Well, it's been a little over two years since my last fic posting ['The One Where Lois and Clark Make Some New Friends: A Birthday Fic for Annette' if anyone's keeping track :-)]. Since then, I've finished one pregnancy, started *and* finished another, adding two more beautiful daughters to my family. That's not to say fic hasn't popped into my head one or more times since then, but finding the time and energy to write is a whole other issue.
So yesterday I was IMing with BanAnna and she pointed me to something on the boards, which led to reading a bit of fic, which led to the STRONG desire to write some, which led to searching desperately on the HD for something started and not finished. The only thing I found was what will be, if ever finished, a very long fic and certainly not what I was looking for.
So Anna urged me, today, to write something short and fun. I remembered a fic I wrote for a 30 min challenge that I didn't really like how it turned out, so I took the same premise and started again.
This one didn't take much longer than that and Anna kindly looked it over for me [heck, I practically wrote it in AIM!] and is insisting that it be posted.
So here goes nothing.
The toys aren't mine, they belong to someone else.
Here it is, for your reading pleasure. As for me, I'm going to feed my kids and wait anxiously for a FDK folder that hopefully isn't full of rotten tomatoes.
*****
Reality
*****
Lois stared at the suspenders strewn casually on the desk where the Chief had dropped them. Why did she get him suspenders again anyway? She was having the strangest sense of déjà vu and it didn't have anything to do with giving him the same gift two years in a row. It was like she had lived this morning already and something just wasn't… right.
She distinctly remembered Clark bringing a card because she, as usual, had forgotten one. Leave it to Clark to remember. But she'd found the card in her briefcase. How had it gotten there?
And Clark had acted *so* weird when she'd pulled it out. He'd ripped it up and thrown it away. What was that about?
Sure, her partner was a little odd – but could anyone *really* be that scatterbrained?! He'd remember a card for Perry's birthday but couldn't remember to turn a movie in on time, for crying out loud!
There were also vague images of Smallville floating around in her head. What were they doing there? She hadn't been in Smallville since the Corn Festival thingy almost two years earlier. Oh, sure, she'd talked to Martha regularly and they'd often invited her to visit, but it just hadn't worked out.
The image of Clark dressed in his flannel shirt and blue jeans at the festival came unbidden to her mind.
'Yum'.
She practically jumped. Where had that thought come from?! Since when did she think things like 'yum' about Clark?!
She shrugged inwardly. He *was* nice to look at. She'd finally admitted that to herself not too long before, but 'yum'? Really. What was she? 15? How high school! No, not even high school. Junior high. How very junior high of her!
A quick shake of her head brought her back to the pathetic birthday party. Most people had gotten their piece of cake and wandered back to their day jobs. Clark was looking at the computer screen with Jimmy. Hopefully, he'd have something good before long. She knew she should be up and about looking for the next hot story, but it would be good for Clark to come up with something on his own. She'd do her share of the work before it was all over.
The card! That could be her next little mini-investigation! What had Clark done with it and why had he been so eager that she not see it?
The most obvious place to look would be the trash can, but Clark wouldn't be that galactically stupid would he? That would be the first place she'd…
Galactically stupid?
Where had that phrase come from? She'd never heard it before.
Or had she?
Something was nibbling at the corners of her consciousness and she couldn't quite place it, but she *knew* she'd heard the phrase before and it didn't bring back pleasant memories either.
Well, technically it didn't bring back any memories, but the feelings certainly weren't good ones.
Superman had been there… She concentrated, her brow furrowed, but she couldn't bring back anything else.
Trash can. The first place to look was the trash can.
Nope. Not there. Well, duh. She'd eaten her cake at Clark's desk, but she'd been sitting at her own desk when he'd snatched the card from her.
She walked to her desk and sat down, trying to unobtrusively check her trash. Clark had glanced at her while she walked and she didn't want him to know what she was up to just yet.
She found some miscellaneous trash in her desk and threw it in the can, then muttered to herself about throwing away a phone message – that should work for her cover story right? – and began digging through the recently filled bin. See, not cleaning out that bottom drawer last year *had* come in handy!
Her hand quickly found the pieces of the card at the bottom of the basket. They were obviously of a different material than the paper above.
She glanced at her partner to find he had *that* look again. More movies he forgot to return? Or was it another prescription? For someone who never seemed to be sick, he certainly was on a lot of drugs. Maybe he was depressed or had some other sort of mental disorder. Maybe he had multiple personalities and one kept forgetting to tell the other when the books had to be back at the library.
He said something to Jimmy and tugged at his tie as he headed towards the stairwell. Why didn't he take the elevator? That was weird.
She pulled her hand out of the basket, unworried about discovery now.
There were only four pieces to the card, but when she put them together, the whole puzzle suddenly fell into place.
Clark was Superman.
A sonic boom confirmed her thoughts.
Clark left the building and Superman flew by.
She settled back into her chair and studied the card in front of her. Clark was Superman. No, Superman was Clark. No. "Superman is what I can do, but Clark is who I am."
Where did that come from? And why could she actually hear Clark saying it? Heck, she could even see him saying it. He was standing next to the Jeep telling her… but it wasn't the Jeep.
And why wasn't this more upsetting to her?
It was like she already knew.
But how could she have known? That kind of revelation wasn't something she'd forget!
She saw Jimmy heading her way and instinctively threw the card into her desk. It would have to be destroyed. She was surprised Clark hadn't done a better job, but a bit of super speed tearing probably would have attracted more attention than he wanted.
She bit her bottom lip and tried to pretend to understand what Jimmy was saying, but only managed to get that he was taking lunch orders. She shook her head to indicate that she wasn't hungry. Clark could take her to China later for that Chinese she loved. That *had* to be where he got it from because no one in Metropolis could make Chinese like that.
And if he could take her to China, he could take her to Italy too. The thought of the pasta they'd had a couple weeks earlier made her mouth water.
She mulled over the last two years in her mind, since two men had come into her life. Superman and Clark. Clark and Superman. Now that she realized the truth, everything made so much sense. Superman *had* told Amy that his mom had made the suit for him. Martha was really quite a seamstress. No one was looking at his face, that was for sure. Few people would think that a super hero would also pose as a mild mannered reporter of all things.
A change of clothes. That's what it was.
That's all it was.
Everything good and real about Superman was also in Clark. And everything good in Clark was also in Superman.
But Clark was… real. Superman wasn't. Sure, he looked awfully real when you were sitting on a nuclear bomb and desperately needed someone to do something about it, but reality was *not* a crisis. Reality was taking care of someone day in and day out. Reality was a crying jag into double chocolate chunk ice cream without passing judgement. Reality was a shoulder rub after a long day hunting down a story.
Reality was… Clark.
She looked up as he hurried back in the door, wondering what excuse he would offer up this time and realizing that it didn't matter.
He walked towards her and she pulled the pieces of the card out of her desk and, without looking at him, handed them over.
She smiled slyly to herself as she imagined the look on his face.
"You might want to burn that."
fin
