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Tonight…
Clark folded his hands in front of him, his elbows resting on the table, trying to figure out how he got here.
It was impossible.
It was absurd.
It was unbelievable.
And this coming from a literal alien from outer space.
It all started two weeks ago. His dad had just named Lois his campaign manager, so she’d been spending even more time at the farm than usual.
Clark didn’t mind all that much, really. At the end of the day, Lois was a friend. He genuinely liked her…most of the time.
She still managed to drive him crazy with little to no effort.
Two Weeks Ago…
“Yo! Smallville!” Lois barked, coming out of the house. “Make yourself useful will you? Come with me to get the fliers I had made for the campaign.”
“Make myself useful?” Clark muttered under his breath, elbow deep in the tractor’s engine. With Lois around, he couldn’t speed through his work like he normally did, which grated on his nerves. “Why didn’t you have them sent here instead of your apartment?”
Lois paused, propping one hand on her hip. She’d taken to dressing less casually of late. More professional, as befitting a campaign manager. It made her look older. More mature. Although Clark knew better than to think she was actually more mature.
“Gee, Farmer Joe, why didn’t I think of that?” Lois sighed, her voice suspiciously high-pitched. “It’s what I get for trying to use my teeny tiny female brain instead of relying on your big, strong, masculine one.”
Clark rolled his eyes. “It was just a question, Lois.”
“I called in a favor and had them printed on the cheap,” Lois explained impatiently. “He sent them to my address automatically. Now, are you gonna quit asking stupid questions and lend some of your big, strong, masculine muscles or what?”
“Fine,” he grumbled, carelessly wiping off his hands. If he got oil on her car seat, well, it was her own fault. Why did he always do what she told him to, anyway? “No” was a complete sentence, after all.
Still, he found himself minutes later in her car, pulling up to the Talon.
“Get a move on, Smallville,” Lois said, leading the way up the stairs. “I don’t know how a guy who can disappear from an uncomfortable situation as fast as you can be so goddamned slow sometimes.”
“I can keep up with you easy,” Clark bit back.
Lois snorted. “In your dreams.”
“What is your problem, anyway?” Clark demanded, following her into her apartment and shutting the door behind him. “I’m here helping you and you still can’t give me a break!”
“Hey! I admitted I need help carrying these boxes. That’s progress. But I don’t have time for your lollygagging!”
Clark sighed. “Look, I get that you’re stressed out and maybe a little overwhelmed about this whole campaign thing, but you don’t have to take it out on me!”
Lois spun to face him, her fists clenching. “This is the most important thing I’ve ever done, Smallville! Messing up is not an option. If you can’t be part of your dad’s success, get the hell out of the way!”
Clark sympathized with her, he did. His dad hadn’t meant to unload so much pressure on a barely 21-year-old. He’d merely gone with the one person he trusted to get the job done, and that person without doubt was Lois.
But even Clark’s sympathy had its limits, and he didn’t think it was fair to take off his head just because he was an easy target.
“Why do you always tear into me, huh?” He asked, already knowing the answer. “Because I let you? You know, I’m getting real tired of being your punching bag, Lane. One day, you’re gonna turn around and I won’t be there to save your ass anymore.”
“Save my ass?” She scoffed. “My ass doesn’t need saving, you pompous creep!”
“Ah, pompous! Someone found a thesaurus. Bet you can’t spell it.”
“You are so immature!”
“Me?! I’m immature?! You know what you are?!”
Lois squared up to him, her chin sticking out defiantly. “What am I?”
“You’re…”
“What?! Man up and just say what’s on your mind, already!”
Clark never knew what came over him then. He’d just wanted to shut her up already. But one minute he was staring her down, wishing he could throw her into the sun, inhaling the scent of her spicy perfume, staring into her flashing, hazel eyes…
And then next his lips were on hers.
Later, if asked, Clark would have said he honestly expected her to stop him immediately, to pull back in anger and shock and punch him in the jaw.
And it would have been well-deserved, too. What was he thinking? Kissing a woman without permission? Even a woman as maddening as Lois Lane.
But she didn’t stop him. She didn’t hit him. He used his X-ray vision through his closed eyes and watched her wide-open ones flutter shut. He felt her body relax, even as her heart picked up rhythm. And then her lips parted, her tongue found his.
She kissed him back.
Clark was lost then. What came after was a flurry of lips, teeth, tongue. His fingers wound into her hair, angling her face so he could get deeper. Her fingers went up under his shirt, digging her nails into his stomach. If he’d been a human he would be left with scratches. As it was, he could feel the drag of her nails and it sent jolts of lightning through his body.
His own hands slid up and down her body of their own volition, just barely avoiding her breasts. He may have been brutish enough to kiss her without permission, but he’d never touch a woman without permission.
But then her hand covered his, and she pulling it upward, covering her own breast with his palm and squeezing to let him know what she wanted.
Not needing any more request than that, Clark touched unheeded. Her breasts, her ass, just the ghost of a touch between her legs, his cock hardening even more at the feel of wetness there.
Lois moaned. A sweet, low, unbelieveably sexy sound that would live in his dreams for a long time to come.
The kiss ended slowly, but when they broke apart, they flew apart, chests heaving, faces flushed, eyes nearly bugging out of their skulls.
As horrified and shocked by his own actions as Clark was, he was still captivated by her swollen, glistening lips.
“I uh…I’ll get those box…those boxes for you,” he stammered, stumbling over a pair of her shoes to get to the three boxes of fliers.
“Right, I uh…I have some uh…calls to make,” Lois said. “Tell Mr. Kent I’ll be over later.”
“Got it,” Clark said, fleeing that apartment as fast as he could without using his powers, forgetting that she’d driven him there, and thus had no explanation for how he could have gotten home.
Tonight…
Clark rested his head on his hands, feeling an actual, honest-to-God headache coming on. In his entire life, he’d never had a natural headache not caused by Kryptonite or alien pathogen. But Lois had her own methods of destruction where he was concerned.
They didn’t talk about it after that. At all. And while Clark was man enough to admit that it probably wasn’t healthy, he wasn’t man enough to be the first to bring it up.
He couldn’t exactly avoid her, though. She worked with his dad, and they shared custody of Chloe, who had definitely noticed the tension between her two best friends, but shockingly had yet to ask questions. At least to Clark.
Oh God…had Lois told her?!
Clark groaned, wishing he was capable of getting drunk.
It wasn’t even that he had kissed Lois that had rocked him so much. He wasn’t in the least bit afraid of admitting that Lois was beautiful. He’d thought about her in a purely physical way more than once, like during that whole strip club fiasco. Usually it came with a heaping pile of guilt, either because he had been in a relationship at the time, or simply because he didn’t feel right objectifying a woman, especially not a friend.
But the feelings Lois ignited in him when he kissed her didn’t feel like objectification. And he was no longer in a relationship with anyone else.
That was the part Clark was having a hard time coming to terms with.
Breaking up with Lana had been the hardest thing he’d ever done. He’d loved her so completely, for so much of his life, that letting go had felt like letting go of a part of himself. But the real sadness had been when all was said and done, he wasn’t as sad as he felt like he should have been. He didn’t regret it. True, it had been to protect her, not because he really wanted to break up, but he was honestly okay with it.
Then she had to go and get involved with Lex of all people, and Clark was considerably less okay with that for a lot of reasons. If Lana had attached herself to someone nice and caring and normal, Clark would have been happy for her. But Lex? He was too conniving, too double-faced, too old for someone as sweet and innocent as Lana.
Then again…maybe he really didn’t know Lana like he thought he had.
But kissing Lois had made him really think of his ill-fated relationship with Lana for the first time in a long time. Kissing Lana had been great. It felt good. It was fun. It gave him butterflies.
Kissing Alicia had felt the same. So had kissing Kyla. And yeah…even Chloe. Clark had never really given it a whole lot of thought. He just assumed that that was what kissing felt like.
That was until he kissed Lois.
It was all-consuming. It made his very skin feel alive. There were no fireworks or butterflies. There was just this sense of rightness. Like his whole life from the moment he landed in Kansas had led him to that moment. It was a relief. A deep breath after being locked in an airless room. It was coming home.
It was human.
And that…that couldn’t happen. He couldn’t feel like that about Lois.
So Clark had ignored it. Shoved it deep, deep inside his inner Fortress of Solitude. And after about a week of tip-toeing around each other, Clark and Lois relaxed back into their usual push and pull.
It was a one-off. A weird lapse in sanity.
And then it happened again.
One Week Ago…
“Hello?” Clark spoke distractedly, holding the house phone to his face with his shoulder, trying to focus on what he was doing.
“Hey, son,” his dad said.
“Dad! How’d the doctor’s appointment go?”
“Couldn’t have been better,” Jonathan said proudly. “Tests came out right as rain. Is Lois there?”
“No, she should be here any minute though,” Clark said, giving a huff of frustration when his fingers wouldn’t quite do what he wanted them to. “I’m taking her to Granville. Something about needing new shoes, I dunno. Her car’s making a weird sound though, could you help me take a look at it when you get home?”
“Sure,” his dad chuckled, an amused tone to his voice that Clark didn’t get. “So…you’re just driving Lois to Granville to buy shoes?”
“It would seem so,” Clark said resignedly, then hissed. “Damn! Oh, sorry, Dad.”
“What happened?”
“Lois got a tear in her favorite pair of jeans, and she was too bashful to ask Mom to fix it for her. God forbid she learn how to sew herself. I’m trying to fix it for her before we go, but I stabbed myself with the needle.”
“Clark!” Jonathan exclaimed in concern. “Is something wrong?!”
“Oh…no…” Clark chuckled, realizing how that sounded. “I just meant I broke the needle. Again. But I think I’ve got it now.”
His dad chuckled again, and this time, Clark let his curiosity win out. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing…it’s just…wasn’t it just this morning that you were complaining about Lois being around all the time, and needing space from her?”
Clark wasn’t seeing the connection. “Yeah?”
“So…you know what, son? Never mind. You kids have fun. I’m taking your mom out for lunch and we’ll be home around five.”
Lois thanked Clark for fixing her jeans, not even complaining about the maybe less-than-neat stitches, though she did call him Holly Hobby for the rest of the afternoon.
Still, he had a surprisingly nice time with her. Suffering through watching her try on multiple pairs of black high heels that all looked exactly the same to him and dealing with her annoyance when he wouldn’t give her an opinion other than “they look nice,” notwithstanding, they grabbed a late lunch at a deli in Granville and then found a used book store neither had been in before.
He didn’t even care that the shopkeeper at the shoe store called him a sweet boyfriend for watching her model a billion pairs of shoes (but hey, the view of her legs and the excuse to be looking at them was a considerable bonus,) and only glared a little when Lois ran with that and called him Pookie.
But all that ended by the time they got back to the farm.
“You had no right!”
“Come on, Lois! Don’t be dense! That guy was bad news.”
“That isn’t for you to decide!”
They’d stopped off at the Talon on the way to the farm so Lois could drop off her purchases and they could grab coffee before she went back with him for her car.
While they were ordering, this smarmy guy who had to be at least thirty was blatantly hitting on Lois.
He had a lot of nerve, to start with. Clark was standing right next to her. Did this guy just…not care that he could have been her boyfriend?
“He was talking directly to your chest,” Clark said. “You can’t honestly tell me you were interested in him.”
Lois balled her hands into fists, so Clark made a conscious effort to soften his body so that if she decided to hit him, she wouldn’t break her hand.
“Whether or not I was interested is my choice, Clark! Not yours! I’m sick and tired of you butting into my love life!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry I got in the way of true love. You and your balding, porn ‘stache boyfriend would have made such adorable children.”
Clark hadn’t even really done anything. He didn’t threaten the guy, (even though he kind of wanted to,) or punt him into the sun. All he did was slide his hand around Lois’s waist from behind, pulling her up against him in a move that was deliberately possessive. He genuinely thought he was being a good friend. Once, at a bar she’d dragged them to, Lois had helped Chloe get out of a similar situation by walking up, pecking her lips, and calling her babe. Clark had balked, (“I’m not being homophobic! You’re cousins for God’s sake!”) but the girls had only laughed and said that it was bro code.
Clark tried to make that argument to Lois in the car ride home, but apparently that was different.
“Oh shut up,” Lois hissed. “I was so not gonna sleep with that creep, but it was my call to make, and one I am perfectly capable of making on my own!”
“You’re being ridiculous!”
“You’re being a little bitch! Next time you put your hands on me like that, I’m taking them off!”
“You weren’t complaining about my hands last week!”
Lois gasped, her jaw dropping. Clark felt his heart freeze, but he stubbornly held firm, refusing to show how shocked he was by his own words.
“You bastard!”
“Stop calling me names!”
“I’ll call you whatever I damn well please!”
“You are the most annoying…”
“Go on!” Lois challenged, rising up on tip-toe to get in his face. “What were you gonna call me? A bitch? Go on. I dare you.”
“I’d never call you that,” he growled.
Lois’s head reeled back a little, clearly not expecting him to back down. But before Clark could come up with something else biting to say that didn’t resort to calling her a derogatory name, maybe something about her having a big mouth, that mouth was on his.
All efforts of convincing himself their kiss before had been a fluke flew out his brain the moment their lips touched. It was everything the first had been and more.
She tasted like vanilla coffee and spearmint gum and something he couldn’t quite describe but was quickly learning to associate with Lois and Lois alone. And God did it taste good. Surely that was gross, right? A person’s saliva shouldn’t taste that good, should it?
He wondered what the rest of her would taste like.
Somehow, without his conscious decision, he’d picked her up and put her on the counter. Her legs…the same legs he’d gotten to stare at for two hours…wrapped around his waist.
He was just about to muster up the courage to try tasting more of her…her neck…shoulders…chest…when a car door our front slammed.
They broke apart like they’d been doused with a bucket of ice water.
Lois leapt off the counter, pulling her shirt back down (when had he rucked it up?!) and smoothing down her mussed up hair.
It did nothing for her puffy mouth and flushed face that he knew he must share, so when she darted for the back door, he didn’t stammer an excuse or expect one from her.
“Lois, wait!” He called out quietly, throwing her his truck keys. “I’ll work on your car tomorrow.”
Lois paused, giving him an odd look that was at once soft and perplexed. But then she smiled at him, and it wasn’t one the usual smirks she shot his way, or even the over-the-top grins he got when she wanted something. It was sweet, almost shy, and it had the most devastating effect on him.
“Bye, Smallville,” she said, disappearing out the back door right as his parents came though the front.
“Clark?” His mom called.
“In here,” Clark said, having to clear his throat when it came out rough, hoping they didn’t notice. He glanced at his reflection in the toaster, relieved to find that the swelling in his lips was gone (thank you super-human healing,) but his cheeks were still suspiciously pink.
“Did I just hear Lois?” Martha said as she and Jonathan entered the kitchen.
“Uh, yeah, you just missed her,” Clark said. “I let her borrow my truck so we could work on her car. She had to get home though. It’s Survivor night.”
It was Survivor night, and Lois never missed her favorite reality show, and Clark was proud of himself for the easy half-truth. Except he forgot his parents knew Lois as well as he did.
“She normally just makes you watch it with her,” his dad laughed.
Oh right. She did.
“Well, I think after an afternoon together, she was ready for a break, and frankly, so was I.”
“Mhm,” his parents hummed in unison.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Jonathan shook his head. “You know, it’s not a crime to enjoy spending time with your friend.”
Clark huffed. “Maybe not a judicial crime, but it’s definitely a crime against nature.”
He took himself upstairs after that, ready to once again ignore it ever happened.
Her spearmint gum was in his mouth.
His parents let it drop, but his mind surely wouldn’t.
After that second kiss, Clark could think about almost nothing else. He went about his days, capturing Phantoms, hanging out with Chloe, dealing with alien and supernatural threats, helping his dad on the farm and with his campaign, but always in the back of his mind…was Lois.
And not just his mind. It was like she had invaded his every sense. He caught himself sometimes, when he was alone in his loft, listening to a comforting rhythmic beat that he realized was her heartbeat, even if she was all the way at her apartment.
When she was around, he was drawn to her scent.
When she wasn’t around, he was picturing her in his head. Particularly the way she had looked perched on his counter.
At least it was less awkward this time. Lois was back the next day to return his truck and get her car, and she called him her mechanic.
Not one of her most creative nicknames, sure, but at least it was normal.
Except it…wasn’t.
They weren’t bickering as much. Clark tried a couple of times to get a rise out of her, but he couldn’t quite muster it, and she couldn’t quite dish it. They still joked and teased. She still punched his arm. But it had lost its bite. It’s meanness.
And that was the problem. He didn’t want to be mean to her. He’d never really wanted to be mean to her, but a little meanness had kept them on even ground. Now, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her to leave, even jokingly, because he didn’t want her to leave. And when she called him one of her hundreds of nicknames she had for him, it sounded affectionate. There was no reason calling someone Flannel Boy should sound like baby.
One afternoon while she was there working with his dad, she was in the kitchen cutting up an apple as a snack.
Normally, he would steal a slice, and she would threaten him with the knife.
He did steal a slice, and she did threaten him with the knife, but then she reached for a second apple, sliced that one up too, and added it to her bowl, which she then set between them on the table so that they could share.
It was so slight. Unnoticeable, really. Except his parents totally noticed and gave him a funny look.
Tonight…
And all that had led to tonight. One of the most harrowing of his life so far.
“Clark?” His dad said, coming downstairs with his mom. “Is everything alright? You ran out so suddenly earlier. Is Lois…”
“Lois is fine,” Clark said. “She’s upstairs sleeping in my room. I didn’t uh…I didn’t want to leave her by herself.”
His parents sat down, concern written all over their faces.
“Honey, you look so pale,” his mom said, taking his hand. “Was it Kryptonite?”
He shook his head. “No. I just…I don’t know how this happened.”
“How what happened? Are you sure Lois is alright?”
Earlier Tonight…
Clark was helping clean up after dinner. It was a rare evening that Lois hadn’t joined him, but she and Chloe had gone into Metropolis for a “girl’s night.”
Clark respected that they liked to spend time just the two of them. He wouldn’t have wanted to go to clubs anyway. He wasn’t jealous.
He was a little jealous, but mostly just because he was stuck home on a Friday night because his only friends were a pair of girls.
I need some guy friends, he thought to himself.
The phone rang, and he dried off his hands. “I’ll get it,” he announced. “Hello?”
“Clark?”
“Lois?” He said, his heart stopping.
One word. His name. Spoken in a shaky, small voice, nothing at all like the over-confident boisterous Lois he knew and…well, that he knew.
“Lois where are you? What’s wrong?”
“I need you to come get me, Clark. Please.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll be right there. Just tell me where you are.”
Lois rattled off the name of a club in East Metropolis. A really sketchy place that he’d gone to as Kal. She told him she was in the ladies’ room, and he told her to just stay there until he got to her.
“I gotta go get Lois,” he said over his shoulder to his parents, not waiting for a response before he sped out the door.
His body was in utter panic mode. She’d sounded so small, so scared. He never wanted to hear her sound like that again. He wanted to do everything in his power to make sure of it.
Throwing all his good sense out the window, he sped to Metropolis instead of taking the truck. But he didn’t care. All he cared about was getting to Lois as soon as inhumanly possible.
He ran right past the bouncer and into the club, not stopping until he was in the back by the bathrooms. He did manage to stop himself from barging right into the women’s room, though.
“Excuse me,” he said to a girl coming out. “I’m looking for someone. Lois? She called me from the restroom, crying.”
“Are you her boyfriend?” She asked. “Hang on.”
Clark had opened his mouth to correct her, but she turned back inside before he could.
Though using his super-hearing on a bathroom was normally a line he wouldn’t cross, he did it now, just so desperate to know if Lois was alright.
“Really tall and handsome?” The girl was saying. “Crazy blue eyes? Looks like he’s about to tear the club apart looking for you?”
“That sounds like him,” Lois chuckled wetly. “Thanks, Rita.”
The sight that met him when Lois came out shattered his heart. Her eyes were red and puffy, her mascara having been hastily wiped off but still smeared under her eyes. But it was the sight of the torn strap of her dress that made him see red as surely as if he’d just touched Red Kryptonite.
“What happened?” He demanded.
Lois didn’t answer, just closed the distance between them and he didn’t hesitate to open his arms for her, wrapping her in a tight embrace.
“Can we leave?” She asked.
“Where’s Chloe?!”
“She’s fine,” Lois said, sniffing as she pulled back a little, but not out of his arms. “She ran into this guy…she had a fling with him a few years ago. I let them go off to…reconnect.”
Clark didn’t like that, for a lot of reasons. First off, why didn’t he know about this fling? Second, she must have been drunk to leave Lois on her own in the city, which was dangerous for both of them.
“So, she ditched you? Two blocks from Suicide Slum?”
Lois shook her head as he led her outside and away from the noisy club. “No, this was my own stupid fault. We were at Nina’s, downtown. She ran into the guy, I pushed her into staying and hanging out with him and, hell, maybe going back to his place. She was sober and in her right mind, and we were a block away from her apartment. I told her I was going back, but then I saw some girls I knew from Met U so I came with them to bar hop some more. And then there was this guy…”
“A guy?” Clark repeated, tensing.
She glared up at him. “Don’t start that again.”
But Clark didn’t feel jealous this time. He felt murderous.
“What did he do?!”
Lois looked away, uncomfortable, and never before had Clark wanted to use his strength to hurt someone so badly.
“He asked me to dance,” she said, pulling into herself. He took his hands off her, sensing that she needed space, but slipped off his jacket and put it around her bare shoulders. The night wasn’t cold, but she looked chilled. “He seemed nice. He was cute. I was drunk. And yeah, I contemplated letting him take me to his place, which I know is so stupid.”
“You weren’t thinking right,” he told her, refusing to let her think she was stupid, even if she hadn’t been making very smart choices that night.
“But then he pulled me into this dark corner of the club and he kissed me and…I didn’t like it. It felt wrong. So I told him to stop and he…” her voice wavered, and every moral Clark held firm to started to drip away.
I will kill him.
“He wouldn’t stop,” she cried. “He had me backed to the wall and it was too loud for the girls to hear me. I felt powerless. I hate feeling powerless!”
Clark knew that well.
“So I kneed him in the balls.”
The sudden sureness in her voice broke him from his dark thoughts, and brought a slight smile to his face. “Hell yeah, you did,” he said proudly.
She smiled up at him. It was wobbly, but it was her. Lois had been frightened, but not cowed. Hurt, but not broken.
“Then I gave him an elbow to the nose,” she continued. “Pretty sure I broke it. There was a lot of blood.”
Clark grinned. “I was going to ask what he looked like so I could deal with him, but I doubt there’s anything left!”
“Definitely not his dignity,” she said smugly. “He might have made me cry, but I made him cry first.”
Clark gently touched her arm, asking, and she dove back into his arms, nestling in so perfectly, it was like she was made to be there.
Suddenly, Clark felt honored. When Lois was scared and upset, she called him. She allowed him to see her cry, to be afraid. He knew her well enough that she would rather cut off her own foot than let anyone see her weak.
“You know you can always call me,” he whispered into her hair. “I will always be here for you, Lois.”
She chuckled against his chest. “Why do you think I called you, Smallville? Granted, I did call the house phone instead of your cell because I know you don’t always keep it on you, and figured that if I couldn’t get you, I might get Mr. Kent.”
Clark grinned. “Oh, he’d have been here same as me. But with a shotgun.”
Lois looked up at him, smiling. Her face was an absolute mess of smeared makeup, dried tears, and mucus, but to Clark she was beautiful.
Neither of them moved in first. It was a natural drift, like two magnets. It wasn’t fiery and lustful, it was gentle. Comfort given, and taken.
Clark hated the flavor of Tequila, but he chased the taste of it on her lips. She stank of sweat, beer, and cigarette smoke, but he breathed her in deep. She was safe, in his arms, and that was all he cared about.
He could have stood there on that street corner and kissed her all night, but she was worn out both physically and emotionally.
“Will you take me home?” She asked quietly, pulling back.
That was when Clark realized his mistake. He’d been so scared for Lois, he’d sped to Metropolis without a car, and now he didn’t know how to explain himself. She hadn’t seemed to notice how quickly he’d gotten there, but she’d been in distress, and drunk.
His saving grace came in the form of the girl from the bathroom, who exited the club with a group of other girls who all made a beeline to Lois to see if she was okay.
He didn’t exactly care for these girls who had brought Lois to an iffy part of town and allowed her to be caught in such a dangerous situation, but they all appeared genuinely concerned, and Lois didn’t look like she could stand to take another step in her heels.
“Hey, would you ladies mind hanging out here with Lois while I go pull my truck around?”
“You got it,” Rita said, as she and another girl linked arms with Lois, as if to form a chain of protection.
Still antsy about letting her out of his sight, Clark jogged around the corner of the building and sped home, having no choice but to carry his truck back to Metropolis. He set it down in an alley behind the club, startling a drunk stumbling out the back door, then drove it back to the front.
“That was fast,” Lois said when he hopped out to get the door, smiling at the other girls in thanks. “But then again, I think the alcohol messed with my perception of time. You got from Smallville to here crazy fast.”
“I did break a few speeding limits,” Clark said. Not a lie, technically.
Lois smirked at him. “You pushed yourself out of granny mode for me?”
“After a call like that, I was practically auditioning for NASCAR.”
Lois didn’t have a response for that, and their drive back to Smallville was quiet, except for the radio that she turned from pop to classic rock.
Tonight…
“Poor Lois,” Martha said. “Did you ever get ahold of Chloe?”
Clark nodded. “Lois texted her, and Chloe called her right back. She’d just gotten home and was panicking that Lois wasn’t there. Lois just told her that she called me to pick her up because she wanted her own bed. She didn’t want to tell Chloe what happened and make her feel bad.”
Martha made a face that suggested she thought Chloe deserved to feel a little bad, and Clark didn’t disagree, but he’d still promised Lois not to tell her.
“If you wanna lecture me for running off to Metropolis without a way to explain it to Lois, go ahead,” Clark said.
Jonathan shook his head. “Son, no man would be expected to use his best judgement when the woman he…cares about calls him crying. I probably would have done the same thing in your shoes.”
Clark groaned, resting his head on his hands again. “But that doesn’t get me out of the mess I’m in.”
“Do you think Lois suspects something?”
“No, she was still kind of drunk when I got there. I really don’t think she noticed anything. That’s not the problem.”
His mom exchanged a look with his dad. “Then what is?”
Clark had told them almost everything that happened that night. Everything but the kiss in Metropolis…and the ones back home in the truck.
Clark wondered if the windows were still fogged up.
“Clark,” his mom said. “Tell us what’s going on.”
“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” he rambled. “I was just going along, and everything was normal…at least as normal as it can get for me. So much of my life is wrapped up in my…my destiny and I thought maybe I had to stop thinking about what I want and focus on what’s right because for so long all I could focus on was how much I wanted Lana…but then out of nowhere…I kissed her!”
His parents blinked, bemused by his ranting. “You kissed…Lana?” His mom ventured, confused.
“No!” Clark exclaimed. “God, no. I kissed Lois!”
His parents’ eyebrows went up, but Clark wasn’t sure if they looked surprised or not. “Tonight?”
“No! I mean…yes. I did kiss her tonight. I kissed her a lot tonight. But no…no it started a couple weeks ago. We were arguing about…I don’t even know what and she just kept going on and on and on and I just wanted her to shut up for a second and I don’t know what came over me, one second I was looking at her and the next I was kissing her. And it’s not like I was the only one, she didn’t have to kiss me back, but she did. And we just kept kissing and we couldn’t stop…”
“Clark…” his dad broke in, a slightly horrified expression on his face.
“I don’t mean that,” Clark said, knowing where his father’s mind had gone. “Not that I didn’t want to.”
“Clark!” Jonathan admonished, while Martha tried not to laugh.
“But then we just didn’t talk about it,” Clark continued. “Which was fine. It was a fluke, right? We’re barely even friends as it is, let’s not complicate things…but then last week it happened again. We argued, we kissed…and I just don’t get it. I’ve kissed girls. Why does kissing Lois feel so different? Why can’t I stop myself? And then tonight…I was just so scared…and then she was so upset…and I wanted to kill the man who tried to hurt her. Do you think I’m infected by some kind of new Kryptonite?!”
“I don’t think so, Clark,” Martha said, her cheeks dimpling.
“Then what?! Why would…” and then it hit him. Like a bolt of lightning to the brain…or maybe the heart. “Oh…oh my God.”
“Clark?” His mom said softly.
“I love her,” he whispered, staring off into nothing, barely able to believe the words leaving his lips, but they were true. “I’m…I’m in love with Lois Lane.”
He dropped his forehead to the table with nearly enough force to splinter it.
“I hardly think this is cause for such dramatics,” Martha said in amusement.
“You think this is funny?!” Clark exclaimed, sitting up. “Aren’t you guys going to…I don’t know, lecture me or something?”
“For what?” Jonathan asked.
“I don’t know! It’s too much of a risk. Getting serious is dangerous because of my abilities. I’m too young to be in love?”
His parents exchanged a fond look, a conversation spoken without words. “Son…” his dad began. “You’re not a child anymore. Your feelings are your own, so is your secret.”
Clark frowned. “A year ago you flipped out when you found out that Lana stayed over.”
Jonathan shrugged. “That was different. This is Lois.”
“Why does it upset you to realize you have feelings for her?” Martha asked.
“It doesn’t,” Clark said, deflating. “It’s…sort of amazing. But like you said, this is Lois. She’s one of my best friends. If things go south, I’ll lose her. I don’t want to lose her. I also don’t want to put her at risk.”
“Maybe you should consider talking about some of what you’re feeling with her.”
Clark gave his mother a look. “And send her packing to God knows where for God knows how long?”
“Maybe give me a little more credit than that, Smallville.”
Clark leaped out of his chair, knocking it over, his heap whipping around to face the stairs where Lois stood, wearing one of his old flannel shirts and a pair of his sweatpants which had to be rolled over at the waist several times.
“To be fair, Chloe doesn’t call me The Bolter for nothing,” she admitted, rolling her eyes.
“How um…how much of that did you hear?” Clark asked, struggling to decide whether he was more concerned about his admittance of love, or discussion about his abilities.
“Enough,” she said haughtily.
“I think we should let you two talk,” Martha said, grabbing Jonathan’s hand. The latter of the two looked like he’d rather stay and listen, but his wife dragged him toward the stairs. “I’m glad you’re alright, Lois,” she said, kissing Lois’s temple before resuming the path upstairs. “Goodnight, you two.”
Clark swallowed, thickly, wondering why it felt like there wasn’t enough air in the room. He didn’t even technically need air.
Lois crossed her arms, waiting, but when it didn’t look like Clark was going to start, she rolled her eyes and broke the ice. “Look, I’m not gonna ask about your time warp routine, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“My…what?”
Lois rolled her eyes again. “I wasn’t that drunk, Smallville. And my phone has time stamps from the time I called you, and the time I texted one of the other girls that you were there.”
Clark swallowed nervously again. “Lois, I…”
She held up a hand to stop him. “No, like I said, I’m not asking. I’m grateful, however you did it.”
Suddenly, something in Clark relaxed. His nerves dissipated, and everything just felt strangely…clear. He smiled, shaking his head a little, the way he did when they first officially met after his whole stint as Kal-El.
Of course Lois knew that something was unusual about him. How could she not, considering the circumstances of their first meeting? To say nothing of the weirdness that surrounded him daily. But she went along with his half-baked lies, and never asked questions when he did something he shouldn’t be able to, like get from Smallville to Metropolis in less than a minute. Not like Lana, or Lex, or Pete, or even Chloe, who felt like they deserved and needed to know all of his secrets.
“So you don’t want to know?” He asked her.
Lois narrowed her eyes at him, a hint of a smirk on those beautiful lips. “Not what I said. But if you wanted me to know all your deep dark secrets, you’d tell me. I’m content to talk about that other thing I heard you say to your parents…”
Clark chuckled, feeling his cheeks heat up. “I meant it, you know.”
Now Lois looked nervous, staring down at the kitchen counter as if it were printed with a very fascinating book. “You did?”
“Mhm,” he said, moving closer to her, until he could feel the warmth of her, still overheated from alcohol and sleep. He touched her hand where it rested on the counter. “How does that make you feel?”
Lois curled her lips inward, but met his eyes. “Kinda like I wanna jump on a plane to Timbuktu. But in a good way, if that makes any sense.”
“I haven’t quite mastered getting across oceans yet. But if you want to bolt to like, Canada or something, we could be there in like 30 seconds.”
“How about the beach?” She asked, perking up. “I hear Florida is lovely this time of year.”
Clark nodded. “On one condition: you wear that red bikini of yours.”
Lois smirked. “I have a new one. It’s still red, and maybe not as skimpy, but you’ll love what it does to the girls,” she glanced down, as if her words weren’t obvious.
Clark grinned. “Alright. We can go tomorrow.”
“Really? You’re serious? Is this like…a first date, kind of thing?”
Clark slowly moved a little closer, sliding his hand around her waist. “Is that okay with you?”
Lois took a deep breath, then nodded. “Yeah. It is.”
He couldn’t resist any longer, not with the way she was looking up at him. He kissed her, slowly and deeply, peace and arousal spreading across his body at the notion that this kiss wasn’t stolen, or a secret, or confusing. It was everything.
It wasn’t those words that he’d admitted to his parents, but it was enough…for now.