Hi Author!
Disclaimer: there’s guesses all throughout. If you haven’t guessed yourself yet, beware!
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Clark asked, honestly looking baffled at everything assembled.
Bring the fire extinguisher. And perhaps an oil fire blanket?
(I did not read ahead! I swear!)
Did he think she couldn’t do this? Granted, if he believed Jimmy, it was understandable that he would be uneasy about letting her cook them dinner.
JIMMY: That time I let her stay with me while Griffin was gunning for her? She offered to make dinner for me and my friends. Emergency room. All of them. And we didn’t even get to try Johnny’s karaoke machine.
He was likely worrying about how dinner would taste or if indigestion would follow.
CLARK: I have seen kitchen fires take down half an apartment building before…
“You sound hesitant. Do you think I can’t cook?” she asked, trying to sound light but really wanting to know as she got the cutting board out.
She did mention that she can only make pasta salad and three kinds of chocolate things.
And I guess I’m . . . just a little . . . confused?”
/squints/ hmm… /goes hunting/ those ellipses, they look like BlueOwl’s style.
I’m glad you invited me for dinner, I . . . uh, I guess I’m confused by . . . what kind of dinner this is? I mean. . . .” He trailed off nervously.
Hehehe. This reminds me of Coupling, Susan inviting Steve to her place to cook dinner for them means “let’s have sex and I’ll cater”.
Oh.
She then spotted tentative hope in his eyes.
Oh. . . .
Um.
/Points at previous remark/
Also, loving that reaction!
She had bulldozed so quickly into wanting to prove what she wanted to prove that she hadn’t even thought about how it would look. . . .
Inviting Clark over for dinner.
Just the two of them. . . .
It’s still time to poison Perry, too!
No wonder he had responded the way he had when she had asked! Though happy, he had been flabbergasted. She had thought it was because he had been thinking about what Jimmy had told him!
Poor dear. He worried that she had run out of patience with his patience!
“A few days ago, about . . . my cooking,” she admitted.
One could still infer cooking to mean something else. One room over.
“–Lois is a horrible cook!” Jimmy said. “Trust me.”
“Surely, things can’t be that bad,” Clark argued.
One guy she dated, he fled across the ocean back to France because of her cooking.
LOIS: No, he fled because I showed him my cooking *knife* and what I can go with it to a carrot.
Perry had called them soon after, so fortunately for Jimmy she hadn’t heard his rebuttal.
Nice implication there on what she’d do to Jimmy if she had heard it.
Primarily, because she was afraid he was right.
Poor dear!
“Your cooking?” he asked, before his eyebrows went up, realization dawning. “Oh!”
Lois looked down, expecting pity or a deflection.
“Lois, we weren’t talking about you,” he said gently.
Oh, that’s a nifty redirection
Why was this even important to her?
A decade of Ellen Lane imprinting?
And she gotta succeed, right?
“Um, I’ll be right back. Sorry, bathroom,” Clark suddenly said.
I don’t know what’s funnier: Clark’s bathroom break right after watching Lois drink a glass of water or him getting a Superman interruption.
She poured in some more, but then her slick fingers dropped the bottle of oil
Oh dear. That’s how Deep Water Horizon started.
hit the counter and bounced, flipping end over top and flinging the flammable liquid all over the stove, on the floor, and on the electric burner.
It all instantly ignited.
See?
Screaming out in horror as tall hot flames licked at her apron and shot high into the air, she instinctively grabbed hold of her glass of water beside her as fast as she could.
A) This is extremely vivid!
B)
And threw the water onto the flaming oil.
What followed was the last thing she expected.
I did mention
The slapstick funny could also be Queenie, but the cadence of the paragraph structure is wrong for her style. And unless Lois’s hair burns off, it’s not Tank either. So far BlueOwl remains a safe bet.
In less than a blink, the fire was out, leaving frosty white and black smudges all over the stove, pan, floor and beyond, even covering the microwave on the kitchen counter straight across from the now ruined island.
New way to assassinate Lois Lane: have Superman deal with some function hundreds of miles away and send Lois a gift basket with a self-prepare meal. She won’t survive the cooking session.
Doing her best to collect herself and wondering where Clark was – because surely he had heard her from the bathroom? –
Nice touch!
She wasn’t the only one breathing heavily.
Had this been scary for Superman too?
Duh! He had just been to the bathroom so he can’t demonstrate how scared he was, but let’s say, yes, he got wee bit upset.
“Thank you, I don’t know how you got here in time, but–” She glanced down, expecting to see blue fabric on well toned arms.
Oooooh
“Clark!?” she rasped. “B-but—the fire! You–you blew out the fire? You’re—? Wha–?”
Yes, he’s Batman.
destroyed a planet destroying asteroid a few weeks before.
Ah, there it is placed.
He had saved her from some real serious harm. What could compete with that? Did he think she was going to be angry or something?
Well, she would have been, if that had been a couple of years later during their kids’ Christmas pageant.
Did you really go to the restroom earlier or did you hear something?” she suddenly asked.
“You really need to work on some of the excuses you give,” she pointed out.
In the future, Lois can send him for coffee, chocolate, or donuts.
He playfully winced. “Yeah, I suppose I do, but now . . . maybe you could help?” he asked hopefully.
Atta boy. It’s not like she’s a consummate liar, but it’s a fine line between truth and creative reality.
“Superspeed certainly comes in handy,” she added.
“It can,” he agreed, relaxing slightly.
Yes, but according to Mark Spencer (Love and Capes), doing boring stuff at superspeed doesn’t make it any less boring.
“About dinner.”
“Yes?” she asked when he didn’t continue.
“Shall I. . . ?” He then did a swooping motion with his hand and it only took her a second to figure out what he meant.
He’s cute when he’s being coy.
moved by how nervous Clark was while (she hoped) asking her out.
Hehehe
leaned forward, her face close to his. “Who was I making dinner for? Who do I call outside of work? Who do I let edit my copy?” Then she blushed. “Who did I perform the dance of the seven veils for?”
Awwwwww
She eased into the kiss, wanting to draw out the tenderness as much as possible.
/squints/ I think you win first kiss of the year!
though maybe he was super sensitive?
She smiled between kisses, suddenly imagining certain, ehem, things.
Well, there is certain tropes about how long certain, ehem, things will take the first time around.
“You,” she said, before kissing him again, this time fully allowing herself to be swept up by how amazing Clark was at kissing.
Dinner would wait.
O o O o O
The End
Awwww, very waffy! Also, that section break is also BlueOwl’s style. /Checks BlueOwl fic/ Looky there, the cadence matches.
Great work on the prompts
And while prepping the FDK for posting, I noticed this very nice build up from cute togetherness to suddenly having chaos and an emergency, and then the big reveal. Very well done indeed.
My guess:
BlueOwl(or a really good copy cat
)
As for the prompts - nope. Sorry!
Michael
Oh, mercy - talk about not checking the water level.
On a normal day, this is so the right move! 
This really feels palpable.
