Lois circled the block, looking for a parking space near Clark’s hotel room. Her heart raced in her chest as she thought of the night before and anticipated another day with him. Last night with him had left her flustered and unexpectedly emotional.
She had been looking forward to dinner with him at Dinello’s — a chance to finally check out Allie’s new restaurant with someone who would appreciate the ambiance as much as she did. And she would be lying if she didn’t admit she got a kick out of showing him up a bit when it comes to sports trivia.
Sports was something they hadn’t discussed at length before last night. It had come up occasionally in conversations about his job and their high school experiences. But she had always gotten the impression that he never dwelled on the topic too long because he didn’t want to bore her. It didn’t take her long last night to disabuse him of that notion. And for the first time, they’d had a long, sustained conversation about it.
Over the years, she had found that most men were attracted at first to her knowledge of sports and her enjoyment of them. They usually tested her not-so-subtly — sure her knowledge only scratched the surface; a party trick used to attract men. But when it quickly became apparent that she understood the ins and outs of most games and the history of local pro teams better than the average fan, she quickly became “not like other girls”.
But that lasted only until she challenged them. She always did. And she was always right. And those same men who had once found it so alluring when she rattled off batting averages or third down conversion stats suddenly thought she was showing off when she corrected their assertions.
Somehow she didn’t worry about that with Clark, though. He had been both thrilled by her knowledge and self-deprecating about his assumption that it was a topic that didn’t interest her. They had talked for hours, reminiscing about great sport plays they’d been a part of or had witnessed. But her favorite part of the conversation was when he talked to her about his football team, opening up about his players, and their strengths and weaknesses, as well as his plans for the upcoming season, and his strategy to take them back to State.
Later, when they had walked to Met Tower, and looked out over the city together, sports had been the last thing on her mind.
She had planned the visit ahead of time, assuming he would appreciate the view. But she hadn’t anticipated discussing Luthor with him.
She had maintained for years that her solitary dinner with Luthor had been nothing more than an interview, and last night had been the first time she had confessed that she had known at the time that it wasn’t; that she had been willing to exploit her femininity, and Luthor’s obvious desire for her, to position herself to glean information about him. The date had gone nowhere, for either of them, and she had never accepted another of his invitations. But still, she had felt compelled last night to be open with Clark about that night in a way she had never been before.
And then, without warning or planning, she had found them discussing the melancholy, complicated emotions surrounding personal responsibility to the greater good. That sense of being set apart from the world, and the bittersweet relief of anonymity and taking a break from trying to save the world from itself. And again she was opening up to him in a way she never did with anyone else.
She found a parking spot on her second trip around the block, and parked her Jeep at the curb outside Clark’s hotel. She climbed out of her seat, trying to stifle her nerves as she walked down the sidewalk toward the front entrance and then into the lobby.
Over the past two months, they’d fallen into a routine of daily emails and weekly phone calls. And though there were moments that reminded her of the chemistry that had so clearly been between them when they first met, most of the time she thought of him primarily as a friend.
She loved debating literature with him or listening as he waxed philosophical. She laughed at the stories of his family and his students, and smiled as she pictured him working the fields of his home. And she shared her own stories with him with a comfort that was foreign to her.
She loved making him laugh as she described her coworkers or bouncing ideas off him as she vented about her investigations. He was a wonderful listener, always attentive but never pushing, when she shared stories from her childhood that she had never shared with anyone, and had honestly not usually even thought about in a decade.
When she was preparing for his visit, she had wondered if being with him in person would be different. If the intimacy that had allowed them that connection was based on distance. But it was clear now that being together in person only multiplied that feeling of intimacy; of trust.
He understood her in a way that no one else did, which made no sense given how different their lives were. And standing on that roof, with his body only inches from hers, his hand resting intimately on her hip, she had wanted him so badly.
When the breeze had ruffled her hair, tickling against her neck, she had shivered not from the cold, but from the electric charge between them; her desperate desire to feel his lips against that same spot on her neck.
He had misinterpreted her trembling as a chill, and had moved closer, and her head had swum with the smell of him, the nearness of him. In retrospect, she should have stepped away, should have put space between them. But in the moment, she was capable only of laying her head against his chest and allowing him to offer her warmth, his large, strong hands so gentle against her back and arms.
They had stayed like that far longer than necessary, and as they had made their way back to her Jeep at the end of the night, his hand had lingered on the small of her back in the way that always made her pulse race.
Later, at home in her bed, she had laid awake unable to sleep as images of his eyes, his grin, the broad expanse of his shoulders under the sedate pinstripes of his shirt danced behind her eyelids. She felt the ghost of his touch against her cheek and longed for him to kiss her again, like he had when they had both thought they were saying a final goodbye.
And she had lectured herself as she laid there, reminding herself of all the reasons why this relationship needed to stay platonic. The same reasons she had once thought she needed to let him leave without her phone number still applied – the distance between them still insurmountable. But now also because his friendship had become so unexpectedly precious to her. He was rapidly becoming her best friend, something she had never had before meeting him. And she wasn’t willing to sacrifice that friendship for a fling, when she knew they had only a few days together and then they had to go back to emails and phone calls.
Today she was taking him into the newsroom to give him a tour, and then they would go check out the new traveling exhibit at the Metropolis Museum of Natural History. And she resolved yet again this morning to set aside any attraction she felt for him and just focus on enjoying the time they had together during his visit – a visit from a platonic friend.
She had reached his hotel room door by this time, and she knocked quickly, her resolve strengthened.
The door was flung open almost immediately, and her jaw dropped as he stood before her, naked except for a hotel-issue towel wrapped low around his hips. His chest glistened, rivulets of water sliding down the sharp edges of muscles before disappearing beneath the terrycloth of the towel.
She had known that his dress shirts hid a well-muscled physique. It was clear even fully dressed that years of manual labor on the farm and strength training with his team had endowed him with broad shoulders and solid ropes of muscle. When he rolled up his sleeves, as he was apt to do, her eyes were drawn to the sleek muscles of his forearms, bunching and flexing as he talked with his hands.
But none of that prepared her for this. She had laid her head on his chest, had rested her hands on his arms, but she had never imagined just how…well defined he was.
She was staring, she realized with a start. She tried to drag her eyes from his abs to his face, but her gaze was caught along the way, tripping over the swell of his pectorals and then sliding along his shoulders to his arms.
She opened her mouth to say something, anything, but nothing came out. Finally, she yanked her gaze from his body to his face, to that unbearably gorgeous grin. “I…I said nine,” she said. “I thought you’d be naked. Ummm, ready. I thought you’d be ready!”
“Sorry,” he said with a grin and a shrug. “My alarm didn’t go off. I’ll be ready in just a minute.”
He stepped back, holding the door open for her, and she stepped through, still at a loss for words. He let go of the door and stepped quickly across the room and into the bathroom, the door closing behind him.
She took a shaky breath, and then laughed silently, covering her face with one hand. So much for shoving aside her attraction to him.
*****
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, revealing the newsroom buzzing with energy. A quick glance around told her the morning meeting was still in session, leaving a number of desks empty.
She led Clark down the ramp and gestured vaguely with one hand. “This is the bullpen. It’s where all the reporters work. The morning meeting is in progress right now, so you can see the conference room is full.”
She waved a hand toward the conference room, and he nodded, eyes scanning the bullpen. She took advantage of the relative quiet, taking him around the office and pointing out the various desks and departments, walking him through the editing process.
“My desk is over here,” she said finally, leading him toward her desk. He followed her, nodding as she pointed out various coworkers’ desks along the way. Her brow furrowed as she approached her desk. She knew she had left it clear, but a manilla file folder sat in the middle of the otherwise empty surface.
She reached for the folder immediately and flipped it open, eyes scanning the contents. It took her a minute to figure out what she was looking at, but once she did, a grin spread across her face. Jimmy had finally been able to hack into the financial files at the Metro Club. She skimmed quickly, past boring expenditures like staff salaries and overhead, then tapped an unfamiliar name: Beece, Inc. It appeared over and over, monthly payments.
She realized suddenly that Clark was standing beside her, waiting quietly.
“Sorry,” she said, giving him an apologetic grin. “Give me a second to look this over? Jimmy’s been promising me this for weeks. He must have finally had a breakthrough last night.”
“Of course,” he said with a smile, and she felt a surge of affection for him. She sat at her desk and gestured to her guest chair. He sat in the chair beside her desk, casually surveying the room while he waited.
She returned her attention to the stack of papers in her hand, but she couldn’t help sneaking a peek at him out of the corner of her eye. He was dressed in tan slacks and a dark green polo with the Midwest U. logo on the breast. It fit him perfectly, disguising the muscles she had glimpsed this morning. His hair had dried in soft waves, and for just the briefest moment, she imagined what it would feel like to thread her fingers through those locks.
She shook herself and forced her attention back to the documents. Under the financials was a preliminary workup on Beece, Inc., and Lois made a mental note to tell Jimmy she owed him one. The information was sketchy at best, but she skimmed through the public record of ownership and board members. Something about the names sounded familiar, but she would need time to compare the list against what she had so far, and she wasn’t going to spend her weekend elbows deep in boring research. It could wait until Clark had left town.
She opened her desk drawer and slid the file inside.
“Anything important?” Clark asked.
She shook her head. “It’s helpful, but I need to sit and dig through it. Nothing’s jumping out right away. It’s good progress though.”
Before he could ask any follow up questions, the conference room door sprung open, and reporters poured out. She glanced over at Cat’s desk and realized she must not be in for the day yet, which made sense given that it was a Friday. She’d probably be out late that night, working some society function, and wouldn’t roll into the newsroom for a few hours.
She was surprised to feel a pang of disappointment that she wouldn’t get to introduce her to Clark. Although a large part of her wanted to keep Clark away from Cat’s claws, some small part of her wanted to see the other woman’s surprise when Lois introduced Clark as the friend who she frequently emailed from the office. Although Cat purported not to care about Lois’ boring personal life, Lois knew the reality was that she was beyond curious about her “secret not-boyfriend”. She frequently speculated about the mystery man, jokingly listing all the things that could be wrong with him to leave him interested in Lois.
“Come on,” she said, standing. “I’ll introduce you to Perry.”
He stood and followed her through the bullpen to Perry's office, where she pushed the slightly-ajar door open and entered without knocking or waiting to be summoned.
“Chief?”
He was standing beside his desk, shuffling a thick stack of papers. He looked up, gestured needlessly for her to come in. “Lois,” he said. “I thought you were taking the day off. Don’t tell me you’ve already changed your mind.”
She laughed and shook her head. “I was just stopping in for a bit. I want to introduce you to someone. Perry White, Clark Kent. Clark’s the friend I told you about from the conference.”
Clark stepped forward and shook Perry’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you, sir. I’m a fan of your work. A college professor of mine used to be a colleague of yours and spoke highly of you.”
“Oh?” he asked. “Who was your professor?”
“Eric Carlson? At Midwest University.”
“Ah, yes!” Perry said with a smile. “Carlson. We had some good times when we were just starting out together.”
Clark nodded, but before he could say anything more, a young man stuck his head in the doorway. “Uh, Chief? You decided on those photos yet? The guys in layout are asking for them.”
“Hell’s bells,” Perry muttered, shifting a bunch of stacks on his desk until he found the pile he wanted. He rifled through, choosing two of the photos and tossing them at the boy who cringed, and then caught the photos and took off with them.
Perry muttered something about departments that think they’re his only priority, then jabbed two fingers into his neck to check his heart rate.
“How’s that blood pressure monitoring going?” Lois asked, unable to keep the amusement from her voice. Perry’s doctor had apparently instructed him at his annual physical last week to start monitoring his blood pressure, but so far it only seemed to be increasing his stress.
“Blood pressure nonsense,” he muttered.
“Paava leaves,” Clark said, surprising both Lois and Perry. They turned to look at him, and he shifted nervously. “The Yolngu tribe of New Guinea eat paava leaves to reduce stress – puts them in a meditative state. Maybe you should try it.”
“Paava leaves,” Perry muttered, giving up on trying to measure his heart rate and dropping his hand from his neck. “Sounds like you’ve done some traveling.”
“A bit,” Clark agreed. “But this is my first time in Metropolis.”
“Well, I’m sure Lois will be an excellent tour guide, assuming you were hoping to spend your trip seeing the inside of police stations and meeting anonymous sources in Suicide Slum.”
“Haha,” Lois said sarcastically. “I’ll have you know we had dinner at Dinello’s last night, and we’re on our way to the Museum of Natural History.”
“Well, la-di-dah,” Perry said with a false air of snobbery. “Look who suddenly has some class. Don’t let her fool you, Kent. This one is as scrappy as they come.”
Lois rolled her eyes at him. “Is Jimmy around? I want to thank him for the research he left on my desk.”
“He’s photographing the ribbon cutting for the new library on the Southside. What research?”
“Metro Club financials. I’m still trying to figure out who’s in charge over there and if they have the Toaster’s weapons.”
Perry raised an eyebrow. “I thought I told you to shelve that. No fires for a few weeks.”
Lois shrugged. “I don’t think they’re done. I just have a feeling.”
Perry looked to Clark and shook his head, “I don’t know why I bother giving her assignments. If she wasn’t the best damn-”
“Yeah, yeah,” Lois interrupted dismissively, an idea forming slowly. She looked Clark up and down, and then grinned at him. “Want to go out for drinks after dinner tonight? I know this great little club…”
Perry laughed and slapped Clark on the back. “Good luck, son.”
They talked for a few more minutes, and then Lois and Clark headed out. They chatted amicably about the exhibit they were going to see, a traveling display of artifacts from the Amazon River Valley, as they rode the elevator back down.
“You said you spent some time in the region, right?” Lois asked.
Clark nodded. “It was one of the first places I visited after I graduated from college. I wasn’t there terribly long. Just three or four months, but it was fascinating. I have to admit, I had no idea how big the river was before I went. I knew it was the largest river in the world, but I was still thinking…river. Like the Missouri or the Mississippi. But the Amazon is so wide there are islands in it as big as countries.”
“Wait, what?” Lois said, caught off guard.
Clark nodded. “The island of Marajo is bigger than Belgium or Switzerland, not to mention tons of island countries like Jamaica.”
“I had no idea,” Lois said, as they exited the elevator and walked through the lobby.
“During the dry season, the river averages two to six miles across, but during the wet season – which is when I was there – some parts are up to thirty miles across.”
“Thirty MILES?!”
He laughed, and she narrowed her eyes at him. He lifted his hands in surrender. “I’m not laughing at you, I swear. I’m laughing because I was just as surprised. Who thinks of a river being thirty miles across?”
They had exited the building now, and were waiting at the corner to cross the street. Lois had parked the Jeep up a block, unable to find parking right outside the building and not wanting to deal with the employee parking deck for a short visit.
She glanced at the light and then back down, rummaging in her purse for her keys.
“I think in addition to the artifacts, there are displays about the wildlife,” he said. “I hope they have photos of the pink river dolphins. There was this pod-”
He stopped abruptly, interrupted by the sound of screeching tires and screams, and Lois’ head whipped up, keys dangling forgotten in her hand. She glanced automatically to her right, and was surprised to find Clark missing.
Movement in the street caught her attention, and she looked over just in time to see Clark yank a baby stroller backwards, out of the path of an oncoming cab. Beside him, a woman in her thirties stood frozen. The cab blew through the crosswalk, swerving wildly, and Lois could see a trail of cars and trucks scattered in its wake. The taxi driver, apparently startled to attention by the commotion, corrected his course and drove off.
“Did you see that?” a woman to Lois’ left asked, not talking to anyone in particular. “He just… That stroller… Oh my god, that baby almost….”
Clark was backing away from the stroller now. The shocked woman, who Lois assumed was the baby’s mother, spurred into motion suddenly, leaned in and pulled the unharmed baby from the seat, clutching it to her chest.
Clark looked around quickly, and jogged back to her side.
“What just happened?” she said. “One second you were standing next to me talking about river dolphins, and the next you’re…”
She trailed off, unsure how to even describe what she had just seen. Had he really just saved a baby from certain death?
Clark shrugged, looking distinctly uncomfortable. “It was nothing. I just saw the cab coming and that woman froze….”
“So you ran out into the street and yanked the baby out of the path of the oncoming car, saving its life?” Lois was incredulous.
Clark shook his head. “No. I mean…I guess. I don’t know? I just reacted. The woman wasn’t moving. Someone had to grab the stroller. I just did what anyone would do. I just happened to get there first.”
Lois looked at him dubiously. She waved a hand around vaguely. “There are a hundred people in this intersection. None of them grabbed that stroller.”
The light changed, and the crowd around them began to cross the street, the commotion already fading back to normalcy. Together they stepped off the curb, falling in with the crowd.
Lois looked at Clark expectantly, waiting for some sort of explanation, though she wasn’t sure what he could possibly say to explain what she had just seen. Clark shifted uncomfortably, his eyes darting away from here, and she realized he was uncomfortable with the attention. Not only was he performing heroics, he wanted no praise or accolades.
This man never ceased to amaze her. Last night, he had charmed her with conversation, touching her with his quiet introspection. This morning, he had answered the door in nothing but a towel, leaving her agog at his physical perfection. And now he was literally snatching babies from the jaws of death. There was no way he was real. She must have hallucinated him.
“I just…wanted to help,” he said finally, shrugging awkwardly, as they stepped back onto the sidewalk.
She laughed, and shook her head, overwhelmed by emotions she wasn’t even sure she could name. She reached over, slipping her hand into the crook of his arm. “You really are something, Clark Kent.”
