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Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found Here

Where we left Lois and Clark at the end of Part 213…

Lois smiled her Cheshire grin, kissing Clark’s chest several more times, before moving to his ribcage and finally his stomach. Her fingers caressed his belly and her lips followed. She took hold of his hand, lacing her fingers with his and squeezing his hand. It felt as if she had expelled all the air out of his lungs.

He could feel every breath she exhaled on his skin. It seemed to tie his intestine in knots. Was there such a thing as good knots?

After a forever that somehow lasted less than an instant, Lois shifted her mouth to his. Clark relaxed into the comfort of this familiar activity as he wrapped his arms around her.

Only… kissing Lois didn’t feel the same as it had last night.

It felt new and exciting, building on that warm feeling in the pit of his stomach and radiating outwards to every cell in his body.

Lois rotated her position slightly and suddenly his hand at her waist slid onto her stomach and under her shirt. He was touching the bare skin of her belly.

Clark sat up and turned so that his feet were on the floor. “I have that meeting,” he said, but he didn’t stand up. The warmth in his stomach was red hot now. He took a couple of gulps of air, trying to catch his breath. Yet, the atmosphere in Lois’s bedroom had somehow thinned considerably.

Lois sat behind him, her chest against his back, and rested her hand on his arm. “It’s okay, Clark. Don’t run away.”

“I’m…” Am I? he wondered. “I…I need more time.”

She nodded. “I completely understand. You’ve got that meeting and you don’t want to be rushed.”

That wasn’t what he meant. Clark turned his head slightly to catch her eye. “Rain check?”

Lois kissed his lips briefly in acceptance. “Deal,” she replied, and then sauntered into the bathroom, leaving him frozen in shock, staring after her.


Part 214

**********************
The Ball in Clark’s Court
**********************

Lois couldn’t believe how easily she had fooled Clark. He actually believed that she had misunderstood his words that morning when he said he needed more time. Ha! He must have been out of it to buy that load of…

The elevator stopped to let out some people.

Reporters really should have an express elevator, Lois thought. This is ridiculous. News waits for no elevator!

Maybe she should go back to taking the stairs.

She had pressed her luck. Lois knew that. In the heat of the moment and all, she had forgotten Clark’s reaction to touching her stomach after he had returned from Las Vegas. She should have known that him allowing her to touch his bare chest, let alone kiss it, had been great progress from a few nights earlier when he didn’t even want her to lift his shirt. Then again, on that other night she had questioned him about what Luthor had done to him.

She would have to come up with different way to get Clark to push past that fear and bring back the man who had once taken off her shirt and kissed down her chest while she was high on Revenge. She didn’t know what exactly Luthor had done to Superman, but that man would rue the day he had messed with her boyfriend.

Lois tapped her pencil on her notepad. No solutions had come to her yet. Apparently, asking Clark point blank about what Luthor had done to him wasn’t the best way to go about things.

God, she hated to wait.

The elevator finally dinged and opened on her floor. She wondered if Clark had returned from running his ‘errands’ yet. Technically, Superman’s errands - meeting with A.D.A. Drake and helping at that fire over on the Southside. Where had he disappeared off to after that? Lois strode out of the elevator and took a quick glance around the bullpen. No such luck. He wasn’t back yet.

A hand grabbed her arm and pulled her into the stairwell, closing the door behind her.

Lois tried to get into her fighting stance, but a pair of immovable strong arms pulled her against an expansive chest first. Then some soft lips descended onto hers.

“Clark?” she sputtered, realizing who it was. What was he doing?

“You were right and I was wrong,” he murmured between heated kisses.

Was he just figuring this out? Which one of her brilliant ideas had finally made it into the dark recesses of his mind to shine its light? “About?” she asked, taking a step back. She liked to look a man in the eye when he admitted she was right.

Clark pulled her back to his chest. “That was definitely second base this morning.”

Oh? She had been tempted to slide into his idea of second base. But if he had been freaked by accidentally touching under her shirt, what would he have done if she had tried that? Blown a gasket probably. Or a hole in her wall. Wouldn’t that have made the morning news…? A Superman shaped hole found in Lois Lane’s bedroom wall. News at eight.

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it and you all morning,” Clark went on.

Lois smiled. Neither had she. Maybe her little experiment had broken down more of his walls than she knew.

With his hands on her waist, Clark turned them so that she was sandwiched between him and the wall, unable to escape. Good thing she didn’t want to. He placed his arms behind her to cushion her head as he proceeded to kiss her again. This time she relaxed into the kiss, enjoying his enthusiasm, because she didn’t know how long it would last.

Murphy’s law.

They both heard the door open upstairs and they naturally moved apart.

“How did Superman’s meeting with Mayson Drake go?” she asked, lifting up her notepad. They both pretended to study it as a man walked down the stairs.

“Well, Superman certainly didn’t make her a fan,” Clark whispered with a chuckle.

“Did he tell her that you slept at my place last night?” she gasped, thinking Clark had only been joking about that the night before.

Clark gave her an ‘are you kidding me?’ look. “No, but his answers were short, bordering on curt,” he replied, caressing her cheek. “Not intentionally, but only because I wanted to get it over with and rush back to you.”

Lois nudged his shoulder. “You better not screw this up, Chuck. That’s my uncle’s café that was bombed.”

“I know,” he said. “I wasn’t rude, just tad more succinct that usual, and not Superman’s usually charming self.”

Lois didn’t want to correct him, but Clark was the charmer of the two. Superman was intense and forbidding. Clark was the sweet and kind one whom everyone loved. Everyone admired Superman. Actually, everyone admired Clark too, now that she thought about it.

“It’s good that Superman didn’t charm Mayson, being how she feels about him,” she said, trying not to sound jealous. She wasn’t jealous. Clark hadn’t even considered Mayson, but those insecurities apparently weren’t easily dissuaded.

“She did ask where I was this morning,” he admitted.

“And where were you?” she asked. “Not taking a shower, I hope.”

“Having breakfast with you, of course.” Clark grinned like a boy who knew he had answered this test question properly. The smile faded as he glanced over his shoulder and down the stairs to where the man from upstairs had disappeared off. The coast must have been clear, because Clark swept Lois back into his arms, kissing her again.

Another person entered the stairwell, this time down below them. “Clark, we need to get back to work,” Lois reluctantly reminded him.

“I know. I’m sorry. I’ve just been distracted this morning,” Clark said, running his hand through his hair. “In my hurry to get back to you.”

“Clearly. I’ve never seen Superman freeze a fire like that before,” she replied. “And then fly off without comment to the press.”

He winced. “You saw that?”

She nodded. “I was there.”

“I didn’t…” He shook his head. “— think, apparently. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” Lois said. Was it wrong that she wasn’t sorry for this development?

Sadness came to Clark’s eyes as he caressed her cheek again. “I was so focused on getting back to you that I didn’t even notice that you were there,” he said. He tapped his head. “I just can’t get it out of my mind.” He dipped his head and kissed her. “I can’t get you off my mind.” His lips brushed hers again. “This morning was amazing. I’ve never…” He smiled broadly. “I didn’t know that I could feel so good.”

“Come on, Clark. A handsome fellow like you has never had anyone…” She glanced around and lowered her voice. “— kiss his chest before?”

His smile grew. “You think I’m handsome?”

She rolled her eyes, nudging him. “Stop fishing for compliments. You know you’re hot stuff.”

He wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his hands at the base of her back. “Nope, sorry, minha. That description belongs to you.”

Lois scoffed, but inwardly felt filled with glee. Clark thought she was hot. Normally, a man calling her ‘hot stuff’ would rue the day those words crossed his lips, but when Clark said them, well, they felt true. She had always known she was hot, but somehow his confirmation validated it. She glanced away so he couldn’t see how much his words delighted her and made them literally come true.

“Anyway,” she stated, opening the door to the bullpen. “Does Superman need to meet with Mayson again? Will he be called to testify?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Curious or writing an article?”

Lois swatted him with her notepad.

“Mayson wasn’t gung-ho about having Superman on the stand. She said it would disrupt the proceedings, and she’s probably right about that,” he conceded, going down the steps to Lois’s desk.

“As long as the man Superman caught doesn’t get off for bombing my uncle’s café.”

“I have faith in Ms. Drake’s ability to prosecute,” Clark replied.

Tell me about it, Lois thought sourly, more than ready to get off the subject of that blonde assistant district attorney. “So, after I finished up my report on the fire, my source at the Commissioner’s Office finally returned my call. All he would give me was this diskette,” she said, pulling it out of her briefcase. “And the implication that someone big is behind the police slowdown on the Southside.”

“Someone other than the Skins?”

“They’re not organized enough to do this kind of damage,” she replied. She tapped the diskette against her hand as she thought. “You know, I wonder if it’s Intergang.”

“Who?” Clark asked.

Lois turned toward her desk to put the disk in her computer. Sitting in the middle of her desk was a white paper bag. She set down her briefcase on her chair and opened the bag. Inside were a croissant and a couple of cannoli. Clark had brought her breakfast, so that his words to Mayson Drake about them sharing breakfast wouldn’t be a total lie. Yep, next time, she’d definitely be taking the stairs, she thought, dipping her hand into the bag. She glanced at Clark and smiled.

“Who or what is Intergang?” Clark asked again.

And they were back to Mayson Drake.

*

A high-pitched whirring sound made Clark turn his head. Instinctively, he wrapped an arm around Lois’s waist as he shifted himself between her and the Daily Planet windows. A split second later, he felt something strike his back.

“Get down!” he yelled and pulled Lois to the floor, lying down on top of her.

Most people ducked, but Jimbo stood up from his desk. “Huh?”

SPLAT! Yellow paint streaked across his shirt, splattering him in the face.

“Aw, man. I just bought this shirt too,” Jimbo grumbled, before dropping down behind his desk.

After about a minute and no more bullets, people started to get up again.

“Saints alive! What’s going on out here?” Perry yelled, emerging from his office.

“CK and I have just been shot,” Jimbo explained, dipping his fingers into the paint on his chest as he stood up.

“You two okay, Kent?” Perry called.

Clark nodded, glancing down at Lois underneath him. She appeared more stunned than hurt.

“Get right on this!” the Chief demanded.

“Yes, sir,” Clark said, rising to his feet.

Out of thin air, a nasally voice Clark had never heard before called out to him, “Superman!”

Clark glanced around, trying to figure out where exactly the voice came from. He stuck his finger in his ear to dull the slight pain from a shrill whistle that accompanied the voice.

The man went on, “I’m contacting you on a frequency that only you and a few bats can hear.” That explained it.

“Great,” Clark mumbled to himself. “A Batman fan.”

“What?” Lois asked as she looked at him. She was climbing to her knees and dusting off her pants. The pastries had tipped out of the bag and were lying on the floor next to the informant’s diskette.

Clark held a finger first to his lips and then tapped his ear.

“I don’t know where you spend your off-hours,” continued the disembodied voice. “So, I’m contacting you this way. Two of your friends at the Daily Planet have been shot. Before you let off any sonic booms over Metropolis, toppling buildings and weakening foundations, let me reassure you that they were only shot with paint pellets.”

“Fantastic,” he whispered to Lois. “Some guy’s idea of a sick joke.” He held out a hand and helped her finish getting to her feet.

“Okay. You’re probably furious with me now, so let me get to brass tacks. First off, let me reassure you that I’m a big fan – numero uno, so I don’t want you to stop being the Man of Steel.”

“He’s a fan, apparently,” he mumbled.

Lois raised her eyebrows curiously but didn’t interrupt when Clark tapped his ear again.

“It’s a beautiful thing. It gives us all hope. But what my partners and I do want is for you to stay out of the Southside,” the voice went on.

“Someone’s taking credit for what’s happening on the Southside,” Clark mumbled to Lois. “He must be the man funding the Skins.”

“That fire this morning was in the Southside, too,” she reminded him. She opened her top desk drawer, pushed her box of Double Fudge Crunch Bars to the side, and pulled out the pile of spare napkins. She turned him around and started to dab at Clark’s paint-splattered jacket as Clark continued to listen to the message.

“Let’s face it. You got your little red shorts caught in a bad combo of high-tech and close friends. Even you have to admit that you can’t be in two places at once, but our bullets can.”

Clark scowled, liking this man less and less. “He’s threatening to hurt Superman’s friends at the Daily Planet.”

Lois nodded, but gave him a sharp glare for not listening to the message as intently as he probably should’ve been. She turned him back around to continue dabbing his jacket.

“I want you to be the best Superman you can be. Street crime? Wipe it out. Terrorists? Kick their butts. Carjackers? Hey, I drive a Ferrari. Put those guys in orbit,” the man’s voice said with a chuckle. “But stay out of the Southside. I don’t care if it’s a cat chasing a mouse, you flash cape in that part of town, you’re looking at an all-expenses-paid education in bereavement. Today was just a warning. Next time, the bullets won’t be full of paint.”

When the voice didn’t say anything more, Clark picked Lois’s notepad from her desk. He quickly jotted down verbatim what the man had said and handed it to Lois to read.

“We could track him down through his car,” she suggested.

“He could’ve been joking about that,” Clark replied.

“Oh.” She thought for a minute before moving her briefcase to the floor and sitting down in her chair. “Why don’t you go down to the locker rooms and change?”

“There’s no way for Superman to track those bullets now,” he reminded her, lowering his voice.

“You’re still dripping yellow paint on the floor,” she said, nodding towards his jacket.

“Right. Of course,” he said, setting a hand on her shoulder. “Are you sure that you’re all right?” That bullet had been aimed at her. He didn’t know if she realized that little detail.

She scratched her arm. “Except for this bug bite, I’m fine,” she replied in her ‘now go! I’m fine’ tone of voice.

He checked his pockets for items and then removed his paint-splattered jacket, setting it on the back of his chair. He returned to Lois’s desk and sat down in her guest chair. “Tell me about Intergang.”

While he was taking off his jacket, Lois had slid the diskette into her computer. “That slimy lawyer that Lex hired for me, back when I was arrested… um… Schwartz tried to convince Mayson to drop all the charges against me because of her supposed association with a group called ‘Intergang’ and her close ties to Bill Church, CEO of Cost Mart. Mayson told me this after the fact. Way later, after Lex had gotten me pardoned in fact. She had never heard of this supposed ‘Intergang’ and thought Bill Church a sweet old man, so the blackmail didn’t work.”

Clark gawked at Lois. She was still looking at her monitor, opening files on the diskette, oblivious to him studying her. He had missed so much while she was undercover, because she had purposely kept it from him. This was just another example.

“Don’t you think this was something Superman should have been alerted to?” he asked softly.

Lois glanced briefly over her shoulder at him. “The police had been informed via Mayson Drake. Superman had enough on his plate this last spring.”

Guarding Lois and trying to prove that Luthor was the criminal mastermind that Clark knew in his gut that the man was, in order to convince Lois not to marry him. Was that the kind of being busy that Lois meant? Clearing Superman’s name as the Nightfall villain?

“It wasn’t relevant,” she went on.

“It is now.”

“So, we’ll deal with it now,” she stated sharply, as if Clark were judging her negatively.

Perhaps he was.

Would Superman knowing that Intergang existed months ago made any difference? He decided it could have to the people of the Southside, like her uncle Mike.

Clark exhaled away his annoyance. Staying mad at Lois over the past wouldn’t help those people in the present or in the future. “What do you know about them?” he asked.

“Not much. Only what Schwartz told Mayson and she told me. Apparently, he thought she was involved because she used to work for Church before joining the D.A.’s office,” Lois said, pulling up a file.

“What does Church have to do with Intergang, and how did Schwartz know?”

Lois shrugged. “I didn’t have time to investigate further, because I was bogged down trying to prove that Luthor was behind the hit on you.”

Clark set his hand on her shoulder and ran his thumb up the back of her neck.

She set her hand on his and gave it a slight caress. He could feel it down to his toes.

“I hypothesized,” Lois continued, “— that because Luthor was running his own criminal organization, big enough to get a pardon from the governor for his girlfriend’s community service, that his staff – aka Bender’s law firm – must have information about potential rivals. Schwartz thought that Mayson was Intergang’s plant at the D.A.’s office.”

“She seems full of integrity to me,” Clark said.

Lois shifted her shoulders slightly and Clark wondered if she had just rolled her eyes. “Aren’t all moles good at hiding it?”

“So you think that she’s guilty because Luthor’s lawyer did?”

Lois sighed and stopped typing. “The truth is I don’t know if she’s dirty or not, but I figured either way she’d want to help me take down Luthor. You know the enemy of my enemy type thing.”

Clark swiveled around her chair so that she was facing him. “The enemy of your enemy isn’t necessarily your friend, either.”

“Clearly,” Lois murmured wryly.

How much of her soul had Lois bet on her Luthor investigation? He already knew that she gave up her professional reputation, her job at the Daily Planet, and her good name. She risked her relationship with him, her family’s welfare, and, from what they learned about the existence of her body double, her life. Now, it seems her integrity had also been on the table.

“Minha,” he said, taking hold of her hands. “You need to let go.”

Her brow furrowed.

“Of your anger at Luthor.”

“Yeah, right,” she scoffed, turning back to her computer. “That’s not happening.”

“Until you do, he still controls you.”

“I could say the same of you, buster,” she growled, standing up. “He tried to kill you! Multiple times. He had me followed. He blew up the Daily Planet, not caring how many people he hurt in the process. He kidnapped my mother in order to control me. He threatened my friends. He made a double of me and killed her brutally. He bugged my office, and videotaped me in my home, my bedroom, and in my shower!” she yelled, heading for the elevators. “So, no, Clark! I can’t just ‘let it go’.”

*

Clark caught Lois before she got to the ramp, put his arm around her waist and steered her into one of the empty conference rooms. She knew it was pointless to fight him, but she wished he would let her go burn off her steam.

Once he closed the door and shut the blinds, he tried to pull her into his embrace.

Did Clark really think she was going to break down and cry?

She glared daggers at him as she shoved him away to pace the room.

If he touched her at this moment, he was liable to get a fist in his face. Maybe she should punch him. It might make her feel better and it wouldn’t hurt him.

Lois knew she was on the edge. She had dangled there often enough to know the symptoms. If she hit him, she wouldn’t do so only once. She might get her anger out, but then all that would be left would be her frustration at not being in control. If she let out her frustration, she might well cry, and she refused to give him the satisfaction.

Lex Luthor was not controlling her!

Therefore, she continued to pace, her hands clenched in tight fists so that she could strike Clark if he dare stop her.

But he didn’t. Instead, Clark sat down on the far side of the table. He didn’t even look at her, but at his folded hands rubbing together, over and over. He didn’t speak, so she continued to pace. Did he think he could wait her out? His patience might be infinite but so was her anger.

“You have no right to tell me that he’s still controlling me, when you let him rule your life!” she screamed.

Clark’s head dropped slightly as his shoulders hunched.

“He brainwashed me,” he finally murmured.

She stopped and turned to look at him.

“He tried to break me,” he whispered. “— to turn me against you. He knows that I love you and he tried to convince me that you loved him. That you had lied about loving me.”

If Clark was trying to reduce her anger at Luthor, it wasn’t working.

“He… he…” Clark closed his eyes, sighed, and then opened them to look straight into her soul, freezing her fury. “He failed.”

‘It’s not her.’ Those were the words Cat had said Clark had been repeating when she had rescued him.

Oh, God, what did Luthor do? A nagging voice in the back of Lois’s mind knew the answer.

Lois slipped into the chair opposite him and set her hands down on top of his.

Clark let go of his own hands and took hold of hers. “I’m sorry, Lois, really I am,” he said. “I can’t erase the lies in my head. I can only wallpaper over them with the truth.”

“You know,” she said hesitantly. “— if we make love, we’d win and he’d lose.”

“Are you suggesting that we make a sex tape and send it to Luthor in jail?” he asked and she could hear the incredulity in his voice.

Lois pretended to consider that idea. “Well, it would have to be of me and Superman, and it’s probably best if such a tape never exists,” she said, sighing deeply with regret. “So, no.”

A hint of a smile curled up on the corner of his mouth. “Tempting thought, though,” he murmured.

She chuckled. “Let’s not even go there.”

He nodded. “We should leave him to wonder in agony.”

Lois knew what that felt like, so she thought it was just punishment. “What can I do to help you with your wallpapering project?”

“Be yourself.”

“Oh, come on, Chuck. I can do more than that,” she prodded.

Clark smiled. “Be patient with me. It’s slow-drying glue.”

“Make up your mind, Clark. Either I can be myself or I can be patient. I can’t be both.”

He laughed, and it filled the room with sunshine. “You can…” He let go of her hand and dipped his fingers into his shirt pocket. His brow furrowed. He stood up and patted his pants pockets, finally pulling out some blue charity ball tickets and holding them up. “You can be my date to the ball.”

“Dancing?” she asked rhetorically. Then, she recalled Perry’s words when he had passed out the tickets the day before: ‘Make sure you invite people who know how to dress and don’t mind dancing close.’ She grinned. “You’ve got yourself a date.”

***End of Part 214***

Part 215

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