Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Clark TOC can be found
HereWhen we last saw Lois in Part 220, she was talking to Lex Luthor…Lex sat back down. “Then let me impart with you some selfless advice. I care for you as a friend, even if you don’t reciprocate. Do not trust Clark Kent.”
“You’ve already told me this.”
“He’s getting better at hiding his tracks,” Luthor went on as if she hadn’t interrupted, partially covering her words with his own. “But he’s
still lying to you!”
Lane’s jaw dropped slightly as she stared at the soon-to-be-former billionaire. She leaned over the back of the chair and towards Luthor, hissing, “About what?”
“About everything.”
She laughed in disbelief at Luthor’s gall. “And you know this…
how?”
He shrugged. “It takes a con man to recognize another con man.”
Bill balled his fist in triumph! Luthor had just admitted that he was a con man. Okay, Bill knew that it was inadmissible in court, as Luthor could easily have been talking metaphorically as a businessman, but still it was a thrill to hear.
“Your theory has a flaw, Lex,” she informed him. “I’ve always heard that the best way to lie is to be ninety-nine percent honest. Therefore, Clark couldn’t be lying to me about everything, otherwise I would see through his lies easily. Just as I saw through your lies.”
Luthor digested this. “All right. Not everything, then. Kent is lying to you about who he is.”
Lane looked up to the ceiling with a slight shake of her head. “Who is he, then?”
He paused, staring at Lane as if debating with himself on whether to tell her the truth. Finally, Luthor admitted, “I don’t know. I never could figure that out.” He tapped the desk. “I just don’t like the idea of you being involved with a ghost.”
“Clark’s not a ghost, Lex. I can touch him just fine,” she purred.
“Kent has another agenda that he’s not telling you about,” he said as she walked towards the door. As she didn’t look back, he started to yell, “Don’t trust him! He’s lying to you! You deserve better!”
Lane opened the door, shutting it firmly behind her. “Good thing it was only the clone who was obsessed with me,” she said bitterly to Bill. “I’d hate to have that man interfering with my personal life.”
They walked down the passageway in silence through the first set of gates.
“Clark grew up in Smallville, Kansas, adopted son to a Martha and Jonathan Kent. He went to Smallville High, and then to MidWestern University,” Bill informed her. “In case you were wondering.”
“I know,” Lane replied, glancing over at him from of the corner of her eye. “That’s what I found out when I visited Smallville last year.”
“Just thought you’d like to know that I know.”
As Lane nodded to him, Bill wondered if she also knew that he knew that information was a lie.
They were all keeping secrets.
They’d both been in on the super con for a while now.
***
Part 221
******************
I Would Die For You
******************“Bobby Bigmouth says that the gangsters will be at the Georgie Hair-do’s speakeasy tonight; therefore, we will be there, too! So, stop your whining and put on your bulletproof vest,” Lois said, slamming the black vest against Clark’s chest.
“Lois,” Clark groaned. “What makes you think that tonight is going to be different from any of the other times you made me wear it during the last month?”
“We’re going to a club where gangsters hang out, Clark, old-timey gangsters. It would be stupid for you not to wear it tonight!”
“Then where’s yours?” he responded, crossing his arms.
She glanced down at her black sequined dress with spaghetti straps. “Where am I going to hide it? In my handbag?” she asked, holding up the small matching bag that had come with her dress for his inspection. “Anyway, you’re the only bulletproof vest I need,” she whispered, kissing his cheek. Placing a pouting, innocent expression to her face, she continued, “You’ll step between me and any bullets, won’t you, Clarkie?”
“I have never been so ready to be shot in my life,” he grumbled.
“Clark!”
“I just mean that as soon as Clark Kent gets shot,
I can stop wearing this redundant vest!” he said, starting to spin. The vest disappeared and Clark stood before her as he had done before in his slacks, white shirt, brown jacket, and red marbled tie.
Lois pressed her lips together into a line and then stepped forward to straighten his tie. Her fingers slipped down to the middle of his chest where she unbuttoned his shirt.
“Hey!”
“I’m just checking,” she said. “I don’t want another Captain Elliot episode on my hands.”
“I told you, Lois. I didn’t put the vest back on
after I flew up to shift the satellite away from Earth.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied, checking to make sure that she saw black, not blue, under his shirt. “That’s why I saw the vest in the back of the jeep later on.” She patted his chest with approval and stepped away to let him button up his shirt. “You didn’t put the vest on in the first place!”
Clark refused to admit she was right, and she knew she was because he didn’t deny it either.
Lois picked up her mobile phone from the side table next to her front door and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He gave her a sour expression, which read, ‘I’m not your pack mule.’
“What?” she replied, innocently holding up her evening bag for his inspection again. “It won’t fit.”
“I thought you were going to wear red tonight,” he said, changing the subject as they stepped out into the hall. “I wore this tie special to match.”
Lois smiled at him and ran her fingers over his tie before locking her door. “We don’t match?” she asked evasively.
“Well, I guess black goes with everything. Although, I must admit you look irresistible in red,” he said, wrapping his arms around her waist from behind her as he kissed her neck.
“Mind if I don’t believe you?” she said wryly, patting his cheek and walking down the hall to the stairwell.
That obstinate man! She still hadn’t been able to convince Clark to try to steal third base. How many months would they have to date before he moved past that invisible line he recently drew across her navel? “I just didn’t feel like wearing red tonight. That’s all. We’re undercover. I don’t want to attract any undue attention to myself, that’s all.” She looped her hand around his arm, accidentally bumping his chest to feel the bulletproof vest again.
Lois knew tonight would be the night. She didn’t know how she knew, she just did. When she had tried on this dress at the store that afternoon she had put on the red version. She
loved the red dress. She had looked hot, as Clark had said, irresistibly hot. It was the kind of dress that would make even Clark forget oaths of chastity. She had even called Clark on her mobile phone and warned him that she would be wearing red.
However, as she walked past the rack of dresses on the way to the register from the fitting room, an icy chill from nowhere had made her stop and replace the dress with a black version. The red dress made her stand out, just as Clark’s blue, red, and yellow suit made him stand out. She didn’t want to draw attention to herself, not while there was a bullet out there with Clark Kent’s name on it. What if the only reason that Clark was shot in her vision was because he had stepped in front of her to stop it?
She knew that she was blaming herself, but she also knew most of the times Clark got in trouble it was because of her. Not that either of them would ever admit it. Aloud. She knew it, and that was enough. She hated to change her behavior to stop a crime against her… or Clark, in this case, from happening; it was just another way to blame the victim. Hated it with a passion! She needed to change the criminal’s behavior, not her own. It wasn’t her fault if some testosterone-laden clone took potshots at her or Clark. It just wasn’t!
The problem was she had no idea whatsoever how to change the behavior of criminals who had just been reanimated from the dead via cloning. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had experience with clones already to last her a lifetime, but she hadn’t been very successful then, either.
Clark had read something about Professor Hamilton working with gene therapy in order to alter a criminal’s behavior. Unfortunately, Lois didn’t have time to wait until Hamilton had perfected his technique.
The thing was Lois knew that if her vision had shown her being shot, and not Clark, she wouldn’t have done anything differently. She was more than willing to risk her own life for a story, but not Clark’s life. Okay, it wasn’t his full life, just his non-hero side. His Clark persona, so to speak.
Oh, sure, she could quit the Daily Planet, move to another city, and get another job at another paper while Clark put together another secret identity. She
could do that and she was willing to do that,
if there was no other option. They had already put in so much time and effort creating this persona, though, even if it did have some holes in it… such as Luthor not believing it was a real identity. Thankfully, the billionaire hadn’t noticed how similar Clark looked to Metropolis’s flying hero, or how they had arrived into town at roughly the same time.
See! She wasn’t the only blind person out there.
The thing was that Lois loved her current life. She loved the Daily Planet. She loved Metropolis. She would have to leave everyone she knew, or more correctly, everyone who knew Clark Kent, forever. She wouldn’t be able to share her life-partner with anyone she knew from this former life, with the exception of Perry, who already was in the know… not that Clark knew that. Clark would have to find another non-reporting career that allowed him the freedom to bolt for the nearest door as this one did, because they couldn’t chance him bumping into any of their old colleagues. Therefore, Lois would no longer have her work partner as well.
While she loved Clark more than her city and her job, she didn’t want to upend her life,
his life, just because he was a stubborn, obstinate git who thought he wasn’t only invulnerable but also invincible.
Well, he had met his match. She would save his life, if she had to die in the process!
***
Clark stared at his beautiful partner as they shared the back of a taxi to the neighborhood of Georgie Hairdo’s club. Lois was holding back. She still hadn’t told him everything that had happened during her interview with Lex Luthor. She had been able to get enough information to piece together an article this time, though, thin that it was.
Henderson insisted that Luthor had only tried to persuade Lois of his innocence by shifting all or most of the blame for his crimes onto his clone. If that were all that had happened, why wouldn’t the inspector let Clark listen to the tape of the interview?
Clark had questioned Lois incessantly about the interview to the point that Lois refused to speak on the subject further, insisting that everything of substance would be in her article and he could just read that! If Perry White wasn’t brave enough to tell Lois that her story lacked substance, Clark was determined not to do so either.
On the other hand, the Chief had said that he was disappointed Lois hadn’t been able to get more out of Luthor. If the suits upstairs wanted to remind the public of Luthor’s eventual trial, Perry would appease them with this little offering so that his reporters could move on with their lives. He had buried the story on the back of Section A, though. Luthor’s propaganda didn’t deserve to be on the front page, whether it was an exclusive interview or not.
Lois glanced at him out of the corner of her eye and caught Clark staring. “Did you want to get something off your chest?” she asked, before raising her finger to stop him from interjecting. “Something that isn’t a piece of clothing?”
“No.”
“Is there something else you wanted to tell me?”
Clark reviewed all the information in his brain dealing with Dr. Hamilton, the cloned gangsters, and even Georgie Hairdo’s club and came up blank. “I love you?” He grinned, hoping that was the answer she was looking for.
Her resulting exasperated eye roll told him it wasn’t even close.
He shifted his position so that he was facing her with his entire body. “Okay, Lois. Enough games. If there’s something you want to know, just ask me.”
Lois stared at him with narrowed eyes as if willing him to reveal the tidbit she wanted. Without being able to read her mind, this technique was bound to fail.
“I’ll ask you again when we get home,” she said. “If you’re still alive.”
“I’m not a mind reader,” Clark mumbled.
“Neither am I, so I guess that makes us even,” Lois retorted.
He resisted the urge to scream in frustration, because with his luck the vibrations would probably cause the cab to combust.
The cab stopped several blocks away from the club, and Lois exited, leaving Clark to pay the cabbie and get the receipt for reimbursement. He stepped next to her and laced her fingers with his. “How about next time, you pay the cabbie,
minha?” he asked as they started walking towards the club.
“If you’re reimbursed, what does it matter?”
“Exactly!” he responded.
She frowned again. “Fine!” Clearly, as Martha had told him, she wasn’t ‘fine’.
“So, you want to be equal with your male co-workers in every way, except when it comes to picking up the tab?” he asked.
“Well, you get paid more than I do!” she snapped.
“I do not! I have fewer years at the Planet and, therefore, less seniority than you.”
“Fine!” she grumbled. “But when you factor in my higher day-to-day expenses, I earn less.”
“What?” he exclaimed.
“You don’t
have to eat every day; I do.”
He scoffed. “I like to eat, same as you… if not more. If you cooked, instead of ordering out all the time, it would save you money and be healthier.”
“I don’t have time to cook.” She pointed at him. “I have to pay for health insurance, medicines, and a gym membership!”
“I have health insurance.”
“But you don’t
need it!”
This seemed to prove his argument more than hers, but instead of disputing this point, he tried to figure out what was behind this line of questioning.
“Perry might get suspicious if your partner didn’t need health insurance any longer,” he reminded her. “Anyway, I buy just as many medicines as you. Just because you use more of them than I do is another matter entirely.”
“Who’s your barber?” she demanded as if she hadn’t even listened to his side.
“You’re kidding me?” he laughed, running a hand through his hair.
“Exactly!” Lois said in all earnestness.
“Lois,” he groaned, stopping and pulling her reluctantly into his embrace. He lowered his voice as he whispered into her ear, “It’s not my fault that only heat vision will cut through my hair and my exercise program involves lifting buses falling from bridges instead of machines at the gym.”
“You don’t need a car, or to pay for gas or cabs to get anywhere,” she went on.
“I pick up the tab most times you fill up the tank,” he retorted, before smiling. “And I like walking to work with you.”
Her returning frown was more persnickety than anger induced.
“Did you want me to…” he cleared his throat. “— pick you up before work instead of walk with you, now that it’s colder?”
The corner of her lip tilted upward. “That sounds nice.”
He brushed her lips with his. “All you had to do was ask, Lois. Is that all?”
She ran her thumb over his lips. “Lipstick.”
Clark stared at her in alarm. “You want me to wear make-up? Wouldn’t it be better if you stopped? I mean, you’re stunning without it.”
Lois grinned, trying to keep a straight face as she pointed at his lips. “I just meant that you had…” She shook her head, laughing. “Never mind.”
“Oh,” he replied with a blushing chuckle as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Sorry.”
“A-ha!” Lois exclaimed. “Your rent costs less than mine.”
How was that
his fault? “One, it’s a smaller apartment. Two, it’s in a worse neighborhood, and three, learn to negotiate better.”
She pressed her lips together. “I have a larger apartment because I had a roommate when I moved in and I needed more space. I live in that neighborhood, because I needed a place with a parking garage for my Jeep. It isn’t safe to leave the car parked on the street in your neighborhood. I mean, it’s better now that Superman moved to town, but… well, anyway… Thirdly, men don’t like to negotiate with women; it makes them feel less of a man, so they refuse to haggle and the woman gets metaphorically screwed.”
Clark opened his mouth and drew in a breath, only to stop himself. Asking Lois to move in with him to win an argument was the cherry on top of a stupendously bad idea, especially since he was only saying it in jest.
Was he saying it in jest? Not that he had actually said it, asked the question that was, but had his motivation been to make her laugh out of her bad humor?
Suddenly, the question didn’t sound funny at all.
His heart started to race.
Clark wanted more than anything to live with Lois, to wake up every morning and go to sleep every night with her in his arms. He had moved to this dimension with that very goal in mind.
That was impossible… God, he hated that word. Okay, perhaps not fully impossible, but one step up from asking Lois to move in with him in jest. A really, horrible, disastrous idea… for a completely different reason.
Clark didn’t want that type of relationship with Lois. He wanted to marry her, but he didn’t know if a full marriage would ever be possible. Nor had he forgotten how badly his first two proposals, the one to Lana and the one to Lois, had gone and he wasn’t in any hurry to repeat the experience. Anyway, if they moved in together before she was ready to be married, wouldn’t that just delay her ever being ready?
If she already had access to the milk, why would she ever buy the cow?
Clark’s head dropped into the palm of his hand with this insane thought. He couldn’t believe his mind jumped to the crazy allegory of milking cows Cat had made when he had brought up the subject, back when she had come to him for advice about Phil, during Lois and Clark’s stakeout at the Luxor Hotel.
He rubbed his forehead and tried to clear these thoughts and the rush of memories that followed about what happened at the Lexor between him and Lois, during Nightfall, and after Nightfall.
Lois cupped his jaw and raised his head so that he was looking her in the eye. “Is everything all right?”
“I…” he sputtered, wanting to avoid answering this question by pressing his lips to hers. Instead, he noticed the red door of the speakeasy half a block away. “I was trying to focus my hearing so that I could…” He licked his lips and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath and stretching out his hearing, in order to make this fib a little more true. “— overhear the password.”
“The Fat Lady Sings,” Lois said without hesitation. He clearly must have appeared stunned, because she went on with a shrug, “I saw it in a movie somewhere.”
How did she always accomplish the feat of making him love her more than the previous moment?
He rested his palm on the small of her back. “Shall we go in, then?”
“Let’s get this over with,” she agreed and they moved towards the door.
After Lois’s password got them into the club, she disappeared into the sea of slot machines. Her little evening purse might have been too small for a bulletproof vest or her phone, but apparently was big enough for a roll of nickels.
Clark saw one of the gangster clones, sitting at the bar and decided that at least one of them should investigate; otherwise, he couldn’t honestly ask to get their fare to the club reimbursed at work.
“Hello,” he asked to Bonnie, partner of Clyde. Then he decided, since she had been dead for the most part of the last half a century, to see if an old pick up line would seem old to her. “Come here often?”
Bonnie turned and smiled at him. “I haven’t been here in years. I guess you could say I hadn’t been
anywhere in years.”
“Would you like a drink?” Clark asked, nodding to the bartender.
“Why don’t you surprise me?” Bonnie replied.
He quickly considered what type of drink Bonnie would have been used to drinking and then chose something a more elegant woman, such as Lois, would order. “White wine for the lady. A club soda with a dash of cranberry juice for me, please.”
Bonnie grabbed Clark’s tie and pulled him closer to her. “Oh, honey, girly drinks aren’t the answer. Trust me, I know.”
Clark wasn’t sure how to respond to this jab at his masculinity. He liked flavor and plain club soda was bland.
“Now, if you were to loosen your tie and relax a little,” she went on, reaching to undo his tie. The bartender arrived and set their drinks down on the bar.
Clark’s hands reached up and took Bonnie’s hands in his, stopping her. Most people didn’t go around wearing bulletproof vests.
“Whatsa matter?” she asked.
“I’m just kinda shy about people seeing my… uh… underwear,” he said.
“After sixty years, you’d think men would be more forward about such things,” Bonnie grumbled to herself.
Lois waved at the bartender from the other side of Bonnie, whispering to the woman, “Tell me about it.”
Bonnie picked up her wine and took a sip. “Thanks, anyway, bub,” she said to Clark. “But I already have a man like you.”
Clark leaned on the bar and took a sip of his drink. “So, do you live around here?”
Lois shot him a glare.
Bonnie’s interest, on the other hand, returned. “Oh, so you’re a more show your underwear in private than in public sort of man.”
Clyde appeared at that moment and tapped Clark on the shoulder. “Back off, pretty boy. This girl’s taken.”
“Knock it off, Clyde. We’re just having a conversation,” Bonnie retorted. She waved her fingers at her partner. “Anyway, I don’t see no ring on this finger.”
“Can we discuss this later?” Clyde whispered. “Anyway, you’re supposed to be watching the door.”
“I
am watching the door,” Bonnie returned, flipping her hand towards the entrance. “I am here and the door is there.”
“Excuse me,” Clark said, moving around the couple and next to Lois. “Can I buy
you a drink, Miss?”
Bonnie and Clyde moved further down the bar, arguing.
“Are you going to offer to show
me your underwear, too?” Lois asked Clark, flirtatiously batting her eyelashes.
He grinned. “If you play your cards right.”
Lois laughed and nodded to the bartender. “White wine, please.”
Clark paid for her and Bonnie’s wine and for his club soda.
The bartender handed Lois her glass of wine. She leaned her back against the bar. “If I play my cards right, you’ll lose your underwear.”
Clark coughed into his drink. He hadn’t expected this response, especially since the hem of Lois’s dress moving further up her thigh had distracted him. “My lucky night,” he said wryly.
*
The front doors of the club burst open with a bang. Dillinger and Capone strode in, followed by several thugs. Dillinger fired his Tommy gun into the ceiling.
Capone removed his cigar from his lips. “I just came to announce that Georgie Hair-do has wisely decided to retire from the hospitality business. So, from now on, this club belongs to Al Capone!”
Bonnie and Clyde with guns of their own rushed up the steps to join the gangsters as Dillinger began to ogle Lois in an all-too-familiar way.
She should have just bought the red dress. Why hadn’t she realized that crummy men didn’t change their attitude no matter what a woman wore?
Dillinger moved down the stairs towards Lois, waving the tip of his gun at her. “How about we name this cutie as our hostess?” he called back to Capone.
“Thanks, but no. I have a job,” Lois returned, holding Clark back with her hand.
Dillinger took hold of her arm. “Quit. You’re just the kind of angel we need around here.”
“Gee, that’s an honor I can’t wait to refuse,” Lois retorted.
Dillinger’s grip tightened on Lois’s arm as he scowled.
Clark knocked the gangster’s hand away, causing Dillinger to push Lois to the floor before her knee could make contact with the gangster’s crotch. Clark, then, stepped between them. “The lady said ‘no’.”
“Clark, no!” Lois screamed, taking hold of his leg.
Clyde leveled his pistol at Clark and fired two shots directly into his chest. “That should stop you from trying to steal our dames!”
Clark sputtered and grabbed his chest, falling to the ground next to Lois. She took his hand in hers. He gasped for breath, playing the dying man to the hilt.
“Clyde, you moron!” Capone snapped. “What did you do that for? Those were our only green bullets. Our contact said that was the one thing that will stop the Man in Blue, and you’ve wasted them on this sap.”
Lois’s eyes widened as she hugged his head to her chest. “Oh no!”
Clark squeezed her hand and whispered, “I’ll never argue with you again.”
The vest! Thank God, the bullets hadn’t penetrated his skin, but since manufacturers stopped using lead for the lighter weight Kevlar, the Kryptonite bullets could still kill him if they didn’t get him out of that vest as soon as possible.
“Let’s get outta here,” roared Capone. “And take the soon-to-be stiff with you. I can’t afford to be linked to a murder.”
Lois wrapped her arms around Clark’s torso. “No!” she screamed. “You can’t have him!” The thugs tried to drag her from her partner, but she only yelled louder and held on more tightly, “Noooooooooooo!”
Dillinger called from the entrance. “I’m okay if you bring the broad along for the ride.”
“Let me go,” Clark murmured through white lips. “I can’t save you.”
Therefore, it was up to her to save him. She pressed her mouth to his in a quick kiss. “I’ll find you!”
Clark nodded briefly before his eyes fluttered closed.
Tears trickled down her cheeks. “Clark? No! Clark?” She grabbed his jacket and shook him, screaming, “
Clark!”
He didn’t respond.
Someone from behind Lois grabbed her waist and pulled her from Clark’s inert body. Lois kicked, screamed, and fought her would-be helper, but by the time she got away, Clark and the gangsters had already disappeared through the speakeasy’s door.
“Clark?!” Lois called from the doorway, but the only answer she heard in return was the screech of tires departing into the darkness and the blare of police sirens approaching.
***End of Part 221*** Part 222 Comments
