From part 1:
After that night, he’d been careful not to daydream in her presence. Of course, she kept him - them - so busy that he didn’t have a lot of time to daydream, at least not in the newsroom. He could daydream - and float - all he wanted when he was at home, especially now that he had his own apartment.
But the problem wasn’t that easily solved. No sooner would he think that he finally had his reaction to Lois under control, than she’d do something to upset the whole thing.
And now, part 2:
-----
As they continued to work together, they seemed to be forming a friendship of sorts out of the initial wary… *standoff* was a good way to describe it. *Partnership* wasn’t really a good description at this point.
It was a slow process, requiring a lot of patience on his part. Lois was suspicious of everyone; she was extremely driven, and totally focused on her job.
When she’d stolen his story, he’d confronted her about it. She had brazenly admitted to the crime, telling him, “You got what you deserved.”
“What?” he’d asked, stunned.
“Never, *never* let go of a story,” she had continued. “Trust no one. Period. …Consider this a life lesson. No charge.”
His anger and disbelief - and, no doubt, her refusal to admit what she’d done was wrong - had been keeping them temporarily separated.
So had Perry - he’d had them on separate stories this week.
But Clark had apparently earned Lois’s reluctant respect, when he’d paid her back for stealing his story.
She had acknowledged that he had set her up.
Slightly uncomfortable, he had admitted it.
Instead of blowing up, she had calmly told him, “You got the story, *and* you took me down a peg in the process. I guess I deserved that.”
On that statement, she’d left the newsroom to get cleaned up and changed.
They hadn’t really talked to each other much since then, both having stories to finish before deadline. Now, he finished his last read-over on a short Superman piece and sent it to Perry. Leaning back in his chair, he looked over at Lois, who had apparently just finished sending her own story.
She was gathering up some files. “Hey, Lois,” he asked, “what have we got on for tomorrow?”
She looked over at him, one eyebrow raised, and answered, “You're using that word again, Clark. There is 'you’, there is ‘I’, there is no 'we’.”
“Not yet,” he said with a grin.
“Not ever,” she replied haughtily, standing up, files tucked under her arm.
“We’ll see,” he told her, unable to stop the grin from becoming a full-fledged smile.
She huffed at him, tossing over her shoulder, “How long can you hold your breath?
But he could see that she, too, was fighting a smile as she crossed the newsroom and stacked the files on the cart for return to the morgue.
At least she was talking to him again. He could be very patient - and he could hold his breath for a long, long time.
< Help, Superman! >
He rose to his feet, making a show of glancing at his watch, and walked as casually as he could up the ramp.
“Back in a bit,” he said as he passed Jimmy, who merely nodded distractedly, his attention fixed on his own errand.
Clark stepped into the stairwell and, with a burst of speed, headed for the roof.
---
‘Back in a bit’ turned into ‘back in quite a few hours’.
Clark was currently sitting at his desk at the Planet. Lois sat at her own desk, head bent over some files. It was quite late, and the newsroom was deserted, except for the two of them. Lois was finishing some research for one of the stories Perry had assigned her, and Clark was just sitting, staring into space.
He hadn’t been floating - much - these last few days. On the few occasions they *were* together, he was too focused on events outside the newsroom to be impacted much by Lois’s presence. For one thing, his creation of Superman was causing a worldwide furor. And he was also trying to cope with Lex Luthor’s ‘tests’.
Luthor was callously putting scores of people at risk for the sake of testing Superman’s powers. Creating Superman had put those people in danger by drawing Luthor’s attention. While the emergencies themselves were manufactured, the danger to Luthor’s victims was real.
And this was in addition to the usual sort of things Superman dealt with. The call for help he’d heard had been another setup; a bomb had exploded just as he had entered what turned out to be, thankfully, a mostly empty office building. He had rescued the few people caught on the upper floors as firemen contained the resultant fire, and had seen the remains of what was obviously monitoring equipment.
As he was finishing up with police on the scene, he had picked up a report of another emergency on a radio newscast.
He had just returned about half an hour ago from that scene, an extremely serious multiple car crash. It had been raining steadily over much of the east coast for most of the day, and a sudden fog had descended on a major highway in upstate New York during the tail end of rush hour. The loss of visibility had led to a domino effect, and as many as fifty cars had been involved.
He hadn’t heard about the accident soon enough. As soon as he *had* heard about it, he’d headed up there, but there had already been a lot of injuries and death. All he could do was help the rescue personnel free those who were trapped, and transport the most severely injured people to hospitals.
He was having a crisis of faith. He couldn’t be in two places at once. All those people, and he couldn’t help them. What good was Superman if he couldn’t save them all?
The silent newsroom monitors were showing the aftermath of the crash, with Superman moving among the people and cars. Clark noticed that Lois had stopped working and was watching the news footage.
“Those poor people,” she commented. “It’s a good thing Superman was there to help.”
“To help?” Clark echoed. “What help? All those people who were hurt… all those people who died - he couldn’t help them! What good is he?”
She didn’t turn around. “What he can’t do… it doesn’t matter. It’s the *idea* of Superman,” she said, gazing at the monitors.
She glanced at him, then returned her gaze to the monitors. Superman was freeing an elderly couple - clearly frightened, and probably seriously hurt - from the wreckage of their car.
She gestured at the screen. “Don’t you see, Clark?” she asked, “It’s someone to believe in… Whatever he *can* do, it’s enough.”
He followed Lois’s gaze back to the monitors.
Superman had just peeled back the roof of the car and was preparing to remove the elderly woman. She reached up and took Superman’s hand, and held it.
He remembered that - the couple had been pinned in place, but had been holding hands while he worked to free them from the crushed car. The woman, white and shaken, and in pain, had taken his hand. “God bless you, Superman,” she’d said, and her husband had echoed her. She had held Superman’s hand until he’d placed her on one of the gurneys the ambulance crew had ready and waiting, and when he placed her husband on a gurney next to her, both of them thanked him.
“You see those two people?” Lois continued. “They probably thought they would die there, in that car. Yes, lots of people were hurt, and lots of people were killed. But a lot more might have died before they could be helped. Superman kept that crash from being any worse. He was there, and he was providing hope, and all of those people needed hope as much as they needed help.”
Clark stared at Lois, deeply touched. Her pep talk, unconsciously being delivered straight to the superhero himself, was affecting him profoundly - and incidentally, doing a lot to restore his confidence.
“He can’t help everyone, Clark,” Lois said. “Even for a super man, it’s impossible. But he helps anyone he can, and that knowledge - that he exists, all the things he *can* do - that provides hope, and that’s enough.”
She rose to her feet, which recalled him to the present and the fact that once again, he’d floated several inches off his chair. He thumped back down onto his seat just before she looked up from where she’d been fishing her purse out of her desk drawer.
He continued to sit at his desk as he watched her cross the newsroom to the elevator. Lois had no idea that she was responsible not only for the creation of Superman, but also for his newly formed determination to stay.
-----
Clark’s retaliation and her response to it marked a turning point in their relationship. While still adversarial, Lois treated him with a grudging respect, and seemed to thrive on their back-and-forth banter.
She had taken to touching him - nothing inappropriate, of course, and he doubted she was even aware of it. But she would tap his arm, or pat his shoulder as he sat at his desk and she read over his shoulder, or swat him on the chest as she made a point.
His dearest dream was to get closer to her, so he reveled in this indication of her acceptance and ease in his presence.
He loved it.
He loved *her*.
But the first time she tapped his arm, and the first time she patted his shoulder, he left the ground - a quarter of an inch at the most, but he was airborne nonetheless.
And the first time she swatted him in the chest - that was another four-incher. He was incredibly lucky she’d swatted backwards over her shoulder at him as they were entering the elevator. If she’d been facing him, his secret would have been toast.
He had been learning to control at least *some* of his reactions to her, though.
Slowly.
Or at least hide them. He probably appeared very clumsy to Lois, with his shifting and stumbling and staggering… or maybe he just appeared crazy.
And really, he could only stagger backwards - as if she’d caught him unaware - once or twice at the most. He could only appear to stumble, or shift around in his chair, a couple of times before she was bound to start wondering what on earth was the matter with him.
She already thought he was strange - she’d told him so. “You’re a strange one, Clark Kent… But I think I’ve got you figured out.”
That little exchange had nearly given him heart failure for an instant, until he realized that his secret remained undiscovered.
It was so much easier when he was around her as Superman.
Then, he could float to his heart’s content.
When he’d rescued the space station transport from the bomb, true to form, he’d found himself floating when he encountered Lois. He’d been able to ignore that, though, since he’d been in the suit. In fact, it may have even been a benefit because the floating probably helped keep people - Lois - focused, as his mother had said, on anything but his face.
It was so much easier when he was in the suit.
And so much harder.
He found himself in the unique position of being incredibly jealous of - himself. While her affection for Clark as her friend seemed to be growing slowly and steadily, Lois’s utter awe of his Super persona completely overshadowed any awareness of him - Clark - as a man.
It defied the laws of geometry. He was in a love triangle with only two people. Three angles, but only two sides.
Once he began to get used to Lois’s casual touches, he was better able to control his tendency to float - at least in those particular situations.
He was learning that the most danger lay either in his feeling a particularly intense emotion - love, or desire - in her presence, or in his complete surprise at something she did.
If he kept himself focused on their friendship and pushed his love into the back of his mind, he could even keep himself from floating when he rested his hand on her shoulder, or gave her a casual half-hug as they walked along together. And as he became accustomed to her casual touches, to her tendency to grab his hand - or tie - and tug him along after her, he was finding that, while he was certainly… stepping a bit lighter around her, it didn’t seem to show.
-----
Then just as he was once again starting to feel cautiously optimistic in his ability to stay grounded, so to speak, around Lois Lane, everything changed again.
Not content with terrorizing the entire newsroom staff, that madman Trask had kidnapped the two of them and resorted to complete insanity in his quest to find and destroy Superman.
He’d planned to throw them both out of that plane.
Clark had not been completely despairing; he knew that he had a better chance of saving Lois and still protecting his secret if Trask did, indeed, throw them out of the plane. Clark could change into his suit in an instant, and catch Lois before she came anywhere near the ground.
He had been more worried that something would happen inside the plane, where his having to do something super was almost guaranteed to give away his secret. He wouldn’t have hesitated to reveal himself if it was the only way in which to save Lois, but he had hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Then Lois made that last request.
She wanted to kiss him goodbye.
She. Wanted. To kiss. *Kiss*. Him.
He knew she’d had an ulterior motive; he knew it was a ploy to get close enough to whisper some desperate plan to him.
But a *kiss* - from *Lois* -
Even surrounded by dangerous men and fearing for her safety, he’d found himself starting to float. The soldier standing behind him must have interpreted his movement as an attempt to rise to his feet, and Clark found himself being pushed forcefully back down into the seat.
Then Lois had stood - Trask’s goons watching her almost nonchalantly, but with their weapons ready in their hands - and had bent down and kissed him.
Clark’s mind had gone completely blank for a moment, and he could probably have beaten his four-inch record. He’d probably have tripled his previous score, at a minimum - that had been a powerful kiss. Worth at least twelve inches.
But even as he’d felt himself rising, Lois had been whispering her plan.
“Take the one on the right,” she’d said, and finding a focus in the sound of her voice, he’d used his involuntary upward motion to surge to his feet, turn, and pin the soldier holding him against the plane’s wall.
Trask had wrestled Lois out the plane’s door at that point, and Clark had followed her in a desperate dive, the sound of a gunshot and Trask’s laughter ringing in his ears.
After Superman caught Lois and returned her safely to solid ground, then disarmed the missile, Clark had returned to the planet to be greeted by his jubilant partner, who threw herself into his arms.
He’d left the floor instantly, and had had to force himself downward quickly. He had swung her up into a lifted hug as he came down, and landed hard, hoping it felt to her as if he’d jumped upward with her. Her comment – “Hey everybody, if Clark’s alive, that means Superman saved him and *he’s* alive!” - had finished bringing Clark down to earth.
But he’d had to force the memory of that kiss to the back of his mind for the rest of the day, at least until he was safely behind his apartment door.
The reality of the deserted, empty warehouse had helped keep him focused, of course, but he’d still found it a relief when he could escape the newsroom for the night. Returning to the Planet as Superman, he’d given in to the Lois-induced floating, and had hovered six inches or so off the floor during their entire conversation.
-----
The first few days after the Trask incident were fairly quiet, at least from a Lois-equals-floating point of view.
They both spent the following day independently writing followup stories on the Bureau 39 incident, so there wasn’t much contact between them. And Superman was busy with a spate of weather-related accidents on the Northeast coast on the following day, so Clark wasn’t in the newsroom for a large part the day.
He’d also been pretty distracted and dismayed by the ballooning Superman hype, fueled in part by his - Superman’s - being awarded the key to the city.
And he’d been totally blindsided by the celebrity auction last night. He’d had no idea he’d have women *bidding money* for a date with him. He’d had the vague idea that he would be officiating, maybe as an auctioneer, at a more… *conventional* auction. The whole thing was a nightmare; he’d even *had* a nightmare about it.
He’d woken up this morning in a sea of tiny feathers - floating above them, actually, but covered in them too. He must have squeezed or pounded his pillow in his sleep, and it had apparently burst in a shower of feathers. There was a man-shaped area empty of feathers beneath him on the bed, and a fine film of feathers on his body. The empty pillow shell lay on the floor, like a popped balloon.
Fragments of the dream echoed through his mind as he floated to the floor, dusting feathers off himself, and went to get the vacuum. He - Clark - had been at a banquet with Lois, when suddenly he’d been surrounded by leering women reaching out to touch him, grabbing at his clothing, which had suddenly turned into Superman’s suit. Then he was wading through a waist-deep sea of money, with some woman - not Lois - hanging onto his arm, and Lois was calling to him. Turning to look, he saw she was sinking into the money, and the faster he tried to reach her, the faster she sank into the sea of green paper. He’d thrown himself forward and grabbed at her, but she turned into a bag of money as he threw his arms around her.
That must have been when he burst his pillow.
Sighing, Clark cleaned up the feathers and threw the empty pillowcase into the trash. Between the Superman-related distractions and independent story assignments, he hadn’t spent much time with Lois over the last few days. That had probably contributed to the nightmare. He hoped Perry would assign them to a story together today; he needed the contact with Lois.
He arrived at the Planet just before Lois and, seeing her step off the elevator, he went to pour her a cup of coffee, grabbing one of the chocolate donuts for her while he was at it. He met her at the door to the conference room and handed them to her as they entered together.
“Thanks, Clark,” she said, rather shortly. The room was still fairly empty, as staff members were still arriving and collecting their own coffee and donuts before the meeting started. Clark held out a chair for Lois and she sank into it, already sipping at the coffee.
Clark knew she functioned better once she’d had additional caffeine in the mornings, so he had taken to bringing her a cup of coffee most mornings. He would cool it just slightly for her, which was easy to do even in a crowded conference room. Everyone blew on their coffee to cool it, and no one could see that his breath was… a bit more effective at cooling than anyone else’s.
“Mmmmm…” Lois sighed, beginning to perk up. “Thank you, Clark. I know it’s just newsroom coffee, but it always seems to taste better when you fix it for me.”
Clark flashed her a big smile. “You’re welcome, Lois,” he answered. They continued to drink their coffee as the room began to slowly fill up with staffers.
The meeting went quickly this morning; Perry had a conference upstairs with ‘the suits’, as he called them, for the monthly advertising budget planning.
After a quick recap of the ongoing stories his reporters were working on, he dismissed them all with his usual gruff, “Get to work, people!” and headed out the door himself.
Lois and Clark remained sitting, waiting for the room to clear out a bit first. Clark pushed back his chair, preparing to rise, as Cat Grant passed them on her way to the door.
Without warning or comment, she suddenly dropped into Clark’s lap, and before he could utter a word, she kissed him squarely on the mouth. He pulled back in surprise even as she was rising to her feet.
“Good morning, handsome,” she purred, and ran a scarlet-tipped finger down his cheek. She flashed a sassy smile at Lois, then turned and sashayed out of the conference room.
Lois glowered at him.
“Lois, I -,” he started, but she cut him off.
“Skip it, Clark,” she snapped scathingly, “I don’t want to hear it. *Some* of us have work to do.”
Ignoring his attempts to explain that he had been blindsided by Cat’s actions, Lois stalked out of the room. He suspected she would be rather distant with him for the rest of the morning.
With a sigh, he returned to his desk and sat down. Embarrassment, he had just discovered, no matter how intense, was another emotion that did not cause him to float.
---
tbc
