Wow, I can't believe how nervous I am right now! I've been a FOLC and avid fanfic reader since the orignial episodes aired, but have never dared to actually write my own story before. It's taken quite some time, but I've put together a product that I'm proud of. I hope you enjoy it too.
The story is complete with six parts, and I will post each part every three days. I hope some of you will provide me with constructive criticism, and I look forward to your feedback.
I have lost all sense of continuity over the years, so forgive me for placing scenes and quotes where they fit for my story. Copyrights belong to their respective owners. Don't bother suing me for borrowing your creation – I'm a teacher, so you know I don't have any money.
I dedicate this story to every fanfic writer who has gone before me. For years, I have happily devoured your work. Please keep writing so that I don't have to write my own – this was hard work!
CHEESE OF THE MONTH
By Susan Young (groobie@charter.net)
PART 1
Lois Lane was angry.
You know that feeling you get as you walk past a co-worker that you don't like, and each of you nod your heads, then continue on your way without a word exchanged? Lois was past that.
That feeling where you want to take off from work and head to the gym for an hour to burn off your frustration? Well, no one except those actresses from the Bally's Gym commercials really feel like that, but still, Lois was past that.
You know how Shakespeare wrote that revenge is a dish best served cold? Lois had passed that hours ago.
Forty days and nights of pouring rain? Yes, that was closer. Anger of biblical proportions.
Her emotions had broken through her like a tidal wave, a mere ripple in the ocean last night that was threatening the city this morning. Like the others before it, Lois' date with Clark was perfect. They had talked their way through pasta in the dim corner of a little Italian restaurant as she melted in his chocolate brown eyes. The atmosphere was right, the partner was right, and for the first time in so long, her heart felt right. Sure, it wasn't straining to burst from her chest the way it had when she had first laid eyes on Superman, but she now realized that was a stupid schoolgirl fantasy. What her heart felt now was so much more. It was a steady glow, warm and content, as if she had been in love with Clark all her life.
'Yes,' she admitted to herself, 'I love Clark Kent.'
She didn't know when it happened, and she couldn't tell herself why it had. She had resisted his charms for so long. In fact, she had resisted admitting he had charms long before she resisted the charms themselves. But over time, Clark had taken his place by her side as her partner, best friend, and now, perhaps, something more.
'Well, not now,' her anger swelled within her. She could not understand how her heart continued to love him, how her body continued to ache for him, how her emotions longed to be soothed by him, because her mind was playing like a record continuously skipping over the same track. Again, her thoughts came back to last night's date. Clark's left hand caressing hers on the table as his right skillfully brought the most delicious chocolate gelato to her lips. Her contented sigh leaving her breathless as her eyelids closed, basking in the perfection. The look of terror on Clark's face when she opened them again. And the words that plunged into her like a knife.
"Lois, I'm so sorry. I hate to leave you like this. But I have to go, ummm, pick up my Cheese of the Month shipment."
Hot tears threatened at the memory of those same tears spilling down her face last night. He hadn't seen them; he had run out of the room far too quickly, pulling on his tie as if he needed air. 'If he feels as breathless as I do when we're together, why does he run away?' Lois passed on that thought, preferring to offer him fury, her long-time defense mechanism friend. He had done this to her before. Video tape returns, library books due, overlooked dentist appointments – the excuses lined up like the end credits of a film, speeding past the screen while being ignored by the departing moviegoers. Come to think of it, Clark had been doing this for their entire relationship. Lois let her mind take the lead again, and listened to it as it reviewed the hundreds of times that Clark had offered her a lame excuse, a quick goodbye, a sudden disappearance. But by far, this was the cheesy excuse yet, pun intended.
Why hadn't she questioned those excuses in the past? Why had she barely given his absences a passing thought? 'Why haven't I cared before?' Lois thought, as the answer came far too quickly for her peace of mind. 'Because I wasn't this deeply in love with him before.' Stabbed in the back with the knife of love. Wasn't Cupid supposed to carry an arrow?
Lois shifted on her uncomfortable couch, gingerly balanced on the edge of love and hate. The wellspring of anger that had accompanied her since her march home last night dared to run dry, and she desperately wanted to cling to it, fearing it was all she had left. Without it, she imagined that she'd break down, wailing to her absent partner as Scarlett did to Rhett, "What shall I do?" And suddenly, an epiphany gripped her as her Clark-voiced conscience screamed.
"You're an investigative reporter, Lois. Investigate!"
When had she become a doormat? How long had she been this blind, lovesick, pathetic female willing to swallow her boyfriend's lies? How cliché was that? When had she stopped using her brain? Where had Mad Dog Lane gone? Wow, how long had it been since she heard anyone call her that?
Lois could swear she heard howling in the distance as the tears stopped threatening, the anger subsided, and determination coursed through her veins. She would no longer accept his lies. She would no longer wait for him to explain. She would find out Clark Kent's secret for herself.
'Of course,' an evil grin made its way across her face, 'it would only be fair for me to warn him first.'
-&-
Clark smelled the rank contents of the box outside his front door before he opened it. The cardboard package had no postage; he guessed that the boy scurrying down the street must have dropped it off. Apprehension began to build, and Clark read the neatly typed label where a return address should be: "Cheese of the Month Club." His thumb ran down the seam of tape, and Clark unfolded the flaps to reveal what his nose already knew was contained inside - a pound of Camembert. But the note attached, meticulously
printed in handwriting that was all too familiar, ratcheted up his apprehension to outright fear.
"Something stinks."
