planet is important – to him, and to Metropolis. Considering how many pieces get written about Superman, I’d go so far as to say that it’s important to the Justice League as well.”
“Which you help fund,” Lois interjected.
“Which I, along with many, many other people, believe to be the best hope we have for defending Earth. And yes, I throw money at them to do what they need, because I trust Superman to lead that team in the right direction.”
“What about Batman? No love for the hometown hero?”
Wayne snorted. “I have a long-standing contentious relationship with the Gotham Bat. The less said about him, the better.”
“He’s won the trust of Gotham’s people, which is no small feat.”
“I’ll be sure to pass that along to the League’s PR team if you stop interviewing me, Miss Lane.”
Lois huffed and took another drink. “Fine, fine,” she waved a hand over the table, “none of that was on the record. Also…” she held the silence until Wayne arched one impeccably threaded brow.
“Also?” Wayne prompted.
Lois smiled at him, and to her surprise, it felt genuine. “If you’re dating my best friend, you have to start calling me Lois.”
Wayne reached across the table and offered his hand. “Only if you call me Bruce,” he said.
She took his hand and gave it a firm shake. “Nice to finally meet you, Bruce.”
“Likewise, Lois.”
They had to return to the Planet eventually, but Lois flatly denied Bruce’s request to call off the tour.
“It’s really not needed,” he said. “I showed up mostly as an excuse to see Clark, and we both know how that’s going.”
Lois snorted. “Guess how many times the last CEO visited the office,” she said.
“In a year?”
“Sure.”
Bruce thought for a moment as they waited for the elevator. “A dozen? I’m feeling optimistic.”
“Zero,” Lois said.
Bruce looked over at her in moderate shock.
“In fact,” she continued, “good old Marcel Keeley never showed his face. He took a private elevator up to the top floor so he wouldn’t have to rub shoulders with the plebs. You’ve already done more to ingratiate yourself to the Planet than Keeley did in a decade, and I’m not about to let you ruin whatever morale you’ve built. We’re going to the presses,” she said, stepping into the elevator and jabbing the button to take them to the basement, “and then we’re going to hit every other office on the way up. You want to get back into Clark’s good books? Take an interest. Be a good boss.”
Now, Bruce looked positively abashed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to put you in the middle of your friend’s relationship drama.”
Lois shrugged. “It’s a slow news week,” she said. “Besides, Clark’s been happier in the last four years. Maybe that’s what you bring to his life. Maybe I’m unwilling to let my friend be miserable just because he fell for someone who makes questionable life choices.”
Bruce’s laughter was a surprise, but Lois found that she liked it. He wasn’t nice, per se, but there was a core of kindness beneath a brittle shell of realism that Lois found deeply comforting. That he hid a sharp mind and a soft heart behind a mask was… understandable, given what she knew of his life. Lois found herself smiling back.
“Besides,” she said as the elevators opened on the production offices, “I’m about to talk your ear off about the changes we really need at the Planet, and I expect you to take notes. Everything comes with a price, and this is mine.”
“Understood,” Bruce said, and reached into his jacket pocket to pull out a small notebook that looked identical to the ones Clark liked to use. He flipped it open and Lois saw a scrawl of Clark’s signature short-hand style, but written by someone with very different penmanship.
Lois tried not to read it. She just didn’t try very hard.
‘Look into LexCorp HR complaints against Mark Lester’ flashed by as he riffled through the pages to find a clear sheet. Then she caught ‘Luthor attempting hostile take-over of Vernon Technologies?’ and ‘LexCorp researching bio-computer interfaces?’
“Careful not to drop that,” Lois warned, mind already going a mile a minute. “More people can read short-hand than you’d think.”
Bruce looked surprised, but Lois caught a flash of mischief behind the shallow veneer. “Oh, really? Clark said it was a dying skill.”
“Dying, not dead,” she said.
“I’ll be more careful,” Bruce said, and then had the audacity to wink. Which… okay. He was intentionally feeding her a story, and it probably had something to do with Luthor’s recent bid to – apparently – take over the Planet. That was something worth sniffing into, especially because Vernon Technologies owned the only valid rival to LexCorp’s social media platform. But did Bruce have to be this melodramatic about it?
The tour of the presses went well by Lois’s estimate. Mahir Alim, the beloved old man who’d been running the presses since before Lois was born, seemed to take a shine to Bruce. Bruce, to his credit, was asking surprisingly insightful questions about what it took to maintain the presses, and the history of upgrades to the production line.
“We still use physical plates,” Mahir said, “I won’t hear of an upgrade to the digital systems until we find one that’s not proprietary. We meet our distribution as-is, and demand for physicals is steady, not increasing.”
Bruce nodded and made a note, then asked, “is it easy to source parts for the older presses?”
Lois slunk away into a corner as Mahir wound up for one of his favourite tirades. She pulled out her phone and dialed one of the few numbers she knew by heart.
Would Jimmy appreciate being pulled out of his dedicated photo-editing day at home? No. Was she about to feel guilty about it? Absolutely not.
“Whatever it is-” Jimmy didn’t get any further before she cut him off.
“You still have my spare key?”
“Uh,” Jimmy paused and after a moment Lois heard a jangling crash. “Shit – yeah. Yeah, got it here.”
“Good. Go to my apartment, get my credit card out of the purse by the dining table. Then, go to Walter’s – the little mom-and-pop clothing store near Clark’s place – and get a pair of jeans in Clark’s size. Ask Netty Walter, she probably knows what he buys. Then get here ASAP and drop the bag at my desk. You’ll understand when you hit the bullpen.”
Lois hung up. She’d owe Jimmy lunch for the favour, but what could you do? It wasn’t like she was about to let Bruce Wayne in on her little scheme. He’d insulted her best friend (and, by extension, Lois herself) and she wasn’t inclined to forgive him until after extracting her pound of flesh.
Jimmy texted her a thumbs-up emoji forty minutes later, followed by an orange square and a puking face.
Good man, that Jimmy. Not quite Superman in a crisis, but solid, dependable, and with a rubber arm that Lois knew exactly how to twist.
Once Mahir was done with Bruce, Lois took him through every floor and made him introduce himself to every office. The man didn’t balk once. He struck up conversations with the social media intern, with the website accessibility coordinator, and with the one IT guy who knew how to fix the office printers.
As he talked, Lois shot off a string of messages to Jimmy to make him complicit in the plan. By the time the rest of the tour was done, Jimmy had confirmed that all the pieces were in place and waiting in an upper-level conference room.
She was just about to herd Bruce into the last stop of the day when the man veered off course, making a beeline towards a janitor who was wheeling a cleaning cart down the hall. Despite her warming opinion of Wayne, Lois still found herself bracing for some entitled diatribe about the help being so visible. She was proven wrong a moment later when Bruce called out “Christof!” and then waved jovially when the man turned around to look at them.
Christof’s face shifted from puzzled to elated faster than Lois thought possible.
“Mister Wayne!” Christof called back, abandoning his cart to jog over. He was a large man, both tall and solidly built, with an unmistakable Gotham drawl.
Bruce immediately held out a hand, reaching forward first, smiling at Christof’s enthusiastic handshake. “How have you been, Christof?”
“Oh, can’t complain,” he replied, “got a full job offer with the agency after my work placement, so long as I was willing to jump the harbour. They’ve been real good to me, and you know, I don’t even hate the city. Sometimes I clean the park toilets, and there’s almost never blood in them!”
Bruce threw back his head in a sincere laugh, a touch of his rough edges peeking out in the sharpness of his smile. “They don’t know how good they’ve got it,” he said to Christof with a sardonic shake of his head.
“Oh, no idea,” Christof agreed, “but what brings you into Metropolis?”
“Just bought the Daily Planet,” Bruce said without a trace of ego.
“No shit?” Christof’s eyes went wide, and he looked Bruce up and down like he was finally impressed. “Well hey, you need a guy who knows the city you just holler, yeah? I know just about every diner round here that serves actual waffles instead of that Belgian fancy shit.”
Bruce tilted his head and said, “a friend told me Caroline’s was the best breakfast place.”
“What? Hell no, that’s healthy food, not a diner,” Chrsitof said with a laugh, “you want something that sticks to your ribs, you go down West Park Street and into the first little cafe in Chinatown, place called Peng’s Food. Best steak and eggs this side of the bridge.”
“I’ll check it out,” Bruce said with a sincerity that even Lois believed. “You still have my card? If you’d rather get back to Gotham...” Bruce trailed off with a vague gesture of his hand.
Christof shrugged, smiling a touch bashfully. “Heh, if I ever need it, Mister Wayne, I promise I’ll use it. But I, uh... kinda like it here. And if I ever miss home I can just look across the harbour – Metropolis waterfront’s got the best views of Gotham.”
“Can’t argue with that,” Bruce said, then held out his hand again. “Great to see you again Christof.”
Christof shook Bruce’s hand again with a wide smile. “You too, Mister Wayne.” Then he gave Lois a little nod of his head and turned to collect his cart.
When Bruce looked back at her he smiled and shrugged, then pressed the elevator button. “He used to work in my downtown office. Small world.”
Lois waited until they were in the elevator – alone – before pinning him with a disbelieving stare. “So, off the record, when he said ‘work placement’, he didn’t mean Wayne Enterprise’s employment initiatives for reformed convicts?”
Bruce looked at her with infinite calm, and an exhaustion that she recognized from late night talks with Clark. “There’s a lot of crime in Gotham, Lois, and most of it driven by desperation instead of evil. Give people what they need to survive and they’ll surprise you with how kind they can be.”
Lois looked at him for a long moment, then sighed. “Goddammit,” she said, leaning against the side of the elevator, “I really, really didn’t want to like you.”
Bruce snorted. “Your secret’s safe with me,” he said.
“I’m about to dump you into a room with Clark,” she admitted. “I was going to be an asshole and not warn you, but... fuck it. You’re an idiot, but you’re a nice idiot, and Clark could use somebody in his life who cares about people as much as you seem to. So,” she said, and poked Bruce’s very, very expensive suit with her finger, “apologize, talk it out, and don’t fuck this up.”
“Lois,” Bruce started, but then the elevator dinged and she looped her arm through his elbow and dragged him forward. “I’m not sure this is going to-”
“Buck up, Bruce,” she said as she dragged him into the room where Jimmy and Clark were bent over a laptop. The two men looked up at their arrival, Jimmy going tongue-tied at the sight of Bruce, and Clark scowling when he noticed their linked arms. Lois would have found the jealousy hilarious if she wasn’t on a mission. She pulled Bruce further into the room and kicked out one of the chairs. “Sit.”
Bruce sat in the chair next to Clark, both of them looking at her as if she was a bomb that had begun ticking down.
“Jimmy, you got the package?”
“Yes ma’am,” Jimmy said, and pulled a shopping bag out of his backpack and handed it to her.
“Perfect. Now, Clark? Against my better judgement, I like him. He’s very nice and only slightly annoying, and he’s been trying extremely hard to make it up to you. I think that should count for something.” Clark’s face was shifting so quickly between emotions that Lois couldn’t parse through the various shades of shock. “Be gentle with him, he’s kind of dense. Bruce? I’d consider it a personal favour if you could get him into these before sending him back downstairs,” and she chucked the bag at his chest.
Then Lois turned, grabbed Jimmy by the collar, and stalked out of the room and back to the elevators. God knew she didn’t need to hear what was about to happen.
“Uh, Lois? What’s....” Jimmy trailed off as she glared at him. The elevator dinged as it opened and she pressed the button for the bullpen, leaning on the ‘close door’ button.
When they started to descend, Lois said, “not a word of this, and I’ll tell you everything in... let’s say a month.”
Jimmy squawked, but then the doors were opening again and Sneha from digital stepped in with a pair of interns.
“Lois,” Sneha said with a nod.
“Sneha,” she replied.
Sneha gave her a curious look, then said, “so, you’ve been with the new boss all day. What’s your verdict?”
And Lois thought about it for a moment, but there really was only one answer. “Colour me impressed,” she said.
When Clark made it back to the bullpen just before six – long after Perry and most of the others had left for the night – he was wearing his new pair of jeans and had Bruce in tow. Was his hair a little more tousled? His cheeks a little more flushed? Well, Lois decided, that was none of her business.
“You still got a source inside Vernon Industries?” She asked in lieu of a greeting.
“Um, yes, hang on,” Clark said, and turned to dig around in the papers on his desk, leaving Bruce to perch on the edge of Lois’s desk and smile like a well-fucked idiot.
None of her business, of course.
She met Bruce’s eye and he smiled wider.
“I don’t want to know,” she told him, and he laughed, and Lois had the terrifying realization that they might be something like friends in the future.
“Thank you,” he said with a dip of his head. “I’ll reimburse you for the jeans.”
Lois snorted and shook her head. “It was a public service.”
“Hey!” Clark cried, but Lois cut off any further protestations of innocence.
“You knew damn well what you were doing,” she said, and gestured for Clark to hand over the notepad he was holding. “I get to be a little mean in return.”
“Not sure that’s fair,” Clark grumbled.
“Don’t care,” she said, copying a phone number into her own notebook. “You two got plans for the night?”
Clark blushed, and Bruce just smiled wider, expression going just a touch besotted.
“Dinner and a movie,” Bruce said.
“Sounds nice,” Lois said. “Clark, don’t stay up too late, you know it’s a school night.”
“Don’t worry, Miss Lane,” Bruce said, eyes full of mischief, “I’ll have him home by curfew.”
“Oh good, now there’s two of them,” Clark muttered as he went to pack up his laptop.
Lois let them shuffle around each other quietly until they were ready to go – Bruce already had a briefcase in hand and a pea coat draped over one arm, and looked relaxed in a way she had never seen. When they turned to say goodnight, Lois couldn’t help notice that Bruce was the one to reach over and take Clark’s hand. Then they were off to the elevator, and Lois waved as the doors shut.
One of these days she should get around to settling down. Not any time soon, though, because this thing with Vernon Industries could be big. She wasn’t about to split her focus when the investigation had just begun. There was dirt to uncover, leads to follow, and an unending series of questions that she needed answered.
Romance could wait; Lois had a new story.